Since my grandmother in law grew up in Nazi-era Germany, I do have some knowledge of the anti-Semitic propaganda from that era.
I have never heard a lefty claim that the "rich" killed our savior. I've never heard a lefty claim that the "rich" were a genetic plague on the purity of our race.
And the arguments you're probably referring to (about the anti-jew and anti-rich arguments being the same - "they control the money to be a game that you and I can't win" etc.) had more to do with the stereotype of Jewish people being rich, than something that was innately Jewish. Those arguments then, were fundamentally rich - with the false assertion that the rich that were making the German people's lives miserable were the rich Jews. When it was really leftover economic malaise from the punative surrender conditions at the end of WWI.
meat may be pretty inefficient at delivering calories, but it's much more efficient at delivering protiens. The dirty little secret of Vegans is that there are some people who simply can't survive on veggies alone (for every example of a healthy, happy vegetarian, there's an example of a person who has tried, and was sick and miserable, and went back to eating meat) - surely, I'll buy the argument that we (Americans, in general) can survive, and even live happy, healthy, rewarding lives with far less meat than we consume today - I'll be willing to bet that if you took every man woman and child and put them on a strict vegan diet, 20% would simply die within a month.
You can estimate the "levelling off" all you want, but nobody yet knows what kinds of innovations or new resources will be discovered - or how that will impact population growth. We could reach a point where there are 24 billion, and a massive plague kill off half because they're starving and living in unsanitary conditions in too close-quarters. We'd level off at 12 billion, but I wouldn't call that comfortable.
That and any other scenario you can come up with all really come from the same place, and your doctor can put on some rubber gloves and show you that place with a flashlight.
The fact that the massively costly effort to airlift food to starving people in remote regions of Afghanistan was largely undermined by soldiers on BOTH sides (Taliban and NA) stealing the food underscores the point that - no matter how hard you try to help someone living in a lawless region, the only way you can ultimately help them is by giving them a stable and honest system of government. An effort which has largely failed in every place we've tried it. You can't GIVE someone the rule of law. They have to take it, and build it, and maintain it themselves.
The listed towing capacity of the Acura Integra (1995) is 350 lbs. Read your owner's manual. You may be able to actually tow more - but it's not safe, and you might actually blow up that spiffy LEV engine of yours. After paying for a rebuild, you might change your mind.
well, add to that the fact that on automatic, many cameras simply will not allow you to trip the shutter in low-light situations unless the flash is turned on. Most people use automatic cameras, and even if the camera has a way to let you override it, and even if the operator knows how to override it, it's usually not a simple task, UI wise, and likely takes more than a few seconds to set up, and most people aren't thinking that far ahead when they point their camera and press the button.
Face it, Photography is, when you get down to it, a highly technical practice, and you can automate it somewhat with smart cameras that can handle say 80% of the situations that 90% of people are likely to want to take pictures of. Fall outside those boundries, and you get situations like these.
Actually, keeping and PROPERLY maintaining an older car (with a small engine) is better for the environment than having the auto industry suck out the resources necessary to build a new car.
The problem is, the technology of engines has changed so much that it's now no longer necessary to keep our disposable cars in tune - they don't require maintenance for tens of thousands of miles (other than routine oil changes).
The OLD car technology, can be just as efficient and clean - as long as people take the effort to properly maintain them. My 30 year old VW engine gets 30 miles per gallon (better than any SUV I'm familliar with) - and passes smog testing (which is not required for a car that old, but if it were, it would pass) - because I adjust the valves, replace plugs and points, and keep the mixture set properly every 1000 miles. I do it myself. But that's too much to ask of most people these days, (and of course, we're all driven to buy new cars every 2 years, and simply MUST have 5 liter behemoths) so the old car technology would be driven, by most people, in a poorly tuned and polluting state. SO in that respect, the new technology is better - but that doesn't mean you have to replace your 5 year old car. Or especially your 2 year old car. And in 10 years, the car you buy today will still be in good running order, and should NOT need to be replaced. Where do you think the energy and materials come from to build every man woman and child on this planet a new car every two years?
I sometimes deal with VERY large text files, often hundreds of megs, a gig or more. Pretty much every win32 app on my 2k box chokes on them, even Word will hang trying to open them. I don't know if it's lack of memory or swap space or what.
But using Cygwin, I can open and manipulate these files with the same ease I can on a separate Linux or Solaris box, without having to wait for them to transfer over the network. Yes, it's a bit slow, I guess that's to be expected, but it's better than hanging my machine to the point of needing a reboot. About my only complaint is that it uses VIM instead of VI, but that's a totally different flamewar.
Now, I'm using an older version of Cygwin, so I don't have X-Window support, I've been using Exceed, and there's always been this one nasty bug with Exceed on my machine where whenever I put the Exceed app window into the background, or put it into the foreground, it forces Netscape (on the Win2k machine) to refresh all the windows it has open, which makes the machine totally bog down - I end up either waiting for 10 minutes for it to get it's head out of it's ass, or I reboot. I haven't gone back to using Exceed from my main machine since I switched to Mozilla for Win2k, so I'm thinking of going back and trying it again - but there was also another nasty bug which totally corrupted the video memory, and windows would just start randomly opening and closing and coming to the foreground, etc. That used to happen whether I ran Netscape or not. Ever since I gave up using Exceed on my main box, I've been using it on another Win2k machine where it was the only app running, and I just used a monitor switch to go over to it. Ah, the joys of an e250 with no frame-buffer, an incompetent IT department, and no time on my hands to chase down weird problems.
on MANY occasions, I've been very greatful that the rumors sites have warned me not to invest in certain Macs because upgrades were due soon. Especially with the high rate at which Apple is obsoleting older hardware lately, and the LOW rate at which Apple is advancing the platform.
In fact, back when I bought my Beige G3, I was FUCKED by Apple, because I did not hear the rumor that the rev A Beige was soon to be silently upgraded to rev B. There are many significant changes from rev A to rev B, which played a big part in the obsolescence of the machine down the road - not the least of which were to do with; the ability of the IDE bus to support slave drives (rev A doesn't) and "upgrade" from Rage II+ to Rage Pro graphics chip. Both of these issues, and some other minor changes to the ROM make it rather tricky to run OS X - well, not tricky, just a rather unsatisfying experience. Unless you've either spent $1000 upgrading the machine bit by bit over the years (as I have) - or bought a new machine.
As a person "investing" in a peice of computer hardware, which is a terrible enough investment as it is - it's good to be armed with as much information as possible - even if some of that information is incorrect or suspect.
Blaming a company's demise on the Osborne effect is stupid. When people refuse to buy a company's product, it's because that product is perceived as a poor value. That's the market, baby.
I've noticed an odd effect, roughly for the past two or three years, prior to watching a movie, I've been a little exited by the hype, then while watching the movie, I'm usually really digging it. Then, anywhere from a couple of hours to maybe a day later, I'm thinking about it and going, "man, that movie actually kinda sucked".
I mean, Episode I, despite Jar Jar, I was really exited and into it, because my 6 year old son was. But later, thinking about it, I couldn't find any really redeeming qualities to it except maybe a little satisfaction at knowing some of the earlier history of Star Wars. Same with Episode II. Damn, nearly every movie I've seen in the theaters for the past 2-3 years, except maybe Being John Malkovich.
That said; having seen MIIB yesterday - it sucked. It sucked really bad. I want my money back. I want my two hours back. Seems the only way Will Smith can get people to listen to his RAP anymore is to get in a movie and virally infect the soundtrack with it. The ONLY worthwhile bit was when he says his car originally had a black driver, but he kept getting pulled over. And I saw that in the trailer.
And I'm not going to see Minority Report, because I'm boycotting the Church of Scientology.
Depressingly, the next movie I'm looking forward to is LOTR II. At least I got to see the trailer. But even more, I'm looking forward to LOTR I's DVD with the extra hour of footage. Fuck this. Movies suck, work sucks, I'm the only person in the office - screw it I'm going to the beach.
It's written that way because that's the way it's verbally related: July fourth. June first. December twenty-fourth.
It makes sense when you say it that way - and to have it written as a "data field", sure it's confusing and ambiguous to say 7/4/2002. But to say, out loud, "four, July, 2002" is gramattically incorrect. Alternatively, you could say "fourth day of July" but it's not WRITTEN that way.
So it's really all because of a disconnect between the way it's phrased in an english sentance, and the way that makes sense to a scientifically-minded person, or computer. One way serves the purpose of your average person reading a date, and the other is a value which represents a point in time.
I mean, come on, sure, some of this stuff was written by the finest minds in the industry, who could easily have feched premium rates for their work, but chose not to for "the good of humanity" (or some other variation of the rationalization). Then there's the contributions from people who might not be able to hold down a job bussing tables at Denny's. Those are two extremes. You could easily compute an average cost from hours spent there.
But what could you sell the software for?
Nothing. It's market value is zero - because it's market is a Linux box, and we all know that nobody will pay for software on Linux, right?;)
no brainer. How the fuck do they prove "expectation of receipt"?
Hotline servers typically have a banner agreement that states that the server is for "backup purposes" - that sets the expectation level. Something similar for P2P-ware could very easily do the same - upon download of a song, a simple clickthrough agreement: "by downloading this song, you agree to be my friend - and in that capacity there is no obligation nor expectation that your receipt of freely shared copyrighted work obliges you to trade additional copyrighted work in return. It is understood that this download is a free gift from your friend, the operator of this server".
If you're reasonably intelligent, you'll learn the subject as you teach. I've been doing this as sort of a refresher course in Spanish. When their maths level gets to the point where it would start to challenge me, that's when I intend to take over. The learning materials I buy for them will help me as well.:)
Never mind Katz' insane ramblings - I'm not dissing Capitalism, but there IS a reason to dis greediness, or people who abuse the free system we all benefit from - for their personal gain, at others' expenses.
True, legitimate capitalism, free market economics, are a great theory, they even seem to work pretty well in practice. But there's NEVER been a civilization that survived without some kind of rules, and enforcement of those rules.
In the case of Enron, WorldCom, and others - those rules were broken. By people whom it is not unreasonable to assume are greedy. Now, define greedy as a word, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, its a GOOD thing to be greedy - to have a drive to want more. It's a BAD thing to let that drive supercede society's rules. It's a GOOD thing to love your God and be devoted to a moral code of your religion. It's a BAD thing to let that devotion supercede society's rules. (okay, that was my required comparison of the bad corporate executives with terrorists for today, thanks for reading).
So it's not capitalism, per se, that I think people are upset with - and I think basically, greed isn't what people are upset with, though it's not a very admirable quality as much so as "drive" or "dedication". What people are upset about is the system's inadequate rules, and the environment that's created that allows people to abuse the system in these blatantly unfair ways.
Now the staunchest capitalists will say "Whooey" about the word "unfair". Life isn't fair, has no place in defining policy, or guiding the market, or dictating whether it's the lion or the lamb who survives. On the other hand, if you let the lions get out of hand, they start to piss in their own beer.
Hence, look at all the people who are out of work, no retirement funds, no insurance, no future. Look at the totally fucked up stock market, because nobody trusts these fiends anymore. Throw "fair" or "unfair" out the window. If the point of capitalism is to loosen things up to the point where free enterprise can take over and lift us all up economically - then capitalism has failed, because we're not simply suffering from some mythical business cycle. We're suffering from the ill effects of corruption and wrongdoing.
Absolute freedom has not led to prosperity. It's led to economic despotism. And I daresay, it's likely going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I'm starting to think that maybe the best investment to make for a secure future is in guns, ammunition, canned food, and bottled water.
Seems that the sole voice of "page hits by controversey" on slashdot was traditionally Katz. Now he suddenly notices that this is what drives what passes for journalism these days?
Sure, you can find some notable exceptions to any broad generalization. As far as personal freedom issues go - the Republican party is not your friend.
I hate the Clear Channel monopoly and media cartels as much as the next guy. But come on, this childish whining about payola is really just nothing.
If a person owns a radio station, and a business wants the station to play a certain advertisement, then that business PAYS for the air time. So stop thinking of the music that radio plays as entertainment, and start thinking of them as advertisements - to incent you, the listener, to buy an album. The whole ratings, and popularity game is just a bullshit scam dreamed up by the record companies to facilitate promotion anyway. (Awards shows as well.)
And if you look at the "product" that the radio station is offering to you: ads, interspaced with more ads - then perhaps it's time you get a grip and realize that it's not a worthwhile product, and stop consuming it. The only real "product" they offer is air time - and the record companies and advertisers (same thing) pay for that airtime. Basically, you, as a listener, are offering your ears for free, for nothing, to the radio station. You are their FREE demographic resource. A pair of ears to sit and listen to ads. You're getting nothing out of this deal.
If you want to listen to the music you want to listen to - the radio is the last fucking place you should be. (and the internet, the first!). It's called, "let the market decide". The invisible hand can't jack you off if you're too stupid to figure out you're being scammed.
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Since my grandmother in law grew up in Nazi-era Germany, I do have some knowledge of the anti-Semitic propaganda from that era.
I have never heard a lefty claim that the "rich" killed our savior. I've never heard a lefty claim that the "rich" were a genetic plague on the purity of our race.
And the arguments you're probably referring to (about the anti-jew and anti-rich arguments being the same - "they control the money to be a game that you and I can't win" etc.) had more to do with the stereotype of Jewish people being rich, than something that was innately Jewish. Those arguments then, were fundamentally rich - with the false assertion that the rich that were making the German people's lives miserable were the rich Jews. When it was really leftover economic malaise from the punative surrender conditions at the end of WWI.
meat may be pretty inefficient at delivering calories, but it's much more efficient at delivering protiens. The dirty little secret of Vegans is that there are some people who simply can't survive on veggies alone (for every example of a healthy, happy vegetarian, there's an example of a person who has tried, and was sick and miserable, and went back to eating meat) - surely, I'll buy the argument that we (Americans, in general) can survive, and even live happy, healthy, rewarding lives with far less meat than we consume today - I'll be willing to bet that if you took every man woman and child and put them on a strict vegan diet, 20% would simply die within a month.
You can estimate the "levelling off" all you want, but nobody yet knows what kinds of innovations or new resources will be discovered - or how that will impact population growth. We could reach a point where there are 24 billion, and a massive plague kill off half because they're starving and living in unsanitary conditions in too close-quarters. We'd level off at 12 billion, but I wouldn't call that comfortable.
That and any other scenario you can come up with all really come from the same place, and your doctor can put on some rubber gloves and show you that place with a flashlight.
The fact that the massively costly effort to airlift food to starving people in remote regions of Afghanistan was largely undermined by soldiers on BOTH sides (Taliban and NA) stealing the food underscores the point that - no matter how hard you try to help someone living in a lawless region, the only way you can ultimately help them is by giving them a stable and honest system of government. An effort which has largely failed in every place we've tried it.
You can't GIVE someone the rule of law. They have to take it, and build it, and maintain it themselves.
The listed towing capacity of the Acura Integra (1995) is 350 lbs. Read your owner's manual. You may be able to actually tow more - but it's not safe, and you might actually blow up that spiffy LEV engine of yours. After paying for a rebuild, you might change your mind.
well, add to that the fact that on automatic, many cameras simply will not allow you to trip the shutter in low-light situations unless the flash is turned on. Most people use automatic cameras, and even if the camera has a way to let you override it, and even if the operator knows how to override it, it's usually not a simple task, UI wise, and likely takes more than a few seconds to set up, and most people aren't thinking that far ahead when they point their camera and press the button.
Face it, Photography is, when you get down to it, a highly technical practice, and you can automate it somewhat with smart cameras that can handle say 80% of the situations that 90% of people are likely to want to take pictures of. Fall outside those boundries, and you get situations like these.
Actually, keeping and PROPERLY maintaining an older car (with a small engine) is better for the environment than having the auto industry suck out the resources necessary to build a new car.
The problem is, the technology of engines has changed so much that it's now no longer necessary to keep our disposable cars in tune - they don't require maintenance for tens of thousands of miles (other than routine oil changes).
The OLD car technology, can be just as efficient and clean - as long as people take the effort to properly maintain them. My 30 year old VW engine gets 30 miles per gallon (better than any SUV I'm familliar with) - and passes smog testing (which is not required for a car that old, but if it were, it would pass) - because I adjust the valves, replace plugs and points, and keep the mixture set properly every 1000 miles. I do it myself. But that's too much to ask of most people these days, (and of course, we're all driven to buy new cars every 2 years, and simply MUST have 5 liter behemoths) so the old car technology would be driven, by most people, in a poorly tuned and polluting state. SO in that respect, the new technology is better - but that doesn't mean you have to replace your 5 year old car. Or especially your 2 year old car. And in 10 years, the car you buy today will still be in good running order, and should NOT need to be replaced. Where do you think the energy and materials come from to build every man woman and child on this planet a new car every two years?
I sometimes deal with VERY large text files, often hundreds of megs, a gig or more. Pretty much every win32 app on my 2k box chokes on them, even Word will hang trying to open them. I don't know if it's lack of memory or swap space or what.
But using Cygwin, I can open and manipulate these files with the same ease I can on a separate Linux or Solaris box, without having to wait for them to transfer over the network. Yes, it's a bit slow, I guess that's to be expected, but it's better than hanging my machine to the point of needing a reboot. About my only complaint is that it uses VIM instead of VI, but that's a totally different flamewar.
Now, I'm using an older version of Cygwin, so I don't have X-Window support, I've been using Exceed, and there's always been this one nasty bug with Exceed on my machine where whenever I put the Exceed app window into the background, or put it into the foreground, it forces Netscape (on the Win2k machine) to refresh all the windows it has open, which makes the machine totally bog down - I end up either waiting for 10 minutes for it to get it's head out of it's ass, or I reboot. I haven't gone back to using Exceed from my main machine since I switched to Mozilla for Win2k, so I'm thinking of going back and trying it again - but there was also another nasty bug which totally corrupted the video memory, and windows would just start randomly opening and closing and coming to the foreground, etc. That used to happen whether I ran Netscape or not. Ever since I gave up using Exceed on my main box, I've been using it on another Win2k machine where it was the only app running, and I just used a monitor switch to go over to it. Ah, the joys of an e250 with no frame-buffer, an incompetent IT department, and no time on my hands to chase down weird problems.
on MANY occasions, I've been very greatful that the rumors sites have warned me not to invest in certain Macs because upgrades were due soon. Especially with the high rate at which Apple is obsoleting older hardware lately, and the LOW rate at which Apple is advancing the platform.
In fact, back when I bought my Beige G3, I was FUCKED by Apple, because I did not hear the rumor that the rev A Beige was soon to be silently upgraded to rev B. There are many significant changes from rev A to rev B, which played a big part in the obsolescence of the machine down the road - not the least of which were to do with; the ability of the IDE bus to support slave drives (rev A doesn't) and "upgrade" from Rage II+ to Rage Pro graphics chip. Both of these issues, and some other minor changes to the ROM make it rather tricky to run OS X - well, not tricky, just a rather unsatisfying experience. Unless you've either spent $1000 upgrading the machine bit by bit over the years (as I have) - or bought a new machine.
As a person "investing" in a peice of computer hardware, which is a terrible enough investment as it is - it's good to be armed with as much information as possible - even if some of that information is incorrect or suspect.
Blaming a company's demise on the Osborne effect is stupid. When people refuse to buy a company's product, it's because that product is perceived as a poor value. That's the market, baby.
I've noticed an odd effect, roughly for the past two or three years, prior to watching a movie, I've been a little exited by the hype, then while watching the movie, I'm usually really digging it. Then, anywhere from a couple of hours to maybe a day later, I'm thinking about it and going, "man, that movie actually kinda sucked".
I mean, Episode I, despite Jar Jar, I was really exited and into it, because my 6 year old son was. But later, thinking about it, I couldn't find any really redeeming qualities to it except maybe a little satisfaction at knowing some of the earlier history of Star Wars.
Same with Episode II. Damn, nearly every movie I've seen in the theaters for the past 2-3 years, except maybe Being John Malkovich.
That said; having seen MIIB yesterday - it sucked. It sucked really bad. I want my money back. I want my two hours back. Seems the only way Will Smith can get people to listen to his RAP anymore is to get in a movie and virally infect the soundtrack with it. The ONLY worthwhile bit was when he says his car originally had a black driver, but he kept getting pulled over. And I saw that in the trailer.
And I'm not going to see Minority Report, because I'm boycotting the Church of Scientology.
Depressingly, the next movie I'm looking forward to is LOTR II. At least I got to see the trailer. But even more, I'm looking forward to LOTR I's DVD with the extra hour of footage.
Fuck this. Movies suck, work sucks, I'm the only person in the office - screw it I'm going to the beach.
bad enough when they start using units of length to measure beer. Anyone ever had a "yard of ale"?
It's written that way because that's the way it's verbally related:
July fourth. June first. December twenty-fourth.
It makes sense when you say it that way - and to have it written as a "data field", sure it's confusing and ambiguous to say 7/4/2002. But to say, out loud, "four, July, 2002" is gramattically incorrect. Alternatively, you could say "fourth day of July" but it's not WRITTEN that way.
So it's really all because of a disconnect between the way it's phrased in an english sentance, and the way that makes sense to a scientifically-minded person, or computer.
One way serves the purpose of your average person reading a date, and the other is a value which represents a point in time.
. . sounds like a Saturn V.
I mean, come on, sure, some of this stuff was written by the finest minds in the industry, who could easily have feched premium rates for their work, but chose not to for "the good of humanity" (or some other variation of the rationalization). Then there's the contributions from people who might not be able to hold down a job bussing tables at Denny's. Those are two extremes. You could easily compute an average cost from hours spent there.
;)
But what could you sell the software for?
Nothing. It's market value is zero - because it's market is a Linux box, and we all know that nobody will pay for software on Linux, right?
no brainer. How the fuck do they prove "expectation of receipt"?
Hotline servers typically have a banner agreement that states that the server is for "backup purposes" - that sets the expectation level. Something similar for P2P-ware could very easily do the same - upon download of a song, a simple clickthrough agreement:
"by downloading this song, you agree to be my friend - and in that capacity there is no obligation nor expectation that your receipt of freely shared copyrighted work obliges you to trade additional copyrighted work in return. It is understood that this download is a free gift from your friend, the operator of this server".
hm, and all this time, I thought their most profitable product was MSDN subscriptions.
If you're reasonably intelligent, you'll learn the subject as you teach. I've been doing this as sort of a refresher course in Spanish. When their maths level gets to the point where it would start to challenge me, that's when I intend to take over. The learning materials I buy for them will help me as well. :)
Never mind Katz' insane ramblings - I'm not dissing Capitalism, but there IS a reason to dis greediness, or people who abuse the free system we all benefit from - for their personal gain, at others' expenses.
True, legitimate capitalism, free market economics, are a great theory, they even seem to work pretty well in practice. But there's NEVER been a civilization that survived without some kind of rules, and enforcement of those rules.
In the case of Enron, WorldCom, and others - those rules were broken. By people whom it is not unreasonable to assume are greedy. Now, define greedy as a word, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, its a GOOD thing to be greedy - to have a drive to want more. It's a BAD thing to let that drive supercede society's rules. It's a GOOD thing to love your God and be devoted to a moral code of your religion. It's a BAD thing to let that devotion supercede society's rules. (okay, that was my required comparison of the bad corporate executives with terrorists for today, thanks for reading).
So it's not capitalism, per se, that I think people are upset with - and I think basically, greed isn't what people are upset with, though it's not a very admirable quality as much so as "drive" or "dedication". What people are upset about is the system's inadequate rules, and the environment that's created that allows people to abuse the system in these blatantly unfair ways.
Now the staunchest capitalists will say "Whooey" about the word "unfair". Life isn't fair, has no place in defining policy, or guiding the market, or dictating whether it's the lion or the lamb who survives.
On the other hand, if you let the lions get out of hand, they start to piss in their own beer.
Hence, look at all the people who are out of work, no retirement funds, no insurance, no future. Look at the totally fucked up stock market, because nobody trusts these fiends anymore. Throw "fair" or "unfair" out the window. If the point of capitalism is to loosen things up to the point where free enterprise can take over and lift us all up economically - then capitalism has failed, because we're not simply suffering from some mythical business cycle. We're suffering from the ill effects of corruption and wrongdoing.
Absolute freedom has not led to prosperity. It's led to economic despotism. And I daresay, it's likely going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I'm starting to think that maybe the best investment to make for a secure future is in guns, ammunition, canned food, and bottled water.
Hey, that's BS.
CNN did a 10 minute story last week about Playboy's "Girls of Enron".
(unfortunately, I'm not joking)
Seems that the sole voice of "page hits by controversey" on slashdot was traditionally Katz. Now he suddenly notices that this is what drives what passes for journalism these days?
Isn't the A330 dynamically unstable as well?
so - 480 LCD screens is calculated into the 19% weight savings?
Sure, you can find some notable exceptions to any broad generalization.
As far as personal freedom issues go - the Republican party is not your friend.
heh. I thought you said, "premium priced elections"
Oh quit your whining.
I hate the Clear Channel monopoly and media cartels as much as the next guy. But come on, this childish whining about payola is really just nothing.
If a person owns a radio station, and a business wants the station to play a certain advertisement, then that business PAYS for the air time. So stop thinking of the music that radio plays as entertainment, and start thinking of them as advertisements - to incent you, the listener, to buy an album. The whole ratings, and popularity game is just a bullshit scam dreamed up by the record companies to facilitate promotion anyway. (Awards shows as well.)
And if you look at the "product" that the radio station is offering to you: ads, interspaced with more ads - then perhaps it's time you get a grip and realize that it's not a worthwhile product, and stop consuming it. The only real "product" they offer is air time - and the record companies and advertisers (same thing) pay for that airtime. Basically, you, as a listener, are offering your ears for free, for nothing, to the radio station. You are their FREE demographic resource. A pair of ears to sit and listen to ads. You're getting nothing out of this deal.
If you want to listen to the music you want to listen to - the radio is the last fucking place you should be. (and the internet, the first!). It's called, "let the market decide". The invisible hand can't jack you off if you're too stupid to figure out you're being scammed.