Much as you might not like the Beatles, some (but not all) of their rather broad and diverse catalog still stomps the crap out of just about any rock band that ever existed. Yeah, Led Zeppelin was great, too -- but much of their stuff is pompous, self-indulgent claptrap. Pink Floyd was great, but a lot of their stuff was silly, navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual rubbish, with a good measure of holier-than-thou arrogance thrown in. And honestly, I doubt that either of those bands would deny the debt they owe to the Beatles.
Wow. You sounded sort of rational and convincing until this point, where your Beatles fanboyism came gushing out.
Led Zeppelin, I think it's widely acknowledged, are great for their guitar work and for bringing that style of music to the (white) masses and into the popular consciousness, but in their own right are probably not "great" musicians in the historical sense. But Pink Floyd... to say "a lot of their stuff was silly navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual rubbish" whilst defending the band which wrote lyrics like:
I'd ask my friends to come and see An octopus' garden with me I'd like to be under the sea In an octopus' garden in the shade.
and
Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower. Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna. Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe. I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus, goo goo gajoob ga goo goo gajoob (rhythmical speaking along with juba's). Juba juba juba, juba, juba, juba, juba, juba, juba juba. Juba juba..... (speaking)
is just laughable. In fact, let me go one further. The Beatles are to Pink Floyd what Coldplay is to Radiohead: one writes catchier and perhaps more memorable songs than the other, but the other truly composes music rather than coming up with a good tune, and dares to create totally new musical concepts rather than tweaking and refining a reliable formula. I will admit the Beatles went through their creative phases, but your anti-Floyd attack is just stupid.
So, let's look at the rest of your ramblings:
Yeah. Kind of like Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, et al? Or do you hear the modern youth bumpin' those classics as they roll down the block? Yeah, man, music is dead all right. Might as well cut off our ears.
Well, go into any half-decent music shop and I'll bet you find more Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven recordings on the shelf than Beatles, Floyd and Zeppelin. So it will be interesting to see how many Beatles CDs there are on the shelves (or whatever the 2038 equivalent is) in, say, 30 years time. I'd bet that many 'kids' will perhaps listen to a best of, a few will delve deeper, and most will have heard 1 or 2 songs, mostly those that the band and rights holders seem to kindly license to advertisers.
diverse catalog still stomps the crap out of just about any rock band that ever existed
I direct you to one Mr Bob Dylan. While your boys were singing "She loves you yeah yeah yeah", he was writing "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and "Masters of War". By the time the fab four got to something really interesting like Sargeant Pepper's, Dylan had (a) been the first popular musician to take a truly electric sound on the road, (b) reinvented himself from folk hero to rock rebel and in the process understood for the first time the true nature of modern musical stardom and the complex relationship between the superstar and the audience (c) written songs of huge cultural and musical significance like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", (d) released easily the longest and most substantial 'single' to that date in the form of "Like a Rolling Stone", (e) invented a totally new sound (the "thin wild mercury sound" of Blonde on Blonde) and released arguably the most consistently good rock album ever in the process, (f
Narrator: The depositions had been delayed, but the prosecution was about to get a Lord and Taylor bag full of evidence.
Detective Munch: We supply the glitter, the glue, the crepe paper and the ready-made template pages for you to decorate and fill out with... "My Favorite Birthday," "Foreign Bank Statements," and of course, "Shh! Family Secrets."
Narrator: The scrapbooking sting had helped the D.A. gather evidence against people as diverse as Ken Lay, Oliver North, but ironically not Martha Stewart.
Detective Munch: So dig up whatever you can and remember, photocopies are not admissible as memories.
Tobias: Uh, sir, Iâ(TM)m going to have to go or our old family storage unit in Reseda.
Detective Munch: No problem. We can arrange for a helicopter to take you there right now.
Tobias: Wow, this is the best free scrapbooking class Iâ(TM)ve ever taken.
Precisely. GP post is an absolute load of nonsense, and of course fails to cite any sources for his/her diatribe.
The majority of "atheist"-caused deaths which are presumably being referred to were motivated by a desire to obtain and maintain political and social control, not to 'eradicate religion' because of its ideological conflict with atheism. The fact that the perpetrators were from ideologies which were also atheistic does not mean that any of those deaths are attributable to atheism. For example, the Soviet Union was not in any sense motivated by a desire to champion atheism as an ideology: it was motivated by a desire to maintain state control, and the church in Russia was regarded as a potential threat to state control.
In contrast, a great many people have been killed by religious groups specifically in the name of religion, i.e. as a deliberate attempt to impose and enforce a particular religious belief for its own sake.
It's also lopsided if you reject the infantile reasoning that past deaths justify future murders.
A modern military force aggressively and methodically assaulting a primarily civilian region outside its national borders containing a few militias armed with crude explosives and rocks looks pretty lopsided to most rational people.
Israel is clearly violating the firm international law against collective punishment. It is killing and intimidating an entire population to punish it for the crimes of a few. If you think that this type of behaviour is acceptable, then I presume you also think that September 11 was acceptable insofar as the US has not exactly been an angel in its activities in the Middle East and therefore it was acceptable for a group from that region to exact revenge on defenceless US civilians? No? How odd.
Your comments about the Palestine being a "welfare state" also ignore the principal causes of that, namely Israel's control over passage into and out of Palestine and Israel's seizure of large sections of useful land within Palestine. Most countries would probably be welfare states under such circumstances. Your comments about aid are also laughable given that Israel is the world's largest recipient of foreign aid.
Until Israel removes all illegal settlements and withdraws to its original borders, it will not have the moral high ground in this debate. If it does that and is subsequently attacked, then it will have my full sympathy and will be justified in limited and properly targeted retaliation.
Other advantages of being stationary are that you can afford the space/weight to add additional infrastructure which you would never fit in a vehicle.
For instance:
- you could try building it in a near-vaccuum or at least low-pressure chamber to make air resistance negligible
- the heavy and complex equipment needed for extremely low friction bearings (or even something frictionless) could be much more easily constructed on land
For some reason I love flywheels. They're just so much more elegant than chemical energy storage.
What's weird is that on an individual level, I never meet anyone who wants: - net censorship - more speed cameras - more alcohol and drug testing - compulsory ID cards - biometric passports - DNA databases - detention without charge.
And yet we have had successive governments ramming these things down our throats for about 10 years now.
Australians are, on the whole, fairly laid back (some might argue this is the problem, because we as a community never seem to stand up and fight). There is a definite tradition of irreverence for institutions here. But lately it seems to be being overtaken by a nasty, petty sort of "ok, let's get serious" meme in government. Sort of like the powers that be have finally decided to "stop kidding around" and start kicking our arses until we behave.
My theory is that because we have never had a totalitarian government or fought in a civil war for our liberty, we have no sense of what it's worth.
Thank you for saving me some typing. This is half the reason why the average consumer has no idea what they are doing when they buy a TV - the media constantly confusing the terminology in this way.
The greens and the liberals have both stated they will not support a mandatory filter and they intend to block it in the senate - so it's not going anywhere fast.
Bad news, there's not going to be anything to block - the laws permitting the filter are already in place. Howard may not have been developing the filter itself, but he had already put the legislative framework in place.
Now, if'n y'all don't mind, I have to go sue the folks who make Red Bull now, since their cans weren't shaped in a way to prevent me from dropping it on the table and accidentally soaking my laptop while absorbing the sheer chutzpah of the ambulance-chaser's commentary in the referenced article.
I agree that this lawsuit is stupid.
However, to play devil's advocate, the Red Bull folks don't encourage you to stand directly in front of your TV with a can in your hands, spinning and waving your arms in a rapid and excited fashion in relation to things which are happening on the screen, occasionally flicking the can towards the TV or simulating a throw with it whilst it is tethered to your wrist by a small and, it seems, breakable strap.
So your analogy is not totally valid. People who do this are still stupid. But there is a higher risk of a Wii-mote breaking something you own in this fashion in something close to what can be described as 'normal' use than most other similarly sized and weighted objects.
Thank you for taking three pages to type answers to my intentionally silly questions. I was simply making the point, which you still haven't answered, that there is nothing unique about this particular person which makes them any more deserving of coverage than, say, any other person who has been sued by the *IAA.
So you know or should know that this isn't an attempt at the logical fallacy of ad misercordiam, but rather an attempt to provide more evidence that the RIAA's campaign is one of extortion and fear rather than a wronged party trying every reasonable measure to recover what's rightfully theirs.
"More evidence" of this kind does not actually add anything to the philosophical debate. So I would say, yes, it is indeed an appeal to pity, or an appeal to consequences.
Let me put it differently. If you substituted a person for the "sick girl" who got screwed over in a similar fashion by the RIAA, what would that detract from the story about the current copyright war? If you removed the RIAA and substituted 'anonymous civil litigant', what would that detract from the story in terms of the problems of the legal system?
The fact she was in the hospital made it impossible for her to respond to the complaint thus why she has a default judgement on her. They likely served her, and not her parents and thus her being in the hospital meant she never opened her mail.
So yes her being sick is relevant, they would never have gotten as far as they did if she had not been sick.
That is a criticism of the legal process, not the RIAA. So the story should be about "Legal system fails sick girl", and would make the same point without even mentioning the RIAA and copyright. But of course that wouldn't allow us to get whipped up into a self-righteous frenzy here, would it?
OMG THEY SUED A SICK PERSON! I bet they didn't even know she was sick.
Thank you, that was my whole point summarised in one sentence.
There's no question the *IAA are complete fucktards, but this story is quite plainly intended to create additional sympathy for the anti-*IAA cause by wheeling out an extremely sympathetic victim.
The computer illiterate grandmother was a slightly different example - she couldn't have breached their copyright.
In contrast, this is just a person who they should (morally/ethically) leave the hell alone. But it adds nothing to the debate about their abuse of the legal system under a set of laws and policies which permit them to do so.
...but what does her state of health have to do with anything?
Is there a suggestion they went out to find someone especially vulnerable?
That having this disease makes it impossible for you to pirate music?
That sick people should get a free pass on legal liabilities?
This type of emotive argument is fairly silly and pointless. This person being sued is no worse an example than that of anyone else who is sued by these thugs.
I'm well aware of that add on. Call me when it displays URLs only, and only suggests them based upon the same algorithm used by FF2. Until then, it just reduces the level of annoyance produced by the new address bar.
But it doesn't! You can always be dick and type the whole URL out, it won't stop you. It probably just sets a variable "userIsSadistic" or something. Jeeze.
You don't get it do you? In FF2, if I want (say) google, I can type g+[enter] in the address bar and rely on the fact that Google is my most commonly visited site with an address starting with 'g'. If I need more precision, one or two letters is usually enough.
Now if I type 'g' I get a random range of options from my bookmarks, history etc which contain the letter 'g' anywhere in their name or URL. THIS IS NOT USEFUL. More to the point, it's not the behaviour I want, and I know many, many other Firefox users agree (just do some Googling to see the epic flame wars).
Also, what if I want my browser to maintain a history, but I don't want it flashing randomly across my address bar in moderate detail when I type something in? What if I want to bookmark things, but don't want the contents of my bookmarks advertised on screen when I want to type in a URL?
I don't understand why you can't understand that some people don't like this 'feature'?
It's one thing to say you like it, but another thing to attack others for not doing the same. Grow up and accept that it is a legitimate criticism of FF3 that it forces users to adopt a particular auto-complete system for the address bar which runs contrary to years of established practice.
As for "install another bare bones browser", I think you'll find it's called Firefox 2 and it's all you need...
I totally agree. After how much trying is one entitled to simply decide that one does not like a particular piece of software?
FF3 has decided that people like me, who actually like using URLs to access on-line resources (crazy, I know) would rather have some higher-level language based address system which trawls through your history and bookmarks and spews them forth into the address bar whether you want them there or not. I have tried everything to disable this "feature" without success.
It would be trivial for them to include options about this stuff, but apparently the old ways are forbidden and options are 'confusing'. That kind of attitude is what ultimately loses you users.
I actually don't think that this general idea is the stupidest idea in the world. It would be much more reflective of the way music is produced and distributed now for there to be a more generalised licensing system, rather than a pay-per-track/album system like we have now.
However, the obvious problems with this proposal are:
- why should the RIAA get to operate the scheme? - who decides which artists are able (or have) to participate? - why should the RIAA set the price (and not, say, the market)?
It's extremely unfashionable, but setting up social systems where the rights and interests of some are protected in a way which adequately protects the rights and interests of the whole is basically the whole point of government...
As per my comment further up, none of your examples are a problem if we adopt "no further possibility of life" as our definition of death.
- drowning victims who are revived: were never dead - drowning victims who are not revived: dead - surgery patients: were never dead - dog: never dead - cryogenically frozen people: probably dead, but we should probably be careful in case they are not
All you are saying is that "clinically dead" (as you define it) != "dead".
Isn't this whole discussion rather like saying "I can switch my computer on, then off, then on again, therefore there is no such thing as 'on' or 'off', just a continuum of states of 'on'-ness"?
Or (perhaps a better example) what about an engine which has just been switched off, but still has enough momentum in it to keep running if fuel supply is restored? Because this scenario exists, does that mean that the engine can never really be "off"?
I would define death as the point at which there is no further possibility of living (in a physical/empirical sense, not a religious one). Anyone who has "come back to life" was therefore never dead to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. You sounded sort of rational and convincing until this point, where your Beatles fanboyism came gushing out.
Led Zeppelin, I think it's widely acknowledged, are great for their guitar work and for bringing that style of music to the (white) masses and into the popular consciousness, but in their own right are probably not "great" musicians in the historical sense. But Pink Floyd... to say "a lot of their stuff was silly navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual rubbish" whilst defending the band which wrote lyrics like:
and
is just laughable. In fact, let me go one further. The Beatles are to Pink Floyd what Coldplay is to Radiohead: one writes catchier and perhaps more memorable songs than the other, but the other truly composes music rather than coming up with a good tune, and dares to create totally new musical concepts rather than tweaking and refining a reliable formula. I will admit the Beatles went through their creative phases, but your anti-Floyd attack is just stupid.
So, let's look at the rest of your ramblings:
Well, go into any half-decent music shop and I'll bet you find more Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven recordings on the shelf than Beatles, Floyd and Zeppelin. So it will be interesting to see how many Beatles CDs there are on the shelves (or whatever the 2038 equivalent is) in, say, 30 years time. I'd bet that many 'kids' will perhaps listen to a best of, a few will delve deeper, and most will have heard 1 or 2 songs, mostly those that the band and rights holders seem to kindly license to advertisers.
I direct you to one Mr Bob Dylan. While your boys were singing "She loves you yeah yeah yeah", he was writing "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and "Masters of War". By the time the fab four got to something really interesting like Sargeant Pepper's, Dylan had (a) been the first popular musician to take a truly electric sound on the road, (b) reinvented himself from folk hero to rock rebel and in the process understood for the first time the true nature of modern musical stardom and the complex relationship between the superstar and the audience (c) written songs of huge cultural and musical significance like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", (d) released easily the longest and most substantial 'single' to that date in the form of "Like a Rolling Stone", (e) invented a totally new sound (the "thin wild mercury sound" of Blonde on Blonde) and released arguably the most consistently good rock album ever in the process, (f
To repeat a comment from another Lexus-related thread:
Whatever their other failings, I do not think you will see this type of thing from companies like BMW or Mercedes.
Do Americans realise that a Lexus is (a) just a Toyota with a different badge and (b) not really regarded as a prestige car outside the US?
I am constantly taken aback by referenced in US films, TV shows etc to Lexii as though they are a status symbol of some worth.
Precisely. GP post is an absolute load of nonsense, and of course fails to cite any sources for his/her diatribe.
The majority of "atheist"-caused deaths which are presumably being referred to were motivated by a desire to obtain and maintain political and social control, not to 'eradicate religion' because of its ideological conflict with atheism. The fact that the perpetrators were from ideologies which were also atheistic does not mean that any of those deaths are attributable to atheism. For example, the Soviet Union was not in any sense motivated by a desire to champion atheism as an ideology: it was motivated by a desire to maintain state control, and the church in Russia was regarded as a potential threat to state control.
In contrast, a great many people have been killed by religious groups specifically in the name of religion, i.e. as a deliberate attempt to impose and enforce a particular religious belief for its own sake.
It's also lopsided if you reject the infantile reasoning that past deaths justify future murders.
A modern military force aggressively and methodically assaulting a primarily civilian region outside its national borders containing a few militias armed with crude explosives and rocks looks pretty lopsided to most rational people.
Israel is clearly violating the firm international law against collective punishment. It is killing and intimidating an entire population to punish it for the crimes of a few. If you think that this type of behaviour is acceptable, then I presume you also think that September 11 was acceptable insofar as the US has not exactly been an angel in its activities in the Middle East and therefore it was acceptable for a group from that region to exact revenge on defenceless US civilians? No? How odd.
Your comments about the Palestine being a "welfare state" also ignore the principal causes of that, namely Israel's control over passage into and out of Palestine and Israel's seizure of large sections of useful land within Palestine. Most countries would probably be welfare states under such circumstances. Your comments about aid are also laughable given that Israel is the world's largest recipient of foreign aid.
Until Israel removes all illegal settlements and withdraws to its original borders, it will not have the moral high ground in this debate. If it does that and is subsequently attacked, then it will have my full sympathy and will be justified in limited and properly targeted retaliation.
Other advantages of being stationary are that you can afford the space/weight to add additional infrastructure which you would never fit in a vehicle.
For instance:
- you could try building it in a near-vaccuum or at least low-pressure chamber to make air resistance negligible
- the heavy and complex equipment needed for extremely low friction bearings (or even something frictionless) could be much more easily constructed on land
For some reason I love flywheels. They're just so much more elegant than chemical energy storage.
The next step will simply be to ban 'unlicensed' encryption.
Don't think they won't do it.
I'm Australian.
What's weird is that on an individual level, I never meet anyone who wants:
- net censorship
- more speed cameras
- more alcohol and drug testing
- compulsory ID cards
- biometric passports
- DNA databases
- detention without charge.
And yet we have had successive governments ramming these things down our throats for about 10 years now.
Australians are, on the whole, fairly laid back (some might argue this is the problem, because we as a community never seem to stand up and fight). There is a definite tradition of irreverence for institutions here. But lately it seems to be being overtaken by a nasty, petty sort of "ok, let's get serious" meme in government. Sort of like the powers that be have finally decided to "stop kidding around" and start kicking our arses until we behave.
My theory is that because we have never had a totalitarian government or fought in a civil war for our liberty, we have no sense of what it's worth.
Thank you for saving me some typing. This is half the reason why the average consumer has no idea what they are doing when they buy a TV - the media constantly confusing the terminology in this way.
So if I understand you correctly you're saying that repeating that phrase decreases understanding of of statistics and scientific research methods?
Bad news, there's not going to be anything to block - the laws permitting the filter are already in place. Howard may not have been developing the filter itself, but he had already put the legislative framework in place.
I agree that this lawsuit is stupid.
However, to play devil's advocate, the Red Bull folks don't encourage you to stand directly in front of your TV with a can in your hands, spinning and waving your arms in a rapid and excited fashion in relation to things which are happening on the screen, occasionally flicking the can towards the TV or simulating a throw with it whilst it is tethered to your wrist by a small and, it seems, breakable strap.
So your analogy is not totally valid. People who do this are still stupid. But there is a higher risk of a Wii-mote breaking something you own in this fashion in something close to what can be described as 'normal' use than most other similarly sized and weighted objects.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/asplos98/dilbert.html
Thank you for taking three pages to type answers to my intentionally silly questions. I was simply making the point, which you still haven't answered, that there is nothing unique about this particular person which makes them any more deserving of coverage than, say, any other person who has been sued by the *IAA.
"More evidence" of this kind does not actually add anything to the philosophical debate. So I would say, yes, it is indeed an appeal to pity, or an appeal to consequences.
Let me put it differently. If you substituted a person for the "sick girl" who got screwed over in a similar fashion by the RIAA, what would that detract from the story about the current copyright war? If you removed the RIAA and substituted 'anonymous civil litigant', what would that detract from the story in terms of the problems of the legal system?
That is a criticism of the legal process, not the RIAA. So the story should be about "Legal system fails sick girl", and would make the same point without even mentioning the RIAA and copyright. But of course that wouldn't allow us to get whipped up into a self-righteous frenzy here, would it?
Thank you, that was my whole point summarised in one sentence.
There's no question the *IAA are complete fucktards, but this story is quite plainly intended to create additional sympathy for the anti-*IAA cause by wheeling out an extremely sympathetic victim.
The computer illiterate grandmother was a slightly different example - she couldn't have breached their copyright.
In contrast, this is just a person who they should (morally/ethically) leave the hell alone. But it adds nothing to the debate about their abuse of the legal system under a set of laws and policies which permit them to do so.
...but what does her state of health have to do with anything?
Is there a suggestion they went out to find someone especially vulnerable?
That having this disease makes it impossible for you to pirate music?
That sick people should get a free pass on legal liabilities?
This type of emotive argument is fairly silly and pointless. This person being sued is no worse an example than that of anyone else who is sued by these thugs.
I'm well aware of that add on. Call me when it displays URLs only, and only suggests them based upon the same algorithm used by FF2. Until then, it just reduces the level of annoyance produced by the new address bar.
But it doesn't! You can always be dick and type the whole URL out, it won't stop you. It probably just sets a variable "userIsSadistic" or something. Jeeze.
You don't get it do you? In FF2, if I want (say) google, I can type g+[enter] in the address bar and rely on the fact that Google is my most commonly visited site with an address starting with 'g'. If I need more precision, one or two letters is usually enough.
Now if I type 'g' I get a random range of options from my bookmarks, history etc which contain the letter 'g' anywhere in their name or URL. THIS IS NOT USEFUL. More to the point, it's not the behaviour I want, and I know many, many other Firefox users agree (just do some Googling to see the epic flame wars).
Also, what if I want my browser to maintain a history, but I don't want it flashing randomly across my address bar in moderate detail when I type something in? What if I want to bookmark things, but don't want the contents of my bookmarks advertised on screen when I want to type in a URL?
I don't understand why you can't understand that some people don't like this 'feature'?
It's one thing to say you like it, but another thing to attack others for not doing the same. Grow up and accept that it is a legitimate criticism of FF3 that it forces users to adopt a particular auto-complete system for the address bar which runs contrary to years of established practice.
As for "install another bare bones browser", I think you'll find it's called Firefox 2 and it's all you need...
I totally agree. After how much trying is one entitled to simply decide that one does not like a particular piece of software?
FF3 has decided that people like me, who actually like using URLs to access on-line resources (crazy, I know) would rather have some higher-level language based address system which trawls through your history and bookmarks and spews them forth into the address bar whether you want them there or not. I have tried everything to disable this "feature" without success.
It would be trivial for them to include options about this stuff, but apparently the old ways are forbidden and options are 'confusing'. That kind of attitude is what ultimately loses you users.
I actually don't think that this general idea is the stupidest idea in the world. It would be much more reflective of the way music is produced and distributed now for there to be a more generalised licensing system, rather than a pay-per-track/album system like we have now.
However, the obvious problems with this proposal are:
- why should the RIAA get to operate the scheme?
- who decides which artists are able (or have) to participate?
- why should the RIAA set the price (and not, say, the market)?
It's extremely unfashionable, but setting up social systems where the rights and interests of some are protected in a way which adequately protects the rights and interests of the whole is basically the whole point of government...
As per my comment further up, none of your examples are a problem if we adopt "no further possibility of life" as our definition of death.
- drowning victims who are revived: were never dead
- drowning victims who are not revived: dead
- surgery patients: were never dead
- dog: never dead
- cryogenically frozen people: probably dead, but we should probably be careful in case they are not
All you are saying is that "clinically dead" (as you define it) != "dead".
Isn't this whole discussion rather like saying "I can switch my computer on, then off, then on again, therefore there is no such thing as 'on' or 'off', just a continuum of states of 'on'-ness"?
Or (perhaps a better example) what about an engine which has just been switched off, but still has enough momentum in it to keep running if fuel supply is restored? Because this scenario exists, does that mean that the engine can never really be "off"?
I would define death as the point at which there is no further possibility of living (in a physical/empirical sense, not a religious one). Anyone who has "come back to life" was therefore never dead to begin with.