I went to UC Berkeley and we, like many top engineering colleges, get money from corporations all the time. Even though I used a bunch of intel machines, windows NT, Sun Microsystems, HP-UX and BSD I was NOT religiously and blinded devoted to any of them.
You make it sound like this school will begin to institute a language called MS-speak and MS will be big brother. I haven't RTFA-ed but I really find this hard to believe.
Even though they are contributing that much money/software, I think the extent of influence will not go beyond promotion of Microsoft. There's no way they are going to force the econs teachers to "not teach about monopolies in general". That's ludicrous. I don't think Microsoft would, or need to, go out of it's way to prevent the education of high school kids about the free market economy.
From what I've read indie labels are actually more for file-sharing than mainstream labels. The reaosn is because small and lesser known artists don't have the money and power to get their names known like Columbia or Arista does.
For them, the web provides an easy way to get their music out to the largest audience. It's a fast, easy and effective way to spread their music.
Anyway I think your math is wrong. You're assumign that loss for all artists is linear. That's an incorrect assumption. If the exposure of mainstream artists is exponential that of lesser known artists then it's quite possible that it would hurt mainstream artists exponentially more.
The other incorrect assumption is the way you group artists. Comparing the sheer number of small artists (huge number) compared to the the artists of the top 10 selling albums (which = 10 and is the albums most companies make their money off of) the math that you spelled out just doesn't add up.
When Napster was big I did download "random" mp3s. The thing is that it was actually pseudo random.
What would usually happen is that I would find a band or dj I liked. Often they would collaborate with other artists of similar genre and this would be reflected on the filename (i.e. "featuring yo mama"). Because the music interested me I would download random music from the person that was featured. On and on this would go.
There are connections in other ways too. I would hear an artist from a friend and sample some mp3s. Or I would go an artist's site and read about their musical influences, bands they thought were currently hot and bands fans would write about on newsgroups.
So I did download random songs but they were from targetted groups and that's even how I find my music today.
I'm no fan of Metallica but having spoken to quite a few of them my guess is that Metallica has been losing more and more money consistently with each successive album.
What's sad is that Lars probably doesn't want to admit that it isnt' because of file-sharing but no one likes Metallica's new shit.
Logically if I were the RIAA and I saw sales were going fine until Napster went into full effect then the correllation would just be too obvious.
OTOH, maybe they were having a steady decline and Napster made it worse. Maybe they saw an opportunity to make money through litigation.
Lastly, maybe there's a correlation to CD consumption with the dot-com bomb. I wouldn't be surprised if techie fools stopped buying CDs like mad once they stopped getting the fat pay checks.
That's sad but I find it hard to believe that their job losses were a result of file-sharing. The mp3s shared are usually mainstream groups and songs (read: NOT indie). Whenever I try finding mp3s of an obscure group I usually fail.
"Moreover, sales of top 10 selling albums, which generate the bulk of profits for record labels, have dropped from 60 million units in 2000 to 34 million units last year, Sherman said."
Am I the only one that find this pathetic and sad? I interpret this to mean that the majority of people buy the same 10 albums (more or less). The problem with music today is this..it's all about marketing!! Market the top 10 boy bands, one hit wonders, trends etc. and make your money selling 10 albums.
Maybe it's just me, but I think it's "fair" that they be losing money. Like any other business they need to adapt to the changing market. They can't get away with selling the same 10 albums (which are probably all crap anyway).
And that's screwed in the "you die early" sense not the "just got laid" sense.
Someone reminds me again why I went into programming?
As a child it made me a nerd and people shunned me.
In college it made me a nerd and the chicks shunned me.
At work it means I work for companies where there are no chicks and now I find out I die prematurely.
This makes no sense. Plenty of chemicals that are harsh on the human body are sold legally. It's the responsibility of the purchasers to use them in the correct way they are meant to be used (i.e. chemicals used to develop film is toxic. It's not the responsibility of the company selling the chemicals to inform developers not to ingest it. It's the responsibility of the photo lab.).
By your logic the company who sold chemicals to cleaners like 409 or Pinesol would be at fault if a child ingested it. That makes no sense.
"..so I'm posting it here, even though he is an uncaring dolt."
I don't follow politics much but I believe this was the Senator who was fighting vigorously against Bush's tax cut and for more benefits to help the middle and lower class. Maybe you know him better but I physically saw him on TV fight valiantly against the Republicans who still managed to ram the bill through.
Actually he was one of the few democrat senators who seemed to know what he was talking about and put things in a way that were intelligent and made sense.
..wouldn't it be a way to "legitimize" file-sharing (Kazaa, etc)?
I mean couldn't one set-up a legal business where the primary service they offer is the selling of iTunes mp3s amongst users? In this way the transfer would be legal but it would be illegal if a person did not delete their copy of the file.
If you told me that you knew the editor of this article was taking bribes then I'd be more apt to agree with you.
All you really prove is that people take measures to accomodate ranking. There's no way that Podunk College is going to be able to skew their school so much as to even make it in the top 500. So, even though there may be some error involved, I would call these rankings a "joke". At most they are not entirely accurate.
The logical part of me, though, wants to expand on what you finished with. The truth is just saying "no" will never get you anywhere. But saying "no" and then providing reasons why such as the bad consequences of such actions can justify it to anyone who is reasonable.
Other ways of saying no include providing a time/cost analysis hopefully showing that the request is not worth it.
However, thinking about it a bit more, my problem with saying/receiving "no" often has to do with design. I think this happens quite often and is the hardest "no" to deal with because the consequences of poor design aren't immediately obvious. The consequence of poor maintainable code hits you everyday little by little but may not cause your whole system to crash down. I think that has been the reason why I've been unable to deal with "no"s.
I don't think the problem is making file-sharing profitable. The problem is finding a way to make it as profitable as selling CDs. I'm sure file-sharing (Apple) already turns a profit. But I bet that it doesn't even come close to the return from CDs.
And that's the major problem. The way CDs are now priced (and given the cheap raw materials required as well as cheap burning process) I can't see how file-sharing can ever compete.
Your wife, this one person, had an experience where at some random college (Podunk College for all we know) where she was told to compile statistics so it would favor that school (what school was it again?).
Give me a break! Unless your wife works for US News World and Report and was the Director of Statistics at Stanford then all you've exhibited is that in one instance a school tried to swing it's ranking one way.
Even if most schools do try to swing their rank that doesn't mean that these results are a "joke". It means that they may be a bit skewed. As for my personal experience, I went to Berkeley under the engineering department and I'd say it was the top off of my experience with people from other schools (MIT, Stanford and otherwise).
I can see what you're saying but I think like any job you've gotta pick the right tool.
If you're just going to churn out another PIM, workflow, content management, ecommerce website there is probably no need for a PhD. A PhD would be overkill (like using a tank to take out one soldier). The level of expertise required to do this is just a bachelors.
However, let's say you weren't doing a "standard" product but wanted to do research on PageRank, Bayesian theory, cryptography, or build a whole new standard for wireless? Most bachelors (as much as I would not liek to admit) probably don't have the expertise for this. Why? Because bacherlors who have tended to work more know less theory. Why is this a negative? Working more tends to be equivalent to learning specific technologies. This leads to fast and easy emulation of old concepts in new scenarios but not learning theory. Many times new technologies require new theories.
So it really depends on what you're hiring for imho.
One could also put it in terms of percentage tax of disposable income. The poor, by far, consume the most in terms of the percentage to total income. They also have, by far, the least amount of disposable income. On the other end of the scale, we have the rich who have much more disposable income and, therefore, consume less (in terms of percentage).
" Why do you feel it is ethical to unfairly tax the most productive members of Califoria society..."
First of all, I can see why someone might naively associate income with level of productivity but this, simply, isn't true. (In all fairness I'll admit that I could be wrong but I'd like to see either a scientific study or some sort of economic principle justifying this).
The truth is living (period) requires a certain minimum amount of money. Most low income people work several jobs to meet this minimum amount and pay taxes. Most economists would agree that consumption has been keeping the economy afloat. Rich, by getting tax cuts, will most likely not use that income to consume. Most likely they will reinvest in stocks, real estate, etc.
The truth is that in a capitalist society the rich get richer. The rich are able to make money merely by having money in the bank due to interest. That being that case, how can anyone really deem their taxes as "unethical" or "unfair"? The rich reap much more benefits than the middle class and the poor. It's not that they don't deserve it or that they dont' earn it, but they still receive it. Everyone works hard but obviously if someone is rich they've enjoyed benefits from society in some form or another that other people have not (such as real estate investments, owning of a business, stock portfolio). So if you think taxing them is unfair then one can easily say it's unfair that the poor and middle class cannot take advantage of these capitalist advantages that the rich have.
I'm not saying the rich or poor are "better", but that everyone works hard for their money.
Slashdot Mirror
FUD.
I went to UC Berkeley and we, like many top engineering colleges, get money from corporations all the time. Even though I used a bunch of intel machines, windows NT, Sun Microsystems, HP-UX and BSD I was NOT religiously and blinded devoted to any of them.
Gad!
You make it sound like this school will begin to institute a language called MS-speak and MS will be big brother. I haven't RTFA-ed but I really find this hard to believe.
Even though they are contributing that much money/software, I think the extent of influence will not go beyond promotion of Microsoft. There's no way they are going to force the econs teachers to "not teach about monopolies in general". That's ludicrous. I don't think Microsoft would, or need to, go out of it's way to prevent the education of high school kids about the free market economy.
From what I've read indie labels are actually more for file-sharing than mainstream labels. The reaosn is because small and lesser known artists don't have the money and power to get their names known like Columbia or Arista does.
For them, the web provides an easy way to get their music out to the largest audience. It's a fast, easy and effective way to spread their music.
Anyway I think your math is wrong. You're assumign that loss for all artists is linear. That's an incorrect assumption. If the exposure of mainstream artists is exponential that of lesser known artists then it's quite possible that it would hurt mainstream artists exponentially more.
The other incorrect assumption is the way you group artists. Comparing the sheer number of small artists (huge number) compared to the the artists of the top 10 selling albums (which = 10 and is the albums most companies make their money off of) the math that you spelled out just doesn't add up.
When Napster was big I did download "random" mp3s. The thing is that it was actually pseudo random.
What would usually happen is that I would find a band or dj I liked. Often they would collaborate with other artists of similar genre and this would be reflected on the filename (i.e. "featuring yo mama"). Because the music interested me I would download random music from the person that was featured. On and on this would go.
There are connections in other ways too. I would hear an artist from a friend and sample some mp3s. Or I would go an artist's site and read about their musical influences, bands they thought were currently hot and bands fans would write about on newsgroups.
So I did download random songs but they were from targetted groups and that's even how I find my music today.
I'm no fan of Metallica but having spoken to quite a few of them my guess is that Metallica has been losing more and more money consistently with each successive album.
What's sad is that Lars probably doesn't want to admit that it isnt' because of file-sharing but no one likes Metallica's new shit.
Logically if I were the RIAA and I saw sales were going fine until Napster went into full effect then the correllation would just be too obvious.
OTOH, maybe they were having a steady decline and Napster made it worse. Maybe they saw an opportunity to make money through litigation.
Lastly, maybe there's a correlation to CD consumption with the dot-com bomb. I wouldn't be surprised if techie fools stopped buying CDs like mad once they stopped getting the fat pay checks.
That's sad but I find it hard to believe that their job losses were a result of file-sharing. The mp3s shared are usually mainstream groups and songs (read: NOT indie). Whenever I try finding mp3s of an obscure group I usually fail.
"Moreover, sales of top 10 selling albums, which generate the bulk of profits for record labels, have dropped from 60 million units in 2000 to 34 million units last year, Sherman said."
Am I the only one that find this pathetic and sad? I interpret this to mean that the majority of people buy the same 10 albums (more or less). The problem with music today is this..it's all about marketing!! Market the top 10 boy bands, one hit wonders, trends etc. and make your money selling 10 albums.
Maybe it's just me, but I think it's "fair" that they be losing money. Like any other business they need to adapt to the changing market. They can't get away with selling the same 10 albums (which are probably all crap anyway).
And that's screwed in the "you die early" sense not the "just got laid" sense.
Someone reminds me again why I went into programming?
As a child it made me a nerd and people shunned me.
In college it made me a nerd and the chicks shunned me.
At work it means I work for companies where there are no chicks and now I find out I die prematurely.
Wtf?
This makes no sense. Plenty of chemicals that are harsh on the human body are sold legally. It's the responsibility of the purchasers to use them in the correct way they are meant to be used (i.e. chemicals used to develop film is toxic. It's not the responsibility of the company selling the chemicals to inform developers not to ingest it. It's the responsibility of the photo lab.).
By your logic the company who sold chemicals to cleaners like 409 or Pinesol would be at fault if a child ingested it. That makes no sense.
"..so I'm posting it here, even though he is an uncaring dolt." I don't follow politics much but I believe this was the Senator who was fighting vigorously against Bush's tax cut and for more benefits to help the middle and lower class. Maybe you know him better but I physically saw him on TV fight valiantly against the Republicans who still managed to ram the bill through.
Actually he was one of the few democrat senators who seemed to know what he was talking about and put things in a way that were intelligent and made sense.
..wouldn't it be a way to "legitimize" file-sharing (Kazaa, etc)?
I mean couldn't one set-up a legal business where the primary service they offer is the selling of iTunes mp3s amongst users? In this way the transfer would be legal but it would be illegal if a person did not delete their copy of the file.
If you told me that you knew the editor of this article was taking bribes then I'd be more apt to agree with you.
All you really prove is that people take measures to accomodate ranking. There's no way that Podunk College is going to be able to skew their school so much as to even make it in the top 500. So, even though there may be some error involved, I would call these rankings a "joke". At most they are not entirely accurate.
I feel you. I often feel the same way.
The logical part of me, though, wants to expand on what you finished with. The truth is just saying "no" will never get you anywhere. But saying "no" and then providing reasons why such as the bad consequences of such actions can justify it to anyone who is reasonable.
Other ways of saying no include providing a time/cost analysis hopefully showing that the request is not worth it.
However, thinking about it a bit more, my problem with saying/receiving "no" often has to do with design. I think this happens quite often and is the hardest "no" to deal with because the consequences of poor design aren't immediately obvious. The consequence of poor maintainable code hits you everyday little by little but may not cause your whole system to crash down. I think that has been the reason why I've been unable to deal with "no"s.
I was about to say the same thing. Smells like a lawsuit waiting to happen. :)
I don't think the problem is making file-sharing profitable. The problem is finding a way to make it as profitable as selling CDs. I'm sure file-sharing (Apple) already turns a profit. But I bet that it doesn't even come close to the return from CDs.
And that's the major problem. The way CDs are now priced (and given the cheap raw materials required as well as cheap burning process) I can't see how file-sharing can ever compete.
So let me get this straight..
Your wife, this one person, had an experience where at some random college (Podunk College for all we know) where she was told to compile statistics so it would favor that school (what school was it again?).
Give me a break! Unless your wife works for US News World and Report and was the Director of Statistics at Stanford then all you've exhibited is that in one instance a school tried to swing it's ranking one way.
Even if most schools do try to swing their rank that doesn't mean that these results are a "joke". It means that they may be a bit skewed. As for my personal experience, I went to Berkeley under the engineering department and I'd say it was the top off of my experience with people from other schools (MIT, Stanford and otherwise).
LOL!!!!!
I so wish I had some mod points right now.
Wow. That was precisely what I was going to say. The words I would've chosen:
:D
"Wow, she's a politician already!"
I can see what you're saying but I think like any job you've gotta pick the right tool.
If you're just going to churn out another PIM, workflow, content management, ecommerce website there is probably no need for a PhD. A PhD would be overkill (like using a tank to take out one soldier). The level of expertise required to do this is just a bachelors.
However, let's say you weren't doing a "standard" product but wanted to do research on PageRank, Bayesian theory, cryptography, or build a whole new standard for wireless? Most bachelors (as much as I would not liek to admit) probably don't have the expertise for this. Why? Because bacherlors who have tended to work more know less theory. Why is this a negative? Working more tends to be equivalent to learning specific technologies. This leads to fast and easy emulation of old concepts in new scenarios but not learning theory. Many times new technologies require new theories.
So it really depends on what you're hiring for imho.
Funny.
I've always taken Friendster to be another gimmick. Because of that, I've never thought Friendster more than a source of entertainment and comedy.
Admittedly, I love using it to check out chicks. That's right. Don't blame a geek for thinking with his penis.
I also enjoy reading about characters such as Strong Bad, Strong Sad, Jail, Booty, Tits and other lewd people/objects.
Hey, anythings possible. :P
Which brings up a good point...
One could also put it in terms of percentage tax of disposable income. The poor, by far, consume the most in terms of the percentage to total income. They also have, by far, the least amount of disposable income. On the other end of the scale, we have the rich who have much more disposable income and, therefore, consume less (in terms of percentage).
Obviously you've never read Ender's Game. :P
" Why do you feel it is ethical to unfairly tax the most productive members of Califoria society..." First of all, I can see why someone might naively associate income with level of productivity but this, simply, isn't true. (In all fairness I'll admit that I could be wrong but I'd like to see either a scientific study or some sort of economic principle justifying this). The truth is living (period) requires a certain minimum amount of money. Most low income people work several jobs to meet this minimum amount and pay taxes. Most economists would agree that consumption has been keeping the economy afloat. Rich, by getting tax cuts, will most likely not use that income to consume. Most likely they will reinvest in stocks, real estate, etc. The truth is that in a capitalist society the rich get richer. The rich are able to make money merely by having money in the bank due to interest. That being that case, how can anyone really deem their taxes as "unethical" or "unfair"? The rich reap much more benefits than the middle class and the poor. It's not that they don't deserve it or that they dont' earn it, but they still receive it. Everyone works hard but obviously if someone is rich they've enjoyed benefits from society in some form or another that other people have not (such as real estate investments, owning of a business, stock portfolio). So if you think taxing them is unfair then one can easily say it's unfair that the poor and middle class cannot take advantage of these capitalist advantages that the rich have. I'm not saying the rich or poor are "better", but that everyone works hard for their money.