but if you flipped it a thousand or a million times, you'd notice a general trend of 50-50
But we're not talking about coin flipping! We're talking about mind-numbing complexity coupled with other influences, like the sun's variability on several levels across all sorts of time scales that may or may not resonate with climactic changes here, volcanoes, and other things that could completely, hugely throw off any trend that we think we're observing.
Is our activity enhancing or mitigating existing trends in some way? Sure, probably. Will we be in a position to do anything about it if we wreck our economy while essentially subsidizing hugely growing economies that have already said they have no interest in altering their own behavior? Not a chance. We need a thriving, profitable economy in order to pay for the sort of technological research and development that will let us get farther into safe nukes and other alternatives. Tax incentives for people that work on such things will go a lot farther than simply agreeing to use less oil, or trading those rights with others who don't care one way or the other.
I work hard, and I'm not (very) stupid. The disruption in daily operations for me to cut 40 live web and db servers, along with all of the code, over to Linux from Win2003/SQL/IIS/ASP/VB would be: total budget killer.
Just changing my group's desktops (including the dev tools, custom apps, storage, file structures, user environments, etc) and ignoring the desktops: total budget killer.
Much better off to talk about the suitability of the Linux stack for new business units, operations, or totally-clean-slate start-up companies. Of course, many new business units are spun off by too-busy growing companies, using people that are already hip-deep in their existing IT framework. This is NOT like deciding that, at home, this weekend, maybe it's time to switch. Any real change would occupy a typical department's people for man-months at least. Very few operations of any kind have that kind of slop in their budgets, as we're coming out of a recession and an only just now loosening IT cost clamp down.
I'd be organizing class-action suits, writing letters, storming Redmond with torches in hand
Maybe I would, but... I've had a busy day doing things for which I collect money, and which help my customers to make money. And I spent that whole day using MS products, none of which crashed, none of which picked up any worms, and none of which required a busy team of people to totally grok a new operating system or try to guess where they'd ever come up with time to do that.
Why these people put up with it most likely can be put into two categories: 1) ignorance, and 2) laziness. Either they don't know there are viable options, or they are too lazy to actually pursue said options.
Don't work in a very competitive, time-stressed, low-margin business environment, do you? Or are you 1) too ignorant or 2) too intellectually lazy to imagine that there might be actual, practical barriers to the quick adoption of something that's completely different and which would require hiring, consultants, and substantial risks? It's called inertia, and in tight economic circumstances, bosses and investors don't like to hear: "It's OK, it's completely different, and no one that works here has ever needed to compile code in order to patch something, but we'll figure it out before anything bad happens! Plus, it's free, other than the huge disruption, support costs, and unknown impact on all of our software! Relax, boss - don't be ignorant and lazy. Certain people on Slashdot have a magic Linux wand that they can wave to make this totally painless, instant, and more or less free."
Personal responsibility is a broken concept. It's also very primitive and obsolete; it's the perfect excuse for letting the rich blame the poor for their predicament. It's also a great tool to keep the State from meddling with the rich people's business.
Personal responsibility could conceivably be extended to justify murder, with "well, he didn't have a gun and didn't defend himself when I shot him dead, so it's his fault he's dead".
This is what qualifies as +5 insightful? That's... breathtaking.
Killing a defenseless person is that act which, in an atmosphere of personal accountibility, most directly and immediately demonstrates your willingness to give up your own rights. You take someone else's away, or attempt to do so, you lose yours. It's as simple as that. You are a trolling, flamebating ass, and you know it, even if the drive-by moderators think that this is some high qualtiy, if tangental, anti-libertarian bash worthy of modding up. Nonsense.
Yet every motherfucking person in the Bible belt owns at least one Gun
Don't forget, Mr. Anonymous Coward, that some of us live outside of the Bible Belt, and own several!
around fifty eight thousand Americans are killed by guns every year
What about the tens of thousands that are killed with knives (or other "sharp implements," as the crime stats put it), blunt instruments, or cars? Added up, those hugely eclipse guns. Shall we ban them? Or how about, say, negligent/accidental medical mistreatment - which kill tens of thousands, and injure (depending on how you define "injure") hundreds of thousands or millions each year.
The point is, if you're going to simply trot out statistics to say that something is more dangerous (domestically, so far, you short-sighted twit - the actions of the ideologies we're worried about have killed millions overseas, remember? and as often with bombs or machetes as guns) than terrorism, so we should just walk away from the declared intentions of Islamist extremists to use WMD on our citizens and interests as quickly as they can actually get them to work, then you're a fool. And, you seem to subscribe to the ridiculous notion that we can't do two things at once (say, lock up violent domestic criminals - which are those most likely to pick up a weapon again and hurt someone - and try to track down people hoping to blow up a train full of chlorine, or whatever), then it's a wonder you can read slashdot and breath at the same time, as difficult as you must find multi-tasking.
"Gun culture," as you put it, has been around a lot longer (and lot more passionately) than has the "don't care, I'm going to kill you" (with a knife, a rope, a car, or a gun) culture we've seen in the last few decades. Everyone in my family, going back generations into 1700's Europe, has owned and used guns. For hunting dinner, for self defense, and for sport. Of course, the current European decendents of those folks don't have as many choices that way, any longer.
Not long ago, you could mail order a shotgun or a deer rifle from Sears, or buy a pistol at the hardware store right next door to the drug store, where kids might buy a copy of The Phantom, or The Shadow. Those forms of entertainment were happy to relate fantastic stories that included gun violence. And parents were happy to help their kids grasp the difference between fantasy and reality. You could buy a semi-auto rifle then, and you can buy one now. You could immerse yourself in dark, violent entertainment then, and you can do it now. The difference? Parents spent a fraction of the time with their kids now, instead of treating child rearing like the solemn challenge that it really is.
And kids are so disconnected from the reality of violence (say, by helping grandpa clean up a shot deer in the garage) that they can no longer mentally connect pulling the trigger with real, tangible, irreversible damage. But that's also true of how they drive, how they drink, how they have sex, and how they never read.
It's not "gun culture" you should be worried about, it's "no parent culture" and its direct impact on generations of rudderless, immature kids that don't get causality (or casualties).
It doesn't matter if it will work or not. What's important is that we'll soon be flooded with "H1d3 Y0ur Dr1v1ng H15t0ry" spam for sites selling tinfoil-based "car tax privacy shields" that go over the receiver's antenna.
Most large industries are very competitive, and though a huge amount of money changes hands, the margin is usually quite small, especially at the manufacturing, wholesale, and distribution level. If a stock analyst noticed a structural 4% contraction in any company's sales, there would be a change in his/her recommendation to buy or hold that stock. 4% is big.
I never could come to grips with creating a Department of Homeland Security when we already had a National Security Agency. It seems more like Bush had more out-of-work friends than he had positions to appoint them to.
This is not interesting, this is a political troll. DHS focuses strictly on what its name says: domestic stuff. The NSA, traditionally, is tasked with listening in on those international communications that would imply threats to our interests. The NSA happens to be the best technical match (in terms of expertise and capacity) for helping to secure inter-agency networking, specifically to help keep that info from being cracked. It's a good fit.
On a side note, has anyone else heard that the entrance to the DHS building is in an alley, and the entire office space is about as big is the lobby of the CIA HQ?
That's mostly myth, of course. But the real point is that the CIA's Virginia HQ is a place where thousands of people actually perform analysis and publishing work. The DHS people are more supervisory, and coordinate the domestic security work that's done elsewhere (say, at the TSA).
Virtually every government agency is subject to evolution in their mission, especially when we experience a fundamental change in the technological landscape. The NSA probably has more experience, nuts-and-bolts-wise, with this subject than any other collection of humans on the planet. No question they've got the chops, but the budget warfare will be a bloody one, just like it was with the TSA or is shaping up to be on things like border crossing security or container shipment inspection. Compared to years past, these changes are happening very, very quickly. At least the NSA won't have to run out and figure out what sort of people to hire, or invent new tools to understand their mission in this case. It's more a matter of scale, and of getting, say, the IT guys at the Commerce Department to understand their nerdy new friends.
Change the players to something more politically correct, like a Hybrid Car factory, and watch exactly the same thing play out. Big companies always look to put their people, their money, and their wake-generating activity in a place (or tax framework) that best suits their bottom line. Why do you suppose that Japanese car manufacturers have partnership plants in Kentucky? Because Michigan was out of room? No, because they dangled issues like jobs in front of political decision makers, and the best deal won. Did the editors of this posting just fall off a turnip truck or something? That headline is gratuitous. Come on, now.
In case you forgot, this article is about an artist who won a Grammy for a web-distributed album which bypassed "those companies" completely. Kind of refutes your claim
Which is why I used the word "most."
Unlike such unknown amateurs as Little Richard, Prince, and Chuck D.
Sure, or Billy Joel, or any of a lot of other people that struck lousy deals. The good news is that we're in a period now where there's no excuse for not having good information about anything, including record companies. Plenty of authors, plumbers, doctors, programmers, and other people also strike crappy deals and regret it for years (I know I have!), and plenty don't. When you decide to make a living as a musician, you are entering a business. Doesn't mean you have to do it in a traditional way, but you're in a market at that point, with several routes you can take. Lots of people choose badly, but are so impressed that someone is actually paying attention to them that it takes a few years to get their heads screwed on straight.
It seems to me that it's only the "aggressive marketers" who are pissed off at p2p
Nope, only those that see their material getting massively ripped off. An ambitious performer that doesn't see that happening to their work probably isn't worrying about it much at all, unless they're more of the big-picture type, and are thinking about the poor schlumps to whom it is happening, and they're sympathetic.
The actual artists realize that they can't be both musicians and marketers, and that they are actually helped by the greater exposure file-sharing and Web distribution provide.
Except, even musicians that are too busy creating to be business people can be logical enough to follow things to the obvious conclusions: if the prevailing sentiment evolves into a sense of free entitlement to all music, all the time, then that exposure does them nothing at all in terms of helping them to put a roof over their head or eat. Artists that proclaim ownership of their work are making a choice, but it's their choice to make. Those that want to gamble in the exposure (by giving it away) vs. revenue (by only selling it) arena are making that gamble deliberately. Or, they would be, if people weren't disregarding their wishes and just ripping off their work regardless.
Almost as obnoxious as expecting to make money on an album, instead of accepting an advance which then gets taken out of album sales and paid back to the record label, so that you never actually see any money from it even if people do buy it.
Thousands and thousands of artists know the score and still vie for record contracts. It's like any other work-your-way-up situation. Without those companies helping, you simply aren't going to see that kind of exposure. Continue to produce at the level the audiences want, and you're in a position to negotiate a vastly better deal. There's nothing forcing people to go this route, but most are WAY too busy being musicians to also be the aggressive marketers, business people and fundraisers to build substantial momentum by any other means.
OK, that's fair. But until enough voters decide that they don't think that artists should be able to set the terms under which they sell their work, ripping them off will happily remain illegal. And, never mind the legal framework... it'll still remain wrong. If you talk enough people into voting, essentially, for making slaves of creators and innovators, you'll simply be squashing them. Can musicians make a living without royalties? Conceivably. Would as much get invested in large-scale entertainment like musicals, new symphonies, ballets, or even cursed boy-bands if those people couldn't expect some extended return for their labor? No.
Yeah, it's okay to record it off the radio, but if you want to download it, you're scum!
So we're here again. You don't like the way you pay for music on the radio (which you indirectly do, but being an audience for the advertisers), so since you don't like that implied contract, and don't think the musicians get enough money that way, you figure that you might as well make sure the artists get nothing at all.
Say it with me, a download does not necessarily equal a lost sale.
OK. Now say this with me:
So what? I doesn't freakin' matter! It's not your creation, it's the artist's creation, and they're the ones that decide how they want to sell (or not) their work. If they want to benefit from a record label's investment in production and marketing (and protecting their rights), then that's totally up to them. If you so dislike the artist's personal tastes and decision making, then I'm sure you won't have any interest in their music (and certainly wouldn't want to run off with a copy of it without paying, because why would you want the output of such a misguided, intellectually lightweight corporate tool?). Um, unless you DO want their music on your own terms (not theirs), and just aren't willing to say that out loud.
Or you could just support those artists (like the jazz artist that released her recent album only for sale online - with no record label participation, and won a Grammy for it last night) that are marketing to people like you that don't like to pay for a CD or listen to the radio. Or you could use any of dozens of pay-per-tune sites, and actually spend money in a format that seems to suit your tastes. I'm sure you have no objection to paying, right? It's all about convenience?
There you go again propagating propaganda about P2Ps hurting sales, where there aren't any conclusive studies to prove they affects sales. Sure there are studies showing P2Ps hurt sales and those showing the opposite, but who you believe depends on your agenda.
But it doesn't matter what the agenda is! The artist... the actual musician, the person whose music you're listening to... has specifically said: "don't take my music without paying for it." What's not clear about that? Who cares if it impacts one sale, a million, or none? By not agreeing to the artist's terms, your violating that artist's wishes. If you hate the artist's wishes that much, how can you like the music that person produces?
The reality is despite P2Ps, sales have remained unchanged, and increases or decreases mostly depend on economic conditions.
Again, so what? That doesn't change the fact that the artist says: "don't do that with my music."
The fact is people do want stuff for free, but they also want to support the artists; however, the people ripping off artists aren't their fans, but the people in their ivory towers who own 99% of the distribution networks. You can't release your great art without paying their tolls.
You mean, like the woman who just won a Grammy last night for her album, which was self-produced and released entirely and only for sale online without a record company involved? Of course, if people start ripping her off, and not paying what she's asking, she won't have a trade association's lawyers to help defend her rights. She'll just lose money, lose her interest in that method of distribution, and probably go right back to a record company. But you pretending that musicians can't get their work out by other means is nonsense, and you know it. Get a better argument, as that one's BS.
Sharing isn't immoral despite your rhetoric.
It is if, when you bought the work in question, you agreed not to do it. And if you ever have actually bought a CD, then you have (by definition) done just that. If you're saying you're not smart enough to read the label, where the artist says "my work is copyrighted," that's one thing. Or, if you know about the terms the artist wants, and you're deliberately, in effect, lying as you buy the CD, that's another thing. At least we all know you're lying about your respect for the artist's wishes, then. And when you do buy it, and spread it all over the internet, you're deliberately cheating on the artist with whom you just entered into that agreement. Don't like the agreement? Then admit that you don't like the artist who wants you to USE that agreement! Still want to hear the music? Wow - you're in a dilema, aren't you! Guess you'll have to actually buy the music, or admit that you're willing to rip the artist off.
Why don't you and the media cartels advocate for boycotting of posting unauthorized materials on P2P instead of for banning P2P altogether?
How can a record company "boycott" a P2P network that's ripping them off? You boycott someone by refusing to buy something from them. P2P networks aren't selling anything, they're largely used to avoid paying for things. You've got it completely backwards. Do you mean that the artists should just refuse to create any more music until the P2P users agree to stop ripping them off? I don't see that happening.
Back in the days of the cassette tapes, people were encouraged to make copies, but you didn't hear anything about "people wanting the work that the artist produces, and not wanting to pay for it."
Actually, you're exactly, completely wrong about that. There was considerable concern in the recording industry that cassette copying was going to hurt record sales. This turned out to be less of a threat because the copies were notoriously lousy sounding, and hard to make in large quantities without investing industrial equipment. And the only people investing in that equipment were people setting u
How about you look up the word "steal" and then start to use the right terminology. Stealing involves depriving someone of property - unless you're "stealing" a base. And we're not talking baseball here.
This is always so funny. I love the way that people who are too cheap, and too disrespectful of the very musicians they seem to like to listen to, respond to any challenge by attempting a redirect. How about this: let's forget worrying about whether it's theft (like of a baseball), or "infringment" (in the classic copyright sense of that word). You're trying to defend the practice of disregarding an artist's specific wishes. The artist agrees to play the music, and lays out the terms by which you can have your own copy of that music. In short: you can pay for it. Now, you don't want to pay for it... you want it for free, and want that person to be your personal musical entertainment slave. Who cares which law or regulation does or doesn't not exactly, specifically address it? You want people to sing, dance, make movies, write books, and otherwise create things that you like, and you want them to do it for you, for free, regardless of what they say.
You've got two choices here: admit you're angling to avoid paying for something that was created and distributed by the artist with the expectation that you'd pay, or that you really do think you should pay for it, and are simply too lazy to do so. There's no middle ground. If you agree that an artist should be paid, then you should honor the artist's terms. If you think the artist should create for you at no charge, then you're deliberately ignoring their rights (never mind legal: just plain rational and ethical), and have no complaint when they in turn seek to impact your rights in exchange.
Are the artists working everytime their recorded song is played?
No, but the good ones work their asses off, and attract money from producers to pay for expensive studio time, musicians, marketing, and other huge costs, in anticipation of a certain level of sales. They build a recording for a particular audience, they risk time, money, and investor's money in the expectation that a fairly predictable number of a certain type of person will like their music, and they'll be compensated for that risk and effort.
What, you'd rather that there's some fixed government-approved fee that musician is allowed to make at the time they make a recording, and then it's free for the world to use as they see fit? Who determines the value of the artist's time? I've got an idea: how about we determine the value by seeing how many people like the artist well enough to actually buy the recording.
Or, how about you pursuade a bunch of musicians to give away their work, and the ones that don't want to... you agree not to steal it from them?
Seriously, if you're not getting paid at your job, why don't you, you know, get another job?
But if you ran a small store, and for a year you lost all of your proceeds because you kept getting ripped off... wouldn't you want to do something about it, rather than just throw your hands up? And wouldn't at least some people in the situation want to get on the news and say: "hey kids! when you rip off my store, you're stealing from actual people!"
Professional musicians spend the best part of their lives getting to the point where they can earn a living at it. Ripping off music over the net is a recent development, and you can't blame career musicians (or aspirants) for wanting to change the course of this stuff back towards showing the artists a little respect. I'd completely agree with you if a musician wasn't making any money because no one liked their music (go get another job!), but the people in question are getting ripped off because people like them!
My first thought was: "I wonder how many people who are normally fine with pirating music because they're sticking it to a record company..." (as if the artist isn't a piece of that picture)..."will, out of inertia, just go ahead and run off with an unpaid-for copy of this woman's work, too." And then I realized that most Jazz fans are a little more cerebral, and have a lot more respect for the artists themselves, and typically would either go see a show, or actually pay for a recording. If her work isn't immediately torrented everywhere, that won't really indicate a sea change in this picture. Stay in the musical neighborhood, but see how it goes with, say, a new Norah Jones collection. Or, just prove that all of the "I only do it because of the RIAA" types are hypocrites by seeing if, just to make the point, Metallica or The Blackeyed Peas would do it. Their work would be immediately ripped off, and we'd have some tangible hypocrisy to point to. And this endless conversation would finally come down to: "I, um, really just don't want to pay for music, actually, you got me."
Was anyone else sooo annoyed at how much crap they spewed about downloading music last night?
Yeah, that was annoying. It's almost as if these people, that earn their living by being paid to entertain their audiences, are annoyed when people decide that they like their music, but not enough to pay for it. Pretty obnoxious, expecting to actually get paid for their work. Jerks! Soooo annoying.
So, let's see. An artist works their heart out to produce a CD. It's great, and they sell 100,000 copies. That's a good sales record, but a lot of artists to a lot better.
100,000 CDs at (say) $15.00 each retail. That's $1,500,000 going into that part of the economym which is a good thing regardless. The retail employees make money, the shippers make money, the local jurisdiction gets some tax revenue - all are stimulated by the transaction. But let's get back to the artis. The standard rate is around $0.08 per track. Assume a 10-track CD (though many are bigger, of course), and a typical 7% "points" clause on the gross sale of the CD. That works out to more than $1.50 per CD for the artist. But, let's round DOWN for the sake of argument. Say they only get $1.00. That's more money ($100,000) than most people make in a year, and doesn't take into account the revenue they also make from tie-in licensing, touring, t-shirt sales, and all the rest. The CD-sales-only part, if a very modestly successful artist sells only that many CDs, is a decent living.
When an artist gets more popular, and sells half a million recordings, they're doing pretty well. Of course, if everyone just distrbutes pirated copies of the artist's work onlone, they get nothing.
The artist doesn't get crap from the sales.
I'm kind of amazed that your theory is: since they don't make a lot of money when a CD is sold, there's no point giving them anything at all. You must really hate musicians, huh? Or like making them work for you for free? That's real nice of you. You're also forgetting that most artists wouldn't sell more than a few CDs at their local bar gig if they didn't have a record company producing, promoting, and getting their material out there in front of a lot of people.
Whew! It's a good thing for you that you don't make a living off of information that you personally create. You'd have a hard time justifying the paycheck.
so limitting free cultural exchange is good, but limitting free speech is bad?
both are important, and both should be legal.
Well, sure. But when an artist chooses to sell their work, and someone else chooses to find a way to get it without paying for it, that's not a freedom of speech issue. That's about people wanting the work that the artist produces, and not wanting to pay for it.
Now if only the RIAA/MPAA would learn this lesson.
Must even the most un-related news items be somehow tortured into a reason to self-proclaim one's rights to an artist's work, unpaid-for? Some Chinese citizen sitting in a net cafe "knowing" the news is not the same as you sitting in your living room "knowing" the latest Green Day CD without paying for it.
404 handlers, redirectors, simple scripts to handle referals you'd like to see land in a different spot... these are all child's play. The billed man-hours of lawyer time that this has already (and WILL) cost them must eclipse (by orders of magnitude) what a technical solution would have cost. They'll deserve all of the traffic they lose because of this, and serves them right. Let the web foot-traffic market show them the foolishness of this approach. This is not exactly proactively leveraging networked synergy, now, is it.
So, anything that I want, but can't afford, but can still somehow get my hands on, is mine to claim?
OK: I want to use your long distance account. I wouldn't have made calls otherwise, but since I can guess your PIN, and I'm not actually taking your phone away from you, I think it's OK. And since YOU think it's OK, please provide that info, OK? No? Hmmm... so if I found a web site that DID have that info, that would be... what... OK with you, then? I'm not rich, so I should be able to have it, right? Oh, wait, you'd have to foot the bill.
Just like artists and studios have to foot the bill to create what they create, and they do it with the expectation of being able to make a living off of how people consume their work. If that expectation was false, no one would be able to raise the money it takes to pay all of the people that are involved in producing recordings, films, and so on. If your thinking is correct, than what... only a few rich people would cough up $39 for a good DVD that costs millions to produce, and all of the rest of us should just take it if we want it?
Slashdot Mirror
but if you flipped it a thousand or a million times, you'd notice a general trend of 50-50
But we're not talking about coin flipping! We're talking about mind-numbing complexity coupled with other influences, like the sun's variability on several levels across all sorts of time scales that may or may not resonate with climactic changes here, volcanoes, and other things that could completely, hugely throw off any trend that we think we're observing.
Is our activity enhancing or mitigating existing trends in some way? Sure, probably. Will we be in a position to do anything about it if we wreck our economy while essentially subsidizing hugely growing economies that have already said they have no interest in altering their own behavior? Not a chance. We need a thriving, profitable economy in order to pay for the sort of technological research and development that will let us get farther into safe nukes and other alternatives. Tax incentives for people that work on such things will go a lot farther than simply agreeing to use less oil, or trading those rights with others who don't care one way or the other.
But people really are stupid and/or lazy
I work hard, and I'm not (very) stupid. The disruption in daily operations for me to cut 40 live web and db servers, along with all of the code, over to Linux from Win2003/SQL/IIS/ASP/VB would be: total budget killer.
Just changing my group's desktops (including the dev tools, custom apps, storage, file structures, user environments, etc) and ignoring the desktops: total budget killer.
Much better off to talk about the suitability of the Linux stack for new business units, operations, or totally-clean-slate start-up companies. Of course, many new business units are spun off by too-busy growing companies, using people that are already hip-deep in their existing IT framework. This is NOT like deciding that, at home, this weekend, maybe it's time to switch. Any real change would occupy a typical department's people for man-months at least. Very few operations of any kind have that kind of slop in their budgets, as we're coming out of a recession and an only just now loosening IT cost clamp down.
I'd be organizing class-action suits, writing letters, storming Redmond with torches in hand
Maybe I would, but... I've had a busy day doing things for which I collect money, and which help my customers to make money. And I spent that whole day using MS products, none of which crashed, none of which picked up any worms, and none of which required a busy team of people to totally grok a new operating system or try to guess where they'd ever come up with time to do that.
Why these people put up with it most likely can be put into two categories: 1) ignorance, and 2) laziness. Either they don't know there are viable options, or they are too lazy to actually pursue said options.
Don't work in a very competitive, time-stressed, low-margin business environment, do you? Or are you 1) too ignorant or 2) too intellectually lazy to imagine that there might be actual, practical barriers to the quick adoption of something that's completely different and which would require hiring, consultants, and substantial risks? It's called inertia, and in tight economic circumstances, bosses and investors don't like to hear: "It's OK, it's completely different, and no one that works here has ever needed to compile code in order to patch something, but we'll figure it out before anything bad happens! Plus, it's free, other than the huge disruption, support costs, and unknown impact on all of our software! Relax, boss - don't be ignorant and lazy. Certain people on Slashdot have a magic Linux wand that they can wave to make this totally painless, instant, and more or less free."
Personal responsibility is a broken concept. It's also very primitive and obsolete; it's the perfect excuse for letting the rich blame the poor for their predicament. It's also a great tool to keep the State from meddling with the rich people's business.
Personal responsibility could conceivably be extended to justify murder, with "well, he didn't have a gun and didn't defend himself when I shot him dead, so it's his fault he's dead".
This is what qualifies as +5 insightful? That's... breathtaking.
Killing a defenseless person is that act which, in an atmosphere of personal accountibility, most directly and immediately demonstrates your willingness to give up your own rights. You take someone else's away, or attempt to do so, you lose yours. It's as simple as that. You are a trolling, flamebating ass, and you know it, even if the drive-by moderators think that this is some high qualtiy, if tangental, anti-libertarian bash worthy of modding up. Nonsense.
Yet every motherfucking person in the Bible belt owns at least one Gun
Don't forget, Mr. Anonymous Coward, that some of us live outside of the Bible Belt, and own several!
around fifty eight thousand Americans are killed by guns every year
What about the tens of thousands that are killed with knives (or other "sharp implements," as the crime stats put it), blunt instruments, or cars? Added up, those hugely eclipse guns. Shall we ban them? Or how about, say, negligent/accidental medical mistreatment - which kill tens of thousands, and injure (depending on how you define "injure") hundreds of thousands or millions each year.
The point is, if you're going to simply trot out statistics to say that something is more dangerous (domestically, so far, you short-sighted twit - the actions of the ideologies we're worried about have killed millions overseas, remember? and as often with bombs or machetes as guns) than terrorism, so we should just walk away from the declared intentions of Islamist extremists to use WMD on our citizens and interests as quickly as they can actually get them to work, then you're a fool. And, you seem to subscribe to the ridiculous notion that we can't do two things at once (say, lock up violent domestic criminals - which are those most likely to pick up a weapon again and hurt someone - and try to track down people hoping to blow up a train full of chlorine, or whatever), then it's a wonder you can read slashdot and breath at the same time, as difficult as you must find multi-tasking.
"Gun culture," as you put it, has been around a lot longer (and lot more passionately) than has the "don't care, I'm going to kill you" (with a knife, a rope, a car, or a gun) culture we've seen in the last few decades. Everyone in my family, going back generations into 1700's Europe, has owned and used guns. For hunting dinner, for self defense, and for sport. Of course, the current European decendents of those folks don't have as many choices that way, any longer.
Not long ago, you could mail order a shotgun or a deer rifle from Sears, or buy a pistol at the hardware store right next door to the drug store, where kids might buy a copy of The Phantom, or The Shadow. Those forms of entertainment were happy to relate fantastic stories that included gun violence. And parents were happy to help their kids grasp the difference between fantasy and reality. You could buy a semi-auto rifle then, and you can buy one now. You could immerse yourself in dark, violent entertainment then, and you can do it now. The difference? Parents spent a fraction of the time with their kids now, instead of treating child rearing like the solemn challenge that it really is.
And kids are so disconnected from the reality of violence (say, by helping grandpa clean up a shot deer in the garage) that they can no longer mentally connect pulling the trigger with real, tangible, irreversible damage. But that's also true of how they drive, how they drink, how they have sex, and how they never read.
It's not "gun culture" you should be worried about, it's "no parent culture" and its direct impact on generations of rudderless, immature kids that don't get causality (or casualties).
It doesn't matter if it will work or not. What's important is that we'll soon be flooded with "H1d3 Y0ur Dr1v1ng H15t0ry" spam for sites selling tinfoil-based "car tax privacy shields" that go over the receiver's antenna.
Most large industries are very competitive, and though a huge amount of money changes hands, the margin is usually quite small, especially at the manufacturing, wholesale, and distribution level. If a stock analyst noticed a structural 4% contraction in any company's sales, there would be a change in his/her recommendation to buy or hold that stock. 4% is big.
I never could come to grips with creating a Department of Homeland Security when we already had a National Security Agency. It seems more like Bush had more out-of-work friends than he had positions to appoint them to.
This is not interesting, this is a political troll. DHS focuses strictly on what its name says: domestic stuff. The NSA, traditionally, is tasked with listening in on those international communications that would imply threats to our interests. The NSA happens to be the best technical match (in terms of expertise and capacity) for helping to secure inter-agency networking, specifically to help keep that info from being cracked. It's a good fit.
On a side note, has anyone else heard that the entrance to the DHS building is in an alley, and the entire office space is about as big is the lobby of the CIA HQ?
That's mostly myth, of course. But the real point is that the CIA's Virginia HQ is a place where thousands of people actually perform analysis and publishing work. The DHS people are more supervisory, and coordinate the domestic security work that's done elsewhere (say, at the TSA).
Virtually every government agency is subject to evolution in their mission, especially when we experience a fundamental change in the technological landscape. The NSA probably has more experience, nuts-and-bolts-wise, with this subject than any other collection of humans on the planet. No question they've got the chops, but the budget warfare will be a bloody one, just like it was with the TSA or is shaping up to be on things like border crossing security or container shipment inspection. Compared to years past, these changes are happening very, very quickly. At least the NSA won't have to run out and figure out what sort of people to hire, or invent new tools to understand their mission in this case. It's more a matter of scale, and of getting, say, the IT guys at the Commerce Department to understand their nerdy new friends.
Change the players to something more politically correct, like a Hybrid Car factory, and watch exactly the same thing play out. Big companies always look to put their people, their money, and their wake-generating activity in a place (or tax framework) that best suits their bottom line. Why do you suppose that Japanese car manufacturers have partnership plants in Kentucky? Because Michigan was out of room? No, because they dangled issues like jobs in front of political decision makers, and the best deal won. Did the editors of this posting just fall off a turnip truck or something? That headline is gratuitous. Come on, now.
In case you forgot, this article is about an artist who won a Grammy for a web-distributed album which bypassed "those companies" completely. Kind of refutes your claim
Which is why I used the word "most."
Unlike such unknown amateurs as Little Richard, Prince, and Chuck D.
Sure, or Billy Joel, or any of a lot of other people that struck lousy deals. The good news is that we're in a period now where there's no excuse for not having good information about anything, including record companies. Plenty of authors, plumbers, doctors, programmers, and other people also strike crappy deals and regret it for years (I know I have!), and plenty don't. When you decide to make a living as a musician, you are entering a business. Doesn't mean you have to do it in a traditional way, but you're in a market at that point, with several routes you can take. Lots of people choose badly, but are so impressed that someone is actually paying attention to them that it takes a few years to get their heads screwed on straight.
It seems to me that it's only the "aggressive marketers" who are pissed off at p2p
Nope, only those that see their material getting massively ripped off. An ambitious performer that doesn't see that happening to their work probably isn't worrying about it much at all, unless they're more of the big-picture type, and are thinking about the poor schlumps to whom it is happening, and they're sympathetic.
The actual artists realize that they can't be both musicians and marketers, and that they are actually helped by the greater exposure file-sharing and Web distribution provide.
Except, even musicians that are too busy creating to be business people can be logical enough to follow things to the obvious conclusions: if the prevailing sentiment evolves into a sense of free entitlement to all music, all the time, then that exposure does them nothing at all in terms of helping them to put a roof over their head or eat. Artists that proclaim ownership of their work are making a choice, but it's their choice to make. Those that want to gamble in the exposure (by giving it away) vs. revenue (by only selling it) arena are making that gamble deliberately. Or, they would be, if people weren't disregarding their wishes and just ripping off their work regardless.
Almost as obnoxious as expecting to make money on an album, instead of accepting an advance which then gets taken out of album sales and paid back to the record label, so that you never actually see any money from it even if people do buy it.
Thousands and thousands of artists know the score and still vie for record contracts. It's like any other work-your-way-up situation. Without those companies helping, you simply aren't going to see that kind of exposure. Continue to produce at the level the audiences want, and you're in a position to negotiate a vastly better deal. There's nothing forcing people to go this route, but most are WAY too busy being musicians to also be the aggressive marketers, business people and fundraisers to build substantial momentum by any other means.
No, it's up to us - the voters.
OK, that's fair. But until enough voters decide that they don't think that artists should be able to set the terms under which they sell their work, ripping them off will happily remain illegal. And, never mind the legal framework... it'll still remain wrong. If you talk enough people into voting, essentially, for making slaves of creators and innovators, you'll simply be squashing them. Can musicians make a living without royalties? Conceivably. Would as much get invested in large-scale entertainment like musicals, new symphonies, ballets, or even cursed boy-bands if those people couldn't expect some extended return for their labor? No.
Yeah, it's okay to record it off the radio, but if you want to download it, you're scum!
So we're here again. You don't like the way you pay for music on the radio (which you indirectly do, but being an audience for the advertisers), so since you don't like that implied contract, and don't think the musicians get enough money that way, you figure that you might as well make sure the artists get nothing at all.
Say it with me, a download does not necessarily equal a lost sale.
OK. Now say this with me:
So what? I doesn't freakin' matter! It's not your creation, it's the artist's creation, and they're the ones that decide how they want to sell (or not) their work. If they want to benefit from a record label's investment in production and marketing (and protecting their rights), then that's totally up to them. If you so dislike the artist's personal tastes and decision making, then I'm sure you won't have any interest in their music (and certainly wouldn't want to run off with a copy of it without paying, because why would you want the output of such a misguided, intellectually lightweight corporate tool?). Um, unless you DO want their music on your own terms (not theirs), and just aren't willing to say that out loud.
Or you could just support those artists (like the jazz artist that released her recent album only for sale online - with no record label participation, and won a Grammy for it last night) that are marketing to people like you that don't like to pay for a CD or listen to the radio. Or you could use any of dozens of pay-per-tune sites, and actually spend money in a format that seems to suit your tastes. I'm sure you have no objection to paying, right? It's all about convenience?
There you go again propagating propaganda about P2Ps hurting sales, where there aren't any conclusive studies to prove they affects sales. Sure there are studies showing P2Ps hurt sales and those showing the opposite, but who you believe depends on your agenda.
But it doesn't matter what the agenda is! The artist... the actual musician, the person whose music you're listening to... has specifically said: "don't take my music without paying for it." What's not clear about that? Who cares if it impacts one sale, a million, or none? By not agreeing to the artist's terms, your violating that artist's wishes. If you hate the artist's wishes that much, how can you like the music that person produces?
The reality is despite P2Ps, sales have remained unchanged, and increases or decreases mostly depend on economic conditions.
Again, so what? That doesn't change the fact that the artist says: "don't do that with my music."
The fact is people do want stuff for free, but they also want to support the artists; however, the people ripping off artists aren't their fans, but the people in their ivory towers who own 99% of the distribution networks. You can't release your great art without paying their tolls.
You mean, like the woman who just won a Grammy last night for her album, which was self-produced and released entirely and only for sale online without a record company involved? Of course, if people start ripping her off, and not paying what she's asking, she won't have a trade association's lawyers to help defend her rights. She'll just lose money, lose her interest in that method of distribution, and probably go right back to a record company. But you pretending that musicians can't get their work out by other means is nonsense, and you know it. Get a better argument, as that one's BS.
Sharing isn't immoral despite your rhetoric.
It is if, when you bought the work in question, you agreed not to do it. And if you ever have actually bought a CD, then you have (by definition) done just that. If you're saying you're not smart enough to read the label, where the artist says "my work is copyrighted," that's one thing. Or, if you know about the terms the artist wants, and you're deliberately, in effect, lying as you buy the CD, that's another thing. At least we all know you're lying about your respect for the artist's wishes, then. And when you do buy it, and spread it all over the internet, you're deliberately cheating on the artist with whom you just entered into that agreement. Don't like the agreement? Then admit that you don't like the artist who wants you to USE that agreement! Still want to hear the music? Wow - you're in a dilema, aren't you! Guess you'll have to actually buy the music, or admit that you're willing to rip the artist off.
Why don't you and the media cartels advocate for boycotting of posting unauthorized materials on P2P instead of for banning P2P altogether?
How can a record company "boycott" a P2P network that's ripping them off? You boycott someone by refusing to buy something from them. P2P networks aren't selling anything, they're largely used to avoid paying for things. You've got it completely backwards. Do you mean that the artists should just refuse to create any more music until the P2P users agree to stop ripping them off? I don't see that happening.
Back in the days of the cassette tapes, people were encouraged to make copies, but you didn't hear anything about "people wanting the work that the artist produces, and not wanting to pay for it."
Actually, you're exactly, completely wrong about that. There was considerable concern in the recording industry that cassette copying was going to hurt record sales. This turned out to be less of a threat because the copies were notoriously lousy sounding, and hard to make in large quantities without investing industrial equipment. And the only people investing in that equipment were people setting u
How about you look up the word "steal" and then start to use the right terminology. Stealing involves depriving someone of property - unless you're "stealing" a base. And we're not talking baseball here.
This is always so funny. I love the way that people who are too cheap, and too disrespectful of the very musicians they seem to like to listen to, respond to any challenge by attempting a redirect. How about this: let's forget worrying about whether it's theft (like of a baseball), or "infringment" (in the classic copyright sense of that word). You're trying to defend the practice of disregarding an artist's specific wishes. The artist agrees to play the music, and lays out the terms by which you can have your own copy of that music. In short: you can pay for it. Now, you don't want to pay for it... you want it for free, and want that person to be your personal musical entertainment slave. Who cares which law or regulation does or doesn't not exactly, specifically address it? You want people to sing, dance, make movies, write books, and otherwise create things that you like, and you want them to do it for you, for free, regardless of what they say.
You've got two choices here: admit you're angling to avoid paying for something that was created and distributed by the artist with the expectation that you'd pay, or that you really do think you should pay for it, and are simply too lazy to do so. There's no middle ground. If you agree that an artist should be paid, then you should honor the artist's terms. If you think the artist should create for you at no charge, then you're deliberately ignoring their rights (never mind legal: just plain rational and ethical), and have no complaint when they in turn seek to impact your rights in exchange.
Are the artists working everytime their recorded song is played?
No, but the good ones work their asses off, and attract money from producers to pay for expensive studio time, musicians, marketing, and other huge costs, in anticipation of a certain level of sales. They build a recording for a particular audience, they risk time, money, and investor's money in the expectation that a fairly predictable number of a certain type of person will like their music, and they'll be compensated for that risk and effort.
What, you'd rather that there's some fixed government-approved fee that musician is allowed to make at the time they make a recording, and then it's free for the world to use as they see fit? Who determines the value of the artist's time? I've got an idea: how about we determine the value by seeing how many people like the artist well enough to actually buy the recording.
Or, how about you pursuade a bunch of musicians to give away their work, and the ones that don't want to... you agree not to steal it from them?
Seriously, if you're not getting paid at your job, why don't you, you know, get another job?
But if you ran a small store, and for a year you lost all of your proceeds because you kept getting ripped off... wouldn't you want to do something about it, rather than just throw your hands up? And wouldn't at least some people in the situation want to get on the news and say: "hey kids! when you rip off my store, you're stealing from actual people!"
Professional musicians spend the best part of their lives getting to the point where they can earn a living at it. Ripping off music over the net is a recent development, and you can't blame career musicians (or aspirants) for wanting to change the course of this stuff back towards showing the artists a little respect. I'd completely agree with you if a musician wasn't making any money because no one liked their music (go get another job!), but the people in question are getting ripped off because people like them!
My first thought was: "I wonder how many people who are normally fine with pirating music because they're sticking it to a record company..." (as if the artist isn't a piece of that picture) ..."will, out of inertia, just go ahead and run off with an unpaid-for copy of this woman's work, too." And then I realized that most Jazz fans are a little more cerebral, and have a lot more respect for the artists themselves, and typically would either go see a show, or actually pay for a recording. If her work isn't immediately torrented everywhere, that won't really indicate a sea change in this picture. Stay in the musical neighborhood, but see how it goes with, say, a new Norah Jones collection. Or, just prove that all of the "I only do it because of the RIAA" types are hypocrites by seeing if, just to make the point, Metallica or The Blackeyed Peas would do it. Their work would be immediately ripped off, and we'd have some tangible hypocrisy to point to. And this endless conversation would finally come down to: "I, um, really just don't want to pay for music, actually, you got me."
Was anyone else sooo annoyed at how much crap they spewed about downloading music last night?
Yeah, that was annoying. It's almost as if these people, that earn their living by being paid to entertain their audiences, are annoyed when people decide that they like their music, but not enough to pay for it. Pretty obnoxious, expecting to actually get paid for their work. Jerks! Soooo annoying.
So, let's see. An artist works their heart out to produce a CD. It's great, and they sell 100,000 copies. That's a good sales record, but a lot of artists to a lot better.
100,000 CDs at (say) $15.00 each retail. That's $1,500,000 going into that part of the economym which is a good thing regardless. The retail employees make money, the shippers make money, the local jurisdiction gets some tax revenue - all are stimulated by the transaction. But let's get back to the artis. The standard rate is around $0.08 per track. Assume a 10-track CD (though many are bigger, of course), and a typical 7% "points" clause on the gross sale of the CD. That works out to more than $1.50 per CD for the artist. But, let's round DOWN for the sake of argument. Say they only get $1.00. That's more money ($100,000) than most people make in a year, and doesn't take into account the revenue they also make from tie-in licensing, touring, t-shirt sales, and all the rest. The CD-sales-only part, if a very modestly successful artist sells only that many CDs, is a decent living.
When an artist gets more popular, and sells half a million recordings, they're doing pretty well. Of course, if everyone just distrbutes pirated copies of the artist's work onlone, they get nothing.
The artist doesn't get crap from the sales.
I'm kind of amazed that your theory is: since they don't make a lot of money when a CD is sold, there's no point giving them anything at all. You must really hate musicians, huh? Or like making them work for you for free? That's real nice of you. You're also forgetting that most artists wouldn't sell more than a few CDs at their local bar gig if they didn't have a record company producing, promoting, and getting their material out there in front of a lot of people.
Whew! It's a good thing for you that you don't make a living off of information that you personally create. You'd have a hard time justifying the paycheck.
so limitting free cultural exchange is good, but limitting free speech is bad?
both are important, and both should be legal.
Well, sure. But when an artist chooses to sell their work, and someone else chooses to find a way to get it without paying for it, that's not a freedom of speech issue. That's about people wanting the work that the artist produces, and not wanting to pay for it.
Now if only the RIAA/MPAA would learn this lesson.
Must even the most un-related news items be somehow tortured into a reason to self-proclaim one's rights to an artist's work, unpaid-for? Some Chinese citizen sitting in a net cafe "knowing" the news is not the same as you sitting in your living room "knowing" the latest Green Day CD without paying for it.
404 handlers, redirectors, simple scripts to handle referals you'd like to see land in a different spot... these are all child's play. The billed man-hours of lawyer time that this has already (and WILL) cost them must eclipse (by orders of magnitude) what a technical solution would have cost. They'll deserve all of the traffic they lose because of this, and serves them right. Let the web foot-traffic market show them the foolishness of this approach. This is not exactly proactively leveraging networked synergy, now, is it.
So, anything that I want, but can't afford, but can still somehow get my hands on, is mine to claim?
OK: I want to use your long distance account. I wouldn't have made calls otherwise, but since I can guess your PIN, and I'm not actually taking your phone away from you, I think it's OK. And since YOU think it's OK, please provide that info, OK? No? Hmmm... so if I found a web site that DID have that info, that would be... what... OK with you, then? I'm not rich, so I should be able to have it, right? Oh, wait, you'd have to foot the bill.
Just like artists and studios have to foot the bill to create what they create, and they do it with the expectation of being able to make a living off of how people consume their work. If that expectation was false, no one would be able to raise the money it takes to pay all of the people that are involved in producing recordings, films, and so on. If your thinking is correct, than what... only a few rich people would cough up $39 for a good DVD that costs millions to produce, and all of the rest of us should just take it if we want it?