Anyone have any figures on how many songs emusic.com has sold ? I just signed up with them recently, they are not a pop chart outfit but they have a lot of bands I Like to listen to. $10 for 40 songs at 192 kbps mp3, no drm, no bullshit and very reasonable terms of service. When you break it down that works out at about 25 cents a song which I consider a reasonable price to pay for consistant sound quality, speed and the fact that you are giving something to the artists who make the music you like.
"As long as they can make it sufficiently inconvenient to copy music, most people won't bother. They're really not worried about people trading music face to face, because that is truly impossible to stop. Forcing people to encrypt individual files in a way that is difficult to intercept currently goes a great way toward dissuading the majority of users. Blocking known P2P applications based on the protocol's "fingerprints", especially encrypted ones like Freenet and Waste, will cut down on the majority of the remainder; these are the easiest and thus most-used methods of encrypted filesharing. "
Currently is the operative word here. As soon as this technique is in any way widely used the p2p networks will evolve and people will either upgrade to newer versions of what ever program they use that stops this or switch to a new program. It happened with napster, it happened with audio galaxy and if this method becomes popular it will happen with old school p2p programs. The point that the parent poster is trying to make is that this technique will have pretty much no affect just like similar efforts had no affect on spam. In other words it wont cause any perceivable slow down, it will just be a minor inconvenience. This product seems designed to milk money out of clueless university staff who do not understand the technical issues involved in blocking filesharing, it reeks of snakeoil and opportunism. Finger printing relies on some sort of patern recognition it is very easy to write an algorythm to change a few bits here and their within a file and disguise it.
" Tell me that paper wasn't YOUR idea and that he didn't just STEAL it!"
He took credit for some one else's work, he didn't steal anything. An Idea is not a tangible object like a chair. Physical objects like a chair have a clear owner, ideas do not. If you tell me your idea for a great new book, I can pass it off as my own. I can take credit for your idea. If you want to claim my chair on the other hand you would have to physically remove it from me or convince me to give it to you.
Society affords people who come up with ideas some protection or guarantee that they will be rewarded for their work through the law. This is a consequence of society and the degree of protection afforded is hence decided by the society in question.
Should every person quoted in the student in your example's paper be entitled to a fee for being quoted or for the student learning something from their works? If the person who the student quotes is dead for 200 years should the estate of that person receive a fee? Should this hold true for all recorded history? Should all relatives of all dead genius be entitled to their pennies worth? Think about the consequences of that. The student in questions "Idea" like all idea's is comprised of many other peoples idea's.
People should be rewarded for doing worthwhile work if they are not rewarded then they will not do the work in the first place. In my opinion many musicians perform worth while work and I have no problem paying to see them and their music or giving them my thanks and praise. I believe file trading will continue for the foreseeable future whether we like it or not. I do not believe that musicians will stop making/playing music as a result of file trading I believe they will adapt and that they are adapting.
I love these big good versus evil rants which paint a picture where on one side you have the faceless corporate gods and on the other you have the poor oppressed little middle class wage slaves. I love these black and white scenarios that make everything so simple to understand.
From reading this rant you get the impression that the person who wrote it (the ghost of I/T past) is some sort of slave incapable of making a decision for itself or having any sort of personal responsibility at all. You would swear that everybody in I/T was forced at gun point to take high payed, high stress jobs and that their was no other alternative for them. You would sware that everyone in "Amerika" was marched down to the bank and forced to mortgage their house, borrow as much money as possible and rack up huge credit card depts. You would swear everybody was obliged by law to spend money like it was water and not think about the future at all.
Did anyone honestly expect the I/T boom to last ? Did everyone think it was just going to get better and better all the time? That salaries were just going to multiply by two every year? You can blame the bosses up until a certain point but remember you were a willing participant in the whole show. You could have gotten off the ride at any time, you took the money and you took the risks.
I understand the sentiment of the whole rant. I can feel sorry for the techie who's job got moved over sea but why should I feel any more sorrow for him/her than the worker from the "insert industry here" who's had the same thing happen to them. Any one who has ever read anything about the history of trade unionism in America knows that workers in other professions have had it far worse than anything the American I/T workers are experiencing right now when outsourcing happend to them. The difference between a lot (not all) of people with I/T jobs and say for example coal miners is/was that people working in the I/T sector could have put aside a lot of money but a lot of them choose not to where as people in traditional industrial jobs (manufacturing) where this sort of thing has happened before often did not have this luxury, often they were making just enough to get by. Now I am not saying that everyone in I/T who is stuck for a job now was a heedless spendaholic who thought the party would never end, a lot of them are, but that relative to others who have suffered a similar fate people in I/T have not had it so bad.
This experience is not just some distant memory, the author of the rant himself/herself admits that : "Do not blame us, Corporate America, for the cynical attitude we have toward you, for some of us remember 20 years ago, when we could not buy a job, and you threw us out on the street at a moments notice." This has happened before and it will happen again, this is not the last time you will hear rants like this nor has it been the first time I'm sure. Shrugging everything off onto some faceless entity called corporate America and relieving yourself of all personal responsibility isn't going to help you in the long run . Raising awareness on issues like who pay's corporate America's salaries or what companies contribute how much to who's campaign are worth far more in my opinion than mono perspective rants like this.
I agree with most of what you say but your comment doesn't really address what I have said. The reality for vendors selling laptops is that 99% of the market wants windows, to get discounted licencing prices from microsoft, vendors in Ireland can not sell blank laptops or laptops with linux.
I agree with your assertion that: "Laptop vendors do not see the market for Linux on a laptop as large enough to be worth investing the R+D, manufacturing and marketing it would take to offer it" But in the context of my comment it does not explain why you can not buy a blank laptop. A blank laptop in a fair market should surly be cheaper than the same laptop without a software licence shouldn't it ? So in summary my point was not just confined to buying a linux laptop but was more to do with the fact that you have to buy windows on a pc laptop in Ireland.
"I'm talking about professional level music creation/editing, and professional multimedia development."
Well maybe not right now but what about 1 or 2 years down the line ? I mean compare what Linux is like now to what linux was like 2 years ago in terms of a polished enough desktop that was easy enough for the average email,mp3,web browsing home user ? Look at knoppix and look at the basic linux desktop experience now. It has come along way.
Now take a look at the current state of sound applications under linux:
Consider the fact that apple, a major platform in the multimedia world is now based on unix. This makes porting applications that work on osx to other unix like platforms (i.e linux) a lot easier. Also consider the fact that some multimedia companies like dreamworks are currently using linux to get stuff done:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6103
Yes at the moment linux in multimedia is primarily just used to render stuff but consider what linux in multimedia will be like 1 or 2 years down the road ? Eventually it will get there and I think it will be the home enthusiasts who will make this happen.
A lot of companies like adobe complain about the effects of software piracy in asia and eastern europe but it was piracy that helped to promote a lot of these companies among young multimedia students. The fact is a lot multimedia students are unwilling to fork out the big bucks to use a lot of these expensive tools (like maya, brice or 3dsmax) so they download them or copy them for free. When these students then go on to work/start their own multimedia company they do not use pirated software but buy a proper licensed copy and then put it down as a tax right off. At the moment thanks to projects like fink, darwin ports and people making carbon ports a lot of cool free unix apps are becoming available to mac users of different skill levels. Now at the moment their is no question that professional apps like reason or cubase are better than any free unix offerings. The question is at what point does the free apps become good enough to handle most of the basic needs of a multimedia student and at what point does it become easier just to use this free app rather than bother going to the hassle of getting a cracked copy. I think the gimp has reached this stage and audacity is nearly there. On the macs in my college I know that multimedia students are thought to use the gimp and told about audacity, I also know that a lot of business students use the gimp and have it installed on their laptops.
I think when these students leave college and start up/ start working for a company they are going to be using at least some free software. At first maybe only to do some trivial multimedia/other tasks but eventually I think as core applications mature and their is more input in the free software community from multimedia minded people you will see the quality of applications improve and user bases grow.
Well in Ireland its pretty much impossible to buy a laptop without windows or a windows licence due to the fact that microsoft will cut discounts to any vendor that would sell such a thing. A guy brought this up recently at A ifso (www.ifso.info) meeting I attended. He also mentioned the fact that he tried to complain about this and pretty much got no where.
You would only have to publish the changes you made to gpl code if you intended to distrubute your software publicly. If a company did this and kept their program in house they would not have to publish the changes they made
"I wish FSF would spend more time to promote current leaders of open source and encourage others to follow in their footsteps. But all I see on their page is criticism"
In all fairness the FSF's job is to be consistent in providing information for developers and users of free software, they are not a division of Apple/IBM's marketing department and they are not in the business of putting a spin on whatever concessions companies make towards them to please said companies and make some temporary karma gain from those companies.
In my opinion the FSF's goal in this particular situation was to deal with issues raised/fixed by Apples new license version. They credited Apple for what they fixed and explained what issues may still exist for developers/users that care/are interested in free software.
"So basically, they are more interested in "ideological purity" than promoting realistic progress towards their goal."
Yes but the goal of the FSF is in essence an ideological one, compromising their ideology would compromise their goal.
One problem Apple is going to encounter with its music store model is with small electronic artists who take a lot of liberties when sampling and mixing. These artists, kid606 for example, currently release a lot of their material in countries with loose copyright law as regards music and then have their CDs sold as imports in other countries to get round such laws.
I am sure that the big labels will not allow such artists to take part in Apples store (they will demand apple take down their songs due to the amount of uncleared samples they contain). The net effect of this probably won't affect the majority of people who will use itunes but will mean that itunes will be lacking a vibrant and new scene which is seeing a lot of interesting and creative things happen within it.
A lot of recent underground electronic music samples, distorts and mixes pop, old and new with other more obscure variety's of music. Sometimes it is impossible to clear theses songs and have them released legally due to the sheer number of samples used or the fact that a sampled artist objects to his/her snippet being used in a song. Now whatever your views on sampling may be I am sure you will admit that it is a shame to see a service as promising as itunes be deprived of such an interesting musical scene.
"I don't know exactly what point I'm trying to make but it just seems like we're all screaming "foul" on this and maybe we should re-examine the whole situation. Escalating this to an epic battle of theft, rights infringement, lawsuit, counter lawsuit, destruction of an industry just doesn't seem like the only option. "
At this stage in the game I don't think we really have a choice in the matter as regards an escalation of piracy. Personally I think apples model for online music is about as reasonable a compromise as you are going to get out of the music business, but, I think it is to little to late. People have gotten a taste for free music, they have become accustomed to getting it for free and they know how to get it. If you shut one network/system down their will always be another, people will find out about it and migrate, this happened when napster was shutdown and it will happen again, as the migrations continue the systems will become harder and harder to shutdown. The music industry is being forced to tackle this issue head on and go toe to toe with their customers, they don't like it and their customers definitely wont either.
Re-evaluating the situation is going to do nothing as the situation is that people want free music and they don't care if you call them a thief or not because until they are caught, put in jail and fined they are going to continue downloading regardless of what the/. community thinks. The opinions of the/. community are like farts in the ocean which no one cares about or pays any attention to. People are not going to re-evaluate the situation they are going to continue puttering along downloading music until they or one of their friends gets caught, that is what will make them re-evaluate the situation. This type of conflict, the one you described, is inevitable because just as the RIAA can do nothing significant at the moment to stop people sharing music neither can people on/..
Even if all the people on/. stopped downloading content they did not pay for would it really make a difference now that the great unwashed masses have tasted free music ?
"Another millieu that shows the same kind of saturation deterrence is the drug war (spit). It's easy, cheap, and desirable enough for many folks to smoke pot, that the courts literally could not handle them all. Stiffer penalties don't work so well, because the penalties are already so unreasonably stiff that they don't affect most peoples' risk assessment".
I read an article a while ago about mandatory urine testing in schools. One school in the article had announced that it intended to introduce regular random testing amongst its students as part of a clampdown on drugs in its area. This got me thinking about laws and how they are enforced. Testing children unwillingly for the presence of 'illegal ' drugs is an issue that can be hard to speak out about,on the surface it would appear that if you are defending the teen in questions right to privacy that you are in fact saying that it is all right for children to take drugs at an early age.
The real issue can be hard to see at this angle. The issue comes more into focus when we look at the practice of urine testing in the workplace. Now it is easier to become vocal about the issue of drug testing among the workforce than it is about drug testing among the school going populace. If a person is a good worker and performs all of the tasks assigned to it and perhaps even more, then what difference does it make if said person takes drugs or not ? The difference is one of perception, the perception of the company and those who scrutinise it. Remember what they say, winners don't take drugs.
However, it is not drugs they care about but more the life style of their employees.
There exists a varying perception in the majority of the business world as to what a good employee is. A good employees works hard, puts in good hours and does not do drugs. A good employee does not drink in the middle of the week, a good employee does not read socialist propaganda, a good employee does not read left wing news papers, a good employee plays golf and a good employee promotes 'family values'.
A good employee is something some one else thinks you should be, it is up to you to decide if you want to be a 'good employee'.
What is my point ? My point is that if a company says 'we do not want people who take drugs and refuse to submit to drug tests' then what is to stop that company from saying 'we do not want people who exhibits behaviour x ' ? You can take the line, 'well if you do not like the companies policy then go some where else ', but what happens when there is no where else to go? What happens when people start believing a stupid perception and you are forced to submit to that perception or go without work.
My point is that the war on drugs just like the war on mp3's are in a way battles of perception. If enough companies deem something as an undesirable trait in their employees then people , people who wish to do more than work in Mc Donald's for the rest of their lives , will try to avoid such 'undesirable traits'. My point is not that
Companies would refuse to employee people who download songs which they do not own (they might) but that it is possible to control or moderate how a person behaves
In their free time by holding them to ransom with the prospect of unemployment or
Low paid employment.
With drugs it is easy to see how this could be achieved. Lots of companies in a particular field start introducing drug testing, the share holders of the companies that are holding out wonder why their company is not doing the same ? Management from other companies mingle with management from the hold out companies, the companies that hold fold one by one. It is good pr to be clean. It is good pr to fit a perception.
With mp3s what you do is hit companies with fines and legal treats concerning what their employees are downloading during their lunch breaks thus forcing them to clamp down on file sharers within companies. Then what you do about the home down loaders is to have a law passed that states
" The other problem is that there is no crackdown on downloaders. If you started arresting people, it would actually sink in to 90% of the users that they are breaking the law. "
I do not agree. If you started arresting people en masse for downloading music what would happen would be that these people would never buy a cd again. The original question that was put to these people was "Do you feel what you are doing is wrong?", not "Do you feel what you are doing is illegal?".
If I got arrested for shop lifting I probably would not be so quick to go out and shop lift again. However if I was arrested for doing something like smoking pot...well I would just be more carefull next time. Shop lifting and smoking hashish are both illegal in the US, the difference is I personally believe stealing to be wrong or a bad thing where as I do not believe smoking pot to be inherintley wrong.
Now if I was arrested for smoking pot , something which I see as not wrong, there is nothing I can do about it I have to take the heat and go through the legal process. Now if you arrest me (a music fan who pays money to see performances/buys cds/buys tshirts) for downloading music... well there is something I can do, its called not buy any cds ever again. While stealing cds from a shop and downloading copyrighted material could both be said to be illegal the difference is that I and a lot of other people who download music, believe one to be right (and not wrong) and not the other
"In software, there have always been little tricks to combat piracy, but they don't always work as well as intended. I believe that the software industry will be hurt by, and therefore change more drastically as a result of, piracy more so than the music industry."
In terms of commercial software, I think you are right on this point. I think that, for example, the gaming industry is moving more and more towards a online pay per play model which would require you to log into a central server to get new content/play against other players (e.g ultima online). This sort of always on always connected to a central server model will and does make piracy a lot more difficult. At the moment it is very difficult for someone to pirate a multi player game like everquest (is it even possible for some one to play everquest for free?). However I would not say that piracy is the main reason for this change in models, I think that the gaming industry and the comercial sofware industry in general would prefer a pay per use model because it makes them more money in a more sustainable and stable way.
This is only a preview of things to come . A lot of people are very scared right now due to terrorism and alot of people do not know what to do about it and how to combat it effectively . The war on afghanistan , the patriot act,the israel/palestine conflict and the possibility of military action in iraq do not by any means spell the end of muslim extremist terrorism. There will be more terrorist attacks on America and its allies , the real question is how big will these attacks be and will anything which America has done thus far be of any use in limiting these attacks in terms of scale and location,(i.e will The U.S be able to stop attacks within there own borders).
When considering everything the American government has done thus far in its quest to anihilate terrorism we should consider a few questions . How much of what the U.S goverenment is doing right now is cosmetic ? I would say alot . Is it entirely nessecary . No. will it have a big impact on terrorism. No . Do the American public need to feel safe . Yes . Do you think that there will be another Major terrorist attack against America despite every thing that has been done thus far to prevent one. Yes.
This is the begining of a cycle , a downward spiral which has not reached full momentum yet. What really scares me is , what would Happen if there was another attack of a similar scale to sept 11. If some one say crashed a plane in to an airport?
This airport data base is like so many other cosmetic moves to solve problems , it sounds great to the general public who believe that it will save them from evil but in reality it causes more problems than it is supposed to solve,(even if it worked reasonably well), and it does not even solve the problems which it was ment to solve. If there was another attack on America tomorrow you would have two tons more of shit like this which would stink twice as bad as this does kind off crud does right now .
Politics in America,(Like in many other places), is run more on appearances and business interests and less on substance and the public interest.Expect more and worse things like this.
"for example: crackers spend a lot of time making sure small software companies can't make money on any general market application (as opposed to big-iron stuff). they apparently think it's some kind of game, where the software company spends hundreds of hours of time and money making something purely for them to crack and redistribute."
Yes this may be true but what are you going to do about it ? That is the real question you have to ask your self.I mean is there anyway to stop people cracking software that does not require draconian laws which may or may not be inforceable and which Do stifle legitimit research and are these laws really a benifit or a pain to a SMALL software company?
"all of this complaining about the evil RIAA is just hot moist air."
So is complaining about the EVIL crack0rz , you would have a better chance trying to convince the riaa to be reasonable and sell people decent quality music at a fair price than stopping people cracking software and putting up the iso's of games ported to linux .
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone have any figures on how many songs emusic.com has sold ? I just signed up with them recently, they are not a pop chart outfit but they have a lot of bands I Like to listen to. $10 for 40 songs at 192 kbps mp3, no drm, no bullshit and very reasonable terms of service. When you break it down that works out at about 25 cents a song which I consider a reasonable price to pay for consistant sound quality, speed and the fact that you are giving something to the artists who make the music you like.
"As long as they can make it sufficiently inconvenient to copy music, most people won't bother. They're really not worried about people trading music face to face, because that is truly impossible to stop. Forcing people to encrypt individual files in a way that is difficult to intercept currently goes a great way toward dissuading the majority of users. Blocking known P2P applications based on the protocol's "fingerprints", especially encrypted ones like Freenet and Waste, will cut down on the majority of the remainder; these are the easiest and thus most-used methods of encrypted filesharing.
"
Currently is the operative word here. As soon as this technique is in any way widely used the p2p networks will evolve and people will either upgrade to newer versions of what ever program they use that stops this or switch to a new program. It happened with napster, it happened with audio galaxy and if this method becomes popular it will happen with old school p2p programs. The point that the parent poster is trying to make is that this technique will have pretty much no affect just like similar efforts had no affect on spam. In other words it wont cause any perceivable slow down, it will just be a minor inconvenience. This product seems designed to milk money out of clueless university staff who do not understand the technical issues involved in blocking filesharing, it reeks of snakeoil and opportunism. Finger printing relies on some sort of patern recognition it is very easy to write an algorythm to change a few bits here and their within a file and disguise it.
http://streamripperx.sourceforge.net/
a bit different from audio hijaak I know but good for what I use it for and its under the gpl if you care about such things.
Anyone know if they are planning on selling them or if they will be available for download on archive.org or something?
yeah but its really easy to change a mac address so if such a site became popular....
" Tell me that paper wasn't YOUR idea and that he didn't just STEAL it!"
He took credit for some one else's work, he didn't steal anything. An Idea is not a tangible object like a chair. Physical objects like a chair have a clear owner, ideas do not. If you tell me your idea for a great new book, I can pass it off as my own. I can take credit for your idea. If you want to claim my chair on the other hand you would have to physically remove it from me or convince me to give it to you.
Society affords people who come up with ideas some protection or guarantee that they will be rewarded for their work through the law. This is a consequence of society and the degree of protection afforded is hence decided by the society in question.
Should every person quoted in the student in your example's paper be entitled to a fee for being quoted or for the student learning something from their works? If the person who the student quotes is dead for 200 years should the estate of that person receive a fee? Should this hold true for all recorded history? Should all relatives of all dead genius be entitled to their pennies worth? Think about the consequences of that. The student in questions "Idea" like all idea's is comprised of many other peoples idea's.
People should be rewarded for doing worthwhile work if they are not rewarded then they will not do the work in the first place. In my opinion many musicians perform worth while work and I have no problem paying to see them and their music or giving them my thanks and praise. I believe file trading will continue for the foreseeable future whether we like it or not. I do not believe that musicians will stop making/playing music as a result of file trading I believe they will adapt and that they are adapting.
I love these big good versus evil rants which paint a picture where on one side you have the faceless corporate gods and on the other you have the poor oppressed little middle class wage slaves. I love these black and white scenarios that make everything so simple to understand.
From reading this rant you get the impression that the person who wrote it (the ghost of I/T past) is some sort of slave incapable of making a decision for itself or having any sort of personal responsibility at all. You would swear that everybody in I/T was forced at gun point to take high payed, high stress jobs and that their was no other alternative for them. You would sware that everyone in "Amerika" was marched down to the bank and forced to mortgage their house, borrow as much money as possible and rack up huge credit card depts. You would swear everybody was obliged by law to spend money like it was water and not think about the future at all.
Did anyone honestly expect the I/T boom to last ? Did everyone think it was just going to get better and better all the time? That salaries were just going to multiply by two every year? You can blame the bosses up until a certain point but remember you were a willing participant in the whole show. You could have gotten off the ride at any time, you took the money and you took the risks.
I understand the sentiment of the whole rant. I can feel sorry for the techie who's job got moved over sea but why should I feel any more sorrow for him/her than the worker from the "insert industry here" who's had the same thing happen to them. Any one who has ever read anything about the history of trade unionism in America knows that workers in other professions have had it far worse than anything the American I/T workers are experiencing right now when outsourcing happend to them. The difference between a lot (not all) of people with I/T jobs and say for example coal miners is/was that people working in the I/T sector could have put aside a lot of money but a lot of them choose not to where as people in traditional industrial jobs (manufacturing) where this sort of thing has happened before often did not have this luxury, often they were making just enough to get by. Now I am not saying that everyone in I/T who is stuck for a job now was a heedless spendaholic who thought the party would never end, a lot of them are, but that relative to others who have suffered a similar fate people in I/T have not had it so bad.
This experience is not just some distant memory, the author of the rant himself/herself admits that : "Do not blame us, Corporate America, for the cynical attitude we have toward you, for some of us remember 20 years ago, when we could not buy a job, and you threw us out on the street at a moments notice." This has happened before and it will happen again, this is not the last time you will hear rants like this nor has it been the first time I'm sure. Shrugging everything off onto some faceless entity called corporate America and relieving yourself of all personal responsibility isn't going to help you in the long run . Raising awareness on issues like who pay's corporate America's salaries or what companies contribute how much to who's campaign are worth far more in my opinion than mono perspective rants
like this.
I agree with most of what you say but your comment doesn't really address what I have said. The reality for vendors selling laptops is that 99% of the market wants windows, to get discounted licencing prices from microsoft, vendors in Ireland can not sell blank laptops or laptops with linux.
I agree with your assertion that: "Laptop vendors do not see the market for Linux on a laptop as large enough to be worth investing the R+D, manufacturing and marketing it would take to offer it" But in the context of my comment it does not explain why you can not buy a blank laptop. A blank laptop in a fair market should surly be cheaper than the same laptop without a software licence shouldn't it ? So in summary my point was not just confined to buying a linux laptop but was more to do with the fact that you have to buy windows on a pc laptop in Ireland.
"I'm talking about professional level music creation/editing, and professional multimedia development."
:
o rge.net/m a/software /
:
3
Well maybe not right now but what about 1 or 2 years down the line ? I mean compare what Linux is like now to what linux was like 2 years ago in terms of a polished enough desktop that was easy enough for the average email,mp3,web browsing home user ? Look at knoppix and look at the basic linux desktop experience now. It has come along way.
Now take a look at the current state of sound applications under linux
http://www.agnula.org/
http://audacity.sourcef
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccr
Consider the fact that apple, a major platform in the multimedia world is now based on unix. This makes porting applications that work on osx to other unix like platforms (i.e linux) a lot easier. Also consider the fact that some multimedia companies like dreamworks are currently using linux to get stuff done
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=610
Yes at the moment linux in multimedia is primarily just used to render stuff but consider what linux in multimedia will be like 1 or 2 years down the road ? Eventually it will get there and I think it will be the home enthusiasts who will make this happen.
A lot of companies like adobe complain about the effects of software piracy in asia and eastern europe but it was piracy that helped to promote a lot of these companies among young multimedia students. The fact is a lot multimedia students are unwilling to fork out the big bucks to use a lot of these expensive tools (like maya, brice or 3dsmax) so they download them or copy them for free. When these students then go on to work/start their own multimedia company they do not use pirated software but buy a proper licensed copy and then put it down as a tax right off. At the moment thanks to projects like fink, darwin ports and people making carbon ports a lot of cool free unix apps are becoming available to mac users of different skill levels. Now at the moment their is no question that professional apps like reason or cubase are better than any free unix offerings. The question is at what point does the free apps become good enough to handle most of the basic needs of a multimedia student and at what point does it become easier just to use this free app rather than bother going to the hassle of getting a cracked copy.
I think the gimp has reached this stage and audacity is nearly there. On the macs in my college I know that multimedia students are thought to use the gimp and told about audacity, I also know that a lot of business students use the gimp and have it installed on their laptops.
I think when these students leave college and start up/ start working for a company they are going to be using at least some free software. At first maybe only to do some trivial multimedia/other tasks but eventually I think as core applications mature and their is more input in the free software community from multimedia minded people you will see the quality of applications improve and user bases grow.
Well in Ireland its pretty much impossible to buy a laptop without windows or a windows licence due to the fact that microsoft will cut discounts to any vendor that would sell such a thing. A guy brought this up recently at A ifso (www.ifso.info) meeting I attended. He also mentioned the fact that he tried to complain about this and pretty much got no where.
Doesn't itunes use its own mp3 encoder and not Fraunhofer's one?
http://www.sonarnerd.net/projects/wavcomp/
You would only have to publish the changes you made to gpl code if you intended to distrubute your software publicly. If a company did this and kept their program in house they would not have to publish the changes they made
"I wish FSF would spend more time to promote current leaders of open source and encourage others to follow in their footsteps. But all I see on their page is criticism"
In all fairness the FSF's job is to be consistent in providing information for developers and users of free software, they are not a division of Apple/IBM's marketing department and they are not in the business of putting a spin on whatever concessions companies make towards them to please said companies and make some temporary karma gain from those companies.
In my opinion the FSF's goal in this particular situation was to deal with issues raised/fixed by Apples new license version. They credited Apple for what they fixed and explained what issues may still exist for developers/users that care/are interested in free software.
"So basically, they are more interested in "ideological purity" than promoting realistic progress towards their goal."
Yes but the goal of the FSF is in essence an ideological one, compromising their ideology would compromise their goal.
One problem Apple is going to encounter with its music store model is with small electronic artists who take a lot of liberties when sampling and mixing. These artists, kid606 for example, currently release a lot of their material in countries with loose copyright law as regards music and then have their CDs sold as imports in other countries to get round such laws.
I am sure that the big labels will not allow such artists to take part in Apples store (they will demand apple take down their songs due to the amount of uncleared samples they contain). The net effect of this probably won't affect the majority of people who will use itunes but will mean that itunes will be lacking a vibrant and new scene which is seeing a lot of interesting and creative things happen within it.
A lot of recent underground electronic music samples, distorts and mixes pop, old and new with other more obscure variety's of music. Sometimes it is impossible to clear theses songs and have them released legally due to the sheer number of samples used or the fact that a sampled artist objects to his/her snippet being used in a song. Now whatever your views on sampling may be I am sure you will admit that it is a shame to see a service as promising as itunes be deprived of such an interesting musical scene.
"I don't know exactly what point I'm trying to make but it just seems like we're all screaming "foul" on this and maybe we should re-examine the whole situation. Escalating this to an epic battle of theft, rights infringement, lawsuit, counter lawsuit, destruction of an industry just doesn't seem like the only option. "
/. community thinks. The opinions of the /. community are like farts in the ocean which no one cares about or pays any attention to. People are not going to re-evaluate the situation they are going to continue puttering along downloading music until they or one of their friends gets caught, that is what will make them re-evaluate the situation. This type of conflict, the one you described, is inevitable because just as the RIAA can do nothing significant at the moment to stop people sharing music neither can people on /. .
/. stopped downloading content they did not pay for would it really make a difference now that the great unwashed masses have tasted free music ?
At this stage in the game I don't think we really have a choice in the matter as regards an escalation of piracy. Personally I think apples model for online music is about as reasonable a compromise as you are going to get out of the music business, but, I think it is to little to late. People have gotten a taste for free music, they have become accustomed to getting it for free and they know how to get it. If you shut one network/system down their will always be another, people will find out about it and migrate, this happened when napster was shutdown and it will happen again, as the migrations continue the systems will become harder and harder to shutdown.
The music industry is being forced to tackle this issue head on and go toe to toe with their customers, they don't like it and their customers definitely wont either.
Re-evaluating the situation is going to do nothing as the situation is that people want free music and they don't care if you call them a thief or not because until they are caught, put in jail and fined they are going to continue downloading regardless of what the
Even if all the people on
"Another millieu that shows the same kind of saturation deterrence is the drug war (spit). It's easy, cheap, and desirable enough for many folks to smoke pot, that the courts literally could not handle them all. Stiffer penalties don't work so well, because the penalties are already so unreasonably stiff that they don't affect most peoples' risk assessment".
I read an article a while ago about mandatory urine testing in schools. One school in the article had announced that it intended to introduce regular random testing amongst its students as part of a clampdown on drugs in its area. This got me thinking about laws and how they are enforced. Testing children unwillingly for the presence of 'illegal ' drugs is an issue that can be hard to speak out about ,on the surface it would appear that if you are defending the teen in questions right to privacy that you are in fact saying that it is all right for children to take drugs at an early age.
The real issue can be hard to see at this angle. The issue comes more into focus when we look at the practice of urine testing in the workplace. Now it is easier to become vocal about the issue of drug testing among the workforce than it is about drug testing among the school going populace. If a person is a good worker and performs all of the tasks assigned to it and perhaps even more, then what difference does it make if said person takes drugs or not ? The difference is one of perception, the perception of the company and those who scrutinise it. Remember what they say, winners don't take drugs.
However, it is not drugs they care about but more the life style of their employees. There exists a varying perception in the majority of the business world as to what a good employee is. A good employees works hard, puts in good hours and does not do drugs. A good employee does not drink in the middle of the week, a good employee does not read socialist propaganda, a good employee does not read left wing news papers, a good employee plays golf and a good employee promotes 'family values'. A good employee is something some one else thinks you should be, it is up to you to decide if you want to be a 'good employee'.
What is my point ? My point is that if a company says 'we do not want people who take drugs and refuse to submit to drug tests' then what is to stop that company from saying 'we do not want people who exhibits behaviour x ' ? You can take the line, 'well if you do not like the companies policy then go some where else ', but what happens when there is no where else to go? What happens when people start believing a stupid perception and you are forced to submit to that perception or go without work.
My point is that the war on drugs just like the war on mp3's are in a way battles of perception. If enough companies deem something as an undesirable trait in their employees then people , people who wish to do more than work in Mc Donald's for the rest of their lives , will try to avoid such 'undesirable traits'. My point is not that Companies would refuse to employee people who download songs which they do not own (they might) but that it is possible to control or moderate how a person behaves In their free time by holding them to ransom with the prospect of unemployment or Low paid employment.
With drugs it is easy to see how this could be achieved. Lots of companies in a particular field start introducing drug testing, the share holders of the companies that are holding out wonder why their company is not doing the same ? Management from other companies mingle with management from the hold out companies, the companies that hold fold one by one. It is good pr to be clean. It is good pr to fit a perception.
With mp3s what you do is hit companies with fines and legal treats concerning what their employees are downloading during their lunch breaks thus forcing them to clamp down on file sharers within companies. Then what you do about the home down loaders is to have a law passed that states
" The other problem is that there is no crackdown on downloaders. If you started arresting people, it would actually sink in to 90% of the users that they are breaking the law. "
...well I would just be more carefull next time. Shop lifting and smoking hashish are both illegal in the US, the difference is I personally believe stealing to be wrong or a bad thing where as I do not believe smoking pot to be inherintley wrong.
/buys tshirts) for downloading music... well there is something I can do, its called not buy any cds ever again. While stealing cds from a shop and downloading copyrighted material could both be said to be illegal the difference is that I and a lot of other people who download music, believe one to be right (and not wrong) and not the other
I do not agree. If you started arresting people en masse for downloading music what would happen would be that these people would never buy a cd again. The original question that was put to these people was "Do you feel what you are doing is wrong?", not "Do you feel what you are doing is illegal?".
If I got arrested for shop lifting I probably would not be so quick to go out and shop lift again. However if I was arrested for doing something like smoking pot
Now if I was arrested for smoking pot , something which I see as not wrong, there is nothing I can do about it I have to take the heat and go through the legal process. Now if you arrest me (a music fan who pays money to see performances/buys cds
"In software, there have always been little tricks to combat piracy, but they don't always work as well as intended. I believe that the software industry will be hurt by, and therefore change more drastically as a result of, piracy more so than the music industry."
In terms of commercial software, I think you are right on this point. I think that, for example, the gaming industry is moving more and more towards a online pay per play model which would require you to log into a central server to get new content/play against other players (e.g ultima online). This sort of always on always connected to a central server model will and does make piracy a lot more difficult. At the moment it is very difficult for someone to pirate a multi player game like everquest (is it even possible for some one to play everquest for free?). However I would not say that piracy is the main reason for this change in models, I think that the gaming industry and the comercial sofware industry in general would prefer a pay per use model because it makes them more money in a more sustainable and stable way.
Sorry
console gamer?
"Communication > Screenshots > Score manipulation > Upload to webspace > Penis size++"
... I really do not follow you , what has any of this got to do with microsoft's target market, i.e
Sorry
console gamer?
what? how is it useless from a gamers point of view ? Isnt Xbox live ment to be pretty much just for gaming ?
Not everywhere in Europe. In Ireland broadband is really expensive it is 100 euro a month WITH a 15 gig limit and 250 per month for no limits.
This is only a preview of things to come . A lot of people are very scared right now due to terrorism and alot of people do not know what to do about it and how to combat it effectively . The war on afghanistan , the patriot act ,the israel/palestine conflict and the possibility of military action in iraq do not by any means spell the end of muslim extremist terrorism. There will be more terrorist attacks on America and its allies , the real question is how big will these attacks be and will anything which America has done thus far be of any use in limiting these attacks in terms of scale and location ,(i.e will The U.S be able to stop attacks within there own borders).
,(even if it worked reasonably well), and it does not even solve the problems which it was ment to solve. If there was another attack on America tomorrow you would have two tons more of shit like this which would stink twice as bad as this does kind off crud does right now .
When considering everything the American government
has done thus far in its quest to anihilate terrorism we should consider a few questions . How much of what the U.S goverenment is doing right now is cosmetic ? I would say alot . Is it entirely nessecary . No. will it have a big impact on terrorism. No . Do the American public need to feel safe . Yes . Do you think that there will be another Major terrorist attack against America despite every thing that has been done thus far to prevent one. Yes.
This is the begining of a cycle , a downward spiral
which has not reached full momentum yet. What really scares me is , what would Happen if there was another attack of a similar scale to sept 11.
If some one say crashed a plane in to an airport?
This airport data base is like so many other cosmetic moves to solve problems , it sounds great to the general public who believe that it will save them from evil but in reality it causes more problems than it is supposed to solve
Politics in America,(Like in many other places), is run more on appearances and business interests and less on substance and the public interest.Expect more and worse things like this.
Good post ,good points , well argued.
"for example: crackers spend a lot of time making sure small software companies can't make money on any general market application (as opposed to big-iron stuff). they apparently think it's some kind of game, where the software company spends hundreds of hours of time and money making something purely for them to crack and redistribute."
Yes this may be true but what are you going to do about it ? That is the real question you have to ask your self.I mean is there anyway to stop people cracking software that does not require draconian laws which may or may not be inforceable and which Do stifle legitimit research and are these laws really a benifit or a pain to a SMALL software company?
"all of this complaining about the evil RIAA is just hot moist air."
So is complaining about the EVIL crack0rz , you would have a better chance trying to convince the riaa to be reasonable and sell people decent quality music at a fair price than stopping people cracking software and putting up the iso's of games ported to linux .