Your wish, little geek. Actually, some of the nerds I made fun of in high school work for me: they sweep my office's floor, clean my toilets, take out the trash. That's what they are good for.
You're confusing nerds, which are smart people, with dweebs, who are stupid nerds. Kthx.
And going to the Moon has never been impossible to begin with. Neither is going to any place in the Solar System, but try living out there. And beyond the Solar System? Again, no FTL travel, no Reaching the Stars. And physics says FTL can't be done, sorry. Give it up already. It's not a technical limitation that cannot be overcome, it's a physical limitation which is intrinsic to the Universe. You can't get around it. You can't go lower then Absolute Zero and you can't go faster than light, which utterly crushes your fantasies forever.
Do you even know what light speed is? Rounded, it's 3.0x10^8th meters per second. Over a billion kilometers per hour. We can't reach that, or go faster than, but "just under 1 billion km/h" is still pretty fucking fast. I don't know what the hell Absolute Zero has to do with it, but we can't even get stuff to absolute zero as it is.
That's why I can afford three cars while you live in your parent's basement. Try again, dumb kid.
Um. Actually, I don't live in my parents' basement. Try again, dumb jock.
No, it just makes you immature, out of contact with the real world and childish.
No, it makes me optimistic about our abilities. I'm not sitting here hoping for warp drive or Trek-like teleportation.
One day you will come to realize this fantasies you hold so dear will never materialize, and you won't be able to find a place in the Real World you hate so much. That's when you won't be able to face life anymore.
Um. Wow at the assumptions you make. I have a place in the real world, dipshit. And I said life is pretty good for/to me. That's not what this is about. This isn't about my personal life sucking -- I'm not the one life has beat down so much that I feel derisive towards other people with dreams. That's almost a psychological condition you have going there. It's not healthy to be this bitter, man.
I enjoy the life I have, not the one I fantasize about.
I do, too. But that doesn't mean I don't want us to go to the stars. I don't know why you assume people with imagination and hope for our future hate their lives so much. Because it's not true. I'm sorry that I don't fit into your little peghole fantasies about what all nerds and space geeks feel.
Oh, and since you like to assume: I don't wear glasses, I'm in good shape, I'm not afraid of girls, I don't wear a pocket protector, and I'm not a fat hairball of a nerd. (And I've never read LoTR all the way through.)
There are thousands of people who are being put out of business by computers, large retailers, and more competition. That's just how it works. Manufacturing is becoming less dependent on human workers. I know it sucks for people losing their jobs, but it's just how it is. Technology making things easier is going to put people out of work.
But this isn't about musicians demanding money, this is about people not being WILLING to pay money for music.
I'm willing to pay money for music, and so are all of my friends. If the music is good.
If music is really worth it to our society, we should be WILLING to pay for it. I'm not suggesting that we HAVE to pay for it, but my problem is that many aren't WILLING to pay for it.
The RIAA labels make over $30 billion dollars a year. That's a great deal of people being willing to pay for music.
Back in the day, people paid $100 a head to see a live concert. They'd sit down, and give the musicians their full attention for an hour and a half. Now, we pay $15 for a CD we can play over and over again, and most don't even give it the time of day. Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that price is inversely proportional the interest in the material, at least in this case.
You can't really be comparing classical music to the low rung pop that is mass produced today. Even the genres of music I like are of a lower quality. I think it's safe to say the quality is proportional to the willingness to pay. A ton of music is mass-produced stuff to sell to their target demographic -- just look how many clones there are.
What's more is that today's album is yesterday's symphony. How would you feel, if I showed up to a concert to just listen to one movement of a symphony, and then left? That's what people are doing with CDs... they buy it for one track, and only listen to that, claiming that the rest of the CD is crap. Sorry dude, if you don't like my WORK as a whole, then FUCK OFF! I put together and released an ALBUM because I wanted to make an ALBUM, not a fucking string of songs.
1. If you show up and leave, that's your prerogative. You paid for the ticket, after all. If I sell a book and you only read the last chapter -- hey, whatever, you bought the whole book.
2. Maybe because the rest of the CD IS crap. A lot of it IS filler made to fill out the current model of CDs. That's why those songs make it to the greatest hits album. Some artists DO produce full CDs I like. I can think of three or four off the top of my head, and they're not very popular or pushed at all (though all were at some time RIAA bands).
3. Well fuck off then, too.;)
I don't think the album is necessarily a requirement for great music. And hardly ANY albums are a work of art like great symphonies are.
If people can't pay $15, because they don't think its worth it, they need to LOOK HARDER, because, yes, 95% of everything out there is total crap, but that's about a good 20 thousand albums, by now, that aren't.
I don't disagree with you here so much, but remember that the 95% that is shit is 99.99% of the available music. And not everyone in the 5% of good music produces full albums all the time. Some of them just release single songs, or a few songs at a time. I'd wager that there's actually a much higher percent of good music -- maybe around 50%, but the 50% that is bad is so pushed by the RIAA that it seems to dwarf the good music 95-5.
The RIAA labels are experts at producing music, almost like on an assembly line. For example, Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, etc, who don't really sing (Jessica Simpson whispers, Britney sings through her nose), with very similar sounding music. Or all the boybands, most of which were managed/produced by one guy. Or the string of typical bands who sound so damn similar. It works because people like the sound of something and want more of that something. The RIAA is right there with the next similar sounding musician or CD.
But, while I like some songs by the top RIAA artists sometimes? After a while it gets repetitive and I don't like it. Just like changing my desktop background every so often, the tune has to change. I don't listen to ONE album all the time. I listen to a large collection of them, typically on random. I rip them to MP3, put
They pissed off their fans by making a silly statement about Bush -- while I'm no fan of his, I wasn't a fan of theirs either, and it wasn't even a +1 Insightful kind of statement, it was more a -1 Troll thing. However, their reaction to fans boycotting them was to throw out the name "McCarthyism" and other such whinery. They acted as though they thought that they had a right to say whatever they wanted and their fans were obligated to continue to buy their music.
I'm sure there are others, but I rarely listen to anything famous people say. Most of them are idiots (actors, singers, politicians -- all mostly stupid people), and so are their organizations (MPAA, RIAA, political parties).
The RIAA does seem to be acting as though it expects to continue selling the same or a greater number of CDs. Also, see the post I replied to where he talked about how it bothered him, as a musician, that people didn't want to pay $15 for a CD. That sounds pretty much like "you owe me."
I know this is a troll, but it's so poorly done I have to reply.
You mean you and a bunch of other nerds who think they know better than anyone? Then I speak for the rest of humanity when I say: shut your fucking mouth and get a life, asshole.
I know you are extraordinarily bitter about having to work for the nerds you used to be mean to in highschool. I'm just surprised you can afford an internet connection on your income. And no, I don't want to supersize my #6 with a rootbeer today, kthx.
I see you swallowed JFK's slogan with no second thought. You know it was just a matter of showing that the US was more technically capable than the USSR, don't you? Oh, you didn't? Sorry. Did they tell you that Santa doesn't exist either?
And we did prove it. Sumbitch, lookit that! We did the "impossible" within the decade just to prove we had bigger nerd-dicks than the USSR did. Meanwhile you were just running around slapping other men on the ass, showering together, and throwing a ball around. No wonder you have no imagination.
Sorry, little nerd, that Real Life on this world is so unbearabal to you losers than you need to escape to Star Trek fantasyland, but this is the world you will live and die on. Deal with it.
Actually, Real Life is pretty fuckin' sweet for me. My life wasn't ruined because of a knee injury.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! And what will you do, loserboy? Flail your arms? Cry? You may as well want to live in Middle Earth, dumb kid, won't make it happen. You WILL be forced to face reality and I guess you won't be able to face it. Are you going to become another suicide statistic, dumb kid?
I love that you assume I am a child; simply because I refuse to be a pessimist does not make it so. I think I've shown what I'd do. I responded to his slashdot post with my opinion. And by the way, the "You may as well..." sentence is horrible grammar. The reality is, regardless of what you cromag jocks think, we are making progress towards that and there are a great deal of people who want it to happen. Including a majority of people in some nowhere county in New Mexico.
And I'm not the one who needs to be put on a suicide watch because I didn't get to go pro and my cheerleader girlfriend left me for the former head of the chess team.
So what? Everything has its time and all must die. Mankind is no exception. We are constrained by biological and physical restrictions we can't escape. Are you so stupid or deluded you think Mankind will exist forever? Because it won't. We will become extinct one day. Just like everything else sooner or later. Accept it or shoot your brains out because reality won't change for your loserboy hopes.
I know we won't exist forever because I believe in the eventual Heat Death of the Universe (or some other fate, this is just the one theory that I recall at the moment). What the hell does that last part even mean? Because one day humanity will cease to exist I should shoot myself?
Just what kind of pessimistic idiot are you?
I'm glad I don't have to live with your outlook on life and our future.
I think I speak for everyone who believes that mankind needs to continue reaching for the stars when I say this:
You are an asshole.
Just because right now we can't snap our fingers and be on Mars, or out of the solar system, doesn't mean we should give up and never try. Because then we certainly won't ever leave this rock. No one thinks that building a spaceport in NM means we'll all be spending our summers in the Cassini Division sipping space martinis. But humanity doesn't end with our generation (hopefully), and eventually the sun will burn out. I realize that this is far in the future, but we as a species have produced some amazing technology in just the last sixty or so years.
There is no reason to stop now, to stop reaching, to stop exploring.
People thought a man on the moon would never happen. People thought a space station would never happen. People thought the Berlin wall wouldn't fall, and people used to think the Earth was flat and the center of the universe. But the dreamers and explorers don't give a fuck about the "this will never happen" crowd because they believe. And more often than not, they are right. Will it be hard? Yes. "We will do these things not because they are easy... but BECAUSE they are hard."
There are a ton of hurdles. I'm sorry you're so pessimistic and cynical that you don't believe we can overcome them. I'm sorry life has beaten you down so much that you can't dream. But fuck you if you think you can take that from the rest of us. If growing up means turning into a hopeless asshole then I'll pass, thanks.
What IS sad, however, is that people don't consider $15 a good deal for an hours worth of music. As a musician, that just makes me sad. Maybe the quality of the goods need to go up, but $10-$15 seems like a steal if you've just gotten a great album you're going to be listening to for the rest of your life.
Please. (rant coming)
There are so few albums that good, and most of them are some form of compilation of greatest hits. I have CDs from artists that I absolutely adore and wish would produce more CDs, and even these artists have more than a few songs that just don't strike me as all that good.
Then there are CDs with 10-12 tracks, 3-4 minutes in length. That's less than an hour.
I have a stack of CD-Rs sitting here on my desk (for data, not music -- I don't listen to any music off of CDs*) and they claim to hold up to 80 minutes of music. I would gladly pay $15 for 80 minutes of quality music. But the problem is, a lot of music is more on the average scale (RIAA or not).
What IS sad to me is that musicians think that they're entitled to anything. I buy my music, but I don't owe any musician a damn thing if they're not selling what I want to buy. That's just how the world works. I write fiction, and damned if I feel entitled to any money -- I do it because I enjoy doing it. If someone wants to give me cash, that's fine, but I don't expect it and I'm not banking on making a living off of selling entertainment.
A hardcover book is $20-30, and generally upwards of 100,000 words (most of the thicker fantasy novels now are upwards of 250,000 words) -- this takes longer than an hour to read, and paper backs are around $7-8 for fiction, and this generally represents a year or more of work by the author; a DVD movie is $10-25 and is generally at least ninety minutes and takes a lot more work and people than an album; there is a ton of free/cheap and legal entertainment available on the internet; radio is free, satellite radio is pretty cheap; TV is cheap for basic cable ($45ish *a month*, give or take $10 depending on location and "rate increases"); video games tend to cost ~$60 and generally take more than an hour of time to get bored of.
There's a lot of competition for entertainment dollars out there, and there's also free content available. $15 isn't necessarily a deal for the average album. It would be great if all albums were just fan-damn-tastic works of art that moved me to buy them, because I really, truly love good music. But it'd be great if I had more money than Bill Gates and a magic flying unicorn to ride to work every day, too. The truth is there's a lot of crap out there and $15 isn't worth it for a song or three. There's also a lot of crap books, a lot of crap movies, a lot of crap games, and a lot of crap websites, TV shows, and everything else.
There are simply more sources for entertainment than music.
(end rant)
By the way, I don't eat fast food. I'd sooner eat the cardboard the burger comes in.
Downloaded music is free. It is easily copyable without loss of quality between copys.
But there are a lot of people who don't want to break the law, even if it is copyright law. I'm friends with a fair number of them. They just won't pirate anything, at all, ever. Even if it means going without music.
It's kind of a bitch, because they're hesitant about anything that is free on the internet -- free software makes their brains hurt. And the weird thing is, most of them are in their 20s and right at the age where you'd think piracy would be more common.
And they're also the people who the music industry annoys with DRM, because people who want to pirate something will and nothing will stop them.
This is a lot more true than a lot of people who want to blame piracy realize.
Every time I go into the local record store, there's some really crappy music playing. The CDs cost $18-19, sometimes $21 or so if it's a double CD.
The selection sucks. The RIAA is putting out a ton of the same. I'm sure this is a hit with certain people, but I don't need five different CDs by five different dyed-blond pop starlets, or five CDs from the newest country hit guy with a mullet, or the black guy with a ten pound gold chain, or the Aryan looking guy who wants to be that black guy and hates his wife, or all the clones of all of these people. Sometimes some of them have a good song or three, but usually, not so much. The goth/punk/emo clone bands are the same.
I can go to a store like Walmart, or Target, or Best buy, and get these same CDs for $14-16. Or I can get them at Amazon.com for a similar price (and if I get two, it's over $25, and I can get free shipping). Or there's iTunes. Which now offers some tracks without DRM.
And the local record store? It isn't local. It's a chain of overpriced music. This isn't a family owned business, and I'm sure there are tons of places where the record store isn't the "two working people with families..."
The RIAA pisses people off. DRM and Sony's rootkit actually did get the attention of non-techie people, at least some that I know. The atmosphere kind of sucks, and the prices definitely suck.
Further: Book stores that aren't chains are also taking a beating because there are cheaper offerings elsewhere. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a huge problem with book piracy.
When you post someone else's information, I think your right to privacy becomes pretty much void. Craiglist should just turn the guy's info over to the cops. He's already shown a disrespect for privacy.
I agree. It's not just Apple, there are people who will always hate (insert any company name).
The thing is, you can blame it on marketing all you want, but right now Apple is doing the best for consumers... sure, it helps their bottom line. What, are they only acceptable measures if they cost Apple money? That's insane. But as it stands, they're making significant progress toward opening things up.
And some people just want to shit on it because they're not getting 100% of what they want right away. Grow up, people. You don't get everything you want 99.99999...% of the time, and you get everything you want, when you want it even less.
This is the real world. Steve Jobs isn't hoarding apples, candy, unicorns and rainbows here.
He didn't steal your sunshine. I was just outside earlier. It is just as hot and glaring as it was yesterday. Grow up.
The internet is neither radio, nor television, nor Canadian, so keep your regulatory hands in your pockets.
Wow.
I wish I'd thought of that line. You're my hero for stuffing all that into one sentence and not saying it in the way I had in mind. (for the curious, "Piss off, turdburglars.")
I know all of Jersey doesn't look like a crackwhore infested slum. I dated a girl who grew up in Jersey, and it always annoyed her when I made cracks about it, but then, it annoyed me when she opened her mouth, so we were even. It's just one of those jokes, like the French being cheese eating surrender monkeys.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah but the mental image of mounting David Boies is just too gross, even for /.
Oh for Christ sake.
Your wish, little geek. Actually, some of the nerds I made fun of in high school work for me: they sweep my office's floor, clean my toilets, take out the trash. That's what they are good for.
You're confusing nerds, which are smart people, with dweebs, who are stupid nerds. Kthx.
And going to the Moon has never been impossible to begin with. Neither is going to any place in the Solar System, but try living out there. And beyond the Solar System? Again, no FTL travel, no Reaching the Stars. And physics says FTL can't be done, sorry. Give it up already. It's not a technical limitation that cannot be overcome, it's a physical limitation which is intrinsic to the Universe. You can't get around it. You can't go lower then Absolute Zero and you can't go faster than light, which utterly crushes your fantasies forever.
Do you even know what light speed is? Rounded, it's 3.0x10^8th meters per second. Over a billion kilometers per hour. We can't reach that, or go faster than, but "just under 1 billion km/h" is still pretty fucking fast. I don't know what the hell Absolute Zero has to do with it, but we can't even get stuff to absolute zero as it is.
That's why I can afford three cars while you live in your parent's basement. Try again, dumb kid.
Um. Actually, I don't live in my parents' basement. Try again, dumb jock.
No, it just makes you immature, out of contact with the real world and childish.
No, it makes me optimistic about our abilities. I'm not sitting here hoping for warp drive or Trek-like teleportation.
One day you will come to realize this fantasies you hold so dear will never materialize, and you won't be able to find a place in the Real World you hate so much. That's when you won't be able to face life anymore.
Um. Wow at the assumptions you make. I have a place in the real world, dipshit. And I said life is pretty good for/to me. That's not what this is about. This isn't about my personal life sucking -- I'm not the one life has beat down so much that I feel derisive towards other people with dreams. That's almost a psychological condition you have going there. It's not healthy to be this bitter, man.
I enjoy the life I have, not the one I fantasize about.
I do, too. But that doesn't mean I don't want us to go to the stars. I don't know why you assume people with imagination and hope for our future hate their lives so much. Because it's not true. I'm sorry that I don't fit into your little peghole fantasies about what all nerds and space geeks feel.
Oh, and since you like to assume: I don't wear glasses, I'm in good shape, I'm not afraid of girls, I don't wear a pocket protector, and I'm not a fat hairball of a nerd. (And I've never read LoTR all the way through.)
That's life.
There are thousands of people who are being put out of business by computers, large retailers, and more competition. That's just how it works. Manufacturing is becoming less dependent on human workers. I know it sucks for people losing their jobs, but it's just how it is. Technology making things easier is going to put people out of work.
It isn't really fair, but it just is.
But this isn't about musicians demanding money, this is about people not being WILLING to pay money for music.
;)
I'm willing to pay money for music, and so are all of my friends. If the music is good.
If music is really worth it to our society, we should be WILLING to pay for it. I'm not suggesting that we HAVE to pay for it, but my problem is that many aren't WILLING to pay for it.
The RIAA labels make over $30 billion dollars a year. That's a great deal of people being willing to pay for music.
Back in the day, people paid $100 a head to see a live concert. They'd sit down, and give the musicians their full attention for an hour and a half. Now, we pay $15 for a CD we can play over and over again, and most don't even give it the time of day. Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that price is inversely proportional the interest in the material, at least in this case.
You can't really be comparing classical music to the low rung pop that is mass produced today. Even the genres of music I like are of a lower quality. I think it's safe to say the quality is proportional to the willingness to pay. A ton of music is mass-produced stuff to sell to their target demographic -- just look how many clones there are.
What's more is that today's album is yesterday's symphony. How would you feel, if I showed up to a concert to just listen to one movement of a symphony, and then left? That's what people are doing with CDs... they buy it for one track, and only listen to that, claiming that the rest of the CD is crap. Sorry dude, if you don't like my WORK as a whole, then FUCK OFF! I put together and released an ALBUM because I wanted to make an ALBUM, not a fucking string of songs.
1. If you show up and leave, that's your prerogative. You paid for the ticket, after all. If I sell a book and you only read the last chapter -- hey, whatever, you bought the whole book.
2. Maybe because the rest of the CD IS crap. A lot of it IS filler made to fill out the current model of CDs. That's why those songs make it to the greatest hits album. Some artists DO produce full CDs I like. I can think of three or four off the top of my head, and they're not very popular or pushed at all (though all were at some time RIAA bands).
3. Well fuck off then, too.
I don't think the album is necessarily a requirement for great music. And hardly ANY albums are a work of art like great symphonies are.
If people can't pay $15, because they don't think its worth it, they need to LOOK HARDER, because, yes, 95% of everything out there is total crap, but that's about a good 20 thousand albums, by now, that aren't.
I don't disagree with you here so much, but remember that the 95% that is shit is 99.99% of the available music. And not everyone in the 5% of good music produces full albums all the time. Some of them just release single songs, or a few songs at a time. I'd wager that there's actually a much higher percent of good music -- maybe around 50%, but the 50% that is bad is so pushed by the RIAA that it seems to dwarf the good music 95-5.
The RIAA labels are experts at producing music, almost like on an assembly line. For example, Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, etc, who don't really sing (Jessica Simpson whispers, Britney sings through her nose), with very similar sounding music. Or all the boybands, most of which were managed/produced by one guy. Or the string of typical bands who sound so damn similar. It works because people like the sound of something and want more of that something. The RIAA is right there with the next similar sounding musician or CD.
But, while I like some songs by the top RIAA artists sometimes? After a while it gets repetitive and I don't like it. Just like changing my desktop background every so often, the tune has to change. I don't listen to ONE album all the time. I listen to a large collection of them, typically on random. I rip them to MP3, put
While it's not piracy related: The Dixie Chicks.
They pissed off their fans by making a silly statement about Bush -- while I'm no fan of his, I wasn't a fan of theirs either, and it wasn't even a +1 Insightful kind of statement, it was more a -1 Troll thing. However, their reaction to fans boycotting them was to throw out the name "McCarthyism" and other such whinery. They acted as though they thought that they had a right to say whatever they wanted and their fans were obligated to continue to buy their music.
I'm sure there are others, but I rarely listen to anything famous people say. Most of them are idiots (actors, singers, politicians -- all mostly stupid people), and so are their organizations (MPAA, RIAA, political parties).
The RIAA does seem to be acting as though it expects to continue selling the same or a greater number of CDs. Also, see the post I replied to where he talked about how it bothered him, as a musician, that people didn't want to pay $15 for a CD. That sounds pretty much like "you owe me."
And no, I really don't.
I know this is a troll, but it's so poorly done I have to reply.
You mean you and a bunch of other nerds who think they know better than anyone? Then I speak for the rest of humanity when I say: shut your fucking mouth and get a life, asshole.
I know you are extraordinarily bitter about having to work for the nerds you used to be mean to in highschool. I'm just surprised you can afford an internet connection on your income. And no, I don't want to supersize my #6 with a rootbeer today, kthx.
I see you swallowed JFK's slogan with no second thought. You know it was just a matter of showing that the US was more technically capable than the USSR, don't you? Oh, you didn't? Sorry. Did they tell you that Santa doesn't exist either?
And we did prove it. Sumbitch, lookit that! We did the "impossible" within the decade just to prove we had bigger nerd-dicks than the USSR did. Meanwhile you were just running around slapping other men on the ass, showering together, and throwing a ball around. No wonder you have no imagination.
Sorry, little nerd, that Real Life on this world is so unbearabal to you losers than you need to escape to Star Trek fantasyland, but this is the world you will live and die on. Deal with it.
Actually, Real Life is pretty fuckin' sweet for me. My life wasn't ruined because of a knee injury.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! And what will you do, loserboy? Flail your arms? Cry? You may as well want to live in Middle Earth, dumb kid, won't make it happen. You WILL be forced to face reality and I guess you won't be able to face it. Are you going to become another suicide statistic, dumb kid?
I love that you assume I am a child; simply because I refuse to be a pessimist does not make it so. I think I've shown what I'd do. I responded to his slashdot post with my opinion. And by the way, the "You may as well..." sentence is horrible grammar. The reality is, regardless of what you cromag jocks think, we are making progress towards that and there are a great deal of people who want it to happen. Including a majority of people in some nowhere county in New Mexico.
And I'm not the one who needs to be put on a suicide watch because I didn't get to go pro and my cheerleader girlfriend left me for the former head of the chess team.
So what? Everything has its time and all must die. Mankind is no exception. We are constrained by biological and physical restrictions we can't escape. Are you so stupid or deluded you think Mankind will exist forever? Because it won't. We will become extinct one day. Just like everything else sooner or later. Accept it or shoot your brains out because reality won't change for your loserboy hopes.
I know we won't exist forever because I believe in the eventual Heat Death of the Universe (or some other fate, this is just the one theory that I recall at the moment). What the hell does that last part even mean? Because one day humanity will cease to exist I should shoot myself?
Just what kind of pessimistic idiot are you?
I'm glad I don't have to live with your outlook on life and our future.
I think I speak for everyone who believes that mankind needs to continue reaching for the stars when I say this:
You are an asshole.
Just because right now we can't snap our fingers and be on Mars, or out of the solar system, doesn't mean we should give up and never try. Because then we certainly won't ever leave this rock. No one thinks that building a spaceport in NM means we'll all be spending our summers in the Cassini Division sipping space martinis. But humanity doesn't end with our generation (hopefully), and eventually the sun will burn out. I realize that this is far in the future, but we as a species have produced some amazing technology in just the last sixty or so years.
There is no reason to stop now, to stop reaching, to stop exploring.
People thought a man on the moon would never happen. People thought a space station would never happen. People thought the Berlin wall wouldn't fall, and people used to think the Earth was flat and the center of the universe. But the dreamers and explorers don't give a fuck about the "this will never happen" crowd because they believe. And more often than not, they are right. Will it be hard? Yes. "We will do these things not because they are easy... but BECAUSE they are hard."
There are a ton of hurdles. I'm sorry you're so pessimistic and cynical that you don't believe we can overcome them. I'm sorry life has beaten you down so much that you can't dream. But fuck you if you think you can take that from the rest of us. If growing up means turning into a hopeless asshole then I'll pass, thanks.
If we stop, we die.
What IS sad, however, is that people don't consider $15 a good deal for an hours worth of music. As a musician, that just makes me sad. Maybe the quality of the goods need to go up, but $10-$15 seems like a steal if you've just gotten a great album you're going to be listening to for the rest of your life.
Please. (rant coming)
There are so few albums that good, and most of them are some form of compilation of greatest hits. I have CDs from artists that I absolutely adore and wish would produce more CDs, and even these artists have more than a few songs that just don't strike me as all that good.
Then there are CDs with 10-12 tracks, 3-4 minutes in length. That's less than an hour.
I have a stack of CD-Rs sitting here on my desk (for data, not music -- I don't listen to any music off of CDs*) and they claim to hold up to 80 minutes of music. I would gladly pay $15 for 80 minutes of quality music. But the problem is, a lot of music is more on the average scale (RIAA or not).
What IS sad to me is that musicians think that they're entitled to anything. I buy my music, but I don't owe any musician a damn thing if they're not selling what I want to buy. That's just how the world works. I write fiction, and damned if I feel entitled to any money -- I do it because I enjoy doing it. If someone wants to give me cash, that's fine, but I don't expect it and I'm not banking on making a living off of selling entertainment.
A hardcover book is $20-30, and generally upwards of 100,000 words (most of the thicker fantasy novels now are upwards of 250,000 words) -- this takes longer than an hour to read, and paper backs are around $7-8 for fiction, and this generally represents a year or more of work by the author; a DVD movie is $10-25 and is generally at least ninety minutes and takes a lot more work and people than an album; there is a ton of free/cheap and legal entertainment available on the internet; radio is free, satellite radio is pretty cheap; TV is cheap for basic cable ($45ish *a month*, give or take $10 depending on location and "rate increases"); video games tend to cost ~$60 and generally take more than an hour of time to get bored of.
There's a lot of competition for entertainment dollars out there, and there's also free content available. $15 isn't necessarily a deal for the average album. It would be great if all albums were just fan-damn-tastic works of art that moved me to buy them, because I really, truly love good music. But it'd be great if I had more money than Bill Gates and a magic flying unicorn to ride to work every day, too. The truth is there's a lot of crap out there and $15 isn't worth it for a song or three. There's also a lot of crap books, a lot of crap movies, a lot of crap games, and a lot of crap websites, TV shows, and everything else.
There are simply more sources for entertainment than music.
(end rant)
By the way, I don't eat fast food. I'd sooner eat the cardboard the burger comes in.
Oh, hi ESR.
sex, respect, and power, which are all scarce as well.
Sex isn't scarce.
Sex with attractive people is.
Downloaded music is free. It is easily copyable without loss of quality between copys.
But there are a lot of people who don't want to break the law, even if it is copyright law. I'm friends with a fair number of them. They just won't pirate anything, at all, ever. Even if it means going without music.
It's kind of a bitch, because they're hesitant about anything that is free on the internet -- free software makes their brains hurt. And the weird thing is, most of them are in their 20s and right at the age where you'd think piracy would be more common.
And they're also the people who the music industry annoys with DRM, because people who want to pirate something will and nothing will stop them.
This is a lot more true than a lot of people who want to blame piracy realize.
Every time I go into the local record store, there's some really crappy music playing. The CDs cost $18-19, sometimes $21 or so if it's a double CD.
The selection sucks. The RIAA is putting out a ton of the same. I'm sure this is a hit with certain people, but I don't need five different CDs by five different dyed-blond pop starlets, or five CDs from the newest country hit guy with a mullet, or the black guy with a ten pound gold chain, or the Aryan looking guy who wants to be that black guy and hates his wife, or all the clones of all of these people. Sometimes some of them have a good song or three, but usually, not so much. The goth/punk/emo clone bands are the same.
I can go to a store like Walmart, or Target, or Best buy, and get these same CDs for $14-16. Or I can get them at Amazon.com for a similar price (and if I get two, it's over $25, and I can get free shipping). Or there's iTunes. Which now offers some tracks without DRM.
And the local record store? It isn't local. It's a chain of overpriced music. This isn't a family owned business, and I'm sure there are tons of places where the record store isn't the "two working people with families..."
The RIAA pisses people off. DRM and Sony's rootkit actually did get the attention of non-techie people, at least some that I know. The atmosphere kind of sucks, and the prices definitely suck.
Further: Book stores that aren't chains are also taking a beating because there are cheaper offerings elsewhere. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a huge problem with book piracy.
Why waste my A-game on a /. post?
Thanks Captain Tiny Penis!
If it wasn't for you spreading stupid sarcasm, who knows what sort of chaos might have ensued?!?!
When you post someone else's information, I think your right to privacy becomes pretty much void. Craiglist should just turn the guy's info over to the cops. He's already shown a disrespect for privacy.
I thought it was piracy.
else, what am I to do with all these silly eyepatches?
1) They left the doors to the house UNLOCKED
This does not make going in and stealing the property any more legal.
And Craiglist is being pretty stupid here, IMO. "One of our users obviously caused a crime to take place... so we're going to be stubborn about it."
2) They pissed someone off.
Pissing someone off does not make theft legal, either.
The person who posted the fake ad should be convicted for the theft, and the people who took things should not -- if they give said stuff back.
I agree. It's not just Apple, there are people who will always hate (insert any company name).
The thing is, you can blame it on marketing all you want, but right now Apple is doing the best for consumers... sure, it helps their bottom line. What, are they only acceptable measures if they cost Apple money? That's insane. But as it stands, they're making significant progress toward opening things up.
And some people just want to shit on it because they're not getting 100% of what they want right away. Grow up, people. You don't get everything you want 99.99999...% of the time, and you get everything you want, when you want it even less.
This is the real world. Steve Jobs isn't hoarding apples, candy, unicorns and rainbows here.
He didn't steal your sunshine. I was just outside earlier. It is just as hot and glaring as it was yesterday. Grow up.
(/rant)
The internet is neither radio, nor television, nor Canadian, so keep your regulatory hands in your pockets.
Wow.
I wish I'd thought of that line. You're my hero for stuffing all that into one sentence and not saying it in the way I had in mind. (for the curious, "Piss off, turdburglars.")
(AOLer) I don't know what my ceiling fan has to do with it, but okay... (/AOLer)
This one wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be true, because sometimes I certainly feel like my processor is degrading...
"In Soviet Russia, phone punches you!"
I think.
I know all of Jersey doesn't look like a crackwhore infested slum. I dated a girl who grew up in Jersey, and it always annoyed her when I made cracks about it, but then, it annoyed me when she opened her mouth, so we were even. It's just one of those jokes, like the French being cheese eating surrender monkeys.
...shit.
wait, that one is true.
Like New Yorkers being assholes.
Well, you get the point.
If you're not kidding and playing around, I have some coastal land in Indiana for a real good price...
I know, I just hate needing sleep.
Especially since getting broadband.
and, uh, discovering all kinds of... uh... interesting forums. yeah, forums.