The Big Record Companies have how many different recordings under their control? By how many artists?
$1 per recording every 5 years. I think that that would stack up to a large amount of money.
Lets look at some numbers: This page has a list of the number of copyright registrations for every year from 1790 to 2002. It lists the total number of copyrights out there as being 30,253,812.
In 2002 there were 521,041 new registered copyrights. That means that in 50 years, $521,041 would have to be paid to the copyright office to maintain those copyrights for another 5 years. Another look at the data shows that right now there are 9,213,707 registered works that are 50 years old or older. That means that $9,213,707 would have to be paid to the copyright office to maintain those works.
Now, realizing that not every work is owned by a BIG CORPORATION(tm) that is still not a small chunk of change and will ultimately result in more and more items entering public domain, or more money going to the government...(or more money being charged for copyrighted works simply to maintain this cost, copyright tax).
I don't know that this solves anything, but I like the attempt.
Looks to me like just a speedier way to suck money out of your bank account and charge you for the service to boot!
I don't know about everyone else but I go running scared when I see things like (paraphrased) "...standard method of allowing consumers to purchase content in their home..."
I can see it now.... "please wave your contactless credit card to watch this channel"....
The main reasons that that loose environment worked was because of the whole companies culture.
--They trusted their employees. --They fostered an environment of open doors. (I could talk to the CEO whenever I wanted to.) --They catered in lunch every day for all employees because it was an inexpensive way for them to boost the productivity of the employees. Because employees didn't have to leave the office to go find lunch. (Though groups of employees did so on occasion). --Everyone in the company had a cubical, even the CEO and all the VPs.
This environment (free lunch, pool table, etc...) made for a very relaxed, enjoyable, lunch hour with one's co-workers where free exchange of ideas could occur and team building happened naturally.
I know what ^H means, but I personally don't like its use. It makes things more difficult to read and makes me instantly think of the poster as immature.
If you have something to say, say it. If you want to be cute, you can be cute, and do it with proper grammer.
Saying something like the following
If you're sensible (paranoid), wait a week or more...
will get your point across just as well without having to be explained to those who don't understand or reducing the power of your argument through l337 sp33k.
But of course, that is just my own opinion, do with it what you will.
Just in case you read replies to your own messages....
I left due to a change in my manager and a conflict of opinions as to what kind of work was suitable for my experience. After four years at that company I found myself starting all over again on the advancement ladder because my new manager had no goal other than to meet his metrics today, completely ignoring that the work I was doing would make it easier for him to meet his metrics consistently for the next year and into the future.
Lack of foresight.
Yes the company is still in business. I'm still a shareholder, I still have friends there and most of them are still complaining about my former manager.
Transfers inside of the company were on hold due to the bubble having burst and money being tight.
I would have love to have stayed. But the stress of my day to day duties and the attitude of my manager made the situation one that was unhappy.
After I left, and started my new job, my friends immediately noticed the difference in my attitude and were amazed at how depressed I had become and how much happier I was now that I was out of the bad situation.
This has to be the best post in my history of reading Slashdot. Bravo!
This, of course, causes its normal downhill motion under gravity to occur retrotemporally, giving the fluid the appearance of syntemporal uphill motion.
The Gov't has always held a military advantage over the populace
I don't believe that this has always been the case.
If I recall correctly, the "War Department" was formed for WWI, disolved, reformed again for WWII, and then changed into the Department of Defense.
Don't forget folks that as US citizens, we choose who our leaders are. And if we _all_ wanted to get rid of the military (something that _I_ don't think would be smart to do) then we just need to vote that way.
At my last company we had a pool table, a ping-pong table, two fooz ball tables, a dart board, a wide screen TV, DVD player, and sometimes people would bring in movies or hook up a game system.
Everday at lunch time (lunch was also catered in BTW) the whole company would descend to the lunch room, eat, hang out, and play games.
Ok, so sometimes the lunch breaks were longer than an hour, but usually it wasn't much longer than that, and you would go back to your desk with a clear mind, an energized body, PLUS you just spent leisure time with your co-workers, so when it comes time to work with them you actually know them and might even like them.
Yeah, I think playing games is a productivity booster. But only if you don't have to sneak around and only if you do it with co-workers away from your desk.
If the prices are made avaiable by one means then that same means should be allowed to view them.
So if the prices are available to the average customer by allowing them to walk into the store, browse the aisles, then leave, then I should be allowed to do the same.
If the prices are available electronically then I should be able to read them electronically however I choose.
If I have to get the prices by speaking to a salesperson then that is the means that I need to use.
This is fair because the cost (time, money, inconvenience) is equitable across the board. If you want to go cheap on me by not putting a salesperson with every piece of merchandise then I'm allowed to go cheap on you and just look at the sign.
I also managed to see Matrix: Reloaded last evening and I would have to say that the Reviewer's opinion pretty much matched my own. The love scene was a bit long and the pacing of the movie was a lot different than the first, but I think that it is a successful movie, a good sequel (and what an act to follow, seriously) and I want to go see it again to make sure that I got everything.
I'm definitely very interested in seeing Revolutions and I'm glad that it is coming out in 6 months. I can definitely understand why they released this movie in this fashion (two parter) and I can only hope that they will come out on DVD in some sane packaging.
The History Teachers Association (HTA) has sued The Quotations Page for posting quotes of famous people. A representative of the HTA said "Even though there was no central authority we felt that this [stealing] couldn't be tolerated any more. We just had to... hey, are you quoting me.... stop that.... no seriously, I'll sue!"
Here is an idea to solve the "how do I pay for this access" problem as it relates to pay phone based WiFi (not a general solution for roaming)...
You walk up to the new WiFi phone, press a special button (marked WiFi), swipe your credit card. Your laptop, PDA, whatever, is set up for DHCP and grabs the next IP address that is freed up from the phone/AP.
Then you are charged per minute with some minimum time charge ($1 for the first 10 minutes then $0.10 per minute after that).
This disclaimer found on the Altavista MP3 Search page: Disclaimer Please be aware that the multimedia files referenced, made accessible or made available to you on these pages or by means of the AltaVista multimedia search engine are protected by the copyright and trademark laws of the United States and other countries. Therefore, you may need to obtain authorization of the owner of such materials before using them. Some of the multimedia content accessible through our search engine may be offensive to you. AltaVista accepts no responsibility or liability for such content, or your use of such content.
How many people do you know that get to work, see the "I Voted Today" stickers on their co-workers, realize that its election day, then realize that they don't have time to go vote?
This way they could just take 5 minutes, log on, vote, log out, and be done with it.
Not that this will solve the real problems with politics.
When will people realize that the most effective Congressman is the one who passes no more laws than absolutely necessary?
Its like the effective System Administrator. If he does his job right, he shouldn't have to work more than 10 minutes a day, except when he's installing new systems.
Open two accounts. One for you, one for your friend down the street. Then take turns getting "big months" and "bad months" and you'll get all of the movies you want and you'll get to watch them with a friend.
Of course this costs you twice as much, so its not like you are stealing... you are just manipulating the system.
... I learned this new fangled HTML thingy in 1994 whilst at college and I, and my roomate, posted one of the most successful online games of the time, Connect Four.
Thousands of games were played each day with people coming in from nasa.gov, ibm.com, and many other very interesting places. Even better the computer AI that I had written (a very basic 1.5 step look ahead AI) was capable of winning 50% or so of the games.
Then I remember the day that AOL got a web browser. Shortly thereafter my Connect Four AI was winning 60% of the time.
Of course, then the lawyers from Hasbro called and told me to shut it off since our board looked pretty close to the real thing and we were using the name. We offered them the source code but once they found out that were weren't making any money off of it they weren't interested.
Oddly enough the url for the game was printed in a magazine for kids, complete with sticker of the URL, as well as a book of the "Best of the Web", kind of a Yellow Pages of URLs.... Seems really strange that people would print paper books indexing URLs. But of course I have a copy, for archival purposes.
Actually its been working for me for over a year now, but it doesn't have a GUI so it doesn't yet fit your description of not looking like ass.
Its Java (so it should work perfectly well on Linux) and it does have request mode (so that you can request a song, or ten, or a whole playlist) and when it runs out of requests it picks the next song based on the current songs meta-data... which right now you still have to enter yourself.
But its been playing music at my house, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the last 15 months solid without a crash. Only power failures stop it (and fewer of those since the UPS was installed).
I'm working on the GUI for it in my spare time now... so that doesn't help you much, but when it is done I plan to shareware it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Big Record Companies have how many different recordings under their control? By how many artists?
$1 per recording every 5 years. I think that that would stack up to a large amount of money.
Lets look at some numbers: This page has a list of the number of copyright registrations for every year from 1790 to 2002. It lists the total number of copyrights out there as being 30,253,812.
In 2002 there were 521,041 new registered copyrights. That means that in 50 years, $521,041 would have to be paid to the copyright office to maintain those copyrights for another 5 years. Another look at the data shows that right now there are 9,213,707 registered works that are 50 years old or older. That means that $9,213,707 would have to be paid to the copyright office to maintain those works.
Now, realizing that not every work is owned by a BIG CORPORATION(tm) that is still not a small chunk of change and will ultimately result in more and more items entering public domain, or more money going to the government...(or more money being charged for copyrighted works simply to maintain this cost, copyright tax).
I don't know that this solves anything, but I like the attempt.
Looks to me like just a speedier way to suck money out of your bank account and charge you for the service to boot!
I don't know about everyone else but I go running scared when I see things like (paraphrased) "...standard method of allowing consumers to purchase content in their home..."
I can see it now.... "please wave your contactless credit card to watch this channel"....
The main reasons that that loose environment worked was because of the whole companies culture.
--They trusted their employees.
--They fostered an environment of open doors. (I could talk to the CEO whenever I wanted to.)
--They catered in lunch every day for all employees because it was an inexpensive way for them to boost the productivity of the employees. Because employees didn't have to leave the office to go find lunch. (Though groups of employees did so on occasion).
--Everyone in the company had a cubical, even the CEO and all the VPs.
This environment (free lunch, pool table, etc...) made for a very relaxed, enjoyable, lunch hour with one's co-workers where free exchange of ideas could occur and team building happened naturally.
It was a small price to pay but it worked.
I know what ^H means, but I personally don't like its use. It makes things more difficult to read and makes me instantly think of the poster as immature.
If you have something to say, say it. If you want to be cute, you can be cute, and do it with proper grammer.
Saying something like the following
If you're sensible (paranoid), wait a week or more...
will get your point across just as well without having to be explained to those who don't understand or reducing the power of your argument through l337 sp33k.
But of course, that is just my own opinion, do with it what you will.
Just in case you read replies to your own messages....
I left due to a change in my manager and a conflict of opinions as to what kind of work was suitable for my experience. After four years at that company I found myself starting all over again on the advancement ladder because my new manager had no goal other than to meet his metrics today, completely ignoring that the work I was doing would make it easier for him to meet his metrics consistently for the next year and into the future.
Lack of foresight.
Yes the company is still in business. I'm still a shareholder, I still have friends there and most of them are still complaining about my former manager.
Transfers inside of the company were on hold due to the bubble having burst and money being tight.
I would have love to have stayed. But the stress of my day to day duties and the attitude of my manager made the situation one that was unhappy.
After I left, and started my new job, my friends immediately noticed the difference in my attitude and were amazed at how depressed I had become and how much happier I was now that I was out of the bad situation.
This has to be the best post in my history of reading Slashdot. Bravo!
This, of course, causes its normal downhill motion under gravity to occur retrotemporally, giving the fluid the appearance of syntemporal uphill motion.
Brilliant!
The Gov't has always held a military advantage over the populace
I don't believe that this has always been the case.
If I recall correctly, the "War Department" was formed for WWI, disolved, reformed again for WWII, and then changed into the Department of Defense.
Don't forget folks that as US citizens, we choose who our leaders are. And if we _all_ wanted to get rid of the military (something that _I_ don't think would be smart to do) then we just need to vote that way.
At my last company we had a pool table, a ping-pong table, two fooz ball tables, a dart board, a wide screen TV, DVD player, and sometimes people would bring in movies or hook up a game system.
Everday at lunch time (lunch was also catered in BTW) the whole company would descend to the lunch room, eat, hang out, and play games.
Ok, so sometimes the lunch breaks were longer than an hour, but usually it wasn't much longer than that, and you would go back to your desk with a clear mind, an energized body, PLUS you just spent leisure time with your co-workers, so when it comes time to work with them you actually know them and might even like them.
Yeah, I think playing games is a productivity booster. But only if you don't have to sneak around and only if you do it with co-workers away from your desk.
If the prices are made avaiable by one means then that same means should be allowed to view them.
So if the prices are available to the average customer by allowing them to walk into the store, browse the aisles, then leave, then I should be allowed to do the same.
If the prices are available electronically then I should be able to read them electronically however I choose.
If I have to get the prices by speaking to a salesperson then that is the means that I need to use.
This is fair because the cost (time, money, inconvenience) is equitable across the board. If you want to go cheap on me by not putting a salesperson with every piece of merchandise then I'm allowed to go cheap on you and just look at the sign.
I also managed to see Matrix: Reloaded last evening and I would have to say that the Reviewer's opinion pretty much matched my own. The love scene was a bit long and the pacing of the movie was a lot different than the first, but I think that it is a successful movie, a good sequel (and what an act to follow, seriously) and I want to go see it again to make sure that I got everything.
I'm definitely very interested in seeing Revolutions and I'm glad that it is coming out in 6 months. I can definitely understand why they released this movie in this fashion (two parter) and I can only hope that they will come out on DVD in some sane packaging.
I was kinda hoping that it might rank a little higher than a "bad" joke... perhaps a clever pun. Maybe I was just doing a parody.
Oh well... either way, I think I got my point across.
Oh, and don't ever quote me again. (Just kidding)
The History Teachers Association (HTA) has sued The Quotations Page for posting quotes of famous people. A representative of the HTA said "Even though there was no central authority we felt that this [stealing] couldn't be tolerated any more. We just had to ... hey, are you quoting me.... stop that.... no seriously, I'll sue!"
I think that this was best said by the Talking Heads in their song I Zimbra
"GadJi Beri Bimba Clan Dridi
Lauli Lonni Cadori Gadjam
A Bim Beri Glassalal Glandride
E Glassala Tuffm I ZIMBRA
Bim Blassa Galassasa Zimbrabim
Blassa Galassasa Zimbrabim
A Bim Beri Glassala Grandrid
E Glassala Tuffm I ZIMBRA
GadJi Beri Bimba Clan Dridi
Lauli Lonni Cadori Gadjam
A Bim Beri Glassalal Glandride
E Glassala Tuffm I ZIMBRA"
-- The Talking Heads, "I Zimbra"
MSN ZDNet even carried the story Here.
Here is an idea to solve the "how do I pay for this access" problem as it relates to pay phone based WiFi (not a general solution for roaming)...
You walk up to the new WiFi phone, press a special button (marked WiFi), swipe your credit card. Your laptop, PDA, whatever, is set up for DHCP and grabs the next IP address that is freed up from the phone/AP.
Then you are charged per minute with some minimum time charge ($1 for the first 10 minutes then $0.10 per minute after that).
...looks more like a light rail system.
... maybe by train!
But then again, I don't think one of these would fit on my N-Scale layout.
I wonder what the shipping and handling will be on that item... I also wonder if it will be sent by air, UPS, or
This disclaimer found on the Altavista MP3 Search page:
Disclaimer
Please be aware that the multimedia files referenced, made accessible or made available to you on these pages or by means of the AltaVista multimedia search engine are protected by the copyright and trademark laws of the United States and other countries. Therefore, you may need to obtain authorization of the owner of such materials before using them. Some of the multimedia content accessible through our search engine may be offensive to you. AltaVista accepts no responsibility or liability for such content, or your use of such content.
Well, that is really good to know... thanks...
(Still not a lawyer)
IANAL but I don't believe that this can be appealed...
The defense can appeal, the plaintiff cannot, that would be double jeopardy.
How many people do you know that get to work, see the "I Voted Today" stickers on their co-workers, realize that its election day, then realize that they don't have time to go vote?
This way they could just take 5 minutes, log on, vote, log out, and be done with it.
Not that this will solve the real problems with politics.
When will people realize that the most effective Congressman is the one who passes no more laws than absolutely necessary?
Its like the effective System Administrator. If he does his job right, he shouldn't have to work more than 10 minutes a day, except when he's installing new systems.
... many of us here are Hackers, right?
So here is the key.
Open two accounts. One for you, one for your friend down the street. Then take turns getting "big months" and "bad months" and you'll get all of the movies you want and you'll get to watch them with a friend.
Of course this costs you twice as much, so its not like you are stealing... you are just manipulating the system.
Why does it even have to be compressed when sold from EMI?
Why not just let us download a full format file and decide to compress it on our own if we want to save space/sacrifice quality?
... I learned this new fangled HTML thingy in 1994 whilst at college and I, and my roomate, posted one of the most successful online games of the time, Connect Four.
Thousands of games were played each day with people coming in from nasa.gov, ibm.com, and many other very interesting places. Even better the computer AI that I had written (a very basic 1.5 step look ahead AI) was capable of winning 50% or so of the games.
Then I remember the day that AOL got a web browser. Shortly thereafter my Connect Four AI was winning 60% of the time.
Of course, then the lawyers from Hasbro called and told me to shut it off since our board looked pretty close to the real thing and we were using the name. We offered them the source code but once they found out that were weren't making any money off of it they weren't interested.
Oddly enough the url for the game was printed in a magazine for kids, complete with sticker of the URL, as well as a book of the "Best of the Web", kind of a Yellow Pages of URLs.... Seems really strange that people would print paper books indexing URLs. But of course I have a copy, for archival purposes.
I'm working on one.
Actually its been working for me for over a year now, but it doesn't have a GUI so it doesn't yet fit your description of not looking like ass.
Its Java (so it should work perfectly well on Linux) and it does have request mode (so that you can request a song, or ten, or a whole playlist) and when it runs out of requests it picks the next song based on the current songs meta-data... which right now you still have to enter yourself.
But its been playing music at my house, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the last 15 months solid without a crash. Only power failures stop it (and fewer of those since the UPS was installed).
I'm working on the GUI for it in my spare time now... so that doesn't help you much, but when it is done I plan to shareware it.
Not smoking anything.
But remember this.... laws can be ruled unconstitutional.