Really? I though their primary source of revenue was to sue any tech company it possibly could to generate revenue streams, as opposed to actually marketing anything. It would be wonderful if someone could figure out a way to destroy SCO and put all of its officers and shareholders in a deep, dark, dank, rat and roach-infested dungeon somewhere for a very long time.
Oh, geeze the wheeze louise, the whole point of corruptible voting machines is to maintain the American tradition of fixed elections! People just don't get it. Incumbents and their supporters (and the people they appoint to office to oversee these things) WANT the bollixed boxes! They assure the Election Day Resurrections of the dead as they commute from the bone yards and funery urns (rising phoenix-like from the ashes) to the polling stations. Incumbents must do everything in their power to assure the franchise of the cemetery constituency, or the local pork may go oinking elsewhere.
Diebold, of course, will maintain the felicity of their system. After all, they guaranteed to put the current administration back in power a mere two years ago. It behooves them to swear by the trustworthiness of their machines. Could anyone expect anything less of a customer service-oriented firm?
That's the point! Confuse the hell out of the process so that whoever holds the keys has a chance to throw the election! Good grief. Does anyone in the USA really believe the incumbents want truly fair and honestly auditable ballot-casting? Making it simple and incorruptible is the last thing partisan state election commissions want. Their guy might lose the election.
Like anyone would really expect Microsoft to to be an Open Source booster? Steve Ballmer is a closet Linux junky, maybe? And listens to an iPod in the privacy of his home loo?
...the Japanese, who came up with it as a cheerful logo to greet all of the foreign nationals coming to the first Olympics held in Japan in the late 1960's. I suppose the Japan Olympics committee could trademark it internationally...
I don't use Linux. Who needs it with Mac and OS X around? Hence, I've been spared the legendary bad manners of the Linux Louts. If I ever have questions, I ask Mac users who seem to be thrilled by Linux. When I ask them why they need Linux when the have OS X, the usually scratch their heads and say, "Well, it's nice to have options..."
But the story's about Windows users switching to Linux. If Linux Louts are what you're getting, maybe you should find yourself one of those happy Mac users who likes tinkering with Linux. They're more often than not quite happy to help walk you through the set up.
If you don't use it, Google Desktop can't harvest a thing. So don't. Use something else to search across your network.
If you must use it, encrypt your data and use the longest possble key allowed. Sure, it someone throws a few terabytes of dedicated processing power at it, they'll crack it in a few days (maybe a little sooner), but that kind of processing time costs a lot and no one is going to thow money at it unless they are pretty sure there's something there that will be useful.
I don't use Google Desktop, but I don't need it. With Mac OSX, I have other secure options. I suspect this is a big issue for Windows users; but then, Windows is so full of security holes that I wonder if Google Desktop really adds to that risk.
Now that is ridiculous. If you really have such a law in your country, it sounds like you need new leaders--at least new representatives with enough character to tell the US to get lost. You also get the EU to back you up by telling to US to piss off. You need to be mad as hell at your own leaders first.
There you have it. The music download services could arrange their virtual shops to appear iTunes-like (or any likes other similar playlist database) in any browser that adheres to web standards.
I've deliberately decreased my purchases of CD's for a couple of reassons:
1. Copy protection. I will not buy a copy-protected CD. If they all become copy protected, then I will never buy another one.
2. The highway robber attitude espoused by most representatives of the major recording labels. The more I hear them natter on, the angrier I get and the more tighly closed I keep my wallet.
I used to spend upwards of $1200 a year on music. That had nose-dived to about $400 this past year, mostly because of the two reasons stated above.
Also, I look at who the label is: if I see Warner, Sony, Columbia, or any of the other Big Labels, I boycott them. I don't need their products to make my life more bearable. I either buy directly from the artist, or from small labels that don't treat their customers like thieves.
If a place like Yahoo is making money off of streaming music videos, then the record labels certainly deserve a cut in the profit, or are justified in charging per play fees. I don't think that they deserve a cut in ad revenues from an information search engine like Google, however. Google isn't streaming videos and selling ad space based on that.
Likewise, the labels don't deserve a cut in the profits generated by any device that plays music back, such as the iPod. The labels have done nothing to develop or market such hardware, and the fact is that their music doesn't sell the devices, it is quite the reverse: people buy them, and then buy music to play on them.
This is what Greed 2.0 is all about: record labels skimming profit from the work of others when they have done nothing to deserve it.
If 70 cents of every tune from the iTunes music store has gone to the labels, this means the labels have received something like $400 million in revenue from the iTMS USA alone--free and clear gold in the pocket, unencumbered by any overhead for advertising or manufacture of physical product, not to mention zero cost for distribution.
And this is money that they wouldn't have had to begin with, if not for the (reletively) low-cost download service. Greed 2.0 is about wringing the beast of every drop of monetary blood until it is bled to death.
...um...creating another something like Microsoft.
Knocking Microsoft down a few pegs just means somebody else gets bigger and protective about its market turf, and they start acting like MS, which is just acting like any other big,rich, successful company protecting it market turf so that it can continue to be big, rich, and successful.
So Google becomes Fuggle and everybody stops flipping off MS and flips the fuggie sign at them, getting stuck for sticking it to MS.
Or something like it. Cripes, and I bet people are tossing good cash down this flush hole. The only place air cars are ever going to fly for real is in the movies, which are--he-heh--fiction.
From the previews, this is not a waste of time. Some of the criticisms are just wrong-headed moronic. This is fan made material done at next to zero budget, and it comes off a thousand percent better than some of the b-Grade skiffy trash I see being rented from the video shops.
It would be great if some big network like Sci-fi channel would pick it up, pay these guys a room full of cash, and do a commercial production version, tampering as little as possible with the original story line.
This will be a cult classic! It will be played on science fiction convention video channels for decades to come.
...has been around for years, is free, and so much like MS Office that you't think it would have overwhelmed MS Office by now.
But there you have it: as good as OO is, as much like MS Office as it is, and even though in some ways it's better, folks still go out and spring the big bucks for MSO.
StarOffice? If the freebie OO hasn't barely dented the MSO dominance, how on earth will SO? It'll get a health chunk of the paying market and be the darling of Microsoft haters, but the hoi poloi will still flock to MS Office.
I certainly hope Apple will resist the effort at corporate blackmail on the part of RIAA members. It does own its own sizeable chunk of recording rights, which it bought a couple of years ago for a few cool billions, and I'm sure that 600,000 title catalog has gown.
However, in Japan Apple did ultimately cave-in on the matter of variable pricing. The Japanese labels refused to budge, and Apple wanted to get that iTMS Japan store going. The tunes it sells are roughly at parity with the prices charged at other Japanese download stores. iTMS is still, however, wildly more popular than any other store here, which has Sony frothing.
It would be interesting to see if iTMS could implement a model similar to that used by AllOfMp3.com (but with no doubt watever as to legality).
The prevelant wisdom here, that Apple has the labels by the royal jewels, is wrong, though. These people have incredibly deep pockets, collectively far deeper than Apple's, and could quite easily weather an losses in revue incurred if dropped by iTMS. There are still plenty of other download services that they sell through.
The issue is whether Apple feels spunky enough to be a maverick, kiss the the big labels good-bye (and along with them the major acts), and risk making a go with smaller labels and independent artists. If it is, then it can deal with the labels on its own terms by simply ignoring them. The recording industry as represented by RIAA members is just one--admitedly very large--dimension among many. As it has demonstrated its fortitude in being a maverick computer company, bucking the odds in a more-or-less Microsoft/Windows universe, so might it equally succeed with music.
The other thread of wisdom, that the buying public will cheer at this Apple toughness, is also a bit too optimistic. Most of the downloading public doesn't give a mouse fart in a hurricane. They want their popular tunes, and it doesn't matter that few folks here think most of that popular stuff is shite. Call them Philistines if you wish, but they buy the music that's popular.
Someone else has noted here that the real issue is control of distribution, and there of pricing and who gets the lion's share of profit. This is entirely the case: RIAA members see their distribution networks under threat if not under seige, and they are willing to dig in and take whatever immediate financial losses may be incurred to assure their longrange control of the distribution network. Control of that in turn assures that they can charge whatever they wish.
So the further question facing Apple is whether the iPod would continue to be a hot seller if the major labels were out of the picture, and if th iPod would continue to drive music sales for alternative independent arts and small labels.
And when your internet connection goes south, or your network connection is broken, you can't get to your stuff. Oh, you have back-up apps on the HD. What? To save money, you bought a dumb box?
This sounds like the Microsoft version of the perfect future in which all applications are on line, you pay monthly fees to subscribe to them, and Microsoft is running the internet for peace, security, and benefit of all humankind. Bill Gates, looking like Henry Gibson on Laugh-In, is smiling at you out of the screen and has a flower for you.
I've lost count of all of the other P2P apps that abound. While Limewire is the most popular and has an admittedly user-friendly interface, it is but one among all of the alternatives, and frankly it is perhaps an expensive alternative at that if you wish to free yourself of the free version's nag screens and go to Pro; and that isn't much better when Limewire introduces and upgrade and the nagging to upgrade and pay yet again for it.
This is all a lot of FUD. Start worrying when legislatures try to make P2P illegal. Worry instead about efforts to shut down web sites that serve as information exchanges for P2P afficiandos. If Limewire goes down the flusher it will be no loss--indeed, it will still be around as an Open Source app.
Don't people have better things to do with their time than moo around about something like this?
Oh. I forgot. This is Slash.dot.
KID: Look at that Lexus, Ma! MA: Eh? KID: It has four tires, two headlights, and a windshield! MA: (Perplexed) Eh? KID: Just like our Studebaker! MA: (Smack kid upside the head.)
This isn't FEMA's fault. I've run into this idiocy at any number of sites, government and otherwise. It's the result of laziness and incompetence, and a sure indicator that whoever is running their computersystems out to be summarily fired for (1) abusing public trust and disenfranchising the citizenry, and (2) possible malfeasance and corruption in requiring users to financially support a private company by buying its software. It may not be intentional, but nevertheless the effect is the same, and whether the malfeasance is intentional or the result of negligence, the result is the same.
The vast majority of Japanese have cell phones, live very close together in big cities, and geographically speaking it is much easier to wire and cable and install cell phone relays in Japan than in the USA. I mean, Japan covers about the same land area as California, Oregon, and Washington and has about 5 times the population as those three states.
It IS a little different out in rural Japan. NTT uses the same reason as US telcos for not wiring up the remoter, non-urban areas: not enough people. This can be right next to a major city, mind you. I have a friend living in a pocket community 15 kilometers from Gifu City center and the 100 or so people living in his neighbohood can't get broadband, ADSL, or cable (TV or computer). NTT and the cable companies say there aren't enough folks to cover the cost of laying in the wires or fiber.
I'm surprised that works from the Renassaince haven't been copyrighted. Museums spend a lot of money retouching paintings, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone figures out how to copyright the PD images under a claim that retouching has created a new image.
Photographs of those great works are copyrightable.
If Blue Frog only runs on a Windoze platform, how do we know it isn't just some clever spyware app that clever spammers put out to lull us all into complacency?
Slashdot Mirror
Really? I though their primary source of revenue was to sue any tech company it possibly could to generate revenue streams, as opposed to actually marketing anything. It would be wonderful if someone could figure out a way to destroy SCO and put all of its officers and shareholders in a deep, dark, dank, rat and roach-infested dungeon somewhere for a very long time.
Oh, geeze the wheeze louise, the whole point of corruptible voting machines is to maintain the American tradition of fixed elections! People just don't get it. Incumbents and their supporters (and the people they appoint to office to oversee these things) WANT the bollixed boxes! They assure the Election Day Resurrections of the dead as they commute from the bone yards and funery urns (rising phoenix-like from the ashes) to the polling stations. Incumbents must do everything in their power to assure the franchise of the cemetery constituency, or the local pork may go oinking elsewhere. Diebold, of course, will maintain the felicity of their system. After all, they guaranteed to put the current administration back in power a mere two years ago. It behooves them to swear by the trustworthiness of their machines. Could anyone expect anything less of a customer service-oriented firm?
That's the point! Confuse the hell out of the process so that whoever holds the keys has a chance to throw the election! Good grief. Does anyone in the USA really believe the incumbents want truly fair and honestly auditable ballot-casting? Making it simple and incorruptible is the last thing partisan state election commissions want. Their guy might lose the election.
Like anyone would really expect Microsoft to to be an Open Source booster? Steve Ballmer is a closet Linux junky, maybe? And listens to an iPod in the privacy of his home loo?
Bill Gates is hiring Linus Torvalds to fix Vista?
...the Japanese, who came up with it as a cheerful logo to greet all of the foreign nationals coming to the first Olympics held in Japan in the late 1960's. I suppose the Japan Olympics committee could trademark it internationally...
I don't use Linux. Who needs it with Mac and OS X around? Hence, I've been spared the legendary bad manners of the Linux Louts. If I ever have questions, I ask Mac users who seem to be thrilled by Linux. When I ask them why they need Linux when the have OS X, the usually scratch their heads and say, "Well, it's nice to have options..." But the story's about Windows users switching to Linux. If Linux Louts are what you're getting, maybe you should find yourself one of those happy Mac users who likes tinkering with Linux. They're more often than not quite happy to help walk you through the set up.
If you don't use it, Google Desktop can't harvest a thing. So don't. Use something else to search across your network. If you must use it, encrypt your data and use the longest possble key allowed. Sure, it someone throws a few terabytes of dedicated processing power at it, they'll crack it in a few days (maybe a little sooner), but that kind of processing time costs a lot and no one is going to thow money at it unless they are pretty sure there's something there that will be useful. I don't use Google Desktop, but I don't need it. With Mac OSX, I have other secure options. I suspect this is a big issue for Windows users; but then, Windows is so full of security holes that I wonder if Google Desktop really adds to that risk.
Now that is ridiculous. If you really have such a law in your country, it sounds like you need new leaders--at least new representatives with enough character to tell the US to get lost. You also get the EU to back you up by telling to US to piss off. You need to be mad as hell at your own leaders first.
There you have it. The music download services could arrange their virtual shops to appear iTunes-like (or any likes other similar playlist database) in any browser that adheres to web standards.
I've deliberately decreased my purchases of CD's for a couple of reassons:
1. Copy protection. I will not buy a copy-protected CD. If they all become copy protected, then I will never buy another one.
2. The highway robber attitude espoused by most representatives of the major recording labels. The more I hear them natter on, the angrier I get and the more tighly closed I keep my wallet.
I used to spend upwards of $1200 a year on music. That had nose-dived to about $400 this past year, mostly because of the two reasons stated above.
Also, I look at who the label is: if I see Warner, Sony, Columbia, or any of the other Big Labels, I boycott them. I don't need their products to make my life more bearable. I either buy directly from the artist, or from small labels that don't treat their customers like thieves.
If a place like Yahoo is making money off of streaming music videos, then the record labels certainly deserve a cut in the profit, or are justified in charging per play fees. I don't think that they deserve a cut in ad revenues from an information search engine like Google, however. Google isn't streaming videos and selling ad space based on that. Likewise, the labels don't deserve a cut in the profits generated by any device that plays music back, such as the iPod. The labels have done nothing to develop or market such hardware, and the fact is that their music doesn't sell the devices, it is quite the reverse: people buy them, and then buy music to play on them. This is what Greed 2.0 is all about: record labels skimming profit from the work of others when they have done nothing to deserve it. If 70 cents of every tune from the iTunes music store has gone to the labels, this means the labels have received something like $400 million in revenue from the iTMS USA alone--free and clear gold in the pocket, unencumbered by any overhead for advertising or manufacture of physical product, not to mention zero cost for distribution. And this is money that they wouldn't have had to begin with, if not for the (reletively) low-cost download service. Greed 2.0 is about wringing the beast of every drop of monetary blood until it is bled to death.
...um...creating another something like Microsoft. Knocking Microsoft down a few pegs just means somebody else gets bigger and protective about its market turf, and they start acting like MS, which is just acting like any other big,rich, successful company protecting it market turf so that it can continue to be big, rich, and successful. So Google becomes Fuggle and everybody stops flipping off MS and flips the fuggie sign at them, getting stuck for sticking it to MS.
Or something like it. Cripes, and I bet people are tossing good cash down this flush hole. The only place air cars are ever going to fly for real is in the movies, which are--he-heh--fiction.
It sure did look cool in Bladerunner, though!
From the previews, this is not a waste of time. Some of the criticisms are just wrong-headed moronic. This is fan made material done at next to zero budget, and it comes off a thousand percent better than some of the b-Grade skiffy trash I see being rented from the video shops.
It would be great if some big network like Sci-fi channel would pick it up, pay these guys a room full of cash, and do a commercial production version, tampering as little as possible with the original story line.
This will be a cult classic! It will be played on science fiction convention video channels for decades to come.
Great, thanks. I started the torrent sownload on another computer, then saw this and clicked the link--it's at least 2-3 times faster!
...has been around for years, is free, and so much like MS Office that you't think it would have overwhelmed MS Office by now.
But there you have it: as good as OO is, as much like MS Office as it is, and even though in some ways it's better, folks still go out and spring the big bucks for MSO.
StarOffice? If the freebie OO hasn't barely dented the MSO dominance, how on earth will SO? It'll get a health chunk of the paying market and be the darling of Microsoft haters, but the hoi poloi will still flock to MS Office.
I certainly hope Apple will resist the effort at corporate blackmail on the part of RIAA members. It does own its own sizeable chunk of recording rights, which it bought a couple of years ago for a few cool billions, and I'm sure that 600,000 title catalog has gown.
However, in Japan Apple did ultimately cave-in on the matter of variable pricing. The Japanese labels refused to budge, and Apple wanted to get that iTMS Japan store going. The tunes it sells are roughly at parity with the prices charged at other Japanese download stores. iTMS is still, however, wildly more popular than any other store here, which has Sony frothing.
It would be interesting to see if iTMS could implement a model similar to that used by AllOfMp3.com (but with no doubt watever as to legality).
The prevelant wisdom here, that Apple has the labels by the royal jewels, is wrong, though. These people have incredibly deep pockets, collectively far deeper than Apple's, and could quite easily weather an losses in revue incurred if dropped by iTMS. There are still plenty of other download services that they sell through.
The issue is whether Apple feels spunky enough to be a maverick, kiss the the big labels good-bye (and along with them the major acts), and risk making a go with smaller labels and independent artists. If it is, then it can deal with the labels on its own terms by simply ignoring them. The recording industry as represented by RIAA members is just one--admitedly very large--dimension among many. As it has demonstrated its fortitude in being a maverick computer company, bucking the odds in a more-or-less Microsoft/Windows universe, so might it equally succeed with music.
The other thread of wisdom, that the buying public will cheer at this Apple toughness, is also a bit too optimistic. Most of the downloading public doesn't give a mouse fart in a hurricane. They want their popular tunes, and it doesn't matter that few folks here think most of that popular stuff is shite. Call them Philistines if you wish, but they buy the music that's popular.
Someone else has noted here that the real issue is control of distribution, and there of pricing and who gets the lion's share of profit. This is entirely the case: RIAA members see their distribution networks under threat if not under seige, and they are willing to dig in and take whatever immediate financial losses may be incurred to assure their longrange control of the distribution network. Control of that in turn assures that they can charge whatever they wish.
So the further question facing Apple is whether the iPod would continue to be a hot seller if the major labels were out of the picture, and if th iPod would continue to drive music sales for alternative independent arts and small labels.
And when your internet connection goes south, or your network connection is broken, you can't get to your stuff. Oh, you have back-up apps on the HD. What? To save money, you bought a dumb box?
This sounds like the Microsoft version of the perfect future in which all applications are on line, you pay monthly fees to subscribe to them, and Microsoft is running the internet for peace, security, and benefit of all humankind. Bill Gates, looking like Henry Gibson on Laugh-In, is smiling at you out of the screen and has a flower for you.
I think I'll stay behind the wave on this one.
I've lost count of all of the other P2P apps that abound. While Limewire is the most popular and has an admittedly user-friendly interface, it is but one among all of the alternatives, and frankly it is perhaps an expensive alternative at that if you wish to free yourself of the free version's nag screens and go to Pro; and that isn't much better when Limewire introduces and upgrade and the nagging to upgrade and pay yet again for it.
This is all a lot of FUD. Start worrying when legislatures try to make P2P illegal. Worry instead about efforts to shut down web sites that serve as information exchanges for P2P afficiandos. If Limewire goes down the flusher it will be no loss--indeed, it will still be around as an Open Source app.
Don't people have better things to do with their time than moo around about something like this?
Oh. I forgot. This is Slash.dot.
KID: Look at that Lexus, Ma!
MA: Eh?
KID: It has four tires, two headlights, and a windshield!
MA: (Perplexed) Eh?
KID: Just like our Studebaker!
MA: (Smack kid upside the head.)
This isn't FEMA's fault. I've run into this idiocy at any number of sites, government and otherwise. It's the result of laziness and incompetence, and a sure indicator that whoever is running their computersystems out to be summarily fired for (1) abusing public trust and disenfranchising the citizenry, and (2) possible malfeasance and corruption in requiring users to financially support a private company by buying its software. It may not be intentional, but nevertheless the effect is the same, and whether the malfeasance is intentional or the result of negligence, the result is the same.
The vast majority of Japanese have cell phones, live very close together in big cities, and geographically speaking it is much easier to wire and cable and install cell phone relays in Japan than in the USA. I mean, Japan covers about the same land area as California, Oregon, and Washington and has about 5 times the population as those three states.
It IS a little different out in rural Japan. NTT uses the same reason as US telcos for not wiring up the remoter, non-urban areas: not enough people. This can be right next to a major city, mind you. I have a friend living in a pocket community 15 kilometers from Gifu City center and the 100 or so people living in his neighbohood can't get broadband, ADSL, or cable (TV or computer). NTT and the cable companies say there aren't enough folks to cover the cost of laying in the wires or fiber.
I'm surprised that works from the Renassaince haven't been copyrighted. Museums spend a lot of money retouching paintings, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone figures out how to copyright the PD images under a claim that retouching has created a new image. Photographs of those great works are copyrightable.
They interbred with homo sapiens. Just about everybody likes sex. I doubt Neanderthals were any different from Cro Magnon in that department.
If Blue Frog only runs on a Windoze platform, how do we know it isn't just some clever spyware app that clever spammers put out to lull us all into complacency?
Cheers!