Oops, spoke too quickly.:-) Slight amendment to my above post: companies gave us CDs to play over the in-store system; we never had to play them, but I do remember the rule that we couldn't bring in any outside CDs, that we had to use what was already there (i.e. company-provided discs; fortunately there was decent music in the pile). My bad. -ryry
I don't think labels pay stores for in-store music time. I worked in a Sam Goody store for a couple months last year. No one ever paid us to play any certain music; we all just played whatever the hell we wanted (within reason, of course, no profanity over the loudspeakers, etc.) Maybe this does go on and I wasn't there to see it, though.
What labels do pay for, however, is the in-store placement of CDs (in relation to the cash register and the main aisles), cardboard cutouts of the artists, which artists we are supposed to recommend at the cash register, etc. Labels actually hire companies to come out to the store and make sure that the Limp Bizkit poster is hanging in the store window just beside the door, that the Britney Spears cardboard stand-up is sitting right in front of the counter, etc. The software industry works the same way.
-ryry
Re:How the rights of artists can be protected, tod
on
Helping Artists Online
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· Score: 1
I believe it was from Steve Albini, and somewhere in this thread somebody else posted a link to it. Then again, I could be wrong, I don't really know... -ryry
Either you have an expansive grasp of the English language that can confused the hell out of anyone, or you used that "complaint generator" that recently hit The Register:-) -ryry
Fanning's mistake was to try and corporatize Napster. He wasn't satisfied with releasing an easy-to-use tool, he had to try and turn it into a successful business and make some money off it. Now he's got to balance Napster's sort of rebel reputation with the need to fit into corporate America, which isn't an easy thing to accomplish.
Damned if you do, damned if you dont:
If they pursue litigation with the Offspring, then their mostly teenage/young adult fanbase will see them as "selling out" and not only messing with a cool band but totally reversing their opinions on copyrighted material. If they leave the Offspring alone, then they're losing a possibly lucrative revenue stream in merchandising (they could make their own "official" gear, but c'mon, they'd sell it for more and it's cool to have the unofficial stuff as well:-)
I for one hope Napster pulls through - I think it's a great piece of technology and that the RIAA should work with them, not against them, to ensure the future of digital music. But I still think Napster should have been left as a Gnutella-style freebie tool with no intention of profitability underlying the coolness of swapping MP3s online.
As it is right now, they are cultivating an elitist image reminiscent of how many people view Microsoft - anticompetetive and unwilling to cooperate with others to further the technology empowering its very product. I certainly hope things turn around.
I don't know jack about Linux, cracking, or whatnot, but the whole series was very enjoyable (a shame that Noel's systems had to suffer in order to produce such a well-written story). He didn't bother to explain what terms like setuid and statd meant, because he obviously was writing for a Linux-smart crowd, but even me in my ignorance of the Most Holy OS could understand the plight of a sysadmin facing down a cracker like that. I understood most of the terms in context, though. Very well done series in all!! -ryry
Although there are no known studies relating to college students and their work hours, it seems they are also bound to their desks and dorms by environments in which faculty, friends and other members of the college community increasingly do their work online. Studies of time spent on instant messaging services would probably show staggering use. And research possibilities online are boundless.
Man, is that ever true. I'm a computer science student at Virginia Tech, which requires each student to have a computer. Every one of our CS assignments are posted (along with sample data files) on the course's web site and we even submit our programs to an automatic grader over the Internet. Even non-CS courses post MP3s of lectures or homework assignments, supplemental material, recommended readings, contact information, research support, and all that good stuff. Not only does almost every course (except maybe english courses) have a separate web page, but most of the CS courses I've seen let students join up on a massive listserv for discussion of problems and announcements of dates by professors. Some courses are even taught entirely online; the requirement being a quick-test every week or so (self-paced learning at its finest).
Tech's web page (http://www.vt.edu) not only allows prospective students to preview the university (and move around real-time in a sample dorm room) but also lets students check grades, room assignments, get news, check on event information, and register for classes each semester. It's insane how web-centric Tech is, and I'm sure other universities out there are just as dependent on the Internet as we are.
And Katz also makes a good point about instant-messaging services: AIM is a huge time-waster, and you don't feel like that much of a dork because you can IM buddies across campus, so it's not like you have an online-only relationship with these people. And as for the research part, that is also true: last semester I penned (or typed) an 11-page formal research paper on how the use of computers in schools like mine is affecting classroom cheating, and I didn't use a single tangible source - the bibliography was entirely from the Internet (and I got a B, too).
Don't catch me complaining though - I love the adoption and total acceptance of technology by major universities. -ryry
there's this program called DFX out already that is a plug-in for winamp, reaplayer, and sonique. You can easily adjust sliders in four sound-control areas: fidelity, ambience, 3d sound, and dynamic boost. finding the right combination is really easy, plus the program works very well. it filters the sound and makes it louder and clearer than normal. you can immediately hear the improvement. plus, it's free! (sort-of). anyways, it's really useful =) -ryry
Well first off, having the subject name as "Pretty Poor Privacy" is just unprofessional. The actual project's name (as many have pointed out) is "Platform for Privacy Preferences" (I'll admit it's a little unwieldy and doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely:-)
People are trying to make P3P out to be more than it actually is or tries to be. All it is is some XML code people can use to automate (very useful) privacy negotiations. Say you don't want to do business with sites that hand out your e-mail address to marketers. Bingo! P3P will make sure you're warned before clicking 'Submit'. Say you don't have a problem with a site that gives out your zip code for aggregate, non personally identifiable data. Bingo! P3P will make sure you can do business with those sites. P3P itself does not facilitate data transfer, automatic or manual, in any way shape or form.
A side effect of standardizing privacy policies is that they are machine readable and therefore can be scanned automatically by a user agent.
The only problem with P3P is that it doesn't provide a way to make sure companies are actually following their policies, but nowhere does any spec even say they are trying to do that, so why lambaste them for it?
And lastly, P3P is a WORK IN PROGRESS. It is by no means finalized.
By 'game makers' i'm assuming you mean developers. They don't have much control over packaging decisions: that's usually handled by the publisher/distributor. -ryry
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Oops, spoke too quickly. :-) Slight amendment to my above post: companies gave us CDs to play over the in-store system; we never had to play them, but I do remember the rule that we couldn't bring in any outside CDs, that we had to use what was already there (i.e. company-provided discs; fortunately there was decent music in the pile). My bad.
-ryry
I don't think labels pay stores for in-store music time. I worked in a Sam Goody store for a couple months last year. No one ever paid us to play any certain music; we all just played whatever the hell we wanted (within reason, of course, no profanity over the loudspeakers, etc.) Maybe this does go on and I wasn't there to see it, though.
What labels do pay for, however, is the in-store placement of CDs (in relation to the cash register and the main aisles), cardboard cutouts of the artists, which artists we are supposed to recommend at the cash register, etc. Labels actually hire companies to come out to the store and make sure that the Limp Bizkit poster is hanging in the store window just beside the door, that the Britney Spears cardboard stand-up is sitting right in front of the counter, etc. The software industry works the same way.
-ryry
I believe it was from Steve Albini, and somewhere in this thread somebody else posted a link to it. Then again, I could be wrong, I don't really know ...
-ryry
Either you have an expansive grasp of the English language that can confused the hell out of anyone, or you used that "complaint generator" that recently hit The Register :-)
-ryry
I'm sure the library buys those CDs like anyone else, or gets them in bulk, I mean, they don't just steal them.
-ryry
Fanning's mistake was to try and corporatize Napster. He wasn't satisfied with releasing an easy-to-use tool, he had to try and turn it into a successful business and make some money off it. Now he's got to balance Napster's sort of rebel reputation with the need to fit into corporate America, which isn't an easy thing to accomplish.
Damned if you do, damned if you dont:
If they pursue litigation with the Offspring, then their mostly teenage/young adult fanbase will see them as "selling out" and not only messing with a cool band but totally reversing their opinions on copyrighted material. If they leave the Offspring alone, then they're losing a possibly lucrative revenue stream in merchandising (they could make their own "official" gear, but c'mon, they'd sell it for more and it's cool to have the unofficial stuff as well :-)
I for one hope Napster pulls through - I think it's a great piece of technology and that the RIAA should work with them, not against them, to ensure the future of digital music. But I still think Napster should have been left as a Gnutella-style freebie tool with no intention of profitability underlying the coolness of swapping MP3s online.
As it is right now, they are cultivating an elitist image reminiscent of how many people view Microsoft - anticompetetive and unwilling to cooperate with others to further the technology empowering its very product. I certainly hope things turn around.
-ryry
I don't know jack about Linux, cracking, or whatnot, but the whole series was very enjoyable (a shame that Noel's systems had to suffer in order to produce such a well-written story). He didn't bother to explain what terms like setuid and statd meant, because he obviously was writing for a Linux-smart crowd, but even me in my ignorance of the Most Holy OS could understand the plight of a sysadmin facing down a cracker like that. I understood most of the terms in context, though. Very well done series in all!!
-ryry
Although there are no known studies relating to college students and their work hours, it seems they are also bound to their desks and dorms by environments in which faculty, friends and other members of the college community increasingly do their work online. Studies of time spent on instant messaging services would probably show staggering use. And research possibilities online are boundless.
Man, is that ever true. I'm a computer science student at Virginia Tech, which requires each student to have a computer. Every one of our CS assignments are posted (along with sample data files) on the course's web site and we even submit our programs to an automatic grader over the Internet. Even non-CS courses post MP3s of lectures or homework assignments, supplemental material, recommended readings, contact information, research support, and all that good stuff. Not only does almost every course (except maybe english courses) have a separate web page, but most of the CS courses I've seen let students join up on a massive listserv for discussion of problems and announcements of dates by professors. Some courses are even taught entirely online; the requirement being a quick-test every week or so (self-paced learning at its finest).
Tech's web page (http://www.vt.edu) not only allows prospective students to preview the university (and move around real-time in a sample dorm room) but also lets students check grades, room assignments, get news, check on event information, and register for classes each semester. It's insane how web-centric Tech is, and I'm sure other universities out there are just as dependent on the Internet as we are.
And Katz also makes a good point about instant-messaging services: AIM is a huge time-waster, and you don't feel like that much of a dork because you can IM buddies across campus, so it's not like you have an online-only relationship with these people. And as for the research part, that is also true: last semester I penned (or typed) an 11-page formal research paper on how the use of computers in schools like mine is affecting classroom cheating, and I didn't use a single tangible source - the bibliography was entirely from the Internet (and I got a B, too).
Don't catch me complaining though - I love the adoption and total acceptance of technology by major universities.
-ryry
there's this program called DFX out already that is a plug-in for winamp, reaplayer, and sonique. You can easily adjust sliders in four sound-control areas: fidelity, ambience, 3d sound, and dynamic boost. finding the right combination is really easy, plus the program works very well. it filters the sound and makes it louder and clearer than normal. you can immediately hear the improvement. plus, it's free! (sort-of). anyways, it's really useful =)
-ryry
People are trying to make P3P out to be more than it actually is or tries to be. All it is is some XML code people can use to automate (very useful) privacy negotiations. Say you don't want to do business with sites that hand out your e-mail address to marketers. Bingo! P3P will make sure you're warned before clicking 'Submit'. Say you don't have a problem with a site that gives out your zip code for aggregate, non personally identifiable data. Bingo! P3P will make sure you can do business with those sites. P3P itself does not facilitate data transfer, automatic or manual, in any way shape or form.
A side effect of standardizing privacy policies is that they are machine readable and therefore can be scanned automatically by a user agent.
The only problem with P3P is that it doesn't provide a way to make sure companies are actually following their policies, but nowhere does any spec even say they are trying to do that, so why lambaste them for it?
And lastly, P3P is a WORK IN PROGRESS. It is by no means finalized.
P3P's official website is here.
And no, I don't work for the W3C, but I've been researching P3P for awhile now and feel this story post was unfairly presented.
-ryry
By 'game makers' i'm assuming you mean developers. They don't have much control over packaging decisions: that's usually handled by the publisher/distributor.
-ryry