I'm their target audience - I actually bought my music collection, which is somewhere over 1500 cd's, not to mention my small vinyl collection and cassettes from my youth. Also, I (was) a regular buyer from iTunes. My collection of *legitimately* purchased music is large enough that it doesn't fit on any available iPod. Yet because of all of this crap, I have stopped buying any music that is from an RIAA-affiliated label, and I have to imagine that others have done the same. It is obscene to say to me that I can't backup the collection I paid some $20,000-$25,000 on over the past 15+ years. They are nauseating, greedy, evil corporate whores.
First of all, there is *no* such thing as unbiased reporting, and there never has been; every person has a bias, and everything that comes from a person has a bias. It is a great and flawed myth that has been perpetuated in this country that there ever was such a thing as unbiased reporting - a myth, imo, used largely to forward paranoid theories about massive conspiracies.
Further, if you think that things are bad *now*, check the history books. Media is so checked and counter-checked and re-checked now that it's *way* "less biased" than it has been in the past. As an example, look at a history of the Jefferson/Hamilton smear campaigns that our founding fathers *participated in* 250 years ago, when there weren't 4,000 media outlets cross-checking everything. They passed out misinformation that would have *never* made it past Spinsanity (RIP...).
Democracies and free societies are set up to take advantage of the noises spewed forth by the multitudes of biased voices, with faith that the sum of the voices will express as close to the truth as possible, and that the populace will act upon that information in its own self-interest. There has been no better example than on the internet where, for all the lies, propaganda and urban myths we wade through, somehow the facts eventually bubble to the top.
"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." - Jefferson
And then the government will ban carrots, and then there will be hippies starting movements for legalizing medical carrots when really all they want is to eat them, and then the world will have finally had enough and all humans will be hurtled into space as the earth stops rotating because it's "sick of this stupid-ass sh*t."
Most interesting of all, we will discover that, low and behold, Leprechauns are real, and they will emerge from deep within the earth to start a new, gold-based economy. Then they'll unlink their currency from gold, and then they'll ban (etc., until leprechauns are hurtled from earth).
I'm sure the RIAA will use Spitzer's potential move into political office to try and de-legitimize him and his actions, but I really don't think that it's a valid criticism. Why is it *more* legitimate for a public official to come from the military system than the justice system? Would people have said that Wesley Clark was working in the Balkans because he had political motivations, or that Ike was trying to defeat the Nazis to become the president? No - they were serving their country. Spitzer is as well, imo, and I'm glad that there's someone who's actually interested in enforcing the law. If there were more men like him "seeking political office" I think there'd be less men like Ken Lay ripping off hardworking people. It's become a cliche, but it's true - I've never seen a pickpocket steal a retiree's future. He's been working on crimes more vicious and less visible than the street crime that gets so much press, and should be commended for it. The only reason immoral business practices become mainstream is because there aren't enough people working hard enough to stop them.
isn't this a tremendous waste of money? I'm generally pretty high on national defense, but is our biggest national security threat really that nuclear bombs aren't powerful enough?
Just wondering (honestly, because I don't know) - does slahdot usually post about music software updates? It seems an odd thing to show up on the front page, because I didn't see anything (which, again, might have been something I missed rather than something that didn't happen) about the new Cubase on here, which I think is as/more popular than Logic, or anything about adobe audition when it came out, or anything about the other myriad music programs on the market. Why is this slashdot news-worthy?
One thing that I think might play into this is that the world's only been a blaringly loud, brightly lit place for a relatively short period in its history, and it's not what a lot of us were built for. I don't think that it should be found to be odd that people want to find ways to deal with it, because it's not really a natural thing, in the sense that, up until very recent history, humans were just animals in the country, farming, hunting and gathering. Our senses now are so blunted by constant pounding information and close proximity of teeming masses of people that I don't think it's odd to try and reclaim, at the very least, our audio space. I certainly don't think it's any stranger than buying a house in the country, or going on a vacation (or turning off your tv one night, for that matter).
And while I think that there are a lot of great experiences to be had in the brain-smashing that's walking down a manhattan street or taking the subway uptown, there's also something to being able to be by yourself in the thick of this muck. I don't think you're necessarily missing out because you're taking a breather, or because you find getting harassed by strangers to be unpleasant. You're just living your life.
Perhaps instead of reading my post with such sarcastic bitterness you should have seen it for what it is and was - a post describing that the benefits related to soundproofing your machine are not necessarily worthy of the additional cost of using those components. Evidently you have the money to burn to put your computers together based upon their noise level relative to the sound coming out of your tv. Not everyone has that luxury. My machine is set up simlaraly to yours, and knowing what I know now, I would have taken some of the extra money I spent on soundproofing my machine and put it into upgrading some of its other components instead.
Oh, and incidentally, I do not spell words using numbers, and as such I am certainly not 1337. I'm just some guy who's actually used the components in question and had some feedback about it.
I actually recently bought a computer that has this power supply, and the zalman heatsink, and a silentmaxx case (it's soundproofed) for a home audio studio. It does make a very big difference for someone like me who records in the same room their computer's in (no control room...), but for anyone else I can't see the benefits being too great. It quiets your system down enough that the hard drive being accessed is your biggest problem, but really, unless you get rid of that problem, it doesn't really matter that much...sound is sound, and stopping it from leaking in on a good mic (I like the akg c414 btlII, for instance) is virtually impossible. These components *do* let you make it possible to drown out computer noise through cumulative recording (i.e. the drums being loud will cover the mic noise on your acoustic guitar track), and if you can get far enough away and position your mic correctly, you can almost eliminate it. But for anyone who's not doing home audio, I really doubt it would be worth it. My old computer had 2 *loud* fans in it, so I kind of feel like I overreacted in going so far to get this computer to be silent.
And besides, if I didn't have a utilitarian need for silence I'd try and find something with a laser show in it. You can't go wrong with laser shows. You *can* go blind with laser shows, but at least even then everyone else can see how cool you are.
It seems to me that $100,000 is really a lot of money. Pirates' propaganda is free. As are their high-quality movies, software, and music.
Some things don't need advertising, like drugs and piracy, and no matter what their argument is, it's not going to work if it's not based in reality. The "all drugs are the same and they'll all kill you" argument's certainly effective, as will be the "all the record/music companies want to do is foster artists' creativity, and bring you the wonderful colors that brighten up your miserable lives, but you just won't let us. Please, let us love you!" argument that the entertainment industry is trying to sell us.
The sarcasm is dripping. Help, I've got a sarcasm drip!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm their target audience - I actually bought my music collection, which is somewhere over 1500 cd's, not to mention my small vinyl collection and cassettes from my youth. Also, I (was) a regular buyer from iTunes. My collection of *legitimately* purchased music is large enough that it doesn't fit on any available iPod. Yet because of all of this crap, I have stopped buying any music that is from an RIAA-affiliated label, and I have to imagine that others have done the same. It is obscene to say to me that I can't backup the collection I paid some $20,000-$25,000 on over the past 15+ years. They are nauseating, greedy, evil corporate whores.
:)
Vent vent vent...
-jake.
From the article:
:)
"The concept of wormholes will be familiar to anyone who has watched the TV programmes Farscape, Stargate SG1 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
The opening sequence of the BBC's new Doctor Who series..."
Why didn't they just post the article directly to slashdot?
-j.
It was meant to read that "Sony still insists that dead pixels are a common problem in all broken LCD displays."
-j.
First of all, there is *no* such thing as unbiased reporting, and there never has been; every person has a bias, and everything that comes from a person has a bias. It is a great and flawed myth that has been perpetuated in this country that there ever was such a thing as unbiased reporting - a myth, imo, used largely to forward paranoid theories about massive conspiracies.
Further, if you think that things are bad *now*, check the history books. Media is so checked and counter-checked and re-checked now that it's *way* "less biased" than it has been in the past. As an example, look at a history of the Jefferson/Hamilton smear campaigns that our founding fathers *participated in* 250 years ago, when there weren't 4,000 media outlets cross-checking everything. They passed out misinformation that would have *never* made it past Spinsanity (RIP...).
Democracies and free societies are set up to take advantage of the noises spewed forth by the multitudes of biased voices, with faith that the sum of the voices will express as close to the truth as possible, and that the populace will act upon that information in its own self-interest. There has been no better example than on the internet where, for all the lies, propaganda and urban myths we wade through, somehow the facts eventually bubble to the top.
"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." - Jefferson
-j.
And then the government will ban carrots, and then there will be hippies starting movements for legalizing medical carrots when really all they want is to eat them, and then the world will have finally had enough and all humans will be hurtled into space as the earth stops rotating because it's "sick of this stupid-ass sh*t."
Most interesting of all, we will discover that, low and behold, Leprechauns are real, and they will emerge from deep within the earth to start a new, gold-based economy. Then they'll unlink their currency from gold, and then they'll ban (etc., until leprechauns are hurtled from earth).
-j.
I'm sure the RIAA will use Spitzer's potential move into political office to try and de-legitimize him and his actions, but I really don't think that it's a valid criticism. Why is it *more* legitimate for a public official to come from the military system than the justice system? Would people have said that Wesley Clark was working in the Balkans because he had political motivations, or that Ike was trying to defeat the Nazis to become the president? No - they were serving their country. Spitzer is as well, imo, and I'm glad that there's someone who's actually interested in enforcing the law. If there were more men like him "seeking political office" I think there'd be less men like Ken Lay ripping off hardworking people. It's become a cliche, but it's true - I've never seen a pickpocket steal a retiree's future. He's been working on crimes more vicious and less visible than the street crime that gets so much press, and should be commended for it. The only reason immoral business practices become mainstream is because there aren't enough people working hard enough to stop them.
Too late...I've been freebasing Nafta all day... Sweet, sweet NAFTA.
isn't this a tremendous waste of money? I'm generally pretty high on national defense, but is our biggest national security threat really that nuclear bombs aren't powerful enough?
We can not afford a mine shaft gap!
Just wondering (honestly, because I don't know) - does slahdot usually post about music software updates? It seems an odd thing to show up on the front page, because I didn't see anything (which, again, might have been something I missed rather than something that didn't happen) about the new Cubase on here, which I think is as/more popular than Logic, or anything about adobe audition when it came out, or anything about the other myriad music programs on the market. Why is this slashdot news-worthy?
One thing that I think might play into this is that the world's only been a blaringly loud, brightly lit place for a relatively short period in its history, and it's not what a lot of us were built for. I don't think that it should be found to be odd that people want to find ways to deal with it, because it's not really a natural thing, in the sense that, up until very recent history, humans were just animals in the country, farming, hunting and gathering. Our senses now are so blunted by constant pounding information and close proximity of teeming masses of people that I don't think it's odd to try and reclaim, at the very least, our audio space. I certainly don't think it's any stranger than buying a house in the country, or going on a vacation (or turning off your tv one night, for that matter).
And while I think that there are a lot of great experiences to be had in the brain-smashing that's walking down a manhattan street or taking the subway uptown, there's also something to being able to be by yourself in the thick of this muck. I don't think you're necessarily missing out because you're taking a breather, or because you find getting harassed by strangers to be unpleasant. You're just living your life.
Perhaps instead of reading my post with such sarcastic bitterness you should have seen it for what it is and was - a post describing that the benefits related to soundproofing your machine are not necessarily worthy of the additional cost of using those components. Evidently you have the money to burn to put your computers together based upon their noise level relative to the sound coming out of your tv. Not everyone has that luxury. My machine is set up simlaraly to yours, and knowing what I know now, I would have taken some of the extra money I spent on soundproofing my machine and put it into upgrading some of its other components instead.
Oh, and incidentally, I do not spell words using numbers, and as such I am certainly not 1337. I'm just some guy who's actually used the components in question and had some feedback about it.
I actually recently bought a computer that has this power supply, and the zalman heatsink, and a silentmaxx case (it's soundproofed) for a home audio studio. It does make a very big difference for someone like me who records in the same room their computer's in (no control room...), but for anyone else I can't see the benefits being too great. It quiets your system down enough that the hard drive being accessed is your biggest problem, but really, unless you get rid of that problem, it doesn't really matter that much...sound is sound, and stopping it from leaking in on a good mic (I like the akg c414 btlII, for instance) is virtually impossible. These components *do* let you make it possible to drown out computer noise through cumulative recording (i.e. the drums being loud will cover the mic noise on your acoustic guitar track), and if you can get far enough away and position your mic correctly, you can almost eliminate it. But for anyone who's not doing home audio, I really doubt it would be worth it. My old computer had 2 *loud* fans in it, so I kind of feel like I overreacted in going so far to get this computer to be silent. And besides, if I didn't have a utilitarian need for silence I'd try and find something with a laser show in it. You can't go wrong with laser shows. You *can* go blind with laser shows, but at least even then everyone else can see how cool you are.
It seems to me that $100,000 is really a lot of money. Pirates' propaganda is free. As are their high-quality movies, software, and music. Some things don't need advertising, like drugs and piracy, and no matter what their argument is, it's not going to work if it's not based in reality. The "all drugs are the same and they'll all kill you" argument's certainly effective, as will be the "all the record/music companies want to do is foster artists' creativity, and bring you the wonderful colors that brighten up your miserable lives, but you just won't let us. Please, let us love you!" argument that the entertainment industry is trying to sell us. The sarcasm is dripping. Help, I've got a sarcasm drip!