I'm convinced that if media companies put up absolutely everything in their vaults for download on a well designed bittorrent tracker, provided guaranteed seeding, removed all DRM, and charged a few pennies per download they would a) just about completely eliminate piracy and b) make a shitload of money.
It's not a counter to anything you're saying, because I essentially agree with you. But from a pragmatic perspective I don't think they're acting even in their own best interest at the moment.
I remember thinking about the Captcha problem a while back and thinking that something related to the subtleties of facial recognition might work -- "click on the woman in a group of men", for example. Of course you'd need tons of images with the correct zones mapped, for example, but I thought the starting point of gender recognition could be very tough for computers and relatively easy for humans.
Then I read about that thing where they display Captchas on free porn sites and have the users (actual humans) do the work and reward them with boobies. So it's not even discerning between a computer vs. a human mind any more. You'd have to find something that a normal user could do that a porn surfer couldn't...? Good luck with that. With such a system all reasonable Captchas are solvable.
If you have something valuable enough for people to want to bust through, a Captcha isn't going to protect you.
As a wanna-be artist who's recorded an album or two myself, there is an anxious excitement about the possibilities of self-recording, self-distribution, and self-promotion. When the internet was first taking off I thought it was going to crack the lid off of independent art, and soon listeners would have a wider variety of better quality stuff and more creative people would be able to find their audience.
To some degree, this is all true. There's a lot of stuff out there, and most artists can find some fans. But in the end it hasn't practially changed much: being in an internet band is about as important as being in a high-school band. The difference is that the 100 people that love you can now be spread across the world instead of just the town.
I think that most listeners really don't want better stuff (even by their own standards): they'd rather listen to stuff that their friends listen to. It's fun to be into popular music, and that's what most people do. They seek out popular music so that they can feel like they're part of something. I don't intend this as a put-down: they just want to enjoy life and I'll admit it's usually more fun to be into an okay-by-me-but-super-popular song than a more-to-your-liking-but-generally-unknown song. Because you can talk about it and play it at parties and people love it. Social interactions matter to music.
Even people like myself, who are drawn to listen to less popular music -- there's just so much stuff I don't feel I need any more. I get all the media I can handle already. So overall as an artist I'm sort of accepting that the way the world functions doesn't financially support all the musical artists who want to be. It doesn't even support all the musical artists who could qualify as great. There's a lot of great artists out there, and only enough opportunity for a tiny fraction of them.
It's kind of a let down, but I'm getting used to it. In the end, you can always make stuff you like, and probably find a few fans. You just won't be able to quit your day job.
Cheers.
PS - this is not based on lack of acceptance of my own musical endeavors, which are admittedly (and intentionally) dumb shit, but rather based on observing other artists
Sure, Perl is pretty much on everyone's shit list these days. But as the Director of Development for Zappos.com from 2000 through 2006, I have to take exception with his claim that perl is unacceptable for high-performance applications. Of course it depends what type of high performance applications you're talking about, but for high performance web applications it's actually quite good.
Specifically, the Zappos site, built with Perl, was rated the fastest retail website in the world for broadband customers for much of 2006. It beat out Amazon, Dell, Best Buy, etc, etc, you name it. It was also the most consistent speed and the fewest errors. Search Internet Retailer for the more numbers. It always places in the top 5.
Also, the claim that one might mix HTML in scripts is a sign that this guy hasn't actually used Perl in the past decade. Everyone switched to powerful templating systems sometime in 98. There are several very nice web development frameworks for Perl these days. Just like almost any other language.
The rest of his criticisms are more valid. I wouldn't try writing graphic intensive applications, or anything with heavy math processing in Perl. And the most common complaint, that it doesn't prevent you from writing messy code, is certainly true. Of course, just because your code looks neat doesn't mean it's good code either:)
Are you actually claiming there aren't enough copies of Vista in the wild to compare it to other OS installations? Yeah, that's the absurd mental gymnastics I was talking about. Sigh
Meh... not that I should expect differently in a possibly pro-MS article, but the level of logical gymnastics being used to prove that this metric is flawed is absurd. It's all completely contradictory with discussions from a few years ago about vulnerabilities and such. Now maybe it's not a great measure, but there are certainly a critical mass of Vista installs and it still has fewer reported security problems. Don't piss and moan about it. Give credit where credit is due: yay Microsoft.
Now, if you want to bash, you could very validly point out that Vista is generally a slow and buggy OS from a user perspective. They got their security tightened up, but apparently at the expense of making a great OS. Most people I know find Vista at best tolerable, at worst downright terrible. But it is seemingly more secure.
I agree with most of your criticisms. And I don't think anyone would call me a mindless fashion sheep. But I still buy Apple stuff because they have the best (so far) GUI + unix + media management software package around. And yes, I've spent years running Windows and Linux, too. And still do on occasion.
They got OSX right (comparatively). And their expensive hardware is decent enough if price isn't a primary concern. I wish they'd improve their act in other areas because I'll probably be using their stuff for a long time. Unless some other company comes along and does notably better.
But wasn't every Mac user in the dTrace story saying
Er, I wasn't. I didn't say anything, and I'm assuming most people didn't because they don't know much about dtrace? I have commented in the past that the recent Quicktime updates are for shit. Starting with 7.3, Quicktime, which was always had but a dubious claim to being "best video player on the mac" went downhill dramatically in functionality and stability. I won't even do the 7.4 update because I've heard nothing good about it.
And I'm a mac user and generally speaking, an Apple fan. Doesn't mean I can't see that they fuck a lot of things up.
Aren't all those "you can't eat this or that" rules abolished in the New Testament?
Well that's the thing -- the New Testament is not clear on which laws are abolished, modified, or left the same. Thus people tend to pick and choose their depending on their personal opinion and circumstance. If they commit a sin, they'll talk of the grace of God in the New Testament. If they see someone else commit a sin that they especially don't like, they'll talk of the wrath of God in the Old Testament. It's really a perfect system for fitting the religion into your own worldview. I think this duality is largely responsible for the immense success of Christianity.
I believe MIcrosoft and everyone would be better off if they just made Gecko the new IE8 rendering engine. They can keep IE7 rendering in there too, and heck I'll even take the annoying idea that I have to add a tag to get rendered correctly... but for the love of god we don't need _another_ guaranteed-to-be-slightly-quirky browser rendering engine to test and support.
They can save themselves the development time. They can avoid the ire of web developers everywhere. They can still let app developers use the IE7 kit for embedding if they want. Everyone wins. I don't see what Microsoft (or anyone) gains by writing another engine.
Which is why you can probably take it in to the Apple Store and they'll replace it for you.
Actually, I have many complaints about the Apple Store service, but just last week they fixed a keyboard problem on the spot by replacing a few keys and didn't charge me anything. So I wouldn't be surprised if they would install a battery you bought.
I've had this happen to me a few times with my Macbook Pro (or was it just with my previous Powerbook G4?) You ground yourself somehow -- say putting my bare foot against a metal chair or desk leg, and suddenly I get a slightly painful buzz from the seam between the wristrests and edge. I guess that's where there is a sliver of bare aluminum between the end of the adonized metal and the plastic rim. Always annoyed the hell out of me, but not consistently reproducible so I never got it fixed.
Metal casing... ungrounded power... what does one expect?
I remember the worst shock I ever got was performing at a club. I leaned in to sing with an old metal grill microphone plugged into a shoddy amp. I got a terrifically painful zap to my lower lip and I jumped back. The lights in the room flickered for a moment... or so I thought. Nobody else saw the flicker, so I guess it was that the shock knocked out my vision for a split second. Yeesh.
Actually, here's a good photo of it, comparing it to the previously most black substance. It's neat: I can already imagine them using this someday in camera optics and such.
work that adds to the value of the original, as opposed to substituting for the original
And who gets to determine what "adds value"? Here's a random example I just came across today that rides the line: the full Steve Jobs Keynote vs. this 60 second recap:
That can both substitute for the original, and yet I think adds value. Not just by being short and informative, but by satirizing and commenting on the effects of 89 minutes of fluff marketing. Is it fair use?
Uh... remove the word "innovative" from the last paragraph for a little more sense. What would "brain-dead innovative" mean anyways? That they're innovating new ways to be brain-dead? Hmm... perhaps that is what I meant.
anyone who is intellectually honest must "acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content..."
I will agree wholeheartedly with that. But at the same time anyone who is intellectually honest should acknowledge, confront and speak to the absurdity of infinite copyright extension, the industry's use of exploitative contracts, and the generally abusive tack they take with honest customers.
No, two wrongs don't make a right. And most of the people who steal the stuff aren't doing it on any kind of crusade. But the big copyright players have been and continue to be such dick heads for so long that citizens who might otherwise look on copyright violation as a type of theft don't really give a shit about it any more. And that includes me.
Also, when you make completely brain-dead innovative content that panders to the lowest common denominator, dumbing down our culture instead of rising to the occasion and doing something great, perhaps even important, with all that power... well, you end up with a bunch of brain-dead customers who don't give a shit about anything anyways.
Isn't that backwards? It's companies complaining they can't keep employees -- not employees complaining they can't keep jobs. Shouldn't it be the companies that we "welcome to the real world"? Seriously: the real world is that smart people aren't going to put up low pay and being treated like crap. Sure, these are relative terms, but they're set by the job market and it sounds like they're set higher than these companies realize.
I was a manager for seven years, so this is not coming from a spoiled brat programmer. I had to hire and retain people, and I did. I think doing so was a combination of: respecting that they are more than an employee, that they have a life outside their job, paying them a competitive salary, and giving them the trust and respect to do their work well.
If a company can't do that, and the employee can find another place that will, it's not the employees fault for being spoiled. It's the company's fault for not being a satisfactory workplace.
But nowadays it seems like everyone is scared to get up out of their chair.
This is so apparent to me too... I don't have kids yet, so what do I know, but the level of fear I see in others is amazing. Everyone child-proofs their house and runs around protecting their kid. My terrible mother (note sarcasm) had no child-proofing to speak of and let me pretty much monitor myself for periods of time even before the age of four. Generally I played with blocks and toy cars. But once I remember I played with a electrical plug, got zapped, bawled, and respected electricity henceforth.
I distinctly remembered being allowed, before age four, to go outside on my own (we lived on a fairly quiet city street) to friends houses. We'd play on the porch. Or at their place. Adults seemed to assume we were fine unless we notified them otherwise.
At four we moved to a quieter town where I learned to ride a bike and my friends and I would be off for hours by ourselves. We used to intentionally crash our bikes into each other to try and knock each other off: sort of like jousting without lances. Sometimes we'd get cut up and bruised. And it just wasn't a big deal. I don't recall my parents ever trying to prevent me from minor injuries by limiting what I could do.
Compared to what I see and hear today, it would appear my parents, and my friends parents were absolutely insane. Is the world actually that much more dangerous today? I tend to doubt it. I hope I can maintain a level of freedom for my kids to experience life. I hope that when they inevitably hurt themselves and get stitches (like I did) that I don't subsequently deny them freedom.
A very helpful post. I did have one comment though:
In any case, I don't understand all the fuss. Obama and Clinton were awarded the same number of delegates.
I think the fuss would be that if there _was_ fraud, then Obama should have got _more_ delegates. Getting "the same amount" isn't fair, it's getting "the accurate amount" that's fair.
Of course, from the rest of the info in your post, it sounds like he got the accurate amount too. So thanks for clearing that up.
Actually, I never went to University. I didn't even complete high-school. I'm not a smoker, I'm not much of a drinker, and I'm married. The post was a lame attempt to be funny.
But now that you mention it, all that Star Trek slash fiction I read may indicate a hitherto unexplored yearning...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm convinced that if media companies put up absolutely everything in their vaults for download on a well designed bittorrent tracker, provided guaranteed seeding, removed all DRM, and charged a few pennies per download they would a) just about completely eliminate piracy and b) make a shitload of money.
It's not a counter to anything you're saying, because I essentially agree with you. But from a pragmatic perspective I don't think they're acting even in their own best interest at the moment.
Cheers.
I remember thinking about the Captcha problem a while back and thinking that something related to the subtleties of facial recognition might work -- "click on the woman in a group of men", for example. Of course you'd need tons of images with the correct zones mapped, for example, but I thought the starting point of gender recognition could be very tough for computers and relatively easy for humans.
Then I read about that thing where they display Captchas on free porn sites and have the users (actual humans) do the work and reward them with boobies. So it's not even discerning between a computer vs. a human mind any more. You'd have to find something that a normal user could do that a porn surfer couldn't...? Good luck with that. With such a system all reasonable Captchas are solvable.
If you have something valuable enough for people to want to bust through, a Captcha isn't going to protect you.
Cheers.
Well maybe I'll have to give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion.
As a wanna-be artist who's recorded an album or two myself, there is an anxious excitement about the possibilities of self-recording, self-distribution, and self-promotion. When the internet was first taking off I thought it was going to crack the lid off of independent art, and soon listeners would have a wider variety of better quality stuff and more creative people would be able to find their audience.
To some degree, this is all true. There's a lot of stuff out there, and most artists can find some fans. But in the end it hasn't practially changed much: being in an internet band is about as important as being in a high-school band. The difference is that the 100 people that love you can now be spread across the world instead of just the town.
I think that most listeners really don't want better stuff (even by their own standards): they'd rather listen to stuff that their friends listen to. It's fun to be into popular music, and that's what most people do. They seek out popular music so that they can feel like they're part of something. I don't intend this as a put-down: they just want to enjoy life and I'll admit it's usually more fun to be into an okay-by-me-but-super-popular song than a more-to-your-liking-but-generally-unknown song. Because you can talk about it and play it at parties and people love it. Social interactions matter to music.
Even people like myself, who are drawn to listen to less popular music -- there's just so much stuff I don't feel I need any more. I get all the media I can handle already. So overall as an artist I'm sort of accepting that the way the world functions doesn't financially support all the musical artists who want to be. It doesn't even support all the musical artists who could qualify as great. There's a lot of great artists out there, and only enough opportunity for a tiny fraction of them.
It's kind of a let down, but I'm getting used to it. In the end, you can always make stuff you like, and probably find a few fans. You just won't be able to quit your day job.
Cheers.
PS - this is not based on lack of acceptance of my own musical endeavors, which are admittedly (and intentionally) dumb shit, but rather based on observing other artists
Sure, Perl is pretty much on everyone's shit list these days. But as the Director of Development for Zappos.com from 2000 through 2006, I have to take exception with his claim that perl is unacceptable for high-performance applications. Of course it depends what type of high performance applications you're talking about, but for high performance web applications it's actually quite good.
:)
Specifically, the Zappos site, built with Perl, was rated the fastest retail website in the world for broadband customers for much of 2006. It beat out Amazon, Dell, Best Buy, etc, etc, you name it. It was also the most consistent speed and the fewest errors. Search Internet Retailer for the more numbers. It always places in the top 5.
Also, the claim that one might mix HTML in scripts is a sign that this guy hasn't actually used Perl in the past decade. Everyone switched to powerful templating systems sometime in 98. There are several very nice web development frameworks for Perl these days. Just like almost any other language.
The rest of his criticisms are more valid. I wouldn't try writing graphic intensive applications, or anything with heavy math processing in Perl. And the most common complaint, that it doesn't prevent you from writing messy code, is certainly true. Of course, just because your code looks neat doesn't mean it's good code either
Cheers.
Are you actually claiming there aren't enough copies of Vista in the wild to compare it to other OS installations? Yeah, that's the absurd mental gymnastics I was talking about. Sigh
Meh... not that I should expect differently in a possibly pro-MS article, but the level of logical gymnastics being used to prove that this metric is flawed is absurd. It's all completely contradictory with discussions from a few years ago about vulnerabilities and such. Now maybe it's not a great measure, but there are certainly a critical mass of Vista installs and it still has fewer reported security problems. Don't piss and moan about it. Give credit where credit is due: yay Microsoft.
Now, if you want to bash, you could very validly point out that Vista is generally a slow and buggy OS from a user perspective. They got their security tightened up, but apparently at the expense of making a great OS. Most people I know find Vista at best tolerable, at worst downright terrible. But it is seemingly more secure.
Cheers.
I agree with most of your criticisms. And I don't think anyone would call me a mindless fashion sheep. But I still buy Apple stuff because they have the best (so far) GUI + unix + media management software package around. And yes, I've spent years running Windows and Linux, too. And still do on occasion.
They got OSX right (comparatively). And their expensive hardware is decent enough if price isn't a primary concern. I wish they'd improve their act in other areas because I'll probably be using their stuff for a long time. Unless some other company comes along and does notably better.
Cheers.
But wasn't every Mac user in the dTrace story saying
Er, I wasn't. I didn't say anything, and I'm assuming most people didn't because they don't know much about dtrace? I have commented in the past that the recent Quicktime updates are for shit. Starting with 7.3, Quicktime, which was always had but a dubious claim to being "best video player on the mac" went downhill dramatically in functionality and stability. I won't even do the 7.4 update because I've heard nothing good about it.
And I'm a mac user and generally speaking, an Apple fan. Doesn't mean I can't see that they fuck a lot of things up.
Cheers.
Aren't all those "you can't eat this or that" rules abolished in the New Testament?
Well that's the thing -- the New Testament is not clear on which laws are abolished, modified, or left the same. Thus people tend to pick and choose their depending on their personal opinion and circumstance. If they commit a sin, they'll talk of the grace of God in the New Testament. If they see someone else commit a sin that they especially don't like, they'll talk of the wrath of God in the Old Testament. It's really a perfect system for fitting the religion into your own worldview. I think this duality is largely responsible for the immense success of Christianity.
Cheers.
I believe MIcrosoft and everyone would be better off if they just made Gecko the new IE8 rendering engine. They can keep IE7 rendering in there too, and heck I'll even take the annoying idea that I have to add a tag to get rendered correctly... but for the love of god we don't need _another_ guaranteed-to-be-slightly-quirky browser rendering engine to test and support.
They can save themselves the development time. They can avoid the ire of web developers everywhere. They can still let app developers use the IE7 kit for embedding if they want. Everyone wins. I don't see what Microsoft (or anyone) gains by writing another engine.
Cheers.
Which is why you can probably take it in to the Apple Store and they'll replace it for you.
Actually, I have many complaints about the Apple Store service, but just last week they fixed a keyboard problem on the spot by replacing a few keys and didn't charge me anything. So I wouldn't be surprised if they would install a battery you bought.
Cheers.
I've had this happen to me a few times with my Macbook Pro (or was it just with my previous Powerbook G4?) You ground yourself somehow -- say putting my bare foot against a metal chair or desk leg, and suddenly I get a slightly painful buzz from the seam between the wristrests and edge. I guess that's where there is a sliver of bare aluminum between the end of the adonized metal and the plastic rim. Always annoyed the hell out of me, but not consistently reproducible so I never got it fixed.
Metal casing... ungrounded power... what does one expect?
I remember the worst shock I ever got was performing at a club. I leaned in to sing with an old metal grill microphone plugged into a shoddy amp. I got a terrifically painful zap to my lower lip and I jumped back. The lights in the room flickered for a moment... or so I thought. Nobody else saw the flicker, so I guess it was that the shock knocked out my vision for a split second. Yeesh.
Actually, here's a good photo of it, comparing it to the previously most black substance. It's neat: I can already imagine them using this someday in camera optics and such.
Cheers.
work that adds to the value of the original, as opposed to substituting for the original
And who gets to determine what "adds value"? Here's a random example I just came across today that rides the line: the full Steve Jobs Keynote vs. this 60 second recap:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz1-cPx0cIk
That can both substitute for the original, and yet I think adds value. Not just by being short and informative, but by satirizing and commenting on the effects of 89 minutes of fluff marketing. Is it fair use?
Cheers.
Wireless remote disk? The MacBook Air tour specifically mentions that you can re-install OSX over wireless, even from a PC with an optical drive.
Uh... remove the word "innovative" from the last paragraph for a little more sense. What would "brain-dead innovative" mean anyways? That they're innovating new ways to be brain-dead? Hmm... perhaps that is what I meant.
Cheers.
anyone who is intellectually honest must "acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content..."
I will agree wholeheartedly with that. But at the same time anyone who is intellectually honest should acknowledge, confront and speak to the absurdity of infinite copyright extension, the industry's use of exploitative contracts, and the generally abusive tack they take with honest customers.
No, two wrongs don't make a right. And most of the people who steal the stuff aren't doing it on any kind of crusade. But the big copyright players have been and continue to be such dick heads for so long that citizens who might otherwise look on copyright violation as a type of theft don't really give a shit about it any more. And that includes me.
Also, when you make completely brain-dead innovative content that panders to the lowest common denominator, dumbing down our culture instead of rising to the occasion and doing something great, perhaps even important, with all that power... well, you end up with a bunch of brain-dead customers who don't give a shit about anything anyways.
You pissed in your bed, now sleep in it.
Cheers.
The "proof" is that they are leaving and finding better jobs.
Note, it's the companies complaining they can't retain, not the employees complaining they can't find work.
Cheers.
Isn't that backwards? It's companies complaining they can't keep employees -- not employees complaining they can't keep jobs. Shouldn't it be the companies that we "welcome to the real world"? Seriously: the real world is that smart people aren't going to put up low pay and being treated like crap. Sure, these are relative terms, but they're set by the job market and it sounds like they're set higher than these companies realize.
I was a manager for seven years, so this is not coming from a spoiled brat programmer. I had to hire and retain people, and I did. I think doing so was a combination of: respecting that they are more than an employee, that they have a life outside their job, paying them a competitive salary, and giving them the trust and respect to do their work well.
If a company can't do that, and the employee can find another place that will, it's not the employees fault for being spoiled. It's the company's fault for not being a satisfactory workplace.
Cheers.
I'm sorry? I've never heard of that happening. Care to give an example?
But nowadays it seems like everyone is scared to get up out of their chair.
This is so apparent to me too... I don't have kids yet, so what do I know, but the level of fear I see in others is amazing. Everyone child-proofs their house and runs around protecting their kid. My terrible mother (note sarcasm) had no child-proofing to speak of and let me pretty much monitor myself for periods of time even before the age of four. Generally I played with blocks and toy cars. But once I remember I played with a electrical plug, got zapped, bawled, and respected electricity henceforth.
I distinctly remembered being allowed, before age four, to go outside on my own (we lived on a fairly quiet city street) to friends houses. We'd play on the porch. Or at their place. Adults seemed to assume we were fine unless we notified them otherwise.
At four we moved to a quieter town where I learned to ride a bike and my friends and I would be off for hours by ourselves. We used to intentionally crash our bikes into each other to try and knock each other off: sort of like jousting without lances. Sometimes we'd get cut up and bruised. And it just wasn't a big deal. I don't recall my parents ever trying to prevent me from minor injuries by limiting what I could do.
Compared to what I see and hear today, it would appear my parents, and my friends parents were absolutely insane. Is the world actually that much more dangerous today? I tend to doubt it. I hope I can maintain a level of freedom for my kids to experience life. I hope that when they inevitably hurt themselves and get stitches (like I did) that I don't subsequently deny them freedom.
Cheers.
A very helpful post. I did have one comment though:
In any case, I don't understand all the fuss. Obama and Clinton were awarded the same number of delegates.
I think the fuss would be that if there _was_ fraud, then Obama should have got _more_ delegates. Getting "the same amount" isn't fair, it's getting "the accurate amount" that's fair.
Of course, from the rest of the info in your post, it sounds like he got the accurate amount too. So thanks for clearing that up.
I'd rather have a minister who believes strongly in individual liberty than a scientist who believed in making people's choices for them.
- a devout atheist
PS - sure, i'd even more prefer a scientist who believed in individual liberty, but have you looked at the crop of candidates?
Actually, I never went to University. I didn't even complete high-school. I'm not a smoker, I'm not much of a drinker, and I'm married. The post was a lame attempt to be funny.
But now that you mention it, all that Star Trek slash fiction I read may indicate a hitherto unexplored yearning...
You doing anything Friday?