i was taking this from a standpoint of a believer. obviously a non-believer is going to disagree. prove that god does not exist. physically prove it. you can't. you can't prove or disprove it. the thing on prayer has nothing to do with disproving it since prayer is not physical. how did the world get here? how were people created? how were all the different animals and plants created? how did all this come to be? answer those questions for me and give me scientific proof for each of your answers. when you can do that, i will stop believing and give you much praise. but you and i both know that you can't offer scientific proof.
if you've ever read the bible, you will notice many many many contradictions. which is why it is necessary to not take it literally. which is why priests have homilies to help us understand what the bible is saying. there is no part of the bible that should be taken verbatim. do you truly believe that 7 days after the earth was formed that man lived? how do you explain the existence of dinosaurs for millions of years before man? the church has even said that each of those days was more than a day.
how do you know lions teach their young to hunt? much of lions hunting is instinct. everything we do (short of sucking a nipple) is learned. i'm not talking the natural stuff, i'm talking living on our own, taking care of ourselves. animals do that from a very early age, younger than they are really able to. read my response to this already.
as for god knowing the outcome of everything, he knows all the possible outcomes for everything. you can make a tree of choices for everyone in the world and it would be infinitely huge, and god knows each and every possible outcome for every decision that has been and will be made by everyone. that's what i meant. he doesn't know which choice you will choose, but he knows the outcome of any choice you might possibly make. we have an infinite number of choices to make in life. he knows every possible outcome of each option in every choice we will make. that's what he knows. he didn't know eve would eat the apple, but he knew what would happen to her if she did. otherwise, it wouldn't be free will if he knew exactly what we would do. and because of this, we are not programmed.
the difference is that animals are weak when they are young. they are sent off on their own while still weak but strong enough to run away or fight off predators.
humans are far more complex than the other animals. (as an evolutionary biology and ecology major, this is something i can say is fact). we must learn a lot from our parents and elders before we are able to fend for ourselves. mcuh of what other animals do and the way they take care of themselves is something they learn on their own after they leave their parents. we must learn from our parents before we can go out and live on our own.
he is all loving, but you must be sincere in your beliefs and your faith and the reason of a science experiment is not sincere. jesus would not forgive the guy taht stole the bike because he was not truly sorry if he did not return the bike.
and i don't understand your point of the bike story anyways, it has nothing to do with any of what you said about god being all loving.
no, i live in new england. the only people i deal with that might say some of that are "born-again" christians, the ones that don't believe catholics are christians. i don't believe science can prove the existence of god, and you will probably notice that all of those people that say that it can are not scientists or are not about to setup an experiment to prove it.
as far as the blind study, you're probably right about how it was done. they probably went to the preacher to have his congregation pray for the people in the experiment. however, because the person asking for the prayers is testing god, i do not believe god would intervene, even though innocent people were saying honest prayers for the patients. if my mother gets really sick, i go to my priest and say "can you keep my mother in your prayers and ask the congregation to pray for her as well?" i do that because i love my mother very much and want to help her and want god's help in helping her. the scientists doing the experiment were asking for the prayers not to help the person, but to help the experiment. so it was not an honest heartfelt reason for the prayers to begin with. understand my point? i never though they would ask a bunch of athiests, just select some jews, some christians, some buddhists, and some muslims, people that believe, but may not necessarily have complete faith.
what instincts do humans have? we aren't born with the ability to live our own lives without the help of others. animals are sent out on their own using their own instinct once they are able to fend for themselves. the human world is far more complex, it's not possible for humans to just go out on our own without having learned anything from our parents and elders.
the bible is not meant to be taken literally. obviously adam and eve did not die. but in this case, die meant to lose all the innocence of their lives, to lose everything good, to be banished from paradise. and also remember that what you read is an english translation of something that was written thousands and thousands of years ago.
god knew she would take the apple, he knows everything that will happen, but we have the freedom of choice, we can choose right or we can choose wrong. he knows the outcome of every decision and every choice we have. he knows everything that could possibly happen in the world. it's not his fault she ate the apple, it wsa hers. she was disobedient. he told her to not eat the apple and he told her the consequences. she chose against god and lost paradise. his purpose is not to intervene in choices we make. if that were the case, we would be pre-programmed and that's not how we were made.
the scientific method cannot be applied to all questions in the universe. do an experiment to see if god exists. what conclusion will you arrive at? what do you test? how do you use the scientific method to answer this question?
the answer is: you can't. plain and simple. i have a theory that god exists and answers the prayers of the truly faithful (meaning you have no doubt in your mind that god exists and saves). god works in strange ways. it's a question of faith and belief, not science. you cannot prove that pray works by pulling some joe shmoe buddhist, jew, christian, and muslim off the street to pray for someone. god also doesn't want to be tested, it's not right, it's against all beliefs. he doesn't answer the prayers of those who test him because that is a sign that you do not have complete faith. so of course this "study" will show prayer doesn't help. i believe it does.
but we are not to test god and that is what the bible tells us. so this experiment is completely unscientific because it is testing god and prayer.
the other thing we are forgetting about prayer is that anyone can say "dear god, please heal me and take this disease out of my body". it's not the words that matter. that's not prayer. it's a matter of believing that it will work, having faith in god that he will help you. how are you do know how much faith in god those people who prayed for the patients have? if they weren't praying from their hearts and just doing it for the purpose of science, then god wouldn't intervene. he'd ignore it because they don't truly believe it would help.
there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of god, which means there is no way to prove or disprove whether or not prayer works to help heal patients faster. there are believers and non-believers. those who believe and know in their heart that god will help them and have strong faith in god will receive his intervention. those that don't, won't. this whole "experiment" can give no definite answer to the question of whether prayer works.
you say that "we are not testing god's effect on medical patients, but prayer's effect on god and that it can be scientifically quantified". how can something that can neither be scientifically proved or disproved to exist be scientifically quantified? it's a matter of belief and faith alone, not science. there is no science to the works of god.
then god would have made a pre-programmed being. that's not how people work. no one is pre-programmed for anything. that's what the other animals are for, they have instinct, we have to learn. that's how god wanted it to be. otherwise, he would've programmed eve to not eat the apple.
i hate to say this, but microsoft mice and keyboards are actually really nice pieces of hardware. although i don't use a ms keyboard, i do use their mice, and i don't think i would ever buy a mouse from another company again. they have that perfect comfort when holding it. and i've only had one break after i dropped it a few times. and something was rattling around inside.
i am satisfied with my pirated copy of windows 2000 pro. it works great. i'm the same person that downloads tons of mp3's and doesn't get caught. why is this? because prices are too high. the RIAA and microsoft are both in the same boat. they both know people can't live without their product and will charge whatever they want. ticketmaster is about to get in on that action with their ticket auctions for the best seats rather than selling them adn letting the scalpers get the real profit.
on a serious note, i am satisfied with my microsoft products. i don't use outlook and i have virus protection from norton (semi-pirated) so i don't have problems with that. i just switched from using IE as my main browser to using mozilla (one of the best ideas i've had), so i don't deal with too many bugs. i just have to worry about doing security patches and stuff, but i'm not too worried since i'm not on a huge network and i have firewall protection on my dsl line. i only update windows when i think of it which isn't too often. the other MS software i use is office, which i love and don't think there's a better office suite out there. i haven't tried open office or star office, but i don't plan on trying those either. why you ask? i have too many things i need that i created with MS office that i can't risk having to reformat if it doens't work quite the same with one of the other office suites. things like my resume.
do i think it's a push poll? partly, but how many average MS users woudl even take part in it? most microsoft users have no idea how buggy the software is, and even if you did tell htem, they wouldn't care. why? because it works so easily right out of the box, unlike linux. linux takes more tiem to setup and get everything the way you want it. windows doesn't take that much effort. the only alternative i could say exists right now is apple, and there's still much more software for windows that any given person could need or want that switching isn't worth it to them.
do i plan on switching? at some point when i make enough money to buy a 15 or 17 inch powerbook, i'm gonna buy one. right now, i'm staying with win2k. it's stable, it works well (the only thing to ever crash it is IE or the media player), and i have no reason to switch at the moment. it does everything i want it to and has all the software i could possibly want. makes my machine fully useable, no need to switch. why do i plan on switching? because i think teh new apples look pretty slick. i've wanted one for a while now, make a little change, we'll see what happens. they seem to be the laptops with the most standard features. more expensive than dell, but whatever, it's apple. maybe by the time i get enough money, they'll have a portable G5 for the powerbooks.
So who gives a crap about phone number portability? Give me signal strength out here in the woods, and I'll give you my money. I'd suggest the government include specified coverage guarantees by a given provider next time they auction off some more wavelengths for the Next Big Wireless Technology.
this is exactly the way i feel. i don't really care about having the same number, i've been with verizon for a couple years now and i don't plan on changing. they have the best service in my area and are recommended by certain consumer research agencies as having the best service in general throughout the country. i also like their phones, i don't care about having all the latest and greatest features, i want a phone that works great above all else.
i do think there should be some regulation in the coverage areas by the government. i have the america's choice plan from verizon and that means that i can go into roaming at almost anytime. their map gives no guarantee to the coverage area because it contains lots of holes. i'd like to see a high quality map that i can zoom in on certain areas and see what the coverage is like and where it is so spotty that it will show up as being within the calling area on their small map. for example, the map shows part of CT (my state) as not being covered, but i can't tell which of the areas it is from the key since the area is so small. i also went into roaming in new york city which is supposed to be covered. so it would be nice if they gave us a clear map as to what's covered and what's not. or if they would just say that the whole country is covered (at least the 48 contiguous states). it would make it so much easier to tell since i used to have a regional plan which is no longer offered that guaranteed coverage (coverage meaning no roaming charges) from maine to south carolina, but when i got a new phone they made me sign a new contract for their new plan and now i can get roaming charges in my home state, which is ridiculous.
the only problem with this is that there are many many many many many more cell phone users than ip addresses that use domains. this is why number portability is good.
i use verizon and they have nothing but phones with extendible antennae. their reasoning is that pulling up the antenna makes for better reception and all those phones with non-extendible ones or internal ones don't get as good reception as the verizon phones. makes sense to me. i don't have reception problems unless i'm in a subway (new york) or in the middle of nowhere. otherwise, i at least have some reception and it's usually pretty good.
i'm getting a little tired of winamp, i'd like to use something more independent (winamp was cool until he sold out to aol and then made winamp 3 which sucks), maybe even open source.
i use filezilla for all my ftp needs now. i've never used ws_ftp lite, but i have used the free education edition (i think it's ws_ftp le or something). filezilla is really nice.
note he said winamp 2.x, not 3. winamp 3 is a resource hog and sucks ass. i'm currently trying to find something better for all my media needs. any suggestions? i don't want to use media player for anything other than windows media stuff.
pet sounds is far from simplistic. the music (instrumental part) might not be overly complicated, but the vocals are complex. no other band has harmonized like that.
only the early beatles catalog contains the cover tunes. their more important music was written by themselves (what band hasn't started out covering music that someone else did?).
oasis will say differently about their music, but yes, they basically copied everything about the beatles. but then again, listen to U2. if there's a band that has the biggest beatles influence (other than oasis, who just copied them), that's the one.
i don't know if saying "basically created" is going too far. from a songwriting standpoint, who tops them? they took the brian wilson and bob dylan influence and went somewhere with it other than mimic and make slight changes. that's why they were more successful than dylan or the beach boys. the beatles success is part of what drove brian wilson into his drug induced madness. they use the influence of others and made it their own, something that was completely new and different, something no other band has done before. you can go and say that bb king or buddy holly or any of those other bands that several other people have commented on did the same thing, but not to the extent of the beatles. from a musical perspective, they went and utilized techniques that were never attempted before except maybe in classical music, and no other band would even come close to taht. those techniques the beatles used were copied by other bands.
i never said the beatles didn't have their influences, and you can see their influences in their music, but they went above and beyond what any other band has done before them or since them.
jimi hendrix was influenced by the beatles. the only thing important that he did was take guitar rock to a new level.
if you mean buddy holly, yes, he was important to rock-n-roll as a whole, but he didn't write his own music. the music he played helped play a role in how the beatles started, but at the same time, little richard is even more important to rock-n-roll, but you don't mention him.
bb king was important to the blues world, but as far as mainstream rock-n-roll (and today's rock) is concerned, the beatles were still more influential based on what they wrote. bb king helped introduce the blues to rock.
that's the thing about motown... you have a small group of song writers who may have written more #1's than all those bands mentioned by your parent, but the songs only made it to #1 because of what the singer did with it. if you had someone other than aretha singing the stuff she sang, you lose the attitude that she gave to it. if you give marvin gaye's stuff to someone else, you lose the sensuality of it, the smoothness of his voice (but i do believe he wrote some of his own stuff too towards the end). that's how most of the 60's pop music worked. very few singers wrote their own music. there were a handful of songwriters that wrote the music and passed it on to the recording industry to try it out on various singers and bands. the same goes for much of today's pop music. all your britney spears, christina aguilera's, nsync's, and backstreet boys are all created the same way. they have good voices, but couldn't write a #1 song if they tried. so they were created to be money makers for the industry.
the beatles on the other hand, although they were a coverband at first, they wrote their entire catalog after 65. that's half of their catalog. they were talented songwriters, and although you can say brian epstein was the only reason they made it, it's not true. he played a big part in getting them recording contracts and keeping them from fucking up, but he only took care of the business aspect of things. they were in charge of the music. george martin helped play a role in their music, but the base was already layed in place by lennon/mccartney.
the point was that the majority of any rock/pop music since the 60's was strongly influenced by something the beatles were the first to do. the beach boys top the beatles vocal innovation 100 times over with pet sounds and the beatles never touched it, but they didn't use their vocals as the driving force in the music. they used the music and lyrics. i still don't see how sgt pepper can be considered better than pet sounds, but strangely, it is. that's one of my least favorite beatles albums, but i love the band. i don't claim to know much about classical music, which is why i stay out of discussion of it, but i do know rock and popular music. even the rolling stones show a strong beatles influence in their music. michael jackson and paul used to be friends (until michael bought the rights to the beatles catalog and still hasn't offered it to paul, even for a fee), so you better believe that paul gave michael some tips. i'm not saying that the beatles are the greatest bunch of musicians to ever exist (i don't even know if you can really call any of them except george real musicians), but as far as influence is concerned, they're pretty much the most influential, as far as popular music goes. they have other bands and people that influenced them, yes, but they went and created outside of the normal scheme of things. most bands either copy the sound of another altering it slightly to make their own (unless you're a modern rock band and you cna jsut sound like everyone else and it doesn't matter... see john mayer/dave matthews) or their music is a mix of all their influences and it creates a different, but familiar sound. the beatles did neither.
it's not the fact that they were the first "boy band" that makes the historically significant. modern boy bands don't write their own music or lyrics, nor to the majority of modern pop artists. the beatles wrote all their own lyrics and music. they created a completely different sound than what ever existed before (you can't listen to just the early or just the late beatles to hear this sound either). their creative skills were much larger than any modern rock band. they use completely different methods in arranging their music. they are the single most influential band to ever exist in music. most of what you, your parent poster, his parent poster, and even the guy that made the first "beatles suck" comment listen to was influenced by something the beatles did. i'm not saying you have to enjoy their music, but you have to respect that they basically created modern rock/pop music. the only person who might be more influential is bob dylan, and that's only as far as lyrics are concerned since he showed the beatles how to write songs about real things, not just teenage love/lust. you might even throw brian wilson and the beach boys in there too. without the rivalry, the bealtes wouldn't have gotten to where they did, and paul claims brian wilson as one of his major influences and pet sounds as one of his favorite albums.
so the moral of the story is... although you may not like the music of the beatles, it exists in probably everythign you listen to (unless you listen to classical or jazz or variants of those).
i mainly used computers as my main example. buckets and pencils, etc, are still more pure than running sounds through a computer. i can take a bunch of pre-recorded sound files and arrange them using a computer to create something different and call it music. or i can do what the grateful dead did (and some of their best music is purely acoustic) and actually make the music myself and use the computer to create loops and stuff with notes i juse played. when i said keyboards, i meant the QWERTY type keyboards. you don't see one of the band members sitting in front of one, in fact, there probably isn't one on stage that's touched at all by the members. i realize computers are used. but the computers used are not pumping out pre-recorded sounds or music, they take the music that was just played. the grateful dead could sit there and take their albums and run them through a computer and just edit their jams using computers, but that's not how they act, they use their musical ability and strong grasp on music theory to create some incredible sounding jams. you'd be surprised how little they actually used computers as well. the same goes for most bands that followed in their footsteps (ie: phish).
i never said i don't appreciate artists. i never called trance "non-art". it's not pure music though. it doesn't require a strong grasp on music theory or ability. it's art and i would call those that play it artists, but i would not call them musicians. arrangers, composers, maybe, but not musicians.
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i was taking this from a standpoint of a believer. obviously a non-believer is going to disagree. prove that god does not exist. physically prove it. you can't. you can't prove or disprove it. the thing on prayer has nothing to do with disproving it since prayer is not physical. how did the world get here? how were people created? how were all the different animals and plants created? how did all this come to be? answer those questions for me and give me scientific proof for each of your answers. when you can do that, i will stop believing and give you much praise. but you and i both know that you can't offer scientific proof.
if you've ever read the bible, you will notice many many many contradictions. which is why it is necessary to not take it literally. which is why priests have homilies to help us understand what the bible is saying. there is no part of the bible that should be taken verbatim. do you truly believe that 7 days after the earth was formed that man lived? how do you explain the existence of dinosaurs for millions of years before man? the church has even said that each of those days was more than a day.
how do you know lions teach their young to hunt? much of lions hunting is instinct. everything we do (short of sucking a nipple) is learned. i'm not talking the natural stuff, i'm talking living on our own, taking care of ourselves. animals do that from a very early age, younger than they are really able to. read my response to this already.
as for god knowing the outcome of everything, he knows all the possible outcomes for everything. you can make a tree of choices for everyone in the world and it would be infinitely huge, and god knows each and every possible outcome for every decision that has been and will be made by everyone. that's what i meant. he doesn't know which choice you will choose, but he knows the outcome of any choice you might possibly make. we have an infinite number of choices to make in life. he knows every possible outcome of each option in every choice we will make. that's what he knows. he didn't know eve would eat the apple, but he knew what would happen to her if she did. otherwise, it wouldn't be free will if he knew exactly what we would do. and because of this, we are not programmed.
the difference is that animals are weak when they are young. they are sent off on their own while still weak but strong enough to run away or fight off predators.
humans are far more complex than the other animals. (as an evolutionary biology and ecology major, this is something i can say is fact). we must learn a lot from our parents and elders before we are able to fend for ourselves. mcuh of what other animals do and the way they take care of themselves is something they learn on their own after they leave their parents. we must learn from our parents before we can go out and live on our own.
he is all loving, but you must be sincere in your beliefs and your faith and the reason of a science experiment is not sincere. jesus would not forgive the guy taht stole the bike because he was not truly sorry if he did not return the bike.
and i don't understand your point of the bike story anyways, it has nothing to do with any of what you said about god being all loving.
no, i live in new england. the only people i deal with that might say some of that are "born-again" christians, the ones that don't believe catholics are christians. i don't believe science can prove the existence of god, and you will probably notice that all of those people that say that it can are not scientists or are not about to setup an experiment to prove it.
as far as the blind study, you're probably right about how it was done. they probably went to the preacher to have his congregation pray for the people in the experiment. however, because the person asking for the prayers is testing god, i do not believe god would intervene, even though innocent people were saying honest prayers for the patients. if my mother gets really sick, i go to my priest and say "can you keep my mother in your prayers and ask the congregation to pray for her as well?" i do that because i love my mother very much and want to help her and want god's help in helping her. the scientists doing the experiment were asking for the prayers not to help the person, but to help the experiment. so it was not an honest heartfelt reason for the prayers to begin with. understand my point? i never though they would ask a bunch of athiests, just select some jews, some christians, some buddhists, and some muslims, people that believe, but may not necessarily have complete faith.
what instincts do humans have? we aren't born with the ability to live our own lives without the help of others. animals are sent out on their own using their own instinct once they are able to fend for themselves. the human world is far more complex, it's not possible for humans to just go out on our own without having learned anything from our parents and elders.
the bible is not meant to be taken literally. obviously adam and eve did not die. but in this case, die meant to lose all the innocence of their lives, to lose everything good, to be banished from paradise. and also remember that what you read is an english translation of something that was written thousands and thousands of years ago.
god knew she would take the apple, he knows everything that will happen, but we have the freedom of choice, we can choose right or we can choose wrong. he knows the outcome of every decision and every choice we have. he knows everything that could possibly happen in the world. it's not his fault she ate the apple, it wsa hers. she was disobedient. he told her to not eat the apple and he told her the consequences. she chose against god and lost paradise. his purpose is not to intervene in choices we make. if that were the case, we would be pre-programmed and that's not how we were made.
the scientific method cannot be applied to all questions in the universe. do an experiment to see if god exists. what conclusion will you arrive at? what do you test? how do you use the scientific method to answer this question?
the answer is: you can't. plain and simple. i have a theory that god exists and answers the prayers of the truly faithful (meaning you have no doubt in your mind that god exists and saves). god works in strange ways. it's a question of faith and belief, not science. you cannot prove that pray works by pulling some joe shmoe buddhist, jew, christian, and muslim off the street to pray for someone. god also doesn't want to be tested, it's not right, it's against all beliefs. he doesn't answer the prayers of those who test him because that is a sign that you do not have complete faith. so of course this "study" will show prayer doesn't help. i believe it does.
but we are not to test god and that is what the bible tells us. so this experiment is completely unscientific because it is testing god and prayer.
the other thing we are forgetting about prayer is that anyone can say "dear god, please heal me and take this disease out of my body". it's not the words that matter. that's not prayer. it's a matter of believing that it will work, having faith in god that he will help you. how are you do know how much faith in god those people who prayed for the patients have? if they weren't praying from their hearts and just doing it for the purpose of science, then god wouldn't intervene. he'd ignore it because they don't truly believe it would help.
there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of god, which means there is no way to prove or disprove whether or not prayer works to help heal patients faster. there are believers and non-believers. those who believe and know in their heart that god will help them and have strong faith in god will receive his intervention. those that don't, won't. this whole "experiment" can give no definite answer to the question of whether prayer works.
you say that "we are not testing god's effect on medical patients, but prayer's effect on god and that it can be scientifically quantified". how can something that can neither be scientifically proved or disproved to exist be scientifically quantified? it's a matter of belief and faith alone, not science. there is no science to the works of god.
then god would have made a pre-programmed being. that's not how people work. no one is pre-programmed for anything. that's what the other animals are for, they have instinct, we have to learn. that's how god wanted it to be. otherwise, he would've programmed eve to not eat the apple.
i hate to say this, but microsoft mice and keyboards are actually really nice pieces of hardware. although i don't use a ms keyboard, i do use their mice, and i don't think i would ever buy a mouse from another company again. they have that perfect comfort when holding it. and i've only had one break after i dropped it a few times. and something was rattling around inside.
i am satisfied with my pirated copy of windows 2000 pro. it works great. i'm the same person that downloads tons of mp3's and doesn't get caught. why is this? because prices are too high. the RIAA and microsoft are both in the same boat. they both know people can't live without their product and will charge whatever they want. ticketmaster is about to get in on that action with their ticket auctions for the best seats rather than selling them adn letting the scalpers get the real profit.
on a serious note, i am satisfied with my microsoft products. i don't use outlook and i have virus protection from norton (semi-pirated) so i don't have problems with that. i just switched from using IE as my main browser to using mozilla (one of the best ideas i've had), so i don't deal with too many bugs. i just have to worry about doing security patches and stuff, but i'm not too worried since i'm not on a huge network and i have firewall protection on my dsl line. i only update windows when i think of it which isn't too often. the other MS software i use is office, which i love and don't think there's a better office suite out there. i haven't tried open office or star office, but i don't plan on trying those either. why you ask? i have too many things i need that i created with MS office that i can't risk having to reformat if it doens't work quite the same with one of the other office suites. things like my resume.
do i think it's a push poll? partly, but how many average MS users woudl even take part in it? most microsoft users have no idea how buggy the software is, and even if you did tell htem, they wouldn't care. why? because it works so easily right out of the box, unlike linux. linux takes more tiem to setup and get everything the way you want it. windows doesn't take that much effort. the only alternative i could say exists right now is apple, and there's still much more software for windows that any given person could need or want that switching isn't worth it to them.
do i plan on switching? at some point when i make enough money to buy a 15 or 17 inch powerbook, i'm gonna buy one. right now, i'm staying with win2k. it's stable, it works well (the only thing to ever crash it is IE or the media player), and i have no reason to switch at the moment. it does everything i want it to and has all the software i could possibly want. makes my machine fully useable, no need to switch. why do i plan on switching? because i think teh new apples look pretty slick. i've wanted one for a while now, make a little change, we'll see what happens. they seem to be the laptops with the most standard features. more expensive than dell, but whatever, it's apple. maybe by the time i get enough money, they'll have a portable G5 for the powerbooks.
So who gives a crap about phone number portability? Give me signal strength out here in the woods, and I'll give you my money. I'd suggest the government include specified coverage guarantees by a given provider next time they auction off some more wavelengths for the Next Big Wireless Technology.
this is exactly the way i feel. i don't really care about having the same number, i've been with verizon for a couple years now and i don't plan on changing. they have the best service in my area and are recommended by certain consumer research agencies as having the best service in general throughout the country. i also like their phones, i don't care about having all the latest and greatest features, i want a phone that works great above all else.
i do think there should be some regulation in the coverage areas by the government. i have the america's choice plan from verizon and that means that i can go into roaming at almost anytime. their map gives no guarantee to the coverage area because it contains lots of holes. i'd like to see a high quality map that i can zoom in on certain areas and see what the coverage is like and where it is so spotty that it will show up as being within the calling area on their small map. for example, the map shows part of CT (my state) as not being covered, but i can't tell which of the areas it is from the key since the area is so small. i also went into roaming in new york city which is supposed to be covered. so it would be nice if they gave us a clear map as to what's covered and what's not. or if they would just say that the whole country is covered (at least the 48 contiguous states). it would make it so much easier to tell since i used to have a regional plan which is no longer offered that guaranteed coverage (coverage meaning no roaming charges) from maine to south carolina, but when i got a new phone they made me sign a new contract for their new plan and now i can get roaming charges in my home state, which is ridiculous.
the only problem with this is that there are many many many many many more cell phone users than ip addresses that use domains. this is why number portability is good.
i use verizon and they have nothing but phones with extendible antennae. their reasoning is that pulling up the antenna makes for better reception and all those phones with non-extendible ones or internal ones don't get as good reception as the verizon phones. makes sense to me. i don't have reception problems unless i'm in a subway (new york) or in the middle of nowhere. otherwise, i at least have some reception and it's usually pretty good.
i'm getting a little tired of winamp, i'd like to use something more independent (winamp was cool until he sold out to aol and then made winamp 3 which sucks), maybe even open source.
i believe it's "beyond all recognition" meaning you can't recognize whatever it was because it's so F'd up.
i use filezilla for all my ftp needs now. i've never used ws_ftp lite, but i have used the free education edition (i think it's ws_ftp le or something). filezilla is really nice.
note he said winamp 2.x, not 3. winamp 3 is a resource hog and sucks ass. i'm currently trying to find something better for all my media needs. any suggestions? i don't want to use media player for anything other than windows media stuff.
pet sounds is far from simplistic. the music (instrumental part) might not be overly complicated, but the vocals are complex. no other band has harmonized like that.
only the early beatles catalog contains the cover tunes. their more important music was written by themselves (what band hasn't started out covering music that someone else did?).
oasis will say differently about their music, but yes, they basically copied everything about the beatles. but then again, listen to U2. if there's a band that has the biggest beatles influence (other than oasis, who just copied them), that's the one.
i don't know if saying "basically created" is going too far. from a songwriting standpoint, who tops them? they took the brian wilson and bob dylan influence and went somewhere with it other than mimic and make slight changes. that's why they were more successful than dylan or the beach boys. the beatles success is part of what drove brian wilson into his drug induced madness. they use the influence of others and made it their own, something that was completely new and different, something no other band has done before. you can go and say that bb king or buddy holly or any of those other bands that several other people have commented on did the same thing, but not to the extent of the beatles. from a musical perspective, they went and utilized techniques that were never attempted before except maybe in classical music, and no other band would even come close to taht. those techniques the beatles used were copied by other bands.
i never said the beatles didn't have their influences, and you can see their influences in their music, but they went above and beyond what any other band has done before them or since them.
jimi hendrix was influenced by the beatles. the only thing important that he did was take guitar rock to a new level.
if you mean buddy holly, yes, he was important to rock-n-roll as a whole, but he didn't write his own music. the music he played helped play a role in how the beatles started, but at the same time, little richard is even more important to rock-n-roll, but you don't mention him.
bb king was important to the blues world, but as far as mainstream rock-n-roll (and today's rock) is concerned, the beatles were still more influential based on what they wrote. bb king helped introduce the blues to rock.
that's the thing about motown... you have a small group of song writers who may have written more #1's than all those bands mentioned by your parent, but the songs only made it to #1 because of what the singer did with it. if you had someone other than aretha singing the stuff she sang, you lose the attitude that she gave to it. if you give marvin gaye's stuff to someone else, you lose the sensuality of it, the smoothness of his voice (but i do believe he wrote some of his own stuff too towards the end). that's how most of the 60's pop music worked. very few singers wrote their own music. there were a handful of songwriters that wrote the music and passed it on to the recording industry to try it out on various singers and bands. the same goes for much of today's pop music. all your britney spears, christina aguilera's, nsync's, and backstreet boys are all created the same way. they have good voices, but couldn't write a #1 song if they tried. so they were created to be money makers for the industry.
the beatles on the other hand, although they were a coverband at first, they wrote their entire catalog after 65. that's half of their catalog. they were talented songwriters, and although you can say brian epstein was the only reason they made it, it's not true. he played a big part in getting them recording contracts and keeping them from fucking up, but he only took care of the business aspect of things. they were in charge of the music. george martin helped play a role in their music, but the base was already layed in place by lennon/mccartney.
the point was that the majority of any rock/pop music since the 60's was strongly influenced by something the beatles were the first to do. the beach boys top the beatles vocal innovation 100 times over with pet sounds and the beatles never touched it, but they didn't use their vocals as the driving force in the music. they used the music and lyrics. i still don't see how sgt pepper can be considered better than pet sounds, but strangely, it is. that's one of my least favorite beatles albums, but i love the band. i don't claim to know much about classical music, which is why i stay out of discussion of it, but i do know rock and popular music. even the rolling stones show a strong beatles influence in their music. michael jackson and paul used to be friends (until michael bought the rights to the beatles catalog and still hasn't offered it to paul, even for a fee), so you better believe that paul gave michael some tips. i'm not saying that the beatles are the greatest bunch of musicians to ever exist (i don't even know if you can really call any of them except george real musicians), but as far as influence is concerned, they're pretty much the most influential, as far as popular music goes. they have other bands and people that influenced them, yes, but they went and created outside of the normal scheme of things. most bands either copy the sound of another altering it slightly to make their own (unless you're a modern rock band and you cna jsut sound like everyone else and it doesn't matter... see john mayer/dave matthews) or their music is a mix of all their influences and it creates a different, but familiar sound. the beatles did neither.
it's not the fact that they were the first "boy band" that makes the historically significant. modern boy bands don't write their own music or lyrics, nor to the majority of modern pop artists. the beatles wrote all their own lyrics and music. they created a completely different sound than what ever existed before (you can't listen to just the early or just the late beatles to hear this sound either). their creative skills were much larger than any modern rock band. they use completely different methods in arranging their music. they are the single most influential band to ever exist in music. most of what you, your parent poster, his parent poster, and even the guy that made the first "beatles suck" comment listen to was influenced by something the beatles did. i'm not saying you have to enjoy their music, but you have to respect that they basically created modern rock/pop music. the only person who might be more influential is bob dylan, and that's only as far as lyrics are concerned since he showed the beatles how to write songs about real things, not just teenage love/lust. you might even throw brian wilson and the beach boys in there too. without the rivalry, the bealtes wouldn't have gotten to where they did, and paul claims brian wilson as one of his major influences and pet sounds as one of his favorite albums.
so the moral of the story is... although you may not like the music of the beatles, it exists in probably everythign you listen to (unless you listen to classical or jazz or variants of those).
i mainly used computers as my main example. buckets and pencils, etc, are still more pure than running sounds through a computer. i can take a bunch of pre-recorded sound files and arrange them using a computer to create something different and call it music. or i can do what the grateful dead did (and some of their best music is purely acoustic) and actually make the music myself and use the computer to create loops and stuff with notes i juse played. when i said keyboards, i meant the QWERTY type keyboards. you don't see one of the band members sitting in front of one, in fact, there probably isn't one on stage that's touched at all by the members. i realize computers are used. but the computers used are not pumping out pre-recorded sounds or music, they take the music that was just played. the grateful dead could sit there and take their albums and run them through a computer and just edit their jams using computers, but that's not how they act, they use their musical ability and strong grasp on music theory to create some incredible sounding jams. you'd be surprised how little they actually used computers as well. the same goes for most bands that followed in their footsteps (ie: phish).
i never said i don't appreciate artists. i never called trance "non-art". it's not pure music though. it doesn't require a strong grasp on music theory or ability. it's art and i would call those that play it artists, but i would not call them musicians. arrangers, composers, maybe, but not musicians.