A "4"? That's it? That is the geek reward for a truly committed relationship? Wow.
This is so basic to a marriage -- or any such long-term bond -- that I find it extraordinary that it got only a "4" for "Insightful".
OMG,/. people: do you realize what this says about you? It says you don't trust anyone with the essential truth of your life. That is so sad.
My mate and I have living wills. We can choose when to "pull the plug" (or not) for each other. What kind of superficial relationship can you have that are less trusting than that?
I watch porn. (She doesn't.) I have close, sometimes emotionally intimate email correspondence with other women. She could at any moment choose to eavesdrop on those. So what?
She is my best friend and I am hers. We don't have secrets, except the birthday-surprise kind, and as "gnick" says, that's easy: just say "It's secret, don't look."
The biggest reason we don't usually have sex with other people is that it isn't something we could share easily. That doesn't mean we are joined at the hip, it just means never having to worry about being truthful. (And by the way, we haven't always been totally monogamous, just very out front, so that sexual straying isn't a secret, and doesn't mean betrayal.)
Being vulnerable to one another is a kind of freedom, and mutual trust is essential to such vulnerability.
And that score of "4" is a sign of someone living so tightly inside their shell that no one else can ever get in. By those standards, this post should get a "1".
I get charged "sales tax" frequently by online sellers with no California presence. Why? Because they CAN. All I can do is cancel the order.
But I've searched and located the item I want, so I order it, and even agree to the absurd "shipping/handling" fee. Then the seller arbitrarily tacks on a California sales tax.
Nearly always I pay that too, grinding my teeth. (Yeah, it's illegal, but what can I do? Take them to Small Claims Court? -- OK, say a local court awards me damages? How do I collect?)
We all know the state will never collect those fees, even if the seller has a California address...unless they are a highly visible Company.
C'mon, folks, the sales tax is an Internet scam, just like the "shipping charges". Consumers can't do anything about it except not buy from such vendors. And the states (particularly California) have no resources to enforce it. I doubt New York has either. It's in effect a phantom tax.
The chief victims of New York's new tax will not be small sellers, who can ignore it with impunity; it will be the larger companies who are physically shipping from that state. The net result? New York will drop points from its market share of online purchases.
I recall you saying you stopped downloading originally because "the artists weren't being paid."
Hello? The artists have not been paid for 40 years and counting. I'm one of them, 2 albums on Columbia, several more on smaller labels, not a penny in royalties, not ever. ALL that money goes to the companies, period. I'm a small fish. They only pay people who can afford to sue them, like the Dixie Chicks.
C'mon people, this "artists' royalties" issue is simply RIAA PR. The companies have no moral standing whatever (and if anyone were to assemble a class-action lawsuit, they'd have no legal standing.
I asked an entertainment attorney what it would take for me to recover the approximately $200,000 in royalties unpaid since 1967, and he said, a substantial retainer for the firm, just to get to the point of writing a letter of demand, a huge fee to a CPA to examine records now nearly half a century old, let's say $50K. And then we'd come up against all the legal obfustications SONY would trot out, one at a time (starting with, it's not our problem, it's Columbia's, and we don't have access to their artists' records).
So recovery is by no means certain, it would take years, and a lot of money, and because Columbia never sent me royalty reports, I have no way of knowing how much they really owe me.
So: $50K (which I don't have) to see if maybe, just possibly, I can get a chance to look at royalty records? I think not.
Ah, yes, the always-reliable Associated Press. Note that the photo caption says "musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper'." Not "allegedly" or "purportedly" or "possibly"...they are encoded ! This is the kind of utter bullshit actual Renaissance scholars have to deal with constantly. I don't envy them. It's no wonder that people who are genuine specialists in the era don't want to talk to the press.
Instead, we get a career-enhancing pretender, utterly undistinguished as either composer or scholar, who arbitrarily assigns a grid (staff) to Leonardo's fresco, and announces a miracle. Which happens to coincide with his release of a CD and a book, which is available for sale to the faithful and the terminally credulous. Now that is a true miracle! Well, Sr. Pala is 45, so his revelation came along at a fortuitous time for his non-career. He's not in Wikipedia or MySpace yet, and this is probably his only chance.
There are major errors of fact, history, and basic music scholarship - for a start, a musical staff is meaningless without a clef. Which of the dozen clefs then in use was it? If so, why was that particular tonic chosen?
And why is the only "authority" quoted not a music scholar, nor even an art historian, but the director of a private for-profit Leonardo "museum" in Vinci? The irony is getting pretty thick here.
This comment is beyond ignorant; it is at the least deceitful. There are thousands of artists (and I'm one) who signed contracts, but have never gotten a penny in royalties. The musicians do not get the money, and no, they are not protected by the RIAA, which is by definition an industry group. In fact, there is no group that represents those musicians (there is a kind of lobbying effort in D.C., but it's just lawyers feeling good about themselves). This has been well known since the Napster suit, when a letter to the presiding judge made the point (see: http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/04/23/copyright/). BTW, she ignored it, and the RIAA has gone on to better things, such as bankrupting single moms.
I am delighted that people download my music, since I will never be paid for it. The total royalties owed over the past 40 years has been estimated to be well over $200,000. That is the real story. You are buying the Industry's version, and why not? They have the money, the clout, the Congressional and Executive branch's support, and in this case, the Federal Judiciary. But it does not mean they are right.
The problem I have with the study is that it seems to equate the concept of left and right politics with flexible and rigid thinking. I spent many years in the left (I still consider myself very much left of "liberal"), and some of the least flexible, creative people I knew were leftists. In the USSR, of course, they would have been the conservatives. That was equally true of the so-called New Left in the 60s and 70s, many of whom had as constraining and orthodox positions as the far right -- slaves to ideology in a way that is like fundamentalism in religion.
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Sorry, this comment is invalidated by its patently reactionary bias. Bush DID skip military service -- in fact he blatantly avoided even the appearance of it. You knew that. Shame on you. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_W._Bush's_military_service
A "4"? That's it? That is the geek reward for a truly committed relationship? Wow. This is so basic to a marriage -- or any such long-term bond -- that I find it extraordinary that it got only a "4" for "Insightful". OMG, /. people: do you realize what this says about you? It says you don't trust anyone with the essential truth of your life. That is so sad.
My mate and I have living wills. We can choose when to "pull the plug" (or not) for each other. What kind of superficial relationship can you have that are less trusting than that?
I watch porn. (She doesn't.) I have close, sometimes emotionally intimate email correspondence with other women. She could at any moment choose to eavesdrop on those. So what?
She is my best friend and I am hers. We don't have secrets, except the birthday-surprise kind, and as "gnick" says, that's easy: just say "It's secret, don't look."
The biggest reason we don't usually have sex with other people is that it isn't something we could share easily. That doesn't mean we are joined at the hip, it just means never having to worry about being truthful. (And by the way, we haven't always been totally monogamous, just very out front, so that sexual straying isn't a secret, and doesn't mean betrayal.)
Being vulnerable to one another is a kind of freedom, and mutual trust is essential to such vulnerability.
And that score of "4" is a sign of someone living so tightly inside their shell that no one else can ever get in. By those standards, this post should get a "1".
I get charged "sales tax" frequently by online sellers with no California presence. Why? Because they CAN. All I can do is cancel the order. But I've searched and located the item I want, so I order it, and even agree to the absurd "shipping/handling" fee. Then the seller arbitrarily tacks on a California sales tax. Nearly always I pay that too, grinding my teeth. (Yeah, it's illegal, but what can I do? Take them to Small Claims Court? -- OK, say a local court awards me damages? How do I collect?) We all know the state will never collect those fees, even if the seller has a California address...unless they are a highly visible Company. C'mon, folks, the sales tax is an Internet scam, just like the "shipping charges". Consumers can't do anything about it except not buy from such vendors. And the states (particularly California) have no resources to enforce it. I doubt New York has either. It's in effect a phantom tax. The chief victims of New York's new tax will not be small sellers, who can ignore it with impunity; it will be the larger companies who are physically shipping from that state. The net result? New York will drop points from its market share of online purchases.
I recall you saying you stopped downloading originally because "the artists weren't being paid." Hello? The artists have not been paid for 40 years and counting. I'm one of them, 2 albums on Columbia, several more on smaller labels, not a penny in royalties, not ever. ALL that money goes to the companies, period. I'm a small fish. They only pay people who can afford to sue them, like the Dixie Chicks. C'mon people, this "artists' royalties" issue is simply RIAA PR. The companies have no moral standing whatever (and if anyone were to assemble a class-action lawsuit, they'd have no legal standing. I asked an entertainment attorney what it would take for me to recover the approximately $200,000 in royalties unpaid since 1967, and he said, a substantial retainer for the firm, just to get to the point of writing a letter of demand, a huge fee to a CPA to examine records now nearly half a century old, let's say $50K. And then we'd come up against all the legal obfustications SONY would trot out, one at a time (starting with, it's not our problem, it's Columbia's, and we don't have access to their artists' records). So recovery is by no means certain, it would take years, and a lot of money, and because Columbia never sent me royalty reports, I have no way of knowing how much they really owe me. So: $50K (which I don't have) to see if maybe, just possibly, I can get a chance to look at royalty records? I think not.
Ah, yes, the always-reliable Associated Press. Note that the photo caption says "musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper'." Not "allegedly" or "purportedly" or "possibly"...they are encoded ! This is the kind of utter bullshit actual Renaissance scholars have to deal with constantly. I don't envy them. It's no wonder that people who are genuine specialists in the era don't want to talk to the press. Instead, we get a career-enhancing pretender, utterly undistinguished as either composer or scholar, who arbitrarily assigns a grid (staff) to Leonardo's fresco, and announces a miracle. Which happens to coincide with his release of a CD and a book, which is available for sale to the faithful and the terminally credulous. Now that is a true miracle! Well, Sr. Pala is 45, so his revelation came along at a fortuitous time for his non-career. He's not in Wikipedia or MySpace yet, and this is probably his only chance. There are major errors of fact, history, and basic music scholarship - for a start, a musical staff is meaningless without a clef. Which of the dozen clefs then in use was it? If so, why was that particular tonic chosen? And why is the only "authority" quoted not a music scholar, nor even an art historian, but the director of a private for-profit Leonardo "museum" in Vinci? The irony is getting pretty thick here.
This comment is beyond ignorant; it is at the least deceitful. There are thousands of artists (and I'm one) who signed contracts, but have never gotten a penny in royalties. The musicians do not get the money, and no, they are not protected by the RIAA, which is by definition an industry group. In fact, there is no group that represents those musicians (there is a kind of lobbying effort in D.C., but it's just lawyers feeling good about themselves). This has been well known since the Napster suit, when a letter to the presiding judge made the point (see: http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/04/23/copyright/). BTW, she ignored it, and the RIAA has gone on to better things, such as bankrupting single moms.
I am delighted that people download my music, since I will never be paid for it. The total royalties owed over the past 40 years has been estimated to be well over $200,000. That is the real story. You are buying the Industry's version, and why not? They have the money, the clout, the Congressional and Executive branch's support, and in this case, the Federal Judiciary. But it does not mean they are right.
The problem I have with the study is that it seems to equate the concept of left and right politics with flexible and rigid thinking. I spent many years in the left (I still consider myself very much left of "liberal"), and some of the least flexible, creative people I knew were leftists. In the USSR, of course, they would have been the conservatives. That was equally true of the so-called New Left in the 60s and 70s, many of whom had as constraining and orthodox positions as the far right -- slaves to ideology in a way that is like fundamentalism in religion.