Whenever the corporation isn't promoting "sponsors," Clear Channel attempts to promote labels sponsored by the RIAA.
Cross-marketing. Who ever heard of that? You're forgetting that mass media boiled down to one simple thing: get the most people to listen to most ads that you possibly can. Best of all, slip in ads disguised as "programming." Heck, MTV (when they played music) was the best advertisement ever conceived for record companies. All a video ever has been is an ad for the album. the play "ad" ads in between for more traditional marketing. Probably get paid for both (Clear Channel charges "promotional fees to add a song.")
So "Art" (with a capital A) never entered into it, ever. But the mass in mass media is the message.
Clear Channel is simply practicing lowest common denominator programming in order to get the most "butts in the seats." In other words, they'd rather have more folks half-interested in mediocre music that doesn't offend anyone than fewer folks who are truly passionate about what they're hearing. Why? Easy. Capitalism. The more folks listening to their ads, the more they charge. The more they charge, the more they profit.
Do different companies in the same industry steal ideas from each other? Yes. Is it news? Not unless they get caught doing it before the other fella, i.e. industrial spying.
When a company has made a living off of copying other ideas and then proclaiming their "innovation" they are going to draw the ire of those who know better.
Microsoft, more than any company since at least the halycon days of IBM, does more to make informed people dislike them than anyone else. And they do a better job of that than they do creating computer programs.
Even died-in-the-wool Microsoft bigots have a lot less than love for the new licensing plans that Microsoft has "offered"... so it is more than just a few malcontents sitting infront of their keyboard after their third triple espresso of the day.
The records companies, movie studios, etc., are trying to preserve their monopoly on the only thing that they have of value to sell, that is, their content. Before the day of P2P, they attempted to suppress cassette tapes and VCR's in much the same manner, using the same tactics of Chicken Little "sky is falling" doom and gloom. It didn't happen then, it probably will not happen now.
In fact, much of the revenue generated by a film is through it's secondary sales channels, namely videos (videotape and now DVD.) Had the masses not had the ability to record, how long would it have taken for VCR's to be adopted? Much longer would be my guess.
So at the end of the day, the content providers figured out how to actually utilize the new technology (VCR's) that previously had been the (they said) precursor of their Armageddon and make money off of it.
It may just turn out that they could do the same with P2P. Yes, piracy is rampant in that area currently, but there are ways, as iTunes has obviated, to make a lot of money by downloading music. iTunes has given consumers choice, and consumers have shown that they are willing to pay for high-quality music of their choosing.
No iTunes is not P2P, but it is what P2P really is -- an electronic distribution channel that brings the record store to the web browser. That's really what Grokster, Kazaa, etc., are -- ways to get music sitting in your underwear on Sunday morning while you're sipping coffee. Music that you choose, not the 13 other tracks on a given CD that, well, suck.
They should have learned this, if nothing else: that consumers are far less willing to accept the old status quo of buying albums by the current "pig in a poke" method -- you know the one song that Clear Channel's been bribed into playing, but the others are a mystery. More often than not, they aren't the greatest. Rare is the album that's pleasing end to end any more. And at $19 bucks a pop, it's no wonder people are refusing to plunk down the price.
Given the choice between a fair price for a legal Napster of a certain guaranteed quality, of songs that they want (no filler) I would think that many people would be happy to pay for it. Time will tell. What's clear though is that the meteor has crashed into the record companies' world and it is now their choice to be either dinosaurs or evolve into something that can survive.
is no different from any other tech/science job. I'm sure chemists and civil engineers don't have all this pretension.
If you think that there is no "art" to science, then all you will ever be is a technician, not a scientist, and hardly an effective engineer.
It takes a creative mind to conceive elegant solutions to a previously unsolved problem or creation, and that's something we call 'right-brain thinking' because literally, that's where your creative centers are generally located.
I have worked in the fields of materials science, physics (laser research) and now, IT geared towards the business end of science. I have patents in two of those three fields, and oddly enough, none of the ideas which garnered the patents just fell into our laps -- they came from blue-sky thinking. And I can tell you this -- the germination of those ideas was pureart followed by literally years of engineering to make the vision a workable reality. Why do I say art? Because it was a hitherto unthought of application or idea that at the time was wholly unworkable. It may have well been an anime' cartoon for all of the reality it contained. Then we made it real.
Programming is no diferent. You imagine a solution to a problem, then you make it real. Much like a painter conceives a vision and then uses their skills and techniques to actually apply it to canvas. Some call a simple and effective solution elegant. Others call it common-sense -- except quite many times, no one ever thought about it. Soooo, as people look over what you've done, some can see the "art" in it.
It's also my experience that programmers who aren't very creative tend to write out chop-shop inefficient code that's wedged into the schema of the program and all-too-often has high computing costs.
Great programmers are elegant and often efficient -- and it is an art, whether you can admit that or not. Poor ones are whuffos who resist creativity and live out the Ben Franklin aphorism time after time: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind."
If a work is copyrighted, generally the implication is that the whole and all parts therein are, indeed, copyrighted performances.
A musician cannot copyright a note or a chord, for example, the chords D / A / G are used in succession in many songs. "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who, "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive are among them. However, a musician CAN copyright the exact performance of his/her playing those chords. That' to my thinking, is a sample.
Now then, take it further. I can't copyright a word. Forget getting the rights to the word "guitar" just to name one of about 300,000 in the English language. But I can copyright a string of words -- like "MY guitar gently weeps" and then sue the pants off if you stick them in your song. Of course, "My guitar gently weeps" were George Harrison's words, ironically the same guy sued for plagiarism in his song "My Sweet Lord." Go figure.
To add to the confusion, add public domain performances, and public domain literature. Rush uses direct quotes from S.T. Coleridge in their song "Xanadu." They cannot copyright them, they are public domain. But, in the song, there is a point where the words are an original set of lyrics by Neil Peart and you can bet your bottom Canadian dollar that those are as copyrighted as it gets. Moby uses public domain performances to great effect, indeed, generating new songs from antique recordings. They're his and our to harvest.
So, at the end of the day, if Dre used someone else's work without permission and rights clearances, he's guilty and should pay up. If the law is wrong, then work to change it. But if you were the guy he sampled and din't pay, you'd be mighty p/o'd and go get a lawyer.
The fact is, The Ellisons, Gates, even Jobs's of the world are a dying breed if the Stallmans, Torvalds and other Open Source guys have their way. open Source has provided much of the real innovations in software over the last decade (how's that BSD TCP stack running these days, Bill?) and has now moved into the arena of whole systems. Why pay $300/annually for a piece of software when a free equivilant that runs better is readliy downloadable?
That said, you can see why Larry is worried. He hears the pounding of the hooves of the horsemen of his economic apocylypse. I, as a ride on one of the thundering heard am enjoying every inch of the ride.
And the price of printing and postage has not deterred firms and organizations from sending me several pieces of unsolicited pieces of snail-mail every day. How would "stamped" e-mail be any different? My take is that it wouldn't.
In fact, it might make it worse, as e-stamps would legitimize sending un-solicited commercial e-mail. You can hear the spammers now: "Hey, I paid my one cent, I can send anything I want!"
And, at the same, time *I* have to pay to send my non-commercial e-mail, paying into a government which really does nothing to provide internet connectivty. So, essentially, you are asking me to pay a price to supposedly prevent something to an entity which would provide me nothing in return. After all, would the ISP's not charge for an account if there were an e-mail tax? Heck no. If anything they would raise their prices because of the additional burden of accounting, accounting software, tax analysts and the like. That has me paying a DOUBLE premium for something I am not doing? Forget that!
In a joint press conference, Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti have announced that the MPAA and the RIAA will sue the designers and contructors of Internet2 for creating a network so fast that it will certainly create havoc in the movie and music industries.
"You can copy all of the Godfather movies in milliseconds!" Valenti shouted, slamming his fist upon the podium. "We're going to take THIS to the mattresses! To the MATTRESSES!"
Rosen added, somewhat more sedately, that the a user could log into an Internet2 account and download the "greatest hits library of Hansen" in less than five minutes. Rosen refused to comment when a reporter asked her how Internet2 was any different, that similar acts of piracy could be accomplished today using only a dialup modem.
...right now, they are concerned about the cash cow of their printers. They specifically designed a machine that requires their own cartridges and then candied it over with claims of higher quality, etc. Even the average consumer knows better than that -- they created a system that hides behind litigation to protect their market share.
That's fine, but the market will have the last word -- for example, I will not buy a Lexmark printer. It won't be because of a political statement of any kind but rather one based on practicality -- they have increased their total cost of ownership to the point where it doesn't make sense for me to go and purchase their gear.
If ongoing consumables gets to be unreasonable, due to a legally mandated monopoly, people will move away from existing installations as well.
Microsoft's record of "innovation" has sunk to a new low -- now it looks like they are going to embrace-extend-exterminate Tux. These bozos can't even invent their own mascot...but then again, a furry, squishy bug (the animal most reminiscent of Windows, IMHO) isn't the most inspiring marketing tool.
Bet they claim they had a penguin for a mascot all along and it was those hippies, foreigners and un-American freaks that stole their idea and made Tux the mascot for that mean ole' Linux.
Time Warner here in the Raleigh area has done a great job. All of the major networks (sans Fox, who doesn't do HD yet) have their own HD companion channels, along with HBO-HD. The local PBS outlet is in the act too, albeit a bit strangely -- their station is an endless loop of HD programming but is not anything from PBS.
WRAL-TV our local CBS affiliate is a leader in HDTV and produces a great deal of it's own programming in HD. All of the news, and many of the local NHL games are shown in HD by them in conjunction with Time Warner.
In short, the future for many of you is here and it is crystal clear for those of us so equipped.
... or a satellite IRD. They'll probably do very nicely.
The very few people that watch their four or five channels over the air will have to pony up at their favorite Fry's or Best Buy. But really, are over the air viewers a large viewership anymore?
Regarding prices, they have been coming down nicely over the past year and will undoubtedly continue to do so. This is the usual trend and like DVD's the slow adoption rate will not change the outcome. DVD's now have over hald the market and only increase their share every day. Don't forget also that TV's are like any other consumer appliance these days -- cheap and temporary. The days of the ten year set may be mostly gone, just like high quality VCR's, DVD players, computers, car stereos, et. al.
As it stands now, HDTV remains somewhat on the fringes of the television market, but with each new digital TV, this remains less and less true. And those subscribers that have DirecTV that upgrade their sets have few options:
1. they will need an IRD (DTV "box") upgrade that runs about $500. Plus they will usually need a new dish and someone to come out and re-aim it for them -- the football dishes are no charm to aim and get all of the DTV satellite constellation. 2. when they do upgrade their IRD they get three HD channels -- and no local stations. They can only get HBO, HD-Net and Discovery Channel in HD.
On the other hand, terrestrial based cable systems have made up a lot of ground. They offer most all of the old analog-based channels that once distinguished DTV, AND they also offer ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, HBO, PBS in their HD offerings. Add to that a sub-TiVo POD, HBO on Demand.
That says to me that DTV faces a major competitive disadvantage in the future. The only way that they can add more capacity is to launch more distribution satellites, and until they do, they cannot begin to match the HD offering that Time Warner and others are offering today. As it is now, TW already has a better picture with less pixellation on ALL channels.
Whoever gets DTV had better be aware of this, or they will face a major uphill battle as the transformation of TV from analog to digital takes place.
Imagine you are running a software business, with operations in San Jose, California and Research Triangle Park, NC, and Austin, Texas.
The state of California decides to enact great deal of new taxation on you specifically. Due to competition in your market sector, raising prices to cover your taxes is not a good option.
So what do you do?
Close the San Jose office and move key employees to NC and Texas.
You are probably right for a box that would live in the server room and run by "us".
This one will live in marketing and will be operated by Mac users. Now, I know that OS/X is Unix-like, but I know my phone will be ringing every time a graphic artist stands at a server console with only a shell to work within.
That said, and given that this is an intranet box, Gnome is entirely appropriate.
And if you went on a job interview, you'd know you were in trouble when the hiring manager looked at your resume and said "Hey, I see you are CL/UE - LESS!!!"
The MCSE is an almost useless cert to go and get if you plan to work in a modern IT department. Due to Microsoft concetrating generating revenue from it's MCSE progrsam and not really worrying about creating truly knowledgable sysadmins the MCSE will get you a 30K job (or less) on a Helpdesk as a mouth-breathing card reader. Unfortunately, the cert mills and Microsoft itself sell this useless stack of papers as keys to the server room, where you will know better than the guys who have been staying up all night for years in there putting on security patches, hotfixes, service packs and upgrades that are wildly different from one another. It ain't so, sorry, thanks for playing.
Red Hat, on the other hand, has a chance to create some truly educated people in their cert program, and if they do, they will definitely be able to get their foot in more doors. But if they just create a bunch of wild-eyed know-it-all evangalizers (read: sales people) who just know how to spin up an install and then run the graphical version of Up2Date, then it will be as big a waste of time as Micro$ofts.
Of course, all IT groups are managed by MCSE's (Magazine Certified Stupid Engineers) who read the rags and think that it would be oh so easy to go and migrate from Progress to Oracle, AND implement SAP in a single evening of downtime!
But who would have ever thought five years ago that the predominant commercial *NIX flavor would be adopting the GUI of it's open source competition?
Hopefully, little goodies like a Gnome Package Manager, an RPM like interface for package installation will be included or coming shortly.
Funny thing is that I am bringing a Solaris 8 box up to life as an AMPS (Apache MySQL PHP Solaris) box this week, so I guess this little gem will have to be part of the roll-out!
Here at the ole corporate plantation, we get calls every day from people who have installed apps like this and now wonder why their IE won't work right, or they are getting illicit (gambling, nekkid chicks, etc.) pop-ups and the like. Of course, they all go doe-eyed and deny they did anything wrong.
Usually, it is something seemingly innocuous like Xupiter, or Gator. As much as I detest Microsoft, I can't really blame them for this one. After all, they didn't make the software MAKE the user click on the download and install buttons, did they?
People should know better, but they don't. I guess it goes back to the analogy of you don't have to know how to rebuild the engine to drive the car, but they should be aware enough to know that after four times, their computer won't work as well when they put some free trash on it to make it pretty or better.
At the end of the day, the biggest security hole is the user. And no software can ever change that.
Every major service out there, e.g. Apache, Samba, etc. freely makes their source code available. Do you really need Red Hat to go and make a nice package for you to install? Instead, you do what *NIX sysadmins have done for years upon years -- see patch, fetch patch compile patch implement patch, rest easy. And hey, you can download and comile GCC too.
I missed your comment and posted nearly the same thing.
Actually, IMHO, this is what they want. 16 million won't begin to pay for the ironing of Boies' boxer shorts while he's working on this much less run the company. FUD flaks aren't cheap, there's a lot of competition from Microsoft.
I bought 100 shares a little while ago. Do I have to pay a license fee now that I have equity in these grubbers?
Perhaps it is time for those who disagree with the policies of the board and management of SCO to do the all American thing: buy shares, form a voting bloc, oust the board, end the policy and make SCO release their "patents" into public domain once and irrevocably.
While you or I as your friendly neighborhood geeks might not be able to pony up the smads to buy a company outright, if enough people who disagree with this so-called "tyranny" did, then the owners of the firm can decide policy by sitting board members. Richard Stallman lives just up the coast and it would certainly be amusing to read THOSE board-room minutes!
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that those with the most to lose might band together and do something similar...namely, IBM, HP, Red Hat and others. If IBM stood to lose millions, they certainly could adsorb these miscreants and forever end the issue.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the outcome SCO wants. Pump up the stock in an acquisition and call it the end of the day.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever the corporation isn't promoting "sponsors," Clear Channel attempts to promote labels sponsored by the RIAA.
Cross-marketing. Who ever heard of that? You're forgetting that mass media boiled down to one simple thing: get the most people to listen to most ads that you possibly can. Best of all, slip in ads disguised as "programming." Heck, MTV (when they played music) was the best advertisement ever conceived for record companies. All a video ever has been is an ad for the album. the play "ad" ads in between for more traditional marketing. Probably get paid for both (Clear Channel charges "promotional fees to add a song.")
So "Art" (with a capital A) never entered into it, ever. But the mass in mass media is the message.
Clear Channel is simply practicing lowest common denominator programming in order to get the most "butts in the seats." In other words, they'd rather have more folks half-interested in mediocre music that doesn't offend anyone than fewer folks who are truly passionate about what they're hearing. Why? Easy. Capitalism. The more folks listening to their ads, the more they charge. The more they charge, the more they profit.
Do different companies in the same industry steal ideas from each other? Yes. Is it news? Not unless they get caught doing it before the other fella, i.e. industrial spying.
... so it is more than just a few malcontents sitting infront of their keyboard after their third triple espresso of the day.
When a company has made a living off of copying other ideas and then proclaiming their "innovation" they are going to draw the ire of those who know better.
Microsoft, more than any company since at least the halycon days of IBM, does more to make informed people dislike them than anyone else. And they do a better job of that than they do creating computer programs.
Even died-in-the-wool Microsoft bigots have a lot less than love for the new licensing plans that Microsoft has "offered"
The records companies, movie studios, etc., are trying to preserve their monopoly on the only thing that they have of value to sell, that is, their content. Before the day of P2P, they attempted to suppress cassette tapes and VCR's in much the same manner, using the same tactics of Chicken Little "sky is falling" doom and gloom. It didn't happen then, it probably will not happen now.
In fact, much of the revenue generated by a film is through it's secondary sales channels, namely videos (videotape and now DVD.) Had the masses not had the ability to record, how long would it have taken for VCR's to be adopted? Much longer would be my guess.
So at the end of the day, the content providers figured out how to actually utilize the new technology (VCR's) that previously had been the (they said) precursor of their Armageddon and make money off of it.
It may just turn out that they could do the same with P2P. Yes, piracy is rampant in that area currently, but there are ways, as iTunes has obviated, to make a lot of money by downloading music. iTunes has given consumers choice, and consumers have shown that they are willing to pay for high-quality music of their choosing.
No iTunes is not P2P, but it is what P2P really is -- an electronic distribution channel that brings the record store to the web browser. That's really what Grokster, Kazaa, etc., are -- ways to get music sitting in your underwear on Sunday morning while you're sipping coffee. Music that you choose, not the 13 other tracks on a given CD that, well, suck.
They should have learned this, if nothing else: that consumers are far less willing to accept the old status quo of buying albums by the current "pig in a poke" method -- you know the one song that Clear Channel's been bribed into playing, but the others are a mystery. More often than not, they aren't the greatest. Rare is the album that's pleasing end to end any more. And at $19 bucks a pop, it's no wonder people are refusing to plunk down the price.
Given the choice between a fair price for a legal Napster of a certain guaranteed quality, of songs that they want (no filler) I would think that many people would be happy to pay for it. Time will tell. What's clear though is that the meteor has crashed into the record companies' world and it is now their choice to be either dinosaurs or evolve into something that can survive.
is no different from any other tech/science job. I'm sure chemists and civil engineers don't have all this pretension.
If you think that there is no "art" to science, then all you will ever be is a technician, not a scientist, and hardly an effective engineer.
It takes a creative mind to conceive elegant solutions to a previously unsolved problem or creation, and that's something we call 'right-brain thinking' because literally, that's where your creative centers are generally located.
I have worked in the fields of materials science, physics (laser research) and now, IT geared towards the business end of science. I have patents in two of those three fields, and oddly enough, none of the ideas which garnered the patents just fell into our laps -- they came from blue-sky thinking. And I can tell you this -- the germination of those ideas was pure art followed by literally years of engineering to make the vision a workable reality. Why do I say art? Because it was a hitherto unthought of application or idea that at the time was wholly unworkable. It may have well been an anime' cartoon for all of the reality it contained. Then we made it real.
Programming is no diferent. You imagine a solution to a problem, then you make it real. Much like a painter conceives a vision and then uses their skills and techniques to actually apply it to canvas. Some call a simple and effective solution elegant. Others call it common-sense -- except quite many times, no one ever thought about it. Soooo, as people look over what you've done, some can see the "art" in it.
It's also my experience that programmers who aren't very creative tend to write out chop-shop inefficient code that's wedged into the schema of the program and all-too-often has high computing costs.
Great programmers are elegant and often efficient -- and it is an art, whether you can admit that or not. Poor ones are whuffos who resist creativity and live out the Ben Franklin aphorism time after time: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind."
If a work is copyrighted, generally the implication is that the whole and all parts therein are, indeed, copyrighted performances.
A musician cannot copyright a note or a chord, for example, the chords D / A / G are used in succession in many songs. "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who, "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive are among them. However, a musician CAN copyright the exact performance of his/her playing those chords. That' to my thinking, is a sample.
Now then, take it further. I can't copyright a word. Forget getting the rights to the word "guitar" just to name one of about 300,000 in the English language. But I can copyright a string of words -- like "MY guitar gently weeps" and then sue the pants off if you stick them in your song. Of course, "My guitar gently weeps" were George Harrison's words, ironically the same guy sued for plagiarism in his song "My Sweet Lord." Go figure.
To add to the confusion, add public domain performances, and public domain literature. Rush uses direct quotes from S.T. Coleridge in their song "Xanadu." They cannot copyright them, they are public domain. But, in the song, there is a point where the words are an original set of lyrics by Neil Peart and you can bet your bottom Canadian dollar that those are as copyrighted as it gets. Moby uses public domain performances to great effect, indeed, generating new songs from antique recordings. They're his and our to harvest.
So, at the end of the day, if Dre used someone else's work without permission and rights clearances, he's guilty and should pay up. If the law is wrong, then work to change it. But if you were the guy he sampled and din't pay, you'd be mighty p/o'd and go get a lawyer.
It's all grey.
...not software.
The fact is, The Ellisons, Gates, even Jobs's of the world are a dying breed if the Stallmans, Torvalds and other Open Source guys have their way. open Source has provided much of the real innovations in software over the last decade (how's that BSD TCP stack running these days, Bill?) and has now moved into the arena of whole systems. Why pay $300/annually for a piece of software when a free equivilant that runs better is readliy downloadable?
That said, you can see why Larry is worried. He hears the pounding of the hooves of the horsemen of his economic apocylypse. I, as a ride on one of the thundering heard am enjoying every inch of the ride.
And the price of printing and postage has not deterred firms and organizations from sending me several pieces of unsolicited pieces of snail-mail every day. How would "stamped" e-mail be any different? My take is that it wouldn't.
In fact, it might make it worse, as e-stamps would legitimize sending un-solicited commercial e-mail. You can hear the spammers now: "Hey, I paid my one cent, I can send anything I want!"
And, at the same, time *I* have to pay to send my non-commercial e-mail, paying into a government which really does nothing to provide internet connectivty. So, essentially, you are asking me to pay a price to supposedly prevent something to an entity which would provide me nothing in return. After all, would the ISP's not charge for an account if there were an e-mail tax? Heck no. If anything they would raise their prices because of the additional burden of accounting, accounting software, tax analysts and the like. That has me paying a DOUBLE premium for something I am not doing? Forget that!
In a joint press conference, Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti have announced that the MPAA and the RIAA will sue the designers and contructors of Internet2 for creating a network so fast that it will certainly create havoc in the movie and music industries.
"You can copy all of the Godfather movies in milliseconds!" Valenti shouted, slamming his fist upon the podium. "We're going to take THIS to the mattresses! To the MATTRESSES!"
Rosen added, somewhat more sedately, that the a user could log into an Internet2 account and download the "greatest hits library of Hansen" in less than five minutes. Rosen refused to comment when a reporter asked her how Internet2 was any different, that similar acts of piracy could be accomplished today using only a dialup modem.
...right now, they are concerned about the cash cow of their printers. They specifically designed a machine that requires their own cartridges and then candied it over with claims of higher quality, etc. Even the average consumer knows better than that -- they created a system that hides behind litigation to protect their market share.
That's fine, but the market will have the last word -- for example, I will not buy a Lexmark printer. It won't be because of a political statement of any kind but rather one based on practicality -- they have increased their total cost of ownership to the point where it doesn't make sense for me to go and purchase their gear.
If ongoing consumables gets to be unreasonable, due to a legally mandated monopoly, people will move away from existing installations as well.
Microsoft's record of "innovation" has sunk to a new low -- now it looks like they are going to embrace-extend-exterminate Tux. These bozos can't even invent their own mascot...but then again, a furry, squishy bug (the animal most reminiscent of Windows, IMHO) isn't the most inspiring marketing tool.
Bet they claim they had a penguin for a mascot all along and it was those hippies, foreigners and un-American freaks that stole their idea and made Tux the mascot for that mean ole' Linux.
How typical.
Time Warner here in the Raleigh area has done a great job. All of the major networks (sans Fox, who doesn't do HD yet) have their own HD companion channels, along with HBO-HD. The local PBS outlet is in the act too, albeit a bit strangely -- their station is an endless loop of HD programming but is not anything from PBS.
WRAL-TV our local CBS affiliate is a leader in HDTV and produces a great deal of it's own programming in HD. All of the news, and many of the local NHL games are shown in HD by them in conjunction with Time Warner.
In short, the future for many of you is here and it is crystal clear for those of us so equipped.
... or a satellite IRD. They'll probably do very nicely.
The very few people that watch their four or five channels over the air will have to pony up at their favorite Fry's or Best Buy. But really, are over the air viewers a large viewership anymore?
Regarding prices, they have been coming down nicely over the past year and will undoubtedly continue to do so. This is the usual trend and like DVD's the slow adoption rate will not change the outcome. DVD's now have over hald the market and only increase their share every day. Don't forget also that TV's are like any other consumer appliance these days -- cheap and temporary. The days of the ten year set may be mostly gone, just like high quality VCR's, DVD players, computers, car stereos, et. al.
As it stands now, HDTV remains somewhat on the fringes of the television market, but with each new digital TV, this remains less and less true. And those subscribers that have DirecTV that upgrade their sets have few options:
1. they will need an IRD (DTV "box") upgrade that runs about $500. Plus they will usually need a new dish and someone to come out and re-aim it for them -- the football dishes are no charm to aim and get all of the DTV satellite constellation.
2. when they do upgrade their IRD they get three HD channels -- and no local stations. They can only get HBO, HD-Net and Discovery Channel in HD.
On the other hand, terrestrial based cable systems have made up a lot of ground. They offer most all of the old analog-based channels that once distinguished DTV, AND they also offer ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, HBO, PBS in their HD offerings. Add to that a sub-TiVo POD, HBO on Demand.
That says to me that DTV faces a major competitive disadvantage in the future. The only way that they can add more capacity is to launch more distribution satellites, and until they do, they cannot begin to match the HD offering that Time Warner and others are offering today. As it is now, TW already has a better picture with less pixellation on ALL channels.
Whoever gets DTV had better be aware of this, or they will face a major uphill battle as the transformation of TV from analog to digital takes place.
Imagine you are running a software business, with operations in San Jose, California and Research Triangle Park, NC, and Austin, Texas.
The state of California decides to enact great deal of new taxation on you specifically. Due to competition in your market sector, raising prices to cover your taxes is not a good option.
So what do you do?
Close the San Jose office and move key employees to NC and Texas.
Easy and simple.
You are probably right for a box that would live in the server room and run by "us".
This one will live in marketing and will be operated by Mac users. Now, I know that OS/X is Unix-like, but I know my phone will be ringing every time a graphic artist stands at a server console with only a shell to work within.
That said, and given that this is an intranet box, Gnome is entirely appropriate.
And if you went on a job interview, you'd know you were in trouble when the hiring manager looked at your resume and said "Hey, I see you are CL/UE - LESS!!!"
I may be putting it together, but it is going to be run in a department setting. Gnome means less me, I HOPE.
...or it will be DOA.
The MCSE is an almost useless cert to go and get if you plan to work in a modern IT department. Due to Microsoft concetrating generating revenue from it's MCSE progrsam and not really worrying about creating truly knowledgable sysadmins the MCSE will get you a 30K job (or less) on a Helpdesk as a mouth-breathing card reader. Unfortunately, the cert mills and Microsoft itself sell this useless stack of papers as keys to the server room, where you will know better than the guys who have been staying up all night for years in there putting on security patches, hotfixes, service packs and upgrades that are wildly different from one another. It ain't so, sorry, thanks for playing.
Red Hat, on the other hand, has a chance to create some truly educated people in their cert program, and if they do, they will definitely be able to get their foot in more doors. But if they just create a bunch of wild-eyed know-it-all evangalizers (read: sales people) who just know how to spin up an install and then run the graphical version of Up2Date, then it will be as big a waste of time as Micro$ofts.
Of course, all IT groups are managed by MCSE's (Magazine Certified Stupid Engineers) who read the rags and think that it would be oh so easy to go and migrate from Progress to Oracle, AND implement SAP in a single evening of downtime!
...not that Solaris is "bad"...
But who would have ever thought five years ago that the predominant commercial *NIX flavor would be adopting the GUI of it's open source competition?
Hopefully, little goodies like a Gnome Package Manager, an RPM like interface for package installation will be included or coming shortly.
Funny thing is that I am bringing a Solaris 8 box up to life as an AMPS (Apache MySQL PHP Solaris) box this week, so I guess this little gem will have to be part of the roll-out!
Here at the ole corporate plantation, we get calls every day from people who have installed apps like this and now wonder why their IE won't work right, or they are getting illicit (gambling, nekkid chicks, etc.) pop-ups and the like. Of course, they all go doe-eyed and deny they did anything wrong.
Usually, it is something seemingly innocuous like Xupiter, or Gator. As much as I detest Microsoft, I can't really blame them for this one. After all, they didn't make the software MAKE the user click on the download and install buttons, did they?
People should know better, but they don't. I guess it goes back to the analogy of you don't have to know how to rebuild the engine to drive the car, but they should be aware enough to know that after four times, their computer won't work as well when they put some free trash on it to make it pretty or better.
At the end of the day, the biggest security hole is the user. And no software can ever change that.
Every major service out there, e.g. Apache, Samba, etc. freely makes their source code available. Do you really need Red Hat to go and make a nice package for you to install? Instead, you do what *NIX sysadmins have done for years upon years -- see patch, fetch patch compile patch implement patch, rest easy. And hey, you can download and comile GCC too.
>I'd print myself a girl.
:-)
Someone has been watching bad 80's movies again.
Look up "Wierd Science" on IMDB...the move where two teenagers printed up Kelly Lebrock using an old PC.
I missed your comment and posted nearly the same thing.
Actually, IMHO, this is what they want. 16 million won't begin to pay for the ironing of Boies' boxer shorts while he's working on this much less run the company. FUD flaks aren't cheap, there's a lot of competition from Microsoft.
I bought 100 shares a little while ago. Do I have to pay a license fee now that I have equity in these grubbers?
Caldera Stock Is Dirt Cheap. Buy Them!
Perhaps it is time for those who disagree with the policies of the board and management of SCO to do the all American thing: buy shares, form a voting bloc, oust the board, end the policy and make SCO release their "patents" into public domain once and irrevocably.
While you or I as your friendly neighborhood geeks might not be able to pony up the smads to buy a company outright, if enough people who disagree with this so-called "tyranny" did, then the owners of the firm can decide policy by sitting board members. Richard Stallman lives just up the coast and it would certainly be amusing to read THOSE board-room minutes!
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that those with the most to lose might band together and do something similar...namely, IBM, HP, Red Hat and others. If IBM stood to lose millions, they certainly could adsorb these miscreants and forever end the issue.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the outcome SCO wants. Pump up the stock in an acquisition and call it the end of the day.
Before radio was well understood, it was believed to travel "the ether" -- a 19th century metaphor some sort of strange sub-space.