since you are dealing online there are not any distribution fees but there are now credit card processing fees that must be paid...which is usually about $.20-$.30
Per transaction. I doubt many people buy one track at a time. I expect it's more like ten. Anyway, it depends on how the music is sold (monthly subscription, packages of tracks, by album, etc). The argument that banking fees take up 20 to 30% of online music sellers costs is just rubbish.
if songs were cheaper than a dollar no one would make a profit and itunes and all these other services could not exist.
You assume that people would spend less on music if tracks were cheaper, because they would be buying the same number of tracks for less money. I think they would spend more. Perhaps a lot more. I certanily would.
Your argument appears to be "people will pay it so it's the right price".
It's the only price. They have to pay it. I'm not sure your logic is so great either.
I'm still old fasioned, going to the record store to pick up CDs I like
Who's living in the past..? My argument doesn't apply to CDs. I appreciate that there are production and distribution costs involved which make those more expensive. Downloaded tracks should be cheaper. They're not. Why not?
You say $1 is the right price because that's what people will pay. Not me. I expect there are others like me.
Playstation: Tried to push its own standard and, er, made billions of dollars!
Furthermore, I don't think the minidisc is a failure. Nor the memory stick. They might not have dominated the market, but that doesn't mean they are failures.
When will the music companies realise that $1 per track is far too expensive, and their profits would probably increase if they acutally decreased the prices. And they'd have much happier customers as a result.
If tracks were 10c each, I would quite happily buy whole albums without worrying if I might not like them after a couple of plays. I buy up whole genres of music - if it cost me $50 to buy up all the best punk tracks of the 70's (or whatever), I would do that, despite it being a genre I never normally listen to.
However, I spend very little on music. I just don't like to get ripped off and I don't think $1 a track is justifiable when they have virtually zero distribution costs. And don't give me all that crap about how expensive it is to promote a record, or how the cost has to be high to pay for the flops. That's just all bullshit, especially with the near zero distribution and manufacture costs that the internet allows.
Large users of MS software now understand Microsoft's game. Go back five years or so and many didn't get it, or didn't care. But they've seen how lock-in allows MS to turn the screws on the when it comes to licencing.
It wouldn't suprise me if a lot of organisations decide to stop at Windows XP for as long as possible, rather than go to Longhorn, to avoid the tighter MS handcuffs of Longhorn.
Every thing is foreign at some point - even the pagan cults surrounding Stonehedge probably draw from older pagan cults who appeared and developed outside of Europe;)
No, paganism is quite clearly linked to northern climates - the seasons play a central role in the makeup of paganism and so the beliefs are very unlikely to have come from anywhere near the equator.
I think Christianity should be mentioned since its role in Europe's history was indeed crucial.
What, crucial in terms of causing loads of wars and strife?
its effect is just symbolic
"Just symbolic" does not mean it is a trivial issue - otherwise why do you think church leaders are making such a big fuss about including it?
It annoys me that some are insisting that the (future) EU constitution must stress Europe's Christian roots.
As sites like Stonehenge show, Europe doesn't have Christian roots. It's roots are pagan. Christianity is a foreign religion for Europe. I think we should insist on the constitution stressing Europe's pagan roots. Now that would be cool!
I put it to you that table-based designs are holding back the imaginations of web-designers.
How, exactly? None of those links show anything that couldn't be done with a table. And I expect some of them would be a lot quicker to do in a table.
I've nothing against CSS. In fact I like it. What I don't like is people that insist that because a site uses tables for its layout, it is somehow inferior. Tables are fine for many types of layout, and there is nothing "wrong" with using tables.
Also, a quick inquery - what exactly is "easier" to do with tables than CSS?
Let's say you have a two column layout, and the left-hand column contains different (and variable) paragraphs of text and the right hand column contains images, but you want the images to line up with the start of certain paragraphs. It's a fairly common thing to want to do.
Or say, you've got to columns of varying length, and you want to draw a line across the page below the longest column, whichever that is.
Re:CSS is crap for layout
on
Core CSS (2nd ed.)
·
· Score: 2, Informative
CSS is still often not a practical solution when creating a web site.
Just to be clear - I'm talking about layout. CSS is great for font colour/styles etc.
CSS is still often not a practical solution when creating a web site. Unfortunately there are many things that are just too difficult to do with CSS - and I mean relatively simple layout issues.
CSS fanboys love to mock web sites that "still" use tables for their layouts. However, when you try to practically design a layout just using CSS and without tables, it proves pratically impossible. Even hardcore CSSers get all excited when they do simple things like layout pages in columns.
Try and find a big commercial web site that doesn't use tables for their layout. You won't find one. Is it because the web designers that work for these big multinationals are dumbasses, as some proponents of CSS will tell you? No. It's because CSS is crap for layout. I wish it wasn't but it is.
you'd think that these sorts of losses would show up on annual reports though
I was told in one instance a big very well known bank lost several hundred million dollars in a single fraud - what must be one of the biggest bank robberies ever - and it never appeared in their annual report or anywhere else. The big banks really want to be see as safe - huge sums of money just disappearing into thin air doesn't look good!
When I worked in banking security my more experienced collegues told me that in the banking industry hundreds of millions of dollars go missing every year to organised criminals. You don't read about it in the papers because the banks don't want you to know about it.
And I'm not talking about petty credit card fraud, I mean sophisticated hacking of the international banking networks to create false transactions and electronically move the money to countries where it can be quickly and anonymously removed from the system in cash or gold.
I think everyone who sends a letter should run it through the Swedish Chef-izer first. That'll confused 'em:
Deer Curpurete-a Vhures,
I epulugeeze-a fur beeeng sooch a cheep besterd boot I joost cun't see-a myselff peyeeng 9 dullers fur a mufeee-a teecket, 5 dullers fur a pupcurn, und 4 dullers fur a pup.
I elsu epulugeeze-a fur nut beeeng veelling tu veeet 6-8 munths fur a mufeee-a tu be-a releesed tu feedeu und dfd es I em sooch a lezy fuul thet I du nut vunt tu spend zee teeme-a oor muney infulfed in velkeeng oor dreefing tu zee feedeu sture-a.
Must ooff ell... I em qooeete-a surry fur getteeng cooght, I prumeese-a yuoo thet thet veell nut heppee egeeen.
Bork bork bork!
Seencerely, A. Nunymuoos
P.S. I du nut egree-a veet oor sooppurt uny ooff vhet I joost vrute-a in thees hypuzeeteecel und mytheecel letter. Hurty flurty schnipp schnipp!
My impression is that the peer pressure is much stronger in the USA because of the competitive nature of the society. If you're not a "winner" you're a "loser". That mentality isn't so prevalent in the UK.
There are lots of clever people here on Slashdot. I have a question.
Has anyone here filed a patent for an invention (as an individual, not for their employers or a university) from which they now profit?
My belief is that the vast majority of patents are issued to, and profit, large companies. Or am I wrong, and there are hundreds of garage inventors out there profiting from their patents? Anyone?
John Q. Inventor invents a new improved foo, then Big Foo Corp. comes along and reverse engineers his foo, and begins manufacturing them on a scale poor old John can never compete with.
As opposed to, John Q Inventor invents a new improved foo, and finds that some aspect of his invention is already patented by Big Foo Corp...
Take a look at who files patents and how benefits from them. (Hint - it's not John).
The main argument behind patents is that without them, nobody would have motivation to come up with new ideas and no research and development would be done.
I say bullshit.
Patents are holding developments back. If you have an idea for a better mousetrap build it and sell it. If someone else copies your idea then you'll just have to improve it, or find a way to make it cheaper than them, or whatever. You'll have to act quicker to make money on your ideas, and innovate faster. I think that's a good thing.
Or just a proof that given time, bandwidth usage will fill to whatever pipe it's given no matter how fat a pipe you supply.
There will be a limit to how much is required. In the early days of mains electricity, people were very concious of how much electricity they had available in their homes. Now we don't worry when we plug another TV in because we've generally got more than enough. Same will happen with bandwidth. It's just we're a long way from having more than enough yet.
It would be very interesting if the students managed to completely congest "internet2". I'm serious - if they do it then it demonstrates that we would still need more bandwidth.
Slashdot Mirror
since you are dealing online there are not any distribution fees but there are now credit card processing fees that must be paid...which is usually about $.20-$.30
Per transaction. I doubt many people buy one track at a time. I expect it's more like ten. Anyway, it depends on how the music is sold (monthly subscription, packages of tracks, by album, etc). The argument that banking fees take up 20 to 30% of online music sellers costs is just rubbish.
if songs were cheaper than a dollar no one would make a profit and itunes and all these other services could not exist.
You assume that people would spend less on music if tracks were cheaper, because they would be buying the same number of tracks for less money. I think they would spend more. Perhaps a lot more. I certanily would.
Your logic is flawed.
Your argument appears to be "people will pay it so it's the right price".
It's the only price. They have to pay it. I'm not sure your logic is so great either.
I'm still old fasioned, going to the record store to pick up CDs I like
Who's living in the past..? My argument doesn't apply to CDs. I appreciate that there are production and distribution costs involved which make those more expensive. Downloaded tracks should be cheaper. They're not. Why not?
You say $1 is the right price because that's what people will pay. Not me. I expect there are others like me.
Playstation: Tried to push its own standard and, er, made billions of dollars!
Furthermore, I don't think the minidisc is a failure. Nor the memory stick. They might not have dominated the market, but that doesn't mean they are failures.
Should read "I would buy up whole genres of music..."
When will the music companies realise that $1 per track is far too expensive, and their profits would probably increase if they acutally decreased the prices. And they'd have much happier customers as a result.
If tracks were 10c each, I would quite happily buy whole albums without worrying if I might not like them after a couple of plays. I buy up whole genres of music - if it cost me $50 to buy up all the best punk tracks of the 70's (or whatever), I would do that, despite it being a genre I never normally listen to.
However, I spend very little on music. I just don't like to get ripped off and I don't think $1 a track is justifiable when they have virtually zero distribution costs. And don't give me all that crap about how expensive it is to promote a record, or how the cost has to be high to pay for the flops. That's just all bullshit, especially with the near zero distribution and manufacture costs that the internet allows.
This approach could backfire on Microsoft.
Large users of MS software now understand Microsoft's game. Go back five years or so and many didn't get it, or didn't care. But they've seen how lock-in allows MS to turn the screws on the when it comes to licencing.
It wouldn't suprise me if a lot of organisations decide to stop at Windows XP for as long as possible, rather than go to Longhorn, to avoid the tighter MS handcuffs of Longhorn.
Is there any point in getting one of these cards for any reason other than playing the latest games?
Every thing is foreign at some point - even the pagan cults surrounding Stonehedge probably draw from older pagan cults who appeared and developed outside of Europe ;)
No, paganism is quite clearly linked to northern climates - the seasons play a central role in the makeup of paganism and so the beliefs are very unlikely to have come from anywhere near the equator.
I think Christianity should be mentioned since its role in Europe's history was indeed crucial.
What, crucial in terms of causing loads of wars and strife?
its effect is just symbolic
"Just symbolic" does not mean it is a trivial issue - otherwise why do you think church leaders are making such a big fuss about including it?
It annoys me that some are insisting that the (future) EU constitution must stress Europe's Christian roots.
As sites like Stonehenge show, Europe doesn't have Christian roots. It's roots are pagan. Christianity is a foreign religion for Europe. I think we should insist on the constitution stressing Europe's pagan roots. Now that would be cool!
I put it to you that table-based designs are holding back the imaginations of web-designers.
How, exactly? None of those links show anything that couldn't be done with a table. And I expect some of them would be a lot quicker to do in a table.
I've nothing against CSS. In fact I like it. What I don't like is people that insist that because a site uses tables for its layout, it is somehow inferior. Tables are fine for many types of layout, and there is nothing "wrong" with using tables.
Also, a quick inquery - what exactly is "easier" to do with tables than CSS?
Let's say you have a two column layout, and the left-hand column contains different (and variable) paragraphs of text and the right hand column contains images, but you want the images to line up with the start of certain paragraphs. It's a fairly common thing to want to do.
Or say, you've got to columns of varying length, and you want to draw a line across the page below the longest column, whichever that is.
CSS is still often not a practical solution when creating a web site.
Just to be clear - I'm talking about layout. CSS is great for font colour/styles etc.
CSS is still often not a practical solution when creating a web site. Unfortunately there are many things that are just too difficult to do with CSS - and I mean relatively simple layout issues.
CSS fanboys love to mock web sites that "still" use tables for their layouts. However, when you try to practically design a layout just using CSS and without tables, it proves pratically impossible. Even hardcore CSSers get all excited when they do simple things like layout pages in columns.
Try and find a big commercial web site that doesn't use tables for their layout. You won't find one. Is it because the web designers that work for these big multinationals are dumbasses, as some proponents of CSS will tell you? No. It's because CSS is crap for layout. I wish it wasn't but it is.
you'd think that these sorts of losses would show up on annual reports though
I was told in one instance a big very well known bank lost several hundred million dollars in a single fraud - what must be one of the biggest bank robberies ever - and it never appeared in their annual report or anywhere else. The big banks really want to be see as safe - huge sums of money just disappearing into thin air doesn't look good!
I disagree. They just fly under the radar.
Very true.
When I worked in banking security my more experienced collegues told me that in the banking industry hundreds of millions of dollars go missing every year to organised criminals. You don't read about it in the papers because the banks don't want you to know about it.
And I'm not talking about petty credit card fraud, I mean sophisticated hacking of the international banking networks to create false transactions and electronically move the money to countries where it can be quickly and anonymously removed from the system in cash or gold.
I think everyone who sends a letter should run it through the Swedish Chef-izer first. That'll confused 'em:
Deer Curpurete-a Vhures,
I epulugeeze-a fur beeeng sooch a cheep besterd boot I joost cun't see-a myselff peyeeng 9 dullers fur a mufeee-a teecket, 5 dullers fur a pupcurn, und 4 dullers fur a pup.
I elsu epulugeeze-a fur nut beeeng veelling tu veeet 6-8 munths fur a mufeee-a tu be-a releesed tu feedeu und dfd es I em sooch a lezy fuul thet I du nut vunt tu spend zee teeme-a oor muney infulfed in velkeeng oor dreefing tu zee feedeu sture-a.
Must ooff ell... I em qooeete-a surry fur getteeng cooght, I prumeese-a yuoo thet thet veell nut heppee egeeen.
Bork bork bork!
Seencerely,
A. Nunymuoos
P.S. I du nut egree-a veet oor sooppurt uny ooff vhet I joost vrute-a in thees hypuzeeteecel und mytheecel letter. Hurty flurty schnipp schnipp!
I think that by the middle of the next century
In 150 years? Gosh, that's a long term projection.
this power struggle will be the cause of the 3rd world war
Great, no third world war in my lifetime! Yipee!
Maybe it's a cutural thing?
My impression is that the peer pressure is much stronger in the USA because of the competitive nature of the society. If you're not a "winner" you're a "loser". That mentality isn't so prevalent in the UK.
There are lots of clever people here on Slashdot. I have a question.
Has anyone here filed a patent for an invention (as an individual, not for their employers or a university) from which they now profit?
My belief is that the vast majority of patents are issued to, and profit, large companies. Or am I wrong, and there are hundreds of garage inventors out there profiting from their patents? Anyone?
John Q. Inventor invents a new improved foo, then Big Foo Corp. comes along and reverse engineers his foo, and begins manufacturing them on a scale poor old John can never compete with.
As opposed to, John Q Inventor invents a new improved foo, and finds that some aspect of his invention is already patented by Big Foo Corp...
Take a look at who files patents and how benefits from them. (Hint - it's not John).
The main argument behind patents is that without them, nobody would have motivation to come up with new ideas and no research and development would be done.
I say bullshit.
Patents are holding developments back. If you have an idea for a better mousetrap build it and sell it. If someone else copies your idea then you'll just have to improve it, or find a way to make it cheaper than them, or whatever. You'll have to act quicker to make money on your ideas, and innovate faster. I think that's a good thing.
The BBC is one of the greatest things about the UK.
Or just a proof that given time, bandwidth usage will fill to whatever pipe it's given no matter how fat a pipe you supply.
There will be a limit to how much is required. In the early days of mains electricity, people were very concious of how much electricity they had available in their homes. Now we don't worry when we plug another TV in because we've generally got more than enough. Same will happen with bandwidth. It's just we're a long way from having more than enough yet.
It would be very interesting if the students managed to completely congest "internet2". I'm serious - if they do it then it demonstrates that we would still need more bandwidth.
Thanks. That's very helpful.