I'm an iPod owner, who has avoided iTunes since launch due to my hatred of DRM. Tonight, I shall buy my first albums from them.
I'm hoping that when they dissect the log files from iTunes over the next few days they'll see an awful lot of non-iTunes client downloads. Whilst Apple can't condone this, it would be nice if they could go to the record labels and say without DRM we sold x many hundre thousand more tracks.
An other interesting point is this. The argument for DRM is that without it we'll all start copying music amongst ourselves. Surely if this was a case, with Apple leaking de-DRM'd music into the world, P2P and other piracy should immediately ramp up now (and I suspect it won't).
"The survey participants were randomly selected from a pool of visitors to various game-related websites."
Any chance of a list of which websites? Any chance to actually see the questionaire? I really really hate it when these pseudo-scientific adverts are presented without providing any backing. I understand most people aren't interested, but there's no reason the down and dirty info can't be linked off the shock and awe press release.
Personally speaking (and I suspect I'm not alone) I have a load of consoles around my house, all chipped, or 'opened' (apart from the PSP and DS).
I've got every console I've owned chipped as soon as I was able to. It's not a matter of wanting 'free' games, it's my urge to make the device as functional as possible. You buy your console and it does X, you chip it and it does X plus a bit more. The world's full of millions of these damn consoles, all uniform in their ability/appearance. You just have the urge to get a little bit more than the next guy - the commoner you can look down upon.
My PS2 was nice, but I bought into DVD when it started off and US imports had the latest films, different cuts and lower prices. How f'in annoying was it to be only able to play back 2/3rds of your film collection? When MGS came out in the US months and months before the UK, why on earth should I sit twiddling my thumbs before I can play it?
For the Xbox it's the wonders of Media Centre - Now there's no reason MS couldn't have released something similar, but they didn't. It's out there, I want it and I need a mod chip to make it happen.
To sum up my ramblings, a large number of people don't mod purely to pirate. They mod to 'free' their console of all the artificial restrictions that've been forced upon it. Somebody pushes you, your first instinct is to push back.
This is what Macrovision is fighting. The consoles have copy protection and most people happily live their lives with it. A minority are opposed to it, you know they are, they've spent an evening swearing at it whilst clutching a soldering iron. You're not going to make them stop, you just enter an escalating race against them. New protection followed by new patch/chip/technique. It's got personal and I'm not going to let Macrovision stop me.
PSP seems to be a bit of an advance, you need to buy games for it, but it plays movies, I can just stick the card from my camera into it, it's region free for games, seemingly it'll synch with the new PSX. I'm just curious to see if my theory holds out, will it be less of a target for hackers due to it's higher original functionality.
Fortunately MS is a champion of flip-flopping
on
Apple Backs Blu-ray
·
· Score: 1
in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing. BluRay is the better format without doubt and the longer this drags on the more obvious the difference between the formats will become.
We can expect and MS back BluRay with their new WMV codec any day soon.
I am merely pointing out that for what they charge, they can catalogue and distribute music.
I believe their current rate is $0.02 a meg.
Apple I believe gets 30-35% of the 99c paid for a tune.
So ($0.02/32.5)*100 = $0.0612
So if allofmp3.com paid the same % royalty as iTunes, then I could have music for 6cents a meg.
The reason this is never going to happen, is because the music industry doesn't believe I'll download 10x more music at that price.
....is it is NEVER as cheap as free.
Not true at all. You forgot to factor in laziness (or convenience as marketing will rename it).
I used to buy CDs and kazaa for the rest.
Now I buy CDs and allofmp3 for the rest.
Why? - Because I can't be arsed trawling through page after page, wasting hour after hour to get the music I'm after - which will undoubtedly be the wrong format or poor quality or some such quibble.
Convenience has a price, that's why people are still buying CDs and DVDs - they don't have the ability/inclination to download and I assure you it's just out of respect for copyright law.
The price of convenience differs from person to person. Student is time and ability rich, but cash poor. Middle management is time and ability (well usually) poor, but cash rich. Hence one downloads whilst the other buys.
What the industry has to do is shift the price point to a position where it maximises their profits - I suspect it's downwards, but 5c does seem a little 'plucked from the air'.
One way to look at it might be printed media. Books, magazines, newspapers - all words on pages, but orders of magnitude different in price. The newspaper has the largest staff, the most tight deadline on distribution, the highest costs in general - yet it's by order of magnitude the cheapest thing to buy. Why? Because it sells millions of copies and does so repeatedly every day. Price is so low you just buy it without reading it fist. People don't think about it. Don't look in their wallet and realise it's empty because they bought a newspaper.
That's what we need from music.
It was just a reference to the technical distribution system. There's the breakdown of why iTunes tunes cost 99c that knocks about, somebody'll have already posted it in this topic I'm sure. I was merely trying to point out that if we exclude payments to the copyright holder for a moment, it can be done much cheaper/better.
In an ideal world allofmp3 would charge a bit more and pay the artist&label - and I'd happily pay it. Unfortunately it's not possible as the labels dogmatically stick to the view that the piece of data should cost approximately the same as a physical CD.
allofmp3.com is a resonably well known quasi-legal outfit selling music, by the meg in whatever format/bitrate you want. Downside with it is that currently money isn't making it's way to the creators of it.
The service is cheap, but with economies of scale, could obviously get cheaper. Stick a % cost onto the tracks for artist royalties and you've got something which completely disproves the theory that you can't get much lower than 99c. It's there, it's working.
We should ban dogs as well, don't want another Son of Sam situation on our hands.
We already have laws for murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder etc.
I'm also a little bit confused about what you've said. You want to diminish the responsibility of the neighbour? It wasn't his fault (the poor thing) some evil person told him to do it?
I really loathe laws that are to 'protect the vulnerable - not me you understand'.
People objecting to pornography, violence on TV. Sex education in schools etc etc. It's always to protect other people from corruption. Who are these mythical people, with cheese for brains? Nobody ever demands it's removal to protect themselves.
"Think of the children" blah blah
My situation was slightly different, I'd obtained a BSc in Biochemistry, but decided I'd loathe a career in that industry. I took a 1 year MRes in bioinformatics, the intention being that I'd end up with a piece of paper saying I could use a computer and it didn't look like I'd wasted my time doing my degree.
What I learnt:
Do something different for your next degree. The world is full of people who have a CS degree and then an MBA *yawn*. Choose a field you're interested in working in and find an M*** that is appropriate. CS can be applied to all manner of fields - your skills will be wanted and if you remain straight CS then you'll end up as a java monkey in come corporate bodyshop. This is not good. Java monkey's are easy replaced and always tricky to explain why you're special/better than the others.
My MRes was basically a mini phd with tutorials. I was chose a topic at the start of the year and at the end I handed in a paper. First time I'd ever had to force myself to work, find people in different departments to provide information, convince people to help me. Helped me pick up all the soft skills you need in the workplace dealing with the evil within and without (emplyers/clients).
I know you can put a whole OS on, but the drive as has been mentioned isn't really fast enough for that. I was thinking more along the lines of:
Apple now have a pretty complete suite of apps and you could chuck in office. A world full of auto updating mini machines with the basic suite and OS, the data on which couldn't be updated by a user. Your ipod would contain the users documents/music/email/email logins/other apps etc. I'm not really a Mac person, but was thinking along the lines of your user folder on an XP machine.
but it's a nice little hard drive with a nice fast connection on it you can carry about with you.
Feel free to shoot my down if I'm spouting gibberish, but maybe you could carry your desktop around on your iPod?
Imagine a world with tiny Mac minis dotted about the place. Don't lug your laptop into Starbucks, just drop in your ipod the slot and whoosh, it's your PC.
Maybe you're strolling through town and fancy some music, just pop your ipod into a public mac mini and stick a couple of iTunes albums on.
You've got an ipod. You've built a desktop on it when you stumbled in for a coffee one day, why not buy a mac for your house as well?
Basically, the ipod's pretty dumb by itself, but can hold a lot of your personal data. Drop it into any mac mini and suddenly it could be your machine.
They've photographed storefronts - things you'd see yourself walking up and down a street. Now unless the secret terrorist targets are listing themselves in the yellow pages (is there even a section for secret terrorist targets)? I fail to see, sorry I can't even argue again your point, so vague and vacuous it appears to be.
In 1999 he gave $5bn to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ and in an interview around that time in the Washington Post, it was reported that 90% of his assets will be transfered to the foundation on his and his wife's death.
That's an awful lot of money and none of it tied to any government or political doctrine. Innoculating children seems a particularly altruistic gesture as well. It's not like building a statue or a museum where there is a reminder of the donation left behind. Vaccinations save lives, but nobody'll ever notice their not catching a disease, or even having the jab.
Whatever your personal views of MS and Bill. He's taken a huge pile of cash from rich corporations and individuals and given it to people who need it - just be happy a good thing happened for once.
"This book contains material on Creationism. Creationism is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
I was considering also adding a note to indicate that "The Bible has been neither peer reviewed, nor have any attempts by other messiahs to replicate the miracles contained within been successful"
People who dislike online adverts don't click on them.
People who dislike online adverts try to block them.
Expressing surprise at the correlation between users who dislike adverts and use software that blocks them isn't the world's greatest leap.
but what degree you get is basically not that important. It might get you an interview, but from then on you're on your own.
I did I biochem degree, decided it really wasn't for me and did a bioinformatics masters - and then randomly ended up getting a job doing telco/IT consultancty (and I'm still here 4 years down the line). I went to a careers fair and gave CV to pharma company. Stand next to it asked for my CV, then offered a phone interview (which I thought would be good practice), then offered proper interview (again practice) and then offered me a real job - with real money.
I think the specifics of a degree aren't too important. Every company will try to mold you into what they require. You just need to demonstrate you have a decent intellect, can adapt and improve, and the world's your f'in oyster.
I'd stick with whatever actually interests you. Something that might be worth considering is associating yourself with something that will get employers interest. In my company at least new potentials are interviewed by their potential peers - nice normal vaguely geeky people who hate the whole HR thing and will love somebody they can have a geeky little chat with. They'll have to work with you and there are quite enough vacuously boring people in the world.
of course you can control MS if you want. Screen to see if you're a carrier and then either abstain, adopt or abort. Stop being a judgemental cunt anyway.
a couple of companies already do similar things with SMS (and have done so for years). For example in the UK theres an online retailer that sells electrical goods online. If you're out shopping and see something, you can SMS them the model number and they'll send you back their price.
I've only ever bought one thing from them, but it's just nice to use it to reassure yourself you're not being completely ripped off buying soemthing on the High Street.
Amazon's barcode reading functionality is very nifty I'm sure, but surely it'd be cheaper, faster, more discrete and less error-prone, just to type in the Book title or ISBN.
After your nefarious actions my gay 14 year old son was redirected towards a Pop Idol site and has turned quite banal. His mother is currently sobbing with shame at the trite, pre-packaged and artistically shallow lyrics he is now often found to be singing around the house. I can no longer even look my neighbours in the eye after they complained he was playing some auto-tuned squawker on his stereo as he washed my car last week.
yours,
a distraught father.
I can see why they did what they did and I can see that it's probably prevented a huge number of complaints etc etc
However.
The site that sprang up when they punched in the.com URL was NOT the one that is supposed to come up (the content of the site doesn't matter a jot). What we have here is a precedent where an ISP has decided not to show you the page you asked for, but rather the page they thought you should look at - and without telling you.
Maybe a slightly better solution would have been to tick up a page stating the cock-up with the printed URL, that this was a temporary measure and asking whether you wished to go to the.com or.com.au site.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that this (although done for innocent reasons I'm sure) is worse than chinese-style site blocking. Imagine if you tried to look for something mildy subversive and your friendly big-brother ISP quietly substituted it for propaganda (and you never realised).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an iPod owner, who has avoided iTunes since launch due to my hatred of DRM. Tonight, I shall buy my first albums from them.
I'm hoping that when they dissect the log files from iTunes over the next few days they'll see an awful lot of non-iTunes client downloads. Whilst Apple can't condone this, it would be nice if they could go to the record labels and say without DRM we sold x many hundre thousand more tracks.
An other interesting point is this. The argument for DRM is that without it we'll all start copying music amongst ourselves. Surely if this was a case, with Apple leaking de-DRM'd music into the world, P2P and other piracy should immediately ramp up now (and I suspect it won't).
"The survey participants were randomly selected from a pool of visitors to various game-related websites."
Any chance of a list of which websites? Any chance to actually see the questionaire? I really really hate it when these pseudo-scientific adverts are presented without providing any backing. I understand most people aren't interested, but there's no reason the down and dirty info can't be linked off the shock and awe press release.
Personally speaking (and I suspect I'm not alone) I have a load of consoles around my house, all chipped, or 'opened' (apart from the PSP and DS).
I've got every console I've owned chipped as soon as I was able to. It's not a matter of wanting 'free' games, it's my urge to make the device as functional as possible. You buy your console and it does X, you chip it and it does X plus a bit more. The world's full of millions of these damn consoles, all uniform in their ability/appearance. You just have the urge to get a little bit more than the next guy - the commoner you can look down upon.
My PS2 was nice, but I bought into DVD when it started off and US imports had the latest films, different cuts and lower prices. How f'in annoying was it to be only able to play back 2/3rds of your film collection? When MGS came out in the US months and months before the UK, why on earth should I sit twiddling my thumbs before I can play it?
For the Xbox it's the wonders of Media Centre - Now there's no reason MS couldn't have released something similar, but they didn't. It's out there, I want it and I need a mod chip to make it happen.
To sum up my ramblings, a large number of people don't mod purely to pirate. They mod to 'free' their console of all the artificial restrictions that've been forced upon it.
Somebody pushes you, your first instinct is to push back.
This is what Macrovision is fighting. The consoles have copy protection and most people happily live their lives with it. A minority are opposed to it, you know they are, they've spent an evening swearing at it whilst clutching a soldering iron. You're not going to make them stop, you just enter an escalating race against them. New protection followed by new patch/chip/technique. It's got personal and I'm not going to let Macrovision stop me.
PSP seems to be a bit of an advance, you need to buy games for it, but it plays movies, I can just stick the card from my camera into it, it's region free for games, seemingly it'll synch with the new PSX. I'm just curious to see if my theory holds out, will it be less of a target for hackers due to it's higher original functionality.
in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing. BluRay is the better format without doubt and the longer this drags on the more obvious the difference between the formats will become.
We can expect and MS back BluRay with their new WMV codec any day soon.
http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st =b&na=88&View=en-us&qu=bluray
results = 0
I am merely pointing out that for what they charge, they can catalogue and distribute music. /32.5)*100 = $0.0612
I believe their current rate is $0.02 a meg.
Apple I believe gets 30-35% of the 99c paid for a tune.
So ($0.02
So if allofmp3.com paid the same % royalty as iTunes, then I could have music for 6cents a meg.
The reason this is never going to happen, is because the music industry doesn't believe I'll download 10x more music at that price.
....is it is NEVER as cheap as free.
Not true at all. You forgot to factor in laziness (or convenience as marketing will rename it).
I used to buy CDs and kazaa for the rest.
Now I buy CDs and allofmp3 for the rest.
Why? - Because I can't be arsed trawling through page after page, wasting hour after hour to get the music I'm after - which will undoubtedly be the wrong format or poor quality or some such quibble.
Convenience has a price, that's why people are still buying CDs and DVDs - they don't have the ability/inclination to download and I assure you it's just out of respect for copyright law.
The price of convenience differs from person to person. Student is time and ability rich, but cash poor. Middle management is time and ability (well usually) poor, but cash rich. Hence one downloads whilst the other buys.
What the industry has to do is shift the price point to a position where it maximises their profits - I suspect it's downwards, but 5c does seem a little 'plucked from the air'.
One way to look at it might be printed media. Books, magazines, newspapers - all words on pages, but orders of magnitude different in price. The newspaper has the largest staff, the most tight deadline on distribution, the highest costs in general - yet it's by order of magnitude the cheapest thing to buy. Why? Because it sells millions of copies and does so repeatedly every day. Price is so low you just buy it without reading it fist. People don't think about it. Don't look in their wallet and realise it's empty because they bought a newspaper.
That's what we need from music.
It was just a reference to the technical distribution system.
There's the breakdown of why iTunes tunes cost 99c that knocks about, somebody'll have already posted it in this topic I'm sure. I was merely trying to point out that if we exclude payments to the copyright holder for a moment, it can be done much cheaper/better.
In an ideal world allofmp3 would charge a bit more and pay the artist&label - and I'd happily pay it. Unfortunately it's not possible as the labels dogmatically stick to the view that the piece of data should cost approximately the same as a physical CD.
allofmp3.com is a resonably well known quasi-legal outfit selling music, by the meg in whatever format/bitrate you want. Downside with it is that currently money isn't making it's way to the creators of it.
The service is cheap, but with economies of scale, could obviously get cheaper. Stick a % cost onto the tracks for artist royalties and you've got something which completely disproves the theory that you can't get much lower than 99c. It's there, it's working.
We should ban dogs as well, don't want another Son of Sam situation on our hands.
We already have laws for murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder etc.
I'm also a little bit confused about what you've said. You want to diminish the responsibility of the neighbour? It wasn't his fault (the poor thing) some evil person told him to do it?
I really loathe laws that are to 'protect the vulnerable - not me you understand'.
People objecting to pornography, violence on TV. Sex education in schools etc etc. It's always to protect other people from corruption. Who are these mythical people, with cheese for brains? Nobody ever demands it's removal to protect themselves.
"Think of the children" blah blah
and if they'd been around anybody with depression, they'd know they don't just go "Oh I'm depressed, but I know it'll pass"
My situation was slightly different, I'd obtained a BSc in Biochemistry, but decided I'd loathe a career in that industry.
I took a 1 year MRes in bioinformatics, the intention being that I'd end up with a piece of paper saying I could use a computer and it didn't look like I'd wasted my time doing my degree.
What I learnt:
Do something different for your next degree. The world is full of people who have a CS degree and then an MBA *yawn*. Choose a field you're interested in working in and find an M*** that is appropriate. CS can be applied to all manner of fields - your skills will be wanted and if you remain straight CS then you'll end up as a java monkey in come corporate bodyshop. This is not good. Java monkey's are easy replaced and always tricky to explain why you're special/better than the others.
My MRes was basically a mini phd with tutorials. I was chose a topic at the start of the year and at the end I handed in a paper. First time I'd ever had to force myself to work, find people in different departments to provide information, convince people to help me. Helped me pick up all the soft skills you need in the workplace dealing with the evil within and without (emplyers/clients).
I know you can put a whole OS on, but the drive as has been mentioned isn't really fast enough for that. I was thinking more along the lines of:
Apple now have a pretty complete suite of apps and you could chuck in office. A world full of auto updating mini machines with the basic suite and OS, the data on which couldn't be updated by a user. Your ipod would contain the users documents/music/email/email logins/other apps etc. I'm not really a Mac person, but was thinking along the lines of your user folder on an XP machine.
but it's a nice little hard drive with a nice fast connection on it you can carry about with you. Feel free to shoot my down if I'm spouting gibberish, but maybe you could carry your desktop around on your iPod? Imagine a world with tiny Mac minis dotted about the place. Don't lug your laptop into Starbucks, just drop in your ipod the slot and whoosh, it's your PC. Maybe you're strolling through town and fancy some music, just pop your ipod into a public mac mini and stick a couple of iTunes albums on. You've got an ipod. You've built a desktop on it when you stumbled in for a coffee one day, why not buy a mac for your house as well? Basically, the ipod's pretty dumb by itself, but can hold a lot of your personal data. Drop it into any mac mini and suddenly it could be your machine.
They've photographed storefronts - things you'd see yourself walking up and down a street. Now unless the secret terrorist targets are listing themselves in the yellow pages (is there even a section for secret terrorist targets)? I fail to see, sorry I can't even argue again your point, so vague and vacuous it appears to be.
In 1999 he gave $5bn to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ and in an interview around that time in the Washington Post, it was reported that 90% of his assets will be transfered to the foundation on his and his wife's death. That's an awful lot of money and none of it tied to any government or political doctrine. Innoculating children seems a particularly altruistic gesture as well. It's not like building a statue or a museum where there is a reminder of the donation left behind. Vaccinations save lives, but nobody'll ever notice their not catching a disease, or even having the jab. Whatever your personal views of MS and Bill. He's taken a huge pile of cash from rich corporations and individuals and given it to people who need it - just be happy a good thing happened for once.
to attach to the front of all bibles.
"This book contains material on Creationism. Creationism is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
I was considering also adding a note to indicate that
"The Bible has been neither peer reviewed, nor have any attempts by other messiahs to replicate the miracles contained within been successful"
and projected power decimated."
A spokesman said Steve would only use the white bits of Lego.
People who dislike online adverts don't click on them.
People who dislike online adverts try to block them.
Expressing surprise at the correlation between users who dislike adverts and use software that blocks them isn't the world's greatest leap.
but what degree you get is basically not that important. It might get you an interview, but from then on you're on your own. I did I biochem degree, decided it really wasn't for me and did a bioinformatics masters - and then randomly ended up getting a job doing telco/IT consultancty (and I'm still here 4 years down the line). I went to a careers fair and gave CV to pharma company. Stand next to it asked for my CV, then offered a phone interview (which I thought would be good practice), then offered proper interview (again practice) and then offered me a real job - with real money. I think the specifics of a degree aren't too important. Every company will try to mold you into what they require. You just need to demonstrate you have a decent intellect, can adapt and improve, and the world's your f'in oyster. I'd stick with whatever actually interests you. Something that might be worth considering is associating yourself with something that will get employers interest. In my company at least new potentials are interviewed by their potential peers - nice normal vaguely geeky people who hate the whole HR thing and will love somebody they can have a geeky little chat with. They'll have to work with you and there are quite enough vacuously boring people in the world.
of course you can control MS if you want. Screen to see if you're a carrier and then either abstain, adopt or abort. Stop being a judgemental cunt anyway.
a couple of companies already do similar things with SMS (and have done so for years). For example in the UK theres an online retailer that sells electrical goods online. If you're out shopping and see something, you can SMS them the model number and they'll send you back their price.
I've only ever bought one thing from them, but it's just nice to use it to reassure yourself you're not being completely ripped off buying soemthing on the High Street.
Amazon's barcode reading functionality is very nifty I'm sure, but surely it'd be cheaper, faster, more discrete and less error-prone, just to type in the Book title or ISBN.
Don't want to check to closely whilst working on client site.
After your nefarious actions my gay 14 year old son was redirected towards a Pop Idol site and has turned quite banal. His mother is currently sobbing with shame at the trite, pre-packaged and artistically shallow lyrics he is now often found to be singing around the house. I can no longer even look my neighbours in the eye after they complained he was playing some auto-tuned squawker on his stereo as he washed my car last week. yours, a distraught father.
I can see why they did what they did and I can see that it's probably prevented a huge number of complaints etc etc However. The site that sprang up when they punched in the .com URL was NOT the one that is supposed to come up (the content of the site doesn't matter a jot). What we have here is a precedent where an ISP has decided not to show you the page you asked for, but rather the page they thought you should look at - and without telling you.
Maybe a slightly better solution would have been to tick up a page stating the cock-up with the printed URL, that this was a temporary measure and asking whether you wished to go to the .com or .com.au site.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that this (although done for innocent reasons I'm sure) is worse than chinese-style site blocking. Imagine if you tried to look for something mildy subversive and your friendly big-brother ISP quietly substituted it for propaganda (and you never realised).