Because the ampersand itself it a HTML and perl marking for coding purposes...
Yes Stupid choice for a charecter but, ya gotta live with it...
For future reference... to write an ampersand write
&
Weird thanks, I always thought that I only had to be careful of stuff in between brackets. ^_^
Of course now with half an assed brain I realize my mistake, it is what it seen when Unicode characters are based into a textbox and then returned by the server (Japanese text with Google for instance)
::looks around:: Why is/. freaking out cuz of an amphersand?
......
try this again ------
I actualy have a problem in that my ATT prepaid phone expires minutes after 3 months. Additionaly I have to purchase minutes in $20 increments, which amounts to about 70 minutes of talk time.
Which will last me;
err;
well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;
so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.
Cellphones == for TALKING on, perferably NOT in the middle of F*cking finals.
I swear. The damn things should be banned. Do you realize that people have ran into SCHOOL BUSES while talking on those things? HOW THE FUCKING HELL do you NOT notice a SCHOOL BUS?
Ugh.
Once again, cell phones are for TALKING on,
spending $300 on one of the fuckers is an immense move of stupididy.
Yeesh. buy a PDA (though with the recent story on PDA reliability I could see why you would be tempted not to. ^_^ ) for about the same price. Bigger screen, faster proccesor, more memory.
Then choose whatever cell phone plan gives you a free phone.
I actualy have a problem in that my AT err
well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;
so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.
Which means it is a serious pain in the ass to have to spend $20 every 3 months just on the off chance that Something Bad Might Happen to me and I may need to use my cellphone to Call Someone To Save My Ass.
As I said, a royal pain.
(and no I am not antisocial, I just perfer to talk to people IN PERSON. You know, real life? Bleh. Cell phones are evil, I _HATE_ the damn f*cking things, HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE them.
Voice recognition technology cannot identify MY voice and put down the English text for it, how the hell it is supposed to translate it into another language?
The minimal success rate even after hours of training
training program: "Say 'The Cat Jumped Fast.' "
Me: "The cat jumped fast"
Comp: "Error, please say the sentence 'The cat jumped fast.' "
Me: "The cat jumped fast"
Repeat 3-4x
Comp: "Error, you are not saying the phrases as directed on screen, please try again at a later time."
Fuck it. If I say "The cat jumped fast." I know what I said, and the damn computer had better adjust to ME.
For less than $200, get a video-out card for your computer.
Your computer can already play Divx 3, 4, and 5, as well as play mp3s and MAME roms. Its just wasteful to go and buy a whole other set for mere convenience.
Besides, you know the software on your computer will work, and I doubt you would want to have to apply numerous M$ 'patches' to get a simple Divx player to work right.
This is what I do;
$200? Heh.
More like $20.:P For a nice BT chipset one, DeScaler rocks!:)
Too bad about the GameCube though, that thing is SO tiny it is amazing, I thought the carrying handle was just for kicks but nope, it is definitely fully functional! Ah, definitely not hackable though, unless somebody finds some way to get it to read minicds or such. ^_^
I beg your pardon... FW costs about $3-$4, depending on complexity, providing, of course, that you are in high volume production. Where does this $25 come from??? There is no combination of parts built this century that would cost so much!
Comparing the cost of firewire enabled devices to identical models that are non-firewire.
Yah yah production volume is part of the equastion, but hell, isn't it always? In the end what matters is the price difference to the consumer, and currently firewire costs at least ~$20 extra when added onto a device.
And while I don't have links to back this up, from the last firewire vs USB2 debate, I believe Firewire still gives better throughput to hard drives, etc.
Oh yes for HDs sure, but USB2 is NOT meant to completely replace Firewire or even take its place.
Think memory card readers and such, or even portable CDR burners, things that you do not NEED to have operate independently of a computer, or at least some sort of root USB hub* device.
HDs, digital cameras, and such, are definitely FireWire's realm
Even CDR devices that are designed as say a drop in for memory cards (oooh now THAT would rock!!! Hehe. Maybe those DataPlay discs could come in handy for something after all, LOL!) are in the domain of firewire.
*I think that is the proper term for the device that runs all other USB devices in the USB network, may have my terminology wrong though.
USB 2 suffers from a master / slave design. Theoretically one can plug a firewire drive into a firewire camera, and transfer footage from the camera directly to the HD
Unforutnatly the cost of actualy IMPLEMENTING this on a device shoots the price up by ~$25-$50 dollars. (it was worse. . . . )
And on say a $200 digicam. . . . ouch.
From a 12.5% to a 25% price markup for the ability to transfer images straight to a HD without a computer go between (uh. . . . heh.) may be useful to people who are doing high end work, but then again people doing high end work do not bother with $200 digicams;
which is why firewire is senseless to use in cheap devices and why USB{1,2} still has its uses and will for some time to come.
If you want to receive a digital signal, you need a box for each TV set.
No shit, called your TV not being able to proccess MPEG2 signals, it needs to be decoded somehow. Yeesh. It is called Digital Cable for a reason (and not just because the video quality stinks. . ..).
Bleh, color me impressed when they get plain old speech to text translators that can translate my ENGLISH into ENGLISH text.
Until then I will be VERY skeptical about any vocal to vocal translators.
I have tried out every generation of speech to text consumer software since 1990, and so far is has all been crap. Even if the government has technology that is 2x what the private sector is at;
well hell, 2x ~10% is still pretty darn shitty and NOT something to be relied on in times of war.
But the sad fact of the matter is that Comcast is looking to purchase AT&T's cable business. AT&T has also announced that they will be making the cable modem speeds on their network 'uniform'. Which, for previous MediaOne customers like myself, is a raw deal beacuse my upstream will drop for 384kbps to 256kbps. AT&T to make broadband speed uniform [com.com] It won't really affect me as I don't host a lot of upstream traffic, but I'm still paying the same price. Now I will also be lucky enough to chip in an extra $7/month because I purchased my own modem? And to top it all of AT&T has hinted at an upcoming tiered pricing structure. Let me guess, the prices will stay the same, but the speeds will drop to 1/2 or 1/4 what they currently are. Because, after all, what choice do the customers have? I'm sure I won't mind paying $80/month for the 'service' I have now. Maybe I'll get even luckier and they will start sniffing for NAT setups. Sure, here's another $150/month. I don't mind...
I am quite happy with the new uniform speeds, for many of us this means a speed increase.:) Many of the @Home affilates where using the recommended 128kbit cap, so the new 256kbit cap is rather nice by comparison.
Also hopefuly AT&T is doing all of this so as to be able to make the cable internet access portion of their company (more?)profitable so as that they can keep ahold of it. At least I hope so. . . . ^_^
AT&T announced this price increase over a year ago, hardly new.
They are actualy REDUCING the price of the modem rental, granted by just $1 a month but. . . . This is quite fair and I consider it JUSTIFIED and a LOT better then, say, implementing shitty ass bandwidth caps.
Considering the high quality level of their service (they have recently increased the upload speed cap from 16KBP/s to 30KBp/s!!!! YAHOOO!!!!:) ) I have no objection to paying a few more dollars a month for high quality cable modem access.
Actually, rereading your statement now, I see your point about empathy, but I don't feel it makes me less of a person. Just because catharsis comes from bad situations does not make my life shitty. It doesn't make me feel good that Slim Shady wants to kill people and is self-described white trash
The problem that I have is that he is considered insightful when in fact his lyrics are none such.
True insight causes an empathetic reaction, it causes you to realize the mistakes you have made in your life and encourages you to do better.
Now often times indeed these types of songs ARE sad and depressing, and hell even gross descriptions of violence can work out as being insightful if done right;
but my point is that eminem is NOT insightful, his lyrics are not original content, and that many of us who are seem like we are looking down on him are only acting the way that we are acting because we came to these 'insightful' realizations years before and realized that there was far more in the world beyond such simple messages.
He can write a rhyme, and he can tell a story. What's shock to one person is passe to another. Do you think my ears bleed every time I hear the word "fuck"?
I do not even care much about the language (though it has been said, and indeed proven, that a truly good author needs not use a single swear word to communicate the most vile and horrifying messages in the world.)
He may be able to write lyrics and communicate a story, but that does not make him a musician. That makes him a poet at most, but I would fear to even call him that. That he uses his talents in such low grade ways is disgraceful.
However, I believe rap has always been more about the lyrics than how they're conveyed.
A lot of independent movie producers say that their movies are more about the message of the movie then the movies actual quality.
And while a lot of people bought this at first, eventually people came to realize that hey;
A crappy movie is a crappy movie no matter who makes it. Of course to some extent an amateurish movie will indeed have a bit of gleam to it if it has a significant message to deliver,
but trying to make sales off of the sheer amateurishness of an art, and even worse saying that that very amateurishness is what makes the art so special, is false. It is a lie, period. Propagated by people who do not want to admit that when it comes down to it, they just can't sing or write musical scores.
If you gave me the lyrics to a good song, I could rap 'em, and that's what a majority of rappers do: talk about shit other people wrote. But not only is Eminem a good written lyricist, he can freestyle (extremely well) spur of the moment rhymes that are hundreds of times more complex than anything lesser artists could take weeks to put together.
But not only is Eminem a good written lyricist, he can freestyle (extremely well) spur of the moment rhymes that are hundreds of times more complex than anything lesser artists could take weeks to put together
He still can't sing.:P
If he wants to enter a poetry bash then he can go right ahead, I do fear that there is very little money to be earned there though.
Of course another problem that rap has is its very self limited simplicity. Complex it may be within its own bounds, but by limiting themselves to their own little tiny niche genre of the arts, rappers are like artists who are stuck forever doing a character study. Sure now and then something great may come out of it, but the point of such self limitations is to be able to bring those skills back into the broader world as a whole. Unfortunately rappers never learn this and instead even learn disdain for those 'other' poetic genres out there.
Heck sometimes slowing the BPM down can speed things up more then you would believe is possible.
Excellent analysis. Speaking as a high-schooler when his first CD came out, most here on slashdot would be surprised how many "geeks" and how many in the top 5% of their high school class love, and I mean absolutely love his music. Maybe you have to be from a newer generation, but you can definitely read very, very far into not just what he says, but how he's saying it. In my AP English class, virtually every person in it concurred that Eminem, specifially the original "slim shasy" is a truly insightful commentary on society. Take that for what you will.
Imagine that, someone saying the Eminem is insightful...god, this is never going to get modded up;)
And it was replied as such:
Only considering insightful commentary if you are too damn stupid to have come across those ideas yourself before. Staring out a window for a few hours will net you more creative insight on the human condition then any of his cds will.
Hmm, was your high school middle class by any chance? That would defintly explain it, the middle class is not exactly known for their depth of thought into matters of human existence (well, except for when it serves them, even then they as a whole tend to consider stating the obvious to be insightful.)
Strip away the personalty of any entertainer, and you're left with a "B-rate" level instance of that form of entertainment.
May I suggest trying listening to art something instead of entertainment? Worlds of difference.
"I don't speak/I float in the air trapped in a sheet/I'm not a real person/I'm a ghost trapped in the beat", then I will support him as an artist.
Juvenile. The level of deep thought that goes into such ramblings is pathetic, I put out crap like that when I am halfassed asleep, and treat it as such, straight into the garbage can. That is not significant or worldly or enlightening at all, and it disgusts me that people would treat such simple minded thoughts as being original. Anybody who has spend the ass end bit of a second pondering the meaning of life has come to far deeper conclusions then that.
And anybody who hasn't spent that much time on the question shouldn't be commenting on what is or is not art.
Every single person I know who enjoys hip-hop at least respects Eminem rhyming ability, if they don't like his content.
So he can rhyme, congrats. Big deal. That DOES NOT make him a musician. Hell I used to do insanely complex rhymes just for the hell of it, gave it up after awhile, got boring. I mean sure A/B/C/A B/C/D/B C/D/E/C D/E/F/D etc is fun for awhile, but it gets rather tiresome fast.:) And then of course when you get even more complex then that. . ..
::shudders:: 4+ syllable rhymes suck sooo much. Heh. Didn't help that I limited myself to never rhyming with the same word more then once in a poem.
Annyways. After a few pages of that (of the A/B/C/A B/C/D/B.... system I have done around 6 pages max so far) it tends to get, as I said, rather tiresome and I just gave up and went to free verse, which I do believe is rather cheating, but hey, it is tons easier.:)
But yah, rhyming isn't music. It is rhyming. NEXT.
I will also respond in advance to your ad hominem attacks against my friends by saying that the majority are college graduates, from English and Poli Sci majors, to Comp Sci (like myself) and Engineering graduates. By your own definition (at least in my social circle of approximately 100 people who like rap/hip-hop), Eminem is a musician.
While I cannot speak for the other person;
college doesn't make you smart;
It just certifies that you can bubble in answer sheets and properly regurgitate answers on tests. Congrats.:P
I used to think that there where Genre's of music, then I learned that if it is real music it doesn't matter what genre it comes from;
Beauty is beauty. My current litmus test is to listen to a song for ~2 months straight. If I hear deeper things in it with each passing listen, then it is truly beautiful.
Of course if I cannot stand to listen to it for two months straight. . . . ^_^
Eminem freestyles constantly. He got second place in 1997's Rap Olympics, devoted to freestyling (well before he was backed by Dre). He has also been on The Wake Up Show (a radio show devoted to lyricists, very well respected in the underground hip-hop community) countless times, again before he was ever backed by Dre or on a label.
Wow he can rhyme fast and add some sort of a beat to it.
If you add a subjective scale to any human performed action you can claim that it requires skill of some kind, and indeed you can even set criteria that says "performing such and such action in such and such way proves that you have such and such skill level."
It does not make it art though, it just makes it a self gratifying genre of back patting competitions.
If you want to argue that he's a sell-out, go for it.
I would, but he has so little to sell out. Definitely no artistic integrity.
If you want to argue that he's not a real musician because he doesn't play an instrument, go for it.
Actually I would rather prefer to aim for "has no musical TALENT" myself. . ..
talent as a rapper? Sure. Talent as a musician? No way.
(He did do most of the production on his new album, but in the hip-hop world that rarely means actually touching an instrument).
So uh, the sum of his 'musical' knowledge basically amounts to:
Knowing the basics of how beats and rhythm works
Knowing how to use a rhyming dictionary.
Yah, uh, great. Heh. Real talent there folks. . ..
Pardon me, I have to stop before my eyes roll out of my head.
As to your second point, many musicians have, as you so callously put it, "just held a microphone on stage". Are opera singers musicians? Are gospel singers musicans?
One key difference;
they can sing.
eminem can talk fast and add some sort of a beat to it.
Con-friggin-graduations. Shit. That is the LOWEST FRIGGIN DENOMINATOR of vocal control.
Sure he may be good at it, but fuck, you ain't gonna call the guy who plays the cowbell a grandmaster, no matter how well he plays it.
One more thing, I can't see a reason why what Eminem wears has anything to do with his value as a musician. Christ, John Lennon was running around naked on camera, with a naked woman no less. [Flamers please note my sarcasm].
That he sells music off of his bad boy attitude has a lot to do with it. If he cannot sell music off of solely his MUSICAL talents then well hell, why the heck should I listen to it at all? I want music, not some bad attitude that comes along with the music.
Finally, if you would like to dismiss Eminem out-of-hand for the content of his songs, then pass Go and collect $200.
A true artist needs not use shockvalue to make something beautiful. Or horrific. After a certain point horror because beautiful as well, on an artistic level.
eminem couldn't sing (hell he can't sing at all) about daisies and make it sound nice. A true musician can.
It's very easy to dismiss artists that put society's collective taboos and psychoses on display.
Actually he just kinda pulls them out of his ass and waves them all around. To put them on display would mean setting up a proper display case and all, (metaphorically of course) and eminem does not have enough talent to do that.
Personally, I believe that one can experience a sort of catharsis from albums such as this one, if only when you realize that your life is so much better than the nightmarish hell that Slim Shady/Eminem/Marshall Mathers seems to inhabit.
Yah how nice, you feel better about yourself because some dickhead whitetrash boy has a shitty life?
Hell is that was passes for empathy in society these days? Pathetic.
Damnit, it is right between just right and a tad wee bit to small.
Since when the heck did midgets become the number one player of console games? Yeesh.
Now the one fault that I _DO_ have with the X-Box controller (and all of the other next gen console system controllers for that matter) is how few buttons the player can access at once.
I remember on the SNES controller that you could push any of 4 out of 6 buttons, not half bad. On the N64 controller it was (uh, 1,2,3,4,5,6) out of 8 buttons at once. Kick ass.
On the X-Box it is like 3 or 4 out of how ever many. Yah I know the main analog joystick also presses down, but it is SOO awful that you likely change the joysticks heading at the same time. NOT a good thing, sorry, doesn't count. Not to mention how fricking dinky some of those buttons are, yeesh. Talk about all pad and no buttons!
The PS2 has the same problem that the PS1 did, dinky ass controller, makes me feel like I am using a Pocket Gameboy to control my Console with. Ick. Cramped as hell.
The original N64 controller SEEMED like it was a pain in the ass, and indeed I got an alternate controller and used it for quite some time, but after awhile I was forced to go back to the original pack-in controller and I then realized how kick-ass it was. Yah!:)
The GameCube has a similar problem to the X-Box, not nearly enough buttons can be pushed at once. But then again Lord Miyamoto says that he plans on designing games that require less buttons to play, so I am not going to complain too much about that one. If the entire console is designed for fewer buttons then OK, but the other consoles out there seem dedicated to using all of the buttons on the control pad but just bunching them up in remote clusters around a pad and making the whole entire thing horribly unergonomic. Yuck.
On the plus side, 40 key gamepads will be quite nice. When I was well into playing Half-Life (since given it up, CS is so painfully slow compared to the frantic strategic action of HLDM) I had at least 20 keys bound on my keyboard and a nine button mouse. . ..
;D
(I still have my two original NES advantage joysticks, yes, two of them. Now THOSE where some well built controllers!:) )
Hell it isn't even that so much as the sheer number of dependencies.
Of the 2GB standard install (or 1.5GB, depending on which version of XP you have), you can remove MAYBE 500Megs of that.
Oh joy. . ..
Of a standard Linux/BSD install all but a few MEGABYTES can be removed and you will still have yourself a stable OS.
If you just want a server machine and not a lot of crud, why even go for the GUI? Hell just one more thing to break and take up resources. Even if it is not very many resources, they are still MINE damnit, and I would like the option to have them back.
This is why I refuse to go from 2K to XP, XP is basicaly 2K with a few kernal tweaks to make users think that it is not bloated, and then 500Megs of blue curvy CRAP that is installed along side everything else.
Yes I can DISABLE the blue curvy crap but it will still be there, and that is what upsets me. That MS sees fit to install blue curvy crap that I do not want nor need.
Actualy the entire WinNT line has tons of extra applications installed, it is just that hardly any of them are documented. . . . Very few productivity apps though.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the ampersand itself it a HTML and perl marking for coding purposes...
Yes Stupid choice for a charecter but, ya gotta live with it...
For future reference... to write an ampersand write
&
Weird thanks, I always thought that I only had to be careful of stuff in between brackets. ^_^
Of course now with half an assed brain I realize my mistake, it is what it seen when Unicode characters are based into a textbox and then returned by the server (Japanese text with Google for instance)
::sighs::
::looks around:: Why is /. freaking out cuz of an amphersand?
......
try this again
------
I actualy have a problem in that my ATT prepaid phone expires minutes after 3 months. Additionaly I have to purchase minutes in $20 increments, which amounts to about 70 minutes of talk time.
Which will last me;
err;
well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;
so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.
---
and so forth
Where the hell did the rest of my post go?
Supposed to be
----
I actualy have a problem in that my AT
err;
well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;
so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.
-----
and so forth
NO!
Cellphones == for TALKING on, perferably NOT in the middle of F*cking finals.
I swear. The damn things should be banned. Do you realize that people have ran into SCHOOL BUSES while talking on those things? HOW THE FUCKING HELL do you NOT notice a SCHOOL BUS?
Ugh.
Once again, cell phones are for TALKING on,
spending $300 on one of the fuckers is an immense move of stupididy.
Yeesh. buy a PDA (though with the recent story on PDA reliability I could see why you would be tempted not to. ^_^ ) for about the same price. Bigger screen, faster proccesor, more memory.
Then choose whatever cell phone plan gives you a free phone.
I actualy have a problem in that my AT
err
well lets see I haven't actualy USED the accursed thing in like 4 months;
so yah, 70 minutes should last me until sometime SLIGHTLY after I die.
Which means it is a serious pain in the ass to have to spend $20 every 3 months just on the off chance that Something Bad Might Happen to me and I may need to use my cellphone to Call Someone To Save My Ass.
As I said, a royal pain.
(and no I am not antisocial, I just perfer to talk to people IN PERSON. You know, real life? Bleh. Cell phones are evil, I _HATE_ the damn f*cking things, HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE them.
Ugh.
Voice recognition technology cannot identify MY voice and put down the English text for it, how the hell it is supposed to translate it into another language?
The minimal success rate even after hours of training
training program: "Say 'The Cat Jumped Fast.' "
Me: "The cat jumped fast"
Comp: "Error, please say the sentence 'The cat jumped fast.' "
Me: "The cat jumped fast"
Repeat 3-4x
Comp: "Error, you are not saying the phrases as directed on screen, please try again at a later time."
Fuck it. If I say "The cat jumped fast." I know what I said, and the damn computer had better adjust to ME.
Most people have the ability to learn at least SOME of another language if they want to.
Most people. . . . Nice phrase there.
:(
For less than $200, get a video-out card for your computer.
:P For a nice BT chipset one, DeScaler rocks! :)
Your computer can already play Divx 3, 4, and 5, as well as play mp3s and MAME roms.
Its just wasteful to go and buy a whole other set for mere convenience.
Besides, you know the software on your computer will work, and I doubt you would want to have to apply numerous M$ 'patches' to get a simple Divx player to work right.
This is what I do;
$200? Heh.
More like $20.
Too bad about the GameCube though, that thing is SO tiny it is amazing, I thought the carrying handle was just for kicks but nope, it is definitely fully functional! Ah, definitely not hackable though, unless somebody finds some way to get it to read minicds or such. ^_^
I beg your pardon ... FW costs about $3-$4, depending on complexity, providing, of course, that you are in high volume production. Where does this $25 come from??? There is no combination of parts built this century that would cost so much!
Comparing the cost of firewire enabled devices to identical models that are non-firewire.
Yah yah production volume is part of the equastion, but hell, isn't it always? In the end what matters is the price difference to the consumer, and currently firewire costs at least ~$20 extra when added onto a device.
And while I don't have links to back this up, from the last firewire vs USB2 debate, I believe Firewire still gives better throughput to hard drives, etc.
Oh yes for HDs sure, but USB2 is NOT meant to completely replace Firewire or even take its place.
Think memory card readers and such, or even portable CDR burners, things that you do not NEED to have operate independently of a computer, or at least some sort of root USB hub* device.
HDs, digital cameras, and such, are definitely FireWire's realm
Even CDR devices that are designed as say a drop in for memory cards (oooh now THAT would rock!!! Hehe. Maybe those DataPlay discs could come in handy for something after all, LOL!) are in the domain of firewire.
*I think that is the proper term for the device that runs all other USB devices in the USB network, may have my terminology wrong though.
USB 2 suffers from a master / slave design. Theoretically one can plug a firewire drive into a firewire camera, and transfer footage from the camera directly to the HD
Unforutnatly the cost of actualy IMPLEMENTING this on a device shoots the price up by ~$25-$50 dollars. (it was worse. . . . )
And on say a $200 digicam. . . . ouch.
From a 12.5% to a 25% price markup for the ability to transfer images straight to a HD without a computer go between (uh. . . . heh.) may be useful to people who are doing high end work, but then again people doing high end work do not bother with $200 digicams;
which is why firewire is senseless to use in cheap devices and why USB{1,2} still has its uses and will for some time to come.
If you want to receive a digital signal, you need a box for each TV set.
.).
No shit, called your TV not being able to proccess MPEG2 signals, it needs to be decoded somehow. Yeesh. It is called Digital Cable for a reason (and not just because the video quality stinks. . .
Bleh, color me impressed when they get plain old speech to text translators that can translate my ENGLISH into ENGLISH text.
Until then I will be VERY skeptical about any vocal to vocal translators.
I have tried out every generation of speech to text consumer software since 1990, and so far is has all been crap. Even if the government has technology that is 2x what the private sector is at;
well hell, 2x ~10% is still pretty darn shitty and NOT something to be relied on in times of war.
Bleh.
But the sad fact of the matter is that Comcast is looking to purchase AT&T's cable business. AT&T has also announced that they will be making the cable modem speeds on their network 'uniform'. Which, for previous MediaOne customers like myself, is a raw deal beacuse my upstream will drop for 384kbps to 256kbps. AT&T to make broadband speed uniform [com.com] It won't really affect me as I don't host a lot of upstream traffic, but I'm still paying the same price. Now I will also be lucky enough to chip in an extra $7/month because I purchased my own modem? And to top it all of AT&T has hinted at an upcoming tiered pricing structure. Let me guess, the prices will stay the same, but the speeds will drop to 1/2 or 1/4 what they currently are. Because, after all, what choice do the customers have? I'm sure I won't mind paying $80/month for the 'service' I have now. Maybe I'll get even luckier and they will start sniffing for NAT setups. Sure, here's another $150/month. I don't mind...
:) Many of the @Home affilates where using the recommended 128kbit cap, so the new 256kbit cap is rather nice by comparison.
I am quite happy with the new uniform speeds, for many of us this means a speed increase.
Also hopefuly AT&T is doing all of this so as to be able to make the cable internet access portion of their company (more?)profitable so as that they can keep ahold of it. At least I hope so. . . . ^_^
AT&T announced this price increase over a year ago, hardly new.
:) ) I have no objection to paying a few more dollars a month for high quality cable modem access.
They are actualy REDUCING the price of the modem rental, granted by just $1 a month but. . . . This is quite fair and I consider it JUSTIFIED and a LOT better then, say, implementing shitty ass bandwidth caps.
Considering the high quality level of their service (they have recently increased the upload speed cap from 16KBP/s to 30KBp/s!!!! YAHOOO!!!!
I have three of them. :)
:)
NES advantage
Not the best picture but. . .
Ahh, when controlers had real METAL in them.
Actually, rereading your statement now, I see your point about empathy, but I don't feel it makes me less of a person. Just because catharsis comes from bad situations does not make my life shitty. It doesn't make me feel good that Slim Shady wants to kill people and is self-described white trash
:P
The problem that I have is that he is considered insightful when in fact his lyrics are none such.
True insight causes an empathetic reaction, it causes you to realize the mistakes you have made in your life and encourages you to do better.
Now often times indeed these types of songs ARE sad and depressing, and hell even gross descriptions of violence can work out as being insightful if done right;
but my point is that eminem is NOT insightful, his lyrics are not original content, and that many of us who are seem like we are looking down on him are only acting the way that we are acting because we came to these 'insightful' realizations years before and realized that there was far more in the world beyond such simple messages.
He can write a rhyme, and he can tell a story. What's shock to one person is passe to another. Do you think my ears bleed every time I hear the word "fuck"?
I do not even care much about the language (though it has been said, and indeed proven, that a truly good author needs not use a single swear word to communicate the most vile and horrifying messages in the world.)
He may be able to write lyrics and communicate a story, but that does not make him a musician. That makes him a poet at most, but I would fear to even call him that. That he uses his talents in such low grade ways is disgraceful.
However, I believe rap has always been more about the lyrics than how they're conveyed.
A lot of independent movie producers say that their movies are more about the message of the movie then the movies actual quality.
And while a lot of people bought this at first, eventually people came to realize that hey;
A crappy movie is a crappy movie no matter who makes it. Of course to some extent an amateurish movie will indeed have a bit of gleam to it if it has a significant message to deliver,
but trying to make sales off of the sheer amateurishness of an art, and even worse saying that that very amateurishness is what makes the art so special, is false. It is a lie, period. Propagated by people who do not want to admit that when it comes down to it, they just can't sing or write musical scores.
If you gave me the lyrics to a good song, I could rap 'em, and that's what a majority of rappers do: talk about shit other people wrote. But not only is Eminem a good written lyricist, he can freestyle (extremely well) spur of the moment rhymes that are hundreds of times more complex than anything lesser artists could take weeks to put together.
But not only is Eminem a good written lyricist, he can freestyle (extremely well) spur of the moment rhymes that are hundreds of times more complex than anything lesser artists could take weeks to put together
He still can't sing.
If he wants to enter a poetry bash then he can go right ahead, I do fear that there is very little money to be earned there though.
Of course another problem that rap has is its very self limited simplicity. Complex it may be within its own bounds, but by limiting themselves to their own little tiny niche genre of the arts, rappers are like artists who are stuck forever doing a character study. Sure now and then something great may come out of it, but the point of such self limitations is to be able to bring those skills back into the broader world as a whole. Unfortunately rappers never learn this and instead even learn disdain for those 'other' poetic genres out there.
Heck sometimes slowing the BPM down can speed things up more then you would believe is possible.
The AC posted thusly:
;)
Excellent analysis. Speaking as a high-schooler when his first CD came out, most here on slashdot would be surprised how many "geeks" and how many in the top 5% of their high school class love, and I mean absolutely love his music. Maybe you have to be from a newer generation, but you can definitely read very, very far into not just what he says, but how he's saying it. In my AP English class, virtually every person in it concurred that Eminem, specifially the original "slim shasy" is a truly insightful commentary on society. Take that for what you will.
Imagine that, someone saying the Eminem is insightful...god, this is never going to get modded up
And it was replied as such:
Only considering insightful commentary if you are too damn stupid to have come across those ideas yourself before. Staring out a window for a few hours will net you more creative insight on the human condition then any of his cds will.
Hmm, was your high school middle class by any chance? That would defintly explain it, the middle class is not exactly known for their depth of thought into matters of human existence (well, except for when it serves them, even then they as a whole tend to consider stating the obvious to be insightful.)
Strip away the personalty of any entertainer, and you're left with a "B-rate" level instance of that form of entertainment.
:) And then of course when you get even more complex then that. . . .
.... system I have done around 6 pages max so far) it tends to get, as I said, rather tiresome and I just gave up and went to free verse, which I do believe is rather cheating, but hey, it is tons easier. :)
:P
May I suggest trying listening to art something instead of entertainment? Worlds of difference.
"I don't speak/I float in the air trapped in a sheet/I'm not a real person/I'm a ghost trapped in the beat", then I will support him as an artist.
Juvenile. The level of deep thought that goes into such ramblings is pathetic, I put out crap like that when I am halfassed asleep, and treat it as such, straight into the garbage can. That is not significant or worldly or enlightening at all, and it disgusts me that people would treat such simple minded thoughts as being original. Anybody who has spend the ass end bit of a second pondering the meaning of life has come to far deeper conclusions then that.
And anybody who hasn't spent that much time on the question shouldn't be commenting on what is or is not art.
Every single person I know who enjoys hip-hop at least respects Eminem rhyming ability, if they don't like his content.
So he can rhyme, congrats. Big deal. That DOES NOT make him a musician. Hell I used to do insanely complex rhymes just for the hell of it, gave it up after awhile, got boring. I mean sure A/B/C/A B/C/D/B C/D/E/C D/E/F/D etc is fun for awhile, but it gets rather tiresome fast.
::shudders:: 4+ syllable rhymes suck sooo much. Heh. Didn't help that I limited myself to never rhyming with the same word more then once in a poem.
Annyways. After a few pages of that (of the A/B/C/A B/C/D/B
But yah, rhyming isn't music. It is rhyming. NEXT.
I will also respond in advance to your ad hominem attacks against my friends by saying that the majority are college graduates, from English and Poli Sci majors, to Comp Sci (like myself) and Engineering graduates. By your own definition (at least in my social circle of approximately 100 people who like rap/hip-hop), Eminem is a musician.
While I cannot speak for the other person;
college doesn't make you smart;
It just certifies that you can bubble in answer sheets and properly regurgitate answers on tests. Congrats.
I used to think that there where Genre's of music, then I learned that if it is real music it doesn't matter what genre it comes from;
Beauty is beauty. My current litmus test is to listen to a song for ~2 months straight. If I hear deeper things in it with each passing listen, then it is truly beautiful.
Of course if I cannot stand to listen to it for two months straight. . . . ^_^
Eminem freestyles constantly. He got second place in 1997's Rap Olympics, devoted to freestyling (well before he was backed by Dre). He has also been on The Wake Up Show (a radio show devoted to lyricists, very well respected in the underground hip-hop community) countless times, again before he was ever backed by Dre or on a label.
.
.
Wow he can rhyme fast and add some sort of a beat to it.
If you add a subjective scale to any human performed action you can claim that it requires skill of some kind, and indeed you can even set criteria that says "performing such and such action in such and such way proves that you have such and such skill level."
It does not make it art though, it just makes it a self gratifying genre of back patting competitions.
If you want to argue that he's a sell-out, go for it.
I would, but he has so little to sell out. Definitely no artistic integrity.
If you want to argue that he's not a real musician because he doesn't play an instrument, go for it.
Actually I would rather prefer to aim for "has no musical TALENT" myself. . .
talent as a rapper? Sure. Talent as a musician? No way.
(He did do most of the production on his new album, but in the hip-hop world that rarely means actually touching an instrument).
So uh, the sum of his 'musical' knowledge basically amounts to:
Knowing the basics of how beats and rhythm works
Knowing how to use a rhyming dictionary.
Yah, uh, great. Heh. Real talent there folks. . .
Pardon me, I have to stop before my eyes roll out of my head.
As to your second point, many musicians have, as you so callously put it, "just held a microphone on stage". Are opera singers musicians? Are gospel singers musicans?
One key difference;
they can sing.
eminem can talk fast and add some sort of a beat to it.
Con-friggin-graduations. Shit. That is the LOWEST FRIGGIN DENOMINATOR of vocal control.
Sure he may be good at it, but fuck, you ain't gonna call the guy who plays the cowbell a grandmaster, no matter how well he plays it.
One more thing, I can't see a reason why what Eminem wears has anything to do with his value as a musician. Christ, John Lennon was running around naked on camera, with a naked woman no less. [Flamers please note my sarcasm].
That he sells music off of his bad boy attitude has a lot to do with it. If he cannot sell music off of solely his MUSICAL talents then well hell, why the heck should I listen to it at all? I want music, not some bad attitude that comes along with the music.
Finally, if you would like to dismiss Eminem out-of-hand for the content of his songs, then pass Go and collect $200.
A true artist needs not use shockvalue to make something beautiful. Or horrific. After a certain point horror because beautiful as well, on an artistic level.
eminem couldn't sing (hell he can't sing at all) about daisies and make it sound nice. A true musician can.
It's very easy to dismiss artists that put society's collective taboos and psychoses on display.
Actually he just kinda pulls them out of his ass and waves them all around. To put them on display would mean setting up a proper display case and all, (metaphorically of course) and eminem does not have enough talent to do that.
Personally, I believe that one can experience a sort of catharsis from albums such as this one, if only when you realize that your life is so much better than the nightmarish hell that Slim Shady/Eminem/Marshall Mathers seems to inhabit.
Yah how nice, you feel better about yourself because some dickhead whitetrash boy has a shitty life?
Hell is that was passes for empathy in society these days? Pathetic.
I have nice long lith fingers. :)
:)
well at least I did, heh, darn computer keyboards. ^_^
Still long and relativly lith though. My Piano teacher is continuasly amazed at how darn long my fingers are.
Damnit, it is right between just right and a tad wee bit to small.
:)
.
:) )
Since when the heck did midgets become the number one player of console games? Yeesh.
Now the one fault that I _DO_ have with the X-Box controller (and all of the other next gen console system controllers for that matter) is how few buttons the player can access at once.
I remember on the SNES controller that you could push any of 4 out of 6 buttons, not half bad. On the N64 controller it was (uh, 1,2,3,4,5,6) out of 8 buttons at once. Kick ass.
On the X-Box it is like 3 or 4 out of how ever many. Yah I know the main analog joystick also presses down, but it is SOO awful that you likely change the joysticks heading at the same time. NOT a good thing, sorry, doesn't count. Not to mention how fricking dinky some of those buttons are, yeesh. Talk about all pad and no buttons!
The PS2 has the same problem that the PS1 did, dinky ass controller, makes me feel like I am using a Pocket Gameboy to control my Console with. Ick. Cramped as hell.
The original N64 controller SEEMED like it was a pain in the ass, and indeed I got an alternate controller and used it for quite some time, but after awhile I was forced to go back to the original pack-in controller and I then realized how kick-ass it was. Yah!
The GameCube has a similar problem to the X-Box, not nearly enough buttons can be pushed at once. But then again Lord Miyamoto says that he plans on designing games that require less buttons to play, so I am not going to complain too much about that one. If the entire console is designed for fewer buttons then OK, but the other consoles out there seem dedicated to using all of the buttons on the control pad but just bunching them up in remote clusters around a pad and making the whole entire thing horribly unergonomic. Yuck.
On the plus side, 40 key gamepads will be quite nice. When I was well into playing Half-Life (since given it up, CS is so painfully slow compared to the frantic strategic action of HLDM) I had at least 20 keys bound on my keyboard and a nine button mouse. . .
;D
(I still have my two original NES advantage joysticks, yes, two of them. Now THOSE where some well built controllers!
Hell it isn't even that so much as the sheer number of dependencies.
.
Of the 2GB standard install (or 1.5GB, depending on which version of XP you have), you can remove MAYBE 500Megs of that.
Oh joy. . .
Of a standard Linux/BSD install all but a few MEGABYTES can be removed and you will still have yourself a stable OS.
If you just want a server machine and not a lot of crud, why even go for the GUI? Hell just one more thing to break and take up resources. Even if it is not very many resources, they are still MINE damnit, and I would like the option to have them back.
This is why I refuse to go from 2K to XP, XP is basicaly 2K with a few kernal tweaks to make users think that it is not bloated, and then 500Megs of blue curvy CRAP that is installed along side everything else.
Yes I can DISABLE the blue curvy crap but it will still be there, and that is what upsets me. That MS sees fit to install blue curvy crap that I do not want nor need.
Actualy the entire WinNT line has tons of extra applications installed, it is just that hardly any of them are documented. . . . Very few productivity apps though.
How exactly are these real names supposed to be used?
Does ANYBODY actualy have one?
I use IE every day, have for 3 or so years now, err;
They are integrated into IE? Really? Heh.
Could've fooled me. . . .
Therefore I am unsurprised that "techies" (i.e. a bunch of young, rich, white males)
.
I swear, even if you ARE a troll;
The next time that SOME ASSHOLE CALLS ME RICH/MIDDLE CLASS. . .
DAMNIT
pisses me off.
And only 1/3rd caucasion, yeesh.
POOR MINORITY MALE THANK YOU OH SO VERY MUCH.
/:D