Now I haven't been around a university for a while, but MS software was never free, even with a site license. We still had to pay 'copying costs', which for large apps ran in the 15-30 dollar range.
Democracy depends upon the trust of the people who matter that their concerns are going to fairly represented. Voting is one way that concerns are represented. As long as voting appears to be fair, then democracy can function.
Which is the argument against security researchers publicizing problems in any voting system. This is especially true if the new voting system is at least as fair and secure as the system to be replaced.
However, the standards for 'fairness' are increasingly strict. Many in the US now want to count every single person, no matter how poor, dark, or uneducated that person is. Such inclusive counting keeps people content while not changing the political landscape all that much, as the elite have other ways to control the landscape. Furthermore, as more people become educated they want access to the public process. Since the educated have the power to disrupt, their concerns matter and should be addressed to protect the peace which is so critical for economic well being.
Additionally, technology allows increased trust in our system. One good example is fingerprinting. Genetic matching brought up issues of the trust and reliability in the technology used to identify suspects. The courts ruled that any technology used in the courts must be reliable. This brought up the question of whether fingerprints are reliable. Though they have been used for a long time, and though a full fingerprint is reliable, the partial prints may not be. Even though they satisfies the standards of the past, they may not satisfy current standards.
Voting may be a smilier case. A higher level of reliability is possible, so it mandated that the possibility be realized.
And this is what i do not understand. All the ads say they want someone with experience in business, experience in the industry, experience working with people, experience gathering requirements, and knowledge of when something is bogus, but when actual hiring time comes around the person with the more advanced degree, and often less experience wins out. Now I respect people with advance degrees, and feel they should often get the job. But if what an employer wants is someone with some knowledge of the field, and some knowledge of the application, why are they hiring a CS major across the world to develop a system to be used by customers here.
The situation is similar to what i have seen in some production plants. Everyone in that plant says quality is the most important thing. Every one in the plant says that the worker is the most important part of that quality. Yet the management berates even the best worker by telling them they could be replaced at any time. The management then wonders why quality is so shitty.
I am not attacking you. I know the compromises involved in hiring a production. It just seems that lately many managers say one thing on the PR side while doing the complete opposite in reality.
A few years ago my bank was doing a survey by email. The survey asked the customer to log into a non-bank website a submit potentially sensitive information.
I emailed the customer service at the bank it the survey was for real and if they considered it secure. They replied by saying the survey was from them, and they cared very much for security. Of course, they cared about advertising services more.
This is a really good example of why certain web and advertising techniques are just too dangerous to be in general use, and why certain web features are justified as not just ad busting techniques, but reasonable security measures.
In this scam a pop up with no navigation and no URL box was presented to the user on top of a genuine web page. This confused the user into thinking the pop up came from citibank. Advertisers like such pop ups because it locks the user into a path specified by the advertiser and obscures the source of the ad. Some web designers like the format because they think it's looks less cluttered.
Most modern web browser can be set will block pop up, force navigation, or always display the URL. Many advertisers whine that this is unfair. So what. What is even more amazing is that generally responsible companies, such as eBay, will create pop up screens with no URL and no navigation, thereby setting a precedence to allow such fraud.
The same is true from images from a third party server. It is useful for advertisers to set web bugs and large scale rotating campaigns. It is even useful for websites to distribute load. It also introduces security issues.
Which is just to say that may on/. would say that the luser should be more careful, and stupid people deserve to be swindled. But i have seen financial organizations use pop ups and third party ads to push product to their customers on the customers financial information page. This is a page that should only contains sensitive information, not irrelevant content The banks are willing to compromise security to push products. And then the banks complain that customers are to blame.
Walmart has leverage in the consumer market that MS and Apple can only dream about. Walmart can exploit that leverage in any number of ways to help brick and mortar store sales. For example
For every CD bought a wal mart, the customer is entitled to a bonus online track by the same artist, and a free track from a select list. This requires that one set up an account on the service.
Gift certificates available at Wal Mart for the service, that can be given to friends. Unused gift certificates result in free money for Walmart. Interest earned until certificates are used.
Gift certificates for the service given with the purchase of MP3 players.
Frequent download programs that result significantly reduced or free product.
Parents will feel more secure about kids using the service because Wal Mart is a protector of a certain form of morality, and the service will allow the parents to easily control and view the child's purchases.
The resources to set up a platform neutral distribution network, thought might be limited with necessary DRM.
There are many other possibilities. Their enumeration is left as an exercise to the reader. The possibility of not controling 25% of the online market is nill.
I suspect the courts would first have to have to find the SCO claim is baseless, and order SCO to pay legal fees. Also, since if SCO losses the stock would be worthless and there would be no business, the bankruptcy courts would have to decide who deserves payment and how much that payment would be. Of course the stockholder would get nothing. The other investors, who know that bankruptcy is likely, will get some of there money back. The lawyers will get paid as long as there is cash left. Of course, the SCO legal team could be sued, but that is whole 'nother can of worms.
Which is to say that SCO is playing to enrich certain persons. Win or lose, those persons will be rich. If they win, a few more people will be rich, and a great many more people will be poor. If they lose, the same people will be rich, and a few people will be poor.
As far as I know you can already share a folder (read only) and allow anyone on a network to copy the music and you can already stream music through iTunes to anyone on a network. The only question would be if is these things are sufficiently harder on a Windows machine to require a special program?
What you describe is an old model. Timeshifting started the decline in the model. TiVo and the internet are going to spell its death.
TV shows make their money from advertising. The key point of the advertising is how many people are watching the show. Not recording it and watching later. Not putting it on their TiVo and watching it five minutes later so they skip the commercials. Who is watching now. That is why we have reality shows and game shows and athletic events. These shows deliver the live demographic. These show provide a medium for the advertisements. These shows, as they are often shot without great sets and equipment, are not HDTV quality.
Then there are the other shows, which no one really cares about anymore in terms of TV. If they make money is because of product placement. Product placement is good because they can count the downloads as impressions. If they make money it is because of DVD sales. If everyone has a HDTV quality copy of the show, then DVDs will not sell as well.
HDTV was a ploy to sell new expensive TV sets. if the networks were ever serious about it, they would have agreed to give up their normal bandwidth on a certain date. I think they did it to insure their survival by acquiring public property that can later be used for unknown purposes.
The purpose of the flag is to make sure that people have to pay to consume entertainment. They have to pay to watch the show, either in cable fees or entertainment or both. They have to pay to acquire a personal copy of the show. They have to pay when the medium for the personal copy changes. It really has little to do with networks or HDTV.
but many problems do occur because of bad management of the programmers. Multiple routines to do the same basic functionality lead to more code that must be validated and increase possibilities for buffer overflows.
For instance it is often helpful to have one place and only one place where credentials are verified. Likewise, there needs to be one place and only one place where external data is verfied or data is truncated to fit in a buffer. We have seen some evidence that MS still has basic functionlity spread over a much too large area. These issues have nothing to do with external user experience.
I think that it is a matter of how you raise your kids. If a parent raises them with cable tv, video games, fast food, and mega churches that resemble broadway productions more than contemplative sacred spaces, then forcing them to sit for even an hour in car without full sensory immersion is abuse. The child has never been given the tools, has never learned self control, has never had to entertain themselves.
When I was kid I spent hours in the car, on a plane, or just waiting for something to happen. I also spent much time in front of the TV and admittedly abuse it. OTOH, i along with my siblings were taught the methods so we could sit quietly, or converse, or create. So I believe a happy balance can be created in which the car can have a TV, but it is sometimes turned off on long trips so that the kids can have time for the scenery, themselves and each other.
And yes, I have had a car load of kids for long trips. And no one missed the TV or video games.
As far as the 'are we there yet' problem, perhaps they can be taught to enjoy the process as much as the final result.
That VPC will support Linux has been assumed. VPC is written to emulate a x86, and not for a specific OS. Therefore, it has been taken for granted that even if MS did want to limit non MS OS, it probably would not happen in this release.
However, the article does not clearly state the level of support. First, will, as in the past, a version of VPC with Linux be available. Redhat has an Linux at the same price level as Windows, so this could be done while still allowing windows to remain competitive.
Second, will MS continue to support installation difficulties with all OSes. My experience is that VPC did provide such support, although on a limited basis. It allowed me to get through some difficult installations.
And third, will MS continue to provide the hooks between Linux and the host OS? On a related note, will MS optimize VPC for Windows and disregard Linux performance.
They can easily cripple the Linux experience without doing anything so bold as to remove support.
I fully expected hack writers to be in the list somewhere. You know, the ones that cannot come up a creative idea to save their life, or actually bring themselves to leave their office and do research. They would rather just look at the same old books and magazines that have lined their office since 1970 and find all article to repurpose. Alternatively, they to come up random lists and format them into something resembling an article.
I can beat you on that. Many weddings now just put disposable cameras on the tables. Less than $100 for the cameras and an equal amount for developing.
Of course, having someone who can actually compose a shot and use proper film and paper so that the picuters will not be grainy and the color will not fade in a few years, is worth something to some people.
Actually, like most entertainment, there are a relatively large number of people who have adequate talent to play a sport. If we take the national football league as an example, about 40 teams employ around 3000 players. I would find it extremely doubtful that of the 40 million people in the US currently in their 20's, only 3000 have the capability to play some position in football.
Clearly the pay is help create a mystic about the person, help the person delude himself or herself into believing that he or she is extra special, and develop a star that will bring in the fans. If the pay was just about ability, then we would have none of the backlash when a player goes and acts badly. It is an issue because they are purposefully crafted images.
As has been mentioned here ad infintum, such a set of numbers would be kind of silly. Without the knowledge of how easily the code spreads and how much damage an infected machine will sustain, the numbers are meaningless. One could in fact write several thousand trivial ineffective viruses for *nix and then argue that they be included in the list. it would not make *nix a less secure environment, it would only mean that someone cared enough to sit down and generate malicious code.
We use analogies to help us understand new things. By attaching the new thing to a known thing, the brain can 'file' it in such a way that the new thing can be efficiently 'retrieved', much like a primary index is used in a relational database. Which is not to say the brain works like a RDMS, but research indicates that one can develop some practical theories in education using the RDMS analogy
This is why we call these pieces of code worms and viruses instead of dejs and kafs. We may in fact be able to use the analogy to defend against these 'parasites', but taking an analogies too far tends to lead us down blind alleys, drop stitches, and generally ends up in cliche hell.
It is really the failure of the business model. MS thought that if they used commodity parts, tied everything to the monopoly, they could gain market share with a product that was only different because it was from MS.
However, the plan didn't work because of two big reasons. First, MS is horrible at creating embedded devices. People tolerate the MS PDAs because they integrate well with Outlook, i.e. MS can leverage the monopoly. The phones will succeed for the same reason. Second, games have be, are, and always will be at the forefront of technology. This is true all way back in history where we see wheels on only toys. Therefore game consoles are unique because they take technological risks that are not present on GPCs. For a console to succeed it must be, by definition, significantly different from a GPC.
As others have said, the GPL merely states you must include sorce code to all customer for a product. It is still free as in speech.
Redhat is targeting the corporate customer that wishes to have some fixed costs and an assurance of professional support. Although the costs of Redhat is higher than some other distributions of GNU/Linux, it is not competing against those. If all you want is an OS with little support and unknown future updates, there are many distributions out there.
Redhat is trying to create a product that can compete with MS, and that pricing is very comparable. In Redhat you get a sophisticated operating system with 1 year of professional support. Depending on the processor, it seems this costs from $300 to $2000 for the desktop. With MS Windows, you might not have any support at all from MS, you might have free installation support, or you might have to pay more than $200 per incidence from help from MS. Cost can be fixed with $1000 prepaid service packs, on top of any licenses fees.
First, i assume by YOUNG Metallica level artist you mean a band that is quite good at giving a large percentage of the public what it wants and therefore has the potential to sell lots of albums.
But how are they going to sell millions of albums? The major labels provide one avenue. The labels will select a few groups from the thousands with a suitable level of talent, a marketable signature, and a strong desire to be famous. They will then market the group strongly, placing them above other groups with similar talent and credentials. If the group takes, millions of albums can be sold. If the group remains cognizant of it's aging audience, sales will continue.
I suppose instead of the traditional labels some sites might grow, in the fullness of time, to be arbitrators of what is cool and what is not. In that way certain groups may have the opportunity to rise above the dina and be allowed to become famous. If such sites would offer the opportunity on more favorable terms to the artists than a label is a question to be answered.
The reality is that many artists exist outside the label structure. The hold concerts for free, win awards at festivals, and sell self produced and self paid for CDs. Their money comes from people who prefer to support artists to celebrities. These artist compete on equal footing with the thousands of other artist with comparable talent and credentials. The market may have the same value, but the number of participants means each receives a smaller share.
I do not see how micopayments would help these artists. From what I see in the advertisements, the cost of producing manufacturing a CD has fallen to the point where any motivated band can buy a small lot for sale. On larger lots the cost of production seems comparable to the bandwidth cost necessary for a download. If they want to do the internet they can give away a track or two for free. Sales of CDs can be handled through current online outlets. I suppose such bands could list tracks on some consolidated web site and compete with thousands of other artists, with no way to differeniate.
The Matrix is a good movie because it is ambiguous and revels in it's incredibility. Humans as batteries? Fully developed muscle tissue on never used bodies? Fully developed sensory perception with never used senses.
Bad movies are those that deal directly and seriously with the plot devices. These bad movies waste minutes of precious screen time with detailed descriptions of why things work. Good movies either ignore the plot devices, or, if they are particularly cheeky, like sheep in the big city, name their robotic plot device 'plot device'.
When everyone is complaining about plot holes and unsatisfying ending and attention spans I always think about 'Casablanca'. It was incoherent because of a string of writers. The ending was tacked on to satisfy people needs for a happier ending. People complained that the fictional papers, that were a critical plot device, did not exist. The story goes no where for the first 20 minutes. But who cares. It ends up being a very good movie.
The Matrix is likely to get better with age. It has enough things going on that the kids who watch it now will see a whole other movie in five or ten years. The ending is a good representations of what a hero is, and what a hero sometimes must do. The reaction at the end was a good characterization of human hope, which is sometimes an overreaction. The response of the machines is a good characterization of politics, where solutions are generally good enough rather than perfect.
Only in certain circumstances is it useful for a company to admit that makes money in a particular area. As see in movies, music, and sports, the firm will almost always structure the accounting so that money is lost in certain strategic areas.
In the case of Apple they certainly have development costs, equipment costs, bandwidth costs, etc. And they are certainly accounting for those costs in such a way to make sure that no profit is seen at the ITMS. For instance, iTunes, which was previously a perk of the OS, can now be funded by the ITMS.
Apple would want to do this for two main reasons. First, a highly profitable music store might invite more competition. Second, as download sales increase, they will likely pressure labels to give Apple more of a cut. This will be easier to do if the music store regularly loses money.
I expect the general media to miss such observation. What is funny is when the like of Fortune and the WSJ does not account for such factors.
Slashdot Mirror
That is because every in India who can code is busy on paid projects. It is the rest of the world that has time to code for fun
Now I haven't been around a university for a while, but MS software was never free, even with a site license. We still had to pay 'copying costs', which for large apps ran in the 15-30 dollar range.
I gues we in the US can no longer complain that the jobs for coders are leaving the country.
Which is the argument against security researchers publicizing problems in any voting system. This is especially true if the new voting system is at least as fair and secure as the system to be replaced.
However, the standards for 'fairness' are increasingly strict. Many in the US now want to count every single person, no matter how poor, dark, or uneducated that person is. Such inclusive counting keeps people content while not changing the political landscape all that much, as the elite have other ways to control the landscape. Furthermore, as more people become educated they want access to the public process. Since the educated have the power to disrupt, their concerns matter and should be addressed to protect the peace which is so critical for economic well being.
Additionally, technology allows increased trust in our system. One good example is fingerprinting. Genetic matching brought up issues of the trust and reliability in the technology used to identify suspects. The courts ruled that any technology used in the courts must be reliable. This brought up the question of whether fingerprints are reliable. Though they have been used for a long time, and though a full fingerprint is reliable, the partial prints may not be. Even though they satisfies the standards of the past, they may not satisfy current standards.
Voting may be a smilier case. A higher level of reliability is possible, so it mandated that the possibility be realized.
The situation is similar to what i have seen in some production plants. Everyone in that plant says quality is the most important thing. Every one in the plant says that the worker is the most important part of that quality. Yet the management berates even the best worker by telling them they could be replaced at any time. The management then wonders why quality is so shitty.
I am not attacking you. I know the compromises involved in hiring a production. It just seems that lately many managers say one thing on the PR side while doing the complete opposite in reality.
I emailed the customer service at the bank it the survey was for real and if they considered it secure. They replied by saying the survey was from them, and they cared very much for security. Of course, they cared about advertising services more.
In this scam a pop up with no navigation and no URL box was presented to the user on top of a genuine web page. This confused the user into thinking the pop up came from citibank. Advertisers like such pop ups because it locks the user into a path specified by the advertiser and obscures the source of the ad. Some web designers like the format because they think it's looks less cluttered.
Most modern web browser can be set will block pop up, force navigation, or always display the URL. Many advertisers whine that this is unfair. So what. What is even more amazing is that generally responsible companies, such as eBay, will create pop up screens with no URL and no navigation, thereby setting a precedence to allow such fraud.
The same is true from images from a third party server. It is useful for advertisers to set web bugs and large scale rotating campaigns. It is even useful for websites to distribute load. It also introduces security issues.
Which is just to say that may on /. would say that the luser should be more careful, and stupid people deserve to be swindled. But i have seen financial organizations use pop ups and third party ads to push product to their customers on the customers financial information page. This is a page that should only contains sensitive information, not irrelevant content The banks are willing to compromise security to push products. And then the banks complain that customers are to blame.
For every CD bought a wal mart, the customer is entitled to a bonus online track by the same artist, and a free track from a select list. This requires that one set up an account on the service.
Gift certificates available at Wal Mart for the service, that can be given to friends. Unused gift certificates result in free money for Walmart. Interest earned until certificates are used.
Gift certificates for the service given with the purchase of MP3 players.
Frequent download programs that result significantly reduced or free product.
Parents will feel more secure about kids using the service because Wal Mart is a protector of a certain form of morality, and the service will allow the parents to easily control and view the child's purchases.
The resources to set up a platform neutral distribution network, thought might be limited with necessary DRM.
There are many other possibilities. Their enumeration is left as an exercise to the reader. The possibility of not controling 25% of the online market is nill.
Which is to say that SCO is playing to enrich certain persons. Win or lose, those persons will be rich. If they win, a few more people will be rich, and a great many more people will be poor. If they lose, the same people will be rich, and a few people will be poor.
As far as I know you can already share a folder (read only) and allow anyone on a network to copy the music and you can already stream music through iTunes to anyone on a network. The only question would be if is these things are sufficiently harder on a Windows machine to require a special program?
TV shows make their money from advertising. The key point of the advertising is how many people are watching the show. Not recording it and watching later. Not putting it on their TiVo and watching it five minutes later so they skip the commercials. Who is watching now. That is why we have reality shows and game shows and athletic events. These shows deliver the live demographic. These show provide a medium for the advertisements. These shows, as they are often shot without great sets and equipment, are not HDTV quality.
Then there are the other shows, which no one really cares about anymore in terms of TV. If they make money is because of product placement. Product placement is good because they can count the downloads as impressions. If they make money it is because of DVD sales. If everyone has a HDTV quality copy of the show, then DVDs will not sell as well.
HDTV was a ploy to sell new expensive TV sets. if the networks were ever serious about it, they would have agreed to give up their normal bandwidth on a certain date. I think they did it to insure their survival by acquiring public property that can later be used for unknown purposes.
The purpose of the flag is to make sure that people have to pay to consume entertainment. They have to pay to watch the show, either in cable fees or entertainment or both. They have to pay to acquire a personal copy of the show. They have to pay when the medium for the personal copy changes. It really has little to do with networks or HDTV.
I can do one better
Composite/Structured Design
For instance it is often helpful to have one place and only one place where credentials are verified. Likewise, there needs to be one place and only one place where external data is verfied or data is truncated to fit in a buffer. We have seen some evidence that MS still has basic functionlity spread over a much too large area. These issues have nothing to do with external user experience.
When I was kid I spent hours in the car, on a plane, or just waiting for something to happen. I also spent much time in front of the TV and admittedly abuse it. OTOH, i along with my siblings were taught the methods so we could sit quietly, or converse, or create. So I believe a happy balance can be created in which the car can have a TV, but it is sometimes turned off on long trips so that the kids can have time for the scenery, themselves and each other.
And yes, I have had a car load of kids for long trips. And no one missed the TV or video games.
As far as the 'are we there yet' problem, perhaps they can be taught to enjoy the process as much as the final result.
However, the article does not clearly state the level of support. First, will, as in the past, a version of VPC with Linux be available. Redhat has an Linux at the same price level as Windows, so this could be done while still allowing windows to remain competitive.
Second, will MS continue to support installation difficulties with all OSes. My experience is that VPC did provide such support, although on a limited basis. It allowed me to get through some difficult installations.
And third, will MS continue to provide the hooks between Linux and the host OS? On a related note, will MS optimize VPC for Windows and disregard Linux performance.
They can easily cripple the Linux experience without doing anything so bold as to remove support.
I fully expected hack writers to be in the list somewhere. You know, the ones that cannot come up a creative idea to save their life, or actually bring themselves to leave their office and do research. They would rather just look at the same old books and magazines that have lined their office since 1970 and find all article to repurpose. Alternatively, they to come up random lists and format them into something resembling an article.
Of course, having someone who can actually compose a shot and use proper film and paper so that the picuters will not be grainy and the color will not fade in a few years, is worth something to some people.
Clearly the pay is help create a mystic about the person, help the person delude himself or herself into believing that he or she is extra special, and develop a star that will bring in the fans. If the pay was just about ability, then we would have none of the backlash when a player goes and acts badly. It is an issue because they are purposefully crafted images.
As has been mentioned here ad infintum, such a set of numbers would be kind of silly. Without the knowledge of how easily the code spreads and how much damage an infected machine will sustain, the numbers are meaningless. One could in fact write several thousand trivial ineffective viruses for *nix and then argue that they be included in the list. it would not make *nix a less secure environment, it would only mean that someone cared enough to sit down and generate malicious code.
We use analogies to help us understand new things. By attaching the new thing to a known thing, the brain can 'file' it in such a way that the new thing can be efficiently 'retrieved', much like a primary index is used in a relational database. Which is not to say the brain works like a RDMS, but research indicates that one can develop some practical theories in education using the RDMS analogy
This is why we call these pieces of code worms and viruses instead of dejs and kafs. We may in fact be able to use the analogy to defend against these 'parasites', but taking an analogies too far tends to lead us down blind alleys, drop stitches, and generally ends up in cliche hell.
However, the plan didn't work because of two big reasons. First, MS is horrible at creating embedded devices. People tolerate the MS PDAs because they integrate well with Outlook, i.e. MS can leverage the monopoly. The phones will succeed for the same reason. Second, games have be, are, and always will be at the forefront of technology. This is true all way back in history where we see wheels on only toys. Therefore game consoles are unique because they take technological risks that are not present on GPCs. For a console to succeed it must be, by definition, significantly different from a GPC.
Redhat is targeting the corporate customer that wishes to have some fixed costs and an assurance of professional support. Although the costs of Redhat is higher than some other distributions of GNU/Linux, it is not competing against those. If all you want is an OS with little support and unknown future updates, there are many distributions out there.
Redhat is trying to create a product that can compete with MS, and that pricing is very comparable. In Redhat you get a sophisticated operating system with 1 year of professional support. Depending on the processor, it seems this costs from $300 to $2000 for the desktop. With MS Windows, you might not have any support at all from MS, you might have free installation support, or you might have to pay more than $200 per incidence from help from MS. Cost can be fixed with $1000 prepaid service packs, on top of any licenses fees.
But how are they going to sell millions of albums? The major labels provide one avenue. The labels will select a few groups from the thousands with a suitable level of talent, a marketable signature, and a strong desire to be famous. They will then market the group strongly, placing them above other groups with similar talent and credentials. If the group takes, millions of albums can be sold. If the group remains cognizant of it's aging audience, sales will continue.
I suppose instead of the traditional labels some sites might grow, in the fullness of time, to be arbitrators of what is cool and what is not. In that way certain groups may have the opportunity to rise above the dina and be allowed to become famous. If such sites would offer the opportunity on more favorable terms to the artists than a label is a question to be answered.
The reality is that many artists exist outside the label structure. The hold concerts for free, win awards at festivals, and sell self produced and self paid for CDs. Their money comes from people who prefer to support artists to celebrities. These artist compete on equal footing with the thousands of other artist with comparable talent and credentials. The market may have the same value, but the number of participants means each receives a smaller share.
I do not see how micopayments would help these artists. From what I see in the advertisements, the cost of producing manufacturing a CD has fallen to the point where any motivated band can buy a small lot for sale. On larger lots the cost of production seems comparable to the bandwidth cost necessary for a download. If they want to do the internet they can give away a track or two for free. Sales of CDs can be handled through current online outlets. I suppose such bands could list tracks on some consolidated web site and compete with thousands of other artists, with no way to differeniate.
Bad movies are those that deal directly and seriously with the plot devices. These bad movies waste minutes of precious screen time with detailed descriptions of why things work. Good movies either ignore the plot devices, or, if they are particularly cheeky, like sheep in the big city, name their robotic plot device 'plot device'.
When everyone is complaining about plot holes and unsatisfying ending and attention spans I always think about 'Casablanca'. It was incoherent because of a string of writers. The ending was tacked on to satisfy people needs for a happier ending. People complained that the fictional papers, that were a critical plot device, did not exist. The story goes no where for the first 20 minutes. But who cares. It ends up being a very good movie.
The Matrix is likely to get better with age. It has enough things going on that the kids who watch it now will see a whole other movie in five or ten years. The ending is a good representations of what a hero is, and what a hero sometimes must do. The reaction at the end was a good characterization of human hope, which is sometimes an overreaction. The response of the machines is a good characterization of politics, where solutions are generally good enough rather than perfect.
In the case of Apple they certainly have development costs, equipment costs, bandwidth costs, etc. And they are certainly accounting for those costs in such a way to make sure that no profit is seen at the ITMS. For instance, iTunes, which was previously a perk of the OS, can now be funded by the ITMS.
Apple would want to do this for two main reasons. First, a highly profitable music store might invite more competition. Second, as download sales increase, they will likely pressure labels to give Apple more of a cut. This will be easier to do if the music store regularly loses money.
I expect the general media to miss such observation. What is funny is when the like of Fortune and the WSJ does not account for such factors.