YOU are going to figure out THEIR new business model for them and show them how they can keep on shaking down both ends of the markets before they will stop interfering.
After all they have had over a century of failure at associating (every technological advance, from the player piano roll to the MP3 file format, has been fought tooth and nail until they lost,) while they have had over a century of success as being parasites on the artistic world.
I can figure out ANY justification for their existence. Then again, I can't figure out why people smoke cigarettes or gamble.
Big deal... I can't believe that this waste of space (physical) wasted my time.
Case mods by some geeks, a 'one off,' are a bad enough waste of bandwith (though they are sometimes fun to look at,) but a mass produced mod is a pointless pursuit.
You have a vested interest by virtue of the fact that you're going to have to come home.
And will you be coming home empty handed? Not if you were going out to buy a 'whatever'. You'll settle for a reasonable facsimile if the price point's acceptable.
That's why Wal*Mart's website is so crappy. They want you to come into the store, looking for one thing, and then they sucker you in with 'great prices' on North Korean running shoes, but acceptably high prices on anything else.
You have to get home. You'd have to get home empty handed. So you buy an IT piece of schlock and tell you self that IT must be great, after all you bought IT, and it was so cheap, well maybe IT wasn't so cheap, but how 'bout those North Korean running shoes.
Click & Order hopping on the web really means you don't even have to put your pants on to comparison shop and get the most bang for your buck (and then blowing the money you saved on delivery.:-)
Imagine walking 19 hours at the mall looking and looking, comparison shoping, trying to get the best feature set for the best price.
You'd get banned. You'd be mauled at the mall. The security guards would be on you like flies on sh*t.
So what happens?
Now that we've spent the money far more wisely, resulting in the most bang for the buck, we now are faced with the prospect of waiting for the darm thing and we just can't.
USPS Express Delievry, UPS and FedEx and making a mint because, since we've spent a much longer amount of time than we could before, we are in a big fuckin' rush to get our grubby li'l hands on whatever we actually eventually purchased. (I just bought some books, saved 50%, and I spent as much for the shipping as I 'saved' on the books. Now how smart was that?:-)
Its like when we were kids, saving up for days/weeks/months, finally sending away for those darn Sea Monkeys and then waiting by the door for the postman (and waiting and waiting.:-)
Now we're grown up and there's overnight delivery and its 'instant gratification' time (and as the shippers know, time is money.)
I just bought an iMac G5 (updated RAM to 2GB) and the keyboard that came in the box was good enough (NO mushy keys, bad angle, missing/small keys and very cramped) that I have used the new keyboard and put away my old keyboard since.
it just that you want to be warned about some low-lifes BEFORE they get a chance to screw up AGAIN.
But its becoming almost imposible to get away, never mind get away with something. Soon your privacy will end at your bathroom door. (They've installed camera surveilance on my street. So much for frolicking around the apartment naked.)
The problem comes with data mining for criminal activity. When will your pass-time become criminal? When will having walked down TWO streets where 'crimes' have taken place indentify YOU as a suspect.
There're already instances of 'the Watchers' watching women with nice butts, being bored enough and being able to follow them with the cameras, match their license plate with the DMV records and get ALL of the related info (such as your SSN, you'r employment history, your medical records, etc.)
You find that PR people (ab)use their relatives a lot.
Remember all those people who are on those 'infomercials' who all looks like their family tree doesn't fork. Well the roots and rotten too (and different colors from the rest of their hair.)
Im waiting for the 'sincere' voice of one of those QVC or HSN shills trying to lure the unsuspecting, the gullible or the deficient to buy the crap.
She's friggin paranoid and doesn't give out ANY info unless you're standing right there in front of her and you'd better not be planning to go anywhere cause she'll take her info back before you do.
She uses FireFox and ThunderBird, (fuck IE and Outlook,) despite knowing barely enough to switch on the machine.
My wife... I think I'll keep her.:-)
As for me... She's taught me well.
CNet's site been mined for addresses so I got that crap from them (maybe CNet is in worse financial shape that they're letting on,) but its done the phishers no good.
If I don't already know you, you're going to end up in my Mac's 'Junk Mail' folder.
Rule 1: Never do anything you don't need to. (run time optimization) Rule 2: Never do anything twice. (cacheing) Rule 3: Empty cache that won't be required. (space optimization)
If you design properly, your software will run fast, stay fast and small.
Remember "Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia (Running Light Without Overbite"?
Its just as true now as it was back when you were writing for machines with K (not M) of RAM.
I just got a new 17" iMac G5 with Tiger two days ago. I just loved watching this trailer in a big window instead of a little dinky plug-in on a web page.
Of course, watching it on the gorgeous flat screen helped.:-)
At some stage, the money invested becomes large enough that the execs become nervous. To ease the cramps in their wallets, as an antacid, they want things to blow up, go bang, crash, make loud noises and anything else that has sold well in the past.
Story, plot, subject matter, appropriateness are all plowed under for a six seconds of basically orange tinted celluloid showing some geographic background and a big fractal/dynamic fluid flow pattern.
If you want inventiveness and daring, challenging writing, look for some small unit who can't do the concept justice. (They just don't have the resources.)
WE come up with a business model that THEY can live with (from/via/off of/.../whatever.)
They're in the business of sueing people until they don't have a reason to do so anymore. That's what they've been doing since the nineteenth century and before.
Every advance from the piano roll to the MP3 has been met with the kind of dogged, to the death, resistance normally encountered in a Pit Bull arena.
When you're stealing other people's creativity and have none of your own, you defend your right to be a parasite with legal anti-piperazine.
Of course, every now and they they go too far and get their wrists slapped, like the last time they were convicted of price fixing in California.
They emptied they warehouses filled with every piece of back catalog crap that time. "We ripped you off. Have this audio dog, uh, wonderful vynil recording of "Milton Freebish sings 'Sony and Cher'" album to make up for it."
You want's to get them to cease and desist, you have to figure out a way that they can keep on collecting money for other people work every second of every day.
That's when they'll shut up. Not before. They're thieves egardless of how they justify it. And YOU are going to have to find them a new pocket to live in.
The PHBs and Catberts of the world are trying to prove they're in control because their own Bungee Bosses are leaning on them until the pHBs and Catberts are starting to making squealing noises.
They actually don't give a good goddamn about you one way or another. You could probaby smoke crack for lunch at the office and get away with paid extended leave, put on a substance abuse program and 'monitored' by the plant 'nurse' (the one who's not even allowed to give out any Aspirin for fear of law suits.)
IP theft is no skin off their noses and they can't do dick all about it anyway. Not without a surgical drill and a tepaning kit. (Before they get any ideas, just mention that its illegal and very messy.)
IP leaks away as soon as its taught to the implementers. The IP and the people who implement it will leave in one way or another. Firing them is as bad as letting them them just walk out the door on their own.
What are the PHBs and Catberts to do? What can they do? They can the same path that the government is taking because its much easier to watch what they can watch over without having to watch anything meaningful.
They're just going to bury their noses in your business because yours is the only business they can bury their noses in.
We're becoming Big Brothered to oblivion with video cameras on our streets and the staff who's paid to watch 'em.
And who watch every pretty skirt, watch what stores she goes into, what car she drives, run the plates, then know her social security number, her bank balance, her credit history, if she's got her own place, indirectly every little detail is available, right down to her dental X-Rays, medical history, abortions performed... everything.
PHBs and Catberts aren't evil anymore than the 'custodians' of liberty are.
But they just don't know when to stop, when they've crossed the line from awake to your worst fuckin' nightmare. They don't know because they don't care.
Actually the hardware was sweet and the OS it came with was OS X 10.3.9 and it had an upgrade DVD which I am also using to upgrade my TiBook and an old iMac (or two or three.)
Jobs gets his pound of flesh from the sale of hardware. If I really needed Linux (I use it on a server [and I also have a W2k box]) I would get it and think nothing about it. It didn't cost me anything.
Apple doesn't have a monopoly on anything, not even intelligent design.
I'm sure you can buy a 970FX from somebody else. Apple isn't the only system builder IBM sells to.:-)
And I imagine that, white DVD burners might be rare, DVD readers are probably "de rigeur" for almost any any system sold since. Apple bundled them in so cheap.
I wonder just how accurate your estimate is that "Something like three out of four of those sold without DVD-reading drives in them"
What degree of confidence (.05) and what is your sample size?
How dare anything dare bear any resemblence to anything sounding like our name.
TRADEMARK infringement!!!
I can see what this is going to lead to... Trademarking the dictionary. Not just the name but the contents. The dictionary companies will then be holding a honkin' great lawsuit.
And stifling ALL free speech because the act of writing the complaint would violate their trademark.
If they're changing the business model perehaps
on
Dutch Pass iPod Tax
·
· Score: 1
we can further the change a bit.
You're now going to pay the RIAA equivalent to listen to anything (regardless of the art or artist, they have now become irrelevant.)
The tax cannot apply to a deaf person. Legally, he can't hear a thing, it would be illegal for him to have to pay. (It doesn't have to make sense. It for a court of law.
You are being forced to tithe for the sin of having been born with ears. Let them force the thing through as the "Ear Tithe."
What a fuckin' great racket.
We have five senses and they're going to try to get money for each.
The perfume industry should be glad. Now, everytime we buy a new car, they can charge the car company. (the 'new car smell is going to be pure 'cha-ching') Fuck perfume. What about that garbage truck?
ONe way around is to have someone who is legally deaf buy all the disks and resell them 'sans-tithe'
The use of the DMCA in ANY expression of free speech is so bogus that attempting to use the courts for such purposes should result in the automatic suspension of the laywer's licence.
The DMCA was NOT designed for the purpose of stifling free speech. (We have libel laws and slander laws for that.:-)
Some humourless lawyer would argue that his client is afforded every protection of the law. I would argue that the DMCA is NOT a protection under the law.
The case is like arguing that you can ONLY have ONE of anything. Reproduction of anything at anytime for any purpose would be outlawed.
Sorrry but I've been saddled with it since 3.1.1 (2000 is tolerable, but that's because I really don't expect much,) and it's always been a cheap-ass GUI and it's always looked cheesy. (Okay it was better than G.E.M. but that's really not saying much, is it?.)
OS X Aqua ISN'T cheesy. Almost nothing Apple has done has ever looked cheesy.
My only complaint with Linux is that, while it works, and WORKS, with almost any hardware, including stuff M$ abandoned year's ago, the GUI is still a bit primitive (Andy Hertzfeld was a BIG help to Gnome for pointing them in the right direction.)
Now with the move to 64 bits on the desktop, I think its time to toss out Windows and hang on to billions and billions of our bucks. They're harder to come by nowadays.
Linux is plenty good enough. For those with more style, there's OS X.
When its time to upgrade to 64 bits, I sat lets leave Windows behind.
Did anybody ever feel that their having THAT MUCH MONEY in the bank meant that they weren't over charged?
I paid ZIP (NADA FUCK-ALL) for Linux and dick all for OS X (it came with the hardware.) My OS X 10.3.9 upgrades were FREE.
Why should I pay anything for M$s old crap. They only got big by ripping off corporations.
People who never figured they's be stuck using PCs. People who felt that it was cheaper than paying for IBM's OS since they didn't have to pay for IBM's hardware. The PC clone made M$ what it is today.
Sorry but Windows belongs on the x86. Let it die there.
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YOU are going to figure out THEIR new business model for them and show them how they can keep on shaking down both ends of the markets before they will stop interfering.
After all they have had over a century of failure at associating (every technological advance, from the player piano roll to the MP3 file format, has been fought tooth and nail until they lost,) while they have had over a century of success as being parasites on the artistic world.
I can figure out ANY justification for their existence. Then again, I can't figure out why people smoke cigarettes or gamble.
(Weiner dog.) Ooo ... I'm gonna get shit at home. :-)
Big deal... I can't believe that this waste of space (physical) wasted my time.
Case mods by some geeks, a 'one off,' are a bad enough waste of bandwith (though they are sometimes fun to look at,) but a mass produced mod is a pointless pursuit.
Brick & Mortar implies actualy going out there.
:-)
You have a vested interest by virtue of the fact that you're going to have to come home.
And will you be coming home empty handed? Not if you were going out to buy a 'whatever'. You'll settle for a reasonable facsimile if the price point's acceptable.
That's why Wal*Mart's website is so crappy. They want you to come into the store, looking for one thing, and then they sucker you in with 'great prices' on North Korean running shoes, but acceptably high prices on anything else.
You have to get home. You'd have to get home empty handed. So you buy an IT piece of schlock and tell you self that IT must be great, after all you bought IT, and it was so cheap, well maybe IT wasn't so cheap, but how 'bout those North Korean running shoes.
Click & Order hopping on the web really means you don't even have to put your pants on to comparison shop and get the most bang for your buck (and then blowing the money you saved on delivery.
shipping is another story.
:-)
:-)
You expend the 19 hours because you CAN.
Imagine walking 19 hours at the mall looking and looking, comparison shoping, trying to get the best feature set for the best price.
You'd get banned. You'd be mauled at the mall. The security guards would be on you like flies on sh*t.
So what happens?
Now that we've spent the money far more wisely, resulting in the most bang for the buck, we now are faced with the prospect of waiting for the darm thing and we just can't.
USPS Express Delievry, UPS and FedEx and making a mint because, since we've spent a much longer amount of time than we could before, we are in a big fuckin' rush to get our grubby li'l hands on whatever we actually eventually purchased. (I just bought some books, saved 50%, and I spent as much for the shipping as I 'saved' on the books. Now how smart was that?
Its like when we were kids, saving up for days/weeks/months, finally sending away for those darn Sea Monkeys and then waiting by the door for the postman (and waiting and waiting.
Now we're grown up and there's overnight delivery and its 'instant gratification' time (and as the shippers know, time is money.)
I just bought an iMac G5 (updated RAM to 2GB) and the keyboard that came in the box was good enough (NO mushy keys, bad angle, missing/small keys and very cramped) that I have used the new keyboard and put away my old keyboard since.
it just that you want to be warned about some low-lifes BEFORE they get a chance to screw up AGAIN.
But its becoming almost imposible to get away, never mind get away with something. Soon your privacy will end at your bathroom door. (They've installed camera surveilance on my street. So much for frolicking around the apartment naked.)
The problem comes with data mining for criminal activity. When will your pass-time become criminal? When will having walked down TWO streets where 'crimes' have taken place indentify YOU as a suspect.
There're already instances of 'the Watchers' watching women with nice butts, being bored enough and being able to follow them with the cameras, match their license plate with the DMV records and get ALL of the related info (such as your SSN, you'r employment history, your medical records, etc.)
Who will you 'accidentally' bump into?
Quid custodes ipso custodes.
between the liars (PR and other 'spin' meinters) and the gummint trying to keep the fuckers honest.
:-)
And who keeps the gummint honest? (The media? Bwahaha!
My advice is "Don't buy anything without a refund policy."
You find that PR people (ab)use their relatives a lot.
Remember all those people who are on those 'infomercials' who all looks like their family tree doesn't fork. Well the roots and rotten too (and different colors from the rest of their hair.)
Im waiting for the 'sincere' voice of one of those QVC or HSN shills trying to lure the unsuspecting, the gullible or the deficient to buy the crap.
Hey, Bill G. needs all your money NOW!
warning you that they're having problems and would you please confirn your SSN and bank account number.
Bwahahaha.
She's friggin paranoid and doesn't give out ANY info unless you're standing right there in front of her and you'd better not be planning to go anywhere cause she'll take her info back before you do.
:-)
She uses FireFox and ThunderBird, (fuck IE and Outlook,) despite knowing barely enough to switch on the machine.
My wife... I think I'll keep her.
As for me... She's taught me well.
CNet's site been mined for addresses so I got that crap from them (maybe CNet is in worse financial shape that they're letting on,) but its done the phishers no good.
If I don't already know you, you're going to end up in my Mac's 'Junk Mail' folder.
Rule 1: Never do anything you don't need to. (run time optimization)
Rule 2: Never do anything twice. (cacheing)
Rule 3: Empty cache that won't be required. (space optimization)
If you design properly, your software will run fast, stay fast and small.
Remember "Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia (Running Light Without Overbite"?
Its just as true now as it was back when you were writing for machines with K (not M) of RAM.
I just got a new 17" iMac G5 with Tiger two days ago. I just loved watching this trailer in a big window instead of a little dinky plug-in on a web page.
:-)
Of course, watching it on the gorgeous flat screen helped.
At some stage, the money invested becomes large enough that the execs become nervous. To ease the cramps in their wallets, as an antacid, they want things to blow up, go bang, crash, make loud noises and anything else that has sold well in the past.
Story, plot, subject matter, appropriateness are all plowed under for a six seconds of basically orange tinted celluloid showing some geographic background and a big fractal/dynamic fluid flow pattern.
If you want inventiveness and daring, challenging writing, look for some small unit who can't do the concept justice. (They just don't have the resources.)
WE come up with a business model that THEY can live with (from/via/off of/.../whatever.)
They're in the business of sueing people until they don't have a reason to do so anymore. That's what they've been doing since the nineteenth century and before.
Every advance from the piano roll to the MP3 has been met with the kind of dogged, to the death, resistance normally encountered in a Pit Bull arena.
When you're stealing other people's creativity and have none of your own, you defend your right to be a parasite with legal anti-piperazine.
Of course, every now and they they go too far and get their wrists slapped, like the last time they were convicted of price fixing in California.
They emptied they warehouses filled with every piece of back catalog crap that time. "We ripped you off. Have this audio dog, uh, wonderful vynil recording of "Milton Freebish sings 'Sony and Cher'" album to make up for it."
You want's to get them to cease and desist, you have to figure out a way that they can keep on collecting money for other people work every second of every day.
That's when they'll shut up. Not before. They're thieves egardless of how they justify it. And YOU are going to have to find them a new pocket to live in.
Think of it this way:
The PHBs and Catberts of the world are trying to prove they're in control because their own Bungee Bosses are leaning on them until the pHBs and Catberts are starting to making squealing noises.
They actually don't give a good goddamn about you one way or another. You could probaby smoke crack for lunch at the office and get away with paid extended leave, put on a substance abuse program and 'monitored' by the plant 'nurse' (the one who's not even allowed to give out any Aspirin for fear of law suits.)
IP theft is no skin off their noses and they can't do dick all about it anyway. Not without a surgical drill and a tepaning kit. (Before they get any ideas, just mention that its illegal and very messy.)
IP leaks away as soon as its taught to the implementers. The IP and the people who implement it will leave in one way or another. Firing them is as bad as letting them them just walk out the door on their own.
What are the PHBs and Catberts to do? What can they do? They can the same path that the government is taking because its much easier to watch what they can watch over without having to watch anything meaningful.
They're just going to bury their noses in your business because yours is the only business they can bury their noses in.
We're becoming Big Brothered to oblivion with video cameras on our streets and the staff who's paid to watch 'em.
And who watch every pretty skirt, watch what stores she goes into, what car she drives, run the plates, then know her social security number, her bank balance, her credit history, if she's got her own place, indirectly every little detail is available, right down to her dental X-Rays, medical history, abortions performed... everything.
PHBs and Catberts aren't evil anymore than the 'custodians' of liberty are.
But they just don't know when to stop, when they've crossed the line from awake to your worst fuckin' nightmare. They don't know because they don't care.
and the Mac OS X 10.4.0 didn't cost me anything.
:-)
Actually the hardware was sweet and the OS it came with was OS X 10.3.9 and it had an upgrade DVD which I am also using to upgrade my TiBook and an old iMac (or two or three.)
Jobs gets his pound of flesh from the sale of hardware. If I really needed Linux (I use it on a server [and I also have a W2k box]) I would get it and think nothing about it. It didn't cost me anything.
Apple doesn't have a monopoly on anything, not even intelligent design.
I'm sure you can buy a 970FX from somebody else. Apple isn't the only system builder IBM sells to.
Apart from the fact that they didn't eally, I think I'm a lot happier that OS X 10.X is built on a stable Unix base (Darwin.)
And are you telling me that Microsoft had a working GUI until they worked with(against) OS 2's GUI (Presentation Manager)?
Windows 1.x and 2.x were fucking patheric jokes. (I worked on 'em and it was sad, really sad.)
And I imagine that, white DVD burners might be rare, DVD readers are probably "de rigeur" for almost any any system sold since. Apple bundled them in so cheap.
I wonder just how accurate your estimate is that "Something like three out of four of those sold without DVD-reading drives in them"
What degree of confidence (.05) and what is your sample size?
Oh wait. The updates take longer than 8 minutes to download.
HA HA HA!! YoU uR 0wn3d!!!
How dare anything dare bear any resemblence to anything sounding like our name.
TRADEMARK infringement!!!
I can see what this is going to lead to... Trademarking the dictionary. Not just the name but the contents. The dictionary companies will then be holding a honkin' great lawsuit.
And stifling ALL free speech because the act of writing the complaint would violate their trademark.
we can further the change a bit.
You're now going to pay the RIAA equivalent to listen to anything (regardless of the art or artist, they have now become irrelevant.)
The tax cannot apply to a deaf person. Legally, he can't hear a thing, it would be illegal for him to have to pay. (It doesn't have to make sense. It for a court of law.
You are being forced to tithe for the sin of having been born with ears. Let them force the thing through as the "Ear Tithe."
What a fuckin' great racket.
We have five senses and they're going to try to get money for each.
The perfume industry should be glad. Now, everytime we buy a new car, they can charge the car company. (the 'new car smell is going to be pure 'cha-ching') Fuck perfume. What about that garbage truck?
ONe way around is to have someone who is legally deaf buy all the disks and resell them 'sans-tithe'
The use of the DMCA in ANY expression of free speech is so bogus that attempting to use the courts for such purposes should result in the automatic suspension of the laywer's licence.
:-)
The DMCA was NOT designed for the purpose of stifling free speech. (We have libel laws and slander laws for that.
Some humourless lawyer would argue that his client is afforded every protection of the law. I would argue that the DMCA is NOT a protection under the law.
The case is like arguing that you can ONLY have ONE of anything. Reproduction of anything at anytime for any purpose would be outlawed.
Sorrry but I've been saddled with it since 3.1.1 (2000 is tolerable, but that's because I really don't expect much,) and it's always been a cheap-ass GUI and it's always looked cheesy. (Okay it was better than G.E.M. but that's really not saying much, is it?.)
OS X Aqua ISN'T cheesy. Almost nothing Apple has done has ever looked cheesy.
My only complaint with Linux is that, while it works, and WORKS, with almost any hardware, including stuff M$ abandoned year's ago, the GUI is still a bit primitive (Andy Hertzfeld was a BIG help to Gnome for pointing them in the right direction.)
Now with the move to 64 bits on the desktop, I think its time to toss out Windows and hang on to billions and billions of our bucks. They're harder to come by nowadays.
Linux is plenty good enough. For those with more style, there's OS X.
When its time to upgrade to 64 bits, I sat lets leave Windows behind.
Did anybody ever feel that their having THAT MUCH MONEY in the bank meant that they weren't over charged?
I paid ZIP (NADA FUCK-ALL) for Linux and dick all for OS X (it came with the hardware.) My OS X 10.3.9 upgrades were FREE.
Why should I pay anything for M$s old crap. They only got big by ripping off corporations.
People who never figured they's be stuck using PCs. People who felt that it was cheaper than paying for IBM's OS since they didn't have to pay for IBM's hardware. The PC clone made M$ what it is today.
Sorry but Windows belongs on the x86. Let it die there.