Republicans and Democrats may differ in their marketing approaches, but they all serve the same ma$ter$. Unless you are wealthy enough to hire a legislator, you are a peasant. The best you can do is get a good job or start a good business, do what you think is right, and try your best to avoid poaching in the royal forest. Enjoy little bits of larceny like speeding on the freeway and skipping the commercials with the curtains closed, but forget about your government representatives representing your interests because they don't.
When the party that constantly whines about "getting the government off our backs" has even a small congressional majority, I DO BLAME THEM for this crap. Their actual doctrine is to give the business world whatever it wants, regardless of what the citizens (or rather, the "consumers") might want. I blame the Republicans for this just as much as I blame the Democrats for being too incredibly lame to kick a homicidal moron out of the White House. Our political leaders are a disgrace, and so are the people who elected them.
Any piece of recorded material has potential value for reissue, licensing, or as raw material for some new medium. The entertainment industry has a lock on nearly everything going back almost as far as the first movies. I know this because I collect old-time radio shows, and copyright is a constant issue. I'm sure their goal is to get every single one of their "properties" into this system, lest a shiny penny slip out of their hands.
How expensive are movies and recorded music? I'm not talking about $8 movie tickets or $20 CDs, I'm talking about Total Cost of Ownership. Suppose some random person had to die every time a new movie was made, or every time a CD was released. Would we value our entertainment enough to tolerate that? What if the RIAA and/or MPAA had to electronically approve every file you saved on your hard drive, and could scan anybody's files at any time?
Helping movie studios and record companies continue to exist in spite of technology that makes it trivial to violate their copyrights does not come free. At some point the cost of these forms of entertainment is too much. How many FBI agents will we need to enforce the technology restrictions the entertainment industry wants to impose? How many more lawyers will we have to support? How much personal freedom will we give up so Hollywood can exist?
At some point you have to cut your losses. I wouldn't go to movies or buy CDs if they were $50 a pop, and I would personally rather live without them entirely than give the people who run studios and record companies all the powers they want, or pay the monetary cost of keeping the system going.
When I read this article (on Fark, yesterday), I immediately went to Wilco's site and ordered a copy of their CD "A Ghost is Born," and if they swing through Seattle I will take in their show. Band promotion through free downloads instead of record contracts is the future of music, and is the key to getting the record industry off our backs before they buy enough legislation to keep us from accessing our hard drives without their permission.
Fame and fortune have been the carrot on the stick which the record industry has been able to dangle in front of musicians for the past century. When a few bands demonstrate that it's possible to succeed without signing over their lives to a big label, others will follow. Reaching #8 on Billboard is one of the first cracks in this wall. Help it spread!
Re:Atlantis Found!! (number 172 in an ongoing seri
on
Atlantis Found. Again.
·
· Score: 1
1. New Atlantis theories almost always ignore Plato's statement that Atlantis was supposed to have been beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in other words out in the Atlantic somewhere, not in the Mediterranean. People like to propose places near the Greecian mainland -- Thera, Santorini, Crete... but if Atlantis existed, none of these places are in the right area.
2. Many people have the notion that Plato personally visited Atlantis and later wrote about it. Actually the story was in his family for many years before he wrote it down. It is believed that an uncle related the story to him. The original information came from a more distant relative, an Athenian named Solon, who heard the story during his own visit to Egypt. The only connection between the Atlantis story and Greece is Plato's family.
The author left out the most important thing
on
The Music Man
·
· Score: 1
Interesting, but I'm not sure how limiting corporate income would discourage anyone from staking out IP claims, waiting for others to do the actual inventing, then swooping in to seize the profits.
Believe it or not, during the last big hurricane I actually bought a big box of strawberry pop tarts for the first time in years (but not at WalMart). I remember munching on them while watching the hurricane reports late at night.
The patent system has created a magical bridge between the world of actual achievement and the made-up world of Intellectual "Property." It's sort of like letting people go into Ultima Online and become rich and powerful, and then somehow transfer their titles and authority into the real world. The patent system clearly wasn't meant to be a platform for clever attorneys to systematically lay claim to future innovation. These people are simply taking advantage of defects in the system, making it work for them in ways it was never meant to, at the expense of everybody else. That used to be a pretty good definition of the term "con artist."
The mere fact that companies can openly perpetrate this sort of flim-flam says something about how far into la-la-land our legal system and our culture have gone. There was a time when such behavior happened behind closed doors and involved discreet payoffs to officials. Now IP pirates proudly wave their sabers and flash their gold teeth. There was a time when the media and the public would have been outraged by such brazen manipulation of the system. Now the primary response is more along the lines of, "I wish I'd thought of that."
I don't really think this sort of thing will stifle innovation -- people with great ideas will still want to see them become reality. What it will do is ensure that more of the beans end up in fewer people's piles, which is the way the economy has been going anyway for some time. In the future, if you have a clever idea you will have to look around for the right Baron to pay your tithe to, so you don't get caught poaching in the royal forest.
For an audio-only solution, my choice is the 3Com Audrey, a cute little retro-futuristic gadget from the short-lived "Internet appliance" bust a few years ago. It was originally meant for lightweight users to read email and news at the breakfast table and look up recipes on the web, but the $500 price tag didn't work out. But now the EBay price (about $85) makes it a nice cheap UI for selecting music to play in different rooms of the house. The Audrey hacking community has made lots of alternative software freely available for playing mp3s, X10 control, etc.
The Audrey has a 7" touch screen, wireless keyboard, microphone, audio jack, 2 USB ports, and a 56K modem or USB LAN dongle. No hard drive, no fan, totally silent. It runs QNX, an embedded Unix.
Setup is very easy, especially if you already have network wiring. All I had to do was plug it into a network jack and a stereo, and add a couple lines to the boot file to connect to my Windows share. My ambition is now to figure out how to get the original telephony software to work, so the 5 Audreys I ended up buying can double as speakerphones and a home intercom system. I highly recommend this nifty toy!
Re:Drop out of the system
on
Cube Farm
·
· Score: 1
DogDude, I'm interested in what you are saying. I even checked out PhideauPets. So do you make a living running that business now, or do you do websites and that's just one of them, or what?
My reaction to reading several of the long posts above was, if these guys are so unhappy where they are why don't they do something else? Getting tired of company politics was what drove me into contracting more than 15 years ago and I've never looked back. Higher pay, even after you buy your own insurance and give yourself unpaid vacation. No worries about clueless managers. This time next year they'll still be here and I won't. No fear of layoffs -- they're expected and predictable. I welcome the small break at the end of each project. My favorite t-shirt: "Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done."
Back in my day, companies didn't even hand out toilet paper. You were lucky if they let you go to the bathroom at all. That's why we didn't drink coffee. Not that we could afford it anyway. Free pop? Hah! You want free pop, you go see that Julia Roberts. Now there's a fine looking woman. Hey, you kids get off my lawn! Where's my TV Guide?
This is pretty much my reaction. Look at the screenshot mentioned, and ask yourself how that mesh of lines will help you find the best BBQ sauce recipe or download porn faster. Maybe I'm not seeing the forest for the trees. Did I say porn? I meant Elizabethan poetry.
My instant reaction to this without even reading the article was to jump straight to Read More with the intention of hitting the Reply button to mention GoDaddy. I received an email from them yesterday explaining the ICANN change and the locking feature (which costs nothing extra), and I immediately locked my domains.
By the way, I'm only defending them as a registrar, not as a hosting service. Somebody below claims their hosting sux. I have no idea. But you don't have to use their hosting to use them as a registrar.
Kozisek will present her work on Monday, 8 Nov., at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Denver.
Any Denver/.ers attend that meeting by any chance? I would like to know more about her presentation. For example, in what specific ways are modern tropical honeybees and their food plants known to be identical to their ancient counterparts?
Ideas that challenge what is generally accepted are always intriguing, but deserve close scrutiny. I would be interested to know how much she studied the food plants as opposed to just the bees. There could be localized regions that stayed much warmer than average. Animals are sometimes able to switch food supplies in times of need. A sustainable bee population wouldn't need nearly as much food and survival space as a sustainable population of dinosaurs.
Slashdot Mirror
Republicans and Democrats may differ in their marketing approaches, but they all serve the same ma$ter$. Unless you are wealthy enough to hire a legislator, you are a peasant. The best you can do is get a good job or start a good business, do what you think is right, and try your best to avoid poaching in the royal forest. Enjoy little bits of larceny like speeding on the freeway and skipping the commercials with the curtains closed, but forget about your government representatives representing your interests because they don't.
When the party that constantly whines about "getting the government off our backs" has even a small congressional majority, I DO BLAME THEM for this crap. Their actual doctrine is to give the business world whatever it wants, regardless of what the citizens (or rather, the "consumers") might want. I blame the Republicans for this just as much as I blame the Democrats for being too incredibly lame to kick a homicidal moron out of the White House. Our political leaders are a disgrace, and so are the people who elected them.
Burt Rutan builds 12-seat scramjet for $1 million, breaks Mach 15 on first attempt.
Any piece of recorded material has potential value for reissue, licensing, or as raw material for some new medium. The entertainment industry has a lock on nearly everything going back almost as far as the first movies. I know this because I collect old-time radio shows, and copyright is a constant issue. I'm sure their goal is to get every single one of their "properties" into this system, lest a shiny penny slip out of their hands.
How expensive are movies and recorded music? I'm not talking about $8 movie tickets or $20 CDs, I'm talking about Total Cost of Ownership. Suppose some random person had to die every time a new movie was made, or every time a CD was released. Would we value our entertainment enough to tolerate that? What if the RIAA and/or MPAA had to electronically approve every file you saved on your hard drive, and could scan anybody's files at any time?
Helping movie studios and record companies continue to exist in spite of technology that makes it trivial to violate their copyrights does not come free. At some point the cost of these forms of entertainment is too much. How many FBI agents will we need to enforce the technology restrictions the entertainment industry wants to impose? How many more lawyers will we have to support? How much personal freedom will we give up so Hollywood can exist?
At some point you have to cut your losses. I wouldn't go to movies or buy CDs if they were $50 a pop, and I would personally rather live without them entirely than give the people who run studios and record companies all the powers they want, or pay the monetary cost of keeping the system going.
When I read this article (on Fark, yesterday), I immediately went to Wilco's site and ordered a copy of their CD "A Ghost is Born," and if they swing through Seattle I will take in their show. Band promotion through free downloads instead of record contracts is the future of music, and is the key to getting the record industry off our backs before they buy enough legislation to keep us from accessing our hard drives without their permission.
Fame and fortune have been the carrot on the stick which the record industry has been able to dangle in front of musicians for the past century. When a few bands demonstrate that it's possible to succeed without signing over their lives to a big label, others will follow. Reaching #8 on Billboard is one of the first cracks in this wall. Help it spread!
You're not alone by a long shot.
Two things worth mentioning:
1. New Atlantis theories almost always ignore Plato's statement that Atlantis was supposed to have been beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in other words out in the Atlantic somewhere, not in the Mediterranean. People like to propose places near the Greecian mainland -- Thera, Santorini, Crete... but if Atlantis existed, none of these places are in the right area.
2. Many people have the notion that Plato personally visited Atlantis and later wrote about it. Actually the story was in his family for many years before he wrote it down. It is believed that an uncle related the story to him. The original information came from a more distant relative, an Athenian named Solon, who heard the story during his own visit to Egypt. The only connection between the Atlantis story and Greece is Plato's family.
What was the brand name of that damn sofa??
1. Find the King of the Pirates.
2. Sue him for all 900,000 songs.
3. PROFIT!!!
Interesting, but I'm not sure how limiting corporate income would discourage anyone from staking out IP claims, waiting for others to do the actual inventing, then swooping in to seize the profits.
Believe it or not, during the last big hurricane I actually bought a big box of strawberry pop tarts for the first time in years (but not at WalMart). I remember munching on them while watching the hurricane reports late at night.
The patent system has created a magical bridge between the world of actual achievement and the made-up world of Intellectual "Property." It's sort of like letting people go into Ultima Online and become rich and powerful, and then somehow transfer their titles and authority into the real world. The patent system clearly wasn't meant to be a platform for clever attorneys to systematically lay claim to future innovation. These people are simply taking advantage of defects in the system, making it work for them in ways it was never meant to, at the expense of everybody else. That used to be a pretty good definition of the term "con artist."
The mere fact that companies can openly perpetrate this sort of flim-flam says something about how far into la-la-land our legal system and our culture have gone. There was a time when such behavior happened behind closed doors and involved discreet payoffs to officials. Now IP pirates proudly wave their sabers and flash their gold teeth. There was a time when the media and the public would have been outraged by such brazen manipulation of the system. Now the primary response is more along the lines of, "I wish I'd thought of that."
I don't really think this sort of thing will stifle innovation -- people with great ideas will still want to see them become reality. What it will do is ensure that more of the beans end up in fewer people's piles, which is the way the economy has been going anyway for some time. In the future, if you have a clever idea you will have to look around for the right Baron to pay your tithe to, so you don't get caught poaching in the royal forest.
I bought a season pass to that museum two years from now and went there twice next month.
SCOwned!!!
For an audio-only solution, my choice is the 3Com Audrey, a cute little retro-futuristic gadget from the short-lived "Internet appliance" bust a few years ago. It was originally meant for lightweight users to read email and news at the breakfast table and look up recipes on the web, but the $500 price tag didn't work out. But now the EBay price (about $85) makes it a nice cheap UI for selecting music to play in different rooms of the house. The Audrey hacking community has made lots of alternative software freely available for playing mp3s, X10 control, etc.
The Audrey has a 7" touch screen, wireless keyboard, microphone, audio jack, 2 USB ports, and a 56K modem or USB LAN dongle. No hard drive, no fan, totally silent. It runs QNX, an embedded Unix.
Setup is very easy, especially if you already have network wiring. All I had to do was plug it into a network jack and a stereo, and add a couple lines to the boot file to connect to my Windows share. My ambition is now to figure out how to get the original telephony software to work, so the 5 Audreys I ended up buying can double as speakerphones and a home intercom system. I highly recommend this nifty toy!
DogDude, I'm interested in what you are saying. I even checked out PhideauPets. So do you make a living running that business now, or do you do websites and that's just one of them, or what?
My reaction to reading several of the long posts above was, if these guys are so unhappy where they are why don't they do something else? Getting tired of company politics was what drove me into contracting more than 15 years ago and I've never looked back. Higher pay, even after you buy your own insurance and give yourself unpaid vacation. No worries about clueless managers. This time next year they'll still be here and I won't. No fear of layoffs -- they're expected and predictable. I welcome the small break at the end of each project. My favorite t-shirt: "Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done."
State Farm
(Duh)
Back in my day, companies didn't even hand out toilet paper. You were lucky if they let you go to the bathroom at all. That's why we didn't drink coffee. Not that we could afford it anyway. Free pop? Hah! You want free pop, you go see that Julia Roberts. Now there's a fine looking woman. Hey, you kids get off my lawn! Where's my TV Guide?
This is pretty much my reaction. Look at the screenshot mentioned, and ask yourself how that mesh of lines will help you find the best BBQ sauce recipe or download porn faster. Maybe I'm not seeing the forest for the trees. Did I say porn? I meant Elizabethan poetry.
My instant reaction to this without even reading the article was to jump straight to Read More with the intention of hitting the Reply button to mention GoDaddy. I received an email from them yesterday explaining the ICANN change and the locking feature (which costs nothing extra), and I immediately locked my domains.
By the way, I'm only defending them as a registrar, not as a hosting service. Somebody below claims their hosting sux. I have no idea. But you don't have to use their hosting to use them as a registrar.
This is a classic strategey called Divide and Conquer.
Oh, wait. Never mind.
Looks like their server zigged when it should have zagged.
My computer is number 44,286,551 and I'm gunning hard for position 44,286,550.
Kozisek will present her work on Monday, 8 Nov., at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Denver.
/.ers attend that meeting by any chance? I would like to know more about her presentation. For example, in what specific ways are modern tropical honeybees and their food plants known to be identical to their ancient counterparts?
Any Denver
Ideas that challenge what is generally accepted are always intriguing, but deserve close scrutiny. I would be interested to know how much she studied the food plants as opposed to just the bees. There could be localized regions that stayed much warmer than average. Animals are sometimes able to switch food supplies in times of need. A sustainable bee population wouldn't need nearly as much food and survival space as a sustainable population of dinosaurs.