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RIAA Dumps Unsold Inventory to Settle Anti-Trust Case
theodp writes "A music windfall promised to WA public schools and libraries from last year's $143M anti-trust settlement with the recording industry wasn't all it was cracked up to be. While WA got 115,241 music CDs out of the deal, folks aren't quite sure what to do with the odd collection, which includes 387 CDs containing explicit lyrics by Big Pun, 310 copies of Will Smith's Willenium and 48 copies of Spooky Scary Sounds for Halloween from Martha Stewart."
Actually, at least in Michigan, the lawsuit winners don't get a dubious victory, they get jack squat. For example, many of the CDs are going to troops in Iraq, which isn't a bad thing, unless you were expecting some of the settlement.
The article only covers a small part of the CDs, but according to WNEM, the settlement CDs are also being placed in all the public non-emergency vehicles in the state (which would include the personal cars of most of the state politicians, refuse collection trucks, mosquito-sprayers, and so on), being given to state employees, and so on. Those people who were to actually benifit from the settlement get a big old goose egg.
Actually, sounds more like Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor. I would imagine it would come with penalties similar to buying Cigarettes or Beer for a 16 year old, which can be considered "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor".
I can't find Washington State's law, but using Colorado as an example, contributing to the delinquency of a minor is a class 4 felony with 2 to 6 years in jail and a fine of $2,000 to $500,000. (Colo. Rev. Stat. 12-47-901, 12-47-903, 18-1-106, 18-6-701)
How many CDs was that again?
Due to changes in the moderating system, Funny doesn't help Karma. But modding a funny comment as Insightful is a way of skirting the issue and rewarding those that amuse.
Nonsense. Both were considered proper spelling variations early on, and eventually "tidbit" became the accepted one.
c1640 J. Smyth Lives Berkeleys (1885) III. 25 A tyd bit, i.e. a speciall morsell reserved to eat at last.
1701 Collier M. Aurel. (1726) 13 To be always loading the table, and eating of tid-bits.
As you can see from the above OED excerpts, the "tidbit" variation predates not only the american revolution, but much of the continents colonization as well.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
So, what prevents one parent from staying home? Money, duh. They need more money. The income of one person cannot support the family of 4 unless you have a really good job.
This is often a myth... when you sit down and do the math, you find out that the second income is eaten up (and then some) by daycare, convenience foods and restaurants, and all the less obvious expenses that pile up when you're both working. Some of that's *so* "less obvious that even sitting down and doing the math doesn't tell you the real story.
We cut our household income in half when I quit to have a baby. And our standard of living hasn't changed (to our great surprise). Difference is, I have to cook and shop and all that instead of managing an AS/400 shop. Yeah, in a lot of ways *that's* a major sacrifice - at least I can still code at home on my *own* projects, so I don't feel at all like I'm completely falling behind on my career. Not everybody can do that. On the other hand, not every second income is 50% of the income, either, so a lot of wives (and the occasional husband) can stay home and actually *improve* the household bottom line.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Here is a link to a story on research that indicates homeschool children are NOT socially inept.
Give life
It is. I can even pronounce it for you if you like. Using improper grammar or spelling to indicate accents or modes of speech is a common practice among writers, one that can often effectively convey meaning as well as pronunciation.
"If I write loike this, 'oo dyaspose I am emulightin'? Wot sort of spaitch dya 'ere when you ride it? Kinyou hair a nyoo accent I am cratin'?"
My linguistics and grammar prof hated this sort of thing, because it really is quite racist to think that other cultures use variant spellings of words due to the way they pronounce them. That hasn't stopped just about every writer in the twentieth century from doing so...heck, even Shakespearre used to play on mispronunciation and poor grammar.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
What Microsoft does is give a hundred PCs to the school district and two copies of Office. They wait until the teachers, kids, and administrators have loaded Office on all the PCs. Then they hit the school district with a huge lawsuit threatening to demand a hundred thousand dollars for every 'pirated' installation of the software. They 'settle' for a single payment of a million dollars or so. The original PCs are all taken as a tax write-off donation.
They've done this to Philadelphia and Portland Oregon that I know of and probably many other places as well.
A truly sleazy and degenerate company.
We had satellite (and gave it up because we weren't watching it; Netflix is a better use of the money), still have a cell phone (we'd probably lose the landline if the DSL wasn't on it), a company-provided pager (unfortunately), but no new car. My husband drives a 17-year-old beater to work (it's ugly, but it's a 1-ton truck and gets 25 mpg, so it's eminently practical), I drive a nine-year-old minivan that's still in excellent shape. We're putting money aside so when time comes to buy another (non-new, probably another program car), we'll pay cash again.
My hobby business made enough to buy a 29" TV (I think it was... ) a couple Christmases ago. And we do have high-speed DSL, with static IPs, for the Phoenyx, so that's an extra $40ish every month we don't have to spend but do.
And we regularly support nonprofits... tithing at our church, public broadcasting (TV/radio), food banks, etc.
On the other hand, I'm not dressing my preschooler at The Gap and Old Navy, so that makes a difference. He wears mostly secondhand stuff, in fact - makes more sense when they seldom wear clothes out. Heck, *I* wear the occasional secondhand find, though since I'm not working I don't need to overdress so my wardrobe's cheaper these days even new (another one of those hidden bennies).
It's all in where you want to spend it, I guess.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Somewhere on MTV's website they have a realonevideo of the actual clip. I was only able to find an mp3 of the interview and have mirrored it here: Be kind to my webspace