I'm sure there are lawyers out there that would have taken the case free of charge just for the publicity of it. I'm also sure they could have beaten this and blown the whole thing up in the RIAA's faces, which would in turn cause the rest of those being sued by the RIAA to win their cases as well.
OTOH, it nice to see people and companies rallying behind this girl to cover the settlement - it shows who the real good guys are in this.
I agree that your time at work is for working, until you have spent so much time there that you are not living. If I'm going to be working 12 hour days, at least an hour of that time is going to be spent reading the news, emailing or IMing friends, talking to my wife, going outside for a miute to get some air. After 8 hours, your cutting into my time, and you can't expect me to give up my life completely. Life happens, and If I want to see how my daughter's day at school went, than I shouldn't have to worry about my personal phone call being scrutinized by a bad manager.
I have to support the executives at work, and they have the absolute worst passwords ever. None of them are set to expire or follow the company standards at all either. It really freaks me out because when they do get hacked, I'm afraid they will blame me!
So, while she was using it as a media player (*cough*) she was also "participating" (whatever that means)
In her defense, I have gone to uninstall Kazaa on people's machines, and there are some that really do believe that its the only way to listen to their MP3's. I often have to explain to them that there are many other players out there that work better! The vast majority of casual users out there really just don't know any better, and that fact may have a major impact on these subpoenas. How do you prove that someone is computer literate enough to know they were doing something wrong?
With the ability for an artist to freely and globally distibute their music sans label involvement, do you see the current RIAA becomming obsolete in the future?
I just installed Mandrake 9.1 on a T20 without a hitch. Once you peel of the "designed for Windows" sticker on the case, you have a laptop completely free of Microsoft since there is no Windows key on the keyboard!
I work for a large technical services company in the USA, and a large part of our internal phone support is in India. The difference in service is blaringly apparent when you spend half of the phone call overcoming communication issues. Its also more obvious when you are connected to an offshore tech that they're reading a script.
Also, I've witnessed how the management gages service in many a meeting, and its ALL ABOUT NUMBERS. While lately customer satisfaction has come up, they have no way to acurately judge it. They think if a call ends in under 10 minutes that its representative of a customer being satisfied. I work in deskside services and we are the only group that faces the costomer in person. I can tell you that people say a lot when they have a living body in front of them, and while management is patting themselves on the back for reaching their number goals and reducing costs, the customer is looking for a way out of their contract!
I just browsed through the sample chapter and its full of usefull hints such as editing the book templates with Apple's developer tools. This is a great book for for people who are new to Macs or aren't tech-heads.
OTOH, any Mac geek can find all of this info easily at MacOSXHints.com
Again, to be blunt, most of the free/independent stuff sucks. People don't want it.
As far as music goes, I tend to think that the majority of major label stuff is quite unbearable to listen to. A lot of people subscribe to the idea that if the artist isn't signed to a major, then it must not be good enough. That is so rediculous! Music production can be done so cheaply now that for a few thousand dollars, a talented musician can make a CD that sounds better than any big budget major label recording.
On the other hand, independent films do not have that luxury just yet and it will be a while before they can compete with big budget movie studios. This kind of limitation can be good though, as it forces the filmaker to be more creative and focus more on the story (something that this summer's crop of special-effects laden "blockbuster" films seem to lack).
Will the future generations be more literate since they spend all of their time reading instead of watching TV? Maybe it will make it worse since 3v3ry7h1ng 15 5p3ll3d l1k3 7h15.
Instead of just disabling the the sharing feature, why not populate it with free music/media/software? Wouldn't it be better for file sharing if they found a lot of people using it the way it was intended to be used?
My friends, there will be casualties. Some of our finest will go down, but we must stand strong.
I have a vision. It is a vision that one day, radio stations will play more than the same 40 crappy songs that are forced down the unsuspecting public's throats. It is a vision of plastic discs that cost less than a buck to produce being sold at a reasonable price and the profits going to the artists whose art they represent. It is a vision of fair use, a vision of free thought without warning labels, a vision unclouded by corporate greed!
It will be a painful battle and it will take time, but today as our brothers and sisters fall from the signatures of the evil lawyers, let us fight knowing that one day we will prevail.
Its a rough number - in the first day, they announced that they initially had only 1,400 sets available. That night I looked at their shop and the stock was down to around 900 sets. So 500 x $30 = $15,000. (this is of course the net, not the gross). They had to have covered their initial costs in the first day for those things, making the rest of the sales pure profit from here on out!
More artists are going to have to offer their creative works themselves. I decided to put all of my former band's work as well as stuff I'm working on now up for free (the site is 8x7.org if anyone cares), and I have actually started getting interest from other bands I know that want to contribute their music for free. The truth is that the chances that you are going to see any real profit off of a recording is slim to none, so why not just let people listen to it for free? Most musicians make money off of live gigs and merchandising, so why not cut out the middleman (the recording industry) entirely?
The same thing goes for other content. Look at Homestar Runner. They offer the content for free, and make money off of the merchandise - its a great formula. Just this week they introduced a set of figurines, and in the first day brought in over $15,000!
The internet sharing feature was crappy because it was slow and there was too much work involved to get something that you can get from Bit Torrent faster. The automatic commercial skip was flaky (I turned it off right away anyway) because you always ended up with snippets of show missing. As long as I have my 30 second skip button on my remote than I'm happy.
The AMD connection actually plays to the rumors a while back about AMD in talks with Apple. While everyone thought at the time that it meant that the Mac OS is going x86, it may turn out that they were really just talking about developing Hypertransport for the Mac.
I've been following recent rumors lately because I've been posting the Apple news articles at CHD, and I have found that the recent rumors (Final Cut 4, iApp updates, iTunes Music Store, iPod, etc) have all been coming true to a certain degree (release dates and some details are a little off, but the main announcements are dead on). So while I don't believe all of the specs I read, you can count on a shipping 970 based Mac within a month.
When I read things like this after getting paged a dozen times two days ago (after I already left work) about an outbreak of the Spybot worm, I think to myself - when will it end? When will our Server team spend time and money on better software distribution and back-end protection? When will the higher ups spend money to have enough staff to effectively be proactive about future outbreaks? Will the next surge in IT spending be the result of some out of work angry Russian programers idea of a good time? Will cyber-terrorism be the next y2k?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure there are lawyers out there that would have taken the case free of charge just for the publicity of it. I'm also sure they could have beaten this and blown the whole thing up in the RIAA's faces, which would in turn cause the rest of those being sued by the RIAA to win their cases as well.
OTOH, it nice to see people and companies rallying behind this girl to cover the settlement - it shows who the real good guys are in this.
#26: What happens to websites when they are linked to from Slas
I agree that your time at work is for working, until you have spent so much time there that you are not living. If I'm going to be working 12 hour days, at least an hour of that time is going to be spent reading the news, emailing or IMing friends, talking to my wife, going outside for a miute to get some air. After 8 hours, your cutting into my time, and you can't expect me to give up my life completely. Life happens, and If I want to see how my daughter's day at school went, than I shouldn't have to worry about my personal phone call being scrutinized by a bad manager.
What if I purchase a song and decide that I don't want it anymore. Can I give it away?
I have to support the executives at work, and they have the absolute worst passwords ever. None of them are set to expire or follow the company standards at all either. It really freaks me out because when they do get hacked, I'm afraid they will blame me!
So, while she was using it as a media player (*cough*) she was also "participating" (whatever that means)
In her defense, I have gone to uninstall Kazaa on people's machines, and there are some that really do believe that its the only way to listen to their MP3's. I often have to explain to them that there are many other players out there that work better! The vast majority of casual users out there really just don't know any better, and that fact may have a major impact on these subpoenas. How do you prove that someone is computer literate enough to know they were doing something wrong?
With the ability for an artist to freely and globally distibute their music sans label involvement, do you see the current RIAA becomming obsolete in the future?
I just installed Mandrake 9.1 on a T20 without a hitch. Once you peel of the "designed for Windows" sticker on the case, you have a laptop completely free of Microsoft since there is no Windows key on the keyboard!
Is Drew Curtis posting stories on Slashdot?
I work for a large technical services company in the USA, and a large part of our internal phone support is in India. The difference in service is blaringly apparent when you spend half of the phone call overcoming communication issues. Its also more obvious when you are connected to an offshore tech that they're reading a script.
Also, I've witnessed how the management gages service in many a meeting, and its ALL ABOUT NUMBERS. While lately customer satisfaction has come up, they have no way to acurately judge it. They think if a call ends in under 10 minutes that its representative of a customer being satisfied. I work in deskside services and we are the only group that faces the costomer in person. I can tell you that people say a lot when they have a living body in front of them, and while management is patting themselves on the back for reaching their number goals and reducing costs, the customer is looking for a way out of their contract!
I just browsed through the sample chapter and its full of usefull hints such as editing the book templates with Apple's developer tools. This is a great book for for people who are new to Macs or aren't tech-heads.
OTOH, any Mac geek can find all of this info easily at MacOSXHints.com
It did spur software development for the Mac for the last five years, so it wasn't that bad!
Wouldn't Apple then be able to claim that the Windows GUI is their IP, and then Xerox could claim that everyone's is theirs?
What about the guys who invented the Abacus? Shouldn't they get a cut too?
Again, to be blunt, most of the free/independent stuff sucks. People don't want it.
As far as music goes, I tend to think that the majority of major label stuff is quite unbearable to listen to. A lot of people subscribe to the idea that if the artist isn't signed to a major, then it must not be good enough. That is so rediculous! Music production can be done so cheaply now that for a few thousand dollars, a talented musician can make a CD that sounds better than any big budget major label recording.
On the other hand, independent films do not have that luxury just yet and it will be a while before they can compete with big budget movie studios. This kind of limitation can be good though, as it forces the filmaker to be more creative and focus more on the story (something that this summer's crop of special-effects laden "blockbuster" films seem to lack).
Will the future generations be more literate since they spend all of their time reading instead of watching TV? Maybe it will make it worse since 3v3ry7h1ng 15 5p3ll3d l1k3 7h15.
Instead of just disabling the the sharing feature, why not populate it with free music/media/software? Wouldn't it be better for file sharing if they found a lot of people using it the way it was intended to be used?
My friends, there will be casualties. Some of our finest will go down, but we must stand strong.
I have a vision. It is a vision that one day, radio stations will play more than the same 40 crappy songs that are forced down the unsuspecting public's throats. It is a vision of plastic discs that cost less than a buck to produce being sold at a reasonable price and the profits going to the artists whose art they represent. It is a vision of fair use, a vision of free thought without warning labels, a vision unclouded by corporate greed!
It will be a painful battle and it will take time, but today as our brothers and sisters fall from the signatures of the evil lawyers, let us fight knowing that one day we will prevail.
I HAVE A VISION!!!
Its a rough number - in the first day, they announced that they initially had only 1,400 sets available. That night I looked at their shop and the stock was down to around 900 sets. So 500 x $30 = $15,000. (this is of course the net, not the gross). They had to have covered their initial costs in the first day for those things, making the rest of the sales pure profit from here on out!
More artists are going to have to offer their creative works themselves. I decided to put all of my former band's work as well as stuff I'm working on now up for free (the site is 8x7.org if anyone cares), and I have actually started getting interest from other bands I know that want to contribute their music for free. The truth is that the chances that you are going to see any real profit off of a recording is slim to none, so why not just let people listen to it for free? Most musicians make money off of live gigs and merchandising, so why not cut out the middleman (the recording industry) entirely?
The same thing goes for other content. Look at Homestar Runner. They offer the content for free, and make money off of the merchandise - its a great formula. Just this week they introduced a set of figurines, and in the first day brought in over $15,000!
...and trust me, they are suffering enough - defacing it might actually be an improvemnt (didn't you ever see the Amityville horror??)
The internet sharing feature was crappy because it was slow and there was too much work involved to get something that you can get from Bit Torrent faster. The automatic commercial skip was flaky (I turned it off right away anyway) because you always ended up with snippets of show missing. As long as I have my 30 second skip button on my remote than I'm happy.
The AMD connection actually plays to the rumors a while back about AMD in talks with Apple. While everyone thought at the time that it meant that the Mac OS is going x86, it may turn out that they were really just talking about developing Hypertransport for the Mac.
I've been following recent rumors lately because I've been posting the Apple news articles at CHD, and I have found that the recent rumors (Final Cut 4, iApp updates, iTunes Music Store, iPod, etc) have all been coming true to a certain degree (release dates and some details are a little off, but the main announcements are dead on). So while I don't believe all of the specs I read, you can count on a shipping 970 based Mac within a month.
you are wrong
When I read things like this after getting paged a dozen times two days ago (after I already left work) about an outbreak of the Spybot worm, I think to myself - when will it end? When will our Server team spend time and money on better software distribution and back-end protection? When will the higher ups spend money to have enough staff to effectively be proactive about future outbreaks? Will the next surge in IT spending be the result of some out of work angry Russian programers idea of a good time? Will cyber-terrorism be the next y2k?