I marked this off-topic because I'll be talking about a place to get legal music, not MP3s necessarily. At eTree a community of FTP siteops collects and trades shows by bands like Phish, DMB, MMW, in the Shorten32 (SHN) format, which are compressed WAV files (hence, source from live shows). Personally, I like to listen to files on my hard-drive not burnt onto CD, so you can either convert the WAVs to MP3s or listen to them in WinAmp using the SHNamp plugin.
Only bad thing is that they are very short on siteops. A couple dozen or so support a community of thousands so it's a pain to try and log on and find something, so help out if you can!
Well, the Lynx came out around the time (or a bit after) as the Turbo Grafix 16 hand-held, which played the same games as the console. But go figure, the GameBoy became the best selling video-game system in history.
Most of those games were just clones of each other.
Not really. They are all in the same genre. You might as well say that 'Hexen' begat 'Unreal Tournament' so there's no reason to play the latter.
Mario 64 is an action game. There's a lot of spatial problem solving and a lot of jumping on Goombas and getting coins. Zelda, on the other hand, is a wee bit more complicated. Link can't even jump with a button! On the other hand Mario has about 5 different kinds of jumps which you need to master to beat the game.
The only similarities between Goldeneye and Perfect Dark is that they were both made by Rare (as well as Banjo-Kazzoie) and both are great games.
I wouldn't call any of your 'similar' games "shit games" but then everyone has an opinion.
Re:[Potential troll] What DviX is really used for
on
DivX ;-) Deux Update
·
· Score: 2
Only problem with DivX, unlike regular.MPEG movies, is that you can't convert them to VCD. The wonderful thing many people used to love about getting theater screeners is that they could use their burner to copy the.MPEG file onto a disc and view it on their DVD player. Currently, DivX'd files (.avi) cannot be placed on a VCD with the same ease as previous formats.
Unfortunately, the DivX site stated in the article has even less technical information that Bitboys did when they released their specs for the (non-existent commercially) Glaze3D. Look at some of these quotes:
"soon, we will start releasing tools and applications for the community to kick around. Then, when all the pieces are in place, we will launch our official site and our true identity, and there will be much rejoicing."
"We are working hard to make DivX;-) Deux maintain the high standards DivX;-) has set while optimizing the codec so that the things you use it for the most are greatly improved."
What codec are they optimizing? DivX or DivX Deux? And as far as I know, DivX is only used to watch a moving pictures. They sound like they are re-inventing the wheel and making it the greatest thing since sliced bread (to combine two clicheéd sayings).
Bottom line is: I'll be a bit more excited when they give me a bit more details on what's going on. I have no doubt something is being done, but this announcement seems a bit too premature for me.
Here's a link to a text file that is updated three times a day and lists all the servers: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/networks/efnet.txt. Unfortunately, all it does is list servers, so it's not full of information.
Same with irc.gameslink.net, which was (or still is, haven't been there lately) a haven for coders/mappers on the Unreal engine. Every channel gets a registered bot, and there's no such thing as splits. Mind you, again, this server probably doesn't handle more than a hundred users, so that's why its stable. EFNet and DALNet draw users because of their mainstays (mp3s/warez/movies).
I dont want some dodgy recording from a persons bedroom in the future.
Hate to burst your bubble, but isn't there a certain backlash against over-produced albums these days? If all this means that more artists will be producing their music in cheaper ways, maybe they will have to rely more on their skills as musicians than hide their bad singing with overdubs. Granted, some albums just sound better when recorded in a studio, and some landmark albums couldn't have been done without the assistance of the studio (any late Beatles, or The Doors' 'The Soft Parade'). Other albums have been great, and have been recorded in bedrooms (pick up Basehead's 'Play With Toys' for a great example).
As far as your studio question, IANAM, but usually studios bill you hourly (in the $60-300 range). Either way, it is extremely expensive to have a studio-recorded album. But then again, I ask: is that so bad?
Not to discourage anyone from doing something really cool like this, but I've ripped a couple of hundred CDs myself and it's NOT that time consuming. I would imagine it takes longer to work your job to get that kind of money ($300-4000 by different accounts), write some kind of automated script, and then get everything else working. Once you do have your files, you can automate the m3us, ID3s, file naming, and SFVs with CD-Tag a handy-dandy little tool (it's for Windows).
Just whatever you do, please rip them in true stereo at bitrates at or above 192kbps. Then share them.
The only thing the article told me is what Quantum is doing now, which I don't really care about, regardless of whether they were "the bee's knees" or not. I'm kind of shocked that SE has turned into such crap, then again, they commissioned Sharky to write this article, and he's probably been out of sorts with what's going on in video cards since at least the Voodoo Rush.
If someone downloads child porn, do we say, "Let's ban browsers so they nobody has access"?
Well, that comment doesn't sound right. Napster, by design, was made to download MP3s and MP3s only (modifications like Wrapster aside). Browsers, on the other hand, are just a way to access content... Which creates this question:
If Napster had started as a file-sharing community (as opposed to an MP3-file-sharing community), would it have run into these legal problems?
Mp3's are not illegal; keeping them longer then 24 hours if you do not own the source media is.
This whole 'keeping-for-24-hours-is-legal' is a bunch of BS, frankly. There is no law, no statue anywhere that you can keep MP3s for a "trial" basis, and that they are legal for 24 hours. This may be some kind of urban legend that was spread by webmasters who would post that warning in their front page, in big blue letters between two banner ads. Thankfully, things have changed.
IE is not the only one then. Every so often, Windows Media Player 7 (setup_wm.exe) wants to try to connect to an MS server...
Me being paranoid, I wonder if MS is checking for a new version or if Bill is getting an email that says, I too, am watching jenna16.mpg. So I setup my firewall to prevent that connection.
Just ta' be safe, you know.
Of course your right. In economic theory, there is a tenet that says that nobody can be "ripped off" as long as they get the product they paid for in the conditions they asked for. What does this mean?
Let's say, for example, I sell wooden chairs, all the same. I don't have prices displayed, but I am willing to sell these chairs at a minimum price of $10. Now, here comes Customer A. For some emergency reason, they absolutely positively need a wooden chair. They ask for a price, and I, sensing their hutrry, say "$500". He says that's high, but he'll pay it. He hands me the money and leaves.
In walks Customer B. They also want a chair, but not as badly as the first customer. We haggle for 15 minutes, and finally decide on a price of $65.
Did Customer A get ripped off? Of course not. They agreeed to pay $500, so they were not "ripped off". At the time, $500 was a fair deal.
This, friends, happens everywhere. Someone mentioned automobile dealerships. Well, it happens with airline tickets as well; it even happens with colleges. They charge everyone a too-high price (I am thinking more Ivy League here), and then if you can't pay the price they lower it JUST enough so you can buy (old) bread and feed yourself, but nothing else. Is it good business sense? Depends on your view of things. It creates more profits, but at the risk of alienating your customers; this diminishes profits in the long run.
And no, this bad press won't hurt Amazon THAT much. For every well informed/. and C|/net reader, you've got other people that are shopping at Amazon because it has a good price, or they saw an ad on "Tee-Vee".
I do think the MTV viewers know what they are doing... To some extent. About 30 seconds into introducing Blink 182 (the final act), Lars Ulrich got booed, and it didn't stop until he left the stage.
'Eaters of the Dead' was the original title of the book written by Michael Chrichton. It is an especially terrible attempt to plagiarize Beowulf, and his worst book by far. That and the title sucks.
They were undermining the stability of the state, a charge that most Westerners greatly underestimate the importance of. True, theese people were charged for the wrong thing, but those were trying times for the American nation, and unruly groups causing chaos and unrest were the last thing it needed.
Yes, I'm sure McCarthy went after a bunch of... Hollywood stars! They're threatening! You seem to forget that McCarthyism is a Bad Thing (tm). Not only is it a Bad Thing (tm), McCarthy himself was just an old, bitter, alcoholic man who used the citizen's fear of 'The Red Menace' to carry out some personal vendettas.
And if you ask me, a little "instability" in the American populace is always good. It means we're on our toes.
Unsure as to wether or not I'm taking bait, but let's see what happens...
The people who run that 4% of the nodes are expanding their power and concentrating it into fewer and fewer hands.
First off, I would laugh at any person or organization who isn't trying to expand their power. That's how business works. You don't become the No. 4 telco and then say, "Well, I guess it's a sweet ride, let's sit back and let others catch up."
As far as the concentration of this power, you're entirely bass-ackwards. First off, telcos everywhere around the world are being privatized. This brings new competition into the mix, and actually increases the amount of diverse ownership. More routes are created, more connections, less bottlenecks.
They will be able to monitor our communications
That can already be done, and it IS being done. I'll agree with other Slashdotters woh have at times mentioned the fact that, more than likely, we're being egoistic when we think governments are spying on us. The government could care less what 99% of its population's communication is.
This is a real problem, and it is only getting worse every day.
This looks to be a combination of oversimplification and lack of evidence to support your view. Interesting, but for practical purposes, worthless.
A nasa spokeswoman commented "We want to make the probe as ergonomic and easy to use as possible. It really will be as simple as plugging it in and pressing the launch button"
In related news, NasaInsider.com was hounded by calls from NASA to take down 'sneak peek, Top-Secret' pictures of its new Mars Probe, which it will present on Tuesday. A bystanding Slashdotter said, "I think [the NasaInsider picture] a fake. Look at the way the light strikes the NASA logo. It doesn't match the shadowing. Plus, why would you make a probe out of clear pink plexiglass?"
NASA shares underwent heavy trading, and dropped 2 points.
Personally, I'm one of those that are Tahoma-obsessed. It's just a beautiful, stylish, clean, sans serif font, easily distinguishable from the many flavors of Helvetica.
Background (which you probably know): Serifs are the little 'tabs' that stick out on text. Look at the 'T' on your keyboard and then look at this T. The small 'tabs' at the ends of the letter are serifs.
Ok, here's the reason serif'd fonts are easier to read. When we read, many times we aren't actually looking at each letter, processing it individually, then combining the letters and matching it against a word we know. Our brain, for the most part, does the following. Let's say you read the word:
Antelope
You probably understood the word long before you put each letter together. That's because your brain processed the word's shape. The high triangle at the front, the loops over the e's and o's, the long line on the high l and the low p. It does this with a great number of words, and while reading, you actually read whole words at a time, because you recognize them instantly from their overall shape. That'S one reason you can read a word like 'duplication' faster than a word like 'dplcigzte'. The second, most likely, does not have its shape stored in your brain. The difference in reading the words is very small, fractions of a second, but it adds up if you read a 1,000 page manuscript.
I am going to repeat this sentence, but in capital letters.
I AM GOING TO REPEAT THIS SENTENCE, BUT IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Again, a large part of what makes posts/sentences in all capital letters annoying is because they are harder to read. The capitals all create rectangles, and our brain doesn't like that one bit.
To sum up, the serifs aid our brain in recognizing the shapes of the letters by thickening the font at the end of each drawn line. I hope I did an adequate job of explaining this, it would be better with a chalkboard.
Alright. I'm going to keep it simple. For the past two years, the amount of CDs I have purchased due to my newfound MP3-hoarding obsession has plummeted from several a month to a few a year. The way I see it, I'm boycotting the RIAA. Others see it as stealing. Either way the RIAA isn't getting their mittens on my bills.
However, this isn't the solution for everyone. Not everyone has the bandwidth, time, or storage space to get their music online (we all have the means: Gnutella, IRC, FTP, Usenet, etc.). However, there is a very, VERY simple solution if you want to purchase a CD and not have money go to the RIAA.
If you buy a music CD at a used CD store, the artist (and the RIAA) get absolutely nothing for your purchase. Someone already gave the RIAA money. The damage has been done. You however, for a lower price, can not only purchase the CD, but also not pay the RIAA. And no moreal qualms since it's legal.
Remember that it doesn't prove anything. Napster has a central server, but not everyone is on that central server. By now, they've split into several (four? a dozen? who knows?), so it is getting increasingly difficult to maintain a hotlist because there's no guarantee those users will be on the same server as you.
Gnutella, on the other hand, has "one central server" in the way that if every Napster user opened up Gnutella and would log in through the same GnutellaNet, the searchable directory would be bigger. Result: Gnutella has the ability to have a MUCH larger user base searching MORE files.
I remember a few months ago, I had both Napster and Gnutella open at the same time (logged into the Gnutella net a Wego.com). Napster was offering a terabyte of songs, Gnutella was offering over 8 terabytes of files. Now, given the possibility that Gnutella's content is at least 25% MP3s, you've got a larger searchable base of music in Gnutella, given in MBs, not unique songs.
To reiterate, search for Chris's music several times on Napster at different times of day. Or search for it in Gnutella. Then come back to us.
(Off-topic): My favorite band on MP3.com is De Vil, who combine film music with techno beats.
I'm all for controlling porn at libraries, to an extent. Eventhough some libraries carry Madonna's Sex book, this really shouldn't be a conversation among a group of pre-teens:
Pre-Teen #1: Man, you know what I could use right now? Access to hard-core porn! Pre-Teen #2: Let's just go to the John Quincy Adams City Library! You can look for 'young hot teenz' and I'll check out what's new at the Stile Project. Pre-Teen #1: Word! (or similar "youth slang" used to convey agreement)
Now, let's get something clear. I have nothing against porn per se, or 12-year olds accessing pornographic material. What I have a problem with is libraries being used for this purpose. I mean, c'mon! The library is a place for education! They should follow the example of universities, who provide internet access to their students. No university students would dare use the Internet for non-educational purposes. I would scoff at the idea of students using an educational tool to access adult material, or trade illegal music and programs online, or...
Hey... wait a minute... Ok, that argument holds no water. Well, let's blockquote the article:
Boyle said LibraryGuardian costs the Hudsonville library just over $20,000 for its seven terminals.
Now that I have a problem with. I don't know the state of Michigan's libraries, but in MY home state, I'd be pretty angry if $20,000 of the library system's meager budget went to buy something used only to block certain Internet sites. Wouldn't it be more productive to hire more staff (part-time), or buy more computers, or, and now this is a wacky idea... buy books with that $20,000? What a total waste of money.
Think Titanic sucked? It would have sucked even worse if it had been shot in James Cameron's back yard. Which is pretty much what you guys are rooting for by being against the big studio model....
I can see the final scene now, where Jack (DiCaprio) is hanging on, about to drown...
Jack(hanging on to the edge of a filled kiddie pool): You must do me this honor, Rose. Promise me you'll survive. Promise me now Rose, no matter what happens, or how hopeless.
Rose(sitting on a plastic Fisher Price boat): I promise.
(She shivers when you see James Cameron, in the background, open up a bag of ice and dump it into the pool, making 'whoosh' noises with his mouth to simulate wind)
Jack: Never let go.
Rose: I'll never let go. I'll never let go, Jack.
(DiCaprio rolls over face-down into the kiddie pool filled with ice)
James Cameron(off-camera): Cut!... Cut I said! Just hit the red button on the HandiCam!
(In the next scene we see an older Rose walk up to the kiddie pool, reminisce about the past, and throw a candy Ring Pop into the pool. Zoom into the Ring Pop, fade to black)
I don't know about you, but I would like to see this version of Titanic. Of course, the budget would be tight, so Jack would probably be played by Austin St. John (the Red Power Ranger) and Rose by an overweight Molly Ringwald. The older Rose would probably be Cameron's mother.
It is clear we must defeat the MPAA so we can watch a $2500 Titanic starring a former Power Ranger and Molly Ringwald. Who's with me?
Slashdot Mirror
Only bad thing is that they are very short on siteops. A couple dozen or so support a community of thousands so it's a pain to try and log on and find something, so help out if you can!
Well, the Lynx came out around the time (or a bit after) as the Turbo Grafix 16 hand-held, which played the same games as the console. But go figure, the GameBoy became the best selling video-game system in history.
Not really. They are all in the same genre. You might as well say that 'Hexen' begat 'Unreal Tournament' so there's no reason to play the latter.
Mario 64 is an action game. There's a lot of spatial problem solving and a lot of jumping on Goombas and getting coins. Zelda, on the other hand, is a wee bit more complicated. Link can't even jump with a button! On the other hand Mario has about 5 different kinds of jumps which you need to master to beat the game.
The only similarities between Goldeneye and Perfect Dark is that they were both made by Rare (as well as Banjo-Kazzoie) and both are great games.
I wouldn't call any of your 'similar' games "shit games" but then everyone has an opinion.
Unfortunately, the DivX site stated in the article has even less technical information that Bitboys did when they released their specs for the (non-existent commercially) Glaze3D. Look at some of these quotes: ;-) Deux maintain the high standards DivX ;-) has set while optimizing the codec so that the things you use it for the most are greatly improved."
"soon, we will start releasing tools and applications for the community to kick around. Then, when all the pieces are in place, we will launch our official site and our true identity, and there will be much rejoicing."
"We are working hard to make DivX
What codec are they optimizing? DivX or DivX Deux? And as far as I know, DivX is only used to watch a moving pictures. They sound like they are re-inventing the wheel and making it the greatest thing since sliced bread (to combine two clicheéd sayings).
Bottom line is: I'll be a bit more excited when they give me a bit more details on what's going on. I have no doubt something is being done, but this announcement seems a bit too premature for me.
Here's a link to a text file that is updated three times a day and lists all the servers: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/networks/efnet.txt. Unfortunately, all it does is list servers, so it's not full of information.
Same with irc.gameslink.net, which was (or still is, haven't been there lately) a haven for coders/mappers on the Unreal engine. Every channel gets a registered bot, and there's no such thing as splits. Mind you, again, this server probably doesn't handle more than a hundred users, so that's why its stable. EFNet and DALNet draw users because of their mainstays (mp3s/warez/movies).
Hate to burst your bubble, but isn't there a certain backlash against over-produced albums these days? If all this means that more artists will be producing their music in cheaper ways, maybe they will have to rely more on their skills as musicians than hide their bad singing with overdubs. Granted, some albums just sound better when recorded in a studio, and some landmark albums couldn't have been done without the assistance of the studio (any late Beatles, or The Doors' 'The Soft Parade'). Other albums have been great, and have been recorded in bedrooms (pick up Basehead's 'Play With Toys' for a great example).
As far as your studio question, IANAM, but usually studios bill you hourly (in the $60-300 range). Either way, it is extremely expensive to have a studio-recorded album. But then again, I ask: is that so bad?
Just whatever you do, please rip them in true stereo at bitrates at or above 192kbps. Then share them.
The only thing the article told me is what Quantum is doing now, which I don't really care about, regardless of whether they were "the bee's knees" or not. I'm kind of shocked that SE has turned into such crap, then again, they commissioned Sharky to write this article, and he's probably been out of sorts with what's going on in video cards since at least the Voodoo Rush.
Well, that comment doesn't sound right. Napster, by design, was made to download MP3s and MP3s only (modifications like Wrapster aside). Browsers, on the other hand, are just a way to access content... Which creates this question:
If Napster had started as a file-sharing community (as opposed to an MP3-file-sharing community), would it have run into these legal problems?
This whole 'keeping-for-24-hours-is-legal' is a bunch of BS, frankly. There is no law, no statue anywhere that you can keep MP3s for a "trial" basis, and that they are legal for 24 hours. This may be some kind of urban legend that was spread by webmasters who would post that warning in their front page, in big blue letters between two banner ads. Thankfully, things have changed.
Me being paranoid, I wonder if MS is checking for a new version or if Bill is getting an email that says, I too, am watching jenna16.mpg. So I setup my firewall to prevent that connection.
Just ta' be safe, you know.
Let's say, for example, I sell wooden chairs, all the same. I don't have prices displayed, but I am willing to sell these chairs at a minimum price of $10. Now, here comes Customer A. For some emergency reason, they absolutely positively need a wooden chair. They ask for a price, and I, sensing their hutrry, say "$500". He says that's high, but he'll pay it. He hands me the money and leaves.
In walks Customer B. They also want a chair, but not as badly as the first customer. We haggle for 15 minutes, and finally decide on a price of $65.
Did Customer A get ripped off? Of course not. They agreeed to pay $500, so they were not "ripped off". At the time, $500 was a fair deal.
This, friends, happens everywhere. Someone mentioned automobile dealerships. Well, it happens with airline tickets as well; it even happens with colleges. They charge everyone a too-high price (I am thinking more Ivy League here), and then if you can't pay the price they lower it JUST enough so you can buy (old) bread and feed yourself, but nothing else. Is it good business sense? Depends on your view of things. It creates more profits, but at the risk of alienating your customers; this diminishes profits in the long run.
And no, this bad press won't hurt Amazon THAT much. For every well informed /. and C|/net reader, you've got other people that are shopping at Amazon because it has a good price, or they saw an ad on "Tee-Vee".
I do think the MTV viewers know what they are doing... To some extent. About 30 seconds into introducing Blink 182 (the final act), Lars Ulrich got booed, and it didn't stop until he left the stage.
...and it's always a relief when the 300 lb. guy next to you, alread sweating, isn't inside a hot Wookie suit for opening night.
'Eaters of the Dead' was the original title of the book written by Michael Chrichton. It is an especially terrible attempt to plagiarize Beowulf, and his worst book by far. That and the title sucks.
Yes, I'm sure McCarthy went after a bunch of... Hollywood stars! They're threatening! You seem to forget that McCarthyism is a Bad Thing (tm). Not only is it a Bad Thing (tm), McCarthy himself was just an old, bitter, alcoholic man who used the citizen's fear of 'The Red Menace' to carry out some personal vendettas.
And if you ask me, a little "instability" in the American populace is always good. It means we're on our toes.
As far as the concentration of this power, you're entirely bass-ackwards. First off, telcos everywhere around the world are being privatized. This brings new competition into the mix, and actually increases the amount of diverse ownership. More routes are created, more connections, less bottlenecks.
That can already be done, and it IS being done. I'll agree with other Slashdotters woh have at times mentioned the fact that, more than likely, we're being egoistic when we think governments are spying on us. The government could care less what 99% of its population's communication is.
This looks to be a combination of oversimplification and lack of evidence to support your view. Interesting, but for practical purposes, worthless.
In related news, NasaInsider.com was hounded by calls from NASA to take down 'sneak peek, Top-Secret' pictures of its new Mars Probe, which it will present on Tuesday. A bystanding Slashdotter said, "I think [the NasaInsider picture] a fake. Look at the way the light strikes the NASA logo. It doesn't match the shadowing. Plus, why would you make a probe out of clear pink plexiglass?"
NASA shares underwent heavy trading, and dropped 2 points.
Background (which you probably know): Serifs are the little 'tabs' that stick out on text. Look at the 'T' on your keyboard and then look at this T. The small 'tabs' at the ends of the letter are serifs.
Ok, here's the reason serif'd fonts are easier to read. When we read, many times we aren't actually looking at each letter, processing it individually, then combining the letters and matching it against a word we know. Our brain, for the most part, does the following. Let's say you read the word:
You probably understood the word long before you put each letter together. That's because your brain processed the word's shape. The high triangle at the front, the loops over the e's and o's, the long line on the high l and the low p. It does this with a great number of words, and while reading, you actually read whole words at a time, because you recognize them instantly from their overall shape. That'S one reason you can read a word like 'duplication' faster than a word like 'dplcigzte'. The second, most likely, does not have its shape stored in your brain. The difference in reading the words is very small, fractions of a second, but it adds up if you read a 1,000 page manuscript.
Again, a large part of what makes posts/sentences in all capital letters annoying is because they are harder to read. The capitals all create rectangles, and our brain doesn't like that one bit.
To sum up, the serifs aid our brain in recognizing the shapes of the letters by thickening the font at the end of each drawn line. I hope I did an adequate job of explaining this, it would be better with a chalkboard.
However, this isn't the solution for everyone. Not everyone has the bandwidth, time, or storage space to get their music online (we all have the means: Gnutella, IRC, FTP, Usenet, etc.). However, there is a very, VERY simple solution if you want to purchase a CD and not have money go to the RIAA.
If you buy a music CD at a used CD store, the artist (and the RIAA) get absolutely nothing for your purchase. Someone already gave the RIAA money. The damage has been done. You however, for a lower price, can not only purchase the CD, but also not pay the RIAA. And no moreal qualms since it's legal.
I plug in my computer with a "UL cable".
Gnutella, on the other hand, has "one central server" in the way that if every Napster user opened up Gnutella and would log in through the same GnutellaNet, the searchable directory would be bigger. Result: Gnutella has the ability to have a MUCH larger user base searching MORE files.
I remember a few months ago, I had both Napster and Gnutella open at the same time (logged into the Gnutella net a Wego.com). Napster was offering a terabyte of songs, Gnutella was offering over 8 terabytes of files. Now, given the possibility that Gnutella's content is at least 25% MP3s, you've got a larger searchable base of music in Gnutella, given in MBs, not unique songs.
To reiterate, search for Chris's music several times on Napster at different times of day. Or search for it in Gnutella. Then come back to us.
(Off-topic): My favorite band on MP3.com is De Vil, who combine film music with techno beats.
Pre-Teen #1: Man, you know what I could use right now? Access to hard-core porn!
Pre-Teen #2: Let's just go to the John Quincy Adams City Library! You can look for 'young hot teenz' and I'll check out what's new at the Stile Project.
Pre-Teen #1: Word! (or similar "youth slang" used to convey agreement)
Now, let's get something clear. I have nothing against porn per se, or 12-year olds accessing pornographic material. What I have a problem with is libraries being used for this purpose. I mean, c'mon! The library is a place for education! They should follow the example of universities, who provide internet access to their students. No university students would dare use the Internet for non-educational purposes. I would scoff at the idea of students using an educational tool to access adult material, or trade illegal music and programs online, or...
Hey... wait a minute... Ok, that argument holds no water. Well, let's blockquote the article:
Now that I have a problem with. I don't know the state of Michigan's libraries, but in MY home state, I'd be pretty angry if $20,000 of the library system's meager budget went to buy something used only to block certain Internet sites. Wouldn't it be more productive to hire more staff (part-time), or buy more computers, or, and now this is a wacky idea... buy books with that $20,000? What a total waste of money.
I can see the final scene now, where Jack (DiCaprio) is hanging on, about to drown...
Jack (hanging on to the edge of a filled kiddie pool): You must do me this honor, Rose. Promise me you'll survive. Promise me now Rose, no matter what happens, or how hopeless.
Rose (sitting on a plastic Fisher Price boat): I promise.
(She shivers when you see James Cameron, in the background, open up a bag of ice and dump it into the pool, making 'whoosh' noises with his mouth to simulate wind)
Jack: Never let go.
Rose: I'll never let go. I'll never let go, Jack.
(DiCaprio rolls over face-down into the kiddie pool filled with ice)
James Cameron (off-camera): Cut!... Cut I said! Just hit the red button on the HandiCam!
(In the next scene we see an older Rose walk up to the kiddie pool, reminisce about the past, and throw a candy Ring Pop into the pool. Zoom into the Ring Pop, fade to black)
I don't know about you, but I would like to see this version of Titanic. Of course, the budget would be tight, so Jack would probably be played by Austin St. John (the Red Power Ranger) and Rose by an overweight Molly Ringwald. The older Rose would probably be Cameron's mother.
It is clear we must defeat the MPAA so we can watch a $2500 Titanic starring a former Power Ranger and Molly Ringwald. Who's with me?