You can try to make a living making music. You just don't have a guarantee that you will succeed. Once recorded, your song has no value, because it costs nothing to reproduce it. The current system assigns value to your recording by making laws that restrict reproduction. What you are asking for is to create something with no monetary value and to receive monetary compensation for doing it. That's just plain broken.
No-one should make music for money. If they get money, that's good, but if not getting money is going to stop you performing, you should probably stop anyway.
I get a little irked by all these people complaining because they can't make money any more. Here's a hint: if you don't need to sing or play; if you don't enjoy it so much that you'd do it for free, I don't want to listen to your music. It's "musicians" that are only in it for the money that gives us crap like the Spice Girls.
I realize that it costs money to record music. Get a job! It's not that expensive. There's lots of jobs out there, and why should you be exempted from being a productive member of society?
It costs even more money to tour. But if you're good enough to be able to play outside your home town, you should be able to charge enough for tickets to cover your costs. Tour during your vacation. If you're making money touring, take some unpaid time off work from your real job.
Basically, what I'm saying is that these people have chosen to become musicians. Now they're bitching to me because they can't make any money at what they've chosen to do. Hint #2: the good musicians are making a living. So are some of the bad ones, but when recorded music is freely available, that will stop.
Microsoft has 95% of the market for buggy software. RedHat, Caldera & so on are bad enough as competition, but they're really in the "stable software" market, where Microsoft doesn't do much of their business.
Now Celera has open-sourced the fruit fly genome, anyone can generate as many bugs as they want (although only a company with Microsoft's resources could create 65,000 of them). Expect Celera to be the target of a hostile takeover pretty soon.
You mean like Virgin Cola? Pretty much indistinguishable from Coke, and much cheaper. Coke accused them of stealing the recipe. People still drink Coke, though.
IANAL, but if you're not using the domain, and they want it, offer to sell it to them for reasonable costs ($50, or whatever it cost you to register it).
Ask for more, and you're a no-good domain squatter. Try to fight, and you're toast.
Tell them you'll take payment in kind. Hold out for at least 240 cans.
What are nVidia thinking? They don't charge for the driver, so it's not like they are losing revenue by opening the source. It sounds like they are really balkanized within the company, and the software guys have lost site of the fact that they are a hardware company. Even if some other company copied their driver, they would still have to duplicate the hardware. And by the time they've done that, nVidia will have a new card out.
So, given that they have (wrong-headedly) decided to develop a binary-only driver, why are they developing one that will not support DRI? Multi-heading is a small issue (not that many people do it) but this seems calculated to piss people off. In a community where reputation is everything, nVidia is laying the tarnish on with a thick brush.
I'm sorry. It sounded like the kind of thing M$ might do. After all, Howard Hughes bought people to protect him with their lives, WHG could certainly do the same to protect his market share.
Perhaps you would care to update that link with one that actually exists?
I wouldn't want any general-purpose OS (RT-Linux, QNX, WinCE, whatever) on my pacemaker. I want something built from the ground up to keep my heart beating. Which doesn't take a whole lot of processor power, really.
Who on earth made the decision that the release of FreeBSD 4.0 wasn't even worthy of a mention as a "quickie," yet the book review on assosciate programs was worthy of a whole article?
Strictly speaking you are correct. Under the DCMA, DeCSS is illegal because its *only* use is to circumvent a copy-protection scheme.
Here's where it gets interesting. Had JJ bundled DeCSS with a playback program, the whole bundle would have been legal. Would that have stopped the MPAA from harrassing him? Of course not. They would have pointed out that DeCSS was in a separate module, or in a separate function, or something, and got him on that.
Why is the MPAA so angry about DeCSS? DVD-CAA is clearly pissed because now anyone can build a DVD player without paying their extortionate licensing fees. But the MPAA plays a longer game. They want to charge pay-per-view even for media you buy (a la Divx). Want to bet those closed-source Win & Mac DVD players don't have any back doors in them?
<long_ramble> Has any thought been given to siccing Janet Reno on the MPAA/DVD-CCA? They are a legal monopoly, and appear to be engaged in bundling. Yes, you can by the DVD player, yes you can buy the DVD. But unless you also buy the Windows or Mac OS you can't use them (you can't even write your own because they'll sue you). </long_ramble>
It took me 90 minutes to write this comment (lunch got in the way). I guess there goes my chance of being first.
Napster itself is legality-neutral (like almost all tools). Since today there is no way to distinguish between an illegal and a legal MP3, Napster can't be held responsible if people choose to use it to share the former as well as the latter.
OTOH Napster is a worse bandwidth hog than W2K's Active Directory. Both should be banned.
As many people have pointed out, this is "bad" fragmentation. It's another distro with hardly any value-add, aimed at a tiny section of the market.
But the good thing is that they didn't start from scratch. They started with the most famous (if not the biggest) distro and made some minor changes. If you can handle RedHat, you can handle Gentus (probably). So long as future releases stay current with RH, there shouldn't be a problem. I don't know how likely that is to happen, though.
The opinions from my house
on
The Truth
·
· Score: 2
I liked it. I thought it well up to Terry's usual high standard.
My wife loved it. She thinks it's his best book ever.
Terry was obviously (too obviously at times) drawing on his formative years as a journalist, but he does a good job of exploring the differences between human interest, the public interest, and what people are actually interested in.
It was interesting to see Cmdr. Vimes in a book where he's not the main character. If you hadn't read any of the other books, I can see how Vimes would seem to be somewhat cardboard in this story. For those who know Vimes, this is an insight on what it's like to be the other side of the "Stoneface". Not that anyone should be surprised, but it reminded me that Vimes has an extremely unpleasant outer persona.
Woz (of course) makes a good point regarding teaching of Linux/*BSD. Before you get to that you actually need to teach computer science. OS design is only a small area of the discipline, albeit an important and (currently) popular one.
I don't think most children will benefit greatly from being taught with free software as opposed to Mac or Windows programs. Obviously taxpayers and future programmers and OS designers will benefit. But most students are going to be using computers as tools, sealed boxes, and they need to learn different lessons. Like don't forward the hoax virus warnings you get in your email. Don't run cute executables from people you don't know. And don't believe everything you read on Slashdot, even if it is from a karma whore with a +1 bonus.
First off, it's nice to see a government making better use of its resources by not paying for software that can be had for free. Not that China ever paid for much software, software theft is pretty much the norm.
On the downside, China is going to have problems developing an "entrepeneur economy" if the government dictates technology. "Use Linux not W2K" is OK, but what if they come down next and say "use MySQL not Oracle" or "use GTK not Qt"?
Re:Is GPL the new name for throw-away?
on
Verge2 GPLed
·
· Score: 1
Look who slipped through the moderation net.
Since you obviously feel there are fallacies in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, why don't you post the article? I was actually referring to The Magic Cauldron, which you'd have known had you followed the link.
Not that there aren't flaws in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, I just didn't think they were relevant to this discussion.
just a handful of pins (more then a dozen, but not much more)
How much do you pay for gloves?
Re:Is GPL the new name for throw-away?
on
Verge2 GPLed
·
· Score: 5
I actually like this trend of freeing old software. While it would undoubtedly make us all feel better if all software was free, there are good reasons to keep a program closed-source. If the environment changes (and it does) then the advantages of closed-source can evaporate, leaving it in the best interests of everyone to open-source it. If it works, or contains worthwhile code, people will use it. If not, it will die. Either way, it's all upside.
I think one of the best points in this model is that you no longer have to support clients that are ridiculously back-level. Publish the source code and have them fix it themselves or pay some random hacker to do so.
As someone who works with NT (and who keeps his NT servers up way past 49.7 days) I can tell you that NT versioning really pisses me off.
Everyone knows that the current version of NT is 4.6.1 (or 4.6.). But type in ver and you get
Windows NT Version 4.0
. Go to "My Computer"/"Properties" and it gives you the more detailed but equally inaccurate
Microsoft Windows NT 4.00.1381
which is the build of the first production release of NT4.
No, to find the service pack number you have to fire up Task Manager, File Manager or any one of a dozen other apps and go to "Help"/"About". It still thinks it's build 1381.
As far as I am aware, the only way to find the build number is to reboot and watch the text on the blue screen.
Slashdot Mirror
You can try to make a living making music. You just don't have a guarantee that you will succeed. Once recorded, your song has no value, because it costs nothing to reproduce it. The current system assigns value to your recording by making laws that restrict reproduction. What you are asking for is to create something with no monetary value and to receive monetary compensation for doing it. That's just plain broken.
No-one should make music for money. If they get money, that's good, but if not getting money is going to stop you performing, you should probably stop anyway.
I hate to start a flame war or anything, but when exactly was slavery outlawed in Virginia?
I get a little irked by all these people complaining because they can't make money any more. Here's a hint: if you don't need to sing or play; if you don't enjoy it so much that you'd do it for free, I don't want to listen to your music. It's "musicians" that are only in it for the money that gives us crap like the Spice Girls.
I realize that it costs money to record music. Get a job! It's not that expensive. There's lots of jobs out there, and why should you be exempted from being a productive member of society?
It costs even more money to tour. But if you're good enough to be able to play outside your home town, you should be able to charge enough for tickets to cover your costs. Tour during your vacation. If you're making money touring, take some unpaid time off work from your real job.
Basically, what I'm saying is that these people have chosen to become musicians. Now they're bitching to me because they can't make any money at what they've chosen to do. Hint #2: the good musicians are making a living. So are some of the bad ones, but when recorded music is freely available, that will stop.
Score: -1, Incoherent Ranting
Microsoft has 95% of the market for buggy software. RedHat, Caldera & so on are bad enough as competition, but they're really in the "stable software" market, where Microsoft doesn't do much of their business.
Now Celera has open-sourced the fruit fly genome, anyone can generate as many bugs as they want (although only a company with Microsoft's resources could create 65,000 of them). Expect Celera to be the target of a hostile takeover pretty soon.
Score: -1. Not very funny.
You mean like Virgin Cola? Pretty much indistinguishable from Coke, and much cheaper. Coke accused them of stealing the recipe. People still drink Coke, though.
IANAL, but if you're not using the domain, and they want it, offer to sell it to them for reasonable costs ($50, or whatever it cost you to register it).
Ask for more, and you're a no-good domain squatter. Try to fight, and you're toast.
Tell them you'll take payment in kind. Hold out for at least 240 cans.
What are nVidia thinking? They don't charge for the driver, so it's not like they are losing revenue by opening the source. It sounds like they are really balkanized within the company, and the software guys have lost site of the fact that they are a hardware company. Even if some other company copied their driver, they would still have to duplicate the hardware. And by the time they've done that, nVidia will have a new card out.
So, given that they have (wrong-headedly) decided to develop a binary-only driver, why are they developing one that will not support DRI? Multi-heading is a small issue (not that many people do it) but this seems calculated to piss people off. In a community where reputation is everything, nVidia is laying the tarnish on with a thick brush.
Will Cyber Patrol be blocking oscars.org?
I'm sorry. It sounded like the kind of thing M$ might do. After all, Howard Hughes bought people to protect him with their lives, WHG could certainly do the same to protect his market share.
Perhaps you would care to update that link with one that actually exists?
I wouldn't want any general-purpose OS (RT-Linux, QNX, WinCE, whatever) on my pacemaker. I want something built from the ground up to keep my heart beating. Which doesn't take a whole lot of processor power, really.
Who on earth made the decision that the release of FreeBSD 4.0 wasn't even worthy of a mention as a "quickie," yet the book review on assosciate programs was worthy of a whole article?
Did you miss this article?
Strictly speaking you are correct. Under the DCMA, DeCSS is illegal because its *only* use is to circumvent a copy-protection scheme.
Here's where it gets interesting. Had JJ bundled DeCSS with a playback program, the whole bundle would have been legal. Would that have stopped the MPAA from harrassing him? Of course not. They would have pointed out that DeCSS was in a separate module, or in a separate function, or something, and got him on that.
Why is the MPAA so angry about DeCSS? DVD-CAA is clearly pissed because now anyone can build a DVD player without paying their extortionate licensing fees. But the MPAA plays a longer game. They want to charge pay-per-view even for media you buy (a la Divx). Want to bet those closed-source Win & Mac DVD players don't have any back doors in them?
<long_ramble>
Has any thought been given to siccing Janet Reno on the MPAA/DVD-CCA? They are a legal monopoly, and appear to be engaged in bundling. Yes, you can by the DVD player, yes you can buy the DVD. But unless you also buy the Windows or Mac OS you can't use them (you can't even write your own because they'll sue you).
</long_ramble>
It took me 90 minutes to write this comment (lunch got in the way). I guess there goes my chance of being first.
Apparently the US has been exporting its stupid export regulations.
Napster itself is legality-neutral (like almost all tools). Since today there is no way to distinguish between an illegal and a legal MP3, Napster can't be held responsible if people choose to use it to share the former as well as the latter.
OTOH Napster is a worse bandwidth hog than W2K's Active Directory. Both should be banned.
As many people have pointed out, this is "bad" fragmentation. It's another distro with hardly any value-add, aimed at a tiny section of the market.
But the good thing is that they didn't start from scratch. They started with the most famous (if not the biggest) distro and made some minor changes. If you can handle RedHat, you can handle Gentus (probably). So long as future releases stay current with RH, there shouldn't be a problem. I don't know how likely that is to happen, though.
I liked it. I thought it well up to Terry's usual high standard.
My wife loved it. She thinks it's his best book ever.
Terry was obviously (too obviously at times) drawing on his formative years as a journalist, but he does a good job of exploring the differences between human interest, the public interest, and what people are actually interested in.
It was interesting to see Cmdr. Vimes in a book where he's not the main character. If you hadn't read any of the other books, I can see how Vimes would seem to be somewhat cardboard in this story. For those who know Vimes, this is an insight on what it's like to be the other side of the "Stoneface". Not that anyone should be surprised, but it reminded me that Vimes has an extremely unpleasant outer persona.
--
Strange but true: more bees have stung me on the feet (when trodden on) than any other part of my body. Maybe they really don't fly.
Woz (of course) makes a good point regarding teaching of Linux/*BSD. Before you get to that you actually need to teach computer science. OS design is only a small area of the discipline, albeit an important and (currently) popular one.
I don't think most children will benefit greatly from being taught with free software as opposed to Mac or Windows programs. Obviously taxpayers and future programmers and OS designers will benefit. But most students are going to be using computers as tools, sealed boxes, and they need to learn different lessons. Like don't forward the hoax virus warnings you get in your email. Don't run cute executables from people you don't know. And don't believe everything you read on Slashdot, even if it is from a karma whore with a +1 bonus.
First off, it's nice to see a government making better use of its resources by not paying for software that can be had for free. Not that China ever paid for much software, software theft is pretty much the norm.
On the downside, China is going to have problems developing an "entrepeneur economy" if the government dictates technology. "Use Linux not W2K" is OK, but what if they come down next and say "use MySQL not Oracle" or "use GTK not Qt"?
Look who slipped through the moderation net.
Since you obviously feel there are fallacies in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, why don't you post the article? I was actually referring to The Magic Cauldron, which you'd have known had you followed the link.
Not that there aren't flaws in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, I just didn't think they were relevant to this discussion.
I actually like this trend of freeing old software. While it would undoubtedly make us all feel better if all software was free, there are good reasons to keep a program closed-source. If the environment changes (and it does) then the advantages of closed-source can evaporate, leaving it in the best interests of everyone to open-source it. If it works, or contains worthwhile code, people will use it. If not, it will die. Either way, it's all upside.
I think one of the best points in this model is that you no longer have to support clients that are ridiculously back-level. Publish the source code and have them fix it themselves or pay some random hacker to do so.
ESR wrote an interesting essay on this subject.
Gigabit ethernet from system memory to the disk? Or to the NIC? Sounds like a bunch of highly specialized NCs in a single box.
Now if only they'd concentrate on this rather than the pointless MHz race we could actually see some real improvement in performance.
>(or 4.6.).
should be
>(or 4.6.[some version number]).
I always preview. Always. Except this time.
Everyone knows that the current version of NT is 4.6.1 (or 4.6.). But type in ver and you get . Go to "My Computer"/"Properties" and it gives you the more detailed but equally inaccurate which is the build of the first production release of NT4.
No, to find the service pack number you have to fire up Task Manager, File Manager or any one of a dozen other apps and go to "Help"/"About". It still thinks it's build 1381.
As far as I am aware, the only way to find the build number is to reboot and watch the text on the blue screen.