How to make money with linux...

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

	John Chambers wrote:
	> Being
	> able to download music on the fly and pop it up on a screen isn't too
	> useful if the screen will only hold 4 bars  of  music,  or  is  in  a
	> format that's only readable if you flop your head over sideways.
	> 

	Sounds to me like sheet music is on it's way out the door.  Perhaps 
	your musicians should learn to read bar-code :-)

	Heck, fire the musicians and teach the instruments to read bar-code...

Well, such suggestions have been made off and on, and of course there
is a lot of computer-generated music about.  But mechanical music has
always lacked something.  Anyhow, even if  you  think  musicians  are
obsolete,  lots  of  musicians  don't think so, and they seem to just
bullheadedly keep playing even when you can buy recordings  that  are
"just as good". Sales of musical instruments are not falling off.

But some of us wouldn't miss sheet music, if there were a better  way
to do it.  This is especially true of the folk crowds that I hang out
with, who are generally contemptuous of musicians  who  need  printed
music as a crutch.  Many of them actually find a computerized version
more acceptable, probably in part because it's  empemeral.   So  far,
like  lots of marvels of modern electronics, computerized sheet music
is more promise than delivery.  The day may be in view, however.  The
only  question is whether we can get all the pieces together in a way
that's actually usable.

(Very few musicians would feel sorry for the music  publishers,  just
as  few  musicians  feel  sorry  for the recording industry's ongoing
fight against piracy of recordings.)

I'm reminded of the case study of the supposedly  well-done  document
processing  system  built  on  some  IBM mainframes back in the 60's,
which failed because  the  publishing  industry  just  wouldn't  take
seriously  a  system  that couldn't print out lower-case letters.  It
didn't matter how good the software is if you have  such  a  failure,
and  of  course the software guys had no say over it.  Their software
could handle lower-case letters quite well, but if you  can't  get  a
lower-case printer for your demos, it doesn't matter.

Similarly, I can download "sheet music" in  a  compact,  easy-to-type
(and  emailable)  format,  convert  it to postscript, and pop up some
very nice "sheet music" in a ghostview window.   But  my  desktop  PC
would  be  laughed  at  in  any  of  the  music  environments  that I
frequently find myself, and rightly so.  It's a physical package that
simply  is  so  unusable  (in this environment) that if you seriously
suggested using it, nobody would argue with you.  You would simply be
considered  too  clueless  to be worth even the smallest effort; lets
play another tune instead.

But I do like to check occasionally to see if the right  stuff  might
be  available somewhere that I haven't heard of.  Bleeding-edge folks
like a linux users group seem like the right people to ask. Wearables
are  another  area  of  potential,  but their emphasis really is in a
different direction.

The best potential is probably with the palmtops.  Now if they could
be persuaded to build one that's as big as a laptop ...

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