tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.comments2009-04-12T14:55:23.316-04:00Snowrunnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223998861938853709noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-46276746952875400052009-04-12T14:55:00.000-04:002009-04-12T14:55:00.000-04:00I can't agree more with you.<BR/><BR/>Here's other evoking comment from Reznor:<BR/><BR/>Rocker TRENT REZNOR is urging all musicians to follow in his footsteps and ditch their record labels.<BR/>Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails broke away from their deal with Universal in 2007, after a tempestuous relationship with the music giant.<BR/>The singer describes the experience as "liberating" - insisting big labels make too much money from musicians and are completely out of touch with the industry.<BR/>Reznor says, "Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact - no idea. I'm surprised they know how to use email. They have built a business around selling plastic discs, and nobody wants plastic discs any more. They're in such a state of denial it's impossible for them to understand what's happening.<BR/>"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' - like I did. When we found out we'd been released (from their recording contract) it was like, 'Thank God!'. But 20 minutes later it was, 'Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?' It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying."<BR/>And Reznor adds that musicians should be exploring other ways to sell their own music, rather than relying on labels: "As an artist, you are now the marketer."<BR/><BR/>http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/reznor%20urges%20musicians%20to%20ditch%20labels_1099985Snowrunnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223998861938853709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-15461904119912249372009-04-12T14:41:00.000-04:002009-04-12T14:41:00.000-04:00I think Reznor is bang-on... Instead of struggling against changing times and circumstances, he's embraced the new digital realities and developed a business model that fits into it... It's pretty forward thinking...Cyber-Spacemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13567620805046975019noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-28447249422713710052009-02-13T16:59:00.000-05:002009-02-13T16:59:00.000-05:00The "Anonymous" is more a group of persons than an individual celebrity, and they will probably fits better under the "cracker" tag than the "hacker" one, according to my definition. They are mainly motivated in collecting what they call "lulz", a corrupted version of lol, laugh out loud. It consist mainly of trolling various site and people. "Lulz" are mainly collected from people reaction to hateful, racist or pedophile comments. It comes out as excuse for almost everything they do: "Why did you harassed this person?" "I did it for the lulz!".<BR/><BR/>Anonymous is a gigantic subculture. They call themselves "the internet hate machine". It would made a terrificly interesting subject for the course for someone brave enough to dig into this. Wikipedia does have an article (of course) on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)<BR/><BR/>In definitive, is a completely different subject from the F/OSS community, and I think members of Open source movement would be offended to be associate in anyway with them (actually, every single sane person would be offended, even members of the group itself when not wearing their "anonymous' mask").Snowrunnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223998861938853709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-19500807479015282652009-02-13T14:50:00.000-05:002009-02-13T14:50:00.000-05:00I also find these individuals can be excellent teachers on how to use difficult or exotic code (because I was ignorant of it, it was difficult and exotic). I essentially locked myself out of my own laptop, forgetting the password needed to enter Ubuntu, then apparently getting the username wrong too. I know, it's ridiculous. They essentially taught me the rudiments for hacking my own laptop, not quite, but they pointed me in a certain direction and they hoped I would get the rest on my own (which I did of course).Maximilian C. Fortehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11209329841918356753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-65955202828637496782009-02-13T14:47:00.000-05:002009-02-13T14:47:00.000-05:00Excellent, thanks very much for this note. Personally, I am very curious about hacker celebrities, such as "Anonymous" (video on the front page of the course website).Maximilian C. Fortehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11209329841918356753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-1206938255631021602009-01-29T13:43:00.000-05:002009-01-29T13:43:00.000-05:00Indeed, this is a good question that I should have addressed before. The reason I didn't included them in my ethnographic project is mainly because it has been covered by others before me. Nonetheless, it would be a good idea to detail what has been said about it if we want to understand how they act together as a group.<BR/><BR/>Thank you for the interest, sometimes when you are too close to your subject, it is good to have someone pointing out obvious thing you miss out.Snowrunnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223998861938853709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-5713123556695422862009-01-29T00:29:00.000-05:002009-01-29T00:29:00.000-05:00(Good) Questions deserve to be answered with questions:<BR/><BR/>What is the 'community' status of F/OSS-types? Is this a matter of 'collective identity' (diffuse, cultural, submerged, but common nonetheless, e.g. Alberto Melucci - we share values, however loosely), (inter)actively-defined through enacted contacts/shared experience (we worked this out together, or we're in this together, whether we like it or not), or instrumentally-linked (we're looking to get the same results - to some extent - so let's put our differences aside)...or something else?<BR/><BR/>To quote generally terrible 1990s ska band Buck-o-Nine: "Who are THEY and where do they get their information?"<BR/><BR/>I'm very much liking the look of your project; I know near-zilch about it, so I'll keep an eye out (and so my su(pplementary/perfluous) question might seem a bit left-field. Cheers.rsrcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05668029098740878094noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-66346498435802252272009-01-23T20:10:00.000-05:002009-01-23T20:10:00.000-05:00Hey no such thing as "too close", I'm sure there are questions to be built on, reworked, reinterpreted. I think we should work on the exact same research questions more often!Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09536228069733122141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-36736112847120592072009-01-22T15:39:00.000-05:002009-01-22T15:39:00.000-05:00Wow, the Thesis that Dr. John Postill link to is a wonderful source of information. I’d say that it is even « too » close to what I intended to do. Thank you a lot for the link. As for Eric Raymond, I already intend to get a hand on his book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."<BR/> <BR/>For more serious reading, I’ve already come across a few books on open source like “The success of open source” by Steven Weber (2004) and “Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software”, edited by Feller et al. (2005). There are a few others, but I don’t want someone to grab them at the library before I do, so I’ll keep this quiet for now. <BR/><BR/>For the participation, I'll try to contact the LoCo and see if there's anything to be done with the documentation. There's also this "Global Bug Jam" event this Febuary, I'll see how I can participate.Snowrunnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223998861938853709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-55105461495543629282009-01-22T14:04:00.000-05:002009-01-22T14:04:00.000-05:00I tried responding a couple days ago and failed miserably trying to use my "wordpress" account to login. I'll figure it out eventually.<BR/><BR/>I'm a huge fan of open source software, and have tried to use it as much as possible. I've run Openoffice for years now, and Gentoo is my OS of choice (at least on my home machine... for my notebook I'm still using XP). In fact, my love of open source fed into my research into open access publishing. <BR/><BR/>I'm looking forward to seeing which anthro readings you find useful for studying the Ubuntu community, and what parallels your findings will have with mine on the open access publishing side. <BR/><BR/>As a Gentoo user, it's also interesting to see the big differences between F/OSS projects. (gentoo in the past made little attempt to attract windows users, etc..). <BR/><BR/>Not sure if you've found them yet, but heres some immediate links:<BR/><BR/>Dr. John Postill's blog post covering an Ethnographic study of Ubuntu. Dr. Postill is very active in the anthro blogsphere and has helped me out a number of times with great feedback. <BR/><BR/>http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/anthropological-study-of-the-ubuntu-linux-community-of-practice/<BR/><BR/>It's always fun to quote some ESR too - especially when he goes off on how great it is to own guns... (kidding).<BR/>http://www.catb.org/~esr/<BR/><BR/>How will you participate in the community? As a user, or perhaps involve yourself in bug fixes? (ie: correcting bad documentation, testing bugs, testing bug fixes, etc?). <BR/><BR/>Looking forward to hearing more!<BR/><BR/>Owen.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09536228069733122141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-76886897140619780762009-01-20T13:48:00.000-05:002009-01-20T13:48:00.000-05:00lol. I'll blame you when I start humming this in the hallway.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09536228069733122141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-68659967598695646992009-01-07T21:31:00.000-05:002009-01-07T21:31:00.000-05:00Yep, no news yet. He's probably busy.Snowrunnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223998861938853709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1222133160903598691.post-8863762390700689552009-01-07T21:16:00.000-05:002009-01-07T21:16:00.000-05:00Har har.<BR/><BR/>Hey, your blog isn't up on the course website. Have you emailed Prof. Forte with the URL?Puckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06711388630312275643noreply@blogger.com