If you play any of Rachmaninoff's piano pieces purely from what's on the notation, you'll never hear the deep mystery inside some of his chords, melodies, and passages. Specific melodies are hidden inside his complex chords which actually have to be stressed by dynamics, tempo, and things simply not written in the notation. The music sounds mediocre without quite a bit of interpretative expression.
When I first heard Richter playing Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, it was as if a completely new piece was being presented to me, with qualities I'd never realized the piece had. I think you may hear a lot more interesting 'structure', hidden melodies, and emotional expressions, if you listen to different virtuoso performers play classical music. There's a rich world of musical expression, by many genius musicians, that would be a shame to just let pass.
That was a very informative post. Your observations seem right on the money. That method of development hadn't really occurred to me - I'll give it a try, hopefully it will eliminate that 'fix-it-for-IE' phase I currently have to go through after making a site:)
To the web developers reading this: Wouldn't it be nice to be able to write totally standards-compliant markup and code and not have to taint it with all the hacks that are practically a necessity these days? It almost seems like an impossible dream (unless your website design is dead simple).
I'm a web developer by profession, and I must say IE6 and 7 are a frustrating pair of browsers to develop for.
I use the Web Developer toolbar extension for Firefox, which conveniently lets me know if my webpages are following standards and if there are any errors on the page. It's a bit depressing when you've developed a perfectly standards-compliant page, and then are forced to break standards, create Javascript warnings etc just so the page renders properly on the IE browsers.
I don't think Microsoft should leave the browser business, as competition is healthy.. but they have polluted the market with these strange browsers, forcing web developers to have to deal with these issues. It will be a triumphant day for us web developers when we can stick to standards and not have to degrade/hack-up our code in order for the majority of the public to be able to view it as it was intended.
John Doe either doesn't know if he likes your music, or doesn't want to pay the price you are charging for the music. Most bands have myspace profiles with music previews, or otherwise websites with samples and previews of the music. On your second point: Isn't it the right of a creator to set the price they want to sell their work at? If someone wants to charge $500 USD for a piece of music.. that's their right to do so, isn't it..? Do consumers suddenly have the right to personally set prices on other peoples' wares? Certain computer software creators charge $1500 for their software while others charge $20 or $0 for equally good software. Isn't it their right to do so? If you don't want to buy it, then go find something you WILL buy, or something being offered for free. Let natural market factors indirectly influence prices. At least, that's how I thought our capitalist society was set up to work.
Therefore you would have received no money from John Doe regardless of the existence of the download. That's debatable.. if there is no other way of getting a hold of the music than paying for it, and the listener really wants to hear it, they'll probably cough up the money and buy the cd / mp3!
The logical approach is to better market your material and to reduce the price until the revenue is maximized.
The illogical approach is to demand more control and power from the government, the enforcement of which is paid for by all non-musicians and non-music-buyers. The issue I worry about: if people become 'spoiled' by free downloads of music and always expect it to be free (as in beer), then music may begin to lose its value in general. If children grow up downloading every bit of music and never having to buy an album, then buying an album simply becomes a nuisance, no matter how cheap the music can be priced or how much the artist deserves compensation. Income for musicians (speaking about recorded music only here) would then be mainly dependent on the generosity of listeners (essentially donations) or their inability to pirate the music. As pleasant sounding as that may be, I believe it should be the right of the content creator to set price on whatever they are selling. Every musician is in a different situation. Some may have spent bucketloads of money on creating their music and hoping for a return on their investment. Some may be rich. Some may have a guitar and a brilliant mind and hope to make a living from their music. Shouldn't capitalism and the market be the element that makes or breaks business?
Should I pay nVidia 10 bucks (to cover the cost of materials) for a GeForce 8800 because i feel $400 is simply unjust... and expect to receive the card?
If Justin Timberlake is selling his album at 18 bucks a copy, noone's forcing you to buy that. There are plenty of other artists with better music, selling it for lower prices or simply giving it away, that you may go to instead.
If we all were created - then we all should be walking around having the same thoughts and opinions as well, in which case there would be only one religion.
In that case, we might be automatic drones instead of having the free will we enjoy. Or looking at it another way, Lucifer/Satan would not be able to exist to tamper with our minds and morals. Since we don't have the ability to determine the nature of supernatural entities in Christianity, the "fall/corruption of humankind" may or may not have been preventable. It's probably something we don't have the capability to understand.
The discovery of the Cosmological Constant created an interesting situation. Theories like multiple universes (multiverse), made to explain the reason for that precise value, are at least as unfounded and hypothetical as the Intelligent Design explanation. I'm no cosmologist, but why do scientists accept theories like this (at least as a possibility) yet rule out Intelligent Design by default?
The problem with your example is that Radiohead is already an insanely famous band, raised to worldwide popularity by... take a guess... Records, music videos, and major music labels. Anything a band like that does will always be noticed and followed by millions of people, by default! Radiohead also received massive free advertising for their release from the media, blogs, and news outlets because they are one of the first large bands doing something like this, and it obviously makes a good news story alongside the RIAA lawsuit stories. If more bands start doing this, I guarantee that eventually they won't benefit from such widespread advertising from the media once this business model becomes old news.
Just the same, most bands aren't Radiohead or NIN with their enormous followings of fans. Smaller indie and electronic music releases usually only see album sales in the hundreds, and are considered a success if they break 1000 sales. I think I may predict with some degree of confidence that if these small releases were now pushed into an online donation business model, they would see very little success from it.
Now, I don't want to sound like a pessimistic luddite. I want to see promising new business models become viable as much as anyone else does - we can't ignore the influence of technology and our increasingly modern society. I just envision a lot of these new models to be much riskier for most artists wanting to make something of a living (or partial income) from their recorded music, or break into the industry. New and struggling musicians already traditionally fall into the category of "starving artist", and they -have- the benefit of copyright protection. From what I've seen on the internet for a long time, many brilliant musicians who even choose to release their music completely FREE over the internet can have a hard time achieving a fan following. Some musicians are simply not good businessmen and would rather focus on their art (even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one such case, as I recall). Having the promotion and sales power of a record label behind them is a mutually beneficial solution.
I really want to see workable new business models happen, but a lot of the ideas that are being suggested, such as socialized music (???) and donation models, truly fail to see the entire issue.
It seems like the majority of people here want to completely obliterate the business of recorded+sold music. I agree that the current major record labels are absurd and out of control, but I also don't think that completely removing all chances of a musician making an income through records is a good idea either... but that is what i see being implied here often on Slashdot.
Sure, most musicians worth any mention DO create music for the love of making music. That's obvious, but I think money and fame is still a large point of motivation for many musicians. I'm a musician myself, and release tracks as free downloads on my website. I definately DO aspire for a chance to make some money creating music, though - and don't tell me that's wrong or that I'm following a "dinosaur model". It's a highly motivating factor for me.
Spending months of free time working on hundreds of song ideas and picking the best I can come up with, in hopes of making a perfect album is a lot of work! A big part of the drive to perfect it is that I might be able to make a few bucks selling such an album, either by distributing music myself over the net, or signing with a small record label. If copyright law was completely changed to fit the views of some people here, then selling music on my website or signing with a small label would be futile, perhaps only resulting in a few 'good samaritan' donations. In that situation, I might as well just keep releasing anything I do for free on my site with no hope of monetary compensation.
But then I might not work so hard on perfecting and polishing an album. I wouldn't send my album to a professional mastering engineer (or spend countless hours mastering the album myself) because I wouldn't feel like I owe anyone the benefit of that extra layer of polish. I might not spend months or years working on songs and remaking them until they fit what I consider a high standard.
If all musicians are to lose their chances of making money via records because John Doe doesn't feel like spending any money on music (yet wants to listen to it all anyway..) that is a sad, selfish tradeoff, in my opinion.
No, it can't really run other malicious code unless there's an exploit in the browser/plugin used.. and that's a different issue altogether.
Popping up a window with OK and Cancel buttons reversed doesn't do anything special. The OK button is equivalent to clicking on a hyperlink. You actually have to go through your browser's Save dialog first before a file will be downloaded/executed on your computer.
Ad spammers have been using these techniques on more obscure websites for years. The only thing special about this case is that they've managed to trick an ad company into accepting a flash file that redirects a user to one of these annoying ad-traps. This was probably done by having the flash communicate with the spammers' server and check a variable to see if it should display the 'legit' advertisement or redirect to the annoying page. That way, they could get the flash file past the advertising company's filter appearing legit, and then enable the alternate actionscript code once the flash file was in the system and being displayed on major sites.
Live performing is indeed work, but what makes you think that composing and producing music is not? Oftentimes a live performance just isn't as enjoyable (or even technically possible) as listening to a well produced track on a high end sound system. It depends on the venue, the genre of music, the popularity of the band, etc. A lot of music simply can't be performed live - for example Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells would be a difficult and expensive feat to pull off live, and if done probably would not match the studio version.
A lot of music is meant for listening instead of dancing, and trust me, there are very few opportunities for artists to play live 'intelligent' listening music. You get more of a crowd playing tired covers of popular standards. Unless the artist has the popularity of The Rolling Stones, don't tell me that they're going to make a decent living playing live music. More like a bare minimum income and having to restrain their creativity to play crowd-pleasers / what the venue-owner wants them to play.
Unfortunately, in the case of music, your philosophy put into action would force musicians to contract custom music for private buyers. Having done work like this in the past, I can say that unless you are composing a film soundtrack or something of that nature, you rarely get much creative freedom in contract work.
If you are fine with the majority of musicians ending up working other jobs and creating their music as a weekend hobby, be prepared to see a decrease in artists' motivation to create quality albums. Sure there will always be people making new music, but the ones who want to dedicate their life doing it will have to work harder doing pointless things that distract from making said music.
I don't quite understand what you are trying to say...
'our art is their product' - are you saying that you are a musician signed under a major label? If you wanted to keep the rights to your music, then signing with a label is your own doing. Or are you implying that music made by other musicians is 'your' art? Please explain.
Flash (or java/etc) in this situation is only an interface, just like HTML is usually used as the interface to a more complex backend system.
A bug in the interface shouldn't be -any- cause for security concern, if the web application is programmed by anyone with the slightest clue about how web apps work. The flash or embedded drawing tool would simply convert the data it gathered about the drawn picture into some kind of encoded string or variables and then pass that to the server. It is a major mistake to include any critical security checks other than simple guidelines (ie, max length of text inputs in HTML forms, etc) in the client side... a mistake which will usually result in an easy hack for anyone who bothers to take a peek.
A bit OT, but would you be able to point me towards a better option than using a closed loop as the main game loop? I've been coding small games using that common method, and am now wondering what the 'better' way is:)
Heh, the second I saw this article, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. immediately came to mind.
Mutated wild boars? Packs of wolves eating people's dogs? Crazy Russian ladies..?
My problem with what you're suggesting is that it still creates many limitations for content creators. There is a lot of software that exists simply because it is an independent product that people will pay for.
If, say, creating video games was profitable only in 'sponsorship' situations.. then many types of games we see today would never be made! There would be less possibility for originality in games -- do we want all large-scale video games to be developed as an advertisment for other companies looking for a new marketing strategy? Now, one might jump at this and claim "Well, all those independent DOS games created back in 1990 were way more original than today's games!". Indeed, I believe those games were fantastic, but we don't want to be stuck playing games of that technical quality forever, do we? There are some products which simply demand large (..or small) teams of developers, getting paid, working on a creative product with the aim of it being sold to people upon completion. Your example of collecting pledges from interested users would not be a very reliable source of income. I'm sure many people would be opportunistic and hope to wait until they could download the product for free. Income would be much more limited than what the traditional selling model would generate, where word spreads of the quality of the product and people buy it over time.
It seems to me that opponents of copyright think of digital information as not having any monetary worth. I believe this to be a stupid viewpoint! Why does a fancy hardwood table cost a lot of money? Surely it's only a bunch of wood? It should cost the same as buying planks of hardwood from a hardware store, shouldn't it? It costs so much because it took thought, skill, effort, and work to shape that wood into the fancy dining table it is. Just as it took work and effort to create that information that's stored on a harddrive or burned onto a DVD. Even though it's "only" electrons, pits on the reflective surface of the DVD, magnetic information on platters, whatever.. it's somebody's effort, and that somebody should have the right to decide if they want to give their work out for free or sell it as they see fit.
It's great that you GPL content and release it to the public for free.
Now tell me, how does this refute gbulmash's point? What does this have to do with "love of money"? Some of us want to be able to make money from our creative and/or programming work! Sure, many programmers and artists work on projects in their spare time after work (or if they are teenagers living at home with their parents.. or filthy rich).. that's great! So do I, in my free time. But why limit people who want to work full-time on their programs, artwork, or music and sell them to make a living?
For example, I have been working on a new application for the last 6 months, 8-10 hours a day.. and my friend/coworker has been slaving away doing design work for the application for the same amount of time. We decided to invest this time and effort into making the application because we believe that it has a good chance of supporting us financially for a few years when released! If there are paying customers, we will make it our priority to release updates and provide support for the app. Now, if this app were to be instantly (and legally!) pirated and spread around the internet, how would we stand a chance of making any money from our time and work? Even large companies would not pay for our application if it was legal to pirate it.
Now, what if copyright law was abolished? Companies might have to resort to extreme licensing and subscription measures.. maybe keeping parts of applications dynamically loading from webservers, and other such tactics to fight all the free copying that will be happening. This may have the effect of creating a worse experience for anyone wanting to pay for their applications. Protection measures that slow down or hinder the quality of programs could become commonplace (think StarForce x10.. etc). What would happen to the movie industry, authors, and musicians who want to make some money off album sales? Who knows.
Copyright law is not unjust. If you want to avoid copyright law, then create your own content and release it under the license of your choice!
Very true.. The only magazines I buy these days are from the UK. Even though they are 2-3x the price, they are actually worth reading. I recently bought a US magazine for a change and regretted spending my money on it. Dumbed down, boring content. The whole magazine seemed like an advertisement flyer.
All 3 problems you mention have already been taken care of in the latest Flash Player 9 (& AS3) and the upcoming Flash development software (cs3 is it?).
A possible problem with your scenario is that in the future it's very possible that people will own devices that are just as (or even more) convenient than a paper book. Sony's Reader is an early example. One day, it might be common to own a portable book-sized computer with an insanely high resolution screen. Then there would be barely any reason to buy paper copies of books, and.. [writers starve because of widespread eBook torrents]
You can already find most books illegally online as eBooks. Currently, the only thing preventing this from being a problem to writers and publishers is that LCD's on laptops and PDA's are cumbersome and hard-on-the-eyes.
I'm a musician and audio engineer, and the best sound I've heard out of any speakers is out of a decent pair of studio monitors with a proper subwoofer. A pair of Mackie HR824's or Yorkville YSM1P's can deliver extremely detailed sound, with much better transient detail than a typical set of home-theater or even 'audiophile' speakers.
It should be mentioned that many people prefer the less-even frequency response of non-studio speakers (easier on the ears for extended listening, or exaggerated bass/treble), but this can be easily modeled with a decent EQ (assuming you have the flat response of studio monitors to start with).
"Using the muscles in ones head, a person was to control the paddle at the bottom of the screen. Needless to say, people began to suffer from headaches as soon as the pace of the game started to quicken."
That's quite a bit different than this product. Something a bit closer (and cooler) are the Wild Divine games.
SpaceTime for PocketPC is a fantastic program. It's leagues more powerful than a TI graphing calculator, easier to use, higher resolution, better interface (drag graphs around with the touchscreen, etc). Having a PocketPC with you also helps when you want to listen to music while doing math, jot down notes or use a spreadsheet, write PocketC programs to help even further with math...
..play games..;-)
My 'old' HP iPaq 2200 PocketPC with a foldup keyboard has served me as a mini laptop for quite some time, and I couldn't imagine being without it, to be honest! When I'm done with it I just slip it into my pocket and it's out of the way, unlike a laptop.
Anyways - definately check out SpaceTime if you're in the market for a PocketPC! Highly recommended!
Slashdot Mirror
If you play any of Rachmaninoff's piano pieces purely from what's on the notation, you'll never hear the deep mystery inside some of his chords, melodies, and passages. Specific melodies are hidden inside his complex chords which actually have to be stressed by dynamics, tempo, and things simply not written in the notation. The music sounds mediocre without quite a bit of interpretative expression.
When I first heard Richter playing Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, it was as if a completely new piece was being presented to me, with qualities I'd never realized the piece had. I think you may hear a lot more interesting 'structure', hidden melodies, and emotional expressions, if you listen to different virtuoso performers play classical music. There's a rich world of musical expression, by many genius musicians, that would be a shame to just let pass.
That was a very informative post. Your observations seem right on the money. That method of development hadn't really occurred to me - I'll give it a try, hopefully it will eliminate that 'fix-it-for-IE' phase I currently have to go through after making a site :)
To the web developers reading this: Wouldn't it be nice to be able to write totally standards-compliant markup and code and not have to taint it with all the hacks that are practically a necessity these days? It almost seems like an impossible dream (unless your website design is dead simple).
I'm a web developer by profession, and I must say IE6 and 7 are a frustrating pair of browsers to develop for.
I use the Web Developer toolbar extension for Firefox, which conveniently lets me know if my webpages are following standards and if there are any errors on the page. It's a bit depressing when you've developed a perfectly standards-compliant page, and then are forced to break standards, create Javascript warnings etc just so the page renders properly on the IE browsers.
I don't think Microsoft should leave the browser business, as competition is healthy.. but they have polluted the market with these strange browsers, forcing web developers to have to deal with these issues. It will be a triumphant day for us web developers when we can stick to standards and not have to degrade/hack-up our code in order for the majority of the public to be able to view it as it was intended.
Plenty of music made for money is also very good music.
A lot of music made for free also has low production values and little creativity, just take a look around the internet.
Perhaps you should make an argument first and set an example?
The illogical approach is to demand more control and power from the government, the enforcement of which is paid for by all non-musicians and non-music-buyers. The issue I worry about: if people become 'spoiled' by free downloads of music and always expect it to be free (as in beer), then music may begin to lose its value in general. If children grow up downloading every bit of music and never having to buy an album, then buying an album simply becomes a nuisance, no matter how cheap the music can be priced or how much the artist deserves compensation. Income for musicians (speaking about recorded music only here) would then be mainly dependent on the generosity of listeners (essentially donations) or their inability to pirate the music. As pleasant sounding as that may be, I believe it should be the right of the content creator to set price on whatever they are selling. Every musician is in a different situation. Some may have spent bucketloads of money on creating their music and hoping for a return on their investment. Some may be rich. Some may have a guitar and a brilliant mind and hope to make a living from their music. Shouldn't capitalism and the market be the element that makes or breaks business?
Should I pay nVidia 10 bucks (to cover the cost of materials) for a GeForce 8800 because i feel $400 is simply unjust... and expect to receive the card?
If Justin Timberlake is selling his album at 18 bucks a copy, noone's forcing you to buy that. There are plenty of other artists with better music, selling it for lower prices or simply giving it away, that you may go to instead.
If we all were created - then we all should be walking around having the same thoughts and opinions as well, in which case there would be only one religion.
In that case, we might be automatic drones instead of having the free will we enjoy. Or looking at it another way, Lucifer/Satan would not be able to exist to tamper with our minds and morals. Since we don't have the ability to determine the nature of supernatural entities in Christianity, the "fall/corruption of humankind" may or may not have been preventable. It's probably something we don't have the capability to understand.
The discovery of the Cosmological Constant created an interesting situation. Theories like multiple universes (multiverse), made to explain the reason for that precise value, are at least as unfounded and hypothetical as the Intelligent Design explanation. I'm no cosmologist, but why do scientists accept theories like this (at least as a possibility) yet rule out Intelligent Design by default?
The problem with your example is that Radiohead is already an insanely famous band, raised to worldwide popularity by... take a guess... Records, music videos, and major music labels. Anything a band like that does will always be noticed and followed by millions of people, by default! Radiohead also received massive free advertising for their release from the media, blogs, and news outlets because they are one of the first large bands doing something like this, and it obviously makes a good news story alongside the RIAA lawsuit stories. If more bands start doing this, I guarantee that eventually they won't benefit from such widespread advertising from the media once this business model becomes old news.
Just the same, most bands aren't Radiohead or NIN with their enormous followings of fans. Smaller indie and electronic music releases usually only see album sales in the hundreds, and are considered a success if they break 1000 sales. I think I may predict with some degree of confidence that if these small releases were now pushed into an online donation business model, they would see very little success from it.
Now, I don't want to sound like a pessimistic luddite. I want to see promising new business models become viable as much as anyone else does - we can't ignore the influence of technology and our increasingly modern society. I just envision a lot of these new models to be much riskier for most artists wanting to make something of a living (or partial income) from their recorded music, or break into the industry. New and struggling musicians already traditionally fall into the category of "starving artist", and they -have- the benefit of copyright protection. From what I've seen on the internet for a long time, many brilliant musicians who even choose to release their music completely FREE over the internet can have a hard time achieving a fan following. Some musicians are simply not good businessmen and would rather focus on their art (even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one such case, as I recall). Having the promotion and sales power of a record label behind them is a mutually beneficial solution.
I really want to see workable new business models happen, but a lot of the ideas that are being suggested, such as socialized music (???) and donation models, truly fail to see the entire issue.
It seems like the majority of people here want to completely obliterate the business of recorded+sold music. I agree that the current major record labels are absurd and out of control, but I also don't think that completely removing all chances of a musician making an income through records is a good idea either... but that is what i see being implied here often on Slashdot.
Sure, most musicians worth any mention DO create music for the love of making music. That's obvious, but I think money and fame is still a large point of motivation for many musicians. I'm a musician myself, and release tracks as free downloads on my website. I definately DO aspire for a chance to make some money creating music, though - and don't tell me that's wrong or that I'm following a "dinosaur model". It's a highly motivating factor for me.
Spending months of free time working on hundreds of song ideas and picking the best I can come up with, in hopes of making a perfect album is a lot of work! A big part of the drive to perfect it is that I might be able to make a few bucks selling such an album, either by distributing music myself over the net, or signing with a small record label. If copyright law was completely changed to fit the views of some people here, then selling music on my website or signing with a small label would be futile, perhaps only resulting in a few 'good samaritan' donations. In that situation, I might as well just keep releasing anything I do for free on my site with no hope of monetary compensation.
But then I might not work so hard on perfecting and polishing an album. I wouldn't send my album to a professional mastering engineer (or spend countless hours mastering the album myself) because I wouldn't feel like I owe anyone the benefit of that extra layer of polish. I might not spend months or years working on songs and remaking them until they fit what I consider a high standard.
If all musicians are to lose their chances of making money via records because John Doe doesn't feel like spending any money on music (yet wants to listen to it all anyway..) that is a sad, selfish tradeoff, in my opinion.
No, it can't really run other malicious code unless there's an exploit in the browser/plugin used.. and that's a different issue altogether.
Popping up a window with OK and Cancel buttons reversed doesn't do anything special. The OK button is equivalent to clicking on a hyperlink. You actually have to go through your browser's Save dialog first before a file will be downloaded/executed on your computer.
Ad spammers have been using these techniques on more obscure websites for years. The only thing special about this case is that they've managed to trick an ad company into accepting a flash file that redirects a user to one of these annoying ad-traps. This was probably done by having the flash communicate with the spammers' server and check a variable to see if it should display the 'legit' advertisement or redirect to the annoying page. That way, they could get the flash file past the advertising company's filter appearing legit, and then enable the alternate actionscript code once the flash file was in the system and being displayed on major sites.
Live performing is indeed work, but what makes you think that composing and producing music is not? Oftentimes a live performance just isn't as enjoyable (or even technically possible) as listening to a well produced track on a high end sound system. It depends on the venue, the genre of music, the popularity of the band, etc. A lot of music simply can't be performed live - for example Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells would be a difficult and expensive feat to pull off live, and if done probably would not match the studio version.
A lot of music is meant for listening instead of dancing, and trust me, there are very few opportunities for artists to play live 'intelligent' listening music. You get more of a crowd playing tired covers of popular standards. Unless the artist has the popularity of The Rolling Stones, don't tell me that they're going to make a decent living playing live music. More like a bare minimum income and having to restrain their creativity to play crowd-pleasers / what the venue-owner wants them to play.
Unfortunately, in the case of music, your philosophy put into action would force musicians to contract custom music for private buyers. Having done work like this in the past, I can say that unless you are composing a film soundtrack or something of that nature, you rarely get much creative freedom in contract work.
If you are fine with the majority of musicians ending up working other jobs and creating their music as a weekend hobby, be prepared to see a decrease in artists' motivation to create quality albums. Sure there will always be people making new music, but the ones who want to dedicate their life doing it will have to work harder doing pointless things that distract from making said music.
I don't quite understand what you are trying to say...
'our art is their product' - are you saying that you are a musician signed under a major label? If you wanted to keep the rights to your music, then signing with a label is your own doing.
Or are you implying that music made by other musicians is 'your' art? Please explain.
.niaga yrt dna gnilleps ruoy kcehc esaelP !drowssaP tcerrocnI :GNINRAW
Flash (or java/etc) in this situation is only an interface, just like HTML is usually used as the interface to a more complex backend system.
A bug in the interface shouldn't be -any- cause for security concern, if the web application is programmed by anyone with the slightest clue about how web apps work. The flash or embedded drawing tool would simply convert the data it gathered about the drawn picture into some kind of encoded string or variables and then pass that to the server. It is a major mistake to include any critical security checks other than simple guidelines (ie, max length of text inputs in HTML forms, etc) in the client side... a mistake which will usually result in an easy hack for anyone who bothers to take a peek.
A bit OT, but would you be able to point me towards a better option than using a closed loop as the main game loop? I've been coding small games using that common method, and am now wondering what the 'better' way is :)
Heh, the second I saw this article, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. immediately came to mind. Mutated wild boars? Packs of wolves eating people's dogs? Crazy Russian ladies..?
My problem with what you're suggesting is that it still creates many limitations for content creators. There is a lot of software that exists simply because it is an independent product that people will pay for.
If, say, creating video games was profitable only in 'sponsorship' situations.. then many types of games we see today would never be made! There would be less possibility for originality in games -- do we want all large-scale video games to be developed as an advertisment for other companies looking for a new marketing strategy? Now, one might jump at this and claim "Well, all those independent DOS games created back in 1990 were way more original than today's games!". Indeed, I believe those games were fantastic, but we don't want to be stuck playing games of that technical quality forever, do we? There are some products which simply demand large (..or small) teams of developers, getting paid, working on a creative product with the aim of it being sold to people upon completion. Your example of collecting pledges from interested users would not be a very reliable source of income. I'm sure many people would be opportunistic and hope to wait until they could download the product for free. Income would be much more limited than what the traditional selling model would generate, where word spreads of the quality of the product and people buy it over time.
It seems to me that opponents of copyright think of digital information as not having any monetary worth. I believe this to be a stupid viewpoint! Why does a fancy hardwood table cost a lot of money? Surely it's only a bunch of wood? It should cost the same as buying planks of hardwood from a hardware store, shouldn't it? It costs so much because it took thought, skill, effort, and work to shape that wood into the fancy dining table it is. Just as it took work and effort to create that information that's stored on a harddrive or burned onto a DVD. Even though it's "only" electrons, pits on the reflective surface of the DVD, magnetic information on platters, whatever.. it's somebody's effort, and that somebody should have the right to decide if they want to give their work out for free or sell it as they see fit.
It's great that you GPL content and release it to the public for free.
Now tell me, how does this refute gbulmash's point? What does this have to do with "love of money"? Some of us want to be able to make money from our creative and/or programming work! Sure, many programmers and artists work on projects in their spare time after work (or if they are teenagers living at home with their parents.. or filthy rich).. that's great! So do I, in my free time. But why limit people who want to work full-time on their programs, artwork, or music and sell them to make a living?
For example, I have been working on a new application for the last 6 months, 8-10 hours a day.. and my friend/coworker has been slaving away doing design work for the application for the same amount of time. We decided to invest this time and effort into making the application because we believe that it has a good chance of supporting us financially for a few years when released! If there are paying customers, we will make it our priority to release updates and provide support for the app. Now, if this app were to be instantly (and legally!) pirated and spread around the internet, how would we stand a chance of making any money from our time and work? Even large companies would not pay for our application if it was legal to pirate it.
Now, what if copyright law was abolished? Companies might have to resort to extreme licensing and subscription measures.. maybe keeping parts of applications dynamically loading from webservers, and other such tactics to fight all the free copying that will be happening. This may have the effect of creating a worse experience for anyone wanting to pay for their applications. Protection measures that slow down or hinder the quality of programs could become commonplace (think StarForce x10.. etc). What would happen to the movie industry, authors, and musicians who want to make some money off album sales? Who knows.
Copyright law is not unjust. If you want to avoid copyright law, then create your own content and release it under the license of your choice!
Very true.. The only magazines I buy these days are from the UK. Even though they are 2-3x the price, they are actually worth reading. I recently bought a US magazine for a change and regretted spending my money on it. Dumbed down, boring content. The whole magazine seemed like an advertisement flyer.
All 3 problems you mention have already been taken care of in the latest Flash Player 9 (& AS3) and the upcoming Flash development software (cs3 is it?).
A possible problem with your scenario is that in the future it's very possible that people will own devices that are just as (or even more) convenient than a paper book. Sony's Reader is an early example. One day, it might be common to own a portable book-sized computer with an insanely high resolution screen. Then there would be barely any reason to buy paper copies of books, and.. [writers starve because of widespread eBook torrents]
You can already find most books illegally online as eBooks. Currently, the only thing preventing this from being a problem to writers and publishers is that LCD's on laptops and PDA's are cumbersome and hard-on-the-eyes.
I'm a musician and audio engineer, and the best sound I've heard out of any speakers is out of a decent pair of studio monitors with a proper subwoofer. A pair of Mackie HR824's or Yorkville YSM1P's can deliver extremely detailed sound, with much better transient detail than a typical set of home-theater or even 'audiophile' speakers. It should be mentioned that many people prefer the less-even frequency response of non-studio speakers (easier on the ears for extended listening, or exaggerated bass/treble), but this can be easily modeled with a decent EQ (assuming you have the flat response of studio monitors to start with).
From that article:
"Using the muscles in ones head, a person was to control the paddle at the bottom of the screen. Needless to say, people began to suffer from headaches as soon as the pace of the game started to quicken."
That's quite a bit different than this product. Something a bit closer (and cooler) are the Wild Divine games.
SpaceTime for PocketPC is a fantastic program. It's leagues more powerful than a TI graphing calculator, easier to use, higher resolution, better interface (drag graphs around with the touchscreen, etc). Having a PocketPC with you also helps when you want to listen to music while doing math, jot down notes or use a spreadsheet, write PocketC programs to help even further with math...
;-)
..play games..
My 'old' HP iPaq 2200 PocketPC with a foldup keyboard has served me as a mini laptop for quite some time, and I couldn't imagine being without it, to be honest! When I'm done with it I just slip it into my pocket and it's out of the way, unlike a laptop.
Anyways - definately check out SpaceTime if you're in the market for a PocketPC! Highly recommended!