"For one, I've bought used music and had to deal with scratches on CD."
Any decent place will give you a refund, or at least I would hope so. The really cool places will let you listen first, which is awesome and is really a big plus for buying used. Buy from whoever treats you right, RIAA or not.
"Secondly, selling out of the used albums may indicate to record owners that there's demand for the full albums."
This isn't necessarily true, it goes both ways. A big demand for used music encourages people to SELL their music too (and for stores to buy it), and the higher the demand, the bigger the secondary market and the bigger the loss to the record industry. Some people will just buy and rip, not saying that's right but when you add these people in, you can have CDs changing hands many
times. This is a bad thing if it really taints the used market, but the worst that will happen is further DRM which will piss off customers much more but end up getting cracked anyways. Either way it weakens their position.
"I haven't bought an album from the RIAA since 2001 - and I make -damn sure- to check RIAA radar before I go out and buy."
There ya go. Awesome suggestion. I didn't even know about them. Pretty much none of the CD's I've bought lately have come from them. That really says something.
"I COULD have gone with a Sony Vaio, but instead I'm going to be buying from ANYBODY ELSE."
Good idea. It's funny, but I think IBM hates Sony as much as you do- I mean they make the hard drives people load their MP3s on AND the Cell Processor:)
Because they're just going to make their money on lawsuits instead? Lawyers aren't like musicians, they aren't going to get stars in their eyes and let the record companies rip them off- they expect to get P-A-I-D. High priced corporate lawyers trying to squeeze blood out of a few radishes is a scare tactic, it belongs in the advertising budget.
So that makes no sense. If you can really hit them in their bottom line by doing something everyone agrees is OK, then they have to take it and like it or do something really dumb like going after the secondary market.
But here's how you REALLY hurt the record companies... There are already places where you can take your album, sell it on itunes, and keep 100% of the royalties. That will fucking kill the record industry as long as these places:
.1. Make the product high quality (nice bitrate) and more convenient than piracy (super fast downloads, instant previews, incredible selection- so no waiting or hunting everywhere, and still no DRM)
.2. Charge a reasonable price that makes people feel like they got their moneys worth, especially compared to the hassle of stealing.
So you only need to make piracy inconvenient and charge based on the much, much lower costs of distribution rather than trying to keep it all.
If this exists, artists keep their work and their royalties and even if half their songs get stolen it's good advertising and they will still come out FAR ahead of the pennies-per-dollar contracts the majors sign people to (if they sign them at all).
The moral of the story? THE RIAA IS SCARED STUPID. She had 400 CDs at one point!!!!!!! They just sued the shit out of one of their best customers!
Fuck these people. Hey, I just 'stole' a CD. Yep, I got a perfect digital copy of the recording and the recording industry didn't get a DIME. Know what I did? I bought a USED CD! Roll up a hondo and snort that Sony.
So that's the moral of the story. BUY USED MUSIC. Hey, old vinyl is cheaper than iTunes and sounds better too. It's the best way to 'steal' from the music industry because it's 100% legal, and it robs them of a sale from a person WHO IS ACTUALLY WILLING TO PAY MONEY FOR THE MUSIC.
If you're a musician, record yourself, it's far easier than it ever was. Then sell your own stuff through iTunes or something if you want to get paid. You don't need these people unless you want them to pay for publicity or your recording (but they'll just take it out of your check anyways).
It sounds way better than mp3, it's cheaper, and best of all you'll be doing YOUR part to help kill the record industry!
The real question is, can it detect BODIES? DEAD BODIES???
Good idea, I bet they can, as long as they're still warm.
Still, having to kill a different neighbor every day before work would still be a pain. I mean, not as bad as D.C. traffic, but a pain none the less...
I love modeling stuff. Everyone should sell their crappy old analog gear and go buy it. Dump all that dusty junk at once, especially on Craigslist in Minneapolis. Make sure you accept the first offer that comes along, even if it seems pretty low. It'll pay off, there's a big sale at Guitar Center RIGHT NOW. Those things don't last forever- and I should know- I'm on their mailing list
Modeling is clearly the future. How often do you have to replace the vacuum tubes in your DAW or your pod? That's right, never. That's called progress.
Real Marshall stacks require additional power outlets and an extra cable for every speaker cabinet you want to connect them to...and guess how many amp models that plexi has? One. Onboard effects? ZERO. That's right, there are 0 possible amp-effect combinations! Don't see that in the ads do you? Nearly any modeling solution is literally infinitely better.
Oh, and you'll be looking for a long time for a pong easter egg on the Marshall. There isn't one.
In all seriousness... real nerds build their own synthesizers, plug electrified banjos into them, and then feed them into good old fashioned 0 MHz Marshall Plexis (though I prefer class A personally).
There's no 'scientifically valid proof' for anything. We have explanations for how things work and we stick with them because they prove to be useful to us. If we figure out something isn't helpful anymore in some situation, it means our understanding isn't totally correct and so we come up with a new explanation that accommodates these facts.
A correlation is not necessarily evidence- but a correlation, combined with a good explanation that can be falsified, but hasn't been, is a good theory, and it's the closest we'll ever get to proof. You can never _prove_ the flying spaghetti monster isn't really causing global warming. So saying 'you can't prove that' is always a bogus argument and, sorry but that is the evolution deniers argument when it comes down to it.
When you look at everything that _might_ be causing global warming, it's easy to pick off the stuff that is much less likely to be contributing much because it the stuff that isn't correlated at all. Once you start to see what's left standing, you see the greenhouse gas theory very much still there. After all:
A. We're measuring historically high levels of greenhouse gasses at a time when we're seeing historically high tempuratures, and it seems like the more that's in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets.
B. We know experimentally, on a smaller scale of course, that greenhouse gasses trap heat and raise temperatures.
What about that says we SHOULDN'T be concerned about CO2 in regards to global warming? What is the alternative theory? Don't just say it's possible that there is another explanation. It's ALWAYS possible. Why is the bit about 'many plausible arguments' always one vague sentence tucked away somewhere? People have been investigating alternative explanations for decades. People have been investigating various ways to measure temperatures all over the world for decades.
What falsifiable claims are you in need of here? The theory says that if we add more CO2 to the atmosphere, it's likely to be hotter. We have been for decades, and it has been getting hotter. The theory says that if we dramatically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gasses, then global temperatures would stabilize, all else being equal. Sounds like a fine experiment.
If you want people to listen to you about global warming, the way it works is that it's up to you to say WHY the CO2 argument isn't sufficient. Saying there is a lack of evidence is lazy and also not true, as is saying the theory doesn't make verifiable claims when any 6th grader could tell you what the claim is. Furthermore HARD to verify != IMPOSSIBLE to verify (not even close). The earth is a very complex system, this is true, and you can't do any kind of global controlled experiment, but wouldn't that be the case REGARDLESS of what your theory was on global warming???
You see when you're being cruel to someone, you're really helping them. Obviously they're pussies if they think otherwise.
So if I tied you up for hours, constantly punching you in the face until you passed out again and again, you'd really be in a position to be thanking me for de-sissifing you so thoroughly.
Wake up. Only the people who dish it out ever think like that.
People have been vicious and cruel to anyone they don't consider their own for as long as there have been people. Only the rationalizations, and the forms of cruelty change.
Not to split hairs, but ol' George is a billionare. That's a B. George could marry and divorce Kevin Federline every year until he dies and still have more money than Brittney He has huge business dealings in ILM, Lucasarts et. all.
In fact. he paid for all of the new Star Wars movies out of his pocket. Completely self financed, just pulled out his checkbook, more or less.
Directing is just a hobby, and of course it shows. If he makes another one like ep. III, though I'll go see it. It was at least worthy of the name.
I for one am going to show mine by recording the service with a miniDV cam tucked under my coat and then selling copies alongside Chinese bootlegs of 'Norbit' out of the trunk of my car.
He is not an autocrat. George Bush looked into his eyes and he saw it for himself, a method far more powerful and revealing than any mere logical argument.
Plus if this were true, would we have spent six years pissing off the entire world chasing two-bit terrorists while the government of the nation with the worlds most dangerous nuclear arsenal consolidated power and grew ever more despotic, violent and belligerent?
So do be silly, Russia is a de-mocracy now, that means the problem is solved, friend.
Religion has done a lot of good for humanity, and I think it gets scapegoated by people like Dawkins when we rightly should be blaming the people involved. Higher primates can be very nasty to their own kind, and this is can hardly be blamed entirely on religion. There is a lot of evidence that religion has brought people together and has helped to build large complex societies by providing a glue that might have otherwise kept people more divided along tribal lines.
What we should hope for is not a world free of religion but a world where the religions have a more empirically accommodating world view, like the Buddhists do.
People like Dawkins (and you I'm afraid) should know better than to spew hatred. This sort of thing just further inflames the ridiculous culture wars and creates more noise for more thoughtful, and constructive voices to have to shout over. I don't believe in hocus-pocus either but such either or treatment of something that has historically been of central importance to people lives creates unnecessary tension where we would benefit from more harmony.
I urge people to read Nicholas Wade's excellent book on human evolution, Before the Dawn. In the age of genetics we are learning an amazing amount about our history. It is an incredible story that is simply awe-inspiring whether you are religious or not. It would be a shame if we turned our history, not American history, European history or African history, but this history of all mankind into a political football. We should not forget that this history is the story not only of our evolution, but also of our faith.
I see your point, sir, but we would get farther if we questioned people's assumptions rather than their faith.
I'll go one step farther. The medical insurance industry needs to not exist in it's present form. Unlike almost every other form of insurance everyone will need medical care at some point. The medical insurance industry is simply a giant bureaucracy intended to get money from healthier people and screw the ones that will actually need care. INSURING EVERYONE WILL NEVER, EVER BE PROFITABLE. Period. Not everyone will have a house burn down, but everyone will get sick.
So you are right, the free market cannot solve this problem. In fact, it has a vested interest in seeing that the problem isn't solved. Those that think this is just socialism running rampant don't understand the problem.
We need universal health insurance for everyone: you are born, you are covered until you die. It would cost less, overall, and provide better care, overall. People will always be free to buy extra coverage, if they don't like the default coverage, but lets face it most of our private plans aren't anything particularly spectacular. Mine isn't. Almost everyone would be better off, those that aren't can always pay more, and we will no longer be punishing employers who do the right thing and provide reasonable health plans. We aren't talking about the government running the health care system, just providing the insurance.
Of course we can't just put the medical insurers largely out of business, for political reasons, so we will be stuck eventually with a Massachusetts-style health plan that just passes on the bad risks and the broke to the government and lets insurers still make a bundle. Oh well, at least people will be able to sleep at night if they lose their jobs (perhaps because they got sick).
The high cost of medical insurance in America is keeping good jobs away (where people expect benefits, naturally). A government solution would be more efficient thus and better for everyone. A plan intended to cover everyone would not need complicated formulas and armies of actuaries to determine who to screw over. We might even have better infant mortality rates than Cuba.
Agreed. If you can't wait for Newegg et. al., Microcenter is the next best thing. I would have told you that any big box retailer was hopelessly lame for all but the clueless, but MicroCenter changed my mind. The prices aren't spectacular- I don't think the systems are any cheaper than Best Buy, but they at least know that their customers realize a Geforce 7300 is a lame video card (even if it's got a really wicked-looking heat sink on it), and they charge accordingly (no 100%+ of wholesale markups on things like that). Still, it isn't perfect. When I bought a 7800GT a while back from Newegg it was 90 bucks cheaper than MC. Not small change and not atypical. Enthusiast (and fanatic) level gear is usually at least 25% more than online, IME, though it's not surpring since BB doesn't really sell it and Cusa sells a lot less of it.
Still, they have OEM packaged stuff which is where you really save the Money over BB and CUSA. Standard SATA Hard drives and basic graphics cards, cables dvd burners, all easily half the best buy or CompUsa prices (the retail packaged ones aren't a whole lot cheaper though). Not as cheap as online but not worth the wait in most cases. You just don't see the enthusiast stuff included.
Oh and it's a great place to buy a case (okay, browse for one).
Completely and utterly wrong. The National Guard=The United States Military, it is controlled by the Federal Government in wartime just as it is right now in Iraq. State Governors control the national guard the rest of the time. I see nothing in there about state governments, but I do see THE PEOPLE mentioned here. At any rate, 'militia' had a very specific and unambiguous meaning in those times.
When the constitution was written, if your town or little piece of the country was threatened, all the men in your town got their guns together and went to the task at hand. You didn't 'enlist' like you do in the national guard, you didn't necessarily submit yourselves to the government's control (if you could help it, that is). It was completely ad hoc and nothing on the scale of a state wide organization (which like I said the national guard isn't really). That's the militia. The National Guard is the same as the Government's standing army (they just train less often most of the time).
So what the constitution says is that you can get all of the men in your town together with their guns and train and organize yourself as a military unit. So all those 'militias' in Iraq they want to get rid of? Yup, those are consitutionally protected under the original United States constitution. In (some of) the Iraqi's defense, giving up their militias would put them at the mercy of their enemies since the government can't protect them. Starting to see where this came from?
You have to put things in their proper perspective. Look at Europe in the Seventeenth century. The thirty years war wasn't really about governments versus governments (which were, along with their 'permanent' armies broke, ineffectual, decentralized and divided.) It was faith versus faith and tribe versus tribe. A lot like Iraq today.
In such a situation, it was your militia against the world. The government couldn't protect you even if it wanted to. People with a memory of such a situation would never have been willing to let the nations army be their sole source of protection (and they would feel more afraid than safe it had the power to be it). The concept of nationalism didn't exist like it did today. People had much more personal loyalties than they do today. Protestants had killed catholics and vice versa for centuries without regard any notion of being 'countrymen'. People wonder why a bunch of deeply religious protestants created the first truly secular government in history, this is why. It's all the wars of Europe. The founding fathers knew their history and their realpolitik very well.
So, saying the second amendment prohibits handgun ownership is a ridiculous exercise in the creative reparsing of eighteenth century grammar. It's like saying a law that establishes 'Catholics suck balls' as the national motto is fine because the Constitution says it's only unconstitutional to pass laws 'respecting the establishment of religion' (so DISrespecting it is just fine).
Sorry friend, but change the constitution or shut up about it. Just because it seems more ambiguous today doesn't mean it was when it was written.
Linux is great on servers because it's designed to be an extremely powerful tool, but in the hands of trained professionals. Windows is great on desktops because it's designed to be reasonably powerful in the hands of just about anybody. There's a reason why no one uses linux at home (for the moment) and Microsoft is losing ground in the server market.
Point 3:
No one would use Linux just because it came preinstalled. This is because Linux on the desktop is a pain in the ass. It's less of an issue when you have an IS department at work that manages it professionally, of course, but at home guess what, that's your job. Simply put, Windows, for all it's limitations, is pretty idiot proof when it comes to the legwork. Installing software is almost totally painless, as is upgrading hardware and many other things that people only do because is gets them to the real task at hand. Anyone who says only an idiot would want an idiot proof OS places no value on their time. Unless I'm writing something, I don't give a shit what version of libwhatthefuckeever.so I have, all I want is for it to work.
I work with nothing but Unix/Linux snobs (including me) and no one I know has a Linux workstation as their only home computer. No one. The people who just want one (Unix) box buy Macs. If you're willing to jump through enough hoops, yes you can do many things you couldn't have done before without windows. Too bad no one wants to, because it still doesn't offer the same hassle free experience. OTOH, if I want to do run crucial Linux applications on a windows box, 98% of the time it has a nearly flawless compatibility layer. It's called ssh.
Not that a linux desktop isn't still nice, it's just nice for a different reason, although it's a very non-mainstream one. Any system I choose to use I use because it makes my life easier than the alternative. That's why I have both and am completely comfortable with neither- and I'm a Linux programmer.
Point 4:
A gaming computer is just a workstation with a graphics card. There are basically two brands and two sets of drivers. Both are available. The reason no one makes games is because almost no one who plays games owns just a Linux box (because of point 3 above). People who like doing things they're not supposed for the sheer challenge of it might enjoy playing games with wine, but no one who just wants to unwind after a long day ever would.
The only chance Linux has on a mass-market desktop anytime soon in the corporate market where no one cares if people can't do i, j and k, as long as they can do x,y and z in an economical fashion.
I've tried going 100% Linux many times, but the first afternoon I spend googling and pouring through forums just to figure out why some seemingly simple thing doesn't work is all it takes.
You are talking about turning the sight of a person getting tortured into an evening's entertainment, which is usually the sign of a pretty fucked up individual. All that makes you different is how society views your reason for hurting someone. It's interesting to see how dark people's thoughts get when they're imagining they make the rules. Face it, _people_ are violent and instead of trying to overcome our violent tendencies you want to justify them.
All you prove is that it's okay to torture and kill people, as long as you have a good reason. Think you have to be evil to commit an inhuman act? You don't. Normal people do it every day. You just have to turn your victim into something other than a human being. You show just how easy it is. Think it's a coincidence that most people who get executed are poor and black but get convicted by people who are neither?
Don't let the housing boom of the last 6-7 years fool you. This is the largest housing bubble in U.S. history (in fact it's not even close). Prices for real estate can go nowhere in real terms for many decades. Housing prices reached a peak in real terms around 1880 that wasn't surpassed until after the second world war. Just remember, if housing prices go up too much, nobody can afford to buy one, and prices will and have gone down and stayed there. You can't have a situation in which housing price gains exceed real wage growth by many percentage points forever.
Truth be told, people aleady can't afford homes, but they get into them with exotic loans and dangerous lending standards. Why not, housing values only go up, right? The price appreciation will bail you out and then you refinance, right? Can't afford a $50,000 down payment right out of school? No problem, we'll just lend it to you, intrest only, you can just refinance once you've build some equity. It's a classic bubble. Can't happen to real estate? Ask Japan.
Read the new edition of Irrational Exuberance by Robert Shiller. If you read it in early 2000 you would have saved a ton of money in the stock market. The new graph of home price increases is no less sickening. It is so dramatic and so unprecidented, any notion of a fundamental basis for it seems absolutely assine. Deja Vu all over again.
Being smart and haivng gone into something useful (like computer science), I make almost twice what many recent college grads make, but I couldn't afford homes I wouldn't have even looked at ten years ago. A $200,000 house would have gone for 80 then.
Buying a house now is, in a word, stupid. But then again, I might not just be able to wait out a big crash. The worse case scenario is housing prices that drop slowly or trail inflation for decades and decades. People say its a great buyers market, well, it just all depends doesn't it? A home is a wonderful thing, but it isn't automatically a great investment. People keep repeating that shit and it's why we're in this mess in the first place. There's no free lunch and things that can't go on forever, _don't_.
Eve is the most interesting mmorg because it is the closest to being an entirely player versus player experience- and the closest to a player-determined world. The missions and crap are just a sideshow. So whether you're just trading or making war to control systems or even regions- the most rewarding stuff, you are competing against real people. Rarely do games bring out your inner Machiavelli so well.
For me, it had the excitement of being of being a commodities broker, except that right after I take delievery of my porkbellies, someone tries to kill me:)
Most importantly, I felt rewarded for being smart, instead of just putting in long hours. Thats priceless IMHO.
I'll concede that senators might need a thousand or two- I was thinking house members. But you are looking at it wrong. Even if it's just 53,400 letters to congress people, that is still literally a tractor trailer or two full of nothing but angry letters. When these show up within a day or so of each other it does make an impact.
If you are still hung up on the number, say I'm off by a factor of ten. Is that unrealistic? Thats not even one letter per slashdot account number.
Now, think about that from the point of view of the average member of the house of representatives. You have 500,000 constituents. Only 400k can even vote, and of these only 200k probably will. Now of these people, at least 66,000 will vote for a yellow labordor retriever before you as they are staunch partisans. That leaves around 133,000 votes you even have a chance of getting.
Now imagine that nearly 1% of your total real consituency has actually taken the time to write you a hand written letter. Not an astroturf form letter but a real one. These people know what a bullshit letter looks like. Guess what, if there are even 5 votes standing behind each of these, that could cost you an election right these.
It's not about pieces of paper. It's a show of resolve, not of one person but of a group of people It shows that someone is paying attention and that their vote WILL be riding on a particular decision.
Don't take my word for it. Look at the religious right. You won't hear Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson telling people not to waste their time writting letters. Those fucking people write letters to everyone with a mailbox. Look at the Janet Jackson thing. It was a small, but very vocal group of people who got together and flooded the FCC. And let me tell you, it was a lot less than 50k letters, yet it sent a chill down the whole broadcasting industry. Same thing with radio. And the movies, and video games. Try and have anything approaching a natural depiction of sex in a movie. You can't show it because it won't get an R rating. Think that's just the media industry being greedy? Sex doesn't sell movie tickets anymore? Which media executive thought the v-chip act would be a great law to buy?
You think those people give up after they make one tiny gesture and don't get their way? I mean, you think you can't stand up to the media industry, but the bible thumpers have pretty much proved you wrong, haven't they? We could be doing the same thing, but we just bitch and moan. Meanwhile, yet another group makes the decisions for us.
Yes, there's nothing you can do. Make sure you don't waste any effort trying. Your individual contribution won't make any difference. So you always loose, oh well, at least you have the satisfaction in your own mind that you're in the right.
You don't have to stop at a letter, son. But if you aren't willing to even do that, all I'm saying is don't complain. Just sit there and like it, and don't you dare blame other people because there are lots of people who think just like you who aren't doing anything either- enough that it COULD matter.
BTW, you won't find that kind of sentiment on the religious right. They actually write a lot of letters. And they vote. But most importantly they get organized and speak with a single voice. I'm sure you aren't terribly fond of these people, but they have an influence far beyond their numbers because they are very effective at the kind of grassroots organizing that people like us are quite capable of engaging in but don't find it worth the trouble.
Anyways, keep on not trying. You might not be 100% certain of getting your way after all. Oh, and enjoy the three more years of George W. Bush.
"So long as we're clear: it's just big companies with lots of money fighting each other for the right to make money off of us. God for-fucking-bid the "battlefield" should in anyway involve some kind of consideration of what might be best for the human constitutents the congresscritters are elected to serve."
So, have you bothered to write your congressperson about it?
Yeah, thats what I thought.
How the hell do you think the people in congress are going to get the idea that this is in the 1% of important issues that a sizable number of voters actually cares about? By whining on slashdot?
The two groups battling over this happen to be the only two groups who actually are willing to take the time and effort to make their voices heard. If that scares you, you have only yourself to blame. Just remember, one hand written letter from a genuine constituent represents hundreds if not thousands of votes to a congressperson.
They need campaign contributions to get votes after all, so they don't do them much good if they piss off a lot of voters in the process. The only problem is that no one gets pissed off enough to actually bring the hurt down on them- and it isn't because the numbers aren't there. It's because people just whine about it and then throw up their hands in disgust without actually doing anything.
Slashdot Mirror
"For one, I've bought used music and had to deal with scratches on CD."
:)
Any decent place will give you a refund, or at least I would hope so. The really cool places will let you listen first, which is awesome and is really a big plus for buying used. Buy from whoever treats you right, RIAA or not.
"Secondly, selling out of the used albums may indicate to record owners that there's demand for the full albums."
This isn't necessarily true, it goes both ways. A big demand for used music encourages people to SELL their music too (and for stores to buy it), and the higher the demand, the bigger the secondary market and the bigger the loss to the record industry. Some people will just buy and rip, not saying that's right but when you add these people in, you can have CDs changing hands many times. This is a bad thing if it really taints the used market, but the worst that will happen is further DRM which will piss off customers much more but end up getting cracked anyways. Either way it weakens their position.
"I haven't bought an album from the RIAA since 2001 - and I make -damn sure- to check RIAA radar before I go out and buy."
There ya go. Awesome suggestion. I didn't even know about them. Pretty much none of the CD's I've bought lately have come from them. That really says something.
"I COULD have gone with a Sony Vaio, but instead I'm going to be buying from ANYBODY ELSE."
Good idea. It's funny, but I think IBM hates Sony as much as you do- I mean they make the hard drives people load their MP3s on AND the Cell Processor
Because they're just going to make their money on lawsuits instead? Lawyers aren't like musicians, they aren't going to get stars in their eyes and let the record companies rip them off- they expect to get P-A-I-D. High priced corporate lawyers trying to squeeze blood out of a few radishes is a scare tactic, it belongs in the advertising budget.
So that makes no sense. If you can really hit them in their bottom line by doing something everyone agrees is OK, then they have to take it and like it or do something really dumb like going after the secondary market.
But here's how you REALLY hurt the record companies... There are already places where you can take your album, sell it on itunes, and keep 100% of the royalties. That will fucking kill the record industry as long as these places:
.1. Make the product high quality (nice bitrate) and more convenient than piracy (super fast downloads, instant previews, incredible selection- so no waiting or hunting everywhere, and still no DRM)
.2. Charge a reasonable price that makes people feel like they got their moneys worth, especially compared to the hassle of stealing.
So you only need to make piracy inconvenient and charge based on the much, much lower costs of distribution rather than trying to keep it all.
If this exists, artists keep their work and their royalties and even if half their songs get stolen it's good advertising and they will still come out FAR ahead of the pennies-per-dollar contracts the majors sign people to (if they sign them at all).
After everything they've been smoking, they'd probably be considered a controlled substance.
Ever ripped a CD? You might as well have.
The moral of the story? THE RIAA IS SCARED STUPID. She had 400 CDs at one point!!!!!!! They just sued the shit out of one of their best customers!
Fuck these people. Hey, I just 'stole' a CD. Yep, I got a perfect digital copy of the recording and the recording industry didn't get a DIME. Know what I did? I bought a USED CD! Roll up a hondo and snort that Sony.
So that's the moral of the story. BUY USED MUSIC. Hey, old vinyl is cheaper than iTunes and sounds better too. It's the best way to 'steal' from the music industry because it's 100% legal, and it robs them of a sale from a person WHO IS ACTUALLY WILLING TO PAY MONEY FOR THE MUSIC.
If you're a musician, record yourself, it's far easier than it ever was. Then sell your own stuff through iTunes or something if you want to get paid. You don't need these people unless you want them to pay for publicity or your recording (but they'll just take it out of your check anyways).
It sounds way better than mp3, it's cheaper, and best of all you'll be doing YOUR part to help kill the record industry!
The real question is, can it detect BODIES? DEAD BODIES???
Good idea, I bet they can, as long as they're still warm.
Still, having to kill a different neighbor every day before work would still be a pain. I mean, not as bad as D.C. traffic, but a pain none the less...
I love modeling stuff. Everyone should sell their crappy old analog gear and go buy it. Dump all that dusty junk at once, especially on Craigslist in Minneapolis. Make sure you accept the first offer that comes along, even if it seems pretty low. It'll pay off, there's a big sale at Guitar Center RIGHT NOW. Those things don't last forever- and I should know- I'm on their mailing list
...and guess how many amp models that plexi has? One. Onboard effects? ZERO. That's right, there are 0 possible amp-effect combinations! Don't see that in the ads do you? Nearly any modeling solution is literally infinitely better.
Modeling is clearly the future. How often do you have to replace the vacuum tubes in your DAW or your pod? That's right, never. That's called progress.
Real Marshall stacks require additional power outlets and an extra cable for every speaker cabinet you want to connect them to
Oh, and you'll be looking for a long time for a pong easter egg on the Marshall. There isn't one.
In all seriousness... real nerds build their own synthesizers, plug electrified banjos into them, and then feed them into good old fashioned 0 MHz Marshall Plexis (though I prefer class A personally).
There's no 'scientifically valid proof' for anything. We have explanations for how things work and we stick with them because they prove to be useful to us. If we figure out something isn't helpful anymore in some situation, it means our understanding isn't totally correct and so we come up with a new explanation that accommodates these facts.
A correlation is not necessarily evidence- but a correlation, combined with a good explanation that can be falsified, but hasn't been, is a good theory, and it's the closest we'll ever get to proof. You can never _prove_ the flying spaghetti monster isn't really causing global warming. So saying 'you can't prove that' is always a bogus argument and, sorry but that is the evolution deniers argument when it comes down to it.
When you look at everything that _might_ be causing global warming, it's easy to pick off the stuff that is much less likely to be contributing much because it the stuff that isn't correlated at all. Once you start to see what's left standing, you see the greenhouse gas theory very much still there. After all:
A. We're measuring historically high levels of greenhouse gasses at a time when we're seeing historically high tempuratures, and it seems like the more that's in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets.
B. We know experimentally, on a smaller scale of course, that greenhouse gasses trap heat and raise temperatures.
What about that says we SHOULDN'T be concerned about CO2 in regards to global warming? What is the alternative theory? Don't just say it's possible that there is another explanation. It's ALWAYS possible. Why is the bit about 'many plausible arguments' always one vague sentence tucked away somewhere? People have been investigating alternative explanations for decades. People have been investigating various ways to measure temperatures all over the world for decades.
What falsifiable claims are you in need of here? The theory says that if we add more CO2 to the atmosphere, it's likely to be hotter. We have been for decades, and it has been getting hotter. The theory says that if we dramatically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gasses, then global temperatures would stabilize, all else being equal. Sounds like a fine experiment.
If you want people to listen to you about global warming, the way it works is that it's up to you to say WHY the CO2 argument isn't sufficient. Saying there is a lack of evidence is lazy and also not true, as is saying the theory doesn't make verifiable claims when any 6th grader could tell you what the claim is. Furthermore HARD to verify != IMPOSSIBLE to verify (not even close). The earth is a very complex system, this is true, and you can't do any kind of global controlled experiment, but wouldn't that be the case REGARDLESS of what your theory was on global warming???
You see when you're being cruel to someone, you're really helping them. Obviously they're pussies if they think otherwise.
So if I tied you up for hours, constantly punching you in the face until you passed out again and again, you'd really be in a position to be thanking me for de-sissifing you so thoroughly.
Wake up. Only the people who dish it out ever think like that.
People have been vicious and cruel to anyone they don't consider their own for as long as there have been people. Only the rationalizations, and the forms of cruelty change.
Not to split hairs, but ol' George is a billionare. That's a B. George could marry and divorce Kevin Federline every year until he dies and still have more money than Brittney He has huge business dealings in ILM, Lucasarts et. all.
In fact. he paid for all of the new Star Wars movies out of his pocket. Completely self financed, just pulled out his checkbook, more or less.
Directing is just a hobby, and of course it shows. If he makes another one like ep. III, though I'll go see it. It was at least worthy of the name.
Not me. I'm waiting for it to show up on TorrentSpy.
People show their respect in different ways.
I for one am going to show mine by recording the service with a miniDV cam tucked under my coat and then selling copies alongside Chinese bootlegs of 'Norbit' out of the trunk of my car.
He is not an autocrat. George Bush looked into his eyes and he saw it for himself, a method far more powerful and revealing than any mere logical argument.
Plus if this were true, would we have spent six years pissing off the entire world chasing two-bit terrorists while the government of the nation with the worlds most dangerous nuclear arsenal consolidated power and grew ever more despotic, violent and belligerent?
So do be silly, Russia is a de-mocracy now, that means the problem is solved, friend.
Religion has done a lot of good for humanity, and I think it gets scapegoated by people like Dawkins when we rightly should be blaming the people involved. Higher primates can be very nasty to their own kind, and this is can hardly be blamed entirely on religion. There is a lot of evidence that religion has brought people together and has helped to build large complex societies by providing a glue that might have otherwise kept people more divided along tribal lines.
What we should hope for is not a world free of religion but a world where the religions have a more empirically accommodating world view, like the Buddhists do.
People like Dawkins (and you I'm afraid) should know better than to spew hatred. This sort of thing just further inflames the ridiculous culture wars and creates more noise for more thoughtful, and constructive voices to have to shout over. I don't believe in hocus-pocus either but such either or treatment of something that has historically been of central importance to people lives creates unnecessary tension where we would benefit from more harmony.
I urge people to read Nicholas Wade's excellent book on human evolution, Before the Dawn. In the age of genetics we are learning an amazing amount about our history. It is an incredible story that is simply awe-inspiring whether you are religious or not. It would be a shame if we turned our history, not American history, European history or African history, but this history of all mankind into a political football. We should not forget that this history is the story not only of our evolution, but also of our faith.
I see your point, sir, but we would get farther if we questioned people's assumptions rather than their faith.
I'll go one step farther. The medical insurance industry needs to not exist in it's present form. Unlike almost every other form of insurance everyone will need medical care at some point. The medical insurance industry is simply a giant bureaucracy intended to get money from healthier people and screw the ones that will actually need care. INSURING EVERYONE WILL NEVER, EVER BE PROFITABLE. Period. Not everyone will have a house burn down, but everyone will get sick.
So you are right, the free market cannot solve this problem. In fact, it has a vested interest in seeing that the problem isn't solved. Those that think this is just socialism running rampant don't understand the problem.
We need universal health insurance for everyone: you are born, you are covered until you die. It would cost less, overall, and provide better care, overall. People will always be free to buy extra coverage, if they don't like the default coverage, but lets face it most of our private plans aren't anything particularly spectacular. Mine isn't. Almost everyone would be better off, those that aren't can always pay more, and we will no longer be punishing employers who do the right thing and provide reasonable health plans. We aren't talking about the government running the health care system, just providing the insurance.
Of course we can't just put the medical insurers largely out of business, for political reasons, so we will be stuck eventually with a Massachusetts-style health plan that just passes on the bad risks and the broke to the government and lets insurers still make a bundle. Oh well, at least people will be able to sleep at night if they lose their jobs (perhaps because they got sick).
The high cost of medical insurance in America is keeping good jobs away (where people expect benefits, naturally). A government solution would be more efficient thus and better for everyone. A plan intended to cover everyone would not need complicated formulas and armies of actuaries to determine who to screw over. We might even have better infant mortality rates than Cuba.
Agreed. If you can't wait for Newegg et. al., Microcenter is the next best thing. I would have told you that any big box retailer was hopelessly lame for all but the clueless, but MicroCenter changed my mind. The prices aren't spectacular- I don't think the systems are any cheaper than Best Buy, but they at least know that their customers realize a Geforce 7300 is a lame video card (even if it's got a really wicked-looking heat sink on it), and they charge accordingly (no 100%+ of wholesale markups on things like that). Still, it isn't perfect. When I bought a 7800GT a while back from Newegg it was 90 bucks cheaper than MC. Not small change and not atypical. Enthusiast (and fanatic) level gear is usually at least 25% more than online, IME, though it's not surpring since BB doesn't really sell it and Cusa sells a lot less of it.
Still, they have OEM packaged stuff which is where you really save the Money over BB and CUSA. Standard SATA Hard drives and basic graphics cards, cables dvd burners, all easily half the best buy or CompUsa prices (the retail packaged ones aren't a whole lot cheaper though). Not as cheap as online but not worth the wait in most cases. You just don't see the enthusiast stuff included.
Oh and it's a great place to buy a case (okay, browse for one).
Completely and utterly wrong. The National Guard=The United States Military, it is controlled by the Federal Government in wartime just as it is right now in Iraq. State Governors control the national guard the rest of the time. I see nothing in there about state governments, but I do see THE PEOPLE mentioned here. At any rate, 'militia' had a very specific and unambiguous meaning in those times.
When the constitution was written, if your town or little piece of the country was threatened, all the men in your town got their guns together and went to the task at hand. You didn't 'enlist' like you do in the national guard, you didn't necessarily submit yourselves to the government's control (if you could help it, that is). It was completely ad hoc and nothing on the scale of a state wide organization (which like I said the national guard isn't really). That's the militia. The National Guard is the same as the Government's standing army (they just train less often most of the time).
So what the constitution says is that you can get all of the men in your town together with their guns and train and organize yourself as a military unit. So all those 'militias' in Iraq they want to get rid of? Yup, those are consitutionally protected under the original United States constitution. In (some of) the Iraqi's defense, giving up their militias would put them at the mercy of their enemies since the government can't protect them. Starting to see where this came from?
You have to put things in their proper perspective. Look at Europe in the Seventeenth century. The thirty years war wasn't really about governments versus governments (which were, along with their 'permanent' armies broke, ineffectual, decentralized and divided.) It was faith versus faith and tribe versus tribe. A lot like Iraq today.
In such a situation, it was your militia against the world. The government couldn't protect you even if it wanted to. People with a memory of such a situation would never have been willing to let the nations army be their sole source of protection (and they would feel more afraid than safe it had the power to be it). The concept of nationalism didn't exist like it did today. People had much more personal loyalties than they do today. Protestants had killed catholics and vice versa for centuries without regard any notion of being 'countrymen'. People wonder why a bunch of deeply religious protestants created the first truly secular government in history, this is why. It's all the wars of Europe. The founding fathers knew their history and their realpolitik very well.
So, saying the second amendment prohibits handgun ownership is a ridiculous exercise in the creative reparsing of eighteenth century grammar. It's like saying a law that establishes 'Catholics suck balls' as the national motto is fine because the Constitution says it's only unconstitutional to pass laws 'respecting the establishment of religion' (so DISrespecting it is just fine).
Sorry friend, but change the constitution or shut up about it. Just because it seems more ambiguous today doesn't mean it was when it was written.
Linux is great on servers because it's designed to be an extremely powerful tool, but in the hands of trained professionals. Windows is great on desktops because it's designed to be reasonably powerful in the hands of just about anybody. There's a reason why no one uses linux at home (for the moment) and Microsoft is losing ground in the server market.
Point 3:
No one would use Linux just because it came preinstalled. This is because Linux on the desktop is a pain in the ass. It's less of an issue when you have an IS department at work that manages it professionally, of course, but at home guess what, that's your job. Simply put, Windows, for all it's limitations, is pretty idiot proof when it comes to the legwork. Installing software is almost totally painless, as is upgrading hardware and many other things that people only do because is gets them to the real task at hand. Anyone who says only an idiot would want an idiot proof OS places no value on their time. Unless I'm writing something, I don't give a shit what version of libwhatthefuckeever.so I have, all I want is for it to work.
I work with nothing but Unix/Linux snobs (including me) and no one I know has a Linux workstation as their only home computer. No one. The people who just want one (Unix) box buy Macs. If you're willing to jump through enough hoops, yes you can do many things you couldn't have done before without windows. Too bad no one wants to, because it still doesn't offer the same hassle free experience. OTOH, if I want to do run crucial Linux applications on a windows box, 98% of the time it has a nearly flawless compatibility layer. It's called ssh.
Not that a linux desktop isn't still nice, it's just nice for a different reason, although it's a very non-mainstream one. Any system I choose to use I use because it makes my life easier than the alternative. That's why I have both and am completely comfortable with neither- and I'm a Linux programmer.
Point 4:
A gaming computer is just a workstation with a graphics card. There are basically two brands and two sets of drivers. Both are available. The reason no one makes games is because almost no one who plays games owns just a Linux box (because of point 3 above). People who like doing things they're not supposed for the sheer challenge of it might enjoy playing games with wine, but no one who just wants to unwind after a long day ever would.
The only chance Linux has on a mass-market desktop anytime soon in the corporate market where no one cares if people can't do i, j and k, as long as they can do x,y and z in an economical fashion.
I've tried going 100% Linux many times, but the first afternoon I spend googling and pouring through forums just to figure out why some seemingly simple thing doesn't work is all it takes.
SGI reborn: here comes the lawyers!
Let's start a democracy. Ready, Iraq?
Gay marriage compromise: just hot chicks.
Nobel prize money finances new rims.
Crack plentiful: savvy addicts stock up.
You are talking about turning the sight of a person getting tortured into an evening's entertainment, which is usually the sign of a pretty fucked up individual. All that makes you different is how society views your reason for hurting someone. It's interesting to see how dark people's thoughts get when they're imagining they make the rules. Face it, _people_ are violent and instead of trying to overcome our violent tendencies you want to justify them.
All you prove is that it's okay to torture and kill people, as long as you have a good reason. Think you have to be evil to commit an inhuman act? You don't. Normal people do it every day. You just have to turn your victim into something other than a human being. You show just how easy it is. Think it's a coincidence that most people who get executed are poor and black but get convicted by people who are neither?
10-18% is more likely?
Sounds like a bubble to me! God help us.
Don't let the housing boom of the last 6-7 years fool you. This is the largest housing bubble in U.S. history (in fact it's not even close). Prices for real estate can go nowhere in real terms for many decades. Housing prices reached a peak in real terms around 1880 that wasn't surpassed until after the second world war. Just remember, if housing prices go up too much, nobody can afford to buy one, and prices will and have gone down and stayed there. You can't have a situation in which housing price gains exceed real wage growth by many percentage points forever.
Truth be told, people aleady can't afford homes, but they get into them with exotic loans and dangerous lending standards. Why not, housing values only go up, right? The price appreciation will bail you out and then you refinance, right? Can't afford a $50,000 down payment right out of school? No problem, we'll just lend it to you, intrest only, you can just refinance once you've build some equity. It's a classic bubble. Can't happen to real estate? Ask Japan.
Read the new edition of Irrational Exuberance by Robert Shiller. If you read it in early 2000 you would have saved a ton of money in the stock market. The new graph of home price increases is no less sickening. It is so dramatic and so unprecidented, any notion of a fundamental basis for it seems absolutely assine. Deja Vu all over again.
Being smart and haivng gone into something useful (like computer science), I make almost twice what many recent college grads make, but I couldn't afford homes I wouldn't have even looked at ten years ago. A $200,000 house would have gone for 80 then.
Buying a house now is, in a word, stupid. But then again, I might not just be able to wait out a big crash. The worse case scenario is housing prices that drop slowly or trail inflation for decades and decades. People say its a great buyers market, well, it just all depends doesn't it? A home is a wonderful thing, but it isn't automatically a great investment. People keep repeating that shit and it's why we're in this mess in the first place. There's no free lunch and things that can't go on forever, _don't_.
Eve is the most interesting mmorg because it is the closest to being an entirely player versus player experience- and the closest to a player-determined world. The missions and crap are just a sideshow. So whether you're just trading or making war to control systems or even regions- the most rewarding stuff, you are competing against real people. Rarely do games bring out your inner Machiavelli so well.
:)
For me, it had the excitement of being of being a commodities broker, except that right after I take delievery of my porkbellies, someone tries to kill me
Most importantly, I felt rewarded for being smart, instead of just putting in long hours. Thats priceless IMHO.
I'll concede that senators might need a thousand or two- I was thinking house members. But you are looking at it wrong. Even if it's just 53,400 letters to congress people, that is still literally a tractor trailer or two full of nothing but angry letters. When these show up within a day or so of each other it does make an impact.
If you are still hung up on the number, say I'm off by a factor of ten. Is that unrealistic? Thats not even one letter per slashdot account number.
Now, think about that from the point of view of the average member of the house of representatives. You have 500,000 constituents. Only 400k can even vote, and of these only 200k probably will. Now of these people, at least 66,000 will vote for a yellow labordor retriever before you as they are staunch partisans. That leaves around 133,000 votes you even have a chance of getting.
Now imagine that nearly 1% of your total real consituency has actually taken the time to write you a hand written letter. Not an astroturf form letter but a real one. These people know what a bullshit letter looks like. Guess what, if there are even 5 votes standing behind each of these, that could cost you an election right these.
It's not about pieces of paper. It's a show of resolve, not of one person but of a group of people It shows that someone is paying attention and that their vote WILL be riding on a particular decision.
Don't take my word for it. Look at the religious right. You won't hear Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson telling people not to waste their time writting letters. Those fucking people write letters to everyone with a mailbox. Look at the Janet Jackson thing. It was a small, but very vocal group of people who got together and flooded the FCC. And let me tell you, it was a lot less than 50k letters, yet it sent a chill down the whole broadcasting industry. Same thing with radio. And the movies, and video games. Try and have anything approaching a natural depiction of sex in a movie. You can't show it because it won't get an R rating. Think that's just the media industry being greedy? Sex doesn't sell movie tickets anymore? Which media executive thought the v-chip act would be a great law to buy?
You think those people give up after they make one tiny gesture and don't get their way? I mean, you think you can't stand up to the media industry, but the bible thumpers have pretty much proved you wrong, haven't they? We could be doing the same thing, but we just bitch and moan. Meanwhile, yet another group makes the decisions for us.
Yes, there's nothing you can do. Make sure you don't waste any effort trying. Your individual contribution won't make any difference. So you always loose, oh well, at least you have the satisfaction in your own mind that you're in the right.
You don't have to stop at a letter, son. But if you aren't willing to even do that, all I'm saying is don't complain. Just sit there and like it, and don't you dare blame other people because there are lots of people who think just like you who aren't doing anything either- enough that it COULD matter.
BTW, you won't find that kind of sentiment on the religious right. They actually write a lot of letters. And they vote. But most importantly they get organized and speak with a single voice. I'm sure you aren't terribly fond of these people, but they have an influence far beyond their numbers because they are very effective at the kind of grassroots organizing that people like us are quite capable of engaging in but don't find it worth the trouble.
Anyways, keep on not trying. You might not be 100% certain of getting your way after all. Oh, and enjoy the three more years of George W. Bush.
"So long as we're clear: it's just big companies with lots of money fighting each other for the right to make money off of us. God for-fucking-bid the "battlefield" should in anyway involve some kind of consideration of what might be best for the human constitutents the congresscritters are elected to serve."
So, have you bothered to write your congressperson about it?
Yeah, thats what I thought.
How the hell do you think the people in congress are going to get the idea that this is in the 1% of important issues that a sizable number of voters actually cares about? By whining on slashdot?
The two groups battling over this happen to be the only two groups who actually are willing to take the time and effort to make their voices heard. If that scares you, you have only yourself to blame. Just remember, one hand written letter from a genuine constituent represents hundreds if not thousands of votes to a congressperson.
They need campaign contributions to get votes after all, so they don't do them much good if they piss off a lot of voters in the process. The only problem is that no one gets pissed off enough to actually bring the hurt down on them- and it isn't because the numbers aren't there. It's because people just whine about it and then throw up their hands in disgust without actually doing anything.