When the radio, television, cars and countless other technologies were first developed, anyone with access to the technology could use it for whatever purpose without any hassles aside from those presented by the technology itself. When new, radio/television content was provided by anyone with something to communicate. In time, licencing, increasing costs of use and other factors were introduced that presented barriers to entry for the enthusiast. Radio and television have since become read-only media.
By fluke or by design, similar barriers are going up around the internet. Bandwidth costs money, overzealous IP lawyers, new laws and a miriade of other factors are starting to inhibit the enthusiasts ability to write on this medium.
With large business and government seeking to control the internet as it does other media, how long to you anticipate the internet remaining a read-write technology for the home user?
Grandparent correct, As the owner of a few car audio shops, nothing made my day more than selling stuff to kids who thought they needed it. The sales pitch was always based on some fragment of truth then a wild jump to a $200 solution. In the case of the caps, the fragment of truth was that the voltage at the back of the car dropped when the amp sucked some current. The REAL answer is both of the following: 1: thats how electricity works 2: the effect can be minimized by making sure your connections are solid (the drop is caused by resistance, NOT the fact that your battery cant keep up to the demand.. the battery can run your starter at a couple hundred amps) The real answers arent all that profitable, nor are they very cool, so we sell you big caps, and your friends drool with envy at your new equipment while you pretend to hear a big difference in the sound. The same principle drives the music/clothing/other industries... 'the dumbest buy the mostest'
Have you ever played with a car amp that needs 1000 watts? No, and neither have you. 1K watts is about 1.5 HORSEPOWER. In recent years, many manufacturers of car audio equipment have been competing for your money by putting really large numbers on the cases of thier devices just because it makes kids buy them. Take the average radio.. a good one claims to do 40 watts per channel, on a 12 volt powersupply and a 4 ohm load, the maximum possible output wattage is 36.. and thats assuming a 100% efficient amplifier (which doesnt exist)
Im normally not a big fan, but this was a good Katz article despite the fact that it held all of the typical Katizms (stating the mostly-obvious, preaching to the converted) which are the inspiration for so many flame wars. More people really need to be aware of the fact that media is market driven.
Simple awareness of the motivation behind the media (in all its forms, the internet is not innocent) can do wonders to promote the media literacy that we teach our kids in school, but remain so terribly wanting ourselves.
Problems is: Media would never let it be suggested that what they present is anything but gods full honest truth. If the media doesnt take this message to the masses, who will?
While it could be said that Win XP is useless because it was brought to us be the makers of edlin, it doesnt validate the argument, regardless of your opinions on either.
GM foods can be a good thing (see golden rice), and pollution is a bad thing (see earth), please be carefull not to base any futher flames on the fact that one company is guilty of both.
Now that the browser wars have been reduced to a minor skirmish (leaving the losers to bicker over whether mozilla or konqueror is better. The previous ruling which, iirc, mandated the division of MS into an OS division and a browser division, seems pointless. With the trial moving ahead now, I sincerly hope that they find that the best solution now will be to divide them into an OS division and an application divisiion.
with both Mini-Softs having to communicate like real busineses do, file formats and protocols become more open, allowing/real/ competition and maybe some/real/ innovation. Both of two new companies will have some good points (one is grand-ma friendly, the other made an effort to come up with a standard set of keybindings (which is more important than it sounds))... I think this would do a whole lot of good for everyone involved.
Its interesting to see the music industry (even a tily little faction of it.. like one band) adopting what appears to be an open source approach to music... "we write it, feel free to hack it if you want.'
I personally dont care for the music, but it will be really interesting to see if any others follow suit, and what the results will be.
I had the shiney side (the side with all the print on it too) eaten off in chunks from a few CDs while I lived in Costa Rica (about 6 days by bus south of Belize), common speculation down there was that it was cockroaches that were the culprit, I had caught a few loitering around my CDs a couple of times, but never actually caught any eating anything. I have also witnessed the same thing on some friends CDs in Honduras (only a day and a half by bus from Belize, depending on route).
I have to wonder about the fungus answer though, since none of the CDs that I had with me at the time are being eaten still while they live up here in Canada, I would imaging that a fungus could endure this climate just fine, though cockroaches and people have a fairly hard time of it.
While this may mean that the linux community loses a big (?) chunk of its user base (and maybe a whole platform), It should be remembered that MacOSX is about to put *nix on your grandmothers desktop, we could learn a heck of alot from this.
Slashdot Mirror
spiffy real media demo from forbes at:h tml
http://www.forbes.com/2002/08/15/0815subway.
When the radio, television, cars and countless other technologies were first developed, anyone with access to the technology could use it for whatever purpose without any hassles aside from those presented by the technology itself. When new, radio/television content was provided by anyone with something to communicate. In time, licencing, increasing costs of use and other factors were introduced that presented barriers to entry for the enthusiast. Radio and television have since become read-only media.
By fluke or by design, similar barriers are going up around the internet. Bandwidth costs money, overzealous IP lawyers, new laws and a miriade of other factors are starting to inhibit the enthusiasts ability to write on this medium.
With large business and government seeking to control the internet as it does other media, how long to you anticipate the internet remaining a read-write technology for the home user?
Grandparent correct, As the owner of a few car audio shops, nothing made my day more than selling stuff to kids who thought they needed it. The sales pitch was always based on some fragment of truth then a wild jump to a $200 solution. In the case of the caps, the fragment of truth was that the voltage at the back of the car dropped when the amp sucked some current. The REAL answer is both of the following: 1: thats how electricity works 2: the effect can be minimized by making sure your connections are solid (the drop is caused by resistance, NOT the fact that your battery cant keep up to the demand.. the battery can run your starter at a couple hundred amps)
The real answers arent all that profitable, nor are they very cool, so we sell you big caps, and your friends drool with envy at your new equipment while you pretend to hear a big difference in the sound. The same principle drives the music/clothing/other industries... 'the dumbest buy the mostest'
Have you ever played with a car amp that needs 1000 watts?
No, and neither have you. 1K watts is about 1.5 HORSEPOWER. In recent years, many manufacturers of car audio equipment have been competing for your money by putting really large numbers on the cases of thier devices just because it makes kids buy them. Take the average radio.. a good one claims to do 40 watts per channel, on a 12 volt powersupply and a 4 ohm load, the maximum possible output wattage is 36.. and thats assuming a 100% efficient amplifier (which doesnt exist)
Im normally not a big fan, but this was a good Katz article despite the fact that it held all of the typical Katizms (stating the mostly-obvious, preaching to the converted) which are the inspiration for so many flame wars. More people really need to be aware of the fact that media is market driven.
Simple awareness of the motivation behind the media (in all its forms, the internet is not innocent) can do wonders to promote the media literacy that we teach our kids in school, but remain so terribly wanting ourselves.
Problems is: Media would never let it be suggested that what they present is anything but gods full honest truth. If the media doesnt take this message to the masses, who will?
While it could be said that Win XP is useless because it was brought to us be the makers of edlin, it doesnt validate the argument, regardless of your opinions on either.
GM foods can be a good thing (see golden rice), and pollution is a bad thing (see earth), please be carefull not to base any futher flames on the fact that one company is guilty of both.
with both Mini-Softs having to communicate like real busineses do, file formats and protocols become more open, allowing /real/ competition and maybe some /real/ innovation. Both of two new companies will have some good points (one is grand-ma friendly, the other made an effort to come up with a standard set of keybindings (which is more important than it sounds)) ... I think this would do a whole lot of good for everyone involved.
The commercial publishing goons will then sell the music that you created and give you a relative pittance.
A perfect summary of the recording industry itself. Perhaps I should have said 'more open' or 'less closed'?
s/good/less evil/
Watch this Lars! sharing might be ok after all.
I had the shiney side (the side with all the print on it too) eaten off in chunks from a few CDs while I lived in Costa Rica (about 6 days by bus south of Belize), common speculation down there was that it was cockroaches that were the culprit, I had caught a few loitering around my CDs a couple of times, but never actually caught any eating anything. I have also witnessed the same thing on some friends CDs in Honduras (only a day and a half by bus from Belize, depending on route). I have to wonder about the fungus answer though, since none of the CDs that I had with me at the time are being eaten still while they live up here in Canada, I would imaging that a fungus could endure this climate just fine, though cockroaches and people have a fairly hard time of it.
While this may mean that the linux community loses a big (?) chunk of its user base (and maybe a whole platform), It should be remembered that MacOSX is about to put *nix on your grandmothers desktop, we could learn a heck of alot from this.