Open source works because the cream can rise to the top
I think this would make the program better, you think that would make it better. We can talk about it in forums, others can argue and debate about it. Then we can both sit down and code. You can add my patch, and see what you end up with. People can add your patch and see what they end up with. We can fork the project, people can apply patches, our pataches can be accepted or rejected. No mater what happens, be it by merit or politics, everyone can have their own opinion on it, and they can actually SEE the code in action. Because compiling and running code is CHEAP.
With scripts, that is not the case. We can't shoot it your way, shoot it my way, shoot it there way, edit and score it as we please and compare versions. It is to expensive. Since the mid 90's I have believed by 2020 computers at home will be powerful enough, that you will be able to do things this way. Just sit down at your desk and bring up Casablanca and say, "OK, lets scrap the last 5 minutes and make it so Bogey gets the girl" and 30 minutes later, your computer will have render a new version of the movie for you.
Till that day is here, collaborative films will not work. Since you can't afford to knock off enough stinkers to see what cream rises to the top.
Yes, and amazingly enough, commercial endevors have the right to say "don't pirate our work", or to ask Congress to extend the copyright peroid to keep their cash cows from rolling into the public domain. These people have the right to lock their work away from being used commercially.
Weather it is really a good idea to do this or not, well, that is another story....
It is the fastest virtual desktop switcher out there, no pause, no hesitation whatsoever. Icons for the most part stay on their own virtual desktop. There is no gui,everything works by hotkey. It is the only virtual desktop manager that just stays out of my way and works.
Most virtual desktop managers for windows are dog slow, you can watch the minimized icons dissapear one by one, then the desktop switches, then the icons for that desktop pop into place, one by one. None of that for me, I am sticking with Secretly.
It was designed to be the ultimate boss key program, but it is more of a linux junkies favorite utility when forced to work in Windows.
I think the article is a little thin on information.
We don't know if the school talked to the students or parents. If anyone refused to take the page down. If the students were threatend with expulsion, if a lawyer was brought in and told the school district could not do that. We don't know all of what was published on the page. Her address? That she has rape fantasies and wants a stranger to come over to her house? Also, with the way things are archvied on line. She could go and apply for a job as a principle someplace, and the school board there could go read "her blog" on how she gets off on abusing children.
We just know the end result. Yes, Johnny, it is libel to create a web page about your vice principle and say things about her and her reputation that are not true, and make it look like she wrote it herself. That both the student and their parents can be held responsible for the students actions. Oh yes, and the page will have to be taken down as well.
I can't tell you how many times in my life, I have seen the need for parents to be held responsible for their children's behavior.
The police or someone brings your brat home and says that they have been tormenting animals, shoplifting, skipping school, etc. And the parent just shakes their head and says that there is nothing they can do about it.
Then they are informed that if their kid misses school again, or is found trespassing, etc, that the parent will go to jail or have to pay the fine. Guess how long it takes for the parent who has "no control over their child" to find some measure of control?
There are truly some kids who know right and wrong, and will do wrong, no matter what the consequences to themselves or their parents are. For most kids, if they go to far astray of the law, a little reminder that they or their parents will be held responsible, puts them right back on track.
This story should be the lead story on the nightly news and in the newspapers. Parents should parent their children on-line, not whine about the government not doing enough and taking away rights and interfering with adults on line just to protect the children.
Let's face it, your car does not have a child proof starter. It is assumed that someone you will have enough control over the blessed tot that they won't hop in the car with the keys and drive of. No one suggests that the government should force auto manufacturers to make child proof ignition systems. We will all be better off when it is the parents responsibility to monitor what their kid is doing on line, not the states.
Parents are generally held responsible for their children's actions. Be it destruction of property, driving without a license and having an accident, someone getting hurt with a firearm, theft, and so on.
We don't need better firewalls. We don't need some intelligent filter at myspace to catch this stuff.
Hold the parents responsible for what their kids post. Even if I think my 13 year old should drink, and drive, and sell their body on the street, well, shucks, society and the law holds me responsible for their actions till they are 18. So I make sure that they are not drinking, or driving without a license, or prostituting themselves out. After a few parents pay some big fines, well heck, they will want to know what web pages their kids are working on.
This nonesense will all go a way in another generation. When the kids who don't remember what life is like before the internet existed grow up, they will watch their kids. They will not cop out and say they don't understand computers, or that their kids could do that. Life should be interesting once that generation of pirates and scallywags have kids of their own.
Hey, the French were not given hundreds of millions from the Oil-for-food program for nothing. Some influence was peddled. I would know, see it all the time here in America....yes the last part was sarcasim.
People said the SAME thing about XP here as well. 5 years later I bet almost all of you windows folks are running XP at this point. Eventually, you will want to buy a new computer and just like XP did, it will come with Vista.
Sorry, no dice, we won't even be looking at Vista till at least 2010
I work in a shop where the boss did a 2 year lease with Dell that is up in March of 07 (yes all XP boxes). Well, the powers that be have decied that a three year lease is the way to go.
So once again Dell, once again, upgrading 80 PC's or so, and once again...Windows XP.
We get to revist the Vista Issue late in 2009. And if Vista is no better than XP SP3 with heavy hardware requirements. Who knows? We have several Options.
Run our old hardware another 2 or 3 years and XP on the desktop. Thus Vista will be a 5 year old OS before we even consider it)
Move to Citrix hosted on Windows 2003, and keep running the old hardware and replace with thin clients. A real option, since bandwith will be even cheaper in a few years.
A migration to Linux. Crossover Office keeps getting better. And the most of the software that we run, may well run in it just fine by 2010. Things like AutoCAD, Quckbooks (being phased out for Solomon), and MS Office.
As it stands, in 07, we are getting 2 beefy servers, loaded up with VMWare, and running in VM evertything we currently use our 8 Windows 2003 servers for. The 2nd server will be used for redundency. I know, we are still going to need the Window Servers License, but we have now bitten the Linux apple. Every bite of that, means less Windows Licenses, and perhaps no new MS OS till 2012 or 2015.
As an aside, there is nothing we are running on any PC in the office that Windows 2000 would not run just fine.
Ever notice how the US used the no-fly zones as a pretext to bomb whatever they wanted to with no questions asked?
How does that invalidate the statement about the French stoped enforcing the no-fly zone once they started getting bribed? The poster even said, the EU is not against Microsoft, just against doing things that they do not see as being in their own self interest? Which he also said was true of everyone on the planet. He believed that if the EU saw Microsoft Vista as serving their interests, Vista would get EU approval.
Well, I can assure you that if the DRM is based solely on a hardware key or checksum, it will be cracked at some point. The only difference is that the crack will happen at the BIOS firmware level rather than the OS level, all this assuming that the BIOS can be flashed... even then, there may be pure hardware hacks available.
Hacking and pirating has always taken the path of least resistance. When it can be done in software, that is great, nice and cheap. When it can't, people will pay for the modified hardware to do this.
Back in the day, most copy protection on Commodore 64 floppy disks, was accomplished by intentionally writing a particular error to a particular track and sector on the disk. So if track 12, sector 3, when read, did NOT return an error 52. The progam would know that the disk was copied, and during the copy process, the error was not duplicated, and would not run
People would modify their floppy drive, so out the top, there would be what looked like a hand on a clock that would go from 10 to 5 o'clock. They would write the track numbers on the top of the drive. Then put in a copied game. When the drive stopped moving, because it hit a spot that should of had an error, you could see what track the error should have been on. Then you could pop the original floppy in the drive, and see which sector on that track returned an error and what error it was. Then duplicate that error on the other floppy.
It sounds like hardware hacks will be coming back into style again.
I am not saying it is not possible to gain some recognition. But to to get radio airplay nation wide, to be seen on TV, to make the cover of magizines, to hit the top ten, to have your album in every music store, across the country. All those things that people see as a mark of success in the music industry, have always been controlled by the major labels.
There are even people who have bucked the system most of the way "up". However, the big money is to be found....where the labels are at.
P2P and independent distribution on the web, threaten the big labels, because, someday, there could be big money found there as well, and they would not be entitled to a cut of it.
If you want to run around picking up pennies, the labels are fine with that. They are in the business of picking up dollars. Once you can start picking of dollars, instead of having them do it for you....then it is an issue for them. The labels want a world where NFOX can't make big money without them. They are scared of the first band that "crosses over", and does make it big without them. Showing everone else, both on and off the label plantation, that it can be done.
When has the RIAA gone after indy labels? I'm not saying it never happens, I've just never heard of it.
There is no need to. An Indy label does not distribute enough media to be a problem. Anytime someone on an Indy gets big, they switch lables, or the Indy gets swallowed up by a larger label. They just don't have the "machine" to promote an artist in the off-line world, the way a big label does.
And I am sure there have been a few Indies that have been torpedoed by the larger labels or by the RIAA.
Wouldn't a valid TCO comparison be the NT > Linux migration vs NT > Windows XP migration? If that's how he justifies overruns, he's probably not the guy I want running my IT shop
NT > Linux vs NT > Vista
If they are running NT systems, they would be forced to purchase new computers. And at the rate they are going,the migration would of ended up being to Vista. Or worse yet, Xp and then having to upgrade to Vista and buy all new hardware sometime in the next 5 or 6 years. I don't think they will have to do a major hardware upgrade for quite some time.
If there weren't a single RIAA song ever transferred over P2P you think that the RIAA would care?
Yes, they would care.
The Record Companies and by extention the RIAA are just like the Agents in "The Matrix". "They hold all the keys, and they guard all the doors" If you are going to distribute music in a big way, you MUST go to the Lables. If you, as a retailer, want to sell popular music, you MUST go to the Lables.
The Lables, take most of the risk, putting out hundreds of albums a year, with only a few proving to be hits. But the ones that really are hits, make the Lables lots of money. Today, some of the best selling ablums, day in, day out, are Pink Floyd, and The Beattles. This back catalog, costs them nothing, but rakes in big money, day after day after day.
Why? Because in the indentured servitude of artist to the record lable. The lable owns the music forever and makes the big money off of anything that sells. If it is not fair, why then does the artist not sign the unfair contract and sell it themselves? Because the reality is, without a lable, you cant sell on a large scale or get airplay, for a large enough audience to hear your music.
P2P is one of the ways the internet changes that. And if ANY artist, any garage band, via there website sells their album, and via P2P, have people discover there music, and then there website. The record labels, see NONE of that money. They can't claim the lions share for taking the risk for the artist of putting the album out. They can't take the lions share for the burden of adverising. They can't take the lionss share for being the source of music that sells.
For the lables to continue to make the kind of money they are used to, being what, 80% or more of the acutal profit from record sales, they have to be THE SOURCE for music. P2P has the power to cut them out of that loop and reduce them to having to play fair with artits and retailers. Taking their fair share for the work they do, and the service they actually provide artits.
They may squeel like a stuck pig right now, over piracy, and how much they are loosing, even with them making more now than they ever did before. But in the shell game of what is real, and what is spin, follow the money. The shell with the money under it, the one they keep in motion, the one they are trying to distract you from. Is the one where P2P destroys their stronghold on both the artist and retailer.
The Zune may not be the device consumers want. But I think Apple is taking no chances. If they can undercut the price with an iPod even for just a few months. The Zune will end up with the stink of death about it. Then soon after that only to be found on Tiger Direct and SurplusComputers.com
I don't think Apple will have to sell at a loss for to long, just long enough for people to know that the Zune is a dog, and that everyone who is anyone is still buying an iPod.
our current system works just fine unless you simply want shit for free and are willing to illegally distribute intellectual property over the internet.
I think what most here find so gulling, is the inequity.
Electronic distribution should mean cheap distribution, and more variety, after all, how much would it cost to put ever lables back catalog on line?
Instead, we have the labels doing what they have always done, take more from the artist, take more from the vendor, and keep more for themself. And yes, I know, the best we can do, is to try and starve them out, not buy stuff that comes from a major label, and I am not talking pirating.
To bad it is not working because most people, even artists, don't recognize that the internet gives them the option of droping the labels out of the loop. So instead they continue to empower what should be an antiquiated system.
At least, that would have to be J. Allard's interpretation of the DMCA.
But J. Allard is NOT a lawyer. And is most certainly NOT YOUR LAWYER giving you legal counsel. Please take all such advice with a grain of salt.
IANAL but I know when I have paid for a legal opinion or not, and am a bit dubious of free advice from Microsoft. Even if it is NOT coming from their legal department.
I am a 40 year old programmer, been on computers since I was 15, never owned a game console, and have three kids.
My youngest is out at his friends, he has played them all, XBox 360, Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, and N64. For playability, he likes the N64 the best.
For the first time in my life, I am very tempted to put a game console under the chrismas tree. That would end up being a Wii as a family gift and a game for each of the kids.
I am sure many less tech savy folks than me will go, "Oh, I know my kid has their heart set on an XBox360, but at $400.00, I can get this $250.00 Nintendo system, buy some games for it, and still come out with an Xbox 360. I am sure the kids will like the Wii."
Stac did not get disc compression perfect the fist time out. Each version impoved. Microsoft Double Space exhibted certain bugs under certain circumstances, that older versions of Stacker had. Thus signalling that they either lifted the code, or recoded it, but followed the logic of the old stacker code.
Micorsoft also did in the Spyglass web browser, I would not call it ethical behaviour to make a deal to give a percentage of my profit from each sale of a product in payment for buying that technology, and then giving the prodcut away for free, and think I don't owe Spyglass some serious coin.
Then we have the typical company "A" has a product 1.0. Mircrosoft enters the market, makes a crappy 1.0 of their own. Then quickly release a 1.1 or whatever before company A releases their 2.0 product, and then sues company A when they put their 2.0 product out for copying MS's product. Since it takes 2 or 3 years to get to trial. So all of company A's profits go into the court case and not into developing their product. Microsoft can afford to do this, that is unfairly leverging their monopoly. It may be somehwat legal, but it is not ethical. I pray that I never build a prodcut that is so good, Microsoft decides to take over my market. Because if I am not making millions a year in profit, I do not have a chance of weathering out the eventual lawsuit from Microsoft.
1. It is 9-11-2001 not 2000 2. If it is such a serious matter, you should get that much right. 3. If today is a day that requires a somber tone....I would suggest avoiding slashdot, or at least reading it at +3 or +4
And the problem here, is the copyright holder is the record company who is a member of the the RIAA. Not the artist.
Most artists sell away all of their rights.
The model is simple.
Artists must sign up with a major label to get exposure, to be bigtime, to sell lots of albums, and be famous. Why would anyone give up all the rights a record contract asks for? Because the Reocord Company traditionally controls all of the doors, holds all of the keys. If you do not get "handled" by them, there is no way to distribute your music.
If you notice, the record companies are not losing money right now. P2P has not hurt their current business model.
However, if artists see that they can distribute music via p2p, build a fanbase, sell music as CD's or downloads, setup concerts, etc. All without the a record company, they are screwed in the long run.
Do you know why record contracts work like they do? Giving everthing foreever over to the Record Company? Because they are always waiting for the next Pink Floyd or Beatles. Where the backcatalog is the money maker. There are no promotional costs, the albums just sell, day in day out, for decades.
They are scared to death, of the thought that the next Beatles may not have a record deal, and that day in, day out sales of their albums will happen for decades and no one in the industry will get a dime of it, let alone the lions share they are used to.
Sad truth number one. Major vendor antivirus software will only stop about 20% of the new viruses from getting at your system. This is not acceptable in a business environment where companies are paying big money for this protection.
Sad truth number two. Most home users are so lame, that they run out of date, or expired, or no antivus software, and thus, will pass on via email and documents, viruses and worms that are old, and would be caught by even the "big three" antivirus products.
If you cant run Linux or a Mac, antiviurs prodcuts are a fact of life in the corporate environment, and yes their price can be justifed, even if they miss 8 out of 10 of the new stuff
Slashdot Mirror
I think this would make the program better, you think that would make it better. We can talk about it in forums, others can argue and debate about it. Then we can both sit down and code. You can add my patch, and see what you end up with. People can add your patch and see what they end up with. We can fork the project, people can apply patches, our pataches can be accepted or rejected. No mater what happens, be it by merit or politics, everyone can have their own opinion on it, and they can actually SEE the code in action. Because compiling and running code is CHEAP.
With scripts, that is not the case. We can't shoot it your way, shoot it my way, shoot it there way, edit and score it as we please and compare versions. It is to expensive. Since the mid 90's I have believed by 2020 computers at home will be powerful enough, that you will be able to do things this way. Just sit down at your desk and bring up Casablanca and say, "OK, lets scrap the last 5 minutes and make it so Bogey gets the girl" and 30 minutes later, your computer will have render a new version of the movie for you.
Till that day is here, collaborative films will not work. Since you can't afford to knock off enough stinkers to see what cream rises to the top.
Weather it is really a good idea to do this or not, well, that is another story....
It is the fastest virtual desktop switcher out there, no pause, no hesitation whatsoever. Icons for the most part stay on their own virtual desktop. There is no gui,everything works by hotkey. It is the only virtual desktop manager that just stays out of my way and works.
Most virtual desktop managers for windows are dog slow, you can watch the minimized icons dissapear one by one, then the desktop switches, then the icons for that desktop pop into place, one by one. None of that for me, I am sticking with Secretly.
It was designed to be the ultimate boss key program, but it is more of a linux junkies favorite utility when forced to work in Windows.
We don't know if the school talked to the students or parents. If anyone refused to take the page down. If the students were threatend with expulsion, if a lawyer was brought in and told the school district could not do that. We don't know all of what was published on the page. Her address? That she has rape fantasies and wants a stranger to come over to her house? Also, with the way things are archvied on line. She could go and apply for a job as a principle someplace, and the school board there could go read "her blog" on how she gets off on abusing children.
We just know the end result. Yes, Johnny, it is libel to create a web page about your vice principle and say things about her and her reputation that are not true, and make it look like she wrote it herself. That both the student and their parents can be held responsible for the students actions. Oh yes, and the page will have to be taken down as well.
The police or someone brings your brat home and says that they have been tormenting animals, shoplifting, skipping school, etc. And the parent just shakes their head and says that there is nothing they can do about it.
Then they are informed that if their kid misses school again, or is found trespassing, etc, that the parent will go to jail or have to pay the fine. Guess how long it takes for the parent who has "no control over their child" to find some measure of control?
There are truly some kids who know right and wrong, and will do wrong, no matter what the consequences to themselves or their parents are. For most kids, if they go to far astray of the law, a little reminder that they or their parents will be held responsible, puts them right back on track.
This story should be the lead story on the nightly news and in the newspapers. Parents should parent their children on-line, not whine about the government not doing enough and taking away rights and interfering with adults on line just to protect the children.
Let's face it, your car does not have a child proof starter. It is assumed that someone you will have enough control over the blessed tot that they won't hop in the car with the keys and drive of. No one suggests that the government should force auto manufacturers to make child proof ignition systems. We will all be better off when it is the parents responsibility to monitor what their kid is doing on line, not the states.
Parents are generally held responsible for their children's actions. Be it destruction of property, driving without a license and having an accident, someone getting hurt with a firearm, theft, and so on.
We don't need better firewalls. We don't need some intelligent filter at myspace to catch this stuff.
Hold the parents responsible for what their kids post. Even if I think my 13 year old should drink, and drive, and sell their body on the street, well, shucks, society and the law holds me responsible for their actions till they are 18. So I make sure that they are not drinking, or driving without a license, or prostituting themselves out. After a few parents pay some big fines, well heck, they will want to know what web pages their kids are working on.
This nonesense will all go a way in another generation. When the kids who don't remember what life is like before the internet existed grow up, they will watch their kids. They will not cop out and say they don't understand computers, or that their kids could do that. Life should be interesting once that generation of pirates and scallywags have kids of their own.
Hey, the French were not given hundreds of millions from the Oil-for-food program for nothing. Some influence was peddled. I would know, see it all the time here in America....yes the last part was sarcasim.
Sorry, no dice, we won't even be looking at Vista till at least 2010
I work in a shop where the boss did a 2 year lease with Dell that is up in March of 07 (yes all XP boxes). Well, the powers that be have decied that a three year lease is the way to go.
So once again Dell, once again, upgrading 80 PC's or so, and once again...Windows XP.
We get to revist the Vista Issue late in 2009. And if Vista is no better than XP SP3 with heavy hardware requirements. Who knows? We have several Options.
- Run our old hardware another 2 or 3 years and XP on the desktop. Thus Vista will be a 5 year old OS before we even consider it)
- Move to Citrix hosted on Windows 2003, and keep running the old hardware and replace with thin clients. A real option, since bandwith will be even cheaper in a few years.
- A migration to Linux. Crossover Office keeps getting better. And the most of the software that we run, may well run in it just fine by 2010. Things like AutoCAD, Quckbooks (being phased out for Solomon), and MS Office.
As it stands, in 07, we are getting 2 beefy servers, loaded up with VMWare, and running in VM evertything we currently use our 8 Windows 2003 servers for. The 2nd server will be used for redundency. I know, we are still going to need the Window Servers License, but we have now bitten the Linux apple. Every bite of that, means less Windows Licenses, and perhaps no new MS OS till 2012 or 2015.As an aside, there is nothing we are running on any PC in the office that Windows 2000 would not run just fine.
How does that invalidate the statement about the French stoped enforcing the no-fly zone once they started getting bribed? The poster even said, the EU is not against Microsoft, just against doing things that they do not see as being in their own self interest? Which he also said was true of everyone on the planet. He believed that if the EU saw Microsoft Vista as serving their interests, Vista would get EU approval.
Hacking and pirating has always taken the path of least resistance. When it can be done in software, that is great, nice and cheap. When it can't, people will pay for the modified hardware to do this.
Back in the day, most copy protection on Commodore 64 floppy disks, was accomplished by intentionally writing a particular error to a particular track and sector on the disk. So if track 12, sector 3, when read, did NOT return an error 52. The progam would know that the disk was copied, and during the copy process, the error was not duplicated, and would not run
People would modify their floppy drive, so out the top, there would be what looked like a hand on a clock that would go from 10 to 5 o'clock. They would write the track numbers on the top of the drive. Then put in a copied game. When the drive stopped moving, because it hit a spot that should of had an error, you could see what track the error should have been on. Then you could pop the original floppy in the drive, and see which sector on that track returned an error and what error it was. Then duplicate that error on the other floppy.
It sounds like hardware hacks will be coming back into style again.
There are even people who have bucked the system most of the way "up". However, the big money is to be found....where the labels are at.
P2P and independent distribution on the web, threaten the big labels, because, someday, there could be big money found there as well, and they would not be entitled to a cut of it.
If you want to run around picking up pennies, the labels are fine with that. They are in the business of picking up dollars. Once you can start picking of dollars, instead of having them do it for you....then it is an issue for them. The labels want a world where NFOX can't make big money without them. They are scared of the first band that "crosses over", and does make it big without them. Showing everone else, both on and off the label plantation, that it can be done.
There is no need to. An Indy label does not distribute enough media to be a problem. Anytime someone on an Indy gets big, they switch lables, or the Indy gets swallowed up by a larger label. They just don't have the "machine" to promote an artist in the off-line world, the way a big label does.
And I am sure there have been a few Indies that have been torpedoed by the larger labels or by the RIAA.
NT > Linux vs NT > Vista
If they are running NT systems, they would be forced to purchase new computers. And at the rate they are going,the migration would of ended up being to Vista. Or worse yet, Xp and then having to upgrade to Vista and buy all new hardware sometime in the next 5 or 6 years. I don't think they will have to do a major hardware upgrade for quite some time.
Yes, they would care.
The Record Companies and by extention the RIAA are just like the Agents in "The Matrix". "They hold all the keys, and they guard all the doors" If you are going to distribute music in a big way, you MUST go to the Lables. If you, as a retailer, want to sell popular music, you MUST go to the Lables.
The Lables, take most of the risk, putting out hundreds of albums a year, with only a few proving to be hits. But the ones that really are hits, make the Lables lots of money. Today, some of the best selling ablums, day in, day out, are Pink Floyd, and The Beattles. This back catalog, costs them nothing, but rakes in big money, day after day after day.
Why? Because in the indentured servitude of artist to the record lable. The lable owns the music forever and makes the big money off of anything that sells. If it is not fair, why then does the artist not sign the unfair contract and sell it themselves? Because the reality is, without a lable, you cant sell on a large scale or get airplay, for a large enough audience to hear your music.
P2P is one of the ways the internet changes that. And if ANY artist, any garage band, via there website sells their album, and via P2P, have people discover there music, and then there website. The record labels, see NONE of that money. They can't claim the lions share for taking the risk for the artist of putting the album out. They can't take the lions share for the burden of adverising. They can't take the lionss share for being the source of music that sells.
For the lables to continue to make the kind of money they are used to, being what, 80% or more of the acutal profit from record sales, they have to be THE SOURCE for music. P2P has the power to cut them out of that loop and reduce them to having to play fair with artits and retailers. Taking their fair share for the work they do, and the service they actually provide artits.
They may squeel like a stuck pig right now, over piracy, and how much they are loosing, even with them making more now than they ever did before. But in the shell game of what is real, and what is spin, follow the money. The shell with the money under it, the one they keep in motion, the one they are trying to distract you from. Is the one where P2P destroys their stronghold on both the artist and retailer.
I don't think Apple will have to sell at a loss for to long, just long enough for people to know that the Zune is a dog, and that everyone who is anyone is still buying an iPod.
I think what most here find so gulling, is the inequity.
Electronic distribution should mean cheap distribution, and more variety, after all, how much would it cost to put ever lables back catalog on line?
Instead, we have the labels doing what they have always done, take more from the artist, take more from the vendor, and keep more for themself. And yes, I know, the best we can do, is to try and starve them out, not buy stuff that comes from a major label, and I am not talking pirating.
To bad it is not working because most people, even artists, don't recognize that the internet gives them the option of droping the labels out of the loop. So instead they continue to empower what should be an antiquiated system.
Is this April 1st?
Compared to where? The Republic of Togo? Finland? Canada?
But J. Allard is NOT a lawyer. And is most certainly NOT YOUR LAWYER giving you legal counsel. Please take all such advice with a grain of salt.
IANAL but I know when I have paid for a legal opinion or not, and am a bit dubious of free advice from Microsoft. Even if it is NOT coming from their legal department.
I am a 40 year old programmer, been on computers since I was 15, never owned a game console, and have three kids.
My youngest is out at his friends, he has played them all, XBox 360, Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, and N64. For playability, he likes the N64 the best.
For the first time in my life, I am very tempted to put a game console under the chrismas tree. That would end up being a Wii as a family gift and a game for each of the kids.
I am sure many less tech savy folks than me will go, "Oh, I know my kid has their heart set on an XBox360, but at $400.00, I can get this $250.00 Nintendo system, buy some games for it, and still come out with an Xbox 360. I am sure the kids will like the Wii."
Stac did not get disc compression perfect the fist time out. Each version impoved. Microsoft Double Space exhibted certain bugs under certain circumstances, that older versions of Stacker had. Thus signalling that they either lifted the code, or recoded it, but followed the logic of the old stacker code.
Micorsoft also did in the Spyglass web browser, I would not call it ethical behaviour to make a deal to give a percentage of my profit from each sale of a product in payment for buying that technology, and then giving the prodcut away for free, and think I don't owe Spyglass some serious coin.
Then we have the typical company "A" has a product 1.0. Mircrosoft enters the market, makes a crappy 1.0 of their own. Then quickly release a 1.1 or whatever before company A releases their 2.0 product, and then sues company A when they put their 2.0 product out for copying MS's product. Since it takes 2 or 3 years to get to trial. So all of company A's profits go into the court case and not into developing their product. Microsoft can afford to do this, that is unfairly leverging their monopoly. It may be somehwat legal, but it is not ethical. I pray that I never build a prodcut that is so good, Microsoft decides to take over my market. Because if I am not making millions a year in profit, I do not have a chance of weathering out the eventual lawsuit from Microsoft.
I know I should not feed the trolls.
1. It is 9-11-2001 not 2000
2. If it is such a serious matter, you should get that much right.
3. If today is a day that requires a somber tone....I would suggest avoiding slashdot, or at least reading it at +3 or +4
And the problem here, is the copyright holder is the record company who is a member of the the RIAA. Not the artist. Most artists sell away all of their rights. The model is simple. Artists must sign up with a major label to get exposure, to be bigtime, to sell lots of albums, and be famous. Why would anyone give up all the rights a record contract asks for? Because the Reocord Company traditionally controls all of the doors, holds all of the keys. If you do not get "handled" by them, there is no way to distribute your music. If you notice, the record companies are not losing money right now. P2P has not hurt their current business model. However, if artists see that they can distribute music via p2p, build a fanbase, sell music as CD's or downloads, setup concerts, etc. All without the a record company, they are screwed in the long run. Do you know why record contracts work like they do? Giving everthing foreever over to the Record Company? Because they are always waiting for the next Pink Floyd or Beatles. Where the backcatalog is the money maker. There are no promotional costs, the albums just sell, day in day out, for decades. They are scared to death, of the thought that the next Beatles may not have a record deal, and that day in, day out sales of their albums will happen for decades and no one in the industry will get a dime of it, let alone the lions share they are used to.
Sad truth number one. Major vendor antivirus software will only stop about 20% of the new viruses from getting at your system. This is not acceptable in a business environment where companies are paying big money for this protection. Sad truth number two. Most home users are so lame, that they run out of date, or expired, or no antivus software, and thus, will pass on via email and documents, viruses and worms that are old, and would be caught by even the "big three" antivirus products. If you cant run Linux or a Mac, antiviurs prodcuts are a fact of life in the corporate environment, and yes their price can be justifed, even if they miss 8 out of 10 of the new stuff
Commodore 64's rock