If they're anything like me, they'll say "Why not leave it up there awhile longer? It might come in handy." So, I'll guess oh....say 2001-05-02 01:00:01
I "watched" Slashdot go down yesterday - by hitting reload every 10 minutes or so. First the user accounts seemed to disappear. Then the comments in the stories were gone. Then the stories were gone. Then there was no response at all from the webservers.
I thought maybe someone had broken in again and was systematically deleting everything. What happened? I'm just curious.
But is it illegal for me to make my own such specialized screwdriver? Or is it illegal for me to use a flathead screwdriver on Phillips screws? I've done this a few times when a Phillips screwdriver wasn't handy. It can't be illegal, can it?
BTW (OT), I don't know what a torx screwhead is. Is it like those wacky screws on restroom stalls that can't be unscrewed?
If we insist on standardization, we run the risk of cutting off future innovation.
Standards should be carefully designed so that (1) they don't need to be changed later and (2) are extendable.
I hope this doesn't seem contradictory. When a standard is designed, the designers should try to establish a reasonable base that they don't think will change much, and also leave room for things to be added, or even modified later.
I'm thinking specifically of HTML. Ignore the fact that browsers and HTML coders alike are very liberal with the standards. HTML that conforms to standards has the version number embedded in it. A standard browser should be able to read the HTML and render it accordingly.
If the browser is newer than the HTML, then it simply has to read the version of HTML and use the standards for that version to render the page (point 2 above). If the HTML is newer than the browser, then we hope the newer HTML isn't too different from the old (point 1 above).
You've got the dvd. You need a legal, authorized player to play it on.
Ah, this is an important point of disagreement. Most folks who read Slashdot (myself included) think it's unfair for the movie-making companies to also control the means of distribution/playback. It's mostly a matter of opinion, I guess. But, just pointing out that it's currently illegal to circumvent controls on digital media means nothing to me, because I think that law should be changed. Don't get me wrong - I don't advocate piracy of DVDs, just more freedom to use the ones you've purchased.
I'm trying to come up with some legalish reasons to back up my view, but I can't think of any. I still think it's unfair. It's also a darn shame that technology is being crippled in the way it is. Do you really think it's wrong for someone who has legally purchased a DVD and DVD-ROM drive to watch it using his free OS rather than buying another OS he doesn't want or a "approved" standalone DVD player he doesn't need? If nothing else, it's just wasteful - and there's no need.
Why is the Linux player not "approved" by the MPAA anyway? Sure, the hardware companies might be upset at the loss of a DVD player sale, but the MPAA makes its money.
And piracy? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the piracy can easily be done in Windows already, right?
I could keep going, but the sun will be up soon, and I don't want to be awake to greet it.
I agree. After reading about some of the policies of other Universities, I'm quite glad that I go to UofM. My network access is high-speed, reliable, and the University respects my privacy.
My network connection here in the dorms is never congested. There are rarely any network outages. That includes connections to the outside, email, AFS filespace, etc.
As far as I know, bandwidth isn't capped or anything. I doubt they even pay attention to those of us in the dorms - unless there is a big problem. They reserve the right to investigate, and even throw us off the network in extreme cases. In the policy I agreed to with ResComp, they made it clear that they know they have no right to confiscate my equipment or anything.
They are also very security-minded (for our sake as well as theirs). Kerberos authentication is used for alot of things. It almost annoys me sometimes. The mail clients that are "officially supported" are kerberized ones like Mulberry. AFS is used for our home directories, and it's also kerberized, which means I have to junp though hoops to map drives in Windows.
MY POINT IS THIS:
I think UofM has the right attitude. Students at Universities aren't like employees at a company. We don't go home at night. Our academic and personal lives are all mixed. There is no reason to expect students to only use their network access for "official educational purposes." That said, I think priority should be given to education, if it ever gets chocked off by, say, last minute Napstering.
And as for monitoring emails. Or deleting them. No! Same thing applies. Students aren't employees to be monitored. If you really don't want your email read, encrypt it. Then a sysadmin somewhere won't stumble on it.
Yes, complain to Egghead. Don't bother talking to Intuit. I did this when one of my rebates was rejected once. I sent an email to one of the customer service addresses (I forget which) with the order number and described the reasons for the reject. Egghead credited my credit card for the amount of the rebate.
Egghead wants to keep your business? Make them eat the rejected rebate cost. That is, assuming the rebate was advertised by them.
Watching NASA TV (available on the Internet and...on TV), you get to hear the communications between Mission Control and the Space Shuttle. It's rather interesting. The night of the launch I was listening in - they were talking about setting up the network, the router, something about mapping drives. (I wonder what kind of bandwidth they have up there, or if I can do a traceroute an Astronaut's laptop - probably not) There's a commentator who explains things to you and throws lots of interesting trivia your way. For example, just 1.5 minutes after launch, due to fuel consumption, the shuttle/fuel tank/boosters together weigh half of what they did on the pad. The boosters consume 10 tons of fuel per second. Wow. That's just crazy. Also they have highlights of the days activities, replays of the launch, etc. I recommend it.
Re:I hate to say it, but who gives a FUCK ?
on
Quake on IPv6
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· Score: 1
No demand for IPv6??? I demand it! The sooner the better. I would rather be rid of this IP address shortage. And I know there are people who feel the same way - I've read their comments on Slashdot.
Next year I'll be living in a house with 4 of my friends. We'll get cable access or DSL, and I'll have to set up a Linux box to masquarade for us behind the one piddling IP (v4) address we get because there aren't that many to spare. Even after that, doing anything complicated over the Internet will be a great pain in the ass due to the masquarading.
When IPv6 finally arrives, we should be able to get all the global IP addresses we need. That's how it's supposed to be.
Yes, I've noticed that and it drives me crazy too. Some apps add themselves to the "All Users" Start Menu. Some due not. Winamp stores your settings in the same dir as the executable - meaning the same playlist and skin for everyone (unless you go crazy changing working directories). On and on.
Remember all the commotion when Win2k came out about certified apps or something like that? Only a handfull of apps were actually certified by Microsoft. I suspect part of the reason so few apps are certified is that very few have adapted to all the Good Changes Microsoft has been making - such as the multi-user settings in the registry, the new standardized installation engine they have, etc. They can get away with it, I think, because most Windows machines are still only used by one person. When they start doing making the apps conform to Microsoft's standards, it'll be better, I think.
As for Linux on the desktop, I agree it's fine for lots of everyday stuff - exlcuding fancy games and windows-only programs. It's especially useful here at school for access to my AFS home directory and for remote sessions on all the UNIX machines they've got around here (and vice versa).
They probably aren't suing because they know their "copy protection" is rediculous. One bit?!??!? Give me a break. The only thing such a lawsuit would do is make people think about how rediculous copy protection (even in more complex forms) really is.
Actually, now that I think about it... They probably aren't suing because they didn't think to make the hardware manufacturers sign agreements regarding the copy-protection bit. They're just quietly implementing new schemes (like CSS) - and they aren't making the same mistake again.
That remind me of something (a little OT). Right now I have analog cable (TV). I also have a super nifty ATI All in Wonder Radeon. I can time-shift programs, record them, preview many stations - the works. Next year I'll be forced to use the new digital cable. My TV tuner will be worthless as I'll have to watch everything though the Digital Cable box. If I watch anything on my All in Wonder at all, it will have to be on channel 3, I think.
Boooooooooo copy-protection.
Re:People are missing the point.
on
MySQL FS
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· Score: 1
Have any of you (fs!=db) nay-sayers ever tried to store/retrieve GIFs and JPEGs in a relational database for a web site -- an often daunting, but often necessary task?
Well, no. It was too daunting for me. But, I'd like to.
I recently started making a database where I could keep track of all my photos - a "photo database," if you will. (It's here, if you are curious.) I didn't store the photos in the database - primarily because there isn't enough room on the database server. I numbered all the images by hand and serve them from my personal computer - using MySQL and PHP on the database server to access them.
Anyway, I want to organize my photos into groups - and maybe even subgroups. And I want the groups to be able to overlap. I haven't done this yet, because I don't have the time to (re)impliment a file system inside the database! However, a "dbfs" seems to be exactly what I need for this task. It's close to what I envisioned.
I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that PDF is a sort-of compressed Postscript. Recall that PostScript is a rather powerful, widely-used printer language. Thus, a PDF can be produced in much the same way as printer output. The pages you describe that
contain slightly skewed and grainy scanned in images of the actual printed manual
are only one way to produce PDFs. Just as you can scan something in and print it, you can scan it in and make a PDF. You can also make PDFs from the original document - which yields high quality, portable files. I don't know why someone would scan things like that.
Sorry, that's the risk you take when you go off on your own like that. For compatibility, and so average users don't have to hack their OS, AlterNIC and the like should apply for (and get) a TLD in the globally recognized (ICANNed) DNS system. Then foobar.biz.alternic will at least be accessible. Though it will make for ugly URLs (boo hoo).
That said, I think they should also go away. The have good ideas, but I think they should try to influence ICANN instead of creating a rouge system.
Here's a brief history of DNS, as made-up by me (i.e. I'm doing some guessing, but it seems reasonable):
When the Internet was new, all people had were IP addresses. Having to remember many of these got to be a pain, so they assigned names to each computer and kept them all in the eqivalent of a hosts file on each computer. Maintaining and updating this file got to be a pain as the Internet got larger. Modern DNS was born to solve this. Root servers, each organization responsible for it's own namespace, etc.
DNS is a names-to-numbers system for the Internet! People are treating it like a keyword system for the WWW. It's not. If you want one of those, by all means, make one. Or just use Yahoo or something. Don't try to use DNS, because everything ends up as www.keyword.com and www.bignewmovie.com, which is pointless - and has polluted the.com TLD.
Back to my best guess of history: Our current TLD make sense to me, given the history of the Internet.
The Internet started out as a military project, funded by the U.S. governement:.mil,.gov
Universities got in on the action:.edu
Networks had to be built:.net
Commercial organizatoins and non-profit organizations used the Internet too:.com,.org
Oh, and other countries got hooked-up too:.us,.uk,.de, etc.
What new groups have joined the Internet? I see a need for a TLD for individuals, maybe.per (personal) or.idv (individual). I don't quite know how to resolve the dispute when everyone wants johnsmith.per, though.
If we want to stick with the current TLD, we should enforce, somehow, their correct use. The rules should be strict enough that most organizaions will fit into only one TLD. None of this grabbing foobar.* .
New TLDs need only be as broad as the old. I mean, what is.museum compared to.com or.org?? The idea of.misc is interesting, but that just encourages the "keyword" behavior. Maybe it could be.keyword if we really can't do without it.
Or else we could scrap the current TLDs. I like that idea too. Make it all usenet-style too.
ALIEN: You have to vote for one of us - it's a two party system.
HUMAN: Why, I believe I'll vote for a third party candidate.
ALIEN: Go ahead! Throw away your vote!
Just like in real life, people felt they had to choose between the two major parties.
It just so happened that I was listening to Gustav Holst's The Planets as I read this story. Specifically, "Saturn, the bringer of old age." Try listening to that while reading about a spaceprobe that is 7 billion miles away - and while contemplating the vastness of time, the Universe, etc.
I also like the idea of cheap MP3s. I've posted before about it. One thing that would really tempt me to buy MP3s direct from an RIAA company is if they simply guarenteed the ID3 tag was correct, etc.
But, the reason I am replying to this post is to address the concern that the RIAA has no interest in selling their music cheaply in any form. I've thought about somehow starting my own recording company - one that is exactly what a recording company should be: a sound studio for hire to the artists. This company of mine would, for some hourly rate, allow groups to record music in its studios. It would, for some other fixed price, produce CDs for the artist. It would even market them, if the artist was willing to pay extra for that service.
All that may not seem to different from what recording companies do today, except that I wouldn't make bands sign over their souls, the rights to their music, or anything else. I wouldn't even make them buy all of my services - but I might offer a package deal.
I don't have the capital or the knowhow to do any of this, sadly. I'm just a kid in college. If bands wouldn't sign exclusive contracts, we wouldn't need my benevolent company anyway. They could shop around for a recording company all they wanted.
It's a shame that so much effort has to be wasted reverse engineering file formats. Sheesh. What kind of file format is so clever that it has to be kept secret?
While thinking about this, it occured to me that these kind of problems would be reduced if everyone used Open Standards. Why waste all the effort? We already have Standards Bodies (ISO, ANSI, others?). Why not use them? IMHO, anything worth doing is worth thinking through and worth creating a standard for.
In fact, this could be a good way to introduce the idea of Open Source Software. Suppose we convince people/companies to start using Open Standards for everything. Even if companies continue to write closed-source software to use these standards, eventually they will realize that they are all duplicating effort by doing so - and might move towards open source.
I realize that companies tend to compete with one another, and that makes the preceding situation unrealistic. To them, it would be like helping competitors. But, so what? That's good. It would mean companies can't sit on their closed standards/closed software. They'd have to continually improve. As a consumer, I'd like to see that.
First of all, everyone deducts everything they can get away with. They may not like that they have to jump through the hoops the tax code gives us, but they take advantage when they can. I can't really blame corporations for doing that too.
Second of all, I don't understand what the big debate about 'paying twice' is. Without doing any calculations whatsoever (!), I'd venture a guess that making corporations pay or not for this or that wouldn't result in a more fair tax code. The tax code is too convoluted for that to be possible.
Money flows. It circulates! How on earth can taxes be paid on it only 'once'?? The more money flows, the more chances there are to tax it. For example, I get my paycheck, I pay income tax. I use some money to buy a pair of shoes. I pay sales tax. The owner of the store pays income tax. He also pays the kid who sold me the shoes. The kid pays income tax too (maybe). The kid goes and buys stuff somewhere else...
This is an honest question: Do the record companies own the copyright to any works they produce automatically?
I was under the impression that artists own the copyright (and therefore have the right to control distribution) originally, and that in most cases they sign over this right to the record companies in their exclusive contracts.
If that's the case, maybe artisits should not sign these contracts!
I would consider downloading MP3s direct from RIAA labels (evil as they might be) or direct from independant bands if only they would do a few things for me in return (it's really easy to add value, listen up!):
Charge about $0-$2 per song (if songs are free they can get away with doing less of the following)
Encode directly from digital masters (none of this ripping of CDs, with all the possible errors in transfer)
Encode with high-bitrates (better yet, let me choose bitrate, joint/true stereo, etc.)
Guarentee the filename and ID3 tag will have the song title and artist spelled correctly and in a consistent format (I should put this one first!)
Guarentee the end of the song isn't missing (not really a problem if from a digital master, but still another candidate for first!)
Perhaps let me download the equivalent of the CD jacket, lyrics, etc.
Offer old, old stuff that they don't even want to bother pressing CDs for.
It would be nice if this were all done on an honor system (like shareware). I want to be honest. I'll pay for what I use - I don't want to pay for songs I find that I hate, and I don't like paying too much. Of course, if the recording companies really did this, they'd probably want to encrypt everything and put security on it (it's all about control, right?). I can't blame them, given all the money to be made and all the piracy that exists. Too bad there aren't more honest and fair people out there (artists, fans, recording companies alike).
Think about it. It will have to be like this in the not-to-distant future. When everyone has high bandwidth connections, who's going to go to the store and buy a CD when they could download it instantly to their stereo? I say we stop buying CDs right now (and DVDs in the near future) and tell the RIAA and MPAA we'll only buy their goods via a download (maybe uncompressed for purists who hate MP3 compression...).
I think it would work best if everything on the net were treated as shareware/freeware (depending on the creators' preferences). This includes music, movies, software, etc., etc. Music, software, movies distributed on CD/DVD should just be considered more permenant copies. It's no longer practical to attach a license to listen/watch/use to the media something is distributed on.
All we'd need is for people on both sides to be honest and fair. People should actually pay for whatever they download (or copy from a friend) and use. And musicians/record companies/software companies should ask for reasonable amounts of money.
No messy encryption, tracking, IDs, whatever. Just be honest and fair. Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
If they're anything like me, they'll say "Why not leave it up there awhile longer? It might come in handy." So, I'll guess oh....say 2001-05-02 01:00:01
I thought maybe someone had broken in again and was systematically deleting everything. What happened? I'm just curious.
BTW (OT), I don't know what a torx screwhead is. Is it like those wacky screws on restroom stalls that can't be unscrewed?
Standards should be carefully designed so that (1) they don't need to be changed later and (2) are extendable.
I hope this doesn't seem contradictory. When a standard is designed, the designers should try to establish a reasonable base that they don't think will change much, and also leave room for things to be added, or even modified later.
I'm thinking specifically of HTML. Ignore the fact that browsers and HTML coders alike are very liberal with the standards. HTML that conforms to standards has the version number embedded in it. A standard browser should be able to read the HTML and render it accordingly.
If the browser is newer than the HTML, then it simply has to read the version of HTML and use the standards for that version to render the page (point 2 above). If the HTML is newer than the browser, then we hope the newer HTML isn't too different from the old (point 1 above).
Ah, this is an important point of disagreement. Most folks who read Slashdot (myself included) think it's unfair for the movie-making companies to also control the means of distribution/playback. It's mostly a matter of opinion, I guess. But, just pointing out that it's currently illegal to circumvent controls on digital media means nothing to me, because I think that law should be changed. Don't get me wrong - I don't advocate piracy of DVDs, just more freedom to use the ones you've purchased.
I'm trying to come up with some legalish reasons to back up my view, but I can't think of any. I still think it's unfair. It's also a darn shame that technology is being crippled in the way it is. Do you really think it's wrong for someone who has legally purchased a DVD and DVD-ROM drive to watch it using his free OS rather than buying another OS he doesn't want or a "approved" standalone DVD player he doesn't need? If nothing else, it's just wasteful - and there's no need.
Why is the Linux player not "approved" by the MPAA anyway? Sure, the hardware companies might be upset at the loss of a DVD player sale, but the MPAA makes its money.
And piracy? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the piracy can easily be done in Windows already, right?
I could keep going, but the sun will be up soon, and I don't want to be awake to greet it.
My network connection here in the dorms is never congested. There are rarely any network outages. That includes connections to the outside, email, AFS filespace, etc.
As far as I know, bandwidth isn't capped or anything. I doubt they even pay attention to those of us in the dorms - unless there is a big problem. They reserve the right to investigate, and even throw us off the network in extreme cases. In the policy I agreed to with ResComp, they made it clear that they know they have no right to confiscate my equipment or anything.
They are also very security-minded (for our sake as well as theirs). Kerberos authentication is used for alot of things. It almost annoys me sometimes. The mail clients that are "officially supported" are kerberized ones like Mulberry. AFS is used for our home directories, and it's also kerberized, which means I have to junp though hoops to map drives in Windows.
MY POINT IS THIS:
I think UofM has the right attitude. Students at Universities aren't like employees at a company. We don't go home at night. Our academic and personal lives are all mixed. There is no reason to expect students to only use their network access for "official educational purposes." That said, I think priority should be given to education, if it ever gets chocked off by, say, last minute Napstering.
And as for monitoring emails. Or deleting them. No! Same thing applies. Students aren't employees to be monitored. If you really don't want your email read, encrypt it. Then a sysadmin somewhere won't stumble on it.
Egghead wants to keep your business? Make them eat the rejected rebate cost. That is, assuming the rebate was advertised by them.
Watching NASA TV (available on the Internet and...on TV), you get to hear the communications between Mission Control and the Space Shuttle. It's rather interesting. The night of the launch I was listening in - they were talking about setting up the network, the router, something about mapping drives. (I wonder what kind of bandwidth they have up there, or if I can do a traceroute an Astronaut's laptop - probably not) There's a commentator who explains things to you and throws lots of interesting trivia your way. For example, just 1.5 minutes after launch, due to fuel consumption, the shuttle/fuel tank/boosters together weigh half of what they did on the pad. The boosters consume 10 tons of fuel per second. Wow. That's just crazy. Also they have highlights of the days activities, replays of the launch, etc. I recommend it.
Next year I'll be living in a house with 4 of my friends. We'll get cable access or DSL, and I'll have to set up a Linux box to masquarade for us behind the one piddling IP (v4) address we get because there aren't that many to spare. Even after that, doing anything complicated over the Internet will be a great pain in the ass due to the masquarading.
When IPv6 finally arrives, we should be able to get all the global IP addresses we need. That's how it's supposed to be.
Yes, I've noticed that and it drives me crazy too. Some apps add themselves to the "All Users" Start Menu. Some due not. Winamp stores your settings in the same dir as the executable - meaning the same playlist and skin for everyone (unless you go crazy changing working directories). On and on.
Remember all the commotion when Win2k came out about certified apps or something like that? Only a handfull of apps were actually certified by Microsoft. I suspect part of the reason so few apps are certified is that very few have adapted to all the Good Changes Microsoft has been making - such as the multi-user settings in the registry, the new standardized installation engine they have, etc. They can get away with it, I think, because most Windows machines are still only used by one person. When they start doing making the apps conform to Microsoft's standards, it'll be better, I think.
As for Linux on the desktop, I agree it's fine for lots of everyday stuff - exlcuding fancy games and windows-only programs. It's especially useful here at school for access to my AFS home directory and for remote sessions on all the UNIX machines they've got around here (and vice versa).
Actually, now that I think about it... They probably aren't suing because they didn't think to make the hardware manufacturers sign agreements regarding the copy-protection bit. They're just quietly implementing new schemes (like CSS) - and they aren't making the same mistake again.
That remind me of something (a little OT). Right now I have analog cable (TV). I also have a super nifty ATI All in Wonder Radeon. I can time-shift programs, record them, preview many stations - the works. Next year I'll be forced to use the new digital cable. My TV tuner will be worthless as I'll have to watch everything though the Digital Cable box. If I watch anything on my All in Wonder at all, it will have to be on channel 3, I think.
Boooooooooo copy-protection.
Well, no. It was too daunting for me. But, I'd like to.
I recently started making a database where I could keep track of all my photos - a "photo database," if you will. (It's here, if you are curious.) I didn't store the photos in the database - primarily because there isn't enough room on the database server. I numbered all the images by hand and serve them from my personal computer - using MySQL and PHP on the database server to access them.
Anyway, I want to organize my photos into groups - and maybe even subgroups. And I want the groups to be able to overlap. I haven't done this yet, because I don't have the time to (re)impliment a file system inside the database! However, a "dbfs" seems to be exactly what I need for this task. It's close to what I envisioned.
contain slightly skewed and grainy scanned in images of the actual printed manual
are only one way to produce PDFs. Just as you can scan something in and print it, you can scan it in and make a PDF. You can also make PDFs from the original document - which yields high quality, portable files. I don't know why someone would scan things like that.
That said, I think they should also go away. The have good ideas, but I think they should try to influence ICANN instead of creating a rouge system.
Here's a brief history of DNS, as made-up by me (i.e. I'm doing some guessing, but it seems reasonable):
When the Internet was new, all people had were IP addresses. Having to remember many of these got to be a pain, so they assigned names to each computer and kept them all in the eqivalent of a hosts file on each computer. Maintaining and updating this file got to be a pain as the Internet got larger. Modern DNS was born to solve this. Root servers, each organization responsible for it's own namespace, etc.
DNS is a names-to-numbers system for the Internet! People are treating it like a keyword system for the WWW. It's not. If you want one of those, by all means, make one. Or just use Yahoo or something. Don't try to use DNS, because everything ends up as www.keyword.com and www.bignewmovie.com, which is pointless - and has polluted the .com TLD.
Back to my best guess of history: Our current TLD make sense to me, given the history of the Internet.
What new groups have joined the Internet? I see a need for a TLD for individuals, maybe .per (personal) or .idv (individual). I don't quite know how to resolve the dispute when everyone wants johnsmith.per, though.
If we want to stick with the current TLD, we should enforce, somehow, their correct use. The rules should be strict enough that most organizaions will fit into only one TLD. None of this grabbing foobar.* .
New TLDs need only be as broad as the old. I mean, what is .museum compared to .com or .org?? The idea of .misc is interesting, but that just encourages the "keyword" behavior. Maybe it could be .keyword if we really can't do without it.
Or else we could scrap the current TLDs. I like that idea too. Make it all usenet-style too.
Spooky.
But, the reason I am replying to this post is to address the concern that the RIAA has no interest in selling their music cheaply in any form. I've thought about somehow starting my own recording company - one that is exactly what a recording company should be: a sound studio for hire to the artists. This company of mine would, for some hourly rate, allow groups to record music in its studios. It would, for some other fixed price, produce CDs for the artist. It would even market them, if the artist was willing to pay extra for that service.
All that may not seem to different from what recording companies do today, except that I wouldn't make bands sign over their souls, the rights to their music, or anything else. I wouldn't even make them buy all of my services - but I might offer a package deal.
I don't have the capital or the knowhow to do any of this, sadly. I'm just a kid in college. If bands wouldn't sign exclusive contracts, we wouldn't need my benevolent company anyway. They could shop around for a recording company all they wanted.
While thinking about this, it occured to me that these kind of problems would be reduced if everyone used Open Standards. Why waste all the effort? We already have Standards Bodies (ISO, ANSI, others?). Why not use them? IMHO, anything worth doing is worth thinking through and worth creating a standard for.
In fact, this could be a good way to introduce the idea of Open Source Software. Suppose we convince people/companies to start using Open Standards for everything. Even if companies continue to write closed-source software to use these standards, eventually they will realize that they are all duplicating effort by doing so - and might move towards open source.
I realize that companies tend to compete with one another, and that makes the preceding situation unrealistic. To them, it would be like helping competitors. But, so what? That's good. It would mean companies can't sit on their closed standards/closed software. They'd have to continually improve. As a consumer, I'd like to see that.
Second of all, I don't understand what the big debate about 'paying twice' is. Without doing any calculations whatsoever (!), I'd venture a guess that making corporations pay or not for this or that wouldn't result in a more fair tax code. The tax code is too convoluted for that to be possible.
Money flows. It circulates! How on earth can taxes be paid on it only 'once'?? The more money flows, the more chances there are to tax it. For example, I get my paycheck, I pay income tax. I use some money to buy a pair of shoes. I pay sales tax. The owner of the store pays income tax. He also pays the kid who sold me the shoes. The kid pays income tax too (maybe). The kid goes and buys stuff somewhere else...
I was under the impression that artists own the copyright (and therefore have the right to control distribution) originally, and that in most cases they sign over this right to the record companies in their exclusive contracts.
If that's the case, maybe artisits should not sign these contracts!
It would be nice if this were all done on an honor system (like shareware). I want to be honest. I'll pay for what I use - I don't want to pay for songs I find that I hate, and I don't like paying too much. Of course, if the recording companies really did this, they'd probably want to encrypt everything and put security on it (it's all about control, right?). I can't blame them, given all the money to be made and all the piracy that exists. Too bad there aren't more honest and fair people out there (artists, fans, recording companies alike).
Think about it. It will have to be like this in the not-to-distant future. When everyone has high bandwidth connections, who's going to go to the store and buy a CD when they could download it instantly to their stereo? I say we stop buying CDs right now (and DVDs in the near future) and tell the RIAA and MPAA we'll only buy their goods via a download (maybe uncompressed for purists who hate MP3 compression...).
There. That was a nice little ramble.
I think it would work best if everything on the net were treated as shareware/freeware (depending on the creators' preferences). This includes music, movies, software, etc., etc. Music, software, movies distributed on CD/DVD should just be considered more permenant copies. It's no longer practical to attach a license to listen/watch/use to the media something is distributed on.
All we'd need is for people on both sides to be honest and fair. People should actually pay for whatever they download (or copy from a friend) and use. And musicians/record companies/software companies should ask for reasonable amounts of money.
No messy encryption, tracking, IDs, whatever. Just be honest and fair. Sheesh.