Sure wish Microsoft, who with the hindsight of Xenix, had adopted more *ix practices in Windows. I know some are there, but buried. Windows is such a pile of muck in a darkened room and when I first had my hands on an *ix system I fell in love with the simplicity and flexibility of it. Then there was Linux - build according to your needs, which utterly blew my mind. How long until we finally say Good-bye to non-*ix system architecture?
Consider how many albums have 12 songs and only one of them is ever aired on the radio. Sometimes that one is a typical indicator of the content of the album, often it's the only track most people can listen to more than once without wanting to kill someone. After realizing that, consider how bad the songs on the radio are that don't inspire you to consider looking for tha album.
Sure there's good music, and good musicians, but there's a whole lot of drek that is much more advertised.
One great thing about last.fm listen to see if you like something, before deciding upon album or only a few songs. This is rather how it was back in the old days of records stores, where you could actually listen to tracks to decide if you warranted the album worth buying. May have one track, which was so exceptional (beyond just pop appeal) warranting purchase of the album. May have several tracks which are very good warranting purchase of the album.
I'm not really a fan of Amazon's approach to listen to a little sample, only useful for confirming it is the tune I'm looking for or particular mix. Most of the rather large music collection I have was purchased upon faith that the whole CD/album was worth getting. Quite often it has been so. There are tunes I really like that may be very obscure to those who only follow Top-40 on radio. I'm probably one of the few you will hear on the freeway in Summer with his windows down and Louis Jordan cranked way up, the whole CD rather than just one tune.
If government didn't stick its nose into this kind of business interference, businesses wouldn't need to lobby government about the kind of interference. When government no longer sees itself as limited, then businesses and others have to form lobbies in order to try to protect themselves from the government.
Waddaminite.
Your theory is that if we didn't regulate business so much, then they wouldn't seek government protection?
Here's my theory. Businesses spend money where they see a potential return on investment. If they think they can use money to increase profitability, they'll do so. Nothing wrong with it. That's Capitalism. That's the American Way. Spending money to get favorable legislation is just a particular case. Businesses have done it since there have been businesses and governments.
One of the reasons government expands is because businesses successfully lobby for legislation they think will increase profitability.
Here in California we had the IT industry pushing hard for increases in H1B visas, so they could recruit from off-shore. Even as the dot-com bubble was dying they were still going for it, despite the streets filling with IT professionals of all skills and levels of ability. I attended a "job fair" and found over 300 people applying for one job, not even a very good job, but a job all the same. What IT industry and employers of IT people are looking for is government regulation of people, not the businesses. Disgusting is the best word for it.
Forgive my doubts, but I can't imagine a drunk hobo punk being a music snob. Real music snobs listen to progressive (or worse, some random electronic subsubgenre noone has ever heard about).
That's rather narrowminded. I personally know of at least one former musician who has an alcohol dependency problem and lives on the street. I'm certain he turns his nose up at certain "music" as it isn't his cuppa or has inferior instrumentation. He favors accoustic over electric guitar.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's
on
Napster Being Shut Down
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Except now you're paying $15 for a digital copy, and $10 for the CD, or $1.99 for that "just one track".
I am completely fine with $1.99 for one track, if the rest of the album isn't of any interest. I'm an old Album Rock dude, but will be among the first to recognize how many one/two hit wonders there have been where I won't want the whole CD.
There's already an island nation where the highest elevation won't shelter them in a storm with the surge waves. Tide is one thing, tide combined with storm surges are quite another, as Japan's unfortunate Earthquake shows, coastal communities can greatly suffer from unforeseen circumstances / perfect storms - and great percentage of world population lives in costal cities or densely populated coastal provinces. One good storm at sea coinciding with high tide and New York City would be an interesting place to live (in the Chinese curse sense of 'Interesting').
The man who stands on a beach in fair weather and believes it can get no worse than it is at high tide must be from the inland.
and the best way to reduce dependence upon it is to raise the price of it. Of course, democracies being what they are, the stupid and venal people will oust the leaders who have the gumption to do the right thing and replace them with spineless lackeys who sup at the trough of the lobbies.
They start erecting sandbags and levees around New York City and Washington DC. They the US won't just participate, but will be pushing the agenda with the threat of economic sanctions and possibly war to those who continue to pump out the greenhouse gasses.
And of course the response to anyone who says, 'Back in 2011 we told you so!' will be a not so diplomatic 'Shut up!'
I mean, who really complained about the absurdly expensive data plans and two year contracts to have smart phones?
Um... call me Scottish (cheap), but I _still_ do not have a smartphone because $30/month/phone is too much for a limited data plan.
I'd happily fork out $600 or more out of pocket to have a smartphone, but spend $1200+ per year for unlimited data plans for me and my spouse? My last cell phone lasted 5 years, I'd rather not spend $3000 on a smartphone.
English-Dutch (thrifty, glad to meet you) I was an early adopter, back in the Bag Phone days. I followed up and upgraded as technologies improved, always buying my phone outright to avoid the costlier plans (where you may think you get your phone for less, but certainly do not) After the outrages of two-year contracts I elected to go Pay As You Go, which is so insanely thrifty I have more money for important things in life (Chardonnay, Pino Grigio, Zinfandel, Ales, Stouts, Porters, Witbiers, Hefeweisse and Geocaching) I'm quite happy this way. It would be nice to have 3G/4G, but the prices are obscene for the pathetic little I'd use such service.
Can't help but notice how nobody from California, the most populous and technology influential state - where making $27/hr is actually a poverty pay rate, considering the cost of living.
I'd really like to know why government believes it needs to stick its nose into this industry - it should be working diligently to remove lobbyists from DC.
There's a little bit of a distinction. I personally have a love-hate relationship with it. Somethings it does well, other things are not present or idiotically implemented.
If you can beat the army of lobbyists, and then the army of lawyers behind them, and then the army of pressure groups who will demand that the network be censored because the government should not spend tax money to distribute smut.
People will just put up with it. I mean, who really complained about the absurdly expensive data plans and two year contracts to have smart phones? Anyone raise a stink over cable/satellite fees? How's that A La Cart bill coming along?
In addition to watching shows online, the ability to easily connect the XBox 360 and PS3 to a computer monitor has to be having a dampening effect on TV sales, esp. among the young. For less than $200, I can get a 23" LCD monitor that I can connect to my laptop for computing and watching shows online, and can connect to my console for gaming. Why on earth then would I want a TV, especially if I am living in a dorm or small apartment where space is at a premium?
You want a TV so you can hook it up to cable and they can keep track of what you watch, so mysteriously you receive advertising in the mail tailored to your profile.
DHS probably monitoring it, too, in case it turns out unstable people or terrorists favor particular shows.
Perhaps because everything on TV now is absolutely shite.
Or it starts out good, but then they beat it to death.
Sponsors pay for the shows and should be demanding better, but then they go and try propping up something like the Simpsons for a couple decades because it's a safe bet for viewer share.
Maybe its being inundated with invasive high volume crap they should PAY YOU to watch every 15 minutes. Its geared to intellectually bankrupt people, and its an insult to be exposed to it. I download shows now, and I feel good cheating cable companies out of revenue. I feel good. Why? Because their retarded content is destroying our society.
Well, the paying thing right there... Let's consider household expenses.
Mobile and data plan for the smart phone - 70$ (on up)
Cable/Satellite TV 50$ on up (I know some people with combined plans for this and above of around 140$ month)
Consider early cable was around $17 month and land line phone was $15 month (excluding long distance.) Getting kinda spendy, isn't it?
Ha! I told you so. TV is just a fad (says dead guy from the early 50s).
You probably mean Fred Allen, a great (nay, brilliant) humorist who hosted a radio variety/comedy show. He was well known for poking fun at Television and show characters, like Titus Moody the farmer saying he was doubtful of it, but had (by the early 50's) determined that Radio was here to stay.
One thing you missed - engage in some topical issue in a completely tawdry and unconvincing way, like you expect when the lesbian couple announce they want to get married there's the unexclaimed 'Dun dun DUNNN!' hanging in the air, rather than let's really examine some real situations, rather than the oversimplified, dumbed down way so much writing is now.
The shows which have appealed to me had dwindled to a few.
Then there was one.
Then there were none.
Television has become so many over-hyped, insipid or worn out shows. Last show I watched was 60 Minutes. Now if I can remember, it's on the radio. My television hasn't been turned on in 10 years. I used a TV card in my computer for a while. Now I read books, watch movies or get the few DVDs of shows which really were worth watching and view them in my own good time sans commercials.
I get antsy when TV shows are on, like I'm being bombarded with some some radiation and want to get up and out of the way. Probably something to do with writing. Something else to do with horrible actors - we don't have many quality actors, so many are there because they are young, look good or were comedians. Few really can act. I feel the combination of watching people terrible at the craft, mixed with uninteresting writing have failed to keep my attention. No problem finding things to do with the time, though.
Driving through the Desert West, slowing down and taking a short walk off road frequently reveals the extent of communities to just assume putting something over there in the weeds was a good enough way to dispose of it - quite a lot of rubbish in the desert, over 50 years old and still sitting there, it didn't go away
So how are old wagon wheels and buckets and other assorted rubbish harming the environment, unless you're talking about something toxic like a bag of DDT? To nature, that old wagon wheel is no different from a fallen branch. Asthetics have nothing to do with the environment.
Now, electronic waste, yes, just tossing it is stupid.
Rhyolite, Nevada and Death Valley Junction, California are interesting places to visit from the perspective of waste disposal.
In Rhyolite, long after the housing and business district of a booming city are gone and in most cases very hard to detect where ever there, the trash is still present - glass (mostly broken and very sharp), metal from tins, hoops from barrels. Below the first inch of soil there can probably still be detected solvents, lubricants, reminants of salves, cleaning compounds and so on. I photographed the lid to one tin, from Fred Fear Manufacturing, New York, from 1894, still resting there. Rhyolite was a thriving city until the mines ran out and the thousands of inhabitants were pretty well gone by 1920.
Death Valley Junction (formerly Amargosa) population is less known, with the community serving as a transit point for Borax in the early twentieth century and a location along rail. The population is pretty low presently, but a trip out into the desert toward the shell of an old building presents a trick back through time as told by trash. There's acres of it. Much of it apparently heaped into piles for burning ad various times, but metals of all sorts, plastics, glass, rubber, etc. is there to see by the ton. A tremendously depressing sight and a hazardous place to tread. Without the benefit of Kudzu or other ground cover to obscure the enormity of the garbage the cummulative effect over time is quite obvious.
The desert changes very slowly and is an ideal place to observe how much waste is generated and how it ceases to simply vanish.
It's not like you can deploy a SWAT team in front of the driver in time to stop him from running the light and never know if he would actually have done it.
Can delay the green on the crossing street, or even put up an alarm with flashing blinkers so no one enters the intersection. The flashers can be implemented with the existing traffic lights, so not that expensive. What is expensive is setting up the cameras linked to a central computer on every intersection. They kind of doing it already with the red light cameras though.
I propose we have walls, big thick concrete suckers, which pop-up when lights change. That'll sort it.
My copy of The Commissar Vanishes. Of course, the author presents original photos of Stalin with Large group, smaller group, all by his lonesome at one point and you can examine the technique used for filling in background. Also, photos where someone was added (Comrade is now in favor, include with Stalin at glorious parade!)
As for Photoshop Disasters, there's a website and the checkout aisle for that sort of mental exercise.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure wish Microsoft, who with the hindsight of Xenix, had adopted more *ix practices in Windows. I know some are there, but buried. Windows is such a pile of muck in a darkened room and when I first had my hands on an *ix system I fell in love with the simplicity and flexibility of it. Then there was Linux - build according to your needs, which utterly blew my mind. How long until we finally say Good-bye to non-*ix system architecture?
if (x < 0) {do_sfuff(); exit;} ...
if (x == 0) { do_other_stuff(); exit;}
if (x > 1) {
... establish restrictions
perform_secure_operation();
}
.
.
.
So... what happens when x == 1
Consider how many albums have 12 songs and only one of them is ever aired on the radio. Sometimes that one is a typical indicator of the content of the album, often it's the only track most people can listen to more than once without wanting to kill someone. After realizing that, consider how bad the songs on the radio are that don't inspire you to consider looking for tha album.
Sure there's good music, and good musicians, but there's a whole lot of drek that is much more advertised.
One great thing about last.fm listen to see if you like something, before deciding upon album or only a few songs. This is rather how it was back in the old days of records stores, where you could actually listen to tracks to decide if you warranted the album worth buying. May have one track, which was so exceptional (beyond just pop appeal) warranting purchase of the album. May have several tracks which are very good warranting purchase of the album.
I'm not really a fan of Amazon's approach to listen to a little sample, only useful for confirming it is the tune I'm looking for or particular mix. Most of the rather large music collection I have was purchased upon faith that the whole CD/album was worth getting. Quite often it has been so. There are tunes I really like that may be very obscure to those who only follow Top-40 on radio. I'm probably one of the few you will hear on the freeway in Summer with his windows down and Louis Jordan cranked way up, the whole CD rather than just one tune.
If government didn't stick its nose into this kind of business interference, businesses wouldn't need to lobby government about the kind of interference. When government no longer sees itself as limited, then businesses and others have to form lobbies in order to try to protect themselves from the government.
Waddaminite.
Your theory is that if we didn't regulate business so much, then they wouldn't seek government protection?
Here's my theory. Businesses spend money where they see a potential return on investment. If they think they can use money to increase profitability, they'll do so. Nothing wrong with it. That's Capitalism. That's the American Way. Spending money to get favorable legislation is just a particular case. Businesses have done it since there have been businesses and governments.
One of the reasons government expands is because businesses successfully lobby for legislation they think will increase profitability.
Here in California we had the IT industry pushing hard for increases in H1B visas, so they could recruit from off-shore. Even as the dot-com bubble was dying they were still going for it, despite the streets filling with IT professionals of all skills and levels of ability. I attended a "job fair" and found over 300 people applying for one job, not even a very good job, but a job all the same. What IT industry and employers of IT people are looking for is government regulation of people, not the businesses. Disgusting is the best word for it.
Forgive my doubts, but I can't imagine a drunk hobo punk being a music snob. Real music snobs listen to progressive (or worse, some random electronic subsubgenre noone has ever heard about).
That's rather narrowminded. I personally know of at least one former musician who has an alcohol dependency problem and lives on the street. I'm certain he turns his nose up at certain "music" as it isn't his cuppa or has inferior instrumentation. He favors accoustic over electric guitar.
Except now you're paying $15 for a digital copy, and $10 for the CD, or $1.99 for that "just one track".
I am completely fine with $1.99 for one track, if the rest of the album isn't of any interest. I'm an old Album Rock dude, but will be among the first to recognize how many one/two hit wonders there have been where I won't want the whole CD.
Columbia PC was the first to do battle to defend their right to manufacture PC clones. Don't hear much of them now, do you?
I wonder what they'll do with the Cat with headphones logo.
There's already an island nation where the highest elevation won't shelter them in a storm with the surge waves. Tide is one thing, tide combined with storm surges are quite another, as Japan's unfortunate Earthquake shows, coastal communities can greatly suffer from unforeseen circumstances / perfect storms - and great percentage of world population lives in costal cities or densely populated coastal provinces. One good storm at sea coinciding with high tide and New York City would be an interesting place to live (in the Chinese curse sense of 'Interesting').
The man who stands on a beach in fair weather and believes it can get no worse than it is at high tide must be from the inland.
I'm pushing for using less energy. Period.
and the best way to reduce dependence upon it is to raise the price of it. Of course, democracies being what they are, the stupid and venal people will oust the leaders who have the gumption to do the right thing and replace them with spineless lackeys who sup at the trough of the lobbies.
They start erecting sandbags and levees around New York City and Washington DC. They the US won't just participate, but will be pushing the agenda with the threat of economic sanctions and possibly war to those who continue to pump out the greenhouse gasses.
And of course the response to anyone who says, 'Back in 2011 we told you so!' will be a not so diplomatic 'Shut up!'
I mean, who really complained about the absurdly expensive data plans and two year contracts to have smart phones?
Um... call me Scottish (cheap), but I _still_ do not have a smartphone because $30/month/phone is too much for a limited data plan.
I'd happily fork out $600 or more out of pocket to have a smartphone, but spend $1200+ per year for unlimited data plans for me and my spouse? My last cell phone lasted 5 years, I'd rather not spend $3000 on a smartphone.
English-Dutch (thrifty, glad to meet you) I was an early adopter, back in the Bag Phone days. I followed up and upgraded as technologies improved, always buying my phone outright to avoid the costlier plans (where you may think you get your phone for less, but certainly do not) After the outrages of two-year contracts I elected to go Pay As You Go, which is so insanely thrifty I have more money for important things in life (Chardonnay, Pino Grigio, Zinfandel, Ales, Stouts, Porters, Witbiers, Hefeweisse and Geocaching) I'm quite happy this way. It would be nice to have 3G/4G, but the prices are obscene for the pathetic little I'd use such service.
Can't help but notice how nobody from California, the most populous and technology influential state - where making $27/hr is actually a poverty pay rate, considering the cost of living.
I'd really like to know why government believes it needs to stick its nose into this industry - it should be working diligently to remove lobbyists from DC.
There's a little bit of a distinction. I personally have a love-hate relationship with it. Somethings it does well, other things are not present or idiotically implemented.
If you can beat the army of lobbyists, and then the army of lawyers behind them, and then the army of pressure groups who will demand that the network be censored because the government should not spend tax money to distribute smut.
People will just put up with it. I mean, who really complained about the absurdly expensive data plans and two year contracts to have smart phones? Anyone raise a stink over cable/satellite fees? How's that A La Cart bill coming along?
We can make your entire industry irrelevant with a single referendum. Tread lightly, telecoms.
Sorry, but if you mean the House, Senate and President signing anything blocking them from doing it you can guess again.
first post!!! Ha Ha suckers!
Oh, my! Next it will be: In Soviet Russia TV owns YOU!
In addition to watching shows online, the ability to easily connect the XBox 360 and PS3 to a computer monitor has to be having a dampening effect on TV sales, esp. among the young. For less than $200, I can get a 23" LCD monitor that I can connect to my laptop for computing and watching shows online, and can connect to my console for gaming. Why on earth then would I want a TV, especially if I am living in a dorm or small apartment where space is at a premium?
You want a TV so you can hook it up to cable and they can keep track of what you watch, so mysteriously you receive advertising in the mail tailored to your profile.
DHS probably monitoring it, too, in case it turns out unstable people or terrorists favor particular shows.
Perhaps because everything on TV now is absolutely shite.
Or it starts out good, but then they beat it to death.
Sponsors pay for the shows and should be demanding better, but then they go and try propping up something like the Simpsons for a couple decades because it's a safe bet for viewer share.
Can't win for losing.
Maybe its being inundated with invasive high volume crap they should PAY YOU to watch every 15 minutes. Its geared to intellectually bankrupt people, and its an insult to be exposed to it. I download shows now, and I feel good cheating cable companies out of revenue. I feel good. Why? Because their retarded content is destroying our society.
Well, the paying thing right there... Let's consider household expenses.
Consider early cable was around $17 month and land line phone was $15 month (excluding long distance.) Getting kinda spendy, isn't it?
Ha! I told you so. TV is just a fad (says dead guy from the early 50s).
You probably mean Fred Allen, a great (nay, brilliant) humorist who hosted a radio variety/comedy show. He was well known for poking fun at Television and show characters, like Titus Moody the farmer saying he was doubtful of it, but had (by the early 50's) determined that Radio was here to stay.
One thing you missed - engage in some topical issue in a completely tawdry and unconvincing way, like you expect when the lesbian couple announce they want to get married there's the unexclaimed 'Dun dun DUNNN!' hanging in the air, rather than let's really examine some real situations, rather than the oversimplified, dumbed down way so much writing is now.
The shows which have appealed to me had dwindled to a few.
Then there was one.
Then there were none.
Television has become so many over-hyped, insipid or worn out shows. Last show I watched was 60 Minutes. Now if I can remember, it's on the radio. My television hasn't been turned on in 10 years. I used a TV card in my computer for a while. Now I read books, watch movies or get the few DVDs of shows which really were worth watching and view them in my own good time sans commercials.
I get antsy when TV shows are on, like I'm being bombarded with some some radiation and want to get up and out of the way. Probably something to do with writing. Something else to do with horrible actors - we don't have many quality actors, so many are there because they are young, look good or were comedians. Few really can act. I feel the combination of watching people terrible at the craft, mixed with uninteresting writing have failed to keep my attention. No problem finding things to do with the time, though.
Driving through the Desert West, slowing down and taking a short walk off road frequently reveals the extent of communities to just assume putting something over there in the weeds was a good enough way to dispose of it - quite a lot of rubbish in the desert, over 50 years old and still sitting there, it didn't go away
So how are old wagon wheels and buckets and other assorted rubbish harming the environment, unless you're talking about something toxic like a bag of DDT? To nature, that old wagon wheel is no different from a fallen branch. Asthetics have nothing to do with the environment.
Now, electronic waste, yes, just tossing it is stupid.
Rhyolite, Nevada and Death Valley Junction, California are interesting places to visit from the perspective of waste disposal.
In Rhyolite, long after the housing and business district of a booming city are gone and in most cases very hard to detect where ever there, the trash is still present - glass (mostly broken and very sharp), metal from tins, hoops from barrels. Below the first inch of soil there can probably still be detected solvents, lubricants, reminants of salves, cleaning compounds and so on. I photographed the lid to one tin, from Fred Fear Manufacturing, New York, from 1894, still resting there. Rhyolite was a thriving city until the mines ran out and the thousands of inhabitants were pretty well gone by 1920.
Death Valley Junction (formerly Amargosa) population is less known, with the community serving as a transit point for Borax in the early twentieth century and a location along rail. The population is pretty low presently, but a trip out into the desert toward the shell of an old building presents a trick back through time as told by trash. There's acres of it. Much of it apparently heaped into piles for burning ad various times, but metals of all sorts, plastics, glass, rubber, etc. is there to see by the ton. A tremendously depressing sight and a hazardous place to tread. Without the benefit of Kudzu or other ground cover to obscure the enormity of the garbage the cummulative effect over time is quite obvious.
The desert changes very slowly and is an ideal place to observe how much waste is generated and how it ceases to simply vanish.
It's not like you can deploy a SWAT team in front of the driver in time to stop him from running the light and never know if he would actually have done it.
Can delay the green on the crossing street, or even put up an alarm with flashing blinkers so no one enters the intersection. The flashers can be implemented with the existing traffic lights, so not that expensive. What is expensive is setting up the cameras linked to a central computer on every intersection. They kind of doing it already with the red light cameras though.
I propose we have walls, big thick concrete suckers, which pop-up when lights change. That'll sort it.
My copy of The Commissar Vanishes. Of course, the author presents original photos of Stalin with Large group, smaller group, all by his lonesome at one point and you can examine the technique used for filling in background. Also, photos where someone was added (Comrade is now in favor, include with Stalin at glorious parade!)
As for Photoshop Disasters, there's a website and the checkout aisle for that sort of mental exercise.