Apparently, the Cheetah, which currently holds the record as the fastest land animal (the typical Slashdotter jerking off to his netbook notwithstanding.)
The success of {GUIs | LANs | The Internet | online music/iTunes/MP3 players | Netbooks | every other major advance} has surprised Microsoft. That company has always been more reactive than proactive. Of course, they can afford to be, which gives rise to their rather conservative approach to entering new markets.
It's not like anything short of dying will stop those drivers.
Well, that's not happening fast enough. The next logical step would be to find some way to increase the rate at which these clowns kill themselves. Help them to do the right thing, as it were.
Actually they have a lot in common with gangsters. What is it that generally triggers internecine warfare between different mob organizations? It's control of product distribution. In this case, the product itself happens to be entirely legal, and the other organization is the entire population of the industrialized world, but the fundamental attitude on the part of the distributors is no different. They want unquestioned control of where the product goes, and of who receives it.
A truly enlightened capitalist will understand that he is not entitled to everything that he wants, that in fact he will benefit by leaving room for others at the table, and by not being a complete, unadulterated asshole. That's where I part company with the major studios, the RIAA/MPAA, and their ilk. That's why I haven't purchased a CD from an RIAA-affiliated label since 1984. I admit I do go to see movies now and then, but if I don't take my girlfriend to the theater now and then she'll kill me (we do, however, usually go to our local two-dollar theater.)
Yes, but then it becomes a problem of education. How do you educate users who don't care to read what's on the screen, even if it's for their own good?
shouldn't that mean that the second most common language should be Japanese?
Why would that follow? Most Japanese businessmen already speak adequate English. A hell of a lot better English than Americans will ever be with Japanese. They learned it in order to be able to trade with the United States... and because so many other countries also use English for international business, that was sufficient.
Also, once a given tongue reaches the point of being a de-facto common language, there really isn't much need of another. If you have multiple common languages then you don't really have a common language, do you. Additionally, English was spread far and wide, not by the United States, but by the British Empire. That fact, plus the eventual American economic dominance pretty much assured that English would have a rather large following, worldwide.
As I mentioned before, the Chinese are learning English in droves. Why? Because they wish to trade with the rest of the world, and the movers and shakers of the industrialized world (and much of the third world) speak English, for better or worse. Who knows, maybe one day we'll all have to learn Mandarin. But for now, the Big E rules the roost.
Jesus Christ you had your GF's mail on your server? I run my own mail server too, never felt comfortable doing that. I run mail for a couple friends, never been tempted to look and wouldn't look if I was tempted, but I would never give myself that kind of access to someone I was screwing, and besides, what happens when you break up? I guess she lost her e-mail address?
I guess you don't have to worry about things like that when you're ScrewMaster though.
Well, I'm just point-blank not interested in anything that doesn't concern me. Really, I hate nosy people and I take great pains not be be one of them. So yes, I do take my privacy seriously, but that means I need to take others' seriously as well. Everything on my server is encrypted anyway, so I couldn't read it even if I wanted to. I didn't and I don't.
And no, she didn't lose her email address until she told me she didn't need it anymore. Just because she was a psychotic witch was no reason for me to be a prick. Tempting as it was, I generally feel better if I don't give in to the Dark Side. Anyway, she got a Yahoo account or something like that. As for me, I just wanted the disk space back.
When the english speaking white man will stop expecting my language to become english by virtue of my shared skin color, we'll talk.
That actually is incorrect. The reason a particular language becomes a so-called lingua franca has much more to do with economics than politics, racism or anything else. You just have to follow the money.
The dominant military and/or economic power in any given period in history generally finds its language becoming popular, if nothing else because of all the other countries who wish to do business with it. So yes, I guess you could say that the United States (and the British Empire before it) expect those of other nations to speak English, if they wish to do business with us. Otherwise we don't particularly care.
Furthermore, in many parts of the world the local dialects are so thoroughly fragmented that people from one village often can't understand the native tongue of those a few miles away. Take Africa for example: widespread knowledge of both English and French have done much to facilitate communication among the various peoples of that continent. Want to do business with a neighboring town? Best learn English (or, as I said, French, since they had a huge influence there as well.) So you may find your ego being bruised by having to learn a language that is not your own but, historically, that's the breaks. And when the American economic empire finally falls (and we're on the way down, now) whoever takes up the reins will force us all to learn their language. Which, oddly enough, will probably be English since China is on the way to becoming the next economic (if not military) superpower, and the Chinese are making a heavy investment in the English language. Last I heard, there were more people learning English there than the entire population of the United States.
So get used to it. The English language is not going away any time soon.
No -- the information is useless to the average person because they don't know how to interpret it.
So? Help them interpret it. That's what computers are for. You can't tell me that that raw data can't be presented in some way that does make sense to Average Joe and at least gives him the idea that somebody is screwing with him.
You mean people actually still think that web-based, free emails are secure?
As opposed to a client-based email, where you can simply get it all through the filesystem? Physical access is game-over. So if you have 30min with your ex's machine, that's pretty much game over, if residing in clients.
I had no problem getting my ex-girlfriend's email... after all, it was residing on my server. As it happened, the only interest I had in it was getting rid of it to reclaim some disk space (the girl didn't understand that you're supposed to delete things now and then.)
Although record companies, just like any businesses, are built around money and thus greed
I disagree, and if we as as society accept that such evil entities are not only tolerable but acceptable then we're in bad trouble. Google the term "enlightened capitalism". Then look up "record label". See the difference?
Imagine if nobody ever pirated music, if there was no file "sharing", no Bit Torrent and everyone who wanted to listen to an album went to a record store and purchased it with cold, hard cash. Would the fee being discussed here ever have been introduced? Would it have even been considered? I'd say the likely answer is no.
The answer is Yes. Unquestionably yes. Apparently you're not going back far enough in time. Start with the advent of the player piano, then move forward to the invention of the audio tape, the cassette, the VCR (specifically the Sony vs. Universal case), the recordable CD, DAT (Digital Audio Tape), the recordable DVD, and now the Internet. You will find, if you are willing to reevaluate your opinion on the subject, that the media companies have fought every new technological advance all down the line, on principle, if they felt even remotely threatened by it. This reaction is and has always been irrational, ill-informed, and very backward-looking, but there it is. The irony is that in every case they ended up making more money than ever once the technologies they feared and spent millions trying to suppress became popular anyway (the Sony vs. Universal case was a landmark in U.S. history since it explicitly authorized home recording and time shifting.) Movie houses now make more money off VHS and DVD sales than they make off theater releases, and in fact there are many, many films that never make it to theaters... but still make billions of dollars, yen, rubles, whatever. In the end, they were wrong... again, and to this day they still have not changed. People refer to them as dinosaurs, and with good reason.
Fact is, if the studios had had their way thirty years ago, you wouldn't have been allowed, under U.S. law anyway, to own a VCR, you would never have seen MP3 players or recordable optical media, and a whole host of other technologies that would have been suppressed just to feed the egos and bank accounts of a few sociopathic corporate assholes. It was a very near thing, at that.
The reality is this: the media companies are run by some very bad people, most of whom have already earned a well-deserved bullet to the back of the head. I would put Jack Valenti at the top of the list, but fortunately he's already dead. And now these pricks have begun writing and re-writing U.S. law, purchasing Congressmen, and generally committing acts of near-treason. So please, don't expect those of us who are better informed on this issue to have the slightest sympathy for these organizations. They simply do not deserve it.
I'll play devil's advocate here: what about the marketing and distribution costs associated with making and selling an album?
You're confusing the two (on purpose, I know!) The costs of producing an album (which is all the artist is responsible for and to which Mr. Milman is apparently referring) are a tiny fraction of the costs of marketing and distribution (which is the record label's job.) A good musician (or group) can produce a quality album in a bloody garage with a few thousand dollars of computer and musical gear, and some sound engineering experience. Yes yes, skill and talent come in handy too. Anyway, it's not like it was twenty years ago, where you really needed a full-fledged multi-track studio to do anything serious. Times have changed, and technological advances have put a lot more power directly into the hands of the artists themselves, and that's not even counting the Internet as a tool for collaboration and self-promotion.
The record labels are primarily marketing organizations, whose function is to distribute the music generated by the creative minds who are beholden to them. As crass middlemen who have no concept of business ethic, they generally obligate the artist to pay for his or her own promotion, and suppress anything else the artist produces that the labels don't wish to release for any reason. In spite of CRIAA/RIAA rhetoric, the cost of music production is not the issue here. Ultimately, the media outfits want to get their product for free (or better yet, take the artist's cut for themselves) while simultaneously milking the buying public for every last dime. Compensating artists fairly is also not the issue. They could live up to their obligations and stand by the artists, they have the cash. They simply see no reason to part with a penny more of it than they have to, and anyone who believes this "defending the artists" line they keep feeding us over and over and over is missing what's really going on. We are not the reason there are starving artists.
"There has to be some sort of way to compensate the artist for the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears and the extreme, extreme expense that goes into making music," Milman said.
Yes, and that happenned when you *bought* the song from iTunes. Why would you want some blanket fee for then moving it onto your iPod?
Besides, the "extreme, extreme expense" that Milman prick is talking about isn't what the artist invests in his music... it's what the record companies choose to spend marketing certain artists, and that's really not the artist's responsibility (although most record company contracts seem to make the artist pay for it anyway.) What they really want is compensation for... oh, I don't know... taking up space I suppose. Face it, about the only good thing a typical record company exec does is exhale carbon dioxide, which is needed by plants.
Regardless, I'm just sick to death of these assholes continuously pretending to be the champions of the artists. It's a lie. If it were true, there'd be a lot more musicians enjoying the money they've earned, and a lot more executives just barely making ends meet while working in a restaurant waiting for their first big break.
Truth is, the relationship between a musician and his record company is generally not symbiotic: it's parasitic, and the artist is not the parasite.
I don't think you can successfully pick that nit, given that the rock was transferred via hyperspace. Besides, had it gone through the Earth, there'd have been one goddamn big hole in our home planet.
Slashdot Mirror
First, what cat goes 60 miles per hour?
Apparently, the Cheetah, which currently holds the record as the fastest land animal (the typical Slashdotter jerking off to his netbook notwithstanding.)
The success of Netbooks also surprised Microsoft
The success of {GUIs | LANs | The Internet | online music/iTunes/MP3 players | Netbooks | every other major advance} has surprised Microsoft. That company has always been more reactive than proactive. Of course, they can afford to be, which gives rise to their rather conservative approach to entering new markets.
It's not like anything short of dying will stop those drivers.
Well, that's not happening fast enough. The next logical step would be to find some way to increase the rate at which these clowns kill themselves. Help them to do the right thing, as it were.
English is a dominant language of trade and commerce, to be sure
Correct, and that was the only point I tried to make.
English was my second language.
I would never have known that had you not said so.
So do any of you have a creative solution for this problem?
Isn't the whole point of this "problem" that there shouldn't be a solution to the problem?
They think that they are divine.
Actually they have a lot in common with gangsters. What is it that generally triggers internecine warfare between different mob organizations? It's control of product distribution. In this case, the product itself happens to be entirely legal, and the other organization is the entire population of the industrialized world, but the fundamental attitude on the part of the distributors is no different. They want unquestioned control of where the product goes, and of who receives it.
A truly enlightened capitalist will understand that he is not entitled to everything that he wants, that in fact he will benefit by leaving room for others at the table, and by not being a complete, unadulterated asshole. That's where I part company with the major studios, the RIAA/MPAA, and their ilk. That's why I haven't purchased a CD from an RIAA-affiliated label since 1984. I admit I do go to see movies now and then, but if I don't take my girlfriend to the theater now and then she'll kill me (we do, however, usually go to our local two-dollar theater.)
Who in the hell is actually going to do the scanning? I'd be wary of accepting an internship at the Googleplex right about now.
Don't worry. Asok is used to it by now.
Yes, but then it becomes a problem of education. How do you educate users who don't care to read what's on the screen, even if it's for their own good?
Well, stupidity carries its own reward.
Yes, because next comes ad-hominim and then with the use of the strawman, we're at burningman. -nB
Hey, best get your hooded robes and that flaming cross ready for the next part of this thread. It's all downhill from here.
shouldn't that mean that the second most common language should be Japanese?
Why would that follow? Most Japanese businessmen already speak adequate English. A hell of a lot better English than Americans will ever be with Japanese. They learned it in order to be able to trade with the United States ... and because so many other countries also use English for international business, that was sufficient.
Also, once a given tongue reaches the point of being a de-facto common language, there really isn't much need of another. If you have multiple common languages then you don't really have a common language, do you. Additionally, English was spread far and wide, not by the United States, but by the British Empire. That fact, plus the eventual American economic dominance pretty much assured that English would have a rather large following, worldwide.
As I mentioned before, the Chinese are learning English in droves. Why? Because they wish to trade with the rest of the world, and the movers and shakers of the industrialized world (and much of the third world) speak English, for better or worse. Who knows, maybe one day we'll all have to learn Mandarin. But for now, the Big E rules the roost.
-1 Strawman
-2 Missed point.
Jesus Christ you had your GF's mail on your server? I run my own mail server too, never felt comfortable doing that. I run mail for a couple friends, never been tempted to look and wouldn't look if I was tempted, but I would never give myself that kind of access to someone I was screwing, and besides, what happens when you break up? I guess she lost her e-mail address?
I guess you don't have to worry about things like that when you're ScrewMaster though.
Well, I'm just point-blank not interested in anything that doesn't concern me. Really, I hate nosy people and I take great pains not be be one of them. So yes, I do take my privacy seriously, but that means I need to take others' seriously as well. Everything on my server is encrypted anyway, so I couldn't read it even if I wanted to. I didn't and I don't.
And no, she didn't lose her email address until she told me she didn't need it anymore. Just because she was a psychotic witch was no reason for me to be a prick. Tempting as it was, I generally feel better if I don't give in to the Dark Side. Anyway, she got a Yahoo account or something like that. As for me, I just wanted the disk space back.
When the english speaking white man will stop expecting my language to become english by virtue of my shared skin color, we'll talk.
That actually is incorrect. The reason a particular language becomes a so-called lingua franca has much more to do with economics than politics, racism or anything else. You just have to follow the money.
The dominant military and/or economic power in any given period in history generally finds its language becoming popular, if nothing else because of all the other countries who wish to do business with it. So yes, I guess you could say that the United States (and the British Empire before it) expect those of other nations to speak English, if they wish to do business with us. Otherwise we don't particularly care.
Furthermore, in many parts of the world the local dialects are so thoroughly fragmented that people from one village often can't understand the native tongue of those a few miles away. Take Africa for example: widespread knowledge of both English and French have done much to facilitate communication among the various peoples of that continent. Want to do business with a neighboring town? Best learn English (or, as I said, French, since they had a huge influence there as well.) So you may find your ego being bruised by having to learn a language that is not your own but, historically, that's the breaks. And when the American economic empire finally falls (and we're on the way down, now) whoever takes up the reins will force us all to learn their language. Which, oddly enough, will probably be English since China is on the way to becoming the next economic (if not military) superpower, and the Chinese are making a heavy investment in the English language. Last I heard, there were more people learning English there than the entire population of the United States.
So get used to it. The English language is not going away any time soon.
Lets ask ourselves how many governments around the world don't want the Internet to be more democratic.
Can't burn an ebook?
Sure you can
No -- the information is useless to the average person because they don't know how to interpret it.
So? Help them interpret it. That's what computers are for. You can't tell me that that raw data can't be presented in some way that does make sense to Average Joe and at least gives him the idea that somebody is screwing with him.
You mean people actually still think that web-based, free emails are secure?
As opposed to a client-based email, where you can simply get it all through the filesystem? Physical access is game-over. So if you have 30min with your ex's machine, that's pretty much game over, if residing in clients.
I had no problem getting my ex-girlfriend's email ... after all, it was residing on my server. As it happened, the only interest I had in it was getting rid of it to reclaim some disk space (the girl didn't understand that you're supposed to delete things now and then.)
Andromeda Devouring Neighbor Galaxy
Long ago and far away, a distant galaxy devoured another.
helps to make the internet democratic.
Lets ask ourselves how many governments around the world don't want the Internet to be more democratic.
How much did they get compensated for developing multi-million dollar markets?
Million? Try "billion".
Although record companies, just like any businesses, are built around money and thus greed
I disagree, and if we as as society accept that such evil entities are not only tolerable but acceptable then we're in bad trouble. Google the term "enlightened capitalism". Then look up "record label". See the difference?
Imagine if nobody ever pirated music, if there was no file "sharing", no Bit Torrent and everyone who wanted to listen to an album went to a record store and purchased it with cold, hard cash. Would the fee being discussed here ever have been introduced? Would it have even been considered? I'd say the likely answer is no.
The answer is Yes. Unquestionably yes. Apparently you're not going back far enough in time. Start with the advent of the player piano, then move forward to the invention of the audio tape, the cassette, the VCR (specifically the Sony vs. Universal case), the recordable CD, DAT (Digital Audio Tape), the recordable DVD, and now the Internet. You will find, if you are willing to reevaluate your opinion on the subject, that the media companies have fought every new technological advance all down the line, on principle, if they felt even remotely threatened by it. This reaction is and has always been irrational, ill-informed, and very backward-looking, but there it is. The irony is that in every case they ended up making more money than ever once the technologies they feared and spent millions trying to suppress became popular anyway (the Sony vs. Universal case was a landmark in U.S. history since it explicitly authorized home recording and time shifting.) Movie houses now make more money off VHS and DVD sales than they make off theater releases, and in fact there are many, many films that never make it to theaters ... but still make billions of dollars, yen, rubles, whatever. In the end, they were wrong ... again, and to this day they still have not changed. People refer to them as dinosaurs, and with good reason.
Fact is, if the studios had had their way thirty years ago, you wouldn't have been allowed, under U.S. law anyway, to own a VCR, you would never have seen MP3 players or recordable optical media, and a whole host of other technologies that would have been suppressed just to feed the egos and bank accounts of a few sociopathic corporate assholes. It was a very near thing, at that.
The reality is this: the media companies are run by some very bad people, most of whom have already earned a well-deserved bullet to the back of the head. I would put Jack Valenti at the top of the list, but fortunately he's already dead. And now these pricks have begun writing and re-writing U.S. law, purchasing Congressmen, and generally committing acts of near-treason. So please, don't expect those of us who are better informed on this issue to have the slightest sympathy for these organizations. They simply do not deserve it.
I'll play devil's advocate here: what about the marketing and distribution costs associated with making and selling an album?
You're confusing the two (on purpose, I know!) The costs of producing an album (which is all the artist is responsible for and to which Mr. Milman is apparently referring) are a tiny fraction of the costs of marketing and distribution (which is the record label's job.) A good musician (or group) can produce a quality album in a bloody garage with a few thousand dollars of computer and musical gear, and some sound engineering experience. Yes yes, skill and talent come in handy too. Anyway, it's not like it was twenty years ago, where you really needed a full-fledged multi-track studio to do anything serious. Times have changed, and technological advances have put a lot more power directly into the hands of the artists themselves, and that's not even counting the Internet as a tool for collaboration and self-promotion.
The record labels are primarily marketing organizations, whose function is to distribute the music generated by the creative minds who are beholden to them. As crass middlemen who have no concept of business ethic, they generally obligate the artist to pay for his or her own promotion, and suppress anything else the artist produces that the labels don't wish to release for any reason. In spite of CRIAA/RIAA rhetoric, the cost of music production is not the issue here. Ultimately, the media outfits want to get their product for free (or better yet, take the artist's cut for themselves) while simultaneously milking the buying public for every last dime. Compensating artists fairly is also not the issue. They could live up to their obligations and stand by the artists, they have the cash. They simply see no reason to part with a penny more of it than they have to, and anyone who believes this "defending the artists" line they keep feeding us over and over and over is missing what's really going on. We are not the reason there are starving artists.
"There has to be some sort of way to compensate the artist for the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears and the extreme, extreme expense that goes into making music," Milman said.
Yes, and that happenned when you *bought* the song from iTunes. Why would you want some blanket fee for then moving it onto your iPod?
Besides, the "extreme, extreme expense" that Milman prick is talking about isn't what the artist invests in his music ... it's what the record companies choose to spend marketing certain artists, and that's really not the artist's responsibility (although most record company contracts seem to make the artist pay for it anyway.) What they really want is compensation for ... oh, I don't know ... taking up space I suppose. Face it, about the only good thing a typical record company exec does is exhale carbon dioxide, which is needed by plants.
Regardless, I'm just sick to death of these assholes continuously pretending to be the champions of the artists. It's a lie. If it were true, there'd be a lot more musicians enjoying the money they've earned, and a lot more executives just barely making ends meet while working in a restaurant waiting for their first big break.
Truth is, the relationship between a musician and his record company is generally not symbiotic: it's parasitic, and the artist is not the parasite.
Lots of fun as long as she's got a pretty face.
If she's a DD, then odds are you've never actually seen her face.
Correction: through, not around.
I don't think you can successfully pick that nit, given that the rock was transferred via hyperspace. Besides, had it gone through the Earth, there'd have been one goddamn big hole in our home planet.