no, i don't subscribe to magazines and i refuse to pay for television. i admit, i'm odd that way.
from a business point of view, perhaps salon did the right thing by moving news coverage into the premium slot right when news was a hot ticket, but from a moral standpoint i think they were dead wrong. information should be free, especially when that information is news coverage of events that could change every aspect of the world we live in. a better way to go would be that of public radio... solicit donations but don't require them, and don't shut people off from important information if they choose not to or simply cannot pay.
salon has always done a great job at covering things that most mainstream news services, and entertainment sources, tend to ignore. however, i'm still not convinced that paying for content is the way to go.... it reminds me of my experience subscribing to my favorite magazine and having it go through a complete overhaul and coming out at the other end as something completely different. there are no guarantees that the same thing couldn't happen to salon.
my biggest point of annoyance with the site was when they took their news coverage out of the free portion of the site. they chose a moment when everyone around the world needed good, accurate reporting of the developing events after 9/11, and exploited that moment to expand their subscriber base. that should have been the moment when they kept everything open and freely available, perhaps soliciting for donations to keep the quality of coverage up. instead, they chose the greedy road and shut a lot of people off from a good information source.
It seems that whenever a new technology is implemented, there are automatically hackers and every day people finding ways to get around security protocols. For example, in my area digital cable was considered completely secure, that there was no way to pirate free access. Then, of course, people figured out the loopholes and there are illegal boxes all over town.
Do you think the music industry will ever perfect security measures on cds and other media, or will there always be some flaw to be exploited? Will research such as yours perhaps lead to impregnable copy protection, and is that a good or bad thing in your opinion?
so there's the big picture, then there's the smaller picture, which is how these "big brother" actions affect every day life right now. it's already starting.
the scariest thing to me right now, with kids in public schools, is all the enforced patriotism in times of conflict/war/whatever you want to call it. it happened during the gulf war, when school children were tying yellow ribbons around trees in my home town, and it's happening even more so now. i'm sure you all have heard about the madison, wisconsin school board's decision to try and buck state law requiring school children to recite the pledge of allegiance or sing the national anthem daily, but here's an account of the outcome of the whole thing, and here's a pretty representative editorial following the fireworks.
personally, it is terrifying the amount of blind patriotic and religious fervor i'm seeing in the aftermath of september 11, and most of it fully sanctioned by the government that is supposed to protect our freedoms of speech and religion. from bush's declaration of a "national day of prayer" where we saw every important political figure crammed into the national cathedral, to the billboards plastered across the country emblazoned with "god bless america", to all of the late night talk show hosts making cheap jabs at arabs and muslims, to every car, house, yard, and building in my city (milwaukee) sporting tattered american flags, it's starting to look like fanaticism.
fanaticism is dangerous. that's what started this whole mess in the first place, and our own fanaticism is what's going to make it worse.
when you have to use aol's software to log in to aol, you have to look at the ads and crap that they want you to look at. aol is just one large, happy advertisement. with the possibility of being able to log into your aol account without having to use their software, they'll lose some of that advertising exposure, which means that yes, they will have kittens over this. whee.
it is pretty damn near impossible to buy a computer in a mainstream store that isn't loaded with unneccesary and clunky microsoft products
once you get said machine home and try to make any modifications to what is loaded on it or try to move anything around, the computer then crashes on an even more regular basis.
if you are one of those weirdos who likes netscape, you suffer slow operation of the program, can't look at all websites because many designers are short-sighted enough to only test them in i.e., and generally have to put up with a lot of crap just to use a program that isn't microsoft in a microsoft environment.
if you are barely computer literate and/or just want a computer to play around with, do homework on, etc, you are at the mercy of windows just because other operating systems seem daunting and microsoft is the most accessible system everywhere.
so, yes, microsoft hurts the consumer by eliminating choice, by dictating to the consumer what they can and cannot use on the consumer's computer, and by driving other companies out of business, and thereby eliminating jobs and healthy competition which would serve to control prices.
I just have to say that the writing in all of the Harry Potter books is not worth such an award. Putting J.K. Rowling up there with such wordsmiths as Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, and more demeans the value of the award. Ellison has commented many times that he felt honored to receive the Hugo, but I wonder what he will feel now? The Harry Potter stories are very fun, great for kids, but to be frank are very generic and have stolen elements from every other good work of fantasy ever written. They are formula novels at the very least, and the only extraordinary thing about them is their marketing scheme.
the footage craig kilbourn plays over and over of the bird flying through the fastball and exploding... anyone see that? cool in a gross-out sort of way.
my alma mater, marquette university, is in the process of building a brand new library. the catch: the new library will not contain any books. the building is being built to house computer terminals and research workspaces that utilize digital formats of original sources. they've been putting as much material as possible into searchable, indexable, easily accessed formats. the point of the whole thing is to increase the quality of work put out by students by making the resources much easier to use: no more waiting for grad student x to return source z for the paper that's due tomorrow (i ran into that so often it wasn't funny).
my question is, aren't we then dumbing down the purpose of research in the first place, if we make it that easy to access the materials that one used to have to really dig for? how many students are going to take the format for its intended purpose rather than finding shortcuts and lazy ways of turning out the same quality of work in less time? how many professors are going to then require even more work for a course, since the hours spent in the library are no longer spent looking through volumes and volumes of dusty manuscripts without indexes?
for some of you, i'll state the obvious, that most of those questions are asked tongue-in-cheek....
and as far as ebooks for pleasure reading, forget it. research is one thing, curling up on the couch with a good hard-cover novel is quite another.
the only difference the net has made in the natural posturing and arrogance of kids in general is that they can now pose pretty successfully as adults through the relative anonymity of the web. dangerous? sometimes, though the game's up once they meet someone face to face. most of them are just playing, and it's the adults that end up taking net "culture" more seriously than kids do.
as a musician, recorded music is necessary to me for research, sorry to burst your sarcastic, assumptive bubble. since cd is the accepted mainstream medium, i don't really have a choice at the moment. believe it or not, there are those of us out there who don't consume mindlessly and needlessly.
entirely possible.... folkweb is a good start, but it would be cool to see every kind of music available and searchable. plus the added benefit of such a site would be that many artists wouldn't have to try to "make it big" with the big record companies since their distribution problem would be mostly solved.
then comes the question of who runs it, what qualifications (if any?) bands need to submit their stuff, what kind of advertising is allowed on the site, who pays for it, how do we make sure the money goes where it's supposed to, etc. all the beaurocratic nonsense would have to be sorted out someway.
multitasking can be done efficiently... just look at pres. clinton. there was an instance where he was recieving a briefing, watching television, looking over a proposal and doing a crossword puzzle (in pen) all at the same time... the person giving the briefing asked him rather peevishly if he was paying attention and he repeated the last four paragraphs verbatim.
I am sick and tired of constant government prosecution of businesses because the DOJ is jealous because they are successful.
how does that work? what does the doj care if a business is successful? how is the doj jealous?
what is supposed to be happening is that the doj regulates business to protect the hapless consumer, i.e. taxpayer. however, what has happened is that businesses become more powerful taxpayers and lobbyists and campaign contributors than the hapless consumer, and the government in general is more influenced by big money than the ideals by which it was founded.
we're screwed both ways, by the government and by the corperations. personally, i'm happy to see the government looking at more and more businesses to make sure they're not completely taking advantage of the general public, though i wish the government were more efficient and timely about it.
another point, what good did it do to "free us from the ibm monopoly" when gates went ahead and created his own? who's going to free us from the microsoft monopoly?
That puts recording in the range of a home business, which could provide affordable recording services to local bands...
exactly. some of our neighbors actually have a small studio in their apartment, and don't seem to have any other jobs. they do mostly techno type stuff, which explains why our floor would thump rhythmically for hours at a time, but they were all about new, local artists and getting them on cd cheap.
it used to be unusual that a smaller local band would have a cd or even a tape for sale, but now they all seem to. the cool thing about the type of system where the artist is responsible for distribution is that it gets more people out to hear live music, then take the cd home if they like it. much better than the difficulty involved in trying to find a new band to listen to from the 30 second samples most chain stores let you listen to, or from liking a song on the radio and finding out the rest of the disc sucks. but, of course, the record industry is all about mass quantities and not so much about the music itself.
if you think being a consumer sucks right now (and it does...) try being a struggling musician. i have a good friend who is a fantastic singer/songwriter on a smaller label who loves hearing that fans got his music free off the internet, because it means more people are listening to him... and when they come to a concert they usually buy the cd from him directly. he makes more money on the road than he does from cd sales, and that's the way he likes it. now with the demolition of napster, which while having its faults was the easiest service for joe schmoe to use, not as many new people have good access to lesser known artists.
what gets me is that the record labels have a front of trying to protect their artists (read: their profit margin) while they're actually screwing those just starting out. they need to look at mp3s like the radio... exposure! however, since consumers are controlling exactly what they're exposed to with mp3s, unlike radio, they don't like it.
there are cool kidney bean shaped bags that are designed to be worn crossing one shoulder to the opposite hip that are very stylish, and come in different sizes. i've also seen some more backpack type things that you wear the same way that have a large pocket right where it crosses your chest for things like keys and id, etc. otherwise, the ever popular cargo pants or beltclips on everything.
and i just have to say that the "scottE" website is the slowest i have ever loaded in my life.... didn't even wait to see the whole picture.
so now we wonder where our politicians are who spoke so strongly about improving the nations' schools, teaching all children the fundamental skills they need to survive in the real world.... oh, that's right, whose money bought that election?
and, of course, gates can't be the bigger man and take it upon himself to vastly improve the schools by offering the software, and even convince other companies to throw in the hardware for free, even though that will even make him more money in the future. think about it, if he gets all the schools wired into the ms universe for free, he would automatically be the world's greatest philanthropist and he would effectively create whole generations of junkies that will then buy and buy and buy once they can no longer get it for free. he's done this somewhat already, but at the price of his company's image: most people detest ms but have to use it anyway.
sheesh. some people just don't know when they have enough money.
the scary thing about this machine is that it takes the fundamental enjoyment from reading a book. when i open a new book, first i read the outside cover, admire the art, read the author's bio, basically prepare myself for breaking into something new. if i love the book, i go out and find the best hardcover copy i can, so that i can experience the sheer enjoyment of reading great prose in the form meant for it.
there is just something about the physical medium of a book that demands quality. think of the painstaking craftsmanship that used to go into making each and every book, from laboriously copied and illustrated scrolls to leather-bound, gilt edged classics. granted, we don't see a whole lot of that in modern-day books, but the quality is still much better than a cheaply bound print-out.
i can really only see a justifiable use for this technology in manuals or textbooks that don't need to be preserved as well as the books that are bought to be enjoyed for what they are.... things that have to be read, rather than things we want to read.
the thing about internet ads is that most experienced, or even not so experienced, surfers are so accustomed to every site having annoying ad banners that we don't even see them anymore. i would hate to see how intrusive the ads would have to be before the vast majority of users would be willing to pay to get rid of them. it would have to be pop-ups that stay on top of the browser rather than just minimizing immediately... and that sort of thing would probably piss people off enough to make them stop going to the site completely rather than pay to make it go away.
personally, i would pay for ad-free access to very few sites (like slashdot, or my bank's online access), because the majority of sites that i visit have minimal advertising already and it doesn't bug me. the sites that have ads that bug me, i don't go to. most of the crap content out there isn't worth jumping through all the hoops in the first place, so why would it be worth paying for the hoops to be eliminated?
Slashdot Mirror
from a business point of view, perhaps salon did the right thing by moving news coverage into the premium slot right when news was a hot ticket, but from a moral standpoint i think they were dead wrong. information should be free, especially when that information is news coverage of events that could change every aspect of the world we live in. a better way to go would be that of public radio... solicit donations but don't require them, and don't shut people off from important information if they choose not to or simply cannot pay.
my biggest point of annoyance with the site was when they took their news coverage out of the free portion of the site. they chose a moment when everyone around the world needed good, accurate reporting of the developing events after 9/11, and exploited that moment to expand their subscriber base. that should have been the moment when they kept everything open and freely available, perhaps soliciting for donations to keep the quality of coverage up. instead, they chose the greedy road and shut a lot of people off from a good information source.
Do you think the music industry will ever perfect security measures on cds and other media, or will there always be some flaw to be exploited? Will research such as yours perhaps lead to impregnable copy protection, and is that a good or bad thing in your opinion?
the scariest thing to me right now, with kids in public schools, is all the enforced patriotism in times of conflict/war/whatever you want to call it. it happened during the gulf war, when school children were tying yellow ribbons around trees in my home town, and it's happening even more so now. i'm sure you all have heard about the madison, wisconsin school board's decision to try and buck state law requiring school children to recite the pledge of allegiance or sing the national anthem daily, but here's an account of the outcome of the whole thing, and here's a pretty representative editorial following the fireworks.
personally, it is terrifying the amount of blind patriotic and religious fervor i'm seeing in the aftermath of september 11, and most of it fully sanctioned by the government that is supposed to protect our freedoms of speech and religion. from bush's declaration of a "national day of prayer" where we saw every important political figure crammed into the national cathedral, to the billboards plastered across the country emblazoned with "god bless america", to all of the late night talk show hosts making cheap jabs at arabs and muslims, to every car, house, yard, and building in my city (milwaukee) sporting tattered american flags, it's starting to look like fanaticism.
fanaticism is dangerous. that's what started this whole mess in the first place, and our own fanaticism is what's going to make it worse.
when you have to use aol's software to log in to aol, you have to look at the ads and crap that they want you to look at. aol is just one large, happy advertisement. with the possibility of being able to log into your aol account without having to use their software, they'll lose some of that advertising exposure, which means that yes, they will have kittens over this. whee.
here's why:
it is pretty damn near impossible to buy a computer in a mainstream store that isn't loaded with unneccesary and clunky microsoft products
once you get said machine home and try to make any modifications to what is loaded on it or try to move anything around, the computer then crashes on an even more regular basis.
if you are one of those weirdos who likes netscape, you suffer slow operation of the program, can't look at all websites because many designers are short-sighted enough to only test them in i.e., and generally have to put up with a lot of crap just to use a program that isn't microsoft in a microsoft environment.
if you are barely computer literate and/or just want a computer to play around with, do homework on, etc, you are at the mercy of windows just because other operating systems seem daunting and microsoft is the most accessible system everywhere.
so, yes, microsoft hurts the consumer by eliminating choice, by dictating to the consumer what they can and cannot use on the consumer's computer, and by driving other companies out of business, and thereby eliminating jobs and healthy competition which would serve to control prices.
in short, bill gates is the devil. ;-)
I just have to say that the writing in all of the Harry Potter books is not worth such an award. Putting J.K. Rowling up there with such wordsmiths as Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, and more demeans the value of the award. Ellison has commented many times that he felt honored to receive the Hugo, but I wonder what he will feel now? The Harry Potter stories are very fun, great for kids, but to be frank are very generic and have stolen elements from every other good work of fantasy ever written. They are formula novels at the very least, and the only extraordinary thing about them is their marketing scheme.
the footage craig kilbourn plays over and over of the bird flying through the fastball and exploding... anyone see that? cool in a gross-out sort of way.
my question is, aren't we then dumbing down the purpose of research in the first place, if we make it that easy to access the materials that one used to have to really dig for? how many students are going to take the format for its intended purpose rather than finding shortcuts and lazy ways of turning out the same quality of work in less time? how many professors are going to then require even more work for a course, since the hours spent in the library are no longer spent looking through volumes and volumes of dusty manuscripts without indexes?
for some of you, i'll state the obvious, that most of those questions are asked tongue-in-cheek....
and as far as ebooks for pleasure reading, forget it. research is one thing, curling up on the couch with a good hard-cover novel is quite another.
the only difference the net has made in the natural posturing and arrogance of kids in general is that they can now pose pretty successfully as adults through the relative anonymity of the web. dangerous? sometimes, though the game's up once they meet someone face to face. most of them are just playing, and it's the adults that end up taking net "culture" more seriously than kids do.
as a musician, recorded music is necessary to me for research, sorry to burst your sarcastic, assumptive bubble. since cd is the accepted mainstream medium, i don't really have a choice at the moment. believe it or not, there are those of us out there who don't consume mindlessly and needlessly.
then comes the question of who runs it, what qualifications (if any?) bands need to submit their stuff, what kind of advertising is allowed on the site, who pays for it, how do we make sure the money goes where it's supposed to, etc. all the beaurocratic nonsense would have to be sorted out someway.
wish i could do that.
what is supposed to be happening is that the doj regulates business to protect the hapless consumer, i.e. taxpayer. however, what has happened is that businesses become more powerful taxpayers and lobbyists and campaign contributors than the hapless consumer, and the government in general is more influenced by big money than the ideals by which it was founded.
we're screwed both ways, by the government and by the corperations. personally, i'm happy to see the government looking at more and more businesses to make sure they're not completely taking advantage of the general public, though i wish the government were more efficient and timely about it.
another point, what good did it do to "free us from the ibm monopoly" when gates went ahead and created his own? who's going to free us from the microsoft monopoly?
exactly. some of our neighbors actually have a small studio in their apartment, and don't seem to have any other jobs. they do mostly techno type stuff, which explains why our floor would thump rhythmically for hours at a time, but they were all about new, local artists and getting them on cd cheap.
it used to be unusual that a smaller local band would have a cd or even a tape for sale, but now they all seem to. the cool thing about the type of system where the artist is responsible for distribution is that it gets more people out to hear live music, then take the cd home if they like it. much better than the difficulty involved in trying to find a new band to listen to from the 30 second samples most chain stores let you listen to, or from liking a song on the radio and finding out the rest of the disc sucks. but, of course, the record industry is all about mass quantities and not so much about the music itself.
what gets me is that the record labels have a front of trying to protect their artists (read: their profit margin) while they're actually screwing those just starting out. they need to look at mp3s like the radio... exposure! however, since consumers are controlling exactly what they're exposed to with mp3s, unlike radio, they don't like it.
and i just have to say that the "scottE" website is the slowest i have ever loaded in my life.... didn't even wait to see the whole picture.
and, of course, gates can't be the bigger man and take it upon himself to vastly improve the schools by offering the software, and even convince other companies to throw in the hardware for free, even though that will even make him more money in the future. think about it, if he gets all the schools wired into the ms universe for free, he would automatically be the world's greatest philanthropist and he would effectively create whole generations of junkies that will then buy and buy and buy once they can no longer get it for free. he's done this somewhat already, but at the price of his company's image: most people detest ms but have to use it anyway.
sheesh. some people just don't know when they have enough money.
there is just something about the physical medium of a book that demands quality. think of the painstaking craftsmanship that used to go into making each and every book, from laboriously copied and illustrated scrolls to leather-bound, gilt edged classics. granted, we don't see a whole lot of that in modern-day books, but the quality is still much better than a cheaply bound print-out.
i can really only see a justifiable use for this technology in manuals or textbooks that don't need to be preserved as well as the books that are bought to be enjoyed for what they are.... things that have to be read, rather than things we want to read.
personally, i would pay for ad-free access to very few sites (like slashdot, or my bank's online access), because the majority of sites that i visit have minimal advertising already and it doesn't bug me. the sites that have ads that bug me, i don't go to. most of the crap content out there isn't worth jumping through all the hoops in the first place, so why would it be worth paying for the hoops to be eliminated?