That must have been for their brilliant strategy of getting the stock price to go from $1.85 (02/28/2003 - Just before SCO sued "Linux") to $19.41 (09/14/2003) to $0.13 just over 50 months later. It takes a real talent to destroy a company like that. Of course, that's the kind of talent I wouldn't want running my company, but what do I know? I'm not management. (*checks hair* - Nope, not pointy.)
That fitness game is actually a peripheral that allows for all kinds of balance/weight related games. It's called the WiiFit (more info/videos at http://www.wiifit.org/ and no I'm not involved with that site in any way).
It should be available in the US on January 1st. (Good luck finding one, though. I'm guessing it'll quickly sell out and then become almost as hard to find as a Wii console.)
Apparently, the fitness game itself isn't that strenuous, but some of the other games (running a race, moving a marble across a platform to a hole, skiing, dancing, etc) are. Also, I've heard that other games developers are looking into how to use this. Tony Hawk has been quoted as being interested in using it for one of his skateboarding games. (I'm not a fan of those games, but I can see how it could be applied there.)
Under current management, yes, they seem like they would rather bring the whole company down in a huge fireball rather than readjust themselves to fit the bottom line. However, I think that once some of those new, nimbler companies arise (and we're already seeing the beginnings of them with the likes of eMusic and Amie Street), the old companies will be forced to change course. Especially once new blood (that better understands the situation) rises into the executive ranks.
Sure they might start by trying to litigate or legislate the new-comers out of business, but that approach will only buy them a small amount of time. Then they'll create new "divisions" or "spin-off" companies which will experiment with the new model without impacting the name of the old model. Eventually, they will be forced to move completely into the new model. Or they will be forced out of business. Hopefully, if the latter happens, the copyrights to the music will revert to the artists and not to some random IP vulture that picks at the corpse. (Though the realist in me knows that the IP vultures will be feeding well when the old record companies start dying.)
In the "old days" it was necessary to provide recording studios, press plastic records, bribe DJs, buy good reviews and coerce musicians into making records to order. Nowadays, most of those functions can be bought-in by the artist themselves. Record companies are now recognised as a barrier rather than the "necessary evil" they once were.
I almost completely agree. I think that the big record companies as they are now are unnecessary. However, I don't think we'll see record companies go away completely. Instead, they'll change into part-record company/part-ad agency. An artist will sign with Record Company X to promote their new music. The record company will be able to recommend places to record, etc, but the artist won't be contractually bound to use those services. (At most, the record company might get a kickback under the table for promoting those services.) The record company also won't take ownership of the copyright on the music. What the record company will do mainly is promotion. They will arrange for the radio airplay. They will get articles in magazines about the band. They will arrange for the band to play on the hip new TV sitcom. Whatever it takes to get the band's name and music out there, the record company will do. And if the band doesn't like how the record company is handling promotions, they can dump them and sign up with a new record company. (Similar to how any company can dump their ad agency and go with another one.)
Take a different example -- a burglar breaks into a home, steals a lot of stuff, and also sees child porn on the way out the door. If the burglar gives an anonymous tip to the police (or bargains for a lighter sentence in exchange for testimony) then the evidence can probably still be used, even though the burglar had no right whatsoever to be in your house.
I'd argue that the child porn that the burglar saw probably shouldn't be admitted as evidence. It's entirely possible that it was planted by the burglar on their way out. However, the evidence could be used to get a wiretap warrant and when the accused obtains (or tries to obtain) more child porn, the police can nab him. As a bonus, they can then get the child porn supplier as well.
Oh, and this could definitely blow up in the RIAA's face. Clear Channel, Infinity and the like are notorious for being very, very tough business people. If this proposal goes through, and if they aren't able to negotiate a miniscule enough rate per play, I wouldn't put it past them to start buying up the larger RIAA members, just to get their music catalogs. Would there be anti-trust implications? Sure. Would it be worth a few tens of millions here or there to try. Absolutely.
If this went through, I actually wonder if the broadcast industry (read: Clear Channel) wouldn't invest in a few small indie labels/music sites. Not buy them outright, but get into deals like "I'll give you $10 million per year to be able to play anything from your catalog." Sites like eMusic and Amie Street could suddenly find themselves the recipients of Clear Channel funding and promotional capacity. And many people decide what songs/CDs to buy based on what gets radio airtime.
Should the RIAA labels suddenly find themselves banned from Clear Channel stations, how many of those labels will get a number 1 hit? How long after the switch would it take for the first eMusic/Amie Street/whatever artist to hit the top 10? Likely just a pipe dream, I know, but it would be a good way for Clear Channel to 1) give a nice, corporate middle finger to the RIAA, 2) expand their musical selection, and 3) gain some good PR in the music world (for supporting indie artists).
"Suppose you describe one million years of events to each roll of papyrus. That means you'll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls. You'll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to stammer after a while. I'll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the voice and I have the strength, who's going to copy it? We've got to have a guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where will we get royalties from?"
I completely agree. In fact, many people I talk to nowadays don't see why companies should ever have to give copyright up at all and think of the Public Domain as a bad idea. The corporations have so indoctrinated (most of) us to seeing copyrights as lasting for more than a lifetime, that people are now accepting them as infinite in length. The counter example I use is Shakespeare's works. For example, just try tracking down the correct current owner of Hamlet to get permission to put on a play.
The 98% figure was an off-the-top-of-my-head notion. In fact, I was probably being very generous. For every Star Wars that generates massive floods of profits 30+ years later, I'm sure there are hundreds of films that generate a trickle at best. Perhaps if corporations want to keep things out of the public domain, the fees should be ever increasing. You get 14 years for your initial copyright. The first renewal (14 years) is $10. The second renewal is $1,000. The third renewal is $100,000. The fourth renewal is $10,000,000. And so on. Is Mickey Mouse really worth a $1 billion renewal fee? If not, let him go Public Domain. If Mickey is worth the fee, then the government gets money that can be used for various purposes (e.g. help pay down the national debt) and Disney gets to hold onto Mickey for 14 more years.
I wouldn't say that the Internet has completely eliminated the middleman. Just that the middleman's job description is going to drastically change.
Before, the middleman's job was to get the music produced via expensive equipment and personnel. After that, the middleman handled the CD/Tape/Vinyl printing, shipping, and sales. The middleman also arranged for airtime on radio stations. In exchange for this, the middleman took control of the copyrights and took most of the profits.
Now, the equipment is inexpensive, it can be operated by a moderately skilled person, sales can be conducted digitally (eliminating pressing and shipping) and radio has been all but replaced by iPods. However, with the new ease of entry, more artists can enter the field. So how does an artist stand out from the crowd? Good songs help, but might not be enough to be heard over all of the bad music out there.
(Re)Enter the middleman. This time, though, the middleman is a humble promoter. The middleman would know where to go online and who to talk to to promote the artist's new songs. In exchange, the middleman would take a fee, not a cut of the profits and definitely not ownership of copyrights. The middleman might be called a label to keep with the old terminology, but it would bear nearly no resemblance to the big labels of today. They would be leaner beasts and subject to the artist's whims instead of having the artist subject to the label's whims. (Label not promoting a song well? Bye Bye promotion contract and hello promotion contract for that song with another label.) Sure, this will mean that a lot of "fat" would be trimmed, but it's the only way that labels will survive in the future.
These are the things a record company's "advance" gives you.
Some other things the record company's advance gives you:
- Loss of copyright ownership over your recordings. The label now owns them and you can't get them back if you switch labels. (Except in rare instances.)
- Indentured servitude. After deducting "costs", your CD will inevitably show a loss. No, it doesn't matter that it sold really, really well and hit #1 within days of release. It still didn't make enough money. The label's accountants will see to this. (See: Steve Albini's The Problem With Music http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.html ) This means that you need to make a second CD for the label to make up for your first "failure". Oh, and that CD might not make money either so a third might be in order.
I buy my music from AmieStreet.com and while there are some bad recordings there, there are also some wonderful ones. These people are mainly signed up to small indie labels and don't spend thousands of dollars on the best equipment and thousands more on the best sound guys to tweak every last note. Many of them, I'm sure, have day jobs also. Does this mean that they don't make a fortune off of their music? Sure. But they do it because they love singing/performing, not because of the cash. Besides, how many big label artists actually wind up rolling in dough for the rest of their lives versus winding up on "Where Are They Now" shows in 10 years.
Yes, copyrights are good. Unfortunately, the good that they do is currently countered by the length of the copyrights. If I write a book, why should I continue to get profits from it 50 years later? Why should my (currently not born) grandchildren profit off of a book that I write today? Will getting small payments from a book written in 2007 somehow give them an incentive to create new works 70 years after I die? Of course not.
In fact, I'd wager that 98% of works out there don't take in any significant money after 40 years. However, big corporations want to a) milk that remaining 2% for all they are worth and b) want to hold on to the 98% just in case something in there is worth something. This lead to them lobbying for extended copyright lengths until we got to where we are now. Life of the author + 70 years for individuals. 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication (whichever is shortest) for corporations. (And you can bet that Disney will work to extend copyright terms before Mickey falls into the Public Domain in 2023.)
IMO, we would be best off by moving back to the original copyright term length of 14 years plus a one-time 14 year renewal. This would allow us to keep strong copyright protection, while balancing that with the needs of the people to have a strong Public Domain. The only compromise I would make would be a phase in period for items whose copyright would be expired or would be expiring soon under the new 14+14 plan. With the strength of the "pro-long-copyright" lobby in Congress, I'm not holding my breath though.
1 - Many systems don't come with XP CDs anymore. They come with "restoration partitions" that revert the entire system to a default factory state and might incur data loss.
2 - I'd bet that most users wouldn't know how to use their XP CD or restoration partition if they needed to.
So, yes, messing up the OS this bad would be "bricking" the computer for these users. Sure the fix is simple to you and me, but it's horrendously technical to them. This doesn't even get into the fact that these people might now mentally associate installing updates with catastrophic system damage and might even shy away from installing Windows Updates.
A friend of mine surprised me by actually trying to argue that we shouldn't prohibit torture as it would "limit our options" when it came to interrogating prisoners. All of my reasoning about how torture gives unreliable information was greeted with "Well, you weren't tortured, so you don't know." Then it struck me. *He* was never tortured either. I pointed out this inconsistency in his argument to him, and told him that I would defer to someone who was tortured for advice. John McCain was tortured as a soldier and is now strongly against the use of torture. That's good enough for me. (Even though I disagree with him on other points and probably wouldn't vote for him, I respect and admire his stance on torture.)
The Bill of Rights was a compromise between two camps of founding fathers. The Federalists thought that the Constitution as-is protected everyone's rights. The Anti-Federalists thought that these rights needed to be spelled out more lest government decide to take away whatever wasn't spelled out in the Constitution. The compromise was to make the first ten amendments to the Constitution the "Bill of Rights." While a good compromise, the Anti-Federalists have been proven right as the government tries to take away rights because "they're not in the Constitution" (and as people accept that as a valid reason for taking away a right).
I'm not too current with my History of Albums Worldwide knowledge, but isn't the album a relatively recent occurance? Weren't songs previously released as they were finished? If so, this might be just the death of the (relatively) short-lived album concept.
As a side bonus, since they won't have recording industry execs telling them "If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit" and cutting the song down to 3:05. We might see more songs five or more minutes in length. Of course, this might lead to some really bad 5 minute songs, but it might also lead to some brilliant 8 minute songs that would otherwise have been sliced and diced into an awful 3 minute version.
There's a tricky line to walk here for Nintendo. If they ramp up too quickly, then they risk oversaturating the market and being left with too much production capacity and not enough demand. If they go too slowly, they risk losing sales to Microsoft and Sony or just having people get frustrated and speculating about whether Nintendo is doing this intentionally or not. Plus, they might not be able to ramp up as quickly as they would like to. The production facilities for gaming devices might just not be adequate to handle the type of cross-over (gamer and non-gamer) demand that the Wii is getting. If this is true, then it would take time to build and/or buy more production. I just don't see how intentionally keeping the Wii supply scarce would benefit Nintendo more than it would harm them.
My wife managed to get me one as a present covering Father's Day, our anniversary, and my birthday. This was back in late-May. Now, I play it at least once a week with my four year old son. He loves WiiSports bowling and golf. Ok, he doesn't quite grasp the concept of golf and loves whacking the ball when it is 2 feet away from the hole into the water trap 50 feet away. Still he has fun. When it comes to bowling, though, he's surprisingly good. He has a high score of 121 and learned how to aim the ball to pick up spares simply from observing me doing it. I never tried to teach him it figuring it was too advanced, but I guess the Wii's controls are just that intuitive.
Just for the record, while I like the occasional game, I'm definitely not in the gamer market. The last console that I owned was the original NES and that was back when I was a kid in my parents' house. So I can completely see why they have a supply issue. They have a supply chain geared for the gamer market and a product being purchased by gamers and non-gamers alike. While they are increasing the supply chain as fast as they can, it's probably none too easy to catch up with the demand. (And they definitely don't want to ramp up too much and then be left with an overly huge supply chain and too many Wiis on the shelf.)
I'll definitely agree that there are bad teachers. For awhile, I was a second grade dropout because my teacher at the time (Mrs. Demperio) hated kids, boys in particular, and me specifically. She would make fun of me in front of the class and would assign me extra work just to keep me busy (write out the alphabet and hand it in every day -- my mother caught on that she wasn't grading it, just handing it back, so my mother had me hand the same piece of paper in over and over). My parents went to the principal and asked for me to be moved, but he refused calling her his "best teacher." I so hated going to school that I avoided it at every opportunity. I went to the in-class bathroom just to get some time away from her, I welcomed a week home with the chickenpox as a better fate than a week with Mrs. Demperio, and I refused to go to school for a week or so.
In contrast, I credit my third grade teacher with all of my academic successes later in life. Mrs. Stravedes gave me the standard reading test, looked at my results, and then insisted that I take the Advanced test because I scored so well. When I aced the Advanced test also, she put me in the advanced reading group. That lead to me taking advanced courses, college level courses in high school, and just generally loving school (academically, anyway) instead of dreading it.
Perhaps I should qualify my statement, then. Parents should seek every opportunity to work with the teacher in their child's education. It's a fine line. On one hand, the parents shouldn't simply trust that the teacher knows best. On the other hand, they shouldn't get in the teacher's way simply because they assume that they know best.
As for "if the student doesn't succeed, the teacher has failed", I've heard plenty of stories from my wife about students who were told that they weren't doing well. They were given the chance to have some extra tutoring by my wife. They didn't show up. She called their parents. The parents either ignored it, or said they would take steps to fix the situation (have the kid come for extra help, etc) but then didn't. Then, when the grades came in, the parents demanded to know why their kid wasn't on the honor roll. (All girl's private Catholic school. Some of the parents felt that their kids deserved to be on the honor roll because the parents paid tuition. Scary, but true.)
Unfortunately, the system as it is now is tilted against the good teachers. Teachers aren't paid well and get a lot of stress from students/parents. Plus, the old "they work school hours and get summers off" myth is false. I watched as my wife went in early to set up, stayed late to grade papers, took more papers home to grade at night, and used the summers to come up with new lessons. We once figured out her salary per hours actually worked and it was way less than minimum wage. She would have made more money flipping burgers at McDonald's than teaching. Once our second child arrived, we figured in daycare costs, taxes, and her salary and figured that her working full time would wind up bringing in less than $4,000 per year! That was the breaking point. It just wasn't worth it and she decided to stay home for our second child's first year. (Whether she goes back to teaching remains to be seen.)
While she was teaching, though, she saw two things happen to many teachers. Either they stayed in the profession and got so beaten down that they basically did the absolute minimum needed to get the kids to the next grade or they dropped out of teaching after the first year. In short, perfectly good teachers were either becoming bad teachers (at best mediocre teachers) or leaving entirely. It's a shame, really, and it is jeopardizing the education of our children.
As for choosing a town with "good schools" and choosing a community with "good parents," I think the two criteria are related. The type of person who is likely to seek out a good school system is the type of parent who will be involved in their child's education. Good schools require that parents get involved (among other things).
As the father of two boys (albeit one who is an infant) and the husband of a teacher, I can say that parental involvement is important. However, there is such a thing as too much involvement. I can't count the times that a parent complained to my wife about something she did in the classroom. Inevitably, it would begin "I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but....." Then they would use their "expertise" (e.g. as a school librarian) to tell my wife how she should be doing her job. (Of course, she did see the other side of the spectrum too. Parents who didn't care what their kids did at all. The kid could be failing and the parents were still pulling her from school for some extracurricular horse riding competition or something.)
So, yes, parental involvement is important, but when it comes to schools, it's important to work *with* the teachers to get things done.
You know, now that I think about it, SCO's case does seem like that classic Simpsons episode where Homer winds up on a skateboard in an attempt to jump Springfield Gorge. He's in midair declaring that he's going to make it, but then hits every single rock and tree on the way down. Then, after the ambulance loads him up, the ambulance crashes into a tree, his gurney rolls out, and he plummets down the gorge once again. SCO's case is about as tattered as Homer's body must have been after that second plummet. Only, unlike Homer Simpson, SCO won't have a fantastically impossible recovery in time for next week's episode.
Side effects include: Green skin, bad fashion taste (some test subjects began wearing purple shorts), out of control anger/rage, and the urge to smash whatever is nearby.
This just seems to prove two things about copyright that I've been saying for awhile:
1 - Copyright terms need to be cut back. I think they should return to the original 14 year span plus a one time 14 year extension, but I'd be willing to settle for 20 years plus a one time 20 year extension. (I'd also be willing to grant the concession of a phase in period to keep 40+ years of copyrighted material from hitting the Public Domain all at once.)
2 - Penalties for copyright violation need to be brought back to reality. In the article's hypothetical example, Professor John could be sued for $750 - $150,000 for each (copyrighted) e-mail that he forwarded. This is despite the fact that the actual damages from forwarding an e-mail are practically zero. (Or at least should be. If you have information in an e-mail that could be that devastating were it forwarded, perhaps you should look into another delivery system.)
I would make non-commercial copyright infringement (infringement without attempt to profit) liable for the cost of the infringing material times 10. (Somewhat random number chosen to give the fine a deterrent value. Otherwise people will just infringe, figuring they can pay up if caught.) Using this system, the RIAA could sue a P2P downloader, but would only be able to get about $10 per song. (Price on iTunes - $0.99 - times 10.) Commercial infringers (e.g. CD press operations) would still be on the hook for the full $750 - $150,000 fine.
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That must have been for their brilliant strategy of getting the stock price to go from $1.85 (02/28/2003 - Just before SCO sued "Linux") to $19.41 (09/14/2003) to $0.13 just over 50 months later. It takes a real talent to destroy a company like that. Of course, that's the kind of talent I wouldn't want running my company, but what do I know? I'm not management. (*checks hair* - Nope, not pointy.)
That fitness game is actually a peripheral that allows for all kinds of balance/weight related games. It's called the WiiFit (more info/videos at http://www.wiifit.org/ and no I'm not involved with that site in any way).
It should be available in the US on January 1st. (Good luck finding one, though. I'm guessing it'll quickly sell out and then become almost as hard to find as a Wii console.)
Apparently, the fitness game itself isn't that strenuous, but some of the other games (running a race, moving a marble across a platform to a hole, skiing, dancing, etc) are. Also, I've heard that other games developers are looking into how to use this. Tony Hawk has been quoted as being interested in using it for one of his skateboarding games. (I'm not a fan of those games, but I can see how it could be applied there.)
Under current management, yes, they seem like they would rather bring the whole company down in a huge fireball rather than readjust themselves to fit the bottom line. However, I think that once some of those new, nimbler companies arise (and we're already seeing the beginnings of them with the likes of eMusic and Amie Street), the old companies will be forced to change course. Especially once new blood (that better understands the situation) rises into the executive ranks.
Sure they might start by trying to litigate or legislate the new-comers out of business, but that approach will only buy them a small amount of time. Then they'll create new "divisions" or "spin-off" companies which will experiment with the new model without impacting the name of the old model. Eventually, they will be forced to move completely into the new model. Or they will be forced out of business. Hopefully, if the latter happens, the copyrights to the music will revert to the artists and not to some random IP vulture that picks at the corpse. (Though the realist in me knows that the IP vultures will be feeding well when the old record companies start dying.)
I almost completely agree. I think that the big record companies as they are now are unnecessary. However, I don't think we'll see record companies go away completely. Instead, they'll change into part-record company/part-ad agency. An artist will sign with Record Company X to promote their new music. The record company will be able to recommend places to record, etc, but the artist won't be contractually bound to use those services. (At most, the record company might get a kickback under the table for promoting those services.) The record company also won't take ownership of the copyright on the music. What the record company will do mainly is promotion. They will arrange for the radio airplay. They will get articles in magazines about the band. They will arrange for the band to play on the hip new TV sitcom. Whatever it takes to get the band's name and music out there, the record company will do. And if the band doesn't like how the record company is handling promotions, they can dump them and sign up with a new record company. (Similar to how any company can dump their ad agency and go with another one.)
I'd argue that the child porn that the burglar saw probably shouldn't be admitted as evidence. It's entirely possible that it was planted by the burglar on their way out. However, the evidence could be used to get a wiretap warrant and when the accused obtains (or tries to obtain) more child porn, the police can nab him. As a bonus, they can then get the child porn supplier as well.
If this went through, I actually wonder if the broadcast industry (read: Clear Channel) wouldn't invest in a few small indie labels/music sites. Not buy them outright, but get into deals like "I'll give you $10 million per year to be able to play anything from your catalog." Sites like eMusic and Amie Street could suddenly find themselves the recipients of Clear Channel funding and promotional capacity. And many people decide what songs/CDs to buy based on what gets radio airtime.
Should the RIAA labels suddenly find themselves banned from Clear Channel stations, how many of those labels will get a number 1 hit? How long after the switch would it take for the first eMusic/Amie Street/whatever artist to hit the top 10? Likely just a pipe dream, I know, but it would be a good way for Clear Channel to 1) give a nice, corporate middle finger to the RIAA, 2) expand their musical selection, and 3) gain some good PR in the music world (for supporting indie artists).
The quote on the bottom of the page seems oddly appropriate.
Weinberg's Principle: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
I completely agree. In fact, many people I talk to nowadays don't see why companies should ever have to give copyright up at all and think of the Public Domain as a bad idea. The corporations have so indoctrinated (most of) us to seeing copyrights as lasting for more than a lifetime, that people are now accepting them as infinite in length. The counter example I use is Shakespeare's works. For example, just try tracking down the correct current owner of Hamlet to get permission to put on a play.
The 98% figure was an off-the-top-of-my-head notion. In fact, I was probably being very generous. For every Star Wars that generates massive floods of profits 30+ years later, I'm sure there are hundreds of films that generate a trickle at best. Perhaps if corporations want to keep things out of the public domain, the fees should be ever increasing. You get 14 years for your initial copyright. The first renewal (14 years) is $10. The second renewal is $1,000. The third renewal is $100,000. The fourth renewal is $10,000,000. And so on. Is Mickey Mouse really worth a $1 billion renewal fee? If not, let him go Public Domain. If Mickey is worth the fee, then the government gets money that can be used for various purposes (e.g. help pay down the national debt) and Disney gets to hold onto Mickey for 14 more years.
I wouldn't say that the Internet has completely eliminated the middleman. Just that the middleman's job description is going to drastically change.
Before, the middleman's job was to get the music produced via expensive equipment and personnel. After that, the middleman handled the CD/Tape/Vinyl printing, shipping, and sales. The middleman also arranged for airtime on radio stations. In exchange for this, the middleman took control of the copyrights and took most of the profits.
Now, the equipment is inexpensive, it can be operated by a moderately skilled person, sales can be conducted digitally (eliminating pressing and shipping) and radio has been all but replaced by iPods. However, with the new ease of entry, more artists can enter the field. So how does an artist stand out from the crowd? Good songs help, but might not be enough to be heard over all of the bad music out there.
(Re)Enter the middleman. This time, though, the middleman is a humble promoter. The middleman would know where to go online and who to talk to to promote the artist's new songs. In exchange, the middleman would take a fee, not a cut of the profits and definitely not ownership of copyrights. The middleman might be called a label to keep with the old terminology, but it would bear nearly no resemblance to the big labels of today. They would be leaner beasts and subject to the artist's whims instead of having the artist subject to the label's whims. (Label not promoting a song well? Bye Bye promotion contract and hello promotion contract for that song with another label.) Sure, this will mean that a lot of "fat" would be trimmed, but it's the only way that labels will survive in the future.
Some other things the record company's advance gives you:
- Loss of copyright ownership over your recordings. The label now owns them and you can't get them back if you switch labels. (Except in rare instances.)
- Indentured servitude. After deducting "costs", your CD will inevitably show a loss. No, it doesn't matter that it sold really, really well and hit #1 within days of release. It still didn't make enough money. The label's accountants will see to this. (See: Steve Albini's The Problem With Music http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.html ) This means that you need to make a second CD for the label to make up for your first "failure". Oh, and that CD might not make money either so a third might be in order.
I buy my music from AmieStreet.com and while there are some bad recordings there, there are also some wonderful ones. These people are mainly signed up to small indie labels and don't spend thousands of dollars on the best equipment and thousands more on the best sound guys to tweak every last note. Many of them, I'm sure, have day jobs also. Does this mean that they don't make a fortune off of their music? Sure. But they do it because they love singing/performing, not because of the cash. Besides, how many big label artists actually wind up rolling in dough for the rest of their lives versus winding up on "Where Are They Now" shows in 10 years.
Yes, copyrights are good. Unfortunately, the good that they do is currently countered by the length of the copyrights. If I write a book, why should I continue to get profits from it 50 years later? Why should my (currently not born) grandchildren profit off of a book that I write today? Will getting small payments from a book written in 2007 somehow give them an incentive to create new works 70 years after I die? Of course not.
In fact, I'd wager that 98% of works out there don't take in any significant money after 40 years. However, big corporations want to a) milk that remaining 2% for all they are worth and b) want to hold on to the 98% just in case something in there is worth something. This lead to them lobbying for extended copyright lengths until we got to where we are now. Life of the author + 70 years for individuals. 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication (whichever is shortest) for corporations. (And you can bet that Disney will work to extend copyright terms before Mickey falls into the Public Domain in 2023.)
IMO, we would be best off by moving back to the original copyright term length of 14 years plus a one-time 14 year renewal. This would allow us to keep strong copyright protection, while balancing that with the needs of the people to have a strong Public Domain. The only compromise I would make would be a phase in period for items whose copyright would be expired or would be expiring soon under the new 14+14 plan. With the strength of the "pro-long-copyright" lobby in Congress, I'm not holding my breath though.
Except that:
1 - Many systems don't come with XP CDs anymore. They come with "restoration partitions" that revert the entire system to a default factory state and might incur data loss.
2 - I'd bet that most users wouldn't know how to use their XP CD or restoration partition if they needed to.
So, yes, messing up the OS this bad would be "bricking" the computer for these users. Sure the fix is simple to you and me, but it's horrendously technical to them. This doesn't even get into the fact that these people might now mentally associate installing updates with catastrophic system damage and might even shy away from installing Windows Updates.
A friend of mine surprised me by actually trying to argue that we shouldn't prohibit torture as it would "limit our options" when it came to interrogating prisoners. All of my reasoning about how torture gives unreliable information was greeted with "Well, you weren't tortured, so you don't know." Then it struck me. *He* was never tortured either. I pointed out this inconsistency in his argument to him, and told him that I would defer to someone who was tortured for advice. John McCain was tortured as a soldier and is now strongly against the use of torture. That's good enough for me. (Even though I disagree with him on other points and probably wouldn't vote for him, I respect and admire his stance on torture.)
The Bill of Rights was a compromise between two camps of founding fathers. The Federalists thought that the Constitution as-is protected everyone's rights. The Anti-Federalists thought that these rights needed to be spelled out more lest government decide to take away whatever wasn't spelled out in the Constitution. The compromise was to make the first ten amendments to the Constitution the "Bill of Rights." While a good compromise, the Anti-Federalists have been proven right as the government tries to take away rights because "they're not in the Constitution" (and as people accept that as a valid reason for taking away a right).
So by fighting the war on terror like this, we've let the terrorists win. It'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
I'm not too current with my History of Albums Worldwide knowledge, but isn't the album a relatively recent occurance? Weren't songs previously released as they were finished? If so, this might be just the death of the (relatively) short-lived album concept.
As a side bonus, since they won't have recording industry execs telling them "If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit" and cutting the song down to 3:05. We might see more songs five or more minutes in length. Of course, this might lead to some really bad 5 minute songs, but it might also lead to some brilliant 8 minute songs that would otherwise have been sliced and diced into an awful 3 minute version.
There's a tricky line to walk here for Nintendo. If they ramp up too quickly, then they risk oversaturating the market and being left with too much production capacity and not enough demand. If they go too slowly, they risk losing sales to Microsoft and Sony or just having people get frustrated and speculating about whether Nintendo is doing this intentionally or not. Plus, they might not be able to ramp up as quickly as they would like to. The production facilities for gaming devices might just not be adequate to handle the type of cross-over (gamer and non-gamer) demand that the Wii is getting. If this is true, then it would take time to build and/or buy more production. I just don't see how intentionally keeping the Wii supply scarce would benefit Nintendo more than it would harm them.
My wife managed to get me one as a present covering Father's Day, our anniversary, and my birthday. This was back in late-May. Now, I play it at least once a week with my four year old son. He loves WiiSports bowling and golf. Ok, he doesn't quite grasp the concept of golf and loves whacking the ball when it is 2 feet away from the hole into the water trap 50 feet away. Still he has fun. When it comes to bowling, though, he's surprisingly good. He has a high score of 121 and learned how to aim the ball to pick up spares simply from observing me doing it. I never tried to teach him it figuring it was too advanced, but I guess the Wii's controls are just that intuitive.
Just for the record, while I like the occasional game, I'm definitely not in the gamer market. The last console that I owned was the original NES and that was back when I was a kid in my parents' house. So I can completely see why they have a supply issue. They have a supply chain geared for the gamer market and a product being purchased by gamers and non-gamers alike. While they are increasing the supply chain as fast as they can, it's probably none too easy to catch up with the demand. (And they definitely don't want to ramp up too much and then be left with an overly huge supply chain and too many Wiis on the shelf.)
I'll definitely agree that there are bad teachers. For awhile, I was a second grade dropout because my teacher at the time (Mrs. Demperio) hated kids, boys in particular, and me specifically. She would make fun of me in front of the class and would assign me extra work just to keep me busy (write out the alphabet and hand it in every day -- my mother caught on that she wasn't grading it, just handing it back, so my mother had me hand the same piece of paper in over and over). My parents went to the principal and asked for me to be moved, but he refused calling her his "best teacher." I so hated going to school that I avoided it at every opportunity. I went to the in-class bathroom just to get some time away from her, I welcomed a week home with the chickenpox as a better fate than a week with Mrs. Demperio, and I refused to go to school for a week or so.
In contrast, I credit my third grade teacher with all of my academic successes later in life. Mrs. Stravedes gave me the standard reading test, looked at my results, and then insisted that I take the Advanced test because I scored so well. When I aced the Advanced test also, she put me in the advanced reading group. That lead to me taking advanced courses, college level courses in high school, and just generally loving school (academically, anyway) instead of dreading it.
Perhaps I should qualify my statement, then. Parents should seek every opportunity to work with the teacher in their child's education. It's a fine line. On one hand, the parents shouldn't simply trust that the teacher knows best. On the other hand, they shouldn't get in the teacher's way simply because they assume that they know best.
As for "if the student doesn't succeed, the teacher has failed", I've heard plenty of stories from my wife about students who were told that they weren't doing well. They were given the chance to have some extra tutoring by my wife. They didn't show up. She called their parents. The parents either ignored it, or said they would take steps to fix the situation (have the kid come for extra help, etc) but then didn't. Then, when the grades came in, the parents demanded to know why their kid wasn't on the honor roll. (All girl's private Catholic school. Some of the parents felt that their kids deserved to be on the honor roll because the parents paid tuition. Scary, but true.)
Unfortunately, the system as it is now is tilted against the good teachers. Teachers aren't paid well and get a lot of stress from students/parents. Plus, the old "they work school hours and get summers off" myth is false. I watched as my wife went in early to set up, stayed late to grade papers, took more papers home to grade at night, and used the summers to come up with new lessons. We once figured out her salary per hours actually worked and it was way less than minimum wage. She would have made more money flipping burgers at McDonald's than teaching. Once our second child arrived, we figured in daycare costs, taxes, and her salary and figured that her working full time would wind up bringing in less than $4,000 per year! That was the breaking point. It just wasn't worth it and she decided to stay home for our second child's first year. (Whether she goes back to teaching remains to be seen.)
While she was teaching, though, she saw two things happen to many teachers. Either they stayed in the profession and got so beaten down that they basically did the absolute minimum needed to get the kids to the next grade or they dropped out of teaching after the first year. In short, perfectly good teachers were either becoming bad teachers (at best mediocre teachers) or leaving entirely. It's a shame, really, and it is jeopardizing the education of our children.
As the father of two boys (albeit one who is an infant) and the husband of a teacher, I can say that parental involvement is important. However, there is such a thing as too much involvement. I can't count the times that a parent complained to my wife about something she did in the classroom. Inevitably, it would begin "I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but....." Then they would use their "expertise" (e.g. as a school librarian) to tell my wife how she should be doing her job. (Of course, she did see the other side of the spectrum too. Parents who didn't care what their kids did at all. The kid could be failing and the parents were still pulling her from school for some extracurricular horse riding competition or something.)
So, yes, parental involvement is important, but when it comes to schools, it's important to work *with* the teachers to get things done.
An LG Phone huh? That's interesting.
*checks shirt pocket and sees an LG VX8350*
Ahhhhhh!!!!!!! *boom!*
You know, now that I think about it, SCO's case does seem like that classic Simpsons episode where Homer winds up on a skateboard in an attempt to jump Springfield Gorge. He's in midair declaring that he's going to make it, but then hits every single rock and tree on the way down. Then, after the ambulance loads him up, the ambulance crashes into a tree, his gurney rolls out, and he plummets down the gorge once again. SCO's case is about as tattered as Homer's body must have been after that second plummet. Only, unlike Homer Simpson, SCO won't have a fantastically impossible recovery in time for next week's episode.
Side effects include: Green skin, bad fashion taste (some test subjects began wearing purple shorts), out of control anger/rage, and the urge to smash whatever is nearby.
This just seems to prove two things about copyright that I've been saying for awhile:
1 - Copyright terms need to be cut back. I think they should return to the original 14 year span plus a one time 14 year extension, but I'd be willing to settle for 20 years plus a one time 20 year extension. (I'd also be willing to grant the concession of a phase in period to keep 40+ years of copyrighted material from hitting the Public Domain all at once.)
2 - Penalties for copyright violation need to be brought back to reality. In the article's hypothetical example, Professor John could be sued for $750 - $150,000 for each (copyrighted) e-mail that he forwarded. This is despite the fact that the actual damages from forwarding an e-mail are practically zero. (Or at least should be. If you have information in an e-mail that could be that devastating were it forwarded, perhaps you should look into another delivery system.)
I would make non-commercial copyright infringement (infringement without attempt to profit) liable for the cost of the infringing material times 10. (Somewhat random number chosen to give the fine a deterrent value. Otherwise people will just infringe, figuring they can pay up if caught.) Using this system, the RIAA could sue a P2P downloader, but would only be able to get about $10 per song. (Price on iTunes - $0.99 - times 10.) Commercial infringers (e.g. CD press operations) would still be on the hook for the full $750 - $150,000 fine.