Part one of my post: Record companies don't want to lock music up -- after all, why would people buy it if they could not listen to it in the way that they wanted?
There's something in here to be said about how I can't walk into a CD store, choose a CD that I think looks interesting, open it up, drop it in a CD player, and sample the product before buying it like we used to be able to do with vinyl recordings.
Part two of my post: Your claim that artists are being cheated out of their revenue is more of a popular myth than anything else. The vast majority of musicians are dying to get contracts with record companies.
Considering that I am a musician myself, and that I understand that the music companies he is referring to means "The Big Five" and not "Any Respectable Music Company, Including the Indies," I would just like to say:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Continuing from that point: Personally, I agree with your comment about radio stations -- and I think that most record companies probably do too. We would love to have more variety on the radio.
Recording industry says: Filesharing is killing the music industry.
General/. public says: Slow economy and lack of satisfaction with product (and price of) is killing the music industry.
Question: Is the industry right, or is/. right?
Answer: Yes.
To have constant drops in sales every year, who is actually naive enough to believe that one single action could be the cause of that? The industry is hurting because of the combination of many factors. Yes, the economy is down, yes, many people are buying video games and DVD's instead of CD's, and yes, some people are simply not buying CD's because they can download everything off the net. Any one of these things would not account for a catastrophe. All of them at once means the planets align and the tides change.
Instead, how about advertising a day in which everyone goes out and purchases one CD by a non-RIAA backed artist? Get stores to cooperate by posting lists of local bands' CDs carried in the stores. It would be "We support the artist" and "We donkey punch the RIAA" at the same time.
Because, y'know, the shitty customer service, higher prices than local DSL lines, and looming corporate control wasn't enough reason to quit using Verizon.
The best form of security is obscurity. How long will it take for the RIAA to start pursuing the smaller local ISP's? I doubt-- But then, those would be easier targets in the courtroom...
Maybe the best place for these online classes is as a way to teach the things that you never really wanted to learn in the first place and that you'll likely forget about as soon as you get that diploma.
I'm taking classes at a VERY expensive college in Boston, upwards of $15K a semester (with tuition, books, paying off the expensive Boston dorm/apartment, etc.). In order to take some nice $80 credits, I enrolled at Bunker Hill Community College for some gen eds. My major requires me to take History of Art and another unspecified 3 credit gen ed course. Bunker Hill offers both of these as courses with little time spent on campus. History of Art (Bunker Hill calls it "Art Appreciation") is a web course with assigned reading and tests every couple of weeks. The nonspecified gen ed I chose was "Sociology of Film", which requires you to watch a film on your own time every week and answer some short essays about the film.
The reason I like taking these courses as web courses is because: I really don't care that much. I'm sorry, but I'm a music major. I understand that the whole history of art thing is important, but when I took History of Art 1 last semester, I did nothing but sleep through the classes. The web class allows me to work at my own pace, pick up what I can, and allow lack of sleep or other necessary courses to take precedence if I need to put something ahead of it. The Film course is actually moderately amusing, but again, it keeps me from having to spend an hour on the subway twice a week to go out to Somerville to talk about it. (Like the discussion in that class would be that great. "I ARE TEH SMARTY PANTS CUZ I UNDERSTAND MEANING BEHIND TERMINATOR 2!!!!1")
Now, if I was told that my favorite music classes were going to become web classes only, like the composition classes where I sit around and get feedback on my projects from the teacher and other students, or the project classes where I learn to work with different music software, I would complain. I would in no way take those classes at home. But I think it's safe to say that just about every college student has a class in their schedule that they're being "forced" to take. A web class allows me to work when it's convenient and concentrate on the classes that are more important to me.
Now I just pray some humorless grinch doesn't mod me down as a troll for saying I don't want to learn anything...
On June 26, a middle level manager at our company opened an email claiming that a friend had sent him something "for him to see." This manager opened the email in Outlook Express. Approximately two hours later, the entire network was shut down, all of our databases were open to any traffic that wished to view it, and every computer in the department was forced to spend the rest of the day with a picture of a woman having sexual intercourse with a horse for a desktop image.
Wow, Love Hina on CN. What a concept. Do you realize how many swimsuits Funimation would have to draw?
As for putting Excel Saga on CN... how many people would get the joke? All the DBZ fans would... well, it's like how some rock stars don't understand why This Is Spinal Tap is so funny.
Y'know, that seems to be the way everyone looks at Trigun. They either think the first 12 episodes are filler and the last 12 are badass, or they think the first 12 are hilarious (a la The Slayers, etc.) and the last 12 are too heavy and unbelievable. I swear, I'm the only person who enjoys the whole damned series.
How about an offense that can actually land you jail time? Like, say, marijuana possession? Boy, that whole 'throw kids away for two years for possessing an ounce' thing, that sure keeps kids off the doobie, don't it?
This might apply for some Broadway shows, but the majority of productions depend on the interaction between the conductor and the performers.
I've seen an interesting device called a Radio Baton being used around here once or twice. It requires some basic coding skills to really use it correctly, but it gives one person quite a bit of control over a whole performance. The basic idea is that you have a recorded sequence of notes in a computer, and whenever you hit a sensitive table with one of the batons, it activates the next note in the sequence. Also, the spot on the table that you hit changes the amplitude of the sound. So one person could ideally control a whole orchestra of sounds and keep the pacing as necessary.
Here's one website on the device. Google up more if necessary. And if you believe that computer-generated samples will never completely sound like the real thing, check out information on a program called Gigasampler, a revolutionary program which learned to read music samples from ROM instead of RAM, allowing for extremely large and complex samples, far closer than anything else I've heard so far.
Isn't Sonar (Cakewalk) PC only? I haven't seen that, but I've heard it's supposed to be halfway decent. Still, doesn't have nearly as much popularity as the others.
In the past, Logic has been on PC, but apparently you didn't hear that eMagic was purchased by Apple. You may still find an older copy with similar features, but Logic is PC no more.
If there's one group of people that would be especially sad to see Apple's demise, it's the music industry. Due to stability and management of multimedia, the vast majority of composers, producers, engineers, film scorers, and even wannabe dj's tend to choose Apple OS over anything else. Two of the most popular music sequencing programs - Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer and eMagic's Logic - are Mac-only. If you ever catch a live electronic band in action with laptops, chances are those laptops have a big blue piece of fruit on the front of them.
The big news about the music world this year is OS X, which included MIDI drivers built into the computer's capacity so that the consumer doesn't need to play with the bulky OMS (Open MIDI System) freeware commonly used by most programs. New MIDI-run synthesizers can be created with OS X in mind to optimize compatibility with sequencing programs. On the one hand, every company who wants to produce music software for the Mac has had to rewrite their best software to take advantage of this fact, but now that most of this software is coming out and running smoothly, most users are extremely pleased with the update. And Apple has solidified their support for the musician by purchasing the aforementioned eMagic, a company that makes several unique and useful products for the musician. Logic was one of the first major music programs to have an OS X upgrade produced.
The professional music world is a fairly small market in comparison to the standard consumer world that the PC dominates, but its a professional world that relies on Apple almost exclusively. There's gonna be a major outcry if Apple really starts going under.
"Real human backing bands are easy enough to hire. Also get yourself a floor full of Dicreet Logic stuff, and a fully outfitted music video soundstage, and you could basically render yourself a rock star."
Not completely. The magic word is "recoupable." The record label gives you X amount of dollars to record your album, to hire outside players, to live on while you dedicate your life to music, etc. Usually they will say that this money is "recoupable." Recoupable how? Through record sales, mostly. Basically, whenever a record sells, the record companies takes your cut and puts it back toward your "debt."
However, this debt is not like a loan from the bank. If you end up never making enough money to pay back the full costs that you owe through record sales and the ilk, then that's it. Some guy in dark shades won't show up on your door asking you for more money, no bankruptcy, etc. The company eats the loss.
The real debt comes with long term deals. Let's say Band A records album 1. The album costs $20K to make. The band ends up making a cut of $15K on record sales. They're $5K in the hole. The record label could drop the band and just eat the $5K loss, but they tell the band that they want to do a second album (generally, the label has the option to force the band into another album or drop them at their free will). However, this time, since the band did ok last time, the label decides to spend a bigger budget on the band with hopes of a bigger return. Even though it has to eventually come out of the band's pocket, the record label will have a lot of say in how much gets spent. So Album 2 has a budget of $50K. The album goes out, the band recoups $30K back in record sales. So that's another $20K in the hole.
Since the company took an option for the second album, now they have to do a third album (options often come in pairs). They say "We're not wasting anymore money on this band than we have to since they're not recouping." They make a back-to-the-roots Album 3 with a $10K budget. The album is technically a hit. The band recoups $40K in record sales. But guess what? You still owe $5K from the first album, and $20K from Album 2. From your first hit record, you get a grand total of $5K. And now that you're a hit, the record label may not let you leave...
This starts a vicious perpetual cycle in which an artist can potentially NEVER see cash back from selling albums. If I had to personally say that there was a way to fix this system, I would say: spend less money on albums. Only sign naturally gifted talent and cultivate grassroots appeal rather than hiring talentless hack pairs-of-breasts and spending millions on their production fees. I'll bet John Mayer, who writes his own stuff and performs fairly simple music, saw some profits from his MTV hits, though I can't say for sure.
BTW, performance royalties for getting your song on the radio or performing live can never be used to recoup expenses for the album, partly because these are paid out by a different organization. This is why musicians usually need to perform to see any money for themselves. It's quite possible for a musician to make a half-decent living playing music while the label is losing money on him. If you walk up to a musician and tell him you paid to see his gig because you downloaded his music off the net, he may not be too peeved at you.
And yet, more times yes than you'd think
on
Why Nerds Are Unpopular
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I wasn't talking about Japanese culture as a whole. My main point was: intelligence isn't as important to American kids. I do understand a little more about Japan than what cartoons tell me, and I understand that Japan isn't utopia, but the basic principle is that the Japanese do place a lot more emphasis on how good your grades are. Japanese students as a whole spend a lot more time studying and Japanese parents put a lot more pressure on kids to get those grades. The simple fact is that being smart doesn't automatically make you a social outcast in that society.
Views of people through the media are often exaggerated, but often a basic reflection of that society. Look at Saved by the Bell. The popular guy with the cute hair always saves the day, and the nerds are all complete ignoramuses. Look at nerds anywhere in American culture. Nerds on TV are always the comic relief or the bad guy. It's not a perfect representation of how they're really treated, but when these shows become popular, it means people aren't insulted by those depiction.
A big point of the article was: Why doesn't this structure happen anywhere else? If anime has taught me anything (which it often doesn't), it's because of complacency, which the author hints at.
In particular, I'd recall the school series Kareshi Kanoujo no Jijyo (His and Her Circumstances). When a student is announced to have gotten the best grade on the exam, the other students look on in admiration. For many students, having the best grades in the class and being popular are synonymous.
The Japanese have a very rigid, strict teaching style that mostly focuses on lectures, just standing in front of the class and speaking the material. Any American educator would call that idiotic. So why do Japanese schoolchildren do better on standardized tests? Because they care. If you asked an American mother about how she felt her children were doing in school, she'd likely say, "Oh, they're doing fine." She may even say, "They're passing almost all of their classes." A Japanese mother is more likely to say, "They could do better."
I think that when it comes right down to it, American culture is far more to blame than an inefficient school system. With all of the different classes you could take at a well-off suburban high school (which I certainly did not attend), you could open up a whole wealth of opportunities. If you combined the Japanese work ethic with that "personal" education program, you could have young virtuosos. But if you turn on MTV, an "adult" world, you see fashion models and men with their pants hanging around their knees, and no one cares what you got on the math test. Chicken or the egg: did MTV inspire this culture, or did these kids tell MTV, "This is what we want you to sell us"?
Ah, I see. The whole reason he did the Q&A is for the presidential campaign commercials. "Dave Barry for President... He listens to you. *insert shot of Dave reading Slashdot at his computer and wondering why someone moderated his last post as a troll*"
This topic and another topic both appeared on the slashdot page today. The first wants to indict Google as Big Brother. The second suggests we can sue companies who try to spy on us discreetly. Coincidence... or foreshadowing?
Slashdot Mirror
Part one of my post:
Record companies don't want to lock music up -- after all, why would people buy it if they could not listen to it in the way that they wanted?
There's something in here to be said about how I can't walk into a CD store, choose a CD that I think looks interesting, open it up, drop it in a CD player, and sample the product before buying it like we used to be able to do with vinyl recordings.
Part two of my post:
Your claim that artists are being cheated out of their revenue is more of a popular myth than anything else. The vast majority of musicians are dying to get contracts with record companies.
Considering that I am a musician myself, and that I understand that the music companies he is referring to means "The Big Five" and not "Any Respectable Music Company, Including the Indies," I would just like to say:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Continuing from that point:
Personally, I agree with your comment about radio stations -- and I think that most record companies probably do too. We would love to have more variety on the radio.
MAKE THE FUNNY STOP!
In review:
Recording industry says: Filesharing is killing the music industry.
General /. public says: Slow economy and lack of satisfaction with product (and price of) is killing the music industry.
Question: Is the industry right, or is /. right?
Answer: Yes.
To have constant drops in sales every year, who is actually naive enough to believe that one single action could be the cause of that? The industry is hurting because of the combination of many factors. Yes, the economy is down, yes, many people are buying video games and DVD's instead of CD's, and yes, some people are simply not buying CD's because they can download everything off the net. Any one of these things would not account for a catastrophe. All of them at once means the planets align and the tides change.
How about you set it up so that if one player has a fatality performed on him, the Xbox falls on him? CRUSHALITY
Instead, how about advertising a day in which everyone goes out and purchases one CD by a non-RIAA backed artist? Get stores to cooperate by posting lists of local bands' CDs carried in the stores. It would be "We support the artist" and "We donkey punch the RIAA" at the same time.
I wonder how many Senators have kids with a pile of 'illicit' mp3s/warez/mp4s.
100 Senators * 1/6 = 16.7
Because, y'know, the shitty customer service, higher prices than local DSL lines, and looming corporate control wasn't enough reason to quit using Verizon.
The best form of security is obscurity. How long will it take for the RIAA to start pursuing the smaller local ISP's? I doubt-- But then, those would be easier targets in the courtroom...
Maybe the best place for these online classes is as a way to teach the things that you never really wanted to learn in the first place and that you'll likely forget about as soon as you get that diploma.
I'm taking classes at a VERY expensive college in Boston, upwards of $15K a semester (with tuition, books, paying off the expensive Boston dorm/apartment, etc.). In order to take some nice $80 credits, I enrolled at Bunker Hill Community College for some gen eds. My major requires me to take History of Art and another unspecified 3 credit gen ed course. Bunker Hill offers both of these as courses with little time spent on campus. History of Art (Bunker Hill calls it "Art Appreciation") is a web course with assigned reading and tests every couple of weeks. The nonspecified gen ed I chose was "Sociology of Film", which requires you to watch a film on your own time every week and answer some short essays about the film.
The reason I like taking these courses as web courses is because: I really don't care that much. I'm sorry, but I'm a music major. I understand that the whole history of art thing is important, but when I took History of Art 1 last semester, I did nothing but sleep through the classes. The web class allows me to work at my own pace, pick up what I can, and allow lack of sleep or other necessary courses to take precedence if I need to put something ahead of it. The Film course is actually moderately amusing, but again, it keeps me from having to spend an hour on the subway twice a week to go out to Somerville to talk about it. (Like the discussion in that class would be that great. "I ARE TEH SMARTY PANTS CUZ I UNDERSTAND MEANING BEHIND TERMINATOR 2!!!!1")
Now, if I was told that my favorite music classes were going to become web classes only, like the composition classes where I sit around and get feedback on my projects from the teacher and other students, or the project classes where I learn to work with different music software, I would complain. I would in no way take those classes at home. But I think it's safe to say that just about every college student has a class in their schedule that they're being "forced" to take. A web class allows me to work when it's convenient and concentrate on the classes that are more important to me.
Now I just pray some humorless grinch doesn't mod me down as a troll for saying I don't want to learn anything...
Got a link on that story?
To Whom it May Concern:
On June 26, a middle level manager at our company opened an email claiming that a friend had sent him something "for him to see." This manager opened the email in Outlook Express. Approximately two hours later, the entire network was shut down, all of our databases were open to any traffic that wished to view it, and every computer in the department was forced to spend the rest of the day with a picture of a woman having sexual intercourse with a horse for a desktop image.
We appreciate your patience.
ATTACHMENT: klezz.txt
Makes sense to me.
Grand Theft Auto: "Shat! That cop's gonna catch me! I gotta pay attention!"
Medal of Honor: "Shat! That nazi's gonna catch me! I gotta pay attention!"
Tetris: "Shat! That block's gonna... fall... somewhere... Ehn, no big loss."
Asuka: Mary Kate (alternately Ashley) Olsen. Asuka's new catch phrase become "How rude!"
Rei: Christina Ricci. Has stoic written all over it.
Misato: Sandra Bullock. Minor depression, messy, drunk, but still a strong woman. Literally every role Bullock has ever played.
Gedou: Christopher Walken. Please. PLEASE get Walken to sit around grinning evil.
And finally, Shinji: Will Smith. Complete with music video.
Isn't that... a French word??? Are you disrespecting our dead troops on foreign soil???
Wow, Love Hina on CN. What a concept. Do you realize how many swimsuits Funimation would have to draw?
As for putting Excel Saga on CN... how many people would get the joke? All the DBZ fans would... well, it's like how some rock stars don't understand why This Is Spinal Tap is so funny.
Y'know, that seems to be the way everyone looks at Trigun. They either think the first 12 episodes are filler and the last 12 are badass, or they think the first 12 are hilarious (a la The Slayers, etc.) and the last 12 are too heavy and unbelievable. I swear, I'm the only person who enjoys the whole damned series.
How about an offense that can actually land you jail time? Like, say, marijuana possession? Boy, that whole 'throw kids away for two years for possessing an ounce' thing, that sure keeps kids off the doobie, don't it?
This might apply for some Broadway shows, but the majority of productions depend on the interaction between the conductor and the performers.
I've seen an interesting device called a Radio Baton being used around here once or twice. It requires some basic coding skills to really use it correctly, but it gives one person quite a bit of control over a whole performance. The basic idea is that you have a recorded sequence of notes in a computer, and whenever you hit a sensitive table with one of the batons, it activates the next note in the sequence. Also, the spot on the table that you hit changes the amplitude of the sound. So one person could ideally control a whole orchestra of sounds and keep the pacing as necessary.
Here's one website on the device. Google up more if necessary. And if you believe that computer-generated samples will never completely sound like the real thing, check out information on a program called Gigasampler, a revolutionary program which learned to read music samples from ROM instead of RAM, allowing for extremely large and complex samples, far closer than anything else I've heard so far.
Isn't Sonar (Cakewalk) PC only? I haven't seen that, but I've heard it's supposed to be halfway decent. Still, doesn't have nearly as much popularity as the others.
In the past, Logic has been on PC, but apparently you didn't hear that eMagic was purchased by Apple. You may still find an older copy with similar features, but Logic is PC no more.
If there's one group of people that would be especially sad to see Apple's demise, it's the music industry. Due to stability and management of multimedia, the vast majority of composers, producers, engineers, film scorers, and even wannabe dj's tend to choose Apple OS over anything else. Two of the most popular music sequencing programs - Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer and eMagic's Logic - are Mac-only. If you ever catch a live electronic band in action with laptops, chances are those laptops have a big blue piece of fruit on the front of them.
The big news about the music world this year is OS X, which included MIDI drivers built into the computer's capacity so that the consumer doesn't need to play with the bulky OMS (Open MIDI System) freeware commonly used by most programs. New MIDI-run synthesizers can be created with OS X in mind to optimize compatibility with sequencing programs. On the one hand, every company who wants to produce music software for the Mac has had to rewrite their best software to take advantage of this fact, but now that most of this software is coming out and running smoothly, most users are extremely pleased with the update. And Apple has solidified their support for the musician by purchasing the aforementioned eMagic, a company that makes several unique and useful products for the musician. Logic was one of the first major music programs to have an OS X upgrade produced.
The professional music world is a fairly small market in comparison to the standard consumer world that the PC dominates, but its a professional world that relies on Apple almost exclusively. There's gonna be a major outcry if Apple really starts going under.
"Real human backing bands are easy enough to hire. Also get yourself a floor full of Dicreet Logic stuff, and a fully outfitted music video soundstage, and you could basically render yourself a rock star."
How close is "Gorillaz"?
Not completely. The magic word is "recoupable." The record label gives you X amount of dollars to record your album, to hire outside players, to live on while you dedicate your life to music, etc. Usually they will say that this money is "recoupable." Recoupable how? Through record sales, mostly. Basically, whenever a record sells, the record companies takes your cut and puts it back toward your "debt."
However, this debt is not like a loan from the bank. If you end up never making enough money to pay back the full costs that you owe through record sales and the ilk, then that's it. Some guy in dark shades won't show up on your door asking you for more money, no bankruptcy, etc. The company eats the loss.
The real debt comes with long term deals. Let's say Band A records album 1. The album costs $20K to make. The band ends up making a cut of $15K on record sales. They're $5K in the hole. The record label could drop the band and just eat the $5K loss, but they tell the band that they want to do a second album (generally, the label has the option to force the band into another album or drop them at their free will). However, this time, since the band did ok last time, the label decides to spend a bigger budget on the band with hopes of a bigger return. Even though it has to eventually come out of the band's pocket, the record label will have a lot of say in how much gets spent. So Album 2 has a budget of $50K. The album goes out, the band recoups $30K back in record sales. So that's another $20K in the hole.
Since the company took an option for the second album, now they have to do a third album (options often come in pairs). They say "We're not wasting anymore money on this band than we have to since they're not recouping." They make a back-to-the-roots Album 3 with a $10K budget. The album is technically a hit. The band recoups $40K in record sales. But guess what? You still owe $5K from the first album, and $20K from Album 2. From your first hit record, you get a grand total of $5K. And now that you're a hit, the record label may not let you leave...
This starts a vicious perpetual cycle in which an artist can potentially NEVER see cash back from selling albums. If I had to personally say that there was a way to fix this system, I would say: spend less money on albums. Only sign naturally gifted talent and cultivate grassroots appeal rather than hiring talentless hack pairs-of-breasts and spending millions on their production fees. I'll bet John Mayer, who writes his own stuff and performs fairly simple music, saw some profits from his MTV hits, though I can't say for sure.
BTW, performance royalties for getting your song on the radio or performing live can never be used to recoup expenses for the album, partly because these are paid out by a different organization. This is why musicians usually need to perform to see any money for themselves. It's quite possible for a musician to make a half-decent living playing music while the label is losing money on him. If you walk up to a musician and tell him you paid to see his gig because you downloaded his music off the net, he may not be too peeved at you.
I wasn't talking about Japanese culture as a whole. My main point was: intelligence isn't as important to American kids. I do understand a little more about Japan than what cartoons tell me, and I understand that Japan isn't utopia, but the basic principle is that the Japanese do place a lot more emphasis on how good your grades are. Japanese students as a whole spend a lot more time studying and Japanese parents put a lot more pressure on kids to get those grades. The simple fact is that being smart doesn't automatically make you a social outcast in that society.
Views of people through the media are often exaggerated, but often a basic reflection of that society. Look at Saved by the Bell. The popular guy with the cute hair always saves the day, and the nerds are all complete ignoramuses. Look at nerds anywhere in American culture. Nerds on TV are always the comic relief or the bad guy. It's not a perfect representation of how they're really treated, but when these shows become popular, it means people aren't insulted by those depiction.
A big point of the article was: Why doesn't this structure happen anywhere else? If anime has taught me anything (which it often doesn't), it's because of complacency, which the author hints at.
In particular, I'd recall the school series Kareshi Kanoujo no Jijyo (His and Her Circumstances). When a student is announced to have gotten the best grade on the exam, the other students look on in admiration. For many students, having the best grades in the class and being popular are synonymous.
The Japanese have a very rigid, strict teaching style that mostly focuses on lectures, just standing in front of the class and speaking the material. Any American educator would call that idiotic. So why do Japanese schoolchildren do better on standardized tests? Because they care. If you asked an American mother about how she felt her children were doing in school, she'd likely say, "Oh, they're doing fine." She may even say, "They're passing almost all of their classes." A Japanese mother is more likely to say, "They could do better."
I think that when it comes right down to it, American culture is far more to blame than an inefficient school system. With all of the different classes you could take at a well-off suburban high school (which I certainly did not attend), you could open up a whole wealth of opportunities. If you combined the Japanese work ethic with that "personal" education program, you could have young virtuosos. But if you turn on MTV, an "adult" world, you see fashion models and men with their pants hanging around their knees, and no one cares what you got on the math test. Chicken or the egg: did MTV inspire this culture, or did these kids tell MTV, "This is what we want you to sell us"?
"9) When you vote...."
Ah, I see. The whole reason he did the Q&A is for the presidential campaign commercials. "Dave Barry for President... He listens to you. *insert shot of Dave reading Slashdot at his computer and wondering why someone moderated his last post as a troll*"
Don't forget to vote: and read the official campaign website.
This topic and another topic both appeared on the slashdot page today. The first wants to indict Google as Big Brother. The second suggests we can sue companies who try to spy on us discreetly. Coincidence... or foreshadowing?