They got off, the RIAA tried to say that they violated a "Recorded Music" act or some such, and the judge said, nope, they just play it. Everytime I hear the RIAA say they aren't against MP3 I start laughing. If they aren't lying (which I seriously doubt) then they're stupid. Very few powerful business men are stupid, the vast majority of them are great liars.
(not to stereotype business men, but c'mon, would YOU lie for $5 bil.?)
That's the basic gist of SDMI, instead of moving to a very low cost wide open distribution model. Those in power of music want to keep it that way. The RIAA is all about maintaining a monopoly (split 5 ways). They will try to convince people that listening to MP3 is theft, and charging $15 for a CD isn't. Their last thought is about how to expose the most number of people to an artists work, instead trying to get the highest return per listener. Big business and art shouldn't mix. I see a veritable battle brewing and I'd like to think that enough people will learn of the evils of controlling information (Secure DMI) do nothing but limit the choices of consumers (see M$, Catholic Church). Beware, AOL already owns winamp and shoutcast. Someone else (don't remeber who, but a big media guy) owns MP3Spy and GameSpy. If AOL joins the SDMI (and they want to play with the big boys) then WinAmp will soon check your MP3's before they play. Watch the legislation, making free things illegal is a great way to charge for them. It's really an us vs. them battle. Consumers vs. Business. Who wins in the Free Market.....we shall see. Stay Alert, Stay Alive, Stay FREE
Those old-fogie executives will wake up when they see sales figures. I don't see any fully open source drivers happening until some daring young company is able to do it AND MAKE MONEY AT IT. I think it will work because any company that does it at this point will be/.'ed at the retail level. And I believe that brand loyalty is huge in the Open Source realm, if you will (flame whats?). But who's going to take that first step?
I agree with the above post. You should most definitely establish yourself as a expert, especially on/. where a good number of very confident poster are college students.
For such a short article a simple sentence or two could do the trick. "We faced this issue during the 20+ years I was working in xxx industry" or some such. Modesty works, but make sure we know that you are being modest and not just some 2-bit hack.
I'm a big Feynman fan, read some books and watched some specials, a truly unique geek. Does anybody have a link about... He had devolped this really interesting and far reaching theory about the idea of anti-matter actually being matter going backwards in time. Mathematically all the speed of light is is a vertical asymptote. It slopes up then comes right back down.:)
I did some quick searches, but couldn't find it. I love this stuff and have written a few papers on it, relating quantum physics to the meaning of life and all that. It'll be up soon, stay tuned....
/. is becoming what WiReD was... but it lacks some of the hard journalism that a "professional" (making money doing it) magazine can pull off...
I'd take the moderated ravings of 100,000 geeks over those of 20 reporters any day. You get a lot more first hand, arguable, backed-by-proof opinions here./.'s style of story collection, it's pin point niche targeting, and TONS of free content (from the readers no less) is the future of media (remember we're all geeks, computers don't scare us and they won't scare anybody else in 20 years) Rob, if you guys sold out for less than a cool mil, you were robbed;).
I didn't read WiReD, now I never will.
(I think this is off-topic for the original post, doh!)
um, sounds quite a bit like real life, eh? Hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction here, but it seems to me when we can figure out how to do large scale quantum computing we'll be basically able to do anything. Aren't the "Universe as we know it" and that pen on your desk just part of a big (very) quantum computer? Aren't we?
I think the final straw is Heisenberg's theory, it'll be tough to get around that one. And, of course, the fact that time keeps going.
(is this what happens when geeks go meta-physical?)
I think the Bazaar method of software developement for games could work, but we have to change a couple underlying assumptions first. The first step is to get beyond the mass-produced crap stage we are at now. The others follow....
I think OSS for games would work something like the way Quake has developed, from Wolf 3-d to Doom to Qauke 1,2,3. Each step is really the same game just taken to a new level. I disagree that we need a constantly revolving buffet of games. I am most happy when I really get to sink my teeth into a game and get to knows its most intimate secrets. Having to shift from shallow game to shallow game (at $50 a pop) gets old rather quickly.
An Open(tm?) game would just continue to evolve over time. You only have to cover three or four genres and then work to make it customizable over those areas. I'm thinking...Real-Time-Strategy (Starcraft), First Person Shooter (Quake), Godsim (Civ,CTP/Alpha Centauri) and of course an RPG.
Just have one extremely customizable game for each genre (remember how the author mentioned that the themes were more important than the file selection system, we have experience with themes) and then improve on it. Networking would be a big issue (multi-player is how games "should" be played), but sprites, stats, and behavious could all be easily customizable. It would be a larger undertaking, but I think it could have the significance of a GNOME or KDE for the community (i.e. open it up to a larger audience).
I think there would be value in selling the "distro" (a la Redhat) as it were, if it included all the tools and various "live" games. From that mythical Open 3-d Studio (which I'd like to see) to the network code, to hackable examples for each genre. I would buy it.
I think it's silly to dismiss a possible future of free/open games. With all it's pitfalls, it does have that magic dust that works in the free software community, it's SEXY, baby!!
(Disclaimer: the above opinions are from a hard-core gamer,i.e. would rather game than code, or much else(99 out of a 100) so take it with a bit of salt)
The ads that are there get watched again - but there's no way for the networks to track this, so they can't charge the advertiser more for it. And if they can't charge the advertiser more, then it's not doing the network any direct benefit.
The ratings companies, err, Neilson(a monopoly) can account for this through thier diary system. If you watch a show, even away from it's normally scheduled air time, you write it down and it's added to the shows rating. The problem (and this is a Big Problem now) is the low sample rate that Neilson uses (1/3 of the country lives in NY and LA, um, no) and it's geographic bias make for a ratings system that is already very flawed. The Networks don't want it to change, b/c the system benefits their percieved ratings. And the Networks pay Neilson's salaries, and have the quick access to the ear's of ratings executives. What the TVreplay will do is fragment the whole thing even more. But I have to agree with the NYTimes article, "Network TV is dead."
Recording PPV movies... shouldn't be an issue either... you already payed for it - I have to disagree with you here, this is just wrong. You pay to rent videos, but you don't have the right to make a copy of them, even for personal use - why should PPV be any different? It's just like software - the distribution medium doesn't mean a thing, it's the intellectual property that you are licensing.
Actually you do have the explicite right to record these movies. It is the distribution for profit that is illegal. They don't advertise the service as such (notice the parallel in the NY Times article) to keep on the good side of the studios. The loss of quality is one reason they don't worry about this, and totally freak about digital copying (1,000,000 perfect copies, everytime)
Happy Fourth of July weekend to you other 42% Americans out there.
if he/she is right on the edge, and a comment on/. pushes them over...my guess is they'd find a way to go that extra foot all by their lonesome selves.
...and just because it's a holiday and I don't have to work... I can think of a situation where it would be "nice" to tell someone to go kill themselves. It would be that situation where my preposterous exclamation caused them to see the craziness in their actions (the ones that caused me to tell them to take a flying leap) and perhaps change them. I can think of numerous situations where the phase "Why don't you go kill yourself" could cause bundles of sarcasm induced laughter. "Oh, I dropeed my pen" "WDYGKY" HAHAHAHAHhahahhehehehe........
Oh yeah, that's right. The purpose of life is to constantly press forward until we win. "99% of human action is equaly useless"? Please go kill yourself before you infect the others. I for one will be enjoying all thost "wasted" moments.
But then who would get the joke? I don't condemn them for this (although they might have messed with more stuff behind the scenes). Telling good jokes in a vacuum is like squeezing mustard out of a turnip.
That's why you go with an open license (of sorts) it allows everyone the right of distribution with the clause of having to share any revenue. It puts the burden of proof on the part of the license holder, but the right to see a distributors books would be part of the licence. It might not work on a small scale (teenagers) but any major corporations that did it would be easy to police.
We basically a wide open marketplace right now (I have yet to have trouble finding any mp3 I want). Controlling it is an impossibility, adapting to it is a necessity.
But only until they (or their advertisers) realize how little time we spend there. I spend probably 50x more time on/., than the news sites. Things are definitely shifting and news will be a tough one, it costs a lot of money to gather the news, only to let other sites have a throwawy link and still retain the eyeballs.
I still can't believe that the news sites don't have discussion of their own. It seems pretty basic to me, centralized discussion on each and every story. Even that sucks though, without good moderation (it's helped/. A LOT, IMHO). It's not surprising that/. is the leader though, it's the core of the core of the 'Net.
I'm sick of mononpolists defending their "rights". This is such a bunch of crap. Going after the girlscouts..this is a very community minded organization. I think it's high time we figure out some new copyright laws. The ones we have don't have a snowball's chance in hell to deal with the Internet and digital distribution. All we'll get is a whole lot more lawyers, who already represent the scum of society (both in court and in person).
How 'bout this as a plan. 50/50 -- Half for the makers, and half for the sellers. If I sell, make more off of broadcasting, or do anything that generates revenue with your music, I have to split it with you, 50/50. This allows for HUGE distribution and, the mark of a good web business plan, multiple revenue streams. Now the lawyers and accountants can come in and make sure the artists get their share, not to make sure the public doesn't get their music. This is a MUCH better deal than most major label artists get and works much better with our modern means of exchanging music.
As for the "windows enthusiast", I didn't know such a beast existed. Can anyone confim or deny this for me?
it's true. I *bows head in shame* used to be on. They are disappearing from the wild however. The only time the crowd I saw Southpark with clapped, was when Bill Gates gets killed.
K, I didn't read Time and I reverently apologize to them for besmirching their good name...in other news.
I just saw the movie.
Outstanding, great flick, I laughed my ass off. (WARNING!! WARNING!! SPOILER MATERIAL!!!) Two great scenes:
1) The military looking at the Death Star style map of Canada before the Invasion. Saddam (who has been consorting with the devil) flashes a couple times, then the thing crashes. General says bring him Bill Gates. Bill walks in with two guards, the General says "I thought windows98 was supposed the be faster,..."yada, yada, yada. Then he pops him right in the forehead. Great. People actually started clapping (the only time they did, and yeah I was one of 'em)
2) Stan is getting a message out to all the children, sits down at a computer, gets on the 'Net, does a quick search, see's Cartman's mom eating shit (he was looking for the clitoris), then does a bit of hacking (cracking, yea, yea, yea). The good part is while he's doing it,he does that quick sidelong self-conscious glance at the boys. The exact same thing I've done when showing off the geek skillz to other clans.
Anyway, there are a ton of jokes, more swear words than you can comprehend, a great ending(Cartman goes Anime). Highly recommended, but NOT for the children (unless you want to answer a whole bunch of questions.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't start hollering about freedon, now. Nobody is free to commit theft.
Now would that be theft as in listening to stuff thats free on the radio, or theft as in charging $15 for a CD?
BTW, we're all free to do whatever we want, theft included. Of course, we're also free to deal with the consequences...
replace MTV with Internet and I agree with you (try to think outside your demographic)
They got off, the RIAA tried to say that they violated a "Recorded Music" act or some such, and the judge said, nope, they just play it.
Everytime I hear the RIAA say they aren't against MP3 I start laughing. If they aren't lying (which I seriously doubt) then they're stupid. Very few powerful business men are stupid, the vast majority of them are great liars.
(not to stereotype business men, but c'mon, would YOU lie for $5 bil.?)
That's the basic gist of SDMI, instead of moving to a very low cost wide open distribution model. Those in power of music want to keep it that way. The RIAA is all about maintaining a monopoly (split 5 ways). They will try to convince people that listening to MP3 is theft, and charging $15 for a CD isn't.
Their last thought is about how to expose the most number of people to an artists work, instead trying to get the highest return per listener. Big business and art shouldn't mix.
I see a veritable battle brewing and I'd like to think that enough people will learn of the evils of controlling information (Secure DMI) do nothing but limit the choices of consumers (see M$, Catholic Church).
Beware, AOL already owns winamp and shoutcast. Someone else (don't remeber who, but a big media guy) owns MP3Spy and GameSpy. If AOL joins the SDMI (and they want to play with the big boys) then WinAmp will soon check your MP3's before they play. Watch the legislation, making free things illegal is a great way to charge for them.
It's really an us vs. them battle. Consumers vs. Business. Who wins in the Free Market.....we shall see.
Stay Alert, Stay Alive, Stay FREE
Those old-fogie executives will wake up when they see sales figures. I don't see any fully open source drivers happening until some daring young company is able to do it AND MAKE MONEY AT IT. I think it will work because any company that does it at this point will be /.'ed at the retail level. And I believe that brand loyalty is huge in the Open Source realm, if you will (flame whats?). But who's going to take that first step?
I agree with the above post. You should most definitely establish yourself as a expert, especially on /. where a good number of very confident poster are college students.
For such a short article a simple sentence or two could do the trick. "We faced this issue during the 20+ years I was working in xxx industry" or some such. Modesty works, but make sure we know that you are being modest and not just some 2-bit hack.
I'm a big Feynman fan, read some books and watched some specials, a truly unique geek. Does anybody have a link about... :)
He had devolped this really interesting and far reaching theory about the idea of anti-matter actually being matter going backwards in time. Mathematically all the speed of light is is a vertical asymptote. It slopes up then comes right back down.
I did some quick searches, but couldn't find it.
I love this stuff and have written a few papers on it, relating quantum physics to the meaning of life and all that. It'll be up soon, stay tuned....
/. is becoming what WiReD was ... but it lacks some of the hard journalism that a "professional" (making money doing it) magazine can pull off ...
/.'s style of story collection, it's pin point niche targeting, and TONS of free content (from the readers no less) is the future of media (remember we're all geeks, computers don't scare us and they won't scare anybody else in 20 years) Rob, if you guys sold out for less than a cool mil, you were robbed ;).
I'd take the moderated ravings of 100,000 geeks over those of 20 reporters any day. You get a lot more first hand, arguable, backed-by-proof opinions here.
I didn't read WiReD, now I never will.
(I think this is off-topic for the original post, doh!)
um, sounds quite a bit like real life, eh? Hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction here, but it seems to me when we can figure out how to do large scale quantum computing we'll be basically able to do anything. Aren't the "Universe as we know it" and that pen on your desk just part of a big (very) quantum computer? Aren't we?
I think the final straw is Heisenberg's theory, it'll be tough to get around that one. And, of course, the fact that time keeps going.
(is this what happens when geeks go meta-physical?)
now it's different. This is of course very difficult to prove, what with the retro-sigging and all. So you'll just have to trust me...
I think the Bazaar method of software developement for games could work, but we have to change a couple underlying assumptions first. The first step is to get beyond the mass-produced crap stage we are at now. The others follow....
I think OSS for games would work something like the way Quake has developed, from Wolf 3-d to Doom to Qauke 1,2,3. Each step is really the same game just taken to a new level. I disagree that we need a constantly revolving buffet of games. I am most happy when I really get to sink my teeth into a game and get to knows its most intimate secrets. Having to shift from shallow game to shallow game (at $50 a pop) gets old rather quickly.
An Open(tm?) game would just continue to evolve over time. You only have to cover three or four genres and then work to make it customizable over those areas. I'm thinking...Real-Time-Strategy (Starcraft), First Person Shooter (Quake), Godsim (Civ,CTP/Alpha Centauri) and of course an RPG.
Just have one extremely customizable game for each genre (remember how the author mentioned that the themes were more important than the file selection system, we have experience with themes) and then improve on it. Networking would be a big issue (multi-player is how games "should" be played), but sprites, stats, and behavious could all be easily customizable. It would be a larger undertaking, but I think it could have the significance of a GNOME or KDE for the community (i.e. open it up to a larger audience).
I think there would be value in selling the "distro" (a la Redhat) as it were, if it included all the tools and various "live" games. From that mythical Open 3-d Studio (which I'd like to see) to the network code, to hackable examples for each genre. I would buy it.
I think it's silly to dismiss a possible future of free/open games. With all it's pitfalls, it does have that magic dust that works in the free software community, it's SEXY, baby!!
(Disclaimer: the above opinions are from a hard-core gamer,i.e. would rather game than code, or much else(99 out of a 100) so take it with a bit of salt)
I haven't heard much from him that I don't like. And he's a pot-smoking, ho-loving, Navy SEAL, Venura for Pres. 2004.
To Pick Deeper:
... shouldn't be an issue either ... you already payed for it - I have to disagree with you here, this is just wrong. You pay to rent videos, but you don't have the right to make a copy of them, even for personal use - why should PPV be any different? It's just like software - the distribution medium doesn't mean a thing, it's the intellectual property that you are licensing.
The ads that are there get watched again - but there's no way for the networks to track this, so they can't charge the advertiser more for it. And if they can't charge the advertiser more, then it's not doing the network any direct benefit.
The ratings companies, err, Neilson(a monopoly) can account for this through thier diary system. If you watch a show, even away from it's normally scheduled air time, you write it down and it's added to the shows rating. The problem (and this is a Big Problem now) is the low sample rate that Neilson uses (1/3 of the country lives in NY and LA, um, no) and it's geographic bias make for a ratings system that is already very flawed. The Networks don't want it to change, b/c the system benefits their percieved ratings. And the Networks pay Neilson's salaries, and have the quick access to the ear's of ratings executives.
What the TVreplay will do is fragment the whole thing even more. But I have to agree with the NYTimes article, "Network TV is dead."
Recording PPV movies
Actually you do have the explicite right to record these movies. It is the distribution for profit that is illegal. They don't advertise the service as such (notice the parallel in the NY Times article) to keep on the good side of the studios. The loss of quality is one reason they don't worry about this, and totally freak about digital copying (1,000,000 perfect copies, everytime)
Happy Fourth of July weekend to you other 42% Americans out there.
if he/she is right on the edge, and a comment on /. pushes them over...my guess is they'd find a way to go that extra foot all by their lonesome selves.
...and just because it's a holiday and I don't have to work...
I can think of a situation where it would be "nice" to tell someone to go kill themselves. It would be that situation where my preposterous exclamation caused them to see the craziness in their actions (the ones that caused me to tell them to take a flying leap) and perhaps change them. I can think of numerous situations where the phase "Why don't you go kill yourself" could cause bundles of sarcasm induced laughter. "Oh, I dropeed my pen" "WDYGKY" HAHAHAHAHhahahhehehehe........
Oh yeah, that's right. The purpose of life is to constantly press forward until we win. "99% of human action is equaly useless"? Please go kill yourself before you infect the others. I for one will be enjoying all thost "wasted" moments.
But then who would get the joke? I don't condemn them for this (although they might have messed with more stuff behind the scenes). Telling good jokes in a vacuum is like squeezing mustard out of a turnip.
That's why you go with an open license (of sorts) it allows everyone the right of distribution with the clause of having to share any revenue. It puts the burden of proof on the part of the license holder, but the right to see a distributors books would be part of the licence. It might not work on a small scale (teenagers) but any major corporations that did it would be easy to police.
We basically a wide open marketplace right now (I have yet to have trouble finding any mp3 I want). Controlling it is an impossibility, adapting to it is a necessity.
but we're still bringing them revenue.
/., than the news sites. Things are definitely shifting and news will be a tough one, it costs a lot of money to gather the news, only to let other sites have a throwawy link and still retain the eyeballs.
/. A LOT, IMHO). It's not surprising that /. is the leader though, it's the core of the core of the 'Net.
But only until they (or their advertisers) realize how little time we spend there. I spend probably 50x more time on
I still can't believe that the news sites don't have discussion of their own. It seems pretty basic to me, centralized discussion on each and every story. Even that sucks though, without good moderation (it's helped
I'm sick of mononpolists defending their "rights". This is such a bunch of crap. Going after the girlscouts..this is a very community minded organization. I think it's high time we figure out some new copyright laws. The ones we have don't have a snowball's chance in hell to deal with the Internet and digital distribution.
All we'll get is a whole lot more lawyers, who already represent the scum of society (both in court and in person).
How 'bout this as a plan.
50/50 -- Half for the makers, and half for the sellers. If I sell, make more off of broadcasting, or do anything that generates revenue with your music, I have to split it with you, 50/50. This allows for HUGE distribution and, the mark of a good web business plan, multiple revenue streams. Now the lawyers and accountants can come in and make sure the artists get their share, not to make sure the public doesn't get their music.
This is a MUCH better deal than most major label artists get and works much better with our modern means of exchanging music.
Bash away
That's the only reason I still have it, of course that's the reason I started using computers, but that's a whole 'nother run-on sentence.
As for the "windows enthusiast", I didn't know such a beast existed. Can anyone confim or
deny this for me?
it's true. I *bows head in shame* used to be on. They are disappearing from the wild however. The only time the crowd I saw Southpark with clapped, was when Bill Gates gets killed.
GO Subject
it has a floppy drive.
Jobs must'a been tripping when he nixed that one.
K, I didn't read Time and I reverently apologize to them for besmirching their good name...in other news.
I just saw the movie.
Outstanding, great flick, I laughed my ass off. (WARNING!! WARNING!! SPOILER MATERIAL!!!)
Two great scenes:
1) The military looking at the Death Star style map of Canada before the Invasion. Saddam (who has been consorting with the devil) flashes a couple times, then the thing crashes. General says bring him Bill Gates. Bill walks in with two guards, the General says "I thought windows98 was supposed the be faster,..."yada, yada, yada. Then he pops him right in the forehead. Great.
People actually started clapping (the only time they did, and yeah I was one of 'em)
2) Stan is getting a message out to all the children, sits down at a computer, gets on the 'Net, does a quick search, see's Cartman's mom eating shit (he was looking for the clitoris), then does a bit of hacking (cracking, yea, yea, yea). The good part is while he's doing it,he does that quick sidelong self-conscious glance at the boys. The exact same thing I've done when showing off the geek skillz to other clans.
Anyway, there are a ton of jokes, more swear words than you can comprehend, a great ending(Cartman goes Anime). Highly recommended, but NOT for the children (unless you want to answer a whole bunch of questions.)
-Fin-
French kiss, French fries--two things I try to not do without for extended periods of time.