The notion that one must spend $100k and spend four years of your life just to prove that you can learn, is simply ridiculous. I understand that is currently how things are, but come on, we should be able to do this in high school (which has become a complete joke in North America).
I agree with everything you've said here, but I'd like to point out that COLLEGE is just as much of a joke in North America as high school was.
The nicest thing about college for me was that I finally wasn't REQUIRED to show up to class. So I'd show up -- never having cracked a book -- for my midterm & finals and pass in the top 5%-10% of my class, rather than what I did in highschool, which is sleep or read science fiction and pass in the top 5%-10% of my class.
The PROBLEM IMHO is that the same people doing the hiring are the ones who STRUGGLED through both high school and college, so they see a benefit in both.
Already there are issues of whether or not cyber-rape has any actual psychological trauma.
I can't imagine what cyber-rape is. I mean, if you're chatting with someone and "play-acting" a rape fantasy, that's just beating off, isn't it? If someone tries to initiate "cybersex" with you and you aren't interested, you can ignore them or logoff... Leads me to wonder how a "victim" could really BE "cyber" raped. Details please?
(Seriously. This isn't a troll, nor a flame. I'm curious if there is some other meaning of cyber-rape that i haven't thought of.)
That's the last straw. It's for precisely this reason that we as a nation (needn't be specified -- you know who we are) must fulfill our manifest destiny and blow Mars and Jupiter up off the face of the earth
Well, you might have a little more trouble blowing up Mars than you would with Jupiter. After all, the Great Old Ones of Mars grokked long ago that the 5th planet from the sun was a lost cause, and that's how we got the asteroid belt in the first place. Don't piss off the Martians. Share water with them and grok in harmony.
If Linux is trully *free*(as in free beer) why is it not distributed like those god damn AOL disks?
My guess would be that it costs anywhere from 50 cents to a buck to duplicate just the CDrom itself, plus the expenses for packaging, shrink-wrapping and then finally bulk mailing them out to people...
AOL spends that money because they are offering a PAID SERVICE... so they get the money back, plus profit. Who are you going to find to spend thousands (millions) of dollars pressing free linux discs to give away?
And if you DO manage to find them, let them know I've got some other really nifty ideas that could use some financing. -The Reverend
Why do hippies always misinterpret the term 'copyright' and assume it's opposite would be 'copyleft'?
It seems to me that the proper opposite would be 'copywrong.'
Of course, that doesn't sound all Stalinist and cool and stuff, like the Red Star on the Mozilla logo.
Ok. This is probably a troll, but what the hell, I'll bite. CopyRIGHT is speaking neither of direction (right & left) or of correctness (right & wrong) but of the RIGHT of the owner to make copies. The opposite of copyright is "don't you dare copy that."
Nobody is going to "pass around" a recording made on a TiVo or ReplayTV box, unless someone wants to go to the trouble of dumping it to tape on an external VCR. The files on the hard disk can't be copied by the user.
There are very few shows that I watch with any regularity, but that's also partly because I don't yet have a Tivo to find shows for me to watch while I'm at work...
that being said, I'd definately keep my SVHS hooked up to my Tivo system... that way I can not only record all the simpsons episodes (digitally, surround sound encoded) but I can dub them onto VHS to build up my catalog of episodes. I can see similar collections being traded around through ebay and the like.... there is a demand. How many times have you caught the last 5 minutes of a really interesting show and you wish you knew somebody who had taped it? Perhaps in a few years, we'll have the equivelent of napster for trading copies of tv shows that you've missed.
"Yeah, this is my new laptop.. it's a bazillion times faster than a Pentium with blah blah blah"
Any dipshit could see the Mac logo.
The biggest problem that the movie hackers (which i really tried to like) faced was that they attempted to put it into the present, so all that goofy shit about surfing through the mainframe that looked like something out of a Mind's Eye movie just made the movie horribly unbelievable.
All they would've had to do to inject just a little plausibility into it would have been to set the story 10 years in the future...
... and more shots of that girl's ass couldn't have hurt.
Are the artists payed obscene amounts of money? Of course they are. Do the record companies spend make billions of dollars on record sales a year? Sure thing. Are CDs overpriced? You betcha
Um, the ARTISTS in the music industry are not being paid obscene amounts of money, especially when you compare the revenues of the artists to the companies who own their contracts. The average band earns something like 10-15% of what their album sells for, but then before they actually SEE any of that money, the record company recoups the production costs, studio time, cost of artwork, advertising, touring, managers, lawyers, A&R guys, distributors, etc.
So a band that generates 800,000 in revenue for a record company ends up going home after a year with $20,000 to split between the 4-5 (typical # of band members) guys who did it all. That's 5 grand (or less) a piece, for a year of touring, not being at home with your family, eating substandard fast-food meals, staying in cheap hotels night after night....
That's less than the average guy working at 7-11. The artists are NOT the RIAA.
Even the relatively few artists who HAVE made it into the multimillionare category have spent years doing so. Very few MUSICIANS ever get rich off of the music industry. Fight the industry, not the artist.
Bullcrap. They'd make plenty of money by touring, and/or selling their music to commercial entities for use in marketing. How would things change? Tours would become more profitable and efficient for the artists, and maybe not as extravagant. Rock stars would put out better music because instead of a windfall of $ from a big contract, they'd have to continue WORKING to make it happen.
Um... with the exception of a few REALLY BIG NAMES, most musicians are making minimum wage or less from their work. True, the RIAA may be making big money, but the individual artists are making very little.
Now, this is partially the fault of the artists, because they accept the HORRIBLE SLAVE CONTRACTS that the record companies offer, but many of these artists sign their contracts as young, ambitious (starving) artists, who believe that there's simply nothing better. And they're right, for the most part. Even artists who today are worth millions (Madonna, Metallica) started off with one of those same HORRIBLE SLAVE CONTRACTS to the record company.. where the company owns the songs, the rights to further use of the songs (like the commercial revenues) and the artist is working on a "paid to play" basis... in a sense, the music that was created belongs to the record company, the musician is not compensated for having written it, but merely for the time spent performing it.
Less drug abuse, less crappy sophomore albums. Less Britney Spears overhyped crap music, more music popular because of actual ARTISTIC VALUE.
In order to stop the wholesale over-saturation of industry-designed groups like Britney Spears, Nsync, BackStreet Boys, the BUYING PUBLIC must turn their votes (their money) away from such acts, and towards other less conventionally recognized talents. If you want more diversity in the music industry.... GO OUT OF YOUR WAY to support underground music.
(for those of you who just have your panties all in a bunge to do just that, try clicking here.)
And it's not free, and shouldn't be free. If it were, who would do it? Not I. I'd like to take the high road and say that "art" should be free, but it can't be. SHOULD be, but can't.
I agree with you, but there are a few other things that ought to be on the "SHOULD BE FREE" list:
Food Clothing Shelter Medical Care
If we (as a species) can manage to make those four things free for everyone, I'll stop selling my art/music. Until such a time, I will continue to eake out a living to the best of my ability, just like the rest of you.
Can you imagine a world without art? Without music? Without architecture? If you aren't willing to live in such a world (and I know *I'm* not) then artists deserve to be paid to provide such a world for you.
At our last meeting, the idea came up to get our own domain name. Why? So we could attract more members. Tell me, how does having our own domain name -- I suppose that it would be indianriverflyingclub.com -- help us any more than the page we have now at flyflorida.com/irfc?
I don't know that indianriverflyingclub.com would necessarily be easier for people to remember than flyflorida.com/irfc, but I'll say this about having your own domain name....
It's much easier (and faster) to tell someone I meet, "Hey, check out my band's website at www.nothinghead.com" than it is to say "Go check out my website at www.geocities/mo/~1012093/nothinghead.html"
Granted, for me it's a business usage, but the point is still there. If I tell someone about my webpage, 10 days later (if he can remember the band name, nothinghead) he can go check it out. Whereas if I was hosting off of someone else's domain, the chances that that person would forget the address before they got a chance to use it would be much greater.
-The Reverend
The best scene/line in the usual suspects IMHO...
on
Slashdot Meets X-Men
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· Score: 1
Is when Stephen Baldwin's character is sitting on the roof of that boathouse and he quickly ticks off all the movements he'd have to make to shoot the "terrorist" guys down on the dock.
"there will never be a true armed Revolution in America until the police start treating white people the way they have historically treated Black people."
I would ammend that statement to read "until police start treating the middle class the way they treat the poor."
Having spent several years as a PWG (Poor White Guy) I can tell you that the police didn't give me any special treatment, let me off on traffic tickets, give me warnings or treat me with the basic courtesy that one ought to show another human. However, once I was able to afford a reasonably new car (I bought a '97 in '99) I saw my instances of being pulled over, searched & ticketed drop from once every month or two to once, period.
The cop's logic goes something like this: The poor ones are more likely to steal, the poor ones are more likely to have warrants on them, the poor ones are more likely to be driving without insurance, or with a broken tail light. By pulling over a poor guy, he can write 4 tickets in one stop (I've gotten as many as 5 at once, all when I drove an old beat up "hooptie" car.)
(Whenever I would drive my girlfriend's nice new car, using the same driving methods, in the same neighborhoods, the same cops would give me not a second glance.)
Here's a lovely quote by my good buddy Kurt Vonnegutt Jr.
"The two real political parties in America are the winners and the losers. The people refuse to acknowledge this. They claim allegiance in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead." -Kurt Vonnegutt, Jr. -The Reverend
Any geezers here remember Quantum Link? The first GUI on line service provider for C64 computers? I joined as a life member and have since had that life membership transferred to AOL (Which Q-Link became).
I can remember reading their ads in the backs of the Commodore magazines, but I don't think the service was ever available back in those days for those of us in St. Louis. We had to make due with Color 64 boards, downloading our Eaglesoft warez off of mountains of 1541 drives linked together.
If take my homegrown CD, label it up like, oh, the latest Kid Rock album, and SELL to some poor guy looking for a Kid Rock album, haven't I just infringement on the copyright? (and committed fraud in the process?)
If you sell it to some unknowing consumer, yes, that is fraud. If you merely rename one of your own songs to BritneySpears.mp3 and put it on your computer and someone else who is looking to STEAL that Britney Spears song comes along and downloads it... that's not at all the same thing. In the first instance, you make money off of another artist's name. In the second instance, you merely frustrate the activities of a thief. -The Reverend
I do think that some people would go in the genre chat rooms and try new stuff. Who knows, maybe in a year or two, after everyone has been saturated by the top 40 crap, they will start getting hungry fo something new.
As DSL and Cable move toward being standard, I think you'll see a lot more of this kind of thing. I love the idea of being exposed to new, underground music, but not the idea of dedicating hours of my time downloading MP3s of unknown quality by an unknown group because I've only got a 56k connection (that rarely connects above 33.6)
If I could grab a new tune and check it out in 5 minutes or less, I'd be much more likely to use such a feature, and use it often.
While Stefanie has gotten a bunch more people to hear her music and had a few more hits on her website, she has also taken more heat than you can imagine... Remember, most of the folks who heard her music didn't want to hear her music and were probably expecting something completely different. We didn't just label it as music that sounded like hers, and thereby reach out to her udience. Instead we labeled it as everything! Not a lot of Kid Rock or Black Sabbath fans that can appreciate a good old folk/pop tune, eh?
He uses the above statement to explain that this is not a stunt to get attention for his wife and her "music", yet he just explained that they decided to use Kid Rock, Black Sabbath and other popular band names to get people to listen to it, because they probably would not listen to it otherwise.
I think you're missing the point. They clearly stated on their site that they used her music because they didn't want to steal from someone else. Now.. question:
If I was going to use this cuckoo-egg scheme to market mymusic (which is aggressive, not unlike TOOL, 311, Chili Peppers) to people in a sneaky way, it would make sense for *ME* to choose to "fake" popular heavy songs and thereby expose people who might actually LIKE my songs to them... but it wouldn't be very good marketing for me to take my same, aggresive songs and put them on napster as Britney Spears or Frank Sinatra tunes... because the people who are likely to be downloading either of THOSE types of music, are not likely to be my target demographic. Likewise, they chose to use the names of the MOST POPULAR DOWNLOADS, because they're trying to be a thorn in the side of music piracy, and the best way to do that is to annoy the MAJORITY of the pirates, not only the niche pirates. (niche pirates being those who would only steal from new age artists like Yanni.) -The Reverend
" "Megacorps" do not tell me when to wake up, when to eat and what to eat, when to sleep and what pillow to buy, and how many times a day I should pray."
.... But the mere fact that something is advertised and I use that product doesn't mean that I'm being told what to do. The choice is still mine.
Your choices become more and more limited as these large companies (without governmental regulation to stop them) shut smaller companies down by undercutting, superior marketing or outright buyout. (I could point to Microsoft, but we're all tired of that.) These megacorps *DO* effectively limit your choice, because they control which products will become available to the public, in which quantities, and at which times. Sure, you can still choose to not buy Taco Bell, but you've got to eat SOMETHING. What do you do when you need something and the only product available (or the only one you can afford) is created by a company that you dislike/disagree with? Your only "choice" at that point is to submit to their will or do without.
You may say that it's just the "American Way" to allow those unscrupulous businesses to grow in any way possible... It definately is the way things *ARE* being done around here.
Corporations now have more rights and political influence than individual citizens... If an individual citizen manages to hoarde large chunks of resources, we can at least count on the fact that they will eventually die and their earnings will be redistributed. Corporations never die, they just get taken over by a larger corporation.
The fact that they will ultimately decide what the content is really isn't all that different from the current radio model. Listeners can call in and request songs, but the DJs and station owners still make the final choices of what to broadcast.
Most radio stations in the US are not owned by small companies, but major corporations that also own controlling interest in many other media industries (i.e., the same company that owns your favorite cable station also owns your local radio station -- and one just like it in all other major US markets -- and they ALSO own the artists that they choose to play on their systems.
Many times, (I'll use St. Louis as my example) a single company will own SEVERAL of the radio stations in your area, further limiting your ability to hear new music.
For example, Emmis Broadcasting owns 3 different FM stations in the St. Louis area... WXTM 104.1 FM, KSHE 94.7 FM and WKKX 106.5 FM. Their main competators own three other stations. So six of the major stations in St. Louis are owned by 2 companies whos only real competitors are each other.
Listeners DO call in and make requests, but haven't you ever thought it was strange that NOBODY ever requests a song that isn't already on the playlist? I can tell you from my OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE as a radio station employee (WXTM 104.1 FM, St. Louis) that the only requests that EVER get played on the radio are the ones that were ALREADY ON THE PLAYLIST. It goes a little like this:
Joe Listener: Hey guys, i haven't heard that kick-ass song "LATEST POP SINGLE" in the last few minutes, could you play it for me?"
DJ (to himself): Hmm.. Let me check the list... yup, this one's scheduled to be played again in the next hour.
DJ (to listener): YOU KNOW IT MAN! I'm here for YOU! Call in now with your requests to 555-1234. And here... BY REQUEST is "LATEST POP SINGLE"
Next Caller: Hey man, I hear you're playing requests! That's great! Do you guys think you could play "ANY SONG THAT WASN'T OFFICIALLY RELEASED AS A SINGLE IN THE LAST 2 MONTHS?"
DJ (to himself): Yeah, right pal. I just push buttons here. I can't make any real decisions, and besides, my playlist was decided a week in advance by the program director.
DJ (to listener): Hey man, I'll see what I can do, OK? In the meantime, here's the latest by BANDOFTHEMINUTE!
Message sent by: Kuppler Graphics, 32 West Main Street, Maple Shade, New Jersey, 08052, 1-800-810-4330. This list will NOT be sold. All addresses are automatically added to our remove list. Hello. My name is Bill from Kuppler Graphics. We do screenprinting on T Shirts, Sweatshirts, Jackets, Hats, Tote Bags and more!
Interesting. I got this same email. I figured he had grabbed me off of some other list, since I actually *AM* in the business of making T-shirts (i'm in a band.)
The worst part is not that he spammed me, but that his prices are outrageous. Like $4 MORE PER UNIT(!!!!!) than what I could get done around town locally.
The only people who are to be hated are those who revel in Satan's unholy evil.
Hmm. I don't remember Jesus saying anything REMOTELY similar to that. I seem to recall him talking about the need to love everyone unconditionally, forgive your neighbor 7*7 times. Could you maybe provide chapter and verse? Thanks so much.
Bear in mind that Catholics are not Christians since they worship the virgin whore rather than God. Those heathen sinners could do anything and it wouldn't suprise me, since they, like all who do not follow in the path of our Lord, are destined to Hell anyway.
Ok. At this point I'm guessing you're just another boring wanna-be-troll, but I'm responding anyway. (Hey, I'm at work, I could be WORKING)
Each "Christian" believes that those who follow his particular brand of christianity is a TRUE christian, while any christian who holds a different set of beliefs is a FALSE christian.
It's all a matter of interpretation. All of life is a matter of interpretation. All instances of right & wrong are just matters of interpretation. You take what you want (or what you feel is reasonable, or what you think is believable) and you disregard the rest.
For instance... I tend to believe that when Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven that he's really talking about a state of mind that can be attained by humans, here on earth. I also believe that Satan is not a real entity, but rather a SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION of the evil in each man's soul. One part of you (Jesus likens it to being childlike) is interested in the good of others... one part of you (SATAN) is only interested in self.
The overall message of Jesus (to me) is that if we all give up on hating and fighting and hurting and lying, we all get to live in a wonderful mind-state that frees us from petty concerns about money/status/power (which can never truely bring any real satisfaction anyway) and brings us into a connection with the WHOLENESS (unity) of the universe, wherein we help each other because we sense the commonality between us, and realize that when we help someone else, we're actually helping ourselves.
and each of you seem to miss each others points entirely in each new rebuttle...
here's the big point that I'll sum up for you:
The US (and a handful of other countries) control a massive portion of the WORLD's wealth. It does not belong to Arabian oil barons, it doesn't belong to multinational corporate entities, it doesn't belong to technologically savvy American Entrepreneurs. The world belongs to the WORLD.
They can't go buy a $400 computer, nor can they go buy $180 nikes (or even $10 keds.) There are people who work for a week in slave-labor conditions just to earn a single dollar. There are some who work for even less.
Even though I understand YOUR point (That you aren't one of the top 1% who are in control) you are missing HIS point, which is that your worldview that sticks you comfortably in the "middle" is incorrect. You are still a part of that minority that holds the big chunks of the pie. When you look at yourself and say "I'm doing as well as the average human" what you're REALLY seeing is "I'm doing as well as the average AMERICAN." The average poor Americans (even the ones who live in the projects) are living "high on the hog" compared to the average person in a non-industrialized country.
When he says that most of the USA believes that the USA *IS* the world, he's right. But it's not necessarily their faults... they've been conditioned to believe in the lies in the same free public schools that they were educated (i.e. brainwashed) in. -The Reverend
His treatment of women is beyond pathetic. In Cryptonomicon he attempts a defense of Manifest Destiny (you remember -- the idea that it's ok for white Christians to commit genocide, because North America was given to them by God), presenting it as the only alternative to a straw-man mindless cultural relativism that holds that all cultures are equivalent. WTF?
All cultures that currently exist were built on the spoils of war - rape, theft & murder. The american indian tribes were doing a good job of killing and enslaving one another before the white man showed up to enslave & kill them. The europeans simply had better military tactics, were better organized, etc.
Now. Am I using it as a justification and saying that it's the only correct course and that there couldn't possibly be a better way of doing things? No. But what I am saying is that what the europeans came over and did to the "native" culture isn't a whole lot different (except in terms of scale) from what the "natives" were doing to themselves and one another already.
I haven't read Cryptonomicon so I can't address your specifics, but I have read Snow Crash and Diamond Age, and there are plenty of strong female characters to choose from among those books. Perhaps you are confusing the opinions of the author with the opinions of his characters?
Slashdot Mirror
The notion that one must spend $100k and spend four years of your life just to prove that you can learn, is simply ridiculous. I understand that is currently how things are, but come on, we should be able to do this in high school (which has become a complete joke in North America).
I agree with everything you've said here, but I'd like to point out that COLLEGE is just as much of a joke in North America as high school was.
The nicest thing about college for me was that I finally wasn't REQUIRED to show up to class. So I'd show up -- never having cracked a book -- for my midterm & finals and pass in the top 5%-10% of my class, rather than what I did in highschool, which is sleep or read science fiction and pass in the top 5%-10% of my class.
The PROBLEM IMHO is that the same people doing the hiring are the ones who STRUGGLED through both high school and college, so they see a benefit in both.
-The Reverend
Already there are issues of whether or not cyber-rape has any actual psychological trauma.
I can't imagine what cyber-rape is. I mean, if you're chatting with someone and "play-acting" a rape fantasy, that's just beating off, isn't it? If someone tries to initiate "cybersex" with you and you aren't interested, you can ignore them or logoff... Leads me to wonder how a "victim" could really BE "cyber" raped. Details please?
(Seriously. This isn't a troll, nor a flame. I'm curious if there is some other meaning of cyber-rape that i haven't thought of.)
-The Reverend
That's the last straw. It's for precisely this reason that we as a nation (needn't be specified -- you know who we are) must fulfill our manifest destiny and blow Mars and Jupiter up off the face of the earth
Well, you might have a little more trouble blowing up Mars than you would with Jupiter. After all, the Great Old Ones of Mars grokked long ago that the 5th planet from the sun was a lost cause, and that's how we got the asteroid belt in the first place. Don't piss off the Martians. Share water with them and grok in harmony.
-The Reverend
I just saw the Quake symbol. What, we're supposed ot read everything all of a sudden?
The above quote was marked -1:TROLL.
I don't see how it could possibly be VIEWED as a troll, but I guess that things that are funny just aren't funny if they are posted anonymously, eh?
If I were a moderator today, I would've modded it up to FUNNY. Goddamn guys, it's not a war, it's a message base.
-The Reverend
If Linux is trully *free*(as in free beer) why is it not distributed like those god damn AOL disks?
My guess would be that it costs anywhere from 50 cents to a buck to duplicate just the CDrom itself, plus the expenses for packaging, shrink-wrapping and then finally bulk mailing them out to people...
AOL spends that money because they are offering a PAID SERVICE... so they get the money back, plus profit. Who are you going to find to spend thousands (millions) of dollars pressing free linux discs to give away?
And if you DO manage to find them, let them know I've got some other really nifty ideas that could use some financing.
-The Reverend
Why do hippies always misinterpret the term 'copyright' and assume it's opposite would be 'copyleft'?
It seems to me that the proper opposite would be 'copywrong.'
Of course, that doesn't sound all Stalinist and cool and stuff, like the Red Star on the Mozilla logo.
Ok. This is probably a troll, but what the hell, I'll bite. CopyRIGHT is speaking neither of direction (right & left) or of correctness (right & wrong) but of the RIGHT of the owner to make copies. The opposite of copyright is "don't you dare copy that."
-The Reverend
Nobody is going to "pass around" a recording made on a TiVo or ReplayTV box, unless someone wants to go to the trouble of dumping it to tape on an external VCR. The files on the hard disk can't be copied by the user.
... there is a demand. How many times have you caught the last 5 minutes of a really interesting show and you wish you knew somebody who had taped it? Perhaps in a few years, we'll have the equivelent of napster for trading copies of tv shows that you've missed.
There are very few shows that I watch with any regularity, but that's also partly because I don't yet have a Tivo to find shows for me to watch while I'm at work...
that being said, I'd definately keep my SVHS hooked up to my Tivo system... that way I can not only record all the simpsons episodes (digitally, surround sound encoded) but I can dub them onto VHS to build up my catalog of episodes. I can see similar collections being traded around through ebay and the like.
-The Reverend
"Yeah, this is my new laptop.. it's a bazillion times faster than a Pentium with blah blah blah"
Any dipshit could see the Mac logo.
The biggest problem that the movie hackers (which i really tried to like) faced was that they attempted to put it into the present, so all that goofy shit about surfing through the mainframe that looked like something out of a Mind's Eye movie just made the movie horribly unbelievable.
All they would've had to do to inject just a little plausibility into it would have been to set the story 10 years in the future...
... and more shots of that girl's ass couldn't have hurt.
-The Reverend
Are the artists payed obscene amounts of money? Of course they are. Do the record companies spend make billions of dollars on record sales a year? Sure thing. Are CDs overpriced? You betcha
Um, the ARTISTS in the music industry are not being paid obscene amounts of money, especially when you compare the revenues of the artists to the companies who own their contracts. The average band earns something like 10-15% of what their album sells for, but then before they actually SEE any of that money, the record company recoups the production costs, studio time, cost of artwork, advertising, touring, managers, lawyers, A&R guys, distributors, etc.
So a band that generates 800,000 in revenue for a record company ends up going home after a year with $20,000 to split between the 4-5 (typical # of band members) guys who did it all. That's 5 grand (or less) a piece, for a year of touring, not being at home with your family, eating substandard fast-food meals, staying in cheap hotels night after night....
That's less than the average guy working at 7-11. The artists are NOT the RIAA.
Even the relatively few artists who HAVE made it into the multimillionare category have spent years doing so. Very few MUSICIANS ever get rich off of the music industry. Fight the industry, not the artist.
-The Reverend
Bullcrap. They'd make plenty of money by touring, and/or selling their music to commercial entities for use in marketing. How would things change? Tours would become more profitable and efficient for the artists, and maybe not as extravagant. Rock stars would put out better music because instead of a windfall of $ from a big contract, they'd have to continue WORKING to make it happen.
Um... with the exception of a few REALLY BIG NAMES, most musicians are making minimum wage or less from their work. True, the RIAA may be making big money, but the individual artists are making very little.
Now, this is partially the fault of the artists, because they accept the HORRIBLE SLAVE CONTRACTS that the record companies offer, but many of these artists sign their contracts as young, ambitious (starving) artists, who believe that there's simply nothing better. And they're right, for the most part. Even artists who today are worth millions (Madonna, Metallica) started off with one of those same HORRIBLE SLAVE CONTRACTS to the record company.. where the company owns the songs, the rights to further use of the songs (like the commercial revenues) and the artist is working on a "paid to play" basis... in a sense, the music that was created belongs to the record company, the musician is not compensated for having written it, but merely for the time spent performing it.
Less drug abuse, less crappy sophomore albums. Less Britney Spears overhyped crap music, more music popular because of actual ARTISTIC VALUE.
In order to stop the wholesale over-saturation of industry-designed groups like Britney Spears, Nsync, BackStreet Boys, the BUYING PUBLIC must turn their votes (their money) away from such acts, and towards other less conventionally recognized talents. If you want more diversity in the music industry.... GO OUT OF YOUR WAY to support underground music.
(for those of you who just have your panties all in a bunge to do just that, try clicking here.)
-The Reverend
And it's not free, and shouldn't be free. If it were, who would do it? Not I. I'd like to take the high road and say that "art" should be free, but it can't be. SHOULD be, but can't.
I agree with you, but there are a few other things that ought to be on the "SHOULD BE FREE" list:
Food
Clothing
Shelter
Medical Care
If we (as a species) can manage to make those four things free for everyone, I'll stop selling my art/music. Until such a time, I will continue to eake out a living to the best of my ability, just like the rest of you.
Can you imagine a world without art? Without music? Without architecture? If you aren't willing to live in such a world (and I know *I'm* not) then artists deserve to be paid to provide such a world for you.
-The Reverend
At our last meeting, the idea came up to get our own domain name. Why? So we could attract more members. Tell me, how does having our own domain name -- I suppose that it would be indianriverflyingclub.com -- help us any more than the page we have now at flyflorida.com/irfc?
I don't know that indianriverflyingclub.com would necessarily be easier for people to remember than flyflorida.com/irfc, but I'll say this about having your own domain name....
It's much easier (and faster) to tell someone I meet, "Hey, check out my band's website at www.nothinghead.com" than it is to say "Go check out my website at www.geocities/mo/~1012093/nothinghead.html"
Granted, for me it's a business usage, but the point is still there. If I tell someone about my webpage, 10 days later (if he can remember the band name, nothinghead) he can go check it out. Whereas if I was hosting off of someone else's domain, the chances that that person would forget the address before they got a chance to use it would be much greater.
-The Reverend
Is when Stephen Baldwin's character is sitting on the roof of that boathouse and he quickly ticks off all the movements he'd have to make to shoot the "terrorist" guys down on the dock.
"Oswald was a fag."
Just classic.
-The Reverend
"there will never be a true armed Revolution in America until the police start treating white people the way they have historically treated Black people."
I would ammend that statement to read "until police start treating the middle class the way they treat the poor."
Having spent several years as a PWG (Poor White Guy) I can tell you that the police didn't give me any special treatment, let me off on traffic tickets, give me warnings or treat me with the basic courtesy that one ought to show another human. However, once I was able to afford a reasonably new car (I bought a '97 in '99) I saw my instances of being pulled over, searched & ticketed drop from once every month or two to once, period.
The cop's logic goes something like this: The poor ones are more likely to steal, the poor ones are more likely to have warrants on them, the poor ones are more likely to be driving without insurance, or with a broken tail light. By pulling over a poor guy, he can write 4 tickets in one stop (I've gotten as many as 5 at once, all when I drove an old beat up "hooptie" car.)
(Whenever I would drive my girlfriend's nice new car, using the same driving methods, in the same neighborhoods, the same cops would give me not a second glance.)
Here's a lovely quote by my good buddy Kurt Vonnegutt Jr.
"The two real political parties in America are the winners and the losers. The people refuse to acknowledge this. They claim allegiance in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead." -Kurt Vonnegutt, Jr.
-The Reverend
Me, I live and let live, what he wants to do with his computer and time... Is his business...
I'm really glad you feel that way, because what I want to do with my time & computer is steal from you.
-The Reverend
Any geezers here remember Quantum Link? The first GUI on line service provider for C64 computers? I joined as a life member and have since had that life membership transferred to AOL (Which Q-Link became).
I can remember reading their ads in the backs of the Commodore magazines, but I don't think the service was ever available back in those days for those of us in St. Louis. We had to make due with Color 64 boards, downloading our Eaglesoft warez off of mountains of 1541 drives linked together.
Sigh... the good ole days.
-The Reverend
If take my homegrown CD, label it up like, oh, the latest Kid Rock album, and SELL to some poor guy looking for a Kid Rock album, haven't I just infringement on the copyright? (and committed fraud in the process?)
If you sell it to some unknowing consumer, yes, that is fraud. If you merely rename one of your own songs to BritneySpears.mp3 and put it on your computer and someone else who is looking to STEAL that Britney Spears song comes along and downloads it... that's not at all the same thing. In the first instance, you make money off of another artist's name. In the second instance, you merely frustrate the activities of a thief.
-The Reverend
I do think that some people would go in the genre chat rooms and try new stuff. Who knows, maybe in a year or two, after everyone has been saturated by the top 40 crap, they will start getting hungry fo something new.
As DSL and Cable move toward being standard, I think you'll see a lot more of this kind of thing. I love the idea of being exposed to new, underground music, but not the idea of dedicating hours of my time downloading MP3s of unknown quality by an unknown group because I've only got a 56k connection (that rarely connects above 33.6)
If I could grab a new tune and check it out in 5 minutes or less, I'd be much more likely to use such a feature, and use it often.
-The Reverend
While Stefanie has gotten a bunch more people to hear her music and had a few more hits on her website, she has also taken more heat than you can imagine... Remember, most of the folks who heard her music didn't want to hear her music and were probably expecting something completely different. We didn't just label it as music that sounded like hers, and thereby reach out to her udience. Instead we labeled it as everything! Not a lot of Kid Rock or Black Sabbath fans that can appreciate a good old folk/pop tune, eh?
He uses the above statement to explain that this is not a stunt to get attention for his wife and her "music", yet he just explained that they decided to use Kid Rock, Black Sabbath and other popular band names to get people to listen to it, because they probably would not listen to it otherwise.
I think you're missing the point. They clearly stated on their site that they used her music because they didn't want to steal from someone else. Now.. question:
If I was going to use this cuckoo-egg scheme to market my music (which is aggressive, not unlike TOOL, 311, Chili Peppers) to people in a sneaky way, it would make sense for *ME* to choose to "fake" popular heavy songs and thereby expose people who might actually LIKE my songs to them... but it wouldn't be very good marketing for me to take my same, aggresive songs and put them on napster as Britney Spears or Frank Sinatra tunes... because the people who are likely to be downloading either of THOSE types of music, are not likely to be my target demographic.
Likewise, they chose to use the names of the MOST POPULAR DOWNLOADS, because they're trying to be a thorn in the side of music piracy, and the best way to do that is to annoy the MAJORITY of the pirates, not only the niche pirates. (niche pirates being those who would only steal from new age artists like Yanni.)
-The Reverend
" "Megacorps" do not tell me when to wake up, when to eat and what to eat, when to sleep and what pillow to buy, and how many times a day I should pray."
.... But the mere fact that something is advertised and I use that product doesn't mean that I'm being told what to do. The choice is still mine.
Your choices become more and more limited as these large companies (without governmental regulation to stop them) shut smaller companies down by undercutting, superior marketing or outright buyout. (I could point to Microsoft, but we're all tired of that.) These megacorps *DO* effectively limit your choice, because they control which products will become available to the public, in which quantities, and at which times. Sure, you can still choose to not buy Taco Bell, but you've got to eat SOMETHING. What do you do when you need something and the only product available (or the only one you can afford) is created by a company that you dislike/disagree with? Your only "choice" at that point is to submit to their will or do without.
You may say that it's just the "American Way" to allow those unscrupulous businesses to grow in any way possible... It definately is the way things *ARE* being done around here.
Corporations now have more rights and political influence than individual citizens... If an individual citizen manages to hoarde large chunks of resources, we can at least count on the fact that they will eventually die and their earnings will be redistributed. Corporations never die, they just get taken over by a larger corporation.
-The Reverend
The fact that they will ultimately decide what the content is really isn't all that different from the current radio model. Listeners can call in and request songs, but the DJs and station owners still make the final choices of what to broadcast.
Most radio stations in the US are not owned by small companies, but major corporations that also own controlling interest in many other media industries (i.e., the same company that owns your favorite cable station also owns your local radio station -- and one just like it in all other major US markets -- and they ALSO own the artists that they choose to play on their systems.
Many times, (I'll use St. Louis as my example) a single company will own SEVERAL of the radio stations in your area, further limiting your ability to hear new music.
For example, Emmis Broadcasting owns 3 different FM stations in the St. Louis area... WXTM 104.1 FM, KSHE 94.7 FM and WKKX 106.5 FM. Their main competators own three other stations. So six of the major stations in St. Louis are owned by 2 companies whos only real competitors are each other.
Listeners DO call in and make requests, but haven't you ever thought it was strange that NOBODY ever requests a song that isn't already on the playlist? I can tell you from my OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE as a radio station employee (WXTM 104.1 FM, St. Louis) that the only requests that EVER get played on the radio are the ones that were ALREADY ON THE PLAYLIST. It goes a little like this:
Joe Listener: Hey guys, i haven't heard that kick-ass song "LATEST POP SINGLE" in the last few minutes, could you play it for me?"
DJ (to himself): Hmm.. Let me check the list... yup, this one's scheduled to be played again in the next hour.
DJ (to listener): YOU KNOW IT MAN! I'm here for YOU! Call in now with your requests to 555-1234. And here... BY REQUEST is "LATEST POP SINGLE"
Next Caller: Hey man, I hear you're playing requests! That's great! Do you guys think you could play "ANY SONG THAT WASN'T OFFICIALLY RELEASED AS A SINGLE IN THE LAST 2 MONTHS?"
DJ (to himself): Yeah, right pal. I just push buttons here. I can't make any real decisions, and besides, my playlist was decided a week in advance by the program director.
DJ (to listener): Hey man, I'll see what I can do, OK? In the meantime, here's the latest by BANDOFTHEMINUTE!
-The Reverend
Message sent by: Kuppler Graphics, 32 West Main Street, Maple Shade, New Jersey, 08052, 1-800-810-4330. This list will NOT be sold. All addresses are automatically added to our remove list. Hello. My name is Bill from Kuppler Graphics. We do screenprinting on T Shirts, Sweatshirts, Jackets, Hats, Tote Bags and more!
Interesting. I got this same email. I figured he had grabbed me off of some other list, since I actually *AM* in the business of making T-shirts (i'm in a band.)
The worst part is not that he spammed me, but that his prices are outrageous. Like $4 MORE PER UNIT(!!!!!) than what I could get done around town locally.
-The Reverend
The only people who are to be hated are those who revel in Satan's unholy evil.
Hmm. I don't remember Jesus saying anything REMOTELY similar to that. I seem to recall him talking about the need to love everyone unconditionally, forgive your neighbor 7*7 times. Could you maybe provide chapter and verse? Thanks so much.
Bear in mind that Catholics are not Christians since they worship the virgin whore rather than God. Those heathen sinners could do anything and it wouldn't suprise me, since they, like all who do not follow in the path of our Lord, are destined to Hell anyway.
Ok. At this point I'm guessing you're just another boring wanna-be-troll, but I'm responding anyway. (Hey, I'm at work, I could be WORKING)
Each "Christian" believes that those who follow his particular brand of christianity is a TRUE christian, while any christian who holds a different set of beliefs is a FALSE christian.
It's all a matter of interpretation. All of life is a matter of interpretation. All instances of right & wrong are just matters of interpretation. You take what you want (or what you feel is reasonable, or what you think is believable) and you disregard the rest.
For instance... I tend to believe that when Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven that he's really talking about a state of mind that can be attained by humans, here on earth. I also believe that Satan is not a real entity, but rather a SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION of the evil in each man's soul. One part of you (Jesus likens it to being childlike) is interested in the good of others... one part of you (SATAN) is only interested in self.
The overall message of Jesus (to me) is that if we all give up on hating and fighting and hurting and lying, we all get to live in a wonderful mind-state that frees us from petty concerns about money/status/power (which can never truely bring any real satisfaction anyway) and brings us into a connection with the WHOLENESS (unity) of the universe, wherein we help each other because we sense the commonality between us, and realize that when we help someone else, we're actually helping ourselves.
More about my perspective can be found at:
http://www.nothinghead.com/jpbio.html
-The Reverend
and each of you seem to miss each others points entirely in each new rebuttle...
here's the big point that I'll sum up for you:
The US (and a handful of other countries) control a massive portion of the WORLD's wealth. It does not belong to Arabian oil barons, it doesn't belong to multinational corporate entities, it doesn't belong to technologically savvy American Entrepreneurs. The world belongs to the WORLD.
*MOST* *PEOPLE* *ON* *THIS* *PLANET* *ARE* *STARVING*
They can't go buy a $400 computer, nor can they go buy $180 nikes (or even $10 keds.) There are people who work for a week in slave-labor conditions just to earn a single dollar. There are some who work for even less.
*THEY* *REPRESENT* *THE* *MAJORITY* *OF* *THE* *WORLD'S* *POPULATION*
Even though I understand YOUR point (That you aren't one of the top 1% who are in control) you are missing HIS point, which is that your worldview that sticks you comfortably in the "middle" is incorrect. You are still a part of that minority that holds the big chunks of the pie. When you look at yourself and say "I'm doing as well as the average human" what you're REALLY seeing is "I'm doing as well as the average AMERICAN." The average poor Americans (even the ones who live in the projects) are living "high on the hog" compared to the average person in a non-industrialized country.
When he says that most of the USA believes that the USA *IS* the world, he's right. But it's not necessarily their faults... they've been conditioned to believe in the lies in the same free public schools that they were educated (i.e. brainwashed) in.
-The Reverend
His treatment of women is beyond pathetic. In Cryptonomicon he attempts a defense of Manifest Destiny (you remember -- the idea that it's ok for white Christians to commit genocide, because North America was given to them by God), presenting it as the only alternative to a straw-man mindless cultural relativism that holds that all cultures are equivalent. WTF?
All cultures that currently exist were built on the spoils of war - rape, theft & murder. The american indian tribes were doing a good job of killing and enslaving one another before the white man showed up to enslave & kill them. The europeans simply had better military tactics, were better organized, etc.
Now. Am I using it as a justification and saying that it's the only correct course and that there couldn't possibly be a better way of doing things? No. But what I am saying is that what the europeans came over and did to the "native" culture isn't a whole lot different (except in terms of scale) from what the "natives" were doing to themselves and one another already.
I haven't read Cryptonomicon so I can't address your specifics, but I have read Snow Crash and Diamond Age, and there are plenty of strong female characters to choose from among those books. Perhaps you are confusing the opinions of the author with the opinions of his characters?
-The Reverend