What about bulk food items labeled "Not for Individual Sale"? Seems they are treading the same ground.
they're not packaged for individual sale, meaning that the packaging does not meet the FDA's requirements for labeling (ingredients, nutritional information, etc.)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: speaking out isn't shutting others up
adopting the "free/scarcity" model will mean, for many of them, foregoing revenue that they'll have to make up by doing many other things that may or may not have anything to do with songwriting. It may be what's "best" for them in your opinion, and perhaps even in fact, but it's a hard sell.
well, god forbid someone work hard on selling something. i guess avoiding hard work is a good idea as any to go into music.
and why give up revenue streams?
here's a revenue stream for you: why not try to save some money and stop paying money to lawyers to sue grandmothers who can't pay, and hiring network snoops to unsuccessfully spy on people's downloads (you know, like mediasentry), and spending money on digital rights management technology that doesn't work. that's a good idea.
i'm not much of and economist but i am pretty sure that spending money on stuff that doesn't help you is not a good business practice. maybe one of you MBA's can explain to me why companies keep doing it.
i guess if you follow the RIAA logic that not making money on every download is the same as losing money... then not spending money on lawyers, DRM, and mediasentry should be the same thing as making money, right?
Given that the MSM just regurgitates government talking points (generally without attribution, just 'cause... well, who really cares who spouts off, anyway?), it shows how useless they are.
it's worse than that.
it's a feedback loop:
the government gives the press an "exclusive" on something. the papers print it. then the government goes on TV and says, "don't take our word for it, take a look at the papers."
that's exactly how the run up to the invasion of iraq worked.
If a band doesn't want there stuff shared (aka stolen) for free that ought to be their right/choice as well.
sure they have a choice. they have all the choice in the world. they can choose and choose until end of time and it won't make a single bit of difference because people download stuff and don't care if it's authorized or not.
it happens and you can't stop it. it's impossible. you might as well sit in your front yard and yell at the sun to not rise tomorrow morning. the end result will be the same: the sun will rise tomorrow just like it always has, and intellectual property will be downloaded, just like it always has, and you will look like an idiot crybaby who wants something that just isn't going to happen.
Mike doesn't seem to want acknowledge that if you are already famous and have a following that people stealing rather than buying your work isn't right.
perhaps you didn't get the memo: the world changed. people don't buy CDs any more. either sell something else or get a real job.
it's a simple fact: if you make something digital it will be distributed digitally, whether you want it to or not. hell, even if your is merely capable of being digitized, it will be distributed digitally.
that's the way the world works: grass is green, water is wet, the sky is blue, size matters, and people download stuff without your authorization.
the thing that all you "downloading is theft" types don't want to acknowledge is that there isn't a single thing that you can do stop people from downloading your stuff. you can rant and rave about right and wrong, and about bits and bytes, and about how they are no different from your identity, but that has nothing to do with the fact that it will never be any harder to exchange bits and bytes than it is at this very moment, and it will only get easier from here on out.
so you can waste your time, effort, and money, whining about what's happening to you and your precious intellectual property, or you can do something to make downloading work in your favor.
sure, you have a choice. you can choose certain failure (i.e. whining about/trying to stop downloading) or you can choose to do something that has a chance of succeeding. the choice is yours.
live is full of screeching sopranos with single digit IQ's. they ruin games for everyone.
we should round up the pedophiles from myspace and turn them loose on xbox live for a few months and see if we can cull the squeaker population to a manageable level.
while they're popular on The Pirate Bay, their YouTube channel has all but been ignored. Why did one community embrace this artist, while another is still waiting to discover them? Is there just less competition on the Pirate Bay, so it's easier for an indie band to stand out or is there something unique about their sound or marketing that caused them take off on one site, but not the other?
i think TPB is a different market than youtube. in my completely biased unscientific and purely anecdotal experience reading comments on both sites the youtube audience tends to be younger, more american, and not as... articulate... as the pirate bay's.
TPB has a higher mix of europeans, especially scandinavians, and while it has it's fair share of jack asses, you tube seems to have cornered the market on inarticulate commenters.
but don't take my word for it, here's an XKCD comic to prove my assertions: http://xkcd.com/481
based on my personal bias, and after listening to a couple GW tracks (there is almost no mention of adorable kitttycats) i am not surprised at all that they get no love on youtube.
Nowadays, as you guys point out nearly ever day, musicians can overcome obscurity by using the internet. These same musicians can create new business models that do not involve the traditional music industry. The current music industry is dead.
i think that you might be confusing the music industry, the business activities that are associated with music, and the institution that is known as The Music Industry(TM). they are two very distinct entities.
it's bad when one thing becomes two.
the general industry is fine, just look at the sales of all things music related. the outlook for music never looked better: new artists are everywhere and there are more channels for promotion and distribution than ever.
the business of selling CDs is doomed, and the institution that was built around those sales is doomed along with those declining sales. people just aren't buying them in the quantities that they used to. the CD is no longer the source of revenue it once was.
as more and more people flee the failing institution (consumers, artists, promoters, etc.) and return to the general industry associated with music, the general industry will eclipse the institution, and we will once again view these distinct entities as one.
On the hardware side, it's hurting Intel's margins, as these netbooks use cheaper "Atom" processors instead of more powerful (and power-hungry) "Core" chips.
the PC hardware market for traditional desktops and traditional laptops is about as big as it's going to get.
how do you convince people to buy an extra laptop or desktop when they already have budgeted (money, space, and in some cases, power and cooling) for a desktop and/or a laptop?
one option is to make models that cost less and use fewer resources (space, power, etc.) and are engineered for specific uses (set top box, portable email/surfing).
intel knows this and so does microsoft. that's why vista included [unsuccessfully] so many media features, like the media extender for the xbox 360 and why they made windows FLP to compete with linux and piracy in the third world:
does it let netbook vendors bundle full-function Windows 7 at a cut-down price, and run the risk of buyers of more expensive hardware wonder why they're suffering price discrimination? Or does it produce a cut-down version of 7 to justify the lower price, and end up making the Linux option look more attractive?
for all of it's failings, vista represents microsoft's concern with security and stability, which are two of the biggest reasons people switch to linux or mac OS.
microsoft looked at the competition and tried to respond. it failed miserably, but at least it responded. a great many american companies could learn something from microsoft.
an example of where microsoft has succeeded in addressing these same concerns are on the server side, with the windows server 2008 core install. the core install is dedicated to a single function and has almost no gui. this is said to take up less disk and memory, to be more stable and secure, and to require less maintenance.
Provided that more and more people use notebooks as work machines ( not home computers ) then I can see how it can decrease sales.
i don't think that many corporations will be deploying netbooks since the typical road warrior has a very specific idea in mind of what a laptop is and should be.
now, the idea of a netbook as a supplement to a desktop might have some value to corporate users, especially if it can add low cost mobility to people who do things that require high end desktops (engineers, graphic artists, etc.) rather than trying to solve both problems with a high-end laptop.
You should be fair to Baker. His argument wasn't that decreasing price for a single product causes average selling price to go down for that product, it was that selling prices would go down across the board, including desktops and laptops.
welcome to the industry. the bathroom is down the hall and on the left.
the price of computer hardware is constantly falling, netbooks are just the current indicator. in the past it was cheap desktops, server appliances, shared web hosting, or $500 laptops.
when you consider that in the 50's a computer was tens of millions of dollars, the race to the bottom becomes apparent.
my netbook, an EEE 700, purchased last christmas for $350, is less than half the machine that you can get this year for the same price. in another two years, a $250 netbook will have more power than my current gaming rig.
now the cellphone that you got for free from your carrier has more power and functionality than was available to NASA during the apollo program and with nice desktops hovering around the $500 mark, the idea of multiple people sharing time on a single system seems barbaric.
it seems that about every 5 years, some new thing shakes up the hardware market and people talk about the end of the industry as we know it. in a sense they are right.
i remember when the sub $1000 desktop was a big deal in the mid 90's, right around the time that consumer access to the internet became commercially viable.
the price of a desktop fell below $500 a few years later when ISPs started subsidizing the price with service contracts. coincidentally, this is when dial-up internet access fell bleow $20 a month and DSL made AOL pretty much irrelevant.
in 1999, e-machines made the infamous "E-one" which was a computer built into the monitor for $399 when subsidized by the ISP.
the only difference between now and a decade ago is that that ISPs are no longer subsidizing the cost of the PC and netbooks offer a much smaller form factor than previous low end notebooks and desktops.
the $500 laptop was a reality around 2002 which is when they started being a fixture in every classroom.
that's the way the hardware industry works, as the sale price falls you have to sell more and more units. this is why blade servers were so popular a couple of years ago (double the servers in half the space!!1!) and why "teh cloud" is such a big deal this year.
with evdo, 3g, and the prospect of wimax or ubiquitous wifi, i think the Next Big Thing will be the tiny laptop as a replacement for a smart phone, and/or the super smartphone as a replacement for a laptop.
the redfly mobile companion is not yet ready for prime time, in my opinion, but it's a signal of what's to come in mobile computing: http://www.celiocorp.com
imagine a device like that for the iphone. there would be little need for a macbook.
the day my account would reset with credits was a shopping spree. had the $20 a month plan, which i would bottom out in a matter of minutes with older indie/punk/ska tracks.
i also discovered the vitamin string quartet thru emusic, and got classical string versions of a lot of popular songs.
but if i forgot to buy tracks for a month, then i lost $20.
for a while i set calendar reminders but instead i decided to just let it go.
if you have to pay by the track, i wish you could just bank unused credits.
In business, "insider information" (i.e., classified information) is no longer considered classified once it's been leaked and people know about it. I don't see why that shouldn't apply here as well.
the government is not a business, no matter how profitable it may be. this is a law enforcement and potentially an intelligence issue, where the rules of business do not apply.
the american intelligence community (military, national, even law enforcement) has long maintained "secrets" that have become common knowledge.
jimmy carter admitted that the US uses spy satellites like 30 years ago, yet the intelligence community continues to states that they can "neither confirm or deny the use of satellites". the term they prefer to use is "airborne reconnaissance" which implies planes, drones, and "perhaps" satellites.
The only problem I see is that they aren't able to cover every conversation to be able to pick out all those considering heinous acts.
there are two phases to every intelligence operation: collection and analysis. it's easy to collect intelligence (bugs, taps, cameras, radar, etc.) but analyzing it is far more involved. it takes trained personnel hours to go through relatively small amounts of intel.
if you want to monitor everything, it would take billions of man hours, which translates to tons of money.
Tap my phone for all I care, I'm not breaking the law and I'm not threatening the government.
how do you know that?
so you agree with every single person in every administration that comes into power?
at some point everyone disagrees with their government, or at the very least, disagrees with someone in their government. if the government is watching you, at some point you are going to do something they don't like and they will take action against it. that's the problem.
if you are tapping phones to stop terrorism, then the government needs to prove that the people being tapped are under reasonable suspicion of being involved with terrorism.
if what the government is doing is right, then they shouldn't have a problem explaining it to the people and there is no need for secrecy.
You're right, there is no casual connection.
What else could explain away the violence in our society??
The availability of guns and knives??
if you rounded up all the guns and knives we would just keep killing each other with sticks and stones.
video games and violence are just the latest boogie man. in the 80's it was devil worship and cults. in the 70's it was music that made kids commit suicide. in the 50's it was rock and roll that caused interracial dating... and communism.
society has been on the verge of collapse from one evil or another for as long as there has been society, except for maybe that first 15 minutes at the beginning.
i love hearing when people inside of and benefiting from a flawed system speak out against them.
this is why i like cory doctorow's writing. as a sci-fi writer, doctorow has much to gain from IP law, and yet he, like the anonymous software engineer, would 'would "press that button" and get rid of IP law immediately, given the chance.'
They probably don't block inbound traffic, but are blocking inbound ports. Just about every ISP in the country will do that to prevent unauthorized traffic. If you want to run a web server, you better be willing to get a dedicated bandwidth connection. You know, a T1 or greater.
that's why god invented non standard ports. no ISP blocks connections to arbitrary high numbered ports, otherwise most networked applications (IM, games, you name it) stop working.
it's stupid to prevent home servers since most home web servers are homework projects anyway and never generate the kind of traffic that would justify a T1.
every person i know that runs a server out of their house is doing so as a proof of concept, either to learn a new operating system or programming language, or to become familiar with an application before deploying it for real on some sort of hosting.
the truth is, the uplink on any residential connection is too slow to make the web server usable for more than a few concurrent connections, i.e. not useful for much more than testing or having fun with a few friends. that's hardly enough users to make any money on a service. even if your intent was to profit, a T1 is still a bad investment. it would be more profitable to go with shared web hosting or a leased virtual machine.
so, the myth of running a commercial service on a residential connection is false, not because ISP's are so great at stopping unauthorized servers, but because it's just not profitable.
if you want to run a server (web, email, or otherwise) from your house, just run it on a non-standard port. there are tons of services that can help you make the change in ports transparent for free or for a very low price (no-ip.com, namecheap.com, dyndns.com, etc.)
it's totally possible to run a server on your residential connection against the wishes of your ISP and in spite of their best efforts to thwart you. it's really not possible to make money doing so since uplink speed is an issue on any residential service.
what about a business model that works for a musician that has no musical talent, no knowledge of the internet or business, and no time or willingness to develop music or do any sort of promotion?
ha ha, see your free model breaks down and now everyone has to go back to buying CDs!!! check me out, i beat the internet!
They won't. That's why we're hoping someone forcibly introduces changes that allow others to compete.
you mean through force of arms, right?
there is no political solution that can counter the sheer volume of money that has been invested in the status quo.
there is no way that the coin operated politicos in DC are going to let stop accepting all that telco money, unless forced to do so by a larger force, like an armed revolt.
On the post: EFF Explains Why You Should Be Allowed To Sell Promo CDs
Re:
they're not packaged for individual sale, meaning that the packaging does not meet the FDA's requirements for labeling (ingredients, nutritional information, etc.)
On the post: ASCAP Working To Shut Up Free Culture Supporters
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: speaking out isn't shutting others up
well, god forbid someone work hard on selling something. i guess avoiding hard work is a good idea as any to go into music.
and why give up revenue streams?
here's a revenue stream for you: why not try to save some money and stop paying money to lawyers to sue grandmothers who can't pay, and hiring network snoops to unsuccessfully spy on people's downloads (you know, like mediasentry), and spending money on digital rights management technology that doesn't work. that's a good idea.
i'm not much of and economist but i am pretty sure that spending money on stuff that doesn't help you is not a good business practice. maybe one of you MBA's can explain to me why companies keep doing it.
i guess if you follow the RIAA logic that not making money on every download is the same as losing money... then not spending money on lawyers, DRM, and mediasentry should be the same thing as making money, right?
On the post: Warner Music Takes Down Popular Star Wars Acapella Video
Re: A Theory
On the post: Transparency Not Just About Access To The Press
Re: Showing pointlessness of MSM
it's worse than that.
it's a feedback loop:
the government gives the press an "exclusive" on something. the papers print it. then the government goes on TV and says, "don't take our word for it, take a look at the papers."
that's exactly how the run up to the invasion of iraq worked.
On the post: Agenda For Sunday Morning: Paper, Brunch, Porn
Re:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/hoecakes-recipe/index.html
On the post: Unsigned Band Thrilled It's One Of The 'Most Pirated'
Re: Again it's about choice....
sure they have a choice. they have all the choice in the world. they can choose and choose until end of time and it won't make a single bit of difference because people download stuff and don't care if it's authorized or not.
it happens and you can't stop it. it's impossible. you might as well sit in your front yard and yell at the sun to not rise tomorrow morning. the end result will be the same: the sun will rise tomorrow just like it always has, and intellectual property will be downloaded, just like it always has, and you will look like an idiot crybaby who wants something that just isn't going to happen.
Mike doesn't seem to want acknowledge that if you are already famous and have a following that people stealing rather than buying your work isn't right.
perhaps you didn't get the memo: the world changed. people don't buy CDs any more. either sell something else or get a real job.
it's a simple fact: if you make something digital it will be distributed digitally, whether you want it to or not. hell, even if your is merely capable of being digitized, it will be distributed digitally.
that's the way the world works: grass is green, water is wet, the sky is blue, size matters, and people download stuff without your authorization.
the thing that all you "downloading is theft" types don't want to acknowledge is that there isn't a single thing that you can do stop people from downloading your stuff. you can rant and rave about right and wrong, and about bits and bytes, and about how they are no different from your identity, but that has nothing to do with the fact that it will never be any harder to exchange bits and bytes than it is at this very moment, and it will only get easier from here on out.
so you can waste your time, effort, and money, whining about what's happening to you and your precious intellectual property, or you can do something to make downloading work in your favor.
sure, you have a choice. you can choose certain failure (i.e. whining about/trying to stop downloading) or you can choose to do something that has a chance of succeeding. the choice is yours.
On the post: Raising Some Questions About Smoking Gun Sex Offender Profiles On MySpace
we need more pedophiles on xbox live
we should round up the pedophiles from myspace and turn them loose on xbox live for a few months and see if we can cull the squeaker population to a manageable level.
On the post: Unsigned Band Thrilled It's One Of The 'Most Pirated'
Re:
i think TPB is a different market than youtube. in my completely biased unscientific and purely anecdotal experience reading comments on both sites the youtube audience tends to be younger, more american, and not as... articulate... as the pirate bay's.
TPB has a higher mix of europeans, especially scandinavians, and while it has it's fair share of jack asses, you tube seems to have cornered the market on inarticulate commenters.
but don't take my word for it, here's an XKCD comic to prove my assertions: http://xkcd.com/481
based on my personal bias, and after listening to a couple GW tracks (there is almost no mention of adorable kitttycats) i am not surprised at all that they get no love on youtube.
On the post: Not A Music Industry Crisis -- It's A CD Crisis
Re:
i think that you might be confusing the music industry, the business activities that are associated with music, and the institution that is known as The Music Industry(TM). they are two very distinct entities.
it's bad when one thing becomes two.
the general industry is fine, just look at the sales of all things music related. the outlook for music never looked better: new artists are everywhere and there are more channels for promotion and distribution than ever.
the business of selling CDs is doomed, and the institution that was built around those sales is doomed along with those declining sales. people just aren't buying them in the quantities that they used to. the CD is no longer the source of revenue it once was.
as more and more people flee the failing institution (consumers, artists, promoters, etc.) and return to the general industry associated with music, the general industry will eclipse the institution, and we will once again view these distinct entities as one.
On the post: Netbooks Damaging The Tech Economy? Say What?!?
Re: It's About Margins
the PC hardware market for traditional desktops and traditional laptops is about as big as it's going to get.
how do you convince people to buy an extra laptop or desktop when they already have budgeted (money, space, and in some cases, power and cooling) for a desktop and/or a laptop?
one option is to make models that cost less and use fewer resources (space, power, etc.) and are engineered for specific uses (set top box, portable email/surfing).
intel knows this and so does microsoft. that's why vista included [unsuccessfully] so many media features, like the media extender for the xbox 360 and why they made windows FLP to compete with linux and piracy in the third world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Fundamentals_for_Legacy_PCs
does it let netbook vendors bundle full-function Windows 7 at a cut-down price, and run the risk of buyers of more expensive hardware wonder why they're suffering price discrimination? Or does it produce a cut-down version of 7 to justify the lower price, and end up making the Linux option look more attractive?
for all of it's failings, vista represents microsoft's concern with security and stability, which are two of the biggest reasons people switch to linux or mac OS.
microsoft looked at the competition and tried to respond. it failed miserably, but at least it responded. a great many american companies could learn something from microsoft.
an example of where microsoft has succeeded in addressing these same concerns are on the server side, with the windows server 2008 core install. the core install is dedicated to a single function and has almost no gui. this is said to take up less disk and memory, to be more stable and secure, and to require less maintenance.
On the post: Netbooks Damaging The Tech Economy? Say What?!?
Re: some merit
i don't think that many corporations will be deploying netbooks since the typical road warrior has a very specific idea in mind of what a laptop is and should be.
now, the idea of a netbook as a supplement to a desktop might have some value to corporate users, especially if it can add low cost mobility to people who do things that require high end desktops (engineers, graphic artists, etc.) rather than trying to solve both problems with a high-end laptop.
On the post: Netbooks Damaging The Tech Economy? Say What?!?
Re:
welcome to the industry. the bathroom is down the hall and on the left.
the price of computer hardware is constantly falling, netbooks are just the current indicator. in the past it was cheap desktops, server appliances, shared web hosting, or $500 laptops.
when you consider that in the 50's a computer was tens of millions of dollars, the race to the bottom becomes apparent.
my netbook, an EEE 700, purchased last christmas for $350, is less than half the machine that you can get this year for the same price. in another two years, a $250 netbook will have more power than my current gaming rig.
the internet was invented essentially because it was cheaper to connect research computers together than it was to buy them for the research teams that needed them:
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674
now the cellphone that you got for free from your carrier has more power and functionality than was available to NASA during the apollo program and with nice desktops hovering around the $500 mark, the idea of multiple people sharing time on a single system seems barbaric.
it seems that about every 5 years, some new thing shakes up the hardware market and people talk about the end of the industry as we know it. in a sense they are right.
i remember when the sub $1000 desktop was a big deal in the mid 90's, right around the time that consumer access to the internet became commercially viable.
the price of a desktop fell below $500 a few years later when ISPs started subsidizing the price with service contracts. coincidentally, this is when dial-up internet access fell bleow $20 a month and DSL made AOL pretty much irrelevant.
in 1999, e-machines made the infamous "E-one" which was a computer built into the monitor for $399 when subsidized by the ISP.
http://lowendmac.com/imac/eone.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EOne
the only difference between now and a decade ago is that that ISPs are no longer subsidizing the cost of the PC and netbooks offer a much smaller form factor than previous low end notebooks and desktops.
the $500 laptop was a reality around 2002 which is when they started being a fixture in every classroom.
that's the way the hardware industry works, as the sale price falls you have to sell more and more units. this is why blade servers were so popular a couple of years ago (double the servers in half the space!!1!) and why "teh cloud" is such a big deal this year.
with evdo, 3g, and the prospect of wimax or ubiquitous wifi, i think the Next Big Thing will be the tiny laptop as a replacement for a smart phone, and/or the super smartphone as a replacement for a laptop.
the redfly mobile companion is not yet ready for prime time, in my opinion, but it's a signal of what's to come in mobile computing:
http://www.celiocorp.com
imagine a device like that for the iphone. there would be little need for a macbook.
i would also put the safebook in this category as a device that's ahead of it's time:
http://www.devonit.com/products/products_Safebook.php
On the post: Long Tail Not Dead Yet: eMusic Says It's Alive And Well
my emusic experience
i also discovered the vitamin string quartet thru emusic, and got classical string versions of a lot of popular songs.
but if i forgot to buy tracks for a month, then i lost $20.
for a while i set calendar reminders but instead i decided to just let it go.
if you have to pay by the track, i wish you could just bank unused credits.
On the post: Obama Adminstration Sides With Bush Administration In Opposing Warrantless Wiretap Lawsuit
Re: Re:
the government is not a business, no matter how profitable it may be. this is a law enforcement and potentially an intelligence issue, where the rules of business do not apply.
the american intelligence community (military, national, even law enforcement) has long maintained "secrets" that have become common knowledge.
jimmy carter admitted that the US uses spy satellites like 30 years ago, yet the intelligence community continues to states that they can "neither confirm or deny the use of satellites". the term they prefer to use is "airborne reconnaissance" which implies planes, drones, and "perhaps" satellites.
On the post: Obama Adminstration Sides With Bush Administration In Opposing Warrantless Wiretap Lawsuit
Re: I don't see what's wrong
there are two phases to every intelligence operation: collection and analysis. it's easy to collect intelligence (bugs, taps, cameras, radar, etc.) but analyzing it is far more involved. it takes trained personnel hours to go through relatively small amounts of intel.
if you want to monitor everything, it would take billions of man hours, which translates to tons of money.
Tap my phone for all I care, I'm not breaking the law and I'm not threatening the government.
how do you know that?
so you agree with every single person in every administration that comes into power?
at some point everyone disagrees with their government, or at the very least, disagrees with someone in their government. if the government is watching you, at some point you are going to do something they don't like and they will take action against it. that's the problem.
if you are tapping phones to stop terrorism, then the government needs to prove that the people being tapped are under reasonable suspicion of being involved with terrorism.
if what the government is doing is right, then they shouldn't have a problem explaining it to the people and there is no need for secrecy.
On the post: New Research Shows No Link Between Violent Video Games And School Shootings
Re: violence
What else could explain away the violence in our society??
The availability of guns and knives??
if you rounded up all the guns and knives we would just keep killing each other with sticks and stones.
video games and violence are just the latest boogie man. in the 80's it was devil worship and cults. in the 70's it was music that made kids commit suicide. in the 50's it was rock and roll that caused interracial dating... and communism.
society has been on the verge of collapse from one evil or another for as long as there has been society, except for maybe that first 15 minutes at the beginning.
On the post: A Patent-Holding Software Engineer Explains Why Software Patents Harm Innovation
i love when insiders speak out
this is why i like cory doctorow's writing. as a sci-fi writer, doctorow has much to gain from IP law, and yet he, like the anonymous software engineer, would 'would "press that button" and get rid of IP law immediately, given the chance.'
On the post: FCC Again Wants Details From Comcast On Its Traffic-Shaping Efforts
that's why god invented non standard ports. no ISP blocks connections to arbitrary high numbered ports, otherwise most networked applications (IM, games, you name it) stop working.
it's stupid to prevent home servers since most home web servers are homework projects anyway and never generate the kind of traffic that would justify a T1.
every person i know that runs a server out of their house is doing so as a proof of concept, either to learn a new operating system or programming language, or to become familiar with an application before deploying it for real on some sort of hosting.
the truth is, the uplink on any residential connection is too slow to make the web server usable for more than a few concurrent connections, i.e. not useful for much more than testing or having fun with a few friends. that's hardly enough users to make any money on a service. even if your intent was to profit, a T1 is still a bad investment. it would be more profitable to go with shared web hosting or a leased virtual machine.
so, the myth of running a commercial service on a residential connection is false, not because ISP's are so great at stopping unauthorized servers, but because it's just not profitable.
if you want to run a server (web, email, or otherwise) from your house, just run it on a non-standard port. there are tons of services that can help you make the change in ports transparent for free or for a very low price (no-ip.com, namecheap.com, dyndns.com, etc.)
it's totally possible to run a server on your residential connection against the wishes of your ISP and in spite of their best efforts to thwart you. it's really not possible to make money doing so since uplink speed is an issue on any residential service.
On the post: How One 'No Name' Musician Used Free Music To Build A Following
ok smartguy
ha ha, see your free model breaks down and now everyone has to go back to buying CDs!!! check me out, i beat the internet!
On the post: New FCC, Telecom Committee Chairs: What's In Store?
Re: Re: competition in telecommunications?
you mean through force of arms, right?
there is no political solution that can counter the sheer volume of money that has been invested in the status quo.
there is no way that the coin operated politicos in DC are going to let stop accepting all that telco money, unless forced to do so by a larger force, like an armed revolt.
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