I would assume that retail employees enter a company at a standard pay level and their pay rate is increased both with seniority and accomplishment. So they may not be at the top of their field, but they should be the better, more experienced Circuit City employees. (I'm also assuming that employees who perform below average are encouraged to leave via non-promotion and minimal pay raises.) So, to cut out your top paid people suggests to me that you've cut out the people with the most experience. (I'm not really sure about the upside about hiring back at lower pay rates the ones you just laid off. I would think the good people wouldn't tolerate going back to work for ingrates.) Given that one knock on stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, that the employees are not really able to help.... seems like a really, really bad idea.
But the really wack part IMHO is that Circuit City's stock went up yesterday! Yes, it's cutting costs, but it begs the question whether every employee is just as valuable as any other employee.
Making a mix tape for friends, relatives and loved ones should be fair use, as far as I'm concerned, and I don't really see that as a slippery slope. You ask what happens to those cds, well, if I'm any indication, they get listened to once or twice and are thrown in a closet where they stay until it's time to move. (Though, despite the languishing in the closet, some of the music on the mix tapes led to purchases.)
I also think it should be fair use to stream, a la radio broadcasting, a program of music and commentary. There will be some capture of the streams, like the cassettes I made 35 years ago of music from the radio stations. Some of it will be by folks in glee because they've taken it to the man. But some will be captured by kids who are fans becoming creators. (I was one of the lucky ones given a gift to create, I wrote some songs and performed in original music bands. It never became my livelihood, but, as the cliche goes, the journey is the reward.)
I think it's like painting; it's like literature; it's like computer programming: creativity arises from creations. All the greats started out by duplicating the "cool" stuff. You may speak of how the disingenuous could take the liberties I'd allow and lead us to, oh, economic ruination, I suppose, but I think this is one realm where everyone, yes everyone, wins if there's a little room for breathing. Content publishers seem to be of a mind that technology is cool because techology == lockdown. That attitude may, may, add a few dollars today, but either the market will wither because the customers are tired of the strait jackets or the creativity will stop sustaining itself. Back to the first comment, if the artifacts of popular culture cannot be shared within emotional or identifying contexts, then it is no more culture then a paper clip.
Some notes: Ep V's writing is attributed to Lucas, Leigh Brackett, and Lawrence Kasdan. Ep. VI is Lucas and Kasdan -- could this have something to do with it being so jokey and self-aware (as well as some contamination from Kasdan, Lucas and Harrison Ford's success with Raiders)? As for Ep IV ushering in a changed Hollywood, I think Jaws (1975) is understood to be the first summer blockbuster. Perhaps it was Ep IV that showed that lightning could strike twice?
On the other hand, Dell has been coming off of some disastrous quarters which suggests there is something troubled about their pick up the phone, take a credit card number, and slap together a laptop with Home XP business model. Polling for market guidance via an internet survey would seem to be an excellent approach to getting ideas that aren't profitable, so was it done as a stunt? I ask that question because if the top requests are ignored (even if there are sound business reasons to ignore them), how does that look? I would have expected that, in order to get a well balanced view of the market, Dell have also engaged other, less noisy, surveying techniques.
Clearly, there is a demand for inexpensive Windows-free notebooks. Is it enough for Dell to find a market? Would a few years of losses (duriing which they buy marketshare and promote how dispensible Windows is for many of us) pay off down the road as Dell becomes the one who brought Linux to the common gal? As they say, no risk no reward. Seems to me, though, if, as a manufacturer of hardware, you can convince the consumer that the value is in the combination of affordable machines running inexpensive, readily available, functional software, then should Microsoft retailiate by raising the OEM cost of Wiindows, it just makes the non-Windows models a better value.
Mid-day after a nuke blew up in Valencia or a mall was poisoned gassed in.... Valencia, which means normal people will want to get out of Dodge. One thing the civil unrest in '92 proved to me, when everyone wants to get out of town, it takes a long time to move a little.
They want MDRM (Magic DRM) that stops piracy and reduces Apple's marketshare to the point where Apple has to accept $1.75 pricing for this song and $2.42 for that song. The goal is to make as much revenue on the three songs that people want as from the pre-digital sale of a cd.
Moi aussi. Bought it because I was hearing it in Southern California via the Internet from Great Britain radio stations way before it was getting any airplay here in the US. Hey record companies, as I've said before, you want to sell more records let people hear more music.
So I was glancing at a summary of questions from the Court, and the point is that, by itself, software is not patentable -- the device using the software is patentable. So where a general device such as a 32 bit personal computer becomes a payroll server or a music player through the execution of a particular program, this device instantly infringes when a patent exists on a device that is a payroll server, etc. Unload the program and the device stops infringing. Since, gentle readers, we know all programs compile down to a sequence of instructions which are members of the small finite set of cpu instructions provided by the cpu designers, people like me ask where is the invention?
So, does this "No, no, we were patenting the device, not the software" loophole make sense? Does granting these types of patents advance society or (as I think) raise the costs for innovation and reward the big dogs in the manger who use patents to hinder progress or to leech off of other's successful implementation of the concept?
The questions from the Court about software patenting are interesting, because, as I understood it, this case was about a US patent being applied to a US company's overseas sale of something that would infringe if it was sold in the US. So, how does the nature of software patentability enter into the question? Unless it's their way to punt the question. Since there are circumstances where someone outside of the US can be held accountable to US laws (I know, go figure) they may want to find a way to settle this case without extending the reach of things like the "war" on drugs or the "war" on terror to civil litigation.
Remember VHS and Beta, besides making it more difficult for consumers to rent (because 1/2 of the tapes at the store were in the wrong format) it reduced title choice. For awhile, those of us with Beta machines weren't allowed to give the store our rental/buying money because Beta was losing. Also, originally, all video tapes were sold to the video stores at a price based on an $80 list price. Someone dared to think that there'd be money to be made if the video tapes were priced for sales and they were right. But, for awhile, titles were priced at 80 for rental and 20 (or so) to sell. Some other genius realized that, low sales price or not, some people still only rented, and some people wanted to buy and so the studios dropped the tier, so buyers could buy any thing and renters still rented.
Music is different than film. We've always owned our records and cds. We've always been able to make personal copies, once magnetic tape and recorders became affordable. Some of the value of records is that we could make mix tapes. We all know that we are hearing the first whispers of an oncoming "Aha!" moment when someone realizes that there are people who will start buying once the mp3s are unlocked. And there, Mr. MacroVision , is the point: while DRM infests music files, the record labels are leaving money on the table and paying MacroVision for the privilege.
Ah, radio. Before the ClearChannel takeover, one of the disturbing trends were formats delivered by satellite. The long term (1970-present) trend at radio has been to decrease the number of records in heavy to medium rotation (top 40 to top 30 to top 15), to rely more and more on national charts and research and less on local "gut feelings," to increase a rigid enforcement of the format, to be sure that disc jockeys have absolutely no say in the programming, and to reduce the identification of the recordings. If given a few more minutes, I could give more ways in which radio makes it harder for record companies to get people to hear the music which is how they sell records.
Oh, that the radio stations are also owned by the promoters isn't good.
You, Mr. or Ms. Record Executive, if you want to sell more records, get more people to hear more music. (And radio is not cooperating with your goal.) Pretty simple test: Will suing p2pers mean somebody new will hear the record you're selling? No. Move on. Will charging the satellite broadcasters, who have looser play-lists and old-school djs who are exposing more than the hot 5, mean your record will get played more or less? Um-hmm. Stop wringing your hands about non-commercial sharing and use all that intelligence to get people to listen.
Makes me wonder, when the pirated stuff will be Office 2007 with the ribbon, will OpenOffice.org actually do a better job of simulating the business software (which will be old Office for a year or two unless it will be easy for non-first world businesses to pirate.) For what it's worth, put me down as preferring OpenOffice.org.
Hmmm... yes, except my Windows-running non-tech-interested parents were taught by me to use Firefox from day 1, so let us extend this to slash-weenies, their relatives, and their friends who are having a choice to run Windows mitigated.
And isn't the slash-group-whine-wisdom about Apple customers that they overpaid for their computers, and doesn't that suggest that Wal-Mart is leaving on the table disposable income from a wealthy demographic willing to spend?
Check the temperature in certain nether-worlds, I'm going to offer a small defense for the record companies. In show-business distribution rights allocated by territory are standard. As an example, in order to get financing for a film, the producers may sell North American distribution rights to one company and European distribution rights to another. If you were a distributor, what would you think about the rights you purchased when your possible customers may download it from a retailer in another territory, especially as that retailer is giving a cut to their territory's distributor?
Once again, as noted elsewhere, radically new media means the entertainment business model needs to be rethought.
White House Visitor Logs that disputed the defense that Abramoff didn't really visit the White House that much.
White House Visitor Logs now private.
Military Reports on Iraqi Military Readiness that showed the Iraqi Military wasn't making significant progress.
Military Reports on Iraqi Military Readiness now classified, if compiled at all any more.
NASA scientists who described to the media results of studies which show a global temperature increase.
Installation of a NASA administrator who vets what the NASA scientist say (though this one wasn't effective, really)
Generals who tell Congress that the Administration has under-budgeted their expeditions.
Generals who find themselves facing an early end of their military career.
[Self-smacks forehead] Too much instrumentation -- of course -- and not another instance where these guys gag and bind the messenger who carries inconvenient news.
On the other hand, this is not a change that creates more virtue, character, self-actualization, etc. I'm not one of them, but I can empathize with the folks around me for whom the computer and the software are necessary evils and these folks don't have any interest in devoting a moment's thought towards engagement, improvisation, exploration, etc. I've written some small applications for the co-workers and I've learned that if it doesn't look familiar, or obviously easier or if it seems to take a foreign approach to the problem, it isn't going to be used. (And God bless them for that, isn't the real art in, as the saying goes, making easy things easy and hard things possible?)
Really, isn't this like dvorak keyboards, except pushed by the major force in the market? The dvorak keyboard is, from all accounts, ergonomic, sensible, faster, and not crippled due to the concerns of engineers who were figuring out how to allow mechanical hammers hit ribbon and paper 8 or more times a second, and yet, what's the uptake after decades of clear advantage?
Still, the shepherd has said it's time for the flock to move. It makes sense: that better usability is the devil's candy that sells the file format change; mix in the network effect and it's only a matter of time and we will all find that life is better as ribbon people. Better get ready to greet a new class of overlords.
Cable is a distribution technology (and I'm assuming that government access as basic service is required as the terms of granting the monopoly -- I am a US-ian and Canada may have a different cable structure), not a format. Is the cable feed unviewable for certain brands of televisions? Of course not.
Regarding the assertion that if one wants to participate in government, one will get (or borrow) a Windows machine: first, has Microsoft guaranteed that those files will be fully readable forever? Second: aren't you as a taxpayer concerned that any platform-tied file format might be costing you more because your government agency's choice in server and requirements for server liceneses are restricted and may need maintenance in perpetuity in order to use your archive?
Again, from a US-ian perspective, one huge problem down here is that people don't participate in government. Interfering with participation by erecting technology barriers, even in this one instance where the practical effect is no doubt minor, seems wrong.
So, projecting ahead. How many years of new computer buys will it take for Vista's costs to break even? Or, Vista has to be on what % of the installed base and how fast for this to not be one of the all-time great product management debacles?
It feels to me as though a new os in three years means a lot of us never try Vista. It also means some businesses will have been using Vista for about a year when the new os arrives. Frankly, I don't think these roadmaps are worth much, because I don't see the incentive for Microsoft to follow them.
XML is derived from another well established standard: SGML. It's meant to allow people to define a simple grammar in order to tag data and to separate the information from the presentation in a hierarchical structure called a document. It allows the authors to share with consumers an external mapping document which allows the consumers to assess the validity of the document. A person and a machine may parse the document, and it may be easier for the person who, with superior pattern processing facilities, can separate the data from the node borders given some cooperation from the producer's whitespace choices. It was designed to solve one problem: html was really good, but not quite right.
So we argue over how verbose node borders need be. '{ }' pairs would be advantageous when considering machine processing efficiency and network bandwidth. Yes, true, but deep hierarchies would look to us humans like bad non-refactored LISP programs. I also suspect that an XPointer such as person.birthplace.state would be harder to derive in a tree of bracket-bordered nodes unless both parties absolutely have the correct version of the hierarchy map for reference. In short, a more terse node bordering comes at the cost of less information represented within the document. The less information the document carries, the more the producer needs to know, and this is the age where the operating assumption for communication is that the consumer has a machine, a network connection, and a browser which renders marked-up text and that's all. XML is for people and so what if the machines have to read more characters?
Connecting the laptop via FireWire cable after starting up in remote drive mode (hold down t after powering on) and copying the entire home directory from one to the other will do it. The working account should not have administrative powers. I'm guessing that it will go more smoothly if the working account on both machines were set up identically with the same name, password, userid, and groupid. This should happen if they were established at the same sequence point (next account after the initial one, perhaps?) Have to say that the thought of blowing away two entire home directories every day (one per machine) bothers me.
I'd look into rsync and a bash script run from Terminal. Set up an alias to a script that mounts the laptop over a network connection, does the sync using rsync and then unmounts the laptop. (Because I did this stuff a lot with Windows sources, I used mount -t smbfs... etc., which will work with the laptop if Windows sharing is enabled). Note, mount requires escalation of the privileges and this will require sudo to execute. (Remember that on OS X, the default is that only members of the wheel group [administrators] are given permission to invoke sudo. As a practical matter, it would make sense to log out of the working account, so everything closes and is saved to the disk, and then log in to the administrative account, open terminal and run 'sudo ${alias} ${arg}. rsync can also work over ssh connections (Remote Login has to be enabled on the laptop). Put the script, flagged executable, in/usr/local/bin and the alias in in the administrative accounts.bashrc file. One good thing about rsync is that you can set it up to handle changed and deleted files in a way you choose, including saving for future checking. bash and rsync are already installed, the Terminal is found under/Applications/Utilities. 'man rsync' for more info.
I'd also look into how cvs and subversion may be better approaches for reposing the working materials and projects and allowing for a third professionally administered and backed up machine to hold the materials. The desktop and the laptop would both perform daily commits and updates in the morning and in the evening. Should that departmental machine have a public interface, the checkout and commits of home work could be done at home. Be sure to use ssh for making the cvs connection -- otherwise passwords are transmitted in clear text. cvs is also already installed on the Mac. subversion, which was created to address cvs's shortcomings, would require installation, perhaps via compilation from source or via fink or darwinports. The departmental server's administrator would also have to set up cvs or subversion, which policy may prevent.
With something like "move all my stuff daily from here to there" one has to balance ease with correctness/safety. It's belts and suspenders and safety pin time, no? Brute force copies don't really allow you to retrieve that file you deleted two days ago when it seemed like a good idea. Thus, rsync and versioning and cvs/subversion.
It isn't facilities per se, it's the capital to book time at a A-List facility with the amenities, such as a room where you can turn it up to 11 or an engineer who has 20 years of experience and knows where the mikes go, as well as the cuttiing-edge technology. That being said lot of people are doing a lot of work at home: demos, vanity projects, composition/arrangement, pre-production, and self-publishing. Cutting-edge technology starts in the studios and within five years becomes available for semi-pros working at home at low cost. At home, no sweat, you can have better sound capture, shaping, and playback equipment than Sam Phillips had for Elvis Presley, then Geoff Emerick had for the Beatles.
A recording label offers four things: sensibility, marketing, distribution, and capital. Successful independents may have less of the last one and "more" of the first. Because big labels have enough capital to fund a lot of failures, I think they have less sensibility -- in any case, there's less risk-taking at the big five (or is it four this year?). In theory, a label signs an artist because the label thinks its audience will buy things the artist records. Again, at the big label level, because of all the capital and politics, deals happen all the time where the artist never releases a single track and somebody knew that was going to happen at the time they approved the deal.
Moving tracks, even giving them away, is tough. Every day when commuting I walk through a half dozen guys near Hollywood's Graumman's Chinese offering free discs and headphones in order that people listen to their discs. The encouraging news is that there are still a few places on the radio and many on the internet which play music because the dj likes it and not because there's a deal some where. The better news is that, just like in the 50s when Chuck Berry wrote about mailing a letter to the local dj, web sites and e-mail addresses now exist where one can ask "what was it that was played," or "where can I buy it," or, "here's something that maybe you'd like to put on the air." The last couple of weeks I've been listening to KCSN out of California State University at Northridge and this seems to be exactly what's happening.
Ask me, the two biggest mistakes that the big labels made were to insist on DRM on all internet sold tracks and to get the US federal government to institute a draconian rights fee that drove out specialty internet radio broadcasters in the late 90s. The record companies need fans and those fans occur, not because the artist is having a 48 hour news cycle about choices in underwear, but because people hear the music. It's in Clive Davis' 20+ year old book for chrissakes, when people hear good music, they'll go out of their way to get it.
Back to today's topic: because the record companies cannot get Apple to raise its prices, they are trying to codify their under-paying of artist and publishing royalties in order to avoid the question of how to replace the revenue lost because customers may now pass on those weak tracks that were part of the package. It is a show business pattern to try and sell the B material by packaging it with the A material, so we can cut them some slack on that. The industry used to make their nut on the sales of 45s and the albums were the gravy. But consolidation, trimming rosters, and going to the government to change the rules (royalties, extension of copyright on British recordings) in order to artificially extend the 60s, 70s, and 80s strikes me as foolish, mainly because the audience changed. Today's teen-ager and young adult has a different pop culture. When the zeitgeist changes, get back to singles. Make lots of them quickly, for low-cost and make them so it doesn't kill you when a hundred fail. Get back to having a roster of hungry and talented producers, writers, studio musicians, and artists, producing items for hire and throw them together in Monday morning pitch sessions which cull the singles from the demos. Remember how Motown went from one person to the soundtrack for a time; remember that being the soundtrack for a time is a three decade business plan.
In the late 70s I was a college dj with a rock 'n' roll show. A handful of cassette recordings of my shows have survived and on the stuff I'm still listening to on cd, like Beatles records, one can hear (on nearly 30 year old cassettes) that vinyl was warmer or better sounding. I was working professionally at a classical music station when the first, imported, compact discs arrived and I found the high strings and high horns to be funny sounding (I think the phenomenon was called aliasing and arose from the choice to use 41.1K as the sample rate). So my point of view is that we compromised fidelity for convenience back in the 80s at the dawn of digital. Two areas where digital outperformed vinyl: the quiet of quiet passages, and the delivery of power for lower registers.
Now, if my hearing wasn't shot from age and the choices of youth (playing in rock and roll bands) and I could appreciate the full dynamic range of recorded acoustic instruments, and if I was listening to acoustic music that was truly recorded dynamically, I'd be putting lossless on my iPod as well. A lot of ifs. Yesterday I bought a compilation of Woody Herman tracks and I'm guessing that the masters for the original discs were mixed hot, decreasing dynamics by using equalization and compression. In addition, who knows what noise reduction, noise gating, limiting, equalization, compression, or aural excitement they added while mastering the compact disc. So, I think I'll be fine with trading off file size (at 192 kB rip) for the dynamics that may or may not be there and the fidelity I may or may not be able to appreciate.
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I would assume that retail employees enter a company at a standard pay level and their pay rate is increased both with seniority and accomplishment. So they may not be at the top of their field, but they should be the better, more experienced Circuit City employees. (I'm also assuming that employees who perform below average are encouraged to leave via non-promotion and minimal pay raises.) So, to cut out your top paid people suggests to me that you've cut out the people with the most experience. (I'm not really sure about the upside about hiring back at lower pay rates the ones you just laid off. I would think the good people wouldn't tolerate going back to work for ingrates.) Given that one knock on stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, that the employees are not really able to help.... seems like a really, really bad idea.
But the really wack part IMHO is that Circuit City's stock went up yesterday! Yes, it's cutting costs, but it begs the question whether every employee is just as valuable as any other employee.
... it's a cue to train elite surgical teams to take a Fantastic Voyage .
Making a mix tape for friends, relatives and loved ones should be fair use, as far as I'm concerned, and I don't really see that as a slippery slope. You ask what happens to those cds, well, if I'm any indication, they get listened to once or twice and are thrown in a closet where they stay until it's time to move. (Though, despite the languishing in the closet, some of the music on the mix tapes led to purchases.)
I also think it should be fair use to stream, a la radio broadcasting, a program of music and commentary. There will be some capture of the streams, like the cassettes I made 35 years ago of music from the radio stations. Some of it will be by folks in glee because they've taken it to the man. But some will be captured by kids who are fans becoming creators. (I was one of the lucky ones given a gift to create, I wrote some songs and performed in original music bands. It never became my livelihood, but, as the cliche goes, the journey is the reward.)
I think it's like painting; it's like literature; it's like computer programming: creativity arises from creations. All the greats started out by duplicating the "cool" stuff. You may speak of how the disingenuous could take the liberties I'd allow and lead us to, oh, economic ruination, I suppose, but I think this is one realm where everyone, yes everyone, wins if there's a little room for breathing. Content publishers seem to be of a mind that technology is cool because techology == lockdown. That attitude may, may, add a few dollars today, but either the market will wither because the customers are tired of the strait jackets or the creativity will stop sustaining itself. Back to the first comment, if the artifacts of popular culture cannot be shared within emotional or identifying contexts, then it is no more culture then a paper clip.
Some notes: Ep V's writing is attributed to Lucas, Leigh Brackett, and Lawrence Kasdan. Ep. VI is Lucas and Kasdan -- could this have something to do with it being so jokey and self-aware (as well as some contamination from Kasdan, Lucas and Harrison Ford's success with Raiders)? As for Ep IV ushering in a changed Hollywood, I think Jaws (1975) is understood to be the first summer blockbuster. Perhaps it was Ep IV that showed that lightning could strike twice?
On the other hand, Dell has been coming off of some disastrous quarters which suggests there is something troubled about their pick up the phone, take a credit card number, and slap together a laptop with Home XP business model. Polling for market guidance via an internet survey would seem to be an excellent approach to getting ideas that aren't profitable, so was it done as a stunt? I ask that question because if the top requests are ignored (even if there are sound business reasons to ignore them), how does that look? I would have expected that, in order to get a well balanced view of the market, Dell have also engaged other, less noisy, surveying techniques.
Clearly, there is a demand for inexpensive Windows-free notebooks. Is it enough for Dell to find a market? Would a few years of losses (duriing which they buy marketshare and promote how dispensible Windows is for many of us) pay off down the road as Dell becomes the one who brought Linux to the common gal? As they say, no risk no reward. Seems to me, though, if, as a manufacturer of hardware, you can convince the consumer that the value is in the combination of affordable machines running inexpensive, readily available, functional software, then should Microsoft retailiate by raising the OEM cost of Wiindows, it just makes the non-Windows models a better value.
Mid-day after a nuke blew up in Valencia or a mall was poisoned gassed in.... Valencia, which means normal people will want to get out of Dodge. One thing the civil unrest in '92 proved to me, when everyone wants to get out of town, it takes a long time to move a little.
They want MDRM (Magic DRM) that stops piracy and reduces Apple's marketshare to the point where Apple has to accept $1.75 pricing for this song and $2.42 for that song. The goal is to make as much revenue on the three songs that people want as from the pre-digital sale of a cd.
Moi aussi. Bought it because I was hearing it in Southern California via the Internet from Great Britain radio stations way before it was getting any airplay here in the US. Hey record companies, as I've said before, you want to sell more records let people hear more music.
Yeah -- what would the guy do if his software was a shareware rewrite of shred?
So I was glancing at a summary of questions from the Court, and the point is that, by itself, software is not patentable -- the device using the software is patentable. So where a general device such as a 32 bit personal computer becomes a payroll server or a music player through the execution of a particular program, this device instantly infringes when a patent exists on a device that is a payroll server, etc. Unload the program and the device stops infringing. Since, gentle readers, we know all programs compile down to a sequence of instructions which are members of the small finite set of cpu instructions provided by the cpu designers, people like me ask where is the invention?
So, does this "No, no, we were patenting the device, not the software" loophole make sense? Does granting these types of patents advance society or (as I think) raise the costs for innovation and reward the big dogs in the manger who use patents to hinder progress or to leech off of other's successful implementation of the concept?
The questions from the Court about software patenting are interesting, because, as I understood it, this case was about a US patent being applied to a US company's overseas sale of something that would infringe if it was sold in the US. So, how does the nature of software patentability enter into the question? Unless it's their way to punt the question. Since there are circumstances where someone outside of the US can be held accountable to US laws (I know, go figure) they may want to find a way to settle this case without extending the reach of things like the "war" on drugs or the "war" on terror to civil litigation.
Remember VHS and Beta, besides making it more difficult for consumers to rent (because 1/2 of the tapes at the store were in the wrong format) it reduced title choice. For awhile, those of us with Beta machines weren't allowed to give the store our rental/buying money because Beta was losing. Also, originally, all video tapes were sold to the video stores at a price based on an $80 list price. Someone dared to think that there'd be money to be made if the video tapes were priced for sales and they were right. But, for awhile, titles were priced at 80 for rental and 20 (or so) to sell. Some other genius realized that, low sales price or not, some people still only rented, and some people wanted to buy and so the studios dropped the tier, so buyers could buy any thing and renters still rented.
Music is different than film. We've always owned our records and cds. We've always been able to make personal copies, once magnetic tape and recorders became affordable. Some of the value of records is that we could make mix tapes. We all know that we are hearing the first whispers of an oncoming "Aha!" moment when someone realizes that there are people who will start buying once the mp3s are unlocked. And there, Mr. MacroVision , is the point: while DRM infests music files, the record labels are leaving money on the table and paying MacroVision for the privilege.
Ah, radio. Before the ClearChannel takeover, one of the disturbing trends were formats delivered by satellite. The long term (1970-present) trend at radio has been to decrease the number of records in heavy to medium rotation (top 40 to top 30 to top 15), to rely more and more on national charts and research and less on local "gut feelings," to increase a rigid enforcement of the format, to be sure that disc jockeys have absolutely no say in the programming, and to reduce the identification of the recordings. If given a few more minutes, I could give more ways in which radio makes it harder for record companies to get people to hear the music which is how they sell records.
Oh, that the radio stations are also owned by the promoters isn't good.
You, Mr. or Ms. Record Executive, if you want to sell more records, get more people to hear more music. (And radio is not cooperating with your goal.) Pretty simple test: Will suing p2pers mean somebody new will hear the record you're selling? No. Move on. Will charging the satellite broadcasters, who have looser play-lists and old-school djs who are exposing more than the hot 5, mean your record will get played more or less? Um-hmm. Stop wringing your hands about non-commercial sharing and use all that intelligence to get people to listen.
Makes me wonder, when the pirated stuff will be Office 2007 with the ribbon, will OpenOffice.org actually do a better job of simulating the business software (which will be old Office for a year or two unless it will be easy for non-first world businesses to pirate.) For what it's worth, put me down as preferring OpenOffice.org.
Hmmm... yes, except my Windows-running non-tech-interested parents were taught by me to use Firefox from day 1, so let us extend this to slash-weenies, their relatives, and their friends who are having a choice to run Windows mitigated.
And isn't the slash-group-whine-wisdom about Apple customers that they overpaid for their computers, and doesn't that suggest that Wal-Mart is leaving on the table disposable income from a wealthy demographic willing to spend?
Check the temperature in certain nether-worlds, I'm going to offer a small defense for the record companies. In show-business distribution rights allocated by territory are standard. As an example, in order to get financing for a film, the producers may sell North American distribution rights to one company and European distribution rights to another. If you were a distributor, what would you think about the rights you purchased when your possible customers may download it from a retailer in another territory, especially as that retailer is giving a cut to their territory's distributor?
Once again, as noted elsewhere, radically new media means the entertainment business model needs to be rethought.
would have cost $2 per unit for Universal, I gather.
White House Visitor Logs that disputed the defense that Abramoff didn't really visit the White House that much.
White House Visitor Logs now private.
Military Reports on Iraqi Military Readiness that showed the Iraqi Military wasn't making significant progress.
Military Reports on Iraqi Military Readiness now classified, if compiled at all any more.
NASA scientists who described to the media results of studies which show a global temperature increase.
Installation of a NASA administrator who vets what the NASA scientist say (though this one wasn't effective, really)
Generals who tell Congress that the Administration has under-budgeted their expeditions.
Generals who find themselves facing an early end of their military career.
[Self-smacks forehead] Too much instrumentation -- of course -- and not another instance where these guys gag and bind the messenger who carries inconvenient news.
On the other hand, this is not a change that creates more virtue, character, self-actualization, etc. I'm not one of them, but I can empathize with the folks around me for whom the computer and the software are necessary evils and these folks don't have any interest in devoting a moment's thought towards engagement, improvisation, exploration, etc. I've written some small applications for the co-workers and I've learned that if it doesn't look familiar, or obviously easier or if it seems to take a foreign approach to the problem, it isn't going to be used. (And God bless them for that, isn't the real art in, as the saying goes, making easy things easy and hard things possible?)
Really, isn't this like dvorak keyboards, except pushed by the major force in the market? The dvorak keyboard is, from all accounts, ergonomic, sensible, faster, and not crippled due to the concerns of engineers who were figuring out how to allow mechanical hammers hit ribbon and paper 8 or more times a second, and yet, what's the uptake after decades of clear advantage?
Still, the shepherd has said it's time for the flock to move. It makes sense: that better usability is the devil's candy that sells the file format change; mix in the network effect and it's only a matter of time and we will all find that life is better as ribbon people. Better get ready to greet a new class of overlords.
Cable is a distribution technology (and I'm assuming that government access as basic service is required as the terms of granting the monopoly -- I am a US-ian and Canada may have a different cable structure), not a format. Is the cable feed unviewable for certain brands of televisions? Of course not.
Regarding the assertion that if one wants to participate in government, one will get (or borrow) a Windows machine: first, has Microsoft guaranteed that those files will be fully readable forever? Second: aren't you as a taxpayer concerned that any platform-tied file format might be costing you more because your government agency's choice in server and requirements for server liceneses are restricted and may need maintenance in perpetuity in order to use your archive?
Again, from a US-ian perspective, one huge problem down here is that people don't participate in government. Interfering with participation by erecting technology barriers, even in this one instance where the practical effect is no doubt minor, seems wrong.
So, projecting ahead. How many years of new computer buys will it take for Vista's costs to break even? Or, Vista has to be on what % of the installed base and how fast for this to not be one of the all-time great product management debacles?
It feels to me as though a new os in three years means a lot of us never try Vista. It also means some businesses will have been using Vista for about a year when the new os arrives. Frankly, I don't think these roadmaps are worth much, because I don't see the incentive for Microsoft to follow them.
XML is derived from another well established standard: SGML. It's meant to allow people to define a simple grammar in order to tag data and to separate the information from the presentation in a hierarchical structure called a document. It allows the authors to share with consumers an external mapping document which allows the consumers to assess the validity of the document. A person and a machine may parse the document, and it may be easier for the person who, with superior pattern processing facilities, can separate the data from the node borders given some cooperation from the producer's whitespace choices. It was designed to solve one problem: html was really good, but not quite right.
So we argue over how verbose node borders need be. '{ }' pairs would be advantageous when considering machine processing efficiency and network bandwidth. Yes, true, but deep hierarchies would look to us humans like bad non-refactored LISP programs. I also suspect that an XPointer such as person.birthplace.state would be harder to derive in a tree of bracket-bordered nodes unless both parties absolutely have the correct version of the hierarchy map for reference. In short, a more terse node bordering comes at the cost of less information represented within the document. The less information the document carries, the more the producer needs to know, and this is the age where the operating assumption for communication is that the consumer has a machine, a network connection, and a browser which renders marked-up text and that's all. XML is for people and so what if the machines have to read more characters?
Connecting the laptop via FireWire cable after starting up in remote drive mode (hold down t after powering on) and copying the entire home directory from one to the other will do it. The working account should not have administrative powers. I'm guessing that it will go more smoothly if the working account on both machines were set up identically with the same name, password, userid, and groupid. This should happen if they were established at the same sequence point (next account after the initial one, perhaps?) Have to say that the thought of blowing away two entire home directories every day (one per machine) bothers me.
I'd look into rsync and a bash script run from Terminal. Set up an alias to a script that mounts the laptop over a network connection, does the sync using rsync and then unmounts the laptop. (Because I did this stuff a lot with Windows sources, I used mount -t smbfs... etc., which will work with the laptop if Windows sharing is enabled). Note, mount requires escalation of the privileges and this will require sudo to execute. (Remember that on OS X, the default is that only members of the wheel group [administrators] are given permission to invoke sudo. As a practical matter, it would make sense to log out of the working account, so everything closes and is saved to the disk, and then log in to the administrative account, open terminal and run 'sudo ${alias} ${arg}. rsync can also work over ssh connections (Remote Login has to be enabled on the laptop). Put the script, flagged executable, in /usr/local/bin and the alias in in the administrative accounts .bashrc file. One good thing about rsync is that you can set it up to handle changed and deleted files in a way you choose, including saving for future checking. bash and rsync are already installed, the Terminal is found under /Applications/Utilities. 'man rsync' for more info.
I'd also look into how cvs and subversion may be better approaches for reposing the working materials and projects and allowing for a third professionally administered and backed up machine to hold the materials. The desktop and the laptop would both perform daily commits and updates in the morning and in the evening. Should that departmental machine have a public interface, the checkout and commits of home work could be done at home. Be sure to use ssh for making the cvs connection -- otherwise passwords are transmitted in clear text. cvs is also already installed on the Mac. subversion, which was created to address cvs's shortcomings, would require installation, perhaps via compilation from source or via fink or darwinports. The departmental server's administrator would also have to set up cvs or subversion, which policy may prevent.
With something like "move all my stuff daily from here to there" one has to balance ease with correctness/safety. It's belts and suspenders and safety pin time, no? Brute force copies don't really allow you to retrieve that file you deleted two days ago when it seemed like a good idea. Thus, rsync and versioning and cvs/subversion.
It isn't facilities per se, it's the capital to book time at a A-List facility with the amenities, such as a room where you can turn it up to 11 or an engineer who has 20 years of experience and knows where the mikes go, as well as the cuttiing-edge technology. That being said lot of people are doing a lot of work at home: demos, vanity projects, composition/arrangement, pre-production, and self-publishing. Cutting-edge technology starts in the studios and within five years becomes available for semi-pros working at home at low cost. At home, no sweat, you can have better sound capture, shaping, and playback equipment than Sam Phillips had for Elvis Presley, then Geoff Emerick had for the Beatles.
A recording label offers four things: sensibility, marketing, distribution, and capital. Successful independents may have less of the last one and "more" of the first. Because big labels have enough capital to fund a lot of failures, I think they have less sensibility -- in any case, there's less risk-taking at the big five (or is it four this year?). In theory, a label signs an artist because the label thinks its audience will buy things the artist records. Again, at the big label level, because of all the capital and politics, deals happen all the time where the artist never releases a single track and somebody knew that was going to happen at the time they approved the deal.
Moving tracks, even giving them away, is tough. Every day when commuting I walk through a half dozen guys near Hollywood's Graumman's Chinese offering free discs and headphones in order that people listen to their discs. The encouraging news is that there are still a few places on the radio and many on the internet which play music because the dj likes it and not because there's a deal some where. The better news is that, just like in the 50s when Chuck Berry wrote about mailing a letter to the local dj, web sites and e-mail addresses now exist where one can ask "what was it that was played," or "where can I buy it," or, "here's something that maybe you'd like to put on the air." The last couple of weeks I've been listening to KCSN out of California State University at Northridge and this seems to be exactly what's happening.
Ask me, the two biggest mistakes that the big labels made were to insist on DRM on all internet sold tracks and to get the US federal government to institute a draconian rights fee that drove out specialty internet radio broadcasters in the late 90s. The record companies need fans and those fans occur, not because the artist is having a 48 hour news cycle about choices in underwear, but because people hear the music. It's in Clive Davis' 20+ year old book for chrissakes, when people hear good music, they'll go out of their way to get it.
Back to today's topic: because the record companies cannot get Apple to raise its prices, they are trying to codify their under-paying of artist and publishing royalties in order to avoid the question of how to replace the revenue lost because customers may now pass on those weak tracks that were part of the package. It is a show business pattern to try and sell the B material by packaging it with the A material, so we can cut them some slack on that. The industry used to make their nut on the sales of 45s and the albums were the gravy. But consolidation, trimming rosters, and going to the government to change the rules (royalties, extension of copyright on British recordings) in order to artificially extend the 60s, 70s, and 80s strikes me as foolish, mainly because the audience changed. Today's teen-ager and young adult has a different pop culture. When the zeitgeist changes, get back to singles. Make lots of them quickly, for low-cost and make them so it doesn't kill you when a hundred fail. Get back to having a roster of hungry and talented producers, writers, studio musicians, and artists, producing items for hire and throw them together in Monday morning pitch sessions which cull the singles from the demos. Remember how Motown went from one person to the soundtrack for a time; remember that being the soundtrack for a time is a three decade business plan.
The tapes were made directly off the board and before the compressor/limiter.
In the late 70s I was a college dj with a rock 'n' roll show. A handful of cassette recordings of my shows have survived and on the stuff I'm still listening to on cd, like Beatles records, one can hear (on nearly 30 year old cassettes) that vinyl was warmer or better sounding. I was working professionally at a classical music station when the first, imported, compact discs arrived and I found the high strings and high horns to be funny sounding (I think the phenomenon was called aliasing and arose from the choice to use 41.1K as the sample rate). So my point of view is that we compromised fidelity for convenience back in the 80s at the dawn of digital. Two areas where digital outperformed vinyl: the quiet of quiet passages, and the delivery of power for lower registers.
Now, if my hearing wasn't shot from age and the choices of youth (playing in rock and roll bands) and I could appreciate the full dynamic range of recorded acoustic instruments, and if I was listening to acoustic music that was truly recorded dynamically, I'd be putting lossless on my iPod as well. A lot of ifs. Yesterday I bought a compilation of Woody Herman tracks and I'm guessing that the masters for the original discs were mixed hot, decreasing dynamics by using equalization and compression. In addition, who knows what noise reduction, noise gating, limiting, equalization, compression, or aural excitement they added while mastering the compact disc. So, I think I'll be fine with trading off file size (at 192 kB rip) for the dynamics that may or may not be there and the fidelity I may or may not be able to appreciate.