www.cauce.com
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail
Saw this today while reading at adbusters.org:
The biggest victory to date is a recent $2 million settlement for Earthlink, an Internet Service Provider. The loser was self-proclaimed "Spam King" Sanford Wallace, a man some estimate sends as many as 25 million bulk e-mails a day. At the vanguard of the Spam solution are those who are trying to enact meaningful anti-Spam legislation, such as the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE). You too can help by visiting the Coalition at www.cauce.org.
Well I love TMBG, but will admit I understand what you're saying, and not surprised you said it!!! Come on everyone, you have to admit that TMBG is some zany music. And it's definately an acquired taste. And that's why we like it. Especially if you just pick a random song --hell, you never know which one he listened to.
I'm sure a large percentage of you out there got hooked when the catchy "Instanbul" song became popular in 1991...A much easier way to transition yourself into their music.
On a funnier note: You know how radio stations some times try to brag how hot they are... and they'll play small clips of hard-hitting songs they play? One station I know used to do this ad all the time for themselves: "This is isn't X-music (play some god-alwful slow song)...THIS is X-Music: (play some headbanger music) "
Well one day they were playing this clip, and they put a TMBG song as the 'bad' music! I almost had to pull over from laughing so hard. And dammit, I liked that song!
TMBG & The Offspring are a couple of the few better-known bands that have done a great job moving to the internet EARLY.
maybe TMBG wouldn't mind about Napster so much, if they would do a few things that The Offspring do: such as merchandise, tour dates (and maybe tour!) etc. Of course, maybe TMBG could start selling Napster t-shirts like The Offspring did! What a great sense of humor!
I just got an up-close look at.NET
I think they're letting the Marketing team go crazy with this one. It's not about cross-platform, barely cross-language.
All it is, is the next reiteration of the COM+ DNA architecture. And a 10 word description of DCOM is being able to run a DLL off of another computer's resources.
COM components are mostly DLL's that are encapsulated, allow you to access their methods. Then you have an architecture explaining how they talk to each other, and the way they access their data. A possible middle-tier solution in a 3-tier environment. And almost as an afterthought, it happens to be usable with a web-base front end.
That's the thing that gets me. It's not really web-centric at all. Oh well.
So first there was COM, then COM+, and not.NET They're just trying to squeeze their Visual Studio closer together. Sprinkle some more XML support, try to get a CLR running (Common Language RUntime) (Which by the way, won't include FoxPro playing with the CLR, and is why VB 7.0 will have to be retooled)
I doubt anyone's reading this since it's so low on the Slashdot front page, but oh well. Just had to mention the extreme un-importance of.NET with the rest of the world.
Big freakin deal. I'm 27 and play with my Mindstorms. Who cares? My g/f don't care, and my coworkers join in when I get a new box, so who cares? It's like the guy in the commercial... jump's through the kid's slip-n-slide with his suit on! Live a little!
I just hope when I'm 70, I can glue some pieces together and make myself a lego cane! Yep, an old fart still playing Dead Milkmen in the car...
"would respond so carelessly. IF you read my comment,...."
Obviously, the only carelessness on my part is posting AT ALL. My post was hardly as inflamatory as all your attacks on slashdot I see, and was in response to TIVO, not you.
However, since you love the fire in your veins, and are so incredulous to my wise User Number (heh, like that means anything) to sum up... I don't see why a person who just purchased a new appliance at retail, must sell it for a loss. It's true, I didn't know that there was a healthy market on ebay, but at the same time, it'll be a moot point when the bigger capacity ones come out for christmas, and the prices of the old ones will plummet.
Honestly though, it was only a few months ago that I was looking at the Tivo website, reading their private policy plan. One that said that I should feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because they swear up and down, that no one will know my viewing habbits. So I buy one. And now, before a few months are up, they say whoops, scratch that, we're ammending that.
And so then I read people say: Easy, just drop the service. Well, If I drop the service then I can't use the box. That's my point. That's all. No service = no box. So you're point is to sell the box too, yippee, good point. Let's go ahead and chew my ass out because my point wasn't as great as your point, or that my point wasn't written as good, or obviously didn't cover everyone else's points with subnotes. Next time I'll add a bibliography.
Rader
Re:Conceding your lawsuit is baseless?
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
·
· Score: 2
I'd have to disagree (not with your points, but with the impossibility of it)
I think Napster could be beat. Just for a minute, let's say that Napster doesn't lose, and they continue on in some type of incarnation of distributing music...
About 6 months ago, some friends and I thought we could do better than Napster (who didn't?) and started writing our own application. Of course, as most pipe dreams go, it went nowhere, although I'd like to think it was because my idiot friends didn't like the idea of actually "working" on it..."Oh, you mean we can't just talk about it", or "I don't know how to program"... blah blah.
But one of the things I did get out of it, was a large list of features, and reasons Napster could be beat at their own game.
I won't bore you with ALL the reason (like how there was no chat feature at the time) but the main reason was content & popularity. It's either an upward spiral or a downward spiral. Back then, at any time, you could get almost 200,000 songs to choose from on Napster. The problem with other wannabe-sites were that there was no content. Do a search on Scour back then, you'd get back nothing. Do a search on iMesh, or whatever it was called, and you might find it, but the user was logged off at the time (And never to come back, because Napster was a better place to go).
So, due to nothing being found, you wouldn't go back, even if they had better ideas and better features than Napster.
So what a company needs to do, is come up with a program with better features, less bugs, and survive long enough to get over the "hump". The hump being enough of a selection so that users kept coming back.... thus keeping it alive (and growing).
We thought the "hump" would be easy to beat. My own collection alone, was 1/8th of Napster's. (25,000+ songs - no dupes either) I figured that if I grew my collection a bit, or get a few more "large collector's" out there to always be logged on... That people would stick around long enough.
Of course, it would never do -- if I was logged in with 25,000 songs... so I'd have to set up a few dummy accounts with 5,000 each or so. Or even maybe buy some college kid in another state a nice big computer, and cable modem, and the only price he had to pay was to keep his mouth shut, and to be logged in all the time......(I always wondered if the Napster kids did that to get it going)
Now, I know that it'd take some money too. I think the last I heard, Napster was using an OC48, and that was quite a while ago. However, I think Napster is doing all the dirty work and spending all their money, where another company could jump right in, and get started with only a million dollars or so. (Or whatever chump change is to VC's is now-a-days).
Of course mp3.com would love to flex their collection a bit. Don't forget, they have 80,000 full albums ripped. At a conservative 10 songs/album, that's 800,000 songs. (with no dupes)
Rader
Re:Conceding your lawsuit is baseless?
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
·
· Score: 2
Absolutely report them. I'd also talk to your local newspaper and tv news. See if you can get picked up by the AP news. I'm sure even they woud like to stay out of the media about their illegal activities.
The Big-5 (and thus RIAA) will spend >$50 million in legal expenses every year. They are able to write the laws in their favor, and then spend a bunch defending these laws after that.
With that kind of money, time, and legal defense, they are capable of doing almost anything. And if they somehow can't, they will stoop to any level to do just that. Such as trying to break into your system, just to get proof against you in court. Do you know how much trouble law enforcement would get into, if they obtained information that way?
If you're not making this story up, you need to keep hard copy records, and file a report. With the media hype today against "hackers" , they would eat up this charge against the RIAA trying to crack your systems.
But if I quit the service, then I have a $300 hunk of junk. (yea, yea, I know some people think it already is a hunk of junk).
Really though, will they give me back my money for the TIVO then?
Yea, if it dropped to $199, then they'd pull an I-OPENER and scream bloody murder as us evil hackers start to use it for whatever we want.
Word would get out that someone was able to connect to it with Linux on their laptop, and then they opened the box and make it so more than one user could connect through multiple PCMCIA ports.
And then the RIAA will sue Mobility because it's obvious that whenever more than 2 people connect their computers together, with any storage capability, they're obviously stealing music by trading mp3's.
I agree with your last sentence, but disagree with everything else you said.
"If you have an mp3 player, you know what mp3's are.../snip/...you sure as heck ain't gonna buy SDMI hardware"
And what percentage of the people out there fall into that? Not enough. Sorry, but the people who are apposed to SDMI are a small percentage to the world that doesn't even know any of this crap is happening.
Not only that, but your 1cm cube idea is exactly what I'm talking about. If Sony comes out in a couple of years with two ear plugs (and that small) that hold 200GB+ of music, even I would be impressed enough to check it out. So that means through hardware obsolescence, we even lose some of the mp3 die hards.
"And if you don't buy it, Diamond sure ain't gonna want to make it anymore"
You need to check out some statistics, first. Portable mp3 player sales are miserable. It's a niche market. They're abysmally lower than projected, and are not building enough steam to withstand competition from the fully sanctioned, fully marketed SDMI solutions that will come out. And if MP3 portable sales are bad now, they're only going to get worse when SDMI comes out.
Diamond *IS* on board to make SDMI players. I am sure they'll dump the break-even MP3 players, and start making SDMI players. And the sheep out there.... they're going to buy this stuff up, without even knowing that they took the wrong stance.
"As long as we have music CD's, which we will continue to have"
New music CD's outsell ALL the old music CD's combined each week. People don't want to just play and listen to their old CD's. They'll want to buy the latest Britney Spears crap, and it'll only be in this new format. What's a teenager to do!? Buy it without blinking! Besides, it'll come with a sticker saying "Even better format" or something, and they'll be happy.
Sorry, I agree with your wishful thinking, but it is at the moment wishful. And the SDMI & Big-5 consortium is getting ready for a big BANG, and they're going to throw as much momentum as they can with this format release. They'll finally have downloadable music, kiosks as each store, SDMI hardware that comes out with new features, gizmos, posters, popup cardboard cutouts, and some Backstreet Boys Hardee's commerical or something.
And if this ball rolls long enough, then all the major hardware companies will do what is profitable --which is make hardware that is selling. And if that means SDMI only compliant hardware, then that's what they'll do to stay in business (no hardware company is going to go out of business just because it's the "right cause". Heck, they might not even believe in our cause. Money talks)
Oh, no kidding! Intel's roadmap could be drawn by a 5 year old kid. "And then...and then... and then.."
Tom's Hardware had a nice editorial at the beginning of the year, talking about where Intel and AMD would be by the end of the year. He showed even back then, that Rambus would be a bust, and when the rest of the world caught on, Intel would try to change course... but Intel is too huge to change course that quickly.
This isn't really a plug or anything, but Tom's site was right on, 9 months later. AMD is kicking butt, their Thunderbird & Duron sets are working as promised, and Intel is still hyping vapor. "Let's release a comparable chip speed to deflate AMD's wind", but then ship only a few hundred?
I don't care "who wins". I like the AMD prices, but have always suffered a speed hit, (I'll live). But I hate these type of marketing tactics. IBM did it back in it's waning PC days. Microsoft just did with the XBox crap. (ooh... they're coming out with a platform that will be better than the P2... in 20 months? duh.)
Oh well. Do your homework. Intel's lies are starting to show. Check out the hardcore sites that have nothing to gain or lose either way. You can't even get that kind of objectivity from the evening news.
I'm surprised more sabatage hasn't been attempted against Napster. The RIAA affiliates flooding MP3's that are actually ads saying "You will die an evil death, thief!".
But the only thing I can think of, is that there are a LOT more legitimate users of Napster than there are people against it. It's a numbers game.
Tune in tonight, when I attempt to login to Napster with 10,000 songs!
I don't know how well or fast gPulp will catch on, but this type of protocol is exactly what we need.
As mentioned in the past Slashdot article about Gnutella, these types of searches could be integrated in the hardware of routers, etc. I don't think that would happen though until a protocol was created & tested.
So, hopefully this protocol or a similar one will be created, tested, and optimized, and then integrated into the hardware/software that runs the internet!
I guess then Al Gore will get sued by the RIAA for creating the Internet as a music-stealing weapon of destruction.
Exactly. And they'll start it out with pushing SDMI-only compliant hardware.
The list of people they have onboard (read=$) is staggering, and almost anyone that has been trying to get the RIO-type market going (mp3 portables) are also on board for making SDMI portables.
I know that mp3's are here, and can't go away. However, if companies start to make SDMI hardware, and stop making MP3 hardware... it won't be long before the MP3 hardware of today is obsolete. (Again, I'm talking about RIO's, etc). And consumers will only have that choice. How many MP3-car players are on the market? about 4? And they're all pricey. What happens in a couple of years when most new cars come with a built-in SDMI player? Same thing.
I just hope it'll become possible to write our mp3's into SDMI compliant files, and thus work on this new hardware.
Just look at any Ziff Davis magazine, and it becomes obvious that the advertisement affects the stories covered. Remember back in the early 90's when you could read magazines and get useful reviews of upcoming hardware and software?
Now all you can read are praising reviews of so-so products (if they're big advertisers) or so-so reviews of really crappy products (if they're big advertisers) or scathing reviews from so-so products (if they're not advertisers).
Now you have to resort to other sources to get a less biased, and informative view. (Anandtech, Tomshardware, are web examples)
The bigger the media is, the worse it gets. What's really scary is who actually owns the large TV-stations... and watching politics dictate what is 'deemed' important enough to show on the news.
That's right. The SDMI overlords have a whole sheep mentality mass to convert.
However, they have been doing it successfully every day with Britney Spears crap and cardboard cutouts, Backstreet Boys, etc,etc.
I remember last year, you heard a lot of hoopla that the SDMI products didn't make it out in time for Christmas. But now... you hear nothing. I think that the Big-5 are waiting for all this MP3-is-illegal campaign to be nailed shut before rolling out the SDMI, along with the 500 million dollar ad campaign. Along with popular kiosks in lame stores, and a distribution model on the internet. (SDMI of course)
They probably know that Napster is the biggest thorn in their side. They've got mp3.com mostly whipped... but as long as we all can still go to Napster,the master plan is put on hold.
But just wait... just wait and see how the Big-5 take it all in a big storm. It'll be the biggest caper ever.
If I was a huge, monolithic, corporation pulling all the strings, living in the dark ages, and refusing to change --- and yet making billions of dollars, I wouldn't change a damn thing either!
I would never allow innovations to occur. Why? because someone might do it better than me, and eventually put me out of business.
Look at how fast the computer industry changes today. IBM is kicking themselves in the ass for letting the PC get out of their control. Hot companies come and go in the computer industry (just look at Apple, Novell, WordPerfect, oh.. the list is so so long).
So you and I might agree that we'd love to see a new distribution method. We even say that it'll make the Big-5 more money! But the Big-5 see it differently: Research, development, and then competition.
The Big-5 even own the artists. They have everything under control, and every dollar spent in the music industry practically goes to them. Why would they want to change, and maybe lose all that?
I think that if they did adopt MP3-CD's, and rolled with the whole paradigm shift, that it would of course be profitable, but then all of a sudden the artists might figure out that they could do the same thing on their own. It all boils down to that carrot they dangle in front of all the artists... that they too can be rich and famous like [fill in famous artist name here]. -- But only if you sign up 7 years with them.
On a final note... yes, maybe Napster won't get slapped with copyright violations exactly like Mp3.com did, but you can be guaranteed that if they lose, they will owe the Big-5 some big bucks... either in the form of the court costs, and/or "damages" done. If the Big-5 prove that they could have increased sale by 8% last year instead of 6%, maybe Napster will owe that 2%. (what is 2% of a bazillion dollars??)
On top of that, Napster has no other form of interest to users... if next time you log in, and you see only my girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's band available for download... just how long will you stick around?
Slashdot Mirror
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail
Saw this today while reading at adbusters.org:
The biggest victory to date is a recent $2 million settlement for Earthlink, an Internet Service Provider. The loser was self-proclaimed "Spam King" Sanford Wallace, a man some estimate sends as many as 25 million bulk e-mails a day. At the vanguard of the Spam solution are those who are trying to enact meaningful anti-Spam legislation, such as the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE). You too can help by visiting the Coalition at www.cauce.org.
I'm sure a large percentage of you out there got hooked when the catchy "Instanbul" song became popular in 1991...A much easier way to transition yourself into their music.
On a funnier note: You know how radio stations some times try to brag how hot they are... and they'll play small clips of hard-hitting songs they play? One station I know used to do this ad all the time for themselves: "This is isn't X-music (play some god-alwful slow song)...THIS is X-Music: (play some headbanger music) "
Well one day they were playing this clip, and they put a TMBG song as the 'bad' music! I almost had to pull over from laughing so hard. And dammit, I liked that song!
Rader
TMBG & The Offspring are a couple of the few better-known bands that have done a great job moving to the internet EARLY.
maybe TMBG wouldn't mind about Napster so much, if they would do a few things that The Offspring do: such as merchandise, tour dates (and maybe tour!) etc. Of course, maybe TMBG could start selling Napster t-shirts like The Offspring did! What a great sense of humor!
Rader
I think they're letting the Marketing team go crazy with this one. It's not about cross-platform, barely cross-language.
All it is, is the next reiteration of the COM+ DNA architecture. And a 10 word description of DCOM is being able to run a DLL off of another computer's resources.
COM components are mostly DLL's that are encapsulated, allow you to access their methods. Then you have an architecture explaining how they talk to each other, and the way they access their data. A possible middle-tier solution in a 3-tier environment. And almost as an afterthought, it happens to be usable with a web-base front end.
That's the thing that gets me. It's not really web-centric at all. Oh well.
So first there was COM, then COM+, and not .NET
They're just trying to squeeze their Visual Studio closer together. Sprinkle some more XML support, try to get a CLR running (Common Language RUntime) (Which by the way, won't include FoxPro playing with the CLR, and is why VB 7.0 will have to be retooled)
I doubt anyone's reading this since it's so low on the Slashdot front page, but oh well. Just had to mention the extreme un-importance of .NET with the rest of the world.
I just hope when I'm 70, I can glue some pieces together and make myself a lego cane! Yep, an old fart still playing Dead Milkmen in the car...
Rader
Obviously, the only carelessness on my part is posting AT ALL. My post was hardly as inflamatory as all your attacks on slashdot I see, and was in response to TIVO, not you.
However, since you love the fire in your veins, and are so incredulous to my wise User Number (heh, like that means anything) to sum up... I don't see why a person who just purchased a new appliance at retail, must sell it for a loss. It's true, I didn't know that there was a healthy market on ebay, but at the same time, it'll be a moot point when the bigger capacity ones come out for christmas, and the prices of the old ones will plummet.
Honestly though, it was only a few months ago that I was looking at the Tivo website, reading their private policy plan. One that said that I should feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because they swear up and down, that no one will know my viewing habbits. So I buy one. And now, before a few months are up, they say whoops, scratch that, we're ammending that.
And so then I read people say: Easy, just drop the service. Well, If I drop the service then I can't use the box. That's my point. That's all. No service = no box. So you're point is to sell the box too, yippee, good point. Let's go ahead and chew my ass out because my point wasn't as great as your point, or that my point wasn't written as good, or obviously didn't cover everyone else's points with subnotes. Next time I'll add a bibliography.
Rader
I think Napster could be beat. Just for a minute, let's say that Napster doesn't lose, and they continue on in some type of incarnation of distributing music...
About 6 months ago, some friends and I thought we could do better than Napster (who didn't?) and started writing our own application. Of course, as most pipe dreams go, it went nowhere, although I'd like to think it was because my idiot friends didn't like the idea of actually "working" on it..."Oh, you mean we can't just talk about it", or "I don't know how to program"... blah blah.
But one of the things I did get out of it, was a large list of features, and reasons Napster could be beat at their own game.
I won't bore you with ALL the reason (like how there was no chat feature at the time) but the main reason was content & popularity. It's either an upward spiral or a downward spiral. Back then, at any time, you could get almost 200,000 songs to choose from on Napster. The problem with other wannabe-sites were that there was no content. Do a search on Scour back then, you'd get back nothing. Do a search on iMesh, or whatever it was called, and you might find it, but the user was logged off at the time (And never to come back, because Napster was a better place to go).
So, due to nothing being found, you wouldn't go back, even if they had better ideas and better features than Napster.
So what a company needs to do, is come up with a program with better features, less bugs, and survive long enough to get over the "hump". The hump being enough of a selection so that users kept coming back.... thus keeping it alive (and growing).
We thought the "hump" would be easy to beat. My own collection alone, was 1/8th of Napster's. (25,000+ songs - no dupes either) I figured that if I grew my collection a bit, or get a few more "large collector's" out there to always be logged on... That people would stick around long enough.
Of course, it would never do -- if I was logged in with 25,000 songs... so I'd have to set up a few dummy accounts with 5,000 each or so. Or even maybe buy some college kid in another state a nice big computer, and cable modem, and the only price he had to pay was to keep his mouth shut, and to be logged in all the time......(I always wondered if the Napster kids did that to get it going)
Now, I know that it'd take some money too. I think the last I heard, Napster was using an OC48, and that was quite a while ago. However, I think Napster is doing all the dirty work and spending all their money, where another company could jump right in, and get started with only a million dollars or so. (Or whatever chump change is to VC's is now-a-days).
Of course mp3.com would love to flex their collection a bit. Don't forget, they have 80,000 full albums ripped. At a conservative 10 songs/album, that's 800,000 songs. (with no dupes)
Rader
The Big-5 (and thus RIAA) will spend >$50 million in legal expenses every year. They are able to write the laws in their favor, and then spend a bunch defending these laws after that.
With that kind of money, time, and legal defense, they are capable of doing almost anything. And if they somehow can't, they will stoop to any level to do just that. Such as trying to break into your system, just to get proof against you in court. Do you know how much trouble law enforcement would get into, if they obtained information that way?
If you're not making this story up, you need to keep hard copy records, and file a report. With the media hype today against "hackers" , they would eat up this charge against the RIAA trying to crack your systems.
Rader
Really though, will they give me back my money for the TIVO then?
Rader
Word would get out that someone was able to connect to it with Linux on their laptop, and then they opened the box and make it so more than one user could connect through multiple PCMCIA ports.
And then the RIAA will sue Mobility because it's obvious that whenever more than 2 people connect their computers together, with any storage capability, they're obviously stealing music by trading mp3's.
Rader
Rader
Rader
"If you have an mp3 player, you know what mp3's are.../snip/...you sure as heck ain't gonna buy SDMI hardware"
And what percentage of the people out there fall into that? Not enough. Sorry, but the people who are apposed to SDMI are a small percentage to the world that doesn't even know any of this crap is happening.
Not only that, but your 1cm cube idea is exactly what I'm talking about. If Sony comes out in a couple of years with two ear plugs (and that small) that hold 200GB+ of music, even I would be impressed enough to check it out. So that means through hardware obsolescence, we even lose some of the mp3 die hards.
"And if you don't buy it, Diamond sure ain't gonna want to make it anymore"
You need to check out some statistics, first. Portable mp3 player sales are miserable. It's a niche market. They're abysmally lower than projected, and are not building enough steam to withstand competition from the fully sanctioned, fully marketed SDMI solutions that will come out. And if MP3 portable sales are bad now, they're only going to get worse when SDMI comes out.
Diamond *IS* on board to make SDMI players. I am sure they'll dump the break-even MP3 players, and start making SDMI players. And the sheep out there.... they're going to buy this stuff up, without even knowing that they took the wrong stance.
"As long as we have music CD's, which we will continue to have"
New music CD's outsell ALL the old music CD's combined each week. People don't want to just play and listen to their old CD's. They'll want to buy the latest Britney Spears crap, and it'll only be in this new format. What's a teenager to do!? Buy it without blinking! Besides, it'll come with a sticker saying "Even better format" or something, and they'll be happy.
Sorry, I agree with your wishful thinking, but it is at the moment wishful. And the SDMI & Big-5 consortium is getting ready for a big BANG, and they're going to throw as much momentum as they can with this format release. They'll finally have downloadable music, kiosks as each store, SDMI hardware that comes out with new features, gizmos, posters, popup cardboard cutouts, and some Backstreet Boys Hardee's commerical or something.
And if this ball rolls long enough, then all the major hardware companies will do what is profitable --which is make hardware that is selling. And if that means SDMI only compliant hardware, then that's what they'll do to stay in business (no hardware company is going to go out of business just because it's the "right cause". Heck, they might not even believe in our cause. Money talks)
Rader
Is that all I have to call my collection mp3's to get free publicity and left alone by the RIAA?
I'm sure we all know that he has the largest collection of MP3's in the world! (with maybe a TB each for videos and pr0n)
Rader
I wonder what software they run to get the hand motion recognition
Rader
Tom's Hardware had a nice editorial at the beginning of the year, talking about where Intel and AMD would be by the end of the year. He showed even back then, that Rambus would be a bust, and when the rest of the world caught on, Intel would try to change course... but Intel is too huge to change course that quickly.
This isn't really a plug or anything, but Tom's site was right on, 9 months later. AMD is kicking butt, their Thunderbird & Duron sets are working as promised, and Intel is still hyping vapor.
"Let's release a comparable chip speed to deflate AMD's wind", but then ship only a few hundred?
I don't care "who wins". I like the AMD prices, but have always suffered a speed hit, (I'll live). But I hate these type of marketing tactics. IBM did it back in it's waning PC days. Microsoft just did with the XBox crap. (ooh... they're coming out with a platform that will be better than the P2... in 20 months? duh.)
Oh well. Do your homework. Intel's lies are starting to show. Check out the hardcore sites that have nothing to gain or lose either way. You can't even get that kind of objectivity from the evening news.
Rader
But the only thing I can think of, is that there are a LOT more legitimate users of Napster than there are people against it. It's a numbers game.
Tune in tonight, when I attempt to login to Napster with 10,000 songs!
Rader
As mentioned in the past Slashdot article about Gnutella, these types of searches could be integrated in the hardware of routers, etc. I don't think that would happen though until a protocol was created & tested.
So, hopefully this protocol or a similar one will be created, tested, and optimized, and then integrated into the hardware/software that runs the internet!
I guess then Al Gore will get sued by the RIAA for creating the Internet as a music-stealing weapon of destruction.
Rader
The list of people they have onboard (read=$) is staggering, and almost anyone that has been trying to get the RIO-type market going (mp3 portables) are also on board for making SDMI portables.
I know that mp3's are here, and can't go away. However, if companies start to make SDMI hardware, and stop making MP3 hardware... it won't be long before the MP3 hardware of today is obsolete. (Again, I'm talking about RIO's, etc). And consumers will only have that choice. How many MP3-car players are on the market? about 4? And they're all pricey. What happens in a couple of years when most new cars come with a built-in SDMI player? Same thing.
I just hope it'll become possible to write our mp3's into SDMI compliant files, and thus work on this new hardware.
Rader
In fact, they must learn how to become even more fanatical, during the time that they are in 'exile' from Apple.
Rader
Now all you can read are praising reviews of so-so products (if they're big advertisers) or so-so reviews of really crappy products (if they're big advertisers) or scathing reviews from so-so products (if they're not advertisers).
Now you have to resort to other sources to get a less biased, and informative view. (Anandtech, Tomshardware, are web examples)
The bigger the media is, the worse it gets. What's really scary is who actually owns the large TV-stations... and watching politics dictate what is 'deemed' important enough to show on the news.
Rader
However, they have been doing it successfully every day with Britney Spears crap and cardboard cutouts, Backstreet Boys, etc,etc.
I remember last year, you heard a lot of hoopla that the SDMI products didn't make it out in time for Christmas. But now... you hear nothing. I think that the Big-5 are waiting for all this MP3-is-illegal campaign to be nailed shut before rolling out the SDMI, along with the 500 million dollar ad campaign. Along with popular kiosks in lame stores, and a distribution model on the internet. (SDMI of course)
They probably know that Napster is the biggest thorn in their side. They've got mp3.com mostly whipped... but as long as we all can still go to Napster,the master plan is put on hold.
But just wait... just wait and see how the Big-5 take it all in a big storm. It'll be the biggest caper ever.
Rader
I would never allow innovations to occur. Why? because someone might do it better than me, and eventually put me out of business.
Look at how fast the computer industry changes today. IBM is kicking themselves in the ass for letting the PC get out of their control. Hot companies come and go in the computer industry (just look at Apple, Novell, WordPerfect, oh.. the list is so so long).
So you and I might agree that we'd love to see a new distribution method. We even say that it'll make the Big-5 more money! But the Big-5 see it differently: Research, development, and then competition.
The Big-5 even own the artists. They have everything under control, and every dollar spent in the music industry practically goes to them. Why would they want to change, and maybe lose all that?
I think that if they did adopt MP3-CD's, and rolled with the whole paradigm shift, that it would of course be profitable, but then all of a sudden the artists might figure out that they could do the same thing on their own. It all boils down to that carrot they dangle in front of all the artists... that they too can be rich and famous like [fill in famous artist name here]. -- But only if you sign up 7 years with them.
On a final note... yes, maybe Napster won't get slapped with copyright violations exactly like Mp3.com did, but you can be guaranteed that if they lose, they will owe the Big-5 some big bucks... either in the form of the court costs, and/or "damages" done. If the Big-5 prove that they could have increased sale by 8% last year instead of 6%, maybe Napster will owe that 2%. (what is 2% of a bazillion dollars??)
On top of that, Napster has no other form of interest to users... if next time you log in, and you see only my girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's band available for download... just how long will you stick around?
Have a nice day,
The Big-5 is....
Rader
Apple die hards always swarm at anything I post that might be taken negatively.
Of course I wouldn't bother posting, unless it was negative. But then again...when was the last time anything positive happened!
Breathlessly awaiting when AAPL = $0 !!!
I'm going throw a huge party that day.
Rader
(Do your worst, oh brainwashed macheads, got lots of karma)
(They don't even know why they're frothing at the mouth and seeing red right now!)