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Let's rewind. VHS won because of porn. Listening to music is now a buffet style affair because of Napster. AC kicked DC in the nuts and the public applauded bec

by oneJob 11y ago

Let's rewind. VHS won because of porn. Listening to music is now a buffet style affair because of Napster. AC kicked DC in the nuts and the public applauded because it was better and it could. I respect those working to improve the system from within, but also respectfully point out that change of the sort this article is talking about comes from the outside. Revolutions all have one thing in common. Out with the old, and in with the new. Copyright law is old, it is administered by old people, and it is kept in place by the old guard. Open source hardware, distributed open source software development, 3D printing, crowd funding, and on and on, these are all new. You can attempt to evolve (fix) the old rules, you'll fail. It seems to me to be a safer bet to simply begin playing the new game, even though the rules are not totally worked out yet, even though people say it isn't legit, even though there are no referees to call foul or panel of judges to provide approval and award medals. Out with the old, and in with the new.

zanny 11y ago
The old have lots of money and political influence, and a money making supermachine (look at Disney's copyright lobby, and then look at their box office revenue this year, and then consider they own pretty much a huge portion of all entertainment period) to fund perpetual bribery of politicians to maintain or further enact their will (see: TPP). This is not something that will organically happen in our lifetimes. If it happens in the next fifty years, it will be a divisive war, not a slow decline. And at this moment there are four camps - the ultrarich perpetuating the system for profit, the apathetic masses that make up 99% of the population who do not care, do not know, or do not give a damn, the portion who defend the old guard on false pretenses that because this is the way it is this must be the only way that works and thus the best way, and lastly, in a tiny fraction of a fraction of people, who do not have the power or influence to push reality onto the rest, are those who fight against draconian IP policy. It will take a lot more involvement and effort to actually reverse the tide. If any of the new age free thought IP out there ever became a tangible threat to the established media empire, it would be swallowed up instantly for the time being. And those in power are not unaware - there is a reason these companies are spending a large portion of their war chests buying patents and IP themselves, to produce an endless morass of bullshit ownership of ideas to drown anyone who threatens them in.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
VHS didn't win because of pornography, it won because it was cheaper and was actually a superior format in certain respects. Listening to music is now "buffet-style" because of iTunes, not Napster. Napster died. AC kicked DC because the latter was financially non-viable.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Napster and related sites/services/apps made iTunes possible by priming the marketplace.
- easytiger 11y ago
  > Listening to music is now "buffet-style" because of iTunes, not Napster. Napster died. I think you just rewrote history.
- oneJob 11y ago
  Re: VHS, granting that I was speaking in superlatives and that VHS might be one of one of multiple primary influences, here is a quote from an industry insider stating the same idea [1]. Re: AC/DC, DC was financially viable. You might notice that we still make use of DC, where it does much close quarter nut kicking. DC was financially uncompetitive over distance, but not because of magic finance. It was uncompetitive because someone had to buy, build, and install the associated hardware to make it work over long distances. AC required much less in that arena, because of the technology, not magical finance. AC as a technology was more viable then DC as a technology over distance because the technologist, not the banker, endowed it with such awesome, nut kicking powers. And nut kick it did. [1] http://www.macworld.com/article/1050627/pornhd.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1050627/pornhd.html
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    DC was not "financially viable" at all. DC was completely unworkable because you had to have a power plant on every city block! It was impossible to transmit DC power over any distance because the losses over the wire were too great. You could use a higher voltage to mitigate that, but then you have high voltage entering peoples' homes and a greater potential for fire, plus it's harder to make devices (light bulbs, household motors) which work reliably at higher voltages. The fundamental problem with DC is that, in 190x, there's no practical way to convert it from one voltage to another. That's why AC won the "current wars", plain and simple. Stupid Edison really thought it would make sense to have a power plant on every city block, but obviously that dream went nowhere, for good reason. With AC power, you use a "transformer" to step the voltage up to much higher levels for long-distance transmission, then another transformer to step it back down at the point-of-use. Higher voltage has much lower losses because the losses, according to Ohm's Law, are P=RI^2, where P is the power loss, R is the resistance (which we'll assume to be fixed for a given length of wire), and I is the current. Since P=VI (power = voltage current), stepping up the voltage means you have proportionately lower current, for the same amount of power, and as you can see from the first equation, the losses go up with the square of the current. This is why long-distance transmission lines use scarily-high voltages (some over 1 megavolts). These days, we have ways of converting DC to different voltages using modern electronics and transistors, but these did not exist in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was simply no way back then to make an electric generation and transmission system of any scale without the AC devices invented by Nikola Tesla.
wonkaWonka 11y ago
I was with you, right up until you said "Out with the old, and in with the new." You're first paragraph is spot on. But. The next step is, DIY tractors, as if they were hot rod motorcycles, since, let's be honest... Tractors are NOT high technology items. Okay, so tractors aren't as sexy as motorcyles, and gear heads don't cut their teeth on John Deer. So... just buy ordinary tractors, why not? They are basically covered wagons with motors, and attached shovels. They scrape dirt. They sift potatoes out of mud. Why do tractors need horrendously advanced software at all? How complicated is a riding lawn mower? These are not jumbo jets with multi-core governed CPU voting systems. Tractors don't have ailerons that need to adjust pitch and yaw at hypersonic velocities. They fucking creep along at like 5MPH. Christ. Then, after that one little nitpick, I'm with you all the way.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Tractors are NOT high technology items. You'd be surprised. There are far more lasers, GPS units, etc. in use at the typical farm than owned by the typical consumer.
  - oneJob 11y ago
    Indeed. I stopped reading when I got to that line. Modern tractors are industrial production machines valued according to their output, and designed as such. These things are indeed complex, expensive, wonders of technology. Not only that, they are no longer simply tractors, they are now parts of systems.
    - emcrazyone 11y ago
      correct, I'm presently doing work for one of the largest tractor manufacturers developing software for them. There are all kinds of technology in these things as well as on the farm itself in the form of GPS correction (called RTK) to deal with auto guidance and improving GPS accuracy. We are also building mesh networks so a tractor and a combine can be driven by one person & having the combine follow the tractor in side-by-side fashion. I work on over the air software updates, some of the touch screens are essentially custom computers running Android. We have a number of on board modules handling steering and precision farming as it's called in the industry. All these modules are interconnected with a mix of technology (CAN, TCP/IP over Broad-R-Reach, LIN, WiFi, and GPS). Check out ISOBUS too... ISOBUS is a technology where any tractor can be connected to any tow behind implement, including 3rd party, and that implement's GUI is shown on a touch panel for the operator to control and program. In short, there's a lot there. And it's a very competitive market.

by oneJob 11y ago

zanny 11y ago

The old have lots of money and political influence, and a money making supermachine (look at Disney's copyright lobby, and then look at their box office revenue this year, and then consider they own pretty much a huge portion of all entertainment period) to fund perpetual bribery of politicians to maintain or further enact their will (see: TPP). This is not something that will organically happen in our lifetimes. If it happens in the next fifty years, it will be a divisive war, not a slow decline. And at this moment there are four camps - the ultrarich perpetuating the system for profit, the apathetic masses that make up 99% of the population who do not care, do not know, or do not give a damn, the portion who defend the old guard on false pretenses that because this is the way it is this must be the only way that works and thus the best way, and lastly, in a tiny fraction of a fraction of people, who do not have the power or influence to push reality onto the rest, are those who fight against draconian IP policy. It will take a lot more involvement and effort to actually reverse the tide. If any of the new age free thought IP out there ever became a tangible threat to the established media empire, it would be swallowed up instantly for the time being. And those in power are not unaware - there is a reason these companies are spending a large portion of their war chests buying patents and IP themselves, to produce an endless morass of bullshit ownership of ideas to drown anyone who threatens them in.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

VHS didn't win because of pornography, it won because it was cheaper and was actually a superior format in certain respects. Listening to music is now "buffet-style" because of iTunes, not Napster. Napster died. AC kicked DC because the latter was financially non-viable.

nitrogen 11y ago
Napster and related sites/services/apps made iTunes possible by priming the marketplace.
easytiger 11y ago
> Listening to music is now "buffet-style" because of iTunes, not Napster. Napster died. I think you just rewrote history.
oneJob 11y ago
Re: VHS, granting that I was speaking in superlatives and that VHS might be one of one of multiple primary influences, here is a quote from an industry insider stating the same idea [1]. Re: AC/DC, DC was financially viable. You might notice that we still make use of DC, where it does much close quarter nut kicking. DC was financially uncompetitive over distance, but not because of magic finance. It was uncompetitive because someone had to buy, build, and install the associated hardware to make it work over long distances. AC required much less in that arena, because of the technology, not magical finance. AC as a technology was more viable then DC as a technology over distance because the technologist, not the banker, endowed it with such awesome, nut kicking powers. And nut kick it did. [1] http://www.macworld.com/article/1050627/pornhd.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1050627/pornhd.html
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  DC was not "financially viable" at all. DC was completely unworkable because you had to have a power plant on every city block! It was impossible to transmit DC power over any distance because the losses over the wire were too great. You could use a higher voltage to mitigate that, but then you have high voltage entering peoples' homes and a greater potential for fire, plus it's harder to make devices (light bulbs, household motors) which work reliably at higher voltages. The fundamental problem with DC is that, in 190x, there's no practical way to convert it from one voltage to another. That's why AC won the "current wars", plain and simple. Stupid Edison really thought it would make sense to have a power plant on every city block, but obviously that dream went nowhere, for good reason. With AC power, you use a "transformer" to step the voltage up to much higher levels for long-distance transmission, then another transformer to step it back down at the point-of-use. Higher voltage has much lower losses because the losses, according to Ohm's Law, are P=RI^2, where P is the power loss, R is the resistance (which we'll assume to be fixed for a given length of wire), and I is the current. Since P=VI (power = voltage current), stepping up the voltage means you have proportionately lower current, for the same amount of power, and as you can see from the first equation, the losses go up with the square of the current. This is why long-distance transmission lines use scarily-high voltages (some over 1 megavolts). These days, we have ways of converting DC to different voltages using modern electronics and transistors, but these did not exist in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was simply no way back then to make an electric generation and transmission system of any scale without the AC devices invented by Nikola Tesla.

wonkaWonka 11y ago

I was with you, right up until you said "Out with the old, and in with the new." You're first paragraph is spot on. But. The next step is, DIY tractors, as if they were hot rod motorcycles, since, let's be honest... Tractors are NOT high technology items. Okay, so tractors aren't as sexy as motorcyles, and gear heads don't cut their teeth on John Deer. So... just buy ordinary tractors, why not? They are basically covered wagons with motors, and attached shovels. They scrape dirt. They sift potatoes out of mud. Why do tractors need horrendously advanced software at all? How complicated is a riding lawn mower? These are not jumbo jets with multi-core governed CPU voting systems. Tractors don't have ailerons that need to adjust pitch and yaw at hypersonic velocities. They fucking creep along at like 5MPH. Christ. Then, after that one little nitpick, I'm with you all the way.

nitrogen 11y ago
Tractors are NOT high technology items. You'd be surprised. There are far more lasers, GPS units, etc. in use at the typical farm than owned by the typical consumer.
- oneJob 11y ago
  Indeed. I stopped reading when I got to that line. Modern tractors are industrial production machines valued according to their output, and designed as such. These things are indeed complex, expensive, wonders of technology. Not only that, they are no longer simply tractors, they are now parts of systems.
  - emcrazyone 11y ago
    correct, I'm presently doing work for one of the largest tractor manufacturers developing software for them. There are all kinds of technology in these things as well as on the farm itself in the form of GPS correction (called RTK) to deal with auto guidance and improving GPS accuracy. We are also building mesh networks so a tractor and a combine can be driven by one person & having the combine follow the tractor in side-by-side fashion. I work on over the air software updates, some of the touch screens are essentially custom computers running Android. We have a number of on board modules handling steering and precision farming as it's called in the industry. All these modules are interconnected with a mix of technology (CAN, TCP/IP over Broad-R-Reach, LIN, WiFi, and GPS). Check out ISOBUS too... ISOBUS is a technology where any tractor can be connected to any tow behind implement, including 3rd party, and that implement's GUI is shown on a touch panel for the operator to control and program. In short, there's a lot there. And it's a very competitive market.