99.999% of the past is not just irrelevant, but harmful, in my opinion.
Do we ever learn that politicians are liars?
Do we ever learn that war is worthwhile?
Do we ever learn to marry the right person at the right time?
Do we ever learn to stop making video games about blockbuster movies?
To me, change is good. As a society, my fellow citizens are more and more unable to adapt. Look at steel tariffs and help desk outsourcing.
Our best 0.001% of anything never need changes. The rest is dust in the wind. Take an imperfect story, product or relationship and keep redoing it unitil it is perfect for the parties involved. Future generations should do the same.
That's why I hate copyright, patents and government licensing.
10.4.5 404 Not Found The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.
A week or so ago, I mentioned decommissioning analog & digital TV broadcast spectrum to use for ore wireless data. I mentioned how fiber was just on serendipidous discovery away from massive data rates. I was shunned as "everyone knows" there are limits to light.
While this may not be THE discovery I was alluding to, it proves that the door surely isn't closed.
While science can find use in this discovery, I'm more interested in profitable consumer uses. What are the possibilities there?
HD is such a new technology, we don't even have a cheap full-res HD device yet! What's the cheapest 1080p (or even i) device that can display 1920x1080 in a decent size?
We're taking baby steps. When I got Step Into Liquid (go buy it), it came with a proprietary MS HD DVD. I got it to work with zero problems. T2 was the same.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD was still baby steps. The industry is likely hoping it fails, but they're acting like they care about their customers. The truth is, the technology, as a whole, is not there yet.
HD will explode when: 1. Compression's Holy Grail is found (10x better than today). I truly believe we're making strides there. I remember hearing Sony's MD ATRAC and knew things were going to change, way before MP3/OGG/etc.
I invested (zero copying ability) in MD, I knew it was a baby step. Today I stream MP3's (Shoutcast) to my cell over my 4K GPRS connection, almost anywhere. I use 0MB of PDAphone storage.
HD to the home scares everyone but consumers. The movie theater industry is freaking out. But it doesn't matter. Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, MS-WMV, etc will not be enough to make consumers happy. They/we will find their happy medium, initially through breaking the law.
In the last week I spent over 60 hours researching copyright history. I now believe it is wrong, and I am going to fight the law by ignoring it. I am a content creator and copyright has never helped me and has hindered those who quote me or want to adapt my work. I am an AnCap, and I now know that copyright can not and will not stand the test of time.
So why are we worried? We happily accept laws and restrictions that we agree with. We'll find our perfect HD medium through the individual choices of billions.
GSM Phone, 4K GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth. RSS grabber, 2 browsers, FTP, VNC client, Excel, Word, AIM, Shoutcast (32kbps & under), MP3&Video (6 hours of TV on my SD card), etc.
Battery life sucks but I have a micro charger. Interface is complex but I do 100% of my/. posts while pumping MP3's and keeping my work orders active.
My broad has an iPod mini. Simple. My luddite dad has one. My little sis has one.
PDAs do too much, for too short a charge life, and it takes too long to get it right!
Most MP3 players fail as the interface is too geeky.
I was at Best Buy this morning, and noticed 40 $10 "prebook" copies of Q4 along the top row of an entire aisle. I asked the kid in blue when it was coming out and he pointed to rows 2-4 of the same aisle.
I haven't had a landline service for 3 years but I recall my bill:
$122: total -7: Caller ID -4: Touch tone -9: Voice Mail -4: 3 Way Calling -8: Unlimited *69 -11: Help The Needy Tax -9: City Tax -8: State Tax -3: Telegraph Tax -4: Freedom Tax -3: Voluntary Anti-terrorism Tax -2: White Pages Listing -50: DSL ==== $0 - Free phone service (unlimited calls)!
That's why I've generally argued that frequency regulation may have had merit in the past.
Satellite radio, WiFi + Shoutcast, and broadband P2P provide a better product more suited to individual listeners. I run a 24kbps MP3 stream only for use on my GPRS PDA. In the car, I have my music streamed from home. A $15 wireless link to my car stereo is enough for me.
DNS could easily be deregulated by an ISP + backbone coalition. It is in everyone's best interest for standard DNS records to be available. Everyone who has tried to break off (Alt DNS) has failed irregardless of government mandates.
1. Find me one company that used its money to maintain a virtual monopoly without government's help. GM in the 70s lost to Japanese automakers. IBM in the 80s lost to Compaq and clones. Even Standard Oil's 'monopoly' was on an oil already being destroyed by gasoline. By the time government found them guilty of monopolizing their short reign was over. Today, there is competition created every day against the biggest companies.
2. Not a valid argument, IMO. My parents were poor and uneducated by busted their butts to change that for the kids. My future kids will have it better if I keep growing and learning, worse if I just live without striving.
Money doesn't give you the only means to compete. In fact, those born into money often are dissatisfied with lives already planned for them. I know numerous wealthy people who have every material good but no happiness.
I'm not advocating piracy, I'm pretending to be the new free market.
I have always released my publications freely. I can pre-lease my novel online first as I lose the ability to sell first release rights. I'll make $10-$40k the first year (more if I simultaneously release it freely online).
I currently co-own the rights to 2 Indie Rock songs I helped write. The band refused a major label contract, twice. The songs are freely available on myspace, purevolume and maybe BT. I get paid 5% of every album sold (I pay 5% of all marketing and publishing costs) and 2% of every concert income. Maybe $1900 in 18 months.
If they signed with a major label I bet I'd get zilch.
I'm embracing the web as a marketing form. I always state of my sites and blogs (and books and CDs) to go and buy the legit product if you want to see more. Many 'pirates' do.
I'll continue to embrace the free formats, even if I lose both book offers for now. That's $10K-$40K I'm throwing away supporting my effort.
We have to admit that we're in the Dark Ages of information sharing.
In the U.S., a ton of bandwidth is wasted (regulated) to antiquated technology. OTA analog and/i> digital television frequencies are two decades outdated. Lower "open" frequencies (old cordless phones, etc) are underutilized.
Information is like a river at a dam ready to break. Once we free up the limitations on frequencies, we'll see so many wireless forms of communication that publicly paid WiFi will be too expensive to compete.
In my town and the 3 neighboring towns we have 2 free WiFi providers (who also sell higher speed connections): Jimmy Wireless and Db3. They want to provide MORE free towers in more cities. Guess who prevents that? Government.
If tiny companies such as these were allowed more frequencies and fewer regulations, we'd see 5MB/1MB connections for $9/month. Maybe as low as $50/year for 2MB/512KB.
In ten years, every form of media we've seen from 1920 to 2004 will be dead. Government gave those media forms privilege, the Internet choices of millions will go around the privileged few.
You want it free? End the taxing authorities' strangehold. You want it fast? Get rid of OTA TV and radio. You want it now? Vote out any local politician who mentions any form of media.
Here's why every law and regulation and tax should have a 5 year sunset.
The free market democracy has many more forms of checks and balances than any government democracy:
1. Time preference. Everyone has a time preference -- what their time is wor h and how they use it. My $1M is not more powerful versus your $50K in many situations. I could buy all the bananas, but is it worth my time? They'll also go to waste.
2. Unlimited forms of investment. If 30% of the population have 70% of the money, and 70% of the population have 30% of the money, it seems unfair. Yet in selling most items under $1000, the market is the 70% with 30% of the money. 200M people spending $100 is way more valuable than 20M people spending $300.
3. Competition. There are so many places to spend your money, no one corporation can do much damage. Only government mandated monopolies on 'public need' items are damaging. If Apple controlled every last commercial band and ovie, you'd still have 10 times the number of choices in other bands, and 100,000 times the number of choices in other forms of infotainment.
Bullshit. No matter how you look it, it ultimately comes down to either greed, selfishness or both on the part of the copyright infringer.
Wrong. Every freely made purchase or transaction is performed by two "greedy" parties. Both sides gain something valuable. If they don't both win, the transaction neve happens.
Demanding that someone release their copyrighted works in a form acceptable to you is selfish. Demanding that they do so for a price you deem "fair" is selfish and greedy, as is obtaining it illegally when you can't get it the way that you want it.
Wrong again. You only have control over what you have in value to barter with. Consumers set their price for a certain level of quality and performance. Producers set their quality and performance for a certain price. When these two sides surpass the minimum desires of the other, a transaction is made.
If an item is too expensive for the given quality and performance, no trade. If an item's quality and performance is more valuable to the producer than the consumer offers, no tradd.
Piracy actually offers a similar price for the product 'stolen.' If you add up the cost of the PC, routing hardware, bandwidth and users' time spent, you'll see monetary cost involved. But its split among billions of users and little trickles to the original producer.
Yet it is the producer's fault if their product doesn't profit. They took a risk that found no immediate market.
People want books for reading. Certain books (romance) sell millions of copies for $2.99. Certain technical books sell a thousand copies at $200. In both cases, every party gained in their transaction.
Don't like it? Fine - don't buy it.
Exactly. Download it for free. We're transitioning to a new world of information. Just as horse shoers and gas lamp lighters had to change, so will content publishers. Good authors will always get their value, or they'll change careers. In my opinion, authors will gain more profit as publishing may transition to easier means that avoid the publishing industry's strangehold on book stores.
People who don't have time to investigate authors and stories will always buy from Border's or Amazon. The price they ask is worth the filtering of really bad authors. The next generation may use P2P, or Amazon, or user groups, who knows.
They'll still want paper form, for the time being. Many will want to support the author for future works, and the editor for keeping it clear the retailer for filtering the worst books.
Every contract I've seen for book publishing offered significantly higher commissions for paperback than hardcover. 50% higher. Plus paperbacks have a higher release volume, more outlets and are more available as a replacement for lost books.
The best commissions come in reprint licensing for groups or retail direct editions (50% commissions).
Hard cover advances can be high, but if you don't earn your advance in sales, it comes out of your paperback commissions.
As a published author without a novel, I'm in a "unique" situation. I've been shopping out my completed novel for 2 months now with 2 publishers interested. I'll likely lose both opportunities as both offered decent advances for "first publish rights" but I want to release the novel freely on P2P and ebook sites.
I'm offering to negotiate zero advance for a higher percentage (2.5% more) and control over online first publishing. My published friends and editors I know said its suicide. Yet I know the novel has worth, and i know free licensing of its digital form would triple sales.
Every lawsuit against people not judged to be criminals by their friends and family is just another mark against the recording and film industries. You know what they say about business: anger one customer and they tell 10 friends.
These lawsuits go beyond anger, they financially hurt customers. For every $10,000 they receive in settlements, they could be losing multiples of in lost future business.
My luddite parents discovered P2P because of some news article about these suits in the U.S. They were blind to Napster since its inception.
I wasn't surprised to see Limewire on my dad's PC a few months ago. This is a guy who never touched a mouse until 2003.
You can stop a river with a boulder when it is still a 6" trickle. Yet the boulder does not one bit when the river is a torrent.
In the long run, ISPs who share privilege information will go out of business. I hereby amend my previous position: "Information that hurts no innocents wants to be freely accessible."
Slashdot Mirror
99.999% of the past is not just irrelevant, but harmful, in my opinion.
Do we ever learn that politicians are liars?
Do we ever learn that war is worthwhile?
Do we ever learn to marry the right person at the right time?
Do we ever learn to stop making video games about blockbuster movies?
To me, change is good. As a society, my fellow citizens are more and more unable to adapt. Look at steel tariffs and help desk outsourcing.
Our best 0.001% of anything never need changes. The rest is dust in the wind. Take an imperfect story, product or relationship and keep redoing it unitil it is perfect for the parties involved. Future generations should do the same.
That's why I hate copyright, patents and government licensing.
Dead link?
10.4.5 404 Not Found
The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.
A week or so ago, I mentioned decommissioning analog & digital TV broadcast spectrum to use for ore wireless data. I mentioned how fiber was just on serendipidous discovery away from massive data rates. I was shunned as "everyone knows" there are limits to light.
While this may not be THE discovery I was alluding to, it proves that the door surely isn't closed.
While science can find use in this discovery, I'm more interested in profitable consumer uses. What are the possibilities there?
First they make you spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in regulatory rescosts to pass their tests.
Then they allow tort laws to get out of control, letting you get sued for billions.
They make you wait a decade for approval (or not).
They offer you a monopoly on your invention.
Then they take it back so their friends and family in pharmaceuticals can make it with zero of your costs involved.
If I close my bedroom door, my quantum bulb will neither be working nor burnt out.
...so short-sighted?
HD is such a new technology, we don't even have a cheap full-res HD device yet! What's the cheapest 1080p (or even i) device that can display 1920x1080 in a decent size?
We're taking baby steps. When I got Step Into Liquid (go buy it), it came with a proprietary MS HD DVD. I got it to work with zero problems. T2 was the same.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD was still baby steps. The industry is likely hoping it fails, but they're acting like they care about their customers. The truth is, the technology, as a whole, is not there yet.
HD will explode when:
1. Compression's Holy Grail is found (10x better than today). I truly believe we're making strides there. I remember hearing Sony's MD ATRAC and knew things were going to change, way before MP3/OGG/etc.
I invested (zero copying ability) in MD, I knew it was a baby step. Today I stream MP3's (Shoutcast) to my cell over my 4K GPRS connection, almost anywhere. I use 0MB of PDAphone storage.
HD to the home scares everyone but consumers. The movie theater industry is freaking out. But it doesn't matter. Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, MS-WMV, etc will not be enough to make consumers happy. They/we will find their happy medium, initially through breaking the law.
In the last week I spent over 60 hours researching copyright history. I now believe it is wrong, and I am going to fight the law by ignoring it. I am a content creator and copyright has never helped me and has hindered those who quote me or want to adapt my work. I am an AnCap, and I now know that copyright can not and will not stand the test of time.
So why are we worried? We happily accept laws and restrictions that we agree with. We'll find our perfect HD medium through the individual choices of billions.
I love my T-mobile HP Pocket PC Phone, the h6315.
/. posts while pumping MP3's and keeping my work orders active.
GSM Phone, 4K GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth. RSS grabber, 2 browsers, FTP, VNC client, Excel, Word, AIM, Shoutcast (32kbps & under), MP3&Video (6 hours of TV on my SD card), etc.
Battery life sucks but I have a micro charger. Interface is complex but I do 100% of my
My broad has an iPod mini. Simple. My luddite dad has one. My little sis has one.
PDAs do too much, for too short a charge life, and it takes too long to get it right!
Most MP3 players fail as the interface is too geeky.
Hmm. What if you could only get the paperback on first release if you bought the hardcover (that comes with the paperback)?
I was at Best Buy this morning, and noticed 40 $10 "prebook" copies of Q4 along the top row of an entire aisle. I asked the kid in blue when it was coming out and he pointed to rows 2-4 of the same aisle.
Doh.
I haven't had a landline service for 3 years but I recall my bill:
$122: total
-7: Caller ID
-4: Touch tone
-9: Voice Mail
-4: 3 Way Calling
-8: Unlimited *69
-11: Help The Needy Tax
-9: City Tax
-8: State Tax
-3: Telegraph Tax
-4: Freedom Tax
-3: Voluntary Anti-terrorism Tax
-2: White Pages Listing
-50: DSL
====
$0 - Free phone service (unlimited calls)!
That's why I've generally argued that frequency regulation may have had merit in the past.
Satellite radio, WiFi + Shoutcast, and broadband P2P provide a better product more suited to individual listeners. I run a 24kbps MP3 stream only for use on my GPRS PDA. In the car, I have my music streamed from home. A $15 wireless link to my car stereo is enough for me.
DNS could easily be deregulated by an ISP + backbone coalition. It is in everyone's best interest for standard DNS records to be available. Everyone who has tried to break off (Alt DNS) has failed irregardless of government mandates.
The shitting comes after a few smokes and a pot of Starbucks. Smokers and coffeedrinkers likely understand.
I meant to say the primes were bad habits, oops.
You do realize CmdrTaco did this years ago to no availl?
A day is lacking without the 7 S's:
1. Shower
2. Seminate (Sex or self)
3. Smoke
4. Shave
5. Starbucks
6. Shit
7. Slashdot
Note that the primes are all habits. Now permanently locked in my brain.
1. Find me one company that used its money to maintain a virtual monopoly without government's help. GM in the 70s lost to Japanese automakers. IBM in the 80s lost to Compaq and clones. Even Standard Oil's 'monopoly' was on an oil already being destroyed by gasoline. By the time government found them guilty of monopolizing their short reign was over. Today, there is competition created every day against the biggest companies.
2. Not a valid argument, IMO. My parents were poor and uneducated by busted their butts to change that for the kids. My future kids will have it better if I keep growing and learning, worse if I just live without striving.
Money doesn't give you the only means to compete. In fact, those born into money often are dissatisfied with lives already planned for them. I know numerous wealthy people who have every material good but no happiness.
I'm not advocating piracy, I'm pretending to be the new free market.
I have always released my publications freely. I can pre-lease my novel online first as I lose the ability to sell first release rights. I'll make $10-$40k the first year (more if I simultaneously release it freely online).
I currently co-own the rights to 2 Indie Rock songs I helped write. The band refused a major label contract, twice. The songs are freely available on myspace, purevolume and maybe BT. I get paid 5% of every album sold (I pay 5% of all marketing and publishing costs) and 2% of every concert income. Maybe $1900 in 18 months.
If they signed with a major label I bet I'd get zilch.
I'm embracing the web as a marketing form. I always state of my sites and blogs (and books and CDs) to go and buy the legit product if you want to see more. Many 'pirates' do.
I'll continue to embrace the free formats, even if I lose both book offers for now. That's $10K-$40K I'm throwing away supporting my effort.
Actually I know its out there already...
But I'm willing to give up 85% of book sales in exchange for marketing, printing and distribution. 20,000 copies = $60,000 just to print.
...and I am its enemy.
We have to admit that we're in the Dark Ages of information sharing.
In the U.S., a ton of bandwidth is wasted (regulated) to antiquated technology. OTA analog and/i> digital television frequencies are two decades outdated. Lower "open" frequencies (old cordless phones, etc) are underutilized.
Information is like a river at a dam ready to break. Once we free up the limitations on frequencies, we'll see so many wireless forms of communication that publicly paid WiFi will be too expensive to compete.
In my town and the 3 neighboring towns we have 2 free WiFi providers (who also sell higher speed connections): Jimmy Wireless and Db3. They want to provide MORE free towers in more cities. Guess who prevents that? Government.
If tiny companies such as these were allowed more frequencies and fewer regulations, we'd see 5MB/1MB connections for $9/month. Maybe as low as $50/year for 2MB/512KB.
In ten years, every form of media we've seen from 1920 to 2004 will be dead. Government gave those media forms privilege, the Internet choices of millions will go around the privileged few.
You want it free? End the taxing authorities' strangehold. You want it fast? Get rid of OTA TV and radio. You want it now? Vote out any local politician who mentions any form of media.
Here's why every law and regulation and tax should have a 5 year sunset.
I disagree.
The free market democracy has many more forms of checks and balances than any government democracy:
1. Time preference. Everyone has a time preference -- what their time is wor h and how they use it. My $1M is not more powerful versus your $50K in many situations. I could buy all the bananas, but is it worth my time? They'll also go to waste.
2. Unlimited forms of investment. If 30% of the population have 70% of the money, and 70% of the population have 30% of the money, it seems unfair. Yet in selling most items under $1000, the market is the 70% with 30% of the money. 200M people spending $100 is way more valuable than 20M people spending $300.
3. Competition. There are so many places to spend your money, no one corporation can do much damage. Only government mandated monopolies on 'public need' items are damaging. If Apple controlled every last commercial band and ovie, you'd still have 10 times the number of choices in other bands, and 100,000 times the number of choices in other forms of infotainment.
Bullshit. No matter how you look it, it ultimately comes down to either greed, selfishness or both on the part of the copyright infringer.
Wrong. Every freely made purchase or transaction is performed by two "greedy" parties. Both sides gain something valuable. If they don't both win, the transaction neve happens.
Demanding that someone release their copyrighted works in a form acceptable to you is selfish. Demanding that they do so for a price you deem "fair" is selfish and greedy, as is obtaining it illegally when you can't get it the way that you want it.
Wrong again. You only have control over what you have in value to barter with. Consumers set their price for a certain level of quality and performance. Producers set their quality and performance for a certain price. When these two sides surpass the minimum desires of the other, a transaction is made.
If an item is too expensive for the given quality and performance, no trade. If an item's quality and performance is more valuable to the producer than the consumer offers, no tradd.
Piracy actually offers a similar price for the product 'stolen.' If you add up the cost of the PC, routing hardware, bandwidth and users' time spent, you'll see monetary cost involved. But its split among billions of users and little trickles to the original producer.
Yet it is the producer's fault if their product doesn't profit. They took a risk that found no immediate market.
People want books for reading. Certain books (romance) sell millions of copies for $2.99. Certain technical books sell a thousand copies at $200. In both cases, every party gained in their transaction.
Don't like it? Fine - don't buy it.
Exactly. Download it for free. We're transitioning to a new world of information. Just as horse shoers and gas lamp lighters had to change, so will content publishers. Good authors will always get their value, or they'll change careers. In my opinion, authors will gain more profit as publishing may transition to easier means that avoid the publishing industry's strangehold on book stores.
People who don't have time to investigate authors and stories will always buy from Border's or Amazon. The price they ask is worth the filtering of really bad authors. The next generation may use P2P, or Amazon, or user groups, who knows.
They'll still want paper form, for the time being. Many will want to support the author for future works, and the editor for keeping it clear the retailer for filtering the worst books.
Every contract I've seen for book publishing offered significantly higher commissions for paperback than hardcover. 50% higher. Plus paperbacks have a higher release volume, more outlets and are more available as a replacement for lost books.
The best commissions come in reprint licensing for groups or retail direct editions (50% commissions).
Hard cover advances can be high, but if you don't earn your advance in sales, it comes out of your paperback commissions.
As a published author without a novel, I'm in a "unique" situation. I've been shopping out my completed novel for 2 months now with 2 publishers interested. I'll likely lose both opportunities as both offered decent advances for "first publish rights" but I want to release the novel freely on P2P and ebook sites.
I'm offering to negotiate zero advance for a higher percentage (2.5% more) and control over online first publishing. My published friends and editors I know said its suicide. Yet I know the novel has worth, and i know free licensing of its digital form would triple sales.
Every lawsuit against people not judged to be criminals by their friends and family is just another mark against the recording and film industries. You know what they say about business: anger one customer and they tell 10 friends.
These lawsuits go beyond anger, they financially hurt customers. For every $10,000 they receive in settlements, they could be losing multiples of in lost future business.
My luddite parents discovered P2P because of some news article about these suits in the U.S. They were blind to Napster since its inception.
I wasn't surprised to see Limewire on my dad's PC a few months ago. This is a guy who never touched a mouse until 2003.
You can stop a river with a boulder when it is still a 6" trickle. Yet the boulder does not one bit when the river is a torrent.
In the long run, ISPs who share privilege information will go out of business. I hereby amend my previous position: "Information that hurts no innocents wants to be freely accessible."
I get paid $450 for a 6000 word story publicly in small media formats. 6000 words taken 2-3 hours to finalize.
I could get about 4 cents per word for some online zines, or $240 for 3 hours.
I know many authors who make well over $50,000 per year working 25 hours a week and never selling a novel.
Novel:Story::CD:Concert
You make good money on stories and series, not novels.