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Now there are 2 kinds of zombie overlords?

It's time to prepare for the invasion:
    http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/4/18/153047/155
    http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/

Just because you have a box full of tools doesn't mean you have to use each and every one of them. You can use the backhoe or the garden spade, it's up to you. Use the right tool for the right job. Just because I only need a hammer today doesn't mean I should throw the screwdriver away.

fast and slow; but it's the same article! Yes, the K5 one has comments, but I think the example gets the point across anyway.

-mcgrew

PS- yes, I know there's a typo in the "back" link. I'm too lazy to fix it.

No, there was no country of "Palestine".

Fantastic Lad is talking about the period before 1918, when Israel did not exist, and had not for at least a thousand years. IIRC, Israel had been conquered by the Roman Empire, and was eventually dissolved. The subsequent Arab residents, known as 'Palestinians', occupied the region for somewhere between 1000 and 2000 years. God took the Jewish people's land away because they weren't very pious.

Also IIRC, sometime in the early 20th century the Zionist Jews (zionists being those who wanted to re-establish Israel) bought the land occupied by the Palestinians from "absentee landlords" in the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians had no concept of having 'title' to a piece of land, and the Ottomans issued titles for themselves to the Palestinians' land.

See the September 10th, 2001 story on K5: Religious-Run Governments and Restriction of Freedom.

I'd say more (and verify my recollections), but it's time for bed.

Have a nice day.

(anonymous because I guess I moderated in this story...)

While it may seem cliche, the world has changed a lot since then

Not in any really signifigant ways. I wish I could find it, there's a rant by some geezer about the younger generation that could have been written yesterday, but was from someone in ancient Greece.

The world's changes have been mostly positive. We don't have to do duck-and-cover drills any more! In 2000 bc there were pedophiles, and far worse. I've been around long enough to see quite a few changes, and some are for the worst, of course; when I was a kid my mom was one of the very few who worked. But I didn't go to a day care center, my Grandmother mostly took care of us during the summer.

The biggest difference between when I was a young adult and now isn't that we have big flat screen TVs, computers, video games, microwave ovens, cell phones, or any of that. Not even the internet. The most important difference is that when I was 25 there were a plethora of birth control choices, and there were no incurable STDs. My generation was vastly different from my parents' in that respect, but things have gone full circle. My kids' generation is far more like my parents' than my own.

-mcgrew

A few links:
Growing Up With Computers
Useful Dead Technologies
Good Riddance to Bad Tech
Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station

While it may seem cliche, the world has changed a lot since then

Not in any really signifigant ways. I wish I could find it, there's a rant by some geezer about the younger generation that could have been written yesterday, but was from someone in ancient Greece.

The world's changes have been mostly positive. We don't have to do duck-and-cover drills any more! In 2000 bc there were pedophiles, and far worse. I've been around long enough to see quite a few changes, and some are for the worst, of course; when I was a kid my mom was one of the very few who worked. But I didn't go to a day care center, my Grandmother mostly took care of us during the summer.

The biggest difference between when I was a young adult and now isn't that we have big flat screen TVs, computers, video games, microwave ovens, cell phones, or any of that. Not even the internet. The most important difference is that when I was 25 there were a plethora of birth control choices, and there were no incurable STDs. My generation was vastly different from my parents' in that respect, but things have gone full circle. My kids' generation is far more like my parents' than my own.

-mcgrew

A few links:
Growing Up With Computers
Useful Dead Technologies
Good Riddance to Bad Tech
Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station

While it may seem cliche, the world has changed a lot since then

Not in any really signifigant ways. I wish I could find it, there's a rant by some geezer about the younger generation that could have been written yesterday, but was from someone in ancient Greece.

The world's changes have been mostly positive. We don't have to do duck-and-cover drills any more! In 2000 bc there were pedophiles, and far worse. I've been around long enough to see quite a few changes, and some are for the worst, of course; when I was a kid my mom was one of the very few who worked. But I didn't go to a day care center, my Grandmother mostly took care of us during the summer.

The biggest difference between when I was a young adult and now isn't that we have big flat screen TVs, computers, video games, microwave ovens, cell phones, or any of that. Not even the internet. The most important difference is that when I was 25 there were a plethora of birth control choices, and there were no incurable STDs. My generation was vastly different from my parents' in that respect, but things have gone full circle. My kids' generation is far more like my parents' than my own.

-mcgrew

A few links:
Growing Up With Computers
Useful Dead Technologies
Good Riddance to Bad Tech
Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station

While it may seem cliche, the world has changed a lot since then

Not in any really signifigant ways. I wish I could find it, there's a rant by some geezer about the younger generation that could have been written yesterday, but was from someone in ancient Greece.

The world's changes have been mostly positive. We don't have to do duck-and-cover drills any more! In 2000 bc there were pedophiles, and far worse. I've been around long enough to see quite a few changes, and some are for the worst, of course; when I was a kid my mom was one of the very few who worked. But I didn't go to a day care center, my Grandmother mostly took care of us during the summer.

The biggest difference between when I was a young adult and now isn't that we have big flat screen TVs, computers, video games, microwave ovens, cell phones, or any of that. Not even the internet. The most important difference is that when I was 25 there were a plethora of birth control choices, and there were no incurable STDs. My generation was vastly different from my parents' in that respect, but things have gone full circle. My kids' generation is far more like my parents' than my own.

-mcgrew

A few links:
Growing Up With Computers
Useful Dead Technologies
Good Riddance to Bad Tech
Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station

perhaps DRM will go the way of prohibition

I hate to break it to you, but prohibition and all the damage it causes society, from the violence of the gangsters to the huge numbers of nonviolent offenders in prison, is still with us.

-mcgrew

PS- DRM on music can never work

Or it could be that the music industry is turning altruistic in it's old age and they wish to slash their profit margins by condoning free downloads.

Advertising isn't altruistic. Giving out free samples isn't altruistic. These dumbasses need to realise that they are RECORD companies and start selling RECORDS again - physical media with full fidelity music on them. Give away the MP3s.

Of course, this will be the death knell of losers who put out a CD's worth of crap that has one decent single they play on the radio. But with some bands it's the opposite. By the time Aerosmith came out, I'd given up buying an album on the strength of a song on the radio, and I REALLY was unimpressed with the minor key whiney Aerosmith song they played on the radio, Dream On. It turned out that that was the only sucky song on the album! But if you had liked that song, you likely wouldn't have liked the rest of the album. I bought it after I heard the LP at a friend's house.

It it was today, and the songs were posted in the internet, I'd have bought it right away.

I always liked Santanna, and when Supernatural came out they weren't playing any of it on the radio here. So I went to CD NOW and listened to the 30 second clips of its songs, and was incredibly unimpressed. "When did they start sucking?" I asked.

Well, my daughter didn't know this but knew I liked Santanna, and bought tha CD for me for Christmas. It was a great CD! Had she not bought it, they would have lost a sale. But had she not bought it and they had posted full MP3s on the internet, I would have bought it.

Advertisers will tell you "sell the sizzle, not the steak". If brains were dynamite, record company execs wouldn't have enough to blow their noses. If they had any brains they would post MP3s and make sure everyone believed in MP3's inferiority to CDs.

That said, the RIAA labels have pissed me off to the point where I only buy indie; the last dozen CDs I've bought have been from bar bands.

-mcgrew

The automobile distributor and points
Unless you are a classic car collector, or a geezer, you have no idea how much of a pain in the butt these things were. About every oil change or two, your car's performance and gas mileage would go down, and you would need a tuneup.

To tune your car, you could simply hire someone. That is, if you were a sissy.

A real man changed his own oil and tuned his own car up. You could tell a real man by the scars and scabs on his knuckles from working on his car.

First you had to change all eight of your spark plugs. What? You only have six? Pussy! Make sure you don't get the wires on wrong, or if your car will start at all, it will lurch and backfire and run like crap.

Then you had to take off the distributor cap, usually held on by two clips that would cut your fingers and were harder than a rubic cube solution to get clipped back on.

Under the distributor cap was the contact points. These had to be replaced. Then you had to adjust the gap on the points. Oh shit, I forgot to adjust the gaps on the spark plugs... do that all over again...

Now that the plugs are gapped and the points are replaced and gapped, you put the new distributor cap on... Come on... SHIT... GOD DAMNED PIECE OF SHI... ok, there it goes. Good. Gimme a bandaid, would ya?

Now you have to set the points' dwell. What's "dwell?" Beats the hell out of me, maybe it's the amount of time the points are closed. But you have to set it with a dwell meter or your car will run like it's powered by gerbils and will suck gas like Bush sucks at being President.

Then you have to get out your strobe and set the timing. You loosen the distributor, point your strobe at the mark on the... wait a minute... I can't see the damned mark. Stop the engine, would you?

Damn, it's all rusty and... to hell with it, start it back up and I'll time the God damned thing by ear, piece of shit...

Thank God and modern electronics for electronic ignition!

...is a terrorist threat

Good thing we really don't have much of it here.

-mcgrew

Actually, yes. Although I haven't seen my roommate since I dropped her off at work Friday morning at the taxi company she drives for. She may have tried to call me last night about midnight; my phone rang, but it's out of minutes.

The Chinese have a curse "may you live in interesting times." I have an interesting life.

Her ex-husband (I never met the guy, thankfully) led the police on a high speed chase through Springfield a couple of weeks ago, sideswiping a couple of cars and almost hitting a couple of police detectives. When they caught him he had a loaded gun and marijuana in tha car. It made the front page of the local daily (link)

He had previously spent time in prison for trying to kill her. His parents told her that they found out he was on his way to murder them. I suppose he'll be behind bars for quite some time.

No newsletter, but I have a slashdot journal. I used to keep a diary at K5. It was pretty popular.

DRM=Digital Restrictions Management

I think of it as "dumb record mangling." My copy of the CD of Led Zeppelin's first album (that I bought at Recycled Records) has two songs that won't play, despite the fact that there are no visible scratches or other defects.

So I ripped all the songs to .wav and replaced the two that wouldn't play with songs sampled from my cassette copy. As I have a very good used cassette deck I paid $50 for (that originally sold for $600), there is little audible difference between the digitally mangled CD and the cassette's sound, whether played on my home JBL three ways (12 inch woofers) or the six speaker car stereo.

In fact, the DRM on that CD and listening to my workaround to its designed defects is what convinced me to stop replacing my tapes and LPs with CDs, and to write the above linked article.

I'd already got a CD copy of their Presence album and it lacked presence. So I tried sampling the LP and guess what? My burned CD of the LP sounds better than the factory CD, which obviously suffers from bad remastering.

The record companies are obviously run by idiots who think their customers are all fools. Sadly, the idiots may be right.

-mcgrew

I hate to break it to you, but we aren't so free as we would have the world believe. I wrote an article about this a couple of years ago. Things have only gotten worse since.

-mcgrew

Actually, PC archetecture hasn't changed much since the XT (which was the last whole computer I bought). You can read about tha latest upgrade (in 2004) here. At one time I had a 386 in a 1983 IBM XT case.

I'd have modded this comment "funny" (as it was obviously intended) rather than "troll". OTOH I'd have modded the summmary "flamebait" for it suse of the phrase "Apple Fanboy". Actually the whole summary was rather trollish; if the summary was a comment and I was modding I'd mad it "Troll".

I'm not an Apple user; I run XP and Mandriva dual-boot and don't even have an iPod, but that summary was a troll. And the word "fanboy" is flamebait whether you're commenting on Apple, Microsoft, Linux, Be, Sun, or any other OS, company, or organization.

Is a bit of civility in the article summary too much to ask? I wish "drinking from the the firehose" was more like modding than a simple "yes/no".

Taco usually does a better job of editing than this (running jokes aside) but hay, it's Monday after a 4 day weekend. I'll cut him some slack.

-mcgrew

They say all pilots dream of being birds. I'm not sure that's true, but in a way that's what happened to me.

I was still in the glass box but in a way I was back out of it; my perceptual environment was no more real than the simulation I'd built inside but now the signals came from real sensors and cameras. I wasn't just flying the helicopter; I was the helicopter. The parts of my mind that weren't concerned with flying and navigation had been carefully edited away.

I suppose that sounds horrible. It isn't. I have a job to do, an important job, and doing it makes me feel both proud and content. I'm not distracted by anything else. When I'm not needed in flight I sleep, more deeply and peacefully than I ever did as a biological human. And when I'm called I flex my rotors and dance with a speed and grace I could have only dreamed of as a human.

Modded interesting? I think "troll" is more appropriate for something this old.

And his karma is probably in the toilet with all of them. Some people ar incapable of insight, interest, or even humor while flaming and trolling are easy for them. One should keep their trolling in meatspace where it belongs! Trolls should grow a pair, as internet troilling is so lame and cowardly. Sheesh!

-mcgrew

(can't decide whether to check "no karma bonus. OK, I'll check it...)

One of the things I've always admired about his writing is his willingness to talk about his kids

Damn, and I thought I was in trouble a few years ago when K5's Rusty put me on his watch list. My reaction was "Holy cow! I'm on Rusty's watchlist! Now I'll never be able to get laid

But here I am with Zonk saying this and ... look, Zonk, if you like my stuff, please don't tell anybody! At least... oh hell, CmdrTaco is next, I just know it =(

One of the things I've always admired about his writing is his willingness to talk about his kids

Damn, and I thought I was in trouble a few years ago when K5's Rusty put me on his watch list. My reaction was "Holy cow! I'm on Rusty's watchlist! Now I'll never be able to get laid

But here I am with Zonk saying this and ... look, Zonk, if you like my stuff, please don't tell anybody! At least... oh hell, CmdrTaco is next, I just know it =(

"Addictive" is not a synonym for "habit forming". Alcohol and caffiene are addictive; there are physical withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal from caffiene causes headaches; caffiene is only mildly addictive. You can die from alcohol withdrawal.

If you have a glass of orange juice (or decaf coffee) every single morning for a year, you're going to miss it greatly if you don't get it. That's "habit". Almost everything is habit forming, only some substances are addictive.

Cigarettes are highly addictive. I haven't had one in almost 8 years now (yay me!) but if I smoked just one, I would be hooked again. I haven't smoked any pot for weeks, but if you handed me a joint now I'd smoke it without any ill effects at all.

And no, pot isn't going to make someone with a two digit IQ into a thinker, but it does indeed enhanse creativity. this (and the article it links to as well) is the product of pot.

-mcgrew

"Addictive" is not a synonym for "habit forming". Alcohol and caffiene are addictive; there are physical withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal from caffiene causes headaches; caffiene is only mildly addictive. You can die from alcohol withdrawal.

If you have a glass of orange juice (or decaf coffee) every single morning for a year, you're going to miss it greatly if you don't get it. That's "habit". Almost everything is habit forming, only some substances are addictive.

Cigarettes are highly addictive. I haven't had one in almost 8 years now (yay me!) but if I smoked just one, I would be hooked again. I haven't smoked any pot for weeks, but if you handed me a joint now I'd smoke it without any ill effects at all.

And no, pot isn't going to make someone with a two digit IQ into a thinker, but it does indeed enhanse creativity. this (and the article it links to as well) is the product of pot.

-mcgrew

• Two. I roll big joints, man. 0%
  
• Lid? Dude, you're old! 57%
  
• Man, that bag is tiny, fucking ripoff... 0%
  
• Man I'm outta pot, want some coke? 0%
  
• How many what is in a what? 14%
  
• You're under arrest 28%

• Two. I roll big joints, man. 0%
  
• Lid? Dude, you're old! 57%
  
• Man, that bag is tiny, fucking ripoff... 0%
  
• Man I'm outta pot, want some coke? 0%
  
• How many what is in a what? 14%
  
• You're under arrest 28%

... of the 'medical-pharmaceutical-industrial complex'. They just don't realize how their medical eduction was co-opted by said complex in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

See 100 Years of Medical Robbery, the follow-up Real Medical Freedom, How Medical Boards Nationalized Health Care, and How The Cost-Plus System Evolved.

See my post on k5 for preview quotes for all but the last article: links on how healthcare became screwed up

anonymous 'cause I just spent a bunch of mod points. :)

Damn it, I want to see some hardcore AO games. I mean, I haven't been into gaming for literally years but give me a hardcore AO with full frontal nudity, sex, oral sex, sodomy, bloody violence, drugs... how about making Fritz the Cat, the only feature length animated film ever to recieve an "X" rating from the MPAA, into a game?

Speaking of Fritz, a few years ago when I was on Paxil, Springfield was full of of cartoons and I met the skinny crow woman from Fritz the Cat (her name's Ginger). Twice!

I lost both levels, never did get laid back then (note the title of the second link).

-mcgrew

Damn it, I want to see some hardcore AO games. I mean, I haven't been into gaming for literally years but give me a hardcore AO with full frontal nudity, sex, oral sex, sodomy, bloody violence, drugs... how about making Fritz the Cat, the only feature length animated film ever to recieve an "X" rating from the MPAA, into a game?

Speaking of Fritz, a few years ago when I was on Paxil, Springfield was full of of cartoons and I met the skinny crow woman from Fritz the Cat (her name's Ginger). Twice!

I lost both levels, never did get laid back then (note the title of the second link).

-mcgrew

Damn it, I want to see some hardcore AO games. I mean, I haven't been into gaming for literally years but give me a hardcore AO with full frontal nudity, sex, oral sex, sodomy, bloody violence, drugs... how about making Fritz the Cat, the only feature length animated film ever to recieve an "X" rating from the MPAA, into a game?

Speaking of Fritz, a few years ago when I was on Paxil, Springfield was full of of cartoons and I met the skinny crow woman from Fritz the Cat (her name's Ginger). Twice!

I lost both levels, never did get laid back then (note the title of the second link).

-mcgrew

So here's the second chip fan offing my CPU in only a couple of years. It's a conspiracy, dammit!!

Being around Christmas, and having just bought a thousand dollar television, I just let the computer gather dust for a while. I mean, that CPU frying was surely God's way of telling me to set it aside for a while.

Speaking of which, I read that Pat Robertson said that God told him that Bush would win again.

So, when Kerry [insert appropriate sports term here] him in a fucking landslide, does that make God a liar? Right wing Christians rejoice, you don't have to go to the polls this year! Bush has God on his side and doesn't need your vote.

I forgot what I was talking about.

Oh yeah, the computer. Any way, After paying for a thousand dollar TV, a Playstation for my oldest daughter and a nice Jenson car stereo for my youngest daughter and an $800 repair three weeks after I bought the $500 car, I was a little short for computer parts.

Pot makes you think. Governments hate that.

-mcgrew

PS- Marijuana laws themselves lead to harder drugs! Often the folks selling pot also sell other drugs; I remember when Reagan started his "WO(s)D" the pot supply dried up. "No, man, it's dry. Want some coke?" Then there are unscrupulous dealers who will take shitweed and spice it up with crack, heroin, PCP, downers, you name it. If you could buy it at the liquor store it would NOT lead to harder drugs.

G.W.'s diary reportedly said "nothing settles the evening meal like a good bowl of hemp".

I don't suppose you can quote chapter and verse about the Bible thing? I'm pretty sure it has no taboos on intoxication, as the apostles were all shitfaced drunk after the last supper.

The article notes that smoking cannabis will not deliver significant quantities of CBD.
Sounds like a challenge to me!

I see the article's authors never met my friends.

-mcgrew

Google has failed me this morning. I remember reading in New Scientist (whose anti-drug propaganda I ranted about a couple of years ago) that they did a study of baby boomers; the generation that started smoking ganja in their youth and are now geezers. They were trying to prove, as all these government studies from all the world's governments do, that pot is bad for you. The object of the study was to look at cancer rates in potheads vs non-potheads. They were certain that reefer causes cancer because there are carcinogens in it.

What they found instead was that (IIRC) potsmokers who did not smoke tobacco had a 10% lower incidence of all cancers than nonsmokers. More striking, however, was the difference between cigarette smokers who also smoked hemp and buttheads who only smoked butts. The cancer incidence of those who smoked both marijuana and tobacco was half the number of those who only smoked cigarettes.

So your study is done, the results are that cannibis prevents cancer.

As I said, a google search for "marijuana boomer study" yielded only one hit (he he he said), to a site I'd never heard of. So I searched New Scientist and found some other interesting tidbits:
Cannabis compound reduces skin allergies in mice
Cannabis compound slows lung cancer in mice
Cannabis extract shrinks brain tumours
Cannabis can help MS sufferers
Cannabis can protect the brain from damage from stroke

So we have a substance that is non-addictive (habit forming but not addictive), non-lethal, fights cancer, helps MS sufferers, is the best anti-nausea agent known, stimulates appetite, yet it is illegal. So why is it illegal?

Because it makes you lazy and forgetful, and what's worse for our corporate overlords, makes you think. You can forget about any substance that makes you think ever being legalized; thinking is the VERY last thing your government (wherever you may live) wants you to to do.

Yes, I'm a geezer. No, I wasn't in the study. Yes, I've smoked dope.

-mcgrew

LET THE games BEGIN!

I WIN!!!!

-mcgrew

...less focused on our own identity...

Um, that kinda sounds, er, sorry, but it sounds like he's saying we all have D.I.D. (AKA "multiple Personality Syndrome"). Actually, to be brutally honest (earning me, of course, a -1 flamenbait) it's just retarded.

Now do I get the coveted "+1, troll" moderation? ;)

-mcgrew

Does this mean every flame and troll post in this thread will get modded +1 Insightful

And that's different from any other slashdot story exactly how? Go for "funny" and you get "insightful". Go for "offtopic" and you get "funny." Go for troll and you get this.

That link from 2003, BTW, is about OFFLINE trolling, proving these bozos wrong.

-mcgrew

PS- Since you are a nerd, it is your duty to troll the cave man jocks

There's this device that's been around for over a century. It's called a "camera". Since a rainbow is simply a band of color caused by refraction of light, capturing a record of that band of color on film (or digital media) is, in effect, captuting the rainbow itself.

Now if you could catch the leprechaun that would be a different story!

-mcgrew

Maybe a lawyer could have argued it better

I've heard (and IANAL) that anyone who represents himself in court has a fool for a lawyer.

here is an account of my trying to collect child support from my ex, who left me and my two teenaged daughters for another man (October 2004).

It is also an account of what happens if you call the judge a "motherfucker". You can't possibly be as amused by my account of it as I was by the actual event. I've never seen a courtroom drama as entertaining, and I doubt I ever will.

-mcgrew

The idea is not to go after the bottom-feeders who are sending the actual spams from their Mom's basement

Considering that most spam these days comes from botnets, it's more likely that they're sending spam from your mom's basement!

my mom doesn't have a basement.

-mcgrew

Sometimes I would like to see the Klingon legal rules about the lawyers...

Was Jesus a Klingon? Luke 11:46 - "And he [Jesus] said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers."

-mcgrew

Is this Eddie the Shipboard Computer, or Eddie Munster? At any rate, here's a message to Eddie:

Look, dude, you're glass. We see right through you and we're going to break you if you don't get the hell out of our way, and if you don't break yourself first.

We know you know that MP3s should be advertising for CDs. We also know that what you're afraid of isn't people downloading Lars and Gene's stuff, it's downloading your independant competitors' stuff. You control the FREE radio and you know it. You can't control the internet and you know it.

You're shaking in your boots over Radiohead. I'm afraid it's too late; you're cracked. It's too late, but I'll tell you what you should have done.

When Napster, the old Napster you bozos sued out of existance came along, you should have embraced it. You should have flooded it with 56k samples of every tune in your inventory, and gone on a PR blitz telling everyone how superior the CD was to MP3. It worked against vinyl when the CD first came out, despite the fact that there are pros and cons to CD and vinyl (each has its shortcomings), it would surely work with CD vs. MP3 and CD's vastly superior sound.

You blew it.

You no longer matter. A musician no longer needs an expensive studio and even more expensive factory, he can rent a studio even in a small city like Springfield, which has several. He can get his CD professionally mastered and copied with insert and jewell case for a couple thousand bucks, less than the price of a decent drum kit.

Now your only recourse to stay alive is to be a hitmaker.

You're stupid, Eddie, and I'll be glad when your twitching corpse stops kicking over the china and bleeding all over my government. Die, damn you, die, you worthles scumbag!

-mcgrew

Is this Eddie the Shipboard Computer, or Eddie Munster? At any rate, here's a message to Eddie:

Look, dude, you're glass. We see right through you and we're going to break you if you don't get the hell out of our way, and if you don't break yourself first.

We know you know that MP3s should be advertising for CDs. We also know that what you're afraid of isn't people downloading Lars and Gene's stuff, it's downloading your independant competitors' stuff. You control the FREE radio and you know it. You can't control the internet and you know it.

You're shaking in your boots over Radiohead. I'm afraid it's too late; you're cracked. It's too late, but I'll tell you what you should have done.

When Napster, the old Napster you bozos sued out of existance came along, you should have embraced it. You should have flooded it with 56k samples of every tune in your inventory, and gone on a PR blitz telling everyone how superior the CD was to MP3. It worked against vinyl when the CD first came out, despite the fact that there are pros and cons to CD and vinyl (each has its shortcomings), it would surely work with CD vs. MP3 and CD's vastly superior sound.

You blew it.

You no longer matter. A musician no longer needs an expensive studio and even more expensive factory, he can rent a studio even in a small city like Springfield, which has several. He can get his CD professionally mastered and copied with insert and jewell case for a couple thousand bucks, less than the price of a decent drum kit.

Now your only recourse to stay alive is to be a hitmaker.

You're stupid, Eddie, and I'll be glad when your twitching corpse stops kicking over the china and bleeding all over my government. Die, damn you, die, you worthles scumbag!

-mcgrew

Is this Eddie the Shipboard Computer, or Eddie Munster? At any rate, here's a message to Eddie:

Look, dude, you're glass. We see right through you and we're going to break you if you don't get the hell out of our way, and if you don't break yourself first.

We know you know that MP3s should be advertising for CDs. We also know that what you're afraid of isn't people downloading Lars and Gene's stuff, it's downloading your independant competitors' stuff. You control the FREE radio and you know it. You can't control the internet and you know it.

You're shaking in your boots over Radiohead. I'm afraid it's too late; you're cracked. It's too late, but I'll tell you what you should have done.

When Napster, the old Napster you bozos sued out of existance came along, you should have embraced it. You should have flooded it with 56k samples of every tune in your inventory, and gone on a PR blitz telling everyone how superior the CD was to MP3. It worked against vinyl when the CD first came out, despite the fact that there are pros and cons to CD and vinyl (each has its shortcomings), it would surely work with CD vs. MP3 and CD's vastly superior sound.

You blew it.

You no longer matter. A musician no longer needs an expensive studio and even more expensive factory, he can rent a studio even in a small city like Springfield, which has several. He can get his CD professionally mastered and copied with insert and jewell case for a couple thousand bucks, less than the price of a decent drum kit.

Now your only recourse to stay alive is to be a hitmaker.

You're stupid, Eddie, and I'll be glad when your twitching corpse stops kicking over the china and bleeding all over my government. Die, damn you, die, you worthles scumbag!

-mcgrew

If only you were right. College age people are the least likely to vote of all eligible age groups, and are the most likely to become disillusioned and disenfranchised.

Witness the last Presidential election where Bush lost in a landslide (sadly, only here in Illinois). Levi is a young man, early twenties (or was when I wrote this in 2004.

We geezers are the ones who show up at the polls. I split my vote between the Libertarians and the Greens, and wish everyone else would stop voting for the Corporate Republicrats. Here is the mainstream (corporate) media take on American Politics

Mainstream media guy A: "Well, you know, theres the Dogshit Party and the Catshit Party. You know they're both so yummy and tasty, but frankly I prefer dogshit."

Mainstream media guy B: "Well, yes Bill, but the Dogshit costs so much. Those on a budget prefer catshit."

Blogger: "But I like the Apple Pie Party!"

Mainstream Media guys (in unison): "Apple pie? If you vote for Apple Pie you're wasting your vote!"

Mainstream media guy A: "Those damned bloggers don't get it, do they?"

-mcgrew

I agree with your comment (our grants have also been replaced by loans) but I believe what he's asking is what Constitutional authority Congress has for passing these laws.

I believe Article 1, Section 8 is what SCOTUS says gives them the power: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States" (emphasis mine).

-mcgrew

Feel free to copy your rejection letter to the local media. They love a good story.

The media are corporate. They are not going to print any letter that would receive an "insightful" or "interesting" mod at slashdot (check my comment history). The same people who own your newspaper own Sony and Universal and BP.

-mcgrew
(you may find that link amusing... it's a search of the Illinois Times' for my name (the last story listed quotes my daughter). They are an independant weekly here and almost every letter I've written them has been published. The Copely paper, the State Journal Register, has never printed any letter I ever wrote them.

You might also find it amusing that the linked S-JR story is about my roommate's ex-husband, who was on his way to kill his parents when the cops stopped him (yes I have an interesting life.

There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free? I will be putting out a Gene Simmons box set called "Monster" -- a collection of 150 unreleased songs.KISS will have another box set of unreleased music in the next year.

2 boxed sets of unreleased music - at best second rate crap that was not good enough to put out the first time - coming. All to just make money as he admitted in the first sentence was his main motivation since making music for it's own sake or attracting new fans isn't enough by itself.

Wrong wrong wrong WRONG.

1) Many artists these days are not the quality that one would expect. THOUGH, and this is a big THOUGH... There were plenty of garbage artists in the 80's, and 70's.

There were always garbage artists, and most of what you heard on the radio was garbage. That was the one single thing you got right in your comment. However...

Case in point Twisted Sister... I never did get that. Twisted Sister is an example of a band that was marketed with no talent.

Dude, Twisted Sister fucking kicked ass! Are you some kind of emo wuss? I have a live Twisted Sister CD, the lead man (can't think of his name, I think he's a disk jockey now) played that audience like Jimi Hendrix played a guitar.

2) People don't buy music because they can rip it off somebody for cheaper. The reality is that if you can get for free you will not pay for it.

That's just retarded. Good music is like good drugs - give them a free hit and they'll pay for more. If your statement had any validity, every band you hear on the radio would be in dire poverty, because the radio gives music away for free! If you want to have the entire Top 40 in MP3 format, free and legal, is to plug your radio into your sound card and sample a Top 40 station for a couple of hours while you're hitting that crack pipe I see from your comment you must always have handy, and then spend ten minutes cutting and pasting into separate .wav files and let the computer convert them.

The RIAA isn't against P2P because they're afraid you'll download the latest RIAA dreck, they're afraid you'll download one of the far better indie bands, like it, and buy the CD. Face it, the twenty bucks I spend on two (or four) indie CDs is tewnty bucks I don't have for a Kiss CD. Selling MP3s (let alone renting crippled DRM WMA files) is a stupid business decision. MP3s should be seen as advertising.

Of course, for MP3s to work in this manner your music has to actually not suck, unlike most RIAA music these days. Don't any of the new bands know how to play anything in a major key? Jesus but this emo shit you kids listen to is depressing. WTF is wrong with you?

And this is the case in college or university. I remember people used to photocopy entire text books because they were too cheap to buy the text book.

Yeah, paper's free and your photocopiers don't have coin slots. Yeah, you're going to stand in front of a photocopier (why not a scanner? Dumbass kids!) all week. Right. Which record label do you work for again?

I've noticed in my 55 years on this planet that people expect other people to be more or less like themselves. Honest people expect people to be honest, and thieves expect people to steal. I see which side of the fence you're on.

Combine this with a general attitude of "we don't want to pay for anything" and you get a serious revenue problem. I actually don't believe the argument that if you have quality you will buy it.

So tell me, why do bartenders and waiters make more money from tips than from the paycheck? There are very few people with the attitude you are talking about. Most people are more than willing to pay for what they get. Give them something free and they're even happier to pay for more of it; gratitude goes a long way. So does resentment.

Take the Radio Head example. It's not a business model, point blank!

Then why are they making so much money?

There was an author who gave away his book "in the spirit" of community. Well his latest book is not completely available anymore in free format. Why? Easy because people were not buying his book and his sales were hurting.

Bullshit. I see you neglected to name the author - Stephen King IIRC. He said he would keep putting chapters online as long as people kept paying. He was trying to make your point, that people wouldn't buy it if you gave it to them, and they surprised

KISS was never really about music. It was a huge franchise to capitalize on.

That's like saying that Sun isn't about computers, it's a huge franchise to capitalize on.

Gene Simmons is not a musician. He is a businessman.

He's not a businessman, he's an employee. He works for the record company. His employers are businessmen.

-mcgrew

This sorry piece of crap is proof positive of American stupidity. The cassette - the (now obsolete) four track, two-spindle, 1/8th inch, 1 /78 IPS shirt pocket sized tape cassette was produced before the 8-track. The four track cassette was originally made as a dictation device, but advances in tape manufacture and head design soon gave them a frequency response that came close to human hearing's limit, signal to noise ratio low enough that you had to turn it up very loud to hear the hiss, and inaudible harmonic distortion which made them ideal for music.

Nevertheless, the 8-track was born anyway. With its transport speed at twice the 4-track cassette's speed, it should have been audibly superior. However, the "powers that be" decided that 8-tracks were going to be for automobiles, which at the time were not as well insulated from outside sounds and wind as today's cars, and with the auto's horrible acoustics, it was OK for a car's music to sound like effluent.

But the deliberately bad sound wasn't bad enough. The eight track tape had a single spindle, a very clever design where the tape fed from the center of the spindle, around a capstain roller inside the housing and back to the outside of the roll of tape. This made for an expensive setup, and one that was prone to wow and flutter, as well as having the tape get "eaten" by the tape player. And unlike a cassette, if your 8-track got ate, you might as well throw it in the trash.

But wait, there's more! This thing was deemed to be for the car, while cassettes were going to be (by about 1970 or so) for the home.

This made no sense whatever, since the "portable" eight track took up as much space as four cassettes, without being able to play any longer than a cassette. In fact, you could buy a longer playing cassette than 8-track.

But the one thing more than anything else that made 8-tracks suck like a Hoover was the fact that it had to change tracks four times during an album. This usually necessitated at least one song and usually more being interrupted in the middle!

Folks finally, after about ten years, started figuring this stuff out for themselves and replaced their 8-track cartriges with 4 track cassettes. Me? I never had an 8-track, although all my friends did. I, the geek, used the far more logical cassettes since about 1966 or 7. Hah! The geek gets the last laugh again!