This is precisely why a P2P organization going legit is a fantastic thing. It can gain momentum without the corporate copyright holders gumming it up. Everyone's been talking about the "Long Tail" without ever realizing that it was broadcast mediums that pu the hits at the top of the charts in the first place. It's time the net got a broadcast mechansim of its own -- but NOT for pirating. Turn it over to the genuinely good non-lable musicians and indy movie makers and let them get their shit out without piracy getting in the way. Podcasting is great for this reason. If BitTorrent were serious about their commitment to not engaging pirated content, they would be doing the world some good. The content would be not-so-good at first and their might not be much of it, but eventually the TV execs and movie execs would start to drool over the numbers and want to get in on the game. But this time, they don't get to tell us how it works. They don't get to dictate that content should have advertising. They'll just be ignored if it does -- or the ads will be ignored. Either way, it's high time that these distribution systems got out from under the stupid copyright argument. Fuck corporate copyright mongers. Let artists out of the cage.
Even more important would be to get developed countries to drop tariffs on farmed goods. Africa could readily compete in the international agriculture market if it were a level playing field. Then everyone gets their natural ecosystem back. In developed countries, many farms would go byu the wayside and gradually go back to the wildlife they displaced. Africa would have more money to invest in conservation groups. It's not a win for everyone (farmers in developed countries) but it's a hell of lot more reasonable than picking up animals in crates and sticking them in places where they don't belong.
Genius! We can solve out ecological problems and the obesity epidemic at the same time. In fact, leveling the population will even help with fuel shortages! How is this not a win-win for everyone?
I could not agree with this more! These people are driven by money. Their motive is money. They want more money. Hit them where it counts. It is time for a major boycott. And why not? There are thousands and thousands of unsigned and even signed musicians on small labels and its all out there for you to listen to. Do something novel today and find a non-RIAA musician to listen to. Try 15megsoffame for starters. Listen to music in the public domain music. Check out artists making music under the creative commons. In fact, don't even STEAL RIAA music. Just drop it and them.
Take that non-RIAA music that you find and like and burn it to a CD. Give it to a friend. Tell your friend why they should think about boycotting the RIAA.
This is the only way that the RIAA will ever think about their own problems and their overpricing. It's the ONLY way because it hits them in the pocketbook.
"decrying the move by stating that unlike electronic toll passes, these new plates will not be anonymous."
I read that and wondered about it too. In New Jersey, they are definitely not anonymous. Not only do they send a bill to your house every month for the amount of the toll, they'll send you tickets too if you drive too fast through the booth. In fact, if someone is going to bill you then how could any toll system be anonymous.
No kidding. I don't usually root for Apple's lawyers but at least in this case I hope they crush Contois. Anybody who has the audacity to sue for the sole purpose of generating an income deserves to be crushed! Go Apple lawyers! Sic 'em!
Apple is going to Intel for the serious DRM. Doesn't Intel have all kinds of vault-like protection system being built into their chips? The OS could easily be protected this way and what's more would be a smart move on Apple's part in order to appease Hollywood. You know they want movies on iTunes and iPods. You KNOW it, Apple. They're just in denial.
"Did they get the fusion to take place inside a crystal by some tunneling effect produced by the presence of multiple hydrogen ions properly positioned within the periodic lattice - potentially leading to a semiconductor fusion fuel-cell?"
I like slashdot for the very reason that this could be someone's first thought and I had to read it three times to really even get it.
My first thought was "Yeah, right."
BTW, do you have any interest in elaborating on your idea? You've piqued my curiosity.
I don't understand why the US treasury could not issue standardized plastic cards along the lines of pre-paid phone cards. They have a number. They have a $ amount (5,20,50). It works exactly like a debit card (maybe even using the same network) but the withdrawl comes out of the Treasury's pocket. You pay $5 in cash for a $5 debit card. It's not a smartcard -- the money's not on it, it's wherever the data is. It's anonymous to boot. Is there something I'm missing with a solution like this? The porn industry does it.
First, I live in New York and have available to me between 6 or 7 completely free newspapers I can grab. The Times has been competing with free papers like the Village Voice and the Metro for a long time. That aspect is not new. Those papers aren't going anywhere -- why would their web site counterparts?
Secondly, My girlfriend buys the Post because she likes the gossip and it's $1. The whole paper is $1. Ask her to pay for each article and look for the one she wants and then decide to pay.05 or.25 or... she's already moved on folks.
People not wanting to pay is not the problem. She pays $1 for something she peruses for 10 minutes and throws away (hardly different from a web page). Micropayments are the problem. Lack of attention is the problem. This is the attention economy after all. Technically speaking, my time is worth ~.50/minute. It is not worth and will never be worth it for me to look for and buy something that costs less than that. Micropayments are never going to happen because below the dollar mark there is not enough of an incentive for a consumer to even both to consume. They won't happen because any variability below a dollar is virtually meaningless. And even if the interface was virtually totally transparent the user still has to think about a purchase decision. If that decision costs more than the price of the product to be purchased, they will move on before bothering.
Frankly I think the interface on most news sites is also part of the problem. You could never get me to pay for the priveledge of not being able to find what I want. The nature of the commodity needs to change. Use RSS in an RSS browser for starters. That's the way web-based newspapers shoudl look: a list of stories that you can sort through in several different ways. RSS by its nature creates simplicity for the user and I've yet to see it, but there are a couple RSS feeds that I would pay $1-$2/month for. I have a subscription like that for runabot.com ($2/month) and I hardly think about it. I think most people would go for something like that. I don't think the average consumer will EVER go for paying for an article at a time.
Although I think it should be the Corporate Repulic of the United States of North America and the Middle East so that it can have a cool acronym: CRUSNAME
Almost as good as NATO. Beside, why include democracy in the new name? Voting is a scam.
Hate to tell ya, Maynard, but corporations have a lot more rights than you seem to suspect.
In 1975 federal courts began to recognize coporations as entities that could be protected under the fourth amendment right. In 1986 Dow Chemical stopped the EPA from flying planes over its property thanks to its proclamation that it had fourth amendment rights. That same year California courts granted one of their public utilities protection under the 1st amendement.
They have been granted rights. Their charters are almost NEVER revoked. They can be in more courtrooms than you can, talk louder than you can and are gaining ground on you every day.
Until there's a constitutional amendment that states that corporations have no natural rights, they will continue to persue them. It is only too easy to see that it is in their best interests. ___________________
Yeah, absolutely. I should clarify my usage of "design". I don't just mean aesthetics. It was my intention to include engineering in my use of the term. And sometimes, in something really new, it really is both. The ipod click wheel is a shift in aesthetics from other ipods but it's also an engineering feat.
The real economic factor that so many firms miss is that good design makes a profit. I'm talking about software design, product design, automobile design. Once an object loses its status as some unique category it becomes a commodity. Once it becomes a commodity people become more concerned with price. Design something really well and it gains in personal value and loses the stigma of commodity. Invest in design (and maybe use a real design firm like Apple does) and you will be rewarded for it.
Consider vacuum cleaners. They're a commodity. Everyone's got one. So how do sell a vacuum cleaner for $500 when anyone can get one for $100. Simple. Re-design it. Look at the reviews! People are swearing up and down that this Dyson vacuum cleaner is the best vacuum they've ever used. It's likely that Dyson won't take over the market. But it is likely that they will have a stable totally loyal users that will buy only that brand. Hmmm. Sound like anyone you know? (Of course it sounds like Apple, but were you also thinking Saturn? Google?)
It never ceases to amaze me when people claim that Apple is not important because they only have 4-5% of the market. They're not in the commodity business! BMW does not have more than 4-5% of the market. Neither will Dyson. Because they are not commodity firms. They are design firms (as in designer goods). Taking over huge amounts of the market by make cheap unattractive crap is not what they do.
When it'susedproperly there are things that flash can accomplish that HTML and Java simply can't.
Saying Flash is evil is like saying guns are evil. Flash does not ruin user experiences, designers that use it to make eye candy ruin user experiences. It is totally possible to use Flash is a beneficial and useful way. It's just not used for that most of the time,
Not to take this discussion too seriously, I find that tickers are one of those classic examples of where design of a real object was taken literally onto the computer screen. Generally speaking, this is ALWAYS a bad idea. Calendars have pages. Computer screens do not. A calendar on a computer should just show all the days in a scroll or some other fashion where the user doesn't have to click back and forth between months to see things.
In the same respect, tickers exist because of big LED boards. You didn't have any interactivity and no choice but to scroll items by. Ditto for TV. With interactivity there's just no reason to scroll things by the user -- at least not without giving them some control -- like a rewind in the event they miss something. There are just too many other ways to lay out information in a program to ever justify the use of a ticker as a UI. It is restricting the user to a form factor that simply doesn't exist in software.
For me the whole discussion is moot because the word communism has no meaning anymore. Does it mean state-owned? Do "the people" own all means of production? Are we not talking theory and discussing the dictatorships that have existed under the claim that they are/were communist? And even if you are talking theory is communism really an approriate description for producing something and giving it to the public (be that something art or software or whatever). We need a new economic paradigm to describe a cooperative system (community) in which people contribute labor for compensation other than money. I would like to propose Donarism as that paradigm.
donare is the greek root for gift. Anthropologists and sociologists have described gift economies for years. The native americans of the Seattle are were some of the most well-known societies in which it was common for the wealthy to give their wealth away. In fact, the more you gave away, the more wealthy you were considered to be. But "Gift Economy" carries a stigma of primetiveness with it. It seems "cute" and also seems to be treated as such by most economists. Capitalism is THE system and the final say on the way things should be distributed according to most. (I don't even remember studying gift economies in my early economics classes in college.) But that's the key problem with capitalism: it is concerned with distributing things. Ideas are simply not like things. Jefferson most famously noted this when he compared the notion of an idea to a candle -- namely that you could light someone else's candle without reducing the amount of light/flame that you possess. I can give you an idea and not reduce what I possess.
The fact is, ideas are more valuable the more widely they are held. What's the most valuable art in the world? -- the most widely recognized art. Software becomes more valuable the closer to a standard that it becomes. An entire industry is based on Apache, an application that is not only free but almost ubiquitous. Therein lies a great deal of its value and that value was developed by it being given away. Donarism then would be the economic system that describes how FREE distribution of ideas is what actually creates value -- not the idea itself.
"Shareholders are generally the only ones who could enforce morality, but corporations own most of the shares, and when you trace them back to humans the humans tend to not be involved with the running of the business much, and instead just want return on investment."
Even worse, the vast majority of shares in the vast majority of corporations are held in the portfolios of pension funds. If you have a pension fund you own the stock only you can't vote. The people managing the pension funds are ONLY concerned with their bottom line and won't push corporations around.
This fact is ludicrous. No one is at the wheel in this scenario and one of the simplest things we could do to reign in corporate power is to give people their vote. In the business world we have a feudal system -- what we need is a democracy. ______________________
I agree that there's no reason to decide that it's going to be one way of the other. All of these deals exist and have existed in one way or another for decades. AT&T gave you your phone for free and owned the wires in your house. You can lease a Mac from several companies today.
The truth is, gerneral purpose computers for general consumers doesn't make any sense. Operating Systems aren't getting easier to use. And the average internet user would balk at a command line or even an IRC client. A free Xbox that can record TV and play my music and deliver RSS feeds to me for a yearly subscription would make most households totally happy to throw out their windows box -- or at least relegate it to the closet.
I was a little disappointed, in fact, when the Nintendo/Apple project Pippin was scrapped -- it seemed obvious then (and still now) that some kind of information appliance (or media appliance) is more appropriate for the living room that a full-on general purpose box.
Both markets (computer and appliance) will likely exist and both pricing schemes (lease and buy) will likely exist in both of those markets.
I'm going to do little more than second or third anyone else in this thread who has said that Spitzer is doing a good job because it needs to be said: Spitzer is the bomb! You can't pick up the times or the post and not read about him going after sketchy finance activities. New York will benefit from the revenue, but so what? New York needs it -- the record boobs don't. ________________
Slashdot Mirror
This is precisely why a P2P organization going legit is a fantastic thing. It can gain momentum without the corporate copyright holders gumming it up. Everyone's been talking about the "Long Tail" without ever realizing that it was broadcast mediums that pu the hits at the top of the charts in the first place. It's time the net got a broadcast mechansim of its own -- but NOT for pirating. Turn it over to the genuinely good non-lable musicians and indy movie makers and let them get their shit out without piracy getting in the way. Podcasting is great for this reason. If BitTorrent were serious about their commitment to not engaging pirated content, they would be doing the world some good. The content would be not-so-good at first and their might not be much of it, but eventually the TV execs and movie execs would start to drool over the numbers and want to get in on the game. But this time, they don't get to tell us how it works. They don't get to dictate that content should have advertising. They'll just be ignored if it does -- or the ads will be ignored. Either way, it's high time that these distribution systems got out from under the stupid copyright argument. Fuck corporate copyright mongers. Let artists out of the cage.
In the words of William Faulkner: "Good artist borrow each others idea's -- great artists steal them outright."
Which also implies that draconian copyright law will make great art one day no longer possible.
Even more important would be to get developed countries to drop tariffs on farmed goods. Africa could readily compete in the international agriculture market if it were a level playing field. Then everyone gets their natural ecosystem back. In developed countries, many farms would go byu the wayside and gradually go back to the wildlife they displaced. Africa would have more money to invest in conservation groups. It's not a win for everyone (farmers in developed countries) but it's a hell of lot more reasonable than picking up animals in crates and sticking them in places where they don't belong.
Genius! We can solve out ecological problems and the obesity epidemic at the same time. In fact, leveling the population will even help with fuel shortages! How is this not a win-win for everyone?
>DO NOT PURCHASE SONGS BACKED BY THE RIAA
I could not agree with this more! These people are driven by money. Their motive is money. They want more money. Hit them where it counts. It is time for a major boycott. And why not? There are thousands and thousands of unsigned and even signed musicians on small labels and its all out there for you to listen to. Do something novel today and find a non-RIAA musician to listen to. Try 15megsoffame for starters. Listen to music in the public domain music. Check out artists making music under the creative commons. In fact, don't even STEAL RIAA music. Just drop it and them.
Take that non-RIAA music that you find and like and burn it to a CD. Give it to a friend. Tell your friend why they should think about boycotting the RIAA.
This is the only way that the RIAA will ever think about their own problems and their overpricing. It's the ONLY way because it hits them in the pocketbook.
I read that and wondered about it too. In New Jersey, they are definitely not anonymous. Not only do they send a bill to your house every month for the amount of the toll, they'll send you tickets too if you drive too fast through the booth. In fact, if someone is going to bill you then how could any toll system be anonymous.
No kidding. I don't usually root for Apple's lawyers but at least in this case I hope they crush Contois. Anybody who has the audacity to sue for the sole purpose of generating an income deserves to be crushed! Go Apple lawyers! Sic 'em!
Apple is going to Intel for the serious DRM. Doesn't Intel have all kinds of vault-like protection system being built into their chips? The OS could easily be protected this way and what's more would be a smart move on Apple's part in order to appease Hollywood. You know they want movies on iTunes and iPods. You KNOW it, Apple. They're just in denial.
I like slashdot for the very reason that this could be someone's first thought and I had to read it three times to really even get it.
My first thought was "Yeah, right."
BTW, do you have any interest in elaborating on your idea? You've piqued my curiosity.
Which is exactly why he should have said "There's edutainmatising to do."
I don't understand why the US treasury could not issue standardized plastic cards along the lines of pre-paid phone cards. They have a number. They have a $ amount (5,20,50). It works exactly like a debit card (maybe even using the same network) but the withdrawl comes out of the Treasury's pocket. You pay $5 in cash for a $5 debit card. It's not a smartcard -- the money's not on it, it's wherever the data is. It's anonymous to boot. Is there something I'm missing with a solution like this? The porn industry does it.
First, I live in New York and have available to me between 6 or 7 completely free newspapers I can grab. The Times has been competing with free papers like the Village Voice and the Metro for a long time. That aspect is not new. Those papers aren't going anywhere -- why would their web site counterparts?
.05 or .25 or... she's already moved on folks.
Secondly, My girlfriend buys the Post because she likes the gossip and it's $1. The whole paper is $1. Ask her to pay for each article and look for the one she wants and then decide to pay
People not wanting to pay is not the problem. She pays $1 for something she peruses for 10 minutes and throws away (hardly different from a web page). Micropayments are the problem. Lack of attention is the problem. This is the attention economy after all. Technically speaking, my time is worth ~.50/minute. It is not worth and will never be worth it for me to look for and buy something that costs less than that. Micropayments are never going to happen because below the dollar mark there is not enough of an incentive for a consumer to even both to consume. They won't happen because any variability below a dollar is virtually meaningless. And even if the interface was virtually totally transparent the user still has to think about a purchase decision. If that decision costs more than the price of the product to be purchased, they will move on before bothering.
Frankly I think the interface on most news sites is also part of the problem. You could never get me to pay for the priveledge of not being able to find what I want. The nature of the commodity needs to change. Use RSS in an RSS browser for starters. That's the way web-based newspapers shoudl look: a list of stories that you can sort through in several different ways. RSS by its nature creates simplicity for the user and I've yet to see it, but there are a couple RSS feeds that I would pay $1-$2/month for. I have a subscription like that for runabot.com ($2/month) and I hardly think about it. I think most people would go for something like that. I don't think the average consumer will EVER go for paying for an article at a time.
Hear! Hear!
Although I think it should be the Corporate Repulic of the United States of North America and the Middle East so that it can have a cool acronym: CRUSNAME
Almost as good as NATO. Beside, why include democracy in the new name? Voting is a scam.
Hate to tell ya, Maynard, but corporations have a lot more rights than you seem to suspect.
In 1975 federal courts began to recognize coporations as entities that could be protected under the fourth amendment right. In 1986 Dow Chemical stopped the EPA from flying planes over its property thanks to its proclamation that it had fourth amendment rights. That same year California courts granted one of their public utilities protection under the 1st amendement.
They have been granted rights. Their charters are almost NEVER revoked. They can be in more courtrooms than you can, talk louder than you can and are gaining ground on you every day.
Until there's a constitutional amendment that states that corporations have no natural rights, they will continue to persue them. It is only too easy to see that it is in their best interests.
___________________
Yeah, absolutely. I should clarify my usage of "design". I don't just mean aesthetics. It was my intention to include engineering in my use of the term. And sometimes, in something really new, it really is both. The ipod click wheel is a shift in aesthetics from other ipods but it's also an engineering feat.
The real economic factor that so many firms miss is that good design makes a profit. I'm talking about software design, product design, automobile design. Once an object loses its status as some unique category it becomes a commodity. Once it becomes a commodity people become more concerned with price. Design something really well and it gains in personal value and loses the stigma of commodity. Invest in design (and maybe use a real design firm like Apple does) and you will be rewarded for it.
Consider vacuum cleaners. They're a commodity. Everyone's got one. So how do sell a vacuum cleaner for $500 when anyone can get one for $100. Simple. Re-design it. Look at the reviews! People are swearing up and down that this Dyson vacuum cleaner is the best vacuum they've ever used. It's likely that Dyson won't take over the market. But it is likely that they will have a stable totally loyal users that will buy only that brand. Hmmm. Sound like anyone you know? (Of course it sounds like Apple, but were you also thinking Saturn? Google?)
It never ceases to amaze me when people claim that Apple is not important because they only have 4-5% of the market. They're not in the commodity business! BMW does not have more than 4-5% of the market. Neither will Dyson. Because they are not commodity firms. They are design firms (as in designer goods). Taking over huge amounts of the market by make cheap unattractive crap is not what they do.
To sum up:
1. Design
2. Profit!!!
Flash is NOT evil.
When it's used properly there are things that flash can accomplish that HTML and Java simply can't.
Saying Flash is evil is like saying guns are evil. Flash does not ruin user experiences, designers that use it to make eye candy ruin user experiences. It is totally possible to use Flash is a beneficial and useful way. It's just not used for that most of the time,
jotaeleemeese, I think you would very much appreciate this short film:
http://www.knife-party.net/flash/barry.html
I think it's fair to say that the ONLY reason the US attacks a country these days economic.
My analysis: it looks like the handwriting of someone who types a lot.
Not to take this discussion too seriously, I find that tickers are one of those classic examples of where design of a real object was taken literally onto the computer screen. Generally speaking, this is ALWAYS a bad idea. Calendars have pages. Computer screens do not. A calendar on a computer should just show all the days in a scroll or some other fashion where the user doesn't have to click back and forth between months to see things.
In the same respect, tickers exist because of big LED boards. You didn't have any interactivity and no choice but to scroll items by. Ditto for TV. With interactivity there's just no reason to scroll things by the user -- at least not without giving them some control -- like a rewind in the event they miss something. There are just too many other ways to lay out information in a program to ever justify the use of a ticker as a UI. It is restricting the user to a form factor that simply doesn't exist in software.
donare is the greek root for gift. Anthropologists and sociologists have described gift economies for years. The native americans of the Seattle are were some of the most well-known societies in which it was common for the wealthy to give their wealth away. In fact, the more you gave away, the more wealthy you were considered to be. But "Gift Economy" carries a stigma of primetiveness with it. It seems "cute" and also seems to be treated as such by most economists. Capitalism is THE system and the final say on the way things should be distributed according to most. (I don't even remember studying gift economies in my early economics classes in college.) But that's the key problem with capitalism: it is concerned with distributing things. Ideas are simply not like things. Jefferson most famously noted this when he compared the notion of an idea to a candle -- namely that you could light someone else's candle without reducing the amount of light/flame that you possess. I can give you an idea and not reduce what I possess.
The fact is, ideas are more valuable the more widely they are held. What's the most valuable art in the world? -- the most widely recognized art. Software becomes more valuable the closer to a standard that it becomes. An entire industry is based on Apache, an application that is not only free but almost ubiquitous. Therein lies a great deal of its value and that value was developed by it being given away. Donarism then would be the economic system that describes how FREE distribution of ideas is what actually creates value -- not the idea itself.
"Shareholders are generally the only ones who could enforce morality, but corporations own most of the shares, and when you trace them back to humans the humans tend to not be involved with the running of the business much, and instead just want return on investment."
Even worse, the vast majority of shares in the vast majority of corporations are held in the portfolios of pension funds. If you have a pension fund you own the stock only you can't vote. The people managing the pension funds are ONLY concerned with their bottom line and won't push corporations around.
This fact is ludicrous. No one is at the wheel in this scenario and one of the simplest things we could do to reign in corporate power is to give people their vote. In the business world we have a feudal system -- what we need is a democracy.
______________________
I agree that there's no reason to decide that it's going to be one way of the other. All of these deals exist and have existed in one way or another for decades. AT&T gave you your phone for free and owned the wires in your house. You can lease a Mac from several companies today.
The truth is, gerneral purpose computers for general consumers doesn't make any sense. Operating Systems aren't getting easier to use. And the average internet user would balk at a command line or even an IRC client. A free Xbox that can record TV and play my music and deliver RSS feeds to me for a yearly subscription would make most households totally happy to throw out their windows box -- or at least relegate it to the closet.
I was a little disappointed, in fact, when the Nintendo/Apple project Pippin was scrapped -- it seemed obvious then (and still now) that some kind of information appliance (or media appliance) is more appropriate for the living room that a full-on general purpose box.
Both markets (computer and appliance) will likely exist and both pricing schemes (lease and buy) will likely exist in both of those markets.
Bill Gates is now the President!
I'm going to do little more than second or third anyone else in this thread who has said that Spitzer is doing a good job because it needs to be said: Spitzer is the bomb! You can't pick up the times or the post and not read about him going after sketchy finance activities. New York will benefit from the revenue, but so what? New York needs it -- the record boobs don't.
________________