"Individuals seem to think that they can allow the dissemination of writers' work on the internet without authorization, and without payment, under the banner of "fair use" or the idiot slogan "information must be free." A writer's work is not information: it is our creative property, our livelihood and our families' annuity. Why should any artist, of any kind, continue creating new work, eking out an existence in pursuit of a career, following the muse, when little internet thieves, rodents without ethic or understanding, steal and steal and steal, conveniencing themselves and "screw the author"? What we're looking at is the death of the professional writer!"
Because their work can be digitized and distributed by anyone, they have to keep performing. Sculpture can't be digitized, happily, so sculptors get paid numerous times off of the single creative work (which is cast and replicated and distributed the old fashioned way -- in trucks). Presumably you don't intend to pay novelists for "performing" their works, so you'll continue to let them print many copies of the same book and be paid for each. Television shows go away as an art form, sadly, because they are just too darn expensive to produce if compensation is only to be had through "live" performances.
Of course, not all people making music *want* to perform, but I guess their out of luck in your consumer utopia as well. Not to mention all the people whose music is of such an electronic/experimental nature that they cannot really perform "live" per se. And let's pay no attention to the orchestras and other large ensembles who actually lose money when they tour, but do so as a means to promote their recordings. And let's hope that all these bands raking in the big bucks are writing their own material, cuz if they're not you know the songriter's getting screwed.
Super. Sounds great. What's not to love?
I'm making a note here to discourage my children from pursuing any creative endeavors professionally.
Like a driver's license. You can apply for it when you are 18, so your being on the 'Net means de facto you are an adult (at least legally/mathematically). All the chatroom entrapment theatrics drop to zero. Signal-to-Noise in places like, well, Slashdot increases dramatically. Would-a-been script kiddies spend their formative years in the high school Drama Club, where they not only have an aptitude but may actually pick up some social skills as well. L33t Sp33k is killed before it can grow. People with any predilection to dress in Goth 'fashion' or smoke clove cigarettes receive no encouragement via Usenet, and so Light returns to The Land. Music ceases to be marketed like jujubes. Instant Messaging, the electronic equivalent of the juvenile pinging of small stones at one's bedroom window, loses traction in business and people start picking up phones again. No metallic object is ever again manufactured in 'Hot Magenta.' The list of benefits go on and on...
What's the argument? We're detaining people, tapping wires, and torturing people. (Of course, a Navy SEAL's definition of torture is different from Harvey Fierstein's, but there's no question we're doing more to suspected terrorists in captivity than feeding them ice cream.)
If we weren't detaining people, tapping their phones, and beating information out of someone, I'd be pissed. I'm paying the government to protect me. Short of naming Kreskin to a newly-minted cabinet position of Secretery of The Psi-Corps, I'm not sure how else this would be best accomplished "in our current environment."
Now, you can quibble that we're detaining, tapping, and beating the wrong guys, or not enough guys, and that's fine, we're an open society, get angry and discuss away, but I find it tough to argue against any of these procedures in toto.
Radio-activity is such a complex issue, that I dare say no single Slashdot poster can succinctly summarize the arguments for and against it.
We can, however, be reasonably certain that there is no hyphen in it.
That said, I think we can all agree that radioactivity, as in, "Oh, my God, Tompkins, the... the... Geiger Counter is off the scale! You're... we're... ALL... RADIOACTIVE!" is not a good thing, but nuclear power plants which create electricity are not quite so bad.
Is your thesis that if we build more nuclear power plants we will become radioactive? If so, I would love to subscribe to your newsletter.
Geez...just the mention of him appearing with Justin Timberlake just killed any idea of quality and usefulness I might have had thought of concerning this service...
Right. Because the service is clearly aimed at all of us listening to the King Crimson Oggs we ripped from vinyl and now play through our home-modded toaster ovens that we've set up to stealthily leech bandwidth from the Starbucks upstairs in the commercial space above the studio apartment we've converted from the freight elevator,
Face it, d00d. We are so not Chairman Bill's target audience for this product. I don't even think I could pick Justin Timberlake out of a police line-up.
But your attitude is EXACTLY what is holding Linux apps back from popular adoption.
I suppose Outlook Express is the ideal name for an email client...as is Outlook. Acrobat is the perfect.pdf viewer or creator. Excel instantly draws to mind spreadsheets [now, but 20 years ago?]. I could go on, but why bother.
The name of an app is not meant to be Literal!! It's meant to make you want to own it! If you had a choice between two toilets, the Open GNUFeces gtkSepticPort, or a CrapThrasher 3000, is there any question which you would select? Calling a graphics program The GIMP (yeah, I know it's meant to be a snarky acronym; newsflash: after the age of 16, nobody cares.) is like naming your son Susan. In fact, I've introduced the GIMP to new users (all of whom look like they'd rather be anyplace in the world than in that room at the time) with a, "Hey, look, with a name like The GIMP, it's got to be good, right? Right??"
For serious 'flagship' Linux applications, allowing the "coding community" to name them is right in line with allowing the "marketing community" to write them. It screams "Hobbyist," which is fine, if that's all you want it to be. In the early '90's, when nobody knew any better, it was not unusual for an organization's HTML jockey to also be responsible for creating the site's look and writing its content. Then, the medium matured, rapidly. When I see the names for a lot of these (very, very fine and well-coded) linux apps, I get the urge to crank Nine Inch Nails, order a double-mocha-latte, and re-read SnowCrash...
I'm guessing the RIAA will drop the case anyway and try to find someone with a bit more cash on hand next time.
The RIAA does not sue individuals for the money. The RIAA sues individuals to garner press through which they intend to frighten entire populations of individuals into not downloading.
This whole story is tailor-made to their efforts. The moral of it is, even when it is impossible to prove the illicit origin of music files on your computer, you still might be unlucky enough to be involved in litigation that can cost you big bucks. The message is, "parents: monitor the content of your kids' hardrives carefully, lest it end up costing you. Digital music just ain't worth the potential hassle."
Intelligent strategy. But getting the story on slashdot during Christmas break is absolutely brilliant.
I've often wondered why the production companies don't market direct to a world wide audience. The technology is in place and there is an audience for the most minortity interest.
Where's the upfront money going to come from?
It's the distribution rights that the creator, say, Joss Whedon's 'Mutant Enemy Productions," 'sells' to, say, Fox, for, say, an 8th Season of Buffy. They haggle over a fee, which reflects MEP's production costs attenuated by whatever rights MEP decides to retain (if MEP can sell the season to someone else for International play, or DVD rights, or game rights, Fox will pay less. If Fox wants it all, they can expect to pay more.)
Fox then pays Joss, and Joss pays the writers, actors, and crew. Fox crosses its fingers that it recoups in domestic ad revenue, syndication, DVD sales -- whatever rights it bought -- the dough it paid up front.
What you're asking Our Boy Joss to do is create something on spec, and hope that he can make the money (whose money? His OWN Money? You Gotta Be Kidding!) back based on what he can get in adword revenue or pay-per-download fees. Works for books, sort of, cuz the production costs are minimal. Works for music, maybe, because of the (relatively recent) economies of the Home Digital Studio. But television? Especially Science Fiction television? Different league.
They really ought to know enough Perl to read and write files and manipulate numbers, and know a little programming. Having to figure out text configuration files would be a good exercise, as whiny as it may make them....
Wiki changes that. I've seen articles with definite left-bias, similar to what I'd expect from any geek forum. With Wikis gaining ground (google searches seem attracted to them), will there be a push to put pressure on the wiki maintainers?
Nah. If the whole wiki-thing really takes off, the money will start to come into it big time, and they'll shift to the right on their own. The early users will wail "Sell Out!," the founders will all cash in, write books, and get knighted.
Meanwhile, some punk in the East Village, his MP3-player cranked to '11' jamming old Velvet Underground is already putting the finishing touches on The Next Big Thing, lighting up his last clove ciggy, pledging to himself that he will Always Be True and that his work will never be used for Evil.
The fact of the matter is that the USA did not become the world's only superpower by force -- quite the opposite, it got their by being a benevolent power that other countries trusted.
What?!? Are you just, like, making up history as you go along?
We became the world's only superpower by (1) building a giant friggin' arsenal, (2) training a ridiculously immense armed forces, and (3) developing a staggeringly robust economy to sustain both. The previous century's other superpower had (1) and (2), then fell short on (3). (I leave the debate re the efficacy of the respective economic systems to a different thread.)
Now, China teeters on superpower-dom, if it can't be classified as one already. Is that because the Chinese have labored so hard at presenting a benevolent face to the world and building up other nations' trust? Obviously not.
If you got to be a superpower by being nice, Iceland would rule the solar system. Or, at least their women would...
Argh. I'm tired of people assuming any technical term of 5 or fewer letters just has to be an acronym.
I never thought it was an acronym. I just left the caps lock on. Lighten up, Francis. If you're tired, grab a cup of coffee.
Mac... Linux...
Don't lecture me about language, D00d. Seriously.
This is incredibly annoying.
Au contraire. You're incredibly annoying. It's exactly your kind of inappropriate and misguided small-stuff-sweating that gives nerds a bad name outside high school. And your repeated tired rants in this space regarding "Joe Average" are classist and trite. Eliminate those, and the Annoyance Quotient of slashdot drops appreciably.
Lose the attitude, boss, remember Rome, greece, egypt? they were great too....
I've no doubt the American Empire will fall, as did Rome, Greece, and Egypt before it. I don't think it will be in my lifetime, however, or the lifetime of my grandchildren. In the meantime, I'm really not inclined to go out of my way to ensure that the bath signs indicating which spout is hot water and which is cold are engraved in both Latin and Pictish.
How do you say "Just Call Me Old Skoool" in Taiwanese?
When your Continental Pride results in less traffic to Ninglenongle.asia than it did to the original, KoreanGameCompany.com, you'll just have to compensate by taking out bigger, longer, more expository ads on the *.com sites. Works for me. Or maybe you'll need multiple sites, one from which to promote your product and make money, and others through which your political correctness and cultural diversity may be flaunted. All Good, as far as our Western tech economy resurgence is concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
Who'd a thunk it! Next they'll be a story about the Chinese negotiating with Hollywood to drive down the prices on DVDs.
It's a Whole New World!
"Individuals seem to think that they can allow the dissemination of writers' work on the internet without authorization, and without payment, under the banner of "fair use" or the idiot slogan "information must be free." A writer's work is not information: it is our creative property, our livelihood and our families' annuity. Why should any artist, of any kind, continue creating new work, eking out an existence in pursuit of a career, following the muse, when little internet thieves, rodents without ethic or understanding, steal and steal and steal, conveniencing themselves and "screw the author"? What we're looking at is the death of the professional writer!"
More flame-throwing corkers here.
Because their work can be digitized and distributed by anyone, they have to keep performing. Sculpture can't be digitized, happily, so sculptors get paid numerous times off of the single creative work (which is cast and replicated and distributed the old fashioned way -- in trucks). Presumably you don't intend to pay novelists for "performing" their works, so you'll continue to let them print many copies of the same book and be paid for each. Television shows go away as an art form, sadly, because they are just too darn expensive to produce if compensation is only to be had through "live" performances.
Of course, not all people making music *want* to perform, but I guess their out of luck in your consumer utopia as well. Not to mention all the people whose music is of such an electronic/experimental nature that they cannot really perform "live" per se. And let's pay no attention to the orchestras and other large ensembles who actually lose money when they tour, but do so as a means to promote their recordings. And let's hope that all these bands raking in the big bucks are writing their own material, cuz if they're not you know the songriter's getting screwed.
Super. Sounds great. What's not to love?
I'm making a note here to discourage my children from pursuing any creative endeavors professionally.
You damn well better be kidding.
Or else what? You'll smash pumpkins on my porch?
Like a driver's license. You can apply for it when you are 18, so your being on the 'Net means de facto you are an adult (at least legally/mathematically). All the chatroom entrapment theatrics drop to zero. Signal-to-Noise in places like, well, Slashdot increases dramatically. Would-a-been script kiddies spend their formative years in the high school Drama Club, where they not only have an aptitude but may actually pick up some social skills as well. L33t Sp33k is killed before it can grow. People with any predilection to dress in Goth 'fashion' or smoke clove cigarettes receive no encouragement via Usenet, and so Light returns to The Land. Music ceases to be marketed like jujubes. Instant Messaging, the electronic equivalent of the juvenile pinging of small stones at one's bedroom window, loses traction in business and people start picking up phones again. No metallic object is ever again manufactured in 'Hot Magenta.' The list of benefits go on and on...
Note to moderators: I am kidding. Mostly.
What's the argument? We're detaining people, tapping wires, and torturing people. (Of course, a Navy SEAL's definition of torture is different from Harvey Fierstein's, but there's no question we're doing more to suspected terrorists in captivity than feeding them ice cream.)
If we weren't detaining people, tapping their phones, and beating information out of someone, I'd be pissed. I'm paying the government to protect me. Short of naming Kreskin to a newly-minted cabinet position of Secretery of The Psi-Corps, I'm not sure how else this would be best accomplished "in our current environment."
Now, you can quibble that we're detaining, tapping, and beating the wrong guys, or not enough guys, and that's fine, we're an open society, get angry and discuss away, but I find it tough to argue against any of these procedures in toto.
Jaron Lanier... Cato Institute... 'blogazine'... Richard Stallman
After that summary, I can't decide whether I need to take an aspirin or a shower first.
...belongs to those who own the presses, a fact-of-life with which I suspect Mr. Murdoch is well-acquainted.
"My Space." That's funny.
Radio-activity is such a complex issue, that I dare say no single Slashdot poster can succinctly summarize the arguments for and against it.
We can, however, be reasonably certain that there is no hyphen in it.
That said, I think we can all agree that radioactivity, as in, "Oh, my God, Tompkins, the... the... Geiger Counter is off the scale! You're... we're... ALL... RADIOACTIVE!" is not a good thing, but nuclear power plants which create electricity are not quite so bad.
Is your thesis that if we build more nuclear power plants we will become radioactive? If so, I would love to subscribe to your newsletter.
Geez...just the mention of him appearing with Justin Timberlake just killed any idea of quality and usefulness I might have had thought of concerning this service...
Right. Because the service is clearly aimed at all of us listening to the King Crimson Oggs we ripped from vinyl and now play through our home-modded toaster ovens that we've set up to stealthily leech bandwidth from the Starbucks upstairs in the commercial space above the studio apartment we've converted from the freight elevator,
Face it, d00d. We are so not Chairman Bill's target audience for this product. I don't even think I could pick Justin Timberlake out of a police line-up.
Not to mention novelists and filmmakers. Won't someone think about THEIR rights?
Oh, wait...
an information architect, an advocate of expanding the boundaries of librarianship in an Internet age and the voice of ambient findability
Jeeus-H-Christ-On-A-Crutch!! All that needed was one "paradigm shift" and my head would have exploded!!
Taco, time to start putting some warning labels on these reviews, whaddya think?
or lonely business men wanting somewhere to entertain the "ladies".
If the lonely businessman is the entertaining one, he's doing it wrong.
wait until the first point release before deploying to important systems.
It's blogging software. How important can any of the systems be?
But your attitude is EXACTLY what is holding Linux apps back from popular adoption.
.pdf viewer or creator. Excel instantly draws to mind spreadsheets [now, but 20 years ago?]. I could go on, but why bother.
I suppose Outlook Express is the ideal name for an email client...as is Outlook. Acrobat is the perfect
The name of an app is not meant to be Literal!! It's meant to make you want to own it! If you had a choice between two toilets, the Open GNUFeces gtkSepticPort, or a CrapThrasher 3000, is there any question which you would select? Calling a graphics program The GIMP (yeah, I know it's meant to be a snarky acronym; newsflash: after the age of 16, nobody cares.) is like naming your son Susan. In fact, I've introduced the GIMP to new users (all of whom look like they'd rather be anyplace in the world than in that room at the time) with a, "Hey, look, with a name like The GIMP, it's got to be good, right? Right??"
For serious 'flagship' Linux applications, allowing the "coding community" to name them is right in line with allowing the "marketing community" to write them. It screams "Hobbyist," which is fine, if that's all you want it to be. In the early '90's, when nobody knew any better, it was not unusual for an organization's HTML jockey to also be responsible for creating the site's look and writing its content. Then, the medium matured, rapidly. When I see the names for a lot of these (very, very fine and well-coded) linux apps, I get the urge to crank Nine Inch Nails, order a double-mocha-latte, and re-read SnowCrash...
I'm guessing the RIAA will drop the case anyway and try to find someone with a bit more cash on hand next time.
The RIAA does not sue individuals for the money. The RIAA sues individuals to garner press through which they intend to frighten entire populations of individuals into not downloading.
This whole story is tailor-made to their efforts. The moral of it is, even when it is impossible to prove the illicit origin of music files on your computer, you still might be unlucky enough to be involved in litigation that can cost you big bucks. The message is, "parents: monitor the content of your kids' hardrives carefully, lest it end up costing you. Digital music just ain't worth the potential hassle."
Intelligent strategy. But getting the story on slashdot during Christmas break is absolutely brilliant.
I'm sure in the hollywood version it's all surly teenagers etcetera. Can't have Card's anti-war message coming through too clearly now.
Right! Cuz there's no more right-wing, gung-ho, pro-war establishment than today's Hollywood. Damn wingnuts...
I've often wondered why the production companies don't market direct to a world wide audience. The technology is in place and there is an audience for the most minortity interest.
Where's the upfront money going to come from?
It's the distribution rights that the creator, say, Joss Whedon's 'Mutant Enemy Productions," 'sells' to, say, Fox, for, say, an 8th Season of Buffy. They haggle over a fee, which reflects MEP's production costs attenuated by whatever rights MEP decides to retain (if MEP can sell the season to someone else for International play, or DVD rights, or game rights, Fox will pay less. If Fox wants it all, they can expect to pay more.)
Fox then pays Joss, and Joss pays the writers, actors, and crew. Fox crosses its fingers that it recoups in domestic ad revenue, syndication, DVD sales -- whatever rights it bought -- the dough it paid up front.
What you're asking Our Boy Joss to do is create something on spec, and hope that he can make the money (whose money? His OWN Money? You Gotta Be Kidding!) back based on what he can get in adword revenue or pay-per-download fees. Works for books, sort of, cuz the production costs are minimal. Works for music, maybe, because of the (relatively recent) economies of the Home Digital Studio. But television? Especially Science Fiction television? Different league.
They really ought to know enough Perl to read and write files and manipulate numbers, and know a little programming. Having to figure out text configuration files would be a good exercise, as whiny as it may make them....
Linux on The Desktop: Death by Evangelism.
Wiki changes that. I've seen articles with definite left-bias, similar to what I'd expect from any geek forum. With Wikis gaining ground (google searches seem attracted to them), will there be a push to put pressure on the wiki maintainers?
Nah. If the whole wiki-thing really takes off, the money will start to come into it big time, and they'll shift to the right on their own. The early users will wail "Sell Out!," the founders will all cash in, write books, and get knighted.
Meanwhile, some punk in the East Village, his MP3-player cranked to '11' jamming old Velvet Underground is already putting the finishing touches on The Next Big Thing, lighting up his last clove ciggy, pledging to himself that he will Always Be True and that his work will never be used for Evil.
Man, I love this stuff...
The fact of the matter is that the USA did not become the world's only superpower by force -- quite the opposite, it got their by being a benevolent power that other countries trusted.
What?!? Are you just, like, making up history as you go along?
We became the world's only superpower by (1) building a giant friggin' arsenal, (2) training a ridiculously immense armed forces, and (3) developing a staggeringly robust economy to sustain both. The previous century's other superpower had (1) and (2), then fell short on (3). (I leave the debate re the efficacy of the respective economic systems to a different thread.)
Now, China teeters on superpower-dom, if it can't be classified as one already. Is that because the Chinese have labored so hard at presenting a benevolent face to the world and building up other nations' trust? Obviously not.
If you got to be a superpower by being nice, Iceland would rule the solar system. Or, at least their women would...
Why not offer some episodes for free as an incentive to download the others?
Because if I'm Steve Jobs, slashdot is the first site I click each day for marketing advice.
Argh. I'm tired of people assuming any technical term of 5 or fewer letters just has to be an acronym.
I never thought it was an acronym. I just left the caps lock on. Lighten up, Francis. If you're tired, grab a cup of coffee.
Mac... Linux...
Don't lecture me about language, D00d. Seriously.
This is incredibly annoying.
Au contraire. You're incredibly annoying. It's exactly your kind of inappropriate and misguided small-stuff-sweating that gives nerds a bad name outside high school. And your repeated tired rants in this space regarding "Joe Average" are classist and trite. Eliminate those, and the Annoyance Quotient of slashdot drops appreciably.
Lose the attitude, boss, remember Rome, greece, egypt? they were great too....
I've no doubt the American Empire will fall, as did Rome, Greece, and Egypt before it. I don't think it will be in my lifetime, however, or the lifetime of my grandchildren. In the meantime, I'm really not inclined to go out of my way to ensure that the bath signs indicating which spout is hot water and which is cold are engraved in both Latin and Pictish.
How do you say "Just Call Me Old Skoool" in Taiwanese?
When your Continental Pride results in less traffic to Ninglenongle.asia than it did to the original, KoreanGameCompany.com, you'll just have to compensate by taking out bigger, longer, more expository ads on the *.com sites. Works for me. Or maybe you'll need multiple sites, one from which to promote your product and make money, and others through which your political correctness and cultural diversity may be flaunted. All Good, as far as our Western tech economy resurgence is concerned.
Vive le Difference! or something...