This is a very good thing! I don't want any company using its money to create some sort of engineering zoo, where they can tout the fact that they have all of these big name engineers who work on exciting projects that will never see the light of day because they're not really inline with HP's current strategy. Instead, let's cut the projects and the engineers so other companies can pick up the talent and put them to work (on the same or similar projects) that they intend to release as products ASAP. Keeping a big name on staff without the intention of releasing any of their work does a disservice to the engineer, the customer and the shareholders. This makes a lot of sense.
The assumption is that most bands that are just getting started don't have a $100 - $250k to get things started at a level equivalent to what a record label would provide. Things like recording time, road crews, PR, better equipment, and living expenses all cost money. Starting a label w/ no or little money doesn't do you any good in the short term and just adds additional overhead and hassle. That said, once you've got the money starting your own label might make sense if you can't get a favorable deal worked out with an established label.
This is a great idea and will most likely be the second mod released for this keyboard. The first mod will replace all the letters on the keyboard with boobs.
Wow! That sucks... so the lesson learned is don't sign contracts with record companies? Although, I wonder what the success/profit ratio of small bands without label support is. I guess the other problem here too is that bands don't have any of this up front money typically, so they could never pay for the high quality recording, typical distribution (Internet distribution is probably affordable), promotion, production, recording, etc. without some cash up front. Maybe they could get loans from credit cards and banks, but that's most likely only going to be a few thousand dollars. Maybe not enough to get things going, or to do it right? All of this is compounded by the fact that they're having to compete against bands who have signed contracts and who do have this support and all of that record company money can buy attention and record sales.
The downside is obviously bad for the bands unless they get a major hit and sell a few million copies resulting in big concerts and a lot of merchandise sales. Meaning they sell enough to get them out of the hole they're in.
I'd also be interested to see how many bands totally flop on major labels and end up costing the label money. All that said, artists should read this because there are some real risks to signing with a label.
Not really, when you sign a contract that gets you a ton of money up front and major distribution so that you can sell out large venus and sell a ton of merch then you shouldn't be able to just break that contract when it suits you.
If the artist is condoning or even engouraging it then it's not a problem whether two copies or two thousand copies are made.
You're absolutely right, if the artist chooses to distribute their music this way then by all means, go ahead and do it.
They are using the internet to their advantage (i.e., using it to replace the outdated industry distribution model) instead of fighting it.
Actually I think this is a marketing tactic, not a trick mind you, just another tool to market the band. By doing this they have received a lot of attention from the media. This is a short term strategy. By releasing the music for free and allowing copying they elminate the typical distribution channels (which you pointed out), but more importantly they hope to build a larger audience more quickly than they would if they had to build and audience by playing a bunch of small gigs. This is a long term strategy and does buck the system to some extent b/c they're finding substitutes for big media distribution channels like radio and TV.
What I find interesting though is that they either don't understand the model or intend to change it in the future. Tony James said in the interview "So I think what we'll see in the future is people will pay to be there - to be part of the creative process." He's talking about watching a song develop in the studio... and although that does sound interesting, why would anyone pay for it if they can get copies for free? Unless the band changes their stance on copying by not allowing for copying (DRM?) and forcing people to subscribe to a site or something.
Windows Media Lossless and FLAC are two examples of lossless codecs... meaning they will produce digitally exact copies of the music. On top of that my point wasn't actually that the copy of the music you made was exact (although it can be), but that copying it over and over again would produce exact copies of the original encoding. If I give my friend a tape, he likes a song, so he makes a tape, and then passes it on, and the next person makes a tape... every copy loses quality. With digital music, the first copy may lose quality, depening on you encoding choices, but every time after that will be an exact copy.
"It's just like you did when you were young, when you made a cassette of your favourite tracks you'd love, and would give it to a friend and say 'listen to this.
Yeah, exactly like when we were young, and you made digitally exact copies of the music you liked and shared it with thousands of people who you've never met.
The research was done for MEDICAL studies, not tech studies, or animal habitat studies, or psychological studies, or sociological studies... only medical studies. Nowhere in the title or the post's main body is this mentioned. This is very poor reporting of the news. It is misleading. The study also only measured studies from 1990 to 2003. That's 13 years not 15 years!
Word to the wise, don't trust the press at face value. Expect sources, preferably cited and available for you to review, and check your facts before you buy into whatever the press happens to be reporting today.
a lot of people who won't be able to find out even basic weather forecasts because ATSC just plain sucks in anything remotely approaching fringe reception areas.
I can pick up the weather forecast in my car using FM or AM radio. There's also NOAA Weather Radio. We don't need new FCC rules.
yeah, it kinda pisses me off that american consumers mess things up for everyone.
Why is it just the American consumers you don't care so much for? Wouldn't it be any consumer of software? Or is it b/c the Americans constitute so much of the market? And if so, then wouldn't you also want to thank the Americans for establishing a market large enough to justify the invesment in the software in the first place (and the hardware advances to run it).
i suspect that if they actually knew better, they would change their buying habits.
I doubt it. Sure some would bitch about it more than they do today, but a lot of people would still choose to give up the right to install the software on more than one box, or would be willing to register it in order to play the latest hotest game. That said, more education about options and license agreements can't hurt and companies that chose to offer less restrictive licenses would have a competitive advantage in the market place.
"well, if people are happy with it, then its ok"
There is not right or wrong with this. The point is that software companies have the freedom to sell products they have created using their own investments funds any way they choose and may choose to create whatever sort of licensing agreement they like. The software company has to select a licensing agreement that people will actually like, if it's too restrictive they're going to lose customers (like they've lost you). The more people you educate, maybe they lose more customers, maybe others just don't care.
You have a particular viewpoint about what is fair, right, wise, etc. Most people don't agree with you enough to not purchase software. That maybe because they are ignorant, and if so education could help (although calling everyone who purchases HL2 or other software products names doesn't make it easy to swallow your argument).
I'd be interested in understanding exactly what you think your digital rights should be an why? My stance is that they are whatever is sorted out by the market, existing copyright laws, and when necessary legislation.
ever hear the expression, "ignorance is bliss"?
No that's a new one, thanks for that.
they may or may not have to burn and supporting a fluffed up corperate economy that treats the needs and wishes of american consumers as irrelevant.
If they treated the needs and wishes of consumers (forget the American part, this software is sold all over) then people wouldn't buy the product. What we see is that people actually want the product and are willing to pay for it. Sure, the companies charge a lot more than some people want to pay, but they still pay for it b/c it's worth it to them... because the software offers some value to them.
Do you know how long it took to transfer 17mb from the old shoe to the toast?
Where you there? I don't remember the exact times, but I remember them running that demo. They ran the shoe and the toaster against two Windows 2003 boxes (dual-processor 4GB of RAM I think) connected via four teamed gig-E fiber connections. The shoe and toaster were running NetBUI, Samba.97 alpha, and were connected via Frame Relay over a strand of rusty barbed wire. The toaster and the shoe finished at least 5 minutes before the Windows boxes.
and it was obvious from the get-go that Microsoft was trying to make Linux look bad. Not only were the running KDE (does anyone use that?), they didn't have Emacs installed (just vi w/o the X version), and they were running it on some pretty crappy hardware; a PIII w/ 128mb of RAM, a toaster, an old shoe, and a moldy piece of toast still in the toaster (which they were calling a Linux blade solution).
Despite M$ stacking the deck against Linux the audience was captivated by the capabilities of the system and the posibilities of FOSS. I even saw two MBAs port Linux to their iPAQs, pull some code off the Internet, teach themselves C and perl, and write a complete ERP system for their business (which they are submitting to SourceForge soon) all before lunch (as an aside, in that same time they grew beards, joined/., wrote "erpCON 2005" on their white button down shirts, and had an odor that was detectable from 30 feet away, again all before lunch).
Amazing how Microsoft's attempts to undermine the community were undermined by the community.
Your reply to the parent post was measured and straightforward offering the facts of your experience and your conclusion that Valve's business decisions would likely keep you from purchasing from them in the future. Please do not post like this again.
In the future, USE MORE CAPS, when you want to make a point (acronymns like DRM do not count). Also call the public "stupid", anyone who disagrees with you "stuipd", anyone who responds to you should be an "asshat", and the moderation system should be attacked as well. Also, in this particular instance you should have called for Valve to GPL all of their software, and for the government to sieze their assetts and distribute them of Open Source gaming projects to rectify their attempt to steal some sort of fundamental rights to have other people's software property on your terms, not theirs. In the future sir, please write like you are mentally unstable, uninformed, and possibly suffering from some sort of brain infection.
So what's the alternative... take away the freedom of the public and hand it over to you, me, a few wise benevolent overseers? We're talking about SOFTWARE LICENSES here... not the suicide bombers or The Holocaust. The market and our FREE society will sort out the software issue.
tooled by digital big-business dictating the terms of THEIR rights as consumers. it is these consumers, for example, who have also allowed the software companies to restrict installation of their products to one machine.
You seem pissed because a company that owns something you want will not give it to you on the terms that you want. The law allows for software licenses (of which the GPL is one by the way). If you don't like the law, go through the legislative process like everyone else has to and get a law passed granting more fair use rights to consumers. As things stand today, most people don't have a problem w/ the current licensing sturcture. As you said, they'll happily pay $49.95 or whatever for a copy of a game for a single computer. Note that they are not being coerced into purchasing the game, the freely hand over their money in order to use the software. If media companies continue to push the DRM thing it is likely that consumers will become frustrated enough that they will legislate additional rights for themselves, or more likely, businesses will see the risk of having their business models dictated to them by law and will work to accomodate consumer demands.
My big problem w/ the parent post, and the point I made, was that it was a stupid incoherent rant. He stated the same thing over and over again without actually supporting any of his arguments. It was just repitition of a point.
Maybe no one designed them at all you idiot. Just because something exists and seems to have some purpose or logical structure doesn't mean it was created. I doubt they were created at all, they probably just came into existence or are the result of metal deposits that have, over time, formed into shapes that appear to be, and are suitable for us as, antennae.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very good thing! I don't want any company using its money to create some sort of engineering zoo, where they can tout the fact that they have all of these big name engineers who work on exciting projects that will never see the light of day because they're not really inline with HP's current strategy. Instead, let's cut the projects and the engineers so other companies can pick up the talent and put them to work (on the same or similar projects) that they intend to release as products ASAP. Keeping a big name on staff without the intention of releasing any of their work does a disservice to the engineer, the customer and the shareholders. This makes a lot of sense.
I think I have aspergers because I read about it on /.
Better information can be found on eWeek and Computerworld.
In short it looks like HP is holding a competing conference. Other user groups, like Encompass, are working w/ HP on this new conference.
Isn't Google the same as Webcrawler?
So start your own label.
The assumption is that most bands that are just getting started don't have a $100 - $250k to get things started at a level equivalent to what a record label would provide. Things like recording time, road crews, PR, better equipment, and living expenses all cost money. Starting a label w/ no or little money doesn't do you any good in the short term and just adds additional overhead and hassle. That said, once you've got the money starting your own label might make sense if you can't get a favorable deal worked out with an established label.
This is a great idea and will most likely be the second mod released for this keyboard. The first mod will replace all the letters on the keyboard with boobs.
Wow! That sucks... so the lesson learned is don't sign contracts with record companies? Although, I wonder what the success/profit ratio of small bands without label support is. I guess the other problem here too is that bands don't have any of this up front money typically, so they could never pay for the high quality recording, typical distribution (Internet distribution is probably affordable), promotion, production, recording, etc. without some cash up front. Maybe they could get loans from credit cards and banks, but that's most likely only going to be a few thousand dollars. Maybe not enough to get things going, or to do it right? All of this is compounded by the fact that they're having to compete against bands who have signed contracts and who do have this support and all of that record company money can buy attention and record sales.
The downside is obviously bad for the bands unless they get a major hit and sell a few million copies resulting in big concerts and a lot of merchandise sales. Meaning they sell enough to get them out of the hole they're in.
I'd also be interested to see how many bands totally flop on major labels and end up costing the label money. All that said, artists should read this because there are some real risks to signing with a label.
Not really, when you sign a contract that gets you a ton of money up front and major distribution so that you can sell out large venus and sell a ton of merch then you shouldn't be able to just break that contract when it suits you.
Oh shit... you're right... let me call the ACLU!
If the artist is condoning or even engouraging it then it's not a problem whether two copies or two thousand copies are made.
You're absolutely right, if the artist chooses to distribute their music this way then by all means, go ahead and do it.
They are using the internet to their advantage (i.e., using it to replace the outdated industry distribution model) instead of fighting it.
Actually I think this is a marketing tactic, not a trick mind you, just another tool to market the band. By doing this they have received a lot of attention from the media. This is a short term strategy. By releasing the music for free and allowing copying they elminate the typical distribution channels (which you pointed out), but more importantly they hope to build a larger audience more quickly than they would if they had to build and audience by playing a bunch of small gigs. This is a long term strategy and does buck the system to some extent b/c they're finding substitutes for big media distribution channels like radio and TV.
What I find interesting though is that they either don't understand the model or intend to change it in the future. Tony James said in the interview "So I think what we'll see in the future is people will pay to be there - to be part of the creative process." He's talking about watching a song develop in the studio... and although that does sound interesting, why would anyone pay for it if they can get copies for free? Unless the band changes their stance on copying by not allowing for copying (DRM?) and forcing people to subscribe to a site or something.
Windows Media Lossless and FLAC are two examples of lossless codecs... meaning they will produce digitally exact copies of the music. On top of that my point wasn't actually that the copy of the music you made was exact (although it can be), but that copying it over and over again would produce exact copies of the original encoding. If I give my friend a tape, he likes a song, so he makes a tape, and then passes it on, and the next person makes a tape... every copy loses quality. With digital music, the first copy may lose quality, depening on you encoding choices, but every time after that will be an exact copy.
"It's just like you did when you were young, when you made a cassette of your favourite tracks you'd love, and would give it to a friend and say 'listen to this.
Yeah, exactly like when we were young, and you made digitally exact copies of the music you liked and shared it with thousands of people who you've never met.
The research was done for MEDICAL studies, not tech studies, or animal habitat studies, or psychological studies, or sociological studies... only medical studies. Nowhere in the title or the post's main body is this mentioned. This is very poor reporting of the news. It is misleading. The study also only measured studies from 1990 to 2003. That's 13 years not 15 years!
Word to the wise, don't trust the press at face value. Expect sources, preferably cited and available for you to review, and check your facts before you buy into whatever the press happens to be reporting today.
a lot of people who won't be able to find out even basic weather forecasts because ATSC just plain sucks in anything remotely approaching fringe reception areas.
I can pick up the weather forecast in my car using FM or AM radio. There's also NOAA Weather Radio. We don't need new FCC rules.
[] I only use XForms
yeah, it kinda pisses me off that american consumers mess things up for everyone.
Why is it just the American consumers you don't care so much for? Wouldn't it be any consumer of software? Or is it b/c the Americans constitute so much of the market? And if so, then wouldn't you also want to thank the Americans for establishing a market large enough to justify the invesment in the software in the first place (and the hardware advances to run it).
i suspect that if they actually knew better, they would change their buying habits.
I doubt it. Sure some would bitch about it more than they do today, but a lot of people would still choose to give up the right to install the software on more than one box, or would be willing to register it in order to play the latest hotest game. That said, more education about options and license agreements can't hurt and companies that chose to offer less restrictive licenses would have a competitive advantage in the market place.
"well, if people are happy with it, then its ok"
There is not right or wrong with this. The point is that software companies have the freedom to sell products they have created using their own investments funds any way they choose and may choose to create whatever sort of licensing agreement they like. The software company has to select a licensing agreement that people will actually like, if it's too restrictive they're going to lose customers (like they've lost you). The more people you educate, maybe they lose more customers, maybe others just don't care.
You have a particular viewpoint about what is fair, right, wise, etc. Most people don't agree with you enough to not purchase software. That maybe because they are ignorant, and if so education could help (although calling everyone who purchases HL2 or other software products names doesn't make it easy to swallow your argument).
I'd be interested in understanding exactly what you think your digital rights should be an why? My stance is that they are whatever is sorted out by the market, existing copyright laws, and when necessary legislation.
ever hear the expression, "ignorance is bliss"?
No that's a new one, thanks for that.
they may or may not have to burn and supporting a fluffed up corperate economy that treats the needs and wishes of american consumers as irrelevant.
If they treated the needs and wishes of consumers (forget the American part, this software is sold all over) then people wouldn't buy the product. What we see is that people actually want the product and are willing to pay for it. Sure, the companies charge a lot more than some people want to pay, but they still pay for it b/c it's worth it to them... because the software offers some value to them.
He realized that linux was a viable product as soon as Microsoft started their anti-linux campaign.
And in other news, Microsoft has announced that corn flakes is not Enterprise Ready.
They should have handed out Live-CDs (Knoppix or Ubuntu) and encouraged users to try it at home w/ no risk.
Do you know how long it took to transfer 17mb from the old shoe to the toast?
.97 alpha, and were connected via Frame Relay over a strand of rusty barbed wire. The toaster and the shoe finished at least 5 minutes before the Windows boxes.
Where you there? I don't remember the exact times, but I remember them running that demo. They ran the shoe and the toaster against two Windows 2003 boxes (dual-processor 4GB of RAM I think) connected via four teamed gig-E fiber connections. The shoe and toaster were running NetBUI, Samba
I wonder if this is the first wave of the new ideas Daniel's got for the Microsoft crowd. (see here for the backstory)
and it was obvious from the get-go that Microsoft was trying to make Linux look bad. Not only were the running KDE (does anyone use that?), they didn't have Emacs installed (just vi w/o the X version), and they were running it on some pretty crappy hardware; a PIII w/ 128mb of RAM, a toaster, an old shoe, and a moldy piece of toast still in the toaster (which they were calling a Linux blade solution).
/., wrote "erpCON 2005" on their white button down shirts, and had an odor that was detectable from 30 feet away, again all before lunch).
Despite M$ stacking the deck against Linux the audience was captivated by the capabilities of the system and the posibilities of FOSS. I even saw two MBAs port Linux to their iPAQs, pull some code off the Internet, teach themselves C and perl, and write a complete ERP system for their business (which they are submitting to SourceForge soon) all before lunch (as an aside, in that same time they grew beards, joined
Amazing how Microsoft's attempts to undermine the community were undermined by the community.
Sir,
/. Poster
:)
Your reply to the parent post was measured and straightforward offering the facts of your experience and your conclusion that Valve's business decisions would likely keep you from purchasing from them in the future. Please do not post like this again.
In the future, USE MORE CAPS, when you want to make a point (acronymns like DRM do not count). Also call the public "stupid", anyone who disagrees with you "stuipd", anyone who responds to you should be an "asshat", and the moderation system should be attacked as well. Also, in this particular instance you should have called for Valve to GPL all of their software, and for the government to sieze their assetts and distribute them of Open Source gaming projects to rectify their attempt to steal some sort of fundamental rights to have other people's software property on your terms, not theirs. In the future sir, please write like you are mentally unstable, uninformed, and possibly suffering from some sort of brain infection.
Kind Regards,
A Concerned
All kidding aside, nice post.
So what's the alternative... take away the freedom of the public and hand it over to you, me, a few wise benevolent overseers? We're talking about SOFTWARE LICENSES here... not the suicide bombers or The Holocaust. The market and our FREE society will sort out the software issue.
tooled by digital big-business dictating the terms of THEIR rights as consumers. it is these consumers, for example, who have also allowed the software companies to restrict installation of their products to one machine.
You seem pissed because a company that owns something you want will not give it to you on the terms that you want. The law allows for software licenses (of which the GPL is one by the way). If you don't like the law, go through the legislative process like everyone else has to and get a law passed granting more fair use rights to consumers. As things stand today, most people don't have a problem w/ the current licensing sturcture. As you said, they'll happily pay $49.95 or whatever for a copy of a game for a single computer. Note that they are not being coerced into purchasing the game, the freely hand over their money in order to use the software. If media companies continue to push the DRM thing it is likely that consumers will become frustrated enough that they will legislate additional rights for themselves, or more likely, businesses will see the risk of having their business models dictated to them by law and will work to accomodate consumer demands.
My big problem w/ the parent post, and the point I made, was that it was a stupid incoherent rant. He stated the same thing over and over again without actually supporting any of his arguments. It was just repitition of a point.
Maybe no one designed them at all you idiot. Just because something exists and seems to have some purpose or logical structure doesn't mean it was created. I doubt they were created at all, they probably just came into existence or are the result of metal deposits that have, over time, formed into shapes that appear to be, and are suitable for us as, antennae.