mp3.com is Vivendi, sport. The artists may be themselves independent but I think you'll find Vivendi holds a perpetual license to everything up there, plus the capacity to change the terms of the agreement unilaterally to absolutely anything on five days' notice.
Try ampcast (my preference) or javamusic or electronicscene for real independents who still have some rights. It is too late to help the people at mp3.com. They've already signed off on a bad deal. They're Vivendi, just without getting paid. (Vivendi has a history of kicking out artists who're owed money instead of paying them. The artist agreement allows for this...)
If I was a psychotic compulsive bank robber convinced that all banks must be robbed (but not a complete fool), and I was in court having a restraining order thrashed out, then:
-if the judge asked me 'Will you obey the restraining order?' I would likely have sense enough to protest that of course I would, your Honor.
-if the Judge asked me 'What parts of this restraining order are fair and reasonable?', I would likely erupt in wild diatribes about how it's all totally unfair and unreasonable... which would be the truth as I saw it... and would be a far more revealing answer to the first question than you'd get from asking me the first question directly.
Microsoft, in their closing argument, have made it absolutely clear that they will not cooperate with the eventual ruling in any way, and will continue to devote all their resources to evading it and denying it. I think the Judge asked them about it on purpose, to see how they'd react. Now we know. And now she knows.
Never underestimate the twistiness of a lawyer- and judges are uber-lawyers.
I'd have done the same thing. It's way more effective than asking them, "Are you going to obey the outcome of this proceeding, or laugh at it and scorn it?" You don't ask them directly, 'are you going to obey the law'. You ask, 'how much of this is reasonable and just'. If they take it as an opportunity to grandstand, you know they're gonna ignore the ruling, because they don't believe in it, or in the law.
FWIW, I burst into incredulous, delighted laughter just seeing the news.com subhead about what Microsoft had done for a reply to the question. Forget foot-shooting: they've blown off their f**king leg here. Spectacularly bad judgement. And Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a smart lady:D
Hang on there. I'm one of the indies- my music is at the URL above. Here's what I've found (particularly on Slashdot): I'll get people who go, check out the music, maybe look into one of the more unusual albums like 'Dragons', and their response will be "Hey, I like this. It's weird, it's interesting me, not what I expected. But nobody else will like it, because it's not commercial enough."
It's always somebody ELSE who is too lame to appreciate good music. Whoever you are, you're also hip to indie stuff, catalog albums, the history of music, live stuff- but you're saying everybody ELSE is lame.
Well, maybe fewer people are lame than you think. I'll concede that it's easier being spoonfed Soylent N'Sync (Soylent Britney is made from machines! from machines!!) but you can't overestimate the effectiveness of that sort of thing. Have you done analysis of the lifespan of platinum-selling records in the past and in the present? I have, and the lame current multiplatinum music has NO STAYING POWER. When they stop shipping it, it stops selling, and that's it. This is evidence that people aren't as into it as you think. It's just that, so far as they know, that's all there is... and inevitably, they are learning better.
No, no, no, no, no. Intent is nothing! It's down to the wording of the actual license. Nobody is going to care about the 'since they came to play in our sandbox they must have MEANT to do XYZ'. Treachery is not itself against the law, just certain implementations of it are.
The outcome to watch for is (4) SCC blows away their license to distribute Linux and then shuts down all Linux distribution that involves their patented stuff, until the patented stuff is completely removed. The reason to watch for this is as follows: while destroying your own product (a Linux distribution) is bad business, there is enough outside interest in doing great damage to Linux that it WILL become rewarding to do so, to the extent that the patent becomes indispensable. If the patent becomes completely indispensable to Linux, the value of buying out or subverting the patent holder becomes astronomical to a competitor- some of whom claim to have rather a lot of money.
This holds for ANY patent being licensed into Free software, not just the SCC.
That sounds plausible. So basically, they get to have a Doomsday switch: under the GPL they can only distribute if they haven't made use of patent restrictions. However, the patent restrictions are independent of the GPL. So, at any point, these guys can bring legal firepower with the intent of shutting down unauthorised use of their patents, and I think they can argue that they retain that capacity.
In so doing, they will blow away their own ability to distribute Linux (possibly permanently). However, they will also be setting up a situation where nobody else is free to distribute (or use?) their patented stuff either. Those people will then be unable to distribute Linux either- to the extent that it depends on the patented stuff. They'd be able to distribute OTHER Linux dists that did not contain the patents.
So it's a doomsday switch: having anything patented in Linux provides a chance for the patent holder to blow themselves away and also take out everybody else, to the extent that the patented stuff is indispensable. If there was a patented thing that was absolutely indispensable to Linux, it would be a tactic that could shut down the whole movement (causing it to be GNU/ with nothing after it;) ). It would require that the patent holder blow away their own work and, as someone else said, be a 'patch looking for a kernel', which is simply a measuring of relative value: is the financial hit of ruining the value of this IP less than, say, 40 billion dollars from MS for killing off Linux and making everyone start over with the Hurd?
For these reasons I'd say, totally reject patents in the context of free software. Any patents, even 'defensive' ones, can potentially cause this situation, and I would have thought the technolibertarian 'let's make our own patent pool and fight it out rather than ask that the rules be changed' types would be the FIRST to accept that, if offered enough money, anybody'll crack. In a perfect idealistic world, maybe 'open source patent pools' would be safe, but we don't live in one, and in practice it's more like stockpiling dynamite and using it as barricades. Stupid!
So, how much did MS pay you guys to put those words, 'expect to see a resurgence of X-Box sales' in there?:D
I must say I kinda like contemplating the cruddy thing as it breathes its last FUD-laden breaths and strangles on its own pathetic lack of video bus bandwidth, and you had to spoil my fun with all this talk of resurgence.
For the guy who's read the article and is getting swayed- DON'T DO IT MAN! It's more proprietary than a Compaq! Steady now, back away from the credit card- there you go!
Another soul saved:D now go and get some sort of real PC if that's what floats your boat. Consider supporting the people who AREN'T trying to have you shut down:)
As a US citizen: are you crazy? Parent needs to be clubbed into submission with 'flamebaits' because there's no such moderation as 'psychotic'. Grow up...
My understanding is that publishing is getting closer to the music industry in terms of support to the artists. In other words, ten years ago the best advice was 'don't even think about being an author for money', with a few footnotes to the effect of 'but if you're willing to work 80 hours a week doing articles, brochures, advertisements etc. that are not 'your great novel' then you may be able to make a living'.
Today, of course, it is worse.
So let's not jump to the conclusion that the publishing industry is about compensating authors. They've always needed to flip burgers in addition to writing. That's also why retired or disabled (like Heinlein) people have made up a large percentage of authors: it's generally not possible to spend the time writing without being paid, and being paid isn't necessarily an option for everybody who does good work.
The book industry isn't going to solve that- it appears to be going the other direction and making matters worse.
I continually get reminders from readers I've never heard from- asking when will my latest book be finished (I gave up and just put everything on the web so at least it could be read). I get 'em maybe a couple times a year, and I reply "Oh, it'll be finished one day!" and don't tend to devote much time to it. If I was getting reminders a couple times a day, that's when I'd start thinking about replying, "Want to buy a copy?" and devoting more time to it. Until then I just have to hope I live long enough to eventually finish the stories I'm gradually telling.
I'm more interested in reading Terry Pratchett than in writing my own stories. _HE_ writes all the time. and it's his main thing that he does. I have too many other outlets to really do that.. at least for now. Well-rounded is good but it won't make you a Stephen King.
The question to ask is 'do you want to do this all the time for the rest of your life?'
Authors tend to be voracious readers. They get more out of this sort of thing than most people. I can't tell you how much of MY library was bought used, but think 'lots';)
And so now he's supporting the destruction of the whole system by which he used to get that income, since he doesn't believe it has a future. Hee! I love it. Kinda sucks to be Prudential though:D
I try to avoid television but I recently visited family, and I was subjected to some network television. The ugliest bit was seeing some yuppie-med being sold to people using no less than the overture from 'Tommy'. I'd always thought of that as pretty much pure art. Somehow it'd always seemed off limits.
If there really is no human expression that cannot be swallowed up and reprocessed and used to sell Viagra, then art itself must die, to be reborn in some other way. It's like Lennon saying, to paint a perfect picture, become perfect and paint as comes naturally- then after his death, things he's done like 'Revolution' are used to sell sneakers sewn in sweatshops in the Third World by starving children. What was really the art? The artifact that can be resold, reprocessed and used in ways utterly repugnant to the artist? Or the act of creation itself?
I think Bowie is right, and I can only wonder if part of his feeling comes from the devouring of the culture he helped create, in order to sell sneakers and patent medicines. It's like... if art is that transient and fleeting, if it can be made to rot so easily and used so against the wishes of the artists as a matter of commerce, why not abandon copyright and intellectual property?
What're you afraid of- that you'd end up hearing 'Revolution' used to sell sweatshop sneakers?
Do you actually mean, 'nobody young who expresses their dissent at stupid things gets on the news that I watch, makes the CDs I buy, writes the books I read'?
For that matter, what the heck are you doing excluding yourself? You don't count, you're gonna give up because you can only trust old hippies to be enlightened? News flash, they are now the ones doing this stuff.
In a culture that devours itself as violently and avidly as ours does, that turns even the most personal statements into soundtracks for commercials, where exactly are you looking for your sincerity? I think you're just as hosed as the rest of us but haven't figured out it's your fight yet. And it is, so quit looking for inspirations and figure out what matters to you...
What I find really fascinating about that is, I use my computer desktop like it was a real one.
The orderly rows of icons are a Windows thing, and I use a Mac. The aspect of MacOS (8.6) that I use in this respect is 'clipping' files, and when I have bits of text that I need to remain aware of, I drag 'em to the desktop. I throw 'em away when they're no longer relevant. This is apparently just like normal desktops are used- in fact I've taken to keeping post-its and blank business cards around just to write tiny notes on- like the ATCs with their slips, I want a SMALL written note, not a manuscript.
I wonder if anyone's ever going to work out something even better for this than MacOS text clipping drag-and-drop. If Microsoft did it, you'd be able to embed movies into the clippings, and they'd be kept in a complicated filing system that you could view and search 27 different ways and people would spend all their time changing the fonts and layout of their clippings;)
Careful. The error you're risking has to do with value neutrality. It's sort of like... suppose you're painting a big backdrop to look like the sky. You're looking into two vendors for buying the paint. One sells blue paint, one sells yellow paint.
Surprise surprise, one says 'the sky is blue' and the other says 'the sky is yellow', for rather understandable reasons: they want to sell their paint. They each have an equal right to claim what they want, as far as that goes, subject to government limitations on what you're allowed to sell as 'sky-colored backdrop paint'. They contradict each other completely, in doing so.
Nothing about this situation implies that the sky is actually green (that being a compromise between the two claims).
Nothing about the Think Tank Troll situation implies that closed-source software is more secure than OSS, free inquiry or not- and the fact that they're preparing to say so, at length, does not make it any more true than 'the sky is yellow', and it does not mean the truth is somewhere in the middle, like 'the sky is green'.
And... want to take bets that Microsoft didn't pay for this report? You could get very interesting odds, because it is enormously probable that it is a corporate 'sock puppet' and nothing more, so the odds that Microsoft outright commissioned a report to say this and this and that are overwhelming. What odds do you figure?
Look, buddy, Microsoft ALREADY owns most of the lobbyists- questions have been raised about their attempting to get a piece of ALL the lobbyists, cutting off the air supply of anyone trying to buy lobbying.
They ALREADY ARE pushing for legislation to make it more difficult for government to buy from their competitors. That is business as usual for Microsoft, and a way to make use of all the money they've spent on Washington. I think you need to wake the fsck up with your little axioms about how business and goverment work. Right now, they don't, it's a free-for-all, and anything that might put off disaster is a Good Thing. If we opt out of taking action now, twiddling our thumbs and saying, "gee, isn't it great that markets just work and produce a happy and free society?", we're gonna be hosed worse than you can possibly imagine. There's no checks and balances on corporations- except for government action, and Nader's idea is about the LEAST intrusive action you could hope for, while still accomplishing anything.
You'd better like it, because Microsoft is acting and this is the scale they currently operate at.
Ugh... try a real converter instead. Digi converters suck, and the recent ones suck so badly that they fall apart even when you just ask them to handle audio from a simple tape machine. They sound thin and small, and are so poorly designed that it sounds as if there's a bass rolloff when you try to do music signals. It measures flat with steady-state tones, but music isn't steady-state and the demands on the power supplies are VERY different from that.
I mean, do what you want- but your idea of running an outboard DAC is good, it'd be a shame to see you waste it on Digi converters, especially the recent ones.
...are you REALLY saying in all seriousness that without the commercial, proprietary companies, Linux would be nothing more than a hobby for geeks' musty basements?
These damn companies only latched on after it became obvious that Linux was a hot area, and now you're crediting them with doing all the work? I think not.
Next thing, you'll be arguing that free software coders detract from the ability for employed coders to make money, and arguing that Linux should be left to the companies to develop, because it's about making money and that's the most direct way to do that;) hey, while we're at it, let's invent a new license that lets us close the source and charge for it! That'll REALLY provide financial incentives for Linux coding to become better and better;)
Sorry- the universe is based on the interactions between protons and electrons and quarks and mesons etc- not based on the interactions between capitalism and money. Capitalism is extraordinarily unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and a very limited framework for understanding the world- and open source development is pretty obviously not what you think it is. No, it is not dependent on companies, employment, money and the capitalist ethic. If it was, Microsoft would've toasted it by now, like they toast everything else competing in their arena by their rules.
Wake up- people will code for nothing, just like they'll converse for nothing, or go jogging to nowhere, or lift weights a lot only to just put them down where they got 'em and go away happy. Open source happens to be a way where you can code for nothing without then also being exploited for it. You can treat coding as the expressing of ideas, like a form of communication. This has its own merits. *kaching* not necessary.
RMS cannot be expected to understand every possible limitation of freedom. He's an uber-coder and to him, the source is the program. What we're seeing currently is a situation in which businesses are looking at Linux and free software, and going, "it's nice that you people want to share with each other and give to each other. Now we're going to come in and make money off it, and we deserve your respect because we're going to make your work profitable- and we're not going to violate the letter of your licenses, we're only going to make sure everyone understands that we will not give the slightest bit more than that."
"Because how can you possibly succeed through giving and sharing?"
This is why these developments are repugnant to a lot of free software people: speaking for myself, I think it's wonderful if these companies are prepared to abide by the letter of the licenses, but they're setting up a situation where they'll be saying, 'the reason you should give us money while we avoid doing more than the minimum we can get away with is, you can't go around being altruistic'.
This is not an argument that I feel needs additional support. To me, the argument, 'great things can happen when people cooperate on something altruistically' is the one that deserves the support. It's true, it's produced the body of open source software, and it's challenged every single time some bozos at a company decide to do Their Special Thing on top of open source, and combine their proprietary software with the free stuff.
Because they will ALWAYS say, 'we're value added', and they'll say, 'You have to expect to pay for the added value, of course', and they'll say 'you can't expect to be given things for free', which is exactly what was done for them. It's ingratitude, and it's distracting, and it's capable of confusing people as to what's really going on- even to the point where they think all the IMPORTANT work must be done by companies for money, and the more important it is, the less anyone will be willing to give it freely for the general betterment of all.
And that is why these business guys are a problem, even if they are obeying the letter of the rules. It's wrong to discount generosity and cooperation. And having examples out there of 'no, you can't have that, shame on you for wanting to deprive us of profit' is bad. They should just write proprietary operating systems if they want to go there- oops, no, they can't! They should take a hint from this.
Linux itself is a rejection of the statement, "you sometimes have to accept that giving away everything for free might not be the right format for success."
Don't even waste your time, unless you're thinking in terms of making 'resistance cells' to smuggle out news of undocumented Kerberos extensions and stuff.
Microsoft is positioned (if they dodge antitrust bullets for a little longer, and get government help) for being the only software vendor for all intents and purposes. They're quite capable of leveraging that until it snaps off in their hands, too. You have no idea how ruthless they can become in ideal circumstances. It's like taking advantage of loopholes in the rules: you cannot beat them in fair competition, because it isn't.
That makes it Them on one side, and The World on the other. Hence, Free Software, which is what you do when you can't ever get rich (or in some cases even survive) selling software in competition with Microsoft, but you want to get your software out there, and you don't want them to use it against you. It's not about competing with Microsoft at all, it's a doomsday scenario based on the idea that people will carry proprietary software to the most obscene and ugly extreme.
The only thing Microsoft can do in relation to Free Software is try and make it illegal, or cripple as many Free Software authors as possible- it makes no sense for them to embrace the ecological reaction to their damaging presence. So, they are putting out viral licensing that makes anyone who has agreed to the terms, liable for Microsoft prosecution at any time, and vulnerable to several admissions of guilt contained in the 'shared source' license itself. I don't know if they're pushing for legislation to make Free Software illegal, but it would be an effective way of using their lobbying situation (they've dumped millions into lobbying and have in fact bought off ALL the available lobbyists so competing interests cannot get their view across to the politicians).
Your advice on the topic of Free Software should be "milk the current situation as hard as you possibly can, because unlike any previous proprietary software vendor you have destroyed the market so completely that people code for nothing now, if they're not working for you. Short of killing or disabling those people, you can't compete or make use of that, because they're doing this in direct reaction to what you've done, and there's more of them, and they're better than you, and self-perpetuating."
"So cash in now, and run like hell, because you've managed to scorch your own earth, and you have all the future of typewriter-ribbon monopolies or a ruthless guild of shoeshine boys. People will pick worse and cheaper over better and more expensive, even if you do manage to do better work- and cleaning up the mess you've caused doing 'worse and cheaper' will cost you, hugely."
"Pretend to be listening, cash in bigtime, and bail out before your company does an Enron. You've destroyed your own 'biological niche' and all that remains is a clever exit strategy."
You should have seen it on Netscape 4! It was the most butchered, 'confuse the enemy browser' type layout I've ever seen in my life. Acres of empty space followed by a thin column of text drawn half under a large black featureless block.
I had to 'view source' and paste it into BBEdit to read the article. It was arguably worth it. Check out this apparently real toe-tapping Egyptian pop number: " o/` Copyright is my right. Buy a license or you'll have trouble with the police o/` "
I'm not making that up either. Is it me or does that fellow have a bright future as the next official RIAA megastar? Just amazing. *gets emotional* you know, all my life I dreamed of the day when the junky manufactured pop stars would threaten their fans with fines and imprisonment. Can you even imagine using that line in a JOKE twenty years ago?
"I cannot believe or comprehend the world I live in" -Bruce Springsteen (after getting married at midnight with insane secrecy to avoid wild paparazzi. Currently Springsteen's working a tune called 'American Skin' that is flat-out political in its way. I daresay plans are in place at the record label to fire him and replace him with this Egyptian "buy a license or you'll have trouble with the police" dude. Springsteen's singing about trouble with the police too, just, um, in a kind of different way:D )
Slashdot Mirror
Try ampcast (my preference) or javamusic or electronicscene for real independents who still have some rights. It is too late to help the people at mp3.com. They've already signed off on a bad deal. They're Vivendi, just without getting paid. (Vivendi has a history of kicking out artists who're owed money instead of paying them. The artist agreement allows for this...)
In invisible ink! :D
Um. They were already found guilty. This is about the remedy. Or are you suggesting re-trying the case over again?
-if the judge asked me 'Will you obey the restraining order?' I would likely have sense enough to protest that of course I would, your Honor.
-if the Judge asked me 'What parts of this restraining order are fair and reasonable?', I would likely erupt in wild diatribes about how it's all totally unfair and unreasonable... which would be the truth as I saw it... and would be a far more revealing answer to the first question than you'd get from asking me the first question directly.
Microsoft, in their closing argument, have made it absolutely clear that they will not cooperate with the eventual ruling in any way, and will continue to devote all their resources to evading it and denying it. I think the Judge asked them about it on purpose, to see how they'd react. Now we know. And now she knows.
Never underestimate the twistiness of a lawyer- and judges are uber-lawyers.
I'd have done the same thing. It's way more effective than asking them, "Are you going to obey the outcome of this proceeding, or laugh at it and scorn it?" You don't ask them directly, 'are you going to obey the law'. You ask, 'how much of this is reasonable and just'. If they take it as an opportunity to grandstand, you know they're gonna ignore the ruling, because they don't believe in it, or in the law.
FWIW, I burst into incredulous, delighted laughter just seeing the news.com subhead about what Microsoft had done for a reply to the question. Forget foot-shooting: they've blown off their f**king leg here. Spectacularly bad judgement. And Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a smart lady :D
It's always somebody ELSE who is too lame to appreciate good music. Whoever you are, you're also hip to indie stuff, catalog albums, the history of music, live stuff- but you're saying everybody ELSE is lame.
Well, maybe fewer people are lame than you think. I'll concede that it's easier being spoonfed Soylent N'Sync (Soylent Britney is made from machines! from machines!!) but you can't overestimate the effectiveness of that sort of thing. Have you done analysis of the lifespan of platinum-selling records in the past and in the present? I have, and the lame current multiplatinum music has NO STAYING POWER. When they stop shipping it, it stops selling, and that's it. This is evidence that people aren't as into it as you think. It's just that, so far as they know, that's all there is... and inevitably, they are learning better.
The outcome to watch for is (4) SCC blows away their license to distribute Linux and then shuts down all Linux distribution that involves their patented stuff, until the patented stuff is completely removed. The reason to watch for this is as follows: while destroying your own product (a Linux distribution) is bad business, there is enough outside interest in doing great damage to Linux that it WILL become rewarding to do so, to the extent that the patent becomes indispensable. If the patent becomes completely indispensable to Linux, the value of buying out or subverting the patent holder becomes astronomical to a competitor- some of whom claim to have rather a lot of money.
This holds for ANY patent being licensed into Free software, not just the SCC.
In so doing, they will blow away their own ability to distribute Linux (possibly permanently). However, they will also be setting up a situation where nobody else is free to distribute (or use?) their patented stuff either. Those people will then be unable to distribute Linux either- to the extent that it depends on the patented stuff. They'd be able to distribute OTHER Linux dists that did not contain the patents.
So it's a doomsday switch: having anything patented in Linux provides a chance for the patent holder to blow themselves away and also take out everybody else, to the extent that the patented stuff is indispensable. If there was a patented thing that was absolutely indispensable to Linux, it would be a tactic that could shut down the whole movement (causing it to be GNU/ with nothing after it ;) ). It would require that the patent holder blow away their own work and, as someone else said, be a 'patch looking for a kernel', which is simply a measuring of relative value: is the financial hit of ruining the value of this IP less than, say, 40 billion dollars from MS for killing off Linux and making everyone start over with the Hurd?
For these reasons I'd say, totally reject patents in the context of free software. Any patents, even 'defensive' ones, can potentially cause this situation, and I would have thought the technolibertarian 'let's make our own patent pool and fight it out rather than ask that the rules be changed' types would be the FIRST to accept that, if offered enough money, anybody'll crack. In a perfect idealistic world, maybe 'open source patent pools' would be safe, but we don't live in one, and in practice it's more like stockpiling dynamite and using it as barricades. Stupid!
(puts on 'It's Funny, Laugh' hat)
So, how much did MS pay you guys to put those words, 'expect to see a resurgence of X-Box sales' in there? :D
I must say I kinda like contemplating the cruddy thing as it breathes its last FUD-laden breaths and strangles on its own pathetic lack of video bus bandwidth, and you had to spoil my fun with all this talk of resurgence.
For the guy who's read the article and is getting swayed- DON'T DO IT MAN! It's more proprietary than a Compaq! Steady now, back away from the credit card- there you go!
Another soul saved :D now go and get some sort of real PC if that's what floats your boat. Consider supporting the people who AREN'T trying to have you shut down :)
As a US citizen: are you crazy? Parent needs to be clubbed into submission with 'flamebaits' because there's no such moderation as 'psychotic'. Grow up...
Today, of course, it is worse.
So let's not jump to the conclusion that the publishing industry is about compensating authors. They've always needed to flip burgers in addition to writing. That's also why retired or disabled (like Heinlein) people have made up a large percentage of authors: it's generally not possible to spend the time writing without being paid, and being paid isn't necessarily an option for everybody who does good work.
The book industry isn't going to solve that- it appears to be going the other direction and making matters worse.
I continually get reminders from readers I've never heard from- asking when will my latest book be finished (I gave up and just put everything on the web so at least it could be read). I get 'em maybe a couple times a year, and I reply "Oh, it'll be finished one day!" and don't tend to devote much time to it. If I was getting reminders a couple times a day, that's when I'd start thinking about replying, "Want to buy a copy?" and devoting more time to it. Until then I just have to hope I live long enough to eventually finish the stories I'm gradually telling.
I'm more interested in reading Terry Pratchett than in writing my own stories. _HE_ writes all the time. and it's his main thing that he does. I have too many other outlets to really do that.. at least for now. Well-rounded is good but it won't make you a Stephen King.
The question to ask is 'do you want to do this all the time for the rest of your life?'
Authors tend to be voracious readers. They get more out of this sort of thing than most people. I can't tell you how much of MY library was bought used, but think 'lots' ;)
And so now he's supporting the destruction of the whole system by which he used to get that income, since he doesn't believe it has a future. Hee! I love it. Kinda sucks to be Prudential though :D
I try to avoid television but I recently visited family, and I was subjected to some network television. The ugliest bit was seeing some yuppie-med being sold to people using no less than the overture from 'Tommy'. I'd always thought of that as pretty much pure art. Somehow it'd always seemed off limits.
If there really is no human expression that cannot be swallowed up and reprocessed and used to sell Viagra, then art itself must die, to be reborn in some other way. It's like Lennon saying, to paint a perfect picture, become perfect and paint as comes naturally- then after his death, things he's done like 'Revolution' are used to sell sneakers sewn in sweatshops in the Third World by starving children. What was really the art? The artifact that can be resold, reprocessed and used in ways utterly repugnant to the artist? Or the act of creation itself?
I think Bowie is right, and I can only wonder if part of his feeling comes from the devouring of the culture he helped create, in order to sell sneakers and patent medicines. It's like... if art is that transient and fleeting, if it can be made to rot so easily and used so against the wishes of the artists as a matter of commerce, why not abandon copyright and intellectual property?
What're you afraid of- that you'd end up hearing 'Revolution' used to sell sweatshop sneakers?
Human beings need to create. If you leave them alone, they will create cool stuff.
You were saying?
For that matter, what the heck are you doing excluding yourself? You don't count, you're gonna give up because you can only trust old hippies to be enlightened? News flash, they are now the ones doing this stuff.
In a culture that devours itself as violently and avidly as ours does, that turns even the most personal statements into soundtracks for commercials, where exactly are you looking for your sincerity? I think you're just as hosed as the rest of us but haven't figured out it's your fight yet. And it is, so quit looking for inspirations and figure out what matters to you...
The orderly rows of icons are a Windows thing, and I use a Mac. The aspect of MacOS (8.6) that I use in this respect is 'clipping' files, and when I have bits of text that I need to remain aware of, I drag 'em to the desktop. I throw 'em away when they're no longer relevant. This is apparently just like normal desktops are used- in fact I've taken to keeping post-its and blank business cards around just to write tiny notes on- like the ATCs with their slips, I want a SMALL written note, not a manuscript.
I wonder if anyone's ever going to work out something even better for this than MacOS text clipping drag-and-drop. If Microsoft did it, you'd be able to embed movies into the clippings, and they'd be kept in a complicated filing system that you could view and search 27 different ways and people would spend all their time changing the fonts and layout of their clippings ;)
Surprise surprise, one says 'the sky is blue' and the other says 'the sky is yellow', for rather understandable reasons: they want to sell their paint. They each have an equal right to claim what they want, as far as that goes, subject to government limitations on what you're allowed to sell as 'sky-colored backdrop paint'. They contradict each other completely, in doing so.
Nothing about this situation implies that the sky is actually green (that being a compromise between the two claims).
Nothing about the Think Tank Troll situation implies that closed-source software is more secure than OSS, free inquiry or not- and the fact that they're preparing to say so, at length, does not make it any more true than 'the sky is yellow', and it does not mean the truth is somewhere in the middle, like 'the sky is green'.
And... want to take bets that Microsoft didn't pay for this report? You could get very interesting odds, because it is enormously probable that it is a corporate 'sock puppet' and nothing more, so the odds that Microsoft outright commissioned a report to say this and this and that are overwhelming. What odds do you figure?
They ALREADY ARE pushing for legislation to make it more difficult for government to buy from their competitors. That is business as usual for Microsoft, and a way to make use of all the money they've spent on Washington. I think you need to wake the fsck up with your little axioms about how business and goverment work. Right now, they don't, it's a free-for-all, and anything that might put off disaster is a Good Thing. If we opt out of taking action now, twiddling our thumbs and saying, "gee, isn't it great that markets just work and produce a happy and free society?", we're gonna be hosed worse than you can possibly imagine. There's no checks and balances on corporations- except for government action, and Nader's idea is about the LEAST intrusive action you could hope for, while still accomplishing anything.
You'd better like it, because Microsoft is acting and this is the scale they currently operate at.
I mean, do what you want- but your idea of running an outboard DAC is good, it'd be a shame to see you waste it on Digi converters, especially the recent ones.
These damn companies only latched on after it became obvious that Linux was a hot area, and now you're crediting them with doing all the work? I think not.
Next thing, you'll be arguing that free software coders detract from the ability for employed coders to make money, and arguing that Linux should be left to the companies to develop, because it's about making money and that's the most direct way to do that ;) hey, while we're at it, let's invent a new license that lets us close the source and charge for it! That'll REALLY provide financial incentives for Linux coding to become better and better ;)
Sorry- the universe is based on the interactions between protons and electrons and quarks and mesons etc- not based on the interactions between capitalism and money. Capitalism is extraordinarily unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and a very limited framework for understanding the world- and open source development is pretty obviously not what you think it is. No, it is not dependent on companies, employment, money and the capitalist ethic. If it was, Microsoft would've toasted it by now, like they toast everything else competing in their arena by their rules.
Wake up- people will code for nothing, just like they'll converse for nothing, or go jogging to nowhere, or lift weights a lot only to just put them down where they got 'em and go away happy. Open source happens to be a way where you can code for nothing without then also being exploited for it. You can treat coding as the expressing of ideas, like a form of communication. This has its own merits. *kaching* not necessary.
"Because how can you possibly succeed through giving and sharing?"
This is why these developments are repugnant to a lot of free software people: speaking for myself, I think it's wonderful if these companies are prepared to abide by the letter of the licenses, but they're setting up a situation where they'll be saying, 'the reason you should give us money while we avoid doing more than the minimum we can get away with is, you can't go around being altruistic'.
This is not an argument that I feel needs additional support. To me, the argument, 'great things can happen when people cooperate on something altruistically' is the one that deserves the support. It's true, it's produced the body of open source software, and it's challenged every single time some bozos at a company decide to do Their Special Thing on top of open source, and combine their proprietary software with the free stuff.
Because they will ALWAYS say, 'we're value added', and they'll say, 'You have to expect to pay for the added value, of course', and they'll say 'you can't expect to be given things for free', which is exactly what was done for them. It's ingratitude, and it's distracting, and it's capable of confusing people as to what's really going on- even to the point where they think all the IMPORTANT work must be done by companies for money, and the more important it is, the less anyone will be willing to give it freely for the general betterment of all.
And that is why these business guys are a problem, even if they are obeying the letter of the rules. It's wrong to discount generosity and cooperation. And having examples out there of 'no, you can't have that, shame on you for wanting to deprive us of profit' is bad. They should just write proprietary operating systems if they want to go there- oops, no, they can't! They should take a hint from this.
HTH, HAND, etc, foad ;) Nice, subtle troll tho...
Microsoft is positioned (if they dodge antitrust bullets for a little longer, and get government help) for being the only software vendor for all intents and purposes. They're quite capable of leveraging that until it snaps off in their hands, too. You have no idea how ruthless they can become in ideal circumstances. It's like taking advantage of loopholes in the rules: you cannot beat them in fair competition, because it isn't.
That makes it Them on one side, and The World on the other. Hence, Free Software, which is what you do when you can't ever get rich (or in some cases even survive) selling software in competition with Microsoft, but you want to get your software out there, and you don't want them to use it against you. It's not about competing with Microsoft at all, it's a doomsday scenario based on the idea that people will carry proprietary software to the most obscene and ugly extreme.
The only thing Microsoft can do in relation to Free Software is try and make it illegal, or cripple as many Free Software authors as possible- it makes no sense for them to embrace the ecological reaction to their damaging presence. So, they are putting out viral licensing that makes anyone who has agreed to the terms, liable for Microsoft prosecution at any time, and vulnerable to several admissions of guilt contained in the 'shared source' license itself. I don't know if they're pushing for legislation to make Free Software illegal, but it would be an effective way of using their lobbying situation (they've dumped millions into lobbying and have in fact bought off ALL the available lobbyists so competing interests cannot get their view across to the politicians).
Your advice on the topic of Free Software should be "milk the current situation as hard as you possibly can, because unlike any previous proprietary software vendor you have destroyed the market so completely that people code for nothing now, if they're not working for you. Short of killing or disabling those people, you can't compete or make use of that, because they're doing this in direct reaction to what you've done, and there's more of them, and they're better than you, and self-perpetuating."
"So cash in now, and run like hell, because you've managed to scorch your own earth, and you have all the future of typewriter-ribbon monopolies or a ruthless guild of shoeshine boys. People will pick worse and cheaper over better and more expensive, even if you do manage to do better work- and cleaning up the mess you've caused doing 'worse and cheaper' will cost you, hugely."
"Pretend to be listening, cash in bigtime, and bail out before your company does an Enron. You've destroyed your own 'biological niche' and all that remains is a clever exit strategy."
I had to 'view source' and paste it into BBEdit to read the article. It was arguably worth it. Check out this apparently real toe-tapping Egyptian pop number: " o/` Copyright is my right. Buy a license or you'll have trouble with the police o/` "
I'm not making that up either. Is it me or does that fellow have a bright future as the next official RIAA megastar? Just amazing. *gets emotional* you know, all my life I dreamed of the day when the junky manufactured pop stars would threaten their fans with fines and imprisonment. Can you even imagine using that line in a JOKE twenty years ago?
"I cannot believe or comprehend the world I live in" -Bruce Springsteen (after getting married at midnight with insane secrecy to avoid wild paparazzi. Currently Springsteen's working a tune called 'American Skin' that is flat-out political in its way. I daresay plans are in place at the record label to fire him and replace him with this Egyptian "buy a license or you'll have trouble with the police" dude. Springsteen's singing about trouble with the police too, just, um, in a kind of different way :D )