Only if you are their customer. If you are not their customer then they are your enemy. This is really quite plain, what is so hard to understand about that?
"THey spent 2billion dollars a year on research. that has to result in something good"
Um- no. It can result in vast amounts of useless wheelspinning and wasting of money. See Apple as of 1996-1997: at the time Apple was working on everything from QTVR to OpenDoc and every engineer seemed to have his own 'cool project' all funded by the endless supplies of Apple money, and very little of it got anywhere. Jobs 'steved' most of it, and now Apple tends to deliver on its ideas rather than not.
It looks very much like MS is in a place similar to where Apple was back in '97... full of themselves, spending vast amounts on ill-defined projects, not taking care of the important things (i.e. the bugs developers were clamoring to be fixed), and very possibly bleeding money in Niagara-like amounts. How is this possible? It's possible because MS _spends_ money in Niagara-like amounts, and in order for that to be useful behavior it needs to produce results.
It appears that the results currently amount to developer alienation so intense (and this is from CONVENTIONGOERS, not snotty linux purists shunning the thing) that there is no excitement and little attention paid to the new toys- contrast that to the days of W95, for instance.
This is partly due to a sense of betrayal ('stop playing with new e+e and fix this damn bug!') and apparently it's also due to the fact that the new technologies are entirely reactive- they are all about filling a laundry list of features and there's little attempt to pretend otherwise. It's like C#'s real purpose is to kill Java, and any usefulness as a programming language is way down on the list- comparatively unimportant. All this is really raising the Art Of Monopolistic Positioning to new heights- it's like an ever-deeper understanding of the viral nature of MS's position in technology- the job really ISN'T to solve techie problems, or even to enable computer solutions. The job is entirely, utterly, to stop other vendors from being able to do that. Actually delivering working and useful technology is decidedly secondary.
Leaving aside the reality that this approach is getting thwacked in the courts, there's another problem: this is an entirely reactive approach. It can be effective at hurting a competing vendor in a free market, but you start hitting diminishing returns as the other vendors die off. The endgame (which we are in) leads toward major vendor-lock, but under conditions of general crappiness and a constant battle to deny obvious customer dissatisfaction (i.e. the crowd of developers yelling at the MS rep about the bug that hadn't been fixed in 3 versions). The same tools that work to hurt other vendors (outright denial of any problems, establishing that your product's benefits are what you _feel_ they should be rather than what they actually are in practice) end up working to cause severe customer rage, which is a real set-up: under these conditions any schmuck can come along and if their promise includes "Oh, and I am not Microsoft" they get an automatic boost. (see Apple in recent years- and Linux)
It may seem like a wild notion that Microsoft would go the way of Kaypro and Visicalc- but there is almost no other way they can go. I am not aware of any Steve Jobs-like figure who can come into Microsoft and start firing people and killing off stupid projects that are only reactive and vapor-oriented. They are _stuck_ with that approach- and well past the point where it's working for them. The Microsoft Way will not become clear sailing- it will continue to be bogged down in efforts to put roadblocks in competing vendors' paths, and the developer and the consumer will continue to be a very low priority compared to the power politics that make up so much of Microsoft's field of vision.
Eventually this will cost more than it earns. At a blind guess I would say that it ALREADY is costing them more than they earn- that MS is in the red if you look at the REAL figures and not entertaining games with taking next year's payroll as a tax deduction for last year twice over etc etc and so on. I say they are losing money- not because they don't still make loads of money, but because they are SPENDING so damn much and are not, cannot show any signs of moderation about this. That's a deadly trap- they daren't show any sign that they have finite pockets like any business or small country, and so they are forced to go way into the red and cover it up at any cost for largely _ego_ reasons and to protect their stock price, which is so intimately linked with their financial resources. It's a recipe for total destruction, not a slide into irrelevance but a high-speed wreck leaving no survivors.
One could wish that MS was able to behave like a normal company for a change and avoid this fate...
Yes, it is shocking what has happened and is still happening. Places like San Francisco maintained a particular cultural position and significance for _decades_, even in some cases centuries, and have been culturally obliterated in a matter of years. (There are certain names- Paris, San Francisco, Greenwich Village- that have been long known as havens for expatriates and artists- and San Francisco has basically been stripped of this identity as effectively as if it had been razed to the ground)
This can be seen as a natural disaster- human overpopulation or even corporate overpopulation causing an unhealthy situation and eventual die-off of even the things that clustered in Silicon Valley and caused the problem (long after all indigenous 'organisms' be they people, parks, or art galleries are destroyed).
The question that comes to my mind is, if not San Francisco, where? If there was a powerful and world-famous cultural center populated by artists, writers etc. in San Fran, and if those people are absolutely unable to live in California anymore post-dotcom, where do they go? They must surely scatter and go _somewhere_. Where will be the next great collection, not of power (which shows up on the news quite easily) but of art and culture?
Meanwhile, I have to admit it amuses me that I live in a smallish Vermont town (Brattleboro) in which mailmen (+ mailwomen) still go around on foot delivering letters and smiling at people (at least some of the time:) ), in which there are art galleries and a few bookshops (we lost one recently, which was distressing, but I can count five others off the top of my head which might explain some of why the sixth couldn't make rent) etc etc etc. Sure, everything's dead by 10 in the evening, if not sooner, but so what? The point is, in this dumb little Vermont town, it turns out that I get more of the special charm and cachet of I Left My Heart In San Francisco... than San Francisco itself.
Definitely food for thought:) maybe the next San Francisco will be a virtual cultural center, existing only on the Internet, with its members scattered across all the cozy small towns of the world?
Please don't 'cuckoo' my music:) "I've asked a number of times for people to put my music on Napster. (It's at www.mp3.com/ChrisJ if you're interested, free for the downloading- you might like it, you might not:) ) Please do not do this 'cuckoo's egg' thing with any of my music- anyone trading it on Napster is doing so with my full permission and consent, and in fact I asked them to. I'd like my stuff to get out there and be heard- it's not costing me anything to have it distributed this way. I feel it's my privilege to decide how my music gets distributed, and I really don't want any listener of mine hassled by 'cuckoo' versions of the music which I'm specifically letting people trade freely. I don't know how much of my stuff is on Napster- probably not much
I think that is a more sensible response than all the vindictiveness. If you would like to be able to make such responses, start making music and get serious about letting people redistribute it freely. As a music consumer, there is only so much rights you have with other people's music- you _do_ have the right to make copies and exchange them for no cost, but you don't have the right to sell 'em or claim you wrote 'em or whatever. As a music _creator_ you become the High Muckitymuck and no matter what other people do with _their_ music you have the right to specify how _yours_ is treated.
This is why I feel I have the right to formally ask these people to stay the hell away from MY music with their 'cuckoo' act, and to ask Orrin Hatch to safeguard my ability to give away and share my music freely as mp3s- it's my choice, it's my music not anybody else's, quit fscking trying to 'protect' me when I don't want to be protected! It's very much like taking a street performer happily plunking away on their guitar, and forcibly locking them and their open guitar case in a steel safe with a coinslot. There! We've protected the artist! Um, did anyone remember to put in airholes? *gasp*:P
It would be nice if you'd quit with the 'homo' as a term of abuse. Jon is _not_ homosexual so far as I know, and his articles are, well, Jon Katz articles. By contrast, you could call me a homo with much greater accuracy, and the slashdot article that I wrote (posted by Roblimo) was much clearer and more interesting. I think you should find something else to call Katz if you want to abuse him. And yeah, it's not really my business as you weren't calling _me_ anything, but ya get sick of seeing it after a while, you know? *shrug*
I will read for you the ad staring me in the face right now:
"By now you've probably opened it already. The sound. The fizz. The taste. It's all there telling your senses to come alive and taste all that life has to offer. Coca-Cola enjoy."
This is on a can of soda that I ALREADY FSCKING BOUGHT! Sorry. (turns ad to wall, though of course the 'coca cola enjoy' mangled-grammar slogan is written all around the top of the can and cannot be escaped) But it really, really bothers me. I have tended to stick to the same snackfoods and sodas, and this one attempt to further yell at me with mangled advertising even when I have already APPEASED the damned manufacturer by buying the damn product and should be left alone to drink it... it _never_ stops bothering me, all I can do is make fun of it.
Well- not quite true. I used to drink only Coca-Cola for soda- and now I have taught myself to like Mountain Dew, as a DIRECT result of this ad campaign on the cans. I give Pepsi another year or so before they start doing the same thing. There's always tea- that I can drink out of a nice big mason jar that stands up to making hot tea well, and has no tea advertisements on it:)
Just got in the Kurzweil Micropiano! It is in a disassembled state all over my desk right now, and I am posting a Geek Report on what you'd find inside. Bear in mind that the huge expensive major label studios will have this sort of gear (a MicroPiano is considered a good piano module, sort of thing you'd have around dedicated to piano synthesis or if someone wants to use that particular unit)- but they won't have taken it apart.
OK- first off, backtracking from the output jacks, you get the usual 'hiss must die, even theoretical hiss' little caps on the output. This is just a teeny cap to ground- may even be something fancy like a tantalum, or it may be just a cheap ceramic, hard to tell from looking. There are markings on them, which you don't always get on ceramic cheapies. This is going to mess with the impulse response going up into the supersonic- a cap configured that way rings very slightly. I'm lifting these with quite a bit of confidence that it will improve overall focus and tone color without significant hiss penalty- I call these 'anal hiss caps', and frequently remove them in mods.
Moving on to the output coupling cap, I am shocked to discover a small cheap 2.2mf cap on each channel! The unit has surprisingly good bass, considering. These are being replaced by 50V 47mf caps- note however that the 2.2mf caps are also 50V. This is not because the circuit needs that voltage, but because pretty much all teeny electrolytics come in such voltages- apparently easier to make them that way. This could be an intentional decision on the part of Kurzweil because piano tones are well suited to choosing a more high-voltage cap even at the cost of bass extension- the piano does not have all that much very low bass, but it has a lot of low-mid kick that is enhanced by the heavier materials of a higher-voltage cap.
Moving right along, the wires to the (analog) volume control don't look terribly special. They did have to be foil shielded, which just goes to show they were picking up digital noise (like the analog stages of a cheezy soundcard in a PC enclosure). Looks like a job for JumperMan! Bypass the control entirely. I'm not certain if the circuit requires the resistance to ground that the dualganged pot provides, but if so it's a simple jumper resistor, no fuss.
Doing these mods (solder remove replace jumper) already delivers some very nice improvements. No jumper resistor was needed for the bypassed volume pot- 'Ballad Organ 1's low end took on a really lush quality- and the highs in general lost a faintly tinny quality that they'd had.
It's Further Caplifting Time! Going in to see if there are other caps that are anal hiss caps (this becomes a one-part-at-a-time exercise because you rapidly start to discover parts that actually do something), C25 is discovered to be borderline- lifting it produces a nice hyper-focussed sound, but also causes the synth to emit a quiet little 'parrp' noise at one point, almost inaudibly- a sure sign that the circuit wants _something_ there. Out with the 1 pf caps- and replacing of C25 and C70 on the other side of the chip results in a very assertively extended treble- since it would be unuseful to take the highs any farther, time to look at some of the other electrolytics on the board. C35 and C36 look to be power supplies, and there's also C23, which matches the two output caps- replacing 'em with 100mf adds a fullness and solidity to things, especially the pianos- and raises the question, "were those 1pf caps enough?" since the highs are feeling kind of overenthusiastic. Ignoring that for a moment, C7 and C6 look enticing- they look a lot like coupling caps, lead to an IC in the output stages, and Kurzweil clearly wouldn't be using 22Mf caps unless they had to- two 10V 470mf caps are found and installed in their place. This might also balance the highs- and in fact it does, but it also raises a question- this is not a 'flash' unit, it's meant to be lush and full, would it be desirable to pull those highs back anyhow? A quick switch of the 1pf caps with 33pf caps and the answer is 'yup', the resulting fullness and solidity is very appealing- and that'll do for the modding- back on with the covers, and tadah:)
Now moderate this down as offtopic, but it was nothing if not geeky.:) you try this with your own Kurzweil at your own risk- but the result _is_ bigger sound than the huge bloated gigabuck studios' Micropianos, you just have to be ready to hack:)
According to David Boies, distributing cheezy mp3 rips of copyrighted music for no money is neither a criminal act or illegal. As long as it's not a commercial act done for money, it's not illegal- and therefore, Napster facilitating it is also not illegal.
Let 'em try! I may not have the math background but I _do_ have the sound engineering background- I can tell you right now that in order to mess with mp3 ripping, the sound quality will be _screwed_ with. Bigtime. I daresay it's possible to make the files resistant to compression- but the resulting CDs will NOT sound good.
Meanwhile, I just ordered for my studio a Lexicon reverb/multieffects- an upgrade of my Alesis drum module- and a Kurzweil Micropiano. I'm also plotting a revision of my UberMonitors while I'm at it. How did I get the money for this, selling CDs? No- I WORKED for it. (To be exact, I sold costume tails at a convention, believe it or not- see here.)
Let 'em keep coming up with new ways to make their $18 CDs sound worse in order to fight copying! I'll be coming up with ways to make my $5.99 CDs sound BETTER and encouraging copying- it's your right as a music owner to make dubs for noncommercial use, that's the law. The sooner I conclusively beat (oh all right, maim) the audio quality of the major labels, the happier I shall be, and getting them to butcher their tone in the name of copyprotection can only help. Bring on the mutated, deformed audio! *g*
*points to URL link* that is mp3 music. It is mine, copyright to me, and I get to do what I want with it. I choose to give it away because I see mp3 as one big radio- and in fact according to David Boies there's no such thing as an illegally copied mp3 so long as nobody's paying money for it.
That said: I know who my competition is. It's the same major labels that have brainwashed generations into thinking that only majorlabel-signed acts are worth hearing, even though this is less and less plausible every year. As an indie musician (btw- buy one of my CDs for $5.99? Please?:) ), my mp3s compete against the 'unauthorised' mp3s of major label acts distributed through services like Napster.
If the major labels want to make their products more unpleasant through building ads into the mp3s or other annoying practices, I say great, go right ahead and do it. If they can magically replace _all_ the existing majorlabel mp3s (hah!) with ad-laden ones, woohoo, go ahead and do it! I am delighted to observe any method by which the music biz can destroy itself through arrogance and greed. I would love to be known as 'one of those people who makes mp3s which DON'T have annoying ads on them'.
Because here's the secret- the majors don't have a lock on worthwhile music. They don't even have a lock on well-produced, expensive sounding music- you just have to be enough of an audiophile geek to know how to make things sound right. I rejoice and dance about chortling smugly at every sign that the biz is going to leverage their supposed lock on all good music by building ads into the mp3s, or making their music SDMI-only, or making the CDs unrippable (and unreliable). They are only hamstringing themselves and doing great damage to the quality of their product, thinking that nobody can replace them. And today, you don't need to have the same kind of distribution networks to replace them... the rules have changed...
(do please go listen to some tunes of mine at the URL given above- they're free and they're up there to be heard, and there will be more and more of them)
First: Gelernter is _the_ canonical handwaver of the last bits of the 20th century. If you have ever read his book 'Mirror Worlds' (try your local library) and managed to get all the way through it you'll understand this right down in your bones. He never goes within shouting distance of application or execution- it's all about conjuring very salable visions in the sky. Gelernter is the UBERhandwaver, I've never seen another person even approach him in this.
Second: The instant you see words like 'lifestreams' be well aware that Gelernter is SELLING this. It was the same for Mirror Worlds- the whole thing was an advertisement for the commercial software project he was selling. I have not seen any evidence that Gelernter understands sharing and the free software approach- I daresay it seems terribly quaint to him.
As such, it can be interesting to scan over Gelernter-handwaving for practicable ideas, such as long-skinny icons like book spines (hey, how about horizontally so you can read them- hey, what about making them a stack so the most recently used ones go to the top and stay there?). However, I would be very cautious about this because of the risk that Gelernter is busily filing patents on all of it and will attack anyone who tries to make his handwaving practical. Actually, I haven't seen evidence one way or the other, but based on his history of producing handwavey 'white papers' that are actually referring to proprietary technology that he is SELLING, I would be moderately surprised if Gelernter wasn't busily patenting up everything he could patent- which of course translates to 'everything'.
Can you tell I'm not utterly thrilled with this fellow?;P If it turns out he's not seizing huge swathes of IP with patents on handwaving-derived general notions, I will be considerably more friendly- but in the final analysis there needs to be more implementation and less imagination for his ideas to go anywhere. There needs to be a lot more gritty detail in how these things are to be actually DONE. One thing you can say for the Linux approach- it's all gritty detail, rarely much in the way of sweeping imagination- but stuff GETS DONE. At the end of the day, Linux stuff got done and an awful lot of grand breathtaking visions remained just grand breathtaking visions...
Of course it does. It means the site involved has impure motives and wishes to put up a fake appearance of trustworthiness that doesn't actually mean anything:)
*g* Listen to you. "I want my Matrix sequels, goddammit!" Well... how much would you pay? Certainly a lot more than you'd pay for some nifty little video clip I did in my spare time- and that is precisely the point, isn't it?
I don't think the Wachowski Brothers have anything to worry about. How much would you personally give them to do more Matrix sequels? Would you help get them set up with a Beowulf Cluster (tm) to do more EFX shots? Would you drop $50 on a "I Sponsored Matrix 2" t-shirt? Would you let them use the spare cycles of your Pentium MCXXIII in some future SETI-esque super distributed arrangement to render frames of the film? Would you _pay_ them so you could literally say "I helped _render_ that movie!" and one-up your geeky friends?;)
People are always saying that the loss of IP would mean the obliteration of all big budget blockbuster media. I don't think that's a sensible conclusion. You'd end up with an awfully big vacuum waiting to be filled- and a lot of creators who'd be able to do it given the resources- and an awful lot of fluidity regarding how those people could get the resources.
Really, the key point here is about the nature of the copying, in practical terms. I just went to a convention selling stuff at an Artist's Alley table, had a great time and sold 14 audio tapes of my music for a buck each to get them in people's hands, and to not have to take them home again:) Now, to make those I had to buy tapes, to copy them tediously (technically I did them all off the computer at normal speed- no dubbing here) and make labels and all that stuff. It cost me energy and time and when I sold the tapes I no longer had them. If someone had sneakily grabbed one off the table I'd have been a bit disappointed (though at least it'd presumably be listened to) because I would no longer have that tape, and replacing it would cost me a buck or so, and some time and effort.
By contrast, I have mp3s (at mp3.com/ChrisJ). I could have them on my website but it would cost me too much to store hundreds of megs of mp3s:) the thing is, if someone sneakily goes and downloads one of them without paying me- well, actually they can't;) because at the moment mp3.com essentially gives me a tiny cut of the ad revenue or something for each download, as an incentive. The actual formula is weird and strange and nobody knows quite how it's worked- I don't care;) But the thing is, even if I didn't get paid anything at all for someone downloading mp3s (without paying), the mp3 is still there for other people to download it- AND is now in another person's hands to further redistribute, with another shot at being heard (which is life to music- it's useless unless it's being heard, it has no value when locked in a safe with a "$10,000" price of listening that nobody will pay. If the music is not in circulation being played and hummed and used, it is WORTHLESS...
So the end result is that the 'worth' of an informational 'good' that is capable of being copied without loss of the original copy, for a trivial expenditure of computer electricity, becomes more accurately what people will pay for it. If it is a very GOOD informational good it will cause other associated goods (the other songs, the 'convenience' physical media audio CD for 5.99, the T-Shirt) to show higher value. So far we can't replicate T-Shirts, and if you want a cup of tea you cannot simply download it- the water and dried leaves and milk squirted out of a cow are physical objects that are transported in trucks and consumed. But the same rules can't apply with the computer information that CAN be copied without loss of the original copy.
It breaks down into four basic categories in practice:
raw information that's unmetered. I paid nobody for the use of the word 'unmetered'. There is no expectation that I make micropayments to the person who coined the term 'unmetered' in speech. This is a type of 'good' that is considered utterly beyond considerations of being limited artificially for economic gain.
raw information that's unmetered by agreement. I write some software and GPL it. I give my own music away on mp3 and some people still reward that by buying 'convenience copies' of the CD- I brought some to my convention and sold almost every one for $10 (and you can buy them online for $5.99!) ALL because of convenience. People wanted some nice music for the ride home- $10 sounded great to them, in one case even without listening to the music at all, only hearing a description. At the same time, as copyrightholder it's my privilege to let people download the music, or copy and alter the software code, for nothing. At this level it starts becoming my business to make that decision- so far.
raw information that is metered by agreement. Patents for ideas, digital audio, songs- there are many things that do not follow the rules for physical objects as far as reproduction and distribution goes, but are still being treated as physical objects by societal agreement.
Physical objects- if you take it I don't have it, if I want it I have to go out and get it and drag it home and find a place to put it. I don't know many people arguing that you should be able to go and take a car or pile of bricks or pizza, and walk off with it without paying. All those things are the extensions of other physical objects altered and built with physical effort, and if you buy them the seller has to in turn go and buy more materials and make more.
I think it is very likely that in the future the second and third categories will merge- they already completely blur. It's my belief that only category 2 makes sense- 3 is a mistake because it is inequitable- it is basically demanding money for nothing, because the seller is not 'out' anything tangible, yet they are demanding something tangible in exchange. It would be more sensible for the seller to demand something else _intangible_ in exchange- for instance, if you download something like that for free, in exchange you must allow the seller to download one of _your_ downloadable things- or to use your download to persuade potential site-advertisers to buy ad space, or something. There will have to be a loosening of the current expectations- the expectation that there are only producers and consumers, and that the only thing the consumer has of value is money. Perhaps it might become popular to have the consumer offer OPINION in exchange for free downloads...
If you want to download this song, please click one of these buttons: "I like music that is- (lively) (mellow) (intelligent) (danceable) (etc) (CowboyNeal)"
That would be a marketplace of intangibles exchanged for intangibles, and would make a lot more sense than attempting to exchange intangibles for micropayments (tangible, but you're not supposed to notice until your bank account runs dry and you're bouncing checks).
We already can. As the 'URL' link above indicates, I am. The trouble is that the RIAA member labels have spent immense amounts of money and energy arranging things so that:
they get the overwhelming bulk of the money from music sales
they tend to not pay musicians money, but rather 'prepay' by bringing the musicians to hugely expensive and elaborate music studios and mastering houses and charging these services against royalties
in so doing, they are able to throw a LOT of money into establishing a system where it appears that only major label acts are any good and the 'minor leaguers' don't seem worth listening to.
Of course, it sometimes shows, for instance when all the pop hits are glossy and really 'professional' but there's no substance there at all- but on the whole it is remarkably effective, and only a 'geek' information sharing approach will help overcome this. People use mp3s like crazy, both in an authorized and unauthorised fashion. That means that it's now possible to GET 'independent' music into people's hands. At this point the ability of the music industry to establish itself as the source for 'professional' quality music is challenged- because it is possible to produce music with a 'polished veneer' that rivals or betters what the industry puts out, even with the money they can throw at it. You simply have to be an audio geek- and to really do it in a serious way you need to literally rebuild consumer level equipment to replace inadequate parts or those which are compromised by design (for instance, capacitors large enough to pass authoritative bass can be five times the price of 'acceptable' ones. Which ones do you think are in your pro-sumer level mixer?)
As for the profit margins- it's a bit shocking. I will refer you to Steve Albini's "Some Of Your Friends Are Probably Already This Fucked" for a look at typical band incomes assuming a _high_ level of CD sales and a successful tour, and another data point would be "Destroying The Artist's Right To Escape Contracts Through Bankruptcy" which is a news article exploring a recent trend of multiplatinum artists attempting to get out of brutally unfair contracts because they are literally left bankrupt and owing large amounts of money (for instance, owing their real landlords money, as the landlord doesn't take payments in label-purchased studio time- the landlord would be wanting actual money, and the multiplatinum major label star may not ever see any actual money).
OK: here- www.mp3.com/chrisj and for that matter www.mp3.com/RFW. Will twenty years of practicing and hacking with audio gear and buying equipment do, or should I work another twenty years and buy another studiofull of equipment to have a right to an opinion?;P
I am immensely delighted that Pete Townsend is on 'our side' here. He not only has the right idea around music and creating it and listening to it, but he's also made some of the best _sounding_ albums ever- in fact I own (fetish,treasure etc) a special guitar I made myself with maple body and ceramic pickups a bit lower-impedance than Strat pickups _just_ so I could have a guitar that gets a tone like the Rickenbackers Pete has used. There's nothing quite as rowdy as a cranked-out Rick:) probably the best example of what this tone is like (from my mp3s) is the tune 'Dog' from my 'anima' album, where there's a rhythm guitar that gets a pretty Townsendesque amount of snarl- actually that tune is about the closest to a Who homage tune as anything I've done:)
For _real_ ultimate Who guitar tone: "Live At Leeds". On LP, on a monster uber-high-ender-turntable. Using one of the original British pressings with the label writing that says 'crackling noises OK, do not correct!'. It only crackles like that on bad turntables. On good turntables you are THERE.
I daresay this is a good place for ESR- it might be the only place in the world outside Redmond that is MORE, uh... not sure how to phrase this... but if you are looking for a place that would make ESR seem like a liberal, the USPTO would be it;)
So, this is a good thing to do with him:) it will keep him out of trouble and for a change he will actually be helping the 'libre' side of things simply because there is nothing he could possibly do to make the USPTO hurt it any worse:) I would assume that somehow somewhere he would see _something_ pathetic that's being patented into corporate backed-by-the-barrel-of-a-government-gun proprietariness (there's so much of it!), and would take the opportunity to point it out and cry "HA! See that? That is not suitable for a patent at all!" and the world would be that much of a better place:)
Think of it in a musical context. New media isn't about being better at bringing you the spice girls, it is about making it equally easy for you to find Lithuanian polka music or Noise or abstract serialism- things which are not 'covered' in the mainstream. By the same token, New Media isn't about covering mainstream news better/faster/deeper than the mainstream media- it is about providing access to news that would never be seen elsewhere, in comparable depth. The whole point of New Media is that on the net, you can get to anywhere with relative ease, so given the access to the information people do seek out their specialised interests, and no matter how specialised the interest, it's possible to have a network around it, news, a community. That wasn't possible in the heyday of Old Media, because the mechanisms for conveying media didn't allow for that kind of proliferation of meaning- there had to be a screening process and things had to suit a lowest common denominator. No longer.
What the judge understands is that loads and loads of damage has already been DONE- we basically don't have a software industry at this point, just a sick charade of one with the few remaining players dropping like flies.
This is a conscious, intentional decision to allow MS to run totally amok until the last possible moment- forcing the hand of the Supreme Court, or even the appeals court if their opinion matters. It's giving them all the rope they want so they can hang themselves from the highest yardarm- hell, they just bought Bungie to pull the hotly anticipated game 'Halo' off the market for X-Box only. Does that sound like they are observing conduct remedies? They're digging themselves absurdly deep. I wonder what the end result will be.
This is a strategic move and it's about _letting_ Microsoft commit more abuses- really shocking ones! so that the Supreme Court can have no possible course but to smash MS to hell, I devoutly hope with serious jail time for some of the high-ups. And frankly- what could it hurt? The industry is pretty much dead in a lot of important ways, letting MS dance over the corpses isn't hurting anything but our _feelings_ at this point. They'll get theirs- this clinches it. There will be no possible argument of 'but we aren't doing that anymore, this is ancient history!'.
Please tell me they are considering using an internal LAB color model:) that's one of the key points about Photoshop that makes its images better than RGB stuff- LAB is a broader color gamut than RGB. My understanding is that Photoshop uses LAB as an intermediate stage when converting from any color model to any other (bar grayscale, or indexed).
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Only if you are their customer. If you are not their customer then they are your enemy. This is really quite plain, what is so hard to understand about that?
"THey spent 2billion dollars a year on research. that has to result in something good"
Um- no. It can result in vast amounts of useless wheelspinning and wasting of money. See Apple as of 1996-1997: at the time Apple was working on everything from QTVR to OpenDoc and every engineer seemed to have his own 'cool project' all funded by the endless supplies of Apple money, and very little of it got anywhere. Jobs 'steved' most of it, and now Apple tends to deliver on its ideas rather than not.
It looks very much like MS is in a place similar to where Apple was back in '97... full of themselves, spending vast amounts on ill-defined projects, not taking care of the important things (i.e. the bugs developers were clamoring to be fixed), and very possibly bleeding money in Niagara-like amounts. How is this possible? It's possible because MS _spends_ money in Niagara-like amounts, and in order for that to be useful behavior it needs to produce results.
It appears that the results currently amount to developer alienation so intense (and this is from CONVENTIONGOERS, not snotty linux purists shunning the thing) that there is no excitement and little attention paid to the new toys- contrast that to the days of W95, for instance.
This is partly due to a sense of betrayal ('stop playing with new e+e and fix this damn bug!') and apparently it's also due to the fact that the new technologies are entirely reactive- they are all about filling a laundry list of features and there's little attempt to pretend otherwise. It's like C#'s real purpose is to kill Java, and any usefulness as a programming language is way down on the list- comparatively unimportant. All this is really raising the Art Of Monopolistic Positioning to new heights- it's like an ever-deeper understanding of the viral nature of MS's position in technology- the job really ISN'T to solve techie problems, or even to enable computer solutions. The job is entirely, utterly, to stop other vendors from being able to do that. Actually delivering working and useful technology is decidedly secondary.
Leaving aside the reality that this approach is getting thwacked in the courts, there's another problem: this is an entirely reactive approach. It can be effective at hurting a competing vendor in a free market, but you start hitting diminishing returns as the other vendors die off. The endgame (which we are in) leads toward major vendor-lock, but under conditions of general crappiness and a constant battle to deny obvious customer dissatisfaction (i.e. the crowd of developers yelling at the MS rep about the bug that hadn't been fixed in 3 versions). The same tools that work to hurt other vendors (outright denial of any problems, establishing that your product's benefits are what you _feel_ they should be rather than what they actually are in practice) end up working to cause severe customer rage, which is a real set-up: under these conditions any schmuck can come along and if their promise includes "Oh, and I am not Microsoft" they get an automatic boost. (see Apple in recent years- and Linux)
It may seem like a wild notion that Microsoft would go the way of Kaypro and Visicalc- but there is almost no other way they can go. I am not aware of any Steve Jobs-like figure who can come into Microsoft and start firing people and killing off stupid projects that are only reactive and vapor-oriented. They are _stuck_ with that approach- and well past the point where it's working for them. The Microsoft Way will not become clear sailing- it will continue to be bogged down in efforts to put roadblocks in competing vendors' paths, and the developer and the consumer will continue to be a very low priority compared to the power politics that make up so much of Microsoft's field of vision.
Eventually this will cost more than it earns. At a blind guess I would say that it ALREADY is costing them more than they earn- that MS is in the red if you look at the REAL figures and not entertaining games with taking next year's payroll as a tax deduction for last year twice over etc etc and so on. I say they are losing money- not because they don't still make loads of money, but because they are SPENDING so damn much and are not, cannot show any signs of moderation about this. That's a deadly trap- they daren't show any sign that they have finite pockets like any business or small country, and so they are forced to go way into the red and cover it up at any cost for largely _ego_ reasons and to protect their stock price, which is so intimately linked with their financial resources. It's a recipe for total destruction, not a slide into irrelevance but a high-speed wreck leaving no survivors.
One could wish that MS was able to behave like a normal company for a change and avoid this fate...
This can be seen as a natural disaster- human overpopulation or even corporate overpopulation causing an unhealthy situation and eventual die-off of even the things that clustered in Silicon Valley and caused the problem (long after all indigenous 'organisms' be they people, parks, or art galleries are destroyed).
The question that comes to my mind is, if not San Francisco, where? If there was a powerful and world-famous cultural center populated by artists, writers etc. in San Fran, and if those people are absolutely unable to live in California anymore post-dotcom, where do they go? They must surely scatter and go _somewhere_. Where will be the next great collection, not of power (which shows up on the news quite easily) but of art and culture?
Meanwhile, I have to admit it amuses me that I live in a smallish Vermont town (Brattleboro) in which mailmen (+ mailwomen) still go around on foot delivering letters and smiling at people (at least some of the time :) ), in which there are art galleries and a few bookshops (we lost one recently, which was distressing, but I can count five others off the top of my head which might explain some of why the sixth couldn't make rent) etc etc etc. Sure, everything's dead by 10 in the evening, if not sooner, but so what? The point is, in this dumb little Vermont town, it turns out that I get more of the special charm and cachet of I Left My Heart In San Francisco... than San Francisco itself.
Definitely food for thought :) maybe the next San Francisco will be a virtual cultural center, existing only on the Internet, with its members scattered across all the cozy small towns of the world?
- 0.44% IE2.x WebTV
- 0.95% IE3.x Windows
- 1.50% IE4.x Macintosh
- 5.64% IE4.x Windows
- 0.68% IE5.0 AOL 5.0
- 2.84% IE5.0 Macintosh
- 22.5% IE5.0 Windows
- 0.18% IE5.01 AOL 5.0
- 18.8% IE5.01 Windows
- 3.60% IE5.5 Windows
Where is the "80% using the new features" there? It's FUD. People are still using IE _2_ out there and being counted in that '80%'.Thanks Dave Garaffa's 'Browserwatch' for the stats :)
Thanks man- I'm not trying to harsh on you, just speaking up, you know? I don't mean to imply that you're some kind of bad person. No :( necessary ;)
This is why I feel I have the right to formally ask these people to stay the hell away from MY music with their 'cuckoo' act, and to ask Orrin Hatch to safeguard my ability to give away and share my music freely as mp3s- it's my choice, it's my music not anybody else's, quit fscking trying to 'protect' me when I don't want to be protected! It's very much like taking a street performer happily plunking away on their guitar, and forcibly locking them and their open guitar case in a steel safe with a coinslot. There! We've protected the artist! Um, did anyone remember to put in airholes? *gasp* :P
It would be nice if you'd quit with the 'homo' as a term of abuse. Jon is _not_ homosexual so far as I know, and his articles are, well, Jon Katz articles. By contrast, you could call me a homo with much greater accuracy, and the slashdot article that I wrote (posted by Roblimo) was much clearer and more interesting. I think you should find something else to call Katz if you want to abuse him. And yeah, it's not really my business as you weren't calling _me_ anything, but ya get sick of seeing it after a while, you know? *shrug*
*g* yeah, tell me about it. Still, you can get some good stealth action going from a position of poverty and ignorability ;)
"By now you've probably opened it already.
The sound.
The fizz.
The taste.
It's all there telling your senses to come alive and taste all that life has to offer.
Coca-Cola enjoy."
This is on a can of soda that I ALREADY FSCKING BOUGHT! Sorry. (turns ad to wall, though of course the 'coca cola enjoy' mangled-grammar slogan is written all around the top of the can and cannot be escaped) But it really, really bothers me. I have tended to stick to the same snackfoods and sodas, and this one attempt to further yell at me with mangled advertising even when I have already APPEASED the damned manufacturer by buying the damn product and should be left alone to drink it... it _never_ stops bothering me, all I can do is make fun of it.
Well- not quite true. I used to drink only Coca-Cola for soda- and now I have taught myself to like Mountain Dew, as a DIRECT result of this ad campaign on the cans. I give Pepsi another year or so before they start doing the same thing. There's always tea- that I can drink out of a nice big mason jar that stands up to making hot tea well, and has no tea advertisements on it :)
OK- first off, backtracking from the output jacks, you get the usual 'hiss must die, even theoretical hiss' little caps on the output. This is just a teeny cap to ground- may even be something fancy like a tantalum, or it may be just a cheap ceramic, hard to tell from looking. There are markings on them, which you don't always get on ceramic cheapies. This is going to mess with the impulse response going up into the supersonic- a cap configured that way rings very slightly. I'm lifting these with quite a bit of confidence that it will improve overall focus and tone color without significant hiss penalty- I call these 'anal hiss caps', and frequently remove them in mods.
Moving on to the output coupling cap, I am shocked to discover a small cheap 2.2mf cap on each channel! The unit has surprisingly good bass, considering. These are being replaced by 50V 47mf caps- note however that the 2.2mf caps are also 50V. This is not because the circuit needs that voltage, but because pretty much all teeny electrolytics come in such voltages- apparently easier to make them that way. This could be an intentional decision on the part of Kurzweil because piano tones are well suited to choosing a more high-voltage cap even at the cost of bass extension- the piano does not have all that much very low bass, but it has a lot of low-mid kick that is enhanced by the heavier materials of a higher-voltage cap.
Moving right along, the wires to the (analog) volume control don't look terribly special. They did have to be foil shielded, which just goes to show they were picking up digital noise (like the analog stages of a cheezy soundcard in a PC enclosure). Looks like a job for JumperMan! Bypass the control entirely. I'm not certain if the circuit requires the resistance to ground that the dualganged pot provides, but if so it's a simple jumper resistor, no fuss.
Doing these mods (solder remove replace jumper) already delivers some very nice improvements. No jumper resistor was needed for the bypassed volume pot- 'Ballad Organ 1's low end took on a really lush quality- and the highs in general lost a faintly tinny quality that they'd had.
It's Further Caplifting Time! Going in to see if there are other caps that are anal hiss caps (this becomes a one-part-at-a-time exercise because you rapidly start to discover parts that actually do something), C25 is discovered to be borderline- lifting it produces a nice hyper-focussed sound, but also causes the synth to emit a quiet little 'parrp' noise at one point, almost inaudibly- a sure sign that the circuit wants _something_ there. Out with the 1 pf caps- and replacing of C25 and C70 on the other side of the chip results in a very assertively extended treble- since it would be unuseful to take the highs any farther, time to look at some of the other electrolytics on the board. C35 and C36 look to be power supplies, and there's also C23, which matches the two output caps- replacing 'em with 100mf adds a fullness and solidity to things, especially the pianos- and raises the question, "were those 1pf caps enough?" since the highs are feeling kind of overenthusiastic. Ignoring that for a moment, C7 and C6 look enticing- they look a lot like coupling caps, lead to an IC in the output stages, and Kurzweil clearly wouldn't be using 22Mf caps unless they had to- two 10V 470mf caps are found and installed in their place. This might also balance the highs- and in fact it does, but it also raises a question- this is not a 'flash' unit, it's meant to be lush and full, would it be desirable to pull those highs back anyhow? A quick switch of the 1pf caps with 33pf caps and the answer is 'yup', the resulting fullness and solidity is very appealing- and that'll do for the modding- back on with the covers, and tadah :)
Now moderate this down as offtopic, but it was nothing if not geeky. :) you try this with your own Kurzweil at your own risk- but the result _is_ bigger sound than the huge bloated gigabuck studios' Micropianos, you just have to be ready to hack :)
According to David Boies, distributing cheezy mp3 rips of copyrighted music for no money is neither a criminal act or illegal. As long as it's not a commercial act done for money, it's not illegal- and therefore, Napster facilitating it is also not illegal.
Meanwhile, I just ordered for my studio a Lexicon reverb/multieffects- an upgrade of my Alesis drum module- and a Kurzweil Micropiano. I'm also plotting a revision of my UberMonitors while I'm at it. How did I get the money for this, selling CDs? No- I WORKED for it. (To be exact, I sold costume tails at a convention, believe it or not- see here.)
Let 'em keep coming up with new ways to make their $18 CDs sound worse in order to fight copying! I'll be coming up with ways to make my $5.99 CDs sound BETTER and encouraging copying- it's your right as a music owner to make dubs for noncommercial use, that's the law. The sooner I conclusively beat (oh all right, maim) the audio quality of the major labels, the happier I shall be, and getting them to butcher their tone in the name of copyprotection can only help. Bring on the mutated, deformed audio! *g*
That said: I know who my competition is. It's the same major labels that have brainwashed generations into thinking that only majorlabel-signed acts are worth hearing, even though this is less and less plausible every year. As an indie musician (btw- buy one of my CDs for $5.99? Please? :) ), my mp3s compete against the 'unauthorised' mp3s of major label acts distributed through services like Napster.
If the major labels want to make their products more unpleasant through building ads into the mp3s or other annoying practices, I say great, go right ahead and do it. If they can magically replace _all_ the existing majorlabel mp3s (hah!) with ad-laden ones, woohoo, go ahead and do it! I am delighted to observe any method by which the music biz can destroy itself through arrogance and greed. I would love to be known as 'one of those people who makes mp3s which DON'T have annoying ads on them'.
Because here's the secret- the majors don't have a lock on worthwhile music. They don't even have a lock on well-produced, expensive sounding music- you just have to be enough of an audiophile geek to know how to make things sound right. I rejoice and dance about chortling smugly at every sign that the biz is going to leverage their supposed lock on all good music by building ads into the mp3s, or making their music SDMI-only, or making the CDs unrippable (and unreliable). They are only hamstringing themselves and doing great damage to the quality of their product, thinking that nobody can replace them. And today, you don't need to have the same kind of distribution networks to replace them... the rules have changed...
(do please go listen to some tunes of mine at the URL given above- they're free and they're up there to be heard, and there will be more and more of them)
Show me where Gelernter has executed on any of this handwaving in a way that's anywhere near as wonderful as Michaelangelo's work.
Second: The instant you see words like 'lifestreams' be well aware that Gelernter is SELLING this. It was the same for Mirror Worlds- the whole thing was an advertisement for the commercial software project he was selling. I have not seen any evidence that Gelernter understands sharing and the free software approach- I daresay it seems terribly quaint to him.
As such, it can be interesting to scan over Gelernter-handwaving for practicable ideas, such as long-skinny icons like book spines (hey, how about horizontally so you can read them- hey, what about making them a stack so the most recently used ones go to the top and stay there?). However, I would be very cautious about this because of the risk that Gelernter is busily filing patents on all of it and will attack anyone who tries to make his handwaving practical. Actually, I haven't seen evidence one way or the other, but based on his history of producing handwavey 'white papers' that are actually referring to proprietary technology that he is SELLING, I would be moderately surprised if Gelernter wasn't busily patenting up everything he could patent- which of course translates to 'everything'.
Can you tell I'm not utterly thrilled with this fellow? ;P If it turns out he's not seizing huge swathes of IP with patents on handwaving-derived general notions, I will be considerably more friendly- but in the final analysis there needs to be more implementation and less imagination for his ideas to go anywhere. There needs to be a lot more gritty detail in how these things are to be actually DONE. One thing you can say for the Linux approach- it's all gritty detail, rarely much in the way of sweeping imagination- but stuff GETS DONE. At the end of the day, Linux stuff got done and an awful lot of grand breathtaking visions remained just grand breathtaking visions...
Of course it does. It means the site involved has impure motives and wishes to put up a fake appearance of trustworthiness that doesn't actually mean anything :)
I don't think the Wachowski Brothers have anything to worry about. How much would you personally give them to do more Matrix sequels? Would you help get them set up with a Beowulf Cluster (tm) to do more EFX shots? Would you drop $50 on a "I Sponsored Matrix 2" t-shirt? Would you let them use the spare cycles of your Pentium MCXXIII in some future SETI-esque super distributed arrangement to render frames of the film? Would you _pay_ them so you could literally say "I helped _render_ that movie!" and one-up your geeky friends? ;)
People are always saying that the loss of IP would mean the obliteration of all big budget blockbuster media. I don't think that's a sensible conclusion. You'd end up with an awfully big vacuum waiting to be filled- and a lot of creators who'd be able to do it given the resources- and an awful lot of fluidity regarding how those people could get the resources.
By contrast, I have mp3s (at mp3.com/ChrisJ). I could have them on my website but it would cost me too much to store hundreds of megs of mp3s :) the thing is, if someone sneakily goes and downloads one of them without paying me- well, actually they can't ;) because at the moment mp3.com essentially gives me a tiny cut of the ad revenue or something for each download, as an incentive. The actual formula is weird and strange and nobody knows quite how it's worked- I don't care ;) But the thing is, even if I didn't get paid anything at all for someone downloading mp3s (without paying), the mp3 is still there for other people to download it- AND is now in another person's hands to further redistribute, with another shot at being heard (which is life to music- it's useless unless it's being heard, it has no value when locked in a safe with a "$10,000" price of listening that nobody will pay. If the music is not in circulation being played and hummed and used, it is WORTHLESS...
So the end result is that the 'worth' of an informational 'good' that is capable of being copied without loss of the original copy, for a trivial expenditure of computer electricity, becomes more accurately what people will pay for it. If it is a very GOOD informational good it will cause other associated goods (the other songs, the 'convenience' physical media audio CD for 5.99, the T-Shirt) to show higher value. So far we can't replicate T-Shirts, and if you want a cup of tea you cannot simply download it- the water and dried leaves and milk squirted out of a cow are physical objects that are transported in trucks and consumed. But the same rules can't apply with the computer information that CAN be copied without loss of the original copy.
It breaks down into four basic categories in practice:
- raw information that's unmetered. I paid nobody for the use of the word 'unmetered'. There is no expectation that I make micropayments to the person who coined the term 'unmetered' in speech. This is a type of 'good' that is considered utterly beyond considerations of being limited artificially for economic gain.
- raw information that's unmetered by agreement. I write some software and GPL it. I give my own music away on mp3 and some people still reward that by buying 'convenience copies' of the CD- I brought some to my convention and sold almost every one for $10 (and you can buy them online for $5.99!) ALL because of convenience. People wanted some nice music for the ride home- $10 sounded great to them, in one case even without listening to the music at all, only hearing a description. At the same time, as copyrightholder it's my privilege to let people download the music, or copy and alter the software code, for nothing. At this level it starts becoming my business to make that decision- so far.
- raw information that is metered by agreement. Patents for ideas, digital audio, songs- there are many things that do not follow the rules for physical objects as far as reproduction and distribution goes, but are still being treated as physical objects by societal agreement.
- Physical objects- if you take it I don't have it, if I want it I have to go out and get it and drag it home and find a place to put it. I don't know many people arguing that you should be able to go and take a car or pile of bricks or pizza, and walk off with it without paying. All those things are the extensions of other physical objects altered and built with physical effort, and if you buy them the seller has to in turn go and buy more materials and make more.
I think it is very likely that in the future the second and third categories will merge- they already completely blur. It's my belief that only category 2 makes sense- 3 is a mistake because it is inequitable- it is basically demanding money for nothing, because the seller is not 'out' anything tangible, yet they are demanding something tangible in exchange. It would be more sensible for the seller to demand something else _intangible_ in exchange- for instance, if you download something like that for free, in exchange you must allow the seller to download one of _your_ downloadable things- or to use your download to persuade potential site-advertisers to buy ad space, or something. There will have to be a loosening of the current expectations- the expectation that there are only producers and consumers, and that the only thing the consumer has of value is money. Perhaps it might become popular to have the consumer offer OPINION in exchange for free downloads... That would be a marketplace of intangibles exchanged for intangibles, and would make a lot more sense than attempting to exchange intangibles for micropayments (tangible, but you're not supposed to notice until your bank account runs dry and you're bouncing checks).- they get the overwhelming bulk of the money from music sales
- they tend to not pay musicians money, but rather 'prepay' by bringing the musicians to hugely expensive and elaborate music studios and mastering houses and charging these services against royalties
- in so doing, they are able to throw a LOT of money into establishing a system where it appears that only major label acts are any good and the 'minor leaguers' don't seem worth listening to.
Of course, it sometimes shows, for instance when all the pop hits are glossy and really 'professional' but there's no substance there at all- but on the whole it is remarkably effective, and only a 'geek' information sharing approach will help overcome this. People use mp3s like crazy, both in an authorized and unauthorised fashion. That means that it's now possible to GET 'independent' music into people's hands. At this point the ability of the music industry to establish itself as the source for 'professional' quality music is challenged- because it is possible to produce music with a 'polished veneer' that rivals or betters what the industry puts out, even with the money they can throw at it. You simply have to be an audio geek- and to really do it in a serious way you need to literally rebuild consumer level equipment to replace inadequate parts or those which are compromised by design (for instance, capacitors large enough to pass authoritative bass can be five times the price of 'acceptable' ones. Which ones do you think are in your pro-sumer level mixer?)As for the profit margins- it's a bit shocking. I will refer you to Steve Albini's "Some Of Your Friends Are Probably Already This Fucked" for a look at typical band incomes assuming a _high_ level of CD sales and a successful tour, and another data point would be "Destroying The Artist's Right To Escape Contracts Through Bankruptcy" which is a news article exploring a recent trend of multiplatinum artists attempting to get out of brutally unfair contracts because they are literally left bankrupt and owing large amounts of money (for instance, owing their real landlords money, as the landlord doesn't take payments in label-purchased studio time- the landlord would be wanting actual money, and the multiplatinum major label star may not ever see any actual money).
I am immensely delighted that Pete Townsend is on 'our side' here. He not only has the right idea around music and creating it and listening to it, but he's also made some of the best _sounding_ albums ever- in fact I own (fetish,treasure etc) a special guitar I made myself with maple body and ceramic pickups a bit lower-impedance than Strat pickups _just_ so I could have a guitar that gets a tone like the Rickenbackers Pete has used. There's nothing quite as rowdy as a cranked-out Rick :) probably the best example of what this tone is like (from my mp3s) is the tune 'Dog' from my 'anima' album, where there's a rhythm guitar that gets a pretty Townsendesque amount of snarl- actually that tune is about the closest to a Who homage tune as anything I've done :)
For _real_ ultimate Who guitar tone: "Live At Leeds". On LP, on a monster uber-high-ender-turntable. Using one of the original British pressings with the label writing that says 'crackling noises OK, do not correct!'. It only crackles like that on bad turntables. On good turntables you are THERE.
'How can I promote Open Source on the Macintosh?' WRITE SOME. How else?
So, this is a good thing to do with him :) it will keep him out of trouble and for a change he will actually be helping the 'libre' side of things simply because there is nothing he could possibly do to make the USPTO hurt it any worse :) I would assume that somehow somewhere he would see _something_ pathetic that's being patented into corporate backed-by-the-barrel-of-a-government-gun proprietariness (there's so much of it!), and would take the opportunity to point it out and cry "HA! See that? That is not suitable for a patent at all!" and the world would be that much of a better place :)
Think of it in a musical context. New media isn't about being better at bringing you the spice girls, it is about making it equally easy for you to find Lithuanian polka music or Noise or abstract serialism- things which are not 'covered' in the mainstream. By the same token, New Media isn't about covering mainstream news better/faster/deeper than the mainstream media- it is about providing access to news that would never be seen elsewhere, in comparable depth. The whole point of New Media is that on the net, you can get to anywhere with relative ease, so given the access to the information people do seek out their specialised interests, and no matter how specialised the interest, it's possible to have a network around it, news, a community. That wasn't possible in the heyday of Old Media, because the mechanisms for conveying media didn't allow for that kind of proliferation of meaning- there had to be a screening process and things had to suit a lowest common denominator. No longer.
This is a conscious, intentional decision to allow MS to run totally amok until the last possible moment- forcing the hand of the Supreme Court, or even the appeals court if their opinion matters. It's giving them all the rope they want so they can hang themselves from the highest yardarm- hell, they just bought Bungie to pull the hotly anticipated game 'Halo' off the market for X-Box only. Does that sound like they are observing conduct remedies? They're digging themselves absurdly deep. I wonder what the end result will be.
This is a strategic move and it's about _letting_ Microsoft commit more abuses- really shocking ones! so that the Supreme Court can have no possible course but to smash MS to hell, I devoutly hope with serious jail time for some of the high-ups. And frankly- what could it hurt? The industry is pretty much dead in a lot of important ways, letting MS dance over the corpses isn't hurting anything but our _feelings_ at this point. They'll get theirs- this clinches it. There will be no possible argument of 'but we aren't doing that anymore, this is ancient history!'.
Please tell me they are considering using an internal LAB color model :) that's one of the key points about Photoshop that makes its images better than RGB stuff- LAB is a broader color gamut than RGB. My understanding is that Photoshop uses LAB as an intermediate stage when converting from any color model to any other (bar grayscale, or indexed).