And that's the problem--lots of companies are making money from music, just not music companies.
So what's next, the car makers going after the after-market parts market and repair shops? After all, they make money on the cars that the manufacturers produce, so why shouldn't they have access to some of those profits? If I run a car message board and advertise on Google, shouldn't Google have to pay the manufacturer a portion of that ad revenue? Where would it END?
Just because I make something, and someone else gets creative and finds a way to ADD VALUE TO AND PROFIT FROM my own creation, doesn't mean that I am entitled to the money they make for themselves.
Hell, I am a ColdFusion developer. Should I have to pay Macromedia (now Adobe) a percentage of every job I do using their software in addition to the cost of purchasing (er, licensing) their software? Heck, they produced ColdFusion, so why shouldn't they get access to the money I make as a result?
This is exactly what the RIAA and the labels are asking for. Sure, they have the right to negotiate their contracts any way they please, but they are going to price themselves right out of business if they keep this short-sighted march into the vault moving forward.
It's almost as bad as the housing market here in Sarasota, FL right now. Many of the apartment buildings are planning to convert to condos that will sell at insane prices once the leases expire for their current tenants. Most people lease/rent because they cannot afford to buy just yet, and if rental housing/apartments become unavailable, they will be forced to leave. Most of those same people are the unskilled workers who serve us in our restaurants and pick up our garbage. If they leave, nobody will be left to do those jobs and then we're all fux0r3d, but that's another rant for another time.
Note to Slashdot: Stop posting RIAA stories, you're getting me worked up about nothing. I gave up on music a few years ago anyway, so why should I care?
According to the introduction, the book is intended to be an annual collection of the best essays from the previous year, but they were afraid the book stores would try to return the books if there was a year in the title ("Best Software Writing of 2004"). Additionally, with the first edition there were some articles from 2003 that he wanted to include, so it got a numbered title instead.
I just finished reading this book a few days ago (mostly at the beach, no less), and I think some of the articles were wonderful, and a few had me counting the pages until the next chapter. Overall it is a great book that will live in my library for many, many years.
Second Brother: First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
If it's a large company, they have money. If they want software with a corporate vendor behind it, look no further than Vircom's ModusMail software. It can authenticate against a wide variety of sources (AD, SQL, Radius, LDAP, etc.). The user mailboxes can be stored on a SAN array to deploy multiple front-end servers to increase uptime. Supports POP/IMAP/webmail, etc. EXCELLENT spam and virus filtering built in with automatic updates every 15 minutes. Admin is Windows GUI app or web-based. Cost is higher than you would pay for a FOSS solution, but uptime and ease of management make it a great option to look at. I don't work for Vircom, but I am a satisfied customer. See: http://www.vircom.com/
I bet you never use mail either, pay all your bills online huh?
Not to defend not paying taxes, but the mail (USPS) is a private corporation with a government charter to exist. They raise all of their own funds through the sale of stamps and such. Sidewalks may be "free" but you have to pay to get mail delivered. Taxes do not fund the USPS.
And for the record, I do use online banking to pay all of my bills, even the ones that still send me statements and invoices printed on dead trees.
You can write off almost everything you use daily if you have a home based business, but I bet you didn't know that either.
I also happen to run a home-based business, and the line-item deductions you can take are pretty limited, actually. My CPA and I worked my taxes up last year using itemized deductions accounting for fuel use, office space, computer gear, you name it, and it still didn't come up to the standard deduction. Go figure. Sure, you can claim I have a crappy accountant, but the two other accountants from her office who reviewed everything were equally unable to work up enough deductions to make a difference. Maybe I'm in the wrong business. Maybe if the FairTax ever gets passed we won't have to have this discussion ever again.
Depending on where the parent lives, his local police may or may not be funded by income taxes. Here in Florida we have a state sales tax (and an extra 1% sales tax here in Sarasota county) that covers all of our public services. If you decide not to tax income taxes here, only the federal government is getting the shaft. This is one reason I like the FairTax, because you wouldn't have to worry about income taxes at all, and EVERYONE would pay when they spend their money regardless of how they made it.
About two years ago I bought a used 1986 Honda Helix scooter which gets 60 miles per gallon and a has a trunk large enough to carry everything I need for work. It can cruise at 70 miles per hour, so it's suitable for freeway driving (if you're insane enough).
I also kept my other car to use in bad weather (Florida, so it rains often) or when I needed to move something too large for the scooter. Maintaining both vehicles is more expensive, but I estimate that with the fuel costs I've saved by preferring to drive the scooter instead of the other car, it's paid for itself a couple of times over already, and will continue to do so even more as gas prices increase.
...since Americans are easily scared, fundie dipshits...
I would qualify that as many Americans, as I for one do not wet myself every time a politician speaks. Most of the really bad decisions that affect how the rest of the world perceives America come from our federal government. Personally I'm of the belief that democracy is "broken" at the federal level. The politicians do whatever they want, and when voting time comes around, people have either forgotten what their representatives did (or never knew to begin with... do you know YOUR rep's voting history??), or will re-elect them again anyway just to keep the evil [insert other major party that you don't belong to here] candidate from winning.
My solution to this would be to ammend the constitution to limit congressional and senatorial terms to one term, period. This would eliminate those positions as "careers" and force regular citizens back into the role. Since nobody would be worried about getting reelected, they might actually do some good for a change.
Careful what you wish for. You have to remember that when gas prices go up, if affects EVERYTHING.
Your "always low prices" at Wal-Mart will be going up because it will cost the company millions in extra fuel expenses. Who do you think pays for that?
You think $0.37 is a lot to send a letter? The USPS will also need to spend millions more in fuel. This goes for UPS, DHL, FedEx, etc. as well.
How about higher property taxes? Yup, most school systems are funded with property taxes. They have to gas up all those busses and now it will cost a lot more, so their budget will increase, and you will pay for it.
Even mass transit will become more expensive. They buy gas too.
Given that everything becomes more expensive, people will be able to spend less on other things such as going out to eat or going to the movies. This hurts the economy, and you may lose your job as a result. Now you can take mass transit to the beach and look at your clear skies and breath easier, but at what cost?
If you were offered a job that paid twice your salary tomorrow but required selling your existing house, wouldn't you be at least slightly annoyed that your neighbor had recently put a bigass hunk of aluminum on top of their house and you couldn't do anything about it other than cut the price of your house by 20 percent or more?
Annoyed, yes, but nobody ever said you have the right NOT to be annoyed. If you're going to make twice as much at a new job, one could argue that taking a 20% hit on the price of your existing home isn't so bad, annoying as it may be.
I think you'd want somebody to force them to get rid of that scrap metal too.
That is where you would be wrong (about me anyway). Using the force of government to make someone else to comply with my wishes goes against my principles.
+2 Informative? Spilling cool-aide on some kids rare comic book has nothing to do with this situation. This would be more like taking your crappy comics and putting them next to his nice ones. Sure, it may not look nice, but the ACTUAL value and quality of his comics are not affected in any way. As soon as you take your nasty comics away his look nicer again. In order for your analogy to be correct, these foil people would have had to put the sheet metal on their neighbors house instead of their own. Frankly, I find the whole "they're making my house worth less" argument to be ineffective unless you are actively trying to sell your house. Thanks for playing.
So quick to blame the liberals, but the conservatives do the same thing on different issues (moral values, for one). I for one am a Libertarian so you could say I'm quick to blame both sides.
Not to mention their amazing color changing sign on the top of the west side of the building. I'm sure people would get a kick out of a picture of that with a view from the top of the Hollywood 20 parking garage. Maybe I'll go grab one if traffic isn't too bad.
That's exactly the benefit desired! The poor get low-quality service, instead of none at all.
So I should have to pay for their crap service AND better service for myself? If you're concerned about "the poor" not having fast Internet access, organize a charity where people can adopt a poor family to get them the fast Internet access they obviously have a "right" and "need" to use.
The government is of, for and by the people, but it is not the people.
The problem with representative democracy is that it is not possible for the desires of every individual person to be represented. The ultimate moral question with this issue is "Why should the hard-working single mother of two who can barely pay her bills let alone afford a computer have to pay MORE taxes to support "free" Wi-Fi for a bunch of geeks who make three times more than she does and who ALREADY have Internet access anyway?"
Would I personally love to be able to get free broadband access from anywhere? Sure! But whenever government gives something away, it has to take from someone else to pay for it.
The flip side of this is if a customer wants good QoS for VoIP, then that customer should expect to pay for it.
But bandwidth is bandwidth. If I have a pipe from Comcast, I don't want them slowing my data down just because it happens to travel on a specific port.
IIRC most music streams run at higher transfer rates than VoIP does, and for longer periods, but you don't see them complaining about that. If your logic holds, then pretty soon we're going to have to pay extra if we want to listen to streaming audio as well.
I guess thats conservative on business, and liberal on morals. Guess you can be both.;)
Yup, they call that libertarian thinking. Socially liberal, financially conservative. There's even a political party based on that line of thinking, of which I am a member.
Essentially it all boils down to tresspass. If I tresspass upon your person or property without your consent, I am in violation. This covers assult (sexual or otherwise), rape, pedophilia (since children cannot give consent), burglary, etc.
Short of installing your own UPSes in your co-lo racks, which many co-lo's either frown upon or strongly discourage...
Or disallow in their terms of service. My understanding is that the reason for this is in case of electrical fires. If a fire breaks out and their gas-based suppression system cannot immediately contain it, one of the first things that will happen is they will cut off all power to the racks. If someone has their own UPS in the rack, the facility cannot do an emergency shutdown. If a server connected to that UPS is the source of the fire, then they might have a VERY hard time putting it out.
At least, that's how it was explained to me by one of the facilities we looked at for our servers.
Also on the subject, I heard (but have not been able to confirm) that Hi-Velocity, a small hosting/co-lo facility in Tampa was without power for over 24 hours due to a transformer problem in their building. They do have battery backup, and claim to have a generator, but some people I know who have servers there were out for over a day.
And to make matters worse, Slashdot is giving me the classic 503 when I tried posting this the first few times...
"...a national sales tax..." - Ok, now I'll finally vote against W. I shed the tears of a clown.
I know it's off topic, but I'm curious about what you have against a national sales tax? The currently favored "tax replacement" legislation is H.R. 25, otherwise known as the FairTax. It's actually quite interesting once you get to know more about it. Basically the current income tax and all of its burdens and loopholes would go away in favor of a flat national sales tax.
Moderators feel free to reign destruction upon this post if you feel it necessary.
And now back to your regularly scheduled discussion of galactic happenings...
We've started using FireFox along with the Web Developer extension over the last couple of months, and have made XHTML/CSS the standards by which we work. The result has been web sites that comply with current standards, are more accessible, and are far easier to read and understand by more members of the team. Here are a few samples of what can be done using basic XHTML/CSS without a lot of additional training...
I'm certain that we still have some things to integrate to make everything truly usable, but the model we work with now is far better than the way it was with table layouts and HTML4.
Of course if anyone has suggestions for improving the technical standards of these sites, by all means, please let me know.
As an e-mail administrator for a company who offers e-mail to the outside world, we had to deal with spam like everyone else running a mail server. Spam was the biggest complaint. We installed SpamAssissin, which helped, but it took up too much time to feed and maintain the filters. So, we bought our way out. We switched to modusMail by Vircom and haven't looked back. It catches close to 99% of our incoming spam, catch-all accounts and all. False positives are less than half a percent. Every morning each user gets a Quarantine Report showing all the spam and viruses for the previous day. From here they can whitelist or blacklist addresses of anything that was caught. Best of all, there is a dedicated team of spam-busters that does nothing but update the filters, which get pushed down to us every 6 hours. Spam doesn't make it to our desktop anymore, nor do viruses, and we spend less than 15 minutes a month managing the mail server. Yes, we paid quite a bit of money for it, and it's not open source (gasp!), but it WORKS, and the users are more than willing to pay extra for this level of service.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's the problem--lots of companies are making money from music, just not music companies.
So what's next, the car makers going after the after-market parts market and repair shops? After all, they make money on the cars that the manufacturers produce, so why shouldn't they have access to some of those profits? If I run a car message board and advertise on Google, shouldn't Google have to pay the manufacturer a portion of that ad revenue? Where would it END?
Just because I make something, and someone else gets creative and finds a way to ADD VALUE TO AND PROFIT FROM my own creation, doesn't mean that I am entitled to the money they make for themselves.
Hell, I am a ColdFusion developer. Should I have to pay Macromedia (now Adobe) a percentage of every job I do using their software in addition to the cost of purchasing (er, licensing) their software? Heck, they produced ColdFusion, so why shouldn't they get access to the money I make as a result?
This is exactly what the RIAA and the labels are asking for. Sure, they have the right to negotiate their contracts any way they please, but they are going to price themselves right out of business if they keep this short-sighted march into the vault moving forward.
It's almost as bad as the housing market here in Sarasota, FL right now. Many of the apartment buildings are planning to convert to condos that will sell at insane prices once the leases expire for their current tenants. Most people lease/rent because they cannot afford to buy just yet, and if rental housing/apartments become unavailable, they will be forced to leave. Most of those same people are the unskilled workers who serve us in our restaurants and pick up our garbage. If they leave, nobody will be left to do those jobs and then we're all fux0r3d, but that's another rant for another time.
Note to Slashdot: Stop posting RIAA stories, you're getting me worked up about nothing. I gave up on music a few years ago anyway, so why should I care?
I just finished reading this book a few days ago (mostly at the beach, no less), and I think some of the articles were wonderful, and a few had me counting the pages until the next chapter. Overall it is a great book that will live in my library for many, many years.
BEDEVERE: And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped.
ARTHUR: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheeps' bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
Two of these three is...
Second Brother: First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
Maynard: Amen.
Knights: Amen.
Arthur: Right! One!... Two!... Five!
Galahad: Three, sir!
Arthur: Three!
[angels sing]
[boom]
There goes Vista! Sorry, I just had to...
If it's a large company, they have money. If they want software with a corporate vendor behind it, look no further than Vircom's ModusMail software. It can authenticate against a wide variety of sources (AD, SQL, Radius, LDAP, etc.). The user mailboxes can be stored on a SAN array to deploy multiple front-end servers to increase uptime. Supports POP/IMAP/webmail, etc. EXCELLENT spam and virus filtering built in with automatic updates every 15 minutes. Admin is Windows GUI app or web-based. Cost is higher than you would pay for a FOSS solution, but uptime and ease of management make it a great option to look at. I don't work for Vircom, but I am a satisfied customer. See: http://www.vircom.com/
I bet you never use mail either, pay all your bills online huh?
Not to defend not paying taxes, but the mail (USPS) is a private corporation with a government charter to exist. They raise all of their own funds through the sale of stamps and such. Sidewalks may be "free" but you have to pay to get mail delivered. Taxes do not fund the USPS.
And for the record, I do use online banking to pay all of my bills, even the ones that still send me statements and invoices printed on dead trees.
You can write off almost everything you use daily if you have a home based business, but I bet you didn't know that either.
I also happen to run a home-based business, and the line-item deductions you can take are pretty limited, actually. My CPA and I worked my taxes up last year using itemized deductions accounting for fuel use, office space, computer gear, you name it, and it still didn't come up to the standard deduction. Go figure. Sure, you can claim I have a crappy accountant, but the two other accountants from her office who reviewed everything were equally unable to work up enough deductions to make a difference. Maybe I'm in the wrong business. Maybe if the FairTax ever gets passed we won't have to have this discussion ever again.
Depending on where the parent lives, his local police may or may not be funded by income taxes. Here in Florida we have a state sales tax (and an extra 1% sales tax here in Sarasota county) that covers all of our public services. If you decide not to tax income taxes here, only the federal government is getting the shaft. This is one reason I like the FairTax, because you wouldn't have to worry about income taxes at all, and EVERYONE would pay when they spend their money regardless of how they made it.
About two years ago I bought a used 1986 Honda Helix scooter which gets 60 miles per gallon and a has a trunk large enough to carry everything I need for work. It can cruise at 70 miles per hour, so it's suitable for freeway driving (if you're insane enough).
I also kept my other car to use in bad weather (Florida, so it rains often) or when I needed to move something too large for the scooter. Maintaining both vehicles is more expensive, but I estimate that with the fuel costs I've saved by preferring to drive the scooter instead of the other car, it's paid for itself a couple of times over already, and will continue to do so even more as gas prices increase.
I would qualify that as many Americans, as I for one do not wet myself every time a politician speaks. Most of the really bad decisions that affect how the rest of the world perceives America come from our federal government. Personally I'm of the belief that democracy is "broken" at the federal level. The politicians do whatever they want, and when voting time comes around, people have either forgotten what their representatives did (or never knew to begin with... do you know YOUR rep's voting history??), or will re-elect them again anyway just to keep the evil [insert other major party that you don't belong to here] candidate from winning.
My solution to this would be to ammend the constitution to limit congressional and senatorial terms to one term, period. This would eliminate those positions as "careers" and force regular citizens back into the role. Since nobody would be worried about getting reelected, they might actually do some good for a change.
Careful what you wish for. You have to remember that when gas prices go up, if affects EVERYTHING.
Given that everything becomes more expensive, people will be able to spend less on other things such as going out to eat or going to the movies. This hurts the economy, and you may lose your job as a result. Now you can take mass transit to the beach and look at your clear skies and breath easier, but at what cost?
If you were offered a job that paid twice your salary tomorrow but required selling your existing house, wouldn't you be at least slightly annoyed that your neighbor had recently put a bigass hunk of aluminum on top of their house and you couldn't do anything about it other than cut the price of your house by 20 percent or more?
Annoyed, yes, but nobody ever said you have the right NOT to be annoyed. If you're going to make twice as much at a new job, one could argue that taking a 20% hit on the price of your existing home isn't so bad, annoying as it may be.
I think you'd want somebody to force them to get rid of that scrap metal too.
That is where you would be wrong (about me anyway). Using the force of government to make someone else to comply with my wishes goes against my principles.
+2 Informative? Spilling cool-aide on some kids rare comic book has nothing to do with this situation. This would be more like taking your crappy comics and putting them next to his nice ones. Sure, it may not look nice, but the ACTUAL value and quality of his comics are not affected in any way. As soon as you take your nasty comics away his look nicer again. In order for your analogy to be correct, these foil people would have had to put the sheet metal on their neighbors house instead of their own. Frankly, I find the whole "they're making my house worth less" argument to be ineffective unless you are actively trying to sell your house. Thanks for playing.
So quick to blame the liberals, but the conservatives do the same thing on different issues (moral values, for one). I for one am a Libertarian so you could say I'm quick to blame both sides.
Not to mention their amazing color changing sign on the top of the west side of the building. I'm sure people would get a kick out of a picture of that with a view from the top of the Hollywood 20 parking garage. Maybe I'll go grab one if traffic isn't too bad.
That's exactly the benefit desired! The poor get low-quality service, instead of none at all.
So I should have to pay for their crap service AND better service for myself? If you're concerned about "the poor" not having fast Internet access, organize a charity where people can adopt a poor family to get them the fast Internet access they obviously have a "right" and "need" to use.
I'd go for the socialist view every time, ... I'm British :-P
Please stay there.
The government is of, for and by the people, but it is not the people.
The problem with representative democracy is that it is not possible for the desires of every individual person to be represented. The ultimate moral question with this issue is "Why should the hard-working single mother of two who can barely pay her bills let alone afford a computer have to pay MORE taxes to support "free" Wi-Fi for a bunch of geeks who make three times more than she does and who ALREADY have Internet access anyway?"
Would I personally love to be able to get free broadband access from anywhere? Sure! But whenever government gives something away, it has to take from someone else to pay for it.
The flip side of this is if a customer wants good QoS for VoIP, then that customer should expect to pay for it.
But bandwidth is bandwidth. If I have a pipe from Comcast, I don't want them slowing my data down just because it happens to travel on a specific port.
IIRC most music streams run at higher transfer rates than VoIP does, and for longer periods, but you don't see them complaining about that. If your logic holds, then pretty soon we're going to have to pay extra if we want to listen to streaming audio as well.
Leave my bits alone, damnit!
I guess thats conservative on business, and liberal on morals. Guess you can be both. ;)
Yup, they call that libertarian thinking. Socially liberal, financially conservative. There's even a political party based on that line of thinking, of which I am a member.
Essentially it all boils down to tresspass. If I tresspass upon your person or property without your consent, I am in violation. This covers assult (sexual or otherwise), rape, pedophilia (since children cannot give consent), burglary, etc.
Short of installing your own UPSes in your co-lo racks, which many co-lo's either frown upon or strongly discourage...
Or disallow in their terms of service. My understanding is that the reason for this is in case of electrical fires. If a fire breaks out and their gas-based suppression system cannot immediately contain it, one of the first things that will happen is they will cut off all power to the racks. If someone has their own UPS in the rack, the facility cannot do an emergency shutdown. If a server connected to that UPS is the source of the fire, then they might have a VERY hard time putting it out.
At least, that's how it was explained to me by one of the facilities we looked at for our servers.
Also on the subject, I heard (but have not been able to confirm) that Hi-Velocity, a small hosting/co-lo facility in Tampa was without power for over 24 hours due to a transformer problem in their building. They do have battery backup, and claim to have a generator, but some people I know who have servers there were out for over a day.
And to make matters worse, Slashdot is giving me the classic 503 when I tried posting this the first few times...
First, I agree. Best Sci-Fi ever. Firefly, Farscape, Star Trek.... whatever, they don't hold a candle to B5. Second, I like your alias. Viva Liberty!
"...a national sales tax..." - Ok, now I'll finally vote against W. I shed the tears of a clown.
I know it's off topic, but I'm curious about what you have against a national sales tax? The currently favored "tax replacement" legislation is H.R. 25, otherwise known as the FairTax. It's actually quite interesting once you get to know more about it. Basically the current income tax and all of its burdens and loopholes would go away in favor of a flat national sales tax.
Moderators feel free to reign destruction upon this post if you feel it necessary.
And now back to your regularly scheduled discussion of galactic happenings...
We've started using FireFox along with the Web Developer extension over the last couple of months, and have made XHTML/CSS the standards by which we work. The result has been web sites that comply with current standards, are more accessible, and are far easier to read and understand by more members of the team. Here are a few samples of what can be done using basic XHTML/CSS without a lot of additional training...
I'm certain that we still have some things to integrate to make everything truly usable, but the model we work with now is far better than the way it was with table layouts and HTML4.
Of course if anyone has suggestions for improving the technical standards of these sites, by all means, please let me know.
As an e-mail administrator for a company who offers e-mail to the outside world, we had to deal with spam like everyone else running a mail server. Spam was the biggest complaint. We installed SpamAssissin, which helped, but it took up too much time to feed and maintain the filters. So, we bought our way out. We switched to modusMail by Vircom and haven't looked back. It catches close to 99% of our incoming spam, catch-all accounts and all. False positives are less than half a percent. Every morning each user gets a Quarantine Report showing all the spam and viruses for the previous day. From here they can whitelist or blacklist addresses of anything that was caught. Best of all, there is a dedicated team of spam-busters that does nothing but update the filters, which get pushed down to us every 6 hours. Spam doesn't make it to our desktop anymore, nor do viruses, and we spend less than 15 minutes a month managing the mail server. Yes, we paid quite a bit of money for it, and it's not open source (gasp!), but it WORKS, and the users are more than willing to pay extra for this level of service.