Things like Mac OSX are why GNU-type people like the GPL more than the BSD license. Mac OSX is proprietary software, with some free components. The real meat of the system is the proprietary work. It might as well be developed by Microsoft.
Linux and OS X are both quality software packages. They are both stable, both very tweakable and have numerous commonalities due to their lineage.
I fail to see why software must be considered evil if one has to pay for it nor why 'It might as well be developed by Microsoft'.
I have had a 48G given to me sans manual. I currently use a TI-85 and an old Canon paper-tape desktop calc. Given what I have read here, I am most interested in learning how to use this calc properly but haven't found much info yet. It will be used more for financial calculations consisting of fairly simple, but lengthy, operations which is why I like the paper-tape or the TI. However, I hate to see this 48G go to waste so I would like to put it to some use.
While I normally don't like Berman whatsoever, this is a good thing. I have long disliked the practice of putting personally identifiable info in the WHOIS database.
I just hope they don't dumb it down so much where one can't get email addresses for those controlling the domain for reporting purposes.
I have had to take a heavy hand to the machines and employees here a few times in recent past due to unlicensed software usage. A couple people took it upon themselves to install copies of Autocad on their machines to 'improve their efficeincy'. We do have a couple AC licenses, but not for these machines. One person was suspended the other just given a warning.
As a geek, Ernie's story is pretty cool, and I am happy to say I support the company financially as well by buying their strings.
Indeed, number three would be very bad. I am sure, however, that the few bands capable of putting together a truly good epic CD will still do this and fans will still buy it.
As for number one, looking at a claimed 20% drop in sales since '99, it is obvious that they are doing something wrong. We all know that it is ludicrous to blame piracy for all 20%, so they are obviously not catering to the audience as well as they could be.
However, more innovative indie labels are experiencing a large upswing in sales.
While I am a little suprised to see the numbers up 10%, I can't say that it wasn't expected. More and more people seem to want to taunt the recording industry, they want the RIAA to come after them it seems.
All the money they are spending on their lawyers should rather be dumped into iTunes or Rhapsodey like services. How much proof is needed that that is the way to go?
The industry needs to face facts. The full-format physical media isn't going to sustain their business model. With todays need for instant gratification, people want to buy only what they want and they want it now.
Removing dependance on full-length physical media will do a couple of good things. First it will force the industry and artists to put out more quality tracks instead of relying on a couple radio tracks to sell a disc made mostly of filler. Second, the consumer will no longer get stuck with a lousy disc.
This, however, can sometimes block people calling from cell phones on other networks.
For example, I had this turned on (Bell Canada) and I called home from my cell (Telus) to tell my wife I was stuck in traffic. While my cell number was not blocked, it did come up as such on my Bell home phone, a p.i.t.a. indeed.
It was fixed with a quick call to my cell phone provider.
Anon blocking also blocked calls from a good friend of mine who runs a number of music stores. He had his home number blocked so that he would stop getting calls in the middle of the night from random guitarists who broke a string on stage and was out of replacements.
Anon call blocking is overly restrictive IMHO, but a necessary evil until laws can rid the world of these parasites.
You know, I hadn't thought of it that way. While it *is* nice to see someone stand up for their ideals, I just finished cleaning some 70 spams that got past Spamnet (Cloudmark). Perhaps I was a little hasty.
How very naive of them. Why shouldn't the people that force us to take extreme measures for a little bit of privacy, convenience, not be made to deal with the same garbage that we do?
Some claim this has been done before with CD Baby. CD Baby (as mentioned in another post) takes $4 per CD sold, plus shipping and handling. Others mention PayPal, obviously forgetting the problems exposed recently with PayPay.
Chuck's site is a popular site already with the corrupt CD list, and it's only a matter of time before they come. So, rather then pan the idea because it may not look professional or because it doesn't have any artists signed up yet, applaud it and Chuck for wanting to do the right thing for the artist, giving them the money they deserve.
A number of people joined forces on this. Each has offered his or her solution to the dilema. Unfortunatly, not everyone can be right. Solution 1 by Peter Howell promotes flooding the file sharing networks with tainted MP3's. While this may be effective to start, it will be circumvented, as it any other measure designed to impeed. Doing this will not force a change in the recording industry, it will not force them to adopt new technology and to abandon the old ways of doing things, the ways that have gotten them into the bind they are in now. To even suggest that the record companies hire a band of spec-op hackers to accomplish the task of making MP3s dangerous is ludicrous. Lower the price of CDs for a few months and give out cash prizes? How short sighted. The cost of creating CDs has dropped significantly since they were introduced, yet the price to the consumer has stayed level, though it hasn't increased much. I will give the industry that. Why? Because of fat contracts, short sighted talent scouts and over population on the shelves. Solution 2, Get a Makeover by Ben Rayner touches on some very enlightened points. The recording industry's reputation currently stinks. They are the typical corporate fat cats treating customers like chum. They believe that the consumer has no choice but to buy their product so why give the consumer any respect. Both consumers and artists have mixed feelings about the current state of the industry. On one hand, they feel cheated by price-fixing, and on the other they do want to do the right thing. The industry isn't helping them, as it is hard to feel sorry for a multi-billion dollar company. Lectures from millionaire execs and artists on the wrongs of piracy hurt their cause even more. It is tough to feel sorry for them, indeed. The industry must nevertheless also content itself with conducting business on a more modest scale, painful though the process might be. No one needs to spend in excess of $40 million on a record, as Sony did with Michael Jackson's 2001 flop, Invincible, for instance, when the White Stripes can muster a hit record for $10,000. I couldn't have said it better myself. Solution 3 by Betsy Powell touches on the overall suckiness of the radio today and how it's influence on the consumer is at an all time low. While this may be a contributory factor, I think radio will be far more difficult to change on one hand, on the other it may be easier, depending on how you look at it. Radio has typically driven consumers, but perhaps it is time for consumers to drive radio. Fixing radio, however, is not going to fix the recording industy. Solution 4, Lose the Lottery by Vit Wagner preaches that the industry needs to stop trolling the music scene for quick hits and one hit wonders and concentrate more on long-term productivity. True indeed. If the industry followed this tact, fewer lousy CDs from one hit wonders would be produced, thereby reducing the over-population on store shelves, and increasing the quality of what is there already. Better product equals more value for consumers equals happy consumers equals less piracy. Being an artist is a full time job, and then some. Treat them as employees and don't give them false promises. Solution 5, Know Your Audience by Peter Goddard states that the industry is sorely out of touch with it's customers. Technology has long been the enemy of the recording industry. First it was radio, currently the internet. They adapted to radio and now use it as a tool, as well they should. They will adapt to the internet and use it as such as well, or they will be left behind to those who do. Peter speaks of the virtual drop off in releases targetted at jazz and classical listeners, groups likely to be better educated and with more money to spend, in favour of quick hits and one hit wonders. It is this mentallity that has cost labels their loyal customer base. Many of these solutions are viable, but none are a total solution. A total solution will require record companies to come to grips with technology, sit down and get to know their customers and tighten their belts like every other industry these past few years.
If we are paying a compulsory fee of x dollars a month on our internet bill, then it would seem it is no longer piracy.
Granted, I would very much not like having to pay another tax on my bill since I already purchase a large amount of music legally a year. The music industry is behind the times which is making it difficult for them to compete against the instant gratification of the P2P networks. The artist suffers not at the hands of the P2P'er, but at the hands of the dinosaurs running the record companies. Consumers suffer by by being painted a criminal with an overly wide brush, and it seems the only way to prove ourselves is to throw yet more money at a solution that is simply a bandaid fix.
Fix the real problem. Give people a number of competing services that will allow them to purchase music from any company and give them fair use rights with the music they purchase. A Columbia House for MP3's. My mother-in-law doesn't *want* to steal music. She wants to buy the music, but doesn't want to pay $25 (Canuck) for a song, if she can even find it without special order. She wants to listen to it now, not when FedEx delivers it. She wants to put it in her iPod for when she goes out for a jog so it doesn't skip.
It's a novell suggestion and one of the best I have heard so far, but the recording industry will most certainly not go for it. They can't martyr themselves if they make file sharing legal.
Part of innovation is knowing when to release the product. 15 years ago, it wasn't really feasable.
There are *some* benefits. One, data has to be stored in a centralised location. Two... umm.. Okay, there is only one benefit I can think of.
The price will drop I am sure. MS has no probs loosing cashish on the xbox so I am sure they will have no probs in dropping the price of this a bit as well.
Alot of people are complaining about it and how the uneducated computer user is getting confused. I am repeating what has been said here many times, but it needs repeating. If you are spending 2-4k for something you better know what that something is. If you don't feel like doing your own research, ask a friend or co-worker. If you go into the purchase unarmed, you get what you deserve.
The office alternatives are good for many uses but not always 100% compatable. Then there is the retraining costs as well. Lastly, when it comes right down to it, Office is not a terrible program at all. It does what it was designed to do (insert your pun about virii here if you must) and it does it well. Nor have I had any stability issues with it in a good long time.
This ghosting debate is much like the tube vs. transistor debate. It's going to go on and on and on well past the time LCD's (or OLED's?) have taken over and the only CRT's you can buy will be four or five times the price they are now. I game on a couple different LCDs (both on laptops) and have noticed no annoying ghosting effects. That's not to say they aren't there, but when I am playing at 1024 at some 100-150 FPS, it just really doesn't seem to matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Things like Mac OSX are why GNU-type people like the GPL more than the BSD license. Mac OSX is proprietary software, with some free components. The real meat of the system is the proprietary work. It might as well be developed by Microsoft.
Linux and OS X are both quality software packages. They are both stable, both very tweakable and have numerous commonalities due to their lineage.
I fail to see why software must be considered evil if one has to pay for it nor why 'It might as well be developed by Microsoft'.
/me adjusts tinfoil hat...
You will be hearing from my lawyers unless you license said tinfoil hat technology.
Good day,
I have had a 48G given to me sans manual. I currently use a TI-85 and an old Canon paper-tape desktop calc. Given what I have read here, I am most interested in learning how to use this calc properly but haven't found much info yet. It will be used more for financial calculations consisting of fairly simple, but lengthy, operations which is why I like the paper-tape or the TI. However, I hate to see this 48G go to waste so I would like to put it to some use.
While I normally don't like Berman whatsoever, this is a good thing. I have long disliked the practice of putting personally identifiable info in the WHOIS database.
I just hope they don't dumb it down so much where one can't get email addresses for those controlling the domain for reporting purposes.
I have had to take a heavy hand to the machines and employees here a few times in recent past due to unlicensed software usage. A couple people took it upon themselves to install copies of Autocad on their machines to 'improve their efficeincy'. We do have a couple AC licenses, but not for these machines. One person was suspended the other just given a warning.
As a geek, Ernie's story is pretty cool, and I am happy to say I support the company financially as well by buying their strings.
Hey Music To Eat, do you write on any sites? If not, I would like to talk to you about my site.
theguy at tinfoil dot net if you are interested.
Let's now return you to your regularily scheduled program
Indeed, number three would be very bad. I am sure, however, that the few bands capable of putting together a truly good epic CD will still do this and fans will still buy it.
As for number one, looking at a claimed 20% drop in sales since '99, it is obvious that they are doing something wrong. We all know that it is ludicrous to blame piracy for all 20%, so they are obviously not catering to the audience as well as they could be.
However, more innovative indie labels are experiencing a large upswing in sales.
While I am a little suprised to see the numbers up 10%, I can't say that it wasn't expected. More and more people seem to want to taunt the recording industry, they want the RIAA to come after them it seems.
All the money they are spending on their lawyers should rather be dumped into iTunes or Rhapsodey like services. How much proof is needed that that is the way to go?
The industry needs to face facts. The full-format physical media isn't going to sustain their business model. With todays need for instant gratification, people want to buy only what they want and they want it now.
Removing dependance on full-length physical media will do a couple of good things. First it will force the industry and artists to put out more quality tracks instead of relying on a couple radio tracks to sell a disc made mostly of filler. Second, the consumer will no longer get stuck with a lousy disc.
I spoke with Darryl Ballentyne regarding this issue. You can find it here.
This, however, can sometimes block people calling from cell phones on other networks.
For example, I had this turned on (Bell Canada) and I called home from my cell (Telus) to tell my wife I was stuck in traffic. While my cell number was not blocked, it did come up as such on my Bell home phone, a p.i.t.a. indeed.
It was fixed with a quick call to my cell phone provider.
Anon blocking also blocked calls from a good friend of mine who runs a number of music stores. He had his home number blocked so that he would stop getting calls in the middle of the night from random guitarists who broke a string on stage and was out of replacements.
Anon call blocking is overly restrictive IMHO, but a necessary evil until laws can rid the world of these parasites.
You know, I hadn't thought of it that way. While it *is* nice to see someone stand up for their ideals, I just finished cleaning some 70 spams that got past Spamnet (Cloudmark). Perhaps I was a little hasty.
they feel that no one should get spammed
How very naive of them. Why shouldn't the people that force us to take extreme measures for a little bit of privacy, convenience, not be made to deal with the same garbage that we do?
Some claim this has been done before with CD Baby. CD Baby (as mentioned in another post) takes $4 per CD sold, plus shipping and handling. Others mention PayPal, obviously forgetting the problems exposed recently with PayPay.
Chuck's site is a popular site already with the corrupt CD list, and it's only a matter of time before they come. So, rather then pan the idea because it may not look professional or because it doesn't have any artists signed up yet, applaud it and Chuck for wanting to do the right thing for the artist, giving them the money they deserve.
A number of people joined forces on this. Each has offered his or her solution to the dilema. Unfortunatly, not everyone can be right.
Solution 1 by Peter Howell promotes flooding the file sharing networks with tainted MP3's. While this may be effective to start, it will be circumvented, as it any other measure designed to impeed. Doing this will not force a change in the recording industry, it will not force them to adopt new technology and to abandon the old ways of doing things, the ways that have gotten them into the bind they are in now. To even suggest that the record companies hire a band of spec-op hackers to accomplish the task of making MP3s dangerous is ludicrous.
Lower the price of CDs for a few months and give out cash prizes? How short sighted. The cost of creating CDs has dropped significantly since they were introduced, yet the price to the consumer has stayed level, though it hasn't increased much. I will give the industry that. Why? Because of fat contracts, short sighted talent scouts and over population on the shelves.
Solution 2, Get a Makeover by Ben Rayner touches on some very enlightened points. The recording industry's reputation currently stinks. They are the typical corporate fat cats treating customers like chum. They believe that the consumer has no choice but to buy their product so why give the consumer any respect.
Both consumers and artists have mixed feelings about the current state of the industry. On one hand, they feel cheated by price-fixing, and on the other they do want to do the right thing. The industry isn't helping them, as it is hard to feel sorry for a multi-billion dollar company. Lectures from millionaire execs and artists on the wrongs of piracy hurt their cause even more. It is tough to feel sorry for them, indeed.
The industry must nevertheless also content itself with conducting business on a more modest scale, painful though the process might be. No one needs to spend in excess of $40 million on a record, as Sony did with Michael Jackson's 2001 flop, Invincible, for instance, when the White Stripes can muster a hit record for $10,000. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Solution 3 by Betsy Powell touches on the overall suckiness of the radio today and how it's influence on the consumer is at an all time low. While this may be a contributory factor, I think radio will be far more difficult to change on one hand, on the other it may be easier, depending on how you look at it. Radio has typically driven consumers, but perhaps it is time for consumers to drive radio. Fixing radio, however, is not going to fix the recording industy.
Solution 4, Lose the Lottery by Vit Wagner preaches that the industry needs to stop trolling the music scene for quick hits and one hit wonders and concentrate more on long-term productivity. True indeed. If the industry followed this tact, fewer lousy CDs from one hit wonders would be produced, thereby reducing the over-population on store shelves, and increasing the quality of what is there already. Better product equals more value for consumers equals happy consumers equals less piracy. Being an artist is a full time job, and then some. Treat them as employees and don't give them false promises.
Solution 5, Know Your Audience by Peter Goddard states that the industry is sorely out of touch with it's customers.
Technology has long been the enemy of the recording industry. First it was radio, currently the internet. They adapted to radio and now use it as a tool, as well they should. They will adapt to the internet and use it as such as well, or they will be left behind to those who do.
Peter speaks of the virtual drop off in releases targetted at jazz and classical listeners, groups likely to be better educated and with more money to spend, in favour of quick hits and one hit wonders. It is this mentallity that has cost labels their loyal customer base.
Many of these solutions are viable, but none are a total solution. A total solution will require record companies to come to grips with technology, sit down and get to know their customers and tighten their belts like every other industry these past few years.
If we are paying a compulsory fee of x dollars a month on our internet bill, then it would seem it is no longer piracy.
Granted, I would very much not like having to pay another tax on my bill since I already purchase a large amount of music legally a year. The music industry is behind the times which is making it difficult for them to compete against the instant gratification of the P2P networks. The artist suffers not at the hands of the P2P'er, but at the hands of the dinosaurs running the record companies. Consumers suffer by by being painted a criminal with an overly wide brush, and it seems the only way to prove ourselves is to throw yet more money at a solution that is simply a bandaid fix.
Fix the real problem. Give people a number of competing services that will allow them to purchase music from any company and give them fair use rights with the music they purchase. A Columbia House for MP3's. My mother-in-law doesn't *want* to steal music. She wants to buy the music, but doesn't want to pay $25 (Canuck) for a song, if she can even find it without special order. She wants to listen to it now, not when FedEx delivers it. She wants to put it in her iPod for when she goes out for a jog so it doesn't skip.
It's a novell suggestion and one of the best I have heard so far, but the recording industry will most certainly not go for it. They can't martyr themselves if they make file sharing legal.
Damn man, I hadn't thought of it *that* way!
:D
You're a super genius!
And Alansz wants to support himself / family.
What's so hard to understand about that?
Argh, you just killed mine too.
Off topic, but it certainly made me giggle.
Part of innovation is knowing when to release the product. 15 years ago, it wasn't really feasable.
There are *some* benefits. One, data has to be stored in a centralised location. Two... umm.. Okay, there is only one benefit I can think of.
The price will drop I am sure. MS has no probs loosing cashish on the xbox so I am sure they will have no probs in dropping the price of this a bit as well.
Alot of people are complaining about it and how the uneducated computer user is getting confused. I am repeating what has been said here many times, but it needs repeating. If you are spending 2-4k for something you better know what that something is. If you don't feel like doing your own research, ask a friend or co-worker. If you go into the purchase unarmed, you get what you deserve.
No doubt. I totally agree with you there.
The office alternatives are good for many uses but not always 100% compatable. Then there is the retraining costs as well. Lastly, when it comes right down to it, Office is not a terrible program at all. It does what it was designed to do (insert your pun about virii here if you must) and it does it well. Nor have I had any stability issues with it in a good long time.
This ghosting debate is much like the tube vs. transistor debate. It's going to go on and on and on well past the time LCD's (or OLED's?) have taken over and the only CRT's you can buy will be four or five times the price they are now. I game on a couple different LCDs (both on laptops) and have noticed no annoying ghosting effects. That's not to say they aren't there, but when I am playing at 1024 at some 100-150 FPS, it just really doesn't seem to matter.
Actually, I am a recent switchee, but not so recent that I was exempt from spending 130 for Jaguar or a few hundred for Office X.