And yet here we are with arguably the most liberal president and congress ever...
I'm arguing. Obama isn't very liberal, he's a conservative Democrat. Why am I arguing this, for the very reasons you state in your post. His actions are not very liberal in that he's basically acting like the conservatives before him. The only liberal thing he has done, so far, is the healthcare crap, which is more like welfare for Insurance companies than any actual liberal proposal.
I am a liberal (according to the silly politics test I'm further left than Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, though also more libertarian than Ron Paul), and Obama just looks like a slightly lesser conservative than Bush, Bush, or Reagan. Same with Clinton, to be honest. I don't think we've had a fully liberal president in the US since FDR.
Ah yes... the International Jewish Conspiracy! I once asked a waitress at a local Red Lobster (she was wearing a Star of David, and just finished being racially slammed by an elderly couple) how that cut of the IJC was treating her, and if I converted to her religion if I would get the same share as her. She laughed, and told me that if I convert to being God's Chosen, I too could be bashed by uneducated morons constantly.
So I went to the local synagogue and asked if I get my cut if I convert. The rabbi said yes, but not in the way I expect, and made a "snip, snip" gesture.
The lesson? Rabbi's rock, and if there is a International Jewish Conspiracy it is highly uneven as most Jew's haven't heard of it, but if it does exist, it probably would be better than most other International Religious Outgroup Conspiracies, since at least some of them have a decent sense of humor.
My question to the rabbi went over better than when I went to the local Mormon temple and asked if the ultra-cool bicycle gear is gratis with conversion, and whether or whether not I get a free "starter" wife upon converting. He called security.
He's either a very successful troll with a small collection of macros, or a decent bot. I'm guessing he, or his programmer, has a real life grudge against whoever the hell Michael Kristopeit is, and that is whose address he posted, and whose name he stole. He probably worked for Kristopeit's company, got laid off, and now sits in his mom's basement pondering digital revenge. Or something.
He is a decent troll though, and further proof that anyone with a UID over a million should be treated with suspicion.
I managed to fall into it once, until I realized that half of the crap he spouted looked quasi-random (think of Elisa as a troll), and the fact that he never replied with the same UID, notice the numbers at the end.
This thread will never end. And he will say "you ARE an idiot" 5000 times.
And how many children do you think are born to non-citizens in the US? Does it have a significant effect on immigration, illegal or otherwise?
I live in the Southwest, so probably more than in most other places in the US. But I do know a significant portion are, not a huge portion but significant. It probably doesn't have a huge effect, but it probably happens more than we realize.
The anchor baby thing is a bit of a myth, since the law doesn't really work like that (as an anchor, they are citizens, but their whole family isn't). It is a bit of cultural knowledge, correct or not, and thus people do act accordingly (cultural knowledge is more meaningful than facts when looking at the actions of people). Also courts are less likely to break up a family than deport a random illegal immigrant. Bob and Julie (or Jose and Maria, or whatnot) have a legal child, its harder to break up the family, than if they didn't.
I never claimed, though, that the original poster was completely accurate. I know damn well (as, I bet, does the OP) that it doesn't work like that. But the general spirit of it was somewhat correct, if worded a bit nastily.
My main point, though, was that it isn't really dehumanizing. Not complimentary pr perhaps accurate, but still very human. His statement didn't make me think of animals or inanimate objects.
...but really most of the people who have children this law applies to just over here trying to make a better life for themselves...
This really doesn't mean much to me. I feel bad for them, they came from a shitty country with minimal rule of law (especially in the north) and who has some long standing racism against the mestizos who generally end up in the US. We should, obviously, assist them, but not at our own detriment. Whether or whether not they are good for the US, and where that line should be (between assistance and self-harm) should be the topic of debate, not all the emotive bullshit thrown out by both sides. I am an Arizonan, and I'm sick of it.
The anti-illegal immigration (often, erroneously painted as anti-immigrant in a silly attempt to rebrand them) crowd is often motivated by racism, and other less than pleasant motivations. This I understand. Though I, and around half the people I know (including a decent amount of Latinos) am for SB1070 and other ways of restricting illegal immigration and removing (humanely) the illegal immigrants we have, for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. The anti-illegal crowd is often a bunch of right-wing, crypto-racist morons, and worse, often just us it as a power grab (ala Jan Brewer) since it is probably the most popular cause around these parts.
The pro-illegal immigration crowd is just as inane, if not a bit more noble. A lot of them are of the "anti-borders" crowd, which is just bizarre. Borders serve a damn good purpose, and if they left their sociology classrooms and gave it a bit of thought they would realize this. Some of them are of the obnoxious "la raza" crowd, who are basically racists who hold some Aryan flavored mythology about some Aztec utopia that the whites stole from them (ignoring that the southwest were never Aztec, and that the Aztecs wore people's skin to make the corn grow). Most of them are just hopelessly idealistic with no sight to the actual consequences if their idealistic utopia came to be (hint; it wouldn't be a utopia, it never is). As we move up in income, age, and power the motivation changes to something more dubious; profit. Rich people love illegal immigrants. They work cheap and thus depress wages for everyone else. They can be used to break unions. They don't need to be taxed, nor do they need benefits. They are a cheap and disposable work force. Discouraging illegal immigration would hurt the bottom line, and thus politicians love it.
The politicians are why this is such a annoying debate. A majority of Americans want to cut off the illegal immigration pipe-line, but this isn't convenient for those who actually matter, those with the money.... and usually do the jobs that none of the locals want to do anyway (and often get exploited and held in virtual slavery while doing so).
This fallacy makes me cringe. For most of the jobs illegal immigrants are doing right now, citizens were doing 20 years ago. The only difference is the amount of pay. One of our family friends was a plumber in Arizona, he had a very large firm that was in charge of many of the developers and hotel chains. He is now out of business. He only hired American citizens, and paid them a living wage, and was basically out competed by firms that only hired illegals, and paid them $2.50/hr under the table (no benefits, not taxes). This is before the housing crisis and so-called "great recession". The same happened in construction,and other blue collar jobs. In the 70's you could actually be middle class and blue collar. Obviously Americans would do these jobs, if it was possible to LIVE off of them. We are accustomed to a standard of living, and we cannot compete with people who expect much, much, less.
A fresh family of illegal immigrants are perfectly capable of living 20 to a house and basically living hand to mouth, we, citizens, expect more. Even in these circumstances the illegal immigrants are better of than they were in Mexico (or where ever).
How is it dehumanizing? Yes, a bit harsh and sarcastic, but it doesn't seem really dehumanizing. He could have phrased it all a bit better, but I don't really see anything inaccurate or particularly vile about it. The truth of the matter is that it is a stupid law that made sense at the time but makes none now.
I don't think the drafters of the Constitution were in favor of today's "anchor babies". Or would be.
If the majority of the population doesn't even show up to vote, that is a de facto vote against the system.
Your reading to much into it. Not everything in this world is politically motivated. Most of the people I know don't vote, and it generally isn't a form of protest. Its just apathy. They don't care. It isn't that they think that their vote doesn't matter, it isn't because they think the system is against them, they just don't care. Even if the government was some mythic ideal they wouldn't vote.
Political people breath too much into politics, they think everyone is engaged at some level. But really politics and the government are very inconsequential to most people. The government is some tertiary entity out in the nebulous periphery of their existence. It isn't a real force in their lives, being that their too busy living, working, caring for their family and community, watching reality TV, and caring about pop culture. They might care about politics, and the political future of this country, but it is all very abstract to them. The government does it thing, they do theirs, and rarely do these influences over lap. They aren't disenfranchised, they aren't repressed, they aren't protesting. On the contrary, the government has done a decent job keeping the basics of life common, and keeping the peace, so it is very hard for the typical person to be very motivated one way or another.
Politics are only important when there is a threat to the real things in life, family, basic survival, and security. Despite all the left/right wing FUD, this threat is pretty abstract and almost non-existent.
I only vote because I was raised to think it is my civic duty. I really don't care all that much, especially about local (and being that I'm in Arizona loco) politics. I probably wouldn't vote in them if not for the feeling of guilt that I was raised with. I also would probably ignore the House of Representatives completely as well, and only vote for Senators and Presidents. Even then it doesn't matter too much, I really can't see America being much different with McCain at the helm, or whoever else wants to sit in the Oval Office. My life will tick on just like it always has. I will pay my taxes, which I don't like (though I like the benefits this gets me... and will have schizophenic feelings about it just like everyone else since the invention of taxes and services paid for om by them), I will interface with the government only very rarely (the DMV, the annoyance of dodging jury duty, etc..), and pretty much completely ignore politics unless it is as theater or as something to get indignant about then pass on... Or to feel elitist over that other 50% of the population who doesn't agree with me, how stupid they must be! Then I will finish my newspaper, put down my coffee and completely forget about the whole damn mess.
Canada, while it has a great martial tradition in the World Wars and Afghanistan, really doesn't have that insurgency mindset that Iraqis who are allowed a full auto AK-47/74 per adult male or Afghanis have.
I think that the mindset for insurgency would develop rather quickly. The original British colonists weren't really insurgents either, until they needed to be. Look at the Occupied French, as well. When one thinks "insurgent" they don't think of the French, but the French managed to pull off a rather good show of it when the time came.
I personally think Canada could kick our ass in an invasion, personally. They would have a reason to fight, have a decent collection of skills, and have tons of small, individual, arms. State militaries are somewhat irrelevant in insurgant style fighting, we're not fighting the Afghan or Iraqi military, we're fighting armed and motivated civilians. Canada would have those, if we were to invade. It also would be harder to motivate our troops with convincing propaganda, or use xenophobia to motivate them, since the Canadians look like us, have a similar culture to ours, speak our language, and share a vast swath of our genealogy and roots.
As an unrelated note, why the hell doesn't Slashdot play nicely with Chrome? Typing this response made me feel like I was trying to use a computer from the 80's to play Crysis. Does it really need to eat 100% of my CPU, and hang for a full minute just to paste something? Or hang for 30 seconds, and once again spike the CPU, if I type to fast? It has to be as Slashdot problem, since it is the only site that has these problems.
Torchlight is damn good, but its a bit simple and short, so it gets a bit stale after awhile. Sacred 2 is okay, but it is infected with MMO style quests that have nothing to do with the story, so it too gets damn old fast. Titan Quest seems a good Diablo 2 stand in, has a decent story (not great but..) and a fair amount of depth (can have two classes, and all their synergies, tons of items and stats and modifiers).
Though if you really want to scratch the Diablo itch, just reinstall Diablo 2 and have some fun.
Diablo 3's Battle.net, and WoW realms are not the same animal. One being down has pretty much nothing to do with the other. I can still play SC2 when WoW is down, and visa versa (actually I can still play Diablo 2 and SC1 while anything else is down too), so I don't see why Diablo 3 would be any different.
I suppose I am in a minority; I never really cared about Starcraft's story. I was more into the gameplay, and the game play in SC2 is pretty much exactly the same. Actually most of Blizzard's stories are rather trite, and have always been so. Warcraft's lore is the only story that they've managed to actually keep interesting, and that probably mostly accidental, and the result of the huge amount of complexity they had to introduce to make a believable MMO world. You go to Blizzard because they are the only ones who have managed to merge style, play, and polish to such a great degree, not because they rival Tolstoy for story telling.
To scratch my Diablo 3 itch, I've been playing a ton of Titan Quest. Its actually pretty damn good. Not as good as Diablo 2, but it runs nice, and looks good on modern systems, there also is a fair amount of depth to it. Sacred 2 was a decent time killer, but its MMO style quest system (seven thousand fetch quests not related one bit to the main story) got a bit tedious. Torchlight doesn't really compete, it is more a spiritual successor to Diablo 1 than anything. Torchlight 2 might be a different story, though.
I do recommended Titan Quest, though. With the fan patch, it is a pretty damn fun and addictive game.
Granted, none of them really compete with Diablo 2. Its damn hard to be that damn awesome and addictive, so I really stopped using it as a point of comparison.
Don't forget that XP support has pretty much become habitual. Its been around so long that pretty much most of its idiosyncrasies are very well known, and pretty much anyone can support it with their eyes closed with one hand tied behind their back, with a full frontal lobotomy. Its damn hard to move onto something new, when the old thing A) works damn good, and B) has been around long enough that it is completely familiar.
Businesses are extremely opposed to change, usually. My friends dad ran a small support firm, and well into the early 2000's was supporting a smallish business that still used a punch card machine for accounts payable. It was too much hassle to swtich over from a system that works, and was familiar, to another alien system.
As for the IE6 thing... I just laugh. My girlfriend works at one of the largest corporations in the US, and they still use IE6. they are stuck with it because they become dependent on some software that only runs on IE6. Recently some of their other software decided to no longer support IE6, so they installed a super locked down version of Firefox that can only run the second suite, leaving IE6 to be their workhorse.
I find it extremely humorous, as do their tech trolls.
Maybe the dumbest, most callous and cynical argument ever. I refuse to get "used to it", and I find people who do "get used to it" are nothing better than sociopaths. The wholesale murder of innocents for silly merely ideological dogma is not something that we should EVER get used to. War should be horrible, it should be painted as horrible, it should cause fear and trembling, it should give us nightmares. Its terror should boggle out minds every single time we think of it.
Why? Because all of it is true. Also; because it keeps it from being easy and common. America doesn't like this, we glorify "warriors", and we must "support our troops", since they "defend our freedom", meaning we randomly pick a country every decade, and then slaughter them so some American politician can get re-elected, and some rich American businessmen can get a bit richer from spendy defense contracts, and so the American population can sit around waving Chinese made flags, saying "we're number one!" (at what, out of how many, and why?). To me none of these things are worth a single life, foreign or domestic. War is not glorious, it never has been, it never will be, only mislead fools think otherwise.
WWII was as close to a just war as there ever has been, and the soldiers in that war fought for decent causes. My grandfather was one of the first American troops to Auschwitz, and he would never argue about the "glory" of war. He never glamorized it, he never romanticized it. All he got in the end was a life time of nightmares and a deep hatred of humanity. The same goes for basically everyone I know who saw action in Vietnam, or either of our purely political Gulf Wars. None of the people I know emerged whole, and none of them are really that proud. What flag waving inanities they do still spout are a rather transparent cover for sorrow, a post-hoc justification for atrocities that they committed but cannot reconcile.
We forget, this terrorist on the roof was fighting for reasons just as valid, if not more so (being that he IS defending his homeland, and we just said we were), and the innocents that we killed to get to him were killed in a war that has no reason. It is the epitome of meaningless deaths. It serves no purpose. They died for no reason whatsoever. And we, the American people, did it. Should we feel happy? Should we just claim "get over it!"
If "yes" is the answer, I say we just "get over" 9/11. Who cares? War is hell! Glory to the warriors, praise be to Allah^W "Truth Justice and the American way!". The story is the same. We just like to paint a difference. All war is the same, no side is right, all sides are wrong. I have no sympathy for anyone who actively engages. I have no respect for warriors, soldiers, or the petty politicians that control them. Murder is murder, whether some elected official (or cleric) calls for it, or not. You, as an individual, make the choice.
We need a media channel that shows the bodies. That actually shows death and horror to the American people. We need war to be real, not some fictionalized drama, not some grand fictional patriotic narrative. We need to see the guts, the viscera, the crying families. We need to see our dead, and our "enemies". We need the full experience.
War is hell. And we should NEVER deal with it lightly.
(sorry for the rant, I just read through some accounts of this latest leak, and am feeling rather sickened.)
This is my general buying strategy on all things; always shoot for the high middle. The high end is generally over priced, since your paying some form of status tax. You are absolutely correct when it comes to CPUs, you could spend $2000 for the top of the top, or you could spend $500 for a chip that does around 80% of the same. The cost/quality ratio gets more and more skewed the higher you get, towards cost.
At the bottom you generally have cheap crap, and get exactly what you pay for.
The only benefit of buy at the very top is that you don't have to go shopping for awhile, since they generally last longer between upgrades. A benefit often undone by personalities of the type of people who NEED the best of the best damn the cost, since they can't let their CPU/GPU/Whatnot sit long enough to see this benefit, needing an upgrade when there is a new, shiny 400 core processor sitting at the top end, which is, obviously, more shiny than their 399 core CPU. Arbitrary benchmarks prove it!
The one problem with this is that you could upgrade when you need it, since that same $3000 CPU will cost as much as the $500 one in a year or two. So it is still a strange decision, unless your expecting inflation to REALLY take off.
I used to have the irrational compulsion to have the best of the best, reguardless of the fact that I'm pretty much paying extra JUST for that distinction, and often the improvements are minimal. The cost thing didn't get to me, the fact that I was on a Sisyphean treadmill did. With computing, there ALWAYS will be a better widget coming out in a month. You will never hit the top and stay there, you need to cough up huge amounts of cash every couple months just to say you have "the best rig money can buy". You "1337" gaming rig with be the standard, run of the mill, rig in a year or so. You need to pay the "cutting edge" tax yearly, for the rest of your life to stay up there. This stuck me as dumb.
Build a computer that slightly exceeds your current needs. Stick to the middle high end of things, avoid that taunting voice in your head saying "but it has.0001 more GHz, and is only $200 more!" Upgrade judiciously, with an eye towards deals and sales. And only upgrade when there is a feature you need, or you actually start to notice performance degradation.
I can play any game I want to play at around 40-50fps, with max settings. I don't need anything above my ATI 4600 family GPU right now. The second I find a game that suffers unduly (currently Starcraft 2, but people have problems with much better GPUs right now, so...), then it is time to do some heavy comparison shopping. Same reason why I didn't upgrade to DDR3 when I was building my last computer, no one could tell me that I would notice an actual noticeable performance improvement, so it wasn't worth spending another $300 for.
GPU's are lagging behind games right now, not like the Intel CPU, when you o/c them there is no game yet to need all that power.
I don't see this. I have an older video card (somewhere in the ATI 4600 series) and haven't really noticed any issues with modern games. I haven't bought a game in a long time where I felt prompted to go out and buy a new card. Sure, I could probably squeeze and extra couple FPS out of games with a better card, but I find 40-50 FPS to be perfectly acceptable. Yes, new cards support new technologies, but often these technologies are used as an optional gimmick in one or two games, but never really hit the mass market.
PC games are now ported console games, for the most part, and are developed accordingly. As long as you have a GPU a generation better than whatever is in the Xbox or PS3, your going to be generally fine.
But then again I've moved past the "I need to get 80 FPS with all the settings on their highest" phase of my life. The benefit doesn't outweigh the cost. Being able to shift from triple A antialiasing to quadruple ++ A antialiasing isn't worth the rather extreme cost jump. Especially for a benefit that I will immediately cease noticing the second I get sucked into the game. That and I generally stopped playing games that really benefit from having the bleeding edge GPU, FPSs. That genre, IMO, is dead, its nothing but "cover/stealth" now, so what the hell does having the best setting matter if your spending your whole time in a dark brown (in a world made of shades of brown, tan, and grey, except for the ridiculous acid-trip Bloom sky) room hiding behind a wall?
I actually can't think of a game that made of GPU churn, of late.
Seriously, are you a selfish, xenophobic asshole in real life, or do you just play one on Slashdot?
Depending on your perspective; both... or neither.
How is it selfish to hold your best interests before others? Doing so in no way implies that you won't help people, or will try to use people as slaves (or whatnot). All it means is that you will help until it becomes a detriment to yourself.
I'm still guessing that you don't give every cent of your money to charity.
How is it xenophobic? I never implied anything against the Chinese, and I especially never stated any fear for them. If you want to read a couple of my posts in this topic, you will find I'm very far from patriot, nationalistic, or whatnot. If China becomes a superpower on their own, that is fine. If they compete with us, that also is fine. When we hand them the keys to our house, on the other hand, it is not so fine.
I'm really not sure where you go selfish or xenophobic from.
Just wait until you hear one of my first actions if I am ever elected lord emperor of the US; a full embargo on China. Not because I have anything against the Chinese, on the contrary, the embargo will only be lifted when China fixes their human rights, and environmental, issues. Now I'm an elitist westerner! Take that.
Try "chrome://flags, if your running the Dev build (or Canary, the daily) on certain OSs then side tabs is an experimental option. I know it is available on the Windows version, and am pretty sure it is there on the Linux versions now.
They cut off workers at the knees, imposing unreasonable dues and ridiculous work requirements.
Sometimes, sometimes not. I find it odd that we expect labor to be a one side relationship where the corporation holds all the cards. The second that labor (that means you, unless you're very lucky) decides to equalize the relationship, then it is tyranny. Personally I think the corporations hold less moral authority than labor.
Corporations don't generally care about people, and use the power imbalance to exploit workers, so what is so wrong with workers grabbing some power, and using that as leverage against corporations? Basically the anti-Union line is that only one side should have any power. Which I find very odd, since many of the ardent anti-Union types are the people who would benefit from Unions, so they work against their best interests to give their uncaring employers more power over them.
I'm not saying Unions are universally good, I'm just saying that they are better than the alternative. More nasty things have been done by corporations than by unions. And corporations, themselves, with no help from Unions, have done more to hurt American industry than Unions ever have. Union shops make up a paltry minority of American industry these days, and yet jobs are still fleeing our country like rats from a ship, with no influence whatsoever from unions. Well, I suppose there is some lasting influence, like labor laws, and worker protections, that the countries that our corporations love don't have.
There is something off about people basically stating that people should not have the ability to collectively bargain for their best interests...
Helping people is good. Helping people in such a way that it will eventually hurt you is bad.
Teaching underprivileged and delinquent children trades is a good thing. So lets teach them all to be locksmiths! And then lets be shocked when we don't have a stereo or TV anymore.
Sadly that seems to be the basis of Americas foreign policy.
Altruism is nice, but tempering things with a modicum of self-interest and protection is also good. You don't give every single cent of your income to charity, do you? Why not? Helping people is good, therefore the more you help people the better.
There also is a difference between elevating people, and lowering everyone to their level. It seems we strive very hard for the latter.
I've come to the conclusion that the only thing keeping our country running at any rate is myopia and tautology.
We keep yelling "we're number one!", despite the fact that statistics don't bear this out on basically any level. The rational is thus; "America is the greatest country on Earth, therefore we do everything better than everyone else, because we are the greatest country on earth!"
Sadly you don't become ascendant by wishful thinking, if we did, then indeed the US would be the greatest country on earth. Well, I suppose there is more than wishful thinking, since it seems the political ethos is currently more invested in forcing your favorite dogmatic ideology on the masses (via astroturfing and nasty politics), while completely ignoring the actual trustiness or long-term social value of said dogmatic ideology. And now with purely partisan bickering (the Democrats can never ever have good idea, because they are Democrats... and visa versa) provides is a very nice smokescreen for corporate interests to eat away a bit more of our country. But then again, obviously, what is good for sociopathic, ammoral, purely profit driven (at any cost) fictional entities; is good for America.
Also note how their forces are hamstrung by the lack of large ammo caches and aerial refueling, things US as allies could likely provide in a pinch against a common threat.
Perhaps in theory, but very doubtful in real life. If China ever makes the move against Japan, I REALLY doubt the US will get involved. Even if China is 100% the aggressor, and 100% in the wrong. Even if China decides to pay back some nasty Japanese actions with like actions. China will be able to basically whatever it wants as long as it doesn't hurt US economic interests.
As much as China is sometimes painted as verging on a bad guy, we love them. And by "we" I mean the only people that matter, monied interests. We would never jeopardize our flow of cheap labor and goods for something as insignificant as an ally being attacked.
Yes, I'm a cynical ass, and that might color my prognostication skills. America acting against corporate fat cats will never happen, human toll be damned.
Pandora, Last.fm. I also use the Amazon recommendations, even if I don't end up buying the music from Amazon. Actually most of the music I've "discovered" was from the "similar artists" on Last.fm, and the Amazon recommendations.
Actual music is almost dead in America. As for the world, actual music is more endangered than the Panda.
If your talking about the big labels, and the top 40 machine, then you are absolutely correct on all your points, but, luckily, this is only a very small portion of modern music. Yes, it is the most visible, and has the highest share of public consciousness, but that scene still represents a tiny minority of the music that is out there.
Right now, in your town, there are hundreds (maybe thousands, depending on population and culture) of small bands, some of which are VERY good. Most are crap, but some of them are better than anything the major labels have churned out in years. Finding which ones are worth the time is a bit daunting (currently, in my town, we have an obnoxiously ubiquitous metal scene, which aspires to recapture the most idiotic parts of 90's metal...), but I guarantee that there is something out there that you will like.
Thanks to the internet, major labels are largely insignificant. It is trivial to find an acquire music from small labels, or individual bands, without ever touching the ancient media dinosaurs, this is now, and not in the future. Of the last 100 or so music purchases I've made in the last 5 years, only two were from major labels, this was completely accidental, I did not have the desire to "stick it to the man". The independent music is just better, at least to my taste.
I would recommended some bands that are awesome and have nothing to do with big labels, but taste is subjective.
I would guess that the big labels make around 90% of the profit, but only represent around 10% (if even) of the artists out there. In ten years they will be almost completely irrelevant. Yes, they are nice for marketing, and promotion. This is generally the case made against independently distributed music around here, small bands can't go on their own because they can't afford to be Lady Gaga (whose branding efforts might rival those of CocaCola and Nike). But who cares? If a band can't become huge without marketing they don't deserve to be huge. And small labels work wonders, insteading of having 10 labels with 10,000 artists, why not have 1,000 labels with 100 artists? Smaller labels have funds for promotion, and smaller labels allow more artist control (the only thing that matters). This is how things are going to develop.
Jesus also told us to help the poor and pray for those who persecute you. He spent his time on Earth with tax collectors and sinners, and was the most critical of the establishment (Pharisees and Sadducees).
Its things like that that most Christians I know have forgotten. Yes, often they help the poor of their parish, or church, but completely forget about the bigger picture.
But what do I know, I'm just an atheist who is a fan of Jesus.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet here we are with arguably the most liberal president and congress ever...
I'm arguing. Obama isn't very liberal, he's a conservative Democrat. Why am I arguing this, for the very reasons you state in your post. His actions are not very liberal in that he's basically acting like the conservatives before him. The only liberal thing he has done, so far, is the healthcare crap, which is more like welfare for Insurance companies than any actual liberal proposal.
I am a liberal (according to the silly politics test I'm further left than Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, though also more libertarian than Ron Paul), and Obama just looks like a slightly lesser conservative than Bush, Bush, or Reagan. Same with Clinton, to be honest. I don't think we've had a fully liberal president in the US since FDR.
Ah yes... the International Jewish Conspiracy! I once asked a waitress at a local Red Lobster (she was wearing a Star of David, and just finished being racially slammed by an elderly couple) how that cut of the IJC was treating her, and if I converted to her religion if I would get the same share as her. She laughed, and told me that if I convert to being God's Chosen, I too could be bashed by uneducated morons constantly.
So I went to the local synagogue and asked if I get my cut if I convert. The rabbi said yes, but not in the way I expect, and made a "snip, snip" gesture.
The lesson? Rabbi's rock, and if there is a International Jewish Conspiracy it is highly uneven as most Jew's haven't heard of it, but if it does exist, it probably would be better than most other International Religious Outgroup Conspiracies, since at least some of them have a decent sense of humor.
My question to the rabbi went over better than when I went to the local Mormon temple and asked if the ultra-cool bicycle gear is gratis with conversion, and whether or whether not I get a free "starter" wife upon converting. He called security.
He's either a very successful troll with a small collection of macros, or a decent bot. I'm guessing he, or his programmer, has a real life grudge against whoever the hell Michael Kristopeit is, and that is whose address he posted, and whose name he stole. He probably worked for Kristopeit's company, got laid off, and now sits in his mom's basement pondering digital revenge. Or something.
He is a decent troll though, and further proof that anyone with a UID over a million should be treated with suspicion.
He's a prolific troll, don't feed him.
I managed to fall into it once, until I realized that half of the crap he spouted looked quasi-random (think of Elisa as a troll), and the fact that he never replied with the same UID, notice the numbers at the end.
This thread will never end. And he will say "you ARE an idiot" 5000 times.
And how many children do you think are born to non-citizens in the US? Does it have a significant effect on immigration, illegal or otherwise?
I live in the Southwest, so probably more than in most other places in the US. But I do know a significant portion are, not a huge portion but significant. It probably doesn't have a huge effect, but it probably happens more than we realize.
The anchor baby thing is a bit of a myth, since the law doesn't really work like that (as an anchor, they are citizens, but their whole family isn't). It is a bit of cultural knowledge, correct or not, and thus people do act accordingly (cultural knowledge is more meaningful than facts when looking at the actions of people). Also courts are less likely to break up a family than deport a random illegal immigrant. Bob and Julie (or Jose and Maria, or whatnot) have a legal child, its harder to break up the family, than if they didn't.
I never claimed, though, that the original poster was completely accurate. I know damn well (as, I bet, does the OP) that it doesn't work like that. But the general spirit of it was somewhat correct, if worded a bit nastily.
My main point, though, was that it isn't really dehumanizing. Not complimentary pr perhaps accurate, but still very human. His statement didn't make me think of animals or inanimate objects.
This really doesn't mean much to me. I feel bad for them, they came from a shitty country with minimal rule of law (especially in the north) and who has some long standing racism against the mestizos who generally end up in the US. We should, obviously, assist them, but not at our own detriment. Whether or whether not they are good for the US, and where that line should be (between assistance and self-harm) should be the topic of debate, not all the emotive bullshit thrown out by both sides. I am an Arizonan, and I'm sick of it.
The anti-illegal immigration (often, erroneously painted as anti-immigrant in a silly attempt to rebrand them) crowd is often motivated by racism, and other less than pleasant motivations. This I understand. Though I, and around half the people I know (including a decent amount of Latinos) am for SB1070 and other ways of restricting illegal immigration and removing (humanely) the illegal immigrants we have, for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. The anti-illegal crowd is often a bunch of right-wing, crypto-racist morons, and worse, often just us it as a power grab (ala Jan Brewer) since it is probably the most popular cause around these parts.
The pro-illegal immigration crowd is just as inane, if not a bit more noble. A lot of them are of the "anti-borders" crowd, which is just bizarre. Borders serve a damn good purpose, and if they left their sociology classrooms and gave it a bit of thought they would realize this. Some of them are of the obnoxious "la raza" crowd, who are basically racists who hold some Aryan flavored mythology about some Aztec utopia that the whites stole from them (ignoring that the southwest were never Aztec, and that the Aztecs wore people's skin to make the corn grow). Most of them are just hopelessly idealistic with no sight to the actual consequences if their idealistic utopia came to be (hint; it wouldn't be a utopia, it never is). As we move up in income, age, and power the motivation changes to something more dubious; profit. Rich people love illegal immigrants. They work cheap and thus depress wages for everyone else. They can be used to break unions. They don't need to be taxed, nor do they need benefits. They are a cheap and disposable work force. Discouraging illegal immigration would hurt the bottom line, and thus politicians love it.
The politicians are why this is such a annoying debate. A majority of Americans want to cut off the illegal immigration pipe-line, but this isn't convenient for those who actually matter, those with the money. ... and usually do the jobs that none of the locals want to do anyway (and often get exploited and held in virtual slavery while doing so).
This fallacy makes me cringe. For most of the jobs illegal immigrants are doing right now, citizens were doing 20 years ago. The only difference is the amount of pay. One of our family friends was a plumber in Arizona, he had a very large firm that was in charge of many of the developers and hotel chains. He is now out of business. He only hired American citizens, and paid them a living wage, and was basically out competed by firms that only hired illegals, and paid them $2.50/hr under the table (no benefits, not taxes). This is before the housing crisis and so-called "great recession". The same happened in construction,and other blue collar jobs. In the 70's you could actually be middle class and blue collar. Obviously Americans would do these jobs, if it was possible to LIVE off of them. We are accustomed to a standard of living, and we cannot compete with people who expect much, much, less.
A fresh family of illegal immigrants are perfectly capable of living 20 to a house and basically living hand to mouth, we, citizens, expect more. Even in these circumstances the illegal immigrants are better of than they were in Mexico (or where ever).
How is it dehumanizing? Yes, a bit harsh and sarcastic, but it doesn't seem really dehumanizing. He could have phrased it all a bit better, but I don't really see anything inaccurate or particularly vile about it. The truth of the matter is that it is a stupid law that made sense at the time but makes none now.
I don't think the drafters of the Constitution were in favor of today's "anchor babies". Or would be.
If the majority of the population doesn't even show up to vote, that is a de facto vote against the system.
Your reading to much into it. Not everything in this world is politically motivated. Most of the people I know don't vote, and it generally isn't a form of protest. Its just apathy. They don't care. It isn't that they think that their vote doesn't matter, it isn't because they think the system is against them, they just don't care. Even if the government was some mythic ideal they wouldn't vote.
Political people breath too much into politics, they think everyone is engaged at some level. But really politics and the government are very inconsequential to most people. The government is some tertiary entity out in the nebulous periphery of their existence. It isn't a real force in their lives, being that their too busy living, working, caring for their family and community, watching reality TV, and caring about pop culture. They might care about politics, and the political future of this country, but it is all very abstract to them. The government does it thing, they do theirs, and rarely do these influences over lap. They aren't disenfranchised, they aren't repressed, they aren't protesting. On the contrary, the government has done a decent job keeping the basics of life common, and keeping the peace, so it is very hard for the typical person to be very motivated one way or another.
Politics are only important when there is a threat to the real things in life, family, basic survival, and security. Despite all the left/right wing FUD, this threat is pretty abstract and almost non-existent.
I only vote because I was raised to think it is my civic duty. I really don't care all that much, especially about local (and being that I'm in Arizona loco) politics. I probably wouldn't vote in them if not for the feeling of guilt that I was raised with. I also would probably ignore the House of Representatives completely as well, and only vote for Senators and Presidents. Even then it doesn't matter too much, I really can't see America being much different with McCain at the helm, or whoever else wants to sit in the Oval Office. My life will tick on just like it always has. I will pay my taxes, which I don't like (though I like the benefits this gets me... and will have schizophenic feelings about it just like everyone else since the invention of taxes and services paid for om by them), I will interface with the government only very rarely (the DMV, the annoyance of dodging jury duty, etc..), and pretty much completely ignore politics unless it is as theater or as something to get indignant about then pass on... Or to feel elitist over that other 50% of the population who doesn't agree with me, how stupid they must be! Then I will finish my newspaper, put down my coffee and completely forget about the whole damn mess.
Canada, while it has a great martial tradition in the World Wars and Afghanistan, really doesn't have that insurgency mindset that Iraqis who are allowed a full auto AK-47/74 per adult male or Afghanis have.
I think that the mindset for insurgency would develop rather quickly. The original British colonists weren't really insurgents either, until they needed to be. Look at the Occupied French, as well. When one thinks "insurgent" they don't think of the French, but the French managed to pull off a rather good show of it when the time came.
I personally think Canada could kick our ass in an invasion, personally. They would have a reason to fight, have a decent collection of skills, and have tons of small, individual, arms. State militaries are somewhat irrelevant in insurgant style fighting, we're not fighting the Afghan or Iraqi military, we're fighting armed and motivated civilians. Canada would have those, if we were to invade. It also would be harder to motivate our troops with convincing propaganda, or use xenophobia to motivate them, since the Canadians look like us, have a similar culture to ours, speak our language, and share a vast swath of our genealogy and roots.
As an unrelated note, why the hell doesn't Slashdot play nicely with Chrome? Typing this response made me feel like I was trying to use a computer from the 80's to play Crysis. Does it really need to eat 100% of my CPU, and hang for a full minute just to paste something? Or hang for 30 seconds, and once again spike the CPU, if I type to fast? It has to be as Slashdot problem, since it is the only site that has these problems.
Grr...
Titan Quest...
Torchlight is damn good, but its a bit simple and short, so it gets a bit stale after awhile. Sacred 2 is okay, but it is infected with MMO style quests that have nothing to do with the story, so it too gets damn old fast. Titan Quest seems a good Diablo 2 stand in, has a decent story (not great but..) and a fair amount of depth (can have two classes, and all their synergies, tons of items and stats and modifiers).
Though if you really want to scratch the Diablo itch, just reinstall Diablo 2 and have some fun.
Diablo 3's Battle.net, and WoW realms are not the same animal. One being down has pretty much nothing to do with the other. I can still play SC2 when WoW is down, and visa versa (actually I can still play Diablo 2 and SC1 while anything else is down too), so I don't see why Diablo 3 would be any different.
I suppose I am in a minority; I never really cared about Starcraft's story. I was more into the gameplay, and the game play in SC2 is pretty much exactly the same. Actually most of Blizzard's stories are rather trite, and have always been so. Warcraft's lore is the only story that they've managed to actually keep interesting, and that probably mostly accidental, and the result of the huge amount of complexity they had to introduce to make a believable MMO world. You go to Blizzard because they are the only ones who have managed to merge style, play, and polish to such a great degree, not because they rival Tolstoy for story telling.
To scratch my Diablo 3 itch, I've been playing a ton of Titan Quest. Its actually pretty damn good. Not as good as Diablo 2, but it runs nice, and looks good on modern systems, there also is a fair amount of depth to it. Sacred 2 was a decent time killer, but its MMO style quest system (seven thousand fetch quests not related one bit to the main story) got a bit tedious. Torchlight doesn't really compete, it is more a spiritual successor to Diablo 1 than anything. Torchlight 2 might be a different story, though.
I do recommended Titan Quest, though. With the fan patch, it is a pretty damn fun and addictive game.
Granted, none of them really compete with Diablo 2. Its damn hard to be that damn awesome and addictive, so I really stopped using it as a point of comparison.
Don't forget that XP support has pretty much become habitual. Its been around so long that pretty much most of its idiosyncrasies are very well known, and pretty much anyone can support it with their eyes closed with one hand tied behind their back, with a full frontal lobotomy. Its damn hard to move onto something new, when the old thing A) works damn good, and B) has been around long enough that it is completely familiar.
Businesses are extremely opposed to change, usually. My friends dad ran a small support firm, and well into the early 2000's was supporting a smallish business that still used a punch card machine for accounts payable. It was too much hassle to swtich over from a system that works, and was familiar, to another alien system.
As for the IE6 thing... I just laugh. My girlfriend works at one of the largest corporations in the US, and they still use IE6. they are stuck with it because they become dependent on some software that only runs on IE6. Recently some of their other software decided to no longer support IE6, so they installed a super locked down version of Firefox that can only run the second suite, leaving IE6 to be their workhorse.
I find it extremely humorous, as do their tech trolls.
War is hell. Get used to it.
Maybe the dumbest, most callous and cynical argument ever. I refuse to get "used to it", and I find people who do "get used to it" are nothing better than sociopaths. The wholesale murder of innocents for silly merely ideological dogma is not something that we should EVER get used to. War should be horrible, it should be painted as horrible, it should cause fear and trembling, it should give us nightmares. Its terror should boggle out minds every single time we think of it.
Why? Because all of it is true. Also; because it keeps it from being easy and common. America doesn't like this, we glorify "warriors", and we must "support our troops", since they "defend our freedom", meaning we randomly pick a country every decade, and then slaughter them so some American politician can get re-elected, and some rich American businessmen can get a bit richer from spendy defense contracts, and so the American population can sit around waving Chinese made flags, saying "we're number one!" (at what, out of how many, and why?). To me none of these things are worth a single life, foreign or domestic. War is not glorious, it never has been, it never will be, only mislead fools think otherwise.
WWII was as close to a just war as there ever has been, and the soldiers in that war fought for decent causes. My grandfather was one of the first American troops to Auschwitz, and he would never argue about the "glory" of war. He never glamorized it, he never romanticized it. All he got in the end was a life time of nightmares and a deep hatred of humanity. The same goes for basically everyone I know who saw action in Vietnam, or either of our purely political Gulf Wars. None of the people I know emerged whole, and none of them are really that proud. What flag waving inanities they do still spout are a rather transparent cover for sorrow, a post-hoc justification for atrocities that they committed but cannot reconcile.
We forget, this terrorist on the roof was fighting for reasons just as valid, if not more so (being that he IS defending his homeland, and we just said we were), and the innocents that we killed to get to him were killed in a war that has no reason. It is the epitome of meaningless deaths. It serves no purpose. They died for no reason whatsoever. And we, the American people, did it. Should we feel happy? Should we just claim "get over it!"
If "yes" is the answer, I say we just "get over" 9/11. Who cares? War is hell! Glory to the warriors, praise be to Allah^W "Truth Justice and the American way!". The story is the same. We just like to paint a difference. All war is the same, no side is right, all sides are wrong. I have no sympathy for anyone who actively engages. I have no respect for warriors, soldiers, or the petty politicians that control them. Murder is murder, whether some elected official (or cleric) calls for it, or not. You, as an individual, make the choice.
We need a media channel that shows the bodies. That actually shows death and horror to the American people. We need war to be real, not some fictionalized drama, not some grand fictional patriotic narrative. We need to see the guts, the viscera, the crying families. We need to see our dead, and our "enemies". We need the full experience.
War is hell. And we should NEVER deal with it lightly.
(sorry for the rant, I just read through some accounts of this latest leak, and am feeling rather sickened.)
This is my general buying strategy on all things; always shoot for the high middle. The high end is generally over priced, since your paying some form of status tax. You are absolutely correct when it comes to CPUs, you could spend $2000 for the top of the top, or you could spend $500 for a chip that does around 80% of the same. The cost/quality ratio gets more and more skewed the higher you get, towards cost.
At the bottom you generally have cheap crap, and get exactly what you pay for.
The only benefit of buy at the very top is that you don't have to go shopping for awhile, since they generally last longer between upgrades. A benefit often undone by personalities of the type of people who NEED the best of the best damn the cost, since they can't let their CPU/GPU/Whatnot sit long enough to see this benefit, needing an upgrade when there is a new, shiny 400 core processor sitting at the top end, which is, obviously, more shiny than their 399 core CPU. Arbitrary benchmarks prove it!
The one problem with this is that you could upgrade when you need it, since that same $3000 CPU will cost as much as the $500 one in a year or two. So it is still a strange decision, unless your expecting inflation to REALLY take off.
I used to have the irrational compulsion to have the best of the best, reguardless of the fact that I'm pretty much paying extra JUST for that distinction, and often the improvements are minimal. The cost thing didn't get to me, the fact that I was on a Sisyphean treadmill did. With computing, there ALWAYS will be a better widget coming out in a month. You will never hit the top and stay there, you need to cough up huge amounts of cash every couple months just to say you have "the best rig money can buy". You "1337" gaming rig with be the standard, run of the mill, rig in a year or so. You need to pay the "cutting edge" tax yearly, for the rest of your life to stay up there. This stuck me as dumb.
Build a computer that slightly exceeds your current needs. Stick to the middle high end of things, avoid that taunting voice in your head saying "but it has .0001 more GHz, and is only $200 more!" Upgrade judiciously, with an eye towards deals and sales. And only upgrade when there is a feature you need, or you actually start to notice performance degradation.
I can play any game I want to play at around 40-50fps, with max settings. I don't need anything above my ATI 4600 family GPU right now. The second I find a game that suffers unduly (currently Starcraft 2, but people have problems with much better GPUs right now, so...), then it is time to do some heavy comparison shopping. Same reason why I didn't upgrade to DDR3 when I was building my last computer, no one could tell me that I would notice an actual noticeable performance improvement, so it wasn't worth spending another $300 for.
GPU's are lagging behind games right now, not like the Intel CPU, when you o/c them there is no game yet to need all that power.
I don't see this. I have an older video card (somewhere in the ATI 4600 series) and haven't really noticed any issues with modern games. I haven't bought a game in a long time where I felt prompted to go out and buy a new card. Sure, I could probably squeeze and extra couple FPS out of games with a better card, but I find 40-50 FPS to be perfectly acceptable. Yes, new cards support new technologies, but often these technologies are used as an optional gimmick in one or two games, but never really hit the mass market.
PC games are now ported console games, for the most part, and are developed accordingly. As long as you have a GPU a generation better than whatever is in the Xbox or PS3, your going to be generally fine.
But then again I've moved past the "I need to get 80 FPS with all the settings on their highest" phase of my life. The benefit doesn't outweigh the cost. Being able to shift from triple A antialiasing to quadruple ++ A antialiasing isn't worth the rather extreme cost jump. Especially for a benefit that I will immediately cease noticing the second I get sucked into the game. That and I generally stopped playing games that really benefit from having the bleeding edge GPU, FPSs. That genre, IMO, is dead, its nothing but "cover/stealth" now, so what the hell does having the best setting matter if your spending your whole time in a dark brown (in a world made of shades of brown, tan, and grey, except for the ridiculous acid-trip Bloom sky) room hiding behind a wall?
I actually can't think of a game that made of GPU churn, of late.
Seriously, are you a selfish, xenophobic asshole in real life, or do you just play one on Slashdot?
Depending on your perspective; both... or neither.
How is it selfish to hold your best interests before others? Doing so in no way implies that you won't help people, or will try to use people as slaves (or whatnot). All it means is that you will help until it becomes a detriment to yourself.
I'm still guessing that you don't give every cent of your money to charity.
How is it xenophobic? I never implied anything against the Chinese, and I especially never stated any fear for them. If you want to read a couple of my posts in this topic, you will find I'm very far from patriot, nationalistic, or whatnot. If China becomes a superpower on their own, that is fine. If they compete with us, that also is fine. When we hand them the keys to our house, on the other hand, it is not so fine.
I'm really not sure where you go selfish or xenophobic from.
Just wait until you hear one of my first actions if I am ever elected lord emperor of the US; a full embargo on China. Not because I have anything against the Chinese, on the contrary, the embargo will only be lifted when China fixes their human rights, and environmental, issues. Now I'm an elitist westerner! Take that.
Try "chrome://flags, if your running the Dev build (or Canary, the daily) on certain OSs then side tabs is an experimental option. I know it is available on the Windows version, and am pretty sure it is there on the Linux versions now.
They cut off workers at the knees, imposing unreasonable dues and ridiculous work requirements.
Sometimes, sometimes not. I find it odd that we expect labor to be a one side relationship where the corporation holds all the cards. The second that labor (that means you, unless you're very lucky) decides to equalize the relationship, then it is tyranny. Personally I think the corporations hold less moral authority than labor.
Corporations don't generally care about people, and use the power imbalance to exploit workers, so what is so wrong with workers grabbing some power, and using that as leverage against corporations? Basically the anti-Union line is that only one side should have any power. Which I find very odd, since many of the ardent anti-Union types are the people who would benefit from Unions, so they work against their best interests to give their uncaring employers more power over them.
I'm not saying Unions are universally good, I'm just saying that they are better than the alternative. More nasty things have been done by corporations than by unions. And corporations, themselves, with no help from Unions, have done more to hurt American industry than Unions ever have. Union shops make up a paltry minority of American industry these days, and yet jobs are still fleeing our country like rats from a ship, with no influence whatsoever from unions. Well, I suppose there is some lasting influence, like labor laws, and worker protections, that the countries that our corporations love don't have.
There is something off about people basically stating that people should not have the ability to collectively bargain for their best interests...
Helping people is good. Helping people in such a way that it will eventually hurt you is bad.
Teaching underprivileged and delinquent children trades is a good thing. So lets teach them all to be locksmiths! And then lets be shocked when we don't have a stereo or TV anymore.
Sadly that seems to be the basis of Americas foreign policy.
Altruism is nice, but tempering things with a modicum of self-interest and protection is also good. You don't give every single cent of your income to charity, do you? Why not? Helping people is good, therefore the more you help people the better.
There also is a difference between elevating people, and lowering everyone to their level. It seems we strive very hard for the latter.
Thank you.
I've come to the conclusion that the only thing keeping our country running at any rate is myopia and tautology.
We keep yelling "we're number one!", despite the fact that statistics don't bear this out on basically any level. The rational is thus; "America is the greatest country on Earth, therefore we do everything better than everyone else, because we are the greatest country on earth!"
Sadly you don't become ascendant by wishful thinking, if we did, then indeed the US would be the greatest country on earth. Well, I suppose there is more than wishful thinking, since it seems the political ethos is currently more invested in forcing your favorite dogmatic ideology on the masses (via astroturfing and nasty politics), while completely ignoring the actual trustiness or long-term social value of said dogmatic ideology. And now with purely partisan bickering (the Democrats can never ever have good idea, because they are Democrats... and visa versa) provides is a very nice smokescreen for corporate interests to eat away a bit more of our country. But then again, obviously, what is good for sociopathic, ammoral, purely profit driven (at any cost) fictional entities; is good for America.
Beh... Go go bile.
Also note how their forces are hamstrung by the lack of large ammo caches and aerial refueling, things US as allies could likely provide in a pinch against a common threat.
Perhaps in theory, but very doubtful in real life. If China ever makes the move against Japan, I REALLY doubt the US will get involved. Even if China is 100% the aggressor, and 100% in the wrong. Even if China decides to pay back some nasty Japanese actions with like actions. China will be able to basically whatever it wants as long as it doesn't hurt US economic interests.
As much as China is sometimes painted as verging on a bad guy, we love them. And by "we" I mean the only people that matter, monied interests. We would never jeopardize our flow of cheap labor and goods for something as insignificant as an ally being attacked.
Yes, I'm a cynical ass, and that might color my prognostication skills. America acting against corporate fat cats will never happen, human toll be damned.
Pandora, Last.fm. I also use the Amazon recommendations, even if I don't end up buying the music from Amazon. Actually most of the music I've "discovered" was from the "similar artists" on Last.fm, and the Amazon recommendations.
Actual music is almost dead in America. As for the world, actual music is more endangered than the Panda.
If your talking about the big labels, and the top 40 machine, then you are absolutely correct on all your points, but, luckily, this is only a very small portion of modern music. Yes, it is the most visible, and has the highest share of public consciousness, but that scene still represents a tiny minority of the music that is out there.
Right now, in your town, there are hundreds (maybe thousands, depending on population and culture) of small bands, some of which are VERY good. Most are crap, but some of them are better than anything the major labels have churned out in years. Finding which ones are worth the time is a bit daunting (currently, in my town, we have an obnoxiously ubiquitous metal scene, which aspires to recapture the most idiotic parts of 90's metal...), but I guarantee that there is something out there that you will like.
Thanks to the internet, major labels are largely insignificant. It is trivial to find an acquire music from small labels, or individual bands, without ever touching the ancient media dinosaurs, this is now, and not in the future. Of the last 100 or so music purchases I've made in the last 5 years, only two were from major labels, this was completely accidental, I did not have the desire to "stick it to the man". The independent music is just better, at least to my taste.
I would recommended some bands that are awesome and have nothing to do with big labels, but taste is subjective.
I would guess that the big labels make around 90% of the profit, but only represent around 10% (if even) of the artists out there. In ten years they will be almost completely irrelevant. Yes, they are nice for marketing, and promotion. This is generally the case made against independently distributed music around here, small bands can't go on their own because they can't afford to be Lady Gaga (whose branding efforts might rival those of CocaCola and Nike). But who cares? If a band can't become huge without marketing they don't deserve to be huge. And small labels work wonders, insteading of having 10 labels with 10,000 artists, why not have 1,000 labels with 100 artists? Smaller labels have funds for promotion, and smaller labels allow more artist control (the only thing that matters). This is how things are going to develop.
Jesus also told us to help the poor and pray for those who persecute you. He spent his time on Earth with tax collectors and sinners, and was the most critical of the establishment (Pharisees and Sadducees).
Its things like that that most Christians I know have forgotten. Yes, often they help the poor of their parish, or church, but completely forget about the bigger picture.
But what do I know, I'm just an atheist who is a fan of Jesus.