I think americans focus on blaming someone else for their (our) problems. It is always someone else's fault. We like to blame a political party, schools, parents, goverment programs, sports, hollywood, or whatever.
No one ever says, "what can I do" or "am I doing my part" or "how can I help fix this". No, blame has to get placed somewhere and we expect someone else to pick up the slack and make the problem go away.
Everyone here can make a big difference just by being a technical role model, changing the TV channel to Discovery/TLC from disney/cartoon programming, helping out at the schools, taking continuing education classes, leaving tech mags around the house.
As a whole, we are good at evangelizing Linux, the same approach needs to be done to science and technology as a whole. It cant be pushy, leading by example is a key part.
I still own a lot of old vinyl records. Am I stealing if I download an album I already own in a different format?
I do own 95%+ of my music as I have no problem supporting a band that I enjoy. It is like tipping the waiter or street musician. I would rather send the band $10 directly instead of having $0.10 filter through to the band via the label.
I do not like paying twice for the same recording and thus I feel no wrong by freely downloading songs I own on vinyl. (of which many are not available)
The last big 'virus' scare for the mac was a number of years ago with the 'autostart worm'. As I understood it, it was an app that took advantage when you put a music cd in, it would automatically launch and play. The system was simply fooled into thinking the worm was a CD and not an application.
I have been surprised there haven't been more exploits using this method. I stick a music cd in any computer now (mac/win/*nix) and the OS launches and tries to play it.
Also, many windows install disks have the autoinstaller application which, I suppose, could be spoofed into launching automatically too, by a malicious code writer. It automatically launches simply by inserting a CD.
Am I correct in assuming all modern OS have some file validation routine to check these autostart/autolaunch applications?
When anyone gives their time on any project, not just programming, the govt is losing precious tax dollars. We should start taxing parenting and at-home daycare centers, youth sport coaches, hospital volunteers, the adopt-a-highway groups, church groups, book clubs, and the rest. Actually, any time spent not punched in on the clock is time not paying income taxes and that should be stopped too. Watching your kids play baseball for free should also be taxed, as that is time you could have been working and the state was losing sales tax by letting you watch for free. Sounds fair to me.
It seems to me that if the bands and recording studios could make distribution agreements directly with iTMS/Napster/etc, the whole RIAA can be avoided and declared irrelevant. As it stands, ~60 cents of the purchase costs goes to the label, of which a few pennies go to the band. Bands could increase their cut 10X and the price per download cut in half. Everybody wins.
The record labels only exist to market and distribute pop music and those functions can be completely done by other means now. I have found some of the/best/ music on line in the last few years and none of it is available at a music store.
To take this even one more step off-topic, you can argue that the whole MTV half-time boobie stunt (which has now mutated into a weird free-speech thing)was simply to steal the thunder of the iTMS/Pepsi/arrested-by-the-RIAA commecial. It shows that the labels are not needed and can/easily/ be done away with. MTV, the sock puppet for the industry, makes money by worshiping the 'stars' promoted by the labels. Heck, when was the last time you saw a music video on MTV? When was the last time you saw a 'music star' actually sing? It is not about music anymore. MTV can can get flushed down the crapper too.
All music related marketing and distribution can be done on-line. The old business model is dead and not needed or wanted. The first major band to sign directly with iTMS/Napster/whatever will turn the tide.
Clearly, I need to calm down and have a cup of coffee. Sorry for the early morning rant.
Totally agree. Apple claims that the 99c gets broken up to 65c for the label (band gets a few pennies) and the 34c covers cost of bandwidth, iTMS, overhead. Apple says they don't make money on music, but on iPods.
I don't know if Napster got a better deal with the labels, but the margins are slim.
What interests me is what if bands themselves could plug into the Napster/iTMS directly and avoid the middle man altogether. Bands would increase revinues 10X and songs could be 50c by avoiding the 'RIAA' cut.
Did each song generate 0.99$ or are these from the University contracts allowing all students to download at will. This is a huge difference. Does anybody have the contract details of the University deals? Is it a blanket fee or reduced charge per song? If students get 'free' unlimitted downloads and are all on T1/T3 lines, of course, 5e6 songs are easily downloaded. This is not surprising.
God, I love internet radio. I have a full 30GB ipod but don't want to listen to anything on it. 95% if my music, I own, I download to sample the native flavors.
I consume music, like water, not wanting to re-rink the same glass twice. On that rare occasion finding a rare gem one cannot live without, I am more than happy to purchase the disk. ( http://www.eslmusic.com will do no wrong to your collection.)
My absolute favorite is any station at HBR1.com or jazzmusique (part of the netmusique network) I streamrip overnight, d/l to my ipod for the next day at work, and purchase what I am intrigued by.
Sampling music of unknown flavors is getting more and more difficult to do. iSwipe for OSX is interesting, but as all P2P, the quality of track is hit or miss, especially if you have far-out tastes.
People who P2P are not cheap. We are searching for the ultimate buzz and are more than happy to pay for magic.
Nothing compares to having every last bit of music in your shirt pocket. I grew up with vinyl records. Having portable music was difficult, lugging records around. CDs are nice, but but you still have to play them one by one. (unless you have one of those neeto 50cd changers)
It is soo cool to play your entire collection randomly. Half the time I say, who the hell is this? It is like getting new music.
The other nifty thing I found is streamripper. Record your favorite iradio station over night, synch your ipod, bring it to work the next day to listen. Keep what you like, delete what you dont. Buy the cd to further explore what you do like.
Yeah, I could use a modular battery, and I had to quit smoking to justify the 5 bones on the unit. If mp3 players with chips and no discs can hold 30GB, I would jump, but there is nothing close.
Yes, there are a few goofy software glitches, but it is the best 500 I spent in a long time.
I switched from ChemEng and IT to BioChem for a girl too. Dang. Mod me down for that.
Life is finding a balance between internal gratification and external resource necessity. What you find intuitive now , may not be where your interests (or the market) lie in 15 years. Biology skills also may not be what will be required to support a family in that time also. Heck, I made more per hour parking cars 15 years ago.
Try to develop, in parallel, 2 skilled talents and play them off each other. You will be able to say, " I am a programmer who knows how to run an ABI 3100" or a " a geneticist who can grep any text file with the best of them".
But then again, nobody believes you unless you have your PhD, so it comes down to selling yourself in the end.
I just hired a kid with a Masters degree to wash dishes. It may be today's work environment, but I see this all the time, especially at the PhD level, people wanting/any/ non-academic job because they are tired of being pissen upon. (pardon my run-on)
As a molecular biologist, I steer interns out of biology. Blend bio with any other discipline. You will spend your entire life justifying the 90% of experiments that fail, justifying your existance to get grants, etc. Bio-business, bio,-programming, bio-sales, bio-anything. Lab rats at the bench make no money, get zero respect, get zero creative control and are this generation's ditch diggers.
A decade of scientific failures is indescribably difficult to explain, but it is ungratifying. I have been taking Linux/SQL classes for the last few years trying to steer into the digital world, and thus mine and slashdot's interests are now intersecting.
Yes, having interesting work can only go so far. You still have Senior management flushing the cool stuff you invent down the toilet or left on the vine to rot. At the end of the day , you still have a pile of bills to pay.
looking for meaningful work in MPLS fleabag-at-covat-dot-net
Sokoban is on many platforms, does not need massive graphics, and has many challenging levels. Some levels need to simmer for a few days before solving them.
Our sysadmin locks us all out from changing any setting or installing anything on our lovely new win2K boxes. I can't install jack.
I tend to agree, but..
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
remember, the blue hairs are going to be 4 years older, have vision worse than a cow, and more shakes than Janet Reno. These voting kiosks will also have the SAME MISTAKES that happen now. Yet, if the sw is well written, the mistakes could be corrected immediately, unlike the mess now.
This also does not solve the reading and comprehension problem that I honestly suspect is at fault for most of the voting noise now. If voters were told to 'vote for the second name' and check the box without reading, so be it.
We get the government we deserve, and it appears we whinny americans do not deserve much.
If people only vote for Gore because they hate Bush more or only vote for Bush because they can't stand Gore, we will never get any marquis candidates.
Nader is a good choice, I am also very intrigued with Harry Browne.
the windoze default setting is to 'hide' the three letter file extenstion. If the attached file was named noodiepic.jpg.vbs, it would appear as noodiepic.jpg . Most people would feel safe (yet perverted) by opening this.
After our beloved NTServer was 'Loved', the people with this setting only noticed the jpg icons had changed and kept infecting away. I changed this setting on all infected users to help remind them what file type it actually is.
How are these releases seeded and to which developers? I get the impression that these releases are held tightly. What sort of NDAs do you have to jump through to be on the short list?
Nothing changes in this country (US) until something catastrophic happens. Until a celebrity or elected official clearly gets harmed in a human-interest sort of way, not one thing will be done to change this.
Slashdot Mirror
I think americans focus on blaming someone else for their (our) problems. It is always someone else's fault. We like to blame a political party, schools, parents, goverment programs, sports, hollywood, or whatever.
No one ever says, "what can I do" or "am I doing my part" or "how can I help fix this". No, blame has to get placed somewhere and we expect someone else to pick up the slack and make the problem go away.
Everyone here can make a big difference just by being a technical role model, changing the TV channel to Discovery/TLC from disney/cartoon programming, helping out at the schools, taking continuing education classes, leaving tech mags around the house.
As a whole, we are good at evangelizing Linux, the same approach needs to be done to science and technology as a whole. It cant be pushy, leading by example is a key part.
I still own a lot of old vinyl records. Am I stealing if I download an album I already own in a different format?
I do own 95%+ of my music as I have no problem supporting a band that I enjoy. It is like tipping the waiter or street musician. I would rather send the band $10 directly instead of having $0.10 filter through to the band via the label.
I do not like paying twice for the same recording and thus I feel no wrong by freely downloading songs I own on vinyl. (of which many are not available)
I could be wrong, usually am.
The last big 'virus' scare for the mac was a number of years ago with the 'autostart worm'. As I understood it, it was an app that took advantage when you put a music cd in, it would automatically launch and play. The system was simply fooled into thinking the worm was a CD and not an application.
I have been surprised there haven't been more exploits using this method. I stick a music cd in any computer now (mac/win/*nix) and the OS launches and tries to play it.
Also, many windows install disks have the autoinstaller application which, I suppose, could be spoofed into launching automatically too, by a malicious code writer. It automatically launches simply by inserting a CD.
Am I correct in assuming all modern OS have some file validation routine to check these autostart/autolaunch applications?
When anyone gives their time on any project, not just programming, the govt is losing precious tax dollars. We should start taxing parenting and at-home daycare centers, youth sport coaches, hospital volunteers, the adopt-a-highway groups, church groups, book clubs, and the rest. Actually, any time spent not punched in on the clock is time not paying income taxes and that should be stopped too. Watching your kids play baseball for free should also be taxed, as that is time you could have been working and the state was losing sales tax by letting you watch for free. Sounds fair to me.
It seems to me that if the bands and recording studios could make distribution agreements directly with iTMS/Napster/etc, the whole RIAA can be avoided and declared irrelevant. As it stands, ~60 cents of the purchase costs goes to the label, of which a few pennies go to the band. Bands could increase their cut 10X and the price per download cut in half. Everybody wins.
/best/ music on line in the last few years and none of it is available at a music store.
/easily/ be done away with. MTV, the sock puppet for the industry, makes money by worshiping the 'stars' promoted by the labels. Heck, when was the last time you saw a music video on MTV? When was the last time you saw a 'music star' actually sing? It is not about music anymore. MTV can can get flushed down the crapper too.
The record labels only exist to market and distribute pop music and those functions can be completely done by other means now. I have found some of the
To take this even one more step off-topic, you can argue that the whole MTV half-time boobie stunt (which has now mutated into a weird free-speech thing)was simply to steal the thunder of the iTMS/Pepsi/arrested-by-the-RIAA commecial. It shows that the labels are not needed and can
All music related marketing and distribution can be done on-line. The old business model is dead and not needed or wanted. The first major band to sign directly with iTMS/Napster/whatever will turn the tide.
Clearly, I need to calm down and have a cup of coffee. Sorry for the early morning rant.
Totally agree. Apple claims that the 99c gets broken up to 65c for the label (band gets a few pennies) and the 34c covers cost of bandwidth, iTMS, overhead. Apple says they don't make money on music, but on iPods.
I don't know if Napster got a better deal with the labels, but the margins are slim.
What interests me is what if bands themselves could plug into the Napster/iTMS directly and avoid the middle man altogether. Bands would increase revinues 10X and songs could be 50c by avoiding the 'RIAA' cut.
Did each song generate 0.99$ or are these from the University contracts allowing all students to download at will. This is a huge difference. Does anybody have the contract details of the University deals? Is it a blanket fee or reduced charge per song? If students get 'free' unlimitted downloads and are all on T1/T3 lines, of course, 5e6 songs are easily downloaded. This is not surprising.
If they are studying the code, will any code accidentally become part of a windows build?
God, I love internet radio. I have a full 30GB ipod but don't want to listen to anything on it. 95% if my music, I own, I download to sample the native flavors.
I consume music, like water, not wanting to re-rink the same glass twice. On that rare occasion finding a rare gem one cannot live without, I am more than happy to purchase the disk. ( http://www.eslmusic.com will do no wrong to your collection.)
My absolute favorite is any station at HBR1.com or jazzmusique (part of the netmusique network) I streamrip overnight, d/l to my ipod for the next day at work, and purchase what I am intrigued by.
Sampling music of unknown flavors is getting more and more difficult to do. iSwipe for OSX is interesting, but as all P2P, the quality of track is hit or miss, especially if you have far-out tastes.
People who P2P are not cheap. We are searching for the ultimate buzz and are more than happy to pay for magic.
r
Nothing compares to having every last bit of music in your shirt pocket. I grew up with vinyl records. Having portable music was difficult, lugging records around. CDs are nice, but but you still have to play them one by one. (unless you have one of those neeto 50cd changers)
It is soo cool to play your entire collection randomly. Half the time I say, who the hell is this? It is like getting new music.
The other nifty thing I found is streamripper. Record your favorite iradio station over night, synch your ipod, bring it to work the next day to listen. Keep what you like, delete what you dont. Buy the cd to further explore what you do like.
Yeah, I could use a modular battery, and I had to quit smoking to justify the 5 bones on the unit. If mp3 players with chips and no discs can hold 30GB, I would jump, but there is nothing close.
Yes, there are a few goofy software glitches, but it is the best 500 I spent in a long time.
I had covad come out and install ADSL within a week. Granted, it is not a speed demon, but it is infinitely faster than the modem.
fwiw, i have not had one problem with my service from covad.
Life is finding a balance between internal gratification and external resource necessity. What you find intuitive now , may not be where your interests (or the market) lie in 15 years. Biology skills also may not be what will be required to support a family in that time also. Heck, I made more per hour parking cars 15 years ago.
Try to develop, in parallel, 2 skilled talents and play them off each other. You will be able to say, " I am a programmer who knows how to run an ABI 3100" or a " a geneticist who can grep any text file with the best of them".
But then again, nobody believes you unless you have your PhD, so it comes down to selling yourself in the end.
Cheers
I just hired a kid with a Masters degree to wash dishes. It may be today's work environment, but I see this all the time, especially at the PhD level, people wanting
I love my work, but I hate my job.
Comprende?
A decade of scientific failures is indescribably difficult to explain, but it is ungratifying. I have been taking Linux/SQL classes for the last few years trying to steer into the digital world, and thus mine and slashdot's interests are now intersecting.
Yes, having interesting work can only go so far. You still have Senior management flushing the cool stuff you invent down the toilet or left on the vine to rot. At the end of the day , you still have a pile of bills to pay.
looking for meaningful work in MPLS fleabag-at-covat-dot-net
Use ethanol and then the user could kill two birds with one stone.
I wonder if there will be Blizzak tires for IT for us in the great white north. Maybe a heater module, posi-trak, and a deicing system.
I second this idea. Sokoban is a fabulous game with minimal hardware reqs.
Sokoban is on many platforms, does not need massive graphics, and has many challenging levels. Some levels need to simmer for a few days before solving them.
search google for a download site
Not really:
Our sysadmin locks us all out from changing any setting or installing anything on our lovely new win2K boxes. I can't install jack.
remember, the blue hairs are going to be 4 years older, have vision worse than a cow, and more shakes than Janet Reno. These voting kiosks will also have the SAME MISTAKES that happen now. Yet, if the sw is well written, the mistakes could be corrected immediately, unlike the mess now.
This also does not solve the reading and comprehension problem that I honestly suspect is at fault for most of the voting noise now. If voters were told to 'vote for the second name' and check the box without reading, so be it.
We get the government we deserve, and it appears we whinny americans do not deserve much.
If people only vote for Gore because they hate Bush more or only vote for Bush because they can't stand Gore, we will never get any marquis candidates.
Nader is a good choice, I am also very intrigued with Harry Browne.
the windoze default setting is to 'hide' the three letter file extenstion. If the attached file was named noodiepic.jpg.vbs, it would appear as noodiepic.jpg . Most people would feel safe (yet perverted) by opening this.
After our beloved NTServer was 'Loved', the people with this setting only noticed the jpg icons had changed and kept infecting away. I changed this setting on all infected users to help remind them what file type it actually is.
How are these releases seeded and to which developers? I get the impression that these releases are held tightly. What sort of NDAs do you have to jump through to be on the short list?
Nothing changes in this country (US) until something catastrophic happens. Until a celebrity or elected official clearly gets harmed in a human-interest sort of way, not one thing will be done to change this.
Hey, I resemble that remark.