That brings up a great point. I remember seeing the announcement of Visual Studio 7 incorporating Perl as a module at ActiveState. It looks like Microsoft is merely "allowing" this to be incorporated, and ActiveState is doing the work of building what amounts to a large plug-in.
I wonder if this just entails the things that facilitate using the IDE (e.g. syntax highlighting, debugging, etc.), or proprietary code modules ala MFC (Microsoft Fried Chicken?). I further wonder if the guts of this big Visual Studio plug-in will themselves be open-source, or will they be grabbed by Microsoft. The arrangement is not terrifically clear if you just read the press release.
Ditto on the Mediaone-is-erratic problems. I get the lost connections, mail server outages, and times when it is nearly impossible to connect. And ditto on the city mandating their use too.
I have been able to negotiate the problems by using *nix with Netscape for strictly graphical pages, and lynx for those that support text. This absolutely minimizes the connection problems for the external model cable modem (which is cross-connected into a 10/100 switch; I never know where I will surf from at home).
If you have the Winbloze-only internal cable modem, you are somewhat hosed.
Although still in the works, below is the AMD announcement over the AMD-760 chipset which enables DDR-SDRAM. This stipulates that 266MHz DDR SDRAM can potentially deliver 2.6 times the memory access bandwidth of traditional SDRAM (due I think to lower latency rates in concert with higher bandwidth). Read it here.
I have heard release dates as early as late July, but you know how that goes.
Charging him for libel seems reasonable as long as there are substantive assertions that unduly characterize individuals or organizations on his site. I am just not sure where there is sufficient material or monetary damage to warrant the hostile treatment by law enforcement.
In print media, the "injured party" generally plies legal means to restrain the publication. It seems that nobody sent a standard "cease-and-desist", all sounding to me like someone wiped their butt with the 4th Amendment.
Maybe one of the "injured parties" knew the local sheriff?
I agree with you on the sentiment of the RIAA's mission, and further agree about malicious linking to sites chock full or illegality, but...
Consider linking as a sort of free speech issue. Laws, codes and regulations, being unable to deal with every sparrow that falls, have to take a lease common denominator approach. It is best to err with the assumption that some innocent party (search engine, server screwed by domain name sale, etc) will be affected. Thus, the law must be written to imply the least amount of criminality for the protection of these innocents.
Yes, in this atmosphere, people will get away with linking illicit and illegal materials, but people get away with some pretty incendiary speech under the auspices of free speech which most (all?) of us hold dear.
Compelling discussion. It is important to note that the authors of HTML (W3C?) felt that the "gateway" link was important enough to have a referring header available in HTML (although it is not necessarily always implemented). This at least theoretically allows one level of validity checking if people choose to use it.
Tom's benchmarks (as people have already pointed out) are based on an overclock, and are only valid for the overclocker. The "BX-133" is just a BX chipset overclocked to 133-MHz FSB, and thus not something that Intel or most manufacturers recommend. Typical of Intel technology, the BX is an excellent chipset that was abandoned for market reasons.
If compared on a testbed of Intel's choosing, it would be a 820 or 840 with 800MHz Rambus which lacks the performance of an overclocked BX according to general testing I have seen. Thus, the minor disparity between the Coppermine and Thunderbird in Tom's tests would likely evaporate into a strict cost or brand loyalty decision.
Basically, AMD has caught up to Intel for most practical purposes, and need only the better chipset designs to make them their equal. Some SMP sets, and perhaps better optimized single-chip sets, would be much appreciated. IMO, they have an advantage in the area of memory by not being tied to a proprietary architecture like Rambus. When DDR-SDRAM becomes widely available, AMD will unveil even more "thunder" while Intel pays their penance.
You make a good point, that it is easier (read cheaper) for manufacturers to continue to update old tech than to run with new tech (largely due to costs of fabs, lack of expertise, etc). But crisis brings about change, and when we run out of creative ways to accelerate silicon, something else will have to step into the void. This seeming "crystal ball" article is more relevant than it may appear.
Particularly interesting to me is the potential of Quantum computing. This article reiterates some earlier research I have read (IANA physicist) pushing the notion that quantum computers will be able to perform practically limitless operations simultaneously based on the size of the qubit array.
This exacerbates one existing problem, and creates another one. The existing problem is the current software and data limitation. We cannot generate software to keep up with our hardware as is (operating systems in particular always lag a few years compared to hardware), and we cannot make digital all the data that existed in predigital form. It is certain however that as we started to "catch up", the automation of society would rise exponentially.
The second problem is the economics of such machines. Performance costing would be quite difficult, so software would probably begin to play a much greater role in the economics of the hardware. "Data-friendliness" might actually become a concern over "user-friendliness". Unless of course they were to sell machines by their "qubitness":
"I have a 64-qubit machine, but I want one of those new 128-qubit jobs!"
"Unsolicited spam mail causes my client extreme frustration and hyper-acidity. Here are his medical bills for ulcer treatments."
"Unsolicited spam mail makes my client feel powerless, and this feeds back on his libido. Here are his bills for Viagra."
And finally...
"Unsolicited mail led my client to believe that he could become part of a class-action lawsuit bonanza in which he would own a portion of your company valued like a Powerball lottery payout. Here are the bills for his heart medication."
An October 1998 EU law prohibits the transfer of data to the United States and other non-EU countries that don't meet EU standards for protecting personal information. ... For the time being, the EU is letting U.S. companies continue to export personal data from Europe. But in an effort to avert a potential trade war, the two sides began negotiating the issue two years ago. ... The accord offers privacy protection deemed adequate but not equivalent to current EU law.
Okay, so the EU has certain standards that they have been ignoring until better guidelines came along. Now they are passing guidelines which are admittedly not up to standards, but they are lauding them as the panacea. Moreover, they will be trusting corporations like we do here in the U.S. And of course the article goes on to list companies who are already trying to exploit the situation...
IMHO, privacy in the hands of corporate America is a sad joke. If it were not, people would not have to put NO SPAM obfuscations in their email addresses. Every online transaction I personally do, I elect against all spam (you know the ubiquitous "don't spam me" checkboxes). Despite that, I am spammed mercilessly, probably like other/.ers. This shows the high regard corporate America has for my privacy elections.
I see no way in which this action by the EU is not a sellout. Just my two coppers.
The U.S. may very well lead in initiatives, but we are still not where we want to be environmentally (we still generate an incredible amount of inadequately handled waste, and worse than anyone else by some measures). As others have pointed out, we have failed (thus far) with the single thing our government must do: tie environmental spending economically with corporate self-interests.
My point was not necessarily that the U.S. is the worst offender (although it is in some respects), but that making a buck has a long lead on saving the world in our society (in particular).
an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
Although the U.S. is not purely capitalistic (IMHO there is no possibility of a pure economic or political system), it still is economically driven on capitalism. There are those who seek a more concise definition, but I humbly suggests the above still fits to a large degree.
Pure capitalism as an economic system is just what the authors stipulate, inherently harmful to everything but profit. In our society, rules are made to sandbag the rising river's edge, but they do not interrupt the flow. We are built on capitalism, and our prosperity for the last two hundred years largely rests on this fact.
Enter the last hundred years where real damage has been perpetrated on the environment, particularly the last thirty years. Capitalism has so much inertia that we as a society do not quite know how to stem it. Add to that the science of the environment which is often unsure enough of it's postulates to be able to gain ground on capitalism. We can measure profit on a balance sheet, but it seems scientists cannot convince us about things like ozone depletion and deforestation through studies.
On the whole, we do a pretty lousy job of jibing capitalism with environmentalism, and judging by at least the American popular ideology, it will take severe environmental crises to change that reality. From day one, we have been a nation of minutemen who need to be struck in the face before we realize we are in a fight.
Good question. If the quality is decent at 350MB per hour, that fits your average movie (1:45 == 612.5MB) on a CD. Of course you would have to dump the previews, commercials, etc.
The publication issue seems to boil down to a couple of major questions:
(1) how much exposure do you want to get (remembering that this determines income)?
(2) is your target audience for your novel more demographical likely to be Web denizens?
The first question pretty much explains itself. Like it or not, traditional publishing houses are mature businesses, and they probably know a few things about promotion. They could make you more of a household name if they are feeling evangelical about what you have to say.
The second question deals with who you write for. I know a lot of people who read a lot and never go on the Internet (mostly older people). Are your ideas the sort that would appeal to this audience? You also have to factor in the newness of the online publishing industry, and the additional trouble the non-technical have to go through to read you. This may be worth doing some research on for your target audience.
The safe way to go seems to be to do traditional publishing first (if you get the opportunity), and save the online pub for last resort (or the second book if thinking optimistically). Just my two cents.
I agree in spirit, but if patents and copyrights cease to exist, a significant amount of taxation or private aid must be levied.
These right-preserving devices exist really for two reasons, profit and notoriety. If you assume that notoriety can be gained even where a "copyleft" situation exists (insert your public license above if desired), then they exist only for profit. Sometimes, capitalism works, and the common goals of profit and altruism coexist.
I remember an example. During the Bush administration, a moratorium was placed on certain types of patents in the field of medicine. A company was then working on creating genetically-altered pigs with human blood, a major (and expensive) investment. These pigs, bred en masse, could effectively eliminate the need for the Red Cross and blood banks in general. The company ended work on the project, because without a patent on their procedure, they could not recoup their investment. Aside: I do not know what happened later in this research, you may need to look it up if interested.
Clearly, the gap in profitability would have to be filled by government, private research or charitable money in cases such as this one. Most cases probably do not have such a large potential payoff, which means more case-by-case review. It just goes to show that elimination of rights-protections is impractical, but an overhaul is certainly necessary.
I simply cannot believe that Canada is corporate-friendly enough for Microsoft. There taxes are higher, and they do not allow businesses to exercise near-complete control of their society.
It is also worth noting that this would be a rash move on Microsoft's part as they still have a reasonable chance of winning on appeal (no flames please, I call it as I see it). If a breakup is ordered, it probably will not be on the aggressive timetable of the plaintiffs (4 months IIRC). This would still leave plenty of time to "take off" if such is warranted.
Agreed, companies are lazy, and somewhere in the mix, someone will probably be irresponsible (or greedy) with the info.
I think there is a profit mechanism in there somewhere via the referral network (I work in a heavy referral industry where real money-making potential exists). Despite that, the FTC regs would probably be prohibitive since credit cards are involved in a substantial way. In any case, the fastest way to keep something from happening, good or bad, is to mention the L-word ("litigation").
To further the point, maybe we should all remind ourselves that we vote anonymously to avoid recrimination. There is a good lesson in that for both governments and corporations.
It's a good question, but I think the two are separable in many people's minds.
As an example, I point out the standard office user who believes their email is private. Everyone knows who the individual is by his/her name (there goes anonymity), but presumably his/her email is not read by a third party (thus the concept of privacy). We all know what a farce this is, but we also have all encountered people who believe in this "privacy".
For the more savvy users among us, we encrypt content and take other precautions in proportion to the "risk" involved in the communication. Once again, we are not anonymous, but we are going the extra mile to ensure our privacy.
The other thing I would add is that every time there is a DDOS attack or site hack, the powers-that-be try to nail down a username (assuming the perp has not made it easy on them). Presumably, this is because they can track users by reputation, something that just cannot be done where strict anonymity is involved.
Actually, having a handle is significantly less anonymous in the context of this forum (than ACs are). Moderation is performed, karma is ascribed, and one's reputation is formed. To some people, their public persona is of the utmost importance. To others, it does not mean squat. That difference is reflected in their posting scores, and their ability to affect moderation on others.
No, you really cannot pin down someone's true identity through the handle. This "anonymity" is proportional to the amount of "damage" that can be done through their speech; it is extremely unlikely that words on Slashdot are going to do more harm than good IMHO.
I am not sure I entirely agree with your economic assessment. It relies heavily on a static supply and demand, but the U.S. economy has been growing at a high rate, ceteris paribus, for a while (say 8 or 9 years). As such, the demand has risen dramatically while the pricing has changed somewhat (perhaps 20% over the same period).
This indicates to me greater profit-taking by members of the supply-side, even while more records are sold (remember also that this period has dramatically lowered the costs of production of the physical medium). In fact, this is almost a given with the higher volumes sold (when Britney Spears is becoming a multi-millionaire, it must necessarily be a goldrush).
I am not saying you are dead wrong, but I think the economic picture is optimized for maximum profitability, and maybe we from the outside do not see all revenue outcomes, especially in a mature big-money business.
Slashdot Mirror
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6,727,830&OS=6,727,8 30&RS=6,727,830
IANAL, but this patent seems to describe only various click modes for handheld devices, differentiating methods of launching applications.
In other words, this is not about stealing past revenue, but setting up to steal future revenue.
"Mavis Beacon Teaches Identity Change"
-L
That brings up a great point. I remember seeing the announcement of Visual Studio 7 incorporating Perl as a module at ActiveState. It looks like Microsoft is merely "allowing" this to be incorporated, and ActiveState is doing the work of building what amounts to a large plug-in.
I wonder if this just entails the things that facilitate using the IDE (e.g. syntax highlighting, debugging, etc.), or proprietary code modules ala MFC (Microsoft Fried Chicken?). I further wonder if the guts of this big Visual Studio plug-in will themselves be open-source, or will they be grabbed by Microsoft. The arrangement is not terrifically clear if you just read the press release.
Does anybody know the end game here?
-L
Ditto on the Mediaone-is-erratic problems. I get the lost connections, mail server outages, and times when it is nearly impossible to connect. And ditto on the city mandating their use too.
I have been able to negotiate the problems by using *nix with Netscape for strictly graphical pages, and lynx for those that support text. This absolutely minimizes the connection problems for the external model cable modem (which is cross-connected into a 10/100 switch; I never know where I will surf from at home).
If you have the Winbloze-only internal cable modem, you are somewhat hosed.
-L
Although still in the works, below is the AMD announcement over the AMD-760 chipset which enables DDR-SDRAM. This stipulates that 266MHz DDR SDRAM can potentially deliver 2.6 times the memory access bandwidth of traditional SDRAM (due I think to lower latency rates in concert with higher bandwidth). Read it here.
I have heard release dates as early as late July, but you know how that goes.
-L
Charging him for libel seems reasonable as long as there are substantive assertions that unduly characterize individuals or organizations on his site. I am just not sure where there is sufficient material or monetary damage to warrant the hostile treatment by law enforcement.
In print media, the "injured party" generally plies legal means to restrain the publication. It seems that nobody sent a standard "cease-and-desist", all sounding to me like someone wiped their butt with the 4th Amendment.
Maybe one of the "injured parties" knew the local sheriff?
-L
I agree with you on the sentiment of the RIAA's mission, and further agree about malicious linking to sites chock full or illegality, but...
Consider linking as a sort of free speech issue. Laws, codes and regulations, being unable to deal with every sparrow that falls, have to take a lease common denominator approach. It is best to err with the assumption that some innocent party (search engine, server screwed by domain name sale, etc) will be affected. Thus, the law must be written to imply the least amount of criminality for the protection of these innocents.
Yes, in this atmosphere, people will get away with linking illicit and illegal materials, but people get away with some pretty incendiary speech under the auspices of free speech which most (all?) of us hold dear.
-L
Compelling discussion. It is important to note that the authors of HTML (W3C?) felt that the "gateway" link was important enough to have a referring header available in HTML (although it is not necessarily always implemented). This at least theoretically allows one level of validity checking if people choose to use it.
-L
Tom's benchmarks (as people have already pointed out) are based on an overclock, and are only valid for the overclocker. The "BX-133" is just a BX chipset overclocked to 133-MHz FSB, and thus not something that Intel or most manufacturers recommend. Typical of Intel technology, the BX is an excellent chipset that was abandoned for market reasons.
If compared on a testbed of Intel's choosing, it would be a 820 or 840 with 800MHz Rambus which lacks the performance of an overclocked BX according to general testing I have seen. Thus, the minor disparity between the Coppermine and Thunderbird in Tom's tests would likely evaporate into a strict cost or brand loyalty decision.
Basically, AMD has caught up to Intel for most practical purposes, and need only the better chipset designs to make them their equal. Some SMP sets, and perhaps better optimized single-chip sets, would be much appreciated. IMO, they have an advantage in the area of memory by not being tied to a proprietary architecture like Rambus. When DDR-SDRAM becomes widely available, AMD will unveil even more "thunder" while Intel pays their penance.
-L
You make a good point, that it is easier (read cheaper) for manufacturers to continue to update old tech than to run with new tech (largely due to costs of fabs, lack of expertise, etc). But crisis brings about change, and when we run out of creative ways to accelerate silicon, something else will have to step into the void. This seeming "crystal ball" article is more relevant than it may appear.
-L
Particularly interesting to me is the potential of Quantum computing. This article reiterates some earlier research I have read (IANA physicist) pushing the notion that quantum computers will be able to perform practically limitless operations simultaneously based on the size of the qubit array.
This exacerbates one existing problem, and creates another one. The existing problem is the current software and data limitation. We cannot generate software to keep up with our hardware as is (operating systems in particular always lag a few years compared to hardware), and we cannot make digital all the data that existed in predigital form. It is certain however that as we started to "catch up", the automation of society would rise exponentially.
The second problem is the economics of such machines. Performance costing would be quite difficult, so software would probably begin to play a much greater role in the economics of the hardware. "Data-friendliness" might actually become a concern over "user-friendliness". Unless of course they were to sell machines by their "qubitness":
"I have a 64-qubit machine, but I want one of those new 128-qubit jobs!"
-L
You are right, but here in America...
"Unsolicited spam mail causes my client extreme frustration and hyper-acidity. Here are his medical bills for ulcer treatments."
"Unsolicited spam mail makes my client feel powerless, and this feeds back on his libido. Here are his bills for Viagra."
And finally...
"Unsolicited mail led my client to believe that he could become part of a class-action lawsuit bonanza in which he would own a portion of your company valued like a Powerball lottery payout. Here are the bills for his heart medication."
-L
An October 1998 EU law prohibits the transfer of data to the United States and other non-EU countries that don't meet EU standards for protecting personal information.
/.ers. This shows the high regard corporate America has for my privacy elections.
...
For the time being, the EU is letting U.S. companies continue to export personal data from Europe. But in an effort to avert a potential trade war, the two sides began negotiating the issue two years ago.
...
The accord offers privacy protection deemed adequate but not equivalent to current EU law.
Okay, so the EU has certain standards that they have been ignoring until better guidelines came along. Now they are passing guidelines which are admittedly not up to standards, but they are lauding them as the panacea. Moreover, they will be trusting corporations like we do here in the U.S. And of course the article goes on to list companies who are already trying to exploit the situation...
IMHO, privacy in the hands of corporate America is a sad joke. If it were not, people would not have to put NO SPAM obfuscations in their email addresses. Every online transaction I personally do, I elect against all spam (you know the ubiquitous "don't spam me" checkboxes). Despite that, I am spammed mercilessly, probably like other
I see no way in which this action by the EU is not a sellout. Just my two coppers.
-L
The U.S. may very well lead in initiatives, but we are still not where we want to be environmentally (we still generate an incredible amount of inadequately handled waste, and worse than anyone else by some measures). As others have pointed out, we have failed (thus far) with the single thing our government must do: tie environmental spending economically with corporate self-interests.
My point was not necessarily that the U.S. is the worst offender (although it is in some respects), but that making a buck has a long lead on saving the world in our society (in particular).
-L
Merriam-Webster says capitalism is...
an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
Although the U.S. is not purely capitalistic (IMHO there is no possibility of a pure economic or political system), it still is economically driven on capitalism. There are those who seek a more concise definition, but I humbly suggests the above still fits to a large degree.
-L
Pure capitalism as an economic system is just what the authors stipulate, inherently harmful to everything but profit. In our society, rules are made to sandbag the rising river's edge, but they do not interrupt the flow. We are built on capitalism, and our prosperity for the last two hundred years largely rests on this fact.
Enter the last hundred years where real damage has been perpetrated on the environment, particularly the last thirty years. Capitalism has so much inertia that we as a society do not quite know how to stem it. Add to that the science of the environment which is often unsure enough of it's postulates to be able to gain ground on capitalism. We can measure profit on a balance sheet, but it seems scientists cannot convince us about things like ozone depletion and deforestation through studies.
On the whole, we do a pretty lousy job of jibing capitalism with environmentalism, and judging by at least the American popular ideology, it will take severe environmental crises to change that reality. From day one, we have been a nation of minutemen who need to be struck in the face before we realize we are in a fight.
-L
Good question. If the quality is decent at 350MB per hour, that fits your average movie (1:45 == 612.5MB) on a CD. Of course you would have to dump the previews, commercials, etc.
-L
The publication issue seems to boil down to a couple of major questions:
(1) how much exposure do you want to get (remembering that this determines income)?
(2) is your target audience for your novel more demographical likely to be Web denizens?
The first question pretty much explains itself. Like it or not, traditional publishing houses are mature businesses, and they probably know a few things about promotion. They could make you more of a household name if they are feeling evangelical about what you have to say.
The second question deals with who you write for. I know a lot of people who read a lot and never go on the Internet (mostly older people). Are your ideas the sort that would appeal to this audience? You also have to factor in the newness of the online publishing industry, and the additional trouble the non-technical have to go through to read you. This may be worth doing some research on for your target audience.
The safe way to go seems to be to do traditional publishing first (if you get the opportunity), and save the online pub for last resort (or the second book if thinking optimistically). Just my two cents.
-L
I agree in spirit, but if patents and copyrights cease to exist, a significant amount of taxation or private aid must be levied.
These right-preserving devices exist really for two reasons, profit and notoriety. If you assume that notoriety can be gained even where a "copyleft" situation exists (insert your public license above if desired), then they exist only for profit. Sometimes, capitalism works, and the common goals of profit and altruism coexist.
I remember an example. During the Bush administration, a moratorium was placed on certain types of patents in the field of medicine. A company was then working on creating genetically-altered pigs with human blood, a major (and expensive) investment. These pigs, bred en masse, could effectively eliminate the need for the Red Cross and blood banks in general. The company ended work on the project, because without a patent on their procedure, they could not recoup their investment. Aside: I do not know what happened later in this research, you may need to look it up if interested.
Clearly, the gap in profitability would have to be filled by government, private research or charitable money in cases such as this one. Most cases probably do not have such a large potential payoff, which means more case-by-case review. It just goes to show that elimination of rights-protections is impractical, but an overhaul is certainly necessary.
-L
I simply cannot believe that Canada is corporate-friendly enough for Microsoft. There taxes are higher, and they do not allow businesses to exercise near-complete control of their society.
It is also worth noting that this would be a rash move on Microsoft's part as they still have a reasonable chance of winning on appeal (no flames please, I call it as I see it). If a breakup is ordered, it probably will not be on the aggressive timetable of the plaintiffs (4 months IIRC). This would still leave plenty of time to "take off" if such is warranted.
-L
Agreed, companies are lazy, and somewhere in the mix, someone will probably be irresponsible (or greedy) with the info.
I think there is a profit mechanism in there somewhere via the referral network (I work in a heavy referral industry where real money-making potential exists). Despite that, the FTC regs would probably be prohibitive since credit cards are involved in a substantial way. In any case, the fastest way to keep something from happening, good or bad, is to mention the L-word ("litigation").
-L
To further the point, maybe we should all remind ourselves that we vote anonymously to avoid recrimination. There is a good lesson in that for both governments and corporations.
-L
It's a good question, but I think the two are separable in many people's minds.
As an example, I point out the standard office user who believes their email is private. Everyone knows who the individual is by his/her name (there goes anonymity), but presumably his/her email is not read by a third party (thus the concept of privacy). We all know what a farce this is, but we also have all encountered people who believe in this "privacy".
For the more savvy users among us, we encrypt content and take other precautions in proportion to the "risk" involved in the communication. Once again, we are not anonymous, but we are going the extra mile to ensure our privacy.
The other thing I would add is that every time there is a DDOS attack or site hack, the powers-that-be try to nail down a username (assuming the perp has not made it easy on them). Presumably, this is because they can track users by reputation, something that just cannot be done where strict anonymity is involved.
-L
Actually, having a handle is significantly less anonymous in the context of this forum (than ACs are). Moderation is performed, karma is ascribed, and one's reputation is formed. To some people, their public persona is of the utmost importance. To others, it does not mean squat. That difference is reflected in their posting scores, and their ability to affect moderation on others.
No, you really cannot pin down someone's true identity through the handle. This "anonymity" is proportional to the amount of "damage" that can be done through their speech; it is extremely unlikely that words on Slashdot are going to do more harm than good IMHO.
-L
I am not sure I entirely agree with your economic assessment. It relies heavily on a static supply and demand, but the U.S. economy has been growing at a high rate, ceteris paribus, for a while (say 8 or 9 years). As such, the demand has risen dramatically while the pricing has changed somewhat (perhaps 20% over the same period).
This indicates to me greater profit-taking by members of the supply-side, even while more records are sold (remember also that this period has dramatically lowered the costs of production of the physical medium). In fact, this is almost a given with the higher volumes sold (when Britney Spears is becoming a multi-millionaire, it must necessarily be a goldrush).
I am not saying you are dead wrong, but I think the economic picture is optimized for maximum profitability, and maybe we from the outside do not see all revenue outcomes, especially in a mature big-money business.
-L