I'm a little concerned about this, because I think we're going the need all that poop to grow crops in the absence of petrochemical-derived fertilizers, and I don't want all the sewage to be used up for producing bio-diesel. What is the organic nutrient content of the by-products of this bio-diesel scheme?
It's a nice thought, but it's not going to happen. There simply isn't enough of a market there for Apple to chase. Now what would be really useful is if Apple would make the "New iBook" with a 12" wide screen, rather than the 13" unit that's being touted. Size is specifically the reason why I bought a 12" iBook instead of a larger laptop. A laptop computer is never going to be my primary machine, so size is more important to me than a huge screen, but it still has to be useful, meaning it needs all the essentials built in.
Look at the 12" wide screen laptops from Sony and Dell that have the CD built in. *That's* what Apple needs to do with the new iBook line. Just an evolutionary update, nothing crazy.
Anything smaller needs to be a completely different paradigm. Think Newton MessagePad 2100 or Nokia 700 form factor--something that's more than a PDA, but less than a laptop. This is the class of devices that the market doesn't even know how badly it needs it. The Nokia 700 is a good effort, but Apple could do it so much better. Of course the problem with the "larger than pocket" size means the device and operating environment has to be so compelling that you're willing to carry it around in a bag rather than a pocket. Eight years on from the MP2100, I think technology has advanced enough to make it possible. Nokia had the right idea with a open source-based OS. Apple could do it, too, only better.
Think iPod Pro, not sub-mini laptop. Sony really blew it with the PSP, when they could have taken the world by storm.
Incidentally, if the new iBook doesn't sport a wide screen, I won't be replacing my 800MHz G3 12" iBook anytime soon, unless it finally breaks altogether.
Wrong again. It's not a "bug in Mac OS X", it's simply the way Multicast DNS works.
Now, while I admit that Zeroconf/Bonjour/mDNS/what have you is a relatively recent innovation, the installation I am dealing with was performed after the introduction of Mac OS X 10.2 (August 2002). In a company where at least 50% of the machines are Macs, it is imperative that the two platforms interoperate. Unfortunately, most Microsoft-centric so-called "consultants" and "systems engineers" (certified or no) have absolutely no knowledge of anything outside their limited purview, and don't care.
Now, while the usage of ".local" for the AD could have been excused had the system been built prior to 2002, this is not the case in many situations, my own included, and such a naming convention should now be considered a deprecated practice.
As far as RFCs are concerned, anybody who understands anything about the RFC system ought to know that no protocol RFC is worth the paper it's written on without a reference implementation. In this case, Zeroconf's reference implementation is Apple's Bonjour (the protocol formerly known as Rendezvous). Microsoft representatives are part of the IETF Zeroconf working group. It *will* be a standard, eventually. Don't get too worked up about the existence/lack thereof of Zeroconf RFC's. Working code is more important, as are defacto standards. After all, many, if not most, of the "standard" protocols have taken years and years to reach "IETF Draft Standard" or "IETF Standard" status, if they ever did so at all.
Well, obviously, your neighbor's daughter has decrypted your WEP key and spoofed one of the MAC addresses in your AP's lookup table (or simply added her MAC to the list). Or maybe she added a VPN tunnel to your subnet.
I myself am in the process of replacing one of these poor design decisions with a brand new AD in a company that is about 50% Mac OS X and 50% Windows 2K/XP/2K3. The arrogant asshats who built the original AD never consulted with the people responsible for over half the computers in the company that run Mac OS X. Not to mention the fact that just about every networkable printer that's come out in the past couple of years supports mDNS/Rendezvous/Bonjour/Zeroconf right out of the box, and will also have problems with using a ".local" AD.
It's interesting that you claim the usage of ".com" addresses for AD causes problems, especially since the ".com" root DN convention is not only recommended by Microsoft, but has been in common usage for LDAP directories for quite a bit longer than Active Directory has been available on the market.
Pointing the Macs at the AD's DNS system doesn't solve the problem, because mDNS assumes that anything ".local" will be found through the Multicast DNS system (at least, prior to 10.3.4), so the ".local" request never makes it to the specified AD server's DNS. Apple had to go out of their way to work around the problem because of so many MCSE asshats who don't know an fscking thing about interoperability...which is to say, most of them.
I own OmniGraffle Pro. It pales in comparison to Visio Pro, even the Visio of five or six years ago. Maybe in another five or six years, OmniGraffle will reach the level that Visio did back then, which would only put OmniGraffle about ten to twelve years behind Visio. OmniGraffle is good, but it's no Visio.
I onestly can't believe that after nearly seven hundred comments on this topic, there nothing rated 4 or above that actually addresses the question. Sure, there's lot's of snide comments about the inferiority of Windows, but that's a given. What's not a given is what the questioner was originally asking. So, here's a few of the applications that I personally find indispensible for what I do..and BTW, I'm a Mac guy, an OpenBSD guy, and a Linux guy, much more than I'm a Windows guy.
1. Visio. The day Microsoft bought Visio, I was *so* pissed off, because I knew that there was then absolutely no chance that Visio would ever be released for Macs. Yes, there are some similar programs on the Mac side (OmniGraffle, ConceptDraw), but none of them can hold a candle to Visio Professional.
2. Duncan Munro's PSU Designer II and Tone Stack Calculator. Two essential tools for designing electron tube amplifiers that just don't exist on the Mac. Yes, a competent EE could probably figure it out in some horrible version of EDA software on a Mac, but all the Mac EDA packages I've seen are awful. As soon as I free up another machine, I'll try to install gEDA to see if that's any better (Linux or Fink/Mac OS X).
3. A whole host of software for my Amateur Radio hobby. Yes, there's some stuff out there for the Mac, but the majority of it runs on Windows. Another thing that pisses me off. This also holds true for a vast range of command and control products.
4. Ross-Tech's VAG-COM software to replace Volkswagen's scan tools. Uwe simply has no interest in porting, not even to Windows CE. Automotive scan tools are another area where all the software I've ever seen runs pretty much only on Windows, with a very few on Palm or WinCE.
5. TrueAudio's WinSpeakerz. This was originally a Mac program (MacSpeakerz), but development on the Windows side has far outstripped the Mac product. Great for designing loudspeaker systems. Most of the packages for this type of work are Windows-only.
6. Games? I couldn't care less about games, so this is really a non-issue for me.
7. VNC. VNC simply works a thousands times better on Windows (or Linux) than it does on the Mac....and that's just off the top of my head. I hope Apple sticks with Boot Camp, and Microsoft updates Virtual PC. I'll happily buy two versions of Windows so that I can have seamless integration of Windows with my Macintosh hardware (one for dual boot for extended usage, and one for virtualization for quicky things), but I have a feeling that Apple will eventually pull the project.
Perhaps if you actually understood the purpose of the Constitution, you would be called a "citizen", and not a "subject", but then, I suspect that in short order, since most citizens here seem to not understand the Constitution, we may be (re)joining you as subjects of another less free government.
Just because the people sitting on the jury, or even the judge himself, have committed the same offence as the defendent, it doesn't mean that they won't condemn him just the same...
At the risk of sounding silly, I will suggest HFS+, Journaled (but without ACL's). This, of course, requires that you use Mac OS X. However, some very good disk repair utilities exist for Mac OS X. As far as performance is concerned, it should be capable of easily handling uncompressed NTSC video without dropouts in a proper configuation, so I can't see that it would be a problem for storing DVD's.
So what happened to Railworks? I was hoping they might be a good long-term play back in the mid-90's...but they started falling apart, and I stopped paying attention to them.
Well, since you didn't ask, I'm a networking consultant who's done a lot of work in NJ public schools. It my *job* to think of things like this.
Suppose it worked? The entrances to schools aren't always busy. There isn't always someone at the front desk to check in visitors. These days, the emphasis is on cost-cutting in schools. Systems like this will cause security to become even more lax, as the operators will tend to rely on the system's judgement.
I should preface my comments by mentioning that I used to work for a company who provided systems integration services to NJ schools and other public agencies, and I still provide those services as a subcontractor to my former employer.
I *personally* designed either some of or effectively *all of* the networking systems in Atlantic City, Vernon, Bridgeton, Delran, West Windsor-Plainsboro, Plainfield, Brick Township (and the Brick Township Police Department), the Mercer County Prosecutors Office, Mercer County Data Processing, and many other NJ school districts and agencies. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I am quite familiar with the standard operating procedure for school security. Personally, my face is well-known in schools all over the state.
One more question I have...who gets access to this database, and why?
Or even better, what if it did acount for aunts and uncles? Suppose the aunt or uncle also has children attending the same school, and then someone decided not to allow them access because of an allegation of sexual abuse of a neice or nephew? Who makes the decision? How does it get made?
It would seem from the context of the article that the system is actually used to control the doors, as in locking or unlocking them. If it didn't, what would be the point? And even if the person at the front desk noticed the severed head (and let me tell you, in NJ the front desk is rarely staffed), could they stop the doors opening (assuming it worked) in time?
No, what I'm asking is, "Have they even bothered to think about this before they went and spent a massive amount of my tax money (I'm a NJ resident) implementing this?"
And the grandparent could be walking to the school, though of course, in Freehold, as in much of NJ, that's probably unlikely.
Yes, holding a severed head up to a camera *would* be sort of out of place, but you have to ask yourself what sort of problems this system is trying to prevent. Given the demographics of the area, I'd guess the most likely result is prevention of divorce-related kidnappings (or maybe just to keep out all those migrant farm workers). But then, ask yourself who gets to control the database and lock someone out of the system. School buildings are public property, and in my mind, there's a serious question as to the legality of this sort of system.
Anyway, as I said, what are they trying to prevent with all this money? Most school doors are glass these days, and if a person *really* felt the need to enter, no high-tech security scanner is going to stop them. Wouldn't it simply have made more sense to lock the doors and post hall monitors?
I wonder how much testing they've done to see if you can fool the system by cutting someone's eyes out or their head off and holding it up to the camera. I suppose you would have to have iris pictures of the same person alive and dead to really test it. On a less morbid note, I wonder if you could fool it by kidnapping a parent, then taking a high resolution photo of their face. Can the system determine stress levels to see if the face it's looking at is under duress? Even easier, just force someone at gunpoint to look into the camera.
How exactly do you see the cultural benefits to society of sharing outweighing the individual benefits provided by copyright law for any particular individual artist?
The whole point of copyright is to provide a personal financial incentive to create, not a societal financial incentive. I'm not saying the the current version of copyright hasn't been completely perverted, what I'm saying is that the perversion itself does not necessarily invalidate the need for *some* sort of privilege. The whole point of copyright is that works are *supposed* to eventually enter the public domain. Of course, thanks to the depredations of large corporations such as Disney and the failings of Lawrence Lessig, copyright has now effectively become a permanent grant, which is not what was intended, at all, and is in the view of anyone who is intellectually honest massively detrimental to society.
Your description of the current marketplace (at least, that is what I *think* you're trying to describe) seems very odd. Distribution costs are only effectively zero for the end user. They are certainly not zero for the creator or any intermediaries. Yes, it is indeed becoming very difficult to make money disseminating recorded works--but I would argue that anyone who thinks this is entirely a good thing is displaying a marked lack of understanding of how we use recorded works in our society. The opportunities for enjoying unrecorded works are becoming fewer and fewer each and every day. In fact, I would argue that recorded works have quite clearly practically replaced unrecorded works as the primary form of aesthetic experience in our culture. One need look no further than the Internet to see the truth of this. There is now, and ever will be, a massive demand for recorded works, but if it becomes impossible to make a living off of them, it is certain that fewer and fewer creators will actually create them. It is highly debatable whether or not this will turn out to be a net good for society. I believe it will result in a massive reduction in total artistic output.
The Framers of the Constitution understood this quite well over 200 years ago, even with their lack of modern technology. Modern technology has only made the situation worse for artists. It disheartens me that so many people today seem not to understand the problem. I agree, in today's world, the economic value of recorded works is approaching zero, given that digital reproduction can result in worldwide distribution of effectively unlimited copies in an instant. You need to consider that when the value of a product becomes effectively zero, then such works will tend to only be created by those with sufficient leisure (temporal or financial) to create, or solely as loss leader advertising. Not to mention the fact that when leisure becomes increasingly scarce, as it is in modern society, then only those with large amounts of leisure will enjoy any artistic works, at all. How can this be considered a net good?
In any case, the Supreme court has already ruled on Eldred v. Ashcroft, so the only method we have left to attempt to return to a reasonable copyright system is to petition the legislature. It is unlikely that the Court will re-examine its precedent, absent massive public outcry.
I think one of things you need to consider is that the real power of the "major labels" lies not in copyright, but in the stranglehold they have over the distribution arena and their positions as the intermediaries and arbiters of taste. Because they control the distribution channels, they can dictate the terms of the contracts they offer to creators, which usually means that the creators must grant a perpetual, exclusive license to the label that signs them, pay for practically all production, promotional, and distribution costs themselves, etc, etc, which results in a system where the label assumes little to no risk, while the musician is for the most part left with no assets. It's a positive feedback loop (like so many capitalist systems) that has a tendency to shut out the smaller player.
The labels and other cartels (Viacom, Clear Channel, etc) control the record stores, the radio, the theatres, the television stations, the concert venues, even many of the small clubs. Do you know how many outlets Clear Channel controls just in the Philadelphia market alone (my market)? The reach of this corporation is staggering! Therefore, they control access to their system. It's not copyright that allows this, but control of the distribution channels. Controlling the copyright is only a fringe benefit to the labels, which has the effect of eliminating their only viable competitors...their content creators themselves.
Mediation is an important aspect of a large scale society, and we as musicians need to start seriously thinking about ways to circumvent the major label system and create our own mediation/distribution system. Thanks to the Internet, we may actually have a chance of succeeding, but the state of distribution over the Internet is in serious disarray. Absent a drastic increase in artistic education in our schools, mediation will always be necessary.
Signing with a major, or even a larger indie label used to be a dream of mine, until we started to garner label interest in the early to mid 90's and discovered how the system really works. Quite distasteful.
I should also mention that the visual and literary arts hold a much different place in our culture than do the musical arts. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to contemplate "Nude Descending a Staircase #2" or read anything by Proust while driving my car...;) Although, come to think of it, that's hard to do even standing still...
I think you are diluting your own point by mentioning "salaried musicians" and "musicians who live only off their concert sales" in the same breath. I would ask you, are you a musician yourself, and if so, have you ever attempted to make a serious living off of the proceeds of your live performances in today's society? Have you considered the difficulty of enjoying many of the rewards of life that others take for granted while embarking on an endless series of touring dates, the least of which is to raise a family of your own? Or, do you draw a salary based on your musical talents?
As an aside, I am skeptical of the Warhol's ultimate benefit to aesthetics, I would argue that neither the Rolling Stones nor the Beatles had economic success as their highest goal in their early days, and we all know what happened to the Medici, don't we? Although I hear Lorenza is eking out a pretty decent living off her cookbooks...some of which I actually own. BTW, if you haven't done so, you should visit Firenze these days. Invigorating place, it is.
I am not saying that "salaried musicians" don't have a place in this world. I am only appalled at the notion that they could somehow become the only musicians capable of making a living absent the protection of copyright. Art is rarely well served by pecuniary interest.
I would respond to this by saying that I do not have a problem with "sharing with friends", but when your "friends" potentially include the entire Internet, you're no longer sharing, but pirating. It may be difficult in the extreme to draw that line clearly, but it needs to be drawn. Which would you find more problematic, one pirate pressing a million copies of your work, or a million people "sharing" a copy each? The net effect to the artist is similar. The only difference is that in the first case, one pirate is making a lot of money, and in the second, no one makes anything. As far as the artist is concerned, it's still a million lost potential sales.
But...copyright *has * to remain a limitation on the right to copy. It's inherent in the nature of intellectual property that there are few, if any, truly new ideas. All knowledge is based upon the discoveries of those who have come before. For this reason, the grant of copyright should always be a limited grant, with the works eventually passing into the public domain. We all already possess the "right to copy" as members of the public. It is to promote progress that we allow authors the exclusive right to their works for a limited period of time. It's a financial incentive to create new works, while still allowing for eventual public access to those works.
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One word...Cheeseburger.
...and if you didn't get that one, your "I'm a Geek" badge is being repossessed.
I'm a little concerned about this, because I think we're going the need all that poop to grow crops in the absence of petrochemical-derived fertilizers, and I don't want all the sewage to be used up for producing bio-diesel. What is the organic nutrient content of the by-products of this bio-diesel scheme?
It's a nice thought, but it's not going to happen. There simply isn't enough of a market there for Apple to chase. Now what would be really useful is if Apple would make the "New iBook" with a 12" wide screen, rather than the 13" unit that's being touted. Size is specifically the reason why I bought a 12" iBook instead of a larger laptop. A laptop computer is never going to be my primary machine, so size is more important to me than a huge screen, but it still has to be useful, meaning it needs all the essentials built in.
Look at the 12" wide screen laptops from Sony and Dell that have the CD built in. *That's* what Apple needs to do with the new iBook line. Just an evolutionary update, nothing crazy.
Anything smaller needs to be a completely different paradigm. Think Newton MessagePad 2100 or Nokia 700 form factor--something that's more than a PDA, but less than a laptop. This is the class of devices that the market doesn't even know how badly it needs it. The Nokia 700 is a good effort, but Apple could do it so much better. Of course the problem with the "larger than pocket" size means the device and operating environment has to be so compelling that you're willing to carry it around in a bag rather than a pocket. Eight years on from the MP2100, I think technology has advanced enough to make it possible. Nokia had the right idea with a open source-based OS. Apple could do it, too, only better.
Think iPod Pro, not sub-mini laptop. Sony really blew it with the PSP, when they could have taken the world by storm.
Incidentally, if the new iBook doesn't sport a wide screen, I won't be replacing my 800MHz G3 12" iBook anytime soon, unless it finally breaks altogether.
Wrong again. It's not a "bug in Mac OS X", it's simply the way Multicast DNS works.
Now, while I admit that Zeroconf/Bonjour/mDNS/what have you is a relatively recent innovation, the installation I am dealing with was performed after the introduction of Mac OS X 10.2 (August 2002). In a company where at least 50% of the machines are Macs, it is imperative that the two platforms interoperate. Unfortunately, most Microsoft-centric so-called "consultants" and "systems engineers" (certified or no) have absolutely no knowledge of anything outside their limited purview, and don't care.
Now, while the usage of ".local" for the AD could have been excused had the system been built prior to 2002, this is not the case in many situations, my own included, and such a naming convention should now be considered a deprecated practice.
As far as RFCs are concerned, anybody who understands anything about the RFC system ought to know that no protocol RFC is worth the paper it's written on without a reference implementation. In this case, Zeroconf's reference implementation is Apple's Bonjour (the protocol formerly known as Rendezvous). Microsoft representatives are part of the IETF Zeroconf working group. It *will* be a standard, eventually. Don't get too worked up about the existence/lack thereof of Zeroconf RFC's. Working code is more important, as are defacto standards. After all, many, if not most, of the "standard" protocols have taken years and years to reach "IETF Draft Standard" or "IETF Standard" status, if they ever did so at all.
Well, obviously, your neighbor's daughter has decrypted your WEP key and spoofed one of the MAC addresses in your AP's lookup table (or simply added her MAC to the list). Or maybe she added a VPN tunnel to your subnet.
You might want to look into that...
No, they were absolutely *wrong* to do so.
I myself am in the process of replacing one of these poor design decisions with a brand new AD in a company that is about 50% Mac OS X and 50% Windows 2K/XP/2K3. The arrogant asshats who built the original AD never consulted with the people responsible for over half the computers in the company that run Mac OS X. Not to mention the fact that just about every networkable printer that's come out in the past couple of years supports mDNS/Rendezvous/Bonjour/Zeroconf right out of the box, and will also have problems with using a ".local" AD.
It's interesting that you claim the usage of ".com" addresses for AD causes problems, especially since the ".com" root DN convention is not only recommended by Microsoft, but has been in common usage for LDAP directories for quite a bit longer than Active Directory has been available on the market.
Pointing the Macs at the AD's DNS system doesn't solve the problem, because mDNS assumes that anything ".local" will be found through the Multicast DNS system (at least, prior to 10.3.4), so the ".local" request never makes it to the specified AD server's DNS. Apple had to go out of their way to work around the problem because of so many MCSE asshats who don't know an fscking thing about interoperability...which is to say, most of them.
I own OmniGraffle Pro. It pales in comparison to Visio Pro, even the Visio of five or six years ago. Maybe in another five or six years, OmniGraffle will reach the level that Visio did back then, which would only put OmniGraffle about ten to twelve years behind Visio. OmniGraffle is good, but it's no Visio.
I onestly can't believe that after nearly seven hundred comments on this topic, there nothing rated 4 or above that actually addresses the question. Sure, there's lot's of snide comments about the inferiority of Windows, but that's a given. What's not a given is what the questioner was originally asking. So, here's a few of the applications that I personally find indispensible for what I do..and BTW, I'm a Mac guy, an OpenBSD guy, and a Linux guy, much more than I'm a Windows guy.
...and that's just off the top of my head. I hope Apple sticks with Boot Camp, and Microsoft updates Virtual PC. I'll happily buy two versions of Windows so that I can have seamless integration of Windows with my Macintosh hardware (one for dual boot for extended usage, and one for virtualization for quicky things), but I have a feeling that Apple will eventually pull the project.
1. Visio. The day Microsoft bought Visio, I was *so* pissed off, because I knew that there was then absolutely no chance that Visio would ever be released for Macs. Yes, there are some similar programs on the Mac side (OmniGraffle, ConceptDraw), but none of them can hold a candle to Visio Professional.
2. Duncan Munro's PSU Designer II and Tone Stack Calculator. Two essential tools for designing electron tube amplifiers that just don't exist on the Mac. Yes, a competent EE could probably figure it out in some horrible version of EDA software on a Mac, but all the Mac EDA packages I've seen are awful. As soon as I free up another machine, I'll try to install gEDA to see if that's any better (Linux or Fink/Mac OS X).
3. A whole host of software for my Amateur Radio hobby. Yes, there's some stuff out there for the Mac, but the majority of it runs on Windows. Another thing that pisses me off. This also holds true for a vast range of command and control products.
4. Ross-Tech's VAG-COM software to replace Volkswagen's scan tools. Uwe simply has no interest in porting, not even to Windows CE. Automotive scan tools are another area where all the software I've ever seen runs pretty much only on Windows, with a very few on Palm or WinCE.
5. TrueAudio's WinSpeakerz. This was originally a Mac program (MacSpeakerz), but development on the Windows side has far outstripped the Mac product. Great for designing loudspeaker systems. Most of the packages for this type of work are Windows-only.
6. Games? I couldn't care less about games, so this is really a non-issue for me.
7. VNC. VNC simply works a thousands times better on Windows (or Linux) than it does on the Mac.
Perhaps if you actually understood the purpose of the Constitution, you would be called a "citizen", and not a "subject", but then, I suspect that in short order, since most citizens here seem to not understand the Constitution, we may be (re)joining you as subjects of another less free government.
Just because the people sitting on the jury, or even the judge himself, have committed the same offence as the defendent, it doesn't mean that they won't condemn him just the same...
At the risk of sounding silly, I will suggest HFS+, Journaled (but without ACL's). This, of course, requires that you use Mac OS X. However, some very good disk repair utilities exist for Mac OS X. As far as performance is concerned, it should be capable of easily handling uncompressed NTSC video without dropouts in a proper configuation, so I can't see that it would be a problem for storing DVD's.
So what happened to Railworks? I was hoping they might be a good long-term play back in the mid-90's...but they started falling apart, and I stopped paying attention to them.
Well, since you didn't ask, I'm a networking consultant who's done a lot of work in NJ public schools. It my *job* to think of things like this.
Suppose it worked? The entrances to schools aren't always busy. There isn't always someone at the front desk to check in visitors. These days, the emphasis is on cost-cutting in schools. Systems like this will cause security to become even more lax, as the operators will tend to rely on the system's judgement.
Well, Houston is one thing, NJ is another.
I should preface my comments by mentioning that I used to work for a company who provided systems integration services to NJ schools and other public agencies, and I still provide those services as a subcontractor to my former employer.
I *personally* designed either some of or effectively *all of* the networking systems in Atlantic City, Vernon, Bridgeton, Delran, West Windsor-Plainsboro, Plainfield, Brick Township (and the Brick Township Police Department), the Mercer County Prosecutors Office, Mercer County Data Processing, and many other NJ school districts and agencies. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I am quite familiar with the standard operating procedure for school security. Personally, my face is well-known in schools all over the state.
One more question I have...who gets access to this database, and why?
Or even better, what if it did acount for aunts and uncles? Suppose the aunt or uncle also has children attending the same school, and then someone decided not to allow them access because of an allegation of sexual abuse of a neice or nephew? Who makes the decision? How does it get made?
It would seem from the context of the article that the system is actually used to control the doors, as in locking or unlocking them. If it didn't, what would be the point? And even if the person at the front desk noticed the severed head (and let me tell you, in NJ the front desk is rarely staffed), could they stop the doors opening (assuming it worked) in time?
No, what I'm asking is, "Have they even bothered to think about this before they went and spent a massive amount of my tax money (I'm a NJ resident) implementing this?"
And the grandparent could be walking to the school, though of course, in Freehold, as in much of NJ, that's probably unlikely.
Yes, holding a severed head up to a camera *would* be sort of out of place, but you have to ask yourself what sort of problems this system is trying to prevent. Given the demographics of the area, I'd guess the most likely result is prevention of divorce-related kidnappings (or maybe just to keep out all those migrant farm workers). But then, ask yourself who gets to control the database and lock someone out of the system. School buildings are public property, and in my mind, there's a serious question as to the legality of this sort of system.
Anyway, as I said, what are they trying to prevent with all this money? Most school doors are glass these days, and if a person *really* felt the need to enter, no high-tech security scanner is going to stop them. Wouldn't it simply have made more sense to lock the doors and post hall monitors?
I wonder how much testing they've done to see if you can fool the system by cutting someone's eyes out or their head off and holding it up to the camera. I suppose you would have to have iris pictures of the same person alive and dead to really test it. On a less morbid note, I wonder if you could fool it by kidnapping a parent, then taking a high resolution photo of their face. Can the system determine stress levels to see if the face it's looking at is under duress? Even easier, just force someone at gunpoint to look into the camera.
You can recover from that problem. I've done it several times. You just need to pull the RAM from the machine and reseat it.
I'm not sure I follow you here.
How exactly do you see the cultural benefits to society of sharing outweighing the individual benefits provided by copyright law for any particular individual artist?
The whole point of copyright is to provide a personal financial incentive to create, not a societal financial incentive. I'm not saying the the current version of copyright hasn't been completely perverted, what I'm saying is that the perversion itself does not necessarily invalidate the need for *some* sort of privilege. The whole point of copyright is that works are *supposed* to eventually enter the public domain. Of course, thanks to the depredations of large corporations such as Disney and the failings of Lawrence Lessig, copyright has now effectively become a permanent grant, which is not what was intended, at all, and is in the view of anyone who is intellectually honest massively detrimental to society.
Your description of the current marketplace (at least, that is what I *think* you're trying to describe) seems very odd. Distribution costs are only effectively zero for the end user. They are certainly not zero for the creator or any intermediaries. Yes, it is indeed becoming very difficult to make money disseminating recorded works--but I would argue that anyone who thinks this is entirely a good thing is displaying a marked lack of understanding of how we use recorded works in our society. The opportunities for enjoying unrecorded works are becoming fewer and fewer each and every day. In fact, I would argue that recorded works have quite clearly practically replaced unrecorded works as the primary form of aesthetic experience in our culture. One need look no further than the Internet to see the truth of this. There is now, and ever will be, a massive demand for recorded works, but if it becomes impossible to make a living off of them, it is certain that fewer and fewer creators will actually create them. It is highly debatable whether or not this will turn out to be a net good for society. I believe it will result in a massive reduction in total artistic output.
The Framers of the Constitution understood this quite well over 200 years ago, even with their lack of modern technology. Modern technology has only made the situation worse for artists. It disheartens me that so many people today seem not to understand the problem. I agree, in today's world, the economic value of recorded works is approaching zero, given that digital reproduction can result in worldwide distribution of effectively unlimited copies in an instant. You need to consider that when the value of a product becomes effectively zero, then such works will tend to only be created by those with sufficient leisure (temporal or financial) to create, or solely as loss leader advertising. Not to mention the fact that when leisure becomes increasingly scarce, as it is in modern society, then only those with large amounts of leisure will enjoy any artistic works, at all. How can this be considered a net good?
In any case, the Supreme court has already ruled on Eldred v. Ashcroft, so the only method we have left to attempt to return to a reasonable copyright system is to petition the legislature. It is unlikely that the Court will re-examine its precedent, absent massive public outcry.
I think one of things you need to consider is that the real power of the "major labels" lies not in copyright, but in the stranglehold they have over the distribution arena and their positions as the intermediaries and arbiters of taste. Because they control the distribution channels, they can dictate the terms of the contracts they offer to creators, which usually means that the creators must grant a perpetual, exclusive license to the label that signs them, pay for practically all production, promotional, and distribution costs themselves, etc, etc, which results in a system where the label assumes little to no risk, while the musician is for the most part left with no assets. It's a positive feedback loop (like so many capitalist systems) that has a tendency to shut out the smaller player.
;) Although, come to think of it, that's hard to do even standing still...
The labels and other cartels (Viacom, Clear Channel, etc) control the record stores, the radio, the theatres, the television stations, the concert venues, even many of the small clubs. Do you know how many outlets Clear Channel controls just in the Philadelphia market alone (my market)? The reach of this corporation is staggering! Therefore, they control access to their system. It's not copyright that allows this, but control of the distribution channels. Controlling the copyright is only a fringe benefit to the labels, which has the effect of eliminating their only viable competitors...their content creators themselves.
Mediation is an important aspect of a large scale society, and we as musicians need to start seriously thinking about ways to circumvent the major label system and create our own mediation/distribution system. Thanks to the Internet, we may actually have a chance of succeeding, but the state of distribution over the Internet is in serious disarray. Absent a drastic increase in artistic education in our schools, mediation will always be necessary.
Signing with a major, or even a larger indie label used to be a dream of mine, until we started to garner label interest in the early to mid 90's and discovered how the system really works. Quite distasteful.
I should also mention that the visual and literary arts hold a much different place in our culture than do the musical arts. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to contemplate "Nude Descending a Staircase #2" or read anything by Proust while driving my car...
I think you are diluting your own point by mentioning "salaried musicians" and "musicians who live only off their concert sales" in the same breath. I would ask you, are you a musician yourself, and if so, have you ever attempted to make a serious living off of the proceeds of your live performances in today's society? Have you considered the difficulty of enjoying many of the rewards of life that others take for granted while embarking on an endless series of touring dates, the least of which is to raise a family of your own? Or, do you draw a salary based on your musical talents?
As an aside, I am skeptical of the Warhol's ultimate benefit to aesthetics, I would argue that neither the Rolling Stones nor the Beatles had economic success as their highest goal in their early days, and we all know what happened to the Medici, don't we? Although I hear Lorenza is eking out a pretty decent living off her cookbooks...some of which I actually own. BTW, if you haven't done so, you should visit Firenze these days. Invigorating place, it is.
I am not saying that "salaried musicians" don't have a place in this world. I am only appalled at the notion that they could somehow become the only musicians capable of making a living absent the protection of copyright. Art is rarely well served by pecuniary interest.
You do realize that you've answered your own question, don't you?
I would respond to this by saying that I do not have a problem with "sharing with friends", but when your "friends" potentially include the entire Internet, you're no longer sharing, but pirating. It may be difficult in the extreme to draw that line clearly, but it needs to be drawn. Which would you find more problematic, one pirate pressing a million copies of your work, or a million people "sharing" a copy each? The net effect to the artist is similar. The only difference is that in the first case, one pirate is making a lot of money, and in the second, no one makes anything. As far as the artist is concerned, it's still a million lost potential sales.
But...copyright *has * to remain a limitation on the right to copy. It's inherent in the nature of intellectual property that there are few, if any, truly new ideas. All knowledge is based upon the discoveries of those who have come before. For this reason, the grant of copyright should always be a limited grant, with the works eventually passing into the public domain. We all already possess the "right to copy" as members of the public. It is to promote progress that we allow authors the exclusive right to their works for a limited period of time. It's a financial incentive to create new works, while still allowing for eventual public access to those works.