The Chinese citizen employees at Google.cn. My thoughts are with them if they are experiencing anything negative other than unemployment from their parent company's decision to thumb their nose at the Chinese government.
Let's hope that working for Google.cn doesn't leave them with a social stigma or government imposed sanction or -- far worse -- bodily harm to them and their families. Hopefully their red society didn't give them a scarlet letter.
That said, the Chinese people have little to look forward to with Baidu in such a dominating lead they can stagnate back to the stone age and people won't have much of a choice. It'll be interesting to see how much of Google.cn's 35% marketshare Bing manages to snag.
Publicize it like they (and you) are doing and actually it just might work. Dare Apple look any more evil than their dictatorship at the app store has made them out to be?
Blu Ray and CDs are still "spinning media" aren't they? I think I've seen many holographic storage disc products (touted to be THE FUTURE) that were spinning as well. I agree that our mechanical media may be just atop the apex or turning point but our non-mechanical disc based media is most likely set to be a some form of spinning disc for at least a few years longer. If the article thinks that movies and albums will switch to SSD based distribution, I just don't see it happening real soon or even now.
That's sold out, $35 and possibly not available in Australia. However, after viewing that, it has occurred to me what has happened here. The submitter is used to (what I learned to call) RCA jacks in stereo. These I guess are two jacks looking like this. I believe what the submitter needs is only one of these adapters that will run you a few bucks at your local store (unless you're finicky about quality which I'm guessing he's not if he's doing this on that old of a computer).
Yes, the large RCA version of it is going the way of the buffalo and probably has for some time. Similar to the new video out ports looking smaller and smaller but being essentially the same standard.
My netbook (months old) has a line in jack. My motherboard (1 year old) has a line in jack. In fact, the software drivers for my motherboard allow me to decide what I plug into each of the three jacks even though it's Realtek crap software. Hell, I think I could have three line-in 1/8" jacks if I wanted to. From what I can tell, the most popular Dell desktop is the Inspiron 560. I hate to sound like a salesman but not only do you get 7.1 surround sound at $350 but you also get a line in jack. They even suggest you "Use the (blue) line-in connector to attach a record/playback device such as a cassette player, CD player, or VCR. On computers with a sound card, use the connector on the card."
So that leaves us with some interesting cases:
Something is very rotten in the state of Australia and their recent Think of the Children campaign has gone to new lengths to prevent people from transmitting sexy audio.
You are very adept at selecting some models of computers that have no line-in jacks from a sea of computers with line-in jacks.
You actually have a line-in jack, you just are confused with the colors (please don't take this as an insult, I've helped family members through this before). You also might have better drivers allowing you to make one of the jacks a line-in jack but you don't realize it.
Look closer at your sound card. Does it say "Sorny" or "Panaphonics" on it? Buying computers from a kangaroo in an alleyway will get you what you pay for.
Your tinfoil hat is on so tight you can't see the back ports on your computer.
Look, if you could give us more information like what operating system you use and what motherboards you're using, I'd be willing to track down the manuals on them and verify there's no line-in jack and take a boomerang to the head if I'm mistaken. But couldn't this problem have been solved with a couple bucks? My eeePC netbook has a line-in. I really don't see them disappearing at all.
P.S. If you're looking for something a little more professional, external Audigys and M-Audio Pre USBs are useful for what you're doing though they are pricey ($200 USD).
They need more gawking morons like you to round out their site.
Ah Slashdot, where the genuine request for more information and recognition of your own shortcomings is met only with the satisfying sting of childish name calling. It makes me a 'gawking moron' to ask if anyone knows how I could find out more about genuine news in a country designed to filter out genuine news? Well, I'm kind of sick and tired of people telling me to ignore China.
I was hoping I'd find more information resources similar to Letter from China except hopefully from a Chinese native citizen. Instead I get an insult and a link to sites seemingly dedicated to a mix of gossip, weird news and some actually decent content.
Well, if you think I'm merely a 'gawking moron' I'd better follow your lead and just shut up and get back in line and stop thinking. That is the safest thing to do, right?
You know, I wish I 1) spoke some variant of Chinese and 2) knew more about Chinese media outlets. I wrote a journal post about this situation back when it was developing and tried to find a diverse viewpoint in Chinese news related to Google's ultimatum. It turned out to be more humorous and an exercise in futility than anything else. Does anyone who speaks the language know of a 'subversive' news source out of China? Or anything at all offering balanced and multiple views in the reporting? All I see is multiple sources looking like they are offering you unbiased news when, in fact, they are regurgitating something to you that is within a government approved standard deviation of the government approved message.
Really, really sad. Also a stark reminder of how thankful I should be of the diversity of our press in the United States no matter how sorry it may look at times...
You may be listening to the wrong stations, then... Admittedly, the Clearchannel stations are told by the RIAA what they're going to be playing, but there *are* indie/alternative stations in most major cities that will play indie music and promote local artists.
Don't get me wrong, there are some good bands here... and especially the international ones are good. I have CDs of Arcade Fire and We Were Promised Jetpacks but let's not kid ourselves, Pearl Jam has some albums on UMG. Red Hot Chili Peppers is on EMI. From a quick glance at the playlist, a lot of these bands aren't directly on big labels but they're on labels like Island Records which is now owned by UMG. Even the renowned subpop walks a fine line with Warner's half ownership.
If you want a good idea of what I'm talking about, check out the programming at my old college's radio station. It even appears that Minnesota Public Radio has a better mix of both indie and big four than live 885. When I listen to these channels on the internet, I find that I am constantly writing down acts and constantly going directly to their pages to send them $8-$10 for an album. I wish more people took this organic approach to finding out what your music tastes are instead of being force fed commercialized music or trying to align your tastes with your friends'.
Live 885 has some good stuff and is way more palatable to the average listener but if you could point out a Radio K or even The Current for the DC area where I now live, I would thank you endlessly.
When has RIAA decided for you what you should watch? Sure, if you like bands under the labels that work with RIAA, those labels might go towards more popular music.
Both you and I know that the bands "working with RIAA" are promoted and slammed down our throats. In addition the radio stations that you can listen to are (with the very rare exception of a few I know in Minnesota) pretty much forced to play RIAA only songs. I live in DC and aside from bands like The Bravery that are already on a large label, I have never heard an unsigned local band showcased or even played on the radio. If you were to build a case for the RIAA deciding what you hear, there it is. They are the deciders on who gets played on TV and the Radio. And miffo.swe was pointing out that this fact is why the internet is a thorn in their side.
It doesn't mean they're deciding what you can listen - you're free to go to any local pub, event or even look for indie music on the internet.
You can't use that last point about the internet because that's what is being debated here. That's what we're talking about annoys the hell out of the RIAA. It annoys them because I'll never hear acts like Joanna Newsom at "any local pub or event." I depend on the internet for it because no radio station in my area has the balls to play it even at 2am.
There are a lot websites for non-signed artists to release their music and RIAA has no saying over that since the artists haven't given them permission to do so. You do know that RIAA doesn't just blindly attack sharing of any music, but only music by artists who have (or their labels have) authorized them to do so.
This particular discussion isn't about file sharing, it's about promotion and distribution channels and consumer awareness. The accusations are that the RIAA enjoy limiting consumer awareness. They don't want to lose 20% of their purchases to acts like Joanna Newsom or hundreds of other bands that you might actually like but you'll never know because there's this great system set up to protect you from <evil voice>Something Different!</evil voice> Do you have any idea how difficult it was for me to hear about Matthew Hemerlein despite the fact that I live in DC? Thank god for the internet and the new distribution channels it provides. I agree with miffo.swe that the RIAA is a bit annoyed that I'm going to be sending money directly to labels like Drag City and Afternoon Records instead of the "Big Four."
I remember CDs. They made such pretty coffee coasters after I burned all their music to my MP3 player.
I believe the correct verb you're looking for is 'ripped.' But before you go on about how 'quaint' CDs are, keep in mind how nice it is to own something physical. You have, as a physical object, evidence of your licensing of personal enjoyment of that media. I do buy $5 albums on Amazon MP3 but I feel almost like I somehow receive less rights or a watered down licensing of that album as opposed to if I had purchased the album. If you find this concept quaint then why are vinyl sales slowly rising?
My favorite form of purchasing these albums is vinyl + lossless digital download. A lot of the indie record labels are adopting this method and you pay a $1 or $2 premium on the CD or vinyl album in order to have the music now with the physical artifact shipped to you later. I purchased my Cloud Cult albums in this manner and also She and Him. Instant gratification and I don't even have to take the album out of its wrapper. Don't expect the major labels or even Amazon to warm up to this idea though... it's far too empowering for the consumer.
the article notes that "executives at the other majors were nervous about the UMG move" and "privately, some appeared annoyed."
You don't say. You mean to tell me that they might have to price their music competitively? That they might have to take a pay cut in order to compete in the market? That their 'silent agreement' of what all music should cost among the biggest labels is no more?
Music record contracts really annoy me in this respect. They are nothing but middlemen when it comes to publishing music. I understand their role in promoting and paying upfront cash for studio time but their role as publishers is leech at best.
If bands had the ability to pit manufacturers against each other in publishing their CDs and albums (and also if the band could decide what percentage they needed from sales) then we would see prices dramatically plummet. Look at CDBaby and think how inexpensive it could get if that kind of market was where we bought all our CDs. And in a capitalistic world, that's how it is supposed to work. But no, acts have contracts and the most popular acts love how the labels shove only those acts down our throats. The music industry is a sorry state right now and rarely do we hear news like this. At least UMG appears to be slowly realizing that it's adapt-or-die time.
The thing that gets me is that TBL designed the internet protocols we use every day. Yet they are so full of plaintext and the technology to process it is all based around slicing and dicing this data up to turn it back into usable binary data that it's amazing we've come this far on such a rickety technology.
"Rickety technology?!" Well, TBL should be so lucky to have you waste time posting about him on Slashdot. We're all waiting for your revolutionary code to be donated free of licenses. Are you working with Stanford on their clean slate project announced three years ago? How's that going?
For all the crap people give the current internet, there's a whole lot of talk and not a lot of work being done. Keep in mind that if you don't license it for free, it's going to perish like the U of MN's gopher protocol which could have been the internet protocol.
But in all seriousness I thought I was just bending over backwards to play by the rules although in reality it seems I've been grabbing my ankles so the rich can get richer.
I don't think there is any incentive for Microsoft to start fighting against TVersity. It doesn't really matter for MS how you stream you content to your 360.
You said you owned an XBox, did you notice how you can buy video and music via Zune's Store?
Allow me to spell this out for you very clearly: they wanted me to install Zune software because they want the marketshare of me purchasing all of my songs and videos through the Zune software. It functions just like iTunes Software in that it's supposed to be your one stop shop for dumping oodles of cash towards the RIAA and MPAA. iTMS is a cash cow for Apple. You're crazy if you think Microsoft doesn't want in on that action. If that's not incentive, I don't know what is.
And if you try and tell me that Microsoft would never do that, check out how they manipulated (and still kind of do) the browser marketshare. If you own any of their products, they'll take any chance they get to shove Bing and Zune down your gullet.
Besides, both 360 (as well as PS3 and even many TV's) use Universal Plug and Play for streaming on network, not some proprietary 360-only technology.
Hence the need for an update to both ends in order to move to something proprietary. It's probably unlikely but you can never be completely sure with Microsoft. They're not exactly the poster child of companies embracing open standards and protocols...
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the link to TVersity and will try it out at home but Microsoft disabled third party storage on the XBox 360, how long before they get bored and engage in a little cat-and-mouse game with TVersity? I wish I could drop $300 and get a PS3 and use your suggestion but I don't think I should have to invest that much in order to watch The Final Sacrifice streaming from my personal computer to my TV.
But streaming from Windows Media Player or Zune is just shit.
Honestly, everything was working in an acceptable manner right up until something happened to my C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM files. Is it WMP & Zune that are shit or is it just the DRM? I know I'm not going to be Mr. Popular for saying this but Zune software is just as good/bad as the iTunes software. Its UI is pretty. It's bloated. It's "free" as in the executable's downloadable but you just have to pay a lot of money in auxiliary products to be able to use it.
I realize that this is in the game section but allow me to recount a story from not two weeks ago. A story in which I almost threw my XBox 360 through the goddamn wall. I have one machine that runs Windows XP and connected to that via cat5e cable (shared internet connection) is my XBox 360. In order to share my media (about a TB of MP3s and Videos -- all very legal unless it is unlicensed video), I need to have this Zune software installed. Fine. I had installed it a while ago and though somewhat resource intensive in its UI and "bus service," it worked.
Then I upgraded my computer's CPU from a single core to a quad core. I decided to rip my newly acquired MST3K licensed DVD of The Final Sacrifice to watch Zap Rowsdower in disgustingly high definition (better than my VHS rips anyway) across a network on multiple devices.
The Zune software stopped working. Blew an error box whenever I started the service.
I reinstalled the Zune software. Nope. I went to Microsoft's support. Searched everywhere. I uninstalled the.NET libraries related to the Zune software (the bloat is really hilarious) and all updates. Reinstalled everything. Still not working.
Finally I found that my error code was related to me not having valid... you guessed it... DRM user files. What I did to cause my DRM files to shit the bed, I'll never know. Is it hashing something with a unique processor string? Was it the extra two gigs of RAM I also added? I don't know. I do know I wasted the better part of a night and did not get to watch Zap ask if they have beer on the sun.
The fix was simple. You had just had to run some executable in Windows that re-initialized all your DRM files. So I tried to run it. Guess what. You can't run it if you don't have valid DRM files in your Local Settings directory. So I deleted them. No luck. Same behavior as if I had tried to start Zune. So I Googled. And I searched my OS hard drive for anything with 'drm' in the title. Curiously enough, my Netflix installation had some executable to the effect of drmreset.exe. At this point, I would try anything. I tried it and it worked. I couldn't believe it.
Now, I'm thinking it's good I didn't use the Zune software to rip anything to DRM encrypted format... because I bet resetting your DRM files in your user directory make those files undecryptable.
And what caused all this? I still don't know. Was it because I had the Netflix silverlight crapware installed to watch Netflix? Was it because I had XNA installed as well? Was it simply a CPU upgrade? I have a masters in computer science. And this is the shit they expect your regular consumer to figure out.
In my unfortunate above example, DRM is unavoidable. I couldn't "wait" that out. I couldn't watch streaming media on my game station. Something that should "just work" was hilariously disabled by none other than DRM. It's everywhere. Especially in gaming. This is just one story of DRM inhibiting my ability to enjoy something I paid money for. And it pisses me off. To the point of slowly migrating away from gaming. If you haven't had to tangle with DRM and you're a gamer, just wait. You will.
OpenCV has C interfaces and there are more that have some C code libraries. Really the coding challenge would be building the wrappers to utilize those libraries with your camera's hardware (I assume provided through CHDK APIs). My vote is for a nifty KLT implementation that allows me to take a video and extract a huge wide pan image in post processing on the camera.
I seem to recall something about having a right to a fair trial if I'm a US citizen. Also, I was hoping I would be considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of my peers. Yes, I know that's been thrown out the window in some cases but I would still prefer that over "Oh, they killed the Jones' today. Huh, they must have been consorting with terrorists." The ACLU is trying to protect your civil liberties and freedoms whether you want them to or not. Because to them and many other people, things like this are important.
We covered something four years ago similar to this and I think Brain Port has been exploiting the sensivity of the tongue for multiple fields. I think I had read another article about the military using this because they could control their individual movements more efficiently and silently due to the extreme sensitivity of the tongue.
Sci-fi has long written about sensory perception extensions but I enjoy hearing about the exploitation of our most sensitive inputs. It's amazing to think that we have spent so much time trying to tap our already exploited senses of sight and sound when there was lower hanging fruit to be collected from sensitive areas of touch. I guess inhibiting speech would be an inconvenience here. Could also make for some really alien looking devices coming out of peoples mouths.
Could this be applied to other ares of touch like your underarm or -- dare I say it -- underwear?
I'll bite. I care about China. I care about that one sixth of the world's population developing and coming out of poverty. To a lesser extent, I care about them becoming a serious player in the world market. Right now they play with their money and disrespect their work force beyond belief. It might not make you feel bad to pick up some piece of electronics at Walmart for $20 but I do feel bad when I see "Made in China" and have to think about the health problems the workers might develop... the environmental damage the plant might create... the plant's drinking water problems from the lead... the list goes on. In order to solve these problems, people have to be unafraid to speak up. People need a method for improving these conditions -- however slowly it might come. They don't have that. Removing government censorship mandates is one step toward that. Yeah it's a slow process and it might not seem like much to you but it is to me.
These are topics much closer to home with a much greater impact on us.
I've tried to shake the "East Versus West" mentality as much as possible, it's sad to see it lingers on in some form. All countries are members of the world. Just because one country speaks the same language you do and has the same form of government you do shouldn't make it anymore or less important to you than another country with differences. China's population might even make it more important than Australia to me. You seem to have some very strange misconceptions about allegiances to countries that are disconnected from you. They hold no domain over you whether they're Australia or China. I certainly expect more of my representatives than to say "it's written into law in Australia, it should be in our law here." This "because everyone else is doing it" does not suffice as an argument where I live. Look at the Scandinavian nations that have taken different routes on copyright. It's okay to have different laws in different countries.
What a bunch of Google execs will do with a handful of employees in China... not so much.
I would wager that the precedent this public display sets will have far more implications for you (and what you consume) than Australia's "Think of the Children" campaign.
"I think Google thought China would be flexible," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group.
My opinion is that the CEO, Eric Schmidt, differs from the young idealism of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I do not mean that either side of this leadership is right or wrong but instead simply that they have different motivations. Brin's past has come up before as a source for this (seemingly) new found anti-censorship campaign.
Google's leadership is conflicted. Brin & Page see the ethics of the situation most important because their motivation seems to be less devoted to money. It certainly seemed to be an exercise in indexing when they started "Google." Schmidt, however, owes his allegience to the shareholders. Or at least feels the pull and responsibility of profit more so than any sort of ethical dilemma. And that's why he was put in that position: to keep investors investing. And, honestly, this last point is why I think this 'removal' is nothing but a rumor or a bluff. Because money is one of the most important things to Google. I don't think the young idealism will stand up to stock prices... and I think everyone involved knows it. Until you tell me that Google.cn is dead and I go to the site and confirm it, I will not believe for a second this is possible.
Brin and Page's cashing out is really just symbolic of what's already happened at Google. Their motivations are like any other company's. Some of it is about the customer and some of it is about profit... and that's it. Pesky ideals and ethics have no place in corporate America. Step aside. It's the safest path to churn out tons of cash. They're walking away from too much money and market to pull out of China. It would be bad for stocks and any investors would flip out... probably even sue.
Hopefully the Bilski decision will come out and invalidate software patents. Then these companies can get back to competing on innovation.
Um, from what I've read of the patents, Nokia's patents seem to be (at least partially) for hardware while Apple's patents (in both suits) are about the software (frameworks and the like) on the phones. Nokia's patents seem to focus on the devices that implement standards. While it will reduce the number of patents covered for royalties, I don't think a negative Bilski decision will immediately cause all charges to be dropped... rather they would just figure out a different angle of attack.
Personally, I think software patents are complete and utter bullshit but you have to respect the hardware patents... that's heavy R&D to get the hardware on phones where it is today. You should get your reward for figuring that crap out. I think it's too long of a patent term but you gotta start somewhere.
This whole patent portfolio charade reeks of a prison scene where when you enter a market you either make someone your bitch or become somebody's bitch. You're telling me that these two companies couldn't have respected each other enough to have worked this crap out before they turned it into a public mud slinging spectacle? Grow up.
When a government serves its own purposes it cannot serve its citizens.
I think that's a false dichotomy. Similar to your subject line.
Look at China. It's own purposes overlap the needs of its people. It needs to artificially manipulate the value of its money for many reasons. Some for its own purposes, some for the betterment of some of the citizens. Now look at China again for your subject line. Yeah, absolute freedom is impossible with a tyrant running the country. And your likely to have more freedom in a republic. But you never have absolute freedom anyway in a group larger than one.
I would rephrase your subject to read "Tyranny Often Finds Freedom Annoying" and since tyrants have complete control by definition, they often just get rid of the freedoms. And then there would be a revolution or something... so historically there have been very clever tyrants to embrace the big freedoms and squash the tiny ones that matter to them. And that, in my opinion, is what China is doing. They don't hate freedom and I find personifying things like tyranny, terror and information saying that they hate, love or want is very detrimental to arguments.
The war that began in the 60s has finally come to an end, and it looks like all the players switched sides.
It's great purple prose but it's kind of erroneous. That's a great one liner there but I would have preferred a lengthy paragraph on COINELPRO in today's contexts.
These 200 odd years were certainly a nice time.
And cut the goddamn fake apathy for crying out loud. Man up and speak about it to your friends and family...
EMI disagreed but a judge has sided with Pink Floyd. The ruling is part of a long-running battle between the two sides over £10m in unpaid royalties.
I also am a huge fan of Pink Floyd but I believe your altruistic views of Floyd are a bit misplaced. I dare say this may be a deeper battle with greed also playing a part and 'art' being used as a facade. If they were concerned about their art, from day one they would have denied radio stations the ability to play their work on the radio without the entirety of an album being played. You and I both know this is not the case.
Slashdot Mirror
The Chinese citizen employees at Google.cn. My thoughts are with them if they are experiencing anything negative other than unemployment from their parent company's decision to thumb their nose at the Chinese government.
Let's hope that working for Google.cn doesn't leave them with a social stigma or government imposed sanction or -- far worse -- bodily harm to them and their families. Hopefully their red society didn't give them a scarlet letter.
That said, the Chinese people have little to look forward to with Baidu in such a dominating lead they can stagnate back to the stone age and people won't have much of a choice. It'll be interesting to see how much of Google.cn's 35% marketshare Bing manages to snag.
from the thats-not-gonna-work dept.
Publicize it like they (and you) are doing and actually it just might work. Dare Apple look any more evil than their dictatorship at the app store has made them out to be?
SSD Price Drops Signaling End of Spinning Media?
Blu Ray and CDs are still "spinning media" aren't they? I think I've seen many holographic storage disc products (touted to be THE FUTURE) that were spinning as well. I agree that our mechanical media may be just atop the apex or turning point but our non-mechanical disc based media is most likely set to be a some form of spinning disc for at least a few years longer. If the article thinks that movies and albums will switch to SSD based distribution, I just don't see it happening real soon or even now.
SOLVED.
That's sold out, $35 and possibly not available in Australia. However, after viewing that, it has occurred to me what has happened here. The submitter is used to (what I learned to call) RCA jacks in stereo. These I guess are two jacks looking like this. I believe what the submitter needs is only one of these adapters that will run you a few bucks at your local store (unless you're finicky about quality which I'm guessing he's not if he's doing this on that old of a computer).
Yes, the large RCA version of it is going the way of the buffalo and probably has for some time. Similar to the new video out ports looking smaller and smaller but being essentially the same standard.
So that leaves us with some interesting cases:
Look, if you could give us more information like what operating system you use and what motherboards you're using, I'd be willing to track down the manuals on them and verify there's no line-in jack and take a boomerang to the head if I'm mistaken. But couldn't this problem have been solved with a couple bucks? My eeePC netbook has a line-in. I really don't see them disappearing at all.
P.S. If you're looking for something a little more professional, external Audigys and M-Audio Pre USBs are useful for what you're doing though they are pricey ($200 USD).
They need more gawking morons like you to round out their site.
Ah Slashdot, where the genuine request for more information and recognition of your own shortcomings is met only with the satisfying sting of childish name calling. It makes me a 'gawking moron' to ask if anyone knows how I could find out more about genuine news in a country designed to filter out genuine news? Well, I'm kind of sick and tired of people telling me to ignore China.
I was hoping I'd find more information resources similar to Letter from China except hopefully from a Chinese native citizen. Instead I get an insult and a link to sites seemingly dedicated to a mix of gossip, weird news and some actually decent content.
Well, if you think I'm merely a 'gawking moron' I'd better follow your lead and just shut up and get back in line and stop thinking. That is the safest thing to do, right?
???
If I wanted to read chinese propagada, I would go to the source:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/
You know, I wish I 1) spoke some variant of Chinese and 2) knew more about Chinese media outlets. I wrote a journal post about this situation back when it was developing and tried to find a diverse viewpoint in Chinese news related to Google's ultimatum. It turned out to be more humorous and an exercise in futility than anything else. Does anyone who speaks the language know of a 'subversive' news source out of China? Or anything at all offering balanced and multiple views in the reporting? All I see is multiple sources looking like they are offering you unbiased news when, in fact, they are regurgitating something to you that is within a government approved standard deviation of the government approved message.
...
Really, really sad. Also a stark reminder of how thankful I should be of the diversity of our press in the United States no matter how sorry it may look at times
You may be listening to the wrong stations, then... Admittedly, the Clearchannel stations are told by the RIAA what they're going to be playing, but there *are* indie/alternative stations in most major cities that will play indie music and promote local artists.
Here's the one I listen to the most: http://live885.com/
Don't get me wrong, there are some good bands here ... and especially the international ones are good. I have CDs of Arcade Fire and We Were Promised Jetpacks but let's not kid ourselves, Pearl Jam has some albums on UMG. Red Hot Chili Peppers is on EMI. From a quick glance at the playlist, a lot of these bands aren't directly on big labels but they're on labels like Island Records which is now owned by UMG. Even the renowned subpop walks a fine line with Warner's half ownership.
If you want a good idea of what I'm talking about, check out the programming at my old college's radio station. It even appears that Minnesota Public Radio has a better mix of both indie and big four than live 885. When I listen to these channels on the internet, I find that I am constantly writing down acts and constantly going directly to their pages to send them $8-$10 for an album. I wish more people took this organic approach to finding out what your music tastes are instead of being force fed commercialized music or trying to align your tastes with your friends'.
Live 885 has some good stuff and is way more palatable to the average listener but if you could point out a Radio K or even The Current for the DC area where I now live, I would thank you endlessly.
When has RIAA decided for you what you should watch? Sure, if you like bands under the labels that work with RIAA, those labels might go towards more popular music.
Both you and I know that the bands "working with RIAA" are promoted and slammed down our throats. In addition the radio stations that you can listen to are (with the very rare exception of a few I know in Minnesota) pretty much forced to play RIAA only songs. I live in DC and aside from bands like The Bravery that are already on a large label, I have never heard an unsigned local band showcased or even played on the radio. If you were to build a case for the RIAA deciding what you hear, there it is. They are the deciders on who gets played on TV and the Radio. And miffo.swe was pointing out that this fact is why the internet is a thorn in their side.
It doesn't mean they're deciding what you can listen - you're free to go to any local pub, event or even look for indie music on the internet.
You can't use that last point about the internet because that's what is being debated here. That's what we're talking about annoys the hell out of the RIAA. It annoys them because I'll never hear acts like Joanna Newsom at "any local pub or event." I depend on the internet for it because no radio station in my area has the balls to play it even at 2am.
There are a lot websites for non-signed artists to release their music and RIAA has no saying over that since the artists haven't given them permission to do so. You do know that RIAA doesn't just blindly attack sharing of any music, but only music by artists who have (or their labels have) authorized them to do so.
This particular discussion isn't about file sharing, it's about promotion and distribution channels and consumer awareness. The accusations are that the RIAA enjoy limiting consumer awareness. They don't want to lose 20% of their purchases to acts like Joanna Newsom or hundreds of other bands that you might actually like but you'll never know because there's this great system set up to protect you from <evil voice>Something Different!</evil voice> Do you have any idea how difficult it was for me to hear about Matthew Hemerlein despite the fact that I live in DC? Thank god for the internet and the new distribution channels it provides. I agree with miffo.swe that the RIAA is a bit annoyed that I'm going to be sending money directly to labels like Drag City and Afternoon Records instead of the "Big Four."
I remember CDs. They made such pretty coffee coasters after I burned all their music to my MP3 player.
I believe the correct verb you're looking for is 'ripped.' But before you go on about how 'quaint' CDs are, keep in mind how nice it is to own something physical. You have, as a physical object, evidence of your licensing of personal enjoyment of that media. I do buy $5 albums on Amazon MP3 but I feel almost like I somehow receive less rights or a watered down licensing of that album as opposed to if I had purchased the album. If you find this concept quaint then why are vinyl sales slowly rising?
... it's far too empowering for the consumer.
My favorite form of purchasing these albums is vinyl + lossless digital download. A lot of the indie record labels are adopting this method and you pay a $1 or $2 premium on the CD or vinyl album in order to have the music now with the physical artifact shipped to you later. I purchased my Cloud Cult albums in this manner and also She and Him. Instant gratification and I don't even have to take the album out of its wrapper. Don't expect the major labels or even Amazon to warm up to this idea though
the article notes that "executives at the other majors were nervous about the UMG move" and "privately, some appeared annoyed."
You don't say. You mean to tell me that they might have to price their music competitively? That they might have to take a pay cut in order to compete in the market? That their 'silent agreement' of what all music should cost among the biggest labels is no more?
Music record contracts really annoy me in this respect. They are nothing but middlemen when it comes to publishing music. I understand their role in promoting and paying upfront cash for studio time but their role as publishers is leech at best.
If bands had the ability to pit manufacturers against each other in publishing their CDs and albums (and also if the band could decide what percentage they needed from sales) then we would see prices dramatically plummet. Look at CDBaby and think how inexpensive it could get if that kind of market was where we bought all our CDs. And in a capitalistic world, that's how it is supposed to work. But no, acts have contracts and the most popular acts love how the labels shove only those acts down our throats. The music industry is a sorry state right now and rarely do we hear news like this. At least UMG appears to be slowly realizing that it's adapt-or-die time.
The thing that gets me is that TBL designed the internet protocols we use every day. Yet they are so full of plaintext and the technology to process it is all based around slicing and dicing this data up to turn it back into usable binary data that it's amazing we've come this far on such a rickety technology.
"Rickety technology?!" Well, TBL should be so lucky to have you waste time posting about him on Slashdot. We're all waiting for your revolutionary code to be donated free of licenses. Are you working with Stanford on their clean slate project announced three years ago? How's that going?
For all the crap people give the current internet, there's a whole lot of talk and not a lot of work being done. Keep in mind that if you don't license it for free, it's going to perish like the U of MN's gopher protocol which could have been the internet protocol.
Going for media playing solutions from the likes of Sony, Microsoft or Apple is like tatooing on your forhead "I'm a Dumb Media Bitch".
Oh sweet! I have to have it! How much and who do I have to pay to get it in Official Comic Sans MS ©?
But in all seriousness I thought I was just bending over backwards to play by the rules although in reality it seems I've been grabbing my ankles so the rich can get richer.
I don't think there is any incentive for Microsoft to start fighting against TVersity. It doesn't really matter for MS how you stream you content to your 360.
You said you owned an XBox, did you notice how you can buy video and music via Zune's Store?
Allow me to spell this out for you very clearly: they wanted me to install Zune software because they want the marketshare of me purchasing all of my songs and videos through the Zune software. It functions just like iTunes Software in that it's supposed to be your one stop shop for dumping oodles of cash towards the RIAA and MPAA. iTMS is a cash cow for Apple. You're crazy if you think Microsoft doesn't want in on that action. If that's not incentive, I don't know what is.
And if you try and tell me that Microsoft would never do that, check out how they manipulated (and still kind of do) the browser marketshare. If you own any of their products, they'll take any chance they get to shove Bing and Zune down your gullet.
Besides, both 360 (as well as PS3 and even many TV's) use Universal Plug and Play for streaming on network, not some proprietary 360-only technology.
Hence the need for an update to both ends in order to move to something proprietary. It's probably unlikely but you can never be completely sure with Microsoft. They're not exactly the poster child of companies embracing open standards and protocols ...
Why would you use something like Zune for streaming to 360
Good question! Where would I get such a crazy idiotic idea?! Perhaps it was the fact that the manufacturer of both my gaming system and operating system (of that machine) suggested it? And at what point in the future of TVersity does a fancy little update to my XBox 360 render TVersity useless?
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the link to TVersity and will try it out at home but Microsoft disabled third party storage on the XBox 360, how long before they get bored and engage in a little cat-and-mouse game with TVersity? I wish I could drop $300 and get a PS3 and use your suggestion but I don't think I should have to invest that much in order to watch The Final Sacrifice streaming from my personal computer to my TV.
But streaming from Windows Media Player or Zune is just shit.
Honestly, everything was working in an acceptable manner right up until something happened to my C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM files. Is it WMP & Zune that are shit or is it just the DRM? I know I'm not going to be Mr. Popular for saying this but Zune software is just as good/bad as the iTunes software. Its UI is pretty. It's bloated. It's "free" as in the executable's downloadable but you just have to pay a lot of money in auxiliary products to be able to use it.
Can You Fight DRM With Patience?
I realize that this is in the game section but allow me to recount a story from not two weeks ago. A story in which I almost threw my XBox 360 through the goddamn wall. I have one machine that runs Windows XP and connected to that via cat5e cable (shared internet connection) is my XBox 360. In order to share my media (about a TB of MP3s and Videos -- all very legal unless it is unlicensed video), I need to have this Zune software installed. Fine. I had installed it a while ago and though somewhat resource intensive in its UI and "bus service," it worked.
.NET libraries related to the Zune software (the bloat is really hilarious) and all updates. Reinstalled everything. Still not working.
... you guessed it ... DRM user files. What I did to cause my DRM files to shit the bed, I'll never know. Is it hashing something with a unique processor string? Was it the extra two gigs of RAM I also added? I don't know. I do know I wasted the better part of a night and did not get to watch Zap ask if they have beer on the sun.
... because I bet resetting your DRM files in your user directory make those files undecryptable.
Then I upgraded my computer's CPU from a single core to a quad core. I decided to rip my newly acquired MST3K licensed DVD of The Final Sacrifice to watch Zap Rowsdower in disgustingly high definition (better than my VHS rips anyway) across a network on multiple devices.
The Zune software stopped working. Blew an error box whenever I started the service.
I reinstalled the Zune software. Nope. I went to Microsoft's support. Searched everywhere. I uninstalled the
Finally I found that my error code was related to me not having valid
The fix was simple. You had just had to run some executable in Windows that re-initialized all your DRM files. So I tried to run it. Guess what. You can't run it if you don't have valid DRM files in your Local Settings directory. So I deleted them. No luck. Same behavior as if I had tried to start Zune. So I Googled. And I searched my OS hard drive for anything with 'drm' in the title. Curiously enough, my Netflix installation had some executable to the effect of drmreset.exe. At this point, I would try anything. I tried it and it worked. I couldn't believe it.
Now, I'm thinking it's good I didn't use the Zune software to rip anything to DRM encrypted format
And what caused all this? I still don't know. Was it because I had the Netflix silverlight crapware installed to watch Netflix? Was it because I had XNA installed as well? Was it simply a CPU upgrade? I have a masters in computer science. And this is the shit they expect your regular consumer to figure out.
In my unfortunate above example, DRM is unavoidable. I couldn't "wait" that out. I couldn't watch streaming media on my game station. Something that should "just work" was hilariously disabled by none other than DRM. It's everywhere. Especially in gaming. This is just one story of DRM inhibiting my ability to enjoy something I paid money for. And it pisses me off. To the point of slowly migrating away from gaming. If you haven't had to tangle with DRM and you're a gamer, just wait. You will.
OpenCV has C interfaces and there are more that have some C code libraries. Really the coding challenge would be building the wrappers to utilize those libraries with your camera's hardware (I assume provided through CHDK APIs). My vote is for a nifty KLT implementation that allows me to take a video and extract a huge wide pan image in post processing on the camera.
And who cares if they are targeting US citizens?
I seem to recall something about having a right to a fair trial if I'm a US citizen. Also, I was hoping I would be considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of my peers. Yes, I know that's been thrown out the window in some cases but I would still prefer that over "Oh, they killed the Jones' today. Huh, they must have been consorting with terrorists." The ACLU is trying to protect your civil liberties and freedoms whether you want them to or not. Because to them and many other people, things like this are important.
The defense's response was merely a motion for discovery of the plaintiff's latitude and longitude.
We covered something four years ago similar to this and I think Brain Port has been exploiting the sensivity of the tongue for multiple fields. I think I had read another article about the military using this because they could control their individual movements more efficiently and silently due to the extreme sensitivity of the tongue.
Sci-fi has long written about sensory perception extensions but I enjoy hearing about the exploitation of our most sensitive inputs. It's amazing to think that we have spent so much time trying to tap our already exploited senses of sight and sound when there was lower hanging fruit to be collected from sensitive areas of touch. I guess inhibiting speech would be an inconvenience here. Could also make for some really alien looking devices coming out of peoples mouths.
Could this be applied to other ares of touch like your underarm or -- dare I say it -- underwear?
Who cares about China. Seriously.
I'll bite. I care about China. I care about that one sixth of the world's population developing and coming out of poverty. To a lesser extent, I care about them becoming a serious player in the world market. Right now they play with their money and disrespect their work force beyond belief. It might not make you feel bad to pick up some piece of electronics at Walmart for $20 but I do feel bad when I see "Made in China" and have to think about the health problems the workers might develop ... the environmental damage the plant might create ... the plant's drinking water problems from the lead ... the list goes on. In order to solve these problems, people have to be unafraid to speak up. People need a method for improving these conditions -- however slowly it might come. They don't have that. Removing government censorship mandates is one step toward that. Yeah it's a slow process and it might not seem like much to you but it is to me.
These are topics much closer to home with a much greater impact on us.
I've tried to shake the "East Versus West" mentality as much as possible, it's sad to see it lingers on in some form. All countries are members of the world. Just because one country speaks the same language you do and has the same form of government you do shouldn't make it anymore or less important to you than another country with differences. China's population might even make it more important than Australia to me. You seem to have some very strange misconceptions about allegiances to countries that are disconnected from you. They hold no domain over you whether they're Australia or China. I certainly expect more of my representatives than to say "it's written into law in Australia, it should be in our law here." This "because everyone else is doing it" does not suffice as an argument where I live. Look at the Scandinavian nations that have taken different routes on copyright. It's okay to have different laws in different countries.
What a bunch of Google execs will do with a handful of employees in China... not so much.
I would wager that the precedent this public display sets will have far more implications for you (and what you consume) than Australia's "Think of the Children" campaign.
"I think Google thought China would be flexible," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group.
My opinion is that the CEO, Eric Schmidt, differs from the young idealism of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I do not mean that either side of this leadership is right or wrong but instead simply that they have different motivations. Brin's past has come up before as a source for this (seemingly) new found anti-censorship campaign.
... and I think everyone involved knows it. Until you tell me that Google.cn is dead and I go to the site and confirm it, I will not believe for a second this is possible.
... and that's it. Pesky ideals and ethics have no place in corporate America. Step aside. It's the safest path to churn out tons of cash. They're walking away from too much money and market to pull out of China. It would be bad for stocks and any investors would flip out ... probably even sue.
Google's leadership is conflicted. Brin & Page see the ethics of the situation most important because their motivation seems to be less devoted to money. It certainly seemed to be an exercise in indexing when they started "Google." Schmidt, however, owes his allegience to the shareholders. Or at least feels the pull and responsibility of profit more so than any sort of ethical dilemma. And that's why he was put in that position: to keep investors investing. And, honestly, this last point is why I think this 'removal' is nothing but a rumor or a bluff. Because money is one of the most important things to Google. I don't think the young idealism will stand up to stock prices
Brin and Page's cashing out is really just symbolic of what's already happened at Google. Their motivations are like any other company's. Some of it is about the customer and some of it is about profit
Hopefully the Bilski decision will come out and invalidate software patents. Then these companies can get back to competing on innovation.
Um, from what I've read of the patents, Nokia's patents seem to be (at least partially) for hardware while Apple's patents (in both suits) are about the software (frameworks and the like) on the phones. Nokia's patents seem to focus on the devices that implement standards. While it will reduce the number of patents covered for royalties, I don't think a negative Bilski decision will immediately cause all charges to be dropped ... rather they would just figure out a different angle of attack.
... that's heavy R&D to get the hardware on phones where it is today. You should get your reward for figuring that crap out. I think it's too long of a patent term but you gotta start somewhere.
Personally, I think software patents are complete and utter bullshit but you have to respect the hardware patents
This whole patent portfolio charade reeks of a prison scene where when you enter a market you either make someone your bitch or become somebody's bitch. You're telling me that these two companies couldn't have respected each other enough to have worked this crap out before they turned it into a public mud slinging spectacle? Grow up.
When a government serves its own purposes it cannot serve its citizens.
I think that's a false dichotomy. Similar to your subject line.
... so historically there have been very clever tyrants to embrace the big freedoms and squash the tiny ones that matter to them. And that, in my opinion, is what China is doing. They don't hate freedom and I find personifying things like tyranny, terror and information saying that they hate, love or want is very detrimental to arguments.
Look at China. It's own purposes overlap the needs of its people. It needs to artificially manipulate the value of its money for many reasons. Some for its own purposes, some for the betterment of some of the citizens. Now look at China again for your subject line. Yeah, absolute freedom is impossible with a tyrant running the country. And your likely to have more freedom in a republic. But you never have absolute freedom anyway in a group larger than one.
I would rephrase your subject to read "Tyranny Often Finds Freedom Annoying" and since tyrants have complete control by definition, they often just get rid of the freedoms. And then there would be a revolution or something
The war that began in the 60s has finally come to an end, and it looks like all the players switched sides.
It's great purple prose but it's kind of erroneous. That's a great one liner there but I would have preferred a lengthy paragraph on COINELPRO in today's contexts.
These 200 odd years were certainly a nice time.
And cut the goddamn fake apathy for crying out loud. Man up and speak about it to your friends and family ...
For Pink Floyd this is about artistic integrity, not profit.
Then why would Pink Floyd ask for royalties as damages? How long did these bundled sales go on before Pink Floyd decided to sue?
From the BBC article:
EMI disagreed but a judge has sided with Pink Floyd. The ruling is part of a long-running battle between the two sides over £10m in unpaid royalties.
I also am a huge fan of Pink Floyd but I believe your altruistic views of Floyd are a bit misplaced. I dare say this may be a deeper battle with greed also playing a part and 'art' being used as a facade. If they were concerned about their art, from day one they would have denied radio stations the ability to play their work on the radio without the entirety of an album being played. You and I both know this is not the case.