Saturday, May 30, 2009

Piracy?



A few days back I noticed the soundtrack for my showreel which was uploaded in Youtube had been removed because of copyright infringement. And I felt it was time for me move on to some other video sharing webiste.

Here is good take on this topic..
In 2002, the RIAA(Recording Industry Association of America) reported that CD sales had fallen by 8.9 percent, from 882 million to 803 million units; revenues fell 6.7 percent.[12] This confirms a trend over the past few years. The RIAA blames Internet piracy for the trend, though there are many other causes that could account for this drop. SoundScan, for example, reports a more than 20 percent drop in the number of CDs released since 1999. That no doubt accounts for some of the decrease in sales. Rising prices could account for at least some of the loss. "From 1999 to 2001, the average price of a CD rose 7.2 percent, from $13.04 to $14.19."[13] Competition from other forms of media could also account for some of the decline. As Jane Black of BusinessWeek notes, "The soundtrack to the film High Fidelity has a list price of $18.98. You could get the whole movie [on DVD] for $19.99."[14]

But let's assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD sales is because of Internet sharing. Here's the rub: In the same period that the RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent.

There are too many different things happening at the same time to explain these numbers definitively, but one conclusion is unavoidable: The recording industry constantly asks, "What's the difference between downloading a song and stealing a CD?"--but their own numbers reveal the difference. If I steal a CD, then there is one less CD to sell. Every taking is a lost sale. But on the basis of the numbers the RIAA provides, it is absolutely clear that the same is not true of downloads. If every download were a lost sale--if every use of Kazaa "rob[bed] the author of [his] profit"--then the industry would have suffered a 100 percent drop in sales last year, not a 7 percent drop. If 2.6 times the number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, and yet sales revenue dropped by just 6.7 percent, then there is a huge difference between "downloading a song and stealing a CD."


It all started with Napster and its amazing where file sharing is stands after 10 years.

“Napster changed the idea of music as something you paid for to being something that was free,” Mr. Usher said in an interview. “It took a whole industry that had its infrastructure built up on making, delivering and selling a CD – a piece of plastic – and it took away the piece of plastic. And without that piece of plastic, you can’t support that pyramid of infrastructure that you no longer need when you deliver for free.”
David Usher, lead singer of the Vancouver rock band Moist

For established musicians who came up through a system built on record sales, radio play and landing the cover of Rolling Stone magazine as measures of success, Napster and file sharing shook the foundations of their world. But for emerging artists, and for a generation of kids who grew up plugged into video games, computers and the Internet, digital media leveled the playing field

Its very clear that due to file sharing nobody is losing out on anything expect few people like major recording companies or film production companies can't hit their more than cent percent profit targets.

Anyways I just embrace the free culture because that is the only way all of us can evolve into better human beings who will be able to do what they love and do it freely. Finally this is what Shawn Fanning who is the creator of Naspter gotto say...

“I’ve never really been concerned with [my own legacy] especially how it relates to the press,” he said. “I mean, I was writing software because I loved writing software. Writing software is a pretty anti-social thing as well. So [a legacy] is not something I tend to think about, I just tend to focus on doing stuff that I enjoy, that I feel good about and I just love creating things, and wherever that takes me, it takes me.”
Its interesting to note that he single handily wrote the whole software code when he was only 18 for sharing music with his peers in college.

Source 1 : Free Culture: Version 2004-02-10
Source 2 : Thank You Napster, Matt Hartley Technology Reporter, Globe and Mail Update,

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

A few quotes from the movie 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

“You can be mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You can swear and curse the fates. But when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”

“We’re all going the same way. We’re just taking different roads to get there, that’s all.
You’re on your own road.”


“It’s not about how well you play. It’s how you feel about what you’re playing.”

“We are meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?”

“For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.”

“It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.”

“It has no time limit. You can start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same,
there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best of it or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things that you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of And if you find you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”


I really feel those above quotes were best movie dialogues I have heard in recent times.Its inspiring and thoughtful, at the same time its fits within the storyline.

I really feel bad that this movie didn't won the best movie award in the Oscars. :(

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Disneyland with the Death Penalty

Its an article about Singapore by William Gibson, who is called as father of cyberpunk genre. I been living here for almost past three years and I was amazed by authenticity of this article to this very day. Though it was written in 1993 and I feel nothing much has changed in terms of culture and society from outsider's point of view.

Here are few interesting quotes from the article

link to the full artcile (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//1.04/gibson.html?pg=5&topic=)

"It's like an entire country run by Jeffrey Katzenberg," the producer had said, "under the motto 'Be happy or I'll kill you.'" We were sitting in an office a block from Rodeo Drive, on large black furniture leased with Japanese venture capital.

Now that I'm actually here, the Disneyland metaphor is proving impossible to shake. For that matter, Rodeo Drive comes frequently to mind, though the local equivalent feels more like 30 or 40 Beverly Centers put end to end.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They're good at this stuff. Really good. But now they propose to become something else as well; a coherent city of information, its architecture planned from the ground up. And they expect that whole highways of data will flow into and through their city. Yet they also seem to expect that this won't affect them. And that baffles us, and perhaps it baffles the Singaporeans that it does.

Myself, I'm inclined to think that if they prove to be right, what will really be proven will be something very sad; and not about Singapore, but about our species. They will have proven it possible to flourish through the active repression of free expression. They will have proven that information does not necessarily want to be free.

But perhaps I'm overly pessimistic here. I often am; it goes with the territory. (Though what could be more frightening, out here at the deep end of the 20th century, than a genuinely optimistic science fiction writer?) Perhaps Singapore's destiny will be to become nothing more than a smug, neo-Swiss enclave of order and prosperity, amid a sea of unthinkable...weirdness.

Dear God. What a fate.

Ancient Mysteries

The famous Egyptian Book of the Dead, in a passage containing a confession to the "Lord of Righteousness," reveals a remarkable correlation to the Ten commandments of the Old Testament:


BIBLE: Have no other gods before me I do not tamper with divine balance
BOOK OF THE DEAD: Make no idols I stop not a god when he comes forth

BIBLE: Do not misuse the name of God I do not offend the god who is at the helm
BOOK OF THE DEAD: Keep the Sabbath holy (Egyptians had no Sabbath)

BIBLE: Honor your mother and father
BOOK OF THE DEAD: I do not harm my kinsmen

BIBLE: Do not kill
BOOK OF THE DEAD:I do not kill

BIBLE:Do not commit adultery
BOOK OF THE DEAD:I am not an adulterer

BIBLE: Do not steal
BOOK OF THE DEAD: I do not roh

BIBLE: Do nor lie
BOOK OF THE DEAD: I do not tell lies instead of truth

BIBLE: Do not covet another's property
BOOK OF THE DEAD: I do no wrong or mischief to others

This comparison provided compelling support for those who claim that the biblical Israelites drew heavily from the ancient Egyptian texts. The Egyptians, in turn, gained their knowledge and beliefs from the older cultures of Babylon and Sumer

Source: Rule by secrecy, Jim Marrs, Page 362
So is there any God or all roads leads to summer? You gotta read this book by Jim Marrs to know the rest of the story. It is must read for anyone who is interested to know an alternative version about our history which may hold a lot of truth about mankind and it's origins.

Is communisim and democracy is the same stuff?

It was the Russian Marxist Vladimir Ulianov, known to the world as Lenin, who referred to the plan for taking over nations as outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) as "the conquest of democracy." In the Manifesto itself, just before listing the ten measures to be used in gaining control of a nation, reads: "The first step in the revolution is to raise the proletariat (lower class) to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy." With those of limited intelligence and ability in control, it is very vasy for the secret rulers to direct them.

It was Lenin who coined the term "democratic centralism" to denote strict guidance from a small center and broad "participation" of a large number of people in the activities flowing from this guidance. It should also be noted that the nations controlled by the international money interests are called democracies..

Source: THE CONQUEST OF DEMOCRACY
by Erminie King Wright
So its all about few people ruling over a lot of folks at the end of day! Then for what reason we had Cold War and on going wars for the spreading or safe guarding democracy?

Friendship between a guy and girl

After a long break... not sure whether I am going to resurrect this blog this time but I just felt like posting few things which I kept as note in my desktop.

Whether you’d admit to it without water boarding, there is a sexual component at play in most friendships between men and women. It may be innocent flirting, repressed mommy issues, or you’re playing with fire. But whatever it is, it affects how you are as a man and it affects the quality and content of the relationship

Source: Art of Manliness, Q&A section. Ask Wayne.

Its a very interesting thought and one which I completely agree to. Throughout my life I been irritated by guys who behave like girls or even worse to get attention from them. I strongly believe a guy can keep a good friendship with girl while keeping at least some dignity.