Okay, I'm probably wrong about the CEO thing. I thought I read it in some Salon (?) article recently but I may remember wrong or the article may have been wrong, too. Serves me right for making a slashdot comment without 2 hours of pondering and double checking, huh?
They may be suits now but were they that when they made some of the comments in the pdf? I have hard time imagining a hard-boiled suit admitting freely that they are about pirating music. But then I'm nto a suit, and certainly not hard-boiled:)
Napster guys are still just kids, and they were even more so when they started. The CEO is 19, isn't he? Face it, Napster isn't in it for any higher ethical purpose. They're not much unlike any warez group and if someone thought they were, it's high time for them to be disillusioned. Any fine speech they may have on their front page now is just hypocritical, probably written tonque-in-cheek.
I think the point of the whole Napster uproar is that RIAA is a battle they can never win, instead of thinking of new ways to relate to new technologies, as they should be doing. Even if they get Napster to shut down, there's Gnutella and the likes. There'll always be something more, something that is harder to track and harder to shut down. And people will find it. It'll never succeed to stop the distribution of mp3s as long as making them is as easy as it is now. Digital watermarking might be the future. I hope not, though! In a perfect world RIAA would understand that it's over for the traditional copyright and think of some other way to make their money.
As I understood it before (can't check now because it's slashdotted) artists or record companies give permission to distribute their stuff and get a compensation. This could potentially be great. However, there are some prerequisites to be met before I'd pay anything.
1) The server must be fast and reliable. If I could spare a couple of hours of searching for some rare album on Napster or Gnutella or whatever and then downloading it from someone with a 14kbps modem in Costa Rica, only for the download to break with 30 seconds of a track missing, I might very well part with some dollars
2) I don't want to give out my credit card number for the sake of those couple of dollars. I want some system that's simpler and more secure. That applies to any online shopping. I'd love to order more online but it's just too complicated.
3) They have to offer a broad selection. My idea is a one-stop music stop where you could find pretty much anything. Those rare tracks are as much a pain to find on Napster as they are in local record shops.
Thanks for the reminder! Myth is actually something I've meant to look at for ages and Oni looks really nice. I don't play that much anymore, basically because all the games I've tried out lately have been uninteresting so I've lost the motivation to even try. And not having to boot Windows would be an added bonus.
hiip, who is at this moment configuring dosemu to see if she gets UW2 running on it
The Ultima Underworlds got several of my otherwise non-gaming friends, many of them girls, too, completely hooked and were responsible for my worst (or best, depending on the point of view.. after all high school is not that important, right?) game addiction ever. The hours me and my best friend kept trying to beat Rodrick the Chaos Knight with a badly worn longsword.. I was really starting to hope something of this Underworld 3 petition but I guess we'll have to forget about that now. Sad news indeed. I just hope some other company will take over producing entertaining games for those of us who actually appreciate a storyline
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I'm probably wrong about the CEO thing. I thought I read it in some Salon (?) article recently but I may remember wrong or the article may have been wrong, too. Serves me right for making a slashdot comment without 2 hours of pondering and double checking, huh?
:)
They may be suits now but were they that when they made some of the comments in the pdf? I have hard time imagining a hard-boiled suit admitting freely that they are about pirating music. But then I'm nto a suit, and certainly not hard-boiled
Napster guys are still just kids, and they were even more so when they started. The CEO is 19, isn't he? Face it, Napster isn't in it for any higher ethical purpose. They're not much unlike any warez group and if someone thought they were, it's high time for them to be disillusioned. Any fine speech they may have on their front page now is just hypocritical, probably written tonque-in-cheek.
I think the point of the whole Napster uproar is that RIAA is a battle they can never win, instead of thinking of new ways to relate to new technologies, as they should be doing. Even if they get Napster to shut down, there's Gnutella and the likes. There'll always be something more, something that is harder to track and harder to shut down. And people will find it. It'll never succeed to stop the distribution of mp3s as long as making them is as easy as it is now. Digital watermarking might be the future. I hope not, though! In a perfect world RIAA would understand that it's over for the traditional copyright and think of some other way to make their money.
As I understood it before (can't check now because it's slashdotted) artists or record companies give permission to distribute their stuff and get a compensation. This could potentially be great. However, there are some prerequisites to be met before I'd pay anything.
1) The server must be fast and reliable. If I could spare a couple of hours of searching for some rare album on Napster or Gnutella or whatever and then downloading it from someone with a 14kbps modem in Costa Rica, only for the download to break with 30 seconds of a track missing, I might very well part with some dollars
2) I don't want to give out my credit card number for the sake of those couple of dollars. I want some system that's simpler and more secure. That applies to any online shopping. I'd love to order more online but it's just too complicated.
3) They have to offer a broad selection. My idea is a one-stop music stop where you could find pretty much anything. Those rare tracks are as much a pain to find on Napster as they are in local record shops.
Thanks for the reminder! Myth is actually something I've meant to look at for ages and Oni looks really nice. I don't play that much anymore, basically because all the games I've tried out lately have been uninteresting so I've lost the motivation to even try. And not having to boot Windows would be an added bonus.
hiip, who is at this moment configuring dosemu to see if she gets UW2 running on it
The Ultima Underworlds got several of my otherwise non-gaming friends, many of them girls, too, completely hooked and were responsible for my worst (or best, depending on the point of view.. after all high school is not that important, right?) game addiction ever. The hours me and my best friend kept trying to beat Rodrick the Chaos Knight with a badly worn longsword.. I was really starting to hope something of this Underworld 3 petition but I guess we'll have to forget about that now. Sad news indeed. I just hope some other company will take over producing entertaining games for those of us who actually appreciate a storyline