If you are a real musician, all you need to do is sit down and point yourself at a microphone.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. To record a standard "adult contemporary" (a popular genre as an example) album these days it is going to cost 20k-50k to get a decent radio quality. This is not counting the countless hours that go into writing, mixing, recording, and mastering. Some genres require less production (you rarely hear these on the radio), but even then, plugging a mic is woefully inadequate in most cases. Your average studio microphone costs $1500 by itself. Sure, you can record a little demo on a MBP with GB and the built in mic, but not anything professional by most genre's standards (some stuff is supposed to be lofi, but that is a different story).
No way. Piracy and all aside, an artist should have control over his/her songs. Without some protection, bullshit high profile musicians could simply steal songs from lesser known artists much in the same way Elvis did with a lot of his hits (which most people would agree was pretty fucked up). Also, corporations would be free to sell an artists music without compensation, or use recordings in ads. Sorry, but no thanks. It sounds cool in theory, but some IP still seems better than none at all.
Fuck the US Constitution. It does not talk about a whole bunch of things. It did talk about how slavery is A-OK. BTW, I agree with everything else you are saying, I just take issue with the constitution argument.
That was my experience with upper level math as well. It really is hard to imagine how any curriculum could be justified being a university level line of study without having this sort of format. If a subject happens to be entirely memorization than it really belongs in a tech school IMHO.
I agree that logic is awesome and should be force fed to kids at the expense of just about anything else, however,... Godel's proof put hole in the idea that logic is the foundation of math and science. Logic leads to simple arithmetic and not much further. Sorry to nitpick.
...and SC2, which would make the guys who invented chess piss their pants. Like every generation before, our kids will make us look like imbeciles one day.
This makes my insides hurt. This makes me want to go back and become a teacher just to go screw with the straight-A-memorizers. The only questions I plan to ask are tricks. Good luck little miss "I-made-color-coded-flash-cards-but-dont-understand-a-single-god-damned-term-on-them".
I am not so sure about this. Most schools have "gifted" programs and AP programs that teach well beyond what gets taught to the lowest common denominator. In my high school classes, while we were reading "Heart of Darkness", the kids next door were reading "The Wizard of Oz". There seemed to be a pretty wide range of offerings at my school at least, which happens to be located in what is known as "The Corridor of Shame" for having the worst schools in the entire country (for a good laugh, overlay the "corridor of shame" with the "bible belt" on a map). Sure, some kids go beyond what the AP classes teach, but to get a 5 on one of those tests, you have to be at or above the college level anyway. In fact, I think the AP classes I took were quite a bit more difficult than any of the college equivalents I ended up taking (they do usually map up with intro level courses).
What physical artifacts do kids have these days to learn with? I guess drugs and sex.
Kids still build and troubleshoot their computers, just like before. This seems pretty close to "kids are dumber today" arguments which have been completely torn apart by the data. I would not be surprised at all if we were to find that reasoning skills have been slowly rising as well.
Nothing beats a good college radio station. Little to no ads, awesome music from people much cooler than you, and casual banter from people who don't have pointy haired boss standing over them full time.
I have always been a radio fanatic, so I was quite disappointed when the 5 or 6 decent quality stations in my market (one even being the highest rated independent radio station in the US at the time) all shut down over the past couple years and were replaced with christian stations (standard gay-bashing creepy-cult-sounding Dobson-felatiating money-grabbing know-nothings). My area went from one of the best radio markets to one of the worst in the entire country over a few months. Now I only listen to NPR on the radio, with everything else coming from streaming or music on my phone.
Seriously, the moaning form Slashdot commenters seems a bit disingenuous considering most of us pretty much ignore copyright and pirate whatever we want, if we cannot conveniently get it through a legitimate source. Piracy is not going anywhere, so I really do not see what all the fuss is about. Hollywood and Nashville can work up a sweat about it all they want, they are still 10 steps behind the pirates, and are more of joke than any real threat.
You can always listen to dark side of the moon over and over again on spotify. Personally, as a music addict, I could not be more pleased with the new streaming paradigm. I used to buy at least 1 album just about every Tuesday. Add on a few splurges and I was spending something around $1500 a year on music. Now I can pay $120 per year (or even free) and listen to practically everything I could ever want anywhere with a connection (and in the places I do not have a connection, I probably should be turning off the music and enjoying nature anyways). I listen to a good bit of obscure stuff so if there is something I cannot find on Spotify, then I can easily buy it with the money I am saving, but even that is fairly rare (no more than a couple hundred dollars worth of music per year). As far as quality goes, I can always buy the high quality versions of the stuff that I really like. Other than a few exceptions though, the streaming quality is perfectly acceptable for casual listening. Most music made in the last 20 years has total shit production quality anyway relative to the 80s and earlier. If you want a good demonstration of how dynamics have completely disintegrated over the past few decades, listen to Bridge Over Troubled Water, followed by Nevermind, followed by the latest rock-pop album. You will notice that the master volume doubles along with the compression level on each album. All the old good stuff is best on vinyl anyway.
90s? Have people stopped using CTRL ALT DEL? It is used for logging on/off, starting up the task manager, and shutting down a locked up program. All of those are pretty common scenarios.
Good call pointing out Experian. FB has loads of info, don't get me wrong, but I tend to agree that there are plenty of other big players that go under the radar. Personally, I would be much more nervous about my bank, search engine provider, health provider, or phone company. I guess if you are a complete moron and regularly post dick-pics on you FB feed or rant about offensive politics, then FB might have something on you. As for me, FB knows my age, gender, around 500 people I have met in the past 6 years (forgot who most of them are by now), where I work, and that I have a dog. I could care less. A targeted ad here and there that I ignore anyway is really not a big deal to me. None of those facts seem particularly violating considering my bank knows every single purchase I have made in years, my phone company could listen in on a call at any moment or read any text, my doctor has a record of every anomaly on my nut sack, and Google knows every single nasty search term I have ever typed into a search bar.
Slashdot Mirror
This "it's expensive" argument is such a joke.
If you are a real musician, all you need to do is sit down and point yourself at a microphone.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. To record a standard "adult contemporary" (a popular genre as an example) album these days it is going to cost 20k-50k to get a decent radio quality. This is not counting the countless hours that go into writing, mixing, recording, and mastering. Some genres require less production (you rarely hear these on the radio), but even then, plugging a mic is woefully inadequate in most cases. Your average studio microphone costs $1500 by itself. Sure, you can record a little demo on a MBP with GB and the built in mic, but not anything professional by most genre's standards (some stuff is supposed to be lofi, but that is a different story).
No way. Piracy and all aside, an artist should have control over his/her songs. Without some protection, bullshit high profile musicians could simply steal songs from lesser known artists much in the same way Elvis did with a lot of his hits (which most people would agree was pretty fucked up). Also, corporations would be free to sell an artists music without compensation, or use recordings in ads. Sorry, but no thanks. It sounds cool in theory, but some IP still seems better than none at all.
Fuck the US Constitution. It does not talk about a whole bunch of things. It did talk about how slavery is A-OK. BTW, I agree with everything else you are saying, I just take issue with the constitution argument.
That was my experience with upper level math as well. It really is hard to imagine how any curriculum could be justified being a university level line of study without having this sort of format. If a subject happens to be entirely memorization than it really belongs in a tech school IMHO.
Wow, slap that on a bumper sticker immediately!
I agree that logic is awesome and should be force fed to kids at the expense of just about anything else, however,... Godel's proof put hole in the idea that logic is the foundation of math and science. Logic leads to simple arithmetic and not much further. Sorry to nitpick.
...and SC2, which would make the guys who invented chess piss their pants. Like every generation before, our kids will make us look like imbeciles one day.
This makes my insides hurt. This makes me want to go back and become a teacher just to go screw with the straight-A-memorizers. The only questions I plan to ask are tricks. Good luck little miss "I-made-color-coded-flash-cards-but-dont-understand-a-single-god-damned-term-on-them".
Don't get down. Biology is barely a real science.
I am not so sure about this. Most schools have "gifted" programs and AP programs that teach well beyond what gets taught to the lowest common denominator. In my high school classes, while we were reading "Heart of Darkness", the kids next door were reading "The Wizard of Oz". There seemed to be a pretty wide range of offerings at my school at least, which happens to be located in what is known as "The Corridor of Shame" for having the worst schools in the entire country (for a good laugh, overlay the "corridor of shame" with the "bible belt" on a map). Sure, some kids go beyond what the AP classes teach, but to get a 5 on one of those tests, you have to be at or above the college level anyway. In fact, I think the AP classes I took were quite a bit more difficult than any of the college equivalents I ended up taking (they do usually map up with intro level courses).
What physical artifacts do kids have these days to learn with? I guess drugs and sex.
Kids still build and troubleshoot their computers, just like before. This seems pretty close to "kids are dumber today" arguments which have been completely torn apart by the data. I would not be surprised at all if we were to find that reasoning skills have been slowly rising as well.
I double majored in philosophy and poli sci and this was how every class I ever took was taught.
For instance, are scientists better at this than artists?
Yes. Reasoning is required to be a scientist. Artists can be good at reasoning, but it is not a requirement
Nothing beats a good college radio station. Little to no ads, awesome music from people much cooler than you, and casual banter from people who don't have pointy haired boss standing over them full time.
I have always been a radio fanatic, so I was quite disappointed when the 5 or 6 decent quality stations in my market (one even being the highest rated independent radio station in the US at the time) all shut down over the past couple years and were replaced with christian stations (standard gay-bashing creepy-cult-sounding Dobson-felatiating money-grabbing know-nothings). My area went from one of the best radio markets to one of the worst in the entire country over a few months. Now I only listen to NPR on the radio, with everything else coming from streaming or music on my phone.
Seriously, the moaning form Slashdot commenters seems a bit disingenuous considering most of us pretty much ignore copyright and pirate whatever we want, if we cannot conveniently get it through a legitimate source. Piracy is not going anywhere, so I really do not see what all the fuss is about. Hollywood and Nashville can work up a sweat about it all they want, they are still 10 steps behind the pirates, and are more of joke than any real threat.
If it is streaming, then it can be pirated. I welcome the new extra-convenient overlords.
I'm hoping we call it "the aquifer"
Not to mention the billions we spend on roads each year; music is expensive!
You can always listen to dark side of the moon over and over again on spotify. Personally, as a music addict, I could not be more pleased with the new streaming paradigm. I used to buy at least 1 album just about every Tuesday. Add on a few splurges and I was spending something around $1500 a year on music. Now I can pay $120 per year (or even free) and listen to practically everything I could ever want anywhere with a connection (and in the places I do not have a connection, I probably should be turning off the music and enjoying nature anyways). I listen to a good bit of obscure stuff so if there is something I cannot find on Spotify, then I can easily buy it with the money I am saving, but even that is fairly rare (no more than a couple hundred dollars worth of music per year). As far as quality goes, I can always buy the high quality versions of the stuff that I really like. Other than a few exceptions though, the streaming quality is perfectly acceptable for casual listening. Most music made in the last 20 years has total shit production quality anyway relative to the 80s and earlier. If you want a good demonstration of how dynamics have completely disintegrated over the past few decades, listen to Bridge Over Troubled Water, followed by Nevermind, followed by the latest rock-pop album. You will notice that the master volume doubles along with the compression level on each album. All the old good stuff is best on vinyl anyway.
90s? Have people stopped using CTRL ALT DEL? It is used for logging on/off, starting up the task manager, and shutting down a locked up program. All of those are pretty common scenarios.
8 for effort.
RIM is clearly just ahead of its time.
Good call pointing out Experian. FB has loads of info, don't get me wrong, but I tend to agree that there are plenty of other big players that go under the radar. Personally, I would be much more nervous about my bank, search engine provider, health provider, or phone company. I guess if you are a complete moron and regularly post dick-pics on you FB feed or rant about offensive politics, then FB might have something on you. As for me, FB knows my age, gender, around 500 people I have met in the past 6 years (forgot who most of them are by now), where I work, and that I have a dog. I could care less. A targeted ad here and there that I ignore anyway is really not a big deal to me. None of those facts seem particularly violating considering my bank knows every single purchase I have made in years, my phone company could listen in on a call at any moment or read any text, my doctor has a record of every anomaly on my nut sack, and Google knows every single nasty search term I have ever typed into a search bar.
It's always nice to get a good laugh at a Luddite now and then.