Think about it. No one can accuse Bush of being "nuanced" or even particularly good at the politicking. He basically says "this is what I'm about, take it or leave it" - and for some silly reason, a LOT of americans seems to be all about that.
So if what you say were even a little true Kerry should win this election bigtime - and no third party willl ever stand a chance, because they actually have to run on issues.
He might lie to cover his ass, and he definitely lied to lead us into this war - but I knew, you probably knew - everyone with half a fucking brain KNEW he was lying from the first time he said the guy who put down fundamentalism in his country with an iron fist was supporting a fundamentalist terrorist organization. I mean, fucking duh. So even though he lied it can easily be argued he is so simple and transparent that even when he is lying you have to be an idiot not to know it.
By your argument, then, sems you should be voting for Bush. Maybe you're right, because it seems a lot of people are. I'd like to believe they're all smart enough to know he's lying, too... but knowing what I know about the Bush supporters around me here in the bible belt, I have my doubts.
I despise bush with every fiber that is "me" and yet I found myself angrily screaming back at the television last night over this democratic party airhead who kept insisting sinclair had no "right" to air this program, on stations they own, without claiming it as some sort of "campaign contribution" (which, of course, would have a value so high as to be illegal).
Get rid of the money factor. Give'em the ability to raise unlimited funds to buy all the airtime they want. They're all in the back pockets of corporations anyway, and really - if someone gives you a Million dollars are you gonna tell'em to go screw because this other guy gave you two Million?
Get rid of the money factor and people will become so jaded "free political speech" on the airwaves will have zero value (if it doesn't already).
The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities), the total value of their time put into the project is $0.
So... if I fix a flat tire on my car myself, that labor has a value of zero dollars? Even 'tho I just saved myself twenty bucks? If I fix my neighbor's computer for free, saving her fifty bucks in the process, the value of my labor is zero? If I spend some time I could be laboring for a paycheck instead engrossed in a hobby, that time has zero value?
Dude... you got some fucked up values
Value:
1 # An amount, as of goods, services, or money, considered to be a fair and suitable equivalent for something else; a fair price or return.
2 # Monetary or material worth: the fluctuating value of gold and silver.
3 # Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit: the value of an education.
4 # A principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable: "The speech was a summons back to the patrician values of restraint and responsibility" (Jonathan Alter).
Therefore, all we are left to consider is whether or not Linux is a good value to the consumer.
By your measure it's not - it's completely worthless unless that consumer paid for it.
What is the value to me of a diamond? Only what I could sell it for - I have no use for a diamond (unless, perhaps, I need to cut a piece of glass). Bottom line is you expended a lot of words saying nothing. Value and price are not directly related, nor even comparable to one another.
The moment the second man added his signature to the Declaration of Independence according to you it was invalidated because when individuals act as a group they lose their right to self-determination.
ROTFL. Talk about neck stretching!
I'm sorry I replied to you. You are obviously retarded and incapable of logical thought.
All men are equal by the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God to separation entirely at their discretion
and if you don't want to work with a black man, you don't have to.. you can quit. If you don't want to work with an atheist, you can quit.
If you don't want to hire an atheist, hire a friend you know. If this is impractical because your business has grown to this point, you are no longer an individual. A business does not have the same rights as an individual and, in fact, they have far too many "rights" already.
Your lifestyle choices are your own. But the Constitution does not afford you the right to make those choices for others. If you cannot handle the concept of liberty, you have no business in any position of authority.
Bull (again). I know someone already who is shipping DVDs offshore to have them ripped to an archive. It costs just a few cents to have some chinese laborer rig it up on a fixture and rip it to a digital archive.
Even if you paid an expensive US worker to rig up a tape on a deck and digitally record it we're talking an hour or two - so how many need to be sold to recoup? Ten? Twenty? After that every access of that archive is pure profit.
It's not being done now because they're still scrambling for that "all or nothing" prize. Eventually they'll figure out that's lost to them, and you'll see the floodgates open.
There's "no money in it" now because THEY don't know how to extract it. Rhino records is even pretty mainstream and they make a fortune doing exactly this: licensing old recordings the big labels had managed to procure but didn't have a clue how to market and selling them as collections. I've spent the last couple of nights listening to one of these, in fact, as I rip it to CD.
The fact a release is temporally unavailable means nothing - one of the ways to create value is to make sure a release isn't available for some time. This "stores up" demand for when it is available. It could also be a release simply hasn't yet been realised, or it might even be in negotiation. I'd like a DVD of "Hardware" (for example). This has never, so far as I know, been available in spite of being of some modest historical import (it was the first big studio film to be released with an NC17 for violence). well, criterion just released "Videodrome" (another title lost in the DVD shuffle) and I have every confidence they'll eventually get around to "Hardware." Meanwhile, it's as safe as any other in the film vault.
When you rely on volume to extract profit there's a huge gap between "some money in it" and "profitable." No matter how small the market, little guys will license these (as they're already doing - google Jimmie Rodgers, for example) and eek out a living catering to niche audiences that the big guys have no knowledge of, connection to, or time for.
But I'm betting you have some self-rightious reason why $10/month is just toooo unreasonable to listen to whatever you want whenever you want
I already told you my reason: I'm not going to give the RIAA affiliated corps any more of my money. Even when I buy "mainstream" media I make an effort to buy imports or used. You can call it "self rightcheous" all you like - whoopdeefucking doo. Like I care what you think when you're in here whoring for the people lobbying away the rights that allow the little guy to compete with them. (You might want to think about the real;ity of this before you jump off that cliff with another ignorant retort.)
(while attached to broadband).
I'm not on broadband; And this wasn't the first of your simple minded assumptions.
I have to drive an hour to campus and spend a few hours in the library to make use of that usenet bandwidth I pay for every month. Ergo, those "streaming services" that provide shit quality recordings that I cannot save are as useless to me as the cable TV that I also do not get out here in the country.
And yes, I have ethical issues with payng for something propped up by an artifical trade barrier.
You say you own a copy on LP. That's great, but there's no realistic way for anyone to verify that
I didn't ask you to. Nor is it relevant to my point. I was not mentioning it to point out my "right" to download a copy of the recording, only my ironic inability to make use of media I already own. Nice try, 'tho.
Buy a record player for $5 at a yard sale (I got my rather nice one complete with two unused styluses that way).
Fischer-Price, no doubt.
I have, in the past, spent a great deal of money on hifi equipment. I have designed it, built it, sold it, written articles for commercial publication - I certainly know about the availability of older equipment. I also own a vintage four track stereo reel to reel deck made in 1961 - does that mean I can play four track stereo reel to reel tapes?
I spent a lot of money on my records and many of them are irreplaceable. Unless you can tell me where to find a (free) vinyl copy of Tex and The Horsehead's first LP, or Shock Therapy's original Detroit release of "Shock Therapy" or impLOG's "Holland Tunnel Dive" 12" 45 I think I'll leave them right where they are: hanging on the wall, well protected from damage.
I'll spend my money where I please, thanks. And it won't be on RIAA label recordings; Why should I blow a four year streak?
And dude... you never heard of the Rolling Stones?
I'm a fleabit peanut monkey
All my friends are junkies
(That's not really true...)
That's another of those fallacious crutches dragged about by the crippled, dying, industry: "if this industry, that owns all these recordings, dies, so do the recordings." It reminds me of Cleavon Little in "Blazing Saddles", holding a gun to his own head while holding back the ignorant townsfolk: "Hold it. The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it...Drop it! I'll blow this nigger's head all over this town! Oh Lordy-lord, he's desperate. Do what he say. Do what he say..."
If Sony records went out of business tomorrow, the catalog would still be owned by Sony. they would seek to extract value from that catalog anyway they could, and if they couldn't come up with something profitable they'd either find someone else to sell it to or move into new distribution partnerships.. partnerships that would INCREASE the flow of these long forgotten recordings back into the culture.
These recordings are not going to suddenly vanish into oblivion, raptured by some corporate god because the parent went out of business. Call it greed, call it common sense... just don't call it Mr. Johnson.
Many of us have for "the industry." I watched Siouxsie fight years for distribution, then finally get it - and succeed - on her own terms. Many artists now have done this.
I want to see the present system die. Completely. The system that gave us all that great stuff from my youth that I still listen to - Pink floyd, Yes, ELP, led Zep, The Jam, Cowboys International, Sex Pistols, The Damned - I want to see that industry dead.
This is the industry that has clearly seen the future coming for at least half a decade now and yet refused to evolve. In the meantime I've found all kinds of new stuff and seen some of my old friends adapt on their own. I've become my own "interntional distributor" via internet commerce. I've discovered music free of these old barriers, and I find - surprise - much of it's just as good as the stuff from the old system. Except now I get to KNOW where my money went. Commerce has become personal - when I give ten bucks to buy a CD, it's like digging into my own wallet and handing that artist five bucks. I'm being allowed to express myself directly to the artist. It restores a creative flow that has become disconnected for too long because of the middlemen of commerce.
I haven't been to a theater, paid for tv, or even subscribed to a magazine in years. I maintain multiple usenet accounts and regularly have to refresh them before the month has run out. Keep this in mind as I defend NOT taking the download approach.
Bjork has a new CD out. Now, I dearly love bjork. You could quite honestly say I am a "fan" - you could even say I am somewhat obsessed with her work. And I have multiple usenet accounts which I frequently employ so as to keep up with my favorite tv shows (bad reception and rural living means tivo is useless to me). It would be trivial to add a pretty high quality rip of bjork's latest CD to my download folder. However:
I don't have a jacket to fondle - with that cool picture of her nearly topless and wearing what looks almost like S&M gear. Is there more inside? I don't know.
Her latest release is actually a DVD with 5.1 sound, two channel PCM sound, and video interviews. While I might be able to download all this stuff as a high quality ISO of the DVD (which would cost me a large percentage of the bandwidth I pay ten bucks a month for), if I do so I still...
I don't have the liner notes to read as I listen, nor do I have the satisfaction of knowing I gave Bjork my further support in the only way I can (at least until she realizes I'm alive and comes to live with me forever in my modest country home) - by giving her some money.
And so my download experience becomes significantly less fulfilling than were I to order the meatspace stuff and wait for its delivery. While there's a small chance I might not like the release at all, the fact is I "just want it because it's Bjork." And, as they say, it's never like the first time again.
So, I go to bjork.com, fill out a form, and wait...
What are you defining as "free?" Convenience? Quality? immediacy?
That damn Victoria's Secret commercial with the first few notes of "Monkey Man" got that song stuck in my head and last night I had to clear it out. Now, I lost virtually my entire MP3 collection about a month ago and have been able to restore only a tiny part of it, so it's not like I could just "click on the mp3." And while I have an LP of that album somewhere in my collection, I haven't had a turntable in years.
So I headed for easynews (not free: ten bucks a month). Believe it or not no one has posted that song in the last 22 days or so, so I had to pay for it. Now, did I go to one of the RIAA backed sites? No - I went to allofmp3.com. Why? Because the RIAA is fighting to lobby away my rights AND force me to subsidize their arrogance, so there's no way in hell they're US member is gonna get a penny. I settled for the lower quality (allofmp3's rip quality kinda sucks although the end product is still likely higher than the 128kbps crap from most US sites) and paid the Russians (who are NOT lobbying Washington to erode my rights) a dime for the track. Don't know how the BOM works but it's still likely whoever owns that album got paid - just a LOT less than if I bought from a US vendor.
Bottom line: it's not always about free, but it is now universally about freedom. In this case, the free market deprived the US industry of a buck while getting the Russians a dime. This happened for no other reason than the US entertainment industry has pissed me off to the point I refuse to support it.
I see nothing n there about giving preference to anyone, only limitations on what you cannot do without good cause - one of those being "you cannot screen job applicants by religion."
Private business? In what sense? If you have a church it is likely to be tax exempt and operating in a non profit capacity. if you want to staff it, common sense says you hire people you know from the congregation - you don't place advertisements for "jobs" within the heirarchy of the church, so eeoc compliance at that level is a non issue.
I used to work for one of the largest christian book distributors in the nation. I suspect that is the type of situation to which you refer.
Guess what? You don't have to be a Christian to push a shopping cart around a warehouse and pull books off shelves. You also don't have to be a christian to push a broom around a studio, or to answer a telephone in a professional manner. If a company does business in a state then it is obligated to abide by the laws of the state. Don't like the laws in that state? Move your operation to Israel.
And what the FUCK does any of this have to do with "bootleg radio stations?" Program directors hire based on action: what "message" the talent presents on air. Actions are completely separate from BELIEF (as so many televangelists have proven to us over the years). If the PD is worth his paycheck no law is going to prevent a station from hiring whatever on-air talent management prefers: the applicants will be "screened" before the first phone call is ever made.
But what you describe is something I never have done, so I'd say I don't need it. Nor do any of my friends, so far as I know, do this. Not even the 16 year old girl I know who carries her music to school on a beatup CD player she got from walmart does this, since her $30 CD player plays MP3 cds that can hold a LOT more music. Even the mp3 discs I give my computer illiterate friends have caused no problems - their home DVD players handle them fine, their mp3 compatible indash units play them fine...
But I just tried what you mention and I see no easy way to do it using the method I use virtually 99.9 percent of the time to make CDs. However, it's quite easy to fire up k3b and drag a folder of music from nautilus to the project window... I mean, if I ever needed to do that sort of thing.
What you describe is fine if you're just talking about talking. But one would assume the objective here is to be able to broadcast something people will enjoy listening to - and "capture" is limited by a factor known as capture ratio and it's not infinite nor perfect not consistent from radio to radio, which means you cannot "engineer it in." And in the transition you get exactly what's described: multipath distortion; picket fencing; swooshing... people finding another station.
but that's another thing I don't get about these "civic minded people." If you want to get your station up and running so you can be heard, that's commendable - but so often it seems not about being heard but about making someone else heard - most usually, some other corporate entity (like the Stones or) name your favorite label-signed artist.
This is the reason I have zero sympathy for those complaining about not being able to "broadcast" RIAA label artists on their internet stations. If you want to operate a station and play only Magnatune artists then bully for you - but if all you want is another station where you can stroke your ego by contributing to the noise made by our corporate overlords, then you're not being a freedom fighter, you're just fighting freedom.
By the way: "Monkey Man" selling lingerie? What does that even mean?
Ah well, I guess Mick's sleeping even cozier in that unmade bed of broken eggs, eh?
I'd rather just drive the speed limit and not worry about it - or buy my own radar detector - than listen to that shit drone on for hour after hour.
When I was a teenager the "CB boom" was in full swing. I sat in front of a radio many an hour. I applied for a first class license years ago and built my first crystal set when I was like five. But travelling down the highway on a trip, having to listen to the crap that flies over channel 19 the entire duration is my version of hell.
If you're worried about your car breaking down, get a cellphone. Then you can call someone you know you can trust instead of having to trust someone you don't know. There was a time when CB had its uses, but there's also good reason the band has been abandoned even by the FCC.
I didn't say you cannot run the desktops in 128MB - what I said was you can't run them well in 128. The person I setup that machine for used it like that for several weeks, but it's all they had besides nothing.
I don't know how you have emacs configured, but if it's like most defaults I've seen it's not terribly burdensome. I do know the mdk10 system I described would absolutely NOT open a mozilla based browser in kde if you had it online via the "winmodem." Sure, kill the modem and it might have enough resources to launch mozilla - but if you were online it was pretty much konq or nothing.
I used a 333 mhz thinkpad 600 with 128mb of ram at the uniy for downloading stuff. Yes, I could actually open kde and login and download. Using a pcmcia 100mbps ethernet card it would blast data in at all of 200kbps on the university uber-pipe so long as you didn't do any browsing. Click a page and that datapump drops to a trickle until the page renders. Meanwhile, open blackbox and try the same thing and see jack run. Still not a demon, but much closer to what one would call "usable."
Yes, kde or gnome with 128mb of ram will work. It will also suck.
The thing about k3b is it really does look slick an impressive (and I'm sorry I left it out of my "good things about kde" list) but - the thing that makes it impressive is all that complexity - which isn't needed unless you just want a linux "cd burner program" that looks like a windows "cd burner program."
If I want to burn a DVD in kde using k3b I open k3b (even if it's right click, "burn this directory" I still have to open k3b) then use the whizbang tools to "burn the cd." If I want to burn an iso, I open k3b then use the whizbang tool to "burn the iso." And then I have to close k3b if I want to burn another iso, or do a buncha clicks to clear this one out and select another. To burn a DVD it's, again, pretty much the same process.
In gnome, I right click an iso and select "burn." I get no whiz-bang interface, I get a simple popup with a "start" button and a couple of drop down dialogs (which I still don't need but they're less intimidating - and quicker to launch - than k3b). When it's running I also have an "abort" button (or some sort, I can't recall right now). If it's a DVD iso or a CD iso I don't have to tell it this, nor do I have to select any "projects" - I just right click and select "burn to cd." If I want to burn a group of files I just open a nautilus window (or right click and copy my files), click the bookmark to my "burn" folder, paste the files there and press a clearly labelled "burn to cd" button. I don't have ten thousand options via an app that takes thirty seconds to load because 99% of the time I don't need that - it simply couldn't be simpler. It's elegant, and that's why I like it.
it's "out of sync transmitters." If you have two adjacent transmitters on the same band and the phase of the two signals is not in sync you will get multipath distortion - this is what causes all that shit you hear on FM when you drive through the city near big buildings. Now imagine you're surrounded by 100 signal sources, all of them very low power, all of them swooshing in and out of tune (because these are just cheap devices, not even carefully calibrated transmitters with stable oscillators).
It just don't work the way the OP "imagined" it. This isn't digital, it's not a "software" problem.
What the hell does any of this have to do with "freedom of religion?" If you want religious programming come to mississippi - there's a transmitter every ten goddamn miles. There's one about a mile from here that comes in so strong on top of this hill I can only get three herringbone covered stations - and that's WITH an FM trap.
"Mandates about with whom we must associate? What, are you a convicted felon? The US certainly has its share of troubles at the moment, but your tirade on the cause of it sounds about as disconnected from that reality as shrub's foreign poilicy.
This isn't something that can be made into a "cluster." Either you have to put them far enough apart there are holes in the signal or you end up with overlapping transmitters just a few hz apart - essentially "stepping on" your own signal. Either that, or you'd have to ask your listener to retune every 500 feet to another channel so you got no overlap.
Microwatt transmitters have their uses, but I'm afraid that ain't one of them.
So... what's the point? Do people even listen to the radio anymore? I mean, maybe in their cars - but anywhere else? I've been involved in one way or another with radio since I was a teen and even operated my own fleawatt when I was a kid, but that was a long time before the internet.
If you want to be a pirate it seems to me you'd reach a lot more people taking the max headroom route. When I was a kid I actually wanted to be a radio pirate - now I see no point in it at all aside from being any easy means of civil disobedience. But now, with the internet and the ease with which we can build a vast video library (not to mention it's just as easy to locate a tv modulator as an fm modulator) I'd much rather be Reg.
I've seen this repeated twice in this thread. I call bullshit. I had a system with a decent Via motherboard, Ati videocard and 1GHz AMD cpu and with 128MB of ram the thing ran like shit. Oh yeah, you could "use it" - so long as you only opened one app at a time. Anything beyond that you had about a 70% chance of the process just dying - no error message, no warning, nothing.
You can make blackbox or ice dance with 128mb, but a late model gnome or kde desktop with only 128mb ram is about one step above useless.
Slashdot Mirror
So if what you say were even a little true Kerry should win this election bigtime - and no third party willl ever stand a chance, because they actually have to run on issues.
He might lie to cover his ass, and he definitely lied to lead us into this war - but I knew, you probably knew - everyone with half a fucking brain KNEW he was lying from the first time he said the guy who put down fundamentalism in his country with an iron fist was supporting a fundamentalist terrorist organization. I mean, fucking duh. So even though he lied it can easily be argued he is so simple and transparent that even when he is lying you have to be an idiot not to know it.
By your argument, then, sems you should be voting for Bush. Maybe you're right, because it seems a lot of people are. I'd like to believe they're all smart enough to know he's lying, too... but knowing what I know about the Bush supporters around me here in the bible belt, I have my doubts.
Get rid of the money factor. Give'em the ability to raise unlimited funds to buy all the airtime they want. They're all in the back pockets of corporations anyway, and really - if someone gives you a Million dollars are you gonna tell'em to go screw because this other guy gave you two Million?
Get rid of the money factor and people will become so jaded "free political speech" on the airwaves will have zero value (if it doesn't already).
So... if I fix a flat tire on my car myself, that labor has a value of zero dollars? Even 'tho I just saved myself twenty bucks? If I fix my neighbor's computer for free, saving her fifty bucks in the process, the value of my labor is zero? If I spend some time I could be laboring for a paycheck instead engrossed in a hobby, that time has zero value?
Dude... you got some fucked up values
Value:
1 # An amount, as of goods, services, or money, considered to be a fair and suitable equivalent for something else; a fair price or return.
2 # Monetary or material worth: the fluctuating value of gold and silver.
3 # Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit: the value of an education.
4 # A principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable: "The speech was a summons back to the patrician values of restraint and responsibility" (Jonathan Alter).
Therefore, all we are left to consider is whether or not Linux is a good value to the consumer.
By your measure it's not - it's completely worthless unless that consumer paid for it.
What is the value to me of a diamond? Only what I could sell it for - I have no use for a diamond (unless, perhaps, I need to cut a piece of glass). Bottom line is you expended a lot of words saying nothing. Value and price are not directly related, nor even comparable to one another.
But what do I know? If Heather Graham can get hired as a voice actor maybe there's still hope for me to make it as a pop star.
ROTFL. Talk about neck stretching!
I'm sorry I replied to you. You are obviously retarded and incapable of logical thought.
My bad.
and if you don't want to work with a black man, you don't have to.. you can quit. If you don't want to work with an atheist, you can quit.
If you don't want to hire an atheist, hire a friend you know. If this is impractical because your business has grown to this point, you are no longer an individual. A business does not have the same rights as an individual and, in fact, they have far too many "rights" already.
Your lifestyle choices are your own. But the Constitution does not afford you the right to make those choices for others. If you cannot handle the concept of liberty, you have no business in any position of authority.
Bull (again). I know someone already who is shipping DVDs offshore to have them ripped to an archive. It costs just a few cents to have some chinese laborer rig it up on a fixture and rip it to a digital archive.
Even if you paid an expensive US worker to rig up a tape on a deck and digitally record it we're talking an hour or two - so how many need to be sold to recoup? Ten? Twenty? After that every access of that archive is pure profit.
It's not being done now because they're still scrambling for that "all or nothing" prize. Eventually they'll figure out that's lost to them, and you'll see the floodgates open.
The fact a release is temporally unavailable means nothing - one of the ways to create value is to make sure a release isn't available for some time. This "stores up" demand for when it is available. It could also be a release simply hasn't yet been realised, or it might even be in negotiation. I'd like a DVD of "Hardware" (for example). This has never, so far as I know, been available in spite of being of some modest historical import (it was the first big studio film to be released with an NC17 for violence). well, criterion just released "Videodrome" (another title lost in the DVD shuffle) and I have every confidence they'll eventually get around to "Hardware." Meanwhile, it's as safe as any other in the film vault.
When you rely on volume to extract profit there's a huge gap between "some money in it" and "profitable." No matter how small the market, little guys will license these (as they're already doing - google Jimmie Rodgers, for example) and eek out a living catering to niche audiences that the big guys have no knowledge of, connection to, or time for.
I already told you my reason: I'm not going to give the RIAA affiliated corps any more of my money. Even when I buy "mainstream" media I make an effort to buy imports or used. You can call it "self rightcheous" all you like - whoopdeefucking doo. Like I care what you think when you're in here whoring for the people lobbying away the rights that allow the little guy to compete with them. (You might want to think about the real;ity of this before you jump off that cliff with another ignorant retort.)
(while attached to broadband).
I'm not on broadband; And this wasn't the first of your simple minded assumptions.
I have to drive an hour to campus and spend a few hours in the library to make use of that usenet bandwidth I pay for every month. Ergo, those "streaming services" that provide shit quality recordings that I cannot save are as useless to me as the cable TV that I also do not get out here in the country.
And yes, I have ethical issues with payng for something propped up by an artifical trade barrier.
You say you own a copy on LP. That's great, but there's no realistic way for anyone to verify that
I didn't ask you to. Nor is it relevant to my point. I was not mentioning it to point out my "right" to download a copy of the recording, only my ironic inability to make use of media I already own. Nice try, 'tho.
Buy a record player for $5 at a yard sale (I got my rather nice one complete with two unused styluses that way).
Fischer-Price, no doubt.
I have, in the past, spent a great deal of money on hifi equipment. I have designed it, built it, sold it, written articles for commercial publication - I certainly know about the availability of older equipment. I also own a vintage four track stereo reel to reel deck made in 1961 - does that mean I can play four track stereo reel to reel tapes?
I spent a lot of money on my records and many of them are irreplaceable. Unless you can tell me where to find a (free) vinyl copy of Tex and The Horsehead's first LP, or Shock Therapy's original Detroit release of "Shock Therapy" or impLOG's "Holland Tunnel Dive" 12" 45 I think I'll leave them right where they are: hanging on the wall, well protected from damage.
I'll spend my money where I please, thanks. And it won't be on RIAA label recordings; Why should I blow a four year streak?
And dude... you never heard of the Rolling Stones?
I'm a fleabit peanut monkey
All my friends are junkies
(That's not really true...)
That's another of those fallacious crutches dragged about by the crippled, dying, industry: "if this industry, that owns all these recordings, dies, so do the recordings." It reminds me of Cleavon Little in "Blazing Saddles", holding a gun to his own head while holding back the ignorant townsfolk: "Hold it. The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it...Drop it! I'll blow this nigger's head all over this town! Oh Lordy-lord, he's desperate. Do what he say. Do what he say..."
If Sony records went out of business tomorrow, the catalog would still be owned by Sony. they would seek to extract value from that catalog anyway they could, and if they couldn't come up with something profitable they'd either find someone else to sell it to or move into new distribution partnerships.. partnerships that would INCREASE the flow of these long forgotten recordings back into the culture.
These recordings are not going to suddenly vanish into oblivion, raptured by some corporate god because the parent went out of business. Call it greed, call it common sense... just don't call it Mr. Johnson.
I want to see the present system die. Completely. The system that gave us all that great stuff from my youth that I still listen to - Pink floyd, Yes, ELP, led Zep, The Jam, Cowboys International, Sex Pistols, The Damned - I want to see that industry dead.
This is the industry that has clearly seen the future coming for at least half a decade now and yet refused to evolve. In the meantime I've found all kinds of new stuff and seen some of my old friends adapt on their own. I've become my own "interntional distributor" via internet commerce. I've discovered music free of these old barriers, and I find - surprise - much of it's just as good as the stuff from the old system. Except now I get to KNOW where my money went. Commerce has become personal - when I give ten bucks to buy a CD, it's like digging into my own wallet and handing that artist five bucks. I'm being allowed to express myself directly to the artist. It restores a creative flow that has become disconnected for too long because of the middlemen of commerce.
Yee hah.
Bjork has a new CD out. Now, I dearly love bjork. You could quite honestly say I am a "fan" - you could even say I am somewhat obsessed with her work. And I have multiple usenet accounts which I frequently employ so as to keep up with my favorite tv shows (bad reception and rural living means tivo is useless to me). It would be trivial to add a pretty high quality rip of bjork's latest CD to my download folder. However:
I don't have a jacket to fondle - with that cool picture of her nearly topless and wearing what looks almost like S&M gear. Is there more inside? I don't know.
Her latest release is actually a DVD with 5.1 sound, two channel PCM sound, and video interviews. While I might be able to download all this stuff as a high quality ISO of the DVD (which would cost me a large percentage of the bandwidth I pay ten bucks a month for), if I do so I still...
I don't have the liner notes to read as I listen, nor do I have the satisfaction of knowing I gave Bjork my further support in the only way I can (at least until she realizes I'm alive and comes to live with me forever in my modest country home) - by giving her some money.
And so my download experience becomes significantly less fulfilling than were I to order the meatspace stuff and wait for its delivery. While there's a small chance I might not like the release at all, the fact is I "just want it because it's Bjork." And, as they say, it's never like the first time again.
So, I go to bjork.com, fill out a form, and wait...
Professional songwriters get paid for every performance of their work, even in live settings.
So long as people pay for live music (and a century of recorded music has done nothing but increase this market) then songwriters can do just fine.
Might not be so easy for the talentless bankers in the middle...
What are you defining as "free?" Convenience? Quality? immediacy?
That damn Victoria's Secret commercial with the first few notes of "Monkey Man" got that song stuck in my head and last night I had to clear it out. Now, I lost virtually my entire MP3 collection about a month ago and have been able to restore only a tiny part of it, so it's not like I could just "click on the mp3." And while I have an LP of that album somewhere in my collection, I haven't had a turntable in years.
So I headed for easynews (not free: ten bucks a month). Believe it or not no one has posted that song in the last 22 days or so, so I had to pay for it. Now, did I go to one of the RIAA backed sites? No - I went to allofmp3.com. Why? Because the RIAA is fighting to lobby away my rights AND force me to subsidize their arrogance, so there's no way in hell they're US member is gonna get a penny. I settled for the lower quality (allofmp3's rip quality kinda sucks although the end product is still likely higher than the 128kbps crap from most US sites) and paid the Russians (who are NOT lobbying Washington to erode my rights) a dime for the track. Don't know how the BOM works but it's still likely whoever owns that album got paid - just a LOT less than if I bought from a US vendor.
Bottom line: it's not always about free, but it is now universally about freedom. In this case, the free market deprived the US industry of a buck while getting the Russians a dime. This happened for no other reason than the US entertainment industry has pissed me off to the point I refuse to support it.
God I love free trade...
I see nothing n there about giving preference to anyone, only limitations on what you cannot do without good cause - one of those being "you cannot screen job applicants by religion."
Private business? In what sense? If you have a church it is likely to be tax exempt and operating in a non profit capacity. if you want to staff it, common sense says you hire people you know from the congregation - you don't place advertisements for "jobs" within the heirarchy of the church, so eeoc compliance at that level is a non issue.
I used to work for one of the largest christian book distributors in the nation. I suspect that is the type of situation to which you refer.
Guess what? You don't have to be a Christian to push a shopping cart around a warehouse and pull books off shelves. You also don't have to be a christian to push a broom around a studio, or to answer a telephone in a professional manner. If a company does business in a state then it is obligated to abide by the laws of the state. Don't like the laws in that state? Move your operation to Israel.
And what the FUCK does any of this have to do with "bootleg radio stations?" Program directors hire based on action: what "message" the talent presents on air. Actions are completely separate from BELIEF (as so many televangelists have proven to us over the years). If the PD is worth his paycheck no law is going to prevent a station from hiring whatever on-air talent management prefers: the applicants will be "screened" before the first phone call is ever made.
But I just tried what you mention and I see no easy way to do it using the method I use virtually 99.9 percent of the time to make CDs. However, it's quite easy to fire up k3b and drag a folder of music from nautilus to the project window... I mean, if I ever needed to do that sort of thing.
This is the reason I have zero sympathy for those complaining about not being able to "broadcast" RIAA label artists on their internet stations. If you want to operate a station and play only Magnatune artists then bully for you - but if all you want is another station where you can stroke your ego by contributing to the noise made by our corporate overlords, then you're not being a freedom fighter, you're just fighting freedom.
By the way: "Monkey Man" selling lingerie? What does that even mean?
Ah well, I guess Mick's sleeping even cozier in that unmade bed of broken eggs, eh?
When I was a teenager the "CB boom" was in full swing. I sat in front of a radio many an hour. I applied for a first class license years ago and built my first crystal set when I was like five. But travelling down the highway on a trip, having to listen to the crap that flies over channel 19 the entire duration is my version of hell.
If you're worried about your car breaking down, get a cellphone. Then you can call someone you know you can trust instead of having to trust someone you don't know. There was a time when CB had its uses, but there's also good reason the band has been abandoned even by the FCC.
I don't know how you have emacs configured, but if it's like most defaults I've seen it's not terribly burdensome. I do know the mdk10 system I described would absolutely NOT open a mozilla based browser in kde if you had it online via the "winmodem." Sure, kill the modem and it might have enough resources to launch mozilla - but if you were online it was pretty much konq or nothing.
I used a 333 mhz thinkpad 600 with 128mb of ram at the uniy for downloading stuff. Yes, I could actually open kde and login and download. Using a pcmcia 100mbps ethernet card it would blast data in at all of 200kbps on the university uber-pipe so long as you didn't do any browsing. Click a page and that datapump drops to a trickle until the page renders. Meanwhile, open blackbox and try the same thing and see jack run. Still not a demon, but much closer to what one would call "usable."
Yes, kde or gnome with 128mb of ram will work. It will also suck.
If I want to burn a DVD in kde using k3b I open k3b (even if it's right click, "burn this directory" I still have to open k3b) then use the whizbang tools to "burn the cd." If I want to burn an iso, I open k3b then use the whizbang tool to "burn the iso." And then I have to close k3b if I want to burn another iso, or do a buncha clicks to clear this one out and select another. To burn a DVD it's, again, pretty much the same process.
In gnome, I right click an iso and select "burn." I get no whiz-bang interface, I get a simple popup with a "start" button and a couple of drop down dialogs (which I still don't need but they're less intimidating - and quicker to launch - than k3b). When it's running I also have an "abort" button (or some sort, I can't recall right now). If it's a DVD iso or a CD iso I don't have to tell it this, nor do I have to select any "projects" - I just right click and select "burn to cd." If I want to burn a group of files I just open a nautilus window (or right click and copy my files), click the bookmark to my "burn" folder, paste the files there and press a clearly labelled "burn to cd" button. I don't have ten thousand options via an app that takes thirty seconds to load because 99% of the time I don't need that - it simply couldn't be simpler. It's elegant, and that's why I like it.
It just don't work the way the OP "imagined" it. This isn't digital, it's not a "software" problem.
"Mandates about with whom we must associate? What, are you a convicted felon? The US certainly has its share of troubles at the moment, but your tirade on the cause of it sounds about as disconnected from that reality as shrub's foreign poilicy.
Microwatt transmitters have their uses, but I'm afraid that ain't one of them.
So... what's the point? Do people even listen to the radio anymore? I mean, maybe in their cars - but anywhere else? I've been involved in one way or another with radio since I was a teen and even operated my own fleawatt when I was a kid, but that was a long time before the internet.
If you want to be a pirate it seems to me you'd reach a lot more people taking the max headroom route. When I was a kid I actually wanted to be a radio pirate - now I see no point in it at all aside from being any easy means of civil disobedience. But now, with the internet and the ease with which we can build a vast video library (not to mention it's just as easy to locate a tv modulator as an fm modulator) I'd much rather be Reg.
I've seen this repeated twice in this thread. I call bullshit. I had a system with a decent Via motherboard, Ati videocard and 1GHz AMD cpu and with 128MB of ram the thing ran like shit. Oh yeah, you could "use it" - so long as you only opened one app at a time. Anything beyond that you had about a 70% chance of the process just dying - no error message, no warning, nothing.
You can make blackbox or ice dance with 128mb, but a late model gnome or kde desktop with only 128mb ram is about one step above useless.