While the letters we use right now are Latin, the numbers are Arabic. What tells you that about the mathematical abilities of the middle east in those times, compared with the european insight?
According to the site, allofmp3.com pays licensing rights to the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) -- and that makes them legal. The true problem is that ROMS does not distribute these funds to the writers/composers/performers of the purchased songs. Instead of pointing your arrows to allofmp3.com, you should be lobbying/suing ROMS for your share of the licensing money.
We have the same situation in the Netherlands. When we buy blank media, we also pay a fee for the rights of the creators of the content we are about the copy. This fee is factored into the price of the media -- and so you pay it even though you only use the media for data backups. Supposedly, this pays for the fair use rights the Dutch have. I wouldn't mind this so much, if the foundation where all this money goes to, would actually distribute that money to the content creators. Alas, they do not -- but that is beyond my direct control.
Instead of suing allofmp3, content creators should sue the foundations that collect these fees without distributing them to the content creators. This will make everyone better off (except perhaps the highwaymen who run these foundations, but no-one should have pity for them).
You are ever so right. If we had kept on hand-crafting our software in assembly, it would be able to squeeze out ever single last clock-cycle out of the CPU and use it. However, writing an application-server in assembly isn't anyone's idea of fun -- and it takes too friggin' long.
There are too many things that need to be automated with software for us to be able to keep on doing everything in assembly. Using higher-level languages has two advantages: it gets easier to express abstract concepts, and there is less technical knowledge needed to write software. The price we pay is the inefficiencies introduced by interpreters, compilers and virtual machines. With raw CPU power still increasing, that's not so much of a problem -- all this time, we've been riding the wave of Moore's Law, writing software in languages with more and more abstract features.
That is not to say that there is no merit in being able to design a linked list, and surely loads of programmers stand to benefit from some additional lectures on data structures. But squeezing the last drop of performance out of the hardware is not an issue anymore.
I eat an apple every workday, as part of my lunch. Two varieties that are really delicious, crispy and juicy: Fuji and Braeburn. They really have a nice bite to 'em.
We know that content providers want this feature. However, no-one but Philips can implement this because of the patent. This means that, if the content providers want the non-skippable ads so badly, they have to play ball with Philips. And you bet they will ask for a hefty fee. Because of this patent, non-skippable ads are actually less attractive than before!
Slashdot Mirror
While the letters we use right now are Latin, the numbers are Arabic. What tells you that about the mathematical abilities of the middle east in those times, compared with the european insight?
According to the site, allofmp3.com pays licensing rights to the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) -- and that makes them legal.
The true problem is that ROMS does not distribute these funds to the writers/composers/performers of the purchased songs. Instead of pointing your arrows to allofmp3.com, you should be lobbying/suing ROMS for your share of the licensing money.
We have the same situation in the Netherlands. When we buy blank media, we also pay a fee for the rights of the creators of the content we are about the copy. This fee is factored into the price of the media -- and so you pay it even though you only use the media for data backups. Supposedly, this pays for the fair use rights the Dutch have.
I wouldn't mind this so much, if the foundation where all this money goes to, would actually distribute that money to the content creators. Alas, they do not -- but that is beyond my direct control.
Instead of suing allofmp3, content creators should sue the foundations that collect these fees without distributing them to the content creators. This will make everyone better off (except perhaps the highwaymen who run these foundations, but no-one should have pity for them).
You are ever so right. If we had kept on hand-crafting our software in assembly, it would be able to squeeze out ever single last clock-cycle out of the CPU and use it. However, writing an application-server in assembly isn't anyone's idea of fun -- and it takes too friggin' long.
There are too many things that need to be automated with software for us to be able to keep on doing everything in assembly. Using higher-level languages has two advantages: it gets easier to express abstract concepts, and there is less technical knowledge needed to write software.
The price we pay is the inefficiencies introduced by interpreters, compilers and virtual machines. With raw CPU power still increasing, that's not so much of a problem -- all this time, we've been riding the wave of Moore's Law, writing software in languages with more and more abstract features.
That is not to say that there is no merit in being able to design a linked list, and surely loads of programmers stand to benefit from some additional lectures on data structures. But squeezing the last drop of performance out of the hardware is not an issue anymore.
I eat an apple every workday, as part of my lunch. Two varieties that are really delicious, crispy and juicy: Fuji and Braeburn. They really have a nice bite to 'em.
We know that content providers want this feature. However, no-one but Philips can implement this because of the patent. This means that, if the content providers want the non-skippable ads so badly, they have to play ball with Philips. And you bet they will ask for a hefty fee.
Because of this patent, non-skippable ads are actually less attractive than before!
Time to port the Lego Mindstorms development environment to the Cell processor!