I hate the RIAA and their methods as much as anyone, but I don't think it is spurious to look at what's happened to the music industry in the last 15 years or so and say that the internet has not had a negative effect.
It will have a continuing negative effect on revenue - not that I care how much EMI makes, but I do care when by extension there is less money available to sign artists, promote music that is not currently mainstream, when lower quality music receives all the promotion dollars available from the now smaller pool, etc.
I'm an amateur musician, but among the semi-professionals I know no one has any delusions about breaking into the music industry anymore. It's really changed the landscape because the industry itself has shrunk dramatically.
Maybe people will see it as good in the future that most music will be local and self-released by the artist and the only acts with real national exposure will be the Britneys and Taylors who sell football stadiums. I just don't think some of the greatest records would have ever been recorded in the current and future system. We've lost something.
Having run out of interesting, actual myths to test, they're too busy trying to see if a rolling stone gathers moss or if you can teach an old dog a new trick.
More over, this article contains no fact or anything close to it about whether this material affects transmission at all. It was simply a blogger walking past a house being built and saying "hmm", then googling.
The material is said to have "reflectivity", but of what? It never says it's constructed of metal or a problem material, the blogger just describes it as "foil-like". What if it means heat reflectivity? What effect exactly has been studied in materials that appear to the eye to be "foil like"?
This is just poppycock on the level of "Well I don't see how the towers could have fell down... gubment musta put nukes in the basement!"
The same application of common sense didn't stop people from demanding that the government buy up Kevin Costner's miracle machines to clean the entire gulf of oil, either.
I totally acknowledge that the increase in deficit spending and the national debt the last ten years had Bush as a major player. In the last three years however, Bush's culpability has gone from 100% to about 20%.
Actually, the fact that there is a development kit coming out for what is, truthfully, a pretty innovative device, sort of makes me feel like there is a division of microsoft that is warring against the greater evil that is microsoft.
We can argue about whether disagreeing with Obama's avalanche of spending means you endorse Dick Cheney, but I won't bother. Nobody is still talking about Bush 3 years later except those who won't judge Obama based on his performance. The point was merely to draw attention to the fact that the wars are not some huge percentage of the government's budget. At best, they are a few single digit percentage points or so annually, meanwhile, Obama is raising spending annually by ten times that amount.
"And given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most."
What a silly comment.
First, I doubt that people who are poor and use pay as you go generally have smartphones, and if they do, they are far less likely to be data users. Second, we are not at the point where smartphones with data are a can't-exist-without-it commodity. If you are this poor, should you be wasting money on any data plan?
Certainly data prices from mobile providers are shockingly high, but this is a silly "think of the children" style fallacious appeal to emotion.
You're precisely right, of course.
I just cancelled my cable because I was essentially paying Comcast $75 per month for ESPN and Fox Sports. Those were the only two channels I felt I couldn't live without, but when my latest bill came and I saw another rate in crease coming, I downgraded. I downgraded to their local-channels only package (still get HD because of my tv's tuner) which is $8, but basically free because they'd charge you $10 more for internet if you just had standalone internet (bastards).
So my comment means, because of the exorbitant cost of cable, people are going to continue moving away from it to these emerging technologies. In the long run it may not be viable, but we might be able to choke the cable companies long enough to get them to come to their senses on cost and realize that their own internet service competes with their TV service.
The cable TV model is doomed, due to streaming. Cable TV will be for the next decade what the land-line home telephone was for the last decade - everyone's favorite way to cut costs.
Comcast, et al., will have to find ways to squeeze more money out of people like me who got rid of cable because we were paying $75 a month for just one or two channels we felt we couldn't live without, probably via bandwidth caps.
Your prospects for salary are based on how rare your skillset is multiplied by how useful it is to a private firm that exists to make money.
A doctorate in philosophy might be rare, but it isn't useful to a lot of software companies. A software company might need secretaries, but there are many millions of people who have that skill set.
Having one of the two doesn't mean you deserve a great starting salary, you have to have both things going for you, and as people try to achieve that, salary structures change in some industries over time. They only remain the same for jobs where entry barriers are always relatively high or relatively low.
I've known people on both sides of the spectrum, but I can definitely say that if you come out of a University of Phoenix or DeVry program you're going to face a hiring stigma. Deservedly or undeservedly, these programs have a reputation that ranks decidedly below basically any traditional four year institution.
They don't seem like a great deal considering the high cost, but when you compare that to what a candidates other options are (or lack thereof), it still might be a good plan.
It sure would suck to have to pay back those loans on a desktop support kind of job salary.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate the RIAA and their methods as much as anyone, but I don't think it is spurious to look at what's happened to the music industry in the last 15 years or so and say that the internet has not had a negative effect.
It will have a continuing negative effect on revenue - not that I care how much EMI makes, but I do care when by extension there is less money available to sign artists, promote music that is not currently mainstream, when lower quality music receives all the promotion dollars available from the now smaller pool, etc.
I'm an amateur musician, but among the semi-professionals I know no one has any delusions about breaking into the music industry anymore. It's really changed the landscape because the industry itself has shrunk dramatically.
Maybe people will see it as good in the future that most music will be local and self-released by the artist and the only acts with real national exposure will be the Britneys and Taylors who sell football stadiums. I just don't think some of the greatest records would have ever been recorded in the current and future system. We've lost something.
Having run out of interesting, actual myths to test, they're too busy trying to see if a rolling stone gathers moss or if you can teach an old dog a new trick.
More over, this article contains no fact or anything close to it about whether this material affects transmission at all. It was simply a blogger walking past a house being built and saying "hmm", then googling. The material is said to have "reflectivity", but of what? It never says it's constructed of metal or a problem material, the blogger just describes it as "foil-like". What if it means heat reflectivity? What effect exactly has been studied in materials that appear to the eye to be "foil like"? This is just poppycock on the level of "Well I don't see how the towers could have fell down... gubment musta put nukes in the basement!"
The same application of common sense didn't stop people from demanding that the government buy up Kevin Costner's miracle machines to clean the entire gulf of oil, either.
I totally acknowledge that the increase in deficit spending and the national debt the last ten years had Bush as a major player. In the last three years however, Bush's culpability has gone from 100% to about 20%.
Actually, the fact that there is a development kit coming out for what is, truthfully, a pretty innovative device, sort of makes me feel like there is a division of microsoft that is warring against the greater evil that is microsoft.
We can argue about whether disagreeing with Obama's avalanche of spending means you endorse Dick Cheney, but I won't bother. Nobody is still talking about Bush 3 years later except those who won't judge Obama based on his performance. The point was merely to draw attention to the fact that the wars are not some huge percentage of the government's budget. At best, they are a few single digit percentage points or so annually, meanwhile, Obama is raising spending annually by ten times that amount.
The two wars together have cost about a trillion dollars total over the last decade, which is about how much Obama increased the deficit in one year.
I agree, but the article seems to be lamenting the poorest of the poor being overcharged for their iPhone plans.
Because I NEED it.
"And given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most." What a silly comment. First, I doubt that people who are poor and use pay as you go generally have smartphones, and if they do, they are far less likely to be data users. Second, we are not at the point where smartphones with data are a can't-exist-without-it commodity. If you are this poor, should you be wasting money on any data plan? Certainly data prices from mobile providers are shockingly high, but this is a silly "think of the children" style fallacious appeal to emotion.
You're precisely right, of course. I just cancelled my cable because I was essentially paying Comcast $75 per month for ESPN and Fox Sports. Those were the only two channels I felt I couldn't live without, but when my latest bill came and I saw another rate in crease coming, I downgraded. I downgraded to their local-channels only package (still get HD because of my tv's tuner) which is $8, but basically free because they'd charge you $10 more for internet if you just had standalone internet (bastards). So my comment means, because of the exorbitant cost of cable, people are going to continue moving away from it to these emerging technologies. In the long run it may not be viable, but we might be able to choke the cable companies long enough to get them to come to their senses on cost and realize that their own internet service competes with their TV service.
The cable TV model is doomed, due to streaming. Cable TV will be for the next decade what the land-line home telephone was for the last decade - everyone's favorite way to cut costs. Comcast, et al., will have to find ways to squeeze more money out of people like me who got rid of cable because we were paying $75 a month for just one or two channels we felt we couldn't live without, probably via bandwidth caps.
You know, Apple stuff all comes from China, not Japan. ("Designed" in California though. In case you only buy American "designed" stuff)
Thank you, I just happened to be checking slashdot to see what I should do.
Pants pocket: normal Belt clip/holster: doucher
Logical impossibility, since the parent was talking about how it works in Europe and I'm not in Europe.
You seem to be under the impression that I was talking about myself. I seem to be under the impression that you didn't read the parent post.
It's "free" in the sense that you pay for it many times over the rest of your life by high taxation to support the weight of the system.
Lucky for them, the government provides financing to everyone, so they can charge however high of a rate they want.
Your prospects for salary are based on how rare your skillset is multiplied by how useful it is to a private firm that exists to make money. A doctorate in philosophy might be rare, but it isn't useful to a lot of software companies. A software company might need secretaries, but there are many millions of people who have that skill set. Having one of the two doesn't mean you deserve a great starting salary, you have to have both things going for you, and as people try to achieve that, salary structures change in some industries over time. They only remain the same for jobs where entry barriers are always relatively high or relatively low.
I've known people on both sides of the spectrum, but I can definitely say that if you come out of a University of Phoenix or DeVry program you're going to face a hiring stigma. Deservedly or undeservedly, these programs have a reputation that ranks decidedly below basically any traditional four year institution. They don't seem like a great deal considering the high cost, but when you compare that to what a candidates other options are (or lack thereof), it still might be a good plan. It sure would suck to have to pay back those loans on a desktop support kind of job salary.
Meesa call moneygrab!
Typo - I mean IE8 is in pilot. (why the hell can't you edit posts here?)
I work in the same, and IE 9 is in pilot right now. Everyone else still has IE6.