Here's another great thread on the dell website about usb HDTV ready TV cards for dell laptops. It's a very long thread. Make sure to go to the rest of the discussion on later pages.
My conclusions: My basic conclusions (after researching a few websites and user forums). USB 2 TV cards are pretty commonplace, although there are only one or two HDTV cards that are USB-based. Linux supports a lot of TV cards, although it's iffier for USB devices (and nonexistent for USB/HDTV devices). Even with a TV card, support can be iffy, so you better have access to good tech support (or buy it locally if you want to swap it out). Laptops can get HDTV, but it uses a lot of CPU and memory.
I want to upgrade, but I can't decide whether to do it to laptop or desktop. My main requirement is for it to accomodate video editing and that it be totally linux friendly. If it's theoretically possible to add a USB hard drive and a TV capture card, then the the main reason for staying with a laptop is no matter one of form factor but of required computing power.
The real question is whether I really need for my laptop/PC to have video capture/tuning capability. A computer is a computer, not a TV. It would be helpful to convert VHS to AVI's or to watch HDTV, but would it be worth the trouble to get everything configured? This is a case where merely because a laptop can receive HDTV signals doesn't imply that you should buy/make it.
good brief how to on dvd creation http://desktopvideo.about.com/cs/vcddvdc reation/ht/vhsdvdcnvt.htm
http://tuxmobil.org/mobile_tv.html small site about linux laptop tv solutions
http://www.tv-cards.com/reviews.php reviews of TV cards (with OS support)
http://www.usbhdtv.com/specification_01.html
USB HDTV card (no linux support)
http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/Graphics_a nd _Sound/USB_Video_Capture.htm a selling site
ok, just a few things. You didn't indicate sw raid or hw raid, so I assume you're talking about sw raid.
In a nutshell, use the easiest configuration you can get away with. You don't want to spend time troubleshooting RAID stuff. Buy identical drives and consider making the whole drive as a partition.
I had major problems with maintaining software raid when I tried to do software raid on a 3 hard drive system. Actually I used raid 1(I think) for the/boot and raid 5 for/.
Putting/boot on RAID was a majorly bad idea. First, because if the array fails, you're basically in sad shape. (two other problems I had was the third hd was from a separate controller card, and the BIOS didn't allow booting from a controller card).
Second, on my gentoo, grub was doing really funny things. i spent way too much time trying to get grub or lilo to boot without the use of my array. to work. Looking back, it seems like a big bother.
Instead, I put root on a unraided drive, and did RAId-1 for the two remaining drives, using one partition for the entire hard drive./hda1/boot 100mb/dev/hda2 1.5 gigs, swap/dev/hda3 / the rest dev/hde1/dev/hdg1 =/dev/md1 =/home RAID1 (the whole 60 gig drive)
My critical needs is having protection of my/home data (I put my mysql db on it). I have less of a need to keep my system up 24x7, but I'm probably going to use a 2nd system (as my personal working machine for everyday use) which has an rsync copy of my/home data and configured similarly (web server, etc). That way, if the system itself goes down, I could just use the 2nd system as my primary system and rely on my rsync of/home to restore my data. (Also, btw, I backup my most critical data on my unraided / directory on my primary machine.
Like I said, I'm more worried about my/home user data, not so much worried about configurations. Come to think of it, maybe I should rsync/backup the/etc directory too.
dog photos and such are cool bits of ephemera
on
Meet Joe Blog
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· Score: 1
When looking over my own blog archives, I find myself wishing I had talked a little less about the latest slashdot article on security and a little more about my life, my friends and my daily concerns. We really shouldn't knock people who publish their own ephemera. Although I'm a news/technology junkie, I have to admit having a fondness for people who just talk about their lives.
blogs not all they're cracked up to be
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Meet Joe Blog
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· Score: 4, Insightful
As someone who writes for 7+ blogs, I certainly don't want to sound as if I'm putting down the trend of self-publishing. But it's hard for people who make little or nothing from blogging to have the time or resources to deliver good reliable news and analysis over a period of time. True, adsense/google ads provide some sort of revenue for A-list bloggers, but that's more the exception rather than the rule. Full time writers may have corporate responsibilities/biases, but at least they have more time to do what they love doing.
One heartening trend is that big media is now adding blogs to their websites (and are presumably paying these writers to blog). It would be nice if employers could recognize the value of blogging so that blogging wouldn't have to be done so surreptitiously.
The biggest worry I have is that the Time's and New York Times will start casting off full time journalists and switch to the slashdot/ALD format that basically poaches off the content from other publications.
To repeat: bloggers do good important work. But at some point writers need resources and infrastructure and collaborators (and a paycheck) to do a good job consistently.
during my unemployed in 2001-2 I quickly discovered (and wrote about) the problems with these boards.
Here's the trick I learned. Don't bother applying to any of the jobs on monster! But be sure to put a profile on monster/yahoo with lots of keywords. HR and contractors are not interested in receiving lots of letters and resumes from people who are trying to fit their skills into a job description. More likely, they want to punch in a few keywords and then email 5 or so people who they think have that skill (and other things).
As far as the recommendation about whether to update your monster profile every day, that was true for about a year, and then afterwards the major job boards fixed that way to game the system.
I know any money is helpful, but consider that the overwhelming majority of musicians are not signed and have no hope of securing a record deal. And that iTunes (if they can get signed on), only compensates them about 11% or so.
Here's a better idea. Look at all those musicians who let you download music legally and dash them an email, saying I want to give the money to you as a way of saying thanks for being so generous and talented.
to further use the porn example, the lowering of price of online porn has NOT resulted in a decrease in porn quality. I realize this is a subjective opinion, but I think the same effect will apply to many kinds of content, not just porn.
Therefore, when I say, wait until the price point becomes chump change, I am not implying that reduction in price implies a reduction in content standards. It may not even imply a reduction in compensation for creators. (It really is amazing how many things we can learn about content just by looking at the porn issue).
Here's an essay about general issues of adult entertainment and content pleasure manifesto .
to further use the porn example, the lowering of price of online porn has NOT resulted in a decrease in porn quality. I realize this is a subjective opinion, but I think the same effect will apply to many kinds of content, not just porn.
Therefore, when I say, wait until the price point becomes chump change, I am not implying that reduction in price implies a reduction in content standards. It may not even imply a reduction in compensation for creators. (It really is amazing how many things we can learn about content just by looking at the porn issue).
btw, an essay I wrote about online types of adult entertainment: Pleasure Manifesto (work safe).
This is an exceptionally fine piece, and I greatly enjoyed reading it.
Some impressions:
Although I'm happy that Mr. Doctorow has made a profit off his creative commons releases, I have a feeling that his case is an exception rather than the rule, and that once the the novelty value of creative commons content released by commercial publishers die down fewer people will be inclined to try first, buy later. (That is not worse than the status quo however). As pda's and ereaders become more user friendly, the temptation not to buy the hard copy will become irresistable for creative commons works.
I advocate a tip-based model of artistic compensation http://www.geocities.com/bigbadlinux/. Perhaps voluntary "pay-what-you-want" scenario is unrealistic, but compensation becomes viable when the pricepoint is low enough to seem insignificant.
A few years ago, memberships to porn sites cost 30-50$ a month; nowadays even most of them offer 1 day or 1 week memberships for gigabytes of movies. One could use emule to get these things, but when the price point starts resembling chump change, that's when people start voluntarily paying for online content.
If you look at this audio book site, for example http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp?g g=1&mg=2 downloading mp3 audios for entire novels cost only about $5. That's close to the level of chump change.
Right now POD books easily sell for $10-12, but 100% virtual content could probably go for $2-3. Content needs to be priced in a way that appears to be chump change for the buyer/reader but gains enough readership for chump change to add up to something substantial. Fortunately, the existence of weblogs like www.maudnewton.com and viral marketing make it easier to get your content out there.
I noticed that my own major (liberal arts) is listed pretty down there. That reveals the problem with these kinds of surveys in general.
Long term, Liberal arts majors consistently outperform other majors in salary, though certainly not right after college.
Liberal artsy majors are inclined to seek more professional training later on or in graduate school. It's like saying that because people who skip college to be executive secretaries have more earning potential than a person who decided to study business at Harvard.
Engineering degrees are helpful for getting one job or one type of job. And if the market changes? Suddenly the engineer has to massively retrain himself or herself or go into management or persuade another techhead that skills from petroleum engineering are not too different from civil engineering.
The liberal artsy major obtains more general skills, but has more versatility and less of a problem changing careers. Also, a recent grad laid off from a high-paying tech job has higher (and maybe more unrealistic) expectations about what salary is the minimum necessary. Liberal arts majors, on the other hand, start on the low end, and go up.
The really interesting study I'd like to see is median salary by college grads at the age of 30, 40 and 50. I think I read somewhere that the most common career for English majors at the age of 40+ is upper management/business executive work.
I don't oppose piracy or file sharing technologies. But cracking down on piracy results in listeners more eager to look for music through other avenues. . 8 months ago I've listened to nothing but music that are legal to download and either free or practically free. I haven't been disappointed. For those looking for new music, check dmusic.com, irate radio, iuma, etc.
Piracy allows people to seek the same old musical shit instead of actually looking for cool music. Piracy is for people too lazy to look for cool music.
who cares? they're both proprietary formats
on
No WMA for HP iPod
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Maybe I'm a fanatic about these things but...
What's wrong with mp3's/oggs? The premise on which iTunes is based (that here is a method that allows you to download legally) is wrong; in fact, lots of musicians are putting mp3's out there for free. Look at dmusic.com , IUMA, irate radio and netlabels . Some of the stuff is eclectic, experimental, not mass market, but it's not that far off.
I stopped listening to commercial music 6 months ago (although I still donate to artists with tipjar links). For "open content" listeners like me, all this talk of proprietary locked content only encourages musicians to put their content in locked formats. That is bad for everyone.
I'm speaking only of creative content, but I believe the a voluntary compensation method (i.e., tipping) is the only model that will compensate creative artists (without worrying about the problems of piracy, drm, etc).
I've cited this here already several times, but I wrote an essay for sharethemusicday.com that describes why a voluntary compensation model would work.
So are you recommending to use software RAID as your primary/only backup method?
And if software RAID fails? People who know anything about RAID say that it should never be relied upon as a primary backup method. You're still going to have to backup somewhere to another media/hd.
Disagree (at least for docs). Instead of.doc formats, students can submit/email things in.rtf formats. I think you overestimate the migration costs and inconveniences here. It's not as though MS Office won't be around on certain desktops or OpenOffice can't convert legacy MS Office docs with their filters.
Another question is whether the "hostility" you describe is worth the extra licensing costs that universities and school districts end up having to pay. These costs are not trivial. Another advocacy letter here reminds us that it is the MS Word format, not the OO format, that it causing aggravation and increased support costs.
This is obviously good news, but the more important question is what is happening at educational institutions like University of Texas? They receive discounted pricing on MS Office products (as do students), so universities tend to be agnostic about which office applications to use for school assignments.
A more dramatic and interesting revelation would be if University of Texas at Austin declared a university-wide preference for nonproprietary file standards for school assignments. Up until now, their agnosticism on the proprietary/nonproprietary standard issue (because of educational discounts and the available of MS Office support) have implicitly propped up the market for MS Office. A UT graduate who uses MS Office for four years is more likely to prefer it at the office or at home later on.
I would like to see more evidence that public educational institutions are shifting to software with more open standards.
a friend of mine has solved the risk problem like this:
buy the CD, either new or discounted. Make a personal copy (legally entitled to do this). Sell the original CD on amazon/half.com for a discounted rate. (again, a legal transaction).
Of course, we're not longer talking about insurance here; my friend does this whether the CD is good or bad.
The effect of people reselling CD's is to apply downward pressure on the sticker price. But there is another more profound impact. It no longer makes sense for music companies to produce original music (if it could be resold so easily). It makes more sense for a music company to just take other people's content produced independently or elsewhere and then repackage it or make it available for a subscription fee.
If anything,this scenario illustrates that the risks that music companies are taking to cultivate and promote an artist's talents are too high to be worth taking. This is shifting more of the risk on the individual performer. Is that good?
I don't mean to imply that irate radio is the only way to expose users to new music. Music blogs are a good way, as well as sites like godsofmusic . Also, music burning groups (I participated in a recent CD Burn event with 5 friends). And dark networks (private networks of file sharers).
This is interesting analysis, and the idea of double moral hazard, insurance, etc is a good way of looking at the sociological problem.
Actually, though, the article's writer doesn't seem to be aware that having an album streamed entirely over the net is becoming more the norm with every passing day. With that capability, consumers can make the purchasing decision without assuming much risk.
The bigger problems seems to be that the consumer doesn't want to spend the time previewing so many songs. In other words, the "mental transaction costs" outweigh the supposed benefits of finding new stuff.
I'm not saying that clearchannel radio is a good way to introduce consumers to new music. But it is an example of how consumers can have exposure to music without needing to expend mental transactions.
There needs to be a painless way to learn about and listen to new music. One such, solution, iRATE radio continuously downloads mp3's and lets users choose which one to keep and adapts to user preferences (see my interview with the creator Anthony Jones ).
I've already written a substantial essay advocating a voluntary compensation model for music (see sharethemusicday . ) In addition to tipping, content aggregators like Universal can provide value by simplifying the task of managing music files, improving the download client and allowing users to create "share lists" that are easily accessible. I would gladly pay for that.
If a content aggregator company could create a download client that simplified file management, allowing sharing of music lists and user recommendations and allowed for a tip jar, then everybody would be interested. Musicians could pay a small fee for music hosting (and maybe fan support like forums, web hosting, etc). They would do it if tipping became perceived as a reliable revenue source. Users could pay for the download client (plus access to updates). This kind of service would make money, satisfy fans who want unlimited downloads and satisfy musicians who want tips.
The voucher proposal is much more radical. The problem lies in who makes the decision to fund individual artists. If it is a government board of some sort, then you have the problem of government entanglement (as well as the requisite backlash from know-nothing conservatives). Interestingly, this kind of idea might swing in Europe, which already provides public support for artists. But in USA, this sort of idea is inconceivable for political reasons (especially if these donations were to be a kind of tax writeoff).
If the grantor is the individual donor, then how does the individual decide the "most worthy" candidate for these types of awards? Often the taste of the wealthy donor just won't be sophisticated enough to ensure that the right kinds of talent is identified.
The alleged benefit behind such a proposal is to eliminate economic transactional costs and to encourage works to go into the public domain. But as far as I see, it doesn't identify or support talent any better than the status quo. Yes, it would be a little prestigious to say that you've won such a grant. But it really doesn't help solve the problem of making the artist's works visible to the reader/spectator/surfer.
As much as I hate the copyright system, I don't see it as really hurting artists from the standpoint of compensation. (Yes, it hurts the right of free expression, as well as allowing corporations to prevent redistribution of creative works. But these things don't really hurt the artist immediately). A large number of content is going towards being free or legally redistributable anyway. I don't see the increased amount of public artwork as being a really big win here.
Here's a better idea (and one in which I propose in my essay cited above). Every artist seeking donations should put a link to paypal or Amazon donation system. (Helpful info for artists: Given current fees structures, it appears that if the donation is less than $5, tipping through Amazon has the lowest transaction fees. Over $5, it's probably cheaper to tip through paypal).
Having a tipjar up is not really obtrusive, doesn't make the artist sound as if he/she's begging and allows the artist to receive an enormous percentage of the cut. But the plain fact is that an overwhelming majority of artistic people just never do so (except webloggers; a large number of webloggers have tipjars; go figure). This sort of plan is far simpler and more direct than some elaborate scheme like this. (And yes, it suffers from the problem of the patron with awful taste and deep pockets).
Our society has a big problem with compensating its creative people. I have seen oodles of talented people just suffering through abject poverty without reasonable hope of support. This is an interesting plan and well worth thinking about. But it requires far too much buyin from politicians. Tipjars are a much more obvious solution.
The main problem I see with the essay is that the writer uses the proposal as a way to mend the copyright problem. That for unsigned musicians and artists is a relatively minor issue. Proposals should be directed instead towards how to encourage individual artists to seek donations from web traffic and how to make it easier for Joe Average to find out about unknown artists. Take the problem of mp3's. A good 90-95% of mp3's out there are freely and legally available by artists you've never heard of. How does the average citizen learn about great works? The problem is not technology or even the law but the discovery process itself. What media outlets provide trustworthy insights about what music is worth listening to? As Tim O'Reilly observed, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."
If most of the downloaded music is RIAA music, then I say the sooner RIAA music is deleted, the better.
Music that cannot be shared is not worth listening to anyway. See my extensive essay share the music .
pacifica radio is great!
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Who Needs Radio?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, it's a bit unfair to tout noncommercial radio on this discussion.
But Pacifica Radio is full of fresh surprising viewpoints, and my local Houston affiliate kpft.org actually plays great music. It gives you a sense of how fun dj's used to be.
This announcement is excellent news, but as I do more coding, html editors seem less important than css editors.
Does anyone know good style editors for linux?
I've been using Top Style on Windows as well as Mozilla plugins like editcss. (I think Morphon has a (free) css editor, but I can't remember how well it's integrated into its xml editor.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's another great thread on the dell website about usb HDTV ready TV cards for dell laptops. It's a very long thread. Make sure to go to the rest of the discussion on later pages.
My post on the subject .
c reation/ht /vhsdvdcnvt.htm
a nd _Sound/USB_Video_Capture.htm
My conclusions: My basic conclusions (after researching a few websites and user forums). USB 2 TV cards are pretty commonplace, although there are only one or two HDTV cards that are USB-based. Linux supports a lot of TV cards, although it's iffier for USB devices (and nonexistent for USB/HDTV devices). Even with a TV card, support can be iffy, so you better have access to good tech support (or buy it locally if you want to swap it out). Laptops can get HDTV, but it uses a lot of CPU and memory.
I want to upgrade, but I can't decide whether to do it to laptop or desktop. My main requirement is for it to accomodate video editing and that it be totally linux friendly. If it's theoretically possible to add a USB hard drive and a TV capture card, then the the main reason for staying with a laptop is no matter one of form factor but of required computing power.
The real question is whether I really need for my laptop/PC to have video capture/tuning capability. A computer is a computer, not a TV. It would be helpful to convert VHS to AVI's or to watch HDTV, but would it be worth the trouble to get everything configured? This is a case where merely because a laptop can receive HDTV signals doesn't imply that you should buy/make it.
good brief how to on dvd creation
http://desktopvideo.about.com/cs/vcddvd
http://tuxmobil.org/mobile_tv.html
small site about linux laptop tv solutions
http://www.tv-cards.com/reviews.php
reviews of TV cards (with OS support)
http://www.usbhdtv.com/specification_01.html
USB HDTV card (no linux support)
http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/Graphics_
a selling site
ok, just a few things.
/boot and raid 5 for /.
/boot on RAID was a majorly bad idea. First, because if the array fails, you're basically in sad shape. (two other problems I had was the third hd was from a separate controller card, and the BIOS didn't allow booting from a controller card).
/hda1 /boot 100mb /dev/hda2 1.5 gigs, swap /dev/hda3 / the rest /dev/hdg1 = /dev/md1 = /home RAID1
/home data (I put my mysql db on it). /home data and configured similarly (web server, etc). That way, if the system itself goes down, I could just use the 2nd system as my primary system and rely on my rsync of /home to restore my data. (Also, btw, I backup my most critical data on my unraided / directory on my primary machine.
/home user data, not so much worried about configurations. Come to think of it, maybe I should rsync/backup the /etc directory too.
You didn't indicate sw raid or hw raid, so I assume you're talking about sw raid.
In a nutshell, use the easiest configuration you can get away with. You don't want to spend time troubleshooting RAID stuff. Buy identical drives and consider making the whole drive as a partition.
I had major problems with maintaining software raid when I tried to do software raid on a 3 hard drive system. Actually I used raid 1(I think) for the
Putting
Second, on my gentoo, grub was doing really funny things. i spent way too much time trying to get grub or lilo to boot without the use of my array. to work. Looking back, it seems like a big bother.
Instead, I put root on a unraided drive, and did RAId-1 for the two remaining drives, using one partition for the entire hard drive.
dev/hde1
(the whole 60 gig drive)
My critical needs is having protection of my
I have less of a need to keep my system up 24x7, but I'm probably going to use a 2nd system (as my personal working machine for everyday use) which has an rsync copy of my
Like I said, I'm more worried about my
When looking over my own blog archives, I find myself wishing I had talked a little less about the latest slashdot article on security and a little more about my life, my friends and my daily concerns. We really shouldn't knock people who publish their own ephemera. Although I'm a news/technology junkie, I have to admit having a fondness for people who just talk about their lives.
As someone who writes for 7+ blogs, I certainly don't want to sound as if I'm putting down the trend of self-publishing. But it's hard for people who make little or nothing from blogging to have the time or resources to deliver good reliable news and analysis over a period of time. True, adsense/google ads provide some sort of revenue for A-list bloggers, but that's more the exception rather than the rule. Full time writers may have corporate responsibilities/biases, but at least they have more time to do what they love doing.
One heartening trend is that big media is now adding blogs to their websites (and are presumably paying these writers to blog). It would be nice if employers could recognize the value of blogging so that blogging wouldn't have to be done so surreptitiously.
The biggest worry I have is that the Time's and New York Times will start casting off full time journalists and switch to the slashdot/ALD format that basically poaches off the content from other publications.
To repeat: bloggers do good important work. But at some point writers need resources and infrastructure and collaborators (and a paycheck) to do a good job consistently.
during my unemployed in 2001-2 I quickly discovered (and wrote about) the problems with these boards.
Here's the trick I learned. Don't bother applying to any of the jobs on monster! But be sure to put a profile on monster/yahoo with lots of keywords. HR and contractors are not interested in receiving lots of letters and resumes from people who are trying to fit their skills into a job description. More likely, they want to punch in a few keywords and then email 5 or so people who they think have that skill (and other things).
As far as the recommendation about whether to update your monster profile every day, that was true for about a year, and then afterwards the major job boards fixed that way to game the system.
I know any money is helpful, but consider that the overwhelming majority of musicians are not signed and have no hope of securing a record deal. And that iTunes (if they can get signed on), only compensates them about 11% or so.
Here's a better idea. Look at all those musicians who let you download music legally and dash them an email, saying I want to give the money to you as a way of saying thanks for being so generous and talented.
To love the music, you must share the music. Sharethemusicday .
to further use the porn example, the lowering of price of online porn has NOT resulted in a decrease in porn quality. I realize this is a subjective opinion, but I think the same effect will apply to many kinds of content, not just porn.
Therefore, when I say, wait until the price point becomes chump change, I am not implying that reduction in price implies a reduction in content standards. It may not even imply a reduction in compensation for creators. (It really is amazing how many things we can learn about content just by looking at the porn issue).
Here's an essay about general issues of adult entertainment and content pleasure manifesto .
to further use the porn example, the lowering of price of online porn has NOT resulted in a decrease in porn quality. I realize this is a subjective opinion, but I think the same effect will apply to many kinds of content, not just porn.
Therefore, when I say, wait until the price point becomes chump change, I am not implying that reduction in price implies a reduction in content standards. It may not even imply a reduction in compensation for creators. (It really is amazing how many things we can learn about content just by looking at the porn issue).
btw, an essay I wrote about online types of adult entertainment: Pleasure Manifesto (work safe).
This is an exceptionally fine piece, and I greatly enjoyed reading it.
g g=1&mg=2
Some impressions:
Although I'm happy that Mr. Doctorow has made a profit off his creative commons releases, I have a feeling that his case is an exception rather than the rule, and that once the the novelty value of creative commons content released by commercial publishers die down fewer people will be inclined to try first, buy later. (That is not worse than the status quo however). As pda's and ereaders become more user friendly, the temptation not to buy the hard copy will become irresistable for creative commons works.
I advocate a tip-based model of artistic compensation http://www.geocities.com/bigbadlinux/. Perhaps voluntary "pay-what-you-want" scenario is unrealistic, but compensation becomes viable when the pricepoint is low enough to seem insignificant.
A few years ago, memberships to porn sites cost 30-50$ a month; nowadays even most of them offer 1 day or 1 week memberships for gigabytes of movies. One could use emule to get these things, but when the price point starts resembling chump change, that's when people start voluntarily paying for online content.
If you look at this audio book site, for example http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp?
downloading mp3 audios for entire novels cost only about $5. That's close to the level of chump change.
Right now POD books easily sell for $10-12, but 100% virtual content could probably go for $2-3. Content needs to be priced in a way that appears to be chump change for the buyer/reader but gains enough readership for chump change to add up to something substantial. Fortunately, the existence of weblogs like www.maudnewton.com and viral marketing make it easier to get your content out there.
The future is weblogs people.
I noticed that my own major (liberal arts) is listed pretty down there. That reveals the problem with these kinds of surveys in general.
Long term, Liberal arts majors consistently outperform other majors in salary, though certainly not right after college.
Liberal artsy majors are inclined to seek more professional training later on or in graduate school. It's like saying that because people who skip college to be executive secretaries have more earning potential than a person who decided to study business at Harvard.
Engineering degrees are helpful for getting one job or one type of job. And if the market changes? Suddenly the engineer has to massively retrain himself or herself or go into management or persuade another techhead that skills from petroleum engineering are not too different from civil engineering.
The liberal artsy major obtains more general skills, but has more versatility and less of a problem changing careers. Also, a recent grad laid off from a high-paying tech job has higher (and maybe more unrealistic) expectations about what salary is the minimum necessary. Liberal arts majors, on the other hand, start on the low end, and go up.
The really interesting study I'd like to see is median salary by college grads at the age of 30, 40 and 50. I think I read somewhere that the most common career for English majors at the age of 40+ is upper management/business executive work.
I take a different tack.
I don't oppose piracy or file sharing technologies. But cracking down on piracy results in listeners more eager to look for music through other avenues. . 8 months ago I've listened to nothing but music that are legal to download and either free or practically free. I haven't been disappointed. For those looking for new music, check dmusic.com, irate radio, iuma, etc.
Piracy allows people to seek the same old musical shit instead of actually looking for cool music. Piracy is for people too lazy to look for cool music.
Maybe I'm a fanatic about these things but...
What's wrong with mp3's/oggs? The premise on which iTunes is based (that here is a method that allows you to download legally) is wrong; in fact, lots of musicians are putting mp3's out there for free. Look at dmusic.com , IUMA, irate radio and netlabels . Some of the stuff is eclectic, experimental, not mass market, but it's not that far off.
I stopped listening to commercial music 6 months ago (although I still donate to artists with tipjar links). For "open content" listeners like me, all this talk of proprietary locked content only encourages musicians to put their content in locked formats. That is bad for everyone.
Share the Music day ; sharethemusic weblog
I'm speaking only of creative content, but I believe the a voluntary compensation method (i.e., tipping) is the only model that will compensate creative artists (without worrying about the problems of piracy, drm, etc).
I've cited this here already several times, but I wrote an essay for sharethemusicday.com that describes why a voluntary compensation model would work.
So are you recommending to use software RAID as your primary/only backup method?
And if software RAID fails? People who know anything about RAID say that it should never be relied upon as a primary backup method. You're still going to have to backup somewhere to another media/hd.
I still can't understand why people are thinking about big music sites when there are perfectly good small sites. dmusic This is the best free download music site I've seen. Irate Radio , a music discovery program. gods of music music review site . sharethemusicday.com My essay on more ways to share music legally. Don't forget to tip your favorite musicians! Musician's Guide to Online Tipping
Disagree (at least for docs). Instead of .doc formats, students can submit/email things in .rtf formats. I think you overestimate the migration costs and inconveniences here. It's not as though MS Office won't be around on certain desktops or OpenOffice can't convert legacy MS Office docs with their filters.
Another question is whether the "hostility" you describe is worth the extra licensing costs that universities and school districts end up having to pay. These costs are not trivial. Another advocacy letter here reminds us that it is the MS Word format, not the OO format, that it causing aggravation and increased support costs.
This is obviously good news, but the more important question is what is happening at educational institutions like University of Texas? They receive discounted pricing on MS Office products (as do students), so universities tend to be agnostic about which office applications to use for school assignments.
A more dramatic and interesting revelation would be if University of Texas at Austin declared a university-wide preference for nonproprietary file standards for school assignments. Up until now, their agnosticism on the proprietary/nonproprietary standard issue (because of educational discounts and the available of MS Office support) have implicitly propped up the market for MS Office. A UT graduate who uses MS Office for four years is more likely to prefer it at the office or at home later on.
I would like to see more evidence that public educational institutions are shifting to software with more open standards.
a friend of mine has solved the risk problem like this:
buy the CD, either new or discounted.
Make a personal copy (legally entitled to do this).
Sell the original CD on amazon/half.com for a discounted rate. (again, a legal transaction).
Of course, we're not longer talking about insurance here; my friend does this whether the CD is good or bad.
The effect of people reselling CD's is to apply downward pressure on the sticker price. But there is another more profound impact. It no longer makes sense for music companies to produce original music (if it could be resold so easily). It makes more sense for a music company to just take other people's content produced independently or elsewhere and then repackage it or make it available for a subscription fee.
If anything,this scenario illustrates that the risks that music companies are taking to cultivate and promote an artist's talents are too high to be worth taking. This is shifting more of the risk on the individual performer. Is that good?
I don't mean to imply that irate radio is the only way to expose users to new music. Music blogs are a good way, as well as sites like godsofmusic . Also, music burning groups (I participated in a recent CD Burn event with 5 friends). And dark networks (private networks of file sharers).
This is interesting analysis, and the idea of double moral hazard, insurance, etc is a good way of looking at the sociological problem.
Actually, though, the article's writer doesn't seem to be aware that having an album streamed entirely over the net is becoming more the norm with every passing day. With that capability, consumers can make the purchasing decision without assuming much risk.
The bigger problems seems to be that the consumer doesn't want to spend the time previewing so many songs. In other words, the "mental transaction costs" outweigh the supposed benefits of finding new stuff.
I'm not saying that clearchannel radio is a good way to introduce consumers to new music. But it is an example of how consumers can have exposure to music without needing to expend mental transactions.
There needs to be a painless way to learn about and listen to new music. One such, solution, iRATE radio continuously downloads mp3's and lets users choose which one to keep and adapts to user preferences (see my interview with the creator Anthony Jones ).
I've already written a substantial essay advocating a voluntary compensation model for music (see sharethemusicday . )
In addition to tipping, content aggregators like Universal can provide value by simplifying the task of managing music files, improving the download client and allowing users to create "share lists" that are easily accessible. I would gladly pay for that.
If a content aggregator company could create a download client that simplified file management, allowing sharing of music lists and user recommendations and allowed for a tip jar, then everybody would be interested. Musicians could pay a small fee for music hosting (and maybe fan support like forums, web hosting, etc). They would do it if tipping became perceived as a reliable revenue source. Users could pay for the download client (plus access to updates). This kind of service would make money, satisfy fans who want unlimited downloads and satisfy musicians who want tips.
This isn't exactly the same thing, but an essay of mine proposed a voluntary compensation model for artists.
The voucher proposal is much more radical. The problem lies in who makes the decision to fund individual artists. If it is a government board of some sort, then you have the problem of government entanglement (as well as the requisite backlash from know-nothing conservatives). Interestingly, this kind of idea might swing in Europe, which already provides public support for artists. But in USA, this sort of idea is inconceivable for political reasons (especially if these donations were to be a kind of tax writeoff).
If the grantor is the individual donor, then how does the individual decide the "most worthy" candidate for these types of awards? Often the taste of the wealthy donor just won't be sophisticated enough to ensure that the right kinds of talent is identified.
The alleged benefit behind such a proposal is to eliminate economic transactional costs and to encourage works to go into the public domain. But as far as I see, it doesn't identify or support talent any better than the status quo. Yes, it would be a little prestigious to say that you've won such a grant. But it really doesn't help solve the problem of making the artist's works visible to the reader/spectator/surfer.
As much as I hate the copyright system, I don't see it as really hurting artists from the standpoint of compensation. (Yes, it hurts the right of free expression, as well as allowing corporations to prevent redistribution of creative works. But these things don't really hurt the artist immediately). A large number of content is going towards being free or legally redistributable anyway. I don't see the increased amount of public artwork as being a really big win here.
Here's a better idea (and one in which I propose in my essay cited above). Every artist seeking donations should put a link to paypal or Amazon donation system. (Helpful info for artists: Given current fees structures, it appears that if the donation is less than $5, tipping through Amazon has the lowest transaction fees. Over $5, it's probably cheaper to tip through paypal).
Having a tipjar up is not really obtrusive, doesn't make the artist sound as if he/she's begging and allows the artist to receive an enormous percentage of the cut. But the plain fact is that an overwhelming majority of artistic people just never do so (except webloggers; a large number of webloggers have tipjars; go figure). This sort of plan is far simpler and more direct than some elaborate scheme like this. (And yes, it suffers from the problem of the patron with awful taste and deep pockets).
Our society has a big problem with compensating its creative people. I have seen oodles of talented people just suffering through abject poverty without reasonable hope of support. This is an interesting plan and well worth thinking about. But it requires far too much buyin from politicians. Tipjars are a much more obvious solution.
The main problem I see with the essay is that the writer uses the proposal as a way to mend the copyright problem. That for unsigned musicians and artists is a relatively minor issue. Proposals should be directed instead towards how to encourage individual artists to seek donations from web traffic and how to make it easier for Joe Average to find out about unknown artists. Take the problem of mp3's. A good 90-95% of mp3's out there are freely and legally available by artists you've never heard of. How does the average citizen learn about great works? The problem is not technology or even the law but the discovery process itself. What media outlets provide trustworthy insights about what music is worth listening to? As Tim O'Reilly observed, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."
If most of the downloaded music is RIAA music, then I say the sooner RIAA music is deleted, the better.
Music that cannot be shared is not worth listening to anyway. See my extensive essay share the music .
Well, it's a bit unfair to tout noncommercial radio on this discussion. But Pacifica Radio is full of fresh surprising viewpoints, and my local Houston affiliate kpft.org actually plays great music. It gives you a sense of how fun dj's used to be.
This announcement is excellent news, but as I do more coding, html editors seem less important than css editors.
Does anyone know good style editors for linux?
I've been using Top Style on Windows as well as Mozilla plugins like editcss. (I think Morphon has a (free) css editor, but I can't remember how well it's integrated into its xml editor.