I know posting this here might upset some people and make me look like a newbie, but if anyone out there has any influence at plastic.com, _please_ make the text wider, like at slashdot. It takes forever to scroll down and read each story. They say plastic.com is based on slashdot, but slashdot has about twice as much text per line, roughly.
I know those two guys who started suck.com think they were very clever to come up with that narrow column in the middle of the page, but as I recall that was to make it easier for various browsers to display in earlier days of the web. These days, is that really so important?
Forgive me if this is old news, but at Las Vegas COMDEX 2000 a company Eupa from Taiwan had some of the most amazing computer cases I have seen. (But at that time they only sold entire computers, not the cases alone.) Two in particular were metal with a 1930-ish "Buck Rogers" look, the Classic (burnished finish) and the Home (shiny chrome finish) They also sell metal retro look audio speaker systems.
This might be obvious, but for a number of years audio cassette tapes of the ACM "History of Programming Languages" conference held in Los Angeles in 1978 were available, I _think_ from the ACM itself.
Around 1993 there was a brief attempt to limit used CD sales, but since that was before the web really took off I suppose it is largely forgotten online. It is probably best remembered for the prominent role Garth Brooks took in the public debate. So this recent attack on amazon.com and used books should come as no big surprise.
To summarize, in late 1992 Wherehouse became one of the few major music chains to sell used CD's. The NARAS and some recording artists spoke out against this, and perhaps the climax came on Aug 5, 1993 when it was announced in writing that the new Garth Brooks album "In Pieces" would not be sold to stores selling used CD's. There was an uproar of protest including events where Garth Brooks recordings were publicly burned, and within a few days this policy was retracted by distributor CEMA and/or Thorn-EMI.
I was able to find one link to a L.A. Times story from Aug 8, 1993 about the end of this:
http://www.planetgarth.com/gbnews/garth049.shtml
It seems obvious to me that we can expect to "license" rather than buy music from the major labels in the future, and such licenses will explicitly prohibit the transfer of your license without prior consent, or several hundred words of similar legal babble.
I spent c. 15 years in the Xbase world (dBASE, Clipper, FoxPro, etc), where this kind of endless "my language is better than yours" debate went on all the time. (Odd note - the more similar two languages are, such as Pascal and C, the more vociferous such debates seem to be!)
As much as I agree with most of this article, one notion that I think is left out is that in the real work-a-day world people are tied very closely to their technical skill sets. That is, most companies do not say "We wish to hire an intelligent, productive person" but rather "We need someone with at least two year's experience in Perl" or whatever.
So whereas an academic can perhaps sit back and calmly survey the language or OS landscape, those in the trenches have a great vested economic interest in promoting the products or tools that they are most experienced in.
I am not saying this is the way it should be, but clearly I think it is the way it is for many people.
The book on the recent history of the music industry "Off the Charts" has a chapter about how the CD format was largely forced onto the public in the 80's. (With many early CD releases, only a much smaller number of vinyl copies were presssed despite a great demand still for vinyl early on.) The music companies realized quite correctly that people would have to buy much of their music all over again and indeed, what started out as a slow decade ended up with huge profits.
Also, does anyone now recall the general promises from those first few years that someday CD's would be cheaper once the initial costs to set up manufacturing facilities had been recouped? I'm still waiting...
As I have posted here before, it seems clear to me that the music industry is eager to have people buy their music yet again, this time in a "secure" digital format. So I would expect to see some sort of new playing device (perhaps a chip or software) that can only play back "secure" music but not music ripped from current CD's. This would also allow them to get rid of the problem of used CD's - I'm sure whatever music you download (at least at first) will be non-transferrable.
But IMO if they actually do this, it will be a boon for fringe or independent artists. They may not get rich, but many of them will be able to pursue careers via downloaded or homemade CD's the way a variety of people are starting to today. I mean, if you have a choice of paying maybe $10 for a plain old CD that you can play anywhere or later sell to someone else, or else $15 to download some files with a bunch of restrictions on them so you can only play them on your own registered devices or whatever, it seems like a no brainer to me.
There is good independent music out there - the problem is trying to get it onto the increasingly corporatized radio playlists.
I am based in the L.A. area and have had Sprint PCS for a few months now. It is OK, but not great. They have had a variety of promotions - I got one where I pay $50 per month for 500 peak and 500 offpeak minutes, but I also had to buy one of their phones for $100. (Those are nationwide long distance minutes - it has been odd thinking it costs me the same to call three or three thousand miles away.)
I also had little interest in their web plan, so I did not price that, although my phone includes a mini-browser. I have since used the phone in Las Vegas, Boston, New Haven and New York City with no major problems, but of course, every now and then you hit a "blind" spot (the worst so far has been Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, perhaps because so many people are using up the available circuits), or else you can't make a call because the network is busy. A few comments, in descending order of importance, IMO:
1. Voice messages are delayed by c. 3 hours. Sprint denies this happens, but it happens almost every time. When someone leaves me a voice message, the little envelope icon does not appear on my phone for typically three hours after they left the message. Apparently nothing can be done about this - presumably it is caused by their internal setup.
2. Get your billing correct up front. There is at least one web site filled with Sprint billing horror stories, and indeed, I had two different problems with my bill caused simply by Sprint people setting up my account incorrectly. Apparently their terminal software at their PCS stores is very complex and they have to enter a variety of numeric codes which seems to lead to mistakes.
3. I don't hear my voice on my phone. Maybe all cel phones are like this, but when I talk I don't hear my voice, making the call more difficult.
4. Sprint "rounds" minutes up. Like almost all carriers that I have heard of, a 65 (or 61) second call will be billed as two minutes.
5. I use more offpeak minutes. Despite what some others have said here, in my usage, I tend to use more offpeak minutes, since I also use this phone for my U.S. long distance calls.
A rare chance for me to post here - I went up to the Marina today (Sunday) and caught the gTLD panel discussion and the welcome reception for the new at large ICANN members put on by the Berkman Center. To my surprise (considering how much Internet activity there is in the L.A. area) I seemed to be one of the few people there without ties to an entity involved in the current ICANN agenda.
Anyway, I would encourage anyone in the L.A. area to attend this coming Wednesday Nov 15th when they will have the public comment session. It may be crowded since c. 900 "public" members have pre-registered online, but what the heck? The Marriott Marina Hotel is on the corner of Via Marina and Admiralty Way, and you can often find free parking on Washington Street and then walk over.
Official ICANN details at www.icann.org, and I think the transcripts of today's Berkman Center event are at:
Hi - although I am a pedant and try to obsessively follow stylistic rules, I can foresee that the hyphen wil disappear eventually, so let's just get rid of it now and save the world a few billion keystrokes per year.
Hi - I respect Dan Bricklin, but I think he left out one major point. IMO, in the traditional third party software market, a copy "stolen" today has a greater chance to result in paid sales tomorrow than with music. (I know both the web and the open source movement are slowly changing this business model.)
1. The idea of a software "learning curve" and complex document formats tends to lock people into specific software. So it is actually better for people to use your company's software for free than to buy from your competitors.
2. Mass software sales are largely upgrade based. Even if people get today's version for free, there will be a new version out every 18 months or so. Since in the past the percentage of people with computers was always growing, a little bit of piracy here and there did not hurt as much since there were always millions of new "virgin" computer users for each new rev.
Also, Bricklin did not say this, but I think the software suite approach was largely a Microsoft innnovation to dominate the applications market. In the golden age of the late 80's I would have taken the best of breed WordPerfect, Lotus and dBASE combo over the clunkier MS bundle any day, but that is now water under the bridge.
Now, I know there are people who will say that many people download MP3's and later buy the CD and/or will buy future CD's from the same artist. However, based just on my own contact with other people, I think this is a much smaller percentage than is sometimes claimed.
But having said the above, I think the RIAA and its big business approach to music is terrible. The false saying that "artists won't create if they won't get paid" is a total crock. True artists have little concern with financial gain. Did Mozart choose music over becoming a banker or something? Did he say he would only complete the final act of "Don Giovanni" if 75% of the audience agreed to pay for it?
I know I have said this here before, but the RIAA fighting with strong arm tactics to keep CD's at $15 each will only cause free or low-cost music to flourish. Let me quickly plug the Cynic Project just because I stumbled across it via mp3.com - I ordered his CD for $8 new and got 70 minutes of great music. Why would I now go out and spend $15 at the mall for a Ricky Martin CD that has only two good songs?
Again, I think the RIAA and the big four labels largely suck, but I seem to be one of the few here that think the much vaunted (by the right wing) "invisible hand" of the marketplace will actually come back to haunt them in the long run.
Well, I am no kind of Uber Hacker, but I have followed this entire digital music story very closely. Further, I live in the L.A. area where the topic is much discussed, and I know a variety of struggling musicians. I am not pretending to be an expert (I do that during the day), but I know a little about this issue.
Just to go against the tide, I don't think there is any need to fight or boycott SDMI technology development. (Although I admire the idea.) In fact, it is possible that an effective SDMI technology may actually hasten the decline of the music oligopoly.
Here are my main thoughts:
1. The market will speak. Given the choice of today's CD's versus some kind of "secure" format with its many limitations, who would buy it? I think the music suits have underestimated how tech saavy today's consumers are becoming. Sure, they may eventually pull "classic" CD's off the market, but that will only increase used sales and copying of them. (Question - how long before an attempt is made to actually outlaw the sale of classic CD's and/or players as some kind of piracy tool?)
2. Today's CD's won't go away, at least for years. As we have learned, one CD and any modern computer can generate an almost unlimited number of virtually perfect digital copies. Even if suddenly tomorrow I wake up and no more classic CD's are sold, the 15 billion or so that are out there and the millions of players will last for years and years to come. Further, once Napster and its ilk are shut down via legal challenges, people will simply become more sophisticated and private with their digital music swapping. The year or so of Napster has provided a music swapping foundation that will continue for years to come.
3. How much new music do we really need? OK, let's say all new music by the big labels is sold on secure CD's, until a time when they can try and make you pay for music every time you listen to it without even selling CD's. Hey, I can live just fine without ever hearing Ricky Martin's next album. With c. 250,000 CD's in print I personally could live the rest of my life just discovering more of what is already out there. Even being a big music fan, a week does not go by that I don't discover something new from the past. No one likes this argument because it seems anti-creative, but it will simply be a market response. If "new" digital music has all sorts of costs and restrictions on it, "classic" digital or even analog work will seem more attractive by comparision.
4. More performers will bypass the labels. As more and more people have high speed connections, music by downloading will become commonplace. More and more performers will be able to distribute their music directly to fans, instead of giving away their first child in a standard music industry contract. Sure, there may be fewer multi-millionaires overall, but so what? Just like open source, some will always create music for the love of doing it, not just to make money and groupies. In the creative world, there is often not a correlation with talent and financial reward, contrary to the constant copyright owner claims that "Artists won't create if they won't get paid" This may be true for hacks, but not for artists in the true sense of the word. I mean, do we really need another Stephen King novel?
5. Free music will flourish. No one seems to be saying this, but clearly there will be tons of free as in beer music for download. There seems to be an idea among some that anything amatuer or
DIY is junk, and sure, much of it may be to some. But to me, there is a lot of junk in any music store these days as well. Music creation software will continue to improve, and no matter how much DIY material is posted, the "buzz" of what is good will spread among friends, much like undergroud Metallica tapes did some 20 years or so ago. People will also see that you don't have to live in New York, L.A. or Nashville to be talented and have a reasonable chance of being discovered.
So in summary, whether we like it or not, the big music industry has the money to buy U.S. legislation to suit its current goals. But that's OK. If anyone wants to buy a secure copy of Britney Spears's latest CD five years from now, that will be their choice. But there will also be a lot of lower cost choices as well that will possibly give you even better (in the sense of matching your personal tastes) music.
Hi - correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that NBC claims its "broadcast rights" to the 2004 Athens Olympics includes Internet rights. (btw the L.A. Times had a big story on how they covertly secured those broadcast rights.) Obviously the broadcast rights are currently sold on a geographic basis which makes no sense when it comes to the Internet, but as I recall this was part of the justification to exclude Internet reporters from getting press credentials at Sydney.
Further, I read that the Canadian CBC will be showing about 18 hours of live Sydney coverage a day, compared to 0 hours by NBC.
Run, don't walk, to get the book "Peopleware" by Demarco and Lister. It outlines a number of very specific things to consider in the work environment. Below is some info on it from amazon.com:
Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed. by Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister
"Peopleware" asserts that most software development projects fail because of failures within the team running them. This strikingly clear, direct book is written for software development-team leaders and managers, but it's filled with enough commonsense wisdom to appeal to anyone working in technology. Authors Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister include plenty of illustrative, often amusing anecdotes; their writing is light, conversational, and filled with equal portions of humor and wisdom, and there is a refreshing absence of "new age" terms and multistep programs. The advice is presented straightforwardly and ranges from simple issues of prioritization to complex ways of engendering harmony and productivity in your team. Peopleware is a short read that delivers more than many books on the subject twice its size. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
IMO, Payne will do nothing. This is the same bozo who repeatedly denied that the 1996 Olympics (i.e. the Coca-Cola Olympics) had any unusual problems. TWR
Sure, they were largely manufactured, but the Monkees had some great songs in their brief two years or so of glory. (And, as I recall from reading a biography of them, in 1967 they outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined!) TWR
(note to story submittors: if video clips aren't viewable under Linux, I can't view them to consider them for posting, so don't bother submitting those quicktime clips;) Flame me if you want, and I don't want to seem critical of this great site overall, but to me, being a "Linux bigot" is no better than being a Windows, Macintosh, or whatever bigot. TWR
Hi - I'm sorry I can't gush over google.com because it does not respect quoted strings, making it far less useful for searching for exact phrases. For example, if I search for "I love you" on google, google takes out the "I" and just searches for "love you" This is a simple example, but it illustrates my point. altavista does not do this! TWR
On a positive note, you may recall the bitter and expensive lawsuit over Aqua's c. 1997 pop song "Barbie Girl" Mattel actually wanted the song removed from the album Aquarium. I don't know the details, but in that case Aqua and the record label won. (But I am pretty sure at one point during the case CD single copies of the song were withdrawn pending further progress of the case.) Of course, you probably don't have the perhaps millions of dollars the huge record company may have spent to win that one! Too bad Klaus Barbi died before Mattel could sue him!:) TWR
Yes, there are a lot of difficult issues here. But to me, Metallica suing Napster is only adding fuel to the fire. IMO, Metallica music is terrible, but as a huge selling act they must make literally millions every year. And we are supposed to feel sorry for them? Are they suing Napster because they are afriad they will only get five million instead of six million in royalties this year? Most of us have to work hard for our money, and are more likely to see groupers than groupies. I don't want to steal from people who need it, but every time someone from the music business says "We want to protect the rights of artists" what it really means is "We want to make sure we can keep selling CD's at the artificially inflated price of $15" I live in L.A. and know many hopeful musicians. Believe me, the music business (with some exceptions) is now just one more cog of huge multi-national conglomerates. They are looking for the next Ricky Martin or Britney Spears, or whatever other fad seems current at the time. I am willing to pay for music, but why should maybe 90% of the cost of a CD go to various middlepeople? I look forward to a day when it will be common to download music directly from musicians, rather than being limited to what CD's some executive has decided will sell 10,000 copies or more per year. Also, there is a lot of old music that can be re-released digitally since there will not be the cost of CD production and distribution to worry about. Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA
I don't know if it is ironic or fitting that Metallic and Dr. Dre both make such awful music. (In Dr. Dre's case, I use the term "music" loosely.) If people are actually using Napster to bootleg these artists, what a waste of bandwidth! I have listened to KROQ 106.7 in the L.A. area for years, and their decision to start playing a Metallica song every hour or so has largely ruined the station. (I suspect someone in the KROQ station management simply wants to increase Metallica sales. In the old days, KROQ used to play music that you could hardly hear anywhere else.) By coincidence, today is KROQ DJ Richard Blade's final day. The end of an era... Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA
Anyway, I discovered GNU and the FSM back around 1990. At that time, I recall that you were _not_ targeting GNU toward Intel CPU's because you did not want to support proprietary architectures. This also applied to Windows, and at that time, I don't think there were any official releases of FSM software for Windows. (As a comment, I personally did a crude port of GNU Chess to DOS, and then someone did a wonderful unofficial port to Windows including full source.)
Yet IMO Linux has taken off precisely because it works so well on Intel, and we are starting to see more and more software targeting the Windows "space" as Internet investors might say.
Do you think it is possible to be too tied to noble principles? That is, GNU had maybe a ten year head start, yet it is Linux and to a lesser degree BSD that is really in the news all the time. Isn't it possible that if you and the FSM had had a more pragmatic outlook ten years ago that a viable Windows alternative might have come along much sooner?
Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA ( at Ashton-Tate from 1988-1991 )
For better or worse, the electronic publishing of "Riding the Bullet" (RTB) will be considered a landmark event. (Disclaimer - I was raised on "the classics" and have no intention of ever reading a Stephen King novel.) I now see in the mainstream news that the posting of various bootleg copies of this is being reported, in a general tone of shock or outrage. I think this whole thing presents some very interesting issues. According to one account I read, King will make as much as $450,000 from this one work which otherwise might only have gotten him maybe $10,000 or so. Granted, I would rather King himself get the money for his work instead of publishers or bookstores, but isn't that more money than many, many writers might make in their entire careers? King makes literally millions for each movie of his work that is made - in the grand scheme of things, is it really so terrible that a few extra copies of RTB are posted here and there? Gosh, I almost want to read it now myself just because of this controversy, so these bootleg copies might possibly get him a new "fan" To take a broader view, I think the entire greed mentality that has taken over the Internet, moving it from a technical arena into a business medium of CEO's and IPO's has made us lose sight of things. Clearly, the entertainment industry is trying to use the Internet, but at the same time trying with various lobbying and litigation efforts to preserve the same profit margins as before. I would like to suggest that the economies have now changed forever, and the business models (God, I hate that phrase!) are going to have to change as well. Why should we have to pay $15 for a CD? Sure there are promotion and production costs, but do we really need to see any more pictures of Ricky Martin or Britney Spears, attractive though they may be? We are certainly nearing a point where artists (in a very broad sense - one could claim I am actually "publishing" as I write these words) can reach their public directly. With negligible production or distribution costs of digital content, why should we try to preserve the same profit sturcture as before? I am not a cheapskate - I don't mind paying for music, for example, but I know at the present of that $15 per CD, only a much smaller amount actually goes to the musicians themselves. Anyway, I am not trying to criticize Stephen King per se - he has certainly helped modernize communication. But I would like to suggest that in the future some (many?) artists will be content to offer their work at a lower cost directly to fans. Without having to produce a physical compact disc, book, or even videotape, more and more people will be able to participate without having to spend years trying to break into the established channels. Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA (one time would-be screenwriter who may attempt to make his own digital movie - where did my paragraph breaks go?)
Slashdot Mirror
Hi -
I know posting this here might upset some people and make me look like a newbie, but if anyone out there has any influence at plastic.com, _please_ make the text wider, like at slashdot. It takes forever to scroll down and read each story. They say plastic.com is based on slashdot, but slashdot has about twice as much text per line, roughly.
I know those two guys who started suck.com think they were very clever to come up with that narrow column in the middle of the page, but as I recall that was to make it easier for various browsers to display in earlier days of the web. These days, is that really so important?
TWR, Torrance, CA
Forgive me if this is old news, but at Las Vegas COMDEX 2000 a company Eupa from Taiwan had some of the most amazing computer cases I have seen. (But at that time they only sold entire computers, not the cases alone.) Two in particular were metal with a 1930-ish "Buck Rogers" look, the Classic (burnished finish) and the Home (shiny chrome finish) They also sell metal retro look audio speaker systems.
Hi -
This might be obvious, but for a number of years audio cassette tapes of the ACM "History of Programming Languages" conference held in Los Angeles in 1978 were available, I _think_ from the ACM itself.
TWR, Torrance, CA
Hi all -
Around 1993 there was a brief attempt to limit used CD sales, but since that was before the web really took off I suppose it is largely forgotten online. It is probably best remembered for the prominent role Garth Brooks took in the public debate. So this recent attack on amazon.com and used books should come as no big surprise.
To summarize, in late 1992 Wherehouse became one of the few major music chains to sell used CD's. The NARAS and some recording artists spoke out against this, and perhaps the climax came on Aug 5, 1993 when it was announced in writing that the new Garth Brooks album "In Pieces" would not be sold to stores selling used CD's. There was an uproar of protest including events where Garth Brooks recordings were publicly burned, and within a few days this policy was retracted by distributor CEMA and/or Thorn-EMI.
I was able to find one link to a L.A. Times story from Aug 8, 1993 about the end of this:
http://www.planetgarth.com/gbnews/garth049.shtml
It seems obvious to me that we can expect to "license" rather than buy music from the major labels in the future, and such licenses will explicitly prohibit the transfer of your license without prior consent, or several hundred words of similar legal babble.
TWR, Torrance, CA
Hi -
I spent c. 15 years in the Xbase world (dBASE, Clipper, FoxPro, etc), where this kind of endless "my language is better than yours" debate went on all the time. (Odd note - the more similar two languages are, such as Pascal and C, the more vociferous such debates seem to be!)
As much as I agree with most of this article, one notion that I think is left out is that in the real work-a-day world people are tied very closely to their technical skill sets. That is, most companies do not say "We wish to hire an intelligent, productive person" but rather "We need someone with at least two year's experience in Perl" or whatever.
So whereas an academic can perhaps sit back and calmly survey the language or OS landscape, those in the trenches have a great vested economic interest in promoting the products or tools that they are most experienced in.
I am not saying this is the way it should be, but clearly I think it is the way it is for many people.
TWR
The book on the recent history of the music industry "Off the Charts" has a chapter about how the CD format was largely forced onto the public in the 80's. (With many early CD releases, only a much smaller number of vinyl copies were presssed despite a great demand still for vinyl early on.) The music companies realized quite correctly that people would have to buy much of their music all over again and indeed, what started out as a slow decade ended up with huge profits.
Also, does anyone now recall the general promises from those first few years that someday CD's would be cheaper once the initial costs to set up manufacturing facilities had been recouped? I'm still waiting...
As I have posted here before, it seems clear to me that the music industry is eager to have people buy their music yet again, this time in a "secure" digital format. So I would expect to see some sort of new playing device (perhaps a chip or software) that can only play back "secure" music but not music ripped from current CD's. This would also allow them to get rid of the problem of used CD's - I'm sure whatever music you download (at least at first) will be non-transferrable.
But IMO if they actually do this, it will be a boon for fringe or independent artists. They may not get rich, but many of them will be able to pursue careers via downloaded or homemade CD's the way a variety of people are starting to today. I mean, if you have a choice of paying maybe $10 for a plain old CD that you can play anywhere or later sell to someone else, or else $15 to download some files with a bunch of restrictions on them so you can only play them on your own registered devices or whatever, it seems like a no brainer to me.
There is good independent music out there - the problem is trying to get it onto the increasingly corporatized radio playlists.
TWR, Torrance, CA
If Bush becomes president without all of the Florida votes being counted, it will be the biggest voter fraud in U.S. history!
TWR, Torrance, CA
Hi -
I am based in the L.A. area and have had Sprint PCS for a few months now. It is OK, but not great. They have had a variety of promotions - I got one where I pay $50 per month for 500 peak and 500 offpeak minutes, but I also had to buy one of their phones for $100. (Those are nationwide long distance minutes - it has been odd thinking it costs me the same to call three or three thousand miles away.)
I also had little interest in their web plan, so I did not price that, although my phone includes a mini-browser. I have since used the phone in Las Vegas, Boston, New Haven and New York City with no major problems, but of course, every now and then you hit a "blind" spot (the worst so far has been Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, perhaps because so many people are using up the available circuits), or else you can't make a call because the network is busy. A few comments, in descending order of importance, IMO:
1. Voice messages are delayed by c. 3 hours. Sprint denies this happens, but it happens almost every time. When someone leaves me a voice message, the little envelope icon does not appear on my phone for typically three hours after they left the message. Apparently nothing can be done about this - presumably it is caused by their internal setup.
2. Get your billing correct up front. There is at least one web site filled with Sprint billing horror stories, and indeed, I had two different problems with my bill caused simply by Sprint people setting up my account incorrectly. Apparently their terminal software at their PCS stores is very complex and they have to enter a variety of numeric codes which seems to lead to mistakes.
3. I don't hear my voice on my phone. Maybe all cel phones are like this, but when I talk I don't hear my voice, making the call more difficult.
4. Sprint "rounds" minutes up. Like almost all carriers that I have heard of, a 65 (or 61) second call will be billed as two minutes.
5. I use more offpeak minutes. Despite what some others have said here, in my usage, I tend to use more offpeak minutes, since I also use this phone for my U.S. long distance calls.
Good luck!
TWR, Torrance, CA
Hi all -
e s2000
A rare chance for me to post here - I went up to the Marina today (Sunday) and caught the gTLD panel discussion and the welcome reception for the new at large ICANN members put on by the Berkman Center. To my surprise (considering how much Internet activity there is in the L.A. area) I seemed to be one of the few people there without ties to an entity involved in the current ICANN agenda.
Anyway, I would encourage anyone in the L.A. area to attend this coming Wednesday Nov 15th when they will have the public comment session. It may be crowded since c. 900 "public" members have pre-registered online, but what the heck? The Marriott Marina Hotel is on the corner of Via Marina and Admiralty Way, and you can often find free parking on Washington Street and then walk over.
Official ICANN details at www.icann.org, and I think the transcripts of today's Berkman Center event are at:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/pressingissu
TWR, Torrance, CA
Hi - although I am a pedant and try to obsessively follow stylistic rules, I can foresee that the hyphen wil disappear eventually, so let's just get rid of it now and save the world a few billion keystrokes per year.
TWR
Hi - I respect Dan Bricklin, but I think he left out one major point. IMO, in the traditional third party software market, a copy "stolen" today has a greater chance to result in paid sales tomorrow than with music. (I know both the web and the open source movement are slowly changing this business model.)
1. The idea of a software "learning curve" and complex document formats tends to lock people into specific software. So it is actually better for people to use your company's software for free than to buy from your competitors.
2. Mass software sales are largely upgrade based. Even if people get today's version for free, there will be a new version out every 18 months or so. Since in the past the percentage of people with computers was always growing, a little bit of piracy here and there did not hurt as much since there were always millions of new "virgin" computer users for each new rev.
Also, Bricklin did not say this, but I think the software suite approach was largely a Microsoft innnovation to dominate the applications market. In the golden age of the late 80's I would have taken the best of breed WordPerfect, Lotus and dBASE combo over the clunkier MS bundle any day, but that is now water under the bridge.
Now, I know there are people who will say that many people download MP3's and later buy the CD and/or will buy future CD's from the same artist. However, based just on my own contact with other people, I think this is a much smaller percentage than is sometimes claimed.
But having said the above, I think the RIAA and its big business approach to music is terrible. The false saying that "artists won't create if they won't get paid" is a total crock. True artists have little concern with financial gain. Did Mozart choose music over becoming a banker or something? Did he say he would only complete the final act of "Don Giovanni" if 75% of the audience agreed to pay for it?
I know I have said this here before, but the RIAA fighting with strong arm tactics to keep CD's at $15 each will only cause free or low-cost music to flourish. Let me quickly plug the Cynic Project just because I stumbled across it via mp3.com - I ordered his CD for $8 new and got 70 minutes of great music. Why would I now go out and spend $15 at the mall for a Ricky Martin CD that has only two good songs?
Again, I think the RIAA and the big four labels largely suck, but I seem to be one of the few here that think the much vaunted (by the right wing) "invisible hand" of the marketplace will actually come back to haunt them in the long run.
TWR
Well, I am no kind of Uber Hacker, but I have followed this entire digital music story very closely. Further, I live in the L.A. area where the topic is much discussed, and I know a variety of struggling musicians. I am not pretending to be an expert (I do that during the day), but I know a little about this issue.
Just to go against the tide, I don't think there is any need to fight or boycott SDMI technology development. (Although I admire the idea.) In fact, it is possible that an effective SDMI technology may actually hasten the decline of the music oligopoly.
Here are my main thoughts:
1. The market will speak. Given the choice of today's CD's versus some kind of "secure" format with its many limitations, who would buy it? I think the music suits have underestimated how tech saavy today's consumers are becoming. Sure, they may eventually pull "classic" CD's off the market, but that will only increase used sales and copying of them. (Question - how long before an attempt is made to actually outlaw the sale of classic CD's and/or players as some kind of piracy tool?)
2. Today's CD's won't go away, at least for years. As we have learned, one CD and any modern computer can generate an almost unlimited number of virtually perfect digital copies. Even if suddenly tomorrow I wake up and no more classic CD's are sold, the 15 billion or so that are out there and the millions of players will last for years and years to come. Further, once Napster and its ilk are shut down via legal challenges, people will simply become more sophisticated and private with their digital music swapping. The year or so of Napster has provided a music swapping foundation that will continue for years to come.
3. How much new music do we really need? OK, let's say all new music by the big labels is sold on secure CD's, until a time when they can try and make you pay for music every time you listen to it without even selling CD's. Hey, I can live just fine without ever hearing Ricky Martin's next album. With c. 250,000 CD's in print I personally could live the rest of my life just discovering more of what is already out there. Even being a big music fan, a week does not go by that I don't discover something new from the past. No one likes this argument because it seems anti-creative, but it will simply be a market response. If "new" digital music has all sorts of costs and restrictions on it, "classic" digital or even analog work will seem more attractive by comparision.
4. More performers will bypass the labels. As more and more people have high speed connections, music by downloading will become commonplace. More and more performers will be able to distribute their music directly to fans, instead of giving away their first child in a standard music industry contract. Sure, there may be fewer multi-millionaires overall, but so what? Just like open source, some will always create music for the love of doing it, not just to make money and groupies. In the creative world, there is often not a correlation with talent and financial reward, contrary to the constant copyright owner claims that "Artists won't create if they won't get paid" This may be true for hacks, but not for artists in the true sense of the word. I mean, do we really need another Stephen King novel?
5. Free music will flourish. No one seems to be saying this, but clearly there will be tons of free as in beer music for download. There seems to be an idea among some that anything amatuer or
DIY is junk, and sure, much of it may be to some. But to me, there is a lot of junk in any music store these days as well. Music creation software will continue to improve, and no matter how much DIY material is posted, the "buzz" of what is good will spread among friends, much like undergroud Metallica tapes did some 20 years or so ago. People will also see that you don't have to live in New York, L.A. or Nashville to be talented and have a reasonable chance of being discovered.
So in summary, whether we like it or not, the big music industry has the money to buy U.S. legislation to suit its current goals. But that's OK. If anyone wants to buy a secure copy of Britney Spears's latest CD five years from now, that will be their choice. But there will also be a lot of lower cost choices as well that will possibly give you even better (in the sense of matching your personal tastes) music.
TWR
Hi - correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that NBC claims its "broadcast rights" to the 2004 Athens Olympics includes Internet rights. (btw the L.A. Times had a big story on how they covertly secured those broadcast rights.) Obviously the broadcast rights are currently sold on a geographic basis which makes no sense when it comes to the Internet, but as I recall this was part of the justification to exclude Internet reporters from getting press credentials at Sydney.
Further, I read that the Canadian CBC will be showing about 18 hours of live Sydney coverage a day, compared to 0 hours by NBC.
TWR
Hi -
Run, don't walk, to get the book "Peopleware" by Demarco and Lister. It outlines a number of very specific things to consider in the work environment. Below is some info on it from amazon.com:
Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed. by Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister
Paperback 2nd edition (February 1, 1999)
Dorset House; ISBN: 0932633439
"Peopleware" asserts that most software development projects fail because of failures within the team running them. This strikingly clear, direct book is written for software development-team leaders and managers, but it's filled with enough commonsense wisdom to appeal to anyone working in technology. Authors Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister include plenty of illustrative, often amusing anecdotes; their writing is light, conversational, and filled with equal portions of humor and wisdom, and there is a refreshing absence of "new age" terms and multistep programs. The advice is presented straightforwardly and ranges from simple issues of prioritization to complex ways of engendering harmony and productivity in your team. Peopleware is a short read that delivers more than many books on the subject twice its size. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
TWR
I know this old one has been posted, but just wanted to make it obvious for someone skimming the subjects. TWR
I just went to ebay, did a search for "nazi" and found 3,214 items. Why is France picking on Yahoo ? TWR
IMO, Payne will do nothing. This is the same bozo who repeatedly denied that the 1996 Olympics (i.e. the Coca-Cola Olympics) had any unusual problems. TWR
Sure, they were largely manufactured, but the Monkees had some great songs in their brief two years or so of glory. (And, as I recall from reading a biography of them, in 1967 they outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined!) TWR
(note to story submittors: if video clips aren't viewable under Linux, I can't view them to consider them for posting, so don't bother submitting those quicktime clips ;) Flame me if you want, and I don't want to seem critical of this great site overall, but to me, being a "Linux bigot" is no better than being a Windows, Macintosh, or whatever bigot. TWR
Hi - I'm sorry I can't gush over google.com because it does not respect quoted strings, making it far less useful for searching for exact phrases. For example, if I search for "I love you" on google, google takes out the "I" and just searches for "love you" This is a simple example, but it illustrates my point. altavista does not do this! TWR
On a positive note, you may recall the bitter and expensive lawsuit over Aqua's c. 1997 pop song "Barbie Girl" Mattel actually wanted the song removed from the album Aquarium. I don't know the details, but in that case Aqua and the record label won. (But I am pretty sure at one point during the case CD single copies of the song were withdrawn pending further progress of the case.) Of course, you probably don't have the perhaps millions of dollars the huge record company may have spent to win that one! Too bad Klaus Barbi died before Mattel could sue him! :) TWR
Yes, there are a lot of difficult issues here. But to me, Metallica suing Napster is only adding fuel to the fire. IMO, Metallica music is terrible, but as a huge selling act they must make literally millions every year. And we are supposed to feel sorry for them? Are they suing Napster because they are afriad they will only get five million instead of six million in royalties this year? Most of us have to work hard for our money, and are more likely to see groupers than groupies. I don't want to steal from people who need it, but every time someone from the music business says "We want to protect the rights of artists" what it really means is "We want to make sure we can keep selling CD's at the artificially inflated price of $15" I live in L.A. and know many hopeful musicians. Believe me, the music business (with some exceptions) is now just one more cog of huge multi-national conglomerates. They are looking for the next Ricky Martin or Britney Spears, or whatever other fad seems current at the time. I am willing to pay for music, but why should maybe 90% of the cost of a CD go to various middlepeople? I look forward to a day when it will be common to download music directly from musicians, rather than being limited to what CD's some executive has decided will sell 10,000 copies or more per year. Also, there is a lot of old music that can be re-released digitally since there will not be the cost of CD production and distribution to worry about. Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA
I don't know if it is ironic or fitting that Metallic and Dr. Dre both make such awful music. (In Dr. Dre's case, I use the term "music" loosely.) If people are actually using Napster to bootleg these artists, what a waste of bandwidth! I have listened to KROQ 106.7 in the L.A. area for years, and their decision to start playing a Metallica song every hour or so has largely ruined the station. (I suspect someone in the KROQ station management simply wants to increase Metallica sales. In the old days, KROQ used to play music that you could hardly hear anywhere else.) By coincidence, today is KROQ DJ Richard Blade's final day. The end of an era... Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA
Dear RMS -
First, thanks for all the great work you've done!
Anyway, I discovered GNU and the FSM back around 1990. At that time, I recall that you were _not_ targeting GNU toward Intel CPU's because you did not want to support proprietary architectures. This also applied to Windows, and at that time, I don't think there were any official releases of FSM software for Windows. (As a comment, I personally did a crude port of GNU Chess to DOS, and then someone did a wonderful unofficial port to Windows including full source.)
Yet IMO Linux has taken off precisely because it works so well on Intel, and we are starting to see more and more software targeting the Windows "space" as Internet investors might say.
Do you think it is possible to be too tied to noble principles? That is, GNU had maybe a ten year head start, yet it is Linux and to a lesser degree BSD that is really in the news all the time. Isn't it possible that if you and the FSM had had a more pragmatic outlook ten years ago that a viable Windows alternative might have come along much sooner?
Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA
( at Ashton-Tate from 1988-1991 )
For better or worse, the electronic publishing of "Riding the Bullet" (RTB) will be considered a landmark event. (Disclaimer - I was raised on "the classics" and have no intention of ever reading a Stephen King novel.) I now see in the mainstream news that the posting of various bootleg copies of this is being reported, in a general tone of shock or outrage. I think this whole thing presents some very interesting issues. According to one account I read, King will make as much as $450,000 from this one work which otherwise might only have gotten him maybe $10,000 or so. Granted, I would rather King himself get the money for his work instead of publishers or bookstores, but isn't that more money than many, many writers might make in their entire careers? King makes literally millions for each movie of his work that is made - in the grand scheme of things, is it really so terrible that a few extra copies of RTB are posted here and there? Gosh, I almost want to read it now myself just because of this controversy, so these bootleg copies might possibly get him a new "fan" To take a broader view, I think the entire greed mentality that has taken over the Internet, moving it from a technical arena into a business medium of CEO's and IPO's has made us lose sight of things. Clearly, the entertainment industry is trying to use the Internet, but at the same time trying with various lobbying and litigation efforts to preserve the same profit margins as before. I would like to suggest that the economies have now changed forever, and the business models (God, I hate that phrase!) are going to have to change as well. Why should we have to pay $15 for a CD? Sure there are promotion and production costs, but do we really need to see any more pictures of Ricky Martin or Britney Spears, attractive though they may be? We are certainly nearing a point where artists (in a very broad sense - one could claim I am actually "publishing" as I write these words) can reach their public directly. With negligible production or distribution costs of digital content, why should we try to preserve the same profit sturcture as before? I am not a cheapskate - I don't mind paying for music, for example, but I know at the present of that $15 per CD, only a much smaller amount actually goes to the musicians themselves. Anyway, I am not trying to criticize Stephen King per se - he has certainly helped modernize communication. But I would like to suggest that in the future some (many?) artists will be content to offer their work at a lower cost directly to fans. Without having to produce a physical compact disc, book, or even videotape, more and more people will be able to participate without having to spend years trying to break into the established channels. Tom Rombouts, Torrance, CA (one time would-be screenwriter who may attempt to make his own digital movie - where did my paragraph breaks go?)