Somehow, I have my doubts that Hollywood, as big and stupid as it may be, is capable of crushing independent cinema completely.
Theater owners probably understand that digital projectors are a major cost to them, and thus they will make sure that the adoption of Hollywood's digital cinema platform goes as slowly as possible. The theater chains are major corporations, too, and if enough of them see no inherent advantage to switching to digital, why wouldn't they raise enough of a stink to delay the transition for years?
Plus, even if the major theater chains do play along with digital cinema, there will still be art house theaters in most cities that cling to traditional film projectors and independent and foreign films. CDs may have made vinyl less ubiquitous, but it never really died. Film will be the same. Let's not forget, also, that many people out there would just as soon rent a video or DVD than go to the theater. Straight-to-video may still carry a stigma, of course, but it's still as good a way to get a film on the market as any, especially if it your town lacks a decent art house cinema. Before the decade is out, straight-to-Internet may be an option for indie filmmakers as well.
Filmmaking is a creative enterprise. I'm sure that people with vision will find creative ways to get those visions out on the market. Pi got made. Memento got made. They won't be the last.
When I die, I want someone find my skull 160 millenia from now and gape in awe and wonder. In fact, I'm going to put a big sign on my grave that says, "Do not open until Christmas, 162,052 A.D."
What we *really* need, is to completely pitch the entire x86 platform and start over from scratch.
Be my guest, then. Go and create a "brand new, well-thought out 64-bit design." Then convince someone to build your brand new, well-thought out 64-bit computer. Then give us a brand new, well-thought out operating system that can run on it. Then convince all those software companies and programmers to port all the software we can run on Windows, Macintosh and/or Linux to your brand new, well-thought out platform. Then convince all those dupes who respond so well to marketing that your brand new, well-thought out system will do things so much better than their PCs and Macs. Oh, and be customer-friendly and quick to respond when people have trouble operating your brand new, well-thought computers...
High intelligence would be realizing that spending an avg of 7 hours a day on the computer playing video games is probably why your computer repair/building/card swapping business is bust and you're broke.
If John Belushi was so intelligent, how come he didn't know enough to stop snorting coke?
This guy is an addict, plain and simple. The celebrity he has inside this virtual world makes him feel good, so he self-medicates for seven hours a day. Addiction is more than capable of trumping high intelligence. There are lots of really bright people at your local AlAnon meeting.
Don't retreat to the electronic anaesthetics. TV, computer games, music - all these exist in some part to desensitize you to the world around you and the people you live near.
Okay, I understand your beef television and gaming, but music? How is music desensitizing? If anything, music can make you more aware of the world around you, especially if you're making the music yourself.
We may ridicule the Japanese for sticking us with karaoke, but they have the right idea. Music is not a tool given only to the elite and the superstars of the world. It's for everyone, and the more people we have making music, the better off we are as a society. There is plenty of scientific proof out there that music education is good for developing kids. Why do you think people are trying so hard to save the disappearing arts departments in schools all over America? Music is good for you.
Far be it from me to tell any man how to live his life, but think about it -- if this guy spent 7 hours a day playing a guitar or a piano instead of a video game, he would develop an appreciable skill that has potential to bring him real-world recognition and perhaps some income. (Unless he signs with an RIAA label, of course, but that's certainly not a musician's only option.) He'd also develop a more rounded and less pessimistic view of humanity. Think about it.
A similar situation occured last December in central North Carolina, when the biggest ice storm in years knocked out power to more than a million people in the area. Nearly all of the (mostly Clear Channel-owned) FM stations that could broadcast at the time were still playing the same old Dave Matthews and Fleetwood Mac songs that they always played, totally oblivious to anything happening outside. Luckily, we have a few locally-owned and/or operated AM talk radio stations that filled the void and got important news and info out to people.
Local radio presence is important in any market, especially in times of emergency. I get the feeling, though, that only local and state civic leaders will be able to do anything about that...
One day before this FCC vote to relax media ownership restrictions further, Wired News ran this article saying that satellite radio was finally starting to take off in the U.S.
That cannot be a coincidence. Granted, more people are jumping on the XM & Sirius bandwagons because they cost less than before, but still, FM radio these days is so big a vacuum that it has to be filled by something...
Of course we all know what the number one cash crop in Kentucky is...(hint: not tobacco)!
Mullets!!!
This isn't about file-sharing.
on
PressPlay + Roxio?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Aren't they coming a bit late to the party? People are doing much more exciting things with file sharing nowadays.
It ought to be pretty obvious that this has nothing to do with file-sharing or P2P. This is about creating a legal alternative to file-sharing and P2P -- a label-friendly environment where people can actually shop for and buy music, rather than just take it. Apple proved in two weeks that people will buy downloadable music if it caters to their needs. Now Roxio is going to follow suit and try to beat Apple to the PC market.
These new online music shops will find customers, because people still want to buy music. Likewise, P2P will still survive, because people still want for porn, warez and back episodes of Adult Swim cartoons. The real question is how much these new online shops will cater to independent labels and artists. If Apple, Roxio and RealNetworks (which recently bought Listen.com) treat those not associated with the Big Five like red-headed stepkids, then these new stores should be shunned.
Apple has indicated they want to help the indie labels. That's a good start, IMHO.
The addition of the type of features which I'd want to see in an online music service (searches, previews etc) would lead to a product completetly different to Napster.
And is that such a bad thing, really? Wouldn't you rather have the product you want rather than another P2P system? (That's what Roxio is betting, anyway.)
I get the sense that Disney wants to keep the Internet open because AOL Time Warner controls the pipes to a lot of homes, especially on the broadband market with both Road Runner and AOL Broadband. If the Internet evolves into another cable outlet (deities forbid) and the AOL channel steers people to Time Warner properties, what will happen to the Mickey Mouse stuff?
Disney also happens to own ESPN, and competition among sports web sites is huge.
Fatchuck's 100% offer is a nice marketing gimmick, but it conveniently neglects to tell artists that they have to have the stuff first beforethey can sell it. If a musician pays out for 100 pro-grade CDs and 100 decent T-shirts, signs up on Fatchuck's for $60, and only sells a handful of each in 12 months, the artist is still out for the cost of making the CDs and T-shirts. It's one thing if it's a touring band that can sell their stuff at gigs, too, but if they can do that, why pay the extra $40/year?
I dare say that CafePress.comand its high base prices are still a better option for a lot of artists that can't afford to pay up front for the goods, although Mixonic tends to offer better rates for CDs. Why there aren't more inexpensive CD creation services like those two really baffles me. (And yes, I know about MP3.com and Ampcast, but CafePress and Mixonic don't ask for $100/year to sign up and don't fill your CD with ads like MP3.com does.)
Eventually, a record company will realize that it would be better off releasing a higher quality product at a lower price, its sales will go through the roof, and everyone else will follow.
Actually, that's already happening, and you can read all about it here. It's just the Big Five that haven't figured it out yet.
-David, who hasn't bought a Big Five CD in a long time.
It seems that Gateway includes music downloads with EMusic as a part of their promotions to get people to buy their boxes... And EMagic, well, that's part of UMG.
There's an interesting Freudian slip for you. EMusic is part of UMG, yes, but Emagic, the software company that created the Logic Audio series of MIDI sequencing/music production software, was bought out by Apple earlier this year. New versions of Logic Audio are now exclusive to OSX and use its Audio Units plug-in protocol exclusively. (Though there's a new wrapper out for Steinberg VST-based plug-ins.)
Apple has always been one to encourage creativity among its user base. One has to wonder if a UMG purchase might lead to giving their more creative customers a bigger stage for showcasing their talents. Ah, synergy...
These are all heartening developments, but I have a feeling I'm still a few years away from being able to make music with any Linux system as easily as I can with Cakewalk Home Studio 2002 in Win2K, especially with all the plug-ins and software synths I'm using now. Once Linux audio gets to the point where I can:
run a pro-quality sequencer/studio that can mixdown audio fairly intuitively (Under-the-rader programs like Muzys and Tracktion qualify here...),
use software synths and effects plug-ins in said sequencer/studio,
wrap at least some of the existing VST and VSTi plug-ins I have now (and that list grows every day), and
do all of this in an environment that doesn't crash or dump core more than once a week,
Then I'll switch to Linux, and I won't look back. I'm happy to see progress in the 2, 3 and 4, but 1 is the dealbreaker. The lack of the decent software sequencer/studio with soft synth support is the one thing keeping me from making the switch. On the other hand, the fact that it's gotten this far gives me some faith that I won't have to wait forever...
You mean that century-old technology that was bought up by Clear Channel in the late 90s and now requires you either to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars up front or sign your life away to an RIAA label to get your song on the air? The same tech that nobody can use for broadcasting purposes without close to a million bucks and an army of lawyers up front?
People need to check themselves. Everyone is so hung up on the fact that it's Microsoft and Windows Media 9 (On Slashdot? Who knew?) that they're ignoring the bigger picture. They're just saying the picture is too pixellated without even looking at it...
What Microsoft, Landmark and DCS are doing is lowering the cost of entry into the cinema. Instead of having to pay a low six-figure sum for making a master print and copies for distribution, filmmakers can now pay less than $10,000 to convert their movie to this digital cinema format and find new audiences for their creations. They're cutting a major cost of independent filmmaking by about 90%. Ultimately, this is a good thing, because it allows filmmakers to concentrate more on their vision than their financial backing, and it allows good films that might otherwise disappear beneath a radar cluttered with major-studio crap -- have major studios released anything worthwhile yet in 2003? -- an opportunity to be seen.
Major motion picture studios tend to focus group their creations to death, leaving us with a lot of bland, forgettable films. Technology is giving small, independent filmmakers a better opportunity to make their focused, unique visions a reality. The next "Pi" will be created using digital film and distributed to theaters on digital media. I fail to see how any of this could be a bad thing.
What's the point? Cheap, silly, groan-inducing puns -- that's the point! How sick and twisted would we be as a race if we didn't look at a story like this and think...
Wouldn't debugging this server ruin the entire project?
Waiter, there's a linux box in my soup!
Press "swatter" to reboot.
Would a web spider crash this fly?
Where's the windex? There's server mush all over my windshield.
Man, that's a really SCSI interface.
Who needs a legitimate reason with all this comedic potential? Our fly server will be here all week, and it wants you to try the veal!
Slashdot Mirror
Somehow, I have my doubts that Hollywood, as big and stupid as it may be, is capable of crushing independent cinema completely.
Theater owners probably understand that digital projectors are a major cost to them, and thus they will make sure that the adoption of Hollywood's digital cinema platform goes as slowly as possible. The theater chains are major corporations, too, and if enough of them see no inherent advantage to switching to digital, why wouldn't they raise enough of a stink to delay the transition for years?
Plus, even if the major theater chains do play along with digital cinema, there will still be art house theaters in most cities that cling to traditional film projectors and independent and foreign films. CDs may have made vinyl less ubiquitous, but it never really died. Film will be the same. Let's not forget, also, that many people out there would just as soon rent a video or DVD than go to the theater. Straight-to-video may still carry a stigma, of course, but it's still as good a way to get a film on the market as any, especially if it your town lacks a decent art house cinema. Before the decade is out, straight-to-Internet may be an option for indie filmmakers as well.
Filmmaking is a creative enterprise. I'm sure that people with vision will find creative ways to get those visions out on the market. Pi got made. Memento got made. They won't be the last.
Puny humans!
Wasn't that in an episode of MacGyver?
When I die, I want someone find my skull 160 millenia from now and gape in awe and wonder. In fact, I'm going to put a big sign on my grave that says, "Do not open until Christmas, 162,052 A.D."
Puny humans.
What we *really* need, is to completely pitch the entire x86 platform and start over from scratch.
Be my guest, then. Go and create a "brand new, well-thought out 64-bit design." Then convince someone to build your brand new, well-thought out 64-bit computer. Then give us a brand new, well-thought out operating system that can run on it. Then convince all those software companies and programmers to port all the software we can run on Windows, Macintosh and/or Linux to your brand new, well-thought out platform. Then convince all those dupes who respond so well to marketing that your brand new, well-thought out system will do things so much better than their PCs and Macs. Oh, and be customer-friendly and quick to respond when people have trouble operating your brand new, well-thought computers...
Puny humans.
If John Belushi was so intelligent, how come he didn't know enough to stop snorting coke?
This guy is an addict, plain and simple. The celebrity he has inside this virtual world makes him feel good, so he self-medicates for seven hours a day. Addiction is more than capable of trumping high intelligence. There are lots of really bright people at your local AlAnon meeting.
Okay, I understand your beef television and gaming, but music? How is music desensitizing? If anything, music can make you more aware of the world around you, especially if you're making the music yourself.
We may ridicule the Japanese for sticking us with karaoke, but they have the right idea. Music is not a tool given only to the elite and the superstars of the world. It's for everyone, and the more people we have making music, the better off we are as a society. There is plenty of scientific proof out there that music education is good for developing kids. Why do you think people are trying so hard to save the disappearing arts departments in schools all over America? Music is good for you.
Far be it from me to tell any man how to live his life, but think about it -- if this guy spent 7 hours a day playing a guitar or a piano instead of a video game, he would develop an appreciable skill that has potential to bring him real-world recognition and perhaps some income. (Unless he signs with an RIAA label, of course, but that's certainly not a musician's only option.) He'd also develop a more rounded and less pessimistic view of humanity. Think about it.
For example, you can't get within 500 yards of the White House in either Washington or Madison...
A similar situation occured last December in central North Carolina, when the biggest ice storm in years knocked out power to more than a million people in the area. Nearly all of the (mostly Clear Channel-owned) FM stations that could broadcast at the time were still playing the same old Dave Matthews and Fleetwood Mac songs that they always played, totally oblivious to anything happening outside. Luckily, we have a few locally-owned and/or operated AM talk radio stations that filled the void and got important news and info out to people.
Local radio presence is important in any market, especially in times of emergency. I get the feeling, though, that only local and state civic leaders will be able to do anything about that...
One day before this FCC vote to relax media ownership restrictions further, Wired News ran this article saying that satellite radio was finally starting to take off in the U.S.
That cannot be a coincidence. Granted, more people are jumping on the XM & Sirius bandwagons because they cost less than before, but still, FM radio these days is so big a vacuum that it has to be filled by something...
Mullets!!!
Aren't they coming a bit late to the party? People are doing much more exciting things with file sharing nowadays.
It ought to be pretty obvious that this has nothing to do with file-sharing or P2P. This is about creating a legal alternative to file-sharing and P2P -- a label-friendly environment where people can actually shop for and buy music, rather than just take it. Apple proved in two weeks that people will buy downloadable music if it caters to their needs. Now Roxio is going to follow suit and try to beat Apple to the PC market.
These new online music shops will find customers, because people still want to buy music. Likewise, P2P will still survive, because people still want for porn, warez and back episodes of Adult Swim cartoons. The real question is how much these new online shops will cater to independent labels and artists. If Apple, Roxio and RealNetworks (which recently bought Listen.com) treat those not associated with the Big Five like red-headed stepkids, then these new stores should be shunned.
Apple has indicated they want to help the indie labels. That's a good start, IMHO.
The addition of the type of features which I'd want to see in an online music service (searches, previews etc) would lead to a product completetly different to Napster.
And is that such a bad thing, really? Wouldn't you rather have the product you want rather than another P2P system? (That's what Roxio is betting, anyway.)
Of course, a $99 iPod would be nice, too, but that's just wishful thinking...
-David, waiting to see what RealNetworks does with Rhapsody.
I get the sense that Disney wants to keep the Internet open because AOL Time Warner controls the pipes to a lot of homes, especially on the broadband market with both Road Runner and AOL Broadband. If the Internet evolves into another cable outlet (deities forbid) and the AOL channel steers people to Time Warner properties, what will happen to the Mickey Mouse stuff?
Disney also happens to own ESPN, and competition among sports web sites is huge.
Sony, roughly translated from the Japanese, means "corporate schizophrenia." It was just as true three years ago...
Fatchuck's 100% offer is a nice marketing gimmick, but it conveniently neglects to tell artists that they have to have the stuff first beforethey can sell it. If a musician pays out for 100 pro-grade CDs and 100 decent T-shirts, signs up on Fatchuck's for $60, and only sells a handful of each in 12 months, the artist is still out for the cost of making the CDs and T-shirts. It's one thing if it's a touring band that can sell their stuff at gigs, too, but if they can do that, why pay the extra $40/year?
I dare say that CafePress.comand its high base prices are still a better option for a lot of artists that can't afford to pay up front for the goods, although Mixonic tends to offer better rates for CDs. Why there aren't more inexpensive CD creation services like those two really baffles me. (And yes, I know about MP3.com and Ampcast, but CafePress and Mixonic don't ask for $100/year to sign up and don't fill your CD with ads like MP3.com does.)
Eventually, a record company will realize that it would be better off releasing a higher quality product at a lower price, its sales will go through the roof, and everyone else will follow.
Actually, that's already happening, and you can read all about it here. It's just the Big Five that haven't figured it out yet.
-David, who hasn't bought a Big Five CD in a long time.
It seems that Gateway includes music downloads with EMusic as a part of their promotions to get people to buy their boxes ... And EMagic, well, that's part of UMG.
There's an interesting Freudian slip for you. EMusic is part of UMG, yes, but Emagic, the software company that created the Logic Audio series of MIDI sequencing/music production software, was bought out by Apple earlier this year. New versions of Logic Audio are now exclusive to OSX and use its Audio Units plug-in protocol exclusively. (Though there's a new wrapper out for Steinberg VST-based plug-ins.)
Apple has always been one to encourage creativity among its user base. One has to wonder if a UMG purchase might lead to giving their more creative customers a bigger stage for showcasing their talents. Ah, synergy...
These are all heartening developments, but I have a feeling I'm still a few years away from being able to make music with any Linux system as easily as I can with Cakewalk Home Studio 2002 in Win2K, especially with all the plug-ins and software synths I'm using now. Once Linux audio gets to the point where I can:
Then I'll switch to Linux, and I won't look back. I'm happy to see progress in the 2, 3 and 4, but 1 is the dealbreaker. The lack of the decent software sequencer/studio with soft synth support is the one thing keeping me from making the switch. On the other hand, the fact that it's gotten this far gives me some faith that I won't have to wait forever...
You mean that century-old technology that was bought up by Clear Channel in the late 90s and now requires you either to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars up front or sign your life away to an RIAA label to get your song on the air? The same tech that nobody can use for broadcasting purposes without close to a million bucks and an army of lawyers up front?
Uh, thanks, but no thanks.
People need to check themselves. Everyone is so hung up on the fact that it's Microsoft and Windows Media 9 (On Slashdot? Who knew?) that they're ignoring the bigger picture. They're just saying the picture is too pixellated without even looking at it...
What Microsoft, Landmark and DCS are doing is lowering the cost of entry into the cinema. Instead of having to pay a low six-figure sum for making a master print and copies for distribution, filmmakers can now pay less than $10,000 to convert their movie to this digital cinema format and find new audiences for their creations. They're cutting a major cost of independent filmmaking by about 90%. Ultimately, this is a good thing, because it allows filmmakers to concentrate more on their vision than their financial backing, and it allows good films that might otherwise disappear beneath a radar cluttered with major-studio crap -- have major studios released anything worthwhile yet in 2003? -- an opportunity to be seen.
Major motion picture studios tend to focus group their creations to death, leaving us with a lot of bland, forgettable films. Technology is giving small, independent filmmakers a better opportunity to make their focused, unique visions a reality. The next "Pi" will be created using digital film and distributed to theaters on digital media. I fail to see how any of this could be a bad thing.
Sounds cool, but in reality it's just Lynx for OSX.
I'd be more interested in OSX for Lynx. I never get to use my Atari stuff anymore...
This quality is out there, but my god, you have to wade through 90% of crap to find it.
And that's different from any other period in movie history how?
If you really want to give yourself a headache, think of it this way: To find out if the cat in the box is alive or dead, you ask the cat.
I don't think I can get my head around poking my computer with a stick to get an answer...
What's the point? Cheap, silly, groan-inducing puns -- that's the point! How sick and twisted would we be as a race if we didn't look at a story like this and think...
Who needs a legitimate reason with all this comedic potential? Our fly server will be here all week, and it wants you to try the veal!