Their sales won't plummet because the ITMS is tiny compared to the CD business. The RIAA is frightened by the possibility of that changing in the future.
Depends on what you mean by "create". Usually when a scene is cut from a movie it happens before the scene in question is 100% complete. Early DVD special editions included deleted scenes in exactly this form, sometimes without dialog, sound, or visual effects. Lately, though, studios have gotten into the habit of taking scenes slated for DVD-extrahood and adding these missing elements to bring them up to the quality of the film itself. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the keep/cut decision has been expanded to keep/cut/put it on the DVD, but if you're suggesting that scenes are being filmed with no intention of ever inserting them in the movie from day 1, I don't think they've gone that far yet. When DVD-only content is created, there's no reason to pretend it was ever meant to be part of the film (except when it's meant as a joke, like the "deleted scenes" on the HHGTTG disk).
Better idea- don't wear clothes with pockets made out of diamonds. I know it's "hip" to be "blinged out" these days, but you gotta think about practicality!
Sorry, but this is a textbook case of DDTT. If your devices are breaking that much there is something wrong with the way you are using or storing them.
This is exactly what we've all been shouting that Hollywood should be doing all along. Read the article- these weren't file sharers whose Rights Online are being infringed, these were people who were involved with stealing a physical master tape. This is the "real" source of piracy, and the place where Hollywood really could make a difference in how quickly and often films get pirated- all without interfering with the Rights Online of anyone using any P2P network or ripping DVDs.
A lot of it is CYA. This is why the word "alleged" is so common when US news programs discuss police activity- it implies that the news is not making any judgement as to whether or not the suspect is guilty or innocent. If they used a stronger term in either direction they could be accused on failing to impartially present raw facts (this does happen sometimes- in Japan handcuffs on persons in custody must be blurred out, because they imply guilt).
That really has nothing to do with open source and more with how more and more people are able to keep up when if conversation switches to computers (or Tolkien).
Cartridges were actually a good idea. Why worry about damage to the media when you can have all the damage happen to something that doesn't affect the data at all? The problems with cartridge CD-ROM drives were unrelated:
The underlying technology sucked ass, so the drives would have been slow and bad even if they had tray and slot loads back then.
Most people owned many more CDs than cartridges.
The first was eventually solved, but only after cartridges had been abandoned. The second was the main reason everyone hated cartridges- would they really have been so bad if all you had to do was take the cartridge off the shelf and stick it in the drive? Swapping CDs in and out of them was much more of a pain in the ass than the cartridge alone was.
DAT was killed off by the copy protection and the fact that it was more expensive. DCC was killed off by market confusion when it was set against MiniDisc.
A 100Mbps line is enough to feed four clients of this service; that's not enough. Server-side traffic shaping is going to become very popular over the next few years.
No, but both of them need training and/or lab equipment to properly diagnose. Reading a description of symptoms on the net and deciding "hey, I kinda sorta feel like some of the things on this list" is not sufficient.
He's also forgetting that once there's a disincentive to downloading popular songs, they're going to get downloaded less, and since the music charts themselves are based on the quantities purchased, the top songs will fall down the charts and into a lower price bracket, thus simultaneously making the charts meaningless and ensuring that the music industry won't actually realize the extra profit this move was supposed to give them. Brilliant.
The intent is to show that anti-terrorism measures as they currently stand are impractical and disrupting much more than actual terrorism. Either the police tighten the guidelines of what indicates a terrorist, or the program comes under fire for being responsible for the tube being shut down for an unacceptably long time. Both possibilities are more compatible with common sense than the current situation.
The presence of a slightly suspicious person shuts down a train for a few hours? It seems that an organized civil disobedience effort could keep the entire London tube system offfline indefinitely by wearing backpacks and using cell phones in carefully chosen stations and times. How long could that go on before someone realizes it's not preventing terrorism and it's more trouble than it's worth for everyone?
That's a basic concept the entire IP industry seems to have missed out on- if you pour $100 million into producing a movie and finally have it reduced down to a master ready for duplication, that master is no different from a briefcase with $100 million in it and should be treated and protected as such. If they would only invest in some production line security, they could make a serious dent in piracy.
The only completely fair pricing would be to have you pay according to a scale of how much you enjoyed the movie. For a movie you loved you'd pay more than (e.g.) $8, for a movie you hated you'd pay less than $8 (and for Gigli they'd pay you). However, this value cannot be determined at the ticket counter, so the same price for all movies, all of which have the potential to entertain you or not, is a fair compromise.
(Alternatively, why do the producers of Pi deserve less money than the producers of The Matrix just because they didn't have big-name actors and thousands of man-hours of CGI work?)
White-on-black text and reading in the dark only work when used together. If one prefers to read with the lights on, a diffuse-reflective rather than emissive surface is better. E-paper may provide that, of course. I'm pretty sure there's ergonomics research that backs this up, but I don't have any links handy.
A book doesn't stop working if it gets bent, dropped, stepped on, dripped on, left on the shelf for a month, etc. A book with a few pages gone is still 99% operational; a PDA with a component (not even a major one, maybe it's a blown cap on the mainboard) gone is a complete loss.
There is no initial cost to books. A paperback is $5-$10, a PDA is at least a few hundred on top of that.
The analogy doesn't quite work because a library does not make a copy of the book. Only one person at a time can use a library copy, they can use it for a limited time, and they aren't allowed to copy the whole thing. This makes libraries not a substitute for buying (and gaining permanent, perpetual access to that copy of) a book and that's why libraries and bookstores can co-exist. That's not what Google is doing, though.
The reason for the 20% project time is not only to avoid engineer burnout but to come up with new ideas. Google has in the past adopted their engineers' side projects and made them releasable products; this is where Google Maps came from. If the wifi trial is successful, they could easily make it "real" and direct more resources and manpower at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Their sales won't plummet because the ITMS is tiny compared to the CD business. The RIAA is frightened by the possibility of that changing in the future.
[X] Joke from next metalevel above previous post.
Depends on what you mean by "create". Usually when a scene is cut from a movie it happens before the scene in question is 100% complete. Early DVD special editions included deleted scenes in exactly this form, sometimes without dialog, sound, or visual effects. Lately, though, studios have gotten into the habit of taking scenes slated for DVD-extrahood and adding these missing elements to bring them up to the quality of the film itself. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the keep/cut decision has been expanded to keep/cut/put it on the DVD, but if you're suggesting that scenes are being filmed with no intention of ever inserting them in the movie from day 1, I don't think they've gone that far yet. When DVD-only content is created, there's no reason to pretend it was ever meant to be part of the film (except when it's meant as a joke, like the "deleted scenes" on the HHGTTG disk).
Better idea- don't wear clothes with pockets made out of diamonds. I know it's "hip" to be "blinged out" these days, but you gotta think about practicality!
Sorry, but this is a textbook case of DDTT. If your devices are breaking that much there is something wrong with the way you are using or storing them.
This is exactly what we've all been shouting that Hollywood should be doing all along. Read the article- these weren't file sharers whose Rights Online are being infringed, these were people who were involved with stealing a physical master tape. This is the "real" source of piracy, and the place where Hollywood really could make a difference in how quickly and often films get pirated- all without interfering with the Rights Online of anyone using any P2P network or ripping DVDs.
A lot of it is CYA. This is why the word "alleged" is so common when US news programs discuss police activity- it implies that the news is not making any judgement as to whether or not the suspect is guilty or innocent. If they used a stronger term in either direction they could be accused on failing to impartially present raw facts (this does happen sometimes- in Japan handcuffs on persons in custody must be blurred out, because they imply guilt).
"All right, robot, what seems to be the problem?"
"Well, I've been having this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side..."
That really has nothing to do with open source and more with how more and more people are able to keep up when if conversation switches to computers (or Tolkien).
The fact that you're posting on Slashdot means you're not in the mainstream market.
- The underlying technology sucked ass, so the drives would have been slow and bad even if they had tray and slot loads back then.
- Most people owned many more CDs than cartridges.
The first was eventually solved, but only after cartridges had been abandoned. The second was the main reason everyone hated cartridges- would they really have been so bad if all you had to do was take the cartridge off the shelf and stick it in the drive? Swapping CDs in and out of them was much more of a pain in the ass than the cartridge alone was.DAT was killed off by the copy protection and the fact that it was more expensive. DCC was killed off by market confusion when it was set against MiniDisc.
Well, my Pentium 4 made my MP3s sound better, so I know the P5 will do wonders for HD-DVD!
A 100Mbps line is enough to feed four clients of this service; that's not enough. Server-side traffic shaping is going to become very popular over the next few years.
No, but both of them need training and/or lab equipment to properly diagnose. Reading a description of symptoms on the net and deciding "hey, I kinda sorta feel like some of the things on this list" is not sufficient.
He's also forgetting that once there's a disincentive to downloading popular songs, they're going to get downloaded less, and since the music charts themselves are based on the quantities purchased, the top songs will fall down the charts and into a lower price bracket, thus simultaneously making the charts meaningless and ensuring that the music industry won't actually realize the extra profit this move was supposed to give them. Brilliant.
Something really awesome.
Signed,
The Top Ten Percent of the Personal Computing Consumer Market
The intent is to show that anti-terrorism measures as they currently stand are impractical and disrupting much more than actual terrorism. Either the police tighten the guidelines of what indicates a terrorist, or the program comes under fire for being responsible for the tube being shut down for an unacceptably long time. Both possibilities are more compatible with common sense than the current situation.
The presence of a slightly suspicious person shuts down a train for a few hours? It seems that an organized civil disobedience effort could keep the entire London tube system offfline indefinitely by wearing backpacks and using cell phones in carefully chosen stations and times. How long could that go on before someone realizes it's not preventing terrorism and it's more trouble than it's worth for everyone?
That's a basic concept the entire IP industry seems to have missed out on- if you pour $100 million into producing a movie and finally have it reduced down to a master ready for duplication, that master is no different from a briefcase with $100 million in it and should be treated and protected as such. If they would only invest in some production line security, they could make a serious dent in piracy.
The only completely fair pricing would be to have you pay according to a scale of how much you enjoyed the movie. For a movie you loved you'd pay more than (e.g.) $8, for a movie you hated you'd pay less than $8 (and for Gigli they'd pay you). However, this value cannot be determined at the ticket counter, so the same price for all movies, all of which have the potential to entertain you or not, is a fair compromise.
(Alternatively, why do the producers of Pi deserve less money than the producers of The Matrix just because they didn't have big-name actors and thousands of man-hours of CGI work?)
The analogy doesn't quite work because a library does not make a copy of the book. Only one person at a time can use a library copy, they can use it for a limited time, and they aren't allowed to copy the whole thing. This makes libraries not a substitute for buying (and gaining permanent, perpetual access to that copy of) a book and that's why libraries and bookstores can co-exist. That's not what Google is doing, though.
Not only that, you are in that position every time you use a computer.
The reason for the 20% project time is not only to avoid engineer burnout but to come up with new ideas. Google has in the past adopted their engineers' side projects and made them releasable products; this is where Google Maps came from. If the wifi trial is successful, they could easily make it "real" and direct more resources and manpower at it.