>>"... point of this article is if everyone buys it, then it must be better...
To the contrary, the point of the article is that technological quality is only one of the attributes that affect sales of a product. Price, convenience, ease of use, suitability for purpose are others. Technological advantages that can only be seen in a lab test, not subjectively by people using the product, don't carry much weight in the mass market.
Did you read it? I don't recall an explanation of BetaMax's supposed superiority. In fact, the statement that it wasn't better is at the top off the piece.
He says BetaMax's supposed edge was discernible only in the lab, not by people watching a tape, and that Sony's decision to package it in one-hour lengths made it unusable for movies.
Send Money or I'll Hide My Alien Pictures
on
SOHO Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
OK... You have incontrovertible photos of alien spacecraft inside the Solar System. Must be pretty exciting. After all, this is the proof that will change humanity forever. You've got to be bursting at the seams to tell the world.
So, what do you do? You wait leisurely for a few weeks, and then charge a few quid for a seat at the grand unveiling at a rented room.
I suspect they'll have the same incentive they have today to listen, which will be rather high if people start making the same case Congressional representatives and Senators. Trends -- many people saying the same thing over and over -- count much more than one brilliantly insightful email.
Second point: Most people aren't "techno-geeks", so mail about issues near and dear to only those folks may have no more impact than mail from, say, orthodontists. Patient, polite and lay explanations explaining the technical holes in regulations impacting this industry, or illuminating unforseen damage to the public, are more likely to do some good.
Third point: Pay attention to proposed regulation. Screaming bloody murder when the regulation comes into force is a bit late.
Fourth point: People with money do influence who runs for office and how those candidates behave, but they still only have one vote. The real currency of politics is the vote. Geeks have all the tools at hand to create their own Internet-based voting bloc.
Stuff and nonsense. Fanaticism like this keeps Linux from being socially acceptable. Who'd want to be identified with people like this? It's like getting emotional about toasters.
By the way, three of the 4 companies you site as being destroyed by MS are still in business.
Yeah, MS has a near-monopoly on the PC desktop, and like every other successful business it behaves in its own best interests. But, if you're old enough to recall the late '70's and early '80's, you'll remember that prior to the wedding of the IBM PC architecture with that of DOS (which, by the way, has always been available from vendors other than MS), the PC desktop world was flooded with different and incompatible hardware and software standards. What ran on a Commodore didn't run on an Apple. What ran on an Apple wouldn't run on a Kaypro. Etc., etc. This wasn't an issue for the hobbyist market, but it was for the business market. That market wants to be able to buy compatible hardware and software from multiple vendors. Hence, their desire for standards (they don't care about the ssame standards that exercise develpers).and their problem with the multiplicity of Linux vendors. Standards tend to foster the growth of only a few big vendors. Microsoft's dominance was inevitable, even if they'd behaved themselvs.
The Wired piece correctly points to the changing music preferences of people who aren't teenagers. One thing they discover is that music is not bounded by the "popular bands' that many Slashdor readers seem to think equate with all music.
I'm over 30, and buy fewer than a dozen CD's per year. I stopped feeling a "gotta have that CD" compulsion a long timer ago. (Hence, the hundreds of CD's sitting in boxesx in my closets.)
I haven't paid to hear a musician play in anything larger than a neighborhood bar for years. And, when I think of a "band" it's more likely to be a bunch of jazz players found on a Bluenote reissue.
I've played with the p2p networks, found them rather chaotic, and, more importantly, found little music that I'd bother to listen to, on any medium.
I care about audio quality, so I don't listen to music on my PC.
I don't know if my experience mirrors that of others (I suspect it does), but the same thing is likely to happen to the big demographic currently targeted by the music industry.
My criteria for a music distribution system that succeeds the current system includes: distribution of music I like; sufficient revenue back to the musicians I like to keep them in the business; simple and convenient way to locate and acquire music I like; simple means to transfer the music files to a format acceptable to my playback method of choice.
Cost? Less is better than more expensive, but it isn't a primary factor.
Apple had a bigger slice of the PC market before the PC architecture took off. but they were never -- and are not -- a monopoly. Think Commodore, Sinclair, Radio Shack, Atari, Texas Instruments, Victor, Heath, and a big batch of other companies that marketed computers in the early 1980's.
If a company has competition, they aren't a monopoly.
Oh, hell...Slashdot has a monopoly on slashdot.org, The New York Times has a monopoly on newspapers called The New York Times, Moscow has a monopoly on capitals of the Russian Federation, and cows have a monopoly on beef.
Guess we better take up our keyboards to do battle against these evil meanies.
Calling Apple a monopoly because they're the only people to make Apple products is like saying McDonalds has a monopoly on hamburgers because they're they only company that makes Big Macs. Apple sells computers. Last I looked they did not control the computer market.
And, unfortunately, you don't have a monopoly on inane comments.
Sorry, but this post is typical of the semi-literate ungrammatical poorly spelled brain droppings that show up every time/. runs a story from the adult world. Do you guys live in Never-Never Land with Peter Pan?
Thousands of bills are introduced in Congress every year. Most don't pass. If you're convinced this bill is a real threat, do something about it instead of spewing dribble. If you don't want to vote or don't want to play politics, stop whining.
By the way, the Supreme Court is the constitutional coourt in the U.S., and the Constitution gives Congress to power tp regulate interstate commerce. And, of course, states can regulate the sale of games within their borders, if they wish.
Only three kinds of people will let this change their behavior:
1. The truly paranoid 2. The truly criminal 3. People whose self-esteem rests on believing that everyone but them is crooked and evil.
People can surveil you anywhere you go, your car can be identified in commercial satellite imagery, the grocery knows what you buy, the phone company knows who you call, the cable company knows what TV programs you watch, and your ISP knows what web sites you visit and who gets your email.....and now you're upset?
>>...power's concentrated in the hands of the copyright holders...
Yep, by definition. That's what copyright is all about.
Trying to make a case that posting hundreds of copywritten files on the net for further copying by anyone constitutes fair use is hopeless. That's piracy. You do not have the right to share copywritten material, in its entirety, with, potentially, the rest of the globe. Copyright's primary purpose is to prevent that kind of wholesale copying. The only difference between p2p copying and commercial piracy is that p2p pirates don't charge (hence the "sharing" claim), while commercial pirates do charge.
Too bad some poor sod of a Verizon customer is caught up in this. They should be going after Kazaa and the rest, who wouldn't exist and wouldn't profit except for their ability to facilitate widespread piracy.
If what you say is accurate, then Canada is being inconsistent.
BTW, I don't have a "theory". I just believe that, in terms of the distribution of media and other content, the Internet will be treated as a medium, like radio, TV, the press, etc. Some argue that will result in the stifling of innovation , etc., so perhaps the web ought to be treated differently, but I doubt that will happen.
Commercial broadcast television, and radio, have always been advertising media. The programs are on the air in order to carry commericials, not the other way around. Programs are there to make sure people watch the commercials, and they are cancelled when not enough people watch the commercials. That's why there's a rating system: so programmers can determine what they charge for advertising air time.
Anyone who wants to put TV programming on the web ought to create original programming, rather than stealing content from someone else.
If someone grabbed, say, CNN, off satellite and rebroadcast it without permission, how long would it take for the lawyers to show up?
If someone grabbed the New York Times page layouts off the satellite feed to the paper's regional printers and put it on the street under another name, guess what would happen?
This action has nothing to do with stifling innovation (at this point, streaming media onto the net is not innovative) or restricting someone's freedom. The web gets no special deals just because its the web.
Slashdot does not run every story that's submitted. The staff selects what it wants to post. That kind of selection is a journalistic function. By not going the rest of the way and acting responsibly,/. is just copping out.
...a European-led consortium presented them with images that clearly were none of the aforementioned, they 'clamped up.
In case anyone is wondering if the people at Slashdot practice journalism or even make an attempt at verifying facts, that quote provides the answer: no.
Who says? What "European-led constortium"? Where's the evidence that NASA "clamped up"? What does "clearly none of the aforementioned" mean? That's an assertion of an opinion.
This story may be perfectly true, but then again it might not be. Meanwhile,/. goes on in full amateur mode.
There's much in your post that I find unfathomable and, more importantly, unsubstantiated, that I really don't the energy to rebut. It would be like swimming in molasses.) I will just point out that, yes, Europe, does not have a constitution, but that's pointless since it's a continent, not a country. And that your post is typical of the unreasoned and unjustifiably cynical posts that/. encourages these days. Just a bunch of posturng by spoiled boys lucky enough to live in the U.S. You think your way of life is threatened because the people who sell music expect you to pay for it. I can't think of an issue that's more emblematic of pampered, know-nothing louts. Be happy you've got electricity.
...honestly expect the entertainment industry to do nothing when, in their eyes, people are stealing their product?
Every time the RIAA or MPAA issues a press release, someone at Slashdot HQ throws the morsel out to the unwashed masses like raw meat to starving cats. And they respond by posting the usual chest-beating paeans of moral indignation, pumping up OSDN's ad revenue in the process.
The RIAA and the MPAA may be pulling a King Canute act (look it up) but the typical/. poster sure smells like someone who just wants free music. So much for the moral high ground.
...what is the moral equivalence of the RIAA taking realized cash from people who do not download music?
I dunno, but so what? Feelings of moral superiority, by themselves, seldom carry the day.
Seems to me this is just an attempt to scare big ISP's into doing the RIAA's dirty work for them. At that, there'd certainly be a few challenges in court that would gum up the works for at least a while.
I don't have room or time here to explain, or persuade, anyone why going into space is worthwhile. It will be motivated by the ame things that motivated human exploration and settling of the Earth: curiosity, search for wealth, power over others, etc.
The argument that the public hears so often from the anti-space crowd -- spend the money here and don't even think about space until we've solved all Earth's problems -- is bogus. We will never solve all our problems, because we keep creating new ones. We change our own environment and then we have to deal with it. That's what we do.
Besides, most people who argue "spend the money here" just want it spent on there own pet interest.
My basic point is that space exploration, fundamentally, is about going to other places in space. Along the way, scientific research, commercial exploitation and all the rest will happen. But until we actually decide to go someplace and build the capability and infrastructure to get there, none of those other secondary benefits are possible. Because leadership outside NASA hasn't ddemonstrated the vision and interest necessary to make that decision, NASA is left, almost literally, spinning its wheels. It's difficult to get excited about putting people into orbit; we've been doing that for 40 years.
Slashdot Mirror
>>"... point of this article is if everyone buys it, then it must be better...
To the contrary, the point of the article is that technological quality is only one of the attributes that affect sales of a product. Price, convenience, ease of use, suitability for purpose are others. Technological advantages that can only be seen in a lab test, not subjectively by people using the product, don't carry much weight in the mass market.
doomed.
Did you read it? I don't recall an explanation of BetaMax's supposed superiority. In fact, the statement that it wasn't better is at the top off the piece.
He says BetaMax's supposed edge was discernible only in the lab, not by people watching a tape, and that Sony's decision to package it in one-hour lengths made it unusable for movies.
OK... You have incontrovertible photos of alien spacecraft inside the Solar System. Must be pretty exciting. After all, this is the proof that will change humanity forever. You've got to be bursting at the seams to tell the world.
So, what do you do? You wait leisurely for a few weeks, and then charge a few quid for a seat at the grand unveiling at a rented room.
Uh huh. Sure
I suspect they'll have the same incentive they have today to listen, which will be rather high if people start making the same case Congressional representatives and Senators. Trends -- many people saying the same thing over and over -- count much more than one brilliantly insightful email.
Second point: Most people aren't "techno-geeks", so mail about issues near and dear to only those folks may have no more impact than mail from, say, orthodontists. Patient, polite and lay explanations explaining the technical holes in regulations impacting this industry, or illuminating unforseen damage to the public, are more likely to do some good.
Third point: Pay attention to proposed regulation. Screaming bloody murder when the regulation comes into force is a bit late.
Fourth point: People with money do influence who runs for office and how those candidates behave, but they still only have one vote. The real currency of politics is the vote. Geeks have all the tools at hand to create their own Internet-based voting bloc.
The Senate and House aren't on the list. They're legislative, not regulatory, bodies.
Stuff and nonsense. Fanaticism like this keeps Linux from being socially acceptable. Who'd want to be identified with people like this? It's like getting emotional about toasters.
By the way, three of the 4 companies you site as being destroyed by MS are still in business.
Yeah, MS has a near-monopoly on the PC desktop, and like every other successful business it behaves in its own best interests. But, if you're old enough to recall the late '70's and early '80's, you'll remember that prior to the wedding of the IBM PC architecture with that of DOS (which, by the way, has always been available from vendors other than MS), the PC desktop world was flooded with different and incompatible hardware and software standards. What ran on a Commodore didn't run on an Apple. What ran on an Apple wouldn't run on a Kaypro. Etc., etc. This wasn't an issue for the hobbyist market, but it was for the business market. That market wants to be able to buy compatible hardware and software from multiple vendors. Hence, their desire for standards (they don't care about the ssame standards that exercise develpers).and their problem with the multiplicity of Linux vendors. Standards tend to foster the growth of only a few big vendors. Microsoft's dominance was inevitable, even if they'd behaved themselvs.
The Wired piece correctly points to the changing music preferences of people who aren't teenagers. One thing they discover is that music is not bounded by the "popular bands' that many Slashdor readers seem to think equate with all music.
I'm over 30, and buy fewer than a dozen CD's per year. I stopped feeling a "gotta have that CD" compulsion a long timer ago. (Hence, the hundreds of CD's sitting in boxesx in my closets.)
I haven't paid to hear a musician play in anything larger than a neighborhood bar for years. And, when I think of a "band" it's more likely to be a bunch of jazz players found on a Bluenote reissue.
I've played with the p2p networks, found them rather chaotic, and, more importantly, found little music that I'd bother to listen to, on any medium.
I care about audio quality, so I don't listen to music on my PC.
I don't know if my experience mirrors that of others (I suspect it does), but the same thing is likely to happen to the big demographic currently targeted by the music industry.
My criteria for a music distribution system that succeeds the current system includes: distribution of music I like; sufficient revenue back to the musicians I like to keep them in the business; simple and convenient way to locate and acquire music I like; simple means to transfer the music files to a format acceptable to my playback method of choice.
Cost? Less is better than more expensive, but it isn't a primary factor.
Apple had a bigger slice of the PC market before the PC architecture took off. but they were never -- and are not -- a monopoly. Think Commodore, Sinclair, Radio Shack, Atari, Texas Instruments, Victor, Heath, and a big batch of other companies that marketed computers in the early 1980's.
If a company has competition, they aren't a monopoly.
Oh, hell...Slashdot has a monopoly on slashdot.org, The New York Times has a monopoly on newspapers called The New York Times, Moscow has a monopoly on capitals of the Russian Federation, and cows have a monopoly on beef.
Guess we better take up our keyboards to do battle against these evil meanies.
Calling Apple a monopoly because they're the only people to make Apple products is like saying McDonalds has a monopoly on hamburgers because they're they only company that makes Big Macs. Apple sells computers. Last I looked they did not control the computer market.
And, unfortunately, you don't have a monopoly on inane comments.
Sorry, but this post is typical of the semi-literate ungrammatical poorly spelled brain droppings that show up every time /. runs a story from the adult world. Do you guys live in Never-Never Land with Peter Pan?
Thousands of bills are introduced in Congress every year. Most don't pass. If you're convinced this bill is a real threat, do something about it instead of spewing dribble. If you don't want to vote or don't want to play politics, stop whining.
By the way, the Supreme Court is the constitutional coourt in the U.S., and the Constitution gives Congress to power tp regulate interstate commerce. And, of course, states can regulate the sale of games within their borders, if they wish.
Why do so many of you define yourselves only as "consumers"? Are you only what you buy? Sad.
Only three kinds of people will let this change their behavior:
1. The truly paranoid
2. The truly criminal
3. People whose self-esteem rests on believing that everyone but them is crooked and evil.
People can surveil you anywhere you go, your car can be identified in commercial satellite imagery, the grocery knows what you buy, the phone company knows who you call, the cable company knows what TV programs you watch, and your ISP knows what web sites you visit and who gets your email.....and now you're upset?
>> ...power's concentrated in the hands of the copyright holders...
Yep, by definition. That's what copyright is all about.
Trying to make a case that posting hundreds of copywritten files on the net for further copying by anyone constitutes fair use is hopeless. That's piracy. You do not have the right to share copywritten material, in its entirety, with, potentially, the rest of the globe. Copyright's primary purpose is to prevent that kind of wholesale copying. The only difference between p2p copying and commercial piracy is that p2p pirates don't charge (hence the "sharing" claim), while commercial pirates do charge.
Too bad some poor sod of a Verizon customer is caught up in this. They should be going after Kazaa and the rest, who wouldn't exist and wouldn't profit except for their ability to facilitate widespread piracy.
If the account is in your name, you're on the hot seat.
If what you say is accurate, then Canada is being inconsistent.
BTW, I don't have a "theory". I just believe that, in terms of the distribution of media and other content, the Internet will be treated as a medium, like radio, TV, the press, etc. Some argue that will result in the stifling of innovation , etc., so perhaps the web ought to be treated differently, but I doubt that will happen.
Commercial broadcast television, and radio, have always been advertising media. The programs are on the air in order to carry commericials, not the other way around. Programs are there to make sure people watch the commercials, and they are cancelled when not enough people watch the commercials. That's why there's a rating system: so programmers can determine what they charge for advertising air time.
Anyone who wants to put TV programming on the web ought to create original programming, rather than stealing content from someone else.
If someone grabbed, say, CNN, off satellite and rebroadcast it without permission, how long would it take for the lawyers to show up?
If someone grabbed the New York Times page layouts off the satellite feed to the paper's regional printers and put it on the street under another name, guess what would happen?
This action has nothing to do with stifling innovation (at this point, streaming media onto the net is not innovative) or restricting someone's freedom. The web gets no special deals just because its the web.
Slashdot does not run every story that's submitted. The staff selects what it wants to post. That kind of selection is a journalistic function. By not going the rest of the way and acting responsibly, /. is just copping out.
...a European-led consortium presented them with images that clearly were none of the aforementioned, they 'clamped up.
/. goes on in full amateur mode.
In case anyone is wondering if the people at Slashdot practice journalism or even make an attempt at verifying facts, that quote provides the answer: no.
Who says? What "European-led constortium"? Where's the evidence that NASA "clamped up"? What does "clearly none of the aforementioned" mean? That's an assertion of an opinion.
This story may be perfectly true, but then again it might not be. Meanwhile,
There's much in your post that I find unfathomable and, more importantly, unsubstantiated, that I really don't the energy to rebut. It would be like swimming in molasses.) I will just point out that, yes, Europe, does not have a constitution, but that's pointless since it's a continent, not a country. And that your post is typical of the unreasoned and unjustifiably cynical posts that /. encourages these days. Just a bunch of posturng by spoiled boys lucky enough to live in the U.S. You think your way of life is threatened because the people who sell music expect you to pay for it. I can't think of an issue that's more emblematic of pampered, know-nothing louts. Be happy you've got electricity.
...honestly expect the entertainment industry to do nothing when, in their eyes, people are stealing their product?
/. poster sure smells like someone who just wants free music. So much for the moral high ground.
Every time the RIAA or MPAA issues a press release, someone at Slashdot HQ throws the morsel out to the unwashed masses like raw meat to starving cats. And they respond by posting the usual chest-beating paeans of moral indignation, pumping up OSDN's ad revenue in the process.
The RIAA and the MPAA may be pulling a King Canute act (look it up) but the typical
...what is the moral equivalence of the RIAA taking realized cash from people who do not download music?
I dunno, but so what? Feelings of moral superiority, by themselves, seldom carry the day.
Seems to me this is just an attempt to scare big ISP's into doing the RIAA's dirty work for them. At that, there'd certainly be a few challenges in court that would gum up the works for at least a while.
Why? For the same reason i don't send a remote sensing device to the beach when I want to take a vacation.
I don't have room or time here to explain, or persuade, anyone why going into space is worthwhile. It will be motivated by the ame things that motivated human exploration and settling of the Earth: curiosity, search for wealth, power over others, etc.
The argument that the public hears so often from the anti-space crowd -- spend the money here and don't even think about space until we've solved all Earth's problems -- is bogus. We will never solve all our problems, because we keep creating new ones. We change our own environment and then we have to deal with it. That's what we do.
Besides, most people who argue "spend the money here" just want it spent on there own pet interest.
My basic point is that space exploration, fundamentally, is about going to other places in space. Along the way, scientific research, commercial exploitation and all the rest will happen. But until we actually decide to go someplace and build the capability and infrastructure to get there, none of those other secondary benefits are possible. Because leadership outside NASA hasn't ddemonstrated the vision and interest necessary to make that decision, NASA is left, almost literally, spinning its wheels. It's difficult to get excited about putting people into orbit; we've been doing that for 40 years.