Re:Like it or not, managers default to commercial
on
What is Open Source?
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· Score: 1
However, if you are truly worried about support, the simple answer is to purchase a support contract from the vendor of your choice. Not only will your support contract likely cost you less than licensing commercial software, but if you feel your vendor isn't giving you adequate support you can purchase support from someone else.
You're saying that you can buy a support contract from any number of organizations? Forgive me for sounding less than enthusiastic about that prospect. If I buy support for product X from company Y, yeah they're my only option, but they make product X and the guys who coded it are intimately familiar with it. They have specialized knowledge of it.
Now let's say I want support for Apache. Who do I buy that from (honest question, I don't know who you can "pay" to support Apache, or any arbitrary open source program)? How am I supposed to expect them to have intimate knowledge of the product? It sounds to me like buying "open source support" from a company means you're paying these guys to be "jacks of all trades", which of course means that they are "masters of none". Doesn't sound like such a good deal to me.
People (well, Slashdot "people") tend to automatically associate "open source" with "quality". Yes, in theory the more eyes you have looking over code and the more people you have making fixes and enhancements will yield an optimal product. But, like you said, few projects are high-profile enough to receive such attention.
One point you forgot to mention is the tendency for open source projects to splinter off, creating confusion and lack of standardization. Everyone's got access to the source and all it takes are a few people who don't like the way the original program does something (or the way a derivative program does something) and -BOOM-, there are suddenly multiple spinoffs from the original program (and spinoffs from those spinoffs), each with their own way of doing things, creating incompatibilities amongst each other.
This is one aspect of open source that I find the most frustrating. Instead of trying to make a single program better, there's a tendency to make multiple versions of the same program that each are better than the original in the some way but mediocre in comparison to the original (or derivatives) in some other ways. Come on! Resist the temptation to branch off projects simply because "it's your way" and try to find a way to make the original project work better.
Re:Like it or not, managers default to commercial
on
What is Open Source?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Interestingly the concept of the company fixing its own problems as they hold the source was just unthinkable. No manager would give themselves more work no matter how much money it would save.
See, you have the misconception that simply having access to the source means you can fix problems in an acceptable amount of time. If you've ever had to pore over a massive project you'll realize that you could spend a couple days trying to track down and fix a problem that is preventing you from finishing your real work or you could simply send a problem description off to the guys who originally wrote the code (and who you're already paying for), and they'll probably be able to fix the problem far quicker than you ever could. THAT is the reason closed-source software is so appealing. If you have a problem with a piece of code you bought you can tell them "hey, I've got a problem, I'm paying you, get on this problem and fix it for me ASAP or we'll be re-evaluating our business relationship with you." With open source software, you might get lucky with helpful developers and you might not. You never know. What you do know is that you don't have the ability to really push open source developers to fix problems for you, and that's a major drawback.
Hey, if copying music isn't "theft" then copying someone else's icons isn't "theft", it's "copyright infringement" (or some other term that makes the act easier to justify).
Other people's work wants to be free! Stop giving these guys a hard time for "sharing" those icons!
Re:No bitching about the price?
on
Jaguar is Over
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· Score: 1
Now lets see, how many stupid comments did you make here.
No more than you just have.
list of features...what list of features, all I've see are a few hand picked features out of over 100. Perhaps you should actually watch the keynote and get a clue.
It stands to reason that if you're only going to summarize the list of features that you're going to list the most significant features instead of a couple randomly-selected ones. That's like saying that if I were to summarize the differences between Windows 98 and Windows XP I'd list "new media player" instead of "completely different kernel that dramatically improves stability." Therefore, we can conclude that unless these really are just randomly-selected features being listed on Slashdot that indeed the "most significant" features were listed and the ones not listed are less significant.
You can buy OEM....yes you can, and Microsoft could turn around and tell you they don't support your copy as OEM copies come with computers and are not for seperate sale.
Wrong. If they weren't going to support OEM copies that didn't come with a new PC they'd either have to find some way to TELL if it was really sold with a new PC or disallow OEM copies entirely. The practice of selling OEM software with hardware has been around for a long time and if there were any legal problems associated with it we wouldn't have major retailers selling OEM copies, now would we?
You can buy...Windows XP. Oh and does that work natively on a Mac.
That has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which concerns only how much OS releases cost versus how significant the changes are for the amount paid.
Windows XP for $99... that will be the home version, the one that you're not allowed to use as a web server or a terminal server, or any type of server that isn't a file and print server (hint read the EULA). A cut down version of a more expensive 2 year old OS.
There is nothing restricting you from using software like Apache, or a 3rd-party terminal server, or an FTP server, or an application server, etc. with WinXP home. Microsoft-supplied software will of course have hard limits on connections (10 concurrent connections to shares, for instance). And even if it is strictly forbidden in the EULA, who cares? Since when have concerns over EULA violations or copyright violations ever stopped geeks before?
Windows XP for $99. And how much did it cost on the day of release before M$ realised no one wanted it.
A lot more "no ones" seem to want it than Mac OS X.
No, I think what's holding back Swing support for GCJ is the fact that you actually have to IMPLEMENT all those AWT classes (Swing is built on top) using native GUI libraries. It's a bit harder to make Java's GUI stuff work natively than, say, linked list classes and the like. An open source Java will not make it any easier to get Java's GUI libraries natively ported to every single platform that GCJ runs on.
No bitching about the price?
on
Jaguar is Over
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I find it curious that many of you will bitch and moan about how expensive MS operating systems are but find Apple's pricing of OS X releases agreeable or complain very little. Looking at the list of "features", this basically looks like a $129 fixpack. Various app speedups, minor enhancements, and slight UI changes for a few apps is worth $129 and Windows is too expensive?
Consider this: I can go out right now and buy a FULL, non-upgrade OEM copy of Windows XP for $99 (plus the negligible cost of a small piece of computer hardware to make the deal legit) to update a system with Windows 98 installed on it. That's $99 for what is a very serious operating system overhaul. Compare this to upgrading OS X 10.2 -> 10.3, which costs $129 for what amounts to a bunch of fixes (and an update to the FreeBSD 5.0 core -- that's relatively major, but not as major as Win9X to NT).
Wouldn't if be fair to say that it's a system that's "hard to read but also write" because we're not used to thinking about it? (you're voicing my grandma's opinion on binary: who doesn't get it, to her it seems unnecessariy complicated: what the hell do we need it for?).:)
Uh no. It's more like what's easier to read, a couple words written on a page or "red knot, blue knot, red knot, yellow knot, (... ten feet of rope later...), orange knot, red knot"? It's also harder to "write" because instead of making a stroke or two on a page you're having to tie knots AND paint them.
WTF am I getting modded "troll" here? I'm asking an honest question... these guys could've dabbed their paint on dried out leaves and the same effect would've been accomplished except they wouldn't need to lug around knotted ropes.
You moron, you can easily dab whatever they were using for coloring on dried-out LEAVES and there you have it... a written alternative to tying knots in rope.
Nobody is saying that the Incas didn't come up with some neat stuff... but to say that using a method of information storage that is not only hard to read but also to "write" (tying knots in string and painting them) is impressive when you consider that other civilizations of the time had WRITTEN LANGUAGES is laughable.
Hey, you know what? At least we have a written language. I'm not so impressed that the Incas used a complicated system of tying colored knots on string that *kinda* resembles binary when you consider how much easier it would've been to just write the information down.
"The things is that Win2K and its derivatives need fairly serious hardware just to breath. If you add office on there you need a 1GHz system with 256MB before you start wanting to play games."
Oh please. You're either a zealous Linux fanboy or getting all your information about Windows from Slashdot or both. Win2K and XP ran very nicely on my old PIII-550 with 256MB RAM and the system was always nice and responsive, even when playing GAMES. And Linux GUI performance has never blown me away, in fact Windows presents a much more responsive and smooth GUI than X even could.
Wait a minute... so the minute Microsoft decides to compete in a market they've crossed the line? Let me get this straight, you're saying that Microsoft is not allowed to compete with anyone? Like I said, MSN has been around for quite a while and they've had more than enough chance to make it the dominant internet portal site. This hasn't happened. Why is this? Wait, let me guess, "they weren't leveraging their monopoly enough".
Jesus Christ. You're basically saying that you don't think MS should be able to do anything because they're just "leveraging their monopoly." Gee, the X-Box hasn't been a smash success, I wonder why that is? Perhaps because they're competing in a market dominated by companies other than themselves? Likewise, they're going to compete in a market dominated by Google and Yahoo and you think that by virtue of them having a monopoly SOMEWHERE that they're going to rush in and crush everyone? Please.
"The fact that they are leveraging Windows in this case (because Internet Explorer is a part of Windows now, isn't it?) seems very clear."
How are they leveraging Windows/IE to gain a dominant position in the search engine market? They've been redirecting searches to MSN for years and it hasn't really helped them one bit. Now that they're actually doing things like trying to improve search quality, you cry "unfair!"
"My bandwidth isn't free, so why shouldn't I be allowed to refuse spidering service to a 280 billion dollar corporation if they're not going to pay me one dime?"
Do you deny other crawlers, like Google's? After all, they're not paying you anything, are they?
"Why am I an asshole if I refuse to remain powerless when the powerful try to roll over me?"
Please elaborate. How are they crushing you...?
"They are the antithesis of fair competition."
In some arenas, yes. This is not one of them. MSN has been around for a number of years and apparently MS hasn't been able to leverage all that monopoly power to make it a respectable internet presence. If they had the ability to sipmle "crush everyone" they would've done it long ago.
"I was mostly joking in my original post, but if you think you can astroturf in on a holier-than-thou attitude"
Oh can it with the "astroturf" crap. I don't care about MS, I have no vested interest in them. All I'm doing is pointing out how hypocritical you are. MS is trying to compete in an area where there IS essentially a monopoly holder in terms of mindshare (Google) and you throw all that "competition is good!" nonsense out the window. Just because someone takes the side of MS once in a while doesn't mean they're being paid to "astroturf" for them.
What unfair advantage? They're going up against Google, who is basically a "monopoly" in terms of search engine mindshare. They only have lots of money, and clearly their monopoly status hasn't helped MSN become a big search engine YET, nor do I think their being a monopoly has any reason to suggest that suddenly MSN will overtake all other search engines. Stop making up excuses, you hate Microsoft and you want to see them fail no matter what, even if they compete fairly.
I think they would at least offer a web service interface to their search engine, much like Google's. Microsoft already does a lot of web service stuff and all they need to provide is a WSDL to access the search functionality. Boom, there's your solution which will work with any programming language that can support SOAP and web services. Don't be so quick to assume that they won't do something like that.
So basically you want to make it impossible for Microsoft to be able to index sites, is that it? That way, no matter how good their work is, there's no way they'll be able to have an index as large as Google's, right? You geeks are always talking about how competition is a "good thing" and when Microsoft, clearly the underdog in this arena, wants to compete, you do everything you can to ruin their ability to do so. Some attitude you've got there.
"For instance, it didn't work, he didn't pay for it, but a friend hears of his predicament and offers to let him watch it on his working DVD player, as he and a few friends were getting it out. Hey, guess what, same situation, you took issue with. Totally within the letter of the law."
Of course, it's a different situation because someone's paid for the movie and the guy managed to watch the movie in a manner that has been deemed appropriate by companies in question. I was hoping you'd be smart enough to infer that "period" excluded obvious cases such as the one you outlined.
"The label only pays advances for these things. Every bit of it gets charged to the artist"
Well duh. The bank technically is only giving you an "advance" on that home loan you applied for too. Of course you still have to pay it back. The point is that if you could come up with the money to buy a house yourself you wouldn't have needed their help. Likewise, these artists need money to get nationwide exposure and they're willing to take the label's advances in the hopes that it will launch their career to the point where they're making their own living off it. Repeat after me: the labels are not just going to "give" artists money, they will LOAN it to them.
"Once they did that, Clear Channel shut down their radio play, and the label didn't do anything about it."
Didn't or couldn't? If CC doesn't want to play them, how is the label supposed to "make" them do it?
"see any number of current and past artists who have had fights with the labels over the amount of money they've made off their multi-platinum albums."
Yeah, and I imagine these fights are over "I'm not getting AS many millions as I want." Aerosmith, Kiss, Metallica, Eminem, NSync, etc. are millionaires many times over (and I doubt they would have found themselves in that position without the help of a record label, ahem). Forgive me for not caring if they "only" get a few percent of the album sales when those albums are merely ADS for more lucrative ventures. The label takes the risk for fronting money on an album, they deserve to reap the rewards. The artists will either hit it big or return to being unemployed singers. They can only do good signing with a label.
"Most retail chains won't carry independent music, and few will even carry small labels"
Exactly, that's all the more reason to sign with a major label!
"The labels want to do whatever they can to hold on to their position as the only route through which to gain access to these things, before it becomes easy for my next door neighbor to figure out how to make it without them."
Okay, you're still missing the point. Let's say you're a "talented artist" who's put up a website selling songs at a "Slashdotter-approved" price of two cents per song. How am I going to find your music? I don't hear you on the radio, I don't see you on TV, I don't see articles about you in the newspaper, etc. You have no exposure. Chances are you're still going to be making less money than you would with a major label because your fan base isn't as large as it could be which means less album sales and less touring revenue.
" Really he should take it back and get his money back, as the disc is faulty (doesn't play the non-standard disc in his standards-compliant player.)"
That's right, he should take it back.
"But he really wants to see the film. So he should download it."
Well that's good to know. If I really want to see a film there's no real need to pay anything.
"They have lost a sale not through piracy, but by comy-protection."
Perhaps, but the person went and pirated the movie anyway. I'm not for copy-protection, but if it doesn't work and you didn't pay for it (I'm assuming you returned it), then you don't get to watch the movie. Period.
The point is that you NEED those "greedy middle men" to get any exposure. What, do you think that just because you make amazing music that if you stick it up on a website (or better yet, put it on Kazaa) you'll be making millions in sales? Someone has to KNOW who you are first, it is unlikely that you'll just stumble upon artists if there's no marketing behind them. Why do you think it's an artist's dream to get a major label deal? Because the label will pay for promotion, advertising, product positioning, radio time, etc. These are all things which help you SELL MORE UNITS. If you sell millions, YOU WILL GET PAID. Just ask any artist who has sold millions of records... they'll tell you two things: 1, that they're happy they signed with a major label; 2, that they couldn't have accomplished it by themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
However, if you are truly worried about support, the simple answer is to purchase a support contract from the vendor of your choice. Not only will your support contract likely cost you less than licensing commercial software, but if you feel your vendor isn't giving you adequate support you can purchase support from someone else.
You're saying that you can buy a support contract from any number of organizations? Forgive me for sounding less than enthusiastic about that prospect. If I buy support for product X from company Y, yeah they're my only option, but they make product X and the guys who coded it are intimately familiar with it. They have specialized knowledge of it.
Now let's say I want support for Apache. Who do I buy that from (honest question, I don't know who you can "pay" to support Apache, or any arbitrary open source program)? How am I supposed to expect them to have intimate knowledge of the product? It sounds to me like buying "open source support" from a company means you're paying these guys to be "jacks of all trades", which of course means that they are "masters of none". Doesn't sound like such a good deal to me.
Excellent post. Wish I could mod you up.
People (well, Slashdot "people") tend to automatically associate "open source" with "quality". Yes, in theory the more eyes you have looking over code and the more people you have making fixes and enhancements will yield an optimal product. But, like you said, few projects are high-profile enough to receive such attention.
One point you forgot to mention is the tendency for open source projects to splinter off, creating confusion and lack of standardization. Everyone's got access to the source and all it takes are a few people who don't like the way the original program does something (or the way a derivative program does something) and -BOOM-, there are suddenly multiple spinoffs from the original program (and spinoffs from those spinoffs), each with their own way of doing things, creating incompatibilities amongst each other.
This is one aspect of open source that I find the most frustrating. Instead of trying to make a single program better, there's a tendency to make multiple versions of the same program that each are better than the original in the some way but mediocre in comparison to the original (or derivatives) in some other ways. Come on! Resist the temptation to branch off projects simply because "it's your way" and try to find a way to make the original project work better.
Interestingly the concept of the company fixing its own problems as they hold the source was just unthinkable. No manager would give themselves more work no matter how much money it would save.
See, you have the misconception that simply having access to the source means you can fix problems in an acceptable amount of time. If you've ever had to pore over a massive project you'll realize that you could spend a couple days trying to track down and fix a problem that is preventing you from finishing your real work or you could simply send a problem description off to the guys who originally wrote the code (and who you're already paying for), and they'll probably be able to fix the problem far quicker than you ever could. THAT is the reason closed-source software is so appealing. If you have a problem with a piece of code you bought you can tell them "hey, I've got a problem, I'm paying you, get on this problem and fix it for me ASAP or we'll be re-evaluating our business relationship with you." With open source software, you might get lucky with helpful developers and you might not. You never know. What you do know is that you don't have the ability to really push open source developers to fix problems for you, and that's a major drawback.
Hey, if copying music isn't "theft" then copying someone else's icons isn't "theft", it's "copyright infringement" (or some other term that makes the act easier to justify).
Other people's work wants to be free! Stop giving these guys a hard time for "sharing" those icons!
$120 VGA to component out adapter
You lose.
Now lets see, how many stupid comments did you make here.
No more than you just have.
list of features...what list of features, all I've see are a few hand picked features out of over 100. Perhaps you should actually watch the keynote and get a clue.
It stands to reason that if you're only going to summarize the list of features that you're going to list the most significant features instead of a couple randomly-selected ones. That's like saying that if I were to summarize the differences between Windows 98 and Windows XP I'd list "new media player" instead of "completely different kernel that dramatically improves stability." Therefore, we can conclude that unless these really are just randomly-selected features being listed on Slashdot that indeed the "most significant" features were listed and the ones not listed are less significant.
You can buy OEM....yes you can, and Microsoft could turn around and tell you they don't support your copy as OEM copies come with computers and are not for seperate sale.
Wrong. If they weren't going to support OEM copies that didn't come with a new PC they'd either have to find some way to TELL if it was really sold with a new PC or disallow OEM copies entirely. The practice of selling OEM software with hardware has been around for a long time and if there were any legal problems associated with it we wouldn't have major retailers selling OEM copies, now would we?
You can buy...Windows XP. Oh and does that work natively on a Mac.
That has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which concerns only how much OS releases cost versus how significant the changes are for the amount paid.
Windows XP for $99... that will be the home version, the one that you're not allowed to use as a web server or a terminal server, or any type of server that isn't a file and print server (hint read the EULA). A cut down version of a more expensive 2 year old OS.
There is nothing restricting you from using software like Apache, or a 3rd-party terminal server, or an FTP server, or an application server, etc. with WinXP home. Microsoft-supplied software will of course have hard limits on connections (10 concurrent connections to shares, for instance). And even if it is strictly forbidden in the EULA, who cares? Since when have concerns over EULA violations or copyright violations ever stopped geeks before?
Windows XP for $99. And how much did it cost on the day of release before M$ realised no one wanted it.
A lot more "no ones" seem to want it than Mac OS X.
No, I think what's holding back Swing support for GCJ is the fact that you actually have to IMPLEMENT all those AWT classes (Swing is built on top) using native GUI libraries. It's a bit harder to make Java's GUI stuff work natively than, say, linked list classes and the like. An open source Java will not make it any easier to get Java's GUI libraries natively ported to every single platform that GCJ runs on.
I find it curious that many of you will bitch and moan about how expensive MS operating systems are but find Apple's pricing of OS X releases agreeable or complain very little. Looking at the list of "features", this basically looks like a $129 fixpack. Various app speedups, minor enhancements, and slight UI changes for a few apps is worth $129 and Windows is too expensive?
Consider this: I can go out right now and buy a FULL, non-upgrade OEM copy of Windows XP for $99 (plus the negligible cost of a small piece of computer hardware to make the deal legit) to update a system with Windows 98 installed on it. That's $99 for what is a very serious operating system overhaul. Compare this to upgrading OS X 10.2 -> 10.3, which costs $129 for what amounts to a bunch of fixes (and an update to the FreeBSD 5.0 core -- that's relatively major, but not as major as Win9X to NT).
And Windows is too expensive...?
Wouldn't if be fair to say that it's a system that's "hard to read but also write" because we're not used to thinking about it? (you're voicing my grandma's opinion on binary: who doesn't get it, to her it seems unnecessariy complicated: what the hell do we need it for?). :)
...), orange knot, red knot"? It's also harder to "write" because instead of making a stroke or two on a page you're having to tie knots AND paint them.
Uh no. It's more like what's easier to read, a couple words written on a page or "red knot, blue knot, red knot, yellow knot, (... ten feet of rope later
WTF am I getting modded "troll" here? I'm asking an honest question... these guys could've dabbed their paint on dried out leaves and the same effect would've been accomplished except they wouldn't need to lug around knotted ropes.
You moron, you can easily dab whatever they were using for coloring on dried-out LEAVES and there you have it ... a written alternative to tying knots in rope.
Sure, but it would've been easy to simply make colored dots on some sort of paper or leaf and this system would be much more portable and manageable.
Nobody is saying that the Incas didn't come up with some neat stuff... but to say that using a method of information storage that is not only hard to read but also to "write" (tying knots in string and painting them) is impressive when you consider that other civilizations of the time had WRITTEN LANGUAGES is laughable.
Hey, you know what? At least we have a written language. I'm not so impressed that the Incas used a complicated system of tying colored knots on string that *kinda* resembles binary when you consider how much easier it would've been to just write the information down.
If the multiplier is ~10x you'd go from 1GHz to 1.33GHz with a 33MHz bus increase.
"The things is that Win2K and its derivatives need fairly serious hardware just to breath. If you add office on there you need a 1GHz system with 256MB before you start wanting to play games."
Oh please. You're either a zealous Linux fanboy or getting all your information about Windows from Slashdot or both. Win2K and XP ran very nicely on my old PIII-550 with 256MB RAM and the system was always nice and responsive, even when playing GAMES. And Linux GUI performance has never blown me away, in fact Windows presents a much more responsive and smooth GUI than X even could.
Wait a minute... so the minute Microsoft decides to compete in a market they've crossed the line? Let me get this straight, you're saying that Microsoft is not allowed to compete with anyone? Like I said, MSN has been around for quite a while and they've had more than enough chance to make it the dominant internet portal site. This hasn't happened. Why is this? Wait, let me guess, "they weren't leveraging their monopoly enough".
Jesus Christ. You're basically saying that you don't think MS should be able to do anything because they're just "leveraging their monopoly." Gee, the X-Box hasn't been a smash success, I wonder why that is? Perhaps because they're competing in a market dominated by companies other than themselves? Likewise, they're going to compete in a market dominated by Google and Yahoo and you think that by virtue of them having a monopoly SOMEWHERE that they're going to rush in and crush everyone? Please.
"The fact that they are leveraging Windows in this case (because Internet Explorer is a part of Windows now, isn't it?) seems very clear."
How are they leveraging Windows/IE to gain a dominant position in the search engine market? They've been redirecting searches to MSN for years and it hasn't really helped them one bit. Now that they're actually doing things like trying to improve search quality, you cry "unfair!"
"My bandwidth isn't free, so why shouldn't I be allowed to refuse spidering service to a 280 billion dollar corporation if they're not going to pay me one dime?"
Do you deny other crawlers, like Google's? After all, they're not paying you anything, are they?
"Why am I an asshole if I refuse to remain powerless when the powerful try to roll over me?"
Please elaborate. How are they crushing you...?
"They are the antithesis of fair competition."
In some arenas, yes. This is not one of them. MSN has been around for a number of years and apparently MS hasn't been able to leverage all that monopoly power to make it a respectable internet presence. If they had the ability to sipmle "crush everyone" they would've done it long ago.
"I was mostly joking in my original post, but if you think you can astroturf in on a holier-than-thou attitude"
Oh can it with the "astroturf" crap. I don't care about MS, I have no vested interest in them. All I'm doing is pointing out how hypocritical you are. MS is trying to compete in an area where there IS essentially a monopoly holder in terms of mindshare (Google) and you throw all that "competition is good!" nonsense out the window. Just because someone takes the side of MS once in a while doesn't mean they're being paid to "astroturf" for them.
What unfair advantage? They're going up against Google, who is basically a "monopoly" in terms of search engine mindshare. They only have lots of money, and clearly their monopoly status hasn't helped MSN become a big search engine YET, nor do I think their being a monopoly has any reason to suggest that suddenly MSN will overtake all other search engines. Stop making up excuses, you hate Microsoft and you want to see them fail no matter what, even if they compete fairly.
I think they would at least offer a web service interface to their search engine, much like Google's. Microsoft already does a lot of web service stuff and all they need to provide is a WSDL to access the search functionality. Boom, there's your solution which will work with any programming language that can support SOAP and web services. Don't be so quick to assume that they won't do something like that.
So basically you want to make it impossible for Microsoft to be able to index sites, is that it? That way, no matter how good their work is, there's no way they'll be able to have an index as large as Google's, right? You geeks are always talking about how competition is a "good thing" and when Microsoft, clearly the underdog in this arena, wants to compete, you do everything you can to ruin their ability to do so. Some attitude you've got there.
"For instance, it didn't work, he didn't pay for it, but a friend hears of his predicament and offers to let him watch it on his working DVD player, as he and a few friends were getting it out.
Hey, guess what, same situation, you took issue with. Totally within the letter of the law."
Of course, it's a different situation because someone's paid for the movie and the guy managed to watch the movie in a manner that has been deemed appropriate by companies in question. I was hoping you'd be smart enough to infer that "period" excluded obvious cases such as the one you outlined.
"The label only pays advances for these things. Every bit of it gets charged to the artist"
Well duh. The bank technically is only giving you an "advance" on that home loan you applied for too. Of course you still have to pay it back. The point is that if you could come up with the money to buy a house yourself you wouldn't have needed their help. Likewise, these artists need money to get nationwide exposure and they're willing to take the label's advances in the hopes that it will launch their career to the point where they're making their own living off it. Repeat after me: the labels are not just going to "give" artists money, they will LOAN it to them.
"Once they did that, Clear Channel shut down their radio play, and the label didn't do anything about it."
Didn't or couldn't? If CC doesn't want to play them, how is the label supposed to "make" them do it?
"see any number of current and past artists who have had fights with the labels over the amount of money they've made off their multi-platinum albums."
Yeah, and I imagine these fights are over "I'm not getting AS many millions as I want." Aerosmith, Kiss, Metallica, Eminem, NSync, etc. are millionaires many times over (and I doubt they would have found themselves in that position without the help of a record label, ahem). Forgive me for not caring if they "only" get a few percent of the album sales when those albums are merely ADS for more lucrative ventures. The label takes the risk for fronting money on an album, they deserve to reap the rewards. The artists will either hit it big or return to being unemployed singers. They can only do good signing with a label.
"Most retail chains won't carry independent music, and few will even carry small labels"
Exactly, that's all the more reason to sign with a major label!
"The labels want to do whatever they can to hold on to their position as the only route through which to gain access to these things, before it becomes easy for my next door neighbor to figure out how to make it without them."
Okay, you're still missing the point. Let's say you're a "talented artist" who's put up a website selling songs at a "Slashdotter-approved" price of two cents per song. How am I going to find your music? I don't hear you on the radio, I don't see you on TV, I don't see articles about you in the newspaper, etc. You have no exposure. Chances are you're still going to be making less money than you would with a major label because your fan base isn't as large as it could be which means less album sales and less touring revenue.
" Really he should take it back and get his money back, as the disc is faulty (doesn't play the non-standard disc in his standards-compliant player.)"
That's right, he should take it back.
"But he really wants to see the film. So he should download it."
Well that's good to know. If I really want to see a film there's no real need to pay anything.
"They have lost a sale not through piracy, but by comy-protection."
Perhaps, but the person went and pirated the movie anyway. I'm not for copy-protection, but if it doesn't work and you didn't pay for it (I'm assuming you returned it), then you don't get to watch the movie. Period.
The point is that you NEED those "greedy middle men" to get any exposure. What, do you think that just because you make amazing music that if you stick it up on a website (or better yet, put it on Kazaa) you'll be making millions in sales? Someone has to KNOW who you are first, it is unlikely that you'll just stumble upon artists if there's no marketing behind them. Why do you think it's an artist's dream to get a major label deal? Because the label will pay for promotion, advertising, product positioning, radio time, etc. These are all things which help you SELL MORE UNITS. If you sell millions, YOU WILL GET PAID. Just ask any artist who has sold millions of records... they'll tell you two things: 1, that they're happy they signed with a major label; 2, that they couldn't have accomplished it by themselves.