It may have been a mistake due to incompetence, but more likely it was down on purpose. Microsoft is only admitting it now because they were caught, else we'd not hear about it.
That's awfully unlikely, don't you think? Their statement says they've complied for XP, Vista, and original Windows 7 version. Furthermore, the statement says:
Since we have fallen short in our responsibility to display the BCS, we have offered to extend the time during which we are obliged to do so by an additional 15 months.
So as it was a time-limited compliance period, all they had to do was wait patiently until the obligation period expired, and then all bets would be off.
Yes, I know companies can be arrogant and stupid enough to look at this kind of logical thought and go "um...nahhh...let's go for it". But I really don't see that as being likely. They were caught, dragged through the courts in a public and embarrassing manner, and punished in a not insubstantial fashion. That doesn't fade quickly.
Their explanation of how it happened is:
Unfortunately, the engineering team responsible for maintenance of this code did not realize that it needed to update the detection logic for the BCS software when Windows 7 SP1 was released last year.
Sounds believable to me. A mammoth software company where the right hand might not know what the left hand is doing? Plausible, totally plausible.
The law according to many different countries. NZ does happen to have copyright infringement laws.
You're correct; it describes a huge range of people. My point is that describing someone as a "fixer" and saying that's a valid & legitimate occupation or role just by inference is quite untenable.
Read up on Kim Dotcom's history. He has for years positioned himself as a modern day swashbuckler. Very romantic when Johnny Depp pretends to be one, I'm sure, but not a good long-term job choice if you're looking to stay out of trouble.
when he is neither the sharer, the viewer, nor the author.
He's the "fixer". He gets you what you want, because he knows someone who has it and can arrange delivery without fuss and bother on your part.This is a perfectly legit role to have in the scheme of things.
One - this "fixer" role is not "perfectly legit" when his fixing breaks the law.
Two - that also describes a pimp. And the RIAA. And someone who steals rare and exotic Lamborghinis and Ferraris to order. And a drug dealer. I don't think you've made a particularly compelling point, frankly.
Four stories after a submission asking if grammar matters any more, we find this gem of a sentence in the summary:
Steve Ballmer suggested Microsoft expected Surface to sell "millions" of the 375m Windows 8 PCs expected to sell in the next year â" spending much of the keynote talking about partners' devices.
Now you hear them whine about being "the internet's showroom" - they think people come in to look and then go buy online instead. That's almost a complete fallacy because almost all of their products are commodities, you gain basically nothing from a hands-on experience with just about everything they sell
Err...what? Go back over the past couple of years on Slashdot and find any one of several stories about Best Buy. You'll find piles of comments from people all saying this is the only reason they go to Best Buy. I realize that Slashdot is not the majority opinion, but still...
You think voting is anything other than a public circlejerk to keep people busy.
Ahh to be young and stupid again.
In many ways that's far better than old and cynical/jaded/paranoid, as is the wont of many a Slashdotter. Just take a look at the monumentally idiotic discussions overwhelming almost any article these days on these pages.
And on another note, is "anonymous submitter" another way to describe "anonymous coward who works for Slashdot and wants to generate page views by posting a sheer flamebait-war-initiating item"? Apparently so.
One of the most insightful comments on this story. Seems like half the Linux community has a massive collective inferiority complex and the other half a laughably unjustifiable superiority complex.
A statistician would say "on the average, then, Linux fanatics are quite normal and well-adjusted".
I haven't seen anyone directly answer your question on "should I get an MBA" yet. This will be variable depending on whether you have good tuition reimbursement policies at your job. (I get 100% tuition reimbursement and don't work in the financial industry; my neighbor, who works for a major financial institution, would love to get an MBA but would have to pony up most of the tuition himself).
A few people have suggested project management, and with your experience you might find that a good fit. If you are a good PM, it's a path that gives you lots of options.
In your shoes, I'd be very tempted to start by getting the PMP certification. It's the industry standard, everyone knows it, and if you are PMP certified you can go anywhere in the world and they know what it means & respect it. The key advantage for you is it's a lot quicker to get PMP certified (assuming you've got some project management experience under your belt), and will be much cheaper than an MBA (again, this'll be influenced by the tuition reimbursement policy at your company). My MBA cost ~ $45,000 in tuition. A PMP boot camp class (one week, and several of the people who run these boot camps have offers that guarantee you pass your PMP exam or you get a refund/get to take the class again for free) will cost around $2,000 to $3,000. (This is East Coast USA, so prices may vary a bit, but I went to a fairly respected business school for that $45K, and the PMP prep classes I've seen are all in that price range whether they be in New York, Philadelphia, or Atlanta)..
Then go for the MBA. That'll take longer (typically two years doing two night classes a week), but it's going to be a big asset. In the financial industry, having someone who knows the technical side and can talk the business side (and yes, you'll get that from an MBA, learning the jargon, understanding about accounting, GAPP, supply chain management, risk management, etc) is much more valuable.
With a PMP and MBA, plus years of development experience, you now have loads of options. Developer, project manager, business analyst, etc. Are you guaranteed to get a much higher salary? No. Is this a path that could significantly help your employment prospects (assuming you're reasonably competent and motivated)? I'd say so.
What a load of pompous and overblown drivel. You can't communicate freely over the Internet? Really? What, precisely, is stopping you from e-mailing your friend in Australia, or Germany, or Finland? What, exactly, made it so difficult and dark for you to risk your good health in communicating this sentiment in your post on a web site which is visible almost anywhere in the world?
If the copyright industry is allowed to hijack our system
What makes it your system? Who paid for it? Who developed ARPANET in the beginning? Who designed the protocols? You?
the answer should be to make a new Internet.
Go for it. That shouldn't take more than a few billion dollars and 20 years or so of dedicated infrastructure building. Yeah, I'm being snarky, but honestly, what a stupid unthinking comment.
The mere existence of thousands of songs available legally on sites for individual purchase or mass service subscription should demonstrate the silliness of your comment. What you mean is you want an Internet where you can freely exchange stuff you didn't pay for, and do so without fear of facing the consequences. You obviously disagree with copyright laws, but to say this totally devastates the entire global Internet concept is simply ludicrous.
By the time the Internet looks like cable TV, living life without an Internet connection will be very difficult.... blah blah blah
I think you are secretly enjoying an unspoken image of yourself as a freedom fighter in a post-apocalyptic "Terminator" or "Matrix" type scenario. Day-dream away, but don't let your grip on reality get too tenous, will you?
Not fire-happy, security conscious / part of the national infrastructure. They take things seriously. Considering how much vitriol gets directed on Slashdot towards companies with SCADA systems when things like Stuxnet rear their ugly heads, I'd think people would rather approve of that kind of policy.
If you work at a place like this, you know the policies and you know the penalties. If you're at all IT savvy and/or security aware, you know why this is done.
* Knowledge of accounting - yes, you need this no matter what industry you're in. You simply MUST understand capital versus expense, A/R and A/P, GAPP, ratios, asset depreciation, etc. Yes, you have a CFO - but you'd better know what they're talking about * Knowledge of risk management. * Extremely detailed and extremely broad knowledge of the industry you're in. * Knowledge of the *market* of your industry * Strong analytics * Strong skills in prioritizing * Ability to explain very technical aspects of your industry to the layman * Strategic wisdom * Be a motivator * Know where to ask for answers if you don't have them * Ability to keep your mouth shut when necessary (talking to politicians and lobbyists, for instance)
And I'm honestly convinced that if the typical Slashdotter or man-on-the-street who makes this kind of asinine comment were given free rein to replace a typical CEO they'd decimate the company's value within a month, if they didn't have half the top executives resign first.
What do you think it actually takes to run a company? Tell me - if it's that easy, this should be trivial. Here, I'll get you started:
* Knowledge of accounting - yes, you need this no matter what industry you're in. You simply MUST understand capital versus expense, A/R and A/P, GAPP, ratios, asset depreciation, etc. Yes, you have a CFO - but you'd better know what they're talking about * Knowledge of risk management. * Extremely detailed and extremely broad knowledge of the industry you're in.
The summary says there's no fix date available, and I know that's what it says in the Register article, but the second article, linking to the bank's site, has this to say:
The bank says the issue has now been fixed but it will take the weekend to clear the backlog which amounts to millions of euro in transactions.
I had the same question, and then saw this post further down, referencing this story from 2010 (which in turn points to another story discussing this as an ongoing strategy). Seems to have validity.
in order to avoid problems related to conflicts of libraries and services that are currently running with those on disk...
Installing updates while the session is running causes havoc with some apps like Firefox that have file resources that have not been locked (just try updating xulrunner when Firefox or Thunderbird is openâ¦)
Does it take into account how far you would have to drive, living arrangements, and other potential factors that would make someone turn down a good job offer?
I suspect that is probably covered by the word "legitimate" and the phrase "can be terminated" (as distinct from "will be terminated). Most people working in an unemployment office are not there for the money but because they legitimately want to help people.
It makes him look guilty of the "not wearing a condom" charge. He should just go face the trial, especially since there's no way they can prove he's guilty (it's just her word vs. his).
Are you really naive enough to believe that's what ANY of this is about?
I guess I'm just as naive as cpu6502, because I believe this too. Honestly, my first thought on reading this was "urgh, that does NOT look good...guy looks like he's running for cover". Innocent or guilty, running off to South America has a strong appearance of someone trying to escape the law.
Do I think the U.S. government is completely ambivalent about the chap? Well, duh, of course they're likely to be somewhat annoyed. Do I think this entire shambles is some huge conspiracy? And that Sweden, of all places, is just going to roll over in acquiescence? Come on...
Assange is a creep. Looking at the whole "using force" bit, the "not using a condom when you knew full well the woman didn't want that" bit, the guy is a jerk and a creep. Yes, you might think he's a hero with Wikileaks. That doesn't mean he's not a creep. In some countries what he did would just get him branded a creep; in Sweden, they are a bit more adamant about protecting women's rights and they think he did something criminal.
If he doesn't like it and says the charges are without basis, well, man up and go back and fight the charges, and then bugger off to Ecuador or anywhere else you want to, in a fit of self-righteous pique. But the guy needs to take responsibility for his actions.
Personally I think half the reason he doesn't want to is because he's afraid he won't get yanked out to the United States. That would really damage his whole martyr/conspiracy victim image. Without that he's a seriously underwhelming and unprepossessing figure. He'll get prosecuted, he'll be freed, or he might serve some jail time, and in a few months or a few years he'll come out, not having been assassinated. But by then everyone will have forgotten about him.
Why do musicians think the last 80 years is the norm? The world is returning to the norm. They will get paid by audiences for live performances. Instead of a very few getting paid mega bucks, many will make a living.
Except that they won't. There was a recent article on/. which pointed to a post by the same David Lowery. In his post, he made a brief comment about the economics of touring. Suffice to say it's hardly a reliable way to make a living. If you're in a tour bus you'd better be playing to a sold out venue. If you're in a van, well, stinks to be you...
(And I've been there, done that - touring, for all but a few, is a desperate scramble of musicians playing for the love of it. Mostly, you lose money and are forever running to get back from your late night gig so that you can get to your paying job on time and struggle to stay awake on three hours of sleep...just so you can do it again.)
Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free
They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.
they are free to stop playing music any time, if they find there is not a market for their goods, and marketability is the only reason they play.
That has to be one of the most irrational and flat-out silliest comments I've read on here in a long time.
There clearly is a market, or people wouldn't be downloading it. The problem is the market finds it easy to take it for free.
This is not the only reason they play. The exceptions of artificially created boy bands aside, musicians dedicate hundreds of hours and significant amounts of money to learning to play music because they love it. (In many cases, their parents also invest a huge amount of money in paying for lessons and instruments.) Most people don't think "I want to get rich and famous, so I'm gonna learn how to play the guitar". They just love music and want to make music themselves.
Do you know what makes people take up an instrument? It's the same drive that makes people study art, or write poems. Musicians love, love, love to make music. Musicians will make music even if no-one is there to hear them. Musicians have a passion for music. Musicians will dedicate years of their life to study and learn and practise for hours on end just so they can get better at their passion, their hobby.
This system has worked very well for fans and artists.
No, it's been superb for the middleman, the famous MAFIAA.
Didn't read the article, didja...Read paragraph six, the one that starts "'Itâ(TM)s OK not to pay for music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists anything.' In the vast majority of cases, this is not true." And paragraph seven, the one that starts "Secondly, by law the record label must pay songwriters (who may also be artists) something called a âoemechanical royaltyâ for sales of CDs or downloads of the song. This is paid regardless of whether a record is recouped or not."
Slashdot Mirror
It may have been a mistake due to incompetence, but more likely it was down on purpose. Microsoft is only admitting it now because they were caught, else we'd not hear about it.
That's awfully unlikely, don't you think? Their statement says they've complied for XP, Vista, and original Windows 7 version. Furthermore, the statement says:
Since we have fallen short in our responsibility to display the BCS, we have offered to extend the time during which we are obliged to do so by an additional 15 months.
So as it was a time-limited compliance period, all they had to do was wait patiently until the obligation period expired, and then all bets would be off.
Yes, I know companies can be arrogant and stupid enough to look at this kind of logical thought and go "um...nahhh...let's go for it". But I really don't see that as being likely. They were caught, dragged through the courts in a public and embarrassing manner, and punished in a not insubstantial fashion. That doesn't fade quickly.
Their explanation of how it happened is:
Unfortunately, the engineering team responsible for maintenance of this code did not realize that it needed to update the detection logic for the BCS software when Windows 7 SP1 was released last year.
Sounds believable to me. A mammoth software company where the right hand might not know what the left hand is doing? Plausible, totally plausible.
The law according to many different countries. NZ does happen to have copyright infringement laws.
You're correct; it describes a huge range of people. My point is that describing someone as a "fixer" and saying that's a valid & legitimate occupation or role just by inference is quite untenable.
Read up on Kim Dotcom's history. He has for years positioned himself as a modern day swashbuckler. Very romantic when Johnny Depp pretends to be one, I'm sure, but not a good long-term job choice if you're looking to stay out of trouble.
when he is neither the sharer, the viewer, nor the author.
He's the "fixer". He gets you what you want, because he knows someone who has it and can arrange delivery without fuss and bother on your part.This is a perfectly legit role to have in the scheme of things.
One - this "fixer" role is not "perfectly legit" when his fixing breaks the law.
Two - that also describes a pimp. And the RIAA. And someone who steals rare and exotic Lamborghinis and Ferraris to order. And a drug dealer. I don't think you've made a particularly compelling point, frankly.
Four stories after a submission asking if grammar matters any more, we find this gem of a sentence in the summary:
Steve Ballmer suggested Microsoft expected Surface to sell "millions" of the 375m Windows 8 PCs expected to sell in the next year â" spending much of the keynote talking about partners' devices.
Well... I go to Best Buy to just laugh at their plight and make snide comments about how anything above 5 dollars is retarded for a HDMI cable.
You know, that probably makes you more mature than 90% of the other Slashdotters posting on a Best Buy story.
Now you hear them whine about being "the internet's showroom" - they think people come in to look and then go buy online instead. That's almost a complete fallacy because almost all of their products are commodities, you gain basically nothing from a hands-on experience with just about everything they sell
Err...what? Go back over the past couple of years on Slashdot and find any one of several stories about Best Buy. You'll find piles of comments from people all saying this is the only reason they go to Best Buy. I realize that Slashdot is not the majority opinion, but still...
You think voting is anything other than a public circlejerk to keep people busy.
Ahh to be young and stupid again.
In many ways that's far better than old and cynical/jaded/paranoid, as is the wont of many a Slashdotter. Just take a look at the monumentally idiotic discussions overwhelming almost any article these days on these pages.
And on another note, is "anonymous submitter" another way to describe "anonymous coward who works for Slashdot and wants to generate page views by posting a sheer flamebait-war-initiating item"? Apparently so.
One of the most insightful comments on this story. Seems like half the Linux community has a massive collective inferiority complex and the other half a laughably unjustifiable superiority complex.
A statistician would say "on the average, then, Linux fanatics are quite normal and well-adjusted".
I haven't seen anyone directly answer your question on "should I get an MBA" yet. This will be variable depending on whether you have good tuition reimbursement policies at your job. (I get 100% tuition reimbursement and don't work in the financial industry; my neighbor, who works for a major financial institution, would love to get an MBA but would have to pony up most of the tuition himself).
A few people have suggested project management, and with your experience you might find that a good fit. If you are a good PM, it's a path that gives you lots of options.
In your shoes, I'd be very tempted to start by getting the PMP certification. It's the industry standard, everyone knows it, and if you are PMP certified you can go anywhere in the world and they know what it means & respect it. The key advantage for you is it's a lot quicker to get PMP certified (assuming you've got some project management experience under your belt), and will be much cheaper than an MBA (again, this'll be influenced by the tuition reimbursement policy at your company). My MBA cost ~ $45,000 in tuition. A PMP boot camp class (one week, and several of the people who run these boot camps have offers that guarantee you pass your PMP exam or you get a refund/get to take the class again for free) will cost around $2,000 to $3,000. (This is East Coast USA, so prices may vary a bit, but I went to a fairly respected business school for that $45K, and the PMP prep classes I've seen are all in that price range whether they be in New York, Philadelphia, or Atlanta)..
Then go for the MBA. That'll take longer (typically two years doing two night classes a week), but it's going to be a big asset. In the financial industry, having someone who knows the technical side and can talk the business side (and yes, you'll get that from an MBA, learning the jargon, understanding about accounting, GAPP, supply chain management, risk management, etc) is much more valuable.
With a PMP and MBA, plus years of development experience, you now have loads of options. Developer, project manager, business analyst, etc. Are you guaranteed to get a much higher salary? No. Is this a path that could significantly help your employment prospects (assuming you're reasonably competent and motivated)? I'd say so.
A command line is something that runs through a rudimentary lexical analysis, has a defined syntax, and parses according to rules.
That is a simple GUI with a text input control doing some quite nifty Natural Language Processing (NLP).
What a load of pompous and overblown drivel. You can't communicate freely over the Internet? Really? What, precisely, is stopping you from e-mailing your friend in Australia, or Germany, or Finland? What, exactly, made it so difficult and dark for you to risk your good health in communicating this sentiment in your post on a web site which is visible almost anywhere in the world?
If the copyright industry is allowed to hijack our system
What makes it your system? Who paid for it? Who developed ARPANET in the beginning? Who designed the protocols? You?
the answer should be to make a new Internet.
Go for it. That shouldn't take more than a few billion dollars and 20 years or so of dedicated infrastructure building. Yeah, I'm being snarky, but honestly, what a stupid unthinking comment.
The mere existence of thousands of songs available legally on sites for individual purchase or mass service subscription should demonstrate the silliness of your comment. What you mean is you want an Internet where you can freely exchange stuff you didn't pay for, and do so without fear of facing the consequences. You obviously disagree with copyright laws, but to say this totally devastates the entire global Internet concept is simply ludicrous.
By the time the Internet looks like cable TV, living life without an Internet connection will be very difficult.... blah blah blah
I think you are secretly enjoying an unspoken image of yourself as a freedom fighter in a post-apocalyptic "Terminator" or "Matrix" type scenario. Day-dream away, but don't let your grip on reality get too tenous, will you?
Not fire-happy, security conscious / part of the national infrastructure. They take things seriously. Considering how much vitriol gets directed on Slashdot towards companies with SCADA systems when things like Stuxnet rear their ugly heads, I'd think people would rather approve of that kind of policy.
If you work at a place like this, you know the policies and you know the penalties. If you're at all IT savvy and/or security aware, you know why this is done.
If they are not allowed to install anything not on the list, remoting to a PC outside of the company firewall is probably a firing waiting to happen.
Okay, starting again...
* Knowledge of accounting - yes, you need this no matter what industry you're in. You simply MUST understand capital versus expense, A/R and A/P, GAPP, ratios, asset depreciation, etc. Yes, you have a CFO - but you'd better know what they're talking about
* Knowledge of risk management.
* Extremely detailed and extremely broad knowledge of the industry you're in.
* Knowledge of the *market* of your industry
* Strong analytics
* Strong skills in prioritizing
* Ability to explain very technical aspects of your industry to the layman
* Strategic wisdom
* Be a motivator
* Know where to ask for answers if you don't have them
* Ability to keep your mouth shut when necessary (talking to politicians and lobbyists, for instance)
And I'm honestly convinced that if the typical Slashdotter or man-on-the-street who makes this kind of asinine comment were given free rein to replace a typical CEO they'd decimate the company's value within a month, if they didn't have half the top executives resign first.
What do you think it actually takes to run a company? Tell me - if it's that easy, this should be trivial. Here, I'll get you started:
* Knowledge of accounting - yes, you need this no matter what industry you're in. You simply MUST understand capital versus expense, A/R and A/P, GAPP, ratios, asset depreciation, etc. Yes, you have a CFO - but you'd better know what they're talking about
* Knowledge of risk management.
* Extremely detailed and extremely broad knowledge of the industry you're in.
The summary says there's no fix date available, and I know that's what it says in the Register article, but the second article, linking to the bank's site, has this to say:
The bank says the issue has now been fixed but it will take the weekend to clear the backlog which amounts to millions of euro in transactions.
I had the same question, and then saw this post further down, referencing this story from 2010 (which in turn points to another story discussing this as an ongoing strategy). Seems to have validity.
in order to avoid problems related to conflicts of libraries and services that are currently running with those on disk...
Installing updates while the session is running causes havoc with some apps like Firefox that have file resources that have not been locked (just try updating xulrunner when Firefox or Thunderbird is openâ¦)
Does it take into account how far you would have to drive, living arrangements, and other potential factors that would make someone turn down a good job offer?
I suspect that is probably covered by the word "legitimate" and the phrase "can be terminated" (as distinct from "will be terminated). Most people working in an unemployment office are not there for the money but because they legitimately want to help people.
I'd already read most of Asimov at 8, and lost my chemistry set privileges. :)
Not going to be a geek, is he?
I'd start with Niven's Ringworld; I remember reading that before puberty, lol.
Wait...you're old enough to have gone through puberty, and this is how you write? Ye gods.
Give it up, Google - If I can see (or hear) it, I already have a copy. I thought you understood that better than the Big Media morons.
Google understands that. They also understand that just because you can make a copy doesn't mean you are legally allowed to make a copy.
It makes him look guilty of the "not wearing a condom" charge. He should just go face the trial, especially since there's no way they can prove he's guilty (it's just her word vs. his).
Are you really naive enough to believe that's what ANY of this is about?
I guess I'm just as naive as cpu6502, because I believe this too. Honestly, my first thought on reading this was "urgh, that does NOT look good...guy looks like he's running for cover". Innocent or guilty, running off to South America has a strong appearance of someone trying to escape the law.
Do I think the U.S. government is completely ambivalent about the chap? Well, duh, of course they're likely to be somewhat annoyed. Do I think this entire shambles is some huge conspiracy? And that Sweden, of all places, is just going to roll over in acquiescence? Come on...
Assange is a creep. Looking at the whole "using force" bit, the "not using a condom when you knew full well the woman didn't want that" bit, the guy is a jerk and a creep. Yes, you might think he's a hero with Wikileaks. That doesn't mean he's not a creep. In some countries what he did would just get him branded a creep; in Sweden, they are a bit more adamant about protecting women's rights and they think he did something criminal.
If he doesn't like it and says the charges are without basis, well, man up and go back and fight the charges, and then bugger off to Ecuador or anywhere else you want to, in a fit of self-righteous pique. But the guy needs to take responsibility for his actions.
Personally I think half the reason he doesn't want to is because he's afraid he won't get yanked out to the United States. That would really damage his whole martyr/conspiracy victim image. Without that he's a seriously underwhelming and unprepossessing figure. He'll get prosecuted, he'll be freed, or he might serve some jail time, and in a few months or a few years he'll come out, not having been assassinated. But by then everyone will have forgotten about him.
Why do musicians think the last 80 years is the norm? The world is returning to the norm. They will get paid by audiences for live performances. Instead of a very few getting paid mega bucks, many will make a living.
Except that they won't. There was a recent article on /. which pointed to a post by the same David Lowery. In his post, he made a brief comment about the economics of touring. Suffice to say it's hardly a reliable way to make a living. If you're in a tour bus you'd better be playing to a sold out venue. If you're in a van, well, stinks to be you...
(And I've been there, done that - touring, for all but a few, is a desperate scramble of musicians playing for the love of it. Mostly, you lose money and are forever running to get back from your late night gig so that you can get to your paying job on time and struggle to stay awake on three hours of sleep...just so you can do it again.)
Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free
They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.
they are free to stop playing music any time, if they find there is not a market for their goods, and marketability is the only reason they play.
That has to be one of the most irrational and flat-out silliest comments I've read on here in a long time.
Do you know what makes people take up an instrument? It's the same drive that makes people study art, or write poems. Musicians love, love, love to make music. Musicians will make music even if no-one is there to hear them. Musicians have a passion for music. Musicians will dedicate years of their life to study and learn and practise for hours on end just so they can get better at their passion, their hobby.
Your comments are insulting.
This system has worked very well for fans and artists.
No, it's been superb for the middleman, the famous MAFIAA.
Didn't read the article, didja...Read paragraph six, the one that starts "'Itâ(TM)s OK not to pay for music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists anything.' In the vast majority of cases, this is not true." And paragraph seven, the one that starts "Secondly, by law the record label must pay songwriters (who may also be artists) something called a âoemechanical royaltyâ for sales of CDs or downloads of the song. This is paid regardless of whether a record is recouped or not."