Supply and demand comes into factor as well when you consider the decrease in produced CDs. As George Ziemann points out, you don't need to sell that many of the "missing" CDs in order to cover-up the sales loss.
As I see it, as supply drops the RIAA will increase CD prices to maintain a net gain. However, it'll come to a point, or already has come to that point, where the cost is too high and demand is too low in order have consumers justifying to themselves to buy that Re-Mixed, Ultra-Quality, same-album-they-bought-six-months-ago-with-one-new -song.
But it's still interesting how much more efficient and finely-tuned the music industry is.. in fact we are starting to see the music industry trying to regulate the computer industry!
RIAA = The older brother of the software industry's EULA? Considering 110% of all complaints about illegal music distribution is stemmed from the internet, I wonder if the RIAA will try to take control of the software industry. Maybe the SIAA? (Software Industry Association of America)
"You also become a distribution source for illegal downloading of movies, music and more, which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie yourself."
Its not the law that comes to mind when I read this quote, its 'is it my fault my friend decided to put a virus on my computer while I was in the bathroom?'
Think about it. Gotta use the bathroom some time and some people aren't as savvy as you are when it comes to protecting ourselves from viruses.
"Sheilding" newbies from the "complexity" of different OS and desktop environments does them a disservice.
It would depend on who you're teaching really. We all know kids *snaps fingers* out do us in about half the time it took us to figure something out. But for pretty much anyone over the age of 30, theres generally a sharp decrease in learning capability when it comes to computers. We've all heard the stories of "mom accidently signing up for a cooking mailing list only to get spam" or "dad using the CD-Rom drive as a coffee cup holder and then spilling coffee on it."
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information to predict dropouts.... "All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success,"
I don't know about other high schools, but my high school had a system like that set up two years ago (2001). It was in everything, we had to log onto the library computers with our student IDs, sign up for our classes with them, and anyone in any computer class virtually had to memorize theirs. This isn't new, and the idea of 'tracking' students sounds like Bush's 'Leave no child behind' plan.
"From his Silicon Valley base he told BBC News Online: "There is no lock that can't be picked and our technology ensures that there is not a rock in the world you can hide under if you are sharing files. "
I don't think the real difficulty is finding the "offender" and then gathering the evidence, its the fact that they are indirectly attempting to crack the works of hundreds of thousands of different methods to encrypt files which is constantly being updated and more created. I mean think about it : nowadays we have companies virtually devoted to doing nothing but creating 'crack-free' methods of protecting files (bank accounts, credit card numbers, etc). Much like the "finding a needle in a haystack", what they are trying to do is "finding a needle with a drop of dried blood on the tip in a haystack".
Actually, I've seenen old Gameboy games (regular gameboy, not color, not advance) sold at $3 at my local EBGames store. Online you could probably buy a dozen for $5, assuming people even have them anymore and are willing to part with them.
Point noted though. Unless Sony decides to pull an X-Box on the handheld market (invest an insane amount of money and let it go to waste if necessary) Nintendo is going to turn the PSP into the NeoGeo Pocket Color-Part 2.
Basicly its like gambling. Everytime you gamble part of the money you lose get used to pay the dealer's salary. Admittly your concerns are correct, but will our few pennies (whats twenty dollars to the government?) actually be the deciding factor whether someone decides to accept a bribe and prevent the attack?
As for the FBI issue, unless you decide to be a big roller (more than $10000) you'll probably have a higher chance of sued by the RIAA than getting picked up by the FBI.
This is not a new concept and one thats slowly being adopted. I work for a small local business organization (the local chamber of commerce actually) and we use the same method to send and recieve e-mails.
(Being an intern) I was given the task of removing -every single e-mail that bounced- and removing it from our database. After the first 100 e-mails removed, its very easy to not notice the fact that a certain business either:
A) no longer has an e-mail address to send notices because you just removed it without getting a replacement one for it
B) you cannot find the business who's e-mail address keeps bouncing so you have a 'rogue' business in your database which cannot recieve notices
Either way, my business loses money since thats one less potential consumer. Or more accurately, "thats -over one hundred- less potential consumers" since the average amount of bounced e-mails recieved everytime we sent out a notice was roughly between or over 100~200. (When your Inbox has over 10000 messages when you start a job you don't keep count)
I think another contributing factor is due to advertisement methods on television. Answer this, in about 3 hours of watching television (say 5-8 PM, around prime time), how many commercials do you see which do NOT feature the use of loud music/sounds which serves only to steal your attention due to the loud noise?
On the internet, that would be considered a pop-up ad, and we all know we hate pop-up ads.
True fact : My (former) business teacher's brother is a manager for Dell and a few years ago, they transferred their entire customer support to India. Hence the reason why you're put on hold and transferred when you connect and why every one of the customer support people have 100% Indian accents and why none of them seem to know how our computer work.
Now you all know why Dell customer support sucks. They're half the time they don't even understand us/we don't even understand them. (Hence the reason why my friend had to spend 6 months calling Dell customer support back and forth trying to get his Dell laptop and Dell desktop to network properly.. only to have me set it up for him)
'I figure that the majority of/. users aren't buying many CDs,'
Thats because the majority of/. users are geeks. "We" don't buy CDs, "we" get one of our buddies to buy a copy, share it on FTP/server/whatever, and burn our own copies.
Result : One CD is sold to one/. user and ten other people use the same CD key (if applicable). Since its all close knit together within the group, no one notices it and no one raises the red flag on them. A friend of mine does that with an FTP group on the web but I don't know what actually goes on and I've known the guy for half my life. What are the chances of the RIAA or the government finding out about it?
Like others said, its for accounting reasons. There are some serious laws and some extremely confusing and annoying procedures to go through in accounting. I took (first year) accounting in high school and we learned about the Sales Journal, the General Journal, the Sales Reciept Journal, the General Ledger, the Accounts Recievable Journal, the Accounts Payable Journal, the Proof and Reconciliation Journal, the Work Sheet, the Balance Sheet, different Account Codes for each sub-catagory, and THEN we finally filed away the source sheet. If we added something to one sheet, we usually ended up writing it on three different other sheets. All that in first year Accounting in -high school-.
Ask any accounting student how many journals and ledgers there are and he'll punch you in the face. I didn't even include the facts that all accounting had to be double checked by a third party accountant, all accountants have to be CPAs (Certified Public Accountants) in order for the work to be accepted as valid, every month there has to be an end of the month summary of data to be submitted to the boss of the place, and other wonderful things you never hear about (never bother a CPA the week before taxes are due.)
Thats not the point. The point is the RIAA is going after petty users. Simple as that. Its not about free music, its about abuse of power that the RIAA is using.
IDSA/ESA = good if you're over the age of 18 and you have a steady job; in which case age catagories mean squat to you and you earn enough money to buy games legit.
IDSA/ESA = bad if you're under the age of 18 and you do not have a steady job (assuming your old enough to work legally); in which case 'T', 'M', and 'A' rated games are out of reach and scrounging up the average $50 for a game is difficult to impossible (unless you're a rich/spoiled kid).
'Personally, I couldn't care less. Sometimes I'll grab a few tunes off Gnutella or Usenet, or post a few albums. But I've stopped telling myself that file sharing will dramatically change the way the music industry works. If anything, it is the other way around: the music industry will do more to change the computing industry than vice versa.'
Thats not the point. The point is, the RIAA has been given the right and power to gain personal information and bring people to court for the mere use of having a P2P program on their computer and sharing/downloading just one file/song. Its not about changing the music industry, thats just the opinions of the Slashdot community, its about the music industry imposing its power over the people.
You just admit that you posted a few albums on the net. You're now liable for $750 to $150,000 PER SONG you posted, even if only one person downloaded it. Until I see you come forward and pay that kind of cash, I suggest you rethink how the RIAA is taking the piracy issue.
Obviously the Fourth of July weekend caused some serious fluctuation (I, personally, was not on the computer on the 4th and 5th at all) so Nielsen Net Ratings should be taken with a grain of salt, fine.
But answer this, why did Nielsen Net Ratings release this report and/or why did CNN report this without noting the Fourth of July fluctuation? Its one thing to with hold facts (this wasn't necessarily "lying") but its another appear slanted when, quoted from the company webpage, 'NetRatings, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTRT) provides the industry's global standard for Internet and digital media measurement and analysis, offering technology-driven Internet information solutions for media, advertising, ecommerce and financial companies which enable customers to make informed decisions regarding their Internet strategies.'
I donno about you guys, but with a stanted report without giving note to the fluctation would give me some serious doubts in believing reports by Nielsen Net Ratings as an investor.
URL of quote : http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/corp.jsp
Not to cast your question aside, personally I don't think so, but what I want to know is ; whos going to replace them? They're just co-founders so its not as obvious as losing some programmers. To be more specific about my question, whos going to be the 'public face' of Blizzard now that Bill Roper is gone?
The day companies begin to suffer for stamping out cheaters is the day Microsoft releases a Linux becomes mainstream and Mac's dominate the PC market.
To sum up this, virtually insane, attempt to blackmail Microsoft; I have to think this is motivated only by 'fanatical anti-Microsoft' people. Face it, pretty much EVERYONE here is anti-Microsoft. Who here has never wanted to take a shot at Bill Gates when Windows crashed and erased their 20-something page essay due the next day? But who here would -ACTUALLY- do it if they had the chance? Thats like shooting the president for raising taxes (which we all dream of doing).
Duh! Think about it. Isn't that the point? To kill P2P networks? They're not looking for revenue from lawsuits, all they want is to stop the file sharing. Make it so no one shares, the problem is solved.
The RIAA said its lawyers will file lawsuits initially against people with the largest collections of music files they can find online. U.S. copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person's computer, but Sherman said the RIAA will be open to settlement proposals from defendants.
$750 to $150,000 -per- song?! Jeez! Why not just make the offenders buy the RIAA a private airplane and fly it into the ground? Not about money? Shit, unless the defendant can get a good deal, you're looking at instant bankruptcy for 70+% of all offenders.
10 songs = $7,500. I make less than $7,500 in 6 months at my current job (minimum wage, full time). If I get sued right now (I have like 20-something mp3s), I'd be saying 'bye bye college, hello community college.'
If a comic was, presumably, successful to become a comic book in the first place, why would it turn into a web comic later on? Usually its the other way around, web comics doing well and then making the slow change to real life comic. Unless the real life comic wasn't making a profit, different area of discussion, then I can't see the logic of making a move like this.
I have heard of emulators for these systems: MAME, NES, Gameboy, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, several minor consoles and N64. I don't know of workable emulators for any console released in the past 10 years aside from the N64 (correct me if I'm wrong on this) - I've heard of projects for dreamcast and gamecube, but neither one actually works for anything significant yet.
Addition: the MSX, Jaguar, every Gameboy version (regular, color, advance), NeoGeo (though that -could- be considered MAME), PS1, Gamegear, and the Sega Master System along with others. Theres a whole slew of them out there, you just never hear about them because the system is either unpopular, too old, or it managed to pass by undetected. Check out www.zophar.net for some emulation news, though it doesn't actually host any of the emulators or roms so some links may be down.
Slashdot Mirror
As I see it, as supply drops the RIAA will increase CD prices to maintain a net gain. However, it'll come to a point, or already has come to that point, where the cost is too high and demand is too low in order have consumers justifying to themselves to buy that Re-Mixed, Ultra-Quality, same-album-they-bought-six-months-ago-with-one-new -song.
RIAA = The older brother of the software industry's EULA? Considering 110% of all complaints about illegal music distribution is stemmed from the internet, I wonder if the RIAA will try to take control of the software industry. Maybe the SIAA? (Software Industry Association of America)
Its not the law that comes to mind when I read this quote, its 'is it my fault my friend decided to put a virus on my computer while I was in the bathroom?'
Think about it. Gotta use the bathroom some time and some people aren't as savvy as you are when it comes to protecting ourselves from viruses.Apparently, yes. Alternative music2win?
It would depend on who you're teaching really. We all know kids *snaps fingers* out do us in about half the time it took us to figure something out. But for pretty much anyone over the age of 30, theres generally a sharp decrease in learning capability when it comes to computers. We've all heard the stories of "mom accidently signing up for a cooking mailing list only to get spam" or "dad using the CD-Rom drive as a coffee cup holder and then spilling coffee on it."
Is this article politically motivated?
Point noted though. Unless Sony decides to pull an X-Box on the handheld market (invest an insane amount of money and let it go to waste if necessary) Nintendo is going to turn the PSP into the NeoGeo Pocket Color-Part 2.
As for the FBI issue, unless you decide to be a big roller (more than $10000) you'll probably have a higher chance of sued by the RIAA than getting picked up by the FBI.
(Being an intern) I was given the task of removing -every single e-mail that bounced- and removing it from our database. After the first 100 e-mails removed, its very easy to not notice the fact that a certain business either :
- A) no longer has an e-mail address to send notices because you just removed it without getting a replacement one for it
Either way, my business loses money since thats one less potential consumer. Or more accurately, "thats -over one hundred- less potential consumers" since the average amount of bounced e-mails recieved everytime we sent out a notice was roughly between or over 100~200. (When your Inbox has over 10000 messages when you start a job you don't keep count)B) you cannot find the business who's e-mail address keeps bouncing so you have a 'rogue' business in your database which cannot recieve notices
On the internet, that would be considered a pop-up ad, and we all know we hate pop-up ads.
Now you all know why Dell customer support sucks. They're half the time they don't even understand us/we don't even understand them. (Hence the reason why my friend had to spend 6 months calling Dell customer support back and forth trying to get his Dell laptop and Dell desktop to network properly.. only to have me set it up for him)
Thats because the majority of /. users are geeks. "We" don't buy CDs, "we" get one of our buddies to buy a copy, share it on FTP/server/whatever, and burn our own copies.
Result : One CD is sold to oneIf I was to print out the lyrics and the musical notes to a song I downloaded off the net, would that be "theft"?
Ask any accounting student how many journals and ledgers there are and he'll punch you in the face. I didn't even include the facts that all accounting had to be double checked by a third party accountant, all accountants have to be CPAs (Certified Public Accountants) in order for the work to be accepted as valid, every month there has to be an end of the month summary of data to be submitted to the boss of the place, and other wonderful things you never hear about (never bother a CPA the week before taxes are due.)
Thats not the point. The point is the RIAA is going after petty users. Simple as that. Its not about free music, its about abuse of power that the RIAA is using.
IDSA/ESA = good if you're over the age of 18 and you have a steady job; in which case age catagories mean squat to you and you earn enough money to buy games legit.
IDSA/ESA = bad if you're under the age of 18 and you do not have a steady job (assuming your old enough to work legally); in which case 'T', 'M', and 'A' rated games are out of reach and scrounging up the average $50 for a game is difficult to impossible (unless you're a rich/spoiled kid).Take your pick.
Thats not the point. The point is, the RIAA has been given the right and power to gain personal information and bring people to court for the mere use of having a P2P program on their computer and sharing/downloading just one file/song. Its not about changing the music industry, thats just the opinions of the Slashdot community, its about the music industry imposing its power over the people.
You just admit that you posted a few albums on the net. You're now liable for $750 to $150,000 PER SONG you posted, even if only one person downloaded it. Until I see you come forward and pay that kind of cash, I suggest you rethink how the RIAA is taking the piracy issue.But answer this, why did Nielsen Net Ratings release this report and/or why did CNN report this without noting the Fourth of July fluctuation? Its one thing to with hold facts (this wasn't necessarily "lying") but its another appear slanted when, quoted from the company webpage, 'NetRatings, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTRT) provides the industry's global standard for Internet and digital media measurement and analysis, offering technology-driven Internet information solutions for media, advertising, ecommerce and financial companies which enable customers to make informed decisions regarding their Internet strategies.'
I donno about you guys, but with a stanted report without giving note to the fluctation would give me some serious doubts in believing reports by Nielsen Net Ratings as an investor.URL of quote : http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/corp.jsp
The day companies begin to suffer for stamping out cheaters is the day Microsoft releases a Linux becomes mainstream and Mac's dominate the PC market.
To sum up this, virtually insane, attempt to blackmail Microsoft; I have to think this is motivated only by 'fanatical anti-Microsoft' people. Face it, pretty much EVERYONE here is anti-Microsoft. Who here has never wanted to take a shot at Bill Gates when Windows crashed and erased their 20-something page essay due the next day? But who here would -ACTUALLY- do it if they had the chance? Thats like shooting the president for raising taxes (which we all dream of doing).
The RIAA said its lawyers will file lawsuits initially against people with the largest collections of music files they can find online. U.S. copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person's computer, but Sherman said the RIAA will be open to settlement proposals from defendants.
$750 to $150,000 -per- song?! Jeez! Why not just make the offenders buy the RIAA a private airplane and fly it into the ground? Not about money? Shit, unless the defendant can get a good deal, you're looking at instant bankruptcy for 70+% of all offenders.10 songs = $7,500. I make less than $7,500 in 6 months at my current job (minimum wage, full time). If I get sued right now (I have like 20-something mp3s), I'd be saying 'bye bye college, hello community college.'
If a comic was, presumably, successful to become a comic book in the first place, why would it turn into a web comic later on? Usually its the other way around, web comics doing well and then making the slow change to real life comic. Unless the real life comic wasn't making a profit, different area of discussion, then I can't see the logic of making a move like this.
You missed Final Fantasy. We all know how bad THAT came out to be.
Addition: the MSX, Jaguar, every Gameboy version (regular, color, advance), NeoGeo (though that -could- be considered MAME), PS1, Gamegear, and the Sega Master System along with others. Theres a whole slew of them out there, you just never hear about them because the system is either unpopular, too old, or it managed to pass by undetected. Check out www.zophar.net for some emulation news, though it doesn't actually host any of the emulators or roms so some links may be down.