It's a bad idea to have people who are supposed to be managing others also working on technical projects. There is never enough definition for the role and people expect basically two full-time equivalents out of you.
Here we see snooty slashdotter savaging a newer poster while gorging itself on open source pudding and koolaide. Incredible. You almost believe watching this drama of nature that he really is better than everyone and his ubuntu cd will end world hunger. Such fanciful creatures.
Integrating twitter into the sh_tter is not "innovation", it's spurious techbloat.
Not one of these features really has any value if you have a smartphone with you, which almost everyone does. Certainly everyone blowing $6000 on a toilet will.
I think one point of this "service" is that it will lay the groundwork for the government to tax the internet without having to go through the legislative process. At least not until they are just one step away.
My guess is this will go from "great, safe option" to "suggested" to "merged with your SSN and required" to "Used to search for and track 'potential domestic terrorists'".
The same poppycock that results in people believing things like "deaths come in threes" or that there are a massively larger number of earthquakes worldwide versus how many there were before we had the ability to measure and detect them like we do today.
Science and religion aren't held to the same standard on/.
Religion is dismissed because "science is repeatable". Global warming can't stand up to the criticism they give other kinds of faith, but is regarded as not only science but the holy grail of science.
The facts aren't contrary. This was a completely valid prediction. The election of Barack Obama prevented this.
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." -- Barack Obama, 3 June 2008, upon winning his party nomination.
He's a politician, he says what benefits him the most in that moment.
But his complaints are not totally without merit.
If he were smarter his point would be that all jobs have life cycles, and we need to develop and innovate so that we can place people in jobs that are ahead of the curve instead of behind.
It's like everyone clammoring to bail out GM and save a bunch of low skill jobs that are going nowhere but overseas in the future anyway. It's a losing battle with the wrong objective.
But from the left, his policies are reactive rather than proactive. Proactive would be getting out in front and stopping things that stifle innovation, like hostile business environments. Instead, he wants us (if he could expand, I'd wager) to outlaw things and restrict things and tariff things after the fact.
Should we want to be one step ahead, or one step behind?
From their perspective, because the revenue pool is shrinking and risk is increasing, they probably feel they have to produce more of these "safe bets". They know that, by spinning up the massive marketing machine, they can always make another Hanson, Jonas Brothers, Backstreet Boys, Bieber, etc., it will go platinum, sell out arenas, etc.
In stormy times with down markets, enterprises look for safe investments. Instrument players aren't as safe a bet, because people who listen to actual music are more discerning than people who listen to pop and don't just eat whatever MTV feeds them. As record labels become more risk adverse, the quality and variety available will go down.
Pop music is an animal unto itself and really isn't music in the same sense. I don't think it's useful to say that "computerization can make anyone sound good" - while that might be true for a pop singer who only ever sings to backing tracks, it's not really what I mean by "music". (and they finance real music, so it's ok with me)
I know you say that amazing music will sound amazing even if it's recorded in a toolshed, but this really isn't the case. You can go find quotes from the band, but you mentioned Pink Floyd earlier. What do they think about this? What have they said about Dark Side of the Moon, and how it would have turned out without Alan Parsons?
I've said all I need to say, I think. There is a difference between fast-food pop, produced for undiscerning audiences, and "real music". The real is what will suffer here. Pop music won't go, it may just be the only thing left in the end.
Labels manufacture boy bands and it-girls because they sell. While nobody is under any delusions that Justin Bieber will be around in 20 years, at least his vapid music/coasters end up funding the enterprise that sets actual musicians up with studio time, airplay, engineers, producers, etc.
All I am saying to/. is that this problem is more complicated than "label it and kill it" / "record industry = evil". The record industry has done both good and evil. If it disappears, some evil disappears but some good does too.
I didn't even mention that Apple is basically a label unto itself, taking cuts of record sales without adding anything... if you want to talk about middlemen, they are a middle man.
Anyway, good discussion. Think about it, everyone.
"These days you can get that many viewers if you have a good band, a friend with a HD cam or a DSLR and another friend who's kind of good with FCP or Premiere (just film a few shows, get a little more material to match the mood of the song, edit and upload to youtube)."
If only producing things at the production quality people expect in music they pay money for were just as "you + computer, viola" as Slashdot believes...
Anyone has always been able to record something and "release" it in a local record shop. That hasn't changed.
Record labels are plenty evil, but they are not just middlemen who add no value. Financing the production of a record at a high standard, physically producing it, promoting it, those are not zero-value enterprises.
And labels won't be going away. They will just be promoting a smaller, safer list of artists than ever before.
I don't feel this is the end of music. My point was that this represents a massive, massive change in it. The engines that brought us basically all music from the 1950s until today are going away, and there isn't really any replacement.
Your comments about publicly supported music ring true in the jazz and classical genres. I doubt if we're going to see subsidies to support music in other areas because there are no education bodies with an interest in that.
Another thing is, even if (according to another poster) I own a computer so I should be able to produce music at just as high quality as anyone has ever produced, if I'm burning CD-Rs and handing them out at shows for $5, what does that really do for music in our cultural consciousness? Is an album great if no one ever hears it? Perhaps, but what has it done for us? What has it done for us versus what could have been done?
Music doesn't change the world by osmosis, it has to enter many millions of ears. Kind Of Blue may still have been great as performed even if the performers were nobodies, but if no one had ever heard the record, what would it have meant?
Anyone can walk into a music shop and buy a Les Paul too, but that doesn't mean they can produce material anywhere near the quality of Jimmy Page. A tool means nothing without knowledge.
The quality of recording facilities does matter. The quality of those engineering, mixing, and producing does matter. The quality of session players available does matter.
"So, use a computer - dummy" has very little to do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Pff... it never comes in white at first. That's why I'm always having to run out and replace mine a year later, to the get white one.
Or come with a free case included in the box?
Good for you guys, but I think you'd find that at 99% of all IT shops, documentation is an issue.
It's a bad idea to have people who are supposed to be managing others also working on technical projects. There is never enough definition for the role and people expect basically two full-time equivalents out of you.
Here we see snooty slashdotter savaging a newer poster while gorging itself on open source pudding and koolaide. Incredible. You almost believe watching this drama of nature that he really is better than everyone and his ubuntu cd will end world hunger. Such fanciful creatures.
Integrating twitter into the sh_tter is not "innovation", it's spurious techbloat.
Not one of these features really has any value if you have a smartphone with you, which almost everyone does. Certainly everyone blowing $6000 on a toilet will.
I think one point of this "service" is that it will lay the groundwork for the government to tax the internet without having to go through the legislative process. At least not until they are just one step away.
My guess is this will go from "great, safe option" to "suggested" to "merged with your SSN and required" to "Used to search for and track 'potential domestic terrorists'".
Probably won't take too long either.
It's sampling bias.
The same poppycock that results in people believing things like "deaths come in threes" or that there are a massively larger number of earthquakes worldwide versus how many there were before we had the ability to measure and detect them like we do today.
Science and religion aren't held to the same standard on /.
Religion is dismissed because "science is repeatable". Global warming can't stand up to the criticism they give other kinds of faith, but is regarded as not only science but the holy grail of science.
The facts aren't contrary. This was a completely valid prediction. The election of Barack Obama prevented this.
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." -- Barack Obama, 3 June 2008, upon winning his party nomination.
Ad hominem is not useful in evaluating the article, and does nothing to address the veracity of it.
Here is a link to the map, whuch the UN took down but was still to be found in Google's cache.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/un_50million_11kap9climat.png
The cache of the original page:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5OWrvQs5P5YJ:maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-refugees-by-2010+http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-refugees-by-2010&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
He's a politician, he says what benefits him the most in that moment.
But his complaints are not totally without merit.
If he were smarter his point would be that all jobs have life cycles, and we need to develop and innovate so that we can place people in jobs that are ahead of the curve instead of behind.
It's like everyone clammoring to bail out GM and save a bunch of low skill jobs that are going nowhere but overseas in the future anyway. It's a losing battle with the wrong objective.
But from the left, his policies are reactive rather than proactive. Proactive would be getting out in front and stopping things that stifle innovation, like hostile business environments. Instead, he wants us (if he could expand, I'd wager) to outlaw things and restrict things and tariff things after the fact.
Should we want to be one step ahead, or one step behind?
Too much outcry from the community? Wasn't worth it after LibreOffice? (despite the stupid name?)
Is there an app that detects sarcasm?
I'm glad I have an android phone, lord knows I couldn't deal with those insecure iphones and blackberries ;)
From their perspective, because the revenue pool is shrinking and risk is increasing, they probably feel they have to produce more of these "safe bets". They know that, by spinning up the massive marketing machine, they can always make another Hanson, Jonas Brothers, Backstreet Boys, Bieber, etc., it will go platinum, sell out arenas, etc.
In stormy times with down markets, enterprises look for safe investments. Instrument players aren't as safe a bet, because people who listen to actual music are more discerning than people who listen to pop and don't just eat whatever MTV feeds them. As record labels become more risk adverse, the quality and variety available will go down.
Pop music is an animal unto itself and really isn't music in the same sense. I don't think it's useful to say that "computerization can make anyone sound good" - while that might be true for a pop singer who only ever sings to backing tracks, it's not really what I mean by "music". (and they finance real music, so it's ok with me)
I know you say that amazing music will sound amazing even if it's recorded in a toolshed, but this really isn't the case. You can go find quotes from the band, but you mentioned Pink Floyd earlier. What do they think about this? What have they said about Dark Side of the Moon, and how it would have turned out without Alan Parsons?
I've said all I need to say, I think. There is a difference between fast-food pop, produced for undiscerning audiences, and "real music". The real is what will suffer here. Pop music won't go, it may just be the only thing left in the end.
Labels manufacture boy bands and it-girls because they sell. While nobody is under any delusions that Justin Bieber will be around in 20 years, at least his vapid music/coasters end up funding the enterprise that sets actual musicians up with studio time, airplay, engineers, producers, etc.
All I am saying to /. is that this problem is more complicated than "label it and kill it" / "record industry = evil". The record industry has done both good and evil. If it disappears, some evil disappears but some good does too.
I didn't even mention that Apple is basically a label unto itself, taking cuts of record sales without adding anything... if you want to talk about middlemen, they are a middle man.
Anyway, good discussion. Think about it, everyone.
"These days you can get that many viewers if you have a good band, a friend with a HD cam or a DSLR and another friend who's kind of good with FCP or Premiere (just film a few shows, get a little more material to match the mood of the song, edit and upload to youtube)."
If only producing things at the production quality people expect in music they pay money for were just as "you + computer, viola" as Slashdot believes...
Anyone has always been able to record something and "release" it in a local record shop. That hasn't changed.
Record labels are plenty evil, but they are not just middlemen who add no value. Financing the production of a record at a high standard, physically producing it, promoting it, those are not zero-value enterprises.
And labels won't be going away. They will just be promoting a smaller, safer list of artists than ever before.
I don't feel this is the end of music. My point was that this represents a massive, massive change in it. The engines that brought us basically all music from the 1950s until today are going away, and there isn't really any replacement.
Your comments about publicly supported music ring true in the jazz and classical genres. I doubt if we're going to see subsidies to support music in other areas because there are no education bodies with an interest in that.
Another thing is, even if (according to another poster) I own a computer so I should be able to produce music at just as high quality as anyone has ever produced, if I'm burning CD-Rs and handing them out at shows for $5, what does that really do for music in our cultural consciousness? Is an album great if no one ever hears it? Perhaps, but what has it done for us? What has it done for us versus what could have been done?
Music doesn't change the world by osmosis, it has to enter many millions of ears. Kind Of Blue may still have been great as performed even if the performers were nobodies, but if no one had ever heard the record, what would it have meant?
Anyone can walk into a music shop and buy a Les Paul too, but that doesn't mean they can produce material anywhere near the quality of Jimmy Page. A tool means nothing without knowledge.
The quality of recording facilities does matter. The quality of those engineering, mixing, and producing does matter. The quality of session players available does matter.
"So, use a computer - dummy" has very little to do with it.
Queue the yanks? Where does the line form?