I'm sorry, but does this really belong on the Slashdot main page? I'm all for a technology-enhanced political debate, as I share a lot of the same sort of technical-style values that I think other/.ers have, but this is completely off the mark. It's just politics as usual, which we can get from anywhere, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fo... Okay, not Fox.
I've got 10 different news sites bookmarked for this stuff. I want Slashdot to make the politics connect to the stuff that I actually read Slashdot for.
According to the website, http://caag.state.ca.us/ag/index.htm
Under the state Constitution, the Attorney General is elected to a four-year term in the same statewide election as the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Controller, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Insurance Commissioner. In 1990, voters imposed a two-term limit on these statewide offices.
Meaning you can't draw a conclusion about the Governator's integrity, since he very likely wasn't involved in this decision at all.
So now, as retailers drive up the price, it's now going to be cheaper to by your non-DRM CD from Target or Wal*Mart or wherever than to get a DRM restricted album from iTunes et al? I'm sorry, I don't get it.
Cheaper promotion + Cheaper distribution + Cheaper Capital costs is supposed to equal Lower Prices (tm).
In order for online distribution to succeed, there has to be some sort of critical mass of consumers -- without them, the business won't be profitable, and it's locked in a death spiral of having to raise prices and losing more customers.
At some point, the music industry just might have to accept that its no longer profitable to run business in this way. Music has been around a lot longer than the recording industry, and will be around a lot longer than when the industry disappears. The sooner they get that lesson through their heads, the sooner we can stop having the exact same discussions on/. all the time.
Math is constantly limited by the continuous need to be rigorous. It's not a bad thing, but imagine the potential. A mathematician (or even, a semi-informed layman) would be able to input a logical statement and have the computer determine the validity, special cases, problems, and so forth.
The hard part would become formulating the statements. For science, this result would be immeasurable. Ask the computer if it can be done, and get an answer. Knowledge could increase exponentially! (No, really -- once upon a time, only advanced mathematicians knew calculus, but now we learn it in high school. Just wait until warp theory is an entry level college engineering course)
What sort of precident does this set regarding USEnet?
It is possible that this judgment could some way be construed to hold all ISPs who give subscribers access to USEnet liable for copyright infringement?
Western Maryland Republican Del. LeRoy E. Myers Jr. said he thinks many of the threats Wertheimer outlined are too complicated to carry out.
"If this were Halloween, you'd be scaring us all to death," Myers said. "I think we're kind of overreacting. Isn't this a much more sophisticated... system? The answer is yes."
I'm sorry, but did Mr. Myers just issue a challenge? Didn't he just say "Bring 'em on!" to a bunch of hackers?
And Maryland elects Gary Coleman in 3... 2... 1...
This particular incarnation probably won't last altogether too long, but I'd wager the idea gets implemented again and again...
My guess is that at some point (in the semi-distant future), when the music industy has finally come to grips with technology, one of the prime resources they'll use to distribute content will be peer-to-peer.
And given a fixed bandwidth cost (which would be considerable, considering the RIAA encompasses all the major labels, including a whole bunch of independants), how better to take profit than get users to contribute their own bandwidth to share the actual music?
This is just an attempt to try to lure people who understand the technology back into the fold. The problem is that right now, the music industry is playing catch up, so the idea, although new, is already outdated.
Police departments, fire departments, and public schools are not necessarily public goods. A public good is a non-rivalrous, non-excludable good. Police, fire and school are all excludable and rivalrous, and the market could, in fact, provide them.
A more reasonable example of a public good is a lighthouse -- no matter if you charge for it or not, anyone can see the light from the house. You can't stop someone from using the light.
Software can be excludable (effective encryption). Rivalrous is another story, as the amount of users is only limited by the number of PCs and amount of bandwidth or media to transfer the software with. To declare software (open source or IP) as a public good, you would at the very least need to determine that it could not be encrypted. (In fact, solve P = NP.)
As long as software is encryptable, ergo excludable, the market should be able to provide it at a profit for firms. Where the free market can legitimately provide a good, regardless of "public interest," it should do so. So sayeth the Economists.
I can see it now, Snapster starts up, buys a few CDs, and all of a sudden every new CD that is bought comes with a draconian Microsoft-style license which explictly states that you may not play the CD on more than one audio system at a time, without the express written consent of the RIAA, which comes only comes with an unrealistic royalty fee. If you don't like it, you can return the CD to the record store. Or, not.
Unfortunately, it's going to be a long struggle before the Record Industry is forced to submit to the fact that recorded music is becoming an economic public good -- because of pratically infinite distribution (at the cost of bandwidth and storage), the good has become non-rivalrous. This does not mean music will disappear, but it does mean that it will not be profitable for a music company to distribute CDs.
Once the RIAA is forced to accept that, and takes the huge accompanying profit cut, their real business will be the promotion and distribution of the music itself -- it will lower its overhead by allowing P2P-style downloads (let the consumers give up their bandwidth), and will profit by sponsoring artists tours.
The downside is that record stores will, for the most part, go out of business. Were that there was another way to save our slave-wage friends who are knowledgable, but in every war, there are casualties.
But sorry, Cringely -- Snapster won't work for long. The fight for free music will be much longer than we hope.
RIAA threatens to sue dozens, hundreds, or thousands of file-shares. File-sharing increases, and we brag about it? "Woohoo! Look at us! You can't get me RIAA! Your threats and lawyers and lawsuits don't bother me at all!"
Look, I'm all for giving the RIAA whatfor, just on principle, but STOP TELLING THEM YOU'RE INFRINGING THEIR COPYRIGHTS (not stealing, as we all know... right?) AND QUIT FLAUNTING THAT YOU'RE NOT AFRAID.
Because they are going to drop the hammer. And they are going to sue some poor college kids and high school kids and ruin their savings and credit and quite possibily their future. This isn't funny. People should be switching to anonymous technologies ASAP. It's like a burgular going back to the same house after having a long conversation with the owner in a coffee shop about how he previously stole from the owner, and he didn't care that the owner now has some nasty looking guard dogs, a moat, and a team of lawyers ready to defend him when he shoots the burgular in "self-defense."
So shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's for your own good.
Of course, Cornell won't decrease the fees that students pay for their LAN access. They go from unlimited usage for X dollars per month or semester to 2 GB for the same X dollars.
Why can't you buy a bigger pipe? Cornell could make some good money off the 'bandwidth hogs,' who would never feel it because it's paid for by either a) Mommy and Daddy or b) Financial aid anyway.
The Motion Picture Association of America, representing major Hollywood studios like Walt Disney Co., Universal Studios and Warner Bros, filed the complaint against Johansen at Norway's Economic Crime Unit.
The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales.
When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to realize that while they may be losing money, is isn't close to that magnitude?
Even if we couldn't download the movies and music, we wouldn't be buying the CDs or DVDs in those numbers. Out of every 100 albums or movies you download (the general "you"), how many would you have bought if you couldn't download them? 10? 5? 1? If it's only 1, or 1% of the movies you download, then that $3.0 billion figure is only $30 million. Which is pennies in a multi-billion dollar industry.
It's amazing how the game isn't "How much money are we losing," but rather "How much money would we have lost in this incredibly unrealistic circumstance?"
Hey, maybe it would be possible to modify this technology so that whenever anyone from the RIAA or MPAA did a search for MP3 or MPG, all they'd get is Whitehouse.com
Yeah, it's big, monolithic, and evil, but what gives Microsoft the right to threaten an "audit and penalties?"
I mean, if Microsoft showed up at my door (if I were a corporation) and said "We're coming in to inspect your computers," why not just say "Go to hell!"
Does anyone know what the Microsoft audit process is, and how they enforce these penalties?
Don't forget that AMDs, which have better performance at lower clock speeds than Intel P4s also cost less.
But HP probably makes the same (or close enough) in profit on either machine.
The difference is that the savings is passed on to the consumer -- but here's the kicker:
The average Joe will not believe that AMDs are outperforming P4s; they'll buy higher clocked AMDs, and discover that the performance is indeed better than expected, for the same price.
Now, not only have they gotten a good deal (vs. buying a P4), they're much more likely to bring return business to HP!
IT people, who need to buy namebrand computers also can flock to HP (for a short time, at least)... It's a great move by HP, as long as they measure up in the other departments...
Slashdot Mirror
It's true.
--Sent from my iPad
Now might be a good time to point people in the direction of Punchscan.org, previously chronicled on Slashdot here
First they go after my music... then they go after my drugs...
But they'll never get my... my... ohmigod, what do I have left??
I'm sorry, but does this really belong on the Slashdot main page? I'm all for a technology-enhanced political debate, as I share a lot of the same sort of technical-style values that I think other /.ers have, but this is completely off the mark. It's just politics as usual, which we can get from anywhere, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fo... Okay, not Fox.
I've got 10 different news sites bookmarked for this stuff. I want Slashdot to make the politics connect to the stuff that I actually read Slashdot for.
Almost, but no.
According to the website, http://caag.state.ca.us/ag/index.htm
Under the state Constitution, the Attorney General is elected to a four-year term in the same statewide election as the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Controller, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Insurance Commissioner. In 1990, voters imposed a two-term limit on these statewide offices.
Meaning you can't draw a conclusion about the Governator's integrity, since he very likely wasn't involved in this decision at all.
Oh, gee, you know, trivial things like roads and schools, stuff the Gov't doesn't really fund.
Isn't Grokline (soon to be www.grokline.net, created by the legendary PJ of Groklaw) supposed to do something that's very similiar to this?
So now, as retailers drive up the price, it's now going to be cheaper to by your non-DRM CD from Target or Wal*Mart or wherever than to get a DRM restricted album from iTunes et al? I'm sorry, I don't get it.
/. all the time.
Cheaper promotion + Cheaper distribution + Cheaper Capital costs is supposed to equal Lower Prices (tm).
In order for online distribution to succeed, there has to be some sort of critical mass of consumers -- without them, the business won't be profitable, and it's locked in a death spiral of having to raise prices and losing more customers.
At some point, the music industry just might have to accept that its no longer profitable to run business in this way. Music has been around a lot longer than the recording industry, and will be around a lot longer than when the industry disappears. The sooner they get that lesson through their heads, the sooner we can stop having the exact same discussions on
Math is constantly limited by the continuous need to be rigorous. It's not a bad thing, but imagine the potential. A mathematician (or even, a semi-informed layman) would be able to input a logical statement and have the computer determine the validity, special cases, problems, and so forth.
The hard part would become formulating the statements. For science, this result would be immeasurable. Ask the computer if it can be done, and get an answer. Knowledge could increase exponentially! (No, really -- once upon a time, only advanced mathematicians knew calculus, but now we learn it in high school. Just wait until warp theory is an entry level college engineering course)
Q: Why do you think SCO can win?
McBride: When I look at our case, I think anyone who has a rational mind would come down to the same conclusions I do.
You mean, just like IBM, and the FOSS movement in general?
What sort of precident does this set regarding USEnet?
It is possible that this judgment could some way be construed to hold all ISPs who give subscribers access to USEnet liable for copyright infringement?
Not to beat the dead horse, but how many people using MSN as a search engine would know a thing about XFree86?
From the second Baltimore article:
... system? The answer is yes."
Western Maryland Republican Del. LeRoy E. Myers Jr. said he thinks many of the threats Wertheimer outlined are too complicated to carry out.
"If this were Halloween, you'd be scaring us all to death," Myers said. "I think we're kind of overreacting. Isn't this a much more sophisticated
I'm sorry, but did Mr. Myers just issue a challenge? Didn't he just say "Bring 'em on!" to a bunch of hackers?
And Maryland elects Gary Coleman in 3... 2... 1...
This particular incarnation probably won't last altogether too long, but I'd wager the idea gets implemented again and again...
My guess is that at some point (in the semi-distant future), when the music industy has finally come to grips with technology, one of the prime resources they'll use to distribute content will be peer-to-peer.
And given a fixed bandwidth cost (which would be considerable, considering the RIAA encompasses all the major labels, including a whole bunch of independants), how better to take profit than get users to contribute their own bandwidth to share the actual music?
This is just an attempt to try to lure people who understand the technology back into the fold. The problem is that right now, the music industry is playing catch up, so the idea, although new, is already outdated.
Police departments, fire departments, and public schools are not necessarily public goods. A public good is a non-rivalrous, non-excludable good. Police, fire and school are all excludable and rivalrous, and the market could, in fact, provide them.
A more reasonable example of a public good is a lighthouse -- no matter if you charge for it or not, anyone can see the light from the house. You can't stop someone from using the light.
Software can be excludable (effective encryption). Rivalrous is another story, as the amount of users is only limited by the number of PCs and amount of bandwidth or media to transfer the software with. To declare software (open source or IP) as a public good, you would at the very least need to determine that it could not be encrypted. (In fact, solve P = NP.)
As long as software is encryptable, ergo excludable, the market should be able to provide it at a profit for firms. Where the free market can legitimately provide a good, regardless of "public interest," it should do so. So sayeth the Economists.
In other news, thousands of filesharers said to be "disappointed" by RIAA's continuing subpeonas and lawsuit threats.
I can see it now, Snapster starts up, buys a few CDs, and all of a sudden every new CD that is bought comes with a draconian Microsoft-style license which explictly states that you may not play the CD on more than one audio system at a time, without the express written consent of the RIAA, which comes only comes with an unrealistic royalty fee. If you don't like it, you can return the CD to the record store. Or, not.
Unfortunately, it's going to be a long struggle before the Record Industry is forced to submit to the fact that recorded music is becoming an economic public good -- because of pratically infinite distribution (at the cost of bandwidth and storage), the good has become non-rivalrous. This does not mean music will disappear, but it does mean that it will not be profitable for a music company to distribute CDs.
Once the RIAA is forced to accept that, and takes the huge accompanying profit cut, their real business will be the promotion and distribution of the music itself -- it will lower its overhead by allowing P2P-style downloads (let the consumers give up their bandwidth), and will profit by sponsoring artists tours.
The downside is that record stores will, for the most part, go out of business. Were that there was another way to save our slave-wage friends who are knowledgable, but in every war, there are casualties.
But sorry, Cringely -- Snapster won't work for long. The fight for free music will be much longer than we hope.
RIAA threatens to sue dozens, hundreds, or thousands of file-shares. File-sharing increases, and we brag about it? "Woohoo! Look at us! You can't get me RIAA! Your threats and lawyers and lawsuits don't bother me at all!"
Look, I'm all for giving the RIAA whatfor, just on principle, but STOP TELLING THEM YOU'RE INFRINGING THEIR COPYRIGHTS (not stealing, as we all know... right?) AND QUIT FLAUNTING THAT YOU'RE NOT AFRAID.
Because they are going to drop the hammer. And they are going to sue some poor college kids and high school kids and ruin their savings and credit and quite possibily their future. This isn't funny. People should be switching to anonymous technologies ASAP. It's like a burgular going back to the same house after having a long conversation with the owner in a coffee shop about how he previously stole from the owner, and he didn't care that the owner now has some nasty looking guard dogs, a moat, and a team of lawyers ready to defend him when he shoots the burgular in "self-defense."
So shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's for your own good.
Of course, Cornell won't decrease the fees that students pay for their LAN access. They go from unlimited usage for X dollars per month or semester to 2 GB for the same X dollars.
Why can't you buy a bigger pipe? Cornell could make some good money off the 'bandwidth hogs,' who would never feel it because it's paid for by either a) Mommy and Daddy or b) Financial aid anyway.
The Motion Picture Association of America, representing major Hollywood studios like Walt Disney Co., Universal Studios and Warner Bros, filed the complaint against Johansen at Norway's Economic Crime Unit.
The group estimates that piracy costs the U.S. motion picture industry $3.0 billion annually in lost sales.
When are the MPAA and the RIAA going to realize that while they may be losing money, is isn't close to that magnitude?
Even if we couldn't download the movies and music, we wouldn't be buying the CDs or DVDs in those numbers. Out of every 100 albums or movies you download (the general "you"), how many would you have bought if you couldn't download them? 10? 5? 1? If it's only 1, or 1% of the movies you download, then that $3.0 billion figure is only $30 million. Which is pennies in a multi-billion dollar industry.
It's amazing how the game isn't "How much money are we losing," but rather "How much money would we have lost in this incredibly unrealistic circumstance?"
Hey, maybe it would be possible to modify this technology so that whenever anyone from the RIAA or MPAA did a search for MP3 or MPG, all they'd get is Whitehouse.com
Yeah, it's big, monolithic, and evil, but what gives Microsoft the right to threaten an "audit and penalties?"
I mean, if Microsoft showed up at my door (if I were a corporation) and said "We're coming in to inspect your computers," why not just say "Go to hell!"
Does anyone know what the Microsoft audit process is, and how they enforce these penalties?
Dear Will,
We are so cool, we're beyond cool. We are in orbit man.
You'd think that if Bill was actually down with Wheaton, he'd take care to spell his name right...
Sometimes, I think these Star Trek stories are just a ploy to get Wil to come and post.
/. users are above shameless celeb watching, right?
Nah,
Don't forget that AMDs, which have better performance at lower clock speeds than Intel P4s also cost less.
But HP probably makes the same (or close enough) in profit on either machine.
The difference is that the savings is passed on to the consumer -- but here's the kicker:
The average Joe will not believe that AMDs are outperforming P4s; they'll buy higher clocked AMDs, and discover that the performance is indeed better than expected, for the same price.
Now, not only have they gotten a good deal (vs. buying a P4), they're much more likely to bring return business to HP!
IT people, who need to buy namebrand computers also can flock to HP (for a short time, at least)... It's a great move by HP, as long as they measure up in the other departments...