I think what he's trying to imply is that iTunes (not iTMS) allows people to rip their own CD's unencumbered by DRM. In fact, it doesn't even have an option to force DRM on songs. I was curious about this too, until I realized that MS Windows Media Player has an option to "Copy Protect Music" and presumably has the ability to force people to "copy protect music" if Micrsoft deems it important. Imagine if iTunes never became the dominant music software; I'm guessing this option would already be turned on.
This is probably some sort of PR spin over the fact that NBC is most likely going to use Windows Media Player to base their options, and this is a feature that a marketing person would tout as important. And at first glance, I think Joe Average will see this as important too, since it will cut down on those dirty hackers and pirates from stealing music.
Ultimately this is a good thing; it forces NBC to be better than Apple or they fail. It then forces Apple to be better than NBC. Which forces everybody else to be better. Because everybody is competing with free. You've got to be good to compete with free.
Now the trouble is, companies hate competing, so ideally, Congress will ignore the whining of these big companies as they ask for laws to shield them from competition. It should also look aggressively at these companies if they try to work together to avoid competing with each other.
Does this remind anybody of the stats that the Canadian government used to justify more anti-consumer laws? These stats sound like the kind of numbers that you come up with sitting around a bar with your friends.
Sounds like someone is using the big numbers to try to get congress to write more laws to "protect" the banks (or whomever). And when big companies get together to propose laws, it's usually not good for everybody else.
He wanted to make a zillion bucks. Anybody can make a few million a year with a software company. But to get 100's of millions, you've got to get somebody to buy you out.
I think this stuff happens all the time, and happened as much before. I think the big difference is: (1) widespread use of video cameras in phones (2) Ease of distributing via Youtube and other video distribution sites.
This will all be for the good eventually because it forces society to see what really happens without the filter of a reporter or large media. That in turn will force society to deal with what is appropriate use of force.
I mean, I think the kid was a jerk, but at the same time, the police forgot what they were trying to do... get the kid out of the room and stop the disruption. Remember those old time westerns were the bouncer throws the guy out the swinging door into the street? That probably would have been a better way to deal with him.
On the other hand, it does bring up the issue that politicians should have to face uncomfortable questions directly from citizens without protection from bouncers.
This is far from simple questions raised in this video.
1) Good for the farmer... the deer population in the northeast is so ridiculous that with the ticks these animals have, they're as bad as rats in the city. The states ought to up the bag limit to 3 or 4 buck per season and allow anybody who wants to get a doe license.
2) If a farmer is shooting deer on his own property, is that really poaching? It's screwy that the law could protect the deer on his property, since it could be argued the deer are his. But I don't know anything about the law in this area.
Re-reading the article, it seems like there is no issue making the ringtone from a song you have, but to use it would require a public performance license, which you don't have (and don't shoot me, I'm only reading the article). So the record companies really pulled a fast one on both consumers and the musicians.
"Seriously, why would you want to buy a Mac if you can have Ubuntu,"
For the average person who wants to do web browsing, write a few letters, and work with music and pictures, iLife is a killer application. I do slide shows in iPhoto/iDVD and you can do a good job quickly. I keep a Macbook Pro around for precisely this reason. Stuff that takes days on my Windows PC can be done in 2-3 hours on a Mac with better results.
What I'm surprised at is how few people are even aware of the iLife suite. Apple would be well advised to advertise, advertise, advertise. Microsoft can't beat this suite for precisely the same reason they can't beat iTunes. Microsoft in incapable of writing a suite like this. It is not in their nature. They would screw it up.
What you're correct about is that if you have little interest in working with photos and music, then I can't see a compelling reason not to get something like Ubuntu. I'm using Vista now, and frankly, and slowly getting fed up with it. It takes everything wrong with XP, eliminating the good parts, and adding a layer of slowness that makes you feel stupid for choosing it in the first place. Oh right. Aero. Like poking yourself in the eye with a stick.
As to people waiting for the service pack, Microsoft better make it a grand-slam home run, because what they've got now is pretty crappy.
I put weather from my backyard on my website. I use it for fun, when I'm at work, or away, I can tell the up-to-the minute weather, and I'd love to put a picture of the backyard up every few minutes. I want to get a wireless camera, but I don't want to pay a fortune, and I'd like it to support wireless.
Can anybody suggest a good camera for this purpose?
In my world, $260 for an operating system is not cheap. In the Macintosh world, for $130 you get the same thing, and for $200 you can install it on every computer in your family (within reason). In the Linux world, that's pretty expensive.
At one time, MS software was cheap, but once they wiped out all the competition, the price rose dramatically. I used to be able to get upgrades to MS Office for $130. I used to be able to get Windows for $79. Microsoft software is now expensive, and now I find out that the damned thing will upgrade itself even when I tell it not to. What else is MS not telling me?
Microsoft will no longer get money from me. Maybe from some other person is not well informed, but I can't see how anybody would voluntarily submit to this behavior.
Even if it was a boast, Arthur C Clarke is allowed that little bit of ego. Besides being an engaging write, he was truly a SCIENCE fiction writer. I don't need to tell you all he's predicted, accomplished, and contributed to popular culture; you can do that yourself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Clark).
Truly an icon, and I glad he was around to see some sort of space exploration take place, even if we didn't accomplish everything he predicted.
"hiring a person who has made it their goal of understanding the psychological, social, and economic drives inside the game, and the same factors outside the game, should be a very high priority."
True, but if that person exists today, they're probably not going to be willing to work for a professor's salary; they'll earn the money themselves. More to the point, somebody taking a few years of classes on the psychology of the online gamer is not going to be an expert in the field. That kind of knowledge and experience has probably got to be learned in the field, doing.
I agree with the original poster; this seems more of an attempt to get people to pay money to study an area that is very hot at the moment without consider that nobody knows what the right skills are.
"What is the carbon footprint of three songs on a packaged CD"
Probably about the same as someone who downloads songs from iTMS and then burns them to a CD because it can't be played on a non-iPod portable, or in the car. Yes I know a small portion of the catalog doesn't have DRM.
On the other hand, if you buy a CD, when the next music player comes out, I just re-rip the CD. When I get tired of it, I can sell it to someone else.
It looks to me like CD's are pretty green after all.
"There may be some irregularity in the copyright ownership. But noone seriously contends that the defendant owns the copyright."
Absolutely right, but it is important. Otherwise, you or I could sue this person for copyright violation. But that doesn't make sense. I can't ask the police to arrest you for trespassing on my neighbor's property. And I can't enforce somebody else's copyright.
And assuming the person were to lose the copyright infringement case, wouldn't they have to award damages to the copyright holder? What if it turns out the copyright holder had no interest in suing widows and orphans?
It was the hotel, and everybody knows you get ripped off at hotels, but, with long distance either non-existent on cell phones, or cheap (3 cents per minute), you assume "getting ripped off" is $1/minute, not $20/minute.
Could be the ridiculous rates you get charged by operators in Europe.
Last year, a colleague and I were staying in London and he called our local travel office to make some changes to the flight. He was on the phone for 30 minutes (mostly on hold) and he was presented with a bill for $600 (300 pounds). Now, you tell me what the rate was...
Anyway, he just refused to pay it, and the manager eventually took it off. But still... seems like a lot of places are set up to cheat the unwary traveler.
Back in the 80's when Japanese cars made real inroads in the U.S. car market, people would comment that Japanese cars were built better and more reliable than their American counterparts. Inevitably this would lead to talk of "fat lazy union workers", and would conjure up pictures of some fat slob with a cigarette dangling from his mouth only putting in the occasional bolt if the mood struck him.
The reality is that quality in cars is engineered from the earliest drawings. It goes into the manufacturing process to ensure there is only one correct way to assemble something. It comes about because management is committed to a quality product. Not just the words, but they take concrete steps to ensure what goes out the door is the best that they know how to build.
So the Japanese really were building better cars simply because the management of the company committed to building good cars. The proof was when Honda and Toyota moved manufacturing to the United States with no loss in quality. Nobody cares if their Accord is built in the U.S. or Japan, the cars are simply quality products.
To this day, the myth of the lazy American work persists, I assume partly because American cars for the most part still fall below Japanese standards. Now somehow the Union makes line workers stupid and lazy, which is ridiculous.
A large part of the reason unions arose in heavy industries was because management treated workers so poorly. That culture still exists in American automobile plants and leads to workers understand that the company will cheat them blind without a good contract. So the company treats people poorly and suffers the consequence in the factory.
It's like you punch somebody in the face, and then complain when they punch you back.
"It is not some "inalienable" God Given right like free speech or freedom of religion."
Actually, I think the "inalienable" rights are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Those are pretty broad, but a reasonable person would conclude that that copyrights don't fall into that realm. So if we're talking philosophically (and we are, since probably neither of us is a lawyer), then if fair use can be argued away so casually, so can copyright.
I think the corporations being pretty shortsighted, but corporations tend to do that. They would stab themselves in the eye if it made next quarter's results look better, never mind that it would put them out of business in 5 years. So perhaps it is time to codify fair use as part of copyright to help these guys help themselves.
I mean, to me, if I tape a game off the air, it's a reasonable thing to loan the tape to my buddy at work. But I'm sure some company would claim I was stealing from them. But then again, you can probably find companies that would claim anything you do as stealing from them. I've heard an RIAA representative claim in front of congress that if a person gives a copy of a CD to their spouse that it's stealing. Orin Hatch disagreed with him, but it does give you a good feeling that the RIAA thinks anything you do that doesn't result in direct money to them should be illegal. That's why it's hard to take the record companies seriously. I'm listening to free streamed music as I write this. The RIAA thinks that's illegal and is doing their best (as I type this) to shut it down.
This sounds like the kinds of noise sony made with the PS1. They changed their tune when the PS2 was announced, and were arrogant up until about 3 months ago.
But that's good. When you buy a PS3, they give you tons of free trial downloads for games. Enough so that I haven't bought a game for the PS3 since I bought it; the demos are good enough.
I saw those same comments and I'm surprised nobody picked up on it.
The record companies have concluded the only way to do business is essentially through getting rid of music that you "own". All music will be streamed to you via industry approved devices and if you want it, you have to pay your $20/month. What a deal.... for the record companies.
This does two things... it guarantees them a stream of money for essentially doing nothing, and it locks small artists and labels out of the distribution channels.
The chances of this happening, however, are pretty close to zero. This is just a pipedream of an industry that is about dead. Their dreams about every man, woman and child paying them an annuity are the same dream where I win $300M in the lottery, but a huge house on Maui, and have swimsuit models working as cabana girls for me at the mansion.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what he's trying to imply is that iTunes (not iTMS) allows people to rip their own CD's unencumbered by DRM. In fact, it doesn't even have an option to force DRM on songs. I was curious about this too, until I realized that MS Windows Media Player has an option to "Copy Protect Music" and presumably has the ability to force people to "copy protect music" if Micrsoft deems it important. Imagine if iTunes never became the dominant music software; I'm guessing this option would already be turned on.
This is probably some sort of PR spin over the fact that NBC is most likely going to use Windows Media Player to base their options, and this is a feature that a marketing person would tout as important. And at first glance, I think Joe Average will see this as important too, since it will cut down on those dirty hackers and pirates from stealing music.
Ultimately this is a good thing; it forces NBC to be better than Apple or they fail. It then forces Apple to be better than NBC. Which forces everybody else to be better. Because everybody is competing with free. You've got to be good to compete with free.
Now the trouble is, companies hate competing, so ideally, Congress will ignore the whining of these big companies as they ask for laws to shield them from competition. It should also look aggressively at these companies if they try to work together to avoid competing with each other.
This should be interesting to watch.
Does this remind anybody of the stats that the Canadian government used to justify more anti-consumer laws? These stats sound like the kind of numbers that you come up with sitting around a bar with your friends.
Sounds like someone is using the big numbers to try to get congress to write more laws to "protect" the banks (or whomever). And when big companies get together to propose laws, it's usually not good for everybody else.
He wanted to make a zillion bucks. Anybody can make a few million a year with a software company. But to get 100's of millions, you've got to get somebody to buy you out.
I think this stuff happens all the time, and happened as much before. I think the big difference is: (1) widespread use of video cameras in phones (2) Ease of distributing via Youtube and other video distribution sites.
This will all be for the good eventually because it forces society to see what really happens without the filter of a reporter or large media. That in turn will force society to deal with what is appropriate use of force.
I mean, I think the kid was a jerk, but at the same time, the police forgot what they were trying to do... get the kid out of the room and stop the disruption. Remember those old time westerns were the bouncer throws the guy out the swinging door into the street? That probably would have been a better way to deal with him.
On the other hand, it does bring up the issue that politicians should have to face uncomfortable questions directly from citizens without protection from bouncers.
This is far from simple questions raised in this video.
Well, my two thoughts are:
1) Good for the farmer... the deer population in the northeast is so ridiculous that with the ticks these animals have, they're as bad as rats in the city. The states ought to up the bag limit to 3 or 4 buck per season and allow anybody who wants to get a doe license.
2) If a farmer is shooting deer on his own property, is that really poaching? It's screwy that the law could protect the deer on his property, since it could be argued the deer are his. But I don't know anything about the law in this area.
Re-reading the article, it seems like there is no issue making the ringtone from a song you have, but to use it would require a public performance license, which you don't have (and don't shoot me, I'm only reading the article). So the record companies really pulled a fast one on both consumers and the musicians.
"Seriously, why would you want to buy a Mac if you can have Ubuntu,"
For the average person who wants to do web browsing, write a few letters, and work with music and pictures, iLife is a killer application. I do slide shows in iPhoto/iDVD and you can do a good job quickly. I keep a Macbook Pro around for precisely this reason. Stuff that takes days on my Windows PC can be done in 2-3 hours on a Mac with better results.
What I'm surprised at is how few people are even aware of the iLife suite. Apple would be well advised to advertise, advertise, advertise. Microsoft can't beat this suite for precisely the same reason they can't beat iTunes. Microsoft in incapable of writing a suite like this. It is not in their nature. They would screw it up.
What you're correct about is that if you have little interest in working with photos and music, then I can't see a compelling reason not to get something like Ubuntu. I'm using Vista now, and frankly, and slowly getting fed up with it. It takes everything wrong with XP, eliminating the good parts, and adding a layer of slowness that makes you feel stupid for choosing it in the first place. Oh right. Aero. Like poking yourself in the eye with a stick.
As to people waiting for the service pack, Microsoft better make it a grand-slam home run, because what they've got now is pretty crappy.
This raises a question that I can't get answered.
I put weather from my backyard on my website. I use it for fun, when I'm at work, or away, I can tell the up-to-the minute weather, and I'd love to put a picture of the backyard up every few minutes. I want to get a wireless camera, but I don't want to pay a fortune, and I'd like it to support wireless.
Can anybody suggest a good camera for this purpose?
If you bought an iPod, they already have your money. iTunes is free. And Apple has long insisted that iTMS is a loss leader.
Seems just stupid, really. You know it's because Apple is being greedy.
He never said he invented the internet. From the link you gave, this is what Al Gore said:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
DEC built AltaVista. It was supposed to be a demonstration of good & powerful DEC servers were and was offered as a public service.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Vista
"Once again, it is American consumers who lose from these tactics."
I'll bet a couple of people around here were wondering how they misspelled "loose".
"If not for MS, somebody else would be making cheap, consumer-grade software "
http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=3268636&WT.mc_id=0107_54
In my world, $260 for an operating system is not cheap. In the Macintosh world, for $130 you get the same thing, and for $200 you can install it on every computer in your family (within reason). In the Linux world, that's pretty expensive.
At one time, MS software was cheap, but once they wiped out all the competition, the price rose dramatically. I used to be able to get upgrades to MS Office for $130. I used to be able to get Windows for $79. Microsoft software is now expensive, and now I find out that the damned thing will upgrade itself even when I tell it not to. What else is MS not telling me?
Microsoft will no longer get money from me. Maybe from some other person is not well informed, but I can't see how anybody would voluntarily submit to this behavior.
Even if it was a boast, Arthur C Clarke is allowed that little bit of ego. Besides being an engaging write, he was truly a SCIENCE fiction writer. I don't need to tell you all he's predicted, accomplished, and contributed to popular culture; you can do that yourself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Clark).
Truly an icon, and I glad he was around to see some sort of space exploration take place, even if we didn't accomplish everything he predicted.
"hiring a person who has made it their goal of understanding the psychological, social, and economic drives inside the game, and the same factors outside the game, should be a very high priority."
True, but if that person exists today, they're probably not going to be willing to work for a professor's salary; they'll earn the money themselves. More to the point, somebody taking a few years of classes on the psychology of the online gamer is not going to be an expert in the field. That kind of knowledge and experience has probably got to be learned in the field, doing.
I agree with the original poster; this seems more of an attempt to get people to pay money to study an area that is very hot at the moment without consider that nobody knows what the right skills are.
--Tom
"What is the carbon footprint of three songs on a packaged CD"
Probably about the same as someone who downloads songs from iTMS and then burns them to a CD because it can't be played on a non-iPod portable, or in the car. Yes I know a small portion of the catalog doesn't have DRM.
On the other hand, if you buy a CD, when the next music player comes out, I just re-rip the CD. When I get tired of it, I can sell it to someone else.
It looks to me like CD's are pretty green after all.
"There may be some irregularity in the copyright ownership. But noone seriously contends that the defendant owns the copyright."
Absolutely right, but it is important. Otherwise, you or I could sue this person for copyright violation. But that doesn't make sense. I can't ask the police to arrest you for trespassing on my neighbor's property. And I can't enforce somebody else's copyright.
And assuming the person were to lose the copyright infringement case, wouldn't they have to award damages to the copyright holder? What if it turns out the copyright holder had no interest in suing widows and orphans?
I think this is not trivial.
"It should be added that de Icaza is a Novell VP"
And yet his blog sounds like it's written by someone very young. Consider this from his answer to a post on his site:
"You do not have to pay anyone any money. Duh.
Nobody said so. Either English is not your first language, or your reading
and comprehension skills are busted.
Miguel."
Is that what passes for civility and adult behavior at Novell from a VP? I must say I'm a bit surprised.
It was the hotel, and everybody knows you get ripped off at hotels, but, with long distance either non-existent on cell phones, or cheap (3 cents per minute), you assume "getting ripped off" is $1/minute, not $20/minute.
Could be the ridiculous rates you get charged by operators in Europe.
Last year, a colleague and I were staying in London and he called our local travel office to make some changes to the flight. He was on the phone for 30 minutes (mostly on hold) and he was presented with a bill for $600 (300 pounds). Now, you tell me what the rate was...
Anyway, he just refused to pay it, and the manager eventually took it off. But still... seems like a lot of places are set up to cheat the unwary traveler.
Back in the 80's when Japanese cars made real inroads in the U.S. car market, people would comment that Japanese cars were built better and more reliable than their American counterparts. Inevitably this would lead to talk of "fat lazy union workers", and would conjure up pictures of some fat slob with a cigarette dangling from his mouth only putting in the occasional bolt if the mood struck him.
The reality is that quality in cars is engineered from the earliest drawings. It goes into the manufacturing process to ensure there is only one correct way to assemble something. It comes about because management is committed to a quality product. Not just the words, but they take concrete steps to ensure what goes out the door is the best that they know how to build.
So the Japanese really were building better cars simply because the management of the company committed to building good cars. The proof was when Honda and Toyota moved manufacturing to the United States with no loss in quality. Nobody cares if their Accord is built in the U.S. or Japan, the cars are simply quality products.
To this day, the myth of the lazy American work persists, I assume partly because American cars for the most part still fall below Japanese standards. Now somehow the Union makes line workers stupid and lazy, which is ridiculous.
A large part of the reason unions arose in heavy industries was because management treated workers so poorly. That culture still exists in American automobile plants and leads to workers understand that the company will cheat them blind without a good contract. So the company treats people poorly and suffers the consequence in the factory.
It's like you punch somebody in the face, and then complain when they punch you back.
"It is not some "inalienable" God Given right like free speech or freedom of religion."
Actually, I think the "inalienable" rights are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Those are pretty broad, but a reasonable person would conclude that that copyrights don't fall into that realm. So if we're talking philosophically (and we are, since probably neither of us is a lawyer), then if fair use can be argued away so casually, so can copyright.
I think the corporations being pretty shortsighted, but corporations tend to do that. They would stab themselves in the eye if it made next quarter's results look better, never mind that it would put them out of business in 5 years. So perhaps it is time to codify fair use as part of copyright to help these guys help themselves.
I mean, to me, if I tape a game off the air, it's a reasonable thing to loan the tape to my buddy at work. But I'm sure some company would claim I was stealing from them. But then again, you can probably find companies that would claim anything you do as stealing from them. I've heard an RIAA representative claim in front of congress that if a person gives a copy of a CD to their spouse that it's stealing. Orin Hatch disagreed with him, but it does give you a good feeling that the RIAA thinks anything you do that doesn't result in direct money to them should be illegal. That's why it's hard to take the record companies seriously. I'm listening to free streamed music as I write this. The RIAA thinks that's illegal and is doing their best (as I type this) to shut it down.
This sounds like the kinds of noise sony made with the PS1. They changed their tune when the PS2 was announced, and were arrogant up until about 3 months ago.
But that's good. When you buy a PS3, they give you tons of free trial downloads for games. Enough so that I haven't bought a game for the PS3 since I bought it; the demos are good enough.
I saw those same comments and I'm surprised nobody picked up on it.
The record companies have concluded the only way to do business is essentially through getting rid of music that you "own". All music will be streamed to you via industry approved devices and if you want it, you have to pay your $20/month. What a deal.... for the record companies.
This does two things... it guarantees them a stream of money for essentially doing nothing, and it locks small artists and labels out of the distribution channels.
The chances of this happening, however, are pretty close to zero. This is just a pipedream of an industry that is about dead. Their dreams about every man, woman and child paying them an annuity are the same dream where I win $300M in the lottery, but a huge house on Maui, and have swimsuit models working as cabana girls for me at the mansion.