It's nice to hear confirmation of what we been suspected all along. I know a few former musicians and most of them say the same thing AND are rabid anti-Napster.
I remember when I first heard of Napster. I thought "they can get away with that!?!?" Obviously not. The technology behind reminded me of ICQ, which I think is cool. Napster's downfall was not it's technology, but rather it's business model, if it even had one. I believe there can be a way to satisfy a good percentage of the Napster users while keeping the RIAA pacified. They just need to examine their marketing demographics and do a little bit of law research, which the kid who wrote the original code could NOT afford. After all he was just in college. A middle ground can be reached, just bear with me. It's difficult to disagree with arguements of "it's stealing", but not impossible. I just call it what it is, "piracy". Very similar to stealing, but different...indirect. With stealing, everything is directly traceable. If someone steals something, you can conclude that he wanted it bad enough to risk stealing it and getting caught. Aside from kleptomainiacs, most thefts occur because the perp can't afford to buy it. [Which is where the theory of high crime rates in low income neighborhoods comes from] Perhasp a vast amout of people "pirating" MP3's are doing so because they can't afford to buy the albums? I don't think so.
Piracy in this fashion on Napster is very indirect. You can only GUESS as to what the impacts are. Who's to say that they would have bought a particular album at all just for one song instead of downloading a single MP3 for free. It is a misguided assumption to think that everyone on Napster is downloading songs because they can't afford to buy the album. There is something more going on here. Something deeper. But what?
I've talked with different kinds of MP3 'lovers' and their motives range from "the rabid fan" who HAS to have one of everything his favorite band ever did [BTW, he ownes all their albums, has several T-shirts and hats, and sees them in concert every time they play in the area], the "music appreciator" who trys out different stuff to see what he likes [he'll even listen to a file that's only 10% downloaded just to see if it's worth keeping], "the gold digger" who looks for hard to find artists or cuts that they cannot find in the stores. [they seem to benefit from Napster the most. I've over-heard them saying "My God, I can't believe I found it!!"], "the collector" who goes for specific songs by specific artists [How does he put it..."most albums suck... they have only 1 or 2 good songs... rest are crap... end up listening to the one song that I like... I'm not paying $15 for one song..." and they're mostly songs from his childhood], and lastly "the pack-rat" who goes out and grabs just about anything and everything he can find just because he can do it. [I even know one that does it for the purpose of trying to get complete albums.]
So, we have rabid fans, music appreciators, gold diggers, collectors, and pack-rats. I believe an internet business could be designed to meet all of these except for the pack-rat. Once he can't get something for nothing, I'm sure he'll move on and "remember the good'ole days when it was all free". Now, we have it narrowed down a little. An internet service could target these demographics by having different sections and cater to them.
Allowing the purchase of individual tracks, whole albums, or compilations of tracks chosen by each user would work for each one that is left. The rabid fan is the easiest to please because he knows exactly what he wants, it's just a matter of placing the order. Make the price fair and they will come. Not just that group, but all of them. A good search mechanisim will help them find what they want and add it to their "shopping cart" or "compilation disc" which would aid the collector and gold digger. A "sample section" which could rip out random sections of song files, 15 or 20 sec. in length, and send it to the music apprecator to listen to. That way they can judge if they want to make the purchase. They can also spend all day at the site trying different clips all the while staring at the banner adds on the page.
The key to the whole thing is the price of each song. They should be set by the free market, not forced upon them by over-bearing Record Lables. Unfortunately, the record lables will not want to vollntarily destroy their profit margins to run a more "fair" system. Hence the problem...and the reason I'm posting this on/. instead of getting some venture capital together and doing it myself. How can you get the rights to music out of the control of the record labels and put the artists in direct control of their work?? The only answer I can think of is for the government to do their anti-Monopoly thing witht he record lables and somehow give a better more fair business model a chance. Again, how? I have no idea. Any suggestions?
Hear me out. Mulder is expendible. His entire purpose in the show is to make the initial correlation, either through the X-File archives or through investigation, of the new case to some myth, obscure fact, government cover-up, or whatever. After that, anybody could do the investigation. Sure, Mulder also supplied his natural intuition to take the path less traveled, but that too can come from somewhere else. The obvious answer is The Lone Gunmen.
I can imagine several ways to set up the main storyline, but this is one: Kill Mulder off. That would have been what I would have done seasons ago if I were one of the government guys trying to cover up my conspiracy. Why risk him finding you out and shutting you down? Ok, so they finally wise up and kill Mulder and get rid of their greatest liability. They killed Deepthroat and his sucessors, it's about time they got to Mulder.
Mulder is dead so they try to shut-down the X-Files, again. No. They should have learned by now, over the past 7 seasons, that they can't really kill it. There will always be an FBI unit that has X-File cases shoved it's way. They reason that by taking Mulder out of the picture it is crippled, or so they believe. They leave Scully to do the X-File investigations with the idea that she can't make the same connections that Mulder did and therefore will be ineffective. Weather the FBI assign her a new partner or not is trivial. Trying to duplicate the chemistry between Scully and Mulder would be a bad idea, IMHO. She should probably be on her own as an agent making it more difficult for her to figure out the government coverup.
But that eliminates the conversations between her and a partner. Well, that is another area where the Lone Gunmen can play. Besides, there does not need to be that much dialogue. You can do a lot with the camera. Have Scully just observe and as you see her investigate or just look around the camera angle switches and zooms in on the clue. Or maybe she dosen't see it and leaves, but the camera pans over to show it to us and maybe she finds it later in the episode after she as learned more and it becomes signifigant. There are lots of things that can be done.
The other elements, the "path least taken" intuition and the initial correlation of the case to an X-File type thing, should come from The Lone Gunman or others, which ever is more appropriate for the plot. Like Deepthroat, they can tip Scully off to things, but more importantly they can play a role in the case as well. Not just as mere informants, but as co-investigators behind the scenes doing what they do best. They could be worked in as much as the plot needs.
Still, there is one small problem. Why would they stop after killing Mulder? Why not just kill off everyone and assign the X-File cases to some new rookie agent that is in way over their head and has no clue. Why not hunt down and kill off The Lone Gunmen if they appear to be helping. Well, they could cover their tracks digitally, but sooner or later a standard tail on Scully would reaveal them and then that would be it. It's obvious that there needs to be some kind of trump card that is throw to counter that sort of thing. A gardian-angel of sorts.
Someone, or something, that intervienes on their behalf once in a while when it looks as if they might get caught or worse. The gardian should be totally mysterious. Perhaps you never even see it, just the results of what is has done to save Scully and the Lone Gunmen, but the show should not focus on it that much and make it into a "transporter" that always saves the day like on Star Trek. The government guys would try a couple attempts and when they are mysteriously foiled they go "What the heck?!?!" and stop the attempts until they figure out who is helping them. Perhaps Scully and the Gunmen know who/what it is? There are different angles that could be played with it.
With all that going on and add in some neat/creepy storylines, a good plot, and good scripts. It would be easy to keep the show going for another season without Mulder. There is nothing wrong with re-inventing yourself from time to time.
"A little revolution now and again is a healthy thing, don't you think?" - The Hunt for Red October
I concur. You can turn the television on and see increased violence in other types of "games" as well. How about Ice Hockey? It seems there's at least one fight in every Hockey game. You can even see bench clearing brawls in Baseball. Baseball has no where near the contact levels of Football or Hockey, yet there are brawls from time to time. I play hockey and have been involved in several fights. I know what's it's like. Also, I have played violent video games, like Quake, my entire life and not ONCE did I ever get into a fight over it.
It's obvious that it depends upon the competitiveness of the individual(s). I have found that the more competitive a game is, the more emotions I have. When you really want to win and your opponent wants to deny you that win, some can't help but get drawn into the emotions like tension, anticipation, desire, joy, ego, and anger. When you play a game against another team or opponent, you're making the statement "I'm better than you at this and I'm going to prove it."
I play Ice Hockey in my spare time and I can tell you that the frustration of getting blown-out is taxing. Eventually, you deal with it by getting mad, wheither it's at yourself, the refs, your opponents. When the game is over, you still may feel it for a few hours, but those feelings pass. When you win, you feel great, but that passess too. That is the reason we play sports. We want to feel the joy of winning, but to do that we have to risk feeling the agony of defeat [insert vido clip of guy crashing on ski jump]. You win, your happy, you lose, your angry. It's as simple as that, yet they don't get it. I'd love to get these PhD's on the ice and show them what it's like.:)
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have sworn off buying VHS movies once I saw and heard my first DVD on a large TV with a surround sound audio system. Weither this is true or not, I'm not buying one more Star Wars movie on VHS. I'm a big fan of Star Wars, but Lucas is just trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the devoted fans. If that's what he wants to do, then so be it. I'll tell you this much, I'm not falling for it. When they come out on DVD I'll buy them.
Of course, this isn't the first time Lucas has dissapointed me. Don't get me started on the exclusion of the "yub-yub" song in the Special Edition Return of the Jedi. I refused to buy the whole set just because of that and when someone gave it to me for christmas, I went out and got the Digitally mastered Jedi and gave the SE Jedi back.
That's what I saw too. I remember watching a special on Area 51 a year ago and from the evidence they presented and some common sence indicates that there is not much of anything going on there. the show said there use to be flights going in and out each morning and evening, which took workers in and out of the base, but they have either stopped or decreased in frequency which indicates less work being done. And a little common sense tells us that once a 'Secret Base' has become as famous as Area 51, after all there's an arcade game named after it, then it's time to find a new place to do the secret stuff. I believe it is no longer used much. that would also explain the why the goverment cleared the sattelite images for posting on the internet. Also, with the cold war over it is not needed as much.
It makes me laugh when I think about how long it took the judicial system to figure out that MS was a monopoly that abused it's monopolistic powers. That was obvious. Eventually, they will pay for it. With that aside, I believe some are a little too hard on MS. At the beginning of any product life cycle, there is always a company that is able to take advantages to position its self as the dominant manufacturer, like Carnagie Steel, Standard Oil, Intel, or Ford.
Monopolies are natural. They happen all the time. A fledgling company can't make a product that suits everyone. They have to pick their market. As it turned out, Intel became the dominant architecture and DOS/Windows became the dominant OS. Because they were dominant, all the other software companies focused on writing for that platform. That's where the money was to be made. Because MS had the dominate OS and a good word processor, they couldn't help but become a monopoly. Now they are losing their monopoly, just as the others. Even Intel is feeling the pressure. It happens. It was only a matter of time, DOJ or no DOJ.
Actually, it could have been a lot worse. Imagine if by some miracle that Apple became the monopoly back then. Not only would we have bought our programs and OS from them, but our boxes as well. I remember how expensive they were, I had an Apple IIe and later a PowerMac.
I don't understand some of the hatred of MS that I have seen, either. My personal gripes are their buggy OS's they've made in the past (memories of that night I tried to type a term paper and NT server kept crashing still stirs up rage) and that damn office assistant. Even so, MacOS is just as buggy (haven't used OS X enough to know) and it was only in the past few years that UNIX/Linux became friendly enough for the average person to load and maintain on a desktop and have half decent applications like StarOffice to use with it, let alone games. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people that jump on the "I hate MS" bandwagon do it just because they think it's cool rather than having valid reasons. The only people MS have hurt are those in the companies that it used it's monopolistic powers against unlawfully, for which they are about to pay.
This sort of thing dosen't surprise me anymore. People substuting fear for reason... Instead of trying to help these poor kids, they decide to brand them as being "dangerous". I'm no child psychologist, but common sence tells me that labeling these kids and having their peer's turn them in for cash and prizes is NOT the way to handle this. All this will do is make them even more depressed, because now their classmates ARE out to get them. Lets say the kid is actually IS dangerous, this crap just might push them over the edge. Of course, they'll be able to tell who turned them in...all they have to look for is a kid with a brand new W.A.V.E. cap or shirt. In that case, the W.A.V.E. logo might as well be a bulleye.
I agree. We don't have very good methods for finding planets. Yes, i am guessing. It's an educated guess, but still a guess none the less. I based my guess on observations of the only life sustaining planet we know of. The odds of similar conditions occuring elsewhere are not that good. I can't say that they'll never occur elsewhere. Who knows? I'm just saying that the _odds_ are against it.
Most scientists agree that _liquid_ water is essitental to life. Yes, they are guessing but it seems a reasonable, educated guess. That was the basis for my little observation as well. Your assumption is that there are no ideal conditions for life. That life can happen anywhere and everywhere no matter the conditions. It's a great assumption for science fiction. Unfortunately, it ran into some problems when Mariner 10 found no life on Mercury, Pioneer and Magellan found none on Venus [I'm afraid the criters didn't make it], The Apollo astronauts didn't see any life on the Moon, and 9 different probes sent to Mars didn't find any there either. Looks like your assumption isn't doing that well.
If I may be so bold, your assumption did not do so well because it was not based upon observations or facts. Might I sugguest more scientific method and less philosophy when you are talking about science.
Many a morning broke when the only nurishment avaliable was cold pizza. Usually, I was in the lab after a long night's worth of coding. It tasted just as good cold as it did hot, not to mention that it did not burn my tounge & gums (I hate that). It reminds me of tomato pie, a thick sicilian crust covered with a chilled, seasoned tomato sause. Very, very delicious.
It's the cold tomato sause that does it in my book. Tomatos and tomato products taste very good while cold. Take a bite out of a chilled tomato right from the grocery store or better yet direct from the tomato plant in the morning. Or how about ketchup? I'm sure some of you put cold ketchup on burgers, fries, or scrambled eggs even.
We are on the virge of a new music distribution model concerning digital music, compression, and storage media. As is evident, the current model is broken. Artist only see a small fraction of their sales and none at all when their CD's are taped, ripped, or burned. Record Labels take far too much of the profit. In the past, their distribution system was the only game in town so they were a necessary evil, but not anymore. They can see the end of their particular business model, like the buggy whip or the ice cutters. For the first time the distribution of music is out of their control, and it scares them. Mostly because they don't know what to do.
I can forsee two different possibilities...
First: Each artists takes control of their own destiny, as far as the distribution of their music goes. They sell it in digital, CD, or whatever format directly from their web site, and perhaps a commercial site, and take almost 100% of the profit. They can give each song a price, discout it for buying a compilation of songs in a compressed or zipped format, and then collect it directly. Instead of getting a few dollars from the royalties of a CD sale in a store, they could get two to three times that from on-line sales minus the distribution costs (internet services and development). This way, they would only need to sell 1/2 to 1/3 of the albums or songs to make the same profit. Seeing that they take on more of the distribution and marketing costs, the break-even point would be greater, but they could cover that ground faster with 2-3 times more profit per unit. Perhaps it would all balance out in the end, but the point is that it would work.
Second: A standard CD can hold approximately 680 MB of data, which translates into about 150 songs give or take. A DVD can hold approximately 8.5 GB using dual layer (http://www.sel.sony.com/S EL/consumer/dvd/about_specs.html) which is 1,875 songs. 3,750 double sided. Can you name 3,000 songs?? It gets better. Regular CD's use infrared lasers to read, DVD's use red lasers, at a smaller wavelength and therefor better compression of the tracks and more data, a blue laser is even smaller, I can't find the link, but they claim 16 GB of data per side. That would be well over 7,000 songs. 14,000 songs double sided. Enter, molecular circutry and nanotechnology and you can see that it is feasable that in the not to distant future it will be possible to have every piece of music ever recorded on a single device that would fit onto your hip in about the size of a disc man or smaller. A company, which I'll call "MUSIC" will go around and gather all the new recordings that comes out and you would have a subscription that would allow you to download the updates (all the new songs since the last update) to your device, kind of like anti-virus updates. Just like everyone pays for cable, cell phones, and ISP's, people will have a subcription to MUSIC. Of course, they will still be able to hear the new stuff right when it comes out on the Radio and MTV (do they still play music videos???).
If the record companies are smart and insightful, they'll work toward the second model, but it will take some time. Meanwhile, the individual aritist can use the first.
Of course we found these things, after all they were looking for them. It only stands to reason that they exist. As the gasses in a nebula or cloud condence (by gravity) into balls of various sizes, it's easy to see that there will be instances when there is no one ball that is extremely larger than the others and in close proximity so the smaller balls orbit the larger. As these float in space, they lose their heat (gained through condencing) and become frozen balls that just wander until they are trapped in a larger gravitational field. And when they do so, they will have extreem elipitical orbits, unless they are affected by other gravitational forces or they plunge directly into one. (that would be cool to watch) Even if it does achieve a modestly eliptical orbit, it will have uneven temperatures determined by the size and temperature of the star and the distances of apogee and perogee of the orbit, which make it practically impossible to sustain life as we know it.
We should all feel fortunate, or blessed, that our solar system and orbit turned out to be so beneficial for the sustainment of life. I can't even begin to calculate the odds against it. For the gas that formed our solar system mostly condenced into a large ball (the sun) and the rest formed into much smaller balls that had slightly eliptical orbits. One of which has a perigee far enough away from the sun so that all water is not a gas and a apogee close enough to keep it from being all ice. That does not seem too common, to me at least.
The telecommuters I know are are considered part-time employees no matter how many hours they work. They lose benefits left and right. I would LOVE to telecommute. Traffic can be horrible in my area (Philadelphia). But, I can't afford to do it because I'd lose benefits. BTW, all of the telecommuters I know are women with children at home.
I can do everything at home that I can do at work, except waste time chatting at the coffee pot and hovering over people trying to get what I want from them. If you can telnet to a box and use POP for your mail, what does it matter WHERE you work. You just drive in for face to face meetings when necessary, but most of the time you could just tele-confrence in or use NetMeeting.
If I could telecommute, I would feel more pressure to get the job done and do a good job; to prove to my supervisor that I'm not slacking off, but being productive with my time. In fact, I'd wager I'd be more productive at home. Of course, if they let me do that, they would have to let everyone do it. They'd have to have a bank of modems that would rival a small ISP. That's probably why right there. The extra overhead that a large RAS would need. Employees could use their own ISP and go through a fire wall, but a company would not want it's propriatry information passed around like that.
In the end, I would guess that the company does not want it's employees to telecommute because it has more control over them when they are on company property. Once you're in, they can shelter you from anything they don't want you to see, hear, or do and push the stuff they want you to see, hear, and do. Squeeze you for every minute of the time they pay you for.
I believe it was St. Thomas Aquains (spelling?) that said "things are not intrinsically good or evil, but our use of them may make it appear to be so"....or something like that
Technology is a tool, nothing more. We may create extreemly powerful weapons, AI, self-replicating robots, or whatever...but they are just merely the tools we will use to get a job done. The two most dangerous technolgies humans have invented are obviously nuclear weapons and biological weapons. Back during the Cuban Missle Crisis, we came pretty darn close to testing weather or not people could survive a large scale nuclear war, but we didn't and we found a way to live with the constant threat via. MAD. I believe it proves that nobody wants to annihilate themselves. It's a survival instinct. Someday, I'm sure we'll invent more powerful weapons that could blast the Earth into kibbels & bits, but that still won't change the fact that people don't want to destroy themselves.
My theory is this: no matter what technological jam we get into, we can find a way out of it. Here is the perfect example of my little theory at work, the Y2K bug. First of all, was there a looming technological problem? Yes. I spent the better part of 1998 fixing the darn things. Could it have caused a disaster? Yes. If I had not fixed the bugs in the distribution and managment system it would not have worked at all and the company could have had some hard times, or even worse. Did anything happen on 1/1/2000? No, not really. Why? The bugs were fixed. How? Each of us looked after our own back yards, so to speak. We didn't want our businesses to go under so we fixed our bugs. Well what do you know, its that survival instinct again.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I believe we humans can adapt to handle just about any situation thrown at us. Granted, we may not like the solution, or what we have to do to obtain it, but to say that any one thing will wipe us out is unlikely.
global thermonuclear war: M.A.D.
killer self-replicating robots:...bring 'em on! I knew all that time I spent playing Quake would pay off.:)
Evil AI: (speaking into phone) "Hello, Bob? Yeah, it's me... Yeah the AI has gone Evil again. Yeah, I know...so could you do a CTRL-ALT-DEL for me and reboot it again. Thanks. Catch you later. Bye."
genetically engineered killer virus:...uh...ok, you got me here. but there has to be some Eskimo's or Amazon's that won't get it.
Disasterous Computer Bugs: HA! Been there, done that, and I _sell_ the T-shirts. The bugs in Win95 couldn't defeat me, the Y2K bug failed to vanquish me. Who's next? Ah...Windows 2000....come get some.
Ever since I got a dedicated line for my computer, I have stopped watching TV, except for visits to a friend's house. I don't even have cable anymore. (if only the slacker cable companies around here would get cable modems) News, Sports, Weather, you name it....I get my information and my entertainment from the net. (...well, that and my DVD player) And, I get most of my communication with my friends off of the net as well. I doubt that the net will ever fully replace TV. Perhaps TV will change to fit the prefered delivery medium, but it will stll be around in some form or another. (shows being broadcast on a "channel" that start and end at certain times, along with commercials)
Honestly...it's about 50/50...
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I do not belive it really matters how we spend our personal time. I'm a net junkie, and have been since I was in college in '94. To be honest with this issue, I'd say that I spend about half my time reading & writing e-mail, ICQ chatting, and playing internet games with my friends or family. The other half I spend downloading files or playing non-internet games.
I cannot possibly imaginge how I could keep up with all my friends if it was not for the internet. In fact, I can't remember how I kept up with them before....probably the phone. I have a bunch of friendships that would be dead if they were not on e-mail life support. You know, all either of you do is send jokes back and forth to each other and occasionally attach a titbit of personal info.
The internet helps keep me rounded. I know some people that try to keep busy all the time. If a night comes along that they can't find anyone to go out with they have a breakdown. That's obviously not healthy. With the net, I can be with whoever I want and put the others off until later and they're not offended by it. Sometimes I just don't feel like replying to my mother's e-mail right away so I'll let it sit in the inbox. Did I mention how cool the internet is?:)
The time I spend downloading files and playing non-internet game is just personal time. Time I spend with just myself, which I find to be very relaxing and very much needed from time to time. Kind of like a de-stressing session. What is the difference between personal time spend on a computer, or playing with a dog, reading a book, or whatever floats your boat? Nothing. Why we choose to do what we do in our personal time is part of what defines who we are. I have no problem with these differences, but I suppose that some people will not be happy until we are all borg-like barbie clones.
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I remember when I first heard of Napster. I thought "they can get away with that!?!?" Obviously not. The technology behind reminded me of ICQ, which I think is cool. Napster's downfall was not it's technology, but rather it's business model, if it even had one. I believe there can be a way to satisfy a good percentage of the Napster users while keeping the RIAA pacified. They just need to examine their marketing demographics and do a little bit of law research, which the kid who wrote the original code could NOT afford. After all he was just in college. A middle ground can be reached, just bear with me. It's difficult to disagree with arguements of "it's stealing", but not impossible. I just call it what it is, "piracy". Very similar to stealing, but different...indirect. With stealing, everything is directly traceable. If someone steals something, you can conclude that he wanted it bad enough to risk stealing it and getting caught. Aside from kleptomainiacs, most thefts occur because the perp can't afford to buy it. [Which is where the theory of high crime rates in low income neighborhoods comes from] Perhasp a vast amout of people "pirating" MP3's are doing so because they can't afford to buy the albums? I don't think so.
Piracy in this fashion on Napster is very indirect. You can only GUESS as to what the impacts are. Who's to say that they would have bought a particular album at all just for one song instead of downloading a single MP3 for free. It is a misguided assumption to think that everyone on Napster is downloading songs because they can't afford to buy the album. There is something more going on here. Something deeper. But what?
I've talked with different kinds of MP3 'lovers' and their motives range from "the rabid fan" who HAS to have one of everything his favorite band ever did [BTW, he ownes all their albums, has several T-shirts and hats, and sees them in concert every time they play in the area], the "music appreciator" who trys out different stuff to see what he likes [he'll even listen to a file that's only 10% downloaded just to see if it's worth keeping], "the gold digger" who looks for hard to find artists or cuts that they cannot find in the stores. [they seem to benefit from Napster the most. I've over-heard them saying "My God, I can't believe I found it!!"], "the collector" who goes for specific songs by specific artists [How does he put it..."most albums suck ... they have only 1 or 2 good songs ... rest are crap... end up listening to the one song that I like... I'm not paying $15 for one song..." and they're mostly songs from his childhood], and lastly "the pack-rat" who goes out and grabs just about anything and everything he can find just because he can do it. [I even know one that does it for the purpose of trying to get complete albums.]
So, we have rabid fans, music appreciators, gold diggers, collectors, and pack-rats. I believe an internet business could be designed to meet all of these except for the pack-rat. Once he can't get something for nothing, I'm sure he'll move on and "remember the good'ole days when it was all free". Now, we have it narrowed down a little. An internet service could target these demographics by having different sections and cater to them.
Allowing the purchase of individual tracks, whole albums, or compilations of tracks chosen by each user would work for each one that is left. The rabid fan is the easiest to please because he knows exactly what he wants, it's just a matter of placing the order. Make the price fair and they will come. Not just that group, but all of them. A good search mechanisim will help them find what they want and add it to their "shopping cart" or "compilation disc" which would aid the collector and gold digger. A "sample section" which could rip out random sections of song files, 15 or 20 sec. in length, and send it to the music apprecator to listen to. That way they can judge if they want to make the purchase. They can also spend all day at the site trying different clips all the while staring at the banner adds on the page.
The key to the whole thing is the price of each song. They should be set by the free market, not forced upon them by over-bearing Record Lables. Unfortunately, the record lables will not want to vollntarily destroy their profit margins to run a more "fair" system. Hence the problem...and the reason I'm posting this on /. instead of getting some venture capital together and doing it myself. How can you get the rights to music out of the control of the record labels and put the artists in direct control of their work?? The only answer I can think of is for the government to do their anti-Monopoly thing witht he record lables and somehow give a better more fair business model a chance. Again, how? I have no idea. Any suggestions?
I can imagine several ways to set up the main storyline, but this is one:
Kill Mulder off. That would have been what I would have done seasons ago if I were one of the government guys trying to cover up my conspiracy. Why risk him finding you out and shutting you down? Ok, so they finally wise up and kill Mulder and get rid of their greatest liability. They killed Deepthroat and his sucessors, it's about time they got to Mulder.
Mulder is dead so they try to shut-down the X-Files, again. No. They should have learned by now, over the past 7 seasons, that they can't really kill it. There will always be an FBI unit that has X-File cases shoved it's way. They reason that by taking Mulder out of the picture it is crippled, or so they believe. They leave Scully to do the X-File investigations with the idea that she can't make the same connections that Mulder did and therefore will be ineffective. Weather the FBI assign her a new partner or not is trivial. Trying to duplicate the chemistry between Scully and Mulder would be a bad idea, IMHO. She should probably be on her own as an agent making it more difficult for her to figure out the government coverup.
But that eliminates the conversations between her and a partner. Well, that is another area where the Lone Gunmen can play. Besides, there does not need to be that much dialogue. You can do a lot with the camera. Have Scully just observe and as you see her investigate or just look around the camera angle switches and zooms in on the clue. Or maybe she dosen't see it and leaves, but the camera pans over to show it to us and maybe she finds it later in the episode after she as learned more and it becomes signifigant. There are lots of things that can be done.
The other elements, the "path least taken" intuition and the initial correlation of the case to an X-File type thing, should come from The Lone Gunman or others, which ever is more appropriate for the plot. Like Deepthroat, they can tip Scully off to things, but more importantly they can play a role in the case as well. Not just as mere informants, but as co-investigators behind the scenes doing what they do best. They could be worked in as much as the plot needs.
Still, there is one small problem. Why would they stop after killing Mulder? Why not just kill off everyone and assign the X-File cases to some new rookie agent that is in way over their head and has no clue. Why not hunt down and kill off The Lone Gunmen if they appear to be helping. Well, they could cover their tracks digitally, but sooner or later a standard tail on Scully would reaveal them and then that would be it. It's obvious that there needs to be some kind of trump card that is throw to counter that sort of thing. A gardian-angel of sorts.
Someone, or something, that intervienes on their behalf once in a while when it looks as if they might get caught or worse. The gardian should be totally mysterious. Perhaps you never even see it, just the results of what is has done to save Scully and the Lone Gunmen, but the show should not focus on it that much and make it into a "transporter" that always saves the day like on Star Trek. The government guys would try a couple attempts and when they are mysteriously foiled they go "What the heck?!?!" and stop the attempts until they figure out who is helping them. Perhaps Scully and the Gunmen know who/what it is? There are different angles that could be played with it.
With all that going on and add in some neat/creepy storylines, a good plot, and good scripts. It would be easy to keep the show going for another season without Mulder. There is nothing wrong with re-inventing yourself from time to time.
"A little revolution now and again is a healthy thing, don't you think?" - The Hunt for Red October
It's obvious that it depends upon the competitiveness of the individual(s). I have found that the more competitive a game is, the more emotions I have. When you really want to win and your opponent wants to deny you that win, some can't help but get drawn into the emotions like tension, anticipation, desire, joy, ego, and anger. When you play a game against another team or opponent, you're making the statement "I'm better than you at this and I'm going to prove it."
I play Ice Hockey in my spare time and I can tell you that the frustration of getting blown-out is taxing. Eventually, you deal with it by getting mad, wheither it's at yourself, the refs, your opponents. When the game is over, you still may feel it for a few hours, but those feelings pass. When you win, you feel great, but that passess too. That is the reason we play sports. We want to feel the joy of winning, but to do that we have to risk feeling the agony of defeat [insert vido clip of guy crashing on ski jump]. You win, your happy, you lose, your angry. It's as simple as that, yet they don't get it. I'd love to get these PhD's on the ice and show them what it's like. :)
Of course, this isn't the first time Lucas has dissapointed me. Don't get me started on the exclusion of the "yub-yub" song in the Special Edition Return of the Jedi. I refused to buy the whole set just because of that and when someone gave it to me for christmas, I went out and got the Digitally mastered Jedi and gave the SE Jedi back.
That's what I saw too. I remember watching a special on Area 51 a year ago and from the evidence they presented and some common sence indicates that there is not much of anything going on there. the show said there use to be flights going in and out each morning and evening, which took workers in and out of the base, but they have either stopped or decreased in frequency which indicates less work being done. And a little common sense tells us that once a 'Secret Base' has become as famous as Area 51, after all there's an arcade game named after it, then it's time to find a new place to do the secret stuff. I believe it is no longer used much. that would also explain the why the goverment cleared the sattelite images for posting on the internet. Also, with the cold war over it is not needed as much.
Monopolies are natural. They happen all the time. A fledgling company can't make a product that suits everyone. They have to pick their market. As it turned out, Intel became the dominant architecture and DOS/Windows became the dominant OS. Because they were dominant, all the other software companies focused on writing for that platform. That's where the money was to be made. Because MS had the dominate OS and a good word processor, they couldn't help but become a monopoly. Now they are losing their monopoly, just as the others. Even Intel is feeling the pressure. It happens. It was only a matter of time, DOJ or no DOJ.
Actually, it could have been a lot worse. Imagine if by some miracle that Apple became the monopoly back then. Not only would we have bought our programs and OS from them, but our boxes as well. I remember how expensive they were, I had an Apple IIe and later a PowerMac.
I don't understand some of the hatred of MS that I have seen, either. My personal gripes are their buggy OS's they've made in the past (memories of that night I tried to type a term paper and NT server kept crashing still stirs up rage) and that damn office assistant. Even so, MacOS is just as buggy (haven't used OS X enough to know) and it was only in the past few years that UNIX/Linux became friendly enough for the average person to load and maintain on a desktop and have half decent applications like StarOffice to use with it, let alone games. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people that jump on the "I hate MS" bandwagon do it just because they think it's cool rather than having valid reasons. The only people MS have hurt are those in the companies that it used it's monopolistic powers against unlawfully, for which they are about to pay.
This sort of thing dosen't surprise me anymore. People substuting fear for reason... Instead of trying to help these poor kids, they decide to brand them as being "dangerous". I'm no child psychologist, but common sence tells me that labeling these kids and having their peer's turn them in for cash and prizes is NOT the way to handle this. All this will do is make them even more depressed, because now their classmates ARE out to get them. Lets say the kid is actually IS dangerous, this crap just might push them over the edge. Of course, they'll be able to tell who turned them in...all they have to look for is a kid with a brand new W.A.V.E. cap or shirt. In that case, the W.A.V.E. logo might as well be a bulleye.
I agree. We don't have very good methods for finding planets. Yes, i am guessing. It's an educated guess, but still a guess none the less. I based my guess on observations of the only life sustaining planet we know of. The odds of similar conditions occuring elsewhere are not that good. I can't say that they'll never occur elsewhere. Who knows? I'm just saying that the _odds_ are against it.
If I may be so bold, your assumption did not do so well because it was not based upon observations or facts. Might I sugguest more scientific method and less philosophy when you are talking about science.
It's the cold tomato sause that does it in my book. Tomatos and tomato products taste very good while cold. Take a bite out of a chilled tomato right from the grocery store or better yet direct from the tomato plant in the morning. Or how about ketchup? I'm sure some of you put cold ketchup on burgers, fries, or scrambled eggs even.
I can forsee two different possibilities...
First: Each artists takes control of their own destiny, as far as the distribution of their music goes. They sell it in digital, CD, or whatever format directly from their web site, and perhaps a commercial site, and take almost 100% of the profit. They can give each song a price, discout it for buying a compilation of songs in a compressed or zipped format, and then collect it directly. Instead of getting a few dollars from the royalties of a CD sale in a store, they could get two to three times that from on-line sales minus the distribution costs (internet services and development). This way, they would only need to sell 1/2 to 1/3 of the albums or songs to make the same profit. Seeing that they take on more of the distribution and marketing costs, the break-even point would be greater, but they could cover that ground faster with 2-3 times more profit per unit. Perhaps it would all balance out in the end, but the point is that it would work.
Second: A standard CD can hold approximately 680 MB of data, which translates into about 150 songs give or take. A DVD can hold approximately 8.5 GB using dual layer (http://www.sel.sony.com/S EL/consumer/dvd/about_specs.html) which is 1,875 songs. 3,750 double sided. Can you name 3,000 songs?? It gets better. Regular CD's use infrared lasers to read, DVD's use red lasers, at a smaller wavelength and therefor better compression of the tracks and more data, a blue laser is even smaller, I can't find the link, but they claim 16 GB of data per side. That would be well over 7,000 songs. 14,000 songs double sided. Enter, molecular circutry and nanotechnology and you can see that it is feasable that in the not to distant future it will be possible to have every piece of music ever recorded on a single device that would fit onto your hip in about the size of a disc man or smaller. A company, which I'll call "MUSIC" will go around and gather all the new recordings that comes out and you would have a subscription that would allow you to download the updates (all the new songs since the last update) to your device, kind of like anti-virus updates. Just like everyone pays for cable, cell phones, and ISP's, people will have a subcription to MUSIC. Of course, they will still be able to hear the new stuff right when it comes out on the Radio and MTV (do they still play music videos???).
If the record companies are smart and insightful, they'll work toward the second model, but it will take some time. Meanwhile, the individual aritist can use the first.
We should all feel fortunate, or blessed, that our solar system and orbit turned out to be so beneficial for the sustainment of life. I can't even begin to calculate the odds against it. For the gas that formed our solar system mostly condenced into a large ball (the sun) and the rest formed into much smaller balls that had slightly eliptical orbits. One of which has a perigee far enough away from the sun so that all water is not a gas and a apogee close enough to keep it from being all ice. That does not seem too common, to me at least.
I can do everything at home that I can do at work, except waste time chatting at the coffee pot and hovering over people trying to get what I want from them. If you can telnet to a box and use POP for your mail, what does it matter WHERE you work. You just drive in for face to face meetings when necessary, but most of the time you could just tele-confrence in or use NetMeeting.
If I could telecommute, I would feel more pressure to get the job done and do a good job; to prove to my supervisor that I'm not slacking off, but being productive with my time. In fact, I'd wager I'd be more productive at home. Of course, if they let me do that, they would have to let everyone do it. They'd have to have a bank of modems that would rival a small ISP. That's probably why right there. The extra overhead that a large RAS would need. Employees could use their own ISP and go through a fire wall, but a company would not want it's propriatry information passed around like that.
In the end, I would guess that the company does not want it's employees to telecommute because it has more control over them when they are on company property. Once you're in, they can shelter you from anything they don't want you to see, hear, or do and push the stuff they want you to see, hear, and do. Squeeze you for every minute of the time they pay you for.
Technology is a tool, nothing more. We may create extreemly powerful weapons, AI, self-replicating robots, or whatever...but they are just merely the tools we will use to get a job done. The two most dangerous technolgies humans have invented are obviously nuclear weapons and biological weapons. Back during the Cuban Missle Crisis, we came pretty darn close to testing weather or not people could survive a large scale nuclear war, but we didn't and we found a way to live with the constant threat via. MAD. I believe it proves that nobody wants to annihilate themselves. It's a survival instinct. Someday, I'm sure we'll invent more powerful weapons that could blast the Earth into kibbels & bits, but that still won't change the fact that people don't want to destroy themselves.
My theory is this: no matter what technological jam we get into, we can find a way out of it. Here is the perfect example of my little theory at work, the Y2K bug. First of all, was there a looming technological problem? Yes. I spent the better part of 1998 fixing the darn things. Could it have caused a disaster? Yes. If I had not fixed the bugs in the distribution and managment system it would not have worked at all and the company could have had some hard times, or even worse. Did anything happen on 1/1/2000? No, not really. Why? The bugs were fixed. How? Each of us looked after our own back yards, so to speak. We didn't want our businesses to go under so we fixed our bugs. Well what do you know, its that survival instinct again.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I believe we humans can adapt to handle just about any situation thrown at us. Granted, we may not like the solution, or what we have to do to obtain it, but to say that any one thing will wipe us out is unlikely.
Ever since I got a dedicated line for my computer, I have stopped watching TV, except for visits to a friend's house. I don't even have cable anymore. (if only the slacker cable companies around here would get cable modems) News, Sports, Weather, you name it....I get my information and my entertainment from the net. (...well, that and my DVD player) And, I get most of my communication with my friends off of the net as well. I doubt that the net will ever fully replace TV. Perhaps TV will change to fit the prefered delivery medium, but it will stll be around in some form or another. (shows being broadcast on a "channel" that start and end at certain times, along with commercials)
I cannot possibly imaginge how I could keep up with all my friends if it was not for the internet. In fact, I can't remember how I kept up with them before....probably the phone. I have a bunch of friendships that would be dead if they were not on e-mail life support. You know, all either of you do is send jokes back and forth to each other and occasionally attach a titbit of personal info.
The internet helps keep me rounded. I know some people that try to keep busy all the time. If a night comes along that they can't find anyone to go out with they have a breakdown. That's obviously not healthy. With the net, I can be with whoever I want and put the others off until later and they're not offended by it. Sometimes I just don't feel like replying to my mother's e-mail right away so I'll let it sit in the inbox. Did I mention how cool the internet is? :)
The time I spend downloading files and playing non-internet game is just personal time. Time I spend with just myself, which I find to be very relaxing and very much needed from time to time. Kind of like a de-stressing session. What is the difference between personal time spend on a computer, or playing with a dog, reading a book, or whatever floats your boat? Nothing. Why we choose to do what we do in our personal time is part of what defines who we are. I have no problem with these differences, but I suppose that some people will not be happy until we are all borg-like barbie clones.