cdrguru: Buy? Once you "have", you have all you need.
The value of recorded music is zero, and that's all anyone I know is paying.
That's not quite true. There is a value to most music: it can convey ideas and moods, change one's outlook, and serve as anything from light entertainment to a rallying theme depending on the intent and skill of the songwriters and performers involved.
Really, if there was zero value, would people really bother to collect it? It wouldn't be worth downloading if there were some sort of desirability to at least some of it.
The problem is not so much the value as the cost. The people who produce it want to sell it at a specific price, which most people don't want to pay. Meanwhile, the cost of reproduction has dropped just about to zero, and that's what people are paying in money to get the stuff. They're still paying costs in effort, storage space, etc. to find, grab, and warehouse the stuff.
After all, it's not like they don't have someplace to look for alternatives. Apple itself has a whole section on their downloads website dedicated to third party business and financial software. This includes freebies, shareware, and demo versions of larger, more robust packages that they can try out. (Yeah, I know, that covers everything.)
Can anyone recommend any of the software available in there? I need to recommend something for my parents sooner or later too, come to think of it, and the 2006 version I'm using now is getting a little hoary.
nog_lorp: They should double check their terminology. Heat pipes are defined to be a closed system whereby the working fluid circulates by convection and capillary action.
And that's probably what they're going to do, too.
Remember, Mr. Jobs absolutely hates noisy computers. He wants them to run as quietly as possible. Fans are kept to an absolute minimum, tolerated only when absolutely necessary and verboten otherwise.
Substitute "pump" for "fan," and you can see where this is going. They'll want a system as noiseless as possible, so they'll want as few pumps as possible. A heat pipe (or whatever you choose to call a heat transfer system that uses no motors) would be the answer to their (pipe) dreams.
circletimessquare: the riaa's extortion model is under legal attack
Not so; it's not like the RIAA has sued them over it or anything...
...
...
Someone really should go to the RIAA and tell them that the use of spurious lawsuits by other companies could set disadvantageous precedents and weaken their legal claims in the future.
adnonsense: It's almost musical. In an avant-garde sort of way.
Heck, I figured that just by reading the summary. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I got to the page and discovered the sounds were all encapsulated in mini Flash players instead of available to download, trim down, and load into the sampler of my choice.
Nice variety of sounds, but totally inaccessible. I give it a D.
Various documents, explanations, and analyses may still be found on SJG's site, according to Google. I also just verified these couple of links myself.
Top Ten Media Errors, for instance. Pardon the formatting, it hasn't really been updated since 1994,
"Crime and Puzzlement". Included partly because it seems to be a worm's-eye account of the poopystorm that transpired, but also because I hate using the unordered-list tag on a list with less than three items.
Unfortunately, I'll admit it's straying a bit far off the topic of federal IP seizures, except perhaps to show that under the right circumstances, there's nothing an adequately jumpy government won't lay claim to.
Remember the good old days, when transparency in government could be safely considered a good thing?
Generally, I'm still for it. Absolutely we need transparency in our government, and anything that brings us closer to point-and-click convenience over what we have now (FOIA requests left behind the radiator for 9–18 months to age and mellow) is for the best.
Furthermore, an open, accessible standard (i.e. no copyrighted DTDs, and I'm looking at you, Microsoft) will allow government resources to be brought together in interesting and inspiring ways. You know all those Facebook apps and Google Maps mashups? Imagine those applied to governance. The idea behind them is to put information together in new and interesting ways. If not only those in government, but the citizenry, can create government hacks like that, there would be great benefit.
Now let's talk hazards.
When was the last time you published your name and address online? See any good uses of microformats on any major sites lately? That's because there are some people on the Internet who are <sarcasm class="churchlady">not so nice</sarcasm>, and might willingly abuse whatever information they can find. The "government hack" alluded to above is an invitation to abuse. And we really can't afford to put government in that kind of position.
Another consideration, and I've stated this before, is that a wide line must be maintained between security and transparency. Security means that everything that must be kept secret is really kept secret. Transparency means that everything that doesn't have to be secure is made available somehow. If things aren't secured, the government becomes ineffectual and even detrimental. If things aren't kept transparent, the government itself can become abusive. A freely searchable infrastructure would make the transparency all that much more powerful, and make any breaches in security that much more severe.
Just Some Guy: If Microsoft opened their own shops, I'm 99% sure they'd look and feel exactly like Best Buy already does.
Not necessarily. A retail space has two ways of conveying a message to you: directly, through the message they want you to see, and indirectly, through those little corners where the message isn't very tightly controlled at all.
Before Apple went big with its own stores, there was a time when Apple had their own ghettos corners oh, be honestâ"ghettos in CompUSA stores. They had only a little more of the charm of the rest of the store by dint of the occasional Apple-styled banners, and the fact that an Apple rep would come by periodically and clean up the machines that customers had (metaphorically) crapped on. It was not the best buying (ahem) experience, and I'd like to think Apple learned from that.
Interestingly, right across the street for a time there was another computer retailer: a Gateway store. I'd never gone in there, but I heard tell they had a country-western theme? Which in a computer store makes about as much sense as a McDonalds made up to look like a bike shop.
In the one case, the Apple Ghetto in CompUSA didn't present a very coherent message, but perhaps managed to impress enough. In the other case, the message may very well have been carefully controlled, but that didn't mean that it really made any sense.
The Apple Stores that opened hence have their own style, clean, controlled, and sensible from a certain effete perspective. The CompUSA in Glen Burnie went toes up a long time ago, and the building that held the Gateway store is now half FedEx/Kinkos and half mattress discounters.
I'm inclined to think that people will ignore the controlled message because deep down, they know it's marketing bullshit. They'll be a little more impressed if the message is controlled and makes sense, much more impressed if the company manages to apply sparkle everywhere (including customer service and after-purchase support), and most impressed if those corners where the company didn't manage to apply polish still manage to sparkle on their own.
That said, I would expect the Microsoft Store to be clean, have a solid message, and be arranged contextually like an Apple store rather than by product like Best Buy is. However, I would also expect it to be very high in visual clutter (mostly signs with multiple bullet points competing for customer attention), and where they forget to polish they will tank hard.
Ah, but remember, there's four more episodes following this one. Count on them being about $10 apiece too. (Or if they really take off, more?) And meanwhile, they're making more of a name for themselves, and possibly growing their audience. Why, from a certain view, this looks like advertising.
Me: If your user ID had three more digits, I'd have marked it "-1 Troll" without a second thought.
XxtraLarGe: Why let that stop you? WTH does his mom buying a Mac over 20 years ago have to do with anything?
Admittedly, it comes back to that four-digit UID thing again: I assumed that he's been around long enough to know better, and rather than simply call him out on it I was going to attempt to learn a little more about his situation and his choices.
File it under "D" for "Diplomacy, misplaced attempt at".
If your user ID had three more digits, I'd have marked it "-1 Troll" without a second thought.
Instead, against my better judgment, I'm going to ask: what kind of business is your family in that is so dependent on PC-only software? And what kind of software is it?
And what the frelling zwack does any of this have to do with which advertising agency Microsoft has hired? Unless they're making extensive use of astroturfers...
houghi: Who would have thought such a thing? I thought that people who steal would make specific GUI's for them selves like you see in the movies and do all that other stuff.
Now, now... don't dismiss that sarcasm so easily. We've established that they're lazy and don't pay much attention to security. But you're onto something there, man. We just have to coax the idea into full reality.
Sure, they're lazy. Either they write the minimum code they need to in order to get their job done, or they buy off-the-shelf toolkits that have what they need. If the toolkit is cheap enough, they would gladly spend a little money in order to make a lot of money.
And that's where the fun begins.
Imagine a craigslist advertisement for such a toolkit with a friendly and easy-to-use back-end interface and innocuous-looking login mechanism so nobody can waltz in and steal or contaminate the collected data. The person who sets that up could make a few bucks on the side...or collect the names and addresses and turn the list over to the FBI...or distribute a program that contains some sort of sleeper malware that lies dormant for a while before it springs into action. How bad do you think the problem of software piracy is among those people, hmmm?
Of course, word of mouth won't be enough. We'll have to start sending out advertising emails. Lots of them. And possibly take out advertisements on those websites that cater to that sort of clientelle. After all, running a board like that probably costs money. The operators should be grateful for any recompense they get. Advertising is an excellent way to make money on a website. Big, flashing banner advertisements in noxious colors, telling them that they've won a free copy of PhishPharmrâ and that all they have to do to claim their prize is enter a little personal information.
Just remind yourself that the point of this exercise is education, not necessarily profit. Some people steadfastly refuse to admit what kind of trouble they cause until they get caught it something like it themselves.
Some kind of exception is in order. Or perhaps it's already there and it just needs a clarification so everyone can see it better.
Remember that the internet is a series of tubes. The ISPs are the pipework, the customers' systems are sinks and reservoirs, and the act of running an "application" is turning on a spigot either to send liquid from your own reservoir to someone else's sink, or to draw liquid from someone else's reservoir to your own sink. The regulations only enforce unrestricted flow through the pipework, not the source and destination systems. This is a necessary step for the internet to work: that packets are routed as efficiently as possible through any intervening systems to get to their destination.
The distinction is important because if someone tries to do something rude into your sink (just imagine it, I dare you), you have every right to work to prevent it, up to and including contacting the other guy's ISP, your own ISP, and federal authorities. Some of that might even tie neatly into guideline #5 above. Likewise, if someone's trying to jiggle the handle to get banking information out of your reservoir (flow of liquid assets, what else?), same thing applies: you have the right to take countermeasures and contact the authorities.
Contrast those with the case where a plumber somewhere in the middle takes exception to the kinds of things flowing through his pipes, and restricts the flow of things he doesn't feel like relaying for whatever reason. Unless it's known to be illegal, that's a no-no according to the regulations. The sender's willing to send it, the receiver's willing to receive it, corking the line will do a disservice to either or both parties, and the full weight of the law in that case means something.
There's another case, where someone tries to do something to the ISP, in order to change routings or get an unfair pipely advantage. That is actionable, because the ISP has its own systems, and the someone is trying to jigger with one of those.
xouumalperxe: Now, if you can prove that the case dragged on simply because one party was trying to outlast the other, that's abusing the court, which is a different ball game altogether...
NewYorkCountryLawyer: "After three years of pursuing a home health aide in Brooklyn [who was accused of illegally downloading and sharing music]who[claims that she]has never even used a computer
I don't know about you, but now I'm intensely curious how they could drag this case on for three years.
I was just thinking about the relation between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates myself. They've been the bitterest of rivals in the past, patched things up somewhat, been bitter rivals again, etc. At the root of this could be the difference in platforms, or it could just be plain and simple competetiveness.
Bill Gates doesn't have as much of a stake in that competition now. Sure, thanks to Windows his name is a household word, but if that old email that surfaced recently is any indication, he may not be all that pleased with the juggernaut he helped build. He dismissed it as an attempt to improve the product (who wouldn't?), but what if it's not enough, and the culture refuses to change? It could be said that he helped build the cultural æsthetic at Microsoft so well that even he can't steer it any more.
I'm not saying it'd happen, but I would giggle like a madman for several days if/when Bill Gates admits that Apple was what he was trying to build all along.
In fact, you know what this reminds me of? The iTunes Music Store. Here was the upstart company (Apple) dealing with a megalith (the recording industry), making demands in certain places ($.99 tracks, piecemeal rather than bundling in albums) and offering concessions in others (DRM) in order to carve itself a niche in an industry where everyone was absolutely sure it didn't belong.
And yes, it's an imperfect analogy because iTMS was just a distribution system (which Apple got a small share of). The iPhone is a physical product. But I still stand by it. (The analogy, not the product.)
Given the arrangement, AT&T is still going to make out like a bandit, even with the subsidy, because Apple is only selling the razor, man. AT&T is selling the blades. (Oh, and Apple is starting up a quaint little shaving cream concession on the side in the form of the App Store.)
The trick for the upstart in any such case is to know what demands to make and what concessions to offer to carve first a niche and grow from there.
Each system has its own flavor of system and setting, and quirks as well. It's possible to like some and hate others, like them all, or be cold on all.
Some may like Rolemaster (and/or SpaceMaster), but others may find its reliance on entire books of tables somewhat daunting. Likewise, Runequest has a very loyal following, although the latest incarnation from Mongoose Publishing just kind of lies there; they focused a little too much on system and not enough on the setting that had been assembled over the course of a decade or two. (Incidentally, I consider HeroQuest to be a worthy spiritual successor to Chaosium's Runequest, moreso than Mongoose's.) D&D has certain strengths over both of them
There's no reason you can't appreciate each system for what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not quite true. There is a value to most music: it can convey ideas and moods, change one's outlook, and serve as anything from light entertainment to a rallying theme depending on the intent and skill of the songwriters and performers involved.
Really, if there was zero value, would people really bother to collect it? It wouldn't be worth downloading if there were some sort of desirability to at least some of it.
The problem is not so much the value as the cost. The people who produce it want to sell it at a specific price, which most people don't want to pay. Meanwhile, the cost of reproduction has dropped just about to zero, and that's what people are paying in money to get the stuff. They're still paying costs in effort, storage space, etc. to find, grab, and warehouse the stuff.
After all, it's not like they don't have someplace to look for alternatives. Apple itself has a whole section on their downloads website dedicated to third party business and financial software. This includes freebies, shareware, and demo versions of larger, more robust packages that they can try out. (Yeah, I know, that covers everything.)
Can anyone recommend any of the software available in there? I need to recommend something for my parents sooner or later too, come to think of it, and the 2006 version I'm using now is getting a little hoary.
And that's probably what they're going to do, too.
Remember, Mr. Jobs absolutely hates noisy computers. He wants them to run as quietly as possible. Fans are kept to an absolute minimum, tolerated only when absolutely necessary and verboten otherwise.
Substitute "pump" for "fan," and you can see where this is going. They'll want a system as noiseless as possible, so they'll want as few pumps as possible. A heat pipe (or whatever you choose to call a heat transfer system that uses no motors) would be the answer to their (pipe) dreams.
Not so; it's not like the RIAA has sued them over it or anything...
...
...
Someone really should go to the RIAA and tell them that the use of spurious lawsuits by other companies could set disadvantageous precedents and weaken their legal claims in the future.
I mean, just to warn them of course.
And what's the difference between a violin and a viola?
The viola burns longer.
And martyrdom for Datacent's servers:
Since they asked nicely, I'll wait a few days. Now I just have to decide what sequencer to run these up in...
Heck, I figured that just by reading the summary. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I got to the page and discovered the sounds were all encapsulated in mini Flash players instead of available to download, trim down, and load into the sampler of my choice.
Nice variety of sounds, but totally inaccessible. I give it a D.
Various documents, explanations, and analyses may still be found on SJG's site, according to Google. I also just verified these couple of links myself.
Unfortunately, I'll admit it's straying a bit far off the topic of federal IP seizures, except perhaps to show that under the right circumstances, there's nothing an adequately jumpy government won't lay claim to.
How's this for a project name: "Air Biscuit"
Remember the good old days, when transparency in government could be safely considered a good thing?
Generally, I'm still for it. Absolutely we need transparency in our government, and anything that brings us closer to point-and-click convenience over what we have now (FOIA requests left behind the radiator for 9–18 months to age and mellow) is for the best.
Furthermore, an open, accessible standard (i.e. no copyrighted DTDs, and I'm looking at you, Microsoft) will allow government resources to be brought together in interesting and inspiring ways. You know all those Facebook apps and Google Maps mashups? Imagine those applied to governance. The idea behind them is to put information together in new and interesting ways. If not only those in government, but the citizenry, can create government hacks like that, there would be great benefit.
Now let's talk hazards.
When was the last time you published your name and address online? See any good uses of microformats on any major sites lately? That's because there are some people on the Internet who are <sarcasm class="churchlady">not so nice</sarcasm>, and might willingly abuse whatever information they can find. The "government hack" alluded to above is an invitation to abuse. And we really can't afford to put government in that kind of position.
Another consideration, and I've stated this before, is that a wide line must be maintained between security and transparency. Security means that everything that must be kept secret is really kept secret. Transparency means that everything that doesn't have to be secure is made available somehow. If things aren't secured, the government becomes ineffectual and even detrimental. If things aren't kept transparent, the government itself can become abusive. A freely searchable infrastructure would make the transparency all that much more powerful, and make any breaches in security that much more severe.
Not necessarily. A retail space has two ways of conveying a message to you: directly, through the message they want you to see, and indirectly, through those little corners where the message isn't very tightly controlled at all.
Before Apple went big with its own stores, there was a time when Apple had their own ghettos corners oh, be honestâ" ghettos in CompUSA stores. They had only a little more of the charm of the rest of the store by dint of the occasional Apple-styled banners, and the fact that an Apple rep would come by periodically and clean up the machines that customers had (metaphorically) crapped on. It was not the best buying (ahem) experience, and I'd like to think Apple learned from that.
Interestingly, right across the street for a time there was another computer retailer: a Gateway store. I'd never gone in there, but I heard tell they had a country-western theme? Which in a computer store makes about as much sense as a McDonalds made up to look like a bike shop.
In the one case, the Apple Ghetto in CompUSA didn't present a very coherent message, but perhaps managed to impress enough. In the other case, the message may very well have been carefully controlled, but that didn't mean that it really made any sense.
The Apple Stores that opened hence have their own style, clean, controlled, and sensible from a certain effete perspective. The CompUSA in Glen Burnie went toes up a long time ago, and the building that held the Gateway store is now half FedEx/Kinkos and half mattress discounters.
I'm inclined to think that people will ignore the controlled message because deep down, they know it's marketing bullshit. They'll be a little more impressed if the message is controlled and makes sense, much more impressed if the company manages to apply sparkle everywhere (including customer service and after-purchase support), and most impressed if those corners where the company didn't manage to apply polish still manage to sparkle on their own.
That said, I would expect the Microsoft Store to be clean, have a solid message, and be arranged contextually like an Apple store rather than by product like Best Buy is. However, I would also expect it to be very high in visual clutter (mostly signs with multiple bullet points competing for customer attention), and where they forget to polish they will tank hard.
+0 Funny until logic like that becomes commonplace
And on the fourth corner, there is a bar with a sign out front that says "No loitering by order of the Pope."
Ah, but remember, there's four more episodes following this one. Count on them being about $10 apiece too. (Or if they really take off, more?) And meanwhile, they're making more of a name for themselves, and possibly growing their audience. Why, from a certain view, this looks like advertising.
In the long run, I think they'll do okay.
Admittedly, it comes back to that four-digit UID thing again: I assumed that he's been around long enough to know better, and rather than simply call him out on it I was going to attempt to learn a little more about his situation and his choices.
File it under "D" for "Diplomacy, misplaced attempt at".
If your user ID had three more digits, I'd have marked it "-1 Troll" without a second thought.
Instead, against my better judgment, I'm going to ask: what kind of business is your family in that is so dependent on PC-only software? And what kind of software is it?
And what the frelling zwack does any of this have to do with which advertising agency Microsoft has hired? Unless they're making extensive use of astroturfers...
Now, now... don't dismiss that sarcasm so easily. We've established that they're lazy and don't pay much attention to security. But you're onto something there, man. We just have to coax the idea into full reality.
Sure, they're lazy. Either they write the minimum code they need to in order to get their job done, or they buy off-the-shelf toolkits that have what they need. If the toolkit is cheap enough, they would gladly spend a little money in order to make a lot of money.
And that's where the fun begins.
Imagine a craigslist advertisement for such a toolkit with a friendly and easy-to-use back-end interface and innocuous-looking login mechanism so nobody can waltz in and steal or contaminate the collected data. The person who sets that up could make a few bucks on the side...or collect the names and addresses and turn the list over to the FBI...or distribute a program that contains some sort of sleeper malware that lies dormant for a while before it springs into action. How bad do you think the problem of software piracy is among those people, hmmm?
Of course, word of mouth won't be enough. We'll have to start sending out advertising emails. Lots of them. And possibly take out advertisements on those websites that cater to that sort of clientelle. After all, running a board like that probably costs money. The operators should be grateful for any recompense they get. Advertising is an excellent way to make money on a website. Big, flashing banner advertisements in noxious colors, telling them that they've won a free copy of PhishPharmrâ and that all they have to do to claim their prize is enter a little personal information.
Just remind yourself that the point of this exercise is education, not necessarily profit. Some people steadfastly refuse to admit what kind of trouble they cause until they get caught it something like it themselves.
Some kind of exception is in order. Or perhaps it's already there and it just needs a clarification so everyone can see it better.
Remember that the internet is a series of tubes. The ISPs are the pipework, the customers' systems are sinks and reservoirs, and the act of running an "application" is turning on a spigot either to send liquid from your own reservoir to someone else's sink, or to draw liquid from someone else's reservoir to your own sink. The regulations only enforce unrestricted flow through the pipework, not the source and destination systems. This is a necessary step for the internet to work: that packets are routed as efficiently as possible through any intervening systems to get to their destination.
The distinction is important because if someone tries to do something rude into your sink (just imagine it, I dare you), you have every right to work to prevent it, up to and including contacting the other guy's ISP, your own ISP, and federal authorities. Some of that might even tie neatly into guideline #5 above. Likewise, if someone's trying to jiggle the handle to get banking information out of your reservoir (flow of liquid assets, what else?), same thing applies: you have the right to take countermeasures and contact the authorities.
Contrast those with the case where a plumber somewhere in the middle takes exception to the kinds of things flowing through his pipes, and restricts the flow of things he doesn't feel like relaying for whatever reason. Unless it's known to be illegal, that's a no-no according to the regulations. The sender's willing to send it, the receiver's willing to receive it, corking the line will do a disservice to either or both parties, and the full weight of the law in that case means something.
There's another case, where someone tries to do something to the ISP, in order to change routings or get an unfair pipely advantage. That is actionable, because the ISP has its own systems, and the someone is trying to jigger with one of those.
The Orion Space Station isn't ferris-wheel -shaped, is it?
(And I'm not posting the source for the joke, because that would spoil...oh hell, yes I will.)
I don't know about you, but now I'm intensely curious how they could drag this case on for three years.
6. The author of the RIAA's wishlist dies. I don't care how, so long as the death certificate reads "autoerotic asphyxiation."
I was just thinking about the relation between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates myself. They've been the bitterest of rivals in the past, patched things up somewhat, been bitter rivals again, etc. At the root of this could be the difference in platforms, or it could just be plain and simple competetiveness.
Bill Gates doesn't have as much of a stake in that competition now. Sure, thanks to Windows his name is a household word, but if that old email that surfaced recently is any indication, he may not be all that pleased with the juggernaut he helped build. He dismissed it as an attempt to improve the product (who wouldn't?), but what if it's not enough, and the culture refuses to change? It could be said that he helped build the cultural æsthetic at Microsoft so well that even he can't steer it any more.
I'm not saying it'd happen, but I would giggle like a madman for several days if/when Bill Gates admits that Apple was what he was trying to build all along.
Well, that's good! Maybe we can let the data come up with its own theories for a change...
Agreed.
In fact, you know what this reminds me of? The iTunes Music Store. Here was the upstart company (Apple) dealing with a megalith (the recording industry), making demands in certain places ($.99 tracks, piecemeal rather than bundling in albums) and offering concessions in others (DRM) in order to carve itself a niche in an industry where everyone was absolutely sure it didn't belong.
And yes, it's an imperfect analogy because iTMS was just a distribution system (which Apple got a small share of). The iPhone is a physical product. But I still stand by it. (The analogy, not the product.)
Given the arrangement, AT&T is still going to make out like a bandit, even with the subsidy, because Apple is only selling the razor, man. AT&T is selling the blades. (Oh, and Apple is starting up a quaint little shaving cream concession on the side in the form of the App Store.)
The trick for the upstart in any such case is to know what demands to make and what concessions to offer to carve first a niche and grow from there.
Each system has its own flavor of system and setting, and quirks as well. It's possible to like some and hate others, like them all, or be cold on all.
Some may like Rolemaster (and/or SpaceMaster), but others may find its reliance on entire books of tables somewhat daunting. Likewise, Runequest has a very loyal following, although the latest incarnation from Mongoose Publishing just kind of lies there; they focused a little too much on system and not enough on the setting that had been assembled over the course of a decade or two. (Incidentally, I consider HeroQuest to be a worthy spiritual successor to Chaosium's Runequest, moreso than Mongoose's.) D&D has certain strengths over both of them
There's no reason you can't appreciate each system for what it is.