Not all time is billable. Putting together a MythTV is _fun_, not _work_. If you can build one for $400, and assemble it in your spare time for fun, it only cost $400. If you build MythTV's to sell for a living, I guess it's fair including your time as a cost...:-)
This kinda reminds of of the Apple ][ vs. TRS-80 debates, when the TRS-80 guys would say "we can store 300K on a $3 cassette, you floppy disk guys are wasting money".
Of course, there are certain advantages to random access storage with a directory structure. Like, say, knowing what's on the disk and where it is.:-)
"And then, for more usual commercial images, photographers still use film"
Actually, back when we were testing very high end analog vs. digital at Sotheby's (about 5 years ago), we found that digital cameras produced clearly superior results for printed material than analog. And, if you've looked at any Sotheby's catalogues, you'll know that we take that sort of thing seriously. It's arguable whether the original source digital image was better, but by the time the film got processed, stripped, placed in the layout and printed, it had clearly suffered. The fact that they also cost less to deal with (an asset repository beats a box of chromes any day) and less to process was just icing on the cake.
I suspect that in the last five years, digital cameras have improved faster than analog.:-)
If anyone's sticking with film over digital, it's for romantic reasons, or because they can't afford new gear, not image quality.
" I would strongly object to the idea that you can "see the results immediately" if you mean the measily preview you get on the built in LCD."
Well, I don't know about other cameras, but with Canon you hold one button to review, then push a slider to zoom in, so you can quickly see whether you caught the details you were after... It only takes a couple of seconds, vs. hours or days for photo processing.:-)
"You just spend a fortune on the initial camera. Amazon's store (Electronics > Camera & Photo > Categories > Film Cameras > SLR Cameras > Manual SLR Cameras) has cameras centered about $250, with one $161. The least expensive digital SLR I've seen is I think ~$800. The difference then is about 50 rolls of film. I don't think I've shot that many in my life."
50 rolls? 50 rolls? That's only 1,800 shots. You'll never learn to shoot on a budget like that.
If you want to get good at photography, the only way to do it is to take THOUSANDS of photographs, and learning by doing what works and what doesn't. This means either buying film in bulk and loading it yourself (which I did for years, and isn't as fun as it sounsd) or go digital.
You _might_ make a case for shooting black and white, since it's way cheaper to buy the film, and you can print it yourself, which is a great education.
If you're serious about photography, though, and want color, the costs aren't even close. You can get a great digital camera for around $500 (e.g. the Canon G2 or G3) or the new Digital Rebel DSLR for $1,000, and then be able to experiment like crazy at ZERO COST. Even better than saving money in the long run, it means that you can exeriment fearlessly, which means that you can take more risks and learn more.
My advice, since you don't want to spend a lot of money up front, would be to get an all-in-one digital camera. Make sure that it gives you good manual control, has a fairly large lens, and at least a little zoom for flexibility. Something like a used Canon G2, for $400 or so.
If you find out that you aren't into it, you can always sell it on eBay and get most of your money back. It's amazing, but old G2's are selling for $400, when you can get a G5 for just over $500!
And if you get addicted, you'll start saying things like "I can't believe that the Digital Rebel costs only $1,000 with a lens" and "But if I get a Nikon D2H, not only can I use all my Nikkor lenses, but the camera can use 802.11 to FTP the photo's right to my server while I'm shooting!"
"Well that's f'in wonderful. So it could be in the hands of anyone...including those who would use it against your own citizens? You deserve that "cold, drafty, leaky house"."
Wow, read his FAQ. It's not like it's a loaded weapon -- it's an unfinished remotely piloted vehicle that's far less dangerous right now than, say, a car.
"What you can not stop is someone copying the audio from the sound output, or the video from the video output. These will NOT be faithful reproductions of the original, but will be close enough for most purposes"
I agree, but would like to elaborate on two points:
1) There are people trying to block the ability to intercept the audio stream by having the audio stream encrypted all the way to the speakers. Of course, this would mean that you can only listen to music on certified "safe" speakers, etc.
2) You can get a very high quality capture of the audio stream. For example, using Audio Hijack Pro you can capture the perfect digital audio stream (MacOS X) and re-encode it however you like. Yes, it's decoded and re-encoded, but it's very handy for capturing streams for offline playback, etc. Yes, it's not a perfect copy, because it's a re-encoding, but it sounds fine to me.:-)
The reality is that as long as you can buy music on a CD that plays on an audio CD player, there's no point in hard-core DRM. I think that iTMS' "speed bump" approach is a pretty reasonable compromise...
"And like some "discounted" cell phones or computers (like from eMachines), what are the chances that this PC will be watered down as well, like crippling its upgradability? (ex. a drive rack with space for a single hard drive, 1-2 open PCI slots, low memory capacity for RAM, etc.)"
Well, given that there's a cost to providing AOL service, the $24 a month isn't 100% an offset to a possible loss on the PC, so the PC is probably pretty close to really being a $299 PC. I went to the Systemax web site (http://www.systemax.com, which linked into www.globalcomputer.com/pcconfig/pcconfigland1.jsp) and configured it to match the AOL offer, and it came out to $443.95. There's a nice picture of the Systemex system guts (NB: AOL might not be using this model, but it's what it looks like Systemex sells otherwise) at http://www.globalcomputer.com/media/html/config_de tail_view/ven_series_view.html?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_ id=4014945&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=7401281&ASSORTMENT% 3C%3East_id=593&bmUID=1070638433313. It looks like six PCI slots, four 3.5" bays, two 5.25" bays, and an AGP video slot. Judging by AOL's photo's, the PC has a floppy drive, though one's not listed in the system spec's. It also looks like AOL adds some software (e.g. AOL Office).
So it's not a FANTASTIC computer, but not pathetic either. For $299 (plus interest if you don't pay it off right away) it's not bad...
Well, where I live broadband is $40-45 a month, which is (according to a survey I just read) the national average, while the cost or AOL is $24 a month, which gets you internet access and also the AOL stuff. So assuming that you're not paying for a phone line just for internet access (a few people also use telephone lines to talk to people) dial is still cheaper...
Well, for people experienced with the internet, I agree that a cheap ISP is the best deal, because all you really need is TCP/IP routing and a mail server. But for someone who wants to have their hand held, AOL's not a bad start -- it's certainly The plain internet access ISP's have gotten better over the years, but it's still easier getting AOL working than installing and configuring PPP, web, email, etc., individually.
Personally, I'd go straight to broadband rather than dial, but that's 2x as much, and we're talking about people who don't want to spend that kind of money on the internet.
Misleading math...
on
AOL's $299 PC
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"The math ( (12*23.90)+299 ) seems to suggest that you can get a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges"
This math is only correct if you assume that there's no value in having AOL dial access. If you think that AOL access is worth the $23.90 a month that millions of people are already paying for it, you're getting a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges, plus agreeing to stay on AOL for a year.
This doesn't sound any more sleazy than cell phone companies giving you a heavily discounted cell phone in return for a commitment for longer service. If you don't want to make the commitment, don't sign the contract, and don't take the up front discount.
To me, this looks like a decent way for people who aren't online to get online very cheaply and learn whether they want to spend more for broadband, etc., later.
"$299 with a $20+ a month lock-in contract, so what they really mean is something closer to about $450."
You're exaggerating by leaving out the fact that they're getting AOL access, which millions of people are paying $20+ a month for without getting a cheap PC. If you think that AOL service is worth nothing, then your math works, I suppose, but...
"The budget has not been balanced for about 50 years"
Yes, it's sleazy to count money coming in for social security in the same category as income tax, etc., since that money coming in will ultimately need to be paid out to beneficiaries. But according to the article you linked to on "The Dixieland Law Journal" says that "80 percent of the president's supposed $237 billion surplus automatically disappears", which means that even after putting the money back into the Social Security fund where it belongs, the year that article was written (under Clinton, but it's not clear exactly when, since there are no dates or other publication details) there was still a budget surplus, just a smaller one than claimed.
If people really cared about keeping the money straight, they would have voted for Gore, who campaigned on cleaning that situation up, instead of Bush. (Oh wait, they did!)
More importantly, since Bush took office, and the Republicans are running all three branches of the government, not only have they kept up the sleazy practice of borrowing against the assets of the Social Security Fund, they've managed to drive even the "fake" numbers insanely negative.
"Voting should not be about trust, it should be about results. Any third party should be able to verify results, regardless of their interest."
In a voting system you don't need to trust the participants, you need to trust the process. That's why when you count ballots you have representatives of both parties present so that they can all witness what's going on rather than having to trust a ballot counter. So each ballot counter may have an agenda, but the process prevents abuse by any one participant, so that you can still trust the outcome.
According to Slyck (caveat: I don't know how they generate these numbers, so I can't defend them) the level of participation on the networks that people think aren't being monitored by the RIAA is up, but overall there's still a significant decline.
"The budget was never "balanced" while Clinton was in office: every single year that national debt was at least hundred billion dollars higher at the end of the year than the start."
According to Reuters and the Congressional Budget Office, you're wrong.
Please go look at justinspoliticaljournal.cafeprogressive.com/4239a6 00.jpg. I'd embed the graphic here for reference, but/. doesn't allow that, so you'll have to copy/paste the URL, sorry.
Just in case you're having trouble reading the graph, the red parts are deficit spending, and the blue bits (Johnson's last year, Clinton's last four years) are budget surplusses.
Imagine how much better off those numbers would look if they weren't dragged down by the interest on the trillions of dollars of debt we inherited from the "borrow and spend" republicans...
This is amazing -- how the heck did GWB's official bio on the whitehouse.gov web site get to the top of the results list? Google's search algorithms really ARE good!
I did a little digging, and found an article here (http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2003/09/2 4/recording_industry_withdraws_suit/) which speculated that either the RIAA made a mistake on the IP address or Comcast made a mistake in matching up the IP address with the user account. In either case, the lawsuit was withdrawn as it was pretty obvious that (as a Mac user) she wasn't running KaZaA.
(OK, unless she was running a PC emulator. But that's kinda unlikely for a 66 year old "computer neophite" accused of downloading hard-core rap.)
Sadly, "I use a Mac" isn't a defense any more, since Poisoned added support for sharing files into FastTrack.:-(
I am pretty sure that having a lawsuit filed makes you "accused," not "guilty". Though I am sure that anyone filing a lawsuit would argue that the person that they're suing is guilt... "Guilty until proven innocent" is the presumption that the judge and jury must make, not the accuser.
They did investigate -- they found an IP address that had hundreds or thousands of files being illegally shared on public p2p networks, then got the address of the person associated with the IP address from the ISP.
IANAL, but a I recall, some lawyer explained it here a while ago -- the paperwork they're filing is apparently only the first step in the process, where they're saying that they think that something illegal happened and that they think you did it, after which you can make the argument that it wasn't you, or nothing illegal happened, or settle, before they actually file the real lawsuit.
Personally, I think that the people who broke the law are the ones serving and downloading copyrighted files. For a really evil case, imagine someone with an insecure wireless LAN setup (i.e. almost all wireless LAN's) whose cable modem is used by a third party without their knowledge, to do illegal things. There was just a case like this in the news, where someone sitting in a car on the street was downloading kiddie porn (I think it was) using a random house's wireless LAN. They caught him because he wasn't wearing any pants...
I suspect that for the sake of reasonable enforcement (i.e. the same reason that the owner of the car is responsible for the parking ticket), they might end up deciding that the owner of the broadband connection is responsible for everything done on it, because it's impossible to prove who was sitting in front of a computer, but it's easy to prove who is paying the ISP bill. That'd suck for free public wireless networks, though.
Yeah, I'm getting old too, but all those millions of people, exchanging billions of files, clearly like music, and the music that they like is the stuff we're not buying.
Here are the top ten from Big Champagne:
Top10 (all) November 24, 2003 to December 1, 2003 LW TW Artist Track #01 #01 OutKast Hey Ya #06 #02 Kelis Milkshake #07 #03 Ludacris Stand Up #13 #04 Chingy Holidae In #02 #05 OutKast The Way You Move #10 #06 3 Doors Down Here Without You #08 #07 Linkin Park Numb #04 #08 Beyonce Knowles Baby Boy #03 #09 50 Cent P.I.M.P. #11 #10 G-Unit Stunt 101
Yep, no Beatles, no Led Zeppelin,... people on p2p networks download the same stuff we don't like that they buy in CD stores. Those wacky kids!
That would be extremely cool. Given how miserable adware and spyware makes computing, there have to be significant support costs that the computer companies are suffering. Perhaps they could sue these companies for screwing up their customers' computers? It'd be fun, though perhaps a dangerous precedent.
"Perhaps the rise of legitimate online alternatives to piracy -- stores that actually give people what they want -- are a bigger contributor."
As I said, coorelation doesn't prove causality. So it's entirely plausaibel that the availability of legitimate alternatives has caused some people to leave the p2p networks as well. But the number of people that left the p2p networks (perhaps 1M) is much larger than the number of people buying music digitally (perhaps 100K), so it's probably not the only cause. Of course, without hard numbers, it's hard to do more than guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all time is billable. Putting together a MythTV is _fun_, not _work_. If you can build one for $400, and assemble it in your spare time for fun, it only cost $400. If you build MythTV's to sell for a living, I guess it's fair including your time as a cost... :-)
This kinda reminds of of the Apple ][ vs. TRS-80 debates, when the TRS-80 guys would say "we can store 300K on a $3 cassette, you floppy disk guys are wasting money".
:-)
Of course, there are certain advantages to random access storage with a directory structure. Like, say, knowing what's on the disk and where it is.
"And then, for more usual commercial images, photographers still use film"
:-)
Actually, back when we were testing very high end analog vs. digital at Sotheby's (about 5 years ago), we found that digital cameras produced clearly superior results for printed material than analog. And, if you've looked at any Sotheby's catalogues, you'll know that we take that sort of thing seriously. It's arguable whether the original source digital image was better, but by the time the film got processed, stripped, placed in the layout and printed, it had clearly suffered. The fact that they also cost less to deal with (an asset repository beats a box of chromes any day) and less to process was just icing on the cake.
I suspect that in the last five years, digital cameras have improved faster than analog.
If anyone's sticking with film over digital, it's for romantic reasons, or because they can't afford new gear, not image quality.
" I would strongly object to the idea that you can "see the results immediately" if you mean the measily preview you get on the built in LCD."
:-)
Well, I don't know about other cameras, but with Canon you hold one button to review, then push a slider to zoom in, so you can quickly see whether you caught the details you were after... It only takes a couple of seconds, vs. hours or days for photo processing.
"You just spend a fortune on the initial camera. Amazon's store (Electronics > Camera & Photo > Categories > Film Cameras > SLR Cameras > Manual SLR Cameras) has cameras centered about $250, with one $161. The least expensive digital SLR I've seen is I think ~$800. The difference then is about 50 rolls of film. I don't think I've shot that many in my life."
50 rolls? 50 rolls? That's only 1,800 shots. You'll never learn to shoot on a budget like that.
If you want to get good at photography, the only way to do it is to take THOUSANDS of photographs, and learning by doing what works and what doesn't. This means either buying film in bulk and loading it yourself (which I did for years, and isn't as fun as it sounsd) or go digital.
You _might_ make a case for shooting black and white, since it's way cheaper to buy the film, and you can print it yourself, which is a great education.
If you're serious about photography, though, and want color, the costs aren't even close. You can get a great digital camera for around $500 (e.g. the Canon G2 or G3) or the new Digital Rebel DSLR for $1,000, and then be able to experiment like crazy at ZERO COST. Even better than saving money in the long run, it means that you can exeriment fearlessly, which means that you can take more risks and learn more.
My advice, since you don't want to spend a lot of money up front, would be to get an all-in-one digital camera. Make sure that it gives you good manual control, has a fairly large lens, and at least a little zoom for flexibility. Something like a used Canon G2, for $400 or so.
If you find out that you aren't into it, you can always sell it on eBay and get most of your money back. It's amazing, but old G2's are selling for $400, when you can get a G5 for just over $500!
And if you get addicted, you'll start saying things like "I can't believe that the Digital Rebel costs only $1,000 with a lens" and "But if I get a Nikon D2H, not only can I use all my Nikkor lenses, but the camera can use 802.11 to FTP the photo's right to my server while I'm shooting!"
At least it's cheaper than boating.
"Well that's f'in wonderful. So it could be in the hands of anyone...including those who would use it against your own citizens? You deserve that "cold, drafty, leaky house"."
Wow, read his FAQ. It's not like it's a loaded weapon -- it's an unfinished remotely piloted vehicle that's far less dangerous right now than, say, a car.
"What you can not stop is someone copying the audio from the sound output, or the video from the video output. These will NOT be faithful reproductions of the original, but will be close enough for most purposes"
:-)
I agree, but would like to elaborate on two points:
1) There are people trying to block the ability to intercept the audio stream by having the audio stream encrypted all the way to the speakers. Of course, this would mean that you can only listen to music on certified "safe" speakers, etc.
2) You can get a very high quality capture of the audio stream. For example, using Audio Hijack Pro you can capture the perfect digital audio stream (MacOS X) and re-encode it however you like. Yes, it's decoded and re-encoded, but it's very handy for capturing streams for offline playback, etc. Yes, it's not a perfect copy, because it's a re-encoding, but it sounds fine to me.
The reality is that as long as you can buy music on a CD that plays on an audio CD player, there's no point in hard-core DRM. I think that iTMS' "speed bump" approach is a pretty reasonable compromise...
"And like some "discounted" cell phones or computers (like from eMachines), what are the chances that this PC will be watered down as well, like crippling its upgradability? (ex. a drive rack with space for a single hard drive, 1-2 open PCI slots, low memory capacity for RAM, etc.)"
) and configured it to match the AOL offer, and it came out to $443.95. There's a nice picture of the Systemex system guts (NB: AOL might not be using this model, but it's what it looks like Systemex sells otherwise) at http://www.globalcomputer.com/media/html/config_de tail_view/ven_series_view.html?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_ id=4014945&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=7401281&ASSORTMENT% 3C%3East_id=593&bmUID=1070638433313. It looks like six PCI slots, four 3.5" bays, two 5.25" bays, and an AGP video slot. Judging by AOL's photo's, the PC has a floppy drive, though one's not listed in the system spec's. It also looks like AOL adds some software (e.g. AOL Office).
Well, given that there's a cost to providing AOL service, the $24 a month isn't 100% an offset to a possible loss on the PC, so the PC is probably pretty close to really being a $299 PC. I went to the Systemax web site (http://www.systemax.com, which linked into www.globalcomputer.com/pcconfig/pcconfigland1.jsp
So it's not a FANTASTIC computer, but not pathetic either. For $299 (plus interest if you don't pay it off right away) it's not bad...
Well, where I live broadband is $40-45 a month, which is (according to a survey I just read) the national average, while the cost or AOL is $24 a month, which gets you internet access and also the AOL stuff. So assuming that you're not paying for a phone line just for internet access (a few people also use telephone lines to talk to people) dial is still cheaper...
Well, for people experienced with the internet, I agree that a cheap ISP is the best deal, because all you really need is TCP/IP routing and a mail server. But for someone who wants to have their hand held, AOL's not a bad start -- it's certainly The plain internet access ISP's have gotten better over the years, but it's still easier getting AOL working than installing and configuring PPP, web, email, etc., individually.
Personally, I'd go straight to broadband rather than dial, but that's 2x as much, and we're talking about people who don't want to spend that kind of money on the internet.
"The math ( (12*23.90)+299 ) seems to suggest that you can get a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges"
This math is only correct if you assume that there's no value in having AOL dial access. If you think that AOL access is worth the $23.90 a month that millions of people are already paying for it, you're getting a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges, plus agreeing to stay on AOL for a year.
This doesn't sound any more sleazy than cell phone companies giving you a heavily discounted cell phone in return for a commitment for longer service. If you don't want to make the commitment, don't sign the contract, and don't take the up front discount.
To me, this looks like a decent way for people who aren't online to get online very cheaply and learn whether they want to spend more for broadband, etc., later.
"$299 with a $20+ a month lock-in contract, so what they really mean is something closer to about $450."
You're exaggerating by leaving out the fact that they're getting AOL access, which millions of people are paying $20+ a month for without getting a cheap PC. If you think that AOL service is worth nothing, then your math works, I suppose, but...
"The budget has not been balanced for about 50 years"
Yes, it's sleazy to count money coming in for social security in the same category as income tax, etc., since that money coming in will ultimately need to be paid out to beneficiaries. But according to the article you linked to on "The Dixieland Law Journal" says that "80 percent of the president's supposed $237 billion surplus automatically disappears", which means that even after putting the money back into the Social Security fund where it belongs, the year that article was written (under Clinton, but it's not clear exactly when, since there are no dates or other publication details) there was still a budget surplus, just a smaller one than claimed.
If people really cared about keeping the money straight, they would have voted for Gore, who campaigned on cleaning that situation up, instead of Bush. (Oh wait, they did!)
More importantly, since Bush took office, and the Republicans are running all three branches of the government, not only have they kept up the sleazy practice of borrowing against the assets of the Social Security Fund, they've managed to drive even the "fake" numbers insanely negative.
"Voting should not be about trust, it should be about results. Any third party should be able to verify results, regardless of their interest."
In a voting system you don't need to trust the participants, you need to trust the process. That's why when you count ballots you have representatives of both parties present so that they can all witness what's going on rather than having to trust a ballot counter. So each ballot counter may have an agenda, but the process prevents abuse by any one participant, so that you can still trust the outcome.
According to Slyck (caveat: I don't know how they generate these numbers, so I can't defend them) the level of participation on the networks that people think aren't being monitored by the RIAA is up, but overall there's still a significant decline.
"The budget was never "balanced" while Clinton was in office: every single year that national debt was at least hundred billion dollars higher at the end of the year than the start."
6 00.jpg. I'd embed the graphic here for reference, but /. doesn't allow that, so you'll have to copy/paste the URL, sorry.
According to Reuters and the Congressional Budget Office, you're wrong.
Please go look at justinspoliticaljournal.cafeprogressive.com/4239a
Just in case you're having trouble reading the graph, the red parts are deficit spending, and the blue bits (Johnson's last year, Clinton's last four years) are budget surplusses.
Imagine how much better off those numbers would look if they weren't dragged down by the interest on the trillions of dollars of debt we inherited from the "borrow and spend" republicans...
This is amazing -- how the heck did GWB's official bio on the whitehouse.gov web site get to the top of the results list? Google's search algorithms really ARE good!
I did a little digging, and found an article here (http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2003/09/2 4/recording_industry_withdraws_suit/) which speculated that either the RIAA made a mistake on the IP address or Comcast made a mistake in matching up the IP address with the user account. In either case, the lawsuit was withdrawn as it was pretty obvious that (as a Mac user) she wasn't running KaZaA.
:-(
(OK, unless she was running a PC emulator. But that's kinda unlikely for a 66 year old "computer neophite" accused of downloading hard-core rap.)
Sadly, "I use a Mac" isn't a defense any more, since Poisoned added support for sharing files into FastTrack.
I am pretty sure that having a lawsuit filed makes you "accused," not "guilty". Though I am sure that anyone filing a lawsuit would argue that the person that they're suing is guilt... "Guilty until proven innocent" is the presumption that the judge and jury must make, not the accuser.
They did investigate -- they found an IP address that had hundreds or thousands of files being illegally shared on public p2p networks, then got the address of the person associated with the IP address from the ISP.
IANAL, but a I recall, some lawyer explained it here a while ago -- the paperwork they're filing is apparently only the first step in the process, where they're saying that they think that something illegal happened and that they think you did it, after which you can make the argument that it wasn't you, or nothing illegal happened, or settle, before they actually file the real lawsuit.
Personally, I think that the people who broke the law are the ones serving and downloading copyrighted files. For a really evil case, imagine someone with an insecure wireless LAN setup (i.e. almost all wireless LAN's) whose cable modem is used by a third party without their knowledge, to do illegal things. There was just a case like this in the news, where someone sitting in a car on the street was downloading kiddie porn (I think it was) using a random house's wireless LAN. They caught him because he wasn't wearing any pants...
I suspect that for the sake of reasonable enforcement (i.e. the same reason that the owner of the car is responsible for the parking ticket), they might end up deciding that the owner of the broadband connection is responsible for everything done on it, because it's impossible to prove who was sitting in front of a computer, but it's easy to prove who is paying the ISP bill. That'd suck for free public wireless networks, though.
Yeah, I'm getting old too, but all those millions of people, exchanging billions of files, clearly like music, and the music that they like is the stuff we're not buying.
... people on p2p networks download the same stuff we don't like that they buy in CD stores. Those wacky kids!
Here are the top ten from Big Champagne:
Top10 (all) November 24, 2003 to December 1, 2003
LW TW Artist Track
#01 #01 OutKast Hey Ya
#06 #02 Kelis Milkshake
#07 #03 Ludacris Stand Up
#13 #04 Chingy Holidae In
#02 #05 OutKast The Way You Move
#10 #06 3 Doors Down Here Without You
#08 #07 Linkin Park Numb
#04 #08 Beyonce Knowles Baby Boy
#03 #09 50 Cent P.I.M.P.
#11 #10 G-Unit Stunt 101
Yep, no Beatles, no Led Zeppelin,
That would be extremely cool. Given how miserable adware and spyware makes computing, there have to be significant support costs that the computer companies are suffering. Perhaps they could sue these companies for screwing up their customers' computers? It'd be fun, though perhaps a dangerous precedent.
Here's what Slyck's reporting right now:
P2P Networks
December 1, 2003 - 18:00 EST
Network Users
FastTrack 3,406,831
eDonkey 1,408,838
iMesh 1,127,835
Overnet 516,096
MP2P 290,705
Gnutella 190,500
DirectConnect 165,071
Ares 68,226
Filetopia 3,495
So they're not reporting private networks, IRC, usenet, etc., for pretty obvious technical reasons.
"Perhaps the rise of legitimate online alternatives to piracy -- stores that actually give people what they want -- are a bigger contributor."
As I said, coorelation doesn't prove causality. So it's entirely plausaibel that the availability of legitimate alternatives has caused some people to leave the p2p networks as well. But the number of people that left the p2p networks (perhaps 1M) is much larger than the number of people buying music digitally (perhaps 100K), so it's probably not the only cause. Of course, without hard numbers, it's hard to do more than guess.