Good points - what I guess I meant by musicians were the performers. But PressPlay and MusicNet isn't ripping off the people who compose but don't perform. The composers/authors get paid royalties by the performers - most commonly through the The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and this, as far as I know, is not affected by online music piracy. I believe they get their royalties when a piece is performed (this includes when the Tonight Show Band plays a copyrighted song or anybody on TV sings "Happy Birthday" - when was the last time you heard people on TV sing that song?) rather than when it is sold, but that may not hold true in all cases.
But, for what it's worth, here's what the breakdown is for musicians: Most are either playing gigs 3-5 nights per week or writing things like jingles or incidental music on TV or in movies. Or both. The remaining few are the "Rock Stars" who make very little from record sales, but a good living from sold-out arenas 150+ times per year. So if music was given a GPL-style license and was freely distributable, the only people hurting would be the record companies. Granted, without them bands would have to pay for recordings up front and music marketing would be much different, but music would still be around.
Go to a local bar/club and pay $5 to hear a local band play for a few hours (hint - if you're afraid to waste money on a band that sucks, go for some jazz; they're generally at least better musicians). And drink beers and tip the staff. These are the people who need our patronage.
If it gets any worse, music will not be a viable profession.
Being a musician means playing to a live audience. No professional musician tries to make a living off their recordings - professional musicians go out and play 3-5+ times per week. Rock Stars, on the other hand, play in smoke-filled bars until they get signed and then want to sit back and watch the money pour in. And that never works. But they are not professional musicians, they are professional Rock Stars.
Sorry I'm being a Music Nazi - I just think too many people confuse "Professional Musicians" with "Recording Artists."
This is no surprise - labels have always screwed the artist on recordings. It's partially justified because they have a big marketing force (i.e., could get you into a lot of playlists of stations owned by ClearChannel) but the excuse they used for ripping off artists on CD's is the cost of creating and shipping those CD's. Now, internet distribution is so much cheaper (not free, but very very cheap) and they're making less money.
So where do artists make their money? Gigs. That's the way it should be, in my opinion. If I buy an album, the band gets a few cents. If I go to the show, they get a few dollars. If they do a show and 5,000 people show up, the band gets at least $5,000 for the day. 50 shows in a year and each musician in a five-piece band get a $50,000 salary. And these are low estimates, too. I do about 50 gigs a year and I still have a day job.
I know a lot of people who are professional musicians, but not famous. If you're in a wedding band, you can pull in $200 per member per gig, and if you're good enough, you can probably get 2-3 gigs per week (or more). $600/week + free drinks is not bad for 4 hours/day, 3 days/week.
But then most of the famous musicians aren't as good as professional musicians. They generally start out playing in small bars, then move up to larger bars, then usually they stop there, but very rarely they move up to being "famous." They still need to work for their money though; meaning the labels don't pay them enough for CD sales so they have to go out and play live. CD sales (and net music sales) should be viewed as a marketing tool used by artist to get fans to come to their shows. If I could give 4,000 copies of my album away and know that 1/10 of them would go see my gigs, I'd do it!
If a blocklist has harsh policies, only a few servers will use it. If it has too lax policies it won't be effective. Somewhere in between are the useful ones.
In theory, in a world where all ISP's are run by knowledgable and competent people, only the best few blacklist operators will survive. However, the best product doesn't always have the highest sales (another consideration - do ISP's have to subscribe to the blacklists as a service? Small ISP's are more likely to go with a cheaper list). This "Natural Selection" approach will only leave us with the blacklists with the best marketing force. Think about it - is AOL the best ISP?
Also, there is more that a blacklist can do wrong than not follow its own policy. It can create policies that are illegal for one reason or another.
We even tried various accents to throw the player off, everything from Brooklyn to southern to bad impersonations of various Monty Python and Simpson's characters. It is very impressive when you shout the word "Folder" talking like Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and it still works.
I would have tested it only using the Comic Book Store guy's voice. It seems like the type of thing he would use. "Worst playlist, ever!"
The site that the previous story referenced has quite a bit of funny correspondence - if you look at his complaints section, you can see all the negative feedback the guy got, and then forwarded to Neil as some sort of revenge for posting the story in the first place. My favorite so far is an e-card somebody sent Bernard, seen here.
Here is Google's cache of the page - the images may not load at first, but I got them after persistent refreshing. Note that Google says it's www.johnromero.com, but I think the two sites are one and the same since they both bring up the same "bandwidth limit exceeded" message.
the AOL software could be configured to override Windows and launch a version of Red Hat's Linux operating system
This makes me think one of two things:
AOL can already do this, since Red Hat Linux is open source. They can make a CD that, if the user so desires, makes an "AOL" partition on the hard drive that is just a Linux installation with AOL's software preinstalled. Linux distros don't need to be bought out in order to incorporate their software into your own. But.... and this takes me to my second point...
If AOL were to make a CD that installs Linux and an AOL client, would they need to release the AOL client's source code (just this version, they wouldn't have to open up the Windows client)? I am leaning towards no; the installation procedure would have to be slightly modified to include copying an "AOL Setup" binary to the skeleton file (of course AOL would want every new user to have the setup binary show up on their desktops by default), but that's about it. The inclusion of AOL's binary wouldn't need to be GPL'ed because it isn't a modification of a GPL-released product. Their installation CD would need to include the Linux sources, since the OS would still need to be GPL'ed. And it would be available for free - do you know anyone who has paid for AOL software?
I'm not the most knowledgable person as far as the GPL, but it seems that they could release a closed-source AOL client with any Linux distro they wanted, without paying a cent to any Linux distro. It's not like the actual delivery would cost them any more than it's costing them now - a CD with a single client installation is the same physical size as one that also contains an operating system installation.
I used to have cable tv and roadrunner, until TW raised the price for roadrunner by $5/month (to $45 now). Once I got my first $87 TW bill, I realized it's time to stop encouraging them. Shop around, and don't be afraid to stray from the same provider for all services:
For TV, why not get a satellite dish? Dish Network's "I like 9" plan works out to $25.58/month if you figure in the cost of the receiver/dish, which is cheaper, has more channels, and better picture than TW's standard $36/month service (at least that's what they were charging me, YMMV). Or spend a little more and get their 501 receiver with no extra PVR monthly charge.
For internet connectivity, I still use RR because it's the best option (which is how competition should work) but there's still DSL, satellite and good-old dialup. For argument's sake, let's say I switched over to a $59/month DSL service just to get rid of anything TW related.
For phone, if you live alone you're probably better off cutting the land line and getting a beefed-up wireless plan - most of the/. crowd probably has a cell phone already. Imagine how many minutes you'd have if you added your monthly land line bill to your wireless plan (hint: Sprint's most expensive non-web-enabled wireless plan is $75, probably less than the two bills combined, and probably more minutes than you need).
If you look at the price difference between going all-TW (we'll say $230 for argument's sake) and what you can piece together with competitors, it doesn't seem like TW will be able to justify the high prices. Using the figures I listed above (and you'd be fairly pimped-out, mind you) it's only $160/month, which leaves you with an extra $70 per month for recreational drugs or beer or cigarettes or whatever your preferred means of slowly (and enjoyably) killing yourself.
From the description, it sounds like the screen will behave like those big lights in the dentist's office. I hope it's a touch-screen. Wait, what am I saying, I'm not getting anything with OS X until they make it work right and I can afford to have two computers.
I'd say go for the CIS degree, and hack the hell out of a Linux box in your free time (I did this, and as a result I can program and sysadmin while drunk). Seriously, though, get the degree so you have a piece of paper, but don't depend on the skills taught in college. Many of the professors are stuck on old technology -- for example, I took a few C++ courses in 97-98 and only learned DOS programming. I had to learn about event handling on my own, thanks in part to Linux apps' open-sourcedness. I've seen some pretty shaky people graduate with CIS degrees, and while they may get a job, they won't keep them because they relied on the courses to teach them everything (in a school where Windows is the only operating system in existence).
If professors want their code to be open source, why not build off a GPL'ed project? Even something as simple as the GNU cp command could be used in most apps, I would think, and if you use GPL'ed code in your project, the project source must be available.
AOL isn't one company... it's America Online-Netscape-Nullsoft-Mirabilis-Compuserve-Time -Warner-etc. Feel free to reply with the rest of the companies involved, I don't care enough to look them up.
Enroll in a few courses at your local community college with a cs/cis program.
Weasle your way in to a technician position (beware, you may have to start as a lab aide!)
If you're lucky, you can move up from a "student" position to a "real" position, and get tuition reimbursement.
Get your BS while working there, and at the end of the process you've got several years experience, a degree, and minimal college expenses.
I tried this technique, but couldn't get a "real" position because faculty didn't want "some kid" running their networks. Being 33 would help you out in this case.
...dad's accounts do not have to be closed before the screen is set to the real business of Grand Turismo
First, dad should learn how to save his "accounts" before he lets his kids log in to play games. Second, it's Gran, not Grand. Third, if dad wants his kid to have the best XPerience, he should really close all open applications before starting such a system-intensive application. Sure the OS (theoretically) can handle this kind of load, but is it good computing practice to do that? The multiple logins thing for me would be more like the virtual desktops in KDE or Gnome - just because you can't see the app running doesn't mean it isn't eating up resources. And in Windows, it's probably not well-protected memory space.
If Quake3 wasn't so commonly used as a benchmark, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But what they're doing is essentially skewing a benchmark.
If I was planning to buy a new video card, I would look at the results of a Q3 benchmark, and if ATI's card scored highest, I might think that it would perform better in other games as well. I would never buy a product based on one benchmark, but ATI probably isn't targeting the übergeeks, just regular PC owners with some extra cash. And they may not take the time to do all the research. Q3 can no longer be a benchmark if this is true, or at least not the only benchmark, so maybe we'll have to test with Black and White until ATI's next driver update.
But what I find most interesting is that the drivers apparently aren't aimed at the calculations Q3 will throw at it; they are more concerned with which app the instructions came from. Maybe it gives anything named Quake3 (or whatever its internal name is) a higher priority. Since an identical game with a different name won't run as fast, this is almost certainly the case (IANAP, so this may be completely wrong).
I can't swap the OS and just play games using the original PSOS. Besides, TVs don't have the nice resolution that a normal monitor has. Running X at 640x480 on a 50 inch TV does nothing for me.
Yes, perhaps, but what if you network it and get yourself a network mp3 player controlled by a PS2 remote? (And you can pipe DVD video through DeCSS and stream it across your home network, I bet...) I know I wouldn't mind having an extra Linux box. And it's a good way to learn to code on a new platform.
I was about to post the same link (I know this is redundant...). I checked to make sure it wasn't a slight advance, since the title (chip > transistor, right?) suggested that there was more progress. There wasn't, the only difference is the last article referenced a press release by Bell Labs and this one references a NYT article.
"It shows what can be the ultimate limit for transistors," Dr. Schön said.
To me, that quote reminds me of the infamous "640K should be enough for anybody" quote by Gates way back when. And the quote back in the 1800's along the lines of "Everything has already been invented" (sorry I can't link the actual quotes, I'm being lazy)... Never, never say that you've found the Holy Grail, at least in terms of computers. Something faster will come out in the future.
[joe@joe/home/joe] ln -s/dev/null; mv./null/bin/laden; (Now you can pipe/redirect all your crap to/bin/laden. It's not real, just a symbolic link)
Slashdot Mirror
Go to a local bar/club and pay $5 to hear a local band play for a few hours (hint - if you're afraid to waste money on a band that sucks, go for some jazz; they're generally at least better musicians). And drink beers and tip the staff. These are the people who need our patronage.
Being a musician means playing to a live audience. No professional musician tries to make a living off their recordings - professional musicians go out and play 3-5+ times per week. Rock Stars, on the other hand, play in smoke-filled bars until they get signed and then want to sit back and watch the money pour in. And that never works. But they are not professional musicians, they are professional Rock Stars.
Sorry I'm being a Music Nazi - I just think too many people confuse "Professional Musicians" with "Recording Artists."
This is no surprise - labels have always screwed the artist on recordings. It's partially justified because they have a big marketing force (i.e., could get you into a lot of playlists of stations owned by ClearChannel) but the excuse they used for ripping off artists on CD's is the cost of creating and shipping those CD's. Now, internet distribution is so much cheaper (not free, but very very cheap) and they're making less money.
So where do artists make their money? Gigs. That's the way it should be, in my opinion. If I buy an album, the band gets a few cents. If I go to the show, they get a few dollars. If they do a show and 5,000 people show up, the band gets at least $5,000 for the day. 50 shows in a year and each musician in a five-piece band get a $50,000 salary. And these are low estimates, too. I do about 50 gigs a year and I still have a day job.
I know a lot of people who are professional musicians, but not famous. If you're in a wedding band, you can pull in $200 per member per gig, and if you're good enough, you can probably get 2-3 gigs per week (or more). $600/week + free drinks is not bad for 4 hours/day, 3 days/week.
But then most of the famous musicians aren't as good as professional musicians. They generally start out playing in small bars, then move up to larger bars, then usually they stop there, but very rarely they move up to being "famous." They still need to work for their money though; meaning the labels don't pay them enough for CD sales so they have to go out and play live. CD sales (and net music sales) should be viewed as a marketing tool used by artist to get fans to come to their shows. If I could give 4,000 copies of my album away and know that 1/10 of them would go see my gigs, I'd do it!
In theory, in a world where all ISP's are run by knowledgable and competent people, only the best few blacklist operators will survive. However, the best product doesn't always have the highest sales (another consideration - do ISP's have to subscribe to the blacklists as a service? Small ISP's are more likely to go with a cheaper list). This "Natural Selection" approach will only leave us with the blacklists with the best marketing force. Think about it - is AOL the best ISP?
Also, there is more that a blacklist can do wrong than not follow its own policy. It can create policies that are illegal for one reason or another.
I would have tested it only using the Comic Book Store guy's voice. It seems like the type of thing he would use. "Worst playlist, ever!"
I'm not surprised that they chose the shortest month for this.
The brainstorming session on the site includes an interesting one - 14: "Mr. Bill". Could this be a precursor to xBill?
The site that the previous story referenced has quite a bit of funny correspondence - if you look at his complaints section, you can see all the negative feedback the guy got, and then forwarded to Neil as some sort of revenge for posting the story in the first place. My favorite so far is an e-card somebody sent Bernard, seen here.
Here is Google's cache of the page - the images may not load at first, but I got them after persistent refreshing. Note that Google says it's www.johnromero.com, but I think the two sites are one and the same since they both bring up the same "bandwidth limit exceeded" message.
This makes me think one of two things:
I'm not the most knowledgable person as far as the GPL, but it seems that they could release a closed-source AOL client with any Linux distro they wanted, without paying a cent to any Linux distro. It's not like the actual delivery would cost them any more than it's costing them now - a CD with a single client installation is the same physical size as one that also contains an operating system installation.
Yeah, if you OWN it. If you copied it, you're not the owner.
Don't buy a Mac I really don't give a crap but I won't give up mine.
If you really don't give a crap, why did you reply to my post?
- For TV, why not get a satellite dish? Dish Network's "I like 9" plan works out to $25.58/month if you figure in the cost of the receiver/dish, which is cheaper, has more channels, and better picture than TW's standard $36/month service (at least that's what they were charging me, YMMV). Or spend a little more and get their 501 receiver with no extra PVR monthly charge.
- For internet connectivity, I still use RR because it's the best option (which is how competition should work) but there's still DSL, satellite and good-old dialup. For argument's sake, let's say I switched over to a $59/month DSL service just to get rid of anything TW related.
- For phone, if you live alone you're probably better off cutting the land line and getting a beefed-up wireless plan - most of the
/. crowd probably has a cell phone already. Imagine how many minutes you'd have if you added your monthly land line bill to your wireless plan (hint: Sprint's most expensive non-web-enabled wireless plan is $75, probably less than the two bills combined, and probably more minutes than you need).
If you look at the price difference between going all-TW (we'll say $230 for argument's sake) and what you can piece together with competitors, it doesn't seem like TW will be able to justify the high prices. Using the figures I listed above (and you'd be fairly pimped-out, mind you) it's only $160/month, which leaves you with an extra $70 per month for recreational drugs or beer or cigarettes or whatever your preferred means of slowly (and enjoyably) killing yourself.I think this might be what he meant.
From the description, it sounds like the screen will behave like those big lights in the dentist's office. I hope it's a touch-screen. Wait, what am I saying, I'm not getting anything with OS X until they make it work right and I can afford to have two computers.
I'd say go for the CIS degree, and hack the hell out of a Linux box in your free time (I did this, and as a result I can program and sysadmin while drunk). Seriously, though, get the degree so you have a piece of paper, but don't depend on the skills taught in college. Many of the professors are stuck on old technology -- for example, I took a few C++ courses in 97-98 and only learned DOS programming. I had to learn about event handling on my own, thanks in part to Linux apps' open-sourcedness. I've seen some pretty shaky people graduate with CIS degrees, and while they may get a job, they won't keep them because they relied on the courses to teach them everything (in a school where Windows is the only operating system in existence).
If professors want their code to be open source, why not build off a GPL'ed project? Even something as simple as the GNU cp command could be used in most apps, I would think, and if you use GPL'ed code in your project, the project source must be available.
AOL isn't one company... it's America Online-Netscape-Nullsoft-Mirabilis-Compuserve-Time -Warner-etc. Feel free to reply with the rest of the companies involved, I don't care enough to look them up.
Apple was stupid enough to provide the full goods for free at the same time they are trying to charge for them
As opposed to Red Hat, which offers free downloads of their ISO's but also sells the boxes in stores?
Here's an aerial photo of 122nd and Rockaway: click!. The intersection, I believe is just east of the large building.
Here's my advice:
Enroll in a few courses at your local community college with a cs/cis program.
Weasle your way in to a technician position (beware, you may have to start as a lab aide!)
If you're lucky, you can move up from a "student" position to a "real" position, and get tuition reimbursement.
Get your BS while working there, and at the end of the process you've got several years experience, a degree, and minimal college expenses.
I tried this technique, but couldn't get a "real" position because faculty didn't want "some kid" running their networks. Being 33 would help you out in this case.
First, dad should learn how to save his "accounts" before he lets his kids log in to play games. Second, it's Gran, not Grand. Third, if dad wants his kid to have the best XPerience, he should really close all open applications before starting such a system-intensive application. Sure the OS (theoretically) can handle this kind of load, but is it good computing practice to do that? The multiple logins thing for me would be more like the virtual desktops in KDE or Gnome - just because you can't see the app running doesn't mean it isn't eating up resources. And in Windows, it's probably not well-protected memory space.
If I was planning to buy a new video card, I would look at the results of a Q3 benchmark, and if ATI's card scored highest, I might think that it would perform better in other games as well. I would never buy a product based on one benchmark, but ATI probably isn't targeting the übergeeks, just regular PC owners with some extra cash. And they may not take the time to do all the research. Q3 can no longer be a benchmark if this is true, or at least not the only benchmark, so maybe we'll have to test with Black and White until ATI's next driver update.
But what I find most interesting is that the drivers apparently aren't aimed at the calculations Q3 will throw at it; they are more concerned with which app the instructions came from. Maybe it gives anything named Quake3 (or whatever its internal name is) a higher priority. Since an identical game with a different name won't run as fast, this is almost certainly the case (IANAP, so this may be completely wrong).
Yes, perhaps, but what if you network it and get yourself a network mp3 player controlled by a PS2 remote? (And you can pipe DVD video through DeCSS and stream it across your home network, I bet...) I know I wouldn't mind having an extra Linux box. And it's a good way to learn to code on a new platform.
I was about to post the same link (I know this is redundant...). I checked to make sure it wasn't a slight advance, since the title (chip > transistor, right?) suggested that there was more progress. There wasn't, the only difference is the last article referenced a press release by Bell Labs and this one references a NYT article.
"It shows what can be the ultimate limit for transistors," Dr. Schön said.
To me, that quote reminds me of the infamous "640K should be enough for anybody" quote by Gates way back when. And the quote back in the 1800's along the lines of "Everything has already been invented" (sorry I can't link the actual quotes, I'm being lazy)... Never, never say that you've found the Holy Grail, at least in terms of computers. Something faster will come out in the future.
[joe@joe
(Now you can pipe/redirect all your crap to