Last week I interviewed the head of Sony Music NZ who also happens to be spokesman for the local Industry's "Burn and Get Burnt" campaign -- an attempt to reduce the levels of CD piracy.
The Sony exec told me that they see the main problem being "organised" groups of pirates who regularly burn CDs and sell them at flea-markets, schools and the like.
Later, a former "top cop" from the UK, who now happens to be under the employ of the UK recording industry, was interviewed on TV.
He claimed that CD piracy was being run by the same organized crime groups that were traffiking in drugs, arms and similar illegal products.
His pitch was pretty much that if you buy a burnt CD you're contributing to the illegal proliferation of drugs and guns -- now that's a new one eh?
The Sony exec said that copy-protected CDs will be introduced in to New Zealand shortly and added that overseas trials have been very promising, with only a very low level of complaints.
At least he acknowledged that this lack of outrage might be because they were trialing the technology on music that was unlikely to appeal to the demographic most active in Net-based trading or casual CD ripping/burning.
He told me that although they still considered burning/ripping a CD for your own use to be illegal (there's no "fair use" here in NZ), their main targets in the anti-piracy drive were the "professional" pirates.
When I pointed out that "professional" pirates would not find the copy-protection to be nothing more than a minor irritation he got a bit agitated and wouldn't comment.
I suggested that perhaps this copy-protection was going to have the most impact on those people who are not in the business of copying music for friends or resale -- but simply want to be able to buy a CD that is certain to play on whatever player they choose (including a PC) to play it on.
I also suggested that copying an expensive CD onto a CDR for use in the car is a sensible thing to do. CDs in cars are prone to get scratched or damaged so using a copy is simply insurance against that.
He told me that this was illegal (here in NZ) and that if you scratched a CD so that it wouldn't play then you should simply buy another copy.
What's more, when I told him that in the days of vinyl I used to tape my expensive LPs and use the tapes for day-to-day listening so that the originals didn't get scratched he told me that this was also illegal (here in NZ). When I suggested that lots of people did this -- he told me that was rubbish.
It's easy to see why the recording industry has a problem -- they live in a world where the sky is a completely different color.
It strikes me that the whole music/movie piracy issue could be solved in one fell swoop if the industries involved simply lobbied government to add another 2% onto income taxes and then give the music away for free.
Sony, BMG and the others could then set up "free download" sites where Net surfers could drop in and grab as much music as they wanted, absolutely without further charge.
The huge revenues thus generated would be paid back to the recording/music industries and apportioned according to the number of downloads of each album/movie.
Likewise, some of the money would be aportioned to video libraries to compensate them for the losses they'd suffer.
Hey, it's a win-win-win situation.
The big companies get massive wads of cash. They can then pay the artists. Copy-protection is no longer an issue. Plus, you could then afford to listen to (and perhaps grow to like) a much wider range of music/movies.
Even though I'm just kidding, I suspect that it's only a matter of time before someone seriously suggests such a plan.
Just look at the lame technology/IP bills proposed already!
When asked how they were going to deal with the intense heat likely to be encountered on any journey to the sun, NASA responded "no problems, we'll send them at night"
The most expensive stage of any orbital or even suborbital launch is the first 30 miles or so.
At these low altitudes, air resistance is a major factor and, due to the heavy fuel-load still onboard, a great deal of power is required.
Conventional rocket motors suffer from the need to carry their own oxidizer (O2) but if the first stage of flight used air-breathing engines then far less of this heavy fuel element would be required. The result would be a lighter "wet" vehicle that required less power to fly.
This is why NASA and other researchers are spending such huge amounts of money on things such as the SCRAMJET and Pulse Detonation Engines.
Unfortunately it appears that there's still a big gap between laboratory and launchpad as far as these new engine designs are concerned.
Liquid-fueled rocket engines will always be risky and fuel-hungry. The magnitude of improvement in safety and price-performance being sought will probably have to wait until they're perfected.
Exactly -- I think methane also has a higher energy density (by weight and volume) than hydrogen -- that eases the storage and transportation problems.
However, if they really want to solve all the nation's energy problems then all they need to do is install a huge heat-exchanger and steam-turbine in Congress.
There's enough hot air in their to keep the nation running forever!
When I went to
this page
on the dallas news website and clicked on the link titled "Movies" I was taken to a "deep link" on the GuideLive.com website (well it ain't the front page).
Guess what -- it looks as if GuideLive.com doesn't want the Dallas News liking to that page -- "The page you requested could not be found."
I would have thought that the movie and book rights, plus revenues from public speaking by the individual who finds ET would make that $500 look pretty paultry by comparison.
If these are the same people that were filling my mailbox with spam trying to flog "backup DVDs to CDs" software then I'm happy to admit that I forwarded all such spam directly to the MPAA with a strong recommendation that they sue the snot out of them.
I've got nothing against such software being available (in fact I'd encourage it) -- but when someone fills my mailbox with spam trying to flog the stuff then I get mad.
I'm going to have to upgrade from my Hercules Mono Graphics card
Oh wow... you got a Hercules card?
Man, I was thinking of upgrading my text adaptor to one of those but I don't know if my old orange-phosphor CRT could handle it.
Of course what I really lust after is one of those BOB color cards. Man, they've got 640x350 pixels in sixteen (yes, count them... SIXTEEN) glorious colors!
What it must be like to be rich eh?
At least I've got 640K of RAM -- that's got to be more than anyone would ever need -- right Bill?
Come on folks -- it's unreasonable to expect the patent office to act as judge and jury in respect to patent claims -- that's what the courts are for.
Registering a patent does not prove that you were first to come up with an idea or invention -- it simply provides you with the ability to prove that you were in posession of such knowledge at the time you filed the registration.
In effect -- a patent is little more than proof of knowledge at a specific time/date, and a right to sue.
If we were to place the onus of verifying each application's technical merit and freedom from prior art -- then it's unlikely that anyone other than the large corporates could afford to register their inventions.
Sorry, but it doesn't follow that drivers licenses lead to police states that require "papers on demand." It's alarmist overreaction
Well you ought to take a look at New Zealand.
While the general perception might be that it's a democratic country with a great civil rights record -- things are changing here.
Some years ago, the government issued drivers with a "lifetime drivers' license" -- or should I say "drivers had to purchase a lifetime drivers' license"
Now this was a legal contract -- they OFFERED the license to qualified drivers, the drivers ACCEPTED the offer, an CONSIDERATION (by way of a once-only fee) was paid and the INTENT was clearly that the license would last the driver's lifetime (these licenses had expiry dates that proved this). In short -- it had all the essential elements of a legally binding contract.
Then, a few years back, these "lifetime licenses" were unilaterally revoked.
Now if it had been anyone other than the government of the nation which broke such an iron-clad contract, they'd have been hit with a huge class-action law suit by all those drivers who were suddenly faced with a new system that demanded regular relicensing at a price much higher than they'd already paid for that lifetime license.
This isn't the half of it though.
Along with the unilateral cancellation of all those existing lifetime licenses and the introduction of the new renewable ones came the decree that any driver can be stopped at any time for any reason and be required to present their license to the police.
Let's get this quite clear.
If you're a law-abiding citizen, going about your everyday activities, the police have a right to stop you and demand to see your papers (no BS!).
Suddenly a very basic tenets of modern justice (the presumption of innocence) has been flushed down the toilet.
It seems that the police are now entitled to presume that you're guilty of driving without a license with no requirement on their part to prove that they had "reasonable cause to suspect", and it becomes the responsibility of the citizen to prove their innocence.
Call me a wacko, but I see this (and many other changes that have gone on around here recently) as the thin end of the wedge. This (and many other) governments are starting to become aware that, having lost the respect of the people, they're now having to introduce laws that ensure compliance and control.
Believe it or not -- NZ doesn't even have a constitution to guarantee its citizens the type of rights that US citizens have. We do have a very ineffective and weak "bill of rights" but it's already been breached by government and the mechanisms put in place to provide citizens with protection in such cases appear to be all but useless.
This isn't exactly the first time Microsoft has chosen to scrap a project that has been so heavily advertised
Yeah... what ever happened to their "Secure Computing" project?
Seems the number of security advisories relating to Microsoft's products hasn't slowed any since they gave us their commitment to focus on safety ahead of features.
Maybe they just found it all a bit beyond them and quietly canned the idea without telling anyone?
My question is, essentially, what's wrong with pay per view? I mean, is advertising really a better model for you and I? As viewers, sure we get loads of content for free, but doesn't advertising have it's own effect on the content?
Unfortunately, experience in this part of the world where there's no competition in the PPV marketplace, indicates that you'll end up paying for the content *AND* they'll still include advertising!
Mostly because I don't know what the hell a piss-up is.
Piss-upnoun. antepodean coloquialism. Party, festivity involving the copious consumption of alcoholic libations. Named because of the after-effects of such activities: ie: to piss-up against the wall.
Did you ever think of taking care of your crap? I have CDs that are ~20 years old and they play just as well as the day they were purchased. Why? Because I treat them carefully, even when transporting them.
Well arent' you lucky then;-)
I've got CDs here that have gotten fatal scratches on some tracks simply from normal wear and tear. The same has happened on occasion with software CDs -- but the HUGE difference is that I can almost always take the software CD back to the vendor and they'll give me a replacement for the cost of the media and handling. But just try that with a music CD!
So just what are we buying when we fork out for an audio CD?
It can't be a single-user license to listen to the music -- or they'd replace the media at cost plus handling right?
So, since they won't replace a damaged CD for the price of the media plus handling, are we to assume that the music itself has little value and that most of the sticker-price is being allocated to the plastic and aluminum foil that makes up the disk itself?
Surely the recording industry needs to decide what they're selling here.
Do you get pissed at the car manufacturer because your car could be damaged in a wreck and ask them for a replacement? You don't? Of course not, because you either drive carefully (take care of your crap) or you hope the other guy has insurance
No, there's a huge difference.
The cost of manufacturing (and repairing or replacing) a car represents a huge percentage of the ticket price. The cost of manufacturing or replacing a wrecked audio CD is a very, very tiny percentage of the price.
Until the recording companies acknowledge this and admit that we're actually paying for a licence to listen to the music (therefore be prepared to replace the media at cost+handling) then they'll get little sympathy from me.
Most people who copy CDs do so simply because if the original gets scratched, they're up for the full price of a new copy -- even though they've already bought it once and that copy is now screwed.
It's nothing but pure and simple greed on the part of the recording companies.
When they learn to play fair then maybe consumers will reciprocate. In the meantime they're simply trying to have their cake and eat it too.
They think that by copy-protecting their CDs, people will no longer burn backups for the car or for their portable diskman players -- both environments where it's easy to accidentaly scratch/wreck an expensive original.
What they don't realize is that instead of buying legal CDs and making "fair use" backups for their own use, people will now find it far more attractive to simply wait until someone else either rips the disk or does an A-D conversion then makes the resulting MP3 files available on the net (through alt.binaries.music.* or one of the many P2P networks).
I for one won't buy a protected music CD -- so that would leave me with no alternative but to download an illegal MP3 copy because I need to burn a couple of spares for my own use.
I guess if I really wanted to be honest, I'd send the recording company a check for the value of the album I'd downloaded -- but chances are that they'd then prosecute me for piracy -- even though I had offered to pay anyway.
These guys couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery!
Has anyone else noticed that virtually all the music they're trying to protect with these lame systems is the type of stuff that no right-minded person would want to copy in the first place?
Let's see them try it on an album that people might want to copy and then watch the reaction of the public.
They can probably weather the outrage of Natalie Umbruglia's fans (both of them) and that Apalachian guy and his cousin/wife who like Celine -- but just watch how much they'll get stung when they piss off all the real music lovers!
imagine never replacing the battery in your calculator, or pocket orginizer
Hey, I already have a solar-powered personal radio and a soloar-powered calculator -- I bought them both quite a few years ago.
I also have a solar-powered battery charger that I use to recharge the NiMh and NiCad batteries I use in some of my other portable electronic items such as my LCD pocket TV and my Walkman.
The future is already here -- you just have to look for it;-)
I fear that those of us who are strongly anti-spam are becoming the minority and that those who have already accepted it as "just a fact of [online] life" are a rapidly growing majority.
Yesterday I wrote an article on how Google, for all its good Netizenship, has sold out to the spaming industry.
If you enter the search query "bulk email" you'll see that Google is quite happy to play its role in the promotion of spamware and spamming services -- by way of the list of paid-advertisements down the right-hand side of the page promoting such products and services.
Surprisingly, I had a raft of feedback from readers who seem to think that there's nothing wrong with Google carrying paid advertising for the promotion of spamware and spamming services.
I know that over the past seven years I've started and run (and sold) a number of very successful ad-funded online publications and I've never felt that I had to stoop so low as to accept advertising dollars from spammers.
Perhaps I'm just one of a dying breed of entrepreneurs who are prepared to put his money where his mouth is in the battle against spam.
I see this latest move by Yahoo to simply be part of a slow but inevitable move towards the day when we're all forced to swallow our daily diet of spam along with the few little morsels that are actually real email.
With all this discussion on using a UPS to reduce line noise it's worth pointing out that most of the low-cost UPSes on the market are actually SPSes (Standby Power Supplies).
Until such time as the mains voltage drops below or above the trigger level, they're nothing more than a medocre spike supressor and filter -- just like the low-cost spike supressors you can buy inside power-boards.
A true UPS runs a full-time inverter.
Incoming mains power is rectified, smoothed (turned into steady DC) and then fed into an inverter that creates the AC waveform which is used to power your computers etc.
Short of a lightning strike, nothing that happens on the input side will affect the output waveform.
Spikes, voltage and phase fluctuations are all eliminated when the AC is converted to DC inside the box.
By comparison, the cheap SPSes (erroneously refered to as UPSes) simply pass the mains voltage through a crude filter and spike suppressor unless they're triggered into inverter mode.
Another problem with these cheap SPSes is that they often don't play nicely with low-cost generators.
I used to have a 600VA SPS that I used on my PC but found that the power outages I was getting were often an hour or more in duration (I live in the countryside where trees regularly fall across the lines).
To solve this problem I bought a 2KW Honda generator but found that when I plugged the SPS into the generator it would repeatedly kick in and out every 2 seconds or so. Turns out that most SPSes are very sensitive to the frequency of the mains and most small generators tend to have a frequency variation well outside the SPSes acceptable limits.
Some better SPSes (such as the APC line) have an adustment so that the sensitivity to frequency fluctionats can be reduced but sometimes even this isn't enough if you're running other loads of the generator.
That's why I bought a true UPS. You can feed it anything and it just keeps putting out a nice smooth, superbly regulated AC waveform. By going up to 1KVA I also obtained an extra 15 minutes of operation on batteries so I don't have to rush to get the generator out and started.
Be aware that most cheap UPSes (Uninterruptable Power Supplies) are actually SPSes (Standby Power Supplies) and only provide basic spike/noise filtering when normal AC voltage is present.
A true UPS (such as the 1KVA Siemens that sits under my desk) converts the AC voltage to DC then runs it through an inverter to create a rock-steady and smooth AC output. It doesn't matter what comes in on the mains side (short of a direct lightning hit), the output side is clean as a whistle.
If you want to get rid of low-frequency voltage/phase fluctuations on your mains supply then you really have to use a true UPS or at least a big, heavy, ferromagnetic resonator.
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Last week I interviewed the head of Sony Music NZ who also happens to be spokesman for the local Industry's "Burn and Get Burnt" campaign -- an attempt to reduce the levels of CD piracy.
The Sony exec told me that they see the main problem being "organised" groups of pirates who regularly burn CDs and sell them at flea-markets, schools and the like.
Later, a former "top cop" from the UK, who now happens to be under the employ of the UK recording industry, was interviewed on TV.
He claimed that CD piracy was being run by the same organized crime groups that were traffiking in drugs, arms and similar illegal products.
His pitch was pretty much that if you buy a burnt CD you're contributing to the illegal proliferation of drugs and guns -- now that's a new one eh?
The Sony exec said that copy-protected CDs will be introduced in to New Zealand shortly and added that overseas trials have been very promising, with only a very low level of complaints.
At least he acknowledged that this lack of outrage might be because they were trialing the technology on music that was unlikely to appeal to the demographic most active in Net-based trading or casual CD ripping/burning.
He told me that although they still considered burning/ripping a CD for your own use to be illegal (there's no "fair use" here in NZ), their main targets in the anti-piracy drive were the "professional" pirates.
When I pointed out that "professional" pirates would not find the copy-protection to be nothing more than a minor irritation he got a bit agitated and wouldn't comment.
I suggested that perhaps this copy-protection was going to have the most impact on those people who are not in the business of copying music for friends or resale -- but simply want to be able to buy a CD that is certain to play on whatever player they choose (including a PC) to play it on.
I also suggested that copying an expensive CD onto a CDR for use in the car is a sensible thing to do. CDs in cars are prone to get scratched or damaged so using a copy is simply insurance against that.
He told me that this was illegal (here in NZ) and that if you scratched a CD so that it wouldn't play then you should simply buy another copy.
What's more, when I told him that in the days of vinyl I used to tape my expensive LPs and use the tapes for day-to-day listening so that the originals didn't get scratched he told me that this was also illegal (here in NZ). When I suggested that lots of people did this -- he told me that was rubbish.
It's easy to see why the recording industry has a problem -- they live in a world where the sky is a completely different color.
It strikes me that the whole music/movie piracy issue could be solved in one fell swoop if the industries involved simply lobbied government to add another 2% onto income taxes and then give the music away for free.
Sony, BMG and the others could then set up "free download" sites where Net surfers could drop in and grab as much music as they wanted, absolutely without further charge.
The huge revenues thus generated would be paid back to the recording/music industries and apportioned according to the number of downloads of each album/movie.
Likewise, some of the money would be aportioned to video libraries to compensate them for the losses they'd suffer.
Hey, it's a win-win-win situation.
The big companies get massive wads of cash. They can then pay the artists. Copy-protection is no longer an issue. Plus, you could then afford to listen to (and perhaps grow to like) a much wider range of music/movies.
Even though I'm just kidding, I suspect that it's only a matter of time before someone seriously suggests such a plan.
Just look at the lame technology/IP bills proposed already!
When asked how they were going to deal with the intense heat likely to be encountered on any journey to the sun, NASA responded "no problems, we'll send them at night"
The most expensive stage of any orbital or even suborbital launch is the first 30 miles or so.
At these low altitudes, air resistance is a major factor and, due to the heavy fuel-load still onboard, a great deal of power is required.
Conventional rocket motors suffer from the need to carry their own oxidizer (O2) but if the first stage of flight used air-breathing engines then far less of this heavy fuel element would be required. The result would be a lighter "wet" vehicle that required less power to fly.
This is why NASA and other researchers are spending such huge amounts of money on things such as the SCRAMJET and Pulse Detonation Engines.
Unfortunately it appears that there's still a big gap between laboratory and launchpad as far as these new engine designs are concerned.
Liquid-fueled rocket engines will always be risky and fuel-hungry. The magnitude of improvement in safety and price-performance being sought will probably have to wait until they're perfected.
Why not just wait until all those brave entrants in the X-Prize contest have had a go.
Who knows, mybe that crazy Englishman with his "Thunderbird" rocket made from plywood will astound us all.
Or not.
Exactly -- I think methane also has a higher energy density (by weight and volume) than hydrogen -- that eases the storage and transportation problems.
However, if they really want to solve all the nation's energy problems then all they need to do is install a huge heat-exchanger and steam-turbine in Congress.
There's enough hot air in their to keep the nation running forever!
When I went to this page on the dallas news website and clicked on the link titled "Movies" I was taken to a "deep link" on the GuideLive.com website (well it ain't the front page).
Guess what -- it looks as if GuideLive.com doesn't want the Dallas News liking to that page -- "The page you requested could not be found."
Ha bloody ha!
How do we know that SETI @Home isn't a cunning alien plot to gain control of all our PCs so that they can take over the world?
I bags the film-rights!
I would have thought that the movie and book rights, plus revenues from public speaking by the individual who finds ET would make that $500 look pretty paultry by comparison.
If these are the same people that were filling my mailbox with spam trying to flog "backup DVDs to CDs" software then I'm happy to admit that I forwarded all such spam directly to the MPAA with a strong recommendation that they sue the snot out of them.
I've got nothing against such software being available (in fact I'd encourage it) -- but when someone fills my mailbox with spam trying to flog the stuff then I get mad.
I'm going to have to upgrade from my Hercules Mono Graphics card
Oh wow... you got a Hercules card?
Man, I was thinking of upgrading my text adaptor to one of those but I don't know if my old orange-phosphor CRT could handle it.
Of course what I really lust after is one of those BOB color cards. Man, they've got 640x350 pixels in sixteen (yes, count them... SIXTEEN) glorious colors!
What it must be like to be rich eh?
At least I've got 640K of RAM -- that's got to be more than anyone would ever need -- right Bill?
Come on folks -- it's unreasonable to expect the patent office to act as judge and jury in respect to patent claims -- that's what the courts are for.
Registering a patent does not prove that you were first to come up with an idea or invention -- it simply provides you with the ability to prove that you were in posession of such knowledge at the time you filed the registration.
In effect -- a patent is little more than proof of knowledge at a specific time/date, and a right to sue.
If we were to place the onus of verifying each application's technical merit and freedom from prior art -- then it's unlikely that anyone other than the large corporates could afford to register their inventions.
Sorry, but it doesn't follow that drivers licenses lead to police states that require
"papers on demand." It's alarmist overreaction
Well you ought to take a look at New Zealand.
While the general perception might be that it's a democratic country with a great civil rights record -- things are changing here.
Some years ago, the government issued drivers with a "lifetime drivers' license" -- or should I say "drivers had to purchase a lifetime drivers' license"
Now this was a legal contract -- they OFFERED the license to qualified drivers, the drivers ACCEPTED the offer, an CONSIDERATION (by way of a once-only fee) was paid and the INTENT was clearly that the license would last the driver's lifetime (these licenses had expiry dates that proved this). In short -- it had all the essential elements of a legally binding contract.
Then, a few years back, these "lifetime licenses" were unilaterally revoked.
Now if it had been anyone other than the government of the nation which broke such an iron-clad contract, they'd have been hit with a huge class-action law suit by all those drivers who were suddenly faced with a new system that demanded regular relicensing at a price much higher than they'd already paid for that lifetime license.
This isn't the half of it though.
Along with the unilateral cancellation of all those existing lifetime licenses and the introduction of the new renewable ones came the decree that any driver can be stopped at any time for any reason and be required to present their license to the police.
Let's get this quite clear.
If you're a law-abiding citizen, going about your everyday activities, the police have a right to stop you and demand to see your papers (no BS!).
Suddenly a very basic tenets of modern justice (the presumption of innocence) has been flushed down the toilet.
It seems that the police are now entitled to presume that you're guilty of driving without a license with no requirement on their part to prove that they had "reasonable cause to suspect", and it becomes the responsibility of the citizen to prove their innocence.
Call me a wacko, but I see this (and many other changes that have gone on around here recently) as the thin end of the wedge. This (and many other) governments are starting to become aware that, having lost the respect of the people, they're now having to introduce laws that ensure compliance and control.
Believe it or not -- NZ doesn't even have a constitution to guarantee its citizens the type of rights that US citizens have. We do have a very ineffective and weak "bill of rights" but it's already been breached by government and the mechanisms put in place to provide citizens with protection in such cases appear to be all but useless.
This isn't exactly the first time Microsoft has chosen to scrap a project that has been so heavily advertised
Yeah... what ever happened to their "Secure Computing" project?
Seems the number of security advisories relating to Microsoft's products hasn't slowed any since they gave us their commitment to focus on safety ahead of features.
Maybe they just found it all a bit beyond them and quietly canned the idea without telling anyone?
Unfortunately, experience in this part of the world where there's no competition in the PPV marketplace, indicates that you'll end up paying for the content *AND* they'll still include advertising!
Mostly because I don't know what the hell a piss-up is.
Piss-up noun. antepodean coloquialism.
Party, festivity involving the copious consumption of alcoholic libations. Named because of the after-effects of such activities: ie: to piss-up against the wall.
Well arent' you lucky then ;-)
I've got CDs here that have gotten fatal scratches on some tracks simply from normal wear and tear. The same has happened on occasion with software CDs -- but the HUGE difference is that I can almost always take the software CD back to the vendor and they'll give me a replacement for the cost of the media and handling. But just try that with a music CD!
So just what are we buying when we fork out for an audio CD?
It can't be a single-user license to listen to the music -- or they'd replace the media at cost plus handling right?
So, since they won't replace a damaged CD for the price of the media plus handling, are we to assume that the music itself has little value and that most of the sticker-price is being allocated to the plastic and aluminum foil that makes up the disk itself?
Surely the recording industry needs to decide what they're selling here.
Do you get pissed at the car manufacturer because your car could be damaged in a wreck and ask them for a replacement? You don't? Of course not, because you either drive carefully (take care of your crap) or you hope the other guy has insurance
No, there's a huge difference.
The cost of manufacturing (and repairing or replacing) a car represents a huge percentage of the ticket price. The cost of manufacturing or replacing a wrecked audio CD is a very, very tiny percentage of the price.
Until the recording companies acknowledge this and admit that we're actually paying for a licence to listen to the music (therefore be prepared to replace the media at cost+handling) then they'll get little sympathy from me.
Most people who copy CDs do so simply because if the original gets scratched, they're up for the full price of a new copy -- even though they've already bought it once and that copy is now screwed.
It's nothing but pure and simple greed on the part of the recording companies.
When they learn to play fair then maybe consumers will reciprocate. In the meantime they're simply trying to have their cake and eat it too.
How thick are the recording companies?
They think that by copy-protecting their CDs, people will no longer burn backups for the car or for their portable diskman players -- both environments where it's easy to accidentaly scratch/wreck an expensive original.
What they don't realize is that instead of buying legal CDs and making "fair use" backups for their own use, people will now find it far more attractive to simply wait until someone else either rips the disk or does an A-D conversion then makes the resulting MP3 files available on the net (through alt.binaries.music.* or one of the many P2P networks).
I for one won't buy a protected music CD -- so that would leave me with no alternative but to download an illegal MP3 copy because I need to burn a couple of spares for my own use.
I guess if I really wanted to be honest, I'd send the recording company a check for the value of the album I'd downloaded -- but chances are that they'd then prosecute me for piracy -- even though I had offered to pay anyway.
These guys couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery!
Has anyone else noticed that virtually all the music they're trying to protect with these lame systems is the type of stuff that no right-minded person would want to copy in the first place?
Let's see them try it on an album that people might want to copy and then watch the reaction of the public.
They can probably weather the outrage of Natalie Umbruglia's fans (both of them) and that Apalachian guy and his cousin/wife who like Celine -- but just watch how much they'll get stung when they piss off all the real music lovers!
I first saw this story posted over at SiliconValley.com on April 1.
Are we sure it's not an April Fool's joke that caught out the guys at MSNBC???
Hey, I already have a solar-powered personal radio and a soloar-powered calculator -- I bought them both quite a few years ago.
I also have a solar-powered battery charger that I use to recharge the NiMh and NiCad batteries I use in some of my other portable electronic items such as my LCD pocket TV and my Walkman.
The future is already here -- you just have to look for it ;-)
Yesterday I wrote an article on how Google, for all its good Netizenship, has sold out to the spaming industry.
If you enter the search query "bulk email" you'll see that Google is quite happy to play its role in the promotion of spamware and spamming services -- by way of the list of paid-advertisements down the right-hand side of the page promoting such products and services.
Surprisingly, I had a raft of feedback from readers who seem to think that there's nothing wrong with Google carrying paid advertising for the promotion of spamware and spamming services.
I know that over the past seven years I've started and run (and sold) a number of very successful ad-funded online publications and I've never felt that I had to stoop so low as to accept advertising dollars from spammers.
Perhaps I'm just one of a dying breed of entrepreneurs who are prepared to put his money where his mouth is in the battle against spam.
I see this latest move by Yahoo to simply be part of a slow but inevitable move towards the day when we're all forced to swallow our daily diet of spam along with the few little morsels that are actually real email.
Looks like there'll be another DSL story to go with the long list of others including: Telecom's Shocking DSL Admission.
With all this discussion on using a UPS to reduce line noise it's worth pointing out that most of the low-cost UPSes on the market are actually SPSes (Standby Power Supplies).
Until such time as the mains voltage drops below or above the trigger level, they're nothing more than a medocre spike supressor and filter -- just like the low-cost spike supressors you can buy inside power-boards.
A true UPS runs a full-time inverter.
Incoming mains power is rectified, smoothed (turned into steady DC) and then fed into an inverter that creates the AC waveform which is used to power your computers etc.
Short of a lightning strike, nothing that happens on the input side will affect the output waveform.
Spikes, voltage and phase fluctuations are all eliminated when the AC is converted to DC inside the box.
By comparison, the cheap SPSes (erroneously refered to as UPSes) simply pass the mains voltage through a crude filter and spike suppressor unless they're triggered into inverter mode.
Another problem with these cheap SPSes is that they often don't play nicely with low-cost generators.
I used to have a 600VA SPS that I used on my PC but found that the power outages I was getting were often an hour or more in duration (I live in the countryside where trees regularly fall across the lines).
To solve this problem I bought a 2KW Honda generator but found that when I plugged the SPS into the generator it would repeatedly kick in and out every 2 seconds or so. Turns out that most SPSes are very sensitive to the frequency of the mains and most small generators tend to have a frequency variation well outside the SPSes acceptable limits.
Some better SPSes (such as the APC line) have an adustment so that the sensitivity to frequency fluctionats can be reduced but sometimes even this isn't enough if you're running other loads of the generator.
That's why I bought a true UPS. You can feed it anything and it just keeps putting out a nice smooth, superbly regulated AC waveform. By going up to 1KVA I also obtained an extra 15 minutes of operation on batteries so I don't have to rush to get the generator out and started.
Be aware that most cheap UPSes (Uninterruptable Power Supplies) are actually SPSes (Standby Power Supplies) and only provide basic spike/noise filtering when normal AC voltage is present.
A true UPS (such as the 1KVA Siemens that sits under my desk) converts the AC voltage to DC then runs it through an inverter to create a rock-steady and smooth AC output. It doesn't matter what comes in on the mains side (short of a direct lightning hit), the output side is clean as a whistle.
If you want to get rid of low-frequency voltage/phase fluctuations on your mains supply then you really have to use a true UPS or at least a big, heavy, ferromagnetic resonator.