Competition is wonderful in the long run and on the whole. But it really sucks when you're one of the people competing.
Any business' ultimate goal is to establish a monopoly and control the market. With that said, I don't know enough about OLPC to know if it's business or non-profit or what. But even if they're not a business it still sucks to have people competing against you. Because for all the effort they've put in to make their product what it is they could see it all swept up by a competitor who is able to offer something better. That is scary. Even though it will ultimately benefit the children in the long run.
I've had this problem in Canada. Most places ask for a driver's license, but I don't have one. They will also accept a passport (but who carries their passport around with them all the time ? I don't have a passport since I don't travel but I have heard that if you lose it you can't get another one). Many places will not accept a health card and I once tried to open a bank account and I forgot to bring my birth certificate and the account manager told me that it's illegal to accept an Ontario health card for ID and she pleaded with me not to even take it out of my wallet since she could be fired.
We do have an 'age of majority card' but it costs a chunk of change and requires a passport photo and all sorts of other documentation. With that said the only reason I haven't gotten one is laziness and the fact that my Ontario health card works most of the time at liquor stores. It still really pisses me off when I get refused though. I once waited in line for 30 minutes at an LCBO on New Years Eve and they refused to accept my health card. They also wouldn't let my cousin (who was with me and just presented his driver's license to pay for his stuff) to pay for mine. But that's what I get for not being sane and buying it in advance. They're always way more vigilant on New Years Eve.
Now that that's out of the way... CD Baby is a huge collection of independent artists and most, if not all, have no affiliation with the RIAA.
Also, as much as it's hated here on/., MySpace has loads of indie artists too. It takes much more sifting through crap to find them than on CD Baby, but I've found so many fellow musicians both that I listen to and jam / collaborate with thanks to MySpace that I have a hard time hating it as much as most slashdotters do.
I've heard the same thing but I accidentally dialed 911 once and when I realized what I did (before hearing a ring or voice etc.) I hung up. Then I picked up to dial the correct number and heard silence, no voice, no keyboard typing, no background noise, just dead silence so I clicked the receiver a few times. Finally I accepted what happened and just hung up and left it hung up. A couple seconds later the phone rings "This is the police, why did you hang up on me?"
I spent the rest of the day assuming the police, fire and ambulance would show up in that "Just incase" scenario that I've heard many people claim is policy in NA but they never did.
It might be because the dispatcher did get to talk to me and I explained to her that I was an idiot. But then I wonder what if a kidnap victim or something calls 911 and the attacker catches them before they have time to talk ? Then the dispatcher calls back and the attacker claims that he accidentally dialed ?
I don't think it would do a damned thing to prevent accidental 911 calls.
I've dialed 911 by accident once before and it's embarrassing enough. Especially in my case because I realized what I had done rather quickly and hung up before I heard any ring or voice (I was trying to order a pizza and the number starts with 977... I typed 911 by mistake). Only the call did go through and when I picked up the receiver I didn't get a dial tone (or hear any voice or any noise at all.. it sounded like a dead line) so I hit the clicker a few times with no results and then I accepted the fact that it really had gone through and so I said "er.. hello?" and I heard a voice "This is the police... why did you hang up on me?" and I had to explain that I was a complete moron and apologize etc.
I've been REALLY careful ever since. So no. An alarm going off after I've accidentally placed a call to 911 will not make it any more embarrassing. Alarm or no alarm, if you've accidentally dialed 911 before then you know it's plenty embarrassing enough to get you to be more careful in the future.
Exactly. While I am just speculating, I really think that if new albums sold for $1 - $4 each and provided an easy way to get the music on to an iPod or computer* then people would buy them up like candy.
But $1 / song is simply too expensive for most people that I know. When a CD collection was *the* collection that someone chose to have then sure. But those were simpler times. We didn't have mass storage devices and DVDs (some people collected VHS tapes but most people chose to have a large CD collection or a large VHS collection.. now people can have both for cheap all they have to do is break a law that they think is silly or easy to ignore)... we didn't have computers. So spending a couple hundred over a few years on a CD collection was worth it. But now it's the norm to fill a 20GB iPod with mp3s and if you did that at $1 / song (assuming 4MB / song) then you're looking at an investment of $5,000. Maybe I and everyone I know are just really unfortunate suckers who live well below the poverty line but I can't think of a single person that I know personally who would like the idea of spending $5,000 on music even over a few years. Most people that I know would see $5,000 as no more credit card debt, or a start to their child's college fund etc.
* I'm not sure what that would be, heck it could be as simple as an instruction leaflet inside the jewel case, which wouldn't be useful for most people who already know what they're doing but it would be kind of like a stamp of approval from the record companies saying "We're with the times. We know you want this on your digital players so we're trying to help you with that". It could also maybe be in the form of a separate Joliet disk that has all the songs pre-ripped to mp3 with complete ID3 tags etc.
While this is probably one of many possibilities introduced, I think what most people are missing isn't that this is a 'mobile' data center... but that it's 'modular'.
In the case of Sun's Black Box project it's literally a data center in a standard shipping container. You can do almost anything with that.
Here's one scenario.
Imagine a web hosting company start-up. Their goal is grow as large as a big server provider like The Planet but they don't have several million to invest and even if they did, they won't have the customers yet.
What a traditional start-up might do is rent servers from a provider and resell them. But with these portable data centers you could just rent a secured warehouse somewhere (much cheaper than building a multi-million dollar data center) and then start with ONE portable datacenter. When you get enough customers you simply stick another portable data center right next to it. Or on top of it. Or whatever.
In essence you have a modular data center that will easily scale and can be put pretty much anywhere.
I think that's what most people are missing. The summary said "mobile" whereas I think the real point is "modular". You can pick it up and drop it pretty much anywhere and it can tack on to your existing infrastructure easily etc. Or, as one video clip demonstrating Sun's Black Box said "If you fill this thing with our high end servers you've got one of the world's top 200 super computers".
Point being it just opens up so many possibilities that weren't there before.
The record labels finally give in and provide it online, and they're told that people will still keep illegally distributing music because they don't like DRM and 99 cents a song is somehow too high.
At 99 cents / song it would cost roughly $5,000 to fill a 20GB iPod (assuming an average of 4MB / song).
The fact that 160GB iPods exist and are selling implies there is demand for them.
Second, do you have a better recommendation for a single overall rating that would not be related to age in any way and that wouldn't be confusing to the average parent?
Sure. How about "V" for violence ? "GV" for "graphic violence" ? "N" for "nudity" ? "L" for language ?
They could easily be combined. A rating on the package of "GV N L" would mean the content contains graphic violence, nudity and strong language. Not rocket science. It also promotes choice instead of saying "may not be appropriate for children under X years of age" which is arbitrary and vague.
I hate to reply to my own post but I want to clarify a little.
Whatever kids see independent of their parents are also independent of rating systems (with the exception being if it's another adult presenting the media such as a teacher or other parent but I would expect those situations to still involve the parent. IE: if you object to another parent's methods you wouldn't have that parent babysitting your child etc.).
My position is that rating systems should be about allowing people to make informed choices based on the content of the media they're rating. Not about telling parents who the content is appropriate for. That's the parents' job.
And what I meant by the theater remark is that if your child is running around seeking media that you don't want them to see then you've failed as a parent. Maybe you were too strict and created a taboo that your child can't resist or maybe you're not keeping close enough tabs on what your kid is doing. But I don't expect other people to take up the responsibility of ensuring that my children are only subjected to things that are "appropriate" (who are they to say what's appropriate anyway?) because I'm too lousy of a parent to take on the responsibility myself. It seems these days that every single person is a bloody parent to every single child. And it annoys me to no end.
The problem is that people need to understand that just because something has the highest rating doesn't mean it should be shunned from the light, it just means it is something not for kids.
*I* will decide what is for my kids thank you very much.
I am all for rating systems. They give information to otherwise ignorant people. If I've never played a game or seen a movie personally the rating system, along with the description of the media on the package, gives me information that will help me understand what kind of content it features. That provides me with information which leads to making informed choices which is a good thing.
However, under no circumstance am I ok with people telling me what is "ok" and what is "not ok" for my children. That's my job. That's one of the reasons that I wish rating systems wouldn't use titles like "T for Teen" and "M for mature". It implies that you need to be a certain age to play it and it doesn't really tell you what the content is. Sure you can guess that if something is "M" it probably has either course language, violence, nudity or all of the above but I, as a parent, will decide how much profanity, course language, violence, sex and drugs is acceptable for my children. Not some board of strangers who are trying to impose their moral opinions on our other strangers.
That is one of the biggest problems IMO. All of the "think of the children" hysteria. It's becoming cliche on/. to say this but parents need to keep tabs on what their children are up to and make personal choices regarding what is acceptable. It is simply not for other people to decide if certain types of media is acceptable for my kids.
What really would matter is, are there PC makers who would pre install Firefox at the factory? They throw in so much of crapware but not Firefox, GIMP and OpenOffice. Why?
Because the companies that author the crapware pay the desktop manufacturers to put them there. It's a form of advertising.
Mozilla Foundation probably can't afford it. Although perhaps that opens up the possibility of doing a donation campaign or some such fund raiser with the community to get such spots purchased.
I've GPL'd some of my code and I adore OSS both philosophically and for all of it's practical glory.
However I am not sure how I feel about this. Simply because with GPL code you're talking about something that someone is going to be running on their own machine and for their own purposes. If there is a problem with a locally executing program the user deserves to be able to fix it themselves. There is also trust issues that OSS goes a ways towards fixing. With the source code available you can audit the code for security issues or even intentional malice on the part of the author etc.
With web services we are talking about applications that do not run on the user's machine. Thus the server-side code doesn't really do them any good anyway. Any code that does execute locally (markup and client side scripts etc.) is available to them.
So this is pandering exclusively to the original authors who demand any modifications that you make to their code, since it in no way benefits their users. I realize that is a part of the original GPL, but I'm not sure it is in it's spirit. The original GPL says that if you DISTRIBUTE your modifications that you must also provide the code. To me that says "the users of MY software deserve to have the code available to them so that they have a complete 'product' that they can do whatever they want with. So if you distribute a modified version then the users also need to have the code to your modifications otherwise you do not have permission to distribute a modified version of my software".
The AGPL on the other hand is saying that "even though the code does absolutely no good to your users, even though you are offering a service and not an application you must still release any modified versions of this code because I gave you the original code and I want your modifications back".
I am not saying that it is good or bad. I am not even sure how I feel about it. I'm just not certain that it's in the spirit of the original GPL. I'm sure others will disagree.
What I would like to see is for the court expenses be limited to what the less wealthy side can afford, and if the wealthier side wants to spend more, require them to cover the difference whether they win or lose.
So when a single mother of 4 who works double shifts at walmart and can barely make ends meet gets sued by the RIAA the court costs become $0 ?
Sounds like a great way to screw the lawyers (and the RIAA).
Click-through is far more common than per-impression these days (in fact per-impression is almost unheard of anymore unless you're the one doing the advertising and are paying for the ad to be seen so many times) but even pay-per-click isn't as common as commission based advertising these days.
In other words, many webmasters only make money if the ads they show produce a sale. They'll either get a percentage of the sale price or a flat fee.
Although there still are a lot of popular per-click programs like AdSense and a lot of affiliate programs for dating sites still do per-click.
A bit off-topic but what you describe is only part of the problem. While they're being contractually forced to produce new "art" on a regimented timeline they also usually have all-day every-day to spend improving their technique and producing that new art as opposed to 1 or 2 jobs with music on the side.
That can actually be a problem though.
My wife and I started an online business a few years ago and it grew to the point where I could sit back and "let the money roll in" so to speak. We weren't wealthy by any standards but we were living comfortably and didn't have what you would call a day job. I decided to focus on my music. I practiced 8 - 12 hours per day and released an album (sorry for the shameless self plug).
You know what I found ? Practicing all day every day was a great way to give myself "musical writer's block". Most of the "magic" happens when I've taken a break for a little while. Even people who knew their entire adolescent lives that they wanted to grow up to be musicians and carry it into adulthood (and actually have talent rather than delusions) can find that they grow tired of it pretty quick when it's an all day every day kind of thing. That's one of the possible reasons why bands like No Doubt and The Beatles (not to compare them, just use them as two examples of artists that have been through this) radically changed their style and genre from album to album. The only problem with that is that if you do it too much your label might drop you since they often want clones of your original success.
I completely agree with you about Gene Simmons and was actually going to bring him up as an example of why I feel that the rest of your post isn't quite accurate.
In the 60's and 70's you had bands like Kiss and The Monkeys who were entirely about show and very little about music. Boy Bands are the descendants of Motown groups. You mentioned Michael Jackson as being an example of a talented artist but it's arguably groups like The Jackson 5 that gave birth to modern boy-bands.
Madonna was taking off her clothes on stage while Britney Spears was in diapers.
There's a lot of great music still being made it's just that MTV and the radio only cater to the most requested (and thus the most marketed hits) and so if you turn on the radio it's very easy to get the impression that only crap is being produced. There's a lot of amazing artists out there who are getting signed to big labels and touring... Dido, Esthero, Thievery Corporation, Circa Survive, Audioslave, Velvet Revolver to name a few.
My point is, mass media has always been a circus and it will always continue to be. But buried in the cheesy clown acts that please the children are the really talented Chinese acrobats who still manage to do some pretty amazing acts even though so much attention gets put on what the kids like.
Can't say that with the big boys. Once they "sell out" as it were, they all develop "star syndrome", and forget who got them where they are. Loyalties shift, from their art to their profits, and the art shows it.
Just curious. How many "big boys" have you known personally that "sold out" and stopped being your personal friend after they became famous and started releasing poor art ?
Also, as a musician I can tell you that a lot artists' "first album" are collections of songs that had been written and perfected over the many years that they were trying to put something together that's "successful". Then when they get signed they're under contract to put out so many albums over a specific period of time. That might support your theory that business is bad for art, but keep in mind that the bands that don't enter into such contracts end up releasing one album every 5 - 7 years (Esthero and Screaming Trees are two examples that come to mind) and their fans scream just as loudly for not having fresh content as Metallica fans scream loudly about their new stuff being crap.
It's a catch-22. Either bands put out a mediocre album every 1 - 2 years and tour and make enough money to live or they work day jobs and put out an awesome album every 5 - 7 years and don't make nearly enough to live doing what they really want to do. It's a personal choice and no one is in a position to say that one is better than the other.
I agree with you to a point. The problem is that "power users" often have very specific applications that require that power. Photoshop, games, AutoCAD, Maya/3D Max etc.
The only "power task" (on desktops and workstations) that I can think of where Linux really shines is for programming and most programmers that I know absolutely love *nix and the ones that use Windows usually have good reasons (their employer is a win32 shop or they play a lot of games at home etc.)
The only way that kind of software will get ported is if the manufacturers see a market. There's a couple of ways that can happen but one of them is getting as many "average at home users" using Linux as possible. And the best way to do that is to give them incentive to chose Linux over Windows... and how many of them do you think are willing to do so on technical merits alone ? Especially considering there are many trade-offs (lack of games, commercial software and hardware you can "just buy and plug in" without researching first to make sure it's supported etc.).
And I've been running Slack since 2.1, Unix before that.
I've been running Linux for almost 10 years so I'm an old time Linux nerd myself. That fact automatically makes the two of us unqualified to talk about what the "average user" is looking for.
But just for shit's and giggles... I only know a handfull of people who go to a store to buy software. Most people that I know use what came with their computer or what someone gave them on a pirated cd. And it's usually web browser, office tools and games.
Games and devices I will give you. It's not just software per-se... but being able to go and buy any web cam or scanner and plug it in and know for certain that it will work because it says "Linux supported" on the box. That's a far way off. But that will come as more users come. It's kind of a catch 22... with no users it doesn't make financial sense for companies to support Linux and with no companies that support it there's no users willing to switch.
Having a big name company like Dell, Walmart etc. offer pre-packaged Linux PCs for cheap with out-the-box software pre-installed to accomplish the most common tasks is going to go a long way towards instilling trust in Linux. Now people know that if they buy this machine and it's crap they can take it back to the company they bought it from without having voided their warranty by installing Linux on it themselves etc. But more importantly they have no reason to think that it might be "crap" to begin with because they've got some big company brand name associated with the product.
When I was in grade school they had a program called "VIP". I can't remember what it was supposed to stand for (certainly not "very important person")... but the program entailed a police officer coming to the classroom every week for a certain period of time to talk to the class about crime, drugs etc. I remember even at the time (I was 11 or 12 years old) thinking to myself how full of shit they were. But one of the things I remember the most clearly was the officer saying that they (the police) will always try to charge you with as many crimes as they possibly can when you are arrested.
That's one thing I took out of the class. Don't trust the police. Especially when they say "we're only trying to help you".
If you are wondering this took place in a Canadian public school.
I think the issue really applies mostly to random situations in public. For example, the other day I was at the bank. It was not busy at all. There were two tellers and each was serving a customer. I was next to be served and there was no one else. Then a man comes in and gets behind me in line. He came up RIGHT behind me to the point where I could hear him breathe, almost feel his breath on the back of my neck and he reeked of bad after shave.
I couldn't help but think to myself what the fuck is this guy's problem?! There is absolutely no one else in the bank. Mind your own personal fucking space asshole. It's not like it's busy as hell and the line was cramped and he had no choice. He chose to get so close to me as to make me feel very uncomfortable when there was more than plenty of space for us to both keep our distance.
Had I been in New York I imagine I might have had the nerve to turn around and punch the guy in the nose. But I'm a regular customer at that bank and I knew I was going to be served any second so it wasn't worth making a scene.
My guess is that's the type of situation that this "study" is examining. Whether people in virtual worlds would be as uncomfortable with random assholes getting too close as people in real life.
Slashdot Mirror
Competition is wonderful in the long run and on the whole. But it really sucks when you're one of the people competing.
Any business' ultimate goal is to establish a monopoly and control the market. With that said, I don't know enough about OLPC to know if it's business or non-profit or what. But even if they're not a business it still sucks to have people competing against you. Because for all the effort they've put in to make their product what it is they could see it all swept up by a competitor who is able to offer something better. That is scary. Even though it will ultimately benefit the children in the long run.
I found these clips on Youtube:
The Original
Guitar Hero Version
I've had this problem in Canada. Most places ask for a driver's license, but I don't have one. They will also accept a passport (but who carries their passport around with them all the time ? I don't have a passport since I don't travel but I have heard that if you lose it you can't get another one). Many places will not accept a health card and I once tried to open a bank account and I forgot to bring my birth certificate and the account manager told me that it's illegal to accept an Ontario health card for ID and she pleaded with me not to even take it out of my wallet since she could be fired.
We do have an 'age of majority card' but it costs a chunk of change and requires a passport photo and all sorts of other documentation. With that said the only reason I haven't gotten one is laziness and the fact that my Ontario health card works most of the time at liquor stores. It still really pisses me off when I get refused though. I once waited in line for 30 minutes at an LCBO on New Years Eve and they refused to accept my health card. They also wouldn't let my cousin (who was with me and just presented his driver's license to pay for his stuff) to pay for mine. But that's what I get for not being sane and buying it in advance. They're always way more vigilant on New Years Eve.
This album is not affiliated with the RIAA ;)
... CD Baby is a huge collection of independent artists and most, if not all, have no affiliation with the RIAA.
/., MySpace has loads of indie artists too. It takes much more sifting through crap to find them than on CD Baby, but I've found so many fellow musicians both that I listen to and jam / collaborate with thanks to MySpace that I have a hard time hating it as much as most slashdotters do.
Now that that's out of the way
Also, as much as it's hated here on
I've heard the same thing but I accidentally dialed 911 once and when I realized what I did (before hearing a ring or voice etc.) I hung up. Then I picked up to dial the correct number and heard silence, no voice, no keyboard typing, no background noise, just dead silence so I clicked the receiver a few times. Finally I accepted what happened and just hung up and left it hung up. A couple seconds later the phone rings "This is the police, why did you hang up on me?"
I spent the rest of the day assuming the police, fire and ambulance would show up in that "Just incase" scenario that I've heard many people claim is policy in NA but they never did.
It might be because the dispatcher did get to talk to me and I explained to her that I was an idiot. But then I wonder what if a kidnap victim or something calls 911 and the attacker catches them before they have time to talk ? Then the dispatcher calls back and the attacker claims that he accidentally dialed ?
So no. I think the policy is just a myth.
I don't think it would do a damned thing to prevent accidental 911 calls.
... I typed 911 by mistake). Only the call did go through and when I picked up the receiver I didn't get a dial tone (or hear any voice or any noise at all .. it sounded like a dead line) so I hit the clicker a few times with no results and then I accepted the fact that it really had gone through and so I said "er.. hello?" and I heard a voice "This is the police ... why did you hang up on me?" and I had to explain that I was a complete moron and apologize etc.
I've dialed 911 by accident once before and it's embarrassing enough. Especially in my case because I realized what I had done rather quickly and hung up before I heard any ring or voice (I was trying to order a pizza and the number starts with 977
I've been REALLY careful ever since. So no. An alarm going off after I've accidentally placed a call to 911 will not make it any more embarrassing. Alarm or no alarm, if you've accidentally dialed 911 before then you know it's plenty embarrassing enough to get you to be more careful in the future.
Exactly. While I am just speculating, I really think that if new albums sold for $1 - $4 each and provided an easy way to get the music on to an iPod or computer* then people would buy them up like candy.
.. now people can have both for cheap all they have to do is break a law that they think is silly or easy to ignore) ... we didn't have computers. So spending a couple hundred over a few years on a CD collection was worth it. But now it's the norm to fill a 20GB iPod with mp3s and if you did that at $1 / song (assuming 4MB / song) then you're looking at an investment of $5,000. Maybe I and everyone I know are just really unfortunate suckers who live well below the poverty line but I can't think of a single person that I know personally who would like the idea of spending $5,000 on music even over a few years. Most people that I know would see $5,000 as no more credit card debt, or a start to their child's college fund etc.
But $1 / song is simply too expensive for most people that I know. When a CD collection was *the* collection that someone chose to have then sure. But those were simpler times. We didn't have mass storage devices and DVDs (some people collected VHS tapes but most people chose to have a large CD collection or a large VHS collection
* I'm not sure what that would be, heck it could be as simple as an instruction leaflet inside the jewel case, which wouldn't be useful for most people who already know what they're doing but it would be kind of like a stamp of approval from the record companies saying "We're with the times. We know you want this on your digital players so we're trying to help you with that". It could also maybe be in the form of a separate Joliet disk that has all the songs pre-ripped to mp3 with complete ID3 tags etc.
While this is probably one of many possibilities introduced, I think what most people are missing isn't that this is a 'mobile' data center... but that it's 'modular'.
In the case of Sun's Black Box project it's literally a data center in a standard shipping container. You can do almost anything with that.
Here's one scenario.
Imagine a web hosting company start-up. Their goal is grow as large as a big server provider like The Planet but they don't have several million to invest and even if they did, they won't have the customers yet.
What a traditional start-up might do is rent servers from a provider and resell them. But with these portable data centers you could just rent a secured warehouse somewhere (much cheaper than building a multi-million dollar data center) and then start with ONE portable datacenter. When you get enough customers you simply stick another portable data center right next to it. Or on top of it. Or whatever.
In essence you have a modular data center that will easily scale and can be put pretty much anywhere.
I think that's what most people are missing. The summary said "mobile" whereas I think the real point is "modular". You can pick it up and drop it pretty much anywhere and it can tack on to your existing infrastructure easily etc. Or, as one video clip demonstrating Sun's Black Box said "If you fill this thing with our high end servers you've got one of the world's top 200 super computers".
Point being it just opens up so many possibilities that weren't there before.
The record labels finally give in and provide it online, and they're told that people will still keep illegally distributing music because they don't like DRM and 99 cents a song is somehow too high.
...
At 99 cents / song it would cost roughly $5,000 to fill a 20GB iPod (assuming an average of 4MB / song).
The fact that 160GB iPods exist and are selling implies there is demand for them.
Just something to think about
Second, do you have a better recommendation for a single overall rating that would not be related to age in any way and that wouldn't be confusing to the average parent?
Sure. How about "V" for violence ? "GV" for "graphic violence" ? "N" for "nudity" ? "L" for language ?
They could easily be combined. A rating on the package of "GV N L" would mean the content contains graphic violence, nudity and strong language. Not rocket science. It also promotes choice instead of saying "may not be appropriate for children under X years of age" which is arbitrary and vague.
I hate to reply to my own post but I want to clarify a little.
Whatever kids see independent of their parents are also independent of rating systems (with the exception being if it's another adult presenting the media such as a teacher or other parent but I would expect those situations to still involve the parent. IE: if you object to another parent's methods you wouldn't have that parent babysitting your child etc.).
My position is that rating systems should be about allowing people to make informed choices based on the content of the media they're rating. Not about telling parents who the content is appropriate for. That's the parents' job.
And what I meant by the theater remark is that if your child is running around seeking media that you don't want them to see then you've failed as a parent. Maybe you were too strict and created a taboo that your child can't resist or maybe you're not keeping close enough tabs on what your kid is doing. But I don't expect other people to take up the responsibility of ensuring that my children are only subjected to things that are "appropriate" (who are they to say what's appropriate anyway?) because I'm too lousy of a parent to take on the responsibility myself. It seems these days that every single person is a bloody parent to every single child. And it annoys me to no end.
No of course not. But if my kid is sneaking in to see R rated movies I don't blame the theater.
The problem is that people need to understand that just because something has the highest rating doesn't mean it should be shunned from the light, it just means it is something not for kids.
/. to say this but parents need to keep tabs on what their children are up to and make personal choices regarding what is acceptable. It is simply not for other people to decide if certain types of media is acceptable for my kids.
*I* will decide what is for my kids thank you very much.
I am all for rating systems. They give information to otherwise ignorant people. If I've never played a game or seen a movie personally the rating system, along with the description of the media on the package, gives me information that will help me understand what kind of content it features. That provides me with information which leads to making informed choices which is a good thing.
However, under no circumstance am I ok with people telling me what is "ok" and what is "not ok" for my children. That's my job. That's one of the reasons that I wish rating systems wouldn't use titles like "T for Teen" and "M for mature". It implies that you need to be a certain age to play it and it doesn't really tell you what the content is. Sure you can guess that if something is "M" it probably has either course language, violence, nudity or all of the above but I, as a parent, will decide how much profanity, course language, violence, sex and drugs is acceptable for my children. Not some board of strangers who are trying to impose their moral opinions on our other strangers.
That is one of the biggest problems IMO. All of the "think of the children" hysteria. It's becoming cliche on
Wow
I missed that article (obviously) and had no idea.
Yeah if MF is worth that much then they could definitely start buying ads for their apps. It would go a long way towards increasing adoption.
What really would matter is, are there PC makers who would pre install Firefox at the factory? They throw in so much of crapware but not Firefox, GIMP and OpenOffice. Why?
Because the companies that author the crapware pay the desktop manufacturers to put them there. It's a form of advertising.
Mozilla Foundation probably can't afford it. Although perhaps that opens up the possibility of doing a donation campaign or some such fund raiser with the community to get such spots purchased.
I've GPL'd some of my code and I adore OSS both philosophically and for all of it's practical glory.
However I am not sure how I feel about this. Simply because with GPL code you're talking about something that someone is going to be running on their own machine and for their own purposes. If there is a problem with a locally executing program the user deserves to be able to fix it themselves. There is also trust issues that OSS goes a ways towards fixing. With the source code available you can audit the code for security issues or even intentional malice on the part of the author etc.
With web services we are talking about applications that do not run on the user's machine. Thus the server-side code doesn't really do them any good anyway. Any code that does execute locally (markup and client side scripts etc.) is available to them.
So this is pandering exclusively to the original authors who demand any modifications that you make to their code, since it in no way benefits their users. I realize that is a part of the original GPL, but I'm not sure it is in it's spirit. The original GPL says that if you DISTRIBUTE your modifications that you must also provide the code. To me that says "the users of MY software deserve to have the code available to them so that they have a complete 'product' that they can do whatever they want with. So if you distribute a modified version then the users also need to have the code to your modifications otherwise you do not have permission to distribute a modified version of my software".
The AGPL on the other hand is saying that "even though the code does absolutely no good to your users, even though you are offering a service and not an application you must still release any modified versions of this code because I gave you the original code and I want your modifications back".
I am not saying that it is good or bad. I am not even sure how I feel about it. I'm just not certain that it's in the spirit of the original GPL. I'm sure others will disagree.
What I would like to see is for the court expenses be limited to what the less wealthy side can afford, and if the wealthier side wants to spend more, require them to cover the difference whether they win or lose.
So when a single mother of 4 who works double shifts at walmart and can barely make ends meet gets sued by the RIAA the court costs become $0 ?
Sounds like a great way to screw the lawyers (and the RIAA).
Where do I sign up ?
Click-through is far more common than per-impression these days (in fact per-impression is almost unheard of anymore unless you're the one doing the advertising and are paying for the ad to be seen so many times) but even pay-per-click isn't as common as commission based advertising these days.
In other words, many webmasters only make money if the ads they show produce a sale. They'll either get a percentage of the sale price or a flat fee.
Although there still are a lot of popular per-click programs like AdSense and a lot of affiliate programs for dating sites still do per-click.
A bit off-topic but what you describe is only part of the problem. While they're being contractually forced to produce new "art" on a regimented timeline they also usually have all-day every-day to spend improving their technique and producing that new art as opposed to 1 or 2 jobs with music on the side.
That can actually be a problem though.
My wife and I started an online business a few years ago and it grew to the point where I could sit back and "let the money roll in" so to speak. We weren't wealthy by any standards but we were living comfortably and didn't have what you would call a day job. I decided to focus on my music. I practiced 8 - 12 hours per day and released an album (sorry for the shameless self plug).
You know what I found ? Practicing all day every day was a great way to give myself "musical writer's block". Most of the "magic" happens when I've taken a break for a little while. Even people who knew their entire adolescent lives that they wanted to grow up to be musicians and carry it into adulthood (and actually have talent rather than delusions) can find that they grow tired of it pretty quick when it's an all day every day kind of thing. That's one of the possible reasons why bands like No Doubt and The Beatles (not to compare them, just use them as two examples of artists that have been through this) radically changed their style and genre from album to album. The only problem with that is that if you do it too much your label might drop you since they often want clones of your original success.
I completely agree with you about Gene Simmons and was actually going to bring him up as an example of why I feel that the rest of your post isn't quite accurate.
... Dido, Esthero, Thievery Corporation, Circa Survive, Audioslave, Velvet Revolver to name a few.
In the 60's and 70's you had bands like Kiss and The Monkeys who were entirely about show and very little about music. Boy Bands are the descendants of Motown groups. You mentioned Michael Jackson as being an example of a talented artist but it's arguably groups like The Jackson 5 that gave birth to modern boy-bands.
Madonna was taking off her clothes on stage while Britney Spears was in diapers.
There's a lot of great music still being made it's just that MTV and the radio only cater to the most requested (and thus the most marketed hits) and so if you turn on the radio it's very easy to get the impression that only crap is being produced. There's a lot of amazing artists out there who are getting signed to big labels and touring
My point is, mass media has always been a circus and it will always continue to be. But buried in the cheesy clown acts that please the children are the really talented Chinese acrobats who still manage to do some pretty amazing acts even though so much attention gets put on what the kids like.
Can't say that with the big boys. Once they "sell out" as it were, they all develop "star syndrome", and forget who got them where they are. Loyalties shift, from their art to their profits, and the art shows it.
Just curious. How many "big boys" have you known personally that "sold out" and stopped being your personal friend after they became famous and started releasing poor art ?
Also, as a musician I can tell you that a lot artists' "first album" are collections of songs that had been written and perfected over the many years that they were trying to put something together that's "successful". Then when they get signed they're under contract to put out so many albums over a specific period of time. That might support your theory that business is bad for art, but keep in mind that the bands that don't enter into such contracts end up releasing one album every 5 - 7 years (Esthero and Screaming Trees are two examples that come to mind) and their fans scream just as loudly for not having fresh content as Metallica fans scream loudly about their new stuff being crap.
It's a catch-22. Either bands put out a mediocre album every 1 - 2 years and tour and make enough money to live or they work day jobs and put out an awesome album every 5 - 7 years and don't make nearly enough to live doing what they really want to do. It's a personal choice and no one is in a position to say that one is better than the other.
I agree with you to a point. The problem is that "power users" often have very specific applications that require that power. Photoshop, games, AutoCAD, Maya/3D Max etc.
... and how many of them do you think are willing to do so on technical merits alone ? Especially considering there are many trade-offs (lack of games, commercial software and hardware you can "just buy and plug in" without researching first to make sure it's supported etc.).
The only "power task" (on desktops and workstations) that I can think of where Linux really shines is for programming and most programmers that I know absolutely love *nix and the ones that use Windows usually have good reasons (their employer is a win32 shop or they play a lot of games at home etc.)
The only way that kind of software will get ported is if the manufacturers see a market. There's a couple of ways that can happen but one of them is getting as many "average at home users" using Linux as possible. And the best way to do that is to give them incentive to chose Linux over Windows
And I've been running Slack since 2.1, Unix before that.
... I only know a handfull of people who go to a store to buy software. Most people that I know use what came with their computer or what someone gave them on a pirated cd. And it's usually web browser, office tools and games.
... but being able to go and buy any web cam or scanner and plug it in and know for certain that it will work because it says "Linux supported" on the box. That's a far way off. But that will come as more users come. It's kind of a catch 22 ... with no users it doesn't make financial sense for companies to support Linux and with no companies that support it there's no users willing to switch.
I've been running Linux for almost 10 years so I'm an old time Linux nerd myself. That fact automatically makes the two of us unqualified to talk about what the "average user" is looking for.
But just for shit's and giggles
Games and devices I will give you. It's not just software per-se
Having a big name company like Dell, Walmart etc. offer pre-packaged Linux PCs for cheap with out-the-box software pre-installed to accomplish the most common tasks is going to go a long way towards instilling trust in Linux. Now people know that if they buy this machine and it's crap they can take it back to the company they bought it from without having voided their warranty by installing Linux on it themselves etc. But more importantly they have no reason to think that it might be "crap" to begin with because they've got some big company brand name associated with the product.
When I was in grade school they had a program called "VIP". I can't remember what it was supposed to stand for (certainly not "very important person") ... but the program entailed a police officer coming to the classroom every week for a certain period of time to talk to the class about crime, drugs etc. I remember even at the time (I was 11 or 12 years old) thinking to myself how full of shit they were. But one of the things I remember the most clearly was the officer saying that they (the police) will always try to charge you with as many crimes as they possibly can when you are arrested.
That's one thing I took out of the class. Don't trust the police. Especially when they say "we're only trying to help you".
If you are wondering this took place in a Canadian public school.
I think the issue really applies mostly to random situations in public. For example, the other day I was at the bank. It was not busy at all. There were two tellers and each was serving a customer. I was next to be served and there was no one else. Then a man comes in and gets behind me in line. He came up RIGHT behind me to the point where I could hear him breathe, almost feel his breath on the back of my neck and he reeked of bad after shave.
I couldn't help but think to myself what the fuck is this guy's problem?! There is absolutely no one else in the bank. Mind your own personal fucking space asshole. It's not like it's busy as hell and the line was cramped and he had no choice. He chose to get so close to me as to make me feel very uncomfortable when there was more than plenty of space for us to both keep our distance.
Had I been in New York I imagine I might have had the nerve to turn around and punch the guy in the nose. But I'm a regular customer at that bank and I knew I was going to be served any second so it wasn't worth making a scene.
My guess is that's the type of situation that this "study" is examining. Whether people in virtual worlds would be as uncomfortable with random assholes getting too close as people in real life.