Why is it that Hollywood is so imaginative when it comes to worst case scenarios, but nearly every movie ever made has a sequal? *eyeroll*
Okay, first, they *can't* make every bit of hardware protect their content. They C-A-N-N-O-T. It's, as Ralph Wiggam would say, unpossible. They talked about making routers not send copy-restricted (I refuse to use the term 'copy-protection' here) data through them. But the thing is, if I break apart the data blocks, randomize them, and then have the computer on the other end reassemble them, then the routers won't work. That philosophy likely applies to the rest of the hardware. You'd seriously need sentient hardware to look at the data to know what's up.
Secondly, they can't get every piece of hardware out there to stop it. Sorry. Too late. Btttz. Unable to comply.
Third, it is ridiculous to believe that every single piece of Hollywood content is going to be made accessible on-line. I can imagine more popular shows like Red Dwarf or the Simpsons or Family Guy or whatever to get pretty well captured and made available, but the people who make that available are true fans of their respected shows. I'm not going to be able to find an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (*gag*) available. You know why? Because I seriously doubt anybody's going to take the time to capture it and make it available. And if they do, I'm not going to waste my time downloading it just to watch it. Stream? Maybe, but not download it.
There's too much content out there! Lets say I build a computer designed to capture a show as it's downloaded, I still would manually have to go in and edit out the commercials. (editing out the commercials is a condition of actually hurting the industry) There's NO WAY I'm going to be able to manually do that for every single show every day of the week! I have a life! Are some people going to do it? Maybe, but not ever on the scale that the industry is afraid of.
Anyway, I have drifted off topic a little bit. Back to my topic "They're fighting the wrong battle...", well Hollywood is taking a really backwards approach here. They think that by stopping piracy they're going to save their revenue. They also think that if they protect their content so it can't be copied that they're going to have a growing market for the rest of time. It won't work! The truth of the matter is that if anybody doesn't watch the show when it's first aired (which is the prime time to see it, if you miss that then you're likely to have some dumb ass friend or radio DJ spoil the ending for you), then the value diminishes. More and more people have less and less time to catch TV shows when they're first aired. That's exactly why VCR's are in every home! If somebody wants the show bad enough, they'll either set it up to get it themselves, or they'll find a way to go get it. If that means that a Napster clone is the way to get it, then the people will go there.
So there's demand here, right? That means there is a market! Instead of fighting the 'piracy', fill the demand! Ever hear of Video on Demand? I wouldn't need to go to Morpheus or Kazaa if I could just go to a website that has the show ready to stream and click play. If they want to insert commercials into it, THAT'S FINE. That works!! I love it! I'll embrace that! But PLEASE give me that opportunity before you claim that piracy will destroy your market! Fighting piracy won't save the market, but filling demand will.
*He who finds it amusing that Hollywood is willing to spend money to stop losses they don't have, but isn't willing to try to make money on demand to watch shows at our leisure.*
I think that the tighter they squeeze people, the wider the door will get for independent people to make their own shows and publish them on the web.
It is possible with today's consumer technology for people to make movies and broadcast them on the internet. Video cameras are cheap, people are willing to act (although there's need for improvement heh), and TV quality visual effects are within the reach of people with a modest income.
Until the day Hollywood consistantly creates stories that are worth paying for, they can't make these kinds of demands. Take a look at Final Fantasy. The people who are fans of that series are mostly interested in the story. They have their Playstation 2's, they have the $50 to buy the game, and they have the 40 hours to beat it. There isn't a TV show out there that can make that many people reschedule their lives around when the show is aired. Even though a show is half an hour to an hour long, nearly all of them aren't worth making sure you are home for that time.
So go ahead Hollywood, spend your energy trying to protect your 'precious content', you're not going to squeeze more money out of people.
Im worried about that too. I do think there's a failsafe tho. Consumers would get priveledges. You can buy individual songs. You can listen to MP3s on your Rio. You can actually contact the artist directly if you want permission to use the music in your demo reel, stuff like that.
When the RIAA signs up that artist, you lose those rights unless they open up. My hope is that they'll find that when people are used to these privledges, they won't react well to having them taken away. If the group makes no money, then they have no value with the RIAA. Its sad that the artists would get screwed, but that'd be a lesson to the rest of them about creating music for money instead of doing it for art.
I was just thinking that maybe what we need is to listen to music that's not from the RIAA. I know there are talented people out there. Here in Portland we have a bunch of aspiring musicians that nobody has really heard of. It seems like if they had a way to get some exposure, they'd be able to use the net as a revenue stream to encourage them to keep creating.
How can Slashdot help? Well the first thing it could do is to generate an article on how to build an audio-PC with all the right microphones etc to do a high-quality capture. Then go on to explain how to do high quality MP3 (or any format really) encoding to make available on the web.
The band puts up a site with a few high quality Mp3's, a couple of them are free to download, and the rest people are asked to pay a few bucks for on Paypal or something to that effect. If it's Slashdotted, they'll get a lot of interested traffic in the first place. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm willing to buy music this way simply to support the start of this idea.
More money can be made on this by creating an MP3 with a 'visit us at http://www.bandname.com/albumname for more music, T-shirts etc...' teaser at the end (or beginning?) of the song, then release them for free on Morpheus or Kazza or whatever P2P technology is around.
Will there be piracy? Of course. Duh we all know that. But I do think that the artists could potentially make a very respectable income this way, and maybe even make a full time job out of their dream. It's important that they keep the quality up, but who knows? Maybe this type of thing could spell the end of the RIAA's monopolistic ways? The only reason we're dependent on the RIAA is that we want more music, remove that dependency and their value goes way down. There's no more boycotting or even DMCA to worry about.
I don't think we need to wait for Philips either. I think we (the consumers) should raise a big stink about not wanting protected music. If all goes well, the stores will decide they need to have a seperate section for protected music. A bunch of people buying music and returning it because it 'doesnt play on my player' (no need to specify you mean your computer) will likely get their attention. At the very least, bring the album to the counter and say "Do you have a version that's not copy protected? I can't play this."
If the protected music is in a seperate section, then it should raise awareness, and make people pay attention to that Compact Disc logo.
The other option would be for the RIAA to produce nothing but N-Sync music. It'll play in everybody's player, and it'll never be copied!
Hmm.. honestly I dont know, but two ideas pop into mind:
3D Printed
or
Etched.
Man... I can't wait to see what happens when they start making microscopic machines. Anybody remember the plastic that has tiny capsules in it that break open when the plastic is broken, releasing a substance that restores some of the strenght? Wouldn't it be cool to use that type of plastic to act as a form of structural support while microscopic machines go in and fix the broken plastic on a real tiny level?
I agree with you here. What the Music Industry, Movie Industry, the Media, Television Networks, heck... any content provider of any kind needs to realize is that the Internet will *replace* the current distribution methods that are in place right now. One day, we will watch TV that comes through a digital network, all on demand. One day, we will have music we've acquired play anywhere from a central server. One day, we will be able to watch movies on a huge screen at home with at least thater resolution. They can't sue these advances out of existence!
They're far better off adopting the net while it's in it's infancy instead of trying to heard people away from it. Man... imagine if typewriter companies pulled this kind of crap when the PC was invented.
Hmm... so let me see if I understand this. If I take my computer, rip all my DVD's to DivX, then get a wireless card, anybody close enough to me in my apartment complex can potentially watch those movies.
Okay, fair enough. Given the range of 802.11, I think maybe 6 people are close enough they'd get a decent signal. Which is fine because I think I wouldn't be able to handle much more than that since a dvd rip is roughly 1 megabit.
For this to happen, all 6 of my neighbors would have to not only have computers (I think 2 of my neighbors have computers), wireless cards, and I'd have to talk to each one to give them information on how to hit my computer to get the info.
I just don't see this happening. First off, with all the neighbors I've had in the past, I can only think of one that'd actually even try it, let alone rely on it.
Secondly, I'm the only guy I know that has a computer permanently hooked up to a television. (gotta put my demo reel on VHS somehow!) I can't imagine any of my neighbors watching a movie on anything but their television.
Third, for all the trouble this would take, I'd have better luck just sending them the movie over ICQ than by trying to get all this wireless bs worked out. As bandwidth improves, wireless as way to transmit it is even less interesting.
I think wireless networks will take off, but I have trouble seeing people sharing their networks to other people. Who'd want to? I'd be afraid of security issues. I don't want my neighbor finding a way into my computer and reading my torrid emails to my girlfriend.
I think the industry is solving the wrong problem. Instead of trying to encrypt very specific files over 802.11, how about trying to figure out how to make money on this. Check out http://www.intertainer.tv for an example. You pay them $4, and you can watch a full length movie immediately. That's a better service than I'd ever care to provide, and they can make money on it.
I had another idea, it's a little extreme, but I think it's an idea that can be built off of.
I'm a member of a forum that talks about a particular interest of mine. Basically, I log in to a site, and my friends that are online (of that particular interest, obviously I won't find my mom on a CG Art board...) show up and I can message them and check out the recent posts. There is a personal messaging system there so I can send private messages to people. If somebody sends me one, I get a notification on the home page.
Basically, I've obscured the method it takes to get a hold of me. A good chunk of my friends are on that forum, a coupla more are on another forum, and the rest including family are on icq. I've basically weined myself from the need for e-mail. I wouldn't have it at all if sites didn't require it for authorization.
This makes it a lot harder for a spammer to reach me. If every site has a different (and constantly mutating) method of sending messages around, then it's so much harder for spammers to get through.
This is an idea that has been bouncing around my head for a while, I hope to implement it some day.
I'm having problems with getting too much unsolicited mail too. The idea I had borrows from something I saw at http://www.godaddy.com when I went to do a whois on my records. Here's the idea:
First, I need a mailserver that will *only* accept incoming emails from a certain domain, the domain of my website. Then I set up my website with a form used to send me email. Then, and this is where I borrow from www.godaddy.com, throw up a random number on the screen using.gif or.jpg images (not text!!!), the user must manually type in that number for the message to be accepted. Then the webserver sends the message to my mailserver. If sombody attempts to send an email to my mailserver and it is from the wrong domain, or it doesn't have the right number, then *flush*.
Is this the perfect solution? Well, no. It kind of puts a block to forwarded mail. (Although if I blocked forwarded mail alltogether I think my mailbox would be a lot less messy...)
It's possible that some day somebody'd come up with a spider that can read the numbers and fake it, but my feeling was that if everybody customized their websites with their own fonts etc, it'd be hard to make a general purpose spider that can spam everybody.
If I ever get a static IP, it's something I intend to try.:)
[idea] Include meta-data with every opinion you write. [/idea]
[offensive] Some people are overly sensitive and can't stand the idea of people having differing opinions. [/offensive]
[suggestive] This sucks. [/suggestive]
[x-rated] This really sucks donkey balls. [/x-rated]
[over-simplified, stupid-idea] So my thinking was that everybody could use XML to solve this problem! If they nest all of their opinions with descriptions like I'm showing here in psuedo form. [/over-simplified,/stupid-idea]
[flawed] Then everybody can set their browsers to filter anything they don't want to hear![/flawed]
[ignorant] This solution solves everybody's problem, and everybody will be happy! And, it'll be very easy to implement! [/ignorant]
I think you bring up an interesting point. Is the hand-link just a terminal, or is it an integral part of Ziggy? For example, when Al smacks it, it cries. Is that Ziggy complaining about abuse of the hand-link?
I'm not asking for the sake of settling some Quantum Leap trivia, I'm asking because I do believe this Mira device relates to what the question I just asked. If an interface device has the ability to perform other tasks, can it be considered a seperate device and get it's own name?
I realize it's not a critical issue, but I do see a day where it's not uncommon for my watch to act as an interface to other devices. So I just thought it'd be an interesting question to ask.
Thanks for the suggestions, guys.:) I need to look into SVCD because that's a new term to me. Learn something new every day, eh?
VB, I tried to play your.WMA file, but I got a notification that I'm not licensed to play it back. Was that what you were trying to show me, or was it a quality issue? Either way I think you make a good point. MS knows what I play every time I play it. (altho Im not sure how they'd get that info on a DVD w/no net connection)
Oh yes, the Macs have been quite tempting lately. I've been eyeballing the Mac laptop that comes with a DVD burner/Authoring software, heck I'd buy one right now if I had the money. Maybe in 6 months.
I was just hoping to stay with PC. If I buy a Mac right now, it'd be almost strictly to do the DVD authoring. Is that such a big deal? Well, sort of. I have reasons to stick with Windows, for example alot of my Lightwave plugins are for Intel only. I'm pretty sure Newtek will let me switch to the Mac version of LW for a reasonable price, but as I said the plugins I use may not work. So its not like I'd be able to replace my PC with the Mac. That makes it a lot harder to justify the $1,500 - $2,000 price point. For a lot less than that I could get a DVD burner I suppose, but that's still a $500 purchase at least.
Anywho, the SVCD option may be what I'm looking for, at least until I can just make a full fledge DVD Burner.:) Thanks guys.
I really wish Lightwave was ported to Linux, then I wouldn't be concerned which platform I used...
I'm excited about this capability. I'm an artist who likes to make his own animation/video, and I like the idea of burning a CD (read: not DVD) with content I can play on the TV. Is this such a silly idea? I don't think so.
Me personally, I'd love the idea of shipping my demo reel to a potentially new employer on a disc that will play in their DVD and allow them to have a better look at my content. Right now, most employers demand that it is on VHS. Why? From what Ive heard, its because they don't want to muck with downloading codecs etc. I'm sure they'd be happy to play back a DVD if I sent it to them, but right now authoring a DVD is astronomical. If this technology were available and STANDARD today, wooo that'd be a lot easier for me. More impressive too.
I have a coworker that's shooting videos of his newborn son with a DV video camera. He would LOVE the capability of making discs with this footage he can send to family/friends.
Some people would like to make archives of their video tapes to disc and never worry about having those cassettes degrade.
What this capability could potentially allow you to do is use a format that has a freely available encoder, burn it to a CD instead of a DVD (CD's are cheap), and play it back in a DVD player. If that's how it plays out, I'm going to be extremely happy.
So it's Microsoft. Big deal? At least they can get the ball rolling on something like this. I'm willing to bet that once MS gets their stuff in, it will be a lot faster for other codecs like DivX to get in there too. Face it, if this doesn't happen, you can bet that DivX will never happen either.
If video games caused violence these people claim then the Darwin Awards would be contain many times as much content as it does now. "4 year old killed when 8 year old lept from the roof of his house on top of him shouting 'It's a me! Mario!'"
I don't want people playing 'parent' for me. I am not a parent yet, but I'm worried that the day I become one I'll have choices already made for me. "Well, this content is offensive to my oversly sensitive nature, we better prevent kids from seeing it."
I'd like to use Harry Potter as an example. When I first heard about Harry Potter, some group was trying to prevent children from being exposed to it for unsubstantiated reasons. One quote that comes to mind is "Harry Potter desensitizes children for the coming of the anti-christ", or some baloney. The reason I use the term 'unsubstantiated' is that I've read the first book and have seen the movie, and I've yet to find any religious implications at all, certainly nothing that has offended my sensibilites. Perhaps it is the later books that supposedly contain this offensive content, but frankly I don't really care. The parents groups were so overreactive that I just don't trust their judgement after I looked into it. Gathering a mob to burn books is not the sensibility I want to instill in my children.
My 8 year old sister really enjoyed the movie, and I bet it is not too long before she is picking up the novels and reading them. They are pretty advanced reading for a kid her age, but I think the interest the movie sparked may cause her to really enjoy reading. Given that I see no conflict in the novel or in the movie and our beliefs, I think it's perfectly okay for her to go off and enjoy Harry Potter in it's various forms.
If the over-reactive parents groups had their way, Harry Potter would never have been available to me or my sister to enjoy. I don't appreciate this at all. I do appreciate being informed. Something as simple as "be careful of Harry Potter because we believe some values expressed in it may be impressionable on your child." is perfectly acceptable to me. But to deny me the right to say "I think it is okay for my children to be exposed to this" is to deny me fundamental rights granted to me by the constitution.
Just because you don't want YOUR child to play a particular video game, doesn't mean that you are righteous when you deny MY child that priveledge.
Would I be correct in assuming that the reason these companies want to share your info is to optimize their advertising tactics? Instead of blasting everybody with an offer for cheap flights to Orlando, only blast the people who are calling Orlando hotels?
If I'm correct, then every company using this technique is rather oblivious to the obvious problem. No human being wants to listen to a bunch of noise. You'd think they'd know that just from the sheer number of people who thinks that 2-minute commercial breaks are worth spending extra money on VCR's with commercial skip features.
Ideally, it'd be nice if companies had products or offers to make you, they'd put their resources into benefitting you the most in a way that it is profitable to them, as opposed to trying every trick they can think of to get you to read/hear about it. Brand loyalty is an example. "Hey! Fly with us, and we'll give you half off of your next flight!", airline miles are a good example of this technique. Instead of trying to encourage you to fly by sending a bunch of people unsolicited emails/faxes, instead they put that effort into taking their existing customers and rewarding them for continuing to fly with them.
They'll never 'optimize marketing' by collecting personal info, it isn't even really necessary! I'm starting to think that coporations have this dream that one day they'll have such efficient control over the information they gather that they'll be able to make money on every message they send out.
Look at Napster! The RIAA thinks that they'll lose money from it, so instead of doing the logical thing (finding a way to make money with Napster or it's style of business practice), instead the sue it to death. Not necessary! Make money with it! Napster did!
"Well, if we put enough laws into practice, everybody will have to buy stuff when we tell them too, and anybody who tries to fight it will be exteriminated... exterimante.. EXTERMINATE!!"
OK Ok, I used the wrong term. Yes I failed history class, but that doesn't make me spastic or an idiot. You all obviously got the point I was trying to make. You could be polite and correct me instead of being rude and giving me heck for it because I haven't recently studied any of this.
With that said, let me explain why I used the term Communism and then thought of Hitler. There's a movie a while back where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a russian detective along with... uh.. I think it was John Belushi, but I may be wrong there. I was a kid when I saw it. The title may have been "Red Heat", again my memory is fuzzy though.
The American detective and the Russian detective were discussing life in Russia, and Arnie described a world where the Gov't owns everything , and the people are welcomed the right to use it. You don't own your own car, the Gov't does. As long as you work, you can drive it. Or something like that. If you get in a wreck, the state pays for it. I was a kid when I saw the movie so that bit's a little fuzzy. But it did manage to paint a dark picture in my head that resurfaced when all this DMCA crap came about.
Imagine a world where you can only listen to music if the corporation grants you permission to. It is illegal to find a way to play it on a computer. It is illegal to make a copy of it so you don't get the CD scratched up. And it's illegal if you're caught with it. How long before your computer is reporting everything you do to the corporation you are buying the music from? "John Smith is playing this song 4 times a day, we better up the price a bit so we get some more money out of it. Oh wait, today he stopped listening to the song. Flag him, he may have found another way of listening to it."
Hopefully that clarifies why I said communism. If I got the wrong term in my head, I'm sorry. If it's fascism, it's facism. I honestly don't know the difference because I haven't looked it up. At least now, though, no matter what term it is, you KNOW what I'm talking about.
As for Hitler, well he had a very clear idea in his head about who he thought should be running the planet. He very specificially wanted some groups on the planet, and some groups extinct. Compare this to the RIAA! The RIAA doesn't want Napster around, so it sues it to death. The RIAA doesn't want MP3.COM around, so it sues it to death! THAT is where the Hitler image came from.
Hmm... just had a thought inspired by some posts in here: Doesn't the DMCA's demanding that people use the products as they are defined start to sound like communism? Every time I read an article like this I keep picturing Adolf Hitler as CEO of whatever company is being written about.
You'd think the industry would learn that a new market has opened up and learn how to profit in it instead of trying to close it. The most damning thing for them is as long as Linux is around, there will always be ways to prevent copy protection from ruining our lives.
How many more subtle changes to the law will it take before it becomes illegal to not purchase a product because you saw the ad on TV?
Oh man... do I remember Rocky Jones. If any of you are curious about some of these old Scifi-shows, find an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 called "Crash of the Moons". This movie stars Rocky Jones and crew and is mentioned in the article.
You can watch the movie without Joel and the bots at MovieFlix.com for a small price. I warn you, though: the movie's a lot more fun with the MST3k crew.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that Hollywood is so imaginative when it comes to worst case scenarios, but nearly every movie ever made has a sequal? *eyeroll*
Okay, first, they *can't* make every bit of hardware protect their content. They C-A-N-N-O-T. It's, as Ralph Wiggam would say, unpossible. They talked about making routers not send copy-restricted (I refuse to use the term 'copy-protection' here) data through them. But the thing is, if I break apart the data blocks, randomize them, and then have the computer on the other end reassemble them, then the routers won't work. That philosophy likely applies to the rest of the hardware. You'd seriously need sentient hardware to look at the data to know what's up.
Secondly, they can't get every piece of hardware out there to stop it. Sorry. Too late. Btttz. Unable to comply.
Third, it is ridiculous to believe that every single piece of Hollywood content is going to be made accessible on-line. I can imagine more popular shows like Red Dwarf or the Simpsons or Family Guy or whatever to get pretty well captured and made available, but the people who make that available are true fans of their respected shows. I'm not going to be able to find an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (*gag*) available. You know why? Because I seriously doubt anybody's going to take the time to capture it and make it available. And if they do, I'm not going to waste my time downloading it just to watch it. Stream? Maybe, but not download it.
There's too much content out there! Lets say I build a computer designed to capture a show as it's downloaded, I still would manually have to go in and edit out the commercials. (editing out the commercials is a condition of actually hurting the industry) There's NO WAY I'm going to be able to manually do that for every single show every day of the week! I have a life! Are some people going to do it? Maybe, but not ever on the scale that the industry is afraid of.
Anyway, I have drifted off topic a little bit. Back to my topic "They're fighting the wrong battle...", well Hollywood is taking a really backwards approach here. They think that by stopping piracy they're going to save their revenue. They also think that if they protect their content so it can't be copied that they're going to have a growing market for the rest of time. It won't work! The truth of the matter is that if anybody doesn't watch the show when it's first aired (which is the prime time to see it, if you miss that then you're likely to have some dumb ass friend or radio DJ spoil the ending for you), then the value diminishes. More and more people have less and less time to catch TV shows when they're first aired. That's exactly why VCR's are in every home! If somebody wants the show bad enough, they'll either set it up to get it themselves, or they'll find a way to go get it. If that means that a Napster clone is the way to get it, then the people will go there.
So there's demand here, right? That means there is a market! Instead of fighting the 'piracy', fill the demand! Ever hear of Video on Demand? I wouldn't need to go to Morpheus or Kazaa if I could just go to a website that has the show ready to stream and click play. If they want to insert commercials into it, THAT'S FINE. That works!! I love it! I'll embrace that! But PLEASE give me that opportunity before you claim that piracy will destroy your market! Fighting piracy won't save the market, but filling demand will.
*He who finds it amusing that Hollywood is willing to spend money to stop losses they don't have, but isn't willing to try to make money on demand to watch shows at our leisure.*
I think that the tighter they squeeze people, the wider the door will get for independent people to make their own shows and publish them on the web.
It is possible with today's consumer technology for people to make movies and broadcast them on the internet. Video cameras are cheap, people are willing to act (although there's need for improvement heh), and TV quality visual effects are within the reach of people with a modest income.
Until the day Hollywood consistantly creates stories that are worth paying for, they can't make these kinds of demands. Take a look at Final Fantasy. The people who are fans of that series are mostly interested in the story. They have their Playstation 2's, they have the $50 to buy the game, and they have the 40 hours to beat it. There isn't a TV show out there that can make that many people reschedule their lives around when the show is aired. Even though a show is half an hour to an hour long, nearly all of them aren't worth making sure you are home for that time.
So go ahead Hollywood, spend your energy trying to protect your 'precious content', you're not going to squeeze more money out of people.
Im worried about that too. I do think there's a failsafe tho. Consumers would get priveledges. You can buy individual songs. You can listen to MP3s on your Rio. You can actually contact the artist directly if you want permission to use the music in your demo reel, stuff like that.
When the RIAA signs up that artist, you lose those rights unless they open up. My hope is that they'll find that when people are used to these privledges, they won't react well to having them taken away. If the group makes no money, then they have no value with the RIAA. Its sad that the artists would get screwed, but that'd be a lesson to the rest of them about creating music for money instead of doing it for art.
Anybody else think it'd be appropriate for me to email my objection to it being called a CD to them?
Frankly, I think Fox would do good to have Sunday night be the animated night. Here's my proposed time slot:
7:00- King of the Hill
7:30- Family Guy
8:00- Simpsons
8:30- Futurama
9:00- P.J.'s (I know it's cancelled, miss it tho)
9:30- The Tick (reruns)
And then, get Comedy Central to show Southpark at 10:00. (I don't think Fox'd air South Park.)
That's the kind of lineup that'd have me watching every Sunday. Message to FOX: STOP preempting Futurama for Football! The two are mutually exclusive!
I was just thinking that maybe what we need is to listen to music that's not from the RIAA. I know there are talented people out there. Here in Portland we have a bunch of aspiring musicians that nobody has really heard of. It seems like if they had a way to get some exposure, they'd be able to use the net as a revenue stream to encourage them to keep creating.
How can Slashdot help? Well the first thing it could do is to generate an article on how to build an audio-PC with all the right microphones etc to do a high-quality capture. Then go on to explain how to do high quality MP3 (or any format really) encoding to make available on the web.
The band puts up a site with a few high quality Mp3's, a couple of them are free to download, and the rest people are asked to pay a few bucks for on Paypal or something to that effect. If it's Slashdotted, they'll get a lot of interested traffic in the first place. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm willing to buy music this way simply to support the start of this idea.
More money can be made on this by creating an MP3 with a 'visit us at http://www.bandname.com/albumname for more music, T-shirts etc...' teaser at the end (or beginning?) of the song, then release them for free on Morpheus or Kazza or whatever P2P technology is around.
Will there be piracy? Of course. Duh we all know that. But I do think that the artists could potentially make a very respectable income this way, and maybe even make a full time job out of their dream. It's important that they keep the quality up, but who knows? Maybe this type of thing could spell the end of the RIAA's monopolistic ways? The only reason we're dependent on the RIAA is that we want more music, remove that dependency and their value goes way down. There's no more boycotting or even DMCA to worry about.
Whatcha think? Anybody willing to try this?
I don't think we need to wait for Philips either. I think we (the consumers) should raise a big stink about not wanting protected music. If all goes well, the stores will decide they need to have a seperate section for protected music. A bunch of people buying music and returning it because it 'doesnt play on my player' (no need to specify you mean your computer) will likely get their attention. At the very least, bring the album to the counter and say "Do you have a version that's not copy protected? I can't play this."
If the protected music is in a seperate section, then it should raise awareness, and make people pay attention to that Compact Disc logo.
The other option would be for the RIAA to produce nothing but N-Sync music. It'll play in everybody's player, and it'll never be copied!
John Washita? (sp?) The guy who did the voice of Blur on the Transformers Movie?
Hmm.. honestly I dont know, but two ideas pop into mind:
3D Printed
or
Etched.
Man... I can't wait to see what happens when they start making microscopic machines. Anybody remember the plastic that has tiny capsules in it that break open when the plastic is broken, releasing a substance that restores some of the strenght? Wouldn't it be cool to use that type of plastic to act as a form of structural support while microscopic machines go in and fix the broken plastic on a real tiny level?
Healing cars!!
I agree with you here. What the Music Industry, Movie Industry, the Media, Television Networks, heck... any content provider of any kind needs to realize is that the Internet will *replace* the current distribution methods that are in place right now. One day, we will watch TV that comes through a digital network, all on demand. One day, we will have music we've acquired play anywhere from a central server. One day, we will be able to watch movies on a huge screen at home with at least thater resolution. They can't sue these advances out of existence!
They're far better off adopting the net while it's in it's infancy instead of trying to heard people away from it. Man... imagine if typewriter companies pulled this kind of crap when the PC was invented.
Hmm... so let me see if I understand this. If I take my computer, rip all my DVD's to DivX, then get a wireless card, anybody close enough to me in my apartment complex can potentially watch those movies.
Okay, fair enough. Given the range of 802.11, I think maybe 6 people are close enough they'd get a decent signal. Which is fine because I think I wouldn't be able to handle much more than that since a dvd rip is roughly 1 megabit.
For this to happen, all 6 of my neighbors would have to not only have computers (I think 2 of my neighbors have computers), wireless cards, and I'd have to talk to each one to give them information on how to hit my computer to get the info.
I just don't see this happening. First off, with all the neighbors I've had in the past, I can only think of one that'd actually even try it, let alone rely on it.
Secondly, I'm the only guy I know that has a computer permanently hooked up to a television. (gotta put my demo reel on VHS somehow!) I can't imagine any of my neighbors watching a movie on anything but their television.
Third, for all the trouble this would take, I'd have better luck just sending them the movie over ICQ than by trying to get all this wireless bs worked out. As bandwidth improves, wireless as way to transmit it is even less interesting.
I think wireless networks will take off, but I have trouble seeing people sharing their networks to other people. Who'd want to? I'd be afraid of security issues. I don't want my neighbor finding a way into my computer and reading my torrid emails to my girlfriend.
I think the industry is solving the wrong problem. Instead of trying to encrypt very specific files over 802.11, how about trying to figure out how to make money on this. Check out http://www.intertainer.tv for an example. You pay them $4, and you can watch a full length movie immediately. That's a better service than I'd ever care to provide, and they can make money on it.
I had another idea, it's a little extreme, but I think it's an idea that can be built off of.
I'm a member of a forum that talks about a particular interest of mine. Basically, I log in to a site, and my friends that are online (of that particular interest, obviously I won't find my mom on a CG Art board...) show up and I can message them and check out the recent posts. There is a personal messaging system there so I can send private messages to people. If somebody sends me one, I get a notification on the home page.
Basically, I've obscured the method it takes to get a hold of me. A good chunk of my friends are on that forum, a coupla more are on another forum, and the rest including family are on icq. I've basically weined myself from the need for e-mail. I wouldn't have it at all if sites didn't require it for authorization.
This makes it a lot harder for a spammer to reach me. If every site has a different (and constantly mutating) method of sending messages around, then it's so much harder for spammers to get through.
Whatcha think, sirs?
This is an idea that has been bouncing around my head for a while, I hope to implement it some day.
.gif or .jpg images (not text!!!), the user must manually type in that number for the message to be accepted. Then the webserver sends the message to my mailserver. If sombody attempts to send an email to my mailserver and it is from the wrong domain, or it doesn't have the right number, then *flush*.
:)
I'm having problems with getting too much unsolicited mail too. The idea I had borrows from something I saw at http://www.godaddy.com when I went to do a whois on my records. Here's the idea:
First, I need a mailserver that will *only* accept incoming emails from a certain domain, the domain of my website. Then I set up my website with a form used to send me email. Then, and this is where I borrow from www.godaddy.com, throw up a random number on the screen using
Is this the perfect solution? Well, no. It kind of puts a block to forwarded mail. (Although if I blocked forwarded mail alltogether I think my mailbox would be a lot less messy...)
It's possible that some day somebody'd come up with a spider that can read the numbers and fake it, but my feeling was that if everybody customized their websites with their own fonts etc, it'd be hard to make a general purpose spider that can spam everybody.
If I ever get a static IP, it's something I intend to try.
[idea] Include meta-data with every opinion you write. [/idea]
/stupid-idea]
[offensive] Some people are overly sensitive and can't stand the idea of people having differing opinions. [/offensive]
[suggestive] This sucks. [/suggestive]
[x-rated] This really sucks donkey balls. [/x-rated]
[over-simplified, stupid-idea] So my thinking was that everybody could use XML to solve this problem! If they nest all of their opinions with descriptions like I'm showing here in psuedo form. [/over-simplified,
[flawed] Then everybody can set their browsers to filter anything they don't want to hear![/flawed]
[ignorant] This solution solves everybody's problem, and everybody will be happy! And, it'll be very easy to implement! [/ignorant]
I think you bring up an interesting point. Is the hand-link just a terminal, or is it an integral part of Ziggy? For example, when Al smacks it, it cries. Is that Ziggy complaining about abuse of the hand-link?
I'm not asking for the sake of settling some Quantum Leap trivia, I'm asking because I do believe this Mira device relates to what the question I just asked. If an interface device has the ability to perform other tasks, can it be considered a seperate device and get it's own name?
I realize it's not a critical issue, but I do see a day where it's not uncommon for my watch to act as an interface to other devices. So I just thought it'd be an interesting question to ask.
Thanks for the suggestions, guys. :) I need to look into SVCD because that's a new term to me. Learn something new every day, eh?
.WMA file, but I got a notification that I'm not licensed to play it back. Was that what you were trying to show me, or was it a quality issue? Either way I think you make a good point. MS knows what I play every time I play it. (altho Im not sure how they'd get that info on a DVD w/no net connection)
:) Thanks guys.
VB, I tried to play your
Oh yes, the Macs have been quite tempting lately. I've been eyeballing the Mac laptop that comes with a DVD burner/Authoring software, heck I'd buy one right now if I had the money. Maybe in 6 months.
I was just hoping to stay with PC. If I buy a Mac right now, it'd be almost strictly to do the DVD authoring. Is that such a big deal? Well, sort of. I have reasons to stick with Windows, for example alot of my Lightwave plugins are for Intel only. I'm pretty sure Newtek will let me switch to the Mac version of LW for a reasonable price, but as I said the plugins I use may not work. So its not like I'd be able to replace my PC with the Mac. That makes it a lot harder to justify the $1,500 - $2,000 price point. For a lot less than that I could get a DVD burner I suppose, but that's still a $500 purchase at least.
Anywho, the SVCD option may be what I'm looking for, at least until I can just make a full fledge DVD Burner.
I really wish Lightwave was ported to Linux, then I wouldn't be concerned which platform I used...
Hmmm.. a noisy hand held device that remotely talks to my computer. Yep, if i get one I'm calling it Ziggy.
I'm excited about this capability. I'm an artist who likes to make his own animation/video, and I like the idea of burning a CD (read: not DVD) with content I can play on the TV. Is this such a silly idea? I don't think so.
Me personally, I'd love the idea of shipping my demo reel to a potentially new employer on a disc that will play in their DVD and allow them to have a better look at my content. Right now, most employers demand that it is on VHS. Why? From what Ive heard, its because they don't want to muck with downloading codecs etc. I'm sure they'd be happy to play back a DVD if I sent it to them, but right now authoring a DVD is astronomical. If this technology were available and STANDARD today, wooo that'd be a lot easier for me. More impressive too.
I have a coworker that's shooting videos of his newborn son with a DV video camera. He would LOVE the capability of making discs with this footage he can send to family/friends.
Some people would like to make archives of their video tapes to disc and never worry about having those cassettes degrade.
What this capability could potentially allow you to do is use a format that has a freely available encoder, burn it to a CD instead of a DVD (CD's are cheap), and play it back in a DVD player. If that's how it plays out, I'm going to be extremely happy.
So it's Microsoft. Big deal? At least they can get the ball rolling on something like this. I'm willing to bet that once MS gets their stuff in, it will be a lot faster for other codecs like DivX to get in there too. Face it, if this doesn't happen, you can bet that DivX will never happen either.
If video games caused violence these people claim then the Darwin Awards would be contain many times as much content as it does now. "4 year old killed when 8 year old lept from the roof of his house on top of him shouting 'It's a me! Mario!'"
I don't want people playing 'parent' for me. I am not a parent yet, but I'm worried that the day I become one I'll have choices already made for me. "Well, this content is offensive to my oversly sensitive nature, we better prevent kids from seeing it."
I'd like to use Harry Potter as an example. When I first heard about Harry Potter, some group was trying to prevent children from being exposed to it for unsubstantiated reasons. One quote that comes to mind is "Harry Potter desensitizes children for the coming of the anti-christ", or some baloney. The reason I use the term 'unsubstantiated' is that I've read the first book and have seen the movie, and I've yet to find any religious implications at all, certainly nothing that has offended my sensibilites. Perhaps it is the later books that supposedly contain this offensive content, but frankly I don't really care. The parents groups were so overreactive that I just don't trust their judgement after I looked into it. Gathering a mob to burn books is not the sensibility I want to instill in my children.
My 8 year old sister really enjoyed the movie, and I bet it is not too long before she is picking up the novels and reading them. They are pretty advanced reading for a kid her age, but I think the interest the movie sparked may cause her to really enjoy reading. Given that I see no conflict in the novel or in the movie and our beliefs, I think it's perfectly okay for her to go off and enjoy Harry Potter in it's various forms.
If the over-reactive parents groups had their way, Harry Potter would never have been available to me or my sister to enjoy. I don't appreciate this at all. I do appreciate being informed. Something as simple as "be careful of Harry Potter because we believe some values expressed in it may be impressionable on your child." is perfectly acceptable to me. But to deny me the right to say "I think it is okay for my children to be exposed to this" is to deny me fundamental rights granted to me by the constitution.
Just because you don't want YOUR child to play a particular video game, doesn't mean that you are righteous when you deny MY child that priveledge.
Would I be correct in assuming that the reason these companies want to share your info is to optimize their advertising tactics? Instead of blasting everybody with an offer for cheap flights to Orlando, only blast the people who are calling Orlando hotels?
If I'm correct, then every company using this technique is rather oblivious to the obvious problem. No human being wants to listen to a bunch of noise. You'd think they'd know that just from the sheer number of people who thinks that 2-minute commercial breaks are worth spending extra money on VCR's with commercial skip features.
Ideally, it'd be nice if companies had products or offers to make you, they'd put their resources into benefitting you the most in a way that it is profitable to them, as opposed to trying every trick they can think of to get you to read/hear about it. Brand loyalty is an example. "Hey! Fly with us, and we'll give you half off of your next flight!", airline miles are a good example of this technique. Instead of trying to encourage you to fly by sending a bunch of people unsolicited emails/faxes, instead they put that effort into taking their existing customers and rewarding them for continuing to fly with them.
They'll never 'optimize marketing' by collecting personal info, it isn't even really necessary! I'm starting to think that coporations have this dream that one day they'll have such efficient control over the information they gather that they'll be able to make money on every message they send out.
Look at Napster! The RIAA thinks that they'll lose money from it, so instead of doing the logical thing (finding a way to make money with Napster or it's style of business practice), instead the sue it to death. Not necessary! Make money with it! Napster did!
"Well, if we put enough laws into practice, everybody will have to buy stuff when we tell them too, and anybody who tries to fight it will be exteriminated... exterimante.. EXTERMINATE!!"
OK Ok, I used the wrong term. Yes I failed history class, but that doesn't make me spastic or an idiot. You all obviously got the point I was trying to make. You could be polite and correct me instead of being rude and giving me heck for it because I haven't recently studied any of this.
... uh.. I think it was John Belushi, but I may be wrong there. I was a kid when I saw it. The title may have been "Red Heat", again my memory is fuzzy though.
With that said, let me explain why I used the term Communism and then thought of Hitler. There's a movie a while back where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a russian detective along with
The American detective and the Russian detective were discussing life in Russia, and Arnie described a world where the Gov't owns everything , and the people are welcomed the right to use it. You don't own your own car, the Gov't does. As long as you work, you can drive it. Or something like that. If you get in a wreck, the state pays for it. I was a kid when I saw the movie so that bit's a little fuzzy. But it did manage to paint a dark picture in my head that resurfaced when all this DMCA crap came about.
Imagine a world where you can only listen to music if the corporation grants you permission to. It is illegal to find a way to play it on a computer. It is illegal to make a copy of it so you don't get the CD scratched up. And it's illegal if you're caught with it. How long before your computer is reporting everything you do to the corporation you are buying the music from? "John Smith is playing this song 4 times a day, we better up the price a bit so we get some more money out of it. Oh wait, today he stopped listening to the song. Flag him, he may have found another way of listening to it."
Hopefully that clarifies why I said communism. If I got the wrong term in my head, I'm sorry. If it's fascism, it's facism. I honestly don't know the difference because I haven't looked it up. At least now, though, no matter what term it is, you KNOW what I'm talking about.
As for Hitler, well he had a very clear idea in his head about who he thought should be running the planet. He very specificially wanted some groups on the planet, and some groups extinct. Compare this to the RIAA! The RIAA doesn't want Napster around, so it sues it to death. The RIAA doesn't want MP3.COM around, so it sues it to death! THAT is where the Hitler image came from.
Does that clear things up a bit?
Hmm... just had a thought inspired by some posts in here: Doesn't the DMCA's demanding that people use the products as they are defined start to sound like communism? Every time I read an article like this I keep picturing Adolf Hitler as CEO of whatever company is being written about.
You'd think the industry would learn that a new market has opened up and learn how to profit in it instead of trying to close it. The most damning thing for them is as long as Linux is around, there will always be ways to prevent copy protection from ruining our lives.
How many more subtle changes to the law will it take before it becomes illegal to not purchase a product because you saw the ad on TV?
What would make me buy an HDTV today is if it had a VGA Input. At the very least I could have a Star Trek style main viewer in my apartment!
Oh man... do I remember Rocky Jones. If any of you are curious about some of these old Scifi-shows, find an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 called "Crash of the Moons". This movie stars Rocky Jones and crew and is mentioned in the article.
You can watch the movie without Joel and the bots at MovieFlix.com for a small price. I warn you, though: the movie's a lot more fun with the MST3k crew.