Sounds like you've been listening to much of what the RIAA have been telling you.
Let's start by deconstructing the term 'artist'. To me, it means (including others) Michaelangelo, Mozart, Jarvis Cocker, Mark E Smith and Rodin. To industry bodies, it means someone who ships product regardless of quality.
Taking Mozart as an example - there was no copyright then, no recordings, and yet people could reproduce his work, but he still made an astounding amount of work. I doubt very much that the financial incentive was that important. It was his calling to make music.
Coming to the present, we can take Britney Spears as an example. Is music her calling? What if she could earn double presenting TV shows? I doubt that people who I regard as artists would make the switch to TV from music just because it paid better.
In addition, lots of people do creative things for other reasons than money. I contribute to open source projects. Not for the money, but because I gain from the things I do (help my other work) and I am willing to share them with the world. I could close off the source, not give it back, but I don't because I choose not to.
If copyright were removed, plenty of music would still be made. It would just be more localised, closer to the people who consume it, and the giant record companies would collapse. People would still pay to see bands play live, would buy merchandise and would often still buy the 'official' CD.
The key difference between Open and Closed source is that it's simpler to find code infringements in Open Source. If I took some source code from somewhere and compiled it into my own code, the chances of anyone finding it are almost nil.
It's why I also like to use Open Source utilities. There's a great deal lower chance of someone introducing trojans/spyware into an application where the source code is visible.
"And I'd like you to personally pay a contribution to the FSF";)
Re:Stagnant? How about stable and secure.
on
Java vs .NET
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· Score: 1
It's not only stability of software, but skills too.
This wretched Microsoft upgrade roller coaster is creating much poorer development teams.
By the time people have matured in something, something new comes along. Result - development costs rise. Managers struggle because the skills they learnt in programming are redundant.
The number of people I try and convince of this, and it falls on deaf ears.
I used to work on Mainframe COBOL/IDMS apps, and after 12 years, I was pretty excellent at it. I trained quite hard, and then just improved at what I did. After 12 years, there was very little I didn't know.
Furthermore, the organisation I worked in had a huge library of code, built up over 20+ years.
I can't forsee organisations with 20 years of legacy microsoft code and staff with 10 years experience in the current environment.
I've seen so much work have to be rewritten in the PC environment as the tools have been replaced.
Can we work out a way to say.Net does enough, it's fine. Now let's get on with long-term savings.
I don't know what 'evidence' the RIAA have of file-sharing damaging their industry.
In the UK, (where incidentally the BPI don't seem to be aggressively attacking file sharers), CD sales went up last year, even though most critics agree that the charts are getting worse.
This is what is stopping me putting my hand in my pocket and buying 3 CDs.
At work, I listen to music and would like the last two Spiritualized CDs and the one by the Kings of Leon. AFAIK, all are copy protected, so will not play except in low-grade format.
My time listening to music is about 20% at home, 30% in the car and 50% at the PC. It's just too important to me.
So, I'll spend my money on something else instead.
There's a shop near me that sells both DVD players and CDs with copy protection. On the side of the DVD player box it lists all the things that it will play - DVDs/CDs etc.
I'm really tempted to buy a player from them and then a few copy protected CDs and then take them all back when they don't play (including the player). Even if they have warning labels, the DVD player that They sold me said it would play it.
Personally, I like the fact that it's all XML. As a programmer, I could write documents from a program, if I wanted to, and without having any open office software installed.
But we're now in a situation where the PCs and the software are "good enough".
I'm personally using Office 97 at work. Why? Because it does all that our company needs a word processor and spreadsheet to do. Some people with newer PCs have Office XP, but there's certainly no plan to upgrade. Our priorities do not include getting the latest unnecessary gimmicks.
Also, how many people are getting upgrades to PCs? We've got people at work using 3 year old PCs. They can do word processing, access our fault logging system and use the applications we have fine. Are we upgrading them? No.
I'm not talking about expecting something for free.
If Microsoft are saying that their service costs them money, then perhaps they should use a subscription model. This would be unavoidable for payment, but still allow any client to be used.
As for EULAs, they aren't worth the bandwidth they consume. MS bury all kinds of conditions in their licenses about not producing test results/not criticizing Microsoft/not producing a word processor. If they aren't up front, they are determined by courts to often be invalid. Courts do this to companies who bury conditions in small print to extract money.
First, they are right -- it's their network, and other people are piggy-backing on their servers for free and making bank on it. Why should they allow that? You have plenty of other options if you want to chat outside of Microsoft's servers...
Microsoft have given me access to their servers via the user ID and password. If they want people to pay, the best way would be a subscription for user ID and password.
Second, instead of the standard MS practice of just squashing the competition, they are introducing a reasonable (assuming the fee is reasonable) solution -- and have decided it's OK to join forces with third party products, if that's what the users want. I say "Bravo!" to MS in this instance.
You assume too much. You think MS really want competitors charging a few cents per client to run a Linux client that would allow people to easily migrate to another server, or allow for open networks to exist? I imagine that the licensing fees will be prohibitive, so that MS can say "well, we offered a licensing deal, but no-one was willing to pay".
I want to encourage MS whenever they do anything even remotely reasonable. To show them they don't have to be anti-competetive, business-stealing, life-destroying bastards to make money.
Good luck to you. I think MS are way down the path of "never mind the quality, just create monopolies and people will have no choice".
Slashdot Mirror
Let's start by deconstructing the term 'artist'. To me, it means (including others) Michaelangelo, Mozart, Jarvis Cocker, Mark E Smith and Rodin. To industry bodies, it means someone who ships product regardless of quality.
Taking Mozart as an example - there was no copyright then, no recordings, and yet people could reproduce his work, but he still made an astounding amount of work. I doubt very much that the financial incentive was that important. It was his calling to make music.
Coming to the present, we can take Britney Spears as an example. Is music her calling? What if she could earn double presenting TV shows? I doubt that people who I regard as artists would make the switch to TV from music just because it paid better.
In addition, lots of people do creative things for other reasons than money. I contribute to open source projects. Not for the money, but because I gain from the things I do (help my other work) and I am willing to share them with the world. I could close off the source, not give it back, but I don't because I choose not to.
If copyright were removed, plenty of music would still be made. It would just be more localised, closer to the people who consume it, and the giant record companies would collapse. People would still pay to see bands play live, would buy merchandise and would often still buy the 'official' CD.
It's why I also like to use Open Source utilities. There's a great deal lower chance of someone introducing trojans/spyware into an application where the source code is visible.
"And I'd like you to personally pay a contribution to the FSF" ;)
This wretched Microsoft upgrade roller coaster is creating much poorer development teams.
By the time people have matured in something, something new comes along. Result - development costs rise. Managers struggle because the skills they learnt in programming are redundant.
The number of people I try and convince of this, and it falls on deaf ears.
I used to work on Mainframe COBOL/IDMS apps, and after 12 years, I was pretty excellent at it. I trained quite hard, and then just improved at what I did. After 12 years, there was very little I didn't know.
Furthermore, the organisation I worked in had a huge library of code, built up over 20+ years.
I can't forsee organisations with 20 years of legacy microsoft code and staff with 10 years experience in the current environment.
I've seen so much work have to be rewritten in the PC environment as the tools have been replaced.
Can we work out a way to say .Net does enough, it's fine. Now let's get on with long-term savings.
When you say "things the language needs", what can you not do in terms of delivering business functionality with Java?
In the UK, (where incidentally the BPI don't seem to be aggressively attacking file sharers), CD sales went up last year, even though most critics agree that the charts are getting worse.
At work, I listen to music and would like the last two Spiritualized CDs and the one by the Kings of Leon. AFAIK, all are copy protected, so will not play except in low-grade format.
My time listening to music is about 20% at home, 30% in the car and 50% at the PC. It's just too important to me.
So, I'll spend my money on something else instead.
Funny how sales in the UK were UP last year, then.
I'm really tempted to buy a player from them and then a few copy protected CDs and then take them all back when they don't play (including the player). Even if they have warning labels, the DVD player that They sold me said it would play it.
Would this mean that DRM would probably not be used to send documents outside the company?
Your other option of course is to do the work from outside the word processor, by manipulating the XML files of an Open Office document.
That's one thing that Office can't do.
Personally, I like the fact that it's all XML. As a programmer, I could write documents from a program, if I wanted to, and without having any open office software installed.
But we're now in a situation where the PCs and the software are "good enough".
I'm personally using Office 97 at work. Why? Because it does all that our company needs a word processor and spreadsheet to do. Some people with newer PCs have Office XP, but there's certainly no plan to upgrade. Our priorities do not include getting the latest unnecessary gimmicks.
Also, how many people are getting upgrades to PCs? We've got people at work using 3 year old PCs. They can do word processing, access our fault logging system and use the applications we have fine. Are we upgrading them? No.
If anyone sends me a Word Document, I open it in Open Office, convert it to a PDF and send it back to them.
I really prefer a hyperlink to a fully W3C compliant web page, though.
I'm getting an error reported half way down the file. If I edit the first record in a certain way, the error goes away.
If that's not dogshit, I don't know what is.
Google should have put a link to www.goatse.cx as the top search for Kazaa (don't go there from work).
If Microsoft are saying that their service costs them money, then perhaps they should use a subscription model. This would be unavoidable for payment, but still allow any client to be used.
As for EULAs, they aren't worth the bandwidth they consume. MS bury all kinds of conditions in their licenses about not producing test results/not criticizing Microsoft/not producing a word processor. If they aren't up front, they are determined by courts to often be invalid. Courts do this to companies who bury conditions in small print to extract money.
I'll try and remember that when I'm asking for my 5th bottle at the bar next time ;)
Both are inferior to Jenlain which comes from northern France.
Microsoft have given me access to their servers via the user ID and password. If they want people to pay, the best way would be a subscription for user ID and password.
Second, instead of the standard MS practice of just squashing the competition, they are introducing a reasonable (assuming the fee is reasonable) solution -- and have decided it's OK to join forces with third party products, if that's what the users want. I say "Bravo!" to MS in this instance.
You assume too much. You think MS really want competitors charging a few cents per client to run a Linux client that would allow people to easily migrate to another server, or allow for open networks to exist? I imagine that the licensing fees will be prohibitive, so that MS can say "well, we offered a licensing deal, but no-one was willing to pay".
I want to encourage MS whenever they do anything even remotely reasonable. To show them they don't have to be anti-competetive, business-stealing, life-destroying bastards to make money.
Good luck to you. I think MS are way down the path of "never mind the quality, just create monopolies and people will have no choice".
Or maybe you are OK with the idea that Microsoft should dictate the make of modem you use to connect to the internet?
Lucky, that people like Vint Cerf don't say "you are using our protocol, you must therefore use our software".
Perhaps they're hoping he goes to a country that George Bush wants to bomb^H^H^H^Hliberate.
Darn, I was going to go on there to get a contact number to buy a license ;)