Onboard memory dedicated to the array. Battery backed write cache. The ability to bias the controller toward reading or writing depending on what your application functions best with. Have you ever used hardware RAID in a real production environment? Next thing you're going to spout off is, "Why would you want a dedicated controller for your tape drive?"
I'm in the, "don't give a fuck" position. There are other things to worry about in life. The position I'm taking is that it really isn't that big of a deal. People are entitled to make money however they want to go about it. As a consumer, I can choose to support them or not support them. In my view of the world, spending a $1 for a song I like is not an onerous burden or strain on my finances.
I think the music industry has done a good job. I've been listening to a lot of Beethoven recently. When Beethoven wrote his music, it required at least a couple of people with instruments to perform it. Only the very rich, or those who work for the very rich, could ever hope to hear one of Beethoven's pieces. Eventually records of Beethoven's recordings were pressed, and anyone with a record player could hear Beethoven. Just today, I was able to sit down on the train and listen to the Berlin Philharmonker play Beethoven for me. I don't mind paying $1 a song to keep Beethoven alive. I don't mind paying $1 to say thanks to the Berlin Philharmonker for getting together to play Beethoven. I don't mind paying $1 a song to encourage the distribution of Beethoven's music, even if the guy has been dead for a couple hundred years at this point.
On the other hand, I won't pay a penny to listen to Britney Spears. I'm not going to pirate Britney Spears either.
Having said what I just said, it seems like my position is this; I will pay to support those who bring me things that I value. I trust the market to set a fair price, and for me, $1 is a fair price. That works out to $5 for a complete symphony, and $45 for all 9 of Beethoven's symphonies that I can listen to over and over and over and over again.
Consider this. If people aren't willing to pay to support people who produce things that they enjoy, sooner or later those people will stop producing them. The question is whether or not people can be honest with themselves. If we like something enough to have it, we should be willing to pay for it. If not, we're pieces of shit. It's that simple. We are basically giving a big "fuck you" to everyone who was involved in providing us with what we like. Time is a precious and valuable thing. When people spend time doing something that enhances our lives, we should compensate them for it. We have absolutely no right to tell other people that we don't think their time is worth anything.
If you don't think someone is producing something worth while, then don't consume what they have a hand in. If you are going to consume it and not pay for it, acknowledge that you're a thief. It's just a label. It's just some moral baggage to hang around your neck. Hell, in modern day America it's even considered acceptable and in some circles, cool to be a low life sack of shit. Just look at how many people are making money on gangster rap. Consider how many celebrities are getting attention for acting irresponsibily. Look at how much money drug dealers make. Look at how financial institutions are being rewarded with tax payer money after seriously screwing the pooch. If you're a thieving asshole who steals from others you have a lot of company.
The idea that not buying music from big record labels is going to change the behavior of the executives at those labels is a pipe dream. Shit rolls down hill. They will just sign fewer artists, or compensate the artists that they sign with less. Stealing from people does not change things. If you have a serious personal problem with the labels, do not support them at all. If you steal what they produce, it tells them that there is still a market for it. If you have a problem with the way labels treat artists, work on developing alternate methods for artists to make money that circumvent the labels. Any parent with an ounce of moral integrity has at some point told their child something to the effect of, "Two wrongs don't make a right."
You you even see the irony in the situation? The record labels "steal" from the arists, so you're going to steal from them? And you're going to tell them that stealing is bad?
How long have the record companies had a strangle hold on music distribution? Maybe fifty years? It seems to me like their business model is crumbling. Look at how much support the Pirate Bay guys have. It seems to me like society does not have much love for major record labels.
The point I was getting at is that some artists don't really want to be a jack of all trades kind of individual. If you take a group like the Glitch Mob, those guys probably have the technical savvy to take care of their own production and distribution. What about the guy who just plays his guitar and wants to sell some albums? He might not necessarily have all of the equipment to lay down the track and then distribute it.
The analogy that comes to mind is that of the photographer. Someone might enjoy taking pictures and might be really good at taking pictures. However, they might know fuck all about Photoshop and picture editing. A lot of musicians that I know are rather introverted, and they might make great music, but they are hestitant to even go up on stage and perform it. Those types of people aren't going to be comfortable marketing themselves. There will always be "middle men" to fill in the gap. Middle men are a fact of life in the 21st century. Our society guides us toward specialization and the social order is setup to encourage collaboration. Now granted the middle men shouldn't screw over the people they are representing. Luckily, society deals with those people and they don't last very long.
I've been using IE8 for a couple of months and have been staying on top of the beta releases. The browser is pretty much worthless unless I put it into "compatibility mode". It doesn't work with my banking sites. It doesn't work right with Gmail, even in compatibility mode. It doesn't work on Slashdot. It barely works anywhere. So either a good portion of the internet isn't coded to standard, or the IE8 interpretation of the standard is borked.
..to develop an app for the IRS that would allow their agents to take work home on their mobile phones. I guess they're just going to have to do things the old fashioned way and lose laptops with the data on it.
Let's be honest here. This has nothing to do with changing how artists earn a living. This has to do with how distributors - middlemen - earn a living. And if you ask me, they can perform some sort of labor, or they can rot.
Because the artists who actually perform the music want to deal with setting up hosting deals with ISPs, and securing advertising, and booking venues, and and and and doing all of the other crap, right?
Fraud is so prevelent the banks have written it off as a cost of doing business. I had my account compromised a couple of months ago. I called the bank on the same day that I noticed the fraud and by the end of the day they had credited my account for the fraud, opened an investigation, and setup a new account for me. I didn't even need to redo any of my direct deposits, or automatic billing because it all transfered over to the new account. Wells Fargo calls it a "lost stolen transfer". I'm sure that other banks have similar catchy phrases for their own process.
In my case, I made the mistake of buying WoW gold from China. It always comes down to user education. If a person knows how to use a computer, they can make educated decisions and keep themselves safe. I live in Long Beach, CA and my city has a couple of classes a month about how to avoid online fraud. They are directed toward seniors and anyone else who is interested. I haven't been to one, but they probably just cover the basics. "Your financial institution will never contact you asking for your personal information." "Unless you initiate the transaction, it's probably suspect." "This is how you type https://.../ into the web browser."
Browsers already do that. The first time you use IE or Firefox and submit form data over HTTP it will tell you something to the effect of, "You are about to submit unencrypted data over the Internet where it might be intercepted. Do you want to do this?" Then right under that, there is a check box to disable the feature.
I use Yelp regularly and have found some good restaurants through Yelp that I would have never visited on my own. It seems like they can't simply leave good enough alone.
I think it's just an industry wide thing. All of the OEMs have gone to those easily stripped phillips screws as far as I can tell. I think they do it so that they can ding you for a parts charge. Every OEM I've dealt with sells a "screw kit" or something similar that includes every single screw you will need for the laptop. At this point I just buy the stupid kit and write it off as a cost of doing business.
Completely off topic, but the celebrity wagon has gone to an entirely new level. I'm attaching a link below. I became aware of the situation a couple of weeks ago when my girlfriend was watching MTV. In short, a rapper got caught in a FEDERAL sting operation trying to buy FULLY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS and SILENCERS. Any normal person would be in jail for a LONG TIME after pulling something like that. This rapper is getting out with 1000 hours of community service. It's bullshit.
Hackers exploit already patched code! Security vendors come up with detection routine to protect from exploits targetting at already patched code. Sysadmins everywhere say to themselves, "I'm sure glad I applied that patch last week." Life goes on.
I often seen antecdotal numbers in the "millions" when people talk about zombie infected boxen. Yet the article quotes Spamhaus.org claiming "225,454" machines on all networks are sending spam. Even if one were to assume that only a quarter of all zombie machines are sending spam at any one given time, that's still only a million boxes that are compromised and sending spam.
What's the deal? Are there really millions and millions of compromised Windows boxes out there in zombie networks? Or are the numbers over blown when matched up against activity logs that monitor traffic from compromised boxes?
It costs significantly less to download music than it does to purchase it. I have never been a big consumer of music, but I remember spending $15 for a CD with between 8 and 12 tracks on it. That works out to more than $1 per track. If I only really like one track on the CD, then I end up paying significantly more than $1 for the track that I wanted. One of the biggest complaints that music fans used to make is that they had to buy an entire CD just to get a couple of tracks that they like. Now that they can simply buy a single track, the gripe seems to be that the single track costs to much.
At this point I'm convinced that America is just full of whining assholes who will bitch no matter what. The mind has the ability to justify any behavior, and that is what we are seeing here. People will justify theft in whatever way they need to, in order to clear their conscience of it.
You argue that music is recorded once and stored on a server. Have you ever been to a recording studio? They have to pay rent. They have to pay to have the building especially constructed, soundproofed, etc. They have to pay for the equipment, and professional recording equipment isn't cheap. They have to pay electricity to power their gear. They need disk space for the song. An MP3 is a COMPRESSED file. A master is hundreds, if not thousands of times larger than the finished product. The data center that the music sits on has operating costs, electricity, employee wages, etc. You talk about the costs involved with candy and soda, then make the assumption that there aren't similar production costs associated with music?
The production costs aren't even the point though. The point is that we, as Americans, live in a society of consumers. We pay to consume things. We pay a lot more to consume things with less reusability than a music download. That is the point. You can argue soda, or candy or whatever all day long, but it doesn't change the point that in this day and age, to be able to spend $1 for something that you will use more than once in a rarity. What else can you get for $1 that will give you as much enjoyment as a song that you like?
Those "one hit wonders" were made by the studios. How do you think their tracks made it onto the air in the first place? That's right... the studios paid for the air time. Maybe their song was in a major movie. How did that major movie get made and distributed? Oh ya, that's right... the studios paid to make that happen. How did their song make it onto a movie soundtrack? Hmmmm, maybe... the studios put out the sound track?
I have a challenge for you, AC. Show me some details about a one hit wonder who was self made and got ripped off by the studios. Show me the one hit wonder who got all of their exposure through word of mouth, without any sort of AR department or other PR support. You said that there are plenty. Show me ONE.
The cost structure has nothing to do with whether or not $1 is a "fair" price for a song. The point that I made and the point that is still valid is that people pay more every day for things that the consume. They pay more to consume things that they can't even consume more than once.
The whole idea of music and movies is a simple one. If the cost to the consumer are so out of whack with the production costs then the consumers should go ahead and jump right on in and get rich. After all, that's what "the labels" and "the studios" are doing, right? They're in there, making money hand over fist and ripping off the rest of society.
Go ahead and find a local band. Find a local band who is actually good enough that you want to listen to their music. Get that local band together, coordinate their schedules, get them into a studio. Get the studio people to master the tracks. Pay the electric bills at the studio to power the equipment. Put the ISP into the equation to host the file. Then go ahead and bring everyone involved, from the band, to the person who sold them an instrument, to the studio tech who captured the sound, to the ISP who hosts the music... put all of them together, and tell them to fight over $1. As a matter of fact, spit on those people and tell them that they're greedy, and that they're stupid for expecting a dollar for their collective effort. Make them fight over 11 cents, or whatever out of your ass figure you feel is fair. Because after all, once they've all done their part, they aren't entitled to any profit from it.
It's really simple. If you can't afford to pay $1 for a track, you're a poor, broke, worthless sponge who sucks off of society. If you can't afford to pay $20 for a DVD, then go rent it for $5. If you can't afford to rent it for $5, then you should probably be working on developing some job skills, because I can give $5 to every person I talk to on a normal day and still not spend as much as I earn in that day. The argument that copyright law is messed up and that undeserving people are making too much profit is a big, fat, load of fucking shit.
There are alternative distribution channels out there for musicians and artists to utilize. They are utilizing them, and they're finding that for the most part, they aren't making much more than they were making with the major labels. We lived in a fucked up society that has become so focused on the short term that they can't see the bigger picture. We live in a society where people believe what they see on television. They turn on MTV and see some douche bag with huge diamond earrings driving an expensive car and they don't think, "Gee, those diamonds were rented for the video shoot, and that car isn't even paid for, the guy is leasing it."
For a second consider the number of people who have to put effort into an open source project. How many people put effort into Zimbra before Yahoo bought them for $350 million dollars? Maybe 100 people? So 100 people each got $3.5 million dollars for writing some code? How stupid is that? Yahoo should have just pirated the source. It's not like those Zimbra guys are entitled to what they developed. After all, they just used compilers that anyone can download for free. Sure, they spent some time on it... but anyone can spend time writing code... just like any monkey can play an instrument and sing. Just like any monkey can orchestrate the three ring circus that is getting a movie produced. I mean it's simple shit, why do people actually expect to get paid for what they do? What... those Zimbra guys got STOCK OPTIONS!? They're going to get paid, based on how well their company does. How fucking stupid is that? That sounds almost as out of whack as getting royalties on a song, or a movie. What fucked up, lamed brain distribution model is that?! Stock options... a return on an investment. Hahahahaha.... what kind of idiot came up with that ludicrous scheme? That's one pyramid that needs to be torn down.
What fantasy world are you living in? How many artists only made one recording and retired? Show me one. I challenge you to back up the absurd nonsense that you posted.
2: 1$ for a tune and 2$ for a single episode of a TV show is a rip-off
I realize I'm in the wrong crowd to be making comments like I'm about to make, but come on now, seriously?! $1 for a song that you can listen to over and over again is too much? Last I checked, a king sized candy bar costs more than that, and you can only eat the thing once. A can of soda costs almost that much, and you can't drink it more than once. A lot of things that people consume regularly, things that they consume ONCE, cost more than a song that can be replayed for years.
I've run into some problems with Wine in client-server application architectures. If the data and application are on the same box it runs pretty well. As soon as it has to emulate the network stack it doesn't work so well.
There are a lot of "niche" products that run on Windows without an open source alternative. Take a look at "The Raiser's Edge" It is the number one fundraising software in the world and is used by non-profits of all shapes and sizes, from the Red Cross on down. There isn't a FOSS equivalent. For the little niche world I work in, take a look at The Museum System. It is the number one collections management database used by museums all over the world, from the Tate, to the Guggenheim, Smithsonian, etc. Again, there isn't an open source equivalent. Those are just two examples from my current job. When I was consulting, I ran into all sorts of little programs without an Open Source equivalent. A client of mine was in the waste management business, there were three different software packages target to that industry and all of them ran on Windows. Another client was a city government and their licensing / permit database was Windows based.
All of the above mentioned softwares could be recreated in open source, but doing so is an up hill battle. The companies that use them don't have the revenue streams to do the development in house. Potential developers aren't going to target small niches where they have to reinvent the wheel because the competitors already have a huge head start.
It seems like a lot of the people offering analysis are over thinking things. There are only a couple of things to consider. A system with a few different nodes generates an EM field to monitor a specific sector of space. The system would have a small handful of triggers (object moving faster than xxx fps, sound above xx db, etc). If any of those alert conditions were met, it would trigger the armor. Of course the system would be biased toward false positives, better to err on the side of caution.
As for the actual movements for the wearer of the armor, that seems simple enough. The armor just needs to trigger a couple of reflex points that causes the target to drop. Perhaps something to spin the hip and shoulder enough, combined with something to take their legs out from underneath them. It just needs to generate enough of a shock to spasm the muscles for a split second.
The patent says that the intended wearers of the armor are VIPs, not front line combat troops. A VIP just needs to get down, not return fire or remain combat effective.
Let alone all the issues that come of a locked-down information market, preventing the healthy functioning of anything resembling a real democratic republic
What does a law imposing fines for downloading the latest Hollywood blockbuster have to do with a "locked-down information market"? We are talking about the drivel that comes out of Hollywood, pop tunes that crowd the airwaves and the latest romantic comedy, or action film. Those aren't exactly the kinds of works that are so necessary to being a functioning human being that our lives will be degraded if we have to pay for them. Take a second and look at the kind of crap that is "locked up" by those evil oligarchies.
These next few sentences aren't an attack against you, the original poster. It amazes me how fucked up in the head people are these days. They will whine and complain about having to pay for copies of Britney Spears, or the latest Oscar worthy movie. Nobody makes anybody want these things, but for some reason they believe that they are entitled to have what they want for free, simply because, and this is what it comes down to most of the time, they resent other people making money on them. They are completely disconnected from the reality of production costs, and they think stupid things like, "Tom Cruise doesn't deserve to make millions of dollars for a movie." (which he might not), and they completely ignore the hundreds of other people whose names are on the credits at the end of the movie. Those people definitely aren't making millions.
I think that our society has come to a point where people just don't respect each other anymore. People are willing to judge what they think someone else's time is worth, and more often than not, people will say that other people's time is worth significantly less than their own. People will have an inflated sense of self worth, and as seems to be the case these days, don't give two shits about anybody else outside of their own little social network.
If you steal copyrighted works, at least acknowledge what you are doing. Don't turn it into some philosophical struggle against the oppressive regimes that are stealing your hard earned money from you. Nobody makes you want what you're stealing. You're just a tool who wants it, but doesn't want to pay for it. Be okay with that. Just remember, parasites almost always kill the host.
Slashdot Mirror
Onboard memory dedicated to the array. Battery backed write cache. The ability to bias the controller toward reading or writing depending on what your application functions best with. Have you ever used hardware RAID in a real production environment? Next thing you're going to spout off is, "Why would you want a dedicated controller for your tape drive?"
I'm in the, "don't give a fuck" position. There are other things to worry about in life. The position I'm taking is that it really isn't that big of a deal. People are entitled to make money however they want to go about it. As a consumer, I can choose to support them or not support them. In my view of the world, spending a $1 for a song I like is not an onerous burden or strain on my finances.
I think the music industry has done a good job. I've been listening to a lot of Beethoven recently. When Beethoven wrote his music, it required at least a couple of people with instruments to perform it. Only the very rich, or those who work for the very rich, could ever hope to hear one of Beethoven's pieces. Eventually records of Beethoven's recordings were pressed, and anyone with a record player could hear Beethoven. Just today, I was able to sit down on the train and listen to the Berlin Philharmonker play Beethoven for me. I don't mind paying $1 a song to keep Beethoven alive. I don't mind paying $1 to say thanks to the Berlin Philharmonker for getting together to play Beethoven. I don't mind paying $1 a song to encourage the distribution of Beethoven's music, even if the guy has been dead for a couple hundred years at this point.
On the other hand, I won't pay a penny to listen to Britney Spears. I'm not going to pirate Britney Spears either.
Having said what I just said, it seems like my position is this; I will pay to support those who bring me things that I value. I trust the market to set a fair price, and for me, $1 is a fair price. That works out to $5 for a complete symphony, and $45 for all 9 of Beethoven's symphonies that I can listen to over and over and over and over again.
Consider this. If people aren't willing to pay to support people who produce things that they enjoy, sooner or later those people will stop producing them. The question is whether or not people can be honest with themselves. If we like something enough to have it, we should be willing to pay for it. If not, we're pieces of shit. It's that simple. We are basically giving a big "fuck you" to everyone who was involved in providing us with what we like. Time is a precious and valuable thing. When people spend time doing something that enhances our lives, we should compensate them for it. We have absolutely no right to tell other people that we don't think their time is worth anything.
If you don't think someone is producing something worth while, then don't consume what they have a hand in. If you are going to consume it and not pay for it, acknowledge that you're a thief. It's just a label. It's just some moral baggage to hang around your neck. Hell, in modern day America it's even considered acceptable and in some circles, cool to be a low life sack of shit. Just look at how many people are making money on gangster rap. Consider how many celebrities are getting attention for acting irresponsibily. Look at how much money drug dealers make. Look at how financial institutions are being rewarded with tax payer money after seriously screwing the pooch. If you're a thieving asshole who steals from others you have a lot of company.
The idea that not buying music from big record labels is going to change the behavior of the executives at those labels is a pipe dream. Shit rolls down hill. They will just sign fewer artists, or compensate the artists that they sign with less. Stealing from people does not change things. If you have a serious personal problem with the labels, do not support them at all. If you steal what they produce, it tells them that there is still a market for it. If you have a problem with the way labels treat artists, work on developing alternate methods for artists to make money that circumvent the labels. Any parent with an ounce of moral integrity has at some point told their child something to the effect of, "Two wrongs don't make a right."
You you even see the irony in the situation? The record labels "steal" from the arists, so you're going to steal from them? And you're going to tell them that stealing is bad?
How long have the record companies had a strangle hold on music distribution? Maybe fifty years? It seems to me like their business model is crumbling. Look at how much support the Pirate Bay guys have. It seems to me like society does not have much love for major record labels.
The point I was getting at is that some artists don't really want to be a jack of all trades kind of individual. If you take a group like the Glitch Mob, those guys probably have the technical savvy to take care of their own production and distribution. What about the guy who just plays his guitar and wants to sell some albums? He might not necessarily have all of the equipment to lay down the track and then distribute it.
The analogy that comes to mind is that of the photographer. Someone might enjoy taking pictures and might be really good at taking pictures. However, they might know fuck all about Photoshop and picture editing. A lot of musicians that I know are rather introverted, and they might make great music, but they are hestitant to even go up on stage and perform it. Those types of people aren't going to be comfortable marketing themselves. There will always be "middle men" to fill in the gap. Middle men are a fact of life in the 21st century. Our society guides us toward specialization and the social order is setup to encourage collaboration. Now granted the middle men shouldn't screw over the people they are representing. Luckily, society deals with those people and they don't last very long.
I've been using IE8 for a couple of months and have been staying on top of the beta releases. The browser is pretty much worthless unless I put it into "compatibility mode". It doesn't work with my banking sites. It doesn't work right with Gmail, even in compatibility mode. It doesn't work on Slashdot. It barely works anywhere. So either a good portion of the internet isn't coded to standard, or the IE8 interpretation of the standard is borked.
..to develop an app for the IRS that would allow their agents to take work home on their mobile phones. I guess they're just going to have to do things the old fashioned way and lose laptops with the data on it.
Because the artists who actually perform the music want to deal with setting up hosting deals with ISPs, and securing advertising, and booking venues, and and and and doing all of the other crap, right?
Fraud is so prevelent the banks have written it off as a cost of doing business. I had my account compromised a couple of months ago. I called the bank on the same day that I noticed the fraud and by the end of the day they had credited my account for the fraud, opened an investigation, and setup a new account for me. I didn't even need to redo any of my direct deposits, or automatic billing because it all transfered over to the new account. Wells Fargo calls it a "lost stolen transfer". I'm sure that other banks have similar catchy phrases for their own process.
In my case, I made the mistake of buying WoW gold from China. It always comes down to user education. If a person knows how to use a computer, they can make educated decisions and keep themselves safe. I live in Long Beach, CA and my city has a couple of classes a month about how to avoid online fraud. They are directed toward seniors and anyone else who is interested. I haven't been to one, but they probably just cover the basics. "Your financial institution will never contact you asking for your personal information." "Unless you initiate the transaction, it's probably suspect." "This is how you type https://.../ into the web browser."
Browsers already do that. The first time you use IE or Firefox and submit form data over HTTP it will tell you something to the effect of, "You are about to submit unencrypted data over the Internet where it might be intercepted. Do you want to do this?" Then right under that, there is a check box to disable the feature.
I use Yelp regularly and have found some good restaurants through Yelp that I would have never visited on my own. It seems like they can't simply leave good enough alone.
I think it's just an industry wide thing. All of the OEMs have gone to those easily stripped phillips screws as far as I can tell. I think they do it so that they can ding you for a parts charge. Every OEM I've dealt with sells a "screw kit" or something similar that includes every single screw you will need for the laptop. At this point I just buy the stupid kit and write it off as a cost of doing business.
Completely off topic, but the celebrity wagon has gone to an entirely new level. I'm attaching a link below. I became aware of the situation a couple of weeks ago when my girlfriend was watching MTV. In short, a rapper got caught in a FEDERAL sting operation trying to buy FULLY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS and SILENCERS. Any normal person would be in jail for a LONG TIME after pulling something like that. This rapper is getting out with 1000 hours of community service. It's bullshit.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/03/27/ti_0328.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab
Hackers exploit already patched code! Security vendors come up with detection routine to protect from exploits targetting at already patched code. Sysadmins everywhere say to themselves, "I'm sure glad I applied that patch last week." Life goes on.
I often seen antecdotal numbers in the "millions" when people talk about zombie infected boxen. Yet the article quotes Spamhaus.org claiming "225,454" machines on all networks are sending spam. Even if one were to assume that only a quarter of all zombie machines are sending spam at any one given time, that's still only a million boxes that are compromised and sending spam.
What's the deal? Are there really millions and millions of compromised Windows boxes out there in zombie networks? Or are the numbers over blown when matched up against activity logs that monitor traffic from compromised boxes?
It costs significantly less to download music than it does to purchase it. I have never been a big consumer of music, but I remember spending $15 for a CD with between 8 and 12 tracks on it. That works out to more than $1 per track. If I only really like one track on the CD, then I end up paying significantly more than $1 for the track that I wanted. One of the biggest complaints that music fans used to make is that they had to buy an entire CD just to get a couple of tracks that they like. Now that they can simply buy a single track, the gripe seems to be that the single track costs to much.
At this point I'm convinced that America is just full of whining assholes who will bitch no matter what. The mind has the ability to justify any behavior, and that is what we are seeing here. People will justify theft in whatever way they need to, in order to clear their conscience of it.
You argue that music is recorded once and stored on a server. Have you ever been to a recording studio? They have to pay rent. They have to pay to have the building especially constructed, soundproofed, etc. They have to pay for the equipment, and professional recording equipment isn't cheap. They have to pay electricity to power their gear. They need disk space for the song. An MP3 is a COMPRESSED file. A master is hundreds, if not thousands of times larger than the finished product. The data center that the music sits on has operating costs, electricity, employee wages, etc. You talk about the costs involved with candy and soda, then make the assumption that there aren't similar production costs associated with music?
The production costs aren't even the point though. The point is that we, as Americans, live in a society of consumers. We pay to consume things. We pay a lot more to consume things with less reusability than a music download. That is the point. You can argue soda, or candy or whatever all day long, but it doesn't change the point that in this day and age, to be able to spend $1 for something that you will use more than once in a rarity. What else can you get for $1 that will give you as much enjoyment as a song that you like?
There is a difference between playing Starcraft and connecting to an SMB file share.
Those "one hit wonders" were made by the studios. How do you think their tracks made it onto the air in the first place? That's right... the studios paid for the air time. Maybe their song was in a major movie. How did that major movie get made and distributed? Oh ya, that's right... the studios paid to make that happen. How did their song make it onto a movie soundtrack? Hmmmm, maybe... the studios put out the sound track?
I have a challenge for you, AC. Show me some details about a one hit wonder who was self made and got ripped off by the studios. Show me the one hit wonder who got all of their exposure through word of mouth, without any sort of AR department or other PR support. You said that there are plenty. Show me ONE.
The cost structure has nothing to do with whether or not $1 is a "fair" price for a song. The point that I made and the point that is still valid is that people pay more every day for things that the consume. They pay more to consume things that they can't even consume more than once.
The whole idea of music and movies is a simple one. If the cost to the consumer are so out of whack with the production costs then the consumers should go ahead and jump right on in and get rich. After all, that's what "the labels" and "the studios" are doing, right? They're in there, making money hand over fist and ripping off the rest of society.
Go ahead and find a local band. Find a local band who is actually good enough that you want to listen to their music. Get that local band together, coordinate their schedules, get them into a studio. Get the studio people to master the tracks. Pay the electric bills at the studio to power the equipment. Put the ISP into the equation to host the file. Then go ahead and bring everyone involved, from the band, to the person who sold them an instrument, to the studio tech who captured the sound, to the ISP who hosts the music... put all of them together, and tell them to fight over $1. As a matter of fact, spit on those people and tell them that they're greedy, and that they're stupid for expecting a dollar for their collective effort. Make them fight over 11 cents, or whatever out of your ass figure you feel is fair. Because after all, once they've all done their part, they aren't entitled to any profit from it.
It's really simple. If you can't afford to pay $1 for a track, you're a poor, broke, worthless sponge who sucks off of society. If you can't afford to pay $20 for a DVD, then go rent it for $5. If you can't afford to rent it for $5, then you should probably be working on developing some job skills, because I can give $5 to every person I talk to on a normal day and still not spend as much as I earn in that day. The argument that copyright law is messed up and that undeserving people are making too much profit is a big, fat, load of fucking shit.
There are alternative distribution channels out there for musicians and artists to utilize. They are utilizing them, and they're finding that for the most part, they aren't making much more than they were making with the major labels. We lived in a fucked up society that has become so focused on the short term that they can't see the bigger picture. We live in a society where people believe what they see on television. They turn on MTV and see some douche bag with huge diamond earrings driving an expensive car and they don't think, "Gee, those diamonds were rented for the video shoot, and that car isn't even paid for, the guy is leasing it."
For a second consider the number of people who have to put effort into an open source project. How many people put effort into Zimbra before Yahoo bought them for $350 million dollars? Maybe 100 people? So 100 people each got $3.5 million dollars for writing some code? How stupid is that? Yahoo should have just pirated the source. It's not like those Zimbra guys are entitled to what they developed. After all, they just used compilers that anyone can download for free. Sure, they spent some time on it... but anyone can spend time writing code... just like any monkey can play an instrument and sing. Just like any monkey can orchestrate the three ring circus that is getting a movie produced. I mean it's simple shit, why do people actually expect to get paid for what they do? What... those Zimbra guys got STOCK OPTIONS!? They're going to get paid, based on how well their company does. How fucking stupid is that? That sounds almost as out of whack as getting royalties on a song, or a movie. What fucked up, lamed brain distribution model is that?! Stock options... a return on an investment. Hahahahaha.... what kind of idiot came up with that ludicrous scheme? That's one pyramid that needs to be torn down.
What fantasy world are you living in? How many artists only made one recording and retired? Show me one. I challenge you to back up the absurd nonsense that you posted.
I realize I'm in the wrong crowd to be making comments like I'm about to make, but come on now, seriously?! $1 for a song that you can listen to over and over again is too much? Last I checked, a king sized candy bar costs more than that, and you can only eat the thing once. A can of soda costs almost that much, and you can't drink it more than once. A lot of things that people consume regularly, things that they consume ONCE, cost more than a song that can be replayed for years.
I've run into some problems with Wine in client-server application architectures. If the data and application are on the same box it runs pretty well. As soon as it has to emulate the network stack it doesn't work so well.
There are a lot of "niche" products that run on Windows without an open source alternative. Take a look at "The Raiser's Edge" It is the number one fundraising software in the world and is used by non-profits of all shapes and sizes, from the Red Cross on down. There isn't a FOSS equivalent. For the little niche world I work in, take a look at The Museum System. It is the number one collections management database used by museums all over the world, from the Tate, to the Guggenheim, Smithsonian, etc. Again, there isn't an open source equivalent. Those are just two examples from my current job. When I was consulting, I ran into all sorts of little programs without an Open Source equivalent. A client of mine was in the waste management business, there were three different software packages target to that industry and all of them ran on Windows. Another client was a city government and their licensing / permit database was Windows based.
All of the above mentioned softwares could be recreated in open source, but doing so is an up hill battle. The companies that use them don't have the revenue streams to do the development in house. Potential developers aren't going to target small niches where they have to reinvent the wheel because the competitors already have a huge head start.
It seems like a lot of the people offering analysis are over thinking things. There are only a couple of things to consider. A system with a few different nodes generates an EM field to monitor a specific sector of space. The system would have a small handful of triggers (object moving faster than xxx fps, sound above xx db, etc). If any of those alert conditions were met, it would trigger the armor. Of course the system would be biased toward false positives, better to err on the side of caution.
As for the actual movements for the wearer of the armor, that seems simple enough. The armor just needs to trigger a couple of reflex points that causes the target to drop. Perhaps something to spin the hip and shoulder enough, combined with something to take their legs out from underneath them. It just needs to generate enough of a shock to spasm the muscles for a split second.
The patent says that the intended wearers of the armor are VIPs, not front line combat troops. A VIP just needs to get down, not return fire or remain combat effective.
What does a law imposing fines for downloading the latest Hollywood blockbuster have to do with a "locked-down information market"? We are talking about the drivel that comes out of Hollywood, pop tunes that crowd the airwaves and the latest romantic comedy, or action film. Those aren't exactly the kinds of works that are so necessary to being a functioning human being that our lives will be degraded if we have to pay for them. Take a second and look at the kind of crap that is "locked up" by those evil oligarchies.
These next few sentences aren't an attack against you, the original poster. It amazes me how fucked up in the head people are these days. They will whine and complain about having to pay for copies of Britney Spears, or the latest Oscar worthy movie. Nobody makes anybody want these things, but for some reason they believe that they are entitled to have what they want for free, simply because, and this is what it comes down to most of the time, they resent other people making money on them. They are completely disconnected from the reality of production costs, and they think stupid things like, "Tom Cruise doesn't deserve to make millions of dollars for a movie." (which he might not), and they completely ignore the hundreds of other people whose names are on the credits at the end of the movie. Those people definitely aren't making millions.
I think that our society has come to a point where people just don't respect each other anymore. People are willing to judge what they think someone else's time is worth, and more often than not, people will say that other people's time is worth significantly less than their own. People will have an inflated sense of self worth, and as seems to be the case these days, don't give two shits about anybody else outside of their own little social network.
If you steal copyrighted works, at least acknowledge what you are doing. Don't turn it into some philosophical struggle against the oppressive regimes that are stealing your hard earned money from you. Nobody makes you want what you're stealing. You're just a tool who wants it, but doesn't want to pay for it. Be okay with that. Just remember, parasites almost always kill the host.
That sounds about right. It's amazing how cheap Microsoft licenses are for non-profit and education customers.