A bunch of their equipment is designed for a 10 year obsoletion-cycle. Cost's a hefty penny, though. Designed for business and major research universities.
At the University, we were using Creator3D graphics cards from Sun Microsystems. That was in 1999, and the general consumer market still hasn't caught up with that tech. Me, I'm still looking around for auto-stereoscopic monitors. Sharp is coming out with a consumer model next year, I hear.
Unfortunately, there is no information transmitted from Photon Receiver A to Photon Receiver B in your scenario, so no information travels faster than light. Schrodinger and Heisenberg are pretty much irrelevant here.
Does information need to be transmitted in order to be received? Can't information be determined directly from the wave equation itself? In the scenario described, photons are transmitted from the Emitter to Photon Receiver A and Photon Receiver B. However, data is jumping - or in the term you used, teleporting - between Photon Receiver A and B without either of them transmitting anything. They don't need to transmit. They just receive. And with quantum parity laws, the data they receive can be used with Heisenberg and Schroedinger equations to calculate states at the other receiver.
Teleportation and quantum entanglement is definately an example of this phenomena which has been achieved in laboratories. There is also work being done (at Northwestern, I believe) on quantum cryptography which utilizes some of these principles (I think it does).
And don't get me wrong. I'm not going to be talking about warp drive in any of these posts. But I do think that Heisenberg and Schroedinger are applicable, in terms of the quantum entanglement, which you mentioned.
As Carl Sagen stated, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
It was a shorthand way of saying that what you'd written was poorly thought-out nonsense delivered with a pretense of authority.
I thought I made it clear that I was not in the recording industry. I also did not mean to make any pretenses at being an economist. Had I wanted to make a pretense at authority, I would have included a bibliography of cited works. You're a sucker for slamming anybody who treads on your domain of study. Makes you feel important, I suspect.
(I used to work at the National Opinion Research Center [uchicago.edu], and we were doing some statistical analysis which was related to this topic.) that you plainly did not have.
Wow. An omniscient economist. Never met one of those before...
For the record, we were monitoring Napster traffic on the University routers. Conducting statistical analysis on file sharing of music over the campus network, in order to determine if the university needed to make an official policy (which they did). Sounds like statistical analysis related to the topic at hand to me. You can check the registrar's office at UChicago and the IRS if you want.
Sad, having access to all of those wonderful profs (I've met many of them, too) and yet you never learned anything about their field.
I learned more about the topic than you may think. Computationally, I know how to use STATA, SPSS, and MatLab. And I know how to write a Black-and-Scholes Option Pricing Model in C/C++. Learned some of the math, just not all of the lingo. But, as a said before, I'm not an economist, and I'm not in the music recording industry. I also learned from them that honey goes much further than vinegar, in regards to manners and civility.
Both head for the door when it opens, both stop to let the other exit first, both start forward again, repeat until the door closes, at which point one is heard to say that manners are clearly suboptimal.
Laf. That's kind of funny. Fair enough.
Now you're going to make me cry!
Geez. You are the sarcastic one, aren't you?
No use in keeping enemies. *Poof* You are un-Foed.
Well, I don't have a PhD in this subject or anything, so you may be correct.
As I understand it, however, data can 'travel faster' than photons.
For instance, assume that we both have direct fiber optic connections from our personal computers to the slashdot servers. So, all information is traveling between us at the speed of light.
Data theory and logic suggest that in order for us to be communicating at all, via 'the internet', we have to both have a web-browser that can transmit HTML, a network protocol stack, a computer screen and keyboard on which to view this information, and so forth. Further, we could also deduce that the other person is a carbon based life form, which possesses DNA, and has grown up in a social environment, such that it learns 'English'. At the very minimum, this can be encoded as a couple of megabytes of information, if not a gigabyte. All of which was transmitted to me the very second that I looked at your message.
Now, one response to this may be that all of this information/data is transmitted in parallel, and it hasn't traveled faster than the speed of light.
On the other hand, there is an argument that information can flow faster than photons.
Let me put it this way: If you encode information on the photon itself, then the data is confined to the physics of the photon. If you encode the information on the wave-equation of the photon, then one can determine and transmit information about states which exceed the speed of light.
The real meat of this post, then, goes back to the previously mentioned scenario. Imagine that we are connected via fiber optics from our personal computers to slashdot. Also, assume that our fiber optics actually transmit information at the speed of light without latency. Now then, assume that we set up our computers to recieve 'push' information from Slashdot's servers, and we both stand in front of our monitors. Also, assume that we are 180 degrees from each other. For the purpose of this argument, assume that there is no latency in regards to processing of the packets, and so forth.
You ------ Slashdot ------ Me
Here is the thought experiment: Slashdot sends an update to both you and me, at the speed of light, via fiber optics. It does this by sending a network packet out it's network card, which is then split into two identical packets by a splitter (one of those mirrors which seperates polalized light, or some similar contraption). The two packets travel to you and me at exactly the same speed, and arrive at the same time.
Now then, I claim that it is true that the network packet travels from Slashdot to Me at no greater velocity than the speed of light (c). I also claim that the network packet travels from Slashdot to You at no greater velocity than the speed of light (c). However, I also claim that there is information transmitted between you and me, at that moment in time, regarding the status of the other packet. This information is transmitted via the wave-equation, not the photon. It's transmitted via the context and the nature of the observation, not with the obersvation itself. In this case, I think that the information passed between You and Me, regarding this network update, has traveled at twice the speed of light (2c), due to quantum parity of the network packets.
If this is not the case, and data is confined by the speed of light, then the thought example must be modified. Perhaps a 1/2 multiplier is needed somewhere within the thought example.
Anyhow, I don't know all the answers, and I'm not claiming what I've said is absolute. I do know, however, that there are definately other scientists on our planet who believe that information can be encoded on the wave-equation, and not just on the photon. In that instance, as I understand it, data can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.
Anyhow, I gathered that from reading and studying articles by Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Fermi, Einstein, Chamberlain, Turring, and Knuth. But I'm not on par with them. I hope that it is obvious that this thought experiment is relevent to UFOs and the topic at hand.
Hmmm. I think that you and the parent post are talking about different things.
According to quantum information theory, quantum pairing should have a theoretical maximum of twice the speed of light.
As I was posting elsewhere on this thread, the basic concept, as I understand it, is that an atom or molecule is excited such that is emits a photon and anti-photon (photon is it's own anti-particle, so two photons are emitted). These photons are emitted in different directions. If the photons are emitted at an acute angle to each other, then the information is passed at a rate less than the speed of light. If the photons are emitted at an obtuse angle to each other, then the information is passed at a rate greater than the speed of light, but less than twice the speed of light.
If I recall correctly, Feynman's Lectures on Physics covers the basic principles, as do works by Heisenberg and Schroedinger. Specific to the topic, however, is the work by Owen Chamberlain, for his discovery of the anti-proton, and the work by Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee for their investigation into parity laws of the elementary particles.
Under controlled situations, one heats up an element. General black box radiation will usually suffice, but you typically need to have some weird constraints like using only a single atom as your emitter. Utilizing various methods, such as a laser, you excite the atom such that it emits a photon and an anti-photon (but, remember that a photon is it's own anti-particle, so the quantum pair turns out to be two photons). These photons are emitted in different directions.
By pulsing the laser and the excitation level of the atom, you can emit photons in a morse-code like manner.
Now then, utilizing affects of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Schroedinger Wave equation, the trick is to not 'observe' the photons as they are emitted (else, they wouldn't be observable to the folks you're sending them to on the other side of the galaxy).
Anyhow, assume that these photons travel half way across the galaxy and are 'observed' by some other group. When the photons are observed, the quantum wave collapses, and discrete information is passed from the source of the photons to the observation apparatus. Additionally, if the two photon are emitted exactly 180 degrees opposite of each other, and both are traveling at velocity c, the transmission of data has a theoretical velocity of twice the speed of light.
That is, by calculating the direction of the incoming photon with the measurement apparatus, one can discretely calculate where the other photon is. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you loose the velocity information, however, so you know where the other photon is, but don't know how long it took to get there, or how fast it's traveling.
This method of calculation, at the quantum level, is not un-common amongst scientists.
I'm sure I haven't gotten the details exactly right, but this is a basic description of the method.
And I've had moving a window on the screen of a heavily loaded NT 4 box bring the server down (BSOD). Mission critical only if your mission tolerates frequent catastrophical failure, or the load on the box is negligible, maybe.
Agreed. I have also had NT machines crash into a BSOD by moving a window.
I've also has the same thing happen to me with FVWM running on a Solaris 8 machine (dumps you into the PROM screen, much like the BSOD). My coworkers didn't know what to say... they'd never seen such a crash (granted, I was messing around with non-standard device drivers, wacky equipment, and unsupported libraries...) Nontheless, it can happen to all platforms.
If you want to get NT to run mission critical stuff, you typically has to remove all the extranious sub-systems. (Ever see a Harley-Davidson 'chopper, where they take everything off that isn't needed to make a real light bike?)
Interesting process that. It can definately be done.
No, I've marked you as a foe because your last email was rude and uncivil. You're arguments are fine, and obviously more well informed than mine are, in the areas of economics. I agree that economists may call the phenomena I was describing a 'barrier to entry' rather than a 'moat'. The evidence and reasoning presented within your arguments lack nothing. Your manners, however, ought to be far better, as an economist. You manage to structure your emails to be nearly as offensive as possible within the first couple of sentences.
Simply put, what evidence is there that you are an economist? Why do I care? Why are you belittling me in the first couple of sentences of your email?
When I was working at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago as a computing assistant, I had real economists, like Robert Fogel, bust my chops and criticize my work. I've already had people far better than you criticize me, and I happen to know from first hand experience, that people at the Doctoral and Nobel Leaureate level are much more courteous and civil about their criticisms, than you are.
Don't think you know everything, hot-shot economist. You're sounding like a wanna-be. Listen to yourself talk. You're resorting to sarcasm as a defence mechanism. You're making defensive rationalizations regarding why I marked you on my Foes list. You're quoting Gracie Allen. And you're trying to insinuate that I'm a little boy. As far as I can tell, you're hurt that somebody had the gall to mark you on their Foe's list... It's happened to you once before, and now you've gone and done something to piss somebody off again.
Learn some manners. A real economist knows how to give criticism and comment on other people's work without causing offence and being rude about it. I suggest the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.
You obviously have a lot of talent and are well educated. Have the civility and manners of men like Heckman, Lucas, Fogel, Scholes, Stigler, Friedman, Becker, or Coase.
This is why NT is far more stable than earlier versions. The NT kernal is very similar to Unix in how it operates, and essentially is just as good.
Agreed. As an MCSE (Windows NT), I've supported all the flavors of Windows around (and some that were never officially released, via the TechNet program). NT works like Unix. In fact, the Chicago Board of Trade, nuclear power plants, and airports often use NT for mission critical systems.
Also, if he'd read the book he'd know that the DOS command prompt is done via emulation, as well as legacy program support. The core of the system remains NT even when the emulator is running.
Um. Not exactly 100% true, but not wrong either. As per the architecture, the Win16 APIs are just subsystems of the NT kernel environment, just the same as the POSIX and OS2 support. Now, I suppose one could describe a subsystem as an emulation program, if you wanted to, but methinks they are slightly different. Anyhow, the Win16, POSIX, and OS2 subsystems are actually considered supported, natively, as I understand. There is chunking involved with the Win16 APIs (padding of a 16bit vector with 16 '0' bits, in order to make it a 32bit vector), which is probably what you are describing as 'emulation.' It's mostly semantics, however.
Sorry for splitting hairs. Not trying to flame or argue.
I am an economist. It is clear that you never received more than a c- in econ 101.
Good for you economist. I'm a scientist and work in the medical industry. I've never taken an economics class. It is clear that you never recieved more than a c- in human relationships and civility 101.
I could go on and on about how XP is based off the NT core which came from VMS and how different the X server is from how MS does its graphical shell, but I'm sure many other posters will put up the same info.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't VMS based off of Unix as well? I recall something about companies such as Digital and HP. Seems like XP would be more favorable to an underlying unix OS than otherwise.
Moving to a Linux base would be a HUGE investment, and MS software would go back to the stability of Win98 for 3 generations as they worked out all the bugs.
Perhaps. But don't they have their automated bug report systems in place nowdays? Seems like that would exponentially speed up the bug fixing problem. Didn't have automated bug-report systems back in the DOS days...
Linux would NOT be helped by having MS grab the Linux kernel and use it as a base for their OS.
Except for the fact that 95% of the world which currently uses DOS/NT based systems would actually migrate to Linux. Don't you think that people who now learn commands like 'dir' and 'copy' would, instead, learn 'ls' and 'cp'. Seems to me like that would be the foundation of learning and experience which could increase the numbers of future linux programmers and coders.
Fair enough. But what happens if you're docking a cruise liner, a naval destroyer, or a cargo super-ship? What about an aircraft carrier? As I understand, docking those things can take days. I suspect those 40 minutes are actually used just in the mooring of such a ship.
Also, as I was posting elsewhere on this thread, the cost of 1 Tesla magnets is high... as high as $1M per magnet, what with the computer systems, the liquid helium and liquid nitrogen costs, the concrete reinforcements, and all.
So, how do you explain the $20M to $50M price tag of this project? I don't think somebody would spend that kind of money for 52 new 1 Tesla magnets (which the article also quotes) if they weren't doing anything other than docking cruise liners, cargo super-ships, naval destroyers, and aircraft carriers.
And if they're using 1 Tesla cryomagnets (which is common for that field strength), it doesn't neccessarily matter if the electricity goes out... the superconductor keeps the magnetic charge. Hell, if they're docking things like aircraft carriers and cargo super-ships, I wouldn't be surprised if they found reason to spend $500,000 on the liquid helium costs alone, per ship, in order to go through a complete power up and power down of the cryomagnets before and after the ships dock. Actually, if they're docking any nuclear powered vehicle, such as submarines, destroyers, or aircraft carriers, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were using cryomagnets.
(FYI: It takes 2,000L of Helium per magnet, which costs about $5 per Liter, for a $10,000 cost per magnet, in terms of Helium alone. This works out to about $520,000 for the 52 magnets. But, then again, they may not be using cryomagnets. All they said was that they were 1 Tesla magnets.)
I dunno. I work with 1.5T magnets, and I think they're talking about much bigger ports and mooring systems than that.
At the very least, according to the cost of medical grade 1.5 Tesla magnets, your initial costs for the electromagnet system could be off by as much as a factor of 1000. (1 Tesla magnets can cost a cool $1M each, with computer systems, real estate infrastructure upgrades, and all. And they're talking about a 52 magnet system.). My guess:
Electromagnets: [Inital Costs: $50,000,000; Ongoing Costs: $100,000 per year]
Lots of Ropes: [Initial Costs: $100,000; Ongoing Labor Costs: $5,000,000 per year (for 200 dock workers)
Five years down the road, the investment pays off real big.
Yes, I know that Helium and Nitrogen are mostly inert. As Vellmont points out elsewhere in this thread, Helium is the most inert element there is.
I agree that there isn't much of a chemical hazard with the Helium or Nitrogen, in regards to chemical reactions. Perhaps my wording was a bit off there, in regards to 'ozone'. I suppose that I'm a bit more concerned with work accidents and thermodynamics, than I am with ozone and atmospheric reactions. Given my training with 1.5Tesla magnets, I can envision accidents happening with human workers getting freeze-burns when a magnet gets hit with a fully loaded cargo ship, and explodes... splashing liquid Helium on everybody. That would be a quick way to ruin your day.
At work, they make a big deal about not "breaking" the cryomagnet by releasing the Helium. It's got an emergency release valve which vents the Helium in case an accident occurs. I'm told that stuff can cause really bad burns.
Also, there's a question, in terms of economics, if a magnet breaks. The emergency button on our 1.5 Tesla magnet has, of all things, a warning sign which states 'Refueling of the magnet is very costly.' My thinking is that if I were to ever press that button, and somebody's life wasn't very much in danger, I'd get a meeting with my directors real quick-like, regarding why it's going to cost them $10,000 to refuel the magnet.
Anyhow, seems to me like there are some practicle issues which need to be sorted out. It's going to probably cost $500,000 in liquid helium costs alone, just to power the thing up.
Mostly, the chain and combo lock doesn't address the issues which electromagnetic mooring systems do. There are a lot of factors involved with a project like this, including sway, roll, and yaw of the boat, which chains and locks don't handle. The chain and lock system acts like a yo-yo or a swing, in so far as two objects are attached together by a string. The electromagnetic mooring system acts like, well, a refridgerator magnet does to a refridgerator.
I'm fairly sure that the force of the magnet decays exponentially with distance, so the magnet's field shouldn't extend too far into the ship. Also, fiber optics shouldn't be affected by the EM interference, so as long as the ship-wide wiring is run over fiber optics, things should be OK. (Fiber optic enabled routers on bridge, engine, and network closets; many manufacturing and production plants which have to deal with EM interference use fiber optics, so I'd suspect that cargo ships might use similar solutions to similar problems.)
As far as who needs 4" hemp ropes... uh, Woody Harrelson for a retrofit of the Cheer's pub?
Scene from Cheers 2:
Woody: Arr! I'm a pirate!
Norm: Hey! Give me some of the stuff he's havin!
Fraiser: Oh, what an excellent opportunity to study the affects of canaboids on socio-psychotic behavior!
Cliff: Shut up and pass the pipe.
Diane: I don't know if I like the color green... oh, my! That is green!
Sam: Hey, lock the damn doors! (bubble, bubble, gurgle)
I think so. The specs don't specify the details, but I think that the Mobile Servicing Station, provided by Canada, uses electromagnets within the Base System and the Dexterous Manipulator.
Here's more info on Canada's robotic hand/arm thing. It's like a crazy robotic slinky/robot arm which doesn't have a shoulder. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it uses electro-magnets, but I can't find any direct mention of the coupling mechanism it uses.
So, at work, I work with a 1.5 Tesla magnet (Gyroscan Intera... used for nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; VMS/VAX/Solaris Operating Systems). Price tag on the thing is about $1M, which makes me wonder:
1) Did this docking system actually cost only $50M? At $5M a year, is a 10 year return on investment reasonable?
2) Is it actually Helium/Nitrogen cooled? We have to have a dedicated coolant system for our magnet to work at 1.5 Tesla. Moreover, what happens if a magnet breaks? They're not going to vent 2,000L of Helium, per magnet into the ozone, are they? (52 magnets = 100,000L total of liquid Helium)
At another level, however, the businesses in question may be the liquor and alcohol manufacturers, such as Bicardi, Smirnoff, Busch, etc. etc. The liquor manufacturers are acting in much the same role as the recording industry. The night clubs in the role of the websites. The RIAA as the bouncers.
I agree with most of your assessment. I would point out that the bouncers don't invest in everything, as well. I would also point out that, according to state law in most every state, night clubs which serve alcohol have an interest in having bouncers to enforce drinking age laws.
Also, the $50 charge per month may be considered a utilities expense, just like heat, electricity, and water.
Anyhow, I don't know the correct answer to this topic. It just occured to me that there seems to be an analogous situation, which has been fairly well resolved, within the liquor/alcohol/nightclub industries.
Fair enough. I agree with most of your comments. (I, too, am not in the recording industry, so I don't have an authoritative voice...) Some comments:
I'm not sure I buy into the idea that more and more CDs are being produced - for one thing, once the initial production is paid for, maintaining a catalog is essentially free.
Well, sales of CD-R and CD-RW devices indicate that there is an increase of CD recording devices in the homes of consumers. Also, the sales of blank CDs indicate that a lot of consumers have the need for the resources needed to record a CD (although, I suppose that some percentage of those CDs are going into data disks and art projects).
Anyhow, I would hope that you agree that there is an increase of CDs on the market in general. Now then, with the independent labels and the home consumer markets, I suspect that there are more CDs being produced. Within the recording industry, however, I suspect that you are correct... they have N number of CDs that they expect to sell each quarter/year, and that number is fairly consistent, according to some function (linear, compounding, exponential, I-don't-know).\
I also agree that there is a plethora of pre-produced bands. My thinking is that these types of bands are the kinds of bands which support the model I proposed of a healthy industry.
I also disagree rather strongly with your definition of a healthy industry - a total lockin like that is enormously UN-healthy. A healthy insdustry is one that consistently makes a profit, that's all. It doesn't have to keep growing, it doesn't have to continually make more money, all it has to do is consistently make money. If it's doing that, it's health, and the recording industry certainly is that.
Now then, I think I understand your position on this point. I would like to offer a comment and a scenario for your consideration.
Comment: I'm not necessarily suggesting a complete lock-in. What I'm suggesting is an economic moat... the thing that keeps your competitors away from you; which is what the recording industry lacks. Now, I couldn't find stock quotes or for the other companies, but I pulled up some graphs for Sony:
As you can see, poor Sony has been declining for three years now, and has no economic moat. There is nothing preventing anybody else from competing with Sony and taking market share away from them.
Scenario: OK, please consider the situation of a salesman who rents an apartment, has little in the way of savings, and experiences a heart attack or stroke. This person may be very consistent before the heart attack or stroke; he may even be increasing his productivity, sales, and yearly income. But when the stroke or heart attack occurs, it's all over. He doesn't have the economic moat to protect him from other salespeople who he is competing with.
Now then, if this salesman were, instead, a real-estate agent, things may be very different. A real-estate agent and real-estate holder typically owns real estate, collects rent from others, has savings, and has a wide economic moat, which is protected by federal law. If a real-estate agent suffers a heart attack or stroke, there are savings to recoup with, rent is still-collected, and annual income may not affected in any manner.
My suggestion is that a healthy industry is not locked in. Rather, the healthy industry has control of it's own castle on it's own real estate. Instead of being locked-in, it has the defenses to keep other's out.
A top music executive said on Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites.
Sounds to me like the 'bouncers-union' has identified some sites which are successfull enough that they ought to start 'offering their services'. Anyhow, sounds to me like they're asking you to pay a cover charge to go into a night club. I'm not sure that's entirely unethical or unreasonable.
The RIAA considers downloading music illegally over the Internet to be the moral equivalence of stealing. I wonder then what is the moral equivalence of the RIAA taking realized cash from people who do not download music?
Paying a cover charge, perhaps? You don't have to drink alcohol at a night club; but many of them will charge cover whether you get drunk or are the designated driver.
Demographics yo. 'Record profits' are generally the result of sales hype, inflation, and overly simplistic accounting reports (read: people who look at the 'bottom line' profits and nothing else).
Now, I'm not in the music industry, but I used to work at the National Opinion Research Center, and we were doing some statistical analysis which was related to this topic. So, I'll give my 2 cents, and attempt to answer your question.
Anyhow, as I understand it, fewer and fewer CD/albums are generating positive returns on investment. At the same time, more and more CD/albums are being produced. The fact which seems to be keeping the industry alive is that when a CD/album does generate a return on investment, the return can be extremely large. In fact, the return on investment is increasing for those albums which do generate a positive return. (Mostly due to an increasing world-wide population, an increase in potential consumers, world-wide communication networks, and peer-to-peer network phenomenas. )
For example, consider Eminem. Selling more CDs than anybody else around. Who has ever heard of a CD selling over 1M copies, in its first week?! But he did it. Now then, I know my estimations are inexact, but figure that 1M x $20 = $20M in one week, from one product. That number (or a similar one) is what the industry reports as a record profit.
Behind that number (and similar numbers reported, which include record-label and industry-wide sums of sales/product) are tens of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 1,000 copies per year. Over time, those tens of thousands of titles become part of the hundreds of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 100 copies per year. Which then become part of the millions of titles which are lucky to sell 10 copies a year.
Now then, as to your question: The music recording industry actually is ailing (as an industry), because they've lost what economists call a 'moat'. That is, they don't have any protection from other competitors getting into the business. As an industry, they don't have something which protects them from Microsoft, Apple, or Linux competing with them (read: Independent Labels.)
Now, if the recording industry were not ailing, and were healthy, here would be the situation:
Every CD produced sold exactly N copies +/- 10% of N. For example, every CD would sell 90,000 to 110,000 copies. No more, no less. There would be approximately M titles produced per year. If a new employee was hired by the company, they would produce 'M + 10' or 'M + x' titles to offset the wages and cost of the new employee. In addition, the industry would use proprietary technology, which nobody had access to, and nobody else could produce compact disks. Those people in the CD industry would be the CD producers, and nobody else got to participate in the game. That is how the industry would be structured if it were healthy.
But, that's not the way it is, now is it?
All things considered, Microsoft getting into this business is very bad news for the recording industry. For the record labels, it just means another major player who wants a cut of the pie, which is already spread too thin as it is. It also means that anybody who buys a Microsoft Small Business Server license can start up not just an 'Independent Label' but, rather, a medium sized recording label. Put another way, the small fish have just gotten bigger.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out some of the equipment from Sun Microsystems, SGI, IBM, and Stereographics.
A bunch of their equipment is designed for a 10 year obsoletion-cycle. Cost's a hefty penny, though. Designed for business and major research universities.
At the University, we were using Creator3D graphics cards from Sun Microsystems. That was in 1999, and the general consumer market still hasn't caught up with that tech. Me, I'm still looking around for auto-stereoscopic monitors. Sharp is coming out with a consumer model next year, I hear.
Unfortunately, there is no information transmitted from Photon Receiver A to Photon Receiver B in your scenario, so no information travels faster than light. Schrodinger and Heisenberg are pretty much irrelevant here.
Does information need to be transmitted in order to be received? Can't information be determined directly from the wave equation itself? In the scenario described, photons are transmitted from the Emitter to Photon Receiver A and Photon Receiver B. However, data is jumping - or in the term you used, teleporting - between Photon Receiver A and B without either of them transmitting anything. They don't need to transmit. They just receive. And with quantum parity laws, the data they receive can be used with Heisenberg and Schroedinger equations to calculate states at the other receiver.
Teleportation and quantum entanglement is definately an example of this phenomena which has been achieved in laboratories. There is also work being done (at Northwestern, I believe) on quantum cryptography which utilizes some of these principles (I think it does).
And don't get me wrong. I'm not going to be talking about warp drive in any of these posts. But I do think that Heisenberg and Schroedinger are applicable, in terms of the quantum entanglement, which you mentioned.
As Carl Sagen stated, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
It was a shorthand way of saying that what you'd written was poorly thought-out nonsense delivered with a pretense of authority.
I thought I made it clear that I was not in the recording industry. I also did not mean to make any pretenses at being an economist. Had I wanted to make a pretense at authority, I would have included a bibliography of cited works. You're a sucker for slamming anybody who treads on your domain of study. Makes you feel important, I suspect.
(I used to work at the National Opinion Research Center [uchicago.edu], and we were doing some statistical analysis which was related to this topic.) that you plainly did not have.
Wow. An omniscient economist. Never met one of those before...
For the record, we were monitoring Napster traffic on the University routers. Conducting statistical analysis on file sharing of music over the campus network, in order to determine if the university needed to make an official policy (which they did). Sounds like statistical analysis related to the topic at hand to me. You can check the registrar's office at UChicago and the IRS if you want.
Sad, having access to all of those wonderful profs (I've met many of them, too) and yet you never learned anything about their field.
I learned more about the topic than you may think. Computationally, I know how to use STATA, SPSS, and MatLab. And I know how to write a Black-and-Scholes Option Pricing Model in C/C++. Learned some of the math, just not all of the lingo. But, as a said before, I'm not an economist, and I'm not in the music recording industry. I also learned from them that honey goes much further than vinegar, in regards to manners and civility.
Both head for the door when it opens, both stop to let the other exit first, both start forward again, repeat until the door closes, at which point one is heard to say that manners are clearly suboptimal.
Laf. That's kind of funny. Fair enough.
Now you're going to make me cry!
Geez. You are the sarcastic one, aren't you?
No use in keeping enemies. *Poof* You are un-Foed.
Well, I don't have a PhD in this subject or anything, so you may be correct.
As I understand it, however, data can 'travel faster' than photons.
For instance, assume that we both have direct fiber optic connections from our personal computers to the slashdot servers. So, all information is traveling between us at the speed of light.
Data theory and logic suggest that in order for us to be communicating at all, via 'the internet', we have to both have a web-browser that can transmit HTML, a network protocol stack, a computer screen and keyboard on which to view this information, and so forth. Further, we could also deduce that the other person is a carbon based life form, which possesses DNA, and has grown up in a social environment, such that it learns 'English'. At the very minimum, this can be encoded as a couple of megabytes of information, if not a gigabyte. All of which was transmitted to me the very second that I looked at your message.
Now, one response to this may be that all of this information/data is transmitted in parallel, and it hasn't traveled faster than the speed of light.
On the other hand, there is an argument that information can flow faster than photons.
Let me put it this way: If you encode information on the photon itself, then the data is confined to the physics of the photon. If you encode the information on the wave-equation of the photon, then one can determine and transmit information about states which exceed the speed of light.
The real meat of this post, then, goes back to the previously mentioned scenario. Imagine that we are connected via fiber optics from our personal computers to slashdot. Also, assume that our fiber optics actually transmit information at the speed of light without latency. Now then, assume that we set up our computers to recieve 'push' information from Slashdot's servers, and we both stand in front of our monitors. Also, assume that we are 180 degrees from each other. For the purpose of this argument, assume that there is no latency in regards to processing of the packets, and so forth.
You ------ Slashdot ------ Me
Here is the thought experiment: Slashdot sends an update to both you and me, at the speed of light, via fiber optics. It does this by sending a network packet out it's network card, which is then split into two identical packets by a splitter (one of those mirrors which seperates polalized light, or some similar contraption). The two packets travel to you and me at exactly the same speed, and arrive at the same time.
Now then, I claim that it is true that the network packet travels from Slashdot to Me at no greater velocity than the speed of light (c). I also claim that the network packet travels from Slashdot to You at no greater velocity than the speed of light (c). However, I also claim that there is information transmitted between you and me, at that moment in time, regarding the status of the other packet. This information is transmitted via the wave-equation, not the photon. It's transmitted via the context and the nature of the observation, not with the obersvation itself. In this case, I think that the information passed between You and Me, regarding this network update, has traveled at twice the speed of light (2c), due to quantum parity of the network packets.
If this is not the case, and data is confined by the speed of light, then the thought example must be modified. Perhaps a 1/2 multiplier is needed somewhere within the thought example.
Anyhow, I don't know all the answers, and I'm not claiming what I've said is absolute. I do know, however, that there are definately other scientists on our planet who believe that information can be encoded on the wave-equation, and not just on the photon. In that instance, as I understand it, data can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.
Anyhow, I gathered that from reading and studying articles by Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Fermi, Einstein, Chamberlain, Turring, and Knuth. But I'm not on par with them. I hope that it is obvious that this thought experiment is relevent to UFOs and the topic at hand.
Anyhow, I could be wrong.
Hmmm. I think that you and the parent post are talking about different things.
According to quantum information theory, quantum pairing should have a theoretical maximum of twice the speed of light.
As I was posting elsewhere on this thread, the basic concept, as I understand it, is that an atom or molecule is excited such that is emits a photon and anti-photon (photon is it's own anti-particle, so two photons are emitted). These photons are emitted in different directions. If the photons are emitted at an acute angle to each other, then the information is passed at a rate less than the speed of light. If the photons are emitted at an obtuse angle to each other, then the information is passed at a rate greater than the speed of light, but less than twice the speed of light.
If I recall correctly, Feynman's Lectures on Physics covers the basic principles, as do works by Heisenberg and Schroedinger. Specific to the topic, however, is the work by Owen Chamberlain, for his discovery of the anti-proton, and the work by Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee for their investigation into parity laws of the elementary particles.
I beg to differ.
As I understand the process, it works like this:
Under controlled situations, one heats up an element. General black box radiation will usually suffice, but you typically need to have some weird constraints like using only a single atom as your emitter. Utilizing various methods, such as a laser, you excite the atom such that it emits a photon and an anti-photon (but, remember that a photon is it's own anti-particle, so the quantum pair turns out to be two photons). These photons are emitted in different directions.
By pulsing the laser and the excitation level of the atom, you can emit photons in a morse-code like manner.
Now then, utilizing affects of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Schroedinger Wave equation, the trick is to not 'observe' the photons as they are emitted (else, they wouldn't be observable to the folks you're sending them to on the other side of the galaxy).
Anyhow, assume that these photons travel half way across the galaxy and are 'observed' by some other group. When the photons are observed, the quantum wave collapses, and discrete information is passed from the source of the photons to the observation apparatus. Additionally, if the two photon are emitted exactly 180 degrees opposite of each other, and both are traveling at velocity c, the transmission of data has a theoretical velocity of twice the speed of light.
That is, by calculating the direction of the incoming photon with the measurement apparatus, one can discretely calculate where the other photon is. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you loose the velocity information, however, so you know where the other photon is, but don't know how long it took to get there, or how fast it's traveling.
This method of calculation, at the quantum level, is not un-common amongst scientists.
I'm sure I haven't gotten the details exactly right, but this is a basic description of the method.
And I've had moving a window on the screen of a heavily loaded NT 4 box bring the server down (BSOD). Mission critical only if your mission tolerates frequent catastrophical failure, or the load on the box is negligible, maybe.
Agreed. I have also had NT machines crash into a BSOD by moving a window.
I've also has the same thing happen to me with FVWM running on a Solaris 8 machine (dumps you into the PROM screen, much like the BSOD). My coworkers didn't know what to say... they'd never seen such a crash (granted, I was messing around with non-standard device drivers, wacky equipment, and unsupported libraries...) Nontheless, it can happen to all platforms.
If you want to get NT to run mission critical stuff, you typically has to remove all the extranious sub-systems. (Ever see a Harley-Davidson 'chopper, where they take everything off that isn't needed to make a real light bike?)
Interesting process that. It can definately be done.
No, I've marked you as a foe because your last email was rude and uncivil. You're arguments are fine, and obviously more well informed than mine are, in the areas of economics. I agree that economists may call the phenomena I was describing a 'barrier to entry' rather than a 'moat'. The evidence and reasoning presented within your arguments lack nothing. Your manners, however, ought to be far better, as an economist. You manage to structure your emails to be nearly as offensive as possible within the first couple of sentences.
Simply put, what evidence is there that you are an economist? Why do I care? Why are you belittling me in the first couple of sentences of your email?
When I was working at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago as a computing assistant, I had real economists, like Robert Fogel, bust my chops and criticize my work. I've already had people far better than you criticize me, and I happen to know from first hand experience, that people at the Doctoral and Nobel Leaureate level are much more courteous and civil about their criticisms, than you are.
Don't think you know everything, hot-shot economist. You're sounding like a wanna-be. Listen to yourself talk. You're resorting to sarcasm as a defence mechanism. You're making defensive rationalizations regarding why I marked you on my Foes list. You're quoting Gracie Allen. And you're trying to insinuate that I'm a little boy. As far as I can tell, you're hurt that somebody had the gall to mark you on their Foe's list... It's happened to you once before, and now you've gone and done something to piss somebody off again.
Learn some manners. A real economist knows how to give criticism and comment on other people's work without causing offence and being rude about it. I suggest the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.
You obviously have a lot of talent and are well educated. Have the civility and manners of men like Heckman, Lucas, Fogel, Scholes, Stigler, Friedman, Becker, or Coase.
Does this work in Pine? If not, I'm afraid I may honestly be behind the times...
Sigh... But I liked to be able to check my email via telnet...
How does a spam filtering language, such as CRM114, determine between one person's junk and another person's treasure?
How can any statistical method or programming language be '95%' accurate in such a complex and dynamic system as email and spam?
This is why NT is far more stable than earlier versions. The NT kernal is very similar to Unix in how it operates, and essentially is just as good.
Agreed. As an MCSE (Windows NT), I've supported all the flavors of Windows around (and some that were never officially released, via the TechNet program). NT works like Unix. In fact, the Chicago Board of Trade, nuclear power plants, and airports often use NT for mission critical systems.
Also, if he'd read the book he'd know that the DOS command prompt is done via emulation, as well as legacy program support. The core of the system remains NT even when the emulator is running.
Um. Not exactly 100% true, but not wrong either. As per the architecture, the Win16 APIs are just subsystems of the NT kernel environment, just the same as the POSIX and OS2 support. Now, I suppose one could describe a subsystem as an emulation program, if you wanted to, but methinks they are slightly different. Anyhow, the Win16, POSIX, and OS2 subsystems are actually considered supported, natively, as I understand. There is chunking involved with the Win16 APIs (padding of a 16bit vector with 16 '0' bits, in order to make it a 32bit vector), which is probably what you are describing as 'emulation.' It's mostly semantics, however.
Sorry for splitting hairs. Not trying to flame or argue.
No, I wouldn't call you a troll. I think you've made a very good point.
I actually hope that 95% is an inaccurate number, as I support freeware and GPL. (I run RedHat 8.0, Gnome, and Enlightenment on my homebox).
I am an economist. It is clear that you never received more than a c- in econ 101.
Good for you economist. I'm a scientist and work in the medical industry. I've never taken an economics class. It is clear that you never recieved more than a c- in human relationships and civility 101.
Thanks for the flame. Go away.
I could go on and on about how XP is based off the NT core which came from VMS and how different the X server is from how MS does its graphical shell, but I'm sure many other posters will put up the same info.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't VMS based off of Unix as well? I recall something about companies such as Digital and HP. Seems like XP would be more favorable to an underlying unix OS than otherwise.
Moving to a Linux base would be a HUGE investment, and MS software would go back to the stability of Win98 for 3 generations as they worked out all the bugs.
Perhaps. But don't they have their automated bug report systems in place nowdays? Seems like that would exponentially speed up the bug fixing problem. Didn't have automated bug-report systems back in the DOS days...
Linux would NOT be helped by having MS grab the Linux kernel and use it as a base for their OS.
Except for the fact that 95% of the world which currently uses DOS/NT based systems would actually migrate to Linux. Don't you think that people who now learn commands like 'dir' and 'copy' would, instead, learn 'ls' and 'cp'. Seems to me like that would be the foundation of learning and experience which could increase the numbers of future linux programmers and coders.
Fair enough. But what happens if you're docking a cruise liner, a naval destroyer, or a cargo super-ship? What about an aircraft carrier? As I understand, docking those things can take days. I suspect those 40 minutes are actually used just in the mooring of such a ship.
Also, as I was posting elsewhere on this thread, the cost of 1 Tesla magnets is high... as high as $1M per magnet, what with the computer systems, the liquid helium and liquid nitrogen costs, the concrete reinforcements, and all.
So, how do you explain the $20M to $50M price tag of this project? I don't think somebody would spend that kind of money for 52 new 1 Tesla magnets (which the article also quotes) if they weren't doing anything other than docking cruise liners, cargo super-ships, naval destroyers, and aircraft carriers.
And if they're using 1 Tesla cryomagnets (which is common for that field strength), it doesn't neccessarily matter if the electricity goes out... the superconductor keeps the magnetic charge. Hell, if they're docking things like aircraft carriers and cargo super-ships, I wouldn't be surprised if they found reason to spend $500,000 on the liquid helium costs alone, per ship, in order to go through a complete power up and power down of the cryomagnets before and after the ships dock. Actually, if they're docking any nuclear powered vehicle, such as submarines, destroyers, or aircraft carriers, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were using cryomagnets.
(FYI: It takes 2,000L of Helium per magnet, which costs about $5 per Liter, for a $10,000 cost per magnet, in terms of Helium alone. This works out to about $520,000 for the 52 magnets. But, then again, they may not be using cryomagnets. All they said was that they were 1 Tesla magnets.)
I dunno. I work with 1.5T magnets, and I think they're talking about much bigger ports and mooring systems than that.
At the very least, according to the cost of medical grade 1.5 Tesla magnets, your initial costs for the electromagnet system could be off by as much as a factor of 1000. (1 Tesla magnets can cost a cool $1M each, with computer systems, real estate infrastructure upgrades, and all. And they're talking about a 52 magnet system.). My guess:
Electromagnets: [Inital Costs: $50,000,000; Ongoing Costs: $100,000 per year]
Lots of Ropes: [Initial Costs: $100,000; Ongoing Labor Costs: $5,000,000 per year (for 200 dock workers)
Five years down the road, the investment pays off real big.
But I don't know that for a fact.
Yes, I know that Helium and Nitrogen are mostly inert. As Vellmont points out elsewhere in this thread, Helium is the most inert element there is.
I agree that there isn't much of a chemical hazard with the Helium or Nitrogen, in regards to chemical reactions. Perhaps my wording was a bit off there, in regards to 'ozone'. I suppose that I'm a bit more concerned with work accidents and thermodynamics, than I am with ozone and atmospheric reactions. Given my training with 1.5Tesla magnets, I can envision accidents happening with human workers getting freeze-burns when a magnet gets hit with a fully loaded cargo ship, and explodes... splashing liquid Helium on everybody. That would be a quick way to ruin your day.
At work, they make a big deal about not "breaking" the cryomagnet by releasing the Helium. It's got an emergency release valve which vents the Helium in case an accident occurs. I'm told that stuff can cause really bad burns.
Also, there's a question, in terms of economics, if a magnet breaks. The emergency button on our 1.5 Tesla magnet has, of all things, a warning sign which states 'Refueling of the magnet is very costly.' My thinking is that if I were to ever press that button, and somebody's life wasn't very much in danger, I'd get a meeting with my directors real quick-like, regarding why it's going to cost them $10,000 to refuel the magnet.
Anyhow, seems to me like there are some practicle issues which need to be sorted out. It's going to probably cost $500,000 in liquid helium costs alone, just to power the thing up.
Ah well... Seems like a neat project to me.
Mostly, the chain and combo lock doesn't address the issues which electromagnetic mooring systems do. There are a lot of factors involved with a project like this, including sway, roll, and yaw of the boat, which chains and locks don't handle. The chain and lock system acts like a yo-yo or a swing, in so far as two objects are attached together by a string. The electromagnetic mooring system acts like, well, a refridgerator magnet does to a refridgerator.
Hmmm, don't need to worry too much about that.
I'm fairly sure that the force of the magnet decays exponentially with distance, so the magnet's field shouldn't extend too far into the ship. Also, fiber optics shouldn't be affected by the EM interference, so as long as the ship-wide wiring is run over fiber optics, things should be OK. (Fiber optic enabled routers on bridge, engine, and network closets; many manufacturing and production plants which have to deal with EM interference use fiber optics, so I'd suspect that cargo ships might use similar solutions to similar problems.)
As far as who needs 4" hemp ropes... uh, Woody Harrelson for a retrofit of the Cheer's pub?
Scene from Cheers 2:
Woody: Arr! I'm a pirate!
Norm: Hey! Give me some of the stuff he's havin!
Fraiser: Oh, what an excellent opportunity to study the affects of canaboids on socio-psychotic behavior!
Cliff: Shut up and pass the pipe.
Diane: I don't know if I like the color green... oh, my! That is green!
Sam: Hey, lock the damn doors! (bubble, bubble, gurgle)
I think so. The specs don't specify the details, but I think that the Mobile Servicing Station, provided by Canada, uses electromagnets within the Base System and the Dexterous Manipulator.
Here's more info on Canada's robotic hand/arm thing. It's like a crazy robotic slinky/robot arm which doesn't have a shoulder. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it uses electro-magnets, but I can't find any direct mention of the coupling mechanism it uses.
So, at work, I work with a 1.5 Tesla magnet (Gyroscan Intera... used for nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; VMS/VAX/Solaris Operating Systems). Price tag on the thing is about $1M, which makes me wonder:
1) Did this docking system actually cost only $50M? At $5M a year, is a 10 year return on investment reasonable?
2) Is it actually Helium/Nitrogen cooled? We have to have a dedicated coolant system for our magnet to work at 1.5 Tesla. Moreover, what happens if a magnet breaks? They're not going to vent 2,000L of Helium, per magnet into the ozone, are they? (52 magnets = 100,000L total of liquid Helium)
Fair enough.
At another level, however, the businesses in question may be the liquor and alcohol manufacturers, such as Bicardi, Smirnoff, Busch, etc. etc. The liquor manufacturers are acting in much the same role as the recording industry. The night clubs in the role of the websites. The RIAA as the bouncers.
I agree with most of your assessment. I would point out that the bouncers don't invest in everything, as well. I would also point out that, according to state law in most every state, night clubs which serve alcohol have an interest in having bouncers to enforce drinking age laws.
Also, the $50 charge per month may be considered a utilities expense, just like heat, electricity, and water.
Anyhow, I don't know the correct answer to this topic. It just occured to me that there seems to be an analogous situation, which has been fairly well resolved, within the liquor/alcohol/nightclub industries.
Fair enough. I agree with most of your comments. (I, too, am not in the recording industry, so I don't have an authoritative voice...) Some comments:
I'm not sure I buy into the idea that more and more CDs are being produced - for one thing, once the initial production is paid for, maintaining a catalog is essentially free.
Well, sales of CD-R and CD-RW devices indicate that there is an increase of CD recording devices in the homes of consumers. Also, the sales of blank CDs indicate that a lot of consumers have the need for the resources needed to record a CD (although, I suppose that some percentage of those CDs are going into data disks and art projects).
Anyhow, I would hope that you agree that there is an increase of CDs on the market in general. Now then, with the independent labels and the home consumer markets, I suspect that there are more CDs being produced. Within the recording industry, however, I suspect that you are correct... they have N number of CDs that they expect to sell each quarter/year, and that number is fairly consistent, according to some function (linear, compounding, exponential, I-don't-know).\
I also agree that there is a plethora of pre-produced bands. My thinking is that these types of bands are the kinds of bands which support the model I proposed of a healthy industry.
I also disagree rather strongly with your definition of a healthy industry - a total lockin like that is enormously UN-healthy. A healthy insdustry is one that consistently makes a profit, that's all. It doesn't have to keep growing, it doesn't have to continually make more money, all it has to do is consistently make money. If it's doing that, it's health, and the recording industry certainly is that.
Now then, I think I understand your position on this point. I would like to offer a comment and a scenario for your consideration.
Comment: I'm not necessarily suggesting a complete lock-in. What I'm suggesting is an economic moat... the thing that keeps your competitors away from you; which is what the recording industry lacks. Now, I couldn't find stock quotes or for the other companies, but I pulled up some graphs for Sony:
Sony 3yr Graph
Sony Moat
As you can see, poor Sony has been declining for three years now, and has no economic moat. There is nothing preventing anybody else from competing with Sony and taking market share away from them.
Scenario: OK, please consider the situation of a salesman who rents an apartment, has little in the way of savings, and experiences a heart attack or stroke. This person may be very consistent before the heart attack or stroke; he may even be increasing his productivity, sales, and yearly income. But when the stroke or heart attack occurs, it's all over. He doesn't have the economic moat to protect him from other salespeople who he is competing with.
Now then, if this salesman were, instead, a real-estate agent, things may be very different. A real-estate agent and real-estate holder typically owns real estate, collects rent from others, has savings, and has a wide economic moat, which is protected by federal law. If a real-estate agent suffers a heart attack or stroke, there are savings to recoup with, rent is still-collected, and annual income may not affected in any manner.
My suggestion is that a healthy industry is not locked in. Rather, the healthy industry has control of it's own castle on it's own real estate. Instead of being locked-in, it has the defenses to keep other's out.
As per the article:
A top music executive said on Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites.
Sounds to me like the 'bouncers-union' has identified some sites which are successfull enough that they ought to start 'offering their services'. Anyhow, sounds to me like they're asking you to pay a cover charge to go into a night club. I'm not sure that's entirely unethical or unreasonable.
The RIAA considers downloading music illegally over the Internet to be the moral equivalence of stealing. I wonder then what is the moral equivalence of the RIAA taking realized cash from people who do not download music?
Paying a cover charge, perhaps? You don't have to drink alcohol at a night club; but many of them will charge cover whether you get drunk or are the designated driver.
Demographics yo. 'Record profits' are generally the result of sales hype, inflation, and overly simplistic accounting reports (read: people who look at the 'bottom line' profits and nothing else).
Now, I'm not in the music industry, but I used to work at the National Opinion Research Center, and we were doing some statistical analysis which was related to this topic. So, I'll give my 2 cents, and attempt to answer your question.
Anyhow, as I understand it, fewer and fewer CD/albums are generating positive returns on investment. At the same time, more and more CD/albums are being produced. The fact which seems to be keeping the industry alive is that when a CD/album does generate a return on investment, the return can be extremely large. In fact, the return on investment is increasing for those albums which do generate a positive return. (Mostly due to an increasing world-wide population, an increase in potential consumers, world-wide communication networks, and peer-to-peer network phenomenas. )
For example, consider Eminem. Selling more CDs than anybody else around. Who has ever heard of a CD selling over 1M copies, in its first week?! But he did it. Now then, I know my estimations are inexact, but figure that 1M x $20 = $20M in one week, from one product. That number (or a similar one) is what the industry reports as a record profit.
Behind that number (and similar numbers reported, which include record-label and industry-wide sums of sales/product) are tens of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 1,000 copies per year. Over time, those tens of thousands of titles become part of the hundreds of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 100 copies per year. Which then become part of the millions of titles which are lucky to sell 10 copies a year.
Now then, as to your question: The music recording industry actually is ailing (as an industry), because they've lost what economists call a 'moat'. That is, they don't have any protection from other competitors getting into the business. As an industry, they don't have something which protects them from Microsoft, Apple, or Linux competing with them (read: Independent Labels.)
Now, if the recording industry were not ailing, and were healthy, here would be the situation:
Every CD produced sold exactly N copies +/- 10% of N. For example, every CD would sell 90,000 to 110,000 copies. No more, no less. There would be approximately M titles produced per year. If a new employee was hired by the company, they would produce 'M + 10' or 'M + x' titles to offset the wages and cost of the new employee. In addition, the industry would use proprietary technology, which nobody had access to, and nobody else could produce compact disks. Those people in the CD industry would be the CD producers, and nobody else got to participate in the game. That is how the industry would be structured if it were healthy.
But, that's not the way it is, now is it?
All things considered, Microsoft getting into this business is very bad news for the recording industry. For the record labels, it just means another major player who wants a cut of the pie, which is already spread too thin as it is. It also means that anybody who buys a Microsoft Small Business Server license can start up not just an 'Independent Label' but, rather, a medium sized recording label. Put another way, the small fish have just gotten bigger.