On the other hand this could be a kick in the pants for the concept album, and might even play into the hands of those who both promote and create them. Example: Let's say you write a 105-minute rock oratorio. You release a couple of three-minute arias from it for 99 cents each. Promote the cuts, but point out that they're part of a larger, more comprehensive work that costs $10 to buy the entire thing -- and which not coincidentally the artist doesn't have to shoehorn so it'll fit conveniently onto a physical medium.
Like every other medium out there, downloaded music will open up possibilities for experimentation for those who choose to use it.
The album was my father's, who was born in 1918. I remember seeing some of his original-style albums when we were cleaning out a closet sometime in the 60s.
You forgot (or didn't mention) the third beneficial effect, namely, no more waiting three years for an album from your favorite band. They get the sound they want, put out the word, and 24 hours later fans are enjoying the track.
In fact eventually "track" may become a carryover from an earlier time, sort of like "album." Has anyone younger than me ever seen a real album, with half-a-dozen sleeves, each of which contains a 10" 78 RPM record?
The real problem these days is examples. And I'm not talking about downloading the kernel source to see how to write programs in C, either.
Back in the Early Days Of Microcomputing (1980, give or take about five years) there were a number of sources for Basic programs that you could type in to your computer. Once they were typed in you could see how the code correlated to what was on the screen. You could also steal, er, ah, learn from the code in building programs you had created yourself.
Creative Computing, Compute!, 80-Micro, Softside, Beagle Bros (mentioned in another post farther up the page) . . . if we really want kids to get hooked on computers, we need something like what these magazines and companies provided.
That's an easy one. Coding first, development later. We're talking about kids here, and coding is a lot more fun than development.
It's sort of like the difference between "OK kid, here's a piggy bank you can save some money in" and "Son, today I'm going to teach you how to manage your portfolio."
For those of you who weren't paying attention in the early to mid 80s, Bert Kersey was the mad genius behind Beagle Bros Software, the coolest software company out there. Their catalogs were a hoot and their products exhibited a complete disregard for taking themselves seriously (this site will give you some of the flavor of the Beagle Bros style), but their best claim to fame was their software. Not only did they write programs that let you do cool things with your Apple II, they showed you how to do the cool things yourself. They were open source years before its restoration to hipness.
Maybe what we need is someone who enjoys building marvelous toys and then distributing the plans so we can see how they're built, along with a programming environment a kid can use "straight out of the box". If I were doing this I'd do it in Python and distribute it on a CD with Python interpreters for the major platforms to give a kid the best possible chance of being able to start playing right away.
This article from Smithsonian Magazine describes the Maine Solar System Model and the guy who put it all together, with a budget of $0. Everything from labor to the land to house the planets on was donated.
Think we can hire him to manage some Open Source projects for us? <grin>
Actually, they just drove south down Highway 1 from Presque Isle and, when they get to (say) the scale location of Saturn, negotiated with whoever owns the property to get the rights to put up the planet.
I understand that Earth is in a car dealership's lot and Pluto is on the wall of a tourist information center, or some such.
It's one less thing I have to lug around with me. I doubt smart phones will be able to do anything like this anytime soon.
I just wish my Handspring would act as a phone, play MP3s and connect to the 2-meter ham repeaters around town. That'd be three fewer pieces of junk I'd have to lug around with me. But, I'd probably have to recharge its battery every 20 minutes or so.
In other news, the Bavarian Illuminati still control IBM and the Pentagon, the Gnomes of Zurich own the Republicans and the South American Nazis, and the UFOs have infiltrated FoxTV and the Semiconscious Liberation Army fnord.
We're always saying the music industry doesn't have any right to keep making money with an obsolete business model after technology has supersceded it, and that if they continue to stick with it then they deserve to die, even if it worked in the past.
Looks like they're skipping right to the obsolete business model to save us time. What a bunch-a guys.
When I first read the headline I saw "Intel Drops DRM" and I was about to do the Happy Dance on Palladium's grave.
Well, let's hope we still get to see that headline.
Re:This is not "Tivo for Radio"
on
TiVo For Radio?
·
· Score: 1
To answer your question: Yes. Radio in the US is that bad. Most of it is owned by large media conglomerates who tend to do central programming, so every station sounds like every other station that plays that genre.
Here is my list, incomplete and in no particular order, of stuff worth listening to:
Some locally-produced shows spotlighting area talent
"Niche" shows for fans of acid jazz, or rockabilly, or blues, or other out-of-the-mainstream genres
Dr Demento (comedy and novelty records -- he's getting harder and harder to find though)
Old radio drama such as The Shadow, Lights Out, and Fibber McGee and Molly
New radio drama, for that matter, when you can find it
NPR -- National Public Radio, the closest thing we have in the US to a European-style public radio channel. Not all of what they carry is for everyone, but all of it sounds like it someone would enjoy it.
Talk radio, if it happens to be of your particular bent. Sports talk radio seldom fits this description -- most of the callers are as uninformed as the hosts, who are usually quite clueless
News
Some public affairs programs, if they're not of the "contractual obligation" type (e.g. "We have to air this, so here it is, blah blah blah")
Sports events -- but then I'm a big baseball fan
Others probably have their own additions to the list.
I have no doubt that if I had a program guide I would be able to find four hours a day of stuff I wanted to listen to. But again, without such a guide it's difficult to impossible to tell what's airing on local radio, and newspapers tend to treat it as an afterthought. Here for instance the local paper has a weekly radio column with a list of programs the stations want to promote, and I can never remember what day of the week it's published on so I usually miss it.
Re:This is not "Tivo for Radio"
on
TiVo For Radio?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
OK, I would be interested in something like this, but only if it met a few conditions:
1. It would have to pull in radio stations from outside my listening area.
2. It would have to have some kind of schedule mechanism so I could select what I wanted to listen to and when I wanted it to record.
3. Radio would have to be much better than it is right now.
1 and 2 pretty much imply hooking the box up to a cable or satellite box. Radio reporting around here is pretty spotty, so I seldom find out about shows I'd be interested in. I'd also want a TiVo-like feature where you could search for programs I was interested in.
#3 is much harder to do anything about. I love radio -- prefer it to TV in many cases, actually -- but let's face it, most of the radio that's out there right now isn't worth listening to. There are exceptions -- Dr Demento, sports events, some of the stuff you find on public radio stations, a few talk shows, occasional locally produced "genre" programs where you can hear blues, rockabilly, local artists and other stuff you might not normally hear -- but just setting it to record KOMA-FM Your Good Time Station, which sounds just like all the other stations in the market? No thanks.
Re:Modern origami artists familiar with math
on
Origami and Math
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Interesting that you should mention Engel. The introduction to his book Origami From Angelfish To Zen deals with the mathematical aspects of origami, including its fractal aspects.
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So apparently we've not only succeeded in slashdotting Slashdot, we've gotten Slashdot to give us multiple duplicate posts! WE WIN!
The only downside is how good of a job it can do if you set it for Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues - a couple marathons later and you will have more shows than I'll let my little one watch.
Do what I do and set it to only keep five episodes at a time. That way my granddaughter has two and a half hours worth of brand new Rugrats (well OK, probably at least a couple she hasn't seen yet) every week when she comes over.
I've also been known to tape off large chunks of programming. That's why the "Tape to VCR" (or whatever it's called) feature is there. I just sent my father in law home to the Land Without Tivo with about five hours of old Have Gun, Will Travel episodes.
Really, I can't say enough good things about TiVo.
I dunno. I would think that if you signed an NDA, you signed an NDA, and disclosing the information would violate the NDA, whether or not it was already common knowledge. For instance, if I signed a non-disclosure agreement stating that I couldn't tell you my eyes are blue, seems to me I'd be in violation of the NDA if I said my eyes were blue, even though you can see for yourself that they are, in fact, blue.
However, I doubt there would be any reason why I then couldn't say, "I'm sorry, I signed an NDA and I can't tell you what color my eyes are, but if you ask this guy from Slashdot who's seen my eyes and didn't sign the NDA, he could tell you."
Slashdot Mirror
If it's the same thing they're serving in my building's cafeteria tomorrow, here's a hint: I'm going to Azteca, and I suggest you do the same.
On the other hand this could be a kick in the pants for the concept album, and might even play into the hands of those who both promote and create them. Example: Let's say you write a 105-minute rock oratorio. You release a couple of three-minute arias from it for 99 cents each. Promote the cuts, but point out that they're part of a larger, more comprehensive work that costs $10 to buy the entire thing -- and which not coincidentally the artist doesn't have to shoehorn so it'll fit conveniently onto a physical medium.
Like every other medium out there, downloaded music will open up possibilities for experimentation for those who choose to use it.
The album was my father's, who was born in 1918. I remember seeing some of his original-style albums when we were cleaning out a closet sometime in the 60s.
You forgot (or didn't mention) the third beneficial effect, namely, no more waiting three years for an album from your favorite band. They get the sound they want, put out the word, and 24 hours later fans are enjoying the track.
In fact eventually "track" may become a carryover from an earlier time, sort of like "album." Has anyone younger than me ever seen a real album, with half-a-dozen sleeves, each of which contains a 10" 78 RPM record?
Can't argue with that quote. The distribution I use now wasn't around ten years ago.
Um, wait . . .
The real problem these days is examples. And I'm not talking about downloading the kernel source to see how to write programs in C, either.
Back in the Early Days Of Microcomputing (1980, give or take about five years) there were a number of sources for Basic programs that you could type in to your computer. Once they were typed in you could see how the code correlated to what was on the screen. You could also steal, er, ah, learn from the code in building programs you had created yourself.
Creative Computing, Compute!, 80-Micro, Softside, Beagle Bros (mentioned in another post farther up the page) . . . if we really want kids to get hooked on computers, we need something like what these magazines and companies provided.
That's an easy one. Coding first, development later. We're talking about kids here, and coding is a lot more fun than development.
It's sort of like the difference between "OK kid, here's a piggy bank you can save some money in" and "Son, today I'm going to teach you how to manage your portfolio."
For those of you who weren't paying attention in the early to mid 80s, Bert Kersey was the mad genius behind Beagle Bros Software, the coolest software company out there. Their catalogs were a hoot and their products exhibited a complete disregard for taking themselves seriously (this site will give you some of the flavor of the Beagle Bros style), but their best claim to fame was their software. Not only did they write programs that let you do cool things with your Apple II, they showed you how to do the cool things yourself. They were open source years before its restoration to hipness.
Maybe what we need is someone who enjoys building marvelous toys and then distributing the plans so we can see how they're built, along with a programming environment a kid can use "straight out of the box". If I were doing this I'd do it in Python and distribute it on a CD with Python interpreters for the major platforms to give a kid the best possible chance of being able to start playing right away.
I had horrible handwriting back in 1961. Being a computer jock hasn't helped, either.
So, what's the third initial for "Commander Taco"?
This article from Smithsonian Magazine describes the Maine Solar System Model and the guy who put it all together, with a budget of $0. Everything from labor to the land to house the planets on was donated.
Think we can hire him to manage some Open Source projects for us? <grin>
Actually, they just drove south down Highway 1 from Presque Isle and, when they get to (say) the scale location of Saturn, negotiated with whoever owns the property to get the rights to put up the planet.
I understand that Earth is in a car dealership's lot and Pluto is on the wall of a tourist information center, or some such.
is this.
It's one less thing I have to lug around with me. I doubt smart phones will be able to do anything like this anytime soon.
I just wish my Handspring would act as a phone, play MP3s and connect to the 2-meter ham repeaters around town. That'd be three fewer pieces of junk I'd have to lug around with me. But, I'd probably have to recharge its battery every 20 minutes or so.
In other news, the Bavarian Illuminati still control IBM and the Pentagon, the Gnomes of Zurich own the Republicans and the South American Nazis, and the UFOs have infiltrated FoxTV and the Semiconscious Liberation Army fnord.
One thing that is worth noting is that Microsoft does do *some* work with Unix
Another thing worth noting is that Microsoft does a lot of work with Unix. However I doubt this applies much to the current discussion.
We're always saying the music industry doesn't have any right to keep making money with an obsolete business model after technology has supersceded it, and that if they continue to stick with it then they deserve to die, even if it worked in the past.
Looks like they're skipping right to the obsolete business model to save us time. What a bunch-a guys.
When I first read the headline I saw " Intel Drops DRM" and I was about to do the Happy Dance on Palladium's grave.
Well, let's hope we still get to see that headline.
To answer your question: Yes. Radio in the US is that bad . Most of it is owned by large media conglomerates who tend to do central programming, so every station sounds like every other station that plays that genre.
Here is my list, incomplete and in no particular order, of stuff worth listening to:
Some locally-produced shows spotlighting area talent
"Niche" shows for fans of acid jazz, or rockabilly, or blues, or other out-of-the-mainstream genres
Dr Demento (comedy and novelty records -- he's getting harder and harder to find though)
Old radio drama such as The Shadow, Lights Out, and Fibber McGee and Molly
New radio drama, for that matter, when you can find it
NPR -- National Public Radio, the closest thing we have in the US to a European-style public radio channel. Not all of what they carry is for everyone, but all of it sounds like it someone would enjoy it.
Talk radio, if it happens to be of your particular bent. Sports talk radio seldom fits this description -- most of the callers are as uninformed as the hosts, who are usually quite clueless
News
Some public affairs programs, if they're not of the "contractual obligation" type (e.g. "We have to air this, so here it is, blah blah blah")
Sports events -- but then I'm a big baseball fan
Others probably have their own additions to the list.
I have no doubt that if I had a program guide I would be able to find four hours a day of stuff I wanted to listen to. But again, without such a guide it's difficult to impossible to tell what's airing on local radio, and newspapers tend to treat it as an afterthought. Here for instance the local paper has a weekly radio column with a list of programs the stations want to promote, and I can never remember what day of the week it's published on so I usually miss it.
OK, I would be interested in something like this, but only if it met a few conditions:
1. It would have to pull in radio stations from outside my listening area.
2. It would have to have some kind of schedule mechanism so I could select what I wanted to listen to and when I wanted it to record.
3. Radio would have to be much better than it is right now.
1 and 2 pretty much imply hooking the box up to a cable or satellite box. Radio reporting around here is pretty spotty, so I seldom find out about shows I'd be interested in. I'd also want a TiVo-like feature where you could search for programs I was interested in.
#3 is much harder to do anything about. I love radio -- prefer it to TV in many cases, actually -- but let's face it, most of the radio that's out there right now isn't worth listening to. There are exceptions -- Dr Demento, sports events, some of the stuff you find on public radio stations, a few talk shows, occasional locally produced "genre" programs where you can hear blues, rockabilly, local artists and other stuff you might not normally hear -- but just setting it to record KOMA-FM Your Good Time Station, which sounds just like all the other stations in the market? No thanks.
Interesting that you should mention Engel. The introduction to his book Origami From Angelfish To Zen deals with the mathematical aspects of origami, including its fractal aspects.
Here's Slashdot's current RSS page:
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So apparently we've not only succeeded in slashdotting Slashdot, we've gotten Slashdot to give us multiple duplicate posts! WE WIN!
The only downside is how good of a job it can do if you set it for Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues - a couple marathons later and you will have more shows than I'll let my little one watch.
Do what I do and set it to only keep five episodes at a time. That way my granddaughter has two and a half hours worth of brand new Rugrats (well OK, probably at least a couple she hasn't seen yet) every week when she comes over.
I've also been known to tape off large chunks of programming. That's why the "Tape to VCR" (or whatever it's called) feature is there. I just sent my father in law home to the Land Without Tivo with about five hours of old Have Gun, Will Travel episodes.
Really, I can't say enough good things about TiVo.
$ make money
make: *** No rule to make target 'money'. Stop.
Geez, you just can't win.
Childs blamed the mix-up on a programming accident and said he has since apologized to Smithson [for using her site as an open relay].
Reminds me of the old saying, "I might have believed it was an accident if you hadn't stopped twice to reload and once to chug a couple of beers."
I dunno. I would think that if you signed an NDA, you signed an NDA, and disclosing the information would violate the NDA, whether or not it was already common knowledge. For instance, if I signed a non-disclosure agreement stating that I couldn't tell you my eyes are blue, seems to me I'd be in violation of the NDA if I said my eyes were blue, even though you can see for yourself that they are, in fact, blue.
However, I doubt there would be any reason why I then couldn't say, "I'm sorry, I signed an NDA and I can't tell you what color my eyes are, but if you ask this guy from Slashdot who's seen my eyes and didn't sign the NDA, he could tell you."
IalsoANAL, so YMMV.