I should have said, "the intolerant culture warriors of the right wing". Like most people I have some right wing and some left wing values, which is why I am so appalled by those who would reduce America's major cultural and foreign policy issues down to a set of simplistic interpretations of the Bible, untainted by history, science, or complex economic theory.
Do you really think it makes a difference whether Bush or Whatsisname get elected?
That's exactly why America is going down the fucking tubes. People use the intellectually lazy excuse that all candidates are the same. You may laugh at "the proles" but your elitist attude is EXACTLY why the NASCAR and God crowd has taken over the American political system.
Do you seriously think that Kerry and Bush are undifferentiated? Do you think that Kerry would have decided that the best way to take down terrorists was to attack Iraq? Do you think social programs that marry religion with social work would be emphasized so much in a Kerry administration? Do you think tax cuts at all costs would be Kerry's method of pumping economic growth?
Intellectual arrogance may make you feel better about yourself, but it won't do a fucking thing to change the state of American politics.
I've seen many comments on Slashdot about how video games are art. Free speech demands that video games be protected. Video games are a form of artistic expression.
Followed to its logical conclusion, if you believe that video games are art, you shouldn't be surprised if there are elements of politics in video games.
Is Oliver Twist a book, or a political statement?
Is Apocalypse Now a movie, or a political statement?
Is Guernica a painting, or a political statement?
Art is intrinsically political, so perhaps the emergence of political statements in video games means that they're becoming a more evolved form of expression.
but back in the day (the mid/late 1990s) Sun was the outfit that was supposed to "save" Apple. As others have pointed out, the calculus has shifted. Apple already makes good hardware; they don't need Sun for that.
I'd rather see Sun completely re-assess their position and find out how they can leverage their core strengths (technology innovation, experience at the server side of computing, understanding of how to use the network as a computing machine, etc.) and implement a new strategy based on those strengths.
IBM re-invented itself. Apple re-invented itself. Sun is capable of doing the same.
Uh, wait. I mean, opinions are like assholes. Heh, sorry. Anyway, it's easy to say something like, "Just give up and close the business" when you're a pundit. You have the plum position of being able to give away advice without having to act on it, and you never bear responsibility for those opinions. They're easy-come, easy-go notions that are basically used to keep readers coming to your publication.
they wanted employees posting blogs, posting in USENET groups (and they do), and responding to e-mails
No argument there. But think about it from MS management's point of view. It's in Microsoft's best interests to make the company look like a company focused on creating great software, rather than a company oriented around annihilating the competition.
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive goals for a software company, but now that Microsoft has succeeded in establishing a tremendously powerful monopoly, they are attempting to show a more human face.
Obviously there are a lot of smart, talented, well-intentioned people working at Microsoft. But a few blogs from Microsofties aren't going to convince me that the company is changing its stripes.
As for the Slashdot hivemind telling me what to think, I've had almost 20 years of working with their products and watching them in the marketplace to guide my opinion of Microsoft.
What I'm wondering is why the higher ups at Microsoft appear comfortable with their employees chatting it up in online forums that will most likely become public.
Excellent question. Maybe I've got my tinfoil hat on too tight, but I wouldn't put it past Microsoft's management to have a plan akin to this: "Hey, go out and make Microsoft look good. Speak as individuals. Tell the world that we're really NOT the Evil Empire."
Microsoft has tried to manipulate public opinion of them before. Maybe they're just getting more subtle. When the big money doesn't work, go soft-touch.
Thankfully my group of friends had very understanding parents. I think they figured, "Hey, they're in the basement listening to The Stranglers and talking about goblins, but at least they're not out doing drugs and beating up old ladies."
One of the guys in our group actually had this really great house, and we had the converted basement to ourselves. His dad would bring down sandwiches from time to time, and we'd game into the wee hours on Friday and Saturday nights. It was great.
Oddly, back in the day we were more into Runequest, Aftermath!, and other games. But now that the d20 system has established itself as the One System, we've all basically decided to stick to the d20 rules. When you're a kid you have all the time in the world to monkey around with rules and prepare for games, but now that our group is officially old, we prefer to spend most of our gaming time actually gaming.
Some 30-somethings play pool or poker to socialize. We play D&D.
No, they're building a product that they hope will dislodge MSN Hotmail from its dominant position. Hotmail gets at least 145 million visitors per month, and Microsoft poured money into Hotmail for eight years before it became profitable.
Microsoft can afford to pour money down a hole until something becomes profitable. Google can't. So Google has to get it right the first time and make Gmail a much better product right out of the gate in order to combat Microsoft's built-in advantages as the owner of the OS and the browser that most people use.
What gave you that idea? The picture of the kid next to it, the 4" Star Wars dolls shown inside the Star Destroyer, or the text indicating that it was made for play?
I'm in the same status as Crowbar. The vest I wore had the same inflexibility problem the_crowbar mentions. It may not seem like a big deal, but it really is, particularly when you are in situations where range of motion is critical.
For example, in urban combat, you are constantly looking up, and pointing your weapon up. As you crane your neck backward and move your non-firing hand above your head, with a traditional kevlar vest you reach a flexibility limitation. If you then have to contort your body laterally for some reason (and they always arise) your trunk is limited in flexiblity as well.
A vest that could incorporate greater flexiblity and some sort of heat-dissipation mechanism would be a real boon to soldiers who need body armor protection.
Interesting comments, and I appreciate that you're willing to discuss this thoughtfully.
I wasn't aware that the major labels were releasing most of their new albums with copy protection built in. I've been buying almost all of my music online for a while now, and most of the CDs I buy in stores are from smaller labels, so I'm out of the loop on that. It may be that the labels are contributing directly to the use of P2P networks by trying this rather stupid approach.
My basic stance is that while DRM is never going to work as a long-term solution, there are two basic paths we can take to get the music industry and the government to smarten up:
1) Subvert the law
2) Work within the law
I don't agree with the DMCA, but I also think that by directly attacking the music industry, it's going to take a lot longer for them to come around. The music industry is stale, moribund, profit-driven, and powerful. But to treat it as an evil entity is counterproductive.
My points about the iTMS pricing were meant to inject some economic reality into the discussion. Ultimately the music is not produced and distributed for free. It takes money, particularly if you're talking about music created by a star act like Sting, U2, Garth Brooks, etc. The marketing costs alone are outrageous.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where artists could distribute their music online using whatever form of Creative Commons license they liked, but it seems to me that most artists are still captive to the notion that they can become Big Rock Stars. So they sign bad contracts with the labels.
The labels don't steal the music from the musicians. The musicians enter into bad contracts, and the labels make money accordingly. If artists got smart, they'd do what David Lindley does. The guy plays a lot of live shows and controls distribution of his music.
But given that the music most of us want to listen to is controlled by big labels (because the artists haven't gotten smart enough to bypass the labels entirely), I submit that if Apple or someone else is paying the costs of setting up an online distribution mechanism for the music I want, Apple and the labels have the right to determine the rules under which the music is distributed given the state of our current copyright law which is quite obviously flawed.
I think we're actually closer on this than it might have seemed at first blush. I think the RIAA is an anachronism, but I think the real unharnessed power lies with the artists themselves. If they started blowing off labels altogether, or started getting used to the notion that they would be better off controlling their own destinies, the RIAA would be rapidy consigned to the scrapheap of history.
The people who seem to be doing the best work in pressuring for copyright reform are not (in my opinion) the people who are hacking DRM, setting up P2P networks, or otherwise attacking from a questionable legal basis.
Rather, the folks who have taken the GPL as inspiration and have conceived more equitable variations on copyright are the people who have the most hope of ending the current RIAA stranglehold on music. If musicians would take a look at what Lawrence Lessig is doing with his latest book (distributing it as a download under a Creative Commons license while simultaneously offering it for sale in printed form), they might start to understand that they have the power to provide a better experience for listeners while retaining vastly more control over their own product.
Will musicians wake up to this? Maybe, but the evidence so far is that only a handfull of musicians really grok what's going on.
Apple's Music Store is a means of showing the labels that they can sell music online in direct competition with P2P networks. My feeling is that as online music sales increase, the online sales outlets that put fewer controls on downloads are the ones that will prosper. In business, money talks and rhetoric wa
Take my dad for example, he has 100's of CD's and he listens to the radio in his truck.
Sounds like your dad is a good candidate for the 40Gb iPod, then.
But it also seems that there a lot of folks out there who simply don't have 100s of CDs. There are people who enjoy listening to the radio but don't own many CDs. These are the folks who bought 45s back in the day, but don't bother with LPs because they only want to listen to the "hit songs".
My point is that if there are a range of options available. The standard iPods are still selling very well. People like me love 'em. But just because another segment of the consumer market is pouncing on the iPod minis for their own reasons doesn't necessarily mean that there's been an outbreak of mass stupidity.
You are making the assumption that most people's music libraries will grow, rather than change. I was a music fanatic as a teenager and well into my 20s. But my tastes have changed over the years, and while I still listen to The Clash frequently, I'm no longer so crazy about The Minutemen.
With an iPod your primary storage mechanism for the music is really the hard drive of your computer (the Digital Hub concept). What's wrong with ripping CDs and buying new music online, and storing it in your computer, uploading only songs you're really interested in listening to onto your iPod? Plus, I agree with the notion that most average consumers just don't have all that many songs.
People are voting with their pocketbooks. They know what they want, and the iPod mini seems to be fitting the bill quite well for a lot of people.
Technology fuels our economy, so it must be flawless.
Technology wins our wars, so it must be flawless.
We have a permanent hard-on for technology. Just look at Slashdot, for crying out loud. We're a country that worships technology for its own sake.
If it's newer, sleeker, faster, shinier, and eliminates interaction with people, we're all for it. We want a permanent state of newness. We don't care about history, or precident, or any of that bullshit.
ARPA (a DoD agency) funded initial work and guided development of the early Internet. Without that DoD funding, there would probably be no Internet. Without an Intenet, there would be no Web. Without a Web, there would be no Slashdot.
Cmd Taco and all the rest of you verminous militaristic scumbags need to be shut down NOW! I'm not going to visit your site any more, nor am I going to use the Web at all. In fact, I'm not going to use the Internet.
Come to think of it, I'm not going to use any radios, fly in jet aircraft, take malaria shots,... the list goes on. Screw it. I'm just going to opt out altogether and live in a hole in the ground somewhere in the Ozark Mountains where the evil U.S. military won't have any effect on my life.
The Clone War was cool, but somehow I wonder if it's really worth it to spend umpty millions to put 87 different kinds of laser blasting vehicles on the screen and vast horizons of rendered landscapes when the cantina scene in the original was more interesting.
You realize that you're insinuating in Slashdot of all places that story *may* be more important than special effects.
All items that a certain percentage of the population sniffed at as unnecessary when they first hit the market. In fact there are probably more than a few Slashdot readers who don't have all four of the items listed above.
But the point is that all four are now ubiquitous. They're so inexpensive and widely distributed that pretty much anyone who wants to purchase can do so.
There are enough people demanding broadband in the U.S. that eventually it will become truly ubiquitous. There may be holdouts who use dial-up for many years to come, but the economic necessity of broadband access will ensure that it comes about either through private enterprise, government intervention, or a combination of the two.
The point was primarily to provide background for Glaser's current plea to Apple. My note about Real being in trouble was not really supported by the quotes, as you point out. But the real aim of my post was to put Glaser's position now in context.
What I find interesting about tech reporting in general is that most articles fail to show how the current story relates to what has come before. Anyone can go to Google to find quotes from Glaser; you're right. Is it ok with you that I did?
April, 2004
"... dismissing Apple's iTunes service, he points to Real's Rhapsody music service with 1.3m subscribers - which 'in the United States is number one'."
July 2003
"It's hard to design a better scenario for us than what Apple did. Apple serves only 5 percent of the market, and it doesn't offer an all-you-can-eat service, just downloads. One of our challenges is teaching consumers about digital music. It's great having Steve Jobs get the word out, since we have the best service for the 95 percent of people who don't use a Mac."
September 2001
"One of [the] surest ways you could drive Bill nuts was to say that Apple is the company that innovates, and Microsoft is the company that iterates. But I think it's basically true. My goal was to create a company culture that has the same pioneering, innovative spirit that one associates with Apple and that has the persistence, a willingness to go nose to the grindstone, that one associates classically [with] Japanese manufacturing companies, like Matsushita, and with Microsoft."
Now, to put the current Real/Apple relationship in perspective, take a look at this May, 2001 tidbit:
"Today, Glaser's RealNetworks, with 26 million users, beats out both Microsoft's and Apple's offerings. Apple, which has slipped to No. 3 behind Microsoft, continues to lose ground. In January, the number of QuickTime users fell to 7.29 million, down 8.4% from a year earlier, according to a recent survey by market researcher Jupiter Media Matrix. Windows Media Player had 21.5 million users, according to the same study."
Sounds like Glaser is trying really hard to make his position look solid, but he sees the writing on the wall. Consumers are fed up with Real's "hunt for the free download" tactics, and aren't taking to Real 10 the way he'd hoped.
Slashdot Mirror
Point taken. ;-)
I should have said, "the intolerant culture warriors of the right wing". Like most people I have some right wing and some left wing values, which is why I am so appalled by those who would reduce America's major cultural and foreign policy issues down to a set of simplistic interpretations of the Bible, untainted by history, science, or complex economic theory.
That's exactly why America is going down the fucking tubes. People use the intellectually lazy excuse that all candidates are the same. You may laugh at "the proles" but your elitist attude is EXACTLY why the NASCAR and God crowd has taken over the American political system.
Do you seriously think that Kerry and Bush are undifferentiated? Do you think that Kerry would have decided that the best way to take down terrorists was to attack Iraq? Do you think social programs that marry religion with social work would be emphasized so much in a Kerry administration? Do you think tax cuts at all costs would be Kerry's method of pumping economic growth?
Intellectual arrogance may make you feel better about yourself, but it won't do a fucking thing to change the state of American politics.
Sorry, someone had to say it, just to get it out of the way.
Followed to its logical conclusion, if you believe that video games are art, you shouldn't be surprised if there are elements of politics in video games.
Is Oliver Twist a book, or a political statement?
Is Apocalypse Now a movie, or a political statement?
Is Guernica a painting, or a political statement?
Art is intrinsically political, so perhaps the emergence of political statements in video games means that they're becoming a more evolved form of expression.
Is that so bad?
I'd rather see Sun completely re-assess their position and find out how they can leverage their core strengths (technology innovation, experience at the server side of computing, understanding of how to use the network as a computing machine, etc.) and implement a new strategy based on those strengths.
IBM re-invented itself. Apple re-invented itself. Sun is capable of doing the same.
Uh, wait. I mean, opinions are like assholes. Heh, sorry. Anyway, it's easy to say something like, "Just give up and close the business" when you're a pundit. You have the plum position of being able to give away advice without having to act on it, and you never bear responsibility for those opinions. They're easy-come, easy-go notions that are basically used to keep readers coming to your publication.
Ok, you're a clever guy. We get the message.
But is your ego helping those of us who would like the RIAA to see the light and start being more open in their approach to digital music?
No argument there. But think about it from MS management's point of view. It's in Microsoft's best interests to make the company look like a company focused on creating great software, rather than a company oriented around annihilating the competition.
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive goals for a software company, but now that Microsoft has succeeded in establishing a tremendously powerful monopoly, they are attempting to show a more human face.
Obviously there are a lot of smart, talented, well-intentioned people working at Microsoft. But a few blogs from Microsofties aren't going to convince me that the company is changing its stripes.
As for the Slashdot hivemind telling me what to think, I've had almost 20 years of working with their products and watching them in the marketplace to guide my opinion of Microsoft.
Excellent question. Maybe I've got my tinfoil hat on too tight, but I wouldn't put it past Microsoft's management to have a plan akin to this: "Hey, go out and make Microsoft look good. Speak as individuals. Tell the world that we're really NOT the Evil Empire."
Microsoft has tried to manipulate public opinion of them before. Maybe they're just getting more subtle. When the big money doesn't work, go soft-touch.
No.
One of the guys in our group actually had this really great house, and we had the converted basement to ourselves. His dad would bring down sandwiches from time to time, and we'd game into the wee hours on Friday and Saturday nights. It was great.
Oddly, back in the day we were more into Runequest, Aftermath!, and other games. But now that the d20 system has established itself as the One System, we've all basically decided to stick to the d20 rules. When you're a kid you have all the time in the world to monkey around with rules and prepare for games, but now that our group is officially old, we prefer to spend most of our gaming time actually gaming.
Some 30-somethings play pool or poker to socialize. We play D&D.
No, they're building a product that they hope will dislodge MSN Hotmail from its dominant position. Hotmail gets at least 145 million visitors per month, and Microsoft poured money into Hotmail for eight years before it became profitable.
Microsoft can afford to pour money down a hole until something becomes profitable. Google can't. So Google has to get it right the first time and make Gmail a much better product right out of the gate in order to combat Microsoft's built-in advantages as the owner of the OS and the browser that most people use.
What gave you that idea? The picture of the kid next to it, the 4" Star Wars dolls shown inside the Star Destroyer, or the text indicating that it was made for play?
Bullets.
For example, in urban combat, you are constantly looking up, and pointing your weapon up. As you crane your neck backward and move your non-firing hand above your head, with a traditional kevlar vest you reach a flexibility limitation. If you then have to contort your body laterally for some reason (and they always arise) your trunk is limited in flexiblity as well.
A vest that could incorporate greater flexiblity and some sort of heat-dissipation mechanism would be a real boon to soldiers who need body armor protection.
I wasn't aware that the major labels were releasing most of their new albums with copy protection built in. I've been buying almost all of my music online for a while now, and most of the CDs I buy in stores are from smaller labels, so I'm out of the loop on that. It may be that the labels are contributing directly to the use of P2P networks by trying this rather stupid approach.
My basic stance is that while DRM is never going to work as a long-term solution, there are two basic paths we can take to get the music industry and the government to smarten up:
1) Subvert the law
2) Work within the law
I don't agree with the DMCA, but I also think that by directly attacking the music industry, it's going to take a lot longer for them to come around. The music industry is stale, moribund, profit-driven, and powerful. But to treat it as an evil entity is counterproductive.
My points about the iTMS pricing were meant to inject some economic reality into the discussion. Ultimately the music is not produced and distributed for free. It takes money, particularly if you're talking about music created by a star act like Sting, U2, Garth Brooks, etc. The marketing costs alone are outrageous. It would be nice if we lived in a world where artists could distribute their music online using whatever form of Creative Commons license they liked, but it seems to me that most artists are still captive to the notion that they can become Big Rock Stars. So they sign bad contracts with the labels.
The labels don't steal the music from the musicians. The musicians enter into bad contracts, and the labels make money accordingly. If artists got smart, they'd do what David Lindley does. The guy plays a lot of live shows and controls distribution of his music.
But given that the music most of us want to listen to is controlled by big labels (because the artists haven't gotten smart enough to bypass the labels entirely), I submit that if Apple or someone else is paying the costs of setting up an online distribution mechanism for the music I want, Apple and the labels have the right to determine the rules under which the music is distributed given the state of our current copyright law which is quite obviously flawed.
I think we're actually closer on this than it might have seemed at first blush. I think the RIAA is an anachronism, but I think the real unharnessed power lies with the artists themselves. If they started blowing off labels altogether, or started getting used to the notion that they would be better off controlling their own destinies, the RIAA would be rapidy consigned to the scrapheap of history.
The people who seem to be doing the best work in pressuring for copyright reform are not (in my opinion) the people who are hacking DRM, setting up P2P networks, or otherwise attacking from a questionable legal basis.
Rather, the folks who have taken the GPL as inspiration and have conceived more equitable variations on copyright are the people who have the most hope of ending the current RIAA stranglehold on music. If musicians would take a look at what Lawrence Lessig is doing with his latest book (distributing it as a download under a Creative Commons license while simultaneously offering it for sale in printed form), they might start to understand that they have the power to provide a better experience for listeners while retaining vastly more control over their own product.
Will musicians wake up to this? Maybe, but the evidence so far is that only a handfull of musicians really grok what's going on.
Apple's Music Store is a means of showing the labels that they can sell music online in direct competition with P2P networks. My feeling is that as online music sales increase, the online sales outlets that put fewer controls on downloads are the ones that will prosper. In business, money talks and rhetoric wa
Sounds like your dad is a good candidate for the 40Gb iPod, then.
But it also seems that there a lot of folks out there who simply don't have 100s of CDs. There are people who enjoy listening to the radio but don't own many CDs. These are the folks who bought 45s back in the day, but don't bother with LPs because they only want to listen to the "hit songs".
My point is that if there are a range of options available. The standard iPods are still selling very well. People like me love 'em. But just because another segment of the consumer market is pouncing on the iPod minis for their own reasons doesn't necessarily mean that there's been an outbreak of mass stupidity.
With an iPod your primary storage mechanism for the music is really the hard drive of your computer (the Digital Hub concept). What's wrong with ripping CDs and buying new music online, and storing it in your computer, uploading only songs you're really interested in listening to onto your iPod? Plus, I agree with the notion that most average consumers just don't have all that many songs.
People are voting with their pocketbooks. They know what they want, and the iPod mini seems to be fitting the bill quite well for a lot of people.
Technology wins our wars, so it must be flawless.
We have a permanent hard-on for technology. Just look at Slashdot, for crying out loud. We're a country that worships technology for its own sake.
If it's newer, sleeker, faster, shinier, and eliminates interaction with people, we're all for it. We want a permanent state of newness. We don't care about history, or precident, or any of that bullshit.
Ready, fire, aim! It's the American Way.
Umm... ok. That's exactly the iron-clad legal guarantee I was looking for!
Cmd Taco and all the rest of you verminous militaristic scumbags need to be shut down NOW! I'm not going to visit your site any more, nor am I going to use the Web at all. In fact, I'm not going to use the Internet.
Come to think of it, I'm not going to use any radios, fly in jet aircraft, take malaria shots, ... the list goes on. Screw it. I'm just going to opt out altogether and live in a hole in the ground somewhere in the Ozark Mountains where the evil U.S. military won't have any effect on my life.
That'll show 'em!
You realize that you're insinuating in Slashdot of all places that story *may* be more important than special effects.
Next you'll tell us that Battlefield Earth sucked.
Cable TV
Cell phones
Personal computers
All items that a certain percentage of the population sniffed at as unnecessary when they first hit the market. In fact there are probably more than a few Slashdot readers who don't have all four of the items listed above.
But the point is that all four are now ubiquitous. They're so inexpensive and widely distributed that pretty much anyone who wants to purchase can do so.
There are enough people demanding broadband in the U.S. that eventually it will become truly ubiquitous. There may be holdouts who use dial-up for many years to come, but the economic necessity of broadband access will ensure that it comes about either through private enterprise, government intervention, or a combination of the two.
What I find interesting about tech reporting in general is that most articles fail to show how the current story relates to what has come before. Anyone can go to Google to find quotes from Glaser; you're right. Is it ok with you that I did?
"... dismissing Apple's iTunes service, he points to Real's Rhapsody music service with 1.3m subscribers - which 'in the United States is number one'."
July 2003
"It's hard to design a better scenario for us than what Apple did. Apple serves only 5 percent of the market, and it doesn't offer an all-you-can-eat service, just downloads. One of our challenges is teaching consumers about digital music. It's great having Steve Jobs get the word out, since we have the best service for the 95 percent of people who don't use a Mac."
September 2001
"One of [the] surest ways you could drive Bill nuts was to say that Apple is the company that innovates, and Microsoft is the company that iterates. But I think it's basically true. My goal was to create a company culture that has the same pioneering, innovative spirit that one associates with Apple and that has the persistence, a willingness to go nose to the grindstone, that one associates classically [with] Japanese manufacturing companies, like Matsushita, and with Microsoft."
Now, to put the current Real/Apple relationship in perspective, take a look at this May, 2001 tidbit:
"Today, Glaser's RealNetworks, with 26 million users, beats out both Microsoft's and Apple's offerings. Apple, which has slipped to No. 3 behind Microsoft, continues to lose ground. In January, the number of QuickTime users fell to 7.29 million, down 8.4% from a year earlier, according to a recent survey by market researcher Jupiter Media Matrix. Windows Media Player had 21.5 million users, according to the same study."
Sounds like Glaser is trying really hard to make his position look solid, but he sees the writing on the wall. Consumers are fed up with Real's "hunt for the free download" tactics, and aren't taking to Real 10 the way he'd hoped.