Not so funny... in a prior discussion, several people piped up with tales (some documented) of how the labels occasionally sign a band with the sole intent of PREVENTING them from releasing a record.
As to your old album -- free downloads might sell those remaining 920 copies for you, not to mention your future work. -- I can attest that almost every album I've ever bought came to my attention first as some sort of freebie, where *I had control over when and what I listened to* (meaning tape in the olden days, MP3s in modern times).
I think Prince does what he does well, he's just not really to my taste (at least what I've heard). But I applaud him for having the balls to tell the record cartels to take a hike.
As to Madonna... she's a businesswoman first and foremost, and she's figured out what sells. (Obviously, or she wouldn't be a "single name" either.) I never cared much for her stuff, but then I heard "Frozen" and about fell over... it's not only good as what it is, I *like* it.
Maybe I need to stick another icepick in my ears...?!;)
"But banning the compulsory licensing scheme is *not* the solution. The solution is fair, non-discriminatory royalty rates."
You forgot "administered by a completely disinterested party."
Occurs to me that one solution might be to run 'em thru the IRS instead. Any royalties collected go against the artist's taxes owed, and the balance is "refunded" to the artist (meaning they get ALL of it except what they'd owe regardless as income tax -- probably a whole helluva lot more than most get paid right now). If the artist dies, then most or all of the money gets bounced back to the broadcaster.
As to that... to each his own, but I don't think it's fair to not give people the *choice* to correct or prevent such issues in themselves or their kids.
Counter-example: I know a number of blind or near-blind people, and not a one of 'em would choose to keep their highly-developed dependency on their hearing, if they could have normal sight instead. As it is, they're forced to pay very close attention to sounds so they can decipher their surroundings, but another whole facet of existence is closed to them whether they wish it to be or not.
Anyway, I'm glad you found your own path and that it works for you.
Honey acts as a general anti-bacterial (not precisely an antibiotic) because that concentration of sugar disrupts bacteria osmosis -- effectively sucks all the water out of the little bugglies. A saturated solution of salt or table sugar or even Epsom salts would work just as well, tho wouldn't sound as magical.;)
The downside is that some of the really NASTY bacterias, like some clostridium species, can survive just fine in honey.
Honey isn't made of pollens, tho it usually has some pollen in it. It's made of dessicated flower nectar.
BTW honey is fairly acidic, and will destroy concrete. Old-style dense concrete is more resistant and will only etch a little; with modern concrete, I've seen honey eat half an inch off the floor in less than 10 years. (I used to work for a beekeeper.)
I'm reminded of a conversation with someone who INSISTED on always driving a stick shift, because that was What She Did. It was part of her identity, if you will.
It came about that she couldn't find a suitable car with a stick, so she finally got one with an automatic transmission. First comment about the new car:
"I can't believe I did all that extra work for all those years! this is SO much nicer!"
I suspect a great many disabled people would react similarly, should they "lose" their disability, even if their initial reaction was "How dare you try to change me!"
Oddity of local major retailers: They carry all sorts of marginal and obscure video DVDs, but almost no mariginal or obscure music CDs -- this despite the fact that CDs take up less shelf space (and are listed at generally higher prices per disk). So what happens? I peruse the DVD aisle every time I go in the store, but seldom waste my time on the CD aisle. Guess which aisle I spend money on!!
Up above I suggest that non-Britons might willingly pay the TV tax if that gave them access to unrestricted-use downloadable BBC content. And ISTM the obvious solution to the "but anyone could grab it!" thing is to issue a login ID to everyone who pays the TV tax, no matter what country they live in. "Buy" a login, get non-DRM'd content. Don't have a login, too bad, go without. Seems fair to me. Wouldn't matter what OS you were using then, either.
Furthermore, why shouldn't a non-UK resident be able to pay the "TV tax" and then enjoy the same access to downloadable content, at no further charge? Seems to me they're missing an opportunity here -- I know plenty of US residents who would gladly cough up the $100/yr or whatever it is, if that meant they could download *freely-usable* BBC content. (Conversely, I don't know any who would pay to download *DRM'd* BBC content.)
Oh, I assure you, BBSs and BBS networks (there were dozens, not just FIDOnet) held flame wars that would make even the most hardened Usenet fireman feel inadequate.
We old BBSers like to remember the "clean" networks, where flames and trolls were discouraged or prohibited, but fact is that most messaging networks weren't much different from what goes on in today's Internet -- main diff being that most BBSs were not realtime (tho some were live chat only) so flame wars burned in slow motion. But burn they did.
And there was indeed spam in the BBS era -- but the sysop had total control, and as soon as a spammer was reported or noticed, their account got deleted. Hence it never reached today's volume.
And there were enough spam and flames that most BBS software and many offline mail readers allowed twit filtering, for the purpose of removing these nuisances from your daily QWK packet.
All that aside, I've often had (and expressed) the thought that for email security and control over what we have to put up with online, a return to the BBS might not be entirely a bad idea, even if it is conducted using tin cans and string.
If you want to exchange ads for a cheaper monthly fee, there's already NetZero, Juno, GeoShitties, Tripod, etc., ranging from cheap to free, but you "pay" with ads inserted in every possible orifice.
I think one part of the solution is to help people learn about for-really web hosting -- when you can get 10GB of space for less than $3/month, with a real web host that doesn't fuck with your stuff, why put up with a "free" host that makes your visitors hate you? (And they won't hate your web host; they'll hate your site and you for making it... most people don't know to distinguish beyond that.)
I'm starting to wonder if we even HAVE any economy anymore outside of advertising agencies and their vict^H^H^H^H customers.:/
You can make a quite durable and sharp blade from a long piece of bone. You can make an effective stabbing weapon from a sharpened piece of wood. And you can make a nasty cutting weapon from wood with broken glass embedded in it.
For that matter, someone could club you to death with their cane, or poke your eye out with their high heel. And what are they going to do about a boxer's fists -- cut off his hands??!
As you say, security theatre abounds, and makes us no safer. A few well-armed ordinary passengers, OTOH, would make all the difference in the world.
Britain. Quebec (if you speak out against anything French). I'm sure there are plenty more that we don't know about -- as this seems to be the pattern as civilization "progresses". And one is reminded that the same pattern has happened before (church inquisitions, etc.)
Only drawback being that trees need significantly more rootspace, headspace, and water than any other type of crop. Whereas you can grow strawberries and blueberries in four inches of dirt with less than a foot of headroom.
I can attest to how little light avocados need, at least for normal growth, because when I was a kid we were always planting the seeds, and they grew into bushy ceiling-high trees in just a year or two -- even stashed in a dim corner of the living room where the sun never shone. As to whether they'd produce a good crop with that little light -- no idea, but I do know that blueberries will do so.
Come to think of it, so will zucchini. Great, now we could give zucchini poisoning to city types who hitherto had been immune!:)
Re:Practical for fragile high-profit crops (berrie
on
Vertical Farming
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· Score: 1
I'm sure you're right that buying the land at street level in real-estate-strapped NYC would be absurdly expensive -- it'd be cheaper to float it on old cargo barges out in the near Atlantic.
But every building has a roof, and a lot of those roofs could be adapted as greenhouse space, and there's no reason it can't be designed to be modernly efficient. ISTM that if someone could get startup capital and get even one good working prototype going, say on the roof of a parking garage or mall, or better yet above the grocery store it intends to serve -- the idea could catch on and become economically viable.
But building it from scratch at street level in NYC -- I agree with you there, that's a fantasy best reserved for folks who regularly smoke rolls of $1000 bills. The only distant possibility might be some sort of collaboration with the Parks Dept. or with some university, and even there, it's not like parks are in surplus.
Exactly what I was getting at! but of course most of NYC is already built -- so there you're mostly talking about retrofitting or adding to an existing building. I'm sure there's a great deal of currently-unused roof space that could support, if not a full-blown facility, at least a basic greenhouse.
And consider that much of the living space in NYC is owned-flats and condo-like arrangements -- I'm sure some would be willing to sell roof space for such a venture, far more cheaply than one could buy land down at street level.
If the optics could be made sufficiently efficient at carrying light from up above, even disused train tunnels could house micro-farms -- hell, if you're growing mushrooms, you don't need sunlight anyway, just enough light to work by.
I was thinking that with fibre you could deliver sunlight precisely where you want it -- as finely grained as to the individual plant. That would be tougher with mirrors, and wouldn't let you use the building's non-windowed surface area as a passive collector.
ISTM fibre would also make filtering light easier -- leech off what the plants don't use anyway and use it to heat the building, or whatever.
Some plants grow with whatever sun comes their way -- frex, avocados do fine in a dim environment with no direct sun at all. Blueberries need very little, in fact direct sun can damage them. Some types of strawberries prefer shade. I'm sure there are others I don't have direct experience with.
Actually, the first use of "droid" that I personally know of was in an SF novel from the 1950s. (Someday I'll find it again... gotta unearth and reread that part of my collection...)
But when I saw this article, my first thought was... oh no, REPLICATORS!!!
I've mentioned this before... given the political climate, the day is coming when the only trustworthy data route (ie. the only way you know your email won't be snooped/blocked) will be the old-fashioned modem and dialup BBS, where the only party you are required to trust is the sysop (and whether his phone lines are tapped), and where no one other than said sysop can filter your words, ideas, content, and whatever other "undesirable" behaviour you may exhibit.
And as phone lines continue to deteriorate (may will not transmit modem data above 26k, and they're not required to do so above 9k) and quality modems become a rarity, that could once again become an elite venue, just as it was in the olden days.
Best description of the problem ever. Kudos to your granddad, a wise man.
As to another thought in this thread... yes, what about backups? Some people do backups to online storage sites. If you thus back up your *legally ripped* copies of this "protected content" -- is that now blockable?? What about when you go to download YOUR OWN BACKUPS??
I think the first three steps have already happened.:(
Re:The top layer is for growing plants
on
Vertical Farming
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This goes right along with my thought up above that such a structure would work well for small fragile crops that don't ship or store well, like berries. Edible fungi are right in the same class -- they don't need anything but a controlled environment and the appropriate influx of "garbage" as the old stuff gets broken down. And they don't keep well once picked, so the closer you are to market, the better.
Most of the retail cost of these fragile crops, outside of the initial labour for pickers, is actually in the special handling they need to ship and store well, as they are very easily destroyed by any mishandling or unexpected storage conditions. If you don't need to ship them any further than the market down the street, and don't need to store any quantity beyond what you'll sell that market tomorrow, that's a heap of costs you don't have, and a bunch of middlemen you don't need to pay. That alone likely would cover the operating costs.
Further, as some point out above, it doesn't make sense to put such structures on ground that would be more profitable for parking garages and condos. But what about putting smaller units on the otherwise-unused roofs of various buildings? Such as parking garages and condos.:)
Re:Great idea, but some unanswered questions.
on
Vertical Farming
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· Score: 1
There are small non-honey bees available as pollenators for greenhouses, isolated gardens, etc. I forget what they're called but they're very small, non-aggressive, and stick close to their hive. Would work fine in a closed environment like this.
Practical for fragile high-profit crops (berries)
on
Vertical Farming
·
· Score: 1
I suspect what they have in mind is not the major or bulky crops, like wheat and potatoes, but rather the crops that are relatively small, fragile and generally don't ship or store well, like strawberries, blueberries, kiwifruit, and the like. These are also relatively compact plants and more subject to predation from birds and diseases, so a protected environment in limited space is practical. Berries are often grown in tiered greenhouses elsewhere (albeit a single floor with many small tiers, but the principle is the same) -- why not in NYC??
As to sunlight, some crops (including many berries) do fine with limited light, and I think if the entire non-glass surface of the building was design as a fibre collector, this would be enough light for the purpose.
Berries and the like are relatively high-priced in the retail market, and if you can cut out a whole layer of distribution/middlemen (no longer needed if you can sell directly to local markets), that could make the profit margin large enough to make this entire idea economically feasible.
BTW direct sales is not unusual for some crops as it is -- frex, Albertsons Groceries (a major western chain) buys 80% of their eggs directly from the Hutterite colonies that produce them. No middlemen involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so funny... in a prior discussion, several people piped up with tales (some documented) of how the labels occasionally sign a band with the sole intent of PREVENTING them from releasing a record.
As to your old album -- free downloads might sell those remaining 920 copies for you, not to mention your future work. -- I can attest that almost every album I've ever bought came to my attention first as some sort of freebie, where *I had control over when and what I listened to* (meaning tape in the olden days, MP3s in modern times).
I think Prince does what he does well, he's just not really to my taste (at least what I've heard). But I applaud him for having the balls to tell the record cartels to take a hike.
;)
As to Madonna... she's a businesswoman first and foremost, and she's figured out what sells. (Obviously, or she wouldn't be a "single name" either.) I never cared much for her stuff, but then I heard "Frozen" and about fell over... it's not only good as what it is, I *like* it.
Maybe I need to stick another icepick in my ears...?!
"But banning the compulsory licensing scheme is *not* the solution. The solution is fair, non-discriminatory royalty rates."
You forgot "administered by a completely disinterested party."
Occurs to me that one solution might be to run 'em thru the IRS instead. Any royalties collected go against the artist's taxes owed, and the balance is "refunded" to the artist (meaning they get ALL of it except what they'd owe regardless as income tax -- probably a whole helluva lot more than most get paid right now). If the artist dies, then most or all of the money gets bounced back to the broadcaster.
As to that... to each his own, but I don't think it's fair to not give people the *choice* to correct or prevent such issues in themselves or their kids.
Counter-example: I know a number of blind or near-blind people, and not a one of 'em would choose to keep their highly-developed dependency on their hearing, if they could have normal sight instead. As it is, they're forced to pay very close attention to sounds so they can decipher their surroundings, but another whole facet of existence is closed to them whether they wish it to be or not.
Anyway, I'm glad you found your own path and that it works for you.
Honey acts as a general anti-bacterial (not precisely an antibiotic) because that concentration of sugar disrupts bacteria osmosis -- effectively sucks all the water out of the little bugglies. A saturated solution of salt or table sugar or even Epsom salts would work just as well, tho wouldn't sound as magical. ;)
The downside is that some of the really NASTY bacterias, like some clostridium species, can survive just fine in honey.
Honey isn't made of pollens, tho it usually has some pollen in it. It's made of dessicated flower nectar.
BTW honey is fairly acidic, and will destroy concrete. Old-style dense concrete is more resistant and will only etch a little; with modern concrete, I've seen honey eat half an inch off the floor in less than 10 years. (I used to work for a beekeeper.)
I'm reminded of a conversation with someone who INSISTED on always driving a stick shift, because that was What She Did. It was part of her identity, if you will.
It came about that she couldn't find a suitable car with a stick, so she finally got one with an automatic transmission. First comment about the new car:
"I can't believe I did all that extra work for all those years! this is SO much nicer!"
I suspect a great many disabled people would react similarly, should they "lose" their disability, even if their initial reaction was "How dare you try to change me!"
Oddity of local major retailers: They carry all sorts of marginal and obscure video DVDs, but almost no mariginal or obscure music CDs -- this despite the fact that CDs take up less shelf space (and are listed at generally higher prices per disk). So what happens? I peruse the DVD aisle every time I go in the store, but seldom waste my time on the CD aisle. Guess which aisle I spend money on!!
Up above I suggest that non-Britons might willingly pay the TV tax if that gave them access to unrestricted-use downloadable BBC content. And ISTM the obvious solution to the "but anyone could grab it!" thing is to issue a login ID to everyone who pays the TV tax, no matter what country they live in. "Buy" a login, get non-DRM'd content. Don't have a login, too bad, go without. Seems fair to me. Wouldn't matter what OS you were using then, either.
Furthermore, why shouldn't a non-UK resident be able to pay the "TV tax" and then enjoy the same access to downloadable content, at no further charge? Seems to me they're missing an opportunity here -- I know plenty of US residents who would gladly cough up the $100/yr or whatever it is, if that meant they could download *freely-usable* BBC content. (Conversely, I don't know any who would pay to download *DRM'd* BBC content.)
Oh, I assure you, BBSs and BBS networks (there were dozens, not just FIDOnet) held flame wars that would make even the most hardened Usenet fireman feel inadequate.
:)
We old BBSers like to remember the "clean" networks, where flames and trolls were discouraged or prohibited, but fact is that most messaging networks weren't much different from what goes on in today's Internet -- main diff being that most BBSs were not realtime (tho some were live chat only) so flame wars burned in slow motion. But burn they did.
And there was indeed spam in the BBS era -- but the sysop had total control, and as soon as a spammer was reported or noticed, their account got deleted. Hence it never reached today's volume.
And there were enough spam and flames that most BBS software and many offline mail readers allowed twit filtering, for the purpose of removing these nuisances from your daily QWK packet.
All that aside, I've often had (and expressed) the thought that for email security and control over what we have to put up with online, a return to the BBS might not be entirely a bad idea, even if it is conducted using tin cans and string.
(Actually, I still regularly use a BBS.
If you want to exchange ads for a cheaper monthly fee, there's already NetZero, Juno, GeoShitties, Tripod, etc., ranging from cheap to free, but you "pay" with ads inserted in every possible orifice.
:/
I think one part of the solution is to help people learn about for-really web hosting -- when you can get 10GB of space for less than $3/month, with a real web host that doesn't fuck with your stuff, why put up with a "free" host that makes your visitors hate you? (And they won't hate your web host; they'll hate your site and you for making it... most people don't know to distinguish beyond that.)
I'm starting to wonder if we even HAVE any economy anymore outside of advertising agencies and their vict^H^H^H^H customers.
It occurs to me that it's just timeshifting, as seen from the other side.
You can make a quite durable and sharp blade from a long piece of bone. You can make an effective stabbing weapon from a sharpened piece of wood. And you can make a nasty cutting weapon from wood with broken glass embedded in it.
For that matter, someone could club you to death with their cane, or poke your eye out with their high heel. And what are they going to do about a boxer's fists -- cut off his hands??!
As you say, security theatre abounds, and makes us no safer. A few well-armed ordinary passengers, OTOH, would make all the difference in the world.
Britain. Quebec (if you speak out against anything French). I'm sure there are plenty more that we don't know about -- as this seems to be the pattern as civilization "progresses". And one is reminded that the same pattern has happened before (church inquisitions, etc.)
Only drawback being that trees need significantly more rootspace, headspace, and water than any other type of crop. Whereas you can grow strawberries and blueberries in four inches of dirt with less than a foot of headroom.
:)
I can attest to how little light avocados need, at least for normal growth, because when I was a kid we were always planting the seeds, and they grew into bushy ceiling-high trees in just a year or two -- even stashed in a dim corner of the living room where the sun never shone. As to whether they'd produce a good crop with that little light -- no idea, but I do know that blueberries will do so.
Come to think of it, so will zucchini. Great, now we could give zucchini poisoning to city types who hitherto had been immune!
I'm sure you're right that buying the land at street level in real-estate-strapped NYC would be absurdly expensive -- it'd be cheaper to float it on old cargo barges out in the near Atlantic.
But every building has a roof, and a lot of those roofs could be adapted as greenhouse space, and there's no reason it can't be designed to be modernly efficient. ISTM that if someone could get startup capital and get even one good working prototype going, say on the roof of a parking garage or mall, or better yet above the grocery store it intends to serve -- the idea could catch on and become economically viable.
But building it from scratch at street level in NYC -- I agree with you there, that's a fantasy best reserved for folks who regularly smoke rolls of $1000 bills. The only distant possibility might be some sort of collaboration with the Parks Dept. or with some university, and even there, it's not like parks are in surplus.
Exactly what I was getting at! but of course most of NYC is already built -- so there you're mostly talking about retrofitting or adding to an existing building. I'm sure there's a great deal of currently-unused roof space that could support, if not a full-blown facility, at least a basic greenhouse.
And consider that much of the living space in NYC is owned-flats and condo-like arrangements -- I'm sure some would be willing to sell roof space for such a venture, far more cheaply than one could buy land down at street level.
If the optics could be made sufficiently efficient at carrying light from up above, even disused train tunnels could house micro-farms -- hell, if you're growing mushrooms, you don't need sunlight anyway, just enough light to work by.
I was thinking that with fibre you could deliver sunlight precisely where you want it -- as finely grained as to the individual plant. That would be tougher with mirrors, and wouldn't let you use the building's non-windowed surface area as a passive collector.
ISTM fibre would also make filtering light easier -- leech off what the plants don't use anyway and use it to heat the building, or whatever.
Some plants grow with whatever sun comes their way -- frex, avocados do fine in a dim environment with no direct sun at all. Blueberries need very little, in fact direct sun can damage them. Some types of strawberries prefer shade. I'm sure there are others I don't have direct experience with.
Actually, the first use of "droid" that I personally know of was in an SF novel from the 1950s. (Someday I'll find it again... gotta unearth and reread that part of my collection...)
... oh no, REPLICATORS!!!
But when I saw this article, my first thought was
I've mentioned this before... given the political climate, the day is coming when the only trustworthy data route (ie. the only way you know your email won't be snooped/blocked) will be the old-fashioned modem and dialup BBS, where the only party you are required to trust is the sysop (and whether his phone lines are tapped), and where no one other than said sysop can filter your words, ideas, content, and whatever other "undesirable" behaviour you may exhibit.
And as phone lines continue to deteriorate (may will not transmit modem data above 26k, and they're not required to do so above 9k) and quality modems become a rarity, that could once again become an elite venue, just as it was in the olden days.
Best description of the problem ever. Kudos to your granddad, a wise man.
As to another thought in this thread... yes, what about backups? Some people do backups to online storage sites. If you thus back up your *legally ripped* copies of this "protected content" -- is that now blockable?? What about when you go to download YOUR OWN BACKUPS??
I think the first three steps have already happened. :(
This goes right along with my thought up above that such a structure would work well for small fragile crops that don't ship or store well, like berries. Edible fungi are right in the same class -- they don't need anything but a controlled environment and the appropriate influx of "garbage" as the old stuff gets broken down. And they don't keep well once picked, so the closer you are to market, the better.
:)
Most of the retail cost of these fragile crops, outside of the initial labour for pickers, is actually in the special handling they need to ship and store well, as they are very easily destroyed by any mishandling or unexpected storage conditions. If you don't need to ship them any further than the market down the street, and don't need to store any quantity beyond what you'll sell that market tomorrow, that's a heap of costs you don't have, and a bunch of middlemen you don't need to pay. That alone likely would cover the operating costs.
Further, as some point out above, it doesn't make sense to put such structures on ground that would be more profitable for parking garages and condos. But what about putting smaller units on the otherwise-unused roofs of various buildings? Such as parking garages and condos.
There are small non-honey bees available as pollenators for greenhouses, isolated gardens, etc. I forget what they're called but they're very small, non-aggressive, and stick close to their hive. Would work fine in a closed environment like this.
I suspect what they have in mind is not the major or bulky crops, like wheat and potatoes, but rather the crops that are relatively small, fragile and generally don't ship or store well, like strawberries, blueberries, kiwifruit, and the like. These are also relatively compact plants and more subject to predation from birds and diseases, so a protected environment in limited space is practical. Berries are often grown in tiered greenhouses elsewhere (albeit a single floor with many small tiers, but the principle is the same) -- why not in NYC??
As to sunlight, some crops (including many berries) do fine with limited light, and I think if the entire non-glass surface of the building was design as a fibre collector, this would be enough light for the purpose.
Berries and the like are relatively high-priced in the retail market, and if you can cut out a whole layer of distribution/middlemen (no longer needed if you can sell directly to local markets), that could make the profit margin large enough to make this entire idea economically feasible.
BTW direct sales is not unusual for some crops as it is -- frex, Albertsons Groceries (a major western chain) buys 80% of their eggs directly from the Hutterite colonies that produce them. No middlemen involved.