They certainly don't listen to the schlock their clients (all 20 of them) are pimping.
If you or I tried to defend this kind extortion, never mind try to carry it out, we would be slapped in jail so fuckin' fast, slapped with RICO act actions, and have to share cells with guys named Bubba.
That was a conference where Hitler's minions decided, with calm and sober delberation, the mechanisms of recouping the costs of the coming holocaust and how the proceeds of the sale of the worldly goods of the Jews and the other victims were to be divided up.
None of these people would have been called evil, despite the utter monstrosity of the acts, their hands were clean of any blood splashing on them directly.
They were merely looking out for the best interests of the stake-holders (despite the fact that they were in effect talking about robbing the 'soon to be' corpses.)
Do you think that the lawyers of the RIAA are kept up at night by the fundamentally flawed logic inherent in propping up an industry which has lost its reason for being?
Good God man! They are making their money, the legal fees, protecting the interests of about 20 companies (its not just the big four, there are about 16 other members of the RIAA) selling NOISE.
And the RIAA are lawyers, they have big egos and even bigger sticks with which to bludgeon you. They comprise the majority of people we elect, and they have control of some people whom they can send around to the other side of the planet to kill your ass.
If the RIAA is not sleeping nights its because they're looking for another way to rip off their 20 or so clients (and fuck the listening public.)
Right now it looks like a typical Windows machine; dumb.
Its just a primitive roving sensor platform (and I don't think much of its roving capabilities.)
Until it gets some way to affect its environment, say a mechanical arm with a few axes of freedom, I'm not turned on in the least.
I think a swarm of small "insectoid" robots is a much better way to go.
Small, light, mobile, easily trainable, remote camera platform, swiveling head with mounted pincers and able to carry out simple tasks.
Hey that's what an ant does right?
An ant alone can't do much (apart from being able to survive falls that would turn HeRoBot into shards and twisted fragments) but when acting in concert, then can build enormous structures.
I watched part the video and it was like watching the eighteen wheeled log-hauler coming your way in front of you on the narrow mountain road suddenly jackknife and the tree trunks go up and over before coming down like a bunch of really BIG pick-up-sticks. (And you hope like Hell you jambed on the brakes fast enough!)
talk show programs (just like "unscripted reality shows" [Oh please, no]) filling the air waves.
The money train's coming to the end of the tracks boys. (No more snorting blow out of a naked hooker's navel.)
It may suck to be us for a little while, but Mullah Omar may be getting his wish after all: "A world without music."
The advertisers who are stuck paying for it all won't mind in the least. (Hell. Truck and beer and during a show about trucks and beer. What a winner!)
The audiences who are stuck with listening to it all won't mind in the least.
Look for the sale of hands-free headsets to go up so "Tucker Tom" can talk back to the radio because they'll have made room to the "Trucker Tom"s of the world.
The price we're stuck with for the **AAs is about to come crashing down because the broadcasters don't have to broadcast music.
Once the broadcasters are on the program, the audiences will realize that instead of wanting them just for their ears and their wallets, the broadcasters will want them for what the audience can contribute.
But the price structure will still be in place, like a bottle of foul tasting hangover remedy, to remind us all of the period in time when billions of pennies were siphoned from all of our pockets and drained into the vast bulging pockets of a very few.
We'll just have to call the music by some other name. (Its happened before, English didn't exist except as utterances spoken by Shakespeare and 'groked' by the audiences to his plays.)
No to sound apocalyptic, but its all coming to an end because its all going 'round again.
Its just a deal that broadcasters worked out in the thirties with some "friends" in gummint so they wouldn't have to pay royalties which some other people worked out earlier with some other "friends" with the gummint.
Instead the broadcasters paid way less dough to a few 'selected individuals' (that's how corruption works and get absorbed as "the cost a doing bizness'.)
after the horses have all been shot because they had contracted rabies.
With podcasting enabling people (real people, not just statistics on the demographics,) to share media without censorship, via RSS on the client side and servers on the 'caster side.
Who gives a flying f.., uh, darn, what those grit suckers think. (Hell, ClearChanel's already gone.)
They are so out of touch with the reality of what's coming down the 'pike that its wryly amusing.
I feel for people who are still trying to make sense of their database schemas without explicit Relationships and in 2D.
I developed a schema and source code parsing technique for detecting Relationships in a well normalized database and then took the output of that (750+ Tables & 1,200+ Relationships) and developed 3D (VRML) presentation techniques to let me SEE the Tables and Relationships.)
I've used it to see the Tables and Relationships in other clients' databases as well. It's a very useful technique for analyzing the structure of financial databases.
I've even blogged about it. (http://oirc.blogspot.com/)
I'm now well rid of the whole mess (disease has sort of changed my perspective, [that's why I podcast now,]) but you're welcome to the idea.
and profit (which is by definition "anti-innovation") are forced to survive in the same 'for profit' economy are the need for true competition to coerce progress from the forces of stagnation.
ARPA, which became DARPA, was a 'not for profit', 'damn the cost', 'pedal to the metal' engine of innovation which tackled the glacial pace of change that existed before then.
It created the environment that made the modern world (the world since 1950) possible and that world in turn has created enormous engines of wealth.
In dealing with climate change, we could have another ARPA, if people are bright enough to see the possibilities as well as the need.
Unfortunately I have MS and, now that I "schlep" around with a cane, it shows.
Now my 'net presence shows that I'm a pretty radical guy (and getting more radical by the day, not physically dangerous, but definitely radical) but I'm now definitely a 15%er*, and worse, than that I'm old** in a young man's game.
Its not easy fighting people's perceptions when you've become imperceptible to them.
Well, as someone I once knew use to say: "Fuck 'em where they breathe!"
* the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 15% of the population is disabled to some degree.
The individuals may change in distress and severity but 15% if the population is going through those doors, on a stretcher. (MS is 0.0833% of the population, 1 in 1,200, so I'm really behind the eight ball.)
** I was born in 1953. I was already doing IT when it was called MIS and I'm almost older that the first computer language (FlowCode) and my career started before relational calculus and relational data bases. That gives me perspectives that inform me, not just a bunch of boring "war stories", when I design and develop software.
I can see them working with OEMs on a promotion to GIVE away huge numbers of Zunes and even get buy in from their media partners (sort of "You tie one of her legs to your car's bumper, I'll get the other, then we'll step on the accelerators and make a wish.")
They are stuck on the desktop and now that their vision (of "A computer on every desktop") has been realized, by hook and by crook, (not 'or' but 'and') they are done. There is very little growth space left for Microsoft and they don't feel ready for the diminished activity of becoming a commodity.
Since they have always done things one way (buy and kill or buy and rebrand products) they are going to do that in the consumer/retail space, however they are going to come up short because the people who are BUYING the products are actually going to USE them, (unlike what originally happened with the PC.)
You have an entirely different mentality when its YOUR money that might be going up in smoke.
Business has lost trillions in lost productivity in IT alone since the early 80s, but its an acceptable loss because they are still showing an overall profit, mostly because of IT.
Consumers don't have profits.
Consumers have JOBS. That limits their income.
You can't afford to buy crap ONCE, never mind the usual three tries at a market that a perennial "also runner" like Microsoft takes. Since the market leaders keep moving the target, Microsoft CAN'T be a winner.
Being an "also runner" means you occupy "also runner" place and that certainly is not a big industrial campus in Redmond.
Its happened before and it will happen again. Its just that this time there are a couple more zeroes before the decimal place.
Microsoft will not be able to reform itself until someone like a Steve Jobs takes the helm of the much diminished corporation and gets hailed as a "turn-around king."
they buy something [remember QDOS?] or rip it off [remember QuarterDeck?] and the product disappears [remember FrameMaker?] and that's how the big fish eats the little fish.
At no point in their entire history have Microsoft originated anything.
Original thought costs in dollars and costs in risk.
And Microsoft is the most risk-averse corporation in existence. That's why they buy politicians.
spend ALL of the tax dollars on killing people and blowing up shit?
Seeing as how the man's such a scientific ignoramous, maybe we could tell him that its actually necessary for a continental anti-terrorist defense that's based off-shore but would still be under our control.
And just to seal the deal, triple the operational budget.
Its a question of advancing the cause, not of self-aggrandizement.
I was publishing back when it was virtually unknown. Now with the rise of Linux and the self publication model, you surely have done something, anything, to get some recognition.
Slashdot Mirror
They're also extremely insensate.
They certainly don't listen to the schlock their clients (all 20 of them) are pimping.
If you or I tried to defend this kind extortion, never mind try to carry it out, we would be slapped in jail so fuckin' fast, slapped with RICO act actions, and have to share cells with guys named Bubba.
That was a conference where Hitler's minions decided, with calm and sober delberation, the mechanisms of recouping the costs of the coming holocaust and how the proceeds of the sale of the worldly goods of the Jews and the other victims were to be divided up.
None of these people would have been called evil, despite the utter monstrosity of the acts, their hands were clean of any blood splashing on them directly.
They were merely looking out for the best interests of the stake-holders (despite the fact that they were in effect talking about robbing the 'soon to be' corpses.)
Do you think that the lawyers of the RIAA are kept up at night by the fundamentally flawed logic inherent in propping up an industry which has lost its reason for being?
Good God man! They are making their money, the legal fees, protecting the interests of about 20 companies (its not just the big four, there are about 16 other members of the RIAA) selling NOISE.
And the RIAA are lawyers, they have big egos and even bigger sticks with which to bludgeon you. They comprise the majority of people we elect, and they have control of some people whom they can send around to the other side of the planet to kill your ass.
If the RIAA is not sleeping nights its because they're looking for another way to rip off their 20 or so clients (and fuck the listening public.)
Dude, last I heard, the iTMS have sold over a billion and a half songs and were closing in on two at an accelerating pace.
and I thought it was just me...
TFA revealed some interesting physics.
Right now it looks like a typical Windows machine; dumb.
:-)
Its just a primitive roving sensor platform (and I don't think much of its roving capabilities.)
Until it gets some way to affect its environment, say a mechanical arm with a few axes of freedom, I'm not turned on in the least.
I think a swarm of small "insectoid" robots is a much better way to go.
Small, light, mobile, easily trainable, remote camera platform, swiveling head with mounted pincers and able to carry out simple tasks.
Hey that's what an ant does right?
An ant alone can't do much (apart from being able to survive falls that would turn HeRoBot into shards and twisted fragments) but when acting in concert, then can build enormous structures.
Screw HeRoBot. I want an "ANT" ((C) TM
of the American public.
I watched part the video and it was like watching the eighteen wheeled log-hauler coming your way in front of you on the narrow mountain road suddenly jackknife and the tree trunks go up and over before coming down like a bunch of really BIG pick-up-sticks. (And you hope like Hell you jambed on the brakes fast enough!)
on their foreign listeners.
But their podcasting (like the Ouch! podcasts [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/ ]) are a sign of the times.
Specialty podcasts for specialty markets.
I mean, if you're "not" disabled, why the hell would you care? (Unless you know/like or care about or for a disabled person.)
But if you ARE disabled, then it IS for YOU.
talk show programs (just like "unscripted reality shows" [Oh please, no]) filling the air waves.
The money train's coming to the end of the tracks boys. (No more snorting blow out of a naked hooker's navel.)
It may suck to be us for a little while, but Mullah Omar may be getting his wish after all: "A world without music."
The advertisers who are stuck paying for it all won't mind in the least. (Hell. Truck and beer and during a show about trucks and beer. What a winner!)
The audiences who are stuck with listening to it all won't mind in the least.
Look for the sale of hands-free headsets to go up so "Tucker Tom" can talk back to the radio because they'll have made room to the "Trucker Tom"s of the world.
The price we're stuck with for the **AAs is about to come crashing down because the broadcasters don't have to broadcast music.
Once the broadcasters are on the program, the audiences will realize that instead of wanting them just for their ears and their wallets, the broadcasters will want them for what the audience can contribute.
But the price structure will still be in place, like a bottle of foul tasting hangover remedy, to remind us all of the period in time when billions of pennies were siphoned from all of our pockets and drained into the vast bulging pockets of a very few.
We'll just have to call the music by some other name. (Its happened before, English didn't exist except as utterances spoken by Shakespeare and 'groked' by the audiences to his plays.)
No to sound apocalyptic, but its all coming to an end because its all going 'round again.
dime of that money?
How naive are you?
Its just a deal that broadcasters worked out in the thirties with some "friends" in gummint so they wouldn't have to pay royalties which some other people worked out earlier with some other "friends" with the gummint.
Instead the broadcasters paid way less dough to a few 'selected individuals' (that's how corruption works and get absorbed as "the cost a doing bizness'.)
Art doesn't enter into it.
after the horses have all been shot because they had contracted rabies.
With podcasting enabling people (real people, not just statistics on the demographics,) to share media without censorship, via RSS on the client side and servers on the 'caster side.
Who gives a flying f.., uh, darn, what those grit suckers think. (Hell, ClearChanel's already gone.)
They are so out of touch with the reality of what's coming down the 'pike that its wryly amusing.
I feel for people who are still trying to make sense of their database schemas without explicit Relationships and in 2D.
I developed a schema and source code parsing technique for detecting Relationships in a well normalized database and then took the output of that (750+ Tables & 1,200+ Relationships) and developed 3D (VRML) presentation techniques to let me SEE the Tables and Relationships.)
I've used it to see the Tables and Relationships in other clients' databases as well. It's a very useful technique for analyzing the structure of financial databases.
I've even blogged about it. (http://oirc.blogspot.com/)
I'm now well rid of the whole mess (disease has sort of changed my perspective, [that's why I podcast now,]) but you're welcome to the idea.
in that we never say what we mean.
Try transliterating most expressions, specially curses, across linguistic barriers and you immediately see the problem.
How is a computer supposed to 'understand' you when you can't even understand yourself without years of intimately shared experience?
Google, with its extremely sophisticated pattern matching, is part of the solution, but they can only do so much.
Yahoo, with its human moderated search spaces, is also part of the solution, but they can only do so much.
Deep contextual dependency, a.k.a. the semantic web, is something that is hard to achieve, even in humans.
We will NEVER achieve perfect solutions, language is always evolving, but the solutions will improve over time (they'll require less of it.)
and profit (which is by definition "anti-innovation") are forced to survive in the same 'for profit' economy are the need for true competition to coerce progress from the forces of stagnation.
ARPA, which became DARPA, was a 'not for profit', 'damn the cost', 'pedal to the metal' engine of innovation which tackled the glacial pace of change that existed before then.
It created the environment that made the modern world (the world since 1950) possible and that world in turn has created enormous engines of wealth.
In dealing with climate change, we could have another ARPA, if people are bright enough to see the possibilities as well as the need.
That's why I DONT do dope.
or some 'almost well formed' spam-ish mail that install a key logger on you machine.
Be thankful. I had to trace someone to Romania to see where a ultimately 'sniffer' reported to.
I have email addresses for each of my "suppliers' by supplier; one for [bank name], one for ... and I even put them on separate ISPs.
Its easier to separate the idiotic spam and "Nigerian Scams" from the serious fuckers that I want my financial institutions to follow up on.
Rock on.
presence was enough but its NOT.
Unfortunately I have MS and, now that I "schlep" around with a cane, it shows.
Now my 'net presence shows that I'm a pretty radical guy (and getting more radical by the day, not physically dangerous, but definitely radical) but I'm now definitely a 15%er*, and worse, than that I'm old** in a young man's game.
Its not easy fighting people's perceptions when you've become imperceptible to them.
Well, as someone I once knew use to say: "Fuck 'em where they breathe!"
* the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 15% of the population is disabled to some degree.
The individuals may change in distress and severity but 15% if the population is going through those doors, on a stretcher. (MS is 0.0833% of the population, 1 in 1,200, so I'm really behind the eight ball.)
** I was born in 1953. I was already doing IT when it was called MIS and I'm almost older that the first computer language (FlowCode) and my career started before relational calculus and relational data bases. That gives me perspectives that inform me, not just a bunch of boring "war stories", when I design and develop software.
penetration. (dirty jokes aside)
I can see them working with OEMs on a promotion to GIVE away huge numbers of Zunes and even get buy in from their media partners (sort of "You tie one of her legs to your car's bumper, I'll get the other, then we'll step on the accelerators and make a wish.")
They are stuck on the desktop and now that their vision (of "A computer on every desktop") has been realized, by hook and by crook, (not 'or' but 'and') they are done. There is very little growth space left for Microsoft and they don't feel ready for the diminished activity of becoming a commodity.
Since they have always done things one way (buy and kill or buy and rebrand products) they are going to do that in the consumer/retail space, however they are going to come up short because the people who are BUYING the products are actually going to USE them, (unlike what originally happened with the PC.)
You have an entirely different mentality when its YOUR money that might be going up in smoke.
Business has lost trillions in lost productivity in IT alone since the early 80s, but its an acceptable loss because they are still showing an overall profit, mostly because of IT.
Consumers don't have profits.
Consumers have JOBS. That limits their income.
You can't afford to buy crap ONCE, never mind the usual three tries at a market that a perennial "also runner" like Microsoft takes. Since the market leaders keep moving the target, Microsoft CAN'T be a winner.
Being an "also runner" means you occupy "also runner" place and that certainly is not a big industrial campus in Redmond.
Its happened before and it will happen again. Its just that this time there are a couple more zeroes before the decimal place.
Microsoft will not be able to reform itself until someone like a Steve Jobs takes the helm of the much diminished corporation and gets hailed as a "turn-around king."
they buy something [remember QDOS?] or rip it off [remember QuarterDeck?] and the product disappears [remember FrameMaker?] and that's how the big fish eats the little fish.
At no point in their entire history have Microsoft originated anything.
Original thought costs in dollars and costs in risk.
And Microsoft is the most risk-averse corporation in existence. That's why they buy politicians.
spend ALL of the tax dollars on killing people and blowing up shit?
Seeing as how the man's such a scientific ignoramous, maybe we could tell him that its actually necessary for a continental anti-terrorist defense that's based off-shore but would still be under our control.
And just to seal the deal, triple the operational budget.
.22s and .38s.
They used to go to the dump to play at cowboys 'n indians or cops 'n robbers, and to shoot at rats.
They sort of disappeared from school one week-end (and nobody asked too many questions.)
But, that's kids for ya...
all the shiny little multi-media features.
:-)
They're running businesses, not gaming rooms or living rooms.
They don't even want flash in their Internet Exploder.
Microsoft is trying to push but their market is not interested.
Linux on the desktop is looking better and better to the average bank. (They only own tens of thousands of machines each.)
And the Mac is a stabler platform for the home.
So where does that leave "Monkey Boy?"
instead of a sad moniker of the bubonic plague, which happened long ago to people who couldn't possibly have known any better, right?
But what have YOU published?
Its a question of advancing the cause, not of self-aggrandizement.
I was publishing back when it was virtually unknown. Now with the rise of Linux and the self publication model, you surely have done something, anything, to get some recognition.
After all, it is a reputation based world now..
when the artist only gets about $1?