You don't think that government documents should have their perpetuity guaranteed ASAP?
Perhaps conversion can be done in a more centralized fashion by a dedicated custodian/librarian at the archiving stage. This should help alleviate your concern without forcing an abrupt change on the majority of the government employees involved.
I absolutely agree that an open document format is necessary, un-avoidable and simply the right thing to do. In the long term.
My only reservation here is the question of timing. I think forcing this issue today is 3-5 years too early. The fact is, for better or worse, most people ARE using MS Office. And it would be a major inconvenience for them to exchange files in a non-native format. And that is for people who are technically adept.
Big changes come naturally and gradually. It would be wrong to build a web site today that shuts out MSIE users - no matter how poor and buggy MSIE may be. It will fail. There could not be an industrial revolution in early 1700's, no matter how obvious and inevitable it might have seemed to a small minority. Slowly build out infrastructure first, the revolution will follow.
No kidding. I was already opening my wallet to pay for a subscription because I couldn't wait to see what the next story would be. Phew! That was a close one.
I don't want to sit in front of my computer when I want to watch TV
Perhaps you should look into subnotebooks small enough you can "cuddle up with" they way you can with a book? A few months ago, I stopped using tv/tivo combo in favor of notebook/torrent/divx combination and haven't looked back. Tivo gave us time-shifting, bittorrent gave us space-shifting. Now you can catch up on your shows while having breakfast at Corner Bakery (bring headphones).
Alice isn't giving the apple farmers much at all. The reason she justifies this is by saying that she has to pay Carol so much.
Without Carol, apples are worth $1 each. That's what farmers with no marketing overhead (Bob) would ever hope to get. And they like it.
Time passes. Alice hires Carol.
Now an apple is in vogue and sells for $5. Alice keeps $4, gives farmers the same old $1. All of a sudden, farmers are no longer happy and start to bitch about Alice keeping most of the profits. They think they're entitled to it because they think that the product is apples. When in fact, the product is promotion.
Those pennies that artists get for their songs may seem small until you realize that without RIAA they would be lucky to get even that. Nobody would have heard about them. If they don't like it they should take promotion into their own hands (which some do, and if RIAA tried to prevent THAT from happening, I'd agree with you.)
people selling 50 Cent's music owe nothing to the RIAA aside from the royalties
This misses the point of my argument. Concept of royalties is based on the idea that the value is in the music/artist. What I tried to show is that the value of today's pop music is almost entirely due to promotion and not the artist. What RIAA is looking for here, imo, is royalties for promotion. That would be consistent with the old royalties model - whoever created the value is ought to be paid, which in poptart's case is RIAA.
Near the bottom of the article they list a few assumptions made in the math exercise the Google conducted. Among other things they assumed that computer power will half every 18 months and that computers 30 years from now will be so large that they will fill an entire room.
Consider an analogy. Alice and Bob each has a fruit stand selling apples. Both are selling identical apples for $1 a piece. They've been doing it for a while, until Alice decided to hire Carol, a marketing exec, to increase sales. Carol immediately gets to work: she installs a loud boombox, girls in skimpy outfits and a blimp hovering overhead - all advertizing Alice's apples. Crowd gathers around Alice's stand and sales go through the roof. Even after paying Carol marketing fees, there is still handsome profit left - more than she ever had before.
Where did the profits come from? Was there any new value created? Well, the apples didn't change, but the demand did. The demand was created exclusively by Carol.
Bob in the meantime kept his costs low and did not hire any marketers. He did notice something interesting, however - because of all the increased interest in the apples next door, demand for his apples started to pick up as well. Marketing effort paid for by Alice has began to increase Bob's revenues.
Question: does Bob owe anything to Alice?
In the physical world, generally, yes. It's called "location, location, location". Bob can setup a fruit stand out in the middle of nowhere and pay nobody for the privilege. Or he can open a stand in a downtown mall, which will cost him.
Back to RIAA.
Without heavy and expensive promotion by RIAA, the value of, say, 50 Cent would be hovering just above zero (some would argue below). RIAA effectively created the artificial demand for his product, which, supported by copyright laws, fuels a vast ecosystem of businesses. Why shouldn't those benefitting from selling, reselling or otherwise commercially benefitting from 50 Cent's music own portion of profits to RIAA who created majority of the value in the first place?
Disclaimer: I think that RIAA should die and music should be free, but that would be preaching to the choir and, therefore, boring.
Maybe they would make phones for consumers if consumers paid for them. However, at least in the US, most phones are heavily ($200-$300) subsidized by carriers. So the simple answer is, as always: follow the money.
Me too! But my video player is a paper notebook. All I have to do is copy down last night's show - each frame in a corner of a new page. When ready to watch, just leaf through the pages real fast. If you want audio, just sing along.
If they can show that the DRM and related crap has hurt sales by more then the Content division believes it helps, they will win.
They already know it - they blew their 20-year portable audio lead (Walkman, MD) and handed it to Apple. They would be idiots not to understand why it happened. They don't put DRM in their hardware because they think this is what consumers would want. They do it because they don't want to endanger the content profits.
In the end, of course, they're shooting themselves in both feet.
Yes, recent MD players' battery life has gone way up - at least way beyond my personal need. Other parameters of portable players such as storage capacity, user interface, companion desktop software gradually became more important. HD-based iPod Mini may last only about 10 hours, it blows MD out of the water in pretty much everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't think that government documents should have their perpetuity guaranteed ASAP?
Perhaps conversion can be done in a more centralized fashion by a dedicated custodian/librarian at the archiving stage. This should help alleviate your concern without forcing an abrupt change on the majority of the government employees involved.
You have attempted to launch a SQL injection attack on slashdot.
You have failed.
Please try again with the correct schema.
But teh spellchecker said it was ok... so it must be!
Sorry for the screwed up subject in the parent. Apparently I have yet to master the proper use of Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.
I absolutely agree that an open document format is necessary, un-avoidable and simply the right thing to do. In the long term.
My only reservation here is the question of timing. I think forcing this issue today is 3-5 years too early. The fact is, for better or worse, most people ARE using MS Office. And it would be a major inconvenience for them to exchange files in a non-native format. And that is for people who are technically adept.
Big changes come naturally and gradually. It would be wrong to build a web site today that shuts out MSIE users - no matter how poor and buggy MSIE may be. It will fail. There could not be an industrial revolution in early 1700's, no matter how obvious and inevitable it might have seemed to a small minority. Slowly build out infrastructure first, the revolution will follow.
Slashdot changes name to Sissydot
No kidding. I was already opening my wallet to pay for a subscription because I couldn't wait to see what the next story would be. Phew! That was a close one.
I'm not sure
I don't want to sit in front of my computer when I want to watch TV
Perhaps you should look into subnotebooks small enough you can "cuddle up with" they way you can with a book? A few months ago, I stopped using tv/tivo combo in favor of notebook/torrent/divx combination and haven't looked back. Tivo gave us time-shifting, bittorrent gave us space-shifting. Now you can catch up on your shows while having breakfast at Corner Bakery (bring headphones).
Can't help feeling Bill Clinton would have handled this better.
Indeed. Nothing Bill Clinton touched had struggled to reach climax...
Alice isn't giving the apple farmers much at all. The reason she justifies this is by saying that she has to pay Carol so much.
Without Carol, apples are worth $1 each. That's what farmers with no marketing overhead (Bob) would ever hope to get. And they like it.
Time passes. Alice hires Carol.
Now an apple is in vogue and sells for $5. Alice keeps $4, gives farmers the same old $1. All of a sudden, farmers are no longer happy and start to bitch about Alice keeping most of the profits. They think they're entitled to it because they think that the product is apples. When in fact, the product is promotion.
Those pennies that artists get for their songs may seem small until you realize that without RIAA they would be lucky to get even that. Nobody would have heard about them. If they don't like it they should take promotion into their own hands (which some do, and if RIAA tried to prevent THAT from happening, I'd agree with you.)
people selling 50 Cent's music owe nothing to the RIAA aside from the royalties
This misses the point of my argument. Concept of royalties is based on the idea that the value is in the music/artist. What I tried to show is that the value of today's pop music is almost entirely due to promotion and not the artist. What RIAA is looking for here, imo, is royalties for promotion. That would be consistent with the old royalties model - whoever created the value is ought to be paid, which in poptart's case is RIAA.
Near the bottom of the article they list a few assumptions made in the math exercise the Google conducted. Among other things they assumed that computer power will half every 18 months and that computers 30 years from now will be so large that they will fill an entire room.
Please stop creating new information and let Google catch up! You can resume later.
Consider an analogy. Alice and Bob each has a fruit stand selling apples. Both are selling identical apples for $1 a piece. They've been doing it for a while, until Alice decided to hire Carol, a marketing exec, to increase sales. Carol immediately gets to work: she installs a loud boombox, girls in skimpy outfits and a blimp hovering overhead - all advertizing Alice's apples. Crowd gathers around Alice's stand and sales go through the roof. Even after paying Carol marketing fees, there is still handsome profit left - more than she ever had before.
Where did the profits come from? Was there any new value created? Well, the apples didn't change, but the demand did. The demand was created exclusively by Carol.
Bob in the meantime kept his costs low and did not hire any marketers. He did notice something interesting, however - because of all the increased interest in the apples next door, demand for his apples started to pick up as well. Marketing effort paid for by Alice has began to increase Bob's revenues.
Question: does Bob owe anything to Alice?
In the physical world, generally, yes. It's called "location, location, location". Bob can setup a fruit stand out in the middle of nowhere and pay nobody for the privilege. Or he can open a stand in a downtown mall, which will cost him.
Back to RIAA.
Without heavy and expensive promotion by RIAA, the value of, say, 50 Cent would be hovering just above zero (some would argue below). RIAA effectively created the artificial demand for his product, which, supported by copyright laws, fuels a vast ecosystem of businesses. Why shouldn't those benefitting from selling, reselling or otherwise commercially benefitting from 50 Cent's music own portion of profits to RIAA who created majority of the value in the first place?
Disclaimer: I think that RIAA should die and music should be free, but that would be preaching to the choir and, therefore, boring.
Maybe they would make phones for consumers if consumers paid for them. However, at least in the US, most phones are heavily ($200-$300) subsidized by carriers. So the simple answer is, as always: follow the money.
If you crack and Ebook - all the numbers fall out.
Not all - only 0's and 1's. And I think I saw a 2!
(Sorry, Bender)
I think they called it that to increase their chances to be visited by terminator and gain major competitive advantage.
Of course the market won't solve this.
The market would have solved it had it not been tampered with repeatedly. By definition, every IP law tampers with the free market.
If before we were able to crack a book open, how ebooks are different?
Me too! But my video player is a paper notebook. All I have to do is copy down last night's show - each frame in a corner of a new page. When ready to watch, just leaf through the pages real fast. If you want audio, just sing along.
I'm sorry, but every time I read "X Goes to Washington" all I can think of is an electic pencil sharpener. That must have hurt.
Fear not! I bet there is now a copyright on this particular scan.
If they can show that the DRM and related crap has hurt sales by more then the Content division believes it helps, they will win.
They already know it - they blew their 20-year portable audio lead (Walkman, MD) and handed it to Apple. They would be idiots not to understand why it happened. They don't put DRM in their hardware because they think this is what consumers would want. They do it because they don't want to endanger the content profits.
In the end, of course, they're shooting themselves in both feet.
Yes, recent MD players' battery life has gone way up - at least way beyond my personal need. Other parameters of portable players such as storage capacity, user interface, companion desktop software gradually became more important. HD-based iPod Mini may last only about 10 hours, it blows MD out of the water in pretty much everything else.