A lot of these deals are not actually recording contracts.
They are actually FINANCING ARRANGEMENTS. With the risk being taken on by the record company, if the venture fails. However, they are not regulated like banks or lending institutions, because they act as third-parties for them.
You realize that what you are regurgitating and spouting here is just meaningless rhetoric.
It's true that the record companies crowd-out legitimate good acts with overpromotion. And they push services (production and mega-wealth) that are not really necessary to "support the arts".
But without professional representation, I'm not convinced that independent bands can make it out of the garage; no matter how "fucking awesome" they are. I know a lot of "fucking awesome" bands that remain unsigned for years - - - and then give up.
Better still; go see a movie (netflix) called "The Anvil Story" - not necessarily my idea of the best musicians in the world, not really geniuses by any measure. (okay, their lyrics are fucking awful) (but as far as being the originators of 1980's hair-metal genre, I think they "win"). But certainly, they deserved a bit more than they got. They show how very difficult it is to "make it" as a musician, even if you're pretty good. These guys are like the "real-life" Spinal Tap, as far as heavy-metal-hard-knocks goes.
Of course, they're no "Metallica" or "Anthrax" (whatever - barf). But, is there no "middle ground"? Cant a musician make a regular-joe living? Apparently not. Apparently it's "Astrofuckinnomical" or "hobby". No middle-ground.
I can say approximately the same. I watched the first moon landing; was pulled out of bed early in the morning, as a 2 year old. And still: transfixed by these very early images in my memory, and understanding the feeling of awe and excitement coming off all the adults in the room, watching this grainy black-and-white TV, scratchy hissy audio voices... . and sharing the sense that - this is our destiny.
Someday.
Go onto YouTube and look up Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" speech. It may *not* be our generation. It may be hundreds of years from now. Who knows what history may transpire, and what changes may take place between now and then? It is certainly disheartening to see that this is not in our immediate future. But to accept that fact, is certainly more comforting than continued blind hope in our continued failed system.
Retiring the shuttle program is good in some ways because it frees up resources
What resources?
Face facts: these resources were CONNED out of the Military Industrial Complex on the PROMISE that the STS would be a multi-purpose system that could orbit KH-based surveillance missions out of the Western Range. (this never happened, by the way. Thiokol/ATK NEVER delivered on the required-and-promised boosters to put the shuttle into a proper high-inclination orbit from the Western Range).
The only reason "we" have an ISS, is because we could CON the European Union to go in "halvsies" with us. I am betting that we will end up selling our share in the near future.
wow - I'm not the ONLY person on the planet who "gets it".
Depressing though. Because that "invisible hand" slap is going to take the form of billions of human deaths, war, disease, poverty, likely long-term contamination and degradation of large portions of the surface of the earth, and continued extinction of 90% of living species. It's not going to be a "market correction". It's going to be Nature, telling us, "yes, you still ARE my bitch, silly apes."
The other issue with 64 gigs of music is; how are you gonna navigate and select on that little postage-stamp of a screen? Using what UI paradigm? Shuffle? You will literally spend more time browsing your library looking for a specific song, than you will listening. And they'll spend time and $$$ rewriting UI software to try to make it work.
I have read some scenarios that seem to point to the idea that even if all human life were wiped out in the blink of an eye, and all petroleum+coal extraction and combustion were halted, it would have little impact on climate change in the next 100 years: that some of the tipping-points on trapped-methane release (seafloor calthyrates and siberian permafrost) have already been passed.
(never mind that if our nuclear power infrastructure were to be abandoned, we would have hundreds of meltdowns - even if all the plants could automatically SCRAM.)
Even in the mildest and most optimistic scenarios, the only viable options are a rapid transition to renewables, and a rapid buildout and deployment of some form of non-sequestration carbon capture technology (i.e. solar-powered devices/biotechnology extracting atmospheric CO2, and reacting it with some chemical feedstock plus an energy input, to stably trap the carbon into a chemical matrix, in order to regulate overall, global CO2 content. . . - - we can only *imagine* this process, not even the actual technology, at this stage).
Yes - let's imagine trying to do this, while simultaneously trying to continue the economic growth and feeding of a world population of 7.7+ Billion. While among 4, 5 (?) major "be fruitful and multiply" religious philosophies - try to convince people to stop breeding like bacteria - as hundreds of millions die from starvation, disease, and war over dwindling resources.
The likely scenarios that seem ready to play out. . . well, have you seen the movie "Soylent Green"?
If a normal, rational, thinking human accepts the above two premises - the likely result is an overwhelming surge of irrational denial. I simply do not blame the vast majority of the people in the world today, who do not believe - who either think that it is not happening, think it's a hoax, or think that there is something we can do to stop it. Those with power, money, and resources, have already begun to hoard more - in anticipation. Those without - are without the means to do anything but continue to manufacture the willpower to remain in denial. It is the ONLY mechanism at their disposal. Accepting the sheer horror of the most likely outcome, is a very difficult and bitter pill to swallow.
Eventually, folks will likely be herded into cities and slaughtered. People who try to go the "survivalist" route, will have a pretty difficult go, I'm sure. Our climate was difficult enough to survive for wild Homo Sapien. But in our modern climate? Without modern tools - competing against entrenched powers who DO have access to modern tools and stockpiles of resources?
Will the stockpilers of resources even be able to survive very much further? How long did the Biosphere II experiment last? Let's be real here.
I would like to have faith in my fellow human beings. I would like to think that we had the power to turn things around, maybe in 1977, when we (the nation that was using 25% of the world's resources with 5% of the world's population) - implemented cap-and-trade for sulfur dioxide emissions - SUCCESSFULLY, and led the world on halting the use of CFC's and possibly reversing the loss of the Ozone layer - that we had the wisdom and the technical power to make this happen. I used to sit-in on Gerard O'Neill's lectures about solar space power, and how we were going to implement it with the new "Space Shuttle" (which was only being designed back then), and how the President was going to put solar panels on the roof of the White House. Energy was a DIRE EMERGENCY back then. The Environment was a DIRE EMERGENCY.
Then, in 1980, we turned our back on that. So that the richest 1% of us could make a buck.
There's no way to know if 1980 was our opportunity, whether we missed that. Or whether we were already hopelessly screwed, as a civilization. (as a world). But it has certainly been a spirit-crushing 31 years since Reagan's "
hmmm. Maybe someone should be talking to pop songwriters, music theory professors. Stuff like that. kwim? Seems like those people may already have this down to a science.
In a machine onto which you can quickly blast a fresh new os image, not plugged into the network... why not? Check it out, see what's on it. If it's dirty, 60 seconds in the microwave, then into the trash. If it's clean, free USB thumb drive!
DARPA should be doing an X-Prize for convincing politicians that War is STUPID.
Or maybe an X-Prize for convincing bankers to lend us money for wars at zero interest; so we can just do them this little favor FOR FREE.
Instead of having to conquer nations for them, and then having to bail halfway through the enterprise when paying interest to them becomes so cumbersome that our economy collapses.
Actually, the smart answer to "let's reduce casualties" is to stay home.
Note: we went to 'stan to kill bin Laden. He was found, and killed, in PAKistan. And anyone who believes he was NOT being sheltered and protected by high-level officials there since early 2002, who were also taking US State Dept. counterterrorism money, is in complete denial.
If only we could go to the "Complaints Department" and ask for a complete and full refund for this idiotic fiasco. They got Air Conditioning, and they were utterly ineffective, at 10 times the cost. The Afghans got their children murdered, and they now get to chuckle as they watch us leave, the way the Soviets, and British left.
And we're going to be paying INTEREST on this debt for the next 100 years. While we're paying higher petroleum prices, because we burned it all trying to keep tents cool in the fucking desert wasteland at the end of the world, last desperate stand of every fucking dying empire that ever binged, puked, and choked to death on its own vomit.
Well; also, factor in the cost of the salaries of the accountants and filing clerks that track the logistical operations to make sure all of that fuel is supplied, especially to critical ops locations like field hospitals, and command centers where shelters MUST remain cool 24x7. This is why hammers cost $200. And this is why wars like this one, in particular, are particularly futile, as far as economic ventures go. It is an extremely cost-inefficient way to jack up someone's ego.
We could have saved ourselves hundreds of billions by hiring the best doctors in the world to surgically attach a giant horse penis to George Bush, thus resolving his psychological inadequacy issues, without all the waste and bloodshed.
I followed this concept closely from the days of Stanley - and looking at the technology in use there, I never believed that it could ever be affordably (+reliably) mass-produced. Not by the same industry that cheaps-out on 1/100 of a cent for taillight bulbs. This technology must be extremely reliable. And manufacturers will use the deadly calculus of the cost-benefit analysis of parts quality and MTBF (etc) to design, and it will be your niece, or cousin, or wife, that could end up being that.00001% of "acceptable failure" risk. Then, whose liability is it?
And what other factors affect this? Dust on the lidar sensor? a chunk of mud or snow? Someone using a cell-phone inside the vehicle? In an adjacent vehicle? Some jackass on the side of the road with a $5 IR LED shining it into traffic for fun? What about the transmitter from one vehicle interfering with the receiver from another?
I actually cut my teeth on TRS-80 BASIC in 1979. And I've been round and round on this argument for many years. I am thinking right now, I completely agree with you.
The argument in the article was about what "programming platform" comes WITH the computer (sufficiently) such that, the technical barrier to entry is low enough that a beginner can get his or her "Hello World" to cough-up some output in the very first day.
Well; I would first say - BASH scripting, (via cygwin on Windows, or native on every other freaking OS in the universe). echo "hello world". DONE.
But after that, JavaScript is closer to being the actual Lingua Franca of the Internet right now. Every computer has a web browser, and everyone can very quickly set up a basic enough development environment (editor+apache instance) to make JavaScript+HTML work with instant gratification. Granted, now your BEGINNING complexity includes networking, graphics, network protocols, security, clilent/server architecture, but that is today's computing world.
The cable Hulu does not do the same (offer premium ad-free service for additional fee) BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE TO.
There is no meaningful competition. Other than Netflix - which is going away. (I guarantee it.)
Now that ISP's are free to bandwidth cap, I give Netflix perhaps 3 years. Tops.
(remember, we used to have Cable+Tivo - then the cable companies neutered Tivo so that we could no longer skip ads, then they came out with their own DVR's so that you get ads within the DVR experience anyway; without the DVR, you get ads that are SO horrible and intrusive, it is nearly impossible to watch any show without the fast-forward capability, for which you are now paying EXTRA, plus another huge premium for HD DVR)
Cable companies have their monopolies (localized) - there is no meaningful competition, so they can charge you for competition, PLUS ads. Period. That's just how it is, and how it shall be, once Netflix is destroyed.
USB... "Universal Serial Bus" . . . so, "Universal means, WHAT exactly? Given that there are like, 8 or 9 different connectors that I can think of off the top of my head (never mind the plethora of devices that ship without working drivers for all but one preferred OS platform.)
Standard my ass.
Whatever they come up with - will be cool in concept, and will SUCK in implementation.
This is just microsoft's latest in a long, long, LONG string of moves to kill off any kind of open 3d framework from thriving. Many, many possible, potential candidates have come and gone, and microsoft has been there standing over the corpse of each one, with bloody hands, proclaiming their own innocence in innovation. Let's get real here, and understand that this is, and always has been, about D3D, and controlling the game development market. When all games (game content) can easily cross over via OpenGL/WebGL, MS will be fucked, as far as having a captive developer market on xbox/windows. Browser-based content is currently only a small part of that, game-wise, because gamers need hardware support == performance. But on the mobile side - how do you suppose that's going to matter? Since mobile == phones, microsoft has a very sharp knife to stick into WebGL. Folks are starting to get damn paranoid about trojan'd content on smartphones. It will be interesting to see where microsoft goes with this.
While INFORMATION (more accurately; Knowledge) can be PROPERTY that has value. . . DATA can NOT. Data can act as a form of CURRENCY, to TRACK A TRANSACTION. But it can never be a commodity that stores value. This is the flaw in bitcoin.
The thing, even about Information or Knowledge, is that it can be copied infinitely and transmitted. So while certain Information and Knowledge has value, in that it can enable one to access physical assets in a more efficient manner; this is not an actual value. It's an "effective" value. But you can't really, in a natural sense, "hoard" information, and build a portfolio of value on a rule of scarcity, all on your own. Not without a framework of legal fiction and a government with police and law to support an Intellectual Property regime, to protect your Information for you. Otherwise, any other person can simply discover and use that information for themselves. And this is also true for Bitcoins. It is not true for PHYSICAL assets. (yet. Not until we figure out how to transmute matter, inexpensively; ie. Stephenson's Diamond Age).
We will eventually no longer manufacture or design anything here, but for the time being if it helps big companies bottom lines, they will never care if they are destroying us. We will wake up and no one will know how to build or design things here, and then all will be lost.
. . . and it will serve us right.
This is the result of voting Republican, the result of the Citizens United SCOTUS decision, (5 to 4, all Republican appointees), who agreed that Capital is the ultimate power in US politics, not the voices of voters. When your CEO's go to the politicians, and ask for H1B's, and 10,000 American engineers sign a petition asking for H1B's to be curtailed, the politician will side with the CEO who gave him money (and investment "tips", by the way). This system is ethically bankrupt, and can not survive. We have cannibalized our own labor force, which has destroyed our own capacity for consumption, and our own wealth as a nation, and due to our greed, we have reduced ourselves to the status of 3rd-world nation. This will catch up with us very soon, perhaps in as little as 10 years. And it will serve us right. This is the future we chose. We fought for it, we voted for it, we embraced and justified dirty tricks to protect it. And here we are.
Well, we would also still require a block of middle-class consumers WHO CAN AFFORD TO PURCHASE PRODUCTS MANUFACTURED BY AMERICANS IN AMERICA.
We don't have anything like that right now. Right now, American consumers can barely afford to buy, on credit, imported products made by slave labor in third-world client-states with no environmental or health regulations. We're rolling down the long tail of the end-game of the US economy, right now. Obama is engaged in a bunch of wishful thinking.
They had enough engineers in 1998, 1999, 2000, when the unemployment rate was 4%, and engineers WERE paid a percentage. Life was good in the late 90's.
But the IPO market was getting rigged by crooked financiers, and there were too many FAKE companies sucking too much venture capital out of the pool. Legit engineers were making a good living. But idiot MBA's were also.
Then came the dotcom crash, and the "percentages" that engineers were paid in stocks got vacuumed up by the Ken Lay's and Bernie Madoff's of the world. And by 2002, they were still INCREASING H1B's instead of reducing them, as companies were laying off engineers by the tens of thousands. And the good ones switch careers.
And they wonder why people decided not to go into engineering in college anymore? We got fucking SCREWED by the system. Until wall street can show the rest of the world that the finance game is no longer rigged, or until engineering can come back as a sustainable-looking career path, I don't think that that kind of trust is ever going to come back.
Slashdot Mirror
lol haw haw haw!!!
A lot of these deals are not actually recording contracts.
They are actually FINANCING ARRANGEMENTS. With the risk being taken on by the record company, if the venture fails. However, they are not regulated like banks or lending institutions, because they act as third-parties for them.
You realize that what you are regurgitating and spouting here is just meaningless rhetoric.
It's true that the record companies crowd-out legitimate good acts with overpromotion. And they push services (production and mega-wealth) that are not really necessary to "support the arts".
But without professional representation, I'm not convinced that independent bands can make it out of the garage; no matter how "fucking awesome" they are. I know a lot of "fucking awesome" bands that remain unsigned for years - - - and then give up.
Better still; go see a movie (netflix) called "The Anvil Story" - not necessarily my idea of the best musicians in the world, not really geniuses by any measure. (okay, their lyrics are fucking awful) (but as far as being the originators of 1980's hair-metal genre, I think they "win"). But certainly, they deserved a bit more than they got. They show how very difficult it is to "make it" as a musician, even if you're pretty good. These guys are like the "real-life" Spinal Tap, as far as heavy-metal-hard-knocks goes.
Of course, they're no "Metallica" or "Anthrax" (whatever - barf). But, is there no "middle ground"? Cant a musician make a regular-joe living? Apparently not. Apparently it's "Astrofuckinnomical" or "hobby". No middle-ground.
I can say approximately the same. I watched the first moon landing; was pulled out of bed early in the morning, as a 2 year old. And still: transfixed by these very early images in my memory, and understanding the feeling of awe and excitement coming off all the adults in the room, watching this grainy black-and-white TV, scratchy hissy audio voices. .. . and sharing the sense that - this is our destiny.
Someday.
Go onto YouTube and look up Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" speech. It may *not* be our generation. It may be hundreds of years from now. Who knows what history may transpire, and what changes may take place between now and then? It is certainly disheartening to see that this is not in our immediate future. But to accept that fact, is certainly more comforting than continued blind hope in our continued failed system.
Retiring the shuttle program is good in some ways because it frees up resources
What resources?
Face facts: these resources were CONNED out of the Military Industrial Complex on the PROMISE that the STS would be a multi-purpose system that could orbit KH-based surveillance missions out of the Western Range. (this never happened, by the way. Thiokol/ATK NEVER delivered on the required-and-promised boosters to put the shuttle into a proper high-inclination orbit from the Western Range).
The only reason "we" have an ISS, is because we could CON the European Union to go in "halvsies" with us. I am betting that we will end up selling our share in the near future.
wow - I'm not the ONLY person on the planet who "gets it".
Depressing though. Because that "invisible hand" slap is going to take the form of billions of human deaths, war, disease, poverty, likely long-term contamination and degradation of large portions of the surface of the earth, and continued extinction of 90% of living species. It's not going to be a "market correction". It's going to be Nature, telling us, "yes, you still ARE my bitch, silly apes."
The other issue with 64 gigs of music is; how are you gonna navigate and select on that little postage-stamp of a screen? Using what UI paradigm? Shuffle? You will literally spend more time browsing your library looking for a specific song, than you will listening. And they'll spend time and $$$ rewriting UI software to try to make it work.
Yes; it's happening. Yes, we're at fault.
Is there anything we can even DO about it?
I have read some scenarios that seem to point to the idea that even if all human life were wiped out in the blink of an eye, and all petroleum+coal extraction and combustion were halted, it would have little impact on climate change in the next 100 years: that some of the tipping-points on trapped-methane release (seafloor calthyrates and siberian permafrost) have already been passed.
(never mind that if our nuclear power infrastructure were to be abandoned, we would have hundreds of meltdowns - even if all the plants could automatically SCRAM.)
Even in the mildest and most optimistic scenarios, the only viable options are a rapid transition to renewables, and a rapid buildout and deployment of some form of non-sequestration carbon capture technology (i.e. solar-powered devices/biotechnology extracting atmospheric CO2, and reacting it with some chemical feedstock plus an energy input, to stably trap the carbon into a chemical matrix, in order to regulate overall, global CO2 content. . . - - we can only *imagine* this process, not even the actual technology, at this stage).
Yes - let's imagine trying to do this, while simultaneously trying to continue the economic growth and feeding of a world population of 7.7+ Billion. While among 4, 5 (?) major "be fruitful and multiply" religious philosophies - try to convince people to stop breeding like bacteria - as hundreds of millions die from starvation, disease, and war over dwindling resources.
The likely scenarios that seem ready to play out. . . well, have you seen the movie "Soylent Green"?
If a normal, rational, thinking human accepts the above two premises - the likely result is an overwhelming surge of irrational denial. I simply do not blame the vast majority of the people in the world today, who do not believe - who either think that it is not happening, think it's a hoax, or think that there is something we can do to stop it. Those with power, money, and resources, have already begun to hoard more - in anticipation. Those without - are without the means to do anything but continue to manufacture the willpower to remain in denial. It is the ONLY mechanism at their disposal. Accepting the sheer horror of the most likely outcome, is a very difficult and bitter pill to swallow.
Eventually, folks will likely be herded into cities and slaughtered. People who try to go the "survivalist" route, will have a pretty difficult go, I'm sure. Our climate was difficult enough to survive for wild Homo Sapien. But in our modern climate? Without modern tools - competing against entrenched powers who DO have access to modern tools and stockpiles of resources?
Will the stockpilers of resources even be able to survive very much further? How long did the Biosphere II experiment last? Let's be real here.
I would like to have faith in my fellow human beings. I would like to think that we had the power to turn things around, maybe in 1977, when we (the nation that was using 25% of the world's resources with 5% of the world's population) - implemented cap-and-trade for sulfur dioxide emissions - SUCCESSFULLY, and led the world on halting the use of CFC's and possibly reversing the loss of the Ozone layer - that we had the wisdom and the technical power to make this happen. I used to sit-in on Gerard O'Neill's lectures about solar space power, and how we were going to implement it with the new "Space Shuttle" (which was only being designed back then), and how the President was going to put solar panels on the roof of the White House. Energy was a DIRE EMERGENCY back then. The Environment was a DIRE EMERGENCY.
Then, in 1980, we turned our back on that. So that the richest 1% of us could make a buck.
There's no way to know if 1980 was our opportunity, whether we missed that. Or whether we were already hopelessly screwed, as a civilization. (as a world). But it has certainly been a spirit-crushing 31 years since Reagan's "
hmmm. Maybe someone should be talking to pop songwriters, music theory professors. Stuff like that. kwim? Seems like those people may already have this down to a science.
In a machine onto which you can quickly blast a fresh new os image, not plugged into the network... why not? Check it out, see what's on it. If it's dirty, 60 seconds in the microwave, then into the trash. If it's clean, free USB thumb drive!
DARPA should be doing an X-Prize for convincing politicians that War is STUPID.
Or maybe an X-Prize for convincing bankers to lend us money for wars at zero interest; so we can just do them this little favor FOR FREE.
Instead of having to conquer nations for them, and then having to bail halfway through the enterprise when paying interest to them becomes so cumbersome that our economy collapses.
Actually, the smart answer to "let's reduce casualties" is to stay home.
Note: we went to 'stan to kill bin Laden. He was found, and killed, in PAKistan. And anyone who believes he was NOT being sheltered and protected by high-level officials there since early 2002, who were also taking US State Dept. counterterrorism money, is in complete denial.
If only we could go to the "Complaints Department" and ask for a complete and full refund for this idiotic fiasco. They got Air Conditioning, and they were utterly ineffective, at 10 times the cost. The Afghans got their children murdered, and they now get to chuckle as they watch us leave, the way the Soviets, and British left.
And we're going to be paying INTEREST on this debt for the next 100 years. While we're paying higher petroleum prices, because we burned it all trying to keep tents cool in the fucking desert wasteland at the end of the world, last desperate stand of every fucking dying empire that ever binged, puked, and choked to death on its own vomit.
Well; also, factor in the cost of the salaries of the accountants and filing clerks that track the logistical operations to make sure all of that fuel is supplied, especially to critical ops locations like field hospitals, and command centers where shelters MUST remain cool 24x7. This is why hammers cost $200. And this is why wars like this one, in particular, are particularly futile, as far as economic ventures go. It is an extremely cost-inefficient way to jack up someone's ego.
We could have saved ourselves hundreds of billions by hiring the best doctors in the world to surgically attach a giant horse penis to George Bush, thus resolving his psychological inadequacy issues, without all the waste and bloodshed.
Why won't people listen to this guy?
I seriously don't know, and you ignorant fuckers all deserve the death that is coming to you.
FWIW; we all knew this was coming in 1973, and we just fucking kept on ignoring it.
I followed this concept closely from the days of Stanley - and looking at the technology in use there, I never believed that it could ever be affordably (+reliably) mass-produced. Not by the same industry that cheaps-out on 1/100 of a cent for taillight bulbs. This technology must be extremely reliable. And manufacturers will use the deadly calculus of the cost-benefit analysis of parts quality and MTBF (etc) to design, and it will be your niece, or cousin, or wife, that could end up being that .00001% of "acceptable failure" risk. Then, whose liability is it?
And what other factors affect this? Dust on the lidar sensor? a chunk of mud or snow? Someone using a cell-phone inside the vehicle? In an adjacent vehicle? Some jackass on the side of the road with a $5 IR LED shining it into traffic for fun? What about the transmitter from one vehicle interfering with the receiver from another?
I actually cut my teeth on TRS-80 BASIC in 1979. And I've been round and round on this argument for many years. I am thinking right now, I completely agree with you.
The argument in the article was about what "programming platform" comes WITH the computer (sufficiently) such that, the technical barrier to entry is low enough that a beginner can get his or her "Hello World" to cough-up some output in the very first day.
Well; I would first say - BASH scripting, (via cygwin on Windows, or native on every other freaking OS in the universe). echo "hello world". DONE.
But after that, JavaScript is closer to being the actual Lingua Franca of the Internet right now. Every computer has a web browser, and everyone can very quickly set up a basic enough development environment (editor+apache instance) to make JavaScript+HTML work with instant gratification. Granted, now your BEGINNING complexity includes networking, graphics, network protocols, security, clilent/server architecture, but that is today's computing world.
The cable Hulu does not do the same (offer premium ad-free service for additional fee) BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE TO.
There is no meaningful competition. Other than Netflix - which is going away. (I guarantee it.)
Now that ISP's are free to bandwidth cap, I give Netflix perhaps 3 years. Tops.
(remember, we used to have Cable+Tivo - then the cable companies neutered Tivo so that we could no longer skip ads, then they came out with their own DVR's so that you get ads within the DVR experience anyway; without the DVR, you get ads that are SO horrible and intrusive, it is nearly impossible to watch any show without the fast-forward capability, for which you are now paying EXTRA, plus another huge premium for HD DVR)
Cable companies have their monopolies (localized) - there is no meaningful competition, so they can charge you for competition, PLUS ads. Period. That's just how it is, and how it shall be, once Netflix is destroyed.
USB... "Universal Serial Bus" . . . so, "Universal means, WHAT exactly? Given that there are like, 8 or 9 different connectors that I can think of off the top of my head (never mind the plethora of devices that ship without working drivers for all but one preferred OS platform.)
Standard my ass.
Whatever they come up with - will be cool in concept, and will SUCK in implementation.
It's certainly a good point - but since they've extended copyright to like the life of the artist plus 90 years - 7 years is a moot point.
This is just microsoft's latest in a long, long, LONG string of moves to kill off any kind of open 3d framework from thriving. Many, many possible, potential candidates have come and gone, and microsoft has been there standing over the corpse of each one, with bloody hands, proclaiming their own innocence in innovation. Let's get real here, and understand that this is, and always has been, about D3D, and controlling the game development market. When all games (game content) can easily cross over via OpenGL/WebGL, MS will be fucked, as far as having a captive developer market on xbox/windows. Browser-based content is currently only a small part of that, game-wise, because gamers need hardware support == performance. But on the mobile side - how do you suppose that's going to matter? Since mobile == phones, microsoft has a very sharp knife to stick into WebGL. Folks are starting to get damn paranoid about trojan'd content on smartphones. It will be interesting to see where microsoft goes with this.
While INFORMATION (more accurately; Knowledge) can be PROPERTY that has value. . . DATA can NOT.
Data can act as a form of CURRENCY, to TRACK A TRANSACTION.
But it can never be a commodity that stores value. This is the flaw in bitcoin.
The thing, even about Information or Knowledge, is that it can be copied infinitely and transmitted. So while certain Information and Knowledge has value, in that it can enable one to access physical assets in a more efficient manner; this is not an actual value. It's an "effective" value. But you can't really, in a natural sense, "hoard" information, and build a portfolio of value on a rule of scarcity, all on your own. Not without a framework of legal fiction and a government with police and law to support an Intellectual Property regime, to protect your Information for you. Otherwise, any other person can simply discover and use that information for themselves. And this is also true for Bitcoins. It is not true for PHYSICAL assets. (yet. Not until we figure out how to transmute matter, inexpensively; ie. Stephenson's Diamond Age).
We will eventually no longer manufacture or design anything here, but for the time being if it helps big companies bottom lines, they will never care if they are destroying us. We will wake up and no one will know how to build or design things here, and then all will be lost.
. . . and it will serve us right.
This is the result of voting Republican, the result of the Citizens United SCOTUS decision, (5 to 4, all Republican appointees), who agreed that Capital is the ultimate power in US politics, not the voices of voters. When your CEO's go to the politicians, and ask for H1B's, and 10,000 American engineers sign a petition asking for H1B's to be curtailed, the politician will side with the CEO who gave him money (and investment "tips", by the way). This system is ethically bankrupt, and can not survive. We have cannibalized our own labor force, which has destroyed our own capacity for consumption, and our own wealth as a nation, and due to our greed, we have reduced ourselves to the status of 3rd-world nation. This will catch up with us very soon, perhaps in as little as 10 years. And it will serve us right. This is the future we chose. We fought for it, we voted for it, we embraced and justified dirty tricks to protect it. And here we are.
Well, we would also still require a block of middle-class consumers WHO CAN AFFORD TO PURCHASE PRODUCTS MANUFACTURED BY AMERICANS IN AMERICA.
We don't have anything like that right now. Right now, American consumers can barely afford to buy, on credit, imported products made by slave labor in third-world client-states with no environmental or health regulations. We're rolling down the long tail of the end-game of the US economy, right now. Obama is engaged in a bunch of wishful thinking.
They had enough engineers in 1998, 1999, 2000, when the unemployment rate was 4%, and engineers WERE paid a percentage. Life was good in the late 90's.
But the IPO market was getting rigged by crooked financiers, and there were too many FAKE companies sucking too much venture capital out of the pool. Legit engineers were making a good living. But idiot MBA's were also.
Then came the dotcom crash, and the "percentages" that engineers were paid in stocks got vacuumed up by the Ken Lay's and Bernie Madoff's of the world. And by 2002, they were still INCREASING H1B's instead of reducing them, as companies were laying off engineers by the tens of thousands. And the good ones switch careers.
And they wonder why people decided not to go into engineering in college anymore? We got fucking SCREWED by the system. Until wall street can show the rest of the world that the finance game is no longer rigged, or until engineering can come back as a sustainable-looking career path, I don't think that that kind of trust is ever going to come back.