The money may "go to the RIAA", but in reality it's going to pay off the debts incurred by the bands.
That's what they get for over-hyping them.
Here's hoping the "new" business model won't include encouraging the superhyping of a few bands over all others in order to capitalize on economies of scale.
I can't stand watching it because I have to sit through the incredibly awful theme music. What idiot chose that piece of crap? And, it made an immediate impression that the show would likely have other similarly bad decisions made about it...
And the idea that T'Pau and Tucker make a good romantic match seemed pretty ridiculous as well. T'Pau seemed a promise that they never delivered on, I immediately recognized the name from the original series (the Amok Time episode), and figured there'd be some additional tie-ins. If there were, they were to subtle for me.
Frankly, the ship should have looked cruder and have more problems. It pretty much works as well and is as comfortable as any of the later ships, when it's supposed to be Earth's first warp vehicle on its first voyage. There's not much to remind you that it is supposed to predate the other series.
Is that supposed to be a good thing? The one thing that I like about working in an IT department within a non-tech company (rather than working in a tech company) is that there's none of that pressure to be a "real geek" and put in 90-hour weeks at the office...
Isn't that ultimately the point of these religious movements-- to fire up the believers to fever pitch so they work so much harder-- the specific dogma used being otherwise completely arbitrary.
If Darl's goal was go try to get some company to get excited about the potential of SCO and buy the company for big bucks (which seems pretty likely, or at least some version thereof), then what this guy thinks of Darl's claims about copyright and IP and his itemized rebuttals are completely missing the point. Quite possibly, Darl would say ANYTHING that he thinks might get someone to make him a great offer on the company, and couldn't care LESS what the legal realities of any of the claims are. The idea seems to be if you spread enough FUD that SOMEONE will think you must have some kind of interesting case that is worth investing in, and gobble the company up for big bux.
The only surprise for Darl is that it hasn't happened yet-- the P.T. Barnum effect doesn't seem to be working very well. Never fear though, perhaps Darl's claims just haven't been quite preposterous enough-- yet.
Darl may very well have learned his tricks from the old back of the magazine ad scams-- like the famous one that read "Last chance, send 25c" and nothing else. Supposedly the guy got all kinds of folks to send him quarters.
There's no point in looking so deep into motivations that are so shallow.
Defeating the polygraph test may be easy, but defeating the polygraph examiner is a different story-- the polygraph is just pseudotechical mumbo jumbo being used to support his biases.
I thought "Adventures of the Laughing Dog" was more entertaining than most US game shows.
And for that matter, Soupy Sales original shows (not the remakes he did in the '80s) which I remember well (dating myself) were far better than most of the crap on US TV these days.
The best things on US broadcast TV these days are the Brit imports-- even Star Trek (Enterprise) has turned out tired and predictable and is remaking plots from the original series. The worst thing is the pathetic Jerry Seinfeld, and the next to worst are the "reality" shows which are little more than repackaged Jerry Springer "let's see how inane and stupid real people can really be" exploitation. Given that, I'd say the Japanese programs average out somewhat better than the US programs do.
No, "Unix" is dying because the OSDL label is moot
on
On The Death Of Unix
·
· Score: 1
Once upon a time, OSDL stepped up to the plate to "certify" what it means to be "UNIX". But that was based on the now outdated assumption that UNIX certification is of interest. Linux, OSX, et. al., even AIX, are not even trying for UNIX certification as it is of no particular value. BSD's certification is out of inheritance, not from any need to be.
"Unix" as a standard is clearly dead, but does anyone really care besides OSDL and maybe SCO?
SCO inherited much of the rights to the original "Unix" codebase, and is now in the process of self-destructing and taking "Unix" with it. Alternatives such as Linux, OSX, etc., have caused most to forget what makes "Unix", and currently, it's whatever OSDL says it is, but noone really cares what they say it is anymore.
Looks like many people here define "Unix" as "anything that runs the shell that I've used on Unix." Note that these shells have virtually all been ported to MS Windows in one form or another-- guess that means MS Windows is Unix.
MS Windows crackers don't NEED a hacked-in-the-source backdoor, as there's enough buggy crap already in there that they can find one without a whole lot of trouble. I would find it telling that some crackers out there have apparently found cracking Linux difficult to the point they feel the need to covertly modify the source trees.
The point of such things might be just to try to get some PR to help make the argument that open source is inherently unsecure because there are so many fingers in it, and these attempts NOT really being a sign that hackers can't find ways to get into Linux without a hidden hack...
Though it is kind of interesting that we haven't seen much in the way of mass-exploits of Linux servers, so maybe it is pretty hard to hack without special help...
Which is deflating like the Hindenberg-- except there's no "humanity" to bemoan. They'll make whatever bizarre claim they think may influence a few speculators to keep their flagging stock from completely tanking. But it ain't working so good anymore, as they now look like the boy who cried wolf. They won't be around long enough to sue *BSD, in fact they should consider themselves lucky if they make it to Christmas...
Originally, MP3.COM was based on the idea that independent content has value. MP3.COM solicited all sorts of independents with a free hosting site on the idea that both the independent artist and MP3.COM could find a way to connect with listeners and make it work.
After they built up a sufficient catalog of independent content, at some point they ceased to view such content as having any value, and in fact, concluded that it was in fact a liability for which they needed compensation. Rather than finding new ways to solicit interest and compensation from listeners, they instead chose to tap the independent artists themselves for compensation by reducing functionality and offering non-free "premium" services.
The implication of such an action is that MP3.COM was UNABLE to find a way to offer the value of the independent content in such a way as to produce the necessary compensation. The unstated assumption was that independent content does not pay for itself, or at least independent content as provided by MP3.COM does not pay for itself. At the same time, they were expecting the independent artist to choose to pay MP3.COM for their (apparently inept) services as a provider of independent content.
So they ended up in a contradictory position-- independent content has no value but we want you to pay us to host your independent content on a site that has shown itself unable to return value for independent content.
What was wrong with this picture? Why should an independent artist pay to have content hosted on a service that readily admits that not only is the site not a source of revenue for independent content, but that they are not even working on devising means whereby independent content can generate the revenue to pay for itself. What value did MP3.COM add to the independent content provider in exchange for the fees? Certainly not connection with paying listeners, as if that were the case they would not NEED to charge a fee.
Whether MP3.COM has actually PROVED that independent content has no value, rather than proving that MP3.COM's operators were simply incompetent at generating revenue from independent content is to me at least, a subject worthy of some discussion. If in fact independent content has no value then none of us has any business sticking it up on websites for people who don't really want it. On the other hand, if it DOES have some value, we need to get behind services that REALIZE this and are taking steps to turn some of that value into revenue that can cover the costs of their services and hopefully provide some additional profit.
MP3.COM's death was WAY OVERDUE, and its demise will hopefully be a lesson to other services that think the way to success is by charging artists to host their content in ways that otherwise don't or can't cover their costs. Can you say FLAWED BUSINESS MODEL? Might as well go into business taking photos of would-be actors and models for portfolios that noone wants to see.
Freeloading listeners can find their free music quite easily-- and that's fine but I see no reason I should pay to make my music available to them for free. Does that in fact mean that my content has no value? Perhaps it does. But perhaps what really lacks value is these hosting services that purport to provide something beyond what a simple web hosting service can provide. Before you sign up for a music hosting service, ask how many ears they've connected with their independent and unknown music streams-- how much ad space they are putting up on other sites to attract listeners and what are the click-through rates? If they want you to pay for their service find out what you get in return and it better be more than just some number of megabytes of storage and so much streaming bandwidth, but information about HOW they propose to get new FIRST TIME listeners to your page to at least check out what you have? If they can't deliver you any more than YOU can send to the site via your gigs and other promotions, WHAT THE F**K do you need this hosting service for anyway? Generic web services are cheaper, so use them, if that's the best a "music" hosting service is able to do for you.
I think it's far more likely you'll start seeing new player devices that appear to operate with the same feature set as existing devices, but that have some new characteristics that won't become apparent until several years later when everyone has such devices. At that point, the industry will start releasing new media in forms that will only play on these devices with restrictions-- you can only play it for some period of time, or for some number of plays, or you can't play it on certain types of gear. At that point you'll already HAVE the piece of crap player so you can't decide not to buy it because of the disabling feature, and the old gear won't play the new stuff.
Microsoft is attempting to transition it's OS in a similar way, gradually evolving to a position where they can charge a periodic "upgrade" fee or their stuff stops working, and more closely track the installations.
It's all part of industry attempts to close the floodgates that have opened up now that digital is everywhere and is inherently copy-oriented. To what extent it will work is hard to say. There's always plenty of sources of "old" media that can be recycled (though presumably, not legally), and there's always the possibility that rogue content creators may decide to release their content in more "open" forms and that could become popular enough that "protected" media could be seen as irrelevant. But big-budget Matrix and Terminator equivalent movies and of course MS products will be released in restricted formats to be sure, the question may become will enough of us live without them (I certainly will) that will send the industry a message that such reduced value media is unacceptable? The problem is, an awful lot of fools will step right up and buy the latest thing and do whatever the MPAA/RIAA/Microsoft/etc. want them to do.
It seems likely as not, SCO's having a hard time keeping the lawyers motivated, as they aren't so stupid they can't see the writing on the wall. SCO has to make sure there's something in it for the lawyers or they'll just throw in the towel and cut their losses.
You don't merge with Microsoft, they simply take you over.
No, what they do is act like they are interested in buying a company out so the prospective "suckers" will tell them all their secrets, then they go off having learned everything about the technology and build the features into the next version of one of their products.
Hopefully, the folks at Google were wise to the game, it's not exactly a new one by now.
One of Microsoft's design requirements for Windows Server 2003 was that EVERYTHING can be done from the commandline, that the GUI interfaces would have NO functionality that the commandline interface does not.
Yes, they need this capability due to their intent to transition to a subscription model (see the first step here)
and connect with your system over the network to monitor and upgrade.
Perhaps they figure that if they secretly apply security patches for you when you connect to the network they'll be able to hide the frequency at which they occur.
This is the classic libertarian argument that everyone espouses, but no one seems to get that it doesn't hold any water. There is practically NOTHING you can do on this planet that doesn't affect those around you.
The problem is, you have to find a solution that isn't worse than the problem. Some feel that laws criminalizing drugs have created far worse problems for all of us than they have solved. If these problems are so well served by drug laws, why aren't the related problems caused by alcohol, tobacco and firearms similarly treated? You don't suppose it could be simply, because there are huge amoral and self-serving financial interests in maintaining the bizarre mosaic of inconsistent laws regarding such things?
Surely this is like hosting a list of places you can buy illicit drugs. You do not actually possess said drugs, but you are party and complicit in assisting access to illegal materials.
On the other hand, if you think the fact that some drugs are deemed illicit by the government is itself immoral, then you are complicit if you don't act to undermine such immoralities.
Don't like free speech? Then consider a move to some other country who's governmental views are aligned more closely with yours.
With the rising focus on security, dot matrix, or more to the point, paper-feed line printers have found a niche market. Logging. A hacker can do a lot of things, but erasing a line-by-line log on a printer is hard, especially if it doesn't have reverse feed. A page-based printer is near useless here, as it would either print one page per line, or wait until the page was filled up, before which the logging process can be killed.
Give me a break. There may be good reasons to keep dot matrix printers around, but logging ain't it. What a waste of paper that you can't easily work with if you ever need to reference it. A better solution would be to incrementally burn the log entries to a CDR. Logging-- HAR! that's a hot one...
WHAT are you TALKING about. The Apple doesn't have a one button mouse, it's a two-or-three button mouse, just some of the buttons are on the keyboard. How conveeeeeenient
Slashdot Mirror
Due to price tags that automatically go up in proportion to the amount of your available credit....
Check out this google cache here.
Now compare it with the current page here.
Even CD-Rs (so called music cd-r) get "Taxed" by the RIAA.
If this is true, then haven't I already paid for the right to copy RIAA music?
The money may "go to the RIAA", but in reality it's going to pay off the debts incurred by the bands.
That's what they get for over-hyping them.
Here's hoping the "new" business model won't include encouraging the superhyping of a few bands over all others in order to capitalize on economies of scale.
I can't stand watching it because I have to sit through the incredibly awful theme music. What idiot chose that piece of crap? And, it made an immediate impression that the show would likely have other similarly bad decisions made about it...
And the idea that T'Pau and Tucker make a good romantic match seemed pretty ridiculous as well. T'Pau seemed a promise that they never delivered on, I immediately recognized the name from the original series (the Amok Time episode), and figured there'd be some additional tie-ins. If there were, they were to subtle for me.
Frankly, the ship should have looked cruder and have more problems. It pretty much works as well and is as comfortable as any of the later ships, when it's supposed to be Earth's first warp vehicle on its first voyage. There's not much to remind you that it is supposed to predate the other series.
Is that supposed to be a good thing? The one thing that I like about working in an IT department within a non-tech company (rather than working in a tech company) is that there's none of that pressure to be a "real geek" and put in 90-hour weeks at the office...
Isn't that ultimately the point of these religious movements-- to fire up the believers to fever pitch so they work so much harder-- the specific dogma used being otherwise completely arbitrary.
If Darl's goal was go try to get some company to get excited about the potential of SCO and buy the company for big bucks (which seems pretty likely, or at least some version thereof), then what this guy thinks of Darl's claims about copyright and IP and his itemized rebuttals are completely missing the point. Quite possibly, Darl would say ANYTHING that he thinks might get someone to make him a great offer on the company, and couldn't care LESS what the legal realities of any of the claims are. The idea seems to be if you spread enough FUD that SOMEONE will think you must have some kind of interesting case that is worth investing in, and gobble the company up for big bux.
The only surprise for Darl is that it hasn't happened yet-- the P.T. Barnum effect doesn't seem to be working very well. Never fear though, perhaps Darl's claims just haven't been quite preposterous enough-- yet.
Darl may very well have learned his tricks from the old back of the magazine ad scams-- like the famous one that read "Last chance, send 25c" and nothing else. Supposedly the guy got all kinds of folks to send him quarters.
There's no point in looking so deep into motivations that are so shallow.
...is the name, then they're in pretty good shape.
They could always call it X-Lindows, unless MS decides it has a case against X-Windows...
Defeating the polygraph test may be easy, but defeating the polygraph examiner is a different story-- the polygraph is just pseudotechical mumbo jumbo being used to support his biases.
I thought "Adventures of the Laughing Dog" was more entertaining than most US game shows.
And for that matter, Soupy Sales original shows (not the remakes he did in the '80s) which I remember well (dating myself) were far better than most of the crap on US TV these days.
The best things on US broadcast TV these days are the Brit imports-- even Star Trek (Enterprise) has turned out tired and predictable and is remaking plots from the original series. The worst thing is the pathetic Jerry Seinfeld, and the next to worst are the "reality" shows which are little more than repackaged Jerry Springer "let's see how inane and stupid real people can really be" exploitation. Given that, I'd say the Japanese programs average out somewhat better than the US programs do.
Once upon a time, OSDL stepped up to the plate to "certify" what it means to be "UNIX". But that was based on the now outdated assumption that UNIX certification is of interest. Linux, OSX, et. al., even AIX, are not even trying for UNIX certification as it is of no particular value. BSD's certification is out of inheritance, not from any need to be. "Unix" as a standard is clearly dead, but does anyone really care besides OSDL and maybe SCO?
Good Riddance.
SCO inherited much of the rights to the original "Unix" codebase, and is now in the process of self-destructing and taking "Unix" with it. Alternatives such as Linux, OSX, etc., have caused most to forget what makes "Unix", and currently, it's whatever OSDL says it is, but noone really cares what they say it is anymore.
Looks like many people here define "Unix" as "anything that runs the shell that I've used on Unix." Note that these shells have virtually all been ported to MS Windows in one form or another-- guess that means MS Windows is Unix.
MS Windows crackers don't NEED a hacked-in-the-source backdoor, as there's enough buggy crap already in there that they can find one without a whole lot of trouble. I would find it telling that some crackers out there have apparently found cracking Linux difficult to the point they feel the need to covertly modify the source trees.
The point of such things might be just to try to get some PR to help make the argument that open source is inherently unsecure because there are so many fingers in it, and these attempts NOT really being a sign that hackers can't find ways to get into Linux without a hidden hack...
Though it is kind of interesting that we haven't seen much in the way of mass-exploits of Linux servers, so maybe it is pretty hard to hack without special help...
Bet you won't see positive Linux articles or negative MS articles...
Which is deflating like the Hindenberg-- except there's no "humanity" to bemoan. They'll make whatever bizarre claim they think may influence a few speculators to keep their flagging stock from completely tanking. But it ain't working so good anymore, as they now look like the boy who cried wolf. They won't be around long enough to sue *BSD, in fact they should consider themselves lucky if they make it to Christmas...
Originally, MP3.COM was based on the idea that independent content has value. MP3.COM solicited all sorts of independents with a free hosting site on the idea that both the independent artist and MP3.COM could find a way to connect with listeners and make it work.
After they built up a sufficient catalog of independent content, at some point they ceased to view such content as having any value, and in fact, concluded that it was in fact a liability for which they needed compensation. Rather than finding new ways to solicit interest and compensation from listeners, they instead chose to tap the independent artists themselves for compensation by reducing functionality and offering non-free "premium" services.
The implication of such an action is that MP3.COM was UNABLE to find a way to offer the value of the independent content in such a way as to produce the necessary compensation. The unstated assumption was that independent content does not pay for itself, or at least independent content as provided by MP3.COM does not pay for itself. At the same time, they were expecting the independent artist to choose to pay MP3.COM for their (apparently inept) services as a provider of independent content.
So they ended up in a contradictory position-- independent content has no value but we want you to pay us to host your independent content on a site that has shown itself unable to return value for independent content.
What was wrong with this picture? Why should an independent artist pay to have content hosted on a service that readily admits that not only is the site not a source of revenue for independent content, but that they are not even working on devising means whereby independent content can generate the revenue to pay for itself. What value did MP3.COM add to the independent content provider in exchange for the fees? Certainly not connection with paying listeners, as if that were the case they would not NEED to charge a fee.
Whether MP3.COM has actually PROVED that independent content has no value, rather than proving that MP3.COM's operators were simply incompetent at generating revenue from independent content is to me at least, a subject worthy of some discussion. If in fact independent content has no value then none of us has any business sticking it up on websites for people who don't really want it. On the other hand, if it DOES have some value, we need to get behind services that REALIZE this and are taking steps to turn some of that value into revenue that can cover the costs of their services and hopefully provide some additional profit.
MP3.COM's death was WAY OVERDUE, and its demise will hopefully be a lesson to other services that think the way to success is by charging artists to host their content in ways that otherwise don't or can't cover their costs. Can you say FLAWED BUSINESS MODEL? Might as well go into business taking photos of would-be actors and models for portfolios that noone wants to see.
Freeloading listeners can find their free music quite easily-- and that's fine but I see no reason I should pay to make my music available to them for free. Does that in fact mean that my content has no value? Perhaps it does. But perhaps what really lacks value is these hosting services that purport to provide something beyond what a simple web hosting service can provide. Before you sign up for a music hosting service, ask how many ears they've connected with their independent and unknown music streams-- how much ad space they are putting up on other sites to attract listeners and what are the click-through rates? If they want you to pay for their service find out what you get in return and it better be more than just some number of megabytes of storage and so much streaming bandwidth, but information about HOW they propose to get new FIRST TIME listeners to your page to at least check out what you have? If they can't deliver you any more than YOU can send to the site via your gigs and other promotions, WHAT THE F**K do you need this hosting service for anyway? Generic web services are cheaper, so use them, if that's the best a "music" hosting service is able to do for you.
I think it's far more likely you'll start seeing new player devices that appear to operate with the same feature set as existing devices, but that have some new characteristics that won't become apparent until several years later when everyone has such devices. At that point, the industry will start releasing new media in forms that will only play on these devices with restrictions-- you can only play it for some period of time, or for some number of plays, or you can't play it on certain types of gear. At that point you'll already HAVE the piece of crap player so you can't decide not to buy it because of the disabling feature, and the old gear won't play the new stuff.
Microsoft is attempting to transition it's OS in a similar way, gradually evolving to a position where they can charge a periodic "upgrade" fee or their stuff stops working, and more closely track the installations.
It's all part of industry attempts to close the floodgates that have opened up now that digital is everywhere and is inherently copy-oriented. To what extent it will work is hard to say. There's always plenty of sources of "old" media that can be recycled (though presumably, not legally), and there's always the possibility that rogue content creators may decide to release their content in more "open" forms and that could become popular enough that "protected" media could be seen as irrelevant. But big-budget Matrix and Terminator equivalent movies and of course MS products will be released in restricted formats to be sure, the question may become will enough of us live without them (I certainly will) that will send the industry a message that such reduced value media is unacceptable? The problem is, an awful lot of fools will step right up and buy the latest thing and do whatever the MPAA/RIAA/Microsoft/etc. want them to do.
It seems likely as not, SCO's having a hard time keeping the lawyers motivated, as they aren't so stupid they can't see the writing on the wall. SCO has to make sure there's something in it for the lawyers or they'll just throw in the towel and cut their losses.
You don't merge with Microsoft, they simply take you over.
No, what they do is act like they are interested in buying a company out so the prospective "suckers" will tell them all their secrets, then they go off having learned everything about the technology and build the features into the next version of one of their products.
Hopefully, the folks at Google were wise to the game, it's not exactly a new one by now.
One of Microsoft's design requirements for Windows Server 2003 was that EVERYTHING can be done from the commandline, that the GUI interfaces would have NO functionality that the commandline interface does not.
Yes, they need this capability due to their intent to transition to a subscription model (see the first step here) and connect with your system over the network to monitor and upgrade.
Perhaps they figure that if they secretly apply security patches for you when you connect to the network they'll be able to hide the frequency at which they occur.
This is the classic libertarian argument that everyone espouses, but no one seems to get that it doesn't hold any water. There is practically NOTHING you can do on this planet that doesn't affect those around you.
The problem is, you have to find a solution that isn't worse than the problem. Some feel that laws criminalizing drugs have created far worse problems for all of us than they have solved. If these problems are so well served by drug laws, why aren't the related problems caused by alcohol, tobacco and firearms similarly treated? You don't suppose it could be simply, because there are huge amoral and self-serving financial interests in maintaining the bizarre mosaic of inconsistent laws regarding such things?
Surely this is like hosting a list of places you can buy illicit drugs. You do not actually possess said drugs, but you are party and complicit in assisting access to illegal materials.
On the other hand, if you think the fact that some drugs are deemed illicit by the government is itself immoral, then you are complicit if you don't act to undermine such immoralities.
Don't like free speech? Then consider a move to some other country who's governmental views are aligned more closely with yours.
With the rising focus on security, dot matrix, or more to the point, paper-feed line printers have found a niche market. Logging. A hacker can do a lot of things, but erasing a line-by-line log on a printer is hard, especially if it doesn't have reverse feed. A page-based printer is near useless here, as it would either print one page per line, or wait until the page was filled up, before which the logging process can be killed.
Give me a break. There may be good reasons to keep dot matrix printers around, but logging ain't it. What a waste of paper that you can't easily work with if you ever need to reference it. A better solution would be to incrementally burn the log entries to a CDR. Logging-- HAR! that's a hot one...
WHAT are you TALKING about. The Apple doesn't have a one button mouse, it's a two-or-three button mouse, just some of the buttons are on the keyboard. How conveeeeeenient