His big mistake was e-mailing the customers. On top of that, he shouldn't have directed users to his own site. True: the company screwed with the customers further by deleting their e-mail, but he should have found a better third party to apply pressure with. Messing with a company's customers is like talking smack about someone's Mom. It will get you into a fight.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what alternative third parties would be good for this kind of whistle blowing?
Gamespy should really lock down that "image.asp" file. Or are they using the stock MS example one? You know... The one that has the security structure of Win 3.11...
That is the same reaction the "good 'ol boys" of country music had about rock in the late 50s. Remember that with there being so many of them, they are becoming a collective voice (I can verify that, because I've seen groups of them network at shows). Commonly used "little guy" techniques eventually become standards as well. I know that hip-hop is an estabilished genre, but the means of printing your own CDs is relatively new and they are taking advantage of it quickly and fully.
I thought that my comment about dreaming to run their own label addressed their MTV/Media aspirations. To me, this illustrates that the small entrepeneur knows what the current business model is and is trying to climb their way up. Most successful musicians, producers and managers have peddled their wares from their pocket (i.e.: selling CDs on the bus) at one point or another. The truth is that musicians all together are a dime a dozen on a two for one sale, not just Hip-Hoppers.
My roommate, who is a DJ and Rapper, has bought plenty of original music from guys he has met riding on public transit, of all places. Lot's of small hip-hop artists are masters of salesmanship and networking. The only way for them to feasibly get by is to sell their product somehow. Even if they don't know how to use a computer, they will find someone who does (it has even been me a couple of times). Mind you, they won't be selling MP3s online anytime soon, but they are quite resourceful and will eventually find a way if it becomes lucrative (and don't you dare tell them that I have some idea of how to script a site to sell MP3s! I'll never get any peace!). The thing that strikes me as odd about these types is that they don't dream of a contract, they dream of having their own label. Hip-Hop seems to always know where the money is, even if they don't always manage the money well once they get some.
Great question! Mod it up! An addition to it could be "Does the RIAA consider the people it is suing to be customers or is their legal position that these people do not buy new CDs and therefore are not customers?" or "Do you know of any other industry that has seen increased sales/bottom line by threatening it's user base (is this a proven business model)?"
They siphon off the excess evil that is in each artist's Deal With The Devil contract. They then refine the evil to a more pure and usable form. The Devil can always be relied upon for spilling extra evil on his contracts with artists.
Changing copyright is exactly what these large companies are trying to do through lobbying, petitioning and legal action. They just don't have any of the comsumer's interest in mind while they are doing it.
"how much percent does the recording company take from sales profits?"
That's actually determined contract by contract and is a question of how much of a percentage the artist gets (the royalty). The artist portion is usually small (usually 7% to 15% of the final sale margin - 15% being estabalished superstar status).
The last time we/.ers were talking about portability, someone tried to say that their company was going to lose money on implementation and that's why they were fighting it. He stated that they had already spent $100 million on the transition. That struck me as a challenge and I dug up some numbers. Sorry to quote my own post, but it seems pretty relevant to this - especially since the SBC numbers weren't quoted in the article.
This says that "Southwestern Bell charges 33 cents to each customer" and has been for since 1999. So let's see, this says that SBC has "6.9 million wireless customers across the United States" as of 1999. It's been 54 months since January 1, 1999 including this month. 54 * 6,900,000 = 372,600,000 months of total charges. 372,600,000 * $0.33 = $122,958,000.00 which makes a $22,958,000.00 profit(!!!!) on the $100,000,000.00 re-tooling you mention if it were SBC. That's not even counting the growth of the customer base since 1999!
How hard would it be for a worm to do a google (or some other search engine) search for "microsoft windows update site:microsoft.com" and pick a target from the top results? I agree that MS is only forcing the worm writers to be smarter with their targets by shuffling things around. Eventually it will backfire. If they don't find a better solution, all of this "musical websites" shuffling could also make for some serious chaos as more people figure out how to write DOS worms and it becomes more of a common attack.
You seem to be a Microsoft Exec reviewing a grant proposal. Would you like to:
Find a third party with the same proposal and aquire it?
Search your patent portfolio for related works that you can leverage ageanst the applicant?
Approve the grant on the condition that the applicant no longer develop this threatening idea and simply works in the mailroom?
Sic your lapdog SCO on the applicant for patent infringement or any other silly thing SCO can come up with?
Reply to the applicant that more evangelizing of MS products on Slashdot is required and that he/she should come back when their Karma hits absolute zero?
"Current laws and regulation leave MS in the clear of such matters"
The EULA for the patch itself (yes, there's an EULA for the patch - it asks you to agree during install) exempts MS from any legal action due to applying the patch.
Two questions really, but related. Are you planning a career in politics, especially if you should win? Did you decide to run for governor or did enough people say "You should run for governor" that you started seriously thinking about it?
Bonus Question: What do you hope to gain if you should win?
Methinks the reader was making a joke about the possibility of recalling whoever wins this election, which I have to admit would be ironic and even somewhat believable. I spoke to a republican friend this weekend who said that "they could just keep recalling until a republican is elected". I know he was joking, but there are idiots out there who would take such a suggestion seriously. Having someone else bring up the idea only scares me more.
--RANT--
Speaking of the Sacramento Fry's, why do all of the other stores have themes except ours? In the Silicon Valley, there's the Wild West Fry's, The Egypt Themed Fry's.. Hell there's supposedly even an Alice in Wonderland fry's!
So what's our theme in Sacramento? "Used to be an Incredible Universe Fry's"? "In a Large Building Fry's"? "Next to a Freeway Fry's"? "Employees that ask YOU how to fix THEIR computers Fry's"?... Oh wait. They're all that last one.
Sorry, but that's one gripe that's been seething in me ever since I saw the "nicer" stores. --ENDRANT--
Ahh, but customer downtime can cost tons of money. Bank Of America had all of their ATMs go down because a key peice of software had a glitch a few years ago during an upgrade. Just trying to imagine the revenue they lost on transaction charges in the western region alone for one hour could make your head spin (and the amount would easily pay both of our salaries for this year). The insurance company I worked for was dead in the water when we had DB2/CICS problems and IBM is a good company to get support from. When our Compaq dual Alpha boxes went down, it was sometimes weeks before they were up again, but we knew better than to trust Compaq with mission critical stuff (Sorry Compaq).
When you rely on technology to keep the infrastructure of your business going and you are a large business, little problems get magnified quickly to lost revenue. Not all tech support calls are for a home PC.
Speaking of Compaq, when I sold computers retail (a long time ago) and a customer brought ther Compaq in with a problem, I would call tech support on speakerphone for the other customers to hear. Compaq tech support kept you on hold for so long that our managers wouldn't allow us to sit there and wait. We had to keep working while we were on hold. Customers would always ask why the phone would say "Estimated 4 hours and 42 minutes for the next available support technician" and I would replay that I was waiting for Compaq tech support and show them an Acer or a Mac.
--sacrasm-- Of course this is due to our demanding standards and our monopoly on quality. It's because we utilize only skilled union labor! Just take the Ford Pinto... or Microsoft Software... or...
--sacrasm--
"
A 2002 study funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology estimated software errors cost the U.S. economy about $59.5 billion a year."
And politicians are worried about entertainment piracy hurting the economy. Maybe there are more important things to fix than catering to the entertainment industry...
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone have any ideas as to what alternative third parties would be good for this kind of whistle blowing?
Gamespy should really lock down that "image.asp" file. Or are they using the stock MS example one? You know... The one that has the security structure of Win 3.11...
I thought that my comment about dreaming to run their own label addressed their MTV/Media aspirations. To me, this illustrates that the small entrepeneur knows what the current business model is and is trying to climb their way up. Most successful musicians, producers and managers have peddled their wares from their pocket (i.e.: selling CDs on the bus) at one point or another. The truth is that musicians all together are a dime a dozen on a two for one sale, not just Hip-Hoppers.
Comment relevance mileage may vary...
What tool are you using from MS?
My roommate, who is a DJ and Rapper, has bought plenty of original music from guys he has met riding on public transit, of all places. Lot's of small hip-hop artists are masters of salesmanship and networking. The only way for them to feasibly get by is to sell their product somehow. Even if they don't know how to use a computer, they will find someone who does (it has even been me a couple of times). Mind you, they won't be selling MP3s online anytime soon, but they are quite resourceful and will eventually find a way if it becomes lucrative (and don't you dare tell them that I have some idea of how to script a site to sell MP3s! I'll never get any peace!). The thing that strikes me as odd about these types is that they don't dream of a contract, they dream of having their own label. Hip-Hop seems to always know where the money is, even if they don't always manage the money well once they get some.
Great question! Mod it up! An addition to it could be "Does the RIAA consider the people it is suing to be customers or is their legal position that these people do not buy new CDs and therefore are not customers?" or "Do you know of any other industry that has seen increased sales/bottom line by threatening it's user base (is this a proven business model)?"
They siphon off the excess evil that is in each artist's Deal With The Devil contract. They then refine the evil to a more pure and usable form. The Devil can always be relied upon for spilling extra evil on his contracts with artists.
Changing copyright is exactly what these large companies are trying to do through lobbying, petitioning and legal action. They just don't have any of the comsumer's interest in mind while they are doing it.
I wonder if anything will happen if the worm can't resolve the domain name. Is there a second runner up?
How hard would it be for a worm to do a google (or some other search engine) search for "microsoft windows update site:microsoft.com" and pick a target from the top results? I agree that MS is only forcing the worm writers to be smarter with their targets by shuffling things around. Eventually it will backfire. If they don't find a better solution, all of this "musical websites" shuffling could also make for some serious chaos as more people figure out how to write DOS worms and it becomes more of a common attack.
Thank you for that. I never knew there was an emulator and I miss the stark nature of JES2 (another sign your a geek).
Are you trying to say that /.ers aren't even good enough to be a supposed jury?
There goes the best Hotmail client there ever was. Treat hotmail just like e-mail without paying for premium POP3 service. Oh well.
Bonus Question: What do you hope to gain if you should win?
Methinks the reader was making a joke about the possibility of recalling whoever wins this election, which I have to admit would be ironic and even somewhat believable. I spoke to a republican friend this weekend who said that "they could just keep recalling until a republican is elected". I know he was joking, but there are idiots out there who would take such a suggestion seriously. Having someone else bring up the idea only scares me more.
Speaking of the Sacramento Fry's, why do all of the other stores have themes except ours? In the Silicon Valley, there's the Wild West Fry's, The Egypt Themed Fry's.. Hell there's supposedly even an Alice in Wonderland fry's!
So what's our theme in Sacramento? "Used to be an Incredible Universe Fry's"? "In a Large Building Fry's"? "Next to a Freeway Fry's"? "Employees that ask YOU how to fix THEIR computers Fry's"? ... Oh wait. They're all that last one.
Sorry, but that's one gripe that's been seething in me ever since I saw the "nicer" stores.
--ENDRANT--
When you rely on technology to keep the infrastructure of your business going and you are a large business, little problems get magnified quickly to lost revenue. Not all tech support calls are for a home PC.
Speaking of Compaq, when I sold computers retail (a long time ago) and a customer brought ther Compaq in with a problem, I would call tech support on speakerphone for the other customers to hear. Compaq tech support kept you on hold for so long that our managers wouldn't allow us to sit there and wait. We had to keep working while we were on hold. Customers would always ask why the phone would say "Estimated 4 hours and 42 minutes for the next available support technician" and I would replay that I was waiting for Compaq tech support and show them an Acer or a Mac.
Of course this is due to our demanding standards and our monopoly on quality. It's because we utilize only skilled union labor! Just take the Ford Pinto... or Microsoft Software... or...
--sacrasm--