Let's be totally honest here, there has never been a time when musicians could expect to make a decent living making music. Being able to make a comfortable living as a musician was always akin to winning the lottery.

What the post-media conglomerate era does promise, though, is that there will be more chances again for good musicians to become moderate successes, as live performances become more important and music studios lose their power as gatekeepers. So instead of just one superstar act out of a thousand, we now have ten star acts out of a thousand.

You do recognise that recordings are becoming more of a promotional tool rather than something sold for profit, though I would add that what is important is the quality of the recording also plays a role. Those recordings that are swapped and shared tend to be lower or questionable quality, but people still buy music from Apple and Amazon, are willing to pay for high quality and reliability. This is an important nuance, and I feel that in the end streaming and sharing of low-fi files will take the role that radio and hit compilations used to fill, with hi-fi recordings replacing the purchased singles and albums.

But music, like any other art, will remain a difficult medium to become successful in. The only real difference now is that we can see the number of artists that couldn't even make it into the gatekeeper's stables.

I was thinking more of a combination Spanish Prisoner and Emperor's New Clothes scenario: keep promising vaporware and delivering nothing as long as the vain and greedy pay. But you could also be right, that the Russian developers have tricked Microsoft into letting them eventually take Windows itself hostage against a price...

Ah, but there was a lot of "pirating" from vinyl and CD to cassette tape, VHS recording off of pay TV and things like that. Also a slew of "sneakernet" copying of floppy discs, so that game publishers made malformatted discs on purpose, sometimes to the detriment of the disc drive heads (hint: they didn't prevent copying).

Later, CD publishers tried to add copy protection to their music CD's, mainly by breaking the Red Book standard and rendering the CD unplayable on some players, incurring a backlash from Philips, denying those discs that weren't Red Book conform the license for the Compact Disc logo.

Nowadays? Kids don't torrent music as much as rip it from YouTube-videos or mail the songs to each other. Torrents aren't really trusted, and the kids I know think that half the torrents are put out by the big studios as a trap. I'm sure they share music as much as we did when I was a teenager, the main difference is that they now share with friends that they know through the net. They still don't care about quality, they aren't audiophiles. They just want the song now, and have the same youthful disregard for Right and Wrong that we had when we were their age.

You're right, it's anecdotal. And really, is it any different from when I was in the university in the 1980's and we copied to cassette tape? Or how I listen to the radio rather than buy the newest hit single? I kinda sorta doubt you would have purchased the albums. And considering that you posted as an anonymous coward, I also kinda sorta doubt that you are interested in seeing my reply in the first place. Er.

That looks to me as if they were incredulous at first. After the shock wore off, they probably made their opening number almost as a joke, almost in the "we're not really interested" range. Once they figured out that the money offered was real, they had to absorb the shock before saying yes, and rebuild their poker faces.

And that is how three days can pass.

Let me rephrase this case so that you can understand why the administration was wrong in its actions, and why your suspicions are also wrong, with my Clever Analogy (sorry, no cars involved):

"Ms. Hester, we have heard from a mother that she saw a photo album in your home that had a picture of someone half dressed. We need you to hand over the keys to your apartment so that we can search it and see just how damaging that photo is. You refuse? Then we must assume the worst. You're fired."

Note in the article that the photo in question was taken before employment at the school, and that the state where this occurred is already considering legislation to make this sort of request illegal.

Still irrelevant. If a parent reported the TA, then the parent should provide the screen shot. It is poor thinking to believe that this is just cause for demanding the Facebook password. If said parent complained that the TA had that picture in a photo album in her home and showed it to guests, does the school district have a right to demand the keys to the TA's private residence to search for said photo album?

Agreed, it seems to be a lot of astroturfing going on here by people afraid to risk their karma. I also would bet that a lot of the AC's are from the MPAA or its client states.

The AC you are replying to was just being snarky, that's all. That's my take.

Ah, but you can be fired for droning on and on about it and creeping out your co-workers. His beliefs are not an issue, but even in his own words he was pestering colleagues. Sounds like he was laid off for committing the sin of being the manager no one wanted to work under.

So the main lesson here? Don't be a missionary at work.

I think he is stating the problem that I myself have: ancient media that contains encrypted data that is languishing in my office (the cellar is too moist, and I don't have an attic). I no longer remember the passwords for those disks, since I haven't used them for years now. A judge out to screw me over could use this to have me held in contempt if for any reason they would be confiscated as evidence, regardless of the merits of the case.

I think you hit the nail on the head: when html authors talk of WYSIWYG editors, what they really mean is a way to do real-time tweaking of CSS, or use a console to debug the JavaScript. And even Dreamweaver pales in comparison to using Firebug.

Now now, if all you are doing is static HTML for some Mom and Pop store, your point *might* be valid. But websites done for money nowadays rarely are straight HTML. All have some CMS on the server, mostly PHP or JSP, and there no WYSISYG software dares to tread. Dreamweaver is hopeless when trying to make a Drupal theme or modify a Magento web shop.

If WYSIWYG has a place, it's in letting designers crank out prototypes. One man shops are better off investing in something like Coda for Mac OS X (I know, it's not open source, but it has served me well) or Eclipse or BBEdit. That, and complex tables really should be avoided unless you are presenting an actual table. CSS layout is what matters. Relying on a WYSIWYG editor will leave your site looking clunky and bloated.

As for your assertion that no one looks at the underyling code? I do, all the time. Especially when debugging/refactoring my own. ;)

The reason why now is pretty obvious: the phone scandal was the crack in the dam. The reporter working the story made damned sure to cover all bases, or Murdoch and the entire pool of NewsCorp sharks would have chewed him up and spat him out. When he testified before parliament, he was supposed to be ripped to shreds by bought and paid for ministers, but they couldn't find any chinks in his armour. And then the skewer he was wielding suddenly seemed even more potent.

So now all of a sudden the meanest, biggest predator is wounded, and all those he intimidated now see the chance to get rid of the one they feared most. All of his riches no longer will help him, since tearing him down all of a sudden seems the more profitable route (profit in terms of power and influence, not mere money).

Agreed, there really is no "cloud" in the original sense of the word (a virtual machine that is actually hosted on a bunch of servers that can ramp up capacity as needed - thus cloud to mean amourphous). Well, maybe there is, but here "the cloud" is reinterpreted to mean "on a big server somewhere on the internet and not connected to your device".