This is a case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
This is the equivalent of judge saying air is evidence, since "the bad guys" used it to potentially say bad things. And he'd be right, except there is no known way to capture states of air; similarly there is no practical way to capture the changing states of RAM as he suggests.
"I think game consoles are one of the areas where the manufacturer can make a decent argument for why they bother."
I disagree. Microsoft has shown a better way to control this: when you detect it, just don't let them hook up to the online service. Threatening people to stop them from *modifying their own equipment* is just crazy and isn't backed up by any sort of common sense.
I was listening to the Howard Stern show yesterday and they had Adam Levine, lead singer and songwriter from Maroon 5.
Now Howard is one of those dinosaurs when it comes to distributing music; he constantly rails against YouTube, thinks file sharing is ruining the music business, etc etc.
Anyway, Howard said to Levine (and I won't have these quotes quite right): "I feel really bad for you guys, it's tough to make it in the music business because people won't pay for music anymore, they want to get it for free"
And Levine said something interesting "Don't feel bad for the musicians. The music industry is screwed up, but musicians have so many ways to make money from the internet. We couldn't have made it without the internet".
Levine didn't stop there, he said what other musicians have confirmed... "Of all he ways we made money, despite selling 10 million records [might've heard this wrong], we made *no money from CD sales*. All of our money came from touring and merchandising"
Unfortunately, Howard can be quite insightful on when to follow up, but he ignore this little exchange, probably because it doesn't fit his opinions, but maybe because he was bored with it. But to sell so many CD's and not make any money from it. I just wish somebody would take these quote from successful musicians and play them in front of Congress so that somebody will say "Well gee, who are we protecting with these draconian copyright and copyright extension laws? It doesn't appear to be the musicians at all!"
The only people this was a secret from was the American people.
Every government on earth (and the "bad guys" as well), knew the size of the budget. Or did someone think Putin was going to look at this powerpoint, smack his forehead with his hand and say "ah ha! now I know!"?
They might, but the circumstantial evidence does not support that theory. Of course, the problem may be that most artists sign away ownership of their music to the RIAA in order to get a recording contract. In this situation, you can make a strong case that royalties hurt diversity, since record companies are looking to maximize royalties by producing music that is closest to popular (best selling, greatest producer of royalties) music.
The crappy part is that now that the RIAA has sucked all the money from the artists on record sales, a lot of groups have to pay money to their record label with profits from the tour.
The funny part is when the RIAA keeps claiming they're thinking of the artist. Yeah, the way the rancher thinks of the steer he's raising.
You are correct. My point wasn't that hobbyist will put Dell/HP/Gateway out of business, it's just that if there is a $300-400 margin building $1500 items, a lot of people will want to sell that thing.
Notebooks? Yeah, that's the kind of PC that generally requires a lot of capital to design, build, and support, so that's why it's going to be tough to compete with entrenched players. But desktops? Anybody can build one.
"Dell does not offer a direct feature-by-feature competitor to the MacBook Pro 17"
I say this a person who has owned and owns many macs, and PC's....
It's not that Dell does not offer a competitor, it's Apple who chooses not to compete with Dell.
And it's hard to argue one is right or the other is wrong. Dell makes money, some quarters more than others. Apple makes money, some quarters more than others.
The author's basic premise is correct.... a high-end mac will be cheaper than a high-end PC, but you have to point out the flip side of that argument: the bulk of the PC market is not at the high end.
and on a tangent... I think the PC market is ripe for a correction. For years, it was cheaper to build a PC than buy. So anybody who was a little technical know-how built their own PC. About 5 years ago, Dell, Gateway, etc etc dropped their margins so a PC was cheaper to buy than you could build it yourself. But you check the market today, and Dell/Gateway/HP are now a lot more expensive than building it, and not by a little. You can build a high-end computer (not counting the graphics card) for just a little over $750. I mean, 2G of Crucial Memory, full aluminum case, Dual Core 2, 500 G Drive, Intel's high end Motherboard, 2 DVD records.... if you buy the same machine from Dell, you're talking closer to $1400. I think we're going to see a couple big names get killed off as prices fall. It seems inevitable. to me.
Go into your bank and use the human teller every time. If everybody did that and explained why, the bank would cry "uncle" in about 60 days and cut the fees for ATM usage.
I'd heard reports a while back that the record companies are still kinda of irritated over the whole MTV thing. As you recall, when MTV started, the record companies gave MTV the music videos free because it was great promotion for the music at the time. And of course it was, MTV came along just at the right time. We used to watch just for hours because there was nothing quite like that on TV at the time. Ultimately MTV grew into quite an impressive piece of property, and the record companies to this day feel they financed the start of the company.
Which probably explains why they don't like YouTube; they see it as building someone else's empire as their expense. I realize this is a bit irrational to a certain extent... it's really a fair exchange. But usually business is run as a result people's feelings, not the cold logically analysis we'd like to believe.
"Besides, you don't honestly think that if the music industry totally changed its ways it would stop people attempting to obtain music without payment?"
No, I don't, but they don't need to stop everybody. They only need to stop enough to make a profit (which, by the way, they already do). The crusade against copying music over the internet is not a moral crusade, it's a financial crusade. It's not like the head of Sony/BMG or EMI feels personally violated by people downloading music. It's just shrinkage losses, and one they're trying to control. I wish them well with that.
I personally don't care if they screw the radio stations out of royalty money (or vice-versa), but my point is that the record companies are raising the barrier to entry for themselves to reach listeners while making it financially more enticing for artists to avoid the RIAA backed companies and either do business on their own or via companies that don't demand as much. Yea, sure, they'll make a killing this year. But as you point out, nobody wants to pay for the music, including radio stations, so they'll make deals another way cutting the RIAA out of the loop next year. And radio is all the RIAA has left at this point, unless they're planning on making a living off of Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel rehashes for the next 40 years.
What the business is waiting for is for someone to show them the way, and perhaps it will take a little desperation for that to happen. Kinda like EMI is desperate enough to remove the DRM. I think that time is coming. And soon.
"The vibrancy of British music depends on a fair return on the investments that allow British talent to shine."
That's the funniest line in the whole article.
Does that mean without money, talent won't shine? If you're doing the shining, can the money be in sterling, euros, or dollars? Can you get some shine with the yen?
I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Now that the record companies can get a fair return, the talent will shine brighter than ever. I can see the shine from here.
"they have difficulty understanding why the music business can't work like open-source."
No, there are actually several viable ways the music "industry" could prosper and artists thrive. Almost none of them involve the companies that make up the RIAA.
The irony of the push by the RIAA to get royalties every time a record is played is that it will accelerate their own demise. But they seem content to kill their own future, as long as they get more money this year. But the music business has always been that way: greedy men who can't see much past the profits from this month. It was true with player piano rolls, sheet music, vinyl, CD's, DAT, SCMS and of course with the internet and electronic download.
For them to try to build for the future would indicate a method of thinking that they haven't displayed in 150+ years. Why would this be any different?
"A more reasonable legal tool for knocking this off the internet might be for the estate of the dead guy to sue under an right of publicity/invasion of privacy theory."
Yes, except the police routinely search cars on the theory that cars in public are not private places.
So which way do we have it... driving in your car down a public road assumes a right to privacy or not?
But at the same time, I can't help but feel that the RIAA is just as bad. They're the ones pushing for help from the government to ensure profit rather than spend their own time and money to defend their product.
So everybody is looking for the nanny state to help them. The RIAA just has better lobbyists than the rest of us.
Actually, what I'm wondering is what this really accomplishes in the long run.
If everybody is showing a 5 minute clip from some TV show that Big Media Conglomerate (BMC) owns the copyright on, and assuming this is foolproof, does BMC think "Oh gee, when those dirty filthy kids can't 'steal' my content, they'll be sure to pay me to use it?".
This is a classic case of:
1) Stop everybody from listening/watching my content 2) ????? 3) Profit!
I was flipping through the XBox 360 the other day, and I realized they're trying to get people to pay $2 for Colbert and Southpark, things that you can watch for free. And I wondered... is that really a growth market? I get the feeling the media conglomerates want us to use a business model that the average consumer has no interest in: pay per view for everything.
What's really ironic is that when they show it for free on TV, they do their best to make sure everybody watches it and there is no restrictions on recording and sharing it with your friends. But when they want to charge for exactly the same content, they do their best to try to make it hard to watch and use the content.
I'm trying to wrap my head around their strategy, and I can't make head nor tail of it.
This is all very nice and impressive, but it's besides the point.
Verizon is coming into the Washington metro area with FIOS and based on informal discussions with friends and colleagues is kicking Comcast's butt.
Right now, it's primarily a price issue. High speed internet (5M/2M) is similarly price, but the FIOS TV is where Verizon has a huge advantage. Right now, most people are reporting savings of $25/month (that's SAVINGS) and this is for more channels, but standard def and high def.
Plus, the Verizon installers are, in general, far more professional because they haven't outsourced installation to guys in pickup trucks. They do it themselves, and the quality of their work is outstanding.
The good news here is for consumers... Comcast must do something they've refused to do so far... compete on price, because they have less features than Verizon. Right now, Comcast is offering limited deals (1 year, all your boxes for free), but as FIOS penetrates more neighborhoods, the prices will drop.
"Even the Blu-ray part will only be college kids and real savers who want the latest greatest movie format but don't have the cash or desire for a "proper" player"
I don't agree entirely.
The cheapest Blu-Ray player at this point is somewhere well north of $600, and so the PS3 right now is basically a game machine, Blu-Ray player, and it has an HDMI output. Right now, you may not want to commit $700 to a player for a format that isn't well established, but the PS3 at a minimum will play PS1/PS2/PS3 and oh-by-the-way blu-ray disks.
I think the prices will come down, but the U.S. version will probably omit the PS2 hardware emulation chip and go with the same emulation as the European chip.
The point is, the price will drop, but it won't be just due to a blue diode prices.
The big thing right now is the games. However, to be fair, Spring/Summer has always been a slow time for new game releases.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
This is the equivalent of judge saying air is evidence, since "the bad guys" used it to potentially say bad things. And he'd be right, except there is no known way to capture states of air; similarly there is no practical way to capture the changing states of RAM as he suggests.
"I think game consoles are one of the areas where the manufacturer can make a decent argument for why they bother."
I disagree. Microsoft has shown a better way to control this: when you detect it, just don't let them hook up to the online service. Threatening people to stop them from *modifying their own equipment* is just crazy and isn't backed up by any sort of common sense.
I was listening to the Howard Stern show yesterday and they had Adam Levine, lead singer and songwriter from Maroon 5.
Now Howard is one of those dinosaurs when it comes to distributing music; he constantly rails against YouTube, thinks file sharing is ruining the music business, etc etc.
Anyway, Howard said to Levine (and I won't have these quotes quite right): "I feel really bad for you guys, it's tough to make it in the music business because people won't pay for music anymore, they want to get it for free"
And Levine said something interesting "Don't feel bad for the musicians. The music industry is screwed up, but musicians have so many ways to make money from the internet. We couldn't have made it without the internet".
Levine didn't stop there, he said what other musicians have confirmed... "Of all he ways we made money, despite selling 10 million records [might've heard this wrong], we made *no money from CD sales*. All of our money came from touring and merchandising"
Unfortunately, Howard can be quite insightful on when to follow up, but he ignore this little exchange, probably because it doesn't fit his opinions, but maybe because he was bored with it. But to sell so many CD's and not make any money from it. I just wish somebody would take these quote from successful musicians and play them in front of Congress so that somebody will say "Well gee, who are we protecting with these draconian copyright and copyright extension laws? It doesn't appear to be the musicians at all!"
The only people this was a secret from was the American people.
Every government on earth (and the "bad guys" as well), knew the size of the budget. Or did someone think Putin was going to look at this powerpoint, smack his forehead with his hand and say "ah ha! now I know!"?
Back in the old days, the argument was "we're the freest nation on earth!"
Now, we're down to... "Well, at least we're not as bad as China".
Well, on the plus side, we don't have secret lists that prevent you from traveling on airplanes. Nor do we do secret wiretaps without judicial review.
Anyway, at least the terrorists won't have to "hate us for our freedoms" much longer.
"Royalties promote diversity."
They might, but the circumstantial evidence does not support that theory. Of course, the problem may be that most artists sign away ownership of their music to the RIAA in order to get a recording contract. In this situation, you can make a strong case that royalties hurt diversity, since record companies are looking to maximize royalties by producing music that is closest to popular (best selling, greatest producer of royalties) music.
The crappy part is that now that the RIAA has sucked all the money from the artists on record sales, a lot of groups have to pay money to their record label with profits from the tour.
The funny part is when the RIAA keeps claiming they're thinking of the artist. Yeah, the way the rancher thinks of the steer he's raising.
I understand what they're doing, but is this any different than what Phil Specter used to do with his "wall of sound"?
You are correct. My point wasn't that hobbyist will put Dell/HP/Gateway out of business, it's just that if there is a $300-400 margin building $1500 items, a lot of people will want to sell that thing.
Notebooks? Yeah, that's the kind of PC that generally requires a lot of capital to design, build, and support, so that's why it's going to be tough to compete with entrenched players. But desktops? Anybody can build one.
"Dell does not offer a direct feature-by-feature competitor to the MacBook Pro 17"
I say this a person who has owned and owns many macs, and PC's....
It's not that Dell does not offer a competitor, it's Apple who chooses not to compete with Dell.
And it's hard to argue one is right or the other is wrong. Dell makes money, some quarters more than others. Apple makes money, some quarters more than others.
The author's basic premise is correct.... a high-end mac will be cheaper than a high-end PC, but you have to point out the flip side of that argument: the bulk of the PC market is not at the high end.
and on a tangent... I think the PC market is ripe for a correction. For years, it was cheaper to build a PC than buy. So anybody who was a little technical know-how built their own PC. About 5 years ago, Dell, Gateway, etc etc dropped their margins so a PC was cheaper to buy than you could build it yourself. But you check the market today, and Dell/Gateway/HP are now a lot more expensive than building it, and not by a little. You can build a high-end computer (not counting the graphics card) for just a little over $750. I mean, 2G of Crucial Memory, full aluminum case, Dual Core 2, 500 G Drive, Intel's high end Motherboard, 2 DVD records.... if you buy the same machine from Dell, you're talking closer to $1400. I think we're going to see a couple big names get killed off as prices fall. It seems inevitable. to me.
"And what could the admins of the servers do?"
1) Ask the users nicely not to do it, warning them of suspensions if they do not listen
2) suspend them
3) Fix bug
4) unsuspend them
That seems pretty straightforward to me.
I know how to stop ATM fees.
Go into your bank and use the human teller every time. If everybody did that and explained why, the bank would cry "uncle" in about 60 days and cut the fees for ATM usage.
I'd heard reports a while back that the record companies are still kinda of irritated over the whole MTV thing. As you recall, when MTV started, the record companies gave MTV the music videos free because it was great promotion for the music at the time. And of course it was, MTV came along just at the right time. We used to watch just for hours because there was nothing quite like that on TV at the time. Ultimately MTV grew into quite an impressive piece of property, and the record companies to this day feel they financed the start of the company.
Which probably explains why they don't like YouTube; they see it as building someone else's empire as their expense. I realize this is a bit irrational to a certain extent... it's really a fair exchange. But usually business is run as a result people's feelings, not the cold logically analysis we'd like to believe.
"Besides, you don't honestly think that if the music industry totally changed its ways it would stop people attempting to obtain music without payment?"
No, I don't, but they don't need to stop everybody. They only need to stop enough to make a profit (which, by the way, they already do). The crusade against copying music over the internet is not a moral crusade, it's a financial crusade. It's not like the head of Sony/BMG or EMI feels personally violated by people downloading music. It's just shrinkage losses, and one they're trying to control. I wish them well with that.
I personally don't care if they screw the radio stations out of royalty money (or vice-versa), but my point is that the record companies are raising the barrier to entry for themselves to reach listeners while making it financially more enticing for artists to avoid the RIAA backed companies and either do business on their own or via companies that don't demand as much. Yea, sure, they'll make a killing this year. But as you point out, nobody wants to pay for the music, including radio stations, so they'll make deals another way cutting the RIAA out of the loop next year. And radio is all the RIAA has left at this point, unless they're planning on making a living off of Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel rehashes for the next 40 years.
What the business is waiting for is for someone to show them the way, and perhaps it will take a little desperation for that to happen. Kinda like EMI is desperate enough to remove the DRM. I think that time is coming. And soon.
"The vibrancy of British music depends on a fair return on the investments that allow British talent to shine."
That's the funniest line in the whole article.
Does that mean without money, talent won't shine? If you're doing the shining, can the money be in sterling, euros, or dollars? Can you get some shine with the yen?
I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Now that the record companies can get a fair return, the talent will shine brighter than ever. I can see the shine from here.
"they have difficulty understanding why the music business can't work like open-source."
No, there are actually several viable ways the music "industry" could prosper and artists thrive. Almost none of them involve the companies that make up the RIAA.
The irony of the push by the RIAA to get royalties every time a record is played is that it will accelerate their own demise. But they seem content to kill their own future, as long as they get more money this year. But the music business has always been that way: greedy men who can't see much past the profits from this month. It was true with player piano rolls, sheet music, vinyl, CD's, DAT, SCMS and of course with the internet and electronic download.
For them to try to build for the future would indicate a method of thinking that they haven't displayed in 150+ years. Why would this be any different?
"A more reasonable legal tool for knocking this off the internet might be for the estate of the dead guy to sue under an right of publicity/invasion of privacy theory."
Yes, except the police routinely search cars on the theory that cars in public are not private places.
So which way do we have it... driving in your car down a public road assumes a right to privacy or not?
I think you're right.
But at the same time, I can't help but feel that the RIAA is just as bad. They're the ones pushing for help from the government to ensure profit rather than spend their own time and money to defend their product.
So everybody is looking for the nanny state to help them. The RIAA just has better lobbyists than the rest of us.
I've often said that lawyer should not be allowed to run for, or hold public office. It's a conflict of interest.
If non-lawyers had to write the laws, things would be much different. And I mean that in a good way.
No, but it probably exposes a little bit of the ridiculous claims that Sony is losing massive amounts of money per console.
d -loot-on-each-ps3/n y_losing_money_on_ps3_systems.htmls html
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/16/sony-losing-ma
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/88295/so
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061116/085020.
And it proves the point that as consoles age, they become much cheaper to produce.
Actually, what I'm wondering is what this really accomplishes in the long run.
If everybody is showing a 5 minute clip from some TV show that Big Media Conglomerate (BMC) owns the copyright on, and assuming this is foolproof, does BMC think "Oh gee, when those dirty filthy kids can't 'steal' my content, they'll be sure to pay me to use it?".
This is a classic case of:
1) Stop everybody from listening/watching my content
2) ?????
3) Profit!
I was flipping through the XBox 360 the other day, and I realized they're trying to get people to pay $2 for Colbert and Southpark, things that you can watch for free. And I wondered... is that really a growth market? I get the feeling the media conglomerates want us to use a business model that the average consumer has no interest in: pay per view for everything.
What's really ironic is that when they show it for free on TV, they do their best to make sure everybody watches it and there is no restrictions on recording and sharing it with your friends. But when they want to charge for exactly the same content, they do their best to try to make it hard to watch and use the content.
I'm trying to wrap my head around their strategy, and I can't make head nor tail of it.
This is all very nice and impressive, but it's besides the point.
Verizon is coming into the Washington metro area with FIOS and based on informal discussions with friends and colleagues is kicking Comcast's butt.
Right now, it's primarily a price issue. High speed internet (5M/2M) is similarly price, but the FIOS TV is where Verizon has a huge advantage. Right now, most people are reporting savings of $25/month (that's SAVINGS) and this is for more channels, but standard def and high def.
Plus, the Verizon installers are, in general, far more professional because they haven't outsourced installation to guys in pickup trucks. They do it themselves, and the quality of their work is outstanding.
The good news here is for consumers... Comcast must do something they've refused to do so far... compete on price, because they have less features than Verizon. Right now, Comcast is offering limited deals (1 year, all your boxes for free), but as FIOS penetrates more neighborhoods, the prices will drop.
This really is good news for everybody.
"Even the Blu-ray part will only be college kids and real savers who want the latest greatest movie format but don't have the cash or desire for a "proper" player"
I don't agree entirely.
The cheapest Blu-Ray player at this point is somewhere well north of $600, and so the PS3 right now is basically a game machine, Blu-Ray player, and it has an HDMI output. Right now, you may not want to commit $700 to a player for a format that isn't well established, but the PS3 at a minimum will play PS1/PS2/PS3 and oh-by-the-way blu-ray disks.
"Sony is selling below production costs--what more could people want? "
Sony's cost of production is not at all relevant to it's value to consumers.
If you found out that the PS3 actually cost $2000 to make, would it make it more useful and/or desirable to consumers?
By the same token, if you found out the PS3 actually cost $10 to make, would it be less useful and/of desirable?
The selling price is not related to the cost of production in the market place.
I think the prices will come down, but the U.S. version will probably omit the PS2 hardware emulation chip and go with the same emulation as the European chip.
The point is, the price will drop, but it won't be just due to a blue diode prices.
The big thing right now is the games. However, to be fair, Spring/Summer has always been a slow time for new game releases.