Its a bit more popular than it is here, but not by much
Spoken like somebody who obviously never set foot in Akihabara.
I guaran-damn-tee you there is NOPLACE in America even a little bit like it.
For that matter, the single biggest billboard I saw in all of Shibuya was not for one of their famous fashion malls, or for an upcoming movie, or for beer. It was a massive multi-story sign on the side of a 5-story music store advertising the anime "Nana."
It's not "a bit" more popular over there. It WAAAAAAAY more popular over there.
The Bebop "Best Sessions" disks are simply a "best of" selection of episodes. No new features, and zero reason for somebody who already owns the entire series to buy them.
It exists for those who don't want to buy the whole series.
It's no different than the "Slayer Pack" releasess of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", which contain a small selection of episodes, while the box sets have every single episode.
Each release (even the expensive superultimategoldplatinum edition which despite its name and price tag will almost certainly NOT be the final release) has different extras. This is extremely annoying to everyone but otaku.
Actually, the majority of re-releases have fewer extras, or even more likely are re-pressings of the EXACT SAME DISKS.
The only people it could possibly bother are the Otaku who desperately want the soundtrack CD or whatever that happens to be bundled with it.
The rare exceptions are when a series is popular enough to be touched up and/or restored, such as the "Cowboy Bebob Remix" DVD's, which features a 5.1 re-mastering of the original soundtrack. (Like most shows from the 80s and 90s, Cowboy Bebop was originally broadcast in stereo, and the original DVD release was a simple pressing of the show as it aired.)
But if you already have the original series, odds are not going to buy a new copy of it. (Unless you are an Otaku freak.)
That is very much the exception, not the rule. The thin-pack of "Chrono Crusade" you see at Best Buy right now is the exact same 6 disks they were doling out one at a time last year, just bundled in a smaller package and sold for less.
Speaking of Otaku Freaks, I am in the process of buying the Cowboy Bebop Remix disks, in spite of owning the original.
I mailed all my original disks to a soldier stationed in Iraq. Portable DVD players are huge with those guys, and the love getting stuff to watch sent to them from the States. Since he can only watch it in stereo on his laptop and/or portable player, and he and his buddies will probably destroy the disks long before coming home due to all the sand down there, it made a perfect gift.
Interestingly, it's more popular in the North America than it was in Japan. From what I recall, Martian Successor Nadesico beat it into the ground in Japan in terms of popularity, back when they were directly competing with each other.
That's not a reflection of how unpopular it was in Japan.
It's a reflection of how massively popular Nadesico was over there. (As well it deserved to be.)
Nadesico didn't catch on as much in the US for several reasons: 1. It was a HORRIBLE dub. 2. A lot of the funny word-play simply doesn't work in English. 3. It was chock full of pop-culture references that most Americans would not really get.
However, for somebody who grew up watching Star Blazers (the American dub of "Space Cruiser Yomato), and was already familiar with typical otaku fare such as harem comedies, I thought it was a brilliant series.
Both are great shows, but if Nadesico and Evangelion were in the same time-slot on TV, I would also probably chose the show which DOESN'T make you want to slit your wrists open.
So I totally understand why Nadesico was the bigger hit over there.
But you're crazy if you don't think Evangelion made an impact. Look at any of several series which followed (the most obvious example being RahXephon) and it's pretty clear than Evangelion completely changed the way Japanese animators look at "mecha" shows.
I don't think you were really meant to like Shinji.
The unifying feature of all the Eva pilots was that they were neglected and/or abandoned children.
The unifying feature of the entire cast was that they were all completely disfunctional.
I mostly didn't care for Death and Rebirth, but the hospital scene when Shinji visits the unconscious Asuka has got to be one of the most creepy and disturbing moments I've ever seen in a motion picture. "Requiem for a Dream" was a light-hearted romp compared to that scene.
Put me in the camp which thought the original talky-talky ending was awesome, and the series managed to say everything it had to say in 26 episodes. The various "alternate" endings are redundant.
I never buy anime because I hate how there is never a single "definitive" edition -- something with all the extras of the all the previous editions.
Kindly name two examples other than Evangelion.
There is almost ALWAYS one, and only one, version of an anime TV series. What might be confusing you is that there are sometimes completely different programs based on the same story.
For example, there is a new TV series right now called "Ah, My Goddess", which is a completely different production from an earlier series (and an earlier OAV) of the same name. Each is a different show, just like how if you go to IMDB.COM, you can find about 200 different movies about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the best of which were probably "My Darling Clementine" and "Tombstone.")
D&D the vi of games? Good god, no. vi is lightweight, fast, and easy to use, once you get the hang of it
So is D&D, as long as you stop buying books once you have the Core Rules.
The biggest problem d20 has is that everybody levels too fast, which makes it very video-gamey.
That's solved easilly enough: Double the requires XP, then subtract 1000.
Now, instead of needing 1000, 2000, 5000, 9000, and 14000 to go up the first few levels, you need 1000, 3000, 9000, 17000, and 27000.
The second-biggest problem is that some gamers don't like the traditional "class" system. That's also easy to fix: Turn most class features into feats, and set requirements according to how difficult you think they should be to acquire. Most of the monk abilities are already available as combat feats, so you can use those as a model for how to transfer others.
The only people I've ever meet who roleplay but don't play non-TSR systems are people who *just barely* managed to get the hang of d20, and don't want to take the time to learn something else.
And why should they? Once you learn either d20 or GURPS, you can role-play in pretty much any genre or setting you like, limited only by the imagination of the GM and the players.
That's why Call of Cthulu released a d20 book. Their original system was crap, and it made a lot more sense to adapt it to a system people are familiar with than to re-invent the wheel.
Yes, there are systems out there which make combat more realistic. There are also systems out there which make it more simple. But a good GM can tweak ANY rule set to work the way they want it to work.
To shun d20 merely because it's less than perfect and far-and-away the most popular with "n00bs" most certainly does make you a snob.
There are few things worse than a game-system snob.
I've had fun playing one of the worst game systems (Doctor Who) designed by one of the worst game companies (FASA) on the entire planet.
I've had fun playing RPG's with no rulebooks at all. Just a DM willing to wing it.
If the game system is the most important thing to you, then I would suggest you are doing it wrong.
I agree that D&D is not perfect, but I wouldn't call it the "Budweiser" of games. I'd call it the "vi" of games. It might not be your favorite tool, but you can find it on every *nix server you log in to. Likewise, d20 may not be as well-designed as several others out there, but you can count on finding players who know how to play it.
I'm currently playing in a GURPS campaign, and have found it to have become (as of version 4) just as bad as, if not worse than, D&D 3.5. We're still having fun with it, though.
The point is not that Kerry went negative and Bush didn't. That's obviously not true. Both candidates savagely maligned each other for months.
The point is that, in addition to the usual mudslinging, Bush had a few bullet points to present to potential supporters as reasons to vote for him.
The only compelling reason Kerry had to offer to his potential supporters was "the guy in office now is terrible and we've got to get rid of him. Vote for me, the Lesser Of Two Evils!"
Now, if Kerry had gotten off all that "I was in 'Nam, y'know!" bullshit that nobody really cares about before going in to the Democratic primary, and instead trotted out a trail of proud accomplishments from the thirty years of his life AFTER the war, maybe it would have been enough to get a couple ten-thousand more votes in Ohio, and he would be President now.
It's two years after the election, and most Americans still know almost nothing about John Kerry except:
1. He was a swift-boat pilot in Nam. 2. He went on TV right after the war and called his fellow soldiers war criminals. 3. He voted for the $87 Billion... BEFORE he voted against it. 4. He's a crappy snowboarder who lashes out at his own security detail.
He has a lot more going for him than that, but nobody ever found out about it, because his handlers were telling him to keep hammering on the War and the tax cuts because that seemed like the sure way to capture this groundswell of anti-Bush energy which they thought Howard Dean had discovered.
It should have crossed their minds at some point that Kerry probably defeated Dean in the primary for a reason... that reason being that the Deaniacs were not nearly as big of a voting block as people thought.
You win a general election by keeping your base energized while reaching out to moderates. Bush managed to keep his base whipped up with ridiculous talk about anti-gay marriage amendments, while getting cross-over Democrats like Zell to help define Bush as the better man to lead the fight against terrorism.
Kerry, on the other hand alienated moderates by failing to outline any clear economic strategy and/or war strategy beyond "the tax cuts were a mistake" (without committing to rolling them back), and "invading Iraq was a mistake" (without making any promise to bring the troops home any faster). Meanwhile, the left-wing base didn't really like him because, up until it began to seem to suit his purposes, he was very pro-invasion. They wanted Dean or Kucinich, and instead they got somebody who voted for going in to Iraq.
Clinton would sometimes go negative on Dole and Bush the Elder, but he also had a clear platform. He never actually delivered the "middle class tax cut" he promised in each election, but the simple fact that he seemed to have an actual plan, an actual collection of ideas, was enough for people to have some small modicum of confidence in his ability to run the White House.
Also, Clinton didn't run away from his record, or his past mistakes. Everybody remembered his embarrassing "and in closing" moment at the '88 convention, and he wisely chose to laugh right along with us. People think we want perfection from our presidents, but the truth is that humanity and humility sells a lot better. Reagan, Clinton, and Bush the Younger learned that lesson and became two-term presidents. People like Mondale, Dole, Gore, Kerry... they were clearly listening to bad advice, or none at all.
By "this thread" I'm speaking specifically about the back-and-forth between your posts and mine for the last half-dozen messages or so, which have only been discussing why some people, who are interested in running a mail server as a means of spam control, would want port 25 open for a very legitimate reason.
Or have you lost track of who you are speaking to?
Yet oddly, you got several replies from people who clearly didn't catch it.
No matter how many geeks like a movie, anything starring Val Kilmer in the lead role that isn't called "The Doors" is an obscure film. A great film, yes, but obscure.
First, if you don't have a server (and there's no real point to it if port 25 is blocked, is there?), then you don't have "server-level" spam filters to control.
Uh. The whole point of this thread is that having a server is the reason why some people would like to have port 25 open.
I'm sorry - but I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for you not being able to operate a vanity-domain mail server because you're in a mood to this week at the expence of me having to do additional work on MY mailservers to compensate for the resulting spew from your ISP's other customers.
Wow. That's a whole heap of wrong speculation.
1. I'm not currently running a mail server. 2. If I did, I doubt it would be on a "vanity-domain." 3. My ISP doesn't block port 25. 4. There is no spew of spam coming from their other customers. 5. You really should calm down.
Because you have control over your server-level spam filters, rather than relying on your ISP. You can even "white-list" your incoming mail, if you are so inclined.
How is it a conspiracy when they were extremely open about pushing that use of "PC" into the public vernacular?
And even if it was a "conspiracy", how could any conspiracy theory about Microsoft Astroturfing ever be dismissed as "silly" when they have been caught red-handed doing exactly that sort of thing on many occasions?
It'd be as if Ford renamed the Mustang to the Oh My Gawd it's Ponies car.
Holy crap! I totally would want to buy that car!
In fact, you've got me thinking I should get some epoxy and glitter to put "OMG Ponies!" on the door panels of my Ford Crown Victoria. That would be the smex.
There aren't that many honest people who want to run their own SMTP servers, but most spammers would love to because it slips around spam blocking at the ISP level.
Unfortunately, if you have a spare old computer lying around (and frankly, who doesn't?), then having your own mail server is one of the best ways to prevent spam from reaching you.
So there's a very good reason for "honest people" to want port 25 open.
If YOU are a good enough artist to get by without a label, good luck to you. Seriously, go make an album. If you can find a way to make me aware of how good it is, and I like it, I'll gladly buy it.
But POP MUSIC has never been about great artists dazzling the world. Guys like Hendrix and... and... actually, I'm struggling to think of an artist in the same class as him who got that big mainly on talent. Anyway, as I was about to say, Jimi Hendrix was a notable exception. The more I think about it, the more I think he might be the only exception. You could certainly find a lot of guitar players in the late 70s who were as good as Edward Van Halen.
There always has been and always will be an alternative music scene, and occasionally somebody will emerge from it to become somewhat popular, but the cultural landscape is defined by big-label pop music, and until somebody thinks of a way for an artist to promote themselves as effectively as a massive corporate army can, that's how it will always be.
Yes, you can make a living showing off your songs on the Internet if you are very, very, very good.
But 15 year old girls in Japan know who Kelly Clarkston is. Who the fuck are you?
Record labels should be identifying talent, not just polishing turds. Since they're not doing their jobs, they don't deserve to be paid. Get out of the way and let me pay for artistic TALENT, not business acumen and "packaging".
If you think you can make more money by identifying talent than what is made by those in the turd-polishing busines, then by all means start your own record label and build an empire.
The fact is that most pop music is made by polishing turds. It's always been that way. Do you honestly think the Kingsmen were notably better folk singers than anybody else out there at the time? Do you think the Beatles went from being sub-literate blues guitar wanna-be close-harmony singers to full-orchestra art-rock geniuses almost overnight without George Martin and an army of faceless producers, musicians & engineers to hold their hands every step of the way?
For that matter, who do you think is responsible for Tony Sheridan's back-up band in a dinky little Hamburg club suddenly becoming the Biggest Band Ever? Did you know that Ringo didn't even play his own drums when they recorded their first hit? At the time, he couldn't play a clean drum-roll to save his life, and the PRODUCER felt that they really needed one in the track, so a session man was brought in. Next thing you know, this guy who was a last-minute replacement drummer for Pete Best on an obscure band that couldn't even hold down a steady gig in their home town is playing in the most popular band in the world.
He became a multi-billionare, and a knight. What happened to the producer who wisely swapped drummers on that track that launched their careers?
Like it or hate it, pop music is a collaborative effort, not the work of a single high-school drop-out with a guitar and a dream. It takes a lot of people to make it sound good, and a lot more people to get anybody to hear it, and a lot more people to get anybody to buy it. All those people need to get paid. It also means putting up a lot of money up front. Money which requires investors. Investors who will want a return on their investment.
So tell me again why it's "unfair" that Courtney Love didn't become a multi-millionaire right away off her first album.
I wasn't attempting to do either. I was merely pointing out the fact that the contribution most pop "artists" make to their albums is relatively small.
And this is nothing new. Most of the Motown acts of the 60's were random, good-looking kids who were no better singers than any of a dozen other members of their church choirs, singing songs they didn't write, backed up by instruments they didn't play.
Slashdot Mirror
Its a bit more popular than it is here, but not by much
Spoken like somebody who obviously never set foot in Akihabara.
I guaran-damn-tee you there is NOPLACE in America even a little bit like it.
For that matter, the single biggest billboard I saw in all of Shibuya was not for one of their famous fashion malls, or for an upcoming movie, or for beer. It was a massive multi-story sign on the side of a 5-story music store advertising the anime "Nana."
It's not "a bit" more popular over there. It WAAAAAAAY more popular over there.
The Bebop "Best Sessions" disks are simply a "best of" selection of episodes. No new features, and zero reason for somebody who already owns the entire series to buy them.
It exists for those who don't want to buy the whole series.
It's no different than the "Slayer Pack" releasess of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", which contain a small selection of episodes, while the box sets have every single episode.
You can't really call that a "different version."
Each release (even the expensive superultimategoldplatinum edition which despite its name and price tag will almost certainly NOT be the final release) has different extras. This is extremely annoying to everyone but otaku.
Actually, the majority of re-releases have fewer extras, or even more likely are re-pressings of the EXACT SAME DISKS.
The only people it could possibly bother are the Otaku who desperately want the soundtrack CD or whatever that happens to be bundled with it.
The rare exceptions are when a series is popular enough to be touched up and/or restored, such as the "Cowboy Bebob Remix" DVD's, which features a 5.1 re-mastering of the original soundtrack. (Like most shows from the 80s and 90s, Cowboy Bebop was originally broadcast in stereo, and the original DVD release was a simple pressing of the show as it aired.)
But if you already have the original series, odds are not going to buy a new copy of it. (Unless you are an Otaku freak.)
That is very much the exception, not the rule. The thin-pack of "Chrono Crusade" you see at Best Buy right now is the exact same 6 disks they were doling out one at a time last year, just bundled in a smaller package and sold for less.
Speaking of Otaku Freaks, I am in the process of buying the Cowboy Bebop Remix disks, in spite of owning the original.
I mailed all my original disks to a soldier stationed in Iraq. Portable DVD players are huge with those guys, and the love getting stuff to watch sent to them from the States. Since he can only watch it in stereo on his laptop and/or portable player, and he and his buddies will probably destroy the disks long before coming home due to all the sand down there, it made a perfect gift.
Lain was terrific, but ABe's best series was neither Lain nor TeXnolyze.
"Haibane Renmei" is a 13-part series which I feel is the best dramatic animation series ever made.
YMMV, obviously.
Interestingly, it's more popular in the North America than it was in Japan. From what I recall, Martian Successor Nadesico beat it into the ground in Japan in terms of popularity, back when they were directly competing with each other.
That's not a reflection of how unpopular it was in Japan.
It's a reflection of how massively popular Nadesico was over there. (As well it deserved to be.)
Nadesico didn't catch on as much in the US for several reasons:
1. It was a HORRIBLE dub.
2. A lot of the funny word-play simply doesn't work in English.
3. It was chock full of pop-culture references that most Americans would not really get.
However, for somebody who grew up watching Star Blazers (the American dub of "Space Cruiser Yomato), and was already familiar with typical otaku fare such as harem comedies, I thought it was a brilliant series.
Both are great shows, but if Nadesico and Evangelion were in the same time-slot on TV, I would also probably chose the show which DOESN'T make you want to slit your wrists open.
So I totally understand why Nadesico was the bigger hit over there.
But you're crazy if you don't think Evangelion made an impact. Look at any of several series which followed (the most obvious example being RahXephon) and it's pretty clear than Evangelion completely changed the way Japanese animators look at "mecha" shows.
I don't think you were really meant to like Shinji.
The unifying feature of all the Eva pilots was that they were neglected and/or abandoned children.
The unifying feature of the entire cast was that they were all completely disfunctional.
I mostly didn't care for Death and Rebirth, but the hospital scene when Shinji visits the unconscious Asuka has got to be one of the most creepy and disturbing moments I've ever seen in a motion picture. "Requiem for a Dream" was a light-hearted romp compared to that scene.
Put me in the camp which thought the original talky-talky ending was awesome, and the series managed to say everything it had to say in 26 episodes. The various "alternate" endings are redundant.
I never buy anime because I hate how there is never a single "definitive" edition -- something with all the extras of the all the previous editions.
Kindly name two examples other than Evangelion.
There is almost ALWAYS one, and only one, version of an anime TV series. What might be confusing you is that there are sometimes completely different programs based on the same story.
For example, there is a new TV series right now called "Ah, My Goddess", which is a completely different production from an earlier series (and an earlier OAV) of the same name. Each is a different show, just like how if you go to IMDB.COM, you can find about 200 different movies about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the best of which were probably "My Darling Clementine" and "Tombstone.")
D&D the vi of games? Good god, no. vi is lightweight, fast, and easy to use, once you get the hang of it
So is D&D, as long as you stop buying books once you have the Core Rules.
The biggest problem d20 has is that everybody levels too fast, which makes it very video-gamey.
That's solved easilly enough: Double the requires XP, then subtract 1000.
Now, instead of needing 1000, 2000, 5000, 9000, and 14000 to go up the first few levels, you need 1000, 3000, 9000, 17000, and 27000.
The second-biggest problem is that some gamers don't like the traditional "class" system. That's also easy to fix: Turn most class features into feats, and set requirements according to how difficult you think they should be to acquire. Most of the monk abilities are already available as combat feats, so you can use those as a model for how to transfer others.
You are mistaking laziness for snobbery.
The only people I've ever meet who roleplay but don't play non-TSR systems are people who *just barely* managed to get the hang of d20, and don't want to take the time to learn something else.
And why should they? Once you learn either d20 or GURPS, you can role-play in pretty much any genre or setting you like, limited only by the imagination of the GM and the players.
That's why Call of Cthulu released a d20 book. Their original system was crap, and it made a lot more sense to adapt it to a system people are familiar with than to re-invent the wheel.
Yes, there are systems out there which make combat more realistic. There are also systems out there which make it more simple. But a good GM can tweak ANY rule set to work the way they want it to work.
To shun d20 merely because it's less than perfect and far-and-away the most popular with "n00bs" most certainly does make you a snob.
You forgot Batmerchandise Forever.
I was doing my best to. Thanks for nothing.
There are few things worse than a game-system snob.
I've had fun playing one of the worst game systems (Doctor Who) designed by one of the worst game companies (FASA) on the entire planet.
I've had fun playing RPG's with no rulebooks at all. Just a DM willing to wing it.
If the game system is the most important thing to you, then I would suggest you are doing it wrong.
I agree that D&D is not perfect, but I wouldn't call it the "Budweiser" of games. I'd call it the "vi" of games. It might not be your favorite tool, but you can find it on every *nix server you log in to. Likewise, d20 may not be as well-designed as several others out there, but you can count on finding players who know how to play it.
I'm currently playing in a GURPS campaign, and have found it to have become (as of version 4) just as bad as, if not worse than, D&D 3.5. We're still having fun with it, though.
The point is not that Kerry went negative and Bush didn't. That's obviously not true. Both candidates savagely maligned each other for months.
The point is that, in addition to the usual mudslinging, Bush had a few bullet points to present to potential supporters as reasons to vote for him.
The only compelling reason Kerry had to offer to his potential supporters was "the guy in office now is terrible and we've got to get rid of him. Vote for me, the Lesser Of Two Evils!"
Now, if Kerry had gotten off all that "I was in 'Nam, y'know!" bullshit that nobody really cares about before going in to the Democratic primary, and instead trotted out a trail of proud accomplishments from the thirty years of his life AFTER the war, maybe it would have been enough to get a couple ten-thousand more votes in Ohio, and he would be President now.
It's two years after the election, and most Americans still know almost nothing about John Kerry except:
1. He was a swift-boat pilot in Nam.
2. He went on TV right after the war and called his fellow soldiers war criminals.
3. He voted for the $87 Billion... BEFORE he voted against it.
4. He's a crappy snowboarder who lashes out at his own security detail.
He has a lot more going for him than that, but nobody ever found out about it, because his handlers were telling him to keep hammering on the War and the tax cuts because that seemed like the sure way to capture this groundswell of anti-Bush energy which they thought Howard Dean had discovered.
It should have crossed their minds at some point that Kerry probably defeated Dean in the primary for a reason... that reason being that the Deaniacs were not nearly as big of a voting block as people thought.
You win a general election by keeping your base energized while reaching out to moderates. Bush managed to keep his base whipped up with ridiculous talk about anti-gay marriage amendments, while getting cross-over Democrats like Zell to help define Bush as the better man to lead the fight against terrorism.
Kerry, on the other hand alienated moderates by failing to outline any clear economic strategy and/or war strategy beyond "the tax cuts were a mistake" (without committing to rolling them back), and "invading Iraq was a mistake" (without making any promise to bring the troops home any faster). Meanwhile, the left-wing base didn't really like him because, up until it began to seem to suit his purposes, he was very pro-invasion. They wanted Dean or Kucinich, and instead they got somebody who voted for going in to Iraq.
Clinton would sometimes go negative on Dole and Bush the Elder, but he also had a clear platform. He never actually delivered the "middle class tax cut" he promised in each election, but the simple fact that he seemed to have an actual plan, an actual collection of ideas, was enough for people to have some small modicum of confidence in his ability to run the White House.
Also, Clinton didn't run away from his record, or his past mistakes. Everybody remembered his embarrassing "and in closing" moment at the '88 convention, and he wisely chose to laugh right along with us. People think we want perfection from our presidents, but the truth is that humanity and humility sells a lot better. Reagan, Clinton, and Bush the Younger learned that lesson and became two-term presidents. People like Mondale, Dole, Gore, Kerry... they were clearly listening to bad advice, or none at all.
By "this thread" I'm speaking specifically about the back-and-forth between your posts and mine for the last half-dozen messages or so, which have only been discussing why some people, who are interested in running a mail server as a means of spam control, would want port 25 open for a very legitimate reason.
Or have you lost track of who you are speaking to?
Yet oddly, you got several replies from people who clearly didn't catch it.
No matter how many geeks like a movie, anything starring Val Kilmer in the lead role that isn't called "The Doors" is an obscure film. A great film, yes, but obscure.
What enemies does the US have that target, or will in the near future target, US ground forces using satellites?
Enemies or likely future enemies who could probably do it within the next ten years, if not right away:
China
North Korea
Russia
France
Enemies or likely future enemies who could probably do it within the next ten years, if they get help from China, North Korea, Russia or France:
All of them
Now all we need is to put up a satellite with a large spinning mirror.
Mmmm... popcorn!
(See? Some of us actually got your Obscure Pop Culture reference!)
First, if you don't have a server (and there's no real point to it if port 25 is blocked, is there?), then you don't have "server-level" spam filters to control.
Uh. The whole point of this thread is that having a server is the reason why some people would like to have port 25 open.
I'm sorry - but I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for you not being able to operate a vanity-domain mail server because you're in a mood to this week at the expence of me having to do additional work on MY mailservers to compensate for the resulting spew from your ISP's other customers.
Wow. That's a whole heap of wrong speculation.
1. I'm not currently running a mail server.
2. If I did, I doubt it would be on a "vanity-domain."
3. My ISP doesn't block port 25.
4. There is no spew of spam coming from their other customers.
5. You really should calm down.
Because you have control over your server-level spam filters, rather than relying on your ISP. You can even "white-list" your incoming mail, if you are so inclined.
How is it a conspiracy when they were extremely open about pushing that use of "PC" into the public vernacular?
And even if it was a "conspiracy", how could any conspiracy theory about Microsoft Astroturfing ever be dismissed as "silly" when they have been caught red-handed doing exactly that sort of thing on many occasions?
It'd be as if Ford renamed the Mustang to the Oh My Gawd it's Ponies car.
Holy crap! I totally would want to buy that car!
In fact, you've got me thinking I should get some epoxy and glitter to put "OMG Ponies!" on the door panels of my Ford Crown Victoria. That would be the smex.
There aren't that many honest people who want to run their own SMTP servers, but most spammers would love to because it slips around spam blocking at the ISP level.
Unfortunately, if you have a spare old computer lying around (and frankly, who doesn't?), then having your own mail server is one of the best ways to prevent spam from reaching you.
So there's a very good reason for "honest people" to want port 25 open.
Blah blah blah Labels are obscolete blah blah blah Slashdot groupthink blah blah blah.
If YOU are a good enough artist to get by without a label, good luck to you. Seriously, go make an album. If you can find a way to make me aware of how good it is, and I like it, I'll gladly buy it.
But POP MUSIC has never been about great artists dazzling the world. Guys like Hendrix and... and... actually, I'm struggling to think of an artist in the same class as him who got that big mainly on talent. Anyway, as I was about to say, Jimi Hendrix was a notable exception. The more I think about it, the more I think he might be the only exception. You could certainly find a lot of guitar players in the late 70s who were as good as Edward Van Halen.
There always has been and always will be an alternative music scene, and occasionally somebody will emerge from it to become somewhat popular, but the cultural landscape is defined by big-label pop music, and until somebody thinks of a way for an artist to promote themselves as effectively as a massive corporate army can, that's how it will always be.
Yes, you can make a living showing off your songs on the Internet if you are very, very, very good.
But 15 year old girls in Japan know who Kelly Clarkston is. Who the fuck are you?
Record labels should be identifying talent, not just polishing turds. Since they're not doing their jobs, they don't deserve to be paid. Get out of the way and let me pay for artistic TALENT, not business acumen and "packaging".
If you think you can make more money by identifying talent than what is made by those in the turd-polishing busines, then by all means start your own record label and build an empire.
The fact is that most pop music is made by polishing turds. It's always been that way. Do you honestly think the Kingsmen were notably better folk singers than anybody else out there at the time? Do you think the Beatles went from being sub-literate blues guitar wanna-be close-harmony singers to full-orchestra art-rock geniuses almost overnight without George Martin and an army of faceless producers, musicians & engineers to hold their hands every step of the way?
For that matter, who do you think is responsible for Tony Sheridan's back-up band in a dinky little Hamburg club suddenly becoming the Biggest Band Ever? Did you know that Ringo didn't even play his own drums when they recorded their first hit? At the time, he couldn't play a clean drum-roll to save his life, and the PRODUCER felt that they really needed one in the track, so a session man was brought in. Next thing you know, this guy who was a last-minute replacement drummer for Pete Best on an obscure band that couldn't even hold down a steady gig in their home town is playing in the most popular band in the world.
He became a multi-billionare, and a knight. What happened to the producer who wisely swapped drummers on that track that launched their careers?
Like it or hate it, pop music is a collaborative effort, not the work of a single high-school drop-out with a guitar and a dream. It takes a lot of people to make it sound good, and a lot more people to get anybody to hear it, and a lot more people to get anybody to buy it. All those people need to get paid. It also means putting up a lot of money up front. Money which requires investors. Investors who will want a return on their investment.
So tell me again why it's "unfair" that Courtney Love didn't become a multi-millionaire right away off her first album.
I'm guessing this article was written by a non-native English speaker.
And edited by somebody with a third-grade education and no access to basic spell-check software.
I wasn't attempting to do either. I was merely pointing out the fact that the contribution most pop "artists" make to their albums is relatively small.
And this is nothing new. Most of the Motown acts of the 60's were random, good-looking kids who were no better singers than any of a dozen other members of their church choirs, singing songs they didn't write, backed up by instruments they didn't play.