Flaw with response #1: Lots of movies DO NOT make money in a theatrical release. Most of them fail miserably in their 2 week stint in the theaters. Take a look at Disney and their mega-flop Treasure Planet...that loss caused Disney to restate profits by $74 million dollars that quarter. I spite of that flop, it made money in the rental market. Most movie venture capitalists know this and count on the DVD rental/sale market to make them money. This model is analogous to the music industry's "summer tour season". The CDs make money and so do concert ticket prices.
I'm not sure why you think DVDs cost less to reproduce...physically they are multilayer discs with more expensive materials, technically, there are more software menus that need to be created, and the outer cases usually cost more than a standard CD. Movies also require quite a bit more in terms of production...more people = more cost. Your average band setup doesn't have a third of the staff an average movie company has....yet their product ends up on the shelf for only $5-$10 more than a CD.
Flaw with response #2: I may not like the RIAA or the artists associated with them, but occasionally one of them produces a song or two I like. It would be nice to have the option of purchasing just those songs. That would encourage better music and the RIAA to find more quality artists.
Flaw with response #3: Have you ever tried to rip a copy protected CD? I suspect you haven't. There are CDs out there that have an intentionally corrupt data track. This corrupt data track prevents a computer drive from reading the disc. Most audio CD players will ignore data tracks and go right to the music. If you can't read the disc in a computer, how are you going to "rip" the disc? Your "ownership" of the disc, under current RIAA licensing laws, does not entitle you to any rights other than playing it in some compatible CD players. My argument is that you should be able to play that disc in ANY device you see fit.
Flaw with response #4: We really won't know the answer to this until there is a service that allows MP3 or Ogg Vorbis downloads, a la carte, with no DRM restrictions. You might be suprised....some people might actually want to legally buy the music when they aren't feeling ripped off.
Music is overpriced: $17 - $20 for a CD is outrageous. DVDs cost much more to produce and have higher quality content...yet only cost $5 to $10 more than an audio CD.
Bad music is bundled with good music: Anyone who has bought a CD with one or two good songs knows he/she was forced into buying all the crap to have that one good song.
There is no legal way to buy unrestricted music: Music consumers want to play their purchased music on any device they see fit. They purchased the music, why shouldn't it be playable on any device they own? - not just a limited number of devices.
Piracy is not the problem: Piracy is a symptom of a market need that is unmet. Much like the speakeasys of the prohibition, when consumers want something, there will ALWAYS be someone to fill that demand. Right now, the only way to get reasonably priced, unrestricted music is to download it or copy it from someone else.
Until these problems are fixed, the music industry will always be fighting an uphill battle.
This trend of offshoring jobs is disturbing for one HUGE reason. I hate to sound like a Bush-43 cabinet member, but here it is:
National Security.
Our Government and Military subcontract lots of high-tech work to companies like IBM. The US should realize that many potentially classified projects are now being developed overseas.
What happens when some critical project in India gets whacked by a Nuke from Pakistan? Worse yet, what happens when "our stuff" ends up in China?
This Gartner article seems to be warning those, that might be considering a Windows replacement, against doing it.
They seem to be saying: Be careful of the hidden costs when switching....blah, blah, blah.
This comes from the very same people that told you to ditch IIS article here Do you think these guys even considered the costs of re-writing all the ASP stuff that runs on IIS before making that recommendation?
Remember, when you combine "con" and "insult" you get "consult".
-ted
Better than iPOD alternative.
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
Phatnoise 20GB removable MP3 player, that works with your factory changer controls. Seems to be based on the Iomega's peerless drive technology. Same thing as the Kenwood Music Keg, but works with factory changer controls.
Big, important projects are what the government is good at. Look at the state of electricity distribution in America around the early 1900's. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration pushed for the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, wiring many rural areas for power that public companies would have ignored.
Another example: The interstate highway system. Do you think for one minute private industry would have created this system? If they did, it would only connect major towns, and require astronomical tolls.
Don't misunderstand. I am a stock-holder in many public companies. I think corporations are great for non-critical stuff like automobiles, entertainment, and the like. There is plenty of competition in those areas, and the products are a luxury, not a national necessity.
The internet and healthcare are too important to be left to the ineffeciencies of private industry. Don't give me the excuse that private industry is more "efficient" than public industry....that's crap. Government dollars go right into the people and equipment making the service available. The same is true for private industry with one very large exception - PROFIT. The lower the quality of the goods, the lower the cost, the higher the profit. The results are even worse (for the consumer) when there is no competition.
The bottom line is, if you care about actual results in public projects, you do not hand them over to private industry. Maybe the people of PA should consider voting Democratic or Independent in the next election.
Does anyone know if this works with any sort of directory services? If I can get a single sign-on solution in the linux world, I can start to replace Microsoft at the back end.
And it's in the slashdot blurb: no onboard power supply
What they don't say is that this sucker is electrical.....so to make this thing fly 2.6 million light years, you need 2.6 million light years of extension cord.
.net is a fine development platform for web services, but there are MANY others out there. Joe end user/business manager doesn't give a damn what his/her applications are built on. They only care about ROI.
Most end users and business consumers are not developers. They want to buy products that solve real-world problems. The problem with.net is that the applications have yet to be built and marketed to the end users (on a scale large enough to notice). Even after this happens, most people won't notice that.net is there under their applications.
The US congress is not entirely stupid. Congress realized that theft is not equal to copyright infringement and crafted a body of laws to deal with that difference. Congress realizes that in order to consider something "stolen" it must not be available to be rightfully sold. When a car is stolen, the car is no longer available for sale by the legal owner. When music is copied, the music is still available for sale. No matter how many copies you and I make of a CD or DVD, they are still available for Walmart to sell. Congress realizes this difference. The problem is the RIAA does not like that difference.
The RIAA assumes that everyone that pirates music would have otherwise purchased the music legally. That is a flawed assumption. Do you honestly think a car thief that steals BMWs would go out and buy them legally if he/she could no longer steal them?
Jack Valenti recently stated "I don't think any of these students would go into a Blockbuster-type store and furtively put a DVD under their jacket and walk out."
Jack is right, they wouldn't...because that is stealing physical property, and that is a crime; fair-use copying is not.
Theft is not copyright infringement and the two should not be treated as equal.
I agree the algorithm isn't necessarily broken. Every hash i've ever coded needs some way to handle collisions.
The difficulty is getting that elusive differentiating data from a face. Obviously if a human can tell apart two faces, then there must be a way to create two different facial templates.
The article shows that the reverse is true. The authors could reconstruct the face from an image template. I didn't go deeply into the math, but it does actually look like a one to one process (i.e. one template did not result in two possible images).
Devices like this can NEVER be used for personal identification unless a one to one relationship between a face recognition template and the person can be mathematicaly proven.
Much like a hashing algorithm (and the pigeonhole principle) if two items can hash to the same spot, then the algorithm is broken; or in this instance two people look alike and the computer can't tell them apart.
I can see this going down in walmart's stock room:
1. Take individual products out of main container. 2. Replace products with bricks and RFID tags. 3. Place main container in inventory. 4. PROFIT!
Seriously, if they are going to do inventory without actually opening boxes and COUNTING individual pieces then they are going to have alot of shrink and no one will know about it until the main carton is cracked open to stock the shelves.
I've got digital cable (with high-def programming), movies on-demand, high-speed internet. I get 10 Mbps down 1Mbps up consistently. (Cablevision's Lightpath service is their SONET backbone.) What DSL even gets close to those speeds? OK, the speeds aren't guarenteed...but then I never paid for an SLA. I use a Cisco NAT firewall and Cisco wireless access point with cablevision's blessing. I spend about $90.00/mo. total.
They just started offering phone service...I might try it and drop the $80.00/mo. I give to Verizon.
I'm a network admin for a K-12 school, and we keep logs of EVERYTHING. Web access, email, IM...etc. Why?
Accountability. We are responsible for the well being of a student while they are here. We can't have some student IMing a 45 year old pedophile. We need to control the information that flows into and out of the school. This protects the students as well as the school.
The biggest problem we have is IM logging. Our Exchange setup does not allow Windows Messenger to be logged at the server level. That means logging happens at the workstation. This is a pain in the ass, but that's why non-administrative users can not use IM.
That analogy would be better. I was merely suggesting that punishments should fit the crime. The writers of the consitution thought so when they added the Eighth Amendment.
In other news, Senator Hatch has just proposed an anti-speeding law. The new law, if enacted, would allow law enforcement to use lethal force when enforcing speeding laws.
"Inspite of heavy fines and expensive insurance, people still continue to break the speed limits of our nation's highways" Hatch said.
"If death is the only way to teach these people to drive slower, than i'm all for it" he said. "Pop a few caps in their ass and they'll start listening!"
Local law enforcement could not be reached for comment.
DVD makers should learn from Circuit City's costly mistake. Consumers like the traditional media distribution model. People like to buy stuff and then OWN it. That means use without restriction. I bought it, I should be able to play it in my car, computer or MP3 player.
The same model has made DVD a success. It would be a dumb strategy to mess with it.
For those that don't remember; info on Circuit City's failed experiment can be found here.
I think i'll go to a bar, pick the biggest guy there and punch him in the face. I'll probably have as much success with that, as SCO will have with this lawsuit.
I worked for an IT consulting firm during college. We actually went to the client and made sure their systems worked, secured them, and installed new systems. That was very "hands-on" work that could not be done by someone overseas (try having an IT guy in Bangalore replace a failed switch or router).
During my last year in college I handed in most of my programming projects via e-mail. That made me realize that I (or some other low-paid code monkey) could do my job from anywhere on the planet. Any good or service that can travel a wire can easily be "offshored" or outsourced.
After college I got a job as a network administrator for a school. Sure, I was earning 20k/yr less than my "programming friends" but I knew I had a job that could not easily be replaced. If you are looking for job security, get one that REQUIRES client contact. That makes you much harder to replace.
Slashdot Mirror
Flaw with response #1: Lots of movies DO NOT make money in a theatrical release. Most of them fail miserably in their 2 week stint in the theaters. Take a look at Disney and their mega-flop Treasure Planet...that loss caused Disney to restate profits by $74 million dollars that quarter. I spite of that flop, it made money in the rental market. Most movie venture capitalists know this and count on the DVD rental/sale market to make them money. This model is analogous to the music industry's "summer tour season". The CDs make money and so do concert ticket prices.
I'm not sure why you think DVDs cost less to reproduce...physically they are multilayer discs with more expensive materials, technically, there are more software menus that need to be created, and the outer cases usually cost more than a standard CD. Movies also require quite a bit more in terms of production...more people = more cost. Your average band setup doesn't have a third of the staff an average movie company has....yet their product ends up on the shelf for only $5-$10 more than a CD.
Flaw with response #2: I may not like the RIAA or the artists associated with them, but occasionally one of them produces a song or two I like. It would be nice to have the option of purchasing just those songs. That would encourage better music and the RIAA to find more quality artists.
Flaw with response #3: Have you ever tried to rip a copy protected CD? I suspect you haven't. There are CDs out there that have an intentionally corrupt data track. This corrupt data track prevents a computer drive from reading the disc. Most audio CD players will ignore data tracks and go right to the music. If you can't read the disc in a computer, how are you going to "rip" the disc? Your "ownership" of the disc, under current RIAA licensing laws, does not entitle you to any rights other than playing it in some compatible CD players. My argument is that you should be able to play that disc in ANY device you see fit.
Flaw with response #4: We really won't know the answer to this until there is a service that allows MP3 or Ogg Vorbis downloads, a la carte, with no DRM restrictions. You might be suprised....some people might actually want to legally buy the music when they aren't feeling ripped off.
-ted
Music is overpriced: $17 - $20 for a CD is outrageous. DVDs cost much more to produce and have higher quality content...yet only cost $5 to $10 more than an audio CD.
Bad music is bundled with good music: Anyone who has bought a CD with one or two good songs knows he/she was forced into buying all the crap to have that one good song.
There is no legal way to buy unrestricted music: Music consumers want to play their purchased music on any device they see fit. They purchased the music, why shouldn't it be playable on any device they own? - not just a limited number of devices.
Piracy is not the problem: Piracy is a symptom of a market need that is unmet. Much like the speakeasys of the prohibition, when consumers want something, there will ALWAYS be someone to fill that demand. Right now, the only way to get reasonably priced, unrestricted music is to download it or copy it from someone else.
Until these problems are fixed, the music industry will always be fighting an uphill battle.
-ted
This trend of offshoring jobs is disturbing for one HUGE reason. I hate to sound like a Bush-43 cabinet member, but here it is:
National Security.
Our Government and Military subcontract lots of high-tech work to companies like IBM. The US should realize that many potentially classified projects are now being developed overseas.
What happens when some critical project in India gets whacked by a Nuke from Pakistan? Worse yet, what happens when "our stuff" ends up in China?
This is going to be a disaster in the long run.
-ted
This Gartner article seems to be warning those, that might be considering a Windows replacement, against doing it.
They seem to be saying: Be careful of the hidden costs when switching....blah, blah, blah.
This comes from the very same people that told you to ditch IIS article here Do you think these guys even considered the costs of re-writing all the ASP stuff that runs on IIS before making that recommendation?
Remember, when you combine "con" and "insult" you get "consult".
-ted
Phatnoise 20GB removable MP3 player, that works with your factory changer controls. Seems to be based on the Iomega's peerless drive technology. Same thing as the Kenwood Music Keg, but works with factory changer controls.
Info here.
-ted
Big, important projects are what the government is good at. Look at the state of electricity distribution in America around the early 1900's. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration pushed for the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, wiring many rural areas for power that public companies would have ignored.
Another example: The interstate highway system. Do you think for one minute private industry would have created this system? If they did, it would only connect major towns, and require astronomical tolls.
Don't misunderstand. I am a stock-holder in many public companies. I think corporations are great for non-critical stuff like automobiles, entertainment, and the like. There is plenty of competition in those areas, and the products are a luxury, not a national necessity.
The internet and healthcare are too important to be left to the ineffeciencies of private industry. Don't give me the excuse that private industry is more "efficient" than public industry....that's crap. Government dollars go right into the people and equipment making the service available. The same is true for private industry with one very large exception - PROFIT. The lower the quality of the goods, the lower the cost, the higher the profit. The results are even worse (for the consumer) when there is no competition.
The bottom line is, if you care about actual results in public projects, you do not hand them over to private industry. Maybe the people of PA should consider voting Democratic or Independent in the next election.
-ted
That's why Commerce Bank shreds AND burns their trash.
-ted
Does anyone know if this works with any sort of directory services? If I can get a single sign-on solution in the linux world, I can start to replace Microsoft at the back end.
-ted
The very first time someone plugs power over ethernet into a non-power over ethernet hub or switch.
-ted
Hey it's in the article:
no onboard fuel
And it's in the slashdot blurb:
no onboard power supply
What they don't say is that this sucker is electrical.....so to make this thing fly 2.6 million light years, you need 2.6 million light years of extension cord.
Oh yeah, you need atmosphere too.
Nifty, but useless.
-ted
.net is a fine development platform for web services, but there are MANY others out there. Joe end user/business manager doesn't give a damn what his/her applications are built on. They only care about ROI.
.net is that the applications have yet to be built and marketed to the end users (on a scale large enough to notice). Even after this happens, most people won't notice that .net is there under their applications.
Most end users and business consumers are not developers. They want to buy products that solve real-world problems. The problem with
-ted
The US congress is not entirely stupid. Congress realized that theft is not equal to copyright infringement and crafted a body of laws to deal with that difference. Congress realizes that in order to consider something "stolen" it must not be available to be rightfully sold. When a car is stolen, the car is no longer available for sale by the legal owner. When music is copied, the music is still available for sale. No matter how many copies you and I make of a CD or DVD, they are still available for Walmart to sell. Congress realizes this difference. The problem is the RIAA does not like that difference.
The RIAA assumes that everyone that pirates music would have otherwise purchased the music legally. That is a flawed assumption. Do you honestly think a car thief that steals BMWs would go out and buy them legally if he/she could no longer steal them?
Jack Valenti recently stated "I don't think any of these students would go into a Blockbuster-type store and furtively put a DVD under their jacket and walk out."
Jack is right, they wouldn't...because that is stealing physical property, and that is a crime; fair-use copying is not.
Theft is not copyright infringement and the two should not be treated as equal.
-ted
I agree the algorithm isn't necessarily broken. Every hash i've ever coded needs some way to handle collisions.
The difficulty is getting that elusive differentiating data from a face. Obviously if a human can tell apart two faces, then there must be a way to create two different facial templates.
The article shows that the reverse is true. The authors could reconstruct the face from an image template. I didn't go deeply into the math, but it does actually look like a one to one process (i.e. one template did not result in two possible images).
-ted
Info here
Run Cat 5 to each of these in every room. Set up a file server containing all of your music (windows or linux will do just fine).
-ted
Devices like this can NEVER be used for personal identification unless a one to one relationship between a face recognition template and the person can be mathematicaly proven.
Much like a hashing algorithm (and the pigeonhole principle) if two items can hash to the same spot, then the algorithm is broken; or in this instance two people look alike and the computer can't tell them apart.
This will keep algorithms guys busy for a while.
-ted
I can see this going down in walmart's stock room:
1. Take individual products out of main container.
2. Replace products with bricks and RFID tags.
3. Place main container in inventory.
4. PROFIT!
Seriously, if they are going to do inventory without actually opening boxes and COUNTING individual pieces then they are going to have alot of shrink and no one will know about it until the main carton is cracked open to stock the shelves.
-ted
I live in Hamilton, NJ (Mercer County).
I've got digital cable (with high-def programming), movies on-demand, high-speed internet. I get 10 Mbps down 1Mbps up consistently. (Cablevision's Lightpath service is their SONET backbone.) What DSL even gets close to those speeds? OK, the speeds aren't guarenteed...but then I never paid for an SLA. I use a Cisco NAT firewall and Cisco wireless access point with cablevision's blessing. I spend about $90.00/mo. total.
They just started offering phone service...I might try it and drop the $80.00/mo. I give to Verizon.
-ted
I'm a network admin for a K-12 school, and we keep logs of EVERYTHING. Web access, email, IM...etc. Why?
Accountability. We are responsible for the well being of a student while they are here. We can't have some student IMing a 45 year old pedophile. We need to control the information that flows into and out of the school. This protects the students as well as the school.
The biggest problem we have is IM logging. Our Exchange setup does not allow Windows Messenger to be logged at the server level. That means logging happens at the workstation. This is a pain in the ass, but that's why non-administrative users can not use IM.
-ted
That analogy would be better. I was merely suggesting that punishments should fit the crime. The writers of the consitution thought so when they added the Eighth Amendment.
-ted
In other news, Senator Hatch has just proposed an anti-speeding law. The new law, if enacted, would allow law enforcement to use lethal force when enforcing speeding laws.
"Inspite of heavy fines and expensive insurance, people still continue to break the speed limits of our nation's highways" Hatch said.
"If death is the only way to teach these people to drive slower, than i'm all for it" he said. "Pop a few caps in their ass and they'll start listening!"
Local law enforcement could not be reached for comment.
-ted
Thelonious Monk's album "Monk" is a must have.
-ted
DVD makers should learn from Circuit City's costly mistake. Consumers like the traditional media distribution model. People like to buy stuff and then OWN it. That means use without restriction. I bought it, I should be able to play it in my car, computer or MP3 player.
The same model has made DVD a success. It would be a dumb strategy to mess with it.
For those that don't remember; info on Circuit City's failed experiment can be found here.
-ted
I think i'll go to a bar, pick the biggest guy there and punch him in the face. I'll probably have as much success with that, as SCO will have with this lawsuit.
-ted
Pic here
A hacker favorite! This little e-mail/web browser station ran QNX out of the box.
-ted
I worked for an IT consulting firm during college. We actually went to the client and made sure their systems worked, secured them, and installed new systems. That was very "hands-on" work that could not be done by someone overseas (try having an IT guy in Bangalore replace a failed switch or router).
During my last year in college I handed in most of my programming projects via e-mail. That made me realize that I (or some other low-paid code monkey) could do my job from anywhere on the planet. Any good or service that can travel a wire can easily be "offshored" or outsourced.
After college I got a job as a network administrator for a school. Sure, I was earning 20k/yr less than my "programming friends" but I knew I had a job that could not easily be replaced. If you are looking for job security, get one that REQUIRES client contact. That makes you much harder to replace.
-ted