And in a couple of millennia be attacked by venomous six-armed three-legged snakefrogsparrows instead of the warm welcome we'd get from the peaceful meerkatbutterflies that would have evolved instead?
In a world where hardware and software are DRMed to hell and back, every music producer is required to have a 'producer key' to input whenever doing any work on their own recordings, including releases. You are a music producer. One fateful morning you lose all copies of your 'producer key'. (You think up the scenario for that, I'll offer one about your dog chewing on one of your USB keys, then rooting for more...). Unable to access your latest masterpiece, you resort to scouring the 'web for any toolz that might give you a chance to get back at your work. Some time later you release your work, signed with the fresh new key you got from the **AA. Yet some time later, you get a nasty letter accusing you of violating the DMCA. Why? Traces of watermarks were found in music files that you released (purporting to be your work), indicating the files were decoded in an unauthorized way.
The MPAA does have a case, considering the police were already called about potential stalking [...]
Since the MPAA is not (yet) part of the executive branch, what right do they have to uphold one law by breaking another? That should be left to the proper authorities. Like, for instance, only the police are allowed to violate the law against speeding while they try to catch a motorist who is speeding...
First off, you make a good point when it applies to a self-publishing author. What I meant to say though was about being a publisher who only prints and sells books written by other authors, while getting a (sizable) chunk of the revenue.
My point is that, for certain forms of creative art and engineering, the current system doesn't provide a suitable measure of quality and therefore apropriate compensation.
Let's say I produce a few simple but catchy pop songs (perhaps optimizing them for the latest Hit Song Rating software). Assume that the publisher has high standards for compensation and gives me a nice percentage of all the sales, and that no-one copies them around illegally. If the revenue is big enough, I could sit back and watch the revenue stream into my bank account and be happy with it.
Now consider this: A composer writes a very involved, highly surreal, weird musical composition that has even the most seasoned music critics listen in bewilderment, scratching their heads, with a few die-hards making it to a second, third performance before they begin to gather a glimpse of the fascinating depth and beauty of it. Surely no 'hot seller' this, but let's assume it is of high artistic value. (Many great artists only gained true appreciation for their work, financially and otherwise, well after their deaths).
So you have possibly tens of thousands of songs sold compared to perhaps only a few performances (including commission, if any) of the involved musical composition. Which has more artistic value? Which endeavour merits the highest compensation?
What I'm trying to say is that money made from mass-produced goods is not always a good measure of their quality or artistic value. Higher compensation for sheer numbers sold tends to force many creators, if they are interested in or simply need the revenue, to go for the greatest common denominator, the mainstream.
With 'simple' things like hand tools, commodities etc. the 'multiplier' effect may seem reasonable, as there usually is little room for improvement in their design, so the incentive to improve them is not that great.
But for more complex things like songs, pieces of software and so on, both the opening possibilities of change and improvement are much greater. The current system of copyright and patents especially combined with ridiculous extension in time removes the incentive to improve and change them and limits access to their markets to large businesses with enough capital to license IP or to forego litigation.
But what about those of us that don't know how or are unable to set a price for a trade.
I for one just want to do what I am good at, the best way I can. I have always found negotiating a price on a contract very difficult, best left to an intermediary more adept at negotiating a deal (in stark contrast to what I refered to in an earlier post). Asking high always makes me feel like cheating my clients out of their money.
My ideal trade would be knowing exactly what the real value of a piece of work at the end of the project would be, combined with knowing what my client would be willing to pay for it without feeling cheated. Considering both I would decide if I wanted the deal to go through. Sadly, this has rarely if ever been the case.
I think the customers should be able to pay you, directly, on the basis of merit. How exactly this can/will be realized, I don't know, but I think the current system where big companies just dump boatloads of products on the market shouldn't hold. I believe that most of the time, big sellers will settle for the solution which benefits them most financially, usually just barely meeting their clients' demands.
Software megabundles office suites and software development environments are some examples. Start out with individual components that work reasonably well, while being reasonably affordable. Next, add more and more features, some of which the customers need, most of which they don't want. Continue by hooking customers onto your proprietary format, bundle the apps in ever more bulging, bloated packages. In order to stay compatlble with colleagues (and reduse risks from security flaws etc.) customers need to buy ever newer versions. This way, adding few extra features and benefits and reselling the same slightly updated package over and over again to lots of customers, revenue spirals to unreasonable heights.
One-off contract work is a contrasting example. I work on projects for many different clients, mostly embedded applications. Each project requires specialized software, with little reuse of modules between projects. because of different hardware, development environments, software libraries, etcetera.
Now compare the amount of work per programmer a programming team puts into a mass-marketed product to the amount of work I do for my projects. Isn't it odd that only big corporations selling mass-produced items can benefit from this 'multiplier' effect while I cannot, all because of an artificial construct like 'copyright' and its corresponding ban on copying? Instead of promoting creativity by rewarding individual creators, this is more like subsidizing mass producers using the buyers' spending money.
If I were a book publisher, why should I be able to gross in lots more money from selling books than just the cost of printing them plus a modest bonus?
To me 'copyright' nowadays means little more than 'license to monopolize mass distribution', since most artists have to sign away their rights to the distributors anyway.
Sorry if this is something like a rant, but I think I'm in a Syd state of mind today.
We need to get it out of our minds that there will be always be a 'multiplier' effect in creating something, selling lots and lots of copies under the umbrella of copyright, then sit back and hear the cash registers ping away as the value of one creation gets multiplied into millions of sales.
Syd Barrett (on record companies, wholesalers and retailers): "All middle men are bad"
To add something constructive to this whole topic:
If you want to gather data on lots of people, find out about their political, sexual, whatever preferences, mine Usenet.
Just gulp down all of the soc.* hierarchy, any newsgroup containing 'politics', any sex / gender / race related newsgroups, etcetera, then feed all the articles to your text filter, freshly stacked with any spook words you care to use.
Perfectly legal, too. If the bandwidth use is any problem to your usenet provider, switch to one of dozens of MegaLeech providers usually specializing in binaries.
As an added bonus, the articles will contain an 'NNTP-Posting-Host: ' header which you can use to track down your 'victims', unless they're posting on a privacy-consious usenet provider.
I don't mind publishing this little 'secret', for I'm sure the spooks have been doing this for a l_o_n_g time.
[...] This license does not include any resale or commercial use of this site or its contents; any collection and use of any product listings, descriptions, or prices; any derivative use of this site or its contents; any downloading or copying of account information for the benefit of another merchant; or any use of data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools. [...]
Which part of this paragraph does the article writer not understand? To me it is loud and clear: No data mining allowed. Period.
Either Amazon changed this in the blink of an eye right after this article was posted (which I find very doubtful), or the author may be looking forward to a peppered letter or phone call from Amazon legal department pretty soon.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but the world actually has close to _six_and_a_half_ billion people... 6,484,183,002 as of today according to geohive.com.
"Wretched isn't it?" -Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Their tactics are disgusting, and moreover, these practice are a danger for the environmenet, because it is impossible to prevent dissemination of the resistance genes into other species.
This give a whole new meaning to the phrase "viral marketing", where 'viral' of course refers to the pattern of spreading, not to the means by which it is done. Yet another proof why viral marketing doesn't always produce a desired outcome, because you cannot fully control it.
Why do you need 2-3 extra cell phones per year? Do you serve them with French fries and ketchup, feed them to your dog or what?:-)
I have 2 cell phones, one is a spare: 6 years old and still works perfectly, the other is a PDA/phone that I use to do software development. Besides the obvious, placing and receiving calls, of course. When either of them dies, I'll replace it with a similar one. Until battery capacity or energy efficiency improve considerably, I don't expect any sudden increase in important functionality in new phones.
Slashdot Mirror
Close. I think you're referring to Dijkstra's Algorithm.
Yeah but I don't want to be around when someone cracks the WEP and sets things up for the house to go woosh.
... why not send a chunk of nuclear waste?
And in a couple of millennia be attacked by venomous six-armed three-legged snakefrogsparrows instead of the warm welcome we'd get from the peaceful meerkatbutterflies that would have evolved instead?
...and so they lob Weapons of Mars Destruction at him in retaliation?
Same pot, same kettle, still black.
(well, actually, the pot could be of a different variety.)
I'll give you a future scenario
In a world where hardware and software are DRMed to hell and back, every music producer is required to have a 'producer key' to input whenever doing any work on their own recordings, including releases.
You are a music producer. One fateful morning you lose all copies of your 'producer key'. (You think up the scenario for that, I'll offer one about your dog chewing on one of your USB keys, then rooting for more...).
Unable to access your latest masterpiece, you resort to scouring the 'web for any toolz that might give you a chance to get back at your work.
Some time later you release your work, signed with the fresh new key you got from the **AA.
Yet some time later, you get a nasty letter accusing you of violating the DMCA. Why? Traces of watermarks were found in music files that you released (purporting to be your work), indicating the files were decoded in an unauthorized way.
You ask: What gives?
Maybe you should go to an Asian convention next time, so you can have a look at babes and interesting new tech.
<ducks donning flame-proof jacket>
The MPAA does have a case, considering the police were already called about potential stalking [...]
Since the MPAA is not (yet) part of the executive branch, what right do they have to uphold one law by breaking another? That should be left to the proper authorities. Like, for instance, only the police are allowed to violate the law against speeding while they try to catch a motorist who is speeding...
Very good point! Learn about Power Factor and you might even be able to help save salmon from extinction!
If you start nitpicking, be sure to pick them all :-)
Not all the power is converted into heat, some of it is put out as EM radiation at other wavelengths.
If Slashdot doesn't save your postings, Google will (at least for some period in time).
Make that last part 'to take the cost of litigation for granted'. It is late here.
First off, you make a good point when it applies to a self-publishing author. What I meant to say though was about being a publisher who only prints and sells books written by other authors, while getting a (sizable) chunk of the revenue.
My point is that, for certain forms of creative art and engineering, the current system doesn't provide a suitable measure of quality and therefore apropriate compensation.
Let's say I produce a few simple but catchy pop songs (perhaps optimizing them for the latest Hit Song Rating software). Assume that the publisher has high standards for compensation and gives me a nice percentage of all the sales, and that no-one copies them around illegally.
If the revenue is big enough, I could sit back and watch the revenue stream into my bank account and be happy with it.
Now consider this: A composer writes a very involved, highly surreal, weird musical composition that has even the most seasoned music critics listen in bewilderment, scratching their heads, with a few die-hards making it to a second, third performance before they begin to gather a glimpse of the fascinating depth and beauty of it.
Surely no 'hot seller' this, but let's assume it is of high artistic value. (Many great artists only gained true appreciation for their work, financially and otherwise, well after their deaths).
So you have possibly tens of thousands of songs sold compared to perhaps only a few performances (including commission, if any) of the involved musical composition. Which has more artistic value? Which endeavour merits the highest compensation?
What I'm trying to say is that money made from mass-produced goods is not always a good measure of their quality or artistic value. Higher compensation for sheer numbers sold tends to force many creators, if they are interested in or simply need the revenue, to go for the greatest common denominator, the mainstream.
With 'simple' things like hand tools, commodities etc. the 'multiplier' effect may seem reasonable, as there usually is little room for improvement in their design, so the incentive to improve them is not that great.
But for more complex things like songs, pieces of software and so on, both the opening possibilities of change and improvement are much greater. The current system of copyright and patents especially combined with ridiculous extension in time removes the incentive to improve and change them and limits access to their markets to large businesses with enough capital to license IP or to forego litigation.
I want Chagalization, you art-sensitive clod :-)
btw. welcome to my friend list, dada21 !
"Remember a day"...?
I do.
[re: capitalism and negotiating a trade]
But what about those of us that don't know how or are unable to set a price for a trade.
I for one just want to do what I am good at, the best way I can. I have always found negotiating a price on a contract very difficult, best left to an intermediary more adept at negotiating a deal (in stark contrast to what I refered to in an earlier post). Asking high always makes me feel like cheating my clients out of their money.
My ideal trade would be knowing exactly what the real value of a piece of work at the end of the project would be, combined with knowing what my client would be willing to pay for it without feeling cheated. Considering both I would decide if I wanted the deal to go through.
Sadly, this has rarely if ever been the case.
Good question.
I think the customers should be able to pay you, directly, on the basis of merit. How exactly this can/will be realized, I don't know, but I think the current system where big companies just dump boatloads of products on the market shouldn't hold. I believe that most of the time, big sellers will settle for the solution which benefits them most financially, usually just barely meeting their clients' demands.
Software megabundles office suites and software development environments are some examples. Start out with individual components that work reasonably well, while being reasonably affordable. Next, add more and more features, some of which the customers need, most of which they don't want. Continue by hooking customers onto your proprietary format, bundle the apps in ever more bulging, bloated packages.
In order to stay compatlble with colleagues (and reduse risks from security flaws etc.) customers need to buy ever newer versions.
This way, adding few extra features and benefits and reselling the same slightly updated package over and over again to lots of customers, revenue spirals to unreasonable heights.
One-off contract work is a contrasting example. I work on projects for many different clients, mostly embedded applications. Each project requires specialized software, with little reuse of modules between projects. because of different hardware, development environments, software libraries, etcetera.
Now compare the amount of work per programmer a programming team puts into a mass-marketed product to the amount of work I do for my projects. Isn't it odd that only big corporations selling mass-produced items can benefit from this 'multiplier' effect while I cannot, all because of an artificial construct like 'copyright' and its corresponding ban on copying? Instead of promoting creativity by rewarding individual creators, this is more like subsidizing mass producers using the buyers' spending money.
If I were a book publisher, why should I be able to gross in lots more money from selling books than just the cost of printing them plus a modest bonus?
To me 'copyright' nowadays means little more than 'license to monopolize mass distribution', since most artists have to sign away their rights to the distributors anyway.
Sorry if this is something like a rant, but I think I'm in a Syd state of mind today.
Exactly.
We need to get it out of our minds that there will be always be a 'multiplier' effect in creating something, selling lots and lots of copies under the umbrella of copyright, then sit back and hear the cash registers ping away as the value of one creation gets multiplied into millions of sales.
Syd Barrett (on record companies, wholesalers and retailers): "All middle men are bad"
It would only be a violation of the constitution if the government were forcing everybody to use DRM; but that is not what we're talking about here.
Remember the Broadcast flag, anyone?
Here you go.
US Patent #4804949: Hand-held optical scanner and computer mouse.
As you can see, the patent is quite old. It was filed in 1987, published in 1989.
To add something constructive to this whole topic:
If you want to gather data on lots of people, find out about their political, sexual, whatever preferences, mine Usenet.
Just gulp down all of the soc.* hierarchy, any newsgroup containing 'politics', any sex / gender / race related newsgroups, etcetera, then feed all the articles to your text filter, freshly stacked with any spook words you care to use.
Perfectly legal, too. If the bandwidth use is any problem to your usenet provider, switch to one of dozens of MegaLeech providers usually specializing in binaries.
As an added bonus, the articles will contain an 'NNTP-Posting-Host: ' header which you can use to track down your 'victims', unless they're posting on a privacy-consious usenet provider.
I don't mind publishing this little 'secret', for I'm sure the spooks have been doing this for a l_o_n_g time.
Quoted directly from the Conditions of Use
LICENSE AND SITE ACCESS
[...]
This license does not include any resale or commercial use of this site or its contents; any collection and use of any product listings, descriptions, or prices; any derivative use of this site or its contents; any downloading or copying of account information for the benefit of another merchant; or any use of data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools.
[...]
Which part of this paragraph does the article writer not understand?
To me it is loud and clear: No data mining allowed. Period.
Either Amazon changed this in the blink of an eye right after this article was posted (which I find very doubtful), or the author may be looking forward to a peppered letter or phone call from Amazon legal department pretty soon.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but the world actually has close to _six_and_a_half_ billion people... 6,484,183,002 as of today according to geohive.com.
"Wretched isn't it?" -Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Their tactics are disgusting, and moreover, these practice are a danger for the environmenet, because it is impossible to prevent dissemination of the resistance genes into other species.
This give a whole new meaning to the phrase "viral marketing", where 'viral' of course refers to the pattern of spreading, not to the means by which it is done. Yet another proof why viral marketing doesn't always produce a desired outcome, because you cannot fully control it.
Ah, how I love those product names. A microdisplay with a 65" screen? Can't wait for the megamouse that fits in your wallet...
I buy 2-3 different cell phones per year
:-)
Why do you need 2-3 extra cell phones per year? Do you serve them with French fries and ketchup, feed them to your dog or what?
I have 2 cell phones, one is a spare: 6 years old and still works perfectly, the other is a PDA/phone that I use to do software development. Besides the obvious, placing and receiving calls, of course.
When either of them dies, I'll replace it with a similar one. Until battery capacity or energy efficiency improve considerably, I don't expect any sudden increase in important functionality in new phones.
The safety feature is that this is a drive-by-wire system
[blink, read again, funny feeling in stomach, then do utmost to quench a severe gag reflex...]
Drive by wire...steering wheel, gas AND brake...controlled by an Xbox 360??
Hell knows I want to be outside a 100 mile radius when a beast like that is in motion on a f*ing road. Serious!
This must be a safety engineer's nightmare come true.