Isn't it funny how the same people who complain about movie and recording industry "fatcats" are the same ones that slobber over the newest trailer for a series of movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce?
I'm sure most persons here know that there is a large cost involved in the promotion and discovery of talent. It is probably true, that illegal file sharing is probably going to really hurt the music and movie industries in the future. Why not take this line of thinking to its final outcome?
When this happens, you will probably see the result of the reduced funding for things like:
MTV radio stations fewer new artists less promotion fewer gold and platinum records fewer concerts
Yes, fewer concerts. With less money for promotion and advertising, and fewer people aware of in love with the record companies' artists, how are they going to fill the concert venues?
How are the "artists" going to live like millionaires after even the most popuplar cannot sell more than a few hundred thousand copies of their album? There will be less of a disparity between "discovered" artists and ones with record deals. MTV Cribs will be kind of boring.
Will MTV be able to pay for a Times Square office space for TRL? Probably not.
If the rappers were poor, think of what would happen to the 20" wheel industry alone!:-)
In areas where obtaining top performance is critical, the desktop will always win. This is one of those cases. The designers of laptops almost always need to make concessions, reducing performance, flexibility or other features of the laptop in order to meet the key design goals:
small size low power consumption
When your goal is to maximize performance, you are not going to give size and power consumption any consideration. The same exact idea applies to wireless networking. Because of FCC limitations and other factors, it will probably always lag behind wired networking.
A laptop is probably adequate for gaming, but many gamers are out for total frames-per-second. And this at any cost...
Stopping email from the Verio domains is going to cause more pain than it will help. It is only a matter of time until the spammers find some other vendor to help them send their ads. Money talks, and in an open market, someone will provide the goods.
I honestly believe that the only way to free ourselves from spam is intellegent filtering. Making it illegal will only cause the spammers to move overseas, if they even notice the law at all. The internet is far too large an entity to make a difference by blocking the IP addresses of spam-friendly domains. It won't put a dent in the real problem.
I think the core of the problem is the high cost of changing the defacto standard away from Microsoft.
Think of the millions of applications that would no longer work and the billions of documents that you would need to convert if you switched away from Windows and Office. For a home user, it is possible, but for a business, it is next to impossible.
When you go to best buy to purchase a new OS, you have to consider the fact that all of the applications you have at home will not work on Non-Microsoft operating systems. This is a major factor in keeping them in "power".
This shows that the only products that Microsoft makes a profit on are those that people find nearly impossible to switch from. In the other arenas, where consumers are not tied down with compatibility issues at purchase time, such as games, handhelds(to a lesser extent), and MSN, they are unable to compete at a profit.
Doesn't this seem like a waste of good wireless bandwidth? The amount of traffic you can send through the air is limited and I would much rather use that bandwidth for connecting to other computers (i.e., the Internet). As the number of computers using this technology grows, the less bandwidth there will be available for useful applications.
Seriously! How do you think those hoodlums get away with it now? They are clean-shaven respectable-looking types. As soon as this plan goes into effect, they will look like the hoodlums that they are!:-)
Re:could this be the xbox "killer app"?
on
Xbox Live Goes Online
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You could say the same thing about Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For some time, it was known as having less than stellar performance, and for being a copy-cat of Netscape Navigator, with a very similar UI and features.
Since then, it has improved somewhat with its stability and performance, but since Netscape has gone to the wayside, almost no features have been introduced. In fact, most of the changes between version 3 and version 6 have been internal, such as additional automation calls and additional events for programmers to use.
I wouldn't get too enthused about it just yet. It has been evident that George Lucas not been in touch with the Star Wars phenomenon since Jedi. Since then, he has only been extending his retirement fund with poor quality "extensions" on the original masterpiece.
- Rerelease of the originals with "additional" footage, with a slew of promotional and marketing gimmicks. - Three prequels, with a slew of promotional and marketing gimmicks. and now: - A cartoon version, with a slew of promotional and marketing gimmicks.
What would be the point in replacing X? It works. It is functional and does everything I need it to. but most of all, it is UBIQUITOUS. You would need a very good reason to have everyone switch away from what they use. (for example, even though Linux is obvioiusly better than Windows, Windows still rules the world).
This is almost like when someone gets arrested for a large crime. They charge him with just about everything they can think of and hope something sticks. They know he is guilty, but they do not know just HOW guilty he is.
Here, Microsoft has been hit with just about every sort of suit imaginable, because everyone knows they have been pushing the limits of their monoplolistic powers. We are just hoping one of these suits will finally give them what they deserve.
It makes me wonder if the Automobile industry is in on it in some way. Any time that they make an alternative fuel vehicle, its about the ugliest "soccer-mom" vehicle ever... Its as if they are trying to make it undesirable to purchase an alternative fuel vehicle.
I wouldn't be caught dead in one of those GM electric vehicles... I know that the electric cars need to be small and light, but why can't they make them look like an MR2 or RX7? Why does it have to look like an UGLY Ford Festiva or Chevy Metro? Bah!
Really, in all reality, even though Slashdot has become a forum for Linux advocacy, the world does not revolve around Linux.
A port to Unix would involve a large number different flavors to maintain. One of the nice things about open-source is that it makes it a bit easier to port to a large number of architectures... In particular, because other people will usually do it for you when they want your software to run on thier machine.
For example, when enlightenment first came out, it was the coolest thing around... I bet you everyone and his brother was trying to port it to the particular flavor of Unix that they were using... Solaris, SunOS, BSD, IRIX...etc.
Porting at this time usually means linux... But not everyone uses linux... There are a lot of poeple that want to have the choice to use Solaris or their cool SGI machines. Its almost sacreligious to not give SGI machines every codec, considering their long history of top notch graphics and media performance.
Oh well.... Its a shame I cant run Civilization CTP on my Sparc Linux or Sparc Solaris boxen.
Open sourcing a codec and/or streaming video application is a touchy situation. Not only do companies such as Apple and Real Networks not want to loose possible revenues due to lack of licensing fees, but having an open source client allows the end user to do what he wishes with the content... (e.g., save it to disk)
And we all know what large corporations think about allowing the customer to do what he wants to with content. (e.g., MPAA, RIAA)
You could see the issue when RealNetworks sued Streambox for making applications that allowed you to save RealAudio streams to disk. There would be no way to assure that the end user cannot save the data to disk, or convert it to another (possibly technically better) format.
Personally, not allowing the user to do what he wants with the data being streamed is against the general open-source philosophy, IMHO.
I suggest a modification to napster that records and caclculates totals on the searches that are being done on napster. Then, you can publish a list of the 100 most requested songs on napster!
That would be a much better indicator of what songs and people are popular than album sales, because certain types of music does not lend itself to sales of albums, though it may be popular.
Im sure you would find that some songs and bands become popular only on the internet that are not popular on the radio (yet).
It would be interesting to see proof of smaller name bands becoming popular due to Mp3 distribution. It would be a good demonstration to those who have doubts as to Mp3's power to make your band more popular.
I know of many bands that I had never heard of that I discovered due to napster and now I love. I have gone to see several of them live. (they probably make more money from me paying for tickets to see them live than from me buying any album of theirs)
Is the source code they provide really enough to build a device? Or do they have additional non-gpl'ed software that is required to do the work?
I would love to build a small device that just does the pause/rewind/slo-mo part of tivo. If TIVO were to sell a device that did just that for maybe 100 bucks, it would be great... then you wouldnt have to pay a crappy fee every month, you wouldnt have to deal with incompatibilty with several cable/satelite inputs... A simple box that worked well and was cheap would be great!
Could that be the killer app? Having the entire library of Playstation games available on a linux box would be excellent!
And on top of that, it would make an entirely free way to play playstation games. You would not have to purchase a piece of software like "bleem" to play your playstation games.
In fact, if it were bundled with a distribution of RedHat or similar, you would have a linux computer with thousands of available games!!!
This is sounding better and better the more I think about it.
Obfuscated DeCSS programming contest
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 4
I recommend an obfuscated DeCSS programming contest...
That kind of law is almost entirely unenforcable. How are they going to be able to force the spammers to take the "opt-out" feature seriously. All this will do is allow spammers to abuse the user, having the user think that they are covered by the law.
Its about time! The zoning they put into DVD players is just another over reach of their power. It allows them to create the prices for dvd players and the media....
Just because they came up with this simple system doesnt mean that they should make billions off of consumers...
I agree. In fact, by releasing the source code to windows, Microsoft would have the ability to sue anyone who wrote some sort of compatable system, such as Wine.
IBM tried this itself in the early 80s when they created the first IBM PC. They released the full specification to thier BIOS makeing it difficult to find engineers who had not seen the code to create a clone of it.
THier computer was almost entirely off-the shelf parts to begin with, so this way, they have a legal means to stop anyone from re-creating their computer.
It would be very difficult to finish the Wine project if this were to happen.
I agree... This smacks of the same type of control that the CSS encryption has on DVD players.
Personally, I think encryption should be totally open and in the public domain. Otherwise, it lends itself to abuse by those with control over the scheme.
Never trust a company to do the right thing. They are there just to make money.
Even RedHat has a hard time joining in the Linux standards teams. Making a linux standard has a lot of potential to take away market share from Redhat... They have a lot to loose in the short term.
I cannot possibly think of anything more boring that photography of the moon. Well... at least after a while... youve seen it once, youve seen it a thousand times... Its doesnt change that often, you know.
However, the recent shots of the near earth asteroid were pretty interesting... At least there is a rock that I haven't seen before... Even had a white-spot to spruce things up and get you thinking!
One way this technology could be "abused" is by companies like Cable companies and DirectTV that would now make it impossible for you view their signal with more than one TV (even if it were the same channel) Currently, even with direct tv, you can split a signal _after_ the descrambler and send it to two TVs.... This way people cant set up sports bars without paying a larger licenseing fee...etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it funny how the same people who complain about movie and recording industry "fatcats" are the same ones that slobber over the newest trailer for a series of movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce?
I'm sure most persons here know that there is a large cost involved in the promotion and discovery of talent. It is probably true, that illegal file sharing is probably going to really hurt the music and movie industries in the future. Why not take this line of thinking to its final outcome?
:-)
When this happens, you will probably see the result of the reduced funding for things like:
MTV
radio stations
fewer new artists
less promotion
fewer gold and platinum records
fewer concerts
Yes, fewer concerts. With less money for promotion and advertising, and fewer people aware of in love with the record companies' artists, how are they going to fill the concert venues?
How are the "artists" going to live like millionaires after even the most popuplar cannot sell more than a few hundred thousand copies of their album? There will be less of a disparity between "discovered" artists and ones with record deals. MTV Cribs will be kind of boring.
Will MTV be able to pay for a Times Square office space for TRL? Probably not.
If the rappers were poor, think of what would happen to the 20" wheel industry alone!
Does this mean Xeyes will actually have a useful function?
It's the future of computing!
In areas where obtaining top performance is critical, the desktop will always win. This is one of those cases. The designers of laptops almost always need to make concessions, reducing performance, flexibility or other features of the laptop in order to meet the key design goals:
small size
low power consumption
When your goal is to maximize performance, you are not going to give size and power consumption any consideration. The same exact idea applies to wireless networking. Because of FCC limitations and other factors, it will probably always lag behind wired networking.
A laptop is probably adequate for gaming, but many gamers are out for total frames-per-second. And this at any cost...
Stopping email from the Verio domains is going to cause more pain than it will help. It is only a matter of time until the spammers find some other vendor to help them send their ads. Money talks, and in an open market, someone will provide the goods.
I honestly believe that the only way to free ourselves from spam is intellegent filtering. Making it illegal will only cause the spammers to move overseas, if they even notice the law at all. The internet is far too large an entity to make a difference by blocking the IP addresses of spam-friendly domains. It won't put a dent in the real problem.
I think the core of the problem is the high cost of changing the defacto standard away from Microsoft.
Think of the millions of applications that would no longer work and the billions of documents that you would need to convert if you switched away from Windows and Office. For a home user, it is possible, but for a business, it is next to impossible.
When you go to best buy to purchase a new OS, you have to consider the fact that all of the applications you have at home will not work on Non-Microsoft operating systems. This is a major factor in keeping them in "power".
This shows that the only products that Microsoft makes a profit on are those that people find nearly impossible to switch from. In the other arenas, where consumers are not tied down with compatibility issues at purchase time, such as games, handhelds(to a lesser extent), and MSN, they are unable to compete at a profit.
Doesn't this seem like a waste of good wireless bandwidth? The amount of traffic you can send through the air is limited and I would much rather use that bandwidth for connecting to other computers (i.e., the Internet). As the number of computers using this technology grows, the less bandwidth there will be available for useful applications.
Seriously! How do you think those hoodlums get away with it now? They are clean-shaven respectable-looking types. As soon as this plan goes into effect, they will look like the hoodlums that they are! :-)
You could say the same thing about Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For some time, it was known as having less than stellar performance, and for being a copy-cat of Netscape Navigator, with a very similar UI and features.
Since then, it has improved somewhat with its stability and performance, but since Netscape has gone to the wayside, almost no features have been introduced. In fact, most of the changes between version 3 and version 6 have been internal, such as additional automation calls and additional events for programmers to use.
I wouldn't get too enthused about it just yet. It has been evident that George Lucas not been in touch with the Star Wars phenomenon since Jedi. Since then, he has only been extending his retirement fund with poor quality "extensions" on the original masterpiece.
- Rerelease of the originals with "additional" footage, with a slew of promotional and marketing gimmicks.
- Three prequels, with a slew of promotional and marketing gimmicks.
and now:
- A cartoon version, with a slew of promotional and marketing gimmicks.
What would be the point in replacing X? It works. It is functional and does everything I need it to. but most of all, it is UBIQUITOUS. You would need a very good reason to have everyone switch away from what they use. (for example, even though Linux is obvioiusly better than Windows, Windows still rules the world).
This is almost like when someone gets arrested for a large crime. They charge him with just about everything they can think of and hope something sticks. They know he is guilty, but they do not know just HOW guilty he is.
Here, Microsoft has been hit with just about every sort of suit imaginable, because everyone knows they have been pushing the limits of their monoplolistic powers. We are just hoping one of these suits will finally give them what they deserve.
It makes me wonder if the Automobile industry is in on it in some way. Any time that they make an alternative fuel vehicle, its about the ugliest "soccer-mom" vehicle ever... Its as if they are trying to make it undesirable to purchase an alternative fuel vehicle.
I wouldn't be caught dead in one of those GM electric vehicles... I know that the electric cars need to be small and light, but why can't they make them look like an MR2 or RX7? Why does it have to look like an UGLY Ford Festiva or Chevy Metro? Bah!
Gary Franczyk
Really, in all reality, even though Slashdot has become a forum for Linux advocacy, the world does not revolve around Linux.
A port to Unix would involve a large number different flavors to maintain. One of the nice things about open-source is that it makes it a bit easier to port to a large number of architectures... In particular, because other people will usually do it for you when they want your software to run on thier machine.
For example, when enlightenment first came out, it was the coolest thing around... I bet you everyone and his brother was trying to port it to the particular flavor of Unix that they were using... Solaris, SunOS, BSD, IRIX...etc.
Porting at this time usually means linux... But not everyone uses linux... There are a lot of poeple that want to have the choice to use Solaris or their cool SGI machines. Its almost sacreligious to not give SGI machines every codec, considering their long history of top notch graphics and media performance.
Oh well....
Its a shame I cant run Civilization CTP on my Sparc Linux or Sparc Solaris boxen.
Open sourcing a codec and/or streaming video application is a touchy situation. Not only do companies such as Apple and Real Networks not want to loose possible revenues due to lack of licensing fees, but having an open source client allows the end user to do what he wishes with the content... (e.g., save it to disk)
And we all know what large corporations think about allowing the customer to do what he wants to with content. (e.g., MPAA, RIAA)
You could see the issue when RealNetworks sued Streambox for making applications that allowed you to save RealAudio streams to disk. There would be no way to assure that the end user cannot save the data to disk, or convert it to another (possibly technically better) format.
Personally, not allowing the user to do what he wants with the data being streamed is against the general open-source philosophy, IMHO.
I suggest a modification to napster that records and caclculates totals on the searches that are being done on napster.
Then, you can publish a list of the 100 most requested songs on napster!
That would be a much better indicator of what songs and people are popular than album sales, because certain types of music does not lend itself to sales of albums, though it may be popular.
Im sure you would find that some songs and bands become popular only on the internet that are not popular on the radio (yet).
It would be interesting to see proof of smaller name bands becoming popular due to Mp3 distribution. It would be a good demonstration to those who have doubts as to Mp3's power to make your band more popular.
I know of many bands that I had never heard of that I discovered due to napster and now I love. I have gone to see several of them live. (they probably make more money from me paying for tickets to see them live than from me buying any album of theirs)
Is the source code they provide really enough to build a device? Or do they have additional non-gpl'ed software that is required to do the work?
I would love to build a small device that just does the pause/rewind/slo-mo part of tivo. If TIVO were to sell a device that did just that for maybe 100 bucks, it would be great... then you wouldnt have to pay a crappy fee every month, you wouldnt have to deal with incompatibilty with several cable/satelite inputs... A simple box that worked well and was cheap would be great!
Could that be the killer app? Having the entire library of Playstation games available on a linux box would be excellent!
And on top of that, it would make an entirely free way to play playstation games. You would not have to purchase a piece of software like "bleem" to play your playstation games.
In fact, if it were bundled with a distribution of RedHat or similar, you would have a linux computer with thousands of available games!!!
This is sounding better and better the more I think about it.
I recommend an obfuscated DeCSS programming contest...
It would really put a kink in their work.
That kind of law is almost entirely unenforcable. How are they going to be able to force the spammers to take the "opt-out" feature seriously. All this will do is allow spammers to abuse the user, having the user think that they are covered by the law.
Its about time! The zoning they put into DVD players is just another over reach of their power. It allows them to create the prices for dvd players and the media....
Just because they came up with this simple system doesnt mean that they should make billions off of consumers...
I agree. In fact, by releasing the source code to windows, Microsoft would have the ability to sue anyone who wrote some sort of compatable system, such as Wine.
IBM tried this itself in the early 80s when they created the first IBM PC. They released the full specification to thier BIOS makeing it difficult to find engineers who had not seen the code to create a clone of it.
THier computer was almost entirely off-the shelf parts to begin with, so this way, they have a legal means to stop anyone from re-creating their computer.
It would be very difficult to finish the Wine project if this were to happen.
I agree... This smacks of the same type of control that the CSS encryption has on DVD players.
Personally, I think encryption should be totally open and in the public domain. Otherwise, it lends itself to abuse by those with control over the scheme.
Never trust a company to do the right thing. They are there just to make money.
Even RedHat has a hard time joining in the Linux standards teams. Making a linux standard has a lot of potential to take away market share from Redhat... They have a lot to loose in the short term.
I cannot possibly think of anything more boring that photography of the moon. Well... at least after a while... youve seen it once, youve seen it a thousand times... Its doesnt change that often, you know.
However, the recent shots of the near earth asteroid were pretty interesting... At least there is a rock that I haven't seen before... Even had a white-spot to spruce things up and get you thinking!
One way this technology could be "abused" is by companies like Cable companies and DirectTV that would now make it impossible for you view their signal with more than one TV (even if it were the same channel)
Currently, even with direct tv, you can split a signal _after_ the descrambler and send it to two TVs....
This way people cant set up sports bars without paying a larger licenseing fee...etc.