At least with a blonde whore singer, when the video comes on you can turn the sound down & just have something nice to look at.
If you want EVEN MORE DREADFUL, take a classic rock song, have a few black female singers perform a poor quality version of it, then get some big black bloke (or even worse, a white bloke who thinks he's a black bloke) to talk all over it.
Neither would be a reference to the book though since Neville swore by driving only Willys.
Please excuse me for being an ignorant Englishman but I think you need to explain what a "Willy" is in terms of what is, presumably, some kind of car?
Only I have the strangest image of Will Smith in my head, driving down an empty pos-apocalypse New York street at the steering wheel of something somewhat long, pink and fleshy - and no, in that image Will is not wearing a helmet.
If a music track is DRM'ed only to the point where you can still do what you expect to do with that music, then there's probably a very strong case for just forgetting about it entirely.
But even you must admit that DRM *can* inhibit an honest music buyer from doing what he is accustomed to with music and, from his/her perspective, that is wrong.
Or let me put it another way - downloadable music is a fairly new idea and you bought your iPod on the basis that you'd pay for downloads from iTunes to put onto your iPod. Okay, so you're probably clued up enough to have known, even before you bought your iPod, that there would be restrictions on any DRMed tracks you download. Therefore, you can turn round and tell me, as you have been doing, that when you buy from iTunes you know exactly what you are getting, your iPod and tracks do exactly what you're told they would do. And I can't argue with that, your expectations of what music should do for you are achieved, it's down to opinion and neither of us is right or wrong. End of story.
But, imagine me sat here now. I've been buying music for 30+ years, from vinyl through to CDs. I've grown up amongst peers who have always enjoyed music together and the concept of sharing music within that group is a given - yes, sometimes people taped albums from each other but much of the time everyone in the group also bought LPs and, later on, CDs. Yes, there's arguments people can put forward to justify the rights or wrongs of doing that but, ultimately, one of my expectations of music is that I can loan albums to friends. If they choose to just listen to it and give it back, that's fine - if they choose to copy it, that's up to them.
The point I'm trying to make is that DRM would inhibit that completely meaning, that one of the reasons I enjoy music is taken away from me - even though I have spent a huge amount of money on CDs and LPs to buy the music I really like. So not only does DRM *change* what I am accustomed to with music, but there's an expectation from the RIAA and parts of the music industry that I just lie down and take it - their justification being "Well hard luck that you're an honest music user but because people choose to download music for free or rip CDs that aren't theirs, you'll suffer it to".
So that's why, to me, DRM is wrong and entirely evil - especially as music is my main passion in life (well, after the missus!) and I am not going to compromise on that.
Financial corporations only give up on fraud when the cost of recovery is more that the amount defrauded
My point exactly. It's still fraud so why should they give up investigating it because of the costs? Surely if any fraud was investigated, more criminals would be caught, thus acting as a bigger deterent to others trying in future.
Corporations, particularly financials, have absolutely no interest in dealing with any fraud that falls within their measured & predicted statistics because they can always make their customers subsidise any fraud - for example, if an organisation predicts they will lose, say, £10,000,000 due to fraud over the next year then unless that figure is greatly exceeded, then they'll just adjust interest rates/premium costs/item costs to all of their customers to allow for that potential loss as it's easier to do it that way rather than dealing with the core problem.
Therefore, the only way to force them to deal with fraud is to "name and shame" those companies by forcing them to release their fraud figures to the public eye.
I myself deal with VoIP security for a company selling converged business solutions and the amount of cover-up of hacking & toll fraud in many corporations is truly astounding.
I suspected that might be the case. When you're able to pick from the best albums of the past 50 years you get a different view of the medium than if you're buying recent music. Albums that only have a couple of decent tracks don't even show up on your radar.
Actually, that's an excellent point you've made that I'd never really considered before. A lot of the albums that I do listen to are "concept" albums, like The Beatles Sgt. Peppers, for example.
And yes, you're correct on the second count also because I can "pick and choose" stuff to listen to, very much so. When all said and done, I'm actually very satisfied with the output of the record companies because, as I said previously, they're rereleasing a lot of very obscure and old stuff that I'm really delving into.
Incidentally, whilst I have no intention of paying for a music download ever, I have absolutely no issue with people who want their music that way. Like I said, I don't really understand this idea of "cherrypicking" tracks because I'm into albums, but if people want their music that way then they've as much right to do that as I do for CD buying.
But my real problem is with DRM, whether it's with Blockbuster renting DRMed DVD movies or the DRMed portions of iTunes. To me, DRM can only be bad for the consumer because it will ultimately turn everything into a rental model to screw more money out of everyone. I just hope people understand that when they buy anything with DRM on it, potentially they are creating a big problem for themselves in the future.
And, incidentally, I don't agree in the free distribution of music either. Ultimately, whether you buy a CD or a download track, you're subsidising those people who choose to steal music and who give the media companies the reasons they need to implement DRM in the first place. Those people wind me up equally as much as the RIAA do...
Mainly classic British rock & psychedelic music from the late 60s through to the present day - I listen to anything from Terry Reid & The Beatles through to Radiohead and Kasabian, with Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Tangerine Dream, Eric Clapton, Nick Drake, Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughan in between (and not necessarily British themselves). I also like a lot of progressive rock with lesser known bands like Eloy, Jane and Amon Duul together with more popular stuff like Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, Jethro Tull, Van der Graaf Generator, Genesis and Yes.
Go back 15 years and I was very much into heavy rock and metal, AC/DC are still one of my favourite bands and whilst I still like most of it, my tastes have expanded due to the fact that a lot of really good music is being rereleased and remastered from the late 60s and early 70s.
I enjoy a little classical but only when I can pick up a cheap CD at a record fair or car boot sale.
I tend to avoid "Best Ofs" except where they're cheap and serve as an introduction to a band I've not heard before - I really am an "album" person, I tend to find "Best Ofs" disjointed, especially where they're over a long period of a band's history.
I don't get into much modern or indie stuff simply because there's so much older stuff to trawl through, there aren't that many hours in a day to check newer stuff out - if I do hear modern stuff, it tends to be in the background somewhere and is invariably modern female R&B stuff which to me never comes close to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Eva Cassidy or Linda Hoyle.
Yes, I like a lot of stuff but then I listen to more music than anything else - if I'm not sat just listening to an album then invariably one is on in the background while I'm on the PC and I don't watch that much TV or movies.
no need to call anyone stupid. CDs are well designed, sleek and simply great in every way, it is Philips' fault for making a great product and the public for liking it so much... i think i will go buy one, no two right now. - A. Music Officionado
Running Linux takes guts??? You think your choice in OS makes you brave, edgy and cool?
If you are an inexperienced user who has the strength of character to not steal software from someone else and instead embrace the high learning curve it takes to migrate to Linux instead then, yes, I say that takes guts - rather than the easy way out of just downloading an illegal copies of Windows from BitTorrent.
Me? I'm just a middle-aged fat bloke who's been using UNIX and Linux for years, who finds it a piece of piss to set up and use, helps other people use it if they ask him but funnily enough doesn't sneakily wipe Windows XP and replace it with Ubuntu whenever his niece's or nephew's need their PCs fixed.
You think your choice in OS makes you brave, edgy and cool?
I don't recall using any of those three words - you must be confusing me with an Apple user.
Some vendors of Linux distros (e.g. Red Hat) choose not to distribute Linux with the ability to play MP3s on the basis that their user base consists mainly of businesses who, potentially, could countersue them if some external party sued the business user for using a patented technology. However, those same vendors invariably explain how you can get MP3 to work quite easily on the provision that you choose to do so and the vendors that do that are a minority of distros.
So if you are going to bring up Linux in the first place, at least get your facts straight.
The "cherrypickers" also seem to entirely forget that they are probably listening to the wrong type of music if they can only ever find one or two good tracks on an album.
Call me old-fashioned but I thought the whole concept of buying a CD album is that you pay the musicians to create the music that the producers and sound engineers make sound nice and arrange on a CD for you so all you have to do is throw some money at them, crack open a beer, stick the CD in a hifi and then just sit back and relax, without all that needless mucking about with playlists and mixing things up.
Have you heard about CDs? No DRM, cheaper than downloading track-by-track, no loss of quality, nice plastic case and a set of sleevenotes to read on the toilet when you've been out celebrating the money you've saved by ingesting curry and beer.
Have you ever tried logging into a remote PC using RDP in order to fix something for them and show them what it is you're doing so they can fix it themselves in future?
Maybe I've missed something but the moment you log into an XP system with RDP then whoever is logged in gets logged out - and I seem to recall doing a Google about it that this is a deliberate crippling of XP and RDP by Microsoft.
Yep, RDP has a purpose and it does a job but as a mainly Linux guy, I cannot wrap my brain around Microsoft's staggeringly overcomplex permissions settings which invariably stop anything built into Windows XP from working first time when you want to connect to it over a network.
TightVNC is far easier to set up, transparent between XP and Linux and, when you mess about with display settings a bit, is no slower than RDP.
These days, if a friend or relative needs help from me fixing a PC problem, I send them a single sheet of instructions via email about how to download and set up Hamachi (for VPN connectivity) and TightVNC on their PC, then I just connect in and fix it.
Then what do you call downloading a pirated version and having the same without paying, genial?
Actually, I'd call it "I find it far easier to brag about being some l33t pirate than having the guts to use an alternative free operating system that I don't have to steal from somebody else."
No, I'm not a coffee snob but I drink black Americano coffee pretty much exclusively, I can get a great double Americano in my work canteen for 65p and, as someone who goes out to Spain a lot, any bar will sell you a good Americano for about 1.
PS. Incidentally, the last bit should have said 1 Euro but for some reason Slashdot dropped the Euro symbol.
To be fair to Starbucks, they are absolutely no better or worse than any of the other coffee chains we have here in the UK. But they all share the common problem of employing teenagers as "barristas" who have no idea about how to make coffee properly.
No, I'm not a coffee snob but I drink black Americano coffee pretty much exclusively, I can get a great double Americano in my work canteen for 65p and, as someone who goes out to Spain a lot, any bar will sell you a good Americano for about 1.
Yet just about 50% of the time that I go into a Starbucks or other coffee chain where I'm paying anything up to 4x as much, the coffee I get served is either weak, tepid or very bitter tasting meaning that I take it back and ask for it to be remade - and all because the teenager behind the counter hasn't taken a bit more care in making it.
What makes it worse is that we British have a reputation for never complaining openly, just whinging quietly to ourselves, and this means that those providing a product or service get used to doing it in a lax manner. Having been to the US several times, service is much better and it's expected that you complain if something is not right.
As for coffee shop culture, I agree, it's just for the posers with their Macs - but then, again, if I want something as simple as a coffee and see a queue at the counter of more than two people, I walk on by and go elsewhere because I'm not queueing for 15 minutes for something as simple as a coffee just to pose around in a comfortable chair.
...as a result of the increased expense of licenses for public broadcasts, a few DJs will find it more costly to play music that invariably sounds like some woman screaming in pain from the inside of a dustbin that is being rolled down some stone steps and that is only bearable in the first because anyone in earshot is totally off their heads on ecstasy?
So where's the problem?
And if there's a few less peroxide-haired record changers around who are no longer bragging about what wonderful "musicians" they are, then that's even better...
Slashdot Mirror
If you want EVEN MORE DREADFUL, take a classic rock song, have a few black female singers perform a poor quality version of it, then get some big black bloke (or even worse, a white bloke who thinks he's a black bloke) to talk all over it.
Please excuse me for being an ignorant Englishman but I think you need to explain what a "Willy" is in terms of what is, presumably, some kind of car?
Only I have the strangest image of Will Smith in my head, driving down an empty pos-apocalypse New York street at the steering wheel of something somewhat long, pink and fleshy - and no, in that image Will is not wearing a helmet.
But even you must admit that DRM *can* inhibit an honest music buyer from doing what he is accustomed to with music and, from his/her perspective, that is wrong.
Or let me put it another way - downloadable music is a fairly new idea and you bought your iPod on the basis that you'd pay for downloads from iTunes to put onto your iPod. Okay, so you're probably clued up enough to have known, even before you bought your iPod, that there would be restrictions on any DRMed tracks you download. Therefore, you can turn round and tell me, as you have been doing, that when you buy from iTunes you know exactly what you are getting, your iPod and tracks do exactly what you're told they would do. And I can't argue with that, your expectations of what music should do for you are achieved, it's down to opinion and neither of us is right or wrong. End of story.
But, imagine me sat here now. I've been buying music for 30+ years, from vinyl through to CDs. I've grown up amongst peers who have always enjoyed music together and the concept of sharing music within that group is a given - yes, sometimes people taped albums from each other but much of the time everyone in the group also bought LPs and, later on, CDs. Yes, there's arguments people can put forward to justify the rights or wrongs of doing that but, ultimately, one of my expectations of music is that I can loan albums to friends. If they choose to just listen to it and give it back, that's fine - if they choose to copy it, that's up to them.
The point I'm trying to make is that DRM would inhibit that completely meaning, that one of the reasons I enjoy music is taken away from me - even though I have spent a huge amount of money on CDs and LPs to buy the music I really like. So not only does DRM *change* what I am accustomed to with music, but there's an expectation from the RIAA and parts of the music industry that I just lie down and take it - their justification being "Well hard luck that you're an honest music user but because people choose to download music for free or rip CDs that aren't theirs, you'll suffer it to".
So that's why, to me, DRM is wrong and entirely evil - especially as music is my main passion in life (well, after the missus!) and I am not going to compromise on that.
My point exactly. It's still fraud so why should they give up investigating it because of the costs? Surely if any fraud was investigated, more criminals would be caught, thus acting as a bigger deterent to others trying in future.
Yep, and I just knew there'd be a response from someone totally warping what I said.
In actuality, if corporations revealed fraud information rather than covering it up, it would help in the capture of the perpetrators.
Therefore, the only way to force them to deal with fraud is to "name and shame" those companies by forcing them to release their fraud figures to the public eye.
I myself deal with VoIP security for a company selling converged business solutions and the amount of cover-up of hacking & toll fraud in many corporations is truly astounding.
Actually, that's an excellent point you've made that I'd never really considered before. A lot of the albums that I do listen to are "concept" albums, like The Beatles Sgt. Peppers, for example.
And yes, you're correct on the second count also because I can "pick and choose" stuff to listen to, very much so. When all said and done, I'm actually very satisfied with the output of the record companies because, as I said previously, they're rereleasing a lot of very obscure and old stuff that I'm really delving into.
Incidentally, whilst I have no intention of paying for a music download ever, I have absolutely no issue with people who want their music that way. Like I said, I don't really understand this idea of "cherrypicking" tracks because I'm into albums, but if people want their music that way then they've as much right to do that as I do for CD buying.
But my real problem is with DRM, whether it's with Blockbuster renting DRMed DVD movies or the DRMed portions of iTunes. To me, DRM can only be bad for the consumer because it will ultimately turn everything into a rental model to screw more money out of everyone. I just hope people understand that when they buy anything with DRM on it, potentially they are creating a big problem for themselves in the future.
And, incidentally, I don't agree in the free distribution of music either. Ultimately, whether you buy a CD or a download track, you're subsidising those people who choose to steal music and who give the media companies the reasons they need to implement DRM in the first place. Those people wind me up equally as much as the RIAA do...
Go back 15 years and I was very much into heavy rock and metal, AC/DC are still one of my favourite bands and whilst I still like most of it, my tastes have expanded due to the fact that a lot of really good music is being rereleased and remastered from the late 60s and early 70s.
I enjoy a little classical but only when I can pick up a cheap CD at a record fair or car boot sale.
I tend to avoid "Best Ofs" except where they're cheap and serve as an introduction to a band I've not heard before - I really am an "album" person, I tend to find "Best Ofs" disjointed, especially where they're over a long period of a band's history.
I don't get into much modern or indie stuff simply because there's so much older stuff to trawl through, there aren't that many hours in a day to check newer stuff out - if I do hear modern stuff, it tends to be in the background somewhere and is invariably modern female R&B stuff which to me never comes close to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Eva Cassidy or Linda Hoyle.
Yes, I like a lot of stuff but then I listen to more music than anything else - if I'm not sat just listening to an album then invariably one is on in the background while I'm on the PC and I don't watch that much TV or movies.
I buy decent CDs, I don't get filler tracks.
Well that's what all the dance music fans refer to it as...
no need to call anyone stupid. CDs are well designed, sleek and simply great in every way, it is Philips' fault for making a great product and the public for liking it so much... i think i will go buy one, no two right now. - A. Music Officionado
If you are an inexperienced user who has the strength of character to not steal software from someone else and instead embrace the high learning curve it takes to migrate to Linux instead then, yes, I say that takes guts - rather than the easy way out of just downloading an illegal copies of Windows from BitTorrent.
Me? I'm just a middle-aged fat bloke who's been using UNIX and Linux for years, who finds it a piece of piss to set up and use, helps other people use it if they ask him but funnily enough doesn't sneakily wipe Windows XP and replace it with Ubuntu whenever his niece's or nephew's need their PCs fixed.
You think your choice in OS makes you brave, edgy and cool?
I don't recall using any of those three words - you must be confusing me with an Apple user.
Correction. The least restrictive DRM scheme on the planet is that where there is no DRM. CDs implement that least restrictive DRM technology.
Some vendors of Linux distros (e.g. Red Hat) choose not to distribute Linux with the ability to play MP3s on the basis that their user base consists mainly of businesses who, potentially, could countersue them if some external party sued the business user for using a patented technology. However, those same vendors invariably explain how you can get MP3 to work quite easily on the provision that you choose to do so and the vendors that do that are a minority of distros.
So if you are going to bring up Linux in the first place, at least get your facts straight.
Call me old-fashioned but I thought the whole concept of buying a CD album is that you pay the musicians to create the music that the producers and sound engineers make sound nice and arrange on a CD for you so all you have to do is throw some money at them, crack open a beer, stick the CD in a hifi and then just sit back and relax, without all that needless mucking about with playlists and mixing things up.
Have you heard about CDs? No DRM, cheaper than downloading track-by-track, no loss of quality, nice plastic case and a set of sleevenotes to read on the toilet when you've been out celebrating the money you've saved by ingesting curry and beer.
In which case you owe me a beer or two for my subsidising your theft by my consistent purchase of music CDs.
Maybe I've missed something but the moment you log into an XP system with RDP then whoever is logged in gets logged out - and I seem to recall doing a Google about it that this is a deliberate crippling of XP and RDP by Microsoft.
Yep, RDP has a purpose and it does a job but as a mainly Linux guy, I cannot wrap my brain around Microsoft's staggeringly overcomplex permissions settings which invariably stop anything built into Windows XP from working first time when you want to connect to it over a network.
TightVNC is far easier to set up, transparent between XP and Linux and, when you mess about with display settings a bit, is no slower than RDP.
These days, if a friend or relative needs help from me fixing a PC problem, I send them a single sheet of instructions via email about how to download and set up Hamachi (for VPN connectivity) and TightVNC on their PC, then I just connect in and fix it.
Actually, I'd call it "I find it far easier to brag about being some l33t pirate than having the guts to use an alternative free operating system that I don't have to steal from somebody else."
"Microsoft Works" being the first and now "sophisticated users buying Vista" is the second.
PS. Incidentally, the last bit should have said 1 Euro but for some reason Slashdot dropped the Euro symbol.
No, I'm not a coffee snob but I drink black Americano coffee pretty much exclusively, I can get a great double Americano in my work canteen for 65p and, as someone who goes out to Spain a lot, any bar will sell you a good Americano for about 1.
Yet just about 50% of the time that I go into a Starbucks or other coffee chain where I'm paying anything up to 4x as much, the coffee I get served is either weak, tepid or very bitter tasting meaning that I take it back and ask for it to be remade - and all because the teenager behind the counter hasn't taken a bit more care in making it.
What makes it worse is that we British have a reputation for never complaining openly, just whinging quietly to ourselves, and this means that those providing a product or service get used to doing it in a lax manner. Having been to the US several times, service is much better and it's expected that you complain if something is not right.
As for coffee shop culture, I agree, it's just for the posers with their Macs - but then, again, if I want something as simple as a coffee and see a queue at the counter of more than two people, I walk on by and go elsewhere because I'm not queueing for 15 minutes for something as simple as a coffee just to pose around in a comfortable chair.
If eating a pack of Bratwurst's will, in any way, stop the adoption of Windows Vista, then you can definitely count me in.
So where's the problem?
And if there's a few less peroxide-haired record changers around who are no longer bragging about what wonderful "musicians" they are, then that's even better...