Ron Kirk must be related to Rush Limbaugh, since that's his type of logic. Any city government that uses telephone taxes to pay for essential services has its head up its ass.
Andrew Sullivan may have overestimated the impact of political bloggers, but all Engberg is doing is defending the status quo on the points of professionalism as defined by big media and the newspaper world it came from.
His criticism that bloggers don't care about the veracity of the stories they are spreading... Their concern is for controversy and "hits" could easily be levelled at various media wizards like Rush Limbaugh or Geraldo Rivera, or for that matter at television news itself, whose economic function is to provide an audience for advertisers. An alternative reason bloggers tend to say outrageous things is that they are saying what they genuinely feel, because they don't have to worry about offending sponsors or parent corporations.
I think big media's real problem with blogs is that it's difficult to adjust when "Freedom of Speech" suddenly means the freedom to speak loudly enough to be heard.
This is Insightful? Another Rush Limbaugh fan must have got mod points.
Treaties have no value unless there is some expectation that they will be kept. The more a country violates agreements, the less credibility it has, just like people. Is that a hard concept?
It's really encouraging to see industry heavyweights starting to give Windows some competition. Not only will it enrich the user's set of choices, it should also result in a better Windows for those who do choose to use that system.
My bet is that the death gong for Windows will sound when Google releases a Linux desktop.
The WB has passed on the pilot. However, they've also been real gentlemen and released it back to the studio to be taken elsewhere. Many networks hold onto pilots out of spite, fearing that if it succeeds elsewhere, they'll look bad.
This sounds disturbingly like what happened in The Making of 'And God Spoke' -- a mockumentary about two eternally optimistic indie filmmakers shooting a cheesy biblical epic. "Very unusual!" they gloat, when the big studio drops the project but lets them keep it. As if this is a good sign.
It's that they stopped sending out all those free CDs. Or at least I stopped getting them. One of the last ones came in a nifty little wooden box. Gosh, we'll never see days like those again.
In other news, the FBI announced that it will partner with the RIAA and MPAA in a pioneering move to trim the federal budget through privatization. The newly repurposed agency will be called the FBIP, Federal Bureau of Intellectual Property, and its primary mission will be to enforce entertainment copyrights, trademarks and patents. Former RIAA chief Hilary Rosen, slated to head the FBIP, said protection Intellectual Property is the key to the safety of American consumers. "Terrorists don't want artists to be compensated for their work," said Rosen. "They hate our freedoms. Plus their music really sucks."
Not sure how it's sobering that criminologists want tools to search computer data. They have tools to identify fingerprints, DNA, hair samples, shoes, clothing fiber, sperm, you name it. If the documents you reference were standards for scanning everybody's hard drive over the Internet, I would understand your reaction, but they aren't.
If your car got stolen, and the cops found your engine block in somebody's garage along with a pile of other car parts, you might want them to search the guy's computer for names and addresses of people he's sold cars to. At least I would.
Right, what I should have said was crimes of the hacking-other-people's-computers type, which seem to be law enforcement's main focus nowadays. The "original" computer crimes, the inside jobs, seem to be at the same time the most profitable and the ones with the greatest chance of success.
Another shot fired in America's one-sided We-must-run-the-world foreign policy. This one isn't aimed at some loose cannon third world nation in the name of fighting terrorism. This is directed at countries that have significant space programs, who we are supposedly friends with, or at least colleagues. Pretty amazingly sad.
The computer crimes this guy talks about seem to be mainly the identity theft type. But when people inside companies skim off rounding errors, create phony accounts, that type of thing (e.g. Office Space), I have read that the crime itself usually goes undetected. They get caught when they do stupid things like associating with bookies and drug dealers, getting involved in some unrelated investigation where their mysterious wealth gets noticed.
There was one guy at Microsoft who made a couple $million selling software that he ordered internally for his department. His mistake was that he put up a website full of photos showing off his lavish house and collection of cars and expensive motorcycles. If the idiot had just kept his big mouth shut and retired he probably would have gotten away with it.
Interesting comments. I agree with your conclusion even if the math is off. What boggles my mind is the sense of scale this gives. 1.8 million of any one kind of business is incredible, considering there are only about 12 million businesses in the US. There are only 30,000 McDonalds in the whole world. China is BIG.
Out of the estimated 40-50 million p2p users, the RIAA sues a couple thousand a year. My guess is that the people afraid of getting sued are the ones who can't afford to buy CDs because they spend too much on lottery tickets.
They charged 15 dollars for most. Only give the artist maybe 70cents-1 dollar for each record sold.
I don't mind repeating this like a broken record. Eventually everybody will get it. Musicians usually get paid NOTHING for CD sales. Yes, by contract they get a small percentage, but that same contract also lets the record company first deduct all expenses of manufacturing, advertising, distribution, etc, etc, which usually leaves a ZERO net payment. For a more detailed explanation of how this works, read this article by Janis Ian, who has recorded more than 25 albums over nearly 40 years, and has yet to see a record company check with a plus sign on it.
The short version is: Musicians make money primarily from live performances, same as they did for centuries before recording technology was invented. What CD sales do for them is give them exposure, which generates audiences for concerts. They get the same exposure whether you buy a CD, download it, listen to it on the radio or find it lying on the sidewalk. Paying for the CD does not help the musician.
Record companies, on the other hand, make nearly ALL their money from CD sales. They justify all their business practices because they lose money on the songs that don't sell well enough to cover expenses. Essentially record companies are venture capitalists who seize all profits from a company until the startup expenses are covered, and then continue to get most of the profits after that.
Would you finance your startup like that? I didn't think so.
That is the kind of Rush Limbaugh statement that only makes sense if you mix up various definitions to make it work. Countries don't want anything and they don't create anything. But they are usually run by people who do want everything, and who have figured out how to own the work of the people who do the actual creating.
When someone in government (not the US, you can be sure) actually seems to represent the interests of the governed, it is kind of hard to adjust to. It's a lot easier to glibly package them with welfare cheats and unwed mothers, who after all are the cause of all our problems, right?
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Ron Kirk must be related to Rush Limbaugh, since that's his type of logic. Any city government that uses telephone taxes to pay for essential services has its head up its ass.
Andrew Sullivan may have overestimated the impact of political bloggers, but all Engberg is doing is defending the status quo on the points of professionalism as defined by big media and the newspaper world it came from.
His criticism that bloggers
don't care about the veracity of the stories they are spreading... Their concern is for controversy and "hits"
could easily be levelled at various media wizards like Rush Limbaugh or Geraldo Rivera, or for that matter at television news itself, whose economic function is to provide an audience for advertisers. An alternative reason bloggers tend to say outrageous things is that they are saying what they genuinely feel, because they don't have to worry about offending sponsors or parent corporations.
I think big media's real problem with blogs is that it's difficult to adjust when "Freedom of Speech" suddenly means the freedom to speak loudly enough to be heard.
This is Insightful? Another Rush Limbaugh fan must have got mod points.
Treaties have no value unless there is some expectation that they will be kept. The more a country violates agreements, the less credibility it has, just like people. Is that a hard concept?
It's really encouraging to see industry heavyweights starting to give Windows some competition. Not only will it enrich the user's set of choices, it should also result in a better Windows for those who do choose to use that system.
My bet is that the death gong for Windows will sound when Google releases a Linux desktop.
The WB has passed on the pilot. However, they've also been real gentlemen and released it back to the studio to be taken elsewhere. Many networks hold onto pilots out of spite, fearing that if it succeeds elsewhere, they'll look bad.
This sounds disturbingly like what happened in The Making of 'And God Spoke' -- a mockumentary about two eternally optimistic indie filmmakers shooting a cheesy biblical epic. "Very unusual!" they gloat, when the big studio drops the project but lets them keep it. As if this is a good sign.
His policies made sense then and they do now.
I would like to hear the explanation of this statement.
Woo-hoo! FREE NACHOS !!!
It's that they stopped sending out all those free CDs. Or at least I stopped getting them. One of the last ones came in a nifty little wooden box. Gosh, we'll never see days like those again.
Sort of embarrassed to have this modded Insightful. Oh well, I'll take what I get.
No no, Gore only invented lunar robot scouts. Now he's designing the lunar robot superhighway.
Not backwards at all.
Men used to have to get up to change channels too.
Sure they do! I think Elroy Jetson is in Lunar Scouts.
"They can put a man on the moon, but they can't... uhh... put a man on the moon."
Nicotine -- acts like a drug and is used like a drug, but it's not a drug at all!
Headline 2014: FDA Chairman/Philip Morris CEO Michael Szymanczyk announces new product: Intravenarettes!
SCO chief Darl McBride broke down in tears today and sobbed to reporters, "I just want people to like me."
In other news, the FBI announced that it will partner with the RIAA and MPAA in a pioneering move to trim the federal budget through privatization. The newly repurposed agency will be called the FBIP, Federal Bureau of Intellectual Property, and its primary mission will be to enforce entertainment copyrights, trademarks and patents. Former RIAA chief Hilary Rosen, slated to head the FBIP, said protection Intellectual Property is the key to the safety of American consumers. "Terrorists don't want artists to be compensated for their work," said Rosen. "They hate our freedoms. Plus their music really sucks."
Not sure how it's sobering that criminologists want tools to search computer data. They have tools to identify fingerprints, DNA, hair samples, shoes, clothing fiber, sperm, you name it. If the documents you reference were standards for scanning everybody's hard drive over the Internet, I would understand your reaction, but they aren't.
If your car got stolen, and the cops found your engine block in somebody's garage along with a pile of other car parts, you might want them to search the guy's computer for names and addresses of people he's sold cars to. At least I would.
Right, what I should have said was crimes of the hacking-other-people's-computers type, which seem to be law enforcement's main focus nowadays. The "original" computer crimes, the inside jobs, seem to be at the same time the most profitable and the ones with the greatest chance of success.
Another shot fired in America's one-sided We-must-run-the-world foreign policy. This one isn't aimed at some loose cannon third world nation in the name of fighting terrorism. This is directed at countries that have significant space programs, who we are supposedly friends with, or at least colleagues. Pretty amazingly sad.
The computer crimes this guy talks about seem to be mainly the identity theft type. But when people inside companies skim off rounding errors, create phony accounts, that type of thing (e.g. Office Space), I have read that the crime itself usually goes undetected. They get caught when they do stupid things like associating with bookies and drug dealers, getting involved in some unrelated investigation where their mysterious wealth gets noticed.
There was one guy at Microsoft who made a couple $million selling software that he ordered internally for his department. His mistake was that he put up a website full of photos showing off his lavish house and collection of cars and expensive motorcycles. If the idiot had just kept his big mouth shut and retired he probably would have gotten away with it.
He takes that thing to a LAN Party ???
Whoa.
Interesting comments. I agree with your conclusion even if the math is off. What boggles my mind is the sense of scale this gives. 1.8 million of any one kind of business is incredible, considering there are only about 12 million businesses in the US. There are only 30,000 McDonalds in the whole world. China is BIG.
Out of the estimated 40-50 million p2p users, the RIAA sues a couple thousand a year. My guess is that the people afraid of getting sued are the ones who can't afford to buy CDs because they spend too much on lottery tickets.
Anyway, here is an interesting EFF article about how to avoid being a target.
They charged 15 dollars for most. Only give the artist maybe 70cents-1 dollar for each record sold.
I don't mind repeating this like a broken record. Eventually everybody will get it. Musicians usually get paid NOTHING for CD sales. Yes, by contract they get a small percentage, but that same contract also lets the record company first deduct all expenses of manufacturing, advertising, distribution, etc, etc, which usually leaves a ZERO net payment. For a more detailed explanation of how this works, read this article by Janis Ian, who has recorded more than 25 albums over nearly 40 years, and has yet to see a record company check with a plus sign on it.
The short version is: Musicians make money primarily from live performances, same as they did for centuries before recording technology was invented. What CD sales do for them is give them exposure, which generates audiences for concerts. They get the same exposure whether you buy a CD, download it, listen to it on the radio or find it lying on the sidewalk. Paying for the CD does not help the musician.
Record companies, on the other hand, make nearly ALL their money from CD sales. They justify all their business practices because they lose money on the songs that don't sell well enough to cover expenses. Essentially record companies are venture capitalists who seize all profits from a company until the startup expenses are covered, and then continue to get most of the profits after that.
Would you finance your startup like that? I didn't think so.
That is the kind of Rush Limbaugh statement that only makes sense if you mix up various definitions to make it work. Countries don't want anything and they don't create anything. But they are usually run by people who do want everything, and who have figured out how to own the work of the people who do the actual creating.
When someone in government (not the US, you can be sure) actually seems to represent the interests of the governed, it is kind of hard to adjust to. It's a lot easier to glibly package them with welfare cheats and unwed mothers, who after all are the cause of all our problems, right?