The (IMHO) most interesting theory brought out so far in this article is the one about distribution:
Radio, by
allowing for the first time anonymous distribution of music, crossed color lines.
The racist pre-war record companies refused to allow black musicians to sell an
honest version of their music. But once that music was on the radio, in the
palatable and infectious style brought by Bessie Smith and Earl Hines, even if the
intended audience was black, any white listener could tune it in, in the privacy of
their home.
I see something similar happening on Napster, but in a slightly different way. Napster allows music to cross cultural, subcultural, and international boundaries (sometimes at the same time:). For example, you might all of a sudden find yourself listening to a French oldies piece because you were browsing someone's hard drive. You might decide you like the genre and fill up a directory with similar fare, and unintentionally aid in the distribution of the genre.
Though it might sound far fetched, I'm sure you've seen examples, such as a single user sharing very good collections of hard core rap, arabic, country, and religious music at the same time. Or someone who is sharing almost terabytes of top 40 with about 10 songs of 70s Indian film music (and maybe 3 Javanese gamelan pieces) thrown in. This is a lot more diversity than any student radio station will give you, and the list goes on...
The difference from the Radio & Jazz example is that no such genre will become immensely popular through Napster, but as time goes on we might see more of a hybridization of the worlds music. At the very least, we might see diversification of individual tastes, which (at least here in the US) is stiflingly uniform at present.
Unless we introduce tracking software at an
early age, these kids might some day grow up to
be software pirates, privacy nuts who don't even
share consumer information, or worse yet, music
pirates! It's better that they know (and are OK with) big brother's constant surveillance from an early age...
What would you rather have: slashdot readers or aol subscribers??
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Our employer (large telco who probably also employs Mr. Coward) would mandate special authorization to leave town even when we were not on call. This was not a huge problem since it was in our job description as support employees.
Everyone would take turns carrying the pager. This was a sweet deal for contractors because even a 15 minute response at 3am ended up getting billed for a full hour. Not getting paged was a rarity. Of course there was no
sleep, but that also was the nature of the job. Once again, this was in the job description--nothing to complain about.
When we were made to become salaried employees, and people who refused to do so left, however, it started getting questionable:
-overtime was anything above 45 hours. We got paid for 40. Everyone worked at least 50 (mandatory). So every month I had at around 20 hrs of unpaid time.
-we would take turns being on call (which became 'on site') on national holidays. We would get no extra pay for this, even though holidays were supposedly a benefit.
-full 8-9 hour shifts were mandatory even after 4-5 hour nightly on calls. We had one guy simply 'break' and just abandon the job. Most of us came close.
My advice:
If you're contracting, stay a contractor, and bill
all time you work (so Coward has little to complain about). Do NOT become salaried.
Otherwise, try monster.com (which I did)!!!
It boils down to this: support employees will be abused. It [support] is a good thing to do if you need the money, or are making a lot of it. Otherwise, fighting the system is pointless, since nobody expects you to last more than 18 months or so anyway. Any other type of employee would probably have unionized, but somehow that does not work in the geek world. Why not? Are we too independent, too disorganized, or do we simply make too much money to care?
-he's making 6 figures...so he'll risk his behind for $250
-he uses a stolen cell to order pizza. Ingenious...
-and, of course, he has a girlfriend!!!
(the serial port?)
> All that it's going to do is stop lamers from
> copying/pirating stuff. Anybody who really > wants to dupe stuff is going to find A Way(tm).
I'm afraid you're missing an important point: the only reason there's _so_ much content out there right now is because lamers put it there. It doesn't take too much savvy to start Napster and share your hard-to-find mp3s via the cable modem.
If the industry is smart, they will infuse copy protection in the softest way possible. This is the start. Next time you search for anything out of the mainstream, you might find a "pirated" copy of it in the Windows Media Format, set to expire in 30 days. Most people who share the content aren't nerds like us. They'll use whatever is easiest (which happens to be mp3 at the moment).
It's because of this type of "soft tyranny" that it's become nearly impossible to live in a UNIX-only world (there's very little I can do to stop my boss's boss from thinking that PowerPoint is a standard graphics format).
Slashdot Mirror
Though it might sound far fetched, I'm sure you've seen examples, such as a single user sharing very good collections of hard core rap, arabic, country, and religious music at the same time. Or someone who is sharing almost terabytes of top 40 with about 10 songs of 70s Indian film music (and maybe 3 Javanese gamelan pieces) thrown in. This is a lot more diversity than any student radio station will give you, and the list goes on...
The difference from the Radio & Jazz example is that no such genre will become immensely popular through Napster, but as time goes on we might see more of a hybridization of the worlds music. At the very least, we might see diversification of individual tastes, which (at least here in the US) is stiflingly uniform at present.
Just my $0.02
Cowtamer
--taming the ferocious wild cow since 1994
We must teach our children to obey the law!
Unless we introduce tracking software at an
early age, these kids might some day grow up to
be software pirates, privacy nuts who don't even
share consumer information, or worse yet, music
pirates! It's better that they know (and are OK with) big brother's constant surveillance from an early age...
What would you rather have: slashdot readers or aol subscribers??
NO MLMs!!! NO SELLING! HARNESS THE POWER OF QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMIC ATTRACTION TO ATTRACT WOMEN WITH SIX FIGURE RESIDUAL INCOMES!!! ORDER OUR 90 MILLION ADDRESS CD-ROM TODAY!
my situation was very similar:
Our employer (large telco who probably also employs Mr. Coward) would mandate special authorization to leave town even when we were not on call. This was not a huge problem since it was in our job description as support employees.
Everyone would take turns carrying the pager. This was a sweet deal for contractors because even a 15 minute response at 3am ended up getting billed for a full hour. Not getting paged was a rarity. Of course there was no
sleep, but that also was the nature of the job. Once again, this was in the job description--nothing to complain about.
When we were made to become salaried employees, and people who refused to do so left, however, it started getting questionable:
-overtime was anything above 45 hours. We got paid for 40. Everyone worked at least 50 (mandatory). So every month I had at around 20 hrs of unpaid time.
-we would take turns being on call (which became 'on site') on national holidays. We would get no extra pay for this, even though holidays were supposedly a benefit.
-full 8-9 hour shifts were mandatory even after 4-5 hour nightly on calls. We had one guy simply 'break' and just abandon the job. Most of us came close.
My advice:
If you're contracting, stay a contractor, and bill
all time you work (so Coward has little to complain about). Do NOT become salaried.
Otherwise, try monster.com (which I did)!!!
It boils down to this: support employees will be abused. It [support] is a good thing to do if you need the money, or are making a lot of it. Otherwise, fighting the system is pointless, since nobody expects you to last more than 18 months or so anyway. Any other type of employee would probably have unionized, but somehow that does not work in the geek world. Why not? Are we too independent, too disorganized, or do we simply make too much money to care?
-he's making 6 figures...so he'll risk his behind for $250 -he uses a stolen cell to order pizza. Ingenious... -and, of course, he has a girlfriend!!! (the serial port?)
> All that it's going to do is stop lamers from
> copying/pirating stuff. Anybody who really > wants to dupe stuff is going to find A Way(tm).
I'm afraid you're missing an important point: the only reason there's _so_ much content out there right now is because lamers put it there. It doesn't take too much savvy to start Napster and share your hard-to-find mp3s via the cable modem.
If the industry is smart, they will infuse copy protection in the softest way possible. This is the start. Next time you search for anything out of the mainstream, you might find a "pirated" copy of it in the Windows Media Format, set to expire in 30 days. Most people who share the content aren't nerds like us. They'll use whatever is easiest (which happens to be mp3 at the moment).
It's because of this type of "soft tyranny" that it's become nearly impossible to live in a UNIX-only world (there's very little I can do to stop my boss's boss from thinking that PowerPoint is a standard graphics format).
>MicroSoft makes me mad sometimes...
...as it should