Once the record companies and the wireless companies work out who gets what piece of whose pie, you will be able to do that.
I note that Verizon has just lowered the price on their EV-DO product. While it's not DSL or cable-modem speed, it is fast enough to download a song.
And therein, I suspect, lies the conflict. The simplest way to get both sides happy about money rolling in will be if the record label's get enough from the song price, while the wireless companies get enough from the data charges. However, the pricing scheme on data currently makes it somewhat unattractive - cost per MB - versus iTMS or other music-store style - cost per song.
Now, the record company is happy either way, but the wireless company sees an issue.
They make a lot on ringtones because they are small and the data-charge is small, so people download them. They will make relatively little on song download if they change the pricing scheme to make it more consumer attractive (price per song, say), and they run the risk of killing ringtone sales if they make MP3/AACs able to be the ringer.
It seems like there will be a lot of bickering between the two sides. The wireless companies will be reluctant to change things on their end if they percieve a loss greater than potential gain and the record companies will, most likely, want to stick to a pricing scheme that is working out for them.
However, what you can expect is some cross-functional benefits, such as downloading songs via the cell network and storing them into the iPod portion of the phone.
But you can't do that. And you really wouldn't want to in most cases. AAC/MP3 are large compared to ringtones, not all cell areas have the required digital coverage and specs to deliver at high speed. As one previous poster mentioned, USB is actually faster than a lot of cell network data speeds. And you'd pay through the nose for the data tranfer.
Sadly, there is the idea of a "tyranny of majority" which one of the founding fathers was wary of. Lani Guinier wrote a book with just that title The Tyranny of Majority.
People have certain inalienable rights, but what, exactly, those rights are, and what people are considered "real people" is entirely up to the majority.
There is a reason gays, who comprise 10% of the population, are denied rights - it is because a certain vocal majority does not consider them to be actual people. The same can be said for any other oppressed group. I just happen to only have memorized the statistic on the gay population percentage.
M$ runs a software house that produces the most widely lused operating systems and groupware in the US.
AOL/TW runs a media conglomerate that owns almost every media outlet Americans can see.
Now, think real hard about who can do more damage to your freedom.
Answer: AOL/TW...duh.
Solution: None. The only thing that scares me more than AOL/TW getting into the OS market is the possibility of Disney entering. (To rip-off an idea from Neal Stephanson, wholesale, if Disney ever entered the OS market, they'd kick M$'s ASS!)
The problem that a lot of people are having, and that I think needs some closer inspection, especially in regards to this post is the difference between "freedom", "liberty", and "flerbage".
Since I ain't ESR, I'm not going to make any conclusive statements at this point about what term "flerbage" is based on. I'm instead going to focus on my understanding of "freedom" and "liberty".
"Freedom" is freedom from. "Liberty" is liberty to.
That's confusing, but it helps if you string them out into examples.
If I use MicroSoft Word (R), I have *freedom* from having to remember keyboard commands (because of the buttons).
If I use emacs, I have *liberty* to implement new functionality with modules.
(This example falls through with the advent of VB, but as a user, VB is as accessible for expanding functionality as LISP is.)
Both sides in this issue are claiming both words...and ESR may not be helping by inventing "flerbage" since it is intrinsically related to his own feelings about personal liberties and freedoms.
The core of this issue is that everyone involved thinks that their idea of how the world works is the best. I'm getting flashbacks from Nietzsche's _Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra_ and Stephenson's _...Command_Line_.
MicroSoft thinks they're offering the best balance of freedom and liberty for developer and user. They offer products that will hide all the gadgets if you don't want to see them, then they add-in extensibility that you can get to if you really want to. (The problem being that any good VB script you write is likely to get replaced in the next version by built-in functionality.)
Tim O'Reilly thinks that developers need more liberty than the GPL offers so that users can choose their desired level of freedom.
Kuhn and Stallman think that developers need to forgo any liberties for the purpose of allowing liberty for all. Note that freedom is not a part of their ideals. Free is. The "Free Software Foundation" is about promoting software that is "free" to be changed at any time. Therefore, if you are confused, think of them as the "Software Liberty People".
So, my point here is this..."flerbage" is useless, as it is merely part of an attempt by ESR to cloud this issue further and elicit a response by O'Reilly and Kuhn&Stallman. "Freedom" involves not having to do something. "Liberty" involves being able to do something. Further discussion of this issue should keep this in mind.
Well, having only skimmed the comments at the 2 setting, I hope I'm not repeating.
Only one person hit the nail on the head. This isn't about sex. This isn't about freedom of speech (directly). This is about responsibility.
No one in America wants to be responsible. We instinctively search for someone to pass the buck to. (Hence hesitance to accept Linux in the business community. No one to sue, you have to take responsibility yourself.) We need someone to blame, someone to sue, someone to take our fall for us.
So, when we don't take the time to raise our children, when we don't teach them useful from harmful, we look for something to blame. The easiest scapegoat is that which has no spokesperson. The Internet is to heterogenous to have any spokesperson, making it an ideal scapegoat. The computer gaming industry has too many different companies to have an effective spokesperson, making it an ideal target.
The problem central to this issue is that too many parents are not teaching their children to be responsible for their own actions. They see how their parents and others in society can blame everyone but themselves and adopt that way of life.
Freedom of speech is the constitutional issue, but the sociological issue is responsibility.
Okay, so all of you wondering why a company would concern itself with developing intuitiveness into an app whose only money garnering feature is the possiblity of securing a support contract haven't worked with enough users.
How do I know this?
I work in the school computer labs. I've seen the brightest people working with highly intuitive interfaces (Kai Krause is the master, all bow down.) and still struggle.
Trust me, even if he manages to develop the most intuitive tools possible, the company'll still get support contracts from paranoid businessmen (or frustrated IT people).
Do you feel affected in any way by your being labeled a pariah by the hacker community?
Do you feel that enough people are taking corporate and governmental threats to personal privacy and security seriously?
Do you feel that denying the community at large access to a resource like packetstorm (for whatever temporary time you did) was worth it to protect your image?
Do you feel that your image is any less tarnished because of your actions against packetstorm?
While all the other coasters in Magic Mountain are fairly-good. (Nothing insanely awesome.) Viper and Superman: The Escape need mention here. Viper is possibly one of the best metal coasters I've seen. When it was built, it was the loopiest rollercoaster in the world. (Anyone know if it still is?)
And now for the part that y'all need to hear talkin' about a 300ft, 92mph coaster. While Superman: The Escape isn't exactly the longest ride, it is 415ft tall and does 0-100mph in 7 seconds. (Yay for electromagnetic acceleration!) Did you all hear that? 100mph and 415ft tall. Oh, and you get to experience about 6 or 7 seconds of weightlessness (a.k.a. free-fall) on the way back.
Yum. I think I'll go chow some fried lard and head over. -Robby
The Fairy Tale (Was Re:How, exactly, does it...?)
on
Universal Translators?
·
· Score: 1
I'm not Russian, and I don't speak Russian, but I learned of this phrase from a fairy tale.
The village idiot in some small town did something weird and ended up castrating some wizard guy. This pissed the wizard off, so he cursed the idiot with a flying penis that would follow him around. When the village idiot noticed what it was, he started laughing moronically. At that moment, the penis flew into his mouth and gagged him. (Maybe killed him, I don't remember.)
Thus, "Don't go catching any flying penises in your mouth." (Phonetically "Vof-lee luv-it," I think.) becomes, "Don't act like the village idiot." Or "Don't act like you don't know what's going on."
Okay, so it can handle colloquialisms, but what does it do with them?
Does it do a literal translation of the colloquialism? (Russian phrase "Don't go catching any flying penises in your mouth.") Or does it try to find the closest idiom in the other language? (Said Russian phrase would best be translated, "Don't act stupid, like you don't know what's going on." It's from a Russian fairy tale.)
Also, one encounters the possibility of there being no equivalent phrase. And what about weighted concepts? Many Asian languages, due to cultural influence, have an inherent extra emotional meaning attached to declarations of honor, but there is no easy way to translate this into English.
This sounds like a HUGE step forward, but I'm still gonna be skeptical and double check machines with people.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really need a PS contest on this?
I see that you are the master of understatement. :-)
I'll take the compliment.
Once the record companies and the wireless companies work out who gets what piece of whose pie, you will be able to do that.
I note that Verizon has just lowered the price on their EV-DO product. While it's not DSL or cable-modem speed, it is fast enough to download a song.
And therein, I suspect, lies the conflict. The simplest way to get both sides happy about money rolling in will be if the record label's get enough from the song price, while the wireless companies get enough from the data charges. However, the pricing scheme on data currently makes it somewhat unattractive - cost per MB - versus iTMS or other music-store style - cost per song.
Now, the record company is happy either way, but the wireless company sees an issue.
They make a lot on ringtones because they are small and the data-charge is small, so people download them. They will make relatively little on song download if they change the pricing scheme to make it more consumer attractive (price per song, say), and they run the risk of killing ringtone sales if they make MP3/AACs able to be the ringer.
It seems like there will be a lot of bickering between the two sides. The wireless companies will be reluctant to change things on their end if they percieve a loss greater than potential gain and the record companies will, most likely, want to stick to a pricing scheme that is working out for them.
Gee. I dunno. Chemical analysis of archaeological finds. Sounds downright geeky to me.
However, what you can expect is some cross-functional benefits, such as downloading songs via the cell network and storing them into the iPod portion of the phone.
But you can't do that. And you really wouldn't want to in most cases. AAC/MP3 are large compared to ringtones, not all cell areas have the required digital coverage and specs to deliver at high speed. As one previous poster mentioned, USB is actually faster than a lot of cell network data speeds. And you'd pay through the nose for the data tranfer.
Sadly, there is the idea of a "tyranny of majority" which one of the founding fathers was wary of. Lani Guinier wrote a book with just that title The Tyranny of Majority. People have certain inalienable rights, but what, exactly, those rights are, and what people are considered "real people" is entirely up to the majority. There is a reason gays, who comprise 10% of the population, are denied rights - it is because a certain vocal majority does not consider them to be actual people. The same can be said for any other oppressed group. I just happen to only have memorized the statistic on the gay population percentage.
Let's take a look.
M$ runs a software house that produces the most widely lused operating systems and groupware in the US.
AOL/TW runs a media conglomerate that owns almost every media outlet Americans can see.
Now, think real hard about who can do more damage to your freedom.
Answer: AOL/TW...duh.
Solution: None. The only thing that scares me more than AOL/TW getting into the OS market is the possibility of Disney entering. (To rip-off an idea from Neal Stephanson, wholesale, if Disney ever entered the OS market, they'd kick M$'s ASS!)
Just my comment. Take it or lump it.
Yeah, six words is enough to determine that we're cheating.
Or that we're both quoting the same relevant material from our (text)book.
That one's fucked.
The problem that a lot of people are having, and that I think needs some closer inspection, especially in regards to this post is the difference between "freedom", "liberty", and "flerbage".
Since I ain't ESR, I'm not going to make any conclusive statements at this point about what term "flerbage" is based on. I'm instead going to focus on my understanding of "freedom" and "liberty".
"Freedom" is freedom from. "Liberty" is liberty to.
That's confusing, but it helps if you string them out into examples.
If I use MicroSoft Word (R), I have *freedom* from having to remember keyboard commands (because of the buttons).
If I use emacs, I have *liberty* to implement new functionality with modules.
(This example falls through with the advent of VB, but as a user, VB is as accessible for expanding functionality as LISP is.)
Both sides in this issue are claiming both words...and ESR may not be helping by inventing "flerbage" since it is intrinsically related to his own feelings about personal liberties and freedoms.
The core of this issue is that everyone involved thinks that their idea of how the world works is the best. I'm getting flashbacks from Nietzsche's _Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra_ and Stephenson's _...Command_Line_.
MicroSoft thinks they're offering the best balance of freedom and liberty for developer and user. They offer products that will hide all the gadgets if you don't want to see them, then they add-in extensibility that you can get to if you really want to. (The problem being that any good VB script you write is likely to get replaced in the next version by built-in functionality.)
Tim O'Reilly thinks that developers need more liberty than the GPL offers so that users can choose their desired level of freedom.
Kuhn and Stallman think that developers need to forgo any liberties for the purpose of allowing liberty for all. Note that freedom is not a part of their ideals. Free is. The "Free Software Foundation" is about promoting software that is "free" to be changed at any time. Therefore, if you are confused, think of them as the "Software Liberty People".
So, my point here is this..."flerbage" is useless, as it is merely part of an attempt by ESR to cloud this issue further and elicit a response by O'Reilly and Kuhn&Stallman. "Freedom" involves not having to do something. "Liberty" involves being able to do something. Further discussion of this issue should keep this in mind.
Well, having only skimmed the comments at the 2 setting, I hope I'm not repeating.
Only one person hit the nail on the head. This isn't about sex. This isn't about freedom of speech (directly). This is about responsibility .
No one in America wants to be responsible. We instinctively search for someone to pass the buck to. (Hence hesitance to accept Linux in the business community. No one to sue, you have to take responsibility yourself.) We need someone to blame, someone to sue, someone to take our fall for us.
So, when we don't take the time to raise our children, when we don't teach them useful from harmful, we look for something to blame. The easiest scapegoat is that which has no spokesperson. The Internet is to heterogenous to have any spokesperson, making it an ideal scapegoat. The computer gaming industry has too many different companies to have an effective spokesperson, making it an ideal target.
The problem central to this issue is that too many parents are not teaching their children to be responsible for their own actions. They see how their parents and others in society can blame everyone but themselves and adopt that way of life.
Freedom of speech is the constitutional issue, but the sociological issue is responsibility.
Okay, so all of you wondering why a company would concern itself with developing intuitiveness into an app whose only money garnering feature is the possiblity of securing a support contract haven't worked with enough users.
How do I know this?
I work in the school computer labs. I've seen the brightest people working with highly intuitive interfaces (Kai Krause is the master, all bow down.) and still struggle.
Trust me, even if he manages to develop the most intuitive tools possible, the company'll still get support contracts from paranoid businessmen (or frustrated IT people).
Do you feel affected in any way by your being labeled a pariah by the hacker community?
Do you feel that enough people are taking corporate and governmental threats to personal privacy and security seriously?
Do you feel that denying the community at large access to a resource like packetstorm (for whatever temporary time you did) was worth it to protect your image?
Do you feel that your image is any less tarnished because of your actions against packetstorm?
Amen brother.
Well, fsck that $hit. Diamond is gonna go with SDMI?!? That sucks @$$.
Since the current Rio's still take MP3's, I think I'll go out and get one.
Can anyone tell me which end the security comes from on SDMI? Is it in the file? Is it during the download?
Classic: Credence
Wall-o-Sound: Who (maybe Asia)
Power Ballad: Too many =]
Just my $0.02
While all the other coasters in Magic Mountain are fairly-good. (Nothing insanely awesome.) Viper and Superman: The Escape need mention here. Viper is possibly one of the best metal coasters I've seen. When it was built, it was the loopiest rollercoaster in the world. (Anyone know if it still is?)
And now for the part that y'all need to hear talkin' about a 300ft, 92mph coaster. While Superman: The Escape isn't exactly the longest ride, it is 415ft tall and does 0-100mph in 7 seconds. (Yay for electromagnetic acceleration!) Did you all hear that? 100mph and 415ft tall. Oh, and you get to experience about 6 or 7 seconds of weightlessness (a.k.a. free-fall) on the way back.
Yum. I think I'll go chow some fried lard and head over.
-Robby
I'm not Russian, and I don't speak Russian, but I learned of this phrase from a fairy tale.
The village idiot in some small town did something weird and ended up castrating some wizard guy. This pissed the wizard off, so he cursed the idiot with a flying penis that would follow him around. When the village idiot noticed what it was, he started laughing moronically. At that moment, the penis flew into his mouth and gagged him. (Maybe killed him, I don't remember.)
Thus, "Don't go catching any flying penises in your mouth." (Phonetically "Vof-lee luv-it," I think.) becomes, "Don't act like the village idiot." Or "Don't act like you don't know what's going on."
-Robby
Okay, so it can handle colloquialisms, but what does it do with them?
Does it do a literal translation of the colloquialism? (Russian phrase "Don't go catching any flying penises in your mouth.") Or does it try to find the closest idiom in the other language? (Said Russian phrase would best be translated, "Don't act stupid, like you don't know what's going on." It's from a Russian fairy tale.)
Also, one encounters the possibility of there being no equivalent phrase. And what about weighted concepts? Many Asian languages, due to cultural influence, have an inherent extra emotional meaning attached to declarations of honor, but there is no easy way to translate this into English.
This sounds like a HUGE step forward, but I'm still gonna be skeptical and double check machines with people.