2001 - MS completes split into two companies. Newly formed MS Office Corp. continues with MS Office for Mac and Windows, and no Linux version. MS Windows Corp., OTOH, losing the marketshare battle with Linux.
2002 - Apple and MS Office Corp. merge in surprise acquisition. Jobs appointed pCEO (permanent CEO) of the new company, Microsoft Apple. Gates continues role as chairman. "It's not the rebirth of the MS monopoly, just a strategic investment in one of MS Office Corp.'s core technology partners." - Bill Gates
2003 - Original Mac OS happy face logo replaced by Microsoft Bob. Renamed "Microsoft Bill" in October.
2004 - Newly formed MS Apple gaining marketshare due to handy tie ins between MS-OCXI (Microsoft Office Corp XI). Justice Department breakup in 2010.
I think the issue here is that we're moving forward with science and technology without even discussing the consequences to the extent that we need to.
Granted, blindly pushing the progress of science may have been acceptable 500 years ago in Western Europe. The establishment (organized religion) had a vested interest in stopping the progress of scientific research and wasn't even interested in a rational debate.
Technology in this day and age has exceedingly more reach and speed of progression. As this increases, so do the chances of our inability to control it. At the very least, we need to open more discourse about where we're going with all of this as science and technology are rapidly accelerating to destinations that we are completely unaware of.
To me, it's like getting on the freeway, closing your eyes, and punching on the accelerator, putting faith in technology to get you where you'd like to go. Some of us just don't have that much faith.
Others have illustrated in previous posts the fact that people pay for clothing with a free advertisement (i.e. they pay for clothing with logos on it). Now we might believe that these articles of clothing should be provided at a reduced cost, however, please consider this (I'll use Nike in this example):
1. Companies such as Nike have invested millions (maybe billions?) over many years in advertising in print, television, billboards and more.
2. The money used in (1) has actually subsidized real benefits to the population at large: low cost magazine subscriptions, free broadcast television, and additional revenue for towns and municipalities. Of course I'm sure many of you question the idea that these are "real benefits" so we'll get into that later.
3. An individaul who purchases clothing with a Nike logo on it (for the same price as an item without a logo) provides an additional benefit to Nike (in the form of market exposure) above and beyond the profit margin realized in the sale.
4. Most importantly, this individual has likely received a high amount of exposure to the Nike logo (due to forces mentioned in (1)). This person has realized more of the "real benefits" mentioned in (2) than an individual who does not purchase clothing with a Nike logo on it.
The real world does not match this example on an individual basis, but aggregately this is what it's all about.
If you watch a lot of broadcast TV (and Nike ads) and don't purchase any Nike stuff you can always thank the guy that has a Nike logo tattoed on his forehead for subsidizing your free TV shows.
Then again if you question the term "real benefits" mentioned above you can tell him to fsck the hell off.
I believe this sheds some light on what I call a revolution. Definitely not a communist or socialist revolution but one that I call a revolution of pure capitalism.
We do not live in a pure capitalist society today, simple by nature of the fact that true capitalism (this is Econ 101 here BTW) requires perfect information. Information is not free and is certainly not perfect. Many individuals have become exceedingly wealthy solely because of this fact.
I believe these individuals are not terribly happy (in fact they are shitting bricks) because technology is increasingly providing us information that 1) costs less, and 2) is more perfect. In a purely capitalistic society these individuals have a lot to lose, and therefore, they will fight tooth and nail to stop the growth of technology which makes perfect information more accessible to everyone. The content of the speech illustrates this point.
Not to mention listening to the first 30 seconds of the song isn't enough. How do they know they haven't gotten ahold of a legitimate, fair-use parody that begins with a sample of a Metallica song, but the rest is something else entirely?
Now let me get this straight - are you suggesting that it is legal (not a copyright violation) for me to take a clip (say 10 seconds) from a Metallica song and put it into my own music (without their permission) and then sell it for a profit? Or distribute freely? AFAIK this is not the case.
True, however, if they're also a startup company, with limited funds *at that time, I doubt they could have set up a search facility all that quickly*
Two words which make this point entirely moot: Venture Capital
if they only listened for 2 sec. per song that they downloaded, that alone would have taken more than 150 hours
All they have to do is listen to one clip, and look for its pattern in the rest of the downloaded music. Note that are at maximum maybe 4 or 5 different file variations for each unique track that appears on Napster.
Looks like my brain is rotten as well because I forgot something.
One more thing is that they'd still have to download ALL of the files. I'm not sure how they could do it though because AFAIK Macster (the Mac variant of Napster that I use) only returns a maximum of 100 search results per title/artist. I'm not sure if Napster is the same but I doubt they downloaded 350,000 files, and I doubt they could retrieve that many search results.
So my question is, how exactly did they get the 350,000 user names??
Let's say that each of the Napster "copyright violators" had only 1 Metallica song they were distributing - the minimum for being a violator. My best guess is that the average Metallica song is probably around 4 minutes long. In order to determine that the files named "Metallica-AndJusticeForAll.mp3" really were Metallica bootlegs (and not just Backstreet Boys jams mislabeled) they would have had listened to 22333.33 hours of music ((335,000 songs * 4 minutes) / 60 minutes). At constant rate with no breaks and no sleep for 1 person that would be 930.55 days (22333.33 hours / 24 hours) worth of some serious headbanging. That was probably divided up into a team of people, let's say 4. So that would be 5583.33 hours each (22333.33 hours / 4 people) coming to 232.64 days concurrently (930.55 days / 4 people).
I don't think it would require anywhere near that much effort. After all they could just listen to each "unique" song and compare checksums to the rest of the MP3 files. Most of the MP3's out there are basically the exact same files.
Anyway the math looks okay, but they've still rotted your brain!
I shut down all my computers and appliances six months before Y2K. Must have worked 'cause I'm not drinking dog piss out of a rusty hubcap or anything...
Slashdot Mirror
2002 - Apple and MS Office Corp. merge in surprise acquisition. Jobs appointed pCEO (permanent CEO) of the new company, Microsoft Apple. Gates continues role as chairman. "It's not the rebirth of the MS monopoly, just a strategic investment in one of MS Office Corp.'s core technology partners." - Bill Gates
2003 - Original Mac OS happy face logo replaced by Microsoft Bob. Renamed "Microsoft Bill" in October.
2004 - Newly formed MS Apple gaining marketshare due to handy tie ins between MS-OCXI (Microsoft Office Corp XI). Justice Department breakup in 2010.
Usually when you answer your own question, you put your answer after the question.
Granted, blindly pushing the progress of science may have been acceptable 500 years ago in Western Europe. The establishment (organized religion) had a vested interest in stopping the progress of scientific research and wasn't even interested in a rational debate.
Technology in this day and age has exceedingly more reach and speed of progression. As this increases, so do the chances of our inability to control it. At the very least, we need to open more discourse about where we're going with all of this as science and technology are rapidly accelerating to destinations that we are completely unaware of.
To me, it's like getting on the freeway, closing your eyes, and punching on the accelerator, putting faith in technology to get you where you'd like to go. Some of us just don't have that much faith.
Others have illustrated in previous posts the fact that people pay for clothing with a free advertisement (i.e. they pay for clothing with logos on it). Now we might believe that these articles of clothing should be provided at a reduced cost, however, please consider this (I'll use Nike in this example):
1. Companies such as Nike have invested millions (maybe billions?) over many years in advertising in print, television, billboards and more.
2. The money used in (1) has actually subsidized real benefits to the population at large: low cost magazine subscriptions, free broadcast television, and additional revenue for towns and municipalities. Of course I'm sure many of you question the idea that these are "real benefits" so we'll get into that later.
3. An individaul who purchases clothing with a Nike logo on it (for the same price as an item without a logo) provides an additional benefit to Nike (in the form of market exposure) above and beyond the profit margin realized in the sale.
4. Most importantly, this individual has likely received a high amount of exposure to the Nike logo (due to forces mentioned in (1)). This person has realized more of the "real benefits" mentioned in (2) than an individual who does not purchase clothing with a Nike logo on it.
The real world does not match this example on an individual basis, but aggregately this is what it's all about.
If you watch a lot of broadcast TV (and Nike ads) and don't purchase any Nike stuff you can always thank the guy that has a Nike logo tattoed on his forehead for subsidizing your free TV shows.
Then again if you question the term "real benefits" mentioned above you can tell him to fsck the hell off.
We do not live in a pure capitalist society today, simple by nature of the fact that true capitalism (this is Econ 101 here BTW) requires perfect information. Information is not free and is certainly not perfect. Many individuals have become exceedingly wealthy solely because of this fact.
I believe these individuals are not terribly happy (in fact they are shitting bricks) because technology is increasingly providing us information that 1) costs less, and 2) is more perfect. In a purely capitalistic society these individuals have a lot to lose, and therefore, they will fight tooth and nail to stop the growth of technology which makes perfect information more accessible to everyone. The content of the speech illustrates this point.
This is only the beginning, my friends.
Now let me get this straight - are you suggesting that it is legal (not a copyright violation) for me to take a clip (say 10 seconds) from a Metallica song and put it into my own music (without their permission) and then sell it for a profit? Or distribute freely? AFAIK this is not the case.
Two words which make this point entirely moot: Venture Capital
if they only listened for 2 sec. per song that they downloaded, that alone would have taken more than 150 hours
All they have to do is listen to one clip, and look for its pattern in the rest of the downloaded music. Note that are at maximum maybe 4 or 5 different file variations for each unique track that appears on Napster.
One more thing is that they'd still have to download ALL of the files. I'm not sure how they could do it though because AFAIK Macster (the Mac variant of Napster that I use) only returns a maximum of 100 search results per title/artist. I'm not sure if Napster is the same but I doubt they downloaded 350,000 files, and I doubt they could retrieve that many search results.
So my question is, how exactly did they get the 350,000 user names??
I don't think it would require anywhere near that much effort. After all they could just listen to each "unique" song and compare checksums to the rest of the MP3 files. Most of the MP3's out there are basically the exact same files.
Anyway the math looks okay, but they've still rotted your brain!
I shut down all my computers and appliances six months before Y2K. Must have worked 'cause I'm not drinking dog piss out of a rusty hubcap or anything...