It's mostly images, no wonder it went so fast. Here's the text on the front page:
Draft Committee to the 'Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States We all want a world that is prosperous and sustainable. We have the technology and resources to create such a world. What is lacking are leaders with vision and will. I encourage you to be such a leader and welcome your participation in our campaign.
It is time that we base our decision-making on the time tested native American idea that all decisions should be made with our seventh generation of descendants in mind and in consultation with our elders. It is time to acknowledge that the earth is our mother and that we must take care of her. It is time to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction from the earth. It is time to insure that all people have access to affordable health care and education.
It is time for American leaders to work with the Moslem world, China, India, Africa, Russia, Latin America, the European Union and all people's around the world to create the world we want. It is our destiny to play a leadership role in creating a new world.
We believe Steve Jobs is the man to help us achieve these goals. If you agree, join us, and together we can get it done!
A Biography of Steve Jobs Editorials: 01/19/03 at 17:59:27 PST by aztc
Editorials Steve Paul Jobs Born 1955 Los Altos CA; Evangelic bad boy who, with Steve Wozniak, co-founded Apple Computer Corporation and became a multimillionaire before the age of...
Printerfriendly version - A Biography of Steve Jobs Send an e-mail to (26 reads) [ More ] [ 0 comments ]
Newsletters are archived under News News: 01/18/03 at 18:24:03 PST by Admin
News Newsletters can only be sent by the top level admin. Please submit your plain text newsletter to webmaster@jobsforpresident.org
Whoops, I just noticed that the poster I replied to was talking specifically about contact lenses, not eyeglasses, as the parent poster had mentioned.
I wouldn't think there's any way to actually use the lenses themselves to generate the image. Even if you could do it, you'd either need a wire going to the lense, which could damage your eye, or all of the gadgetry, plus some sort of high bandwidth wireless connectivity, in the lens itself. I don't think miniaturization's there, quite yet.
Of course, you can siply project the image right onto your eye, whether or not you're wearing contacts, with something like this (which is actually what Don makes his displays with):
In addition, they should install a dupe comment rating system, so I can assign a -5 to any comment bitching about dupes.
Thank you for at least offering something constructive, though, instead of just saying "Taco can't spell, I mean didn't check to see if it had been posted, already!"
Also, to play the devil's advocate, I must suggest adding a meta-dupe-comment rating system be installed, so one can also assign -5 to any comment bitching about comments bitching about dupes.
Actually, I spent significantly more than the price of the ticket, because I had to travel there from Baltimore, and I brought food & water. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone show up without food, water, and shelter, but my point is that it can be done, and plenty of people do it.
A lot of people overprepare, though. Renting an RV, for example, is a ridiculous way for most people to experience the event. Granted, there are always exceptions, and someone who is really making an effort to participate can always do so, but it can easily be an isolationist act. Practicing isolationism is a great way to completely miss the experience.
I think that the trick is to prepare just enough so that your needs are met, and you don't become a burden on others, but no more. Just find something that you can offer as a gift, and don't just buy a box of 1000 glow sticks, there's plenty of that already. If you give freely, people will do the same for you.
As far as I can tell, you need a certain minimum commitment to commercialism and conformity to even be able to afford Burning Man, without taking a significant hit to your overall quality of life.
Absolutely. Just like you need a certain minimum commitment to commercialism to buy a tuna sandwich in this country. This is America. Capitalism rules supreme. The only way to avoid commercialism is to hold the event outside of America (or any other country which practices capitalism), but, even then, anyone traveling there from a capitalist society would still need money to leave their country, so it's unavoidable.
The point of a Temporarty Autonomous Zone, like Burning Man, is to give you a break from that, not to replace it. Just to sidestep it for a moment, then allow us to return to our lives. Hopefully, everyone that was there takes a little bit of it home with them, and maybe even carries the philosophies on to their daily lives. It doesn't directly change the world, but it changes the people who live in it, which can be just as good.
Thank you for putting that so well. I was struggling to come up with the same thing, myself. It's really like anywhere else in the world. Different groups and subcultures represent themselves, and the crowd you hang around greatly influences your experience.
It's a strange microcosm of the rest of the world, really, with the freak factor magnified 100x. You even end up with neighborhoods in Black Rock City. Certain areas will be a large cluster of rave camps, and such, and some people end up thinking of them like a bad part of town, that they want to avoid.
Burning Man is a huge commercial event now. It's not what it used to be, and we're due for something new.
Then shut the hell up, and do something about it. Or you you honestly think that you're "due for something new?" That the world owes you freedom of self expression?
You need to get out there and take it back.
Need some help getting started? Check for a regional event in your area: http://www.burningman.com/calendar/regional .html
If you're on the East Coast, there's a great regional called Playa Del Fuego that you should check out: http://www.playadelfuego.org/
Where thousands of the wealthiest and most powerful pay scads of money to celebrate anti-commercialism and equality. Gag me with a fucking spork; the hypocrisy is going to make my skin peel.
That's not really true. Have you been there? It really doesn't take much to come up with $150 for a ticket, and you go there with just the clothes on your back, if you've got a true gift to offer. Sure, there's lots of yuppies who sit in their RV's until it's time to burn the man, but you really don't see to much of them.
Just stay away from the main attractions, and you'll see the real participants. You'll see the most beautiful things of your life.
Yeah, there's a bit of a battle going on there, between the "true believers" and those who just want to party. The latter group can be seen tossing beer cans in anything that looks like a trash can, and the former group can be seen following them around, picking up the beer cans, and taking them back to their own camps for disposal.
It works out surprisingly well, actually. A lot of people don't mind doing it so much, since there's plenty of people to spread the burden (the former group still outnumbers the latter, at least until the last couple of days). It's a pretty good feeling, to be walking across the playa, and happen upon a bit of trash. It's like a treasure, and you cram it into some overstuffed pocket, and hold onto it all night long, until you can make it back to your camp.
Yeah right. Do you seriously think they're going to generate and embed a distinct watermark for each and every PC that goes out the door with this stuff already on disk?
Somewhere at the OEM a bulk HD copier will be churning out a dozen of these drives at a time. It's impractical NOT to put identical data on every single drive.
That's an interesting thought, it hadn't occurred to me. I know the download services give you a unique watermark, but, you're right, it would seem impractical to do anything but duplicate data. Maybe if it were a slight modification (like imprinting a unique CD-key onto a PC game CD), but a watermark would involve actual processing and changing the entire data set.
Unless it's the DRM software that embeds the watermarks dynamically during 'playback', based on a unique ID on the processor die
This wouldn't be sufficient, because, once someone cracks the format's encryption, and converts it to a normal format, like mp3, it will never be played that first time to set the watermark.
Well, since the pre-downloaded music is offered as a convenience only, and an internet connection is required to use the services, it's perfectly reasonable to expect the user to contact customer service, and do whatever needs to be done to enable the music to be downloaded. Supposedly, they're fairly helpful about that kind of thing, at least for now (if the service fails or becomes very successful, expect that to change).
Sure, it'd be a pain in the ass, but anyone signing up for a service with all those DRM hoops to jump through has got to be prepared for that.
Same thing goes for when you buy a box from an auction, to find it's full of gold, to the victor go the spoils.
Full of gold? It sounds like this music will consist of primarily Eminem, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and whatever else is at the top of the charts (after all, they want to convenience the most people, so they'll include what they expect to be the most popular downloads). I wouldn't call any of that gold.
Maybe more like getting a box that's full of corroded old copper pennies... they might be worth something to a collector, but aren't particularly attractive or valuable on their own.
Small problem with that. These people are not idiots. They know that people will do things like that, or find some other way of cracking the encryption and extracting the data. That's why these mp3s are watermarked. As soon as they see certain songs show up on a p2p sharing app, they grab them, examine the watermark, and trace it back to the credit card that purchased the computer.
Unless you can show that your credit card was stolen, you're getting sued.
I was beta testing TSO for a few weeks, and in my opinion, it's not going to take off. Visualize this: playing a computer game... in which one's avatar is... sleeping. For twenty minutes straight, because your stupid "energy" bar is low. Meanwhile, you are forced to chat with other players to keep your connection alive because they boot you after fifteen minutes of idleness.
I know that sounds ridiculous to any reasonably sane individual, but that's exactly what playing EverQuest is like, and it's doing quite well. Gameplay in any MMORPG consists of doing some boring and repetetive taks (i.e. killing monsters , making arrows, or selling hamburgers) until your character gets tired (or low on hp), at which point you have to lay down for a while, and wait. People tend to be satisfied chatting or, trying to sell stuff, or getting a group together while they do this, in EQ.
You also have to remember that The Sims is mostly played by non-technical women. These are people that are likely to hang out in a chatroom, anyways, so that's not idle time to them; it's fun.
Even if the damn game does inexplicably manage to sell and retain players, it doesn't offer anything new at all to the genre.
Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps a better way to look at it is that it will have a profound effect on the chat room industry, and the game industry is an innocent victem caught in the cross-fire.
So... how long until somebody figures out how to remove the digital watermarking? Maybe it wouldn't be the easiest process in the world, but it probably would scare the pants off of them as a proof-of-concept.
And probably get their lawyers all excited with the possibility of DMCA-related charges.
That would be a really bad idea, right now. Think of what Adobe was able to do for Sklyarov and Elcomsoft, considering that they basically just mentioned it, and backed down on most of their actions fairly quickly. Now, imagine if it were the RIAA, instead.
Anybody who's working on this should be taking serious steps to preserve their anonymity. Even the people posting here about lossy compression's effects are probably in violation of the DMCA, already.
I honestly think the end all of mass p2p sharing would be if the record industry purchased a familiar interface (Napster), spruced it up a bit, and make simple searching, and downloading of high quality mp3s then p2p would end. That plus the added benefit of no spy ware, and a cheap cost, like $5/month, and I honestly think people would pay that and the music industry would make a ton of money.
Have you checked out emusic before? It's been around for years, $10/month unlimited downloads of their entire library. Sure, it's mostly indy labels & jazz, but it's a great service if that's mostly what you're into, anyways.
Straight-up mp3 downloads, too. No watermarking, spyware, DRM, or special required software (they do have an optional custom download agent, but it runs on linux). Now, if only they'd offer ogg downloads...
First of all, I agree with your decision on Games & Work making MS neccesary, at this point. If you want to play games on your computer (not the damn TV), MS is your only real choice. If you work for a corporation or government office, chances are very good that you'll need to read/write MS Office formats (although OpenOffice is slowly making this a non-isssue, but it's only 90% there).
I must simply disagree with your comment about SQL Server 2000 being "Microsoft's only GOOD non-gaming product," it almost made me spit my beer all over the monitor. First of all, MSSqlServer wasn't even written by MS. It's Sybase, repackaged. Second of all, have you actually used Enterprise Manager? That's got to be one of the slowest, most cumbersome apps I've ever seen, next to Visual Studio.
Try setting up MySql some time. If the command line straight-sql interface is too intimidating, download phpMyAdmin. It's roughly equivalent to Enterprise Manager in function, but exponentially faster, even though it's a web interface. All of this will run fine on MS Windows, btw, although you'll have to install apache & php to get phpMyAdmin working.
From the site (emphasis mine): HiSi - Hear It! Save It!
A new song catches your ear on the radio. You love it, but you can't count on getting the song title and artist from the DJ. Rely instead on Neuros and its' HiSi feature. Record a 30 second sample of the mystery song to your Neuros by pressing the orange button. Neuros records directly to MP3 format. Next time you synchronize with your PC, Neuros matches the "digital fingerprint" you've recorded to a proprietary online audio database and provides you with the title and artist of the song. This information is sent directly to your Neuros and is also stored in your Neuros Synchronization Manager PC application.
A proprietary online database? How many such databases are there? Are they free? Will they alawys be free? Is what they're doing even legal or authorized by the RIAA?
This reminds me of a few years ago, when mp3 software started adding in lyric lookups through a variety of online lyrics databases. Shortly after it became a popular feature, the RIAA had all of those sites shut down, leaving that feature useless.
They're using declining sales and stock prices as the primary data to come to these conclusions. Have they not noticed that our economy is (pardom me) in the outhouse?
I'm not getting a steady paycheck right now, and I've cancelled my cell phone and stopped buying any non-essential household item. That means no computers, no stereo equipment, and certainly no PVRs. When this country has a bit more disposable income to throw around, then you can more accurately predict this sort of thing.
How on earth can this compete with.pdf if it's not a cross-platform standard?!! The WHOLE point to.pdf is that it's universally available. This is just another Windows-only format.
You're absolutely correct, sir, and I agree with you 100%. In fact, I've recently written a paper on that exact subject, Why non Windows-only formats can never become standards. Just use outlook to schedule an appointment to discuss it with me. I'll send you the word.doc, so you can read it over ahead of time.
I think this is just a bit of an over reaction. MS is a little late in this area. PDF is very well established as a standard.
Did you ever do any word processing or desktop publishing in the late 80s/early 90s? There was this beast of a program called WordPerfect, that everyone used for everything they possibly could. They taught it in high schools, even. Any office or goverment agency that used computers to edit documents used it.
One day, Microsoft released a crappy version of notepad with font support, called Word. It absolutely sucked, and was in no way a replacement for WordPerfect. It didn't have anywhere near the functionality, and was a usability nightmare. What's the standard today? Netscape is far from the only competition Microsoft has stamped out.
There are still plenty of people out there that still use WordPerfect 5.0, on a 286 running DOS 5. Even if Microsoft has their way with XDocs, plenty of people will still used PDF. But, suddenly, PDF readers will be a bit harder to come by. New coputer purchases with XP, or whatever they come out with next, won't come with a PDF reader. In response to this, people will start providing XDocs documents instead, so that more people will be able to read them. It will eventually be unthinkable to use anything but XDocs in new projects.
Is that a bad thing? Who knows? PDF is a pretty screwed up standard, led by an evil corporation. I don't see XDocs being any worse. It sounds like It'll even have actual ASCII text inside, so I can grep it, or read it in vi, without having to start an x session.
I dislike the American tradition of television and cheezy poofs as much as you do, but I really don't think it's your place to judge whether or not that's a worthwhile way for someone else to spend their time.
If somebody enjoys Jerry Springer and the WWF, and they're perfectly happy to sit around eating junk food and getting fat, then who are you to stop them? They probably find it just as baffling that somebody would want to go walking through the woods and just look at plants.
It's difficult to see extra free time as a bad thing (unless you think about more abstract effects, like motivation and the value of unhappiness (necessity is the mother of invention, after all)). You use yours how you choose, as will I. Is it really better for a human to spend all of their time working, than to have a machine do it for them, so that human can at least "piss away" their time in a way that brings them pleasure?
It's tough to spend time outside, when you're stuck in a factory all day long.
Slashdot Mirror
It's mostly images, no wonder it went so fast. Here's the text on the front page:
...
Draft Committee to the 'Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States
We all want a world that is prosperous and sustainable. We have the technology and resources to create such a world. What is lacking are leaders with vision and will. I encourage you to be such a leader and welcome your participation in our campaign.
It is time that we base our decision-making on the time tested native American idea that all decisions should be made with our seventh generation of descendants in mind and in consultation with our elders. It is time to acknowledge that the earth is our mother and that we must take care of her. It is time to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction from the earth. It is time to insure that all people have access to affordable health care and education.
It is time for American leaders to work with the Moslem world, China, India, Africa, Russia, Latin America, the European Union and all people's around the world to create the world we want. It is our destiny to play a leadership role in creating a new world.
We believe Steve Jobs is the man to help us achieve these goals. If you agree, join us, and together we can get it done!
A Biography of Steve Jobs
Editorials: 01/19/03 at 17:59:27 PST by aztc
Editorials Steve Paul Jobs
Born 1955 Los Altos CA; Evangelic bad boy who, with Steve Wozniak, co-founded Apple Computer Corporation and became a multimillionaire before the age of
Printerfriendly version - A Biography of Steve Jobs Send an e-mail to (26 reads) [ More ] [ 0 comments ]
Newsletters are archived under News
News: 01/18/03 at 18:24:03 PST by Admin
News Newsletters can only be sent by the top level admin. Please submit your plain text newsletter to webmaster@jobsforpresident.org
Not to be confused with http://www.jobsforTHEpresident.org/, as I'd really like to see him get a new one.
/>
<rimshot
Whoops, I just noticed that the poster I replied to was talking specifically about contact lenses, not eyeglasses, as the parent poster had mentioned.
I wouldn't think there's any way to actually use the lenses themselves to generate the image. Even if you could do it, you'd either need a wire going to the lense, which could damage your eye, or all of the gadgetry, plus some sort of high bandwidth wireless connectivity, in the lens itself. I don't think miniaturization's there, quite yet.
Of course, you can siply project the image right onto your eye, whether or not you're wearing contacts, with something like this (which is actually what Don makes his displays with):
http://www.tekgear.com/product.cfm?sku=0001
The wearable computing community has had this for ages. Check out Dod Pap's website, he makes some pretty sweet eyewear:
a ge _id=29
http://aeinnovations.com/content.php?menu=906&p
In addition, they should install a dupe comment rating system, so I can assign a -5 to any comment bitching about dupes.
Thank you for at least offering something constructive, though, instead of just saying "Taco can't spell, I mean didn't check to see if it had been posted, already!"
Also, to play the devil's advocate, I must suggest adding a meta-dupe-comment rating system be installed, so one can also assign -5 to any comment bitching about comments bitching about dupes.
Heh, methinks they were running the web server on the thing, too. I wonder if vodka can boil ...
Actually, I spent significantly more than the price of the ticket, because I had to travel there from Baltimore, and I brought food & water. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone show up without food, water, and shelter, but my point is that it can be done, and plenty of people do it.
A lot of people overprepare, though. Renting an RV, for example, is a ridiculous way for most people to experience the event. Granted, there are always exceptions, and someone who is really making an effort to participate can always do so, but it can easily be an isolationist act. Practicing isolationism is a great way to completely miss the experience.
I think that the trick is to prepare just enough so that your needs are met, and you don't become a burden on others, but no more. Just find something that you can offer as a gift, and don't just buy a box of 1000 glow sticks, there's plenty of that already. If you give freely, people will do the same for you.
As far as I can tell, you need a certain minimum commitment to commercialism and conformity to even be able to afford Burning Man, without taking a significant hit to your overall quality of life.
Absolutely. Just like you need a certain minimum commitment to commercialism to buy a tuna sandwich in this country. This is America. Capitalism rules supreme. The only way to avoid commercialism is to hold the event outside of America (or any other country which practices capitalism), but, even then, anyone traveling there from a capitalist society would still need money to leave their country, so it's unavoidable.
The point of a Temporarty Autonomous Zone, like Burning Man, is to give you a break from that, not to replace it. Just to sidestep it for a moment, then allow us to return to our lives. Hopefully, everyone that was there takes a little bit of it home with them, and maybe even carries the philosophies on to their daily lives. It doesn't directly change the world, but it changes the people who live in it, which can be just as good.
Thank you for putting that so well. I was struggling to come up with the same thing, myself. It's really like anywhere else in the world. Different groups and subcultures represent themselves, and the crowd you hang around greatly influences your experience.
It's a strange microcosm of the rest of the world, really, with the freak factor magnified 100x. You even end up with neighborhoods in Black Rock City. Certain areas will be a large cluster of rave camps, and such, and some people end up thinking of them like a bad part of town, that they want to avoid.
Burning Man is a huge commercial event now. It's not what it used to be, and we're due for something new.
l .html
Then shut the hell up, and do something about it. Or you you honestly think that you're "due for something new?" That the world owes you freedom of self expression?
You need to get out there and take it back.
Need some help getting started? Check for a regional event in your area:
http://www.burningman.com/calendar/regiona
If you're on the East Coast, there's a great regional called Playa Del Fuego that you should check out:
http://www.playadelfuego.org/
Maybe one of them has what you're looking for.
Where thousands of the wealthiest and most powerful pay scads of money to celebrate anti-commercialism and equality. Gag me with a fucking spork; the hypocrisy is going to make my skin peel.
That's not really true. Have you been there? It really doesn't take much to come up with $150 for a ticket, and you go there with just the clothes on your back, if you've got a true gift to offer. Sure, there's lots of yuppies who sit in their RV's until it's time to burn the man, but you really don't see to much of them.
Just stay away from the main attractions, and you'll see the real participants. You'll see the most beautiful things of your life.
Yeah, there's a bit of a battle going on there, between the "true believers" and those who just want to party. The latter group can be seen tossing beer cans in anything that looks like a trash can, and the former group can be seen following them around, picking up the beer cans, and taking them back to their own camps for disposal.
It works out surprisingly well, actually. A lot of people don't mind doing it so much, since there's plenty of people to spread the burden (the former group still outnumbers the latter, at least until the last couple of days). It's a pretty good feeling, to be walking across the playa, and happen upon a bit of trash. It's like a treasure, and you cram it into some overstuffed pocket, and hold onto it all night long, until you can make it back to your camp.
Yeah right. Do you seriously think they're going to generate and embed a distinct watermark for each and every PC that goes out the door with this stuff already on disk?
Somewhere at the OEM a bulk HD copier will be churning out a dozen of these drives at a time. It's impractical NOT to put identical data on every single drive.
That's an interesting thought, it hadn't occurred to me. I know the download services give you a unique watermark, but, you're right, it would seem impractical to do anything but duplicate data. Maybe if it were a slight modification (like imprinting a unique CD-key onto a PC game CD), but a watermark would involve actual processing and changing the entire data set.
Unless it's the DRM software that embeds the watermarks dynamically during 'playback', based on a unique ID on the processor die
This wouldn't be sufficient, because, once someone cracks the format's encryption, and converts it to a normal format, like mp3, it will never be played that first time to set the watermark.
Well, since the pre-downloaded music is offered as a convenience only, and an internet connection is required to use the services, it's perfectly reasonable to expect the user to contact customer service, and do whatever needs to be done to enable the music to be downloaded. Supposedly, they're fairly helpful about that kind of thing, at least for now (if the service fails or becomes very successful, expect that to change).
Sure, it'd be a pain in the ass, but anyone signing up for a service with all those DRM hoops to jump through has got to be prepared for that.
I'd love to see the first lawsuit after these watermarked mp3s get cracked and make it onto a p2p network.
"Dude, you're going to Jail!"
*ducks*
Same thing goes for when you buy a box from an auction, to find it's full of gold, to the victor go the spoils.
... they might be worth something to a collector, but aren't particularly attractive or valuable on their own.
Full of gold? It sounds like this music will consist of primarily Eminem, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and whatever else is at the top of the charts (after all, they want to convenience the most people, so they'll include what they expect to be the most popular downloads). I wouldn't call any of that gold.
Maybe more like getting a box that's full of corroded old copper pennies
Small problem with that. These people are not idiots. They know that people will do things like that, or find some other way of cracking the encryption and extracting the data. That's why these mp3s are watermarked. As soon as they see certain songs show up on a p2p sharing app, they grab them, examine the watermark, and trace it back to the credit card that purchased the computer.
Unless you can show that your credit card was stolen, you're getting sued.
I was beta testing TSO for a few weeks, and in my opinion, it's not going to take off.
Visualize this: playing a computer game... in which one's avatar is... sleeping. For twenty minutes straight, because your stupid "energy" bar is low. Meanwhile, you are forced to chat with other players to keep your connection alive because they boot you after fifteen minutes of idleness.
I know that sounds ridiculous to any reasonably sane individual, but that's exactly what playing EverQuest is like, and it's doing quite well. Gameplay in any MMORPG consists of doing some boring and repetetive taks (i.e. killing monsters , making arrows, or selling hamburgers) until your character gets tired (or low on hp), at which point you have to lay down for a while, and wait. People tend to be satisfied chatting or, trying to sell stuff, or getting a group together while they do this, in EQ.
You also have to remember that The Sims is mostly played by non-technical women. These are people that are likely to hang out in a chatroom, anyways, so that's not idle time to them; it's fun.
Even if the damn game does inexplicably manage to sell and retain players, it doesn't offer anything new at all to the genre.
Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps a better way to look at it is that it will have a profound effect on the chat room industry, and the game industry is an innocent victem caught in the cross-fire.
So... how long until somebody figures out how to remove the digital watermarking? Maybe it wouldn't be the easiest process in the world, but it probably would scare the pants off of them as a proof-of-concept.
And probably get their lawyers all excited with the possibility of DMCA-related charges.
That would be a really bad idea, right now. Think of what Adobe was able to do for Sklyarov and Elcomsoft, considering that they basically just mentioned it, and backed down on most of their actions fairly quickly. Now, imagine if it were the RIAA, instead.
Anybody who's working on this should be taking serious steps to preserve their anonymity. Even the people posting here about lossy compression's effects are probably in violation of the DMCA, already.
I honestly think the end all of mass p2p sharing would be if the record industry purchased a familiar interface (Napster), spruced it up a bit, and make simple searching, and downloading of high quality mp3s then p2p would end. That plus the added benefit of no spy ware, and a cheap cost, like $5/month, and I honestly think people would pay that and the music industry would make a ton of money.
...
Have you checked out emusic before? It's been around for years, $10/month unlimited downloads of their entire library. Sure, it's mostly indy labels & jazz, but it's a great service if that's mostly what you're into, anyways.
Straight-up mp3 downloads, too. No watermarking, spyware, DRM, or special required software (they do have an optional custom download agent, but it runs on linux). Now, if only they'd offer ogg downloads
First of all, I agree with your decision on Games & Work making MS neccesary, at this point. If you want to play games on your computer (not the damn TV), MS is your only real choice. If you work for a corporation or government office, chances are very good that you'll need to read/write MS Office formats (although OpenOffice is slowly making this a non-isssue, but it's only 90% there).
I must simply disagree with your comment about SQL Server 2000 being "Microsoft's only GOOD non-gaming product," it almost made me spit my beer all over the monitor. First of all, MSSqlServer wasn't even written by MS. It's Sybase, repackaged. Second of all, have you actually used Enterprise Manager? That's got to be one of the slowest, most cumbersome apps I've ever seen, next to Visual Studio.
Try setting up MySql some time. If the command line straight-sql interface is too intimidating, download phpMyAdmin. It's roughly equivalent to Enterprise Manager in function, but exponentially faster, even though it's a web interface. All of this will run fine on MS Windows, btw, although you'll have to install apache & php to get phpMyAdmin working.
From the site (emphasis mine):
HiSi - Hear It! Save It!
A new song catches your ear on the radio. You love it, but you can't count on getting the song title and artist from the DJ. Rely instead on Neuros and its' HiSi feature. Record a 30 second sample of the mystery song to your Neuros by pressing the orange button. Neuros records directly to MP3 format. Next time you synchronize with your PC, Neuros matches the "digital fingerprint" you've recorded to a proprietary online audio database and provides you with the title and artist of the song. This information is sent directly to your Neuros and is also stored in your Neuros Synchronization Manager PC application.
A proprietary online database? How many such databases are there? Are they free? Will they alawys be free? Is what they're doing even legal or authorized by the RIAA?
This reminds me of a few years ago, when mp3 software started adding in lyric lookups through a variety of online lyrics databases. Shortly after it became a popular feature, the RIAA had all of those sites shut down, leaving that feature useless.
They're using declining sales and stock prices as the primary data to come to these conclusions. Have they not noticed that our economy is (pardom me) in the outhouse?
I'm not getting a steady paycheck right now, and I've cancelled my cell phone and stopped buying any non-essential household item. That means no computers, no stereo equipment, and certainly no PVRs. When this country has a bit more disposable income to throw around, then you can more accurately predict this sort of thing.
How on earth can this compete with .pdf if it's not a cross-platform standard?!! The WHOLE point to .pdf is that it's universally available. This is just another Windows-only format.
.doc, so you can read it over ahead of time.
You're absolutely correct, sir, and I agree with you 100%. In fact, I've recently written a paper on that exact subject, Why non Windows-only formats can never become standards. Just use outlook to schedule an appointment to discuss it with me. I'll send you the word
I think this is just a bit of an over reaction. MS is a little late in this area. PDF is very well established as a standard.
Did you ever do any word processing or desktop publishing in the late 80s/early 90s? There was this beast of a program called WordPerfect, that everyone used for everything they possibly could. They taught it in high schools, even. Any office or goverment agency that used computers to edit documents used it.
One day, Microsoft released a crappy version of notepad with font support, called Word. It absolutely sucked, and was in no way a replacement for WordPerfect. It didn't have anywhere near the functionality, and was a usability nightmare. What's the standard today? Netscape is far from the only competition Microsoft has stamped out.
There are still plenty of people out there that still use WordPerfect 5.0, on a 286 running DOS 5. Even if Microsoft has their way with XDocs, plenty of people will still used PDF. But, suddenly, PDF readers will be a bit harder to come by. New coputer purchases with XP, or whatever they come out with next, won't come with a PDF reader. In response to this, people will start providing XDocs documents instead, so that more people will be able to read them. It will eventually be unthinkable to use anything but XDocs in new projects.
Is that a bad thing? Who knows? PDF is a pretty screwed up standard, led by an evil corporation. I don't see XDocs being any worse. It sounds like It'll even have actual ASCII text inside, so I can grep it, or read it in vi, without having to start an x session.
I dislike the American tradition of television and cheezy poofs as much as you do, but I really don't think it's your place to judge whether or not that's a worthwhile way for someone else to spend their time.
If somebody enjoys Jerry Springer and the WWF, and they're perfectly happy to sit around eating junk food and getting fat, then who are you to stop them? They probably find it just as baffling that somebody would want to go walking through the woods and just look at plants.
It's difficult to see extra free time as a bad thing (unless you think about more abstract effects, like motivation and the value of unhappiness (necessity is the mother of invention, after all)). You use yours how you choose, as will I. Is it really better for a human to spend all of their time working, than to have a machine do it for them, so that human can at least "piss away" their time in a way that brings them pleasure?
It's tough to spend time outside, when you're stuck in a factory all day long.