My take home pay for two weeks is less than it would cost to convert my 1200 CD collection (which I'm going to be doing this winter).
Thusly, are these companies thriving on people with small collections who can't be bothered to rip their 120 CDs? Shouldn't they be more likely to rip the CDs themselves because it won't be a deathslog?
I ripped a couple hundred over a two week period two years ago. It was no big deal. While I'm doing my usual web roundup at night, pop in a CD, drag into my iTunes library, wait for the bing, put in a new CD, drag into my iTunes library, etc, etc, etc.
Just FYI, after 9/11 I said "well, that sucked, but that's the price of living in a free society." And I lived in DC at the time, so I'm not one of those detached Iowans who are in no danger, but harp about the war on "terrism."
I'm fully aware that there are people out there who want to kill me because I'm an american. There are good options and bad options for how to deal with these people. Kicking them out of Afghanistan was a good idea. Increasing the trust of the US with the "muslim street" is a good idea. Cracking down on civil liberties is a bad idea.
I'm willing to pay the price for freedom, but all of these "patriotic" assclowns aren't. So they hide behind totalitarian laws in the hope that nothing bad will happen to them.
This is even scarier: "and sent it off to Renaissance Dancewear, who I buy all of my tights for Renfaire clothing from. They matched the color perfectly, and made me a custom unitard."
Clearly an alpha nerd, if he's got a regular Renaissance fair supplier!!!
Whoops, I missed the fact that they were talking about WBZ radio, and not WBZ television. There's two of them.
Based on that, this isn't even a news story. This was a much bigger deal IIRC a year or so ago when a bunch of rural midwestern stations didn't mention tornados coming through town, because not a one of them had a local broadcast on, and might not have even had a human at the station.
The "local" DJs on most small town radio stations are "voice tracking" from bigger cities, but acting like they're broadcasting from downtown.
So I don't think they'd have any problems decieving you where you local television personality is broadcasting from. And I'm not sure it is a problem. I've lived all over, from Youngstown, OH to Boston to Los Angeles, and it doesn't matter where you are, because the local news always sucks.
As a side note, CC has gotten into some trouble with consolidated contests on radio, where they make it seem like your local station is giving away a million dollars, when in reality, it's every station they own giving away the million dollars, so when you call in, you're competing with a whole country worth of callers.
I move every 3 months with my job. Just landed in LA, and the utilities here are doing their best to f&*k me up the @$$. For basic cable in my building (which is provided by a satellite, and therefore has no cable broadband), I pay a reasonble $13 a month. And a $40 connection fee.
For broadband, I needed to get DSL. No deals for me, because I'm only here for 3 months. So I'm paying $50 a month for DSL, plus $100 for the equipment, plus a $50 connection charge, or some such bullshit.
If I want DSL, I need to have phone service (though I only use my cell). That's a reasonble $6 a month. Plus a $30 connection fee.
In all, for my 3 month stint, connection fees have ended up doubling the price of everything. WTF? I'll even be lenient on the cable company, because at least they had to send a guy to make sure it worked. All SBC had to do was flick a switch for my phone and DSL.
If you really want up to date info from non Fox/CNN/Other talking heads, get thee a shortwave radio and check out these sources.
Does anyone else think it looks really bad to rush in because Iraq is destroying its oil wells? Bush is trying to tell everyone this isn't about oil, so doesn't that undermine this?
Don't get me wrong, I know everyone knows it's about oil, but they're not even being consistent in their bullshit.
Has anyone ever explored a sort of "salvage use" copyright? In other words, I don't have a huge problem with Disney wanting to control a copyright on Mickey, because they're still actively using him in their business.
But what about something like the Katzenjammer Kids (for a comic from about the same time as the first mickey shorts) that aren't being actively used by anyone. No real reason for something like that to not be in the public domain.
In other words, don't extend copyright for everything, but give extensions for things that are still being actively used (and no, I don't have the time to work out a legal definition of "actively used").
Anything that is introduced in Congress now isn't going to go anywhere. They're going to go home and campaign for the november elections soon.
If you really want to support this bill, write them and let them know you support it. Then, next January, assuming that Lofgren and Boucher get re-elected, write them and remind them that you'd like the bill introduced again.
Actually, there's lots of stuff that's nonpartisan. The Freedom Forum beats up on Dems and Republicans (and probably Greens, Libs, Commies, Facists, etc) with equal furvor.
They're not claiming to be impartial (obviously they're not, because their mission is protecting first amendment freedoms), just nonpartisan.
As for the FF ginning up funding with the study, I think Ashcroft and Co are just about the best fundraiser they've ever had.
If you played with the 1st edition D&D books, Gary Gygax's name was on them. Not sure if he's on the later editions, because I haven't played D&D in probably 10 years.
If anything, the net has given us the ability to find just about any information we want. While the main news/political sites are still status quo, people who want to go out there and raise hell are able to find dissadent information a whole lot easier than before the rise of the net. At least this is true in the US.
I work for an advocacy oriented nonprofit, and I can tell you that the net has had a huge impact on the way we interact with government, and the way we interact with grassroots supporters (getting them to write their Representatives, etc). Give the US government a few years to catch up.
I do not think, however, that the net is going to change the way governments work wholesale. They'll still be corrupt and powerful, and they'll still be trying to screw you and me.
Actually, it's not really a myth (or at least it used to be based in reality).
I did research on this topic in 1998 that involved surveying congressional offices and talking to IT people there, and they pretty much confirmed that they didn't read email, and ranked it's impact on policy about the same as a postcard campaign.
However, I think now that they have systems like "Write Your Representative" in place, they'll actually listen, as long as you're a constituent. They'll still ignore you if you don't live in their district, though.
The basic lesson is, the more thought and time you put into a letter to a politician, the better response you'll get. And it helps to be a big contributor. . .
What do you expect from a guy who annoints himself in Crisco and gets telepathic advice from some big guy who lives in the sky that nobody's ever seen?
That would be "person 2 programmer" beer system. Aside from contributing geek toys (presumably to be used in further coding efforts), it sure would be nice to be able to send freeware developers a 6-er once in a while. Of beer, red bull, Mt. Dew, or whatever it is they drink.
Beer addresses should be included in the documentation;-)
p2p has moved on. Napster was probably the easiest way to get music off the net, and that's probably why it's dead. With great gnutella tools out there like Gnucleus, BMG and Napster can make all the proprietary formats they want. The cat's out of the bag. Napster increased the popularity of file sharing, but Napster does not equal file sharing.
Sure, we'll get paid to pay attention. Until somebody figures out a way to beam their ads right into our brains. We're already half zombified by advertizing, so this would just be the next logical step.
There's some really nasty fungus out there (not sure of the sepcies, and I'm not interested enough to look it up) that eats the glass on lenses. Cameras are usually stored in dark, cool places, which are perfect for fungi to go to town. I wouldn't worry about CDs too much, especially in the US, unless you keep them in a cool, damp, dark closet. And even then.
Besides, keeping CDs in an archival setting would probably keep this fungus from doing anything to them. Of course, printing *really* important things is a good idea too. Or writing them out on acid free paper with archival inks.
I agree that the possibilities are great for a little accessory panel for games, but I've seen too much gaming vaporware to believe that it will be useful until I see it used.
Think of this concept. Very few people like klezmer music. There's maybe a few thousand in any city. That's not enough to support any radio airplay.
BUT, there's enough aggregate klezmer music listeners in the entire country to get some airplay on a station that broadcasts to the entire country, and it's likely that they will not mind paying $10 a month to hear their favorite music.
Satellite radio will be successful if they carve out small musical niches. I can hear top 40 anywhere, but where am I going to get late 70s, early 80s punk? We've already seen this to some degree with internet radio. Most internet only stations are niche stations.
Interesting point! Was anyone here surprised when they found out that the nerdy kids shot up the jocks?
Although I like Chris Rock's quip about their outsider status: "There was *SIX* of them [in the "trenchcoat mafia"]. I didn't have six friends in high school. I don't have six friends now!"
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My take home pay for two weeks is less than it would cost to convert my 1200 CD collection (which I'm going to be doing this winter).
Thusly, are these companies thriving on people with small collections who can't be bothered to rip their 120 CDs? Shouldn't they be more likely to rip the CDs themselves because it won't be a deathslog?
I ripped a couple hundred over a two week period two years ago. It was no big deal. While I'm doing my usual web roundup at night, pop in a CD, drag into my iTunes library, wait for the bing, put in a new CD, drag into my iTunes library, etc, etc, etc.
Just FYI, after 9/11 I said "well, that sucked, but that's the price of living in a free society." And I lived in DC at the time, so I'm not one of those detached Iowans who are in no danger, but harp about the war on "terrism."
I'm fully aware that there are people out there who want to kill me because I'm an american. There are good options and bad options for how to deal with these people. Kicking them out of Afghanistan was a good idea. Increasing the trust of the US with the "muslim street" is a good idea. Cracking down on civil liberties is a bad idea.
I'm willing to pay the price for freedom, but all of these "patriotic" assclowns aren't. So they hide behind totalitarian laws in the hope that nothing bad will happen to them.
This is even scarier: "and sent it off to Renaissance Dancewear, who I buy all of my tights for Renfaire clothing from. They matched the color perfectly, and made me a custom unitard."
Clearly an alpha nerd, if he's got a regular Renaissance fair supplier!!!
Whoops, I missed the fact that they were talking about WBZ radio, and not WBZ television. There's two of them.
Based on that, this isn't even a news story. This was a much bigger deal IIRC a year or so ago when a bunch of rural midwestern stations didn't mention tornados coming through town, because not a one of them had a local broadcast on, and might not have even had a human at the station.
The "local" DJs on most small town radio stations are "voice tracking" from bigger cities, but acting like they're broadcasting from downtown.
So I don't think they'd have any problems decieving you where you local television personality is broadcasting from. And I'm not sure it is a problem. I've lived all over, from Youngstown, OH to Boston to Los Angeles, and it doesn't matter where you are, because the local news always sucks.
As a side note, CC has gotten into some trouble with consolidated contests on radio, where they make it seem like your local station is giving away a million dollars, when in reality, it's every station they own giving away the million dollars, so when you call in, you're competing with a whole country worth of callers.
I move every 3 months with my job. Just landed in LA, and the utilities here are doing their best to f&*k me up the @$$. For basic cable in my building (which is provided by a satellite, and therefore has no cable broadband), I pay a reasonble $13 a month. And a $40 connection fee.
For broadband, I needed to get DSL. No deals for me, because I'm only here for 3 months. So I'm paying $50 a month for DSL, plus $100 for the equipment, plus a $50 connection charge, or some such bullshit.
If I want DSL, I need to have phone service (though I only use my cell). That's a reasonble $6 a month. Plus a $30 connection fee.
In all, for my 3 month stint, connection fees have ended up doubling the price of everything. WTF? I'll even be lenient on the cable company, because at least they had to send a guy to make sure it worked. All SBC had to do was flick a switch for my phone and DSL.
Does anyone else think it looks really bad to rush in because Iraq is destroying its oil wells? Bush is trying to tell everyone this isn't about oil, so doesn't that undermine this?
Don't get me wrong, I know everyone knows it's about oil, but they're not even being consistent in their bullshit.
Has anyone ever explored a sort of "salvage use" copyright? In other words, I don't have a huge problem with Disney wanting to control a copyright on Mickey, because they're still actively using him in their business.
But what about something like the Katzenjammer Kids (for a comic from about the same time as the first mickey shorts) that aren't being actively used by anyone. No real reason for something like that to not be in the public domain.
In other words, don't extend copyright for everything, but give extensions for things that are still being actively used (and no, I don't have the time to work out a legal definition of "actively used").
Anything that is introduced in Congress now isn't going to go anywhere. They're going to go home and campaign for the november elections soon.
If you really want to support this bill, write them and let them know you support it. Then, next January, assuming that Lofgren and Boucher get re-elected, write them and remind them that you'd like the bill introduced again.
Actually, there's lots of stuff that's nonpartisan. The Freedom Forum beats up on Dems and Republicans (and probably Greens, Libs, Commies, Facists, etc) with equal furvor.
They're not claiming to be impartial (obviously they're not, because their mission is protecting first amendment freedoms), just nonpartisan.
As for the FF ginning up funding with the study, I think Ashcroft and Co are just about the best fundraiser they've ever had.
Meanwhile, the 8 ounce asscheek has been upgraded to the 24 ounce asscheek.
There will be trickle down from larger pants to larger chairs to larger coffins.
Hmm. I bet you take a normal computer, put the word "marine" in front of it, and charge 4x the normal price.
(note: this also works with the word "aviation").
It's an age thing.
If you played with the 1st edition D&D books, Gary Gygax's name was on them. Not sure if he's on the later editions, because I haven't played D&D in probably 10 years.
If anything, the net has given us the ability to find just about any information we want. While the main news/political sites are still status quo, people who want to go out there and raise hell are able to find dissadent information a whole lot easier than before the rise of the net. At least this is true in the US.
I work for an advocacy oriented nonprofit, and I can tell you that the net has had a huge impact on the way we interact with government, and the way we interact with grassroots supporters (getting them to write their Representatives, etc). Give the US government a few years to catch up.
I do not think, however, that the net is going to change the way governments work wholesale. They'll still be corrupt and powerful, and they'll still be trying to screw you and me.
Actually, it's not really a myth (or at least it used to be based in reality).
I did research on this topic in 1998 that involved surveying congressional offices and talking to IT people there, and they pretty much confirmed that they didn't read email, and ranked it's impact on policy about the same as a postcard campaign.
However, I think now that they have systems like "Write Your Representative" in place, they'll actually listen, as long as you're a constituent. They'll still ignore you if you don't live in their district, though.
The basic lesson is, the more thought and time you put into a letter to a politician, the better response you'll get. And it helps to be a big contributor. . .
What do you expect from a guy who annoints himself in Crisco and gets telepathic advice from some big guy who lives in the sky that nobody's ever seen?
That would be "person 2 programmer" beer system. Aside from contributing geek toys (presumably to be used in further coding efforts), it sure would be nice to be able to send freeware developers a 6-er once in a while. Of beer, red bull, Mt. Dew, or whatever it is they drink.
;-)
Beer addresses should be included in the documentation
p2p has moved on. Napster was probably the easiest way to get music off the net, and that's probably why it's dead. With great gnutella tools out there like Gnucleus, BMG and Napster can make all the proprietary formats they want. The cat's out of the bag. Napster increased the popularity of file sharing, but Napster does not equal file sharing.
Sure, we'll get paid to pay attention. Until somebody figures out a way to beam their ads right into our brains. We're already half zombified by advertizing, so this would just be the next logical step.
No, most corporations don't pay jack in taxes. Ever heard of Delaware? Corporate Welfare? Multinationals hididng out in third world countries?
Sure, they may fill out tax forms and send checks to the Department of the Treasury, but they get most of it back somehow or someway.
There's some really nasty fungus out there (not sure of the sepcies, and I'm not interested enough to look it up) that eats the glass on lenses. Cameras are usually stored in dark, cool places, which are perfect for fungi to go to town. I wouldn't worry about CDs too much, especially in the US, unless you keep them in a cool, damp, dark closet. And even then.
Besides, keeping CDs in an archival setting would probably keep this fungus from doing anything to them. Of course, printing *really* important things is a good idea too. Or writing them out on acid free paper with archival inks.
I agree that the possibilities are great for a little accessory panel for games, but I've seen too much gaming vaporware to believe that it will be useful until I see it used.
Think of this concept. Very few people like klezmer music. There's maybe a few thousand in any city. That's not enough to support any radio airplay.
BUT, there's enough aggregate klezmer music listeners in the entire country to get some airplay on a station that broadcasts to the entire country, and it's likely that they will not mind paying $10 a month to hear their favorite music.
Satellite radio will be successful if they carve out small musical niches. I can hear top 40 anywhere, but where am I going to get late 70s, early 80s punk? We've already seen this to some degree with internet radio. Most internet only stations are niche stations.
Interesting point! Was anyone here surprised when they found out that the nerdy kids shot up the jocks?
Although I like Chris Rock's quip about their outsider status: "There was *SIX* of them [in the "trenchcoat mafia"]. I didn't have six friends in high school. I don't have six friends now!"