Month: April 2005

Who is really hurting the artists?

That the record companies claims the artists lose money because of the piracy is no news. Wether the net effect is that the companies are losing or actually earning more because of the p2p sharing of music is one thing, but what else is threatening the artists’ income?

The Register (among many) writes about Fiona Apple, and her third album, “Extraordinary Machine”. It was recorded and produced in May 2003, and… that’s it. It wasn’t released by Sony. The reason? Well, would it be any sound reason in any case? Corporate drones, bean counters, personal taste… The result is still the same: Fiona Apple isn’t making money on the album she made, not because of sharing over p2p networks, but because of Sony itself.

But the album made its way out in the free anyway. First via a DJ on radio, and later the whole album in CD quality mp3 files. So the only way fans of Fiona – and other people who would buy the album – can get it, is to download it. For free. Without Fiona nor Sony getting anything at all for it. Smart move, Sony. Not. If it can’t be released on CD because it would be too expensive, there are many ways and places to sell it online by download, with no costs for CD manufacturing.

Of course, one may wonder how that DJ got hold of those mp3 files in the first place. There must be someone inside Sony, or…?

So, how is the album? Why not find out for yourself? This page has some links where you can find it and download. I’m listening to it now, and so far I like it. 🙂

Opera and GMail

Opera implemented user javascripts for the Opera 8 beta 3 release, something which was appreciated by many – and one use was for GMail. With GMail you could previously tell it to log in even if your browser wasn’t supported, and a ?nocheckbrowser-argument was added to the URL. Then it stopped that option, giving non-supported browser a basic, less useful implementation.

Opera was such a non-supported browser, despite handling the standard implementation just fine. The nocheckbrowser-argument still worked, but you had to enter it manually. It wasn’t perfect, as you still were thrown back into the simple interface sometimes. Enter the user-javascripts. Some javascripts to keep the argument in place were quickly made and published by other users, and I quickly started to use one of them, making GMail a nice experience once again.

I never gave it any thought after that, until I a few days ago used an earlier version of Opera without user javascript – and GMail worked flawlessly there, too. How come? Well – it turns out Google has yet again tweaked GMail to give us a better experience. The choice of using the simple interface is still there, but now as a link at the bottom of the pages. Wonderful 🙂 And with the storage space growing each day, who’s complaining? Not me.

Of course, with Opera working flawlessly with GMail once again, I’ve turned off that particular userscript.

The Acid2 test

A while ago, before the WaSP Acid 2 test was ready, Opera challenged Microsoft to take said test in the upcoming IE7. Not everyone appreciated this challenge, claiming that WaSP is working for Opera and such (see among the comments after a post in Scobleizers blog.)

Well – the wait is over, and the WaSP Acid 2 test is here. How does the browsers fare? Well, not unexpectedly, IE6 fails miserably – but no one have claimed IE6 support CSS2.1; it’s the next version that’ll be interesting to test. Maybe to the glee of some, Opera 8 fails too, and so does FireFox. Every browser fails, truth to be told.

So, now we just have to wait and see how fast the browsers get the pieces implemented correctly. Work has already started on the Safari, for those of you on the Mac.

IE7 – what’s important?

I’ve been thinking – and procrastinating. I had a comment to a post in Scobleizer’s blog, about the Acid2 test and Opera’s challenge to Microsoft:

What is left now is for MS to ace the Acid2 test with IE7, and make it secure to counter the reputation in that field, and optionally add features so that it will be an attractive browser to use.

And Robert Scobleizer answered thus:

Yup, although I’m still not sure just how many Web standards we’ll be able to support in the next version. Supporting Web standards are important, but not the most important thing on the list. By far security is more important. So we’re continuing to work on that first and make sure we nail that. Just wanna let you know that figuring out software development priorities are tough.

Believe it or not, but the IE team does not have unlimited numbers of really smart developers.

Now, I do know that expecting that IE7 will completely support CSS1 and CSS2.1 right away is not realistic, but I started thinking: What is the most important thing? This does depend on your point of view, I guess, but there is one thing that gives us a hint, I believe: Why did MS change their mind and decide to release IE7 for Windows XP after all, and not wait for Longhorn as previously stated? Personally, I’ve got no doubt the popularity of FireFox is at least partly to blame.

Security is of course important – very important – and when there are warnings from many against using IE due to security risks, it’s especially important to eliminate threats. There will be many scrutinising eyes at the release of the new version, and I don’t think MS can take any chances not getting that right.

But security isn’t all, is it? Security isn’t the only reason people have downloaded FireFox and Opera – what more is there? There are some who are enticed by the tabbed browsing alone, and have said they would switch back to IE if it got tabbed browsing too. More are enjoying other features, either built in or via extensibility (plug ins) – and then there are those who like the fact that the alternatives support standards much better than IE.

I have no idea how many of the FireFox users and Opera users care about standards support or even know what the standards are about. How many have just heard about FireFox and/or Opera and that it is so much better than IE, or got it recommended, and just decided to try it and see without knowing much more than the names and that they support tabbed browsing? But when it comes to web designers and developers, standard support is very important, and some are getting very impatient with MS. From time to time, and from many different sources, I’m hearing the equivalent of “Screw Microsoft, IE can get served a less advanced web page. I’ll support the standards.” The voices uttering these opinions are not getting fewer.

This is also an aspect Microsoft have to consider: When users visit such pages with standards compliant browsers, and then see a usable, but less advances/pretty/whatever result in IE, which browser will they use? How will they react? While many users don’t care or know about the standards the web pages are built on, their experience with the browsers that support standards (or not) will be an influence. So while security is a necessity, standards support shouldn’t lag too far behind. And maybe have a look into which browser features are popular – when standard support is in place, that’s where the browsers are going to win and lose users. All in my humble opinion, of course.

In any case, it will be intereting to see the result of MS’ work on IE7, at least.

Opera included in Adobe Creative Suite 2

In an interview in March, HÃ¥konWium Lie, CTO of Opera said there would be some big news in April. And here it is: Today they announced that Opera will be integrated in the Adobe Creative Suite 2, which include products like Photoshop CS2 and GoLive CS2.

This is great news. With this integration, not only will web designers automatically be encouraged to develop for and test in a standards compliant browser – with Operas technology it will also be possible to see how their designs will appear on small screens, such as PDAs and mobile phones.

The end of the music industry. Or not.

Right from the beginning, when Napster made sharing music easy, the music industry claimed that it hurt the sales, and robbed the artists from their money. For just as long, those who downloaded music for free said they bought more music, since they discovered new (for them) artists this way. After all, why not try something new when it doesn’t cost you anything?

Alan Wexelblat writes in his article The revenge of Sapir-Whorf that all studies have shown no negative effect on the music sales due to P2P-sharing, and studies that have shown an effect, have shown that it has been a positive effect. Not quite what the music industry want you to hear, eh?

So – what is the problem then? Well – from the consumers’ side it is that we haven’t been able to buy what we’re willing to pay for, simply because record companies wouldn’t sell it to us. Instead, they want to sell us what we don’t want instead: Music we can’t use as we want and play where we want on the equipment we want. Music with lots of restrictions. What’s the reason for this? Is it just the fear of not getting money for everything, or is it more? Do they want complete control over how we can listen to our music, making us pay several times for the same music if we want to play it several places?

Well – if the music sales finally go down, it may just as likely (or more) be because people stop buying music due to such restrictions, which just makes it cumbersome for us.

Persian music download

I like music. I like popular music of the kind you hear on the radio all the time, but I also like music from countries we rarely hear music from. At least here in Norway. For me, the internet is great that way – there’s so much unknown but exciting music and artists to be found, from countries all over the world. Of course, not all of the music I find can be shared with the blessing of the artists or maybe the record companies in particular, with them calling it an illegal activity – but that’s not the main problem, as I see it. The fact that I can’t find a place to buy the music by the artists I find is. At least not for sensible prices.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about this time. I wanted to write about a page I found today, with a collection of Persian music (provided by bia2.com) in mp3 format. Something for many tastes in music there – I like what I’ve heard so far.

Wonder if I find some place that sell what I like…