Hey, quit bitching and open your mind a little bit.
Let's say your favorite band just went on tour and as part of a promotion they decided to post a few songs and videos "bootlegged" from each concert.
Now, it might get kinda anoying to load up their page every couple of days and click on each link to download the media. However, they could post an RSS feed with BitTorrent links that you subscribe to just once. Everytime a new bootleg goes online, the RSS feed gets updated, and the content gets downloaded to your computer automatically.
Where would we be if everytime the Internet was mentioned 50 years ago, people ranted and raved about how the postal service already solved the problem of distributing content?
This is seriously cool stuff, you are just too closed minded to realise it.
As opposed to Unix, where the design is so open and extensible that anything is possible, yet there is no coherent interface and none of the non-server applications work or look as good as they do on Macintosh or Windows.
I will rephrase your argument as I interpret it:
In UNIX, there is no coherent interface and the general-use applications don't work as good as the do on Mac OS X.
Now, the argument stated given that Mac OS X is UNIX:
In UNIX, there is no coherent interface and the general-use applications don't work as good as the do on Mac OS X, which is UNIX.
Now, do you see how the argument falls apart and the point fails to stand? I hope so, but even if you don't I won't resort to petty name-calling and cursing.
Jared, who will drop karma when a point needs to be made.
As opposed to Unix, where the design is so open and extensible that anything is possible, yet there is no coherent interface and none of the non-server applications work or look as good as they do on Macintosh or Windows.
Well, you seem to forget that Macintosh, with OS X, is UNIX based, thus destroying your whole argument.
I think the author was coming more from a technical underpinnings standpoint where UI isn't (much of) a consideration. Attention to detail on the interface takes more of an artists' touch, rather than an engineers' touch. Linux is more than capable of having a consistent, good-looking interface. The open source world needs to attract more artistically expressive people however. Until this happens, Linux on the desktop won't take off.
Incidentally, I think the majority of the apps on Windows look equally as shitty as their Linux counterparts. The only OS that consistently impresses me on the interface issue is Mac OS X.
The cash credits will cost the company at least $15 million, and allowing for the fact that some of the coupons will be unused the PPV movie offer should cost the company about $10-15 million. Ironic, because $25-30 million is about the total price increase Viacom was seeking.
You might pay a big price to win a battle if it wins you the entire war. If EchoStar had given in to Viacom, it would have showed a weakness that Viacom would then try to exploit every time their contract came under negotiation, not to mention all the other content providers that would try the same underhanded tactics.
Plus, the way things turned out, customers get a break in pricing for a minor inconvenience. The rates as a whole should stay flat. If Viacom succeeded, rates would likely go up. If that happened, EchoStar would likely lose a number of subscribers to other, cheaper alternatives. The money they paid was paid in order to keep and gain subscribers, rather than lose them.
I agree with you. I wasn't trying to insinuate the opposite case.
For the records, I love Apple and the products they produce. I have a Power Mac, PowerBook, iPod, and a ton of software. I use Mac OS X on my desktop systems, and Linux (x86) for my servers. I do not use any Microsoft products, though I am considering buying Office for the Mac.
I'm disappointed when products such as this pPod come out and tarnish the well-deserved reputation that Apple has earned.
As for the first paragraph, if Apple significantly changes their licensing terms and/or the quality of the downloads for the worse, I will reconsider my position. Right now, I "own" the bits on my hard drive that I have downloaded from iTMS and nothing can change that fact.
Now, thanks to the hard work of the people at VideoLAN, I can play back my iTMS purchases on any computer I own without the need to get a "license" from Apple. I can also transcode to any format without additional loss given that said format transcoded to is lossless.
So, given that I have the bits in my posession, I consider myself the owner of what I have purchased. Nothing can take this away from me. If Apple choses to offer for sale their product in a different, more negative, manner, I will reevaluate.
Your point about resale is valid. However, it is a non-issue to me. If I degenerate financially to a point where my iTMS purchased music would become a significant proportion of my net worth, then I would have far more serious problems to deal with. If the issue bothers you, however, then by all means do not spend your money there.
What you get from iTMS is a long license to play that music on a narrow range of hardware device.
I don't consider redbook compliant CD players to be a "narrow range of hardware device."
You are buying a subscription, only instead of a monthly fee you pay a one-off license fee.
A "one-off license fee" sure as shit doesn't sound like a subscription to me. I'd suggest you put down the crack pipe.
Don't believe me? Try reselling what you have "bought".
I have an assload of music sitting in shoeboxes because it isn't worth my time to try and resell it. It'll find its way to a dumpster before a used CD store. Consequently, I'm not to worried about reselling my downloads.
Well, think of it more like cable TV or satellite radio. You never owned anything to begin with, it was just broadcast to you. So, if you don't pay your cable bill, the company shuts off your television. You haven't lost anything. When you decide to start paying again, you have access to everything you had before.
Want to switch music services, no problem. But, you might have to deal with a different selection of artists. Like a song and want to listen to it whenever? Buy it.
For the record, I support Apple and iTMS. I do wish they would release an Internet radio fee based service with a wealth of selection and the ability to set up "personalized" on-demand stations. I'd pay for this. Icing on the cake would be to partner with Sirius so I could have access anywhere with one bill. Integration into the store would allow me to purchase my favorite music while being allowed to discover new stuff all the time.
I mind it for the simple fact that a good portion on the time the updates never arrive.
If a product doesn't ship with the advertised features, its a good chance that the company simply didn't have the money to put them in their in the correct time frame. Who's to say, then, that the company has the money to implement them at all.
I'm sure the hope is that they can release to generate some revenue. However, when the user gets their hands on a shoddy product, it doesn't take long for negative reviews to crop up on the net. This means that the company in question will likely sell less of the shoddy product than they hoped to, decreasing the revenue brought in ergo increasing the likelyhood that they will go out of business. The only people getting screwed in this scenario is the consumer who bought the product.
A IBM/Sun combination could make for some interesting happenings. I think most people would agree that Sun has made some costly mistakes, and it is bringing them down. Conversely, IBM has made the opposite decisions, which is starting to really pay off for them.
IBM is quite interesting to watch. They've largely thrown their weight behind Linux. The also holding the high cards at the Java table. They are trying to leverage their chip advantage to get Sun to meet their demands. Iterestingly, they also are a big investor in the whole Novell/SuSE/Ximian deal, the people leading the.NET and Mono charge. They've also got numerous other OSs, chips, and other products within the company.
My take on the situation: Linux is at the point where it needs to rally behind a driving force. I'm all for choice and all, but you don't beat Microsoft by constant infighting and fractured ideas. As the old saying goes, united we stand but divided we fall.
I think IBM should outright buy Sun. Sun is failing and would be a cheap aquisition. Waiting any longer will just give Microsoft a bigger advantage as the.NET platform gains steam. The primary reason for the aquisition would be for Java, but a lot of other interesting products would come along. I've always thought IBM's product line needed some consolidation. For instance, Sun would bring in Solaris and IBM should move to a dual OSs strategy: Linux and a proprietary, high-end UNIX that combines Solaris/AIX/etc. There is room for both those products. A lot of work would have to be done on integrating and perhaps open sourcing various middleware and application servers.
On the development side, I believe it would be tremendous if IBM (with Sun and Ximian under their wings) would step up and iron out both Java and Mono, along with providing a tight IDE with Eclipse. This could make Linux the development platform of choice.
Of course, development isn't worth much if you don't have an installed base to deploy to. With Novell/SuSE/Ximian, IBM could generate a nice, consistent, integrated desktop environment and provide the corporate sway in convincing businesses to switch from Microsoft.
In short, I think IBM has the most incentive to see Microsoft fall from dominance. They've shown their willingness to get behind an open platform. The community should show their support and get behind IBM. It will yeild the greatest long term benefit.
An explanation
on
Postfix
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Performing post order tree traversal on this tree yeilds:
modthisup
For those of you too long out out CS class, just remember: left, right, root.
Some apps on Linux that don't use MDI suffer from the problem of cluttering the taskbar. I suspect this is the fault of relative immaturity.
On Mac OS X, certain windows are "toolbar windows." They are only displayed when one of the document windows of that app is currently active. For instance, the Photoshop toolbar is only displayed when you have a image window selected. If you use Safari, the Photoshop toolbars will be hidden from the screen.
In addition, there is no concept of a taskbar in OS X, but rather the dock. The dock is quite nice in that it minimizes clutter as all windows of an app are listed in a fly-up window from the application icon.
I never used Mac until a few months ago, but everyday I become more and more impressed with how it operates. If only Linux could be more this way I could justify using my x86 boxes more.
MDI is something that is particular to Windows, and Linux by extension since the general interface trend is to copy Microsoft.
Mac OS X (and probably prior, but I have no experience) advocates not using the MDI paradigm. I switched from MS to Linux and now I use both Linux and Mac. At first the absence of MDI was a little daunting and I didn't like it.
However, after a couple weeks of adjusting, I'd say I agree with Apple that MDI is a horrible idea and should be avoided. I find managing my workflow far more efficient when my windows are constrained only by my desktop rather than some application that deems itself smarter than I am.
Oh, well forgive my ignorance then. I read this comment:
Does this mean that I'll finally have some hardware support for my Audrey [3rdmoon.com]?
and thought you were asking for hardware support from software companies. Damn, I must be really stupid for reading it that way.
As a tip, I wouldn't go calling up Red Hat or Microsoft or whoever when your motherboard fails. I'm sure they will give you the free f-you.
In any case, you won't be seeing any support from any companies for your discontinued product because none of them care. This is especially true of those companies who had nothing to do with the product in the first place.
I've seen both zeros (0) and ohs (O) on the winning caps. The ohs are much more elongated in the horizontal direction, which is how you can tell them apart, though it is still somewhat confusing.
Not that it makes too much difference, as the odds are already astronomical, but I just thought I'd point this out.
You've never used one of these PPC970 chips then, if you are claiming reduced performance. PPC is a fundamentally different architecture, and one that typically yeilds both less heat and greater performance.
So, do yourself a favor and walk into your nearest Apple store and check out a great computer with a great processor. While your at it, give the OS a chance to. You might find something better than your biases previously allowed.
Here is the problem I see with this. They are trying to have their "Official" release be less buggy than recent releases. They claim that the problems with the recent releases are because not enough gets ironed out in the betas.
So, they are breaking the final release into "Community" and "Official" branches. Won't the "Community" release eventually become synonomous with "beta." In the end, fewer people will run this community release, and fewer bugs will be found in it. If this happens, problems will undoubtedly creep into the "Official" release and only be found then because more people are running it.
Anyway, it seems to me they are just trying to rename the word "beta," which is not a solution to the problem they are trying to fix.
You make excellent points. I do not agree with the RIAAs tactics at all, and I'm not trying to rationalize them. And yes, they made a very poor business decision with regards to distribution models.
Also, your scenario for justifying illegal downloads from the consumer point of view makes sense. That is undoubtedly how most people justify their activites.
Your food analogy is useful for certain comparisons, and illustrates them effectively. You realize, of course, that food is much more intrinsic a right than music is. You will die without food. I wouldn't advocate starvation and death to bring about change if that were the real scenario.
My stance just comes from the "two wrongs don't make a right" proverb. To effectively bring about any change, I don't believe it is right to stoop to the level of the people who were wrong to begin with. I just think its better policy to uphold the standards you seek to promote.
I agree with your opinion in most respects, however I think you do some hand waving at my central point.
My point was, the RIAA doesn't need to change its model when most of its losses are coming at the hand of illegal activity. When this happens, the first reaction is to seek legal recourse. If you steal all your food, the food industry is not going to think "oh, I should find a different way to serve food," they are going to prosecute you for stealing.
I do not agree with most of the RIAA's tactics, and as I stated, it was a huge business mistake not to take advantage of new distribution methods. However, a person who partakes in illegal activites loses any voice they could have had in bringing about change. So, it seems to me quite hypocritical to be illegaly downloading music at the same time you are saying "I will pay for the stuff if you open an online store." Why should they take seriously the people stealing from them when they have every right to sue those people? It is insane to think they should.
As an aside, there are plenty of alternatives to music than that which is distributed under RIAA affiliated record labels. I have found a wealth of incredible independant bands that are every bit as good, and in most cases better, than the mainstream. If illegal downloads dropped to next to nothing, and record sales were still down (due to people finding indie music) then the RIAA would have to wake up and change. After all, they cannot survive without money. But when they can point to the finger at illegal activity rather than themselves, you had better expect them to do just that.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, quit bitching and open your mind a little bit.
Let's say your favorite band just went on tour and as part of a promotion they decided to post a few songs and videos "bootlegged" from each concert.
Now, it might get kinda anoying to load up their page every couple of days and click on each link to download the media. However, they could post an RSS feed with BitTorrent links that you subscribe to just once. Everytime a new bootleg goes online, the RSS feed gets updated, and the content gets downloaded to your computer automatically.
Where would we be if everytime the Internet was mentioned 50 years ago, people ranted and raved about how the postal service already solved the problem of distributing content?
This is seriously cool stuff, you are just too closed minded to realise it.
As opposed to Unix, where the design is so open and extensible that anything is possible, yet there is no coherent interface and none of the non-server applications work or look as good as they do on Macintosh or Windows.
I will rephrase your argument as I interpret it:
In UNIX, there is no coherent interface and the general-use applications don't work as good as the do on Mac OS X.
Now, the argument stated given that Mac OS X is UNIX:
In UNIX, there is no coherent interface and the general-use applications don't work as good as the do on Mac OS X, which is UNIX.
Now, do you see how the argument falls apart and the point fails to stand? I hope so, but even if you don't I won't resort to petty name-calling and cursing.
Jared, who will drop karma when a point needs to be made.
As opposed to Unix, where the design is so open and extensible that anything is possible, yet there is no coherent interface and none of the non-server applications work or look as good as they do on Macintosh or Windows.
Well, you seem to forget that Macintosh, with OS X, is UNIX based, thus destroying your whole argument.
I think the author was coming more from a technical underpinnings standpoint where UI isn't (much of) a consideration. Attention to detail on the interface takes more of an artists' touch, rather than an engineers' touch. Linux is more than capable of having a consistent, good-looking interface. The open source world needs to attract more artistically expressive people however. Until this happens, Linux on the desktop won't take off.
Incidentally, I think the majority of the apps on Windows look equally as shitty as their Linux counterparts. The only OS that consistently impresses me on the interface issue is Mac OS X.
The cash credits will cost the company at least $15 million, and allowing for the fact that some of the coupons will be unused the PPV movie offer should cost the company about $10-15 million. Ironic, because $25-30 million is about the total price increase Viacom was seeking.
You might pay a big price to win a battle if it wins you the entire war. If EchoStar had given in to Viacom, it would have showed a weakness that Viacom would then try to exploit every time their contract came under negotiation, not to mention all the other content providers that would try the same underhanded tactics.
Plus, the way things turned out, customers get a break in pricing for a minor inconvenience. The rates as a whole should stay flat. If Viacom succeeded, rates would likely go up. If that happened, EchoStar would likely lose a number of subscribers to other, cheaper alternatives. The money they paid was paid in order to keep and gain subscribers, rather than lose them.
I agree with you. I wasn't trying to insinuate the opposite case.
For the records, I love Apple and the products they produce. I have a Power Mac, PowerBook, iPod, and a ton of software. I use Mac OS X on my desktop systems, and Linux (x86) for my servers. I do not use any Microsoft products, though I am considering buying Office for the Mac.
I'm disappointed when products such as this pPod come out and tarnish the well-deserved reputation that Apple has earned.
Well, you are correct in more ways than you realise.
Apple had their way with these guys and forced the renaming of the product (to pBop) and slight modifications to the interface.
Slashdot is behind the times. This story would have been meaningful a couple days ago.
As for the first paragraph, if Apple significantly changes their licensing terms and/or the quality of the downloads for the worse, I will reconsider my position. Right now, I "own" the bits on my hard drive that I have downloaded from iTMS and nothing can change that fact.
Now, thanks to the hard work of the people at VideoLAN, I can play back my iTMS purchases on any computer I own without the need to get a "license" from Apple. I can also transcode to any format without additional loss given that said format transcoded to is lossless.
So, given that I have the bits in my posession, I consider myself the owner of what I have purchased. Nothing can take this away from me. If Apple choses to offer for sale their product in a different, more negative, manner, I will reevaluate.
Your point about resale is valid. However, it is a non-issue to me. If I degenerate financially to a point where my iTMS purchased music would become a significant proportion of my net worth, then I would have far more serious problems to deal with. If the issue bothers you, however, then by all means do not spend your money there.
Are you always this angry?
Yes.
What you get from iTMS is a long license to play that music on a narrow range of hardware device.
I don't consider redbook compliant CD players to be a "narrow range of hardware device."
You are buying a subscription, only instead of a monthly fee you pay a one-off license fee.
A "one-off license fee" sure as shit doesn't sound like a subscription to me. I'd suggest you put down the crack pipe.
Don't believe me? Try reselling what you have "bought".
I have an assload of music sitting in shoeboxes because it isn't worth my time to try and resell it. It'll find its way to a dumpster before a used CD store. Consequently, I'm not to worried about reselling my downloads.
Well, think of it more like cable TV or satellite radio. You never owned anything to begin with, it was just broadcast to you. So, if you don't pay your cable bill, the company shuts off your television. You haven't lost anything. When you decide to start paying again, you have access to everything you had before.
Want to switch music services, no problem. But, you might have to deal with a different selection of artists. Like a song and want to listen to it whenever? Buy it.
For the record, I support Apple and iTMS. I do wish they would release an Internet radio fee based service with a wealth of selection and the ability to set up "personalized" on-demand stations. I'd pay for this. Icing on the cake would be to partner with Sirius so I could have access anywhere with one bill. Integration into the store would allow me to purchase my favorite music while being allowed to discover new stuff all the time.
I mind it for the simple fact that a good portion on the time the updates never arrive.
If a product doesn't ship with the advertised features, its a good chance that the company simply didn't have the money to put them in their in the correct time frame. Who's to say, then, that the company has the money to implement them at all.
I'm sure the hope is that they can release to generate some revenue. However, when the user gets their hands on a shoddy product, it doesn't take long for negative reviews to crop up on the net. This means that the company in question will likely sell less of the shoddy product than they hoped to, decreasing the revenue brought in ergo increasing the likelyhood that they will go out of business. The only people getting screwed in this scenario is the consumer who bought the product.
A IBM/Sun combination could make for some interesting happenings. I think most people would agree that Sun has made some costly mistakes, and it is bringing them down. Conversely, IBM has made the opposite decisions, which is starting to really pay off for them.
.NET and Mono charge. They've also got numerous other OSs, chips, and other products within the company.
.NET platform gains steam. The primary reason for the aquisition would be for Java, but a lot of other interesting products would come along. I've always thought IBM's product line needed some consolidation. For instance, Sun would bring in Solaris and IBM should move to a dual OSs strategy: Linux and a proprietary, high-end UNIX that combines Solaris/AIX/etc. There is room for both those products. A lot of work would have to be done on integrating and perhaps open sourcing various middleware and application servers.
IBM is quite interesting to watch. They've largely thrown their weight behind Linux. The also holding the high cards at the Java table. They are trying to leverage their chip advantage to get Sun to meet their demands. Iterestingly, they also are a big investor in the whole Novell/SuSE/Ximian deal, the people leading the
My take on the situation: Linux is at the point where it needs to rally behind a driving force. I'm all for choice and all, but you don't beat Microsoft by constant infighting and fractured ideas. As the old saying goes, united we stand but divided we fall.
I think IBM should outright buy Sun. Sun is failing and would be a cheap aquisition. Waiting any longer will just give Microsoft a bigger advantage as the
On the development side, I believe it would be tremendous if IBM (with Sun and Ximian under their wings) would step up and iron out both Java and Mono, along with providing a tight IDE with Eclipse. This could make Linux the development platform of choice.
Of course, development isn't worth much if you don't have an installed base to deploy to. With Novell/SuSE/Ximian, IBM could generate a nice, consistent, integrated desktop environment and provide the corporate sway in convincing businesses to switch from Microsoft.
In short, I think IBM has the most incentive to see Microsoft fall from dominance. They've shown their willingness to get behind an open platform. The community should show their support and get behind IBM. It will yeild the greatest long term benefit.
Performing post order tree traversal on this tree yeilds:
modthisup
For those of you too long out out CS class, just remember: left, right, root.
You've got serious problems.
Before you suggest anything else you want attached to your crainum, I suggest some electro-shock therapy, applied directy to the brain.
Some apps on Linux that don't use MDI suffer from the problem of cluttering the taskbar. I suspect this is the fault of relative immaturity.
On Mac OS X, certain windows are "toolbar windows." They are only displayed when one of the document windows of that app is currently active. For instance, the Photoshop toolbar is only displayed when you have a image window selected. If you use Safari, the Photoshop toolbars will be hidden from the screen.
In addition, there is no concept of a taskbar in OS X, but rather the dock. The dock is quite nice in that it minimizes clutter as all windows of an app are listed in a fly-up window from the application icon.
I never used Mac until a few months ago, but everyday I become more and more impressed with how it operates. If only Linux could be more this way I could justify using my x86 boxes more.
MDI is something that is particular to Windows, and Linux by extension since the general interface trend is to copy Microsoft.
Mac OS X (and probably prior, but I have no experience) advocates not using the MDI paradigm. I switched from MS to Linux and now I use both Linux and Mac. At first the absence of MDI was a little daunting and I didn't like it.
However, after a couple weeks of adjusting, I'd say I agree with Apple that MDI is a horrible idea and should be avoided. I find managing my workflow far more efficient when my windows are constrained only by my desktop rather than some application that deems itself smarter than I am.
It's the big dogs that copy the little dogs. Both in this case (Intel, AMD) and in the Microsoft, Apple case. It is so satisfying when this happens.
Now, go troll somewhere else.
Oh, well forgive my ignorance then. I read this comment:
Does this mean that I'll finally have some hardware support for my Audrey [3rdmoon.com]?
and thought you were asking for hardware support from software companies. Damn, I must be really stupid for reading it that way.
As a tip, I wouldn't go calling up Red Hat or Microsoft or whoever when your motherboard fails. I'm sure they will give you the free f-you.
In any case, you won't be seeing any support from any companies for your discontinued product because none of them care. This is especially true of those companies who had nothing to do with the product in the first place.
That is all.
Do you even know what you are talking about?
Wind River and Red Hat are both software companies. The Ergo Audrey was made my 3Com a number of years ago and was very quickly discontinued.
In addition, the OS that the Audrey runs is QNX, which has nothing to do with either Wind River or Red Hat.
I've seen both zeros (0) and ohs (O) on the winning caps. The ohs are much more elongated in the horizontal direction, which is how you can tell them apart, though it is still somewhat confusing.
Not that it makes too much difference, as the odds are already astronomical, but I just thought I'd point this out.
yeah, I read your reply and was like "wow, that person is an idiot."
On a related note, you might be interested in this link:
State of the Union Drinking Game
Unfortunately, I found out about the site a day too late, but it seems to be an annual event. So, bookmark the site and play next year!
You've never used one of these PPC970 chips then, if you are claiming reduced performance. PPC is a fundamentally different architecture, and one that typically yeilds both less heat and greater performance.
So, do yourself a favor and walk into your nearest Apple store and check out a great computer with a great processor. While your at it, give the OS a chance to. You might find something better than your biases previously allowed.
Here is the problem I see with this. They are trying to have their "Official" release be less buggy than recent releases. They claim that the problems with the recent releases are because not enough gets ironed out in the betas.
So, they are breaking the final release into "Community" and "Official" branches. Won't the "Community" release eventually become synonomous with "beta." In the end, fewer people will run this community release, and fewer bugs will be found in it. If this happens, problems will undoubtedly creep into the "Official" release and only be found then because more people are running it.
Anyway, it seems to me they are just trying to rename the word "beta," which is not a solution to the problem they are trying to fix.
You make excellent points. I do not agree with the RIAAs tactics at all, and I'm not trying to rationalize them. And yes, they made a very poor business decision with regards to distribution models.
Also, your scenario for justifying illegal downloads from the consumer point of view makes sense. That is undoubtedly how most people justify their activites.
Your food analogy is useful for certain comparisons, and illustrates them effectively. You realize, of course, that food is much more intrinsic a right than music is. You will die without food. I wouldn't advocate starvation and death to bring about change if that were the real scenario.
My stance just comes from the "two wrongs don't make a right" proverb. To effectively bring about any change, I don't believe it is right to stoop to the level of the people who were wrong to begin with. I just think its better policy to uphold the standards you seek to promote.
I agree with your opinion in most respects, however I think you do some hand waving at my central point.
My point was, the RIAA doesn't need to change its model when most of its losses are coming at the hand of illegal activity. When this happens, the first reaction is to seek legal recourse. If you steal all your food, the food industry is not going to think "oh, I should find a different way to serve food," they are going to prosecute you for stealing.
I do not agree with most of the RIAA's tactics, and as I stated, it was a huge business mistake not to take advantage of new distribution methods. However, a person who partakes in illegal activites loses any voice they could have had in bringing about change. So, it seems to me quite hypocritical to be illegaly downloading music at the same time you are saying "I will pay for the stuff if you open an online store." Why should they take seriously the people stealing from them when they have every right to sue those people? It is insane to think they should.
As an aside, there are plenty of alternatives to music than that which is distributed under RIAA affiliated record labels. I have found a wealth of incredible independant bands that are every bit as good, and in most cases better, than the mainstream. If illegal downloads dropped to next to nothing, and record sales were still down (due to people finding indie music) then the RIAA would have to wake up and change. After all, they cannot survive without money. But when they can point to the finger at illegal activity rather than themselves, you had better expect them to do just that.