Hey now, banning video games is done for the good of the children who play them, stopping the nightly news from showing you broken and bloodied bodies is stepping on their first amendment rights.
And I agree that in the long term on line distribution will win, but before it can the internet as we know it needs some substantial upgrading. Not to support the concept (it already does), but to support what happens when the masses start using it.
Bingo! MS isn't trying to destroy physical media anymore than Verizon is trying to destroy the POTS. While both know that the future doesn't lay in these technologies both also know that for now they're pulling down a reasonable profit with them because of mass usage.
By the time the internet is seriously up to the task of delivering HD styled content to the masses both HD DVD and Blu Ray will have gone the way of the laser disc. The lifespan of these new formats will not be longer than that of the traditional DVD. We've been DVD for what now? 10 or 12 years? Do people here honestly think that technologies like FIOS are going to be nation wide (let alone world wide) in the next decade? I think people are fooling themselves into the ultra futuristic world of downloadable content being just around the corner. We have communities within 20 miles of a somewhat major city (if you can call Pittsburgh a major city) that still don't have DSL or Cable internet. This doesn't even bring the frail backbone of the internet into question.
Online content as a mass market is still a long ways off and it's ability to replace physical media won't be a reality in the next 10 years.
Maybe MS sees Blu Ray as the next Betamax? (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060420-6641.html)
Maybe since they're offering their set top game box in HD DVD it's a business interest?
What's the problem here and why is this news?
They have real interest in seeing HD get the upper hand. Yes. Would they like to see downloadable content as a better business prospective? Yes. Who doesn't. MS has invested billions into their 360 product, throwing in a bit more money to give it the edge in home movies isn't unthinkable and certainly isn't unheard of.
I seriously do not understand why people are in such a twist over this. Oh, that's right, it's because it's big bad Microsoft and we all need to focus our attention for our daily two minutes of hate.
Use MP2 instead. Backwards compatibility is inherent. Anything that can play MP3 can play MP2 files as well. And at bitrates of 160kbps+ (Joint Stereo, psy-1) MP2 actually sounds better than any MP3 as well. Not to mention it both encodes and decodes faster.
Just a couple of questions as an audio format n00b:
1. Are you telling me that a 160kbps MP2 is better than MP3 at higher bit rates? 2. Given a comparable bit rate (if the answer to question one is no) how do the file sizes compare? 3. What is psy-1?
If you can see someone is at their desk by standing up and looking across the office, you are much more likely to walk over and talk than to send an email or call someone who is 20 feet away. It may sound inefficient to a slashdotter, but face-to-face communication is really useful.
Yes and no. While face to face may be able to bring a faster exchange of ideas it's also nice to have that black and white conversation trail to work from. Not unlike Slashdot, just talking about an issue without a reference point can lead into a problem becoming confused and focus is more easily lost. Also, e-mail gives us the opportunity to sit back for a couple of minutes and think about problems instead of feeling urged to just fire back an answer.
So the decision on which option is the best for communication comes down to the issue and the individuals involved.
I know what it costs per hour (about $100) and the total cost to record an album ($1-2k for a demo, about 10k-??? for a full on professional album). It's NOT THAT EXPENSIVE.
It took Steely Dan 2 years of recording time to do the Gaucho album with professional studio musicians that probably wouldn't answer the phone for 100 dollars. Care to revise these figures?
The studio built under your local guitar shop is a far different beast from a professional studio.
The 5 corporate moguls you speak of worked with many more artists than Trend has and has made that money back many fold. Or do you really think that record execs make one band profitable and they never work again? Please.
It's funny to hear NIN fans and Trend supporters caw on about his talent. The man floundered for years on his own work. Only when he could do a demo on "borrowed" studio time and resources as a janitor did he ever make a dime from his music when he sold out to TVT who paid for him to record PHM.
Anyone with any real knowledge of labels will tell you how much of a joke it is that Mr. Trend "musical integrity" Reznor signed a contract with TVT. He may as well been on K-Tel. TVT is the sausage factory of all music labels. So much for him and his high handed attitudes about doing it all for the music and for the fans.
The bottom line is that Trend did try to make it on his "talents" and never got a foothold as a profitable artist without a record contract. The babble about PHM being an indy album is like claiming that Scaled Composites is couple of guys in a garage workshop that cranked out a space ship.
If you got data that is so sensitive that you're worried about Google processing it for some kind of ad targeting purpose you should be worried enough to spend a few bucks and get a webhost for your data. You can get a webhost with a couple of gigs of storage and more transfer for ~10 bucks a month. What's the issue?
Every one of these "video games as a moral measure" articles always mentions the downside. What if I do good?
Sure, you can label me as a hostage killer in CounterStrike for my occasional screw up in a firefight but does that mean I qualify for the G.I. Bill due to my fine combat record in Call of Duty 4?
And more-so, if I had friends that got bent out of shape because I don't lose sleep over the hostages I accidentally fragged I probably wouldn't want them around me anyway.
you shouldn't be surprised when that system comes crashing down, once an innovation comes along that turns your industry on its head.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; no price beats free.
Even if the industry was selling CDs for 12 USD on the store shelves and had been doing that since the real significant drop in CD prices in the late 80s or early 90s you'd still have a hard time selling when the free alternative came around.
The difference is that Trend Reznor is an established product of the music industry. Yes, he is the product that they marketed him as and if Trend were honest he'd probably admit that he'd have a pretty hard time ahead of him today if he were at square one trying to establish himself.
The man is fortunate that he will be able to live off of NIN nostalgia for the rest of his life. We can't really put a price tag on how much of an advantage that is for him.
It's easy to scoff at the industry structure once you've taken all you can from them. Like any other business deal there is a break even point and Trend is on the losing side of that deal now. His record label doubtlessly lost a ton of artists just like him without ever seeing any real payback for their investment. If Trend wasn't so self-centered he'd be able to see this relationship and understand that while he may not need them today they carried his ass to where he's gotten to.
He reminds me of a young 20-something thumbing his nose at his parents after they went through all the expense and pains of raising them and putting their ass through school. Of course, we'd see the 20-something with his new job and his first apartment as ungrateful little jerk while most seem to be cheering Trend on. But the relationship really is no different.
What did we lose? Well, in a lot of cases, liner notes, the cool label on the media, etc.
For what it's worth Rush's Snakes and Arrows MVI is one hell of a lot better than anything I ever got from an LP package.
And don't get me wrong. Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery is the reason I got into H.R. Giger and I still have all the original goodies out of Pink Floyd's DSOTM album but it simply can not compare to this. The unfortunate part is that as the physical media's sales sink the less and less reason that bands will have to go this extra mile.
All the music industry has to do is say, "Go ahead, pirate it, lose all the music in the future" Then it wont be fun anymore...
Do you honestly people have that much of an interest or a scope on the future of music? Music downloads today are no different than Enron when it comes right down to it; people who don't really care about the future of the industry filling their pockets (and hard drives) with as much as they can before the whole thing collapses and hoping that they don't get caught in the fall out.
Just like music piracy, Enron didn't only cause problems for their stockholders, they brought down hammers on an entire industry. The shockwave of this kind of greed spreads out over multiple industries and ultimately damages the future of both the primary industry and those industries that have direct connections. Luckily for those who got hosed in the Enron scandal is that it's both government regulated and the product can't simply be downloaded. Even at that rate there were tons of well intentioned people who lost everything and are probably eating dog food out of a can today. Not all business casualties are guys in Beamers with 2000 dollar suits. There are real 9-5 working slobs types who need that investment dollar for their retirement and to get their kids off to college. Nothing sucks more than to see good paying jobs (as in 40-50K a year, not millions) get squashed because some jackass thinks it's their right to do as the will and not worry about who they might be screwing over. Ever wonder why we've become such a WalMart nation with foreclosures being more of a rule and not an unfortunate series of circumstance?
We're seeing tons of people pointing to the Radiohead model and screaming that it works. Yeah, it worked for the first band out the door with all the free publicity it could handle. What happens when an equally talent bunch of musicians with no fan base and no front page articles on MSNBC.com try the same thing? They're more likely to turn no profit and fade into obscurity. But why care about that as long as we can continue to download as much Pink Floyd and Eminem as we can stomach?
also, isn't music these days already lost?
There is tons of good music today. If you're still motivated enough to find it, that is. It's great that kids can get together and make a few songs and let people a half a world away hear it. The question is about finding it and if these kids can maintain the cash flow it takes to keep pumping out songs.
My guess? Long lived bands are going to become fewer and fewer. If you think that pop music today sucks wait until the market has thousands of copycats using karaoke machines instead of the dozen or so boy bands, R&B, hip hop or whatever leeches. Bands that can't live off a small fanbase as they were able to in the past will have no chance in the future.
Everyone screams "Go tour" but touring costs money and with a smaller (let's call it indy) fanbase these guys aren't going to be able to put together the revenue to do a serious tour and playing bars and small clubs simply isn't profitable. Established bands can live off of touring, small bands use it to promote their merchandise and get a few free beers. I really don't see why people can't understand this. Maybe most of them never seen the underside of professional music where labels like SST, Touch-N-Go and Discord flourished because they ran their own mail order but most of their bands never got past a couple of LPs and maybe a song on a comp.
In all seriousness, what would it take to create a _third_ party in the US, if one wanted to run for office but did wanted to be associated with neither Democrats nor Republicans? Would that even be possible under US law? (Or why not?)
Sure, it can be done and it is done but not to the degree it would take to seriously compete with the large parties. We've had third party and independent candidates in probably every office in the US government aside from the president (and of course, vice president).
Getting on the ballet normally only involves so many petitions to be signed and sometimes a filing fee.
I mean, aside from the considerable cash required for any political campaign (under any system, in any country); assume one has enough cash to burn.
Cash is a problem most times, yes, but not all the time...
I'm assuming you're not an American from some of the questions so excuse me if some of this doesn't make perfect sense; Recently there was an overturn of Republicans in the federal and state legislative branches (House of Representatives and Senate) mostly because of ill-will towards Bush and the Iraq war. My state, Pennsylvania, is largely Democratic in party base. But there was one stand out election: A young kid was running against and older incumbent Democrat for a state senate (I believe, it may have been a representative). The Democrat spent somewhere in the area of a million dollars on a TV and print campaign that was nothing more than stating he was the Democrat incumbent and asking who the other candidate was. While this election was not in my district it was close enough that I seen many of the TV adverts. It was a real piss poor effort on the incumbent's part and frankly it pissed me off to see that someone who was elected thought that their party alignment should be good enough to get them re-elected.
As it turns out the incumbent lost!
The reason that a lot of people outside of the district didn't know the young Republican was because he only spent 2000 USD on his bid for the office and relied mainly on grassroot tactics to get his name known. It seems that a large number of the voters in the district were just as upset with the incumbent's smug attitude about "begin the Democrat" and tossed him out on his ass.
So yeah, if you get a candidate that creates enough ill will it seems that he can be defeated regardless of party, incumbency or money spent on the campaign.
Yeah, because physically printed media is exempt from bias. [/sarcasm]
While PC Gamer is certainly a lot better off than it use to be I still remember the days where a game was either considered shit or a gift from God. Seriously. Just a few years ago everything as either over 80% or under 25%. It kind of fouled my taste for their magazine.
Wow, you must think you're witty but again, you're rewarding someone for deceiving you, lying about the deception and repaying them with ill-gained loyalty. If that's your idea of how things should work I guess it will work out fine for you.
If EMI cuts a significant amount of funding to the RIAA then I will go back to buying CD's from them.
Step on up, folks! There is a sucker born every minute and we have one right here for your amusement!
It seems that you really don't understand the RIAA's role in this game do you? The RIAA could not have sued on the label's behalf without the blessing of the label! Are you really going to be one of those rubes who thinks that EMI was misrepresented by the RIAA? The RIAA is EMI's customer, not the other way around!
EMI is doing this only to gain goodwill on the sucker's, err... I mean, the customer's part hoping that the customer will continue to point the finger at the RIAA when the fact is that EMI is even more to blame and could have called off it's dogs years ago.
And this isn't to say that I don't support the industry's right to protect it's own product. I really do. I think the "free trade" of music is going to do more damage in the long run and I would rather see music bought. But I'm certainly not going to be a stooge to EMI thinking that the RIAA went around for years sueing people and that EMI has finally caught on to the RIAA's evil ways.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprise if EMI or one of their ilk wasn't the ones to suggest lawsuits to the RIAA.
Which would you rather have: some dope smokers or kids with bullets in their backs because of gang activity? The gangs won't go away 100%, no, but what is driving them is largely the drug trade. This can not be denied and to deny it is to deny any potential solution the war on drugs may offer.
Maybe if these substances were free of their black market status they'd lose their allure.
Considering that EMI never said what was in the blurb and it was a blatant misrepresentation?
perhaps DRM will go the way of prohibition
The thing is that prohibition really didn't go away and the war on drugs is the remnants of prohibition. You were conned into thinking that we won some great victory when, in fact, we merely gained back the "right" to what they could tax.
Thanks for bringing this up. I was 98% sure it did as I always considered one of the best level names in any game was from Half Life 1 ("We have hostiles")
Not always no, but you're also mixing apples and oranges. Most people feel better with a 30 dollar meal over the 5 dollar deal-o-the-day at the local taco joint. Most people feel ripped off by a 10 dollar pen because a 45 cent Bic Clic Stic does the same thing and for most people is just as nice. A wedding is a once in a lifetime kind of event. People hate to skimp on those things.
I'd mostly file your post under bad analogy but in someways you'd be correct. While I don't think that time of use is the only measure of value it certainly is a big one in a lot of cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey now, banning video games is done for the good of the children who play them, stopping the nightly news from showing you broken and bloodied bodies is stepping on their first amendment rights.
And I agree that in the long term on line distribution will win, but before it can the internet as we know it needs some substantial upgrading. Not to support the concept (it already does), but to support what happens when the masses start using it.
Bingo! MS isn't trying to destroy physical media anymore than Verizon is trying to destroy the POTS. While both know that the future doesn't lay in these technologies both also know that for now they're pulling down a reasonable profit with them because of mass usage.
By the time the internet is seriously up to the task of delivering HD styled content to the masses both HD DVD and Blu Ray will have gone the way of the laser disc. The lifespan of these new formats will not be longer than that of the traditional DVD. We've been DVD for what now? 10 or 12 years? Do people here honestly think that technologies like FIOS are going to be nation wide (let alone world wide) in the next decade? I think people are fooling themselves into the ultra futuristic world of downloadable content being just around the corner. We have communities within 20 miles of a somewhat major city (if you can call Pittsburgh a major city) that still don't have DSL or Cable internet. This doesn't even bring the frail backbone of the internet into question.
Online content as a mass market is still a long ways off and it's ability to replace physical media won't be a reality in the next 10 years.
Maybe MS sees Blu Ray as the next Betamax? (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060420-6641.html)
Maybe since they're offering their set top game box in HD DVD it's a business interest?
What's the problem here and why is this news?
They have real interest in seeing HD get the upper hand. Yes. Would they like to see downloadable content as a better business prospective? Yes. Who doesn't. MS has invested billions into their 360 product, throwing in a bit more money to give it the edge in home movies isn't unthinkable and certainly isn't unheard of.
I seriously do not understand why people are in such a twist over this. Oh, that's right, it's because it's big bad Microsoft and we all need to focus our attention for our daily two minutes of hate.
If it's any indication, the last guy who paid to get a ride out that way paid 20 million.
Use MP2 instead. Backwards compatibility is inherent. Anything that can play MP3 can play MP2 files as well. And at bitrates of 160kbps+ (Joint Stereo, psy-1) MP2 actually sounds better than any MP3 as well. Not to mention it both encodes and decodes faster.
Just a couple of questions as an audio format n00b:
1. Are you telling me that a 160kbps MP2 is better than MP3 at higher bit rates?
2. Given a comparable bit rate (if the answer to question one is no) how do the file sizes compare?
3. What is psy-1?
Thanks in advance.
If you can see someone is at their desk by standing up and looking across the office, you are much more likely to walk over and talk than to send an email or call someone who is 20 feet away. It may sound inefficient to a slashdotter, but face-to-face communication is really useful.
Yes and no. While face to face may be able to bring a faster exchange of ideas it's also nice to have that black and white conversation trail to work from. Not unlike Slashdot, just talking about an issue without a reference point can lead into a problem becoming confused and focus is more easily lost. Also, e-mail gives us the opportunity to sit back for a couple of minutes and think about problems instead of feeling urged to just fire back an answer.
So the decision on which option is the best for communication comes down to the issue and the individuals involved.
I know what it costs per hour (about $100) and the total cost to record an album ($1-2k for a demo, about 10k-??? for a full on professional album). It's NOT THAT EXPENSIVE.
It took Steely Dan 2 years of recording time to do the Gaucho album with professional studio musicians that probably wouldn't answer the phone for 100 dollars. Care to revise these figures?
The studio built under your local guitar shop is a far different beast from a professional studio.
The 5 corporate moguls you speak of worked with many more artists than Trend has and has made that money back many fold. Or do you really think that record execs make one band profitable and they never work again? Please.
It's funny to hear NIN fans and Trend supporters caw on about his talent. The man floundered for years on his own work. Only when he could do a demo on "borrowed" studio time and resources as a janitor did he ever make a dime from his music when he sold out to TVT who paid for him to record PHM.
Anyone with any real knowledge of labels will tell you how much of a joke it is that Mr. Trend "musical integrity" Reznor signed a contract with TVT. He may as well been on K-Tel. TVT is the sausage factory of all music labels. So much for him and his high handed attitudes about doing it all for the music and for the fans.
The bottom line is that Trend did try to make it on his "talents" and never got a foothold as a profitable artist without a record contract. The babble about PHM being an indy album is like claiming that Scaled Composites is couple of guys in a garage workshop that cranked out a space ship.
If you got data that is so sensitive that you're worried about Google processing it for some kind of ad targeting purpose you should be worried enough to spend a few bucks and get a webhost for your data. You can get a webhost with a couple of gigs of storage and more transfer for ~10 bucks a month. What's the issue?
Every one of these "video games as a moral measure" articles always mentions the downside. What if I do good?
Sure, you can label me as a hostage killer in CounterStrike for my occasional screw up in a firefight but does that mean I qualify for the G.I. Bill due to my fine combat record in Call of Duty 4?
And more-so, if I had friends that got bent out of shape because I don't lose sleep over the hostages I accidentally fragged I probably wouldn't want them around me anyway.
you shouldn't be surprised when that system comes crashing down, once an innovation comes along that turns your industry on its head.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; no price beats free.
Even if the industry was selling CDs for 12 USD on the store shelves and had been doing that since the real significant drop in CD prices in the late 80s or early 90s you'd still have a hard time selling when the free alternative came around.
The difference is that Trend Reznor is an established product of the music industry. Yes, he is the product that they marketed him as and if Trend were honest he'd probably admit that he'd have a pretty hard time ahead of him today if he were at square one trying to establish himself.
The man is fortunate that he will be able to live off of NIN nostalgia for the rest of his life. We can't really put a price tag on how much of an advantage that is for him.
It's easy to scoff at the industry structure once you've taken all you can from them. Like any other business deal there is a break even point and Trend is on the losing side of that deal now. His record label doubtlessly lost a ton of artists just like him without ever seeing any real payback for their investment. If Trend wasn't so self-centered he'd be able to see this relationship and understand that while he may not need them today they carried his ass to where he's gotten to.
He reminds me of a young 20-something thumbing his nose at his parents after they went through all the expense and pains of raising them and putting their ass through school. Of course, we'd see the 20-something with his new job and his first apartment as ungrateful little jerk while most seem to be cheering Trend on. But the relationship really is no different.
What did we lose? Well, in a lot of cases, liner notes, the cool label on the media, etc.
For what it's worth Rush's Snakes and Arrows MVI is one hell of a lot better than anything I ever got from an LP package.
And don't get me wrong. Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery is the reason I got into H.R. Giger and I still have all the original goodies out of Pink Floyd's DSOTM album but it simply can not compare to this. The unfortunate part is that as the physical media's sales sink the less and less reason that bands will have to go this extra mile.
All the music industry has to do is say, "Go ahead, pirate it, lose all the music in the future" Then it wont be fun anymore. ..
Do you honestly people have that much of an interest or a scope on the future of music? Music downloads today are no different than Enron when it comes right down to it; people who don't really care about the future of the industry filling their pockets (and hard drives) with as much as they can before the whole thing collapses and hoping that they don't get caught in the fall out.
Just like music piracy, Enron didn't only cause problems for their stockholders, they brought down hammers on an entire industry. The shockwave of this kind of greed spreads out over multiple industries and ultimately damages the future of both the primary industry and those industries that have direct connections. Luckily for those who got hosed in the Enron scandal is that it's both government regulated and the product can't simply be downloaded. Even at that rate there were tons of well intentioned people who lost everything and are probably eating dog food out of a can today. Not all business casualties are guys in Beamers with 2000 dollar suits. There are real 9-5 working slobs types who need that investment dollar for their retirement and to get their kids off to college. Nothing sucks more than to see good paying jobs (as in 40-50K a year, not millions) get squashed because some jackass thinks it's their right to do as the will and not worry about who they might be screwing over. Ever wonder why we've become such a WalMart nation with foreclosures being more of a rule and not an unfortunate series of circumstance?
We're seeing tons of people pointing to the Radiohead model and screaming that it works. Yeah, it worked for the first band out the door with all the free publicity it could handle. What happens when an equally talent bunch of musicians with no fan base and no front page articles on MSNBC.com try the same thing? They're more likely to turn no profit and fade into obscurity. But why care about that as long as we can continue to download as much Pink Floyd and Eminem as we can stomach?
also, isn't music these days already lost?
There is tons of good music today. If you're still motivated enough to find it, that is. It's great that kids can get together and make a few songs and let people a half a world away hear it. The question is about finding it and if these kids can maintain the cash flow it takes to keep pumping out songs.
My guess? Long lived bands are going to become fewer and fewer. If you think that pop music today sucks wait until the market has thousands of copycats using karaoke machines instead of the dozen or so boy bands, R&B, hip hop or whatever leeches. Bands that can't live off a small fanbase as they were able to in the past will have no chance in the future.
Everyone screams "Go tour" but touring costs money and with a smaller (let's call it indy) fanbase these guys aren't going to be able to put together the revenue to do a serious tour and playing bars and small clubs simply isn't profitable. Established bands can live off of touring, small bands use it to promote their merchandise and get a few free beers. I really don't see why people can't understand this. Maybe most of them never seen the underside of professional music where labels like SST, Touch-N-Go and Discord flourished because they ran their own mail order but most of their bands never got past a couple of LPs and maybe a song on a comp.
In all seriousness, what would it take to create a _third_ party in the US, if one wanted to run for office but did wanted to be associated with neither Democrats nor Republicans? Would that even be possible under US law? (Or why not?)
Sure, it can be done and it is done but not to the degree it would take to seriously compete with the large parties. We've had third party and independent candidates in probably every office in the US government aside from the president (and of course, vice president).
Getting on the ballet normally only involves so many petitions to be signed and sometimes a filing fee.
I mean, aside from the considerable cash required for any political campaign (under any system, in any country); assume one has enough cash to burn.
Cash is a problem most times, yes, but not all the time...
I'm assuming you're not an American from some of the questions so excuse me if some of this doesn't make perfect sense; Recently there was an overturn of Republicans in the federal and state legislative branches (House of Representatives and Senate) mostly because of ill-will towards Bush and the Iraq war. My state, Pennsylvania, is largely Democratic in party base. But there was one stand out election: A young kid was running against and older incumbent Democrat for a state senate (I believe, it may have been a representative). The Democrat spent somewhere in the area of a million dollars on a TV and print campaign that was nothing more than stating he was the Democrat incumbent and asking who the other candidate was. While this election was not in my district it was close enough that I seen many of the TV adverts. It was a real piss poor effort on the incumbent's part and frankly it pissed me off to see that someone who was elected thought that their party alignment should be good enough to get them re-elected.
As it turns out the incumbent lost!
The reason that a lot of people outside of the district didn't know the young Republican was because he only spent 2000 USD on his bid for the office and relied mainly on grassroot tactics to get his name known. It seems that a large number of the voters in the district were just as upset with the incumbent's smug attitude about "begin the Democrat" and tossed him out on his ass.
So yeah, if you get a candidate that creates enough ill will it seems that he can be defeated regardless of party, incumbency or money spent on the campaign.
Yeah, because physically printed media is exempt from bias. [/sarcasm]
While PC Gamer is certainly a lot better off than it use to be I still remember the days where a game was either considered shit or a gift from God. Seriously. Just a few years ago everything as either over 80% or under 25%. It kind of fouled my taste for their magazine.
Good save.
how can america get one of these?
Stop supporting the same old bullshit by not voting democrat or republican? That's my guess.
Wow, you must think you're witty but again, you're rewarding someone for deceiving you, lying about the deception and repaying them with ill-gained loyalty. If that's your idea of how things should work I guess it will work out fine for you.
If EMI cuts a significant amount of funding to the RIAA then I will go back to buying CD's from them.
Step on up, folks! There is a sucker born every minute and we have one right here for your amusement!
It seems that you really don't understand the RIAA's role in this game do you? The RIAA could not have sued on the label's behalf without the blessing of the label! Are you really going to be one of those rubes who thinks that EMI was misrepresented by the RIAA? The RIAA is EMI's customer, not the other way around!
EMI is doing this only to gain goodwill on the sucker's, err... I mean, the customer's part hoping that the customer will continue to point the finger at the RIAA when the fact is that EMI is even more to blame and could have called off it's dogs years ago.
And this isn't to say that I don't support the industry's right to protect it's own product. I really do. I think the "free trade" of music is going to do more damage in the long run and I would rather see music bought. But I'm certainly not going to be a stooge to EMI thinking that the RIAA went around for years sueing people and that EMI has finally caught on to the RIAA's evil ways.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprise if EMI or one of their ilk wasn't the ones to suggest lawsuits to the RIAA.
Which would you rather have: some dope smokers or kids with bullets in their backs because of gang activity? The gangs won't go away 100%, no, but what is driving them is largely the drug trade. This can not be denied and to deny it is to deny any potential solution the war on drugs may offer.
Maybe if these substances were free of their black market status they'd lose their allure.
It's hard to argue with EMI's logic there
Considering that EMI never said what was in the blurb and it was a blatant misrepresentation?
perhaps DRM will go the way of prohibition
The thing is that prohibition really didn't go away and the war on drugs is the remnants of prohibition. You were conned into thinking that we won some great victory when, in fact, we merely gained back the "right" to what they could tax.
That's the same thing the hippies said back in the 60s. Now that they're the ones with the reigns in their hands and what has changed?
Thanks for bringing this up. I was 98% sure it did as I always considered one of the best level names in any game was from Half Life 1 ("We have hostiles")
Value is not just a function of time of use.
Not always no, but you're also mixing apples and oranges. Most people feel better with a 30 dollar meal over the 5 dollar deal-o-the-day at the local taco joint. Most people feel ripped off by a 10 dollar pen because a 45 cent Bic Clic Stic does the same thing and for most people is just as nice. A wedding is a once in a lifetime kind of event. People hate to skimp on those things.
I'd mostly file your post under bad analogy but in someways you'd be correct. While I don't think that time of use is the only measure of value it certainly is a big one in a lot of cases.