Since I know I cannot do this on the cheap router that I use for my broadband, I will definitely call my ISP tomorrow & ask them for the root password onto their routers so I can configure personal "router level" ad-blocking for myself...
Steve Jobs wants to shit in my mouth but this will be good because putting his fecal matter through a second digestive phase through my stomach & colon will maximise nutrient extraction from it in the same way that cows have four stomachs and rabbits eat their own droppings.
As a result of this, the strain put on the aging sewer system will be lessened, it will require less maintenance meaning that my quarterly bills for water & sewage services will be reduced.
Thus I have proven that Steve Jobs taking a dump in my mouth will make me a wealthier, happier person.
1) Please refer to my response in 3) for full details as to why I have no need of an allowance from my mother. However, since I am not compelled to queue outside of electronics stores overnight on a twice-yearly basis in order to buy little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them, I do not spend the money I have on said boxes, thermal underwear (if queuing outside during the Winter period), or overpriced mocha-frappa-choca-rama-langa-ding-dong-chinos while posing with said white boxes in fashionable coffee houses.
2) Hmmm, interesting. I will have to ask my wife of 17 years if she is sexually frustrated through lack of attention from me.
3) Hmmm, interesting. I will have to ask my boss why he has been approving my project time bookings for the past five years which causes money that I never use to buy little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them (see 1) above) to mysteriously appear in my bank account at the end of every month.
4) The lack of a compulsion to buy little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them (see 1) above) stems from not having a requirement that everything I possess looks like a fashion accessory. From this it might be construed that not having a need to hide a personality disorder behind a corporate logo means that I probably do not have a personality disorder in the first place - in other words, I am a happy, well-adjusted Linux-using individual.
5) You are clearly telepathic, well done. Not only was I a temporary "loser" of my car keys today for about 20 minutes (until I found them in my trouser pocket in the washing basket) but I also have a particularly nasty cold at the moment which impairs the functionality my olefactory senses currently - indeed, my smelling capability is really bad at the moment. You really must tell me how you managed to work this out - was it with the assistance of an app from the store of the manufacturer of the little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them? (See 1) above.)
Correct - and when I am in my front garden weeding the flower beds, I also wave down drivers who are speeding on the road going past my house - yes, I'm an old duffer but that just means I've seen more in my time to make comparisons against, plus my cynicism gland is fully matured.
Yes, I agree that your description of an application for this technology sounds like fun - but then it's no longer "3D" is it? More like "screen multiplexing"...
Even then, do you *REALLY* see such an application being allowed by games companies when it might reduce sales of multiple consoles or multiple games?
I'm not sure I can ever remember a time when I suddenly stopped playing an FPS game because the "3D simulation on a 2D screen" wasn't immersive enough for me - but I can remember stopping many games because they were crap.
Likewise, I cannot remember staring at a movie in the cinema or on a TV screen and not feeling immersed enough due to flat screen images - but I can remember walking out of crap movies in cinemas or turning off crap DVDs.
I'm also old enough to remember movies like Jaws 3D which were released *SPECIFICALLY* to showcase 3D but were ultimately crap movies... Avatar was very pretty, I'm pleased I saw it but was ultimately just a series of graphical set pieces strung together by a simple plot.
3D in entertainment is a gimmick & marketing tool, nothing more. It turns everything into eye candy which means your brain spends more time looking at stuff rather than wondering about the quality of the plot and the content - if you look at most stuff that's released as entertainment these days, it's clear to see quality standards have dropped, everything now is about marketing and branding.
And as such, the technology companies are in the pay of the entertainment companies to force 3D on consumers so they can continue to churn out mainstream rubbish remakes.
Why would anyone comment on something with a comment that clearly shows they have no understanding of what they are commenting on? Oh wait, I forgot, this IS Slashdot, after all...
Open Source may not be perfect, may sometimes be slow to come up with software solutions, but it IS free - and anyone who mocks anything that's free is an idiot, full stop. Sure, do something constructive and send some feedback to the developers of an OSS project telling them why you think they've done it wrong, they're not immune to criticism - but if you act like a spoilt child, people will just ignore you.
And if Open Source is so crap, why are you posting on the Internet now, since its entire functionality is based on Open Source and Open Standards? That makes you a hypocrite also.
Incidentally, one of the main reasons Open Source development is sometimes slow is due to the very time-consuming task of having to backwards engineer protocols because the creator of those protocols do not publish those standards openly - this is why, for example, some hardware manufacturers have far better driver support in the Linux kernel than do others.
So next time, engage brain THEN mouth, not the other way around. Intelligent people like me consider software to be tools for productivity & entertainment and if they do the "right job for the right price" then it doesn't matter whether they are Open or Closed Source, as long as they do what they need.
Clearly you know your stuff about Windows and there's no real excuse for posting without reading the article properly.
However, having read several of your responses, your arrogant tone with people sucks & you've become the caricature that people paint of "IT know-it-alls" who they hate calling when they have a problem with their PCs.
Having been in telecoms/IT support myself for some 30 years now, I've discovered the secret to a happy life is to treat others respectfully for them to respect you back - if you make a career of talking down to people, it's you, not them, that becomes the idiot.
I shall follow you postings closely in future and look forward to a time when I can correct you if you make any incorrect statements about UNIX or Linux...
As an almost exclusively Linux user myself these days (one Windows XP dual-boot kept handy for gaming), I'd like to see it happen but I'm not sure it will.
Someone who has the time & inclination to mess around with Linux probably does other things with it as well, unlike the myriads of people out there with Windows PCs they just use for surfing the Internet, doing emails & gaming. (That's not a criticism, BTW, just a statement of fact & good luck to them.)
I do quite a bit of PC gaming (mainly single and LAN play, tried WoW for a month but it didn't do it for me) but these days I spend as much time playing old classics like Duke Nukem 3D and the Quakes, as much as new games - especially when those old classics have revamped game engines or mods.
Consequently, I wouldn't describe myself as a gaming nut. I loved Warcraft II and Starcraft, as well as Total Annihilation & C&C/Red Alert, but not sure I understand the value of 3D graphics (and having to change camera views) in RTS games. I'll keep an eye on Starcraft II with interest but won't rush to buy it.
My view is that there's a lot of Linux people like me & that there probably isn't the interest there at the moment for games companies to justify an immediate Linux port.
I think the time for that will be when you start to see big titles being released that won't run on Windows XP - Microsoft has made Windows 7 more expensive than ever to buy and people forced to upgrade from XP may well start looking at the free options of Ubuntu or Fedora.
Pre downloading then activating on the day of release for left 4 dead 2 was terrible. It probaly has something to do with time zones as the "27th" will occur a half day before for me(being in new zealand).
I enjoy PC gaming loads, but I have other interests & people to socialise with as well. Consequently, I don't have enough time to sit there wetting my knickers in anticipation of precisely when a game is going to be released based on what timezone I'm in.
As far as I'm concerned, if it's a good game, I'll get to hear about it some time after its release and probably bag a bargain in the process.
Agreed. Part of the definition of a good networked game is one that you can drink beer with friends while doing it, and hurl abuse at them from the other side of the room or house at.
Since people tend to socialise with others who share similar interests & lifestyles, the nice thing about LAN gaming with friends is that you're all generally around the same skill level and have a chance of beating each other.
I enjoy gaming a lot but not to the point where I need to practice 24x7 in order to beat teenagers with nothing better to do than prove how great they are on Internet servers.
Unfortunately, if this passes I will be forced to subsidize music I don't listen to or actually like.
Why is that any different to anything else?
You may have driven a car for 25 years and never had an accident but you still pay an insurance premium that goes to subsidise those who are not careful drivers.
Besides which, as a fan of rock & blues myself, I understand that with the record companies making astounding profits on cheap-to-produce "I won X-Factor" plastic pop music, they can afford to take a bit of a risk of less mainstream music as a result.
I've been a music buyer for around 35 years now & as mainstream pop has got crappier and crappier, the amount of really obscure rock from the late 60s & 70s that has been remastered and rereleased has sky-rocketed - I'm more than happy with that situation.
PS. If you're in the UK & feel the time has come to save some money (including beating airline surcharges), Martin Lewis' site has saved us hundreds of pounds over the years & it's well worth subscribing to his weekly email newsletter. And much as I despise the plasticity of breakfast TV, it is worth catching his regular appearances on GMTV in the morning.
Since the end of the Second World War there has been a proliferation of wealth amongst the richest nations of the world meaning that now there are far more of us with a large amount of disposable income in our hands. Corporations have taken advantage of this by providing goods & services that make things easy for us on the basis that we don't mind parting with our money to have easy lives.
I'm lucky in that I work in the Telecoms/IT Industry and have a stable consulting job with a few big clients who are happy to pay good money, year-on-year, for my services. However, like just about anyone else outside of a CEO role or the banking industry, I've not had pay rises or bonuses over the past few years - yet I have more money than ever at my disposal.
The reason is simple - my wife and I have taken a long hard look at where we spend our money, done a lot of research & made some large cash savings as a result. Over the past few years, we've changed banks, house insurances, energy providers and kept our cars a bit longer rather than buying new ones.
We also fly quite a lot and, again, whereas we used to fly with one airline in order to enjoy member benefits, when those benefits were taken away by that airline one-by-one as a cost-saving, we started getting our flights as cheaply as possible as well.
It's got to the point whereby we now only travel with carry-on luggage & take our own snacks & non-alcoholic drinks on-board aircraft in order to avoid the high costs from the airline. What we have learned is that you do not need 3/4 of the stuff that you usually pack anyway.
I imagine that a lot more people are also becoming a lot more frugal during the economic downturn - this means that airlines and other companies need to become more inventive in how they make their money & it's inevitable that they will try to capitalise on those people who don't watch their money so carefully - things will therefore only get worse.
So my advice is to look at how you are spending money very carefully and do the research for cheaper goods & services as I'm sure most people can make some immediate cost savings without any real change in their lifestyles. And for airlines particularly, read the small print, use bags that are the right size for carry-on luggage & weigh them before you leave for the airport.
Also check if the airline adds a booking charge for certain types of payment card - here in the UK, RyanAir is renowned for that little trick but in order to add that booking charge legally in the first place, they need to accept at least one type of card (in this case a prepaid Mastercard designed for those with low credit ratings) where they do not apply the booking charge; so if you fly regularly with them (like we do) then it makes sense to get and use one of those cards.
So there's no point sitting back & moaning about how everything costs more these days - take some responsibility, stay one step ahead of them & learn some frugality.
Geological fact shows that this planet has gone through at least four previous Ice Ages before man ever existed - indisputable proof that Earth has gone through extreme cooling & warming cycles before we were here.
I'm more than willing to accept scientific fact that man is responsible for climate change when it is put in front of me. I'm also willing to take part in green policies *JUST IN CASE* we're the cause of the problem.
However, to this day, there is no firm evidence that mankind is the major cause of climate change - if anything, Al Gore's figure-massaging & FUD campaign, as well as other manipulated data suggests that certain parties are desperate
I'm a Trek fan, more than a fantasy fan, but I've no inclination to try the MMO.
I tried WoW for a month after my friends finally convinced me to give it a go, it didn't "float my boat" whatsoever. Having tried WoW, it left me more mystified as to what the actual appeal of them is, if I'm honest.
There was no co-operative play with my friends because they were all too busy off elsewhere doing their own missions...
Even on a "role playing" server, when you tried to engage others in a friendly fashion, most of them ignored you...
There were, of course, plenty of people making nuisances of themselves trying to ruin it for everyone else and I seemed to spend most of my time ignoring them...
The whole gaming experience was flat and unrealistic - "go to this person and do his mission" over and over again, plus waiting behind someone else on the same mission to kill an NPC only to have that NPC stand up again for me to kill him.
For all its faults, Fallout 3 is about the best gaming experience I have ever had for realism - plus I can load it up and play it when I feel like it, rather than having to keep playing at the same rate as my friends just to keep on a level par with them.
I enjoy online gaming a lot also, but only so far as online deathmatching in UT2004, World Of Padman, Nexuiz and TF2 - log on, play for half-an-hour then log off again, it suits me fine.
I also keep going back to a lot of old Star Trek games like Birth Of The Federation, Elite Force I and II, and the Starfleet Command games - but MMOs are not for me.
Fundamentally it's based on artificial scarcity of something that can be endlessly copied for virtually no cost. You do not see a problem with this?
I cannot remember the last time I couldn't find an album I wanted on CD - if anything the record companies are doing a fantastic job at the moment re-releasing and remastering both popular and very obscure stuff from the 70s and 80s. So, no, I don't see any problems.
So let's see. Joe Startup Artist is supposed to try to negotiate with Big Music Corporation, which has dozens of new artists just like him lined up outside the door for the chance to throw themselves at the very contract he's trying to negotiate. Big Music Corporation has every reason to tell Joe Startup Artist to piss off if he doesn't like the abusive terms of the contract. Considering that a lawyer good enough to solve this problem would likely cost more than Joe Startup Artist makes in six months at Wal-Mart, how exactly do you suggest that he gain some leverage against Big Music Corporation?
I don't know and I don't care, to be honest - just like the musician doesn't care about my employment contract or how much I earn. For music, I just care about whether the end product is good quality and worth the money I paid for it. Just because you call yourself a musician doesn't mean you're either good enough or even entitled to make a living out of it - retrain, become a plumber...
Dude, if I were a musician, I'd be extremely pissed at you for saying that. You're saying that the only people who are good enough to make money from their music are those that manage to wrestle it from their predatory record label. Never mind the fact that that particular attribute cannot be used to judge music quality.
Hmmm, I think if you were a musician you'd be more pissed at someone pirating your music - at least when I buy a CD the musician *MIGHT* get some royalties, when someone else pirates the CD, he/she definitely gets nothing.
Bull fucking shit. You're asserting that without copyright protection everyone would just download music and therefore no music would ever be made. Bull, fucking, shit.
Roll your neck back in, please, and *READ* what I posted. I did not mention "copyright protection", I talked about *HONESTY*. I, and people like me, are *HONEST* enough to pay for our music, meaning that it gets released in the first place such that only then can dishonest people download it.
When you buy the CD, the vast majority of what you pay goes towards the record labels and lets them fund continued multi-thousand-dollar lawsuits against casual music sharers
Like I said, I don't give a shit. If a £10 CD entertains me over and over again over the space of 30-odd years, that's good value for money and job done as far as I'm concerned - they can do pretty much what they want to with that money from me, I can sit back in front of my nice expensive hi-fi with my nice shiny CD knowing that it won't be me they're taking to court.
as well as continued lobbying of governments for harsher copyright law and more invasive enforcement.
I'm a PC gamer also but I buy very few modern PC games because of the DRM protection on them - no, I don't pirate them either. I consider no product out there as something I *MUST* have, if it's price and conditions of usage don't suit me, I just don't buy it. It's that simple and that's sends a far stronger message to the producers of that stuff than Internet "Robin Hoods" who think they're doing the whole world a favour with their "crusade of piracy".
Kind of cuts away your moral high ground.
Not one bit, actually. It comes down to the simple fact that I don't lose my head over anything & don't get drawn in by hype and advertising. I *THINK* before I spend my money, I do my research and I only buy what I consider is good value for money - for that reason I enjoy my music (and everything else) a whole lot more and still have enough money left to enjoy pretty much what else I want to in life. If you think that's a moral high ground, that's your choice - me, I could care less, I'm too busy having fun.
Nobody forces you to buy T-shirts and refreshments at the concerts...
Yes, musicians do make more at concerts but new albums give a reason to tour and a break between tours - thus creating enough gap and enough of a set difference to justify someone seeing the artist live on subsequent tours.
Personally, I don't see any problem with the existing music business model.
Firstly, I don't consider musician royalties to be any of my business as a music fan. If you make a decision to try to make a living from your music then as far as I'm concerned it's a case of getting a good lawyer & negotiating your record company contract. After that, if you still feel you're being screwed by the record companies, then maybe you're not good enough to be making money from your music - so go train to do something else.
Secondly, as a music fan, I only care about the end product - i.e. that it represents good value for money. As far as I'm aware, my buying a music CD has not helped maintain poverty in the Third World or damaged too many trees (not that I'm particularly into that hippie crap anyway). If I've spent £10 on a CD that I've enjoyed for 30 years of my life, then that's good value for money.
Thirdly, people that justify music piracy are too stupid to realise that the music is there to be had in the first place because enough honest people like me go out and buy it the first place. Therefore, people like me subsidise their music habits and if we all chose to pirate music, then none of it would be made and they'd have nothing to download. Which is where the whole piracy argument falls flat on its face.
Fourthly, if you think music (or anything else) is too expensive then get a backbone and don't buy it or pirate it. Capitalism works when market forces determine the price of something, not when the market creates a reason to keep the price of music high because the honest people have to constantly subsidise the dishonest people by what they pay.
Lastly, don't pirate music and pretend you're doing it out of concern for what the musician may or may not be earning. The bottom line is that when I buy the CD, the musician *may* be getting something whereas when you pirate the music, the musician is *definitely* getting nothing for their work.
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Great, thanks for the advice!
Since I know I cannot do this on the cheap router that I use for my broadband, I will definitely call my ISP tomorrow & ask them for the root password onto their routers so I can configure personal "router level" ad-blocking for myself...
Steve Jobs wants to shit in my mouth but this will be good because putting his fecal matter through a second digestive phase through my stomach & colon will maximise nutrient extraction from it in the same way that cows have four stomachs and rabbits eat their own droppings.
As a result of this, the strain put on the aging sewer system will be lessened, it will require less maintenance meaning that my quarterly bills for water & sewage services will be reduced.
Thus I have proven that Steve Jobs taking a dump in my mouth will make me a wealthier, happier person.
That's as maybe - but I can hold my Android bloatware any damn way I please & can still send & receive phone calls.
... you are holding your Safari browsers the wrong way.
In response:
1) Please refer to my response in 3) for full details as to why I have no need of an allowance from my mother. However, since I am not compelled to queue outside of electronics stores overnight on a twice-yearly basis in order to buy little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them, I do not spend the money I have on said boxes, thermal underwear (if queuing outside during the Winter period), or overpriced mocha-frappa-choca-rama-langa-ding-dong-chinos while posing with said white boxes in fashionable coffee houses.
2) Hmmm, interesting. I will have to ask my wife of 17 years if she is sexually frustrated through lack of attention from me.
3) Hmmm, interesting. I will have to ask my boss why he has been approving my project time bookings for the past five years which causes money that I never use to buy little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them (see 1) above) to mysteriously appear in my bank account at the end of every month.
4) The lack of a compulsion to buy little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them (see 1) above) stems from not having a requirement that everything I possess looks like a fashion accessory. From this it might be construed that not having a need to hide a personality disorder behind a corporate logo means that I probably do not have a personality disorder in the first place - in other words, I am a happy, well-adjusted Linux-using individual.
5) You are clearly telepathic, well done. Not only was I a temporary "loser" of my car keys today for about 20 minutes (until I found them in my trouser pocket in the washing basket) but I also have a particularly nasty cold at the moment which impairs the functionality my olefactory senses currently - indeed, my smelling capability is really bad at the moment. You really must tell me how you managed to work this out - was it with the assistance of an app from the store of the manufacturer of the little white boxes with pictures of fruit on them? (See 1) above.)
Correct - and when I am in my front garden weeding the flower beds, I also wave down drivers who are speeding on the road going past my house - yes, I'm an old duffer but that just means I've seen more in my time to make comparisons against, plus my cynicism gland is fully matured.
Yes, I agree that your description of an application for this technology sounds like fun - but then it's no longer "3D" is it? More like "screen multiplexing"...
Even then, do you *REALLY* see such an application being allowed by games companies when it might reduce sales of multiple consoles or multiple games?
With all respect, I don't know you from Adam so care little about your life history - but thanks for posting it anyway.
It was your obnoxious "peering down my nose at you" tone that I object to.
And whilst you may not work in IT (I apologise for my error on that part), you still sound like a condescending asshole, fellow Linux user or not.
...I do not defend BP's handling of this or their utter incompetency.
But why so little mention of Halliburton (= big American corporation) who were actually responsible for the drilling site?
I'm not sure I can ever remember a time when I suddenly stopped playing an FPS game because the "3D simulation on a 2D screen" wasn't immersive enough for me - but I can remember stopping many games because they were crap.
Likewise, I cannot remember staring at a movie in the cinema or on a TV screen and not feeling immersed enough due to flat screen images - but I can remember walking out of crap movies in cinemas or turning off crap DVDs.
I'm also old enough to remember movies like Jaws 3D which were released *SPECIFICALLY* to showcase 3D but were ultimately crap movies... Avatar was very pretty, I'm pleased I saw it but was ultimately just a series of graphical set pieces strung together by a simple plot.
3D in entertainment is a gimmick & marketing tool, nothing more. It turns everything into eye candy which means your brain spends more time looking at stuff rather than wondering about the quality of the plot and the content - if you look at most stuff that's released as entertainment these days, it's clear to see quality standards have dropped, everything now is about marketing and branding.
And as such, the technology companies are in the pay of the entertainment companies to force 3D on consumers so they can continue to churn out mainstream rubbish remakes.
Why would anyone comment on something with a comment that clearly shows they have no understanding of what they are commenting on? Oh wait, I forgot, this IS Slashdot, after all...
Open Source may not be perfect, may sometimes be slow to come up with software solutions, but it IS free - and anyone who mocks anything that's free is an idiot, full stop. Sure, do something constructive and send some feedback to the developers of an OSS project telling them why you think they've done it wrong, they're not immune to criticism - but if you act like a spoilt child, people will just ignore you.
And if Open Source is so crap, why are you posting on the Internet now, since its entire functionality is based on Open Source and Open Standards? That makes you a hypocrite also.
Incidentally, one of the main reasons Open Source development is sometimes slow is due to the very time-consuming task of having to backwards engineer protocols because the creator of those protocols do not publish those standards openly - this is why, for example, some hardware manufacturers have far better driver support in the Linux kernel than do others.
So next time, engage brain THEN mouth, not the other way around. Intelligent people like me consider software to be tools for productivity & entertainment and if they do the "right job for the right price" then it doesn't matter whether they are Open or Closed Source, as long as they do what they need.
Clearly you know your stuff about Windows and there's no real excuse for posting without reading the article properly.
However, having read several of your responses, your arrogant tone with people sucks & you've become the caricature that people paint of "IT know-it-alls" who they hate calling when they have a problem with their PCs.
Having been in telecoms/IT support myself for some 30 years now, I've discovered the secret to a happy life is to treat others respectfully for them to respect you back - if you make a career of talking down to people, it's you, not them, that becomes the idiot.
I shall follow you postings closely in future and look forward to a time when I can correct you if you make any incorrect statements about UNIX or Linux...
As an almost exclusively Linux user myself these days (one Windows XP dual-boot kept handy for gaming), I'd like to see it happen but I'm not sure it will.
Someone who has the time & inclination to mess around with Linux probably does other things with it as well, unlike the myriads of people out there with Windows PCs they just use for surfing the Internet, doing emails & gaming. (That's not a criticism, BTW, just a statement of fact & good luck to them.)
I do quite a bit of PC gaming (mainly single and LAN play, tried WoW for a month but it didn't do it for me) but these days I spend as much time playing old classics like Duke Nukem 3D and the Quakes, as much as new games - especially when those old classics have revamped game engines or mods.
Consequently, I wouldn't describe myself as a gaming nut. I loved Warcraft II and Starcraft, as well as Total Annihilation & C&C/Red Alert, but not sure I understand the value of 3D graphics (and having to change camera views) in RTS games. I'll keep an eye on Starcraft II with interest but won't rush to buy it.
My view is that there's a lot of Linux people like me & that there probably isn't the interest there at the moment for games companies to justify an immediate Linux port.
I think the time for that will be when you start to see big titles being released that won't run on Windows XP - Microsoft has made Windows 7 more expensive than ever to buy and people forced to upgrade from XP may well start looking at the free options of Ubuntu or Fedora.
Pre downloading then activating on the day of release for left 4 dead 2 was terrible. It probaly has something to do with time zones as the "27th" will occur a half day before for me(being in new zealand).
I enjoy PC gaming loads, but I have other interests & people to socialise with as well. Consequently, I don't have enough time to sit there wetting my knickers in anticipation of precisely when a game is going to be released based on what timezone I'm in.
As far as I'm concerned, if it's a good game, I'll get to hear about it some time after its release and probably bag a bargain in the process.
Agreed. Part of the definition of a good networked game is one that you can drink beer with friends while doing it, and hurl abuse at them from the other side of the room or house at.
Since people tend to socialise with others who share similar interests & lifestyles, the nice thing about LAN gaming with friends is that you're all generally around the same skill level and have a chance of beating each other.
I enjoy gaming a lot but not to the point where I need to practice 24x7 in order to beat teenagers with nothing better to do than prove how great they are on Internet servers.
Oh, and "business class" isn't it. You still get scanned and groped by strangers.
Yes, it's a well-known fact that impoverished terrorists cannot afford business class seats...
Unfortunately, if this passes I will be forced to subsidize music I don't listen to or actually like.
Why is that any different to anything else?
You may have driven a car for 25 years and never had an accident but you still pay an insurance premium that goes to subsidise those who are not careful drivers.
Besides which, as a fan of rock & blues myself, I understand that with the record companies making astounding profits on cheap-to-produce "I won X-Factor" plastic pop music, they can afford to take a bit of a risk of less mainstream music as a result.
I've been a music buyer for around 35 years now & as mainstream pop has got crappier and crappier, the amount of really obscure rock from the late 60s & 70s that has been remastered and rereleased has sky-rocketed - I'm more than happy with that situation.
PS. If you're in the UK & feel the time has come to save some money (including beating airline surcharges), Martin Lewis' site has saved us hundreds of pounds over the years & it's well worth subscribing to his weekly email newsletter. And much as I despise the plasticity of breakfast TV, it is worth catching his regular appearances on GMTV in the morning.
Since the end of the Second World War there has been a proliferation of wealth amongst the richest nations of the world meaning that now there are far more of us with a large amount of disposable income in our hands. Corporations have taken advantage of this by providing goods & services that make things easy for us on the basis that we don't mind parting with our money to have easy lives.
I'm lucky in that I work in the Telecoms/IT Industry and have a stable consulting job with a few big clients who are happy to pay good money, year-on-year, for my services. However, like just about anyone else outside of a CEO role or the banking industry, I've not had pay rises or bonuses over the past few years - yet I have more money than ever at my disposal.
The reason is simple - my wife and I have taken a long hard look at where we spend our money, done a lot of research & made some large cash savings as a result. Over the past few years, we've changed banks, house insurances, energy providers and kept our cars a bit longer rather than buying new ones.
We also fly quite a lot and, again, whereas we used to fly with one airline in order to enjoy member benefits, when those benefits were taken away by that airline one-by-one as a cost-saving, we started getting our flights as cheaply as possible as well.
It's got to the point whereby we now only travel with carry-on luggage & take our own snacks & non-alcoholic drinks on-board aircraft in order to avoid the high costs from the airline. What we have learned is that you do not need 3/4 of the stuff that you usually pack anyway.
I imagine that a lot more people are also becoming a lot more frugal during the economic downturn - this means that airlines and other companies need to become more inventive in how they make their money & it's inevitable that they will try to capitalise on those people who don't watch their money so carefully - things will therefore only get worse.
So my advice is to look at how you are spending money very carefully and do the research for cheaper goods & services as I'm sure most people can make some immediate cost savings without any real change in their lifestyles. And for airlines particularly, read the small print, use bags that are the right size for carry-on luggage & weigh them before you leave for the airport.
Also check if the airline adds a booking charge for certain types of payment card - here in the UK, RyanAir is renowned for that little trick but in order to add that booking charge legally in the first place, they need to accept at least one type of card (in this case a prepaid Mastercard designed for those with low credit ratings) where they do not apply the booking charge; so if you fly regularly with them (like we do) then it makes sense to get and use one of those cards.
So there's no point sitting back & moaning about how everything costs more these days - take some responsibility, stay one step ahead of them & learn some frugality.
Geological fact shows that this planet has gone through at least four previous Ice Ages before man ever existed - indisputable proof that Earth has gone through extreme cooling & warming cycles before we were here.
I'm more than willing to accept scientific fact that man is responsible for climate change when it is put in front of me. I'm also willing to take part in green policies *JUST IN CASE* we're the cause of the problem.
However, to this day, there is no firm evidence that mankind is the major cause of climate change - if anything, Al Gore's figure-massaging & FUD campaign, as well as other manipulated data suggests that certain parties are desperate
I'm a Trek fan, more than a fantasy fan, but I've no inclination to try the MMO.
I tried WoW for a month after my friends finally convinced me to give it a go, it didn't "float my boat" whatsoever. Having tried WoW, it left me more mystified as to what the actual appeal of them is, if I'm honest.
There was no co-operative play with my friends because they were all too busy off elsewhere doing their own missions...
Even on a "role playing" server, when you tried to engage others in a friendly fashion, most of them ignored you...
There were, of course, plenty of people making nuisances of themselves trying to ruin it for everyone else and I seemed to spend most of my time ignoring them...
The whole gaming experience was flat and unrealistic - "go to this person and do his mission" over and over again, plus waiting behind someone else on the same mission to kill an NPC only to have that NPC stand up again for me to kill him.
For all its faults, Fallout 3 is about the best gaming experience I have ever had for realism - plus I can load it up and play it when I feel like it, rather than having to keep playing at the same rate as my friends just to keep on a level par with them.
I enjoy online gaming a lot also, but only so far as online deathmatching in UT2004, World Of Padman, Nexuiz and TF2 - log on, play for half-an-hour then log off again, it suits me fine.
I also keep going back to a lot of old Star Trek games like Birth Of The Federation, Elite Force I and II, and the Starfleet Command games - but MMOs are not for me.
...but then as an *HONEST* music fan who buys lot of CDs, I would like a refund of that tax that is offset against every CD that I buy.
Fundamentally it's based on artificial scarcity of something that can be endlessly copied for virtually no cost. You do not see a problem with this?
I cannot remember the last time I couldn't find an album I wanted on CD - if anything the record companies are doing a fantastic job at the moment re-releasing and remastering both popular and very obscure stuff from the 70s and 80s. So, no, I don't see any problems.
So let's see. Joe Startup Artist is supposed to try to negotiate with Big Music Corporation, which has dozens of new artists just like him lined up outside the door for the chance to throw themselves at the very contract he's trying to negotiate. Big Music Corporation has every reason to tell Joe Startup Artist to piss off if he doesn't like the abusive terms of the contract. Considering that a lawyer good enough to solve this problem would likely cost more than Joe Startup Artist makes in six months at Wal-Mart, how exactly do you suggest that he gain some leverage against Big Music Corporation?
I don't know and I don't care, to be honest - just like the musician doesn't care about my employment contract or how much I earn. For music, I just care about whether the end product is good quality and worth the money I paid for it. Just because you call yourself a musician doesn't mean you're either good enough or even entitled to make a living out of it - retrain, become a plumber...
Dude, if I were a musician, I'd be extremely pissed at you for saying that. You're saying that the only people who are good enough to make money from their music are those that manage to wrestle it from their predatory record label. Never mind the fact that that particular attribute cannot be used to judge music quality.
Hmmm, I think if you were a musician you'd be more pissed at someone pirating your music - at least when I buy a CD the musician *MIGHT* get some royalties, when someone else pirates the CD, he/she definitely gets nothing.
Bull fucking shit. You're asserting that without copyright protection everyone would just download music and therefore no music would ever be made. Bull, fucking, shit.
Roll your neck back in, please, and *READ* what I posted. I did not mention "copyright protection", I talked about *HONESTY*. I, and people like me, are *HONEST* enough to pay for our music, meaning that it gets released in the first place such that only then can dishonest people download it.
When you buy the CD, the vast majority of what you pay goes towards the record labels and lets them fund continued multi-thousand-dollar lawsuits against casual music sharers
Like I said, I don't give a shit. If a £10 CD entertains me over and over again over the space of 30-odd years, that's good value for money and job done as far as I'm concerned - they can do pretty much what they want to with that money from me, I can sit back in front of my nice expensive hi-fi with my nice shiny CD knowing that it won't be me they're taking to court.
as well as continued lobbying of governments for harsher copyright law and more invasive enforcement.
I'm a PC gamer also but I buy very few modern PC games because of the DRM protection on them - no, I don't pirate them either. I consider no product out there as something I *MUST* have, if it's price and conditions of usage don't suit me, I just don't buy it. It's that simple and that's sends a far stronger message to the producers of that stuff than Internet "Robin Hoods" who think they're doing the whole world a favour with their "crusade of piracy".
Kind of cuts away your moral high ground.
Not one bit, actually. It comes down to the simple fact that I don't lose my head over anything & don't get drawn in by hype and advertising. I *THINK* before I spend my money, I do my research and I only buy what I consider is good value for money - for that reason I enjoy my music (and everything else) a whole lot more and still have enough money left to enjoy pretty much what else I want to in life. If you think that's a moral high ground, that's your choice - me, I could care less, I'm too busy having fun.
Nobody forces you to buy T-shirts and refreshments at the concerts...
Yes, musicians do make more at concerts but new albums give a reason to tour and a break between tours - thus creating enough gap and enough of a set difference to justify someone seeing the artist live on subsequent tours.
Personally, I don't see any problem with the existing music business model.
Firstly, I don't consider musician royalties to be any of my business as a music fan. If you make a decision to try to make a living from your music then as far as I'm concerned it's a case of getting a good lawyer & negotiating your record company contract. After that, if you still feel you're being screwed by the record companies, then maybe you're not good enough to be making money from your music - so go train to do something else.
Secondly, as a music fan, I only care about the end product - i.e. that it represents good value for money. As far as I'm aware, my buying a music CD has not helped maintain poverty in the Third World or damaged too many trees (not that I'm particularly into that hippie crap anyway). If I've spent £10 on a CD that I've enjoyed for 30 years of my life, then that's good value for money.
Thirdly, people that justify music piracy are too stupid to realise that the music is there to be had in the first place because enough honest people like me go out and buy it the first place. Therefore, people like me subsidise their music habits and if we all chose to pirate music, then none of it would be made and they'd have nothing to download. Which is where the whole piracy argument falls flat on its face.
Fourthly, if you think music (or anything else) is too expensive then get a backbone and don't buy it or pirate it. Capitalism works when market forces determine the price of something, not when the market creates a reason to keep the price of music high because the honest people have to constantly subsidise the dishonest people by what they pay.
Lastly, don't pirate music and pretend you're doing it out of concern for what the musician may or may not be earning. The bottom line is that when I buy the CD, the musician *may* be getting something whereas when you pirate the music, the musician is *definitely* getting nothing for their work.