Not so much the RIAA, but the fact that it cost money to produce vinyl records or burn CDs. Hence lesser selling artists (not to be confused with lesser artists) were unavailable. Now, assuming they take every recording in their vaults and digitize it, probably clean it up a little, as some masters have degraded a bit due to time, and make it all available. Seems simple enough, then buyers could access what they actually want, rather than what the record companies decide is good enough to sell. Very democratic, but the owners of the performances/recordings will still find ways to justify not doing it. They'd rather make $$$$$ off the next N'Sync or Britney Spears manufactured music than low demand oldies.
The RIAA, as we have seen is just the body which fights progress and consumers at the behest of the recording companies.
The bad part of this is that it could discourage someone from adding to the knowledgebase, particularly in this age where people tend to guard their ideas/Intellectual Property.
Yes, you can contribute, but you surrender rights to it, thanks to CRC's tactics. So you could reword something and contribute it, so it's not in the same form you might publish elsewhere.
On the surface it seems like a good thing, until, while reading this commentary, you get to this part:
Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the web site. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the web site unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form.
The short of it is, they caved to CRC and if you want to be a contributor, but retain all your rights, you can't be a contributor. 8^(
Linus, in his latest interview still doesn't bash Microsoft, or much if at all. It would probably be a coup if he were to join Microsoft, but then he'd probably have to stop designing the kernel as everything he did for years after would belong to M$.
Clause in Microsoft employment contract: All your intellectual output are belong to us
It's true, I swear it!
`A competitive software industry is vital to our economy, and effective antitrust
enforcement is crucial to preserving competition in the constantly changing hi-tech arena,'' Ashcroft said.
That quote is right on, but his actions probably are not.
Exactly, the DoJ inactions and remedies are inconsistent with Ashcroft's words. Worse, they excuse these measures, or lack of, as for the good of the economy, i.e. Restricting or punishing the monopolist hurts the economy, so don't do it.
Today's lesson: You may break the law, as long as you say it's good for consumers the economy.
Bonus: You get to keep your ill-gotten gains and keep on leveraging your monopoly with a mere slap on the wrist.
In their lawsuit, CRC claimed that the existence of the MathWorld web site "competes
with and interferes and impairs with [sic] sales of the Concise Encyclopedia."
...
Apparenly impervious to irony, CRC at the same time acknowledged in its own court
filing that the book was the company's best-selling mathematics title! (This, one month
after Mr. Stern had "explained" to me that my book was a back list item that I should
not be surprised to see dropped from its promotional materials.)
What interesting behavior. This sounds like RIAA logic, doesn't it?
``The settlement is fair and reasonable and, most important, is in the best
interests of consumers and the economy,'' Gates said in a statement.
``A competitive software industry is vital to our economy, and effective
antitrust enforcement is crucial to preserving competition in the
constantly changing hi-tech arena,'' Ashcroft said.
``Eliminating uncertainty is going to be good for the economy,'' said New
York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
Now the economy is certainly a good thing to keep healthy. But I'm pissed that I see sidestepping the lack of punishment (i.e. fines) for their habitual unlawful and unethical behavior, all done for the good of the economy. What a great thing that employees and shareholders of Microsoft should not have to feel the burden which has been shouldered by so many others.
Maybe misters Gates, Ashcroft and Spitzer would like to bring back indentured servitude, since that would reduce unemployment.
Here's hoping the Finding of Guilt, in regard to monopolistic behavior, gives Microsoft's foes enough ammo to slap them around in court for a few years and for significant monetary damages, since clearly some politicals are dropping the ball for the good of the economy.
When you catch Intel with their pants down, they can actually recover. Interestingly, it's Intel that's been playing a bit of catch-up in the past few years.
I wonder what Linus is thinking of doing if his employer goes.
A friend signed up with the Air Force and spent 2 years in Alice Springs, Australia, monitoring seismic data -- That and tearing around the bush on dirt bikes and generally having a pretty cool time. He spent the rest of his tour between Colorado Springs and whatever the AF base is near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the privilege of his time he got more money for school and some VA benefits. Pretty nice how that can work out.
A friend did this and rode out the PhD until the University of Michigan politely suggested he finally graduate and make room for the next student. Nothing against him, as he did some top notch work in the field of silicon circuits, i.e. 100 MHz CPUs back when most of us were fooling around with 4 MHz PC XT's.
Unfortunately for him, that was around one of these tech busts, when the DoD cut back on spending. Didn't last long of course, this bust won't either.
Maybe it's ignorance is bliss, back when you didn't really know squat it all seemed like it had limitless potential. Once confronted by the realities, and a declining Tech boom (don't expect this to last forever, particularly for those who really do have CS degrees, as opposed for those who got their foot into the field out of an employers desperation) the occupation can seem dreary. I know, I've passed through phases where it was just 'work' and nothing fun or exciting about it. Some might suggest 'growing up' as in, jobs are supposed to suck. Well, jobs have sucked at times and held great enjoyment at times. You're probably just in a down cycle. So give it time, find something else you like to do and do that until that project or opportunity finds you (you never find them, they find you, it's a fact) and you discover where your strengths are and what you prefer doing. Best of luck.
The worst thing, IMHO, is that large projects create large vulnerabilities. For example, a.c is secure, b.c is secure, but a and b together are not secure. Spread that across any large project and you'll get more flaws than you can shake a 9/16" debugging tool at.
Ok, sooooo, maybe we can enlist the aid of The Great Carnac? I'm not certain the writers of worms and perpetrators of DoS attacks are leaving their plans, hermetically sealed, on Funk and Wagnell's front porch.
Part of fighting an attack is certainly building a more attack resistant mechanism, but keep in mind that the ingenuity of the perpetrators is eventually their undoing, as attacks will have to become more and more sophisticated (except where gaping holes like those in a certain monopolies products are left in througn lack of ordinary foresight) as many aspects of the internet, as well as operating systems and applications get stronger.
I wonder if Disney's getting a government grant to promote nuclear families for cartoon characters.
Well, it would be about time, no? After all these decades of three ducklings; Huey, Dewey and Louie; hanging around with their bachelor "unca" Donald, and two mice; Morty and Ferdie; hanging out with their bachelor uncle Mickey.
Now Lucas on the other hand, has a father turn to the dark side of the force, while his erstwhile wife hides his twin children. That's a family american's can related to...
This worked to my advantage on Saturday. I went to see K-Pax, which started at 4:45. Got ticket at 4:35 and then stood in line for popcorn for the next 25 minutes. Still saw one trailer before the feature began. Oddly, theaters make most of their profit on popcorn, candy and soda sales, which are high profit-margin items, yet they had one girl, with purple hair, meticulously serving a line of ~30 people. An apparent manager helped from time to time, but several people were too frustrated to wait and stepped out of line. I'd like to point out that I go, not just to see the film, but for the whole viewing experience. Which includes carrying in my own salt, the really fine stuff, since most local theaters have taken to using plastic restaurant table salt shakers (ugh!) If I'm going to fork over $15+ to see a movie, I'm going to enjoy it, dammit! (c=
George Lucas, after deciding to take a break from Star Wars films, utterly snowed audiences with the plug for Willow, proclaiming it would change the way the audience views pictures, or some similar accolade. The result was an "OK" film, but massive disappointment and a fairly quick exit from theaters for a film Lucas had staked a lot to. So, did the trailer for Willow increase viewing, or decrease it through unmet expectations and negative reactions?
Many slashdotters won't remember this, but for Alien, back in the late 70's the trailer was very brief, showing an egg cracking and light radiating through the crack, with the tag line "In space no one can hear you scream" Pretty effective, didn't give away a lick of what was going to happen besides a very very well done film. It really helps a suspense story not to be giving away anything. While I don't expect Star Wars movies to have the same level of suspense, it helps the experience that there is some and I don't remember seeing something in the trailer that will dilute the suspense.
I've seen many trailers where the entire movie was given away, all the good jokes, all the exciting action, that's another view, drumming audience expectations and therefore attendance. That is a kind of fraud, IMHO.
Ohhhh, NOOOooooooooo! Dang! I was hoping he'd forget about Episodes IV-VI and, in Hollywood tradition, go in a completely different direction than the commonly known end of the book or previous film...
"No, you're not my father!"
"Yeth, but I didn't turn to the dark thide of the forth, I became and Igor inthtead. After my hand wath cut of I thewed it back on, thee?"
I want to go into the theater without any ideas what I'm going to see. Trailers, being the spoilers that they often are, often drive me from seeing a film because I can figure out the story, which is often "attitude" + "fireballs" + "stupid plot", etc.
Granted this is a Star Wars movie, which I'm required by the Geek Code to see, so I'll go see it when it comes out. Until then it'll be stepping through a mine field of films trying to avoid seeing it. Thanks for the warning about it preceeding Monsters, Inc.
AMD used to be getting by on the "just as good as Intel but costs less" line of marketing.
In the last year AMD has been going on the "As fast if not faster and still costs less than Intel" marketing.
The marketing tack AMD appears to be taking now is "we're our own company with our own product and it's great" (without so much as the incidental mention of that other processor company)
This is the direction AMD has to go, to get out of Intel's shadow. The upcoming Hammer line of processors is a bold move in that direction -- with the advantage of having built in backwards hardware compatibility -- which departs clearly from the 64 bit architecture Intel has chosen. With ~20% of the market, though probably mostly in Europe and Asia, AMD should be making testing these waters.
All that aside, you as a wise consumer, should choose the CPU that's "right" for you. By "right" I mean speed, efficiency at your primary task, with reliability and support to meet your standards. A difficult decision, really, considering most buyers get suckered by a minimum wage salesman on a commission and make important decisions truly uninformed. Lucky for most of them that you really will not miss the mark by too much, whatever you buy, though customer support is usually where people meet their grief, so consider that a primary factor over speed, etc., unless you're a bold, devil may care, geek who provides your own customer support and get the rest off the net.
The problem with movies today is that every great plot has been done already.
Right, and as you say, these basic plots [3] and storylines [21 or 22, whatever it is] have been around since the first campfire. However, IMHO the cinematography can help the visual telling of the story, but the story still has to hold up. And here's a major point. I've probably seen more films and read more fantasy/sci-fi than 90% of slashdot readers and I watched The Matrix thinking the story was old, but there were some interesting use of new visual effects. Now compare my experience to that of a younger viewer, who has likely seen and read less than 10% of what I have and it would be more new to them. Good for them, they get more out of it than I do. Increasingly I'm off to the limited run films, stuff most have never heard of, but which wins Cannes, Sundance and other film festival awards for simply being done extremely well.
Tricks like computer animation, rotating cameras, etc. become old fast.
Thanks for the warning, Jon, but... I've seen a couple of these and now trailers pretty much warn me off of seeing these things. No one can deny that CTHD was a fine film, mostly because the story holds up, rather than the inexplicable type used even in Bruce Lee's flix.
Every time I open the local free happenings paper and see another chinese film on the way I have to overcome the suspicion that it's just trying to play off CTHD success. Himalaya has zilch martial arts and is a great film to see if you would care to watch people from that neck of the woods not kick boxing their way through a story outlined on a bar napkin.
Saw K-Pax last night, after all the great talk I've heard about it and left the theater thinking, "Huh? Ok, so how did that actually end?" Pretty entertaining otherwise.
Pixar's style is a lot different than what we've seen in other full-CG movies including Final Fantasy: TSW and even Shrek
Very nice, as my college english prof. would say, but how is Pixar's style different? You've described how they go about it, how about an example or two illustrating the process others use.
Oh, and BTW, break these things up into a few paragraphs. I, for one, cringe when I see these big chunks of text. Thanks.
I've seen these around for ages, variety of manufacturers, but usually they're priced significantly higher than just buying several cheap PC's, granted you have a fast bus between cards/PC's, unless you have a redundant powersupply, one failure brings your whole cluster down, whereas networked mobos should be tolerant of one system failing. As for future, eh, they've been around long enough, but I expect the use has been rather specialized.
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA, as we have seen is just the body which fights progress and consumers at the behest of the recording companies.
Pop-under adds for the Amazing Z10 pr0n c4m.
Please, I'll subscribe, anything but that!!! =-(
Seriously, I'd toss a buck a month to dodge ads, if that would help with /. upkeep.
Yes, you can contribute, but you surrender rights to it, thanks to CRC's tactics. So you could reword something and contribute it, so it's not in the same form you might publish elsewhere.
Sticky business.
The short of it is, they caved to CRC and if you want to be a contributor, but retain all your rights, you can't be a contributor. 8^(
Clause in Microsoft employment contract: All your intellectual output are belong to us
It's true, I swear it!
That quote is right on, but his actions probably are not.
Exactly, the DoJ inactions and remedies are inconsistent with Ashcroft's words. Worse, they excuse these measures, or lack of, as for the good of the economy, i.e. Restricting or punishing the monopolist hurts the economy, so don't do it.
Today's lesson: You may break the law, as long as you say it's good for consumers the economy.
Bonus: You get to keep your ill-gotten gains and keep on leveraging your monopoly with a mere slap on the wrist.
Now the economy is certainly a good thing to keep healthy. But I'm pissed that I see sidestepping the lack of punishment (i.e. fines) for their habitual unlawful and unethical behavior, all done for the good of the economy. What a great thing that employees and shareholders of Microsoft should not have to feel the burden which has been shouldered by so many others.
Maybe misters Gates, Ashcroft and Spitzer would like to bring back indentured servitude, since that would reduce unemployment.
Here's hoping the Finding of Guilt, in regard to monopolistic behavior, gives Microsoft's foes enough ammo to slap them around in court for a few years and for significant monetary damages, since clearly some politicals are dropping the ball for the good of the economy.
I wonder what Linus is thinking of doing if his employer goes.
A friend signed up with the Air Force and spent 2 years in Alice Springs, Australia, monitoring seismic data -- That and tearing around the bush on dirt bikes and generally having a pretty cool time. He spent the rest of his tour between Colorado Springs and whatever the AF base is near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the privilege of his time he got more money for school and some VA benefits. Pretty nice how that can work out.
A friend did this and rode out the PhD until the University of Michigan politely suggested he finally graduate and make room for the next student. Nothing against him, as he did some top notch work in the field of silicon circuits, i.e. 100 MHz CPUs back when most of us were fooling around with 4 MHz PC XT's.
Unfortunately for him, that was around one of these tech busts, when the DoD cut back on spending. Didn't last long of course, this bust won't either.
Maybe it's ignorance is bliss, back when you didn't really know squat it all seemed like it had limitless potential. Once confronted by the realities, and a declining Tech boom (don't expect this to last forever, particularly for those who really do have CS degrees, as opposed for those who got their foot into the field out of an employers desperation) the occupation can seem dreary. I know, I've passed through phases where it was just 'work' and nothing fun or exciting about it. Some might suggest 'growing up' as in, jobs are supposed to suck. Well, jobs have sucked at times and held great enjoyment at times. You're probably just in a down cycle. So give it time, find something else you like to do and do that until that project or opportunity finds you (you never find them, they find you, it's a fact) and you discover where your strengths are and what you prefer doing. Best of luck.
The worst thing, IMHO, is that large projects create large vulnerabilities. For example, a.c is secure, b.c is secure, but a and b together are not secure. Spread that across any large project and you'll get more flaws than you can shake a 9/16" debugging tool at.
Ok, sooooo, maybe we can enlist the aid of The Great Carnac? I'm not certain the writers of worms and perpetrators of DoS attacks are leaving their plans, hermetically sealed, on Funk and Wagnell's front porch.
Part of fighting an attack is certainly building a more attack resistant mechanism, but keep in mind that the ingenuity of the perpetrators is eventually their undoing, as attacks will have to become more and more sophisticated (except where gaping holes like those in a certain monopolies products are left in througn lack of ordinary foresight) as many aspects of the internet, as well as operating systems and applications get stronger.
Well, it would be about time, no? After all these decades of three ducklings; Huey, Dewey and Louie; hanging around with their bachelor "unca" Donald, and two mice; Morty and Ferdie; hanging out with their bachelor uncle Mickey.
Now Lucas on the other hand, has a father turn to the dark side of the force, while his erstwhile wife hides his twin children. That's a family american's can related to...
On another note... who's going to be the first to parody it? South Park? Thumb?, An unknown yet sinister entity?
This worked to my advantage on Saturday. I went to see K-Pax, which started at 4:45. Got ticket at 4:35 and then stood in line for popcorn for the next 25 minutes. Still saw one trailer before the feature began. Oddly, theaters make most of their profit on popcorn, candy and soda sales, which are high profit-margin items, yet they had one girl, with purple hair, meticulously serving a line of ~30 people. An apparent manager helped from time to time, but several people were too frustrated to wait and stepped out of line. I'd like to point out that I go, not just to see the film, but for the whole viewing experience. Which includes carrying in my own salt, the really fine stuff, since most local theaters have taken to using plastic restaurant table salt shakers (ugh!) If I'm going to fork over $15+ to see a movie, I'm going to enjoy it, dammit! (c=
Many slashdotters won't remember this, but for Alien, back in the late 70's the trailer was very brief, showing an egg cracking and light radiating through the crack, with the tag line "In space no one can hear you scream" Pretty effective, didn't give away a lick of what was going to happen besides a very very well done film. It really helps a suspense story not to be giving away anything. While I don't expect Star Wars movies to have the same level of suspense, it helps the experience that there is some and I don't remember seeing something in the trailer that will dilute the suspense.
I've seen many trailers where the entire movie was given away, all the good jokes, all the exciting action, that's another view, drumming audience expectations and therefore attendance. That is a kind of fraud, IMHO.
"No, you're not my father!"
"Yeth, but I didn't turn to the dark thide of the forth, I became and Igor inthtead. After my hand wath cut of I thewed it back on, thee?"
Granted this is a Star Wars movie, which I'm required by the Geek Code to see, so I'll go see it when it comes out. Until then it'll be stepping through a mine field of films trying to avoid seeing it. Thanks for the warning about it preceeding Monsters, Inc.
AMD used to be getting by on the "just as good as Intel but costs less" line of marketing.
In the last year AMD has been going on the "As fast if not faster and still costs less than Intel" marketing.
The marketing tack AMD appears to be taking now is "we're our own company with our own product and it's great" (without so much as the incidental mention of that other processor company)
This is the direction AMD has to go, to get out of Intel's shadow. The upcoming Hammer line of processors is a bold move in that direction -- with the advantage of having built in backwards hardware compatibility -- which departs clearly from the 64 bit architecture Intel has chosen. With ~20% of the market, though probably mostly in Europe and Asia, AMD should be making testing these waters.
All that aside, you as a wise consumer, should choose the CPU that's "right" for you. By "right" I mean speed, efficiency at your primary task, with reliability and support to meet your standards. A difficult decision, really, considering most buyers get suckered by a minimum wage salesman on a commission and make important decisions truly uninformed. Lucky for most of them that you really will not miss the mark by too much, whatever you buy, though customer support is usually where people meet their grief, so consider that a primary factor over speed, etc., unless you're a bold, devil may care, geek who provides your own customer support and get the rest off the net.
Right, and as you say, these basic plots [3] and storylines [21 or 22, whatever it is] have been around since the first campfire. However, IMHO the cinematography can help the visual telling of the story, but the story still has to hold up. And here's a major point. I've probably seen more films and read more fantasy/sci-fi than 90% of slashdot readers and I watched The Matrix thinking the story was old, but there were some interesting use of new visual effects. Now compare my experience to that of a younger viewer, who has likely seen and read less than 10% of what I have and it would be more new to them. Good for them, they get more out of it than I do. Increasingly I'm off to the limited run films, stuff most have never heard of, but which wins Cannes, Sundance and other film festival awards for simply being done extremely well.
Tricks like computer animation, rotating cameras, etc. become old fast.
Every time I open the local free happenings paper and see another chinese film on the way I have to overcome the suspicion that it's just trying to play off CTHD success. Himalaya has zilch martial arts and is a great film to see if you would care to watch people from that neck of the woods not kick boxing their way through a story outlined on a bar napkin.
Saw K-Pax last night, after all the great talk I've heard about it and left the theater thinking, "Huh? Ok, so how did that actually end?" Pretty entertaining otherwise.
Very nice, as my college english prof. would say, but how is Pixar's style different? You've described how they go about it, how about an example or two illustrating the process others use.
Oh, and BTW, break these things up into a few paragraphs. I, for one, cringe when I see these big chunks of text. Thanks.
I've seen these around for ages, variety of manufacturers, but usually they're priced significantly higher than just buying several cheap PC's, granted you have a fast bus between cards/PC's, unless you have a redundant powersupply, one failure brings your whole cluster down, whereas networked mobos should be tolerant of one system failing. As for future, eh, they've been around long enough, but I expect the use has been rather specialized.