They can just stop after "more money." No need for "to generate..." or "as they rehash..." The "more money" simply and eloquently says it all.
BTW, I'll bet the record companies really are poor. IMHO it's like the movie industry, where even/especially blockbusters *never* make a profit. They just have costs and salaries through the roof - a big, inefficient machine that leaks money (no doubt unequally) over all of its parts.
Not at all. But with regards to the recent bankruptcy bill, I see it as two wrongs, compounded by a third and bigger wrong.
* Wrong #1: People who use credit cards unwisely. Nothing good about this, and I won't defend it. * Wrong #2: Credit card companies that push credit on people with relentless advertising. Then they advance credit to just about anyone, and are happy, even eager, to up your credit line. IMHO, they are knowingly making bad loans. This used to be known as "bad banking" and was punished by bad profits.
* Wrong #3: After years of making bad loans, and starting to see personal bankruptcies rise as a result, the credit card companies buy legislation to "close the loophole." They have been taught nothing about prudence in loaning, at all. Neither side is right in this. But the bad part is what happens to that original background of bankruptcies, before this credit abuse bubble. This bill is catching some of those legitimate bankruptcies and turning them into lifetime debtors.
NPR covered the story this morning, even including an audio blip by Bruce Schneier. He actually thought that using UPS could be a good idea - kind of like hiding a needle in a haystack, but unfortunately in this case, the needle got lost. I would agree with others, that especially if they knew the needle was going offsite, it should have been encrypted.
Because it's fun. How about a new rumor, since we've only got a few more hours.
How about... Intel cut Apple a sweet deal on Itanium chips for the Mac line?
I know there has been speculation about Apple taking PowerPC into the Intel fab, but IMHO that seems even less likely than OS/X running on x86 chips. Apple has been struggling for years from a weak point. Even though at the moment they're behind the performance curve, Intel is still dealing from a strong point. Doing PowerPC chips, even from a foundry contract, would be another coffin-nail for Itanium, on top of doing x86-64, and I don't think Intel would do that, at least not right now.
But it's worth remembering that Steve Jobs has been more able than most to turn lemons into lemonade. Despite his "reality distortion field," Jobs is one of the few CEOs to focus on growing his markets, rather than just cutting costs.
What is the ONE application that's about to drive this much churn in your shop? Perhaps rather talking about minor things like preferences and productivity, start talking about the cost of replacing 250 low-spec desktops with new machines, as well as any upgrades needed for your array of servers.
Since you probably can't tell what the ONE application is that's worth turning your whole IT infrastructure upside-down for, can you give a few of its properties? Is it a heavily interactive communications program? Is it a simulator? Before anyone can evaluate alternatives like VNC, WINE or VMWare, more information is needed.
>But, does every end user need to be a damned security expert? Sorry, but the average Joe shouldn't have to know what the hell a host based firewall is, much >less if it's a good one.
Do you work on your car? Did you ever? Do you do ALL the work on your car, or just a few things, like basic fluid maintenance?
I suspect most people take their car to the shop for everything more sophisticated than washer fluid. A fair number of people do a few more things, like tires, oil changes, etc. I suspect very few people do ALL of the maintenance on their cars, and it has been this way for a few years^H^H^H^H^decades.
A modern car is very complex, but I would guess that a modern computer with software certainly matches the complexity of a car back in the 60's or 70's. Back then most of us wouldn't think of never maintaining our car, or of doing ALL of the maintenance ourselves. Yet today we have this similarly complex gizmo on our desks, and there is precious little regular maintenance. (Outside of places with good IT shops.)
We really are doing society a disservice by trying to say these PCs are so easy. They're really not, and we have a bad mind-set problem. If we had a mind-set for PC maintenance, we'd see more PCs get regular maintenance, including security patches. It wouldn't even have to be as expensive as hiring the geek down the street, because your maintenance supplier would have a secure VPN to your PC, and would have automated tools for checking its health and applying patches. Physical (expensive) visits, perhaps even personal (non-automated) attention would be very rare, if this practice grew up correctly.
This a whole industry that hasn't been born, because of the wrong impression that these things are "easy" and have essentially no ongoing TCO for the homeowner. They're NOT toasters, and when you consider worms, zombies, bots, and the like, it's downright criminal to apply toaster-like standards to them.
I kind of thought that the stealth was accidental. From what I understand, at the time, radar was new, crude, and Top Secret. But it kind of makes you wonder how stealthy the Go-229 would have been, and what the Germans could have done had they understood radar and what stealthiness they already had.
Didn't Lucas Arts do a game about that? "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe" Though I read a little about the real Secret Weapons, and about how they were developing blended wing-body aircraft, and were a fair way toward stealth. For instance, radar-absorbing glue in the plywood, and engines buried in the body. They didn't clarify whether the stealthiness was deliberate or accidental.
On a different note, we have this abiding urge to build flying saucers, and have made many poor attempts. Imagine for a moment that there really are ETs, and they really did fly saucers around Earth. (One sf book claims they were alien adolescents buzzing us, stirring up trouble by being seen.) Then let them see our attempts to make flying saucers - and wonder if they think we're all cargo cultists.
Chronic complainer... I'm absolutely SURE that if we gave you a bigger planet, say Jupitor 0.25, that you'd complain about THAT, too. You'd probably gripe about the gravity or thick atmosphere, or excess radiation, or something.
And you've probably hit the one set of issues that really matters to Joe 6pak's kids. (and Joe himself, depending on how indulgent he is and how buggy his kids are.)
The general model for games has been that one machine can become a server for your friends, and this is the sensible mode for lan parties. The other general mode is to connect to a server elsewhere. No doubt ISPs would like to keep things on some footing like this, but that lan party setup can also set you up with friends and neighbors on DSL or cable, and ISPs don't like that. (because you're running a server) Still, as long as they don't chew too much bandwidth or aggravate the spam issue, I suspect ISPs will be loath to shut down home game servers, even if they are technically against TOS.
I like the idea of VOIP to go with the game. I remember games enabling chat, but never wanted to take my hands off the controls to type a message. Embedded VOIP would be just the thing.
What could really blow things open is if there were some way to make a true peer2peer game. I wonder if multicast would help, here.
>NAT is not good enough. Good enough for whom. That's the first, and unfortunately only real question that we have to ask, here. From my own personal point of view, I agree with every one of your points. But your and my points of view don't really count.
Think of another point of view. Think of ??AA, for instance, as the most visible, and current whipping boy of the/. community. >Too many things have to work around NAT problems. Problems? NAT has no problems. The only "problem" is that some people have the wrong concept of the Internet, thinking of it as some bizarre "end to end" system. It's really supposed to be like broadcasting-on-demand, with a few handy things like email and customer feedback thrown in. >I run a small network and all the users running filesharing programs have problems. I have to give them each a port. Filesharing is EVIL. NAT is good, in that it hinders filesharing. >What happens when more than one of them wants to run server for a protocol which needs a specific port? SMTP? Ordinary people should NEVER run servers, only ISPs should, especially SMTP. Only ISPs and corporate IT departments could possibly have a clue about how to properly secure SMTP, or any other server. >Why shouldn't people be able to have full IP connectivity? NAT does not provide that, and UPNP is not enough to fix that. As I said, only corporate intersts need full IP connectivity, for regular people it's highly undesirable.
To go a little further, the article talks about the improved QOS available from IPV6, and how it makes streaming media MUCH better. That's BAD too, because QOS is a function more properly implemented by the ISP. That way the ISP can push streaming media to you - for a fee, while other media just won't stream without hiccups. That way the Baby Bells can be secure phone providers, because they can make sure THEY offer the best VOIP and everyone else's has hiccups.
Nope, from a corporate interest point of view, IPV6 is BAD. In a simplistic point of view, and without bringing EVIL into the discussion, it's bad for profits.
I see this argument frequently, "If X were as popular as Windows, it would have just as many cracks."
Let's debunk that with one (not simple) phrase, "The API as a weapon in corporate warfare."
I warned you that the phrase wasn't simple. Now let's define it. Microsoft waged corporate warfare on its competitors with it's APIs. When someone broke new ground, and Microsoft felt the need to compete, or at least not be left behind, they announced a new set of APIs for Windows that would do the same thing. When someone began to clone or interoperate with Windows in a way Microsoft didn't like, here come some new APIs. For that matter, even within Microsoft, the Win95 and WinNT groups came up with different APIs to do the same job. The marketing people used APIs as a weapon, and the technical people had to try and implement them, and notice that security hasn't been mentioned in this paragraph, until now. For that matter, neither has clean design, consistency, or other nifty software terms.
Contrast that with Apple and Linux, to name two. Only with the latest release of OS/X have they "stabilized" part of the API, with full warning to developers. They now feel that they have it clean enough, complete enough, and well enough understood to call it stable. Take a look at the number of times Linus has refused some patch/feature, because it's "ugly." Just as often he says he wants the feature, but please do it differently, so it's cleaner/more maintainable/more orthogonal, etc.
THAT is what has been missing from Windows, at least so far. True design and architecture as opposed to implementation. Look at it as a misbalance in strategy vs tactics. The tactical design practices of Windows at the API level means that a lot of cruft under the hood is practically unavoidable, that code becomes moribund because it depends on other pieces of code, bugs and all. At this point, it becomes difficult to clean one module because its bugs have become requirements of some other module.
That is also why IMHO, even if Mac or Linux got much more popular, they probably would have more problems with virii and worms than they do today, but still far from the problems with Windows. The strategy vs tactics balance is different.
Oh, not to mention the culture. WinNT has admin/user separation every bit as good as Unix/Linux, at least at the OS level. But the Windows culture doesn't understand it, and much software can't work with it. Therefore most WinNT-family users end up being admin, making the separation useless.
Does "Monsoon Wedding" count? My wife and I liked it. The plot was a bit trite, but we really enjoyed seeing the glimpses it gave us of Indian culture. I was especially fascinated to see how comfortable they were with Western and traditional Indian culture living alongside each other.
Need to see Gattaca and Pi some time - they're been on my Round Tuit list for some time, along with others. (seen the rest)
If you're going to get esoteric, try "Phantom of Liberty". Far from the best I've ever seen, but certainly quite memorable and one of the stranger.
One of my own favorites, for it's perfect tongue-in-cheek comedy and perfect action pacing/buildup is "Big Trouble in Little China". But I know better than to think it has any place on a best of all time list.
GWTW came back around in the 70's, when I was in high school. My mom and a friend's mom took us to see it. Remember the scene where Rhett (sp?) and Scareltt are at the top of the stairs, she tells him she's pregnant, and at least one of them is not happy about it? He tells her, "You could have an accident." Then she turns around and falls down the stairs.
I was the only one who laughed, who found the timing comedic.
From the memepool.com Sex archive: >Friday Nov 12, 2004 >A couple sets out to break every one of America's weird blue laws, >and photograph the process to boot. >to Sex by riotnrrd
I don't quite buy that, because there isn't that much functional overlap between the two. It's not as if there were economy of scale of efficiency to be bought by merging the two. Personally, I think the MPAA shares a problem with the RIAA - too much money. They're both grossly inefficient and rather piggish with "their" money.
I suspect that if you look behind the numbers, you'll find record stores in a similar bind to movie theaters. (no proof, though.)
IMHO, this goes back to the "greed is good" binge of the 1980's, which was really an economic transformation of the US. (and beyond) Prior to the transformation, GM/Ford/etc was in the business of making cars, and sold those cars to make money so they could go on making and selling cars, and reward their employees and stockholders. The ??AA were in the business of making music and movies, and selling/showing them so they could go on...etc.
After the transformation, it seems that every business is first and foremost in the business of making money. The products they market are mere incidentals, necessary evils in order to further their primary mission. Witness that GM revenue is divided 1/3 - 2/3 between selling cars and selling financing. (forget which third is which) They're making a significant amount of their revenue dabbling in what used to be banks' business. Or consider that a sizable part of Microsoft's revenue comes from playing financial games, and that their multibillion dollar war chest gives them a lot of ability to do this.
There's a more subtle shift here, too. Prior to the transformation of the 80's, employees were valuable resources, especially those with experience. Now employees are annoying expenses, and a drain on profits. Customers used to be valued, hoping for return business. Now, at least in some industries, they're "thieves."
I had a discussion with my son about this last night on the way home. He received several downloaded songs from friends of a European group called, "Nightwish." He now has 5 of their 6 CDs, and my daughter has 2. (and as soon as my son can find the 6th, actually their first, he wants to buy it.) I asked how likely he would have been to plunk down $17 for a CD never having really heard their music, and of course he said, "not at all." A few downloaded songs have translated to 7, potentially 8 sales, in my immediate family.
Oh, some time ago, after he had begun his Nightwish collection I sternly cautioned him about any trading in downloaded songs.
The ??AA is also more than a little STUPID in counting every downloaded song or movie as a lost unit of revenue. Case in point, me. I think long and hard before plunking down $15 for a CD. If CDs (that I like) were $7.50, I'll bet I'd buy more than twice as many. If they were $5.00, I'll bet my purchases would more than triple. At some point, I'd reach my limit of storage and clutter.
But for the guy the RIAA is suing with 10,000 songs, or whatever, he NEVER HAD the kind of money to buy that much music. Even if he had a good income, when it costs real money, you balance your music against food, rent, clothing, gasoline, eating out, going to the movies, going to concerts, etc. The only reason he would have that collection of 10,000 songs is because they were (at the time) effectively free, costing only bandwidth and space.
Choke off ALL downloads, filesharing, etc, and I suspect the ??AA wouldn't see more than even a 10% increase in their sales. Lacking the "free" source, I'll bet those people would simply choose not to buy, most of the time.
>Those of us who are old enough will remember "copy protected" software from the early days of the PC. That died a well-deserved death before too long, because it was only >effective for giving legitimate customers a pain in the ass.
I hope you're right. I fear you're not. Please let me redo your last sentence: "That died a well-deserved death before too long, because the software industry was new, and neither big enough nor savvy enough to buy legislation protecting their interests." Isn't Windows Activation really another form of copy protectoin, after all?
If I were starting from scratch, I probably wouldn't have even been asking the question, just gotten KnoppMyth. But given that I control 5 Gentoo systems already, I'm prone to add more of what I already know, than to add yet another distribution. (I also have to see after some RedHat machines.) But some comparison information is still useful.
Slashdot Mirror
They can just stop after "more money." No need for "to generate..." or "as they rehash..." The "more money" simply and eloquently says it all.
BTW, I'll bet the record companies really are poor. IMHO it's like the movie industry, where even/especially blockbusters *never* make a profit. They just have costs and salaries through the roof - a big, inefficient machine that leaks money (no doubt unequally) over all of its parts.
Not at all. But with regards to the recent bankruptcy bill, I see it as two wrongs, compounded by a third and bigger wrong.
* Wrong #1: People who use credit cards unwisely. Nothing good about this, and I won't defend it.
* Wrong #2: Credit card companies that push credit on people with relentless advertising. Then they advance credit to just about anyone, and are happy, even eager, to up your credit line. IMHO, they are knowingly making bad loans. This used to be known as "bad banking" and was punished by bad profits.
* Wrong #3: After years of making bad loans, and starting to see personal bankruptcies rise as a result, the credit card companies buy legislation to "close the loophole." They have been taught nothing about prudence in loaning, at all. Neither side is right in this. But the bad part is what happens to that original background of bankruptcies, before this credit abuse bubble. This bill is catching some of those legitimate bankruptcies and turning them into lifetime debtors.
NPR covered the story this morning, even including an audio blip by Bruce Schneier. He actually thought that using UPS could be a good idea - kind of like hiding a needle in a haystack, but unfortunately in this case, the needle got lost. I would agree with others, that especially if they knew the needle was going offsite, it should have been encrypted.
Because it's fun. How about a new rumor, since we've only got a few more hours.
How about... Intel cut Apple a sweet deal on Itanium chips for the Mac line?
I know there has been speculation about Apple taking PowerPC into the Intel fab, but IMHO that seems even less likely than OS/X running on x86 chips. Apple has been struggling for years from a weak point. Even though at the moment they're behind the performance curve, Intel is still dealing from a strong point. Doing PowerPC chips, even from a foundry contract, would be another coffin-nail for Itanium, on top of doing x86-64, and I don't think Intel would do that, at least not right now.
But it's worth remembering that Steve Jobs has been more able than most to turn lemons into lemonade. Despite his "reality distortion field," Jobs is one of the few CEOs to focus on growing his markets, rather than just cutting costs.
What is the ONE application that's about to drive this much churn in your shop? Perhaps rather talking about minor things like preferences and productivity, start talking about the cost of replacing 250 low-spec desktops with new machines, as well as any upgrades needed for your array of servers.
Since you probably can't tell what the ONE application is that's worth turning your whole IT infrastructure upside-down for, can you give a few of its properties? Is it a heavily interactive communications program? Is it a simulator? Before anyone can evaluate alternatives like VNC, WINE or VMWare, more information is needed.
>But, does every end user need to be a damned security expert? Sorry, but the average Joe shouldn't have to know what the hell a host based firewall is, much
>less if it's a good one.
Do you work on your car? Did you ever? Do you do ALL the work on your car, or just a few things, like basic fluid maintenance?
I suspect most people take their car to the shop for everything more sophisticated than washer fluid. A fair number of people do a few more things, like tires, oil changes, etc. I suspect very few people do ALL of the maintenance on their cars, and it has been this way for a few years^H^H^H^H^decades.
A modern car is very complex, but I would guess that a modern computer with software certainly matches the complexity of a car back in the 60's or 70's. Back then most of us wouldn't think of never maintaining our car, or of doing ALL of the maintenance ourselves. Yet today we have this similarly complex gizmo on our desks, and there is precious little regular maintenance. (Outside of places with good IT shops.)
We really are doing society a disservice by trying to say these PCs are so easy. They're really not, and we have a bad mind-set problem. If we had a mind-set for PC maintenance, we'd see more PCs get regular maintenance, including security patches. It wouldn't even have to be as expensive as hiring the geek down the street, because your maintenance supplier would have a secure VPN to your PC, and would have automated tools for checking its health and applying patches. Physical (expensive) visits, perhaps even personal (non-automated) attention would be very rare, if this practice grew up correctly.
This a whole industry that hasn't been born, because of the wrong impression that these things are "easy" and have essentially no ongoing TCO for the homeowner. They're NOT toasters, and when you consider worms, zombies, bots, and the like, it's downright criminal to apply toaster-like standards to them.
I kind of thought that the stealth was accidental. From what I understand, at the time, radar was new, crude, and Top Secret. But it kind of makes you wonder how stealthy the Go-229 would have been, and what the Germans could have done had they understood radar and what stealthiness they already had.
Didn't Lucas Arts do a game about that? "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe" Though I read a little about the real Secret Weapons, and about how they were developing blended wing-body aircraft, and were a fair way toward stealth. For instance, radar-absorbing glue in the plywood, and engines buried in the body. They didn't clarify whether the stealthiness was deliberate or accidental.
On a different note, we have this abiding urge to build flying saucers, and have made many poor attempts. Imagine for a moment that there really are ETs, and they really did fly saucers around Earth. (One sf book claims they were alien adolescents buzzing us, stirring up trouble by being seen.) Then let them see our attempts to make flying saucers - and wonder if they think we're all cargo cultists.
Chronic complainer...
I'm absolutely SURE that if we gave you a bigger planet, say Jupitor 0.25, that you'd complain about THAT, too. You'd probably gripe about the gravity or thick atmosphere, or excess radiation, or something.
And you've probably hit the one set of issues that really matters to Joe 6pak's kids. (and Joe himself, depending on how indulgent he is and how buggy his kids are.)
The general model for games has been that one machine can become a server for your friends, and this is the sensible mode for lan parties. The other general mode is to connect to a server elsewhere. No doubt ISPs would like to keep things on some footing like this, but that lan party setup can also set you up with friends and neighbors on DSL or cable, and ISPs don't like that. (because you're running a server) Still, as long as they don't chew too much bandwidth or aggravate the spam issue, I suspect ISPs will be loath to shut down home game servers, even if they are technically against TOS.
I like the idea of VOIP to go with the game. I remember games enabling chat, but never wanted to take my hands off the controls to type a message. Embedded VOIP would be just the thing.
What could really blow things open is if there were some way to make a true peer2peer game. I wonder if multicast would help, here.
>NAT is not good enough.
/. community.
Good enough for whom. That's the first, and unfortunately only real question that we have to ask, here. From my own personal point of view, I agree with every one of your points. But your and my points of view don't really count.
Think of another point of view. Think of ??AA, for instance, as the most visible, and current whipping boy of the
>Too many things have to work around NAT problems.
Problems? NAT has no problems. The only "problem" is that some people have the wrong concept of the Internet, thinking of it as some bizarre "end to end" system. It's really supposed to be like broadcasting-on-demand, with a few handy things like email and customer feedback thrown in.
>I run a small network and all the users running filesharing programs have problems. I have to give them each a port.
Filesharing is EVIL. NAT is good, in that it hinders filesharing.
>What happens when more than one of them wants to run server for a protocol which needs a specific port? SMTP?
Ordinary people should NEVER run servers, only ISPs should, especially SMTP. Only ISPs and corporate IT departments could possibly have a clue about how to properly secure SMTP, or any other server.
>Why shouldn't people be able to have full IP connectivity? NAT does not provide that, and UPNP is not enough to fix that.
As I said, only corporate intersts need full IP connectivity, for regular people it's highly undesirable.
To go a little further, the article talks about the improved QOS available from IPV6, and how it makes streaming media MUCH better. That's BAD too, because QOS is a function more properly implemented by the ISP. That way the ISP can push streaming media to you - for a fee, while other media just won't stream without hiccups. That way the Baby Bells can be secure phone providers, because they can make sure THEY offer the best VOIP and everyone else's has hiccups.
Nope, from a corporate interest point of view, IPV6 is BAD. In a simplistic point of view, and without bringing EVIL into the discussion, it's bad for profits.
I see this argument frequently, "If X were as popular as Windows, it would have just as many cracks."
Let's debunk that with one (not simple) phrase, "The API as a weapon in corporate warfare."
I warned you that the phrase wasn't simple. Now let's define it. Microsoft waged corporate warfare on its competitors with it's APIs. When someone broke new ground, and Microsoft felt the need to compete, or at least not be left behind, they announced a new set of APIs for Windows that would do the same thing. When someone began to clone or interoperate with Windows in a way Microsoft didn't like, here come some new APIs. For that matter, even within Microsoft, the Win95 and WinNT groups came up with different APIs to do the same job. The marketing people used APIs as a weapon, and the technical people had to try and implement them, and notice that security hasn't been mentioned in this paragraph, until now. For that matter, neither has clean design, consistency, or other nifty software terms.
Contrast that with Apple and Linux, to name two. Only with the latest release of OS/X have they "stabilized" part of the API, with full warning to developers. They now feel that they have it clean enough, complete enough, and well enough understood to call it stable. Take a look at the number of times Linus has refused some patch/feature, because it's "ugly." Just as often he says he wants the feature, but please do it differently, so it's cleaner/more maintainable/more orthogonal, etc.
THAT is what has been missing from Windows, at least so far. True design and architecture as opposed to implementation. Look at it as a misbalance in strategy vs tactics. The tactical design practices of Windows at the API level means that a lot of cruft under the hood is practically unavoidable, that code becomes moribund because it depends on other pieces of code, bugs and all. At this point, it becomes difficult to clean one module because its bugs have become requirements of some other module.
That is also why IMHO, even if Mac or Linux got much more popular, they probably would have more problems with virii and worms than they do today, but still far from the problems with Windows. The strategy vs tactics balance is different.
Oh, not to mention the culture. WinNT has admin/user separation every bit as good as Unix/Linux, at least at the OS level. But the Windows culture doesn't understand it, and much software can't work with it. Therefore most WinNT-family users end up being admin, making the separation useless.
Does "Monsoon Wedding" count? My wife and I liked it. The plot was a bit trite, but we really enjoyed seeing the glimpses it gave us of Indian culture. I was especially fascinated to see how comfortable they were with Western and traditional Indian culture living alongside each other.
Need to see Gattaca and Pi some time - they're been on my Round Tuit list for some time, along with others. (seen the rest)
If you're going to get esoteric, try "Phantom of Liberty". Far from the best I've ever seen, but certainly quite memorable and one of the stranger.
One of my own favorites, for it's perfect tongue-in-cheek comedy and perfect action pacing/buildup is "Big Trouble in Little China". But I know better than to think it has any place on a best of all time list.
2001 was the big miss from the list, for me.
GWTW came back around in the 70's, when I was in high school. My mom and a friend's mom took us to see it. Remember the scene where Rhett (sp?) and Scareltt are at the top of the stairs, she tells him she's pregnant, and at least one of them is not happy about it? He tells her, "You could have an accident." Then she turns around and falls down the stairs.
I was the only one who laughed, who found the timing comedic.
...
2: At the OS level, block port 25 for all mailers except your own.
3: Profit!!!
If we put together a Beowulf cluster of these, would they self-assemble into Skynet?
From the memepool.com Sex archive:
a ws2.htm /
>Friday Nov 12, 2004
>A couple sets out to break every one of America's weird blue laws,
>and photograph the process to boot.
>to Sex by riotnrrd
Since the links don't show in the quote:
http://www.dribbleglass.com/subpages/strange/sexl
http://www.nerve.com/photography/egan/illegalacts
(Sorry, when first posted on memepool the second link was free, but now it's "premium.")
>It shouldn't be long before we can expect have a set of replacement parts ready when our own wear out.
Right about the time we have too-cheap-to-meter fusion power.
I keep thinking there's a Jengo Fett joke lurking in this subject, somewhere.
I don't quite buy that, because there isn't that much functional overlap between the two. It's not as if there were economy of scale of efficiency to be bought by merging the two. Personally, I think the MPAA shares a problem with the RIAA - too much money. They're both grossly inefficient and rather piggish with "their" money.
I suspect that if you look behind the numbers, you'll find record stores in a similar bind to movie theaters. (no proof, though.)
Come off it, moderators. One of the few times it's at least close to topic. Give him a break.
It's clear that you're talking about dead tree books, and not eBooks.
IMHO, this goes back to the "greed is good" binge of the 1980's, which was really an economic transformation of the US. (and beyond) Prior to the transformation, GM/Ford/etc was in the business of making cars, and sold those cars to make money so they could go on making and selling cars, and reward their employees and stockholders. The ??AA were in the business of making music and movies, and selling/showing them so they could go on...etc.
After the transformation, it seems that every business is first and foremost in the business of making money. The products they market are mere incidentals, necessary evils in order to further their primary mission. Witness that GM revenue is divided 1/3 - 2/3 between selling cars and selling financing. (forget which third is which) They're making a significant amount of their revenue dabbling in what used to be banks' business. Or consider that a sizable part of Microsoft's revenue comes from playing financial games, and that their multibillion dollar war chest gives them a lot of ability to do this.
There's a more subtle shift here, too. Prior to the transformation of the 80's, employees were valuable resources, especially those with experience. Now employees are annoying expenses, and a drain on profits. Customers used to be valued, hoping for return business. Now, at least in some industries, they're "thieves."
I had a discussion with my son about this last night on the way home. He received several downloaded songs from friends of a European group called, "Nightwish." He now has 5 of their 6 CDs, and my daughter has 2. (and as soon as my son can find the 6th, actually their first, he wants to buy it.) I asked how likely he would have been to plunk down $17 for a CD never having really heard their music, and of course he said, "not at all." A few downloaded songs have translated to 7, potentially 8 sales, in my immediate family.
Oh, some time ago, after he had begun his Nightwish collection I sternly cautioned him about any trading in downloaded songs.
The ??AA is also more than a little STUPID in counting every downloaded song or movie as a lost unit of revenue. Case in point, me. I think long and hard before plunking down $15 for a CD. If CDs (that I like) were $7.50, I'll bet I'd buy more than twice as many. If they were $5.00, I'll bet my purchases would more than triple. At some point, I'd reach my limit of storage and clutter.
But for the guy the RIAA is suing with 10,000 songs, or whatever, he NEVER HAD the kind of money to buy that much music. Even if he had a good income, when it costs real money, you balance your music against food, rent, clothing, gasoline, eating out, going to the movies, going to concerts, etc. The only reason he would have that collection of 10,000 songs is because they were (at the time) effectively free, costing only bandwidth and space.
Choke off ALL downloads, filesharing, etc, and I suspect the ??AA wouldn't see more than even a 10% increase in their sales. Lacking the "free" source, I'll bet those people would simply choose not to buy, most of the time.
>Those of us who are old enough will remember "copy protected" software from the early days of the PC. That died a well-deserved death before too long, because it was only
>effective for giving legitimate customers a pain in the ass.
I hope you're right. I fear you're not. Please let me redo your last sentence:
"That died a well-deserved death before too long, because the software industry was new, and neither big enough nor savvy enough to buy legislation protecting their interests."
Isn't Windows Activation really another form of copy protectoin, after all?
If I were starting from scratch, I probably wouldn't have even been asking the question, just gotten KnoppMyth. But given that I control 5 Gentoo systems already, I'm prone to add more of what I already know, than to add yet another distribution. (I also have to see after some RedHat machines.) But some comparison information is still useful.