The stores that are pushing the DRM-encumbered media are complicit in pushing DRM. They've chosen willingly to push this technology, and that doesn't make them the victims. They're merely the little dog, racing around the bigger one as it rips at the consumer's jugular.
Don't sign with a label; don't sign with a record company, because the minute you sign your name, you will lose all the rights to your music, and you will never see a dime. So what you should do is build up your following by continuously playing. Save up your money and record your own stuff and your own CDs, and then learn to market yourself. Sell your own CD's right out of your vehicle, right out of your show, just like Johnny Cash sold his records right out of the trunk of his car.... If you sign with a label, the label will take it all, and you won't see one nickel. And that's the reason why labels will give you a million dollars up front... they'll invest four million into you and they'll take about fourteen million making that kind of money off of you and you'll end up owning them two million. So you'll never see a dime of anything that you do. And when you start to make money for the company they make you record another song, so that you will go back in the hole again, the company does. So that's the reason why you'll never see a dime in royalties. You'll be lucky if they even give you thirty-five cents a record. Whereas if you make and sell your own CD, whatever it costs you to make the CD, above and beyond that you'll put in your own pocket.
This is a guy that's survived a shark bite, beaten cancer, and has been supporting himself playing music since the early 60's. Anyone who tells you that you need a major label to promote your work is either ignorant or actively trying to defraud you.
When you were growing up, making durable, faithful copies of an audio or video signal was a technically difficult and impressive service. It was a source of value, and the market rewards a service with value by exchanging other things of value for it. Today, making perfect copies of an audio or video signal is something with a material and skill cost so negligible it is practically nothing. The market does not support the sale of a service which has no value.
I am more than happy to pay a musician to play a show, or a theater to project a film. The fact that making copies of media is no longer a service with economic value does not threaten the livelihood of a musician who can give a performance or a director who can create a film that is worth going out to see on a 50 foot screen. It only threatens the livelihood of professional copyists, whose business is now no longer worth anything.
That's what technology does. It put the thesis typesetters, buggy-whip makers, and telegraphers out of business. I do not see anything special about it having eliminated the need for media middlemen.
For you, perhaps. I haven't a clue what CableCARD even means, and somehow I've managed to keep my Myth box's 160GB hard disk full continuously for as long as it's been in service.
I work in a tribal casino and I am continually amazed at how much money people will stuff into machines, but then I'm a gamer and if I don't get to control anything (the amount of bet/number of lines is just not enough for me) then I get bored easily.
Might I suggest backgammon? It's a wonderful game of manipulating probabilities and making expected value estimations, with enough random chance to keep it exciting.
No, I don't have to buy a new TV, and I don't have to buy a new tuner. I don't have to buy anything... much like the majority of American TV viewers who aren't upgrading equipment that's perfectly fine, I can just keep using my existing equipment. The folks who are running out to Circuit City to buy a 36" LCD HDTV are in a niche market. There are a whole lot of sets left to displace before mandated obsolescence becomes either economically feasible (for the broadcasters) or politically feasible (for the feds).
Yes, I think it's just not going to happen. I think there is a much greater chance that over-the-air broadcast will be made entirely obsolete by network content distribution before the feds ever throw the switch on NTSC. I also think that the claim that SDTVs will simply not be manufactured anymore rests on the faulty assumption that NTSC broadcasts will be turned off.
What was the first time they told us analog TV was going away "real soon! we promise!!"?
Wasn't it something like 1997?
Seriously, guys, I'll believe this one when I see it. The FCC's digital TV broadcast announcements have become a pathetic parody of the boy who cried wolf.
Easy. This is targeted at folks who have already decided they want to use Postgres, so they can't be sold on the $xx,000 MSSQL license... but maybe they can still be sold on the $300 OS license! It may be too late to lock them into our database, but it's not too late to lock them into the OS.
Steve Wilhite also tells us that "GIF" should be pronounced like "JIF". Don't let these erroneous claims fool you just because they come from the authors.
You may want to read this excellent essay, entitled Linux is not Windows. I think it will offer you some valuable perspective on the issues you're addressing.
Don't forget about Debconf! The ability of the OS to centrally manage configuration for a variety of applications is one of the most important advantages of the Debian style of package management.
The reason Linux distributions have not been trembling to adopt the OS X style of package management, if you can call it that, is that it would be a poor fit for the Linux software ecosystem.
The vast majority of software used on Linux systems is licensed under the GPL; what is not is almost always under another license permitting free redistribution. This gives Linux distributors great freedom in selecting and assembling a compatible collection of versions, tested and working with the same versions of dependent libraries. In a larger distribution (such as Gentoo, Debian, or Fedora), most of the software you will ever need is already a part of the OS -- you just need to use the built-in package management tools to summon it from the distributor's repository.
OS X-style package management is best suited for a software ecosystem in which users draw software from a large number of heterogenous third-party sources, while the core OS and iLife suite are maintained and updated by Apple. A third-party distributor who wishes to distribute something that must link against a particular version of a library can include it in the application bundle, knowing that the exact version needed will be available. This can lead to many copies of the same libraries being installed, facilitating compatibility with applications that require different versions, but consuming (small amounts of) disk space unnecessarily and increasing the attack surface when multiple copies of an exploitable library are installed on the system. A system such as APT does not need to provide a facility for private copies of libraries, since it does all of the dependency computation, and all software in the repository is built and linked against the libraries in the repository.
Certainly, once you have resigned yourself to visiting a third-party distributor's web page, manually downloading a binary package, and then manually installing the binary package, drag-and-drop installation is very convenient. But the Linux software ecosystem does not require this concession from the user -- the Linux distributor is free to provide a repository and tools for finding, installing, and updating software, without the need for manual installation.
Some do, and some don't. Verizon, for example, went to bat for its customers when the RIAA was launching one of its first full broadsides of subpoenas. They had to go into appeals, but eventually obtained a decision invalidating the subpoenas.
That's the difference between "don't be evil" and "genuinely, honestly don't be evil."
Not quite. While deb packages do frequently include preinst, postinst, prerm, and postrm scripts, everything executed by apt either comes on the installer CD or from the package repositories themselves, unless you replace the apt binary. This is why I mentioned a compromise of the repository as a nightmare scenario. Obviously, the installation of software requires the execution of some code. But I still argue that reducing the amount of code executed, as much as possible, to things controlled by the OS distributor is a good thing for security.
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The stores that are pushing the DRM-encumbered media are complicit in pushing DRM. They've chosen willingly to push this technology, and that doesn't make them the victims. They're merely the little dog, racing around the bigger one as it rips at the consumer's jugular.
As Dick Dale said:
This is a guy that's survived a shark bite, beaten cancer, and has been supporting himself playing music since the early 60's. Anyone who tells you that you need a major label to promote your work is either ignorant or actively trying to defraud you.
Your experience is par for the course. Get some CAT5 and your troubles will vanish.
Which city? Any city? Some city in particular? You are not being specific enough.
A Mac is, and always has been, a personal computer. A PC. If you've been mentally excluding Macs when you say "PC", well, that's your damn problem.
When you were growing up, making durable, faithful copies of an audio or video signal was a technically difficult and impressive service. It was a source of value, and the market rewards a service with value by exchanging other things of value for it. Today, making perfect copies of an audio or video signal is something with a material and skill cost so negligible it is practically nothing. The market does not support the sale of a service which has no value.
I am more than happy to pay a musician to play a show, or a theater to project a film. The fact that making copies of media is no longer a service with economic value does not threaten the livelihood of a musician who can give a performance or a director who can create a film that is worth going out to see on a 50 foot screen. It only threatens the livelihood of professional copyists, whose business is now no longer worth anything.
That's what technology does. It put the thesis typesetters, buggy-whip makers, and telegraphers out of business. I do not see anything special about it having eliminated the need for media middlemen.
Now I wish I'd never asked. That's about the most onerous piece of hardware you could have possibly described.
For you, perhaps. I haven't a clue what CableCARD even means, and somehow I've managed to keep my Myth box's 160GB hard disk full continuously for as long as it's been in service.
Ah, never wanted to use an SiS 355 video card with hardware acc^H^H^Hdeceleration on Red Hat 8, I see!
Picking a supported video card, of course, is all that it will take for Dell to eliminate that need.
Jesus -- you have an incomprehensibly low opinion of most end-users.
Sure, but have you heard the song?
So, we should be pronuncing it like "etch"?
Won't that be confusing in a couple of years?
Might I suggest backgammon? It's a wonderful game of manipulating probabilities and making expected value estimations, with enough random chance to keep it exciting.
No, I don't have to buy a new TV, and I don't have to buy a new tuner. I don't have to buy anything... much like the majority of American TV viewers who aren't upgrading equipment that's perfectly fine, I can just keep using my existing equipment. The folks who are running out to Circuit City to buy a 36" LCD HDTV are in a niche market. There are a whole lot of sets left to displace before mandated obsolescence becomes either economically feasible (for the broadcasters) or politically feasible (for the feds).
Yes, I think it's just not going to happen. I think there is a much greater chance that over-the-air broadcast will be made entirely obsolete by network content distribution before the feds ever throw the switch on NTSC. I also think that the claim that SDTVs will simply not be manufactured anymore rests on the faulty assumption that NTSC broadcasts will be turned off.
What was the first time they told us analog TV was going away "real soon! we promise!!"?
Wasn't it something like 1997?
Seriously, guys, I'll believe this one when I see it. The FCC's digital TV broadcast announcements have become a pathetic parody of the boy who cried wolf.
Easy. This is targeted at folks who have already decided they want to use Postgres, so they can't be sold on the $xx,000 MSSQL license... but maybe they can still be sold on the $300 OS license! It may be too late to lock them into our database, but it's not too late to lock them into the OS.
Boy howdy, you sure know how to kick the shit out of a straw man.
Steve Wilhite also tells us that "GIF" should be pronounced like "JIF". Don't let these erroneous claims fool you just because they come from the authors.
Forgive me, but are you trolling, or did you simply not think to search for linux standard base?
You may want to read this excellent essay, entitled Linux is not Windows. I think it will offer you some valuable perspective on the issues you're addressing.
Don't forget about Debconf! The ability of the OS to centrally manage configuration for a variety of applications is one of the most important advantages of the Debian style of package management.
The reason Linux distributions have not been trembling to adopt the OS X style of package management, if you can call it that, is that it would be a poor fit for the Linux software ecosystem.
The vast majority of software used on Linux systems is licensed under the GPL; what is not is almost always under another license permitting free redistribution. This gives Linux distributors great freedom in selecting and assembling a compatible collection of versions, tested and working with the same versions of dependent libraries. In a larger distribution (such as Gentoo, Debian, or Fedora), most of the software you will ever need is already a part of the OS -- you just need to use the built-in package management tools to summon it from the distributor's repository.
OS X-style package management is best suited for a software ecosystem in which users draw software from a large number of heterogenous third-party sources, while the core OS and iLife suite are maintained and updated by Apple. A third-party distributor who wishes to distribute something that must link against a particular version of a library can include it in the application bundle, knowing that the exact version needed will be available. This can lead to many copies of the same libraries being installed, facilitating compatibility with applications that require different versions, but consuming (small amounts of) disk space unnecessarily and increasing the attack surface when multiple copies of an exploitable library are installed on the system. A system such as APT does not need to provide a facility for private copies of libraries, since it does all of the dependency computation, and all software in the repository is built and linked against the libraries in the repository.
Certainly, once you have resigned yourself to visiting a third-party distributor's web page, manually downloading a binary package, and then manually installing the binary package, drag-and-drop installation is very convenient. But the Linux software ecosystem does not require this concession from the user -- the Linux distributor is free to provide a repository and tools for finding, installing, and updating software, without the need for manual installation.
Some do, and some don't. Verizon, for example, went to bat for its customers when the RIAA was launching one of its first full broadsides of subpoenas. They had to go into appeals, but eventually obtained a decision invalidating the subpoenas.
That's the difference between "don't be evil" and "genuinely, honestly don't be evil."
Not quite. While deb packages do frequently include preinst, postinst, prerm, and postrm scripts, everything executed by apt either comes on the installer CD or from the package repositories themselves, unless you replace the apt binary. This is why I mentioned a compromise of the repository as a nightmare scenario. Obviously, the installation of software requires the execution of some code. But I still argue that reducing the amount of code executed, as much as possible, to things controlled by the OS distributor is a good thing for security.