Libraries are open to all ages, including adults -- who have a First Amendment right to access a broader range of materials on the Net than the proposed congressional filtering arrangement would allow.
Um, no, they don't. The First Amendment gives you the right to say anything, not to see anything. All those websties are well within their First Amendment rights to post anything they want, but the libraries aren't obligated to display it. It's like demanding that they stock copies of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Swank, etc., and crying out "First Amendment!" and "Censorship!" if they don't.
The government isn't at all obligated to present this information, legally speaking. So with that understood, we can discuss what they should do, not what they are legally required to do. Should they grant people compete, unrestricted access to the Internet in libraries?
I'm a huge advocate of free speech and I'm very anti-censorship, but I say Hell No. Can you picture 12-year-olds downloading porn in a library? It would be horrible. Picture library workstations flooded with local teenagers downloading porn, or even game sites, and the adults wanting to do research suddenly being crowded out. Now picture the alternative. You want to do some legitimate 'net research about sexuality or AIDS, and you can't access it. This kind of sucks, but it's nowhere near as bad as its alternative. Find another net connection. Get one at home, or at a college, or whatever. The libraries aren't obligated to provide you with unrestricted free Internet service, and I don't think they should.
You want us to believe that the best way to hurt the RIAA is to give them even more money... Sure, whatever.
No, I don't expect you're going to really do anything that will hurt the RIAA. You can convince them they're right, that Napster is a major threat to them, or convince them that it's a minor boon. But your petty boycott isn't going to scare them.
The effectiveness of any boycott depends on the change it incurs. So the only significant boycotters are the ones who would previously bought a lot of CDs from RIAA. While I believe there are several Napster users who still buy RIAA CDs (me being one of them), I think these people account for a very small percentage of the total CD buyers, and I don't think you'll really convince even 50% of the Napster/CD-purchasers to boycott.
Think of the tobacco companies. Everyone and their dog knows that cigarettes are bad for them, and there's tons of "concerned citizens" out there trying to quit. And yet the tobacco companies are still alive and kicking, turning out massive profits. I hate to rain on your grassroots parade, but a small collection of concerned citizens isn't going to change the policies of a billion dollar industrial complex. Especially not by threatening minor financial hits, when the reason RIAA is acting this way is because they're pursuing major financial issues (like judgements won in a lawsuit, or concerns like "will anyone ever buy any of our CDs if they can get them for free?").
If you want to buycott something, rush out and buy from the indies. That way they'll still lose, but market research will show that CD sales in general are up.
That sounds familiar. Maybe because that's what I said:
"The Buy-cott however, is a great idea. This way market research shows that the record labels who are encouraging Napster are showing record (no
pun intended) sales, and maybe give RIAA something to think about."
The point here is that RIAA is huge, and not only is it huge, but it's made up of lots of member companies. So even assuming you inflict a 10% cut in their profits, (a ridiculously optimistic figure) you have to convince not just one man, but at least 20 different companies that the profit cuts are entirely due to outrage at their legal action against Napster. Even then, as I've mentioned before, it has gone beyond RIAA now. It's in the courts. It's up to a judge now to declare Napster as legal or illegal, and the judge isn't going to be scared of financial losses. Instead, the judge is going to be looking for financial losses, because they would support RIAA's claim that Napster is causing them damages.
You can make impact here, I'm not trying to say you can't. But the way you can make impact is by supporting the "good guys" (the indie labels), not by trying to hurt the RIAA.
If you've seen interviews with many artists, you've probably noticed how most of them hate to be classified. If this really works, it would kill a lot of pretension. I can see it now:
Reporter: Despite the fact that you're considered a rock artist, you seem to be having a great deal of success amongst the country and even R+B fans. Why do you think that is?
Artist: Well I don't really think of myself as a rcok musician. People are always trying to classify my music as pop, or hard rock, or soft rock, or whatever. But I don't restrict myself to those terms, I just think of myself as an artist, and I think my work really defies being simply classified as rock.
[Reporter looks down at a laptop, hits a few keys]
Reporter: No, the computer says it's clearly rock music. Not country, not big-band, not funk, not innovative-genre-transcending-art, just rock music.
Artist: Well, yes, but it's really- Reporter: That's all the time we have for now. Tune in tomorrow as I interview another popular rock band.
I'm not a big fan of Anonymous Cowards, but why was this modded down?
I think it's completely logical. You can only buy Matchbox 20 CD's from one label. If you want to buy a CD, check out the label and see if it's RIAA. If it's not, you're in the clear. But I doubt you'll have much luck finding music you like based on the label rather than the artist.
I still like the solution of creating a.sex (or whatever you want to call it) and requiring any porn companies in the US to house their domain there.
It doesn't stop pages from companies in other countries, or illegal pages, but any veteran computer user can tell you that you can't really reliably censor the net. As soon as you make a smarter filter, they'll make craftier pages.
The TLD provides a simple, cheap, effective solution for all law-abiding sites.
RIAA won't know WHY you chose to stop buying their CDs, all they know is that they have new figures showing a drastic drop off in sales after the advent of mp3 sharing technology. This will just be ammunition in their arguments that technologies like Napster are causing them damages.
Every CD you decide not to buy, thanks to the existence of Napster (either because you use it to steal or merely want to protest RIAA) drives another nail in Napster's coffin.
The Buy-cott however, is a great idea. This way market research shows that the record labels who are encouraging Napster are showing record (no pun intended) sales, and maybe give RIAA something to think about.
Don't go to war with organizations bigger than you. You'll lose. Convince them that what you want is also in their best interests.
I suck at the whole job seeking process, not just interviewing.
Luckily for me, the interview for my current job (a rather good one, IMHO) went like this:
I was with a guy I knew, who was talking to a co-worker on his cell phone. He turned to me and said: "How would you like to spend the summer in New York City, getting paid $20/hour while [the company] covers your hotel, travel, and food expenses?"
I'm always curious as to why people are interested in the size of the internet. As long as it works, and people think it's running nicely, does it really matter?
I'm guessing you're not a network administrator. It works because the infrastructure can support all the traffic that's currently on it. If your infrastructure is build to support 10 billion hosts, and your survey reveals you have 10 million active hosts, you can relax.
On the other hand, if it reveals you have 900 million hosts, and you only had 500 millon two weeks ago, you're in trouble and you need to get some new hardware, fast.
So aside from a general curiosity as to how many people out there want to download my mp3's, there's a legitimate reason for the 'net community to be interested and even concerned by the size and growth rate of the Internet.
It always annoys me when people try to cite companies, organizations, or even cultures or types of people as hypocritical.
Slashdot is a news site and public forum. Say one person posts a news article in favor of something, then another person posts one against it. Does this make Slashdot hypocritical? No.
If you're gonna accuse someone of hypocrisy, site the author of the pages' code and the author of the news posts. Don't try to accuse a collective of having a character flaw.
Well here's my take on the matter. As before, I fully expect to be called an inhuman bastard at any minute.
The USA, and drug companies therein, should not be responsible for the lives of anyone in Africa. (save possibly vacationing Americans)
If the African government decides to buy drugs to help their people, more power to them. If they decide not to because they can't afford it, I don't blame them. If they decide not to because they're greedy dictatorial types who would rather build mansions of gold, then let their people overthrow them. Maybe we'll help.
If, on the other hand, some company in Africa decides to steal a drug formula from an American company and market it ultra cheap in Africa, then I say the US shouldn't have to do anything about it. If the American company wants to do something about it, let them. Now as soon as somebody tries to buy that drug in Africa and ship it back to America, then it's American Customs' responsibility to stop them, because that medicine is a violation of American laws.
But I don't agree that "we'd be stupid not to do something to help." (assuming by "we" you mean the US government.) They're not our people, they're not our responsibility. If they're being oppressed by nature, tough shit. People die. If they're being oppressed by their government, they should overthrow their government. If they show that they intend to overthrow their government, but they can't quite do it, then maybe we'll help them overthrow their government. But I don't think that we're obligated to.
But this brings to mind an idea. It would have to get passed around and become hacker chic, but it's kinda nasty.
Tag the bottom of ALL your emails with the following sig:
Bomb Arab Kill President Blow Up Federal Building Shoot Guns Explosives Drugs Mafia Crime Terrorist etc...
If that suddenly appears at the bottom of 50 million emails a day, you'd at least knock the load on their systems up a notch or two, not to mention making it infeasible for them to be read over by people.
But my guess is they'd just add you to a list of minor trouble makers and make their software a bit smarter.
There are cases where other interests override those of profit though. Africa is a perfect example of this. They need the drugs because they are having a massive AIDS epidemic. There's no way they can afford to pay the price the drug companies want. They have little choice but to do whatever is necessary for survival, and I don't see that we have any right to stop them. This is something that I think we here in the US need to really examine as a country. There must be a way to continue drug research without having to charge prices that are prohibitive for many people, even though their lives depend on receiving the medicine. Maybe we do need a less capitalist health system in this country.
Like many people, you ignore the long term aspect. If you took cases where you think saving lives is more important than money, and forced companies to give away drugs to people who need them, companies would stop developing drugs that people need, and move towards developing only drugs that people want. This is already happening to some extent. No cure for AIDS yet, but Viagra and Rogaine are certainly prominent. Because if they came out with a cure for AIDS, and wanted to charge $1,000 per person for it, people like you would cry out that lives must be saved and demand the government force the company to cut their profits.
The problem (and many people will hate me for saying this) is that people (particularly Americans) attach too high a value to each human life. We all think that every single person is entitled to the absolute best cutting-edge medical measures to save their life. Well calculate how much money exists. The total funds of the world. Call this number W. Now calculate the cost of the most expensive cutting-edge medical treatment for one person, and multiply that number by the population of the world. Call that number C. I do not doubt that C is far greater than W. This means that if we put all the resources of humanity towards nothing but medical care, we would still fail at goal of immortality.
It's a simple fact of life. People die. You are mortal. So am I. So if 10,000 people's lives are at stake, don't insist that they be saved at any cost, when that cost might be bankrupting the corportation that would have developed a drug that would later have saved 100,000 people.
The New York Times a few weeks ago estimated that between 20% and 40% of the cost of developing a drug is taxpayer money, but the private companies get 100% of the profits.
If this is really the case and is a valid statistic, then it is the fault of those resposible for setting government budgets. You can't just give a company some money and expect them to suddenly change their goals from making money into helping humanity. If you gave these companies the choice between that 20-40% funding and the right to make a profit on their product, I bet they'd tell the government where to stick those tax dollars.
Maybe someone in the government thinks it's better for you to have Aspirin and Tylenol developed and as an option, no matter how much it costs you at the store, than it is to save your tax dollars. If they think that, it's their fault and you should place your judgments at their feet, not at the feet of the companies they donate to.
That's nonsense. The record companies ADVANCE the money to the groups for these expenses, but the musicians are the ones who bear the ultimate cost.
That's true of recording studio costs, (at least so I hear) but I haven't seen anything that supports the claim that record companies do not contribute anything financially to the artists (such as promotion (advertising), legal representation, transportation, and many other costs). If you think this is the case, I want to see your information source.
This seems very obvious to me. If you're free to say "Impeach the President!" you should be free to wear a T-shirt with "Impeach the President!" on the front of it. And similarly, if it's illegal to say "Kill Bill Clinton" it should be illegal to wear a T-Shirt that says "Kill Bill Clinton".
But it's apparently not obvious to everyone. In the Napster and DeCSS cases, it's not the fact that corporations are suing and getting them shut down that really worries me. It's the level of ignorance that it reveals amongst the people (mainly judges) who make the important decisions. It hadn't even occured to this judge to consider the free speech issues present. And I think the judge in the Napster case truly believed that Napster was posting copyrighted material, as opposed to merely providing search information to people who share copyrighted material.
Most people ignore that distinction, choosing to focus on things like "Who cares if Napster is illegal, the corporations it's ripping off were ripping me off!" or "Napster helps them more than it hurts them". While I believe the latter statement is both true and relevant, the key to the issue, as I see it, is the fact that Napster is just the Internet equivalent to the radar detector or the handgun. It's a tool. Sure, the majority of its users break the law with it, but it is not inherently illegal, so it shouldn't be outlawed. The same is the case with DeCSS. It's not inherently illegal, it just has potentially illegal uses. So does damn near all technology.
My real fear isn't that the judges are considering these issues and disagreeing with me, it's that it doesn't even occur to them.
You quoted the "How can they take my Napster away?" and mocked it. I don't blame you. That's a pathetic whiny complaint and Katz played it up. I don't think Napster should be shut down, both because it doesn't violate laws (it serves a community, the majority of which violates laws) and because I personally believe it does more good than harm. Not because I'm annoyed that "they took my Napster away." I can get along just fine without Napster.
But this isn't just about Napster. You accuse Individualism (a word I hadn't heard before used as a political party, but I intend to start using it that way to apply to myself) as being professed just to fit into a group. I think it's quite the opposite. Take three issues that Republicans and Democrats disagree on. What happens if you agree with the Republicans on one of them, and the Democrats on the other two? Maybe you start another party. Now someone else comes along, who agrees with you on those three issues, and differs on a fourth and fifth issue.
I disagree with the idea of political parties just like I disagree with organized religions. I think each person's beliefs are different enough from the next person's that they shouldn't join any political party or religion, because they're bound to disagree with some significant aspect of said party or religion. So if I am asked my religion I'll say anti-theist, and if asked my party, I'll say individualist. Even this is probably inaccurate, but I'll settle for it for now.
Issues on Slashdot tend to be driven by this group ideal as much as anywhere else; it's a place where it's cool to be anti-Echelon and anti-DMCA. What if I'm anti-Echelon, but pro-Carnivore? What if I think that the DMCA ain't such a bad idea? Individual thought needs to be embraced in any society where we wish idealistic progress to happen. We can't have two straw-man positions.
Where's the complexity of your thoughts? Where can I express that Open Source is good in some areas, but in others some Closed Source software is better, and that Free Software might not ever be the best? Where can I truly be an individual? Certainly not slashdot, despite the hidden references in Katz's essay. Individual thought needs to be sustained, but making straw-man sides out of an issue suits nobody.
You say it's cool to think certain things on Slashdot. Why is it cool? Because that's what the majority here thinks. So when people say those things, the majority cheers for them. That's how any group of people works. Nobody is preventing you from saying whatever you want here. Maybe your concern is that if you said "[Some Software] should be Closed Souce." people would mod your post down, which in effect removes it. I doubt it. In fact your post that I'm responding to right now got modded up to a 5. Modding shouldn't be about whether you agree with someone's point, it should be whether you think they said something relevant and informative. And despite all the complaints, I think it does a pretty good job of reflecting that. People who complain about moderators are usually just people who think they deserve more attention and are upset that the moderators out there don't agree.
You have free speech here, and you're turning it down. What you want isn't a place where you can speak freely. What you want is a place where everyone agrees with you. If you think people here are strong free-speech and privacy proponents just because it makes them popular, then you probably won't find much agreement here. But you're free to say it.
Damn. I was all impressed until you tried to claim that after drug company A pays millions upon millions to develop a drug, drug company B should be able to take said drug and sell it much cheaper.
I've notice a lot of the people posting here complaining about "the evil corporations that charge us outrageous prices" don't seem to have even a rudimentary understanding of the economics that those companies operate under. It's always "they do this. they do that"
I challenge you to do a little research. Find out the average cost in money and time it takes to develop a drug and get it to market. Now tell me where that money comes from. I would take it from the sales of said drug, but apparently Hard_Code disagrees.
Record companies have to spend a lot of money to support artists (not to PAY artists neccessarily, but to transport them and promote them and pay their legal fees and all sorts of things) and to maintain an infrastructure that allows them to make music, put it where you can hear it, and sell it to you. I'm not saying they are great people who don't try to make a big profit, but very few people here seem to have a realistic understanding of the economics involved.
Whenever your theory starts to involve evil villains and conspiracies, it's time to step back a minute and rethink your theory. The (tobacco/drug/record) companies are greedy, yes. But they aren't evil, and they aren't conspiring against you. Get some perspective.
This is the second time I've been asked "Can you explain that?" I'm not explaining anything. I'm just pointing out that you're ignoring a lot of costs to the record companies. That doesn't mean that they're not bastards; it doesn't mean that they aren't ripping off artists. I don't intend to explain or justify any of their behavior, but I'm pointing out that it if they only got a dollar for each CD they would be bankrupt in no time, because it really costs them more than 50 cents per CD to operate. Maybe it only costs 50 cents to physically produce that CD, but record companies do more than just stamp out CDs.
As for the "I'm really using Napster to protest the injustice of record companies," that's total bullshit. You're using Napster because you want to listen to songs without paying for them. If you decide not to buy a CD because you can get it on Napster, you're basically stealing from the record companies, and it's not a noble act of protest. If you really want to protest the record companies, stop buying AND stealing their music, and patronize the indie record labels and free artists.
So don't come crying to me about all the extra costs the record labels have to bear promoting lesser-known bands. It's just not true. 3000-4000% was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but 1800% is not (at the $8-10 sell price).
I don't recall any crying. I don't claim that record companies aren't greedy and immoral, I was merely pointing out that his 3000% was an exaggerated figure. I still think your 1800% is not very informative, since you're still looking at the cost of producing the CD, and ignoring the overhead. It would seem like if you sell something for twice what you paid to make it, you'd be turning an amazing profit. But I bet if the record companies only had a 100% profit margin on the CD production/sales, they'd go out of business. There are a lot of costs that record companies pay, other than just physically manufacturing CDs.
If the RIAA was saying "We're thinking about suing Napster" and people started launching boycotts, it might have some effect, if and only if you could make it really public and convince RIAA that their sales drop was due to their proposed lawsuit.
But we're way past that now. We're talking about law now. A judge has said "what you're doing is illegal, shut it down." The power isn't in the hands of the RIAA anymore, it's in the hands of a judge. And a judge isn't going to say "Wait, I take back my ruling, because RIAA is unpopular and losing sales now!"
If Napster wins on appeal, great. I think legally speaking, they have a case, since they don't actually do anything illegal. Just like radar-detectors don't violate speed limits, AT&T doesn't make obscene phone calls, guns don't kill people, and the ISPs that run the backbones from Dallas to New York to California don't sell kiddie porn. These are all just technologies, and if they are used to break the law, the resposibility lies with the law breakers, not the tech makers.
But the laws these days don't always reflect the Constitution, or even justice. So be prepared for Napster to lose. If they lose, boycotting won't bring them back. Accept the loss and move on. Write better software. Take the Gnutella source and make it better. But don't stop buying CDs, because if you do, then your "Napster isn't bad, because I still buy music that I like" is now a pathetic lie. You'll keep listening to the music, you're just making excuses not to spend money.
But it's not surprising that an industry that consistently charges $15-20 for something that costs them $0.50 (a 3000-4000% markup) will sue anyone who tries to threaten it.
Look, I hate to be the guy who defends the record companies, but this is a bogus statistic.
It may cost them 50 cents to stamp the CD, but you're overlooking a huge number of costs for the record companies. They pay the musicians, maybe not well, but they pay them. They advertise. They take care of lots of things for their musicians, including legal fees (because musicians tend to attract lawsuits more than the average person) and transportation and lodging on tour. Also, most bands that are signed at a major label don't make the label a profit, and the profit turning bands have to pay for these others.
Also, the stores charge $15 for CDs, the record companies probably sell to the stores for about $8-10.
I don't know all the costs, someone who works in the recording industry might better be able to name them, but it's unfair to say the record companies make CDs for 50 cents and sell them for $15.
Slashdot Mirror
Libraries are open to all ages, including adults -- who have a First Amendment right to access a broader range of materials on the Net than the proposed congressional filtering arrangement would allow.
Um, no, they don't. The First Amendment gives you the right to say anything, not to see anything. All those websties are well within their First Amendment rights to post anything they want, but the libraries aren't obligated to display it. It's like demanding that they stock copies of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Swank, etc., and crying out "First Amendment!" and "Censorship!" if they don't.
The government isn't at all obligated to present this information, legally speaking. So with that understood, we can discuss what they should do, not what they are legally required to do. Should they grant people compete, unrestricted access to the Internet in libraries?
I'm a huge advocate of free speech and I'm very anti-censorship, but I say Hell No. Can you picture 12-year-olds downloading porn in a library? It would be horrible. Picture library workstations flooded with local teenagers downloading porn, or even game sites, and the adults wanting to do research suddenly being crowded out. Now picture the alternative. You want to do some legitimate 'net research about sexuality or AIDS, and you can't access it. This kind of sucks, but it's nowhere near as bad as its alternative. Find another net connection. Get one at home, or at a college, or whatever. The libraries aren't obligated to provide you with unrestricted free Internet service, and I don't think they should.
You want us to believe that the best way to hurt the RIAA is to give them even more money... Sure, whatever.
No, I don't expect you're going to really do anything that will hurt the RIAA. You can convince them they're right, that Napster is a major threat to them, or convince them that it's a minor boon. But your petty boycott isn't going to scare them.
The effectiveness of any boycott depends on the change it incurs. So the only significant boycotters are the ones who would previously bought a lot of CDs from RIAA. While I believe there are several Napster users who still buy RIAA CDs (me being one of them), I think these people account for a very small percentage of the total CD buyers, and I don't think you'll really convince even 50% of the Napster/CD-purchasers to boycott.
Think of the tobacco companies. Everyone and their dog knows that cigarettes are bad for them, and there's tons of "concerned citizens" out there trying to quit. And yet the tobacco companies are still alive and kicking, turning out massive profits. I hate to rain on your grassroots parade, but a small collection of concerned citizens isn't going to change the policies of a billion dollar industrial complex. Especially not by threatening minor financial hits, when the reason RIAA is acting this way is because they're pursuing major financial issues (like judgements won in a lawsuit, or concerns like "will anyone ever buy any of our CDs if they can get them for free?").
If you want to buycott something, rush out and buy from the indies. That way they'll still lose, but market research will show that CD sales in general are up.
That sounds familiar. Maybe because that's what I said:
"The Buy-cott however, is a great idea. This way market research shows that the record labels who are encouraging Napster are showing record (no pun intended) sales, and maybe give RIAA something to think about."
The point here is that RIAA is huge, and not only is it huge, but it's made up of lots of member companies. So even assuming you inflict a 10% cut in their profits, (a ridiculously optimistic figure) you have to convince not just one man, but at least 20 different companies that the profit cuts are entirely due to outrage at their legal action against Napster. Even then, as I've mentioned before, it has gone beyond RIAA now. It's in the courts. It's up to a judge now to declare Napster as legal or illegal, and the judge isn't going to be scared of financial losses. Instead, the judge is going to be looking for financial losses, because they would support RIAA's claim that Napster is causing them damages.
You can make impact here, I'm not trying to say you can't. But the way you can make impact is by supporting the "good guys" (the indie labels), not by trying to hurt the RIAA.
If you've seen interviews with many artists, you've probably noticed how most of them hate to be classified. If this really works, it would kill a lot of pretension. I can see it now:
Reporter: Despite the fact that you're considered a rock artist, you seem to be having a great deal of success amongst the country and even R+B fans. Why do you think that is?
Artist: Well I don't really think of myself as a rcok musician. People are always trying to classify my music as pop, or hard rock, or soft rock, or whatever. But I don't restrict myself to those terms, I just think of myself as an artist, and I think my work really defies being simply classified as rock.
[Reporter looks down at a laptop, hits a few keys]
Reporter: No, the computer says it's clearly rock music. Not country, not big-band, not funk, not innovative-genre-transcending-art, just rock music.
Artist: Well, yes, but it's really-
Reporter: That's all the time we have for now. Tune in tomorrow as I interview another popular rock band.
I'm not a big fan of Anonymous Cowards, but why was this modded down?
I think it's completely logical. You can only buy Matchbox 20 CD's from one label. If you want to buy a CD, check out the label and see if it's RIAA. If it's not, you're in the clear. But I doubt you'll have much luck finding music you like based on the label rather than the artist.
I still like the solution of creating a .sex (or whatever you want to call it) and requiring any porn companies in the US to house their domain there.
It doesn't stop pages from companies in other countries, or illegal pages, but any veteran computer user can tell you that you can't really reliably censor the net. As soon as you make a smarter filter, they'll make craftier pages.
The TLD provides a simple, cheap, effective solution for all law-abiding sites.
I said it before, I'll say it again:
The boycott is a HORRIBLE, STUPID idea.
RIAA won't know WHY you chose to stop buying their CDs, all they know is that they have new figures showing a drastic drop off in sales after the advent of mp3 sharing technology. This will just be ammunition in their arguments that technologies like Napster are causing them damages.
Every CD you decide not to buy, thanks to the existence of Napster (either because you use it to steal or merely want to protest RIAA) drives another nail in Napster's coffin.
The Buy-cott however, is a great idea. This way market research shows that the record labels who are encouraging Napster are showing record (no pun intended) sales, and maybe give RIAA something to think about.
Don't go to war with organizations bigger than you. You'll lose. Convince them that what you want is also in their best interests.
I suck at the whole job seeking process, not just interviewing.
Luckily for me, the interview for my current job (a rather good one, IMHO) went like this:
I was with a guy I knew, who was talking to a co-worker on his cell phone. He turned to me and said: "How would you like to spend the summer in New York City, getting paid $20/hour while [the company] covers your hotel, travel, and food expenses?"
Me: Sounds great.
Him (to cell phone) : Okay, he says yes.
Also, indie-music.com has a big alphabetical list with links.
If you really care, file that list and RIAA's list and cross-reference them.
Well I still think the boycott idea is moronic, but I'll drop in the one I know:
Ani DiFranco's label, Righteous Babe, isn't listed on the membership list and I doubt it's a subsidiary of some other.
No, it doesn't.
It has no character, so it can't have character flaws.
I'm always curious as to why people are interested in the size of the internet. As long as it works, and people think it's running nicely, does it really matter?
I'm guessing you're not a network administrator.
It works because the infrastructure can support all the traffic that's currently on it. If your infrastructure is build to support 10 billion hosts, and your survey reveals you have 10 million active hosts, you can relax.
On the other hand, if it reveals you have 900 million hosts, and you only had 500 millon two weeks ago, you're in trouble and you need to get some new hardware, fast.
So aside from a general curiosity as to how many people out there want to download my mp3's, there's a legitimate reason for the 'net community to be interested and even concerned by the size and growth rate of the Internet.
Sure, as long as you can talk the people who aren't using all of their class A's and class B's into loaning you a couple addresses.
Besides, if you assume it doubles every one and a half years, I'd say you've got maybe 8 more years. Not 20.
It always annoys me when people try to cite companies, organizations, or even cultures or types of people as hypocritical.
Slashdot is a news site and public forum. Say one person posts a news article in favor of something, then another person posts one against it. Does this make Slashdot hypocritical? No.
If you're gonna accuse someone of hypocrisy, site the author of the pages' code and the author of the news posts. Don't try to accuse a collective of having a character flaw.
Well here's my take on the matter. As before, I fully expect to be called an inhuman bastard at any minute.
The USA, and drug companies therein, should not be responsible for the lives of anyone in Africa. (save possibly vacationing Americans)
If the African government decides to buy drugs to help their people, more power to them. If they decide not to because they can't afford it, I don't blame them. If they decide not to because they're greedy dictatorial types who would rather build mansions of gold, then let their people overthrow them. Maybe we'll help.
If, on the other hand, some company in Africa decides to steal a drug formula from an American company and market it ultra cheap in Africa, then I say the US shouldn't have to do anything about it. If the American company wants to do something about it, let them. Now as soon as somebody tries to buy that drug in Africa and ship it back to America, then it's American Customs' responsibility to stop them, because that medicine is a violation of American laws.
But I don't agree that "we'd be stupid not to do something to help." (assuming by "we" you mean the US government.) They're not our people, they're not our responsibility. If they're being oppressed by nature, tough shit. People die. If they're being oppressed by their government, they should overthrow their government. If they show that they intend to overthrow their government, but they can't quite do it, then maybe we'll help them overthrow their government. But I don't think that we're obligated to.
I wonder if they would even bother.
But this brings to mind an idea. It would have to get passed around and become hacker chic, but it's kinda nasty.
Tag the bottom of ALL your emails with the following sig:
Bomb Arab Kill President Blow Up Federal Building Shoot Guns Explosives Drugs Mafia Crime Terrorist etc...
If that suddenly appears at the bottom of 50 million emails a day, you'd at least knock the load on their systems up a notch or two, not to mention making it infeasible for them to be read over by people.
But my guess is they'd just add you to a list of minor trouble makers and make their software a bit smarter.
There are cases where other interests override those of profit though. Africa is a perfect example of this. They need the drugs because they are having a massive AIDS epidemic. There's no way they can afford to pay the price the drug companies want. They have little choice but to do whatever is necessary for survival, and I don't see that we have any right to stop them. This is something that I think we here in the US need to really examine as a country. There must be a way to continue drug research without having to charge prices that are prohibitive for many people, even though their lives depend on receiving the medicine. Maybe we do need a less capitalist health system in this country.
Like many people, you ignore the long term aspect. If you took cases where you think saving lives is more important than money, and forced companies to give away drugs to people who need them, companies would stop developing drugs that people need, and move towards developing only drugs that people want. This is already happening to some extent. No cure for AIDS yet, but Viagra and Rogaine are certainly prominent. Because if they came out with a cure for AIDS, and wanted to charge $1,000 per person for it, people like you would cry out that lives must be saved and demand the government force the company to cut their profits.
The problem (and many people will hate me for saying this) is that people (particularly Americans) attach too high a value to each human life. We all think that every single person is entitled to the absolute best cutting-edge medical measures to save their life. Well calculate how much money exists. The total funds of the world. Call this number W. Now calculate the cost of the most expensive cutting-edge medical treatment for one person, and multiply that number by the population of the world. Call that number C. I do not doubt that C is far greater than W. This means that if we put all the resources of humanity towards nothing but medical care, we would still fail at goal of immortality.
It's a simple fact of life. People die. You are mortal. So am I. So if 10,000 people's lives are at stake, don't insist that they be saved at any cost, when that cost might be bankrupting the corportation that would have developed a drug that would later have saved 100,000 people.
The New York Times a few weeks ago estimated that between 20% and 40% of the cost of developing a drug is taxpayer money, but the private companies get 100% of the profits.
If this is really the case and is a valid statistic, then it is the fault of those resposible for setting government budgets. You can't just give a company some money and expect them to suddenly change their goals from making money into helping humanity. If you gave these companies the choice between that 20-40% funding and the right to make a profit on their product, I bet they'd tell the government where to stick those tax dollars.
Maybe someone in the government thinks it's better for you to have Aspirin and Tylenol developed and as an option, no matter how much it costs you at the store, than it is to save your tax dollars. If they think that, it's their fault and you should place your judgments at their feet, not at the feet of the companies they donate to.
That's nonsense. The record companies ADVANCE the money to the groups for these expenses, but the musicians are the ones who bear the ultimate cost.
That's true of recording studio costs, (at least so I hear) but I haven't seen anything that supports the claim that record companies do not contribute anything financially to the artists (such as promotion (advertising), legal representation, transportation, and many other costs). If you think this is the case, I want to see your information source.
This seems very obvious to me.
If you're free to say "Impeach the President!" you should be free to wear a T-shirt with "Impeach the President!" on the front of it. And similarly, if it's illegal to say "Kill Bill Clinton" it should be illegal to wear a T-Shirt that says "Kill Bill Clinton".
But it's apparently not obvious to everyone. In the Napster and DeCSS cases, it's not the fact that corporations are suing and getting them shut down that really worries me. It's the level of ignorance that it reveals amongst the people (mainly judges) who make the important decisions. It hadn't even occured to this judge to consider the free speech issues present. And I think the judge in the Napster case truly believed that Napster was posting copyrighted material, as opposed to merely providing search information to people who share copyrighted material.
Most people ignore that distinction, choosing to focus on things like "Who cares if Napster is illegal, the corporations it's ripping off were ripping me off!" or "Napster helps them more than it hurts them". While I believe the latter statement is both true and relevant, the key to the issue, as I see it, is the fact that Napster is just the Internet equivalent to the radar detector or the handgun. It's a tool. Sure, the majority of its users break the law with it, but it is not inherently illegal, so it shouldn't be outlawed. The same is the case with DeCSS. It's not inherently illegal, it just has potentially illegal uses. So does damn near all technology.
My real fear isn't that the judges are considering these issues and disagreeing with me, it's that it doesn't even occur to them.
You quoted the "How can they take my Napster away?" and mocked it.
I don't blame you. That's a pathetic whiny complaint and Katz played it up. I don't think Napster should be shut down, both because it doesn't violate laws (it serves a community, the majority of which violates laws) and because I personally believe it does more good than harm. Not because I'm annoyed that "they took my Napster away." I can get along just fine without Napster.
But this isn't just about Napster. You accuse Individualism (a word I hadn't heard before used as a political party, but I intend to start using it that way to apply to myself) as being professed just to fit into a group. I think it's quite the opposite. Take three issues that Republicans and Democrats disagree on. What happens if you agree with the Republicans on one of them, and the Democrats on the other two? Maybe you start another party. Now someone else comes along, who agrees with you on those three issues, and differs on a fourth and fifth issue.
I disagree with the idea of political parties just like I disagree with organized religions. I think each person's beliefs are different enough from the next person's that they shouldn't join any political party or religion, because they're bound to disagree with some significant aspect of said party or religion. So if I am asked my religion I'll say anti-theist, and if asked my party, I'll say individualist. Even this is probably inaccurate, but I'll settle for it for now.
Issues on Slashdot tend to be driven by this group ideal as much as anywhere else; it's a place where it's cool to be anti-Echelon and anti-DMCA. What if I'm anti-Echelon, but pro-Carnivore? What if I think that the DMCA ain't such a bad idea? Individual thought needs to be embraced in any society where we wish idealistic progress to happen. We can't have two straw-man positions.
Where's the complexity of your thoughts? Where can I express that Open Source is good in some areas, but in others some Closed Source software is better, and that Free Software might not ever be the best? Where can I truly be an individual? Certainly not slashdot, despite the hidden references in Katz's essay. Individual thought needs to be sustained, but making straw-man sides out of an issue suits nobody.
You say it's cool to think certain things on Slashdot. Why is it cool? Because that's what the majority here thinks. So when people say those things, the majority cheers for them. That's how any group of people works. Nobody is preventing you from saying whatever you want here. Maybe your concern is that if you said "[Some Software] should be Closed Souce." people would mod your post down, which in effect removes it. I doubt it. In fact your post that I'm responding to right now got modded up to a 5. Modding shouldn't be about whether you agree with someone's point, it should be whether you think they said something relevant and informative. And despite all the complaints, I think it does a pretty good job of reflecting that. People who complain about moderators are usually just people who think they deserve more attention and are upset that the moderators out there don't agree.
You have free speech here, and you're turning it down. What you want isn't a place where you can speak freely. What you want is a place where everyone agrees with you. If you think people here are strong free-speech and privacy proponents just because it makes them popular, then you probably won't find much agreement here. But you're free to say it.
Damn. I was all impressed until you tried to claim that after drug company A pays millions upon millions to develop a drug, drug company B should be able to take said drug and sell it much cheaper.
I've notice a lot of the people posting here complaining about "the evil corporations that charge us outrageous prices" don't seem to have even a rudimentary understanding of the economics that those companies operate under. It's always "they do this. they do that"
I challenge you to do a little research. Find out the average cost in money and time it takes to develop a drug and get it to market. Now tell me where that money comes from. I would take it from the sales of said drug, but apparently Hard_Code disagrees.
Record companies have to spend a lot of money to support artists (not to PAY artists neccessarily, but to transport them and promote them and pay their legal fees and all sorts of things) and to maintain an infrastructure that allows them to make music, put it where you can hear it, and sell it to you. I'm not saying they are great people who don't try to make a big profit, but very few people here seem to have a realistic understanding of the economics involved.
Whenever your theory starts to involve evil villains and conspiracies, it's time to step back a minute and rethink your theory. The (tobacco/drug/record) companies are greedy, yes. But they aren't evil, and they aren't conspiring against you. Get some perspective.
This is the second time I've been asked "Can you explain that?"
I'm not explaining anything. I'm just pointing out that you're ignoring a lot of costs to the record companies. That doesn't mean that they're not bastards; it doesn't mean that they aren't ripping off artists. I don't intend to explain or justify any of their behavior, but I'm pointing out that it if they only got a dollar for each CD they would be bankrupt in no time, because it really costs them more than 50 cents per CD to operate. Maybe it only costs 50 cents to physically produce that CD, but record companies do more than just stamp out CDs.
As for the "I'm really using Napster to protest the injustice of record companies," that's total bullshit. You're using Napster because you want to listen to songs without paying for them. If you decide not to buy a CD because you can get it on Napster, you're basically stealing from the record companies, and it's not a noble act of protest. If you really want to protest the record companies, stop buying AND stealing their music, and patronize the indie record labels and free artists.
So don't come crying to me about all the extra costs the record labels have to bear promoting lesser-known bands. It's just not true. 3000-4000% was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but 1800% is not (at the $8-10 sell price).
I don't recall any crying. I don't claim that record companies aren't greedy and immoral, I was merely pointing out that his 3000% was an exaggerated figure. I still think your 1800% is not very informative, since you're still looking at the cost of producing the CD, and ignoring the overhead. It would seem like if you sell something for twice what you paid to make it, you'd be turning an amazing profit. But I bet if the record companies only had a 100% profit margin on the CD production/sales, they'd go out of business. There are a lot of costs that record companies pay, other than just physically manufacturing CDs.
If the RIAA was saying "We're thinking about suing Napster" and people started launching boycotts, it might have some effect, if and only if you could make it really public and convince RIAA that their sales drop was due to their proposed lawsuit.
But we're way past that now. We're talking about law now. A judge has said "what you're doing is illegal, shut it down." The power isn't in the hands of the RIAA anymore, it's in the hands of a judge. And a judge isn't going to say "Wait, I take back my ruling, because RIAA is unpopular and losing sales now!"
If Napster wins on appeal, great. I think legally speaking, they have a case, since they don't actually do anything illegal. Just like radar-detectors don't violate speed limits, AT&T doesn't make obscene phone calls, guns don't kill people, and the ISPs that run the backbones from Dallas to New York to California don't sell kiddie porn. These are all just technologies, and if they are used to break the law, the resposibility lies with the law breakers, not the tech makers.
But the laws these days don't always reflect the Constitution, or even justice. So be prepared for Napster to lose. If they lose, boycotting won't bring them back. Accept the loss and move on. Write better software. Take the Gnutella source and make it better. But don't stop buying CDs, because if you do, then your "Napster isn't bad, because I still buy music that I like" is now a pathetic lie. You'll keep listening to the music, you're just making excuses not to spend money.
But it's not surprising that an industry that consistently charges $15-20 for something that costs them $0.50 (a 3000-4000% markup) will sue anyone who tries to threaten it.
Look, I hate to be the guy who defends the record companies, but this is a bogus statistic.
It may cost them 50 cents to stamp the CD, but you're overlooking a huge number of costs for the record companies. They pay the musicians, maybe not well, but they pay them. They advertise. They take care of lots of things for their musicians, including legal fees (because musicians tend to attract lawsuits more than the average person) and transportation and lodging on tour. Also, most bands that are signed at a major label don't make the label a profit, and the profit turning bands have to pay for these others.
Also, the stores charge $15 for CDs, the record companies probably sell to the stores for about $8-10.
I don't know all the costs, someone who works in the recording industry might better be able to name them, but it's unfair to say the record companies make CDs for 50 cents and sell them for $15.
Then again it may just be that he REALLY likes /., to the point where he dotes upon it. ;)
Ah, but that would be "slashdotdoter"
"slashdoter" would be someone who dotes on slashes. My guess would be a person overly fond of knives. Probably not a good thing.