I was the network manager for a bank a while back, and during our audits were were given a list of registry/active directory policies required to get a good rating by those auditors. They also had a list of services that needed to be disabled as well (unless there was a compelling business case for those services).
Did it make a difference or was it just more busy work? Did they have you get rid of IE, Outlook Express and other trouble makers that lead to propagation like this? Even if you do get rid of those applications, can you really secure the underlying software without software freedom? I know that might be difficult at first, but it's easier than the continual patch and upgrade train most companies are already on.
... when dealing with the federal government, it is where there is a regulation there is always a way to get an exception to that regulation.
Yes, but when they really care the exceptions are circular. An obvious exception to the new Windoze lockdown is to run gnu/linux. The obvious block is to make it so most people can't do that.
Corporate welfare policies require frequent M$ license purchases. It's a pity they don't support other nice American companies like Red Hat, IBM, Novel, Mepis, Ubunto, and so on and so fort that should obviously be the low bidders.
There's a difference between being "pro-Microsoft" or as you succintly put it, "tireless M$ defenders", and being anti-bullshit. Your problem is that you can't distinguish between the two.
You listed three "personalities". Which one do you claim for the dedazo attack troll sock puppet?
Don't you have to finish the math before making judgment positive or negative, i.e.
Yes, but that's what this tireless M$ Defender is trying to deny without actually having the nerve to say it. All you really need to know is that botnets are more prevalent of Windoze than any other platform to know that more than 1 in 4 of Windoze computers are part of a botnet. Study after study has shown the relative security of the platforms. Macthorp and his sock puppets continue to beat the "Windoze is most secure OS" drum anyway they can. Saying so directly will get you laughed at, so they are trying to build an unreasonable fear of other OS. Only the most naive of M$ users or hard headed of fanboys could equate the service records of M$ with any other software.
But it is doing what the customer wants. They want a baseline configuration and any programs that don't work with their configuration aren't allowed.
They could have gotten that and a much wider choice of applications by choosing any Linux distribution. Free software package management works. A side benefit is real security
You're trying so hard to turn this around and make it about Microsoft but they have little to do with it. This is the federal government making up these rules.
That could be, but M$ can't win for losing. It would be much harder for M$ to blame the user for M$ problems if they really told the user exactly what to do. In the end, it's all about M$ and non free software. Non free software can't be as good or work together the same way free software does. It has obvious problems and the obvious solutions are difficult or impossible.
Two solutions are code sharing and configuration control. As you and others say, a smaller code base is cheaper and more secure. Competitive pressures keep non free companies from sharing libraries and their licensing make that most obvious cost savings impossible anyway. Everyone has to reinvent every wheel or put themselves at the mercy of their non free competitors. The second most obvious cost savings measure is configuration control, but that too is impossible in the non free world. The user can flip switches, but the switches themselves will change as applications change out libraries. Without the source code, the user does not really know what the switches do anyway.
... the first thing vendors do is require IT to "turn down" security settings because highly paid programmers can't be bothered to make their software work properly under security settings.
We will see if M$ will give them permission for their software to work. Programmers for anti-virus, Netscape, Correl, IBM and everyone but M$ have complained about issues like this in the past. M$ only wishes it had been so easy as that to get rid of those former competitors and their wish appears to have come true.
The ultimate loser is M$, of course. What will they be left with when they drive everyone else off their platform? How well paid will programmers be if their only potential employer has to give up most of their profits to M$?
A different way to look at it is that a known, reduced configuration allows vulnerabilities to be patched (government-wide) at the lowest level possible with minimum code necessary.
You may also minimize the work your users can do, on Windoze at least.
It's the government mandating this version of Windows, not Microsoft. Reading comprehension much?
Once the settings are specified, M$ can make the system do as they please. What, do you think Uncle Sam is going to give up patch Tuesday? The whole point is to make it easier to apply patches. It won't really work, of course, because M$ and others will keep playing the same anti-competitive tricks. When an application does not work with the settings, it not Windoze is rejected.
The net result is contrary to commodity computing. The whole reason for using M$ is to gain access to cheap hardware and a universe of software. Reducing your choice in software goes a long way toward making your hardware worthless. A fancy computer that does not do the task you want it to is not doing you any good. The proposed flexibility will inevitably sink to Dell software install options and people who want to get work done with specialized programs will be forced off Windoze or suffer with second rate software on expensive hardware.
The same kind of program would not be such a disaster in the free world. First, it's easy to tell what works and upgrades are already painless. Second, if something does not work, it will be fixed quickly. Third, and most importantly, the software does not have "owners" who want to mess with other software "owners".
Well, if there's one White House that I think might be experts on Security, it's this one.
I'm not very impressed with most of the "security" people have traded their liberty for. The failure is nowhere more apparent than the non free computing world.
The phrase "don't put all your eggs into one basket" comes to mind...
The net result will be identically configured computers with fewer applications, a bot maker's paradise. The comply/no-comply label give M$ more veto power over applications and that will reduce the number of applications that can be used. Everything must now be done the M$ way on Windoze, so the worst practices with the worst track record have been mandated. The identical settings are only more "secure" until someone breaks them and then they are all equally hosed.
I would probably react to an honorary degree with a big fuck you.
Mr. Gates has a similar disdain and reaction to those who endorse his products by purchasing them. His PR team will be able to keep him in check and force him to say something nice and his customers get the same kind of glad handling.
Take what it gives and you will be happier. No one ever has to do anything for you. When they do, take it for what it's worth. Gratitude does not require servility.
Ever heard of IRC botnets twitter? Ones that tend to run on *nix shells using eggdrop and such? They're pretty large, by most measures.
IRC is a communications channel, not a disease vector. Infected Windoze computers log onto IRC so they can be controlled. It's a way of disguising the controller's identity and I'm sure there are better ways by now.
eggdrop, from what I remember from telephone modem days, was a program that echoed nonsense into IRC channels so the phone company would not hang up the line.
Do you have any real gnu/Linux infections you can point to?
A more accurate measurement might be: average time to system compromise / number of attacks.
Any real world test would be better than this silly patch counting, but the number usually reported is time to ownership. People don't really care about how many attempts it takes to break a system as much as they care about how often they need to do things. It might take an attacker 100,000 tries to brute force a password, what matters is how long it took. The trick is to make sure your network looks like a typical network and to describe those conditions so others can compare.
The usual result of tests like that is that Windoze machines are taken down in as little as four minutes with a half life of 12 minutes. Red Hat, out of the box, takes three or four months.
It amazes me that a company would have the nerve to publish a report like that after the methodology has been so discredited. Who do they think they are fooling?
The ClearChannel monopoly on our radio stations is the source of this problem. They "pay to play" the same 40 songs all day.... they can always blame the pirates.
You are witnessing one of the biggest and dumbest misunderstandings of a market ever. The greed heads really think you will go out and buy the limited shit they dribble to you through the top 40. All that's really doing is killing radio too. This was all noticed and predicted seven years ago. People who share music are the industry's biggest promoters and customers. Recorded music has always been that way and always will be. If it's not cheap and easy it's not fun or worth having.
The one I'm most familiar with is to get mail from Outlook to Thunderbird. M$'s own interface is terrible and forces the user to save each message as text one at a time with poor control of output location. Mozilla automates the use of the program called, but still uses the program.
You might also look at Mozilla's ActiveX. While I'm sure it's much saner than the controls which were exploited in this threads topic, it's still a use of M$'s unsafe machinery.
Finally, even good code is more dangerous on Windoze then elsewhere. M$ has not yet properly implemented users, permissions and other safety features found in the Unix world. This is one of the reasons it's always been so much easier to break a Windoze box than anything else. The other reason is that most M$ code is poor quality. They bought it and hacked it together and have always shipped with known bugs.
The further away you get from M$, the better off you are. IE is the pits but other browsers on the platform will use M$'s flawed underlying code at times for compatibility. There are lots of IE specific bones on this one but once the machine is compromised anything is possible. You keep IE around for that one page that needs it, right? All it takes is a rotten banner ad to blow you out that one time you use it. M$'s internet services are starting to mirror their PC performance when it comes handing out malware. The more you use M$, the worse off you are.
The next time you end up wiping and reloading because of problems like this, why not save time and install something that just works?
Be careful what you ask for, twitter. There are literally thousands of these helpful blasts to the past littering your posting history. All anyone needs to do is pick one up and have fun.
I don't mind anyone looking at any of those posts. Few of them say what you say they do, except the first and a few others I'll stand by. M$ used all of it's anti-competitive might to destroy the PDA market. The Zune has famously tanked. WMP does indeed keep lists of all the media you play. Microsoft continues to insult the US workforce by claiming they must import cheaper foreign workers because their US counterparts are not up to the task. I can go on and on, but I'd rather people just read the original posts.
Now, why is it that 14 of your 24 visible posts are dedicated to harassing Twitter? In the huge sea that Slashdot is, how is it that you magically find me if you are not some kind of stalker?
You're fully aware that the article you link to says nothing of the sort about '1 in 4 Windows machines are in a botnet'. It says '1 in 4 computers are in a botnet.'... I think you're too smart to have misread that, so you're a liar.
I can say with complete confidence that the two statements are equivalent and that I'm being unfairly kind to M$. First, a majority of those computers are running windows. Second the botnet rate for all systems other than Windoze is vanishingly small. The rate Cerf and Dell apply to "internet connected computers" must be greater in the Windoze world to make up the difference.
Of course, you don't care. Your job is to harass me and bury whatever message I have under a load of crap. It's too bad for your boss that your malice is a kind of second rate entertainment that sharpens my ability to advocate free software. Carry on, and ask for a raise. You don't deserve it, but every penny wasted on you is a M$ penny gone forever.
[artist would benefit from music sales] if they would sell their own music, or found distributors that gave them favorable terms.... [but] don't get the marketing muscle that the big names have.
Sure, the old radio lock up means less everyday and cable music means less than nothing. No one is listening anymore because they have found alternatives. Gone are the days of the old radio empire where creativity was saved for a few "target" cities like New York and the rest of us got to sample the safe crumbs of the weekly top 40 on heavy rotation. The internet brings much of that music scene to everyone, like the pigopolist never would. So, I agree, there are better deals elsewhere now. So what? It's not like the pigopolist are not fighting the emerging competition with every breath.
In any case, I was responding to the statement "That's where the money is, anyway. not the Albums," which is obviously false.
If you read what Love has to say, touring is the only way they make money now.
I feel no sympathy for the poor, downtrodden artists who sign away the rights to their music in hopes of becoming multimillionaires. They played the lottery, they lost.
Your lack of sympathy is apparent, but that does not mean the rest of us should support an unjust system that screws everyone. In a year Love made $6,000,000 profits for her record company her band members got paid about $30,000 each. That kind of bad deal can only exist outside of a free market, where government has granted people monopolies and is taking a cut. It's not just Love that's a loser, it's all of us. The record companies did not make that $6,000,000 by promoting Love, they made it by shutting out hundreds of equally talented artists out of radio play and venue space. Obviously, from the sales figures you quoted, there's plenty of room for $30,000/year artists. What goes around comes around, and the sharp decline of major music sales is good payback. All you have to do to fight the greed heads is to enjoy better music from other sources. A free market is asserting itself and everyone is going to win.
So what exactly are you trying to say? People are willing to pay for recorded music and shows. What's the problem with that? How does that make it wrong for people to promote their concerts by giving their music away? Do you have a better way for them to promote themselves without "losing the lottery"? Were you really the defending digital restrictions which are the largest component of the next attempted lockout?
I am not a record-industry shill, I'm just sick of people justifying their actions in order to clear their consciences.... The guy made a mistake (downloading WMA format music to play on an iPod) and rather than deal with it and eat his $10 losses, decided that he would rather get his music for free.
You may have been paid to say that but you lack both understanding and sympathy either way. It's crazy and pathetic that your bosses paid someone to talk to this guy for hours rather than giving him his money back or giving it to him in a format he could use. That's not the way you treat a customer you expect to make another purchase.
The man is still afraid of your paymasters and is not going to "get his music for free" which is a shame. There's a whole world of legitimate free music at archive.org, magnatune.com and other places that are much better than his proposed remedy:
I've resigned myself not to waste any more time with the music business, I suppose I'll have to resort to purchasing used CD's & records, or having my friends occasionally make me a copy of one of their newer CD's.
He's only going to share in meat space, so your bosses don't try to take him for another $5,000. Don't worry, though, it will only take him a few hours of searching before he realizes that he does not need your product at all. No more dirty bad pirate for you, just another lost customer.
From where I stand, the music industry can't run out of customers fast enough. All this shit will blow over in a decade or so when your bosses run out of money and there are some worthwhile recordings in the owned archives. When the RIAA finishes self destructing, it will come back out as it already should have. Copyright laws will finally be fixed.
US music sales included 588.2 million albums and 581.9 million digital tracks indicates that there is perhaps a bit of money in the field of selling albums and music, and not just performing. When it is so patently obvious that owning music is worth quite a bit to hundreds of millions of people, the old argument that recorded music "should" just be used to draw people to concerts seems more than a little self-serving.
Yes, hundreds of millions of people are willing to pay for music. The greedy pigs who own the entire history of recorded music, unfortunately are so busy both artists and fans that no one is getting what they deserve.
The vast majority of music is still acquired on CDs, but history is all they will provide in the future. Everyone but the majors are sick of the majors. New music is being produced, promoted and enjoyed without them. Online, they are just one of many providers. The future belongs to those who meet people's need for entertainment. Lawsuits, restrictions and bad deals are not fun for anyone.
Because you lie about everything else? I mean, the question isn't "Why would a Windows user say 80%", it's "Is it worthwhile even considering you to be a reliable source", to which the answer is: No.
... my data point is really meaningless because it does not represent overall reality, a median or an average. It's just a data point. It tells the story of a single data center of a single large company.
True and there are a lot more than 500 computers at LSU, each one representing the independent choice of each of LSU's 33,000 plus students. I have to admit, I was surprised when the guy running LSU's networks told me that number but that was his estimate. Now why would a Windows user like him make up a number like that and why would I lie about it?
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I was the network manager for a bank a while back, and during our audits were were given a list of registry/active directory policies required to get a good rating by those auditors. They also had a list of services that needed to be disabled as well (unless there was a compelling business case for those services).
Did it make a difference or was it just more busy work? Did they have you get rid of IE, Outlook Express and other trouble makers that lead to propagation like this? Even if you do get rid of those applications, can you really secure the underlying software without software freedom? I know that might be difficult at first, but it's easier than the continual patch and upgrade train most companies are already on.
Yes, but when they really care the exceptions are circular. An obvious exception to the new Windoze lockdown is to run gnu/linux. The obvious block is to make it so most people can't do that.
Corporate welfare policies require frequent M$ license purchases. It's a pity they don't support other nice American companies like Red Hat, IBM, Novel, Mepis, Ubunto, and so on and so fort that should obviously be the low bidders.
There's a difference between being "pro-Microsoft" or as you succintly put it, "tireless M$ defenders", and being anti-bullshit. Your problem is that you can't distinguish between the two.
You listed three "personalities". Which one do you claim for the dedazo attack troll sock puppet?
Don't you have to finish the math before making judgment positive or negative, i.e.
Yes, but that's what this tireless M$ Defender is trying to deny without actually having the nerve to say it. All you really need to know is that botnets are more prevalent of Windoze than any other platform to know that more than 1 in 4 of Windoze computers are part of a botnet. Study after study has shown the relative security of the platforms. Macthorp and his sock puppets continue to beat the "Windoze is most secure OS" drum anyway they can. Saying so directly will get you laughed at, so they are trying to build an unreasonable fear of other OS. Only the most naive of M$ users or hard headed of fanboys could equate the service records of M$ with any other software.
But it is doing what the customer wants. They want a baseline configuration and any programs that don't work with their configuration aren't allowed.
They could have gotten that and a much wider choice of applications by choosing any Linux distribution. Free software package management works. A side benefit is real security
You're trying so hard to turn this around and make it about Microsoft but they have little to do with it. This is the federal government making up these rules.
That could be, but M$ can't win for losing. It would be much harder for M$ to blame the user for M$ problems if they really told the user exactly what to do. In the end, it's all about M$ and non free software. Non free software can't be as good or work together the same way free software does. It has obvious problems and the obvious solutions are difficult or impossible.
Two solutions are code sharing and configuration control. As you and others say, a smaller code base is cheaper and more secure. Competitive pressures keep non free companies from sharing libraries and their licensing make that most obvious cost savings impossible anyway. Everyone has to reinvent every wheel or put themselves at the mercy of their non free competitors. The second most obvious cost savings measure is configuration control, but that too is impossible in the non free world. The user can flip switches, but the switches themselves will change as applications change out libraries. Without the source code, the user does not really know what the switches do anyway.
We will see if M$ will give them permission for their software to work. Programmers for anti-virus, Netscape, Correl, IBM and everyone but M$ have complained about issues like this in the past. M$ only wishes it had been so easy as that to get rid of those former competitors and their wish appears to have come true.
The ultimate loser is M$, of course. What will they be left with when they drive everyone else off their platform? How well paid will programmers be if their only potential employer has to give up most of their profits to M$?
A different way to look at it is that a known, reduced configuration allows vulnerabilities to be patched (government-wide) at the lowest level possible with minimum code necessary.
You may also minimize the work your users can do, on Windoze at least.
A very Silly AC taunts:
It's the government mandating this version of Windows, not Microsoft. Reading comprehension much?
Once the settings are specified, M$ can make the system do as they please. What, do you think Uncle Sam is going to give up patch Tuesday? The whole point is to make it easier to apply patches. It won't really work, of course, because M$ and others will keep playing the same anti-competitive tricks. When an application does not work with the settings, it not Windoze is rejected.
The net result is contrary to commodity computing. The whole reason for using M$ is to gain access to cheap hardware and a universe of software. Reducing your choice in software goes a long way toward making your hardware worthless. A fancy computer that does not do the task you want it to is not doing you any good. The proposed flexibility will inevitably sink to Dell software install options and people who want to get work done with specialized programs will be forced off Windoze or suffer with second rate software on expensive hardware.
The same kind of program would not be such a disaster in the free world. First, it's easy to tell what works and upgrades are already painless. Second, if something does not work, it will be fixed quickly. Third, and most importantly, the software does not have "owners" who want to mess with other software "owners".
Well, if there's one White House that I think might be experts on Security, it's this one.
I'm not very impressed with most of the "security" people have traded their liberty for. The failure is nowhere more apparent than the non free computing world.
The phrase "don't put all your eggs into one basket" comes to mind...
The net result will be identically configured computers with fewer applications, a bot maker's paradise. The comply/no-comply label give M$ more veto power over applications and that will reduce the number of applications that can be used. Everything must now be done the M$ way on Windoze, so the worst practices with the worst track record have been mandated. The identical settings are only more "secure" until someone breaks them and then they are all equally hosed.
I would probably react to an honorary degree with a big fuck you.
Mr. Gates has a similar disdain and reaction to those who endorse his products by purchasing them. His PR team will be able to keep him in check and force him to say something nice and his customers get the same kind of glad handling.
Take what it gives and you will be happier. No one ever has to do anything for you. When they do, take it for what it's worth. Gratitude does not require servility.
Ever heard of IRC botnets twitter? Ones that tend to run on *nix shells using eggdrop and such? They're pretty large, by most measures.
IRC is a communications channel, not a disease vector. Infected Windoze computers log onto IRC so they can be controlled. It's a way of disguising the controller's identity and I'm sure there are better ways by now.
eggdrop, from what I remember from telephone modem days, was a program that echoed nonsense into IRC channels so the phone company would not hang up the line.
Do you have any real gnu/Linux infections you can point to?
A more accurate measurement might be: average time to system compromise / number of attacks.
Any real world test would be better than this silly patch counting, but the number usually reported is time to ownership. People don't really care about how many attempts it takes to break a system as much as they care about how often they need to do things. It might take an attacker 100,000 tries to brute force a password, what matters is how long it took. The trick is to make sure your network looks like a typical network and to describe those conditions so others can compare.
The usual result of tests like that is that Windoze machines are taken down in as little as four minutes with a half life of 12 minutes. Red Hat, out of the box, takes three or four months.
The Honeynet Project has all sorts of studies to further enlighten you. The bottom line is the result: More than 25% of Windoze computers are part of a bot net that's screwing everyone. It happens faster than you can download patches that won't really do you any good anyway.
It amazes me that a company would have the nerve to publish a report like that after the methodology has been so discredited. Who do they think they are fooling?
Tell me again how a more secure Windows OS becomes good news for Symantec.
Because you have to believe Windoze can be secure before you waste money on it or Symantic.
The ClearChannel monopoly on our radio stations is the source of this problem. They "pay to play" the same 40 songs all day. ... they can always blame the pirates.
You are witnessing one of the biggest and dumbest misunderstandings of a market ever. The greed heads really think you will go out and buy the limited shit they dribble to you through the top 40. All that's really doing is killing radio too. This was all noticed and predicted seven years ago. People who share music are the industry's biggest promoters and customers. Recorded music has always been that way and always will be. If it's not cheap and easy it's not fun or worth having.
The one I'm most familiar with is to get mail from Outlook to Thunderbird. M$'s own interface is terrible and forces the user to save each message as text one at a time with poor control of output location. Mozilla automates the use of the program called, but still uses the program.
You might also look at Mozilla's ActiveX. While I'm sure it's much saner than the controls which were exploited in this threads topic, it's still a use of M$'s unsafe machinery.
Finally, even good code is more dangerous on Windoze then elsewhere. M$ has not yet properly implemented users, permissions and other safety features found in the Unix world. This is one of the reasons it's always been so much easier to break a Windoze box than anything else. The other reason is that most M$ code is poor quality. They bought it and hacked it together and have always shipped with known bugs.
The further away you get from M$, the better off you are. IE is the pits but other browsers on the platform will use M$'s flawed underlying code at times for compatibility. There are lots of IE specific bones on this one but once the machine is compromised anything is possible. You keep IE around for that one page that needs it, right? All it takes is a rotten banner ad to blow you out that one time you use it. M$'s internet services are starting to mirror their PC performance when it comes handing out malware. The more you use M$, the worse off you are.
The next time you end up wiping and reloading because of problems like this, why not save time and install something that just works?
Be careful what you ask for, twitter. There are literally thousands of these helpful blasts to the past littering your posting history. All anyone needs to do is pick one up and have fun.
I don't mind anyone looking at any of those posts. Few of them say what you say they do, except the first and a few others I'll stand by. M$ used all of it's anti-competitive might to destroy the PDA market. The Zune has famously tanked. WMP does indeed keep lists of all the media you play. Microsoft continues to insult the US workforce by claiming they must import cheaper foreign workers because their US counterparts are not up to the task. I can go on and on, but I'd rather people just read the original posts.
Now, why is it that 14 of your 24 visible posts are dedicated to harassing Twitter? In the huge sea that Slashdot is, how is it that you magically find me if you are not some kind of stalker?
You're fully aware that the article you link to says nothing of the sort about '1 in 4 Windows machines are in a botnet'. It says '1 in 4 computers are in a botnet.' ... I think you're too smart to have misread that, so you're a liar.
I can say with complete confidence that the two statements are equivalent and that I'm being unfairly kind to M$. First, a majority of those computers are running windows. Second the botnet rate for all systems other than Windoze is vanishingly small. The rate Cerf and Dell apply to "internet connected computers" must be greater in the Windoze world to make up the difference.
Of course, you don't care. Your job is to harass me and bury whatever message I have under a load of crap. It's too bad for your boss that your malice is a kind of second rate entertainment that sharpens my ability to advocate free software. Carry on, and ask for a raise. You don't deserve it, but every penny wasted on you is a M$ penny gone forever.
[artist would benefit from music sales] if they would sell their own music, or found distributors that gave them favorable terms. ... [but] don't get the marketing muscle that the big names have.
Sure, the old radio lock up means less everyday and cable music means less than nothing. No one is listening anymore because they have found alternatives. Gone are the days of the old radio empire where creativity was saved for a few "target" cities like New York and the rest of us got to sample the safe crumbs of the weekly top 40 on heavy rotation. The internet brings much of that music scene to everyone, like the pigopolist never would. So, I agree, there are better deals elsewhere now. So what? It's not like the pigopolist are not fighting the emerging competition with every breath.
In any case, I was responding to the statement "That's where the money is, anyway. not the Albums," which is obviously false.
If you read what Love has to say, touring is the only way they make money now.
I feel no sympathy for the poor, downtrodden artists who sign away the rights to their music in hopes of becoming multimillionaires. They played the lottery, they lost.
Your lack of sympathy is apparent, but that does not mean the rest of us should support an unjust system that screws everyone. In a year Love made $6,000,000 profits for her record company her band members got paid about $30,000 each. That kind of bad deal can only exist outside of a free market, where government has granted people monopolies and is taking a cut. It's not just Love that's a loser, it's all of us. The record companies did not make that $6,000,000 by promoting Love, they made it by shutting out hundreds of equally talented artists out of radio play and venue space. Obviously, from the sales figures you quoted, there's plenty of room for $30,000/year artists. What goes around comes around, and the sharp decline of major music sales is good payback. All you have to do to fight the greed heads is to enjoy better music from other sources. A free market is asserting itself and everyone is going to win.
So what exactly are you trying to say? People are willing to pay for recorded music and shows. What's the problem with that? How does that make it wrong for people to promote their concerts by giving their music away? Do you have a better way for them to promote themselves without "losing the lottery"? Were you really the defending digital restrictions which are the largest component of the next attempted lockout?
I am not a record-industry shill, I'm just sick of people justifying their actions in order to clear their consciences. ... The guy made a mistake (downloading WMA format music to play on an iPod) and rather than deal with it and eat his $10 losses, decided that he would rather get his music for free.
You may have been paid to say that but you lack both understanding and sympathy either way. It's crazy and pathetic that your bosses paid someone to talk to this guy for hours rather than giving him his money back or giving it to him in a format he could use. That's not the way you treat a customer you expect to make another purchase.
The man is still afraid of your paymasters and is not going to "get his music for free" which is a shame. There's a whole world of legitimate free music at archive.org, magnatune.com and other places that are much better than his proposed remedy:
He's only going to share in meat space, so your bosses don't try to take him for another $5,000. Don't worry, though, it will only take him a few hours of searching before he realizes that he does not need your product at all. No more dirty bad pirate for you, just another lost customer.
From where I stand, the music industry can't run out of customers fast enough. All this shit will blow over in a decade or so when your bosses run out of money and there are some worthwhile recordings in the owned archives. When the RIAA finishes self destructing, it will come back out as it already should have. Copyright laws will finally be fixed.
US music sales included 588.2 million albums and 581.9 million digital tracks indicates that there is perhaps a bit of money in the field of selling albums and music, and not just performing. When it is so patently obvious that owning music is worth quite a bit to hundreds of millions of people, the old argument that recorded music "should" just be used to draw people to concerts seems more than a little self-serving.
Are you implying that artists somehow benefit from music sales? I was under the impression that platinum performing artists made next to nothing from those sales but were forced to tour perpetually to promote them.
Yes, hundreds of millions of people are willing to pay for music. The greedy pigs who own the entire history of recorded music, unfortunately are so busy both artists and fans that no one is getting what they deserve.
The vast majority of music is still acquired on CDs, but history is all they will provide in the future. Everyone but the majors are sick of the majors. New music is being produced, promoted and enjoyed without them. Online, they are just one of many providers. The future belongs to those who meet people's need for entertainment. Lawsuits, restrictions and bad deals are not fun for anyone.
Because you lie about everything else? I mean, the question isn't "Why would a Windows user say 80%", it's "Is it worthwhile even considering you to be a reliable source", to which the answer is: No.
Find one lie I've ever told here.
True and there are a lot more than 500 computers at LSU, each one representing the independent choice of each of LSU's 33,000 plus students. I have to admit, I was surprised when the guy running LSU's networks told me that number but that was his estimate. Now why would a Windows user like him make up a number like that and why would I lie about it?