Evolution of Music

One of the most heavily impacted industries by computers is the music industry. The methods of producing and selling music have changed more in the past 30 years than they have since the beginning of time. From the creation of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and virtual synthesizers to the sampled recording of real live instruments, composers are now able to purchase software and produce realistic sounding instruments without the need for a big recording studio and many hired players. These instruments are often recorded note by note many times at different microphone positions and different articulations. Then, the audio is packaged with programmed software, often known as a VSTi (Virtual Studio Technology Instrument), that lets the composer input his/her own notes and have an output of sound that resembles a live performance. These sampled instruments have become such a standard that they can be heard in most popular songs in most genres. Composers and producers do not have the time or funding to record a live performance of every single instrument no matter how far in the background it is, so the cheaper way is to use software. The business of selling sampled and synthesized virtual instruments has become big enough that there are entire big companies dedicated to programming and selling this kind of software to music creators around the world. EastWest, for example, is a company dedicated to making all kinds of virtual instruments, and although I could not find their yearly revenue, they have spent hundreds of thousands on creating their most recent libraries sampling orchestral string and brass instruments. For a software that only sells to a specific number of professionals, they are spending quite a lot on perfecting the art of making a computer produce the sounds you would hear in an acoustic performance. For a professional, the prices of these products being in the thousands does not come close to the higher price of hiring an entire orchestra, so EastWest do realize the importance of what they're investing into.


The real issue here is how this will affect performers and musicians. When people stop noticing the difference between sampled software playback and live performance recordings, why would even the richest composers bother spending money to record performances for something like music for a trailer or a TV show? Being a musician could very well be one of the rarest jobs in the future, and I highly doubt someone that has spent their entire life mastering an instrument would be happy spending every single day playing the same note 50 times to make the perfect sample for a software where his playing won't even be remembered. Like any movement in technology, virtual instruments have their after-effects. The opportunities they open for programmers could be the same number of opportunities they close for musicians. Even bands and live performing artists rely somewhat on virtual instruments in one way or another during performances. As a matter of fact, some companies, such as Eareckon, have created software made especially for use as a host of virtual instruments during live performances. More recent genres of music, such as electro, techno, etc. rely on 1 person controlling a previously arranged sequence as a DJ on his/her computer during live performances, rather than having live players performing on synthesizers. With the core of music moving closer to a single workstation and further from the hands of the player, it is unpredictable how the most culturally-influenced things like music will be affected.

Google on the Road

It's been almost 2 years since Google first announced their work on a self-driving car and now they're making a move on it and partnering with Toyota. The new self-driving car features cameras and laser tracking hardware that reads movements and objects on the road and detects exactly when to signal, turn, accelerate and brake. It was presented earlier in 2010 as an unfinished experiment, but it was very capable of driving safely then and it still is. Google and Toyota have not set an exact date to put it into production or a price, but it is very possible that this technology would be safe for consumers to use by 2014 or 2015. Google and Toyota did say that they do not plan on replacing the driver with a machine, because the driver is still fully liable and responsible for what the car is doing. A driver would need to step in place and take the wheel at any time if the car seems to be making a mistake. They also do not want to take the joy of driving away from those who enjoy it. However, it may be much easier to set the car on self-drive during a 50 minute drive through a busy freeway at 8 in the morning.


The impact this has on the industry means putting a lot of responsibility on the companies themselves. Any error in the code operating the car and people will die. Cars would not only have to work together, but be able to detect sudden changes on the road very quickly even if the color of a certain object is not bright or different enough to detect. It would also mean more costs to fix these cars when a problem does occur. The move to digital and computer-operated cars means more work for the mechanic and possibly more of a need to send parts back to manufacturers. This will also create a fear from buying used cars, due to them always having older chips that may fail more easily, similar to the risks of buying used computers. Do-It-Yourself fixes will also decrease, meaning less control for the buyer and more for the company. however, the pros of having self-driving cars do out-weigh the cons. It is possible that accidents may decrease by almost 50%. Human errors will always be more than computer errors in most cases, so it will be more accurate in stopping potential accidents. These cars may even be programmed and used in film stunts to get a perfect shot at planned points on the road at certain speeds. I am one of the people looking forward to this, and I do hope that Google and Toyota live up to their word on keeping the drivers in control and simply giving them the option to access this technology.


ABC News video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nYhKD8leAg


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References:
- Richard Blackden, "Google technology allows Toyota car to drive itself," The Telegraph, March 1st 2012; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/9117119/Google-technology-allows-Toyota-car-to-drive-itself.html

A Very Educational Post

It seems that the internet has brought forward new crowd-sourcing opportunities for educators. www.thefreeuniversity.com is a new website that has grabbed my attention. The site is still under construction, but it seems they have plans to create a full open source area for lectures and texts to let people interested in learning any subjects to have the opportunity to simply search for it and watch a few lectures. MIT has been doing a similar thing for a few of their courses for years, where they record entire lectures and upload them to websites, such as YouTube or their own website, which can be found at http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/. However, MIT does ask for donations to keep the service up and running, which surprised me that a university as big as MIT was having trouble funding the recording and storage of lectures. That is why thefreeuniversity.com may be more successful in collecting more full course lectures, since they do plan on being community-operated.


There are lots of places on the internet that offer free lectures and tutorials aside from universities themselves. YouTube itself has become a big source of educational how-to videos and academic tutorials. There are even people that are able to make somewhat of a living from posting free tutorial videos about various subjects, such as Khan Academy, thenewboston, patrickjmt, and the list goes on. I've found many of these free tutorials helpful while studying for university subjects myself. This process doesn't threaten the existence of big institutions, yet it helps people become more educated and well-rounded. I've certainly learned a lot more by researching random topics on the internet, than from taking breadth requirement courses at U of T. Self-motivated learners are definitely the best future professionals, which is why it's becoming increasingly important to become dedicated to a single field. Technology is what's closing that gap between self-motivated learners and professionals. Wikipedia would not be as successful without the support of those that are motivated enough to share information and fund the website. Online degrees are still too early to become credible enough, but in the future, there may be a good amount of variety from one type of university to another that people are judged by their skills, not their location of study.

Hollywood vs. the World

Hotfile has recently gotten attention from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) as a part of their series of battles with file-sharing websites. One might consider Hotfile's status to be close to Megaupload, since it is commonly used and all kinds of files are uploaded to it. It also made the world's top 100 websites in terms of traffic. Hotfile does remove illegal content upon request of the copyright holder, but since when has a plan that required the MPAA to do any work been favorable to them?


The main problem with Hotfile being taken down in this manner is that it gives Hollywood more power over tech companies. If their case against Hotfile is successful, they would have enough power to threaten big companies that offer uploading and sharing services like YouTube. They wouldn't necessarily take down YouTube, considering how much it currently benefits them to spread their trailers and music videos, but they can approach Google with requests that they cannot deny, simply because they have enough power to threaten the company's branches. That is why Google itself has stepped in this time. Google's lawyers are taking Hotfile's side and defending it in court, stating that Hotfile, like any other content-sharing site, is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The last people the world would want to give more power are companies that find it this necessary to either play by their own rules or throw the entire game board away. They certainly will not stop with Hotfile's employees going to prison. They'll keep finding site after site and shutting it down, leading to an internet owned by shallow media companies, whose only goal in life is to gain more profits from entertainment media at any cost.


An internet owned and operated by the people is definitely a reality the MPAA wants to escape. These Hollywood companies have worked years on setting up their loss-proof game plan only to have it be destroyed by the internet. However, ignorance deserves no empathy. Modern software and video game companies have already found their ways to successfully work around piracy and generate profits. The film and the music industries being too slow to catch on shouldn't give them the right to force everyone to slow down and wait for them. They need to find more appropriate ways of generating profits without harming the people's freedoms and damaging the lives of those simply offering the world a useful service like file-sharing.


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References:
- Paul Sloan, "Google defends hosting site under attack by MPAA," CNET News, March 19, 2012; http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57400361-93/google-defends-hosting-site-under-attack-by-mpaa/?tag=mncol;cnetRiver#postComments

Thoughts on HTML5 vs. Flash

The latest web language, HTML5, has introduced significant changes to the core and construction of web content. Its new vector-based rendering and video play-back capabilities have been put into place to rival Adobe Flash. Most developers are leaning towards replacing Flash with HTML5, even though benchmarks do show that HTML5 is much slower at the tasks that Flash is commonly used for.  HTML5 is free to use and it does provide some easy and simple APIs that help in creating any sort of website without the use of external plug-ins. However, Adobe Flash does have a more user-friendly interface and a simpler action script. In the end, a developer would save a lot of time when using Flash, since the interface is similar to Photoshop and Illustrator’s and it does provide a few of the simpler tools used in these programs. The smoothest animations can be created in Flash with the push of a few buttons. However, in HTML5, there’s a lot of code to be written and more experience is required. The use of JavaScript or a similar scripting language is also required to properly animate objects in HTML5.

The main concerns floating around when it comes to Flash are CPU usage and multi-platform development. However, CPU usage can be ruled out since it has already been proven by benchmarks that Flash runs most things at much higher frame rates than HTML5, proving most of Apple’s excuses for not allowing Flash support in iOS to be lies. The only problem with Flash performance is when it is used for large amounts of text. In situations like these, HTML5 scores higher. It is perfectly possible that HTML5 still has not had enough updates to run as smoothly as Flash. Flash has been around since 1996, so it has had a lot of work done on it and several big changes in every update.

I may be biased in this argument, since I have been using Flash since I was 10 and it was what gave me a better outlook into learning more complex things about software in general. Losing it for me would be much like imagining your favorite childhood cartoon or video game not existing. It’s something I’d want kids to learn to get themselves introduced to simple scripting combined with graphics work. It does make sense that companies wouldn’t want Adobe to have all the power in choosing what platforms to support and how much to charge for that Flash support, but the death of Flash does not solve anything, nor does it make web content in any way better. I would prefer that Flash become open source and gain community support. There are some speculations as to how Adobe will create something to empower HTML5 and I am one of the people waiting to see what Adobe is capable of. On the consumer’s side, it does not make a difference what the web page uses, but it does matter how visually appealing and smooth a web page is to enhance the entertainment one gets from web surfing without taking a drop in CPU or GPU performance.

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References:

- Sean Christmann, "GUIMark 2: The rise of HTML5," CraftyMind, 2009; http://www.craftymind.com/guimark2/

- Sean Christmann, "GUIMark 3 – Mobile Showdown," CraftyMind, 2011; http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/

"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has stopped working"

The most recent Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3, has gotten some criticism, despite selling so well, over re-releasing the same game over and over again with a few changed features. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't actually sold at the same $60 price. When the game crashes, which it does often, it still contains error logs and messages that were Modern Warfare 2 specific. The code being used was obviously never changed and neither were over 70% of the sound effects. Instead, Activision has been keeping all the profits from previous games and not investing enough into the creation of the series. I could go on about models, textures and designs being done in the most amateur and quickest way possible, recognizable by any professional artist in the industry, but you get the point.

This is not a new thing in the industry, whether it's games, software or gadgets. Companies making big profits come to the conclusion that they're able to reduce costs without anyone noticing. When Microsoft released Windows Millennium, they had high hopes that making quick releases of their operating system means more profits. The entire operating system ended up lacking thorough testing and gave the famous blue screen its common reference to windows, needlessly harming its reputation. Apple's iOS 5 has had many crashes running downloaded apps and it does show that very little features were added into the release simply to give the new 4s phone a higher reputation. The list of examples goes on, but it is an apparent problem in the industry. It is forgivable when a company makes a mistake in the product itself, but when little work is put into it intentionally, they do not deserve sales for that product. People that work on such products know very well how the level of competition with other companies is very high.

Creating engines that make the work flow faster is one thing, but tricking people into paying full price for something that had minimal work put into it is entirely unethical. It's no different from scamming people. To me, it is a programmer's job to put his/her full effort and attention into a project until it is perfect enough to sell or distribute. Greed and professionalism do not mix.

Any thoughts on these companies or others being greedy in avoiding doing work on new products?

Survival Is Not Free. It's Open Source

Recent news about endless series of bills, laws and ideas to end piracy and protect information rights have been the center of the people’s attention worldwide. ACTA, PIPA and SOPA led to protests worldwide and endless angry letters being sent to governments. The questions on how piracy has harmed people remain unanswered. Laws that protect the copyright holders remain solid and they have been protecting those who fight for their rights for many years. These questions are not about the law nor are they about human rights; these questions are about the higher benefit of the people. Most media companies have complained about piracy at least once, whether it is about music, movies, software, or video games. The “losses” that have been endlessly pouring in on these poor beings have contradicted the very basics of human rights. However, this complaining only puts them in more heat.
 

Humans are adaptive creatures. When something does not naturally work in our favor, we do not change it; we adapt for survival. This is where the idea of open source and free distribution came into fruition. People that are smart enough to make money from a product distributed for free are the survivors of current and future times. Media companies have gotten comfortable with the idea that putting minimal thought into work pays if there is no competition. That’s how the world of business set the standards for monopolistic distribution. Whether the business has to do with music labels, book or game publishers, or film distributors, they have the final word on what gets funded and what gets released to the people. The foundation of corporate greed is not money; it’s power, the power to keep that money. The world’s top companies survive on casting out the competition rather than making a better product. The new age’s thoughts on free distribution and open source are the main threat to their strategies. Why should the people expect them to adapt to the new ideologies when a perfect system has been created for them to stay in power? Major labels are more threatened by artists that distribute their music for free. Even small video game development companies have turned to free-to-play games for alternative ways of earning money instead of using the usual payment and disc distribution systems. Ijji, a major influence on the free-to-play games market, reached over 10 million members in 2009 and have since gained millions more. Since then, thousands of free-to-play PC games have come into play. Media companies have always been trying to limit piracy one way or another with failed attempts, such as limiting internet bandwidth, DRM and limited installations of software or games, but their end may finally come with laws that deny people piracy. As mentioned in the last post, 20% of the people cause 80% of the influence. If these pirates can’t use the internet by their own rules then by all means, free and open source media will take over the internet. Making content impossible to pirate will only make it inaccessible. When the only content accessible is free, that is what people will download. Even major companies such as Mozilla and Red Hat make large profits from the distribution of open source software. Red Hat reported a total of $909.3 million in revenue for the fiscal year 2011 results. These companies don't use the standard marketing and business strategies but still continue to earn enough profits. There’s no doubt that making money from something that is being distributed for free is harder, and that is most likely the main reason for why big media companies hate it. It requires adapting for survival.
 

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References:

“Heading into New Decade and 10 Million Members, ijji.com Unveils New Logo,” IGN, January 9, 2012; http://pc.ign.com/articles/104/1043348p1.html

“Red Hat Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2011 Results,” Red Hat, March 23, 2011; http://investors.redhat.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=559647