Catalyst has been in negotiations with some additional parties for weeks concerning how to pay down debts, including making partial payments, turning over stock and so on, as they’ve requested. We’ve been notified that some of these parties are pursuing additional legal means to secure the monies owed despite the negotiations. Our legal counsel has advised that the lawsuit is baseless. As such, Catalyst will defend against it and expect it to be dismissed in the near future. Regardless, we’re continuing our negotiations and will continue to move, as we’ve been doing, to pay debts down as quickly as possible.
Finally, as some of you may have noticed, we’ve just changed the legal text and logos on all our appropriate sites that reference Shadowrun and BattleTech from WizKids to The Topps Company, Inc., per their direction. We’ve been in contact with Topps for weeks regarding these situations. We are currently in negotiations to re-secure the Shadowrun and BattleTech licenses.
It appears to be an edited rip of Aakash Soneri's Sone. (A comparison: Sone is teal, the new logo face is wine, where it overlaps is cobalt blue.) The changes appear to be as insubstantial as adding a slant to ascenders and shifting the baselines of some of the glyphs.
If Canonical modified Sone, didn't license it, and they start freely distributing it ("our global community will still maintain access to the resources needed to construct logos that use the branding" - so either the modified glyphs for the logo as svg, or the modified font itself), that's a dick move.
And if they did license it, then why is an open-source project licensing commercial fonts and calling it a reflection of the project?
Maybe it's a placeholder - who knows? Canonical doesn't say anything about the font's origin or license in the linked documentation, nor does Canonical's Jono Bacon in his nearly identical announcement.
But it is disappointing to see an open source project - whose community already made LGPL-licensedtypefaces for their current logo - make and publicize such a half-assed effort, even in a preliminary stage, without any explanation on the decision.
When you say, as an organization based on community contribution:
"We wanted Ubuntu to reflect the precision and engineering that sits at the heart of the product. The new logo reflects this but not at the expense of the immediately recognisable circle of friends."
And you follow that with a logo that's based on a commercial typeface, you're reneging on that intent in at least one of two ways:
You're disrespecting the designer of the commercial font by modifying it and refusing to give credit - if it's licensed correctly at all;
You're disrespecting the open-source community, which includes professional designers who've went to bat for you in the past.
Even if Sone was correctly licensed, and Canonical got permission to modify it for their logo and future redistribution, why not get it from the community?
And if it wasn't licensed correctly, then is Ubuntu following the lead of Arial and just ripping things off in a legal but unethical manner when they can't find what they want in a convenient license?
(And maybe it's a coincidence - a really bad coincidence that still should be fixed. Without any explanation, nobody can tell.)
Nothing so far released regarding RBN and the Rock Band Creators Club indicates that it will require XNA. XNA Creators Club != XNA Studio, XNA the programming language, XNA the flamethrower, etc.
Details about Magma, which packages the songs for distribution, haven't been released; all Harmonix says is that it's a "PC tool." That means it may require XNA, but for all we know, it equally might require Java, or COBOL, or shoving your head up your ass. There's just no information yet.
it's also $1,000 to get started... If you own a PLAYSTATION 3 and a PC running Linux, or if you own a Wii and a Macintosh computer, you also need to buy an Xbox 360 and a PC running Windows.
Ignoring the suggestion that a Mac owner or Linux user has to buy another computer to run Windows, you're looking at about $640-$850 ($230 Xbox Pro + $150 Windows license + $100-$150 360 Rock Band set + $100 Creators Club + $60-$225 Reaper license). Reaper has an OS X build and works in wine, but since we don't know anything about Magma, it may well require Windows. If not, the cost of entry drops further. If your band or label makes less than $20,000 gross/year, Reaper costs $60, not $225.
At $80, selling their songs at the standard small-label price of $1/80 points per song, the band would have to sell about 2,650 songs to recoup their investment, before taxes. At $640, its 2,133 songs.
Sounds daunting, eh? Dropping $640 with no guarantee of profit? If you're just putting on 2 or 3 songs, you could probably hire a ScoreHero forum person who has a few years' experience in charting to put it together for $200-$300, or less, who knows.
There's no accurate sales figures for Rock Band DLC; Statosphere used to attempt to estimate them based on leaderboard activity, and the song that had sold the fewest copies as of Sept. 2008 (Devo's "Through Being Cool") sold an estimated 2,895 copies in three weeks at $2/sale. MC Frontalot moved an estimated 3,445 copies at $1 each of "Livin' at the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe" in one week.
The worst-selling song, The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb," was available on opening day and sold an estimated 13,550 copies in the first 11 months of Rock Band's existence; projecting that performance onto a RBN release, that'd be a gross take for the artist of $4,065, at 30 percent of each $1 sale.
Don't take any of this for any significance - IANA band's business manager, the DLC stats above are sketchy at best, and it'll be a much more crowded marketplace full of songs that will, on average, have lower-quality audio and note charts. But 1.) it's not $1,000 for gear, and for most small bands and some small labels, it won't be $500, and 2.) there's a decent chance artists and labels with a fan base and dedication to quality and promotion can break even.
Nothing so far released regarding RBN and the Rock Band Creators Club indicates that it will require XNA. XNA Creators Club != XNA Studio, XNA the programming language, XNA the flamethrower, etc.
Details about Magma, which packages the songs for distribution, haven't been released; all Harmonix says is that it's a "PC tool." That means it may require XNA, but for all we know, it equally might require Java, or COBOL, or shoving your head up your ass. There's just no information yet.
it's also $1,000 to get started... If you own a PLAYSTATION 3 and a PC running Linux, or if you own a Wii and a Macintosh computer, you also need to buy an Xbox 360 and a PC running Windows.
Ignoring the suggestion that a Mac owner or Linux user has to buy another computer to run Windows, you're looking at about $640-$850 ($230 Xbox Pro + $150 Windows license + $100-$150 360 Rock Band set + $100 Creators Club + $60-$225 Reaper license). Reaper has an OS X build and works in wine, but since we don't know anything about Magma, it may well require Windows. If not, the cost of entry drops further. If your band or label makes less than $20,000 gross/year, Reaper costs $60, not $225.
At $80, selling their songs at the standard small-label price of $1/80 points per song, the band would have to sell about 2,650 songs to recoup their investment, before taxes. At $640, its 2,133 songs.
Sounds daunting, eh? Dropping $640 with no guarantee of profit? If you're just putting on 2 or 3 songs, you could probably hire a ScoreHero forum person who has a few years' experience in charting to put it together for $200-$300, or less, who knows.
There's no accurate sales figures for Rock Band DLC; Statosphere used to attempt to estimate them based on leaderboard activity, and the song that had sold the fewest copies as of Sept. 2008 (Devo's "Through Being Cool") sold an estimated 2,895 copies in three weeks at $2/sale. MC Frontalot moved an estimated 3,445 copies at $1 each of "Livin' at the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe" in one week.
The worst-selling song, The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb," was available on opening day and sold an estimated 13,550 copies in the first 11 months of Rock Band's existence; projecting that performance onto a RBN release, that'd be a gross take for the artist of $4,065, at 30 percent of each $1 sale.
Don't take any of this for any significance - IANA band's business manager, the DLC stats above are sketchy at best, and it'll be a much more crowded marketplace full of songs that will, on average, have lower-quality audio and note charts. But 1.) it's not $1,000 for gear, and for most small bands and some small labels, it won't be $500, and 2.) there's a decent chance artists and labels with a fan base and dedication to quality and promotion can break even.
It's from the interview with Harmonix and MTV Games.
Songs submitted through this process must then be reviewed by other developers to check for playability, inappropriate lyrics, copyright infringement and so on. Harmonix will post approved tracks to an in-game download store separate from its existing "Rock Band" store where creators can set their own price (50 cents to $3 per song) and receive 30% of any resulting sales. Gamers will also be able to demo 30-second samples of each track.
The Billboard article is extremely detailed, with info on training the review community; Microsoft's development of a Harmonix-hosted subset of the XBL Creators Club, with special rules just for Rock Band; details on the software to be used by artists and and HMX; record label Sub Pop announcing that they're already moving content onto the network, including all of their fall releases; and MTV saying they may eventually combine the RBN and existing Rock Band Store markets if RBN is successful.
1.) If TC can prove that the data was transferred from last.fm to CBS, they're refusing to disclose it because they expect to be sued and will use the evidence to build a truth defense against the libel suit.
If this is true, TC doesn't care about informing the public - if they did, either TC would have the balls to post the evidence by now on their site, or slip a copy to Wikileaks or some other gray-market info distributor to hit the blogs. The end goal for Arrington is publicity for the site and page views.
2.) If TC can't prove this, and only has a single unsubstantiated source, they're refusing to disclose the source because they expect to be sued and plan to throw the source to CBS' lawyers as a diversion. If this is the case, TC is looking to burn off some excess money. The end goal for Arrington is publicity for the site and page views.
Even if TC can prove it has a source, last.fm/CBS would have to sue TC to get to it. If CBS sues TC and TC doesn't produce any source or evidence, TC faces the full liability for CBS' losses, and likely significant punitive damages.
If Arrington agrees to reveal the source or evidence, and it turns out the source was wrong, a judge would likely limit damages compared to what it would award against the source, as the libel originated with the source. In this situation, TC didn't invent the false information, it merely relayed it, and in many cases this does not result in heftier judgments against the outlet. (Sometimes it does, but in any case, Arrington can point at the source and blame him/her/it, self-validate his journalistic ethics, and continue working.) The story makes banner headlines across news sites. TC loses a chunk of cash, but FFS, it's a blog about to compete with Apple and tablet PC makers. It obviously has cash to burn. The net result for Arrington is publicity for the site and page views.
If Arrington refuses to reveal the source, either the judge slaps the full brunt of libel against tc, or the judge jails Arrington for contempt. Arrington happily martyrs himself for "journalism" and goes to jail for contempt, blogging by mail or phone or prison sex or whatever, until CBS decides to stop paying its legal team and drops the suit. (Arrington's sponsors - including competing music services - would be happy to foot the bill.) The end result for Arrington is a SHIT-TON of publicity for the site and page views.
And finally, libel suits that span the Atlantic are tough nuts to crack. Legal action is possible, but it's expensive, and therefore unlikely. Last.fm suspended the deletion of account data the last time TC did this, allowing Angry Internet People to sulk back when it was evident TC didn't have the cards to play their accusations in public and folded. We'll see if it happens again - considering the mirroring of the previous incident's tactics, that's probably true.
In that case, all CBS/last.fm suing TC would accomplish is... publicity and page views for Arrington and TC.
Arrington can't lose, he knows it, and we all break down TC's site to spit on Arrington or pat his back. Meanwhile, he passes all THAT info on to HIS advertisers.
So finally I talked my boss into getting me an SGI Indy (which I've since replaced with an SGI O2) and life became joyous again. Because SGI actually knows something about building user interfaces, and about making it possible to administer a machine without being a member of the technological priesthood. For but one example, I was able to install and format a new disk on this machine through GUIs, without once having to run ``man'' and try to remember some random arcane command that I last used in 1986.
This is the part where I start getting hate mail from people, and cheerleading messages telling me to take a look at it again, because it's so much better now. I understand. I'll take your word for it. And when the time comes to replace the O2 I have today, maybe my next machine will run Linux. But as we all know, Linux is only free if your time has no value, and I find that my time is better spent doing things other than the endless moving-target-upgrade dance.
Of course, all of the software I write runs on Linux; that's the beauty of standards, and of cross-platform code. I don't have to run your OS, and you don't have to run mine, and we can use the same applications anyway!
I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more. I hope that some day it will have evolved to the point where my mom can take home a Linux box, turn it on, and get on with her life without having to become a Unix sysadmin first, and without having to give up on all the ease of use she's come to expect from allegedly less powerful operating systems.
"An AC says before if these marks are still on the records for the kids."
IANAL, but juvenile disciplinary records are sealed in most/all states, and tough to open. Turn 18 and most people won't know you ever went unless you commit a crime or they, um, have access to a corrupt public official. Like this one.
I'm still trying to figure out how popular projects like Miro and Songbird really are, and why. How useful is mashing Web functions together with media to create some interactive behemoth? Why do people need these bloated apps for content discovery when browsing a Web site and running an RSS-supporting torrent client is at least as effective?
Is it just the convenience of not leaving an app? If it's the interface, I understand even less - both are so cluttered, even with Miro's upgrade, and resource-intensive. Neither appears to have any meaningful integration with any media center software - MythTV can't even sync with Miro's library without a hack since Miro doesn't have much of a backend API - and neither has much of a 10-foot interface, so that kills it for me on a TV, which is the only place I'd watch anything more than a YouTube clip.
We're going to remove OpenCandy from our installer next week. Thanks for pushing back on this.
We still think the core idea of open source projects promoting one another is a great one, and we'll continue to support and promote other FOSS projects whenever possible.
~Jesse
Also from that post:
OpenCandy is a a software recommendation engine that we added recently in order to suggest other free and open source software to our users. You can find out about the organization at www.opencandy.com.
I wasn't aware that it permanently left their recommendation engine on the user's machine after running it. We'll look into that right now and fix it as soon as possible.
"The problem is that local governments (municipalities, primarily) have signed exclusive agreements with these companies."
OR
"LUS Fiber is officially "Open for Business" - already providing Video, Internet and Phone services from its state-of-the-art network to Lafayette residents. This community-owned 100% fiber optic infrastructure will supply residents and businesses with the most advanced communications system in the world. Better, faster and more cost-efficient communications means improved quality of life and numerous benefits for our community."
This is tl; I expect most dr. Move along, then, nothing to see here.
If that's true, then do you have a theory for why newspapers, which have been racking their brains non-stop regarding this crisis, haven't latched onto the local-coverage solution?
The local/wire debate is not too far off from debates about organizing a team for programming software.
One end of the code spectrum is to write everything you need yourself. From the close-to-metal code to the UI, everything is written in-house. When well-funded and executed by a well-organized, qualified team, the result is solid software that's nearly self-maintaining. Each team member knows their role inside and out by working not only on coding the solutions but also calculating the efficiency of the algorithms, documenting code well and correcting errors quickly. QA catches bugs quickly, the coders stomp them out before it ships, the program is fast and resource-efficient, UI design is intuitive - but all these coders are expensive, and the best ones quickly get snatched up after a project, or even during one, by deeper-pocketed rivals.
On the other end is, I suppose, the stereotypical Visual Basic.NET style - using large libraries and off-the-shelf solutions. Taking this route is easier and doesn't require a large group of coders. Programs can be written quickly at relatively a low financial cost by a smaller team - hell, you can even outsource much of the work. However, the software can be horribly resource-inefficient, requested or needed features are missing or slimmed down, the UI is clunky or overwrought, and bugs are rife.
Most development philosophies fall somewhere between: a team of coders will write much of what they need on their own, but certain complex or tedious parts of the program can be handled by libraries or delegated to subcontractors/outsourcers. A game might be written by one company except for the 3D engine; a developer may hand off database backend development while taking care of the forward-facing application. Everything comes down to the budget, which is driven by a desire for profit.
Now, let's frame the news business in a similar fashion.
One end of the news spectrum is the local-first approach. From the legwork to find out what happens behind closed doors - stuff that won't ever get published, but gives a reporter context and angles for stories that aren't obvious from just the press releases and meetings - to the grip-and-grin photo ops, everything is written by in-house reporters who work a beat. When well-funded and executed by a well-organized, qualified team, the result is solid news reporting with strong contextual background that's simple to understand without oversimplifying. Each reporter knows their beat inside and out by working not only on writing stories but also gaining the trust of reliable sources, taking and archiving copious off-the-record and unpublished notebooks, and staying in contact with reliable expert sources to correct errors quickly. Copy editors also catch errors quickly, the managing editors help stomp them out before it prints, the story is tight and concise, paginators lay the story out attractively and add appropriate art and graphics - but all these employees are expensive, and the best ones quickly get snatched up after a story, or even during one, by deeper-pocketed rivals - corporate-owned newspapers, news wires, even PR firms and politicians.
On the other end is, I suppose, the stereotypical Gannett corporate newspaper - recycling press releases and using wire services. Taking this route is easier and doesn't require a large newsroom staff. Pages can be produced quickly at a relatively low financial cost by a smaller team - hell, you can even outsource much of the work, like Gannett is doing or planning to do with reporting, copy editing and pagination. However, the stories can be horribly written, lacking in context, missing important information that's relevant to readers, cut down to make room for more ads, with lazy desi
How many years have you been using PC-based hardware and how many exploding capacitors have you encountered?
Four. Two on one used motherboard back in 2002, one off a two-week-old board from MSI in 2004, and one last year off a 7-year-old Dell, though that one was hosed in a number of other ways as well. None before or since, and only one in any system I built from new parts up.
It'll be 20 years of tinkering with PC-based (I assume that means IBM-compatible and its descendants) hardware come December.
From the EFF archives. Read the whole thing, but this is the tl;dr part you should:
Based on what they told me at the time and everything I've learned since then:
(Phil) Zimmermann never even uploaded PGP files for public access.
(Kelly) Goen studiously limited his uploads to U.S. systems, as permitted
by law and routinely done with identically-regulated AT&T and RSA software.
They certainly didn't care about exporting PGP. Hell, most of the
rest of the world already purchases public-key products from numerous
vendors except U.S. companies.
They did want to pre-empt S. 266 before it became law - just as millions of
people do all the time regarding all sorts of pending legislation. And the
offending mandate was later deleted from S. 266, anyway.
Zimmermann and Goen wanted to protect this nation's citizens. S.
266 wasn't threatening other nation's citizens; it was threatening
Americans!"
Wired also posted an overview of PGP and S.266 on the 10th anniversary of the shebang in 2001. It's worth noting that Biden introduced the legislation, but also was one of the Senators responsible for removing the anti-crypto section.
Biden's still a thorough douche toward tech, specifically peer-to-peer networking and free speech on the Internet.
Wow! Even an AT&T customer service rep could have remembered that site existed and pointed any customer who asked about charges to it, instead of saying that they didn't know what the charges could possibly be and that there was no way of ever finding out.
Probably because it's too complicated to figure just off the top of their heads, or because they haven't determined your alignment and class.
According to the 4th ed. FC&C Salesmaster's Manual, the taxes on a $40 calling plan is 2d10+2 percent for all classes and alignments of customer.
However, the rules get tricky when adding the data and text plans. If you add those and the customer is any Lawful alignment, or your class is Apple Cultist, the monthly fees and taxes are a d20+30 per month.
If you're Neutral, sales should charge 2d10+2 percent of the total purchase in fees, plus a flat setup fee of 3d20, and whatever the local tax rate is (see Table 13-4.7, "Telecommunication Tax Rates of Municipalities, Provinces, Kingdoms, Shires and Deities").
If your alignment is Chaotic, or you have the Late Bills or Frequent Support Caller flaws, or your class is Go Phoner, your fees are (3d20)d20+(d20)d6, plus (2d20)d20 percent taxes, plus 2d6 in franchise fees, plus 3d20+d6 setup.
If you're identified as Chaotic Hard-to-Please alignment, the Salesmaster may simply escalate fees and taxes and make up complex usage rules (2Gb bandwidth cap except on Fridays and the alternating days of the third week of every fourth month, when it's 256k, for example) until the customer gives up.
However, if sales can't determine your alignment or class - if you're a new customer, for example, or your billing and prior plan history isn't available -Âthey will probably refuse to answer your questions. If a customer immediately submits, they get Apple Cultist treatment. If a customer questions the refusal but eventually submits, they get Chaotic treatment.
If a customer is an insistent questioner, the Salesmaster considers the player in combat and gives the player d6-2 rounds to flee before calling security (see U.S. Government's "Monster and Enforcement Officer Bestiary," table 2.1-1, "Rented Muscle").
People will not have switching opportunities between different distros
The Bazaar will survive. There'll still be Puppy, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, MEPIS. Gentoo, Slack/Slax, CentOS, Arch, Vector. NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DesktopBSD, PC-BSD. OpenSolaris. gOS, Xandros, Freespire.
The Bazaar and the Cathedral is not a dichotomy. It's symbiotic. They not only can coexist, they must.
The Bazaar certainly will survive this because of the people behind it. If Shuttleworth's clan strays to far towards the Cathedral, the Bazaar's backers will throw their weight elsewhere.
But if Canonical never does anything to provide services to the Cathedral, only the Bazaar - no matter how vocal, always the minority - will ever benefit.
The people who only have time for the Cathedral's simplicity benefit from collaboration, and the people with time to sample everything in the Bazaar benefit from competition. It's long past time for the Bazaar and the Cathedral to work together and share those benefits with each other.
I bought a cheap mac mini (intel core solo) on ebay, gutted it, replaced the CPU, added 2 GB RAM and a 250 GB drive.. I then put an external 250 GB drive on top of it. Alternatively buy a brand new Mac mini with the specs you need.
There you go - $600 or so and you have a totally silent "home server". If all you're going to do is gut a Mac mini and add components, get a POS laptop off eBay instead. Same thing, no Mac markup.
You can't cut ad staff because they're the people who make money for the paper. You can't cut circulation and distribution because that's always been cut down to the barest minimum.
You can cut mailroom staff and move deadlines up, but they're minimum wage, so that's not much savings.
You can put a bigger workload on the press room to do more commercial jobs, but with higher overtime and press maintenance costs, the gain in revenue is a wash.
You can't cut reporting staffs down too much or you won't have anything to put into the paper.
So where are the cuts taking place? Copy desks. It's cheaper to make a reporter learn to edit copy while maintaining their writing (and now videography, photography, blogging and podcasting) workloads, than it is to hire someone with the software experience, editing skills, contacts and breadth of knowledge to even know what facts to suspicious, much less actually check them.
Yeah, I've been thinking about forking this Mozilla project Web browser because it's getting way too bloated. It was great back when it was just Netscape, just a Web browser, you know? Then they're adding all this extra crap, probably because of all this corporate sponsorship, and it'll get all slow and suck up tons of RAM when all I want to do is look at some Web pages.
Let's make it just a stand-alone browser. I think I've already got a name for it, too -- Phoenix, you know, like rising from the ashes?
Once your paying customers start wanting to pay in order NOT to play your game, you know your designer is a complete retard. People paying my company to not do anything? That's bad? They're not quitting, are they?
If that makes my game designer retarded, well, at least he knows our target audience.
I never really heard about any interesting XBox homebrew, just running Linux and XBMC type stuff. Ditto with the 'cube. But the Wii should prove interesting.
Yeah, now we can get XBMC with motion-sensitive remote control!
Slashdot Mirror
The current licensee is trying to renegotiate their terms with Topps after plunging into debt via some astonishingly poor management.
It appears to be an edited rip of Aakash Soneri's Sone. (A comparison: Sone is teal, the new logo face is wine, where it overlaps is cobalt blue.) The changes appear to be as insubstantial as adding a slant to ascenders and shifting the baselines of some of the glyphs.
If Canonical modified Sone, didn't license it, and they start freely distributing it ("our global community will still maintain access to the resources needed to construct logos that use the branding" - so either the modified glyphs for the logo as svg, or the modified font itself), that's a dick move.
And if they did license it, then why is an open-source project licensing commercial fonts and calling it a reflection of the project?
Maybe it's a placeholder - who knows? Canonical doesn't say anything about the font's origin or license in the linked documentation, nor does Canonical's Jono Bacon in his nearly identical announcement.
But it is disappointing to see an open source project - whose community already made LGPL-licensed typefaces for their current logo - make and publicize such a half-assed effort, even in a preliminary stage, without any explanation on the decision.
When you say, as an organization based on community contribution:
And you follow that with a logo that's based on a commercial typeface, you're reneging on that intent in at least one of two ways:
Even if Sone was correctly licensed, and Canonical got permission to modify it for their logo and future redistribution, why not get it from the community?
And if it wasn't licensed correctly, then is Ubuntu following the lead of Arial and just ripping things off in a legal but unethical manner when they can't find what they want in a convenient license?
(And maybe it's a coincidence - a really bad coincidence that still should be fixed. Without any explanation, nobody can tell.)
this program is XNA exclusive
Nothing so far released regarding RBN and the Rock Band Creators Club indicates that it will require XNA. XNA Creators Club != XNA Studio, XNA the programming language, XNA the flamethrower, etc.
Details about Magma, which packages the songs for distribution, haven't been released; all Harmonix says is that it's a "PC tool." That means it may require XNA, but for all we know, it equally might require Java, or COBOL, or shoving your head up your ass. There's just no information yet.
Ignoring the suggestion that a Mac owner or Linux user has to buy another computer to run Windows, you're looking at about $640-$850 ($230 Xbox Pro + $150 Windows license + $100-$150 360 Rock Band set + $100 Creators Club + $60-$225 Reaper license). Reaper has an OS X build and works in wine, but since we don't know anything about Magma, it may well require Windows. If not, the cost of entry drops further. If your band or label makes less than $20,000 gross/year, Reaper costs $60, not $225.
At $80, selling their songs at the standard small-label price of $1/80 points per song, the band would have to sell about 2,650 songs to recoup their investment, before taxes. At $640, its 2,133 songs.
Sounds daunting, eh? Dropping $640 with no guarantee of profit? If you're just putting on 2 or 3 songs, you could probably hire a ScoreHero forum person who has a few years' experience in charting to put it together for $200-$300, or less, who knows.
There's no accurate sales figures for Rock Band DLC; Statosphere used to attempt to estimate them based on leaderboard activity, and the song that had sold the fewest copies as of Sept. 2008 (Devo's "Through Being Cool") sold an estimated 2,895 copies in three weeks at $2/sale. MC Frontalot moved an estimated 3,445 copies at $1 each of "Livin' at the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe" in one week.
The worst-selling song, The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb," was available on opening day and sold an estimated 13,550 copies in the first 11 months of Rock Band's existence; projecting that performance onto a RBN release, that'd be a gross take for the artist of $4,065, at 30 percent of each $1 sale.
Don't take any of this for any significance - IANA band's business manager, the DLC stats above are sketchy at best, and it'll be a much more crowded marketplace full of songs that will, on average, have lower-quality audio and note charts. But 1.) it's not $1,000 for gear, and for most small bands and some small labels, it won't be $500, and 2.) there's a decent chance artists and labels with a fan base and dedication to quality and promotion can break even.
this program is XNA exclusive
Nothing so far released regarding RBN and the Rock Band Creators Club indicates that it will require XNA. XNA Creators Club != XNA Studio, XNA the programming language, XNA the flamethrower, etc.
Details about Magma, which packages the songs for distribution, haven't been released; all Harmonix says is that it's a "PC tool." That means it may require XNA, but for all we know, it equally might require Java, or COBOL, or shoving your head up your ass. There's just no information yet.
Ignoring the suggestion that a Mac owner or Linux user has to buy another computer to run Windows, you're looking at about $640-$850 ($230 Xbox Pro + $150 Windows license + $100-$150 360 Rock Band set + $100 Creators Club + $60-$225 Reaper license). Reaper has an OS X build and works in wine, but since we don't know anything about Magma, it may well require Windows. If not, the cost of entry drops further. If your band or label makes less than $20,000 gross/year, Reaper costs $60, not $225.
At $80, selling their songs at the standard small-label price of $1/80 points per song, the band would have to sell about 2,650 songs to recoup their investment, before taxes. At $640, its 2,133 songs.
Sounds daunting, eh? Dropping $640 with no guarantee of profit? If you're just putting on 2 or 3 songs, you could probably hire a ScoreHero forum person who has a few years' experience in charting to put it together for $200-$300, or less, who knows.
There's no accurate sales figures for Rock Band DLC; Statosphere used to attempt to estimate them based on leaderboard activity, and the song that had sold the fewest copies as of Sept. 2008 (Devo's "Through Being Cool") sold an estimated 2,895 copies in three weeks at $2/sale. MC Frontalot moved an estimated 3,445 copies at $1 each of "Livin' at the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe" in one week.
The worst-selling song, The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb," was available on opening day and sold an estimated 13,550 copies in the first 11 months of Rock Band's existence; projecting that performance onto a RBN release, that'd be a gross take for the artist of $4,065, at 30 percent of each $1 sale.
Don't take any of this for any significance - IANA band's business manager, the DLC stats above are sketchy at best, and it'll be a much more crowded marketplace full of songs that will, on average, have lower-quality audio and note charts. But 1.) it's not $1,000 for gear, and for most small bands and some small labels, it won't be $500, and 2.) there's a decent chance artists and labels with a fan base and dedication to quality and promotion can break even.
I swear the link was in the preview. Billboard interview
The Billboard article is extremely detailed, with info on training the review community; Microsoft's development of a Harmonix-hosted subset of the XBL Creators Club, with special rules just for Rock Band; details on the software to be used by artists and and HMX; record label Sub Pop announcing that they're already moving content onto the network, including all of their fall releases; and MTV saying they may eventually combine the RBN and existing Rock Band Store markets if RBN is successful.
1.) If TC can prove that the data was transferred from last.fm to CBS, they're refusing to disclose it because they expect to be sued and will use the evidence to build a truth defense against the libel suit.
If this is true, TC doesn't care about informing the public - if they did, either TC would have the balls to post the evidence by now on their site, or slip a copy to Wikileaks or some other gray-market info distributor to hit the blogs. The end goal for Arrington is publicity for the site and page views.
2.) If TC can't prove this, and only has a single unsubstantiated source, they're refusing to disclose the source because they expect to be sued and plan to throw the source to CBS' lawyers as a diversion. If this is the case, TC is looking to burn off some excess money. The end goal for Arrington is publicity for the site and page views.
Even if TC can prove it has a source, last.fm/CBS would have to sue TC to get to it. If CBS sues TC and TC doesn't produce any source or evidence, TC faces the full liability for CBS' losses, and likely significant punitive damages.
If Arrington agrees to reveal the source or evidence, and it turns out the source was wrong, a judge would likely limit damages compared to what it would award against the source, as the libel originated with the source. In this situation, TC didn't invent the false information, it merely relayed it, and in many cases this does not result in heftier judgments against the outlet. (Sometimes it does, but in any case, Arrington can point at the source and blame him/her/it, self-validate his journalistic ethics, and continue working.) The story makes banner headlines across news sites. TC loses a chunk of cash, but FFS, it's a blog about to compete with Apple and tablet PC makers. It obviously has cash to burn. The net result for Arrington is publicity for the site and page views.
If Arrington refuses to reveal the source, either the judge slaps the full brunt of libel against tc, or the judge jails Arrington for contempt. Arrington happily martyrs himself for "journalism" and goes to jail for contempt, blogging by mail or phone or prison sex or whatever, until CBS decides to stop paying its legal team and drops the suit. (Arrington's sponsors - including competing music services - would be happy to foot the bill.) The end result for Arrington is a SHIT-TON of publicity for the site and page views.
And finally, libel suits that span the Atlantic are tough nuts to crack. Legal action is possible, but it's expensive, and therefore unlikely. Last.fm suspended the deletion of account data the last time TC did this, allowing Angry Internet People to sulk back when it was evident TC didn't have the cards to play their accusations in public and folded. We'll see if it happens again - considering the mirroring of the previous incident's tactics, that's probably true.
In that case, all CBS/last.fm suing TC would accomplish is... publicity and page views for Arrington and TC.
Arrington can't lose, he knows it, and we all break down TC's site to spit on Arrington or pat his back. Meanwhile, he passes all THAT info on to HIS advertisers.
Jamie Zawinski (the DNA Lounge/Unix Mozilla 1.1 guy) said it in 1998.
Just two years later, he took it mostly back.
IANAL, but juvenile disciplinary records are sealed in most/all states, and tough to open. Turn 18 and most people won't know you ever went unless you commit a crime or they, um, have access to a corrupt public official. Like this one.
I doubt it. Too RISCy.
I'm still trying to figure out how popular projects like Miro and Songbird really are, and why. How useful is mashing Web functions together with media to create some interactive behemoth? Why do people need these bloated apps for content discovery when browsing a Web site and running an RSS-supporting torrent client is at least as effective?
Is it just the convenience of not leaving an app? If it's the interface, I understand even less - both are so cluttered, even with Miro's upgrade, and resource-intensive. Neither appears to have any meaningful integration with any media center software - MythTV can't even sync with Miro's library without a hack since Miro doesn't have much of a backend API - and neither has much of a 10-foot interface, so that kills it for me on a TV, which is the only place I'd watch anything more than a YouTube clip.
OpenCandy was removed from Miro two months ago after user complaints.
Also from that post:
OR
Your municipality may very.
This is tl; I expect most dr. Move along, then, nothing to see here.
If that's true, then do you have a theory for why newspapers, which have been racking their brains non-stop regarding this crisis, haven't latched onto the local-coverage solution?
The local/wire debate is not too far off from debates about organizing a team for programming software.
One end of the code spectrum is to write everything you need yourself. From the close-to-metal code to the UI, everything is written in-house. When well-funded and executed by a well-organized, qualified team, the result is solid software that's nearly self-maintaining. Each team member knows their role inside and out by working not only on coding the solutions but also calculating the efficiency of the algorithms, documenting code well and correcting errors quickly. QA catches bugs quickly, the coders stomp them out before it ships, the program is fast and resource-efficient, UI design is intuitive - but all these coders are expensive, and the best ones quickly get snatched up after a project, or even during one, by deeper-pocketed rivals.
On the other end is, I suppose, the stereotypical Visual Basic.NET style - using large libraries and off-the-shelf solutions. Taking this route is easier and doesn't require a large group of coders. Programs can be written quickly at relatively a low financial cost by a smaller team - hell, you can even outsource much of the work. However, the software can be horribly resource-inefficient, requested or needed features are missing or slimmed down, the UI is clunky or overwrought, and bugs are rife.
Most development philosophies fall somewhere between: a team of coders will write much of what they need on their own, but certain complex or tedious parts of the program can be handled by libraries or delegated to subcontractors/outsourcers. A game might be written by one company except for the 3D engine; a developer may hand off database backend development while taking care of the forward-facing application. Everything comes down to the budget, which is driven by a desire for profit.
Now, let's frame the news business in a similar fashion.
One end of the news spectrum is the local-first approach. From the legwork to find out what happens behind closed doors - stuff that won't ever get published, but gives a reporter context and angles for stories that aren't obvious from just the press releases and meetings - to the grip-and-grin photo ops, everything is written by in-house reporters who work a beat. When well-funded and executed by a well-organized, qualified team, the result is solid news reporting with strong contextual background that's simple to understand without oversimplifying. Each reporter knows their beat inside and out by working not only on writing stories but also gaining the trust of reliable sources, taking and archiving copious off-the-record and unpublished notebooks, and staying in contact with reliable expert sources to correct errors quickly. Copy editors also catch errors quickly, the managing editors help stomp them out before it prints, the story is tight and concise, paginators lay the story out attractively and add appropriate art and graphics - but all these employees are expensive, and the best ones quickly get snatched up after a story, or even during one, by deeper-pocketed rivals - corporate-owned newspapers, news wires, even PR firms and politicians.
On the other end is, I suppose, the stereotypical Gannett corporate newspaper - recycling press releases and using wire services. Taking this route is easier and doesn't require a large newsroom staff. Pages can be produced quickly at a relatively low financial cost by a smaller team - hell, you can even outsource much of the work, like Gannett is doing or planning to do with reporting, copy editing and pagination. However, the stories can be horribly written, lacking in context, missing important information that's relevant to readers, cut down to make room for more ads, with lazy desi
Four. Two on one used motherboard back in 2002, one off a two-week-old board from MSI in 2004, and one last year off a 7-year-old Dell, though that one was hosed in a number of other ways as well. None before or since, and only one in any system I built from new parts up.
It'll be 20 years of tinkering with PC-based (I assume that means IBM-compatible and its descendants) hardware come December.
Wired also posted an overview of PGP and S.266 on the 10th anniversary of the shebang in 2001. It's worth noting that Biden introduced the legislation, but also was one of the Senators responsible for removing the anti-crypto section.
Biden's still a thorough douche toward tech, specifically peer-to-peer networking and free speech on the Internet.
Wow! Even an AT&T customer service rep could have remembered that site existed and pointed any customer who asked about charges to it, instead of saying that they didn't know what the charges could possibly be and that there was no way of ever finding out.
Probably because it's too complicated to figure just off the top of their heads, or because they haven't determined your alignment and class.
According to the 4th ed. FC&C Salesmaster's Manual, the taxes on a $40 calling plan is 2d10+2 percent for all classes and alignments of customer.
However, the rules get tricky when adding the data and text plans. If you add those and the customer is any Lawful alignment, or your class is Apple Cultist, the monthly fees and taxes are a d20+30 per month.
If you're Neutral, sales should charge 2d10+2 percent of the total purchase in fees, plus a flat setup fee of 3d20, and whatever the local tax rate is (see Table 13-4.7, "Telecommunication Tax Rates of Municipalities, Provinces, Kingdoms, Shires and Deities").
If your alignment is Chaotic, or you have the Late Bills or Frequent Support Caller flaws, or your class is Go Phoner, your fees are (3d20)d20+(d20)d6, plus (2d20)d20 percent taxes, plus 2d6 in franchise fees, plus 3d20+d6 setup.
If you're identified as Chaotic Hard-to-Please alignment, the Salesmaster may simply escalate fees and taxes and make up complex usage rules (2Gb bandwidth cap except on Fridays and the alternating days of the third week of every fourth month, when it's 256k, for example) until the customer gives up.
However, if sales can't determine your alignment or class - if you're a new customer, for example, or your billing and prior plan history isn't available -Âthey will probably refuse to answer your questions. If a customer immediately submits, they get Apple Cultist treatment. If a customer questions the refusal but eventually submits, they get Chaotic treatment.
If a customer is an insistent questioner, the Salesmaster considers the player in combat and gives the player d6-2 rounds to flee before calling security (see U.S. Government's "Monster and Enforcement Officer Bestiary," table 2.1-1, "Rented Muscle").
If you thought the elevators in Mass Effect were cool, just wait! Now they'll be STAR WARS ELEVATORS OMG
The Bazaar will survive. There'll still be Puppy, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, MEPIS. Gentoo, Slack/Slax, CentOS, Arch, Vector. NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DesktopBSD, PC-BSD. OpenSolaris. gOS, Xandros, Freespire.
The Bazaar and the Cathedral is not a dichotomy. It's symbiotic. They not only can coexist, they must.
The Bazaar certainly will survive this because of the people behind it. If Shuttleworth's clan strays to far towards the Cathedral, the Bazaar's backers will throw their weight elsewhere.
But if Canonical never does anything to provide services to the Cathedral, only the Bazaar - no matter how vocal, always the minority - will ever benefit.
The people who only have time for the Cathedral's simplicity benefit from collaboration, and the people with time to sample everything in the Bazaar benefit from competition. It's long past time for the Bazaar and the Cathedral to work together and share those benefits with each other.
There you go - $600 or so and you have a totally silent "home server". If all you're going to do is gut a Mac mini and add components, get a POS laptop off eBay instead. Same thing, no Mac markup.
There was a time when newspapers had massive profit margins from being the only game in town for classifieds and employment ads, commercial and local advertising. That's obviously no longer true.
You can't cut ad staff because they're the people who make money for the paper. You can't cut circulation and distribution because that's always been cut down to the barest minimum.
You can cut mailroom staff and move deadlines up, but they're minimum wage, so that's not much savings.
You can put a bigger workload on the press room to do more commercial jobs, but with higher overtime and press maintenance costs, the gain in revenue is a wash.
You can't cut reporting staffs down too much or you won't have anything to put into the paper.
So where are the cuts taking place? Copy desks. It's cheaper to make a reporter learn to edit copy while maintaining their writing (and now videography, photography, blogging and podcasting) workloads, than it is to hire someone with the software experience, editing skills, contacts and breadth of knowledge to even know what facts to suspicious, much less actually check them.
Yeah, I've been thinking about forking this Mozilla project Web browser because it's getting way too bloated. It was great back when it was just Netscape, just a Web browser, you know? Then they're adding all this extra crap, probably because of all this corporate sponsorship, and it'll get all slow and suck up tons of RAM when all I want to do is look at some Web pages.
Let's make it just a stand-alone browser. I think I've already got a name for it, too -- Phoenix, you know, like rising from the ashes?
If that makes my game designer retarded, well, at least he knows our target audience.
Yeah, now we can get XBMC with motion-sensitive remote control!