Slashdot Mirror

I refer you to Fat Guys Kick Ass to better educate you on the up side of being fat.

Even GW's crew uses subliminal messages. I guess they learned that from their CIA connections. Kinda makes me wonder what other crap is being fed to the sheeple.

Bush says 'RATS' ad not meant as subliminal message
link: http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/09/ 13/ads/index.html
link: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/0 9/12/bush.ad/

Courtney Love describes how all recording contracts became "Work for Hire" by a similar process:

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/l ove/index.html

The result, any particular format is pretty much homogeneous across their span of coverage. Stations begin to lack individuality (outside of their personalities and callsign sweeper).

Probably, but it is never too late to remember that of the ~5800 people special enough to vote on the Academy Awards, only around 300 bothered to vote in the documentary category:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/50113 2p-422609c.html

(via http://www.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2007/02/27/tue/in dex.html)

Let me pile on with the others who have said, yes you can. There are numerous cases where anti-abortion groups wanted to run ads on television showing dead fetuses and such but were denied by the stations in question. The groups claimed discrimination and other things but the courts consistently have held that television stations and such do not have to run the ads.

Here are cases involving billboard companies refusing to run ads because of their content:

North Georgia
Crawford Texas
Hollywood
Times Square

I know for a fact that Lamar Advertising refused to run ads in my area from anti-Bush people during the last campaign.

Here's a story from last year (2006) when CBS refused to run two ads during the Super Bowl. One was for PETA and the other was anti-Bush. Link

So yes, you can deny someone advertisement on a whim just like a restaurant has the right to refuse someone service for any reason they so choose.

No, we pretty much have the same rule as you do but since it's rarely enforced, people like Kevin Trudeau can continue to peddle crap which claims to 'cure' dieting even though by claiming such, he is required to submit his products for testing to verify their claims. Since you're not from the U.S., any product which claims to cure an affliction must be tested by the FDA to prove it's claims. If, however, you say that the product helps to relieve the symptoms of X, then it's not subject to medical scrutiny. See this FDA page on how things are supposed to work.

Which he hasn't and never will. The only time the FTC stepped in on his lame ass was when he sold the products themselves. The FTC shut him down based on his infomercials so he adjusted his snakeoil salesmanship to only sell the books which tell you what products to buy. Since his books are protected Free Speech, PROFIT!

See this link and this link for what a con artist this guy is and how he's endangering peoples lives with his lies as well an analysis by a doctor about his claims.

Here are two articles on the subject:

• Why I don't believe Steve Jobs
• Steve Jobs' iTunes dance

Here in Colorado there are still strict rules against wearing trenchcoats and numerous suspensions, counciling sessions etc... to deal with bullying. All of this is of course the Columbine effect. A thred like this one can't exist for long with out the mention of the tragedy. Bullying is not what drove Harris and Klebold to mass murder, it's a myth that simply will not die. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/23/colum bine/print.html

Bullies are part of growing up. It's part of growing up for the persons being bullied and the bullies themselves. It is not evil behavior that must be erradicated because another Columbine could happen again. It's natural behavior that occurs in all human cultures and many in the animal kingdom as well. Those that are the victims of bullies have great lessons to learn that will serve them well later in life. Those that are bullies also have lessons to learn. I can't imagine anything more destructive that taking kids in their learning years and secluding them from this natural behavior. Sometimes kids need to touch a hot stove to understand cause and effect.

Sure, M$ has nothing to do with the global advance of draconian "intellectual property" law. Nobody has been threatening other contries with trade embargo of the sort usually reserved for wars. No, nothing to do with Bill Gates and M$, they are the good guys trying to eduspam your children about how to buy fine Office software and what a dirty bad pirate you are if you don't buy a M$ OS with each and every computer sold. Oh noes, M$ would never launch any action against a school.

Their solution, to never buy another piece of commercial software, is fitting punishment for those who demanded the laws Russia now has. They will soon learn that the it was stupid to mess around with it to begin with.

Not quite true.. but the spyware was optional rather than mandatory. http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/02/p arasite_capital/index.html

It would seem that the music publishers/distributors, record companies, whatever you want to call them, are shafting the artists right royally and are just throwing their toys out of the pram because they can see their gravy train ride coming to an end!

From the other end of the argument comes Sellaband who have setup a method for indepent artists to reach a wide audience of believers who can choose to buy parts in the production of a CD in advance (others have done this before off their own bat, like Marillion, and I thing Dodgy did it too!). The difference here is that a bunch of music industry savvy people have gathered together to offer a real alternative. Sellaband also only tie the artist in for the first year after the CD is created, so rights to the music is returned to the artist and they can choose to stick with Sellaband or decide to move on elsewhere.

OK, I am a Sellaband Believer myself, and I have believed in a number of the artists, most of whom I don't know. Artists from around the world, one of which, Cubworld, has made the $50K and is in the process of making his first album!

This is one of the most laughable things I have ever heard.

CD prices were always higher than the equivalent cassette tape, which was much more complicated to produce and had the same production and marketing costs.

FTA: For example, when you hear a song played on the radio -- that didn't just happen! Labels make investments in artists by paying for both the production and the promotion of the album, and promotion is very expensive.

The only thing that gets played on the radio is the latest Britney Spears bubblegum crap-ola. In fact, Mandy Moore recently apologized for making such bad music

So we have to pay for all the payola in getting the radio stations bribed to play the songs on the radio.

And then when a CD gets scratched, broken, or stolen, do we get a free replacement? Oh no, we have to pay the full retail cost all over again even though the RIAA wants us to think that we have somehow "licensed" the music from them.

I am glad that they are sweating, which they must be in order to be trying to play the "victim" game. The days of the Internet are here to stay, and bands can finally distribute their own music without getting shafted.

In the linked article it says that only 10% of all CD's make a profit. The other 90% of CD's put the bands into debt to the record companies, making it a really bad deal to sign a record contract. Courtney Love does the math.

The RIAA sounds desperate, and I hope they are -- it would serve them right.

What about the poor pedo who goes for HotLuv1949 when he meant to go for HotLuv1994... Sorry I think I may be slightly twisted...

By the way - here's the link to a story on Chris Morris's BrassEye special on PEDOGEDDON. The show was released during a UK-wide paedophile media-witchhunt, shortly after a Paediatrician in Newport had her house vandalised by idiots. Dirty Paedo.

The right link for the article is http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/02/03/leonard/ . The other one leaved me in a "click-here" kind of redirect page.

Sick Transit's Glorious Monday.

Given that you're clearly on crack, you might very well find yourself visited by the paramilitaries. They "knock" with a shotgun, by the way.

He asked the question. The problem is that he also tried to answer it.

God forbid scientists try to actually answer a question if the answer might be politically incorrect. Everyone knows that if your data suggest something that's not PC, massage the data, or at least don't have the nerve to publish, right? Everyone rants about how the Religious Right wants to make certain scientific subjects off-limits, but the Left is just as bad. In fact, Sweden has already banned research into gender differences in mental characteristics.

And his answer("Women aren't as good at men at math and science,") was offensive and incorrect, and rightly struck a blow to his reputation among the faculty.

It pisses me off to no end that everyone thinks Summers said women weren't as smart on average as men. He explicitly did not say this. What he did say is that there is evidence the standard deviation (not the mean!) for intelligence for men appears to be higher than the standard deviation for women. He proceeded to discuss the implications of this (more male morons, but also more male geniuses).

Go find a transcript of what Summers actually said (the whole damn thing, not a soundbyte), read it, and stop slandering the poor man.

"Apple therefore demands that you remove this screenshot from your website and refrain from facilitating the further dissemination of Apple's copyrighted material by removing the link to http://forum.xda-developers.com/ where said icons and screenshot are being distributed."

Now it seems that all anyone can think of is the children. Even innocent seeming conduct can easily be misconstrued as "endangering" a child. There's an interesting article on salon.com entitled "They called me a child pornographer" that details one family's excursion into a similar legal hellhole as a result of photos taken during a camping trip.

From the article: As usual during the trip, we took several photos. Because I forgot my digital camera, I bought a disposable camera at a gas station on the way to the campground. I took pictures of the kids using sticks to beat on old bottles and cans and logs as musical instruments. I took a few of my youngest daughter, Eliza, then age 3, skinny dipping in the lake, and my son, Noah, then age 8, swimming in the lake in his underwear, and another of Noah naked, hamming it up while using a long stick to hold his underwear over the fire to dry. Finally, I took a photo of everyone, as was our camping tradition, peeing on the ashes of the fire to put it out for the last time. We also let the kids take photos of their own. When we returned on Sunday, I forgot the throwaway camera and Rusty found it in his car. He gave it to his wife, who I'll call Janet, to get developed, and she dropped it off the next day with two other rolls of film at a local Eckerd drug store. On Tuesday, when she returned to pick up the film, she was approached by two officers from the Savannah Police Department. They told her they had been called by Eckerd due to "questionable photos."

This, of course, was just the beginning of an overblown investigation. Like this case, Matt Bandy's "crime" should have been looked at by a competent prosecutor and dropped. However, other recent cases in the news (the Connecticut porn-pop-up teacher, and the Duke Lacrosse "rape") show that unfortunately some prosecutors are simply out to make a name for themselves rather than checking their facts or enforcing the spirit of the law.

There's no question that crimes against children are a vile thing, but after decades of doing nothing and pretending that such things just didn't happen we are now - in typical American fashion - going to exactly the opposite extreme.

Not very good that when the prosecutors couldn't convict him for the porn they still wanted to stick some conviction on him! What's the idea that someone handing copies of playboy to their friends be convicted of a crime? There's nothing illegal in that magazine. The US have some weird attitudes to tits and nudity (playboy ain't really porn).

I agree with you, especially on your last point. In this particular case, anyone living or working in Arizona shouldn't be surprised by this kind of prosecution. From what I read about this case, it takes place in Maricopa County (Phoenix,Scottsdale,Mesa). That especially sucks for the kid. Arizona prides itself on still being the "old west", and the prosecutors and sheriffs there are very heavy-handed to the point of being draconian. Several of the sheriffs even sport the stereotypical old western sheriff look (funny hats and mustaches included). Sometimes, the law enforcement atmosphere there feels like a perversion of "Gunsmoke" with emphasis placed on maximum punishment, and barring that, public humiliation.

The most notorious example is Maricopa county's sheriff, Joe Arpaio. He's nicknamed "America's toughest sheriff" for the tactics he uses and his treatment of prisoners (non-convicts included). He still likes to assemble posses from among civilians. He loves to be in front of the camera. He's not giving speeches every night, but he does like to make his presence known. Many of the locals love him; but many are afraid of him. Some even argue that he is abusive.

He makes his prisoners wear pink in order to humiliate them. He forces them to live in his outdoor "tent city" suffering harsh desert conditions (bare in mind that not all convicts in tent city are violent offenders). He installed webcams in Phoenix's Madison Street Jail so that the world could see prisoners in the world's first jailcam; however, it got him sued since these "prisoners" were only in jail, hence not convicted criminals. In one case, a female prisoner was broadcasted over the web using a toilet without knowing she was being watched.

I once saw him parade a chain of crying middled-aged women (all Mexican illegals) before a row of flashing cameras. He's been criticized for torturing prisoners, allowing prisoners to die in his custody, and in allowing officers to take advantage of prostitutes in custody (see Wikipedia entry). There have even been complaints that he has allowed undercover police in prostitution raids to receive full services from prostitutes before making arrests, resulting in nearly 60 arrests being dropped.

Recently, the Phoenix area has been experiencing freezing weather below 30 F, and inmates in Arpaio's outdoor prison "tent city" have complained about the cold. The sheriff's response was that if they didn't want to suffer, they should not have committing crimes. (sorry no citation, check KPHO.com). Most recently, he has listed outstanding warrants for approx. 70,000 people on the sheriff's website, and has encouraged all citizens to read the list and report individuals they identify on the list.

Ironically, as harsh as Arpaio is, and as popular as the sheriff is among hardcore justice lovers; he has really been successful in only instilling complete fear in citizens who aren't would-be criminals. Maricopa county still suffers from extremely violent crimes including regular home invasions, teen rapes, and the Baseline Killer which made national news last year. I believe there is even an ASU study that was funded using tax dollars under Arpaio's control that reviewed his tent city prision, and then determined that Arpaio's tactics are largely ineffective.

Kim Jong Il is known to be a fan of Daffy Duck. Having giant rabbits around can allow him to re-enact one of the funniest cartoons of all time.

Unfortunately, now that they've gotten this extra publicity due to not being part of a big label, the results are largely meaningless. Much as I'd like to say that this signals the end of the big labels, this almost proves that you do still need them ...

A pigopolist, tries to sooth himself after a terrible night. "Yeah, that's it, it's a novelty thing - a one hit wonder," he croons to himself, "Now that one band has sold a lot of records without the help of a big publisher, it will never happen again because no one cares."

Five minutes later, he realizes it's over. The thought comes like thunder and there's no escape, "The "signing hype" was all made by the big publishers to help obscure the poor quality of the signed. No one cared to begin with ... and oh shit, they don't need a big publisher to suck up all the sales."

Time to polish the old resume. There's going to be work, it's just going to be different. Some of your old never made it buddies might be able to quit waiting tables.

Maybe now the "hype" won't be about who's signing with who or who's got the biggest billboard in L.A., maybe, just maybe the hype will be about who's got the best show or the most interesting music. That's something you can't do with a computer program in a central office, or an add campaign. No one's listening to radio anymore because the internet radio stations blow the locals away, so does your own collection for that matter. A couple hundred songs in heavy rotation is no longer a commercial success. Music TV, murdered by the music companies lost it's audience a decade ago.

Welcome to the long tail. There's something for everyone and it's going to be a lot harder to push trash. People are not going to stop singing and dancing, the party is moving on and it's getting better.

Below is the text of the article:

Electrocute Bill Keller! No, hang him!

The moronic hosts of GOP-connected radio station KSFO get big yuks calling for "traitors" in the press to be killed -- all brought to you by Disney.

By Joe Conason

Jul. 14, 2006 | While Melanie Morgan debates with Ann Coulter about whether the executive editor of the New York Times should be killed by gas chamber or firing squad, the institutional forces behind the San Francisco radio host deserve to share in the national spotlight now focused on her. Morgan's brand of authoritarian extremism is brought to her radio listeners every day courtesy of the Disney Corp., which owns KSFO-AM -- a station that functions as a mouthpiece and fundraising mechanism for the Republican Party.

Through KSFO and Move America Forward, a right-wing nonprofit (and "nonpartisan") organization that she co-chairs, Morgan enjoys an extensive network of connections in the Californian Republican Party. The founder and "chief strategist" of Move America Forward is noted Republican consultant Sal Russo, whose firm has represented a broad spectrum of GOP candidates around the country over the past three decades.

Started as a vehicle for the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis, the group has pursued such disparate causes as discouraging theaters from screening Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," promoting the confirmation of United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, promoting happy news from Baghdad -- and, last December, launching an ad campaign to persuade Americans that Saddam Hussein really did possess a hidden arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

For a commercial radio station, KSFO maintains an unusually close relationship with the local Republican Party. The station's Web site links to Political Vanguard, which is operated by Contra Costa County GOP chairman Thomas Del Beccaro. Both his site and KSFO feature a series of party fundraising events, notably a gala hosted by Morgan herself and an upcoming speech by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund. (Perhaps Morgan will take the opportunity to harangue Fund about his traitorous Journal colleagues, who also published the story about the financial tracking of terrorists by the SWIFT bank consortium.)

Anyone wishing to purchase tickets to these KSFO-sponsored events is advised to make out a check to "Contra Costa Republican Party" and mail it to the party headquarters in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Morgan and her co-hosts at KSFO (formerly the home of hatemonger Michael Savage) are predictably thrilled by the attention she has received ever since she called for Times executive editor Bill Keller to be sent to the gas chamber (after a "trial," of course). To listen to them is to wonder whether they may have gotten a little overexcited about their newfound notoriety -- Morgan's daily program specializes in primitive politics, with aging frat-boy high jinks provided by male sidekick Lee Rodgers and another character known as "Officer Vic."

On June 27, following a news item about President Bush's denunciation of the Times story on financial tracking of suspected terrorists via the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications ) bank consortium, Morgan sputtered, "Get 'em! Yes, hang 'em! Yeah!"

Two days later, her sidekick Rodgers became exasperated with the Associated Press for reporting that antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and others had begun a hunger strike. "Why don't you dopes at the Associated Press do the world a favor? Commit mass suicide!"

"Oh, Lee!" tittered Morgan.

The hilarity

And in radio, there's "no payola".

but if you think about all that they take care of (advertising, risk of producing your album (which if it's your first could be a total loser bringing in no money), etc.), it doesn't sound too rediculous.

Until you find out that all those expenses are effectively taken from the artist's cut. They have to pay it back...

I thought you were joking (look at the date of the interview - 1 April 2000) but a little googling brought up the transcript. http://archive.salon.com/politics2000/feature/2000 /04/22/leo/ Not that great, but not bad.

"This is a significant change in direction for Bill Gates. Up until 2000 or so, he'd publicly stated that robotics wasn't going anywhere"

Gates regularly changes directions and is good at predicting things after the fact. How soon will Encarta show him predicting robots in 2002. His book the Road Ahead barely mentioned the Internet, the updated version had more.

was Gates has changed direction. This is significant. (Score:5, Informative)

You asked for a citation for the assertion that the recording artists don't get paid. The problem is that the record labels deduct so much from royalties that the artists often get little or nothing of the revenue from record sales. Here are Steve Albini's take and Courtney Love's take.

I lost all respect for the Darwin Awards when they refused to give one to JFK Jr.

Some jackass flying an airplane in conditions that he had not been certified for and kills himself, his wife and his sister-in-law and they call it a "lapse of judgement" not worthy of a Darwin award.

LK

Your posts are both misleading and full of inaccuracies.

1. You seem to be implying that the amount people killed as a result of Saddam's policies during the Iraq-Iran war would be related to the amount of people that would be killed between 2003-present in a non-invaded Iraq. I don't see why this would be the case. The circumstances in those time periods would be entirely different. Most importantly Saddam was completely supported and backed by the US during the Iraq-Iran war, which was most likely what allowed him to carry out such atrocities. If you don't believe me, then feel free to read the publicly available declassified records available from the National Security Archives at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index .htm. Among other things, they contain the minutes from Rumsfeld's meetings with Saddam during the early 1980's, when the US-Iraq special relationship developed.

2. Of course Iraq is of "extreme strategic significance". The country has one of the largest energy reserves in the world, and if the US manages to stabilize Iraq enough for US oil companies to invest in it at the expense of the Iraq people, then the US will have increased its superpower status substantially. Read the "Crude Designs" report (http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2005/cru dedesigns.htm) for an analysis of this.

3. As "A beautiful mind" correctly points out, your figure of 57,617 Iraqi deaths in the war is completely false. Look at the Iraq Body Count's webpage that you linked to. They explicitly state that that number refers to the number of iraq deaths REPORTED. That's a big difference between that and the total number of Iraq deaths, which is probably around 600,000. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_mor tality_before_and_after_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq)

4. The philosophy you propose seems ignorant and racist. I don't see why an American life should be worth more than others, as you suggest when you say "I don't think it's worth a single American life to help people who are not among our own". And why is it so important that the US get "paid back". If the US does save lives as a result of its actions, then shouldn't that in itself be enough compensation. Furthermore, inaction which you propound as a guiding principle of US politics is completely unrealistic. The US's economy is tightly linked to that of many other countries, and US companies have a presence in many other countries. These facts alone necessitate that the US be involved in world politics, and humanitarian reasons should justify this as well.

5. You claim that the US owes nobody anything else and that the US should get paid back for police work that it has done in the past. What "police work" are you refering to? Most of US military intervention has been to protect and secure the interest of US companies, and things are the other way around: The US owes other countries for unjustified intervention in the past. Here are some examples:

* The invasion of Panama in 1989 (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Panama)
* The US-backed coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002 (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_coup_attem pt_of_2002)
* 25 years of US sanctions against Cuba that have been repeatedly denounced by the UN (See http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/ga10529.doc .htm)
* US sanctions against Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of over 500,000 children (See http://dir.salon.com/story/people/feature/200

The most disgusting form of this is CHILD PSYCHOLOGISTS used to market to children.

I'm not really sure why that is so disgusting. toys have been marketed to children since Barbie - literally the first toy to be marketed directly to children. Amusingly, Barbie is based on a cartoon whore.

It only makes sense to use science to make marketing effective.

Its not some advertising thats bad, its ALL advertising. Its all lies, all of it.

You learned the wrong lesson - since that's not remotely true. All advertising is not comprised of lies. I work in marketing and every bit of the advertising material I put out is 100% true - it is concerned with the facts. But we sell a service - entertainment - and so our material sells itself. Nonetheless, you are making a generalization that is, well, a generalization. And so incorrect.

"It's how they make money more effeciently, and when done right, it's a service to you too"

Your either an advertising executive or clueless. Does it really make a difference what brand of shampoo I buy? Soap? Razors? Aren't they all, for all intents and purposes, EXACTLY THE SAME?

1) s/Your/You're/

No, they are not all, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same. Let's use shampoo as an example. Some are heavily fragranced, which makes me want to vomit. Some are meant for dry hair - they don't clean my head very well, because I have very oily hair. And I know from experience (from when I had long hair) that not all conditioners are created equal.

But let's say that you're a 6' tall 250 lb manly man who cuts down trees and drives a four-by. Targeted advertising means that instead of ads for tampons, you're more likely to see ads for chainsaws. Oh, you might still ignore them, but at least it's something you might be interested in.

You might counterpropose that the ads should go away entirely. The result, should such a thing ever happen, is that you would have to start paying for content. You might be okay with that - so are some other people, which is why there are pay sites. Most of us would rather see ads, which is why there are so few pay sites (if you compare ad-supported to fee-supported, that is.)

Does anyone really think being surrounded by LIES told by corporations, virging on 24x7 (eyelid ads ftw), does not have an effect on society?

It has the effect that the most manipulable people behave like sheep and do what they are told. This has the effect of making those people less effectual. If we could only somehow make advertising make them less fertile, we'd really have something.

1999: http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/1999/08/12/deep _links/ covers several lawsuits seven years ago about deep linking without permission. I can't remember which one set the precedent that you need permission; and started the "linking guidelines" pages most sites now have, but I do remember one of them did get through, and yes you do officially need to have permission to link to anyhting other than the homepage.

BTW, this was an issue when Harvard/Yale/Stanford/MIT or whoever it was "hacked" another university's website by simply guessing what the URL was going to be while making admissions decisions.

Birds don't really often get killed by wind turbines, the blades move quite slowly and predictably and are clearly visible so the birds can avoid them. Some birds even have nests on top of turbines.

Rather birds tend to fly into ordinary power lines and die. Climate change and pollution are also big threats to birds as other wildlife too, and their effect is often global.

Furthermore, bird enthusiasts even in America are supporting wind power, here is a link to a statement from the Audubon Society:
http://personals.salon.com/blog/1976/post_32241.ht ml?dcb=personals.salon.com

It's one of the perpetual myths against wind power that surface every time the public discusses about it, I was sure it'd pop up here on slashdot...
Now just waiting about the "will the turbines ever recoup their construction energy cost?" (They will in a few months.)

Let me be the first to say how lame Time was picking this, when Salon made a much more interesting pick.

I do support a national patient's bill of rights. As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the State of Texas to get a patient's bill of rights through. It requires a different kind of leadership style to do it, though. You see, in order to get something done on behalf of the people, you have to put partisanship aside, and that's what we did in my state. We have one of the most advanced patient's bill of rights. It says, for example, that a woman doesn't have to go through a gate keeper to go to her gynecologist. It says that you can't gag a doctor, doctor can advise you. The HMO, the insurance company, can't gag that doctor from giving you full advice. And this particular bill, it allows patients to choose a doctor, their own doctor if they want to. But we did something else that was interesting. We're one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage.

Despite his campaign rhetoric in favor of a patients bill of rights, Bush fought such a bill tooth and nail as Texas governor, vetoing a bill coauthored by Republican state Rep. John Smithee in 1995. He had his insurance commissioner draft into law some of the less controversial bits of the bill -- like letting women choose gynecologists as their primary-care doctors -- but constantly opposed a patient's right to sue an HMO over coverage denied that resulted in adverse health effects. Faced with a vetoproof majority in 1997, he had his legislative aide, Vance McMahan, do everything he could to sabotage the bill, to the point that Republican legislators complained on the floor of the Texas Senate. Then, faced with a vetoproof majority, Bush let the bill become law without his signature.

But, except for artists left over from the supergroup era who also managed to start their own labels, the average "successful" musician barely makes a living on those measly 3 cents a CD royalty payment, and that's only when the CD is not on sale.
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/l ove/

However, the music industry has lost it's grip on the industry, and it's internet chat that's doing it. I have three teens in the house, computer literate, and not one of them ever really listens to the radio at all. They and all their peers find out about music/bands etc directly from their private online communities. They have a very widespread eclectic taste in music, from the 1960's to current, drawing from mainstream to obscure.
This is what I beleive has the industry running scared - they can promote the next low talent Britney Spears with as many millions as they want, but the teens are not listening. This is very different from the last 80 years of industry - the loss of a broadcast audience is a loss of control and of money.

So, I respectfully disagree: the industry have never been good at paying musicians - unless the musicians had enough business sense to sue for control of their own catalog, and now they have lost the broadcast audience.

They are not working for the artists as we all know, but this is a compelling argument detached from the copyright infringement case.

Just to add to this, here are articles by different artists about being ripped off:

Steve Albini
Courtney Love
Steve Vai

Funny you should mention that. 2/1 is my battalion, mentioned in that article. You have no idea what you're talking about.

That was a political decision.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/16 /fallujah/index.html

But the corrections made to you hypothetical are much more representative of the way the music industry works. Artists are not given $X no matter what. They're given a loan. With that loan they create their work and all that it entails and then some. They split what is left over, if any, and are in debt to the label if they run a deficit.

I know she can be a bit bat-shit crazy, but here's a great transcript of a speech that Courtney Love gave to the Digital Holywood online entertainment conference outlining the abuse that artists are on the receiving end of from their record labels.

We give local police guns and other equipment to protect the public, but we can't trust them with cellular-jamming equipment?

... except that I don't think electing more submarine-theocrats to high public office is really what America needs. Gates claims to be agnostic on one hand, but if he is, why is the Gates Foundation funding the Creationism-pushing Discovery Institute, for example?

This says a lot about his priorities with respect to education and scientific research. He can do what he wants with his own money, but if we elect him to office, he'll be doing it with mine, and I have a huge problem with that.

Or if you didn't mean that, try this quiz:

"#In 1985, Air India Flight 182 was blown up over the Atlantic by:
a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Bill O'Reilly
c. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir
d. Indian Sikh extremists, in retaliation for the Indian Army's attack on the Golden Temple shrine in Amritsar

# In 1986, who attempted to smuggle three pounds of explosives onto an El Al jetliner bound from London to Tel Aviv?
a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Michael Smerconish
c. Bob Mould
d. A pregnant Irishwoman named Anne Murphy

# In 1962, in the first-ever successful sabotage of a commercial jet, a Continental Airlines 707 was blown up with dynamite over Missouri by:
a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Ann Coulter
c. Henry Rollins
d. Thomas Doty, a 34-year-old American passenger, as part of an insurance scam

# In 1994, who nearly succeeding in skyjacking a DC-10 and crashing it into the Federal Express Corp. headquarters?
a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Michelle Malkin
c. Charlie Rose
d. Auburn Calloway, an off-duty FedEx employee and resident of Memphis, Tenn.

# In 1974, who stormed a Delta Air Lines DC-9 at Baltimore-Washington Airport, intending to crash it into the White House, and shot both pilots?
a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Joe Scarborough
c. Spalding Gray
d. Samuel Byck, an unemployed tire salesman from Philadelphia

The answer, in all cases, is D."

Courtney Love explained in some detail how record industry math works, here.

How soon we forget...

http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/10/28fe ature.html

Even if Apple just made the hardware chances are pretty good at this point in the iPod's popularity the RIAA would be sending their lawyers over to 1 Infinite Loop.

Perhaps pornography is simply a Western invention and a predilection that strikes people in Asia as bizzare. Then again, I have no doubt that people in these countries are freely downloading Western porn; they just aren't producing it themselves.


What? Asia is full of porn. Porn, love hotels, brothels, hostess bars (i.e. emotional prostitutes), strip clubs. Seriously. How were you not aware of this? And no. The bars don't cater to only a a foreign clientel. Many Japanese bars frequently put up big Jim Crow-esque signs that read "Japanese Only."

http://archive.salon.com/sex/world/2001/03/16/surv ey/index.html
http://archive.salon.com/sex/galleries/2003/09/12/ louie/index_np.html

Perhaps pornography is simply a Western invention and a predilection that strikes people in Asia as bizzare. Then again, I have no doubt that people in these countries are freely downloading Western porn; they just aren't producing it themselves.


What? Asia is full of porn. Porn, love hotels, brothels, hostess bars (i.e. emotional prostitutes), strip clubs. Seriously. How were you not aware of this? And no. The bars don't cater to only a a foreign clientel. Many Japanese bars frequently put up big Jim Crow-esque signs that read "Japanese Only."

http://archive.salon.com/sex/world/2001/03/16/surv ey/index.html
http://archive.salon.com/sex/galleries/2003/09/12/ louie/index_np.html

Well, it encourages you to believe falsehoods, to be satisfied with inadequate explanations which really aren't explanations at all. And this is particularly bad because the real explanations, the scientific explanations, are so beautiful and so elegant. Plenty of people never get exposed to the beauties of the scientific explanation for the world and for life. And that's very sad. But it's even sadder if they are actively discouraged from understanding by a systematic attempt in the opposite direction, which is what many religions actually are. But that's only the first of my many reasons for being hostile to religion.

A Salon.com writer decided to try Provigil for five days to see how it affected him. It's hardly scientific, but it makes for an interesting read nonetheless.

Better waking through chemistry

Please see this.