You don't give a flying fuck about the artists you lying piece of shit. You, like very other heavy Napster user out there, don't care about artists or music. Yes, you read that right.
People who truly enjoy and appreciate music don't download mp3's. They buy their music, because there is much more to the whole concept of what recorded music is than just the sounds.
But you, and others like you, don't understand that. You have never understood that because until mp3's came along you didn't give a rat's ass about music, and you still don't. Prior to 1998 your entire music collection consisted of Beck's Mellow Gold and the first Us3 album because your friends said they were cool. But now that you've got 20G of mp3's we're all supposed to believe that you're some afficienado of music? Bullshit!
You take it becuase you can and because it's free. If it wasn't easy you wouldn't bother with music at all. In case you can't quite follow the logic there, that means that you don't care about music, and you certainly don't care about musicians.
There are thousands and thousands of people who have collected huge numbers of CD's, LP's, and even a few cassettes, of music that they love and appreciate. Are these people converting all their stuff to mp3 and ditching the physical versions? NO. Are they the typical demographic of mp3 users? NO. Do they still buy CD's and LP's? YES. Do they truly appreciate music and the artists that create it? YES. Do you? NO.
You're a leacherous fuck. You care for nothing but what is convenient and easy. If music were gone from your life you wouldn't miss it after 5 days, because if you truly loved music you would take the necessary steps to actually own some.
Children are children, and need to be treated as such. It is wrong to assume that a child is entitled to the same sorts of rights and privledges as you and I. In fact, it can be very dangerous to do so.
A child does not have the same refined understanding of the world, and important subleties are frequently lost on them. Not only is it not "wrong" to significantly restrict what our children have access and exposure to, it is extremely negligent to abdicate the responsibility for protecting them from situations they aren't prepared to deal with.
All these care-free hippy children who can do whatever they please is a very bad trend in today's society. Kids need stern discpline from their parents, not friendship! To treat your child as an equal is to guarantee that they will become dysfunctional adults with no real understanding of how to properly behave in society.
Now I may have no formal training in the classical "arts", but it has always been my understanding that true art is a reflection of the world in which we live. As such, the argument can easily be made that programming is the most relevant art form currently being practiced.
Painting and sculpture, especially all this "avant garde" stuff that consists of nothing more than a few splashes of paint on a canvas, don't have anything to do with the world people live in at all. These elitist dandies like to proclaim that they are doing something of great public good, but who sees this "art"? Who is affected by it?
Contrast this with your average programmer. My art work, while rarely seen directly, effects the lives of thousands of people a day. My Perl scripts for a large eCommerce site have a positive benefit to many people. And if you've ever read my code you know that it takes an artistic talent to make sense out of such apparent chaos;-)
Yes, modern day programmers are artists of the highest caliber. Our presence in this world is acutely felt by many, and our absence would be seriously detrimental to society. If you can not see the inherent beauty in a well-written algorithm then I am afraid you have no soul.
Uh, no Mr. Zealot, by my way of thinking there are a lot of half-wit people who think that anything containing the acronym GPL is by definition superior. By my way of thinking, anybody who believes that one single license is the right solution to every problem imaginable is an idiot. By my way of thinking, many advocates of the GPL as a business model are doomed to miserable failure because their way of thinking often lacks common sense.
One of the biggest problems with massively multiplayer games is the cheaters - those who write scripts and such that build up their characters while they sleep. This is a real problem now, and game companies have to keep constant vigil against those that would ruin the game with their exploits.
Now, if both the client and the server are GPL'ed it will be that much harder to crack down on the cheaters. The biggest hurdle these folks have right now is that they can't access the code directly and must play a constant game of cat 'n mouse with simple scripting tools.
If these people had direct access to source code and could custom-compile their own clients then it would become virtually impossible to prevent wide-spread cheating and exploits. Having an open standard will ruin the game for everybody, and thus nobody will bother playing after the rampant abuse becomes apparent..
The "cooler than heck" Linux Router Project can't get anything over 1.88M to boot, so it would seem they couldn't do much of anything with these other than use then as coasters.
Anybody who has used computers for any length of time at all knows that keyboard shortcuts are much faster than navigating a mouse up to click a button. That's why all decent software, and even crappy software made by MS, still has lots and lots of keyboard shortcuts available.
Clicky little buttons are for neophytes and grandmothers. Real computer users rarely touch the mouse. Do you actually take the time to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, then move the mouse carefully up to click the little disk icon? What a waste!
I'll take 'ESC:w ENTER' anyday, thank you.
As a long time Linux user, I strenuously object to this direction for my preferred OS. My Linux box is not a toy, and it shouldn't be used as such!
Linux has succeeded so well because of (until recently) the complete lack of frivolous chrome that bogged down other once-noble systems like DOS. I grudgingly accepted a simple window manager as an occassionally useful tool, but knew full well that some people would get totally carried away with it and force these resource-hog abominations on us like KDE, Gnome and TWM. Serious computing is done with the command line, OK?
It's only gone downhill since that first X server started working with Linux. I've never liked the idea of Wine to begin with. I mean, who the hell wants to run some windoze app on something like Linux? What the hell is the point in that? You know why people do it? Because they're too stupid to learn Emacs or Vi and they need they're precious Word!
Look, people, Linux is a serious tool for people doing serious work. If you can't figure out how to use it then stay the hell away from it and stop trying to corrupt it with your damn eye candy!
I can't believe people have polluted Linux with some Microso~ game API. The Linux we have all come to know and love is dying, and I think it is an absolute shame.
Just proves the need for gov't regulation
on
Kid Clicks For Sale
·
· Score: 4
I am continually shocked at our consumerist society, especially when it targets our poor, impressionable children. The corporate dominance of US culture must end at once. If selling traffic analysis of children's web viewing habits while at school isn't the last straw we need to motivate us into action then I fear our society of individual freedoms may be lost.
I know this is going to generate some flame, but the only way to stop these abuses of our fundamental rights to privacy is for the federal government to get involved. We need regulation of these cash-bloated demons who would sell their grandmother's dentures as long as there was a little gold in them. Freedom of speach does NOT mean freedom to market your damn products to my child while he or she is attending class!
It is truly sad that we have reached a point in history where it is now unavoidably necessary for us to encourage further governmental control of some of our communications mediums. But, there is simply no other way for us to throw off the yoke of our profit-driven, capitalist opressors.
American creators anticipate that their copyrights will serve as important sources of income for their children
the composer's daughter, remains extremely active in publishing and exploiting her father's music
Excuse me? I find the logic in this quote to be severly lacking. What right, exactly, is being upheld by allowing children to milk the creative efforts of their parents for profit long after their death? Who's interests are being served here?
This just proves to me that the only point of these copyright "laws" is to return our society to some sort of medieval caste system in which everything a person may hold as their own is determined by something as vaporous as "birthright". This benefits only a select few at the expense of many, and I find it reprehensible.
We are supposed to have moved beyond this sort of situation in which the undeserving yet well-born are given a leg up on everyone else. This is not fair and it is not equality. If government refuses to pass laws to promote equality amongst all peoples, then it becomes the duty of the right-thinking to violate government whim in direct opposition to their bourgeois policies.
I will continue my long crusade against all forms of copyright by utilizing Napster, Gnutella, Freenet, and any other source of revenue-harming protest I can.
From the website: Seventy years after a composer dies, the copyright on his work expires and anyone can copy it.
Am I the only one who thinks 70 years is a ridiculous amount of time for a dead person to hold onto a copyright? Hell, what is the purpose of musical copyright in the first place?
Music, like digital information, is nothing more than a specific arrangement of a finite number of symbols. The entire concept that someone can "own" a particular grouping of symbols is at best ludicrous.
What? And how is that a problem with me? The fact that I grew up is bad? Being more mature is bad? Developing a more refined sense of taste in my amusements is bad?
Atari, Lego's, Star Wars, Tolkien, anime...
What is it with you geeks and all this childish behavior? I swear, sometimes I think people on this site have the emotional IQ of a 6 year old. No wonder you people can't get dates. You're too busy playing with freaking toys.
And somebody else in this thread said that I got old...
What you're essentially saying is that you object to progress in video games. I respect the Atari for being first, but that certainly doesn't make it better. I also respect the skills of the first cave painters. Does that mean I should throw out my Mondrian prints? Are Peter Greenaway films intricate nonsense, and should we just keep watching Citizen Caine over and over again instead?
Computer games are an evolving form of expression that are destined to be the first true new art form of the 21st century. It's sad that you can't bring your level of understanding up to where it needs to be to appreciate the work of geniuses like John Carmack.
No, I think you are trying to make a point where there isn't one. Name 3 truly useful apps that require X and don't have equally useful alternatives that don't.
Got 'em? Took you awhile, didn't it? OK, now describe what sort of person will be wanting those applications and will also want a Mac in place of a more powerful and much cheaper PC.
I'll bet that was even harder, but you still came up with something, right? Well then, now the hardest part: Tell me, with a straight face, that there are more than a handful of these people in the world.
The world moves too quickly today to reasonably expect kids to spend that much time on something. In the time it takes to read LOTR you could watch many adaptations of good books instead. Strictly analog methods of sensory input like reading are just hopelesly out of date. Just because something is a good story doesn't mean that you should spend a huge chunk of your life absorbing it.
I never read Dune, but I saw the first movie. It was great because I got the whole plot about this guy who rides worms in about 2 hours. Now I know how it ends. I know the plot, so why would I bother watching some 6 hour version on SciFi or read the book? I want the information fast so I can move on to other things.
Also, why would I read Phillip K. Dick's lengthy novel when I can just rent Bladerunner? Same with Johnny Mnemonic. What's the point of plodding through Gibson's masturbatory prose when I can pop in the movie and watch it while paying bills or eating dinner?
Yeah, I know there have been other movie versions in the past, but this'll be the first one with a huge budget and the level of effects movie goers demand nowadays. The reason I'm so happy about this is that it will allow the youth of today the chance to experience this timeless story, a story they may otherwise not be aware of because kids don't read anymore.
I really don't have a problem with kids not reading so much as I have a problem with not enough good old books being brought to the silver screen. You can't expect a child of today to waste hours and hours of their life plodding through a book. It was great for me 20 years ago, but it can't compete with a PS2, nor should it have to. We have evolved.
So, since it is obvious that books are a dying form, I believe we need to strongly encourage Hollywood to make more of the timeless classics into a format more conducive to being received by children in the 21st century. We need Asimov's entire Foundation series set to celluloid (ok, bits), and other quality work like Piers Anthony and the Dragon Lance stuff. We also need the second half of both Watership Down and the Neverending Story to be finished.
Nothing says "High Fidelity" like Realistic. True audiophiles like myself are always shopping at The Shack to purchase the latest in equalizers and DSP devices to provide the warmth that you can't get anymore now that everything has gone digital. It is absolutely absurd to go out and buy some stripped down box for $1,500 when you can have all the latest in 5 channel simulated theatre and multiple hall settings.
I've got this friend who spent close to 2 G's on some Nadcomm thing that he was all proud of. I went over to his house to check the thing out and he pops the cover with a flourish. I take a look and... there isn't a damn thing in it! Couple tiny boards and like three freaking wires connecting it all together! Compare this to my Optimus reciever (yeah, it's a bit snooty for my tastes, too) which is so packed with electronic goodness that you couldn't squeeze a paper clip into the thing and only cost me $299!
Anyway, I hide my skepticism and tell him to fire it up. Guess what? He can't because the freakin' thing doesn't have an amplifier and the one he wants is out of stock! Two thousand dollars and it doesn't even fucking do anything!
So the next week I went back to The Shack and bought a project box, a coupla RCA plugs, some A/B toggles, and a dual gang pot. I throw it all together and show my friend my sweet contraption that does the same thing as his but not only cost less than $100, it doesn't even need to be plugged in! I figure he'd feel like a fool and take his box back for a refund, but he just looked at me and shook his head like I was some kind of moron. I just don't get it...
I've moved 1/2 a dozen times in the past 5 years, but I've always kept the same main email address. Still, however, it feels less "permanent" than any physical address I've ever had. The company could go out of business at any time for any of a wide variety of reasons.
For better or worse, in this country the USPS is fully responsible for your mail. As a quasi-governmental agency it will always be as strong as the nation itself. Baring significant political upheaval, I always know my mail will (usually) end up in the right place as long as I fill out the change of address forms. And if the government ever does go tits up, where my credit card statement goes will probably be one of my least worries.
Why can't we have something similar to the USPS for email? With this current hodge-podge of ISP's practicing collective anarchy, there are no real guarantees. When a huge company like Altavista shuts down the accounts it serves as a chilling wake-up call to the ephemerality of our most basic online communications.
I hate to advocate more governmental involvement of any sort, but honestly, my email account is by far more important to my life than my physical mail address. The nature of the capitalist market itself rules out the sort of stability that email requires, and only a government can really provide any sort of long-term guarantee that I believe we need.
Slashdot Mirror
Troll or not, it's how I genuinely feel.
If you have a valid counter-argument then please offer it, preferably while logged in. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
You don't give a flying fuck about the artists you lying piece of shit. You, like very other heavy Napster user out there, don't care about artists or music. Yes, you read that right.
People who truly enjoy and appreciate music don't download mp3's. They buy their music, because there is much more to the whole concept of what recorded music is than just the sounds.
But you, and others like you, don't understand that. You have never understood that because until mp3's came along you didn't give a rat's ass about music, and you still don't. Prior to 1998 your entire music collection consisted of Beck's Mellow Gold and the first Us3 album because your friends said they were cool. But now that you've got 20G of mp3's we're all supposed to believe that you're some afficienado of music? Bullshit!
You take it becuase you can and because it's free. If it wasn't easy you wouldn't bother with music at all. In case you can't quite follow the logic there, that means that you don't care about music, and you certainly don't care about musicians.
There are thousands and thousands of people who have collected huge numbers of CD's, LP's, and even a few cassettes, of music that they love and appreciate. Are these people converting all their stuff to mp3 and ditching the physical versions? NO. Are they the typical demographic of mp3 users? NO. Do they still buy CD's and LP's? YES. Do they truly appreciate music and the artists that create it? YES. Do you? NO.
You're a leacherous fuck. You care for nothing but what is convenient and easy. If music were gone from your life you wouldn't miss it after 5 days, because if you truly loved music you would take the necessary steps to actually own some.
Children are children, and need to be treated as such. It is wrong to assume that a child is entitled to the same sorts of rights and privledges as you and I. In fact, it can be very dangerous to do so.
A child does not have the same refined understanding of the world, and important subleties are frequently lost on them. Not only is it not "wrong" to significantly restrict what our children have access and exposure to, it is extremely negligent to abdicate the responsibility for protecting them from situations they aren't prepared to deal with.
All these care-free hippy children who can do whatever they please is a very bad trend in today's society. Kids need stern discpline from their parents, not friendship! To treat your child as an equal is to guarantee that they will become dysfunctional adults with no real understanding of how to properly behave in society.
Now I may have no formal training in the classical "arts", but it has always been my understanding that true art is a reflection of the world in which we live. As such, the argument can easily be made that programming is the most relevant art form currently being practiced.
Painting and sculpture, especially all this "avant garde" stuff that consists of nothing more than a few splashes of paint on a canvas, don't have anything to do with the world people live in at all. These elitist dandies like to proclaim that they are doing something of great public good, but who sees this "art"? Who is affected by it?
Contrast this with your average programmer. My art work, while rarely seen directly, effects the lives of thousands of people a day. My Perl scripts for a large eCommerce site have a positive benefit to many people. And if you've ever read my code you know that it takes an artistic talent to make sense out of such apparent chaos ;-)
Yes, modern day programmers are artists of the highest caliber. Our presence in this world is acutely felt by many, and our absence would be seriously detrimental to society. If you can not see the inherent beauty in a well-written algorithm then I am afraid you have no soul.
I've said this before and I'll say it again.
For 95% of valid Linux uses, a GUI is just useless eye candy.
Linux was not meant to be a desktop environment, because real computer users don't use desktop environments. That's not how serious computing is done.
It's for serving files and relaying mail. It's for doing complex scientific calculations. It's for contributing to SETI@home and other valid research.
It is not for writing letters to grandma. It is not for balancing your checkbook. It is not for playing games!
Stop using a tool like a toy, dammit!
Uh, no Mr. Zealot, by my way of thinking there are a lot of half-wit people who think that anything containing the acronym GPL is by definition superior. By my way of thinking, anybody who believes that one single license is the right solution to every problem imaginable is an idiot. By my way of thinking, many advocates of the GPL as a business model are doomed to miserable failure because their way of thinking often lacks common sense.
One of the biggest problems with massively multiplayer games is the cheaters - those who write scripts and such that build up their characters while they sleep. This is a real problem now, and game companies have to keep constant vigil against those that would ruin the game with their exploits.
Now, if both the client and the server are GPL'ed it will be that much harder to crack down on the cheaters. The biggest hurdle these folks have right now is that they can't access the code directly and must play a constant game of cat 'n mouse with simple scripting tools.
If these people had direct access to source code and could custom-compile their own clients then it would become virtually impossible to prevent wide-spread cheating and exploits. Having an open standard will ruin the game for everybody, and thus nobody will bother playing after the rampant abuse becomes apparent..
The "cooler than heck" Linux Router Project can't get anything over 1.88M to boot, so it would seem they couldn't do much of anything with these other than use then as coasters.
Floppies are dead. Move on. Nothing to see here.
Clicking that "U" is such a resource hog!
Anybody who has used computers for any length of time at all knows that keyboard shortcuts are much faster than navigating a mouse up to click a button. That's why all decent software, and even crappy software made by MS, still has lots and lots of keyboard shortcuts available.
Clicky little buttons are for neophytes and grandmothers. Real computer users rarely touch the mouse. Do you actually take the time to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, then move the mouse carefully up to click the little disk icon? What a waste! :w ENTER' anyday, thank you.
I'll take 'ESC
As a long time Linux user, I strenuously object to this direction for my preferred OS. My Linux box is not a toy, and it shouldn't be used as such!
Linux has succeeded so well because of (until recently) the complete lack of frivolous chrome that bogged down other once-noble systems like DOS. I grudgingly accepted a simple window manager as an occassionally useful tool, but knew full well that some people would get totally carried away with it and force these resource-hog abominations on us like KDE, Gnome and TWM. Serious computing is done with the command line, OK?
It's only gone downhill since that first X server started working with Linux. I've never liked the idea of Wine to begin with. I mean, who the hell wants to run some windoze app on something like Linux? What the hell is the point in that? You know why people do it? Because they're too stupid to learn Emacs or Vi and they need they're precious Word!
Look, people, Linux is a serious tool for people doing serious work. If you can't figure out how to use it then stay the hell away from it and stop trying to corrupt it with your damn eye candy!
I can't believe people have polluted Linux with some Microso~ game API. The Linux we have all come to know and love is dying, and I think it is an absolute shame.
I am continually shocked at our consumerist society, especially when it targets our poor, impressionable children. The corporate dominance of US culture must end at once. If selling traffic analysis of children's web viewing habits while at school isn't the last straw we need to motivate us into action then I fear our society of individual freedoms may be lost.
I know this is going to generate some flame, but the only way to stop these abuses of our fundamental rights to privacy is for the federal government to get involved. We need regulation of these cash-bloated demons who would sell their grandmother's dentures as long as there was a little gold in them. Freedom of speach does NOT mean freedom to market your damn products to my child while he or she is attending class!
It is truly sad that we have reached a point in history where it is now unavoidably necessary for us to encourage further governmental control of some of our communications mediums. But, there is simply no other way for us to throw off the yoke of our profit-driven, capitalist opressors.
American creators anticipate that their copyrights will serve as important sources of income for their children
the composer's daughter, remains extremely active in publishing and exploiting her father's music
Excuse me? I find the logic in this quote to be severly lacking. What right, exactly, is being upheld by allowing children to milk the creative efforts of their parents for profit long after their death? Who's interests are being served here?
This just proves to me that the only point of these copyright "laws" is to return our society to some sort of medieval caste system in which everything a person may hold as their own is determined by something as vaporous as "birthright". This benefits only a select few at the expense of many, and I find it reprehensible.
We are supposed to have moved beyond this sort of situation in which the undeserving yet well-born are given a leg up on everyone else. This is not fair and it is not equality. If government refuses to pass laws to promote equality amongst all peoples, then it becomes the duty of the right-thinking to violate government whim in direct opposition to their bourgeois policies.
I will continue my long crusade against all forms of copyright by utilizing Napster, Gnutella, Freenet, and any other source of revenue-harming protest I can.
From the website:
Seventy years after a composer dies, the copyright on his work expires and anyone can copy it.
Am I the only one who thinks 70 years is a ridiculous amount of time for a dead person to hold onto a copyright? Hell, what is the purpose of musical copyright in the first place?
Music, like digital information, is nothing more than a specific arrangement of a finite number of symbols. The entire concept that someone can "own" a particular grouping of symbols is at best ludicrous.
This is the last in our retrospective on the columns that Jon Katz began writing after the killings at Columbine
What? And how is that a problem with me? The fact that I grew up is bad? Being more mature is bad? Developing a more refined sense of taste in my amusements is bad?
Atari, Lego's, Star Wars, Tolkien, anime...
What is it with you geeks and all this childish behavior? I swear, sometimes I think people on this site have the emotional IQ of a 6 year old. No wonder you people can't get dates. You're too busy playing with freaking toys.
And somebody else in this thread said that I got old...
What you're essentially saying is that you object to progress in video games. I respect the Atari for being first, but that certainly doesn't make it better. I also respect the skills of the first cave painters. Does that mean I should throw out my Mondrian prints? Are Peter Greenaway films intricate nonsense, and should we just keep watching Citizen Caine over and over again instead?
Computer games are an evolving form of expression that are destined to be the first true new art form of the 21st century. It's sad that you can't bring your level of understanding up to where it needs to be to appreciate the work of geniuses like John Carmack.
No, I think you are trying to make a point where there isn't one. Name 3 truly useful apps that require X and don't have equally useful alternatives that don't.
Got 'em? Took you awhile, didn't it? OK, now describe what sort of person will be wanting those applications and will also want a Mac in place of a more powerful and much cheaper PC.
I'll bet that was even harder, but you still came up with something, right? Well then, now the hardest part: Tell me, with a straight face, that there are more than a handful of these people in the world.
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Intel-based architecture on an OS? How do you arrange that?
Place a PIII motherboard on top of your iBook.
This is the exact opposite of what most of us really want!
Let's take slow, over-priced hardware and replace the great GUI it has with a crufty hack that's older than jesus. Yeah, great idea.
News flash: Most of us are hoping for OSX, including Aqua, on Intel-based architecture, not the other way around.
Do Anglos Ream Erotic Sheep?
Killjoy.
The world moves too quickly today to reasonably expect kids to spend that much time on something. In the time it takes to read LOTR you could watch many adaptations of good books instead. Strictly analog methods of sensory input like reading are just hopelesly out of date. Just because something is a good story doesn't mean that you should spend a huge chunk of your life absorbing it.
I never read Dune, but I saw the first movie. It was great because I got the whole plot about this guy who rides worms in about 2 hours. Now I know how it ends. I know the plot, so why would I bother watching some 6 hour version on SciFi or read the book? I want the information fast so I can move on to other things.
Also, why would I read Phillip K. Dick's lengthy novel when I can just rent Bladerunner? Same with Johnny Mnemonic. What's the point of plodding through Gibson's masturbatory prose when I can pop in the movie and watch it while paying bills or eating dinner?
Yeah, I know there have been other movie versions in the past, but this'll be the first one with a huge budget and the level of effects movie goers demand nowadays. The reason I'm so happy about this is that it will allow the youth of today the chance to experience this timeless story, a story they may otherwise not be aware of because kids don't read anymore.
I really don't have a problem with kids not reading so much as I have a problem with not enough good old books being brought to the silver screen. You can't expect a child of today to waste hours and hours of their life plodding through a book. It was great for me 20 years ago, but it can't compete with a PS2, nor should it have to. We have evolved.
So, since it is obvious that books are a dying form, I believe we need to strongly encourage Hollywood to make more of the timeless classics into a format more conducive to being received by children in the 21st century. We need Asimov's entire Foundation series set to celluloid (ok, bits), and other quality work like Piers Anthony and the Dragon Lance stuff. We also need the second half of both Watership Down and the Neverending Story to be finished.
Nothing says "High Fidelity" like Realistic. True audiophiles like myself are always shopping at The Shack to purchase the latest in equalizers and DSP devices to provide the warmth that you can't get anymore now that everything has gone digital. It is absolutely absurd to go out and buy some stripped down box for $1,500 when you can have all the latest in 5 channel simulated theatre and multiple hall settings.
I've got this friend who spent close to 2 G's on some Nadcomm thing that he was all proud of. I went over to his house to check the thing out and he pops the cover with a flourish. I take a look and... there isn't a damn thing in it! Couple tiny boards and like three freaking wires connecting it all together! Compare this to my Optimus reciever (yeah, it's a bit snooty for my tastes, too) which is so packed with electronic goodness that you couldn't squeeze a paper clip into the thing and only cost me $299!
Anyway, I hide my skepticism and tell him to fire it up. Guess what? He can't because the freakin' thing doesn't have an amplifier and the one he wants is out of stock! Two thousand dollars and it doesn't even fucking do anything!
So the next week I went back to The Shack and bought a project box, a coupla RCA plugs, some A/B toggles, and a dual gang pot. I throw it all together and show my friend my sweet contraption that does the same thing as his but not only cost less than $100, it doesn't even need to be plugged in! I figure he'd feel like a fool and take his box back for a refund, but he just looked at me and shook his head like I was some kind of moron. I just don't get it...
Look, you want to know why streetcars died off? Want to know why the US is dominated by suburban growth? Do you want facts?
For better or worse, in this country the USPS is fully responsible for your mail. As a quasi-governmental agency it will always be as strong as the nation itself. Baring significant political upheaval, I always know my mail will (usually) end up in the right place as long as I fill out the change of address forms. And if the government ever does go tits up, where my credit card statement goes will probably be one of my least worries.
Why can't we have something similar to the USPS for email? With this current hodge-podge of ISP's practicing collective anarchy, there are no real guarantees. When a huge company like Altavista shuts down the accounts it serves as a chilling wake-up call to the ephemerality of our most basic online communications.
I hate to advocate more governmental involvement of any sort, but honestly, my email account is by far more important to my life than my physical mail address. The nature of the capitalist market itself rules out the sort of stability that email requires, and only a government can really provide any sort of long-term guarantee that I believe we need.