He may have had a point to make, but his example was horribly misguided.
As for why music prices have gone up, there is only one good answer: because enough of the public is willing to pay! It's the same with the inflationary spiral seen in sports - despite constant criticism of athlete salaries, people still clamor to pay hundreds of dollars for tickets to big games.
Assuming you're a Bruins fan, at least your boys had the smarts to hold onto Pat Burns.
There's the real challenge for musical artists in the digital age: figuring out what sorts of value they can provide to their audience that warrant purchasing their music in a material format like a CD. Once upon a time, people really wanted to have their favorite groups' albums, for liner notes, artwork, etc. I can't think of too many CD's I own that have anything interesting to them other than the sound encoded on the disc.
What's the difference between tap water and bottled water
Unfortunately, where I live, there really is a difference - yuck!
Regardless of the manouvers that have cheezed off many of their fans, this lawyer for Metallica is only fanning the flames by calling the protesting Napster users "liars" in blanket statements. There's an argument that Metallica can make regarding the protection of their copyrights, but it does them no good to needlessly offend tens of thousands of their (former?) fans in the process.
More than just a fancy dress...
on
Boo No More
·
· Score: 1
"Dr Spong is on the money: e-commerce is just mail order in fancy dress."
That's basically true, but the distribution demands are much greater in an e-commerce environment. When a user buys something over the web, they expect delivery within 2-3 days, as opposed to a mail-order situation which usually involves weeks between the order being sent out and product delivery.
That's a very significant challenge that many e-tailers frankly overlook - they need a scalable warehousing/distribution environment with the systems and staffing available to handle sometimes unpredictable demand. That challenge requires a great deal of investment and attention, even though it isn't as glitzy as a spiffy Java applet or $2 million Super Bowl ad.
Others have asked about the potential CPU hit of trying to play a game while having VR processes running, and I was wondering about the CPU-intensive aspect of VR in general. Would it make any sense at all to develop a card that would handle VR processing, much like a graphics card or sound card takes some of the load off the main CPU for output?
actually, that's not so much the case anymore. China's huge problem looming on the horizon is how to downsize their bloated government industrial enterprises, while at the same time finding private-enterprise employment for the millions of urban workers who need "downsizing."
Regardless of the issues, it might serve you to retain a lawyer on your own behalf - who knows when the interests of the ad agency and yourself might diverge in this dispute.
I would think that
1) an HTML file could very well be copyrighted, just like any other work, but
2) The advertising agency would own the HTML that the original company created for them. The lawyers, I'm sure, are going back over the contracts that defined that relationship to make that determination.
They certainly sound like litigious parasites, that's for sure...
If the Justice Department hadn't been bugging MS for the last few years, they would control the entire Internet by now, thus there would be no "hostile" users left.
Since the routers along the way only would stamp a portion of their IP address, and only do so a fraction of the time, this would only provide useful mapping information for large-scale, distributed attacks. Also, does this scheme record the IP address at the very start of the process (the users' IP address), or does it start with the first router along the way?
I think the individual user is still anonymous under this scheme, but I ain't no expert.
Basically, the SKU is an identifier used within a company to differentiate product. It can be anything the company wants it to be, as long as it meets their needs.
A UPC is a code that identifies not just a product, but where it comes from. The UPC is a standard from the Uniform Code Council, and is a 12-digit number, in the format 0-12345-67890-1. The "12345" part identifies the manufacturer, the 1st digit (0 in this example) is the site from which it came, and the "67890" uniquely identifies the product. The last digit is a check digit for accuracy.
As for equating order numbers with product numbers, that would seem to be pretty confusing. How would I tell John Doe's order from Mary Sue's, if they order the same goods? Typically, you'll see an order # that defines a particular order, and then underneath that you'll see order lines which each reference a given SKU and quantity.
Example:
Order #: 12345 Line 1: SKU# 928375B, Qty 5 Line 2: SKU# 132487C, Qty 3 Each of those SKU's would then have their own UPC, which is represented by the bar code that can be scanned anywhere along the way.
Since the artists don't make much off the CD sales anyway, they can bypass the restrictions and interference from the label and get their music out to the fans more directly over the net.
The whole point is, in the future, where do the record labels provide value to both the artist and the consumer? That is the question that must be answered in order for them to survive.
But given all the possibilities that technology might bring, I don't see a replacement for the live concert experience. There's just nothing like going to a gigantic event and sharing it with tens of thousands of your closest friends (Pink Floyd at the Silverdome on the Pulse tour - wow!).
What I'm waiting to see is the development of a successful "on-line" label company, one that promotes a band that distributes their music for free over the net, gets them mainstream radio/video airplay, and makes the money back by staging a tour. That would be a neat trick, and would certainly give the big labels reason to start quivering in their boots.
I'm certainly not trying to dictate my personal tastes here - I'm just proposing how I see the situation working out over the long term. As the saying goes, the genie is out of the bottle, and the free distribution of music (illegal or not) is here to stay.
Rather than concentrate on the supposedly awful effects this would have on your "lone composer in his basement," think of the huge opportunity that's out there as well - by publishing music independently over the Net, he can avoid the interference that commercial labels burden artists with.
As regards the diversity of music, I can think of no other motivator for the independent artist than to be able to freely distribute their work to millions of listeners just as easily as the Backstreet Boys and any other mainstream act.
They can make it from live performances. Up until the last couple decades, that's where the money was made - record sales and radio airplay were the means by which artists built their reputation, allowing them to make money by playing LIVE.
The rise of the fixed-medium (vinyl, CD, etc.) music industry as a gigantic financial engine is a fairly recent one. In another decade or two, it will (hopefully) be remembered as a temporary economic quirk that was renderred irrelevant by the progress of electronic communications technology.
A far more widespread and disturbing trend that goes beyond just tech stocks is the dwindling amount of firms that pay dividends to shareholders on a regular basis. Look at a firm like Microsoft, which makes outrageous profits, but has never paid nor has any plans to pay any future dividends out to the shareholders. For many firms (at least the ones that are making profits), paying out dividends is seen as an admission that they can't do better for the shareholders than simply hand out the dough - far better to pour it into new ventures or acquisitions.
So what exactly do these shareholders get? Without the prospect of participating in the profits of a corporation via a dividend, the value in a share of stock becomes whatever another person is willing to pay for it. That may be the company itself (via stock buyback programs), or the market at large. Do you see where this is going?
"I've got your purple Furby right over here! Who's willing to give me $200 for it? Anyone? $190, then! Anyone willing to pony up $190 for this here purple Furby???"
Purple Furby = share of non-dividend paying stock. Well, at least you can play with the Furby.
Sure, there are some systemic causes of this problem - there are lots of investors who simply don't want dividends, since they are taxed as income in the year received, as opposed to a stock whose share price rises over time without incurring a tax hit until a sale takes place at a profit. And a huge number of companies can't pay dividends because, sadly, they just aren't making any money. The bull market of the last several years has been notable in the small number of firms that are accounting for a large portion of the growth, while the rest lanquish.
The bottom line is that economic fundamentals have taken a back seat to optimistic speculation. I don't think we'll see an Armageddon, but we could have some lean years ahead in terms of stock market gains, even though the economy as a whole continues to chug along.
Check out this story from PBS, it contains a direct quote at the top. I'll try and find a video or audio track of that speech, but I remember him speaking those words quite clearly. It is phrased in a hypothetical "how do we know when..." type of conjecture, but he knew exactly what sort of effect those words would have.
I use the preview pane, and it hasn't launched from my mailbox. I immediately set up a rule to permanently delete these emails upon receipt, but our office (in Indianapolis) is flooded with this crap.
Slashdot Mirror
As for why music prices have gone up, there is only one good answer: because enough of the public is willing to pay! It's the same with the inflationary spiral seen in sports - despite constant criticism of athlete salaries, people still clamor to pay hundreds of dollars for tickets to big games.
Assuming you're a Bruins fan, at least your boys had the smarts to hold onto Pat Burns.
What's the difference between tap water and bottled water
Unfortunately, where I live, there really is a difference - yuck!
Uh, booze was just plain banned - hence the black market of which you speak (similar to the drug market of today). Price had nothing to do with it...
Regardless of the manouvers that have cheezed off many of their fans, this lawyer for Metallica is only fanning the flames by calling the protesting Napster users "liars" in blanket statements. There's an argument that Metallica can make regarding the protection of their copyrights, but it does them no good to needlessly offend tens of thousands of their (former?) fans in the process.
Boo-Hoo...
That's basically true, but the distribution demands are much greater in an e-commerce environment. When a user buys something over the web, they expect delivery within 2-3 days, as opposed to a mail-order situation which usually involves weeks between the order being sent out and product delivery.
That's a very significant challenge that many e-tailers frankly overlook - they need a scalable warehousing/distribution environment with the systems and staffing available to handle sometimes unpredictable demand. That challenge requires a great deal of investment and attention, even though it isn't as glitzy as a spiffy Java applet or $2 million Super Bowl ad.
Others have asked about the potential CPU hit of trying to play a game while having VR processes running, and I was wondering about the CPU-intensive aspect of VR in general. Would it make any sense at all to develop a card that would handle VR processing, much like a graphics card or sound card takes some of the load off the main CPU for output?
Do you get bonus points for overacting?
actually, that's not so much the case anymore. China's huge problem looming on the horizon is how to downsize their bloated government industrial enterprises, while at the same time finding private-enterprise employment for the millions of urban workers who need "downsizing."
your sarcasm detector seems to be on the fritz...
I would think that
1) an HTML file could very well be copyrighted, just like any other work, but
2) The advertising agency would own the HTML that the original company created for them. The lawyers, I'm sure, are going back over the contracts that defined that relationship to make that determination.
They certainly sound like litigious parasites, that's for sure...
All Hail the Great Leader!
and I'm 100% certain that you'll front their legal fees, right?
I think the individual user is still anonymous under this scheme, but I ain't no expert.
Let 'em work on making that machine from "The Cat in the Hat" a reality. No more housecleaning, just switch the thing on and let it go to work...
The real challenge is for the free music groups to get the word out, and (perhaps hardest of all) get that translated into mainstream radio airplay.
A UPC is a code that identifies not just a product, but where it comes from. The UPC is a standard from the Uniform Code Council, and is a 12-digit number, in the format 0-12345-67890-1. The "12345" part identifies the manufacturer, the 1st digit (0 in this example) is the site from which it came, and the "67890" uniquely identifies the product. The last digit is a check digit for accuracy.
As for equating order numbers with product numbers, that would seem to be pretty confusing. How would I tell John Doe's order from Mary Sue's, if they order the same goods? Typically, you'll see an order # that defines a particular order, and then underneath that you'll see order lines which each reference a given SKU and quantity.
Example:
Order #: 12345
Line 1: SKU# 928375B, Qty 5
Line 2: SKU# 132487C, Qty 3
Each of those SKU's would then have their own UPC, which is represented by the bar code that can be scanned anywhere along the way.
I hope I've confused the issue sufficiently...
I'm getting a fax from Mr. Brown!
The whole point is, in the future, where do the record labels provide value to both the artist and the consumer? That is the question that must be answered in order for them to survive.
What I'm waiting to see is the development of a successful "on-line" label company, one that promotes a band that distributes their music for free over the net, gets them mainstream radio/video airplay, and makes the money back by staging a tour. That would be a neat trick, and would certainly give the big labels reason to start quivering in their boots.
Rather than concentrate on the supposedly awful effects this would have on your "lone composer in his basement," think of the huge opportunity that's out there as well - by publishing music independently over the Net, he can avoid the interference that commercial labels burden artists with.
As regards the diversity of music, I can think of no other motivator for the independent artist than to be able to freely distribute their work to millions of listeners just as easily as the Backstreet Boys and any other mainstream act.
The rise of the fixed-medium (vinyl, CD, etc.) music industry as a gigantic financial engine is a fairly recent one. In another decade or two, it will (hopefully) be remembered as a temporary economic quirk that was renderred irrelevant by the progress of electronic communications technology.
So what exactly do these shareholders get? Without the prospect of participating in the profits of a corporation via a dividend, the value in a share of stock becomes whatever another person is willing to pay for it. That may be the company itself (via stock buyback programs), or the market at large. Do you see where this is going?
"I've got your purple Furby right over here! Who's willing to give me $200 for it? Anyone? $190, then! Anyone willing to pony up $190 for this here purple Furby???"
Purple Furby = share of non-dividend paying stock. Well, at least you can play with the Furby.
Sure, there are some systemic causes of this problem - there are lots of investors who simply don't want dividends, since they are taxed as income in the year received, as opposed to a stock whose share price rises over time without incurring a tax hit until a sale takes place at a profit. And a huge number of companies can't pay dividends because, sadly, they just aren't making any money. The bull market of the last several years has been notable in the small number of firms that are accounting for a large portion of the growth, while the rest lanquish.
The bottom line is that economic fundamentals have taken a back seat to optimistic speculation. I don't think we'll see an Armageddon, but we could have some lean years ahead in terms of stock market gains, even though the economy as a whole continues to chug along.
He's a pretty clever fella...
I use the preview pane, and it hasn't launched from my mailbox. I immediately set up a rule to permanently delete these emails upon receipt, but our office (in Indianapolis) is flooded with this crap.