Docs: Well, OK, just as long as we can still get our work done. Will we still be able to send our grant applications and other records to the various governmental agencies, other hospitals, and such without and problems?
Competent IT Manager: Yes. It will mean changing platforms and learning new software, but it will be no harder than when we moved you from Word 5.5 to Word 6 (Word 6 to 97, Word 97 to Word 2k, etc.)
Docs: What about these hundreds of legacy DOS and Windows applications that do one thing for us, but do it incredibly well, that we absolutely have to have? Will they still run?
Competent IT Manager: For the systems that don't require HIPAA complience, we'll be able to leave the legacy applications in place. For others, we will be moving to updated custom applications, or working with other solutions. The bottom line is we will maintain the functionality, even if it requires a bit of retraining.
Docs: So basically you're telling us that by switching to Linux, we won't be able to properly communicate with the people we need to, and we won't be able to use the applications we need to.
Competent IT Manager: No. It means learning some slightly different ways to do the job, but ultimately you'll be able to do everything you could do before. It will also give us closer compliance with witht the new regulations and enable us to better support you and the rest of the faculty. It will also give us capabilities we didn't have before, and will save the Hospital money in the long run.
The Zaurus comes with an SD slot and a CF slot. I use both myself. The SD more or less permenantly mounted for 128M, and the CF gets memory, camera, or network cards as needed.
Personally, the service has some appeal, but the battery life on the Zaurus is far too short. Still, it's proven useful for WarWalking with a CF 802.11b card.
Have to agree with the general consensus though. 19.2K (max) is far too slow for the modern web, though if I can ssh through the proxies I could actually get some work done while sitting in traffic...
While I agree with most of your points, especially regarding privacy and the invasion thereof, there is some valid logic to a "charge to drive" scheme.
The "public" lands you refer too aren't parklands or open spaces - they are developed roads. Roads that require tax dollars to maintain, improve, etc. Putting a "pay to use" fee on a given region results in a fund dedicated to improving traffic flow in said given region - funded by the people who actually use it.
It really sucks to see the majority of your assorted "road taxes" (registration fees, fuel taxes, etc.) going to improve the roads 400 miles away because they have the political clout to use state funds to get their repairs done in six months - while you wait a decade for the same things AND have to pay higher regional taxes. But I digress.
Obviously, there are a lot of things that need to be done right, and a lot of places where it can get hosed, but the concept is sound.
Vehicles in cities are a financial paradox for the cities. In some cases, the city talks a good game of Public Transit and Traffic Reduction - but finds it in their own best interest to keep the cars rather than chase them away. Too many cities make a substantial fraction of their revenue from parking, vehicle taxes, etc., for them to really want to do away with the cars.
I agree completely that public transit that's cheaper - and at least as convenient - than driving into town will get people onto public transit - but the economics are such that the cities don't want to see a whole hearted shift.
I wish you were wrong about this. It's hard to be an idealist in the Corporate States of America.
Side note: My father was a Professor of American History at Penn State, teaching the Revolutionary War period. I was steeped in that stuff as a kid. With the way things have been going, we could solve our power problems by wrapping belts around the Founding Fathers, hooking them to generators, and letting them spin with the Old Guys turning over in their graves...
Interesting point. Yes, if in fact MS bought the IP from SGI, then they're exercising "their" rights - though the "intelect" isn't theirs. The point I see though is that if SGI originally released that property to the wild, the "right" of the new owner to recall said right is questionable. If it was originally released under some kind of Open Source source agreement, that agreement should still be valid.
Second, their "just protecting 'their' property" can, and should, be seen as the anti-competitive ploy that it is. The ONLY thing they stand to gain from this action is to strengthen their monopoly - which has already been found illegal.
The hardware/software community aren't the ones who need to step up here, it's the Justice Department who needs to enforce their own rulings.
It seems the "non-discriminatory" clauses would be an issue here. Saying "you can use it on anything that's not (insert favorite OpenSource licenses here)" is VERY discriminatory.
MS has already been found guilty of anti-trust violations. The appeal wasn't on guilt, but on the penalty. An attack against OpenGL is just another case of them dealing in anti-competitive practices.
None of the IDS systems they named "detect" intrusions. NO IDS system on the market really detects intrusions. They either look for known signatures of various exploits, probes, what have you, and report on them, or they do some form of anomoly detection based on a "baseline" for the network they're observing.
Neither of them is flawless OR a complete solution.
NONE of them are going to be perfect out of the box. It takes skill and experience to know what's important and what's not. None of these IDS systems are going to catch the guy doing a slow map of your IP space. ALL of them will false positive on some things, and miss others completely.
It takes a human at the other end to look and see and decide what's a threat and what's not.
We won't go into the lack of information on how they configured each one of these IDS systems. I use snort at home on my LAN, but have worked with NFR and Cisco's Netranger - and each has it's advantages and disadvantages. If you're SERIOUS, you're combining something from a commercial heavy duty IDS, with Snort, with dumps from all your syslogs, some kind of host based IDS, and putting together the individual pieces to see what's happening. Then you might be able to detect a skilled intruder.
It's NOT for the faint of heart, the clueless, or, it seems, the media pundits.
I look at the display on my dash, wrist, cell, or whatever happens to be available in line of sight. For my organic needs, "accurate within a few minutes" is accurate enough.
For my LAN, I have two machines running ntpd, getting their sync from two different sets of time servers. The other machines on the LAN sync to the two local time servers.
My digital needs require better than "within a few minutes" accuracy.
Five years is forever in the computer industry - remember what hardware you were using five years ago?
Yes, In fact I do. It's the mail and web server we use to support about 30 user accounts and however many thousand hits it gets a day. It's obsolete for gaming maybe, but it's crunched god knows how many SETI units over it's 7 year operational life and is still running strong.
Making obsolete hardware illegal under the DMCA because it's not Palladium enabled is about as likely as them making my KZ650 illegal because it can still run on leaded gas...
As was pointed out, I should have said propriatory, not necessarily commercial - though they are often the same thing. The "free" version of ssh from ssh.com is free only for personal or educational use, unless you're on BSD or Linux. From their website:
A non-commercial source code version of SSH Secure Shell for Servers is available for Unix and Linux platforms. The non-commercial version can be used for personal hobby/recreational use, by universities, and by charity organizations and public libraries. It can also be freely used for any purpose on the Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD operating systems.
Commercial use (on operating systems other than those listed above) requires the purchase of a license. Also, precompiled binaries and support are only available for commercial licenses.
It would appear to be free for some applications, but again, there's no compelling reason to use it over OpenSSH unless management wants support - in which case it's a $495 product.
The company I work for ("a little hardware vendor in the Valley") switched from the Commercial ssh client and server package to OpenSSH for all of our servers. OpenSSH proved more robust and easier to support - not to mention much, much, less expensive. And yes, I'm including the "cost" of our SysAdmin's time and the time of the person who manages distribution of our 'approved' OpenSSH package.
There really is no reason to use a commercial product unless the management is stuck on the "We need someone to sue if it breaks" business model of software acquisition.
Interesting, but the "DO NOT PUSH" probably had something to do with it. If it had just been an unlabled black push-button on the wall, your results would almost certainly have been different.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the ethical question these clowns were asking their employees. There's a huge difference between pushing a random button (labled or not) and pushing a button when you know that pushing it will result in someone's dieing.
I wonder how much it would take to set up two of these things. One labled "push this: feed a child" and another labled "push this: kill a venture capitalist" (or insert your prefered: Lawyer, RIAA Executive, Marketing drone, etc.). There would be a better test of human nature...
Personally, if it was "Push the button, a spammer dies" I'd keep pushing until the button broke.
The point is though that it's two industries at work here. People already grouse about paying $8.50 to see feature films at the theater. The "shift to digital" will require theaters to raise prices to cover the investment in "digital projectors" which, like most things in this industry, have a very high rate of obsolence. Theaters aren't the studios - and they don't want to have to buy new projection gear to help the studios maintain their control. Here, the studio's interest and the theater's interest are in conflict.
As several people have pointed out, the prices will come down. But that means that most theaters will be reluctant to purchase until after the prices have become competetive with with their standard film projectors - or the studios force them to change.
Tell me something. Do you think the theaters will be happy to invest X dollars in new gear when A: they'll have to pass the upgrade costs on to their audience (cutting into box office take) and B: have to upgrade or replace when the next generation hits the market? Unless the studios force the issue, there's no incentive for them to upgrade.
Yes, as noted, film prints do degrade over time, and data will always be data - but as also pointed out, most people can't tell the difference between a first run, or a 100th run print.
We may well BE on the downward spiral as far as our civil rights go - but we don't have to sit by like sheep and let it happen. And we sure as hell don't have to ante up an extra $5 to see another bad movie just because Hollywood wants to keep even more control over their "Intellectual Property."
I've seen a lot of people say "The digital quality is better!" Sorry, folks, it just ain't so. For the same reason your fancy digital camera doesn't have the same resolution as your SLR film camera - film has a finer grain than CCD's and provides a better image.
The studios want to "go digital" because it gives them more control, not because it gives them better quality. If they were really after quality, they'd have stuck with 70mm film rather than shifting back to the cheaper 35mm format.
Cinemas are already on a thin edge. The reason food's so bloody expensive is because they have to give such a huge cut of the box office take to the studios. Adding the cost of digital equipment to the mix will mean higher ticket prices than we are already paying. Considering the abysimal quality of most movies oozing out of Hollywood, it's already too much. Who really want to pay even more just to amortize the cost of Hollywood exercising more control?
True, chemicals were an example, but they are still covered by very different laws and represent a very different business model.
The fact that "Snatch" was seen more in pirate showings than in theaters implies more that "This movie sucked" than "Pirates are evil!" Many, if not most, movies fail to recover their initial investment during a theater run. That's the nature of the business. Most of the movies coming out of Hollywood (or anywhere else) suck. For every Spiderman, there are probably 50 Mulholland Drives. The studios make their money on those movies from TV showings, video rentals, and sales. While piracy can cut into that revenue, the simple fact remains that A: Tape copies are lower quality than originals. B: DivX rips of DVD's are lower quality than the original. C: People who -really- like a movie -will- buy the commercial version for the increased quality.
Yes, the industry loses money to Commercial Copies - but the folks making commercial copies are NOT the people making DivX rips of DVDs, or copying tapes, or loaning their buddy a copy of Photoshop. They are an INDUSTRY, and the copyright holders have every right to pin them to the wall.
But the MPAA and RIAA and BSA don't make the distinction between commercial pirates (who make thousands of copies and SELL them as if they were real) and casual file traders.
There is an ethical difference between the two. Here, we have the BSA convincing a religion to support their "there is no difference" view of things.
Actually, I've given a very specific example as it relates to the issue. The BSA targets software, not patented chemicals. Which is part of the issue here. These are "copyright pirates," not "patent thievs." Copyright and patent are not the same thing. Britney Spears doesn't put several million dollars into research, then spend several years getting FDA approval before she releases another album on the unsuspecting public.
If the RIAA and MPAA spent that much effort, we wouldn't HAVE boy bands.
If the software industry did that, we wouldn't have abominations like IIS.
Drug patents are a separate issue. And, since they are patented, the patent will eventually expire and we'll see legal Viagra "Clones" (Generics, in the industry) once said patent expires. Thanks to industry lobying, copyright doesn't work like that.
I agree the issue has more sides, but the drug example isn't the same issue.
How does making bootleg copies of Brittney Spears albums become "potentially robbing the world of future discoveries?" We're not talking about scientific discoveries here (Which, arguably, benefit from wide desimination - the antethisis of what the MPAA, BSA, RIAA, etc., want) we're talking about copying music, software, and movies.
The copies are almost invariably of lower quality than the originals (MP3 and DivX aren't as sharp as the original. We won't even go into degredation of video tape) and often prompt people to go out and buy an original copy rather than the bootleg.
The BSA getting a religion involved in supporting their corporate sire's business model is just wrong.
While I agree that ideas and intellectual discoveries are more valuable to a culture than physical objects, that is NOT what we're talking about here. We're talking about "intellectual property" holders using dirty tactics to try and push their agenda.
Anecdotaly, everyone seems to forget the Greatful Dead and them actively encouraging people to tape and spread their concert performances. Did it "hurt" them to have the bootlegs out there? Hell no! It got them spread to a wider audience, and, ultimately, contributed to their success. Has Linux or BSD been hurt by being spread freely and widely?
I would have to say that Linux as a phenomena pretty much disproves your argument that this kind of "theft" hurts the culture, or disinclines people from developing new (and better!) ideas. Wide dissemination of ideas helps spread those ideas.
I used to work for SBC Internet. I feel for you. To this day, I refuse to use their DSL service. Corporate was using it (at the time - mid 2000) as a "Loss Leader." You wanted to make them lose money serving you? Make one call to tech support that required a live person. After about 15 minutes on the phone, you'd cost the ISP all the profit it made from your account for the month.
We won't go into the 8000 users hanging off a single router that was served by a pair of OC3's. That was 8000 users each expecting 1.53k/sec downloads. You do the math.
Cable modems were/are at least as bad. While I was on a cable modem system (a municipal system, who contracted out their cable modem service) The entire city - with about 1000 users - was served by 6 T1 lines. The only reason the service didn't suck all the time was because I was one of the few users who actually used their allocated bandwidth. That may be an extreme example, but it's not that different for the larger providers.
They ALL over-subscribe their services, and they still manage to lose money on them. Broadband (actually a misnomer in most cases) isn't cheap to provide. They have to raise prices to pay for the increased pipe the users are finally getting around to using. The monopolization doesn't help any, but simple economics is behind this one at least as much as their desire to see some black ink.
The future of radio...
on
Homogenized Music
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· Score: 3, Interesting
... looks grim.
Radio is a business, like any other. The object is to spend less money than you take in. Turn a profit. Keep your owners (investors, individuals, corporate sire, whatever) happy. The income for these stations comes from advertising and selling air-time to whoever wants to buy it. The reason "it sucks" is because the advertisers want to get their message to their target audience, and they have very specific target audiences. If "market research" shows the mainstream target audience wants to hear a non-stop beat-mix of Brittney Spears and Weird Al Yankovic, that's what the station will play, because that's what the advertisers will pay to advertise on.
The "mainstream" listeners are the targets. They don't really care about the niche markets or the fringe because there's no advertising money in niche markets or the fringe./.ers are, from what I can tell, aren't mainstream.
Why are listeners abandoning radio? Lots of factors. 6-disk in-dash CD players for the morning commute. MTV or the CD player at home. MP3 collections on the file server. Simple bordom with "mainstream" mass media music. Tired of 40% commercials. Whatever.
Are college stations, pirate stations, or internet broadcasters an alternative? Of course they are. Are they "better"? If they serve -your- niche market, they certainly are - for you at least. It's one reason I have an internet station of my own - I can cater to my own tastes.
Is radio dead? No. But it's ill. If the radio markets all collapse and the big conglomerates start abandoning stations we may see a change back to "the good old days" when stations took risks and used variety to compete for listeners. I just wouldn't count on it.
The inkjet printer industry has always seemed to use the old "Snag 'em with the razors, gouge 'em on the blades" business model. The printer chassis was surprisingly inexpensive, while replacement inkjet carts were disproportinately high.
The practice of 'shorting' the included carts is what they're being sued over - since the "economy" lable seems to imply a "good value" for the customer, not "we only half filled the cart so you'll have to buy a new one soon!"
It's not about the difference between inkjet v. laser. It's about deceptive labeling.
It's been my experience that "Pirate" stations tend to be considerably more ecclectic in their selections than commercial stations. Perhaps more important, they tend to play the stuff the commercial stations don't - giving coverage to bands and tracks that commercial stations ignore.
There are at least two other factors to consider. The first, and probably most important, is "how easy is it to get this kit on-line?" That one factor may be the deciding factor for any console trying to break into the on-line market. If it's a beast to configure, only those willing and able to deal with configuration will do it.
The second factor is 'redundant functionality.' The point here being that all the on-line services I've seen (excepting Saga's old Dreamcast network) assume some form of broadband connection and the console just being one more piece of kit hanging behind the NAT. The fact is, of course, you already have at least one real computer hanging off that broadband connection already, which seems to make your competition not other consoles - but multi-player PC games.
I suppose you could get broadband (or an extra phone line for dialup) just to play console games . . . but why? And if I have my computer already, the Xbox game (or any console game, really) will have to be better or I'll just stay at the keyboard.
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Docs: Well, OK, just as long as we can still get our work done. Will we still be able to send our grant applications and other records to the various governmental agencies, other hospitals, and such without and problems?
Competent IT Manager: Yes. It will mean changing platforms and learning new software, but it will be no harder than when we moved you from Word 5.5 to Word 6 (Word 6 to 97, Word 97 to Word 2k, etc.)
Docs: What about these hundreds of legacy DOS and Windows applications that do one thing for us, but do it incredibly well, that we absolutely have to have? Will they still run?
Competent IT Manager: For the systems that don't require HIPAA complience, we'll be able to leave the legacy applications in place. For others, we will be moving to updated custom applications, or working with other solutions. The bottom line is we will maintain the functionality, even if it requires a bit of retraining.
Docs: So basically you're telling us that by switching to Linux, we won't be able to properly communicate with the people we need to, and we won't be able to use the applications we need to.
Competent IT Manager: No. It means learning some slightly different ways to do the job, but ultimately you'll be able to do everything you could do before. It will also give us closer compliance with witht the new regulations and enable us to better support you and the rest of the faculty. It will also give us capabilities we didn't have before, and will save the Hospital money in the long run.
I've had this argument.
It's not fun.
The Zaurus comes with an SD slot and a CF slot. I use both myself. The SD more or less permenantly mounted for 128M, and the CF gets memory, camera, or network cards as needed.
Personally, the service has some appeal, but the battery life on the Zaurus is far too short. Still, it's proven useful for WarWalking with a CF 802.11b card.
Have to agree with the general consensus though. 19.2K (max) is far too slow for the modern web, though if I can ssh through the proxies I could actually get some work done while sitting in traffic...
While I agree with most of your points, especially regarding privacy and the invasion thereof, there is some valid logic to a "charge to drive" scheme.
The "public" lands you refer too aren't parklands or open spaces - they are developed roads. Roads that require tax dollars to maintain, improve, etc. Putting a "pay to use" fee on a given region results in a fund dedicated to improving traffic flow in said given region - funded by the people who actually use it.
It really sucks to see the majority of your assorted "road taxes" (registration fees, fuel taxes, etc.) going to improve the roads 400 miles away because they have the political clout to use state funds to get their repairs done in six months - while you wait a decade for the same things AND have to pay higher regional taxes. But I digress.
Obviously, there are a lot of things that need to be done right, and a lot of places where it can get hosed, but the concept is sound.
Vehicles in cities are a financial paradox for the cities. In some cases, the city talks a good game of Public Transit and Traffic Reduction - but finds it in their own best interest to keep the cars rather than chase them away. Too many cities make a substantial fraction of their revenue from parking, vehicle taxes, etc., for them to really want to do away with the cars.
I agree completely that public transit that's cheaper - and at least as convenient - than driving into town will get people onto public transit - but the economics are such that the cities don't want to see a whole hearted shift.
It sucks.
I wish you were wrong about this. It's hard to be an idealist in the Corporate States of America.
Side note: My father was a Professor of American History at Penn State, teaching the Revolutionary War period. I was steeped in that stuff as a kid. With the way things have been going, we could solve our power problems by wrapping belts around the Founding Fathers, hooking them to generators, and letting them spin with the Old Guys turning over in their graves...
It's sad. It's really sad.
Interesting point. Yes, if in fact MS bought the IP from SGI, then they're exercising "their" rights - though the "intelect" isn't theirs. The point I see though is that if SGI originally released that property to the wild, the "right" of the new owner to recall said right is questionable. If it was originally released under some kind of Open Source source agreement, that agreement should still be valid.
Second, their "just protecting 'their' property" can, and should, be seen as the anti-competitive ploy that it is. The ONLY thing they stand to gain from this action is to strengthen their monopoly - which has already been found illegal.
The hardware/software community aren't the ones who need to step up here, it's the Justice Department who needs to enforce their own rulings.
It seems the "non-discriminatory" clauses would be an issue here. Saying "you can use it on anything that's not (insert favorite OpenSource licenses here)" is VERY discriminatory.
MS has already been found guilty of anti-trust violations. The appeal wasn't on guilt, but on the penalty. An attack against OpenGL is just another case of them dealing in anti-competitive practices.
None of the IDS systems they named "detect" intrusions. NO IDS system on the market really detects intrusions. They either look for known signatures of various exploits, probes, what have you, and report on them, or they do some form of anomoly detection based on a "baseline" for the network they're observing.
Neither of them is flawless OR a complete solution.
NONE of them are going to be perfect out of the box. It takes skill and experience to know what's important and what's not. None of these IDS systems are going to catch the guy doing a slow map of your IP space. ALL of them will false positive on some things, and miss others completely.
It takes a human at the other end to look and see and decide what's a threat and what's not.
We won't go into the lack of information on how they configured each one of these IDS systems. I use snort at home on my LAN, but have worked with NFR and Cisco's Netranger - and each has it's advantages and disadvantages. If you're SERIOUS, you're combining something from a commercial heavy duty IDS, with Snort, with dumps from all your syslogs, some kind of host based IDS, and putting together the individual pieces to see what's happening. Then you might be able to detect a skilled intruder.
It's NOT for the faint of heart, the clueless, or, it seems, the media pundits.
I look at the display on my dash, wrist, cell, or whatever happens to be available in line of sight. For my organic needs, "accurate within a few minutes" is accurate enough.
For my LAN, I have two machines running ntpd, getting their sync from two different sets of time servers. The other machines on the LAN sync to the two local time servers.
My digital needs require better than "within a few minutes" accuracy.
Five years is forever in the computer industry - remember what hardware you were using five years ago?
Yes, In fact I do. It's the mail and web server we use to support about 30 user accounts and however many thousand hits it gets a day. It's obsolete for gaming maybe, but it's crunched god knows how many SETI units over it's 7 year operational life and is still running strong.
Making obsolete hardware illegal under the DMCA because it's not Palladium enabled is about as likely as them making my KZ650 illegal because it can still run on leaded gas...
As was pointed out, I should have said propriatory, not necessarily commercial - though they are often the same thing. The "free" version of ssh from ssh.com is free only for personal or educational use, unless you're on BSD or Linux. From their website:
A non-commercial source code version of SSH Secure Shell for Servers is available for Unix and Linux platforms. The non-commercial version can be used for personal hobby/recreational use, by universities, and by charity organizations and public libraries. It can also be freely used for any purpose on the Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD operating systems.
Commercial use (on operating systems other than those listed above) requires the purchase of a license. Also, precompiled binaries and support are only available for commercial licenses.
It would appear to be free for some applications, but again, there's no compelling reason to use it over OpenSSH unless management wants support - in which case it's a $495 product.
The company I work for ("a little hardware vendor in the Valley") switched from the Commercial ssh client and server package to OpenSSH for all of our servers. OpenSSH proved more robust and easier to support - not to mention much, much, less expensive. And yes, I'm including the "cost" of our SysAdmin's time and the time of the person who manages distribution of our 'approved' OpenSSH package.
There really is no reason to use a commercial product unless the management is stuck on the "We need someone to sue if it breaks" business model of software acquisition.
Misread that. My oops. Shit happens.
Interesting, but the "DO NOT PUSH" probably had something to do with it. If it had just been an unlabled black push-button on the wall, your results would almost certainly have been different.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the ethical question these clowns were asking their employees. There's a huge difference between pushing a random button (labled or not) and pushing a button when you know that pushing it will result in someone's dieing.
I wonder how much it would take to set up two of these things. One labled "push this: feed a child" and another labled "push this: kill a venture capitalist" (or insert your prefered: Lawyer, RIAA Executive, Marketing drone, etc.). There would be a better test of human nature...
Personally, if it was "Push the button, a spammer dies" I'd keep pushing until the button broke.
The point is though that it's two industries at work here. People already grouse about paying $8.50 to see feature films at the theater. The "shift to digital" will require theaters to raise prices to cover the investment in "digital projectors" which, like most things in this industry, have a very high rate of obsolence. Theaters aren't the studios - and they don't want to have to buy new projection gear to help the studios maintain their control. Here, the studio's interest and the theater's interest are in conflict.
As several people have pointed out, the prices will come down. But that means that most theaters will be reluctant to purchase until after the prices have become competetive with with their standard film projectors - or the studios force them to change.
Tell me something. Do you think the theaters will be happy to invest X dollars in new gear when A: they'll have to pass the upgrade costs on to their audience (cutting into box office take) and B: have to upgrade or replace when the next generation hits the market? Unless the studios force the issue, there's no incentive for them to upgrade.
Yes, as noted, film prints do degrade over time, and data will always be data - but as also pointed out, most people can't tell the difference between a first run, or a 100th run print.
We may well BE on the downward spiral as far as our civil rights go - but we don't have to sit by like sheep and let it happen. And we sure as hell don't have to ante up an extra $5 to see another bad movie just because Hollywood wants to keep even more control over their "Intellectual Property."
I've seen a lot of people say "The digital quality is better!" Sorry, folks, it just ain't so. For the same reason your fancy digital camera doesn't have the same resolution as your SLR film camera - film has a finer grain than CCD's and provides a better image.
The studios want to "go digital" because it gives them more control, not because it gives them better quality. If they were really after quality, they'd have stuck with 70mm film rather than shifting back to the cheaper 35mm format.
Cinemas are already on a thin edge. The reason food's so bloody expensive is because they have to give such a huge cut of the box office take to the studios. Adding the cost of digital equipment to the mix will mean higher ticket prices than we are already paying. Considering the abysimal quality of most movies oozing out of Hollywood, it's already too much. Who really want to pay even more just to amortize the cost of Hollywood exercising more control?
True, chemicals were an example, but they are still covered by very different laws and represent a very different business model.
The fact that "Snatch" was seen more in pirate showings than in theaters implies more that "This movie sucked" than "Pirates are evil!" Many, if not most, movies fail to recover their initial investment during a theater run. That's the nature of the business. Most of the movies coming out of Hollywood (or anywhere else) suck. For every Spiderman, there are probably 50 Mulholland Drives. The studios make their money on those movies from TV showings, video rentals, and sales. While piracy can cut into that revenue, the simple fact remains that A: Tape copies are lower quality than originals. B: DivX rips of DVD's are lower quality than the original. C: People who -really- like a movie -will- buy the commercial version for the increased quality.
Yes, the industry loses money to Commercial Copies - but the folks making commercial copies are NOT the people making DivX rips of DVDs, or copying tapes, or loaning their buddy a copy of Photoshop. They are an INDUSTRY, and the copyright holders have every right to pin them to the wall.
But the MPAA and RIAA and BSA don't make the distinction between commercial pirates (who make thousands of copies and SELL them as if they were real) and casual file traders.
There is an ethical difference between the two. Here, we have the BSA convincing a religion to support their "there is no difference" view of things.
Actually, I've given a very specific example as it relates to the issue. The BSA targets software, not patented chemicals. Which is part of the issue here. These are "copyright pirates," not "patent thievs." Copyright and patent are not the same thing. Britney Spears doesn't put several million dollars into research, then spend several years getting FDA approval before she releases another album on the unsuspecting public.
If the RIAA and MPAA spent that much effort, we wouldn't HAVE boy bands.
If the software industry did that, we wouldn't have abominations like IIS.
Drug patents are a separate issue. And, since they are patented, the patent will eventually expire and we'll see legal Viagra "Clones" (Generics, in the industry) once said patent expires. Thanks to industry lobying, copyright doesn't work like that.
I agree the issue has more sides, but the drug example isn't the same issue.
How does making bootleg copies of Brittney Spears albums become "potentially robbing the world of future discoveries?" We're not talking about scientific discoveries here (Which, arguably, benefit from wide desimination - the antethisis of what the MPAA, BSA, RIAA, etc., want) we're talking about copying music, software, and movies.
The copies are almost invariably of lower quality than the originals (MP3 and DivX aren't as sharp as the original. We won't even go into degredation of video tape) and often prompt people to go out and buy an original copy rather than the bootleg.
The BSA getting a religion involved in supporting their corporate sire's business model is just wrong.
While I agree that ideas and intellectual discoveries are more valuable to a culture than physical objects, that is NOT what we're talking about here. We're talking about "intellectual property" holders using dirty tactics to try and push their agenda.
Anecdotaly, everyone seems to forget the Greatful Dead and them actively encouraging people to tape and spread their concert performances. Did it "hurt" them to have the bootlegs out there? Hell no! It got them spread to a wider audience, and, ultimately, contributed to their success. Has Linux or BSD been hurt by being spread freely and widely?
I would have to say that Linux as a phenomena pretty much disproves your argument that this kind of "theft" hurts the culture, or disinclines people from developing new (and better!) ideas. Wide dissemination of ideas helps spread those ideas.
I used to work for SBC Internet. I feel for you. To this day, I refuse to use their DSL service. Corporate was using it (at the time - mid 2000) as a "Loss Leader." You wanted to make them lose money serving you? Make one call to tech support that required a live person. After about 15 minutes on the phone, you'd cost the ISP all the profit it made from your account for the month.
We won't go into the 8000 users hanging off a single router that was served by a pair of OC3's. That was 8000 users each expecting 1.53k/sec downloads. You do the math.
Cable modems were/are at least as bad. While I was on a cable modem system (a municipal system, who contracted out their cable modem service) The entire city - with about 1000 users - was served by 6 T1 lines. The only reason the service didn't suck all the time was because I was one of the few users who actually used their allocated bandwidth. That may be an extreme example, but it's not that different for the larger providers.
They ALL over-subscribe their services, and they still manage to lose money on them. Broadband (actually a misnomer in most cases) isn't cheap to provide. They have to raise prices to pay for the increased pipe the users are finally getting around to using. The monopolization doesn't help any, but simple economics is behind this one at least as much as their desire to see some black ink.
... looks grim.
/.ers are, from what I can tell, aren't mainstream.
Radio is a business, like any other. The object is to spend less money than you take in. Turn a profit. Keep your owners (investors, individuals, corporate sire, whatever) happy. The income for these stations comes from advertising and selling air-time to whoever wants to buy it. The reason "it sucks" is because the advertisers want to get their message to their target audience, and they have very specific target audiences. If "market research" shows the mainstream target audience wants to hear a non-stop beat-mix of Brittney Spears and Weird Al Yankovic, that's what the station will play, because that's what the advertisers will pay to advertise on.
The "mainstream" listeners are the targets. They don't really care about the niche markets or the fringe because there's no advertising money in niche markets or the fringe.
Why are listeners abandoning radio? Lots of factors. 6-disk in-dash CD players for the morning commute. MTV or the CD player at home. MP3 collections on the file server. Simple bordom with "mainstream" mass media music. Tired of 40% commercials. Whatever.
Are college stations, pirate stations, or internet broadcasters an alternative? Of course they are. Are they "better"? If they serve -your- niche market, they certainly are - for you at least. It's one reason I have an internet station of my own - I can cater to my own tastes.
Is radio dead? No. But it's ill. If the radio markets all collapse and the big conglomerates start abandoning stations we may see a change back to "the good old days" when stations took risks and used variety to compete for listeners. I just wouldn't count on it.
The inkjet printer industry has always seemed to use the old "Snag 'em with the razors, gouge 'em on the blades" business model. The printer chassis was surprisingly inexpensive, while replacement inkjet carts were disproportinately high.
The practice of 'shorting' the included carts is what they're being sued over - since the "economy" lable seems to imply a "good value" for the customer, not "we only half filled the cart so you'll have to buy a new one soon!"
It's not about the difference between inkjet v. laser. It's about deceptive labeling.
It's been my experience that "Pirate" stations tend to be considerably more ecclectic in their selections than commercial stations. Perhaps more important, they tend to play the stuff the commercial stations don't - giving coverage to bands and tracks that commercial stations ignore.
Amen, brother! People would be amazed with how much coverage you can get with 200 watts and a good location....
Remember blip verts? The "a 30 second commercial compressed into about 2 seconds" concept from the pilot of Max Headroom?
Now, if they could only get around the couch potatos exploding...
There are at least two other factors to consider. The first, and probably most important, is "how easy is it to get this kit on-line?" That one factor may be the deciding factor for any console trying to break into the on-line market. If it's a beast to configure, only those willing and able to deal with configuration will do it.
The second factor is 'redundant functionality.' The point here being that all the on-line services I've seen (excepting Saga's old Dreamcast network) assume some form of broadband connection and the console just being one more piece of kit hanging behind the NAT. The fact is, of course, you already have at least one real computer hanging off that broadband connection already, which seems to make your competition not other consoles - but multi-player PC games.
I suppose you could get broadband (or an extra phone line for dialup) just to play console games . . . but why? And if I have my computer already, the Xbox game (or any console game, really) will have to be better or I'll just stay at the keyboard.