Musicians distribute their tunes freely on the Internet. In return they get exposure, which gets them paying gigs, and they live off the income from the gigs like they do now. The record business dries up and blows away, leaving musicians and everybody else to get along Just Fine.
To repeat what has been said over and over by musicians who are speaking out: musicians do not make money from recording contracts. Standard recording contracts are written so that all production, distribution and advertising costs come out of the musician's share, draining it down to zero. Musicians make money from the gigs that they get through the exposure they get by having their songs widely distributed. Give musicians an alternate distribution method which works just as well will rob them of nothing.
I've been contracting mostly at MS for about 5 years, and yes, contractors are treated differently in all the tangible ways mentioned in the article. But I haven't noticed any caste system, or a demeaning attitude on the part of full-timers I have worked with. I expect that, like most things, it depends on individuals. Some people probably look down on others for wearing dorky clothes.
One point I strongly disagree with was the assertion that we are all on the dole for our 100-days off. I sat out my first hiatus because I could afford to. I didn't even collect unemployment that time. The second one happened during the dotcom crash, which hit the Seattle area especially hard. I did go on unemployment that time, and it took several months to find another contract job (which turned out not to be at Microsoft). Next I came back to MS and am now looking for another job as my year is about to end.
Maybe my experience isn't typical, but I fail to see how being a temp at Microsoft should stop anyone from looking for jobs elsewhere when the year is up. Any contract job anywhere could end after a year, and then you move on. You don't just lie there until the same company hires you back. How difficult is this concept?
Now let me get this straight. The inventor came up with the refrigerated microwave because his family was eating too much fast food in order to accommodate their son's busy baseball schedule. The few minutes it takes to nuke up a dinner in the normal way would not fit into their schedule. Life was so hectic that during the 6 years he spent developing the microwave it never occurred to him to spend 15 minutes loading up a crockpot and a bread machine in the morning.
"The oven provides you with a method of having home-cooked meals when you want," said Mr Mansbery. "You are giving people back their life, with the option to provide healthy meals."
Are we sick yet of products that give us back our lives? I'm kind of hoping Mansbery is right when he says, "This will be the start of the future." Maybe this will make people realize how stupid and contrived the whole idea of the Internet Kitchen is. After they stop laughing, maybe they will realize how much money they have been spending on solutions that are really just solutions to the problem of how to convince them to spend more money. Maybe they'll start thinking that if they spent a little less time working and a little more time on their lives, their lives wouldn't cost so much and they won't have to work so hard.
And for a home printer it gets used heavily. We go through a couple cases of paper a year to print things for our daughter's school. Not one problem ever, ZERO maintenance, and we use only reconditioned cartridges. Best piece of hardware I ever bought.
"In the case of physical property, we take it for granted that the ownership right should have the potential of persisting as long as the physical object itself. In the case of an idea, however,... we have chosen instead to follow the lead of British common law and place time limits on intellectual property rights."
Maybe Greenspan is behind on his reading. As most of you know, the US Congress has the right to define "limited" as "forever" if they want to (or rather if Disney wants them to), and the Supreme Court will back them up. An economy does indeed require rule of law, but rule of law requires that words mean what they mean.
Each unit of production costs progressively less, not more. I think the rule of thumb is that costs are supposed to drop by half after production has doubled.
The article only talks about venture capital firms, but I would guess they're in the minority compared to the individuals (like me) who have bought stock in various wireless companies. There are billions invested.
Surely somebody who has seen this list is of a mind to post it somewhere anonymously... a programmer at Worldcom or one of the other ISPs, or someone in the AG's office?
The biggest flaw in this idea is that it is yet another attempt to solve the wrong problem: how to build a life support system for record companies. I wish these pundits would read and understand what musicians are saying increasingly in their writings: that the whole music piracy brouhaha is not about musicians, it's only about record companies, and that we really don't need record companies.
Most musicians by far make a living with paying gigs, not CD sales. Recording contracts are carefully structured so that all expenses come out of the artist's share, which ends up being zero. CD sales benefit musicians by giving them exposure which translates into gigs. A musician gets this same exposure whether someone buys a CD, listens to a song on the radio or downloads it from Kazaa.
Replacing the entire record industry with free distribution wouldn't deprive musicians of anything except the opportunity to let the record companies control their careers. And as an added bonus, it would mean one less source of big-money whispering into the ears of lawmakers.
Three Cheers for opensource, but take a look at the web server market share chart referenced in the posting and see if you can find a point where IIS had anything close to "market dominance." If Apache displaced anything it was NCSA.
Considering Larry's legendary Everest-size ego and penchant for hyperbole, possibly he just doesn't feel he's getting enough press lately.
Everybody I know at Microsoft, where I work as a contractor, uses Google as their primary search engine. Here's an example of why: recently at work I wanted the syntax for the VBScript SELECT CASE statement. I already had an MSDN window open for something else, so I typed in "vbscript select case" and here's what it found. Not wanting to wade through this mass of irrelevance I typed the exact same thing into Google and got this, a whole page of exactly what I was looking for.
Starring Peter Reigert (Boone in Animal House) as an oil company exec sent to Scotland to buy up an entire seaside town for a refinery site. Weird local characters and a cool story.
We may be seeing the early signs of Microsoft's stragegy to get people to switch to their new Palladium version of Windows. Think about how the Palladium version is going to be completely incompatible with existing Windows systems. Pre-Palladium software won't run at all. Documents will not be transferrable between the old and new systems. Users of the new OS will even have to buy new Palladium-equipped PCs.
On the surface this seems insane. There are 40 million people still running Win98, who have never seen fit to upgrade their OS, let alone buy new hardware. Microsoft must have a strategy for making the switch happen. Perhaps they intend to embargo customers who don't switch, controlling the supply of software and hardware. Forcing the diehards to shop at secondhand stores for things like hard drives and video cards might be the Big Lever they use to make the world go where they want it to.
How long do you want to bet it will be before non-Palladium hardware is outright illegal?
I gotta say, this is a beautiful thing. Someone plasters the town with useless shit, and their phone gets spammed relentlessly. Doesn't get any better than that. The phrase, "You asked for it asshole" comes to mind. Now if only this could work on telemarketurds.
As a contractor I've worked at a number of companies where morale was very low, and WITHOUT EXCEPTION the managers at these places have been pointy-haired boss types. Some of them technically illiterate, most with serious communication problems, and all incapable of thinking in terms other than budget and deadline.
At the places with high morale, again WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the managers have been technically savvy, good communicators, realistic about what can and can't be done with given resources, and able to inspire (by example) commitment to quality.
I think management is a talent like any other. You can awaken that talent with education, but you really can't teach people how to be good managers if they aren't innately able. Unfortunately the number of management positions in our economy exceeds BY FAR the number of people who have talents for the job.
So my recommendation to you is to move into management yourself, and see if you are one of those people who can do it right. You definitely have the right motivation. Too many people are in management because they just want to make more money. The fact that you are interested in improving the situation, and are actually looking for ways to do it, sets you apart already.
The mere fact that OSS is getting a lot of business press lately is really encouraging. Business people tend to be cautious about diving into new things. But once they get the impression that everybody else is doing something, they worry that they better start doing it too before the boss asks how come they aren't. Then they become like lemmings.
Slashdot Mirror
Musicians distribute their tunes freely on the Internet. In return they get exposure, which gets them paying gigs, and they live off the income from the gigs like they do now. The record business dries up and blows away, leaving musicians and everybody else to get along Just Fine.
To repeat what has been said over and over by musicians who are speaking out: musicians do not make money from recording contracts. Standard recording contracts are written so that all production, distribution and advertising costs come out of the musician's share, draining it down to zero. Musicians make money from the gigs that they get through the exposure they get by having their songs widely distributed. Give musicians an alternate distribution method which works just as well will rob them of nothing.
"The disruptive flickers would be unseen by the human eye in the movie theater."
I get it, sort of like MacroVision, which doesn't disrupt the picture at all. Thank you sir, would you like some ibuprofen with that popcorn?
Recently I was lucky enough to catch these guys in the act . Frightening, isn't it?
For a kid interested in the bones of the human body here is an interactie Human Skeleton.
Probably along the lines of this and this .
Thank you, please pull forward to the second window.
I've been contracting mostly at MS for about 5 years, and yes, contractors are treated differently in all the tangible ways mentioned in the article. But I haven't noticed any caste system, or a demeaning attitude on the part of full-timers I have worked with. I expect that, like most things, it depends on individuals. Some people probably look down on others for wearing dorky clothes.
One point I strongly disagree with was the assertion that we are all on the dole for our 100-days off. I sat out my first hiatus because I could afford to. I didn't even collect unemployment that time. The second one happened during the dotcom crash, which hit the Seattle area especially hard. I did go on unemployment that time, and it took several months to find another contract job (which turned out not to be at Microsoft). Next I came back to MS and am now looking for another job as my year is about to end.
Maybe my experience isn't typical, but I fail to see how being a temp at Microsoft should stop anyone from looking for jobs elsewhere when the year is up. Any contract job anywhere could end after a year, and then you move on. You don't just lie there until the same company hires you back. How difficult is this concept?
Now let me get this straight. The inventor came up with the refrigerated microwave because his family was eating too much fast food in order to accommodate their son's busy baseball schedule. The few minutes it takes to nuke up a dinner in the normal way would not fit into their schedule. Life was so hectic that during the 6 years he spent developing the microwave it never occurred to him to spend 15 minutes loading up a crockpot and a bread machine in the morning.
"The oven provides you with a method of having home-cooked meals when you want," said Mr Mansbery. "You are giving people back their life, with the option to provide healthy meals."
Are we sick yet of products that give us back our lives? I'm kind of hoping Mansbery is right when he says, "This will be the start of the future." Maybe this will make people realize how stupid and contrived the whole idea of the Internet Kitchen is. After they stop laughing, maybe they will realize how much money they have been spending on solutions that are really just solutions to the problem of how to convince them to spend more money. Maybe they'll start thinking that if they spent a little less time working and a little more time on their lives, their lives wouldn't cost so much and they won't have to work so hard.
And for a home printer it gets used heavily. We go through a couple cases of paper a year to print things for our daughter's school. Not one problem ever, ZERO maintenance, and we use only reconditioned cartridges. Best piece of hardware I ever bought.
If he doesn't want free software given to him at a free seminar, he should just throw it in the dumpster and quit wasting other people's time.
"In the case of physical property, we take it for granted that the ownership right should have the potential of persisting as long as the physical object itself. In the case of an idea, however, ... we have chosen instead to follow the lead of British common law and place time limits on intellectual property rights."
Maybe Greenspan is behind on his reading. As most of you know, the US Congress has the right to define "limited" as "forever" if they want to (or rather if Disney wants them to), and the Supreme Court will back them up. An economy does indeed require rule of law, but rule of law requires that words mean what they mean.
"Ownership or authorship of an idea is fairly easy to record and protect. Controlling distribution of the idea is difficult."
If protecting ownership or authorship doesn't mean controlling distribution, then what exactly does it mean?
Each unit of production costs progressively less, not more. I think the rule of thumb is that costs are supposed to drop by half after production has doubled.
The "modern pauper" sleeps in the streets and wears and eats what other people throw away. Turn off Rush Limbaugh and look at the real world.
The article only talks about venture capital firms, but I would guess they're in the minority compared to the individuals (like me) who have bought stock in various wireless companies. There are billions invested.
Surely somebody who has seen this list is of a mind to post it somewhere anonymously... a programmer at Worldcom or one of the other ISPs, or someone in the AG's office?
The biggest flaw in this idea is that it is yet another attempt to solve the wrong problem: how to build a life support system for record companies. I wish these pundits would read and understand what musicians are saying increasingly in their writings : that the whole music piracy brouhaha is not about musicians, it's only about record companies, and that we really don't need record companies.
Most musicians by far make a living with paying gigs, not CD sales. Recording contracts are carefully structured so that all expenses come out of the artist's share, which ends up being zero. CD sales benefit musicians by giving them exposure which translates into gigs. A musician gets this same exposure whether someone buys a CD, listens to a song on the radio or downloads it from Kazaa.
Replacing the entire record industry with free distribution wouldn't deprive musicians of anything except the opportunity to let the record companies control their careers. And as an added bonus, it would mean one less source of big-money whispering into the ears of lawmakers.
Three Cheers for opensource, but take a look at the web server market share chart referenced in the posting and see if you can find a point where IIS had anything close to "market dominance." If Apache displaced anything it was NCSA.
Considering Larry's legendary Everest-size ego and penchant for hyperbole, possibly he just doesn't feel he's getting enough press lately.
Everybody I know at Microsoft, where I work as a contractor, uses Google as their primary search engine. Here's an example of why: recently at work I wanted the syntax for the VBScript SELECT CASE statement. I already had an MSDN window open for something else, so I typed in "vbscript select case" and here's what it found. Not wanting to wade through this mass of irrelevance I typed the exact same thing into Google and got this, a whole page of exactly what I was looking for.
Rock on.
If it's a fake then it really doesn't matter what it says.
Starring Peter Reigert (Boone in Animal House) as an oil company exec sent to Scotland to buy up an entire seaside town for a refinery site. Weird local characters and a cool story.
We may be seeing the early signs of Microsoft's stragegy to get people to switch to their new Palladium version of Windows. Think about how the Palladium version is going to be completely incompatible with existing Windows systems. Pre-Palladium software won't run at all. Documents will not be transferrable between the old and new systems. Users of the new OS will even have to buy new Palladium-equipped PCs.
On the surface this seems insane. There are 40 million people still running Win98, who have never seen fit to upgrade their OS, let alone buy new hardware. Microsoft must have a strategy for making the switch happen. Perhaps they intend to embargo customers who don't switch, controlling the supply of software and hardware. Forcing the diehards to shop at secondhand stores for things like hard drives and video cards might be the Big Lever they use to make the world go where they want it to.
How long do you want to bet it will be before non-Palladium hardware is outright illegal?
"Those who can't do, teach."
I gotta say, this is a beautiful thing. Someone plasters the town with useless shit, and their phone gets spammed relentlessly. Doesn't get any better than that. The phrase, "You asked for it asshole" comes to mind. Now if only this could work on telemarketurds.
As a contractor I've worked at a number of companies where morale was very low, and WITHOUT EXCEPTION the managers at these places have been pointy-haired boss types. Some of them technically illiterate, most with serious communication problems, and all incapable of thinking in terms other than budget and deadline.
At the places with high morale, again WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the managers have been technically savvy, good communicators, realistic about what can and can't be done with given resources, and able to inspire (by example) commitment to quality.
I think management is a talent like any other. You can awaken that talent with education, but you really can't teach people how to be good managers if they aren't innately able. Unfortunately the number of management positions in our economy exceeds BY FAR the number of people who have talents for the job.
So my recommendation to you is to move into management yourself, and see if you are one of those people who can do it right. You definitely have the right motivation. Too many people are in management because they just want to make more money. The fact that you are interested in improving the situation, and are actually looking for ways to do it, sets you apart already.
The mere fact that OSS is getting a lot of business press lately is really encouraging. Business people tend to be cautious about diving into new things. But once they get the impression that everybody else is doing something, they worry that they better start doing it too before the boss asks how come they aren't. Then they become like lemmings.