MIDI is a standard for getting electronic instruments (hardware e.g. samplers, synths, sequencers, sound modules, drum machines etcetera) to talk to each other.
MIDI is one of the best things to happen to music in years - a couple of decades ago the manufacturers all sat down and agreed to standards, so that you can buy a Roland synth, drive it with a Yamaha sequencer, and hook up a Korg sampler, and make music. The file sizes are tiny, but powerful.
If you think MIDI is just the rinky dink tunes you sometimes hear on websites/PC's, you are probably confusing their/your poor hardware (soundcard) with MIDI.
Oh yeah, and then put all the research in the public domain and watch the shit fly while MS takes on IBM over FrontPage and so on and so on.
A freely available register of dumb patents and prior art might make a few people take notice. After a while all the various corps should get tired of fighting and defending IP cases simultaneously and might put some pressure on the govt.
That is the first sensible post on this topic all day. If you don't like the situation - change it. Somone needs to sit down and do some research - find out all the 'landgrab' patents that have been filed over a particular period (6 years seems like a good start), then do the work locating all the prior art, then use the info to make a mockery of the whole mess, scaring the politicians into action.
Be like McSpotlight - do the research and force the main offenders into a public forum like a court.
seriously, they are the standard when it comes to msuic production. take a look at any major recording publication e.g. Sound on Sound - its Mac Mac Mac all the way. Faffing around with drivers, motherboards, hard drive, OS crashes etc just gets in the way of making music, hence the Mac.
"We've seen the same type of thing coming from the draconian content regulation of the leftist Australian government.
The Australian government is a coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party. Despite the name, the Liberal party is anything but liberal, being much more like the Republicans - i.e. conservative, family-values, free-trade - bascially your average right-wing conservatives. The National Party is smaller, and a bit more right wing. Neither of them could be described as "leftist" unless:
a) you are significantly more right wing i.e. a Nazi; and
b) you are stupid.
Finally, re: your comments on gun-control and Australia's doctored crime rates - doctored or not, I can't think of a single school in Australia that has a metal detector. Yep, that's right - not one.
Consultants and contractors are directly paid to do a good job. They have a reputation to protect in their line of work. They are professionals that are in it for the long run
because it's their own career. Because they are in it for the long run, they have an interest in doing the right thing, cleaning things up, and maintaining things.
In an ideal world what you say is right, but my experience with a number of the larger consulting firms differs slightly - what the consultants tend to do is rollout the same solution for each problem/project and tweak it a bit to fit the client. This is not necessarily the best way to do things.
Its simply a question of economies of scale - it is much more expensive to create unique solutions for each project than it is to create a few templates and slot them into place in each client's business. The downside (for the client) is that you end up with lots of clients who haven't quite got what they paid for. Or even asked for.
I think you are on the right track in suggesting free software consulting - the trick will be in creating consulting firms that aren't afraid to do the job properly. I can tell you now - there's no way in the world I'd let IBM through the doors again, Linux or no Linux.
Katz' big problem is that he has no *skills* - so he can't really contribute anything useful to/. except for his movie reviews and his lame generalised articles that tend to state the bleeding obvious. The Internet is a revolution? Oh my God - I had no idea!
Poor Jonny - he spent his whole life looking for a captive audience, and when he finally found one, he discovered that they're smarter than him.
The emergency call point is a good one, but step back for a sec: how did we manage before we all had cellphones? The answer is - we managed. A cinema has a landline, so no problems there. So too retaurants. As for highways - I can't see governments forking out money to fund the creation of jamming devices alongside all the highways.
and recently Australia's new non forwarding mail rule.
Its not a rule, and no-one will be prosecuted for forwarding an email, unless the owner of the copyright i.e. the person who sent the original email, launches an action against the person who forwarded the email. Copyright actions are always initiated by the holder of the the copyright, not governments.
Oh dear. You need to grow a sense of humour and fast. Otherwise you may find yourself in court facing an apprehended violence order, simply because you didn't understand that somebody was gently taking the piss.
Re: Aluminum vs Aluminium - check the periodic table of the elements.
Probably the ban is politically motivated - the ruling coalition (Barisan Nasional - BN) in Malaysia is under pressure from the more "fundamentalist" Muslim parties, which are eroding the coalition's support base amongst Malay muslims.
So the BN bans an activity which is seen as "immoral" (kids - they're always up to no good) to shore up their support amongst the Malays. The owners of the arcades are probably Chinese so the BN isn't too worried about losing their support, because the Chinese will never vote for the Muslim parties anyway.
At least, that's the way I see it...
Since the ruling by the court, the IBM consultants who are currently building the b2b site at the place where I work are sitting around in a meeting discussing how they have to go back and put ALT "tags" on all the gif's they used to design the site. Hahahahaha. They are clueless wankers. And their idea of cross-browser compatibility testing is to see if the thing works on IE5 and Netscape 4. And that's it. Morons.
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MIDI is one of the best things to happen to music in years - a couple of decades ago the manufacturers all sat down and agreed to standards, so that you can buy a Roland synth, drive it with a Yamaha sequencer, and hook up a Korg sampler, and make music. The file sizes are tiny, but powerful.
If you think MIDI is just the rinky dink tunes you sometimes hear on websites/PC's, you are probably confusing their/your poor hardware (soundcard) with MIDI.
Oh yeah, and then put all the research in the public domain and watch the shit fly while MS takes on IBM over FrontPage and so on and so on.
A freely available register of dumb patents and prior art might make a few people take notice. After a while all the various corps should get tired of fighting and defending IP cases simultaneously and might put some pressure on the govt.
That is the first sensible post on this topic all day. If you don't like the situation - change it. Somone needs to sit down and do some research - find out all the 'landgrab' patents that have been filed over a particular period (6 years seems like a good start), then do the work locating all the prior art, then use the info to make a mockery of the whole mess, scaring the politicians into action.
Be like McSpotlight - do the research and force the main offenders into a public forum like a court.
seriously, they are the standard when it comes to msuic production. take a look at any major recording publication e.g. Sound on Sound - its Mac Mac Mac all the way. Faffing around with drivers, motherboards, hard drive, OS crashes etc just gets in the way of making music, hence the Mac.
The Australian government is a coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party. Despite the name, the Liberal party is anything but liberal, being much more like the Republicans - i.e. conservative, family-values, free-trade - bascially your average right-wing conservatives. The National Party is smaller, and a bit more right wing. Neither of them could be described as "leftist" unless:
a) you are significantly more right wing i.e. a Nazi; and
b) you are stupid.
Finally, re: your comments on gun-control and Australia's doctored crime rates - doctored or not, I can't think of a single school in Australia that has a metal detector. Yep, that's right - not one.
In an ideal world what you say is right, but my experience with a number of the larger consulting firms differs slightly - what the consultants tend to do is rollout the same solution for each problem/project and tweak it a bit to fit the client. This is not necessarily the best way to do things.
Its simply a question of economies of scale - it is much more expensive to create unique solutions for each project than it is to create a few templates and slot them into place in each client's business. The downside (for the client) is that you end up with lots of clients who haven't quite got what they paid for. Or even asked for.
I think you are on the right track in suggesting free software consulting - the trick will be in creating consulting firms that aren't afraid to do the job properly. I can tell you now - there's no way in the world I'd let IBM through the doors again, Linux or no Linux.
Poor Jonny - he spent his whole life looking for a captive audience, and when he finally found one, he discovered that they're smarter than him.
The emergency call point is a good one, but step back for a sec: how did we manage before we all had cellphones? The answer is - we managed. A cinema has a landline, so no problems there. So too retaurants. As for highways - I can't see governments forking out money to fund the creation of jamming devices alongside all the highways.
Its not a rule, and no-one will be prosecuted for forwarding an email, unless the owner of the copyright i.e. the person who sent the original email, launches an action against the person who forwarded the email. Copyright actions are always initiated by the holder of the the copyright, not governments.
Ignore him and he'll go away.
Oh dear. You need to grow a sense of humour and fast. Otherwise you may find yourself in court facing an apprehended violence order, simply because you didn't understand that somebody was gently taking the piss. Re: Aluminum vs Aluminium - check the periodic table of the elements.
Probably the ban is politically motivated - the ruling coalition (Barisan Nasional - BN) in Malaysia is under pressure from the more "fundamentalist" Muslim parties, which are eroding the coalition's support base amongst Malay muslims.
So the BN bans an activity which is seen as "immoral" (kids - they're always up to no good) to shore up their support amongst the Malays. The owners of the arcades are probably Chinese so the BN isn't too worried about losing their support, because the Chinese will never vote for the Muslim parties anyway. At least, that's the way I see it...
Since the ruling by the court, the IBM consultants who are currently building the b2b site at the place where I work are sitting around in a meeting discussing how they have to go back and put ALT "tags" on all the gif's they used to design the site. Hahahahaha. They are clueless wankers. And their idea of cross-browser compatibility testing is to see if the thing works on IE5 and Netscape 4. And that's it. Morons.