a) The record industries weren't forced to change their packaging. It seemed that way, that they were getting pressure from environmental groups. But if you stop and think about it, the amount of plastic and paper in an old cd package was actually inconsiquention, especially when compared to the consumer waste generated by other products, like fast food containers.. What really went on (and I was there working in a record store so I saw this first hand), the record companies not only put up no resistance, but they encouraged the environmentalist groups to lobby for it. Why? It reduced the physical space of each cd by half, making it cheaper to ship (by volume, not counting the weight anyway), and twice as cheap to store in warehouses. I mean, come on, has *anyone* ever heard of an environmentalist group being able to affect an entire industry so cleanly? Especially the record industry, with billions of dollars to fight (if they wanted to). The only objection of course was from the record stores, who now had to worry about theft since the cd's were in smaller packages and easily pocketed. They were forced to buy those expensive CD security frames and/or those security systems that go off when you try to leave the store with product.
b) Last I checked, Microsoft wasn't the only culprit. Redhat, Suse, Slackware all had nice big boxes too. (Granted some of them had manuals, but there's still a fair amount of air in them).
In fact, I don't feel there's anything wrong with downloading unlicensed music; I just don't want such music replacing buying.
First off, the music pubslishers and artists screams heard today must be very similar to those of book publishers and authors decades ago when public libraries first started appearing. "What? Let people read our books for free? Thats stealing!!!" Oh, and speaking of which, next time you're near a library, stop in and ask for the audio/video department. Look at all the music and movies they offer for anyone on the street to listen to for free. It's stealing too, isn't it? Shame on those librarians!
Secondly, everyone (on both sides of the piracy/freedom argument) needs to chill take a step back to look at exactly what the record companies are producing and what people are buying/downloading. Fame. Most people (especially teens) have an incredible need to belong to a group, whether it's a gang, slashdot, a newsgroup, golf group, a D&D club, etc.. Music just happens to be the most flexible, effecient, and (relatively) inexpensive way to *passively* belong to a group. All it takes is the proper clothes and a handful of braincells to index a few bands, albums, and members. Instant group access.
Now, the record companies aren't stupid. They know all this since they spend millions and millions on marketing research, cultural analysis, and trend watching. They know very well that most pop culture consumers want to be a part of a group of people that listen to the same music. Ans *this* is the need they fill as their business obligations to their stockholders.
The popularity life-force of a band is born when they sign their record contract. The record label instantly goes to work promoting them in the demographic they were signed to fill (You don't *really* believe they were signed because the were talented, did you?) A record is produced, promos are sent out to radio stations, record co. sales people start pestering retail store buyers to stock a bunch, mtv gets a video, magazines are paid to run articles, etc... Eventually the band's populatity reaches a critical mass, at which point the fans begin doing the promotion for the label. T-shirts are bought, web sites are put up, etc..
This is what the record company produces, this is what they're charging $16 per CD for, and this is what people are downloading on napster, gnutella, irc, etc.. The record label pumps a lot of time and effort into shoving a band so far down our throat that we feel like outcasts if we don't buy them.. Of course with napster and gnutella, you now have a way to feel like a part of the crowd for free.. hell, these file sharing tools even offer the ultimate way to make you feel like you're part of a herd: as people download songs from your collection, you can just lean back and (even more passively than even the most sedate couch potato) watch the groups you belong to grow bigger and bigger.
I'll leave you with a thought: Would Metallica's songs be downloaded so much if the record companies hadn't been spamming us with Lars and co. for the last 10-15 years? If the band were still playing in sleezy clubs in Cali, would people even download them if they heard them once? Maybe for a very few people who actually like the way they sound. For most people however, they'd only download a song from that unknown band Metallica if a whole buunch of others were also.
I got a win 95 machine at work from someone. One day I was messing around typeing random things in, and I happened to type 'loadlin'. It started up this weird easter egg called linux.
No surprise. Oracle is the same way. Call up a saleperson sometime and tell them you want to write a web app that stores its data in an oracle db. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. What's worse, they then charge per CPU. And god forbid you are discovered to have been cheating on your license -- they'll charge you retroactively.
And no amount of indirection between the web and oracle server can be used to get around this, other than having an army of people reading web requests on one screen, typing a sql query on another, reading the results, and relaying that back to the user's web browser. And even then, they'd probably slap you with a huge license fee.
It all seems silly to me. I can think of dozens of examples of public access to databases.. kiosks, public access libraries terminals, automated phone directories, etc...
It is also the bane of my existence. I have a friend who is obsessed with her phone who will actually talk to her boyfriend long distance on the way to the movie theater, totally ignoring anyone she is with, and almost getting hit by cars/other pedestrians in her little phone trance.
Cell phones are actually a new form of technological natural selection. Let's say people who talk on a cellphone while crossing the street run a higher risk of dieing. Now, as call phones are becoming more and more popular, they are being used by younger portions of the population. People in their 20's, College students, even high school students are using cellphones. Since they run the risk of having an accident before they actually breed, we now have a natural selection scenario. End result: we're (very slowly) breeding ourselves into a society of beings that can talk on the phone while dodging cars! Who wants to make a bet that this ends up being an olympic event by the end of the century!
Look, individuals can vote, corporations can't. It's time we make that very clear to the politicians who have forgotten.
Excuse the cynicism, but yes they can, and a few thousand times more effective. It's called lobbying. How do you think we got the DMCA in the first place? Duh.
And another thing. Being an election year may not be that good either.. It really means that any popular issue (police brutality, medicare, whether or not ketchup is considered a fruit in school lunches, etc..) has the potential of being exploited to further a political platform.
I can already see the negative campaining... "The Clinton/Gore administration passed laws that limit your privacy..." paid for by the Bush campain. "Bush wants to take away artists' copyrights..." paid for by the Gore campain.. (Or maybe I have it backwards; it doesn't matter, it's all arbitrary who's side is for what anyway.)
Is this going to be Slashdot's official policy? That you will never remove copyrighted material if the copyright holder asks you to? Or is this a special rule only for Microsoft?
I'm just curious:
ENTER SANDMAN
Say your prayers little one Don't forget, My son To include everyone
Tuck you in, Warm within Keep you free from sin Till the sandman he comes
Sleep with one eye open Gripping your pillow tight
Exit: Light Enter: Night Take my hand We're off to never never land
Something's wrong, Shut the light Heavy thoughts tonight And they aren't of snow white
Dreams of war, Dreams of liars Dreams of dragon's fire And of things that will bite
Sleep with one eye open Gripping your pillow tight
Exit: Light Enter: Night Take my hand We're off to never never land
Now I lay me down to sleep Pray the lord my soul to keep If I die before I wake Pray the lord my soul to take
Hush little baby, Don't say a word And never mind that noise you heard It's just the beasts under your bed In your closet, In your head
Exit: Light Enter: Night Grain of sand
Exit: Light Enter: Night Take my hand We're off to never never land
I have one of those nifty SGI 1600SW flatpanel monitors, that comes with a special version of the Number 9 Revolution IV that runs the monitor in 1600x1024, which is 16:10. I also have another monitor attached to an ATI Rage Pro in the same system. Win2k handles the weird ratio and dual monitors without any problems. I have yet to try it under linux or solaris (and don't really want to since I'm spoiled by dual heads, and rather use the unix's via command line, X, or vnc).
Even better, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), is an IETF standard (rfc 2543) which (in some respects) replaces some of the functionality of H.323. Here's a nice comparison: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/sip/h323-comparison.html. Also check out the SIP faq and columbia.edu's SIP Main Site. It defines the protocols for locating and setting up any type of multimedia call, be it voice, video, virtual presence, whatever...
It's called competition. If no other pda devices existed besides the Palm, everyone would be screaming evil empire, and the justice department would be on them as soon as they finished with microsoft.
Sony (or some other bug name electronics manufacturer) probably came to him and gave him a nice suitcase of money to release the DVD sooner, in order to hook more first-time DVD player buyers for this xmas season.
The other (slightly more far-fetched) reason could be that he wants to sell as many digital copies as he can before high bandwidth and huge harddrive space allows (even more) people to pirate movies.
First the bad: I saw this on some stupid "future technology" TV show.. It's a garbage pail with a scanner that would scan UPC codes of empty containers as you threw them out, and automatically add the item to an electronic shopping list. Yeah, just because I tossed out that 3 year old box of unused condoms doesn't mean I'm going to want to buy another box. You get the point.
Another is the 'net enabled microwave ove. It would scan the UPC code off a box of food you wanted to cook (making the broad assumption that everything you cook in a microwave comes from UPC enabled containers). Then it would download the cooking instructions from the 'net, and program itself with the proper time and power settings. Did someone actually think this was a good idea!?! Oh, I know.. They were trying to design a product that required an internet-based subscription business model, ensuring that when the company went IPO, the stock would skyrocket. They probably patented the business plan as well.
One great product I could imagine is net based MP3 appliances. I know people have talked about this one before, some people have a bunch of linux boxes around their house doing this, and there are a few companies out there with some (vaporware?) of these... but before this becomes practical, we really need someone (preferably not Microsoft) actually write some simple open music appliance protocol spec (how about calling it Simple Music Appliance Protocol, or SMAP/g/). It's probably no more complex than a directory service that can access multiple reporitories (both in the home and outside). Maybe something like napster.
Slashdot Mirror
a) The record industries weren't forced to change their packaging. It seemed that way, that they were getting pressure from environmental groups. But if you stop and think about it, the amount of plastic and paper in an old cd package was actually inconsiquention, especially when compared to the consumer waste generated by other products, like fast food containers.. What really went on (and I was there working in a record store so I saw this first hand), the record companies not only put up no resistance, but they encouraged the environmentalist groups to lobby for it. Why? It reduced the physical space of each cd by half, making it cheaper to ship (by volume, not counting the weight anyway), and twice as cheap to store in warehouses. I mean, come on, has *anyone* ever heard of an environmentalist group being able to affect an entire industry so cleanly? Especially the record industry, with billions of dollars to fight (if they wanted to). The only objection of course was from the record stores, who now had to worry about theft since the cd's were in smaller packages and easily pocketed. They were forced to buy those expensive CD security frames and/or those security systems that go off when you try to leave the store with product.
b) Last I checked, Microsoft wasn't the only culprit. Redhat, Suse, Slackware all had nice big boxes too. (Granted some of them had manuals, but there's still a fair amount of air in them).
In fact, I don't feel there's anything wrong with downloading unlicensed music; I just don't want such music replacing buying.
First off, the music pubslishers and artists screams heard today must be very similar to those of book publishers and authors decades ago when public libraries first started appearing. "What? Let people read our books for free? Thats stealing!!!" Oh, and speaking of which, next time you're near a library, stop in and ask for the audio/video department. Look at all the music and movies they offer for anyone on the street to listen to for free. It's stealing too, isn't it? Shame on those librarians!
Secondly, everyone (on both sides of the piracy/freedom argument) needs to chill take a step back to look at exactly what the record companies are producing and what people are buying/downloading. Fame. Most people (especially teens) have an incredible need to belong to a group, whether it's a gang, slashdot, a newsgroup, golf group, a D&D club, etc.. Music just happens to be the most flexible, effecient, and (relatively) inexpensive way to *passively* belong to a group. All it takes is the proper clothes and a handful of braincells to index a few bands, albums, and members. Instant group access.
Now, the record companies aren't stupid. They know all this since they spend millions and millions on marketing research, cultural analysis, and trend watching. They know very well that most pop culture consumers want to be a part of a group of people that listen to the same music. Ans *this* is the need they fill as their business obligations to their stockholders.
The popularity life-force of a band is born when they sign their record contract. The record label instantly goes to work promoting them in the demographic they were signed to fill (You don't *really* believe they were signed because the were talented, did you?) A record is produced, promos are sent out to radio stations, record co. sales people start pestering retail store buyers to stock a bunch, mtv gets a video, magazines are paid to run articles, etc... Eventually the band's populatity reaches a critical mass, at which point the fans begin doing the promotion for the label. T-shirts are bought, web sites are put up, etc..
This is what the record company produces, this is what they're charging $16 per CD for, and this is what people are downloading on napster, gnutella, irc, etc.. The record label pumps a lot of time and effort into shoving a band so far down our throat that we feel like outcasts if we don't buy them.. Of course with napster and gnutella, you now have a way to feel like a part of the crowd for free.. hell, these file sharing tools even offer the ultimate way to make you feel like you're part of a herd: as people download songs from your collection, you can just lean back and (even more passively than even the most sedate couch potato) watch the groups you belong to grow bigger and bigger.
I'll leave you with a thought: Would Metallica's songs be downloaded so much if the record companies hadn't been spamming us with Lars and co. for the last 10-15 years? If the band were still playing in sleezy clubs in Cali, would people even download them if they heard them once? Maybe for a very few people who actually like the way they sound. For most people however, they'd only download a song from that unknown band Metallica if a whole buunch of others were also.
I got a win 95 machine at work from someone. One day I was messing around typeing random things in, and I happened to type 'loadlin'. It started up this weird easter egg called linux.
No surprise. Oracle is the same way. Call up a saleperson sometime and tell them you want to write a web app that stores its data in an oracle db. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. What's worse, they then charge per CPU. And god forbid you are discovered to have been cheating on your license -- they'll charge you retroactively.
And no amount of indirection between the web and oracle server can be used to get around this, other than having an army of people reading web requests on one screen, typing a sql query on another, reading the results, and relaying that back to the user's web browser. And even then, they'd probably slap you with a huge license fee.
It all seems silly to me. I can think of dozens of examples of public access to databases.. kiosks, public access libraries terminals, automated phone directories, etc...
It is also the bane of my existence. I have a friend who is obsessed with her phone who will actually talk to her boyfriend long distance on the way to the movie theater, totally ignoring anyone she is with, and almost getting hit by cars/other pedestrians in her little phone trance.
Cell phones are actually a new form of technological natural selection. Let's say people who talk on a cellphone while crossing the street run a higher risk of dieing. Now, as call phones are becoming more and more popular, they are being used by younger portions of the population. People in their 20's, College students, even high school students are using cellphones. Since they run the risk of having an accident before they actually breed, we now have a natural selection scenario. End result: we're (very slowly) breeding ourselves into a society of beings that can talk on the phone while dodging cars! Who wants to make a bet that this ends up being an olympic event by the end of the century!
I'd appreciate your comments.
Sorry, I don't own any. I'd be happy to let you lease some comments as soon as I borrow them from someone else though..
That's because you have to pay for sex...
I therefore propose, as a political position, that the non-commercial distribution of any material older than 23 years be legalized.
Oh great. That's just what I want is to have better access to "Freebird" and "Boogie Wonderland".
It's economically feasible; almost all profits from commercial content are extracted in the first few years, a decade at most
Yeah, tell that to the millionare that owns the rights to all the Beatles music (I don't think it's Michael Jackson anymore, is it?)
Now why the hell won't Metallica answer our questions?!?! Bastards. I think I'm gonna go burn my metallica CD now.
You mean you haven't already? I burnt them a year or two ago as soon as l3enc was done.
Look, individuals can vote, corporations can't. It's time we make that very clear to the politicians who have forgotten.
Excuse the cynicism, but yes they can, and a few thousand times more effective. It's called lobbying. How do you think we got the DMCA in the first place? Duh.
And another thing. Being an election year may not be that good either.. It really means that any popular issue (police brutality, medicare, whether or not ketchup is considered a fruit in school lunches, etc..) has the potential of being exploited to further a political platform.
I can already see the negative campaining... "The Clinton/Gore administration passed laws that limit your privacy..." paid for by the Bush campain. "Bush wants to take away artists' copyrights..." paid for by the Gore campain.. (Or maybe I have it backwards; it doesn't matter, it's all arbitrary who's side is for what anyway.)
Why does this make me think of Dee Snider at the PMRC hearings? Ah well, at least it's not Flavah Flav.
I have to say it: "Get up a get-get-get down. RIAA is a joke in your town..."
Is this going to be Slashdot's official policy? That you will never remove copyrighted material if the copyright holder asks you to? Or is this a special rule only for Microsoft?
I'm just curious:
ENTER SANDMAN
Say your prayers little one
Don't forget, My son
To include everyone
Tuck you in, Warm within
Keep you free from sin
Till the sandman he comes
Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight
Exit: Light
Enter: Night
Take my hand
We're off to never never land
Something's wrong, Shut the light
Heavy thoughts tonight
And they aren't of snow white
Dreams of war, Dreams of liars
Dreams of dragon's fire
And of things that will bite
Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight
Exit: Light
Enter: Night
Take my hand
We're off to never never land
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
Pray the lord my soul to take
Hush little baby, Don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beasts under your bed
In your closet, In your head
Exit: Light
Enter: Night
Grain of sand
Exit: Light
Enter: Night
Take my hand
We're off to never never land
I have one of those nifty SGI 1600SW flatpanel monitors, that comes with a special version of the Number 9 Revolution IV that runs the monitor in 1600x1024, which is 16:10. I also have another monitor attached to an ATI Rage Pro in the same system. Win2k handles the weird ratio and dual monitors without any problems. I have yet to try it under linux or solaris (and don't really want to since I'm spoiled by dual heads, and rather use the unix's via command line, X, or vnc).
Even better, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), is an IETF standard (rfc 2543) which (in some respects) replaces some of the functionality of H.323. Here's a nice comparison: http://www.cs.columbia.edu /~hgs/sip/h323-comparison.html. Also check out the SIP faq and columbia.edu's SIP Main Site. It defines the protocols for locating and setting up any type of multimedia call, be it voice, video, virtual presence, whatever...
Judge: "I'd like to call to the stand grubber_45, NYJuggaloY2K, 4nAngel, BiGWilly1289, funkxxx..."
It's called competition. If no other pda devices existed besides the Palm, everyone would be screaming evil empire, and the justice department would be on them as soon as they finished with microsoft.
Sony (or some other bug name electronics manufacturer) probably came to him and gave him a nice suitcase of money to release the DVD sooner, in order to hook more first-time DVD player buyers for this xmas season.
The other (slightly more far-fetched) reason could be that he wants to sell as many digital copies as he can before high bandwidth and huge harddrive space allows (even more) people to pirate movies.
Are you kidding me? They want people to go sit in a classroom/lab for 12 hours a days, six days a week.
:)
Piece of cake. I code at work for 12 hours a day six days a week, and all it takes is 5mg of Ritalin every 3 hours.
Remember the PMRC?
Wasn't that the committee that declared Tipper to be the inventor of music?
This AC post should've gotten modderated up.... He (or she) actually registered and is redirecting ashdotslay.org to slashdot! Right on!
What really would've been cool is if they registered ashdotslay.org and redirected slashdot to it. I wonder if anyone would've noticed...
First the bad: I saw this on some stupid "future technology" TV show.. It's a garbage pail with a scanner that would scan UPC codes of empty containers as you threw them out, and automatically add the item to an electronic shopping list. Yeah, just because I tossed out that 3 year old box of unused condoms doesn't mean I'm going to want to buy another box. You get the point.
/g/). It's probably no more complex than a directory service that can access multiple reporitories (both in the home and outside). Maybe something like napster.
Another is the 'net enabled microwave ove. It would scan the UPC code off a box of food you wanted to cook (making the broad assumption that everything you cook in a microwave comes from UPC enabled containers). Then it would download the cooking instructions from the 'net, and program itself with the proper time and power settings. Did someone actually think this was a good idea!?! Oh, I know.. They were trying to design a product that required an internet-based subscription business model, ensuring that when the company went IPO, the stock would skyrocket. They probably patented the business plan as well.
One great product I could imagine is net based MP3 appliances. I know people have talked about this one before, some people have a bunch of linux boxes around their house doing this, and there are a few companies out there with some (vaporware?) of these... but before this becomes practical, we really need someone (preferably not Microsoft) actually write some simple open music appliance protocol spec (how about calling it Simple Music Appliance Protocol, or SMAP