It's far from irrelavant considering you can create a lyric timing file by simply listening to the song and manually hilighting the correct line at the correct time. Then, it's saved, and uploaded, and you get a better experience listening to the song for the rest of your life, as well as any guests who might NOT know the song would now know what they are saying.
Let's not forget that in conjunction with EvilLyrics, found at http://www.evillabs.sk/ you can have the lyrics sent to milkdrop as they are sung. No other program can do this in existence. Certainly not in a way where you can download the lyrics and timing information for new songs in near-realtime.
I was talking more along the lines of: A bunch of poor citizens can always break it, but a bunch of rich govts and corps can always make a better, harder-to-break one. Eventually, I think technology and engineering will be perfect, and then we may very well have that which cannot be broken.
"Someday, they shall make a nail on the end of a stick far larger than any others, and will destroy themselves."
You said: Your reading of all/.'ers having the same dichotomy,(correct spelling btw), that you do is shortsighted. Are the majority of/.'ers oppressed by the computers, or are they simply self-confined to their cubicles because they are enabled by the computer age to do so?
Actually, I was not talking about work at all. I am talking more about things like DMCA, RFID, red-light cameras, Carnivore, crowd suppression technology (including microwave-based), thermal imaging, quantum computers [which will eventually allow those who have them first to be able to listen in to those who don't have them], nanotechnology, spy devices, etc. But then there are things like software patents which control some software technologies so that only the (seemingly) nefarious can use it. My speech had nothing to do with work at all. I prefer to be in a cubicle.
Anyway, most of those tools are not enablers. Quntum computing will enable much -- but break all our encryption keys. Most of the rest of those do absolutely nothing to enable for me. Conceivably I could use RFID in my house to track my stuff...("Where's my keys again?")...or maybe a cunning burglar with sophisticated software could use THAT against me...((begins fashiong tin-foil hat))...
One of my point being that there is a technology war going on, mostly on the legal and cultural fronts, with technology almost never being used in the way that benefits the most. For instance, self-sealing car tires were invented a good 40 years ago (heresay/unverified), but I was only able to buy one recently (and only $20 more!). There was more profit to be made in people buying outdated tires because they are replaceable. There's no way to force the better technology to market. It gets seized by corporate lawyers often in a way that exploits us.
I'm definitely rambling here (at home now). I am very sorry about your car accident and would gladly kick the offender's ass for you if given a chance. But I think a better solution would be if your own car had camera(s) that recorded what happened: So that if this happened to you you'd have your own proof right there.
Red-light cameras are inhuman. Take snow. You can't stop as fast in snow. Some say double your stopping distance. Well, that means you have to be twice as far away from a light to stop when it turns yellow. So you pretty much HAVE to run the red lights if you don't want to slide into the intersection. A camera can't capture the real situation. My wife got one, but the picture was so pathetic you couldn't tell who it was. Apparantly, it was her father, but he claimed it wasn't as did she. Her previous employers were fascist, so she had a "guestbook" (the real kind) that people would sign in and out of when going to work/lunch/errands/home. The fact that she was signed in was the only way to convince her father to take responsibility. No doubt that if we'd tried to fight it, we'd lose. Not gonna play that game. Not when the cost of taking time off from work is more than the ticket (another problem I have with the system).
150 million citizens? That's 1 in 2 people. Are there huge clusters of these people right around you? Cause I don't see them here. Canada has higher gun ownership than America, per capita. Marijuana smokers can't own guns because it's an automatic 10 year federal mandatory minium with a pot conviction even if it's not involved in the crime, locked up, unloaded, in a safe. Assault rifles can't be owned. The guns that the govt has are much better than what the civilians have (not necessarily such a big divide in 1776). We have no militia. The right to bear arms is somewhat of a farce in many ways.
I don't know that if America wanted to revolt, that it could successfully. And let technology (soldier robots are already starting to be used, didn't slashdot say recently?) build up, and pretty soon a revolution might well be damn
well, you could hit the 'alter relationship' button, and make me a friend, and then add a +4 modifier to posts-by-friends in your config... and then it would LOOK like you had mod points...
heh
I think you should know that technology continually improves.
Saying RFIDs can be defeated is like saying you can make an un-pirable CD. It's just a claim. Progress eventually works through all obstacles. In the end, the oppressors are going to be able to afford to spend more money on better things than we will be.
You sure like to give the benefit of the doubt to the government.
Funny thing when you give them the benefit of the doubt. You usually can't take it back. Once the floodgates are open, they can't generally be closed.
You fail to realize the reason of the dichotimy(sp?) between the two slashdot viewpoints: Technology is an enabler, but it is a much more efficient oppressor. Slashdotters want technology that enables, and don't want technology that oppresses, or can oppress. It's quite simple really.
Considering that Texas is considering RFID tags on all license places, and yes, police would scan them automatically for criminals in the like, I'd say the "trcaking system" infrastructure is already being put in place. (Only if the license gets an RFID tag, now they'll know if someone's borrowing your car or not.) And as more and more things are RFID-mandated, more and more government buildings will have readers, then like red-light cameras they'll be red-light RFID readers (to help catch people who run red lights, of course)... The end result will indeed be tracking of everyone's movements. Technology as an oppressor. NO ONE has to have that idea in mind now for that to be what happens; it's simply where the current trend will end up.
You also seem to think that just because there are not men in dark suits in a dimly-lit board room conspiring against us, that there is no conspiracy. There is a conspiracy, but it is more a de-facto conspiracy of ideas and moral forces that mesh together to create things bigger than any single human being (corporations, government entities, grassroot movements). That the conspiracy doesn't have a specific face does not mean that it is not something that should be fought against.
The numbers tell you more than just the year.
Bandname\1975 - AlbumName\
Tell me, based on that structure, if this album is during Bandname's early career when they were good, or if this album is during Bandname's later career, after they sold out and went all poppy. I don't know. But change it to "1 - 1975 - AlbumName" and now we know: This was their debut album. (And yes, I end up renumbering these sometimes.) I usually use whatever is listed on AllMusic, but I don't always count compilations and singles as a separate number. For instance, my Ween directory looks like (notice 2 album #3s, one is a single . . . I cheated):
8/18/2002 4:12p <DIR>. 8/18/2002 4:12p <DIR>.. 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> 0 - Craters Of The Sac 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> 1 - God, Ween, Satan 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> 2 - The Pod 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> 3 - Pure Guava 1/22/2003 9:51a <DIR> 3 - Push Th' Little Daisies (single) 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> 4 - Chocolate And Cheese 8/18/2002 4:12p <DIR> 5 - 12 Golden Country Hits 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> 6 - The Mollusk 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> 7 - White Pepper 3/06/2004 6:37p <DIR> 8 - Quebec 1/22/2002 7:04p <DIR> LIVE 1/24/2002 1:12a <DIR> MISC STUDIO 1/22/2003 1:58a <DIR> MISC-IMAGES 1/22/2003 1:58a <DIR> MISC-VIDEO 3/28/2003 5:52p <DIR> NON-MUSIC 1/22/2003 2:40a <DIR> side-project - Moistboyz 8/18/2002 4:13p <DIR> side-project - Z-Rock Hawaii 3/31/2003 6:56p <DIR> TRIBUTES
What if your missing an album you don't know about when ordering your albums? If it comes to your attention, then you'd have to give it the number previously assigned to another album and consequently change the number of every album coming out after it.
That is certainly true, but what happens more than that is that, in the process of renumbering the folders to indicate the order, I *FIND OUT* about albums I don't have. And later, when looking at the folder again, I might see "1, 2, 3, 5", and know: "Hey, I need the 4th album still!"; otherwise I would have to rely on my non-photographic memory and that would be bad with how much media I have (um... 1690G LAN space, 3000-6000 cds worth of data offline, 6000 hrs of VHS too).
>The year already does this and keeps in order quite nicley.
Usually, yes. But it gives no information about missing albums or where in the career the artist is.
>Can you name an album that came out in 1976 that came out after an album that came out in 1978?
Compilation albums often cover a range of years, and if the range was first in the list (instead of the release number, my way), then a comp album of "1980-2000" would be listed before an album that came out in 1981. But in reality, the compilation album came out in 2001. I'm nit-picking, yes.
I also don't see any need to reduntly repeat over and over again the artist and album. It is already in the file structure and in the idv tags.
Hopefully in both the id3v1 and id3v2 tags, but that's another story. So with your system, one can't just look at a file and know who the artist is? If I was, say, browsing your files, I would have to actually open them with a specific piece of software just to find out the band?!?! That seems utterly ridiculous! That simply cuts off different forms of usefulness, like grepping a band name out of a playlist generated with a simple "dir/b" (think: ls -1) command. Files should scream out what they are. They shouldn't have to be inspected. That's overhead.
Sorry about the formatting of my post. I'm lazy and prefer real-HTML. Slashcode doesn't properly handle UL OL LI either!
Oh, and for additional info: I use a playlist generato
Because I was at work, I did not have my mp3 collection with me.
It's totally and completely irrelevant to the concept of organization.
Only a fucking geek would point that out. I know I'm replying to a troll here, but in truth, I was the original troll, because I knew somebody would respond... Loser
I like to make my album names like:
"1 - 1987 - Kill 'Em All"
"2 - 1989 - Ride The Lightning"
"3 - 1991 - Master Of Puppets"
Also, I think trusting such a thing to any program is asking for trouble. Manual is the best way.
Playlist-generation is an entirely different issue. How do you deal with files you want to keep, but don't want to hear on a regular basis? Is there a way to adjust the music so that certain bands you don't want to play wont play when friends are over? (Because how many normals want to hear an anime theme song? Or King Diamond?)
Tagging: I use Tag-and-Rename. It lets you specify how to tag based on the filename. Like: %4\%3\%0_%2 would be "artist\album\tracknumber_title". And then auto-tags.
Also, MusicBrainz can tag based on acoustic fingerprint, but is not too good with unpopular songs.
Please, all people should tag both id3v2 AND id3v1. Both are important in different situations.
Encoding: Use LAME.exe, VBR, highest setting!
Playing: Winamp.
Best visualizer: MilkDrop.
Best companion program: EvilLyrics (http://www.evillabs.sk/) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EvilLyrics autodownloads the lyrics of whatever you are listening to and permanently stores them in a cache! When and if you hand-edit the lyrics, you can save them and they will be set to read-only.
You can listen to the song, and hilight the lyrics as you listen to it, and a timing-file (karaoke file) is saved, so that the lyrics are hilighted. It is uploaded to a central server. You can download all 27000 karaoke files via bittorrent.
Best of all: These timed lyrics are sent to milkdrop, which displays them as you listen. Best listening experience ever!
Does anyone else think assassins should be called in to prevent this experiment from creating a real black hole that swallows up the whole planet in minutes?
This has worked well for me: Burn 2 copies of everything.
If one gets scratched, restore the ruined file (or restore the whole disk! it can't hurt!) and re-burn.
This has saved me many many many many many many many many times.
To take the idea even further, always buy two kinds of media (randomly, even). Burn 1 copy on one, and the other on the other. Now, if one media is better than the other, your data will survive as long as the best media, even though you did not know what that was at burntime.
Yes this costs some extra money. Believe me, I know. I've burned no less than 1800 cdrs (times two) and 450 DVD-Rs (times two). It's a small price to pay. and still cheaper than the harddrives (which I have 1390G of).
I have an irman infrared receiver that sits on top of my main (media) machine. I use my remote to control winamp, WMP/VLC video players, and to turn the monitors off (ALL monitors on ALL 5 computers with 1 button) when watching movies.
I also have those "Ion Storm"/"Illumastorm" neat balls that shoot the electricity out. You know the type, the Dr. Frankenstein electro device where if you touch it, more of the bolts surround your finger. Mine are also sound-activated. They screw into the 2 overhead lights in my rec room.
Well, apparantly, even though there are billions of unique IR codes, these balls are random enough that they do things that look like IR codes.
If winamp is on, these balls respond to the sound of the music, producing their "ion storm". This creates random IR codes, which end up affecting the music! Winamp rewinds randomly, a 5 minute song can take 10 minutes, etc.
The real irony being that, technically, the music is controlling itself since winamp is making the sound that makes the ion-storm-bulb make the 'lightning' that makes the infrared receiver make winamp play the music differently...
Which do we have most of? Drugs, murder, or rape? I'd say drugs. Looks like the long sentences aren't having the deterrent effect you speak of, at least not for drugs. What you say is probably more true for violent crime. But of course, over 50% of prisoners are nonviolent drug users. What a fucked up country we live in.
RE: Socialism, I do not think socialism is a system that works now (except for medicine and education)... I think it sucks... But as nanotechnology, genetics, fusion, automation, etc, take everything over: There's going to be a lot less needs for us as a species to work a "job". When robots do everything, what do the humans do? Fix the robots, but I don't think you can keep a planet employed on that. The trend is irreversable unless we have some sort of holocaust that throws us back into the dark ages.
I am a libertarian.
I must point out that, that you kind of contradict yourself. You state "My problem with the modern socialist movement in this country is that people want the right to do drugs, but at the same time want state-run healthcare."
You then follow later with "The ''we don't want to foot the bill'' mentality is what scares me. They give us healthcare and in turn require certain behavior of us to keep the program fiscally viable?"
And yet, the "we don't want to foot the bill" mentality is exactly what you are representing when you make your comment about doing drugs.
Either way -- contradiction or not -- doing drugs is a basic human right, all societies have drugs, even animals do drugs (Yes, there is evidence of this, for example horses that feed on certain types of grass that contain LSA -- a naturally occurring LSD-derivative -- in order to relax. And, throwing this in for humor value: Don't forget the smoking monkeys!). In your self-contradiction, somehow "doing drugs" is different than "certain behaviour". But I think "doing drugs" is just that: "certain behavior".
You want to know about pot and unemployment? It's a vicious cycle of propaganda. The NIDA conducts phone surveys of drug usage. (Drug usage is likely HIGHER than what they state due to the average drug user's obvious distrust of the government.) Basically, they ask what drugs you do and such, and ask how much money you make.
They then see that pot smokers make less money than non-pot-smokers. They turn around and spin this statistic as "corporate loss", and state things such as, "Marijuana cost companies $50M in productivity last year". So the companies implement drug-testing, and don't hire pot smokers. So the pot smokers don't get as good jobs. So when the NIDA calls them to do the survey, OF COURSE THEY MAKE LESS ON AVERAGE.
Their form of statistical analysis approximately reminds me of the MPAA saying every mp3 downloaded is a $15 loss. Neither the MPAA or the Federal Government has a clue about causality with any activites they do not approve.
And, um, hate to break the news to you, but people are already able to do drugs. Legal drugs. Almost all of which are almost all worse than almost every legal drug. (Look up National Beureau Of Mortality statistics for toxicological deaths for: daily alcohol users vs daily cocaine users, and occasion alcohol users vs occaisonal cocaine users, for example. I did this. And drew the obvious conclusion, as should you if you looked the data up.) Alcohol is bad bad news.
Did you know Aspirin overdoses kill more people each year than all illegal drugs combined (approx 3000 a year -- a "Sept 11th" of dead people)? Look it up, it's the truth. Do we have a war on aspirin? Should we regulate it? It makes people feel good, makes their pain go away. It doesn't cure any conditions. A real fascist could classify aspirin as a recreational drug and they could be considered right in that if every person who takes aspirin switched to marijuana, there would be fewer toxicological deaths.
(Don't get me started on driving, please. Lots of studies in that arena as well but I can testify firsthand the difference. Driving stoned you are careful and might have some problems if you're too stoned, obviously. Driving drunk is fucking scary and terrifying even with your inhibitions gone -- only did that once, ever. Wish I could find my $140 professional-grade breathalyzer, I think someone stole it fro
I had to stop and think for a second about what this was originally about.:) I'm not throwing a fit over that, at least... This is just a tangent to that. I actually thought this was the one about banning video games in prisons, haha.
Don't care for Rage Against The Machine myself.
I actually have gotten an extremely good deal out of life. But I'm fucking grim nonetheless. But I wont go on prozac mind control like my coworker.
A true utilitarian economist is heartless and has no sense of justice or how to weigh qualitative measures against quantitative measures. Isn't that sort of how communism works? (Not that it does.)
Interesting stuff about the seat belt. I think you're crazy on that front, but I did drive 3 blocks without one on today. (I think *I'm* a bit crazy for that.) And it's certainly legal to jump out of an airplane and bungee jump so you have a point there. But I guess with 40M americans without health care, we don't wanna foot the bill.
Here's an interesting thought: As technology progresses, especially nanotechnology, genetic altering, mastery of medicine, and fusion -- we will not need to work. As a species, we are eventually going to be socialist. It's absolutely not a system that would work now, but we need to start thinking about sliding that way in a few key areas: health care and education.
The PATRIOT act is just one small problem. I'd pretty much feel the same if that hadn't happened. Even if Sept 11th hadn't happened, I'd pretty much feel the same. Corporations, proto-fascists, neocons, consumption, fear, lies, injustice, drug war, mass druggings, commercials for drugs to feel good and a D.E.A. to make sure you DON'T do drugs to feel good. Our society is very fucked up right now.
Skepticism unfortunately works against the general public. If people don't believe there's a problem, there isn't, right? I'm so very tired of the whole "badness is everywhere, so bad isn't so bad" attitude. It's the same attitude that makes to people vote Democrat and Republican... "Oh, all politicians are corrupt, so why bother voting 3rd party?" Both parties have got to go! Vote for someone who you actually believe in. (Which I admit is easier said than done.) But I digress.
There is impropriety and corruption in every profession and facet of life, yes. This does not mean one should be skeptical to bad things or that we should turn a blind eye or lie to ourselves. Public officials, and especially police (they got guns, for chrissake!), should and are held to a higher standard than civilians. A non-civilian should always die before a civilian. The army has soldiers lining up willing to die--so that we don't. The police, too, are supposed to be willing to die to save us.
Yet all too often, WE die because they THINK we endangered them.
Would a soldier sacrifice his life to save 1000 people? I sure hope anyone would. Would he sacrifice his or her life to save 1 person? I think most soliders are trained to think this way. Would 10 soldiers sacrifice their lives to protect 1 person? Hell yeah, if he's a general or the president. There is a tradeoff. They are considered expendable.
To go around pointing guns and accidentally killing people is absolutely and unequivacably unacceptable. Even if 100 cops get killed each and every day, this is no excuse to kill even 1 civilian accidentally, in paranoia, every day! (Unless, obviously, he's the one trying to kill the cop...)
I don't think they are worse than criminals in an absolute sense, and I don't think that's what I stated previously. It's not what I meant to. But I care about justice, and when a policeman does something like this, it is a betrayal of justice. The criminal betrays justice, but he is a criminal and considered such. The corrupt policeman betrays justice, yet has power and respect and can almost always get away with it. That is a far greater injustice to society than letting the actual criminal go. A corrupt policeman is like a criminal with a license to kill.
Of course people exaggerate things, I myself didn't give all the details when I first said it. The statements were true but deliberately out of context enough to be emphasized a bit greater than they were (i.e. not giving the backstory). That dosen't make what I said wrong though. Spun, maybe. Karl Rove would be proud. (Not.)
I don't think it's that ironic to pay for a song that espouses revolution. Your point is??? I'm willig to buy something I like?? First off,I'm pretty sure Atari Teenage Riot's DigitalHardcoreRecordings record group is not a member of the MPAA, a friend dubbed me the first 2 albums I got (never would have heard of them otherwise), and the only discs I've actually bought were from individuals on Ebay. And those are some of the only discs I've bought period in the past 5 years. And I feel it when I listen to it, more than I have felt while listening to any other band for several years now. I don't have a problem with paying for it, I just reget never having seen them live (Carl Crack is dead. I was said to be the one to tell the Australian Ebayer that I got my ATR shirt from... But I digress.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's far from irrelavant considering you can create a lyric timing file by simply listening to the song and manually hilighting the correct line at the correct time. Then, it's saved, and uploaded, and you get a better experience listening to the song for the rest of your life, as well as any guests who might NOT know the song would now know what they are saying.
Let's not forget that in conjunction with EvilLyrics, found at http://www.evillabs.sk/ you can have the lyrics sent to milkdrop as they are sung. No other program can do this in existence. Certainly not in a way where you can download the lyrics and timing information for new songs in near-realtime.
But your comment was funny nonetheless.
I sure would like to get a chance to make out with 3 chicks at once again... stupid conservative east coast.
You neglect the fact that something like 50% of girls are bi-sexual, bi-curious or bi-willing.. so... we're losing.
Think more like radar detectors. Then they have radar detector detectors. You can't always circumvent technology. Software, yes. Hardware? Not always.
"Someday, they shall make a nail on the end of a stick far larger than any others, and will destroy themselves."
You said: Your reading of all /.'ers having the same dichotomy,(correct spelling btw), that you do is shortsighted. Are the majority of /.'ers oppressed by the computers, or are they simply self-confined to their cubicles because they are enabled by the computer age to do so?
Actually, I was not talking about work at all. I am talking more about things like DMCA, RFID, red-light cameras, Carnivore, crowd suppression technology (including microwave-based), thermal imaging, quantum computers [which will eventually allow those who have them first to be able to listen in to those who don't have them], nanotechnology, spy devices, etc. But then there are things like software patents which control some software technologies so that only the (seemingly) nefarious can use it. My speech had nothing to do with work at all. I prefer to be in a cubicle.
Anyway, most of those tools are not enablers. Quntum computing will enable much -- but break all our encryption keys. Most of the rest of those do absolutely nothing to enable for me. Conceivably I could use RFID in my house to track my stuff...("Where's my keys again?")...or maybe a cunning burglar with sophisticated software could use THAT against me...((begins fashiong tin-foil hat))...
One of my point being that there is a technology war going on, mostly on the legal and cultural fronts, with technology almost never being used in the way that benefits the most. For instance, self-sealing car tires were invented a good 40 years ago (heresay/unverified), but I was only able to buy one recently (and only $20 more!). There was more profit to be made in people buying outdated tires because they are replaceable. There's no way to force the better technology to market. It gets seized by corporate lawyers often in a way that exploits us.
I'm definitely rambling here (at home now). I am very sorry about your car accident and would gladly kick the offender's ass for you if given a chance. But I think a better solution would be if your own car had camera(s) that recorded what happened: So that if this happened to you you'd have your own proof right there.
Red-light cameras are inhuman. Take snow. You can't stop as fast in snow. Some say double your stopping distance. Well, that means you have to be twice as far away from a light to stop when it turns yellow. So you pretty much HAVE to run the red lights if you don't want to slide into the intersection. A camera can't capture the real situation. My wife got one, but the picture was so pathetic you couldn't tell who it was. Apparantly, it was her father, but he claimed it wasn't as did she. Her previous employers were fascist, so she had a "guestbook" (the real kind) that people would sign in and out of when going to work/lunch/errands/home. The fact that she was signed in was the only way to convince her father to take responsibility. No doubt that if we'd tried to fight it, we'd lose. Not gonna play that game. Not when the cost of taking time off from work is more than the ticket (another problem I have with the system).
150 million citizens? That's 1 in 2 people. Are there huge clusters of these people right around you? Cause I don't see them here. Canada has higher gun ownership than America, per capita. Marijuana smokers can't own guns because it's an automatic 10 year federal mandatory minium with a pot conviction even if it's not involved in the crime, locked up, unloaded, in a safe. Assault rifles can't be owned. The guns that the govt has are much better than what the civilians have (not necessarily such a big divide in 1776). We have no militia. The right to bear arms is somewhat of a farce in many ways.
I don't know that if America wanted to revolt, that it could successfully. And let technology (soldier robots are already starting to be used, didn't slashdot say recently?) build up, and pretty soon a revolution might well be damn
well, you could hit the 'alter relationship' button, and make me a friend, and then add a +4 modifier to posts-by-friends in your config... and then it would LOOK like you had mod points... heh
Republican?
Saying RFIDs can be defeated is like saying you can make an un-pirable CD. It's just a claim. Progress eventually works through all obstacles. In the end, the oppressors are going to be able to afford to spend more money on better things than we will be.
Funny thing when you give them the benefit of the doubt. You usually can't take it back. Once the floodgates are open, they can't generally be closed.
You fail to realize the reason of the dichotimy(sp?) between the two slashdot viewpoints: Technology is an enabler, but it is a much more efficient oppressor. Slashdotters want technology that enables, and don't want technology that oppresses, or can oppress. It's quite simple really.
Considering that Texas is considering RFID tags on all license places, and yes, police would scan them automatically for criminals in the like, I'd say the "trcaking system" infrastructure is already being put in place. (Only if the license gets an RFID tag, now they'll know if someone's borrowing your car or not.) And as more and more things are RFID-mandated, more and more government buildings will have readers, then like red-light cameras they'll be red-light RFID readers (to help catch people who run red lights, of course)... The end result will indeed be tracking of everyone's movements. Technology as an oppressor. NO ONE has to have that idea in mind now for that to be what happens; it's simply where the current trend will end up.
You also seem to think that just because there are not men in dark suits in a dimly-lit board room conspiring against us, that there is no conspiracy. There is a conspiracy, but it is more a de-facto conspiracy of ideas and moral forces that mesh together to create things bigger than any single human being (corporations, government entities, grassroot movements). That the conspiracy doesn't have a specific face does not mean that it is not something that should be fought against.
Bandname\1975 - AlbumName\
Tell me, based on that structure, if this album is during Bandname's early career when they were good, or if this album is during Bandname's later career, after they sold out and went all poppy. I don't know. But change it to "1 - 1975 - AlbumName" and now we know: This was their debut album. (And yes, I end up renumbering these sometimes.) I usually use whatever is listed on AllMusic, but I don't always count compilations and singles as a separate number. For instance, my Ween directory looks like (notice 2 album #3s, one is a single . . . I cheated):
It's totally and completely irrelevant to the concept of organization.
I like to make my album names like:
"1 - 1987 - Kill 'Em All"
"2 - 1989 - Ride The Lightning"
"3 - 1991 - Master Of Puppets"
Also, I think trusting such a thing to any program is asking for trouble. Manual is the best way.
Playlist-generation is an entirely different issue. How do you deal with files you want to keep, but don't want to hear on a regular basis? Is there a way to adjust the music so that certain bands you don't want to play wont play when friends are over? (Because how many normals want to hear an anime theme song? Or King Diamond?)
Tagging: I use Tag-and-Rename. It lets you specify how to tag based on the filename. Like: %4\%3\%0_%2 would be "artist\album\tracknumber_title". And then auto-tags.
Also, MusicBrainz can tag based on acoustic fingerprint, but is not too good with unpopular songs.
Please, all people should tag both id3v2 AND id3v1. Both are important in different situations.
Encoding: Use LAME.exe, VBR, highest setting!
Playing: Winamp.
Best visualizer: MilkDrop.
Best companion program: EvilLyrics (http://www.evillabs.sk/) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EvilLyrics autodownloads the lyrics of whatever you are listening to and permanently stores them in a cache! When and if you hand-edit the lyrics, you can save them and they will be set to read-only.
You can listen to the song, and hilight the lyrics as you listen to it, and a timing-file (karaoke file) is saved, so that the lyrics are hilighted. It is uploaded to a central server. You can download all 27000 karaoke files via bittorrent.
Best of all: These timed lyrics are sent to milkdrop, which displays them as you listen. Best listening experience ever!
true 3-D tetris...
My only salient comment is that his presence, and even voice, really strikes me as being much the same as Timothy Leary.
Just wanted to get that out there.
P.S. Rest In Peace Timothy Leary, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson
Neutrality is apathy. Allowing oppression to continue without working against it is to be complicit. Sheep are evil.
Who needs Unix?
Does anyone else think assassins should be called in to prevent this experiment from creating a real black hole that swallows up the whole planet in minutes?
If one gets scratched, restore the ruined file (or restore the whole disk! it can't hurt!) and re-burn.
This has saved me many many many many many many many many times.
To take the idea even further, always buy two kinds of media (randomly, even). Burn 1 copy on one, and the other on the other. Now, if one media is better than the other, your data will survive as long as the best media, even though you did not know what that was at burntime.
Yes this costs some extra money. Believe me, I know. I've burned no less than 1800 cdrs (times two) and 450 DVD-Rs (times two). It's a small price to pay. and still cheaper than the harddrives (which I have 1390G of).
I also have those "Ion Storm"/"Illumastorm" neat balls that shoot the electricity out. You know the type, the Dr. Frankenstein electro device where if you touch it, more of the bolts surround your finger. Mine are also sound-activated. They screw into the 2 overhead lights in my rec room.
Well, apparantly, even though there are billions of unique IR codes, these balls are random enough that they do things that look like IR codes.
If winamp is on, these balls respond to the sound of the music, producing their "ion storm". This creates random IR codes, which end up affecting the music! Winamp rewinds randomly, a 5 minute song can take 10 minutes, etc.
The real irony being that, technically, the music is controlling itself since winamp is making the sound that makes the ion-storm-bulb make the 'lightning' that makes the infrared receiver make winamp play the music differently...
The average rapist serves 4 years.
The average drug user serves 10.
Which do we have most of? Drugs, murder, or rape? I'd say drugs. Looks like the long sentences aren't having the deterrent effect you speak of, at least not for drugs. What you say is probably more true for violent crime. But of course, over 50% of prisoners are nonviolent drug users. What a fucked up country we live in.
I am a libertarian.
I must point out that, that you kind of contradict yourself. You state "My problem with the modern socialist movement in this country is that people want the right to do drugs, but at the same time want state-run healthcare."
You then follow later with "The ''we don't want to foot the bill'' mentality is what scares me. They give us healthcare and in turn require certain behavior of us to keep the program fiscally viable?"
And yet, the "we don't want to foot the bill" mentality is exactly what you are representing when you make your comment about doing drugs.
Either way -- contradiction or not -- doing drugs is a basic human right, all societies have drugs, even animals do drugs (Yes, there is evidence of this, for example horses that feed on certain types of grass that contain LSA -- a naturally occurring LSD-derivative -- in order to relax. And, throwing this in for humor value: Don't forget the smoking monkeys!). In your self-contradiction, somehow "doing drugs" is different than "certain behaviour". But I think "doing drugs" is just that: "certain behavior".
You want to know about pot and unemployment? It's a vicious cycle of propaganda. The NIDA conducts phone surveys of drug usage. (Drug usage is likely HIGHER than what they state due to the average drug user's obvious distrust of the government.) Basically, they ask what drugs you do and such, and ask how much money you make.
They then see that pot smokers make less money than non-pot-smokers. They turn around and spin this statistic as "corporate loss", and state things such as, "Marijuana cost companies $50M in productivity last year". So the companies implement drug-testing, and don't hire pot smokers. So the pot smokers don't get as good jobs. So when the NIDA calls them to do the survey, OF COURSE THEY MAKE LESS ON AVERAGE.
Their form of statistical analysis approximately reminds me of the MPAA saying every mp3 downloaded is a $15 loss. Neither the MPAA or the Federal Government has a clue about causality with any activites they do not approve.
And, um, hate to break the news to you, but people are already able to do drugs. Legal drugs. Almost all of which are almost all worse than almost every legal drug. (Look up National Beureau Of Mortality statistics for toxicological deaths for: daily alcohol users vs daily cocaine users, and occasion alcohol users vs occaisonal cocaine users, for example. I did this. And drew the obvious conclusion, as should you if you looked the data up.) Alcohol is bad bad news.
Did you know Aspirin overdoses kill more people each year than all illegal drugs combined (approx 3000 a year -- a "Sept 11th" of dead people)? Look it up, it's the truth. Do we have a war on aspirin? Should we regulate it? It makes people feel good, makes their pain go away. It doesn't cure any conditions. A real fascist could classify aspirin as a recreational drug and they could be considered right in that if every person who takes aspirin switched to marijuana, there would be fewer toxicological deaths.
(Don't get me started on driving, please. Lots of studies in that arena as well but I can testify firsthand the difference. Driving stoned you are careful and might have some problems if you're too stoned, obviously. Driving drunk is fucking scary and terrifying even with your inhibitions gone -- only did that once, ever. Wish I could find my $140 professional-grade breathalyzer, I think someone stole it fro
Don't care for Rage Against The Machine myself.
I actually have gotten an extremely good deal out of life. But I'm fucking grim nonetheless. But I wont go on prozac mind control like my coworker.
A true utilitarian economist is heartless and has no sense of justice or how to weigh qualitative measures against quantitative measures. Isn't that sort of how communism works? (Not that it does.)
Interesting stuff about the seat belt. I think you're crazy on that front, but I did drive 3 blocks without one on today. (I think *I'm* a bit crazy for that.) And it's certainly legal to jump out of an airplane and bungee jump so you have a point there. But I guess with 40M americans without health care, we don't wanna foot the bill.
Here's an interesting thought: As technology progresses, especially nanotechnology, genetic altering, mastery of medicine, and fusion -- we will not need to work. As a species, we are eventually going to be socialist. It's absolutely not a system that would work now, but we need to start thinking about sliding that way in a few key areas: health care and education.
The PATRIOT act is just one small problem. I'd pretty much feel the same if that hadn't happened. Even if Sept 11th hadn't happened, I'd pretty much feel the same. Corporations, proto-fascists, neocons, consumption, fear, lies, injustice, drug war, mass druggings, commercials for drugs to feel good and a D.E.A. to make sure you DON'T do drugs to feel good. Our society is very fucked up right now.
There is impropriety and corruption in every profession and facet of life, yes. This does not mean one should be skeptical to bad things or that we should turn a blind eye or lie to ourselves. Public officials, and especially police (they got guns, for chrissake!), should and are held to a higher standard than civilians. A non-civilian should always die before a civilian. The army has soldiers lining up willing to die--so that we don't. The police, too, are supposed to be willing to die to save us. Yet all too often, WE die because they THINK we endangered them.
Would a soldier sacrifice his life to save 1000 people? I sure hope anyone would. Would he sacrifice his or her life to save 1 person? I think most soliders are trained to think this way. Would 10 soldiers sacrifice their lives to protect 1 person? Hell yeah, if he's a general or the president. There is a tradeoff. They are considered expendable.
To go around pointing guns and accidentally killing people is absolutely and unequivacably unacceptable. Even if 100 cops get killed each and every day, this is no excuse to kill even 1 civilian accidentally, in paranoia, every day! (Unless, obviously, he's the one trying to kill the cop...)
I don't think they are worse than criminals in an absolute sense, and I don't think that's what I stated previously. It's not what I meant to. But I care about justice, and when a policeman does something like this, it is a betrayal of justice. The criminal betrays justice, but he is a criminal and considered such. The corrupt policeman betrays justice, yet has power and respect and can almost always get away with it. That is a far greater injustice to society than letting the actual criminal go. A corrupt policeman is like a criminal with a license to kill.
Of course people exaggerate things, I myself didn't give all the details when I first said it. The statements were true but deliberately out of context enough to be emphasized a bit greater than they were (i.e. not giving the backstory). That dosen't make what I said wrong though. Spun, maybe. Karl Rove would be proud. (Not.)
I don't think it's that ironic to pay for a song that espouses revolution. Your point is??? I'm willig to buy something I like?? First off,I'm pretty sure Atari Teenage Riot's DigitalHardcoreRecordings record group is not a member of the MPAA, a friend dubbed me the first 2 albums I got (never would have heard of them otherwise), and the only discs I've actually bought were from individuals on Ebay. And those are some of the only discs I've bought period in the past 5 years. And I feel it when I listen to it, more than I have felt while listening to any other band for several years now. I don't have a problem with paying for it, I just reget never having seen them live (Carl Crack is dead. I was said to be the one to tell the Australian Ebayer that I got my ATR shirt from... But I digress.)
My fingers are tired.