. ..if they look around they are either at work or in the basement
Would you believe both?
. ..if they do that than what is next - wandering out of the basement!?!?
Dude, I just wandered back in. Why didn't someone tell me there were people out there? I had to like fucking interact and shit. I only managed to survive because I was in the woods most of the time.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a vlog about "community" and beg people to subscribe to it, despite the fact that I'm obviously just a camwhoring fucktard.
Well, at least you said post-9/11 U.S.A. and not post 9/11 World, so I'll give you half a Brownie point for that, but I'm still getting awfully sick of the idiotic phrase.
Just because it's cartoony doesn't mean it should be taken less seriously.
Taking it seriously does not mean acting like a school girl who has just had an ant crawl up her skirt.
Bomb threats have been happening all the time and they have always been taken seriously, they just don't mean the lock down of an entire city and hours of live national TV coverage, because they are taken seriously and professionally. i.e., investigated and dealt with in a manner to not cause a public panic, which might turn out to be pointless anyway.
Watch a frickin' suspense movie or something and see how it's supposed to be done.
The Boston authroities themselves during the incident stated that what they were doing was for public display, it was theater, not proper bomb threat response. It isn't Turner's fault that Boston authorities decided to stage a bit psycho-drama. They have take that responsibility themselves; not that they ever will.
If we took that attitude, next thing you know, you'd be getting shredded by a Hello Kitty full of C4 and nails.
Every automobile is a high explosive device. You have no security. Get used to the idea.
My ancestors helped found Boston and though I know it isn't my fault I would just like to say to everyone:
I came to this story to say "Plant more trees. Where's my 25 mil?," but first frickin' post got the answer. We can all go home now.
Or perhaps the money could be donated to Arun Ghandi's foundation, since it was his grandfather who said that India's future could be assured if every individual planted a single tree and cared for it to maturity. This would cost nothing. Trees grow on trees. I don't know how things are handled now, but back in the 50's and 60's planting a tree from seed was a part of every child's education, perhaps all we need do is take that process seriously. Back then the American Dustbowl was still fresh in the mind of many Americans, caused largely by the overharvesting of trees on the already arid great plains.
Remember Arbor Day? We actually used to observe that. An early settler in Nebraska relized that the way to transform the desert of the great plains (yes, the great plains are a desert, that's why basically only grass grows there and even Native Americans considered it an unlivable wasteland suitlable only for the summer buffalo hunt) into something permanantly settleable was simply to plant trees to break the scope of the wind, preventing the blowing away of tilled soil.
Later generations cut them down again. Ta Da! Instant Dustbowl the second there was as bit of a drought. So we planted more trees again. This story was taught and the trees planted at about the third grade.
Now we've cut them all down again for the benefit of the large farming conglomerates (it wastes time driving harvesters around trees). We never learn. If the irrigation ever fails, for any reason, it will happen again and people will die by the millions.
So how many trees could we plant for $25 mil? All of them. It doesn't take money, something we actually have a lot of, it takes caring about it, something which we're a bit short of.
Ok, let us, however, take the availability of Branson's money at face value and look at the question from a slightly different perspective. How many trees could you plant if you had an income of a couple mil a year to plant trees? Rather a lot I think. You might even spend some of your time inspiring other people to plant trees and multiply the effect.
A couple mil a year is what you would have as unearned income on 25 mil. You could carry eveything you needed on a bicycle, although you would have enough money to drive an Aston-Martin and spend every night in a four star hotel if you wished. That might be a bit bad for the PR though.
So, Branson, here's what you do, put the money in a trust and hire someone with the unearned income to become a modern Johnny Appleseed. I'm available. I'd be damned good at it. Although four star hotels actually give me the creeps (at least the American variety) I wouldn't mind the Aston-Martin.
Although I'd be perfectly willing to settle for a Bob Jackson or a Cinelli.
I didn't say anything about the UK, although I did imply a member of the Commonwealth. There are, however, many countries scattered around the world who have taken the British system as a model for government without even ever having been part of the Empire. They simply find it a system worth emulating. Who woulda thunk it? They often incorporate their own legal traditions into the framework though, some of which might be rather different than the British. Who woulda thunk that? It's uncivilized.
I've never heard of such a thing.
Have you read the Dom-Boke? "Modern" English law spans a period of more than a thousand years (My own post covered a period of slightly more than 300 years. You do understand that the "presumed guilty until proven innocent" Salem witch hunters were British, don't you?) and has changed much from time to time; and I used the word "still," implying a certain archaicness in the practice.
No, no, no. Please. After you have whacked me upside the head with a 2x4 I am laughing uproariously at your joke.
There has clearly been something gone wrong with my own sense of humor in understanding replies.
Been a bad night for me; I wasn't even supposed to be here tonight. I was supposed to be out saying hey to Utah Phillips, but the car du jour turned up undead; and now I'm sitting here in the wee hours because a rush job with a tomorrow deadline showed up when I wasn't even supposed to be here to get it.
And Utah is a lot more fun to hang around than work.
But this has *nothing* to do with whether guilt or innocence can be proven, formally.
You're both right to an extent. The people who founded our innocent until proven guilty system had in many cases themselves experienced the abuse of power the government/your neighbor could have by a presumption of guilt; by discovering the logical impossibility of proving their innocence. See the Salem Witch Trials which stayed fresh in the minds of Americans for generations, which are the gensis of the system.
The abuse of power derives from the fact that charges can be levied in which no evidence based defense is possible under a presumption of guilt. Like, say, that you are a witch. It is Habeas Corpus and the procedures of bail that protect against legally unjust incarceration, which existed even before the presumption of innocence (and there are many places with legal systems based on British common law that still hold to a presumption of liability in civil cases. That is why James Randi is now an American citizen).
However, "Guilty" and "Innocent" are both terms of legal presumption, not statements of actual fact. Nothing is "proven" per se. A judge/jury render a verdict. A legal finding. Which is legally binding. This is why in certain unusual cases you can have two people each serving time for being the sole perpetrator of a crime.
It's also why it's perfectly ok to know that O.J. did it. His innocence is legal, not factual.
Which means that Jobs' argument against licensing the DRM is bogus
Of course. It's good old fashioned Jobsian Reality Distortion Field; and always was. The author of the article has just proved that -- there is no Santa Claus.
A lot of us have to go through that phase; those that remain are refered to as "religious fanatics" or "Apple Fanbois."
If Apple deliberately set the bar low, then they fulfill their obligation and allow the counter-culture to flourish as much as the "official" party line.
Bingo!
Apple is doing the minimum necessary in order to be allowed to sell content. Microsoft is trying to do the maximum possible in order to sell the security system to the content owners.
Their markets are entirely different, so their products are entirely different.
Would you believe that Hotmail matters to my mom? Not that she reads Slashdot.
That's 'cause I won't tell her how to find me here. She's actually asked, but I evaded the question. The last thing I need is her reading the shit I post about her. It's a Brave New Family Relationships World.
. ..recognize a handful of manufacturers and have 80% of the PC marketplace. ..
If I weren't in the other 20% I wouldn't be using Windows or OSX to run the recording studio, but I understand that isn't a mainstream sort of thing to do.
You can pay $1300 for a mac...or you can spend $700 for a PC. Which do you THINK parents are going to buy? Parents aside, what do you think MOST people are going to go with.
Anecdotal observation says they'll go for an iBook. That's what I see something like 90% of the college kids hauling to the coffeeshops.
If Dell were able to sell a PC and offer the users the choice of OSX or Windows...I bet. ..
Apple would be plunged into driver hell. I've got two windows machines on the bench right now with sound cards that don't work. One with an Ethernet card that won't work and one with a serial port that's conflicting with the sound card. I'll get it all sorted, of course, but it will take some hours. I'm no Mac fanboy and there some things about OSX that really torque me off, but I'm still planning to build my small recording studio around a Mac mini, because when I plug the audio gear into the family shared iBook it really does all just work.
They are not special. Most bands DO make money at gigs.
Neither am I. So do I. That's rather my point.
But most of the bands that you go to a big hall/stadium to see, the "recording industry bands" do not; even though this is actually their only real avenue to do so. The newer bands are often surprised to find that after the first major tour as top billed act that they are deep in debt. Even estabished bands often do not make money. Zappa stopped touring because he couldn't afford it anymore, despite selling to sold out crowds of thousands; and even tens of thousands.
Stay small. Make your own recordings. Manage your own money and get to keep it.
And producing your own CDs has never been cheaper, there are recording studios all around and they don't cost too much for a couple of days' session.
You can now buy outright a recording deck that abolutely blows away the equipment that Sgt. Pepper was recorded on for . ..$1000 American. Yeah, that's just the start of what you need to spend to have your own small studio, but the principle scales.
The recording industry functions primarily as a financial institution these days. They lend the money to record and you not only have to pay them back (and it is their accountants who determine when this is), but have to pay them with your rights up front to get the loan.
You can buy all the gear/studio time you need for so little that most middle class people can finance an album with a simple, unsecured loan.
My underlying point is that is wrong to think of improving the music "industry" by proping up the recording industry. There are these people known as "musicians." People tend to forget that.
The recording industry does not any help other than to the grave. They are a twisted, evil and corrupt organization that has been ripping off musicians for over a century now and we do not need to put up with it anymore.
When you wish to fix music, fix the state of the musicians, not the lawyers. The musicians will record anyway, because that is what musicians these days do.
Slashdot Mirror
. . .if they look around they are either at work or in the basement
.if they do that than what is next - wandering out of the basement!?!?
Would you believe both?
. .
Dude, I just wandered back in. Why didn't someone tell me there were people out there? I had to like fucking interact and shit. I only managed to survive because I was in the woods most of the time.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a vlog about "community" and beg people to subscribe to it, despite the fact that I'm obviously just a camwhoring fucktard.
KFG
. . .most people here who think US law applies everywhere.
Ah, well, that's different. I know the US is haredly anywhere, now if we could only say the same thing about its military forces.
I'm 50% sure James Randi wasn't born then.
You should look up a recent photo.
KFG
Talk is cheap.
KFG
Windows Osborne 2.
KFG
But in a post-9/11 U.S.A.
Well, at least you said post-9/11 U.S.A. and not post 9/11 World, so I'll give you half a Brownie point for that, but I'm still getting awfully sick of the idiotic phrase.
Just because it's cartoony doesn't mean it should be taken less seriously.
Taking it seriously does not mean acting like a school girl who has just had an ant crawl up her skirt.
Bomb threats have been happening all the time and they have always been taken seriously, they just don't mean the lock down of an entire city and hours of live national TV coverage, because they are taken seriously and professionally. i.e., investigated and dealt with in a manner to not cause a public panic, which might turn out to be pointless anyway.
Watch a frickin' suspense movie or something and see how it's supposed to be done.
The Boston authroities themselves during the incident stated that what they were doing was for public display, it was theater, not proper bomb threat response. It isn't Turner's fault that Boston authorities decided to stage a bit psycho-drama. They have take that responsibility themselves; not that they ever will.
If we took that attitude, next thing you know, you'd be getting shredded by a Hello Kitty full of C4 and nails.
Every automobile is a high explosive device. You have no security. Get used to the idea.
My ancestors helped found Boston and though I know it isn't my fault I would just like to say to everyone:
I'm sorry.
KFG
I came to this story to say "Plant more trees. Where's my 25 mil?," but first frickin' post got the answer. We can all go home now.
Or perhaps the money could be donated to Arun Ghandi's foundation, since it was his grandfather who said that India's future could be assured if every individual planted a single tree and cared for it to maturity. This would cost nothing. Trees grow on trees. I don't know how things are handled now, but back in the 50's and 60's planting a tree from seed was a part of every child's education, perhaps all we need do is take that process seriously. Back then the American Dustbowl was still fresh in the mind of many Americans, caused largely by the overharvesting of trees on the already arid great plains.
Remember Arbor Day? We actually used to observe that. An early settler in Nebraska relized that the way to transform the desert of the great plains (yes, the great plains are a desert, that's why basically only grass grows there and even Native Americans considered it an unlivable wasteland suitlable only for the summer buffalo hunt) into something permanantly settleable was simply to plant trees to break the scope of the wind, preventing the blowing away of tilled soil.
Later generations cut them down again. Ta Da! Instant Dustbowl the second there was as bit of a drought. So we planted more trees again. This story was taught and the trees planted at about the third grade.
Now we've cut them all down again for the benefit of the large farming conglomerates (it wastes time driving harvesters around trees). We never learn. If the irrigation ever fails, for any reason, it will happen again and people will die by the millions.
So how many trees could we plant for $25 mil? All of them. It doesn't take money, something we actually have a lot of, it takes caring about it, something which we're a bit short of.
Ok, let us, however, take the availability of Branson's money at face value and look at the question from a slightly different perspective. How many trees could you plant if you had an income of a couple mil a year to plant trees? Rather a lot I think. You might even spend some of your time inspiring other people to plant trees and multiply the effect.
A couple mil a year is what you would have as unearned income on 25 mil. You could carry eveything you needed on a bicycle, although you would have enough money to drive an Aston-Martin and spend every night in a four star hotel if you wished. That might be a bit bad for the PR though.
So, Branson, here's what you do, put the money in a trust and hire someone with the unearned income to become a modern Johnny Appleseed. I'm available. I'd be damned good at it. Although four star hotels actually give me the creeps (at least the American variety) I wouldn't mind the Aston-Martin.
Although I'd be perfectly willing to settle for a Bob Jackson or a Cinelli.
KFG
Men, men, men, men
Men, men, men, men...
There's men above and men below
and men down in the galley
There's Butch and Spike and Buzz and Biff
and one guy we call Sally
One guy we call Sally
Men, men, men
We're a ship all filled with men
You'll never have to lift the seat
There's no one here but men
We're men and friends until the end
and none of us are sissies
At night we sleep in seperate beds
and blow each other kissies
Blow each other kissies
Men, men, men. We're a ship all filled with men
So throw your rubbers overboard there's no one here but men
- Martin Mull
KFG
In the UK . . .
I didn't say anything about the UK, although I did imply a member of the Commonwealth. There are, however, many countries scattered around the world who have taken the British system as a model for government without even ever having been part of the Empire. They simply find it a system worth emulating. Who woulda thunk it? They often incorporate their own legal traditions into the framework though, some of which might be rather different than the British. Who woulda thunk that? It's uncivilized.
I've never heard of such a thing.
Have you read the Dom-Boke? "Modern" English law spans a period of more than a thousand years (My own post covered a period of slightly more than 300 years. You do understand that the "presumed guilty until proven innocent" Salem witch hunters were British, don't you?) and has changed much from time to time; and I used the word "still," implying a certain archaicness in the practice.
KFG
. . .my sense of humor is broken tonight.
No, no, no. Please. After you have whacked me upside the head with a 2x4 I am laughing uproariously at your joke.
There has clearly been something gone wrong with my own sense of humor in understanding replies.
Been a bad night for me; I wasn't even supposed to be here tonight. I was supposed to be out saying hey to Utah Phillips, but the car du jour turned up undead; and now I'm sitting here in the wee hours because a rush job with a tomorrow deadline showed up when I wasn't even supposed to be here to get it.
And Utah is a lot more fun to hang around than work.
KFG
But this has *nothing* to do with whether guilt or innocence can be proven, formally.
You're both right to an extent. The people who founded our innocent until proven guilty system had in many cases themselves experienced the abuse of power the government/your neighbor could have by a presumption of guilt; by discovering the logical impossibility of proving their innocence. See the Salem Witch Trials which stayed fresh in the minds of Americans for generations, which are the gensis of the system.
The abuse of power derives from the fact that charges can be levied in which no evidence based defense is possible under a presumption of guilt. Like, say, that you are a witch. It is Habeas Corpus and the procedures of bail that protect against legally unjust incarceration, which existed even before the presumption of innocence (and there are many places with legal systems based on British common law that still hold to a presumption of liability in civil cases. That is why James Randi is now an American citizen).
However, "Guilty" and "Innocent" are both terms of legal presumption, not statements of actual fact. Nothing is "proven" per se. A judge/jury render a verdict. A legal finding. Which is legally binding. This is why in certain unusual cases you can have two people each serving time for being the sole perpetrator of a crime.
It's also why it's perfectly ok to know that O.J. did it. His innocence is legal, not factual.
KFG
Undead; something that actually is dead, but won't lie down.
Tepid; something that's to warm to call cold, but is otherwise noticably lacking in internal energy.
KFG
Which means that Jobs' argument against licensing the DRM is bogus
Of course. It's good old fashioned Jobsian Reality Distortion Field; and always was. The author of the article has just proved that -- there is no Santa Claus.
A lot of us have to go through that phase; those that remain are refered to as "religious fanatics" or "Apple Fanbois."
But I repeat myself.
KFG
My cat can type too, but she has a bit of a problem with spelling. My congratulations to you.
KFG
Real Life is for people who can't deal with being catheterized.
KFG
If Apple deliberately set the bar low, then they fulfill their obligation and allow the counter-culture to flourish as much as the "official" party line.
Bingo!
Apple is doing the minimum necessary in order to be allowed to sell content. Microsoft is trying to do the maximum possible in order to sell the security system to the content owners.
Their markets are entirely different, so their products are entirely different.
KFG
WTF? Where's the hydrogen coming from?
Mr. Fusion!
KFG
Would you believe that Hotmail matters to my mom? Not that she reads Slashdot.
That's 'cause I won't tell her how to find me here. She's actually asked, but I evaded the question. The last thing I need is her reading the shit I post about her. It's a Brave New Family Relationships World.
KFG
Being a bit goofey now and again matters.
KFG
I'm not sure you'd want to use these to replace the two stroke in an chainsaw.
'Cause that would just ruin slasher movies.
"And now you're going to die. Mwuahahahaha!" -- whir.
KFG
. . .why are we not decentralizing power sources.
Follow the money.
KFG
Would you believe Windows Undead Tepidmail?
KFG
. . .recognize a handful of manufacturers and have 80% of the PC marketplace. . .
If I weren't in the other 20% I wouldn't be using Windows or OSX to run the recording studio, but I understand that isn't a mainstream sort of thing to do.
On the other hand, it will be.
KFG
You can pay $1300 for a mac...or you can spend $700 for a PC. Which do you THINK parents are going to buy? Parents aside, what do you think MOST people are going to go with.
.
Anecdotal observation says they'll go for an iBook. That's what I see something like 90% of the college kids hauling to the coffeeshops.
If Dell were able to sell a PC and offer the users the choice of OSX or Windows...I bet. .
Apple would be plunged into driver hell. I've got two windows machines on the bench right now with sound cards that don't work. One with an Ethernet card that won't work and one with a serial port that's conflicting with the sound card. I'll get it all sorted, of course, but it will take some hours. I'm no Mac fanboy and there some things about OSX that really torque me off, but I'm still planning to build my small recording studio around a Mac mini, because when I plug the audio gear into the family shared iBook it really does all just work.
And that's worth a few bucks.
KFG
Bear in mind, however, that you can overprice something compared to the effort needed to live without the software.
Contractors can already perform this function with a ruler and a calculator.
KFG
They are not special. Most bands DO make money at gigs.
.$1000 American. Yeah, that's just the start of what you need to spend to have your own small studio, but the principle scales.
Neither am I. So do I. That's rather my point.
But most of the bands that you go to a big hall/stadium to see, the "recording industry bands" do not; even though this is actually their only real avenue to do so. The newer bands are often surprised to find that after the first major tour as top billed act that they are deep in debt. Even estabished bands often do not make money. Zappa stopped touring because he couldn't afford it anymore, despite selling to sold out crowds of thousands; and even tens of thousands.
Stay small. Make your own recordings. Manage your own money and get to keep it.
And producing your own CDs has never been cheaper, there are recording studios all around and they don't cost too much for a couple of days' session.
You can now buy outright a recording deck that abolutely blows away the equipment that Sgt. Pepper was recorded on for . .
The recording industry functions primarily as a financial institution these days. They lend the money to record and you not only have to pay them back (and it is their accountants who determine when this is), but have to pay them with your rights up front to get the loan.
You can buy all the gear/studio time you need for so little that most middle class people can finance an album with a simple, unsecured loan.
My underlying point is that is wrong to think of improving the music "industry" by proping up the recording industry. There are these people known as "musicians." People tend to forget that.
The recording industry does not any help other than to the grave. They are a twisted, evil and corrupt organization that has been ripping off musicians for over a century now and we do not need to put up with it anymore.
When you wish to fix music, fix the state of the musicians, not the lawyers. The musicians will record anyway, because that is what musicians these days do.
KFG