I particularly like your comment about walking and hearing the neighbors conversation, no doubt there will be some who will try this as a form of defense, if they haven’t already.

It will be very interesting to see how all of this is handled in the future that is for sure.
Regards
Adirec

I particularly like your comment about walking and hearing the neighbors conversation, no doubt there will be some who will try this as a form of defense, if they haven’t already.

It will be very interesting to see how all of this is handled in the future that is for sure.
Regards
Adirec

Of course if Boeing took the same attitude as Microsoft in building the things — lets let it fly and when it crashes we’ll fix the bugs — I would be more than reluctant to step on board.

What’s going on here?

I never use windows — strictly an apple biter — and when things don’t happen the way I want I call my son, who, following some sighing that seems to register a an understanding of the impenetrable depth of my ignorance, informs me of a few key strokes that solve my problem.

Of course if Boeing took the same attitude as Microsoft in building the things — lets let it fly and when it crashes we’ll fix the bugs — I would be more than reluctant to step on board.

What’s going on here?

I never use windows — strictly an apple biter — and when things don’t happen the way I want I call my son, who, following some sighing that seems to register a an understanding of the impenetrable depth of my ignorance, informs me of a few key strokes that solve my problem.

Right… Fixing Microsoft windows problems is like a tax on my life. I spend much more time fixing other people’s windows problems than I do fixing my own non-windows problems. I have some resentment towards MS over this – they release shoddy products and support and the burden falls on the computer literate of the world. I often feel like asking my windows using friends why they bought this fantastically complex device when they have absolutely no idea how to use it properly, how it works, how to fix it, etc. What were they expecting? The easy-to-use illusion that sells millions of these objects to people who shouldn’t have them has resulted in people who don’t-even-use having to help maintain the bloody things. Not even being a user of Windows because it is too horribly painful to live with makes this particularly galling. I know quite a lot about Windows, and every single bit of that knowledge comes from helping others to keep their machines running. I’ve never used Windows myself, and don’t intend to. Yet I get to pay a tax to MS. I don’t have to, but if I don’t then my friends get to pay an even bigger penalty for having made the mistake of buying an object they don’t understand. Maybe if we all refused to help the poor Windows users…..

OK, another rant.

Right… Fixing Microsoft windows problems is like a tax on my life. I spend much more time fixing other people’s windows problems than I do fixing my own non-windows problems. I have some resentment towards MS over this – they release shoddy products and support and the burden falls on the computer literate of the world. I often feel like asking my windows using friends why they bought this fantastically complex device when they have absolutely no idea how to use it properly, how it works, how to fix it, etc. What were they expecting? The easy-to-use illusion that sells millions of these objects to people who shouldn’t have them has resulted in people who don’t-even-use having to help maintain the bloody things. Not even being a user of Windows because it is too horribly painful to live with makes this particularly galling. I know quite a lot about Windows, and every single bit of that knowledge comes from helping others to keep their machines running. I’ve never used Windows myself, and don’t intend to. Yet I get to pay a tax to MS. I don’t have to, but if I don’t then my friends get to pay an even bigger penalty for having made the mistake of buying an object they don’t understand. Maybe if we all refused to help the poor Windows users…..

OK, another rant.

Back in the 90′s I thought X-Windows might be the solution. A light weight, solid state terminal on the desk (and more importantly in the home) and the crunch power and storage being held off site by a service provider could take care of the business, professionally. It fits the model of pay for what you use very well. Alas X-Windows was probably ahead of its time or at least ahead of bandwidth. We couldn’t deliver rich media content at 2400 baud. Later on, I though Sun’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray might at least provide a solution for the large corporate. I mean how many tech monkeys do they need running around our local hospital solving PC configuration faults in various labs and clinics?

Add to that AV digital fat pipe, a nice solid state thin client please. If the thin client does ever fail, switch off and then switch on again. If that fails you peel it off the wall, throw it in the recycling bin, and pick up a replacement. But never never again will I have to deal with that ‘phone call whilst I am eating dinner that goes “Hi, Mike, It’s Alan, we’re having a problem with our computer and we thought we’d try you as you know all about computers”… I don’t even use PCs. There sense of disappointment in me is palpable

Hah, I’m still singing “?Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all, The needle returns to the start of the song, And we all sing along like before?, clearly I am advocating a return to the mainframe and the sandal and socks wearing Unix guru. Oh gawd!

Back in the 90′s I thought X-Windows might be the solution. A light weight, solid state terminal on the desk (and more importantly in the home) and the crunch power and storage being held off site by a service provider could take care of the business, professionally. It fits the model of pay for what you use very well. Alas X-Windows was probably ahead of its time or at least ahead of bandwidth. We couldn’t deliver rich media content at 2400 baud. Later on, I though Sun’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray might at least provide a solution for the large corporate. I mean how many tech monkeys do they need running around our local hospital solving PC configuration faults in various labs and clinics?

Add to that AV digital fat pipe, a nice solid state thin client please. If the thin client does ever fail, switch off and then switch on again. If that fails you peel it off the wall, throw it in the recycling bin, and pick up a replacement. But never never again will I have to deal with that ‘phone call whilst I am eating dinner that goes “Hi, Mike, It’s Alan, we’re having a problem with our computer and we thought we’d try you as you know all about computers”… I don’t even use PCs. There sense of disappointment in me is palpable

Hah, I’m still singing “?Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all, The needle returns to the start of the song, And we all sing along like before?, clearly I am advocating a return to the mainframe and the sandal and socks wearing Unix guru. Oh gawd!

That’s pretty interesting, and nice, and I guess not surprising. A friend told me the other day that vinyl is making a bit of a comeback. I also like the pops and squeaks and the whole analog experience. And things go in phases, of course, with retro stuff coming strongly back into style. That’s running counter to the general direction of increasing technology, but it’s nice when it happens. I also love books, especially used ones, and can’t imagine ever even wanting to own a Kindle (let alone buying one). OK, I’m just blabbing now (early morning, pre-coffee).

Thanks for the comment. I wonder if my owns kids will one day go retro like this too. I guess so, for a while at least. And thanks for the comment on broadcast – before this posting I hadn’t looked at things from this “right” angle.

That’s pretty interesting, and nice, and I guess not surprising. A friend told me the other day that vinyl is making a bit of a comeback. I also like the pops and squeaks and the whole analog experience. And things go in phases, of course, with retro stuff coming strongly back into style. That’s running counter to the general direction of increasing technology, but it’s nice when it happens. I also love books, especially used ones, and can’t imagine ever even wanting to own a Kindle (let alone buying one). OK, I’m just blabbing now (early morning, pre-coffee).

Thanks for the comment. I wonder if my owns kids will one day go retro like this too. I guess so, for a while at least. And thanks for the comment on broadcast – before this posting I hadn’t looked at things from this “right” angle.

As I age, I want physical objects less and less. Things get broken, wear out, go missing and take up space. When we invest so much in our things, we become vulnerable to the prospect of loosing those things too.

But a fair rate for a fair bit rate (one where a portion is repatriated to content creator) seems the way to go.

That said, my teenage son has just received his belated birthday present of a record deck and phono pre-amp. His quest, to delve into the collection of Jazz and Blues black vinyl bequeathed to him by his grand father. Tonight, from ebay at a cost of £17, he took delivery of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Onions_(album) An album cut when I was born. I’m looking at the spinning vinyl, the label in the middle of the record, the design, the colours, the font just seem from an era that is right on the edge of my personal event horizon. He could have downloaded it from iTunes, saved himself £8 and foregone the pleasure of all the cracks and pops, or even taken a peek on Spotify. But no, apparently sacrilegious of me even to suggest. Funny, he’s so bloody happy with his monaural black vinyl early offering from Stax records. I doubt that he could handle a new born with more tenderness and care. He doesn’t care much for my fat digital pipe, and in my head I am hearing “Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all, The needle returns to the start of the song, And we all sing along like before” I think I might have that on vinyl somewhere, buried deep in the garage.

As for playing requests from your balcony, let alone running speaker cables to all your neighbours, well, I think that is currently covered under the fine print “All Rights of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unauthorised copying,public performance, broadcasting, hiring
or rental of this recording prohibited.”

As I age, I want physical objects less and less. Things get broken, wear out, go missing and take up space. When we invest so much in our things, we become vulnerable to the prospect of loosing those things too.

But a fair rate for a fair bit rate (one where a portion is repatriated to content creator) seems the way to go.

That said, my teenage son has just received his belated birthday present of a record deck and phono pre-amp. His quest, to delve into the collection of Jazz and Blues black vinyl bequeathed to him by his grand father. Tonight, from ebay at a cost of £17, he took delivery of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Onions_(album) An album cut when I was born. I’m looking at the spinning vinyl, the label in the middle of the record, the design, the colours, the font just seem from an era that is right on the edge of my personal event horizon. He could have downloaded it from iTunes, saved himself £8 and foregone the pleasure of all the cracks and pops, or even taken a peek on Spotify. But no, apparently sacrilegious of me even to suggest. Funny, he’s so bloody happy with his monaural black vinyl early offering from Stax records. I doubt that he could handle a new born with more tenderness and care. He doesn’t care much for my fat digital pipe, and in my head I am hearing “Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all, The needle returns to the start of the song, And we all sing along like before” I think I might have that on vinyl somewhere, buried deep in the garage.

As for playing requests from your balcony, let alone running speaker cables to all your neighbours, well, I think that is currently covered under the fine print “All Rights of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unauthorised copying,public performance, broadcasting, hiring
or rental of this recording prohibited.”

I say, that’s fine, but if somebody comes and asks you to pay for it or delete it, then
you (according to the way things should work, IMHO, etc) either delete or pay for it.
Fine, we’re in agreement up to there, and perhaps well beyond.

But what is happening is people saying “it’s not fair to even ask me to pay.
You’re a troll and a blood sucker and are stiffling innovation (cf. Lessing)
and other attacks in the parade of horribles, including “don’t you understand that
in the modern day Information wants to be FREE!” but all boiling down to the same thing,
trying to retrade the deal between society and original creators, cutting a new one in
favor of consumers of creativity against creators themselves. It’s short-sighted and foolish,
I claim, though I recognize that I am in a decided minority. Nobody, e.g. in Silicon Valley,
the /. crowd, open-source crowd, Big-Co manufacturers, etc sees it that way. And they’ve got the Economics and Law departments of Stanford on their side too, not to mention the US Supreme Court.

Everybody thought that you could eat eyeballs too, back in the day.

I see the argument as orthogonal to network effects,. path dependence and so on. I just don’t see the relationship. Networks effects are a mechanism to unpack the value in a creation, not to create the value.

ok, enough.

I say, that’s fine, but if somebody comes and asks you to pay for it or delete it, then
you (according to the way things should work, IMHO, etc) either delete or pay for it.
Fine, we’re in agreement up to there, and perhaps well beyond.

But what is happening is people saying “it’s not fair to even ask me to pay.
You’re a troll and a blood sucker and are stiffling innovation (cf. Lessing)
and other attacks in the parade of horribles, including “don’t you understand that
in the modern day Information wants to be FREE!” but all boiling down to the same thing,
trying to retrade the deal between society and original creators, cutting a new one in
favor of consumers of creativity against creators themselves. It’s short-sighted and foolish,
I claim, though I recognize that I am in a decided minority. Nobody, e.g. in Silicon Valley,
the /. crowd, open-source crowd, Big-Co manufacturers, etc sees it that way. And they’ve got the Economics and Law departments of Stanford on their side too, not to mention the US Supreme Court.

Everybody thought that you could eat eyeballs too, back in the day.

I see the argument as orthogonal to network effects,. path dependence and so on. I just don’t see the relationship. Networks effects are a mechanism to unpack the value in a creation, not to create the value.

ok, enough.

If I keep physical copies, it’s because I don’t trust others to continue to make the content available, easily or at all.

It is (relatively) important that musicians don’t starve, to exactly the same extent that it is (relatively) important that non-musicians don’t starve, but it is not important that everyone who listens pays (and I say this as a semi-professional musician). As for money as feedback, there are other channels of at least equal importance.

If I keep physical copies, it’s because I don’t trust others to continue to make the content available, easily or at all.

It is (relatively) important that musicians don’t starve, to exactly the same extent that it is (relatively) important that non-musicians don’t starve, but it is not important that everyone who listens pays (and I say this as a semi-professional musician). As for money as feedback, there are other channels of at least equal importance.

But information does not want to be free, and even if it did, as various commentators have pointed out, “who cares?” Rats want to eat fingers off of babies, that doesn’t mean we have to let them, let alone encourage them.

But information does not want to be free, and even if it did, as various commentators have pointed out, “who cares?” Rats want to eat fingers off of babies, that doesn’t mean we have to let them, let alone encourage them.

Thanks. I think your point makes sense, and it accords with David’s comments about the system in Italy (which may apply in Spain too for all I know). And I guess this is also what hag is saying: the right of exclusion allows the owner to prohibit (or charge for) broadcast. Then you’re on the slippery slope of what’s a broadcast, but you do at least have a leg to stand on. I certainly agree that in the particular case of me listening to Grooveshark, it’s Grooveshark that are sailing close to the wind. If Michael is right about how they operate (and he should know), then it’s not clear how Grooveshark will be able to continue to operate. I don’t know where they’re physically located though. And I’d even go as far as to agree with Michael that using them is contributing to the problem.

It seems a bit pat to say “thanks everyone”, but I’ll say it anyway :-) As I said at the very top, I haven’t spent much time thinking about this, and I’ve learned things today, so thanks! (I hereby extend free broadcast rights to my blog to each and every one of you.)