I actually happen to like techno. Although it's an exaggeration to say that it's not really music, it's easier to type than the real explanation.
Music is essentialy education. Listening to music trains you to hear things a certain way. As children, classical music seems boring and dull, because we don't yet have the knowledge of music to be able to understand what we're hearing, so it just sounds like a bunch of silly strings; but Barney and Sesame Street sound about right. As teenagers, we expand into popular music, and then into Jazz and alternative styles when we hit college. If we keep our minds open, eventually things like Schostakovich make sense to us. The music of our youth, the pop and Barney songs, now sound boring because they teach us nothing new.
My experience listening to techno is that although I hear new things, they are never developed. At all. Listening to classical music, I hear an idea expressed, and then that idea is developed and expanded upon. Techno is like someone just shouting a clever slogan over and over.
What's more is that the human element has been removed from most techno music. Outside of knob-twisting, there is very little expression or emotion. Even the repetition and electronics in Hip-Hop at least have a very strong human element in the vocalist's performance.
I also recognize that this repetition and mechanistic styling is a deliberate choice: If you're going to dance to it, the beat must be steady and constant. But latin dance forms maintain the steady beat while actually developing their themes; why can't electronic music do the same?
So this isn't an "I hate techno" thought. I love listening to the new sounds. But my mind never gets involved. When I'm writing code or paying my bills, it's fine. It's functional. But it is not art.
Wendy Carlos has an interview on her web page (and if you claim to be an electronic music lover and don't know who Wendy Carlos is, LEARN! -- www.wendycarlos.com) where she expresses a very similar sentiment, and does a good job of expressing this as well.
Music is ultimately a human endeavor. If you take the human out of it, it's not really music any more. Sure, it's creative, but that doesn't make it music.
I should also mention that there are exceptions. B.T., to name one example, does a lot to add a human element to his music, and his live performances in particular are stunning. But the overwhelming majority of electronic music today has not progressed in any significant intellectual or technological way in ten years.
So it's not an "I hate techno" thing. I like McDonald's, but face it -- the stuff they serve is crap, and everyone knows it. I like techno, but I'm not going to fool myself into believing it's some kind of high art form.
You could just say, "Published music notation and tablatures."
Music's been "open source" for centuries, in that sense. Techno doesn't really go onto sheet music, but it's really on the borderline between music and random mechanical noise anyhow.
"The law is aimed at furthering online music, which has nothing to do with the DMCA."
Not true. Actually, the DMCA was approved specifically to give the RIAA companies certain protections to encourage them to go on-line with their content. Instead, they used it to go after current on-line providers. Inside.com had an article several months back covering a hearing where Orrin Hatch took the major labels to task for the way they were using the legislation.
Slashdot covered it here:
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/07/12/1829246.sh tm l
Sure, I'll agree with you there -- but that's not what the author of the parent comment was saying. He's a member of the public who will NOT permit you and I to demand things as a reward for any reason and at any time.
He says that out of the goodness of our hearts, we should provide our work to all free of charge.
Musicians shouldn't be compensated. Coders should work for free. Writers should take the time, blood, sweat and tears as a badge of honor for having done society a good favor.
That's why I find myself in agreement with the editorial. I'm one of those billions of people who are in the middle between the two extremes between the communists and the fascists, wanting both a government's ability to distribute my work and a corporation's ability to exploit it to be limited.
"False, there is no such thing as IP and any attempt to suggest otherwise is an illusion thrown up by corporate fatcats looking to stuff their wallets just a bit thicker at the expense of the public and of reality."
So does that mean that I, as a small-time musician who expects credit and compensation for his work, am really just a corporate fatcat looking to stuff my wallet a bit thicker at the expense of the public and of reality? Because IP law is very important to me -- it's what keeps people from stealing my songs and saying, "No, actually, I made this."
You've taken the discussion from an unconstructive "us vs. them" rights point of view and turned it into an unconstructive "us vs. them" belligerent point of view.
Here's a little bit of information for you: The WIPO holds all of the cards. Big businesses hold all of the cards. The only way we have half of a prayer of not being squashed like little bugs is if we discard the "us vs. them" point of view and work with these countries. This is NOT a zero-sum game; the key is to demonstrate to these companies how, if they structure their proposals in a different way, that they can benefit further -- and moreover, to show that with the current structure, that they are harmed.
Because the real problem is that overly reactionary policies cause businesses to stagnate. The people structuring these deals are not just doing bad things for little guys; they're doing bad things to their own companies and those companies' shareholders.
Throw away the "us vs. them" mindset. We really are all in this together.
I think ca. 1994 or so I bought a Slackware subscription, but I haven't paid for Linux since then. I've downloaded Debian and RedHat distributions ever since.
Pinochet had strong support from the richest 10% of Chile's population and the military -- which is how he gained power -- but the fact of the matter is that he gained that power by overthrowing a popularly elected president. At no time did he ever enjoy what you and I would call "popularity." Just because he had many supporters doesn't make him popular.
Actually, it's the other way around. Chile had been under democratic rule for nearly one hundred years; when the people chose a president who was a Communist, that's when the CIA gave Pinochet assistance.
But it's faulty to think the CIA had everything to do with it. The richest 10% of the Chilean population wanted nothing to do with Salvador Allende, and were the primary driving force behind the takeover.
I don't think that most of the folks at Microsoft even realize why they are hated so badly. They may even think it's just sour grapes.
It reminds me of the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. He held on to power through absolute totalitarian measures for two decades. His brutes were known to gang-rape the wives of dissidents -- and God forbid you ever dissented and you were a woman!
But after twenty years of power, he actually believed his own bull. He actually believed that if he allowed the people to speak their minds, they would choose him. So he opened up free elections. Unfortunately for him, Chile had a long history of democracy, and so people took advantage of the chance, and he was defeated.
He absolutely couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want him in power.
Microsoft is the same way. They use strong-arm tactics to force companies to bundle their software, and their software, with a couple of exceptions, is generally poor quality. Gates & Co. are actually naive enough to believe the marketshare they've bullied out of companies and customers is our willing choice.
But in a capitalist economy with a democratic government, such a reign cannot last forever. If customers can't choose otherwise, the government typically intervenes. Their very complacency and need to be a bully will be their undoing.
Technically, yes, it's still a bill. But we tend to forget that the amount of investment that goes into putting that bill on the floor in the first place usually gives it a good chance of passing.
Yeah...all we have to do is figure out how to sue them under the DMCA.
Let's see...
First, we copyright our web browser configuration. Then, we define our homepage as a copyright protection measure. Then, anyone who changes the ad is circumventing a copyright protection measure for profit! A pirate! Sic the federales on 'em! Yeah!
Hey, the DMCA could be a lot of FUN if we just abused it the right way.:)
If CmdrTaco does so much as to even mention the name, that will almost guarantee increased hits, which is exactly what they want. Advertising is not about making people happy. It's about making people remember you and visit your website. It's based on one of the oldest principles of advertising: An entertaining ad is not nearly as effective as an annoying one.
Slashdotters are curious. We'll click any link and search any subject to learn more. Look at my post. Posting to slashdot with my.sig the way it is drives more hits to my MP3.com page than anything else I've tried -- internet pyramid schemes, MP3.com's auctions, and submitting to search engines.
No, I can't help but feel that CmdrTaco did the right thing; even speaking their name here helps them out.
But of course, it's only a matter of time before some friendly poster mentions who it is anyhow.
Ahhh, I remember. But the Prime Radiant was more than just a display devices; it was also data storage. It pretty much contained all of Mathematical knowledge if I recall correctly.
The "Geek's Revenge" -- being vastly more successful than the bullies who used to beat the geeks up in 7th grade gym class -- is about to be avenged upon by the lawyers and politicians. They never liked the brains or the bullies. It was easy to send the bullies to jail, but now they're waging war against us.
Okay, that's a bit on the paranoid side, but realistically now that they know they can push us around, having already passed and enforced the DMCA, what'll stop them from passing this law? It reminds me of a quote from the last year's political election. A pollster for one of the two big parties mentioned that he'd discovered that women universally respond positively to the phrase, "For the children," regardless of context. This law's already signed, sealed, and delivered. Forget free speech, forget rights, get ready to be ass-rammed by some guy named Guido for the next ten years.
And usually, by the time a law like this is even announced, the decisions have already mostly been made. "Write your Congressman!" is a naive call to action. What we need are pre-emptive measures to heavily favor our cause. What we should be sponsoring is not ex post facto protests and lawsuits, but making sure that geek-friendly laws are made from the beginning.
The EFF is doing great work, but what we really need is not a legal organization, but a lobbying organization.
RADAR isn't anywhere near as accurate as GPS for measurements. Sure, you can follow something with RADAR, but you can't get its position to within a couple of cm.
"That was a blatantly ignorant troll, how the hell did that get modded up so high? There is no way that comment was in any way 'Insightful'. No one knows which games are better, or which controller is better, how can you even try to judge them months before either is released?"
As the AC's below mentioned, the controllers were available for folks to test at E3. Also, if you have a friend who is a developer, you might get lucky and get invited to play-test the game he's developing on the console. You DO realize that the developers have to have those controllers and consoles to develop the games with, don't you?
I haven't used the Nintendo controller, but it wouldn't take much to surpass the one for the X-box. I couldn't even reach the top two buttons without shifting my hands around, and the only way I could tell which of those buttons I was pushing was by looking down, away from the screen, where my attention should be.
But as for the Cube's controller, my developer friend who has seen it can't stop raving about it: "Your hands were made for this controller!"
"Don't you mean the controller was--"
"No, I mean your HANDS were made for THIS controller!"
And as an aside...as the responses to your post point out, you really aren't in a position to be calling anyone "ignorant."
Slashdot Mirror
I actually happen to like techno. Although it's an exaggeration to say that it's not really music, it's easier to type than the real explanation.
Music is essentialy education. Listening to music trains you to hear things a certain way. As children, classical music seems boring and dull, because we don't yet have the knowledge of music to be able to understand what we're hearing, so it just sounds like a bunch of silly strings; but Barney and Sesame Street sound about right. As teenagers, we expand into popular music, and then into Jazz and alternative styles when we hit college. If we keep our minds open, eventually things like Schostakovich make sense to us. The music of our youth, the pop and Barney songs, now sound boring because they teach us nothing new.
My experience listening to techno is that although I hear new things, they are never developed. At all. Listening to classical music, I hear an idea expressed, and then that idea is developed and expanded upon. Techno is like someone just shouting a clever slogan over and over.
What's more is that the human element has been removed from most techno music. Outside of knob-twisting, there is very little expression or emotion. Even the repetition and electronics in Hip-Hop at least have a very strong human element in the vocalist's performance.
I also recognize that this repetition and mechanistic styling is a deliberate choice: If you're going to dance to it, the beat must be steady and constant. But latin dance forms maintain the steady beat while actually developing their themes; why can't electronic music do the same?
So this isn't an "I hate techno" thought. I love listening to the new sounds. But my mind never gets involved. When I'm writing code or paying my bills, it's fine. It's functional. But it is not art.
Wendy Carlos has an interview on her web page (and if you claim to be an electronic music lover and don't know who Wendy Carlos is, LEARN! -- www.wendycarlos.com) where she expresses a very similar sentiment, and does a good job of expressing this as well.
Music is ultimately a human endeavor. If you take the human out of it, it's not really music any more. Sure, it's creative, but that doesn't make it music.
I should also mention that there are exceptions. B.T., to name one example, does a lot to add a human element to his music, and his live performances in particular are stunning. But the overwhelming majority of electronic music today has not progressed in any significant intellectual or technological way in ten years.
So it's not an "I hate techno" thing. I like McDonald's, but face it -- the stuff they serve is crap, and everyone knows it. I like techno, but I'm not going to fool myself into believing it's some kind of high art form.
Good evening Professor Falken
A strange game
It seems the only way to win is not to play
How about a nice game of chess?
You could just say, "Published music notation and tablatures."
Music's been "open source" for centuries, in that sense. Techno doesn't really go onto sheet music, but it's really on the borderline between music and random mechanical noise anyhow.
"This is true, but history has shown that it was little more than a pretext (one of many) used by legislators to pass the DMCA."
I think a more accurate characterization is that it was the pretext the RIAA used to sell the DMCA to the legislators, but it's the same result.
"The law is aimed at furthering online music, which has nothing to do with the DMCA."
h tm l
Not true. Actually, the DMCA was approved specifically to give the RIAA companies certain protections to encourage them to go on-line with their content. Instead, they used it to go after current on-line providers. Inside.com had an article several months back covering a hearing where Orrin Hatch took the major labels to task for the way they were using the legislation.
Slashdot covered it here:
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/07/12/1829246.s
Or download free stuff from MP3.com.
It's not like the bands the RIAA push onto us are significantly better than most of the better artists on MP3.com, anyway.
Pretty much says it all, doesn't it?
Sure, I'll agree with you there -- but that's not what the author of the parent comment was saying. He's a member of the public who will NOT permit you and I to demand things as a reward for any reason and at any time.
He says that out of the goodness of our hearts, we should provide our work to all free of charge.
Musicians shouldn't be compensated. Coders should work for free. Writers should take the time, blood, sweat and tears as a badge of honor for having done society a good favor.
That's why I find myself in agreement with the editorial. I'm one of those billions of people who are in the middle between the two extremes between the communists and the fascists, wanting both a government's ability to distribute my work and a corporation's ability to exploit it to be limited.
"False, there is no such thing as IP and any attempt to suggest otherwise is an illusion thrown up by corporate fatcats looking to stuff their wallets just a bit thicker at the expense of the public and of reality."
So does that mean that I, as a small-time musician who expects credit and compensation for his work, am really just a corporate fatcat looking to stuff my wallet a bit thicker at the expense of the public and of reality? Because IP law is very important to me -- it's what keeps people from stealing my songs and saying, "No, actually, I made this."
You've taken the discussion from an unconstructive "us vs. them" rights point of view and turned it into an unconstructive "us vs. them" belligerent point of view.
Here's a little bit of information for you: The WIPO holds all of the cards. Big businesses hold all of the cards. The only way we have half of a prayer of not being squashed like little bugs is if we discard the "us vs. them" point of view and work with these countries. This is NOT a zero-sum game; the key is to demonstrate to these companies how, if they structure their proposals in a different way, that they can benefit further -- and moreover, to show that with the current structure, that they are harmed.
Because the real problem is that overly reactionary policies cause businesses to stagnate. The people structuring these deals are not just doing bad things for little guys; they're doing bad things to their own companies and those companies' shareholders.
Throw away the "us vs. them" mindset. We really are all in this together.
writ of habeas corpus
I think ca. 1994 or so I bought a Slackware subscription, but I haven't paid for Linux since then. I've downloaded Debian and RedHat distributions ever since.
Pinochet had strong support from the richest 10% of Chile's population and the military -- which is how he gained power -- but the fact of the matter is that he gained that power by overthrowing a popularly elected president. At no time did he ever enjoy what you and I would call "popularity." Just because he had many supporters doesn't make him popular.
Actually, it's the other way around. Chile had been under democratic rule for nearly one hundred years; when the people chose a president who was a Communist, that's when the CIA gave Pinochet assistance.
But it's faulty to think the CIA had everything to do with it. The richest 10% of the Chilean population wanted nothing to do with Salvador Allende, and were the primary driving force behind the takeover.
...we still have to pay for that pre-loaded software that we aren't using.
I don't think that most of the folks at Microsoft even realize why they are hated so badly. They may even think it's just sour grapes.
It reminds me of the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. He held on to power through absolute totalitarian measures for two decades. His brutes were known to gang-rape the wives of dissidents -- and God forbid you ever dissented and you were a woman!
But after twenty years of power, he actually believed his own bull. He actually believed that if he allowed the people to speak their minds, they would choose him. So he opened up free elections. Unfortunately for him, Chile had a long history of democracy, and so people took advantage of the chance, and he was defeated.
He absolutely couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want him in power.
Microsoft is the same way. They use strong-arm tactics to force companies to bundle their software, and their software, with a couple of exceptions, is generally poor quality. Gates & Co. are actually naive enough to believe the marketshare they've bullied out of companies and customers is our willing choice.
But in a capitalist economy with a democratic government, such a reign cannot last forever. If customers can't choose otherwise, the government typically intervenes. Their very complacency and need to be a bully will be their undoing.
Technically, yes, it's still a bill. But we tend to forget that the amount of investment that goes into putting that bill on the floor in the first place usually gives it a good chance of passing.
ESPECIALLY if it's "for the children."
Yeah...all we have to do is figure out how to sue them under the DMCA.
:)
Let's see...
First, we copyright our web browser configuration. Then, we define our homepage as a copyright protection measure. Then, anyone who changes the ad is circumventing a copyright protection measure for profit! A pirate! Sic the federales on 'em! Yeah!
Hey, the DMCA could be a lot of FUN if we just abused it the right way.
If CmdrTaco does so much as to even mention the name, that will almost guarantee increased hits, which is exactly what they want. Advertising is not about making people happy. It's about making people remember you and visit your website. It's based on one of the oldest principles of advertising: An entertaining ad is not nearly as effective as an annoying one.
.sig the way it is drives more hits to my MP3.com page than anything else I've tried -- internet pyramid schemes, MP3.com's auctions, and submitting to search engines.
Slashdotters are curious. We'll click any link and search any subject to learn more. Look at my post. Posting to slashdot with my
No, I can't help but feel that CmdrTaco did the right thing; even speaking their name here helps them out.
But of course, it's only a matter of time before some friendly poster mentions who it is anyhow.
Ahhh, I remember. But the Prime Radiant was more than just a display devices; it was also data storage. It pretty much contained all of Mathematical knowledge if I recall correctly.
The "Geek's Revenge" -- being vastly more successful than the bullies who used to beat the geeks up in 7th grade gym class -- is about to be avenged upon by the lawyers and politicians. They never liked the brains or the bullies. It was easy to send the bullies to jail, but now they're waging war against us.
Okay, that's a bit on the paranoid side, but realistically now that they know they can push us around, having already passed and enforced the DMCA, what'll stop them from passing this law? It reminds me of a quote from the last year's political election. A pollster for one of the two big parties mentioned that he'd discovered that women universally respond positively to the phrase, "For the children," regardless of context. This law's already signed, sealed, and delivered. Forget free speech, forget rights, get ready to be ass-rammed by some guy named Guido for the next ten years.
And usually, by the time a law like this is even announced, the decisions have already mostly been made. "Write your Congressman!" is a naive call to action. What we need are pre-emptive measures to heavily favor our cause. What we should be sponsoring is not ex post facto protests and lawsuits, but making sure that geek-friendly laws are made from the beginning.
The EFF is doing great work, but what we really need is not a legal organization, but a lobbying organization.
So teachers get the same amount of spam and hate-mail the rest of us get.
So? Why destroy our educational system over that?
RADAR isn't anywhere near as accurate as GPS for measurements. Sure, you can follow something with RADAR, but you can't get its position to within a couple of cm.
They're only cheating if they're homing in on that beacon. The purpose of the beacon was for the -base- to track the missile during the test.
How else do you expect them to track the missile during the test? A guy sitting on the ground with a telescope and a sextant or something?
"That was a blatantly ignorant troll, how the hell did that get modded up so high? There is no way that comment was in any way 'Insightful'. No one knows which games are better, or which controller is better, how can you even try to judge them months before either is released?"
As the AC's below mentioned, the controllers were available for folks to test at E3. Also, if you have a friend who is a developer, you might get lucky and get invited to play-test the game he's developing on the console. You DO realize that the developers have to have those controllers and consoles to develop the games with, don't you?
I haven't used the Nintendo controller, but it wouldn't take much to surpass the one for the X-box. I couldn't even reach the top two buttons without shifting my hands around, and the only way I could tell which of those buttons I was pushing was by looking down, away from the screen, where my attention should be.
But as for the Cube's controller, my developer friend who has seen it can't stop raving about it: "Your hands were made for this controller!"
"Don't you mean the controller was--"
"No, I mean your HANDS were made for THIS controller!"
And as an aside...as the responses to your post point out, you really aren't in a position to be calling anyone "ignorant."