Some possible spoilers ahead. Nothing realy specific, just some ideas you might not want to have in your head before seeing the movie
I have to say I got a good laugh out of it. Rachel Leigh Cook and Claire Forlani were hot, a definite plus. The code detector was a cool thing, as was the "multimedia" bit at the end (probably my favorite part of the movie).
I have a couple of bones to pick with the film. First, Milo actually outsmarts the evil Tim Robbins character. I guess one could say that Gary Winston has some sort of tragic flaw that allows him to be conquered, but I don't believe that it's very realistic. Evil people don't build an evil empire to take over the world without covering their bases. I'm not that evil (I'm quasi-evil, semi-evil. The diet coke of evil: just one calorie, not evil enough), and I never would have let Milo get that far.
Second, (possible spoiler), when Gary gets into a typing war with Milo, I could not believe it. If I had a global network of satelites, with the control running over IP [side note. Why did they have to use 10.0.0.0/8 addresses? 192.168.0.0/16 or 172.16.0.0 / 12 would have looked better] I think I would have memorized the IP addresses of the 12 satelites I was using (I think there were actually 14, 2 mother satelites and the 12 Milo and Gary were trying to control). I can probably list 50 IP's, what the name of the device is, and what's running on it from my job. I would expect the head of an evil orginization trying to take over the world would memorize his IP's.
Finally, the source code (looked kinda java-ish to me). Whenever someone showed someone else code, the looked at it for 10 seconds and said "that's amazing." The didn't even page down or anything. I guess if you actually fit all the code for a worldwide communications system into 30 lines of code, it would be amazing. The clips I caught from the code were like:
struct {
stuff[1] = boolean
var[1] = boolean
}
that's not the actual wording, but it looked like that.
The film was interesting. I think any geek would probably get a laugh out of it.
Why should an employee be forced into a permanent promotion if they are doing well in their current one. Of course...in the corporate world, things are never as simple (or logical) as they should be.
Isn't that the whole argument of the peter principle? (BTW, IANA sociologist) In corporate culture, people get promoted past their level of competency. That's not exactly the case here, it's more like this person is being promoted past his/her level of comfort. Anyway, the firing part sucks, but if you work at a place that will fire you for not taking a promotion, maybe you should work elsewhere. Like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty, "I'm looking for as little responsibility as possible." If you want to read more about the Peter principle, check here
I formerly worked in a "Large RGB(0000FF)" building (think three letters) in Alpharetta,GA. It was a datacenter with a a great deal of mainframes and mid-range computers. They have 7 diesel generators and enough fuel to power the entire center for two weeks. The generators are rarely used for that purpose, but during the summer in Atlanta (Alpharetta is about 10 mi north of the perimeter) they generally run the diesels every day because they can make a profit selling it back to the power company.
I didn't see any mention of security in the article (other than the authentication "server"). Does anyone know how they handle Data vs Code in memory? Seeing as they are still in the development stage, couldn't they take a big step away from one of the intrinsic security issues in all the *NIXes? I just can't imagine starting the process of weeding out thousands of buffer overflows in a new OS. (Please note, I may be smoking crack here, but I thought that separating Data from Code in memory would help the buffer overflows.) Oh well, it sounds like it _Might_ be interesting.
I think that watching someone play a game being dull depends on the type of game. My ex, who hated games, would get mad at me if I played Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, without her being there. She was so wrapped up in the story, she wanted to see what happened next. I know that my friends and I have no problem chilling out and watching each other play some of the more engaging story based games on the market. Just my $.02
1)The rest of their time, about 150 days, is spent on testing, fixing bugs and working on projects that are later canceled.
O.K., I might allow the working on projects that get canned not being counted as work (even though they are work. ask someone who worked on a project that was canceled.), but testing and fixing bugs not work? Does he believe that code should be written, compiled and then work perfectly? I've met developers with the attitude of, "well, it compiled without any errors. Lets put it in production." If you have never worked with someone in this mind set, it is scary, and a difficult arguement to win to boot.
2) Reminds me of another survey I saw with similar results. It said that American developers write about 4000 lines of code a year (compared to non-US coders producing 16000 a year). I don't do development primarily, and I know I've written a couple of thousand lines of code in a week (not including comments). I guess that fixing code (like in the story) wouldn't count as "code" either. Even if you have to add lines.
This article seems to be saying that poor managment leads to unproductive programmers. Any innovation in code should be planned, coded, tested, evaluated and have the process started again (from step two). Give developers some credit.
I hope you are happy with what you have done here today. You have made a mockery of the system, and this Country. But you have your DUI convicted, coke-head President. I hope you're happy.
On the serious side, I can say I'm disappointed, but the results were fun to watch. I can definitely say that I found it more interesting than the most recent World Series. The thing I feel the worst about is that George "Duh" Bush will most likely get to appoint 3 new Supreme Court Justices. For all the women in the country, I just hope they leave Roe v. Wade alone.
Flame if you want, but I'd rather have a discussion.
That's right, now you, a lowly consumer can own your own pair of USB 2048 bit twofish encrypted speakers. That's right, the audio signal doesn't get decrypted until it gets inside the speaker. What about those prying hands that try to get to the speaker after the decryption? No problem, each speaker is equiped with enough C4 explosive to ensure that it (and possibly some other stuff) is destroyed should someone try to dismantle it.
But wait, what about speaker to mic recordings? No problema, our new BigBrother speaker actually induces so much noise, that any recording will sound horrible, no matter how good the recording equipment is. So if you want to get in on the wave of the future, order your BigBrother today!
Well, in Armageddon, they had to drill to 800 ft. In Deep Impact, they drilled to 100m, which is about 328ft. I was just saying, that if the Deep Impact people had drilled to 800 ft. (244m) as the Armageddon people did, they would have blown up the asteroid (following movie logic).
Ahh, but here comes the big problem from the old debate days. When weighing disadvantages (usually things like genocide, nuclear war, loss of human rights, etc.) we come to a problem. How do I weigh something that has a high probability of happening to a small percent of the population (like 5% of american deaths will be caused by cancer this year [this was made up, IANAStatistician]) with a definite time frame vs something with a very small probability of happening to the entire population with an indefinite time frame (a large asteriod will kill the entire population some day)? It is a very touchy issue that can be argued in favor of either side. It comes down to we need to make the best statistical analysis (based on reports like these) that we can, and try to distribute money as fairly as possible.
And on the lighter side, I think Deep Impact taught us the best lesson: if we would have just waited for the whole thing to show up near Earth, we could have blown up the entire thing, instead of just one of the pieces we created earlier. I guess the people in Deep Impact didn't see Armageddon. If they had, they would have known to drill to 800ft, not just 100m.
I felt the article was insightful, especially the point about no NIC, but one thing I want ( and I think others will too) is to be able to move things I record from my TiVo (easily and digitally) for archival. I'm a bit of a video pack rat. I like to keep entire seasons of the shows I enjoy for later viewing. Tapes are very messy for this (especially if you record in SP).
As DVD authoring advances, it will become easier and easier for the home user to add his / her own video to a DVD. Two or three years from now, I'm sure it will be about as easy as making a CD.
Now lets suppose I like Friends (I'm not saying that I do. Don't accuse me of it. I might though, but I'll never admit to it:-). I set up my TiVo to record every episode of Friends. Eventually, I will have very little room left to record other programmig. But, if I could connect to my TiVo from my PC or iMac (don't have one, I'm just saying) and copy all the episodes of Friends, I could burn my own DVD's of Friends.
I realize that the people that frequent the AVS TiVo Hack forum are working on this, but without an ethernet (or USB or Firewire) connection, this still seems like a lot of trouble. Anyone else interested?
At a previous company, I used a product called SurfControl. I didn't think that the software was as good as it could have been, but part of the package was their URL database. At the last point I was using it, They had 1000000 urls in their database, all of which were catagorizied. One could grant or restrict access to any catagory, and implement allow/deny all rules so that you could grant (or revoke) access to any url that wasn't in the database. One could also specify keywords to grant or revoke access to as well. All of their predefined urls could be overridden as well (i.e. they mistag a site as adult, and it is a legitimate site).
The pluses were it was easy to install and administer, it gave pretty good reports, and it worked well from an HR perspective. Minuses included sometimes buggy software, reports that didn't always run, and price. It does run with Microsoft Proxy Server as well.
I think a solution like this can be helpful, because they maintain the URL database for you. I'm not saying that this is the greatest solution in the world (I realize that the number of registered domain names will constantly expand past anyone's ability to catagorize them.), but I think it could work. If you could combine a url database with a method for sending blocked url's to an administrator for review, I think it will get close to what you want. This way, you could disallow access to things that might be legitimate (like the breast cancer example), and then grant access when it comes up.
In some of the pandemonium related to Carnivore, I've seen the notion that if an ISP was able to give the FBI what they wanted (email to and from the badguy(s)), they wouldn't be forced to install the black box.
Now if there was an open source Carnivore work-alike (GNUnivore?) that ISP's could slap on a span port, wouldn't this trash the FBI's position pretty severely. I mean, I can hear the stammering now,
[FBI] Uh, but, umm, uh that's not going to give us what we want. [/FBI]
[ISP] But it gives you all the email from the person you are investigating [/ISP]
[FBI] Yeah, but, umm, we really wanted to view all of your traffic, so, uh could you just be a good citizen and let us?[/FBI]
I think it would be really easy to turn Snort into a Carnivore like system (please forgive me Marty for suggesting the bastardization of your work) that an ISP could easily administer and have the security of knowing that they control what information it is logging. So what do you say/.ers? Anyone want to make GNUnivore?
I think a fun project would have something to do with what the students already enjoy doing. Take an application that supports plugins (like WinAMP) and have them create plugins to do stuff they think is cool (like output visualization).
If you want them to do something helpful to the community, try something from the unmaintained free software project. Or try to create a helpful windows tool.
At the high school level, I think integrating fun with programming will probably help future computer scientists a great deal. If you can pique their interests now, learning operating system design in college might not be so bad.
As for suggesting specific projects, what languages do you use, and what kind of things do your students find boring? That might get the ball rolling.
And on a personal note, I thought that creating a graphical output to the Towers of Hanoi problem was fun (insert geek jokes here), and it helped me to understand recursion.
What if just starts resizing images that are part of attachments? It could even be a part of some fun policy. [authoritative voice] Due to network bandwidth concerns, we sometimes strip image attachments, shrink them, and then reattach them for you to help the internet work better[/authoritative voice]. I realize that you can use steganography on any kind of binary file, just pointing out that they could still do something about it.
Hasn't there been some work with fractal compression algorithms for photographic images? I seem to recall a few years ago a Windows demo of fractal image compression (I think it was Iterated Systems, but they don't seem to be doing it anymore) - you could zoom in, zoom out, and still get quite good quality as you zoomed in - less pixellation and artifacting.
I did some research on fractal compression a while back. The thing with the "good quality" that you get when zooming in is that it becomes artificial after a while. Because of the algorithm, you will always get more detail whenever you zoom in. The problem lies in the amount of detail (information) that was available when the image was created.
Most fractal compression schemes convert images from some sort of pixilated image to begin with. The algorithm does allow the display to estimate (approximate) what would be at some point in the image at some level of detail, but it isn't "real" if the resolution is much higher than the original image.
What might be cool is a fractal system to capture images originally (like a fractal scanner or digital camera). Then the added benefits of the algorithm might have more meaning.
And when you do quit, think about what it was that made you quit. Make lists for yourself about what you liked and disliked about your last employer (assuming that the disliked list isn't "everything"). These are the important things to take with you on your next job search.
If you are in a market that is in high demand, which is about everyone, you have the power. Tell potential employers what you want. Demand the things that you need to feel comfortable in a new job. Don't sign contracts that severely limit your options because it is "standard for everyone."
When I first moved out of the helpdesk environment to enterprise level technical work, I didn't know how to handle HR people, recruiters and headhunters. I was under the impression that they were in control because they had the jobs. Soon I realized that by bending to their whims that I put myself in a place I didn't want to be.
I soon realized that with patience and the right attitude, I could get the job I wanted, making the money I wanted with the benefits I wanted. I told headhunters/recruiters/HR people I want this much money with this much vacation and these hours. For the people that said no, it is their loss. You know your skills, and you should know how valuable of a resource you are. I didn't always get exactly what I wanted, but with this attitude, I found that negotiations went much better. And when I was able to truly negotiate, I found that it was easier to find a job for me.
And one more thing. Don't be afraid to tell people NO (I like piss off better, but it's not as friendly). When you have it noted that your minimum salary is $85,000 and the same recruiter keeps calling/emailing you for a $8/hr helpdesk job, see the second sentence again.
You are ultimately in control of your free time. Your happiness and well being (watch out, I feel the spirit of Ayn Rand) are the ultimate factors in your life. Kick @$$, take names, and work how, why and where that makes you happy.
Peace!
Re:Stupid Artists: And other thoughts
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 1
From knowing the father of a recording artist that had a couple of hits, I found out that the artist gets about $1 for each album sold.
Also, if production costs for a CD are also about $1 ( a general estimate on my part, but one I believe to be reasonably correct), that gives us about $2 spent on creating a CD so far. Large retailers (such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc.) generally pay about $8-9 per CD. That's a nice 300% mark up over costs. Then, our large retailers mark CD's up to $12 to $16. Aww, only 50%-100% mark up for them. How do they survive?
Does anyone remember when RealAudio became popular back in `95? For a while you could connect to sites that had a couple hundred albums encoded into.ra files and listen to streaming audio. Sure, the quality was poor at best, but I listened to a great deal of music that led me to purchase CDs that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Of course, after it caught on, the RIAA (I think, could be off on that) came stumbling in with the threat of a lawsuit. After that, only independent stuff was allowed, and those sites went to other content. So, I was just trying to throw in an analogy there. I realize that this is somewhat different as the.ra files were stored on the server, but it still hits close to home on this issue.
So here's the idea I had. Why not use abusive click-wrap like agreements to benefit this position. Instead of napster being a search tool initially, it would give the user a list of other users that were logged on. Everyone's list of songs would remain hidden/encrypted/whatever, until our user added another person to their "Search list." To add another user to one's "Search list," one would have to click through some insane agreement that would essentially say, "I don't work for the RIAA or anyone related to the stuffy, price-gouging fat cats of the recording industry. I won't use this list to do reconnaissance for a lawsuit, or anything else like that, etc." Of course, this process would suck at first, but then we could possibly side step the process by which the record labels are attacking Napster. Any thoughts?
Even if it is slowing, and the dotcoms are "drying up," I don't think it is dead yet. Let me tell a story.
I have a friend who writes multi-tier applications. In VB. He doesn't know whether TCP/IP is something implemented (on a PC) in hardware or software. I wouldn't trust him to write a "hello world" program to save my life. He recently left a job making $65/hr for another making $85 an hour.
But I digress. I realize some people are getting laid off as dotcoms go bust. They probably can't get jobs as easily as the Ted guy from the Monster.com commercial. But when untalented people can make $175,000/year and there exist businesses with money that can still hire untalented people for that much, I don't think the economy is quite that dead yet.
It might just be time to go back to searching for a job instead of having them thrown at you.
Re:Information is subject to entropy
on
The Regulon
·
· Score: 1
(who makes up these words?)
I think it was Homer Simpson, from the same episode he said, "There is only one monster in this house, and I call him Gamblor."
This is my experience exactly. Two examples. I downloaded the new Kid Rock album, burned it to a CD, and listened. It sucked. I threw away the CD and deleted the MP3's.
For kicks, I downloaded the new Eminem album, not thinking it would be all that, and listened. I thought it was decent, and bought the CD.
I'm not saying that I don't leach the occasional pop song for dance mixes, but if Napster/GNUtella / Bithive (when it gets going. Props to cr0bar who brought us the Maxtix Bastardization) allows me to find music that I like, and then support the artist that created it, I say it's double plus good (and that's not duckspeak. or maybe it is?).
Now if I could just give my money directly to the artist . . .
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say I got a good laugh out of it. Rachel Leigh Cook and Claire Forlani were hot, a definite plus. The code detector was a cool thing, as was the "multimedia" bit at the end (probably my favorite part of the movie).
I have a couple of bones to pick with the film. First, Milo actually outsmarts the evil Tim Robbins character. I guess one could say that Gary Winston has some sort of tragic flaw that allows him to be conquered, but I don't believe that it's very realistic. Evil people don't build an evil empire to take over the world without covering their bases. I'm not that evil (I'm quasi-evil, semi-evil. The diet coke of evil: just one calorie, not evil enough), and I never would have let Milo get that far.
Second, (possible spoiler), when Gary gets into a typing war with Milo, I could not believe it. If I had a global network of satelites, with the control running over IP [side note. Why did they have to use 10.0.0.0/8 addresses? 192.168.0.0/16 or 172.16.0.0 / 12 would have looked better] I think I would have memorized the IP addresses of the 12 satelites I was using (I think there were actually 14, 2 mother satelites and the 12 Milo and Gary were trying to control). I can probably list 50 IP's, what the name of the device is, and what's running on it from my job. I would expect the head of an evil orginization trying to take over the world would memorize his IP's.
Finally, the source code (looked kinda java-ish to me). Whenever someone showed someone else code, the looked at it for 10 seconds and said "that's amazing." The didn't even page down or anything. I guess if you actually fit all the code for a worldwide communications system into 30 lines of code, it would be amazing. The clips I caught from the code were like:
that's not the actual wording, but it looked like that.
The film was interesting. I think any geek would probably get a laugh out of it.
Isn't that the whole argument of the peter principle? (BTW, IANA sociologist) In corporate culture, people get promoted past their level of competency. That's not exactly the case here, it's more like this person is being promoted past his/her level of comfort. Anyway, the firing part sucks, but if you work at a place that will fire you for not taking a promotion, maybe you should work elsewhere. Like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty, "I'm looking for as little responsibility as possible." If you want to read more about the Peter principle, check here
1)The rest of their time, about 150 days, is spent on testing, fixing bugs and working on projects that are later canceled.
O.K., I might allow the working on projects that get canned not being counted as work (even though they are work. ask someone who worked on a project that was canceled.), but testing and fixing bugs not work? Does he believe that code should be written, compiled and then work perfectly? I've met developers with the attitude of, "well, it compiled without any errors. Lets put it in production." If you have never worked with someone in this mind set, it is scary, and a difficult arguement to win to boot.
2) Reminds me of another survey I saw with similar results. It said that American developers write about 4000 lines of code a year (compared to non-US coders producing 16000 a year). I don't do development primarily, and I know I've written a couple of thousand lines of code in a week (not including comments). I guess that fixing code (like in the story) wouldn't count as "code" either. Even if you have to add lines.
This article seems to be saying that poor managment leads to unproductive programmers. Any innovation in code should be planned, coded, tested, evaluated and have the process started again (from step two). Give developers some credit.
I hope you are happy with what you have done here today. You have made a mockery of the system, and this Country. But you have your DUI convicted, coke-head President. I hope you're happy.
On the serious side, I can say I'm disappointed, but the results were fun to watch. I can definitely say that I found it more interesting than the most recent World Series. The thing I feel the worst about is that George "Duh" Bush will most likely get to appoint 3 new Supreme Court Justices. For all the women in the country, I just hope they leave Roe v. Wade alone.
Flame if you want, but I'd rather have a discussion.
But wait, what about speaker to mic recordings? No problema, our new BigBrother speaker actually induces so much noise, that any recording will sound horrible, no matter how good the recording equipment is. So if you want to get in on the wave of the future, order your BigBrother today!
And on the lighter side, I think Deep Impact taught us the best lesson: if we would have just waited for the whole thing to show up near Earth, we could have blown up the entire thing, instead of just one of the pieces we created earlier. I guess the people in Deep Impact didn't see Armageddon. If they had, they would have known to drill to 800ft, not just 100m.
As DVD authoring advances, it will become easier and easier for the home user to add his / her own video to a DVD. Two or three years from now, I'm sure it will be about as easy as making a CD.
Now lets suppose I like Friends (I'm not saying that I do. Don't accuse me of it. I might though, but I'll never admit to it :-). I set up my TiVo to record every episode of Friends. Eventually, I will have very little room left to record other programmig. But, if I could connect to my TiVo from my PC or iMac (don't have one, I'm just saying) and copy all the episodes of Friends, I could burn my own DVD's of Friends.
I realize that the people that frequent the AVS TiVo Hack forum are working on this, but without an ethernet (or USB or Firewire) connection, this still seems like a lot of trouble. Anyone else interested?
The pluses were it was easy to install and administer, it gave pretty good reports, and it worked well from an HR perspective. Minuses included sometimes buggy software, reports that didn't always run, and price. It does run with Microsoft Proxy Server as well.
I think a solution like this can be helpful, because they maintain the URL database for you. I'm not saying that this is the greatest solution in the world (I realize that the number of registered domain names will constantly expand past anyone's ability to catagorize them.), but I think it could work. If you could combine a url database with a method for sending blocked url's to an administrator for review, I think it will get close to what you want. This way, you could disallow access to things that might be legitimate (like the breast cancer example), and then grant access when it comes up.
Now if there was an open source Carnivore work-alike (GNUnivore?) that ISP's could slap on a span port, wouldn't this trash the FBI's position pretty severely. I mean, I can hear the stammering now,
[FBI] Uh, but, umm, uh that's not going to give us what we want. [/FBI]
[ISP] But it gives you all the email from the person you are investigating [/ISP]
[FBI] Yeah, but, umm, we really wanted to view all of your traffic, so, uh could you just be a good citizen and let us?[/FBI]
I think it would be really easy to turn Snort into a Carnivore like system (please forgive me Marty for suggesting the bastardization of your work) that an ISP could easily administer and have the security of knowing that they control what information it is logging. So what do you say /.ers? Anyone want to make GNUnivore?
If you want them to do something helpful to the community, try something from the unmaintained free software project. Or try to create a helpful windows tool.
At the high school level, I think integrating fun with programming will probably help future computer scientists a great deal. If you can pique their interests now, learning operating system design in college might not be so bad.
As for suggesting specific projects, what languages do you use, and what kind of things do your students find boring? That might get the ball rolling.
And on a personal note, I thought that creating a graphical output to the Towers of Hanoi problem was fun (insert geek jokes here), and it helped me to understand recursion.
What if just starts resizing images that are part of attachments? It could even be a part of some fun policy. [authoritative voice] Due to network bandwidth concerns, we sometimes strip image attachments, shrink them, and then reattach them for you to help the internet work better[/authoritative voice]. I realize that you can use steganography on any kind of binary file, just pointing out that they could still do something about it.
And as for China controlling all data in and out of the country, implement A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers. So the government would have to add guards along all the borders to shoot down any bird with something on its leg. It would be slow, and the ACK times (horrible pun intended) would probably be a little long, but it could work.
I did some research on fractal compression a while back. The thing with the "good quality" that you get when zooming in is that it becomes artificial after a while. Because of the algorithm, you will always get more detail whenever you zoom in. The problem lies in the amount of detail (information) that was available when the image was created.
Most fractal compression schemes convert images from some sort of pixilated image to begin with. The algorithm does allow the display to estimate (approximate) what would be at some point in the image at some level of detail, but it isn't "real" if the resolution is much higher than the original image.
What might be cool is a fractal system to capture images originally (like a fractal scanner or digital camera). Then the added benefits of the algorithm might have more meaning.
If you are in a market that is in high demand, which is about everyone, you have the power. Tell potential employers what you want. Demand the things that you need to feel comfortable in a new job. Don't sign contracts that severely limit your options because it is "standard for everyone."
When I first moved out of the helpdesk environment to enterprise level technical work, I didn't know how to handle HR people, recruiters and headhunters. I was under the impression that they were in control because they had the jobs. Soon I realized that by bending to their whims that I put myself in a place I didn't want to be.
I soon realized that with patience and the right attitude, I could get the job I wanted, making the money I wanted with the benefits I wanted. I told headhunters/recruiters/HR people I want this much money with this much vacation and these hours. For the people that said no, it is their loss. You know your skills, and you should know how valuable of a resource you are. I didn't always get exactly what I wanted, but with this attitude, I found that negotiations went much better. And when I was able to truly negotiate, I found that it was easier to find a job for me.
And one more thing. Don't be afraid to tell people NO (I like piss off better, but it's not as friendly). When you have it noted that your minimum salary is $85,000 and the same recruiter keeps calling/emailing you for a $8/hr helpdesk job, see the second sentence again.
You are ultimately in control of your free time. Your happiness and well being (watch out, I feel the spirit of Ayn Rand) are the ultimate factors in your life. Kick @$$, take names, and work how, why and where that makes you happy.
Peace!
Also, if production costs for a CD are also about $1 ( a general estimate on my part, but one I believe to be reasonably correct), that gives us about $2 spent on creating a CD so far. Large retailers (such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc.) generally pay about $8-9 per CD. That's a nice 300% mark up over costs. Then, our large retailers mark CD's up to $12 to $16. Aww, only 50%-100% mark up for them. How do they survive?
Does anyone remember when RealAudio became popular back in `95? For a while you could connect to sites that had a couple hundred albums encoded into .ra files and listen to streaming audio. Sure, the quality was poor at best, but I listened to a great deal of music that led me to purchase CDs that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Of course, after it caught on, the RIAA (I think, could be off on that) came stumbling in with the threat of a lawsuit. After that, only independent stuff was allowed, and those sites went to other content. So, I was just trying to throw in an analogy there. I realize that this is somewhat different as the .ra files were stored on the server, but it still hits close to home on this issue.
So here's the idea I had. Why not use abusive click-wrap like agreements to benefit this position. Instead of napster being a search tool initially, it would give the user a list of other users that were logged on. Everyone's list of songs would remain hidden/encrypted/whatever, until our user added another person to their "Search list." To add another user to one's "Search list," one would have to click through some insane agreement that would essentially say, "I don't work for the RIAA or anyone related to the stuffy, price-gouging fat cats of the recording industry. I won't use this list to do reconnaissance for a lawsuit, or anything else like that, etc." Of course, this process would suck at first, but then we could possibly side step the process by which the record labels are attacking Napster. Any thoughts?
I have a friend who writes multi-tier applications. In VB. He doesn't know whether TCP/IP is something implemented (on a PC) in hardware or software. I wouldn't trust him to write a "hello world" program to save my life. He recently left a job making $65/hr for another making $85 an hour.
But I digress. I realize some people are getting laid off as dotcoms go bust. They probably can't get jobs as easily as the Ted guy from the Monster.com commercial. But when untalented people can make $175,000/year and there exist businesses with money that can still hire untalented people for that much, I don't think the economy is quite that dead yet.
It might just be time to go back to searching for a job instead of having them thrown at you.
I think it was Homer Simpson, from the same episode he said, "There is only one monster in this house, and I call him Gamblor."
For kicks, I downloaded the new Eminem album, not thinking it would be all that, and listened. I thought it was decent, and bought the CD.
I'm not saying that I don't leach the occasional pop song for dance mixes, but if Napster/GNUtella / Bithive (when it gets going. Props to cr0bar who brought us the Maxtix Bastardization) allows me to find music that I like, and then support the artist that created it, I say it's double plus good (and that's not duckspeak. or maybe it is?).
Now if I could just give my money directly to the artist . . .