Open source software

In the early days of computers, idealism was very much alive and well on the software development side of the equation. Software developers shared their knowledge, including computer code, with one another freely. By doing so they could tap into the collective knowledge of fellow professionals to solve any problems they might encounter. By allowing others to modify their code, they could develop software that was stable, user friendly and readily available to the end user at little or no charge.

These idealistic individuals actually believed that the benefits of personal computing should be available to everyone, not just the well off and wealthy.

And then came Microsoft.

To give Bill Gates and his buddy Steve their due, Microsoft has done a pretty good job of making computers user friendly and opening up the wonderful world of personal computing to the average man (or woman) on the street. The Windows environment is easy to work in and relatively stable for the average user. But . . .

I’ve been using Windows XP for several years. And, over those years, I’ve had to activate (or re-activate) the system four times. It’s not a lengthy process and some people may consider it a minor inconvenience. To me, however, it’s a major infringement on my privacy rights. And, I also object to the “guilty until proven innocent” attitude of Microsoft’s activation process.

Judges routinely order criminals to wear electronic monitoring devices, after a hearing or trial has confirmed their guilt. Microsoft demands that they be permitted to conduct electronic surveillance of my computer system, without the benefit of a hearing. After paying to use their damned operating system, they want me to prove that I’m innocent of piracy any time they decide it’s convenient for them. It would be unacceptable to most people if they were required to contact Ford or GM to get permission to re-start their automobile after changing the oil or installing new spark plugs. Why is it acceptable behaviour from Microsoft?

And Windows Vista is even more restrictive; you are simply not allowed to move the operating system to new hardware. As well, the Microsoft activation process is being applied to most, if not all, of the Microsoft product line.

Then, there’s the cost.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to Microsoft Windows. Most incarnations of Linux (Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc.) have a GUI (graphical user interface), an application task bar and an office document processing environment, thanks to open source software. And, since it’s free, it can be used on any system, with any hardware, on as many computers as you might choose to install it.

You can get (or make) “live” CDs that allow you to transport the operating system to any computer via a bootable disc. You choose as many applications as you need, all at little or no cost.

Microsoft is not happy with open source software.

While claiming it doesn’t want to litigate the issue, Microsoft is demanding that it be paid royalties on patents they “own”. I understand the concept of copyright, but I’m not exactly sure how anyone can patent software anymore than they can patent mathematics. You can copyright a song, but you can’t patent the idea of a song and then demand royalties from anyone who writes a song. But that’s what Microsoft is claiming; that they’re entitled to patent the idea behind a computer application.

The European Union has turned thumbs down on software patents. And rightly so. The United States has been allowing people to register patents, but some recent court cases suggest that any legal action for patent infringement will meet with limited success.

Microsoft wants nothing less than complete control over the computer operating system market. Their only competition is from Mac and Gnu/Linux.

It’s clear that Microsoft is afraid of the concept of open source software, otherwise they wouldn’t be turning their considerable legal and financial might against those who produce it.

Open source software is still a small market to be sure, but it’s here to stay; and, it’s gaining ground in the end user market; losing it’s “for geeks only” connotation. And, as the many manifestations of Linux become easier to use for the average Joe, it will continue to erode Microsoft’s current advantage in the market place.

And, you simply can’t beat the price. That’s making Microsoft very nervous.

Second hand goods

There are a lot of good guitar builders out there, making good quality instruments. And, over the years, I’ve owned a few. But, my first guitar was an inexpensive “Simpson’s Sears special”, a Silvertone acoustic flat top. Specially priced for the beginner market back in the fifties, it cost less than $30.00. But, to put that price tag in context, my Dad’s weekly paycheck was just over $58.00 net, which made the guitar pretty special. And, I’ve never been without a guitar in all the years since.

These days I play a Washburn D10SDL, and I also own a Norman B-20-12, a 12 string guitar that’s hand made in Canada. OK, it’s made in Quebec, but whether they know it or not, they’re still part of Canada. Both my current guitars were gifts from family members, just like the first one I got from my Dad over half a century ago.

Recently, while surfing the net, I came across an article on Gallotone guitars. Now, if I were to mention names like Gibson, Gretsch, Martin, Ephinone, etc, everyone who has ever learned how to strum a chord would know what I was talking about. But, I’m wondering how many people out there can tell me what a Gallotone guitar looks like or where they were made? That’s what I thought.

The Gallotone Champion guitar model was a 3/4 size steel string flat-top acoustic made from laminated woods. It was manufactured in South Africa by the Gallo company during the 50's and 60's. It was intended for the beginner market and sold for under $20.00 US.

If I were to tell you that John Lennon once played a Gallowtone Champion, would you know where I’m going with this piece? Sure you would, unless you’re a complete stranger to this web log.

A few years back (eight to be exact), the Gallotone guitar once played by John Lennon sold for 155,500 pounds ($251,700) at a Rock'n'Roll memorabilia sale held by Sotheby's London. There is no indication anywhere that the purchaser is a guitar player. If he were, he would have spent a grand or two on a top of the line instrument that he could play on a daily basis without turning his fingers to hamburger; instead of a worthless piece of junk.

But the man was not a musician; he was a collector of memorabilia. He didn’t buy the guitar to play it, he bought it as a trophy so he could display it and proclaim proudly to anyone who might see it that it was once played by John Lennon. “Yessireebob. Worth every penny of the quarter of a million dollars I spent for it.”

No. I do not envy the man’s wealth and I don’t dispute his right to spend his money in any manner he sees fit. And, I sure as hell don’t envy his intelligence or lack thereof.

It was a cheap beginner’s guitar that plays no better today than it did back in the fifties when Lennon bought it. Its magic was never in the guitar; the magic was in the hands, heart and soul of the man who played it. And, no matter how much the buyer might be willing to spend, he can never buy the magic.

And the same holds true for the guitar once played, but never owned by Sir Paul McCartney, which sold at auction last year for $675,000.00. The guitar was accompanied by a letter from Sir Paul authenticating the fact he had once played that guitar as a boy. The owner, a boyhood friend of McCartney’s sold the guitar to “build a nest egg” for his pending retirement. He has obviously been thinking about his nest egg for a long time if he has managed to keep the instrument in any kind of decent shape over that length of time.

The guitar's buyer, the president of an auction company, is quoted as saying: "This is such an important piece of rock history and I am an extremely happy man tonight. Without this guitar, the Beatles may never have existed and it is a fantastic acquisition." An acquisition? I thought he was buying a guitar.

It may be a piece of rock history, but as such it belongs in a museum, not in the hands of a private collector who wants to bath, albeit second hand, in the brilliance of one of the world’s finest guitar players.

It’s hard to figure out these “collectors”. Is it their colossal ego or just plain stupidity that makes them pay that much money for second hand goods.

Record companies & royalties

Found an interesting bit of trivia on the web just a few days ago while researching another article for this web log. On a web site called “How it works”, a brief article in the side bar claims that country super star, Merle Haggard, had never received a recording royalty cheque throughout his long career in country music, until he recently recorded an album for the indie punk-rock label Epitaph.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “The guy is a country music legend. He’s had thirty-seven top ten country singles, with twenty-three of them number one hits. There’s no way any artist can be that successful and never cash a royalty cheque.” But, you’re wrong. To fully understand how such a thing might happen, you’d have to read several lengthy articles on how recording contracts actually work. I’ll try and give the short lecture in this post.

Let’s say you’re an up and coming young country singer who has just signed his/her first recording contract with a major record label. You sign the standard industry contract stating your cut will be 10% of total album sales. The record company gives you an advance of $100,000.00 or so to tide you over until your album is released, and you’re happily drifting along on cloud nine. The dollar signs are dancing in your head, rendering the brain next to useless.

So let’s see if we can’t work this out together. If you sell a million records at $15.00 apiece, that’s 15 million dollars; and your take would be a cool 1.5 million, right? Well, no, not exactly. You royalties will be based on the wholesale price, not the retail price. But that’s fair. If your record wholesales for nine dollars, you still make $900,000.00. Unless your album is sold through a record or CD club, or some discount retail outlet like Costco who usually pay a lower wholesale price. But, it’s still a pretty good deal, right?

Well, maybe. But there are a few expenses to be deducted from your royalties. Many record companies charge an up front “packaging fee” of up to 25% of the artist’s royalties. Then, there’s the cost of recording the songs. These costs alone can easily run up to several hundreds of thousands of dollars. You might do your recording in a studio owned by the record company, but you won’t get the studio time for free. They’ll charge you for it, usually with a considerable mark up.

There’s production costs, costs for graphic design, royalties to the writers, advertising and promotion of the album and don’t forget your advance. Then there’s the free CDs distributed for promotional purposes and to radio stations. And, don’t forget the hold back for CDs and tapes that might be returned later by retailers.

And, few records are released these days without at least one video for television; no one wants to look at a picture of Toby Keith for three and a half minutes while listening to one of his songs on CMT. So add on a few more hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Once it’s all added up, you’ll be down on your knees praying for a gold or platinum album. Otherwise you could end up owing the record company. And consider this, the music industry publishes tens of thousands of new albums every year, and only a small percentage of them are going to go gold (500,000 records sold) or platinum (1,000,000 records sold). You have about a 1-in-20 chance of producing an album that's a major hit.

Singer Courtney Love had this to say in an open letter to recording artists: “How do record companies get away with a 95% failure rate that would be totally unacceptable in any other business? Record companies keep almost all the profits. Recording artists get paid a tiny fraction of the money earned by their music. That allows record executives to be incredibly sloppy in running their companies and still create enormous amounts of cash for the corporations that own them.”

“The royalty rates granted in every recording contract are very low to start with and then companies charge back every conceivable cost to an artist's royalty account. Artists pay for recording costs, video production costs, tour support, radio promotion, sales and marketing costs, packaging costs and any other cost the record company can subtract from their royalties. Record companies also reduce royalties by "forgetting" to report sales figures, miscalculating royalties and by preventing artists from auditing record company books.”

And this item, from her blog: Courtney Love wants to follow the example of rock band Radiohead, who has allowed fans to download their new album "In Rainbows" and pay whatever they wanted. She too will release her music, for free, online.

Go ahead. Ask me why I don’t feel at all guilty about visiting “Torrent Portal” or “Pirate Bay” from time to time.

Water, water, everywhere . . .

Right now, in my refrigerator, there are several bottles of bottled water. And under a desk in my bedroom, there is an unopened case of the same bottled water. It is the last of three cases of water bought by my wife who drinks a lot of bottled water. When my wife and youngest daughter were lugging the stuff into the apartment, I raised my eyebrows in a questioning manner. “It was on sale!” was the chorus.

Also, in the kitchen of my apartment, there is a contraption called a “sink”. In the sink there are taps which you turn to make water run into the sink. The tap marked with a “C” gives you clear, cold; government tested water, certified fit for human consumption. And, it’s free.

Now, cold running water, delivered directly to your house or apartment, has been around for many years. Even back in the fifties, living on Bog Row down in Cape Breton, we had cold running water. Of course, if you ventured out into the countryside to visit Aunt Daisy, things got a little more complicated. There you had to prime the pump, and then pump the pump handle to get the water running before you could get a cool, refreshing drink . . . of free water.

Now, don’t anyone get the wrong impression here. I don’t begrudge a case or two of bottled water to anyone, especially my wife of nigh on to forty years. But . . .

Let’s look at some facts.

Nestlé Waters Canada has applied to extend its permit to pump 3.6 million litres of water a day in Aberfoyle and 1.1 million litres a day in Hillsburg for the next five years. That application drew about 6,000 letters of objection into the office of Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment.

According to Council of Canadians national chairperson Maude Barlow, “local residents need to be aware that a water crisis happening around the world can also happen in Guelph. Droughts are not just happening in Third World countries but in northern China, the Middle East, Australia and parts of the United States. It's a myth (in Canada) that we have so much water that we can afford to take it away, sell it and it'll never run out."

That, in and of itself, should be enough to make proponents of bottled water sit up and take notice. But, there’s another concern being overlooked by the environmentalists which is all too obvious to dumb old country boys like myself. If Nestle is drawing water from the same source as the local tap water, just why in hell are people paying for their stuff.

Now, consider this little news item from Reuters (South Africa). “Manufacturers of bottled water have hit back at accusations that they may be ripping-off consumers by selling tap water. Nestlé South Africa says its Pure Life product is obtained from an internationally approved source (unidentified) that is tested every six months. It has refuted allegations that Nestlé uses tap water and markets it as spring water.”

And, Coke has also worked to block public knowledge of its water source. Just a short time ago, Consumers International gave a Bad Product award to Dasani (water bottled by Coke), stating the honor was due to "pushing marketing into the realms of the ridiculous" by packaging water that came from the same source as tap water.

But, there are others guilty of “pushing marketing into the realms of the ridiculous”.

Claridges in London, one of the best known hotels in the world boasts three restaurants. It is now offering a "water menu" featuring more than 30 worldwide varieties of bottled water; iceberg water from Newfoundland, OGO water from the Netherlands which contains 35 times more oxygen than usual, water from New Zealand's finest volcanic springs, Tasmanian Rain, etc, etc. The cost? Anywhere from seven to thirty dollars a bottle.

And consider this item from Reuters (London), which claims, “Restaurants are pushing customers into buying expensive bottled water instead of offering them tap water for free, the government's consumer watchdog said on Friday. A five-star hotel in London charges 50 pounds (roughly 75 dollars) a litre and even chain restaurants charge 3.80 pounds (five dollars) for bottled mineral water.”

The article goes on to claim that a recent survey found that nine out of every 10 restaurants (in London) were pushing consumers to buy bottled water and failed to offer them free tap water.

Maker of horror films, David Cronenberg, once said, “The secret to a good horror film is to take ordinary events and extend them to their ultimate conclusion.” How about this for a possible horror scenario?

Coke and Pepsi buy the Great Lakes. Manufacturing concerns are forced to pay such high prices for their water that they move out of the country leaving millions unemployed. The public is forced to pay through the nose for Dasani and Aquafina. There is rioting in the streets of Toronto and hordes of thirsty, unemployed easterners are prepared to invade Alberta and BC to wrest control of their water supply.

Yeah, I know. It’ll never happen. By the time we get around to it, the Yanks will have already invaded Alberta and BC and there’ll be no water left.