I question the validity of this. I am not familiar with WalMart.com's sales but I bet they are dwarfed by Amazon's sales. (WalMart, in general, however I am sure dwarfs that.)
I have to agree. Walmart is a force to be reckoned with, but not necessarily online. I don't equate Walmart with online shopping and I don't think most people do. And I certainly don't equate Walmart with music sales. Moreover, it just doesn't seem like the right audience. You go to walmart because it's the only thing open at 2:00 AM, not because of the great music selection.
I really don't understand why everyone thinks they should be selling music online. Next thing you know, the gas station will be giving out free music download passes with a full tank of gas. Thankfully, the fad will eventually die and the services that are left will be decent.
We may have been able to change the policies "years ago" but if you're a citizen of the United States you have to acknowledge that you've implicitly agreed to these policies by being a very citizen of this country
How about we change the words "implicitly agreed" to "implicitly responsible"? It's rather obvious that not everyone in a country agrees on any particular policy, but regardless of agreement, citizens are responsible for the consequences. I'll certainly accept that.
Look, I'm not trying to argue that Saddam wasn't a horrible dictator, nor that nothing should have been done about him and his government. I'm just saying that when someone says, "Oh, $60 billion is just WAY too expensive for Mars", we need to sit down and look at where our money is going.
Besides, the billions we're spending now in Iraq had nothing to do with Iraqi lives. The original argument was to protect American lives and everyone else from the weapons of mass destruction Saddam was supposedly ready to unleash. If we had been serious about those 61,000 lives you mention, we could have saved many more of them for much less money if we had practiced a better policy in the middle east YEARS ago. But we didn't seem too upset about it then.
Anyway, this poll is much more trollish than I would like. I just want to say that, yes, those 61,000 lives are (were) more important than any Mars trips, but I think there could have been a much better way to save them and also spend our money on something more creative and less destructive. Anyone who says billions are better spent on war than on peaceful scientific exploration had better have some amazingly damn good reasons for war.
Others include price, estimated at $30 billion to $60 billion, and launching enough food, supplies and fuel for a round trip. Any one of these could make the project impractical.
Well, not to sound too bitter, but going to Mars seems like a much better way to spend billions than going to Iraq.
Funny, when I first read the headline I thought it meant you could buy a service to crash someone else's server....
Actually, that service is free. Just click on the "Submit Victim", I mean, "Submit Story" link on the sidebar. Make up a clever story and your faithful/.'ers will take care of the rest.
The person who assailed us over it was Michael Eisner. But he didn't have any teenage kids living at home, and he didn't have any teenage kids working at Disney whom he talked to, so he thought "rip" meant "rip off." And when somebody actually clued him in to what it meant, he did apologize.
You know, that says so much about Disney and their current state of affairs.
The problem with your argument is that most people don't want to download all the songs on an album- they only want a few. To download 2 or 3 good songs off of an album at high quality (192kbps+) still takes less time than it would to get in your car and drive to the store. And it is also infinitely cheaper.
Funny you should say that because there was a USA Today article
in today's newspaper that discussed the implications of a single song music market, ie- the end of the album. There are still some artists who produce albums as an artistic whole, not just a bunch of singles, but as a complete artistic statement. The fear is that if the per song market becomes dominent, that the art of albums will consequently suffer.
Definitely some interesting thoughts to consider. I've been on both sides of the fence. I've bought albums that I thought, "Wow, the rest of this sucks." and I've also bought albums and thought, "Wow, I'm so glad I have all of this, it rocks!".
My favorite was the joke about the physics exam in which a young Neils Bohr goes through all the different ways to measure the height of a building using a pen.
Holy smokes! What a freaky trashy looking piece of crap.
Yeah, I know -- it looks like it fell out of a bad anime. In fact, two seperate people walked into my apartment and said it looked like a transformer head.:)
So it looks really weird and I was hesitant to get it because of that, but I'm really glad I did. The sound is truly great.
Oh, and someone else posted something about Sony and DRM -- this box has no DRM in it whatsoever and assuming it does is rather trollish. In fact, the system has an optical out port, so it's easy to dub music from the CD player into a burner or MD recorder. And there is a tape deck and you can easily dub CD's onto tapes too. So, no DRM. Just nice sound.
I just got a new Sony self system that has 'Wireless Audio Transfer' (WAT). Basically, it has a seperate RF attenna that you attach to the sound card of your PC (or other audio device) and the shelf system will pick up the audio feed wirelessly. Not quite as versitile as the system reviewed here, but the sound on this system is incredible! Plus, you get the whole system (has a 60 CD changer) for $299. If it had an MD player instead of tape deck it would be perfection.
Saw this one via google news earlier today on InfoWorld:
SCO: GPL threatens $229B software market
Citing WIPO data, McBride said that the value of the worldwide software market would approach $229 billion by 2007, and that it was being threatened by the ideas behind the Free Software Foundation's GPL, the software license that governs Linux.
"The world, especially here in America, is shifting to one that is an information society," McBride said. "In the future, is that $229 billion in software still going to be there? Or in the case of the Free Software Foundation's goal, is proprietary software going to go away?"
Seriously, any 'bullies' doing this really do open themselves up to a libel suit (it's libel not slander since it's printed). And though I'm not a parent, if I were and such bullying were happening to my child, I would seriously consider teaching such web-savvy youth that their comments in the public forum carry consquences.
Slicker:
A collection of utilities which provide alternative for our beloved kicker.
Slicker consists of three primary items Cards, the Slider, and a Task-bar. Which can be used in conjunction with each other, and Kicker, or utilized by themselves.
It always seemed like such an innovative idea, I'm surprised it hasn't ended up in the mainsteam of KDE yet.
That was a very well written post and I agree with you that most Americans do not understand the facts. But then, neither do the French, the Russians, the Chinese, heck, the entire human race's ability for objectivism and rationality could be seriously questioned. Which is the point of my response.
While I as an American certainly do not want to let my government and my society (including myself) off the hook, laying the guilt of 3,000,000 or 6,000,000 deaths soley on the heads of America is an abuse of the facts. Violence is a global failure, not a localized one. Aggressors should be identified and appropriately dealt with (US included) -- but to excuse all other parties is to participate in a witch hunt.
I leave you with one question: Suppose the US had not killed all those people. Suppose the US had never gotten involved anywhere. Can you confidently conclude that the gross level of violence and death in the world would be any less?
There is more than one player in the world. And we ALL share in these iniquities. The violence of the US, Rwanda, Palestinians and Jews is violence of humanity and we each share in the failure.
I thought FreeBSD was already on 5.x or something like that. Is that the development version? Does FreeBSD use a linux-like version numbering where odd numbers are development releases?
I'd have to agree. At this point, almost all of my information comes from the internet. The only other contender in my life (other than word of mouth) is the radio since I listen to NPR and a few other stations to and from work each day. At home, I don't have cable or satellite, nor do I want them. So TV isn't a big source of information for me. Yet despite this, I find myself generally as well informed if not more so than most of the people I interact with daily.
The internet just happens to be an incredibly efficient source of information. That's not to say you'll always find the most accurate data online, but that you can find lots of information very quickly. Searching for information in even a library, as well organized as it is, cannot beat a decent google search in terms of speed. Moreover, the amount of information at your fingertips is simply astounding.
Given all that, I have found a few drawbacks. One is that I tend to be a little more ignorant of local news than national or international. Secondly, I have found though that I tend to visit only a few select sites. When I can't find what I'm looking for on Google, I sometimes forget that there are other search engines. If the online mailing list archives don't have the answer to my programming question, I sometimes forget to look in the newsgroups. I think this is a danger, though not necessarily one specific to the internet. Just because you have millions of sites, or hundreds of channels, doesn't mean you'll actually take the time to listen to more than one voice.
An unauthorized copy of Nullsoft's copyrighted software was briefly
posted on this website on or about Wednesday May 28, 2003. The
software was identified as "WASTE" (the "Software") and includes
the files "waste-setup.exe", "waste-source.zip",
"waste-source.tar.gz" and any additional files contained in these
files.
Nullsoft is the exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in
the Software. The posting of the Software on this website was not
authorized by Nullsoft.
If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the Software, you
acquired no lawful rights to the Software and must destroy any and
all copies of the Software, including by deleting it from your
computer. Any license that you may believe you acquired with the
Software is void, revoked and terminated.
Any reproduction, distribution, display or other use of the
Software by you is unauthorized and an infringement of Nullsoft's
copyright in the Software as well as a potential violation of other
laws.
The way to legally get around issues like this (at eBay and other establishments) is to include some cheap object, like a ball-point pen. Then what you're selling is a really expensive pen that just happens to come with a iTunes music file (or whatever it is).
What's the difference between gotGnu and Ximian's Mono project?
I've googled for some details, but I'm not.NET literate enough to really distinguish the two. Anyone want to give a short explanation of the differences? Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree. Walmart is a force to be reckoned with, but not necessarily online. I don't equate Walmart with online shopping and I don't think most people do. And I certainly don't equate Walmart with music sales. Moreover, it just doesn't seem like the right audience. You go to walmart because it's the only thing open at 2:00 AM, not because of the great music selection.
I really don't understand why everyone thinks they should be selling music online. Next thing you know, the gas station will be giving out free music download passes with a full tank of gas. Thankfully, the fad will eventually die and the services that are left will be decent.
We may have been able to change the policies "years ago" but if you're a citizen of the United States you have to acknowledge that you've implicitly agreed to these policies by being a very citizen of this country
How about we change the words "implicitly agreed" to "implicitly responsible"? It's rather obvious that not everyone in a country agrees on any particular policy, but regardless of agreement, citizens are responsible for the consequences. I'll certainly accept that.
Anyway, this poll is much more trollish than I would like.
I mean "post", sorry.
Look, I'm not trying to argue that Saddam wasn't a horrible dictator, nor that nothing should have been done about him and his government. I'm just saying that when someone says, "Oh, $60 billion is just WAY too expensive for Mars", we need to sit down and look at where our money is going.
/rant off
Besides, the billions we're spending now in Iraq had nothing to do with Iraqi lives. The original argument was to protect American lives and everyone else from the weapons of mass destruction Saddam was supposedly ready to unleash. If we had been serious about those 61,000 lives you mention, we could have saved many more of them for much less money if we had practiced a better policy in the middle east YEARS ago. But we didn't seem too upset about it then.
Anyway, this poll is much more trollish than I would like. I just want to say that, yes, those 61,000 lives are (were) more important than any Mars trips, but I think there could have been a much better way to save them and also spend our money on something more creative and less destructive. Anyone who says billions are better spent on war than on peaceful scientific exploration had better have some amazingly damn good reasons for war.
Others include price, estimated at $30 billion to $60 billion, and launching enough food, supplies and fuel for a round trip. Any one of these could make the project impractical.
Well, not to sound too bitter, but going to Mars seems like a much better way to spend billions than going to Iraq.
Funny, when I first read the headline I thought it meant you could buy a service to crash someone else's server....
/.'ers will take care of the rest.
Actually, that service is free. Just click on the "Submit Victim", I mean, "Submit Story" link on the sidebar. Make up a clever story and your faithful
On the "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign, Jobs said:,
The person who assailed us over it was Michael Eisner. But he didn't have any teenage kids living at home, and he didn't have any teenage kids working at Disney whom he talked to, so he thought "rip" meant "rip off." And when somebody actually clued him in to what it meant, he did apologize.
You know, that says so much about Disney and their current state of affairs.
The problem with your argument is that most people don't want to download all the songs on an album- they only want a few. To download 2 or 3 good songs off of an album at high quality (192kbps+) still takes less time than it would to get in your car and drive to the store. And it is also infinitely cheaper.
Funny you should say that because there was a USA Today article in today's newspaper that discussed the implications of a single song music market, ie- the end of the album. There are still some artists who produce albums as an artistic whole, not just a bunch of singles, but as a complete artistic statement. The fear is that if the per song market becomes dominent, that the art of albums will consequently suffer.
Definitely some interesting thoughts to consider. I've been on both sides of the fence. I've bought albums that I thought, "Wow, the rest of this sucks." and I've also bought albums and thought, "Wow, I'm so glad I have all of this, it rocks!".
My favorite was the joke about the physics exam in which a young Neils Bohr goes through all the different ways to measure the height of a building using a pen.
I thought is was a barometer:
Neils Bohr: On Being a Student
And relevant google search
Holy smokes! What a freaky trashy looking piece of crap.
:)
Yeah, I know -- it looks like it fell out of a bad anime. In fact, two seperate people walked into my apartment and said it looked like a transformer head.
So it looks really weird and I was hesitant to get it because of that, but I'm really glad I did. The sound is truly great.
Oh, and someone else posted something about Sony and DRM -- this box has no DRM in it whatsoever and assuming it does is rather trollish. In fact, the system has an optical out port, so it's easy to dub music from the CD player into a burner or MD recorder. And there is a tape deck and you can easily dub CD's onto tapes too. So, no DRM. Just nice sound.
I just got a new Sony self system that has 'Wireless Audio Transfer' (WAT). Basically, it has a seperate RF attenna that you attach to the sound card of your PC (or other audio device) and the shelf system will pick up the audio feed wirelessly. Not quite as versitile as the system reviewed here, but the sound on this system is incredible! Plus, you get the whole system (has a 60 CD changer) for $299. If it had an MD player instead of tape deck it would be perfection.
Saw this one via google news earlier today on InfoWorld:
SCO: GPL threatens $229B software market
Citing WIPO data, McBride said that the value of the worldwide software market would approach $229 billion by 2007, and that it was being threatened by the ideas behind the Free Software Foundation's GPL, the software license that governs Linux.
"The world, especially here in America, is shifting to one that is an information society," McBride said. "In the future, is that $229 billion in software still going to be there? Or in the case of the Free Software Foundation's goal, is proprietary software going to go away?"
Seriously, any 'bullies' doing this really do open themselves up to a libel suit (it's libel not slander since it's printed). And though I'm not a parent, if I were and such bullying were happening to my child, I would seriously consider teaching such web-savvy youth that their comments in the public forum carry consquences.
We don't want....them. Us vs. them. If 'they' trusted 'us', we might trust them. In the mean time...give 'em hell.
Who said 'you' get to be part of 'us', huh? And how do I know that 'you' aren't one of 'them'?
Your conspiracy theories do nothing constructive. What moderator thought this was insightful?
This article seems slashdotted, but there's a similar (same?) article on the CBS site: Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S. .
Also, check a search on Google News
I've always wondered about slicker:
Slicker: A collection of utilities which provide alternative for our beloved kicker. Slicker consists of three primary items Cards, the Slider, and a Task-bar. Which can be used in conjunction with each other, and Kicker, or utilized by themselves.
It always seemed like such an innovative idea, I'm surprised it hasn't ended up in the mainsteam of KDE yet.
That was a very well written post and I agree with you that most Americans do not understand the facts. But then, neither do the French, the Russians, the Chinese, heck, the entire human race's ability for objectivism and rationality could be seriously questioned. Which is the point of my response.
While I as an American certainly do not want to let my government and my society (including myself) off the hook, laying the guilt of 3,000,000 or 6,000,000 deaths soley on the heads of America is an abuse of the facts. Violence is a global failure, not a localized one. Aggressors should be identified and appropriately dealt with (US included) -- but to excuse all other parties is to participate in a witch hunt.
I leave you with one question: Suppose the US had not killed all those people. Suppose the US had never gotten involved anywhere. Can you confidently conclude that the gross level of violence and death in the world would be any less?
There is more than one player in the world. And we ALL share in these iniquities. The violence of the US, Rwanda, Palestinians and Jews is violence of humanity and we each share in the failure.
I thought FreeBSD was already on 5.x or something like that. Is that the development version? Does FreeBSD use a linux-like version numbering where odd numbers are development releases?
I'd have to agree. At this point, almost all of my information comes from the internet. The only other contender in my life (other than word of mouth) is the radio since I listen to NPR and a few other stations to and from work each day. At home, I don't have cable or satellite, nor do I want them. So TV isn't a big source of information for me. Yet despite this, I find myself generally as well informed if not more so than most of the people I interact with daily.
The internet just happens to be an incredibly efficient source of information. That's not to say you'll always find the most accurate data online, but that you can find lots of information very quickly. Searching for information in even a library, as well organized as it is, cannot beat a decent google search in terms of speed. Moreover, the amount of information at your fingertips is simply astounding.
Given all that, I have found a few drawbacks. One is that I tend to be a little more ignorant of local news than national or international. Secondly, I have found though that I tend to visit only a few select sites. When I can't find what I'm looking for on Google, I sometimes forget that there are other search engines. If the online mailing list archives don't have the answer to my programming question, I sometimes forget to look in the newsgroups. I think this is a danger, though not necessarily one specific to the internet. Just because you have millions of sites, or hundreds of channels, doesn't mean you'll actually take the time to listen to more than one voice.
Who are these people, and what have they done with my real government?
:)
Hopefully something very dreadful and permanent.
A stick dipped in rancid pork and shoved into my left eye. That would be worse. But not by a lot.
That's +2 Insightful! Funny, perhaps. Interesting, perhaps. But Insightful?
Wow. This explains so much about slashdot.
Was there any resolution about the legality of using WASTE considering Nullsoft/AOL's revoked it?
From http://www.nullsoft.com/free/waste/:
NOTICE OF UNAUTHORIZED SOFTWARE
An unauthorized copy of Nullsoft's copyrighted software was briefly posted on this website on or about Wednesday May 28, 2003. The software was identified as "WASTE" (the "Software") and includes the files "waste-setup.exe", "waste-source.zip", "waste-source.tar.gz" and any additional files contained in these files.
Nullsoft is the exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in the Software. The posting of the Software on this website was not authorized by Nullsoft.
If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the Software, you acquired no lawful rights to the Software and must destroy any and all copies of the Software, including by deleting it from your computer. Any license that you may believe you acquired with the Software is void, revoked and terminated.
Any reproduction, distribution, display or other use of the Software by you is unauthorized and an infringement of Nullsoft's copyright in the Software as well as a potential violation of other laws.
Thank you.
Nullsoft
The way to legally get around issues like this (at eBay and other establishments) is to include some cheap object, like a ball-point pen. Then what you're selling is a really expensive pen that just happens to come with a iTunes music file (or whatever it is).
I'm sure I'm not the only one with this question:
.NET literate enough to really distinguish the two. Anyone want to give a short explanation of the differences? Thanks.
What's the difference between gotGnu and Ximian's Mono project?
I've googled for some details, but I'm not
What causes this aversion to economic change?
Ignorance. Fear. Uncertaintly. Doubt.
You'll see plenty of it around here. Though it is QUITE refreshing to see a well written, intelligent post on this subject. Thank you.