What does the RIAA have to say about you using their copyrighted material to generate music - music which is arguably not unique, but rather derivatives of their property?
Funny you should use the word "derivative."
That's exactly the word I'd use to describe 90% of the stuff on radio (especially that ClearChannel (tm) garbage).
Brazil didn't have a printing press until the 20th century (nor a university, IIRC). The Portuguese colonists did their best to keep the populace uneducated. Brazil was also the last country to end slavery (~1889 or 1899).
Given Brazil's history as one of the poorest and least educated countries (median, not mean), I think it's remarkable they've done so well. As is commonly stated by Brazilians, Brazil is the country of the future. Ordem e Progresso!
There's a lot more to the country than glue-sniffing kids playing with radioactive material and getting shot by the police. As one of my old teachers used to say, "Brazil is not for beginners."
Most people in the US would have no idea that the ministers in Lula's cabinet are pretty interesting . . . Dirceu is a former (current?) communist, very active during the dictatorship. Gilberto Gil is one of my favorite Brazilian musicians, and was banished from the country during the dictatorship. Do a google search on them.
Slashdot readers should know that the current president in Brazil, Lula (Luis Inacio da Silva) is a very active labor activist who has run for pres. for the past several elections. His success in the polls is a big, big deal--the last time a leftist won the presidency, the military kicked him out and imposed a harsh rule on the country for years. Much of Brazil's debt was incurred during this period from so-called "pharonic projects" like a road through the Amazon that was almost immediately eaten up by the jungle (there was much more jungle at the time).
Pay attention. I expect a lot more interesting decisions from Lula's government, besides ditching the Microsoft stranglehold (mod me flamebait if you want, but you know it's true). Just recently they overhauled the very costly pension system for government employees--pissed off a lot of people, but seems necessary to cut gov. spending and redirect it to more urgent problems.
And for all you Brazilians out there who disagree with me, and think Lula's election was a travesty, tell me why. I know not everyone is optimistic.
I almost immediately changed to bash in Jan. '02, when I got my Powerbook (first Mac ever, for me). Everything was fine and dandy until I upgraded to Jaguar. Now the Terminal application won't work at all, and Apple won't help me out because they say tweaking with settings "under the hood," so to speak, is not covered. In addition, I can't access Cocoa's font or color menus after the upgrade. I've tried repairing preferences and fsck, to no avail (if anyone else has had similar problems, please let me know if you figured out how to fix them). Thank goodness for iTerm, else I'd have to reboot in single-user mode to access a command line!
So yes, this is a fairly big deal. It also makes OSX how-tos easier to follow (many had tcsh-specific command-line instructions).
I like BBEdit a lot, except for one particular bug--
when I have more than one document open, and I try to save or close one of them, sometimes the action affects one of the other open docs. It's really, really annoying, and I'm a little pissed that BareBones dropped support for BBEdit Lite. No new versions, no fix for this problem.
I graduated from UT (Chem. Eng.) not long ago. I used my TI-89 on almost all relevant math tests. I mean, in Dif. Eq. a calculator isn't usually going to help much, aside from checking answers involving boundary conditions. But man, did that device save me a lot of pain in Linear Algebra. Manually putting a matrix in reduced row eschelon form is a pain in the ass, allowing room for errors at every step. What math classes were you taking?
In engineering classes, it would have been unthinkable to take a test without a graphing calculator.
The only bikes made from aluminum are the mid to high end bikes in the $500-$1500 range.
In the past, that was true about aluminum frames--only the mid-range to higher-end had them, because it involves welding in an oxygen-free environment, is a pain in the ass, etc. But try to find anything BUT aluminum now. Even the cheapie bikes are made of it these days.
In January, some asshole stole my beautiful (chromoly) Kona, and as a temporary fix I got a department store bike for around $100. And guess what it's made of? Aluminum. Yet it's heavier than my mom's old chromoly Trek.
I've discovered that although aluminum was once really cool to have, nowadays many serious bikers think it sucks. Check out the comparison chart on this page here (caveat: they manufacture superior steel frames, but I believe the data is still valid).
So that cheapo aluminum bike didn't get much use. As soon as I could, I got a frame made of Reynold's 853 steel. It's neck-and-neck with titanium (superior in many respects).
To anticipate any defenders of aluminum, yeah, I know they're coming out with kick-ass alloys these days, like Scandium, but I'll still stick to steel for now, thank you.
Billy and the Boingers sucked compared to Death TÃngüe. No one has repeated such masterpieces as "Leper Lover." And I love the line "Let's run over Lionel Richie with a tank."
Having recently (Jan. 2002) purchased a TiBook (my first Mac ever), I did extensive price comparisons of laptops. The best choices I could find were the Sony Vaio, IBM Thinkpad, and Titanium Powerbook G4. For comparable systems, the Mac was actually cheapest. And by the way, at the time Sony didn't even make a Vaio that had all the features I was looking for.
As an aside, I've loved using my Powerbook for the past year-and-a-half, and have had minimal problems. My most recent uptime has been about 3 weeks (had to restart after Software Update).
Oh--and this is an appropriate question given the audience: Has anyone had problems starting the Terminal application after an update to Jaguar? I fiddled with settings (e.g., using bash instead of tcsh, changing a couple default directory, etc.) and Apple's Tech Support refuses to help me. I'm using the 3rd party iTerm, but can't properly map the backspace key and it's goddamned annoying. I also can't open the built-in font menu, and have no idea what's causing that bug.
Very interesting, because so much of it was censored, and the authors chose to leave blank space in the parts that were censored. Sections that the CIA wanted to ban, but a court ruled had to be allowed, were printed as boldface. Next time somebody tries to give you bullshit about how our government does what's best for the people, refer them to this book, written by former CIA operatives. Most interesting is the connection of Latin American coups with US business interests (e.g., United Fruit Company).
Oh, and if you're looking for a politician who stands up for his principles, and for civil liberties, read up on Russ Feingold (Winconsin senator, Dem.), co-author of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, and ONLY senator to vote against the Patriot Act. I'm no Democrat, but if he runs for pres., I'll throw my vote his way.
First, 128kbps is crappy encoding.
Even if it's better than 128kbps mp3s, it probably isn't as good as 192 kbps mp3s, and certainly isn't CD quality. I'm not some audiophile who has a $1000 record player and buys vinyl to get that "pristine" sound of analog, but jesus, I can certainly hear the difference between mp3s and CDs on a regular, ordinary stereo. As such, for music that I really like, an mp3 is not going to be good enough for me. I'll download mp3s for portable use and to preview music, but if I like it enough, I'll buy it.
A big question those RIAA types keep neglecting to address is, why can we listen to songs on the radio for free, but not via mp3s? The quality is similar, but with mp3s at least I can bypass those ClearChannel bastards who have a virtual monopoly on our public domain airwaves. I don't believe any argument that radio stations pay royalties, because we all already know about Payola, a.k.a. pay-per-play publicity for Top 40 artists. After that price-fixing scandal, where the RIAA bilked millions from the American public, what fscking right do they have to sue anyone (like poor college students) for theft! Two wrongs don't make a right, but I'd estimate that for every CD you've ever bought, you've paid for about two or three. So you're just getting your money's worth if you pay for 50% of the music in your library. Downloading more than that might be pushing the limits of honesty, though. But make sure to pirate only from record labels for which you've purchased something. Not that I'm changing anyone's mind in this forum, but so many people think they have a right to pirate music because they can. In fact, there are some logical reasons why we should be able to download mp3s. Until a radical change in the way the record industry does business, Apple's new program is a step in the right direction.
actually, i believe al didn't need permission because coolio's song was itself a derivative of stevie wonder's "pastime paradise". coolio got all bent out of shape, but i think it was groundless, since he didn't write the hook for the song in the first place. imagine puff daddy (i refuse to use any of his latest pseudonyms) getting upset for someone parodying . . . let's say, jimmy page (kashmir).
I usually preview new music by downloading mp3s before i buy the album. But you know what? The only time I actually pirate music is when a friend of mine has a copy of the CD. I'm not what most people would consider an audiophile, but mp3s don't cut it for me for several reasons--
1) I listen to weird music, usually not available on file-sharing systems. Try to find any decent Brazilian music on Gnutella. Or even slightly obscure artists, like the Delgados. My time is worth more than the hours it would take to search for and download some of this music.
2) 128 kbps sampling sucks ass! 192 is acceptable for my computer, for the car, and for a portable device (like an iPod) but NOT for the stereo. I've always been seriously disappointed with CDs I've burned from mp3s. I'll stick with 44.1 kHz, thank you very much.
3) Lyrics, album art, and extras. Yeah, it's not that big of a deal, but especially if I think the artist DESERVES my support, these can be deciding factors in whether I'll buy the expensive retail album.
In summary, the RIAA can fuck itself. Just as with software piracy, no one is losing any money with music sharing. I wouldn't buy the album anyway if I couldn't get it free, in almost all cases.
And props to labels like Dischord (of Fugazi fame) for NOT ripping off consumers. They routinely sell (sold?) albums for $7, post-paid. Without all the bloat and middlemen, artists can make a decent profit w/o bending over the people who buy their albums.
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Funny you should use the word "derivative." That's exactly the word I'd use to describe 90% of the stuff on radio (especially that ClearChannel (tm) garbage).
More people on this planet speak Portuguese than speak French, Russian, Japanese, German, and Italian. There are more English and Spanish speakers, though.
Brazil didn't have a printing press until the 20th century (nor a university, IIRC). The Portuguese colonists did their best to keep the populace uneducated. Brazil was also the last country to end slavery (~1889 or 1899).
Given Brazil's history as one of the poorest and least educated countries (median, not mean), I think it's remarkable they've done so well. As is commonly stated by Brazilians, Brazil is the country of the future. Ordem e Progresso!
There's a lot more to the country than glue-sniffing kids playing with radioactive material and getting shot by the police. As one of my old teachers used to say, "Brazil is not for beginners."
Slashdot readers should know that the current president in Brazil, Lula (Luis Inacio da Silva) is a very active labor activist who has run for pres. for the past several elections. His success in the polls is a big, big deal--the last time a leftist won the presidency, the military kicked him out and imposed a harsh rule on the country for years. Much of Brazil's debt was incurred during this period from so-called "pharonic projects" like a road through the Amazon that was almost immediately eaten up by the jungle (there was much more jungle at the time).
Pay attention. I expect a lot more interesting decisions from Lula's government, besides ditching the Microsoft stranglehold (mod me flamebait if you want, but you know it's true). Just recently they overhauled the very costly pension system for government employees--pissed off a lot of people, but seems necessary to cut gov. spending and redirect it to more urgent problems.
And for all you Brazilians out there who disagree with me, and think Lula's election was a travesty, tell me why. I know not everyone is optimistic.
So yes, this is a fairly big deal. It also makes OSX how-tos easier to follow (many had tcsh-specific command-line instructions).
So are you using the Pro version?
In engineering classes, it would have been unthinkable to take a test without a graphing calculator.
In the past, that was true about aluminum frames--only the mid-range to higher-end had them, because it involves welding in an oxygen-free environment, is a pain in the ass, etc. But try to find anything BUT aluminum now. Even the cheapie bikes are made of it these days.
In January, some asshole stole my beautiful (chromoly) Kona, and as a temporary fix I got a department store bike for around $100. And guess what it's made of? Aluminum. Yet it's heavier than my mom's old chromoly Trek.
I've discovered that although aluminum was once really cool to have, nowadays many serious bikers think it sucks. Check out the comparison chart on this page here (caveat: they manufacture superior steel frames, but I believe the data is still valid).
So that cheapo aluminum bike didn't get much use. As soon as I could, I got a frame made of Reynold's 853 steel. It's neck-and-neck with titanium (superior in many respects).
To anticipate any defenders of aluminum, yeah, I know they're coming out with kick-ass alloys these days, like Scandium, but I'll still stick to steel for now, thank you.
Billy and the Boingers sucked compared to Death TÃngüe. No one has repeated such masterpieces as "Leper Lover." And I love the line "Let's run over Lionel Richie with a tank."
hint: it has to do with pron.
Having recently (Jan. 2002) purchased a TiBook (my first Mac ever), I did extensive price comparisons of laptops. The best choices I could find were the Sony Vaio, IBM Thinkpad, and Titanium Powerbook G4. For comparable systems, the Mac was actually cheapest. And by the way, at the time Sony didn't even make a Vaio that had all the features I was looking for.
As an aside, I've loved using my Powerbook for the past year-and-a-half, and have had minimal problems. My most recent uptime has been about 3 weeks (had to restart after Software Update).
Oh--and this is an appropriate question given the audience: Has anyone had problems starting the Terminal application after an update to Jaguar? I fiddled with settings (e.g., using bash instead of tcsh, changing a couple default directory, etc.) and Apple's Tech Support refuses to help me. I'm using the 3rd party iTerm, but can't properly map the backspace key and it's goddamned annoying. I also can't open the built-in font menu, and have no idea what's causing that bug.
Very interesting, because so much of it was censored, and the authors chose to leave blank space in the parts that were censored. Sections that the CIA wanted to ban, but a court ruled had to be allowed, were printed as boldface. Next time somebody tries to give you bullshit about how our government does what's best for the people, refer them to this book, written by former CIA operatives. Most interesting is the connection of Latin American coups with US business interests (e.g., United Fruit Company).
Oh, and if you're looking for a politician who stands up for his principles, and for civil liberties, read up on Russ Feingold (Winconsin senator, Dem.), co-author of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, and ONLY senator to vote against the Patriot Act. I'm no Democrat, but if he runs for pres., I'll throw my vote his way.
First, 128kbps is crappy encoding. Even if it's better than 128kbps mp3s, it probably isn't as good as 192 kbps mp3s, and certainly isn't CD quality. I'm not some audiophile who has a $1000 record player and buys vinyl to get that "pristine" sound of analog, but jesus, I can certainly hear the difference between mp3s and CDs on a regular, ordinary stereo. As such, for music that I really like, an mp3 is not going to be good enough for me. I'll download mp3s for portable use and to preview music, but if I like it enough, I'll buy it. A big question those RIAA types keep neglecting to address is, why can we listen to songs on the radio for free, but not via mp3s? The quality is similar, but with mp3s at least I can bypass those ClearChannel bastards who have a virtual monopoly on our public domain airwaves. I don't believe any argument that radio stations pay royalties, because we all already know about Payola, a.k.a. pay-per-play publicity for Top 40 artists. After that price-fixing scandal, where the RIAA bilked millions from the American public, what fscking right do they have to sue anyone (like poor college students) for theft! Two wrongs don't make a right, but I'd estimate that for every CD you've ever bought, you've paid for about two or three. So you're just getting your money's worth if you pay for 50% of the music in your library. Downloading more than that might be pushing the limits of honesty, though. But make sure to pirate only from record labels for which you've purchased something. Not that I'm changing anyone's mind in this forum, but so many people think they have a right to pirate music because they can. In fact, there are some logical reasons why we should be able to download mp3s. Until a radical change in the way the record industry does business, Apple's new program is a step in the right direction.
actually, i believe al didn't need permission because coolio's song was itself a derivative of stevie wonder's "pastime paradise". coolio got all bent out of shape, but i think it was groundless, since he didn't write the hook for the song in the first place. imagine puff daddy (i refuse to use any of his latest pseudonyms) getting upset for someone parodying . . . let's say, jimmy page (kashmir).
i assume you've already used the link howstuffworks? it's pretty appropriate for any age, and has a great section on computers.
I usually preview new music by downloading mp3s before i buy the album. But you know what? The only time I actually pirate music is when a friend of mine has a copy of the CD. I'm not what most people would consider an audiophile, but mp3s don't cut it for me for several reasons-- 1) I listen to weird music, usually not available on file-sharing systems. Try to find any decent Brazilian music on Gnutella. Or even slightly obscure artists, like the Delgados. My time is worth more than the hours it would take to search for and download some of this music. 2) 128 kbps sampling sucks ass! 192 is acceptable for my computer, for the car, and for a portable device (like an iPod) but NOT for the stereo. I've always been seriously disappointed with CDs I've burned from mp3s. I'll stick with 44.1 kHz, thank you very much. 3) Lyrics, album art, and extras. Yeah, it's not that big of a deal, but especially if I think the artist DESERVES my support, these can be deciding factors in whether I'll buy the expensive retail album. In summary, the RIAA can fuck itself. Just as with software piracy, no one is losing any money with music sharing. I wouldn't buy the album anyway if I couldn't get it free, in almost all cases. And props to labels like Dischord (of Fugazi fame) for NOT ripping off consumers. They routinely sell (sold?) albums for $7, post-paid. Without all the bloat and middlemen, artists can make a decent profit w/o bending over the people who buy their albums.