It's years since I bought a CD. From the moment I got my hands on a CD burner, I think, my music-paying habits began to lose steam. The coming of decent copy software and cheap disks got me in the one-to-ten disks a year percentile (I was more in the 50-to-100 before). And Napster finally killed it. I'm still more in the direct copy of CD's than MP3, relly, if only for the convenience (it's already normalised). I also do lots of compilations, mainly for the car. Now, when I pay a visit to a friend, I carry my laptop with the Exact Audio Copy program. I come back with two or three CD's in it, and perhaps some separated tracks. When something that interest me is not to be found, there is always the Net to pick up MP3's, lately of rather good quality.
Now, for what would bring me back to paying for music. I would pay for a non-subscription, pay as you go service, of the following description. It would have most of the published music available. You check the tracks you want, and they send you by snail mail, one or several compilated CD's with those tracks. You can choose an image to go printed on the CD, if you want a booklet with the lyrics, biographies... you name it. No protection of the tracks, of course, just a regular CD. The tracks should have their volume and dynamic range normalised (as far as possible, of course, if you try to mix classical music and AC-DC, you are in for it).
I reckon some kind of automatic process could take care of mostly everything. The new releases would have a waiting time before being available in this service, like for the video version of a film, only probably longer. The price? About half a dollar for track, plus post, packaging. Total price of a ten-track CD at home, less than $10. No box, of course, only a hard envelope.
The web site would be a gigantic central point for music, with lots of user comments, forums, cross-references (if you liked that, you would probably like to check...), and so on. Probably would be one of the most visited sites on Earth, for buying, but mostly for hanging around.
That I would pay for, and gladly. I do not know if I check with the profile of many others, but I know that those half-baked, half-hearted attemps to a paying service leave me cold. I'm just not buying it. I will refuse them my attention till they start doing something interesting. I suppose they don't care, they are busy with other kinds of users. But I don't care either, I'm busy burning my own CD's.
Actually, I did read the article. And, aside from the kid being a "hacker", I don't see why it's on slashdot. Can you explain that to me? Has slashdot started posting tragic deaths that should not have occured, and we're supposed to discuss them? If the kid had punched a teacher, was suspended, and then killed himself, would we see the story posted here? But because his crime was of hacking, we're supposed to.... what exactly?
Well, you seem to be proved wrong, if the sheer volume of comments has anything to do with it (almost 700 now). The article should be in Slashdot because we are interested in it. A good Slashdot article is one in which the Slashdot community is interested. You can argue about the closed model that implies, the possible lack of contrary opinions, but that's another matter.
"Open source" means that anyone can get a copy of the source code. Developers can find security weaknesses very easily with Linux. The same is not true with Microsoft Windows.
Yeeeeeah! True and to the point. Rather nice of Microsoft to recognize it. Only, for the sake of clarity, we should ask them to add ", and so fix them." at the end of the second sentence. Elsewhere, somebody could be confused.
Thank you for the link. Now I have read something interesting today, and I'm not referring to the Slashdot posting.
But really, about the Stallman's speech. When a discussion about "What Would We Do If We Had a Food Duplicator"? For a bit of perspective, only.
And yes, IMHO he whines too much.
About WPA, I'd like to make a bet. It will never exist. If MS had ever wanted to really protect Windows, they could have done ages ago via hardware, something in the keyboard cable or the paralell port or whatever. That would have stopped casual copying. They haven't done it to date, because they don't want to piss off their clients. That reason will hold now.
Regarding your comments. You seem to use the facts of today desktop domination by Microsoft as a proof that they will continue to dominate it in the future, if I understood it correctly. I respectfully beg to differ, even recognizing that's a possible outcome. After all, stasis has a force of it's own. But I think different forces are at work to undermine that dominance. Enumerate them would be long. I will resume saying that it's precisely such a domination that is unnatural, and can only be due to a particular combination of circumstances. I would say an optimal combination. As soon as any circumstance change, the result is a loss of power and money by Microsoft, because it's no longer optimal.
About the monopoly topic, you don't seem so much to like monopolies as consider them a fact of life, and reject the MS particular treatment. Well, I'm involved in computing, and tend to resent MS monopoly more.
I'm of course right along with you about the reason why many people will change to the next Office, Windows or whatever. They will trod along, like always, but I think in ever dwindling numbers. I'm not predicting a huge downfall in sales, more like a gentle eroding. The problem is that MS has built much of its success in the seemingly ever growing nature of her bussiness. Now that IMHO will no longer be the case. I think we have already seen the highest point of MS in influence, power, stock valuation, you name it. Some day a book will be written "The decadence and fall of the Microsoft Empire". I think we are living it. But let's wait for news from Richmond, there's smart people there, and nobody has ever accused them of lack of fighting spirit. But they will fight against the irresistible hand of psychohistory:) Well, perhaps I'm playing too much the Hari Seldon here, predicting decline when not at all obvious, but I think my equations are correct:o)
They are starting to face consumer resistence to change versions, as they offer nothing the consumer wants. That trend is bound only to worsen (or improve depending on your point of view). What could be the reason for an exising Office user to buy a Office XP? Difficult question. They face also a maturing PC market, with declining sales.
So they concocted the subscription idea. The idea is good, really. After all, software is a service, and should be sold as a service. But.
Catch 22: But you have to provide the service. There is a message before that I think is dead on. You cannot eat the soup and keep it too. That translates to You cannot sell Office as a service and charge for it too. At leas as you were charging before. If it's a service, it's a service, and you charge for the service, but not for the product, or at least something nominal. It's like having to pay a big lump of money to be able to use a taxi company. And then paying as before each time you take a cab. That could be an interesting move for the taxi company, specially if it has a monopoly. But the customers are not going to like it, and if the monopoly is not perfect, it's not going to last.
And that's the final problem with that scheme. It is not based on customer demand. If you ask customers what do they want of Microsoft, a subscription based service is unlikely to make to the top-10. So Microsoft is doing it based only in her own insterests. That can work, as I say, with a perfect monopoly. I was really looking forward to this subscription idea. To me it looked like the moment we were going to test how strong is Microsoft monopoly, and how much it's based on not having irritated to date their lazy customers too much.
So the news are a little dissapointing. But doesn't matter. We knew after all they were not stupid, specially not maketing stupid. But the structure of the situation is against them. They are dammed if they do, and if they don't. The software market is changing, and Microsoft will have to adapt. And any adaptation is bound to reduce her size and power, because they are based on the old paradigm, on the old market. I am really interested on seeing the next step of this soap opera.
Every time an article about Napster or file-sharing appears, you can read the
same topics. One very popular is the "you are all despicable pirates"
theme, followed by many "but it's mainly fair-use" choir. I beg to differ.
I for one haven't bought a CD for three years now, if you don't take into account
gifts. And I take home every two months or so a 50-blank-CDs pack, and burn
it with everything. I just love music. And I don't consider myself amoral.
(knowingly half-smile) Does anybody, ever?
If asked why I do that, the only thing I can think of is "because I can".
I can, the technology lets me do it, and I'm hurting nobody. I'm only not-benefiting
some people. And that's not the same thing, not for me, at least. Let's make
a parallelism.
Suppose some smart guy invented a car-duplicator. This car-duplicator can,
as its name implies, duplicate a car, any car, for about $200, and in your own
backyard.The duplicate is perfect. Would you duplicate your neighbour's BMW,
and then let that moron of your brother-in-law duplicate your new copy? Or would
you forge ahead, and pay $20,000 for a new half-as-good one? Would you take
into account the interest of the BMW engineers, their many patents, the investigation,
the almost sure ruin of the company? Would you think that no new, better cars
wouldl ever be produced? Or would you first think of the improved security and
comfort for you and your family? I am not sure, but I think that after the invention
of the car-duplicator, you would be hard pressed to sight a cheap Toyota.
And, oh!, perhaps rather obviously, the car makers would not dissapear, not
entirely. They would reduce their size, start using the damm duplicator, and
sell the cars for $300 , with a free toaster in the pack.
All this kind of contests are just another way of slapping ourselves on the backs. I know this kind of thing has a glorious tradition, starting with the "Oscars" circus. But other contests let you, at least, know new sites that can possibly be useful to you. This one shares not that virtue. What's the point of it, anyway?
It's efficiency? I'm all in favour of efficiency, but when the useful information is near zero, you get a very bad ratio, no matter how little resources you used.
It's a way of reflecting about the design, by adding constraints? That would be a wonderful idea. If they stated a goal, lets say design a web site with the periodic table of elements, and some strong size limitations, and let people use their minds on it, that would be something, IMHO. That perhaps would provide us with useful insights. But with no goals, it's only a collection of nonsense. I'm not particularly interested in how somebody solved a problem of his or her own invention, where the specifications could be changed at will.
It has no point, it's simply a fun site? Well, I have seen funnier.
So for me it's just another self-congratulation site. I have no time for it now, I must contemplate my navel, I think...Oh my! Isn't it interesting?...I think I'll forget everything about the outside world...ohmmmmm...
That Moon-falling thing is, I recognize, a growing concern. But the real problem is what will happen with all those solar panels, when the sun fades away. Then all those damn hippies will come crying for nuclear power to heat their communes or whatever. Then when the sun becomes a big black ball, will we learn the big lie of so-called "renewable-energies". Humpf! I almost cannot wait!
I'm very much in favour of making Linux accesible to the masses. But that's not IMHO a task for the kernel. What's the kernel about is precisely isolatin sofware running on Linux from the intrincacies and differences of underlying hardware. When writting an application, I should not have to worry about what kind of disk will they have, or the possibility another process will use my memory to store some Whitney Spears mp3's or something.
So it's only logical to address hardware issues. The focus on usability should be on other fronts, like the windowing system. Of course some capabilities of a user-friendly windowing system will perhaps need kernel changes. And I would understand your concern if such changes were ignored or treated lightly by the kernel community. But I see no evidence of that.
I am too very interested in seeing the Linux system get mainstream. But from my point of view the advances made are lighting fast, really. When I think about five years ago I find myself unable to say where can we be five years from now. Perhaps a really mainstream Linux. And when that day arrives, it will make me very happy to know that they are using the very same system in the NASA computers.
Yeah, you have a point there. It's a difficult situation. I can only say my instincts make me distrust such moves, but after reflecting I recognize it's more of an instinct than a real reasoning behind it.
They offer a service. You buy it. But then, if you try to access this service with a tool they don't control, they change the access protocol.
Of course they can, proof is they are doing it. But its not nice, its not a good way of treating your clients, and smack of propietary domination desire.
Why do they want to control the tool? Its not technical reasons, its not security, as security is in the protocol, can only be the desire of locking you down. I, as a client, prefer not to be locked, thanks. It's their right to change their protocol. It's ours not to be happy with it.
Of course I used registers. I seem to recall no lack of them in the 68000. And you had only two kinds, addressing and data. Eight of each, if I remember it right, and rather general purpose so more usable, in my view.
But for me the main difference came from the addressing strategy. I will always prefer a single addressing space, as opposed to segments. I hated segments, then and later, when I saw the kind of restrictions they imposed on commercial software. Perhaps I'm a little bit biased by my experiences. I had to figth during months with an application that could not be compiled (that was not assembler, of course) with more than 64K code space. You could dynamically load code segments, but a common code base had to remain, and all that crap. Of course that was more of a compiler limitation, you could argue. But one, let's not say imposed, but at least determined, by the processor structure. Probably the compiler was developed for the 8086. But well, in any case we are veering extremely off-topic now, I think:)
In any case, there was much written about the advantages of both architectures, at that time. I cannot say from a performance point of view, but for ease of programming I will always vote for the 68000. Fortunately I do not program in assembly anymore:) and those processors are long gone.
I am aware of the history of the Intel family of processors. I had to write assembly for the 68000 and the 286 at the same time, so I had the opportunity to compare them. And I regret that the winning architecture was the Intel one. We are still fighting with the constraints imposed by that architecture. Of course a PowerPC cannot be considered a 68000. Can a Pentium be considered a 80x86?. But you build better when you have better foundations.
I am also conscious of the differences between CISC and RISC. And although is not important, and its easy to brag online, I really could make a linux distro. In fact I'm doing one at the time, based on Suse.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, for what would bring me back to paying for music. I would pay for a non-subscription, pay as you go service, of the following description. It would have most of the published music available. You check the tracks you want, and they send you by snail mail, one or several compilated CD's with those tracks. You can choose an image to go printed on the CD, if you want a booklet with the lyrics, biographies... you name it. No protection of the tracks, of course, just a regular CD. The tracks should have their volume and dynamic range normalised (as far as possible, of course, if you try to mix classical music and AC-DC, you are in for it).
I reckon some kind of automatic process could take care of mostly everything. The new releases would have a waiting time before being available in this service, like for the video version of a film, only probably longer. The price? About half a dollar for track, plus post, packaging. Total price of a ten-track CD at home, less than $10. No box, of course, only a hard envelope.
The web site would be a gigantic central point for music, with lots of user comments, forums, cross-references (if you liked that, you would probably like to check...), and so on. Probably would be one of the most visited sites on Earth, for buying, but mostly for hanging around.
That I would pay for, and gladly. I do not know if I check with the profile of many others, but I know that those half-baked, half-hearted attemps to a paying service leave me cold. I'm just not buying it. I will refuse them my attention till they start doing something interesting. I suppose they don't care, they are busy with other kinds of users. But I don't care either, I'm busy burning my own CD's.
Now, where have I heard that? Uhmmm...
"Hey, just open the porthole, Boris"
(Image ended up in my mind probably from "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle :)
SGI submits it's workstation to the TPC with Linux as OS of choice.
Or something like that.
Well, you seem to be proved wrong, if the sheer volume of comments has anything to do with it (almost 700 now). The article should be in Slashdot because we are interested in it. A good Slashdot article is one in which the Slashdot community is interested. You can argue about the closed model that implies, the possible lack of contrary opinions, but that's another matter.
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't quit the game.
And now, you cannot even know the rules.
(Sorry I forgot to whom belongs the above quote)
Yeeeeeah! True and to the point. Rather nice of Microsoft to recognize it. Only, for the sake of clarity, we should ask them to add ", and so fix them." at the end of the second sentence. Elsewhere, somebody could be confused.
But really, about the Stallman's speech. When a discussion about "What Would We Do If We Had a Food Duplicator"? For a bit of perspective, only.
And yes, IMHO he whines too much.
About WPA, I'd like to make a bet. It will never exist. If MS had ever wanted to really protect Windows, they could have done ages ago via hardware, something in the keyboard cable or the paralell port or whatever. That would have stopped casual copying. They haven't done it to date, because they don't want to piss off their clients. That reason will hold now.
Regarding your comments. You seem to use the facts of today desktop domination by Microsoft as a proof that they will continue to dominate it in the future, if I understood it correctly. I respectfully beg to differ, even recognizing that's a possible outcome. After all, stasis has a force of it's own. But I think different forces are at work to undermine that dominance. Enumerate them would be long. I will resume saying that it's precisely such a domination that is unnatural, and can only be due to a particular combination of circumstances. I would say an optimal combination. As soon as any circumstance change, the result is a loss of power and money by Microsoft, because it's no longer optimal.
About the monopoly topic, you don't seem so much to like monopolies as consider them a fact of life, and reject the MS particular treatment. Well, I'm involved in computing, and tend to resent MS monopoly more.
I'm of course right along with you about the reason why many people will change to the next Office, Windows or whatever. They will trod along, like always, but I think in ever dwindling numbers. I'm not predicting a huge downfall in sales, more like a gentle eroding. The problem is that MS has built much of its success in the seemingly ever growing nature of her bussiness. Now that IMHO will no longer be the case. I think we have already seen the highest point of MS in influence, power, stock valuation, you name it. Some day a book will be written "The decadence and fall of the Microsoft Empire". I think we are living it. But let's wait for news from Richmond, there's smart people there, and nobody has ever accused them of lack of fighting spirit. But they will fight against the irresistible hand of psychohistory :) Well, perhaps I'm playing too much the Hari Seldon here, predicting decline when not at all obvious, but I think my equations are correct :o)
--
So they concocted the subscription idea. The idea is good, really. After all, software is a service, and should be sold as a service. But.
Catch 22: But you have to provide the service. There is a message before that I think is dead on. You cannot eat the soup and keep it too. That translates to You cannot sell Office as a service and charge for it too. At leas as you were charging before. If it's a service, it's a service, and you charge for the service, but not for the product, or at least something nominal. It's like having to pay a big lump of money to be able to use a taxi company. And then paying as before each time you take a cab. That could be an interesting move for the taxi company, specially if it has a monopoly. But the customers are not going to like it, and if the monopoly is not perfect, it's not going to last.
And that's the final problem with that scheme. It is not based on customer demand. If you ask customers what do they want of Microsoft, a subscription based service is unlikely to make to the top-10. So Microsoft is doing it based only in her own insterests. That can work, as I say, with a perfect monopoly. I was really looking forward to this subscription idea. To me it looked like the moment we were going to test how strong is Microsoft monopoly, and how much it's based on not having irritated to date their lazy customers too much.
So the news are a little dissapointing. But doesn't matter. We knew after all they were not stupid, specially not maketing stupid. But the structure of the situation is against them. They are dammed if they do, and if they don't. The software market is changing, and Microsoft will have to adapt. And any adaptation is bound to reduce her size and power, because they are based on the old paradigm, on the old market. I am really interested on seeing the next step of this soap opera.
--
--
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Just like third generation wireless. Now, where do we have to sign up to provide them with umpteen gazillion dollars in venture money to develop it?.
Oh, no, wait a minute, I fear my calendar is one year slow...
--
Every time an article about Napster or file-sharing appears, you can read the same topics. One very popular is the "you are all despicable pirates" theme, followed by many "but it's mainly fair-use" choir. I beg to differ.
I for one haven't bought a CD for three years now, if you don't take into account gifts. And I take home every two months or so a 50-blank-CDs pack, and burn it with everything. I just love music. And I don't consider myself amoral. (knowingly half-smile) Does anybody, ever?
If asked why I do that, the only thing I can think of is "because I can". I can, the technology lets me do it, and I'm hurting nobody. I'm only not-benefiting some people. And that's not the same thing, not for me, at least. Let's make a parallelism.
Suppose some smart guy invented a car-duplicator. This car-duplicator can, as its name implies, duplicate a car, any car, for about $200, and in your own backyard.The duplicate is perfect. Would you duplicate your neighbour's BMW, and then let that moron of your brother-in-law duplicate your new copy? Or would you forge ahead, and pay $20,000 for a new half-as-good one? Would you take into account the interest of the BMW engineers, their many patents, the investigation, the almost sure ruin of the company? Would you think that no new, better cars wouldl ever be produced? Or would you first think of the improved security and comfort for you and your family? I am not sure, but I think that after the invention of the car-duplicator, you would be hard pressed to sight a cheap Toyota.
And, oh!, perhaps rather obviously, the car makers would not dissapear, not entirely. They would reduce their size, start using the damm duplicator, and sell the cars for $300 , with a free toaster in the pack.
--
...if the user that paid the $35 fee to put back online the passport service of Microsoft got his or her money back. :)
It's efficiency? I'm all in favour of efficiency, but when the useful information is near zero, you get a very bad ratio, no matter how little resources you used.
It's a way of reflecting about the design, by adding constraints? That would be a wonderful idea. If they stated a goal, lets say design a web site with the periodic table of elements, and some strong size limitations, and let people use their minds on it, that would be something, IMHO. That perhaps would provide us with useful insights. But with no goals, it's only a collection of nonsense. I'm not particularly interested in how somebody solved a problem of his or her own invention, where the specifications could be changed at will.
It has no point, it's simply a fun site? Well, I have seen funnier.
So for me it's just another self-congratulation site. I have no time for it now, I must contemplate my navel, I think...Oh my! Isn't it interesting?...I think I'll forget everything about the outside world...ohmmmmm...
--
That Moon-falling thing is, I recognize, a growing concern. But the real problem is what will happen with all those solar panels, when the sun fades away. Then all those damn hippies will come crying for nuclear power to heat their communes or whatever. Then when the sun becomes a big black ball, will we learn the big lie of so-called "renewable-energies". Humpf! I almost cannot wait!
Like a bet or something.
"I beat we can fill a day with void content, and they will keep on posting".
"Sure not, they have better things to do".
Seem we don't.
I idly wonder how long they could keep this up. Probably years.
--
So it's only logical to address hardware issues. The focus on usability should be on other fronts, like the windowing system. Of course some capabilities of a user-friendly windowing system will perhaps need kernel changes. And I would understand your concern if such changes were ignored or treated lightly by the kernel community. But I see no evidence of that.
I am too very interested in seeing the Linux system get mainstream. But from my point of view the advances made are lighting fast, really. When I think about five years ago I find myself unable to say where can we be five years from now. Perhaps a really mainstream Linux. And when that day arrives, it will make me very happy to know that they are using the very same system in the NASA computers.
--
Of course they can, proof is they are doing it. But its not nice, its not a good way of treating your clients, and smack of propietary domination desire.
Why do they want to control the tool? Its not technical reasons, its not security, as security is in the protocol, can only be the desire of locking you down. I, as a client, prefer not to be locked, thanks. It's their right to change their protocol. It's ours not to be happy with it.
--
Of course I used registers. I seem to recall no lack of them in the 68000. And you had only two kinds, addressing and data. Eight of each, if I remember it right, and rather general purpose so more usable, in my view.
But for me the main difference came from the addressing strategy. I will always prefer a single addressing space, as opposed to segments. I hated segments, then and later, when I saw the kind of restrictions they imposed on commercial software. Perhaps I'm a little bit biased by my experiences. I had to figth during months with an application that could not be compiled (that was not assembler, of course) with more than 64K code space. You could dynamically load code segments, but a common code base had to remain, and all that crap. Of course that was more of a compiler limitation, you could argue. But one, let's not say imposed, but at least determined, by the processor structure. Probably the compiler was developed for the 8086. But well, in any case we are veering extremely off-topic now, I think :)
In any case, there was much written about the advantages of both architectures, at that time. I cannot say from a performance point of view, but for ease of programming I will always vote for the 68000. Fortunately I do not program in assembly anymore :) and those processors are long gone.
Julian
--
I am aware of the history of the Intel family of processors. I had to write assembly for the 68000 and the 286 at the same time, so I had the opportunity to compare them. And I regret that the winning architecture was the Intel one. We are still fighting with the constraints imposed by that architecture. Of course a PowerPC cannot be considered a 68000. Can a Pentium be considered a 80x86?. But you build better when you have better foundations.
I am also conscious of the differences between CISC and RISC. And although is not important, and its easy to brag online, I really could make a linux distro. In fact I'm doing one at the time, based on Suse.
Kisses.
--