How many times yesterday did you do a web search that led you to a Wikipedia page that then didn’t load because of that site’s SOPA protest? I didn’t notice the effect immediately but once I did I was later able to go back through my browser history and see that I tried and failed to open a total of 13 Wikipedia pages so far. Whether you give a damn about SOPA or public protest, this experience has given me a whole new respect for the role Wikipedia has come to play in my life and probably yours.
As a result I made a small donation to Wikipedia around lunchtime then cursed it the rest of the day for failing me seven more times.
As for the SOPA/PIPA protest itself, I sympathize. But in my view what we have here is mainly a conflict of business models, dying industries, and really, really poor design that will work itself out over time.
Remember the record album — the LP? Some were great, most were not. Too many B tracks if you ask me. The music industry has long had a problem of value. The groups I liked sometimes didn’t have many good songs. The record companies would put one or two good songs on an LP or CD, then throw in 10 more that weren’t so good. There were no warning labels which matter to me now that I am a parent. All we wanted were good songs at a reasonable price, which didn’t mean the 15-20 percent yield we were getting from albums.
Then came iTunes and all those problems went away. iTunes did more than just sell the songs the record companies were pushing: they sold whole collections of music. As a result, more, not less, music was sold, most of it the good stuff. Music — if not the recording industry — is better as a result. Steve Jobs proved thinking about the consumer is very good business.
Now we have SOPA and PIPA. I would like to have the same ability to build an online movie library as I have done with music, but there are big problems with this, starting with Windows Media Center and, yes, even iTunes — pretty good products in their own right that protect the copyrights of stored content. That part is okay. But they have very little third party support. Then there is the problem of content. I can buy only a fraction of what I’d like to get and it is scattered over several suppliers. If the movie and TV industries think I am going to subscribe to 5-10 services for $10-25 a month each, they’re nuts.
The movie and TV industries are doing now exactly what the recording industry did before iTunes. SOPA and PIPA will die but they’ll be replaced with something just as bad because lawmakers are stupid and producers are afraid of the future — a future that’s coming no matter what the entertainment industry does. For the money they are spending on lobbying, a design team could develop a new system that would make more money by exposing more content, not less, enabling new business models in the process. At least that’s my take on it.
Changing subjects, Jerry Yang recently got his choice of replacement CEOs again (Jerry’s fourth CEO — fifth if you include choosing himself in 2007) then almost immediately bailed from his every Yahoo connection: what’s up with that? I wish I knew, but I have some suspicions. An intervention, perhaps? Jerry was such an obstructionist to Yahoo moving forward in almost any direction that someone on the inside may finally have told him to sit down and shut up, which I am sure Tim Koogle wanted to do many times.
I can see Jack Ma making a preemptive move like that, saying he’ll pay $1 billion more for Yahoo’s Alibaba stake if Jerry takes a hike first.
Nah, sounds too simple. More likely Yang finally got tired of playing the bad cop and decided to retire to his private golf course. I’ll be very interested to see what his next career move will be. Off the board and owning less than five percent of the company (no SEC reporting requirements) it could be trying to make money trading on what’s sure to be a wild ride for Yahoo over the next several months.
Another change of subject — remember my problem just after Christmas trying to upgrade Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional using one of those instant upgrade cards I bought at WalMart? Though I tried to do the upgrade every day, it wasn’t until this past weekend — two and a half weeks after I started — that the Windows Instant Upgrade website was no longer down for maintenance. I’m not making this up nor can I be the only person with this particular problem, yet run a Google News search and you’ll see I’m almost the only person to write about it. What’s with that?
Well it is certainly humbling for me: I’m clearly not the hotshot reporter thought I was or possibly use to be. But it also brings into question the whole idea of viral growth in news stories and why one story gets picked up and another doesn’t. It beats the crap out of me why it happens. One thing I don’t suspect, though, is any concerted effort by Microsoft to shape the news other than by simply ignoring me. I certainly felt no pressure from them.
Frankly, I wish I had been pressured by Microsoft. That would have been fun.
And now that I have Windows RDP service to my thin clients from a brand new Windows 7 server, how is it working out for my trio of young users? Terrible. Even elementary school gamers overload this system despite first 8 and now 16 gigs of DDR3 RAM. Thin clients (and thick — I’ve tried both) fail the FusionFall test.
How quickly would an alternative way, an alternative DNS service, would be working to circunvent SOPA, etc? I mean, the IP addresses will be there, you just need a nice, easy way to head along to those sites. Maybe a new business idea looms in the horizon.
The problem with that would be that the client software would be illegal.
It’s already illegal to pirate. So legality is not the issue since those who pirate would acquire the software to do it.
But the client software would be your regular software you use every day. Just publish an alternate DNS server. It would be a “separate” internet, which I’m surprised hasn’t really taken off already. There’s no reason that ICANN should be the _only_ primary registrar, except that it’s vastly convenient for most of the world.
Oh, yes, obviously, why didn’t the DNS geeks think of this? Just upgrade every computer on the Internet. That’ll fix it!
The DNS is the only distributed database _ever_ to have been this successful. It happened partly by luck, but it also happened because, despite its many really awful warts, it is remarkably good at what we want from it. And it only uses UDP.
The idea that some clever tricksters will come along and just work around the poison the US Gubmint seems to want to put into it is lovely, but disastrously naïve. If we permit that kind of fragmentation of the Internet namespace, the Internet itself will become massively less useful.
But I don’t think actually replacing the DNS would be necessary. The DNS is already polluted will all sorts of botnet fast-fluxers in the DNS: you can set up a new domain in minutes. I think that the attempt by ignorant legislators to protect a dying oligarchy will actually make those uses stronger and more legitimate. It will mean we’ll have even more crap flowing around the Internet; but we’ll also be sticking a finger in the eye of the MPAA. I can’t decide which scenario depresses me more.
Regarding Microsoft services, I’ve just uninstalled their Family Safety component of Windows Live after the site has been down many days and been unable to allow me to add a web site to the allowed white list. This in the middle of the Australian school holidays. Unbelievable.
Instead of home-built cloud gaming system via RDP, you might give OnLive a try. It works extremely well using what I assume must be voodoo or black magic.
From where I sit, SOPA and PIPA have two flaws: implementation and scope.
The proposed implementation is both flawed (is the US really going to be able to prevent its citizens using DNS services hosted outside its borders? I don’t think so) and open to abuse (by government, rival businesses or enemies).
The scope problem is IMO the more important. By limiting attention to the demands of RIAA and the movie producers, legislation seems to be totally ignoring the problems of photographers, authors, journalists and software writers, all of whom are equally deserving of good copyright protection. In addition, all the changes seem to be in the favour of large corporations and working against both creators and the general public. Of course Google, news aggregators and friends are in favour of SOPA – their current business model depends on free access to copyrighted material: the BBC is famous for scrubbing all attributions off the photos it uses. The same goes for publishers in general, with ridiculously extended copyright periods and their “all copyright are belong to us” attitude.
It would be much fairer to everybody if copyright was non-transferrable and lapsed as soon as distribution of the work ceased or the creator dies, whichever is later. The creator’s relatives would then be in the same position as if the creator was an employee who popped his clogs: no free ride for life. That seems fair to me.
Publishers could still benefit by signing publication contracts with the creator as at present, but when, say a book goes out of print the first time, that’s it: publication rights and fees end at that point and the work goes into the public domain.
I totally agree, limit the copyright!
Invent a great life saving medicine and you can protect it for 10-15 years. Write a song ant it’s protected for now 70 years. Ridiculous.
You are way short, my friend: it’s author’s life+70, or 95 from publication. Put those remixes on ice ice, baby.
With Print-on-Demand nothing would ever go out of print.
Making copyright non-transferable would have a problem for all software companies. These companies need to be able to transfer the copyright of their software from their employees to the company itself. Otherwise, an employee could walk away from the company and take the copyright with them.
By default, copyright belongs to the writer.
Not if it is a work for hire…
You missed the more obvious comparison, IMO, which is that Hollywood is repeating its reaction of 30 years ago to what was then perceived as the threat to survival of the entertainment industry … the VCR/Betamax.
Note that the content owners-distributors knee-jerk response to technology disruption is to seek legislative relief. The same executives who scream “piracy” and “unfair” and “illegal” are the same ones who, reportedly, use creative accounting techniques to understate their actual profits to screw the content-creators from their share of those profits.
And so it goes.
Thank you for separating “producers” into at two semi-adversarial camps. The IP owners gravitate into selfprotective cartels that buy legislators and the creations of artists, while creative artists get screwed.
The current crop of aggregators don’t exert themselves to integrate any of your individual libraries, books, films, music into astute projections of your tastes.
We’ve always been customers for, rather than depreciating consumers of copies of their often-appreciating distributed goods. And I don’t much like the way plastics taste.
“because lawmakers are stupid”
No – because lawmakers are for sale.
Which in effect still makes them stupid. Watched CSPAN lately?
1. lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull.
2. characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless: a stupid question.
3. tediously dull, especially due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless: a stupid party.
4. annoying or irritating; troublesome: Turn off that stupid radio.
5. in a state of stupor; stupefied: stupid from fatigue.
You can’t buy legislators, you can only rent them.
Unless you are a church in which case you can really own their souls
You can be sure the news would have spread if you claimed Microsoft was pressuring you. 🙂
PIPA is DOA. Senators are fleeing! AppleTV and iCloud (or something like it) will be the answer if the content creators start thinking.
‘Thinking’ being the operative word.
Economics of the well-trodden path.
All bubbles occur when there is a well-known path to a return.
There is a classical bias error of misperceiving the easy as the correct (and misperceiving the clear as the close…why Mt Ranier and Mt Wachsman–germany are viewed as moving and/or growing).
So, lobbying yes, new business model….no, but one can start a new business with a new model (I think you are the expert on how this occurs).
I too tried to upgrade a customer with the Anytime Upgrade last week. I even called and got a message that the Anytime Upgrade Store was closed. Unbelievable. What also was funny was the first price was $119. That got changed to $199 in the cart. Ended up getting an OEM disk for $110. Don’t know what they are thinking.
A little off topic, but as a music lover, I have to say iTunes and the internet killed the concept album. There are many great albums from start to finish that are so much more then the sum of their parts.
In the digital world where people randomly listen to songs, you don’t get the ‘album’ experience and that to me is sad.
I wish progress wasn’t over simplified to make room for the details, which is where the real gold is.
I agree somewhat. iTunes et al didn’t kill them entirely though. Mae’s Everglow album would be an exception.
Musicians killed the concept album. Putting one or two good songs on an album ans filling it out with junk is abuse to your fan base. I still buy whole albums when I find one worth buying; Court of the Crimson King, recently.
I’ve been in the music business since 1995, first as a singer/songwriter, then as a music producer, engineer, and sometimes label liaison. There are few greater myths than your above statement, as it pertains to artists. I don’t really know of *any* artists who intentionally stocked their albums with “filler” material. Every artist I have ever known or worked with has always wanted to put the best album out that they could possibly create. Sometimes, they were only able to write a few truly compelling songs, with the rest of the album being not as interesting, but I don’t know *anyone* who intentionally put songs on an album that were intended as “filler”. It’s a popular myth, but untrue.
It’s a strange myth, too. It really does cost just as much money to put a bad song on an album as it does to put a good one on, so there really wasn’t as much of an incentive to use “filler” by the labels as some people seem to think. Almost universally, record labels have always wanted to release the highest quality albums that they can. The mistakes the major labels have made are legion, but intentionally putting out crap is not generally among them.
Of course. they have spent far too long chasing the bottom line rather than considering artistic concerns paramount, but they’ve never wanted to put out total *junk*.
I am in my 50’s. When I was a kid the music groups could produce enough content to fill a whole album. When my kids were old enough to enjoy the music of their generation, things were different. Many of the groups they liked had only 1 or 2 good songs on a CD. My kids were quite disappointed when they spent $15 hoping to get a dozen good songs and only getting 1. This did happen and it happened a lot.
The bigger problem for me as a parent was what was on some of those “filler” songs. The one or two popular songs and the CD were being marketed to 12-15 year olds. Some of those “filler” songs were completely inappropriate. Several times I personally took those opened CD’s back to the record store and demanded a refund, and got it. In this area of the USA the record stores got the message pretty fast and started advising families what to buy and what not to buy. This was years before the industry agreed to warning labels.
Thinking about the consumer is indeed very good business.
It is pretty bad when 12 year olds figure out how to rip and copy music. They didn’t do it to avoid paying for copyrighted music. The did it because they were being ripped off.
The *CD* killed the concept album, because people could skip the tracks they didn’t like (more easily). When I really want to have an album, I buy it on *vinyl*.
(And it was the *cassette tape* that killed the album cover art.)
If we are talking of albums as a collection of individual songs, then there are few desirable albums, with the possible exception of Christmas and musicals, which would be a small minority.
Still think you should have used a Mac Mini and VNC. That game supports Macs. And Macs JUST WORK.
Unless, of course, they have Lion on them, in which case they JUST SUCK.
“Courtney Love does the math”, a Salon, June 2000, article is a good read with an artists’s view on piracy and music:
https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
The reason you don’t hear anyone else complain when Microsoft’s ridiculous attempts to prevent their customers from using their products is successful, is that everyone besides you gets fed up and just downloads a pirated unlocked copy of whatever they need.
After using a legitimately purchased copy of Windows XP for 5 years (bought it @ the college bookstore when I was a student), Microsoft decided my activation key was no longer valid. Went round & round with them for a while, with them insisting I needed to get a hold of the college & get a new key.
Yeah right. Instead I got a pirated OEM unlock key from the internet & found out how to change it in the registry so Windows recognized it. Problem solved, and I never paid Microsoft money for a product again (switched to Linux shortly after that).
I believe you are not guilty of copyright infringement and subject to 4 years in prison.
You’ve covered all the keywords. Hope this article will bring you some clicks whatever it’s about.
“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
I think your reporter mojo is okay. Microsoft products not working correctly simply isn’t news.
Told Ya 🙂
I don’t know that lawmakers are stupid; I think they are just so far removed from the travails of the public that they don’t care, and that makes them more susceptible to influence from lobbyists.
Perhaps they vote in line with whomever pays them more. Is that what you’re saying? How do other countries keep their legislators pure or unsullied by money from corporate lobbyists?
> How do other countries keep their legislators pure or unsullied by money from corporate lobbyists?
By not having primary elections 10 months before the main election. With MANY months of required advertising, American politicians need LARGE donations in order to successfully campaign.
I’m surprised that you were unable to use Wikipedia since it was well-known that disabling Java let you use the site as usual. In my case, since I only enable Java when I really need it, I had to go looking to find the Wikipedia protest page because I didn’t notice any difference.
You also had me confused by the statement that the groups you liked sometimes didn’t have many good songs. Then why did you like them, because of their outfits? Sounds like you liked a few of their songs but not the groups themselves.
I do like having samples of all songs available but, while not as simple, even many decades ago there were still ways of finding out if an album was worth buying such as radio airplay, listening at a friend’s house, or record stores that let you preview. You might recall that the early Beatles albums didn’t even have the singles on them because those were considered complete releases on their own. The albums still sold well. (And I’ve never heard of “B-tracks”; the term I know is B-sides, which only refers to 45s.)
I must say, sometimes I really like the B-tracks, or essentially the songs you got when you bought the album, even though they’re not why you bought it. Personally I believe that there are problems with being too pervasive about choosing the information that goes into your head. That goes especially for news, but it goes for music, too. I prefer a station that isn’t -too- suited to my likes, because sometimes it helps me find something new to like.
I have java disabled but still got the blackout screen.
I just hit CMD-PERIOD (stop loading) after the page loaded and before the black screen loaded. Worked without problems.
@ JJ:
+1, my man.
“Sounds like you liked a few of their songs but not the groups themselves.” Exactly. When it comes to art, some people like the art, others like the artist. Back in the days when the single was king and songs from different artists made the top 10, the “A” tracks were in the top 10 and the “B” tracks were in the top 100. Of course the artists always did their best on every song or album, but that didn’t stop the art lovers from being selective about what they like.
“If the movie and TV industries think I am going to subscribe to 5-10 services for $10-25 a month each, they’re nuts.”
You may be already, as many of us are. It’s called ‘cable tv’, it comes with a LOT of terrible content, still missing a LOT of good content, and regularly changes the content but keeps billing us.
Cable is dying, but not until the ‘video industry’ unleashes content and figures out they can sell almost everything to someone, they just have to acknowlege the new realities, such as the market price, distribution, etc.
It’s an old problem. Can you sell 100,000 fo $14.95, 1,000,000 for $1.49, or 10,000,000 for $0.75? And what if you can sell it again and again for $0.45?
Which option do you like best? So far, it seems the movie and tv industries like no change, which is not going to last of course. Some new player(s) will come along and get me interested in a YouTube or whatever serial, and I’ll be that much closer to giving up cable. And someone will bring out a compelling movie-length presentation I can subscribe to for a few bucks, and I’ll be missing the popcorn at the theatre. Well, maybe not so much missing it.
I’m content with netflix streaming along with youtube and ps3 streaming movie rentals.
Cable TV – what a racket! I remember back in the early-80’s time frame, there were no commercials on cable TV. You paid for the content – much like HBO today.
Today, not only am I paying for the cable – I’m also being forced to watch commercials.
My Pop and my Grandpa NEVER had to pay – aside from watching commercials from time to time – usually in between shows – rather than the 20 mins of commercials of an hour long show (that could really have been viewed in 30 mins without the commercials) that I have to endure today. I guess I’m a sap.
(Wife and kids won’t let me shut down the cable in lieu of streaming youtube/netflix etc – but I’m working on it.)
There are many problems with PIPA and SOPA, but most of those get a lot of bandwidth elsewhere.
First and still the most important is the collateral damage they do, even as they fail to work.
Second, and more insidious is that they shield MPAA and RIAA from adapting to the times. Let’s imagine for a moment that they managed to pass PIPA and SOPA, and lock “their” content up and control ALL access to it, just the way they want to. As a result, “their” content becomes more expensive, more annoying to use, etc. Someone else will come along and begin offering a much more civil way to distribute content, get paid for it, and pay artists. At about that time, “classic” media from the MPAA and RIAA will begin to fade, simply because even though nice, it’s too obnoxious. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see MPAA and RIAA use PIPA/SOPA to block the “new media”, but I’d expect that to be every bit as successful as we all expect it to be at blocking real piracy.
The SOPA/IPA mess has been under-publicized rather than dominating bandwidth.
There is a relation between the SOPA mess and the Wikipedia pause. It may be, as Bob says, that “a conflict of business models, dying industries, and really, really poor design…will work itself out over time.” It would also be a repeat of law makers short on insight and content overseers long on stasis and greed.
Apart from the many technical problems, SOPA would give extra leverage to impulses of the few individual entities, many already powerful, at the expense of the public good. Application of SOPA or its later offspirng could lack transparency, with large possilibility of abuse.
For whatever its imperfections, Wikipedia is an example of widespread enrichment rather than concentration of control. Poor implentation and failure to adapt by the concentrators may relieve things in the long run.
But in an extended intermediate period of “collateral damage” (Phred’s term) many unintended consequences will surface, including restricting functionality of the net, reducing forums for dissidents under autocratic regimes, loss of safe harbor, and diminishing e-commerce and venture capital.
The sums that sustaining Wikipedia and other advancing resources tiny in comparison to the huge costs of advancing SOPA type actions, which have many risks for much of the nation, and problematic implementation.
I find the supposedly ‘unintended’ consequences more troubling than the ones that are immediately exposed.
For example, the subsequent shutdown of tools that allow end users to generate their own content (because they could draw a picture of ‘Mickey Mouse(tm)’ you never know) due to potentially site-destroying infractions based upon an open ended tool.
This raises the barrier of entry for people to create and share their own content by making it too costly for providers to host such tools.
I think if my own experience learning to program back in the 80’s tells me anything it is that having tools available to do interesting things leads to kids exploring and learning – and creating. The opposite, of course, applies.
I can relate. I use Wikipedia very often and I was pretty crippled without being able to access it. That is until I discovered you could use a direct link to the article you were looking for to still access it… 😉
“Google News search” I thought you were on their “Black list” ???
Regarding the LP, I can remember a few albums that were treasured because not only did they have hits but the other, more obscure songs were hidden gems as well. To name a few:
Mud Slide Slim
Tapestry
The White Album
Trick of the Tail
Glass Houses
and more…
I honestly don’t understand the fret and worry about youtube in particular. Isn’t that website, like the LP of old, a place to discover what’s out there and then buy it? For example, I bought a CD because I liked a song that someone used as background music for a web video. If not for that video, I never would have even heard of the band let alone the song.
Rubber Soul
Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Desperado
etc. etc
Boberto,
Are you planning to release the Jobs lost interview on dvd or online? I would like to own a copy of it somehow.
Warmest titillations,
Paul
Inspired by your 2nd paragraph I’ve just made my first donation to Wikipedia.
Hey Bob, regarding Fusion Fall, you may want to check out the system requirements: http://fusionfall.cartoonnetwork.com/help/faqs-technical.php . I imagine each person must have access to all the specified resources including an acceptable browser.
Bob, I am surprised you don’t seem to know about the UltraViolet system (www.uvvu.com) which is being rolled out now.
That seems a credible attempt by the movie industry to allow ready use of multiple formats without unduly restrictive DRM.
Bob,
On the TS front, why didn’t you go with MultiPoint Server instead? It’s actually purpose built to do exactly what you want… https://www.microsoft.com/windows/multipoint/howitworks.aspx
I’m running it in our business so my Mac users can use RDP to access Quickbooks 2012 and our Professional Services Application (the web app isn’t as good as the fat Windows app). Works GREAT!
Aaron
P.S. Couldn’t agree more about the MPAA. Wasting money on lobbyists instead of trying out new business models is just dumb.
Huh, your problems with Microsoft are nothing. My problem started when I got an Xbox 360 second-hand about a year ago. It’s a neat machine and a lot of fun and I have a fair collection of second-hand games now, but I never tried out the Xbox Live “gold” online gaming system, because they want $60 per year for it and I only paid $100 for the entire console. Well one day they emailed me that I could try it for one month for $1. I had heard that Microsoft doesn’t just let you do that but they tie you into a monthly obligation that is incredibly hard to break. Well, I threw caution to the wind and gave it a try. Immediately I found that they were throwing up every roadblock possible to me cancelling after one month, to the extent that it was IMPOSSIBLE to cancel short of using Paypal to deny Microsoft automatically charging my account (or for people who don’t have Paypal, you would literally have to cancel the credit card used for payment). The agreement was to pay for one month but I had to agree to pay for all subsequent months until I was able to get through to customer service and cancel the recurring charge, which technically is possible but practically is not possible. All phone calls could not get through, all emails were rebuffed. The upshot is they strung me along for two more months at $10 apiece (unpaid for since Paypal was told to block) then I was cut off from the service permanently.
Only now can I get in touch with customer service, but they tell me that I am blocked FOR LIFE unless I do one of two things: I must either pay them $20 before I can ever use Xbox Live again, or else I must retire my “gamer tag” and forfeit all game progress I have ever made, in every game I have ever played on Xbox. Are you kidding? Nope. And when I pointed out that I live in Canada, and that so-called “negative option billing” has been illegal since 1997 (which is what the original deal actually boils down to) they told me that Microsoft doesn’t break any laws and I don’t have a leg to stand on, however in their generosity they won’t send any collection agency after me. They also relented and let me have the free xbox live “silver” again, which lets me do system updates. Oh and I find that I am also blocked from Windows Live as well.
I checked with the Canadian Competition Bureau, technically what Microsoft is doing is illegal but because not enough people are complaining they can’t dedicate resources to stop it. The reason people aren’t complaining is because they are by-and-large kids who don’t know they have rights and Microsoft is behaving illegally, plus they never heard of the Competition Bureau. Plus, who cares about kids anyway? But I digress.
Why didn’t you just get a ps3? The gaming network is free; it has a browser to surf the internet and it comes with a blue ray.
I don’t support Wikipedia because of the way the global warming pages are all rigged with bias. Guys like William Connolley and others just don’t allow any honesty on those pages if they are at all a skeptical position. Somehow Wikipedia’s own procedures were used to get Connolley suspended as an editor for awhile, but the problem persists. Richard Lindzen says that report was not based on scientists alone. Then the next sentence says National Academy of Sciences disagreed with him as their panel used scientists and X. I pointed out that this is obviously not a disagreement, and I kept having my edit overwritten.
Someone else pointed out on a particular paper that an editor had received four positive recommendations from reviewers, yet the article kept saying that all four reviewers recommended rejection. They used a source of one reporter who got it wrong over the statement of the editor who said otherwise.
Both of those cases were eventually fixed, but there are many more, including scientists who can’t edit their own biographies.
I am struck at how idle your life is, that Wikipedia is a resource you need 20 times in a single day.
For everything I needed that day, there were other sources. And for the people I helped who “needed” Wikipedia, there are myriad workarounds around the Wikipedia blackout.
I really enjoyed that article.
“The music industry has long had a problem of value”. Agreed.
And so does the TV Production industry. Need a new business model? Stop trying to force every one of your products into a 21 or 43 min slot. The internet is there waiting for you. If a market doesn’t support a show (like Chicago Code which I loved) then reduce production costs by making each episode 28 minutes long (for example) and it’s cheaper to market because it’s on the internet rather than a broadcast medium.
And, finally: Robert Cringely, I don’t care what anybody thinks – you are clearly a hotshot reporter.
– jim
[…] note, I agree with Cringely, no one is going to subscribe to multiple services, it’s part of what’s stopping me […]
Face it, real-time/high performance graphics and game engines do not play well with thin clients. Until you have the power of a water-cooled uber game rig in the space of a sugar cube, this isn’t going to happen. Of course, if you do get to the point of having that — then it won’t be a thin client anyway, ergo – spend some dough on a couple of game rigs and be done with it. You could also leach some of the CPU cycles from those as needed to do interesting things when the boys aren’t playing…if you are so inclined, and your headache would be gone.
Your SOPA-PIPA view is right on the mark. I spent a good deal of time over the past few weeks educating my coworkers and friends on the issues (this TED talk by Professor Clay Shirky was about as simple and clear a rendition of what is at stake as I’ve seen: http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/ted-takes-on-sopa-why-it-would-create-a-consumption-only-internet-video/ ). I was surprised to find how few were aware of this going down, and I’m glad to say I got them all to at least send email to their congress people. One of my friends actually lives in Lamar Smith’s district (the sponsor of the SOPA bill) – and he is seeing what he can do to help NOT get him re-elected next time around.
I had to deal with Yahoo! on a project one time which fell through. ‘Yahoo’ is the correct adjective to use, and I’m not surprised – that’s all I’ve got to say on that one.
“I made a small donation to Wikipedia around lunchtime then cursed it the rest of the day for failing me seven more times.”
There are two ways of donating to Wikipedia: by giving money or by writing content. Bob, do you ever correct articles when you see a mistake or add to them when there is something missing? Wikipedia would be even better if everyone reading this occasionally added something to Wikipedia’s content.
You Write Eloquently. The Emotion and Feel is from the Heart. I Love Visiting Here when I Can. I Sincerely Appreciate the Great Reads. Keep Up the Good Work and I’ll Visit as Often as I can. Glad to have Found You.
Continue the Journey 🙂
Umm..on the thin client thing…I’m not sure why you are having a problem. Have 10+ clients on a win 7 pro machine. 8gig ram, gigabit ethernet or “N” depending. (Well it is an intel I7) . Its not even sweating. Did you try to search MSDN? I have never tried the anytime upgrade, but the windows versions that are pre-installed on an off the shelf machine are usually hacked up.
Just have the option for ALAC downloads. Then obtain a set of speakers that meet your standards, for the way much of an audiophile you might be, and there we’ve got it.Not every person needs a $100,000 set of speakers, and also for the few who is able to hear the difference (and the even fewer who are able to reasonably afford it), have advertising online. Not everyone can hear the real difference between 320 kbps and ALAC, its not all speakers can reproduce a positive change, and not everyone cares; that’s okay.Music is definitely an art, the same as artwork itself. If you’re able to be content to view a 4 megapixel image of the Hireling shepherd on your computer, that’s fine. Others would not be content until they notice in person.And so i sort of accept him that digital music is shuffled around in a degraded state, but it doesn’t have to be, as well as those who care enough, it isn’t. As for piracy, Baby, Get Your Head Screwed On
Bob should be careful in choosing titles for his columns: “…other weird thoughts”
Yeah – iTunes eliminated junk tracks. In favour of degraded tracks.
Look – a recording of a performance loses tons of the sonic goodness supplied if you were at the performance with your human ears because of the limitations of the recording process! And then an .mp3 comes along and dumps another significant portion of it. We’re training an entire generation of brains NOT to hear things!
Oh well – it’s probably the same as listening to a hit on a car radio in the early 60s…
🙁
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