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Wal-Mart Music Download Service Launches
nns6561 writes "Wal-Mart launched their music download service today. They are providing wma files for 88 cents. I was able to download and play the test file with MPlayer and Linux. Finally, a music service for us geeks." While it may be only another online music seller, I'd hazard a guess that Wal-Mart has the name recognition to be the most prevalent music download service, especially among the tech-unsavvy.
They seem to be a bit less restrictive than Napster2.
From their usage agreement:
You may download music to a single computer. You may then transfer music files and backup license files to up to two (2) additional personal computers. You may play music an unlimited number of times on up to three (3) personal computers. You shall be entitled to 1) burn Products solely for personal, non-commercial use up to ten (10) times and 2) export Products solely to a portable device capable of playing Windows Media (TM) Audio ("WMA") files such as a WMA-compliant MP3 player an unlimited number of times. WALMART.COM is a reseller to you and does not accept orders from music dealers, exporters, wholesalers, any businesses of any kind or other customers who intend to resell.
Emphasis mine.Still, I won't pay for any music until I can burn it to CD in MP3 or Ogg format. My car has an MP3 player and changing CDs every hour or so has become as objectionable to me as following the speed limit.
As for the submitter's claim that wal-mart might be able to make this the "most prevalent online music service," whatever happened to the ISP that wal-mart tried to float? I rest my case.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
I question the validity of this. I am not familiar with WalMart.com's sales but I bet they are dwarfed by Amazon's sales. (WalMart, in general, however I am sure dwarfs that.)
While cheap, it will take more than a few cents savings to convince people to use Walmart's service as opposed to using itunes. Hey, better yet, why not download for free? Seriously though, unlike their globally dominating bricks and mortar brand, I don't see this taking off as well. But maybe I'm wrong; perhaps WalMart's music service will take off. Hey while we are at it, maybe while people are at the site they will buy a bunch of Lindows PCs too. :)
Plus with the selection available at WalMart (or lack therof) I hazard a guess that WalMart will not be the most prevelant music download service...
*
troll blacklist. Please mo
Haha it will all prob be edited.. what crap!
sorry move along.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The test file said "Thanks for shopping at Wal-mart!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Here's what you need to play a song: A Windows PC. See all system requirements. Windows Media Player 9. Get it now for free. Approximately 10 MB of disk space on your PC. A connection to the Internet the first time you play a song. If you currently have a Windows Media Player installed on your computer, you may be prompted to update certain components of the player before you can play the song. Click here for information about installing, configuring, and troubleshooting your Windows Media Player.
Who do they think we are? This is /. by God. We shall never be held by the "requirements" of simpletons!
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
I will gladly save 11 cents to switch!
Or not..
Napster is fulfilling my dreams of musical intimacy. I don't care for DRM, but that is a reality that shall be eternally attached to digital music sales.
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
With Wal Mart entering the fray with music downloading, pretty soon we will have mp3 networks pumping our inboxes with free music if we sign up for these really good offers. It's official. Our economy has now vaporized into the electronic economy; expect a downturn on physical object sales and an upturn on non-tangible sales. Services will replace ownership and the middle class will vanish, and the poor will not own anything while the rich will own everything. All because Wal Mart decided to compete in online mp3 sales. It's the beginning of a standardized, McDonald's style cookie-cutter industry in an intangible form. Without the costs associated with shipping and manufacture, industry can charge more and reap more profit. Soon we will be required to do much more intangible stuff than we do, and there will be industry waiting to take our money to help us (give them money for no reason other than to give them money).
This is nothing new really, and as Marshal Berman said, All that is Solid, Melts into Air. ( BooK: Amazon )
I'd never buy anything from wal-mart just because they have been a major promoter of censorship in music (and films). I suspect their online music store is the same.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
let the songs come down in price to 75 cents by end of 2004....60 cents by 2005 .... 50 cents by 2006.....down to 20 cents by 2010
Somehow I doubt Wal-Mart has "geeks" in mind as the target audience. It does not help the geek community to patronize an online music store that provides WMA files. When those WMA's start including Palladium-enriched goodness, you won't be able to play them on Linux anymore. And maybe by then, Wal-Mart and Microsoft will have put iTunes and the more legit shops out of business.
Think about the big picture. Demand MP3 and OGG files. This cannot be understated.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
88 cents every son every day! you have to pay 88 cents a day?
88 cents but doesn't work on my iBook with out propritary software!
wma files for 88 cents. I was able to download and play the test file with MPlayer and Linux. Finally, a music service for us geeks.
.vma files to /dev/audio and decoding the audio by ear. I mean, how geekier can you get?
Yes, huzzah and hurrah with highly polished brass knobs on. Everybody knows the vma format is the sound format of choice for true geeks. Geeks even make a point of cat-ing their
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I actually think I like the website driven manner which they have set up things.
It doesn't feel like I'm making a commitment, it is simply a place where I can buy digital music...like Amazon.
I will add it to the list of places I search when I'm in need of a song. 88 cents doesn't really catch my eye. I'm curious to how they can survive at so low of rate, unless they cut a better deal with the recording industry (which is possible given all the freaking CDs they sell nationwide, everyday). Does make one wonder...if Apple is barely paying the bills at 99 cents, how can Walmart do better at 11 cents less?
I await financial reports and news. They are getting in late, but...hey...it isn't like Walmart doesn't own us.
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
If your husband got hooked up with them cryptography guys, you need to talk to a man called Bruce Schneier. Come to Stacy's on 3rd at around 7:35-7:45. He usually hangs out there.
I always wondered what WMA stood for.
they analyze their first day traffic and see Slashdot as their number one referrer, Linux i386/i686 as their number one OS, and Mozilla/Gecko as the number one browser.
wal mart, a publicly held company, is under no mandate to carry any music or products it does not want to.
Not carrying a CD by artist Q does not mean Wal-Mart is censoring artist Q. Artist Q is free to sell his music anywhere.
I suppose you would like to be critized if you owned a music store and refused to carry:
1. A conservitive spoken word book (e..g, rush limbaugh)
2. A liberal spoken word book (e.g., al franken)
So, does this mean that their music folders are going to be a complete mess like the aisles I wander down in Wal-Mart when I visit?
Will I have barefoot pregnant mothers with no front teeth jostling me so they can download "Shania Twain's Greatest Hits" first in the queue, before me?
Will my internet connection be trampled over, causing me to pass out, as a mob of people try to download the new cut price 77c song?
Boy oh boy, I can hardly wait!
It'll be about the only thing for sale at Walmart with a price that doesn't end with .99.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What does a song marked "(Edited)" mean?
An "edited" song is an alternate version of a song that has been recorded without explicit lyrics.
Rank Presidents by th
apple has invented it (yet again) and will remain the king of this technology even if they charge much more. i will be loyal to apple at all costs just because gian and innovator like apple deserves my support. you linux users just envy us. we are way, way, in front of you. it took you almost a year to catch up with G5 64 bit technology and it will take you even more, I say almost 5 months, to catch up with iTeens...err...iTunes. We are chaning the industry and you can't deny it. Apple is the revolution. Salute us!
Well, it passed my test: I tried U2 (a must for any online service that I use :) ) and every major studio track appeared. What I cannot figure out, though, is how WalMart can turn a profit while Apple cannot. Is it volume? Do they have an even more special deal??
1) Apple doesn't kow tow to M$ by using wma. They use their own format, with decent DRM policies. That's more than enough for me to keep using them.
2) They bundle their store with free burning/ripping/playlist software and seamlessly integrate it. The only thing Wal*Mart is good at integrating is their supply chain.
3) Apple is a company that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I buy their products. Did Wal*Mart create the first music store? No. Did Napster develop a really great MP3 player? No. Apple innovates, and that's why I like them.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Better spend $0.99 just to be safe! iTunes is open source! Here, look:
/
/boot
iTunes 2.0 for Mac:
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf
iTunes for Windows:
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf
The first MP3 player with a built-in gun rack!
It's fairly well known that the versions of CDs sold in Walmart are sanitized for your protection. Altered lyrics or artists/albums not sold by them are common practicies.. I wonder if it's the same with the download service. C'mon..don't think the Juggalos will be shoppin at Wal-mart.com
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
So in the interests of full disclosure the price should really be marked as "88 cents...AND YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL!"
I bet that would've messed up the formatting on their website or something though. Oh well.
If it were for us geekenfolk it would be in ogg(size) or flac(quality). Flac would be sweet. Hard to download but lossless.
Is anyone else disturbed that Wal-Mart and Target always get labeled "Discount Retailers" by the media?
Is there some threshold perecentage above which, Wal-Mart, Target, CVS, Costco, etc. are considered 'regular price retailers' and the currently labeled 'regular price retailers' become 'high price retailsers'?
The NYT should get this concept in about 10 years.
They are screwing all the grocery store businesses in the southwest by forcing their competitors to stop paying their workers health insurance just to say competitive. They are the cheapest because they buy alot of customers fire all of them and ship the labor oversea;s. The made in the USA banner in all their stores are such crap!
They have the GDP of most countries and according to Business week magazine is projected to be the seller of 50% of all household goods by 2008!
Walmart also forces vendors to outsource labor to 3rd world countries because they only stock products that are the cheapest. If not then you go out of business since Walmart will own 50% of all your customers by 2008!
All the products are cheap crap over there and the walmart down the street from where I live recently, because they put in camera's in the breakrooms, bathrooms, and hired a gumshoe to determine if the employees were forming a union. Only a few were but they fired all 120 workers in the store just to be safe and replaced them will mexicans willing to work for minimum wage.
The controversy is endless and this corporation makes Microsoft and the RIAA look friendly.
Just a little warning and you all may want to do some research before buying any laptop or music service from them.
http://saveie6.com/
128 bit encrypted WMA which they claim is "CD Quality." You can't send them as gifts (which sounds like a cool idea now that they mention it). The says
All rights in the Products are owned by WALMART.COM or its licensors and you have only a limited, nontransferable, nonexclusive, revocable, nonsublicensable right to use the Products for personal use in accordance with the terms of this Agreement.
According to this:s ervlet/ TourServlet?pageIndex=1
e rvlet/ TourServlet?pageIndex=0
http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/
Macs are out!
Yet this page has a screenshot from a mac!
http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/s
You do not need to burn to CD and rerecord to remove copyprotection, just open the file up in a sound editor and save as whatever you like.
Sadly, all of the songs I really want tend to not be major label, so they typically don't appear. Heck, I even tried Frank Zappa: while it came up with an entry for him, clicking the link gave me a "page not found" :)
Derek
Don't Panic...
Thanks, that was funny :-)
That's computer graphics. It's a black mouse pointer. Get over it. :-p
clifgriffin > blog
Wait, if Apple hardly directly makes money off of a 99cent service, how does WalMart expect to come up with a profit when doing it for 11cents less? Yea, I know they do it inside their stores, but with digital music files? I just don't get it!
Any word if the DRM prevents you from burning a song more than 10 times if you don't burn it with Windows Media Player? I don't see how it could, but who knows?
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
Just a second there - you played a *test* track with Mplayer under Linux. But the tracks that you buy are DRM'd?
Something's wrong - Microsoft's DRM scheme can't possibly work with Linux-native applications? Or can it?
Their FAQ says:
That would seem to imply that your tunes are limited to one PC only - unless they're referring to casual sharing.iTMS was hardly the first online music store. It was arguably the first good one, but hardly the first one. Apple didn't really innovate there, they just did a damn good job (which is good enough, IMO.)
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I've just spent 3 weeks converting all my CD's to MP3. I know, ogg is better, but all of my audio gear can play MP3 -- car stereo, mp3 walkman, a sony mp3 radio my wife has, etc. Anyways, religious debate aside... This is a crappy solution to my needs and I'll never use it, simply because of the lossy quality of the music once I convert the WMA's to MP3. What a shame -- I was hopeful.
-gam
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
4) I just searched for a few songs on WalMart that ITMS didn't have, and as it turns out, WalMart did.
I wonder how much attention they're paying to what they are throwing online. Here's a sound effects CD for 88 cents per effect. Bizarre.
and it plays fine on mplayer. The question is, who isn't too cheap to put out 88 cents to see if paid for download works?
I dunno . . . PAYING to download music . . . it seems so alien to me.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
None of your opinions seem to reference any material advantages...
1. MS/Apple/Lock and Key...it's all DRM, it's all proprietary. Policies? They look rather similar to me...except that I can play my WMA files on any Windows Media Player 9 computer or device...that's a lot of computers and devices, regardless of what the Walmart license wishes me to agree to. The DRM can't handle that complicated of schema.
2. Windows Media Player 9 has its own burning utility, why reinvent the wheel? Who actually uses Napster as their media player? Who would want to...you forget that with Apple, they lock me into their clunky interface to play my music. While there are a host of WMP devices around, their are only a few Apple devices...all made by Apple and all priced to reflect that. (ahem, iPod?)
3. No one cares how you feel. It may get me modded down to say it, but that is just the worst reason to use a technology ever. If you like sticking with the original inventors, get used to paying higher prices. Do you buy the name brands of all your perscription medication simply because they invented it?
Have a nice day,
Cliffy G.
clifgriffin > blog
Of course, Wal-Mart the store has all these crazy rules on what they will and won't sell - like no stickered albums, but guns and ammo. So does this mean their songs will be censored?
For that matter, I think I remember overhearing that the last digit on a Wal-Mart price says something, like if it's $19.92, the "2" means it's been returned, or something like that. Does anyone out there know the method to this madness?
Schnapple
First, make sure you have MPlayer installed and then go to the Mplayer site and download all the win32 codecs. Extract all the codecs to /usr/lib/win32. Now MPlayer, Xine and Totem can play just about any audio/video file you throw at it.
Go to Walmart's Music Sample page and download the test wma file named 829757140926_01_02.wma.
From your favorite terminal, type this command:
This will make a RAW PCM/WAVE file named audiodump.wav.Encode with oggenc:
Or, if you need MP3 (though I recommend you support a great and open format such as OGG) do this:If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Despite the poster's enthusiasm, it is worth noting that the test file is NOT DRM-wrapped (encrypted), which is why it works on mplayer / Linux. The downloaded songs surely would require licensing.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
According to their license and usage, one can download the music to 1 computer and back up music to up to two additional computers, make 10 burns to a CD and make unlimited transfers to a portable device. That's if you use WMP 9 on a PC. I was able to download the sample song, play it *and* transcode to mp3 with VLC (too lazy to cmd-line it with other tools) on OS X with no troubles. I tried the same with a song I paid for and got nothing. VLC choked on it, MPlayer gave me no sound and WMP for OS X tried to send Safari to a web site (no doubt for the DRM part).
/. effect (it was alot faster earlier today).
I'm looking forward to seeing a thorough comparison of the quality of Wal-Mart's encoded WMA (I couldn't readily find the encoding details) and Apple's iTunes AAC. I doubt that Wal-Mart is the store of choice for audiophiles, so I'm suspecting Apple's downloads are of better quality.
iTunes wins hands down on interface, usability and reliability. I can't see Wal-Mart's web-only interface winning them any converts. And, as I was checking back just a couple seconds ago, it appeared to be just starting to feel some pain from the
The potential "problem" is price. 88 cents is hard to beat, especially when folks are downloading Britney Spears latest pop hits (again, not the audiophile audience). I suspect Wal-Mart *is* making money, if only because they are leveraging their position as the number one retailer. "Want us to carry alot of copies your new album in our store? Then, you'll let us put your song on our online service and let us make money there too!"
Right now, as a Mac user, I just blew 88 cents on a song I'll never be able to hear. They lost a *potential* customer by locking my platform out. That may be their biggest downfall.
Mind the gap...
Yeah, if you look at any CD that would be sold in a Walmart store as "edited" there is an "edited" tag for the corresponding online album. It's nice to see the Walton family is still bowing down to Tipper Gore. One less reason for me to use their service (along with their rather sub-par selection of anything that isn't top 40).
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
Is anyone else mildly amused by the fact that a Wal-Mart PC can't play Wal-Mart music files?
Did you actually try that, Captain?
If you had, you'd have noticed that it cannot be done. Sound Forge, Goldwave, Super Cyber Sound Editor for Soccer Moms With 2.4 Kids all can't. They can't unencrypt it or use your license.
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
You can't buy from this new Walmart store if you're not in the 50 United States. And Apple's store isn't in Europe (yet). So what's the solution for those of us in Europe?
I've found various OD2 powered sites (Virgin, for one) but they're all the same, with awful interfaces, and music seems to be downloaded using a bizarre streaming arrangement (i.e. not good for me on a modem).
Sadly, I can see Apple et al coming to Europe, setting up their stores, and charging 99 pence a song ($1.76) which means hardly anyone will use it.. that seems to be how most US->UK things are priced.. just switch the $ for !
mogorific carpentry experiments
Woah, slow down there, Cowboy.
The test file doesn't have DRM. Windows Media Player 9 is the only player that can play a DRM'd file..
I would like to know whether WMP for Mac can play them...for curiousity's sake.
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
I am considering to launch my very own Share-Mart 2 cents a song...
I downloaded the test file, fired up MPlayer OSX, and the song played just fine.
Not that I'd be buying my music from WalMart, of course. I do have standards.
I just tried to listen to a couple of entries on their site, and all of their "listen" links throw an error in my music player.
in the same way they do their physical cd sales?
Question. When a music download site puts a restriction such as "you can only burn this to an audio CD X number of times" on a track, what's preventing somebody from burning the audio CD once, re-ripping it to .OGG?
Off topic, but I couldn't resist. Wal-Mart is soon to enter the retail wine (fermented grapes) business, according to a press release some months ago, and have actually contacted a number of the major players in California bulk wine to brand their own name. At our wine shop, we received an email from another shop suggesting the Top 12 possible names: ...
12. Chateau Traileur Parc
11. White Trashfindel
10. Big Red Gulp
9. Grape Expectations
8. Domaine Walmart "Merde du Pays"
7. NASCARbernet
6. Chef Boyardeaux
5. Peanut Noir
4. Chateau des Moines
3. I Can't Believe It's Not Vinegar!
2. World Championship Riesling
And the number 1 name for Walmart Wine
1. Nasti Spumante
Note however that the importing process takes significantly longer than usual, I don't know if this is due to the AAC format or the protection. And my only experience working with the files is on the mac, perhaps it's different in windows.
Poor quality due to compression artifacts from two formats stacking.
May we never see th
If an mp3 price is sliced by 10% and no one hears it, does it make a sound? And do they have "falling prices" signs all over the website?
Join the TWIT army now!
I know that most walmart stores do not sell "Parental Advisory" CDs, are they limiting the content of their online version as well?
You're being followed by homeland securty. I had tha same thang happern to me once.
Their customers wouldn't see it that way. They would want the portability and choice to play their music on other media players and digital music players. They would feel that their "walmart music" is in a proprietary format that WMP can't play. It's ironic, but this is how their customers would percieve the situation and ultimately what walmart must deal with.
Whoops! I think you made a mistake. It's spelled "Linux," not "Lunix!" Looks like you swapped the 'u' and the 'i.' Don't worry, it's a simple mistake...you must be new. Anyway, welcome to Slashdot!!!
I, for one, welcome our new 11-cent-cheaper-DRM-protected-online-music-distrib utor overlords.
Nothing at all. However, note that WMA -> CD -> Ogg/MP3/etc. will result in a much more lossy file that will sound worse due to the different codecs cutting out different parts of the sound. In fact, even WMA -> CD -> WMA would sound worse.
Want Slashdot headlines on your site? Try SlashHead
I recently stopped shopping at Wal Mart. The reason? Because they obtain their super low prices by paying their workers super low wages, by restricting the forming of unions for their workers, by forcing their workers to work overtime without pay, and by using huge amounts of sweatshop labor.m ?cusip= 931142
Wal Mart literally has one of the highest rates of sweatshop labor for any company. This fact, and the fact that Wal Mart also takes advantage of its non sweatshop workers, is the only reason they have the low prices they do.
All the other online music stores right now charge 99 cents per song. That seems to be the mark to hit in terms of price. Setting the price at 88 cents just undermines the stores that are actually honest. It's very likely that Wal Mart set the price at 88 cents because they could support their lower price with the profits from their other unethical practices.
While Wal Mart can't use sweatshop labor for an online store, buying from this store certainly still supports it by supporting Wal Mart.
I don't care how cheap their songs are, really, the cheaper they are, the less I want to use the store. I don't care how many songs they have, I don't care about their user rights agreements. No matter how good this store could ever be, I will never use it because of Wal Mart's horrible abuse and ethics, and I strongly encourage all of you to do the same.
If anyone is interested a more detailed list of Wal Mart's business practices, they can be found here:
http://www.responsibleshopper.com/basic.cf
Walmart were selling these sports shirts with the number 88 on them. Sold well they did, until it was revealed that it was a NeoNazi symbol. 88 being code for Heil Hitler, the 8th letter in the alphabet.
Ironic that they price them at 88 cents. Or is it?
I d/l'd the trail song (pap), and burned a CD. Works fine in my car's Alpine CDA-9811 headunit (CD/MP3/WMA), albeit a bit tinny....sounds like crap on my G4. Didn't see any cover art with it...
:)
I'll stick with ITMS for now. Gotta luv those email gift certificates
I researched this Spring '03, so all facts are current as of Fall '02 - Spring '03:
Top 5 Reasons Not To Shop At Wal-Mart
1. American Wal-Mart Employees Are Exploited.
2. Wal-Mart's Low Prices Are The Result Of Human Misery.
3. Wal-Mart Forces Its Unethical Practices On Its 65,000 Suppliers.
4. Wal-Mart Destroys Local Communities.
5. Wal-Mart Is Not Accountable.
1. AMERICAN WAL-MART EMPLOYEES ARE EXPLOITED:
* "Full-Time" (actually 28 hours/week) employees only gross $11,000 a year,
on average.
* Health benefits are available only after two years, but premiums are so
high only 38% of employees can afford it.
* Even discussing working conditions or unionization will result in
retaliation and firing.
* There is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered
and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation." (Quote taken
from a national class-action suit against Wal-Mart.)
2. WAL-MART'S LOW PRICES ARE THE RESULT OF HUMAN MISERY:
* 13-16 hour days molding, assembling, and painting toys, 7 days a week; 20
hour days in the peak season.
* Workers are paid 13 cents/hour wages in China: the minimum wage is
31 cents.
* There is no health or safety enforcement: constant headaches and nausea
from chemical fumes, indoor temperatures above 100 degrees F, rampant
repetitive stress disorder, no protective clothing available.
* Most employees are young women or teenage girls.
3. WAL-MART FORCES ITS UNETHICAL PRACTICES ON ITS 65,000 SUPPLIERS:
* Suppliers have to open their accounting books to Wal-Mart executives so
they can cut "unnecessary expenses" like unionized workers, health
benefits, and American-made products.
* Suppliers are forced to move facilities to China and other low production
cost nations to meet Wal-Mart's demands.
* Competitors are also forced to abandon customer service while slashing
employee wages and moving production to foreign sweat shops to remain
competitive.
4. WAL-MART DESTROYS LOCAL COMMUNITIES:
* Wal-Mart stores average 200,000 feet in size: more than 4 football fields
and destroying any sense of community or character where they are located.
* By pricing items below cost they crush local retailers. Once they hold a
monopoly in the market they raise prices.
* Three good jobs are destroyed for every two Wal-Mart jobs created.
* Instead of business profits being reinvested in the community they are
shipped to Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
5. WAL-MART IS NOT ACCOUNTABLE:
* The media won't report negatively about Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart would
pull its huge advertising budget.
* The 535 members of Congress have no power compared to Wal-Mart's
global reach: Wal-Mart does not have to answer to American voters, just
it's stockholders who are seeking unethical profit.
* Wal-Mart is radically remaking our labor standards and local economies
by stifling debate, suppressing knowledge, and not asking our consent.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Lately we keep hearing of an increasing number of people who had their credit card numbers stolen and their accounts emptied by using credit cards for online purchases. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a "secure transaction" since your card information will always be decrypted on the server end and stored in plain text so it is available to hackers all over the world and to anyone with access to the server.
Our advise is: NEVER use a credit card for purchases on the internet unless you are willing to take significant risks. Any credit card company WILL try everything to hold you personally responsible, even if they claim that they won't.
Really? You must mean the ones that can't read, because 90% of the stuff that they take home says 'Made in China' right on the bottom/label/box/manual/agency label/warranty card/rebate.
:)
They've also heard that's where the jobs are going too
Seems it was Wal-Mart that promised America it would promote madeinUSA....but gosh, where is that APEX TV made...ummm...not in USA? How patriotic.
Top 5 Reasons Not To Shop At Wal-Mart
1. American Wal-Mart Employees Are Exploited.
2. Wal-Mart's Low Prices Are The Result Of Human Misery.
3. Wal-Mart Forces Its Unethical Practices On Its 65,000 Suppliers.
4. Wal-Mart Destroys Local Communities.
5. Wal-Mart Is Not Accountable.
1. AMERICAN WAL-MART EMPLOYEES ARE EXPLOITED:
* "Full-Time" (actually 28 hours/week) employees only gross $11,000 a year,
on average.
* Health benefits are available only after two years, but premiums are so
high only 38% of employees can afford it.
* Even discussing working conditions or unionization will result in
retaliation and firing.
* There is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered
and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation." (Quote taken
from a national class-action suit against Wal-Mart.)
2. WAL-MART'S LOW PRICES ARE THE RESULT OF HUMAN MISERY:
* 13-16 hour days molding, assembling, and painting toys, 7 days a week; 20
hour days in the peak season.
* Workers are paid 13 cents/hour wages in China: the minimum wage is
31 cents.
* There is no health or safety enforcement: constant headaches and nausea
from chemical fumes, indoor temperatures above 100 degrees F, rampant
repetitive stress disorder, no protective clothing available.
* Most employees are young women or teenage girls.
3. WAL-MART FORCES ITS UNETHICAL PRACTICES ON ITS 65,000 SUPPLIERS:
* Suppliers have to open their accounting books to Wal-Mart executives so
they can cut "unnecessary expenses" like unionized workers, health
benefits, and American-made products.
* Suppliers are forced to move facilities to China and other low production
cost nations to meet Wal-Mart's demands.
* Competitors are also forced to abandon customer service while slashing
employee wages and moving production to foreign sweat shops to remain
competitive.
4. WAL-MART DESTROYS LOCAL COMMUNITIES:
* Wal-Mart stores average 200,000 feet in size: more than 4 football fields
and destroying any sense of community or character where they are located.
* By pricing items below cost they crush local retailers. Once they hold a
monopoly in the market they raise prices.
* Three good jobs are destroyed for every two Wal-Mart jobs created.
* Instead of business profits being reinvested in the community they are
shipped to Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
5. WAL-MART IS NOT ACCOUNTABLE:
* The media won't report negatively about Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart would
pull its huge advertising budget.
* The 535 members of Congress have no power compared to Wal-Mart's
global reach: Wal-Mart does not have to answer to American voters, just
it's stockholders who are seeking unethical profit.
* Wal-Mart is radically remaking our labor standards and local economies
by stifling debate, suppressing knowledge, and not asking our consent.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I figured 88 cents is cheap enough to give it a try. It doesn't work :P wouldn't accept my payment. Fuck that. Going to finally bite the bullet and try iTunes :P
NO CARRIER
iTunes wins -- why?
1) I can play them on both Windows and Mac OS X.
2) I don't need to copy the music or "backup license files" to my other computers. iTunes' mDNS sharing makes this instant, and automatic. (Note to the cynics - you *can* copy the files to your laptop or something if you want to take them somewhere off your LAN)
3) Ninja Tune (record label) is now on the iTunes Music Store. (Amon Tobin, for instance. [iTunes link])
I'll admit that #3 is more subjective than the others, but they're all part of the same point. It doesn't matter if Wal-Mart sells tracks for 88 cents (how much mindshare does undercutting by 11 cents get them, anyway?) -- they don't have the indie labels I want, they don't have the standards-based network sharing, and they don't support all of the computers I own. iTunes came sooner, better, and with a lot more polish.
MS is charging $$ for FAT now;
it would be darn funny (or horrible, i guess) when you will, for every WMA file, pay a little to MS. I can see them doing it, but it definitely adds something on the side of "WMA is bad" argument.
using pop music prisoners.
photosMy Photostream
I was able to change the .wma test file to .ogg using CDex. I had to download a DLL for it to be able to read the WMA file, but I just google'd for it and it came up lickety split. So basically:
1) Install CDex
2) Download WalMart WMA Song
3) Attempt to convert file, download whatever DLL it tells you too, then try again.
4) Congratulations, you have a OGG/MP3/whatever format you want.
I did notice their song collection is pretty sparse. For example look at keb' mo and I see two songs listed for download and the rest marked "not available". Also cant buy any of his complete CDs either just individual songs
many of the songs are edited for content as well. iTunes does this too but offers the originals as well. Also Walmart acknowledges they pull songs they just dont like regardless of specificly "dirty" lyrics (ask sheryl crow).
Is this good or bad for apple. I'd say good. First was wolworth used to say he liked it when the competion moved next door cause it tended to grow the market. At the same time, it completely guts the profit for all the marketers on the windows side of the house. They will be in ruinous competition. Walmart in their usual strategy just drills out the center. That is, they sell all the millions of brittant and justin albums and leave the onesy-twosey sales of nine-inch nails to Napster. Napster eats it on overhead mamanging diversity and wallmart rakes it in. Meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum for people who want a good music store experience there is Apple gobbling up the quality market. Since apple now leads with 80% of online sales people will/should see the light and realize its the better choice for diversity.
Meanwhile MS sits back, takes no risks at all but just lets others front its stores and push WMA. If it succeeds they'll swoop in and seize the market by changing WMA somehow and jacking up the royalties.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
But I'm talking in general, about how this dilutes culture. And how kids who are just starting out with music could be fooled into thinking that it's all there is to it, some ultra-limited, purged and censored selection from wal-mart.
.00001% of the population would think the Wal-Mart selection was all there was to music.
The same kids that are using P2P apps in mass quantities? Come on, that's totally unrealistic to think that more than
Wal-Mart can do whatever the hell it likes, and so can we - I also don't buy music at Wal-Mart usually, not because I mind them limiting stock they carry (so does every other music store, though usually to what sells...) but because the selection stinks.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(random groups selected from the family music library...)
....
:)
Dio:
ITMS - three full release albums from Dio (including an album from '96 that I'd never heard about) - no hits from his stints in Deep Purple or Black Sabbath, oddly enough, or any Dio albums as old as what I own
WMMS - a "Very Best of Dio" album, and two compilation albums with a track from Dio
Iron Maiden:
ITMS - twenty-four albums (including several duplicated "special edition" albums - assuming to be edited)
WMMS - also twenty-four albums, but you can see "remastered" and "limited edition remastered" for most of the album names, so the total number of availble albums is lower than at ITMS
Manowar:
ITMS - three albums
WMMS - Amazingly enough, one album: "Fighting The World". which is also on ITMS
Duran Duran:
ITMS - eight full albums, one partial album
ITMS also has the only album relased by Arcadia, which was several of the D^2 boys post-band split
WMMS - five albums, as well as several compilation album hits
WMMS also carries the Arcadia album
Kate Bush:
ITMS - four albums, plus one hit on a compilation
WMMS - four albums, plus hits on three compilations / soundtracks - wow, Kate Bush is in GTA: Vice City? Who knew?
ABBA (hey, they're the wife's LPs, not mine!):
ITMS - fourteen albums
WMMS - twenty(!) albums - though the same caveat about "remastered" applies, there were a few albums that ITMS didn't have listed
And, just for testing's sake (and since I'm on a roll), a few things not in the house:
Slayer:
ITMS - eight albums, and one hit from a NASCAR album(?)
WMMS - two compilation hits - the NASCAR one, and a soundtrack from WCW
Spike Jones:
ITMS - three full albums, and three compilation hits
WMMS - one album, and three compilation hits
Wu-Tang Clan:
ITMS - three full and apparently one partial album, three hits for compliations and soundtracks; slightly less than half of the ITMS tracks were labeled "explicit"
WMMS - three albums and one compilation hit, all labeled "edited", none "explicit"
John Denver:
ITMS - fifteen full albums, three partial
WMMS - umm, a lot - they listed 485 tracks, spread out over 10 screens; I couldn't find an easy way to list all the albums, or even all the tracks on one screen, like you can do with ITMS, so I stopped comparing sites at this point
So, WMMS beats out ITMS for performers like ABBA and John Denver, while ITMS excels at... most other stuff. Feel free to continue to compare / contrast... I'm going to bed
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Can a company who will only sell "clean" cd's be trusted to deliver quality complete music, including words that wal-mart find objectionable to their "family image."
Being the only geek here with 88 cents I went for it. Downloading was very easy. No clunky software was eneded, just download it directly from walmart after paying. Way better than any other solution (IMHO).
The results are mplayer not being able to play it. Oh well.
dan@stryker:~/Desktop$ mplayer Crash
MPlayer 1.0pre2-3.3.2 (C) 2000-2003 MPlayer Team
Playing Crash
ASF file format detected.
= ASF Stream group = START =
object size = 32
stream count=[0x1][1]
stream id=[0x1][1]
max bitrate=[0x1f67f][128639]
= ASF Stream group = END =
Clip info:
name: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
author: Crash Test Dummies
copyright: (P)&(C) 1999 Arista Label. All Rights Reserved.
=
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 16002->176400 (128.0 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [ffwmav2] afm:ffmpeg (DivX audio v2 (ffmpeg))
=
Checking audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/16bit -> 44100Hz/2ch/16bit...
AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 2 ch, 44100 hz, little endian signed int
AF_pre: 44100Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
SDL: Samplerate: 44100Hz Channels: Stereo Format Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
AO: [sdl] 44100Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps)
Building audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/16bit -> 44100Hz/2ch/16bit...
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 0.0 0.0% 0%
Exiting... (End of file)
Edited for junk filter
That'd play well in a free market. This isn't one.
You are such a tool of the GroupThink. In what way is this not a free market? Sure there's loads of crap, but some good stuff here and there. I could burn a CD tomorrow (even though I can assure it it would be utter drek) and sell it if I liked. If it were even half good I might try to get it into CDBaby and then from there to the Apple store just like that.
As for WalMart choosing not to carry some things - guess what EVERY PHYSICAL CD STORE EVER is doing the same thing!! Wal-Mart's criteria for what to carry is just a "value system" they like. Your local Best-Buy may have Korn, but probably not some other indie band that lots of people like. They have chosen not to carry music that will not be purchased by "The Masses". Which is really the more scary limitation? Yet I do not hear people complaining about that.
The fact is that with online music stores taking off, for the first time some stores for the public are not limited by stock and in fact are now DRIVEN to offer as many songs as possible to keep up with the numbers game!!! This is about to become a golden age (or as golden as any age ever has been) for the small bands that were kept down by "the man" (insert your definition of "man" here).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
they lock me into their clunky interface to play my music.
How can you say that? You don't like acres of brushed-aluminum-widgetry?
WMA audio is not even worth 88 cents.
Won't work on Linux.
I won't even bother
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Went there and got Server too busy errors. Looks Like Slashdot moment for the record to me
You seem to just be pissed at the values used by WalMart to censor things. Most other CD stores simply "censor" anything does does not appeal to the broadest possible market - if anyone were really worried about kids growing up in a limited understanding of what music was then that is far more scary. Sure everyone else carries Korn... but do they carry much else that's LIKE Korn? Not if it does not sell by the millions.
In fact that very effect has been the vicious circle that combined with radio has led us to where we are today. I don't know if online sales will free us from the cycle but I think so (though why hasn't P2P had an effect? Not sure).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They are walmart, they sell more music then any other B&M. I can bet they told they RIAA "we are ging to make any offer you can't say no to".
"Full-Time" (actually 28 hours/week) employees only gross $11,000 a year, on average.
Assuming they work 52 weeks a year, that comes out to about $7.55/hour, which is well above minimum wage, for menial labor. Working at wal-mart isn't exactly skillful work.
People aren't forced to work at wal-mart, there are alternatives. Wal-mart is one of the nation's largest employers, if not THE largest. If something is going on there that's illegal, there are plenty of people watching.
It's called capitalism people. Wal-mart offers cheap things, and gets cheap labor. So what if it uses factories in china. The chinese people are employed by them, so it helps them out.
The media won't report negatively about Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart would pull its huge advertising budget.
Utter bullshit. Walmart was all over the media for using illegal immigrant workers. Illegal immigrants shouldn't be in our country in the first place, so anyone who hires them should be punished. That goes for meat-packing plants as well.
The parent thread is an anti-capitalist troll. Its so easy to pick on the big bad walmarts of the world.
[sarcasm]Yep, they're successful, but they must have gotten that way by cheating someone out of something.[/sarcasm]
...here, though only as complete albums (and mostly censored ones at that). Still missing a few big-name artists (for example, the Red Hot Chili Peppers), but it'll be interesting to see how the iTunes holdouts fair here.
Walmart censors the music they sell in their store. I don't see why they wouldn't do the same thing online.
Count me out.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
... they are still forcing artists to modify their vision ...
... keep lots of people from accessing the original piece of work ...
... wall-mart is often the place when he first discovers music ...
No, they are offering money. The artist is free to say no. Apparently many artists don't value their original vision very highly.
Fans are free to buy the artists original vision elsewhere. Apparently many fans either prefer the toned down vision or they don't care enough about the orginal vision to be inconvenienced by shopping elsehwere, including mail order. Small town folk get mail.
Uh, radio. MTV or VH1, small town folk often have radio and TV. Listening to another kids music. 30-second samples at the iTunes Music Store. Not to mention the tiny little detail that the kids get the original vision anyway. I don't think hearing Trent Reznor sing "I want to eff you like an animal" rather than "I want to f**k you like an animal" really made much of a difference in anyones musical taste, and I don't think it fooled any kids.
Do you often get stuck in various rooms in your house because you are "locked" in? You may want to try the door. Same advice for the 'fridge.
Using this same advanced technique of "burning" an audio CD, you can play the ITMS songs on a variety of devices (any audio CD players for example).
And it's pretty.
And yes, DRM on AAC files from the Apple store is VERY reasonable.
Also, I'm not sure anyone who has used iTunes can call its interface clunky. Windows Media Player's GUI is pretty awful, on every platform.)
You think they make more selling it up the chain? You think they see any of that fat markup? You think the numbers of goods sold into North America amount to anything when compared to inside China? No way. They get the same $2.00 regardless of whom they sell stuff to, and the market is 4 times as big.
The middle-men would hate it, but the factories (I've been in them) and the manufs. (my friends too) wouldn't give a hoot.
Wal-Mart's model only works when cheap goods can be sold at inflated prices. The world's largest market (Asia) is not dependant on that model....just North America, and look where it's taking us.
"Way better than the other solution..." except you can't play the music you want in the way you want it. Hmmm, yeah that makes sense man.
Meanwhile, in the "other solution" i can download, rip, burn. Hmm. ok. Have fun with wally world.
Good luck searching the site. Unless I'm missing something on how to use their search engine, the results are wildly inaccurate on some searches.
I did a search by artist for "Tool", and it says it found more than 50 matches which struck me as somewhat odd. Clicking "See top 50 matches" returns a list headed by ZZ Top and that includes Tom Jones, Jelly Roll Morton, and 47 other artists that come nowhere close to matching what I searched for. I'll grant some of them have "to" in their names, but if I wanted to search for "to" I would have. I also searched by album for "Aenima" which produced similarly horrible results.
Now, I'll admit that I didn't expect Wal-mart's online store to carry Tool, but I do expect a search by artist to return either results with Tool actually in the name or no results at all. If they want to include things they feel are "close", then they should state so clearly somewhere and not claim they actually matched what I was searching for when they clearly didn't.
Despite some issues with the search facilities, I do like the simplicity of the store front.
- b
All things being equal (source quality, etc.), which they probably aren't, AAC should beat out WMA handily at bitrates like what the iTMS and Wal-Mart are using. The only chance WMA would have of approaching AAC in quality at that bitrate would have been if Wal-Mart had used WMA Pro, but because of the lack of hardware player support for WMA Pro, that probably won't happen soon.
I haven't seen tests directly comparing AAC to WMA (non-Pro), but Roberto Amorim's testing at 128kbps with AAC and WMA Pro and ff123's testing of a different AAC codec against WMA non-Pro probably say enough.
Also, Apple has actually spoken about the quality of the sources that they encode from (the original masters rather than CDs themselves), and Wal-Mart hasn't.
I do hope that whoever elects to actually directly compare the quality of Wal-Mart's music to Apple's doesn't just look at frequency analysis to do it. Apple's AAC lowpasses at 16 KHz, but to use this as some sort of indication of quality is ludicrous.
Wal-Mart makes labels censor their artists works in able to be sold at wal-mart. This is wrong. If you believe in free speech and free expression please don't give a dime to wal-mart.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I've been mod'd down by Pro-Wal-Mart zealots! Oh no! What's /. coming to.....the ignominy of it all.
I haven't been this put off since I got banned from a Taco Bell drive-thru.
Not to mention the music itself is crap.
Support independent artists. Support music libre.
* locarecords.com
* subatomicglue.com
* zalex.ru
etc....
Wait, Apple wasn't the first music store?
I don't know what they do have, but they don't seem to have anything by offspring or prodigy. How is that??
slightly less than half of the ITMS tracks were labeled "explicit"
WMMS - three albums and one compilation hit, all labeled "edited", none "explicit"
That right there is the only reason you need to stay away from WMMS. They censor all this stuff.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I am a gamer and upgrade my CPU on average about once a year. In three years I will have upgraded CPUs 3 times. Does that mean when I upgrade a 4th time I will not be able to access the WMA files I have paid for on my hard drives?
Yeah but what's their song selection? I just ran a quick Artist search for "Green Day" and I came up with two songs...which were both not very good and unavailable for download.
:).
I don't think that's much of a stretch to ask for someone as obscure as Green Day. Hell, even my PARENTS know who they are
Now that Walmart is a distributor of WMA files, you guys are going gonzo with conspiracy theories and anti-Walmart venom. Make up your minds!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Wallyworld did 1 billion in sales for Black Friday (day after thanxgiving). They have lowered their costs be routinely getting local communities to pay majority of construction costs. They now run Linux as their main systems (they were one of the first to use Windows based and paid for all development PRIOR to their competitors even thinking about switching) so they have one of the lowest costs. And one of the highest profits, and you think that they are losing money?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and another thing about iTunes... I can't use it on Win98 apparently.
Or Weapons of Microcock Asses
Or Works for Most AOL'ers.
You work at itune, or perhaps mp3.com?
its this easy: mplayer -ao pcm blahblah.wma .wav that you can then encode as mp3.
this creates a file called audiodump.wav, which is just a standard
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
Walmarts downloads are from their edited cds, which suck. I don't wanna hear poop instead of shit... what the artist intended.
'The overall trade deficit hit $41.8 billion, a 1 percent increase from September's imbalance of $41.3 billion, the Commerce Department reported Friday.'
:)
We're pressing them for business, not the other way around.
They'll notice if we don't purchase weapons, coal and partnerships in local ventures...other than that, we're just a pimple on their economic butt
I checked 50 Cent, Nas, Obie Trice, all are edited versions. As I listen to 90% hip-hop this makes them useless to me, in addition to the WMA restrictions.
And in addition to the fact that they are evil.
I'm not sure if even most average-to-dumb americans will buy all edited stuff.
i bow down to our new Wal-Mart'ian overlords
In the series, Walmart admits that they don't pay their workers enough to support a family on. They also admit that most of their employees can't afford the Walmart health care plan which means those employees end up in the county hospital at taxpayer's expense. It's one thing to cut operating costs to remain competitive, it's quite another to cut costs so much that your employees end up having to rely on charity to make ends meet.
No shit. Wal-mart employes over a MILLION PEOPLE. That's fucking huge and doesn't count the employees of their suppliers.
Don't forget the hire illegal immigrants. The DOJ came and arrested them... AFTER their shift. (I wonder if they still got paid...)
t s. ap/
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/11/09/walmart.arres
apparently The Beatles have only released 1 album, titled "In The Beginning" ($9.44) Can someone please explain to me what the fuss is about a band with only 1 CD???
This just serves to illustrate the same weakness in all the gazillion music stores so far: it's still a long way before they begin to have anything like a full collection of music.
1.4million people. By that guy's own "stats", 38% of them can afford health insurance. That's over half a million people who can afford health insurance, who probably couldn't if they were not employed there, because who knows where else they'd be? Maybe some even crappier job.
1.They're cheap!
I'm sold. Incidentally they do sell American products there (I bought one the other day).
Anything that lowers the price of goods makes it easier for everyone to afford them thus raising living standards.
good luck trying to get Paris Hilton to shop there
Let's pretend for a moment when you say "girl" you mean "woman" and by that you mean "person old enough to enter into contractual agreements, and to consent to sex."
what exactly would be wrong with that, then? You'd make her an offer - XX amount of money for XX amount of service. If the offer doesn't seem fair to her, she'll decline.
You could argue the poverty she lives in makes XX too appealing an offer for her to reasonably approve, even if noone in a developed area would agree to the same. But what's wrong with giving this woman the CHOICE? Isn't it better to give a person a choice between the absolute shit life of complete poverty and the nearly absolute shit life of menial pay for hard work?
Your arguments may be valid but your poor (atrocious/diabolically atrocious?) grammar makes you sound "intellectually challenged." This in turn prejudices your readers against anything you have to say. Communication is not only about what you have to say but how you say it. A jumbled message carries jumbled content.
If you hired her, she would not be your SLAVE, she would be your EMPLOYEE, and would therefore be free to quit. If you hired someone to kidnap her and bring her to you, then that's kidnapping, not capitalism.
Captitalism has its flaws definitely, but if you want to talk about FORCING people to do things, then you're talking about Socialism.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Isn't it better to give a person a choice between the absolute shit life of complete poverty and the nearly absolute shit life of menial pay for hard work?
No because that's contrary to liberalism. If you are liberal you can't accept that because your justification can be used for anything. If anything, you can even justify slavery by your reasoning.
Of course, to a capitalist, slavery is perfectly ok. In fact, capitalists were the ones who were against the abolishment of slavery.
Like all capitalists, you obviously has no idea of the notion of exploitation. And how about cases where the government initiates mass propaganda and disinformation and brainwashes people to accept something? You will have no concept of right or wrong. To you, only one thing matters: money.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
That's what I heard.
Also, 90% of the content is kept on Chinese servers.
Actually, I agree with most of what you say, but I do have to correct you on one point. I'm trying to condone slavery at all, but after the American civil war, the blacks were treated different but no better. Before, at least they had some things to eat and at least a roof over their head. Afterward, it was "We'll pay $0.02/hr and if you don't like it, tough. We can find 10 others who'll take your place."
About time Wallyworld stepped in with a download service, I have been afraid of dowloading something that could turn me into a child-murdering satan-worshipper that knows how to cuss!
One Store to rule them all, One Store to find them, One Store to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Walmart where the Shadows lie.
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
Hey, thanks for making all sorts of assumptions about my line of reasoning and motivations - love when that happens.
Actually, freedom matters a whole lot more to me than money. I'd like to see people have the options to take whatever jobs best suit their abilities and opporunities. In some cases that's well-paid executive. In some cases that's poorly paid gas station attendant. In some cases thats well-paid high-profile prostitute. In other's, it's a poorly paid street hooker.
I don't want to take any choices away from people on either side of the contract. So long as both the employer and the employee enter into their arrangement knowingly and honestly, who the hell are you or i or anyone else to tell them what they can or can't do. All employed work is subjugation of one sort or another - its up to the employee to decide whether its worth the payment in return.
And no, capatalists don't think slavery is ok - not unless they can't distinguish between humans and properties. A capatalist can't buy and sell that which isn't considered to be property. While the US has its own deplorable history with failing to make that distinction, it's a point we moved past long ago. Slavery can exist under any economic system - but not under any just system.
As far as cases wgere government initiates mass propoganda and disinformation - well that's a bad thing regardless of the economic system. Historically we've seen it happen in communist, capatalist, socialist and all sorts of other societies. IF the governmetn engages in behavoir like that, the government is going to introduce corruption into the system - regardless of what type of system it is.
It's not explotation if someone chooses, with all the information presented in front of him/her, to enter into the situation without coersion.
Why would any self respecting geek ever fuel the plague that is Walmart?
Without music, life would be a mistake. --- Nietzsche
Sure they've been found guilty of all kinds of violations and fined several times but no fine, no sanction (to date) has been severe enough to make them notice, let alone think twice. The fact is that Walmart is well on it's way to becoming the poster child for the crusade against monocultures. Microsoft has nothing on Walmart.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
watch out for all amazon.com links
nt
Yeah it is, watch out and beware!
" It's not exploitation if someone chooses, with all the information presented in front of him/her, to enter into the situation without coersion. "
When you have a choice between starving and entering into a contract - whatever the contract -, then you have no choice.
But maybe you have problem conceptualizing "starving", that's usually an issue with well-fed "capitalist".
Waaa I'm a tattle-tale bitch
It's a good book, talks too much about M$.
I like BJU - no interracial dating ALLOWED
Keeps you linux fucks in check with no cheques.
LONG LIVE ARNOLD!!!!! FUCK YOU LEFT WING PUSSIES. LONG LIVE ARNOLD!!!!
watch out!
Another shitty ass green fuck. EAt my smog cunt for brains!
* "Full-Time" (actually 28 hours/week) employees only gross $11,000 a year, on average.
$7.55 an hour ($11,000 / 52 / 28) is an acceptable wage for menial labour and working half days (4 hours). A full time worker (8 hour days) would make twice that amount, or $22,00 USD. Which is 58% of the US GDP. A very reasonable wage for a clerk.
Health benefits are available only after two years, but premiums are so high only 38% of employees can afford it.
Workers then should look elsewhere for health benefits, or perhaps form something people in the USA like to call an "HMO".
Even discussing working conditions or unionization will result in retaliation and firing.
Interesting. Firing for discussing unsafe conditions is clearly illegal and I dare you to show evidence of this accusation. Oh, and unlike WalMart, *I* don't fire for discussing unionization. I take it a step further. I close down the store and therefore everyone is fired. Anyone working here knows that upon employment. WalMart employees should be happy that's all that happens.
There is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation." (Quote taken from a national class-action suit against Wal-Mart.)
A biased party made a quote against the party they hate? How blase. Allow me to make one or two for good measure, anyways:
(emphasis mine)
13-16 hour days molding, assembling, and painting toys, 7 days a week; 20 hour days in the peak season.
A whole 13 hours at Christmas? And here I am working at my shop doing 24 hour days. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. They have it good. But hey, just pretend nobody is working long hours at Christmas in North America, the wool over your eyes will keep you warm.
Workers are paid 13 cents/hour wages in China: the minimum wage is 31 cents.
Incorrect. There is no minimum wage in China. However, individual Chinese cities have elected to enact minimum wage standards.
The minimum wage in Shenyang, for example, is 320 yuan monthly, or 8 cents per hour if your above numbers are true.
But that's ok. Don't let the truth cloud your rhetoric.
There is no health or safety enforcement: constant headaches and nausea from chemical fumes, indoor temperatures above 100 degrees F, rampant repetitive stress disorder, no protective clothing available.
That's not unusual for any Chinese factory. It's not unusual for any developing nation. It is unfortunate and my heart bleeds for them. But denying them employment and money will only serve to exacerbate such problems through death and pestilence.
Most employees are young women or teenage girls.
It is unfortunate that in most rural areas choices are diffcult and it is believed in such areas that men are more suited to farm work than women. This leads to women working in such factories to support the financial aspect of such families.
Suppliers have to open their accounting books to Wal-Mart executives so they can cut "unnecessary expenses" like unionized worke
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
um...
2 yes...
3 yes...
4 yes..
5 * actually between illeagal aliens cleaning the freaken floors and 4 count them 4 women bitching about being screwed over from working there...the only media coverage I hear about wal-mart is considerably more than any other retailer and it's all bad
* Congress having no power over Wal-Mart? Are you sure? You're reading that wrong anyway...it's Congress that doesn't care to have power over Wal-mart because they are paid to not care.
* not sure about that last bit
1 You really screwed up on #1...
** "Full-Time" (actually 28 hours/week) employees only gross $11,000 a year,
on average.
* Actually at the Wal-Mart I work at everyone gets full 40 hours a week. The only time they cut back are the months Jan-March the slowest months of the year. There are a lot of older people working at wally world that have been with the company a while. 10 years ~= 15/h stocking shelves. Not that I plan on being here more than a few more months though
** Health benefits are available only after two years, but premiums are so high only 38% of employees can afford it.
* Where the hell are you getting your info from? NO! From the day you start you can get a third party health insurance. After 6 months you are qualified for health insurance...38%? Did you pull that out of your ass? It costs me 35 bucks a pay check and 3 bucks for dental...who can't afford that?
** Even discussing working conditions or unionization will result in retaliation and firing.
* I can tell you've never worked there before. No actually working conditions are talked about all the time. In fact me along with 14 other people at the Wal-Mart I'm working at all got $1 raises because we used something called the open door policy stating that other places would be paying us the same amount...it took a while but we got the raise. We talk about unions all the time...but most people agree that paying money for some union is a joke at the rate we get paid. Who will pay the bills if we HAVE to go on strike? And who needs more money taken out of their small pay check for it?
** There is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation." (Quote taken from a national class-action suit against Wal-Mart.)
* I have 2 store managers that are women and about 7 other women above me in the chain of command. Your quote is from 4 women out of how many that work at Wal-Mart? How many of the Waltons (you know the owners of Wal-Mart...there are 5 of them) are women? `
Yes Wal-Mart damages the local community and exploits labor in third world countries. However, I really doubt half the stuff you hear in the NEWS/MEDIA is in any way acurate about the realities of working there. It's a sucky job...yes. It pays crap yes. And I'm sure it will not be here more than another decade given how many people like you seam to hate it with such a passion. But despite everything that is bad about it...nah you know what there's nothing I can say good about the place...I just wanted to correct the mis-stated facts you made.
Take it from someone that works there...Wal-Mart is EVIL!!!! But it's no different from the thousands of other retailers...Cosco? K-Mart? and the job is a McJob...but what do you expect? We have to work somewhere. I suppose if places like Wal-Mart where outlawed (which they would have to be in order to prevent another one from doing the same thing) the only places left would be small mall stores...I doubt they would pay much better...it would still be another McJob.
Oh...by the way. I'm one of those CS majors from college that was a Junior before he had to take a job at Wal-Mart stocking shelves because everyone hiring required 5+ years experience.
watch it, this guy is a sick fuck
But Walmart's going to roll back the price to $46.98. How much is Amazon going to cut their price, huh? ZERO! Yep that's right, greedy Amazon isn't going to reduce their price any. But Walmart is always keeping me the consumer in mind by reducing their prices! Walmart it is!
Anyone else try guessing the domain before clicking the link? :) Tee hee! Maybe I can get my student loans paid off ;)
I was sure it'd be www.WalMusic.com, but it wasn't - it's http://musicdownloads.walmart.com -- THAT'S HORRIBLE!
So, I bought www.WalMusic.com for $15. In about 24 hours it'll point to my homepage
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
It appears that all of the albums that contain explicit lyrics, normally, are [Edited]. Look at Nelly for example.
Get real, Employers are not and should not be required to provide medical benefits. Its all a government fake out anyway. Its a TAX.
Second,the turnover at WalMarts would make medical insurance hideously expensive which would result is less benefits for those covered, higher premiums, let alone higher prices at the register.
If you want to knock on Wal-Mart them knock on them for using the GOVERNMENT to take people's houses to build new Wal-Mart.
That is the real problem of Wal-Mart, the rest of your claims you can lay at the feet of almost every major merchandiser across the world.
All the Mom & Pop download services will not be able to compete and they will go under. Another victory for corporate America....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
I just tried to import some iTunes music store files with Felt Tip Sound Studio 2.0.7 and worked fine, and amazingly fast. I imported using quicktime, and it let me save it was AIFF (regular CD quality, post AAC compression) or several others, but not directly as an MP3.
.Mac subscribers a while back. Wonder if they know it defeats their DRM?
Felt Tip.com
I use this program to re-encode files for Final Cut, because MP3's make a shitty popping sound when final cut imports them directly.
Irony of it is, this program was given out free by Apple for their
--
Can anyone spare 120 chars? I'm saving mine to buy a link at Fark.
It seems to me that at these prices, actually making a reasonable profit is going to be... challenging.
... So Walmart will help suppress the competition, giving Apple an unintentional boost.
Consequently, only the companies that use music sales to drive the sales of an own-brand MP3 player will last long in this game.
For all your legal mp3/ogg/wma/aac-needs.
I guess the term 'wage-slavery' doesn't mean anything to you?
When the minimum wage guarantees that you will live in poverty, and you must work 12+ hours a day to afford just to survive, then you don't have the time/money resources to get an education that will allow you to advance your career (don't even mention heath care...)
The fact that there is no 'living-wage' legislation in this country is a crime - one perpetrated by a government that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capitalist Profit, Inc. When a CEO take home $15million a year at the expense of the workers who make that profit possible by paying them a poverty wage - that IS exploitation!!
If you think exploitation of this great country's population is OK, then you are unpatriotic, self-centered, delusional and clearly don't know that democracy and capitalism are NOT one and the same. You cannot have a true democracy when a huge portion of the population is disempowered (I'm sure you can blame it ALL on the individual, though...)
Good luck when the fake money multiplier that you call the stock market crashes - when your 401k gets flushed, you'll spend your retirement as a WalMart greeter. See ya there.
Browser based, so I have to download the file to some folder, then find it, then play it in WMP.
No artist pages with any interesting information.
I had at least three windows pop open when browsing the store.
The only thing the Walmart Music Service might be good for is driving down the cost of online music.
Given my five minute impression of the store, I certainly wouldn't want to shop there; the overall experience is rather poor.
I'll continue betting that iTMS will remain the market leader.
Actually you can do a lot by encouraging car companies to make fuel efficient cars. See Detroit Project
...richie - It is a good day to code.
You mean lower prices?
That's the definition of competition.
remade by chinese sweatshop labor? :P i'll be looking forward to hearing "Clocks" in the same voice used on the little Chicken Dance Hamster!
:D
Okay, I'm done with my socio-political rant.
So I can download anything I want from Wal*Mart, as long as it doesn't say as* or syit. Well, here's to the information revolution!
not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but i would bet money that the music coming off wal-mart's download service is censored... at least i know that is what they do with the CDs they sell... i went to a college in a small town in missouri and wal-mart was often the only place to get music, but i had several friends who bought albums there that were completely beeped out...
- just a warning to be careful before buying whole albums from them, or lots of music, you might want to download something with a lot of swearing and make sure it has not been censored.
I don't see a full album price like they have on iTMS. Most albums on the ITMS have more than 10 songs but have a flat fee of ~$10.00. For those that want individual songs, WalMart is cheaper, but for those who want full albums, iTMS seems to still be cheaper.
Well at least its nice to see some class bashing here on Red /.
Comrade Fenix may have to answer for that at his next cadre meeting.
WalMart may just have to find a way to support DRM'd WMA on Linux, or just ditch WMA all together, if their own music store wont work on their own cheap Linux PCs.
Imagine bing a WalMart customer, buying a WalMart Licoris PC- and not being able to buy music from WalMart's own online music store.
Good price, more competition for other services, but no MP3s. And I couldn't find anything that wasn't censored. Listening to My Michelle by Guns n' Roses, they were blanking bad words I didn't even know were there after listening to the album hundreds of times. At least they didn't blank the word "porno."
iTunes has a simmilar restriction. My question is WHY?
If you can burn the files to a CD just *once*, you can rip them later, or copy thw CD wholesale, thus circumventing all protections.
Wal-Mart should install kiosks in their stores and allow people to pick songs and burn them to disc immediately. With all the consumer traffic a Wal-Mart store receives, it would do amazingly well. Heck why would the typical consumer buy the full retail CD when they could buy the exact various CD they wanted?!
And this is one instance where an online music provider could not be bullied by the music industry. If a record label ever complained about something Wal-Mart was doing, Wal-Mart would simply threaten to stop selling its CDs. Wal-Mart will make the music industry its bitch.
Eventually Wal-Mart could become so powerful that it could deal directly with the artists, cutting out the music industry entirely. However, considering how poorly Wal-Mart treats its employees, I think artists would be jumping from the frying pan right into the fire. But unfortunately, they may not have a choice.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If you're serious, then you have no heart, and no *fucking* idea what goes on in a Wal-mart. I've worked in one -- let me tell you what goes on. The employes take endless abuse to the tune of sub-poverty level wages. If you stay long enough you're left with back problems, wrist problems, and bone spurs for your trouble.
I can hear the cheap labor Republican cry of, "But you don't have to work there, you can quit!" But you can't quit. Thats not the way the world works. These people are living on such a thin margin of financial saftey that a missed paycheck, an injury, their car breaking down, can make the difference and put them on the street.
And next you say, "Well, it's menial labor, its supposed to be hard." And you'd be half right, the work is supposed to be hard, but the pay is supposed to be something you can live off. We owe these people a sustaniable and not terrible living -- and let me tell you why... The middle class is stretched too thin already, theres starting to become nobody LEFT who makes enought money to sustain business. It's going to be the fall of rome all over again.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
and a good selection of merchandise in a single location.
You don't have to shop there you don't have to work there.Millions choose to do both.They have good reasons for making these choices.Do you want to decide for them? Well if so fuck you!
Wallmart is losing money and only doing this to turn their competitors under. They will raise the costs afterwards. Walmart does this more then Microsoft and the DOJ can't touch them because Americans would have a fit since it would raise the cost of goods there.
If you think about it for, oh, 30 more seconds, that makes no sense. If that was their standard practice, then it would be this practice that would raise the cost of goods, and Americans would welcome government intervention. So that must not be an accurate description of what goes on (an entertaining theory, perhaps, but not accurate).
According to the applications I opened the test download with, it has no DRM/licensing/protection.
(winamp, wmp)
So, natrually this can be converted and used wherever you can actually use a WMA file. Do the actual paid-for ones have licensing embedded or not? That's the real question...
It's just Crap.
how does this fanboi shit get modded up? Oh right, it's /. sponsored by Apple.
1. I'm sure that it is more than enough for you fanbois to get locked into a proprietary system with only one player to choose from.
2. Hmm - I know another company that "bundles and integrates" their software with a variety of stores offering actual choice of vendors. But it's Microsoft, and they are evil so it's bad when they "bundle and integrate"
3. That warm, fuzzy feeling is Steve Jobs wang in your cornhole idiot. Are you actually suggesting that Apple was the first to create a music store or a great MP3 player? I know the Ipod is one of the, if not the best MP3 players out there; but the first or the only it is not. I guess Steve must be running the reality distortion field on a G5, cause apparently it can now alter both space and time.
any type of vile, violent, brash, foul, obscene, ...
If only it were just that material that Wal-Mart was censoring. Wal-Mart also censors a Sheryl Crow album because it contains lyrics that are critical of Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is not out to protect kids. They're out to protect themselves and their bottom line. That's all they care about. And part of that is removing any criticism of themselves from American culture.
I too boycott walmart and try to avoid other companies that upset me. Keep up the good fight.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
If Wal-Mart doubles minimum wage and pays it's employee's that (average salary calculation) they are legal. They are even fair compared to most local employers in the service industry!
I'm not sure what your objecting too -- in America the rule is generally do what you have to do in order to survive. You define survival. The government has went so far as to define a minimum wage. Wal-Mart is doing better than minimum wage... Your beef is?
Dio
Iron Maiden
Manowar
Duran Duran
Kate Bush
ABBA
Slayer
Spike Jones
Wu-Tang Clan
John Denver
"Hey, dude, it's me. I just realized that I can't go on that road trip with you. I, uh, have something I need to do that week."
On OS X? Is the test file a non-DRM'd music file... that hardly seems to be a suitable test file. Leave it to Wal-Mart to leave out the fine details.
This store is garbage anyways...
Name Recognition... I won't even buy a computer from Wal-Mart... why would I buy music? Am I going to refer my friends to Wal-Mart.com... My family? Hell No.. Ease of use is with Apple... like it or not.
Quality... I will take my locked AAC file over a locked WMA file any day. I also love my iTunes Jukebox!
I am sure that some people will buy some music from this store... but... long-term... lets admit it... Wal-Mart is not a savvy internet company... it will fail.
A quick look at the store suggests that albums are more expensive than the same albums on iTunes. Example Toby Keith: Shockn Y'all 9.99 at iTunes 11.88 at Walmart. Bait n' switch cheap songs but pricier albums.
Here is another reason they are not accountable: They are by leaps and bounds the richest family in the US. Look at Forbes Top 10 Richest People list for 2003. Notice any similarities in the names?
TOP TEN
1. Bill Gates
2. Warren Buffett
3. Paul Allen
4. Helen Walton
5. S. Robson Walton
6. John Walton
7. Jim Walton
8. Alice Walton
9. Larry Ellison
10. Michael Dell
If you watch that train-wreck of a show "The Simple Life", Paris Hilton had no idea what Wal-Mart was. I found that quite interesting, because any one of the Walton family members could buy her family out with the cash in their pockets. Wal-Mart is even less accountable than Microsoft, which is pretty sickening.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
C'mon. Anyone really interested in pure, unadultered music is not going to buy from Walmart. Everyone knows they censor songs that they find objectionable (oops, I mean they 'edit' the songs).
An ingnorant consumer is their best customer!
The fact that they refuse to sell songs they deem objectionable just creates a market for some other service (iTunes, etc.)
Karma Schmarma
Quite a few people have commented that Wal-Mart's music service is less restrictive in terms of use rights than other download services. However, I have refused to by music at Wal-Mart for several years and will not be using their download service because of their policy of only offering edited versions of most CDs. Just search for Outkast or any other rap artist and you'll see that this apparently hasn't changed. Also, on a funny note, there is page after page of "Blank Track" listed for Nine Inch Nails' Broken. One or two of them is actually for sale for $.88!
I am apalled that WalMart will be putting more mom and pop businesses owners out on the streets. If one more digital music store run by lovable country bumpkins goes out of business, I'm going to snap.
Hmm a lot of tracks by John Denver. I guess its safe for walmart to sell that anyone who would likely be offended would be put to sleep before they could do anything.
"All rights in the Products are owned by WALMART.COM or its licensors and you have only a limited, nontransferable, nonexclusive, revocable, nonsublicensable right to use the Products for personal use in accordance with the terms of this Agreement.""
So walmart can revoke your ownership... I won't pay for anything i don't own!!
Apple doesn't kow tow to M$ by using wma. They use their own format, with decent DRM policies.
An additional point that is often lost on slashdot discussions is the fact that Apple's "AAC" format isn't just something they made up, nor is it something that Apple "controls." It's the audio component for the mpeg 4 standard which was created by several biggies in the industry.
Contrast this with Microsoft's "WMA" format. Who made it up? Microsoft. Who can change it any time they wish? Microsoft. Who can determine which players, companies, computers, people can play the files? Microsoft.
Do you trust Microsoft not to abuse that position? I thought not.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
... after X-Mas techno-stupid hit the net will hill them is support alone. Only to use the M$ Player on a PC... they know how to keep people interested.
Deadpool: I bet before July this service is toast.
iTunes: 25 million songs and counting...
--
I'm allowed a flaimbait now and again...
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
Okay, maybe I am just an old fart, but all these digital music download stores are missing way too much from the experience of buying and owning an album.
Where is my album cover art? Where are my lyrics? Where are the credits? Where was it mixed? Who played drums on what track? Where are the band's "thank you's"?
Am I the only one who took their brand new copy of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" home, cranked up the headphones and layed on the bed looking at the artwork and reading the lyrics while it played?
...in the USA. In fact, the Union states were far more industrialized and had a far larger economy than the Confederacy. That is a large part of why they were able to defeat the Confederacy.
An awful lot of capitalist American lives were lost in that war.
While the American Civil War, contrary to revisionist opinion, was not about slavery, the abolishment of slavery in America was a wonderful benefit. Many people seem to love to hold America's historical follies against it. Why is it I never hear negative comments about the French who supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War? If they supported the Confederacy, then they must have approved of slavery...right? Wrong. Like the Civil War itself, they were in it for political reasons just like the Union and the Confederacy.
Before you start spouting history to support your opinions, you should know about that which you speak.
right - I love how Wal-Mart is blamed for labor conditions in China. God forbid you lefty pinkos have to admit that it is the leftist Totalitarian Communist government of that country that is the root of the problem.
There is a legitimate argument that trade and commerce will help to liberalize (in the classic sense of the word) the Chinese government. However, that is currently not happening in my opinion. As a result of that, I check the tags on everything I buy now, and I avoid purchasing items made in China, even if the alternative costs more.
Or if you actually care about the Chinese people (most people ranting about that actually don't, just like they didn't actually give a rats ass about Iraqis until it became a good argument against the current administration), you could choose to start or support businesses that give people decent treatment in China. I know of one small book publisher who does that - they have Bibles and other items printed in China - and pay a living wage and give decent treatment to their workers.
" You can always smell a "Cheap-labor Republican", and you sir stink :)"
All I can say to you is BRAVO!!!!!! Thats exactly what these types of people are. They think mistreating other people is acceptable because those people are not forced to work there. Thats wrong. Thats like saying my wife should continue to take my beatings because she is free to leave. Bullshit! I say fuck the Republicans in 04!! Vote them out!
In a related story, it seems that thousands of small 99 cent stores have banded together to manage their own music download service as well. Many songs are listed as 99 cents per song, but the website is also offering single remixes at 2 for 99 cents in order to compete with walmart.
PS - Walmart is setting up stores in China and kicking the shit out of the Chinese stores.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If you stay long enough you're left with back problems, wrist problems, and bone spurs for your trouble.
And how is this is any different from working at any grocery store, Target, Sears, gas station, or toll both, ticket counter, convienence store etc?
Does Walmart buy special non ergonomic keyboards for the registers (moot point anyway as everything is scanned), and special granite floor pads to stand on that cause these problems?
What do other retailers in the US pay for wages and is it really any different then Walmart? Walmart is big so it is easy to get some statistics but if you add up 10 or 15 other mid sized retailers you will find the same wages, the same working conditions, but yet, they are somehow not "evil".
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
OK, here's a search on some representative samples of my current collection.
Desmond Dekker & The Israelites:
ITMS - 42 Songs: 1 full album (best of) and 3 compilations
WMMS - 3 songs: 2 compilations
Link Wray & The Wraymen:
ITMS - 1 song: 1 compilation
WMMS - nada
Sebedoh:
ITMS - nada
WMMS - nada
Trailer Bride:
ITMS - 26 songs: 2 albums
WMMS - nada
Yoko Kanno & The Seatbelts:
ITMS - nada
WMMS - nada
Modest Mussorgsky:
ITMS - many: 5 full versions of Pictures At An Exhibition, 2 versions of Night On Bald Mountain and 4 other pieces
WMMS - 1 movement from Pictures At An Exhibition
Pleasantly surprised that ITMS has Trailer Bride at all. Stunned that WMMS has only one piece - and a single movement not the whole thing - from Mussorgsky.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
"As a Usenet [or /.] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress."
Interestingly enough, there is no Classical music at all! Even something as common as Beethoven.
I'll stick with iTunes for myriad reasons, but here are the biggest ones:
1. WalMart has excluded me based on my status as a Mac user. For some reason, they saw fit not to include me and my ilk in their business plan.
2. There is no classical music, which is 90% of what I buy. Here even iTunes isn't so great, as what I'm interested in is new music by living composers, and the selection there is limited.
3. WalMart is an evil, unscrupled company.
Reading this, WalMart? You could turn me into a customer, but I imagine it's not likely to happen.
To reign is to serve.
You can always spot a bleeding heart liberal. They have no understanding of economics and they always want to give away someone else's money. How much money have you donated to the federal government? If you haven't voluntarily given anything then shut your trap. There's nothing keeping Democrats from writing checks out to the government for their "fair share".
Not sure why I "owe" them anything. I joined the Marines to pay for my college so I could get into the middle class. Both of my parents worked at Wal-mart when I was young (and they both still do.) They aren't getting rich but they are doing fine. Also, if Wal-mart pays the employees more what do you think will happen to prices? Let me explain something to you. When costs go up so do prices. Where do people with little incomes shop? Wal-mart that's where. So as prices go up at Wal-mart they go up everywhere. And as prices move up so do wages everywhere else. In a free society people are paid what their services are worth. When you try to artificially inflate that then it raises the bar for everyone and so you're back to where you started.
BEWARE.
Wal-Mart charges sales tax in their music store. At my local sales tax rate of 8.25%, that brings the price of a track to 95 cents, not 88. iTMS does not charge sales tax so the total charge is 99 cents.
Well, I'm a fool ... I bought a song to "test" the poster's theory. No go. MPlayer reads the header and gacks immediately. However, it does work in Windows Media Player running in Win98SE under Win4Lin not that that's much consolation.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Yes, damn the capitalists. Communism only killed 100 million innocent people in the 20th century, let's give it another chance.
Given the choice between working for Wal-Mart and working in a Soviet Gulag or shovelling baby skulls for Pol Pot, I'll take Wal-Mart any time.
Socialism kills, free markets feed. Wake up and smell the long pork wafting from North Korea.
Why is there a persistent supply of people advocating unlawful restriction of companies, intitutions, and individuals when they do not want those restrictions placed on themself?
/. comments here, Wal-Mart should be rewarded with legitimatly pursuing its own sel-interest by:
Is there a serious decline in the teaching of basic logic skills in public education?
Summarizing the
1. Being forced to pay health insurance for all workers
2. Being forced to sell products at prices higher than local businesses so those local businesses don't go out of business
3. Being forced to use unionized labor
4. Being forced to buy products from only unionized labor in industrialized countries
5. Being forced to reduce the total amount of goods sold so that it does not sell 50% of all consumer products in the USA
6. Being forced to carry products which it currently does not (e.g., music which is objectionable in Wal-Mart's opinion)
7. Being forced to pay employees a wage set by an outside committee
Who should have the power to arbitrary pick and chose companies to punish in this way?
Should this type of Gestapo UN-'equal protection under the law' be applied at the whim of whatever politican wants to punish enemies?
Is this basically just Communism in that each business will be forced to employ workers, forced to buy from state approved companies, forced to carry all state approved products, etc., ?
So what if wal-mart buys crap from China, so does Target and K-mart and everyone else. Why should I have to pay $500 for a 27 inch tv, when I can pay $125 for a chinese one and then buy dvds and videotapes that give money to good jobs for American employees in film studios.
As for people complaining about Wal-mart putting local businesses out of business. These businesses had no problem putting THEIR competitors out of business. They also never cut prices to help their customers. We dont owe them anything.
This myth about the "shop around the corner" being put out of business by walmart is just that...a myth. Wal-mart doesnt compete with little boutiques, they compete with grocery stores, and department stores...and do so very, very well. I shouldnt have to pay 20% more for my groceries or goods so some $8 an hour worker can keep his job.
"Yet another music service with no Tool." Why is it so hard to sign on this most coveted heavy metal band? I can't seem to find any of the services having their albums, or a good selection of Prodigy for that matter. It's the single reason why I haven't signed up yet.
So far Apple is in complete control over what can play their DRM'd AAC files. Moreover, Jobs has been quoted as saying that they have no interest in supporting anything but the iPod. Apple can't stop other players from playing non-DRMd AAC files (or even some other form of DRM for AAC) but they completely control their iTMS DRM. I'm a long time Mac user, but if Apple doesn't let other players into their DRM scheme I'm all for Apple getting slapped hard with monopoly litigation and losing big time.
--- What?
The parent thread is an anti-capitalist troll. Its so easy to pick on the big bad walmarts of the world.
Duelling trolls! But I'll take a walk over your bridge, just for fun.
The problem is, is that no other retailer is even close to being in the same league with Wal-Mart.From the November issue of Fast Business:
7.5 cents out of every dollar spent in stores goes to Wal-Mart (excluding auto parts).
Wal-Mart does more in sales than its next nine competitors combined.
This is a retailer that uses its market posisition as the proverbial big stick. Manufacturers can't afford *not* to sell their wares at Wal-Mart. From the same magazine, Dial soap would have to *double* it's sales at it's next dozen or so buyers to make up for what Wal-Mart sells (don't have the issue right in front of me, don't have the exact number for that right now). Massive distribution isn't a bad thing, but having your seller dictate what you can sell your items at is.
It's called capitalism people.
And everyone knows that a true capitalist goes after the most profit, regardless of eventual social consequences.
Wal-mart offers cheap things,
What Wal-Mart is doing is causing a disconnect between what the perceived price of something should be, and what it costs. The muscle that Wal-Mart applies to its vendors causes a continuing chain of cost-cutting that ends in the elimination of jobs. That's not just rhetoric, I've seen it in my town with Master Lock.
and gets cheap labor.
I'm presuming that cheap labor is alright so long as it isn't American cheap labor.
Sounds like a lot of the reasons not to shop at Wal-Mart are reasons you shouldn't shop anywhere at all.
"Well the problem is that Walmart has, for all intents & purposes, hired the Chinese government (wheee socialism eh?) to provide a cheap workforce that can't say no. Walmart has done a great many evil things, and exploited many people."
So does this mean that the mom and pop store that sells some "Made in China" action figure toys have also hired the Chinese government to provide a cheap workforce? Or is it ok if just two people (mom and pop) exploit the Chinese? What if there's a cooperative venture amongst mom and pop stores to increase their purchasing power, is it still ok for them to stock Power Ranger toys?
Wal-Mart meat cutters in one store contemplated joining a union. One actually signed a union card. Days later, every meat cutter in that store was laid off, and one week later Wal-Mart announced it would be going to pre-packaged (and pre-cut) meats in all of its stores.
Do you have anything to back up this claim? News stories, say?
I go to WalMart from time to time, but honestly, I don't like their products.
I think their flyers and their hours of business bring me in. They're open about an hour later than most of the other retailers.
A pet theory: Walmart may suffer in a future economic upswing... there will be no room for store expansion (new cities etc), the suppiers will be able to ignore Walmart to cater to the mid-range market, and Walmart won't be able to shake its budget image without alienating its main customer base.
I mean... if Walmart sucks all the profit out of the budget sector of wholesale, why would anyone want to bother with budget wholesale? in an up market, go upscale and ditch Walmart.
Hopefully, this will cause them to lose their edge over the manufacturers/wholesalers, loose their big-budgets for advertising and become less aggressive. I doubt they'll collapse though, just shrink and be less annoying.
I think somebody on this list said 10 years. Sounds reasonable to me.
Not to mention Wal-Mart's persecution of the Mad Pooper!
Maybe partying will help...
scripsit lemox:
I just have to point out a little something. A slave is a human being owned (as private property) by another human being. It is the ultimate extension of the capitalist ideal of private property -- even other people can be property. Socialism (whatever flaws it may have) contests exactly these ideas of private property. Slavery is totally inconceivable in a society where there is no private property. Think about it.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
Most Slashdotters think Microsoft has sort of developed and abused a monopoly, if I recall.
Their worst actions entail forcing free, if sometimes defective products upon people: Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Java. You are not forced to use any of these three things, though WMA/WMV files force you to use WMP. You can still download Mozilla, Real, and Sun Java.
Walmart, on the other hand, is known for going into a town or city, dropping a superstore, underpricing everyone until most of the competition goes belly up, and then raising prices higher than ever. That's exactly what they're doing with the music sales business right now. They'll first run Buymusic out, because that's who they're most like. Next to fall will be Napster, which isn't doing well because it is a miserable copy of the miserable original; among the classical Napsterite audience they target, most have gone to either other piracy services or to iTunes or similar. Microsoft, and even Apple, may be run out by Walmart. Walmart then can raise the price of a song to $1.25 or higher with impunity, because there is no competition.
Also, it must be kept in mind that whoever emerges from this new industry's birth as victor will no doubt next go after the labels. Do you want people singing on the Wal-Mart label?Uh-uh. Their cash flow from operations is both positive, and has increased every year. If you don't understand that statement, then don't make statements like the above.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Walmart will start the downward price spiral on songs until the only music available will be made by poorly-paid Chinese musicians. American rock stars will be unable to compete and will go out of business.
Good article on Walmart's general business practices: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l (beware the /. space) What's most interesting is how supplier companies effectively have to descend into bankruptcy to comply with Walmart's demands. What's wrong with this picture?
Frankly, I'd rather prices didn't "drop every year" (which in my observation is actually bogus; everything *I* buy at Walmart has had regular price *increases* over the past few years) in favour of a better variety of merchandise from a wider array of surviving suppliers. Not to mention that you can't sell anything to people who are out of work cuz all the jobs went to China... oh wait, maybe that's the whole idea: put everyone else out of a job, so the only place they can AFFORD to shop is at Walmart.
As to work shifts, in this area, partial work weeks are the norm, to avoid paying benefits; Walmart's little brother Sam's Club is one of the few places where you can get a 40 hour work week (at $8/hr, for what that's worth). But at our local Walmart, only the old hands work full weeks. If you apply there now, you're told up front that you'll only get a 32 hour work week (the max before the company has to pay benefits; note that since you start at minimum wage, this is not enough hours to hit the income break point for subsidized medical/dental benefits). Maybe that's because in this economically-strapped area, they can get away with it, since full-time jobs and pay over $7/hr are NOT the norm.
IOW, maybe their hours and benefits policies vary by regional job market.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You can always smell a "something for nothing" democrat.
...sub-poverty level wages. If you stay long enough you're left with back problems, wrist problems, and bone spurs for your trouble.
Life isn't all ergonomic keyboards and naptimes on company time. Your entire argument is based on emotion and conjecture. Walmart has done nothing illegal, and for you to bash them as if they're just some evil corporation is ridiculous.
sub-poverty level to me, and I may be wrong about this, means below poverty level. Being paid about two times minimum wage wouldn't be below poverty level. I would think below minimum wage would be sub-poverty level.
not the way the world works. These people are living on such a thin margin of financial saftey that a missed paycheck, an injury, their car breaking down, can make the difference and put them on the street.
Actually, that's exactly how the world works. Here's the secret. If you have some ambition for a better job, go out and start looking while you hold your current job. You may be miserable for a little while, but if you line it up right, you can quit your current job and move on to you new happy job.
Now if that's not aiming high, I don't know what is.
"I'd hazard a guess that Wal-Mart has the name recognition to be the most prevalent music download service, especially among the tech-unsavvy."
So what happens when these "tech-unsavvy" try uploading these WMA files to their MP3-only digital playback devices and it doesn't work?
Tell me, just why do you run Linux at all? Is it really just for the performance? Because you've sacrificed all the other advantages.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
it must be nice to see the world in such absolute terms, and not have to deal with the messy shades of gray...
despite your inclination to label me, i'm not a communist, but i do remember marx predicting that eventually, power corrupts in ALL systems of government...
being applied that way... King George is declaring war on idea's, parts of speech are next I think, those silly adverbs have always confused him, individuals from sovereign countries are being subjected detention for violation of US laws, while being denied the protections of the self same laws and constitution.
:(
I have to agree Wal-Mart is a monopsonist by definition, WHAT to do about it is a tougher question. The old A&P grocery chain was a great example and was a monopsonist that became a monopoly, which in turn was killed by the government, but it took while and crushed many people
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
ever notice that snapple features a picture of a boat? a SLAVE BOAT! And Walmart sells snapple....
Noose for nerds. Nerds like Urkel. 'Stuff' is a slang term for cock and balls. Obviously, slashdot is devoted to lynching blackies and having sex with black slave girls.
You mean like the soccer mom's anthem, in c major? Maybe "I lost my girl, and my keys" by the acclaimed country western star, I can't think of a really hick name right now?
Even if I say something insightfull or inteligent, it doens't matter cause I'm an ass.
It's only censorship when it becomes *illegal* to read/view certain content.
:)
Merely deciding not to carry certain content in your store is hardly censorship, any more than a church deciding they don't want porn mags brought into Sunday school. Market pressure exists from many sources, not just from Walmart's decision not to carry unedited versions. That decision comes from their desire to appeal to the broadest common denominator, and they've decided that's the same audience as bland broadcast-network TV. (Because broadcast-network TV doesn't carry the Ozzy Show, is that censorship??)
Similarly, I don't want rap music brought into my house. That doesn't make it censorship. You can play the nasty stuff in your own home all you like.
Yes, Walmart exerts a market pressure toward bland sameness. But if that's where the money is, that's how it will be. If those who don't like it can't exert sufficiently large economic pressure to the contrary, other choices may disappear from the free market. Many folk enjoy a horse-and-buggy ride too, but that doesn't make it economically viable for a large corporation to offer Sunday buggy rides.
Your recourse is to buy from alternative retailers, same as it would be if you wanted any other retail item that's not profitable in a large-scale market. If the alternative retailers can't make a buck and go out of business, that's market pressure, not censorship.
Yeah, the net *effect* on what's available in the open market CAN be the same, but as wise folk around here often say, don't confuse causation with correlation.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Asshole.
So money is slavery?
Nice, they move in, upset small town economy, then subject us to the ebb and flow of the global economic pains, and now try it on the digital realm. When you think about it, Wal Mart carries about as much name-brand glamour as Goodwill when it goes up against Sony or Apple. Tres un-geek indeed. You sure you want it to be known you're a WalMart shopper? :)
Signed up withthe DVD rental program and found after 8 month that 80% the DVD was not viewable (I have 2 DVD player (one brand new) and a PS2 (also brand new) and the turnaround was up to 3 weeks.
I'm sure they'll find other deficiencies for the music download....
Nice one coward. It's nice to see someone so compassionate about people who work at Wa-mart looking down on someone who's happily in the middle class. Fact is not all Republicans are rich greedy fat cats. I live a comfortable life and I just want the government to leave me alone and stay out of my wallet. My wife doesn't have to work and my kids are all well provided for. Considering most people in this country end up doing about as well as their parents I'd say I'm doing pretty well. Oh, and my individual income is in the top 10% of my region but I don't consider myself rich by any means. ice
(I was born there, which probably explains a lot. :)
Actually, it's a nice little "quintessential small midwestern farm town" (from the photos on the site you kindly linked to, it hasn't changed much since I was last there in 1972) so I'm mildly amazed that it's grown a K-Mart, let alone a Walmart!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
...Your choice WMA for .88 or MP3 for $1.
Quick poll, how many of us would pay a little extra for a simple non DRM download - Show of hands...
"Smile, listen, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you wanted to do anyway." ~Robert Downey Jr.
So it's better not to have any options, and be FORCED to starve then it is to choose between starving and entering into a shitty arrangement that at least lets you eat?
If the person's in a dire situation - starving, absolute poverty, etc - then offering a new choice (even a crummy one) is a GOOD thing. It may not be a great thing, but it's a good thing. Offering fair wage for reasonable work is a BETTER thing.
Hmmm, does anyone know how this works? I know the licence will be dl'ed the first time listened to. Is that stored in the .wma file then? Or, on the PC somewhere.
I ask this because I replace (well highly modify--- usually a new mobo) my pc with a new one about ever year or so. After 3 years, does this mean I can no longer listen to my music that I paid for? Are iTunes or Napster the same way?
but why do you limit yourself to this binary choice? why can't you imagine that it's possible to have a good, satisfying and well paind job? because that would imply that the owners of WalMart would not be so obscenely rich?
I should have RTFF
* I bought a new computer. Can I transfer music downloads from Walmart.com to this new computer?
WMA files protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption cannot be transferred from computer to computer. If you want to play music you downloaded from Walmart.com on another computer (or on any other device that plays audio CDs), you must burn your music onto an audio CD to play it (please note that you may burn a song to a CD up to 10 times).
The argument is that what WalMart is doing is immoral - not necessarily illegal.
as to minimum wage, depending on where one lives, especially on the local rent levels, a minimum wage does not guarentee a decent living standard. In Toronto, for example, about 1/3 of the people using food banks are actually employed, presumably at or above minimum wage.
"Actually, that's exactly how the world works"
yes, it is. the question is, do we accept this as an appropriate thing, or do we do something to change it. you seem happy enough to accept that there are poor people - i am not.
"Here's the secret. If you have some ambition for a better job, go out and start looking while you hold your current job"
you are assuming that there are other or better jobs out there. one of the complaints against WalMart is that it is (nearly) the sole employer in many communities. the unemployment rate in all industrialized countries is above zero. perhaps you are trained enough to find an alternate job easily - many people are not.
It must be nice to be able to rationalize any moral cowardice with "shades of gray" rhetoric.
Wal-Mart corporate really doesn't care about the .com very much. I've known people who interviewed there and the opinion they came away with from the experience was that the people working there didn't really know what they were doing. They've got a chunk of money from the mothership and they're basically playing with it, following the lead of whatever business seems to be the hot thing this week. First it was general e-commerce, then DVD rentals, now music sales.
If I were Apple, I'd hardly be worried about the iTMS.
Is Target censoring exotic love toys? I guess so, they don't sell any that I know of. Or perhaps that is not part of the image they are striving to create.
Family friendly (and limiting stock to related things) is just another form of marketing. Now Wal-Mart happens to be so big, that for marketing reasons (labels want a record to sell at Wal-Mart because of the huge market base they offer) they airbrush out the covers and do what they can to make a product that fits into Wal-Marts image. Note that in the article Wal-Mart was not asking labels to do this - they did so of their own volition, with artists consent. Note also that no lyrics were censored (by Wal-Mart), just covers altered (by the record companies, not Wal-Mart).
I believe real censorship can only be achieved by the government, where they actually throw someone in jail (or just kill them) for what they say. That is censorship, Wal-Mart not offering your CD of all holiday music composed entirely with the F-bomb is just a disjunction of two different marketing messages. If consumers are still allowed to seek out your work then there is no censorship.
Like it or not, Wal-Mart is just doing what they can to appeal to the masses - and they have obviously succeeded looking at their size. Some part of that may be ruthlessness, but a great deal has to do with you and me going in and actually buying from them. Personally I prefer Target but have no vendetta against Wal-Mart, and have to admit they can be handy when on long road trips to the middle of nowhere I have a need to buy something that otherwise would never be carried around there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At first I was impressed with the layout of Walmart's music site and actually bought a song(took all of 1 minute to think of a way to convert it to mp3). Another guy at work also bought a few songs, but he noticed that the songs he downloaded were not what he had choosen to buy. I soon noticed that every warrant song from thier live album was incorrect. The preview is not the song that it says it is. I have e-mailed Walmarts tech support to alert them that they have an issue, but have not gotten any kind of response yet.
Maybe because the band is 'Sebadoh'. However, I bet even if you spell it right, you don't find it (sigh). Glad I still have those old CDs and records.
And if you think voting in some other group of politicians is going to fix anything you're just as bad. Nearly all politicians at the federal level are corrupt. What's even worse than that is that nobody even cares that it is.
I tried it out. The poster was correct that the test file would play just in mplayer, but don't waste another 88 cents trying the songs for sale. They are DRMed and will not work with mplayer.
Perhaps if Wal-mart were just scraping by it would be alright, but when 5 of the 10 richest people in the country got there thanks to Wal-mart, and they treat their employees the way they do, that's just criminal.
I'm reminded a couple of years ago when I visited some of the islands of the inner passage to Alaska. Lots of poor people who were being charged 5.00 US for a gallon of milk by local vendors until Wal Mart came in and cut the price in half. Same situation with bread and other basics. Before Wal Mart the local vendors all whined about how expensive it was to get things shipped in. They were lying.
I have very little sympathy for most small town local vendors. Many who exploit the locals even worse than Wal Mart.
This will come as a great surprise to the prosecutors working on their use of illegal aliens as "contracted" janitorial service.
Sean
A slave is a human being owned (as private property) by another human being. It is the ultimate extension of the capitalist ideal of private property -- even other people can be property. Socialism (whatever flaws it may have) contests exactly these ideas of private property. Slavery is totally inconceivable in a society where there is no private property. Think about it.
I thought about it. If coming up with that is the best you can think, I hope you get educated soon.
Slavery does not require ownership by a person. Socialism makes everybody a slave to the government. Communism makes everybody a slave to the neighbor. Only capitalism as an economic system, and libertarianism as originally specified by the U.S.A. founding fathers, placed human freedom as supremely important.
Because human beings are not property unless the government says they are. If the government does not say humans are property, then any attempt to own human beings is illegal, e.g. kidnapping, and is one of if not the main reason for government -- preservation of human rights.
sdb
What you are saying is correct. Slaves WERE worse off afterwards--at least initially. In fact, that was the argument of the capitalists. Capitalists claimed that they would take care of the slaves far better than the free slaves will be able to. Their analogy was to that of private property (eg. you would take care of you OWN car better than a public car)...
But there is something this argument ignores: FREEDOM!!! I don't know about you but I would rather be free and poor than rich and be a slave. There is NOTHING that is equal to freedom.
Some countries in the world are worse off now than under imperialism/colonialism (in the economic sense). However, they are better off overall. Being free is worth infinity!
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
(NOT QUOTED IN ORDER)
;)... Actually, I threw some arguments at capitalism as a system. I have no idea how capitalistic you are... I admit that my points were mostly inflammatory...
Hey, thanks for making all sorts of assumptions about my line of reasoning and motivations - love when that happens.
You are welcome
As far as cases wgere government initiates mass propoganda and disinformation - well that's a bad thing regardless of the economic system.
I agree... let's skip this issue for now. It's irrelevant to the rest...
And no, capatalists don't think slavery is ok - not unless they can't distinguish between humans and properties. A capatalist can't buy and sell that which isn't considered to be property.
Just like how abolishing slavery is against capitalism, so is minimum wage. Capitalists don't argue in favour of slavery however, they still argue against minimum wage. Slavery is similar to minimum wage.
Under pure capitalism, slaves would be considered property--as they were for thousands of years. The only reason you don't have slavery is because the GOVERNMENT abolished it. It is ILLEGAL for you to own slaves in USA (or 90%+ of other countries who signed UN treaties). In other words, this is government intervention in the markets. This is against (pure) capitalism. Just consider how a hypothetical (pure) capitalist world will be (zero govt intervention, very few laws except to enforce property rights, etc). Under such a world, slavery will necessarily manifest itself. People WILL engage in slavery under a capitalist world. Without hte goverment what is to stop it? Certain forms of prostituion ALREADY borders close to slavery. There are millions of underage kids being sexually abused in many countries. There are also millions of women being RAPED every day of their lives for little money. When we talk about abuse, we are not talking about the Hollywood version where some prostitute makes a ton of money. These children and women are actually ABUSED. They are forced to perform sexual acts that will be totally illegal and immoral. Yet they do it! All because they are poor and will do ANYTHING! Until you are in that situation, or until you realize the choices faced by these people, you have NO IDEA what what you are talking about. *I* have no idea what I'm talking about either. However, I think I have a better idea of the social issues than you.
The problem with you--and your fellow capitalists--is that you never consider the notion of MORALITY. There are EVIL people in this world. People will engage in activities that are totally immoral. You and your capitalist friends have no idea of morality. To you, it's just a market run by supply & demand. You people take any action that a person performs is taken to be rational and "good". Yet it is never the case. When a person abandons their OWN child in the streets in poor countries, you view that as their own choice--a choice that they are happy about. In reality it is never that case. If these people were a little bit richer, if they were a lit bit calmer, if they were a little bit thoughtful, they never would abandon their child--just like how you wouldn't. You never consider the situations faced by the people. To you, there is no difference between someone offering themselves when they are poor versus when they are rich.
It's not explotation if someone chooses, with all the information presented in front of him/her, to enter into the situation without coersion.
With that view, there is no such thing as exploitation. Why do we even have the world 'exploitation'?
Capitalism is HEARTLESS... you being a proponent of it, will become one--if you aren't one already.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
So it's better not to have any options, and be FORCED to starve then it is to choose between starving and entering into a shitty arrangement that at least lets you eat?
The world existed for thousands of years without capitalism. Many ancient civilizations supported large populations and complex societies without capitalism. I'm not saying the people were better off back then but my point is... Your implication that these poor people must accept a horrible life and become a wage slave is ignoring humanity. There is no reason why people have to either live as a wage slave or die...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
First of all, I don't know why you are bringing the Civil War into this. Yes, I realize that it was NOT about slavery--it was about seperation. That's why I'm against the Civil War (it was wrong).
Anyway, the fact that USA was industrialized does not make it capitalist (although in this case it was). You can have cases where a country is capitalist but that doesn't mean the people are. Just like how you can have a country that is socialist yet the people aren't.
Slavery was NOT abolished by capitalists. Capitalists were PRO-SLAVERY. Why don't you check out the history of some wealthy capitalists in the North? They were against the war (except for the war profiteers) and abolishment of slavery. The people who wanted to abolish slavery were hardly capitalists. They were all liberals and liberatarians, mostly the lower classes. Abolishment of slavery was driven by these people--not capitalists! Capitalism is an economic system and slaves are perfectly ok under it.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
lol Maybe you should read up on thse systems first. North Korea communist? Cambodia? If those countries are capitalist, Iraq is too (we all know how much USA supported it, don't we?).
Socialism kills, free markets feed.
Do you need to get your brain examined? How about Nazi Germany which was capitalist? I think you seriously have a lack of understanding of the world. Socialism doesn't kill; Totalitarianism does! Of course, you have no idea of the difference. Just wait until USA switches to totalitarianism when the terrorists hit USA again.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
You can use money to induce slavery... So yes, money is a kind of modern day slavery. In fact, I consider myself to be an economic slave. I am a slave to the capitalist overlords*.
(* I'm unemployed right now but I'm talking about the case when I am working).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
That guy can hardly be an anti-socialist...given that he is quoting George Orwell...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
(NOT QUOTED IN ORDER)
Because human beings are not property unless the government says they are. If the government does not say humans are property, then any attempt to own human beings is illegal, e.g. kidnapping, and is one of if not the main reason for government -- preservation of human rights.
That's COMPLETELY wrong. When did a government have to say something is a property for it to be traded? Under capitalism, ANYTHING is a property. It looks like you don't even know your own system. Under capitalism, government intervention is zero. Government is not the one that says people are slaves--it's the market that says that. If people engage is trading of slaves, it's perfectly ok. If anything, it's the government that PREVENTS you from trading slaves. Without the government you can legally trade anything. The government is acting like a socialist state in blocking slaves from being traded.
Only capitalism as an economic system, and libertarianism as originally specified by the U.S.A. founding fathers, placed human freedom as supremely important.
You must have a skewed view of history (like conservatives). If you quoted modern liberatarianism, you may have a point. But quoting the original liberatarianism is your loss. The Founding Fathers were PRO-SLAVE. Washington and Jefferson owned a ton of slaves and they never freed them. The US government also had many opportunities to outlaw slavery but they never did. Under the free market of the early days, slaves were open traded on markets. This was so because slaves were property (and you can trade anything under capitalism). The only reason slavery is not practiced now is, not because of the Founding Fathers or capitalism, but because the government INTERVENES and makes it ILLEGAL. This, needless to say, is against capitalism since it is govt intervention. In fact, the capitalists of that era used the same argument that modern day capitalists use against minimum wage to justify slavery. Before the government outlawed it, slavery was perfectly fine.
Your fault is the brainwashing you received (I guess from your school). The Founding Fathers certainly "placed human freedom as supremely important." But you fail to realize that the Founding Fathers only considered WHITE MEN to be humans. Others weren't. If anything, blacks (and other non-whites) were the same thing as a rock on the ground--nothing more than a piece of property.
In any case, the Founding Fathers were less liberatarian than the American Liberatarians like to claim. The Founding Fathers were actually radical liberals (they are called classical liberals). They share more with liberalism than with liberatarianism. For instance, if someone was a liberatarian, they would have been in favour of abolishment of slavery, homosexuality, etc. Many weren't!
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
scripsit sylvandb:
If ad hominems are the best you can come up with, I question why I am bothering to reply. Perhaps because the semester has just ended and all my grading is done.
By the way, I am getting educated. In fact, I have devoted my entire life to scholarship; I am an historian.
Slavery is the state of being a slave. If I may direct your attention to the Oxford English Dictionary, a slave (definition I.1.a) is ``One who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person...''
It is beyond the scope of a /. posting to attempt to explain socialist thought in all its detail and permutations (I believe that, in the Western Civ syllabus I just put together, it got more than a full class period). However, you might want to familiarize yourself with, for example, anarcho-socialist thought, before you make such sweeping generalizations about the relationship of socialism and servitude.
You might also want to check out the concept of libertarian socialism. This is the true form of libertarianism, before the term was hijacked by the right-wing capitalist apologists. Google should help a bit.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
I am not blaming Wal-Mart for labour conditions in China, or for that matter any other country. I am blaming them for taking ADVANTAGE of others and exploiting them. BTW, this has nothing to do with China. It could be India, or Philliphines, or South Africa, or whatever. It's all the same.
I find it ironic that you claim to support capitalism yet make sure you only buy products from certain countries. Since when did capitalism resort to protectionism or boycotts?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Sure, it's possible for a better job to be offered. And anyone who takes the crummy job in favor of the great job is making a bad choice. I'm just saying that when the base situation is poverty, offering the poverty-stricken another solution is a good thing. How good of a thing that is depends on how good the job is. And so long as all parties involved enter into the situation knowingly, it's BS to say they're coerced. The employee is free to decline the crummy job and keep seekign out something better, which may or may not come along. it's the employee's choice.
I didnt' say they have to - what i said is if they're allready in a situation where they're poverty-stricken, you're not doing them an injustic by offering (not forcing) an alternative.
Wow you're so close, except that the number you cite is a monthly number and has no particular attachment to China (it's the overall US trade deficit).
Nice try through, and thanks for pointing out (via the contents of the article) that the 2003 numbers will actually be much higher than the 2002 number I gave.
now if we can get them to pricematch what it cost to download music on kazaa, I'm in
Why don't you just make it a proper -link?
Capitalist? I have no idea what you are saying here. The USA supported what? Could you try to make some sense?
The Nazis were also known as the National Socialist party. The only difference between the Soviets and the Nazis is that the Nazis were smart enough to let qualified people run the companies. The State still owned them for all practical purposes. The notion that the fascists were the opposite of the communists is an oversimplistic fallacy.
To paraphrase Robert Heinlein, there are only really two types of political thought. Those who think people need to be controlled and those who don't. The natural state of commerce is free markets. To control markets requires controlling people. Controlling people requires force. Force requires disarming the people and making examples of dissidents.
You can't have real socialism without totalitarianism (which is the real enemy of the people as you correctly stated). You can have a centrist mix of free markets with social programs like the U.S. and Europe. All of our economic power depends on the (relatively) free market and capitalism.
Your typically Leftist condescension is repulsive and infantile. You think that anyone who disagrees with you must be an idiot. You know nothing about me. I'm an avid reader of history and political theory, I just happen to disagree with you. Please make some reasoned and supported arguments if you wish to carry this discussion further.
You can be a socialist in the orwell sense and still mock "socialists" like the Chinese and Soviet governments. C.f. Animal Farm, 1984.
I don't even use the word socialist anymore, it's so diluted.
But seriously, to quote user 676199 "No one cares how you feel. It may get me modded down to say it, but that is just the worst reason to use a technology ever."
Which is to say, the DRM is much more sane on the ITMS, but you feel like using WMP, that's fine. Just don't claim that it is for some other reason relating to non-existant locks.
I agree with you 95 percent.
The only difference between the Soviets and the Nazis is that the Nazis were smart enough to let qualified people run the companies. The State still owned them for all practical purposes. The notion that the fascists were the opposite of the communists is an oversimplistic fallacy.
...there are only really two types of political thought. Those who think people need to be controlled and those who don't.
If you let the economy be driven by (private) individuals, as the Nazis did, it is not socialist. It's that simple. There is nothing more to it. Your assertion that the goverment somehow had control was completely false. The Nazi government had very little control of the economy. This is why you had rich wealthy capitalits running everything. The only thing the Nazis had control over was politics. Capitalism, in case you don't know, does not delve into politics. Nazis practiced fascism on top of capitalism. It's too bad you have no understanding of that.
As far as opposite of fascism is concerned, there really isn't a true opposite when it comes to econopolitical systems (since these systems and complex and have many traits). But if you want to pick one, the closest thing to an opposite of fascism is anarchism.
You claim to understand history but the fact that you claim Nazism is socialism just shows that you know very little.
That is such a simplistic view that it isn't even worth addressing. It is just as idiotic as Bush's "You are with us or against us" line. Your line of thinking reduces everything into anarchism and non-anarchism. That's correct in some sense but for all intensive purposes it is irrelevant. Even capitalism calls for controls to be placed (eg. capitalism requires government to enforce private property. Even the pure capitalists call for minimal goverment that will enforce property rights.).
The natural state of commerce is free markets.
There is no such thing as a natural state. There never has been a free market and never will be. Free markets are not in the interest of most humans therefore they won't support it. For example, most people will support fair wages and not market wages.
You can't have real socialism without totalitarianism (which is the real enemy of the people as you correctly stated).
Explain why.
You can have a centrist mix of free markets with social programs like the U.S. and Europe.
You are not using the language properly. Mixed economies are hardly centrist. There is no such thing as a centrist system. Europe and Canada are capitalist! They have socialist ideals but that's a minor thing. You cannot call a country socialist when they are practicing capitalism. Socialists AND capitalists both claim that it is unstable to run a mixed economy. One or the other has to lose. Right now, the socialists are losing. You'll note that these countries are dismantling their socialist institutions (like public schools, public libraries, public healthcare, etc). These countries are becoming more capitalitst by the day.
I'm an avid reader of history and political theory, I just happen to disagree with you.
You don't show it... I mean, you claim Nazism is a form of socialism (By the way, that article that you quoted is the most idiotic thing I have read in a while. The author claims that (Italian) Fascists are the forefathers of socialism. lol That's just too funny. Find me a leftist book/article/etc that worships any of thse fascists. If the Fascists are indeed socialists, one would think that some leftist out there would be praising them, no? I mean, you can find leftists supporting Lenin but can you find one supporting Mussolini or Hitler?). Then you claim that all political ideologies reduce to anarchism (no one has power over individual) and non-anarchism (someone/something has power over you). It seems like you don't really understand much. I mean, do you even know what egalitarianism is? How does that fit in with fascism?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Sorry to hijack this thread, but it looks like no-one has mentioned a very important fact:
While the test file and the "Listen" samples do work on Linux, the purchased songs cannot be played on Linux. Wal-Mart screwed up and didn't apply the same DRM they use on the purchased songs to the test file, so it isn't really an adequate test. I was able to play the test file on Linux using MPlayer. I then tried purchasing a song and testing it out. MPlayer recognizes the file format, but it won't play any sound.
Let that be a lesson to you: always make your test cases as close as possible to the real thing!
As a side-note, if anyone knows of a freeware sound driver for Windows that writes audio to WAV files, I'd like to know about it.
I tried using dBpowerAMP converter with the WMA add-on to convert the WalMart wma files to mp3.. Pity. It doesn't work. All of us who spent our hard-earned bucks on an MP3 Player before they started including wma support are just SOL I guess (unless someone out there knows of a converter that will do the job?)
Quicktime may have better DRM than WMA. It's certainly better in other ways. But it's still a proprietary technology controlled by the whims of a single company. Which is not a good thing!
Innovation is good. But sometimes when Microsoft and Apple say "innovation", they really mean "we're smarter than everybody else, so we're going to do things our way, and so stop bothering us about 'interoperability' and 'standards' and all that crap."