Sorry guys, but I'm with Microsoft on this one. Their business tactics may be dirty, but at least Media Player 6.4 is a decent piece of software that doesn't force you to navigate a labyrinth on Microsoft's website to download.
Then, of course, we have Real's annoying default settings that take your personal information, enable that stupid start-centre (or whatever they call it), and that ugly green UI.
Their archive would grow year by year, and maybe their artists would get more longevity.
This is a good point. If they do open up the vault, and at the same time start producing better quality music, a lot more music may become timeless, somewhat like certain books are today. It may be the case that new artists no longer get the most attention.
I can't see why opening up the vault would hurt the industry, apart from the initial cost. Who knows, maybe this might wake up the public to how much of a greedy oligopoly they really are, and force them to explore other sources of music.
However, if they opened it up and introduced the "time-tiered" pricing you suggested, it could certainly put them at risk of losing money due to loss of interest from the public in their new productions. This is a possibility.
I think the music industry needs to kick itself in the ass. iPods and other MP3 players are huge, and it is obvious that music in digital format is here to stay.
They may not even need a kick. If other companies are offering to start music services (e.g. Apple) and pay them royalties, the music industry could probably survive on the royalties.
They have to embrace it or they will go extinct.
I don't know about this one. They own too much to go extinct immediately. It seems that they have finally caught on to the idea of online distribution. We'll have to wait and see whether they'll be proactive about starting their own service, or just let Apple do all the work (and take all of the credit, while selling a few iPods along the way).
Gee, you mean like it is today? How would this be any different than today's market?
The difference is that with the current system, if the industry has a bad month, they can keep hyping up whoever was popular last month. They have more momentum, if you will. If they have another bad month or two, their sales probably won't decrease that much, as the advertising machine goes into overdrive.
Under the proposed system, when you take into account the scale of things, not having any artists in your most lucrative sales category could spell disaster.
True, this may be offset by the sales of older songs, which, is indeed a very large library, but how long would that market last? Sure, people would love to have new access to old material, but after a while, once people have bought their favourites, that market won't bring in a lot of revenue.
That's my opinion, anyway. I don't think that the sale of old songs is a growth market. In fact, our culture prevents it from growing by the nature of the way the media steers our society as a whole. Obviously not everybody sees it exactly like this, but on the whole, I think that the demand for old music would peak once the library is made available, and then slowly drop off to a low level.
Don't forget that most of their money comes from new hit artists. Even if the older stuff were available, it would be unlikely to exceed the sales of newer artists' works simply because there is a fixed set of "old" artists. On top of that, nobody is going to spend money to promote the older artists.
Every song older than 10 years old is $0.10. Every song 5-10 years old is $0.25. Every song 2-5 years old is $0.50 Every song 2 years old to 6 months old is $0.99 Anything newer than 6 months you have to buy on CD. (maybe this could be rolled into the 0.99 if it didn't fly)
I would also like this idea, but it would never fly. What you're advocating essentially puts financial pressure on the record labels to continuously generate new hit artists. If they fail to do so, their revenue stream would logarithmically approach zero.
Ask yourself this: would you implement this business model if you had a vested interest in the RIAA?
Not meaning to add to the "why not bluetooth" posts already here, but how effective will infrared be for this sort of application.
If you are facing someone who is turned away from you, your two badges won't have line of sight. I wonder whether they chose to use infrared solely based on the cost. Let's not forget the bluetooth licensing fees, either.
Yes, 200MB makes a big difference to me. If you're willing to spring for my ADSL expenses (modem, connection etc.) then I'd be more than happy to switch.
Do you think banner ads are still an effective way to offset the cost of a website, or has their time passed? If so, what do we replace them with?
I would recommend replacing them with 1x1 transparent GIFs.
Seriously though, with squid, a redirector, and about 200 rules, I very rarely see banner ads and it keeps my bandwidth costs down.
Sorry, but if I have to choose between a month of "supportive" web surfing and an extra 200MB of download/surfing/whatever, then it's not too hard to see which one I'd pick.
Here is a list of the number of URL rewrites that have occurred since I installed this system:
Feb 15302 Mar 16581 Apr 19221 Jun 20333 Jul 19294 Aug 10320 Sep 15912 Oct 13705
Now, every single one of those rewrites has spared me at the very minimum an HTTP request and a few hundred bytes. This applies only to non-banner objects (such as counters, which I also block). Ads are usually at least 3k with some extending far beyond that.
I should probably remind those that need reminding, that I have a monthly download quota of 3000MB. The bandwidth savings are too significant for me to ignore.
Marge: Homer! That side of bacon was for my bridge game tonight! Homer: Marge, if you don't mind, I'm a little busy right now achieving financial independence. Marge: With cans of grease? Homer: [sarcastically] No! Through savings and wise investment. Of course with grease.
1.79 MHz CPU, and 8 bits per cycle, yields 14.32 Mb/s
You must've missed the part about Ethernet being a serial protocol.
How is it going to grab 8 bits at a time in one clock cycle when there is only one bit coming down the wire at that time? It can't process more than one bit per clock cycle because the second bit wouldn't have arrived yet.
In practice, the older Ethernet cards are
limited to about 3.5Mb/s due to a conservative implementation of
checking whether the medium is free.)
I think classic Ethernet is about the oldest and slowest networking
medium that's still widely supported, unless you want to use serial
connections.
I can relate to that. I have a Mac LC II with an LC Ethernet card (those things look weird). The other day, I was backing up some software using FTP.
Now, it's interesting that I could only download at about 10-30kBps from the Mac, whereas I could upload at about 100kBps. It's probably because the crusty IP stack on the Mac could acknowledge data whenever it wanted to without causing my PC to wait. In contrast, when downloading, the Mac probably had its own timers that had to expire before receiving any more data.
Ok, ten points up for grabs for the first person that explains how a CPU can receive data using a serial protocol at a rate faster than its clock.
If it doesn't really receive 10Mbps of data, then it's not really 10Mbps, is it?
...My mobile phones can be rendered inoperable too
And my car can be rendered inoperable if I pour sugar in the petrol tank. That's not the issue. Come to think of it, I don't think I own one piece of hardware that couldn't be rendered inoperable.
If I pour in petrol from a different petrol station, and that causes the car to fail (assuming the petrol meets all required guidelines), then that would be a serious problem.
Also, my car could be seriously screwed up if I were to flash the firmware on the on-board computer, but I'm not going to do that.
The primary reason why CD sales has dropped is not about cost. I'm sure even teenagers would be prepared to spring the $1 or two to buy the few songs that they really like.
It comes down to convenience. They want instant gratification, and P2P file sharing lets them have it.
Online music services will change this in the near future, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry guys, but I'm with Microsoft on this one. Their business tactics may be dirty, but at least Media Player 6.4 is a decent piece of software that doesn't force you to navigate a labyrinth on Microsoft's website to download.
Then, of course, we have Real's annoying default settings that take your personal information, enable that stupid start-centre (or whatever they call it), and that ugly green UI.
I'd be happy to see Real Networks die!
The only catch to all of this is that you need to have another computer on the same LAN that is always switched on.
Having said that, you may as well have your extra PC always turned on as well, but with power saving enabled.
If only you could wake up machines straight over the internet...
Their archive would grow year by year, and maybe their artists would get more longevity.
This is a good point. If they do open up the vault, and at the same time start producing better quality music, a lot more music may become timeless, somewhat like certain books are today. It may be the case that new artists no longer get the most attention.
I can't see why opening up the vault would hurt the industry, apart from the initial cost. Who knows, maybe this might wake up the public to how much of a greedy oligopoly they really are, and force them to explore other sources of music.
However, if they opened it up and introduced the "time-tiered" pricing you suggested, it could certainly put them at risk of losing money due to loss of interest from the public in their new productions. This is a possibility.
I think the music industry needs to kick itself in the ass. iPods and other MP3 players are huge, and it is obvious that music in digital format is here to stay.
They may not even need a kick. If other companies are offering to start music services (e.g. Apple) and pay them royalties, the music industry could probably survive on the royalties.
They have to embrace it or they will go extinct.
I don't know about this one. They own too much to go extinct immediately. It seems that they have finally caught on to the idea of online distribution. We'll have to wait and see whether they'll be proactive about starting their own service, or just let Apple do all the work (and take all of the credit, while selling a few iPods along the way).
Gee, you mean like it is today? How would this be any different than today's market?
The difference is that with the current system, if the industry has a bad month, they can keep hyping up whoever was popular last month. They have more momentum, if you will. If they have another bad month or two, their sales probably won't decrease that much, as the advertising machine goes into overdrive.
Under the proposed system, when you take into account the scale of things, not having any artists in your most lucrative sales category could spell disaster.
True, this may be offset by the sales of older songs, which, is indeed a very large library, but how long would that market last? Sure, people would love to have new access to old material, but after a while, once people have bought their favourites, that market won't bring in a lot of revenue.
That's my opinion, anyway. I don't think that the sale of old songs is a growth market. In fact, our culture prevents it from growing by the nature of the way the media steers our society as a whole. Obviously not everybody sees it exactly like this, but on the whole, I think that the demand for old music would peak once the library is made available, and then slowly drop off to a low level.
Don't forget that most of their money comes from new hit artists. Even if the older stuff were available, it would be unlikely to exceed the sales of newer artists' works simply because there is a fixed set of "old" artists. On top of that, nobody is going to spend money to promote the older artists.
I largely agree with the rest of your points.
Every song older than 10 years old is $0.10.
;)
Every song 5-10 years old is $0.25.
Every song 2-5 years old is $0.50
Every song 2 years old to 6 months old is $0.99
Anything newer than 6 months you have to buy on CD. (maybe this could be rolled into the 0.99 if it didn't fly)
I would also like this idea, but it would never fly. What you're advocating essentially puts financial pressure on the record labels to continuously generate new hit artists. If they fail to do so, their revenue stream would logarithmically approach zero.
Ask yourself this: would you implement this business model if you had a vested interest in the RIAA?
I didn't think so
how about we get the backspace key working before we worry about the desktop.
*ducks*
Not meaning to add to the "why not bluetooth" posts already here, but how effective will infrared be for this sort of application. If you are facing someone who is turned away from you, your two badges won't have line of sight. I wonder whether they chose to use infrared solely based on the cost. Let's not forget the bluetooth licensing fees, either.
rolf!
Don't be a zealot.
The Slashdot community is far more intelligent than this.
You must be new around here.
It's just suffering from gingivitis and other oral nasties that come with a competitive marketplace.
How did I know "someone" was going to reply ;)
Yes, 200MB makes a big difference to me. If you're willing to spring for my ADSL expenses (modem, connection etc.) then I'd be more than happy to switch.
At least cable is a little faster than ADSL.
Do you think banner ads are still an effective way to offset the cost of a website, or has their time passed? If so, what do we replace them with?
I would recommend replacing them with 1x1 transparent GIFs.
Seriously though, with squid, a redirector, and about 200 rules, I very rarely see banner ads and it keeps my bandwidth costs down.
Sorry, but if I have to choose between a month of "supportive" web surfing and an extra 200MB of download/surfing/whatever, then it's not too hard to see which one I'd pick.
Here is a list of the number of URL rewrites that have occurred since I installed this system:
Feb 15302
Mar 16581
Apr 19221
Jun 20333
Jul 19294
Aug 10320
Sep 15912
Oct 13705
Now, every single one of those rewrites has spared me at the very minimum an HTTP request and a few hundred bytes. This applies only to non-banner objects (such as counters, which I also block). Ads are usually at least 3k with some extending far beyond that.
I should probably remind those that need reminding, that I have a monthly download quota of 3000MB. The bandwidth savings are too significant for me to ignore.
Flame away...
I don't think they'll be fscking anything.
Going by this employee's comments, I'd be expecting them to use chkdsk.
Marge: Homer! That side of bacon was for my bridge game tonight!
Homer: Marge, if you don't mind, I'm a little busy right now achieving financial independence.
Marge: With cans of grease?
Homer: [sarcastically] No! Through savings and wise investment. Of course with grease.
From 5F20.
1.79 MHz CPU, and 8 bits per cycle, yields 14.32 Mb/s
You must've missed the part about Ethernet being a serial protocol.
How is it going to grab 8 bits at a time in one clock cycle when there is only one bit coming down the wire at that time? It can't process more than one bit per clock cycle because the second bit wouldn't have arrived yet.
If you need to use an Atari to do your work in security, you're in trouble.
In practice, the older Ethernet cards are limited to about 3.5Mb/s due to a conservative implementation of checking whether the medium is free.) I think classic Ethernet is about the oldest and slowest networking medium that's still widely supported, unless you want to use serial connections. I can relate to that. I have a Mac LC II with an LC Ethernet card (those things look weird). The other day, I was backing up some software using FTP. Now, it's interesting that I could only download at about 10-30kBps from the Mac, whereas I could upload at about 100kBps. It's probably because the crusty IP stack on the Mac could acknowledge data whenever it wanted to without causing my PC to wait. In contrast, when downloading, the Mac probably had its own timers that had to expire before receiving any more data.
Ok, ten points up for grabs for the first person that explains how a CPU can receive data using a serial protocol at a rate faster than its clock. If it doesn't really receive 10Mbps of data, then it's not really 10Mbps, is it?
...My mobile phones can be rendered inoperable too
And my car can be rendered inoperable if I pour sugar in the petrol tank. That's not the issue. Come to think of it, I don't think I own one piece of hardware that couldn't be rendered inoperable.
If I pour in petrol from a different petrol station, and that causes the car to fail (assuming the petrol meets all required guidelines), then that would be a serious problem.
Also, my car could be seriously screwed up if I were to flash the firmware on the on-board computer, but I'm not going to do that.
Do you think there might be a problem with your hardware if it can be destroyed solely with software?
One thing I haven't heard mentioned is creating ps files and then converting them to pdf.
AFAIK, ps is widely supported under linux. ps2pdf comes with the ghostscript package.
Well, at least you can be sure that in the future, nothing will be popping up.
The primary reason why CD sales has dropped is not about cost. I'm sure even teenagers would be prepared to spring the $1 or two to buy the few songs that they really like.
It comes down to convenience. They want instant gratification, and P2P file sharing lets them have it.
Online music services will change this in the near future, though.
Wouldn't you be better served by replaing her with a handspring?
shouldn't you be working?