My god! TWO ARROW TOOLS? WTF? One selects, and the other selects differently? Huh? No. That's a mistake.
A - FUCKING - MEN brutha. Illustrator is a fucking CRIME. Freehand was WAY better, even though, it too succumbed to the multiple selection tool idiocy. How was FH better? Two words: MULTIPLE PAGES. To this DAY Illustrator doesn't do mltiple pages, so if you do a design, say, for a CD cover, one document does the CD, another does the tray card, and anther does the insert.
WTF is THAT all about? IT should be ONE document with THREE pages! How stupid can it get?
Now: re: Photoshop - while it's UI and workflow is not optimal, it is a damn sight better than Illustrator's. And even in its some better than mediocre quality, GIMP's UI and workflow are utter crap. Pure and simple. And as flawed as Photoshop is, it is light years ahead of GIMP.
What the above post is describing is what is fundamentally wrong with GIMP and why I don't use it, either. That problem is WORKFLOW. The UI *is* truly hideous and disuseful, but if the app is good enough, you go along with its weirdness.
A case in point in that regard would be the old Quark Xpress. For years it tortured people with parent windows and child windows, a truly clunky interface, and all manner of f*cked up weirdness. BUT: once you learned it, it TOTALLY rocked and was light years beyond Pagemaker, ReadySetGo, and all the other page layout apps, even when those apps were easier to use.
InDesign arrived, and was deeply bug ridden. Then they fixed it, and its workflow is sooo powerful and easy to use, as it is combined with a fairly rational UI, it's eating Quark's Lunch.
Workflow proceeds from fundamental capabilities - the above note demonstrates that clearly. But merely possessing them isn't good enough - it has to be in a UI that is familiar, especially when going up against the likes of Photoshop. There have been plenty of powerful apps with bizarro UI (Kai's powerTools, Metasynth, etc.) and their power often went untapped. So, the discussion of UI is relevant. However, the UI is of no value if the workflow is hampered by inferior basic features.
GIMP's support of CMYK is miserable. That needs to change. One should be able to INVENT colour spaces on the fly - an ability to make (x) colour separations. Multiple windows as above noted needs to happen. The tool palette is absurd and needs to be aligned with other apps in that market segment - heck PAINTER was/is more like Photoshop than GIMP, and it has a great interface and Painter's brushes are incredible.
Frankly, fixing the UI is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. GIMP needs fundamental and architectural adjustments to its fundamental feature sets and workflow.
I don't care if it EVER runs on Windows or Mac - if done right, it could be a killer app for Linux (along with OO), and help put Linux over the top.
Interestingly, that's pretty accurate. I have about 1050 CDs, and I rip them at 192. I do have a bunch of mp3s from friends that I have collected at LAN parties. (we get together, plug in to a router, and open up file sharing...) We drink ad yap saying "OH DUDE - you GOTTA hear this record... I listen to it. If I like it, I go and buy the CD. If I don't like it, I delete the mp3 during my semiannual drive clean up eforts - it's just clutter at that point. And yes, I really am good about that - kind of fanatical, actually.
Wife: "Hey Honey - LET'S FUCK!"
Me: "I'm cleaning crap off my drives - my OCD. You know. I'll be up later. Play with yourself in the mean time..."
I do listen to a lot of classical music, so that keeps prices down, and I moved to TO just this year. 1/2 of my CDs I bought in Washington DC in the late 1980s, the other half in San Francisco - usually at Aquarius or Amoeba. (by the by: DO YOURSELF A BIG FAVOUR and subscribe to the Aquarius email. They get the most peculiar records. Period. Ever. And if you're into Metal - one of the owners is behind tUMULt... classical? Metal? Yeah - I have eclectic tastes...) Amoeba is expensive, but they get me the Really Weird Stuff. Amoeba was great, because it's what was a 22 lane bowling alley, and half of it is used CDs. They took over the Pharmacy next door and that became the classical and video section... Simply: HUGE BEYOND YOUR DREAMS. And DIRT CHEAP.
I guestimated my CD collection investment at around $9k - 1/10 the price of buying it track for track. I know a lot of musicians, and would estimate that at least 100 of my CDs are gifts or trades.
I'm kind of jazzed with this new iPod. If it can really handle my collection, I can FINALLY put my CDs in storage - that'll open up a lot of room in the Living Room. Makes Wife Happy. I'll stick it all in the basement where I'll put the "Listening / Video room"... Aaaaah - the miracles of cheap energy....
I haven't put that many tracks on my gigaPod yet. I do have a 160gig drive with 147gigs / 25,543 songs of audio on it. itunes seems to run just fine. I am curious as to how well the iPod will respond when I really load it up...
Lemme see. I have one of them funky new iPods that holds, what, 40,000 songs? And let's see, I'm going to fill it up with ringles? Hmmm. I don't think I'll bother putting the ringtone on the iPod, but the three songs? Sure. So, let's see. Divide 40,000 by 3 = 13,333.33 ringles. Each ringle is $6? 6 x 13,333.33 = $80,000. And that doesn't include sales tax. Here in Toronto, that's 14%, making it $91,200.
WTF ARE THESE IDIOTS THINKING??? That I'm going to spend over NINETY THOUSAND DOLLARS to load up my 160gig iPod?
They must be doing some mighty fine crack, because THAT is pure unadulterated BULLSHIT if they think I'm going to spend even 1/2 of one percent of $80,000 loading up my 160gig iPod, and it certainly isn't going to be spend on ringles...
Good god. What a bunch of losers. Left curve of the IQ bell chart. Morons. Mafiosi. Dead enders. Feh.
If this chip has four cores, how much faster does this actually make something happen? Doesn't the software have to be optimised for multiprocessors? If someone could 'splain this, it would be a public service.
Flying Pig is correct. The resource constraints, especially in the energy sector, are very real. We can yammer about "The Singularity" all you want, but it's not going to matter much when billions of people in the so-called "developing world" are dying of hunger, thirst, disease, or in some war over the remaining pools of energy and/or metals, and, conversely, millions of people in so-called "advanced" countries are reduced to penury as the economies slowly contract over decades.
Human numbers are following the same pathological growth one sees in a petri dish filled with sugar/energy - the bacteria grows like crazy until the energy/food is consumed. Then it dies off. Humans are capable of intensifying resources to meet needs, but logically, this is not a permanent "Get out of jail free" card. Eventually limits are hit, and people die off.
with the present numbers of humans (billions) and the political economy (industrial capitalist) the world is quickly becoming one big Easter Island.
Every single time I take them, they ask simple questions, like "What is your name?" or "is the sky blue?" etc, I can give straight up honest answers, and it always come up that I'm lying. I'm not a "flinchy" type, but I can't pass a polygraph for love or money. So, for me, they suck, and I don't think they should be admitted in a court as evidence.
They had a common interest, and corresponded from an email list. They found each other really entrancing from the emails, and after 8 months, he bought a plane ticket to visit her. They clicked, and were married a year later.
They've been married for almost 10 years now, and are doing just fine.
If it works - it works - nothing wrong with it. Lord knows it's better than going to Yente the Matchmaker...
Hodel, oh Hodel,
Have I made a match for you!
He's handsome, he's young!
Alright, he's 62.
But he's a nice man, a good catch, true?
True.
I promise you'll be happy,
And even if you're not,
There's more to life than that---
Don't ask me what.
Chava, I found him.
Won't you be a lucky bride!
He's handsome, he's tall,
That is from side to side.
But he's a nice man, a good catch, right?
Right.
You heard he has a temper.
He'll beat you every night,
But only when he's sober,
So you're alright.
Did you think you'd get a prince?
Well I do the best I can.
With no dowry, no money, no family background
Be glad you got a man!
Brrrrr. Between Yente, and the millions of Arranged Marriages that go down Every Single Year to this present day, and the resulting resentment and far-too-common acts of violence, I think if people can find love in this hypersexualised culture it doesn't really matter what medium it takes to make that connection.
One of my very best friends met his wife through an advertisement in one of those cheezy urban free weekly newspaper. (SWM seeks SF, etc.) 14 years later - they're still fine and loving, with two adorable kids.
So it doesn't matter: SWM ISO SWF, OKCUPID.COM, or alt.tasteless - love is good where-ever you find it - as long as it is true.
2. I didn't say ANYTHING about Malthus or famine or die off.
Did I mention Malthus? No. Did I mention famine? No.
All I did was state the obvious: fertilisers and pesticides are made from oil. As oil depletes, these items will increase in price, and will find less and less use. The result? A drop in productivity per acre. However, TO PREVENT starvation and a Malthusian die-off, this means that MORE people will have to be involved with food production.
Now, go crawl back under your rock, and stop making some other argument in an argument. IT's like you were barking about global warming in an argument about oil depletion. They have links, but it's not the same discussion. So, kindly go fuck yourself, you troll.
RS
PS: Ingenuity cannot work around the laws of thermodynamics...
Sure - we have the luxury of a service economy because we have a huge amount of oil that permits things like fertiliser and pesticides and trucks to move food and all that crap.
Once we start sliding down the back end of the depletion curve, fertiliser will become increasingly expensive, as will pesticides. Farming will become more labour intensive, and farming will, again, dominate the economy, as it always has and always will.
I also detest Flash. I think it is an abomination. However: you are missing the point of what Flash is.
Flash started as FutureSplash, a system for simple vector based goofy animations on the web.
Macromedia bought it, and ramped it up. About, oooh, a week (?) after Flash was bought, the writing was on the wall - Macromedia Director was a Dead Duck. What made Director useful, however, was its craptacular programming language, Lingo. Once the vision shifted from Director to Flash, the move was on to develop a programming language for Flash - the result? The even MORE craptacular ActionScript.
Several year ago, a survey was done and it was found that a full 80% of the users of the web would click "skip intro" and avoid using flash if they could. This set off a sea change at Macromedia, and now at Adobe, where Flash is no longer the funky little animation engine that couldn't if its life depended on it, but to become a "development environment" and platform for web based applications. Now, isn't THAT a totally stupid idea...
So, what Microsoft is trying to do is strangle and/or marginalise Flash as a dev environment before it gets any real traction.
Economic Collapse is NOT the end of Civilisation - it is shift, the juncture from one form of civilisation to another. Neolithic cultures were civilised. They lived in small towns, grew food - same thing with the native americans and other first nations. They led perfectly interesting and colourful lives. They loved and hurt and dreamed like anyone else. They were civilised - they just used the sun and stone to make their world. So, saying economic collapse is the end of civilisation only serves to demonstrate your pathetically myopic notion of what it is to be "civilised" and what "civilisation" consists in and of.
And I use an "s" because I'm not in the States.
Then you beat your thick skull against the keyboard and drummed up the following bit of idiocy:
Anyway, the fact that you have to scream at me with frothing anger, with little actual rebuttal of my central point*, should tell you that you're not thinking clearly about the issue.
I was yelling at you because YOU were putting words in my mouth. Gads, you ARE an Idiot. And a Narcissist. Do yourself a big fat favour: learn how to grow your own food. And learn some analogue skills, like darning your own socks and repairing your own shirts. Some carpentry skills would be good, and a good collection of high quality hand tools for that would be wise. And learn to cook on a wood stove. Get all that together, and you'll survive OK in a small town.
But again : think twice - once would be a big improvement in your case.
Reality Master 101 is in need of some rhetorical skillz and another blast of his own namesake: Reality.
1. you wrote: First of all, we will NEVER EVER run out of oil. EVER.
I NEVER SAID WE WERE GOING TO RUN OUT OF OIL, ASSHOLE.
2. you wrote: What will happen is that once we (finally) are unable to find new sources (I predict 100 years, but it doesn't matter to my point), the price of oil will start to increase.
The number and size of discoveries peaked in the 1960s. This is a well known fact. Thanks to Satellite technology, the earth has been intensely surveyed, and we have a very good idea of what's left to find, and it isn't much. This is bolstered by the evidence - the lack of discoveries and the smaller sizes of them.
The price of oil HAS ALREADY STARTED TO INCREASE. Where are you living? In Qatar or Saudi Arabia - such that you wouldn't notice the increases in price?
3. You wrote: Sure, things might get more expensive for awhile, but that will hardly lead to a breakdown of civilization.
Again, you put words in my mouth you ASSHOLE.
I never said anything about "Civilisation breaking down". Economic Collapse? Yes. I said that. End of Civilisation? No. I did not say that.
Next time you post on such matters, I would recommend you think twice before typing. altough, in your case, once would be an improvement.
Yeah - well, I hate to break it to you, but the REAL numbers are much scarier.
Note in the chart I linked to -
Kuwait isn't supposed to peak before 2017. In fact, their largest field, Burghan, is in profound collapse - 10% year over year.
The North Sea is also collapsing at 10% a year.
Mexico's largest field, Cantarell, is in freefall - 14% a year. They will likely cease exporting oil in 5 years.
Saudi production slipped 1.5% last year, and that's only because they did some fancy footwork. Their largest field, Ghawar, is speculated to be in collapse, but its production is a closely guarded state secret. There are reports that Ghawar is pumping 50% sea water...
This poster is pretty up-to-date, and gives a good sense of what is known as of 2 years ago.
You *can't* dismiss peak oil - it's like dismissing gravitation. The question is not IF but simply when and how hard. Right now, and I've researched this six ways to Tuesday, it seems we're either right at peak, or it will come in the next several years. After that, there is only one direction for oil production to go. Down. Tar sands will lessen the angle of descent, but it's not going to alter the direction of production.
slashdot moderators gave this a TROLL mod? WTF? What he stated was PATENTLY OBVIOUS and DIRECTED TO the article Editor's original posting. THAT IS NOT TROLLING. The Editor's original statement re: Taxes was a Troll. The Moderator who took PhreakOfTime down as a troll was, in typical slashdot fashion, being a hypersentive dickhead, as many dickheads tend to be.
When the Editor made a blanket statement about "your tax dollars at work", the Editor WAS TROLLING. There are lots of examples of where the "taxpayer" paradigm collapses - example - people should be CITIZENS FIRST, not taxpayers.
If anything, this post deserves an Interesting modifier, because he points up some simple basic facts of how the US.gov works, and an equally interesting point about rights and privileges. I don't necessarily AGREE with him, but I know a Retard Moderator when I see it. And no, that is not a troll - that's simple invective bourne of disgust.
I second Eno2001's point. We were given a two trillion barrel gift of energy. We've pissed half of it away on crap like SUVs, Las Vegas, steak for breakfast, and 1800 mile Caesar Salads (as well as pesticides, fertiliser, electronic communications, and a variety of other useful things) and some of the useful things we've developed (modern medicine, dentistry, etc.) when combined with the discovery of germ theory and hygiene have now allowed our numbers to bloom like bacteria in a petri dish full of sugar and water.
We are completely and utterly fucked - I think the next 50 years is going to see an economic collapse of epic proportions as more and more people fight over less and lass oil. The noble niceties of space travel will go by the boards as the ruling classes scramble to prevent food riots and revolutions. I expect the first big shock between 2010 and 2014 as the easiest oil peaks out and skids down the Hubbert curve. After that, some time in the 2020s, the tar sand oil will peak and decline. The historical *total* peak of all petroleum liquids (when taken as an aggregate average) will be likely prove to have been sometime this year or perhaps last year, for the increases in Tar Sand oils won't offset the fact that nearly all the major producers are in decline, some dramatically collapsing (Mexico and North Sea) some flatlining and eroding (the Mid East, Venezuela) and some long past their prime and slowly dying (USA, Iran, etc.)
Fusion would help a number of things, but so much of our infrastructure and materials are based in petroleum, that even Fusion may not be sustainable. I suspect it won't be, and furthermore, for all the cheerleading around Fusion, it's still decades away from workability *under present plans*, and should these plans fail, which they may, we'll still be (again) decades away from Fusion.
Solar power is good in a localised sense, but it won't generate the power soon enough to compensate, and what is every important: you can't eat electricity, but we DO eat petroleum (fertiliser and pesticides).
So, overall I think the space program is admirable, and I do think we need to send more robotic probes out there to continue our understanding of the universe, but the kind of "golly gosh jeekers" cheerleading for putting people in space is utterly retarded.
You are Soooooo Wrong, you're not even wrong. There's been TONS and TONS of great music being made, every single year, year after year. Just because it doesn't fit your aesthetic judgment pattern that was established during your adolescence and young adulthood doesn't mean that it sucks. IT just means you stopped listening and looking for it.
Great records of the past 17 years? Jeepers - where do I begin?
Here are a FEW of the hundreds and hundreds of records I have bought since 1990. If they are not all "Rawk And Roll", that is YOUR shortcoming, not mine. I was born when cars had tailfins - so I'm not some youngster whining about how the old people are picking on m m my generation...
Roll up a fatty and trip on these:
Music has the Right to Children by the Boards of Canada
Geogaddi by the Boards of Canada
Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett by Venetian Snares
The Order of Things by Tarentel
Homb by Cerberus Shoal
The Weed Tree by Espers
Portishead by Portishead
OK Computer by Radiohead
Slow Riot for New Zero Canada by Godspeed You Black Emperor
Emperor Tomato Ketchup by Stereolab
Mars Audiac Quintet by Stereolab
Release the Stars by Rufus Wainwright
When I Was a Boy by Jane Siberry
The ConstruKction of Light by King Crimson
Fariytales of Slavery by Miranda Sex Garden
Hazel by Red Krayola
Mmmm kay? That's 16 of HUNDREDS of great records that came out in the 1990s and early 21st century.
Buy them, listen to them, and tell me that "they don't make great music anymore". Some of the above noted are pretty difficult listens (Venetian Snares) some are gentle (Boards of Canada) some are eccentric (Siberry, Espers, Cerberus Shoal) and some open a SERIOUS can of Whoop Ass upon listening (Godspeed You Black Emperor, Miranda Sex Garden). It's ALL good. Seriously. These are GREAT records.
Fewer and fewer people are interested in buying CDs. LOTS of GREAT music is being made, every day. It can be hard to find, but that doesn't mean it's not there - it just means that it's hard to find.
I asked my students - 153 in a lecture class - "How many of you bought a new CD in the past 6 months? Raise you hands." About 20 raised their hands. I then asked "How many of you have downloaded a new song either through legitimate means with iTunes and other companies, or illegitimately, via P2P? Raise you hands." Almost everyone raised their hand.
The fact is: the CD is dead. It's dying because CDs are long format and inherited the interest in long playing music from the LP and 78rpm "Albums". People today have the attention span of gnats, and are too distracted by the gazillion different toys to just sit and listen to music. When I was young, we'd roll a fatty or three and put on some Yes or Genesis or Tangerine Dream and space for hours while we glotzed the gatefold cover art. We didn't have Xbox, playstations, etc, or cellphones or IM or texting or internet porn or whatever. Our options were comparatively limited - TV, records, radio. And these media have their own requirements as passive "sit back" media. Now, with active "sit forward" media of Xbox etc. and the jump up and down of Wii, and the focus of IM and texting, there is really no "pay off" to sitting around listening to music. Actually listening to music seems almost like a meditation practice to contemporary cultural "intake".
The CD's duration was determined by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - one can sit through the entire symphony uninterrupted. With LPs you had to get up every 18 - 20 minutes to flip the record. CDs removed that hassle, and a CD became a musical journey. Constructing such a journey and doing it convincingly is hard work, which is why so many CDs had "filler". Sustaining interest in a listener for 1.3 hours is tough work.
The advent of the MP3 removed the need for the "extended hypnosis" and brought back the spirit of the 78RPM and the 45RPM record - "singles". If you're a talentless hack, and so many musicians are - talentless hacks give a ground to judge how we know someone isn't a talentless hack - then you probably don't have the chops or the depth of a song list to fill a CD. So, it only makes sense to put what you've got going on an MP3 network, and when you hve enough of your crap for a CD, do that too. But the pressure to cook up a CD's worth of tunage FIRST is gone.
This doesn't help matters for the gangsters in the RIAA.
They had a chance to put a meter on P2P with the original Napster. We (at Napster) had developed a billing client, and suggested a very very low price for P2P'd songs - where a DL would be dinged off a client's account value. We tested it - and IT WORKED. It was kind of clunky at first, and we needed to work on optimisations, but it really worked, and it was pretty damn slick. The RIAA et al told us "No". And now those idiots are reaping the whirlwind for their greed and stupidity, and we are all the worse for it.
Reasonable question - why it is score 0, I have no idea.
Unfortunately the answer is one that the questioner probably won't want to hear:
There is NO point to a moonbase or going to Mars. None. We can send robots to do excellent work. Nearly everything a human can do in those harsh miserable environments, a robot can do. Maybe not as fast on the ground, but certainly don't require a few acres of food and water and entertainment. The robots can be made to be much more robust than humans and if one gets a direct hit from a micro meteor on the Moon or super sonic sandblast on Mars, we're bummed about losing a good machine, but there isn't a family back home wailing over their death.
The only reason to put people on the Moon is set up and supervise machines harvesting the regolith for He3, an even that could be intensely automated over time. Mars? Too far. Too Cold. Not enough there. I imagine they will send some few people there just to be able to say "We sent some hairless ape creatures to Mars", but beyond that? Naaah. Not worth the trouble.
So, basically, they didn't send more people because there is no reason to send more people. And unless some bunch of geniuses can actually make Fusion work and thusly give a reason for He3, there is NO reason to bother with the moon. It's close enough that we can set stuff up by robot. And in the next 20 years,the robots will be MUCH smarter and more capable...
It's the kind of research that simply INVENTS new weird shit that is what is so tragically dying in the world of American technology. The Bell Labs of the world are now in the university systems, but they are frequently tied to corporate donors (for better and worse) and are further problematised by society's need to educate people to be something other than simple cogs in the industrial machine - making them well rounded, critically thinking, discerning citizens is also of great importance. As a consequence, the need for innovation in research as downloaded to the level of university destabilises itself over time as time/mind share is increasingly directed to the mercantile demands of the corporate masters.
This is not a good thing. We need more blue sky deep research - research with NO profit motive - its where the real ground-breaking stuff happens. Keep science away from bean-counters. They will eviscerate it the same way they gutted the Arts and Humanities.
Slashdot Mirror
My god! TWO ARROW TOOLS? WTF? One selects, and the other selects differently? Huh? No. That's a mistake.
A - FUCKING - MEN brutha. Illustrator is a fucking CRIME. Freehand was WAY better, even though, it too succumbed to the multiple selection tool idiocy. How was FH better? Two words: MULTIPLE PAGES. To this DAY Illustrator doesn't do mltiple pages, so if you do a design, say, for a CD cover, one document does the CD, another does the tray card, and anther does the insert.
WTF is THAT all about? IT should be ONE document with THREE pages! How stupid can it get?
Now: re: Photoshop - while it's UI and workflow is not optimal, it is a damn sight better than Illustrator's. And even in its some better than mediocre quality, GIMP's UI and workflow are utter crap. Pure and simple. And as flawed as Photoshop is, it is light years ahead of GIMP.
RS
A case in point in that regard would be the old Quark Xpress. For years it tortured people with parent windows and child windows, a truly clunky interface, and all manner of f*cked up weirdness. BUT: once you learned it, it TOTALLY rocked and was light years beyond Pagemaker, ReadySetGo, and all the other page layout apps, even when those apps were easier to use.
InDesign arrived, and was deeply bug ridden. Then they fixed it, and its workflow is sooo powerful and easy to use, as it is combined with a fairly rational UI, it's eating Quark's Lunch.
Workflow proceeds from fundamental capabilities - the above note demonstrates that clearly. But merely possessing them isn't good enough - it has to be in a UI that is familiar, especially when going up against the likes of Photoshop. There have been plenty of powerful apps with bizarro UI (Kai's powerTools, Metasynth, etc.) and their power often went untapped. So, the discussion of UI is relevant. However, the UI is of no value if the workflow is hampered by inferior basic features.
GIMP's support of CMYK is miserable. That needs to change. One should be able to INVENT colour spaces on the fly - an ability to make (x) colour separations. Multiple windows as above noted needs to happen. The tool palette is absurd and needs to be aligned with other apps in that market segment - heck PAINTER was/is more like Photoshop than GIMP, and it has a great interface and Painter's brushes are incredible.
Frankly, fixing the UI is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. GIMP needs fundamental and architectural adjustments to its fundamental feature sets and workflow.
I don't care if it EVER runs on Windows or Mac - if done right, it could be a killer app for Linux (along with OO), and help put Linux over the top.
RS
HA!
You would never work again...
RS
Wife: "Hey Honey - LET'S FUCK!"
Me: "I'm cleaning crap off my drives - my OCD. You know. I'll be up later. Play with yourself in the mean time..."
I do listen to a lot of classical music, so that keeps prices down, and I moved to TO just this year. 1/2 of my CDs I bought in Washington DC in the late 1980s, the other half in San Francisco - usually at Aquarius or Amoeba. (by the by: DO YOURSELF A BIG FAVOUR and subscribe to the Aquarius email. They get the most peculiar records. Period. Ever. And if you're into Metal - one of the owners is behind tUMULt... classical? Metal? Yeah - I have eclectic tastes...) Amoeba is expensive, but they get me the Really Weird Stuff. Amoeba was great, because it's what was a 22 lane bowling alley, and half of it is used CDs. They took over the Pharmacy next door and that became the classical and video section... Simply: HUGE BEYOND YOUR DREAMS. And DIRT CHEAP.
I guestimated my CD collection investment at around $9k - 1/10 the price of buying it track for track. I know a lot of musicians, and would estimate that at least 100 of my CDs are gifts or trades.
I'm kind of jazzed with this new iPod. If it can really handle my collection, I can FINALLY put my CDs in storage - that'll open up a lot of room in the Living Room. Makes Wife Happy. I'll stick it all in the basement where I'll put the "Listening / Video room"... Aaaaah - the miracles of cheap energy....
RS
RS
WTF ARE THESE IDIOTS THINKING??? That I'm going to spend over NINETY THOUSAND DOLLARS to load up my 160gig iPod?
They must be doing some mighty fine crack, because THAT is pure unadulterated BULLSHIT if they think I'm going to spend even 1/2 of one percent of $80,000 loading up my 160gig iPod, and it certainly isn't going to be spend on ringles...
Good god. What a bunch of losers. Left curve of the IQ bell chart. Morons. Mafiosi. Dead enders. Feh.
RS
RS
RS
Cheers.
RS
Human numbers are following the same pathological growth one sees in a petri dish filled with sugar/energy - the bacteria grows like crazy until the energy/food is consumed. Then it dies off. Humans are capable of intensifying resources to meet needs, but logically, this is not a permanent "Get out of jail free" card. Eventually limits are hit, and people die off.
with the present numbers of humans (billions) and the political economy (industrial capitalist) the world is quickly becoming one big Easter Island.
RS
Every single time I take them, they ask simple questions, like "What is your name?" or "is the sky blue?" etc, I can give straight up honest answers, and it always come up that I'm lying. I'm not a "flinchy" type, but I can't pass a polygraph for love or money. So, for me, they suck, and I don't think they should be admitted in a court as evidence.
RS
They've been married for almost 10 years now, and are doing just fine.
If it works - it works - nothing wrong with it. Lord knows it's better than going to Yente the Matchmaker...
Hodel, oh Hodel,
Have I made a match for you!
He's handsome, he's young!
Alright, he's 62.
But he's a nice man, a good catch, true?
True.
I promise you'll be happy,
And even if you're not,
There's more to life than that---
Don't ask me what.
Chava, I found him.
Won't you be a lucky bride!
He's handsome, he's tall,
That is from side to side.
But he's a nice man, a good catch, right?
Right.
You heard he has a temper.
He'll beat you every night,
But only when he's sober,
So you're alright.
Did you think you'd get a prince?
Well I do the best I can.
With no dowry, no money, no family background
Be glad you got a man!
Brrrrr. Between Yente, and the millions of Arranged Marriages that go down Every Single Year to this present day, and the resulting resentment and far-too-common acts of violence, I think if people can find love in this hypersexualised culture it doesn't really matter what medium it takes to make that connection.
One of my very best friends met his wife through an advertisement in one of those cheezy urban free weekly newspaper. (SWM seeks SF, etc.) 14 years later - they're still fine and loving, with two adorable kids.
So it doesn't matter: SWM ISO SWF, OKCUPID.COM, or alt.tasteless - love is good where-ever you find it - as long as it is true.
RS
That had nothing to do with Flash. it was just a movie. The content wsa interesting - the frame is irrelevant.
Flash sucks. It always has and it always will.
RS
2. I didn't say ANYTHING about Malthus or famine or die off.
Did I mention Malthus? No. Did I mention famine? No.
All I did was state the obvious: fertilisers and pesticides are made from oil. As oil depletes, these items will increase in price, and will find less and less use. The result? A drop in productivity per acre. However, TO PREVENT starvation and a Malthusian die-off, this means that MORE people will have to be involved with food production.
Now, go crawl back under your rock, and stop making some other argument in an argument. IT's like you were barking about global warming in an argument about oil depletion. They have links, but it's not the same discussion. So, kindly go fuck yourself, you troll.
RS
PS: Ingenuity cannot work around the laws of thermodynamics...
Once we start sliding down the back end of the depletion curve, fertiliser will become increasingly expensive, as will pesticides. Farming will become more labour intensive, and farming will, again, dominate the economy, as it always has and always will.
Enjoy living in Atlantis, while you can.
RS
Flash started as FutureSplash, a system for simple vector based goofy animations on the web.
Macromedia bought it, and ramped it up. About, oooh, a week (?) after Flash was bought, the writing was on the wall - Macromedia Director was a Dead Duck. What made Director useful, however, was its craptacular programming language, Lingo. Once the vision shifted from Director to Flash, the move was on to develop a programming language for Flash - the result? The even MORE craptacular ActionScript.
Several year ago, a survey was done and it was found that a full 80% of the users of the web would click "skip intro" and avoid using flash if they could. This set off a sea change at Macromedia, and now at Adobe, where Flash is no longer the funky little animation engine that couldn't if its life depended on it, but to become a "development environment" and platform for web based applications. Now, isn't THAT a totally stupid idea...
So, what Microsoft is trying to do is strangle and/or marginalise Flash as a dev environment before it gets any real traction.
Now you know.
RS
Economic Collapse is NOT the end of Civilisation - it is shift, the juncture from one form of civilisation to another. Neolithic cultures were civilised. They lived in small towns, grew food - same thing with the native americans and other first nations. They led perfectly interesting and colourful lives. They loved and hurt and dreamed like anyone else. They were civilised - they just used the sun and stone to make their world. So, saying economic collapse is the end of civilisation only serves to demonstrate your pathetically myopic notion of what it is to be "civilised" and what "civilisation" consists in and of.
And I use an "s" because I'm not in the States.
Then you beat your thick skull against the keyboard and drummed up the following bit of idiocy:
Anyway, the fact that you have to scream at me with frothing anger, with little actual rebuttal of my central point*, should tell you that you're not thinking clearly about the issue.
I was yelling at you because YOU were putting words in my mouth. Gads, you ARE an Idiot. And a Narcissist. Do yourself a big fat favour: learn how to grow your own food. And learn some analogue skills, like darning your own socks and repairing your own shirts. Some carpentry skills would be good, and a good collection of high quality hand tools for that would be wise. And learn to cook on a wood stove. Get all that together, and you'll survive OK in a small town.
But again : think twice - once would be a big improvement in your case.
RS
1. you wrote: First of all, we will NEVER EVER run out of oil. EVER.
I NEVER SAID WE WERE GOING TO RUN OUT OF OIL, ASSHOLE.
2. you wrote: What will happen is that once we (finally) are unable to find new sources (I predict 100 years, but it doesn't matter to my point), the price of oil will start to increase.
The number and size of discoveries peaked in the 1960s. This is a well known fact. Thanks to Satellite technology, the earth has been intensely surveyed, and we have a very good idea of what's left to find, and it isn't much. This is bolstered by the evidence - the lack of discoveries and the smaller sizes of them.
The price of oil HAS ALREADY STARTED TO INCREASE. Where are you living? In Qatar or Saudi Arabia - such that you wouldn't notice the increases in price?
3. You wrote: Sure, things might get more expensive for awhile, but that will hardly lead to a breakdown of civilization.
Again, you put words in my mouth you ASSHOLE.
I never said anything about "Civilisation breaking down". Economic Collapse? Yes. I said that. End of Civilisation? No. I did not say that.
Next time you post on such matters, I would recommend you think twice before typing. altough, in your case, once would be an improvement.
RS
Yeah - well, I hate to break it to you, but the REAL numbers are much scarier.
Note in the chart I linked to -
Kuwait isn't supposed to peak before 2017. In fact, their largest field, Burghan, is in profound collapse - 10% year over year.
The North Sea is also collapsing at 10% a year.
Mexico's largest field, Cantarell, is in freefall - 14% a year. They will likely cease exporting oil in 5 years.
Saudi production slipped 1.5% last year, and that's only because they did some fancy footwork. Their largest field, Ghawar, is speculated to be in collapse, but its production is a closely guarded state secret. There are reports that Ghawar is pumping 50% sea water...
This poster is pretty up-to-date, and gives a good sense of what is known as of 2 years ago.
You *can't* dismiss peak oil - it's like dismissing gravitation. The question is not IF but simply when and how hard. Right now, and I've researched this six ways to Tuesday, it seems we're either right at peak, or it will come in the next several years. After that, there is only one direction for oil production to go. Down. Tar sands will lessen the angle of descent, but it's not going to alter the direction of production.
RS
When the Editor made a blanket statement about "your tax dollars at work", the Editor WAS TROLLING. There are lots of examples of where the "taxpayer" paradigm collapses - example - people should be CITIZENS FIRST, not taxpayers.
If anything, this post deserves an Interesting modifier, because he points up some simple basic facts of how the US.gov works, and an equally interesting point about rights and privileges. I don't necessarily AGREE with him, but I know a Retard Moderator when I see it. And no, that is not a troll - that's simple invective bourne of disgust.
RS
We are completely and utterly fucked - I think the next 50 years is going to see an economic collapse of epic proportions as more and more people fight over less and lass oil. The noble niceties of space travel will go by the boards as the ruling classes scramble to prevent food riots and revolutions. I expect the first big shock between 2010 and 2014 as the easiest oil peaks out and skids down the Hubbert curve. After that, some time in the 2020s, the tar sand oil will peak and decline. The historical *total* peak of all petroleum liquids (when taken as an aggregate average) will be likely prove to have been sometime this year or perhaps last year, for the increases in Tar Sand oils won't offset the fact that nearly all the major producers are in decline, some dramatically collapsing (Mexico and North Sea) some flatlining and eroding (the Mid East, Venezuela) and some long past their prime and slowly dying (USA, Iran, etc.)
These numbers on this are easy to find.
Fusion would help a number of things, but so much of our infrastructure and materials are based in petroleum, that even Fusion may not be sustainable. I suspect it won't be, and furthermore, for all the cheerleading around Fusion, it's still decades away from workability *under present plans*, and should these plans fail, which they may, we'll still be (again) decades away from Fusion.
Solar power is good in a localised sense, but it won't generate the power soon enough to compensate, and what is every important: you can't eat electricity, but we DO eat petroleum (fertiliser and pesticides).
So, overall I think the space program is admirable, and I do think we need to send more robotic probes out there to continue our understanding of the universe, but the kind of "golly gosh jeekers" cheerleading for putting people in space is utterly retarded.
RS
Great records of the past 17 years? Jeepers - where do I begin?
Here are a FEW of the hundreds and hundreds of records I have bought since 1990. If they are not all "Rawk And Roll", that is YOUR shortcoming, not mine. I was born when cars had tailfins - so I'm not some youngster whining about how the old people are picking on m m my generation...
Roll up a fatty and trip on these:
Music has the Right to Children by the Boards of Canada
Geogaddi by the Boards of Canada
Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett by Venetian Snares
The Order of Things by Tarentel
Homb by Cerberus Shoal
The Weed Tree by Espers
Portishead by Portishead
OK Computer by Radiohead
Slow Riot for New Zero Canada by Godspeed You Black Emperor
Emperor Tomato Ketchup by Stereolab
Mars Audiac Quintet by Stereolab
Release the Stars by Rufus Wainwright
When I Was a Boy by Jane Siberry
The ConstruKction of Light by King Crimson
Fariytales of Slavery by Miranda Sex Garden
Hazel by Red Krayola
Mmmm kay? That's 16 of HUNDREDS of great records that came out in the 1990s and early 21st century.
Buy them, listen to them, and tell me that "they don't make great music anymore". Some of the above noted are pretty difficult listens (Venetian Snares) some are gentle (Boards of Canada) some are eccentric (Siberry, Espers, Cerberus Shoal) and some open a SERIOUS can of Whoop Ass upon listening (Godspeed You Black Emperor, Miranda Sex Garden). It's ALL good. Seriously. These are GREAT records.
RS
I asked my students - 153 in a lecture class - "How many of you bought a new CD in the past 6 months? Raise you hands." About 20 raised their hands. I then asked "How many of you have downloaded a new song either through legitimate means with iTunes and other companies, or illegitimately, via P2P? Raise you hands." Almost everyone raised their hand.
The fact is: the CD is dead. It's dying because CDs are long format and inherited the interest in long playing music from the LP and 78rpm "Albums". People today have the attention span of gnats, and are too distracted by the gazillion different toys to just sit and listen to music. When I was young, we'd roll a fatty or three and put on some Yes or Genesis or Tangerine Dream and space for hours while we glotzed the gatefold cover art. We didn't have Xbox, playstations, etc, or cellphones or IM or texting or internet porn or whatever. Our options were comparatively limited - TV, records, radio. And these media have their own requirements as passive "sit back" media. Now, with active "sit forward" media of Xbox etc. and the jump up and down of Wii, and the focus of IM and texting, there is really no "pay off" to sitting around listening to music. Actually listening to music seems almost like a meditation practice to contemporary cultural "intake".
The CD's duration was determined by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - one can sit through the entire symphony uninterrupted. With LPs you had to get up every 18 - 20 minutes to flip the record. CDs removed that hassle, and a CD became a musical journey. Constructing such a journey and doing it convincingly is hard work, which is why so many CDs had "filler". Sustaining interest in a listener for 1.3 hours is tough work.
The advent of the MP3 removed the need for the "extended hypnosis" and brought back the spirit of the 78RPM and the 45RPM record - "singles". If you're a talentless hack, and so many musicians are - talentless hacks give a ground to judge how we know someone isn't a talentless hack - then you probably don't have the chops or the depth of a song list to fill a CD. So, it only makes sense to put what you've got going on an MP3 network, and when you hve enough of your crap for a CD, do that too. But the pressure to cook up a CD's worth of tunage FIRST is gone.
This doesn't help matters for the gangsters in the RIAA.
They had a chance to put a meter on P2P with the original Napster. We (at Napster) had developed a billing client, and suggested a very very low price for P2P'd songs - where a DL would be dinged off a client's account value. We tested it - and IT WORKED. It was kind of clunky at first, and we needed to work on optimisations, but it really worked, and it was pretty damn slick. The RIAA et al told us "No". And now those idiots are reaping the whirlwind for their greed and stupidity, and we are all the worse for it.
RS
Unfortunately the answer is one that the questioner probably won't want to hear:
There is NO point to a moonbase or going to Mars. None. We can send robots to do excellent work. Nearly everything a human can do in those harsh miserable environments, a robot can do. Maybe not as fast on the ground, but certainly don't require a few acres of food and water and entertainment. The robots can be made to be much more robust than humans and if one gets a direct hit from a micro meteor on the Moon or super sonic sandblast on Mars, we're bummed about losing a good machine, but there isn't a family back home wailing over their death.
The only reason to put people on the Moon is set up and supervise machines harvesting the regolith for He3, an even that could be intensely automated over time. Mars? Too far. Too Cold. Not enough there. I imagine they will send some few people there just to be able to say "We sent some hairless ape creatures to Mars", but beyond that? Naaah. Not worth the trouble.
So, basically, they didn't send more people because there is no reason to send more people. And unless some bunch of geniuses can actually make Fusion work and thusly give a reason for He3, there is NO reason to bother with the moon. It's close enough that we can set stuff up by robot. And in the next 20 years ,the robots will be MUCH smarter and more capable...
RS
This is not a good thing. We need more blue sky deep research - research with NO profit motive - its where the real ground-breaking stuff happens. Keep science away from bean-counters. They will eviscerate it the same way they gutted the Arts and Humanities.
RS