Analog may last forever if you never play it, but try playing a CD and a record side-by-side for a month, with decent equipment for each. The record will be in a sad state by the end, while the CD will keep on tickin'.
BUT: take that CD lock it away in a box for 500 years, and take the same vinyl record, now seriously worn out, and put it in a similar box for 500 years.
In 500 years the CD will be removed and there will be NOTHING TO PLAY IT ON. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that the data on there will even be accessible *at all* by ANY means available then. However, you will still be able to take a thorn or needle, glue it to a paper cone, spin the vinyl record, put the needle/cone on the record's surface, and it will make sound. Tomorrow and 500 years from now. The CD won't.
Nice conspiracy theory. Except it's obvious from the iTunes Music Store and the iPod that Apple understands that CONSUMERS WILL NOT BUY SECURE AND/OR INVASIVE DRM.
The iTMS sells AAC files - files that have built in DRM restrictions. Consumers will *cheerfully* plunk down major dolloars for crippled stuff - Macrovision? SOME consumers (such as you and I) won't plunk down money for DRM'd materail, and the way the **AA orgs are looking to get around that is to have everything DRMd from the gitgo.
The idea is this: DRM technology arrives as a fait accompli by way of Intel DRM technology at the chip level - tough noogies. There will be some percentage of the public who will hack around it (such as me and thee and audio / video professionals) but the business model they're working under *incorporates* that distinction - they don't care about the tech savvy - they are more interested in putting a meter on Ma and Pa Kettle's "Movie / Music / TV thingie."
It's really not a conspiracy theory - I've done software and hardware QA work on Just These Kinds of Technologies. You can gripe about it (lord knows I do) but that isn't going to stop it. And the thing about this is: it will be "invisible" and transparent to the end user, so the average user isn't going to notice - until you try to copy something too often or use it on an unsupported medium etc. I bailed on that work a few years ago - it's like working for Microsoft, only worse.
In 500 years I doubt there will be a single CD that will be playable. In 500 years you will still be able to take a pin and a paper cone and get audio out of a vinyl record. Maybe not more than 3 or 4 times, but you will still be able to hear the music.
Therefore, analogue is better - scratches and pops and all.
One of the reasons Apple went to Intel and not AMD *IS* the whole DRM thing - Intel's building it right into the chipset. This will allow Apple computers to become clients for the next rev of downloadable brainwashing crap from Hollywood. It has to be DRM'd at a very low level, and Intel's got that front and centre in their business plan.
The future is this:
From the time the audio goes into the microphone or the light goes into the DV camera, to when the audio comes out of your speakers and the signal is sent to your digital flat panel, DRM will be ALL OVER IT like Stink On Shit (which, given the quality of contemporary entertainment, is a fairly apt metaphor).
Apple wants to be part of that gravy train, and hence: Intel > AMD and IBM bye bye.
Those more at home with TV news and what the Ford Taurus has wrought will oooh and aaaah over it until they find that it has less useful information in it than the old block chart, and shows fewer meaningful relationships between the elements as well.
then people will look at it and say "Gee. It's Pretty, but it's also PRETTY USELESS." and this will go the way of the Edsel and the AMC Matador. (brrrr- I get chills just thinking about that ugly POS)
"When I can make oodles of bucks speculating on the stock market and flipping houses on the insane real estate bubble?
All that edjacation crap is for the birds - Ellison bailed, sodid Gates. Y should any 1 bother with collitch?
Now I'll just fire up my laptop running speculation software I bought on an infomercial, short a bunch of penny stocks I've been pumping for weeks on my spam bots and roll up North in my SUV and take a long weekend where it's k3wl... and some CS grad can ask me about Fries or something like that."
The above is not a troll - just illustrating the mentality of the good old USA, where corporations only exist to benefit stockholders, and people work for wealth, neither providing any goods and/or services to the public commonweal.
Also: How do you dig up Palladium? Ooooh - that's right - you NEED OIL to do it - the mining machinery is all diesel.
HYDROGEN IS NOT THE SOLUTION.
Hydrogen fuel cells are more like "batteries", and I think calling them FUEL cells is deeply misleading. We need to do the following, ASAP:
1.Reduce our population (without resorting to war and famine and such like)
2. Stop Using Oil
3. develop a lifestyle that is slower, more decentralised, and a few orders of magnitude more efficient.
Otherwise, we're going back to the caves in 1000 years and just hang out waiting for the next asteroid to take us out or the flu to do us in.
And therein lies confusion. In this context, remix is not meant to apply strictly to music. The post-WIRED version describes a much more general cultural shift that I think is much more valid of the attention it receives than "just" music remixing.
I agree. In terms of video this was even discussed in the ACM Journal back in Spring 1991. Remixing *is* a fact and the sooner anti-remixers get used to it, the happier they will be. However: remixing is Not a critical juncture in culture. Not now, not ever. It's just a contemporary manifestation of a given set of technologies rubbing up against notions of Intellectual Property as defined by copyright. Without the notion of copyright, remixing would be as controversial as taking a walk to 7-11 to pick up a six pack of beer (which I intend to do in a few minutes).
Some people *have it* - simple raw talent - most people don't.
I don't disagree with this, per se; It's an observation anyone can make. What I disagree with is the idea that talent can't be learned.
Sorry, but it can't. Take a dwarf and see how well they do in the NBA. They simply don't have the Raw Skills, the Talent to do that. This doesn't mean they would stink shooting hoops against other dwarves, but they won't make much headway against the Pistons. The Hawks, maybe, but the Pistons or Lakers- no.
There are SO many things that go into creative skill sets, it's crazy. Any halfwit can draw badly and paint worse and make a living out of it (look at the "career" of David Salle...) but to make really superior work takes Skillz, and unfortunately, training and hard work can only take you so far. The rest is innate - genetic. Michelangelo, Titian, the pantheon of great artists demonstrates this. Some can be psycho alky self destructive asshats, like Van Gogh, or sweetie pie genius types, like ME, but it's something you're borne with. you can work, and if you work hard enough, it will be indistinguishable from Good Work, but some people Gots It, and some don't. I gots it, I just never cared enough about the Game to bother. I don't let it get me down - I'm too cynical to believe in nihilism.
The idea that if you don't have it you can't get it, or at least shouldn't bother trying.
No no no - DO try. If we don't try, NOTHING will ever improve.
The perceived gap between collage/cut-up/remix art and original art is shrinking (from both sides) to the point of being meaningless. The idea being that the lessened stigma around "appropriation" and "borrowing" will lower the bar significantly for people to create.
Well, I hope and pray that eventually it will fade altogether, and then we can look at things for their meaning and value, the "content of their character", and not be looking over our shoulder about pissing off Disney.
Thanks for the exchange. Cheers!
Now, to get me a BEER (or six or however many it takes to lose count...)
One of the highlights of modern culture is that this number seems to be decreasing.
So?
People naturally want to create.
Create WHAT? I can create a great steaming tourde every morning.
If they "aren't interested" it's because they were never encouraged (and often actively discouraged) to be.
That's only partly true. Take this out of the realm of "Creativity" and put it in the realm of "human activity".
Everyone likes to play something of some variety - whether it's pinocle or marathon running, everyone has some kind of outlet that way, and people will NATURALLY have different aptitudes for any such activity. Some will be REALLY GOOD - run the mile under 4 minutes, play flawless 128th note arpeggios at 120 bpm - whatever. Some people can't bang two rocks together for love or money, or are in crutches and can barely walk around the block.
Playing an instrument, whether it's a trumpet, guitar, keyboard or Ableton Live 4.1 - all of this requires skills of some variety, and some instruments (such as an Armenian Duduk and its requirements of some MAJOR lung power or classical violin and its requirements of fine motor control in the fingertips) require some SERIOUS skills that are likely innate and influenced by genetic traits in origin. Other instruments (such as Live 4.1) require very little physical skills and require simply a decent set of ears and a sensibility, the former fairly common, and the latter can be acquired through education.
People with little skills or, please note: INTEREST IN ACQUIRING THESE SKILLS will always constitute an audience, and this is a PERMANENT fact of human existence. The sooner you get used to it, the happier you will be.
Remixing is a marginal case......that you demonstrate your lack of awareness of. I'm sorry if you heard some crappy mashup that you didn't like. There's a lot of crappy music by "Skilled Professional Musicians", too. (Furthermore, most remixing is done by "Skilled Professional Musicians") But you don't see people writing off the whole enterprise, except out of ignorance.
I didn't write it off, I simply contextualised it. Face it: remixing is a fact, but it is not the WHOLE fact, and it will never be the whole fact.
Maybe if you addressed some of the concrete examples in TFA you would have more of a point.
Maybe if you addressed my post on its own terms, as I addressed the part of the article on its own terms you might have ANY point.
As further clarification, I enjoy remixing myself - I've done plenty of it, and was doing it back in high school in the late 1970s when it took a shitload of audio tape, a tape deck, a cutting block, razor blades and a box of band aids to do what people do now with a click of a button with no threat of losing a finger tip. I was doing basic remixing / plunderphonic - type stuff in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now I use Ableton Live, but I use it more as an instrument and a node for controlling software synths.
I know what I'm talking about, I'm in the middle of it EVERY DAY. And I can assure you: remixing is just the latest manifestation of audio technology. It is NOT the whole game, nor is it the most interesting part of the game. Not everyone will create, nor will they want to or have to. Some people will be better at it than others, and remixing is no exception.
Are you implying that writing sci-fi is something reserved for a category of people other than the one you are in? Or that writing is something that cannot be learned and honed?
the mechanics of Writing is something that can be learned and honed. but that is not all their is to writing. Insight is not something that is necessarily learnable, and Insight is what makes a good writer great. Same with music. Some people *have it* - simple raw talent - most people don't. Most people are mediocretins and need someone sm
Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.'"
Baloney. There will ALWAYS be an audience, because not everyone is as adept at making things (even remixes require some talent - not much, but some) and not everyone WANTS to make things or finds making things interesting. There are a huge number of people, and I would submit that such a number constitutes a majority of people in general, who aren't really interested in being cultural producers of any variety. They LIKE to be entertained, they LIKE having people do that for them, and they LIKE having people do it for them in a COMPETENT manner.
Remixing is a marginal case, and while it will grow in popularity, it is just the flavour of the month until people tire of hearing Led Zeppelin being mixed over a brain dead hip hop beat with some spacey and/or glitchy atmospherics tossed in for the sake of "creativity". People will want to hear Real Music Made By Skilled Professional Musicians and remixing will go the same route of professionalisation and renewal like the rest of it.
Appealing to William Gibson as an authority is not a wise idea in this case. I have an idea - I'll OCR Mona Lisa Overdrive and remix it. Oooops! Can't really do that, can I? I have to KNOW HOW TO WRITE SCI-FI to do that. Same goes for music.
A straw poll showed a fair degree of consensus--art is craft plus a special degree of inspiration. This pretty much explains immediately why only art students and art critics at a certain sort of paper favor conceptual art. Conceptual art, of course, often lacks a craft component as people usually understand the term."
Which is exactly why ART IS NOT LEFT TO PUBLIC CONSENSUS. What people "usually understand" is not part of much conceptual art - since the substrate of Conceptual Art is Understanding itself, any notion of "usual understanding" is not part of the game. the point is Unusual Understanding. - HELLO!
Secondly, there are PLENTY of examples of people who use programming as art, and more broadly, if one includes computability in general as an artmaking practice, there are even greater ranges, where programming becomes an intrinsic part of the artwork itself. To that I would point to the work being done in Max/MSP and Jitter, as well as HTML, Flash and Action Scripting, and other internet technologies.
From my perspective, "programming as art" is a total non-issue and has been a non-issue since John Cage worked with people like Lejaren Hiller developing randomisation techniques in music and other media almost 40 years ago.
No porn site is going to exclusively use.xxx, no telephone company is exclusively going to use.tel.
Hence: get rid of TLDs...
I agree with the other who think TLDs are a thing of the past and are no longer useful. I understand your point that they can be useful, but I think their usefulness can be incorporated into whatever name one wants.
Example:
Instead of typing in http://www.whitehouse.gov/ to see what the Retard In Chief is up to, I could simply type "whitehouse" and bingo - done.
Instead of http://www.rutgers.edu/ I could just type "rutgers". And if there's a company that already owns "rutgers" then the university could simply be "rutgers-university" etc. Instead of http://www.microsoft.com/ I could just type "microsoft". I'd rather type "EVILEMPIRE" but microsoft will do.
How is appending a TLD to a name more useful? It's certainly not faster.
One would think that as soon as the Bristol server went down, a secondary mirrored server in, say, Paris, would be right back up. It's not like a given indymedia node has terabytes of data to serve up or store.
And given they could easily build their own server for PEANUTS that would at least be able to get the minimum news out the door, they would have done this kind of redundancy the day after the last time this happened.
I'd be inclined to call them Stupid Hippies, but they're not Hippies or Stupid. I just guess they don't have the few hundred pounds per node to set up a back up server somewhere.
This is my country too, and I have every right to participate in its development and future - THAT'S WHAT DEMOCRACY IS ALL ABOUT YOU IDIOT.
And when I see a perfectly useful republic such as the USA abdicate into a pseudo-democratic fascism, and I HAPPEN TO LIVE IN SUCH A COUNTRY, I just happen to have that crazy silly feeling THAT I SHOULD HELP DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, and pointing out the heinous errors (committed either willfully or through negligence) of the US Gov is, IMHO, what EVERY citizen should be doing, no matter what their political persuasion.
Example: when a bunch of ninnies ban Huckleberry Finn for being racist - the right wing has a perfectly legitimate target.
Example: when a bunch of power mad assholes fix an election and then invade a foreign country on false pretexts - the left wing has a perfectly legitimate target.
Etc. Etc. and so on.
So kindly take your "love it or leave it" attitude and stick it where the sun don't shine you pathetic tool. This is MY COUNTRY TOO!
1. I said If things continue as they are, in 20 years
You answered the statement you WANTED to answer by saying
There simply is not censorship here even remotely similar to the horrible things that take place elsewhere
I was not using the present tense - YOU WERE. I was saying that IF THINGS CONTINUE ALONG THE PATH THEY ARE AT PRESENT, we won't have much, if any alternative press in this country.
YOU decided that I was saying that the USA is like Iran TODAY, and responded using such a presumption. Why? Because you're a typical ninny.
2. You're wrong.
Have you been arrested and thrown in prison and then beaten for suggesting you do not like the president? I don't think so.
No, but many people have been arrested and then beaten or tortured or faced with asymmetrical application of state force for much less. Proof?
Oh - I guess you didn't read the Amnesty International Report, either...
I could go on and on about the evils of the American Government, but I won't. Suffice to say, you're wrong. RIGHT NOW most of the torture and fascist repression our government does (but not all) is visited upon our victims through proxies - client states and corrupt governments supressing their people in the interests of the local ruling class who support the insane and destructive American lifestyle and get rich in the process.
SOME of the torture is handled here, and is dished out as described above.
Make no mistake about it: the USA is quickly sliding into a new and unique form of "pseudo-democratic fascism" in the form of a 1.5 party state. The "winner take all" structure of the election system prevents third parties from getting any real daylight, and the power duopoly has been so eroded in the past several years by the neocon thugs in the Republican party that it is more of a monopoly of government by and for the corporations.
The 21st century will disappear from history. In 500 yearstime they will know more about Italy of 1505 than the USA of 2005. Why? the records of Italy will still exist.
The entire digital info system is based on the free ride of petroleum. Petroleum will basically disappear from society fairly soon, (either it will simply deplete, or will become too expensive to drill it out) and everything made of plastic and anything requiring high energy density to acquire (like digging up precious metals) will be largely (but not completely) curtailed. The result is most of what we call "our culture" will be lost soon after the Collapse ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154005&cid=129 17603 ) and will be largely ignored from a lack of manpower ( http://www.dieoff.org/ ).
It's a truly stunning prospect - our civilisation will, with the possible exception of a few basic texts that can be copied to paper, will simply disappear. It will be seen as a dark age - not from a lack of people writing (as it was in 490 CE) but from a lack of putting things into a survivable substrate.
Maybe we'll invade another country in twenty years under the premise that their citizens are "deprived of a free press and subjected to a singular propagandic source of news?
By that logic and assuming things continue as they are, in 20 years we would have to invade ourselves.
If things continue as they are, in 20 years the only "alternative" media (i.e., not owned and operated by corporate plutocrats) the USA might have is Pacifica Radio, and that's assuming there IS radio in 20 years or that it wasn't bought out by AirAmerica and its corporate sponsors.
RS
Things are so far gone, they're coming around looking like new. But it's not - it's just the same wage slavery in different clothes.
If you had the balls to put your name to it, I'd have rebutted you, but I'm tired of replying to Anonymous Cowards. From now on- AC's do not merit my response.
Frankly, I would like to see the very notion of the AC dispensed with - it would get rid of a lot of the bullshit in slashdot. If you have something to say, ID yourself, asswipe - even if its fictional.
Your post is as idiotic as I expect from a messianic techophile.
It is epitomised in this glaring bit of nonsense:
I hate to break it to you, but not every painting from 500 years ago has survived. There is nothing inherent in the medium itself that lends it ultimate survivability.
You are TOTALLY incorrect. A painting that is made on linen or board with an oilbased lead white gesso and then painted on with linseed oil pigments has the *inherent* ability to last for well over 1000 years. There are many extant examples of such. Paint mixed with water, egg white and pigment blown onto stone has lasted upwards of 37,000 years.
I can GUARANTEE that there isn't a single hard drive or optical drive that will provide information in 37,000 years.
Most that survive do so either by chance or because people actively wanted them to survive.
That is s a completely different issue - the *inherent* (I use your term) survivability of a work is COMPLETELY dependent on its substrate. Digital substrate is completely dependent on a specific and narrow band of time in the development of technology and has ZERO potential for survivability.
I repeat - our age is a dark age. Not from a lack of anyone writing (as in the year 490 AD in Western Europe) but because nothing we write will last.
Thus it's not supprising much of it gets destroyed. For that matter, most of it isn't worth saving anyhow.
That's not the argument - the problem is the evanescence of digital media itself. It's not a question of most - it's a question of ALL.
Books are not such a perminant media as you might think. They wear out, and can be destoryed.
I didn't say they were - they are merely MORE permanent if they are made properly. furthermore, the *context* of their information is much lower - all it takes is paper and pen and you can (carefully) copy the data *with no loss* of the "original* message. This is how the Bible and other "important" works were maintained over the centuries.
DIgital data requires a very high context situation for its copying: it MUST be copied to another digital (drive) or digital supporting substrate (tape). Tape breaks down (I occassionally work in tape restoration - tape SUCKS for storage. Sticky shed gets you sooner or later...) and drives die and corrupt (I found that out the hard way last month when my main computer AND my back up both died within 2 weeks of each other. I lost a LOT of data...)
No one can sit and copy out trillions of ones and zeros - there isn't enough paper. Digital requires a huge and wasteful industrial system, which has been proven over and over to be unsustainable. Something's going to go, and I would submit that video and digital audio will be among the first to go.
The Nordic Legends weren't written down for centuries, yet today we still have them. They were passed down, as an oral traditon for generations. There was no perminance to them other than stories in people's minds, yet they've durvived thousands of years.
Then I suggest you learn all your favourite slashdot posts by heart so you can pass them down to your grandchildren, assuming we all don't starve to death with our kids in a refugee camp in Oregon in 2032.
Sure - you can copy from drive to drive, until the file formats don't WORK any more, or you're trying to move the files between incompatible operating systems, or something like that.
Then there's the problem of archivability, where those questions get VERY problematic.
Your faith in technology is not illogical, but is not fully comprehending of the complexities involved, hence, misplaced.
Slashdot Mirror
Analog may last forever if you never play it, but try playing a CD and a record side-by-side for a month, with decent equipment for each. The record will be in a sad state by the end, while the CD will keep on tickin'.
BUT: take that CD lock it away in a box for 500 years, and take the same vinyl record, now seriously worn out, and put it in a similar box for 500 years.
In 500 years the CD will be removed and there will be NOTHING TO PLAY IT ON. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that the data on there will even be accessible *at all* by ANY means available then. However, you will still be able to take a thorn or needle, glue it to a paper cone, spin the vinyl record, put the needle/cone on the record's surface, and it will make sound. Tomorrow and 500 years from now. The CD won't.
RS
Nice conspiracy theory. Except it's obvious from the iTunes Music Store and the iPod that Apple understands that CONSUMERS WILL NOT BUY SECURE AND/OR INVASIVE DRM.
The iTMS sells AAC files - files that have built in DRM restrictions. Consumers will *cheerfully* plunk down major dolloars for crippled stuff - Macrovision? SOME consumers (such as you and I) won't plunk down money for DRM'd materail, and the way the **AA orgs are looking to get around that is to have everything DRMd from the gitgo.
The idea is this: DRM technology arrives as a fait accompli by way of Intel DRM technology at the chip level - tough noogies. There will be some percentage of the public who will hack around it (such as me and thee and audio / video professionals) but the business model they're working under *incorporates* that distinction - they don't care about the tech savvy - they are more interested in putting a meter on Ma and Pa Kettle's "Movie / Music / TV thingie."
It's really not a conspiracy theory - I've done software and hardware QA work on Just These Kinds of Technologies. You can gripe about it (lord knows I do) but that isn't going to stop it. And the thing about this is: it will be "invisible" and transparent to the end user, so the average user isn't going to notice - until you try to copy something too often or use it on an unsupported medium etc. I bailed on that work a few years ago - it's like working for Microsoft, only worse.
RS
Therefore, analogue is better - scratches and pops and all.
RS
One of the reasons Apple went to Intel and not AMD *IS* the whole DRM thing - Intel's building it right into the chipset. This will allow Apple computers to become clients for the next rev of downloadable brainwashing crap from Hollywood. It has to be DRM'd at a very low level, and Intel's got that front and centre in their business plan.
The future is this:
From the time the audio goes into the microphone or the light goes into the DV camera, to when the audio comes out of your speakers and the signal is sent to your digital flat panel, DRM will be ALL OVER IT like Stink On Shit (which, given the quality of contemporary entertainment, is a fairly apt metaphor).
Apple wants to be part of that gravy train, and hence: Intel > AMD and IBM bye bye.
RS
then people will look at it and say "Gee. It's Pretty, but it's also PRETTY USELESS." and this will go the way of the Edsel and the AMC Matador. (brrrr- I get chills just thinking about that ugly POS)
RS
All that edjacation crap is for the birds - Ellison bailed, sodid Gates. Y should any 1 bother with collitch?
Now I'll just fire up my laptop running speculation software I bought on an infomercial, short a bunch of penny stocks I've been pumping for weeks on my spam bots and roll up North in my SUV and take a long weekend where it's k3wl... and some CS grad can ask me about Fries or something like that."
The above is not a troll - just illustrating the mentality of the good old USA, where corporations only exist to benefit stockholders, and people work for wealth, neither providing any goods and/or services to the public commonweal.
RS
HYDROGEN IS NOT THE SOLUTION.
Hydrogen fuel cells are more like "batteries", and I think calling them FUEL cells is deeply misleading. We need to do the following, ASAP:
1.Reduce our population (without resorting to war and famine and such like)
2. Stop Using Oil
3. develop a lifestyle that is slower, more decentralised, and a few orders of magnitude more efficient.
Otherwise, we're going back to the caves in 1000 years and just hang out waiting for the next asteroid to take us out or the flu to do us in.
Face it folks: THE PARTY'S OVER.
RS
RS
I agree. In terms of video this was even discussed in the ACM Journal back in Spring 1991. Remixing *is* a fact and the sooner anti-remixers get used to it, the happier they will be. However: remixing is Not a critical juncture in culture. Not now, not ever. It's just a contemporary manifestation of a given set of technologies rubbing up against notions of Intellectual Property as defined by copyright. Without the notion of copyright, remixing would be as controversial as taking a walk to 7-11 to pick up a six pack of beer (which I intend to do in a few minutes).
Some people *have it* - simple raw talent - most people don't.
I don't disagree with this, per se; It's an observation anyone can make. What I disagree with is the idea that talent can't be learned.
Sorry, but it can't. Take a dwarf and see how well they do in the NBA. They simply don't have the Raw Skills, the Talent to do that. This doesn't mean they would stink shooting hoops against other dwarves, but they won't make much headway against the Pistons. The Hawks, maybe, but the Pistons or Lakers- no.
There are SO many things that go into creative skill sets, it's crazy. Any halfwit can draw badly and paint worse and make a living out of it (look at the "career" of David Salle...) but to make really superior work takes Skillz, and unfortunately, training and hard work can only take you so far. The rest is innate - genetic. Michelangelo, Titian, the pantheon of great artists demonstrates this. Some can be psycho alky self destructive asshats, like Van Gogh, or sweetie pie genius types, like ME, but it's something you're borne with. you can work, and if you work hard enough, it will be indistinguishable from Good Work, but some people Gots It, and some don't. I gots it, I just never cared enough about the Game to bother. I don't let it get me down - I'm too cynical to believe in nihilism.
The idea that if you don't have it you can't get it, or at least shouldn't bother trying.
No no no - DO try. If we don't try, NOTHING will ever improve.
The perceived gap between collage/cut-up/remix art and original art is shrinking (from both sides) to the point of being meaningless. The idea being that the lessened stigma around "appropriation" and "borrowing" will lower the bar significantly for people to create.
Well, I hope and pray that eventually it will fade altogether, and then we can look at things for their meaning and value, the "content of their character", and not be looking over our shoulder about pissing off Disney.
Thanks for the exchange. Cheers!
Now, to get me a BEER (or six or however many it takes to lose count...)
RS
Ummmm.... NOWHERE.
Meanwhile Intel is working on dual core as well, and they're banging the door of 4gHz...
Steve switched to Intel for a good reason...
RS
dr. dumbass wrote:
One of the highlights of modern culture is that this number seems to be decreasing.
So?
People naturally want to create.
Create WHAT? I can create a great steaming tourde every morning.
If they "aren't interested" it's because they were never encouraged (and often actively discouraged) to be.
That's only partly true. Take this out of the realm of "Creativity" and put it in the realm of "human activity".
Everyone likes to play something of some variety - whether it's pinocle or marathon running, everyone has some kind of outlet that way, and people will NATURALLY have different aptitudes for any such activity. Some will be REALLY GOOD - run the mile under 4 minutes, play flawless 128th note arpeggios at 120 bpm - whatever. Some people can't bang two rocks together for love or money, or are in crutches and can barely walk around the block.
Playing an instrument, whether it's a trumpet, guitar, keyboard or Ableton Live 4.1 - all of this requires skills of some variety, and some instruments (such as an Armenian Duduk and its requirements of some MAJOR lung power or classical violin and its requirements of fine motor control in the fingertips) require some SERIOUS skills that are likely innate and influenced by genetic traits in origin. Other instruments (such as Live 4.1) require very little physical skills and require simply a decent set of ears and a sensibility, the former fairly common, and the latter can be acquired through education.
People with little skills or, please note: INTEREST IN ACQUIRING THESE SKILLS will always constitute an audience, and this is a PERMANENT fact of human existence. The sooner you get used to it, the happier you will be.
Remixing is a marginal case... ...that you demonstrate your lack of awareness of. I'm sorry if you heard some crappy mashup that you didn't like. There's a lot of crappy music by "Skilled Professional Musicians", too. (Furthermore, most remixing is done by "Skilled Professional Musicians") But you don't see people writing off the whole enterprise, except out of ignorance.
I didn't write it off, I simply contextualised it. Face it: remixing is a fact, but it is not the WHOLE fact, and it will never be the whole fact.
Maybe if you addressed some of the concrete examples in TFA you would have more of a point.
Maybe if you addressed my post on its own terms, as I addressed the part of the article on its own terms you might have ANY point.
As further clarification, I enjoy remixing myself - I've done plenty of it, and was doing it back in high school in the late 1970s when it took a shitload of audio tape, a tape deck, a cutting block, razor blades and a box of band aids to do what people do now with a click of a button with no threat of losing a finger tip. I was doing basic remixing / plunderphonic - type stuff in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now I use Ableton Live, but I use it more as an instrument and a node for controlling software synths.
I know what I'm talking about, I'm in the middle of it EVERY DAY. And I can assure you: remixing is just the latest manifestation of audio technology. It is NOT the whole game, nor is it the most interesting part of the game. Not everyone will create, nor will they want to or have to. Some people will be better at it than others, and remixing is no exception.
Are you implying that writing sci-fi is something reserved for a category of people other than the one you are in? Or that writing is something that cannot be learned and honed?
the mechanics of Writing is something that can be learned and honed. but that is not all their is to writing. Insight is not something that is necessarily learnable, and Insight is what makes a good writer great. Same with music. Some people *have it* - simple raw talent - most people don't. Most people are mediocretins and need someone sm
Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.'"
Baloney. There will ALWAYS be an audience, because not everyone is as adept at making things (even remixes require some talent - not much, but some) and not everyone WANTS to make things or finds making things interesting. There are a huge number of people, and I would submit that such a number constitutes a majority of people in general, who aren't really interested in being cultural producers of any variety. They LIKE to be entertained, they LIKE having people do that for them, and they LIKE having people do it for them in a COMPETENT manner.
Remixing is a marginal case, and while it will grow in popularity, it is just the flavour of the month until people tire of hearing Led Zeppelin being mixed over a brain dead hip hop beat with some spacey and/or glitchy atmospherics tossed in for the sake of "creativity". People will want to hear Real Music Made By Skilled Professional Musicians and remixing will go the same route of professionalisation and renewal like the rest of it.
Appealing to William Gibson as an authority is not a wise idea in this case. I have an idea - I'll OCR Mona Lisa Overdrive and remix it. Oooops! Can't really do that, can I? I have to KNOW HOW TO WRITE SCI-FI to do that. Same goes for music.
RS
A straw poll showed a fair degree of consensus--art is craft plus a special degree of inspiration. This pretty much explains immediately why only art students and art critics at a certain sort of paper favor conceptual art. Conceptual art, of course, often lacks a craft component as people usually understand the term."
Which is exactly why ART IS NOT LEFT TO PUBLIC CONSENSUS. What people "usually understand" is not part of much conceptual art - since the substrate of Conceptual Art is Understanding itself, any notion of "usual understanding" is not part of the game. the point is Unusual Understanding. - HELLO!
Secondly, there are PLENTY of examples of people who use programming as art, and more broadly, if one includes computability in general as an artmaking practice, there are even greater ranges, where programming becomes an intrinsic part of the artwork itself. To that I would point to the work being done in Max/MSP and Jitter, as well as HTML, Flash and Action Scripting, and other internet technologies.
From my perspective, "programming as art" is a total non-issue and has been a non-issue since John Cage worked with people like Lejaren Hiller developing randomisation techniques in music and other media almost 40 years ago.
RS
Hence: get rid of TLDs...
I agree with the other who think TLDs are a thing of the past and are no longer useful. I understand your point that they can be useful, but I think their usefulness can be incorporated into whatever name one wants.
Example:
Instead of typing in http://www.whitehouse.gov/ to see what the Retard In Chief is up to, I could simply type "whitehouse" and bingo - done.
Instead of http://www.rutgers.edu/ I could just type "rutgers". And if there's a company that already owns "rutgers" then the university could simply be "rutgers-university" etc. Instead of http://www.microsoft.com/ I could just type "microsoft". I'd rather type "EVILEMPIRE" but microsoft will do.
How is appending a TLD to a name more useful? It's certainly not faster.
RS
And given they could easily build their own server for PEANUTS that would at least be able to get the minimum news out the door, they would have done this kind of redundancy the day after the last time this happened.
I'd be inclined to call them Stupid Hippies, but they're not Hippies or Stupid. I just guess they don't have the few hundred pounds per node to set up a back up server somewhere.
RS
This is my country too, and I have every right to participate in its development and future - THAT'S WHAT DEMOCRACY IS ALL ABOUT YOU IDIOT.
And when I see a perfectly useful republic such as the USA abdicate into a pseudo-democratic fascism, and I HAPPEN TO LIVE IN SUCH A COUNTRY, I just happen to have that crazy silly feeling THAT I SHOULD HELP DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, and pointing out the heinous errors (committed either willfully or through negligence) of the US Gov is, IMHO, what EVERY citizen should be doing, no matter what their political persuasion.
Example: when a bunch of ninnies ban Huckleberry Finn for being racist - the right wing has a perfectly legitimate target.
Example: when a bunch of power mad assholes fix an election and then invade a foreign country on false pretexts - the left wing has a perfectly legitimate target.
Etc. Etc. and so on.
So kindly take your "love it or leave it" attitude and stick it where the sun don't shine you pathetic tool. This is MY COUNTRY TOO!
RS
It seems that Limewire's GUI is specifically developed in a way that infringes the ruling. But I could be wrong - I'm not sure -
Perhaps my esteemed colleagues here on slashdot can discuss if this impacts the future of Limewire?
RS
2. you're wrong.
1. I said If things continue as they are, in 20 years
You answered the statement you WANTED to answer by saying
There simply is not censorship here even remotely similar to the horrible things that take place elsewhere
I was not using the present tense - YOU WERE. I was saying that IF THINGS CONTINUE ALONG THE PATH THEY ARE AT PRESENT, we won't have much, if any alternative press in this country.
YOU decided that I was saying that the USA is like Iran TODAY, and responded using such a presumption. Why? Because you're a typical ninny.
2. You're wrong.
Have you been arrested and thrown in prison and then beaten for suggesting you do not like the president? I don't think so.
No, but many people have been arrested and then beaten or tortured or faced with asymmetrical application of state force for much less. Proof?
Here:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-06.ht m
Take a look at her face and tell me that isn't torture.
http://www.constitution.org/ghansen/conghansen.htm
He wasn't tortured? He wa a former CONGRESSMAN (even)!
http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/usa-summary-eng
Oh - I guess you didn't read the Amnesty International Report, either...
I could go on and on about the evils of the American Government, but I won't. Suffice to say, you're wrong. RIGHT NOW most of the torture and fascist repression our government does (but not all) is visited upon our victims through proxies - client states and corrupt governments supressing their people in the interests of the local ruling class who support the insane and destructive American lifestyle and get rich in the process.
SOME of the torture is handled here, and is dished out as described above.
Make no mistake about it: the USA is quickly sliding into a new and unique form of "pseudo-democratic fascism" in the form of a 1.5 party state. The "winner take all" structure of the election system prevents third parties from getting any real daylight, and the power duopoly has been so eroded in the past several years by the neocon thugs in the Republican party that it is more of a monopoly of government by and for the corporations.
RS
the link shoud have been:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/sim-explorer/ explore-items/-/0670033375/0/101/1/none/purchase/r ef%3Dpd_sxp_r0/103-5019446-5179842
RS
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154005&cid=129 17603
My opinion?
The 21st century will disappear from history. In 500 yearstime they will know more about Italy of 1505 than the USA of 2005. Why? the records of Italy will still exist.
The entire digital info system is based on the free ride of petroleum. Petroleum will basically disappear from society fairly soon, (either it will simply deplete, or will become too expensive to drill it out) and everything made of plastic and anything requiring high energy density to acquire (like digging up precious metals) will be largely (but not completely) curtailed. The result is most of what we call "our culture" will be lost soon after the Collapse ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154005&cid=129 17603 ) and will be largely ignored from a lack of manpower ( http://www.dieoff.org/ ).
It's a truly stunning prospect - our civilisation will, with the possible exception of a few basic texts that can be copied to paper, will simply disappear. It will be seen as a dark age - not from a lack of people writing (as it was in 490 CE) but from a lack of putting things into a survivable substrate.
RS
By that logic and assuming things continue as they are, in 20 years we would have to invade ourselves.
If things continue as they are, in 20 years the only "alternative" media (i.e., not owned and operated by corporate plutocrats) the USA might have is Pacifica Radio, and that's assuming there IS radio in 20 years or that it wasn't bought out by AirAmerica and its corporate sponsors.
RS
Things are so far gone, they're coming around looking like new. But it's not - it's just the same wage slavery in different clothes.
Frankly, I would like to see the very notion of the AC dispensed with - it would get rid of a lot of the bullshit in slashdot. If you have something to say, ID yourself, asswipe - even if its fictional.
RS
It is epitomised in this glaring bit of nonsense:
I hate to break it to you, but not every painting from 500 years ago has survived. There is nothing inherent in the medium itself that lends it ultimate survivability.
You are TOTALLY incorrect. A painting that is made on linen or board with an oilbased lead white gesso and then painted on with linseed oil pigments has the *inherent* ability to last for well over 1000 years. There are many extant examples of such. Paint mixed with water, egg white and pigment blown onto stone has lasted upwards of 37,000 years.
I can GUARANTEE that there isn't a single hard drive or optical drive that will provide information in 37,000 years.
Most that survive do so either by chance or because people actively wanted them to survive.
That is s a completely different issue - the *inherent* (I use your term) survivability of a work is COMPLETELY dependent on its substrate. Digital substrate is completely dependent on a specific and narrow band of time in the development of technology and has ZERO potential for survivability.
I repeat - our age is a dark age. Not from a lack of anyone writing (as in the year 490 AD in Western Europe) but because nothing we write will last.
RS
OK - point for point:
Thus it's not supprising much of it gets destroyed. For that matter, most of it isn't worth saving anyhow.
That's not the argument - the problem is the evanescence of digital media itself. It's not a question of most - it's a question of ALL.
Books are not such a perminant media as you might think. They wear out, and can be destoryed.
I didn't say they were - they are merely MORE permanent if they are made properly. furthermore, the *context* of their information is much lower - all it takes is paper and pen and you can (carefully) copy the data *with no loss* of the "original* message. This is how the Bible and other "important" works were maintained over the centuries.
DIgital data requires a very high context situation for its copying: it MUST be copied to another digital (drive) or digital supporting substrate (tape). Tape breaks down (I occassionally work in tape restoration - tape SUCKS for storage. Sticky shed gets you sooner or later...) and drives die and corrupt (I found that out the hard way last month when my main computer AND my back up both died within 2 weeks of each other. I lost a LOT of data...)
No one can sit and copy out trillions of ones and zeros - there isn't enough paper. Digital requires a huge and wasteful industrial system, which has been proven over and over to be unsustainable. Something's going to go, and I would submit that video and digital audio will be among the first to go.
The Nordic Legends weren't written down for centuries, yet today we still have them. They were passed down, as an oral traditon for generations. There was no perminance to them other than stories in people's minds, yet they've durvived thousands of years.
Then I suggest you learn all your favourite slashdot posts by heart so you can pass them down to your grandchildren, assuming we all don't starve to death with our kids in a refugee camp in Oregon in 2032.
RS
Then there's the problem of archivability, where those questions get VERY problematic.
Your faith in technology is not illogical, but is not fully comprehending of the complexities involved, hence, misplaced.
RS