I don't think they have the monopoly on Internet content- or anything even remotely near it. My understanding was that MSNBC was basically about as strong as NBC was, and that while MSN and their content always got a boost from the heavy tie-ins, they just sucked at content, badly enough that people wouldn't settle for it. Without the ability to command obedience through wielding their market power (I'm talking "Obey us or... we won't run your banner ads on MSN") they don't have a monopoly.
So they might as well keep the media stuff- they can go play with AOL/Time Warner *g* get used to the idea that they are allowed to still be slime, because the ruling _must_ restrict itself to the areas where MS is literally choking off all the air, and the venture capitalists are obliged to run every potential project by MS to see if it gets thumbs up and 'yawn, we will allow this to thrive- for a time' or thumbs down and 'I wouldn't- we're going to kill those people, don't invest in that'.
MS media is _far_ from that powerful. Hence, it can go wherever they think it should go, and best of luck to it. Very likely it will continue to struggle for some time- and it's no longer so feasible to dump money into that stuff financed by OS/Office revenues. Some of these things will have to start paying their own way- that is the point.
How can you just leave them alone when they are breaking laws? Nobody is _making_ them break laws. They know the rules, they are just ignoring them. Do they get to be above the law? If they get to be above those laws, where do you draw the line? Do they get to steal? Do they get to hire goons to break the fingers of competing programmers? Laws are there for a reason and the Sherman Act isn't stupid. It only starts to apply when things are already waaaaay out of line...
How can you expect them not to pay the consequences from a court case in which they fscking FAKED EVIDENCE (thank you, David Boies, for spotting that!) Are they special somehow for being allowed to make up whatever evidence they like in the courts of the United States of America, or does anybody get to lie in court with no consequences whatsoever? Or do you have to be able to buy presidential elections in order to be able to outrank the judicial system and make a fscking mockery of our laws?
Sorry, this is more important than techies at this point. They seriously went too far for my taste with some of those courtroom stunts. In some ways I am deeply unsatisfied with even the breakup and regulation because I seriously think some PEOPLE should be doing jail time- I'd like to see some of the people responsible for this arrogance jailed as felons. I don't think they deserve to be allowed to vote, I think they should spend the rest of their lives as convicted felons, with some of the privileges of citizenship DENIED them. I know several people who _are_ convicted felons who are more worthy citizens than the Microsoft brain trust.
If Valve and Interplay owned effectively _all_ of the game market, Sherman Act would apply to their working together so closely too. The fact is, it's so unnatural for something like that (Valve and Interplay owning 95% of games or so, nobody much even considering buying games from other vendors, 'nobody ever got fired for buying ValveAndInterplay') to happen, that it's hard to see how unnatural the Microsoft situation is. Does one car maker sell 95% of all cars? Does one soft drink vendor have 95% of the supermarket shelves and twist the arms of supermarkets to have veto power over anything in the supermarket, by threatening to withdraw their product?
When Valve and Interplay can work together so well that they can _break_ a computer software store simply by pulling all their products and leaving the store with empty shelves and nothing to put on them, _then_ I'll consider forbidding them to share information except in public.
Microsoft's been in that position for _years_ and the restriction is deeply justified. I personally would have been happy with just a *SLICE* "OK, now go about your business", but as we know, Microsoft lies, so the ruling _assumes_ that if you just went 'chop' and walked away, Microsoft would go 'florp' and join together again immediately, either clandestinely or right out in the open, and would _be_ still one company, with nothing changed.
It's a pity the ruling had to get into this stuff and make picky little regulations, but really- as if you could tell Microsoft "Okay, break up now! And be good and allow real competition to happen!" As if! So, since they are so deeply criminal, you have to oversee every little thing, because they are totally unrepentant.
Nonsense: I'm talking about the HTML active content enabled preview pane Microsoft came up with. Even if they have entirely disabled this, the fact that they did it and shipped it makes the email virus a reality. It's absurd even to have the HTML preview pane- to have that enabled for active content is ludicrous- and combined with the inevitable problems in keeping Microsoft web software vaguely secure, it was a dead loss.
I suppose if you want to be really pedantic it's "Get sent evil content in such a way that it happens to be the first thing in your inbox, while you have the preview pane fully enabled, and if the evil content happens to be making use of the ActiveX controls that keep being improperly marked as safe for web use, your computer is toast- otherwise maybe it's just welcome to Melissa-land and here's hoping your friends like getting sent email viruses". But that takes so long to type;)
It's very interesting how many people jump to the conclusion that politicians and government officials will allow any amount of criminal activity as long as they aren't liberals...
I know if I was 'Conservative' I'd be asking some hard questions along the lines of 'just how much total contempt for our country and our country's legal system can I tolerate?'. It seems very reasonable to expect an attitude, from the arch-conservatives, of "Microsoft, I totally oppose the Sherman Act etc etc- but you are a _dick_, to hell with you people. I'm supposed to hold still while you fake evidence and don't even understand that you're on trial? While you try to screw over the government and cut funding for the DoJ? Oh, now you're going to _bribe_ me, that makes it soooo much better, sheesh! Don't you people understand you are acting with the arrogance and exact behavior and attitude of Mafiosi?"
Honestly, if you are going to think about the realities of the case you simply _must_ allow the government people, perhaps even the Presidential candidates, to be human- and to have _some_ sense of self-preservation. Publically aligning with a gang of renegade criminals is just not that great PR-wise. It doesn't look great on a resume.
People should not have been surprised when the judge had a clue and a brain and used both. People should not be surprised if the case goes before an archconservative appeals court- which can't be bought- and which upholds the decision, because unlike the 'separate IE' order, THIS time the foundation is in place.
Microsoft's utter hubris and stupidity in thinking they can fight, buy or intimidate _anything_, is going to hurt them bigtime through this process. Hell, these people are the same ones who _disbanded_ the Mac IE team and assigned them to WebTV (which sounds OS-ish, come to think of it!) They appear to be pursuing a scorched earth strategy- a "Let us have our way or we ALL die!" strategy. The tragedy is that things have gone far enough- and all they're doing now in their frantic attempts to make the breakup seem like a disaster for the economy and IT and the world- is making that the reality.
And the comedy of this is- they caused nearly as much damage and destruction by operating in good faith with their dumb notions of making computers so easy that people don't have to learn ANYTHING in order to use them. That approach is what gave us the email virus- which was once a _myth_. It gave us Bob and Clippy- and there are still community college courses for 'how to use a word processor'- they failed, and in the attempt made 90% of the world horribly vulnerable and impeded by hassle and stupidity.
So- the scorched earth won't actually be all that different...
I mean, come _on_... can we have a little perspective here? We are talking about lock-in and single-sourcedness so intense that most people will say making choice is IMPOSSIBLE, if not MORALLY wrong even- and people are using "religion" to describe the _alternative_?
What is so hard about establishing relationships with people and negotiating this sort of thing to establish means of doing business that are not so single-sourced?
I just did some experimental music in collaboration with a rapper over the internet: "Regular Size Monster" aka Gentle Jones:)
I don't think he's a programmer but when asked in an interview, "Why do you have such a strong presence on mp3.com?" he answered "Because I am willing to waste away in front of the CRT for hours each day":) That ought to count for something! Also, his style is geek-friendly: some rap sounds like Jocks, and Gentle is drastically more articulate, polysyllabic and creative than that, with a more relaxed, flowing delivery that first drew me to his music.
Again, just last night I uploaded four tracks to mp3.com/ChrisJ as part of this collaboration- they are just down from the top of the page, the ones that credit Gentle and have (experimental) in the name and 'parental advisory' on the track;)
To hear what Gentle normally does (and also you can hear the vocal-only tracks that I added bebop-jazzesque music to), go to mp3.com/regularsizemon ster. I'm not a hip hop listener but I ended up liking lots of the tracks...
Now all we have to do is convince Gentle to geek out on Linux and programming a bit;)
They are not stupid- they are _crazy_. I think you could safely call them psychotic, because their idea of how the world works is wildly at variance with reality. They not only think it would be capitalism's finest moment if they sold _all_ computer software (100% of the market), they also believe implicitly that they are morally entitled to override the government anytime they want. It's not stupidity that's caused their astonishing actions- it's hubris on a mind boggling scale. That is the reality. We're talking about people who respond to threats with "Okay, next let's buy a President and get the Supreme Court replaced" kind of thinking, without a _thought_ to how outrageous this seems to a normal person.
...isn't about looking at Apogee's current _intent_. Their responses have been disingenious in the extreme- saying "Don't be fools, we aren't _intending_ to sue you over making a bad review".
The trouble is, a license/EULA like this is like a blank check. It's like Unisys's patent on LZW GIFs and a rousing helping of "Don't be a fool, we're not going to charge for this! (until it's convenient for us to)". And that is the problem.
What the people at Apogee _think_ they're doing is not relevant. The terminology of the contract is what is binding, and UCITA makes it quite feasible to live up to the worst fears of panicking slashdotters- basically, the Apogee people can even believe themselves that they are only establishing rules for using IP on fan sites or whatever, but it's the actual contract terms that matter, and knowingly or not they've got a blank check for whatever abuses they might want to commit in future- basically it becomes a slamdunk to cripple anyone who gets in their way, under UCITA, not because they wrote the EULA that way but because it is TOO VAGUE about what is permissible. I would not want to trust that referring to their products negatively in a review is technically permissible- I think it would be very easy to make a case that it is not, going not by their intent but by the potentials in the terms of use which falls under contract law.
It is indeed one of the most heinous contracts I've ever seen- one interesting point is that if John Carmack wrote Apogee and said, "You suck! Quake (tm) is much better", Apogee would then own rights to make games using the Quake (tm) trademark, provided Carmack owned the trademark and was personally able to sign it away! Not only that, technically, if any IP was contained in the _sig_ of Carmack's letter, that too would become Apogee's to use. This would not be exclusive- Carmack would still own his IP- but under the agreement, any communication with Apogee gives them access to anything mentioned anywhere in the communication, to use for any purpose.
Lastly, regarding the repeated statements of Apogee people that "This is what we really mean, settle down": that's like a "Summary" section of a music business contract, legally completely irrelevant. I quote the terms exactly: "YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS AGREEMENT, UNDERSTAND IT, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY ITS TERMS AND CONDITIONS; YOU FURTHER AGREE THAT IT IS THE COMPLETE AND EXCLUSIVE STATEMENT OF THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APOGEE WHICH SUPERSEDES ANY PROPOSED OR PRIOR AGREEMENT, ORAL OR WRITTEN, AND ANY OTHER COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN YOU AND APOGEE RELATING TO YOUR USE OF THE WEB SITE." In other words- there is no point even talking to the Apogee people about this, much less listening to anything they say, because what they say is legally _meaningless_... only the terms apply, they could verbally outright contradict every last thing in the terms of use and it would still be binding.
Welcome to the world of the future. Enjoy your stay- and get used to READING every little detail of things like this, as literal-mindedly as a computer, and #ifdef "THIS SUPERSEDES ANY OTHER COMMUNICATION YOU MIGHT HEAR FROM COMPANY REPRESENTATIVES", reassurances > dev/null #endif. Legalstuff is like programming- what it says is what you get, not what you _think_ it says or what you want it to say or even what the author thought he was trying to say.
My guess, again, is one (1). I think the balls are single-poly cards with round pingpong balls drawn on them.
I saw the quicktime movie earlier and didn't see any significant evidence of shadows and light on the balls- lighting was very even, which also suggests use of one-poly 'balls'.
If I wanted to be really evil I'd draw _polygonal_ ping pong balls on the one-poly cards:) it's just a question of how subtle, and how evil, these guys were willing to be. If you draw the things perfectly round it's _obviously_ sprites. Making it a little polygonal would be elegantly misleading:)
Boy, do you have _that_ right. I would make a butterfly out of two polys. Do you know how many polys I'd use to make a ping pong ball? (wait for it)....
One.
Just get a lot of sprites with that little 'x' facing in all directions, keep track of the 'rotation': if the X shows, choose the relevant sprite. If the X is facing away- always use a featureless blank ping-pong ball sprite.
Presto- all the ping pong balls can be ONE poly. Don't even waste your time looking at them and trying to figure how many polys it is! I suspect even if the demo is totally rigged the balls are _still_ one-poly cards drawing from a really large selection of sprites: this serves several purposes. One, the entire ping-pong ball load is about as much as one Quake model, and two, if they can get people trying to imagine how many polys make those 'round' (;) ) forms, they can get people imagining huge impossible poly counts.
Sprite cards are actually a damned good way to do 3D game programming- look at Myth and Myth II, the characters in that are all sprites on cards and it lets lots of activity be happening on relatively humble computers with good framerate- and allows more CPU to be used for terrain. However, used as a fraud, it's annoying:)
Forget it- what you're seeing is essentially conceptual art. No way are you seeing genuine output from the thing- I doubt any exist. These are the same people who faked video testimony IN COURT, and have a long history of stuff like technology demos which crash to the MAC FINDER of all things (I'm not making this up). They are the kings of outright fraud, and this time they're not even in court and are entirely controlling and dictating the presentation. How can you pretend there is anything real about this when you look at the record? It's just crazy to try and make a case that their claims should be taken at face value! Get real! When you can take one home and plug it into your TV, _then_ you can form an opinion.
Look, I've just invented a game console that plugs into color PalmPilots to generate flightsims! Here is actual video footage taken off the PalmPilot's actual screen- this was generated by a PalmPilot in REAL TIME and you'll be able to fly combat missions against your friends on the Internet, while jotting down notes in Graffiti! (Do you believe FNORD! that?)
Hang on a second- I put a lot of stuff, writing, music, art, software on the web. I have every expectation that people will be able to download these things and exchange them with each other. I don't see how copyright enters into that at all.
Maybe I'm taking a strange viewpoint, but to me, copyright is what _lets_ me do that with some assurance Seagram (for instance) can't take that material and say "We wrote this! Go pound sand". Copyright (at least in writing) is automatic, and gives me the right to be associated with my own work wherever it's used. Maybe it gives other privileges, maybe not- the one I care about is that I get to share stuff and be reasonably safe from having people copy it AND PRESENT IT AS THEIR WORK.
I bitterly resent any line of argument that suggests I must either forbid sharing, or accept total loss of ownership over my own work. That is _bullshit_ and goes against the spirit of copyright. Copyright means I _can_ share in good faith, and that people can copy and exchange my stuff a whole lot, and _still_ if someone tries to take CREDIT for my work and present it as their own, I have recourse. There is NO obligation on my part to prevent anyone from downloading my work, copying it, giving it to friends or whatever. I can allow people to trade my songs on Napster for decades and it doesn't mean the authorship of them is up for grabs. I can let people download my stories and post copies on their own web pages if I choose and that doesn't equate to my allowing them to claim authorship.
The funny thing is, posters like Vanbo ranting about Freenet never intend to create a situation where anything made public is legally 'authored' by whoever claims they authored it... they're attacked as if that's what they're doing, but they really haven't given a thought to that aspect because it never occurs to them that anybody _would_ go around laying claim to other people's work. Meanwhile these idiots on the other side are trying to imply that if you don't 'defend' your copyright against types of USE, it is meaningless- and that's a crock! Copyright is for life, you have to sign it away to lose it, copyright is automatic, and it is about your right to lay claim to the authorship of YOUR OWN work. The details of use are insignificant next to this...
Lars:
"What you have to remember is, it's only bands who are fortunate enough to be at the level that we're at that have the option of maybe circumventing the record companies and the retailer."
Hi Lars! Good to hear from you. Now, look at _this_:
mp3.com/ChrisJ Go there- and just for the sake of argument, pick up "Dragons" (a pretty innovative electronic album I did- you ought to appreciate the time signatures, nothing is 4/4. Plus the sound is fully professional)
Got it? Good. Lars, I just circumvented the record companies and the retailer- all without stepping on _your_ rights one bit. How's that grab you?
I'll be more specific- hope you guys get to read this, you're clearly sharp enough to understand what I'm telling you. Lars, the mp3.com contract is an experienced musician's wet dream- try comparing it to, say, farmclub.com's contract! You continue to own your music, and in fact you own the mechanicals. You get to back out and mp3.com LOSES license rights if you do, save only what they need to sell or use any existing materials (and they print to order, so there wouldn't be much of that). Here's a big one that you'd know about and not so many other people would be hip to- the mp3.com contract is subject to revision ONLY with the consent of both parties (I see you nodding your head, you'd know about contracts that are unilaterally changeable without consent of the artist- part of the 'being fucked' you mentioned).
But that's only part of it: Lars, I have a fan running around evangelising my music (especially that "Dragons" album) like crazy. I've put up some posters, and got hit with an unexpected 'rip fee' that caused them to cost about 30$: this is chicken feed. I've sold some CDs, and lots of people have downloaded my music. The equipment is my hobby and avocation- it's like a guitar player collecting guitars.
Lars, I've already broken even, in a very real sense. How long did it take you guys to recoup your advances when you were first signed? You're one of the few acts that ever manage to do that, and it's because the record companies are still stuck in the mindset where you drag people into billion-dollar studios and put the result through billion-dollar mastering houses, or you don't even do anything. With that mindset, it's no wonder most artists don't recoup their advances.
Well- I grew up (I'm 31) at the end of the era where mastering records was the realm of big rich companies. I saw the rise of home recording (shitty though it was- woohoo for cassette 4-tracks!;) ) and getting 1000 records pressed for 999$. And I watched as CDs were invented, initially so crappy, as digital recording became so widespread and the bloom went off the rose and people started trying to do better than the initial cruddy 'perfect sound forever' ripoff, and now it's 2000.
Let me tell you what I have at home, now. I'm still making payments on a 20-bit, 48Khz ADAT- eight-track recorder. It doesn't record on 50$ rolls of impossible-to-find reel-to-reel tape: it records on S-VHS cassettes that only run about $10 for 40 minutes of recording. I have plans for getting a CD-R burner- and borrow one when I need it badly enough. Blanks are a couple bucks absolute max. I print cheap art out on an inkjet printer- but to get serious, the local copy shop has a Color Laser Copier. Damn thing prints better than most glossy magazines, totally colorfast, and at just a dollar a copy plus a 14$ rip fee for when I bring them a disk with the CMYK separations on it, to use the copier as my own personal imagesetter...
Are you beginning to get the picture, Lars? This is all about your remark about circumventing the record companies and the retailer. The fact is, you and I are both old enough to remember when you couldn't produce anything but CRAP out of your home- xeroxed covers from paste-up artwork, having dual-cassette decks going 24/7, all that rot and the result always reeked of 'demo'.
But those days are GONE now. Yes, most musicians still don't have the expertise or resources or experience to put together a total package that rivals what the record companies (expensively) manage to put together. But dude- some of us do, and there will be more and more.
That leaves only distribution- and that's the easy part, there are a million 'e-businesses' dying to get anywhere _near_ the markup routinely charged by the music biz.
The fact is, Lars, everybody gets to circumvent the record companies and retailers now, and you don't even have to accept a loss in quality- DIY, or hire your own people who're good enough, and you're rolling. Copy shops are outputting printed paper as good or better than major label pressing houses. Project studios are kicking the asses of big mastering houses and 128-track monster studios (not hard- when the output media is only 16/44K). It didn't used to be that way as we both know, but now things are very different.
Good luck on getting free of your own record company entanglements- I own my masters, dunno if you guys own yours, and that could be a ball and chain for you. One thing that is very clear from hearing you out, is this: the record companies are _using_ you, man. They are letting you take all the heat for doing what _they_ want done, and they're not helping you, even. They should at least take responsibility for the fact that you're doing _their_ work. At least the old adage "no such thing as bad publicity" is still true! But you don't owe them any respect- I, like many people, expected that all this was driven by the record companies. Imagine my surprise to discover that, yes, they love seeing this happening, yes it's for their benefit, but they are letting a lot of people ruin you guys' reputation and they're not even SUPPORTING you? That's disgusting.
That changes things, for me. I have no gripe with you guys. My complaint is with the labels- my action is to MAKE MUSIC and put it out there without using them in the slightest way. Reading that the labels are letting you fight this whole fight on your own- it disgusts me. You're paying for the lawyers and stuff out of your own pockets? The labels are the primary beneficiaries, they've made God knows how much off you over the years, and they won't even cover the cost of a damn lawyer to protect _their_ interests? That's disgusting! You're being fucked- start making plans for what you're going to do when they no longer own your ass, that's all I can say.
Hope you like my tunes- feel free to make copies for your friends:)
Everybody always says 1$, but that's greatly exaggerated. Generally the contract requires that all recording and promotion costs be recouped out of that 1$ share before the artist sees any. So Sarah McLachlan gets to record in a fancy studio (seemingly at the expense of the label) but then has to pay off the whole $100 an hour bill out of her $1 share (minus 20% for shellac breakage fees etc- I'm not making this up- making it like 60 cents maybe) before she sees a cent of actual profit.
Bear that in mind when deciding whether to support major label artists. In many ways you'd help them better by sending them care packages of ramen noodles;P
However, the slashdot CODE does not support correctly typed closing 'a' tags which happen to be broken across two lines in the submission textbox o_O I went back and looked at the HTML I put in there, and it was (a href)(b)mp3.com/ChrisJ(/b)(/a) just as it should be. Slashdot ate the closing (/b) and for some reason Netscape is getting stuck on the underlining, making it even more silly looking;P
Maybe I'll not bother trying the daring and death defying 'b' tag next time. I am so 1333333T!1! Wait, let me try this:
Hey, be fair. Some slashdot readers download unsigned artists. I happen to have a way to track this- I have many albums available on mp3.com (best of a bad lot, sorry about their demands for email addresses) and can count the numbers of hits and downloads. For instance, watch this:
Now, when I don't do that all the fscking time and get way overexposed and become as familiar as hot grits, I usually get a nice heavy stats boost. It's not arbitrary- I have to have something to say on the Slashdot article for it to actually work. In this case, what I have to say is hey- Slashdot readers _do_ support 'open source' artists (I hate 'unsigned' as a label- sounds like you want to be signed- think of it as the equivalent in musical terms of 'microsoft-only shop', for a more clear picture of what that's about)
Maybe not lots and lots of Slashdot readers, maybe not even 200 Slashdot readers, but over 150 slashdot readers on some days do actually go looking for 'open source music', free MP3 stuff that's actually MEANT to be free. That might be a drop in the bucket but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing. I'm proud to be a slashdotter on those days- it's like taking a picture of how many slashdotters actually WILL turn away from the grossly corrupt 'traditional' music industry and start working with the actual artists, maybe helping them work out their plans for a RIAA-free future. We can't go out and make an RIAA-free future if nobody listens and understands what we're trying to do, and frankly slashdotters are some of the best-equipped people to understand this because of libre software, and because the typical slashdotter paranoia is actually totally relevant to understanding the traditional music industry o_O
As far as my own stuff- I have a weird but cool 'ambient from hell' album (Cirrus) that some of you might not have heard, and I'm working on one that's like "Dragons" only using electric bass and guitars more (making it quite the uncategorisable thing!). "Dragons" continues to get a lot of positive reviews, and I have this one terrific fan (guy who goes by the nick of Moses) who's been exhausting himself trying to get people to listen to and buy the Dragons album:) I feel bad that he has to try so hard, but I didn't ask him to do any of it so I just periodically try to cool him off saying "It's okay, I'm making music for the sake of the music- it doesn't have to be in the 'charts' (mp3.com style) for me to be happy!", and this might help.
Again, slashdotters DO support independent artists. Perhaps not constantly- other things like buying mountain dew for all night coding sessions might come first- but they do support us, I can track that sort of thing and Slashdot (when it feels like it) is always a comparatively huge surge of downloads and pageviews (which figures...) That does count as support, it is noticed, it is appreciated.:)
His comments to David Boies were _so_ hip they were like another level of the findings of fact- startled me even though I already expected him to be clued.
Boies: "We want to break them in two, that might be the easier path since they'll fight having IE broken off"
Jackson: "Are you kidding? Forget their response just for a second and think about what will provide maximum relief in a structural way (without lots of little regulations and overseeing). Nothing about this is going to be simple- hell, you could try to fine them 2$ and they'd take it to the Supreme Court. Quit pandering to what you think their lawyers would like and go for a real solution. There _is_ no softer path that they will consent to honorably cooperate with. Haven't you been listening all this time?"
*g*
I _love_ hearing this stuff. This judge is a smart cookie and understands Microsoft all too well. It's absolutely great to see how clearly he understands the situation in spite of the massive confusion, FUD and propaganda everywhere (even on Slashdot o_O )
Short form: Microsoft is guilty, they are unrepentant, they are pissed off and actively trying to do as much damage as possible, and they have the economy _hostage_. In no sense is that a worthy justifiable position deserving of being protected- so Jackson is not going to try and coddle them. But at the same time there has rarely been such a totally amoral, remorseless, psychotic and sociopathic corporate criminal- so Jackson is not going to try to negotiate with them in good faith.
GOOD. Negotiating in good faith doesn't work with Microsoft. Three cheers for Jackson and hopefully the heavy hints he dropped will be enough.
*hehe* I could point you towards other noise artists who literally were doing just that- cat something_or_other >/dev/snd:) personally, I think that's cool- some people have put a lot of effort into finding picture data or programs that sound neat when played as audio. That's not what binary is: binary is the performance of a shortwave radio picking up some sort of satellite, run through a homemade three-band compressor being played like an instrument:) all of the Hard Vacuum album will sound more or less like that, it's 'noise' music. If it had a beat or notes it wouldn't be noise music:) it's impossible to explain, if you like it good and if you don't then don't DL the other Hard Vacuum tracks or buy the CD:) You're gonna freak when you start listening to 'anima', that's just as different:) want a pointer to the guy on mp3.com who's doing noise music from raw computer data? That would be Monessen:)
Interesting stuff on the binaural beats! I am afraid I can't outright do music directly using this, as it is patented. However, some of my ambient stuff does similar things just by accident, so think of it as a milder version or something:)
Hope you don't think it's all like Stratus- I think that's going to continue to be a problem as I keep doing different sorts of albums:) as long as you don't mind the eclecticness you should have fun downloading stuff. Mind your head now;)
I agree with you about the bind we are in. There's just too much information out there to sort through... the thing is, the MTV/Top 40 approach fails horribly when confronted with a wide range of people. You can try to force all people into one mold, but it never completely works, it's artificial. It's more natural for people to form different opinions about things.
Tsk, don't read too much into that now! I said "IF THERE IS NO SUCH POINT". Do you honestly think this guy should accept ANY ACTIVITY from his superiors blindly and unquestioningly? I will accept if he has such a point, a "this has gone too far" point and simply has not been pushed to that point yet. However if he does NOT have such a point, if he would accept anything from MS, if his loyalty is that blind, then indeed he is not a nice person- I would hardly call that a person at all because I tend to assume that personhood involves having independent judgement.
Do you, yourself, feel there is a point at which you would quit a job because your employers were too corrupt for you to tolerate? Or is your reaction so strong because you yourself would tolerate any activity no matter how criminal from those who sign your paycheck? At any rate, quit jumping to those conclusions on behalf of konstant: I never said he wasn't nice, I said "IF x, y and z then you are not a nice person at all". It's not for me, or you, to decide what he would or wouldn't tolerate. Would he tolerate MS killing other businesses? Obstructing justice? Owning the President outright through bribery? Surely there is some point at which a person will say 'no, that's gone far enough'. If not... well, you know my opinion on the matter.
Slashdot Mirror
So they might as well keep the media stuff- they can go play with AOL/Time Warner *g* get used to the idea that they are allowed to still be slime, because the ruling _must_ restrict itself to the areas where MS is literally choking off all the air, and the venture capitalists are obliged to run every potential project by MS to see if it gets thumbs up and 'yawn, we will allow this to thrive- for a time' or thumbs down and 'I wouldn't- we're going to kill those people, don't invest in that'.
MS media is _far_ from that powerful. Hence, it can go wherever they think it should go, and best of luck to it. Very likely it will continue to struggle for some time- and it's no longer so feasible to dump money into that stuff financed by OS/Office revenues. Some of these things will have to start paying their own way- that is the point.
How can you expect them not to pay the consequences from a court case in which they fscking FAKED EVIDENCE (thank you, David Boies, for spotting that!) Are they special somehow for being allowed to make up whatever evidence they like in the courts of the United States of America, or does anybody get to lie in court with no consequences whatsoever? Or do you have to be able to buy presidential elections in order to be able to outrank the judicial system and make a fscking mockery of our laws?
Sorry, this is more important than techies at this point. They seriously went too far for my taste with some of those courtroom stunts. In some ways I am deeply unsatisfied with even the breakup and regulation because I seriously think some PEOPLE should be doing jail time- I'd like to see some of the people responsible for this arrogance jailed as felons. I don't think they deserve to be allowed to vote, I think they should spend the rest of their lives as convicted felons, with some of the privileges of citizenship DENIED them. I know several people who _are_ convicted felons who are more worthy citizens than the Microsoft brain trust.
If Valve and Interplay owned effectively _all_ of the game market, Sherman Act would apply to their working together so closely too. The fact is, it's so unnatural for something like that (Valve and Interplay owning 95% of games or so, nobody much even considering buying games from other vendors, 'nobody ever got fired for buying ValveAndInterplay') to happen, that it's hard to see how unnatural the Microsoft situation is. Does one car maker sell 95% of all cars? Does one soft drink vendor have 95% of the supermarket shelves and twist the arms of supermarkets to have veto power over anything in the supermarket, by threatening to withdraw their product?
When Valve and Interplay can work together so well that they can _break_ a computer software store simply by pulling all their products and leaving the store with empty shelves and nothing to put on them, _then_ I'll consider forbidding them to share information except in public.
Microsoft's been in that position for _years_ and the restriction is deeply justified. I personally would have been happy with just a *SLICE* "OK, now go about your business", but as we know, Microsoft lies, so the ruling _assumes_ that if you just went 'chop' and walked away, Microsoft would go 'florp' and join together again immediately, either clandestinely or right out in the open, and would _be_ still one company, with nothing changed.
It's a pity the ruling had to get into this stuff and make picky little regulations, but really- as if you could tell Microsoft "Okay, break up now! And be good and allow real competition to happen!" As if! So, since they are so deeply criminal, you have to oversee every little thing, because they are totally unrepentant.
*sigh* Hell, nuke 'em. Simplest solution :)
I suppose if you want to be really pedantic it's "Get sent evil content in such a way that it happens to be the first thing in your inbox, while you have the preview pane fully enabled, and if the evil content happens to be making use of the ActiveX controls that keep being improperly marked as safe for web use, your computer is toast- otherwise maybe it's just welcome to Melissa-land and here's hoping your friends like getting sent email viruses". But that takes so long to type ;)
I know if I was 'Conservative' I'd be asking some hard questions along the lines of 'just how much total contempt for our country and our country's legal system can I tolerate?'. It seems very reasonable to expect an attitude, from the arch-conservatives, of "Microsoft, I totally oppose the Sherman Act etc etc- but you are a _dick_, to hell with you people. I'm supposed to hold still while you fake evidence and don't even understand that you're on trial? While you try to screw over the government and cut funding for the DoJ? Oh, now you're going to _bribe_ me, that makes it soooo much better, sheesh! Don't you people understand you are acting with the arrogance and exact behavior and attitude of Mafiosi?"
Honestly, if you are going to think about the realities of the case you simply _must_ allow the government people, perhaps even the Presidential candidates, to be human- and to have _some_ sense of self-preservation. Publically aligning with a gang of renegade criminals is just not that great PR-wise. It doesn't look great on a resume.
People should not have been surprised when the judge had a clue and a brain and used both. People should not be surprised if the case goes before an archconservative appeals court- which can't be bought- and which upholds the decision, because unlike the 'separate IE' order, THIS time the foundation is in place.
Microsoft's utter hubris and stupidity in thinking they can fight, buy or intimidate _anything_, is going to hurt them bigtime through this process. Hell, these people are the same ones who _disbanded_ the Mac IE team and assigned them to WebTV (which sounds OS-ish, come to think of it!) They appear to be pursuing a scorched earth strategy- a "Let us have our way or we ALL die!" strategy. The tragedy is that things have gone far enough- and all they're doing now in their frantic attempts to make the breakup seem like a disaster for the economy and IT and the world- is making that the reality.
And the comedy of this is- they caused nearly as much damage and destruction by operating in good faith with their dumb notions of making computers so easy that people don't have to learn ANYTHING in order to use them. That approach is what gave us the email virus- which was once a _myth_. It gave us Bob and Clippy- and there are still community college courses for 'how to use a word processor'- they failed, and in the attempt made 90% of the world horribly vulnerable and impeded by hassle and stupidity.
So- the scorched earth won't actually be all that different...
I thought the fellow who created "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" wrote the Hellmouth series :)
Actually, the bigger proof of monopoly is that all the people who _don't_ use Windows... understand what that refers to.
- "I feel like using program X for a change"
- Thou Shalt Use No Other Program But Me
I mean, come _on_... can we have a little perspective here? We are talking about lock-in and single-sourcedness so intense that most people will say making choice is IMPOSSIBLE, if not MORALLY wrong even- and people are using "religion" to describe the _alternative_?What is so hard about establishing relationships with people and negotiating this sort of thing to establish means of doing business that are not so single-sourced?
I don't think he's a programmer but when asked in an interview, "Why do you have such a strong presence on mp3.com?" he answered "Because I am willing to waste away in front of the CRT for hours each day" :) That ought to count for something! Also, his style is geek-friendly: some rap sounds like Jocks, and Gentle is drastically more articulate, polysyllabic and creative than that, with a more relaxed, flowing delivery that first drew me to his music.
Again, just last night I uploaded four tracks to mp3.com/ChrisJ as part of this collaboration- they are just down from the top of the page, the ones that credit Gentle and have (experimental) in the name and 'parental advisory' on the track ;)
To hear what Gentle normally does (and also you can hear the vocal-only tracks that I added bebop-jazzesque music to), go to mp3.com/regularsizemon ster. I'm not a hip hop listener but I ended up liking lots of the tracks...
Now all we have to do is convince Gentle to geek out on Linux and programming a bit ;)
They are not stupid- they are _crazy_. I think you could safely call them psychotic, because their idea of how the world works is wildly at variance with reality. They not only think it would be capitalism's finest moment if they sold _all_ computer software (100% of the market), they also believe implicitly that they are morally entitled to override the government anytime they want. It's not stupidity that's caused their astonishing actions- it's hubris on a mind boggling scale. That is the reality. We're talking about people who respond to threats with "Okay, next let's buy a President and get the Supreme Court replaced" kind of thinking, without a _thought_ to how outrageous this seems to a normal person.
The trouble is, a license/EULA like this is like a blank check. It's like Unisys's patent on LZW GIFs and a rousing helping of "Don't be a fool, we're not going to charge for this! (until it's convenient for us to)". And that is the problem.
What the people at Apogee _think_ they're doing is not relevant. The terminology of the contract is what is binding, and UCITA makes it quite feasible to live up to the worst fears of panicking slashdotters- basically, the Apogee people can even believe themselves that they are only establishing rules for using IP on fan sites or whatever, but it's the actual contract terms that matter, and knowingly or not they've got a blank check for whatever abuses they might want to commit in future- basically it becomes a slamdunk to cripple anyone who gets in their way, under UCITA, not because they wrote the EULA that way but because it is TOO VAGUE about what is permissible. I would not want to trust that referring to their products negatively in a review is technically permissible- I think it would be very easy to make a case that it is not, going not by their intent but by the potentials in the terms of use which falls under contract law.
It is indeed one of the most heinous contracts I've ever seen- one interesting point is that if John Carmack wrote Apogee and said, "You suck! Quake (tm) is much better", Apogee would then own rights to make games using the Quake (tm) trademark, provided Carmack owned the trademark and was personally able to sign it away! Not only that, technically, if any IP was contained in the _sig_ of Carmack's letter, that too would become Apogee's to use. This would not be exclusive- Carmack would still own his IP- but under the agreement, any communication with Apogee gives them access to anything mentioned anywhere in the communication, to use for any purpose.
Lastly, regarding the repeated statements of Apogee people that "This is what we really mean, settle down": that's like a "Summary" section of a music business contract, legally completely irrelevant. I quote the terms exactly: "YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS AGREEMENT, UNDERSTAND IT, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY ITS TERMS AND CONDITIONS; YOU FURTHER AGREE THAT IT IS THE COMPLETE AND EXCLUSIVE STATEMENT OF THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APOGEE WHICH SUPERSEDES ANY PROPOSED OR PRIOR AGREEMENT, ORAL OR WRITTEN, AND ANY OTHER COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN YOU AND APOGEE RELATING TO YOUR USE OF THE WEB SITE." In other words- there is no point even talking to the Apogee people about this, much less listening to anything they say, because what they say is legally _meaningless_... only the terms apply, they could verbally outright contradict every last thing in the terms of use and it would still be binding.
Welcome to the world of the future. Enjoy your stay- and get used to READING every little detail of things like this, as literal-mindedly as a computer, and #ifdef "THIS SUPERSEDES ANY OTHER COMMUNICATION YOU MIGHT HEAR FROM COMPANY REPRESENTATIVES", reassurances > dev/null #endif. Legalstuff is like programming- what it says is what you get, not what you _think_ it says or what you want it to say or even what the author thought he was trying to say.
I saw the quicktime movie earlier and didn't see any significant evidence of shadows and light on the balls- lighting was very even, which also suggests use of one-poly 'balls'.
If I wanted to be really evil I'd draw _polygonal_ ping pong balls on the one-poly cards :) it's just a question of how subtle, and how evil, these guys were willing to be. If you draw the things perfectly round it's _obviously_ sprites. Making it a little polygonal would be elegantly misleading :)
One.
Just get a lot of sprites with that little 'x' facing in all directions, keep track of the 'rotation': if the X shows, choose the relevant sprite. If the X is facing away- always use a featureless blank ping-pong ball sprite.
Presto- all the ping pong balls can be ONE poly. Don't even waste your time looking at them and trying to figure how many polys it is! I suspect even if the demo is totally rigged the balls are _still_ one-poly cards drawing from a really large selection of sprites: this serves several purposes. One, the entire ping-pong ball load is about as much as one Quake model, and two, if they can get people trying to imagine how many polys make those 'round' ( ;) ) forms, they can get people imagining huge impossible poly counts.
Sprite cards are actually a damned good way to do 3D game programming- look at Myth and Myth II, the characters in that are all sprites on cards and it lets lots of activity be happening on relatively humble computers with good framerate- and allows more CPU to be used for terrain. However, used as a fraud, it's annoying :)
Look, I've just invented a game console that plugs into color PalmPilots to generate flightsims! Here is actual video footage taken off the PalmPilot's actual screen- this was generated by a PalmPilot in REAL TIME and you'll be able to fly combat missions against your friends on the Internet, while jotting down notes in Graffiti! (Do you believe FNORD! that?)
Maybe I'm taking a strange viewpoint, but to me, copyright is what _lets_ me do that with some assurance Seagram (for instance) can't take that material and say "We wrote this! Go pound sand". Copyright (at least in writing) is automatic, and gives me the right to be associated with my own work wherever it's used. Maybe it gives other privileges, maybe not- the one I care about is that I get to share stuff and be reasonably safe from having people copy it AND PRESENT IT AS THEIR WORK.
I bitterly resent any line of argument that suggests I must either forbid sharing, or accept total loss of ownership over my own work. That is _bullshit_ and goes against the spirit of copyright. Copyright means I _can_ share in good faith, and that people can copy and exchange my stuff a whole lot, and _still_ if someone tries to take CREDIT for my work and present it as their own, I have recourse. There is NO obligation on my part to prevent anyone from downloading my work, copying it, giving it to friends or whatever. I can allow people to trade my songs on Napster for decades and it doesn't mean the authorship of them is up for grabs. I can let people download my stories and post copies on their own web pages if I choose and that doesn't equate to my allowing them to claim authorship.
The funny thing is, posters like Vanbo ranting about Freenet never intend to create a situation where anything made public is legally 'authored' by whoever claims they authored it... they're attacked as if that's what they're doing, but they really haven't given a thought to that aspect because it never occurs to them that anybody _would_ go around laying claim to other people's work. Meanwhile these idiots on the other side are trying to imply that if you don't 'defend' your copyright against types of USE, it is meaningless- and that's a crock! Copyright is for life, you have to sign it away to lose it, copyright is automatic, and it is about your right to lay claim to the authorship of YOUR OWN work. The details of use are insignificant next to this...
Hi Lars! Good to hear from you. Now, look at _this_:
mp3.com/ChrisJ Go there- and just for the sake of argument, pick up "Dragons" (a pretty innovative electronic album I did- you ought to appreciate the time signatures, nothing is 4/4. Plus the sound is fully professional)
Got it? Good. Lars, I just circumvented the record companies and the retailer- all without stepping on _your_ rights one bit. How's that grab you?
I'll be more specific- hope you guys get to read this, you're clearly sharp enough to understand what I'm telling you. Lars, the mp3.com contract is an experienced musician's wet dream- try comparing it to, say, farmclub.com's contract! You continue to own your music, and in fact you own the mechanicals. You get to back out and mp3.com LOSES license rights if you do, save only what they need to sell or use any existing materials (and they print to order, so there wouldn't be much of that). Here's a big one that you'd know about and not so many other people would be hip to- the mp3.com contract is subject to revision ONLY with the consent of both parties (I see you nodding your head, you'd know about contracts that are unilaterally changeable without consent of the artist- part of the 'being fucked' you mentioned).
But that's only part of it: Lars, I have a fan running around evangelising my music (especially that "Dragons" album) like crazy. I've put up some posters, and got hit with an unexpected 'rip fee' that caused them to cost about 30$: this is chicken feed. I've sold some CDs, and lots of people have downloaded my music. The equipment is my hobby and avocation- it's like a guitar player collecting guitars.
Lars, I've already broken even, in a very real sense. How long did it take you guys to recoup your advances when you were first signed? You're one of the few acts that ever manage to do that, and it's because the record companies are still stuck in the mindset where you drag people into billion-dollar studios and put the result through billion-dollar mastering houses, or you don't even do anything. With that mindset, it's no wonder most artists don't recoup their advances.
Well- I grew up (I'm 31) at the end of the era where mastering records was the realm of big rich companies. I saw the rise of home recording (shitty though it was- woohoo for cassette 4-tracks! ;) ) and getting 1000 records pressed for 999$. And I watched as CDs were invented, initially so crappy, as digital recording became so widespread and the bloom went off the rose and people started trying to do better than the initial cruddy 'perfect sound forever' ripoff, and now it's 2000.
Let me tell you what I have at home, now. I'm still making payments on a 20-bit, 48Khz ADAT- eight-track recorder. It doesn't record on 50$ rolls of impossible-to-find reel-to-reel tape: it records on S-VHS cassettes that only run about $10 for 40 minutes of recording. I have plans for getting a CD-R burner- and borrow one when I need it badly enough. Blanks are a couple bucks absolute max. I print cheap art out on an inkjet printer- but to get serious, the local copy shop has a Color Laser Copier. Damn thing prints better than most glossy magazines, totally colorfast, and at just a dollar a copy plus a 14$ rip fee for when I bring them a disk with the CMYK separations on it, to use the copier as my own personal imagesetter...
Are you beginning to get the picture, Lars? This is all about your remark about circumventing the record companies and the retailer. The fact is, you and I are both old enough to remember when you couldn't produce anything but CRAP out of your home- xeroxed covers from paste-up artwork, having dual-cassette decks going 24/7, all that rot and the result always reeked of 'demo'.
But those days are GONE now. Yes, most musicians still don't have the expertise or resources or experience to put together a total package that rivals what the record companies (expensively) manage to put together. But dude- some of us do, and there will be more and more.
That leaves only distribution- and that's the easy part, there are a million 'e-businesses' dying to get anywhere _near_ the markup routinely charged by the music biz.
The fact is, Lars, everybody gets to circumvent the record companies and retailers now, and you don't even have to accept a loss in quality- DIY, or hire your own people who're good enough, and you're rolling. Copy shops are outputting printed paper as good or better than major label pressing houses. Project studios are kicking the asses of big mastering houses and 128-track monster studios (not hard- when the output media is only 16/44K). It didn't used to be that way as we both know, but now things are very different.
Good luck on getting free of your own record company entanglements- I own my masters, dunno if you guys own yours, and that could be a ball and chain for you. One thing that is very clear from hearing you out, is this: the record companies are _using_ you, man. They are letting you take all the heat for doing what _they_ want done, and they're not helping you, even. They should at least take responsibility for the fact that you're doing _their_ work. At least the old adage "no such thing as bad publicity" is still true! But you don't owe them any respect- I, like many people, expected that all this was driven by the record companies. Imagine my surprise to discover that, yes, they love seeing this happening, yes it's for their benefit, but they are letting a lot of people ruin you guys' reputation and they're not even SUPPORTING you? That's disgusting.
That changes things, for me. I have no gripe with you guys. My complaint is with the labels- my action is to MAKE MUSIC and put it out there without using them in the slightest way. Reading that the labels are letting you fight this whole fight on your own- it disgusts me. You're paying for the lawyers and stuff out of your own pockets? The labels are the primary beneficiaries, they've made God knows how much off you over the years, and they won't even cover the cost of a damn lawyer to protect _their_ interests? That's disgusting! You're being fucked- start making plans for what you're going to do when they no longer own your ass, that's all I can say.
Hope you like my tunes- feel free to make copies for your friends :)
Bear that in mind when deciding whether to support major label artists. In many ways you'd help them better by sending them care packages of ramen noodles ;P
Film at 11 ;)
Maybe I'll not bother trying the daring and death defying 'b' tag next time. I am so 1333333T!1! Wait, let me try this:
mp3.com/ChrisJ
Now, let's see if that got munged (bold _outside_ the href, and none of the tags are being bisected by the text box)
And now that I've proved I'm a fscking 1333T g33K- go listen to my g33K mUz1K *g*
mp3.com/ChrisJ
Now, when I don't do that all the fscking time and get way overexposed and become as familiar as hot grits, I usually get a nice heavy stats boost. It's not arbitrary- I have to have something to say on the Slashdot article for it to actually work. In this case, what I have to say is hey- Slashdot readers _do_ support 'open source' artists (I hate 'unsigned' as a label- sounds like you want to be signed- think of it as the equivalent in musical terms of 'microsoft-only shop', for a more clear picture of what that's about)
Maybe not lots and lots of Slashdot readers, maybe not even 200 Slashdot readers, but over 150 slashdot readers on some days do actually go looking for 'open source music', free MP3 stuff that's actually MEANT to be free. That might be a drop in the bucket but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing. I'm proud to be a slashdotter on those days- it's like taking a picture of how many slashdotters actually WILL turn away from the grossly corrupt 'traditional' music industry and start working with the actual artists, maybe helping them work out their plans for a RIAA-free future. We can't go out and make an RIAA-free future if nobody listens and understands what we're trying to do, and frankly slashdotters are some of the best-equipped people to understand this because of libre software, and because the typical slashdotter paranoia is actually totally relevant to understanding the traditional music industry o_O
As far as my own stuff- I have a weird but cool 'ambient from hell' album (Cirrus) that some of you might not have heard, and I'm working on one that's like "Dragons" only using electric bass and guitars more (making it quite the uncategorisable thing!). "Dragons" continues to get a lot of positive reviews, and I have this one terrific fan (guy who goes by the nick of Moses) who's been exhausting himself trying to get people to listen to and buy the Dragons album :) I feel bad that he has to try so hard, but I didn't ask him to do any of it so I just periodically try to cool him off saying "It's okay, I'm making music for the sake of the music- it doesn't have to be in the 'charts' (mp3.com style) for me to be happy!", and this might help.
Again, slashdotters DO support independent artists. Perhaps not constantly- other things like buying mountain dew for all night coding sessions might come first- but they do support us, I can track that sort of thing and Slashdot (when it feels like it) is always a comparatively huge surge of downloads and pageviews (which figures...) That does count as support, it is noticed, it is appreciated. :)
His comments to David Boies were _so_ hip they were like another level of the findings of fact- startled me even though I already expected him to be clued.
Boies: "We want to break them in two, that might be the easier path since they'll fight having IE broken off"
Jackson: "Are you kidding? Forget their response just for a second and think about what will provide maximum relief in a structural way (without lots of little regulations and overseeing). Nothing about this is going to be simple- hell, you could try to fine them 2$ and they'd take it to the Supreme Court. Quit pandering to what you think their lawyers would like and go for a real solution. There _is_ no softer path that they will consent to honorably cooperate with. Haven't you been listening all this time?"
*g*
I _love_ hearing this stuff. This judge is a smart cookie and understands Microsoft all too well. It's absolutely great to see how clearly he understands the situation in spite of the massive confusion, FUD and propaganda everywhere (even on Slashdot o_O )
Short form: Microsoft is guilty, they are unrepentant, they are pissed off and actively trying to do as much damage as possible, and they have the economy _hostage_. In no sense is that a worthy justifiable position deserving of being protected- so Jackson is not going to try and coddle them. But at the same time there has rarely been such a totally amoral, remorseless, psychotic and sociopathic corporate criminal- so Jackson is not going to try to negotiate with them in good faith.
GOOD. Negotiating in good faith doesn't work with Microsoft. Three cheers for Jackson and hopefully the heavy hints he dropped will be enough.
People have been saying that since Windows 95. Why should we start believing you now? o_O
*hehe* I could point you towards other noise artists who literally were doing just that- cat something_or_other > /dev/snd :) personally, I think that's cool- some people have put a lot of effort into finding picture data or programs that sound neat when played as audio. That's not what binary is: binary is the performance of a shortwave radio picking up some sort of satellite, run through a homemade three-band compressor being played like an instrument :) all of the Hard Vacuum album will sound more or less like that, it's 'noise' music. If it had a beat or notes it wouldn't be noise music :) it's impossible to explain, if you like it good and if you don't then don't DL the other Hard Vacuum tracks or buy the CD :) You're gonna freak when you start listening to 'anima', that's just as different :) want a pointer to the guy on mp3.com who's doing noise music from raw computer data? That would be Monessen :)
Interesting stuff on the binaural beats! I am afraid I can't outright do music directly using this, as it is patented. However, some of my ambient stuff does similar things just by accident, so think of it as a milder version or something :)
Hope you don't think it's all like Stratus- I think that's going to continue to be a problem as I keep doing different sorts of albums :) as long as you don't mind the eclecticness you should have fun downloading stuff. Mind your head now ;)
I agree with you about the bind we are in. There's just too much information out there to sort through... the thing is, the MTV/Top 40 approach fails horribly when confronted with a wide range of people. You can try to force all people into one mold, but it never completely works, it's artificial. It's more natural for people to form different opinions about things.
Do you, yourself, feel there is a point at which you would quit a job because your employers were too corrupt for you to tolerate? Or is your reaction so strong because you yourself would tolerate any activity no matter how criminal from those who sign your paycheck? At any rate, quit jumping to those conclusions on behalf of konstant: I never said he wasn't nice, I said "IF x, y and z then you are not a nice person at all". It's not for me, or you, to decide what he would or wouldn't tolerate. Would he tolerate MS killing other businesses? Obstructing justice? Owning the President outright through bribery? Surely there is some point at which a person will say 'no, that's gone far enough'. If not... well, you know my opinion on the matter.