But... when I bought my iMac G4 Steve Jobs told me it was a supercomputer!
Re:Well, then I made the right decision
on
Anathem
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· Score: 1
Stephenson's last 5 books have all made the NY Times best-seller list - Anathem hit their hardcover fiction list at number 1. While I don't agree with your criticisms of Cryptonomicon, I think not tackling the Baroque Cycle is absolutely the right decision - for you. You wouldn't like it and you wouldn't like Anathem.
I doubt Stephenson is under any illusion that the directions he's taken has lost him some fans of the early works, but the idea that it has put him some kind of financially unsustainable position just isn't true. And while you represent one pole of reaction, I represent another one - I find the direction his writing has gone from Cryptonomicon so satisfying that I have bought everything since that book new, first edition hardcover - something that isn't true of any but a tiny handful of authors for me.
Re:Very disappointing review.
on
Anathem
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· Score: 1
One thing that's clear from recent talks, interviews etc. is that Stephenson is doing exactly what he is aiming to. People hoping for some "return" to the Snow Crash era of his writing need to just give it up and move on to other authors. He doesn't want to go back there and he's not going to.
While I don't think the review author really got inside this material, I think in one essential respect his review is quite accurate: if you didn't like the direction Stephenson was going from Cryptonomicon on through the Baroque Cycle, you're probably going to like Anathem even less. If you like the Baroque Cycle you're certainly not going to listen to the review of someone who gave up on it after the first book. Of course, if you came out of that several thousand page investment with a smile on your face chances are, like me and everyone else defending Stephenson's recent career in here, you finished Anathem long ago anyway.
So the only person the review is really potentially misleading to is people who haven't read Stephenson, and honestly they probably shouldn't start with anything later than Cryptonomicon as the introduction to his work.
Which is not to say this review doesn't suck, because it definitely does.
I'm baffled as to where anyone's getting the idea that these people are proposing to legalize file sharing. What they're proposing is "ISP users steal from us, we demand they get us some money back." There is not a hint or a whisper of making file sharing legit. They want to coerce a kickback just as they did with recording media. The idea that they are talking about legitimizing file sharing is so absurd and unfounded it makes me wonder if it is a purposeful disinformation campaign to inhibit consumer resistance to a completely idiotic (from the point of view of anyone not in line to get some free money out of it) proposal.
The bigger joke to me is the idea that the ISPs will roll over for this. Their revenues dwarf the music industry's and they have nothing to gain by supporting this and nothing to lose by bucking it. They are legally indemnified by safe harbor provisions. What do they care about file sharing? As far as I can tell they're not even dignifying this BS with an opinion.
This is more desperation blather from a failing industry, period. Their revenues are in the toilet, their legal opposition strategy has been displayed as a costly failure (and the legal pushback against their questionable tactics is gaining traction), anybody who isn't dumb as a turnip knows that file sharing is at best a component of their business failure, and they've still got their heads buried in the sand about the diverse screw-ups that led them to this estate. Meanwhile expensive properties they've lost control of are showily making themselves middle-man-free millions while facilitating exactly the sort of free digital access the industry has been claiming is the root of all their problems. Good luck trying to force this against monsters like SBC, Comcast and Verizon with your shrinking war chests, crazy dreamers.
Tee... Vee? Now I know Dee-Vee-Dee, they ship those to me in the mail. And I often turn on the Tee-VOH when I'm surfing the web, it's fun sometimes except they're always interrupting it with that stupid little skill game where you try to blip through the spam as quickly as possible without running over too much of the following content. I don't know about this Tee-Vee, though.
That's not to dismiss solar cells -- but we need to explore every avenue.
I wish I could bold this and underline it a thousand times. If a fossil fuel crunch AKA "peak oil" or whatever you want to call it does bite civilization in the ass the fundamental reason behind it will be that enemy of so many systems - failure to diversify. One of the huge benefits of fossil fuels is their portability - something that many of the alternatives just can't deliver. So we must instead develop alternatives that will fit the resources of a variety of resource conditions. Trying to define a single replacement for fossil fuels is failure by design.
But by your definition, either nothing is renewable, or everything is, depending on your views on where the universe is heading in the really long term. Though if I'd been your teacher I'd probably have written "is a back-talking little smartass" instead.
I can't seriously see this working, or creating any good press for eMusic or AT&T.
Totally, and the punchline is, as this post shows, Apple gets bad PR as a side-effect for a deal it has nothing to do with. Everybody loses! Leave it to Ma Bell. Your World. Delivered. At a 500% Markup.
Do you reject all science that doesn't have a complete testable model behind it?
Well, more to the point, the computer models that skeptics are so quick to discount have been increasingly accurately predicting the macro climatic effects of discrete environmental events (such as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo). I don't know how much closer to a testable model of climate we are likely to get, which is of course the point: what global warming skeptics are demanding is a degree of certainty that can't exist in a system as complex and large as the global climate. More research! More research! We heard it about acid rain, which was real - just like the majority of mainstream scientists in relevant disciplines asserted - and has only been mitigated by large scale policy initiatives such as the Clean Air Act, we heard it about the ozone hole*, which was real - just like the majority of mainstream scientists in relevant disciplines asserted - and has only been mitigated by large scale policy initiatives such as the Montreal Protocol. And here we are again. Gee, I wonder how it's going to pan out?
It's always the same old song and dance. Put the most ridiculous caricature of a hysterical deep ecologist hippie on the stage and go on soberly about more research and economic effects (ignoring as well that the real chicken littles in these situations have inevitably been the welfare happy subsidy hogs in industry, who have somehow managed to survive all previous necessary environmental policy initiatives that they assured us would cause irrevocable economic harm).
*The other day I read a comment appended to some global warming skeptic article by that Australian geologist who pops up to repeat his same thoroughly refuted set of claims avery so often - and always finds a buyer in some conservative rag, surprise - and this person's response to the inevitable objections is "oh come on, weren't these scientists going on about a hole in the ozone layer? And whatever happened to that, did it just close? Global warming is just the next scientific fad!" I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Janet Boyd, a lobbyist for Dow Chemical, said she and her husband "nearly died" when they got a $70 charge for their 20-year-old daughter's text-messaging. They went to an unlimited plan.
There's so many things wrong with that sentence I don't know where to begin.
It seems to me that it is just more noise from a blowhard company
You know what it sounds like to me? A protection racket. Real nice code you got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it. The subheading on an article linked withing the original post states that "Microsoft said it wants to create more arrangements that mirror the company's deal with Linux distributor Novell." Of course you do: that's money for nothing. They're saying, hey, we've got deep pockets, many lawyers, and we've combed our patent database for everything we think we can befuddle the courts with for the maximum legal-fee beating. Win or lose, you lose. Next step is they will start targeting the low-hanging fruit, mid-sized companies with something to lose, and the shakedowns will commence. And you can bet "you can't talk about the deal" will be the first rule of any deals they make.
While I hope of course that legal authorities learn from their mistakes (although sometimes it seems that the only thing they learn from - and that grudgingly - are massive lawsuits, and I'm sure these revelations will spawn plenty) - I hope every story like this encourages another person to read every credit card statement, carefully and completely. I keep an eye out for fraudulent charges (and not just the patently illegal stuff - it is that telemarketer for your card company lying and telling you there will be no charge for this trial offer (as long as you call and cancel after the end of the trial period of which you will be given no notice), the magazine that remembered to stop sending you issues but forgot to stop charging your card after you canceled, the credit card company that decided to start billing you an annual fee (maybe you missed that two line notice in 7pt. type buried in the middle of that mini paperback of terms of service changes they sent you a month ago?). I also watch those interest rates. It's amazing how many ways, even if you have things on "fixed" rates, they find to basically rip you off. I don't hold it against them (any debt I carry is my own damn fault and responsibility), though I do pay attention to who screws me the hardest and manage my bills accordingly. The point is, your carelessness is not just essential to fraudsters prospering, it is a cornerstone of the credit card companies' business strategies. There are only two defenses possible: eliminating credit use entirely (even a card you pay off monthly may sneak in a mid-month interest assessment and start sneaking a few bucks a month out of you or slip in some BS fee) or reading every statement.
While I think there are very reasonable points here, restricting considerations to $/watt isn't completely justified. It can be pretty difficult to say what economies of scale are going to be for a particular technology - so to reject something that is functionally superior because it it initially expensive to produce may not be fair. Even if something is intrinsically expensive - for example, it uses particularly expensive materials - may pay off from a basic research perspective, that is, once a basic concept like a certain model of electron transfer is proven effective, it may spur research into more cost-effective technologies using similar principles. Finally, although it does not really speak to energy needs, there is a definite market for higher-efficiency solar cells in any application where the available real estate is restricted but a solar power source is desirable.
This being said, I absolutely agree that there is overemphasis on "boutique" projects with a high "sexy" factor, when pragmatic concerns (cheap, workable, and available sooner rather than later) ought to receive much more investment and attention.
Yeah, it is frankly ridiculous to say something like you will produce power at one tenth the cost of conventional solar regarding a product that has not even been produced at the pilot scale. Of course, looking a wee bit more closely reveals that this figure comes from a press release by reps of the university, who are, the first article reveals, actively engaged in seeking funding for the next phase. So basically that number could be described as an optimistic projection by biased analysts. If one were feeling extremely charitable, that is.
That being said, I don't think optimism, given the information that is there, is completely out of order. The most important factors they claim - photosynthetic-like conversion of sunlight leading to higher efficiency and ability to function in low light, and chemical basis in titanium dioxide, both make sense, are in line with solar research that has been going on for decades, and would unquestionably trend to lower prices and better versatility. But until a commercial product is being produced and some sensible grasp of the scale economies involved can be determined, any cost projections are pie in the sky.
Yeah, I thought a similar thing, then I got around to heading over to the iTMS and looking for some actual tracks... Huh, not a word about it. No way I can see to search for these tracks. I guess I'm supposed to stumble upon them at random, and say hey, that's an option? It seems dumb to me considering all the free publicity they're getting out of this. I like having an a la carte option like iTunes, I like it with no DRM even better, but man, every time I hit the iTMS something new about their messy, busy, ugly, poorly designed and criminally slow interface is bound to end up pissing me off in about 3 minutes. Why, Apple?!
Hmm... they want to be able to meet with a ten-year-old girl in person. Now I may have been around the seedier sides of the internet a bit too much, but does that sound a little disturbing to you?
A nervous-looking man wearing a conservative suit and carrying a briefcase enters an ordinary suburban home. He hears the "ten year old" he's arranged to meet call that she will be down in a minute as soon as she fetches her MP3 player.
He is startled when Chris Hansen enters the room...
Honestly though, I'm starting to feel like some sort of devious anti-industry genius has infiltrated the RIAA and is brilliantly coordinating a devastating bad-publicity campaign.
I, too wonder how complete these statistics are. I've been making a concerted effort not to buy from major labels and not to buy from major retailers for some time now, ever since the advent of strong-arm tactics by the RIAA. Do these figures track sales by CD Baby, now a major online retailer, whose entire catalog is independent artists? Do they track all the independent artists and minor labels which market on Amazon or self-distribute online, at live shows, and through their own online retail efforts?
I actually have been assuming this is the year I will sign up. I am a little uneasy about a few reports I have heard of billing problems (billing past cancellation, dunning a closed account and not communicating) though I suspect these are the sort of inevitable worst case reports, so it is always good to hear the fans weigh in. It is the best thing going in non DRM music but I still think it is a shame there is basically only one store of significance for non-DRM music and only a subscription model there.
Ah yes, the article about how available the DRM free music takes 10 minutes to load before Slashdot runs up a hundred comments. It nicely illustrates the point: it is not about availability. Every decent sized town in America has a dozen hometown favorites who play out often, go on regular, modest tours, and have a handful of solid, professional CD releases that can stand up to 90% of what's on the Billboard 100 at any given time. They never had the "luck" or were a little too attached to their quirks to make a major label deal, or they decided it wasn't really worth it. They are working musicians supporting their families and local economies and I'd rather give them my money any day of the week than some vacuous, entitled little shit who's ClearChannel's flavor od the month. And they are virtually unknown outside their local community. If you're fan of local shows I bet several names popped into head just from that description. If they're smart you can probably find their music online, either independent or CD Baby, and on eMusic. I bet there are tens of thousands of U.S. bands that fit this profile, probably hundreds of thousands if not millions worldwide. Add to that the "long tail" of hobby, avocation or quirk artists who nonetheless have a few solid tracks a lot of people might pay a nickel or a quarter for, and you've got a catalog no individual could ever tap out. In a way, fixating on trying to transform the distribution model for the tiny population of major label stable pros (getting smaller every year) is laughably the wrong approach.
The problem is filtering. I keep looking at that eMusic trial offer and thinking, man, how much time am I going to have to spend getting my money's worth out of that? If they had a built-in, fast working Pandora plug in so I could simply and accurately calibrate my mainstream preferences to their catalog? I would be on that today.
The problem is payment strategies. A dollar for a song is BS and micropayments have been pretty BS up to now too. Subscriptions make a lot of people skeevy. This should not be as complicated as it is.
The problem is dispersion. There are fifty million little this and that sites. That does not work. Independent artists who want to sell piecemeal tracks and not require people have a subscription to eMusic - desperately need a solution. The technology for delivering bits is not complicated. The technology for accepting money is not complicated. Social networking and community-driven filtering and moderation aren't the future, they are the RIGHT NOW. This is a get-in-on-the-ground-floor Google type opportunity, man.
God, that pie in the sky looks so del.icio.us. Ahem, gotta wipe these starts out of my eyes. Okay, well, if anybody takes up the cause, you know, I'm available for visionary consultation and next gen viral marketeering (not to self: no electronics on bridges)! Call me! (Man, why did I study chemistry instead of computers?)
Oh, and regarding that Nettwerk Store link (once it finally loaded)... You want me to use Real to preview, this is how you make your point? Come the fuck on. My Grandma has a simple, browser-agnostic preview player built into her website. Well, okay, that's not true but still. Bye bye, Hello Love.
The problem I've got is with the notion that the way to keep your toddler from driving is to make sure s/he doesn't get exposed to the idea that it is possible.
I apply what I feel to be a sounder principle, in that I do not give my 2.5 year old access to our car. It works like a charm. I parent with this crazy notion that, being full of fast and heavy and sharp and hot etc. etc. objects, the world is an intrinsically dangerous place and keeping my toddler safe in it is (gasp) my responsibility, which I achieve through (shock! horror!) paying attention to him.
I don't have a problem with these people protesting either, because, you know, free speech and everything, but they're still morons, and pulling the ad is typical knee-jerk BS which will do absolutely nothing for anyone anywhere ever.
The part I like best is the supposed "cause" of his "addiction" -...says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969...
Hey, all you Iraq and Afghanistan vets coming back with PTSD, look on the bright side, in 40 years you can still be milking that for the most bullshit excuse for cruising sex sites at work ever known to man.
This is big news! DRM works half the time?! I'd like to see a list of the 50% of digital commodities that are not available on P2P networks because they have been protected by DRM. Oh, that's right... it only has to be cracked once.
Although it is particularly dumb in the case of music where in most cases unprotected CDs are available (because CD DRM has been such a trainwreck) so that anybody who owns the CD can produce an unprotected MP3, yet you're not allowed to buy one.
I bet Macrovision and its ilk are loving this conversation.
Slashdot Mirror
But... when I bought my iMac G4 Steve Jobs told me it was a supercomputer!
Stephenson's last 5 books have all made the NY Times best-seller list - Anathem hit their hardcover fiction list at number 1. While I don't agree with your criticisms of Cryptonomicon, I think not tackling the Baroque Cycle is absolutely the right decision - for you. You wouldn't like it and you wouldn't like Anathem.
I doubt Stephenson is under any illusion that the directions he's taken has lost him some fans of the early works, but the idea that it has put him some kind of financially unsustainable position just isn't true. And while you represent one pole of reaction, I represent another one - I find the direction his writing has gone from Cryptonomicon so satisfying that I have bought everything since that book new, first edition hardcover - something that isn't true of any but a tiny handful of authors for me.
One thing that's clear from recent talks, interviews etc. is that Stephenson is doing exactly what he is aiming to. People hoping for some "return" to the Snow Crash era of his writing need to just give it up and move on to other authors. He doesn't want to go back there and he's not going to.
While I don't think the review author really got inside this material, I think in one essential respect his review is quite accurate: if you didn't like the direction Stephenson was going from Cryptonomicon on through the Baroque Cycle, you're probably going to like Anathem even less. If you like the Baroque Cycle you're certainly not going to listen to the review of someone who gave up on it after the first book. Of course, if you came out of that several thousand page investment with a smile on your face chances are, like me and everyone else defending Stephenson's recent career in here, you finished Anathem long ago anyway.
So the only person the review is really potentially misleading to is people who haven't read Stephenson, and honestly they probably shouldn't start with anything later than Cryptonomicon as the introduction to his work.
Which is not to say this review doesn't suck, because it definitely does.
I'm baffled as to where anyone's getting the idea that these people are proposing to legalize file sharing. What they're proposing is "ISP users steal from us, we demand they get us some money back." There is not a hint or a whisper of making file sharing legit. They want to coerce a kickback just as they did with recording media. The idea that they are talking about legitimizing file sharing is so absurd and unfounded it makes me wonder if it is a purposeful disinformation campaign to inhibit consumer resistance to a completely idiotic (from the point of view of anyone not in line to get some free money out of it) proposal.
The bigger joke to me is the idea that the ISPs will roll over for this. Their revenues dwarf the music industry's and they have nothing to gain by supporting this and nothing to lose by bucking it. They are legally indemnified by safe harbor provisions. What do they care about file sharing? As far as I can tell they're not even dignifying this BS with an opinion.
This is more desperation blather from a failing industry, period. Their revenues are in the toilet, their legal opposition strategy has been displayed as a costly failure (and the legal pushback against their questionable tactics is gaining traction), anybody who isn't dumb as a turnip knows that file sharing is at best a component of their business failure, and they've still got their heads buried in the sand about the diverse screw-ups that led them to this estate. Meanwhile expensive properties they've lost control of are showily making themselves middle-man-free millions while facilitating exactly the sort of free digital access the industry has been claiming is the root of all their problems. Good luck trying to force this against monsters like SBC, Comcast and Verizon with your shrinking war chests, crazy dreamers.
Tee... Vee? Now I know Dee-Vee-Dee, they ship those to me in the mail. And I often turn on the Tee-VOH when I'm surfing the web, it's fun sometimes except they're always interrupting it with that stupid little skill game where you try to blip through the spam as quickly as possible without running over too much of the following content. I don't know about this Tee-Vee, though.
That's not to dismiss solar cells -- but we need to explore every avenue.
I wish I could bold this and underline it a thousand times. If a fossil fuel crunch AKA "peak oil" or whatever you want to call it does bite civilization in the ass the fundamental reason behind it will be that enemy of so many systems - failure to diversify. One of the huge benefits of fossil fuels is their portability - something that many of the alternatives just can't deliver. So we must instead develop alternatives that will fit the resources of a variety of resource conditions. Trying to define a single replacement for fossil fuels is failure by design.
But by your definition, either nothing is renewable, or everything is, depending on your views on where the universe is heading in the really long term. Though if I'd been your teacher I'd probably have written "is a back-talking little smartass" instead.
Google motto 1999: Don't be evil
Google motto 2007: Our bad
I can't seriously see this working, or creating any good press for eMusic or AT&T.
Totally, and the punchline is, as this post shows, Apple gets bad PR as a side-effect for a deal it has nothing to do with. Everybody loses! Leave it to Ma Bell. Your World. Delivered. At a 500% Markup.
Person interested in Prince as a long term brand strategy: "But come on - customers love to get free stuff!"
Music Industry: "What the fuck does what customers want have to do with anything?"
Do you reject all science that doesn't have a complete testable model behind it?
Well, more to the point, the computer models that skeptics are so quick to discount have been increasingly accurately predicting the macro climatic effects of discrete environmental events (such as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo). I don't know how much closer to a testable model of climate we are likely to get, which is of course the point: what global warming skeptics are demanding is a degree of certainty that can't exist in a system as complex and large as the global climate. More research! More research! We heard it about acid rain, which was real - just like the majority of mainstream scientists in relevant disciplines asserted - and has only been mitigated by large scale policy initiatives such as the Clean Air Act, we heard it about the ozone hole*, which was real - just like the majority of mainstream scientists in relevant disciplines asserted - and has only been mitigated by large scale policy initiatives such as the Montreal Protocol. And here we are again. Gee, I wonder how it's going to pan out?
It's always the same old song and dance. Put the most ridiculous caricature of a hysterical deep ecologist hippie on the stage and go on soberly about more research and economic effects (ignoring as well that the real chicken littles in these situations have inevitably been the welfare happy subsidy hogs in industry, who have somehow managed to survive all previous necessary environmental policy initiatives that they assured us would cause irrevocable economic harm).
*The other day I read a comment appended to some global warming skeptic article by that Australian geologist who pops up to repeat his same thoroughly refuted set of claims avery so often - and always finds a buyer in some conservative rag, surprise - and this person's response to the inevitable objections is "oh come on, weren't these scientists going on about a hole in the ozone layer? And whatever happened to that, did it just close? Global warming is just the next scientific fad!" I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Lobbying... is the second most immoral thing on the planet.. behind serial violent crime.
Sooo... you're saying I got one freebie before I'm as bad as a lobbyist?
Janet Boyd, a lobbyist for Dow Chemical, said she and her husband "nearly died" when they got a $70 charge for their 20-year-old daughter's text-messaging. They went to an unlimited plan.
There's so many things wrong with that sentence I don't know where to begin.
It seems to me that it is just more noise from a blowhard company
You know what it sounds like to me? A protection racket. Real nice code you got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it. The subheading on an article linked withing the original post states that "Microsoft said it wants to create more arrangements that mirror the company's deal with Linux distributor Novell." Of course you do: that's money for nothing. They're saying, hey, we've got deep pockets, many lawyers, and we've combed our patent database for everything we think we can befuddle the courts with for the maximum legal-fee beating. Win or lose, you lose. Next step is they will start targeting the low-hanging fruit, mid-sized companies with something to lose, and the shakedowns will commence. And you can bet "you can't talk about the deal" will be the first rule of any deals they make.
While I hope of course that legal authorities learn from their mistakes (although sometimes it seems that the only thing they learn from - and that grudgingly - are massive lawsuits, and I'm sure these revelations will spawn plenty) - I hope every story like this encourages another person to read every credit card statement, carefully and completely. I keep an eye out for fraudulent charges (and not just the patently illegal stuff - it is that telemarketer for your card company lying and telling you there will be no charge for this trial offer (as long as you call and cancel after the end of the trial period of which you will be given no notice), the magazine that remembered to stop sending you issues but forgot to stop charging your card after you canceled, the credit card company that decided to start billing you an annual fee (maybe you missed that two line notice in 7pt. type buried in the middle of that mini paperback of terms of service changes they sent you a month ago?). I also watch those interest rates. It's amazing how many ways, even if you have things on "fixed" rates, they find to basically rip you off. I don't hold it against them (any debt I carry is my own damn fault and responsibility), though I do pay attention to who screws me the hardest and manage my bills accordingly. The point is, your carelessness is not just essential to fraudsters prospering, it is a cornerstone of the credit card companies' business strategies. There are only two defenses possible: eliminating credit use entirely (even a card you pay off monthly may sneak in a mid-month interest assessment and start sneaking a few bucks a month out of you or slip in some BS fee) or reading every statement.
While I think there are very reasonable points here, restricting considerations to $/watt isn't completely justified. It can be pretty difficult to say what economies of scale are going to be for a particular technology - so to reject something that is functionally superior because it it initially expensive to produce may not be fair. Even if something is intrinsically expensive - for example, it uses particularly expensive materials - may pay off from a basic research perspective, that is, once a basic concept like a certain model of electron transfer is proven effective, it may spur research into more cost-effective technologies using similar principles. Finally, although it does not really speak to energy needs, there is a definite market for higher-efficiency solar cells in any application where the available real estate is restricted but a solar power source is desirable.
This being said, I absolutely agree that there is overemphasis on "boutique" projects with a high "sexy" factor, when pragmatic concerns (cheap, workable, and available sooner rather than later) ought to receive much more investment and attention.
Yeah, it is frankly ridiculous to say something like you will produce power at one tenth the cost of conventional solar regarding a product that has not even been produced at the pilot scale. Of course, looking a wee bit more closely reveals that this figure comes from a press release by reps of the university, who are, the first article reveals, actively engaged in seeking funding for the next phase. So basically that number could be described as an optimistic projection by biased analysts. If one were feeling extremely charitable, that is.
That being said, I don't think optimism, given the information that is there, is completely out of order. The most important factors they claim - photosynthetic-like conversion of sunlight leading to higher efficiency and ability to function in low light, and chemical basis in titanium dioxide, both make sense, are in line with solar research that has been going on for decades, and would unquestionably trend to lower prices and better versatility. But until a commercial product is being produced and some sensible grasp of the scale economies involved can be determined, any cost projections are pie in the sky.
Not only does it make great PR
Yeah, I thought a similar thing, then I got around to heading over to the iTMS and looking for some actual tracks... Huh, not a word about it. No way I can see to search for these tracks. I guess I'm supposed to stumble upon them at random, and say hey, that's an option? It seems dumb to me considering all the free publicity they're getting out of this. I like having an a la carte option like iTunes, I like it with no DRM even better, but man, every time I hit the iTMS something new about their messy, busy, ugly, poorly designed and criminally slow interface is bound to end up pissing me off in about 3 minutes. Why, Apple?!
Hmm... they want to be able to meet with a ten-year-old girl in person. Now I may have been around the seedier sides of the internet a bit too much, but does that sound a little disturbing to you?
A nervous-looking man wearing a conservative suit and carrying a briefcase enters an ordinary suburban home. He hears the "ten year old" he's arranged to meet call that she will be down in a minute as soon as she fetches her MP3 player.
He is startled when Chris Hansen enters the room...
Honestly though, I'm starting to feel like some sort of devious anti-industry genius has infiltrated the RIAA and is brilliantly coordinating a devastating bad-publicity campaign.
I, too wonder how complete these statistics are. I've been making a concerted effort not to buy from major labels and not to buy from major retailers for some time now, ever since the advent of strong-arm tactics by the RIAA. Do these figures track sales by CD Baby, now a major online retailer, whose entire catalog is independent artists? Do they track all the independent artists and minor labels which market on Amazon or self-distribute online, at live shows, and through their own online retail efforts?
I actually have been assuming this is the year I will sign up. I am a little uneasy about a few reports I have heard of billing problems (billing past cancellation, dunning a closed account and not communicating) though I suspect these are the sort of inevitable worst case reports, so it is always good to hear the fans weigh in. It is the best thing going in non DRM music but I still think it is a shame there is basically only one store of significance for non-DRM music and only a subscription model there.
Ah yes, the article about how available the DRM free music takes 10 minutes to load before Slashdot runs up a hundred comments. It nicely illustrates the point: it is not about availability. Every decent sized town in America has a dozen hometown favorites who play out often, go on regular, modest tours, and have a handful of solid, professional CD releases that can stand up to 90% of what's on the Billboard 100 at any given time. They never had the "luck" or were a little too attached to their quirks to make a major label deal, or they decided it wasn't really worth it. They are working musicians supporting their families and local economies and I'd rather give them my money any day of the week than some vacuous, entitled little shit who's ClearChannel's flavor od the month. And they are virtually unknown outside their local community. If you're fan of local shows I bet several names popped into head just from that description. If they're smart you can probably find their music online, either independent or CD Baby, and on eMusic. I bet there are tens of thousands of U.S. bands that fit this profile, probably hundreds of thousands if not millions worldwide. Add to that the "long tail" of hobby, avocation or quirk artists who nonetheless have a few solid tracks a lot of people might pay a nickel or a quarter for, and you've got a catalog no individual could ever tap out. In a way, fixating on trying to transform the distribution model for the tiny population of major label stable pros (getting smaller every year) is laughably the wrong approach.
The problem is filtering. I keep looking at that eMusic trial offer and thinking, man, how much time am I going to have to spend getting my money's worth out of that? If they had a built-in, fast working Pandora plug in so I could simply and accurately calibrate my mainstream preferences to their catalog? I would be on that today.
The problem is payment strategies. A dollar for a song is BS and micropayments have been pretty BS up to now too. Subscriptions make a lot of people skeevy. This should not be as complicated as it is.
The problem is dispersion. There are fifty million little this and that sites. That does not work. Independent artists who want to sell piecemeal tracks and not require people have a subscription to eMusic - desperately need a solution. The technology for delivering bits is not complicated. The technology for accepting money is not complicated. Social networking and community-driven filtering and moderation aren't the future, they are the RIGHT NOW. This is a get-in-on-the-ground-floor Google type opportunity, man.
God, that pie in the sky looks so del.icio.us. Ahem, gotta wipe these starts out of my eyes. Okay, well, if anybody takes up the cause, you know, I'm available for visionary consultation and next gen viral marketeering (not to self: no electronics on bridges)! Call me! (Man, why did I study chemistry instead of computers?)
Oh, and regarding that Nettwerk Store link (once it finally loaded)... You want me to use Real to preview, this is how you make your point? Come the fuck on. My Grandma has a simple, browser-agnostic preview player built into her website. Well, okay, that's not true but still. Bye bye, Hello Love.
The problem I've got is with the notion that the way to keep your toddler from driving is to make sure s/he doesn't get exposed to the idea that it is possible.
I apply what I feel to be a sounder principle, in that I do not give my 2.5 year old access to our car. It works like a charm. I parent with this crazy notion that, being full of fast and heavy and sharp and hot etc. etc. objects, the world is an intrinsically dangerous place and keeping my toddler safe in it is (gasp) my responsibility, which I achieve through (shock! horror!) paying attention to him.
I don't have a problem with these people protesting either, because, you know, free speech and everything, but they're still morons, and pulling the ad is typical knee-jerk BS which will do absolutely nothing for anyone anywhere ever.
The part I like best is the supposed "cause" of his "addiction" - ...says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969...
Hey, all you Iraq and Afghanistan vets coming back with PTSD, look on the bright side, in 40 years you can still be milking that for the most bullshit excuse for cruising sex sites at work ever known to man.
This is big news! DRM works half the time?! I'd like to see a list of the 50% of digital commodities that are not available on P2P networks because they have been protected by DRM. Oh, that's right... it only has to be cracked once.
Although it is particularly dumb in the case of music where in most cases unprotected CDs are available (because CD DRM has been such a trainwreck) so that anybody who owns the CD can produce an unprotected MP3, yet you're not allowed to buy one.
I bet Macrovision and its ilk are loving this conversation.