CEO Steve Ballmer has warned that the company will start to lose customers through inattention and arrogance.
Um, this is supposed to happen in the future if Microsoft doesn't get its act together? Shoot, bubba, it's already happening. Once again, MS is being reactive & not proactive.
Microsoft gained its market dominance through marketing, unethical business practices, shrewd evangelical work in the education area, bundling applications with the OS, buying out the competition & (oh yes) pure dumb luck. Customer service & attention to the needs of end users has never been their strong suit.
As the article pointed out, these licensing changes are really there to keep the procurement agents, customers' lawyers, corporate brass et al. happy. They will have minimal real-world impact.
If it would have significant real-world impact, you can bet your glutes that Microsoft wouldn't have done it. Microsoft is in the business of making money, not making software products. I'm not saying this is good (the "neo-conservative" point-of-view) or bad (the "Soviet Russia" point-of-view). I'm just saying that's the way it is.
"Burst Resistant... balls are strongly recommended in all environments as staples or other sharp items may unexpectedly pierce your..." Oh, nevermind...
Nuala O'Connor, DoubleClick's vice president for data protection and chief privacy officer, began Aug. 13, 2001, as the Commerce Department's deputy director of the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning & in 2002, became Chief Counsel for Technology. I don't think Ashcroft heads the Commerce Department, but you're almost "close enough for government work":
I guarantee that those artists would be more successful in the long run.
The Grateful Dead were/are a good example of this. While they could be vicious pursuing commercial bootleggers, they would happily sell a fan a "taper ticket" that included a place to plug in & a roped-off area near the soundboard to set up the mike stands.
Or for true confusion, visit http://www.bobdylan.com... the website actually features audience-taped songs from recent shows. Of course, Dylan has gone on record several times decrying commercial bootleggers.
I know there are many other bands & performers that do this kind of thing, but I'm an old mossback & there's about to be a Dylan-Dead tour;-)
legal cost of going after individuals is too high.
This is probably true. But if RIAA can trot enough "criminals" through a legal mill, then they'll be able to justify a bigger surcharge on recordings, blank media, or even internet access. Like the "recording surcharge" already on blank tapes & CDRs, it would go straight to the RIAA coffers.
And all these surcharges are exactly why folks are downloading instead of buying. Or to quote my 16 yr old daughter, "If new CDs cost five bucks, I'd buy them."
As for me, if Columbia Records (to use a specific sig-related example) would let me purchase an annual subscription to download Bob Dylan concert recordings on a next day basis, I'd be sending 'em my money today!
The real problem that the recording industry faces today isn't downloading, it's lack of imagination.
Yesterday afternoon as I was driving home from the office, I heard Trent Lott talking about the proposed FCC rule on Public Radio Mississippi. Basically, he said he opposed the new rules because it would reduce the diversity of opinion in the media. It sounded almost exactly like a PIRC form letter.
Needless to say, I was a bit, um, amazed. But regardless of what you (or I) think of him, Trent Lott is a seasoned politician. And the only way to become one of those is to listen to constituents.
Maybe he's still atoning for that Strom Thurmond thing...
It's worth reading to page 7 just to see Larry color the "impossible object oriented" widget. And then add the "universal clarification tool."
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but in all those pink tennis court diagrams was the concept of Parrot as a universal interpreter for Perl 5, Perl 6 & a heap pile of other languages. While it's an interesting concept in & of itself, it suggests to me that the advent of Perl 6 will not mean the demise of Perl 5, which is something I find quite comforting. And then Wall takes the "impossible object" widget, turns it into a comb & uses that to illustrate Parrot. Whoa!
Oppenheim: How does this have anything to do with corporations? This has to do with artists and creators. Artists and creators, like anybody else who creates something, should have the right to sell what they create...Indeed, most artists spend a lifetime trying to sell the result of their efforts to record companies so that they may make a living making music. At the end of the day, that is a great thing for music lovers--otherwise artists would have a lot less time to create the music we all love.
Fine, let's take the corporate aspect out of it & pay only the artists' share for compact discs. That would be somewhere on the order of 30 or 40 cents per disc, if that much (if the artist has a good contract). OK. Throw in $2 for the media & production. CDs start selling for $3 (like vinyl in the early '70s) & P2P would be irrelevant.
Yes, artists deserve to be able to sell what they create. That's why the record company moguls, agents & hangers-on often make as much as or more than the artists themselves.
20 years ago, I remember the high price of CDs being explained as "recouping research & development costs." Ummm... Methinks those costs were recouped long ago. Corporate greed is what it is...
But yeah, Oppenheim, let's take the corporations out of this. Who do you think is paying RIAA in the first place? Roadies?
When the guy equated file sharing with bank robbery, he showed that he is a nutcase.
The/. headline says it's 50 "coders" & the CNET headline says "developers," but the article says "employees." There's a bit of a difference in laying off 50 programmers & laying off 50 secretaries or technicians. One thing we can be fairly safe in assuming: it wasn't 50 managers. Inevitably, the last rat to have to hop off a sinking ship is the HR director.
Regardless, this is sad news. Sad, but not unexpected. Here's hoping some far-sighted investors will pick up Netscape/Mozilla -- it would probably be the bargain of the week, especially if MSIE really is dead in the water until Longhorn is finished.
Maybe this is Larry Ellison's chance to show us once again how badly he hates Bill Gates.
> United States citizens cannot launch outside of the United States without FAA approval
Solution: Have the Guatemalan who lives next door to the launch site push the button. If you need to be a "business," incorporate offshore. Bankers in the Cayman Islands can be most helpful with tax strategies as well.
> The FAA has threatened fines and possibly jail for anyone who violates that order.
Solution: Donate early & often to the Senator, Congressman, or court-appointed President of your choice. Then if all else fails, you'll have a friend in court -- the one called "Your Honor";-)
These strategies work well for those who are in the "important exportin' trade" in South America, so why not rocketeers, too?
Well, I'm starin' at my VAIO, a-drinkin' Kirin beer.
My IRC was lagging when it all came clear.
I hopped into my Honda, it's a little bitty car.
And I'm drivin' down to meet you at the Sushi Bar.
But don't tell me I'm crazy until you hear my plan.
I'm gonna buy two tickets and move to Japan.
I'm gonna move to Japan,
I'm gonna move to Japan.
So if you've got no job and the cable's too slow,
And it's too far to the switch at the ol' telco,
Just pack your bags and don't forget your Kimona,
And you'll be wallowing in bandwidth all the way to Yokohama.
We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan.
Tokyo's got the neon.
Put a pot of green tea on.
Akira Kurosawa,
Sapporo Okinawa.
Girls with almond eyes,
Downloadin' everything twice.
It's the land of tradition,
But I'm a man on a mission.
When we get to Japan we're gonna do our part,
To use up that bandwidth with all of our heart.
From the unemployment line I see lots to be done
And they're handin' out gigabit in the land of the risin' sun.
And I love my mom and my apple pie,
But sayonara Uncle Sam, hello Samurai.
We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan,
Hey, we're gonna move to Japan,
The home of the wired man.
It's rolling.
(Liberally adapted from The Band's "Move to Japan" -- 1993)
Whenever OpenOffice.org gets discussed on here, I see plenty of people complaining about its speed. I guess people must be trying to run on the cheap with older, slower systems...
That makes sense actually. The PHB reads about "this OpenOffice thing" in a trade mag & tells IT to test it "on one of our old computers." So it gets tested on a 450 PII instead of on the P-4's that MS Office is routinely run on. And the IT director's report back to the PHB is, "It's slow."
That's probably why Congress "gutted" the original proposal. Although we're "guaranteed" free speech by the US Constitution, the government doesn't have to guarantee us a venue in which to practice it.
To quote my favorite songwriter (see sig):
Democracy don't rule the world
You better get that out of your head
This world is ruled by violence
But that's better left unsaid.
And while we're quite low on democracy in these days of court-appointed presidents, we're still pretty adept at violence:-(
If I worked for RIAA, I would use P2P activity as a leading indicator of future sales. Reduced P2P activity means the current products are not very popular. When will they learn?
This is brilliant! Better yet, don't let the RIAA get credit for it -- steal their stats, refurbish them as market research & sell them to record companies;-)
They are NOT law enforcement. They are basically a private investigation outfit masquerading as an advocacy group for the "industry."
If you know any private eyes, you know they lie, cheat, deceive, distort facts, whatever they need to do to get their work done. They are very often only two spits shy of being crooks themselves.
So, it doesn't surprise me that RIAA takes stats from a holiday week, as has been pointed out already, to show that their threats & intimidation work.
The big problem that I see is that RIAA has essentially unlimited resources -- all that money that could be paid in artists' royalties -- while Joe Blow P2Per in the dorm doesn't. It will be very interesting if RIAA ever gets an opponent in court who has some financial backing. Of course, that will have to wait until we have a Department of Justice and not a Department of "Just Us"...
I guess that's why my first reaction was, "Jeez, this doesn't look any different from Outlook."
My bad:-( <sigh>
Of course, none of this -- including my own "contribution" -- explains why an email client needs to have a calendar anyway. Except, of course, that having a calendar in Outlook allows my pointy-headed boss to stick stuff on my calendar. And it puts me in the position of trying to keep my personal calendar separate from the "public" one that Exchange lets aforementioned pointy-headed one view... Solution: never synch my Palm at the office.
The author's links to the screenshots seem to have bellied up to the/. effect. Fortunately, Ximian has screenshots.
BTW, the author's links failed for me when there were only 4 comments posted here. Makes me wonder how long before someone starts coding sites that say, "Hmmm... the referer is slashdot.org, so don't deliver a page"...;-)
Obviously, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
And that's the real problem with this sort of GORGEOUS piece of hardware -- on price points, a lot of businesses will just make their designers work on a Mac. And a good many more will decide that Macs are too pricey themselves & have their designers working on souped-up Windows boxes.
This is really unfortunately, but it's the way it is. I think what my own staff artist might be doing on an SGI workstation, but then I think what else we'd be doing without if we got him one:-(
It makes me wonder, though, why an obvious workhorse machine is packaged up in a box that would make Alienware blush. Sorta like if White Freightliner started slapping Lamborghini-made bodies on their trucks.
OTOH, maybe SGI is onto something, since they market those things to graphic artists & designers...
Slashdot Mirror
Bork bork bork!
... and Longhorn gets a tabbed desktop with mouse gestures that only work with a Longhorn-certified Microsoft mouse.
Um, this is supposed to happen in the future if Microsoft doesn't get its act together? Shoot, bubba, it's already happening. Once again, MS is being reactive & not proactive.
Microsoft gained its market dominance through marketing, unethical business practices, shrewd evangelical work in the education area, bundling applications with the OS, buying out the competition & (oh yes) pure dumb luck. Customer service & attention to the needs of end users has never been their strong suit.
As the article pointed out, these licensing changes are really there to keep the procurement agents, customers' lawyers, corporate brass et al. happy. They will have minimal real-world impact.
If it would have significant real-world impact, you can bet your glutes that Microsoft wouldn't have done it. Microsoft is in the business of making money, not making software products. I'm not saying this is good (the "neo-conservative" point-of-view) or bad (the "Soviet Russia" point-of-view). I'm just saying that's the way it is.
"Burst Resistant ... balls are strongly recommended in all environments as staples or other sharp items may unexpectedly pierce your..." Oh, nevermind...
<GROAN />
It would be more in keeping with the wooden construction, methinks...
The Grateful Dead were/are a good example of this. While they could be vicious pursuing commercial bootleggers, they would happily sell a fan a "taper ticket" that included a place to plug in & a roped-off area near the soundboard to set up the mike stands.
Or for true confusion, visit http://www.bobdylan.com ... the website actually features audience-taped songs from recent shows. Of course, Dylan has gone on record several times decrying commercial bootleggers.
I know there are many other bands & performers that do this kind of thing, but I'm an old mossback & there's about to be a Dylan-Dead tour ;-)
This is probably true. But if RIAA can trot enough "criminals" through a legal mill, then they'll be able to justify a bigger surcharge on recordings, blank media, or even internet access. Like the "recording surcharge" already on blank tapes & CDRs, it would go straight to the RIAA coffers.
And all these surcharges are exactly why folks are downloading instead of buying. Or to quote my 16 yr old daughter, "If new CDs cost five bucks, I'd buy them."
As for me, if Columbia Records (to use a specific sig-related example) would let me purchase an annual subscription to download Bob Dylan concert recordings on a next day basis, I'd be sending 'em my money today!
The real problem that the recording industry faces today isn't downloading, it's lack of imagination.
Needless to say, I was a bit, um, amazed. But regardless of what you (or I) think of him, Trent Lott is a seasoned politician. And the only way to become one of those is to listen to constituents.
Maybe he's still atoning for that Strom Thurmond thing...
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but in all those pink tennis court diagrams was the concept of Parrot as a universal interpreter for Perl 5, Perl 6 & a heap pile of other languages. While it's an interesting concept in & of itself, it suggests to me that the advent of Perl 6 will not mean the demise of Perl 5, which is something I find quite comforting. And then Wall takes the "impossible object" widget, turns it into a comb & uses that to illustrate Parrot. Whoa!
This was the most fun read I've had in a while.
From the C|Net interview:
Fine, let's take the corporate aspect out of it & pay only the artists' share for compact discs. That would be somewhere on the order of 30 or 40 cents per disc, if that much (if the artist has a good contract). OK. Throw in $2 for the media & production. CDs start selling for $3 (like vinyl in the early '70s) & P2P would be irrelevant.
Yes, artists deserve to be able to sell what they create. That's why the record company moguls, agents & hangers-on often make as much as or more than the artists themselves.
20 years ago, I remember the high price of CDs being explained as "recouping research & development costs." Ummm... Methinks those costs were recouped long ago. Corporate greed is what it is...
But yeah, Oppenheim, let's take the corporations out of this. Who do you think is paying RIAA in the first place? Roadies?
When the guy equated file sharing with bank robbery, he showed that he is a nutcase.
You might consider encoding some sample files as mp3, Vorbis & flac, and then let some of the musicians be the judge.
Same goes for artwork. Sure, a lot of listeners might think it's peripheral, but musicians often think it's pretty important.
Remember, the musicians will be as much your "customers" as the folks who download the music.
Well for starters, Mozilla is free (as in beer), while the ad-free Opera costs isn't.
Regardless, this is sad news. Sad, but not unexpected. Here's hoping some far-sighted investors will pick up Netscape/Mozilla -- it would probably be the bargain of the week, especially if MSIE really is dead in the water until Longhorn is finished.
Maybe this is Larry Ellison's chance to show us once again how badly he hates Bill Gates.
Solution: Have the Guatemalan who lives next door to the launch site push the button. If you need to be a "business," incorporate offshore. Bankers in the Cayman Islands can be most helpful with tax strategies as well.
> The FAA has threatened fines and possibly jail for anyone who violates that order.
Solution: Donate early & often to the Senator, Congressman, or court-appointed President of your choice. Then if all else fails, you'll have a friend in court -- the one called "Your Honor" ;-)
These strategies work well for those who are in the "important exportin' trade" in South America, so why not rocketeers, too?
My IRC was lagging when it all came clear.
I hopped into my Honda, it's a little bitty car.
And I'm drivin' down to meet you at the Sushi Bar.
But don't tell me I'm crazy until you hear my plan.
I'm gonna buy two tickets and move to Japan.
I'm gonna move to Japan,
I'm gonna move to Japan.
So if you've got no job and the cable's too slow,
And it's too far to the switch at the ol' telco,
Just pack your bags and don't forget your Kimona,
And you'll be wallowing in bandwidth all the way to Yokohama.
We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan.
Tokyo's got the neon.
Put a pot of green tea on.
Akira Kurosawa,
Sapporo Okinawa.
Girls with almond eyes,
Downloadin' everything twice.
It's the land of tradition,
But I'm a man on a mission.
When we get to Japan we're gonna do our part,
To use up that bandwidth with all of our heart.
From the unemployment line I see lots to be done
And they're handin' out gigabit in the land of the risin' sun.
And I love my mom and my apple pie,
But sayonara Uncle Sam, hello Samurai.
We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan,
We're gonna move to Japan,
Hey, we're gonna move to Japan,
The home of the wired man.
It's rolling.
(Liberally adapted from The Band's "Move to Japan" -- 1993)
That makes sense actually. The PHB reads about "this OpenOffice thing" in a trade mag & tells IT to test it "on one of our old computers." So it gets tested on a 450 PII instead of on the P-4's that MS Office is routinely run on. And the IT director's report back to the PHB is, "It's slow."
To quote my favorite songwriter (see sig):
And while we're quite low on democracy in these days of court-appointed presidents, we're still pretty adept at violenceThis is brilliant! Better yet, don't let the RIAA get credit for it -- steal their stats, refurbish them as market research & sell them to record companies ;-)
If you know any private eyes, you know they lie, cheat, deceive, distort facts, whatever they need to do to get their work done. They are very often only two spits shy of being crooks themselves.
So, it doesn't surprise me that RIAA takes stats from a holiday week, as has been pointed out already, to show that their threats & intimidation work.
The big problem that I see is that RIAA has essentially unlimited resources -- all that money that could be paid in artists' royalties -- while Joe Blow P2Per in the dorm doesn't. It will be very interesting if RIAA ever gets an opponent in court who has some financial backing. Of course, that will have to wait until we have a Department of Justice and not a Department of "Just Us"...
I guess that's why my first reaction was, "Jeez, this doesn't look any different from Outlook."
My bad :-( <sigh>
Of course, none of this -- including my own "contribution" -- explains why an email client needs to have a calendar anyway. Except, of course, that having a calendar in Outlook allows my pointy-headed boss to stick stuff on my calendar. And it puts me in the position of trying to keep my personal calendar separate from the "public" one that Exchange lets aforementioned pointy-headed one view... Solution: never synch my Palm at the office.
BTW, the author's links failed for me when there were only 4 comments posted here. Makes me wonder how long before someone starts coding sites that say, "Hmmm... the referer is slashdot.org, so don't deliver a page"... ;-)
And that's the real problem with this sort of GORGEOUS piece of hardware -- on price points, a lot of businesses will just make their designers work on a Mac. And a good many more will decide that Macs are too pricey themselves & have their designers working on souped-up Windows boxes.
This is really unfortunately, but it's the way it is. I think what my own staff artist might be doing on an SGI workstation, but then I think what else we'd be doing without if we got him one :-(
It makes me wonder, though, why an obvious workhorse machine is packaged up in a box that would make Alienware blush. Sorta like if White Freightliner started slapping Lamborghini-made bodies on their trucks.
OTOH, maybe SGI is onto something, since they market those things to graphic artists & designers...