you're not supposed to buy music you think is the worst, you're supposed to acknowledge that not everyone likes (or even should like) the music that you happen to like.
I do acknowledge that. Sorry if it came across otherwise. My list of examples wasn't supposed to be interpreted as "this is what is good, I declare it so", just "this is what I've personally found which defies the idea that albums are mostly filler, I'm sure there is something out there for everyone".
For example, my flatmate is heavily into punk stuff, he loves bands like NOFX and Primus. Now, personally I don't really like it - but my point is, I'm sure he doesn't think those albums are 90% rubbish.
Heh. They were really just meant to be examples of albums I've picked up which defy the "90% is rubbish" maxim IMHO. I didn't expect them to serve as recommendations since I've no idea of the taste of those who read the post. But if you're interested in checking them out, great!
There are also some relatively eclectic chillout mixes in my sig. If you're not already a fan of rather abstract electronic/IDM stuff, I would recommend the "Snowfall Sessions" mix; I've had "the whole family enjoyed it" feedback about that one, it seems to be more accessible than the other two.
hehe, cool! there's a new track called "Addict" on our myspace (I know, I know, as a techie it's horrible, but it does work for reaching 'normal' people). It's the first thing we've finished from our next cd which should be finished by about, um, March (hopefully!).
I also uploaded the "Timestorm" album to last.fm. You can stream it all and download two of the tunes free (only 128kbps, which I find pretty unlistenable, but hey, it is only a taster). We've sold out of the CD now, but we'll still sell DRM free, LAME-encoded 320s to anybody who wants it. Unfortunately I can't seem to get CubeCart to talk to Paypal, so the actual shop with automatic secure download link presented upon receipt, isn't there yet. You have to trust us to email you the download link:(
slashdot ate a few sentences in the middle, sorry:(
Should have read:
Single correlates with short (< 3 or 4 minutes), catchy, sticks-in-your-head, probably upbeat, fairly simple, vocal focused. Stuff that works well over radio. It's quite possible for albums to feature songs which are stunningly good, but clearly no use for a single, because they're 7-8 minutes long, in a strange time signature or structure, instrumental / no vocal, and so on.
I don't understand how, in this context, that is supposed to be a bad thing.
Elite = best. Elitist = likes the best.
What, I'm supposed to buy the music I think is the worst, and reject the music I think is the best? Just to keep up my anti-snobbery credentials? That doesn't make any sense. Of course I'm an elitist!
Perhaps you meant I'm elitist because I listed artists you haven't heard of, and you think I'm one of those "only likes music that's obscure" types?
Well, no, not really:)
The Minnie Riperton and King Curtis file alongside all the other soul/funk/disco I have collected... Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, that's all very mainstream, popular/populist chart-topping stuff. I discovered Seth Lakeman when he was splashed all over the media after being Mercury nominated. Ojos de Brujo might seem obscure, but they won a BBC Radio 3 world music award, so they're really far from obscure within world music. Sasha must be about the least obscure name from the whole of trance/house. etc... I also love all sorts of other well known stuff from rock/indie stuff like Radiohead and Blur, to pure pop like Michael Jackson... So, don't judge too quickly eh?:)
I find it hard to believe that you don't see the vast majority of all albums as a few good songs immersed in garbage "filler material"
The vast majority of Britney / Timberlake / Fifty Cent / whatever is being pushed by the major labels... sure. That's my point... they're rubbish, so don't buy them! Instead of buying them and then complaining on slashdot that you feel ripped off because there was only one decent track on them... buy stuff that isn't rubbish, stuff where the ratio is inverted, 90% good stuff, 10% weaker. And in my experience... that goes for a lot if not most "independent" or "not aimed squarely at a Billboard chart position" music, be that soul, electronic, alternative rock, world, folk or whatever. Hence what I was hoping would be a relatively diverse list of examples...
Of course this being slashdot nobody is prepared to grasp the point that with a little bit of effort in finding strong artists you really vibe with, there is more fantastic music out there than you could possibly have time to listen to in your lifetime. Instead, they just slate my "terrible" personal taste or my "elitist" person.
To be honest I think a lot of people on slashdot dont WANT to accept this point, because they like clinging onto their crappy little "90% of the album sucks anyway" reason for continuing to pirate music, or even worse, pay for it in ways that don't ever trickle back to the musicians (allofmp3.com)
If they released albums of entirely good songs, how do they decide which ones will become "singles" or "videos"?
WTF? "Singles" doesnt correlate with "good", and "not a single" doesn't correlate with bad! (Again, not if you avoid manufactured Britney rubbish, anyway). Single correlates with short ( You're a rare person if you find even a handful of artists with a set of albums that all contain 90% "good" music.
I've got dozens of artists I could say that about. It just depends how much you actually care about music and how much you're prepared to put into finding it, besides listening to whatever Clear Channel syndicated feed is playing in the local sandwich deli.
Personally, I'm a musician and a producer of electronic stuff; music is my main thing, I spend a lot of time performing or attending live gigs and club nights, visiting specialist record shops, reading and posting on music-oriented forums and blogs, reading music-oriented "dead trees" media, networking with other music obsessives in the real world, etc, etc. When you do all that, it's really not that hard to find way more music than you have time to listen to. I get the impression most people on slashdot griping about there being
If I had only listed electronic/dance music stuff, that response would not surprise me. I'm aware that slashdot seems mostly populated by "music stopped with Led Zep*" types, capable of only a narrow minded knee-jerk get-off-my-lawn "that's not even music" response to anything electronic.
But considering I threw in a bit of soul, folk and world music as well - you know, what you'd call "real music" with "real" instruments - I am slightly taken aback.
Still... have you actually heard a single tune by any of those artists? I'm guessing you've heard "Lovin you" (Minnie Riperton) without knowing who it was by, and are making judgements without having heard a single note of any of the rest.
* Not that I've anything against Led Zep, I hasten to add. I love a bit of classic rock too, I just haven't really bought any of it this year...
Re:Must just be the majors. The indies are thrivin
on
iTunes Sales 'Collapsing'
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I keep seeing this on slashdot. All I can say is (with my tongue somewhat in cheek) that you guys must be listening to the wrong music!
All the albums I buy have maybe 1 or 2 tracks I'm not overly fond of, max, and 10-15 that are good. And I'm not buying in any one genre either. Just looking at what I've bought in 2006, the following don't really have ANY weak tracks: Ojos de Brujo - Techari (Flamenco hiphop fusion), Breakage - This Too Shall Pass (dub-influenced drum'n'bass), Shpongle - Nothing Lasts (psychedelic global electronica). While these have maybe one or two that are slightly weaker, but by no means "don't want to listen to": Seth Lakeman - Freedom Frields (folk / singer songwriter), Minnie Riperton - Anthology (soul), Intex Systems - Research and Development (ambient and idm), Burial - Burial (dubstep / ambient), ICR - Day Trip (trancey drum'n'bass), King Curtis - Live at Fillmore West (soul / R&B), Sasha - airdrawndagger (progressive trance / house). Etc, etc.
Seriously... if 90% of the tracks on the albums you're buying aren't worth listening to, I do have to suspect you're buying albums by artists that suck, it's pretty much that simple.
Excellent post. Bravo. Are you in the UK? If so, have you or would consider sending something along these lines to your MP (etc)? Maybe even writing it up into a fully standalone article and trying to get it published somewhere? (Somewhere, unlike slashdot, that isn't mostly "preaching to the choir"). Also, how do you stand on people quoting this. I wouldn't mind reposting it myself, with credit of course.
Someone once had an insightful sig on that topic. "Linux is only free if your time has no value".
According to this a new copy of XP Home will set me back £186. Seems a bit steep, I'm sure when I bought my PC the OEM price was more like £40, but hey, let's roll with it anyway.
I get paid roughly £15/hr - which as it happens is kind of low, because I'm in the charity sector and earning maybe 60-70% of what I would in the private sector. But again... let's just roll with it anyway.
I bought XP in spring 2002 I think. Vista's not out yet; as it happens I have no plan to upgrade because it doesn't seem to offer any compelling reason to, and I don't like the cranked up DRM, etc. But let's assume anyway that I buy Vista next year when it comes out. Thus, XP gave me 5 years of service.
Now that means £186 / £15 ~= 12 hours / 5 years ~= 2.5 hrs per year. So, if I put in any more than 2 and a half hours learning how to use Linux AND all the new Linux apps I would have to learn to replace my current familiar software, Linux works out more expensive for me.
Do I think I would spend that length of time R'ing TFM, Googling, hitting up forums, and so forth? Hell yes I do.
And I used deliberately conservative/generous estimates throughout. I can well believe that if you do the same calculations based on the cost of Windows when you're buying OEM, for someone who earns more than my bottom-of-the-range wage, it's more like about half an hour. Do you honestly think someone with a lifetime's familiarity with Windows (or Mac, come to that) can switch to Linux and not have to spend an hour or two each year learning the new way of working? I really doubt it.
So, basically, price is an absolutely rubbish reason to advocate Linux. Security, lack of big brother / DRM crap, complete freedom to modify and customise it... they're the reasons you want to focus on, because they're much more genuine and compelling advantages. (And, FWIW, the sort of reasons that mean my next OS is more likely to be Ubuntu than Vista).
Saying that it's not worth throwing away the only life you'll ever get for your country - when the very concept of the current nation state was only invented a few centuries ago, mostly as a way of persuading the proles to carry on dying for the elites (owing to the fact they mostly stopped believing in the divine right of kings, patriotism was the next best brainwashing choice); when you're born in whatever country you're born in through chance and no choice of your own; when the nation state is one of the least relevant aspects of the modern economic landscape... Gets moderated flamebait? Wow, you people really are retards. I believe the fashionable phrase you guys use in this situation is "drank the kool-aid". Still, enjoy dying for your obsolete political unit, lmao.
CSS... makes updates and general maintenance a pain. We've done a few sites that way and they are the ones I hate working on when [the] client calls with updates, enhancements, etc
Updates/maintenance is one of CSS's strongest points. Client wants all the links green instead of red? Look in my style.css, change a { color:#f00; } to a { color:#0f0; } - instead of pick through 50 pages looking for every <font> tag inside an <a> tag. Client wants the left hand navigation column to be a bit wider? Look in my style.css, change div#leftnav { width: } to something bigger. As opposed to picking through 50 pages trying to work out whether it's the fourth level of nested <table><tr><td> which controls that, or the fifth level.
If he wanted to complain about CSS designs being less consistent than table based ones I could somewhat understand his point. (Although I'd still say he needs to google the IE box model, take his pick from any one of several very easy solutions (including CSS hacks like the Tantek hack; abandoning padding and using only margins, with extra wrapper divs if necessary; serving different CSS to IE via conditional comments...), and then realise the majority of his layout issues have vanished...)
Then again, judging by this:
versus looking up styles
it sounds like he was just lazy and didn't want to learn something new. Looking up styles? Oh noes. Really, you've only got to do professional CSS-based design work for about a fortnight and you've memorised the 90% of the stuff you need on a regular basis. For the more esoteric bits that you do need to look up, it's not like there isn't a vast amount of CSS reference material just one click away.
Tables don't cause any problems if they're done correctly
Well, apart from the huge nest of tables inside cells inside tables inside cells inside tables being (a) a waste of bandwidth and (b) far harder to write and maintain. And being piss-poor for people browsing with screen readers, and by divorcing content from presentation completely all kinds of interesting microformats / data mining / semantic web type of applications become totally impossible.
You're talking two things here, depth and breadth.
If somebody publishes a 15,000-word wiki on the 1970s NBC show "Cliffhangers" - Depth some way-out there pop culture reference I never heard of, and Wiki has me up-to-speed - Breadth
My personal view is that Wikipedia shouldn't be shy of breadth. One of the things I think it has going for it (versus traditional encyclopaedias and "knowledge stores") is that it can document that trivial, the everyday and the disposable, which would not be deemed worthy enough to be worth the paper-space in Britannica or book-length analyses by academics, but may still be very interesting to future generations.
On the other hand, when it comes to depth, I think pruning is probably for the best. A 15,000 word dissertation on a niche topic doesn't really deserve to be in Wikipedia - it deserves to be published in full elsewhere, and summarised / referenced / linked as appropriate to an encyclopaedia article.
"Oh but it's legal, it works like radio, they pay the Russian PRS, who pay the artists". Er... no.
My band's CD is for sale on various allofmp3.com-alikes. Not allofmp3.com itself, AFAIK, but certainly on other *.ru sites. I know quite a few other (more successful/well known) artists whose work is doubtless available on these sites.
Nobody's got any cheques from the Russian PRS.
Frankly you're better off downloading it off soulseek/bittorrent/emule/whatever the kids are using this week. I mean - if you're going to pay - the only reason for doing so is to financially support the artists you like, and that does not happen with these Russian mp3 sites. Seriously - just pirate it for free instead! Lining the pockets of some random Russian mafia dudes should do nothing to qualm your conscience, so you honestly might as well.
I wish I could confidently agree with you, but I seem to remember reading that Tony Blair's administration has created something ridiculous like 1400 new criminal offences:(
Good grief. A slashdot poster who's actually read some Marx, studied some (Soviet) history, and knows that "the USSR was awful so obviously Marx was wrong" isn't exactly accurate. Bravo!
I donno man, I've got AWStats on one of my hosting accounts at the moment and it's frankly very very mediocre, compared to almost everything else I've tried -- some other online stats package I used to have with a different provider (whose name escapes me at the moment I'm afraid), some piece of freeware/shareware I downloaded that you run clientside (obviously you have to ftp the raw apache log files to your local pc too) - again I forget the name, I think it was something like WebLog Pro (dated from before weblog took on a different meaning!), and also compared to the system we run at work (which is 3rd party, much like Google Analytics I imagine, not that I've ever tried Analytics)
MS pushes a short hardware upgrade cycle, aiming to get its customers to make new hardware purchases every two years or so. Remember not only do later versions require newer hardware, eventually out-growing old hardware, most of MS' income is from Windows sales and nearly all of that is from OEM sales.
Eh? XP was released in October 2001 - just over five years ago and Vista isn't released quite yet. Where's this two year cycle now? Admittedly the gaps between Win95 - Win98 - WinXP were three years apiece, but I could argue hardware / user software / games was doing that for itself without necessarily Windows being the driver. I know I went from a 200hz CPU to 2.4Ghz between my Win95 machine and XP machine, but the upgrades in between the two weren't because 98 came along, they were because more demanding games and audio/visual/multimedia applications came along.
Where? I think you searched for Teddington to get you started, then scrolled to the logo, then pasted us the link in your URL bar. Doesn't work - you need to hit "link to this page" on the right hand side for the URL to update according to where you scrolled.
I tried looking around for a while but couldn't find anything within a few minutes...
Funny, the train I get to work in the morning is bound for Teddington.
Some people don't like B5 because you can't drop into it.
I, on the other hand, didn't like B5 because I thought it was, well... sort of crappy.
I had no problem dropping into it - I started watching from the very first episode. But I only lasted about 5 or 6 episodes, not enough to see this amazing multi-season storyline, on account of the absolutely awful acting, dialogue, make-up and special effects.
Really, I don't know why any US companies can do business with China.... China does terrible, horrible things to their people. We're talking on par with Cuba, Iraq... Yet for some reason we seem to turn a blind eye to it. I've never understood it. I'm sure it's all political because the US couldn't survive as a country without China.
Indeed, I suspect it's something to do with owing China $323.5 billion and not owing Iraq/Cuba $323.5 billion. (Oblig: that's just a quick wiki lookup so it might be wrong)
Slashdot Mirror
you're not supposed to buy music you think is the worst, you're supposed to acknowledge that not everyone likes (or even should like) the music that you happen to like.
I do acknowledge that. Sorry if it came across otherwise. My list of examples wasn't supposed to be interpreted as "this is what is good, I declare it so", just "this is what I've personally found which defies the idea that albums are mostly filler, I'm sure there is something out there for everyone".
For example, my flatmate is heavily into punk stuff, he loves bands like NOFX and Primus. Now, personally I don't really like it - but my point is, I'm sure he doesn't think those albums are 90% rubbish.
Heh. They were really just meant to be examples of albums I've picked up which defy the "90% is rubbish" maxim I M HO. I didn't expect them to serve as recommendations since I've no idea of the taste of those who read the post. But if you're interested in checking them out, great!
There are also some relatively eclectic chillout mixes in my sig. If you're not already a fan of rather abstract electronic/IDM stuff, I would recommend the "Snowfall Sessions" mix; I've had "the whole family enjoyed it" feedback about that one, it seems to be more accessible than the other two.
hehe, cool! there's a new track called "Addict" on our myspace (I know, I know, as a techie it's horrible, but it does work for reaching 'normal' people). It's the first thing we've finished from our next cd which should be finished by about, um, March (hopefully!).
:(
I also uploaded the "Timestorm" album to last.fm. You can stream it all and download two of the tunes free (only 128kbps, which I find pretty unlistenable, but hey, it is only a taster). We've sold out of the CD now, but we'll still sell DRM free, LAME-encoded 320s to anybody who wants it. Unfortunately I can't seem to get CubeCart to talk to Paypal, so the actual shop with automatic secure download link presented upon receipt, isn't there yet. You have to trust us to email you the download link
slashdot ate a few sentences in the middle, sorry :(
Should have read:
Single correlates with short (< 3 or 4 minutes), catchy, sticks-in-your-head, probably upbeat, fairly simple, vocal focused. Stuff that works well over radio. It's quite possible for albums to feature songs which are stunningly good, but clearly no use for a single, because they're 7-8 minutes long, in a strange time signature or structure, instrumental / no vocal, and so on.
Another elitist.
:)
:)
... buy stuff that isn't rubbish, stuff where the ratio is inverted, 90% good stuff, 10% weaker. And in my experience... that goes for a lot if not most "independent" or "not aimed squarely at a Billboard chart position" music, be that soul, electronic, alternative rock, world, folk or whatever. Hence what I was hoping would be a relatively diverse list of examples...
I don't understand how, in this context, that is supposed to be a bad thing.
Elite = best. Elitist = likes the best.
What, I'm supposed to buy the music I think is the worst, and reject the music I think is the best? Just to keep up my anti-snobbery credentials? That doesn't make any sense. Of course I'm an elitist!
Perhaps you meant I'm elitist because I listed artists you haven't heard of, and you think I'm one of those "only likes music that's obscure" types?
Well, no, not really
The Minnie Riperton and King Curtis file alongside all the other soul/funk/disco I have collected... Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, that's all very mainstream, popular/populist chart-topping stuff. I discovered Seth Lakeman when he was splashed all over the media after being Mercury nominated. Ojos de Brujo might seem obscure, but they won a BBC Radio 3 world music award, so they're really far from obscure within world music. Sasha must be about the least obscure name from the whole of trance/house. etc... I also love all sorts of other well known stuff from rock/indie stuff like Radiohead and Blur, to pure pop like Michael Jackson... So, don't judge too quickly eh?
I find it hard to believe that you don't see the vast majority of all albums as a few good songs immersed in garbage "filler material"
The vast majority of Britney / Timberlake / Fifty Cent / whatever is being pushed by the major labels... sure. That's my point... they're rubbish, so don't buy them! Instead of buying them and then complaining on slashdot that you feel ripped off because there was only one decent track on them
Of course this being slashdot nobody is prepared to grasp the point that with a little bit of effort in finding strong artists you really vibe with, there is more fantastic music out there than you could possibly have time to listen to in your lifetime. Instead, they just slate my "terrible" personal taste or my "elitist" person.
To be honest I think a lot of people on slashdot dont WANT to accept this point, because they like clinging onto their crappy little "90% of the album sucks anyway" reason for continuing to pirate music, or even worse, pay for it in ways that don't ever trickle back to the musicians (allofmp3.com)
If they released albums of entirely good songs, how do they decide which ones will become "singles" or "videos"? WTF? "Singles" doesnt correlate with "good", and "not a single" doesn't correlate with bad! (Again, not if you avoid manufactured Britney rubbish, anyway). Single correlates with short (
You're a rare person if you find even a handful of artists with a set of albums that all contain 90% "good" music.
I've got dozens of artists I could say that about. It just depends how much you actually care about music and how much you're prepared to put into finding it, besides listening to whatever Clear Channel syndicated feed is playing in the local sandwich deli.
Personally, I'm a musician and a producer of electronic stuff; music is my main thing, I spend a lot of time performing or attending live gigs and club nights, visiting specialist record shops, reading and posting on music-oriented forums and blogs, reading music-oriented "dead trees" media, networking with other music obsessives in the real world, etc, etc. When you do all that, it's really not that hard to find way more music than you have time to listen to. I get the impression most people on slashdot griping about there being
If I had only listed electronic/dance music stuff, that response would not surprise me. I'm aware that slashdot seems mostly populated by "music stopped with Led Zep*" types, capable of only a narrow minded knee-jerk get-off-my-lawn "that's not even music" response to anything electronic.
But considering I threw in a bit of soul, folk and world music as well - you know, what you'd call "real music" with "real" instruments - I am slightly taken aback.
Still... have you actually heard a single tune by any of those artists? I'm guessing you've heard "Lovin you" (Minnie Riperton) without knowing who it was by, and are making judgements without having heard a single note of any of the rest.
* Not that I've anything against Led Zep, I hasten to add. I love a bit of classic rock too, I just haven't really bought any of it this year...
I keep seeing this on slashdot. All I can say is (with my tongue somewhat in cheek) that you guys must be listening to the wrong music!
All the albums I buy have maybe 1 or 2 tracks I'm not overly fond of, max, and 10-15 that are good. And I'm not buying in any one genre either. Just looking at what I've bought in 2006, the following don't really have ANY weak tracks: Ojos de Brujo - Techari (Flamenco hiphop fusion), Breakage - This Too Shall Pass (dub-influenced drum'n'bass), Shpongle - Nothing Lasts (psychedelic global electronica). While these have maybe one or two that are slightly weaker, but by no means "don't want to listen to": Seth Lakeman - Freedom Frields (folk / singer songwriter), Minnie Riperton - Anthology (soul), Intex Systems - Research and Development (ambient and idm), Burial - Burial (dubstep / ambient), ICR - Day Trip (trancey drum'n'bass), King Curtis - Live at Fillmore West (soul / R&B), Sasha - airdrawndagger (progressive trance / house). Etc, etc.
Seriously... if 90% of the tracks on the albums you're buying aren't worth listening to, I do have to suspect you're buying albums by artists that suck, it's pretty much that simple.
Excellent post. Bravo. Are you in the UK? If so, have you or would consider sending something along these lines to your MP (etc)? Maybe even writing it up into a fully standalone article and trying to get it published somewhere? (Somewhere, unlike slashdot, that isn't mostly "preaching to the choir"). Also, how do you stand on people quoting this. I wouldn't mind reposting it myself, with credit of course.
Aren't you forgetting the rest of the world? Or are google.co.uk, google.ca and so on based in independent datacentres in those countries?
Someone once had an insightful sig on that topic. "Linux is only free if your time has no value".
According to this a new copy of XP Home will set me back £186. Seems a bit steep, I'm sure when I bought my PC the OEM price was more like £40, but hey, let's roll with it anyway.
I get paid roughly £15/hr - which as it happens is kind of low, because I'm in the charity sector and earning maybe 60-70% of what I would in the private sector. But again... let's just roll with it anyway.
I bought XP in spring 2002 I think. Vista's not out yet; as it happens I have no plan to upgrade because it doesn't seem to offer any compelling reason to, and I don't like the cranked up DRM, etc. But let's assume anyway that I buy Vista next year when it comes out. Thus, XP gave me 5 years of service.
Now that means £186 / £15 ~= 12 hours / 5 years ~= 2.5 hrs per year. So, if I put in any more than 2 and a half hours learning how to use Linux AND all the new Linux apps I would have to learn to replace my current familiar software, Linux works out more expensive for me.
Do I think I would spend that length of time R'ing TFM, Googling, hitting up forums, and so forth? Hell yes I do.
And I used deliberately conservative/generous estimates throughout. I can well believe that if you do the same calculations based on the cost of Windows when you're buying OEM, for someone who earns more than my bottom-of-the-range wage, it's more like about half an hour. Do you honestly think someone with a lifetime's familiarity with Windows (or Mac, come to that) can switch to Linux and not have to spend an hour or two each year learning the new way of working? I really doubt it.
So, basically, price is an absolutely rubbish reason to advocate Linux. Security, lack of big brother / DRM crap, complete freedom to modify and customise it... they're the reasons you want to focus on, because they're much more genuine and compelling advantages. (And, FWIW, the sort of reasons that mean my next OS is more likely to be Ubuntu than Vista).
Saying that it's not worth throwing away the only life you'll ever get for your country - when the very concept of the current nation state was only invented a few centuries ago, mostly as a way of persuading the proles to carry on dying for the elites (owing to the fact they mostly stopped believing in the divine right of kings, patriotism was the next best brainwashing choice); when you're born in whatever country you're born in through chance and no choice of your own; when the nation state is one of the least relevant aspects of the modern economic landscape... Gets moderated flamebait? Wow, you people really are retards. I believe the fashionable phrase you guys use in this situation is "drank the kool-aid". Still, enjoy dying for your obsolete political unit, lmao.
What a genuinely bizarre thing to say.
... makes updates and general maintenance a pain. We've done a few sites that way and they are the ones I hate working on when [the] client calls with updates, enhancements, etc
CSS
Updates/maintenance is one of CSS's strongest points. Client wants all the links green instead of red? Look in my style.css, change a { color:#f00; } to a { color:#0f0; } - instead of pick through 50 pages looking for every <font> tag inside an <a> tag. Client wants the left hand navigation column to be a bit wider? Look in my style.css, change div#leftnav { width: } to something bigger. As opposed to picking through 50 pages trying to work out whether it's the fourth level of nested <table><tr><td> which controls that, or the fifth level.
If he wanted to complain about CSS designs being less consistent than table based ones I could somewhat understand his point. (Although I'd still say he needs to google the IE box model, take his pick from any one of several very easy solutions (including CSS hacks like the Tantek hack; abandoning padding and using only margins, with extra wrapper divs if necessary; serving different CSS to IE via conditional comments...), and then realise the majority of his layout issues have vanished...)
Then again, judging by this:
versus looking up styles
it sounds like he was just lazy and didn't want to learn something new. Looking up styles? Oh noes. Really, you've only got to do professional CSS-based design work for about a fortnight and you've memorised the 90% of the stuff you need on a regular basis. For the more esoteric bits that you do need to look up, it's not like there isn't a vast amount of CSS reference material just one click away.
Tables don't cause any problems if they're done correctly
Well, apart from the huge nest of tables inside cells inside tables inside cells inside tables being (a) a waste of bandwidth and (b) far harder to write and maintain. And being piss-poor for people browsing with screen readers, and by divorcing content from presentation completely all kinds of interesting microformats / data mining / semantic web type of applications become totally impossible.
You're talking two things here, depth and breadth.
If somebody publishes a 15,000-word wiki on the 1970s NBC show "Cliffhangers" - Depth
some way-out there pop culture reference I never heard of, and Wiki has me up-to-speed - Breadth
My personal view is that Wikipedia shouldn't be shy of breadth. One of the things I think it has going for it (versus traditional encyclopaedias and "knowledge stores") is that it can document that trivial, the everyday and the disposable, which would not be deemed worthy enough to be worth the paper-space in Britannica or book-length analyses by academics, but may still be very interesting to future generations.
On the other hand, when it comes to depth, I think pruning is probably for the best. A 15,000 word dissertation on a niche topic doesn't really deserve to be in Wikipedia - it deserves to be published in full elsewhere, and summarised / referenced / linked as appropriate to an encyclopaedia article.
You mean this I think.
t m
http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.h
"Oh but it's legal, it works like radio, they pay the Russian PRS, who pay the artists". Er... no.
My band's CD is for sale on various allofmp3.com-alikes. Not allofmp3.com itself, AFAIK, but certainly on other *.ru sites. I know quite a few other (more successful/well known) artists whose work is doubtless available on these sites.
Nobody's got any cheques from the Russian PRS.
Frankly you're better off downloading it off soulseek/bittorrent/emule/whatever the kids are using this week. I mean - if you're going to pay - the only reason for doing so is to financially support the artists you like, and that does not happen with these Russian mp3 sites. Seriously - just pirate it for free instead! Lining the pockets of some random Russian mafia dudes should do nothing to qualm your conscience, so you honestly might as well.
Doug Morris,
You're a cunt.
I wish I could confidently agree with you, but I seem to remember reading that Tony Blair's administration has created something ridiculous like 1400 new criminal offences :(
Good grief. A slashdot poster who's actually read some Marx, studied some (Soviet) history, and knows that "the USSR was awful so obviously Marx was wrong" isn't exactly accurate. Bravo!
oh for mod points. great track!
I donno man, I've got AWStats on one of my hosting accounts at the moment and it's frankly very very mediocre, compared to almost everything else I've tried -- some other online stats package I used to have with a different provider (whose name escapes me at the moment I'm afraid), some piece of freeware/shareware I downloaded that you run clientside (obviously you have to ftp the raw apache log files to your local pc too) - again I forget the name, I think it was something like WebLog Pro (dated from before weblog took on a different meaning!), and also compared to the system we run at work (which is 3rd party, much like Google Analytics I imagine, not that I've ever tried Analytics)
MS pushes a short hardware upgrade cycle, aiming to get its customers to make new hardware purchases every two years or so. Remember not only do later versions require newer hardware, eventually out-growing old hardware, most of MS' income is from Windows sales and nearly all of that is from OEM sales.
Eh? XP was released in October 2001 - just over five years ago and Vista isn't released quite yet. Where's this two year cycle now? Admittedly the gaps between Win95 - Win98 - WinXP were three years apiece, but I could argue hardware / user software / games was doing that for itself without necessarily Windows being the driver. I know I went from a 200hz CPU to 2.4Ghz between my Win95 machine and XP machine, but the upgrades in between the two weren't because 98 came along, they were because more demanding games and audio/visual/multimedia applications came along.
Where? I think you searched for Teddington to get you started, then scrolled to the logo, then pasted us the link in your URL bar. Doesn't work - you need to hit "link to this page" on the right hand side for the URL to update according to where you scrolled.
I tried looking around for a while but couldn't find anything within a few minutes...
Funny, the train I get to work in the morning is bound for Teddington.
Some people don't like B5 because you can't drop into it.
I, on the other hand, didn't like B5 because I thought it was, well... sort of crappy.
I had no problem dropping into it - I started watching from the very first episode. But I only lasted about 5 or 6 episodes, not enough to see this amazing multi-season storyline, on account of the absolutely awful acting, dialogue, make-up and special effects.
Really, I don't know why any US companies can do business with China.... China does terrible, horrible things to their people. We're talking on par with Cuba, Iraq... Yet for some reason we seem to turn a blind eye to it. I've never understood it. I'm sure it's all political because the US couldn't survive as a country without China.
Indeed, I suspect it's something to do with owing China $323.5 billion and not owing Iraq/Cuba $323.5 billion. (Oblig: that's just a quick wiki lookup so it might be wrong)