Excellent points. I can ask any of my non-geek friends about Ogg Vorbis and almost guarantee they have no idea what it is. And you are absolutely right about "good enough"-- once they know what it is, they won't really care all that much. Heck, I'd guess even most geeks here don't have any plans in the near future to move everything over to Ogg.
I think the best hope for Ogg Vorbis is if it is accept alongside MP3. So if every (hardware and software) MP3 player can play.ogg, any encoder/decoder can handle.ogg, etc. (or most of them at least), then people won't have to care about all the MP3 stuff they have going on already. It could eventually evolve to be that Ogg is the higher quality MP3.
I think that is THE way to get Ogg in the mainstream. Make Ogg and MP3 exist together in perfect harmony.
They said, "Man! We were getting all excited over nothing! What a waste of time!", because it was.
Maybe it was... but maybe it wasn't. You don't actually know that, which was my point. Yes, not very much happened, but maybe it was a result of the efforts to avoid the problem. I don't know which countries decided to just wait as you say. But maybe the efforts that took place in the US were also of benefit to those other countries. Those few amusing anecdotes could perhaps have been much worse. It's all interconnected.
It is just something interesting to think about and can't truly be answered... by answering it you are missing the point.
I was always thinking this when the Y2K problem came and went. Everybody was saying how important it was and scrambled to try to make things Y2K compliant. Then it hit the year 2000, and almost nothing noteworthy happened. Instead of people saying "Hooray, our hyping and precautionary measures worked!", everybody though "Man! We were getting all excited over nothing! What a waste of time!"
Maybe the fact that these virus attacks seemed lesser than expected is the proof that the hype is good. (Better to err on the side of safety?)
I agree. Nimda lived up to the hype at my office. That thing took us out for a whole day.
Yes, Code Red was overhyped. But some viruses deserve the strong warnings. It's not like there's huge hype every day about some virus so that you don't even pay attention.
Of course the security companies are going to strongly emphasize the risk of viruses, it should be expected-- it's what they do!
For news sites... they make everything overly dramatic. Maybe that's the problem.
What this article is really addressing IMO is the fact that news sites like to exploit people's fears in order to increase readership/viewership. That's an across-the-board news problem, not a virus problem.
Well, if you were also getting an A grade by handing in the said paper then her scenario is valid.
Do you mean that handing in the copied paper and getting an "A" is the same as burning a copy of a CD?
It is not the same thing-- that's what I'm trying to say.
Copying someone's "A"-paper, putting your name on it, and handing it in is plagiarism, and would be analagous to plagiarizing a song and selling that CD for your own gain.
The importance of the distinction is that most people agree that handing in someone else's "A"-paper is really bad, so by trying to misleadingly attach that same feeling to burning a CD, you're trying to "trick" people into thinking it is just as bad.
(It reminds me of the Wookiee defense that Cochran uses on South Park. Connecting two things that aren't really related to confuse the jury.)
While their is a gain of mindshare and publicity, of what value is that mindshare/publicity if the public at large finds it acceptable to mass copy the work of that musician?
I think that the mindshare is still worth something. People are still buying CDs, (and I think a combination of the economic downturn and perhaps a low point in music is probably the cause of the lower sales-- my guess) and so even if someone makes a copy of a CD, that doesn't mean a lost sale (and could perhaps lead to more sales). And I think if CDs were priced much more realistically that people would be buying a lot more of them. My point is that I think, yes, this mindshare is worth something, even with MP3s. If you build a fanbase, those fans will put money into CDs, concerts and merchandise. Or whatever music-related item.
Rosen is asking kids to understand the feeling behind having your work taken and copied and used, and she is doing it from the perspective of an industry that depends upon the sale of creative (no jokes about N'Sync) works to consumers.
I still think it's worth pointing out how the analogy is off, because I think the way that she puts it is more directly harmful than what is really going on. Yes, people just plain copying CDs and not paying artists for them is not right, but I think what's going on is not so simple.
Ding! I'll bet 10 to 1 odds that you've hit the nail on the head. That's PR for you!
I definitely wouldn't doubt putting a spin on what she's saying... I just think the analogy is so bad that I can't believe she actually thinks it'll get by.
You might be fooling yourself into believing that upgrades = better deal.
Why not buy a new computer when you want to upgrade?
First of all, the price difference alone is $1600. So right there you have $1600 going towards a new computer. Couple that with the fact that you could sell the iMac for almost the same price as new (very common with Macs).
Metaphor, peeps. Not a literal representation of the situation. Just metaphor.
First of all, it's an analogy, not a metaphor. And an analogy needs to be properly analogous to the situation.
She's saying, "Wouldn't you be pissed if somebody else gained from your hard work without you getting a damn thing?" And she's hoping people will say, "Yes."
I agree with that statement in and of itself, but read below.
Okay, counter-point time... I used the word "gained", and that, in Slashworld, implies profit. But that's not necessarily so. If somebody burns a CD, they've "gained" the benefit of not having a negative impact on their wallets, which surely would have happened had they paid for the music legally.
And the musician has "gained" mindshare and publicity. Therefore, the creator has gotten something in return. What, you disagree with using "gained" so liberally? I would say the same about your use of the word. I mean, you're saying they've "gained" the non-loss of money (which they very well might not have spent on the CD)?
The attack of her analogy is valid-- the analogy doesn't hold. Most everyone here would agree with your interpretation of the "metaphor", and go on to say that this is the reason the RIAA is bad-- artists aren't getting what they deserve!
Right. If somebody thought my "A" paper was really great, and made photocopies of it so they could read it in their car, home, office... yes that would be fine. Even if they shared copies with friends.
That's one thing that's kind of strange. As I was reading her quote, it immediately jumped out at me that her analogy was fundamentally flawed. This took no time at all.
It makes me wonder, has she heard the flaw in this analogy pointed out, and ignored it? Or has she not had a real conversation with someone who is on the other side of the fence? Or is she trying to deliberately give a shoddy analogy in the hopes it gets by people?
Meanwhile, I'd estimate that nearly 90% of the Slashdot population fell for it. Hmm.
90% of Slashdotters fell for the fact that people might have seriously made this (because it seems like there are loonies out there like this). What he was saying about the bible belt is that over 50% of people would believe not just that the creators of the site were serious, but that this was true information. And they would agree with it.
I mean, just this weekend we had another round of pamphlets under every car's windshield on campus "What the Bible Really Thinks About Homosexuality". Don't they know that we take these and read them with our friends and hang them up because they are hilarious? Don't they know that they probably caused one or two more college students to give up on christianity?
One of the most classic ones though was the one that said "What You Miss By Being a Christian"-- then you open the pamphlet, and in big red letters-- "HELL!" Then it goes on citing passages of the bible that describe hell as fire and brimstone, burning sulphur, etc. It's like "believe in the bible, because if you don't, the bible says you'll go to hell!" But I don't believe in it so...er nevermind.
Yes, most slashdotters think this site is ridiculous and totally far-fetched... but from the things I've seen the extreme religious right do, it's not really that surprising.
(Not to say this is what I think christianity is all about, just that there are people like this.)
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Decent-but-spotty
on
Zope Bible
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
"Bible" may be too grand a word for this decent-but-spotty work.
I dunno, I thought the original bible had some interesting stories but was overall pretty spotty and even contradictory at times.
Not unless they can gget OmniWeb to get rid of the nagware. Nobody pays for browsers anymore, and while it is a good browser, I'm not a big fan of that watermark being there when its in the background.
Oh definitely. I'd hope if Apple wanted to change to OmniWeb they would strike up some sort of deal on that.
I think it would be worse than IE if they had OmniWeb with the nagware.
I know I could replace it, but does the typical iMac user who just wants it to work out of the box?
Don't forget that Apple has been in a contract with MS for the past 5 years, and part of that required Explorer as the default browser. Now that the contract is coming to an end, Apple can choose a different browser to be the default (like, say, OmniWeb?:)
Well, now that their 5-year contract with Microsoft, part of which agreed that IE would be the default browser on Mac OS, is over, we may very well see a change. But for the past 5 years they were obligated to go IE.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to see you turn the handlebars to the right and not turn!
(Turning them 90 degrees to the right so fast that the bike just falls down does not count. Although I guess you can do that if you really want. =)
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Excellent points. I can ask any of my non-geek friends about Ogg Vorbis and almost guarantee they have no idea what it is. And you are absolutely right about "good enough"-- once they know what it is, they won't really care all that much. Heck, I'd guess even most geeks here don't have any plans in the near future to move everything over to Ogg.
.ogg, any encoder/decoder can handle .ogg, etc. (or most of them at least), then people won't have to care about all the MP3 stuff they have going on already. It could eventually evolve to be that Ogg is the higher quality MP3.
I think the best hope for Ogg Vorbis is if it is accept alongside MP3. So if every (hardware and software) MP3 player can play
I think that is THE way to get Ogg in the mainstream. Make Ogg and MP3 exist together in perfect harmony.
mark
Comic Book Guy: "Rest assured, I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world."
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Definitely not. They might do it because it's illegal though (which it may well be... we'll see).
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Maybe it was... but maybe it wasn't. You don't actually know that, which was my point. Yes, not very much happened, but maybe it was a result of the efforts to avoid the problem. I don't know which countries decided to just wait as you say. But maybe the efforts that took place in the US were also of benefit to those other countries. Those few amusing anecdotes could perhaps have been much worse. It's all interconnected.
It is just something interesting to think about and can't truly be answered... by answering it you are missing the point.
mark
You know, that's a good thing to note.
I was always thinking this when the Y2K problem came and went. Everybody was saying how important it was and scrambled to try to make things Y2K compliant. Then it hit the year 2000, and almost nothing noteworthy happened. Instead of people saying "Hooray, our hyping and precautionary measures worked!", everybody though "Man! We were getting all excited over nothing! What a waste of time!"
Maybe the fact that these virus attacks seemed lesser than expected is the proof that the hype is good. (Better to err on the side of safety?)
mark
I agree. Nimda lived up to the hype at my office. That thing took us out for a whole day.
Yes, Code Red was overhyped. But some viruses deserve the strong warnings. It's not like there's huge hype every day about some virus so that you don't even pay attention.
mark
Of course the security companies are going to strongly emphasize the risk of viruses, it should be expected-- it's what they do!
For news sites... they make everything overly dramatic. Maybe that's the problem.
What this article is really addressing IMO is the fact that news sites like to exploit people's fears in order to increase readership/viewership. That's an across-the-board news problem, not a virus problem.
mark
Do you mean that handing in the copied paper and getting an "A" is the same as burning a copy of a CD?
It is not the same thing-- that's what I'm trying to say.
Copying someone's "A"-paper, putting your name on it, and handing it in is plagiarism, and would be analagous to plagiarizing a song and selling that CD for your own gain.
The importance of the distinction is that most people agree that handing in someone else's "A"-paper is really bad, so by trying to misleadingly attach that same feeling to burning a CD, you're trying to "trick" people into thinking it is just as bad.
(It reminds me of the Wookiee defense that Cochran uses on South Park. Connecting two things that aren't really related to confuse the jury.)
mark
I think that the mindshare is still worth something. People are still buying CDs, (and I think a combination of the economic downturn and perhaps a low point in music is probably the cause of the lower sales-- my guess) and so even if someone makes a copy of a CD, that doesn't mean a lost sale (and could perhaps lead to more sales). And I think if CDs were priced much more realistically that people would be buying a lot more of them. My point is that I think, yes, this mindshare is worth something, even with MP3s. If you build a fanbase, those fans will put money into CDs, concerts and merchandise. Or whatever music-related item.
I still think it's worth pointing out how the analogy is off, because I think the way that she puts it is more directly harmful than what is really going on. Yes, people just plain copying CDs and not paying artists for them is not right, but I think what's going on is not so simple.
mark
I definitely wouldn't doubt putting a spin on what she's saying... I just think the analogy is so bad that I can't believe she actually thinks it'll get by.
But maybe people in general do fall for it.
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You might be fooling yourself into believing that upgrades = better deal.
Why not buy a new computer when you want to upgrade?
First of all, the price difference alone is $1600. So right there you have $1600 going towards a new computer. Couple that with the fact that you could sell the iMac for almost the same price as new (very common with Macs).
Sounds like an even better deal to me.
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First of all, it's an analogy, not a metaphor. And an analogy needs to be properly analogous to the situation.
I agree with that statement in and of itself, but read below.
And the musician has "gained" mindshare and publicity. Therefore, the creator has gotten something in return. What, you disagree with using "gained" so liberally? I would say the same about your use of the word. I mean, you're saying they've "gained" the non-loss of money (which they very well might not have spent on the CD)?
The attack of her analogy is valid-- the analogy doesn't hold. Most everyone here would agree with your interpretation of the "metaphor", and go on to say that this is the reason the RIAA is bad-- artists aren't getting what they deserve!
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Precisely.
I think there's some economy of scale going on with the new N*Sync album too!
(Not that it actually must be cheaper to buy the real thing, but if it were anywhere close, people would gladly buy CDs.)
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C-c-copies??? But that's unfair!
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Right. If somebody thought my "A" paper was really great, and made photocopies of it so they could read it in their car, home, office... yes that would be fine. Even if they shared copies with friends.
That's one thing that's kind of strange. As I was reading her quote, it immediately jumped out at me that her analogy was fundamentally flawed. This took no time at all.
It makes me wonder, has she heard the flaw in this analogy pointed out, and ignored it? Or has she not had a real conversation with someone who is on the other side of the fence? Or is she trying to deliberately give a shoddy analogy in the hopes it gets by people?
mark
90% of Slashdotters fell for the fact that people might have seriously made this (because it seems like there are loonies out there like this). What he was saying about the bible belt is that over 50% of people would believe not just that the creators of the site were serious, but that this was true information. And they would agree with it.
I mean, just this weekend we had another round of pamphlets under every car's windshield on campus "What the Bible Really Thinks About Homosexuality". Don't they know that we take these and read them with our friends and hang them up because they are hilarious? Don't they know that they probably caused one or two more college students to give up on christianity?
One of the most classic ones though was the one that said "What You Miss By Being a Christian"-- then you open the pamphlet, and in big red letters-- "HELL!" Then it goes on citing passages of the bible that describe hell as fire and brimstone, burning sulphur, etc. It's like "believe in the bible, because if you don't, the bible says you'll go to hell!" But I don't believe in it so...er nevermind.
Yes, most slashdotters think this site is ridiculous and totally far-fetched... but from the things I've seen the extreme religious right do, it's not really that surprising.
(Not to say this is what I think christianity is all about, just that there are people like this.)
mark
I dunno, I thought the original bible had some interesting stories but was overall pretty spotty and even contradictory at times.
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Oh definitely. I'd hope if Apple wanted to change to OmniWeb they would strike up some sort of deal on that.
I think it would be worse than IE if they had OmniWeb with the nagware.
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Don't forget that Apple has been in a contract with MS for the past 5 years, and part of that required Explorer as the default browser. Now that the contract is coming to an end, Apple can choose a different browser to be the default (like, say, OmniWeb?
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Trucks can too!
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Did you put the typo in there as part of the joke?
=)
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The Tomagachi virtual pet of the 2000s?
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You can email me this way
INTERNET:bob123@aol.com
and it only costs a measely 10 cents per email!
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Well, now that their 5-year contract with Microsoft, part of which agreed that IE would be the default browser on Mac OS, is over, we may very well see a change. But for the past 5 years they were obligated to go IE.
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