"No, it's not a good thing in disguise. Why? Because that music tax would only go to RIAA-owned artists. Every other musician would get entirely fucked over."
That's probably a very big motivating factor in the minds of the greedy and corrupt RIAA affiliates. The RIAA companies are losing market share hand over fist (latest evidence the sky is falling - Tower Records went bye bye, just like a plethora of other brick and morter music stores). The alternative avenue for musicians is direct marketing via the web portal and indie labels. Get a so-called "pirate tax" you get a piece of all those indie artists using non-RIAA channels to get their music to the masses! And the big labels wet their pants everytime they give the reality of the situation serious thought.
As a musician, what I see is another method for the large media labels to get a choke hold on both the patrons and the performers. They want their pound of flesh and will do anything possible to get back their choke hold.
It's a pivitol point in the world of music and musicians. One that could cede back to the artist the lions share of the products they market - seeing that they/we are the ones that make this stuff up and it's the suits that make the majority of the profits because they have a lock-in. This is changing and they're getting more desperate by the day. Just another tactic by a industry in it's death throws.
No, no, no. IBM didn't steal the "r"! They are acting under an injunction put forth but the RIAA. Since the first letter in RIAA is indeed an "r", the RIAA had applied and has been granted said patent and IP rights to the letter "r".
Since then the RIAA has been in talks with "IBM", "Intel", "Novell, and various others to secure a license agreement for the royalties due the RIAA for the use of said letter "r". Until such time that these companies come into agreement with the RIAA about the use of said IP (read "r"), IBM and various aforementioned and yet unmentioned parties are under federal order to "cease and desist" from the unauthorized use of the letter "r".
Note: It should be mentioned that Mic"r"osoft, O"r"acle, and "R"ambus have already procured a license agreement from the RIAA and its affiliate members.
{This message brought to you buy the USPTO, the FCC and US Dept of Commerce}
"The RIAA cartel can't force artists to sign contracts. But if consumers are afraid of digital distribution, it becomes useless to artists, thus reinforcing the RIAA distribution lock-in"
And therein lays the rub for the RIAA. Most of the people that use digital distributions are of a generation that don't concern themselves with such issues. P2P sites are still going strong and new ones pop up all the time. Pair this with the fact that many countries other than the US and EU don't concern themselves with thoughts of RIAA torts and it's pretty much a done deal for the RIAA - their reign is coming to an end and they know it (regardless of how hard they try to stay in denial).
Furthermore, as a musician for over 30 years I strongly believe that many musicians are opting for digital/web distributions and also are opting more for indie labels than the RIAA affiliates. I am in the midst of finishing up an album and have no plans whatsoever to court any of the major labels (read RIAA affiliates). I will setup up an account on a p2p and court indies that offer a more sane contract offer (rather than an RIAA affiliate based contract wherein I'll be lucky to get 5 points on the deal). Also consider that, if I choose a site wisely (as in high traffic) I stand a good chance to get better exposure.
As I've said in other posts. The U.S. has about 300 million and the E.U. has the same or perhaps more (if you consider Europeans over those in the E.U. proper). All I have to do is hit one tenth of one percent of those populations at a buck a song an my days of money worries would be essentially mute. I believe that listeners should decide what they do or don't like, not some arrogant R & A rep with some agenda that's not in my best interest. This is also what the RIAA fears - people tasting the banquet of music out there and then deciding what they want over having to choose from a formulated market schema from a bunch of fat old dudes trying to get even richer than they already are.
It's MY MUSIC, not theirs. They need people like me alot more than I need people like them. This may not be exactly the reality at the time but that's where it's headed and these guys probably piss their pants when the contemplate the inevitable.
If I produce lousy music then no one will buy it. If I'm a lousy musician under a RIAA contract they'll find a way to make it sound half assed and market the hell out of it. If the RIAA has it's way not everyone will realize lousy music when they hear because they'll have little if anything else to compare it to.
Cases such as this are evidence to me the RIAA is losing it's grip and wants to avoid any further negative publicity. They're doing a bad job at that as well. My only hope is that the judges in these cases have more than two braincells to think with so that they'll see the trend and take steps to at least curtail the RIAA lawyers from grab bag torts.
Vista won't need an Antivirus program??? Sure, whatever the "Windows Chief" says. If this is the case then I expect solid gold frogs to start shooting out my arse any moment now.
I don't think so. Some may recall a/. article about students in New Mexico or Arizona (can't remember exactly which state) wherein some students that came across a malfunction Diebold ATM machine. From the default ATM user interface these students managed to get the ATM to reboot. It was built in Windows, and at which time they logged into a user account (was it XP?) and then proceeded to pull up Windows Media Player and dl a few songs and played them - of course playing in repeat mode so that the bank employee would have something to listen to - I suppose.
This happened shortly after a group of, i believe, MIT students won a cease and desist order from Diebold. They had legally stumbled on to Diebold internal memos and communications dealing with a plethora of issue with code stability and covertly inserting update patches for kludged voting machines. All without notifying the various necessary state and local authorities about it.
Anything Diebold makes is in the same mind set as M$. Don't make it secure make it pretty and easy. In otherwords, make the customer happy and pray nothing "untoward" happens - great strategy for the security of yours and my financial and voting data!
Diebold needs some serious oversight IMHO. In fact I would advocate open source code. Why? It's kinda like that Capital One commercial - you know, the one that ask "do you know what' in your wallet?". In this case it's do you know what in your voting machine - the answer is an unmistakable NO! So how the hell does one know if it's doing what is says it supposed to be doing? You don't - unless you're a Diebold developer and then your under an NDA... Time for the U.S. Gov to seriously rethink the Diebold contract - as in CANCEL IT!
Like the previous poster said - Do it there way! Think about it. The artist makes the music. From concept to finished product it's all about the musician and the music. The record companies used to represent the package under which this was facilitated. They supplied studio, the equipment, the engineers, the presses, the labeling and cover art and the marketing. Now the only real thing the Big Studios/Labels need provide is perhaps the advertising and marketing. But consider the fact that you are a fairly well known artist. Why does one need to give the record companies the majority of the proceeds in order to make a sale? 30 cents per song down to less than a dime?!?! The RIAA affiliates need to be relegated to the position they truly are now - that of a marketing firm. Between indie studios and computer technologies what does an established artist really need from a record company. Pro Tools is the standard and is completely HDD technology. Many well know and established artists use other software such as Cubase, Sonar, Ableton Live to make their creation. The only thing I can see the RIAA affiliates are really needed for is marketing and to a point distribution - and distribution is soon to be an non-factor due to a little thing called THE INTERNET!
Show me a major corporation gives the advertising/marketing and distribution divisions 70% of their operation revenue and I'll show a corporation soon to be delisted and facing board member and share holder torts up the ass! There are some people that have made music from their bedrooms and put it on MySpace. Now they have literally 10 of thousands of fans. With a little marketing/advertising in the right areas and they could be facing some real "market" success! How much success do you think Cold Play would have if they set up a portal and did direct sales??? I bet they'd make a lot of money and people would more than happy to patronize their website.
How much do most lawyers get for awards? About 15%. How much are most finders fees? About 10 to 15%! How much do most companies allocate to a well know marketing and advertising firm? About 10 to 15% for most well established corporation. So why are musician, especially well known musicians giving as much as 70 to 80 or more percent to the record companies - especially in this day and age? I have no idea, other than the mind set of most is that "this is they way it's done". That "was" the way it was done - and things are changing. It's time the creators to take control of their creations and reap a fuller benefit for their labors. The point of taking individual songs out of context in terms of concepts productions has some validity, especially from the artist point of view. But giving over such large amounts of control to people that are basically piggy backing on the technology accessible to "everyone" is beyond me.
Capture sound - generally in wave format. Convert to preferred compression format such as mp3, ogg, etc. Put in share folder of favorite Knutella clone or torrent. Rinse and Repeat as necessary. What was the point??? Oh ya! Market lock in. Ya sure, ok, whatever. Brick and morter music stores are dinosaurs waiting for that final pyroclastic blast to put them out of everyones misery!
If there's commercial venture for ripping DVD movies by major retailers, what makes these doofs at the RIAA think that John Doe won't be ripping the audio as before??? RIAA Desperation??? You bet!
LOKI games? The only problem with Loki games was the owner. He ran it into the ground, along with some of the devs finances as well. Actually, I believe he was under criminal indictment after Loki went belly up. The point is this. I bought several Loki games and they all worked fine. I had a couple of install problems but a quick email to the dev and a return with a couple of command flags during install and they were up and running. Likewise, after Loki went the way of the Dodo I got hooked on WINE. I had problems with WINE, but I could run some games. Then Transgaming's "WineX". For just $5/month and I had access to a specially tweaked version of wine - specifically for gaming. Well, that was a bust. Some games worked and others didn't. And all for $5/month. Fact of the matter is that I had better luck with plain old "WINE" then WineX. For some silly reason I kept contributing to Transgaming in hopes of getting a version that would run the games I wanted - never happened! I finally cancelled my so-called subscription and just spent time getting Wine running my games. Ironically I have always had better luck getting games to run under Wine then WineX/Cedega.
In all honestly perhaps they have actually improved Cedaga. I am a musician and run some fairly demanding (and expensive) software. One such program is called BFD (Big Fucking Drums) and it is actually pretty damn good - and I like to consider myself very demanding and picky in this area. The point is that one poster on the forum asked about getting BFD running on Linux (has dual binaries for Mac and Win). Well he got it up and running without any complaints on RH using Cedega - I was impressed. It was laggy but he's not running a pre-emptive kernel, which would likely solve the latency issues. But overall I really think Cedega is more hype that product overall.
Referring to PotatoHead and A. Bosch. Forgive me for my suspicious nature - But who are you and why do you want to know? There are many industry lurkers on this list. The RIAA affiliates and lawyers would no doubt like to give the people/radio station alot of crap for this (nothing illegal about it, they're very careful I'm sure), but this flies in the face of the RIAA's objectives - that being to crush any opposition and further it's strangle hold in market.
Case in point: I was doing a rewrite of a prolific patent (as in "the most cited patent in USPTO history") in order to make it more easily understandable to lay persons and the "judge". In my posting related to this specific subject I talked about how this patent would be used to beat the RIAA's and MPAA's competitors over the head with this - as in file sharing sites, etc (I never ever talked about specifics or the parties involved - would be very unethical). I did this under a psuedo-identity. Well, the patent holders' attorney found out about it! Why? Because the law firm had people they paid to monitor/. for just such postings.
Call me paranoid, but I'm sure you may understand my leery nature. As I said in the original post - I strongly support and advocate this advent and would be very very dismayed if any action I took led to the RIAA bringing grief to those at said radio station and muting the new talent they are affording exposure to a avid and hungry audience.
P.S. None of you guys work for anyone named "Simon" do you:D
As I've posted before. I'm a musician that has opted to go the home studio route due to the level of development in the software and hardware available. Well, it seems that others are taking heed of the this trend and bringing the worst fears of the RIAA into reality. Many local (and regional/national) artist are taking advantage of other channels to promote and sell their wares. Case in point: Here in my home town (major U.S. city) a local radio station is perusing the local uploads on MySpace and playing their music on their radio program. Then they have votes by listeners as to which songs played were their favorites. None of these bands or musicians are "signed" by a label. The winner of the vote is slotted into the regular play rotation.
This is a win for all involved and puts the RIAA affiliates in the light they deserve to be - Mind over matter. The radio station, listeners and musicians don't mind the RIAA dregs because it doesn't matter. These bands/musicians get the exposure they so desperately need and deserve and get a change to get signed by a indie label (or an RIAA label if they see fit to). Where the RIAA/labels are concerned they are dealing with musicians that have decidedly more leverage than they may have had without this exposure.
I for one welcome and highly advocate this trend. Personally I may not get any airtime. But at least I have an even shot and the "listeners" will decide my musics' marketability, not some coked out narssicistic R&A rep. And if I don't fair well with the listeners, perhaps I'll get an objective critique, which is something I likely wouldn't get by and "industry" goon.
This latest advent in court shows two things as far as I'm concerned. 1) they're getting desperate. 2) It just goes to show how out of touch these morons are - they just set precedenct. Unfortunately for themselves (the RIAA legal team) it's in the opposite direction they had intended. Next time some innocent gets randomly targeted by these clueless idiots their lawyer will have a tool to use against the RIAA - and all thanks to the RIAA's efforts. It's nice when the thugs hand you a gun! Bang! Bang! Baby!
I have been to Tokyo twice in the last three years. At the time XBox was in stores across various consumer based stores and in the tech sector of Tokyo (Akihabura district - which is a geek haven to say the least). On an informal basis I repeatedly inquired about XBox sales. In general there really aren't any appreciable sales of XBox. Sony PlayStation2 and Nintendo boxes sell as one might expect, but XBox sales are virtually non-existent. Each sales person I talked to said they regularly sold Sony and Nintendo platforms but in some places not one XBox sold. In other stores sales were dismal to say the least and the inventory became more a liability than an asset - dead stock taking up shelf space.
If M$ thinks that they're going to turn this tide with new games for XBox 360 then it just goes to show how much a corporation can delude itself. Like I said, it ain't gonna happen. I could be wrong but seriously would be surprised if XBox 360 had any sales that justified the cost of shipping them in the first place. But let the hype role and more losses for M$' entertainment division.
From the article: "It suggests the human brain shows far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected." Well, both from professional and personal experience this is not the revelation they claim. Yes it is significant but not unprecedented. It is a well known fact that patients are known to recover lost function up to 19 years after the initial insult to the tissue (in this case that would be both grey and white mater). This is as well documented in the medical journals and case studies.
On a personal note, my mother had an AVM (arterial-venous malformation) that blew (aka a bleed). She initially had the classic signs of a CVA (Cerebral Vascular Accident) which includes both bleeds and anoxic conditions [aka stroke]), in her case that was hemiplagia on the left side (contralateral to the side of the insult to the brain tissue) with ipsolateral (same side - right side) facial palsy with the associated somatic paresthesia (numbness). This abated completely within a little over a year at around 90% and complete recovery in around 3 to 4 years. However, one function she lost was thermal regulation (couldn't sweat or shiver/goosebumps)and had to be careful in semi-extreme temperatures.
Well, guess what, about 18 years later she noticed one hot day she started to sweat. Since then her ability to thermal regulate has steadily being increasing.
One of the key factors in a patients recovery is therapy (physical, occupational and in some cases speech). Many MD's instill a feeling of "get used to it" mentality in their patients. Therefore patients generally accept this, especially in light of the changes in body perceptons. Their bodies don't function as they did prior to their incident and statements by medical professionals (usually MD's) reinforces their sense of hopelessness. This is especially true if the patient in a comatose state, but still shows positive brain activity. The mechanism of recovery are still a mystery. But medical literature has many case studies that support my argument. The object is to normalize as much as possible with the realistic expectation of gaining back most functions, but realistically as to not instill false hope (which is why most physicians are perceived as pessimistic in these cases).
The strange part of this is the number of years - 19. For some reasons regardless of whatever function you regain, if you don't get it back within that 19 year period you generally won't. (generally)
Let's see. Houston Chief wants cameras in homes, malls and what... public bathrooms, in your bedroom (maybe he's got a scam to sell the more juicy videos to pron sites).
They want to put little capsules (RFID?) to track you at work (and anywhere else you happen to be).
The Pres is tapping peoples phones carte blanch and wonders why people are upset?
Maybe all those survivalist nuts weren't so nutty after all!
Things are getting scary. Looks like I'm going to have to have a contingency plan to go live out in the north forty about an hour away from the Canadian border? I also guess I'll have to bone up on my hunting skills and woodlore. Because they'll put a camera in my house and a chip in my body right after the swat teams sniper shoots me.
Anyone know where to get good maps of the upper Canadian territories?
This is what I found when following the link for the screenshots:
"This Account Has Been Suspended
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Please contact support as soon as possible."
Actually you moron I'm German, Dutch, and Swiss American! You're just pissed because I marked you as a foe and your only retort is to sling racial remarks because your brain is too small to think of something really intelligent.
Actually is should be "its'" IIRC. It's translates to "it is". Take for example Joe, Joe's and Joes'. If I'm not totally screwing up the English language it works like this;
Joe = Singular Joe's = Joe is - as he is doing something: Joe's going home. Joes' = The car belongs to Joe, therefore it's Joes' car.
If I'm wrong either someone will correct me or they could completely ignore this as "off-topic".
One is that many musicians know how to sing or strum a guitar, but asking them to operate a computer or even a mixing console might be going a bit far. I know it isn't rocket science, but it still is technical.
You have a point. But consider the advent of the digital age to a guitarist. Used to be that you used stomp boxes to modify you sound - then the multiFX rackmount dsp devices - this was technical but guitarist not only adapted but embraced this new advent. It is more about understanding the bigger picture today. Sure it is one thing to just be a talented player (or singer) and another to be familiar to the more technical end. I guess it all boils down to how fervently rightbrained one might happen to be. Talent will rise and mediocracy will fade away.
Two is that many a person who can operate a mixing console hasn't half an ear for mixing. It really is a different skill from singing or playing an instrument in a modern band. Sure, it is really just general musicianship to be able to blend your part in with everyone else, but since the advent of mixing consoles in modern bands it seems to be a dying art...
Once again, this is a matter of audio engineering vs musicianship. Yes, you are correct in your assertion that there are those with little real musicianship (e.g. player/singer) and those that construct songs purely from preformated samples. But the end result is producing music that is both listenable and marketable. Just as the RIAA has to adjust their focus, so do the musicians. It is one thing to just be a stellar player and likewise this holds for being a competent sound engineer. The fact of the matter, in order to be successful, the modern musician must be both an artisan and, to a larger extent, an engineer. This will work itself out over time. The bottomline again is what does the music sound like - people generally do not care how the music was made. They just care about whether or not it is something they want to listen to and are not forced to pay 20 bucks just to listen to two songs they like. And those that can run a mixing console but have not half an ear for mixing wont be around very long - theyre two sides of the same coin.
Three is that even if you do end up with a really nice CD you still need to be able to bribe somebody to play it over the air...
Who said anything about airplay. It is becoming swiftly outmoded. Remember that the RIAA affiliates and the Radio stations are part and parcel all part of the same industry machine (can you say Clear Channel?). Let us look at things from a more current perspective. I have enough songs to fill, lets say, 2 CD projects. I use P2P networks and indy web portals to showcase 2 or 3 of my songs. I let you dl them for free... gratis, no charge, spread it among your friends (pleeaassee!). Now you like my song and notice that you can preview the rest of my works. If you like what you hear you can dl them at somewhere around a buck a song (and yes there is always a risk of my stuff being pirated - welcome to the world). With 250 mil in the U.S. and a like amount in the E.U. (not to mention the rest of the connected world) and we have some prospect for potential sales. If I get one in a thousand to buy one song how much money do you think Ill make? ALOT!!!!!! So screw Payola and Clear Channel - this is just another face of the RIAA and one of the other reason they are scared witless. If radio station become all but obsolete just think about all the advertising revenue that Clear Channel and the RIAA and affilitates lose. This all plays into the bigger picture. And also consider those pressuring the RIAA members to get a handle on this - one sector that comes swiftly to mind is all those record stores. Tower Records hayday is fading and they are squirming as well - their market model is crumbling.
Once again, this is about a fundamental shift in the market and if the Laissez-faire market were to be let lose without intervention I garner that the RIAA affiliates would be applying for bankruptcy protection - the people have decided sometime ago and if not for the pervasive tactics of both the RIAA and the politicians they bribes this would not be the issue it is today IMHO.
It's cases like this that make me think that the RIAA is in it's death throes.
They are, more or less! Take it from a musician of over 30 years. Ever figure out the cost of going to a conventional RIAA approved recording studio - very expensive! If you are not rich or lucky you generally need a label backing. But as others have pointed out there are alternatives now and the RIAA is turning into a case of mind over matter. No one will mind in the long run because the RIAA will not matter .
CubaseSX costs about $400 US, Ableton live for about the same. Protools is about double this at the entry level (by the way this is generally what the industry uses now). A/D converter/interface for as low ~$100 to a couple thousand (I have a Tascam FW-1884 interface/mixer). You can use things such as VST plugins (e.g. compressor, EQ, Amp model, ad infinum) and VSTi virtual synth instruments (VST = Virtual Studio Technology) and the list goes on. The point I am making is that with talent, a bit of a learning curve (and there are plenty of online media to help you learn sound engineering) and a modest amount of money, one can create and produce industry standard music.
If you are heads up you save you songs @ a 24bit/96kHz format and take it to a qualified engineer, for again a modest price, to master you work. The RIAA know this and they also know that the new breed of musicians are savvy to this. This debunks the RIAAs long stand grip on the industry. They are desperate and too clueless to figure out they are the ones that must adapt - not the consumer. It just drives them nuts that the tables have shifted and the consumers are again starting to dictate the conditions of the market.
This is the way it is supposed to work, the consumers dictate the market and the product lines and costs. The RIAA cannot come out and let it be known really what is their motivation - preventing the loss of their market lock and monopoly. They are fighting a losing battle. Even if they get laws passed, in say.., The U.S., E.U. and parts of Asia. But considering that China is the sleeping dragon and is well known for their pirating prowess the RIAA has not a chance in hell.
Yep, they are more than desperate - they are more likely at their wits end. Nothing seems to be going their way in the courts or the market, so they play the my lawyer is bigger than your lawyer game to attempt to scare people from pirating (which to a degree is understandable) and more over looking to other non-RIAA alternatives to get music. This is really what scares them - the mind over matter aspect. No will _mind_ because the RIAA, in the long run, will not _matter_.
Im forty five years old and have been a musician since I was 13. I have met and had several friends and colleagues that have had fairly lucrative careers with RIAA affiliates. But as of today those people have essentially retired. They made their money and got out. Why get out? Because those that one must deal with on a day to day basic on the music industry are some of the sleaziest and unethical people you may ever have the displeasure of meeting. Talk about needing to watch your back. And dont by any means ever ever sign anything without having a lawyer look at it - thats how they get the young ones with talent (and a lawyer that is not known by or worked for the RIAA affiliates if possible).
This all has to do with monopoly and price fixing. They are looking at everything from patent law (was very briefly involved in preparing a definition of terms in the patent as pertains to todays IT environment and market - it nauseated me after a while and I dropped it). They cant figure out how to lock in/down the net market in the manner they have on the brick and morter side of things.
One of their prevalent and most pervasive tactics has been via the courts and legislature. They are trying to pass laws and using the my lawyer is bigger than youre lawyer tactic on common citizens that may or may not be guilty of pirating. Thats not the issue. The issue is to control the market in the same/similar manner they have previously.
They also run their organization in a similar manner that is observed in organized crime - that being many layers of fall guys to plow through before you get to the guys really calling the shots.
What I do find surprising is that people may be surprised by this so-called revelation. From Payola to price-fixing to ripping off their own artisans with alarming regularity this is nothing new in the slightest. What is new is that fact that the RIAA and its affiliates see to be off their game to a fair degree. Its slipping away from them and their outmoded execs are still living with illusions of grandeur evoked from the time before digital.
They want control of the market. They want to tell you what music you like and how much youre fork out for this. There was no real competition before the net and the digital area. Pair this with the advent of the fully functional digital studio and the plethora of Indy record labels spawning forth with a far more viable net market strategy than the RIAA has and one might get a sense as to what extent the RIAA is actually at odds with its own market.
I say let them leave North Carolina, just as long as they leave the code behind. Oh and a viable address in case of a subpoena - which is probably why they dont want to let people see the code. I also understand theyre not too keen on divulging their email or memos either. One could say theyre not to fond of paper overall.
Hurber Mantel, lead kernel dev and co-founder of SuSE Linux has announced that he is leaving Novell/SuSE. The talk on the Beta tester list is overwhelmingly negative in regards to Novell's decision to "standardize" to GNOME.
Seems Novell is likely to do with SuSE what they've done to everything else they've touched (can you say NetWare?). That's right, take a perfectly successful Linux distro and alienate your base. But this is the standard motis operandii at Novell, so they appear to be in fine character.
If this hold true, after years as a SuSE beta tester, I can safely say I'll be looking for another distro.
Time to post this on the SuSE-e mailing list and see what shakes out. If I offended any GNOME users I apologize. But after years of shaking out bugs in SuSE versions, IMHO GNOME has been behind the curve for some time (at least in SuSE Linux) and frankly I find the GNOME interface to be obtuse and rife with political overtones I personally would like to avoid.
I understand why one interface would be preferable and the fact that Novell has chosen to focus on GNOME over KDE is no real surprise considering they bought Ximian (the best of the GNOME offerings IMO). But my dislike of GNOME is such that if SUSE defaults to GNOME (as did RH) then I will be shopping elsewhere...
They thought the world was flat and if you went to far you would fall off the edge of the world. They thought the Earth was the center of the universe and when those that new otherwise tried to convince the "powers that be" they ran the risk of being labeled heritics and consorting with the devil.
We have all heard stories and tales of this type and the real trick to these is that when it's happening in present time people have a hard time believing it. However, when viewed retrospectively these notions agreed upon as "undeniable" facts, such as the world is flat" are now considered to be the product of superstition and ignorance.
The fact remains that we are still in the very early stages of understanding the construction of "everything" - aka the unified theory. Einstein gave us a tool in which to understand the world around us that much better, but it presented a whole new set of questions and problems to be addressed. Hence the Quantum theory.
The Quantum theory addresses many of the problems Einstein's theories presented, but in turn it gave rise to a whole new set of question. The part that I can't seem to escape reflects back to the first part of this post. So many people back in the day were "convinced" that one could actually sail of the edge of the planet.
Now he have someone that has shaken the proverbial "ivory" tower and the powers that be keep insisting that this is hogwash - despite the inventors claims of 50 independent validation reports and 65 peer-reviewed journal articles we see, as reported in the article, that others are offering "theorhetical" resistance to this latest advent.
Frankly, if they think it's so much hogwash then why aren't those putting up such a noise about this doing what they're getting paid to do? That would be using the scientific methods they revere so highly to find out the "FACTS"?
Perhaps, as further stated in the original article, they have some ulterior motives that preclude them from finding out if there's any merit to this - gee they might just learn something. But then again I think this might be more a matter of ego and tenure.
If this proves to be true then the question is now what will it mean. The article mentions that they intend to release the findings soon and have wheels in motion to get it "to market". What's that supposed to mean. Is this a discovery or a product? Hmmmm.....!
The contention you've mentioned is focused on "due diligence". It goes back a lot further than the 2.5 years of the tort filing/court proceedings. In actuality it started when SCO started down the linux path - one they bought out from Caldera. Much of the work done for Linux that SCO/Caldera was started in the Ransom Love days. Many of the key developers were SCO/Caldera devs and openly and knowingly developed the Linux kernel.
The real contention is that they're claim IBM covertly folded in proprietary SCO nix code into the kernel without SCO's knowledge. This is essentially hogwash because the SCO nix devs were well aware of what they were doing and did so with the blessing of the upper management - such as Ransom Love. Now Darl is claiming they gave no permission or had no knowledge that this was occurring. The real things is that while the former Caldera (and SCO) devs were contributing to the kernel development they did so in a way that adhered to the GPL. Furthermore, Darl is in a position to admit to the point that this was going on for sometime after he assumed the helm and replaced Ransom Love.
Remember, Caldera was a principle member of "United Linux". I beleive that included SuSE (the principle player), Connectiva, Turbo Linux, and Caldera. After Darl took over at SCO they continued to partner with United Linux. So, this obviously begs the question - When did Darl decide that something wrong was happening? I'd say right about the time he realized that SCO was tanking and decided to scream foul. But one might ask what about all the time before this when SCO/Caldera devs were actively contributing to the kernel - was Darl asleep at the wheel? This is the root of the "due diligence" argument. All that time before filing the tort against IBM Darls own devs were making Linux kernel code. So, why didn't he try to do something about it during all that time before the tort filing and the inevitable SCO tank in the market?
The law states (and IMNAL) that in order to claim a violation of IP and other proprietary matters it must be shown that all "reasonable" efforts were taken to protect it and keep it secure - neither of which Darl and Co did.
Lastly, It still remains to be seen if SCO really has any legal legs to stand on because Novell claims SCO was never given the rights to the code in the extent that SCO claims and therefore can't claim a violation of something they never gained the rights to in that sense in the first place.
But lets give credit where credit is due. Darl may not know jack about software and the associated market (let alone F/OSS). But he seems adept at doing the Wall Street 2 step and playing the courts for all it's worth.
"Reasons like this were what made me stop paying for the subscription... I'm sure they'll figure out the Right Way of handling voting at some point in the future (please, take some cues from Bugzilla and basically any other open source bug tracking, okay?) but until then, I'll be content with dual booting to play my Windows games even though it means turning off my torrents.."
I also cancelled my TransGaming account. I agree with your frustrations. I don't understand some of the reasoning they come up with at TransGaming. Yes you're right. I can get Diablo running no problem and the same holds true for FallOut Tactics - most of my success with Cedega/WineX has been with "sprite" based games. Over half of the "older" games (ranging for 1 year old to 5 or more years) wont run.
Sure one might argue - 5 bucks a month is no big deal to keep your account access going. But, for what point? Fact be told I have better success getting plain ol' Wine to run a wider variety of games (with or without a gui - point to play is a fairly nice front end). Also consider a couple of other things. The howto's and online docs/etc.. that can be found are much more plentiful and useful for Wine than the TransGaming forums, so much so I wrote the wine mini-howto for the unofficial SuSe FAQ.
After paying 5 bucks a month for the last 3 or so years I finally got feed up with the level of progress (or lack thereof) when I could simply dl the latest Wine packages and have better success - pity!
Slashdot Mirror
"No, it's not a good thing in disguise. Why? Because that music tax would only go to RIAA-owned artists. Every other musician would get entirely fucked over."
That's probably a very big motivating factor in the minds of the greedy and corrupt RIAA affiliates. The RIAA companies are losing market share hand over fist (latest evidence the sky is falling - Tower Records went bye bye, just like a plethora of other brick and morter music stores). The alternative avenue for musicians is direct marketing via the web portal and indie labels. Get a so-called "pirate tax" you get a piece of all those indie artists using non-RIAA channels to get their music to the masses! And the big labels wet their pants everytime they give the reality of the situation serious thought.
As a musician, what I see is another method for the large media labels to get a choke hold on both the patrons and the performers. They want their pound of flesh and will do anything possible to get back their choke hold.
It's a pivitol point in the world of music and musicians. One that could cede back to the artist the lions share of the products they market - seeing that they/we are the ones that make this stuff up and it's the suits that make the majority of the profits because they have a lock-in. This is changing and they're getting more desperate by the day. Just another tactic by a industry in it's death throws.
No, no, no. IBM didn't steal the "r"! They are acting under an injunction put forth but the RIAA. Since the first letter in RIAA is indeed an "r", the RIAA had applied and has been granted said patent and IP rights to the letter "r".
:)
Since then the RIAA has been in talks with "IBM", "Intel", "Novell, and various others to secure a license agreement for the royalties due the RIAA for the use of said letter "r". Until such time that these companies come into agreement with the RIAA about the use of said IP (read "r"), IBM and various aforementioned and yet unmentioned parties are under federal order to "cease and desist" from the unauthorized use of the letter "r".
Note: It should be mentioned that Mic"r"osoft, O"r"acle, and "R"ambus have already procured a license agreement from the RIAA and its affiliate members.
{This message brought to you buy the USPTO, the FCC and US Dept of Commerce}
Have a nice day!
"The RIAA cartel can't force artists to sign contracts. But if consumers are afraid of digital distribution, it becomes useless to artists, thus reinforcing the RIAA distribution lock-in"
And therein lays the rub for the RIAA. Most of the people that use digital distributions are of a generation that don't concern themselves with such issues.
P2P sites are still going strong and new ones pop up all the time. Pair this with the fact that many countries other than the US and EU don't concern themselves with thoughts of RIAA torts and it's pretty much a done deal for the RIAA - their reign is coming to an end and they know it (regardless of how hard they try to stay in denial).
Furthermore, as a musician for over 30 years I strongly believe that many musicians are opting for digital/web distributions and also are opting more for indie labels than the RIAA affiliates. I am in the midst of finishing up an album and have no plans whatsoever to court any of the major labels (read RIAA affiliates). I will setup up an account on a p2p and court indies that offer a more sane contract offer (rather than an RIAA affiliate based contract wherein I'll be lucky to get 5 points on the deal). Also consider that, if I choose a site wisely (as in high traffic) I stand a good chance to get better exposure.
As I've said in other posts. The U.S. has about 300 million and the E.U. has the same or perhaps more (if you consider Europeans over those in the E.U. proper). All I have to do is hit one tenth of one percent of those populations at a buck a song an my days of money worries would be essentially mute. I believe that listeners should decide what they do or don't like, not some arrogant R & A rep with some agenda that's not in my best interest. This is also what the RIAA fears - people tasting the banquet of music out there and then deciding what they want over having to choose from a formulated market schema from a bunch of fat old dudes trying to get even richer than they already are.
It's MY MUSIC, not theirs. They need people like me alot more than I need people like them. This may not be exactly the reality at the time but that's where it's headed and these guys probably piss their pants when the contemplate the inevitable.
If I produce lousy music then no one will buy it. If I'm a lousy musician under a RIAA contract they'll find a way to make it sound half assed and market the hell out of it. If the RIAA has it's way not everyone will realize lousy music when they hear because they'll have little if anything else to compare it to.
Cases such as this are evidence to me the RIAA is losing it's grip and wants to avoid any further negative publicity. They're doing a bad job at that as well. My only hope is that the judges in these cases have more than two braincells to think with so that they'll see the trend and take steps to at least curtail the RIAA lawyers from grab bag torts.
Just MHO.
Vista won't need an Antivirus program??? Sure, whatever the "Windows Chief" says. If this is the case then I expect solid gold frogs to start shooting out my arse any moment now.
What a moron!
I don't think so. Some may recall a /. article about students in New Mexico or Arizona (can't remember exactly which state) wherein some students that came across a malfunction Diebold ATM machine. From the default ATM user interface these students managed to get the ATM to reboot. It was built in Windows, and at which time they logged into a user account (was it XP?) and then proceeded to pull up Windows Media Player and dl a few songs and played them - of course playing in repeat mode so that the bank employee would have something to listen to - I suppose.
This happened shortly after a group of, i believe, MIT students won a cease and desist order from Diebold. They had legally stumbled on to Diebold internal memos and communications dealing with a plethora of issue with code stability and covertly inserting update patches for kludged voting machines. All without notifying the various necessary state and local authorities about it.
Anything Diebold makes is in the same mind set as M$. Don't make it secure make it pretty and easy. In otherwords, make the customer happy and pray nothing "untoward" happens - great strategy for the security of yours and my financial and voting data!
Diebold needs some serious oversight IMHO. In fact I would advocate open source code. Why? It's kinda like that Capital One commercial - you know, the one that ask "do you know what' in your wallet?". In this case it's do you know what in your voting machine - the answer is an unmistakable NO! So how the hell does one know if it's doing what is says it supposed to be doing? You don't - unless you're a Diebold developer and then your under an NDA... Time for the U.S. Gov to seriously rethink the Diebold contract - as in CANCEL IT!
Like the previous poster said - Do it there way! Think about it. The artist makes the music. From concept to finished product it's all about the musician and the music. The record companies used to represent the package under which this was facilitated. They supplied studio, the equipment, the engineers, the presses, the labeling and cover art and the marketing. Now the only real thing the Big Studios/Labels need provide is perhaps the advertising and marketing. But consider the fact that you are a fairly well known artist. Why does one need to give the record companies the majority of the proceeds in order to make a sale? 30 cents per song down to less than a dime?!?! The RIAA affiliates need to be relegated to the position they truly are now - that of a marketing firm. Between indie studios and computer technologies what does an established artist really need from a record company. Pro Tools is the standard and is completely HDD technology. Many well know and established artists use other software such as Cubase, Sonar, Ableton Live to make their creation. The only thing I can see the RIAA affiliates are really needed for is marketing and to a point distribution - and distribution is soon to be an non-factor due to a little thing called THE INTERNET!
Show me a major corporation gives the advertising/marketing and distribution divisions 70% of their operation revenue and I'll show a corporation soon to be delisted and facing board member and share holder torts up the ass! There are some people that have made music from their bedrooms and put it on MySpace. Now they have literally 10 of thousands of fans. With a little marketing/advertising in the right areas and they could be facing some real "market" success! How much success do you think Cold Play would have if they set up a portal and did direct sales??? I bet they'd make a lot of money and people would more than happy to patronize their website.
How much do most lawyers get for awards? About 15%. How much are most finders fees? About 10 to 15%! How much do most companies allocate to a well know marketing and advertising firm? About 10 to 15% for most well established corporation. So why are musician, especially well known musicians giving as much as 70 to 80 or more percent to the record companies - especially in this day and age? I have no idea, other than the mind set of most is that "this is they way it's done". That "was" the way it was done - and things are changing. It's time the creators to take control of their creations and reap a fuller benefit for their labors. The point of taking individual songs out of context in terms of concepts productions has some validity, especially from the artist point of view. But giving over such large amounts of control to people that are basically piggy backing on the technology accessible to "everyone" is beyond me.
Capture sound - generally in wave format. Convert to preferred compression format such as mp3, ogg, etc. Put in share folder of favorite Knutella clone or torrent. Rinse and Repeat as necessary. What was the point??? Oh ya! Market lock in. Ya sure, ok, whatever. Brick and morter music stores are dinosaurs waiting for that final pyroclastic blast to put them out of everyones misery!
1 7
See: Circuit City Ripping DVDs for Users
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/04/15272
If there's commercial venture for ripping DVD movies by major retailers, what makes these doofs at the RIAA think that John Doe won't be ripping the audio as before??? RIAA Desperation??? You bet!
Happy listening!
LOKI games? The only problem with Loki games was the owner. He ran it into the ground, along with some of the devs finances as well. Actually, I believe he was under criminal indictment after Loki went belly up. The point is this. I bought several Loki games and they all worked fine. I had a couple of install problems but a quick email to the dev and a return with a couple of command flags during install and they were up and running. Likewise, after Loki went the way of the Dodo I got hooked on WINE. I had problems with WINE, but I could run some games. Then Transgaming's "WineX". For just $5/month and I had access to a specially tweaked version of wine - specifically for gaming. Well, that was a bust. Some games worked and others didn't. And all for $5/month. Fact of the matter is that I had better luck with plain old "WINE" then WineX. For some silly reason I kept contributing to Transgaming in hopes of getting a version that would run the games I wanted - never happened! I finally cancelled my so-called subscription and just spent time getting Wine running my games. Ironically I have always had better luck getting games to run under Wine then WineX/Cedega.
In all honestly perhaps they have actually improved Cedaga. I am a musician and run some fairly demanding (and expensive) software. One such program is called BFD (Big Fucking Drums) and it is actually pretty damn good - and I like to consider myself very demanding and picky in this area. The point is that one poster on the forum asked about getting BFD running on Linux (has dual binaries for Mac and Win). Well he got it up and running without any complaints on RH using Cedega - I was impressed. It was laggy but he's not running a pre-emptive kernel, which would likely solve the latency issues. But overall I really think Cedega is more hype that product overall.
Just MHO.
Referring to PotatoHead and A. Bosch. Forgive me for my suspicious nature - But who are you and why do you want to know? There are many industry lurkers on this list. The RIAA affiliates and lawyers would no doubt like to give the people/radio station alot of crap for this (nothing illegal about it, they're very careful I'm sure), but this flies in the face of the RIAA's objectives - that being to crush any opposition and further it's strangle hold in market.
/. for just such postings.
:D
Case in point: I was doing a rewrite of a prolific patent (as in "the most cited patent in USPTO history") in order to make it more easily understandable to lay persons and the "judge". In my posting related to this specific subject I talked about how this patent would be used to beat the RIAA's and MPAA's competitors over the head with this - as in file sharing sites, etc (I never ever talked about specifics or the parties involved - would be very unethical). I did this under a psuedo-identity. Well, the patent holders' attorney found out about it! Why? Because the law firm had people they paid to monitor
Call me paranoid, but I'm sure you may understand my leery nature. As I said in the original post - I strongly support and advocate this advent and would be very very dismayed if any action I took led to the RIAA bringing grief to those at said radio station and muting the new talent they are affording exposure to a avid and hungry audience.
P.S. None of you guys work for anyone named "Simon" do you
As I've posted before. I'm a musician that has opted to go the home studio route due to the level of development in the software and hardware available. Well, it seems that others are taking heed of the this trend and bringing the worst fears of the RIAA into reality. Many local (and regional/national) artist are taking advantage of other channels to promote and sell their wares. Case in point: Here in my home town (major U.S. city) a local radio station is perusing the local uploads on MySpace and playing their music on their radio program. Then they have votes by listeners as to which songs played were their favorites. None of these bands or musicians are "signed" by a label. The winner of the vote is slotted into the regular play rotation.
This is a win for all involved and puts the RIAA affiliates in the light they deserve to be - Mind over matter. The radio station, listeners and musicians don't mind the RIAA dregs because it doesn't matter. These bands/musicians get the exposure they so desperately need and deserve and get a change to get signed by a indie label (or an RIAA label if they see fit to). Where the RIAA/labels are concerned they are dealing with musicians that have decidedly more leverage than they may have had without this exposure.
I for one welcome and highly advocate this trend. Personally I may not get any airtime. But at least I have an even shot and the "listeners" will decide my musics' marketability, not some coked out narssicistic R&A rep. And if I don't fair well with the listeners, perhaps I'll get an objective critique, which is something I likely wouldn't get by and "industry" goon.
This latest advent in court shows two things as far as I'm concerned. 1) they're getting desperate. 2) It just goes to show how out of touch these morons are - they just set precedenct. Unfortunately for themselves (the RIAA legal team) it's in the opposite direction they had intended. Next time some innocent gets randomly targeted by these clueless idiots their lawyer will have a tool to use against the RIAA - and all thanks to the RIAA's efforts. It's nice when the thugs hand you a gun! Bang! Bang! Baby!
I have been to Tokyo twice in the last three years. At the time XBox was in stores across various consumer based stores and in the tech sector of Tokyo (Akihabura district - which is a geek haven to say the least). On an informal basis I repeatedly inquired about XBox sales. In general there really aren't any appreciable sales of XBox. Sony PlayStation2 and Nintendo boxes sell as one might expect, but XBox sales are virtually non-existent. Each sales person I talked to said they regularly sold Sony and Nintendo platforms but in some places not one XBox sold. In other stores sales were dismal to say the least and the inventory became more a liability than an asset - dead stock taking up shelf space.
If M$ thinks that they're going to turn this tide with new games for XBox 360 then it just goes to show how much a corporation can delude itself. Like I said, it ain't gonna happen. I could be wrong but seriously would be surprised if XBox 360 had any sales that justified the cost of shipping them in the first place. But let the hype role and more losses for M$' entertainment division.
From the article: "It suggests the human brain shows far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected." Well, both from professional and personal experience this is not the revelation they claim. Yes it is significant but not unprecedented. It is a well known fact that patients are known to recover lost function up to 19 years after the initial insult to the tissue (in this case that would be both grey and white mater). This is as well documented in the medical journals and case studies.
On a personal note, my mother had an AVM (arterial-venous malformation) that blew (aka a bleed). She initially had the classic signs of a CVA (Cerebral Vascular Accident) which includes both bleeds and anoxic conditions [aka stroke]), in her case that was hemiplagia on the left side (contralateral to the side of the insult to the brain tissue) with ipsolateral (same side - right side) facial palsy with the associated somatic paresthesia (numbness). This abated completely within a little over a year at around 90% and complete recovery in around 3 to 4 years. However, one function she lost was thermal regulation (couldn't sweat or shiver/goosebumps)and had to be careful in semi-extreme temperatures.
Well, guess what, about 18 years later she noticed one hot day she started to sweat. Since then her ability to thermal regulate has steadily being increasing.
One of the key factors in a patients recovery is therapy (physical, occupational and in some cases speech). Many MD's instill a feeling of "get used to it" mentality in their patients. Therefore patients generally accept this, especially in light of the changes in body perceptons. Their bodies don't function as they did prior to their incident and statements by medical professionals (usually MD's) reinforces their sense of hopelessness. This is especially true if the patient in a comatose state, but still shows positive brain activity. The mechanism of recovery are still a mystery. But medical literature has many case studies that support my argument. The object is to normalize as much as possible with the realistic expectation of gaining back most functions, but realistically as to not instill false hope (which is why most physicians are perceived as pessimistic in these cases).
The strange part of this is the number of years - 19. For some reasons regardless of whatever function you regain, if you don't get it back within that 19 year period you generally won't. (generally)
What the hell is going on!
Let's see. Houston Chief wants cameras in homes, malls and what... public bathrooms, in your bedroom (maybe he's got a scam to sell the more juicy videos to pron sites).
They want to put little capsules (RFID?) to track you at work (and anywhere else you happen to be).
The Pres is tapping peoples phones carte blanch and wonders why people are upset?
Maybe all those survivalist nuts weren't so nutty after all!
Things are getting scary. Looks like I'm going to have to have a contingency plan to go live out in the north forty about an hour away from the Canadian border? I also guess I'll have to bone up on my hunting skills and woodlore. Because they'll put a camera in my house and a chip in my body right after the swat teams sniper shoots me.
Anyone know where to get good maps of the upper Canadian territories?
This is what I found when following the link for the screenshots:
"This Account Has Been Suspended
Your account at StackedTech Hosting Solutions has been suspended because of breaking the Terms of Services or going over bandwidth limit. UPDATE: If your account was suspended and you don not know why then it is probaly because of our recent server outage. We are checking all accounts for viruses/ or users that are attempting to hack our server. If this is the case then your account will be unsuspended in a few ours. Contact support@stackedtech.com for more information on your account. Please include username and domain. Thanks
Please contact support as soon as possible."
Poor guy. So much for his website!
Actually you moron I'm German, Dutch, and Swiss American! You're just pissed because I marked you as a foe and your only retort is to sling racial remarks because your brain is too small to think of something really intelligent.
Actually is should be "its'" IIRC. It's translates to "it is". Take for example Joe, Joe's and Joes'. If I'm not totally screwing up the English language it works like this;
Joe = Singular
Joe's = Joe is - as he is doing something: Joe's going home.
Joes' = The car belongs to Joe, therefore it's Joes' car.
If I'm wrong either someone will correct me or they could completely ignore this as "off-topic".
HTH
One is that many musicians know how to sing or strum a guitar, but asking them to operate a computer or even a mixing console might be going a bit far. I know it isn't rocket science, but it still is technical.
You have a point. But consider the advent of the digital age to a guitarist. Used to be that you used stomp boxes to modify you sound - then the multiFX rackmount dsp devices - this was technical but guitarist not only adapted but embraced this new advent. It is more about understanding the bigger picture today. Sure it is one thing to just be a talented player (or singer) and another to be familiar to the more technical end. I guess it all boils down to how fervently rightbrained one might happen to be. Talent will rise and mediocracy will fade away.
Two is that many a person who can operate a mixing console hasn't half an ear for mixing. It really is a different skill from singing or playing an instrument in a modern band. Sure, it is really just general musicianship to be able to blend your part in with everyone else, but since the advent of mixing consoles in modern bands it seems to be a dying art...
Once again, this is a matter of audio engineering vs musicianship. Yes, you are correct in your assertion that there are those with little real musicianship (e.g. player/singer) and those that construct songs purely from preformated samples. But the end result is producing music that is both listenable and marketable. Just as the RIAA has to adjust their focus, so do the musicians. It is one thing to just be a stellar player and likewise this holds for being a competent sound engineer. The fact of the matter, in order to be successful, the modern musician must be both an artisan and, to a larger extent, an engineer. This will work itself out over time. The bottomline again is what does the music sound like - people generally do not care how the music was made. They just care about whether or not it is something they want to listen to and are not forced to pay 20 bucks just to listen to two songs they like. And those that can run a mixing console but have not half an ear for mixing wont be around very long - theyre two sides of the same coin.
Three is that even if you do end up with a really nice CD you still need to be able to bribe somebody to play it over the air...
Who said anything about airplay. It is becoming swiftly outmoded. Remember that the RIAA affiliates and the Radio stations are part and parcel all part of the same industry machine (can you say Clear Channel?). Let us look at things from a more current perspective. I have enough songs to fill, lets say, 2 CD projects. I use P2P networks and indy web portals to showcase 2 or 3 of my songs. I let you dl them for free... gratis, no charge, spread it among your friends (pleeaassee!). Now you like my song and notice that you can preview the rest of my works. If you like what you hear you can dl them at somewhere around a buck a song (and yes there is always a risk of my stuff being pirated - welcome to the world). With 250 mil in the U.S. and a like amount in the E.U. (not to mention the rest of the connected world) and we have some prospect for potential sales. If I get one in a thousand to buy one song how much money do you think Ill make? ALOT!!!!!! So screw Payola and Clear Channel - this is just another face of the RIAA and one of the other reason they are scared witless. If radio station become all but obsolete just think about all the advertising revenue that Clear Channel and the RIAA and affilitates lose. This all plays into the bigger picture. And also consider those pressuring the RIAA members to get a handle on this - one sector that comes swiftly to mind is all those record stores. Tower Records hayday is fading and they are squirming as well - their market model is crumbling.
Once again, this is about a fundamental shift in the market and if the Laissez-faire market were to be let lose without intervention I garner that the RIAA affiliates would be applying for bankruptcy protection - the people have decided sometime ago and if not for the pervasive tactics of both the RIAA and the politicians they bribes this would not be the issue it is today IMHO.
They are, more or less! Take it from a musician of over 30 years. Ever figure out the cost of going to a conventional RIAA approved recording studio - very expensive! If you are not rich or lucky you generally need a label backing. But as others have pointed out there are alternatives now and the RIAA is turning into a case of mind over matter. No one will mind in the long run because the RIAA will not matter .
CubaseSX costs about $400 US, Ableton live for about the same. Protools is about double this at the entry level (by the way this is generally what the industry uses now). A/D converter/interface for as low ~$100 to a couple thousand (I have a Tascam FW-1884 interface/mixer). You can use things such as VST plugins (e.g. compressor, EQ, Amp model, ad infinum) and VSTi virtual synth instruments (VST = Virtual Studio Technology) and the list goes on. The point I am making is that with talent, a bit of a learning curve (and there are plenty of online media to help you learn sound engineering) and a modest amount of money, one can create and produce industry standard music.
If you are heads up you save you songs @ a 24bit/96kHz format and take it to a qualified engineer, for again a modest price, to master you work. The RIAA know this and they also know that the new breed of musicians are savvy to this. This debunks the RIAAs long stand grip on the industry. They are desperate and too clueless to figure out they are the ones that must adapt - not the consumer. It just drives them nuts that the tables have shifted and the consumers are again starting to dictate the conditions of the market.
This is the way it is supposed to work, the consumers dictate the market and the product lines and costs. The RIAA cannot come out and let it be known really what is their motivation - preventing the loss of their market lock and monopoly. They are fighting a losing battle. Even if they get laws passed, in say.., The U.S., E.U. and parts of Asia. But considering that China is the sleeping dragon and is well known for their pirating prowess the RIAA has not a chance in hell.
Yep, they are more than desperate - they are more likely at their wits end. Nothing seems to be going their way in the courts or the market, so they play the my lawyer is bigger than your lawyer game to attempt to scare people from pirating (which to a degree is understandable) and more over looking to other non-RIAA alternatives to get music. This is really what scares them - the mind over matter aspect. No will _mind_ because the RIAA, in the long run, will not _matter_.
This all has to do with monopoly and price fixing. They are looking at everything from patent law (was very briefly involved in preparing a definition of terms in the patent as pertains to todays IT environment and market - it nauseated me after a while and I dropped it). They cant figure out how to lock in/down the net market in the manner they have on the brick and morter side of things.
One of their prevalent and most pervasive tactics has been via the courts and legislature. They are trying to pass laws and using the my lawyer is bigger than youre lawyer tactic on common citizens that may or may not be guilty of pirating. Thats not the issue. The issue is to control the market in the same/similar manner they have previously.
They also run their organization in a similar manner that is observed in organized crime - that being many layers of fall guys to plow through before you get to the guys really calling the shots.
What I do find surprising is that people may be surprised by this so-called revelation. From Payola to price-fixing to ripping off their own artisans with alarming regularity this is nothing new in the slightest. What is new is that fact that the RIAA and its affiliates see to be off their game to a fair degree. Its slipping away from them and their outmoded execs are still living with illusions of grandeur evoked from the time before digital.
They want control of the market. They want to tell you what music you like and how much youre fork out for this. There was no real competition before the net and the digital area. Pair this with the advent of the fully functional digital studio and the plethora of Indy record labels spawning forth with a far more viable net market strategy than the RIAA has and one might get a sense as to what extent the RIAA is actually at odds with its own market.
I say let them leave North Carolina, just as long as they leave the code behind. Oh and a viable address in case of a subpoena - which is probably why they dont want to let people see the code. I also understand theyre not too keen on divulging their email or memos either. One could say theyre not to fond of paper overall.
Hurber Mantel, lead kernel dev and co-founder of SuSE Linux has announced that he is leaving Novell/SuSE. The talk on the Beta tester list is overwhelmingly negative in regards to Novell's decision to "standardize" to GNOME.
Seems Novell is likely to do with SuSE what they've done to everything else they've touched (can you say NetWare?). That's right, take a perfectly successful Linux distro and alienate your base. But this is the standard motis operandii at Novell, so they appear to be in fine character.
Pity really!!!
If this hold true, after years as a SuSE beta tester, I can safely say I'll be looking for another distro.
Time to post this on the SuSE-e mailing list and see what shakes out. If I offended any GNOME users I apologize. But after years of shaking out bugs in SuSE versions, IMHO GNOME has been behind the curve for some time (at least in SuSE Linux) and frankly I find the GNOME interface to be obtuse and rife with political overtones I personally would like to avoid.
I understand why one interface would be preferable and the fact that Novell has chosen to focus on GNOME over KDE is no real surprise considering they bought Ximian (the best of the GNOME offerings IMO). But my dislike of GNOME is such that if SUSE defaults to GNOME (as did RH) then I will be shopping elsewhere...
OH Well - to each their own.
They thought the world was flat and if you went to far you would fall off the edge of the world. They thought the Earth was the center of the universe and when those that new otherwise tried to convince the "powers that be" they ran the risk of being labeled heritics and consorting with the devil.
We have all heard stories and tales of this type and the real trick to these is that when it's happening in present time people have a hard time believing it. However, when viewed retrospectively these notions agreed upon as "undeniable" facts, such as the world is flat" are now considered to be the product of superstition and ignorance.
The fact remains that we are still in the very early stages of understanding the construction of "everything" - aka the unified theory. Einstein gave us a tool in which to understand the world around us that much better, but it presented a whole new set of questions and problems to be addressed. Hence the Quantum theory.
The Quantum theory addresses many of the problems Einstein's theories presented, but in turn it gave rise to a whole new set of question. The part that I can't seem to escape reflects back to the first part of this post. So many people back in the day were "convinced" that one could actually sail of the edge of the planet.
Now he have someone that has shaken the proverbial "ivory" tower and the powers that be keep insisting that this is hogwash - despite the inventors claims of 50 independent validation reports and 65 peer-reviewed journal articles we see, as reported in the article, that others are offering "theorhetical" resistance to this latest advent.
Frankly, if they think it's so much hogwash then why aren't those putting up such a noise about this doing what they're getting paid to do? That would be using the scientific methods they revere so highly to find out the "FACTS"?
Perhaps, as further stated in the original article, they have some ulterior motives that preclude them from finding out if there's any merit to this - gee they might just learn something. But then again I think this might be more a matter of ego and tenure.
If this proves to be true then the question is now what will it mean. The article mentions that they intend to release the findings soon and have wheels in motion to get it "to market". What's that supposed to mean. Is this a discovery or a product? Hmmmm.....!
The contention you've mentioned is focused on "due diligence". It goes back a lot further than the 2.5 years of the tort filing/court proceedings. In actuality it started when SCO started down the linux path - one they bought out from Caldera. Much of the work done for Linux that SCO/Caldera was started in the Ransom Love days. Many of the key developers were SCO/Caldera devs and openly and knowingly developed the Linux kernel.
The real contention is that they're claim IBM covertly folded in proprietary SCO nix code into the kernel without SCO's knowledge. This is essentially hogwash because the SCO nix devs were well aware of what they were doing and did so with the blessing of the upper management - such as Ransom Love. Now Darl is claiming they gave no permission or had no knowledge that this was occurring. The real things is that while the former Caldera (and SCO) devs were contributing to the kernel development they did so in a way that adhered to the GPL. Furthermore, Darl is in a position to admit to the point that this was going on for sometime after he assumed the helm and replaced Ransom Love.
Remember, Caldera was a principle member of "United Linux". I beleive that included SuSE (the principle player), Connectiva, Turbo Linux, and Caldera. After Darl took over at SCO they continued to partner with United Linux. So, this obviously begs the question - When did Darl decide that something wrong was happening? I'd say right about the time he realized that SCO was tanking and decided to scream foul. But one might ask what about all the time before this when SCO/Caldera devs were actively contributing to the kernel - was Darl asleep at the wheel? This is the root of the "due diligence" argument. All that time before filing the tort against IBM Darls own devs were making Linux kernel code. So, why didn't he try to do something about it during all that time before the tort filing and the inevitable SCO tank in the market?
The law states (and IMNAL) that in order to claim a violation of IP and other proprietary matters it must be shown that all "reasonable" efforts were taken to protect it and keep it secure - neither of which Darl and Co did.
Lastly, It still remains to be seen if SCO really has any legal legs to stand on because Novell claims SCO was never given the rights to the code in the extent that SCO claims and therefore can't claim a violation of something they never gained the rights to in that sense in the first place.
But lets give credit where credit is due. Darl may not know jack about software and the associated market (let alone F/OSS). But he seems adept at doing the Wall Street 2 step and playing the courts for all it's worth.
"Reasons like this were what made me stop paying for the subscription... I'm sure they'll figure out the Right Way of handling voting at some point in the future (please, take some cues from Bugzilla and basically any other open source bug tracking, okay?) but until then, I'll be content with dual booting to play my Windows games even though it means turning off my torrents.."
I also cancelled my TransGaming account. I agree with your frustrations. I don't understand some of the reasoning they come up with at TransGaming.
Yes you're right. I can get Diablo running no problem and the same holds true for FallOut Tactics - most of my success with Cedega/WineX has been with "sprite" based games. Over half of the "older" games (ranging for 1 year old to 5 or more years) wont run.
Sure one might argue - 5 bucks a month is no big deal to keep your account access going. But, for what point? Fact be told I have better success getting plain ol' Wine to run a wider variety of games (with or without a gui - point to play is a fairly nice front end). Also consider a couple of other things. The howto's and online docs/etc.. that can be found are much more plentiful and useful for Wine than the TransGaming forums, so much so I wrote the wine mini-howto for the unofficial SuSe FAQ.
After paying 5 bucks a month for the last 3 or so years I finally got feed up with the level of progress (or lack thereof) when I could simply dl the latest Wine packages and have better success - pity!