This is the way it should work. Without the ability to monopolize an artist, a label cannot make money, since all the cost to promote an artist and make him famous can't be recovered if anyone else can sell copies of the album or if people can download it for free.
Promoting someone who has no talent but just a body that would appeal to most customers in the target group (according to research) to perform songs that have neither innovative music nor significant lyrics but would appeal to most customers in the target group (according to research) is the way it should work?? Maybe these so-called artists are promoted too much with too much money?
I think there is something fundamentally wrong with a society where a business of entertaining is more profitable and respected than business of actually building something. If it pays better to be Ozzy Osbourne than Alex Wolszczan or Linus Torvalds then we have some priorities terribly wrong.
The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small
Almost no technologically mature civilisations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours
You are almost certainly in a simulation.
We live in the real world.
I think he left (4) out because there is really no way of telling whether we live in a simulated or real world. In fact we know very little about the nature of reality. However, someone has to live in the real world - even if only to be able to run first of the recursive simulations.
I also think all the discussion about "How to live in a simulated world" boils down to this: don't worry too much about what's going on around you. But that holds also if we live in real world and is what Buddha taught long time ago.
Can they do it? Sure. So could ESA, Japan and probably a half dozen other nations like Australia, Brazil or India. Will they? Probably, they want the bragging rights. But by 2006? No way.
So what - it's not important whether they will pull this one off in 2006 or 2026, what counts is that they officially entered The Race - the officially challenge US supremacy in space. That should be enough for US to reconsider its spending priorities - and NASA management.
Although I doubt that they would be really able to do it in that time I think this is great for humanity as a whole because it's revival of the Space Race! Competition - it's the only thing that can make Americans support space exploration again and - who knows - maybe NASA can be again changed into dynamic and dedicated agency it once was? The possibility of China being the only real space power would mean that tax dollars would go this way and we will be flying into space again.
(Probably in armed spaceships, but that's the way humans behave...)
But, what value does this artificial monopoly on an idea give to us? It obviously costs something in time and money to create ideas and technologies. Has anyone done a scientific study comparing the creativity levels of countries with differing copyright systems? I'd love to see one done, as its results could shed light on the (non-)benefits given by extending copyright terms.
The problem here is that one of people's main motives is improvement of their lives and that in modern societies is directly related to having more money to spend. One could of course argue that there are people who live healthier and happier lives in primitive conditions and close to nature, but those are not the source of civilizational progress. Most other people want to live in better homes, drive new cars, have better education for their kids etc. - and that includes scientists and inventors. You could also argue that money inventor gets is to some extent measure of the value of his invention for the rest of society.
In Soviet Russia and countries of the Eastern block creating an invention or a scientific discovery didn't make anyone rich - all you could count on was maybe some fame and maybe, maybe a little more money. The result was that many scientists from Poland, Hungary, Romania etc. migrated to US and when you look at - for example - Nobel prize winners most of them live in US. Yes, scientists there did some important work but it was more or less wasted, because it was not valued by the system they lived in. This is one of the examples that some way of rewarding people for their ideas and discoveries is necessary to sustain progress.
I think what is going wrong with the copyright and IP is that the situation shifts towards rewarding not the actual inventors or creators but corporations they work for. And that might become similar to the situation in the communist countries, where everything one invented was State's property - just change State to Company.
In 40 years or so there will be replicators where all you will need is a carbon block and some [pirated] scripts and you can make whatever you want...
Why people here tend to take gadgets out of sci-fi books & movies for granted? I think people should read more old books and press and review for example some promises and forecasts from 1970. We should have permanent bases on the Moon by now, few powerful computers with AI able to talk and recognize human speech and - of course - methods of food production to end hunger and ways of organizing societies to end wars and crime.
All of that just didn't happen. I especially like the promise of computer translations - this promise is as old as computer age. Even back in 1950s there were people working on it and promising a simple, working translator within 5 to 10 years. But it's stil not here as it turned out that human languages are way more complex than it looked at first. It might take a few more decades to get a really decent computer translation - but it might never get to the point of being able to translate literature and poetry.
Same here. Maybe there is more to the way physical reality is constructed and replicators turning garbage into gold might be as far away as the philosopher's stone was in Middle Ages.
No speeding; the car won't accelerate past the speed limit. No following too closely; radars prevent that. No excessive speed relative to adjacent lanes; the car slows down.
Jeeeez... that would take all the remaining fun out of driving.
Well, all the pages about WASTE are 404 now, WASTE also disappeared from the list of software made by Nullsoft. But - as I said already here - it's already irrelevant, as the GPL-ed source is already mirrored around the world and will be worked on. Soon we will see ports and mutations of WASTE everywhere.
Looks like the guys at Nullsoft learned from Gnutella...
Why use AIM - and have to rely on their servers as well as network to those servers - when you can have your own, independent and secure network that is even resistant to traffic analysis?
And if SecureIM in Trillian is the same as a Miranda plug-in I know then I don't trust it that much as I don't have the source.
WASTE is something that is indeed very useful for small company or teams (especially dispersed teams) in larger organizations. In many places one or another IM system is being used to communicate with team members. Over ICQ or AOL contracts and employment conditions are discussed, remarks about contractors and clients are passed etc. That is a huge security leak if you look at it from a certain prospective, especially for some profiles of companies like small consulting firms with employees regularly using clients networks. WASTE is a simple to use and free method of closing that leak.
I know at least two small companies that should adopt WASTE immediately and I would advise them to do so. One is a PR company with 2-10 people offices around Europe, where ICQ is frequently used as a discussion medium. Other is a small consulting company. Someone eavesdropping on their ICQ chats could seriously damage both of them.
I think the message in The Matrix is society doesn't have to be a complex matrix of propoganda designed to keep us independant and greedy.
A great example of this message are loads of money invested in the two Matrix sequels in order to gain even more than $450 milion WB got from the first film.
If you know some French you can try Le Monde, a major French newspaper. Since France was opposed to war it is likely that you will get a completely different prospective than that of BBC, CNN, NBC and other three letter acronyms.
I know it is out of topic as far as your DIY project is concerned, but I went to the Think Geek page and apart from seeing that the item was already Slashordered ("out of stock"), I read that this item can't be shipped out of US. Now, is it because there is strategically important technology involved or just because Think Geek doesn't want to sell to foreign customers?
3) Bluetooth-schmootooth, there's nothing THAT cool about it yet...sure there's a few tricks, and maybe sync-ing address books is all right...but there's not enough practicality in it yet.
I use Bluetooth primarily (only in fact) to be able to access the network via GPRS from my notebook or PDA without the hassle of cables or balancing the devices to keep IR ports aligned.
I'm still stuck with my old T39m, because it is much more rugged than T68 was, but I won't buy a phone without Bluetooth now. A GPRS card for my notebook is not an alternative, because I would have to get another SIM card or to move the one I have from one device to another and back. WLAN is also not an alternative, because coverage is scarce yet, as compared to GPRS coverage which is practically everywhere I go.
Hm... did it occur to anyone that it's forbidden for Muslims to eat pork, not order it? They can order a standard meal and just leave the meat on the side of their dish.
Same applies to all data. Some people just don't get it - massive technological surveillance is not enough to get rid of terrorists. You have to use KGB style methods, with detention camps in Siberia (Alaska?) when anyone even remotely suspected would be sent - and an anonymous notice to the authorities should be enough to get there, no fair trial etc. etc. Also, armed guards should be put in each plane with permission to shoot if passengers behave suspiciously and private plane ownership should be abolished.
But even in the soviet russia people hijacked planes (although such planes were silently shot down by their airforce).
A search on "CIPA" is also a good way to catch up on the Polish porn scene (just add site:.pl in Google), as this word is vulgar for pussy in Polish. Knowning that it is a bit funny to read some comments like "CIPA is one of those things that looks good on the outside..." (sure it is!)...
I know it's off-topic but I couldn't resist
What is really amazing...
on
Baked Apple
·
· Score: 1
is that people this stupid (or careless) can afford a new Powerbook G4...
Yeah, and that's because on this market (as on many markets these days) people making decisions in most cases don't have deep (or any) understanding of the things they buy or/and buy these things for corporations, not for themselves, so in fact they don't care that much about reliability, costs etc.
> If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.
Yeah, you are right - the problem is that some standardization body would have to produce some kind of standard and then companies would have to adhere to it. GSM has been exactly that idea but it was conceived long before anyone seriously considered anything more than making voice calls from a device just little smaller than a brick.
Main problem now would be the legacy devices and systems - and the investment that went into building them. Implementing a common wireless communication protocol would take even more time than developing it - and then in few years another technology using electromagnetic radiation would come that no one thought of while developing this standard.
And - BTW - how do you think - would such a standard be an open standard?
I'm sure this is what telcos have seen coming and have been scared shitless of. This will prevent them from ever making UMTS into a commercial success, especially taking into account they payed far to much for licensing the (yet-to-be-used) UMTS frequencies.
UMTS is already dead and buried - and everybody in the industry understood that shortly after last UMTS licenses were sold for crazy piles of money. The system discussed in the article won't change the picture that much - UMTS promise didn't concern voice calls (these are quite well served by the GSM system) but rather multimedia transmissions.
Also, spread of cheap WLAN connectivity not controlled by telecoms is only one of the reasons why UMTS is dead. Main reason is that it turned out that people at large are quite happy with just calling and sending short messages and are not interested in paying lots of money for fancy phones and then for multimedia content. All analysts agree that it will take time before significant number of customers would be interested in what UMTS promised.
Cellular operators perceive WiFi as a threat, because there has been long feared that cheap, community operated wireless networks ("guerilla networks" in corporate speak) would wipe out operators own WiFi offerings. What seems to anger operators most is that the whole concept of local wireless networks is not in line with the operators' idea of monetizing every single byte transmitted over the air. Also operators feared that someone would come up with an VoIP-WLAN phone that would offer very cheap voice calls in the WLAN range. WLAN networks.
Now the impact of this new device (and system) that this partnership is going to produce depends on whether it would be oriented towards operators (and would thus require deep integration with GSM operator's infrastructure) or rather corporate customers (and would therefore be more like an software over-the-Internet VPN solution but also for voice communication). I think the first option is more likely and then the operators would be in position to control to some extent the WiFi market with local WLAN operators reduced to being just local bandwidth providers. The most important part of making this work would be the SIM card (or its equivalent) identifying the user and interfaces connecting a registry of users to authentication mechanisms of various visited networks. Most of that is what GSM operators already have.
Slashdot Mirror
Promoting someone who has no talent but just a body that would appeal to most customers in the target group (according to research) to perform songs that have neither innovative music nor significant lyrics but would appeal to most customers in the target group (according to research) is the way it should work?? Maybe these so-called artists are promoted too much with too much money?
I think there is something fundamentally wrong with a society where a business of entertaining is more profitable and respected than business of actually building something. If it pays better to be Ozzy Osbourne than Alex Wolszczan or Linus Torvalds then we have some priorities terribly wrong.
I think he left (4) out because there is really no way of telling whether we live in a simulated or real world. In fact we know very little about the nature of reality. However, someone has to live in the real world - even if only to be able to run first of the recursive simulations.
I also think all the discussion about "How to live in a simulated world" boils down to this: don't worry too much about what's going on around you. But that holds also if we live in real world and is what Buddha taught long time ago.
Ever saw "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? :-)
So what - it's not important whether they will pull this one off in 2006 or 2026, what counts is that they officially entered The Race - the officially challenge US supremacy in space. That should be enough for US to reconsider its spending priorities - and NASA management.
BTW - it was no incident, for example more funds were spent on teaching maths in colleges and on science education in general.
(Probably in armed spaceships, but that's the way humans behave...)
The problem here is that one of people's main motives is improvement of their lives and that in modern societies is directly related to having more money to spend. One could of course argue that there are people who live healthier and happier lives in primitive conditions and close to nature, but those are not the source of civilizational progress. Most other people want to live in better homes, drive new cars, have better education for their kids etc. - and that includes scientists and inventors. You could also argue that money inventor gets is to some extent measure of the value of his invention for the rest of society.
In Soviet Russia and countries of the Eastern block creating an invention or a scientific discovery didn't make anyone rich - all you could count on was maybe some fame and maybe, maybe a little more money. The result was that many scientists from Poland, Hungary, Romania etc. migrated to US and when you look at - for example - Nobel prize winners most of them live in US. Yes, scientists there did some important work but it was more or less wasted, because it was not valued by the system they lived in. This is one of the examples that some way of rewarding people for their ideas and discoveries is necessary to sustain progress.
I think what is going wrong with the copyright and IP is that the situation shifts towards rewarding not the actual inventors or creators but corporations they work for. And that might become similar to the situation in the communist countries, where everything one invented was State's property - just change State to Company.
Why people here tend to take gadgets out of sci-fi books & movies for granted? I think people should read more old books and press and review for example some promises and forecasts from 1970. We should have permanent bases on the Moon by now, few powerful computers with AI able to talk and recognize human speech and - of course - methods of food production to end hunger and ways of organizing societies to end wars and crime.
All of that just didn't happen. I especially like the promise of computer translations - this promise is as old as computer age. Even back in 1950s there were people working on it and promising a simple, working translator within 5 to 10 years. But it's stil not here as it turned out that human languages are way more complex than it looked at first. It might take a few more decades to get a really decent computer translation - but it might never get to the point of being able to translate literature and poetry.
Same here. Maybe there is more to the way physical reality is constructed and replicators turning garbage into gold might be as far away as the philosopher's stone was in Middle Ages.
Jeeeez... that would take all the remaining fun out of driving.
Looks like the guys at Nullsoft learned from Gnutella...
And if SecureIM in Trillian is the same as a Miranda plug-in I know then I don't trust it that much as I don't have the source.
WASTE is something that is indeed very useful for small company or teams (especially dispersed teams) in larger organizations. In many places one or another IM system is being used to communicate with team members. Over ICQ or AOL contracts and employment conditions are discussed, remarks about contractors and clients are passed etc. That is a huge security leak if you look at it from a certain prospective, especially for some profiles of companies like small consulting firms with employees regularly using clients networks. WASTE is a simple to use and free method of closing that leak.
I know at least two small companies that should adopt WASTE immediately and I would advise them to do so. One is a PR company with 2-10 people offices around Europe, where ICQ is frequently used as a discussion medium. Other is a small consulting company. Someone eavesdropping on their ICQ chats could seriously damage both of them.
It's already irrelevant whether AOL would pull the plug on them. The source is out. GPL-ed.
A great example of this message are loads of money invested in the two Matrix sequels in order to gain even more than $450 milion WB got from the first film.
If you know some French you can try Le Monde, a major French newspaper. Since France was opposed to war it is likely that you will get a completely different prospective than that of BBC, CNN, NBC and other three letter acronyms.
I know it is out of topic as far as your DIY project is concerned, but I went to the Think Geek page and apart from seeing that the item was already Slashordered ("out of stock"), I read that this item can't be shipped out of US. Now, is it because there is strategically important technology involved or just because Think Geek doesn't want to sell to foreign customers?
I use Bluetooth primarily (only in fact) to be able to access the network via GPRS from my notebook or PDA without the hassle of cables or balancing the devices to keep IR ports aligned.
I'm still stuck with my old T39m, because it is much more rugged than T68 was, but I won't buy a phone without Bluetooth now. A GPRS card for my notebook is not an alternative, because I would have to get another SIM card or to move the one I have from one device to another and back. WLAN is also not an alternative, because coverage is scarce yet, as compared to GPRS coverage which is practically everywhere I go.
"Linux is not Unix" - and believed it.
Same applies to all data. Some people just don't get it - massive technological surveillance is not enough to get rid of terrorists. You have to use KGB style methods, with detention camps in Siberia (Alaska?) when anyone even remotely suspected would be sent - and an anonymous notice to the authorities should be enough to get there, no fair trial etc. etc. Also, armed guards should be put in each plane with permission to shoot if passengers behave suspiciously and private plane ownership should be abolished.
But even in the soviet russia people hijacked planes (although such planes were silently shot down by their airforce).
A search on "CIPA" is also a good way to catch up on the Polish porn scene (just add site:.pl in Google), as this word is vulgar for pussy in Polish. Knowning that it is a bit funny to read some comments like "CIPA is one of those things that looks good on the outside..." (sure it is!)...
I know it's off-topic but I couldn't resist
is that people this stupid (or careless) can afford a new Powerbook G4...
Yeah, and that's because on this market (as on many markets these days) people making decisions in most cases don't have deep (or any) understanding of the things they buy or/and buy these things for corporations, not for themselves, so in fact they don't care that much about reliability, costs etc.
> If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.
Yeah, you are right - the problem is that some standardization body would have to produce some kind of standard and then companies would have to adhere to it. GSM has been exactly that idea but it was conceived long before anyone seriously considered anything more than making voice calls from a device just little smaller than a brick.
Main problem now would be the legacy devices and systems - and the investment that went into building them. Implementing a common wireless communication protocol would take even more time than developing it - and then in few years another technology using electromagnetic radiation would come that no one thought of while developing this standard.
And - BTW - how do you think - would such a standard be an open standard?
I'm sure this is what telcos have seen coming and have been scared shitless of. This will prevent them from ever making UMTS into a commercial success, especially taking into account they payed far to much for licensing the (yet-to-be-used) UMTS frequencies.
UMTS is already dead and buried - and everybody in the industry understood that shortly after last UMTS licenses were sold for crazy piles of money. The system discussed in the article won't change the picture that much - UMTS promise didn't concern voice calls (these are quite well served by the GSM system) but rather multimedia transmissions.
Also, spread of cheap WLAN connectivity not controlled by telecoms is only one of the reasons why UMTS is dead. Main reason is that it turned out that people at large are quite happy with just calling and sending short messages and are not interested in paying lots of money for fancy phones and then for multimedia content. All analysts agree that it will take time before significant number of customers would be interested in what UMTS promised.
Cellular operators perceive WiFi as a threat, because there has been long feared that cheap, community operated wireless networks ("guerilla networks" in corporate speak) would wipe out operators own WiFi offerings. What seems to anger operators most is that the whole concept of local wireless networks is not in line with the operators' idea of monetizing every single byte transmitted over the air. Also operators feared that someone would come up with an VoIP-WLAN phone that would offer very cheap voice calls in the WLAN range. WLAN networks.
Now the impact of this new device (and system) that this partnership is going to produce depends on whether it would be oriented towards operators (and would thus require deep integration with GSM operator's infrastructure) or rather corporate customers (and would therefore be more like an software over-the-Internet VPN solution but also for voice communication). I think the first option is more likely and then the operators would be in position to control to some extent the WiFi market with local WLAN operators reduced to being just local bandwidth providers. The most important part of making this work would be the SIM card (or its equivalent) identifying the user and interfaces connecting a registry of users to authentication mechanisms of various visited networks. Most of that is what GSM operators already have.