I was in high school at the time and my best friend, who was working for his parents' business and had plenty of disposable cash, fancied himself a bit of an audiophile. He got a quad system and man, it did sound great, if you sat in the right diamond-shaped zone. I think there were two competing formats: SQ (RCA, IIRC) and the other one (probably Columbia -- all pre-1980 radio/recording technologies had an RCA vs. Columbia duality).
He had the Vanguard demo disk (I think he recorded it onto a 4-track reel-to-reel) and it endeared me forever to Joan Baez singing Dylan's "Love is Just a Four Letter Word." The Who also released Quadrophenia in quad (yes it was bald-facedly a gimmick) and my friend bought that disk, but it wasn't noticeably better-sounding relative to what one heard on the radio. According to the soundtrack liner notes, the band thought the original mixes were muddy and so when it came time to mix for the movie, Entwistle supervised remixes. In the later days when I was a dj at a college radio station, I preferred to pull the soundtrack when I wanted to play "Bellboy" or "5:15." Back to 1973, in Southern California, some of the radio stations had quad broadcast hours (in the evening, generally), but these were the rockers: KMET and KLOS and reception was always a tad bit dicey in the coastal town to the north where we lived.
I suppose the ultimate quad joke would have been a quad release of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music; still unavailable in CD.
I'm thinking about an arranger who listens to a recording, writes notations on papers, and passes it around to the band. The notation could be notes on the staff and it could be something else, right? (The bands I played in, they were chord symbols and an approximation of where in the bar they happened.) The songwriters have copyrights on the lyric and melody. The record company has a copyright on the recording. The publisher has a copyright on offically sanctioned sheet music (and player piano rolls and uses in broadcast and films and...). None of them -- no one -- has a copyright on the arrangement or the harmony behind the melody.
So why is guitar tablature that is produced by transcribing a performance infringing? (Especially as the tablature's don't show the melody, they show the solos.) It's notation for an arrangement with single guitar. Posting scans of a officially published tab book would be one thing (and clearly infringing) but transcription and notation feels like clean-room reverse engineering to me.
You really haven't been paying attention, now have you? It's okay, there are lots of other facets to our world and this too will pass.
A trial date has been set for years. It was originally going to be this Fall, but SCO (IIRC) asked for it to be advanced. They've since suggested they needed another delay, but they were reminded that when the schedule was changed it was not going to be changed again.
Prior art is a patent defense but patents are not part of this litigation -- patent infringements were in IBM's counter-claims, but IBM subsequently dropped them in order to to simplify the case. Even were patents still part of the case, the respondent (SCOG at one time) is allowed to find out the details of the patents and to ask where and how they are allegedly infringing in order to provide a defense, which may include prior art, that the method patented is not the method used by the respondent, and/or that the patent is vague or obvious.
The discovery phase (and the time for basic discovery has passed) is exactly when you ask for the evidence that the other party will use at trial. Making interrogatories and deposing witnesses during the scheduled time is neither asking for evidence up front nor delaying the trial.
I've been saying make cds that I can rip to the hard drive run by my platform of choice and I'll keep buying cds. I've been saying don't impede and/or kill internet volks-broadcasting as it is the only way a specialized music niche can find listeners (and buyers). I've been thinking (and now I'm saying) don't give so much of the money for that new artist to their attorneys, managers, and producers (who take a percentage of the deal and bonus and recording budget): less money up front means more time to find an audience and more money to support playing.
But H-E double hockey sticks, how much of the industry is geared to skimming the bucks flying around as a record company pays a production company for the ingenue or ingenuo found, who has to live their private life on Hollywood Access so the video gets played on MTV (or whatever is playing videos) so ClearChannel programs the track and books the bombastic, dancerific, with-six-costume-changes-per-houric shows into a mega-shed near you? (Given all the corporate alliances and synergies are correct.)
And can any one with a straight face tell me that playing clarinet in a polka band while people dance, sing along, and enjoy themselves is less cool than corporate tattooed attitude packages found on certain, you should pardon the expression, reality shows this summer?
Designing for non-standard-compliant browsers sounds like an itemizable additional cost to web site owners who pay attention to the issue. That looks to me like a class and identifiable damages and, I would think, a basis for suing Microsoft.
Let's say your constituency, or better still, the constituency of your party's leaders, include the good citizens who work in and own the glass and steel gambling houses. Let's also imagine that recent hurricanes destroyed many gambling houses (which were on the water due to legislative hyprocrisy) leaving many of your voters without a job and leaving quite a few [Republican, we don't raise taxes, ever] state and municipal governments without tax revenues until and if the casinos rebuild. Well, a little economic protectionism and interference in the free market might start to look like a good thing. And check out the conribution score. Naturally, contributions from casino and race track and wealthy Native American interests -- plus, since it looks like addressing a "vice," in come the accolades and huzzahs and dollars from the theocracy crowds. That's so win-win baby. It's positively K Street.
Except... "WGA will kill" is speculation which originated from advice given by a low-level tech in the company. The journalist followed up with requests for clarification from Microsoft, and that company and its pr firm would neither confirm nor deny at the time. The most recent chapter in the saga is that an official statement, quoted in the above abstract, perhaps clarifies Microsoft's intentions. Nonetheless, Microsoft's agent has gone on to say that they they will not entertain any requests for interviews on the subject. I quote:
Update 30-June 2:15PM PDT: Microsoft says they have no intention of answering any questions about WGA. According to the same Waggener Edstrom spokesperson who sent me the statement reprinted above, "We are not granting interviews on this, as all of the information we have to share about WGA Notifications is contained in the response I provided below and the PressPass article that I sent you a link for."
Perhaps these statements are a consequence of the way WGA was rolled out, and the way, allegedly, some people have had WGA nags when they have legitimate licenses. My guess is that the Microsoft lawyers were smelling lawsuits (there's one already) and that's what put the company into clam mode.
Guess I don't know. That would be my bad because I don't use Windows at home and at work my Windows computer is Virtual PC in a Mac. It seemed to me that before Windows 2000 there was some support in Windows Media Player for the ripping and that with Windows 2000 (and ostensibly due to the mp3 patents) it was taken away. Trying to research the issue through Google, I found, in an abstract, the suggestion that Win2000 would rip at a very low-fi 32kbps and that rang a bell and made me believe that I recollected un-musical low quality as not capable. I did find this link Windows XP to add ripping via add-ins from 7/16/01. At the end of the article, some of you will be amused at how the source press release trumpeted recent deals made between Microsoft and Sony regarding WMA and DRM.
If Windows Media Player today allows for ripping of unrestricted mp3s than I apologize for diparaging Microsoft on this particular point. Though, looking at the articles, even though mp3s were spreading like wildfire in the late 90s, and were clearly what the customers wanted, Microsoft tried to use its consumer dominance and its deep pockets to swim against the tide and try to get people to move their music to the wma format. In 2001, they made a point about getting the fidelity in half the file size, which I suppose should have been a resonant message to all us dial-up users. And yet, it didn't seem to make much of a difference.
What about making the Windows platform the most iTunes/iPod friendly platform around? How about putting customer-friendly things back into Windows like mp3 ripping. Wouldn't that, less expensively, counter any iPod halo effect erosion of Windows? Giving the customer what they want, it's a crazy enough idea that it just might work! Isn't there some ancient wisdom about moving with the wind?
But... no, yet another exercise of being a speed-bump to gain time while awaiting the allegedly inexorable logic of owning the desktop (and deals with content providers and pipeline owners). Wouldn't we all be shocked to find out that iTunes is, oh dear, one application that just isn't quite working with Vista's new security model. Or that iTunes is banished from Vista because Microsoft is afraid of infringement liability as Creative enforces its patents. ("Their attorneys sent us a c&d letter, what could we do?")Sure, wild, unsupported speculation, but does history really suggest I'm so wack?
Oh yes, how many years of successful XBox360 roll-out are needed now before that project breaks even?
Either way the result is the same: people who don't like Microsoft are going to take pot-shots at them.
Well, yes they well. And there'll be a bunch of folks who will support Microsoft with questions along the line of if you're so smart why aren't you rich. And some will point out that CNN is a subset of Time Warner which is a superset of AOL, and therefore a competitor: so is this generous advice or evil well-poisoning????? And who, really, doesn't enjoy a good chair joke?
I think that the slippage of Vista is a 6.2 on the Richter scale that rattled Microsoft with shaking felt on Wall Street. Maybe Vista or maybe the six or seven years Microsoft has put into other ventures with less than anticipated results has something to do with Mr. Gates' decision to leave the trenches and spend his time and money doing good things and addressing the problems of neglected people.
So, does this commentary signal that Wall Street is now thinking Ballmer has to be jettisoned in order to "turn the company around?" Don't know. Don't expect to get the answer today and here, but I'm curious.
A key component is that the new compulsory license governs all nondramatic musical works and does not permit copyright owners to opt-out, which would otherwise jeopardize the efficiency of the entire blanket licensing structure.
That sounds to me as though there will be no self-distribution of music - it has to be through a license-holder and you can't waive the license fee on copyrights you hold. Efficiency, pah. This is about the haves keeping control.
Think about what we were discussing last week: Microsoft new answer to the jpeg question no one was asking. Microsoft's pdf writing engine would use that for images, Microsoft's reading consumer will handle it without a hiccup and Microsoft - Microsoft communication is optimized whle the rest of the world -- even those who have bought Adobe Acrobat Pro -- have compatibility issues which will be a nuisance at best and intractable at worse.
So, is this java or is this mp3? When Microsoft pulled its mp3 support (release of Windows 2000, right?) the mp3 cow was so way out of the barn. How many millions of shareholder money have been and continue to be spent staffing offices in Santa Monica making deals with media companies in order to try and get sound files back on the Redmond reservation? Assuming, for the sake of argument, Microsoft and its pr network are describing the offer and rejection accurately, I can imagine Adobe looking at how many people still use Office 97 (you know the Microsoft customers Microsoft likes to draw dinosaur heads on) and looking at Microsoft's licensing and Microsoft's track record at stealing customers when there isn't a large technology sea-change and concluding that XPS in Office 2007 isn't quite the pdf-killer Microsoft thinks it is.
Three thoughts. Glad I'm taking vacation this week. I'll be sure to see Cars on Friday. And, I for one, posthumously welcome our underground bureaucratic overlords.
How about, when we discuss these concepts alone or in our independent gatherings, using a term that shows our concept is undeniably better: Web 2.11, or Eleven for short.
With all due respect to all above: the brass in the Pentagon running the Viet Nam War were junior officers in WWII, which ended 20 years earlier. (I guess that doesn't guarantee they saw combat in WWII -- but wasn't Maxwell Taylor (who parachuted in with the 101st) head of the joint chiefs of staff?) And I'm not sure what ideology says put only missiles and no cannons on the jet fighters...
But, perhaps the observation I'd make is that high tech has its place, but it doesn't obviate all the low tech.
Funny thing about real property rights, my parents are required to reserve an easement on their land for utilities. Also, there's something called eminent domain which governments may assert and take property for an erstwhile public benefit.
It's a cross between PR and camouflage. Oh, there will be checks cut and money spent, but, Microsoft's number one tool is deny the sales channel. Look at it this way, ten years ago Microsoft was out-spending Google and where did it get them? Look at the browser wars: IE was intensively engineered so that "we won because it's a better product," could be used to explain a victory made from bundling. For all the money Microsoft has been (loudly) spending it's Apple that keeps shipping upgrades.
Now, they put "dangerous" live programming on a six second delay and a person monitors and pushes a buttom to dump out bad content before it is transmitted. Any system that replaces that will have to be really really good at always doing the right thing and never doing the wrong thing. (What with the way nanny-gate bureaucracies worship technology, how much do you want to bet that the threshhold for fining broadcasters for indecency will be set lower once an automated tool hits the market?) So is Microsoft to be congratulated for making great strides in engineering around Chmosky's rule that a natural language cannot be expressed in formal methods, or is this planting a flag on the technology in case someone else figures out the nasty engineering and customer satisfaction bits?
I'm going to disagree with you. For compositions in the US there is a statutory mechanical reproduction (pressing the disk in old school terms) fee. Any one who pays this can record the song and sell the disk. The songwriter holds a "first-performance" right which may be granted to someone else on a negotiated basis, but once the song is recorded, any one can record that song without asking permission -- they just have to pay at pressing time. The recording company holds a copyright on the publishing of the performance, i.e., the disk.
Now, bands that were kinda successful (or not succesful at all) may still owe advances to the recording company. And the contract may require that any new labels reimburse the old label for the advances and that would put a damper on a re-do.
Songwriters of the Beatles era keeping their publishing was not as common as you make it out to be. And the money the songwriters get from the disk occurs not at sale but at pressing. Glossing over some of the ways people screw artists, for every $1.00 received as publishing revenues (commercial radio and live performances [collected by performance rights societies, such as ASCAP], inclusion on film soundtracks, advertising placements, sheet music sales) $.50 goes to the songwriter and $.50 goes to the publisher. The specific publishing deal may mean the songwriter also gets a bit of the publisher's $.50. The more successful the songwriter, the greater a piece of the publisher's $.50 the songwriter may get.
As far as copyrights go, there's nothing to prevent a band from rerecording its repetoire on a new label. The old record company only holds rights to the original masters, via the recording contract, the right to sell the disks in the warehouse, and the right to press more disks from the masters. Seems to me, five years ago or so, Prince was on the verge of re-recording his songs until he and Warners came to an understanding and Prince bought back his masters. I know I own some disks where 50s and 60s era artists re-recorded their hits years later for a different label.
Now the original packaging is the property of the old record company. So if we're being old school and talking about product in stores, this band would have to pay for original packaging and find a distributor who is willing to distribute what is duplicative product which will be placed side by side next to the originals (assuming the old company hasn't put the catalog out of print). So good luck with that. Of course, the packaging and distribution problems dissipate if we're thinking about mp3s via internet download only.
So, copyright doesn't interfere with the redo the repetoire plan in the mp3 age. Are there any other impediments? Well, recordings can be difficult to duplicate. The studio may be gone. The room may have lost its acoustic signature. The budget, in relative terms, may have been higher when the record company was cutting the checks (even though the costs were recouped from royalties). Digital sounds different than analog tape. Engineers are exercising different skill sets. Plus, who wants to listen back to the playback and say "25 years later and we play it just the same." Regarding those re-did disks I mentioned above: the originals were better, despite the new ones featuring real stereo recordings on better requipment with better musicians. I'll conclude with this note: with the arguable exception of the 1969 Memphis recordings, Elvis sounded best when he was young and hungry and in Sam Phillip's house at Sun. Some moments are quintessential; they don't last and they don't come back.
The politicians are making noise about ISP data retention. Do we think application survivors will not be swept up as well?
And with this, not only will you be on the record for the final version, which is reasonable, but also on the record for all the draft elements as well. Litigator heaven! Hmmm maybe I shouldn't be doing all this checking, previewing and editing of my \. posts.
How about combining with another big wish list item: virtual desktops. So the Windows window would not take up screen space, but could be switched to, and there's full copy and paste, etc.
No bet from me. Just want to mention that I've always suspected these sea changes from Microsoft (like product activation being introduced in XP) are focus grouped to death and they have a pretty good idea what the impact will be. Course the whole Software Assurance License 6 (or whatever) didn't quite work out as planned (it was delayed and delayed because the customers just did not want them) but I'm pretty sure that, just like New Coke, it tested well. As for "No Aero For You Mr. Pirate," I think it doesn't really matter -- Microsoft is telling the pirates that they'll have to do without in the future just as they are doing without today. That's a threat?
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I was in high school at the time and my best friend, who was working for his parents' business and had plenty of disposable cash, fancied himself a bit of an audiophile. He got a quad system and man, it did sound great, if you sat in the right diamond-shaped zone. I think there were two competing formats: SQ (RCA, IIRC) and the other one (probably Columbia -- all pre-1980 radio/recording technologies had an RCA vs. Columbia duality).
He had the Vanguard demo disk (I think he recorded it onto a 4-track reel-to-reel) and it endeared me forever to Joan Baez singing Dylan's "Love is Just a Four Letter Word." The Who also released Quadrophenia in quad (yes it was bald-facedly a gimmick) and my friend bought that disk, but it wasn't noticeably better-sounding relative to what one heard on the radio. According to the soundtrack liner notes, the band thought the original mixes were muddy and so when it came time to mix for the movie, Entwistle supervised remixes. In the later days when I was a dj at a college radio station, I preferred to pull the soundtrack when I wanted to play "Bellboy" or "5:15." Back to 1973, in Southern California, some of the radio stations had quad broadcast hours (in the evening, generally), but these were the rockers: KMET and KLOS and reception was always a tad bit dicey in the coastal town to the north where we lived.
I suppose the ultimate quad joke would have been a quad release of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music; still unavailable in CD.
I'm thinking about an arranger who listens to a recording, writes notations on papers, and passes it around to the band. The notation could be notes on the staff and it could be something else, right? (The bands I played in, they were chord symbols and an approximation of where in the bar they happened.) The songwriters have copyrights on the lyric and melody. The record company has a copyright on the recording. The publisher has a copyright on offically sanctioned sheet music (and player piano rolls and uses in broadcast and films and...). None of them -- no one -- has a copyright on the arrangement or the harmony behind the melody.
So why is guitar tablature that is produced by transcribing a performance infringing? (Especially as the tablature's don't show the melody, they show the solos.) It's notation for an arrangement with single guitar. Posting scans of a officially published tab book would be one thing (and clearly infringing) but transcription and notation feels like clean-room reverse engineering to me.
You really haven't been paying attention, now have you? It's okay, there are lots of other facets to our world and this too will pass.
A trial date has been set for years. It was originally going to be this Fall, but SCO (IIRC) asked for it to be advanced. They've since suggested they needed another delay, but they were reminded that when the schedule was changed it was not going to be changed again.
Prior art is a patent defense but patents are not part of this litigation -- patent infringements were in IBM's counter-claims, but IBM subsequently dropped them in order to to simplify the case. Even were patents still part of the case, the respondent (SCOG at one time) is allowed to find out the details of the patents and to ask where and how they are allegedly infringing in order to provide a defense, which may include prior art, that the method patented is not the method used by the respondent, and/or that the patent is vague or obvious.
The discovery phase (and the time for basic discovery has passed) is exactly when you ask for the evidence that the other party will use at trial. Making interrogatories and deposing witnesses during the scheduled time is neither asking for evidence up front nor delaying the trial.
I've been saying make cds that I can rip to the hard drive run by my platform of choice and I'll keep buying cds. I've been saying don't impede and/or kill internet volks-broadcasting as it is the only way a specialized music niche can find listeners (and buyers). I've been thinking (and now I'm saying) don't give so much of the money for that new artist to their attorneys, managers, and producers (who take a percentage of the deal and bonus and recording budget): less money up front means more time to find an audience and more money to support playing.
But H-E double hockey sticks, how much of the industry is geared to skimming the bucks flying around as a record company pays a production company for the ingenue or ingenuo found, who has to live their private life on Hollywood Access so the video gets played on MTV (or whatever is playing videos) so ClearChannel programs the track and books the bombastic, dancerific, with-six-costume-changes-per-houric shows into a mega-shed near you? (Given all the corporate alliances and synergies are correct.)
And can any one with a straight face tell me that playing clarinet in a polka band while people dance, sing along, and enjoy themselves is less cool than corporate tattooed attitude packages found on certain, you should pardon the expression, reality shows this summer?
Damon, sure, why not. If Kirk get his mission at a convenience store, then the flick's in trouble.
My thought exactly -- bet it would have made for a great patent for the portfolio.
Designing for non-standard-compliant browsers sounds like an itemizable additional cost to web site owners who pay attention to the issue. That looks to me like a class and identifiable damages and, I would think, a basis for suing Microsoft.
Let's say your constituency, or better still, the constituency of your party's leaders, include the good citizens who work in and own the glass and steel gambling houses. Let's also imagine that recent hurricanes destroyed many gambling houses (which were on the water due to legislative hyprocrisy) leaving many of your voters without a job and leaving quite a few [Republican, we don't raise taxes, ever] state and municipal governments without tax revenues until and if the casinos rebuild. Well, a little economic protectionism and interference in the free market might start to look like a good thing. And check out the conribution score. Naturally, contributions from casino and race track and wealthy Native American interests -- plus, since it looks like addressing a "vice," in come the accolades and huzzahs and dollars from the theocracy crowds. That's so win-win baby. It's positively K Street.
Except... "WGA will kill" is speculation which originated from advice given by a low-level tech in the company. The journalist followed up with requests for clarification from Microsoft, and that company and its pr firm would neither confirm nor deny at the time. The most recent chapter in the saga is that an official statement, quoted in the above abstract, perhaps clarifies Microsoft's intentions. Nonetheless, Microsoft's agent has gone on to say that they they will not entertain any requests for interviews on the subject. I quote:
Source: Ed Bott's ColumnPerhaps these statements are a consequence of the way WGA was rolled out, and the way, allegedly, some people have had WGA nags when they have legitimate licenses. My guess is that the Microsoft lawyers were smelling lawsuits (there's one already) and that's what put the company into clam mode.
Guess I don't know. That would be my bad because I don't use Windows at home and at work my Windows computer is Virtual PC in a Mac. It seemed to me that before Windows 2000 there was some support in Windows Media Player for the ripping and that with Windows 2000 (and ostensibly due to the mp3 patents) it was taken away. Trying to research the issue through Google, I found, in an abstract, the suggestion that Win2000 would rip at a very low-fi 32kbps and that rang a bell and made me believe that I recollected un-musical low quality as not capable. I did find this link Windows XP to add ripping via add-ins from 7/16/01. At the end of the article, some of you will be amused at how the source press release trumpeted recent deals made between Microsoft and Sony regarding WMA and DRM.
If Windows Media Player today allows for ripping of unrestricted mp3s than I apologize for diparaging Microsoft on this particular point. Though, looking at the articles, even though mp3s were spreading like wildfire in the late 90s, and were clearly what the customers wanted, Microsoft tried to use its consumer dominance and its deep pockets to swim against the tide and try to get people to move their music to the wma format. In 2001, they made a point about getting the fidelity in half the file size, which I suppose should have been a resonant message to all us dial-up users. And yet, it didn't seem to make much of a difference.
What about making the Windows platform the most iTunes/iPod friendly platform around? How about putting customer-friendly things back into Windows like mp3 ripping. Wouldn't that, less expensively, counter any iPod halo effect erosion of Windows? Giving the customer what they want, it's a crazy enough idea that it just might work! Isn't there some ancient wisdom about moving with the wind?
But... no, yet another exercise of being a speed-bump to gain time while awaiting the allegedly inexorable logic of owning the desktop (and deals with content providers and pipeline owners). Wouldn't we all be shocked to find out that iTunes is, oh dear, one application that just isn't quite working with Vista's new security model. Or that iTunes is banished from Vista because Microsoft is afraid of infringement liability as Creative enforces its patents. ("Their attorneys sent us a c&d letter, what could we do?")Sure, wild, unsupported speculation, but does history really suggest I'm so wack?
Oh yes, how many years of successful XBox360 roll-out are needed now before that project breaks even?
Well, yes they well. And there'll be a bunch of folks who will support Microsoft with questions along the line of if you're so smart why aren't you rich. And some will point out that CNN is a subset of Time Warner which is a superset of AOL, and therefore a competitor: so is this generous advice or evil well-poisoning????? And who, really, doesn't enjoy a good chair joke?
I think that the slippage of Vista is a 6.2 on the Richter scale that rattled Microsoft with shaking felt on Wall Street. Maybe Vista or maybe the six or seven years Microsoft has put into other ventures with less than anticipated results has something to do with Mr. Gates' decision to leave the trenches and spend his time and money doing good things and addressing the problems of neglected people.
So, does this commentary signal that Wall Street is now thinking Ballmer has to be jettisoned in order to "turn the company around?" Don't know. Don't expect to get the answer today and here, but I'm curious.
That sounds to me as though there will be no self-distribution of music - it has to be through a license-holder and you can't waive the license fee on copyrights you hold. Efficiency, pah. This is about the haves keeping control.
Think about what we were discussing last week: Microsoft new answer to the jpeg question no one was asking. Microsoft's pdf writing engine would use that for images, Microsoft's reading consumer will handle it without a hiccup and Microsoft - Microsoft communication is optimized whle the rest of the world -- even those who have bought Adobe Acrobat Pro -- have compatibility issues which will be a nuisance at best and intractable at worse.
So, is this java or is this mp3? When Microsoft pulled its mp3 support (release of Windows 2000, right?) the mp3 cow was so way out of the barn. How many millions of shareholder money have been and continue to be spent staffing offices in Santa Monica making deals with media companies in order to try and get sound files back on the Redmond reservation? Assuming, for the sake of argument, Microsoft and its pr network are describing the offer and rejection accurately, I can imagine Adobe looking at how many people still use Office 97 (you know the Microsoft customers Microsoft likes to draw dinosaur heads on) and looking at Microsoft's licensing and Microsoft's track record at stealing customers when there isn't a large technology sea-change and concluding that XPS in Office 2007 isn't quite the pdf-killer Microsoft thinks it is.
Three thoughts. Glad I'm taking vacation this week. I'll be sure to see Cars on Friday. And, I for one, posthumously welcome our underground bureaucratic overlords.
How about, when we discuss these concepts alone or in our independent gatherings, using a term that shows our concept is undeniably better: Web 2.11, or Eleven for short.
With all due respect to all above: the brass in the Pentagon running the Viet Nam War were junior officers in WWII, which ended 20 years earlier. (I guess that doesn't guarantee they saw combat in WWII -- but wasn't Maxwell Taylor (who parachuted in with the 101st) head of the joint chiefs of staff?) And I'm not sure what ideology says put only missiles and no cannons on the jet fighters... But, perhaps the observation I'd make is that high tech has its place, but it doesn't obviate all the low tech.
Funny thing about real property rights, my parents are required to reserve an easement on their land for utilities. Also, there's something called eminent domain which governments may assert and take property for an erstwhile public benefit.
It's a cross between PR and camouflage. Oh, there will be checks cut and money spent, but, Microsoft's number one tool is deny the sales channel. Look at it this way, ten years ago Microsoft was out-spending Google and where did it get them? Look at the browser wars: IE was intensively engineered so that "we won because it's a better product," could be used to explain a victory made from bundling. For all the money Microsoft has been (loudly) spending it's Apple that keeps shipping upgrades.
Now, they put "dangerous" live programming on a six second delay and a person monitors and pushes a buttom to dump out bad content before it is transmitted. Any system that replaces that will have to be really really good at always doing the right thing and never doing the wrong thing. (What with the way nanny-gate bureaucracies worship technology, how much do you want to bet that the threshhold for fining broadcasters for indecency will be set lower once an automated tool hits the market?) So is Microsoft to be congratulated for making great strides in engineering around Chmosky's rule that a natural language cannot be expressed in formal methods, or is this planting a flag on the technology in case someone else figures out the nasty engineering and customer satisfaction bits?
nuucp?
I'm going to disagree with you. For compositions in the US there is a statutory mechanical reproduction (pressing the disk in old school terms) fee. Any one who pays this can record the song and sell the disk. The songwriter holds a "first-performance" right which may be granted to someone else on a negotiated basis, but once the song is recorded, any one can record that song without asking permission -- they just have to pay at pressing time. The recording company holds a copyright on the publishing of the performance, i.e., the disk.
Now, bands that were kinda successful (or not succesful at all) may still owe advances to the recording company. And the contract may require that any new labels reimburse the old label for the advances and that would put a damper on a re-do.
Songwriters of the Beatles era keeping their publishing was not as common as you make it out to be. And the money the songwriters get from the disk occurs not at sale but at pressing. Glossing over some of the ways people screw artists, for every $1.00 received as publishing revenues (commercial radio and live performances [collected by performance rights societies, such as ASCAP], inclusion on film soundtracks, advertising placements, sheet music sales) $.50 goes to the songwriter and $.50 goes to the publisher. The specific publishing deal may mean the songwriter also gets a bit of the publisher's $.50. The more successful the songwriter, the greater a piece of the publisher's $.50 the songwriter may get.
As far as copyrights go, there's nothing to prevent a band from rerecording its repetoire on a new label. The old record company only holds rights to the original masters, via the recording contract, the right to sell the disks in the warehouse, and the right to press more disks from the masters. Seems to me, five years ago or so, Prince was on the verge of re-recording his songs until he and Warners came to an understanding and Prince bought back his masters. I know I own some disks where 50s and 60s era artists re-recorded their hits years later for a different label.
Now the original packaging is the property of the old record company. So if we're being old school and talking about product in stores, this band would have to pay for original packaging and find a distributor who is willing to distribute what is duplicative product which will be placed side by side next to the originals (assuming the old company hasn't put the catalog out of print). So good luck with that. Of course, the packaging and distribution problems dissipate if we're thinking about mp3s via internet download only.
So, copyright doesn't interfere with the redo the repetoire plan in the mp3 age. Are there any other impediments? Well, recordings can be difficult to duplicate. The studio may be gone. The room may have lost its acoustic signature. The budget, in relative terms, may have been higher when the record company was cutting the checks (even though the costs were recouped from royalties). Digital sounds different than analog tape. Engineers are exercising different skill sets. Plus, who wants to listen back to the playback and say "25 years later and we play it just the same." Regarding those re-did disks I mentioned above: the originals were better, despite the new ones featuring real stereo recordings on better requipment with better musicians. I'll conclude with this note: with the arguable exception of the 1969 Memphis recordings, Elvis sounded best when he was young and hungry and in Sam Phillip's house at Sun. Some moments are quintessential; they don't last and they don't come back.
The politicians are making noise about ISP data retention. Do we think application survivors will not be swept up as well? And with this, not only will you be on the record for the final version, which is reasonable, but also on the record for all the draft elements as well. Litigator heaven! Hmmm maybe I shouldn't be doing all this checking, previewing and editing of my \. posts.
How about combining with another big wish list item: virtual desktops. So the Windows window would not take up screen space, but could be switched to, and there's full copy and paste, etc.
No bet from me. Just want to mention that I've always suspected these sea changes from Microsoft (like product activation being introduced in XP) are focus grouped to death and they have a pretty good idea what the impact will be. Course the whole Software Assurance License 6 (or whatever) didn't quite work out as planned (it was delayed and delayed because the customers just did not want them) but I'm pretty sure that, just like New Coke, it tested well. As for "No Aero For You Mr. Pirate," I think it doesn't really matter -- Microsoft is telling the pirates that they'll have to do without in the future just as they are doing without today. That's a threat?