It doesn't mean anything if you don't read the affidavit. Linux dd was used (is used) as one of 3 methods by the FBI CART to image disks during discovery. That's all it means.
Succinctly put... While it's important that speech issued about corporations should not be false and libelous, restricting speech ends there.
"...we firmly believe that those who violate the right to Corporate Free Speech have no place on a commercial network like the internet. "
It's unfortunate that in Dow's quoted official statement they mistake the Internet for a commercial network, when it was actually funded from government funds as a public network; which should maintain public free speech protection, rather than "Corporate Free Speech" protection -- whatever the hell that is.
It's a shame the YesMen infringed on Dow's copyrights in their parody, but pretty disturbing that Dow lawyers were able to effectively shut down their ISP. I'd love to see a list of Dow products I can boycott. Any one have such a list?
Engineering also implies innovation. The absence of wage competition in a market where government-injected wage deflation exists will force innovation and creativity talent out of that market. You're right: this is ECN 101.
We need to encourage our creative programmers who have invested in their skills development with wages that make them feel their society values them; not that their society wants cheap programming... we'll keep ending up with cheap programming and flawed software.
You can't throw drones at engineering problems and expect decent results.
No offense to the H1-Bs that come to this country seeking better wages, but there's more to engineering than being able to operate validation software...
Dvorak made the association a couple times when referring to the relationship between the user of the x86 PC and the OS they're using. There're enough artists in the./ community to understand the distinction between an Apple user and an XP user. The core difference is that artists only use their gear to create somethng. Windoze and Linux users are more enrapt in the process of creating the machine to do that. Perhaps to stave off the inevitable act of having to create something, or perhaps just because they're more into dinking with the gear than creating something with it. If that's the case, cool. It's only frustrating when people start bitching about it to the extent that the gear never gets to a useable state for those trying to create something with it.
Some things that Linux could do with the liberal development environment is improve on some of the existing applications out there. Perhaps a Pro-Tools for Linux / FreeBSD. Or making SoundStudio work with it's graphical surroundings in a way that makes it as useful as SoundForge on Windoze. Most importantly, make sure that when you click on some pixels that represent a graphic object in a drawing or a sound wave, it's getting the correct range of the object you're trying to select. If you can do that, the window manager is just a matter of style preference. If that can't happen with the existing group of x86 GUI programmers in the OSS development world, I'll just keep saving up for a G4.
What will happen is that the end user will switch to an ISP who doesn't charge such fees, and the spam will continue because once the addy is harvested it proliferates quickly to other spam hauses and spam lists.
Many people run their own mail servers off DSL (and, yes even dedicated dial-up and ISDN), and the bandwidth burden is pretty insignificant from a single small mail server's perspective. You can bounce most of the spam away with a well managed access list. And, my ISP still has to foot the bill for the bandwidth on their end; I don't. I only get about 20 - 30 spams a day and reject about 100 with ORDB and access rules.
You'll probably still get charged for your cell phone spams, but your idea won't work for e-mail spam. Sorry...
The only way to qwench the spam is to fuck with them in the way./'s ad-hoc committee is doing to Alan Ralsky.
It strikes me that we continue to read that the sales of CD's sold by member companies of the RIAA continue to decline.
... sales of compact discs dropped 7 percent in the first half of 2002 after falling 5 percent in 2001.
The stock market has lost ~2000 points since the middle of 2002. Unemployment is up. These may be factors.
People may be dissatisfied with the quality of music. More artists are playing mainstream network venues like the Today Show and Live with Regis and Kelly, and Caroline Rhea.
Movies seem to be doing okay, though since every week there's a new box office record (seems like it, anyway).
Perhaps it is the thieves' fault that the RIAA is in such dire straits from all this piracy. It's a helluva lot cheaper to produce a song than a movie. It's also cheaper to burn a music CD than a movie DVD. How the hell would anyone be able to put some solid figures together on this? Not an entirely rhetorical question. I think the RIAA and MPAA suck, but it would be cool to see some solid figures that could establish that the reason the numbers are going down is because the quality of music is poor; the level of respect the music companies give their customers vis-a-vis their privacy policies is poor; and most importantly, the agressive nature of these highly-publicized anti-piracy campaigns against their customers really turns them off from continuing to purchase from them.
If you antagonize your customers and there are choices, they will opt for alternatives to you. Basic economics. Someone should quantify this, if possible and publish the numbers. I'd do it myself, but I'd rather spend my time in the studio producing yet another song that will never get released by a label. >:)
It takes time and persistence. I used to play with technology until 2 am and know the routine. My lifestyle has changed a lot and most of my time is spent with pure artists at their gigs and in the studio with them. They are not clueless.
People are listening. Don't buy mainstream records or attend movies. It may be tough, but in the end, it will take the arts from the media conglomerates and give it back to the people.
It'll actually happen eventually regardless of that... People are smarter than geeks typically give them credit for. They just don't seem to care about these types of issues quite as much.
Badlink (and likely other companies like them) are exploring the landscape looking for viable ways to get this demographic data. They may succeed. Here on./ we all get our panties in a bunch, but sadly, we're the stark minority in assessing the privacy preferences of the consuming public. We need some laws for this form of abuse, but won't get them since the consumer does less to finance the machinations of our current legislature (in U.S.) than the consumer.
On the other hand, as an artist, I would like to see some availability of tracking in a macro sense. Nothing personally identifying (perhaps have a standard that dictates that you can gather data, but not tie it to a human), but it would be nice to see if people listen to a specific track on a CD in it's entirety; whether it's more popular in one region than in an other.
Again, tying such data to a specific person is scummy. Perhaps someone could dig up the medical records for the CEO / President of BadLink and mail 7000 boxes of photocopies of it to the company receptionist for distribution to all their business partners. Not that I'd do such a thing...
I used to be like this: going out of my way to help people in my free time fix their mouse; reconnect to their ISP; trouble-shoot that broken coffee holder...
I don't do this any more, but that's not really relevant to the point I'd like to make. We live in a day where our government (yes, you Aussies and Euros, too; can't actually see what's happening in Asia but different story) is continuually seeking additional control over our personal lives. Most 1st world governments are largely financed by the people in some form of taxation, but controlled more by corporations within (or even outside) them. Think about that for a second.
So, we get something like 75 - 80 years to live; the first 25 we're busy getting educated, partying and otherwise not doing much productive, and then venture into a 20-year career helping some company with our expertise and best years, all the while making yet a little more money from our boss and paying yet a little more in taxes to our government to help subsidize it's financing for the corporations to use it to control its minions... Seeing a trend here?
I love good samaritanism, generosity and philanthropy just as much as the next dude, but there are other ways to spend our spare time. You don't have much left anyway, so go pick up a guitar, write some poetry, ride your mountain bike off a cliff, or throw frisbees at your mutt, but don't spend your limited leisure time on line helping other people try to figure out what your money-grubbing employer can't make work for them.
And, if you really need to, then go log in and break a digit, or two; just don't say you're representing your employer. They can sue you for helping them out! How cool is that?
just thinking aloud, here...
Re:What the slashdotters will say?!
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 2
...every stupid jackasses cheesy little program having Windows...
This was MicroSoft®'s initial feat / faux pas in "branding" windows in the initial product marketing campaign. Whether the term "windows" was used to design Xerox®es original implementation of a graphic user environment or Apple's Macintosh® operating system escapes me, but the term "windows" is no more appropriate a descriptor in software branding than the term "apple." MicroSoft®'s might not like it, but there's nothing they can do about whether jackasses use the term in their cheesy software, or not. Now, if some jackass were to label his or her cheesy software "Norton AntiVirus for MicroSoft®'s Operating Systems" they'd probably need to have permission from Redmond.
What MicroSoft®'s probably didn't want to do initially in their marketing of the then recently acquired IBM® DOS software was have it referred to in marketing literature by their "partners" as "MicroSoft® Windows Operating System", but just "Windows;" much easier to brand, but it just couldn't have played out that way.
>Songs are not software. That's how they're different. Do you even have to ask? Nice answer smart ass, what I meant was in terms of content licensing.
Was a fair response, but also a fair retort. A song is purely creative content with the exception of the production process. Software development is almost entirely production-oriented, and the creative processes are merely applied to address business (or just programming) processing.
People write songs from a subjective context (mostly emotional). People write software from an objective context (entirely unemotional if done correctly). The creator of songs in the current environment receives the proceeds rarely and usually incurs debt if it gets accepted by a production company. The creator of software usually receives a paycheck from an employer or client.
Clearer on the way they differ in terms of licensing? Software creators usually get paid. Songwriters usually work in coffee shops for minimum wage, unless they're lucky enough to be signed, in which case they get to owe Virgin records $250K for production costs.
Psssst! Say, you didn't happen to notice that the economy is down 20% since last year, did you? Checked your 401-K lately? Pretty grim...
Companies like Pivot Entertainment are likely similar to the countless dozens I used to spend a lot of my own money in the request-to-submit/sase, send tape, (receive request for money to add my stuff to their compilation CD / silently have it thrown in the circular file) process. Guess what: an artist can now record their own original creative work cheaply enough and compress it to an auditionable version useful enough for someone to hear it and then purchase a CD of appropriate sound quality if they like it.
That whole problem of the industry having to wade through all the crap to finance that one act they have out of 1000 that makes money is gone. The listeners get to decide. Fans don't need record / publishing / production companies to filter their music any more. Perhaps they can start looking at providing management and booking services for artists / bands that do prove their worth.
Not trying to flame. It just looks like a whole new kinda world in this "industry."
So, one big company who happens to own copyrights usurped from artists in exchange for basically nothing with the means to production is trying to protect those rights, still...
It only runs on Windows, but Linux/UNIX users will crack it; just wait a week, or two;
It theoretically won't affect consumer CD players; just wait for a complaint, or two;
CDs still cost $20 and you only get a decent song, or two;
Reality check: Sony doesn't have creative product and thus has nothing to sell. Eventually, artists will start to make money directly from their fans because the industry has made it so damn prohibitive to buy consumer-directed "art" that the consumer just gets fed up with all the controls over their media playback devices and media. Quit buying that shit!
There is so much more quality stuff with so fewer strings attached avaiable by independents that wasting time in Sam Goody's is just that: a waste of time. Give your money to the artist and buy directly from them or via CD Baby or MP3.com. Quit buying Sony, BMG, Virgin CDs and guess what: CD prices will drop to about $5 for 15 tracks and people will quit stealing it. Worse case scenario is you get to hear something original and the artist gets to eat...
There's no need (perceived or practical) to use Win95 to surf the 'Net. I know people who use it for certain multi-media things and just keep it off-line. I personally use it to test my own web applications and for QuickBooks... that's it. If I wish to surf the 'Net (like right now for instance) in a zone I can't trust, I use an OS I can trust with Java disabled and cookies selectively controlled. You too can take this approach.
Contrary to popular belief, the Internet isn't really necessary, either. You can get news from TV, mail via the postal system, and talk to people using a phone. They all still function virtually risk-free.
Don't go buying new hardware and paying more to M$ for licensing fees because they forced you to due to their own incompetence. If you do, you're a sheep...
I've been trying to convince my family and friends for months to boycott CDs until the RIAA gets real. Now that they'll start running into useability issues when they try and play CDs in their new stereo, it looks like they'll finally get that disincentive to buy $20 CDs churned out by the media/ad agencies (who are one and the same, at this point). Hopefully, they'll start buying independent artists' works. It's a shame that much of this type of product is still poorly produced, but compared to 10 years ago, the indies have really made some progress. It's exciting to see where indies' production quality will be 10 years from now.
Of those 250MM blanks purchased for the sole purpose of raping the RIAA and its members, I'm responsible for about 250 units. None of them are CD-R for audio, since I don't subsidize the RIAA. Not a single one of them was used to burn a copy of a purchased, or burned-from-a-purchased, or even third, fourth, or 10th generation pirated audio CD. About half were used to archive old data from servers / workstations, perform backups; and the rest were used for my own musical projects: original Ded Serius songs, and practice CDs so I could promote other artists work (covers) during live gigs in bands.
So, now that the "industry" is about to force it's consumers to stop buying, I'd like to continue to offer my own material here: Ded Serius Music, some friends' music here: Layden Robinson, Turkestan Road, and Twig free of charge. Because real musicians (Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, etc.) did it (and still do) for... the music. People who do music for the $$$ are... the Industry. Who are you going to support?
Go see a local band play live and buy their CD. We'd love to see some people show up for the show.
Precisely why if I need to find something quickly I fire up a putty session to my samba server and do a quick grep -i 'word2find'/datadir/* 2>/dev/null. I have yet to see either coldfusion server, or win2k complete an "index." And, that machine is sometimes up for over 2 and 3 days at a time.
What really sucks is this moron will probably actually sell enough of this crapware to retire in 2 years. Technology will continue to suck until Bill Gates dies. OSes are irrelevant! Actually, I guess they are...
Suits are fine for job hunts. But, no one's going to make you do anything on the interview. I can even agree with the esteem boost.
As the IT guy in a 1st Mortgage shop at Citicorp some years back, though, I found myself stuck competing with a bunch of loan officers for the best tie award every day spending massive amounts of my discretionary income on ties that got in my way as I tried to get my job done. Expensive slacks got ruined when some office cow would look at me in her polyester flower-dress and say "Gee, Sparky, I don't kno how to change the toner in the copy machine."
So, putting good dress into practice is largely a matter of function. If you interact with the public and have to sell shit, dress up. But, when I get off work, I go live my fucking life. I'm not going to spend $150 on a new tie, or $1000 on an Armani suit when I'd rather throw the money down on a new Taylor acoustic guitar.
Most consumers still do buy CDs and go to movies. It's only the moderately to extremely technocentric who download and rip music wraught from free file-sharing services. Most people don't have 10 Linux/BSD/BeOS computers sitting in the other room. Most people don't have more than the scant 4 - 8 GBytes of filesystem space on their 1 Win9x computer they use to check mail on AOL or MSN. That's the way of life outside Slashdot.
The onslaught of change has begun in how music distribution takes place and the RIAA and MPAA are deploying survival tactics now because their business model demands they prevent these technophiles from establishing that independent music and movie production is viable and forthcoming with near term consumer technologies. They need laws now to prevent the inevitable "Joe's Home Movie (Part III: The Basement)" from taking revenues from their next Hollywood blockbuster by ensuring no ordinary consumer can play it unless it has an industy-approved DRM mechanism on the media. They need to prevent your home-produced CD of your original music recorded on ProTools from being playable in a new Esplanade. They need to maintain that, unless CNN/Time Warner gets ad revenues from industry and society approved advertising messages with sponsored and undercompensated artists, those subversive independent works get silenced.
It is an uphill battle, but you just have to keep hammering it away. Boycott CDs and movies. Go see a band and buy the CD directly from the artist.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft. -- Wish I could really disagree with that. But, does it really matter?
Would they prefer you just take over one of Micro$oft's IIS servers and replace the c:\wwwroot\ with your story content? Is there a code-redify wizard available to automate the process of taking 0wn3r5h1p of an IIS server, or does this have to be done manually? Thanks if someone knows...
A good package management system doesn't necessarily need to include a plethora of automated utilities that allow you to forget how to be a system administrator. RPM actually discourages thorough knowledge of your system in the same way M$ approaches updates / "package management." With RH, you'll eventually need to reboot (unless you're very good; but the distro discourages you from being very good).
I've upgraded glibc on a slackware server 2000 miles away before without a reboot. And, yes it worked just fine for another couple hundred days until I got on a plane and traveled to where it was so I could get it.
People put way too much emphasis on package management. I prefer to maintain my own as closely as possible. Creates much less work in the long run...
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't mean anything if you don't read the affidavit. Linux dd was used (is used) as one of 3 methods by the FBI CART to image disks during discovery. That's all it means.
Linux is made in America and other places, too.
Succinctly put... While it's important that speech issued about corporations should not be false and libelous, restricting speech ends there.
"...we firmly believe that those who violate the right to Corporate Free Speech have no place on a commercial network like the internet. "
It's unfortunate that in Dow's quoted official statement they mistake the Internet for a commercial network, when it was actually funded from government funds as a public network; which should maintain public free speech protection, rather than "Corporate Free Speech" protection -- whatever the hell that is.
It's a shame the YesMen infringed on Dow's copyrights in their parody, but pretty disturbing that Dow lawyers were able to effectively shut down their ISP. I'd love to see a list of Dow products I can boycott. Any one have such a list?
I don't play with legos, or hit myself with a skillet.
Doesn't sound much like a fight; more like a struck nerve. I'm not fat and I've been around the world twice.
Sounds like you're pretty sick of running validation software.
Engineering also implies innovation. The absence of wage competition in a market where government-injected wage deflation exists will force innovation and creativity talent out of that market. You're right: this is ECN 101.
We need to encourage our creative programmers who have invested in their skills development with wages that make them feel their society values them; not that their society wants cheap programming... we'll keep ending up with cheap programming and flawed software.
You can't throw drones at engineering problems and expect decent results.
No offense to the H1-Bs that come to this country seeking better wages, but there's more to engineering than being able to operate validation software...
Dvorak made the association a couple times when referring to the relationship between the user of the x86 PC and the OS they're using. There're enough artists in the
Some things that Linux could do with the liberal development environment is improve on some of the existing applications out there. Perhaps a Pro-Tools for Linux / FreeBSD. Or making SoundStudio work with it's graphical surroundings in a way that makes it as useful as SoundForge on Windoze. Most importantly, make sure that when you click on some pixels that represent a graphic object in a drawing or a sound wave, it's getting the correct range of the object you're trying to select. If you can do that, the window manager is just a matter of style preference. If that can't happen with the existing group of x86 GUI programmers in the OSS development world, I'll just keep saving up for a G4.
What will happen is that the end user will switch to an ISP who doesn't charge such fees, and the spam will continue because once the addy is harvested it proliferates quickly to other spam hauses and spam lists.
Many people run their own mail servers off DSL (and, yes even dedicated dial-up and ISDN), and the bandwidth burden is pretty insignificant from a single small mail server's perspective. You can bounce most of the spam away with a well managed access list. And, my ISP still has to foot the bill for the bandwidth on their end; I don't. I only get about 20 - 30 spams a day and reject about 100 with ORDB and access rules.
You'll probably still get charged for your cell phone spams, but your idea won't work for e-mail spam. Sorry...
The only way to qwench the spam is to fuck with them in the way
It strikes me that we continue to read that the sales of CD's sold by member companies of the RIAA continue to decline.
The stock market has lost ~2000 points since the middle of 2002. Unemployment is up. These may be factors.
People may be dissatisfied with the quality of music. More artists are playing mainstream network venues like the Today Show and Live with Regis and Kelly, and Caroline Rhea.
Movies seem to be doing okay, though since every week there's a new box office record (seems like it, anyway).
Perhaps it is the thieves' fault that the RIAA is in such dire straits from all this piracy. It's a helluva lot cheaper to produce a song than a movie. It's also cheaper to burn a music CD than a movie DVD. How the hell would anyone be able to put some solid figures together on this? Not an entirely rhetorical question. I think the RIAA and MPAA suck, but it would be cool to see some solid figures that could establish that the reason the numbers are going down is because the quality of music is poor; the level of respect the music companies give their customers vis-a-vis their privacy policies is poor; and most importantly, the agressive nature of these highly-publicized anti-piracy campaigns against their customers really turns them off from continuing to purchase from them.
If you antagonize your customers and there are choices, they will opt for alternatives to you. Basic economics. Someone should quantify this, if possible and publish the numbers. I'd do it myself, but I'd rather spend my time in the studio producing yet another song that will never get released by a label. >:)
It takes time and persistence. I used to play with technology until 2 am and know the routine. My lifestyle has changed a lot and most of my time is spent with pure artists at their gigs and in the studio with them. They are not clueless.
People are listening. Don't buy mainstream records or attend movies. It may be tough, but in the end, it will take the arts from the media conglomerates and give it back to the people.
It'll actually happen eventually regardless of that... People are smarter than geeks typically give them credit for. They just don't seem to care about these types of issues quite as much.
Badlink (and likely other companies like them) are exploring the landscape looking for viable ways to get this demographic data. They may succeed. Here on
On the other hand, as an artist, I would like to see some availability of tracking in a macro sense. Nothing personally identifying (perhaps have a standard that dictates that you can gather data, but not tie it to a human), but it would be nice to see if people listen to a specific track on a CD in it's entirety; whether it's more popular in one region than in an other.
Again, tying such data to a specific person is scummy. Perhaps someone could dig up the medical records for the CEO / President of BadLink and mail 7000 boxes of photocopies of it to the company receptionist for distribution to all their business partners. Not that I'd do such a thing...
I used to be like this: going out of my way to help people in my free time fix their mouse; reconnect to their ISP; trouble-shoot that broken coffee holder...
I don't do this any more, but that's not really relevant to the point I'd like to make. We live in a day where our government (yes, you Aussies and Euros, too; can't actually see what's happening in Asia but different story) is continuually seeking additional control over our personal lives. Most 1st world governments are largely financed by the people in some form of taxation, but controlled more by corporations within (or even outside) them. Think about that for a second.
So, we get something like 75 - 80 years to live; the first 25 we're busy getting educated, partying and otherwise not doing much productive, and then venture into a 20-year career helping some company with our expertise and best years, all the while making yet a little more money from our boss and paying yet a little more in taxes to our government to help subsidize it's financing for the corporations to use it to control its minions... Seeing a trend here?
I love good samaritanism, generosity and philanthropy just as much as the next dude, but there are other ways to spend our spare time. You don't have much left anyway, so go pick up a guitar, write some poetry, ride your mountain bike off a cliff, or throw frisbees at your mutt, but don't spend your limited leisure time on line helping other people try to figure out what your money-grubbing employer can't make work for them.
And, if you really need to, then go log in and break a digit, or two; just don't say you're representing your employer. They can sue you for helping them out! How cool is that?
just thinking aloud, here...
Probably due to not rotating his logs...
This was MicroSoft®'s initial feat / faux pas in "branding" windows in the initial product marketing campaign. Whether the term "windows" was used to design Xerox®es original implementation of a graphic user environment or Apple's Macintosh® operating system escapes me, but the term "windows" is no more appropriate a descriptor in software branding than the term "apple." MicroSoft®'s might not like it, but there's nothing they can do about whether jackasses use the term in their cheesy software, or not. Now, if some jackass were to label his or her cheesy software "Norton AntiVirus for MicroSoft®'s Operating Systems" they'd probably need to have permission from Redmond.
What MicroSoft®'s probably didn't want to do initially in their marketing of the then recently acquired IBM® DOS software was have it referred to in marketing literature by their "partners" as "MicroSoft® Windows Operating System", but just "Windows;" much easier to brand, but it just couldn't have played out that way.
I actually did/do know. That's why I practice 20 hours a week; so, when I perform, I make an engaging presentation.
Recording is fun, too; but nothing like interactive entertainment. Thanks for noting this...
3) If I didn't buy CDs, the artists would stop making music.
What did artists do before CDs / tapes / the victrola existed?
Songwriters write from inspiration for no goal in particular, but to create something. If the goal is to make money, it isn't art.
>Songs are not software. That's how they're different. Do you even have to ask?
Nice answer smart ass, what I meant was in terms of content licensing.
Was a fair response, but also a fair retort. A song is purely creative content with the exception of the production process. Software development is almost entirely production-oriented, and the creative processes are merely applied to address business (or just programming) processing.
People write songs from a subjective context (mostly emotional). People write software from an objective context (entirely unemotional if done correctly). The creator of songs in the current environment receives the proceeds rarely and usually incurs debt if it gets accepted by a production company. The creator of software usually receives a paycheck from an employer or client.
Clearer on the way they differ in terms of licensing? Software creators usually get paid. Songwriters usually work in coffee shops for minimum wage, unless they're lucky enough to be signed, in which case they get to owe Virgin records $250K for production costs.
Psssst! Say, you didn't happen to notice that the economy is down 20% since last year, did you? Checked your 401-K lately? Pretty grim...
Companies like Pivot Entertainment are likely similar to the countless dozens I used to spend a lot of my own money in the request-to-submit/sase, send tape, (receive request for money to add my stuff to their compilation CD / silently have it thrown in the circular file) process. Guess what: an artist can now record their own original creative work cheaply enough and compress it to an auditionable version useful enough for someone to hear it and then purchase a CD of appropriate sound quality if they like it.
That whole problem of the industry having to wade through all the crap to finance that one act they have out of 1000 that makes money is gone. The listeners get to decide. Fans don't need record / publishing / production companies to filter their music any more. Perhaps they can start looking at providing management and booking services for artists / bands that do prove their worth.
Not trying to flame. It just looks like a whole new kinda world in this "industry."
So, one big company who happens to own copyrights usurped from artists in exchange for basically nothing with the means to production is trying to protect those rights, still...
Reality check: Sony doesn't have creative product and thus has nothing to sell. Eventually, artists will start to make money directly from their fans because the industry has made it so damn prohibitive to buy consumer-directed "art" that the consumer just gets fed up with all the controls over their media playback devices and media. Quit buying that shit!
There is so much more quality stuff with so fewer strings attached avaiable by independents that wasting time in Sam Goody's is just that: a waste of time. Give your money to the artist and buy directly from them or via CD Baby or MP3.com. Quit buying Sony, BMG, Virgin CDs and guess what: CD prices will drop to about $5 for 15 tracks and people will quit stealing it. Worse case scenario is you get to hear something original and the artist gets to eat...
There's no need (perceived or practical) to use Win95 to surf the 'Net. I know people who use it for certain multi-media things and just keep it off-line. I personally use it to test my own web applications and for QuickBooks... that's it. If I wish to surf the 'Net (like right now for instance) in a zone I can't trust, I use an OS I can trust with Java disabled and cookies selectively controlled. You too can take this approach.
Contrary to popular belief, the Internet isn't really necessary, either. You can get news from TV, mail via the postal system, and talk to people using a phone. They all still function virtually risk-free.
Don't go buying new hardware and paying more to M$ for licensing fees because they forced you to due to their own incompetence. If you do, you're a sheep...
I've been trying to convince my family and friends for months to boycott CDs until the RIAA gets real. Now that they'll start running into useability issues when they try and play CDs in their new stereo, it looks like they'll finally get that disincentive to buy $20 CDs churned out by the media/ad agencies (who are one and the same, at this point). Hopefully, they'll start buying independent artists' works. It's a shame that much of this type of product is still poorly produced, but compared to 10 years ago, the indies have really made some progress. It's exciting to see where indies' production quality will be 10 years from now.
Of those 250MM blanks purchased for the sole purpose of raping the RIAA and its members, I'm responsible for about 250 units. None of them are CD-R for audio, since I don't subsidize the RIAA. Not a single one of them was used to burn a copy of a purchased, or burned-from-a-purchased, or even third, fourth, or 10th generation pirated audio CD. About half were used to archive old data from servers / workstations, perform backups; and the rest were used for my own musical projects: original Ded Serius songs, and practice CDs so I could promote other artists work (covers) during live gigs in bands.
So, now that the "industry" is about to force it's consumers to stop buying, I'd like to continue to offer my own material here:
Ded Serius Music, some friends' music here: Layden Robinson, Turkestan Road, and Twig free of charge. Because real musicians (Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, etc.) did it (and still do) for... the music. People who do music for the $$$ are... the Industry. Who are you going to support?
Go see a local band play live and buy their CD. We'd love to see some people show up for the show.
'Waiting to Index' my files.
Precisely why if I need to find something quickly I fire up a putty session to my samba server and do a quick grep -i 'word2find'
What really sucks is this moron will probably actually sell enough of this crapware to retire in 2 years. Technology will continue to suck until Bill Gates dies. OSes are irrelevant! Actually, I guess they are...
Suits are fine for job hunts. But, no one's going to make you do anything on the interview. I can even agree with the esteem boost.
As the IT guy in a 1st Mortgage shop at Citicorp some years back, though, I found myself stuck competing with a bunch of loan officers for the best tie award every day spending massive amounts of my discretionary income on ties that got in my way as I tried to get my job done. Expensive slacks got ruined when some office cow would look at me in her polyester flower-dress and say "Gee, Sparky, I don't kno how to change the toner in the copy machine."
So, putting good dress into practice is largely a matter of function. If you interact with the public and have to sell shit, dress up. But, when I get off work, I go live my fucking life. I'm not going to spend $150 on a new tie, or $1000 on an Armani suit when I'd rather throw the money down on a new Taylor acoustic guitar.
I work so I can finance my life. What do you do?
Most consumers still do buy CDs and go to movies. It's only the moderately to extremely technocentric who download and rip music wraught from free file-sharing services. Most people don't have 10 Linux/BSD/BeOS computers sitting in the other room. Most people don't have more than the scant 4 - 8 GBytes of filesystem space on their 1 Win9x computer they use to check mail on AOL or MSN. That's the way of life outside Slashdot.
The onslaught of change has begun in how music distribution takes place and the RIAA and MPAA are deploying survival tactics now because their business model demands they prevent these technophiles from establishing that independent music and movie production is viable and forthcoming with near term consumer technologies. They need laws now to prevent the inevitable "Joe's Home Movie (Part III: The Basement)" from taking revenues from their next Hollywood blockbuster by ensuring no ordinary consumer can play it unless it has an industy-approved DRM mechanism on the media. They need to prevent your home-produced CD of your original music recorded on ProTools from being playable in a new Esplanade. They need to maintain that, unless CNN/Time Warner gets ad revenues from industry and society approved advertising messages with sponsored and undercompensated artists, those subversive independent works get silenced.
It is an uphill battle, but you just have to keep hammering it away. Boycott CDs and movies. Go see a band and buy the CD directly from the artist.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft. -- Wish I could really disagree with that. But, does it really matter?
Much more cool, since it isn't at
So, there still are some Slackware users out there? Or just a cludged RH?
I realize M$ took the article down, but is the preferred method of submitting insider article ideas still via the following document links:
- or -
Would they prefer you just take over one of Micro$oft's IIS servers and replace the c:\wwwroot\ with your story content? Is there a code-redify wizard available to automate the process of taking 0wn3r5h1p of an IIS server, or does this have to be done manually? Thanks if someone knows...
A good package management system doesn't necessarily need to include a plethora of automated utilities that allow you to forget how to be a system administrator. RPM actually discourages thorough knowledge of your system in the same way M$ approaches updates / "package management." With RH, you'll eventually need to reboot (unless you're very good; but the distro discourages you from being very good).
I've upgraded glibc on a slackware server 2000 miles away before without a reboot. And, yes it worked just fine for another couple hundred days until I got on a plane and traveled to where it was so I could get it.
People put way too much emphasis on package management. I prefer to maintain my own as closely as possible. Creates much less work in the long run...