In the time frame the play was written, this was FINE. Of course, people only lived to what, 30 on average right?
No, actually about 50 years, primarily due to the lack of medical care. Not that this has anything whatsoever to do with kiddie porn.
Romeo and Juliet were considered to be fully capable of entering into a real romantic relationship, complete with lots of fondling and groping, even though they were about 14 years old. Different standards, no different in biology than the 14-year-olds of today.
I know many 16 year olds that had no clue what they were getting themselves into.
This says nothing of the 16-year-old but rather the society they live in, and their parents.
A common fallacy among Americans is the idea that a) they know better than everyone else what the age for sexual activity should be, and b) that whatever limit is currently in place is the way it's always been.
We should note that most of the world's population lives in countries where the legal age for sexual activity is lower than 18. We should also note that it was lower than 18 in most areas of the U.S. until the last century.
And we should also be aware that girls and boys have been able to have sex at an age earlier than 18 ever since the race evolved. This didn't become a problem until we decided it was a problem, and acted accordingly. I sincerely doubt it was because Americans suddenly happened upon a superior moral imperative that our ancestors failed to notice, and that most of the rest of the world has yet to catch on to (barbarians!). Or that it was just recently 'discovered' that teens aren't 'capable' of handling sex, whatever that means.
Here's another example of how schools enforce laws in a very broken manner:
I recently started administering a portion of my district computer system at a locked-down facility for children. In order to work there I had to read the 'must report' rules for suspected child abuse. I found that if a child came in with bruises on his or her arm over several months, then came to school with a cast on that same arm, it wasn't grounds for suspecting abuse. WTF?
However, if a child (and I'm talking child here, the example was a 5-year-old/kindergartner) told me that her uncle had picked her up in such a fashion as to put his hands on her 'breasts' then I *had* to report it as suspected sexual molestation.
Think about this for a moment: the guidelines specifically used the word 'breasts' for the imaginary 5-year-old. Yet as any sane adult knows *5-year-old girls don't have breasts*. They have a chest not at all different from that of *5-year-old boys*. But no breasts. Makes you wonder about the mental state of the person who wrote the guidelines.
I also realized that I had violated the guidelines on numerous occasions with my niece - in fact, every time I'd picked her up by grabbing her under the arms and swinging her through the air. Because my hands, being so large against her tiny 6-year-old body, always wrap around her chest - er, 'breasts', according to the whackos who wrote the manual. So according to these guidelines it would be reasonable to assume that I had *molested my niece on multiple occasions*.
Really, it's shit like this that puts the fear of the state into your heart. If I had picked up my niece and played 'airplane' with her when she came to visit me on the job, I could've gone to jail under the 'mandatory reporting' rules of the school district....
Homosexuality and pedophilia *have nothing to do with one another*. Homosexuality involves attraction to a sexually mature human being - just like heterosexuality does, only with a different gender.
Pedophilia, on the other hand, involves an attraction to prepubescents - by definition not sexually developed - based upon *control* and *power*. This is why young boys are almost always molested by *straight males, not gay males*. The sex of the victim has nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the attacker because it isn't about normal sexual attraction to a specific gender; it's about the power that one can enforce over a defenseless child.
Pedophilia is a sickness, boys and girls. Homosexuality has *nothing to do with it*, just as heterosexuality and bisexuality have nothing to do with it. The mere fact that virtually all molestors are straight males while the victims are roughly half and half boys and girls should be a tip-off, even to the clueless.
As I stated in a previous post (from knowledge based upon the fact that I am, indeed, a psychologist), people who engage in child molestation do so regardless of outside influences. Conversely, pornography - nor the lack thereof - won't turn a human being into a child molestor.
It doesn't matter if you do or don't provide virtual child porn, RealDolls, or what have you. If the person in question isn't a child molestor *then he won't molest* - it's that simple. If he is a child molestor *then he will molest no matter what 'releases' or available*.
Anything else provides an excuse for the molestor (e.g., "if I had virtual porn I wouldn't have raped the kid", or oppositely, "the virtual kiddie porn encouraged me to rape the kid"). This is no different from the frat-boy argument "if she hadn't dressed so slutty/danced with me/whatever then I wouldn't have raped her".
As a Real Psychologist(TM), let me say that actual child molesters need no incentive to 'take it to the next level'. They will do so regardless of whatever pornographic material happens to be available. This is a fact. The mental illness is independent of outside factors like exposure to pornography (no matter what the 'pop psychologists', the bane of real science, claim on talk shows).
Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever that pornography *in any form* encourages people who wouldn't otherwise molest children to do so. None. Nada. Zip. Child molestation is a particular mental illness which can't be 'encouraged' to grow where it doesn't otherwise exist.
The folks who make these claims are a) completely ignorant of the sickness in question, and b) are actually setting up an apologia for further incidents of child molestation (e.g. "if I hadn't had access to virtual porn I wouldn't have gone out and raped that 8-year-old girl"). Don't give them the excuse; these people can't be allowed an inch when it comes to motivation for their acts.
Finally, if a bit off-topic, child molestors are so driven to molest that there recidivism rate *even with therapy* is over 90%. That means if you catch one, send him to jail, and give him all the therapy in the world (I say 'him because the vast majority are straight males), there is a 9 in 10 chance that he'll molest again once released. The only treatment that has proven to be even mildly effective relies on drugs to completely short-circuit the sex drive, and that only works if the molestor is constantly monitored to make sure he takes the drugs.
Pornography has nothing to do with any of this; it's a non-factor and serious scientists don't even consider it when trying to puzzle out how to treat something so resistant to change. Trying to ascribe any blame at all to porn of any kind just makes it that much easier for the molestor to grab an excuse when caught and tried in court.
I realize I'm posting this in a forum that practically worships the idea that 'friendly aliens are out there', but I have a karma of 50 so what do I care?
The biggest mystery in terms of alien civilizations is why they aren't here. Why haven't they colonized the Earth? If intelligent life is common then at some point at least one species had the wherewithall to colonize the galaxy. And that species, once moderately into the colonization process, is immune to complete collapse. Any one planet might suffer a collapse in civilization; even thousands might, if they're all affected by the same disaster. But many won't be and since expansion is a given (otherwise they would never have left the home system in the first place) they'll reoccupy any habitable system that goes through this collapse. And if you posit that one species is capable of doing, then others will eventually come along as well.
What this means is that the Earth should have been colonized by *at least* one intelligent species that found it to its liking at some point in the past (distant past, actually). And even if that colony was destroyed it wouldn't matter - Earth would just be *recolonized*, again and again because colonization is what these aliens, all of them, do. Yet it hasn't: we're here and nobody else is, nor is there any evidence at all to suggest that anyone has been here but us. And even if they had been here, in all the long millions of years the recolonization, or new colonization by some other species, just didn't happen. Doesn't make sense.
The 'galactic' disaster theories (a la Niven's Thrint/Tnuctipun war) are so much hogwash - great science fiction, lousy science. Also hogwash is that civilizations advanced enough to begin the process of colonization eventually collapse - every planet, everywhere, all of them in a time frame close enough to prevent recolonization. Uh huh. Again, nice science fiction but there's no rational reason why this should be believed. Another postulation of pseudo-science is the 'Prime Directive' which again has no basis in anything but a TV show popular among geeks. Humans don't practice the prime directive so there's no reason to believe that *every species capable of colonization* is somehow enamored of leaving nice big chunks of real estate alone to allow potential natives to *perhaps* develop into future neighbors. The 'Prime Directive' argument is apologia for why we aren't in contact with a colonization-capable species and isn't something to be seriously considered. The 'we haven't discovered them because the galaxy is so huge' argument is much the same thing, as it doesn't matter what *we've* done; *they* should be here anyway.
All of these are just suppositions, in fact defenses given by the pro-alien crowd for why contact hasn't occurred, and why there is no evidence at all that other intelligent life exists in the galaxy.
Of course, the only sample for life we have (so far) is Earth. Life on earth is incredibly resilient and lives in the most inhospitable of places; it's rational to assume that life exists elsewhere as well, wherever conditions permit. The 'Earth Only' crowd essentially denies the adaptability of life by claiming - without any evidence to support them - that life was a one-time fluke in a galaxy with a hundred billion or more stars. Right. Tell me another, O creationist.
But whether or not life exists elsewhere isn't the point. The question is whether *intelligent* life exists elsewhere. And how do you go about answering that question?
For starters, they aren't here. If intelligent life were common, and throwing out the inane arguments, they should be; they should've been here all along, during our development and before, and they aren't. Okay, so this gives us some idea that while life may be common, intelligent life might be darned rare. Another fact in support of the rarity of intelligent life is Earth itself. Of all the species that have existed over the course of hundreds of millions of years (just taking into account complex organisms, say from the Triassic on up) there has been exactly one intelligent life form. Just one. No others. That is pretty definite evidence that *at least on Earth* (my only sample, and yours too) intelligent life is incredibly rare - unique for this planet. It might very well be a fluke.
So, common sense tells us that life may be common but that intelligent life might be one of those one-in-a-billion shots in the dark. With that we have something to work with. But the question still stands: even if intelligent life is that rare, unless humans are the first to make it this far why has no species colonized the galaxy?
That one is unanswerable, as yet. My hypothesis (completely unsupported) is that once a species reaches a certain technological level, barring accident or malevolence it'll do as we're doing now - ride a roller coaster of technological development that follows an asymptotic curve to a conclusion that we can't even guess at. If this is true, it could be that all species, once they've punched the ticket for ride, reach the technological know-how to travel between stars and colonize planets; but that by the time they get to this level of development they're no longer interested in doing so. It could be that whatever siren-song plays at the event horizon of asymptotic development is far, far more interesting than the pedestrian endeavors of colonizing other planets. That *something* happens to them that draws the entire species into one great collective bent on achieving a goal we can't even guess at - not yet, at least.
And once they achieve that goal, they disappear from the universe as we know it. On to some other playground where our little patch of reality appears downright boring in comparison. Perhaps they go someplace else and mutter 'let there be light'. Who knows? All conjecture, of course.
But if true, it does explain why the universe is so empty. Any species capable of interstellar colonization is no longer interested in colonization. The time frame between discovery of the radio and the Whatever-It-Is that tempts them to go 'someplace else' would be awfully short. Hence no colonization, and no tens of thousands of years worth of radio waves criss-crossing the galaxy.
I have no evidence for any of this, but I believe that Vernor Vinge just might have gotten it right in "Across Realtime". In any event, barring self-destruction or catastrophe we'll hit the 'event horizon' in about 150 years, and then we'll be able to answer the question for ourselves.
To make an analogy, if music were food the superstar music makers would be making oatmeal w/o any flavor added-- whereas the musicians I select to patronize bake crab filet, sushi, t-bone steaks, and Waldorf salads: each different in style, texture and flavor, incomparable to the others, but certainly better than the gruel offered by "the Machine".
And there are millions of people out there who'd pick something you like and say the same thing about it. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' when it comes to music preferences, and no one is more discriminating or cultured based upon these preferences.
sure, I can see how someone might like that music but its' not too likely.
It isn't just likely, it's fact. People buy the cds because they like them. If they didn't like them they wouldn't buy them; there are easily obtainable alternatives (even in a chain cd store) and they choose the popular stuff instead. The proof is in the purchase. This isn't a monopoly situation a la MS in terms of music, but rather in *distribution*.
Regarding point 2, I *like* Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, and Britney Spears. I also like Bach, George Winston (piano pieces, for the unenlightened), Dido, Enya, the Dixie Chicks, the Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, Nickel Creek, Sarah McLachlin, Weird Al Yankovic, Gregorian chants, just about anything that involves a bagpipe, virtually all a cappella regardless of subject, and a host of other things. This refers back to the initial point I made about everyone having their own taste (mine ranging all over the map, as you can see).
No one is 'forcing' Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera on the public. The public buys their cds because they happen to like them. It's that simple. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just as there's nothing wrong with someone liking rap, even though I personally can't stand it.
Any time a mention is made of the RIAA we always get the young, incredibly arrogant dillweeds - no doubt still in college and therefore infallible - who blithely go about condemning pop as 'crap' music and telling everyone that if they had any taste at all they'd listen to 'alternative bands'. These same little boys also wear baseball caps backwards and think that this somehow makes them look cool (rather than just too damned stupid to figure out which way the cap actually goes).
Something you little egomaniacs need to know before you pull your dicks out of shorts and start playing with yourselves here:
- music is a matter of taste. As in, I've got mine and you've got yours. It isn't an "I've got taste and you don't affair", no matter how bloated your ego is. If you think otherwise you need meds, and lots of them.
- consider the possibility that alternative bands aren't popular is because *most people think they suck*. This is a more likely explanation than the idea that you have better taste than everyone else, or that you're smarter. Odds are that half of the people out there have better taste than you, and are smarter than you.
- the music you listen to says little about your character, abilities, mores, or ideals. Listening to alternative bands doesn't make you any more enlightened than believing in crystal power does. Claiming otherwise just makes you look dumb, although this is probably an accurate assessment of your intellect if you do so.
- popular music isn't popular because the RIAA brainwashes people into liking it. This is just another ego argument (i.e., "i'm superior and therefore immune to brainwashing, while the rest of you are a bunch of sheep"). Popular music is popular because *alot of people like it*. Deal with it.
I'm probably too late here but man am I sick of those little college boys blathering on with their stock lines "popular music sucks anyways!" or "support local bands and stop buying cds!". Enough already. Try acting like an asshole in a novel way for once; your lines are tired and old and rapidly becoming pathetic.
Now how do you know you like these songs before you buy the album?
By downloading them and listening to them. How else? And exactly how is this different from listening to them on the radio? You may be satisfied with a song ripped at 128k, just as you may be satisfied with one taped from the radio; but I sure won't settle for such low quality.
If you truly were a fan, let alone supporting them, you'd want to have their Cover Art, the actual cd, maybe even Vinyl.
Moralistic blathering. I'm not a 'fan' with an aspiration to suck artistic cock as if it were some sort of ethical imperative; I'm a customer. I decide what I want and what I don't want; what the band wants, and what you want, doesn't mean jack in this context.
I want to be sold single tracks because most bands do one or two or three good songs, and really suck - and suck hard - on the majority of their album (of course, *which* bands is a matter of individual taste). I feel no imperative to 'support the band' by buying the dogshit with the diamonds. You can do that, but I have better uses for the money I earn working.
But really, fuck the band. They aren't a religion; they're a goddamned business for all their pretentions at 'artistry'. They don't deserve any special consideration regardless of what their fans think.
Get used to the fact that in order to get music to keep, you're going to have to buy it.
And when the price is reasonable, I'm sure the vast majority of folks *will* buy their music. I'm also sure that the huge number of people trading music has little to do with morals (really, this issue is economic, not moral) and alot to do with a) pricing, and b) compulsory bundling.
My wife and I are in the same boat, although in a different order. The last two cds we bought were crippled and the stores in our area refuse to take them back (or identify which are crippled).
Because of this we've stopped buying cds. We've also stopped downloading mp3s since we no longer have a reason to sample.
If the product isn't worth purchasing at any price then this will indeed happen. So what? That's what's *supposed* to happen to products which are worthless, or become worthless over time (note the raging demand for buggy whips).
If the product isn't actually worthless then prices will stabilize at what people are willing to pay. That's how a free market works.
Note that I say "that's how a free market works". The U.S. is not a free market, not even close; with corporate welfare and protectionism it's edging more and more towards a loose command-style economy as time goes on (i.e., "you can play at being a free market so long as you stay within this narrowly-defined box, and we decide not to change the rules"). So although a free market would continue to support music (at much lower prices than those demanded by the RIAA) there's no guarantee that the mechanism would work properly in the U.S. economy.
why doesn't anyone pay any attention to economical fact, statistical fact?
Ireland has and their economy is through the roof. Which pisses off the command-economy types in the upper levels of the EU government, who claim that in some mystical fashion they're responsible for Ireland's turn-around. Right now Ireland has the *lowest* tax rates in the EU, the *highest* growth rate (three TIMES the average in the EU), and is soon going to have the highest tax revenues per capita.
Wish I had the link but I'm stuck in boondockland doing installs and it's at home.
I'd pay a $0.50 a song if I could choose which songs went on to a CD, and assuming there was no copy protection (so I could rip them onto my computer at 320k for mix 'n match playlists).
I think this is goddamned reasonable, especially since I can do the same friggin' thing for free if I don't mind downloading illegal lower-quality mp3s.
I'm willing to bet there are alot of Americans who think the same way I do (well, at least among the crowd that's out of college and actually working for a living, anyway).
My prediction: the first company that sets this up and has a reasonable selection of popular music to sell will be making money hand over fist.
Slashdotters in particular have a responsibility to act on behalf of their less privileged counterparts.
Oh please! Internet access as a matter of conscience? Tell me another!
If we were to 'act on conscience', such actions would be directed towards goals that actually mattered - food, water, shelter, and so on. Internet access doesn't even rate in comparison, at least to those of us who're sane.
we will all benefit as the Internet receives a much-needed infusion of black blood.
In exactly what sense? Cultural diversity? Because contrary to your claims skin color make blacks no more 'competent' than whites in any arena. The whole idea of 'infusing' the internet with the 'blood' of target population x, simply because x has some trivial phenotypical characteristic that differs marginally from my own, makes me want to laugh.
By the way, the winners of the Oscars weren't Africans. They were Americans. A rather big difference as the two groups don't even live on the same continent.
People lacking certain basic mental abilities aren't considered to be capable of 'fault' in the legal sense of the word. That's why nobody's complaining about GW.
Sometimes government workers, especially those lower down on the food chain, think that the system sucks too. And they will actively work to point out the flaws in such a fashion as to make it painfully obvious to even the most brain-dead of folks that something is wrong in Bureaucracy-Land.
I can't imagine that the clerk who saw this wasnt' aware of the absurdity of the situation. No doubt he/she looked at it as the perfect opportunity to point out the silliness of current ip laws, especially in his now-incredibly-overworked office. And I'm sure that someone higher up the chain - a management type - is giving him shit about it.
Not true. You can declare it as a business loss if you fail to make a profit. All you really need is 'proof of intent' which is why I suggested submitting articles a few times a year *even if they get rejected*. This shows an attempt to make your business work - and a failure.
Slashdot Mirror
In the time frame the play was written, this was FINE. Of course, people only lived to what, 30 on average right?
No, actually about 50 years, primarily due to the lack of medical care. Not that this has anything whatsoever to do with kiddie porn.
Romeo and Juliet were considered to be fully capable of entering into a real romantic relationship, complete with lots of fondling and groping, even though they were about 14 years old. Different standards, no different in biology than the 14-year-olds of today.
Either way, a good play.
Max
I know many 16 year olds that had no clue what they were getting themselves into.
This says nothing of the 16-year-old but rather the society they live in, and their parents.
A common fallacy among Americans is the idea that a) they know better than everyone else what the age for sexual activity should be, and b) that whatever limit is currently in place is the way it's always been.
We should note that most of the world's population lives in countries where the legal age for sexual activity is lower than 18. We should also note that it was lower than 18 in most areas of the U.S. until the last century.
And we should also be aware that girls and boys have been able to have sex at an age earlier than 18 ever since the race evolved. This didn't become a problem until we decided it was a problem, and acted accordingly. I sincerely doubt it was because Americans suddenly happened upon a superior moral imperative that our ancestors failed to notice, and that most of the rest of the world has yet to catch on to (barbarians!). Or that it was just recently 'discovered' that teens aren't 'capable' of handling sex, whatever that means.
Max
We could start by banning alcohol altogether. Its been working wonders with other drugs.
Max
Here's another example of how schools enforce laws in a very broken manner:
I recently started administering a portion of my district computer system at a locked-down facility for children. In order to work there I had to read the 'must report' rules for suspected child abuse. I found that if a child came in with bruises on his or her arm over several months, then came to school with a cast on that same arm, it wasn't grounds for suspecting abuse. WTF?
However, if a child (and I'm talking child here, the example was a 5-year-old/kindergartner) told me that her uncle had picked her up in such a fashion as to put his hands on her 'breasts' then I *had* to report it as suspected sexual molestation.
Think about this for a moment: the guidelines specifically used the word 'breasts' for the imaginary 5-year-old. Yet as any sane adult knows *5-year-old girls don't have breasts*. They have a chest not at all different from that of *5-year-old boys*. But no breasts. Makes you wonder about the mental state of the person who wrote the guidelines.
I also realized that I had violated the guidelines on numerous occasions with my niece - in fact, every time I'd picked her up by grabbing her under the arms and swinging her through the air. Because my hands, being so large against her tiny 6-year-old body, always wrap around her chest - er, 'breasts', according to the whackos who wrote the manual. So according to these guidelines it would be reasonable to assume that I had *molested my niece on multiple occasions*.
Really, it's shit like this that puts the fear of the state into your heart. If I had picked up my niece and played 'airplane' with her when she came to visit me on the job, I could've gone to jail under the 'mandatory reporting' rules of the school district....
Max
Homosexuality and pedophilia *have nothing to do with one another*. Homosexuality involves attraction to a sexually mature human being - just like heterosexuality does, only with a different gender.
Pedophilia, on the other hand, involves an attraction to prepubescents - by definition not sexually developed - based upon *control* and *power*. This is why young boys are almost always molested by *straight males, not gay males*. The sex of the victim has nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the attacker because it isn't about normal sexual attraction to a specific gender; it's about the power that one can enforce over a defenseless child.
Pedophilia is a sickness, boys and girls. Homosexuality has *nothing to do with it*, just as heterosexuality and bisexuality have nothing to do with it. The mere fact that virtually all molestors are straight males while the victims are roughly half and half boys and girls should be a tip-off, even to the clueless.
Max
As I stated in a previous post (from knowledge based upon the fact that I am, indeed, a psychologist), people who engage in child molestation do so regardless of outside influences. Conversely, pornography - nor the lack thereof - won't turn a human being into a child molestor.
It doesn't matter if you do or don't provide virtual child porn, RealDolls, or what have you. If the person in question isn't a child molestor *then he won't molest* - it's that simple. If he is a child molestor *then he will molest no matter what 'releases' or available*.
Anything else provides an excuse for the molestor (e.g., "if I had virtual porn I wouldn't have raped the kid", or oppositely, "the virtual kiddie porn encouraged me to rape the kid"). This is no different from the frat-boy argument "if she hadn't dressed so slutty/danced with me/whatever then I wouldn't have raped her".
Max
As a Real Psychologist(TM), let me say that actual child molesters need no incentive to 'take it to the next level'. They will do so regardless of whatever pornographic material happens to be available. This is a fact. The mental illness is independent of outside factors like exposure to pornography (no matter what the 'pop psychologists', the bane of real science, claim on talk shows).
Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever that pornography *in any form* encourages people who wouldn't otherwise molest children to do so. None. Nada. Zip. Child molestation is a particular mental illness which can't be 'encouraged' to grow where it doesn't otherwise exist.
The folks who make these claims are a) completely ignorant of the sickness in question, and b) are actually setting up an apologia for further incidents of child molestation (e.g. "if I hadn't had access to virtual porn I wouldn't have gone out and raped that 8-year-old girl"). Don't give them the excuse; these people can't be allowed an inch when it comes to motivation for their acts.
Finally, if a bit off-topic, child molestors are so driven to molest that there recidivism rate *even with therapy* is over 90%. That means if you catch one, send him to jail, and give him all the therapy in the world (I say 'him because the vast majority are straight males), there is a 9 in 10 chance that he'll molest again once released. The only treatment that has proven to be even mildly effective relies on drugs to completely short-circuit the sex drive, and that only works if the molestor is constantly monitored to make sure he takes the drugs.
Pornography has nothing to do with any of this; it's a non-factor and serious scientists don't even consider it when trying to puzzle out how to treat something so resistant to change. Trying to ascribe any blame at all to porn of any kind just makes it that much easier for the molestor to grab an excuse when caught and tried in court.
Max
I wouldn't pay for mp3s either. I'd pay for actual tracks, which I could then rip to mp3s for my own home playlists.
Max
I realize I'm posting this in a forum that practically worships the idea that 'friendly aliens are out there', but I have a karma of 50 so what do I care?
The biggest mystery in terms of alien civilizations is why they aren't here. Why haven't they colonized the Earth? If intelligent life is common then at some point at least one species had the wherewithall to colonize the galaxy. And that species, once moderately into the colonization process, is immune to complete collapse. Any one planet might suffer a collapse in civilization; even thousands might, if they're all affected by the same disaster. But many won't be and since expansion is a given (otherwise they would never have left the home system in the first place) they'll reoccupy any habitable system that goes through this collapse. And if you posit that one species is capable of doing, then others will eventually come along as well.
What this means is that the Earth should have been colonized by *at least* one intelligent species that found it to its liking at some point in the past (distant past, actually). And even if that colony was destroyed it wouldn't matter - Earth would just be *recolonized*, again and again because colonization is what these aliens, all of them, do. Yet it hasn't: we're here and nobody else is, nor is there any evidence at all to suggest that anyone has been here but us. And even if they had been here, in all the long millions of years the recolonization, or new colonization by some other species, just didn't happen. Doesn't make sense.
The 'galactic' disaster theories (a la Niven's Thrint/Tnuctipun war) are so much hogwash - great science fiction, lousy science. Also hogwash is that civilizations advanced enough to begin the process of colonization eventually collapse - every planet, everywhere, all of them in a time frame close enough to prevent recolonization. Uh huh. Again, nice science fiction but there's no rational reason why this should be believed. Another postulation of pseudo-science is the 'Prime Directive' which again has no basis in anything but a TV show popular among geeks. Humans don't practice the prime directive so there's no reason to believe that *every species capable of colonization* is somehow enamored of leaving nice big chunks of real estate alone to allow potential natives to *perhaps* develop into future neighbors. The 'Prime Directive' argument is apologia for why we aren't in contact with a colonization-capable species and isn't something to be seriously considered. The 'we haven't discovered them because the galaxy is so huge' argument is much the same thing, as it doesn't matter what *we've* done; *they* should be here anyway.
All of these are just suppositions, in fact defenses given by the pro-alien crowd for why contact hasn't occurred, and why there is no evidence at all that other intelligent life exists in the galaxy.
Of course, the only sample for life we have (so far) is Earth. Life on earth is incredibly resilient and lives in the most inhospitable of places; it's rational to assume that life exists elsewhere as well, wherever conditions permit. The 'Earth Only' crowd essentially denies the adaptability of life by claiming - without any evidence to support them - that life was a one-time fluke in a galaxy with a hundred billion or more stars. Right. Tell me another, O creationist.
But whether or not life exists elsewhere isn't the point. The question is whether *intelligent* life exists elsewhere. And how do you go about answering that question?
For starters, they aren't here. If intelligent life were common, and throwing out the inane arguments, they should be; they should've been here all along, during our development and before, and they aren't. Okay, so this gives us some idea that while life may be common, intelligent life might be darned rare. Another fact in support of the rarity of intelligent life is Earth itself. Of all the species that have existed over the course of hundreds of millions of years (just taking into account complex organisms, say from the Triassic on up) there has been exactly one intelligent life form. Just one. No others. That is pretty definite evidence that *at least on Earth* (my only sample, and yours too) intelligent life is incredibly rare - unique for this planet. It might very well be a fluke.
So, common sense tells us that life may be common but that intelligent life might be one of those one-in-a-billion shots in the dark. With that we have something to work with. But the question still stands: even if intelligent life is that rare, unless humans are the first to make it this far why has no species colonized the galaxy?
That one is unanswerable, as yet. My hypothesis (completely unsupported) is that once a species reaches a certain technological level, barring accident or malevolence it'll do as we're doing now - ride a roller coaster of technological development that follows an asymptotic curve to a conclusion that we can't even guess at. If this is true, it could be that all species, once they've punched the ticket for ride, reach the technological know-how to travel between stars and colonize planets; but that by the time they get to this level of development they're no longer interested in doing so. It could be that whatever siren-song plays at the event horizon of asymptotic development is far, far more interesting than the pedestrian endeavors of colonizing other planets. That *something* happens to them that draws the entire species into one great collective bent on achieving a goal we can't even guess at - not yet, at least.
And once they achieve that goal, they disappear from the universe as we know it. On to some other playground where our little patch of reality appears downright boring in comparison. Perhaps they go someplace else and mutter 'let there be light'. Who knows? All conjecture, of course.
But if true, it does explain why the universe is so empty. Any species capable of interstellar colonization is no longer interested in colonization. The time frame between discovery of the radio and the Whatever-It-Is that tempts them to go 'someplace else' would be awfully short. Hence no colonization, and no tens of thousands of years worth of radio waves criss-crossing the galaxy.
I have no evidence for any of this, but I believe that Vernor Vinge just might have gotten it right in "Across Realtime". In any event, barring self-destruction or catastrophe we'll hit the 'event horizon' in about 150 years, and then we'll be able to answer the question for ourselves.
Assuming all of this isn't a crock.
Max
To make an analogy, if music were food the superstar music makers would be making oatmeal w/o any flavor added-- whereas the musicians I select to patronize bake crab filet, sushi, t-bone steaks, and Waldorf salads: each different in style, texture and flavor, incomparable to the others, but certainly better than the gruel offered by "the Machine".
And there are millions of people out there who'd pick something you like and say the same thing about it. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' when it comes to music preferences, and no one is more discriminating or cultured based upon these preferences.
sure, I can see how someone might like that music but its' not too likely.
It isn't just likely, it's fact. People buy the cds because they like them. If they didn't like them they wouldn't buy them; there are easily obtainable alternatives (even in a chain cd store) and they choose the popular stuff instead. The proof is in the purchase. This isn't a monopoly situation a la MS in terms of music, but rather in *distribution*.
Max
Regarding point 2, I *like* Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, and Britney Spears. I also like Bach, George Winston (piano pieces, for the unenlightened), Dido, Enya, the Dixie Chicks, the Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, Nickel Creek, Sarah McLachlin, Weird Al Yankovic, Gregorian chants, just about anything that involves a bagpipe, virtually all a cappella regardless of subject, and a host of other things. This refers back to the initial point I made about everyone having their own taste (mine ranging all over the map, as you can see).
No one is 'forcing' Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera on the public. The public buys their cds because they happen to like them. It's that simple. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just as there's nothing wrong with someone liking rap, even though I personally can't stand it.
Max
Any time a mention is made of the RIAA we always get the young, incredibly arrogant dillweeds - no doubt still in college and therefore infallible - who blithely go about condemning pop as 'crap' music and telling everyone that if they had any taste at all they'd listen to 'alternative bands'. These same little boys also wear baseball caps backwards and think that this somehow makes them look cool (rather than just too damned stupid to figure out which way the cap actually goes).
Something you little egomaniacs need to know before you pull your dicks out of shorts and start playing with yourselves here:
- music is a matter of taste. As in, I've got mine and you've got yours. It isn't an "I've got taste and you don't affair", no matter how bloated your ego is. If you think otherwise you need meds, and lots of them.
- consider the possibility that alternative bands aren't popular is because *most people think they suck*. This is a more likely explanation than the idea that you have better taste than everyone else, or that you're smarter. Odds are that half of the people out there have better taste than you, and are smarter than you.
- the music you listen to says little about your character, abilities, mores, or ideals. Listening to alternative bands doesn't make you any more enlightened than believing in crystal power does. Claiming otherwise just makes you look dumb, although this is probably an accurate assessment of your intellect if you do so.
- popular music isn't popular because the RIAA brainwashes people into liking it. This is just another ego argument (i.e., "i'm superior and therefore immune to brainwashing, while the rest of you are a bunch of sheep"). Popular music is popular because *alot of people like it*. Deal with it.
I'm probably too late here but man am I sick of those little college boys blathering on with their stock lines "popular music sucks anyways!" or "support local bands and stop buying cds!". Enough already. Try acting like an asshole in a novel way for once; your lines are tired and old and rapidly becoming pathetic.
My rant for the day.
Max
Now how do you know you like these songs before you buy the album?
By downloading them and listening to them. How else? And exactly how is this different from listening to them on the radio? You may be satisfied with a song ripped at 128k, just as you may be satisfied with one taped from the radio; but I sure won't settle for such low quality.
If you truly were a fan, let alone supporting them, you'd want to have their Cover Art, the actual cd, maybe even Vinyl.
Moralistic blathering. I'm not a 'fan' with an aspiration to suck artistic cock as if it were some sort of ethical imperative; I'm a customer. I decide what I want and what I don't want; what the band wants, and what you want, doesn't mean jack in this context.
I want to be sold single tracks because most bands do one or two or three good songs, and really suck - and suck hard - on the majority of their album (of course, *which* bands is a matter of individual taste). I feel no imperative to 'support the band' by buying the dogshit with the diamonds. You can do that, but I have better uses for the money I earn working.
But really, fuck the band. They aren't a religion; they're a goddamned business for all their pretentions at 'artistry'. They don't deserve any special consideration regardless of what their fans think.
Max
Get used to the fact that in order to get music to keep, you're going to have to buy it.
And when the price is reasonable, I'm sure the vast majority of folks *will* buy their music. I'm also sure that the huge number of people trading music has little to do with morals (really, this issue is economic, not moral) and alot to do with a) pricing, and b) compulsory bundling.
Max
My wife and I are in the same boat, although in a different order. The last two cds we bought were crippled and the stores in our area refuse to take them back (or identify which are crippled).
Because of this we've stopped buying cds. We've also stopped downloading mp3s since we no longer have a reason to sample.
Max
If the product isn't worth purchasing at any price then this will indeed happen. So what? That's what's *supposed* to happen to products which are worthless, or become worthless over time (note the raging demand for buggy whips).
If the product isn't actually worthless then prices will stabilize at what people are willing to pay. That's how a free market works.
Note that I say "that's how a free market works". The U.S. is not a free market, not even close; with corporate welfare and protectionism it's edging more and more towards a loose command-style economy as time goes on (i.e., "you can play at being a free market so long as you stay within this narrowly-defined box, and we decide not to change the rules"). So although a free market would continue to support music (at much lower prices than those demanded by the RIAA) there's no guarantee that the mechanism would work properly in the U.S. economy.
Max
why doesn't anyone pay any attention to economical fact, statistical fact?
Ireland has and their economy is through the roof. Which pisses off the command-economy types in the upper levels of the EU government, who claim that in some mystical fashion they're responsible for Ireland's turn-around. Right now Ireland has the *lowest* tax rates in the EU, the *highest* growth rate (three TIMES the average in the EU), and is soon going to have the highest tax revenues per capita.
Wish I had the link but I'm stuck in boondockland doing installs and it's at home.
Max
I'd pay a $0.50 a song if I could choose which songs went on to a CD, and assuming there was no copy protection (so I could rip them onto my computer at 320k for mix 'n match playlists).
I think this is goddamned reasonable, especially since I can do the same friggin' thing for free if I don't mind downloading illegal lower-quality mp3s.
I'm willing to bet there are alot of Americans who think the same way I do (well, at least among the crowd that's out of college and actually working for a living, anyway).
My prediction: the first company that sets this up and has a reasonable selection of popular music to sell will be making money hand over fist.
Max
Slashdotters in particular have a responsibility to act on behalf of their less privileged counterparts.
Oh please! Internet access as a matter of conscience? Tell me another!
If we were to 'act on conscience', such actions would be directed towards goals that actually mattered - food, water, shelter, and so on. Internet access doesn't even rate in comparison, at least to those of us who're sane.
Max
we will all benefit as the Internet receives a much-needed infusion of black blood.
In exactly what sense? Cultural diversity? Because contrary to your claims skin color make blacks no more 'competent' than whites in any arena. The whole idea of 'infusing' the internet with the 'blood' of target population x, simply because x has some trivial phenotypical characteristic that differs marginally from my own, makes me want to laugh.
By the way, the winners of the Oscars weren't Africans. They were Americans. A rather big difference as the two groups don't even live on the same continent.
Max
The issue at hand has nothing to do with socialism. Lay off the crack pipe, put down Limbaugh's latest diatribe, and re-read the article.
Max
Which has what to do with giving African ISPs a free ride?
Max
People lacking certain basic mental abilities aren't considered to be capable of 'fault' in the legal sense of the word. That's why nobody's complaining about GW.
Max
Sometimes government workers, especially those lower down on the food chain, think that the system sucks too. And they will actively work to point out the flaws in such a fashion as to make it painfully obvious to even the most brain-dead of folks that something is wrong in Bureaucracy-Land.
I can't imagine that the clerk who saw this wasnt' aware of the absurdity of the situation. No doubt he/she looked at it as the perfect opportunity to point out the silliness of current ip laws, especially in his now-incredibly-overworked office. And I'm sure that someone higher up the chain - a management type - is giving him shit about it.
Max
Not true. You can declare it as a business loss if you fail to make a profit. All you really need is 'proof of intent' which is why I suggested submitting articles a few times a year *even if they get rejected*. This shows an attempt to make your business work - and a failure.
A failed business venture does not a hobby make.
Max