If you can explain how we can possibly have technological progress, economic growth and shrinking energy needs I would be very interested in hearing your suggestions. In fact I think *everyone* would be interested in your suggestions.
And regardless of the front-page panic on newspapers we are hardly running out of any non-renewable fuel.. what we do have is the possibilities of political problems, ie relying on the Middle-east and other unstable regions for our energy needs...
The billions might belong to solar... but ON THE MOON??!?
At present we are in an interesting situation whereby all the forecasts from the 70s about our impending running out of Oil/Gas/Coal have been proved to be completely wrong. Additionally we are now experimenting with geothermal, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear (fusion and fission).
Granted there are risks and uncertainties with some of these technologies but the costs of flying equipment to THE MOON and then sending microwaves back to the earth.. come on.. that is hardly a feasible or practical solution to our energy problems here.. surely!
In any case the moral questions about building solar banks across the perfect untouched surface of the moon would be interesting to see develop... and expensive...
This is a non-idea if ever I heard one. What is the point of going to all that trouble when we have ample power supplies here on earth (contra to our current moral panic about power supplies). Fair enough to try to build a justification to increasing lunar exploration but this is far too easily shot down.
I think we need more political imaginaries - if you try to justify most space projects in terms of economic benefits likes this you are liable to look a fool. Space projects are fundamentally state financed projects (due to their horrific costs and risks) and will remain so for the foreseeable future. But we should be seizing the possibility of exploring space as a project for mankind.. dreaming the impossible..
Much as I think Apple have created an amazing proof of concept in the Apple Music Store I am not convinced it qualifies as an invention.. Downloading music off the internet is not new and paying for it is not new either... Now if they radically opened up the distribution to bypass the majors... now that would be rather revolutionary... but we'll have to see how far they take it..
I use a lot of CD-Rs for archival purposes for music on my label, LOCA records, and my experience is that stick-on labels definitely reduce the lifespan. The CD's tend to develop a noticable click when they are played in CD-players and it becomes increasingly worse as time goes by.
Conversely since I have begun using a CD pen, although it does not look as good professionally, the CD's don't seem to be developing the same fault. Now whether this is due to the fact that the CD's have come from a different manufactuer with a more recent technology - though the older ones are also from a variety of manufacturers - I don't know.
So my advice is to steer clear of CD labels and stick to pens or stamps (which is also what we use on the label now) as these do not seem to cause the same problems.
This sounds like a fantastic new technology. Being able to shrink high resolution to a usable size for photo-realistic displays would be great. But I think the idea of contact-lense screens or glasses with inbuilt displays particularly exciting as it could/would revolutionise computers.
Wearable computers are a much discussed idea but I feel that without a feedback display there are pretty useless. Now we have the possibility of it getting much closer...\
Who ares which way the legal action goes.. That is not the point. The idea is to spread enough confusion and uncertainty that corporate entities will be more likely to use perceived 'legal' and 'safe' versions of unix that don't have any licensing issues.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt contribute to the bottom line when it comes to conservative decisions about technology platforms. And let's face facts how many people read below the headline with its exagerrated emphasis on legal uncertainty and disarray.
No company wants to risk their technology decisions being upset by later unbudgeted licensing, legal and technical problems when the quiet life of a standard product from a multinational is on the shelf next to it...
Voice over IP is the next big thing and the bidding war is part of a general plan to drive the smaller less well capitalised firms out of business. This will leave the larger companies better positioned to roll-out all sorts of differentiated (and profitable) services.
Having relatives in Norway and an avid user of iChat with iSight I can tell you that this has reduced our telphone bill by a huge amount. Once others catch on VoIP and video services are going to go mental...
There is a good article in The Financial Times today about the future of music and the threat from music downloads.
It's coming there is no doubt about it. At last with the ipod we have a usable MP3 player and with iTunes a service that can mean you can be legal... But will the record labels be able to move in and dominate the online distribution industry before it even begins?
I certainly question their expertise in this area and perhaps an online retailer is better to deal with the customer than through these dinosaurs. In any case they squandered millions on rubbish plastic acts over the last decade and I sincerely hope that the online world opens up the field to other (quality) musicians...
No doubt that optical is fast but isn't the problem always going to be routing the light inside a processor (ie optical transisters) and the interface between the light and the electrical will always cause bottlenecks... I think a lot to solve before this becomes a workable technology...
I have just bought a new top-of-range Al Powerbook and although I am extremely happy with it I am concerned that Apple has not got enough of a differentiation between the iBook and Powerbook line.
Bluetooth and a larger L2 cache is hardly a justification and the superdrive is personally neither here nor there. I think the sooner they get the liquid cooled G5 fitted into a powerbook the better. Hey I might even be *forced* to part with even more money for the sheer coolness of it.
However I think that this market segmentation is crucial for Apple to keep an aspirational difference between consumer and pro lines. And frankly these releases are dangerously close to blurring them...
I would suggest that plastic vs metal case is *not* gonna be enough if they are both based on the same processor architecture...
How cynical can you get... chill out and think that perhaps, just perhaps, we are actually *trying* to do something different.
It is so depressingly that people can't be more supportive...
We are actually trying an *experiment* in releasing and challenging existing ways of running a record label... giving stuff away free to then reuse and re-release is completely anti-existing ways of the way things are done in the record industry. For them property is king...
I suggest you look at 'The Culture Industries' by Adorno and Horkheimer
Yes we know. We are trying to get our web-designers to sort this out... but it takes time... They tell me they are on the case.... it obviously has to be snazzy and excitingly designed before they will let it on the web...;-)
I once read a book about the fact that radio masts mounted onto buildings were a plan to brainwash the nation and only a psychotic patient was able to communicate this fact to his shrink. The shrink eventually realised that this was in fact true.. but only just as it was too late....
Question is who wrote the book as I would love to look it up again...
This is more than about a space launch. This is about China telling the world that it has arrived and that things are going to be different in the International arena.
They have their own rapidly growing technology sector, including china developed chips and Red Flag linux and they are building their own space agency. Investmenting in technology is crucial to challenging the US lead economically, politically and militarily.
I think t
e problem is that all these deals are the big multinational labels holding the reins on the distribution of the future. The vibrant underground scene gets a tiny look in but the real money goes to the usual suspects...
Not sure what the alternative is except maybe some way of networking all the little labels up using the internet. At least that way they can get a presence and make enough money to continue to survive...
I agree. Apple made the right call at the right time and continue to do so. You only have to use a Mac for a short time to feel the difference in speed and reliability. I have introduced all of my family, my girlfriends family and several friends to the Mac and they are all convinced... especially when I demonstated the iSight conversation we had with our Norwegian friends...
Interesting point but the music is not just released MP3 actually. And if you took time to look at the site and read what we are planning you might be more informed.
Firstly we release onto CD, Vinyl and Tape and all these works are copylefted and open to be copied, sampled and re-used.
Secondly, as we state in our Mission we are looking to release TRULY open source, ie samples, arrangement files etc etc etc, but we do not currently have the expertise. We explicitly ask for feed back and ideas here.
Thirdly unlike software music is open if you can *sample* it. That is the important difference between music and software. The Open Sourceness is the ability to re-use the code - and with our music you can.
Now that may not be radical enough for you but I think you'll be unlikely to find anyone trying harder than us!!
OPEN SOURCE RECORD LABEL
on
Why Only Music?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't know how many have heard of our label LOCA RECORDS but we have been releasing music Open-source for at least a couple of years now. Although our artists are small, for instance MEME, XAN, WARD and MAZ PLANT OUT, but they are all really excited about the ideas and the licenses.
Granted most people look blank or think we must be insane to do this but we are experimenting with a new business model and it is very exciting!
And as we believe in the artists and they trust us because of our licensing freedom we think in the long term the relationship can only get stronger and more artists will want to join us.
Slashdot Mirror
And regardless of the front-page panic on newspapers we are hardly running out of any non-renewable fuel.. what we do have is the possibilities of political problems, ie relying on the Middle-east and other unstable regions for our energy needs...
The billions might belong to solar... but ON THE MOON??!?
At present we are in an interesting situation whereby all the forecasts from the 70s about our impending running out of Oil/Gas/Coal have been proved to be completely wrong. Additionally we are now experimenting with geothermal, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear (fusion and fission).
Granted there are risks and uncertainties with some of these technologies but the costs of flying equipment to THE MOON and then sending microwaves back to the earth.. come on.. that is hardly a feasible or practical solution to our energy problems here.. surely!
In any case the moral questions about building solar banks across the perfect untouched surface of the moon would be interesting to see develop... and expensive...
This is a non-idea if ever I heard one. What is the point of going to all that trouble when we have ample power supplies here on earth (contra to our current moral panic about power supplies). Fair enough to try to build a justification to increasing lunar exploration but this is far too easily shot down.
I think we need more political imaginaries - if you try to justify most space projects in terms of economic benefits likes this you are liable to look a fool. Space projects are fundamentally state financed projects (due to their horrific costs and risks) and will remain so for the foreseeable future. But we should be seizing the possibility of exploring space as a project for mankind.. dreaming the impossible..
Much as I think Apple have created an amazing proof of concept in the Apple Music Store I am not convinced it qualifies as an invention.. Downloading music off the internet is not new and paying for it is not new either... Now if they radically opened up the distribution to bypass the majors... now that would be rather revolutionary... but we'll have to see how far they take it..
I use a lot of CD-Rs for archival purposes for music on my label, LOCA records, and my experience is that stick-on labels definitely reduce the lifespan. The CD's tend to develop a noticable click when they are played in CD-players and it becomes increasingly worse as time goes by.
Conversely since I have begun using a CD pen, although it does not look as good professionally, the CD's don't seem to be developing the same fault. Now whether this is due to the fact that the CD's have come from a different manufactuer with a more recent technology - though the older ones are also from a variety of manufacturers - I don't know.
So my advice is to steer clear of CD labels and stick to pens or stamps (which is also what we use on the label now) as these do not seem to cause the same problems.
This sounds like a fantastic new technology. Being able to shrink high resolution to a usable size for photo-realistic displays would be great. But I think the idea of contact-lense screens or glasses with inbuilt displays particularly exciting as it could/would revolutionise computers.
Wearable computers are a much discussed idea but I feel that without a feedback display there are pretty useless. Now we have the possibility of it getting much closer...\
Who ares which way the legal action goes.. That is not the point. The idea is to spread enough confusion and uncertainty that corporate entities will be more likely to use perceived 'legal' and 'safe' versions of unix that don't have any licensing issues.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt contribute to the bottom line when it comes to conservative decisions about technology platforms. And let's face facts how many people read below the headline with its exagerrated emphasis on legal uncertainty and disarray.
No company wants to risk their technology decisions being upset by later unbudgeted licensing, legal and technical problems when the quiet life of a standard product from a multinational is on the shelf next to it...
Having relatives in Norway and an avid user of iChat with iSight I can tell you that this has reduced our telphone bill by a huge amount. Once others catch on VoIP and video services are going to go mental...
There is a good article in The Financial Times today about the future of music and the threat from music downloads.
It's coming there is no doubt about it. At last with the ipod we have a usable MP3 player and with iTunes a service that can mean you can be legal... But will the record labels be able to move in and dominate the online distribution industry before it even begins?
I certainly question their expertise in this area and perhaps an online retailer is better to deal with the customer than through these dinosaurs. In any case they squandered millions on rubbish plastic acts over the last decade and I sincerely hope that the online world opens up the field to other (quality) musicians...
Or maybe it's best that Governments actually *don't* read the manual!!
Great get out clause for whiste-blowers!
I have just bought a new top-of-range Al Powerbook and although I am extremely happy with it I am concerned that Apple has not got enough of a differentiation between the iBook and Powerbook line.
Bluetooth and a larger L2 cache is hardly a justification and the superdrive is personally neither here nor there. I think the sooner they get the liquid cooled G5 fitted into a powerbook the better. Hey I might even be *forced* to part with even more money for the sheer coolness of it.
However I think that this market segmentation is crucial for Apple to keep an aspirational difference between consumer and pro lines. And frankly these releases are dangerously close to blurring them...
I would suggest that plastic vs metal case is *not* gonna be enough if they are both based on the same processor architecture...
It is so depressingly that people can't be more supportive...
We are actually trying an *experiment* in releasing and challenging existing ways of running a record label... giving stuff away free to then reuse and re-release is completely anti-existing ways of the way things are done in the record industry. For them property is king...
I suggest you look at 'The Culture Industries' by Adorno and Horkheimer
The Libre Society
This might be found interesting in lieu of the comments about free/libre/open-source ness... The Libre Society
in the meantime you can listen at DOWNLOAD LOCA MUSIC..
Cheers
Question is who wrote the book as I would love to look it up again...
They have their own rapidly growing technology sector, including china developed chips and Red Flag linux and they are building their own space agency. Investmenting in technology is crucial to challenging the US lead economically, politically and militarily.
They have little or no foreign debt and growing economic power...
This rather than being the New American Century is likely to be Chinese!
Not sure what the alternative is except maybe some way of networking all the little labels up using the internet. At least that way they can get a presence and make enough money to continue to survive...
With mp3's always there and my documents this would be fantastic...
However I am not convinced about typing emails on my jumper though I do think animated t-shirts are round the corner....
All music that is released Open Source is freely copyable and re-useable.
Sometimes it is an uphill struggle to get people to understand what we are trying to do (artists included) but we are showing by doing....
Firstly we release onto CD, Vinyl and Tape and all these works are copylefted and open to be copied, sampled and re-used.
Secondly, as we state in our Mission we are looking to release TRULY open source, ie samples, arrangement files etc etc etc, but we do not currently have the expertise. We explicitly ask for feed back and ideas here.
Thirdly unlike software music is open if you can *sample* it. That is the important difference between music and software. The Open Sourceness is the ability to re-use the code - and with our music you can.
Now that may not be radical enough for you but I think you'll be unlikely to find anyone trying harder than us!!
Granted most people look blank or think we must be insane to do this but we are experimenting with a new business model and it is very exciting!
And as we believe in the artists and they trust us because of our licensing freedom we think in the long term the relationship can only get stronger and more artists will want to join us.