Oh, I realise that. Fundamentally though, HTML is similar to BASIC in that it's an interpreted language (whether markup or programming), and thus your source code is your executable. (Note to the pedants: I know this isn't strictly true, but for byte-counting, it's a fair approximation)
And the idea is the same in both cases: Write tightly. Write elegantly. Write concisely. Do what you have to do with a minimum of fluff. It's a Good Thing.
I remember the days of Byte (when it was a real magazine), Compute!, et al. The magazines were full of code back then, pages and pages and pages of typing that you'd laboriously enter by hand, and then debug. A few of 'em had 1k programming contests monthly, which (along with typing in the loooong programs) really gave you an appreciation for style, efficiency, and elegance in coding. Atari Basic (this was on the 400/800 machines) also allowed you to enter more than one statement on a logical line (which was something like 107 or 112 characters), so they also had 'one liners' every month. They were usually cute little graphics demos, since easy graphics programming was Atari's forte'.
Now we're doing it in HTML instead of BASIC, and with a 5kB limit instead of 1kB. What goes around, comes around, eh?
"What saddens me is what they'll accomplish. Humorously enough, it's what a majority of Slashdot seems to want, the abolishment of the patent system."
First of all, I really hope that's not what the majority of/.ers want, because the patent system (when it works) is a good and necessary thing.
Secondly, I don't see this causing anything more than a well-justified revamping (read: shake-up) of the whole patent system. Somehow it's fallen apart at the seams, and too seldom does what it was put in place for: To give originators the incentive and protection to release their ideas to the world.
But even in all the hype, the entire world of computing isn't big enough to destroy the patent system. If we're lucky, maybe it's just big enough to fix it.
"It's a well known technology truism that all of the smart people don't work for you, and that one of the surest ways to success is to get more ideas and more work out of people outside your own fences."
Proof positive that Tim O'Reilly knows from whence he speaks. That's got to be one of the most effective and concise explanations of the philosophy behind open source development I've ever read.
Re:"New" and "Old" Makes no Sense
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 1
"Why artificially divide the world between "new" and "old" media?"
Because this is Jon Katz we're talking about.
Omigod...could things (gasp!) work together??!!
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 2
OK, just to grab a few bits from the beginning (i.e. the 'topic paragraphs') of JonKatz's article:
"For years, Old Media dismissed electronic competitors as frivolous and temporal. Then New Media appeared to be burying its predecessors for good. It appears both notions may have been wrong. The boundaries between new and old media are getting fuzzy, as a hybrid Middle Media emerges between the two."
and...
"Conventional wisdom says that the former will ultimately and completely replace the latter."
Who comes up with this shit? For decades now, people have been saying that print media will never dissappear. Since day one of 'the new media,' nobody except for a very few extremists has been saying that the 'old media' will dissappear. The idea is, has always been, and will continue to be that as it develops, new media technologies will coexist and integrate with the old ones. Given that, this article is pretty stupid and alarmist, not to mention long.
Disclaimer: I'm about to marry a professional ergonomicist.:-)
Take a look at the message subjects, ( "I don't leave home without my Kinesis kbd" and "I HATE the Kinesis kbd!" ) you'll find the single most important and fundamental truth of ergonomics.
We're all built differently.
There is no single solution. There is no solution that will work for more than a certain percentage of the population. Furthermore, when you start to push your limits, the percentage that a given solution works for drops drastically.
Let's apply this specifically to keyboards.
If you use a keyboard for an hour or two per week, you can probably get away with almost any keyboard on the market. If you use a keyboard an hour a day, then some general purpose keyboards won't work for you. Others will. If you use a keyboard eight hours a day (or more!), then you are pushing the limits of what your hands and wrists can sustain, and will have to find the _precise_ ergonomic solution that works best for you. In other words, you have to go out and try as many keyboards as you can to find the one that causes the least problems ***FOR YOU***!!! The guy beside you might have stronger forearm muscles, narrower shoulders, double-jointed knuckles, or a thousand other more subtle variations which would make his perfect solution a disaster for you. EXPERIMENT! Try 'em all out, and try 'em again.
However, there's another side to the coin. If you're looking to minimise pain and/or damage, there's a good chance you're spending too much time at it. With the death of mechanical typewriters and manual carriages, we're currently often spending eight solid hours typing (with the odd bit of mousing on the side--the next time you give your sweetie a backrub, pay attention to where the tightest muscles are. If they use a computer extensively, I almost guarantee it'll be on their mouse side), without moving any other parts of our bodies. This is not what we were designed to do!
Make a point of getting some flexing in during the day. Get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so. Shake your hands out after typing a long block.
If, after finding a good ergonomic solution and loosening up your muscles, you're still suffering, take a (real--weeks!) break, and see a professional.
"And im real sorry, but most turntables ARE aimed at djs. I can think of roughly 10 models off the top of my head which are aimed at djs... including the venerable Technics SL-1200-MK2, and kids are buying boatloads of them!"
Heh heh heh... Considering the SL-1200 was originally considered a 'DJ-quality playback table, the above statement is amusing. Regardless, I can list probably five times that many turntables that are aimed at audiophiles/old vinyl owners.
More to the point, "VINYL IS BEAUTIFUL!" I can agree with that. As long as people are willing to accept that a turntable could possibly be useful for or even (gasp!) aimed at a group OTHER than DJs, we can all get along.
"However, the MAJOR use of new turntables (by numbers sold) is still by DJs, whether you like them or not.:-)"</i>
<p>Got any numbers to back up that statement? I suspect that if it's true, it would mostly be because DJs tend to go through turntables. I bet that the major use of new turntables by hours used would be to listen to music. Rega and Linn are still selling a lot of tables.
Definitely not the mass market, but check out some of the high end stuff. Mark Levinson power amps go up to a list price of $35,000 (per pair--they're mono amps); similar price for Krell's top of the line. (and they're not the most expensive either!) In that context, thye'll sell a few of these things.
Hey, go wild with the style sheets. As long as you adhere to the HTML standards, it's up to the browsers to interpret them correctly. In fact, it's worth putting a disclaimer on your page to that effect: "This page rigidly adheres to all official HTML standards. If you are not seeing it properly, please complain to your browser vendor, and demand that they fix their software."
Come to think of it, everyone writing web pages could start doing that. I'm sick of web browsers that support their own silly extensions but don't adhere to the standards.
Rumour has it that Sun changed Solaris 2.7 to 7 because they wanted to beat out the upcoming NT5. It was less than a week later that MS announced NT5 would be renamed to Windows2000.
*sigh*
Also, there's lots of precedent in the free (and relatively noncommercial) world. Consider BIND that went from 4.9 to 8.
Damn it all to hell, I'm SICK OF HEARING, "but what about the DJs? What good is this table if you can't scratch on it?"
Some of you youngsters should beat it into your thick skull that the original and still primary purpose for a turntable is reproducing sound that's on records. NOT scratching, NOT sampling, and NOT back-cueing.
Furthermore, there are a lot of records out there, some well over half a century old, which are one-of-a-kind. There are historic recordings on wax cylinders (including some of Caruso) which will NEVER be copied onto CD or MP3...unless they can read those recordings in a non-destructive process. For record studios, for museums, and for archivists, this sort of technology is invaluable.
So if you STILL can't figure it out;
1) These turntables are not aimed at DJs. 2) Most turntables made aren't aimed at DJs. 3) The world of vinyl doesn't revolve around DJs. 4) Deal with it.
Maybe not $3k, but I've got a lovely little Rega Planar 3 that I picked up for a song. The rest of my system can't hold up to it, so until I get a new preamp, amp, and speakers, the turntable keeps me happy.
I'm not sure exactly who they are marketing this to."
AAARRRRRGHHHH!!!!
Do the 20 year olds out there have to TRY this hard to be clueless? Doesn't anyone under the age of 30 understand that up until a few tiny years ago, vinyl was a reproduction medium? Here's a history lesson for you: For every minute of scratching done by (talentless hack) so-called DJs, there have been hundreds of hours of music listened to on record, over the last 50+ years. Bah. Why am I even bothering to try explaining. Suffice to say, libraries and museums have been buying these things for years.
Wander into a high-end audio store (the ones that have $$$$$ vacuum tube monoblocks!) and tell 'em you're looking for a low end turntable. They'll probably point you in the direction of a Rega or the likes. (lovely tables)
Yep. Make sure you've got enough memory (or whatever it eats, besides batteries) for the camera, and leave a message with your friends (i.e. the ones you trust not to ransack your place while you're gone) saying, "gone fishin'." That's all the connectivity you need.
Kick back. Take it easy. Take lots of pictures. Do lots of weird things. Don't worry about email or (god forbid!) reading/. until you get back. "Despite beliefs to the contrary, the world will continue to turn in your absence." It'll all be here, replete with its petty squabbling and linux evangelism.
I speak from experience here. Being a fairly hardwired geek, I absolutely LOVE taking holidays where the closest I get to a computer is the ATM. (or when I'm backpacking, my whisperlite:-) The computer/'net is becoming one of those 'daily things' that, much as we may love 'em, are exactly what we take holidays to get away from.
"Wait a minute, are you saying that just because I don't like the MPAA or their policies, I have to stop liking movies? I don't like the RIAA's stance on mp3's, but I still buy CD's. Sure, I don't like that the Reaplayer G2 for linux is old, buggy, and closed, but I love Seeing Ear Theater, so until a good, Free Software, implentation is available, I'm going to use what I've got."
<p>While I can understand not wanting to lose all of the tools and functionality that these things give us, I have to wonder why the RIAA, the MPAA, and RealAudio would even consider changing their respective stances. Imagine a company hearing, "Everyone hates us, but they're buying our product in record-breaking numbers" month after month. Oh, maybe I just mentioned MS.:-)
<p>After hearing that RealPlayer was essentially a trojan horse, I deleted it off of all my systems. I don't care if I'm missing out on some streaming audio--I will not support them in any way, shape, or form. No matter how much I dislike what the RIAA has been doing, they have a point--how do the musicians make a living? The answer comes from the musicians themselves, many of who are trying to get out from under the yoke of the recording industry and become true independents. As a result, I find that ~80% of the music I buy is from independent artists. (often as not, from the musicians themselves) My support of the RIAA is minimal. Movies? Tougher call, because the MPAA really does have pretty much a monopoly on the US movie industry (and by extension, about 90% of Canada as well:-( ). Ah well, I can live without 99% of the movies that come out, and if I really want to see something, I might take some flyers about the MPAA down to the theatre, and hand them out to the people in line.
<p>Bottom line: What are we doing to convince the industries to change their ways?
<p>As an aside, you said, <I>"Also, be careful of characterizing Slashdot as a whole. This site is filled individuals that have widely varying points of view."</i> True enough, but we're also a community, and one of the defining traits of a community is a commonality of thought. (hopefully with enough leeway for dissention, conflict, and debate) We've pretty much shown that we (as a community) are against the MPAA's actions, so let's at least not change our community's allegiances from day to day.
"But trying to boycott the MPAA is fighting a lost cause, unless a _lot_ of people are willing to make what is effectively a major sacrifice, even if it doesn't sound like it."
While I'm not sure that I disagree with you, you make it sound like a lost cause. Maybe with some serious grassroots drum-banging we _could_ get enough people to make such a sacrifice. Did you read C. Scott Anian's article in Salon last week? The guy is standing on Manhattan street corners handing out flyers to people in the street. There's someone who truly believes, and is trying to change things!
"There is a limit to what popular action can accomplish in the face of monopolies or deeply entrenched industry-wide practices."
I'd say there's a limit to what popular action can accomplish at a given level of discomfort. Popular action was behind the end of segregation in the US, the independence of India, and so forth. HOWEVER, tempting as it may be, this issue isn't comparable to those ones, and the benefits of winning this battle aren't nearly enough to justify getting people up in arms, rioting in the streets, etc. It just ain't gonna happen.
But the point still remains: Why bother with moral outrage at all, if you're not going to try to do something about it? Maybe a boycott of the MPAA isn't the right answer (although I know of some people who have sworn off supporting them at all, at _least_ until this issue is resolved), but I can't see how enthusiastically (and apparently blindly--I have a strong suspicion that the people most hyped about Star Wars are the ones who weren't old enough to remember it the first time 'round, but that's another story) buying into the hype surrounding the next LucasBlockbuster(tm) is anything but the wrong answer.
So here's a possible answer, at the end of all of this rambling. Maybe we (as/., as/.ers) should refuse to do articles about the Next Big MPAA project. In other words, refuse to give their hype more support, because hype breeds tickets sales, money, and a reason for the industry to not change their behaviour.
Is it just me, or did this message show up only a few days after the MPAA injunction, which of course was not long after the search and seizure in Norway, and various other things.
Maybe LucasArts has nothing to do with the MPAA, in which case we can all get excited about the biggest bit of media hype to come along since, well since episode I probably. However, I doubt it.
Seriously. How shallow can 'we' be to get all up in arms over the MPAA (or the RIAA, or RealTrojan, or Spamazon Books, or...) one day, and the next to start slathering over the latest MPAA-affiliated movie (or RIAA-backed recording, or an interview with Linus available in RealAudio, or some book "buy it at Amazon!", or...)? This is nothing but gut-level anti-establishment behaviour, glued onto full blown opportunism and/or selfishness.
Go ahead and moderate me down, but at least when I take a moral stand against something, I don't have to look at a calendar to see if it's a 'friend' or 'enemy' day. If you're going to stand up for what you believe in, stand _all_ the goddamn way up!
Either that, or be happy with whatever gets tossed your way, because you don't deserve a voice.
Hell, it's three days later, probably no one's still reading, but I can't resist another comment. This has been one interesting bit of discussion!
<p><i>"It's true, the middle class is gradually thinning out, the wage gap between rich and poor is widening, and things are starting to become slightly tense here and there... But don't underestimate the power of greed and desire. The poorer North American citizen (who is not really poor in comparison to the rest of the world, don't ever forget that) will, 95% of the time, it seems, stick to his job, buy lottery tickets, anything to try and achieve the material opulence that commercials tell us is desireable."</i>
<p>The crucial point is that historically as the middle class gets smaller (they split into richer or poorer), the lower class gets poorer. By the time the middle class is gone, the lower class is _really_ lower class, usually subsistence level or below. That's when revolution starts.
Slashdot Mirror
Hm. Not the Atari ones, I think. The Atari physical line size was forty characters, and a logical line was slightly less than three lines.
Or am I misremembering?
Time to dust off (and restore!) the old Atari 400, I think.
Oh, I realise that. Fundamentally though, HTML is similar to BASIC in that it's an interpreted language (whether markup or programming), and thus your source code is your executable. (Note to the pedants: I know this isn't strictly true, but for byte-counting, it's a fair approximation)
And the idea is the same in both cases: Write tightly. Write elegantly. Write concisely. Do what you have to do with a minimum of fluff. It's a Good Thing.
Ah, this sort of thing takes me back.
I remember the days of Byte (when it was a real magazine), Compute!, et al. The magazines were full of code back then, pages and pages and pages of typing that you'd laboriously enter by hand, and then debug. A few of 'em had 1k programming contests monthly, which (along with typing in the loooong programs) really gave you an appreciation for style, efficiency, and elegance in coding. Atari Basic (this was on the 400/800 machines) also allowed you to enter more than one statement on a logical line (which was something like 107 or 112 characters), so they also had 'one liners' every month. They were usually cute little graphics demos, since easy graphics programming was Atari's forte'.
Now we're doing it in HTML instead of BASIC, and with a 5kB limit instead of 1kB. What goes around, comes around, eh?
Cool stuff.
"What saddens me is what they'll accomplish. Humorously enough, it's what a majority of Slashdot seems to want, the abolishment of the patent system."
First of all, I really hope that's not what the majority of /.ers want, because the patent system (when it works) is a good and necessary thing.
Secondly, I don't see this causing anything more than a well-justified revamping (read: shake-up) of the whole patent system. Somehow it's fallen apart at the seams, and too seldom does what it was put in place for: To give originators the incentive and protection to release their ideas to the world.
But even in all the hype, the entire world of computing isn't big enough to destroy the patent system. If we're lucky, maybe it's just big enough to fix it.
Did anyone else catch this?
"It's a well known technology truism that all of the smart people don't work for you, and that one of the surest ways to success is to get more ideas and more work out of people outside your own fences."
Proof positive that Tim O'Reilly knows from whence he speaks. That's got to be one of the most effective and concise explanations of the philosophy behind open source development I've ever read.
"Why artificially divide the world between "new" and "old" media?"
Because this is Jon Katz we're talking about.
OK, just to grab a few bits from the beginning (i.e. the 'topic paragraphs') of JonKatz's article:
"For years, Old Media dismissed electronic competitors as frivolous and temporal. Then New Media appeared to be burying its predecessors for good. It appears both notions may have been wrong. The boundaries between new and old media are getting fuzzy, as a hybrid Middle Media emerges between the two."
and...
"Conventional wisdom says that the former will ultimately and completely replace the latter."
Who comes up with this shit? For decades now, people have been saying that print media will never dissappear. Since day one of 'the new media,' nobody except for a very few extremists has been saying that the 'old media' will dissappear. The idea is, has always been, and will continue to be that as it develops, new media technologies will coexist and integrate with the old ones. Given that, this article is pretty stupid and alarmist, not to mention long.
Oh wait--I forgot the source. Nevermind.
Clearly you just don't understand the Black Pint.
Disclaimer: I'm about to marry a professional ergonomicist. :-)
Take a look at the message subjects, ( "I don't leave home without my Kinesis kbd" and "I HATE the Kinesis kbd!" ) you'll find the single most important and fundamental truth of ergonomics.
We're all built differently.
There is no single solution. There is no solution that will work for more than a certain percentage of the population. Furthermore, when you start to push your limits, the percentage that a given solution works for drops drastically.
Let's apply this specifically to keyboards.
If you use a keyboard for an hour or two per week, you can probably get away with almost any keyboard on the market. If you use a keyboard an hour a day, then some general purpose keyboards won't work for you. Others will. If you use a keyboard eight hours a day (or more!), then you are pushing the limits of what your hands and wrists can sustain, and will have to find the _precise_ ergonomic solution that works best for you. In other words, you have to go out and try as many keyboards as you can to find the one that causes the least problems ***FOR YOU***!!! The guy beside you might have stronger forearm muscles, narrower shoulders, double-jointed knuckles, or a thousand other more subtle variations which would make his perfect solution a disaster for you. EXPERIMENT! Try 'em all out, and try 'em again.
However, there's another side to the coin. If you're looking to minimise pain and/or damage, there's a good chance you're spending too much time at it. With the death of mechanical typewriters and manual carriages, we're currently often spending eight solid hours typing (with the odd bit of mousing on the side--the next time you give your sweetie a backrub, pay attention to where the tightest muscles are. If they use a computer extensively, I almost guarantee it'll be on their mouse side), without moving any other parts of our bodies. This is not what we were designed to do!
Make a point of getting some flexing in during the day. Get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so. Shake your hands out after typing a long block.
If, after finding a good ergonomic solution and loosening up your muscles, you're still suffering, take a (real--weeks!) break, and see a professional.
"And im real sorry, but most turntables ARE aimed at djs. I can think of roughly 10 models off the top of my head which are aimed at djs... including the venerable Technics SL-1200-MK2, and kids are buying boatloads of them!"
Heh heh heh... Considering the SL-1200 was originally considered a 'DJ-quality playback table, the above statement is amusing. Regardless, I can list probably five times that many turntables that are aimed at audiophiles/old vinyl owners.
More to the point, "VINYL IS BEAUTIFUL!" I can agree with that. As long as people are willing to accept that a turntable could possibly be useful for or even (gasp!) aimed at a group OTHER than DJs, we can all get along.
"However, the MAJOR use of new turntables (by numbers sold) is still by DJs, whether you like them or not. :-)"</i>
<p>Got any numbers to back up that statement? I suspect that if it's true, it would mostly be because DJs tend to go through turntables. I bet that the major use of new turntables by hours used would be to listen to music. Rega and Linn are still selling a lot of tables.
Definitely not the mass market, but check out some of the high end stuff. Mark Levinson power amps go up to a list price of $35,000 (per pair--they're mono amps); similar price for Krell's top of the line. (and they're not the most expensive either!)
In that context, thye'll sell a few of these things.
Hey, go wild with the style sheets. As long as you adhere to the HTML standards, it's up to the browsers to interpret them correctly. In fact, it's worth putting a disclaimer on your page to that effect: "This page rigidly adheres to all official HTML standards. If you are not seeing it properly, please complain to your browser vendor, and demand that they fix their software."
Come to think of it, everyone writing web pages could start doing that. I'm sick of web browsers that support their own silly extensions but don't adhere to the standards.
First, a note on Solaris.
Rumour has it that Sun changed Solaris 2.7 to 7 because they wanted to beat out the upcoming NT5.
It was less than a week later that MS announced NT5 would be renamed to Windows2000.
*sigh*
Also, there's lots of precedent in the free (and relatively noncommercial) world. Consider BIND that went from 4.9 to 8.
Damn it all to hell, I'm SICK OF HEARING, "but what about the DJs? What good is this table if you can't scratch on it?"
Some of you youngsters should beat it into your thick skull that the original and still primary purpose for a turntable is reproducing sound that's on records. NOT scratching, NOT sampling, and NOT back-cueing.
Furthermore, there are a lot of records out there, some well over half a century old, which are one-of-a-kind. There are historic recordings on wax cylinders (including some of Caruso) which will NEVER be copied onto CD or MP3...unless they can read those recordings in a non-destructive process. For record studios, for museums, and for archivists, this sort of technology is invaluable.
So if you STILL can't figure it out;
1) These turntables are not aimed at DJs.
2) Most turntables made aren't aimed at DJs.
3) The world of vinyl doesn't revolve around DJs.
4) Deal with it.
Maybe not $3k, but I've got a lovely little Rega Planar 3 that I picked up for a song. The rest of my system can't hold up to it, so until I get a new preamp, amp, and speakers, the turntable keeps me happy.
I'm not sure exactly who they are marketing this to."
AAARRRRRGHHHH!!!!
Do the 20 year olds out there have to TRY this hard to be clueless? Doesn't anyone under the age of 30 understand that up until a few tiny years ago, vinyl was a reproduction medium? Here's a history lesson for you: For every minute of scratching done by (talentless hack) so-called DJs, there have been hundreds of hours of music listened to on record, over the last 50+ years. Bah. Why am I even bothering to try explaining. Suffice to say, libraries and museums have been buying these things for years.
Wander into a high-end audio store (the ones that have $$$$$ vacuum tube monoblocks!) and tell 'em you're looking for a low end turntable. They'll probably point you in the direction of a Rega or the likes. (lovely tables)
Yep. Make sure you've got enough memory (or whatever it eats, besides batteries) for the camera, and leave a message with your friends (i.e. the ones you trust not to ransack your place while you're gone) saying, "gone fishin'."
/. until you get back. "Despite beliefs to the contrary, the world will continue to turn in your absence." It'll all be here, replete with its petty squabbling and linux evangelism.
:-) The computer/'net is becoming one of those 'daily things' that, much as we may love 'em, are exactly what we take holidays to get away from.
That's all the connectivity you need.
Kick back. Take it easy. Take lots of pictures. Do lots of weird things. Don't worry about email or (god forbid!) reading
I speak from experience here. Being a fairly hardwired geek, I absolutely LOVE taking holidays where the closest I get to a computer is the ATM. (or when I'm backpacking, my whisperlite
"Wait a minute, are you saying that just because I don't like the MPAA or their policies, I have to stop liking movies? I don't like the RIAA's stance on mp3's, but I still buy CD's. Sure, I don't like that the Reaplayer G2 for linux is old, buggy, and closed, but I love Seeing Ear Theater, so until a good, Free Software, implentation is available, I'm going to use what I've got."
:-)
:-( ). Ah well, I can live without 99% of the movies that come out, and if I really want to see something, I might take some flyers about the MPAA down to the theatre, and hand them out to the people in line.
<p>While I can understand not wanting to lose all of the tools and functionality that these things give us, I have to wonder why the RIAA, the MPAA, and RealAudio would even consider changing their respective stances. Imagine a company hearing, "Everyone hates us, but they're buying our product in record-breaking numbers" month after month. Oh, maybe I just mentioned MS.
<p>After hearing that RealPlayer was essentially a trojan horse, I deleted it off of all my systems. I don't care if I'm missing out on some streaming audio--I will not support them in any way, shape, or form. No matter how much I dislike what the RIAA has been doing, they have a point--how do the musicians make a living? The answer comes from the musicians themselves, many of who are trying to get out from under the yoke of the recording industry and become true independents. As a result, I find that ~80% of the music I buy is from independent artists. (often as not, from the musicians themselves) My support of the RIAA is minimal. Movies? Tougher call, because the MPAA really does have pretty much a monopoly on the US movie industry (and by extension, about 90% of Canada as well
<p>Bottom line: What are we doing to convince the industries to change their ways?
<p>As an aside, you said, <I>"Also, be careful of characterizing Slashdot as a whole. This site is filled individuals that have widely varying points of view."</i> True enough, but we're also a community, and one of the defining traits of a community is a commonality of thought. (hopefully with enough leeway for dissention, conflict, and debate) We've pretty much shown that we (as a community) are against the MPAA's actions, so let's at least not change our community's allegiances from day to day.
Just to pick some points out of order...
"But trying to boycott the MPAA is fighting a lost cause, unless a _lot_ of people are willing to make what is effectively a major sacrifice, even if it doesn't sound like it."
While I'm not sure that I disagree with you, you make it sound like a lost cause. Maybe with some serious grassroots drum-banging we _could_ get enough people to make such a sacrifice. Did you read C. Scott Anian's article in Salon last week? The guy is standing on Manhattan street corners handing out flyers to people in the street. There's someone who truly believes, and is trying to change things!
"There is a limit to what popular action can accomplish in the face of monopolies or deeply entrenched industry-wide practices."
I'd say there's a limit to what popular action can accomplish at a given level of discomfort. Popular action was behind the end of segregation in the US, the independence of India, and so forth. HOWEVER, tempting as it may be, this issue isn't comparable to those ones, and the benefits of winning this battle aren't nearly enough to justify getting people up in arms, rioting in the streets, etc. It just ain't gonna happen.
But the point still remains: Why bother with moral outrage at all, if you're not going to try to do something about it? Maybe a boycott of the MPAA isn't the right answer (although I know of some people who have sworn off supporting them at all, at _least_ until this issue is resolved), but I can't see how enthusiastically (and apparently blindly--I have a strong suspicion that the people most hyped about Star Wars are the ones who weren't old enough to remember it the first time 'round, but that's another story) buying into the hype surrounding the next LucasBlockbuster(tm) is anything but the wrong answer.
So here's a possible answer, at the end of all of this rambling. Maybe we (as /., as /.ers) should refuse to do articles about the Next Big MPAA project. In other words, refuse to give their hype more support, because hype breeds tickets sales, money, and a reason for the industry to not change their behaviour.
Blah blah blah.
Note that port 25 on valinux.com refuses all connections.
Is it just me, or did this message show up only a few days after the MPAA injunction, which of course was not long after the search and seizure in Norway, and various other things.
Maybe LucasArts has nothing to do with the MPAA, in which case we can all get excited about the biggest bit of media hype to come along since, well since episode I probably. However, I doubt it.
Seriously. How shallow can 'we' be to get all up in arms over the MPAA (or the RIAA, or RealTrojan, or Spamazon Books, or...) one day, and the next to start slathering over the latest MPAA-affiliated movie (or RIAA-backed recording, or an interview with Linus available in RealAudio, or some book "buy it at Amazon!", or...)? This is nothing but gut-level anti-establishment behaviour, glued onto full blown opportunism and/or selfishness.
Go ahead and moderate me down, but at least when I take a moral stand against something, I don't have to look at a calendar to see if it's a 'friend' or 'enemy' day. If you're going to stand up for what you believe in, stand _all_ the goddamn way up!
Either that, or be happy with whatever gets tossed your way, because you don't deserve a voice.
C
(feeling bitter and disgusted tonight)
Hell, it's three days later, probably no one's still reading, but I can't resist another comment. This has been one interesting bit of discussion!
<p><i>"It's true, the middle class is gradually thinning out, the wage gap between rich and poor is widening, and things are starting to become slightly tense here and there... But don't underestimate the power of greed and desire. The poorer North American citizen (who is not really poor in comparison to the rest of the world, don't ever forget that) will, 95% of the time, it seems, stick to his job, buy lottery tickets, anything to try and achieve the material opulence that commercials tell us is desireable."</i>
<p>The crucial point is that historically as the middle class gets smaller (they split into richer or poorer), the lower class gets poorer. By the time the middle class is gone, the lower class is _really_ lower class, usually subsistence level or below. That's when revolution starts.
The "gross abuses of capitalism" could be better explained by someone like, oh, Jon Johansen.
Remember him? Arrested? Detained? Property seized? All at the behest of the movie industry in a foreign country?