ARI announces new Atlas Shrugged website

[galtgulch]

www.aynrand.org

Announcing AtlasShrugged.com

The Ayn Rand Institute is very pleased to announce AtlasShrugged.com, a major new Web site dedicated to Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's great novel about the mysterious disappearance of the world's greatest innovators and industrialists.

AtlasShrugged.com has been created to be the Web's most comprehensive and insightful companion site to the novel. For new readers, it offers an introduction to the book and its themes; and for those already familiar with Atlas Shrugged, the site offers an unprecedented wealth of analysis and commentary to help them understand the book better, along with background information about Ayn Rand and her life.

Now in print for more than fifty years, Atlas Shrugged today sells well over 125,000 copies each year, even more than it sold at the peak of its initial publication run when it was a best-seller. More and more people are reporting the book's profound influence on their lives. Visit atlasshrugged.com to see why!

Browse AtlasShrugged.com http://www.atlasshrugged.com/.

[Greybird]

From the Website's "History of Atlas Shrugged" pages:

Writing and Re-Writing Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Mind at Work

By Shoshana Milgram

WARNING: contains plot spoilers

This audio lecture is intended for an audience very familiar with the plot, theme and philosophical content of the novel. It is based on archival research in the Library of Congress in 1997 and at the Ayn Rand Archives in 2004; some of the material was presented in “Ayn Rand’s Drafts: The Labors of a Literary Genius” (taped lectures, Second Renaissance Books, 1998).

Playback of this audio requires RealPlayer®.[*]

* Lecture (52 min.)

* Q & A (27 min.)

Even with Milgram, who captivated me at ARI's free Hollywood event in 2002, being among the few who might tempt me to tap this streaming audio ... I am SO FRIGGING TIRED of this. We're coming up on fifty years of an Objectivist oral culture. I've been mystified by it for the last thirty.

It's difficult for me to reconcile how the woman who scintillated on the importance of words in an objective, accessible format (in "Kant versus Sullivan") could put up with leaving so many expositions of her ideas in taped form. Rand herself reduced her Ford Hall lectures to print promptly, at least. Why didn't she prevail on her associates to do the same?

At least CD-ROMs were an advance on the past, providing random access and citations, or the potential for them. Now, with streaming audio, we're back to its being no better than cassette tapes. *sigh*

_____

* No, it does NOT require RealPlayer. If you want these lectures, and you haven't yet installed that abomination, with its endless vampiric taps on the efficiency of your Windows system, please DON'T! You will regret it. RealPlayer is nearly impossible to remove. Instead, use the open-source RealAlternative, which minimizes the intrusion on your system. You can reliably download this ad-free, fee-free software here.

[Brant Gaede]

Thanks for the heads up, Greybird.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Steve,

This is a wonderful example of a concrete expression of a mentality. I had to come to terms with this within myself and I do not support it.

The mentality is trying to be control at all times.

To such a person, allowing a viewer to choose a player is outside his value system. (I speculate, but this is based on observation of many people and discerning patterns.) He thinks that because he owns the lecture material, this gives him rights to dictate other matters, like which platform on the Internet his property will be viewed. He forgets that the viewer is the owner of his own computer and has many other values that invasive programs hinder or destroy. Since people choose what they want, anyway, and the aspiring controller has no say in the matter, he treats it as war and embarks on dirty tricks.

ARI has been in cahoots with Real Player and streaming media ever since I have been aware of its presence on the Internet. I remember reading about streaming media from ARI back when I was still in Brazil, but years ago, not just recently.

In terms of copyright, I have discerned the same kind of thinking.

The concept of Web 2.0 mash-ups is foreign to this kind of person, or at least goes against the grain of his professed values and behavior. I have to admit an exception, however. There is a beautiful set of video mash-ups on YouTube doing Galt's speech as theme. They have received little or no protest from orthodox Objectivists. I have seen all of them nor read all of the comments, so I might be wrong. But I have not seen any outcry of copyright violation with the images taken from motion pictures or music (like the parts taken from the soundtracks of John Williams).

And I have to admit that someone within ARI is pushing them in the right direction Web-wise. Many items are now being offered to the public for free, like the Lexicon and Sures's book. Many lectures are provided for free in exchange for free registration. I wonder how many of the orthodox are aware that this process exists to establish a targeted customer base for making future sales offers and does not have the main purpose of controlling the viewer by keeping tabs on him.

Thank you for the RealAlternative tip. I competely forgot to look for open source and freeware places for an alternative. I already disabled RealPlayer and simply do not watch the ARI material because of its invasiveness (which is nothing if not a poor cousin of spam). But there it sits in my computer, taking up space with its all its worthlessness. It is galling to look at it and know that it is there.

Oh well, I guess I will have to jump through the hoops, invest time and effort and see if I can get rid of the damn thing. This is the last time for RealPlayer in my life, though.

Michael

[tjohnson]

Real player probably wouldn't have to be so invasive if the monopoly M$ didn't effectively put it out of business by bundling Media Player with their OS just like they did to Netcape with the crappy Internet Explorer. Doesn't bother me though - I can listen with the Mplayer plug-in for Mozilla on my Linux box just fine.

[Greybird]

Michael, you might be imputing more of a Machiavellian intent to ARI than they actually have, at least in this case ... I know, I know, it's hard to imagine that they don't have one.

It's probably, in large part, simple inertia. The easiest way to advise others to use what had been a proprietary format is to direct them to those who developed it. They're also, usually, presumed to stay around longer in the marketplace and on the Web than their nimbler, smaller rivals.

Those originators, however, keep adding weight and overhead to what had been relatively simpler tools, in order to keep "market" share, at least in bringing users back to their Websites.

Real Networks has, at least, made available the codecs for their .rm/.ram/.ra streaming audio, so others aren't infringing on any intellectual property by creating such simpler tools as Real Alternative.

Another example is Adobe and its (Acrobat) Reader. It's become a monstrous and system-clogging beast. When you want to read or annotate .pdf files, it becomes overkill. Foxit Reader uses the publicly available PDF specs to create a quick-loading, unobtrusive alternative.

I do have my own suspicions as to ARI, and other Objectivists of all stripes, being dubious as to the entire phenomenon of open-source, freeware, and shareware programs. (Occasional hints, rather than openly writing about it.)

These creations involve marketplaces that rely largely on non-monetary contributions, or on breaking the iron link between production and payment. Motives of those involved do range from woozy altruism to practical engineering realism.

Yet the undeniable result is that these products tend to work efficiently, at no or minimal cost, and with potent feedback to resolve difficulties and weaknesses. I've saved money, frustration, and security hassles by making use of dozens of them. FileHippo is an excellent source.

[Robert Campbell]

Another alternative is to use a Macintosh . RealPlayer does nothing vampiric to OS X.

The oral tradition that grew up around Objectivism serves multiple functions. But staying inaccessible to informed criticism is clearly one of them.

Shoshana Milgram is a strong writer, as her published book chapters show. I'll wait for her chapter on Atlas Shrugged, thank you very much.

Robert Campbell