I came across this page which shows some of Microsoft's Investments over the years. Apart from the fact that Microsoft has never had an original idea for itself, one thing stood out... The have funded Transvirtual's Java Virtual Machine, Kaffe. This software is developed under a GPL license... I wonder if Microsoft had a tough time stooping down to our level just to get a bit of leverage on one of their other compeditors... Sun.
Piracy exists... It is virtually impossible to stop, so maybe we need to find other ways to influence people to not pirate music/software/whatever... The first industry to realise this I think was the computer games industry. They knew everyone was pirating their stuff and no matter how many ways they tried to find to stop people copying the games, people still copied them. Their solution... I think ID Software was one of the first... release DEMO versions of their games... Then people played the game, when they liked it they went and payed for it. Maybe musicians could try this strategy also? I know some "mainstream" musicians have released mp3s... maybe if big bands released their singles as mp3s on the net and then people could go buy the albums in store? It would be similar to the concept of radio I think... you hear a song on the radio you like so you go buy the album.... What do you guys think?
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I came across this page which shows some of Microsoft's Investments over the years. Apart from the fact that Microsoft has never had an original idea for itself, one thing stood out... The have funded Transvirtual's Java Virtual Machine, Kaffe. This software is developed under a GPL license... I wonder if Microsoft had a tough time stooping down to our level just to get a bit of leverage on one of their other compeditors... Sun.
Piracy exists... It is virtually impossible to stop, so maybe we need to find other ways to influence people to not pirate music/software/whatever... The first industry to realise this I think was the computer games industry. They knew everyone was pirating their stuff and no matter how many ways they tried to find to stop people copying the games, people still copied them. Their solution... I think ID Software was one of the first... release DEMO versions of their games... Then people played the game, when they liked it they went and payed for it. Maybe musicians could try this strategy also? I know some "mainstream" musicians have released mp3s... maybe if big bands released their singles as mp3s on the net and then people could go buy the albums in store? It would be similar to the concept of radio I think... you hear a song on the radio you like so you go buy the album.... What do you guys think?