Actually, I think some forms of gambling are legal in all states. You might not find craps tables or roulette wheels, but I think all states have their own lottery or participate in a multi-state powerball. Utah does (utahlottery.com), so I've got to assume others do.
Additionally, there's lots of horse racing, and let's not forget that many Native American tribes have casino rights, and while I don't know if there's tribal gaming in every state, it's not uncommon.
Lastly, there are allowances for gaming in "uncontrolled" zones such as river borders between states, but within the confines of the US. I once went to a riverboat casino in Illinois. It "boarded" and "departed" at given times, but all that meant was that they only let you in at the top of the hour. The boat never left the dock, but having boarding times let them run a 24/7 casino. Of course, you could off-board at any time:)
I think the point of the GP post is that the gov't--whether it's state or federal level--is perfectly fine with gambling as long as they are getting some sort of benefit from it. The benefit could take many forms, but the main thing is that it is not an issue of morality, even though that's how it's often painted in the regulations. It's an issue of control. The gov't does not want significant volumes of money changing hands without them getting their due.
Can't say I blame them. If I could get just 0.001% of the annual US gaming industry revenue, I'd be a very happy camper myself.
My question is, why ZFS for the Mac? I mean, for 99% of people's uses, it seems like the most enticing features of ZFS are overkill, unless implementing it does not imply any load on the system if all the features are not being used, and they want to synch up FS development between all of their products, from iPod to XServe.
That being said, they may have something up their sleeves, and forgive me if the connection between ZFS and my idea is tenuous. If it seems like a silly idea, I blame the overdose of coffee I had this morning.
My understanding is that one of the features of ZFS is effectively infinite virtual device size, spread over effectively infinite numbers of physical volumes in a RAID configuration.
Since the introduction of iTMS, especially with TV and movies, Apple is now very much in the business of pushing bits, and the costs of that bit-pushing grow--maybe not linearly, but they do grow--as demand for those bits grows.
People have been suggesting that Apple might be building some sort of BitTorrent client to facilitate distribution of content, and I'm thinking that ZFS might be a key to this.
Perhaps--and this is where my understanding of the technology may be leading me down the wrong path--they could build some sort of ZFS hooks into iTunes such that, if the user chooses to do so, they could mount their purchased library as a network-shared ZFS partition and register an IP address and port with an Apple server. If someone wants to buy a TV show that 10 people have already bought, they get a magic read-only volume mounted which is effectively a network-mounted RAID1 partition striped across those 10 drives, with access only to the TV show in question.
The iTunes hosts which are providing the data shake hands and agree on some sort of wrapper that is provided by the Apple servers, and encode their data appropriately. The buyer then gets their content with minimal data flow from Apple's infrastructure.
To provide incentive for people to do this, perhaps Apple offers lower-cost or even free content to regular bandwidth contributors.
Is this feasible, or even a likely path that they would be thinking of with ZFS, or am I just on crack?
Good point about the bounces. I hadn't even thought about that. With forged addresses, it's still a hassle for *someone*.
I could imagine a situation where someone gets hundreds of those authentication bounces in a day; who would think that person would appreciate the intention of the system?
Everything is not a nail. But SPF is a hammer that does not even get the nail all the way in. What I am suggesting is that SPF is a very limited solution, and that may be why it's not universally implemented. And I'm saying that auto-implementing it will still leave the option of sending out some kinds of SPAM wide open.
I'm saying that if we really want to defeat spam, someone needs to intelligently integrate greylisting, SPF, heuristic filters and a number of other systems into a useful and easy-to-implement "tool belt". Building the article's suggested system will just be a waste of time and solve very little in terms of significantly reducing volumes of spam, in my opinion.
I totally agree, hence my quote of... "and the size of such a universal database would be ridiculous".
If bandwidth, CPU and data storage and access were infinitely available resources such that an attack as you describe wouldn't make my suggestion effectively impossible, I would push for my idea. However, my idea was simply to address some of the shortcomings of the original idea in the article.
Unfortunately, at this time, there is no magic bullet for spam. I use some heuristic filters, but mostly I just use my delete button.
So what happens when you receive an email from a big site like Sympatico, Hotmail, or any number of other places that have farms of SMTP servers, where your message isn't guaranteed to be resent from the same IP?
And OKing the receipt of any address at a domain from such an infrastructure seems less than ideal. I mean, if I send out all my email for "me@mydomain.com" from Hotmail's SMTP servers, I'm not sure I want that to automatically give the go-ahead so that anyone can send spam from "Need-Viagra@mydomain.com" and "refinance-your-house@mydomain.com", etc..., from those domains.
SPF, as I understand it, has some contexts in which it works well. But it doesn't cut with fine-enough a blade as far as I'm concerned. Automating the process so that I (if I haven't set up SPF records) could allow spammers to use my domain with more authority by responding to an automated message just doesn't sound like a good idea. I think this opens up the door for a lot more spam if people believe in it.
If it went a step further and tried to authenticate each time a unique USER@DOMAIN pair sent an email via a particular host, I could see that being useful. The protocol could be extended such that even the SMTP farms could conceivably use something to say, "if authorized at one of my servers, an email should be authorized at all of my servers". But it's a lot of work to get there, and the size of such a universal database would be ridiculous, and it seems that for there to be a single-source host for such a thing, there would have to be a lot of cooperation between some major corp^H^H^H^H sources of funding.
I've heard a lot of terms for describing the feelings associated with frustration. Some of them are pretty catchy. But this one really takes the cake.
Sometimes I type LOL even when I really just barely cracked a smile. In fact, most times, it really means, "That bored me less. But in the case of this turn of phrase, I actually laughed out loud. Just one guffaw, but it was enough to get me to give up my moderation rights on this thread and say...
Well, if it's for personal use, I'd personally say that's fine. Someone from the Ferrari legal team might feel otherwise, but I'll bet it could be done in such a way that you'd be very safe in court. But the actual car is the least valuable part of a Ferrari. The design--what makes you want it in the first place--and the name are much bigger parts of the cost than the physical car.
And both the name and design have value that comes out of decades of hard work from the members of the Ferrari company (family? LLC?) and so if you sell or rent your mock-up and make money off of it, it's arguable that you are profiting inappropriately, and that there may be some reasonable expectation of recompense or other protection for the designers of the copied product and the owners of the trademark name.
Even in my original example, you probably need to gain access to the original Ferrari in order to copy it in full detail. Even a good spec sheet probably would not allow you to make one that looks and feels like the original. So the question is, would anyone who's paid $250,000 for a car loan it to you so that you can take molds and measurements to make your own? Even if you rented it, could the owner of the car specify in the rental contract that you are only allowed to use it for driving?
Of course, you could resolve this problem by buying the car yourself. I don't know what's in the sales contract from ferrari, but I don't know if a "no copying" clause could be enforced in a personal use situation.
In addition to the sale or rental of functional cars, I could see some other places where the commercial use of a copy could be problematic. If, for instance, you were in the business of selling cheap copies of cars to be destroyed in TV show car chases, the car companies whose models you were copying could probably be justified in claiming that you are profiting from their designs and thus could require compensation. Heck, I believe that even HotWheels and their ilk have to pay license to the companies that make the real-world counterparts to their toys.
I'm sure there are other grey areas; obviously, as you point out, copying a car and copying an MP3 are very different issue, but the biggest issue I see with that difference and thus your comparison, is that if you have the mad skillz to make a Ferrari copy that is realistic enough to be a sue-able offense, then you probably could make a good enough living making custom cars that you could afford to buy one outright.
Doubtful; wealth begets wealth. 99 missed opportunities for more money, perhaps, but not 99 more individuals given opportunities.
I don't know if I agree. You know the story about how Gary Killdall skipped a meeting with Gates and IBM to discuss licensing QDOS in order to go surfing, and Gates, pissed at being flaked on, capitalized by buying it outright for $25K, making a HUGE killing? GK had a huge opportunity and didn't recognize it or chose not to take it, for whatever reason. I'm sure there are lots and lots of stories like that, on varying levels.
Maybe 1 to 99 is incorrect, but chances are that wherever one person has HUUUGE success, there are at least a handful of people who have just barely missed the boat.
Oh, it's easy enough to hazard a guess at the balance:
I agree in broad strokes with your statement, but since not all of these attributes are available to all people (i.e. resources) some try to find a formula where if you plunk down X amount of work and Y amount of networking, you're guaranteed to win. Since every situation is different, the threshold of a given attribute in combination of others required to get a win is difficult to predict.
Heck, even with all the resources in the world, it's still possible to F things up. I mean, couldn't Microsoft have done anything better than the Zune? The Zune might be a fine music player, but they of all companies have to understand that in order to tangibly change a firmly entrenched market, they've got to come up with something ground breaking. Brown and semi social are just not going to do it.
this would fit the observed data of tens of millions of working poor who struggle to make ends meet
Yup. Ronald Reagan justified his tax cuts saying that a rising tide carries all boats, and someone--I wish I could remember who--responded something on the order of, "not the ones that are below water".
There is an issue of thresholds in our society. I agree with you that once you get to a certain point, it's hard not to do well, but it's extremely hard to get to that point. That's why I think we should tax the hell out of those bastards. You made 100 million dollars this year? 90% goes to taxes to pay for social services. Don't like it? Pay your employees better and take a smaller cut for yourself. Or donate to causes you believe in. Or something.
But I've gotten off-track here. Anyway, if you're interested in discussing the merits of theoretical capitolism vs. socialism, and both of those versus American captialism and European socialism, I'm happy to engage. I've got opinions which, while strong, are open to discussion.
Similarly, for every gazillionaire who was in the right place at the right time and capitalized, there are 99 people who had similar opportunities and did not make anything of them. Your comment of, "working hard isn't the deciding factor" is probably a fair statement, but to be more accurate, it should maybe be changed to, "working hard is not the only factor."
And, per my addition, "luck is not the only factor."
And for other factors, like knowing the right people, we can see that this does not always make for a complete success...
So our formula for becoming a gazillionaire is something along the lines of this: There is no single factor which guarantees success. A combination of luck, access to resources, insight, motivation, hard work, networking, and possibly a number of others as yet unidentified, is typically required. In some cases, an abundance in one category more than makes up for a deficiency in another, but the greater the weakness in any area, the lesser the chance of success. Because circumstances are always changing, there is no perfect balance of these elements which can be pre-defined, so there is no absolute guarantee of becoming a gazillionaire.
This, of course, begs the question of how we define success. I don't care if I ever become a gazillionaire. However, if someone were to gift me a few million dollars, I would happily live off the interest and remain a contributing member of society through both regular work and creative endeavors. It's a pity that so many people with resources (the Paris Hiltons of the world) choose instead to flaunt and squander; imagine if she were to have given all the money she has spent on cocaine in the last decade to a local homeless shelter... But I digress...
Great comment, should be modded "insightful". But if you had wanted to be modded as "funny", you could have made some joke about how people don't even RTFE.
I'm not saying that producing an album that sells a couple million copies should keep you set for life in some Beverly Hills mansion
This appears to be a point that we agree on. It sounded to me like the great-grand-parent post (I don't know if it was you) was trying to say that artists should never have to tour if they don't want to. Making an album is hard work, but even if it takes months and costs thousands of dollars in studio time, the artists who produced it should not be surprised if they have to tour to cover their bills.
but to think that artists should produce music, release music and not make a cent until they get above the overhead of producing a record and starting a tour is even sillier
Again, I never said that, although the reality is that if they want to make money while making an album, they either have to sign on with a label who can afford to support them, get a private backer/patron, or they need to get a job. All of these options have pluses and minuses, but as much as I respect artists, there is the grim reality, and they have to make their choices.
Also, for the record, I'm not forcing anything down anyone's throat. I couldn't if I wanted to. What I am complaining about is that megacorporations with megabucks can and do force stuff down people's throats. It may not have been nice to refer to the audiences of mass-pop bands as sheep, and I apologize if I offended anyone, but the truth is, advertising works. It creates demand, creates the illusion of value and desire. With the right techniques and masses of money, you can make anything into a huge hit. Like it or not, it's true.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't like something just because it's successful, or just because there's money behind it. I just think that there's more out there than the majors sell, and unfortunately, for the great majority of people, a lot of it is lost in the shuffle because so much attention is being put on a relatively small group of bands (compared to what's out there).
With regards to other types of artists, I don't know how they all pay their rent. Patronage used to be a big thing, and I know many major artists took commissions. Some artists are independently wealthy and never had to worry about that stuff, and others beg, borrow and steal in order to afford that next tube of oil. And of course some simply sell paintings, though my understanding is that's the hardest way to make a living as an artist. I don't know what Dali's situation was, but unless he had his own money, or unless he got a patron as a very young man, I have to imagine that he did work at a relatively normal job as he was establishing himself. Just because a man paints doesn't mean he doesn't have to earn his living somehow until he finds someone willing to pay for his work...
For the record, as I stated before, I don't steal music. I do pay for what I listen to. However, as you may or may not know, most of that money does not go to the bands.
Many people do like what they buy. Others are being herded like sheep; those with the greatest resources for marketing can take the money that might go to better art. It may not be a zero sum game, but it is indeed a game.
I'm not telling anyone what to like or not like. I just think it's silly to say that people who write music shouldn't have to tour. Being an artist--of any type--does not exempt you from having to continually earn your keep. It's great that a few people do hit the jackpot, but I'm just saying that it could be a better world for more people if something were changed to reduce the concentration of wealth in the hands of major music corporations and a few of their marquee bands.
I've enjoyed our debate and admit that in some ways, I'm taking reactionary positions, but again, saying that someone shouldn't have to work for a living is just silly.
My main point, however poorly stated, was that I need to be convinced of the grandparent's post that artists should not have to tour to pay the rent. Just because a bunch of sheep think that an artist is hot and have an artificial desire for the album fueled by expensive marketing doesn't make it right that these folks get to retire in their 20s. They haven't earned it, they've hit the jackpot, and to say that it's not right for artists to have to tour to promote their music is just silly.
The current model, where all the marketing gets behind a handful of mega-hitsters is bad for everyone. Poor artists can't compete with the marketing machines at the majors, so they have to sign the same all-or-nothing deals. While I'm sure everyone would love to write a "Disco Duck" song that keeps them in the money forever, I'm sure most musicians would be happy to make a decent living performing, writing music and earning their keep.
There are a bunch of ways to fix the problem. Shortening copyright limits is one way. Regulating the business practices of pimping organizations like the RIAA to ensure that artists get the majority of the money rather than ending up as musical sharecroppers is another. A sales model like Amie Street may be another. We'll see. The main thing is that I don't think that the current system works in one way: it does value popularity over everything else. Thus we as a society are doomed to the Britneys and the Metallicas forever raining down their bubblegum cacophony. If the masses weren't constantly having this crap shoved down their throats, there'd be more money for everyone to spend on really good music.
And yes, I do have better taste in music than the vast majority of people.
And if you still feel it's a natural supply and demand thing, read Al Gore's "Assault on Reason". It'll make you think differently about advertising.
Why shouldn't an artist be forced to tour to pay the rent? I'm not saying that they should, but the RIAA model where artists drop their souls in a slot machine and hope to win the jackpot does not seem like an intrinsically good system.
In most other careers, one expects to work most days of each week, most weeks of each year. I realize that touring is hard (I've done it), but why should musicians get off easy? It would be one thing if all of the successful recording artists were actually publishing great music that made the world a better place to live. But the Britneys and the Metallicas of the world have gotten rich off of simplistic musical drivel which caters to the lowest common denominator, well promoted by greedy bastards.
Personally, I think that the people who do the hard work should get paid. Heck, I'd even say that I think that popular music copyrights should expire after five years. Then I'd be able to get a Rhino Records recording of every Metallica album ever made for the cost of the materials, packaging and shipping. Or download it for free. They've made their millions. If they're not going to write a new album or perform for me, why should I have to pay them for something that:
- Took them a couple of days to create.
- Was created 10 years ago.
- Has already made them a million dollars
I personally don't torrent music that's under copyright; I pay for what I listen to, even if it's old, because that's the law. But as far as promoting interest in one's music, I'd prefer to see bands touring and working for a living than just having big corporations hype them and push them endlessly via payola on the radio.
Dang it, now I'm starting to lose focus. Ah, well, I hope you get my point. Vote for Oog!
This was actually my first thought. The title is actually inaccurate. They haven't proved that cell towers don't cause health problems, they've proved that cell tower radio emissions don't cause health problems. Wouldn't it be interesting if the cell towers themselves caused the problems?
Feng shui or no feng shui, maybe they just need to be more clever about integrating them into the environment. If a big, ugly tower causes stress for a significant portion of the nearby population, then it's worth exploring other options.
It could be the same with high power voltage lines. Farmers have been reporting problems with livestock which lives under HPVL, and hard scientists have denied any connection to the power or surrounding magnetic fields. They may be right; maybe even sheep and cows don't like grazing near huge, imposing, unnatural structures. Maybe those hard angles and bright, glaring metal cause them stress. And if that's true for our cloven-hoofed friends, why is it such a stretch to imagine that it would have an effect on those with bigger brains and opposable thumbs?
I've heard two different feng shui "experts" make exactly contradictory suggestions for a location, so I'm sure there's some quackery for anyone who claims absolute rightness and rigidity about the art. But that's not uncommon; the more zealous someone is about any belief, the more likely I am to distrust their opinions on the matter. That having been said, I think there are a lot of good concepts underpinning the practice. Make your environment peaceful and supportive. Encourage light and gentle, clean air flow. Discourage strong drafts, dust and shadow. Minimize noises which interrupt your life and work, but do not completely isolate yourself. Remember you are an animal; cold, industrial-feeling environments are not good for a well rounded life.
So who's up for a study of cell phone towers, emissions or no?
Slashdot Mirror
Once a blade runner named Deckard
Whose childhood memories were checkered
Found a hot babe
that he wanted to save
only to end up hen-peckered!
How's that?
Additionally, there's lots of horse racing, and let's not forget that many Native American tribes have casino rights, and while I don't know if there's tribal gaming in every state, it's not uncommon.
Lastly, there are allowances for gaming in "uncontrolled" zones such as river borders between states, but within the confines of the US. I once went to a riverboat casino in Illinois. It "boarded" and "departed" at given times, but all that meant was that they only let you in at the top of the hour. The boat never left the dock, but having boarding times let them run a 24/7 casino. Of course, you could off-board at any time :)
I think the point of the GP post is that the gov't--whether it's state or federal level--is perfectly fine with gambling as long as they are getting some sort of benefit from it. The benefit could take many forms, but the main thing is that it is not an issue of morality, even though that's how it's often painted in the regulations. It's an issue of control. The gov't does not want significant volumes of money changing hands without them getting their due.
Can't say I blame them. If I could get just 0.001% of the annual US gaming industry revenue, I'd be a very happy camper myself.
The world couldn't stop the US from invading Iraq based on non-existent WMD; who thinks that the US gov't would pay any foreign-levied fine of $100B?
Awesome!
That being said, they may have something up their sleeves, and forgive me if the connection between ZFS and my idea is tenuous. If it seems like a silly idea, I blame the overdose of coffee I had this morning.
My understanding is that one of the features of ZFS is effectively infinite virtual device size, spread over effectively infinite numbers of physical volumes in a RAID configuration.
Since the introduction of iTMS, especially with TV and movies, Apple is now very much in the business of pushing bits, and the costs of that bit-pushing grow--maybe not linearly, but they do grow--as demand for those bits grows.
People have been suggesting that Apple might be building some sort of BitTorrent client to facilitate distribution of content, and I'm thinking that ZFS might be a key to this.
Perhaps--and this is where my understanding of the technology may be leading me down the wrong path--they could build some sort of ZFS hooks into iTunes such that, if the user chooses to do so, they could mount their purchased library as a network-shared ZFS partition and register an IP address and port with an Apple server. If someone wants to buy a TV show that 10 people have already bought, they get a magic read-only volume mounted which is effectively a network-mounted RAID1 partition striped across those 10 drives, with access only to the TV show in question.
The iTunes hosts which are providing the data shake hands and agree on some sort of wrapper that is provided by the Apple servers, and encode their data appropriately. The buyer then gets their content with minimal data flow from Apple's infrastructure.
To provide incentive for people to do this, perhaps Apple offers lower-cost or even free content to regular bandwidth contributors.
Is this feasible, or even a likely path that they would be thinking of with ZFS, or am I just on crack?
Goatse FTW!
Got a better idea?
I could imagine a situation where someone gets hundreds of those authentication bounces in a day; who would think that person would appreciate the intention of the system?
Everything is not a nail. But SPF is a hammer that does not even get the nail all the way in. What I am suggesting is that SPF is a very limited solution, and that may be why it's not universally implemented. And I'm saying that auto-implementing it will still leave the option of sending out some kinds of SPAM wide open.
I'm saying that if we really want to defeat spam, someone needs to intelligently integrate greylisting, SPF, heuristic filters and a number of other systems into a useful and easy-to-implement "tool belt". Building the article's suggested system will just be a waste of time and solve very little in terms of significantly reducing volumes of spam, in my opinion.
If bandwidth, CPU and data storage and access were infinitely available resources such that an attack as you describe wouldn't make my suggestion effectively impossible, I would push for my idea. However, my idea was simply to address some of the shortcomings of the original idea in the article.
Unfortunately, at this time, there is no magic bullet for spam. I use some heuristic filters, but mostly I just use my delete button.
And OKing the receipt of any address at a domain from such an infrastructure seems less than ideal. I mean, if I send out all my email for "me@mydomain.com" from Hotmail's SMTP servers, I'm not sure I want that to automatically give the go-ahead so that anyone can send spam from "Need-Viagra@mydomain.com" and "refinance-your-house@mydomain.com", etc..., from those domains.
SPF, as I understand it, has some contexts in which it works well. But it doesn't cut with fine-enough a blade as far as I'm concerned. Automating the process so that I (if I haven't set up SPF records) could allow spammers to use my domain with more authority by responding to an automated message just doesn't sound like a good idea. I think this opens up the door for a lot more spam if people believe in it.
If it went a step further and tried to authenticate each time a unique USER@DOMAIN pair sent an email via a particular host, I could see that being useful. The protocol could be extended such that even the SMTP farms could conceivably use something to say, "if authorized at one of my servers, an email should be authorized at all of my servers". But it's a lot of work to get there, and the size of such a universal database would be ridiculous, and it seems that for there to be a single-source host for such a thing, there would have to be a lot of cooperation between some major corp^H^H^H^H sources of funding.
I've heard a lot of terms for describing the feelings associated with frustration. Some of them are pretty catchy. But this one really takes the cake.
Sometimes I type LOL even when I really just barely cracked a smile. In fact, most times, it really means, "That bored me less. But in the case of this turn of phrase, I actually laughed out loud. Just one guffaw, but it was enough to get me to give up my moderation rights on this thread and say...
And both the name and design have value that comes out of decades of hard work from the members of the Ferrari company (family? LLC?) and so if you sell or rent your mock-up and make money off of it, it's arguable that you are profiting inappropriately, and that there may be some reasonable expectation of recompense or other protection for the designers of the copied product and the owners of the trademark name.
Even in my original example, you probably need to gain access to the original Ferrari in order to copy it in full detail. Even a good spec sheet probably would not allow you to make one that looks and feels like the original. So the question is, would anyone who's paid $250,000 for a car loan it to you so that you can take molds and measurements to make your own? Even if you rented it, could the owner of the car specify in the rental contract that you are only allowed to use it for driving?
Of course, you could resolve this problem by buying the car yourself. I don't know what's in the sales contract from ferrari, but I don't know if a "no copying" clause could be enforced in a personal use situation.
In addition to the sale or rental of functional cars, I could see some other places where the commercial use of a copy could be problematic. If, for instance, you were in the business of selling cheap copies of cars to be destroyed in TV show car chases, the car companies whose models you were copying could probably be justified in claiming that you are profiting from their designs and thus could require compensation. Heck, I believe that even HotWheels and their ilk have to pay license to the companies that make the real-world counterparts to their toys.
I'm sure there are other grey areas; obviously, as you point out, copying a car and copying an MP3 are very different issue, but the biggest issue I see with that difference and thus your comparison, is that if you have the mad skillz to make a Ferrari copy that is realistic enough to be a sue-able offense, then you probably could make a good enough living making custom cars that you could afford to buy one outright.
I don't know if I agree. You know the story about how Gary Killdall skipped a meeting with Gates and IBM to discuss licensing QDOS in order to go surfing, and Gates, pissed at being flaked on, capitalized by buying it outright for $25K, making a HUGE killing? GK had a huge opportunity and didn't recognize it or chose not to take it, for whatever reason. I'm sure there are lots and lots of stories like that, on varying levels.
Maybe 1 to 99 is incorrect, but chances are that wherever one person has HUUUGE success, there are at least a handful of people who have just barely missed the boat.
Oh, it's easy enough to hazard a guess at the balance:
I agree in broad strokes with your statement, but since not all of these attributes are available to all people (i.e. resources) some try to find a formula where if you plunk down X amount of work and Y amount of networking, you're guaranteed to win. Since every situation is different, the threshold of a given attribute in combination of others required to get a win is difficult to predict.
Heck, even with all the resources in the world, it's still possible to F things up. I mean, couldn't Microsoft have done anything better than the Zune? The Zune might be a fine music player, but they of all companies have to understand that in order to tangibly change a firmly entrenched market, they've got to come up with something ground breaking. Brown and semi social are just not going to do it.
this would fit the observed data of tens of millions of working poor who struggle to make ends meet
Yup. Ronald Reagan justified his tax cuts saying that a rising tide carries all boats, and someone--I wish I could remember who--responded something on the order of, "not the ones that are below water".
There is an issue of thresholds in our society. I agree with you that once you get to a certain point, it's hard not to do well, but it's extremely hard to get to that point. That's why I think we should tax the hell out of those bastards. You made 100 million dollars this year? 90% goes to taxes to pay for social services. Don't like it? Pay your employees better and take a smaller cut for yourself. Or donate to causes you believe in. Or something.
But I've gotten off-track here. Anyway, if you're interested in discussing the merits of theoretical capitolism vs. socialism, and both of those versus American captialism and European socialism, I'm happy to engage. I've got opinions which, while strong, are open to discussion.
And, per my addition, "luck is not the only factor."
And for other factors, like knowing the right people, we can see that this does not always make for a complete success...
So our formula for becoming a gazillionaire is something along the lines of this: There is no single factor which guarantees success. A combination of luck, access to resources, insight, motivation, hard work, networking, and possibly a number of others as yet unidentified, is typically required. In some cases, an abundance in one category more than makes up for a deficiency in another, but the greater the weakness in any area, the lesser the chance of success. Because circumstances are always changing, there is no perfect balance of these elements which can be pre-defined, so there is no absolute guarantee of becoming a gazillionaire.
This, of course, begs the question of how we define success. I don't care if I ever become a gazillionaire. However, if someone were to gift me a few million dollars, I would happily live off the interest and remain a contributing member of society through both regular work and creative endeavors. It's a pity that so many people with resources (the Paris Hiltons of the world) choose instead to flaunt and squander; imagine if she were to have given all the money she has spent on cocaine in the last decade to a local homeless shelter... But I digress...
This appears to be a point that we agree on. It sounded to me like the great-grand-parent post (I don't know if it was you) was trying to say that artists should never have to tour if they don't want to. Making an album is hard work, but even if it takes months and costs thousands of dollars in studio time, the artists who produced it should not be surprised if they have to tour to cover their bills.
but to think that artists should produce music, release music and not make a cent until they get above the overhead of producing a record and starting a tour is even sillier
Again, I never said that, although the reality is that if they want to make money while making an album, they either have to sign on with a label who can afford to support them, get a private backer/patron, or they need to get a job. All of these options have pluses and minuses, but as much as I respect artists, there is the grim reality, and they have to make their choices.
Also, for the record, I'm not forcing anything down anyone's throat. I couldn't if I wanted to. What I am complaining about is that megacorporations with megabucks can and do force stuff down people's throats. It may not have been nice to refer to the audiences of mass-pop bands as sheep, and I apologize if I offended anyone, but the truth is, advertising works. It creates demand, creates the illusion of value and desire. With the right techniques and masses of money, you can make anything into a huge hit. Like it or not, it's true.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't like something just because it's successful, or just because there's money behind it. I just think that there's more out there than the majors sell, and unfortunately, for the great majority of people, a lot of it is lost in the shuffle because so much attention is being put on a relatively small group of bands (compared to what's out there).
With regards to other types of artists, I don't know how they all pay their rent. Patronage used to be a big thing, and I know many major artists took commissions. Some artists are independently wealthy and never had to worry about that stuff, and others beg, borrow and steal in order to afford that next tube of oil. And of course some simply sell paintings, though my understanding is that's the hardest way to make a living as an artist. I don't know what Dali's situation was, but unless he had his own money, or unless he got a patron as a very young man, I have to imagine that he did work at a relatively normal job as he was establishing himself. Just because a man paints doesn't mean he doesn't have to earn his living somehow until he finds someone willing to pay for his work...
For the record, as I stated before, I don't steal music. I do pay for what I listen to. However, as you may or may not know, most of that money does not go to the bands.
Many people do like what they buy. Others are being herded like sheep; those with the greatest resources for marketing can take the money that might go to better art. It may not be a zero sum game, but it is indeed a game.
I'm not telling anyone what to like or not like. I just think it's silly to say that people who write music shouldn't have to tour. Being an artist--of any type--does not exempt you from having to continually earn your keep. It's great that a few people do hit the jackpot, but I'm just saying that it could be a better world for more people if something were changed to reduce the concentration of wealth in the hands of major music corporations and a few of their marquee bands.
I've enjoyed our debate and admit that in some ways, I'm taking reactionary positions, but again, saying that someone shouldn't have to work for a living is just silly.
The current model, where all the marketing gets behind a handful of mega-hitsters is bad for everyone. Poor artists can't compete with the marketing machines at the majors, so they have to sign the same all-or-nothing deals. While I'm sure everyone would love to write a "Disco Duck" song that keeps them in the money forever, I'm sure most musicians would be happy to make a decent living performing, writing music and earning their keep.
There are a bunch of ways to fix the problem. Shortening copyright limits is one way. Regulating the business practices of pimping organizations like the RIAA to ensure that artists get the majority of the money rather than ending up as musical sharecroppers is another. A sales model like Amie Street may be another. We'll see. The main thing is that I don't think that the current system works in one way: it does value popularity over everything else. Thus we as a society are doomed to the Britneys and the Metallicas forever raining down their bubblegum cacophony. If the masses weren't constantly having this crap shoved down their throats, there'd be more money for everyone to spend on really good music.
And yes, I do have better taste in music than the vast majority of people.
And if you still feel it's a natural supply and demand thing, read Al Gore's "Assault on Reason". It'll make you think differently about advertising.
In most other careers, one expects to work most days of each week, most weeks of each year. I realize that touring is hard (I've done it), but why should musicians get off easy? It would be one thing if all of the successful recording artists were actually publishing great music that made the world a better place to live. But the Britneys and the Metallicas of the world have gotten rich off of simplistic musical drivel which caters to the lowest common denominator, well promoted by greedy bastards.
Personally, I think that the people who do the hard work should get paid. Heck, I'd even say that I think that popular music copyrights should expire after five years. Then I'd be able to get a Rhino Records recording of every Metallica album ever made for the cost of the materials, packaging and shipping. Or download it for free. They've made their millions. If they're not going to write a new album or perform for me, why should I have to pay them for something that:
- Took them a couple of days to create.
- Was created 10 years ago.
- Has already made them a million dollars
I personally don't torrent music that's under copyright; I pay for what I listen to, even if it's old, because that's the law. But as far as promoting interest in one's music, I'd prefer to see bands touring and working for a living than just having big corporations hype them and push them endlessly via payola on the radio.
Dang it, now I'm starting to lose focus. Ah, well, I hope you get my point. Vote for Oog!
This actually made me laugh out loud. Mostly stuff that's rated as "funny" is only enough to get me to type "LOL".
Feng shui or no feng shui, maybe they just need to be more clever about integrating them into the environment. If a big, ugly tower causes stress for a significant portion of the nearby population, then it's worth exploring other options.
It could be the same with high power voltage lines. Farmers have been reporting problems with livestock which lives under HPVL, and hard scientists have denied any connection to the power or surrounding magnetic fields. They may be right; maybe even sheep and cows don't like grazing near huge, imposing, unnatural structures. Maybe those hard angles and bright, glaring metal cause them stress. And if that's true for our cloven-hoofed friends, why is it such a stretch to imagine that it would have an effect on those with bigger brains and opposable thumbs?
I've heard two different feng shui "experts" make exactly contradictory suggestions for a location, so I'm sure there's some quackery for anyone who claims absolute rightness and rigidity about the art. But that's not uncommon; the more zealous someone is about any belief, the more likely I am to distrust their opinions on the matter. That having been said, I think there are a lot of good concepts underpinning the practice. Make your environment peaceful and supportive. Encourage light and gentle, clean air flow. Discourage strong drafts, dust and shadow. Minimize noises which interrupt your life and work, but do not completely isolate yourself. Remember you are an animal; cold, industrial-feeling environments are not good for a well rounded life.
So who's up for a study of cell phone towers, emissions or no?