..is the "why is Google so successful?" question. This interview seems pretty focused on talking about "hot" topics (gmail privacy, microsoft, blah blah), and it talks about possible future technologies in Google, but the interview doesn't probe about just why Google got there in the first place. Where's the talk about what Google did differently? PageRank (before its manipulation by spamdemons), clean design, obliteration of banner advertising and "portal" services, clear separation of search results and "related advertising" results... that's the compelling stuff that I'd want to hear the man behind Google talk about. Those were all pretty bold moves from an economic standpoint ("what, you want to remove banner ads?! how do you expect to make money!!" etc etc), and by golly, it panned out and then some. Someone should go back and ask, "how the hell did that succeed, how did you convince people to come on board and work with you on Google when it was so damn different?"
More importantly, who will adopt this 'improved' electronic voting system? Very few. Potential consumers:
1) states/regions that have already spent millions on Diebold machines,
2) states/regions that don't have the budget to overhaul the paper voting systems already in place.
The groups seeking electronic 'improvement' have, for the most part, already tanked their money into Diebold systmes, so you'll be hard-pressed to find a city council / state legislature in those respective areas that will willingly devote more of their budgets to MORE electronic voting machines. Constituents in these communities won't stand for that kind of spending because the information about the faulty machines has been kept too well under wraps to raise popular concern.
Ultimately, however, if these machines can get into even one voting district in this nation in the place of Diebold, then I'll count it a success. However, I doubt the machine producers will feel that giddily about such a small profit margin.
RIAA is never going to fret over this because the average consumer will not bother configuring their computer to record from digitally-streamed radio stations. Even with a tape deck, people could easily click two buttons, one to start recording and one to stop, and they were set. Napster and Kazaa are about as simple - type a song title, double click and the song eventually downloads.
You MIGHT find an average Internet user setting their computer to record an hour or two of their fave Internet station to listen later, but since the listener is only getting single songs by artists in that instance, the RIAA would obviously be fine with that, because the consumer will still have to go to a store to get the rest of the album. Otherwise, nobody who plays Madden and reads USA Today is going to bother with the necessary process to snag songs off Internet radio stations, because the payoff isn't worth the amount of time necessary on their not-so-computer-inclined behalves.
This article is simply an overreaction that tags onto the mp3 bandwagon to get short-term attention from people who don't consider the rationality.
Let's put opinion aside, because if we're going to talk about how "good" Moby is, we're never gonna get anywhere. Moby rips off the zillions of techno/DJ artists who came before him, just as Nirvana ripped off the zillions of post-punk and 70's rock bands before them, but nobody says Nirvana sucks, right?
Anyway, the reason Moby's current album is doing poorly (though going gold doesn't seem all that poor from my perspective, anyway) is because 18 isn't getting the commercial tie-ins that Play got in bucketloads. I work at a CD store, and every day, I get someone coming in and asking "who does the song on [such and such] commercial?" Dirty Vegas is getting that buzz at the moment, and Moby has no mainstream promotion pushing 18 the way Play was pushed over a span of two years. Remember, Moby didn't get the mainstream attention over Play until he'd released 3 singles from it. Bodyrock was the first single and it flopped on MTV... but the buzz built, just as the current Billboard smash, the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack, is doing right now, and selling in bucketloads behind everyone's backs.
So, Moby has shifted from a nobody who could barely break 200,000 records to a gradual multi-platinum-selling artist to a "disappointing" new release. He's in an economy of such scale that the Internet factor really isn't that huge. People in general aren't hooking their computers up to their preferred speaker systems, and they aren't replacing their car CD players to handle mp3s, and the general mall-music-buying public is NOT switching to CD-burning or mp3s in droves. The "Pearl Jam" effect is a myth once you're mainstream enough to sell 100,000 records in a week.
"The message is clear - there is no place on the Internet for services that exploit creators' work without fair compensation." --Edward Murphy, NMPA
Of course. The recording industry would much rather let the record labels, executives, managers and lawyers do the exploiting of musicians, as always.
"This is a victory for everyone who cares about protecting the value of music," said Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA.
And by value, she means dollars, not musical or technical merit. But she doesn't mean the dollars spent in "payola" fashion to radio directors who decide which songs are put into rotation in key markets (and you thought your phone calls and emails picked which songs got played)... nor does she mean the dollars spent on flawed copy-protection schemes. She means.001% of the dollars on an executive's quarterly report. That's the value of music, kids.
MS is putting $$ into a ship that's already sinking. Let's look at MS's online blunders:
1) Microsoft needs a killer app to get people to flock to Internet gaming. Nintendo would've never sold as many controllers as it did, for example, if it weren't for Goldeneye 007 - the first truly successful mainstream four-player game ever released. MS had their chance with Halo, but they missed the online boat, and Halo II won't bring the same draw with an additional online portion, much the same way Perfect Dark didn't succeed after Goldeneye, since it only drew the hardcore crowd.
MS's chances at a killer mainstream online app, such as something from the EA Sports series, are obviously diminished thanks to the info on the linked article from the opening post. MS needs a game that everyone talks about - kids in school, kids at college, buddies at a party - the kind of word-of-mouth that reaches the mass consumer dollar. I like to call this the Wal*Mart dollar, and I use my hick brother as an example - his $$ goes towards games like Gran Turismo, Goldeneye, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto... these are the games that have so much mass appeal, whether thanks to licensed cars, licensed movie characters, or general shock value, that even magazines like Rolling Stone give them coverage. MS has no games like this in the pipeline, and they would've announced them by now if MS had 'em, because they need the attention very badly at this point.
2) Ethernet connection inside the box. Seems like a great idea for smooth gameplay, compared to a phone line's lag-a-lot, but you've already limited the potential market. The Wal*Mart dollar, which may be the mightiest out there, is basically gone with this one. The XBox may be cheaper now, which could get the system itself into more houses, but $200 + $50 per game + $50 per month for high-speed net + installation fee + $10 per month is not going to catch on any time soon for the average consumer, particularly parents who already have enough bills to deal with as it is.
3) Speaking of parents; there is no way in hell that XBox Live will be as much of a "disneyland" as they want it to. AOL, with its thousands of parent controls, still has plenty of indecency available for minors (and if you don't believe me, ask my little cousins). If MS puts voice capabilities in its games, there's no way moderators will be able to listen in to every single game and censor speech. I'm sure groups of parents will moan about that vulnerability pretty soon.
XBox has already carved its niche pretty deeply thanks to high-speed net limitations and lack of mainstream enthusiasm. The former isn't going to change, no matter how well MS picks up its slack on the latter. Nintendo and Sony know better than to pump $$ into a dying online horse and send it around the track. Console online gaming won't happen until high-speed net becomes as common as cable TV service, it's that simple. And cable TV didn't get into everyone's home until 1) the price went down and 2) channels like MTV and HBO became "must-haves" for the masses.
Let's not forget that Star Wars may be the absolute WORST movie to watch in camcorder format. This isn't "My Dinner w/ Andre" -- the amount of action and surround sound and color range that SW has is too much for the VCD format to keep up with (as evidenced by some of the final scenes in the released screener). For that reason alone, I plan on seeing it in its full glory in a few days with a group of friends and a big box of Junior Mints.
I will say, though, that I got an unexpected reaction from friends when I told them that I'd watched the movie early. I thought I'd hear "oh, wow, cool! how'd he get it so early?"
Instead, my friends said perhaps the meanest things I've ever heard. They were downright pissed that I'd "tainted my eyes" by watching some crappy non-pure version of the film. They don't even want me to go with them to the theater next week, actually; not because they think I'm going to give away any secrets, though. This is something deeper.
Star Wars has this very odd, intangible quality to it that makes people hold it up in a nearly religious way. It's as if I cheated to get to heaven, honestly. "Why couldn't you have waited? Saint Peter was going to let you in five days from now, and you go and ruin it by having Judas sneak you in? Ass."
mashing? sounds like "sampling" to me
on
Mashed-Up Music
·
· Score: 1
"Mashing" is a different form of sampling, but it's the same concept: take a portion of one person's song and use it in another person's song. Legal precedent is volumes thick to prove that this is illegal; anyone who has watched Behind The Music featuring Vanilla Ice knows that he had to cough up millions to the band Queen for "mashing" the song Under Pressure with his "lyrics."
Still, in mashing, the artist that would be breaking copyright would be the remixer, since I would imagine neither of the two "mashed" artists gave permission to be part of this new remix. Remixes require the same clearance that other songs do, thanks to protection from ASCAP, BMI, or another songwriting association that the original writer/performer may be a member of. It's an unconfirmed misrepresentation of the writer/performer's artistic creation, and is thus protected in the same manner as sampling has been in court for decades.
the interesting thing about PS2 DVD is that the movie player is software-driven, or at least a good portion. to run a DVD movie on your PS2, you have to insert your memory card, and the memory card has to have a 600k+ executable to run the movie player. I have a feeling this memory card file will be easier for hackers to to crack in order to allow DVD movies, but that means if you import a PS2, and you wanna watch American DVD movies, you'll have to import a memory card from China or something to get those movies to run. Speaking of hacking... one thing I think has been largely ignored about the PS2's crackability is the difference in CD-loading. Except for the original Sega CD, all previous CD consoles have been laid out like a Discman; that is, you open the console's lid and place the CD until it firmly stays in the turner. Because of this, people could "trick" the console by making it think the lid was closed, and therefore switch CDs (very useful to play import games on Playstation, for example). But PS2 goes back to the old-school Sega CD design, in which you click the eject button, the little tray comes out, you put the DVD in, and the tray closes. I don't know how much of a hassle that will make for hackers who are used to lid-tricks, but I doubt it'll make things any easier.
Slashdot Mirror
..is the "why is Google so successful?" question. This interview seems pretty focused on talking about "hot" topics (gmail privacy, microsoft, blah blah), and it talks about possible future technologies in Google, but the interview doesn't probe about just why Google got there in the first place. Where's the talk about what Google did differently? PageRank (before its manipulation by spamdemons), clean design, obliteration of banner advertising and "portal" services, clear separation of search results and "related advertising" results... that's the compelling stuff that I'd want to hear the man behind Google talk about. Those were all pretty bold moves from an economic standpoint ("what, you want to remove banner ads?! how do you expect to make money!!" etc etc), and by golly, it panned out and then some. Someone should go back and ask, "how the hell did that succeed, how did you convince people to come on board and work with you on Google when it was so damn different?"
More importantly, who will adopt this 'improved' electronic voting system? Very few. Potential consumers:
1) states/regions that have already spent millions on Diebold machines,
2) states/regions that don't have the budget to overhaul the paper voting systems already in place.
The groups seeking electronic 'improvement' have, for the most part, already tanked their money into Diebold systmes, so you'll be hard-pressed to find a city council / state legislature in those respective areas that will willingly devote more of their budgets to MORE electronic voting machines. Constituents in these communities won't stand for that kind of spending because the information about the faulty machines has been kept too well under wraps to raise popular concern.
Ultimately, however, if these machines can get into even one voting district in this nation in the place of Diebold, then I'll count it a success. However, I doubt the machine producers will feel that giddily about such a small profit margin.
RIAA is never going to fret over this because the average consumer will not bother configuring their computer to record from digitally-streamed radio stations. Even with a tape deck, people could easily click two buttons, one to start recording and one to stop, and they were set. Napster and Kazaa are about as simple - type a song title, double click and the song eventually downloads.
You MIGHT find an average Internet user setting their computer to record an hour or two of their fave Internet station to listen later, but since the listener is only getting single songs by artists in that instance, the RIAA would obviously be fine with that, because the consumer will still have to go to a store to get the rest of the album. Otherwise, nobody who plays Madden and reads USA Today is going to bother with the necessary process to snag songs off Internet radio stations, because the payoff isn't worth the amount of time necessary on their not-so-computer-inclined behalves.
This article is simply an overreaction that tags onto the mp3 bandwagon to get short-term attention from people who don't consider the rationality.
Let's put opinion aside, because if we're going to talk about how "good" Moby is, we're never gonna get anywhere. Moby rips off the zillions of techno/DJ artists who came before him, just as Nirvana ripped off the zillions of post-punk and 70's rock bands before them, but nobody says Nirvana sucks, right?
Anyway, the reason Moby's current album is doing poorly (though going gold doesn't seem all that poor from my perspective, anyway) is because 18 isn't getting the commercial tie-ins that Play got in bucketloads. I work at a CD store, and every day, I get someone coming in and asking "who does the song on [such and such] commercial?" Dirty Vegas is getting that buzz at the moment, and Moby has no mainstream promotion pushing 18 the way Play was pushed over a span of two years. Remember, Moby didn't get the mainstream attention over Play until he'd released 3 singles from it. Bodyrock was the first single and it flopped on MTV... but the buzz built, just as the current Billboard smash, the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack, is doing right now, and selling in bucketloads behind everyone's backs.
So, Moby has shifted from a nobody who could barely break 200,000 records to a gradual multi-platinum-selling artist to a "disappointing" new release. He's in an economy of such scale that the Internet factor really isn't that huge. People in general aren't hooking their computers up to their preferred speaker systems, and they aren't replacing their car CD players to handle mp3s, and the general mall-music-buying public is NOT switching to CD-burning or mp3s in droves. The "Pearl Jam" effect is a myth once you're mainstream enough to sell 100,000 records in a week.
"The message is clear - there is no place on the Internet for services that exploit creators' work without fair compensation." --Edward Murphy, NMPA
.001% of the dollars on an executive's quarterly report. That's the value of music, kids.
Of course. The recording industry would much rather let the record labels, executives, managers and lawyers do the exploiting of musicians, as always.
"This is a victory for everyone who cares about protecting the value of music," said Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA.
And by value, she means dollars, not musical or technical merit. But she doesn't mean the dollars spent in "payola" fashion to radio directors who decide which songs are put into rotation in key markets (and you thought your phone calls and emails picked which songs got played)... nor does she mean the dollars spent on flawed copy-protection schemes. She means
I'm left to wonder; where's the AG press release?
MS is putting $$ into a ship that's already sinking. Let's look at MS's online blunders:
1) Microsoft needs a killer app to get people to flock to Internet gaming. Nintendo would've never sold as many controllers as it did, for example, if it weren't for Goldeneye 007 - the first truly successful mainstream four-player game ever released. MS had their chance with Halo, but they missed the online boat, and Halo II won't bring the same draw with an additional online portion, much the same way Perfect Dark didn't succeed after Goldeneye, since it only drew the hardcore crowd.
MS's chances at a killer mainstream online app, such as something from the EA Sports series, are obviously diminished thanks to the info on the linked article from the opening post. MS needs a game that everyone talks about - kids in school, kids at college, buddies at a party - the kind of word-of-mouth that reaches the mass consumer dollar. I like to call this the Wal*Mart dollar, and I use my hick brother as an example - his $$ goes towards games like Gran Turismo, Goldeneye, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto... these are the games that have so much mass appeal, whether thanks to licensed cars, licensed movie characters, or general shock value, that even magazines like Rolling Stone give them coverage. MS has no games like this in the pipeline, and they would've announced them by now if MS had 'em, because they need the attention very badly at this point.
2) Ethernet connection inside the box. Seems like a great idea for smooth gameplay, compared to a phone line's lag-a-lot, but you've already limited the potential market. The Wal*Mart dollar, which may be the mightiest out there, is basically gone with this one. The XBox may be cheaper now, which could get the system itself into more houses, but $200 + $50 per game + $50 per month for high-speed net + installation fee + $10 per month is not going to catch on any time soon for the average consumer, particularly parents who already have enough bills to deal with as it is.
3) Speaking of parents; there is no way in hell that XBox Live will be as much of a "disneyland" as they want it to. AOL, with its thousands of parent controls, still has plenty of indecency available for minors (and if you don't believe me, ask my little cousins). If MS puts voice capabilities in its games, there's no way moderators will be able to listen in to every single game and censor speech. I'm sure groups of parents will moan about that vulnerability pretty soon.
XBox has already carved its niche pretty deeply thanks to high-speed net limitations and lack of mainstream enthusiasm. The former isn't going to change, no matter how well MS picks up its slack on the latter. Nintendo and Sony know better than to pump $$ into a dying online horse and send it around the track. Console online gaming won't happen until high-speed net becomes as common as cable TV service, it's that simple. And cable TV didn't get into everyone's home until 1) the price went down and 2) channels like MTV and HBO became "must-haves" for the masses.
Let's not forget that Star Wars may be the absolute WORST movie to watch in camcorder format. This isn't "My Dinner w/ Andre" -- the amount of action and surround sound and color range that SW has is too much for the VCD format to keep up with (as evidenced by some of the final scenes in the released screener). For that reason alone, I plan on seeing it in its full glory in a few days with a group of friends and a big box of Junior Mints.
I will say, though, that I got an unexpected reaction from friends when I told them that I'd watched the movie early. I thought I'd hear "oh, wow, cool! how'd he get it so early?"
Instead, my friends said perhaps the meanest things I've ever heard. They were downright pissed that I'd "tainted my eyes" by watching some crappy non-pure version of the film. They don't even want me to go with them to the theater next week, actually; not because they think I'm going to give away any secrets, though. This is something deeper.
Star Wars has this very odd, intangible quality to it that makes people hold it up in a nearly religious way. It's as if I cheated to get to heaven, honestly. "Why couldn't you have waited? Saint Peter was going to let you in five days from now, and you go and ruin it by having Judas sneak you in? Ass."
"Mashing" is a different form of sampling, but it's the same concept: take a portion of one person's song and use it in another person's song. Legal precedent is volumes thick to prove that this is illegal; anyone who has watched Behind The Music featuring Vanilla Ice knows that he had to cough up millions to the band Queen for "mashing" the song Under Pressure with his "lyrics."
Still, in mashing, the artist that would be breaking copyright would be the remixer, since I would imagine neither of the two "mashed" artists gave permission to be part of this new remix. Remixes require the same clearance that other songs do, thanks to protection from ASCAP, BMI, or another songwriting association that the original writer/performer may be a member of. It's an unconfirmed misrepresentation of the writer/performer's artistic creation, and is thus protected in the same manner as sampling has been in court for decades.
the interesting thing about PS2 DVD is that the movie player is software-driven, or at least a good portion. to run a DVD movie on your PS2, you have to insert your memory card, and the memory card has to have a 600k+ executable to run the movie player. I have a feeling this memory card file will be easier for hackers to to crack in order to allow DVD movies, but that means if you import a PS2, and you wanna watch American DVD movies, you'll have to import a memory card from China or something to get those movies to run. Speaking of hacking... one thing I think has been largely ignored about the PS2's crackability is the difference in CD-loading. Except for the original Sega CD, all previous CD consoles have been laid out like a Discman; that is, you open the console's lid and place the CD until it firmly stays in the turner. Because of this, people could "trick" the console by making it think the lid was closed, and therefore switch CDs (very useful to play import games on Playstation, for example). But PS2 goes back to the old-school Sega CD design, in which you click the eject button, the little tray comes out, you put the DVD in, and the tray closes. I don't know how much of a hassle that will make for hackers who are used to lid-tricks, but I doubt it'll make things any easier.