I hope to earn money from live performances someday, but I'm determined that my recordings will always be free.
For now, my aim is to build a base of fans who might buy tickets to my shows someday, and to study piano and music theory so that a few years from now, when I can pass the entrance audition, I can enroll in music school to study musical composition.
BitTorrent is crucial for the economical distribution of large-filesize media. Many Open Source and Free Software publishers use BitTorrent to distribute their installers. Jamendo, a distributor of Creative Commons-licensed music, uses both BitTorrent and eMule.
BitTorrent is also critical to unsigned musicians such as myself who offer downloads of their music from their websites. P2P allows bandwidth to be contributed by one's fans, whereas direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling artist if one of their tracks becomes a sudden hit.
And yes I know there are many music hosting sites such as MySpace. But it's better for musicians to offer downloads from their own sites rather than to use a host.
I've read several reports of those pilotless drones firing from the air. I expect they're under remote control though.
There's something that really bothers me about this robotic warfare business - it doesn't seem fair to fight a war that doesn't put your troops at risk. My concern is that if the US were able to wage war with no risk of life at all, it might become quite a bit more despotic to other countries.
Where one is often advised to "mindpixel yourself", "klerck yourself" or use "shotgun mouthwash" or "winchester mouthwash".
I have schizoaffective disorder. It's just like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time. One of the symptoms is severe depression: I have attempted suicide twice. There were several years where I was almost continuously suicidal. It was quite a grim existence.
I also know now that depression is actually a delusional state; feeling that life is not worth living is no more real than regarding oneself as the Emperor of France. It can almost always be effectively treated, and often cured completely.
I have found many times that the antidepressants I take for it (imipramine these days) have the effect of changing the behaviour of other people, making them friendlier towards me. Strangers are more likely to strike up conversations with me when I'm medicated.
Consider: the Alberta Tar Sands are now the world's largest oil reserves, given that the Saudi oilfields are likely at their peak.
Extraction wasn't economical for a long while, but with the high price of oil lately, it has become extremely economical. There's such an economic boom going on that high school boys are dropping out of school to drive trucks in the oil fields.
You might claim I'm trolling, but I'm not. I'm absolutely serious.
I have experimented with many color schemes on several websites I run, which tend to be very text-intensive. I've found I prefer black on light gray. Click the link in my sig for an example.
That's how I make my credit card payment - I filled in a web form with my routing and account numbers, and when I tell them to, my credit card company withdraws money from my account via EFT.
The people who do this have to get something set up with their bank, but it must not be very hard because that's all the phishing spammers need to rob you.
Of course when the fraud is discovered, the bank will shut down their accounts and report them to the authorities, but they will by then have withdrawn the money and disappeared without a trace.
... electronic funds transfers, and automated clearinghouse "checks".
Back in the day when I was a young coder - that was in a whole different century, mind you - we had these paper gadgets called "checks" that couldn't be cashed unless the account holder signed them. Our banks kept records called signature cards to compare them to, to make sure the checks were legit.
Even when Automatic Teller Machines came along, you needed both a card and a Personal Identification Number to withdraw cash.
But these days, anyone who knows your routing number (bank and branch number) and your account number can initiate an EFT to rob you blind! Yes, they'll get caught eventually - but your money will be long gone.
I understand that the banking industry is losing ten billion dollars a year worldwide this way. You'd think that would be enough to get them to require some kind of authentication, but I guess the efficiency savings from not having to process paper checks makes up for it.
Small comfort to the victims though.
A friend of mine who is a professor, with a PhD and very prominent in his field, with a big grant and legions of grad students, fell for a phishing scam. They withdrew $4000 from his account. He'd never heard of phishing before. So you see, the scams do pay off sometimes.
Sometimes I find myself wondering if there are alien civilizations close enough to supernovae, or black holes (which emit intense x-rays), or are in galaxies which suffer collisions, or whose home planets are hit by comets.
Any civilization without space flight capability - much more advanced than our own - would have no way to escape, and would be wiped out.
It seems like catastrophes on an astronomical scale are fairly common; how many intelligent beings have perished as a result?
I have a mental illness called schizoaffective disorder. It's just like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time.
I'm doing well these days, thanks to the heroic efforts of my pshrinks and the pharmaceutical industry, but I'm quite eccentric: someone at Kuro5hin said "You're mad as a cut snake, but at least you're an independent thinker".
My aim is to build brand-name recognition for my stage name - Michael David Crawford - and my album - Geometric Visions.
A problem I've got is that there's a famous British actor also named Michael Crawford. He starred in the London Phantom of the Opera, and he's been popular since the sixties. He's therefore got a lot of Google juice. My aim is to make my site rank ahead of all of his fan and theatre industry sites in a search for our name.
It's not required, but I figure that many of those who get my free CD will return the favor by linking my site from their own websites, weblogs or from message boards.
I wrote about it in 2003. It downloads tracks from websites like mine, where artists have placed free and legal music downloads. You rate the tracks, then it compares your ratings to those of the other users, and as time progresses becomes more and more successful at automatically picking out tracks that you'll like.
They're not afraid so much of losing CD sales to downloaders - they're afraid of being cut out of the business entirely.
I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label, thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.
For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.
Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.
I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto explains why I'm doing this.
You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.
Saddam Hussein really was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction - up until the first Gulf War at least.
I read a Scientific American article (sorry, I don't have a reference) about what weapons inspectors had uncovered, including copies of the declassified patent for an improvement to the Calutron.
Calutrons are large mass spectrometers used to refine Uranium. They are very simple in principle, but in practice they work very poorly. At first the Manhattan project tried to improve them - resulting in this patent - but after the war they abandoned it for the far more efficient Uranium Hexafluoride gas centrifuge.
I guess the Calutron was considered so obsolete that no harm was forseen in declassifying its patents.
Calutrons require massive amounts of electricity. To avoid suspicion, Hussein ran power cables hundreds of miles underground to the Calutron facilities.
The Virgin Earth Challenge prize will be open to entries for five years, with ideas assessed by a panel of judges that includes Branson, former vice president Al Gore, U.S. climate scientist James Hansen, British environmental writer and former diplomat Crispin Tickell, British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock, and Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery. The winning solution will be expected to remove one billion metric tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for ten years -- with $5 million paid at the start of that period and the remaining $20 million to follow at the end of the ten years. If no winner is identified after five years, the judges can extend the trial period.
(Emphasis mine.)
My first idea was to genetically engineer a super-vigorous form of algae and throw it in the ocean. But my biologist wife said it would do more harm than good; water that is polluted by fertilizers from agricultural runoff gets choked with algae, which also consumes oxygen, and asphyxiates the fish.
I think I first learned about Knowledge Forum from Andy at a party we attended in 1997, but I think it was already by then a mature product.
(While Knowledge Forum is proprietary, ZooLib is Open Source under the MIT license, and IMHO the best thing since sliced bread.)
Well I guess the patent is already overturned, but I doubt it's the last we'll see of educational software patents, so maybe Knowledge Forum can serve as prior art for future cases.
I didn't used to like programming, and I wasn't any good at it. I only wrote code to pay the rent until I could get a real job.
But then someone turned me on to Emacs and the GNU Manifesto. That's what made me decide to take programming seriously, and to do what it took to learn to do it well.
Slashdot Mirror
Email it to michael@geometricvisions.com
I hope to earn money from live performances someday, but I'm determined that my recordings will always be free.
For now, my aim is to build a base of fans who might buy tickets to my shows someday, and to study piano and music theory so that a few years from now, when I can pass the entrance audition, I can enroll in music school to study musical composition.
I want to compose symphonies someday!
I'm thinking of also taking up the Marimba. I think it would be fairly easy as the bars are arranged just like piano keys.
What is it about my homepage that turns you off? I really appreciate your feedback.
BitTorrent is also critical to unsigned musicians such as myself who offer downloads of their music from their websites. P2P allows bandwidth to be contributed by one's fans, whereas direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling artist if one of their tracks becomes a sudden hit.
And yes I know there are many music hosting sites such as MySpace. But it's better for musicians to offer downloads from their own sites rather than to use a host.
You have a good point.
There's something that really bothers me about this robotic warfare business - it doesn't seem fair to fight a war that doesn't put your troops at risk. My concern is that if the US were able to wage war with no risk of life at all, it might become quite a bit more despotic to other countries.
I have schizoaffective disorder. It's just like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time. One of the symptoms is severe depression: I have attempted suicide twice. There were several years where I was almost continuously suicidal. It was quite a grim existence.
I also know now that depression is actually a delusional state; feeling that life is not worth living is no more real than regarding oneself as the Emperor of France. It can almost always be effectively treated, and often cured completely.
I have found many times that the antidepressants I take for it (imipramine these days) have the effect of changing the behaviour of other people, making them friendlier towards me. Strangers are more likely to strike up conversations with me when I'm medicated.
I'm not kidding! I'm absolutely serious.
Extraction wasn't economical for a long while, but with the high price of oil lately, it has become extremely economical. There's such an economic boom going on that high school boys are dropping out of school to drive trucks in the oil fields.
You might claim I'm trolling, but I'm not. I'm absolutely serious.
I still find it surprising that it ICMP_ECHO_REPLYs my ICMP_ECHO_REQUESTs. Why?
A lot of sites disable ping because, years ago, The Ping of Death could crash a server by sending maliciously-crafted ping packets.
And you can DOS a server by flooding it with pings.
I'd be interested to know just how many pings Google receives, and replies to each day.
And how many of those are maliciously encoded, only to be defeated by the ub3rh4x0r5 at Google.
The people who do this have to get something set up with their bank, but it must not be very hard because that's all the phishing spammers need to rob you.
Of course when the fraud is discovered, the bank will shut down their accounts and report them to the authorities, but they will by then have withdrawn the money and disappeared without a trace.
Back in the day when I was a young coder - that was in a whole different century, mind you - we had these paper gadgets called "checks" that couldn't be cashed unless the account holder signed them. Our banks kept records called signature cards to compare them to, to make sure the checks were legit.
Even when Automatic Teller Machines came along, you needed both a card and a Personal Identification Number to withdraw cash.
But these days, anyone who knows your routing number (bank and branch number) and your account number can initiate an EFT to rob you blind! Yes, they'll get caught eventually - but your money will be long gone.
I understand that the banking industry is losing ten billion dollars a year worldwide this way. You'd think that would be enough to get them to require some kind of authentication, but I guess the efficiency savings from not having to process paper checks makes up for it.
Small comfort to the victims though.
A friend of mine who is a professor, with a PhD and very prominent in his field, with a big grant and legions of grad students, fell for a phishing scam. They withdrew $4000 from his account. He'd never heard of phishing before. So you see, the scams do pay off sometimes.
Any civilization without space flight capability - much more advanced than our own - would have no way to escape, and would be wiped out.
It seems like catastrophes on an astronomical scale are fairly common; how many intelligent beings have perished as a result?
As for why I'm using my real name, I'm determined not to have it taken from me. It's not even his real name; he changed his for the stage.
yeah, kuro5hin has quite a troll problem, but there are some good people there still.
I'm doing well these days, thanks to the heroic efforts of my pshrinks and the pharmaceutical industry, but I'm quite eccentric: someone at Kuro5hin said "You're mad as a cut snake, but at least you're an independent thinker".
My aim is to build brand-name recognition for my stage name - Michael David Crawford - and my album - Geometric Visions.
A problem I've got is that there's a famous British actor also named Michael Crawford. He starred in the London Phantom of the Opera, and he's been popular since the sixties. He's therefore got a lot of Google juice. My aim is to make my site rank ahead of all of his fan and theatre industry sites in a search for our name.
It's not required, but I figure that many of those who get my free CD will return the favor by linking my site from their own websites, weblogs or from message boards.
I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label, thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.
For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.
Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.
I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto explains why I'm doing this.
You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.
The articles are:
- Sermon at the Soup Kitchen: On C++ Software Quality and Institutional Resistance to Change
- Pointers, References and Values: Passing Parameters, Returning Results, and Storing Member Variables with Musings on Good C++ Style
- On Refactoring C++ Code
- Pointers to C++ Member Functions
I'm no Stroustrup, but I've received quite a bit of praise for writing these.I read a Scientific American article (sorry, I don't have a reference) about what weapons inspectors had uncovered, including copies of the declassified patent for an improvement to the Calutron.
Calutrons are large mass spectrometers used to refine Uranium. They are very simple in principle, but in practice they work very poorly. At first the Manhattan project tried to improve them - resulting in this patent - but after the war they abandoned it for the far more efficient Uranium Hexafluoride gas centrifuge.
I guess the Calutron was considered so obsolete that no harm was forseen in declassifying its patents.
Calutrons require massive amounts of electricity. To avoid suspicion, Hussein ran power cables hundreds of miles underground to the Calutron facilities.
If you don't believe me, I have a photo of one of Hussein's Calutrons (courtesy of the IAEA) at the end of this section of my essay Kiss Your Sorry Ass Goodbye! The Atom Bomb Is Gonna Fly.
(And yes, I was surprised myself to find that domain available.)
My first idea was to genetically engineer a super-vigorous form of algae and throw it in the ocean. But my biologist wife said it would do more harm than good; water that is polluted by fertilizers from agricultural runoff gets choked with algae, which also consumes oxygen, and asphyxiates the fish.
I fear to think that they might be running a whole OS instance for each seat.
Software Freedom Law Center
1995 Broadway, 17th floor
New York, NY 10023
They're a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so if you're in the US, your contribution will be tax-deductible.
It's expensive to fight lawsuits. Vote with your wallet!
I think I first learned about Knowledge Forum from Andy at a party we attended in 1997, but I think it was already by then a mature product.
(While Knowledge Forum is proprietary, ZooLib is Open Source under the MIT license, and IMHO the best thing since sliced bread.)
Well I guess the patent is already overturned, but I doubt it's the last we'll see of educational software patents, so maybe Knowledge Forum can serve as prior art for future cases.
But then someone turned me on to Emacs and the GNU Manifesto. That's what made me decide to take programming seriously, and to do what it took to learn to do it well.