Well maybe. Instead why don't you help small labels like www.locarecords.com who are struggling to do something different with Open Source releases that *explicitly* give you the rights to copy and reproduce the tracks???
Pouring more money into these huge multinationals is hardly the best way to get innovative new music...
I'ved posted before about our label LOCA RECORDS and the fact that we are releasing records on an Open Source license that gives the listener the right to copy the music and we are not just doing it because we are have rubbish bands! The proof???
Feel free to browse and if you have ideas for how we *could* place our music on the web cheaply and easily then please please let us know!! All help credited and appreciated!
Oh and feel free to buy a nice t-shirt.. they keep us releasing...;-)
What is cool is that this seems to be an open platform so you can writes MODs to the player to get extra functionality out of the player. Now this is revolutionary stuff.
I love my iPod but adding the ability for users to write extra mods to provide more functions would be amazing. You can just imagine the websites springing up with 3rd party extras...
So full-marks to the designers. Using the an open XML database is a wicked idea and providing it is as easy to code to as they claim I can see this being a serious selling point!!
We need more democratic rights and more open government not these gung-ho attempts by the military to remove our civil liberties.
Langdon Winner argued that Nuclear power would lead to a possible infringement of our civil rights and the growth of the state due to claims to dangers from Terrorism and Nuclear dangers and thus the government suggested fix being bigger more authoritarian government...
It seems that instead of Nuclear power, the Internet is becoming danger to modern society and a hotbed seething with evil-doers..
Rather than spending billions on these systems that will become white elephants and probably never work. Political action is required in terms of Nation building (eg Afghanistan) and working with the UN to proceduralise feelings of anger toward the US and engender a feeling of equity and fairness.
What if you could boot from this drive? If it were Flash Ram then presumably you could store your operating system on a RAM Drive and get it to boot instantly cutting down on the boring and annoying wait for the computer to start up.
Another drive could be used for storing files and such like (if it were thought to be somewhat dangerous medium to *store*) but in anycase it would be lovely to get instantly booting computers.
In addition, rather than booting, couldn't these drives make possible a kind-of ghost-like save boot-up state. ie Copy into memory very quickly the state of the computer just following boot up. Now that would surely speed up the booting process.
And I know everyone might say, oh that doesn't matter, but even though I use a Powerbook which with OS X stays up almost forever - I *still* need to boot occassionally. And it is *painful* to wait for.
Once it is built into my laptop I will be well happy... I hate chugging drives... and silence is golden
First Past the Post (Slightly off topic I know but
on
SCALE Talks Now Online
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
To stop the idiot first posts couldn't slashdot auto-moderate down those who 'first post' rubbish in future???
I think the is an inescable argument for LINUX to be used in Universities. At my Uni we are looked into Microsoft campus agreements that are *impossible* to get out of without an exceedingly shocking leave clause. Now whoever signed that shouldn't have but now getting out is harder and people get used to their software and then Microsoft becomes a very expensive *need*
On the contrary if they had moved in an Open Source direction at least they would be spared this restrictive contract and they could have bought Office for those that were really keen rather than EVERYONE even *if they don't use M$ products!!!
A bit of our LOCA fighting spirit, mission status...
The multinational media corporations believe that music is a product to be squeezed of every last vestige of profit without any need to invest in new talent or to enable musicians to experiment. They do this by seeking to enforce property rights in copyright law that give them ownership of the music created by musicians in perpetuity. But they go much further in their attempts to control every derivative of the music, including samples, lyrics, melodies, rythmns and imagery. Anybody breaking their copyright is dealt with harshly and ruthlessly in the courts. When these companies have finally acheived their aims of preventing us from being able to create our own music we will live in a corporate world where we can be only consumers of music. In contrast, we at LOCA believe that creativity requires that musicians reappropriate and reinterpret music and sounds to enable them to create truly innovative music.
LOCA believes that the fight over Open Content and Open Media is a struggle over the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech, radically opening up the possibilities of media. To this end LOCA is attempting to release music under so-called copyleft, a license that enables music writers to develop music collaboratively and equitably and then release it into the public domain. Using either the Open Audio license (from EFF) or the LOCA Public License, a derivative of the GNU Public License (GPL), LOCA hopes to provide the control necessary to prevent further commercialisation of work that is released and to encourage others to do the same. We hope that musicians who contemplate using the work released in this manner will honour the license and release their work under a public license resulting in a radical rejection of the whole capitalist ethos of these multinational media corporations.
Unfortunately we don't have the resources and people only seem to buy music from the aforementioned multinationals with the huge billboard adverts... hence we will probably go under.... oh well...
I think that one of the problems that many younguns run into now is that their only exposure to software is from the evil empire (and assorted minor evil fiefdoms). I have personally worked with many prop. sofware companies that are very responsive to bugs.
I am not exactly a youngun.. and worked with a Digital Equipment contract that meant that support was little short of amazing on the VAX/VMS systems I was developing. However that contract was EXPENSIVE.
But I agree that props should be more responsive. Unfortunately too often they aren't....
how can you say this w/ a straight face? For every "stable"-ish OSS project i can show you 500 that aren't. Not that this is any different from closed source. Shitty code is shitty code but it exists in both arenas.
True enough. But with Open Source more users can check out the code to feedback into the development process. Hence bugs are to use the oft quoted Linus law - shallower.
If you are doing a project of a decent size you can write this kind of stuff into the contract.
Kind of. Trouble is you don't know your *future* requirements.. And that means uncontracted, uncosted changes that could be *very* expensive. One small firm I got to know just loved getting fully costed projects as they *knew* that in a years time people move on in multinationals and priorities change and software can change dramatically...
this is just wrong. OSS upgrades constantly.
Sure I know that. My point is that you don't have to upgrade. If it ain't broke don't fix it. And feel free to copy it to lots of other machines *for free*!!
Most reliable vendors will put out patches for security holes and bugs.
Hahahahahaha. This is a joke yeah? How often? This is one of the biggest problems with prop vendors and well documented.
OSS may be quicker in this area.
I think you'll find *IS*
All I am saying is we need to change the arguments. Microsoft are happily shifting the entire focus of argument with TCO and everyone is falling for it...
A totally false assumption. Not saying that it can't be true, just that being OS doesn't guarantee this.
Er.. this is a contradiction, its therefore not a *totally* false assumption then?
Also, look at the recent Mozilla bugs as proof that being OS doesn't mean that you get it right any sooner
At least you know what the bugs are!! In Prop you often have not got a clue and no warning.
Likely, but not again, not something inherint in OS.
True, but you can only charge to a level at which it becomes more cost effective to compile it yourself... try that with prop...
Absolutely false. Presumably a company is looking at these solutions because they DON'T want to have to deal with development of the product in house, or else they'd just roll their own.
You love your absolutely. It is not absolutely false. You can hold back, no one *forces* you to upgrade by cancelling the previous version. You can *always* get it, copy it from that machine, do what you like with it, and at worst develop it in house. Not poss. with Prop
How is this any different than prop. software?
Have you actually used any prop software. I think every copy of a prop software program has bugs that I have been moaning to the manufacturer about. AND I CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!
If it were open source at least I would have that possibility!!!
It's a great alternative (and many times the superior), but take off your OS colored glasses and see that it's not the only answer.
Please don't misunderstand me. I am saying it is cool and has very good technical reasons for being used. *But* it is not a panacea and comes with caveats about how it is supported and what it will give you. These naturally have to be considered carefully for each case.
Point 2 is quite simply rubbish. How exactly are you measuring this in a 'taylorist' way?
Counting lines of code? Counting functions? There is currently no clear unambigous way to measure productivity in services and consequently it is difficult to compare.
Just because something is easier to use doesn't make it more efficient. For example the amount of time users spend twiddling with fonts, colours and sizes (ie FORM) to produce documents is highly inefficient in terms of CONTENT.. and all down to improved usability...
The trouble is that you have bought lots of proprietary software assumptions to the party. For instance you assume that you will have the same sorts of issues whereas the Open Source varient will:
1. Be more stable and contain less bugs in the long run
2. Cost less in terms of licensing etc
3. Have projectable license costs. ie Nil. Whereas who knows how much Micro$oft will charge you in a couple of years.
4. Gain from *not* having to upgrade due to it no longer being supported. Proprietary software forces you to upgrade and infact is built into their model. If you don't buy they go bankrupt
5. Allows you to *gain* from quick bug fixes, security patches and the like
This seems like a typical TCO attack on Open Source which needs to be carefully assessed in a research setting where the differences can be clearly ascertained between proprietary and Open Source software..
I think that the fact they got caught shows that they are still naive when it comes to using the technology. But as they work out ways and means to control the technology we will less hear about it, and more scarily experience it unknown to us....
Re:Looking for proof.
on
Halloween VII
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
We say look at the underlying political position. Theres no such thing as truth only interpretation..
As we are politically inclined, and readers might not be, they may think we're asking him the wrong questions, perhaps, but we are interested in what connections he sees in Open Source and the world at large (if any)... and anyway we love politics.... and we love Open Source... and a good argument..;-)
See Raymond's own views on Linux and propaganda at at our site
ESR Interview
on
Halloween VII
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Hi, we are running an interview series with key figures in the Open Source movement and have got up the first notable, none other than Eric S. Raymond himself.
As we are politically inclined readers might think we're asking him the wrong questions, perhaps, but we are interested in what connections he sees in Open Source and the world at large (if any)... and anyway we love politics....
I own a Powerbook 667 and the battery life is trylu unbelievable. Compared to dell and toshiba laptop battery life it blows them away.
I used to own an iBook but needed the extra screen size and just love the powerbook (I was a little worried it might be too big) but it weighs nothing and look cool.
Unfortunately there is going to be a whole plethora of court cases regarding EULA before their legality and usage becomes accepted and regulated. In the meantime they are steadily going to get more and more over the top to try to cover themselves for any and every eventuality. Rather than draw up a code of practice, companies are happier to try to restrict more and more of their customers' rights. Not good business practice in the long run...
Slowly but surely the lawyers are moving in on the Internet....
We are trying. But it is very very difficult to develop a real forum for debate that doesn't go round in circles or lose itself due to nesting and other text tricks.
I think it is important that technologists realise the importance of politics to technology. The centres of power cannot simply be ignored and difficult questions about where technology is leading us and where we want it to lead us need to be addressed particularly by those who understand the technology.
This is especially crucial when politicians start to introduce crazy new laws (DMCA anyone?) without any deeper understanding of the implications.
People claiming that Open Source must remain apolitical and neutral are naive. To address this subject we are running an open debate on technology and politics on our website digitalagora.com and would welcome your comments and debate.
I think it is interesting that the success or otherwise of musicians and music in general is now measured in CD sales, playlists and MTV airplay. I think this is a great shame considering what music can be, and indeed ought to be. These great custodians of the income of the record labels (who incidentally themselves make no music, they merely package and sell it) shows how crazy the whole discussion has gotten. Can we please remember the lowly musician?
Fundamentally musicans make music because they love music. They don't do it for the fame, for the limo or the huge paycheck (though I grant some do). Musicians make music because they are crazy about music.
I believe that the Internet has the potential for us to rediscover musicians who make music, music for themselves, their friends, their local community but most of all music for people to listen to and enjoy. Musicians with a passion for the music in itself. But this potential is being criminalised as the labels and their cronies see their massive revenues slipping away. Lets face facts record labels are the most conservative, non-innovative and staid organisations known to man. They *buy* talent in, and most of all they buy it cheaply, often through one-sided contracts, usually underpaying by substantial amounts - you only have to look at the countless court cases surrounding record contracts.
Musicans need to innovate and need people to listen to their music, and the normalising effects of the record industry merely serve to homogenise and standardise music into need easily digestable packages. This is the problem - the record labels have gotten bigger than the musicians and consequently they now try to mass-produce them. This is a pathetic attempt to continue to cash in on their cash-cows and suppress innovation and creativity.
I hope people will continue to experiment with downloading and trying out new music, and yeah hopefully some method will be developed to help musicians get paid when you want to buy it. But the record labels have grown fat and lazy and have become part of the problem.
I believe Open Music initiatives (like Creative Commons, EFF, LOCA public license etc) are the way forward to get exciting new sounds and musical movements underway. I look forward to seeing what musicians the world over can create in this new medium.
I would be very interested in hearing what Janis thinks of these Open Music licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
Pouring more money into these huge multinationals is hardly the best way to get innovative new music...
I hope they now start to be more proactive in naming and shaming those who subvert their standards (no names m$entioned).
How about five years in prison for propsing/implementing a copying/p2p technology? Or the threat of a huge $100000 fine?
Strangely mostly people will be put right off. And peer-to-peer requires a peer to peer to...
The man with the lone telephone has no-one to call...
See MEME INTERVIEW
Or WARD REVIEW
Ok that's in french so maybe WARD INTERVIEW would be better? (Scroll down for English)
Or hey just visit our site
Feel free to browse and if you have ideas for how we *could* place our music on the web cheaply and easily then please please let us know!! All help credited and appreciated!
Oh and feel free to buy a nice t-shirt.. they keep us releasing... ;-)
I love my iPod but adding the ability for users to write extra mods to provide more functions would be amazing. You can just imagine the websites springing up with 3rd party extras...
So full-marks to the designers. Using the an open XML database is a wicked idea and providing it is as easy to code to as they claim I can see this being a serious selling point!!
Langdon Winner argued that Nuclear power would lead to a possible infringement of our civil rights and the growth of the state due to claims to dangers from Terrorism and Nuclear dangers and thus the government suggested fix being bigger more authoritarian government...
It seems that instead of Nuclear power, the Internet is becoming danger to modern society and a hotbed seething with evil-doers..
Rather than spending billions on these systems that will become white elephants and probably never work. Political action is required in terms of Nation building (eg Afghanistan) and working with the UN to proceduralise feelings of anger toward the US and engender a feeling of equity and fairness.
What if you could boot from this drive? If it were Flash Ram then presumably you could store your operating system on a RAM Drive and get it to boot instantly cutting down on the boring and annoying wait for the computer to start up.
Another drive could be used for storing files and such like (if it were thought to be somewhat dangerous medium to *store*) but in anycase it would be lovely to get instantly booting computers.
In addition, rather than booting, couldn't these drives make possible a kind-of ghost-like save boot-up state. ie Copy into memory very quickly the state of the computer just following boot up. Now that would surely speed up the booting process.
And I know everyone might say, oh that doesn't matter, but even though I use a Powerbook which with OS X stays up almost forever - I *still* need to boot occassionally. And it is *painful* to wait for.
Once it is built into my laptop I will be well happy... I hate chugging drives... and silence is golden
On the contrary if they had moved in an Open Source direction at least they would be spared this restrictive contract and they could have bought Office for those that were really keen rather than EVERYONE even *if they don't use M$ products!!!
I need this on my Mac! Clever thinking by the Moz boys and girls!
I agree entirely. But the TCO approach is not a science. It is more of an art. That is the point I am trying to make...
The multinational media corporations believe that music is a product to be squeezed of every last vestige of profit without any need to invest in new talent or to enable musicians to experiment. They do this by seeking to enforce property rights in copyright law that give them ownership of the music created by musicians in perpetuity. But they go much further in their attempts to control every derivative of the music, including samples, lyrics, melodies, rythmns and imagery. Anybody breaking their copyright is dealt with harshly and ruthlessly in the courts. When these companies have finally acheived their aims of preventing us from being able to create our own music we will live in a corporate world where we can be only consumers of music. In contrast, we at LOCA believe that creativity requires that musicians reappropriate and reinterpret music and sounds to enable them to create truly innovative music.
LOCA believes that the fight over Open Content and Open Media is a struggle over the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech, radically opening up the possibilities of media. To this end LOCA is attempting to release music under so-called copyleft, a license that enables music writers to develop music collaboratively and equitably and then release it into the public domain. Using either the Open Audio license (from EFF) or the LOCA Public License, a derivative of the GNU Public License (GPL), LOCA hopes to provide the control necessary to prevent further commercialisation of work that is released and to encourage others to do the same. We hope that musicians who contemplate using the work released in this manner will honour the license and release their work under a public license resulting in a radical rejection of the whole capitalist ethos of these multinational media corporations.
Unfortunately we don't have the resources and people only seem to buy music from the aforementioned multinationals with the huge billboard adverts... hence we will probably go under.... oh well...
Just clearing up a misconception ;-)
I think that one of the problems that many younguns run into now is that their only exposure to software is from the evil empire (and assorted minor evil fiefdoms). I have personally worked with many prop. sofware companies that are very responsive to bugs.
I am not exactly a youngun.. and worked with a Digital Equipment contract that meant that support was little short of amazing on the VAX/VMS systems I was developing. However that contract was EXPENSIVE.
But I agree that props should be more responsive. Unfortunately too often they aren't....
True enough. But with Open Source more users can check out the code to feedback into the development process. Hence bugs are to use the oft quoted Linus law - shallower.
If you are doing a project of a decent size you can write this kind of stuff into the contract.
Kind of. Trouble is you don't know your *future* requirements.. And that means uncontracted, uncosted changes that could be *very* expensive. One small firm I got to know just loved getting fully costed projects as they *knew* that in a years time people move on in multinationals and priorities change and software can change dramatically...
this is just wrong. OSS upgrades constantly.
Sure I know that. My point is that you don't have to upgrade. If it ain't broke don't fix it. And feel free to copy it to lots of other machines *for free*!!
Most reliable vendors will put out patches for security holes and bugs.
Hahahahahaha. This is a joke yeah? How often? This is one of the biggest problems with prop vendors and well documented.
OSS may be quicker in this area.
I think you'll find *IS*
All I am saying is we need to change the arguments. Microsoft are happily shifting the entire focus of argument with TCO and everyone is falling for it...
Er.. this is a contradiction, its therefore not a *totally* false assumption then?
Also, look at the recent Mozilla bugs as proof that being OS doesn't mean that you get it right any sooner
At least you know what the bugs are!! In Prop you often have not got a clue and no warning.
Likely, but not again, not something inherint in OS.
True, but you can only charge to a level at which it becomes more cost effective to compile it yourself... try that with prop...
Absolutely false. Presumably a company is looking at these solutions because they DON'T want to have to deal with development of the product in house, or else they'd just roll their own.
You love your absolutely. It is not absolutely false. You can hold back, no one *forces* you to upgrade by cancelling the previous version. You can *always* get it, copy it from that machine, do what you like with it, and at worst develop it in house. Not poss. with Prop
How is this any different than prop. software?
Have you actually used any prop software. I think every copy of a prop software program has bugs that I have been moaning to the manufacturer about. AND I CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!
If it were open source at least I would have that possibility!!!
It's a great alternative (and many times the superior), but take off your OS colored glasses and see that it's not the only answer.
Please don't misunderstand me. I am saying it is cool and has very good technical reasons for being used. *But* it is not a panacea and comes with caveats about how it is supported and what it will give you. These naturally have to be considered carefully for each case.
Counting lines of code? Counting functions? There is currently no clear unambigous way to measure productivity in services and consequently it is difficult to compare.
Just because something is easier to use doesn't make it more efficient. For example the amount of time users spend twiddling with fonts, colours and sizes (ie FORM) to produce documents is highly inefficient in terms of CONTENT.. and all down to improved usability...
1. Be more stable and contain less bugs in the long run
2. Cost less in terms of licensing etc
3. Have projectable license costs. ie Nil. Whereas who knows how much Micro$oft will charge you in a couple of years.
4. Gain from *not* having to upgrade due to it no longer being supported. Proprietary software forces you to upgrade and infact is built into their model. If you don't buy they go bankrupt
5. Allows you to *gain* from quick bug fixes, security patches and the like
This seems like a typical TCO attack on Open Source which needs to be carefully assessed in a research setting where the differences can be clearly ascertained between proprietary and Open Source software..
We are running an interview series with key figures in the Open Source movement and have got up the first notable, none other than Eric S. Raymond himself.
As we are politically inclined, and readers might not be, they may think we're asking him the wrong questions, perhaps, but we are interested in what connections he sees in Open Source and the world at large (if any) ... and anyway we love politics.... and we love Open Source... and a good argument.. ;-)
See Raymond's own views on Linux and propaganda at at our site
As we are politically inclined readers might think we're asking him the wrong questions, perhaps, but we are interested in what connections he sees in Open Source and the world at large (if any) ... and anyway we love politics....
Feel free to point browser at DIGITALAGORA.COM
I used to own an iBook but needed the extra screen size and just love the powerbook (I was a little worried it might be too big) but it weighs nothing and look cool.
Recommended!!
Slowly but surely the lawyers are moving in on the Internet....
We are trying. But it is very very difficult to develop a real forum for debate that doesn't go round in circles or lose itself due to nesting and other text tricks.
Any ideas/software suggestions would be appreciated email to editor@digitalagora.com
Thanks
This is especially crucial when politicians start to introduce crazy new laws (DMCA anyone?) without any deeper understanding of the implications.
People claiming that Open Source must remain apolitical and neutral are naive. To address this subject we are running an open debate on technology and politics on our website digitalagora.com and would welcome your comments and debate.
I think it is interesting that the success or otherwise of musicians and music in general is now measured in CD sales, playlists and MTV airplay. I think this is a great shame considering what music can be, and indeed ought to be. These great custodians of the income of the record labels (who incidentally themselves make no music, they merely package and sell it) shows how crazy the whole discussion has gotten. Can we please remember the lowly musician?
Fundamentally musicans make music because they love music. They don't do it for the fame, for the limo or the huge paycheck (though I grant some do). Musicians make music because they are crazy about music.
I believe that the Internet has the potential for us to rediscover musicians who make music, music for themselves, their friends, their local community but most of all music for people to listen to and enjoy. Musicians with a passion for the music in itself. But this potential is being criminalised as the labels and their cronies see their massive revenues slipping away. Lets face facts record labels are the most conservative, non-innovative and staid organisations known to man. They *buy* talent in, and most of all they buy it cheaply, often through one-sided contracts, usually underpaying by substantial amounts - you only have to look at the countless court cases surrounding record contracts.
Musicans need to innovate and need people to listen to their music, and the normalising effects of the record industry merely serve to homogenise and standardise music into need easily digestable packages. This is the problem - the record labels have gotten bigger than the musicians and consequently they now try to mass-produce them. This is a pathetic attempt to continue to cash in on their cash-cows and suppress innovation and creativity.
I hope people will continue to experiment with downloading and trying out new music, and yeah hopefully some method will be developed to help musicians get paid when you want to buy it. But the record labels have grown fat and lazy and have become part of the problem.
I believe Open Music initiatives (like Creative Commons, EFF, LOCA public license etc) are the way forward to get exciting new sounds and musical movements underway. I look forward to seeing what musicians the world over can create in this new medium.
I would be very interested in hearing what Janis thinks of these Open Music licenses.
David
locarecords.com