Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 1
If not, I posit you're a nihilist, and thus anything goes anyway; arguing we don't have a right to do X posits that there is a universal morality, which contradicts your assertion of localized morality.
Ah hah! I just got this. You're a smart guy. Smart, and wrong. Here's the deal: belief in an objective Right does not necessarily translate into belief in America being the clearinghouse for everything that's OK. In fact, most of us theists believe that what makes morality possible is the free will that allows us to choose Right over Wrong. At the least, you have to agree that free will makes morality more powerful. So: I do believe in objective right. I do not, however believe that America's version is the one the world should live by.
Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 1
I get the point. No one has any right to comment on anyone's actions anywhere else, because we are not superior to them.
Actually, I guess you didn't get the point. You can comment all you want, because this is America, Land of the Free and all that. What you can't do is go over there, and make them act a certain way, like they're our little children. You do not have to agree with their belief system, but if you don't respect it, well, I guess nothing really. But you should. It's the way of life of almost a billion people.
Also, calling someone an asshole online is easy and small.
Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 1
Good point there, and thanks. Apparently my post was both Flamebait and Overrated, which when scored at 1 is hard to believe.
Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 1
I agree that there is an objective morality (God). I do not, however believe that a nation of people which has totally eliminated any objectivity, morality, or mention of either in popular culture and government has any right to tell an entire race how to treat its women. You mention Federalists, Bills of Rights, etc, etc, apparently unaware that all of those concepts are govermental, not moral. Make the argument that governments have any moral responsibility, and/.'ers would jump all over you, citing that their "civil liberties" are under assault. I happen to agree that if injustice is happening somewhere, it should be stopped. Our national power grants us a national responsibility. Unfortunately, by stepping in to this situation, we affect how millions practice their religion. This is not our job. Hell, for all we know, we might not even be right. You cannot judge other nations based on the standards of your own. Slavery was wrong in America, therefore it was abolished. Abolished, I might add, last of all industrialized nations. This was not done by an occupying force from Europe, educating us heathens, but by an act of law, written and ratified right here in the USA. If those people want change, they'll get it. If they don't, they need to be left alone so that no one feels obligated to crash airplanes into anything.
Yup, and it's a pretty repressive place with immoral leaders.
Says you! If the Saudi people are happy that way, leave them be. The last time they were modernized, they formed a radical Muslim group called the Taliban, and that fucking sucked.
We are not superheroes ridding the world from anything we find distasteful. We are just another powerful country. When the Soviets tried to do what you suggest (ridding the world of injustice), we pointed nukes at them. Our capitalist society was just as offensive to them as the Afghani way of life is to us.
Just because we can't stop all repression doesn't mean we can't (or shouldn't) stop some, or pressuring governments to reduce repression.
Everyone does not have to think and live like we do. Democracy in this form hasn't really been around long enough to establish it as the de facto standard for governing everyone. In fact, fewer people live under democracy than don't. Pressuring governments pisses them off, although you already know that. The Dutch don't pressure us to legalize drugs, do they? France doesn't ask us to put titties on billboards. Anyway, dead horse.
Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
"Mankind is my business, and yours too. Enslave someone *anywhere*, and I have the moral right to stop you. Morality does not stop at national borders. "
What you and I call "enslavement", Afghans call "respect". Anyway, you can't even stop me from "enslaving" my wife if I lived next door to you, as long as I don't break any laws. How can you expect to Americanize these people halfway across the globe? Moral right? What does that even mean on a global scale? You have no rights not given to you by your nation of residence. If you live in Afghanistan, and you are a woman, you live like an Afghan woman. If you live in America, you get to sit and watch.
"It's not like all of Afghanistan sat down and agreed, 'OK, women stay at home, don't get schooling, and have to wear burqas.'"
You mean that there was no election, right? So what? There has never been an election in Saudi Arabia either. Democracy is not for everyone. Just ask China. Notice we're not doing shit about how they treat their women. That's because we'd get our democratic asses handed to us if we tried. As soon as you become a Muslim you accept that women are to be treated differently. It's a vital part of their beliefs. Although not as extreme, all 1 billion of the world's Muslims behave this way. You want to go ask them to stop? Be my guest.
Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 0, Troll
What business is it of ours how women are treated in Afghanistan? Since when were we the moral compass for the world? Last time I checked, we had seperation of church and state, which Afghanistan does not have. That means they get to rule their country however their religon sees fit. Attempted "Modernization" of Saudi Arabia is what created the whole fundie Muslim movement in the first place. I know it's probably hard for us equal-rights-crazed Americans (and Europeans), but maybe Afghans like it that way. Yes, even the women. Ask orthodox Jews or the Amish if they'd like to be forced to "modernize", and see what they think! If the Afghans would like to treat their women differently, let them figure it out for themselves, rather than putting our big nose in somebody else's business, which is what got us into this mess to begin with.
You're right. Although many other means of transferring data do not compress well due to their "efficiency". XML responds well to data compression algorythms for several reasons. Unicode text always compresses pretty well. The redundancy is just one aspect.
Is it just me, or is anyone else's palatte "sophisticated" enough to handle the food they serve on that show? Minus the one episode with Bobby Flay, I can't think of a single dish I would let near my face. Octopus ink soup, lobster heads, etc, etc. Gross!
Right, right. Of course there's always design considerations. I would think that even the caching would make use of some sort of loop, tacking the shipping cost onto each product record once per day. I'm just saying that I'd rather use an inefficient methodology than delay my project's completion. For something that was likely to change often, I might even make the call in real-time, rather than try to develop a caching algorythm.
Not really. It's basically as binary as traditional computing, just using a different measure for "on" and "off": "up" and "down". Look:
Just like the positive/negative duo of charge, the 0s and 1s of current information technology, this up/down pairing makes spin an attractive possibility for encoding and carrying information electronically.
The "quantum-readyness" of this technology is the same as charge. The cat is spinning both upand down at the same time, until you open the box.
Anybody who uses SOAP requests for doing small and frequent function calls over the net is foolish and deserves to suffer the consequences he will face for his foolishness.
You can't make blanket statements like that. If I am writing an ecommerce app that interfaces with a FedEx web service to get prices for shipping to various destinations for certain services at a certain weight, and I make a call every time a customer wants to know how much shipping would cost, I can get that aspect of the system up and running in less than half the time it would take to develop the in-house data structures, load them, and continue to load them daily (or maybe several times a day, depending on how often the data changes). Yes, I know that last sentence was a run-on, but you get the point. If time-to-market is a high priority (and it should be), then frequent small calls to internet web services could be the answer to a lot of problems.
Right. Why stop at serving bulky data, when you can wrap the bulky data in more bulky data.
Why? Ask anyone who writes tools that piggyback off of Ebay if they wish Ebay supplied XML representation of auction data. They will pee themselves, then scream out loud with joy. XML provides a way to exchange data that is human and machine readable. It also responds well to compression, due to redundancy.
If you see that the box is obviously fucked up, and you are asked to sign for it... DON'T! Make the driver pack it back into his truck. You do not have to accept the package. The fine print on the reciept often holds you responsible for damages if you do not "inspect the package" before signing for it. I used to work for a mailorder computer company, and that's what we told our customers to do if boxes showed up obviously physically damaged. That way, the boxes are returned to the shipper, and he/she can make a claim for damages. Of course, if you yourself are the shipper, it makes it a little more complicated. Once you've officially accepted delivery, UPS assumes you have accepted the condition of the parcels. Still, I say pester UPS until you get your refund. Call every day if you have to. Have a lawyer friend of yours send a threatening letter. Someone please post a link to a UPS CS page, so that we can all lodge a complaint on this guy's behalf.
The fact still remains that pop music is what most people listen to.
Well, "popular" is what "pop" is short for. Of course, the term "pop" has been applied to unpopular music with a similar catchy-ness, like Jets to Brazil or Apples in Stereo. The point is not that people listen to crap, but why do they?
There is plenty of choice out there and whether you listen to Led Zeppelin or The Beatles, who mind you, were a pop group still with plenty of fans, is a choice.
Not if listening to indie music is nearly impossible, like it is in most of the 'burbs, and the Midwest in general. I live in Dallas, a no-man's-land for national indie acts. Whereas there's an all-ages show every night at 100 different venues in NYC, we might get one or two a month. How are kids supposed to shake off the influence of crap radio when there are no alternatives?
Marylin Manson and Rob Zombie sure aren't pop [...]
Oh, really? Multi-platinum arists are underground all of the sudden? Everybody's definition of "pop" is different, but come on...
but anti-pop is just as big a market and they are simply cashing in on all the teenaged boys trying to be cool[...]
Fred Bizkit and crew (POD, Linkin Park, et al) are just as popular as Brittney. Real anti-pop (think Fugazi, At The Drive In, underground hip hop, etc) is a tiny, tiny segment of the music market (less than 1%) with a monopoly on quality. Check out Insound for the best bands you've never heard. No, I do not work for them. Get a record player. Go out to local shows and small national acts when they show up in/near your town. Grab your town's alternative music weekly. There's a lot of great tunes out there made during the last five years.
It would be great if the radio had more variety and more challenging music. That's unfortunately impossible right now, with the way the 'biz works. Who knows, maybe we can change that.
Re:I think this article is pants.
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
"You think the 62% figure is correct but doesn't make a difference. What planet are you on? "
Certainly not Uranus. Ha ha! Anyway, the 62% figure is important, but acting like that loyalty is due to the actual quality of the system is bullshit. Brand loyalty only works in the console industry as long as the games are there. Remember Sega?
With all that's stacked against Microsoft in the gaming console business, and all the market share Sony ALL READY[sic]you think the Xbox will fly off the shelves? Your[sic]dreaming.
Seeing as how none of the EBs in my area had any, and had sold all of their pre-orders, I would say you are wrong. There are no XBoxes on the shelves. Whether they got off of them by flying or Greyhound, I don't give a shit.
I think this article is pants.
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
First off, although/. sells it as a "review" of the XBox, I couldn't find a single instance in which the "reviewer" actuall tocuhed an XBox. In fact, the third page didn't even mention the XBox at all, instead focusing entirely on the PS2. The rest of the article was full of fact problems, and general poor journalism, detailed below:
And for its own billion-dollar system, Microsoft leads off with... a guy in a boxy outfit with a title for a name, his humanity masked off by a faceplate of tinted glass.
Uh, who's the big mascot for the PS2? A snowboarding guy? The fact is that single-character branding only works on Japanese kids nowadays. Even Nintendo has figured that out, and isn't pushing Mario on us anymore.
And that's it for the Xbox premiere list.
Bullshit. There's more than a dozen games on that list, each one of them better than anything PS2 had at premiere. Remember the crap that PS2 had on shelves for its launch? If you could even find a game.
This sense is validated by a recent survey of consumers in the market this Christmas for a console; overwhelmingly (as in 62 percent) they preferred the Playstation 2, and primarily on the strength of its brand and wide variety of games.
Again, bullshit. Although the 62% figure is correct, with XBox and Gamecube basically tied, the reasons for choosing PS2 had more to do with "brand leadership" and Sony-ness than games. Games were listed as third in the list of reasons. Even then, it had to do with variety, not quality.
I could go on, but you get the point. That article was crap. Not a review, more of an editorial. The author was so afraid of adding publicity to the XBox machine that he hardly mentioned the console at all, instead focusing on why he thought PS2 and G^3 were so much better.
Fine, fine, fine. Companies sometimes don't always tell the truth in memos. Does that mean Ameritrade didn't stick with Windows over Linux? No, it doesn't. Typical/., nitpick, and assume the whole comment useless. Fortunately, moderators saw through that for a change. Thanks, guys.
Yeah, you're right. Totally unrealistic. Is everyone ignoring the last part of the memo?:
Finally, there's the Ameritrade team. Lloyd Arrow and team lost initially to Linux in the design phases by getting vetoed by the CIO, even after winning on all other merits. After several months of schedule slips trying to implement Linux, the Ameritrade CIO resigned. The account team was back at it with the new CIO and within a month were ready to deploy Ameritrade's most strategic apps, their Stream Quotes Servers, on Windows 2000. This is a key win and will expand from 5 servers to 100's of servers as the service is rolled out to all of Ameritrade's customers. The win demonstrated our business agility and shorter time to market over Linux.
Sounds to me like Linux cost at least one guy his job. Not to mention the Windows solution was up and running in one month, according to this. Since it's an internal memo, they'd have no reason to lie, either. Anyway, if you're going to get all excited and take one portion of this memo as Gospel, you might want to keep reading before you toot Linux's horn.
"So, they go into the recording studio, release a CD and hope that someone out there gives a shit and buys it. "
And why is the purchase of recorded music such a necessity? Just because it's always been that way? The fact is that every person that can get their hands on the bandwidth "steals" (if you can call it that) music. Not a few people, not some, but all. You do it, I do it, my mom would probably do it, if she knew how. Once confronted with that fact, introducing additional complexity into our legal and network systems to lead an arms race against the Little Guy is just wrong on so many levels. The people have spoken, my man (or woman).
"Artists should get paid, and if they want to release a CD, the least you can do is buy it if you like them."
Artist should get paid, and they do every time I hand a club owner money to see a small national act (Rocket From the Crypt, Murder City Devils, Death Cab for Cutie, Thursday, etc, etc, and that was just the last few weeks). I might also buy the Lp, too. What I won't buy is a cd full of songs I can download for free. I'm sorry, but I have kids to feed, too.
Again, play out, or go home. You can still make money from your art, just not for sitting on your ass.
Before I get started, here's two of my favorite quotes from the article:
At a speech in Washington, D.C., she told software developers that it was only the specific illegal use of the software that the group is trying to stop, asking them to help develop applications that respected artists' rights to be paid.
Thanks for asking, but when was the last time the music industry spoke out against software piracy?! I just thought their cries for help were funny. Also:
The question is...whether they'll respect what artists create just like we in the recording business respect what the business sponsors and software developers in this audience create.
Great idea! I think what the RIAA needs is a good 'ol fashioned audit. Let's track down the license for every Pro Tools plugin and MIDI utility, make sure every copy of Word is official. I bet they've got Morpheus on their boxes!
Now, here's why the whole thing is an issue. Back in the day (pre 20th century), musicians made their money on performance. When people showed up to watch, they got paid. In order for this to work, there had to be lots of moderately-paid musicians, and only a few starving, or well-paid ones. If you were good actually performing, you became successful. Enter the age of 78s and radio. All of the sudden, musicians could make money without even showing up! Once a master recording was made, it could be duplicated with little effort (relative to cloning the musician and his band), and played over and over, for fans around the globe. In effect, record companies were granted a license to mint currency! This wasn't a big deal at first, since live performances, and the music audience in general, were small. Now with the mega-tour, and packaged crap being pumped into our ears by sleazy record execs, it is time to make a change. If you can't make money by touring, you need to hang it all up. It's time to bring the performance back into music. It's obvious that IP law won't stop 10 million people from listening to your music for free. As an artist, you now have the opportunity to dump the whole distribution channel and still make a decent living actually playing music for a live audience! Think of how much more integrity the business would have. No more gold records, only an artist and his axe (or tuba, or whatever). When that artist dies, we all have the right to enjoy his art forever, without interference. Think about that right there.
Your post pretty much sums it up. With some small additions (that I hope future posters might make), it is the perfect argument against anti-filetraders. One additional point (call it "3a.1"):
Some people can't afford recorded music. This would include college students (probably the largest former Napster demo), and just plain poor folks. Before you spout "but they can afford a computer!", remember, the CDs you burn for friends aren't always for friends who could afford the music otherwise. Recipients of traded files aren't always getting them as mp3s.
Slashdot Mirror
If not, I posit you're a nihilist, and thus anything goes anyway; arguing we don't have a right to do X posits that there is a universal morality, which contradicts your assertion of localized morality.
Ah hah! I just got this. You're a smart guy. Smart, and wrong. Here's the deal: belief in an objective Right does not necessarily translate into belief in America being the clearinghouse for everything that's OK. In fact, most of us theists believe that what makes morality possible is the free will that allows us to choose Right over Wrong. At the least, you have to agree that free will makes morality more powerful. So: I do believe in objective right. I do not, however believe that America's version is the one the world should live by.
I get the point. No one has any right to comment on anyone's actions anywhere else, because we are not superior to them.
Actually, I guess you didn't get the point. You can comment all you want, because this is America, Land of the Free and all that. What you can't do is go over there, and make them act a certain way, like they're our little children. You do not have to agree with their belief system, but if you don't respect it, well, I guess nothing really. But you should. It's the way of life of almost a billion people.
Also, calling someone an asshole online is easy and small.
Good point there, and thanks. Apparently my post was both Flamebait and Overrated, which when scored at 1 is hard to believe.
I agree that there is an objective morality (God). I do not, however believe that a nation of people which has totally eliminated any objectivity, morality, or mention of either in popular culture and government has any right to tell an entire race how to treat its women. You mention Federalists, Bills of Rights, etc, etc, apparently unaware that all of those concepts are govermental, not moral. Make the argument that governments have any moral responsibility, and
Yup, and it's a pretty repressive place with immoral leaders.
Says you! If the Saudi people are happy that way, leave them be. The last time they were modernized, they formed a radical Muslim group called the Taliban, and that fucking sucked.
We are not superheroes ridding the world from anything we find distasteful. We are just another powerful country. When the Soviets tried to do what you suggest (ridding the world of injustice), we pointed nukes at them. Our capitalist society was just as offensive to them as the Afghani way of life is to us.
Just because we can't stop all repression doesn't mean we can't (or shouldn't) stop some, or pressuring governments to reduce repression.
Everyone does not have to think and live like we do. Democracy in this form hasn't really been around long enough to establish it as the de facto standard for governing everyone. In fact, fewer people live under democracy than don't. Pressuring governments pisses them off, although you already know that. The Dutch don't pressure us to legalize drugs, do they? France doesn't ask us to put titties on billboards. Anyway, dead horse.
"Mankind is my business, and yours too. Enslave someone *anywhere*, and I have the moral right to stop you. Morality does not stop at national borders. "
What you and I call "enslavement", Afghans call "respect". Anyway, you can't even stop me from "enslaving" my wife if I lived next door to you, as long as I don't break any laws. How can you expect to Americanize these people halfway across the globe? Moral right? What does that even mean on a global scale? You have no rights not given to you by your nation of residence. If you live in Afghanistan, and you are a woman, you live like an Afghan woman. If you live in America, you get to sit and watch.
"It's not like all of Afghanistan sat down and agreed, 'OK, women stay at home, don't get schooling, and have to wear burqas.'"
You mean that there was no election, right? So what? There has never been an election in Saudi Arabia either. Democracy is not for everyone. Just ask China. Notice we're not doing shit about how they treat their women. That's because we'd get our democratic asses handed to us if we tried. As soon as you become a Muslim you accept that women are to be treated differently. It's a vital part of their beliefs. Although not as extreme, all 1 billion of the world's Muslims behave this way. You want to go ask them to stop? Be my guest.
What business is it of ours how women are treated in Afghanistan? Since when were we the moral compass for the world? Last time I checked, we had seperation of church and state, which Afghanistan does not have. That means they get to rule their country however their religon sees fit. Attempted "Modernization" of Saudi Arabia is what created the whole fundie Muslim movement in the first place. I know it's probably hard for us equal-rights-crazed Americans (and Europeans), but maybe Afghans like it that way. Yes, even the women. Ask orthodox Jews or the Amish if they'd like to be forced to "modernize", and see what they think! If the Afghans would like to treat their women differently, let them figure it out for themselves, rather than putting our big nose in somebody else's business, which is what got us into this mess to begin with.
You're right. Although many other means of transferring data do not compress well due to their "efficiency". XML responds well to data compression algorythms for several reasons. Unicode text always compresses pretty well. The redundancy is just one aspect.
Is it just me, or is anyone else's palatte "sophisticated" enough to handle the food they serve on that show? Minus the one episode with Bobby Flay, I can't think of a single dish I would let near my face. Octopus ink soup, lobster heads, etc, etc. Gross!
Good point. Insightful. Thanks.
P.S.: 20-second rule is pissing me off!
Right, right. Of course there's always design considerations. I would think that even the caching would make use of some sort of loop, tacking the shipping cost onto each product record once per day. I'm just saying that I'd rather use an inefficient methodology than delay my project's completion. For something that was likely to change often, I might even make the call in real-time, rather than try to develop a caching algorythm.
Or, more importantly, cheaper flash RAM so that media cards don't cost $big.
Not really. It's basically as binary as traditional computing, just using a different measure for "on" and "off": "up" and "down". Look:
Just like the positive/negative duo of charge, the 0s and 1s of current information technology, this up/down pairing makes spin an attractive possibility for encoding and carrying information electronically.
The "quantum-readyness" of this technology is the same as charge. The cat is spinning both upand down at the same time, until you open the box.
Anybody who uses SOAP requests for doing small and frequent function calls over the net is foolish and deserves to suffer the consequences he will face for his foolishness.
You can't make blanket statements like that. If I am writing an ecommerce app that interfaces with a FedEx web service to get prices for shipping to various destinations for certain services at a certain weight, and I make a call every time a customer wants to know how much shipping would cost, I can get that aspect of the system up and running in less than half the time it would take to develop the in-house data structures, load them, and continue to load them daily (or maybe several times a day, depending on how often the data changes). Yes, I know that last sentence was a run-on, but you get the point. If time-to-market is a high priority (and it should be), then frequent small calls to internet web services could be the answer to a lot of problems.
Right. Why stop at serving bulky data, when you can wrap the bulky data in more bulky data.
Why? Ask anyone who writes tools that piggyback off of Ebay if they wish Ebay supplied XML representation of auction data. They will pee themselves, then scream out loud with joy. XML provides a way to exchange data that is human and machine readable. It also responds well to compression, due to redundancy.
More importantly:
If you see that the box is obviously fucked up, and you are asked to sign for it... DON'T! Make the driver pack it back into his truck. You do not have to accept the package. The fine print on the reciept often holds you responsible for damages if you do not "inspect the package" before signing for it. I used to work for a mailorder computer company, and that's what we told our customers to do if boxes showed up obviously physically damaged. That way, the boxes are returned to the shipper, and he/she can make a claim for damages. Of course, if you yourself are the shipper, it makes it a little more complicated. Once you've officially accepted delivery, UPS assumes you have accepted the condition of the parcels. Still, I say pester UPS until you get your refund. Call every day if you have to. Have a lawyer friend of yours send a threatening letter. Someone please post a link to a UPS CS page, so that we can all lodge a complaint on this guy's behalf.
The fact still remains that pop music is what most people listen to.
Well, "popular" is what "pop" is short for. Of course, the term "pop" has been applied to unpopular music with a similar catchy-ness, like Jets to Brazil or Apples in Stereo. The point is not that people listen to crap, but why do they?
There is plenty of choice out there and whether you listen to Led Zeppelin or The Beatles, who mind you, were a pop group still with plenty of fans, is a choice.
Not if listening to indie music is nearly impossible, like it is in most of the 'burbs, and the Midwest in general. I live in Dallas, a no-man's-land for national indie acts. Whereas there's an all-ages show every night at 100 different venues in NYC, we might get one or two a month. How are kids supposed to shake off the influence of crap radio when there are no alternatives?
Marylin Manson and Rob Zombie sure aren't pop [...]
Oh, really? Multi-platinum arists are underground all of the sudden? Everybody's definition of "pop" is different, but come on...
but anti-pop is just as big a market and they are simply cashing in on all the teenaged boys trying to be cool[...]
Fred Bizkit and crew (POD, Linkin Park, et al) are just as popular as Brittney. Real anti-pop (think Fugazi, At The Drive In, underground hip hop, etc) is a tiny, tiny segment of the music market (less than 1%) with a monopoly on quality. Check out Insound for the best bands you've never heard. No, I do not work for them. Get a record player. Go out to local shows and small national acts when they show up in/near your town. Grab your town's alternative music weekly. There's a lot of great tunes out there made during the last five years.
It would be great if the radio had more variety and more challenging music. That's unfortunately impossible right now, with the way the 'biz works. Who knows, maybe we can change that.
"You think the 62% figure is correct but doesn't make a difference. What planet are you on? "
Certainly not Uranus. Ha ha! Anyway, the 62% figure is important, but acting like that loyalty is due to the actual quality of the system is bullshit. Brand loyalty only works in the console industry as long as the games are there. Remember Sega?
With all that's stacked against Microsoft in the gaming console business, and all the market share Sony ALL READY[sic]you think the Xbox will fly off the shelves? Your[sic]dreaming.
Seeing as how none of the EBs in my area had any, and had sold all of their pre-orders, I would say you are wrong. There are no XBoxes on the shelves. Whether they got off of them by flying or Greyhound, I don't give a shit.
Uh, who's the big mascot for the PS2? A snowboarding guy? The fact is that single-character branding only works on Japanese kids nowadays. Even Nintendo has figured that out, and isn't pushing Mario on us anymore.
Bullshit. There's more than a dozen games on that list, each one of them better than anything PS2 had at premiere. Remember the crap that PS2 had on shelves for its launch? If you could even find a game.
This sense is validated by a recent survey of consumers in the market this Christmas for a console; overwhelmingly (as in 62 percent) they preferred the Playstation 2, and primarily on the strength of its brand and wide variety of games.
Again, bullshit. Although the 62% figure is correct, with XBox and Gamecube basically tied, the reasons for choosing PS2 had more to do with "brand leadership" and Sony-ness than games. Games were listed as third in the list of reasons. Even then, it had to do with variety, not quality.
I could go on, but you get the point. That article was crap. Not a review, more of an editorial. The author was so afraid of adding publicity to the XBox machine that he hardly mentioned the console at all, instead focusing on why he thought PS2 and G^3 were so much better.
Alright, whatever. The windows solution is up, the Linux one failed. Or maybe the whole memo is fake, and this website doesn't even exist. Sigh.
Fine, fine, fine. Companies sometimes don't always tell the truth in memos. Does that mean Ameritrade didn't stick with Windows over Linux? No, it doesn't. Typical /., nitpick, and assume the whole comment useless. Fortunately, moderators saw through that for a change. Thanks, guys.
Yeah, you're right. Totally unrealistic. Is everyone ignoring the last part of the memo?:
Finally, there's the Ameritrade team. Lloyd Arrow and team lost initially to Linux in the design phases by getting vetoed by the CIO, even after winning on all other merits. After several months of schedule slips trying to implement Linux, the Ameritrade CIO resigned. The account team was back at it with the new CIO and within a month were ready to deploy Ameritrade's most strategic apps, their Stream Quotes Servers, on Windows 2000. This is a key win and will expand from 5 servers to 100's of servers as the service is rolled out to all of Ameritrade's customers. The win demonstrated our business agility and shorter time to market over Linux.
Sounds to me like Linux cost at least one guy his job. Not to mention the Windows solution was up and running in one month, according to this. Since it's an internal memo, they'd have no reason to lie, either. Anyway, if you're going to get all excited and take one portion of this memo as Gospel, you might want to keep reading before you toot Linux's horn.
See subject.
"So, they go into the recording studio, release a CD and hope that someone out there gives a shit and buys it. "
And why is the purchase of recorded music such a necessity? Just because it's always been that way? The fact is that every person that can get their hands on the bandwidth "steals" (if you can call it that) music. Not a few people, not some, but all. You do it, I do it, my mom would probably do it, if she knew how. Once confronted with that fact, introducing additional complexity into our legal and network systems to lead an arms race against the Little Guy is just wrong on so many levels. The people have spoken, my man (or woman).
"Artists should get paid, and if they want to release a CD, the least you can do is buy it if you like them."
Artist should get paid, and they do every time I hand a club owner money to see a small national act (Rocket From the Crypt, Murder City Devils, Death Cab for Cutie, Thursday, etc, etc, and that was just the last few weeks). I might also buy the Lp, too. What I won't buy is a cd full of songs I can download for free. I'm sorry, but I have kids to feed, too.
Again, play out, or go home. You can still make money from your art, just not for sitting on your ass.
Before I get started, here's two of my favorite quotes from the article:
At a speech in Washington, D.C., she told software developers that it was only the specific illegal use of the software that the group is trying to stop, asking them to help develop applications that respected artists' rights to be paid.
Thanks for asking, but when was the last time the music industry spoke out against software piracy?! I just thought their cries for help were funny. Also:
The question is...whether they'll respect what artists create just like we in the recording business respect what the business sponsors and software developers in this audience create.
Great idea! I think what the RIAA needs is a good 'ol fashioned audit. Let's track down the license for every Pro Tools plugin and MIDI utility, make sure every copy of Word is official. I bet they've got Morpheus on their boxes!
Now, here's why the whole thing is an issue. Back in the day (pre 20th century), musicians made their money on performance. When people showed up to watch, they got paid. In order for this to work, there had to be lots of moderately-paid musicians, and only a few starving, or well-paid ones. If you were good actually performing, you became successful. Enter the age of 78s and radio. All of the sudden, musicians could make money without even showing up! Once a master recording was made, it could be duplicated with little effort (relative to cloning the musician and his band), and played over and over, for fans around the globe. In effect, record companies were granted a license to mint currency! This wasn't a big deal at first, since live performances, and the music audience in general, were small. Now with the mega-tour, and packaged crap being pumped into our ears by sleazy record execs, it is time to make a change. If you can't make money by touring, you need to hang it all up. It's time to bring the performance back into music. It's obvious that IP law won't stop 10 million people from listening to your music for free. As an artist, you now have the opportunity to dump the whole distribution channel and still make a decent living actually playing music for a live audience! Think of how much more integrity the business would have. No more gold records, only an artist and his axe (or tuba, or whatever). When that artist dies, we all have the right to enjoy his art forever, without interference. Think about that right there.
Your post pretty much sums it up. With some small additions (that I hope future posters might make), it is the perfect argument against anti-filetraders. One additional point (call it "3a.1"):
Some people can't afford recorded music. This would include college students (probably the largest former Napster demo), and just plain poor folks. Before you spout "but they can afford a computer!", remember, the CDs you burn for friends aren't always for friends who could afford the music otherwise. Recipients of traded files aren't always getting them as mp3s.