The American Electoral system does actually create a 2 party system, not because of the system itself (where electors are elected, rather than presidential candidates directly), but because it is a (except for a few states) "winner-take-all" system.
What happens to third parties in a winner-take-all system is plainly obvious, as most people are not willing to help their least favorite party win the election just to support a losing cause.
When you have a proportional system, however, the opportunity for coalitions and partnerships between parties is created. For example, you could have a coalition government consisting of 3 small parties win over a single party that is larger than the other three.
The problem with this, however, is that the situation inevitably arises where a small party gains a disproportionate amount of political influence due to their capacity as a swing vote. For example, imagine a situation where there are 2 parties each with 45% of the vote, and a third with 10%. In this case, the small 10% party is catered to by each of the others, so that while the third party's representation may be a small fraction of the whole, they still gather a large amount of the attention.
Alexander Hamilton was aware of this fact, and mentioned it as one of his reasons why the Electoral system was created (to prevent "cabal, intrigue, and corruption", in his words), and I think that in all, it has done a fairly admirable job.
But while third parties are rarely successful in the American electoral system, this doesn't mean that they are ignored. For what happens is that the larger parties, in order to avoid the sapping of their numbers by a 3rd party, tend to absorb the ideas of the smaller parties. What results is a more moderate version of a (typically radical) agenda that helps bring more people into the fold of the larger party.
working 12-16 hours a day, being on call all the time is perfectly fine if the pay is fine. If the pay isn't fine, then don't work there. If an employer doesn't pay well, they aren't going to get good people. It all works out.
Many species can, and do, tolerate inbreeding. While the problem with inbreeding is that it tends to bring out bad recessive traits, that is not a problem if the germ line consists of identical individuals, i.e. they are just creating clones. Read Gould's _Panda's Thumb_ for an example of a few species of mites that engages solely in sibling-sibling mating. In fact, in one species all born offspring are female because the male dies off before being born (although he does fertilize all his sisters before that).
it was moderated as flamebait because it's dumb,
ill-considered, and inflammatory. According to the original poster's "logic", the USA has been a decadent empire on the decline for the entirety of it's history.
This reminds me of the interpreted basic on the Apple, where, due to a quirk/feature of the interpreter (I don't believe this was an actual feature of the language, although I could be wrong), most keywords had a symbol equivalent. The most common was to use '?' for "print", although sometimes I saw a few others.
I don't think it is appropriate to pick and choose which entries on the Bill of Rights are "good" and which are "bad".
I would agree with you if the ACLU's resources were infinite. As they aren't, they necessarily have to make decisions between what areas to focus on. I think it is perfectly appropriate to try to avoid wasting limited resources on such a controversial topic that is already well-represented by the NRA.
Yeah, web businesses don't want to have a web tax. But yet, when they are DoS'ed or whatever, who does eBay and Yahoo and Amazon and all those turn to to investigate?
But corporations already pay a federal income tax. A web tax would go to the municipalities and states to make up for the (supposed) decrease in revenue from out-of-state sales tax purchases. It isn't as if the corporations are getting anything for free, instead it is the local governments getting annoyed because they get less money. Of course, out-of-state companies consume no local resources (they don't need the services of the local police force, for example), so this shouldn't be a problem. But governments of any sort are always going to complain about not getting their hands on revenue, whether they deserve it or not. That's what governments do.p
I have no problem with Dr. Dre's suit, but Metallica used to pass out their music for free! It's near hypocrisy! They would give people tapes and ask them to listen." What's the difference, other than now it's being pushed by the demand side? What's the difference between giving money to a panhandler, and having the panhandler mug you?
They very carefully pick and choose which rights they will defend, and invent rights where none exist.
I doubt that they invent rights where none exist, and as far as picking and choosing what rights they wish to defend, that's their right. They aren't a government agency, they are under no obligation to be completely neutral on which cases they wish to take on. If they wish to take cases concerning the 1st amendment, instead of the 4th, 8th, or 10th, they can, and have every right to. Another constraint is that they do not have infinite resources.I think someone mentioned the second amendment, which, AFAIK, is already pretty well protected by the lawyers of the NRA, so why should they spend the money on it?
You may wish that they had more interest in what you want protected, but there is no reason to disparage them for not doing so.
If it was based on a patent, they'd lost because they didn't make any move to protect those patents earlier, if you don't want them enough to try to protect them, the courts ain't going to give them back to you years later when you finally wake up.
Actually, you're thinking of Trademarks, which lose their legal protection if not defended. Patents can be undefended for years, but still be protected, if the owner so desires. Look at Unisys and LZW encoding for an example of this.
For instance, the Saturn's dual processor architecture actually had more horsepower than the PSX's, but who bothered to push it to its limits?
Yes, the saturn did have two processors, but the design was horrible. Actually, design is too good of a word, since the dual processors were just a kludge put together at the last moment. The saturn was orignially designed to be another 2-D platform, like previous 16-bit machines, but when the playstation's 3D capabilities were announced, Sega quickly hacked on another processor into the design.
This caused a lot of problems in many different aspects. First of all, since the design was a hack, it cost a lot to manufacture the damn things (wires had to be soldered on, etc.), so that sega could never benefit from the economies of scale that the more elegantly designed PSX could, and forced Sega to keep the price of the machine higher than they would have liked, which didn't allow them much room to maneuver around Sony. Secondly, because the basic design was a hack, the libraries for the system were not very good, so that the developers had a hell of a time trying to make games for it. Sony's libraries for the PSX, on the other hand, were very easy to use, which made developing games much easier. Thirdly, even if someone managed to work around the libraries for the Saturn, the basic problem of the hardware not being designed for 3D games came up again. The PSX has 2 (main) processors as well, a RISC 3000 chip, and a graphics processor that was designed to support 3D operation, so that even from the very beginning of the PSX, it was fairly trivial to get a working 3D game working. On the other hand, even the later Japanese Saturn games that I saw (the Saturn did MUCH better in Japan than in the US) had horrible problems with 3D graphics. So the problem with the Saturn wasn't so much that it was difficult to develop for (although it was), but instead the fact that the basic design was inadequate. Of course, it didn't help that the playstation was much easier to work with, but it wasn't as if the saturn never got a chance.
In the 1950's, '60's and early 70's, the American auto industry was booming, and a person could drop out of high school and in a few years of working for Ford, GM, Studebaker, etc. he could be making a wage that would support a stay at home wife, children, mortgage, and a car of his own.
Exactly, although, to be honest, I don't think that it went far enough. I feel, that with today's booming economy, a person should be able to not just drop out of high school, but instead skip school altogether and still make enough to buy their own house, car, and 5 person hottub. The answer that is always given by the evil Social Darwinists is that education is the key to getting ahead. This does not acknowledge, however, the sad fact that education is only available to very few people in our society. As everyone knows, the only people who go to college are the recipients of Upper Class Privilege, who are there only because of their connections. The average person in our society has no way to attend higher education, and is instead forced to toil for sub-slave wages, just because they never got past 5th grade. This just isn't right. The solution is to remove any benefit that the Rich and Privileged receive from any education at all. This way, those of us who are not in a position to attend kindergarten would be paid enough to live in a way that has previously only been available to the privileged college-educated. In a perfect society, we would begin receiving this Living Wage at birth, because why should we expect someone to be paid less than a living wage just because they cannot read, speak, or even clean themselves? We shouldn't!
What happens if people do not receive a living wage? Well, they obviously receive a non-living wage, and therefore must die. Usually slowly and painfully. This horrible policy is blatantly obvious in the huge number of fab workers who are dying off in droves every day. In fact, around some plants, workers must spend hours every day digging mass graves for all the unfortunate people who were paid these non-living wages. Moreover, these workers who are digging the graves are usually not paid a living wage either. They usually are the last ones to be placed inside. This horrific situation is the sad result of not having a living wage.
Save the Children! Stop the Carnage! Support a Living Wage!
several Mattel-trademarked items on the cover. Including Barbie's own, special shade of pink.
As mentioned in Slashdot earlier, there was a recent United States Supreme Court decision that a product's color cannot be inherently distinctive. So use away!
all was good in the world - except that we had to code in VC++ for the final project.:)
Not to start a pointless war over programming environments, but I feel that, for an IDE, VC++ is pretty good. The compilation was pretty good, and it's customizable enough to make me happy. The later versions have some nice features too, that make object oriented programming a LOT easier (less having to flip back and forth between class definitions and source code).
Of course, for what I do now, my development environment is the classic: vi + gcc:)
Ohmigod, you mean to say that a large corporation with billions of dollars and over two decades of product releases behind them has more credibility than some small unknown company that has never released a product? Amazing!
Signal 11's post never made a single racist generalization. Rap is known for having a certain tone of speech, and Signal 11's post was using this tone in his parody.
If I make a parody of Country music in a southern twang, talking about how My wife left me and took my dog, and how much I miss that dog, then I am not making racist generalizations about white southerners, but about a typical subject matter of a country song.
Re:History of techno (uh, way offtopic)
on
Linux And Hip Hop
·
· Score: 1
Whoooo boy. Not correct. You can technically take Techno back to the invention of the electric keyboard/synthesizer in the 50s
I'm not talking about "electronic music", I'm talking about techno. While kraftwerk, brian eno, john cage, and many others were making music with electronic instruments for a long time (Autobahn was out in '73 I believe), they shouldn't be considered the source of today's techno scene. While the instruments, and even the sounds, may be similar, there is no straight progression from the experimental electronic artists of the 70s (and other funk oriented bands). The later artists may have been influenced (although that's always hard to say), but the fact is that techno has always been associated with dance music, which is very different from what groups like Y.M.O., and Kraftwerk played.
DJs, who were the first rappers, didn't need a drum machine - they used their 2 turntables and a mixer
You're correct, however, I was not claiming that the drum machine created rap music, but merely that it encouraged the development. Prior to the drum machine, as you point out, rappers used the proverbial "two turntables and a microphone". However, this inherently limited the rappers to whatever records they could get their hands on. The advent of the drum machine meant that, rather than having to use someone else's records, they could lay their own beats down. Drum machines didn't create rap music, but they allowed it to grow much faster than it might have otherwise.
After this, techno began to make its way back to where it originated: the USA.
As far as I know, it never left. It was still being played in the clubs.
Note that I'm talking about progression of music development, and not about where it was being played. The big difference is that, in the early 80s, most techno producers were located in the US (and most of them in Detroit), but after a few years most producers were located across the atlantic. While the American clubs were still playing the music, the source of the records had changed.
Re:Other Things That Linux Is Like
on
Linux And Hip Hop
·
· Score: 2
Hardly anything truly big started out as something small.
apple: started in a garage yahoo: started in grad school dell: started in a dorm room
just to mention three tech companies...
History of techno (uh, way offtopic)
on
Linux And Hip Hop
·
· Score: 1
The Chemical Brothers invented techno in 1994. And they're English, not European.
Actually, techno is American, invented in the early '80s. And actually, it evolved from Disco. When disco "died", it actually just disappeared from the mainstream culture, but didn't actually die completely. There were many places where disco was still popular, namely gay clubs.
During this time, a few DJs/producers began to play around with the dance-music feel of disco, and combining it with the new drum machines that were making their appearance at the time (which also, incidentally, encouraged the development of rap music, which used the beats as well). The gay clubs of detroit were, basically, the incubator where the first techno was developed. This was around '83 or 84 I think.
Because of where it was played, though, techno was not destined to break out in the US. Instead, mainstream clubs in England began to play techno, and eventually began to create their own. Techno evolved into more of the "rave" form that we know nowadays, and exploded during '86 into what the english called their "Summer of Love", which was a huge bash of massive festival-raves, copious and freely available hallucinogens, and the first real introduction of techno to the Mainstream.
After this, techno began to make its way back to where it originated: the USA. It took several years, but in 1991 the first techno-explosion occured in the US. This first incarnation of techno in the US was strongly associated with Hippie culture (probably due to the mutual association with drugs), and then promptly faded from the mainstream in 1993.
Techno then began to change again, getting away from the cheesy anthems of old (James Brown is Dead, Dominator, etc.), and, led by groups like Orbital, what is now known as "trance" began to appear. in 1994, the only music that was heard at raves was trance (sorta like today:) ), but then the genre began to expand, and there was another explosion of new music, with the introduction of Jungle, Big Beat (thank the Chemical Brothers (previously known as the Dust Brothers) for that), drum 'n bass, and other types.
1997 was the beginning of the Mainstream's latest fascination with techno. Groups like Prodigy and the Chemical Bros. became popular, Robert Miles' song "Children" hit the #1 spot all around the world, and many people were predicting that techno was going to be "the next big thing". Thankfully, that never happened, and things have died down without the Mainstream music industry appropriating the techno scene (certain madonna and cher songs not withstanding).
And no, I think that linux is nothing like techno!:)
Why shouldn't I be able to listen to their mp3 of the CD track when I can listen to an identical mp3 of an identical CD track legally? Does one of the identical mp3s cost the artist more? Obviously not.
Actually, obviously so. Here's an obvious example: Suppose you pay $10 to me for a copy of an artist's CD, rather than paying $10 to get the CD directly from the artist. Then, despite the fact that the data from each is the same, one transaction does, indeed, cost the artist $10 more. Obviously.
BTW, in WWII, Germany lost the war in Stalingrad. Not in Normandy. Yeah, thanks commies. Sound weird, doesn't it?
Actually, just for the sake of argument, I believe that the one battle that could have changed the course of the war was the Battle of England. If Hitler had not been so hestiant to invade England, instead trying to rely on just bombing, then it is very possible that Germany would have been able to take England out of the war. Without England, the US would have been much less likely to enter the war, much less make much of a difference without having a convenient place to stage their armies. Not to mention the fact that the Germans would then be able to put their focus on the eastern front, rather than having to split their resources.
Slashdot Mirror
What happens to third parties in a winner-take-all system is plainly obvious, as most people are not willing to help their least favorite party win the election just to support a losing cause.
When you have a proportional system, however, the opportunity for coalitions and partnerships between parties is created. For example, you could have a coalition government consisting of 3 small parties win over a single party that is larger than the other three.
The problem with this, however, is that the situation inevitably arises where a small party gains a disproportionate amount of political influence due to their capacity as a swing vote. For example, imagine a situation where there are 2 parties each with 45% of the vote, and a third with 10%. In this case, the small 10% party is catered to by each of the others, so that while the third party's representation may be a small fraction of the whole, they still gather a large amount of the attention.
Alexander Hamilton was aware of this fact, and mentioned it as one of his reasons why the Electoral system was created (to prevent "cabal, intrigue, and corruption", in his words), and I think that in all, it has done a fairly admirable job.
But while third parties are rarely successful in the American electoral system, this doesn't mean that they are ignored. For what happens is that the larger parties, in order to avoid the sapping of their numbers by a 3rd party, tend to absorb the ideas of the smaller parties. What results is a more moderate version of a (typically radical) agenda that helps bring more people into the fold of the larger party.
A book that goes contains a good discussion of this phenomenon, in the context of the apparent failure of socialism in america is the book It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States.
working 12-16 hours a day, being on call all the time is perfectly fine if the pay is fine. If the pay isn't fine, then don't work there. If an employer doesn't pay well, they aren't going to get good people. It all works out.
2. surveillance cameras
3. locking file cabinets
4. computers that are physically secured
5. passwords
6. firewalls
7. encrypted file systems
8. access logs
9. an alert, competent MIS staff
10. pinging, "lojack"-style laptop software (several exist, I don't know them by name)
this is just off the top of my head, but i imagine that if all 10 of these were implemented well, then most security issues would be solved.
Actually, you're wrong.
Many species can, and do, tolerate inbreeding. While the problem with inbreeding is that it tends to bring out bad recessive traits, that is not a problem if the germ line consists of identical individuals, i.e. they are just creating clones. Read Gould's _Panda's Thumb_ for an example of a few species of mites that engages solely in sibling-sibling mating. In fact, in one species all born offspring are female because the male dies off before being born (although he does fertilize all his sisters before that).
it was moderated as flamebait because it's dumb, ill-considered, and inflammatory. According to the original poster's "logic", the USA has been a decadent empire on the decline for the entirety of it's history.
Now I can be disappointed ahead of schedule...
This reminds me of the interpreted basic on the Apple, where, due to a quirk/feature of the interpreter (I don't believe this was an actual feature of the language, although I could be wrong), most keywords had a symbol equivalent. The most common was to use '?' for "print", although sometimes I saw a few others.
*doosh*
I would agree with you if the ACLU's resources were infinite. As they aren't, they necessarily have to make decisions between what areas to focus on. I think it is perfectly appropriate to try to avoid wasting limited resources on such a controversial topic that is already well-represented by the NRA.
And BTW, I do support the right to bear arms.
But corporations already pay a federal income tax. A web tax would go to the municipalities and states to make up for the (supposed) decrease in
revenue from out-of-state sales tax purchases. It isn't as if the corporations are getting anything for free, instead it is the local governments getting annoyed because they get less money. Of course, out-of-state companies consume no local resources (they don't need the services of the local police force, for example), so this shouldn't be a problem. But governments of any sort are always going to complain about not getting their hands on revenue, whether they
deserve it or not. That's what governments do.p
I have no problem with Dr. Dre's suit, but Metallica used to pass out their music for free! It's near hypocrisy! They would give people tapes and ask them to listen." What's the difference, other than now it's being pushed by the demand side? What's the difference between giving money to a panhandler, and having the panhandler mug you?
They very carefully pick and choose which rights they will defend, and invent rights where none exist.
I doubt that they invent rights where none exist, and as far as picking and choosing what rights they wish to defend, that's their right. They aren't a government agency, they are under no obligation to be completely neutral on which cases they wish to take on. If they wish to take cases concerning the 1st amendment, instead of the 4th, 8th, or 10th, they can, and have every right to. Another constraint is that they do not have infinite resources.I think someone mentioned the second amendment, which, AFAIK, is already pretty well protected by the lawyers of the NRA, so why should they spend the money on it?
You may wish that they had more interest in what you want protected, but there is no reason to disparage them for not doing so.
If it was based on a patent, they'd lost because they didn't make any move to protect those patents earlier, if you don't want them enough to try to protect them, the courts ain't going to give them back to you years later when you finally wake up.
Actually, you're thinking of Trademarks, which lose their legal protection if not defended. Patents can be undefended for years, but still be protected, if the owner so desires. Look at Unisys and LZW encoding for an example of this.
Yes, the saturn did have two processors, but the design was horrible. Actually, design is too good of a word, since the dual processors were just a kludge put together at the last moment. The saturn was orignially designed to be another 2-D platform, like previous 16-bit machines, but when the playstation's 3D capabilities were announced, Sega quickly hacked on another processor into the design.
This caused a lot of problems in many different aspects. First of all, since the design was a hack, it cost a lot to manufacture the damn things (wires had to be soldered on, etc.), so that sega could never benefit from the economies of scale that the more elegantly designed PSX could, and forced Sega to keep the price of the machine higher than they would have liked, which didn't allow them much room to maneuver around Sony. Secondly, because the basic design was a hack, the libraries for the system were not very good, so that the developers had a hell of a time trying to make games for it. Sony's libraries for the PSX, on the other hand, were very easy to use, which made developing games much easier. Thirdly, even if someone managed to work around the libraries for the Saturn, the basic problem of the hardware not being designed for 3D games came up again. The PSX has 2 (main) processors as well, a RISC 3000 chip, and a graphics processor that was designed to support 3D operation, so that even from the very beginning of the PSX, it was fairly trivial to get a working 3D game working. On the other hand, even the later Japanese Saturn games that I saw (the Saturn did MUCH better in Japan than in the US) had horrible problems with 3D graphics. So the problem with the Saturn wasn't so much that it was difficult to develop for (although it was), but instead the fact that the basic design was inadequate. Of course, it didn't help that the playstation was much easier to work with, but it wasn't as if the saturn never got a chance.
In the 1950's, '60's and early 70's, the American auto industry was booming, and a person could drop out of high school and in a few years of working for Ford, GM, Studebaker, etc. he could be making a wage that would support a stay at home wife, children, mortgage, and a car of his own.
Exactly, although, to be honest, I don't think that it went far enough. I feel, that with today's booming economy, a person should be able to not just drop out of high school, but instead skip school altogether and still make enough to buy their own house, car, and 5 person hottub. The answer that is always given by the evil Social Darwinists is that education is the key to getting ahead. This does not acknowledge, however, the sad fact that education is only available to very few people in our society. As everyone knows, the only people who go to college are the recipients of Upper Class Privilege, who are there only because of their connections. The average person in our society has no way to attend higher education, and is instead forced to toil for sub-slave wages, just because they never got past 5th grade. This just isn't right. The solution is to remove any benefit that the Rich and Privileged receive from any education at all. This way, those of us who are not in a position to attend kindergarten would be paid enough to live in a way that has previously only been available to the privileged college-educated. In a perfect society, we would begin receiving this Living Wage at birth, because why should we expect someone to be paid less than a living wage just because they cannot read, speak, or even clean themselves? We shouldn't!
What happens if people do not receive a living wage? Well, they obviously receive a non-living wage, and therefore must die. Usually slowly and painfully. This horrible policy is blatantly obvious in the huge number of fab workers who are dying off in droves every day. In fact, around some plants, workers must spend hours every day digging mass graves for all the unfortunate people who were paid these non-living wages. Moreover, these workers who are digging the graves are usually not paid a living wage either. They usually are the last ones to be placed inside. This horrific situation is the sad result of not having a living wage.
Save the Children! Stop the Carnage! Support a Living Wage!
several Mattel-trademarked items on the cover. Including Barbie's own, special shade of pink.
As mentioned in Slashdot earlier, there was a recent United States Supreme Court decision that a product's color cannot be inherently distinctive. So use away!
all was good in the world - except that we had to code in VC++ for the final project. :)
:)
Not to start a pointless war over programming environments, but I feel that, for an IDE, VC++ is pretty good. The compilation was pretty good, and it's customizable enough to make me happy. The later versions have some nice features too, that make object oriented programming a LOT easier (less having to flip back and forth between class definitions and source code).
Of course, for what I do now, my development environment is the classic: vi + gcc
Ohmigod, you mean to say that a large corporation with billions of dollars and over two decades of product releases behind them has more credibility than some small unknown company that has never released a product? Amazing!
Signal 11's post never made a single racist generalization. Rap is known for having a certain tone of speech, and Signal 11's post was using this tone in his parody.
If I make a parody of Country music in a southern twang, talking about how My wife left me and took my dog, and how much I miss that dog, then I am not making racist generalizations about white southerners, but about a typical subject matter of a country song.
Whoooo boy. Not correct. You can technically take Techno back to the invention of the electric keyboard/synthesizer in the 50s
I'm not talking about "electronic music", I'm talking about techno. While kraftwerk, brian eno, john cage, and many others were making music with electronic instruments for a long time (Autobahn was out in '73 I believe), they shouldn't be considered the source of today's techno scene. While the instruments, and even the sounds, may be similar, there is no straight progression from the experimental electronic artists of the 70s (and other funk oriented bands). The later artists may have been influenced (although that's always hard to say), but the fact is that techno has always been associated with dance music, which is very different from what groups like Y.M.O., and Kraftwerk played.
DJs, who were the first rappers, didn't need a drum machine - they used their 2 turntables and a mixer
You're correct, however, I was not claiming that the drum machine created rap music, but merely that it encouraged the development. Prior to the drum machine, as you point out, rappers used the proverbial "two turntables and a microphone". However, this inherently limited the rappers to whatever records they could get their hands on. The advent of the drum machine meant that, rather than having to use someone else's records, they could lay their own beats down. Drum machines didn't create rap music, but they allowed it to grow much faster than it might have otherwise.
After this, techno began to make its way back to where it originated: the USA.
As far as I know, it never left. It was still being played in the clubs.
Note that I'm talking about progression of music development, and not about where it was being played. The big difference is that, in the early 80s, most techno producers were located in the US (and most of them in Detroit), but after a few years most producers were located across the atlantic. While the American clubs were still playing the music, the source of the records had changed.
Hardly anything truly big started out as something small.
apple: started in a garage
yahoo: started in grad school
dell: started in a dorm room
just to mention three tech companies...
The Chemical Brothers invented techno in 1994. And they're English, not European.
:) ), but then the genre began to expand, and there was another explosion of new music, with the introduction of Jungle, Big Beat (thank the Chemical Brothers (previously known as the Dust Brothers) for that), drum 'n bass, and other types.
:)
Actually, techno is American, invented in the early '80s. And actually, it evolved from Disco. When disco "died", it actually just disappeared from the mainstream culture, but didn't actually die completely. There were many places where disco was still popular, namely gay clubs.
During this time, a few DJs/producers began to play around with the dance-music feel of disco, and combining it with the new drum machines that were making their appearance at the time (which also, incidentally, encouraged the development of rap music, which used the beats as well). The gay clubs of detroit were, basically, the incubator where the first techno was developed. This was around '83 or 84 I think.
Because of where it was played, though, techno was not destined to break out in the US. Instead, mainstream clubs in England began to play techno, and eventually began to create their own. Techno evolved into more of the "rave" form that we know nowadays, and exploded during '86 into what the english called their "Summer of Love", which was a huge bash of massive festival-raves, copious and freely available hallucinogens, and the first real introduction of techno to the Mainstream.
After this, techno began to make its way back to where it originated: the USA. It took several years, but in 1991 the first techno-explosion occured in the US. This first incarnation of techno in the US was strongly associated with Hippie culture (probably due to the mutual association with drugs), and then promptly faded from the mainstream in 1993.
Techno then began to change again, getting away from the cheesy anthems of old (James Brown is Dead, Dominator, etc.), and, led by groups like Orbital, what is now known as "trance" began to appear. in 1994, the only music that was heard at raves was trance (sorta like today
1997 was the beginning of the Mainstream's latest fascination with techno. Groups like Prodigy and the Chemical Bros. became popular, Robert Miles' song "Children" hit the #1 spot all around the world, and many people were predicting that techno was going to be "the next big thing". Thankfully, that never happened, and things have died down without the Mainstream music industry appropriating the techno scene (certain madonna and cher songs not withstanding).
And no, I think that linux is nothing like techno!
Why shouldn't I be able to listen to their mp3 of the CD track when I can listen to an identical mp3 of an identical CD track legally? Does one of the identical mp3s cost the artist more?
Obviously not.
Actually, obviously so. Here's an obvious example:
Suppose you pay $10 to me for a copy of an artist's CD, rather than paying $10 to get the CD directly from the artist. Then, despite the fact that the data from each is the same, one transaction does, indeed, cost the artist $10 more. Obviously.
BTW, in WWII, Germany lost the war in Stalingrad. Not in Normandy. Yeah, thanks commies. Sound weird, doesn't it?
Actually, just for the sake of argument, I believe that the one battle that could have changed the course of the war was the Battle of England. If Hitler had not been so hestiant to invade England, instead trying to rely on just bombing, then it is very possible that Germany would have been able to take England out of the war. Without England, the US would have been much less likely to enter the war, much less make much of a difference without having a convenient place to stage their armies. Not to mention the fact that the Germans would then be able to put their focus on the eastern front, rather than having to split their resources.
1989? Jeez, Al Gore must have just been getting started. (The document has no mention of ARPANET that I could find whatsoever.)
"The Web" != "The Internet"