Find a new trade eh? Who is going to produce culture when they can't do it while feeding themselves and their families? I like access to culture, but I also believe in supporting those who generate the culture I enjoy as opposed to enjoying their work and then telling them "screw you, find a real job"
Tell this to anyone else who was put out of business by a machine or a computer. Protect the people who make whips for those driving buggies from going out of business or scaling back employees.
Artists aren't somehow protected from market forces or the driving force of technology. Some of the best music came from remarkably terrible times, people like those enslaved created art in order to express their anguish about their situation. You might know this as the blues....you know, the foundation of modern rock. If you take away the millions of dollars and the glitz and glamor, people will still create music. You've seen the type of "art" bestowing upon a select few millions of dollars causes. Do you think it's really necessary for them to be this rich? Do you think the market still warrants it? They exploited a temporary gap.
I say this as I create my own art. As perhaps billions of people other than me make art every day for the enjoyment of the craft and the enrichment of our lives that creative expression brings. If someone stops creating songs because they can't sell a million plus copies per single, you probably didn't lose much in them putting the guitar down anyway.
The loss of intellectual property will not bring art to a screeching halt. It might bring to an end some of the exploitation of art, but it will not stop the human mind from the never ending pressure and release cycle that is creativity. I work a full time job and I still create art. I might not be the best, in fact I'm sure I'm not. But there are millions and perhaps billions out there that do the same thing. Thanks to the Internet we can pass this stuff on without even touring if we don't want to. Culture changes, yes, but who is to judge if its good or bad. This culture change *is* our industrial revolution, those that stand in its way will be its artifacts.
Many very talented artists are already embracing this new way of looking at music distribution. Only greed keeps people from just, as south park put it, being stoked that so many people are listening.
only on slashdot is a perfectly sensible post saying that people who create something have the right to control its use modded as 'flamebait'. The 'we can take what we want for free' groupthink of slashdot is totally out of control.
That's right, because I don't think anywhere else even has such a moderation flag. Maybe so, by now, but they just "borrowed" the idea. Course, if Slashdot made that idea, they must own it. So, no, nobody can mod anything flamebait anywhere else, because Slashdot owns "flamebait" (tm).
I wrote the above paragraph to express something about "ownership" and "copyright." What exactly do "artists" create from? I know that as a fledgling artist, you often learn how to play others songs first. Then after you get sort of good at that, you develop a way to create a "sound" of your own. Well, now what exactly is that sound?
Music as a whole is only the way it is due to popular consent. Scales, chords, etc are learned entities. Learned from thousands of examples, music is essentially an evolutionary artform much like any other. Often today's "artists" will rehash old blues chord progressions stolen ideologically from the southern countryside in the 1920s. Even many of John Lennon's best songs (a fantastic artist if you ask me) were simply the standard blues fair, 12-bar blues progression with a riff or two thrown in for good measure and prehaps a unique melody line.
The MPAA and the RIAA want to make it seem like artists are people on a tower, conjuring up melodies, fantastic scripts and ideas from the thin air. That they are a vital part of society that is better than society, that the things they make can never be performed unless first stamped and certified by the original copyright holders. Music hasn't worked like this for a long time and it's not going to start now just because it's making a bunch of lawyers, bureaucrats and spoiled artists from making a few million more per year.
Rock and roll is based off the blues, the blues is based off of earlier folk music of other origins. Everything is derivative. Music isn't created in a vacuum, it's a steady push of the familiar with a little spice of added touch from an "artist". Let It Be and With or Without You have the same cliche chord progression, and it is I suppose illegal to have a chord sheet of either of them without authorization. Who owns the chord progression then? It certainly isn't something U2 created, so should they have to receive royalties because someone plays it?
Perhaps you hear this line of logic here more than anywhere else, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthy argument. Instead of trying to criticize the argument for being unpopular in other venues and popular here, how about you attack the argument?
You must also realize that most "everywhere else" the media is bought and sold. The MPAA and the RIAA and respective industries are deeply ingrained with the newscasts and "news" that you receive on a nightly basis. The idea that intellectual property is a load of horseshit doesn't exactly reflect well on their perspective businesses. I can't imagine why they would want to air information about it.
"Imaginary property rights"? The right to have the right to say how something you own is used is an imagenary right? Artists have assigned control over their art to representatives, as is their right. Clearly this is the issue, than.
I believe the "imaginary" substitution is somewhat warranted. What is it, exactly that you believe these "artists" own? Is it the chords and how the song is played on an instrument? Because being a guitarist/psuedo-pianist/instrumentalist myself, I find the idea highly objectionable that anyone, that's right anyone can own chords or combinations of chords (known as chord progressions). If it's not the chords they own, is it the lyrics? Because as I've seen it, lyrics often contain information such as cliches and phrases borrowed from other sources. I find it difficult to believe that someone can "own" phrases.
Is it the chords combined with the lyrics? What exactly do they own?
The truth is that "intellectual" property is imaginary. It was only until I read that phrase in this very article that the issue had been nailed home so clearly in my head.
Nobody owns the plot that everyone uses in modern movies, popular culture, or "folk songs" and things were never before subject to such legislation. They were never "property" before. Myths and tales permeated the countryside. That was until plays could be captured forever as "movies", and music could be stowed away on "records." The truth is that media provided these now hugely successful recording artists with a brief window in which to make millions. That window was only provided by the fact that recorded media could be scarce. That limitation is now gone. Records don't require media anymore and are now as free as they were via word of mouth or through strolling minstrels. The truth is that it was a very small amount of time and their business model should *not* be protected. The reason why people say that artists ripping off other artists makes for great artistry is because it's true. Artists for centuries simply innovated and were free to do so by the free society of culture which has been cut off with records and movies. Well, gentlemen, welcome to the other side of the mountain. If you give something out to the free air that can be copied and played again, it will be. You have no power to stop the echo of your voice once you've used it to scream something from atop a mountain, it is then no longer yours to contain. And as such you have no power to stop the spread of your content. Culture is now back in the hands of the people, where it belonged to begin with. All your justifications and ideas of "intellectual property" are now gone. Get used to tightening your belt and practicing your craft...or find a new trade.
But you don't know that they are there yet! Sure, you could walk into the family room and look around and pick up any you see, but you can do better. Open up your mobile, direct the interface to show the location of all diningware in your home. Now filter that to exclude diningware not already in the kitchen. How do you do that? I don't know, maybe it's as direct as typing "diningware +home -kitchen" into a prompt. But however you do it, now you see on your mobile a layout of your home with red dots indicating the location of diningware you need to round up to wash.
Or you could just put the dishes in the sink after you are done eating.
You're at the grocery store. You're out of milk, low on soy sauce, and out of eggs. But you can only remember the eggs! Open up your mobile. Query "groceries +refrigerator +out" to get a list of groceries that belong in your refrigerator that you are out of: "1. milk, 2. eggs". How does it know what you are out of? After all, if you are out of it, it isn't there. AI? Of course not. It gives a list of groceries that have recently been in your refrigerator but aren't now.
Or you could just make a grocery list with a.02 pencil and a mini sheet of paper.
Americans spent millions to engineer a pen that writes upside down for space travel. Russians just used a pencil. Remember to do these simple little things and you won't need a god damned database to remember for you to pick up the eggs. Maintenance on this shit alone sounds like it would require a full time maintenance man because every little bit of electronics that can be is manufactured in a 3rd world country for 2 cents an hour whose workers definitely just write a grocery list instead. If this envisioned future of yours is why we need all this technology, people are retarded and ruining the globe with electronic waste as a means to a very complicated way to complete already obnoxiously simple tasks.
And what a model we are setting for the 3rd world countries to grow to...One day, you too might require an oracle database and millions of dollars of infrastructure to buy groceries!
Not being from US, I don't wholly understand this attitude of "I am (insert political mindset), therefore I am voting for (insert associated candidate)". Is this a common behavior?
Ah what you don't get. See, in this country, parties are like football teams. You pick your favorite and defend their bad decisions (play calls) until the end. Even in the face of overwhelming defeat and obvious bias in the referee's calls and penalties, you defend your team until the end. Cuz if you don't have a team, you are a bandwagon jumper! So you must pick your preconceived ideology and vote strictly based on that, despite the value of the actual candidates.
You've just realized one of the fundamental flaws of this America's government system.
Political candidates shouldn't be "enemies", they should have opposing viewpoints. The candidate who wins the most arguments should win the debate. But this is America, so all of that logic flies out the window and in the newly ajar window the "political pundits" come in and confuse everyone into thinking that each side did equally well. So that we can continue to believe there are two versions of the truth, and the only difference is which side you are rooting for.
Now that this has become the "norm", I'm not surprised to see it spreading to other parts of the computer industry. So much for having a free press - guess that they're not really "free" after all if all you have to do is buy a few ads.
That's what you gotta love about the Internet. Sites with peer reviewing allow real users to post what they think of something. That is, until companies start paying people to flood the boards with good reactions to products. Right now I do believe that the noise ratio is low and better than receiving information from a "rag" as you call it. Oh, btw, has anyone heard? Steve Jobs promised a greener apple. Now that can't be slanted.... No siree.
It's gonna be hard for me to even read a PC World article again without thinking "horseshit" the whole time.
To paraphrase Dragnet: "if you don't like the law you can try to get that law changed that doesn't give you the right to break it." The school network isn't "law", no, but they can still cause trouble for you if you go against it.
What if you can't get the law changed, because a group of special interests has pretty much hijacked the government allowing for them to put plastic in your chicken food while throwing you in the slammer for trying to watch your own HD-DVDs on a non-approved apparatus? Is there any other option? In many cases, breaking the law eventually does change it. Only through widespread breaking of the law was prohibition repealed and it is likely to be the same for a number of other inane drivel they produce to appeal to a very small minority.
Congressmen don't even read their mail half of the time, attempting to motivate them through voting or protest or any other regular way is ineffectual. Nowadays mainstream media barely even covers protests when they happen, making everyone feel like nobody is outraged and doing something about it. The ways to get a law changed as an average person are small. Breaking it, does, in fact, make a point. You just have to be willing to make the sacrifice if you get caught. Please note: Rosa Parks broke the law.
Although I am not the most 31337 person in the world, I am pretty much surrounded by the world of computers, but I have never, in my life, put down money for a computer magazine. And no one I know, including many programmers, hardware people, or network administrators, seems to be a follower either.
But yet I see racks of these things at grocery stores. Who is buying these things? Middle management who want to keep up to date with the computer world?
My dad...then he tries to be hip.
"Son, did you know they aren't using AGP slots anymore?"
I can't wait to see all the product placement blockbusters. And all those ad-laden songs are going to be really cool to dance to.
Just because distribution is easier on the internet does not give anyone with access to a computer the right to distribute content they do not hold the copyrights to. Many new services of downloadable content are springing up and work just fine and they support the production studios. Use them if you want to download movies/music or don't consume copyrighted entertainment. It is really they simple.
Maybe you guys simply aren't getting it. It's not a matter of rights or other sources of downloadable content. "Intellectual property" as you guys call it is free of media with the start of the Internet age. Whether it breaks your laws, your ethics, your sense of conduct or not it's happening all over the world right now. The cat's out of the bag and no amount of DRM or pandering to peoples' "goodness" is going to save it. The model is changing. The parent is right, it's the gunpowder of our age. Either embrace it, or prepare to be trampled upon.
As for ad-riddled music and movies, you've already got it. Jay-Z uses his music (one example) to sell merchandise, and I'm sure he's not the only one. But as far as being ad supported and also pay per listen, that's not going to happen. Mainstream media may become overly ad ridden or stay as a pay product, but not both.
Your silly ethics mean nothing. Everyone whining about artists rights now looks like a dinosaur. It reminds me of the people who whined when TV came about because they'd look ugly under the lights. The game has changed, folks, update or be squashed. We've had to accept technology taking our jobs for years as regular working people, now it's time for you to accept the payback, remember, it's all in the name of "progress."
So what, computers don't move forward? People don't change their minds ever? You're attempting to justify a stance because of discussions years ago? If that is true, shouldn't you be a train driver because that's what you said you were going to be at age 6?
Sometimes I get the feeling that OpenOffice advocates clearly don't use OpenOffice. Here's a hint: it sucks. It's slow, unresponsive, the UI leaves much to be desired, and the compatibility with MS Office is partial at best. There's a lot of solid OSS out there that rivals their commercial competitors, but OO is not one of them.
Well here's a feeling for you, I'm an OO advocate and I use openoffice on a regular basis.
It is slow and sluggish, perhaps a little moreso than the equivalent MS Office package, at least on Windows. Linux you don't really notice so much because it doesn't seem to chomp up as much memory and CPU time. But either way, yes, I use it, and yes it has its difficulties. But so does MS Office. A lot of the odd things about OO.org are just copied weirdo behavior from MS Office. IMO, the only problem with open office is that it functions too much like MS Office to the point of emulating its bad behavior.
Writer and the spreadsheet app are definitely usable for even some advanced users, the database application really isn't comparable to MS Access, it is buggy and crappy, course, so is Access in its own ways.
I used to pirate MS Office, now I just use OO.org, because I know my data is in a standardized format, and OO works good enough.
There is enough stuff out there today for Joe to get his taste of Linux if he's interested. You may get people to buy these machines but don't count on many "switchers". Somehow I doubt the more vocal fanbois in this cause are going to take up the banner of actually shelling out the bucks. Mouthpieces normally stop when their toe touches the waters, so to speak.
I don't know if I'd call myself a Linux fanboy or anything, but I have to be honest, I've been considering system76 for my next laptop simply because it comes with Linux installed. The lack of an included Windows disk with a new computer really bothers me, as does the "you don't own Windows, you license it" idea of purchasing Windows does. I believe my days of buying computers with Windows preinstalled are over, especially since I'm not going to tolerate having my new machine slowed down like an elephant in a tarpit by being forced to buy Vista. I tried Vista, that thing is a slug necklace. My dual core machine with 2gb of ram was kinda chugging, I can only imagine what a mid range laptop would be doing. At any rate, what I wanted to say is this: Dell selling notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled makes me consider Dell for my next notebook. I love running Linux but I hate the calculation and guess work that goes into making sure everything runs properly on the computer you are buying, and I'd much rather have it preinstalled so I know everything works. And I don't want to have to pay for a Windows license I'm not using (of course some people say using Windows pays you, but whatever).
Let's face it, Linux is not going to destroy Windows, there's too many issues with it. People have already seen Linux and made their opinions then. We can change them but it's an uphill battle. The in fighting, the "hard core linux guys" vs. the Red hats vs. the Slackware vs. everyone else has ruined what little chance Linux has. The very fact that if Linux takes over, it won't be one version but every version and it will all create work for the end user means it's going to be problematic for it to even gain market share.
Let's face it, if Linux *did* destroy Windows, you guys would all have something to say about that too. It's the never happy thing. The world would be better with Linux, people say now. But as soon as Grandma and Grandpa are using Linux and the malware starts getting made, original Linux users will be flustered.
Why do we care, as supporters of this movement if Linux does take over Windows position as the number one player? Is it just for more hardware support? What exactly is this need for open source to overtake Windows? I understand that you want freedom and choice, congratulations, Linux solved that problem years ago.
The important part isn't that Linux take over the Windows monopoly to me. To me the important part is that Linux *exists*, the important part is that there *is* an alternative to a Windows desktop. OSS's existence is more important to me than how many users it has, quite honestly. If enough software gets developed that's quality, it WILL pull users. Empires rise and fall, but why care? Linux is built to outlive empires. It's the peoples' movement of software, if there ever was such a thing. Just the fact that it exists lets us know that we don't ever have to be shackled with the MS chains ever again.
Instead of worrying about Linux overtaking MS, how about just use Linux, enjoy the freedom. Don't look down on others because they made an "incorrect" decision to use Windows. They, most of the time, didn't make a decision. Stop worrying so much about Windows and in time it will fade under its own steam. You can hate the king of the hill, but if you don't have a plan to replace him and you spend all your energy trying to cut his throat, you'll just end up with a worse king at the end of it.
People look at Apple as an example for hating Microsoft, but they have more lockin than MS, at least MS isn't trying to make you use their specific computers again like it was in the old days. At least MS is just selling software for grey boxes. Apple is the champion of DRM and stuff. Knocking MS off the hill isn't important. Keeping Linux going is. It's a precious movement, and it's self-sustaining. As long as OSS has all the talent, who cares who wins the software "battle," the people win either way.
If a company sells you an unsafe car, do you blame the government, or the car company? And having been sold 2 or 3 unsafe cars already, why would you go back to the same vendor?
I'd partially blame the government if they were trying to pass a law making unsafe cars unactionable by exempting the major car manufacturers from having to pay for lawsuits brought by their failures.
But that's kind of a bad analogy anyway so I'll let it slide. There's nothing saying OSX couldn't have a backdoor if.gov decided they wanted Apple to put one in. At some point the only way you can be sure your software isn't spying on you is the ability to look at the code itself and/or compile it yourself. Barring that, there's no way you can tell if it's got spyware coded in it or not. Why people explicitly trust one multinational corporation while saying another is complete rubbish I have no idea. Give all of them enough time, they will become evil in order to make more money if given the opportunity.
When I see things like this, I have to wonder if it's on there because it's a great story with a great Broadway adaptation or is it on there because it has been repopularized by the recent movies & they're hoping to make another quick buck?
When I see things like this, I tag them "thatwillsuck".
You can't expect casual people to think 5-10 or 20 years in the future. That's also quite arrogant. If you want to make the rules, just keep your company privately owned.
Gotta say, even if that was a backhanded comment, it is true that if you want to keep anything relevant or pure, you have to stay privately owned. I was having this discussion with my girlfriend yesterday. The fickleness of the stock market immediately places a company under scrutiny for decisions. You either have to be growing in market penetration, growing in market share, or cutting costs to maintain today's investors. Once you start cutting costs, it spirals downward from there.
I've noticed "going public" as the defining moment in most companies of when they take a turn for the worse. However, some companies once they go public are able to maintain their decency for a short period of time while they continue to expand in marketshare or penetration. Companies, however, once they are done growth in a particular segment are forced to either go into other market segments (generalizing their company to become a "jack of all trades") or are doomed to die a slow death, cutting costs until they have no customers left to attract a single investor.
My comments were made as I was eating at "Baha Fresh", for those of you who don't know, it's a taco-bell style chain, privately owned, partially expanded. I didn't know whether it was true or not at the time, but I said that it was probably privately owned, because it was still worth eating at. Publically owned companies eventually become gutted skeleton companies for the pleasing of the investor. People here often say that users of Google services aren't the customer, they are the product. Well, then I say to you that to most publically traded companies, the "customer" is the product as well. They are the people who the company can show as an influx of income in order to attract investors, investors being the primary concern. The business starts changes to cater to the investors, which sometimes are at odds with the customer. Often the investor isn't a customer him/herself and doesn't care about the outcome as long as his/her investment is realized. The net result: the company goes from startup hotshot, to generic buying up everything monster, to eventually gutted cost cutting operation to a worthless piece of trash that nobody would buy a stick of gum from. It happened to K-Mart, it'll happen to Walmart, it happens to all of them. McDonalds, IMO, is the primary example. Once you sell your company to the world, you are no longer a company that is interested in making a "clean, family place to eat", you begin instead selling what the investors think you should be selling.
Another generation learns the old truth... the upstarts always seem to start as the Good Guys taking on the Big Faceless Corporate Machines. Their CEOs are hip and appear smiling, sharp but casually dressed, on magazine covers. Even after they go public, they maintain that halo for awhile, give lip service to idea of making the world a better place instead of just making a buck. Why not make a little less, and give something back to the people?
Every company does seem to undergo this transition. And honestly, for most companies it seems to be the moment they go public. Google is still managing to print money, watch how cooperative they become when earnings slip.
Here's a new idea. Why not make a printer, and sell it for what it costs to make, plus fair profit for the company? You could even use this same wacky business model for the ink! I know it doesn't quite follow the over-simplified model of selling a printer at just enough to cover your costs, then soak the end user with grossly overpriced consumables because that ensures a source of renewable income, thus making the your budget spreadsheet nice and pretty, but I think people have made it work in the past. Like every company that ever sold anything before the 1970's.
You are missing something here. In the 1970s a lot of these companies were newer and therefore not completely used to screwing over the customer quite yet. Unfortunately the way corporations operate is by constantly cutting margins and finding new ways to screw the consumer. The problem is that investors want the company to put out more profits while making the same product with, in some cases, the same marketshare. So if your company is making one thing en masse, and everyone pretty much already has one and is satisfied etc, that's a dry market. No growth. No growth, no investors. No investors in public corporate speak and no money, no money, no company. The end result, companies have to keep cutting margins on old things especially if they have few new products, because they have to turn more and more profits. The model is flawed. Every cost must eventually be cut and that's why all major printer makers now follow this model.
but i really don't believe that anoybody, who wouldn't watch news channels and use - maybe even international - websites to stay up-to-date with what's happening, will just because of a new possibility start to be interested. you can even find some informational stuff on youtube, but as long you are not interested in this kind of things, you'll still type in "boobs" instead of "global warming".
Then there's only one rational solution: to educate these people we need to tag videos about global warming with "boobs." In theory, this wouldn't be really misleading, as the more global warming occurs, the more spring/summer weather months we have further from the equator and the less clothing girls will wear during those months. Who knows, maybe some of them will even go wild on winter break.
If you get controlled logins, Gmail, Writely, spreadsheet and presentation as well as a portal with your own domain name, why bother with Microsoft?
Because Writely isn't even half as good as having a real word processor, MS Word, Open Office Writer or otherwise. It's buggy, I've experienced a bug with hitting enter and getting two blank lines every time that hadn't been fixed the last time I tried it. I really wanted online office to be worthy of usage because it is practical and nice, but Google's apps seem to be subpar at best.
McDonald's causes great hassle for Burger King as they refuse to release the recipe for the Big Mac's secret sauce. Sadly, this will only be available at McDonald's for the time being. There are no plans for cross-restaurant release.
I call BS on this analogy, everyone knows that McDonald's "secret sauce" is just probably one part Russian dressing one part mayo or something. Burger King came out with a big mac imitator that tasted just like the Big Mac, but I don't even know if it's available anymore because nobody wanted it or liked it anyway even though it did taste like a big mac (only "flame broiled"). Kind of like Coke 2, nobody wanted a Pepsi tasting Coke so they didn't buy it.
There isn't even a burger king analogy to be made here. Microsoft just constantly puts people in a position where if they don't play with Windows, MS will take the ball and run home. They use their monopoly to tie into everything else, making it impossible to break free from the proprietary chains. Make software patents illegal and we'll see a lot less outrage from the OSS side.
Public media WILL NOT pick this up. Microsoft and its partners pays for advertising. If you watch any technological article in the media, you will notice they always side on big business.
Pays for advertising. Hell, they are the media. It's called "MSNBC" for a reason. Wake up and smell the coffee folks, unless these things make a huge, huge stink with voters and viewers they will never catch wind in the mainstream media...pun kind of intended...sorry.
I don't know about this move for M$. They are spreading themselves thin trying to conquer every electronic related market (zune, 360, computers, etc..). Flash is a well established format that many people are accustomed to using and familiar with. Unless M$ has an awesome solution at hand already I believe that they should consolidate their efforts and try to make some headway one their other fronts instead of moving focus from failing efforts.
Who cares, I say yeah it's bad in terms of a business move for the company, but hey, who cares. I hope they continue to try to be this gargantuan monster that doesn't focus on making any product well but just tries to conquer every market. It makes it that much easier for the whole thing to fall apart. The less they focus on the products that are actually pushing units, the less of those products they sell and the less money they'll have to invade other sections of the market. Losing all this money in every division will eventually catch up. They'll become another unspecialized POS company with more product lines than sales and find themselves in the same garbage bing all other companies that once made a popular product find themselves in. I just hope Vista is scary enough for some people to start looking somewhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell this to anyone else who was put out of business by a machine or a computer. Protect the people who make whips for those driving buggies from going out of business or scaling back employees.
Artists aren't somehow protected from market forces or the driving force of technology. Some of the best music came from remarkably terrible times, people like those enslaved created art in order to express their anguish about their situation. You might know this as the blues....you know, the foundation of modern rock. If you take away the millions of dollars and the glitz and glamor, people will still create music. You've seen the type of "art" bestowing upon a select few millions of dollars causes. Do you think it's really necessary for them to be this rich? Do you think the market still warrants it? They exploited a temporary gap.
I say this as I create my own art. As perhaps billions of people other than me make art every day for the enjoyment of the craft and the enrichment of our lives that creative expression brings. If someone stops creating songs because they can't sell a million plus copies per single, you probably didn't lose much in them putting the guitar down anyway.
The loss of intellectual property will not bring art to a screeching halt. It might bring to an end some of the exploitation of art, but it will not stop the human mind from the never ending pressure and release cycle that is creativity. I work a full time job and I still create art. I might not be the best, in fact I'm sure I'm not. But there are millions and perhaps billions out there that do the same thing. Thanks to the Internet we can pass this stuff on without even touring if we don't want to. Culture changes, yes, but who is to judge if its good or bad. This culture change *is* our industrial revolution, those that stand in its way will be its artifacts.
Many very talented artists are already embracing this new way of looking at music distribution. Only greed keeps people from just, as south park put it, being stoked that so many people are listening.
That's right, because I don't think anywhere else even has such a moderation flag. Maybe so, by now, but they just "borrowed" the idea. Course, if Slashdot made that idea, they must own it. So, no, nobody can mod anything flamebait anywhere else, because Slashdot owns "flamebait" (tm).
I wrote the above paragraph to express something about "ownership" and "copyright." What exactly do "artists" create from? I know that as a fledgling artist, you often learn how to play others songs first. Then after you get sort of good at that, you develop a way to create a "sound" of your own. Well, now what exactly is that sound?
Music as a whole is only the way it is due to popular consent. Scales, chords, etc are learned entities. Learned from thousands of examples, music is essentially an evolutionary artform much like any other. Often today's "artists" will rehash old blues chord progressions stolen ideologically from the southern countryside in the 1920s. Even many of John Lennon's best songs (a fantastic artist if you ask me) were simply the standard blues fair, 12-bar blues progression with a riff or two thrown in for good measure and prehaps a unique melody line.
The MPAA and the RIAA want to make it seem like artists are people on a tower, conjuring up melodies, fantastic scripts and ideas from the thin air. That they are a vital part of society that is better than society, that the things they make can never be performed unless first stamped and certified by the original copyright holders. Music hasn't worked like this for a long time and it's not going to start now just because it's making a bunch of lawyers, bureaucrats and spoiled artists from making a few million more per year.
Rock and roll is based off the blues, the blues is based off of earlier folk music of other origins. Everything is derivative. Music isn't created in a vacuum, it's a steady push of the familiar with a little spice of added touch from an "artist". Let It Be and With or Without You have the same cliche chord progression, and it is I suppose illegal to have a chord sheet of either of them without authorization. Who owns the chord progression then? It certainly isn't something U2 created, so should they have to receive royalties because someone plays it?
Perhaps you hear this line of logic here more than anywhere else, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthy argument. Instead of trying to criticize the argument for being unpopular in other venues and popular here, how about you attack the argument?
You must also realize that most "everywhere else" the media is bought and sold. The MPAA and the RIAA and respective industries are deeply ingrained with the newscasts and "news" that you receive on a nightly basis. The idea that intellectual property is a load of horseshit doesn't exactly reflect well on their perspective businesses. I can't imagine why they would want to air information about it.
I believe the "imaginary" substitution is somewhat warranted. What is it, exactly that you believe these "artists" own? Is it the chords and how the song is played on an instrument? Because being a guitarist/psuedo-pianist/instrumentalist myself, I find the idea highly objectionable that anyone, that's right anyone can own chords or combinations of chords (known as chord progressions). If it's not the chords they own, is it the lyrics? Because as I've seen it, lyrics often contain information such as cliches and phrases borrowed from other sources. I find it difficult to believe that someone can "own" phrases.
Is it the chords combined with the lyrics? What exactly do they own?
The truth is that "intellectual" property is imaginary. It was only until I read that phrase in this very article that the issue had been nailed home so clearly in my head.
Nobody owns the plot that everyone uses in modern movies, popular culture, or "folk songs" and things were never before subject to such legislation. They were never "property" before. Myths and tales permeated the countryside. That was until plays could be captured forever as "movies", and music could be stowed away on "records." The truth is that media provided these now hugely successful recording artists with a brief window in which to make millions. That window was only provided by the fact that recorded media could be scarce. That limitation is now gone. Records don't require media anymore and are now as free as they were via word of mouth or through strolling minstrels. The truth is that it was a very small amount of time and their business model should *not* be protected. The reason why people say that artists ripping off other artists makes for great artistry is because it's true. Artists for centuries simply innovated and were free to do so by the free society of culture which has been cut off with records and movies. Well, gentlemen, welcome to the other side of the mountain. If you give something out to the free air that can be copied and played again, it will be. You have no power to stop the echo of your voice once you've used it to scream something from atop a mountain, it is then no longer yours to contain. And as such you have no power to stop the spread of your content. Culture is now back in the hands of the people, where it belonged to begin with. All your justifications and ideas of "intellectual property" are now gone. Get used to tightening your belt and practicing your craft...or find a new trade.
Or you could just put the dishes in the sink after you are done eating.
Or you could just make a grocery list with a .02 pencil and a mini sheet of paper.
Americans spent millions to engineer a pen that writes upside down for space travel. Russians just used a pencil. Remember to do these simple little things and you won't need a god damned database to remember for you to pick up the eggs. Maintenance on this shit alone sounds like it would require a full time maintenance man because every little bit of electronics that can be is manufactured in a 3rd world country for 2 cents an hour whose workers definitely just write a grocery list instead. If this envisioned future of yours is why we need all this technology, people are retarded and ruining the globe with electronic waste as a means to a very complicated way to complete already obnoxiously simple tasks.
And what a model we are setting for the 3rd world countries to grow to...One day, you too might require an oracle database and millions of dollars of infrastructure to buy groceries!
Ah what you don't get. See, in this country, parties are like football teams. You pick your favorite and defend their bad decisions (play calls) until the end. Even in the face of overwhelming defeat and obvious bias in the referee's calls and penalties, you defend your team until the end. Cuz if you don't have a team, you are a bandwagon jumper! So you must pick your preconceived ideology and vote strictly based on that, despite the value of the actual candidates.
You've just realized one of the fundamental flaws of this America's government system.
Political candidates shouldn't be "enemies", they should have opposing viewpoints. The candidate who wins the most arguments should win the debate. But this is America, so all of that logic flies out the window and in the newly ajar window the "political pundits" come in and confuse everyone into thinking that each side did equally well. So that we can continue to believe there are two versions of the truth, and the only difference is which side you are rooting for.
That's what you gotta love about the Internet. Sites with peer reviewing allow real users to post what they think of something. That is, until companies start paying people to flood the boards with good reactions to products. Right now I do believe that the noise ratio is low and better than receiving information from a "rag" as you call it. Oh, btw, has anyone heard? Steve Jobs promised a greener apple. Now that can't be slanted.... No siree.
It's gonna be hard for me to even read a PC World article again without thinking "horseshit" the whole time.
What if you can't get the law changed, because a group of special interests has pretty much hijacked the government allowing for them to put plastic in your chicken food while throwing you in the slammer for trying to watch your own HD-DVDs on a non-approved apparatus? Is there any other option? In many cases, breaking the law eventually does change it. Only through widespread breaking of the law was prohibition repealed and it is likely to be the same for a number of other inane drivel they produce to appeal to a very small minority.
Congressmen don't even read their mail half of the time, attempting to motivate them through voting or protest or any other regular way is ineffectual. Nowadays mainstream media barely even covers protests when they happen, making everyone feel like nobody is outraged and doing something about it. The ways to get a law changed as an average person are small. Breaking it, does, in fact, make a point. You just have to be willing to make the sacrifice if you get caught. Please note: Rosa Parks broke the law.
My dad...then he tries to be hip.
"Son, did you know they aren't using AGP slots anymore?"
"Yes dad, that was like 3 years ago."
Maybe you guys simply aren't getting it. It's not a matter of rights or other sources of downloadable content. "Intellectual property" as you guys call it is free of media with the start of the Internet age. Whether it breaks your laws, your ethics, your sense of conduct or not it's happening all over the world right now. The cat's out of the bag and no amount of DRM or pandering to peoples' "goodness" is going to save it. The model is changing. The parent is right, it's the gunpowder of our age. Either embrace it, or prepare to be trampled upon.
As for ad-riddled music and movies, you've already got it. Jay-Z uses his music (one example) to sell merchandise, and I'm sure he's not the only one. But as far as being ad supported and also pay per listen, that's not going to happen. Mainstream media may become overly ad ridden or stay as a pay product, but not both.
Your silly ethics mean nothing. Everyone whining about artists rights now looks like a dinosaur. It reminds me of the people who whined when TV came about because they'd look ugly under the lights. The game has changed, folks, update or be squashed. We've had to accept technology taking our jobs for years as regular working people, now it's time for you to accept the payback, remember, it's all in the name of "progress."
I am a train driver, you insensitive clod.
Yeah, that would be kinda cool...
Well here's a feeling for you, I'm an OO advocate and I use openoffice on a regular basis.
It is slow and sluggish, perhaps a little moreso than the equivalent MS Office package, at least on Windows. Linux you don't really notice so much because it doesn't seem to chomp up as much memory and CPU time. But either way, yes, I use it, and yes it has its difficulties. But so does MS Office. A lot of the odd things about OO.org are just copied weirdo behavior from MS Office. IMO, the only problem with open office is that it functions too much like MS Office to the point of emulating its bad behavior.
Writer and the spreadsheet app are definitely usable for even some advanced users, the database application really isn't comparable to MS Access, it is buggy and crappy, course, so is Access in its own ways.
I used to pirate MS Office, now I just use OO.org, because I know my data is in a standardized format, and OO works good enough.
I don't know if I'd call myself a Linux fanboy or anything, but I have to be honest, I've been considering system76 for my next laptop simply because it comes with Linux installed. The lack of an included Windows disk with a new computer really bothers me, as does the "you don't own Windows, you license it" idea of purchasing Windows does. I believe my days of buying computers with Windows preinstalled are over, especially since I'm not going to tolerate having my new machine slowed down like an elephant in a tarpit by being forced to buy Vista. I tried Vista, that thing is a slug necklace. My dual core machine with 2gb of ram was kinda chugging, I can only imagine what a mid range laptop would be doing. At any rate, what I wanted to say is this: Dell selling notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled makes me consider Dell for my next notebook. I love running Linux but I hate the calculation and guess work that goes into making sure everything runs properly on the computer you are buying, and I'd much rather have it preinstalled so I know everything works. And I don't want to have to pay for a Windows license I'm not using (of course some people say using Windows pays you, but whatever).
Correct, I much prefer the Tom Cruise inspired phrase "jumped the couch."
Let's face it, if Linux *did* destroy Windows, you guys would all have something to say about that too. It's the never happy thing. The world would be better with Linux, people say now. But as soon as Grandma and Grandpa are using Linux and the malware starts getting made, original Linux users will be flustered.
Why do we care, as supporters of this movement if Linux does take over Windows position as the number one player? Is it just for more hardware support? What exactly is this need for open source to overtake Windows? I understand that you want freedom and choice, congratulations, Linux solved that problem years ago.
The important part isn't that Linux take over the Windows monopoly to me. To me the important part is that Linux *exists*, the important part is that there *is* an alternative to a Windows desktop. OSS's existence is more important to me than how many users it has, quite honestly. If enough software gets developed that's quality, it WILL pull users. Empires rise and fall, but why care? Linux is built to outlive empires. It's the peoples' movement of software, if there ever was such a thing. Just the fact that it exists lets us know that we don't ever have to be shackled with the MS chains ever again.
Instead of worrying about Linux overtaking MS, how about just use Linux, enjoy the freedom. Don't look down on others because they made an "incorrect" decision to use Windows. They, most of the time, didn't make a decision. Stop worrying so much about Windows and in time it will fade under its own steam. You can hate the king of the hill, but if you don't have a plan to replace him and you spend all your energy trying to cut his throat, you'll just end up with a worse king at the end of it.
People look at Apple as an example for hating Microsoft, but they have more lockin than MS, at least MS isn't trying to make you use their specific computers again like it was in the old days. At least MS is just selling software for grey boxes. Apple is the champion of DRM and stuff. Knocking MS off the hill isn't important. Keeping Linux going is. It's a precious movement, and it's self-sustaining. As long as OSS has all the talent, who cares who wins the software "battle," the people win either way.
I'd partially blame the government if they were trying to pass a law making unsafe cars unactionable by exempting the major car manufacturers from having to pay for lawsuits brought by their failures.
But that's kind of a bad analogy anyway so I'll let it slide. There's nothing saying OSX couldn't have a backdoor if .gov decided they wanted Apple to put one in. At some point the only way you can be sure your software isn't spying on you is the ability to look at the code itself and/or compile it yourself. Barring that, there's no way you can tell if it's got spyware coded in it or not. Why people explicitly trust one multinational corporation while saying another is complete rubbish I have no idea. Give all of them enough time, they will become evil in order to make more money if given the opportunity.
When I see things like this, I tag them "thatwillsuck".
Gotta say, even if that was a backhanded comment, it is true that if you want to keep anything relevant or pure, you have to stay privately owned. I was having this discussion with my girlfriend yesterday. The fickleness of the stock market immediately places a company under scrutiny for decisions. You either have to be growing in market penetration, growing in market share, or cutting costs to maintain today's investors. Once you start cutting costs, it spirals downward from there.
I've noticed "going public" as the defining moment in most companies of when they take a turn for the worse. However, some companies once they go public are able to maintain their decency for a short period of time while they continue to expand in marketshare or penetration. Companies, however, once they are done growth in a particular segment are forced to either go into other market segments (generalizing their company to become a "jack of all trades") or are doomed to die a slow death, cutting costs until they have no customers left to attract a single investor.
My comments were made as I was eating at "Baha Fresh", for those of you who don't know, it's a taco-bell style chain, privately owned, partially expanded. I didn't know whether it was true or not at the time, but I said that it was probably privately owned, because it was still worth eating at. Publically owned companies eventually become gutted skeleton companies for the pleasing of the investor. People here often say that users of Google services aren't the customer, they are the product. Well, then I say to you that to most publically traded companies, the "customer" is the product as well. They are the people who the company can show as an influx of income in order to attract investors, investors being the primary concern. The business starts changes to cater to the investors, which sometimes are at odds with the customer. Often the investor isn't a customer him/herself and doesn't care about the outcome as long as his/her investment is realized. The net result: the company goes from startup hotshot, to generic buying up everything monster, to eventually gutted cost cutting operation to a worthless piece of trash that nobody would buy a stick of gum from. It happened to K-Mart, it'll happen to Walmart, it happens to all of them. McDonalds, IMO, is the primary example. Once you sell your company to the world, you are no longer a company that is interested in making a "clean, family place to eat", you begin instead selling what the investors think you should be selling.
Every company does seem to undergo this transition. And honestly, for most companies it seems to be the moment they go public. Google is still managing to print money, watch how cooperative they become when earnings slip.
You are missing something here. In the 1970s a lot of these companies were newer and therefore not completely used to screwing over the customer quite yet. Unfortunately the way corporations operate is by constantly cutting margins and finding new ways to screw the consumer. The problem is that investors want the company to put out more profits while making the same product with, in some cases, the same marketshare. So if your company is making one thing en masse, and everyone pretty much already has one and is satisfied etc, that's a dry market. No growth. No growth, no investors. No investors in public corporate speak and no money, no money, no company. The end result, companies have to keep cutting margins on old things especially if they have few new products, because they have to turn more and more profits. The model is flawed. Every cost must eventually be cut and that's why all major printer makers now follow this model.
Then there's only one rational solution: to educate these people we need to tag videos about global warming with "boobs." In theory, this wouldn't be really misleading, as the more global warming occurs, the more spring/summer weather months we have further from the equator and the less clothing girls will wear during those months. Who knows, maybe some of them will even go wild on winter break.
Because Writely isn't even half as good as having a real word processor, MS Word, Open Office Writer or otherwise. It's buggy, I've experienced a bug with hitting enter and getting two blank lines every time that hadn't been fixed the last time I tried it. I really wanted online office to be worthy of usage because it is practical and nice, but Google's apps seem to be subpar at best.
I call BS on this analogy, everyone knows that McDonald's "secret sauce" is just probably one part Russian dressing one part mayo or something. Burger King came out with a big mac imitator that tasted just like the Big Mac, but I don't even know if it's available anymore because nobody wanted it or liked it anyway even though it did taste like a big mac (only "flame broiled"). Kind of like Coke 2, nobody wanted a Pepsi tasting Coke so they didn't buy it.
There isn't even a burger king analogy to be made here. Microsoft just constantly puts people in a position where if they don't play with Windows, MS will take the ball and run home. They use their monopoly to tie into everything else, making it impossible to break free from the proprietary chains. Make software patents illegal and we'll see a lot less outrage from the OSS side.
Pays for advertising. Hell, they are the media. It's called "MSNBC" for a reason. Wake up and smell the coffee folks, unless these things make a huge, huge stink with voters and viewers they will never catch wind in the mainstream media...pun kind of intended...sorry.
Who cares, I say yeah it's bad in terms of a business move for the company, but hey, who cares. I hope they continue to try to be this gargantuan monster that doesn't focus on making any product well but just tries to conquer every market. It makes it that much easier for the whole thing to fall apart. The less they focus on the products that are actually pushing units, the less of those products they sell and the less money they'll have to invade other sections of the market. Losing all this money in every division will eventually catch up. They'll become another unspecialized POS company with more product lines than sales and find themselves in the same garbage bing all other companies that once made a popular product find themselves in. I just hope Vista is scary enough for some people to start looking somewhere else.