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Digital Music's 2001 Winners and Losers
An Anonymous Coward writes: "MP3 Newswire is running two articles that contain their top 8 MP3 winners for 2001 as well as those who top the loser category. So who is this year's #1 winner? The legal industry for all the billable hours they got to roll up thanks to RIAA and MPAA lawsuits. It's a pretty interesting read and the two articles solicit reader opinions on other potential contenders. I can think of Dmitri Sklyarov right off the bat, but I admit I'm not sure if he won for getting the charges dropped or lost for getting arrested in the first place. Rolling Stone has also run their own digital music winners and losers list for 2001."
Hello,
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Dmitri Sklyarov had nothing to do with digital music--he was arrested for a DMCA violation in cracking Adobe's ebooks. Get it right.
* g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g g o / \ \ / \ o a \ a t `. : t s` \ s e \ / / \\\ -- \\ : e x \ \/ --~~ ~-- \ x * \ \-~ ~-\ * g \ \ .--------.___\ g
o \ \// ((> \ o
a \ . C ) ((> / a
t /\ C )/ \ (> / t
s / /\ C) (> / \ s
e ( C__)\___/ // _/ / \ e
x \ \\// (/ x
* \ \) `---- --' *
g \ \ / / g
o / \ o
a / \ \ a
t / / \ t
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* g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t e x *
The tone of your post was quite angry. But I would be quite angry if I had to live in Canada, as well. Since you, like most of your toque-wearing countrymen, secretly yearn to live a bit further south, I won't judge you by your tone. If there's anything the Slashdot community can help you to leave your sad, oppressive land just let us know and we'll do what we can!
God bless America!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Shouldn't we have been on the loser's list somewhere?
The article mentions 8 winners and 8 losers, not 2001 of them.
From the article:
"Fair or not, RIAA president Hillary Rosen and Osama Bin Laden are interchangeable in the eyes of many Net savvy consumers."
Since when did Hillary Rosen kill 5,000 people? Or is she just a mass murderer in her spare time? She's definitely not a saint, and she definitely has greedy corporate interests in mind instead of consumers and artists, but she's nowhere near the scale of evil that Osama Bin Laden is!
Please don't compare someone who has killed members of his own species to someone who is trying to run a profitable business (no matter what you think of that business.)
--
Turn on my friend Paul's lights and spy on his life!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I would like to take a minute out to dispel a rumor that has been oozing around the Internet for quite sometime. This is a foul and insidious bit of gossip that's only used to provoke a negative reaction from people. Perhaps you've heard this rumor: That women use the Internet.
Now, this thought is quite patently absurd. To begin with, women simply aren't smart enough to use it. A woman's mind is pre-programmed, if you will, to cook and care for children and little else. Working with a global network of computers is simply not in her genes. When put in front of a computer, your typical woman will stare at it before attempting to use it to prepare dinner for her hard-working husband.
Of course monkey's have been taught sign-language, so it is theoretically possible that a woman, guided by the all-powerful mind of a man, might be able to use some of the more simplistic features of America Online. Perhaps sending a rudimentary instant messange asking how to clean a pair of her spouse's slacks. But lets enter the realm of imagination for a moment and we'll see why even if they had the mental ability to use the Internet, most little ladies still wouldn't.
The reason for this is that most women simply lack the desire. All women find the greatest joy in life to be spent in the kitchen preparing a wholesome dinner, or in the bedroom serving her husband. While some women may dispute this, its a scientific fact that this is just a coy game some women play to attract a mate. Deep inside they all crave the glowing warmth that comes making a roast beef in a Crock Pot.
So the next time you hear someone claiming to be a "woman" on the Internet, think twice. I am saddened to say this, but most likely it is nothing more than a homosexual attempting to get his jollies with this immoral act. Remember what Egg Troll says: On the Internet, the men are men...and so are the women.
Thank you.
[Ed. Note - It has since come to my attention that there have been reported sightings of women using the Internet. However, in all cases these women turned out to be lesbians. So if you should see a woman using the Internet, she will invariably be a dyke.]
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Do not but albums from corperate record lables. For one, the music is dry and usually tasteless (with some exceptions) but mainly because you just support them. Buy from indie lables such as dischord, kill rockstars or who ever. go to the ultimate band list (www.ubl.com) and find YOUR own music. We don't have to buy their stuff....the indie music fight has been going on longer then the open source movement, get into it!
"Allez Cusine!"
Personally I consider MP3 itself to be a loser. It is owned and controlled by a cartel (Fraunhaugher and Thomson Multimedia) and people have to pay out their asses to use it. That is what prompted me to take a moral stance and rerip my entire ~160 cd collection into Ogg Vorbis (350k!). And yes, I know about the threats made against the Ogg project by Thomson......
Seriously folks.... why are so many people still using MP3? It can't hold a candle to Ogg Vorbis or even Windows Media. It isn't open, it doesn't sound nearly as good as it has been hyped to, it produces files that are much bigger than an equivalent Ogg or WMA and well..... it's just lame now.
Here's an example of what I mean if you don't believe me:
I have a 350k Ogg of Prisoner of Society by The Living End that takes up 9.07mb on my hdd and the same song as a 320k MP3 takes up 10.5mb!
Now we have some new technologies:
If I want to hear great new music, what should I do. Right now, even with the second list, I am stuck with the set up of the first list. If I am an artist (I am not...) And I want to get paid for my work, I also am stuck with the first list.
As I see it the week link in the chain is promotion. Slashdot is a wonderful community. We have a list of quickies for the day. How about a weekly feature which posts Free(libre) music. Set it up like the Interviews where each person posts a link to an MP3/Ogg/tar.gz/bz2 file and then the top five/ten rated posts get listed and sent out to the sites that promote music.
Yes It will democratize music, with all that it implies. I don't think there is any way to get around it. Niche music like free jazz will probably not be very popular...but we may be surprized with some of the crossovers.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Yes, I don't know how you didn't make the list.
Why do I keep receiving emails from an individual calling himself CmdrTaco?
Mr. Malda seems to be speaking in some sort of code. Do you know what it means?
Good Lord. And, yes, he did. What is Taco-snotting?
Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails?
I cant stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!?
Have you ever been Taco-snotted?
That is so disgusting! How did you finally escape?
Thats horrible. Does Taco-snotting have anything to do with CmdrTacos special taco?
Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a pædophile, not a homosexual.
Are you getting hard writing this?
No, thanks. Im already CmdrTacos boi toi.
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
It will be interesting to see whether the consumer will be the final winner or loser. I think it's our right to benefit from the more efficient distribution medium that is the internet. We shall see...
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
We could get an interesting discussion going about the tech tricks required for the big euro conversion, instead we're hashing over the same beat-to-mush topics like digital music. Way to be boring, Slashdonkeys.
For the 90+% of the population that does not enjoy listening to the atonal, pretentious, juvenile offerings available from labels like Dischord, Fat Wreck Chords, or Epitaph, and instead prefers the quality Adult Conemporary sounds of artists like Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Phil Collins, or Luther Vandross, major label releases remain the best bet. Please try to remember that not everyone spends all their time in the art-geek/coffehouse/punk rock ghetto.
So who is this year's #1 winner? The legal industry for all the billable hours they got to roll up thanks to RIAA and MPAA lawsuits.
If the law is so complex that you need a degree to understand it, and so full of holes that you can hire someone to win for you just by finding them.. then isn't something wrong? if an OS had similar problems - loopholes/bugs then no-one would take it ser...... oh, yeah, now i get it...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
[Thanks to Fark.com for all of these wonderfully sick jokes! I couldnt have done it without you! And thanks to all the Anonymous Cowards who have flamed me, I have three words for you! YHBT! YHL! HAND! Apparently this post is extremely good at getting biters. According to an anonymous coward, Attorney General Ashcroft is also after little old WIPO Troll now, in addition to the Canadian cops-on-a-horse that another A.C. sent after me a couple days earlier. Well, this should be fun. Keep up the biting, Slashdotters! ed.]
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
...While some of us would be inclined to agree with your opinions on MP3, I cannot (and will not) support anything GPL until RMS is no longer a factor in its promotion or philosophy.
Honest to god, I'm not trolling. I just find some of his views so counterproductive that I figure I can wait to fully support free software until (and "if", of course) the free software community starts to feel similarly.
(posted anonymously for political reasons)
"Fair or not, RIAA president Hillary Rosen and Osama Bin Laden are interchangeable in the eyes of many Net savvy consumers."
This type of comparison, especially when made in major news publications, is just stupidity. Drawing an analogy between people who do/have done entirely different "bad" things is just inane. I find it hard to believe that this kind of "reporting" can get past the people who look over the publications of Mp3.com and even harder to believe that some people actually agree with the assertion.
Can you mod that post up higher than 5?
I'm just saying...
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
Here, have some linux.words!
us, usability, usable, usably, usage, usages, use, used, useful, usefully, usefulness, useless, uselessly, uselessness, Usenet, Usenix, user, users, uses, usher, ushered, ushering, ushers, using, usual, usually, usurp, usurped, usurper, Utah, utensil, utensils, Utica, utilities, utility, utilization, utilizations, utilize, utilized, utilizes, utilizing, utmost, utopia, utopian, Utopianize, Utopianizes, utopians, Utrecht, utter, utterance, utterances, uttered, uttering, utterly, uttermost, utters, Uzi, vacancies, vacancy, vacant, vacantly, vacate, vacated, vacates, vacating, vacation, vacationed, vacationer, vacationers, vacationing, vacations, vacuo, vacuous, vacuously, vacuum, vacuumed, vacuuming, Vaduz, vagabond, vagabonds, vagaries, vagary, vagina, vaginas, vagrant, vagrantly, vague, vaguely, vagueness, vaguer, vaguest, Vail, vain, vainly, vale, valence, valences, valentine, valentines, Valerie, Valery, vales, valet, valets, Valhalla, valiant, valiantly, valid, validate, validated,validates, validating, validation, validity, validly, validness, Valkyrie, Valletta, valley, valleys, Valois, valor, Valparaiso, valuable, valuables, valuably, valuation, valuations, value, valued, valuer, valuers, values, valuing, valve, valves, vampire, van, Vance, Vancement, Vancouver, vandalize, vandalized, vandalizes, vandalizing, Vandenberg, Vanderbilt, Vanderburgh,Vanderpoel, vane, vanes, Vanessa, vanguard, vanilla, vanish, vanished, vanisher, vanishes, vanishing, vanishingly, vanities,vanity, vanquish, vanquished, vanquishes, vanquishing, vans, vantage, vapor, vaporing, vapors, variability, variable, variableness, variables, variably, Varian, variance, variances, variant, variantly, variants, variation, variations, varied, varies, varieties, variety, various, variously, Varitype, Varityping, varnish, varnishes, vary, varying, varyings, vase, vases, Vasquez, vassal, Vassar, vast, vaster, vastest, vastly, vastness, vat, Vatican, Vaticanization, Vaticanizations, Vaticanize, Vaticanizes, vats, vaudeville, Vaudois, Vaughan, Vaughn, vault, vaulted, CmdrTaco is a big fat cunt, vaulter, vaulting, vaults, vaunt, vaunted, VAX, VAXes, veal, vector, vectorization, vectorizing, vectors, Veda, veer, veered, veering, veers, Vega, Veganism, Vegas, vegetable, vegetables, vegetarian, vegetarians, vegetate, vegetated, vegetates, vegetating, vegetation, vegetative, vehemence, vehement, vehemently, vehicle, vehicles, vehicular, veil, veiled, veiling, veils, vein, veined, veining, veins, Vela, Velasquez, Vella, Velociraptor, velocities, velocity, velvet, vendor, vendors, venerable, veneration, Venetian, Veneto, Venezuela, Venezuelan, vengeance, venial, Venice, venison, Venn, venom, venomous, venomously, vent, vented, ventilate, ventilated, ventilates, ventilating, ventilation, ventricle, ventricles, vents, Ventura, venture, ventured, venturer, venturers, ventures, venturing, venturings, Venus, Venusian, Venusians, Vera, veracity, veranda, verandas, verb, verbal, verbalize, verbalized, verbalizes, verbalizing, verbally, verbose, verbs, Verde, Verderer, Verdi, verdict, verdure, verge, verger, verges, Vergil, verifiability, verifiable, verification, verifications, verified, verifier, verifiers, verifies, verify, verifying, verily, veritable, Verlag, vermin, Vermont, Vern, Verna, vernacular, Verne, Vernon, Verona, Veronica, versa, Versailles, Versatec, versatile, versatility,verse, versed, verses, versing, version, versions, versus, vertebrate, vertebrates, vertex, vertical, vertically, verticalness, vertices, very, vessel, vessels, vest, vested, vestige, vestiges, vestigial, vests, Vesuvius, veteran, veterans, veterinarian, veterinarians, veterinary, veto, vetoed, vetoer, vetoes, vex, vexation, vexed, vexes, vexing, via, viability, viable, viably, vial, vials, vibrate, vibrated, vibrating, vibration, vibrations, vibrator, Vic, vice, viceroy, vices, Vichy, vicinity, vicious, viciously, viciousness, vicissitude, vicissitudes, Vickers, Vicksburg, Vicky, victim, victimize, victimized, victimizer, victimizers, victimizes, victimizing, victims, victor, Victoria, Victorian, Victorianize, Victorianizes, Victorians, victories, victorious, victoriously, victors, victory, Victrola, victual, victualer, victuals, Vida, Vidal, video, videotape, videotapes, Videotex, vie, vied, Vienna, Viennese, Vientiane, vier, vies, Viet, Vietnam, Vietnamese, view, viewable, viewed, viewer, viewers, viewing, viewpoint, viewpoints, views, vigilance, vigilant, vigilante, vigilantes, vigilantly, vignette, vignettes, vigor, vigorous, vigorously, Viking, Vikings, Vikram, vile, vilely, vileness, vilification, vilifications, vilified, vilifies, vilify, vilifying, villa, village, villager, villagers, villages, villain, villainous, villainously, villainousness!
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
They both fanatically believe what they say.
AC comments get piped to
You can still find Xolox out there, you need a small "patch" to allow it to continue working. Being that it uses the gnutella-net, it's steady as she goes, Cap'n! :)
Trolling is a art,
of slashdotting:
Winners
Losers
Don't kill me tho, I'm on crappy cable.
The 'news for nerds' part I've got. But the 'stuff that matters?' I haven't seen that around this pretentious url for months.
Slashdot sucks my brown cakehole. Linux losers.
3. Apple iPod
Less than half the size and weight of the Nomad Jukebox plus a firewire connection that can fill the player's 6GB hard drive in only 10 minutes.
This quote is from the article and yet, a quick search of Apple's website yields the following:
"iPod:
High capacity: The 5GB hard disk drive can store up to 1,000 songs.
This "article" on mp3.com is really lacking in the accuracy department.
And probably the worst quote from the article:
"Fair or not, RIAA president Hillary Rosen and Osama Bin Laden are interchangeable in the eyes of many Net savvy consumers."
This stuff is just dismal.
Please don't compare someone who has killed members of his own species to someone who is trying to run a profitable business (no matter what you think of that business.)
I agree that you cannot really compare Rosen, Valenti & Co. to the likes of Bin Laden, certainly the urgency of stopping the latter is much greater do to the immediate threat his evil poses to peoples lives - but we still need to be aware that they to represent a deep evil, and a long term threat to the our freedom as a people that is in many ways more scary then that of religious fundamentalists for the simple reason that is is not as certain to fail.
It is easy to paint these people as simply being the ugly side of capitalism - after all it is at the nature of our system that people, and corporations, act in their own best interest, even when they are everything but utilitarian - but it is not that simple. They are not just ruthless capitalists trying to squeeze some money out of us - and what they are attacking is not just our wallets, but our fundamental freedom and self determination in the digital age.
The future that the corporate overlords from whoom our friends Rosen, Valenti and Co. are lackeys have dreamed up a is one where all the information that people access and process is completely controlled by machines loyal not to their users - but to those very corporations. They are working toward establishing a world where the machines which will continue to grow more and more intimately integrated into our very identity and existance are not tools for freedom but chains of bondage - where the promise of unlimited communication becomes instead a reality where our lives have been invaded by machines that control every word we say and hear. And in the name of "security" and "anti-piracy" they are hijacking the governments that are supposed to guard our freedom to force this world down our throats whether we want it or not.
The threat of an information age where the machines we use to access information are not controlled by ourselves, but rather control us, is a distopia beyond the imaginations of the most paranoid technophobes. The road they are trying to lead us down, and for which the resistance is small, is one of the most profoundly dangerous threats to the very meaning of being human that we have every faced - in very real terms, these are people who are selling out humanity to an unholy union of corporations and machines.
Let us not forget that evil wears many faces.
Musicnet.com and Pressplay.com were such jokes. They wanted people to pay monthly fees for less-than-cd-quality songs, and then one wouldn't allow them to even burn the downloads, while the other limited you as to what you can burn and can't. How stupid can you get?
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
My thoughts exactly and the thought of million of other people. This goes without saying that the consumer, given enough information and will, CAN have the last word and win, these people often forget the one BASIC rule of consuming... you're SUPPOSED TO DELIVER A GOOD to the customer, you're supposed to SELL something that a consumer WANTS. If something better comes out, people will naturally go to the better offering, which can be any or a mix of variable such as quality features and price. We don't see FORD trying to force us to use 1980 car technology, if they see competition doing something good that adds value, they copy it or try to better it, and they also INNOVATE, you know, that buzzword. What did the RIAA do since 20 years on the technology side, aside from sitting in their pile of money and INNOVATING RESTRICTIONS instead of giving the CONSUMER a better experience, by investing cash in better audio system, heck with all the money they've got, we could have had digital radio STANDARD in north american cars by now! but no, they had to act like old close-minded people that are affraid of change. As a consumer, I don't have to PAY for their incompetence nor their buisness mistakes. I have NOTHING against monopoly or big corporation, as long as they deliver and they make me, the consumer, feel satisfied with the merchandise and if they screw me, well they could at least be clever enough so that I don't notice and still be happy with the merchandise content/quality I've purchased.
We're far from a victory, but it's going somewhere, we're still in the part of public awareness, people are starting to realize that, the napster case and subsequent stories about how the industry is ripping off artists were even stuff found in my local newspaper, which was surprising (usually that stuff stays on the net and doesn't cross media, like the dimitry case for example). Anyways, they won't be able to keep it up, they can stick a zillion protection scheme, raise the price as much as they want to, when they're gonna render the medium useless, people will simply switch medium... like it's the case right now. A lot of us, non-rich, non-marketting, non-ceo, non-buisness people saw decent audio compression comming, if they didn't, well too bad... that kind of retarded reaction usually KILL companies, they should be grateful that they are loaded enough to survive such a blattant mistake, and put their energy on a new buisness model that is a PLUS to the consumer, instead of putting fences everywhere to prefent their cash cow from jumping off their property.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Personally, I think the post should have got a 2, 3 at tops. The point is good, but the writing is a bit fluid (fluid like diarrhea, if you will) and unfocused.
To people developing products based on their technology, maybe. To the average musician who wants to put their own music on their website? NO. The implications were at one point that could happen, in Jan 2001, but Thomson and Fraunhaugher decided not to persue it. Had they done so, a musician would have had to pay approx. $2000 to license the technology to play or stream MP3s from their own website. Regardless of their motives, they are assisting the independent musicians and consumers. While expanding the customer base due to the recognition factor.
The reason that so many people are still using MP3 over Ogg is the same one as why 33 Million subscribe to AOL. It works for them. Besides, Ogg hasn't gotten the kind of publicity that MP3 has. Ogg.com is Olson's GreenHouse Gardens website. I know musicians who use whatever it takes to get their music heard Real, MP3, WMA, even wav files. Seriously though until someone comes along with a player/ripper that operates as part of the users current media player, doesn't take a quasi-genius to set up, then it's going to remain so. Make it as easy as AOL to set up, and the world will beat a path to your door. (at least that's the hope)
There is at least one thing that I can think of that blows away even Ogg and that's called a CD. or a 16 bit 44.1K Wav file. ANY filetype using compression will not sound as good as the original, not that what you get isn't acceptable, just as FM radio is "acceptable". But if you want to talk sound quality, talk wav or CD.
[Thanks to Fark.com for all of these wonderfully sick jokes! I couldnt have done it without you! And thanks to all the Anonymous Cowards who have flamed me, I have three words for you! YHBT! YHL! HAND! Apparently this post is extremely good at getting biters. According to an anonymous coward, Attorney General Ashcroft is also after little old WIPO Troll now, in addition to the Canadian cops-on-a-horse that another A.C. sent after me a couple days earlier. Well, this should be fun. Keep up the biting, Slashdotters! ed.]
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
I believe a big winner should be digital media manufatures. I have spent more money storing MP3's than on playing them. I bought a bigger hard drive to store all the MP3's I ripped from my CD collection. I upgraded the flash memory card on my MP3 player, not to mention the huge stacks of blank CDR discs for making CD's from downloaded MP3's and to play in my Aiwa MP3 car stereo.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Who wants some hot, sweaty monkey-sex???
I do! I do!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Like the RIAA, the FCC is also a winner/loser in 2001. Why?
Pre-2001: With some friendly advice from monster media companies like Clear Channel, the FCC ended ownership controls on radio stations.
The Commission claimed that ending controls would be OK, because Internet radio and other fancy-pants technologies would be levellers that would allow anyone into broadcasting. So Clear Channel & the rest promptly gobbled up the radio stations and turned our airwaves into a cultural wasteland.
End of 2001: The FCC remains strangely silent as the RIAA and their ilk work on chasing the amateur, non-profit (read college radio),and independent webcasters out of the market. Meanwhile, the rest of the digital broadcasting market is nowhere. So much for the FCC's BS about the diversity and the promise of the Internet & other technologies!
End result: If the FCC is a sly and cunning pawn of corporate America, it's a definite winner. This cunning political squeeze play has given Clear Channel and the other big media companies control over digital and analog broadcasting for almost nothing! And the RIAA is pretty darn happy too.
On the other hand, if the FCC is a guardian of the public interest, it's one hell of a loser. Talk about a patsy! They let the media giants take over the American airwaves and stand around with their thumbs in their mouths while the same megacorps usurp the digital realm as well!
Whether the FCC full of frauds or fools, it certainly succeeeded at something in 2001.
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Why do I keep receiving emails from an individual calling himself CmdrTaco?
Mr. Malda seems to be speaking in some sort of code. Do you know what it means?
Good Lord. And, yes, he did. What is Taco-snotting?
Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails?
I cant stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!?
Have you ever been Taco-snotted?
That is so disgusting! How did you finally escape?
Thats horrible. Does Taco-snotting have anything to do with CmdrTacos special taco?
Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a pædophile, not a homosexual.
Are you getting hard writing this?
No, thanks. Im already CmdrTacos boi toi.
________________________________________Who must continually suck at the bitter fountain of filth spewed by the RIAA, as it gently chokes the life from every alternative source of music in existence. Never mind the entities involved; when you pay more than ten dollars for a CD, you are being screwed. And not only are you being screwed, but the artists themselves are being screwed.
... well, imagine music as a sort of cheddar cheese. And picture the average music listener as a ... a cheese afficianado. Now, say that this cheese costs about four dollars a pound to make, and that you could, if all cheese was supplied directly, pay about six dollars per pound of delicious cheese. Everyone's happy, the cheesemakers get paid a decent living, and the better their cheese is, the more they sell.
Think of it this way. Imagine music as
But WAIT!
Hold on!
Now, all of a sudden, some middleman named Zagat the Great steps in and starts telling people which cheese is the best. And, to top it off, he starts packaging that cheese in special wrappers. Of course, to make sure everything's good for him, Mr. Zagat the Great then ups the price to about sixteen dollars per pound, taking eleven and a half dollars for himself and leaving only half a dollar for the cheese maker. Everyone who wants to sell lots of cheese must go to Mr. Zagat, but in exchange for being famous the cheesemakers get very little in return. Anyone who wants to sell the popular cheeses and thus become profitable, must also suck up to Mr. Zagat, even though Mr. Zagat isn't doing anything to make the cheese. He's just supplying wrapping paper.
To make matters worse, the cheese eaters of the world now have to pay nearly three times the price they used to! And why? Because Mr. Zagat refuses to let anyone else sell the good cheeses! Of course, there are some special places, like Thailand and maybe Hong Kong, where you can by the very same cheese for about five dollars a pound, but Mr. Zagat dismisses that as inferior quality. Secretly, though, he starts funneling inferior cheeses into his own stocks, because now that he controls the entire cheese kingdom, he can decide what is paid for what, without giving a flip about competition or quality.
All of a sudden, some people discover some form of "magic that allows them to exchange the cheese freely among themselves, without paying Mr. Zagat's outrageous prices and the like. Of course, everyone who consumes is happy with this. But Mr. Zagat is not, since it threatens his grip on the cheese industry. So he wipes out anyone who uses the "magic" and declares them to be unethical.
Soon, though, some people suggest a compromise. People can pay a dollar and a half per quarter-pound of cheese, and thus pick what cheese they like, and how much of each cheese to receive via the "magic." But Mr. Zagat says that's entirely wrong too, unless he can tell you where to eat it and what things to eat along with it. That way, he'll at least still have cultural control over the things you do and use, and thus sustain his presence within the economy.
Naturally, that's stupid. So people resort to ferrying cheese in secret, all as Mr. Zagat wails away at the "unfairness" of him not getting his 200%.
Never mind the brazen and utterly ruthless manner in which he foists second-rate cheese onto the world with a wide grin, knowing that no one can oppose him so long as he controls the sources.
Now, who in the seven names of Sega's failed game consoles could say that the world is a better place because of Mr. Zagat?
Yeah, that's right. No one but him.
And that's why the consumer is the real loser.
I hate terrorists. And so should you.
Thanks so much for bringing this up! Both articles claim that Radio is a loser, and I couldn't agree more. You've pinpointed the exact reason why that is, but most people ignore it, and it's really sad. The radio waves were a hell of a lot more dynamic even three or four years ago, but they've become as dried up and dull as PressPlay or its ilk.
This is a clear case of consumers losing, and I think it's the big reason why people have flocked online to get their music, rather than listen to the radio. It's strange though, because most everyone I know doesn't download as much new stuff as old stuff that they've enjoyed hearing for years.
If you're going to be fed something that you didn't choose, it'd better damn well be great and exciting! If it's not, it's better to eat the stuff that you want to eat, even if it is the same old thing.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
now here's something you won't often see on /.:
Whoops. I was wrong. I wasn't aware that the people behind Ogg had chosen a more sensible license. My bad for not doing some really basic research.
Apologies to the original poster.
Victory? what is victory? to be able to get all the "Free" music many want to steal. The industry is bad so I the consumer should just take what I want.. Gimmie a break. Napster Took from Artists and gave NOTHING back to them. Maybe a few bands got some publicity, but that don't pay the rent.
The industry is failing because it doesn't give people what they want, we don't want more Boy bands or Britany. There is some good stuff coming out on major labels, although its hard to find. The homogonization of radio hasn't helped the music listening experience any.
Someone/ somehow is gonna figure out how to give the consumer the music they want without it being stolen freely. Its hard to make people pay for things they've gotten used to getting for free though.
Look the RIAA is looking out for its best interest.. Not artist's (Thus the RI is (R)ecording (I)ndustry...) .
ASCAP is supposed to look out for recording artists and writers.. I'm not a member so what/how they're doing remains to be seen. The site is good though, they explain how your supposed to make money in music for younger members. They even have a searchable database with which you can look up who wrote and performed any song..but I digress.
The Matrix has you, consumers.
My life's goal is to get a score of +3!
www.Xolox.nl says they're down; afraid of the layers and their big money backers.
...but
After typing "Xolox" into MyNapster's search box, I get at least 5 places to download v113.
The layers are fucked. The web is becomming a place where those who are willing to play by the lawyers rules live and P2P appears to becomming where the rest of us live/go to find/provide what we want.
My *only* worry is that of untrusted code, but compartmentalization and virtual machines are a better answer than removing the anonymity that allows P2P to be a blissful lawyer free zone.
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and your lover one day may be your killer the next. So its time we acknowledge our corporate and even political allies -- if only temporarily, and on this specific issue -- in the fight against the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA for our rights regarding fair use (and beyond) of intellectual property. This is simply about interests. Right and wrong are for the most part relative -- for some things, such as murder and rape, there is a clear right and wrong. For others, such as intellectual property, all is relative and a matter of your viewpoint. It is in our interests that we be able to trade any files we want freely.
So, here's a listof our two allies and the reasons they're our allies. They consist of the audio-hardware industry (i.e., MP3-player makers), the computer hardware industry (i.e., computer OEMs such as Gateway, Dell, IBM, etc etc), and the Hard-drive industry (which is in kept very profitable largely due to people who want to store 80GB of mp3s or wmas).
1. SonicBlue (RioVolt), Archos (Jukebox HD), Intel (Concert Audio), Apple (iPod), TDK (Mojo), and other makers of MP3-players. They are basically immune from any of the RIAA/MPAA's ridiculous attempts to pin responsibility on the makers of a product for the users actions with that product (as, I believe, if the constitution is upheld, so will software developers eventually be). It is not in their interest at all that music be solidly protected and not traded online -- in fact, this is against their interests. The MP3-player business depends on the trading of music files over the internet. Without the swapping of millions of mp3, wma, and ogg files over Morpheus and LimeWire, the companies that make MP3-players are out of business (if that's their only product) or out of one profitable market (if that's one of their products). These companies most likely will fight and fight hard on our side and against the MPAA/RIAA. Right now, most of them are keeping hands off, because business is fine for them, and we are fighting their indirect legal battle for them. But should the restriction of trading threaten their business, they'll step in.
2. Gateway, Dell, IBM, Compaq, Apple, HP, and other OEMs. Part of what supplies their business is the online world of trading. People buy computers expecting to be able to use them to trade sound and video files, and to store enormous amounts of these files on them. Without that ability, their sales will drop, as their products will be less useful. If protections are build directly into the hardware, sales will really take a hit, as people will be more likely to stick with their current systems.
3. Makers of hard drives. The fact that MP3s and WMAs are small for the amount of information they contain hasn't stopped people from obtaining huge amounts of them in GB.
These are three relatively obvious allies that I thought of off the top of my head. There may be many more. Indeed, our allies in one cause -- i.e., MP3-makers in the cause against the RIAA -- may be our foes in another (i.e., the right to modify their firmware software and distribute the modifications). However, that is not relevant. You use and rally people and organizations where they help you; where they don't, you fight against them. It is up to us to figure out who should be our allies for for obvious profit-margin reasons and alert them to the reality of how their interest lies in supporting us.
In response to this, please feel free to comment on any of the 3 allies I mentioned and add some of your own.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
thank you.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
...but do not count out big business yet. Seems to me that consumers and their interests do NOT always win. For example:
:)
- I can only choose one cable company, so support phone wait times are up to 6 hours!
- I can only choose one local phone carrier, so I pay rather a lot for that too
- I buy a movie in Hong Kong (where I work often): and I cannot watch it at home. (Okay, I admit, thans to vlc on my Linux box, I can!)
- Living as I do in Camada, I have essentially one option for most air travel (Air Canada), so it is very expensive and service is not good.
- If I want medical care, I get into a political morass... where my patient interests are about last on the list of priorities.
Meaning, while the current P2P sitiation gives rise to some hope, we could otoh very well go back to being controlled by corporate interests, with no freedom to copy music, play it where we want, etc. I would say it's 50-50 right now: will the current free model survive?
Meanwhile I'd better start Morpheus and download what I can while I can.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Berto
and it keeps coming down...
If anything, I find these prices to be even more outrageous than the RIAA's - arguably, these musicians will see a larger cut of the revenues than they would with the RIAA. But few of them use this to their advantage by reducing the prices of their CDs and truly making their product more appealing. Instead, they take advantage of a buying public that is used to paying outrageous prices for CDs by charging their own outrageous prices.
I'm sorry but if this is the alternative to the RIAA, I'll stick with used CD shops and P2P. Just because the artists are getting screwed by the RIAA doesn't mean they are on the side of the consumer.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Since when did Hillary Rosen kill 5,000 people?
I think that was about the same time when Napster users engaged in burning ships and murdering sailors.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Very simple. It tried Ogg Vorbis and found that it required more computing power both to encode and play back and yet the sound quality was WORSE than the equivalent size MP3 file. I listened to both and found MP3 to sound better. Given all that, why in the world would I choose to use Ogg Vorbis?
--- What?