If someone is killed by a terrorist it is bad, but if an innocent person is killed by the police, it is a lot worse. A society where innocent people are terrified of terrorism has a minor problem. A society where innocent people live in fear of the police has a major problem. Hint: it's because the police is the major social institution with legal backing for use of force, and the terrorists aren't. It's a lot easier to convict a terrorist for killing someone than it is sometimes to even get a fucking apology from the police.
How could Apple have stolen the Dock from Windows, when the Dock originated in NEXTSTEP, which predates versions of Windows with a taskbar by quite a few years?
It was the same with Gil Amelio at Apple. He inherited a company that was going downhill fast, made the necessary changes and was sacked before his changes really took effect. When Jobs took over, a lot of the things he is given credit for were started by Amelio. Having said that, Amelio would never have gotten Apple to where it is today, only Jobs could have done that, but he does deserve the credit for what he did do, and which he doesn't generally get.
Same goes with Fiorina. She offended a lot of people at HP. But by all accounts they needed to be offended, and get a kick up the backside to boot. That's just what happens when someone comes along and makes necessary waves. Often they get sacked, but their changes stick. It's just business.
> I'm tired of everyone who has an orgasm every time they see a Macintosh.
Dude, what's wrong with you? This is the best thing for picking up girls ever.
The last straw for me was the poor performance that I was getting playing World of Warcraft (the main reason I had upgraded to their high speed service). I don't know what they did, but I just started getting ridiculous latency spikes and interruptions, and for once it was not Blizzard's fault. Of course (among other things) they insisted that it was my fault for using a Mac (the tards). So much for high speed internet that randomly slows to a crawl in peak gaming hours.
Sympatico are pointless scum who don't listen to their own customers.
And I'm glad I left Canada before the Tories started wrecking everything.
The Apple iElevator (sorry, MacElevator Pro) would have a touch screen display that displayed the available floors (and not the one you were on) along with the relevant information of who was on each floor. It wouldn't beep, but would have a chord played by the Berlin Philharmonic as the alert sound. And it would have the awesome feature that Korean elevators have and Canadian ones don't: I mean that if you push the button twice it cancels the action (so you aren't doomed to visit your mistakes).
Yes, Blizzard borrowed heavily from Games Workshop. You only have to look at the late 80s Citadel catalogue to see where the inspiration for Warcraft's Artwork came from. It's not enough to say that both borrowed from Tolkien, because they did. But Blizzard borrowed heavily from GW's "chunky" spin on fantasy figures, and WCIII borrows heavily from the Warhammer Universe and the invasion of Chaos (hell, it's even called Reign of Chaos). The Warcraft games even have much the same sense of humour as the Warhammer games.
But that doesn't make them bad. I happen to hate what Games Workshop has done to itself. In 1989 they had the most fun tabletop games in existence, the best gaming magazin,e and the best roleplaying game I had ever played. They abandoned the latter and dumbed down both of the former in order to sell overpriced hunks of metal (I was particularly distressed at what happened to WH40K). I'm glad that Blizzard came along and took some of these ideas and made them into great games, since GW doesn't have a hope in hell of doing so (I predict WAR will suck).
TFA is right in that Blizzard is just good at making extremely playable games. World of Warcraft is the best game I have ever played. I have spent more time on it than any other game, even the original Civilization, and I still have tons of stuff to do. Sure, there are lots of bad things about it, like the daft emphasis on 40 man raids, but it's still a cracking game and well worth the money.
And I love Blizzard for one additional reason. Their Mac support is by far the best of any gaming company. The WoW Mac Tech forum has the highest CM response of any forum and the responses are always useful and honest. Blizzard go out of their way to make Mac users feel like first class citizens in their games and it is much appreciated.
Like most of the memorable things JS says, it's not really a joke.
It just means that where matters of fact are concerned rather than mere opinions, the liberals tend to be right and the conservatives are plain wrong. "Conservative arguments" tend to involve denying the facts and trying to recast them as matters of opinion. This is the case for a wide variety of topics: sex education, economics, evolution, weapons of mass destruction, Hannity being a nutcase, etc.
And that, people, is a fact.
It's weird that the postmodern "philosophies" derided by conservatives are basically being utilized by them in their attempt to recast all uses of language as rhetoric.
Yeah, but I bet you made Grand Marshal/High Warlord and got your full Epic PvP set.
Compared to that any noob can have washboard abs or buns of steel.
Seriously, this is just shit from people who don't understand, like, or play games. It's OK for them to belong to some ridiculous sports club or folk music club or some other boring crap like that, because this is "normal" and "healthy". How many of them watch more than 4 hours of television a day? That shit will rot your mind.
If I'd wanted to turn my mind to mush and become a cud-chewing thickwit, I would do what "normal" people do. But I find talking about the banalities that are the topics of most people's conversation to be soul destroying. I'd rather destroy other people's virtual souls than my own.
So I game.
I like it. I have a good group of online friends that I game with. They are always glad to see me, and I them. We joke around just like I do with my RL friends. There's nothing "unreal" about it.
> Well, basically speaking, IP rights are a solution to the problem that information wants to be free. A clever hack, if you will, and not a true "right" in the natural rights sense.
> So as you see, it's not really a question of natural rights, like speech, liberty, etc. It's a question of a sensible societal tradeoff. In a sense, IP protection is a "public good" much like parks and libraries (heh, heh, he said "libraries"). Again, using the technical economics definition of "public good" here.
This is the accepted view, but I think that it doesn't apply so much in the case of music that most people want to buy (which is essentially identical with the music that people want to download illegally).
As someone else said, music is a high risk and low pay occupation. People are prepared to have a go at it for various reasons. One is that they simply like doing it, the other is the chance at great wealth, and the rest is "attendant benefits". The latter two only accrue if you are one of the few major success stories.
I don't see that making music free would necessitate even successful artists being poor. For groups like the Stones, their music is just a way of advertising a tour (that's why we get lamer releases and compilations when they tour). Why not just go the whole hog and treat it as advertising, but advertising that people actually like.
But the other benefits of being a successful musician are motivation enough. What teenage muso hasn't dreamed of the endless train of groupies he would fuck if he made it? And there's fame in general.
As long as there is no shortage of fame junkies in our society, there will be no shortage of music. Lots of people are already willing to spend money and time for the chance of being a famous musician. Our society might run into shortages of computer engineers, science teachers et al. but I can tell you that there will never be a shortage of actors and musicians.
> You're actually referring to the subset of artists who have the either the means or the talent to record, mix, engineer and produce their own stuff, right? Do you have a suggestion for musicians who don't happen to have the cash or the skills? Are they SOL in the future world where record companies don't exist?
No. There are plenty of people who manage to produce their own films this way. Some of them are even good. But, although signficant, the financial barriers to producing a decent bit of recorded music are not so high that someone who really wants to can't do it. And new technology means that the barriers are lowering as we speak.
I'm saying that recorded music should really be treated as what it in most cases is: advertising for concerts and other sales. Advertising is customarily given away for free to people who don't want it. Free music as advertising will be consumed by those people who do want it, and better still, they won't resent it and it will make them want to buy other stuff. It's not difficult to understand unless you are a music exec whose livelihood is tied to the old system.
Hell, it costs more to make and broadcast a crappy TV ad than it does to record a song and release it for free on the internet (as a form of advertising your gigs). There's no good reason why music production could not be organized this way, and the RIAA and company have not made a convincing case that it would necessarily be bad for the consumer.
If two guys can make a thing called a "personal computer" and get financial backing for what seemed to be an amateur hobbyist's toy, there is no reason why some kid can't record some songs as promo for his gigs and make millions (or even millions licensing the song to other money making enterprises).
> Here, you're excluding the artists who, for whatever reason, can't or won't tour or perform live, right?
That's cool. I don't claim that the new way will be perfect. But I think that overall, the fact that music will be freely swappable by anyone and its attendant benefits far outweighs the fact that a minority of people will no longer be able to make a certain type of music and make money from it.
> You're not the first to claim that the Internet eliminates the need to do sales or marketing. Do you believe this holds true for other industries? For example, would you advise, say, the Ford Motor Company to cease all marketing and advertising, and just rely on word of mouth?
Why? Ford makes large material items which you have to get up and go to purchase. A couch potato can download music instantly. It's just a fact that the viral nature of the internet tends to spread ideas and content very quickly. We don't really need someone to trumpet this at us. A network model of information awareness (where we tell each other) is just different than a broadcast model (where someone else tells us). Both work.
> I don't understand what you mean here. I haven't met very many people who worked in the record industry, but I've met a few.
That wasn't a serious comment. Just a stab at a stereotype.:)
> Ah, the very articulate "I don't like paying for it so therefore it should be free" argument. Which is just "I don't like paying for it so I don't" plus a heap of bullshit to help one stay a "good boy" and sleep better at night.
You're missing the point. The greatest thing about the internet is that it makes the distribution of content virtually free. I can sit their and just absorb as much information as I want to (I am one of those addicts who endlessly surfs Wikipedia). Who among us could honestly say that this vast amount of free information has not enriched their lives? It's the worlds biggest and most easily navigable book and deals with virtually every topic known to humankind (from sites about Aristotle to sites about breast aesthetics (ratemyjugs or whatever that site is called).
Before the internet, information was often a pain to get. With the internet I, as an information junkie, can mainline it. And what's better is that I don't have to do this alone, but I can share it and talk about it with other people who have the same interests (whether that interest be Aristotle or breasts).
The same goes for music. I own well over a thousand CDs (closer to 2 thousand I think). But filesharing exposed me to all sorts of wonderful music I had never heard, and enabled me to get rare stuff without having to wait for a CD to arrive in the mail. Excluding the fact that it was free, Napster was still the best thing that's happened to music in years. But the fact is that it has to be free for people to extract the maximum benefit. Information wants to be free, and it is alawys much better for everyone if it is.
The RIAA and their ilk are deliberately trying to control the distribution of music, which no one person or organization should be allowed to control. They are directly attacking the freedom that makes being a music lover right now much better than it ever was before. They have no right to ruin this just to support an industry that we don't need.
We don't need them to record music. Artists can do that themselves, and release it for free if they want to. They've always made more money from concerts, belly-button rings and T-shirts anyway. For the artist, a recording is basically a form of advertising live performance. If the record companies get off their backs, then they won't have to worry about being screwed and can record music on their own terms. Besides, with current computer technology the price of recording a decent album is low. Indpendent filmakers spend more on their pet projects.
We don't need record companies to distribute music. If I am an artist I can put it on my site and let the public decide. If people like it, it will spread virally. It will cost me virtually nothing.
We don't need record companies to "find" artists for us. Anyone who wants to can release their music and the public will decide who makes it. That is vastly more efficient than getting some idiot like Simon from American Idolatry to decide for us.
We don't need record companies to publicize music. The internet is incredibly efficient at spreading ideas. Look at some of the viral memes that have spread just because of the internet.
What else is left for record company employees to do, other than support the cocaine industry?
Nothing. They are vampires, and the stakes are being sharpened.
Why destroy the ability to freely access and share music if there is no need?
> I'm as liberal as the next guy, but people who steal things understand the risks involved, or if they don't, they deserve what they get simply out of ignorance.
People who use the law to defend industries for which there is no longer any need are enemies of the people.;)
The recording industry should just die. File sharing is the best thing to happen to music since the invention of the LP (it completely rekindled my interest in popular music after years of apathy, and the same goes for many of my friends). Copyright is supposed to be about the interests of the consumer. Well, it's quite clear that the interests of the consumer are served better by the free exchange of music than by having to financially support an industry.
People will still make and distribute music if they aren't being paid (for all sorts of reasons). If you don't want to, you don't have to. But don't crap on the listeners who have no need to support an outmoded business model. No one has any moral right to make money from music, just as no one has any moral right to make other people pay every time they tell a story you told them.
File sharing is like marijuana - you just aren't going to be able to stop people from doing it.
As someone with an Antipodean accent, I was treated very well by Montrealers. It might have helped that I at least tried to use as much French as I had, and when people asked why, explained that this was Quebec and I didn't expect people to speak English. Like many non-English speakers, Quebecers get annoyed if people just expect them to speak English in their own country (or province in this case).
It's a wonderful city. Along with Edinburgh it's one of my favourites.
IIRC didn't Google do all their accounts using Quicken in the early years? I seem to remember reading that and laughing. I think that for intensive apps like CS2 you are right, but what interests me so much is virtualization. If that really can be made to work well, then no-one need be tied to Windows for all their software. Plus, a lot of computers in colleges don't run much more than browsers, email and Office software, and it would be easier just to replace those. Granted, I work in education and we don't have much use for anything beyond the basics.
But I stand by my comment that MS is in a worse situation if VIsta bombs than it was with the appalling ME.
I can't believe I got modded troll above. It seems some people have a problem with basic English comprehension.
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft
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Please correct me if I am wrong, but Microsoft managed to avoid the disaster that was Windows ME by replacing it not long after (i.e. a couple of years) with XP Home Edition, which was based on NT. So at least they had some insurance.
If Vista is a disaster, they don't seem to have another OS ready to tweak to replace it. All their eggs seem to be in this basket.
More to the point, there are better competitors out there. Back in 2000 Apple was still selling the Classic Mac OS, and Linux on the desktop was quite crude. Now Apple is currently selling an OS that is at least as good as Vista and will release a new version that will probably be much better than Vista around the same time MS releases. Desktop Linux is starting to look really good, and the whole movement towards virtualization could conceivably provide backwards compatibility for people who want to move away from MS products (this is what Boot Camp and the rumoured virtualization in OS 10.5 are about).
There's a scene in "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where Steve Jobs confronts Gates about plagiarizing from Apple. Jobs claims he will win because Apple has better stuff, but Gates points out that this doesn't matter. The Gates character was proven right. But now this might bite the real Gates in the ass: Desktop Linux is probably not going to be as good as Vista, but that doesn't matter. Microsoft beat Apple because Apple had hardware lockin. Linux will beat Microsoft because Microsoft has software lockin, and because Linux these days is pretty much good enough.
Substitute for "I use drugs" the phrase "I am gay, and I live in Afghanistan" and see how far you get.
I guess the problem with future laws is one we can't avoid. We can't be sure that future people won't be a bunch of uptight uber-moralistic assholes, but you can't live as if that's true. In fact, there's good reason that you should get all your weird sicko stuff done now while the price is right.
If Apple released a Bluetooth iPod, a lot more people would use it. I wish they would. The cool factor would be enough for me.
Apple computers tend to last for an extremely long time. I just gave away my old CRT iMac after 6 years of faithful service. It now runs Panther acceptably and will be a good enough computer for simple tasks for another couple of years. It stands to reason that many of the things people don't use much now, they will find they need in the future, and it's always pleasant to realize that you don't have to spend any more money or buy a new computer, and that it will "just work" because Apple already thought of it.
Example: I bought my Powerbook over a year ago. I loathe cell phones and I have never owned a PDA. I had no conceivable use for Bluetooth. Then for various reasons I had to use the Powerbook as both my mobile and my office machine. That means shutting the lid and using an external LCD. Bluetooth halves the amount of plugs I have to put in every time I move it. I'm really pleased it was there: having to get some stupid USB dongle for wireless peripherals would have been too much of an irritant.
Re:Step 1: Invent the Apple I
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Now now... everyone knows that...
There's no step 3.
Re:Actually Woz was the more important Steve ...
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It's unfair for people to slag off Jobs. Sure Woz is the more personally appealing of the two, and sure, he appeals more to the average/. reader, since he's the engineer type, but Jobs has done far more for the company, and is in many ways the more remarkable person.
Jobs is extremely good at getting the right people to do the right thing, and getting them to do it as best as they can. Like many bosses he's by all accounts somewhat of an asshole, but I guess most people in his position are a bit like that. He is the person who should take most of the credit for saving Apple.
Jobs' personal stamp is all over everything that Apple makes, particularly its consumer level stuff. It seems to me that some people here just don't get it. There's an old interview with Jobs floating around on the net where he accuses Microsoft of having no taste. That's sort of the point with Apple: it's not enough just to make stuff that works, it always has to be done with one eye on the aesthetics of the computer experience. Apple under Jobs has characteristically produced machines and software with a simplistic Zen-like design that attempt to be works of art (and in some cases arguably succeed). If you are the sort of person who only cares about what is quantifiable in technical terms, then you aren't going to really get Apple's way of doing things. That's why people like the iPod... it's just a cool piece of kit. Comparing it with other players on technical grounds alone misses the point. It's rivals are almost uniformly hideous and lack any sense of proportion or beauty.
I guess if you wanted to sum it up, Apple's philosophy is that a computer (or whatever they are flogging this week) should be an organic whole, not merely a prettified piece of technical equipment. The Apple aesthetic is a fundamental part of the user experience, and one which attracts a following. That's Jobs' doing for the most part.
If you don't like that sort of stuff, then fair enough, but to me it seems that it is akin to the difference between someone who is incredibly technically proficient with the guitar, but has no real sense of what makes good music, and someone who has both.
But if the response I have seen is anything to go by, Apple will sell a fair few computers because of Boot Camp. Even in this discussion there are people saying: "Right, I'm getting a Mac" or "Just ordered my first Mac".
I've been seeing that all day. I'm quite surprised. I expected more whining and more dithering, but a lot of people seem to be jumping at the chance of getting their first Mac.
Every Mac User knows we have the better desktop OS, it's just that that wasn't quite enough for people with Windows specific needs (primarily games) to make the switch.
Now there's no reason not to. And it will be a nice surprise for new Mac owners. I bought an iMac Core Duo last week. It is a superb computer and IMHO the finest that Apple has ever made (with the possible exception of the MacBook Pro).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you're the one that's nauseating.
If someone is killed by a terrorist it is bad, but if an innocent person is killed by the police, it is a lot worse. A society where innocent people are terrified of terrorism has a minor problem. A society where innocent people live in fear of the police has a major problem. Hint: it's because the police is the major social institution with legal backing for use of force, and the terrorists aren't. It's a lot easier to convict a terrorist for killing someone than it is sometimes to even get a fucking apology from the police.
How could Apple have stolen the Dock from Windows, when the Dock originated in NEXTSTEP, which predates versions of Windows with a taskbar by quite a few years?
Just askin...
I knew this would happen.
It was the same with Gil Amelio at Apple. He inherited a company that was going downhill fast, made the necessary changes and was sacked before his changes really took effect. When Jobs took over, a lot of the things he is given credit for were started by Amelio. Having said that, Amelio would never have gotten Apple to where it is today, only Jobs could have done that, but he does deserve the credit for what he did do, and which he doesn't generally get.
Same goes with Fiorina. She offended a lot of people at HP. But by all accounts they needed to be offended, and get a kick up the backside to boot. That's just what happens when someone comes along and makes necessary waves. Often they get sacked, but their changes stick. It's just business.
> I'm tired of everyone who has an orgasm every time they see a Macintosh. Dude, what's wrong with you? This is the best thing for picking up girls ever.
I hear ya.
The last straw for me was the poor performance that I was getting playing World of Warcraft (the main reason I had upgraded to their high speed service). I don't know what they did, but I just started getting ridiculous latency spikes and interruptions, and for once it was not Blizzard's fault. Of course (among other things) they insisted that it was my fault for using a Mac (the tards). So much for high speed internet that randomly slows to a crawl in peak gaming hours.
Sympatico are pointless scum who don't listen to their own customers.
And I'm glad I left Canada before the Tories started wrecking everything.
Nah.
The Apple iElevator (sorry, MacElevator Pro) would have a touch screen display that displayed the available floors (and not the one you were on) along with the relevant information of who was on each floor. It wouldn't beep, but would have a chord played by the Berlin Philharmonic as the alert sound. And it would have the awesome feature that Korean elevators have and Canadian ones don't: I mean that if you push the button twice it cancels the action (so you aren't doomed to visit your mistakes).
And it would be round.
Yes, Blizzard borrowed heavily from Games Workshop. You only have to look at the late 80s Citadel catalogue to see where the inspiration for Warcraft's Artwork came from. It's not enough to say that both borrowed from Tolkien, because they did. But Blizzard borrowed heavily from GW's "chunky" spin on fantasy figures, and WCIII borrows heavily from the Warhammer Universe and the invasion of Chaos (hell, it's even called Reign of Chaos). The Warcraft games even have much the same sense of humour as the Warhammer games.
But that doesn't make them bad. I happen to hate what Games Workshop has done to itself. In 1989 they had the most fun tabletop games in existence, the best gaming magazin,e and the best roleplaying game I had ever played. They abandoned the latter and dumbed down both of the former in order to sell overpriced hunks of metal (I was particularly distressed at what happened to WH40K). I'm glad that Blizzard came along and took some of these ideas and made them into great games, since GW doesn't have a hope in hell of doing so (I predict WAR will suck).
TFA is right in that Blizzard is just good at making extremely playable games. World of Warcraft is the best game I have ever played. I have spent more time on it than any other game, even the original Civilization, and I still have tons of stuff to do. Sure, there are lots of bad things about it, like the daft emphasis on 40 man raids, but it's still a cracking game and well worth the money.
And I love Blizzard for one additional reason. Their Mac support is by far the best of any gaming company. The WoW Mac Tech forum has the highest CM response of any forum and the responses are always useful and honest. Blizzard go out of their way to make Mac users feel like first class citizens in their games and it is much appreciated.
Like most of the memorable things JS says, it's not really a joke.
It just means that where matters of fact are concerned rather than mere opinions, the liberals tend to be right and the conservatives are plain wrong. "Conservative arguments" tend to involve denying the facts and trying to recast them as matters of opinion. This is the case for a wide variety of topics: sex education, economics, evolution, weapons of mass destruction, Hannity being a nutcase, etc.
And that, people, is a fact.
It's weird that the postmodern "philosophies" derided by conservatives are basically being utilized by them in their attempt to recast all uses of language as rhetoric.
Yeah, but I bet you made Grand Marshal/High Warlord and got your full Epic PvP set.
Compared to that any noob can have washboard abs or buns of steel.
Seriously, this is just shit from people who don't understand, like, or play games. It's OK for them to belong to some ridiculous sports club or folk music club or some other boring crap like that, because this is "normal" and "healthy". How many of them watch more than 4 hours of television a day? That shit will rot your mind.
If I'd wanted to turn my mind to mush and become a cud-chewing thickwit, I would do what "normal" people do. But I find talking about the banalities that are the topics of most people's conversation to be soul destroying. I'd rather destroy other people's virtual souls than my own.
So I game.
I like it. I have a good group of online friends that I game with. They are always glad to see me, and I them. We joke around just like I do with my RL friends. There's nothing "unreal" about it.
> Well, basically speaking, IP rights are a solution to the problem that information wants to be free. A clever hack, if you will, and not a true "right" in the natural rights sense.
> So as you see, it's not really a question of natural rights, like speech, liberty, etc. It's a question of a sensible societal tradeoff. In a sense, IP protection is a "public good" much like parks and libraries (heh, heh, he said "libraries"). Again, using the technical economics definition of "public good" here.
This is the accepted view, but I think that it doesn't apply so much in the case of music that most people want to buy (which is essentially identical with the music that people want to download illegally).
As someone else said, music is a high risk and low pay occupation. People are prepared to have a go at it for various reasons. One is that they simply like doing it, the other is the chance at great wealth, and the rest is "attendant benefits". The latter two only accrue if you are one of the few major success stories.
I don't see that making music free would necessitate even successful artists being poor. For groups like the Stones, their music is just a way of advertising a tour (that's why we get lamer releases and compilations when they tour). Why not just go the whole hog and treat it as advertising, but advertising that people actually like.
But the other benefits of being a successful musician are motivation enough. What teenage muso hasn't dreamed of the endless train of groupies he would fuck if he made it? And there's fame in general.
As long as there is no shortage of fame junkies in our society, there will be no shortage of music. Lots of people are already willing to spend money and time for the chance of being a famous musician. Our society might run into shortages of computer engineers, science teachers et al. but I can tell you that there will never be a shortage of actors and musicians.
I think I see the difference.
Girls who like doing things like (2) and all the other bondage stuff are more fun, right?
> You're actually referring to the subset of artists who have the either the means or the talent to record, mix, engineer and produce their own stuff, right? Do you have a suggestion for musicians who don't happen to have the cash or the skills? Are they SOL in the future world where record companies don't exist?
:)
No. There are plenty of people who manage to produce their own films this way. Some of them are even good. But, although signficant, the financial barriers to producing a decent bit of recorded music are not so high that someone who really wants to can't do it. And new technology means that the barriers are lowering as we speak.
I'm saying that recorded music should really be treated as what it in most cases is: advertising for concerts and other sales. Advertising is customarily given away for free to people who don't want it. Free music as advertising will be consumed by those people who do want it, and better still, they won't resent it and it will make them want to buy other stuff. It's not difficult to understand unless you are a music exec whose livelihood is tied to the old system.
Hell, it costs more to make and broadcast a crappy TV ad than it does to record a song and release it for free on the internet (as a form of advertising your gigs). There's no good reason why music production could not be organized this way, and the RIAA and company have not made a convincing case that it would necessarily be bad for the consumer.
If two guys can make a thing called a "personal computer" and get financial backing for what seemed to be an amateur hobbyist's toy, there is no reason why some kid can't record some songs as promo for his gigs and make millions (or even millions licensing the song to other money making enterprises).
> Here, you're excluding the artists who, for whatever reason, can't or won't tour or perform live, right?
That's cool. I don't claim that the new way will be perfect. But I think that overall, the fact that music will be freely swappable by anyone and its attendant benefits far outweighs the fact that a minority of people will no longer be able to make a certain type of music and make money from it.
> You're not the first to claim that the Internet eliminates the need to do sales or marketing. Do you believe this holds true for other industries? For example, would you advise, say, the Ford Motor Company to cease all marketing and advertising, and just rely on word of mouth?
Why? Ford makes large material items which you have to get up and go to purchase. A couch potato can download music instantly. It's just a fact that the viral nature of the internet tends to spread ideas and content very quickly. We don't really need someone to trumpet this at us. A network model of information awareness (where we tell each other) is just different than a broadcast model (where someone else tells us). Both work.
> I don't understand what you mean here. I haven't met very many people who worked in the record industry, but I've met a few.
That wasn't a serious comment. Just a stab at a stereotype.
I'm sorry. For a moment I thought you were something more than a shortsighted, selfish cretin. My mistake.
> Ah, the very articulate "I don't like paying for it so therefore it should be free" argument. Which is just "I don't like paying for it so I don't" plus a heap of bullshit to help one stay a "good boy" and sleep better at night.
You're missing the point. The greatest thing about the internet is that it makes the distribution of content virtually free. I can sit their and just absorb as much information as I want to (I am one of those addicts who endlessly surfs Wikipedia). Who among us could honestly say that this vast amount of free information has not enriched their lives? It's the worlds biggest and most easily navigable book and deals with virtually every topic known to humankind (from sites about Aristotle to sites about breast aesthetics (ratemyjugs or whatever that site is called).
Before the internet, information was often a pain to get. With the internet I, as an information junkie, can mainline it. And what's better is that I don't have to do this alone, but I can share it and talk about it with other people who have the same interests (whether that interest be Aristotle or breasts).
The same goes for music. I own well over a thousand CDs (closer to 2 thousand I think). But filesharing exposed me to all sorts of wonderful music I had never heard, and enabled me to get rare stuff without having to wait for a CD to arrive in the mail. Excluding the fact that it was free, Napster was still the best thing that's happened to music in years. But the fact is that it has to be free for people to extract the maximum benefit. Information wants to be free, and it is alawys much better for everyone if it is.
The RIAA and their ilk are deliberately trying to control the distribution of music, which no one person or organization should be allowed to control. They are directly attacking the freedom that makes being a music lover right now much better than it ever was before. They have no right to ruin this just to support an industry that we don't need.
We don't need them to record music. Artists can do that themselves, and release it for free if they want to. They've always made more money from concerts, belly-button rings and T-shirts anyway. For the artist, a recording is basically a form of advertising live performance. If the record companies get off their backs, then they won't have to worry about being screwed and can record music on their own terms. Besides, with current computer technology the price of recording a decent album is low. Indpendent filmakers spend more on their pet projects.
We don't need record companies to distribute music. If I am an artist I can put it on my site and let the public decide. If people like it, it will spread virally. It will cost me virtually nothing.
We don't need record companies to "find" artists for us. Anyone who wants to can release their music and the public will decide who makes it. That is vastly more efficient than getting some idiot like Simon from American Idolatry to decide for us.
We don't need record companies to publicize music. The internet is incredibly efficient at spreading ideas. Look at some of the viral memes that have spread just because of the internet.
What else is left for record company employees to do, other than support the cocaine industry?
Nothing. They are vampires, and the stakes are being sharpened.
Why destroy the ability to freely access and share music if there is no need?
> I'm as liberal as the next guy, but people who steal things understand the risks involved, or if they don't, they deserve what they get simply out of ignorance.
;)
People who use the law to defend industries for which there is no longer any need are enemies of the people.
The recording industry should just die. File sharing is the best thing to happen to music since the invention of the LP (it completely rekindled my interest in popular music after years of apathy, and the same goes for many of my friends). Copyright is supposed to be about the interests of the consumer. Well, it's quite clear that the interests of the consumer are served better by the free exchange of music than by having to financially support an industry.
People will still make and distribute music if they aren't being paid (for all sorts of reasons). If you don't want to, you don't have to. But don't crap on the listeners who have no need to support an outmoded business model. No one has any moral right to make money from music, just as no one has any moral right to make other people pay every time they tell a story you told them.
File sharing is like marijuana - you just aren't going to be able to stop people from doing it.
Yeah, the nerds won.
"Revenge of the Jocks"?
Nah... no one would watch that.
He's right.
As someone with an Antipodean accent, I was treated very well by Montrealers. It might have helped that I at least tried to use as much French as I had, and when people asked why, explained that this was Quebec and I didn't expect people to speak English. Like many non-English speakers, Quebecers get annoyed if people just expect them to speak English in their own country (or province in this case).
It's a wonderful city. Along with Edinburgh it's one of my favourites.
Point taken. Grats on all the punting. :)
IIRC didn't Google do all their accounts using Quicken in the early years? I seem to remember reading that and laughing. I think that for intensive apps like CS2 you are right, but what interests me so much is virtualization. If that really can be made to work well, then no-one need be tied to Windows for all their software. Plus, a lot of computers in colleges don't run much more than browsers, email and Office software, and it would be easier just to replace those. Granted, I work in education and we don't have much use for anything beyond the basics.
But I stand by my comment that MS is in a worse situation if VIsta bombs than it was with the appalling ME.
I can't believe I got modded troll above. It seems some people have a problem with basic English comprehension.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but Microsoft managed to avoid the disaster that was Windows ME by replacing it not long after (i.e. a couple of years) with XP Home Edition, which was based on NT. So at least they had some insurance.
If Vista is a disaster, they don't seem to have another OS ready to tweak to replace it. All their eggs seem to be in this basket.
More to the point, there are better competitors out there. Back in 2000 Apple was still selling the Classic Mac OS, and Linux on the desktop was quite crude. Now Apple is currently selling an OS that is at least as good as Vista and will release a new version that will probably be much better than Vista around the same time MS releases. Desktop Linux is starting to look really good, and the whole movement towards virtualization could conceivably provide backwards compatibility for people who want to move away from MS products (this is what Boot Camp and the rumoured virtualization in OS 10.5 are about).
There's a scene in "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where Steve Jobs confronts Gates about plagiarizing from Apple. Jobs claims he will win because Apple has better stuff, but Gates points out that this doesn't matter. The Gates character was proven right. But now this might bite the real Gates in the ass: Desktop Linux is probably not going to be as good as Vista, but that doesn't matter. Microsoft beat Apple because Apple had hardware lockin. Linux will beat Microsoft because Microsoft has software lockin, and because Linux these days is pretty much good enough.
We can only hope.
Just looked at anti-slash
From the site:
"CowboyNeal
Sorry, no injustices on file for CowboyNeal."
That was a relief. The world would end if CowboyNeal did anything bad.
But seriously, the injustices mentioned on the site seem to be pretty small beer. Digg, on the other hand, just festers IMHO.
Substitute for "I use drugs" the phrase "I am gay, and I live in Afghanistan" and see how far you get.
I guess the problem with future laws is one we can't avoid. We can't be sure that future people won't be a bunch of uptight uber-moralistic assholes, but you can't live as if that's true. In fact, there's good reason that you should get all your weird sicko stuff done now while the price is right.
If Apple released a Bluetooth iPod, a lot more people would use it. I wish they would. The cool factor would be enough for me.
Apple computers tend to last for an extremely long time. I just gave away my old CRT iMac after 6 years of faithful service. It now runs Panther acceptably and will be a good enough computer for simple tasks for another couple of years. It stands to reason that many of the things people don't use much now, they will find they need in the future, and it's always pleasant to realize that you don't have to spend any more money or buy a new computer, and that it will "just work" because Apple already thought of it.
Example: I bought my Powerbook over a year ago. I loathe cell phones and I have never owned a PDA. I had no conceivable use for Bluetooth. Then for various reasons I had to use the Powerbook as both my mobile and my office machine. That means shutting the lid and using an external LCD. Bluetooth halves the amount of plugs I have to put in every time I move it. I'm really pleased it was there: having to get some stupid USB dongle for wireless peripherals would have been too much of an irritant.
Now now... everyone knows that... There's no step 3.
It's unfair for people to slag off Jobs. Sure Woz is the more personally appealing of the two, and sure, he appeals more to the average /. reader, since he's the engineer type, but Jobs has done far more for the company, and is in many ways the more remarkable person.
Jobs is extremely good at getting the right people to do the right thing, and getting them to do it as best as they can. Like many bosses he's by all accounts somewhat of an asshole, but I guess most people in his position are a bit like that. He is the person who should take most of the credit for saving Apple.
Jobs' personal stamp is all over everything that Apple makes, particularly its consumer level stuff. It seems to me that some people here just don't get it. There's an old interview with Jobs floating around on the net where he accuses Microsoft of having no taste. That's sort of the point with Apple: it's not enough just to make stuff that works, it always has to be done with one eye on the aesthetics of the computer experience. Apple under Jobs has characteristically produced machines and software with a simplistic Zen-like design that attempt to be works of art (and in some cases arguably succeed). If you are the sort of person who only cares about what is quantifiable in technical terms, then you aren't going to really get Apple's way of doing things. That's why people like the iPod... it's just a cool piece of kit. Comparing it with other players on technical grounds alone misses the point. It's rivals are almost uniformly hideous and lack any sense of proportion or beauty.
I guess if you wanted to sum it up, Apple's philosophy is that a computer (or whatever they are flogging this week) should be an organic whole, not merely a prettified piece of technical equipment. The Apple aesthetic is a fundamental part of the user experience, and one which attracts a following. That's Jobs' doing for the most part.
If you don't like that sort of stuff, then fair enough, but to me it seems that it is akin to the difference between someone who is incredibly technically proficient with the guitar, but has no real sense of what makes good music, and someone who has both.
Maybe...
But if the response I have seen is anything to go by, Apple will sell a fair few computers because of Boot Camp. Even in this discussion there are people saying: "Right, I'm getting a Mac" or "Just ordered my first Mac".
I've been seeing that all day. I'm quite surprised. I expected more whining and more dithering, but a lot of people seem to be jumping at the chance of getting their first Mac.
Every Mac User knows we have the better desktop OS, it's just that that wasn't quite enough for people with Windows specific needs (primarily games) to make the switch.
Now there's no reason not to. And it will be a nice surprise for new Mac owners. I bought an iMac Core Duo last week. It is a superb computer and IMHO the finest that Apple has ever made (with the possible exception of the MacBook Pro).