Media

Conveniently Stackable Shoulders

The opening lines grabbed me:

In toy stores everywhere a depressing trend unfolds: Lego bricks are losing popularity and the line of Lego known as “TECHNIC” has been transformed into a shallow mimicry of action figures. Somewhere an accountant or a focus group must have realized that a box full of plastic bricks and gears was too complicated, took too much work to transform into something that resembled a toy, and wasn't selling as well as Star Wars merchandise.
— Disenchanted

I guess I must be one of those inquisitive engineers mentioned at the bottom of the graf, because I find the Lego TECHNICs boring. You can't build many things with them. You have to go out and buy more.

5:55:49 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Learning, Media, System Administration

Early Copyleft

“………anybody caught singing it without our permission will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do. WG”

How does this license affect republication of this work published here: Woody Guthrie: The Asch Recordings, vols. 1-4?

5:19:15 PM # Google It!
categories: Law, Media

Fixin' to make a killin'

Zimran: "What the charts actually show is that the elasticity of demand for CDs is about -1.5, which seems reasonable." [links added]

In other words, the music industry is pricing themselves out of the market. They've passed the optimal price and are in the process of driving the demand to zero.

4:34:15 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Media

A Cuban Cigar

Mark Cuban made me laugh, something I sorely needed.

Cuban recommended that manufacturers simply continue to ship product, and allow Hollywood to make its own decision to provde content -- "if they don't, there are thousands of content producers who would be happy to take their place."

There are three pieces in this little puzzle: the producers, the distributors, and the consumers. The producers, that is, "Hollywood," need the distributors to reach the consumers. The distributors need the producers to provide something to distribute. The consumers don't need diddly squat.

If the producers are the distributors, they then cut out the middleman, to an extent, but Mr. Cuban is right. Content producers are a dime a dozen — otherwise they wouldn't be producing work for hire.

"[J]ust completely ignore" the incumbent producers. The legislative efforts are to persuade one to not ignore them. They appear to have been effective.

3:51:15 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Media

The Proper Use of a Fulcrum to Increase Leverage

I spent some time browsing through the high-risers at Amazon this morning. Not that I'm in a purchasing mode, mind you, but just to see who's topping the charts. I noticed that Johnny Marr is on the new Pet Shop Boys album. (I think Marr made The The's Mind Bomb incredible.) While I can't listen to the samples from the album because it hasn't been released yet, I did notice that if I buy Release, I could listen to it NOW: there's a stream.

What's wrong with this picture?

1. I no longer buy without listening first.
2. I don't use Windows Media.

1:03:46 PM # Google It!
categories: Media

Preserving ephemera for posterity

Tim O'Reilly reprints Grady Booch's email "Preserving classic software products":

I'll happily absorb card decks, listings, documents, napkins full of sketches, and the like. If your company owns the rights to some of these artifacts, let's enter into a serious dialog about how we might put those artifacts into secure escrow to save them before your company discards them by intention, neglect, or merger/economic demise.

10:53:26 AM # Google It!
categories: Industry, Media