In my haste to spew, I forgot to contextualize: what I meant is that the RIAA should take a lesson from Oreilly quote about writers -- that obscurity is no friend to an artist, writer, musician, or whatever.
It's best to strike a reasonable balance between exposure and profitibility.
"Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy."
A-fucking-men.
Write that down and stick it up the tight-suited asses of the golf-loving, lexus-driving, greedy-mother-fucking-artist-screwing RIAA executives and tell them to go blow a taco.
Look at my.sig. Some cockroach, who fancies himself a site 'moderator', climbed out of his hole and shut me down for 4 weeks because he thought I got downmodded too often.
Maybe you're just a bona fide idiot?
Tradition and the Individual Talent?
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 1
What influences you and gets your creative juices flowing? Creative writers, for example, are influenced by other writers. What do you do to get new ideas or give your creativity a little nudge?
Office 12's innovations paves the way for Office 13's "return to the Office design that users have to love."
Two years from now, whoever is in charge in Office will stand up at some flashy Microsoft presentation and explain how they "ignored users" and "goofed" by changing too much in Office 12. He'll talk about "lessons learned" and how "grateful Microsoft is to the user community for their active support of Microsoft Office."
And then he'll push a couple buttons, curtains will raise, and some huge screen will blast "Office 13" and show videos about how all these new innovations have been replaced by the stuff that users wanted -- namely, a return to the regular menu.
I don't know -- after ten, fifteen years of Microsoft, I'm extremely, extremely weary of all this technological hullabaloo. It's a lot of noise about nothing except money -- big money -- and users -- myself included -- fall for it time and time again.
And yes, I've gradually moved over to Linux solutions. They're fine -- sometimes more complesxs than I'd like -- but I've come to understand that Microsoft -- and perhaps Google, too, but I don't know yet -- really don't understand technology. They understand technology, yeah, but they don't understand the fundamental fact that more and more people have an antagonistic response to technology. We like technology, sure, but goddammit make technology that makes things easier -- not complex in a different way.
I wish someone at these companies would begin to acknowledge the odd technological antagonism that more technology breeds. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should* -- create a new version of Word, implement X or Y, etc. etc.
Understand the context, though: Illinois has a young, Kennedy-esque governor who claims to be a populist and is working "for the people." He has steadfastly refused to raise general sales taxes or income taxes and is instead turning toward businesses to blanace a 1.7 billion dollar state deficit.
This governor does not work in the state capital and instead spends all his time in Chicago because "he's got a family to raise, and he can't raise it in Springfield" (or something to that effect). So he spends lots of moola jetting back and forth.
The theory with Blagojevich is that he's positioning himself for a presidential bid in 2008 and is loathe to contradict his "populist roots" by imposing a tax on the "backs of the hard working men and women of Illinois."
In a sense, yeah, that's good. I can appreciate that. But the result of his fervent populism is a state government that's only a couple weeks away from a legislative break and is facing enormous pressure within the next two weeks to balance the budget and erase a 1.7 billion -- billion! -- dollar deficit from the state rolls.
He's in a tough spot, and because he's a union-guy and a guy's guy, Governor Sunshine has backed himself into a corner. The *only* things left are (a) massive taxes on businesses (bad for the state because we have lots of other states close by that would benefit from a business exodus from Illinois) or (b) gambling.
He's an odd bird, Blagojevich, and he's scraping -- literally, with a little plastic spatula -- the bottom of every barrel across the state to raise money.
Do I agree with what he's doing?
I'm not sure. I think Illinois government is in complete *disarray* -- lots of agencies are understaffed, for example -- but so long as he doesn't raise taxes on Ma and Pa, he's cool.
What was weird about Scorpia was the way she wore perfume. She'd wear something normal like Chanel and her internal chemistry would weirdly transform it into this odd, highly-enriched attractor. None of us could keep our eyes off Scorpia on account she smelled so good.
Damn, dude. That's the weirdest off-topic story I've *ever* read on Slashdot.
I have no idea if you're making that up, but you creeped me out for the rest of the day.
>> Everyone had all sorts of questions. First, where was the beer? Where did it go? And then (of course) how did she manage to pop off the bottlecaps since they weren't screwoffs?
Are you for real? Is this real? Or just fake?
Still, this gets my vote as the thread-of-the-month.
Nothing to do with DRM and DRM protected CDs, but it does seem a shame that most folks won't read this because it's mod'd at 0 and will probably soon be at -1.
It pleases me to hear that porn and P2P music and video are (or have been) the new "killer application."
An old guy I know wanted me to set him up with DSL so he could find out what all this hubbub about music is all about. (He really called it "hubbub", too).
But I suspect he'll check out some porn, too. We all like porn and downloadable music. But very few us will admit it.
BTW, how come someone hasn't set up a P2P network that allows me to stream music from my buddy's computer. Wouldn't this be the same as listening to music at a friend's house? Would the RIAA shut this down?
Even cooler would be to stream video from my bud's computer. It's like we're in the same room together -- but we're just virtually there.
Anyway, I set the old guy I know up with DSL. Got him to sign on, fork over the cash. He's got an install in the next few weeks, and I've got a free PS2 coming my way (on account the DSL folks are giving away a free XBOX or PS2 to whoever signs up by Sep. 30.)
So soon he'll be able to check out that hubbub. (Is hubbub short for something? Or is it one of those words that sound like the thing they're describing? I've been in hubbub before -- and I've checked out a lot of hubbub -- but I'm not sure it ever sounded like 'hubbub' when I was checking it out.)
I agree with you. Of course there are other paths to freedom and liberty. I don't deny it. And I think I said as much (several times, in fact) in my post.
But I'm not sure there are *better* paths.
But I think the original question is a powerful one: where do Americans go if they seek greater --or better -- freedoms?
Now, it depends on what you mean by "better".
Certainly an American concerned about the ominous and recent loss of his or her freedoms has a different idea of "better" than a German teenager concerned about the hegemony of America and its recent "strike first" doctrine and what this is going to mean to, say, the German economy and the overall global power balance.
But there is an undeniable irony -- and perhaps this, finally, is what the poster meant -- in the symbol -- symbol! -- of Americans (of all people) *seeking* freedom.
America -- up until recently maybe -- has always been a destination for many people seeking freedom. One archetypical image (taken by many different photographers) in early 20th century photography is the immigrant family standing on the dock of the ship -- presumably just having come up from steerage -- to gaze at the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.
(Coppola scored his own version of this in 'Godfather II' with little Vito staring out a lead-glass window in Ellis Island and gazing at the statue. It's a great image in a great movie. But I digress...)
The history of Jewish-American literature, for example, is dotted with narratives that deal with immigrants (German and Russian Jews) coming to America, going through Ellis Island, and settling down on the lower-east side of New York City to start their new lives. (Henry Roth's masterful 'Call it Sleep', Abraham Cahan's 'Rise of David Levinky' are but two examples.)
True, these are -- for the most part, at least -- idealized notions and narratives (although Cahan's description of early 20th century New York is mostly devoid of sentimentality) but the fact remains that America has always been considered -- at least in theory -- 'The Promised Land.' (I suspect these days that notion is met with jeers around the globe.)
Now one could argue -- and one most certainly would argue these days -- that America is not exactly a Promised Land for most folks. But traditionally, America has been the place to go if you've been persecuted and are seeking a better life. That's not to say that France or Britain aren't viable places, certainly -- and that's not to say that these days maybe France or Britain *are* the places to go.
But in the early part of the 20th century, the notion of 'Promised Land' combined with the Statue of Liberty standing in New York harbor was a powerful intoxicant for many soon-to-become-Americans. I suspect this is what the original poster is alluding to.
Idealized, yes. But, as I say, at one point in the history of our little planet, America was, indeed, the destination for all the so-called 'oppressed' peoples. (Personally, I believe it still is, although it's not too fashionable to say that these days.)
I know Oklahoma officials also tried to ban a video of the 'Tin Drum' (a great movie and an even better book) and arrest a guy who had it checked out from Blockbuster.
I wonder if some libraries keep this information in order to know when to withdraw books and sell them at book sales.
Lately, at a lot of the 'Friends of the Library' booksales I've been to, I've noticed a lot of "Withdrawn" editions -- perfectly good books, in pretty good shape, but for whatever reason they've been pulled from the shelf.
Well, last weekend I got a copy of Milosz's 'History of Polish Literature' and was actually curious why a book like this was at a FOL sale for a quarter. Anyway, I bought the book then went upstairs to check the card catalog. I figured the book had been replaced. But there was no sign of a new edition.
Then I figured it might be from a different library -- a branch or something -- but all the markings on the spine and front cover matched with the library where it was for sale.
I should have asked the ref librarians -- because i was actually pretty curious about this -- but they were busy and I didn't feel like waiting.
Anyway, I scored a great book (if you're into the history of Polish lit, I suppose) for twenty-five cents. I figured that because it was pretty obscure was why it was pulled.
But I might be wrong. I'd hate to think libraries are driven by marketing -- what's popular, what's not -- but then I figure: well, most libraries have a finite amount of space and new space is not always forthcoming. So instead of just adding, adding, adding to the inventory, they probably have to make some hard decisions and pull stuff off the shelf.
This *might* be why libraries need records. (But they don't need to correlate the borrower records with the book check-out history, I suppose.)
I wondered about this, too. I mean, I can recall going to libraries as a kid and they had this little punchcard dealie where they actually punched a date onto a punchcard and inserted it into your book.
That was always pretty cool to me -- the mechanical punching and the fact that it almost always lined the date up perfectly below the last date.
But even then, I guess the libraries had records because they took the original card from the book and stored it somewhere. And somewhere along the line they someone correlated the name of the borrower with the card because they knew when to send overdue notices.
So I think the response to your question is that libraries have to keep track of lending habits. They have no other option. They can't simply lend a book out without any record of it being checked out. (Why does this seem like it might be the germ for a Borges story?)
Anyone with a reading list as ecelectic and as interesting as the one posted by KelsoLundeen has my permission to go off-topic all he or she wants.
And, um, here's another little 'um' to shove in your dusty little container: the post was actually *on* topic. Kelso mentioned DRM and made a pretty insightful suggestion about one possible result of DRM.
Scan up toward the top for an even more insightful post by Kelso about DRM and Palladium.
Slashdot Mirror
So the hell with eyes... it's actually possible to undress her with your diction...
Yeah, and it's been possible for as long as David Mamet has been writing.
In my haste to spew, I forgot to contextualize: what I meant is that the RIAA should take a lesson from Oreilly quote about writers -- that obscurity is no friend to an artist, writer, musician, or whatever.
It's best to strike a reasonable balance between exposure and profitibility.
But still, the RIAA should go blow tacos.
"Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy."
A-fucking-men.
Write that down and stick it up the tight-suited asses of the golf-loving, lexus-driving, greedy-mother-fucking-artist-screwing RIAA executives and tell them to go blow a taco.
Look at my .sig. Some cockroach, who fancies himself a site 'moderator', climbed out of his hole and shut me down for 4 weeks because he thought I got downmodded too often.
Maybe you're just a bona fide idiot?
What influences you and gets your creative juices flowing? Creative writers, for example, are influenced by other writers. What do you do to get new ideas or give your creativity a little nudge?
What happened to Wang? (Is it Wang! (with an exclamation mark?) or just Wang?)
I remember Wang. I don't know where I remember Wang, but it wings a bell.
Office 12's innovations paves the way for Office 13's "return to the Office design that users have to love."
Two years from now, whoever is in charge in Office will stand up at some flashy Microsoft presentation and explain how they "ignored users" and "goofed" by changing too much in Office 12. He'll talk about "lessons learned" and how "grateful Microsoft is to the user community for their active support of Microsoft Office."
And then he'll push a couple buttons, curtains will raise, and some huge screen will blast "Office 13" and show videos about how all these new innovations have been replaced by the stuff that users wanted -- namely, a return to the regular menu.
I don't know -- after ten, fifteen years of Microsoft, I'm extremely, extremely weary of all this technological hullabaloo. It's a lot of noise about nothing except money -- big money -- and users -- myself included -- fall for it time and time again.
And yes, I've gradually moved over to Linux solutions. They're fine -- sometimes more complesxs than I'd like -- but I've come to understand that Microsoft -- and perhaps Google, too, but I don't know yet -- really don't understand technology. They understand technology, yeah, but they don't understand the fundamental fact that more and more people have an antagonistic response to technology. We like technology, sure, but goddammit make technology that makes things easier -- not complex in a different way.
I wish someone at these companies would begin to acknowledge the odd technological antagonism that more technology breeds. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should* -- create a new version of Word, implement X or Y, etc. etc.
I dunno. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
You take your PSP to weddings?
And this doesn't qualify as "mindless fanboyism?"
Confused.
Understand the context, though: Illinois has a young, Kennedy-esque governor who claims to be a populist and is working "for the people." He has steadfastly refused to raise general sales taxes or income taxes and is instead turning toward businesses to blanace a 1.7 billion dollar state deficit.
This governor does not work in the state capital and instead spends all his time in Chicago because "he's got a family to raise, and he can't raise it in Springfield" (or something to that effect). So he spends lots of moola jetting back and forth.
The theory with Blagojevich is that he's positioning himself for a presidential bid in 2008 and is loathe to contradict his "populist roots" by imposing a tax on the "backs of the hard working men and women of Illinois."
In a sense, yeah, that's good. I can appreciate that. But the result of his fervent populism is a state government that's only a couple weeks away from a legislative break and is facing enormous pressure within the next two weeks to balance the budget and erase a 1.7 billion -- billion! -- dollar deficit from the state rolls.
He's in a tough spot, and because he's a union-guy and a guy's guy, Governor Sunshine has backed himself into a corner. The *only* things left are (a) massive taxes on businesses (bad for the state because we have lots of other states close by that would benefit from a business exodus from Illinois) or (b) gambling.
He's an odd bird, Blagojevich, and he's scraping -- literally, with a little plastic spatula -- the bottom of every barrel across the state to raise money.
Do I agree with what he's doing?
I'm not sure. I think Illinois government is in complete *disarray* -- lots of agencies are understaffed, for example -- but so long as he doesn't raise taxes on Ma and Pa, he's cool.
Welcome to American politics, I guess.
*shrug*
What was weird about Scorpia was the way she wore perfume. She'd wear something normal like Chanel and her internal chemistry would weirdly transform it into this odd, highly-enriched attractor. None of us could keep our eyes off Scorpia on account she smelled so good.
Damn, dude. That's the weirdest off-topic story I've *ever* read on Slashdot.
I have no idea if you're making that up, but you creeped me out for the rest of the day.
Bizarre.
This is proof of why Slashdot rocks.
Actually, no, it's not getting old. It's pretty damn funny.
And who cares? At least Didion's posting some funny, interesting shit. He's no Jon Katz (thank goodness) but he makes me chuckle.
He's actually one of the funnier Slashdot posters I've seen in sometime. His rant of a couple weeks back is classic.
So, no, it's not getting old. I want more. It beats the hell outta reading the same old Linux versus Windows crap.
Is this off-topic? Probably.
>> Everyone had all sorts of questions. First, where was the beer? Where did it go? And then (of course) how did she manage to pop off the bottlecaps since they weren't screwoffs?
Are you for real? Is this real? Or just fake?
Still, this gets my vote as the thread-of-the-month.
Nothing to do with DRM and DRM protected CDs, but it does seem a shame that most folks won't read this because it's mod'd at 0 and will probably soon be at -1.
Um, I never thought I'd see gnosticism, Plotinus, Jack Valenti, and James Caan mentioned in the same post.
I'm not sure if it should be rated off-topic, funny, or "quick, someone bring me more tin-foil for my helmet."
Wow.
Mod: +1 Bizarre.
I hope you got rid of that sofa.
Vice always drives profit.
It pleases me to hear that porn and P2P music and video are (or have been) the new "killer application."
An old guy I know wanted me to set him up with DSL so he could find out what all this hubbub about music is all about. (He really called it "hubbub", too).
But I suspect he'll check out some porn, too. We all like porn and downloadable music. But very few us will admit it.
BTW, how come someone hasn't set up a P2P network that allows me to stream music from my buddy's computer. Wouldn't this be the same as listening to music at a friend's house? Would the RIAA shut this down?
Even cooler would be to stream video from my bud's computer. It's like we're in the same room together -- but we're just virtually there.
Anyway, I set the old guy I know up with DSL. Got him to sign on, fork over the cash. He's got an install in the next few weeks, and I've got a free PS2 coming my way (on account the DSL folks are giving away a free XBOX or PS2 to whoever signs up by Sep. 30.)
So soon he'll be able to check out that hubbub. (Is hubbub short for something? Or is it one of those words that sound like the thing they're describing? I've been in hubbub before -- and I've checked out a lot of hubbub -- but I'm not sure it ever sounded like 'hubbub' when I was checking it out.)
Please.
I agree with you. Of course there are other paths to freedom and liberty. I don't deny it. And I think I said as much (several times, in fact) in my post.
But I'm not sure there are *better* paths.
But I think the original question is a powerful one: where do Americans go if they seek greater --or better -- freedoms?
Now, it depends on what you mean by "better".
Certainly an American concerned about the ominous and recent loss of his or her freedoms has a different idea of "better" than a German teenager concerned about the hegemony of America and its recent "strike first" doctrine and what this is going to mean to, say, the German economy and the overall global power balance.
But there is an undeniable irony -- and perhaps this, finally, is what the poster meant -- in the symbol -- symbol! -- of Americans (of all people) *seeking* freedom.
Please.
KelsoLundeen is mostly right.
America -- up until recently maybe -- has always been a destination for many people seeking freedom. One archetypical image (taken by many different photographers) in early 20th century photography is the immigrant family standing on the dock of the ship -- presumably just having come up from steerage -- to gaze at the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.
(Coppola scored his own version of this in 'Godfather II' with little Vito staring out a lead-glass window in Ellis Island and gazing at the statue. It's a great image in a great movie. But I digress...)
The history of Jewish-American literature, for example, is dotted with narratives that deal with immigrants (German and Russian Jews) coming to America, going through Ellis Island, and settling down on the lower-east side of New York City to start their new lives. (Henry Roth's masterful 'Call it Sleep', Abraham Cahan's 'Rise of David Levinky' are but two examples.)
True, these are -- for the most part, at least -- idealized notions and narratives (although Cahan's description of early 20th century New York is mostly devoid of sentimentality) but the fact remains that America has always been considered -- at least in theory -- 'The Promised Land.' (I suspect these days that notion is met with jeers around the globe.)
Now one could argue -- and one most certainly would argue these days -- that America is not exactly a Promised Land for most folks. But traditionally, America has been the place to go if you've been persecuted and are seeking a better life. That's not to say that France or Britain aren't viable places, certainly -- and that's not to say that these days maybe France or Britain *are* the places to go.
But in the early part of the 20th century, the notion of 'Promised Land' combined with the Statue of Liberty standing in New York harbor was a powerful intoxicant for many soon-to-become-Americans. I suspect this is what the original poster is alluding to.
Idealized, yes. But, as I say, at one point in the history of our little planet, America was, indeed, the destination for all the so-called 'oppressed' peoples. (Personally, I believe it still is, although it's not too fashionable to say that these days.)
Oklahoma must have a serious morality crisis.
I know Oklahoma officials also tried to ban a video of the 'Tin Drum' (a great movie and an even better book) and arrest a guy who had it checked out from Blockbuster.
What the hell is going on in Oklahoma?
I wonder if some libraries keep this information in order to know when to withdraw books and sell them at book sales.
Lately, at a lot of the 'Friends of the Library' booksales I've been to, I've noticed a lot of "Withdrawn" editions -- perfectly good books, in pretty good shape, but for whatever reason they've been pulled from the shelf.
Well, last weekend I got a copy of Milosz's 'History of Polish Literature' and was actually curious why a book like this was at a FOL sale for a quarter. Anyway, I bought the book then went upstairs to check the card catalog. I figured the book had been replaced. But there was no sign of a new edition.
Then I figured it might be from a different library -- a branch or something -- but all the markings on the spine and front cover matched with the library where it was for sale.
I should have asked the ref librarians -- because i was actually pretty curious about this -- but they were busy and I didn't feel like waiting.
Anyway, I scored a great book (if you're into the history of Polish lit, I suppose) for twenty-five cents. I figured that because it was pretty obscure was why it was pulled.
But I might be wrong. I'd hate to think libraries are driven by marketing -- what's popular, what's not -- but then I figure: well, most libraries have a finite amount of space and new space is not always forthcoming. So instead of just adding, adding, adding to the inventory, they probably have to make some hard decisions and pull stuff off the shelf.
This *might* be why libraries need records. (But they don't need to correlate the borrower records with the book check-out history, I suppose.)
*shrug*
I wondered about this, too. I mean, I can recall going to libraries as a kid and they had this little punchcard dealie where they actually punched a date onto a punchcard and inserted it into your book.
That was always pretty cool to me -- the mechanical punching and the fact that it almost always lined the date up perfectly below the last date.
But even then, I guess the libraries had records because they took the original card from the book and stored it somewhere. And somewhere along the line they someone correlated the name of the borrower with the card because they knew when to send overdue notices.
So I think the response to your question is that libraries have to keep track of lending habits. They have no other option. They can't simply lend a book out without any record of it being checked out. (Why does this seem like it might be the germ for a Borges story?)
It makes you wonder why sometimes -- at least in this case -- a low-tech solution might not be the better alternative.
I mean, cripes, just remember your passwords.
And if you can't do it, try harder.
Simple.
I suspect that if you kill the chickens first, it'll take much less 45 minutes.
Is it possible to lavaify rock in a convection oven?
I like the idea of cooking with lava, but here in Iowa, there's not much lava. Can I make my own?
Well, here's some 'Um' for you, pal.
Anyone with a reading list as ecelectic and as interesting as the one posted by KelsoLundeen has my permission to go off-topic all he or she wants.
And, um, here's another little 'um' to shove in your dusty little container: the post was actually *on* topic. Kelso mentioned DRM and made a pretty insightful suggestion about one possible result of DRM.
Scan up toward the top for an even more insightful post by Kelso about DRM and Palladium.
So, there's a couple 'ums' for ya, Slick.
He *is* programming. Inform is an OO programming language for creating Zmachine text-adventure games -- like the old Infocom games.
Check out the Inform website.