Why do you think of Communism (i.e. Marxism) as the alternative to capitalism? Is it because you consider it a success, because your point is only true for the weakest non-capitalist system or because you don't know any other alternatives to capitalism?
The UK is a constitutional monarchy and not yet a republic.
Re:This is not "Tivo for Radio"
on
TiVo For Radio?
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· Score: 1
Radio would have to be much better than it is right now.
I once tried recording most of the radio that interests me. It was about four hours a day. This isn't top forty or talk shows, but mostly live music and comedy (the rest was documentaries).
Remember that if you spend are recording radio programmes all of the time, then there is no time left to listen to them (unless you are simply time-shifting).
Is radio so bad in the US that you can't find anything to record? There only needs to be something that is really good on a single ocassion for it to be worthwhile. The more time that you spend not listening to/recording radio (because it doesn't exist), the more time you have to listen to the material that you do record and non-broadcast recordings.
Re:One way it would be useful...
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TiVo For Radio?
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· Score: 1
Why would you need to pause/rewind/timeshift radio?
If something is worth listening to, then it's worth time-shifting. There is plenty of national analogue radio worth listening to in the UK and far more if you have DAB/satelite/cable/etc. or live near certain cities.
It is 75% commercials, 24% crap anyway.
There are no commercials on pirate radio, (some) state owned radio or other non-profit radio broadcasters. Commercial radio has only about one sixth commercials.
In terms of quality of non-commercial content, TV is worse than radio. Most television is either worth listening to, but not worth watching (and could, therefore, be on the radio), or not worth listening to (e.g. news and sports broadcast on both TV and radio are best on radio). Some good radio programmes even get 'promoted' to television. Without propper adaption they are still the best thing on TV. Nearly.
I couldn't think of anything to record.
Any live performances, interviews, interesting documentaries and comedy are worth keeping (and, therefore, recording, unless it is released). Even commercial radio stations have live music. If you can't get this by analogue radio, then look elsewhere. My parents' satelite TV is awash with good radio.
The problem is not that there is too little of value to record. It is that it is difficult to record all of it.
Sometimes a classic rock station might play an entire album by an artist,
Even if it has been released? What a waste of air time!
how does it compare to the best of Asian and Western poetry? Extremely poorly, in technical terms; in fact, so badly, it seems like incompetent morons screaming.
I think that you're only considering the bad hiphop.
I think you mean "Europe's," not "America's." The most recent copyright extension was justified on the premise that we ought to bring America's copyright laws into harmony with Europe's.
Actually, while the US has been making its "intellectual property" restrictions more draconian to harmonise with Europe, the EU was doing the same thing: making its own laws stronger and more unreasonable to "bring us into line with the US". We have been taken for a ride by our governments.
You're right. Rapping and Etch-A-Sketch are both tools for delivering art (I consider music to be art). So is singing. All three could be used inartistically, but that is not the fault of rapping, singing or Etch-A-Sketch.
Hey....gimme an band that plays their own instruments...
If that's your cup of tea.
writes their own songs/music anyday
All good rappers write their own lyrics. One of my main objections to sung music is that it is considered acceptable to sing someone elses words. When you find this claim unfair, maybe you'll realise how your own demonisation of "rap music" looks.
over someone pushing buttons on computers or tape drives in a studio any day of the week....
I'd rather hear someone cutting (sampling the old fashioned way) breaks than someone plucking strings or pressing keys in a studio any day of the week. Just as the guitar player is not just strumming, the hiphop artist is not just pressing buttons.
Of course, sampling is utterly dependent on their being sounds to sample, so I and many other hiphop devotees are grateful for the existence of music made by people who play instruments, but the argument that hiphop is not artistic is not sound and the conclusion (but not the enquiry) is offensive.
And they wonder why record sales are down....
Are hiphop sales down more than other genre's sales?
But, anyone can spew forth obcenities, violence, and promote a lifestyle that will get you nowhere fast in life....and put this all to a drum loop....that ain't talent or art....IMHO.
Yes, but I would not consider doing so to be artistic. However, there is much artistic hiphop. If you are defining "rap music" as music which promotes bad things, then I would have some understanding of your position. Remember, there is much hiphop that provides a positive message, which gives a good discussion of the undesirable things in life or which combines undesirable utterances with high quality verse. Perhaps you have missed some irony in one of these recordings or misunderstood the intended meaning. I could complain that the sung music that I have heard sounds whiney and promotes sexism and the worship of money, but I know that it would be unfair to do so without giving sung music a fair listening. Listen to some real hiphop and then make your argument.
Rap is a vocal style (I dislike "sing music", but I don't pretend that it is all artistically unworthy, even if some of it genuinly is). The rapped words in hiphop are lyrical poetry (it is possible for poetry to be good or bad, even if it ends up being rapped). The non-vocal part of hiphop requires a very high level of skill to be done well and the skill is a gift.
Apparently someone likes it...but, I don't see it, in its present day form, lasting that long as a major genre...
Once upon a time people took offence at rock music. It was new and challenging. Hiphop has been around for three decades. It was already mature when it spawned the crappy spin-offs that caught your attention, and (thankfully) it will be with us for a little longer.
To me sampling is akin to photocopying a page from Shakespeare and maybe add some blue triangles around it then calling it your own.
...or Shakespeare taking elements from other people's works and weaving them into his masterful creations. It depends on the extent of the sampling (obviously taking a sample by itself is not new creativity), the skill with which it is composed with other sounds and the quality of any made-from-scratch material in the recording.
The argument you loathe is in response to the argument that anybody could make hiphop, so it is not art. Why do you loathe this argument?
Until you've fucked children yourself you are unqualified to say that it is wrong.
This argument is not about morality (at least, not obviously or directly). It is about artistic worth and aesthetic value. How is this comparison relevent?
He listened to his boss and determined that OSS/FS best fits management's strategy,
So the parent post provides argument that could be used to argue for Free Software. The person arguing for open source could confront the management with: "You should consider the pros and cons and choose the solution that is most appropriate for your needs."
If he is right to claim that Free Software is the best solution (and I think that he is), then the management must have failed to weigh up the pros and cons of the possible solutions properly.
Charging per email should be the last resort. It is unfair on those who do not abuse email (unless the price of the email is received by the person who bears the other cost of the message). It also increases the complexity of email. It would not eliminate spam.
A better way of easing the spam problem is to make the sender bear the cost of sending messages (not to artificially impose costs on the sender, but to relieve the recipient of the costs of spam). Why is Internet Mail 2000 not a suitable solution?
Why should I charitably help one company research towards a cure rather than another? Why not have a non-profit organisation to provide the 'Intellectual Property' resulting from distributed computing for free. If this is not practical, then the findings could be patented by an exhaustive corporate consortium (open to any company which decided to participate) or a non-profit organisation.
I think it is going to be quite easy to tell the farmporn/viagara/penis pill spammers from legit businesses.
The problem is determining whether the otherwise legit business was responsible for the spam. As another poster wrote, we could get Microsoft punished by sending Windows related spam. It would also be prone to abuse.
No, I didn't. I do know that technological progress provides cheaper alternatives. Thanks to recent advances, I have seen high quality (as far as I could tell, the movie was Randall's Flat) pictures shot on video. Digital formats will make reproduction and distribution (and capture) cheaper.
I'm sure that movie purists would be horrified if tape or DV replaced film. I wouldn't. Anyway, why can't a movie theatre or film society pay for the film. Before you say "because the cost is too high", consider that film enthusiasts and movie theatres are where the studios get their revenue, so it is already done.
"Every copyright holder is a partial owner of my CD burner, my Xerox machine, my hard drive, my VCR, my CD-Rs, etc because they dictate what I can and cannot do with my own property. "
No they don't. They dictate what you can do with their property. You are free to make as many copies of your home movie, term paper, original songs, etc., as you'd like.
When I copy a CD with 'my' CD writer, I am not interfering with anyone else's property. Copyright is not property. It is a deal struck between the people and the content industry and if I violate it, they are not deprived of anything tangible.
Anyway, if I could control their property, then it would be partly mine, and if they could control my property, then it would be partly theirs. The owner is the person/organisation who controls it. Ownership is simply control. Property rights are the right to control things.
Explain to me how in a world without copyrights, the makers of X-Men 2 would make money
Good question. The best answer that I can give is that they wouldn't. (If, by 'make money', you mean profit) that is not the problem. I don't think that the world is any better for the existence of entertainment that is motivated by money. The problem is how they recoup their costs. It is a big problem.
unless they owned a chain of movie theaters
The movie theatre owners would need content, so perhaps they would fund new movies. Movie production costs would have to come down.
Luckily, lower production costs would mean higher quality. The focus will be on the script rather than the special effects and paying movie actors a fair wage would get rid of some of the dead wood.
Explain to me how a legally enforceable copyright has ever hindered an artist.
By making it illegal to build on the work of others. Under modern British/American copyright, some of Shakespeare's plays would have been illegal to release.
This is the reason for open source software being popular with users. What you say is only relevent because developers are users too.
I think that the most important motive for writing open source software is that free software users find the software that already exists is insufficient for their wants. I believe that most free software developers do not write software for target audiences include themselves.
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Why do you think of Communism (i.e. Marxism) as the alternative to capitalism? Is it because you consider it a success, because your point is only true for the weakest non-capitalist system or because you don't know any other alternatives to capitalism?
The UK is a constitutional monarchy and not yet a republic.
Radio would have to be much better than it is right now.
I once tried recording most of the radio that interests me. It was about four hours a day. This isn't top forty or talk shows, but mostly live music and comedy (the rest was documentaries).
Remember that if you spend are recording radio programmes all of the time, then there is no time left to listen to them (unless you are simply time-shifting).
Is radio so bad in the US that you can't find anything to record? There only needs to be something that is really good on a single ocassion for it to be worthwhile. The more time that you spend not listening to/recording radio (because it doesn't exist), the more time you have to listen to the material that you do record and non-broadcast recordings.
Why would you need to pause/rewind/timeshift radio?
If something is worth listening to, then it's worth time-shifting. There is plenty of national analogue radio worth listening to in the UK and far more if you have DAB/satelite/cable/etc. or live near certain cities.
It is 75% commercials, 24% crap anyway.
There are no commercials on pirate radio, (some) state owned radio or other non-profit radio broadcasters. Commercial radio has only about one sixth commercials.
In terms of quality of non-commercial content, TV is worse than radio. Most television is either worth listening to, but not worth watching (and could, therefore, be on the radio), or not worth listening to (e.g. news and sports broadcast on both TV and radio are best on radio). Some good radio programmes even get 'promoted' to television. Without propper adaption they are still the best thing on TV. Nearly.
I couldn't think of anything to record.
Any live performances, interviews, interesting documentaries and comedy are worth keeping (and, therefore, recording, unless it is released). Even commercial radio stations have live music. If you can't get this by analogue radio, then look elsewhere. My parents' satelite TV is awash with good radio.
The problem is not that there is too little of value to record. It is that it is difficult to record all of it.
Sometimes a classic rock station might play an entire album by an artist,
Even if it has been released? What a waste of air time!
COULDN'T care less, moron. The phrase is COULDN'T care less.
At last, someone has spoken out about this. I'm not sure "moron" was necessary, though.
Using "could care less" instead of "couldn't care less" is a bad idea (when you mean "couldn't care less") because they mean precisely the opposite.
I wonder why people do this. Is it because the two phrases sound similar when some people say them (like "could've" and "could of")?
how does it compare to the best of Asian and Western poetry? Extremely poorly, in technical terms; in fact, so badly, it seems like incompetent morons screaming.
I think that you're only considering the bad hiphop.
Go read some Keats, Donne, or Zen monks.
I will do.
I think you mean "Europe's," not "America's." The most recent copyright extension was justified on the premise that we ought to bring America's copyright laws into harmony with Europe's.
Actually, while the US has been making its "intellectual property" restrictions more draconian to harmonise with Europe, the EU was doing the same thing: making its own laws stronger and more unreasonable to "bring us into line with the US". We have been taken for a ride by our governments.
Rap is to music as the Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
You're right. Rapping and Etch-A-Sketch are both tools for delivering art (I consider music to be art). So is singing. All three could be used inartistically, but that is not the fault of rapping, singing or Etch-A-Sketch.
rap is only rhythm and percussion,
Actually, rap is only vocal.
Hey....gimme an band that plays their own instruments...
If that's your cup of tea.
writes their own songs/music anyday
All good rappers write their own lyrics. One of my main objections to sung music is that it is considered acceptable to sing someone elses words. When you find this claim unfair, maybe you'll realise how your own demonisation of "rap music" looks.
over someone pushing buttons on computers or tape drives in a studio any day of the week....
I'd rather hear someone cutting (sampling the old fashioned way) breaks than someone plucking strings or pressing keys in a studio any day of the week. Just as the guitar player is not just strumming, the hiphop artist is not just pressing buttons.
Of course, sampling is utterly dependent on their being sounds to sample, so I and many other hiphop devotees are grateful for the existence of music made by people who play instruments, but the argument that hiphop is not artistic is not sound and the conclusion (but not the enquiry) is offensive.
And they wonder why record sales are down....
Are hiphop sales down more than other genre's sales?
But, anyone can spew forth obcenities, violence, and promote a lifestyle that will get you nowhere fast in life....and put this all to a drum loop....that ain't talent or art....IMHO.
Yes, but I would not consider doing so to be artistic. However, there is much artistic hiphop. If you are defining "rap music" as music which promotes bad things, then I would have some understanding of your position. Remember, there is much hiphop that provides a positive message, which gives a good discussion of the undesirable things in life or which combines undesirable utterances with high quality verse. Perhaps you have missed some irony in one of these recordings or misunderstood the intended meaning. I could complain that the sung music that I have heard sounds whiney and promotes sexism and the worship of money, but I know that it would be unfair to do so without giving sung music a fair listening. Listen to some real hiphop and then make your argument.
Rap is a vocal style (I dislike "sing music", but I don't pretend that it is all artistically unworthy, even if some of it genuinly is). The rapped words in hiphop are lyrical poetry (it is possible for poetry to be good or bad, even if it ends up being rapped). The non-vocal part of hiphop requires a very high level of skill to be done well and the skill is a gift.
Apparently someone likes it...but, I don't see it, in its present day form, lasting that long as a major genre...
Once upon a time people took offence at rock music. It was new and challenging. Hiphop has been around for three decades. It was already mature when it spawned the crappy spin-offs that caught your attention, and (thankfully) it will be with us for a little longer.
I loathe your argument.
The argument you loathe is in response to the argument that anybody could make hiphop, so it is not art. Why do you loathe this argument?
Until you've fucked children yourself you are unqualified to say that it is wrong.
This argument is not about morality (at least, not obviously or directly). It is about artistic worth and aesthetic value. How is this comparison relevent?
He listened to his boss and determined that OSS/FS best fits management's strategy,
So the parent post provides argument that could be used to argue for Free Software. The person arguing for open source could confront the management with: "You should consider the pros and cons and choose the solution that is most appropriate for your needs."
If he is right to claim that Free Software is the best solution (and I think that he is), then the management must have failed to weigh up the pros and cons of the possible solutions properly.
No two people have exactly the same racial characteristics, so segregating people by race is very difficult.
Behaviour is not racial, so integration is quite possible.
The only protocol that I have heard proposed is IM 2000. Is this what you were talking about, or do you know of others?
Charging per email should be the last resort. It is unfair on those who do not abuse email (unless the price of the email is received by the person who bears the other cost of the message). It also increases the complexity of email. It would not eliminate spam.
A better way of easing the spam problem is to make the sender bear the cost of sending messages (not to artificially impose costs on the sender, but to relieve the recipient of the costs of spam). Why is Internet Mail 2000 not a suitable solution?
Why should I charitably help one company research towards a cure rather than another? Why not have a non-profit organisation to provide the 'Intellectual Property' resulting from distributed computing for free. If this is not practical, then the findings could be patented by an exhaustive corporate consortium (open to any company which decided to participate) or a non-profit organisation.
I think it is going to be quite easy to tell the farmporn/viagara/penis pill spammers from legit businesses.
The problem is determining whether the otherwise legit business was responsible for the spam. As another poster wrote, we could get Microsoft punished by sending Windows related spam. It would also be prone to abuse.
Do you know how much film costs *alone*?
No, I didn't. I do know that technological progress provides cheaper alternatives. Thanks to recent advances, I have seen high quality (as far as I could tell, the movie was Randall's Flat) pictures shot on video. Digital formats will make reproduction and distribution (and capture) cheaper.
I'm sure that movie purists would be horrified if tape or DV replaced film. I wouldn't. Anyway, why can't a movie theatre or film society pay for the film. Before you say "because the cost is too high", consider that film enthusiasts and movie theatres are where the studios get their revenue, so it is already done.
"Every copyright holder is a partial owner of my CD burner, my Xerox machine, my hard drive, my VCR, my CD-Rs, etc because they dictate what I can and cannot do with my own property. "
No they don't. They dictate what you can do with their property. You are free to make as many copies of your home movie, term paper, original songs, etc., as you'd like.
When I copy a CD with 'my' CD writer, I am not interfering with anyone else's property. Copyright is not property. It is a deal struck between the people and the content industry and if I violate it, they are not deprived of anything tangible.
Anyway, if I could control their property, then it would be partly mine, and if they could control my property, then it would be partly theirs. The owner is the person/organisation who controls it. Ownership is simply control. Property rights are the right to control things.
Explain to me how in a world without copyrights, the makers of X-Men 2 would make money
Good question. The best answer that I can give is that they wouldn't. (If, by 'make money', you mean profit) that is not the problem. I don't think that the world is any better for the existence of entertainment that is motivated by money. The problem is how they recoup their costs. It is a big problem.
unless they owned a chain of movie theaters
The movie theatre owners would need content, so perhaps they would fund new movies. Movie production costs would have to come down.
Luckily, lower production costs would mean higher quality. The focus will be on the script rather than the special effects and paying movie actors a fair wage would get rid of some of the dead wood.
Explain to me how a legally enforceable copyright has ever hindered an artist.
By making it illegal to build on the work of others. Under modern British/American copyright, some of Shakespeare's plays would have been illegal to release.
The spring 'solstice' is called an 'equinox'.
At the bottom of this page
This is the reason for open source software being popular with users. What you say is only relevent because developers are users too.
I think that the most important motive for writing open source software is that free software users find the software that already exists is insufficient for their wants. I believe that most free software developers do not write software for target audiences include themselves.