A good question, since the Mac was launched when there was a real window of opportunity. My first PC at work cost something like $6,000 and this was a "cheap clone" at the time. But it had a 20 Mb hard disk and that meant we could do real work on it. The Mac, with its 128Kb RAM and single floppy, was just too slow for serious work.
If Apple had made the Mac expandable using some kind of external bus (something the Apple II and Commodore 64 and CP/M systems and PCs all did), there would have been a supply of external disks that would have allowed it to compete with the PC.
If they had made a business version that had a larger case which could be opened and expanded with more memory, they might have cornered the market.
If they had licensed the hardware and software to other manufacturers, they would have been able to compete with the price drops that kept the (IBM) PC the most popular choice.
As it was, IBM clones were simply cheaper, more expandable, more widely available, and eventually, more capable.
Apple captured a small number of markets with its graphic capability and has basically been serving the same markets ever since.
I did say "most" women, and the fact that you are reading Slashdot is a good sign that technology interests you. This is a walk-up-and-use anonymous site, yet there are remarkably few women readers. That should be a good sign that technology interests only a small minority of women.
Honestly: of all the women you know, how many seriously _like_ technology? And did you suffer prejudice at school when you chose physics instead of modern linguistics?
Why does Microsoft want to support Unix/Linux applications on Windows? It does not seem to make sense. Every deployment of a portable application on Windows creates an opportunity for moving to Linux at a later stage (vis. OpenOffice).
Presumably the "Unix" services will include extensions that make the migration a one-way affair. Presumably also Microsoft have some killer Unix/Linux applications in mind that they want/need to be able run on Windows. Apache? Hmmm...
Presumably also the goal is to turn Windows into something closer to what corporate IT centers actually want.
It reminds me a lot of IBM's drive to include Unix-like features in OS/370. An obvious thing, to make one's OS POSIX-compliant. But all POSIX compliancy drives seem to lead to Linux.
So... the very first thing I thought when I first heard about this, and the thing I still think today is that this is the first step in the direction of a Microsoft-branded Linux distribution.
Harkins' Law of Dead Trees: "The same people who refuse to read the copious free online searchable documentation until they come across an unsurmountable problem will rush out to spend $39.95 on a 1000-page book containing essentially the same information."
A man goes to a bakers, asks how much the bagels are. Baker replies "twelve for a dollar". Man replies, "at the bakers across the street, they're fourteen per dollar". Baker replies, "Yes, but they're sold out, no?" "Yes", answers the man. "Well," says the baker, "when my bagels are sold out, they're sixteen for a dollar!"
Moral: Verisign can hardly do anything wrong with this serial number change, so it's hardly proof of goodwill. When they stop messing with other, more delicate things, they will get some credit.
Just get any one of the neat P2P tools available...
I was not talking about the software but about the people who use it. It's easy, yes, but still restricted to a niche of power users (those with unrestricted broadband, enough capacity, skill to burn DVDs or VCDs, etc.)
Two years and then everyone and their grandmother is doing this, that's my prediction.
"Massive" is when it's a more popular way of getting movies than going to the video/DVD rental shop.
On one of our customers' systems (IIS). Turns out they had already installed the new Verisign intermediate certificate but had not removed the old one. IIS happily used the old one...
Lesson: if the certificate expired yesterday, remove it from IIS and then reboot the thing.
I watched in wonder a few weeks ago as an aquaintance logged into an FTP site he owns with some friends, populated with something like a thousand ripped movies, and downloaded a movie, burnt it to CD, and handed it to me, saying 'try this'. (I did not like the movie).
We're only a year or two away from seeing *massive* movie trading on p2p networks.
Anyone who claims this is about fair use is obviously trolling. It's about cheating, getting something for nothing.
But that does not mean it's necessarily going to be bad for the movie business. There is still a world of difference between watching a movie on the big screen and watching a movie at home. The video/DVD rental industry, however, is definitely going to die, I think.
The key to "anti-piracy" is to understand that the warez kids never pay anyhow. Whatever they're ripping/cracking/hoarding, it's always stolen and it's always for kicks, not because they want a quiet evening at home with the wife.
The only significant market for media sales (music, movies, and probably software too) is the bulk of non-technical people who look for the easy solution, for decent quality, and are willing to pay for it.
The music industry lost this market when it dropped the Napster ball. The movie industry still has a chance...
The film industry has perhaps 2 years to make a paid service for downloading / burning movies to protected DVD, if they miss this window of opportunity, they will find that their main market is already getting their stuff for free.
Up to a point I would agree but not when your business model is based on sales of the basics of computing - OS and Office. There is a definite limit to how many times you can sell the same product to the same user.
If Windows had sold only to DOS users, it would have been a failure. It succeeded because it sold to a hundred new users for every DOS user.
The fact that MS makes the bulk of its sales to its existing (old) customers and - vitally - sales of the same basic product, which has in the meantime become a commodity - should be a worry to it.
To me, counting migrations from (e.g.) Windows 98 to Windows XP as "market growth" is a sleight of hand, fine for impressing the stock market, and definitely good for profits, as all sales are, but it is not really market growth at all.
All this would not be an issue if the market were more or less stable - as is the market for cars, for example, and where sales to existing customers are the best kind of sales there are. The software market is always changing, driven by ever lower costs of production and any company that is not actively growing into new markets is by my argument 'shrinking' its market.
Microsoft's own figures for Windows growth in 2003 was 3%. The main growth region for 2004 and beyond is in APAC, the region with the lowest sales of Windows. This adds up to a slowly shrinking share of a growing market. Much of MS's "growth" over the last few years has been cannibalization of existing users, and this will continue as they end support for Win98 - that's another 28% of Windows users who will count as "new growth".
Microsoft will be producing a series of devices that are tailored to exactly what the user needs!
Yes, with their small size, astounding battery life, spacious hard disk, well-conceived software, clean-elegant user interface, and extraordinary low, low price these new Personal Interactive Media Players (or PIMPs) are guaranteed to wipe out the competition. Sony, Apple, Archos, forget it!
Or maybe not.
What will happen? MS will collaborate with some small company with excellent designs, they will co-produce a player that is ordinary in every respect except that the new version of WMP will refuse to work with anything else. MS will lead its captive community by the nose and say "This is the iPOD for Windows, buy it now!" and millions of people will. The goal will be to sell Microsoft-labeled music. Microsoft will then screw their partners every which way, steal their IP and engineers, and cancel their collaboration. MS will produce one or two updates of their device and then stop developing it. They will sell the model to Dell and Sony, and aim to build a monopolistic music market based around control of the OS, the platform, and the media.
Design, price, and quality will never come into it.
Apple have 2-4 months to produce a complete iPod package for Windows, or they will find themselves embraced by the Beast.
Only snag in Microsoft's plan is that its base of Windows users is shrinking, and this is one thing that may make it shrink even faster. If you could get a media player that was twice as cool and half the price and played "free" music (as in speech), wouldn't you consider switching to Linux?
We have used Xandros/1.0 for 6 months or so on our systems, and it was already wonderful. Xandros/2.0 went onto a couple of new systems last week and is simply excellent.
If you have to support MS Office, go for the professional version, which comes with Crossover Office, a decent way of running MSIE, MS Office, and some other applications. It's Wine plus some extensions, and well-integrated into Xandros.
If you don't need this, just go for the basic package.
The best thing about Xandros is that it combines the 95%+ device detection we're starting to expect in modern distros along with a clean and lean Debian-based chassis. You get simple graphical installation of the standard Xandros packages, plus access to everything in Debian unstable via the normal apt-get interface.
The Xandros/2.0 file manager handles pretty much everything you can throw at it. It mounts everything it can, lets you burn CDs, map network drives, and so on.
Just for fun I installed a Lindows 4.5, then took a deep breath, and wiped it with Xandros. Lindows is so *full* of stuff, while Xandros shows the meaning of "less is more".
There is no shame in paying for good software, and Xandros/2.0 gets my vote as the best office distro of 2003. Install it, forget about it. You can't ask for more.
The quotation is from a friend of mine, Pieter Hintjens (from a book in progress). The ideas are inherited from Dawkins but taken somewhat further and combined with a rather cynical and enjoyable view of human society. You will probably also enjoy Steven Pinker ("Blank Slate", "How the Mind Works").
And yes, compressing the Human Situation into a single paragraph does make a tasty morsel, doesn't it?
Ah, the power of heresy!
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
How about this one:
We exist purely as vehicles for our genes; our consciousness, our imaginations, our creations: all these are simply manifestations of our genetically-implanted instincts for survival. We believe we exist because it makes us better replicators. There is no other reason for existence, no god, no destiny, no karma. Our lives are neither random nor controlled: choice is an illusion, but so is fate. We simply operate, like the very intelligent automatons we are. Our minds are exquisitely adapted to solving large and complex problems, the bulk of which come from our intraspecies competition with each other. Our societies are hives, built through the collaboration of thousands and millions of minds. As a species we are genetically so similar, due to near-extinction around 50,000 years ago, that we are practically clones. All our notions of "ethnicity" and "color" are as meaningful as separating people by hair patterns or toe size. Our species is incredibly successful mainly because we have managed to turn our technological prowess onto ourselves, creating a feedback loop that has not stopped since we invented fire and freed our jaws to shrink and make space for a larger brain. Finally, although we all feel unique, we are in fact designed as team players, male and female, young and old adopting clear and comfortable roles that are so inate they are universal in all human cultures. Men solve technical problems, women organize social networks. Young men learn and work, young women dance and like to look pretty. Old women gossip and old men accumulate power."
These truths, though self0evident, are heresy because they seem to imply (wrongly) that life has no meaning and personal endeavour has no value. Au contraire, life is filled with meaning, and personal endeavour all that makes it possible.
Just because you understand fluid mechanics does not mean you cannot enjoy surfing a great wave.
It's also already happening - China is the second largest importer in the world, and it's not only importing raw materials. It has a huge middle class getting wealthier all the time, and they like their foreign luxuries like everyone does.
The biggest hurdles to free trade are those placed by rich countries against poor countries, not the other way around. Case in point: most of Africa imports huge quantities from Europe and the US (and China), protectionism is rarely an issue. But when African countries try to sell beef, milk, vegetables, and fruit to Europe and the US, they always find themselves fighting vested agricultural interests in those countries.
True free trade means bringing those barriers down.
My late uncle, who I cannot name, left me an inheritance of $50Bn (yes, fifty billion USD) worth of diamonds which are unfortunately trapped in a space capsule on the surface of the moon. I am seeking investors who will help me recover this capsule, and in return for their investment I will be able to reward them richly. A trusted friend gave me your address and I hope you will be discrete with my message. The budget for a small one-man expedition to the Lunar Surface is approximately $30m, or $18m if a Chinese rocket is used. I am therefore inviting you to join in this unique opportunity with a guaranteed return of %1000 on your investment, which can be as little as $1m. Yes, if you will provide me with just one million USD, I will on recovery of the lunar diamonds, repay you with TEN MILLION USD. We are also selling one excursion trip to the Moon, a round trip with unlimited stopovers, for the low low price of $12m.
What stupid ignorant dick of a moderator modded this "Informative" without even checking the link? It's a *shudder* animated Goatse link. Please mod the parent -1 OBSCENE TROLL really fast.
Curiously, when "Master and Commander" came out in Belgium a month or so ago, it was proceeded by a bold notice that anyone caught filming in the cinema would be hunted down, skinned alive, and thrown naked and bleeding to the dogs. And their film and camera would be confiscated and maybe kept for like a week or so.
The hordes of surreptitious filmers immediately ran out of the cinema, where they were aprehended by the local branch of the MPAA.
Not. I have never seen anyone filming in a theater, and the few pirate films I've seen that were made this way were incredibly unwatchable ("cough cough", shadows walking in front of the film, noises of coke being slurped and people making out in row 2.)
I mean... does this actually present a threat to the movie industry?
Surely a balanced law would also mandate prison for people who make movies like Matrix 2 and 3? This kind of crap product is a far greater threat to cinema revenues than pirates can ever be.
- Open source and free software is like disk space. You used to pay $1000 for 1GB, today you get 1Gb for $1.
- This is possible because the Internet has made communications so cheap that the traditional huge costs of making software - design, management and infrastructure - have been largely eliminated.
- "Closed software" businesses like Microsoft would very much like you to continue paying 1970's prices for software.
- But the fact is that your competitors are benefiting from high-quality free packages like OpenOffice, Apache, PHP, Linux, and MySQL.
- You should really be switching your IT budgets from paying for software licenses to paying for support and custom development: this is the best way to keep an edge in the market.
Every dollar spent on buying overblown commercial software that has a free equivalent is a dollar wasted. Are you sure you want to waste your money?
There are way too many short-term factors confusing the long-term trends. The RIAA will say that the crackdown on file traders is bringing results. Others will say that P2P networks promote the sales of CDs... both are obviously bullshit.
First, CD sales are much more dependent on economic circumstances than they used to be. Prior to 1998 or so, CDs were the only way to get music, and like drug addicts, we stood in line and paid the price. The fact that the music industry was robbing us blind made us detest them, and we still do. When CDs cost $0.50 to produce, we paid more for them than LPs.
Secondly, people's listening habits have completely changed. Digital music means we are able to (and used to) listening to much more music, and in a much more personal way than ever before. The "45 minute album" concept is completely irrelevant in an age when people build 24-hour playlists for their MP3 players.
Thirdly, the competition is not between CD sales and P2P. Most music sales happen by word of mouth, from friend to friend, and "friendly copying" on CDR already sabotaged CD sales long before P2P became big. Clearly P2P is a big problem for CD sales but it's just one of the many channels people use to get music. Trading CDs, listening to the radio, exchanging casettes (in many parts of the world)... these are probably more significant.
The underlying trends in the music industry are driven by technology and are impossible to stop except by bombing the world back into the stone age. Consumers expect more choice, more control, and as much music as they can consume. The only viable option for the music industry is to channel this demand (as Apple is doing) into its own products.
Trying to sell 1970's products (albums) to a 2000's market is just plain stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
A good question, since the Mac was launched when there was a real window of opportunity. My first PC at work cost something like $6,000 and this was a "cheap clone" at the time. But it had a 20 Mb hard disk and that meant we could do real work on it. The Mac, with its 128Kb RAM and single floppy, was just too slow for serious work.
If Apple had made the Mac expandable using some kind of external bus (something the Apple II and Commodore 64 and CP/M systems and PCs all did), there would have been a supply of external disks that would have allowed it to compete with the PC.
If they had made a business version that had a larger case which could be opened and expanded with more memory, they might have cornered the market.
If they had licensed the hardware and software to other manufacturers, they would have been able to compete with the price drops that kept the (IBM) PC the most popular choice.
As it was, IBM clones were simply cheaper, more expandable, more widely available, and eventually, more capable.
Apple captured a small number of markets with its graphic capability and has basically been serving the same markets ever since.
I did say "most" women, and the fact that you are reading Slashdot is a good sign that technology interests you. This is a walk-up-and-use anonymous site, yet there are remarkably few women readers. That should be a good sign that technology interests only a small minority of women.
Honestly: of all the women you know, how many seriously _like_ technology? And did you suffer prejudice at school when you chose physics instead of modern linguistics?
...just means people will once again be able to create their own as we did before the days of Big Media.
Why is this a bad thing?
Why does Microsoft want to support Unix/Linux applications on Windows? It does not seem to make sense. Every deployment of a portable application on Windows creates an opportunity for moving to Linux at a later stage (vis. OpenOffice).
Presumably the "Unix" services will include extensions that make the migration a one-way affair. Presumably also Microsoft have some killer Unix/Linux applications in mind that they want/need to be able run on Windows. Apache? Hmmm...
Presumably also the goal is to turn Windows into something closer to what corporate IT centers actually want.
It reminds me a lot of IBM's drive to include Unix-like features in OS/370. An obvious thing, to make one's OS POSIX-compliant. But all POSIX compliancy drives seem to lead to Linux.
So... the very first thing I thought when I first heard about this, and the thing I still think today is that this is the first step in the direction of a Microsoft-branded Linux distribution.
Paid opinions make me nauseous. Who can take this guy seriously? He's just a monkey with a microphone.
Harkins' Law of Dead Trees: "The same people who refuse to read the copious free online searchable documentation until they come across an unsurmountable problem will rush out to spend $39.95 on a 1000-page book containing essentially the same information."
Congratulations on news for nerds aged 3-7. I really agree that plastic blocks are the kind of thing I will come back to Slashdot for again.
Seriously, surely there are more interesting things happening out there than this?
Or, a terrifying though occurs, perhaps there are not?
Always read the fine print.
A man goes to a bakers, asks how much the bagels are. Baker replies "twelve for a dollar". Man replies, "at the bakers across the street, they're fourteen per dollar". Baker replies, "Yes, but they're sold out, no?" "Yes", answers the man. "Well," says the baker, "when my bagels are sold out, they're sixteen for a dollar!"
Moral: Verisign can hardly do anything wrong with this serial number change, so it's hardly proof of goodwill. When they stop messing with other, more delicate things, they will get some credit.
...?
Just get any one of the neat P2P tools available...
I was not talking about the software but about the people who use it. It's easy, yes, but still restricted to a niche of power users (those with unrestricted broadband, enough capacity, skill to burn DVDs or VCDs, etc.)
Two years and then everyone and their grandmother is doing this, that's my prediction.
"Massive" is when it's a more popular way of getting movies than going to the video/DVD rental shop.
On one of our customers' systems (IIS). Turns out they had already installed the new Verisign intermediate certificate but had not removed the old one. IIS happily used the old one...
Lesson: if the certificate expired yesterday, remove it from IIS and then reboot the thing.
I watched in wonder a few weeks ago as an aquaintance logged into an FTP site he owns with some friends, populated with something like a thousand ripped movies, and downloaded a movie, burnt it to CD, and handed it to me, saying 'try this'. (I did not like the movie).
We're only a year or two away from seeing *massive* movie trading on p2p networks.
Anyone who claims this is about fair use is obviously trolling. It's about cheating, getting something for nothing.
But that does not mean it's necessarily going to be bad for the movie business. There is still a world of difference between watching a movie on the big screen and watching a movie at home. The video/DVD rental industry, however, is definitely going to die, I think.
The key to "anti-piracy" is to understand that the warez kids never pay anyhow. Whatever they're ripping/cracking/hoarding, it's always stolen and it's always for kicks, not because they want a quiet evening at home with the wife.
The only significant market for media sales (music, movies, and probably software too) is the bulk of non-technical people who look for the easy solution, for decent quality, and are willing to pay for it.
The music industry lost this market when it dropped the Napster ball. The movie industry still has a chance...
The film industry has perhaps 2 years to make a paid service for downloading / burning movies to protected DVD, if they miss this window of opportunity, they will find that their main market is already getting their stuff for free.
A sale is a sale.
Up to a point I would agree but not when your business model is based on sales of the basics of computing - OS and Office. There is a definite limit to how many times you can sell the same product to the same user.
If Windows had sold only to DOS users, it would have been a failure. It succeeded because it sold to a hundred new users for every DOS user.
The fact that MS makes the bulk of its sales to its existing (old) customers and - vitally - sales of the same basic product, which has in the meantime become a commodity - should be a worry to it.
To me, counting migrations from (e.g.) Windows 98 to Windows XP as "market growth" is a sleight of hand, fine for impressing the stock market, and definitely good for profits, as all sales are, but it is not really market growth at all.
All this would not be an issue if the market were more or less stable - as is the market for cars, for example, and where sales to existing customers are the best kind of sales there are. The software market is always changing, driven by ever lower costs of production and any company that is not actively growing into new markets is by my argument 'shrinking' its market.
Microsoft's own figures for Windows growth in 2003 was 3%. The main growth region for 2004 and beyond is in APAC, the region with the lowest sales of Windows. This adds up to a slowly shrinking share of a growing market. Much of MS's "growth" over the last few years has been cannibalization of existing users, and this will continue as they end support for Win98 - that's another 28% of Windows users who will count as "new growth".
Microsoft will be producing a series of devices that are tailored to exactly what the user needs!
Yes, with their small size, astounding battery life, spacious hard disk, well-conceived software, clean-elegant user interface, and extraordinary low, low price these new Personal Interactive Media Players (or PIMPs) are guaranteed to wipe out the competition. Sony, Apple, Archos, forget it!
Or maybe not.
What will happen? MS will collaborate with some small company with excellent designs, they will co-produce a player that is ordinary in every respect except that the new version of WMP will refuse to work with anything else. MS will lead its captive community by the nose and say "This is the iPOD for Windows, buy it now!" and millions of people will. The goal will be to sell Microsoft-labeled music. Microsoft will then screw their partners every which way, steal their IP and engineers, and cancel their collaboration. MS will produce one or two updates of their device and then stop developing it. They will sell the model to Dell and Sony, and aim to build a monopolistic music market based around control of the OS, the platform, and the media.
Design, price, and quality will never come into it.
Apple have 2-4 months to produce a complete iPod package for Windows, or they will find themselves embraced by the Beast.
Only snag in Microsoft's plan is that its base of Windows users is shrinking, and this is one thing that may make it shrink even faster. If you could get a media player that was twice as cool and half the price and played "free" music (as in speech), wouldn't you consider switching to Linux?
We have used Xandros/1.0 for 6 months or so on our systems, and it was already wonderful. Xandros/2.0 went onto a couple of new systems last week and is simply excellent.
If you have to support MS Office, go for the professional version, which comes with Crossover Office, a decent way of running MSIE, MS Office, and some other applications. It's Wine plus some extensions, and well-integrated into Xandros.
If you don't need this, just go for the basic package.
The best thing about Xandros is that it combines the 95%+ device detection we're starting to expect in modern distros along with a clean and lean Debian-based chassis. You get simple graphical installation of the standard Xandros packages, plus access to everything in Debian unstable via the normal apt-get interface.
The Xandros/2.0 file manager handles pretty much everything you can throw at it. It mounts everything it can, lets you burn CDs, map network drives, and so on.
Just for fun I installed a Lindows 4.5, then took a deep breath, and wiped it with Xandros. Lindows is so *full* of stuff, while Xandros shows the meaning of "less is more".
There is no shame in paying for good software, and Xandros/2.0 gets my vote as the best office distro of 2003. Install it, forget about it. You can't ask for more.
The quotation is from a friend of mine, Pieter Hintjens (from a book in progress). The ideas are inherited from Dawkins but taken somewhat further and combined with a rather cynical and enjoyable view of human society. You will probably also enjoy Steven Pinker ("Blank Slate", "How the Mind Works").
And yes, compressing the Human Situation into a single paragraph does make a tasty morsel, doesn't it?
How about this one:
We exist purely as vehicles for our genes; our consciousness, our imaginations, our creations: all these are simply manifestations of our genetically-implanted instincts for survival. We believe we exist because it makes us better replicators. There is no other reason for existence, no god, no destiny, no karma. Our lives are neither random nor controlled: choice is an illusion, but so is fate. We simply operate, like the very intelligent automatons we are. Our minds are exquisitely adapted to solving large and complex problems, the bulk of which come from our intraspecies competition with each other. Our societies are hives, built through the collaboration of thousands and millions of minds. As a species we are genetically so similar, due to near-extinction around 50,000 years ago, that we are practically clones. All our notions of "ethnicity" and "color" are as meaningful as separating people by hair patterns or toe size. Our species is incredibly successful mainly because we have managed to turn our technological prowess onto ourselves, creating a feedback loop that has not stopped since we invented fire and freed our jaws to shrink and make space for a larger brain. Finally, although we all feel unique, we are in fact designed as team players, male and female, young and old adopting clear and comfortable roles that are so inate they are universal in all human cultures. Men solve technical problems, women organize social networks. Young men learn and work, young women dance and like to look pretty. Old women gossip and old men accumulate power."
These truths, though self0evident, are heresy because they seem to imply (wrongly) that life has no meaning and personal endeavour has no value. Au contraire, life is filled with meaning, and personal endeavour all that makes it possible.
Just because you understand fluid mechanics does not mean you cannot enjoy surfing a great wave.
OK, flame me now...
Actually, this is already possible today.
It's also already happening - China is the second largest importer in the world, and it's not only importing raw materials. It has a huge middle class getting wealthier all the time, and they like their foreign luxuries like everyone does.
The biggest hurdles to free trade are those placed by rich countries against poor countries, not the other way around. Case in point: most of Africa imports huge quantities from Europe and the US (and China), protectionism is rarely an issue. But when African countries try to sell beef, milk, vegetables, and fruit to Europe and the US, they always find themselves fighting vested agricultural interests in those countries.
True free trade means bringing those barriers down.
My late uncle, who I cannot name,
left me an inheritance of $50Bn
(yes, fifty billion USD) worth of
diamonds which are unfortunately
trapped in a space capsule on the
surface of the moon. I am seeking
investors who will help me recover
this capsule, and in return for
their investment I will be able to
reward them richly. A trusted
friend gave me your address and I
hope you will be discrete with my
message. The budget for a small
one-man expedition to the Lunar
Surface is approximately $30m, or
$18m if a Chinese rocket is used.
I am therefore inviting you to
join in this unique opportunity
with a guaranteed return of %1000
on your investment, which can be
as little as $1m. Yes, if you
will provide me with just one
million USD, I will on recovery
of the lunar diamonds, repay you
with TEN MILLION USD. We are
also selling one excursion trip
to the Moon, a round trip with
unlimited stopovers, for the low
low price of $12m.
Yours sincerely,
Abubakar_Ibrahim@yahoo.ng
What stupid ignorant dick of a moderator modded this "Informative" without even checking the link? It's a *shudder* animated Goatse link. Please mod the parent -1 OBSCENE TROLL really fast.
Curiously, when "Master and Commander" came out in Belgium a month or so ago, it was proceeded by a bold notice that anyone caught filming in the cinema would be hunted down, skinned alive, and thrown naked and bleeding to the dogs. And their film and camera would be confiscated and maybe kept for like a week or so.
The hordes of surreptitious filmers immediately ran out of the cinema, where they were aprehended by the local branch of the MPAA.
Not. I have never seen anyone filming in a theater, and the few pirate films I've seen that were made this way were incredibly unwatchable ("cough cough", shadows walking in front of the film, noises of coke being slurped and people making out in row 2.)
I mean... does this actually present a threat to the movie industry?
Surely a balanced law would also mandate prison for people who make movies like Matrix 2 and 3? This kind of crap product is a far greater threat to cinema revenues than pirates can ever be.
How about an explanation that works for suits?
Something like this:
- Open source and free software is like disk space. You used to pay $1000 for 1GB, today you get 1Gb for $1.
- This is possible because the Internet has made communications so cheap that the traditional huge costs of making software - design, management and infrastructure - have been largely eliminated.
- "Closed software" businesses like Microsoft would very much like you to continue paying 1970's prices for software.
- But the fact is that your competitors are benefiting from high-quality free packages like OpenOffice, Apache, PHP, Linux, and MySQL.
- You should really be switching your IT budgets from paying for software licenses to paying for support and custom development: this is the best way to keep an edge in the market.
Every dollar spent on buying overblown commercial software that has a free equivalent is a dollar wasted. Are you sure you want to waste your money?
There are way too many short-term factors confusing the long-term trends. The RIAA will say that the crackdown on file traders is bringing results. Others will say that P2P networks promote the sales of CDs... both are obviously bullshit.
First, CD sales are much more dependent on economic circumstances than they used to be. Prior to 1998 or so, CDs were the only way to get music, and like drug addicts, we stood in line and paid the price. The fact that the music industry was robbing us blind made us detest them, and we still do. When CDs cost $0.50 to produce, we paid more for them than LPs.
Secondly, people's listening habits have completely changed. Digital music means we are able to (and used to) listening to much more music, and in a much more personal way than ever before. The "45 minute album" concept is completely irrelevant in an age when people build 24-hour playlists for their MP3 players.
Thirdly, the competition is not between CD sales and P2P. Most music sales happen by word of mouth, from friend to friend, and "friendly copying" on CDR already sabotaged CD sales long before P2P became big. Clearly P2P is a big problem for CD sales but it's just one of the many channels people use to get music. Trading CDs, listening to the radio, exchanging casettes (in many parts of the world)... these are probably more significant.
The underlying trends in the music industry are driven by technology and are impossible to stop except by bombing the world back into the stone age. Consumers expect more choice, more control, and as much music as they can consume. The only viable option for the music industry is to channel this demand (as Apple is doing) into its own products.
Trying to sell 1970's products (albums) to a 2000's market is just plain stupid.