For a new band they have the choice of making taking a $100k advance RIGHT NOW...
So let's say you've got a basic 4-piece band. That's $25,000 each -- to last you the term of the contract, usually 7 years. Or roughly $3,500 a year. WHAT A DEAL!!! So delivering pizzas is probably the wiser choice. They may even have benefits, which won't be a part of that record contract.
Most likely that will be the end of it, but there is a modest chance that you could make a little more money.
"Modest" as in "slim to none." You'll do better in tips at the pizza place.
If you sign with a record label the business model is also simple. You will not lose any money under any circumstances. You will definitely get to keep your advance...
And even if you pay off your advance, you will also definitely never own the recordings you created. It's kind of like a mortgage, except after you pay off the loan, the bank still keeps the house.
Or you can put your music on iTunes, skip the cartons of unsold CDs and avoid the fairy stories of how beneficial a record contract is. Play our every weekend. The local bar pays almost as well and no vultures are hovering over you, waiting to make sure that they get 85 cents out of every dollar.
More than 90,000 albums were released that way last year just through Tunecore.com alone. $50 for global retail distribution without the bullshit. True risk equalization.
The old way is dead.
most people critical of the RIAA miss the fact that it does provide one valuable service to the new artist...
The RIAA is a lobbying organization. It provides no service to the artists, unless you want to count suing their fans and driving sales down.
The MAFIAA wants to keep the process of turning their fantasies into law hidden behind closed doors? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you. They've always been so honest and forthcoming...
Someone seems to have said something earlier, in another branch of the discussion, that will resemble this.
If you create a stand-alone application that could be sold to numerous companies for the same purpose (an inventory database, payroll processing, etc.), then to your clients, you're a vendor supplying a product, not an independent programmer.
Occasionally, one of your clients may request custom software for which a software solution has not yet been developed to suit their needs. You (or an employee) could create the software as a beta version which dealt with the client's specific needs. It will be followed by a public version that performs the same basic function, with any bizarre specs that developed in the course of the beta version dealt with in a generic manner, allowing more user control.
And you would like to thank Company X for their generous donations to create this software solution. Their sponsorship and extensive testing efforts lets us now offer every _______ user the opportunity to take advantage of this helpful _______ tool.
Yes, God forbid we allow kids to learn anything they may actually find useful when they graduate. It's not like any employers out there will be using computers or expect people to be computer literate, know how to locate information, do written communication or data entry.
Might as well eliminate science and math, too, since their gatewat courses that will lead to an interest in computers. In fact, why don't we just forget the entire idea of school. We've already abandoned geography, art, music, civics and anything that's not on The Test. All that extra knowledge just makes people uppity liberals anyway.
Maybe they tried everything they could think of... Where did they get the primordial soup recipe and how do they know they didn't miss something that no longer exists on the planet?
They haven't tried a close pass through the tail of a comet yet or a giant meteor impact, both of which could be potential carriers of a missing spark albeit with some nasty side effects (irrelevant if there wasn't any life to begin with). They haven't tried everything.
I think that this tendency to call yourself something you're not comes in part from employers' expectations.
I'm seeing people asking for web designers with 2-year degrees and multi-year experience in Twitter (seriously, I've seen it) to maintain a virtually static page. I can imagine that if they wanted a chemist, they'd require a Nobel Prize.
I do (or did) Mac applications. No school teaches that except Apple. I learned by slogging through Pascal, C and C++, and by reading every volume of Inside Macintosh, something that the guys at Microsoft never did before 1995 or they would have known how to make a window with fucking scroll bars in FoxPro for the Mac. (They told me to use graphics to simulate a scrolling window. That was the day I stopped using Microsoft products.)
I sat through a semester of computer science at 35, but it was so outdated (and not a single prof on campus understood the Apple toolbox) that any degree would have been just a piece of paper, as it would not signify any knowledge gained, much less anything that would be applicable in the real world. The classes seemed more designed to merely get people to think in a logical manner. The final exam was something I could have done on the first day.
Not having 3-1/2 more years to waste, I quit school and went to work as a Mac programmer. Took a week to find a job.
We all know there are lots of people out there writing bad/buggy/dangerous/insecure software that were hired because of a degree, and are still rather incompetent because they still don't think logically enough to see peripheral consequences or anticipate/test user error factors, for instance.
They're not competent software engineers, but they have a piece of paper. I don't have a piece of paper, but I can make something that works properly.
Without trying to tell a story about the software I already did (Basketball stats, school free lunch program tracking, inventory database for Motorola, complete custom business accounting software), how many free-standing applications does one have to develop from scratch for different clients, according to their specs, before one can safely assume that they are a software engineer?
Or is it enough that your clients know that you engineered theirs?
As for the list of facts that all engineers should know...
Software engineering is not physical engineering. Software engineering is about making a piece of software that solves a problem, performs a function or deals with data in the desired manner. We're not building computers, we're writing software to operate within the restrictions already in place as a result of hardware choice. So we don't really need to know much about metal fatigue on the micro or nanoscopic level.
If we do, we look it up, code in the formula, test the calculations and forget it until the next time someone wants to ask their software about metal fatigue. But software will not change the metal fatigue of the computer housing it.
Most people just want to keep track of stuff. Especially money. Nothing ever explodes, except perhaps incompetent managers who have been fudging records.
As for black boxes, that rules out Windows and Mac interfaces entirely doesn't it? The entire difference between the two is that Mac has actual engineers hard-code the chips with these instructions, whereas Microsoft likes to keep the Windows interface more fluid so it can disable compting products. If I ask for a new window and one shows up, is it really necessary for me to grok the machine code that produced it, or can I move on to teaching it how to process payroll for 100 employees?
The key here is to eliminate the role of the recording industry execs.
iTunes, Amazon and other services have already done that. Anyone can now release their music directly into the largest music retailer's inventory, something that was pretty much impossible without a record contract 15 years ago.
I think the idea is to create a competitor for PayPal, something that is long overdue.
This simply highlights how much of scumbags these people really are.
And also how stupid they are.
Very few songs will win you over on the first play. Payola was popular to get repetition, to shove a song down your throat until it starts to taste good. Despite being illegal, that did sell records.
So now their plan is not only to avoid repetition, they don't want you to hear the songs at all. Another stroke of Bronfman genius. Not surprisingly, this approach does not sell records. That's okay, too, because Bronfman still wants to run the infamous $5 a month plan, except now you would only get Warner artists. So who needs records?
But Warner could end up with EMI's catalog, since EMI is broke. Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma, which bought EMI a few years back, is under pressure from Citibank to sell it. Hands would like to see it go to Warner Music.
The only reason I brought up the last paragraph was to point out that Mr. Hands is a huge fan of -- karaoke. This goes a long way in explaining EMI's demise.
...their campaign of legal harassment is working...
Really? By what metrics?
File-sharing is still happening. If it's slowing down at all, it might be because everyone already downloaded everything they could think of. Sales certainly aren't up. They dropped another 15% or so in 2009. Certainly no one is afraid of them. Annoyed, maybe. Afraid, no. And as you said, they're spending a boatload of bucks running the legal assault.
No offense, but forget that -- how do you define "copyright bullshit"?
This is what happens when the RIAA takes over the DOJ.
U.S. Code -- Title 17, 105. Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works
Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
If you're selling something cheap online (i.e., CDs at $10), a bank transfer is going to cost more than the transaction -- every time.
Yeah, Paypal kinda sucks, and it's bad reputation is actually getting worse. However, right now, small sellers who don't move enough to justify credit card input don't have much in the way of alternatives.
Only if you use it like a bludgeon. The Author's Guild (U.S.) is trying to deal with Google's "library in the cloud" concept and sees the RIAA's actions as the way not to go about things. The problem isn't copyright, it's the way the MAFIAA has twisted and abused it.
Their interpretation is a definitely a violation of common sense. Sadly, the same could be said for those still sharing RIAA music, as they are the only ones that the RIAA can legitimately harrass.
I'd like to ask them what the hell is the difference in me stealing a CD from a music store and me "making unauthorised copies" of a friends CD?
The music store can notice it has a CD missing and file a police report identifying the stolen property. If you copy a friend's CD, he doesn't lose his original.
Both give ME, the same net result, which is obtaining a product or property without paying, and therefore FOR PROFIT
You have no more money after making a copy than you had before. Plus you used up a blank CD and probably a jewel case, so you had LESS than before you did it. It's not "for profit" unless you sell it -- priced to recover your minimal costs and then a little extra for geekmux.
But really, the "for profit" part doesn't seem to have a lot of significance anyway. A lot of the people who were sued in the US were seemingly ignorant about what the hell file sharing was, much less trying to make a profit on it. They got sucked in because the software's default was to share and they had no idea of the significance of that setting.
So before you fax, call them and ask them to make sure they put the paper in the machine top side up.
Be insistent. They can't expect you to print right side up if they loaded the paper upside down in the first place. That's why you have to call and check every time you fax.
You're going to roll out software that traces outgoing web content back to its source? If you've signed into your computer, the outbound data is traceable back to you.
No, just to the computer. Depending on the environment a number of people may have access to my computer. So there's a potential for false accusation here, which you obviously recognize. And your advice to those forced to use it?
Someone else used your computer, you say? Good luck with that defence.
Here's a better idea. Such a system should have an automatic logout after more than a couple of minutes of inactivity to protect the users from exactly the type of false allegations that you describe. That way, even if you're an idiot, the software will protect you from itself.
This is common sense really, as ISP's are a carrier and not liable for the content that passes through their networks.
While this has always been a valid argument in most countries, the MAFIAA really wants it not to be true. They seem to think that they can sue someone and the law will morph to fit their perspective. Look how long they hammered "downloading is theft" when only the sharers were open to charges.
Can you imagine the spin the newsclowns will then be able to put on anything?
More than they already do? Is that even possible? At least the animation factor would remind you that it's not real.
And now that you made me think about it, maybe it's a proper punishment for a show's bullshit rating going too high -- turn them into animations until people stop taking them seriously.
Anything that is copyrighted to the U.S. government can be freely disseminated and it's fair use. I would think the same applies to patents.
My erroneous conclusion was that the Dept. of Citizen Participation was somehow protecting a portion of content, probably in an effort to get them to participate in something or other, like, I don't know, a discussion board, without worrying about getting sued for copying a paragraph from an Associated Press article.
And beyond being closer to correct, I would think that "Google Patents the News" is more likely to attract attention than the Director of some obscure governmental department that I've never heard of before.
Even easier, just add it to the list of things you get charged extra for if you have an accident, like we do with unused seat belts, improper child car seats, drinking and/or offering the officer a hit off the spliff you were smoking when he showed up.
How many unfounded takedown notices do they have to issue before it graduates to "knowingly materially misrepresents"? Was the dancing baby a threat to Prince somehow?
Universal should be able to tell the difference between infringement and fair use. However, along with the rest of the RIAA, Doug Morris at UMG will insist that fair use is stealing "just a little bit." As long as the industry keeps pretending the law says something different than it actually does, they'll continue to send a takedown notice to every dancing baby they find.
The accused deserve legal representation if it is required. If the accusation is baseless, the accuser should have to pay the legal fees.
Sadly, the Supreme Court just upgraded the RIAA to a person and gave the RIAA's money freedom of speech, which they can now use to impede everyone else's.
Slashdot Mirror
For a new band they have the choice of making taking a $100k advance RIGHT NOW...
So let's say you've got a basic 4-piece band. That's $25,000 each -- to last you the term of the contract, usually 7 years. Or roughly $3,500 a year. WHAT A DEAL!!! So delivering pizzas is probably the wiser choice. They may even have benefits, which won't be a part of that record contract.
Most likely that will be the end of it, but there is a modest chance that you could make a little more money.
"Modest" as in "slim to none." You'll do better in tips at the pizza place.
If you sign with a record label the business model is also simple. You will not lose any money under any circumstances. You will definitely get to keep your advance...
And even if you pay off your advance, you will also definitely never own the recordings you created. It's kind of like a mortgage, except after you pay off the loan, the bank still keeps the house.
Or you can put your music on iTunes, skip the cartons of unsold CDs and avoid the fairy stories of how beneficial a record contract is. Play our every weekend. The local bar pays almost as well and no vultures are hovering over you, waiting to make sure that they get 85 cents out of every dollar.
More than 90,000 albums were released that way last year just through Tunecore.com alone. $50 for global retail distribution without the bullshit. True risk equalization.
The old way is dead.
most people critical of the RIAA miss the fact that it does provide one valuable service to the new artist...
The RIAA is a lobbying organization. It provides no service to the artists, unless you want to count suing their fans and driving sales down.
The MAFIAA wants to keep the process of turning their fantasies into law hidden behind closed doors? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you. They've always been so honest and forthcoming...
Someone seems to have said something earlier, in another branch of the discussion, that will resemble this.
If you create a stand-alone application that could be sold to numerous companies for the same purpose (an inventory database, payroll processing, etc.), then to your clients, you're a vendor supplying a product, not an independent programmer.
Occasionally, one of your clients may request custom software for which a software solution has not yet been developed to suit their needs. You (or an employee) could create the software as a beta version which dealt with the client's specific needs. It will be followed by a public version that performs the same basic function, with any bizarre specs that developed in the course of the beta version dealt with in a generic manner, allowing more user control.
And you would like to thank Company X for their generous donations to create this software solution. Their sponsorship and extensive testing efforts lets us now offer every _______ user the opportunity to take advantage of this helpful _______ tool.
laptops do not belong in high school.
Yes, God forbid we allow kids to learn anything they may actually find useful when they graduate. It's not like any employers out there will be using computers or expect people to be computer literate, know how to locate information, do written communication or data entry.
Might as well eliminate science and math, too, since their gatewat courses that will lead to an interest in computers. In fact, why don't we just forget the entire idea of school. We've already abandoned geography, art, music, civics and anything that's not on The Test. All that extra knowledge just makes people uppity liberals anyway.
It does not work. They tried everything...
Obviously not.
Maybe they tried everything they could think of... Where did they get the primordial soup recipe and how do they know they didn't miss something that no longer exists on the planet?
They haven't tried a close pass through the tail of a comet yet or a giant meteor impact, both of which could be potential carriers of a missing spark albeit with some nasty side effects (irrelevant if there wasn't any life to begin with). They haven't tried everything.
--
The unknown unknowns are the ones to watch for.
I think that this tendency to call yourself something you're not comes in part from employers' expectations.
I'm seeing people asking for web designers with 2-year degrees and multi-year experience in Twitter (seriously, I've seen it) to maintain a virtually static page. I can imagine that if they wanted a chemist, they'd require a Nobel Prize.
I do (or did) Mac applications. No school teaches that except Apple. I learned by slogging through Pascal, C and C++, and by reading every volume of Inside Macintosh, something that the guys at Microsoft never did before 1995 or they would have known how to make a window with fucking scroll bars in FoxPro for the Mac. (They told me to use graphics to simulate a scrolling window. That was the day I stopped using Microsoft products.)
I sat through a semester of computer science at 35, but it was so outdated (and not a single prof on campus understood the Apple toolbox) that any degree would have been just a piece of paper, as it would not signify any knowledge gained, much less anything that would be applicable in the real world. The classes seemed more designed to merely get people to think in a logical manner. The final exam was something I could have done on the first day.
Not having 3-1/2 more years to waste, I quit school and went to work as a Mac programmer. Took a week to find a job.
We all know there are lots of people out there writing bad/buggy/dangerous/insecure software that were hired because of a degree, and are still rather incompetent because they still don't think logically enough to see peripheral consequences or anticipate/test user error factors, for instance.
They're not competent software engineers, but they have a piece of paper. I don't have a piece of paper, but I can make something that works properly.
Without trying to tell a story about the software I already did (Basketball stats, school free lunch program tracking, inventory database for Motorola, complete custom business accounting software), how many free-standing applications does one have to develop from scratch for different clients, according to their specs, before one can safely assume that they are a software engineer?
Or is it enough that your clients know that you engineered theirs?
As for the list of facts that all engineers should know...
Software engineering is not physical engineering. Software engineering is about making a piece of software that solves a problem, performs a function or deals with data in the desired manner. We're not building computers, we're writing software to operate within the restrictions already in place as a result of hardware choice. So we don't really need to know much about metal fatigue on the micro or nanoscopic level.
If we do, we look it up, code in the formula, test the calculations and forget it until the next time someone wants to ask their software about metal fatigue. But software will not change the metal fatigue of the computer housing it.
Most people just want to keep track of stuff. Especially money. Nothing ever explodes, except perhaps incompetent managers who have been fudging records.
As for black boxes, that rules out Windows and Mac interfaces entirely doesn't it? The entire difference between the two is that Mac has actual engineers hard-code the chips with these instructions, whereas Microsoft likes to keep the Windows interface more fluid so it can disable compting products. If I ask for a new window and one shows up, is it really necessary for me to grok the machine code that produced it, or can I move on to teaching it how to process payroll for 100 employees?
Wasn't wikipedia scheduled to be broke and shut down by now? Weren't they in serious need of funds like, a month ago?
If so, then Google did a good thing, regardless of what it thinks it might gain going forward. Maybe Bing will chip in a million, too.
People have the insanely naive, stupid idea that when they have someone else host their content that they will still have control over that content.
I totally agree with you, but isn't this the core idea of the "cloud"?
The key here is to eliminate the role of the recording industry execs.
iTunes, Amazon and other services have already done that. Anyone can now release their music directly into the largest music retailer's inventory, something that was pretty much impossible without a record contract 15 years ago.
I think the idea is to create a competitor for PayPal, something that is long overdue.
This simply highlights how much of scumbags these people really are.
And also how stupid they are.
Very few songs will win you over on the first play. Payola was popular to get repetition, to shove a song down your throat until it starts to taste good. Despite being illegal, that did sell records.
So now their plan is not only to avoid repetition, they don't want you to hear the songs at all. Another stroke of Bronfman genius. Not surprisingly, this approach does not sell records. That's okay, too, because Bronfman still wants to run the infamous $5 a month plan, except now you would only get Warner artists. So who needs records?
But Warner could end up with EMI's catalog, since EMI is broke. Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma, which bought EMI a few years back, is under pressure from Citibank to sell it. Hands would like to see it go to Warner Music.
The only reason I brought up the last paragraph was to point out that Mr. Hands is a huge fan of -- karaoke. This goes a long way in explaining EMI's demise.
...their campaign of legal harassment is working...
Really? By what metrics?
File-sharing is still happening. If it's slowing down at all, it might be because everyone already downloaded everything they could think of. Sales certainly aren't up. They dropped another 15% or so in 2009. Certainly no one is afraid of them. Annoyed, maybe. Afraid, no. And as you said, they're spending a boatload of bucks running the legal assault.
I just don't see where the "working" part is.
Also, how do you define "news organizations"?
No offense, but forget that -- how do you define "copyright bullshit"?
This is what happens when the RIAA takes over the DOJ.
U.S. Code -- Title 17, 105. Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works
Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
If you're selling something cheap online (i.e., CDs at $10), a bank transfer is going to cost more than the transaction -- every time.
Yeah, Paypal kinda sucks, and it's bad reputation is actually getting worse. However, right now, small sellers who don't move enough to justify credit card input don't have much in the way of alternatives.
fill in their User Generated statistics maliciously?
No, no, no. Fill it out properly so you can get more highly valuable information. They would never use that info to send more spam your way.
---------
News Flash! World ends! Tune in at 10:00 for details.
...is a violation of human rights.
Only if you use it like a bludgeon. The Author's Guild (U.S.) is trying to deal with Google's "library in the cloud" concept and sees the RIAA's actions as the way not to go about things. The problem isn't copyright, it's the way the MAFIAA has twisted and abused it.
Their interpretation is a definitely a violation of common sense. Sadly, the same could be said for those still sharing RIAA music, as they are the only ones that the RIAA can legitimately harrass.
I'd like to ask them what the hell is the difference in me stealing a CD from a music store and me "making unauthorised copies" of a friends CD?
The music store can notice it has a CD missing and file a police report identifying the stolen property. If you copy a friend's CD, he doesn't lose his original.
Both give ME, the same net result, which is obtaining a product or property without paying, and therefore FOR PROFIT
You have no more money after making a copy than you had before. Plus you used up a blank CD and probably a jewel case, so you had LESS than before you did it. It's not "for profit" unless you sell it -- priced to recover your minimal costs and then a little extra for geekmux.
But really, the "for profit" part doesn't seem to have a lot of significance anyway. A lot of the people who were sued in the US were seemingly ignorant about what the hell file sharing was, much less trying to make a profit on it. They got sucked in because the software's default was to share and they had no idea of the significance of that setting.
This is like Toyota trying to ask for more driver responsibility this week, if they were stupid enough to do such a thing.
We need licenses, eh? Okay, as long as we get to make MS recall IE because it's an unsafe vehicle.
So before you fax, call them and ask them to make sure they put the paper in the machine top side up.
Be insistent. They can't expect you to print right side up if they loaded the paper upside down in the first place. That's why you have to call and check every time you fax.
Only because it's an AC...
You're going to roll out software that traces outgoing web content back to its source? If you've signed into your computer, the outbound data is traceable back to you.
No, just to the computer. Depending on the environment a number of people may have access to my computer. So there's a potential for false accusation here, which you obviously recognize. And your advice to those forced to use it?
Someone else used your computer, you say? Good luck with that defence.
Here's a better idea. Such a system should have an automatic logout after more than a couple of minutes of inactivity to protect the users from exactly the type of false allegations that you describe. That way, even if you're an idiot, the software will protect you from itself.
But yours isn't going to do that, I take it.
This is common sense really, as ISP's are a carrier and not liable for the content that passes through their networks.
While this has always been a valid argument in most countries, the MAFIAA really wants it not to be true. They seem to think that they can sue someone and the law will morph to fit their perspective. Look how long they hammered "downloading is theft" when only the sharers were open to charges.
Can you imagine the spin the newsclowns will then be able to put on anything?
More than they already do? Is that even possible? At least the animation factor would remind you that it's not real.
And now that you made me think about it, maybe it's a proper punishment for a show's bullshit rating going too high -- turn them into animations until people stop taking them seriously.
I was annoyed at the title malfunction, too.
Anything that is copyrighted to the U.S. government can be freely disseminated and it's fair use. I would think the same applies to patents.
My erroneous conclusion was that the Dept. of Citizen Participation was somehow protecting a portion of content, probably in an effort to get them to participate in something or other, like, I don't know, a discussion board, without worrying about getting sued for copying a paragraph from an Associated Press article.
And beyond being closer to correct, I would think that "Google Patents the News" is more likely to attract attention than the Director of some obscure governmental department that I've never heard of before.
I almost skipped it.
No, because ideas are valuable property...
Ideas are worthless if they don't produce something.
Can't be both. It's not the idea that carries the ultimate value; it's the actions of the person whose brain the idea lives in that really matters.
I agree with everything else you said.
So, there should be tests.
Even easier, just add it to the list of things you get charged extra for if you have an accident, like we do with unused seat belts, improper child car seats, drinking and/or offering the officer a hit off the spliff you were smoking when he showed up.
How many unfounded takedown notices do they have to issue before it graduates to "knowingly materially misrepresents"? Was the dancing baby a threat to Prince somehow?
Universal should be able to tell the difference between infringement and fair use. However, along with the rest of the RIAA, Doug Morris at UMG will insist that fair use is stealing "just a little bit." As long as the industry keeps pretending the law says something different than it actually does, they'll continue to send a takedown notice to every dancing baby they find.
The accused deserve legal representation if it is required. If the accusation is baseless, the accuser should have to pay the legal fees.
Sadly, the Supreme Court just upgraded the RIAA to a person and gave the RIAA's money freedom of speech, which they can now use to impede everyone else's.