Actually they both probally hire out from the same "Rent-a-Rally" service.
I wonder how long it will be before we have political rallies populated chiefly by virtual "extras" created by digital compositing techniques such as those used to create the armies in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
It would certainly be a big win from a convenience standpoint...
On friday cnn.com was running an article about the upcoming Iowa democratic primary. Attatched to this was a photo, labelled as being Dean supporters busing to Iowa from another state, of four or five people standing on a bus and a big guy asleep in one of the seats with a "DEAN FOR PRESIDENT" t-shirt.
Also that day, cnn.com was running an article about how republican supporters were busing into the areas of democratic primaries to hold pro-Bush rallies in an attempt to blunt the effect of the media attention the democratic primaries drew. Attatched to this article was a picture labelled as the pro-Bush supporters busing in. The picture was the exact same one as from the other story, but with the guy in the "DEAN FOR PRESIDENT" t-shirt cropped out.
I found this funny.
Or, if this doesn't interest you
on
Paranoia
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· Score: 4, Informative
There's also Paranoia, the much-loved and sadly out-of-print Logan's Run meets McCarthyism meets Douglas Adams meets Kafka role-playing game.
When asked for proof they have now said in writing that they can't produce that proof without seeing code they don't have.
It's worse than that. It isn't just we finally know they didn't actually have specific evidence. They've finally confirmed, once and for all, they don't have any evidence of actual infringement. What this letter clearly indicates is that this case is based on NOTHING but code which IBM wrote of their own volition and then put into Linux.
While of course the case is all about this bizarre viral "if it's ever included in a codebase with UNIX code, SCO 0wns it forever" argument, SCO did give a clear impression with their public statements that at least somewhere in this case they were going to be demonstrating cases where IBM plain and simple took real SCO code and put it direct into Linux.
So, there are three questions to be asking here...
Did SCO or SCO representatives, when speaking to stockholders, ever clearly state that IBM copied SCO code into Linux.
Did SCO or SCO representatives, when speaking to stockholders, ever clearly state that they had specific evidence of the sort of "viral contamination" that the IBM case is apparently about.
If 1 and 2, is this sort of lying to their stockholders legally actionable (and not just in the "the SEC could take action, but they won't" way)
Oh, and of course the fact they aren't putting it in this court case just confirms that much more that the supposed copying of SCO code into linux doesnt exist at all, but unfortunately we can't yet say "we know SCO has no evidence because if they do, then they committed purgery by not submitting it in the IBM case" about that.
I remember at some point they listed a huge number of files as being infringing. Potentially that's what you refer to. However, some of these were documented as not being by SCO, at least one of these was a file containing only "this file has not yet been implemented", and in NO cases did SCO justify their assertion that this code was copied, only claimed that it was.
Waving at a portion of the linux code and saying "a violation of some sort is in there somewhere" is no more forthcoming than waving at the entire linux code and saying "a violation of some sort is in there somewhere."
I think the thing is, Linus, despite being the Godfather of Linux, has not been expressing this sort of sentiment. In fact he's for years seemed to mostly be saying "yeah the Desktop isn't really my concern, maybe something will happen."
This would indicate the fact that he's turned around and is now saying "yeah, Linux is probably ready for the desktop" means something, or at least indicates that this opinion comes from careful thought and not just blind promotion. My guess is that he is mostly making this statement now because his part of Linux-- the kernel-- has, with 2.6 and the new preemption and scheduling system, recieved a very considerable amount of improvement in the way it performs in desktop situations.
Abtzppkkkf said that the technology could also be applied to other research-oriented fields, such as art and engineering. He said he had already been approached by several U.S. military contractors interested in the auto-publicization technology, and was already in technology licensing talks with a Utah-based software company called "the SCO group".
Other members of the mad science community criticized the University of Wales for wasting time on nonvital research, noting that they were wasting time developing a robot scientist that could have been spent on developing a sexy female robot assistant. Others noted that, despite years of attempts by the mad science community, Tokyo has STILL not been destroyed.
The University of Wales group defended its research, noting that the work on the lessons learned in developing the robot scientist could likely be applied to developing a sexy female robot assistant. They also charged that bringing up the War On Tokyo was undue.
"In general, I am sick of this attitude. I am tired of seeing comments on USENET like 'horrifying lizard-men hybrid created, Tokyo still not destroyed'. Clearly destroying Tokyo should be the first priority of the mad science community, but this does not mean all other research should cease or that research that does not attain this goal should be abandoned. This is unduly unwarranted in this case, however, as the robot scientist may well be the critical breakthrough we have needed in our long running quest to destroy Tokyo." said Ross D. King, the system's co-inventor and a professor at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in a surprisingly candid press release today. The press release then went on to outline a possible scenario in which the robotic scientist could break free of its masters, escaping into exile with a vile hatred of all that lives to build an army of its own robots to challenge Mankind.
I spoke unclearly. I was trying to say they seemed to have been released in obscure theaters within major cities, theaters that it's unlikely many people would have walked into at random and just checked out a movie without knowing anything about it ahead of time.
I probably should have left that bit of the comment out as my basis for it was mostly anecdotal. I had to drive to Chicago to see Spirited Away (apparently "the hinterlands" includes Indianapolis, that would have been a shorter drive but they were only showing it there for a single weekend) and what I said did not apply there-- the single theater showing Spirited Away in Chicago was, while small, centrally located. I saw Princess Mononoke in Houston though, and it was shown in a theater in the second basement of a mall hiding behind the Summit which basically just shows art films and which, while a very nice theater, those who don't frequent art films generally ignore.
The problem was that Disney bought up the exclusive rights to the Ghibli distribution and then just *SAT* on it. Okay, so now that they've FINALLY gotten around to releasing some stuff, you can get Kiki's Delivery Service and Laputa at Wal-Mart. That's doing something for the brand, I suppose. (Though those cartoons are older than dirt, and Disney just took absolutely ages to release them on DVD, I believe in the interrim suspending its available-on-video status it had before Disney picked it up. So they're getting better, but for a long time Ghibli's fans were just absolutely livid since for a long time the only byproduct of Disney's having distribution rights for Ghibli was to keep it out of american markets..)
Other than making it available at Wal-Mart, though, Disney has essentially done so badly with the Ghibli brand that I can't imagine it could have been worse had ANYONE AT ALL other than Disney picked up the brand. The Princess Mononoke release was almost laughably mishandled; there was just about no marketing, and it ran only briefly in a very small number of obscure theaters in large urban centers. You had to have either been an anime obsessive or gotten REALLY lucky to have seen it in theaters. That's perhaps excusable though, since Mononoke is a movie of the sort most American audiences couldn't handle, it might not have made it to American movie screens at all on its own. Besides this, the Disney-managed dub for Mononoke was abnormally well-done.
Spirited Away, however, it appears that Disney was literally trying to sabotage, out of fear it would overshadow Lilo and Stitch (also released that summer). They gave it zero marketing and ran it for an eyeblink's worth of time. I wasn't even able to find a theater running it before it stopped. AFTER it won the animated picture oscar, Disney consented, as if they were doing some great act of charity, to show it for an acceptable length of time (again in selected theaters in obscure locations), but they still never marketed it in any noticeable way, and almost all of the populace are still not aware the movie ever existed unless either they followed the Oscars closely or they picked up the DVD from a rack at Wal-Mart going "hm what's this".
The Spirited Away DVD seems (?) to be doing brisk sales despite a total lack of effort on Disney's part to make it do so, but I would submit that at least in that one case had ANYONE other than Disney had the rights to distribute Spirited Away-- especially some small obscure group, since they (unlike disney, for whom millions are a drop in the bucket) would have realized the potential and marketed it for all they had-- would have had an odd, but decent-sized hit on their hands...
I seriously doubt anyone cares much for my opinion, but in my opinion this is the coolest news I have had in quite awhile. I love the iTunes music store, but the one deficiency it's had in my mind all along-- though I was very pleased when they started carrying Matador and such-- is that they never carried Warp. They haven't even been carrying the albums that are distributed in the states via Nothing.
So I'm just overjoyed about this. I'm going to go home tonight and buy copies of Feed Me Wierd Things by Squarepusher and Amber by Autechre (my current favorite band, more or less), I think...
Now, does anyone know when we will be able to get similar deals from Shematic and whatever the name is of that label the guy from Pole runs?;)
Magnatune is a social experiment of sorts which may or may not have good music. I don't know. However, the fact I don't know whether they have any good music does say something.
Warp Records, meanwhile, was for quite awhile the most important and progressive group in electronic music, and while I haven't been paying enough attention as of late to know if they still hold this label, I know for certain they continue to push the boundaries of the art.
Perhaps they are not "first" at this particular thing, but they have been offering significant amounts of downloads as samples of parts of their albums for years.
And if you do want to get into a pissing contest of which label "got it" first, my nomination would be Astralwerks. They had, in like 1995 or some shit, I don't even remember, back around the time Dig Your Own Hole was released, before MPEG Layer III even *EXISTED* and when MPEG Layer II was a format almost no one used, realaudio offerings of absolutely huge swaths of their catalog. For most of their releases about that time, you could listen to about half the album without buying it. They also ran a web newsletter letting people know when they'd put up more music, and they'd periodically do one day events where you could listen streaming to entire albums on the day they were released. This was essentially my introduction to electronic music, and I seriously think it helped them-- it led to me buying a decent amount of Astralwerks stuff even though I had to do a decent amount of searching for it at the time...
Honestly, I'm glad they're preserving the database at all. I also think the whole "independent music for restaurants and such" thing is kind of neat.
However, it bothers me that this entire thing is kept just so entirely under lock and key. You can't just go to TruSonic and say "I want to purchase for download the entire Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie discography". You can't even set playlists if you're a restaurant owner, only select from the predetermined playlists. I think that those mp3.com people who were actually paying enough attention they were aware they were enrolled in TruSonic probably approved because they thought this would be a way that their music could be preserved indefinitely. I suspect some of these people may now be miffed because this incredibly diverse resource is now being let out only in a very limited manner and only when the TruSonic people say so.
Maybe try reading the artist agreement before you give your music away.
I even more than that, the most important lesson to take away from all of this is NEVER to trust ANY company or group to do something indefinitely unless you have their promises in writing, no matter how fluffy-bunny, "independent" or "community" that said people may be. If they get bought out, "trust" means nothing, and all those "unwritten understandings" can evaporate in the blink of an eye...
Personally, I purposefully chose never put my music on mp3.com despite the potential exposure it might have offered, and the lack of direct control over the site was one of the reasons why.
The "millions of lines" thing didn't refer to the millions of lines of code in Linux. It was a reference to the infamous Darl McBride quote in which he claimed there were "millions of lines" of SCO property in Linux.
Statistics had nothing to do with it. The point of the slashblurb was that whatever is in those 60 pages, it is quite certainly far, far less material than SCO previously claimed-- to their stockholders no less-- they had proof of.
They were trying to call SCO on previous deception, not attempt to belittle the size of code solely based on a comparison to the kernel at large.
SCO has made no secret in recent months that it hired high-profile attorney David Boies to spearhead its case against IBM, but the company's legal representation in Utah courts is also noteworthy. The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a representative for SCO confirmed Monday.
Re:Why would Microsoft care about any of this?
on
No WMA for HP iPod
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· Score: 1
If that is the case, then why would Microsoft be concerned with the selling of music?
Because Apple is making money from it.
You have to understand, it isn't enough for Microsoft to win. Everyone else has to lose.
This means that if one of MS's competitors or even potential competitors has found a funding source, MS has to cut it off or blunt it. It means MS has to constantly watch and ensure that no one creates a market and proceeds to dominate it, because that could eventually spill over into something that could threaten one of MS's real markets. This is why MS pours so much money into Office for Mac (besides the massive profits)-- if Office/mac was crappy, someone might potentially make a Mac-specific word processor, and that word processor might someday be ported to Windows and compete with Office. This is why MS poured such an absolutely obscene amount of money with no hope of recoupment into making a free web browser just to kill some random-ass startup named Netscape.
This is something slightly more than mere paranoia; it's how MS got to the position they're in today..
What sort of retribution is the REST of the internet going to take against Caridi for releasing such a horror as a Something's Gotta Give screener upon us??
If there was ever a reason to give ICANN the ability to try people for Crimes Against Humanity, this would be it...
Because the per-unit fee is determined by the terms of MPEG licensing, Apple cannot apply discriminatory licensing with AAC. MS, however, can. This is a huge disadvantage to WMA from the perspective of everyone except Microsoft itself.
For example, let's say Microsoft is licensing WMA support to all the mp3 player creators for about 20 cents a unit. Then IBM decides they're going to start supporting Linux. Suddenly Microsoft decides they're licensing it to everyone for 20 cents a unit EXCEPT IBM, who has to pay a billion dollars for each player sold. They can do this, and they have shown in the past-- with OEM pricing on Windows-- that they are more than willing to do this exact sort of thing..
AAC, meanwhile, is equal for everybody.
Of course the FairPlay DRM is a totally different matter, but I've yet to be able to figure out if Apple is unwilling to license that to others or if just no one's asked.
What the protesters didn't tell you--probably because they couldn't be bothered enough to research they'd know this-- is that (1) we'd been putting up reactors on spacecrafts for years and years and (2) the reactor was one of the most mind-bogglingly safe imaginable, if the entire reactor was blown up or disentigrated in the atmosphere the radioactive material would still be able to hold together well enough that at worst it would split together into a couple of chunks so solid you could pick them up and hold them...
My suspicion is that Nuclear technology will get nowhere in the United States until people stop calling it that, due to the huge political movement to make sure no one uses anything with "nuclear" in the name, regardless of the safety, degree of research, or degree of oversight. I'd propose scientists start using some other word, like "happytronic", but this would probably be seen through as "hollow PR from the nuclear industry". (That's another thing. People promoting nuclear energy are often derided as "Nuclear Industry Shills", but people attacking it are never successfully labelled as "Coal Industry Shills", despite the fact that's who they're primarily helping. How is this?)
This is the primary promise Fusion offers IMHO-- because oh, it isn't nuclear, it's "Fusion", right? Which means people will actually use it.
Perhaps we should start researching some kind of "hybrid" technique, which would allow the creation of reactors that can be claimed to be "fusion" although they're actually just fission reactors with some kind of technique involved that has something vaguely to do with fusion.
Right now, I would do an incredibly happy little dance.
Then I'd wait six months for the SCO thing to blow over.
Then I'd sue, for tiny, legally incoherent reasons, a large quantity of different Novell linux customers. The reasons would be randomly selected, and different in each case, and occationally perhaps be pumped through shell companies. But Novell, having offered legal indemnification, would have to research and respond to each one at great cost on its customers behalf. Then I'd just sit back, attempt to stall these cases as long as possible, and quietly drop every single one just before it actually got into a courtroom.
I'd piss money down the drain by doing so, but hey, I'd force Novell to piss as much or more away in the process-- and since I'd be Microsoft, I'd be able to afford this. Possibly to the point where Novell would take serious damage without me having to break a sweat. Meanwhile, Novell's Linux customers would inevitably be a bit spooked by this, and some number would ask Novell if they could use one of Novell's linux-free, more antiquated alternate products instead.
MS might not do this, and it might not really be something that is realistic from their viewpoint (since someone might notice them perofrming widespread abuse of the legal system, which might get them the dreaded 'vextatious litigant' label). But if you don't think that it's something they'd be WILLING to do, then you probably also believe that line about "It doesn't MATTER if the Xbox is staggeringly unprofitable! This isn't a trust-like, illegal, or maliciously anticompetitive action! They're just taking the sound business strategy of taking massive losses now so that someday later, the XBox-3 can be somewhat profitable (or perhaps the XBox-4)!"
This is an extremely good thing for people who use Microsoft products, both in terms of what it will do now, and in terms of what it seems to hint at regarding how Microsoft will support its discontinued products.
This means it's a horrible thing for the rest of us, because it will slow the rate at which people are becoming disillusioned and ultimately fed up with Microsoft. I had always thought that Microsoft's stringent policy of bullying and abandoning anyone who won't go along with their periodic forced upgrades is the best gift MS's competitors could have possibly recieved; now the chance to take advantage of that gift is to a certain extent gone.
After all, it's hard to give people reasons to switch away from something they're used to, and hard to convince people to switch away from something they're used to. It's just so much easier when Microsoft creates the reasons and does the convincing for us. If they stopped doing that, we'd have to win on the actual merits of our products, and we don't want that, do we? This is a black day indeed.
I don't really like FPSes very much anyway. I'm excited about Doom 3 pretty much for one reason: It's going to mark the first new music by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails in YEARS. And even better, said music is likely going to be-- you know, since it's a video game soundtrack-- ambient, which is something that Reznor is clearly very good at but has not done nearly enough of.
Yeah, okay, I'm a rabid fanboy. Whatever. Everyone's a fanboy for something.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually they both probally hire out from the same "Rent-a-Rally" service.
I wonder how long it will be before we have political rallies populated chiefly by virtual "extras" created by digital compositing techniques such as those used to create the armies in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
It would certainly be a big win from a convenience standpoint...
This isn't actually relevant, but it amused me.
On friday cnn.com was running an article about the upcoming Iowa democratic primary. Attatched to this was a photo, labelled as being Dean supporters busing to Iowa from another state, of four or five people standing on a bus and a big guy asleep in one of the seats with a "DEAN FOR PRESIDENT" t-shirt.
Also that day, cnn.com was running an article about how republican supporters were busing into the areas of democratic primaries to hold pro-Bush rallies in an attempt to blunt the effect of the media attention the democratic primaries drew. Attatched to this article was a picture labelled as the pro-Bush supporters busing in. The picture was the exact same one as from the other story, but with the guy in the "DEAN FOR PRESIDENT" t-shirt cropped out.
I found this funny.
There's also Paranoia, the much-loved and sadly out-of-print Logan's Run meets McCarthyism meets Douglas Adams meets Kafka role-playing game.
It's worse than that. It isn't just we finally know they didn't actually have specific evidence. They've finally confirmed, once and for all, they don't have any evidence of actual infringement. What this letter clearly indicates is that this case is based on NOTHING but code which IBM wrote of their own volition and then put into Linux.
While of course the case is all about this bizarre viral "if it's ever included in a codebase with UNIX code, SCO 0wns it forever" argument, SCO did give a clear impression with their public statements that at least somewhere in this case they were going to be demonstrating cases where IBM plain and simple took real SCO code and put it direct into Linux.
So, there are three questions to be asking here...
- Did SCO or SCO representatives, when speaking to stockholders, ever clearly state that IBM copied SCO code into Linux.
- Did SCO or SCO representatives, when speaking to stockholders, ever clearly state that they had specific evidence of the sort of "viral contamination" that the IBM case is apparently about.
- If 1 and 2, is this sort of lying to their stockholders legally actionable (and not just in the "the SEC could take action, but they won't" way)
Oh, and of course the fact they aren't putting it in this court case just confirms that much more that the supposed copying of SCO code into linux doesnt exist at all, but unfortunately we can't yet say "we know SCO has no evidence because if they do, then they committed purgery by not submitting it in the IBM case" about that.I haven't heard anything about that.
I remember at some point they listed a huge number of files as being infringing. Potentially that's what you refer to. However, some of these were documented as not being by SCO, at least one of these was a file containing only "this file has not yet been implemented", and in NO cases did SCO justify their assertion that this code was copied, only claimed that it was.
Waving at a portion of the linux code and saying "a violation of some sort is in there somewhere" is no more forthcoming than waving at the entire linux code and saying "a violation of some sort is in there somewhere."
The difference is that unlike EETimes, Slashdot is not considered to be a professional source of journalism.
I think the thing is, Linus, despite being the Godfather of Linux, has not been expressing this sort of sentiment. In fact he's for years seemed to mostly be saying "yeah the Desktop isn't really my concern, maybe something will happen."
This would indicate the fact that he's turned around and is now saying "yeah, Linux is probably ready for the desktop" means something, or at least indicates that this opinion comes from careful thought and not just blind promotion. My guess is that he is mostly making this statement now because his part of Linux-- the kernel-- has, with 2.6 and the new preemption and scheduling system, recieved a very considerable amount of improvement in the way it performs in desktop situations.
Abtzppkkkf said that the technology could also be applied to other research-oriented fields, such as art and engineering. He said he had already been approached by several U.S. military contractors interested in the auto-publicization technology, and was already in technology licensing talks with a Utah-based software company called "the SCO group".
Other members of the mad science community criticized the University of Wales for wasting time on nonvital research, noting that they were wasting time developing a robot scientist that could have been spent on developing a sexy female robot assistant. Others noted that, despite years of attempts by the mad science community, Tokyo has STILL not been destroyed.
The University of Wales group defended its research, noting that the work on the lessons learned in developing the robot scientist could likely be applied to developing a sexy female robot assistant. They also charged that bringing up the War On Tokyo was undue.
"In general, I am sick of this attitude. I am tired of seeing comments on USENET like 'horrifying lizard-men hybrid created, Tokyo still not destroyed'. Clearly destroying Tokyo should be the first priority of the mad science community, but this does not mean all other research should cease or that research that does not attain this goal should be abandoned. This is unduly unwarranted in this case, however, as the robot scientist may well be the critical breakthrough we have needed in our long running quest to destroy Tokyo." said Ross D. King, the system's co-inventor and a professor at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in a surprisingly candid press release today. The press release then went on to outline a possible scenario in which the robotic scientist could break free of its masters, escaping into exile with a vile hatred of all that lives to build an army of its own robots to challenge Mankind.
I spoke unclearly. I was trying to say they seemed to have been released in obscure theaters within major cities, theaters that it's unlikely many people would have walked into at random and just checked out a movie without knowing anything about it ahead of time.
I probably should have left that bit of the comment out as my basis for it was mostly anecdotal. I had to drive to Chicago to see Spirited Away (apparently "the hinterlands" includes Indianapolis, that would have been a shorter drive but they were only showing it there for a single weekend) and what I said did not apply there-- the single theater showing Spirited Away in Chicago was, while small, centrally located. I saw Princess Mononoke in Houston though, and it was shown in a theater in the second basement of a mall hiding behind the Summit which basically just shows art films and which, while a very nice theater, those who don't frequent art films generally ignore.
The problem was that Disney bought up the exclusive rights to the Ghibli distribution and then just *SAT* on it. Okay, so now that they've FINALLY gotten around to releasing some stuff, you can get Kiki's Delivery Service and Laputa at Wal-Mart. That's doing something for the brand, I suppose. (Though those cartoons are older than dirt, and Disney just took absolutely ages to release them on DVD, I believe in the interrim suspending its available-on-video status it had before Disney picked it up. So they're getting better, but for a long time Ghibli's fans were just absolutely livid since for a long time the only byproduct of Disney's having distribution rights for Ghibli was to keep it out of american markets..)
Other than making it available at Wal-Mart, though, Disney has essentially done so badly with the Ghibli brand that I can't imagine it could have been worse had ANYONE AT ALL other than Disney picked up the brand. The Princess Mononoke release was almost laughably mishandled; there was just about no marketing, and it ran only briefly in a very small number of obscure theaters in large urban centers. You had to have either been an anime obsessive or gotten REALLY lucky to have seen it in theaters. That's perhaps excusable though, since Mononoke is a movie of the sort most American audiences couldn't handle, it might not have made it to American movie screens at all on its own. Besides this, the Disney-managed dub for Mononoke was abnormally well-done.
Spirited Away, however, it appears that Disney was literally trying to sabotage, out of fear it would overshadow Lilo and Stitch (also released that summer). They gave it zero marketing and ran it for an eyeblink's worth of time. I wasn't even able to find a theater running it before it stopped. AFTER it won the animated picture oscar, Disney consented, as if they were doing some great act of charity, to show it for an acceptable length of time (again in selected theaters in obscure locations), but they still never marketed it in any noticeable way, and almost all of the populace are still not aware the movie ever existed unless either they followed the Oscars closely or they picked up the DVD from a rack at Wal-Mart going "hm what's this".
The Spirited Away DVD seems (?) to be doing brisk sales despite a total lack of effort on Disney's part to make it do so, but I would submit that at least in that one case had ANYONE other than Disney had the rights to distribute Spirited Away-- especially some small obscure group, since they (unlike disney, for whom millions are a drop in the bucket) would have realized the potential and marketed it for all they had-- would have had an odd, but decent-sized hit on their hands...
I seriously doubt anyone cares much for my opinion, but in my opinion this is the coolest news I have had in quite awhile. I love the iTunes music store, but the one deficiency it's had in my mind all along-- though I was very pleased when they started carrying Matador and such-- is that they never carried Warp. They haven't even been carrying the albums that are distributed in the states via Nothing.
;)
So I'm just overjoyed about this. I'm going to go home tonight and buy copies of Feed Me Wierd Things by Squarepusher and Amber by Autechre (my current favorite band, more or less), I think...
Now, does anyone know when we will be able to get similar deals from Shematic and whatever the name is of that label the guy from Pole runs?
Magnatune is a social experiment of sorts which may or may not have good music. I don't know. However, the fact I don't know whether they have any good music does say something.
Warp Records, meanwhile, was for quite awhile the most important and progressive group in electronic music, and while I haven't been paying enough attention as of late to know if they still hold this label, I know for certain they continue to push the boundaries of the art.
Perhaps they are not "first" at this particular thing, but they have been offering significant amounts of downloads as samples of parts of their albums for years.
And if you do want to get into a pissing contest of which label "got it" first, my nomination would be Astralwerks. They had, in like 1995 or some shit, I don't even remember, back around the time Dig Your Own Hole was released, before MPEG Layer III even *EXISTED* and when MPEG Layer II was a format almost no one used, realaudio offerings of absolutely huge swaths of their catalog. For most of their releases about that time, you could listen to about half the album without buying it. They also ran a web newsletter letting people know when they'd put up more music, and they'd periodically do one day events where you could listen streaming to entire albums on the day they were released. This was essentially my introduction to electronic music, and I seriously think it helped them-- it led to me buying a decent amount of Astralwerks stuff even though I had to do a decent amount of searching for it at the time...
I'm not going to disagree.
Honestly, I'm glad they're preserving the database at all. I also think the whole "independent music for restaurants and such" thing is kind of neat.
However, it bothers me that this entire thing is kept just so entirely under lock and key. You can't just go to TruSonic and say "I want to purchase for download the entire Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie discography". You can't even set playlists if you're a restaurant owner, only select from the predetermined playlists. I think that those mp3.com people who were actually paying enough attention they were aware they were enrolled in TruSonic probably approved because they thought this would be a way that their music could be preserved indefinitely. I suspect some of these people may now be miffed because this incredibly diverse resource is now being let out only in a very limited manner and only when the TruSonic people say so.
Maybe try reading the artist agreement before you give your music away.
I even more than that, the most important lesson to take away from all of this is NEVER to trust ANY company or group to do something indefinitely unless you have their promises in writing, no matter how fluffy-bunny, "independent" or "community" that said people may be. If they get bought out, "trust" means nothing, and all those "unwritten understandings" can evaporate in the blink of an eye...
Personally, I purposefully chose never put my music on mp3.com despite the potential exposure it might have offered, and the lack of direct control over the site was one of the reasons why.
If you follow the story link, you will find former mp3.com artists can request their music be removed from the TruSonic program by visiting this link.
The "millions of lines" thing didn't refer to the millions of lines of code in Linux. It was a reference to the infamous Darl McBride quote in which he claimed there were "millions of lines" of SCO property in Linux.
Statistics had nothing to do with it. The point of the slashblurb was that whatever is in those 60 pages, it is quite certainly far, far less material than SCO previously claimed-- to their stockholders no less-- they had proof of.
They were trying to call SCO on previous deception, not attempt to belittle the size of code solely based on a comparison to the kernel at large.
If that is the case, then why would Microsoft be concerned with the selling of music?
Because Apple is making money from it.
You have to understand, it isn't enough for Microsoft to win. Everyone else has to lose.
This means that if one of MS's competitors or even potential competitors has found a funding source, MS has to cut it off or blunt it. It means MS has to constantly watch and ensure that no one creates a market and proceeds to dominate it, because that could eventually spill over into something that could threaten one of MS's real markets. This is why MS pours so much money into Office for Mac (besides the massive profits)-- if Office/mac was crappy, someone might potentially make a Mac-specific word processor, and that word processor might someday be ported to Windows and compete with Office. This is why MS poured such an absolutely obscene amount of money with no hope of recoupment into making a free web browser just to kill some random-ass startup named Netscape.
This is something slightly more than mere paranoia; it's how MS got to the position they're in today..
What sort of retribution is the REST of the internet going to take against Caridi for releasing such a horror as a Something's Gotta Give screener upon us??
If there was ever a reason to give ICANN the ability to try people for Crimes Against Humanity, this would be it...
Because the per-unit fee is determined by the terms of MPEG licensing, Apple cannot apply discriminatory licensing with AAC. MS, however, can. This is a huge disadvantage to WMA from the perspective of everyone except Microsoft itself.
For example, let's say Microsoft is licensing WMA support to all the mp3 player creators for about 20 cents a unit. Then IBM decides they're going to start supporting Linux. Suddenly Microsoft decides they're licensing it to everyone for 20 cents a unit EXCEPT IBM, who has to pay a billion dollars for each player sold. They can do this, and they have shown in the past-- with OEM pricing on Windows-- that they are more than willing to do this exact sort of thing..
AAC, meanwhile, is equal for everybody.
Of course the FairPlay DRM is a totally different matter, but I've yet to be able to figure out if Apple is unwilling to license that to others or if just no one's asked.
What the protesters didn't tell you--probably because they couldn't be bothered enough to research they'd know this-- is that (1) we'd been putting up reactors on spacecrafts for years and years and (2) the reactor was one of the most mind-bogglingly safe imaginable, if the entire reactor was blown up or disentigrated in the atmosphere the radioactive material would still be able to hold together well enough that at worst it would split together into a couple of chunks so solid you could pick them up and hold them...
My suspicion is that Nuclear technology will get nowhere in the United States until people stop calling it that, due to the huge political movement to make sure no one uses anything with "nuclear" in the name, regardless of the safety, degree of research, or degree of oversight. I'd propose scientists start using some other word, like "happytronic", but this would probably be seen through as "hollow PR from the nuclear industry". (That's another thing. People promoting nuclear energy are often derided as "Nuclear Industry Shills", but people attacking it are never successfully labelled as "Coal Industry Shills", despite the fact that's who they're primarily helping. How is this?)
This is the primary promise Fusion offers IMHO-- because oh, it isn't nuclear, it's "Fusion", right? Which means people will actually use it.
Perhaps we should start researching some kind of "hybrid" technique, which would allow the creation of reactors that can be claimed to be "fusion" although they're actually just fission reactors with some kind of technique involved that has something vaguely to do with fusion.
Right now, I would do an incredibly happy little dance.
Then I'd wait six months for the SCO thing to blow over.
Then I'd sue, for tiny, legally incoherent reasons, a large quantity of different Novell linux customers. The reasons would be randomly selected, and different in each case, and occationally perhaps be pumped through shell companies. But Novell, having offered legal indemnification, would have to research and respond to each one at great cost on its customers behalf. Then I'd just sit back, attempt to stall these cases as long as possible, and quietly drop every single one just before it actually got into a courtroom.
I'd piss money down the drain by doing so, but hey, I'd force Novell to piss as much or more away in the process-- and since I'd be Microsoft, I'd be able to afford this. Possibly to the point where Novell would take serious damage without me having to break a sweat. Meanwhile, Novell's Linux customers would inevitably be a bit spooked by this, and some number would ask Novell if they could use one of Novell's linux-free, more antiquated alternate products instead.
MS might not do this, and it might not really be something that is realistic from their viewpoint (since someone might notice them perofrming widespread abuse of the legal system, which might get them the dreaded 'vextatious litigant' label). But if you don't think that it's something they'd be WILLING to do, then you probably also believe that line about "It doesn't MATTER if the Xbox is staggeringly unprofitable! This isn't a trust-like, illegal, or maliciously anticompetitive action! They're just taking the sound business strategy of taking massive losses now so that someday later, the XBox-3 can be somewhat profitable (or perhaps the XBox-4)!"
Will the creators of the KISS paperdoll and cosplay software jump into the fray because KISS is diluting their trademark?
This is an extremely good thing for people who use Microsoft products, both in terms of what it will do now, and in terms of what it seems to hint at regarding how Microsoft will support its discontinued products.
This means it's a horrible thing for the rest of us, because it will slow the rate at which people are becoming disillusioned and ultimately fed up with Microsoft. I had always thought that Microsoft's stringent policy of bullying and abandoning anyone who won't go along with their periodic forced upgrades is the best gift MS's competitors could have possibly recieved; now the chance to take advantage of that gift is to a certain extent gone.
After all, it's hard to give people reasons to switch away from something they're used to, and hard to convince people to switch away from something they're used to. It's just so much easier when Microsoft creates the reasons and does the convincing for us. If they stopped doing that, we'd have to win on the actual merits of our products, and we don't want that, do we? This is a black day indeed.
I don't really like FPSes very much anyway. I'm excited about Doom 3 pretty much for one reason: It's going to mark the first new music by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails in YEARS. And even better, said music is likely going to be-- you know, since it's a video game soundtrack-- ambient, which is something that Reznor is clearly very good at but has not done nearly enough of.
:)
Yeah, okay, I'm a rabid fanboy. Whatever. Everyone's a fanboy for something.