With the demise of some sites recently, and a subscription model being tried for others, I've started to really think about what sites I'd be prepared to pay for. In the end, it turns out that there's about four regular sites that'd get my money (given a reasonable fee), while another dozen would be dropped.
And that's the real problem with this idea - you'll only want 4 sites, but it's likely that they'll be packaged with a lot of other ones and you'll be paying for sites you didn't want. Meanwhile, I'm sure that some sites will spring up which will offer similar content for free.
Im wondering how long it will be before the USA pulls some kind of Nazi thing on the world
The worst part about your statement is that I'm an American, only about 130 miles from you, and I'm starting to wonder the same thing. I'm still trying to figure out if the morons outnumber the clueful here...
Before you flame me, think about it. How much time did you spend learning about you constitution in school? How often do you here your fellow countrymen bellow on about ammendments and "free speach"? Have you ever heard a Candaian mention their Charter of Rights and Freedoms? A Brition? Anyone from any commonwealth country? You have educated yourselves into being a bunch of obnoxious prats and the rest of us are tired of hearing it.
As an American, I can tell you that we spend quite a bit of time learning about our constitution in school, and obviously, many of our citizens have learned their lessons well. In the last century, there were European countries in which people were not educated about the rights their government gave them, if any, and these countries turned out to be easy prey for the fascists and totalitarian communists. Surely, you're not trying to argue that your country would be a better place if people were ignorant and careless of the rights they possess? History has shown otherwise.
There's a couple of things the analysis left out because the data doesn't cover them - first, artists used to release albums a lot more than they do now. Back in the 60's a lot of them had to put something out every six months. This resulted in a lot of crappy albums with just one good song, but it also resulted in talented musicians like the Beatles getting better because the amount of studio work and songwriting they had to do pushed them to it.
Second, the variety of what was played on 60's Top 40 was amazing - Tammy Wynette, Jimi Hendrix, Dean Martin and James Brown could be all heard on the same station! There were regional markets - a record that was a flop in New York could be a Top 10 hit in L.A. or Detroit. The suits that ran the record companies signed a lot of different acts because no one could be sure what was going to be the next big thing. A DJ might decide to play a B-side for the heck of it, and in weeks it could be a No. 1 hit. ("Ode to Billy Joe" Bobbi Gentry). Independent record companies loved this environment because it meant they had a chance of getting somewhere. The majors hated it because they had to sign a lot of acts and could never be sure which ones would hit as the market was so volatle. Some of the smaller labels like Liberty, Dot, Uni went broke or got bought up, because they didn't have a good clue as to what good rock and roll was. Others, like RCA and Columbia, coasted for a while until they figured out the new sounds and how to sell them. Companies like Atlantic and Warner Bros. knew what they were doing and cleaned up. It was a chaotic time for the business, but a great time for music. It was the period when singles stopped being so important and albums sales took off. It was a time when 2 or 3 track recording evolved to 16 track. Those companies who adapted survived - those that didn't, didn't. And from detractors of rock and roll to conservative A & R people to radio companies unwilling to experiment in the new FM band, a lot of people tried to reign it in or hold it back because they knew it threatened the way they knew how to do business.
Today, we're seeing the exact same phenomenon - anyone can have a useful recording studio if they have a fast enough PC. Anyone can put that music out on the web and anyone can trade it - it's like having your own radio station that plays only what you want to hear or are curious about. Suddenly, independent and regional markets are back with a vengence - even a short listen to today's hit radio reveals a lot more variety then there used to be. Once again, it's harder to tell what the next big thing's going to be, and people are paying less attention to what the promotional machinery is telling them. Once again, the record companies are facing stiff competition from independents and (internet) media outlets that play what they want to, not what they're paid to.
This is what the RIAA is really scared of. People have taped off the radio for years - but it was still stuff the companies were promoting. Now, they could be listening and buying to anything. And to them, that's dangerous.
>But blaming the "Corporate Republic" is an intellectual cop-out.
Is it? If there is no Corporate Republic, then why are so many corporations lobbying our government for special consideration? Why does every candidate for national office recieve hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations and those people associated with them? You refer to regulatory garbage passed by Congress - did it ever occur to you that certain economic interests might benefit from these regulations? At the least, a company that stringently follows these regulations has a good defence against anyone suing it - "But look, we followed the government's regulations, we've done what we could."
You go on to say that the market is driven by the consumer, but only as much as the current combination of governmental and corporate powers allow. This is NOT a free market society - it never has been.
As far as a diabolic plan to squelch independent producers goes, I think that the crash in the price that web advertisers are willing to pay had much to do with the problems that they're having. With big players like AOL willing to pay much less, it's not surprising that the price has dropped. I wouldn't know if there's a conspiracy behind it or not, but I would think that if AOL announced they were paying less that the little guys would be forced to play along - and go broke.
Corporations have much more power than they should. They have the power to buy votes and they have the power to manipulate demand by having the government overregulate things that may hurt their business. They have the power to undercut the little guy by selling ad space for unprofitable prices until the little guy goes broke trying to match - after which, they can just consider their losses as an investment and jack up the price again.
Anti-capitalist? Whatever gave you the idea that our current system of corporate/government socialism was capitalist? Didn't the government develop the Internet to begin with? Don't the phone lines that carry it go through public easements negotiated with various levels of government? Corporations love government interference in the market when it's to their benefit.
The real problem in the world is concentration of power in the hands of a few. I don't believe it matters whether the few are in a government or a corporation or both. The end result is loss of liberty for everyone else. To hell with Big Government, to hell with Big Business and if Big Religion ever makes a comeback, to hell with them too!
What would happen if I looked at one of my web pages with IE 6.0 to determine what words were being smart linked and then added links of my own to those words that would make any resulting clicks go to a site that had absolutely nothing to do with the word? Anyone who clicked on the word Coca-Cola would be sent to a page about rhubarb farming. Better yet, we could rewrite all these words to link to Microsoft's site and see how well their server stood up. Which would take precedence in the browser - the Smart Link or the web page's link? Would people be able to tell if there were two links there? Would it be possible to disguise a regular link as a smart link by copying that little purple line under it?
I say if they're going to shove this down our throats then we should screw it up for them.
So, if a rock and roll band is streaming MP3s from their web site, and they're also attempting to sell CDs of their music, that means they've got to put up 2,000 dollars to start with.
Sounds to me like another way to raise the bar for the little guys in the music biz so the big guys can continue to monopolize the business. All
they have to do now is announce a minimum fee for making downloads of MP3s available from a band's sales site and they'll really put a lid on that pesky competition.
How can you measure the demand for love or sex if you can't put a price on it? What's the worth of a newborn baby in dollars? If you were walking down the road and some maniac is driving off of it about to run you over at 90 mph, how much do you think you should have to pay the person who sees this before he tells you?
You can't use money to measure everything in life. There are people who have loads of it and can't buy the things they really desire.
As far as the free market is concerned, no one can make any statements about what it does and doesn't do, because there never has been any such thing - the government limits the market in all sorts of ways, prohibiting one thing and encouraging another. In those areas where government doesn't take an active interest, private parties often do their best to act as regulators of the market.
In short, the free market is not a real world concept. Some kind of compromise with other factors will always be necessary.
The problem with this is simple - I have a web page that's devoted to my poetry and writings. It's a link-poor site - as you might imagine, I didn't write this stuff with a bunch of hyperlinks in mind. The poems are presented as plain text, just as they would be in a book. It's a violation of my artistic intent for a browser to highlight a bunch of "keywords", thus distracting the reader from the flow of the text, and to have these "keywords" link to things that I had no intention to have linked.
This is an attempt by Microsoft to use other people's words and pages as advertising revenue for themselves. It'll be interesting to see what happens when someone finds a way to hack it...
Slashdot Mirror
And that's the real problem with this idea - you'll only want 4 sites, but it's likely that they'll be packaged with a lot of other ones and you'll be paying for sites you didn't want. Meanwhile, I'm sure that some sites will spring up which will offer similar content for free.
The American constitution gives one the right not to testify against oneself.
Before you flame me, think about it. How much time did you spend learning about you constitution in school? How often do you here your fellow countrymen bellow on about ammendments and "free speach"? Have you ever heard a Candaian mention their Charter of Rights and Freedoms? A Brition? Anyone from any commonwealth country? You have educated yourselves into being a bunch of obnoxious prats and the rest of us are tired of hearing it.
As an American, I can tell you that we spend quite a bit of time learning about our constitution in school, and obviously, many of our citizens have learned their lessons well. In the last century, there were European countries in which people were not educated about the rights their government gave them, if any, and these countries turned out to be easy prey for the fascists and totalitarian communists. Surely, you're not trying to argue that your country would be a better place if people were ignorant and careless of the rights they possess? History has shown otherwise.
It would be a shame if people missed something this funny.
There's a couple of things the analysis left out because the data doesn't cover them - first, artists used to release albums a lot more than they do now. Back in the 60's a lot of them had to put something out every six months. This resulted in a lot of crappy albums with just one good song, but it also resulted in talented musicians like the Beatles getting better because the amount of studio work and songwriting they had to do pushed them to it.
Second, the variety of what was played on 60's Top 40 was amazing - Tammy Wynette, Jimi Hendrix, Dean Martin and James Brown could be all heard on the same station! There were regional markets - a record that was a flop in New York could be a Top 10 hit in L.A. or Detroit. The suits that ran the record companies signed a lot of different acts because no one could be sure what was going to be the next big thing. A DJ might decide to play a B-side for the heck of it, and in weeks it could be a No. 1 hit. ("Ode to Billy Joe" Bobbi Gentry). Independent record companies loved this environment because it meant they had a chance of getting somewhere. The majors hated it because they had to sign a lot of acts and could never be sure which ones would hit as the market was so volatle. Some of the smaller labels like Liberty, Dot, Uni went broke or got bought up, because they didn't have a good clue as to what good rock and roll was. Others, like RCA and Columbia, coasted for a while until they figured out the new sounds and how to sell them. Companies like Atlantic and Warner Bros. knew what they were doing and cleaned up. It was a chaotic time for the business, but a great time for music. It was the period when singles stopped being so important and albums sales took off. It was a time when 2 or 3 track recording evolved to 16 track. Those companies who adapted survived - those that didn't, didn't. And from detractors of rock and roll to conservative A & R people to radio companies unwilling to experiment in the new FM band, a lot of people tried to reign it in or hold it back because they knew it threatened the way they knew how to do business.
Today, we're seeing the exact same phenomenon - anyone can have a useful recording studio if they have a fast enough PC. Anyone can put that music out on the web and anyone can trade it - it's like having your own radio station that plays only what you want to hear or are curious about. Suddenly, independent and regional markets are back with a vengence - even a short listen to today's hit radio reveals a lot more variety then there used to be. Once again, it's harder to tell what the next big thing's going to be, and people are paying less attention to what the promotional machinery is telling them. Once again, the record companies are facing stiff competition from independents and (internet) media outlets that play what they want to, not what they're paid to.
This is what the RIAA is really scared of. People have taped off the radio for years - but it was still stuff the companies were promoting. Now, they could be listening and buying to anything. And to them, that's dangerous.
>But blaming the "Corporate Republic" is an intellectual cop-out.
Is it? If there is no Corporate Republic, then why are so many corporations lobbying our government for special consideration? Why does every candidate for national office recieve hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations and those people associated with them? You refer to regulatory garbage passed by Congress - did it ever occur to you that certain economic interests might benefit from these regulations? At the least, a company that stringently follows these regulations has a good defence against anyone suing it - "But look, we followed the government's regulations, we've done what we could."
You go on to say that the market is driven by the consumer, but only as much as the current combination of governmental and corporate powers allow. This is NOT a free market society - it never has been.
As far as a diabolic plan to squelch independent producers goes, I think that the crash in the price that web advertisers are willing to pay had much to do with the problems that they're having. With big players like AOL willing to pay much less, it's not surprising that the price has dropped. I wouldn't know if there's a conspiracy behind it or not, but I would think that if AOL announced they were paying less that the little guys would be forced to play along - and go broke.
Corporations have much more power than they should. They have the power to buy votes and they have the power to manipulate demand by having the government overregulate things that may hurt their business. They have the power to undercut the little guy by selling ad space for unprofitable prices until the little guy goes broke trying to match - after which, they can just consider their losses as an investment and jack up the price again.
Anti-capitalist? Whatever gave you the idea that our current system of corporate/government socialism was capitalist? Didn't the government develop the Internet to begin with? Don't the phone lines that carry it go through public easements negotiated with various levels of government? Corporations love government interference in the market when it's to their benefit.
The real problem in the world is concentration of power in the hands of a few. I don't believe it matters whether the few are in a government or a corporation or both. The end result is loss of liberty for everyone else. To hell with Big Government, to hell with Big Business and if Big Religion ever makes a comeback, to hell with them too!
What would happen if I looked at one of my web pages with IE 6.0 to determine what words were being smart linked and then added links of my own to those words that would make any resulting clicks go to a site that had absolutely nothing to do with the word? Anyone who clicked on the word Coca-Cola would be sent to a page about rhubarb farming. Better yet, we could rewrite all these words to link to Microsoft's site and see how well their server stood up. Which would take precedence in the browser - the Smart Link or the web page's link? Would people be able to tell if there were two links there? Would it be possible to disguise a regular link as a smart link by copying that little purple line under it?
I say if they're going to shove this down our throats then we should screw it up for them.
So, if a rock and roll band is streaming MP3s from their web site, and they're also attempting to sell CDs of their music, that means they've got to put up 2,000 dollars to start with.
Sounds to me like another way to raise the bar for the little guys in the music biz so the big guys can continue to monopolize the business. All they have to do now is announce a minimum fee for making downloads of MP3s available from a band's sales site and they'll really put a lid on that pesky competition.
How can you measure the demand for love or sex if you can't put a price on it? What's the worth of a newborn baby in dollars? If you were walking down the road and some maniac is driving off of it about to run you over at 90 mph, how much do you think you should have to pay the person who sees this before he tells you?
You can't use money to measure everything in life. There are people who have loads of it and can't buy the things they really desire.
As far as the free market is concerned, no one can make any statements about what it does and doesn't do, because there never has been any such thing - the government limits the market in all sorts of ways, prohibiting one thing and encouraging another. In those areas where government doesn't take an active interest, private parties often do their best to act as regulators of the market.
In short, the free market is not a real world concept. Some kind of compromise with other factors will always be necessary.
The problem with this is simple - I have a web page that's devoted to my poetry and writings. It's a link-poor site - as you might imagine, I didn't write this stuff with a bunch of hyperlinks in mind. The poems are presented as plain text, just as they would be in a book. It's a violation of my artistic intent for a browser to highlight a bunch of "keywords", thus distracting the reader from the flow of the text, and to have these "keywords" link to things that I had no intention to have linked.
...
This is an attempt by Microsoft to use other people's words and pages as advertising revenue for themselves. It'll be interesting to see what happens when someone finds a way to hack it
http://www.net-link.net/~termite