much like how I devalue your car by riding it around, you stealing music is also devaluing the value of the music.
Simply repeating your point doesn't make it a correct one. You can steal tangible goods. You can even steal credit for a song. You can steal a CD. You can even steal art that exists in space, such as a painting or a sculpture. But music is an art form that exists only in time. You can't steal a song, you can only copy it. Listening to music without paying for it is simply not "stealing." Your attempt to anchor that word is inaccurate hyperbole.
But if I want to create because I want to make money, you don't get to tell me no.
That's the crux of your argument, and it fails. You can create music becaues you want to make money, sure. What I *do* get to tell you is that you don't deserve to get paid for every time someone hears your song. I *do* get to tell you that if hearing your wanna-make-money song makes someone's life worth living, I will make sure they can get it without having to pay you a single penny.
Yep, you need money to survive. Yep, musicians need money to buy most music gear. Yep, musicans need money to pay for a studio, and yep musicians need money get to and from gigs.
Their need for money does not equal their right to money, nor does their labor. When your industry starts to leak profit from points that used to be airtight lines of revenue because tech advances obsolete your profit model, you don't get to change the world to save your fortune. You didn't *deserve* your fortune in the first place, you just wanted it. If you got some of it, well good for you: you were lucky and had a good run. Now your time with this model is over.
Lowery's article shows how desperate the outgoing model is. He is reduced telling people what we really should be doing "because it's the right thing to do", and that apparently means paying you for the noise you decided to bring into this world.
Like the rest of the working schlubs out there, in order to make money you're going to need to contribute products or services that people are willing to pay for. Didn't get the Bently, the hot tubs, or the groupies, even though your bosses did? Tough shit, would-be stars. Those days are over. So music star doesn't sound like an attractive business model any more? Great. We've had enough stars. It's time to leave music to the musicians.
If I create and own something, I'm allowed to decide how to distribute it . . . . What you're saying is something like if I saw your car . . . I should be allowed to break in and drive it around.
No that's not what I'm saying at all. You're making the same mistake Lowery is, and which I originally pointed out. Music is not a physical good A car, appliances, band merchanise? Those things are physical goods. There is no "taking" of music. My playing music doesn't prevent anyone else from playing that same music simultaneously. Ultimately Lowery --and you, it seems-- would have every set of ears that can hear to pay money for listening. Well often those ears that would benefit from music most can't afford to pay.
You can't really have your "transformative experiences" if the person who created them decided to hand out fries at a drive thru instead.
You're making my point, but you just don't realize what would drive someone to such a choice. The inspired musician does not create for the money, they create because music moves them. They create because certain music that they heard lit something up in their brain, and from that point on they knew they needed to make music. If these people aren't able to hear that music because they're too poor, the world wouldn't have Jimi Hendrix musician, we would have had Jimmy Hendricks the Seattle burger-flipper. Not because burger flipping pays better, but because he never heard the music he needed to hear... because he couldn't afford to pay for it.
A few musicians per generation get lucky enough to get paid handsomely for their work. More of the music entertainers are simply celebrities who are successful at self-promotion. (Test yourself: think of Rhianna or Chris Brown. What pops into your head first? Is it the sound of one of their songs, or is it a visual image of how they looked in a photo spread? Now do the same with Adele. Do you see her face first, or hear her voice?)
Would-be celebrities who chase fame and fortune aren't driven by a love of music, they're driven by a thirst for attention and money. Just peruse Craigslist band ads for fifteen minutes and read the blurbs of all the would-bes who "are dedicated to making it!" Now look for all the ads describing people who want to make incredible music. The music industry has done its best to eliminate public perception of any distinction between a musician, and a music star. The difference is inspiration -- one is driven by music, the other by celebrity.
So Lowery wanted to be a music star, and the money and attention that goes with it. He didn't make as far as he hoped he would. So now he pushes a world view that would make it easier for people like him to reach that goal. In the pursuit of that unrealized sad dream of music star celebrity, he is willing to eliminate access to the music that will inspire future musicians.
Jimi could listen to music on the radio, on TV, go and watch live bands. His ability to buy records WAS limited by how much money he had and I think he turned out just fine.
I like that point; it's a good one. What I'm trying to get across here is that had Jimi been unable, during his formative years, to listen to music that he couldn't afford to purchase, he might not have been inspired to create his own. Lowery's approach would impose on similarly poor, upcoming musical geniuses a moral obligation *not* to listen to music that could shape their art in a critical manner at a formative time, simply because they can't afford to pay for it.
More generally I'm coming from the perspective that, because the benefits we get from music/art/literature cannot simply be reduced to a $ value, I'd prefer equal access to music/art/literature, regardless of ability to pay. A strict commoditized regime --slapping price tags on culture-- prevents equal access. I see Lowery's approach as one that, if carried to its natural conclusion, would slaps a price tag and a shoplifting alarm on things that offer encouragement, hope, inspiration, insight, and other such things that improve peoples' lives.
I'd like Lowery to go back in time and explain his you-must-pay-to-hear approach to one young, incredibly poor Jimi Hendrix. That guy started out playing a broom for fuck's sake; his first guitar had one goddamn string. Where would we all be now if Jimi's access to music should have been limited to the amount he could pay?
Lowery's approach would be accurate, if he were talking about selling appliances, or even band merchandise. Without further addressing the multiple mistaken premises (replace every instance of "the vast majority" with "a tiny minority", for starters), the main area he fails is his equivocation of music with a physical product.
We've become used to this model. It has driven pop music culture for close to a century; it's given us the "music star" celebrity model that we've become comfortable with. This approach has progressed naturally, and now we've reached the current point of American Idol-voted celebrity products.
What he overlooks is the natural power of music. Music, when at its best, can give courage to the otherwise cowardly, joy to those in pain, even trigger mystical experiences in the otherwise mundane. It can cement memories and bring people closer together.
The problem is when you slap a price tag and marketing on something that serves as a vehicle for these transformative experiences, a few nasty things happen. For one thing, you inevitably see a homogenization of music as salespersons try to maximize profit. Music is reduced to the lowest common denominator to maximize mass appeal, just like fast food. Services exist that compare proposed compositions to past hits in terms of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic structure -- you have people just rewriting variations on the same old tune. Quality is subjective though, and there's no real basis to say one song is better than another -- all that matters is the experience of the listener.
But the most insidious part of slapping price tags on transformative experiences is that you keep poor people from experiencing them. Can't afford to pay up? Tough shit son, you don't get to experience an essential aspect of your culture. Too poor? Sorry, this joy is reserved for those who can afford it.
I'm sure Lowery means well, but people like him are one reason why I'm a librarian. There must be a way for people to access vital, possibly transformative parts of our culture regardless of ability to pay. For the time being it seems like taxing society to provide public access to repositories of music, art, and literature, while not perfect, is the best workaround.
Spent a few weeks up at RMSC myself years ago. If the hard drives aren't SSDs, bumping them around in transit and while packing/unpacking might risk head crashes. Since you have a lot of them, cushion the drives on a layer or three of the zabutons you have lying around.
I really hope the stupa survives the fire. Please follow up after you're able to return, and good luck.
For as much dislike as I've seen for them here on/., a Chromebook w/ 3G is ideal for your scenario.
I was on a very tight budget last summer, had been relegated to only using my Android phone for a computer for a few weeks, and finally picked up a first generation Samsung Series 5. (It came with 2 years of minimal 3G connectivity; if you factored that into the price it was cheaper than anything else I could find.) It's tiny, light, the battery lasts longer than anything I've had, and you have a real keyboard and screen. It has been the perfect travel computing device: because it's so small and light it's not just easy to carry but easy to use (even while standing in line), and because it's based on the concept of remote storage the wireless connectivity is a focus of the OS. It's cheap enough that its destruction or theft won't completely wipe you out; the secure computing chip and remote storage focus mean you won't risk losing critical data just because you lose the hardware. Get an USB ethernet adapter for when a wireless network isn't available.
A few years before I picked up the Chromebook I tried using an Asus EEE Netbook for the same scenario, and I've found the Chromebook is much more suited to being an on-the-go travel device.
Ah, I don't have a separate television and I didn't realize you can't customize ads unless you were at a computer. I'd heard of the eHarmony anti-gay bigotry; I'd also heard that they reject atheists. Fuck that fucking company.
Anyway I've had limited success with customizing Hulu ads. For example, about half of the ads I get are for car insurance and/or cars -- I haven't owned a car since 2006. Since car share services like car2go and Zipcar more than meet my car needs, and are cheaper, more reliable, and more convenient, I have no plans to buy a car.
Still, the other half of the ads are usually blockbuster movie/game ads and the occasional tech/gear ad, which is about as accurate as I think they can get for me. While it is still widely off the mark most of the time, it is more accurately targeted than any other video ads I've yet to encounter.
Your anecdote seems to indicate that feedback button for the ad customization might go a long way for them.
Hulu at least does have an option to help them with ad customization. In the upper right corner of each ad is a dialog that reads "is this ad relevant to you? yes/no"
Selecting "no" on the least relevant ads does seem to reduce them, though not immediately nor completely. I'm not sure what "yes" does, because personally I hate ads and don't want to encourage any of them.
So then, why don't we have a Department of Offense instead of just a Department of Defense? If the lie, I mean creative labeling works for DOD, why not use it for hacking titles also?
DoD covers both: because the best defense is a good offense. This same kind of sports-based reasoning is also why we have "three strikes" laws, btw. Because nothing quite as accurate as a good sports analogy to explain how to kill a bunch of people and/or imprison them for life.
There's a reason that a human right to dignity is enshrined as the most basic right in the constitution of almost every democracy except that of the United States: because most people value a life of dignity. There's also a reason this is almost certainly news to you: your own ignorance.
And you're wrong the WBC is not just an excellent example but practically a textbook one of the conflict between human dignity and freedom of speech. Another great example is whether or not a society will permit Nazi parades.
Where has... I have to use your construction here... person W blamed person X for the unquestioning actions of person Y that were based on the speech of person Z because person X once previously said something? What exactly are you talking about? That makes almost no sense to me at all.
I'm afraid that I'm simply not understanding any point you're making beyond the several ways now you've said that "good," and other individual preferences are subjective, not objective. And that particular point seems to me like such an obvious given that I don't understand why you felt it was necessary to point out.
I'm not asking an endless series of "but, why?" questions here. If someone is going to assert that certain ideals are important above and beyond all other ideals, then asking two very basic questions --(1) what do those ideals mean, exactly? and (2) why are those ideals so important?-- should not be showstopper questions. If the person making such assertions is unable to answer these fundamental questions, then it indicates that they've simply accepted a belief system as a matter of faith or emotion.
I haven't asserted the supremacy of any ideal above all others. In fact I am very suspicious of anyone who does so... *because* (note! an explanation, a reason) that kind of belief sets the believer up to be manipulated so that others may profit and gain power. If people can be convinced to value some ideal even more than life itself, it's not difficult to convince these believers to risk and lose their lives for said unquestioned ideals.
It appears that you are unable to explain why you too, apparently and like GP, value "liberty and freedom of speech" above all else, without exception.
If someone elevates these concepts above all others, and is unable to enunciate why exactly they would do so, that would tend to indicate that such belief is more akin to a religious faith or a knee-jerk patriotism than a well-reasoned conclusion.
How about if someone rapes your daughter, films the act, and puts it on a billboard across the street from her school?
Freedom is important, but it is not an absolute.
Use the film to prove the rape, prosecute the bastard and send him to a prison where someone else shows him what it is like. Also, prosecute the billboard owner for obscenity. Lets face it. The worst thing happening in that hypothetical situation is not that someone took pictures. It was rape.
Or, you could prevent your daughter being raped by depriving the rapist of his precious liberty before he rapes your daughter in the first place.
Why do you think this? And how do you define "liberty"? Life, for starters, seems like it a strong contender for more of a priority than freedom of speech, should the two things conflict. Living a life of dignity seems more valuable than freedom of speech in many cases where the two things conflict. (Easy example: the Westboro Baptist Church hate demonstrations.)
Maybe there's a well thought-out reason that you make this statement, but I suspect that most people waving that particular flag haven't bothered to think carefully about it at all.
If someone is going to raise a concept to a higher priority than life itself, I'd like to hear some very good reasoning behind it. Otherwise I don't see how one can distinguish this sentiment from that behind any other adrenaline-based flag-waving.
I started learning *nix w/ FreeBSD back towards the end of the 4.x series, and stuck with FreeBSD through the beginning of 6.x. As fond as I am of the BSDs, they are fundamentally incompatible with multitrack *recording*.
Multitrack recording is where you record a track or tracks while listening to and playing along with a prerecorded track. This requires extremely low latency -- you need to be able to play something and hear it back as close to instantaneously as possible. Latency needs to be at a lower time threshold than you can perceive, and about 6 microsecond is the threshold (though that's pushing it.) Any latency larger than that, and the newly recorded tracks will be noticeably out of sync with the playback tracks.
This part is beyond my knowledge (please forgive and correct any inaccuracies, respected kernel hackers) but I'll share my understanding: Linux achieves low latency with real time interrupts -- several years ago Ingo Molnar created the first RT kernel patch for Linux. However, real time interrupts also, unfortunately, provide a vector for instability and insecurity, and BSD architecture intentionally disallows real-time interrupts to kernel space, from user space. Because of this, BSD latency is not low enough to allow for multitrack recording.
Pulse killed the possibility of multitrack recording studio on Linux. You can still look back and witness the dramatic die-off of multitrack Linux uses and discussion that coincide with the introduction of Pulse. It's like going back and looking at MySpace, or Friendster.
Right before Ubuntu brought in Pulse, I'd finally hit a sweet spot with Linux audio. With ALSA + qjackctl I was able to manage low-latency multitrack audio recording, and simultaneously have discrete control over the audio of all media players. Before pulse, I was able to use my terminal as a giant mixing board, managing recording and various media playback simultaneously. Different mixes and levels for different apps -- I was able to discretely control the audio levels and mixes for *each channel* in surround sound.
Pulse completely destroyed these capabilities, it eliminated the low-latency capability necessary for multitrack recording, and replaced it with frequent crashes, inconsistent behavior, and was tied in so deeply that Ubuntu has never since been capable of the audio layout I'd been using about five years ago.
Pulse is the single worst Linux move I've ever seen. In the interest of removing audio from the kernel space (necessary for low-latency), it simply eliminated what used to be advanced capabilities. Lennart Poettering, author of Pulse simply disregarded these concerns, waved his hands and said "that's not the concerns Pulse was designed to address!"
I imaging that whenever you bring this up, you must get a lot of frustratingly condescending comments along the lines of "stop whining, it's simple math, consume fewer calories than you expend and you will lose weight."
Without that attitude, I'd like to point something out in your comment, and let you know what has helped me lose weight in a similar situation. You said you "try (your) best to eat healthy." That's almost certainly where your lifestyle is falling short. About a year ago I picked up a copy of a diet book --"Flat Belly Diet for Men" (I had to get the For Men one, natch.) I stuck with it for about a month, and didn't see much in the way of results. However, what I did learn in that month was how to properly apportion my sizes. It turned out that, while I was eating mostly healthy foods --whole grains, fresh fruit & veggies, very little in the way of sweets or processed sugar-- I was still consuming more calories of the healthy food per day than I would expend, even with three to four 5-6 mile runs per week. And a month was enough for me to pick up the habit, and be more conscious not only of the types of foods I was eating, but how much of that healthy food I was eating.
Fast forward a few months. I had to relocate for a new job, and was able to incorporate daily walking into my lifestyle without any particular effort -- basically I'd just walk to the store and buy as many groceries as I could carry by hand a few times a week, rather than fewer trips to pick up a carload of groceries. It transformed a sedentary act (driving) into low-level cardio (walking.) It might have taken longer, but then I also stopped going to the gym so ultimately there was no time loss. I kept up eating the portion sizes I'd learned a few months prior. During this time, I didn't hit the gym once, and frankly I still at relatively unhealthy types of food (lots of pizza and beer), but by keeping track of serving sizes and allowing for the calories in everything (including beer), I kept my daily caloric intake to the recommended level. In about 3 months, without making any particular effort, I dropped over 20 lbs.
Point is, don't just pay attention to the types of food (healthy -v- unhealthy), but pay close attention to the *proper amounts* of healthy foods to eat, and the extra pounds will drop. Flat Belly Diet worked for me because it was basically a per-meal recipe book; other systems do something similar. But if you spend a few weeks serving your meals from measuring cups, you will almost certainly find that you've been consuming more calories than you expend. In my case, it required no extra time, no time at the gym, saved the gas money I'd have spent going to and from the store, and as an added bonus, the extra attention I paid to serving sizes meant I saved money on groceries, also.
Contrast this with the legal field in which women and men are represented in equal numbers. The difference is that anyone who works in the legal profession is trained to understand why sexual harassment is wrong for both moral and legal reasons. You don't see women being objectified in legal conventions.
I work in the legal field, I'm male, and can assure you that you're wrong. Had you read *anything* about this you'd know that, but I suspect this is a case where you arrived at your conclusion first, then made up what you hope is reality to support it.
Since your opinion is based on inaccurate info, you need to reexamine your conclusions -- they are probably also inaccurate.
To clarify, no, women and men are not represented in equal numbers in the legal field. Bring yourself up to speed:
In 2011, women made up 31.9% of all lawyers. Women were 45.4% of associates in 2011. Women were 47.7% of summer associates in 2011. Given the same rate of change, Catalyst estimates that it will take more than a woman lawyer's lifetime to achieve equality.
There is a drastic difference between women and men at the highest levels in law firms. According to a recent survey of law firms, 11% of the largest law firms in the U.S. have no women on their governing committees, women partners constituted only 16% of those partners receiving credit for having $500,000 worth of business or more.
Only 23% of all federal judgeships were held by women, and only 27% of state judgeships were held by women. In one study of law school faculty, only 20.6% of law school deans were women. In a survey of the 50 best law firms for women,
10% of firm chairpersons were women, 12% of the firms had women managing partners, 19% of the equity partners were women, 28% of the nonequity partners were women, and
41% of the of-counsels were women.
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
Why it's suddenly outrageous if attractive women even hypothetically complain about their job puzzles me. I've yet to run into a person who would continue to work at their current job if they didn't have to for the money. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's why they pay people -- no one wants to do any of this shit we spend most of our lives doing, at least not for free. We need to be paid to do it.
Getting paid doesn't magically make the downsides of a job magically disappear. It's just crap that we're willing to put up with in exchange for money. We do not surrender our right to complain about the things that suck about it, just because money is involved. So yes, let's invite the booth girls to our support group, because --whaddayaknow?-- their job sucks, too.
...because all copyrightable material is under copyright from the moment of its creation. That would include all original works, all writings, etc... they're copyrighted, and the creator owns the copyright.
What MPAA wants to disallow is in bold...
"If the Court is willing to consider allowing access for users such as Mr. Goodwin to allow retrieval of files, it is essential that the mechanism include a procedure that ensures that any materials the users access and copy or download are not files that have been illegally uploaded to their accounts."
To that, I'll add "allegedly illegally uploaded." The court as a finder of law can't determine that the files were illegally uploaded; a finder of fact (jury) needs to do that.
It doesn't help that Obama has basically done at best nothing to curb the excesses and crimes of the financial sector. Only Madoff has been imprisoned.
While I appreciate the rest of your point, this claim bugs me. It's not accurate, but it gets self-reinforcing echo chamber treatment. Compare the # of successful DOJ financial fraud prosecutions during W's administration with those of O's. http://www.stopfraud.gov/news-index.html While a fairly recent report points out that the raw number of financial fraud prosecutions has continued to decrease over the past 20 years, that study fails to distinguish between a $15,000 credit card scam and a $60 million dollar conspiracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Rajaratnam#Conviction_and_imprisonment_for_insider_trading (Can you name one big financial fraud or insider trading prosecution from 2000-2008?)
Slashdot Mirror
much like how I devalue your car by riding it around, you stealing music is also devaluing the value of the music.
Simply repeating your point doesn't make it a correct one. You can steal tangible goods. You can even steal credit for a song. You can steal a CD. You can even steal art that exists in space, such as a painting or a sculpture. But music is an art form that exists only in time. You can't steal a song, you can only copy it. Listening to music without paying for it is simply not "stealing." Your attempt to anchor that word is inaccurate hyperbole.
But if I want to create because I want to make money, you don't get to tell me no.
That's the crux of your argument, and it fails. You can create music becaues you want to make money, sure. What I *do* get to tell you is that you don't deserve to get paid for every time someone hears your song. I *do* get to tell you that if hearing your wanna-make-money song makes someone's life worth living, I will make sure they can get it without having to pay you a single penny.
Yep, you need money to survive. Yep, musicians need money to buy most music gear. Yep, musicans need money to pay for a studio, and yep musicians need money get to and from gigs.
Their need for money does not equal their right to money, nor does their labor. When your industry starts to leak profit from points that used to be airtight lines of revenue because tech advances obsolete your profit model, you don't get to change the world to save your fortune. You didn't *deserve* your fortune in the first place, you just wanted it. If you got some of it, well good for you: you were lucky and had a good run. Now your time with this model is over.
Lowery's article shows how desperate the outgoing model is. He is reduced telling people what we really should be doing "because it's the right thing to do", and that apparently means paying you for the noise you decided to bring into this world.
Like the rest of the working schlubs out there, in order to make money you're going to need to contribute products or services that people are willing to pay for. Didn't get the Bently, the hot tubs, or the groupies, even though your bosses did? Tough shit, would-be stars. Those days are over. So music star doesn't sound like an attractive business model any more? Great. We've had enough stars. It's time to leave music to the musicians.
If I create and own something, I'm allowed to decide how to distribute it . . . . What you're saying is something like if I saw your car . . . I should be allowed to break in and drive it around.
No that's not what I'm saying at all. You're making the same mistake Lowery is, and which I originally pointed out. Music is not a physical good A car, appliances, band merchanise? Those things are physical goods. There is no "taking" of music. My playing music doesn't prevent anyone else from playing that same music simultaneously. Ultimately Lowery --and you, it seems-- would have every set of ears that can hear to pay money for listening. Well often those ears that would benefit from music most can't afford to pay.
You can't really have your "transformative experiences" if the person who created them decided to hand out fries at a drive thru instead.
You're making my point, but you just don't realize what would drive someone to such a choice. The inspired musician does not create for the money, they create because music moves them. They create because certain music that they heard lit something up in their brain, and from that point on they knew they needed to make music. If these people aren't able to hear that music because they're too poor, the world wouldn't have Jimi Hendrix musician, we would have had Jimmy Hendricks the Seattle burger-flipper. Not because burger flipping pays better, but because he never heard the music he needed to hear... because he couldn't afford to pay for it.
A few musicians per generation get lucky enough to get paid handsomely for their work. More of the music entertainers are simply celebrities who are successful at self-promotion. (Test yourself: think of Rhianna or Chris Brown. What pops into your head first? Is it the sound of one of their songs, or is it a visual image of how they looked in a photo spread? Now do the same with Adele. Do you see her face first, or hear her voice?)
Would-be celebrities who chase fame and fortune aren't driven by a love of music, they're driven by a thirst for attention and money. Just peruse Craigslist band ads for fifteen minutes and read the blurbs of all the would-bes who "are dedicated to making it!" Now look for all the ads describing people who want to make incredible music. The music industry has done its best to eliminate public perception of any distinction between a musician, and a music star. The difference is inspiration -- one is driven by music, the other by celebrity.
So Lowery wanted to be a music star, and the money and attention that goes with it. He didn't make as far as he hoped he would. So now he pushes a world view that would make it easier for people like him to reach that goal. In the pursuit of that unrealized sad dream of music star celebrity, he is willing to eliminate access to the music that will inspire future musicians.
So, fuck that guy.
Jimi could listen to music on the radio, on TV, go and watch live bands. His ability to buy records WAS limited by how much money he had and I think he turned out just fine.
I like that point; it's a good one. What I'm trying to get across here is that had Jimi been unable, during his formative years, to listen to music that he couldn't afford to purchase, he might not have been inspired to create his own. Lowery's approach would impose on similarly poor, upcoming musical geniuses a moral obligation *not* to listen to music that could shape their art in a critical manner at a formative time, simply because they can't afford to pay for it.
More generally I'm coming from the perspective that, because the benefits we get from music/art/literature cannot simply be reduced to a $ value, I'd prefer equal access to music/art/literature, regardless of ability to pay. A strict commoditized regime --slapping price tags on culture-- prevents equal access. I see Lowery's approach as one that, if carried to its natural conclusion, would slaps a price tag and a shoplifting alarm on things that offer encouragement, hope, inspiration, insight, and other such things that improve peoples' lives.
I'd like Lowery to go back in time and explain his you-must-pay-to-hear approach to one young, incredibly poor Jimi Hendrix. That guy started out playing a broom for fuck's sake; his first guitar had one goddamn string. Where would we all be now if Jimi's access to music should have been limited to the amount he could pay?
Lowery's approach would be accurate, if he were talking about selling appliances, or even band merchandise. Without further addressing the multiple mistaken premises (replace every instance of "the vast majority" with "a tiny minority", for starters), the main area he fails is his equivocation of music with a physical product.
We've become used to this model. It has driven pop music culture for close to a century; it's given us the "music star" celebrity model that we've become comfortable with. This approach has progressed naturally, and now we've reached the current point of American Idol-voted celebrity products.
What he overlooks is the natural power of music. Music, when at its best, can give courage to the otherwise cowardly, joy to those in pain, even trigger mystical experiences in the otherwise mundane. It can cement memories and bring people closer together.
The problem is when you slap a price tag and marketing on something that serves as a vehicle for these transformative experiences, a few nasty things happen. For one thing, you inevitably see a homogenization of music as salespersons try to maximize profit. Music is reduced to the lowest common denominator to maximize mass appeal, just like fast food. Services exist that compare proposed compositions to past hits in terms of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic structure -- you have people just rewriting variations on the same old tune. Quality is subjective though, and there's no real basis to say one song is better than another -- all that matters is the experience of the listener.
But the most insidious part of slapping price tags on transformative experiences is that you keep poor people from experiencing them. Can't afford to pay up? Tough shit son, you don't get to experience an essential aspect of your culture. Too poor? Sorry, this joy is reserved for those who can afford it.
I'm sure Lowery means well, but people like him are one reason why I'm a librarian. There must be a way for people to access vital, possibly transformative parts of our culture regardless of ability to pay. For the time being it seems like taxing society to provide public access to repositories of music, art, and literature, while not perfect, is the best workaround.
Spent a few weeks up at RMSC myself years ago. If the hard drives aren't SSDs, bumping them around in transit and while packing/unpacking might risk head crashes. Since you have a lot of them, cushion the drives on a layer or three of the zabutons you have lying around.
I really hope the stupa survives the fire. Please follow up after you're able to return, and good luck.
For as much dislike as I've seen for them here on /., a Chromebook w/ 3G is ideal for your scenario.
I was on a very tight budget last summer, had been relegated to only using my Android phone for a computer for a few weeks, and finally picked up a first generation Samsung Series 5. (It came with 2 years of minimal 3G connectivity; if you factored that into the price it was cheaper than anything else I could find.) It's tiny, light, the battery lasts longer than anything I've had, and you have a real keyboard and screen. It has been the perfect travel computing device: because it's so small and light it's not just easy to carry but easy to use (even while standing in line), and because it's based on the concept of remote storage the wireless connectivity is a focus of the OS. It's cheap enough that its destruction or theft won't completely wipe you out; the secure computing chip and remote storage focus mean you won't risk losing critical data just because you lose the hardware. Get an USB ethernet adapter for when a wireless network isn't available.
A few years before I picked up the Chromebook I tried using an Asus EEE Netbook for the same scenario, and I've found the Chromebook is much more suited to being an on-the-go travel device.
Ah, I don't have a separate television and I didn't realize you can't customize ads unless you were at a computer. I'd heard of the eHarmony anti-gay bigotry; I'd also heard that they reject atheists. Fuck that fucking company.
Anyway I've had limited success with customizing Hulu ads. For example, about half of the ads I get are for car insurance and/or cars -- I haven't owned a car since 2006. Since car share services like car2go and Zipcar more than meet my car needs, and are cheaper, more reliable, and more convenient, I have no plans to buy a car.
Still, the other half of the ads are usually blockbuster movie/game ads and the occasional tech/gear ad, which is about as accurate as I think they can get for me. While it is still widely off the mark most of the time, it is more accurately targeted than any other video ads I've yet to encounter.
Your anecdote seems to indicate that feedback button for the ad customization might go a long way for them.
Hulu at least does have an option to help them with ad customization. In the upper right corner of each ad is a dialog that reads "is this ad relevant to you? yes/no"
Selecting "no" on the least relevant ads does seem to reduce them, though not immediately nor completely. I'm not sure what "yes" does, because personally I hate ads and don't want to encourage any of them.
So then, why don't we have a Department of Offense instead of just a Department of Defense? If the lie, I mean creative labeling works for DOD, why not use it for hacking titles also?
DoD covers both: because the best defense is a good offense. This same kind of sports-based reasoning is also why we have "three strikes" laws, btw. Because nothing quite as accurate as a good sports analogy to explain how to kill a bunch of people and/or imprison them for life.
There's a reason that a human right to dignity is enshrined as the most basic right in the constitution of almost every democracy except that of the United States: because most people value a life of dignity. There's also a reason this is almost certainly news to you: your own ignorance.
And you're wrong the WBC is not just an excellent example but practically a textbook one of the conflict between human dignity and freedom of speech. Another great example is whether or not a society will permit Nazi parades.
Where has... I have to use your construction here... person W blamed person X for the unquestioning actions of person Y that were based on the speech of person Z because person X once previously said something? What exactly are you talking about? That makes almost no sense to me at all.
I'm afraid that I'm simply not understanding any point you're making beyond the several ways now you've said that "good," and other individual preferences are subjective, not objective. And that particular point seems to me like such an obvious given that I don't understand why you felt it was necessary to point out.
I'm not asking an endless series of "but, why?" questions here. If someone is going to assert that certain ideals are important above and beyond all other ideals, then asking two very basic questions --(1) what do those ideals mean, exactly? and (2) why are those ideals so important?-- should not be showstopper questions. If the person making such assertions is unable to answer these fundamental questions, then it indicates that they've simply accepted a belief system as a matter of faith or emotion.
I haven't asserted the supremacy of any ideal above all others. In fact I am very suspicious of anyone who does so... *because* (note! an explanation, a reason) that kind of belief sets the believer up to be manipulated so that others may profit and gain power. If people can be convinced to value some ideal even more than life itself, it's not difficult to convince these believers to risk and lose their lives for said unquestioned ideals.
So there you have my reasoning. What's yours?
It appears that you are unable to explain why you too, apparently and like GP, value "liberty and freedom of speech" above all else, without exception.
If someone elevates these concepts above all others, and is unable to enunciate why exactly they would do so, that would tend to indicate that such belief is more akin to a religious faith or a knee-jerk patriotism than a well-reasoned conclusion.
How about if someone rapes your daughter, films the act, and puts it on a billboard across the street from her school? Freedom is important, but it is not an absolute.
Use the film to prove the rape, prosecute the bastard and send him to a prison where someone else shows him what it is like. Also, prosecute the billboard owner for obscenity. Lets face it. The worst thing happening in that hypothetical situation is not that someone took pictures. It was rape.
Or, you could prevent your daughter being raped by depriving the rapist of his precious liberty before he rapes your daughter in the first place.
Why do you think this? And how do you define "liberty"? Life, for starters, seems like it a strong contender for more of a priority than freedom of speech, should the two things conflict. Living a life of dignity seems more valuable than freedom of speech in many cases where the two things conflict. (Easy example: the Westboro Baptist Church hate demonstrations.)
Maybe there's a well thought-out reason that you make this statement, but I suspect that most people waving that particular flag haven't bothered to think carefully about it at all.
If someone is going to raise a concept to a higher priority than life itself, I'd like to hear some very good reasoning behind it. Otherwise I don't see how one can distinguish this sentiment from that behind any other adrenaline-based flag-waving.
1. Changed my LinkedIn password
2. Went to the site, entered a fake, almost certainly unique password. Result?
"Looks like your password was not leaked. Hooray!"
3. Entered my old password -- a password now not used on any account. Result?
Your password was leaked and cracked. Sorry, friend.
Rats. Good catch, I used the wrong metric unit. That should be *milliseconds*, not microseconds. The abbreviation is ms.
I started learning *nix w/ FreeBSD back towards the end of the 4.x series, and stuck with FreeBSD through the beginning of 6.x. As fond as I am of the BSDs, they are fundamentally incompatible with multitrack *recording*.
Multitrack recording is where you record a track or tracks while listening to and playing along with a prerecorded track. This requires extremely low latency -- you need to be able to play something and hear it back as close to instantaneously as possible. Latency needs to be at a lower time threshold than you can perceive, and about 6 microsecond is the threshold (though that's pushing it.) Any latency larger than that, and the newly recorded tracks will be noticeably out of sync with the playback tracks.
This part is beyond my knowledge (please forgive and correct any inaccuracies, respected kernel hackers) but I'll share my understanding: Linux achieves low latency with real time interrupts -- several years ago Ingo Molnar created the first RT kernel patch for Linux. However, real time interrupts also, unfortunately, provide a vector for instability and insecurity, and BSD architecture intentionally disallows real-time interrupts to kernel space, from user space. Because of this, BSD latency is not low enough to allow for multitrack recording.
Pulse killed the possibility of multitrack recording studio on Linux. You can still look back and witness the dramatic die-off of multitrack Linux uses and discussion that coincide with the introduction of Pulse. It's like going back and looking at MySpace, or Friendster.
Right before Ubuntu brought in Pulse, I'd finally hit a sweet spot with Linux audio. With ALSA + qjackctl I was able to manage low-latency multitrack audio recording, and simultaneously have discrete control over the audio of all media players. Before pulse, I was able to use my terminal as a giant mixing board, managing recording and various media playback simultaneously. Different mixes and levels for different apps -- I was able to discretely control the audio levels and mixes for *each channel* in surround sound.
Pulse completely destroyed these capabilities, it eliminated the low-latency capability necessary for multitrack recording, and replaced it with frequent crashes, inconsistent behavior, and was tied in so deeply that Ubuntu has never since been capable of the audio layout I'd been using about five years ago.
Pulse is the single worst Linux move I've ever seen. In the interest of removing audio from the kernel space (necessary for low-latency), it simply eliminated what used to be advanced capabilities. Lennart Poettering, author of Pulse simply disregarded these concerns, waved his hands and said "that's not the concerns Pulse was designed to address!"
No shit, Lennart.
a hell of a lot more than it will Malcolm Gladwell.
I imaging that whenever you bring this up, you must get a lot of frustratingly condescending comments along the lines of "stop whining, it's simple math, consume fewer calories than you expend and you will lose weight."
Without that attitude, I'd like to point something out in your comment, and let you know what has helped me lose weight in a similar situation. You said you "try (your) best to eat healthy." That's almost certainly where your lifestyle is falling short. About a year ago I picked up a copy of a diet book --"Flat Belly Diet for Men" (I had to get the For Men one, natch.) I stuck with it for about a month, and didn't see much in the way of results. However, what I did learn in that month was how to properly apportion my sizes. It turned out that, while I was eating mostly healthy foods --whole grains, fresh fruit & veggies, very little in the way of sweets or processed sugar-- I was still consuming more calories of the healthy food per day than I would expend, even with three to four 5-6 mile runs per week. And a month was enough for me to pick up the habit, and be more conscious not only of the types of foods I was eating, but how much of that healthy food I was eating.
Fast forward a few months. I had to relocate for a new job, and was able to incorporate daily walking into my lifestyle without any particular effort -- basically I'd just walk to the store and buy as many groceries as I could carry by hand a few times a week, rather than fewer trips to pick up a carload of groceries. It transformed a sedentary act (driving) into low-level cardio (walking.) It might have taken longer, but then I also stopped going to the gym so ultimately there was no time loss. I kept up eating the portion sizes I'd learned a few months prior. During this time, I didn't hit the gym once, and frankly I still at relatively unhealthy types of food (lots of pizza and beer), but by keeping track of serving sizes and allowing for the calories in everything (including beer), I kept my daily caloric intake to the recommended level. In about 3 months, without making any particular effort, I dropped over 20 lbs.
Point is, don't just pay attention to the types of food (healthy -v- unhealthy), but pay close attention to the *proper amounts* of healthy foods to eat, and the extra pounds will drop. Flat Belly Diet worked for me because it was basically a per-meal recipe book; other systems do something similar. But if you spend a few weeks serving your meals from measuring cups, you will almost certainly find that you've been consuming more calories than you expend. In my case, it required no extra time, no time at the gym, saved the gas money I'd have spent going to and from the store, and as an added bonus, the extra attention I paid to serving sizes meant I saved money on groceries, also.
Contrast this with the legal field in which women and men are represented in equal numbers. The difference is that anyone who works in the legal profession is trained to understand why sexual harassment is wrong for both moral and legal reasons. You don't see women being objectified in legal conventions.
I work in the legal field, I'm male, and can assure you that you're wrong. Had you read *anything* about this you'd know that, but I suspect this is a case where you arrived at your conclusion first, then made up what you hope is reality to support it.
Since your opinion is based on inaccurate info, you need to reexamine your conclusions -- they are probably also inaccurate.
To clarify, no, women and men are not represented in equal numbers in the legal field. Bring yourself up to speed:
In 2011, women made up 31.9% of all lawyers. Women were 45.4% of associates in 2011. Women were 47.7% of summer associates in 2011. Given the same rate of change, Catalyst estimates that it will take more than a woman lawyer's lifetime to achieve equality.
There is a drastic difference between women and men at the highest levels in law firms. According to a recent survey of law firms, 11% of the largest law firms in the U.S. have no women on their governing committees, women partners constituted only 16% of those partners receiving credit for having $500,000 worth of business or more.
Only 23% of all federal judgeships were held by women, and only 27% of state judgeships were held by women. In one study of law school faculty, only 20.6% of law school deans were women. In a survey of the 50 best law firms for women, 10% of firm chairpersons were women, 12% of the firms had women managing partners, 19% of the equity partners were women, 28% of the nonequity partners were women, and 41% of the of-counsels were women.
What you have is almost-not-quote equal numbers of men and women in law school, but continued inequality in professional legal positions. Source = http://www.catalyst.org/publication/246/women-in-law-in-the-us
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
Why it's suddenly outrageous if attractive women even hypothetically complain about their job puzzles me. I've yet to run into a person who would continue to work at their current job if they didn't have to for the money. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's why they pay people -- no one wants to do any of this shit we spend most of our lives doing, at least not for free. We need to be paid to do it.
Getting paid doesn't magically make the downsides of a job magically disappear. It's just crap that we're willing to put up with in exchange for money. We do not surrender our right to complain about the things that suck about it, just because money is involved. So yes, let's invite the booth girls to our support group, because --whaddayaknow?-- their job sucks, too.
What MPAA wants to disallow is in bold...
"If the Court is willing to consider allowing access for users such as Mr. Goodwin to allow retrieval of files, it is essential that the mechanism include a procedure that ensures that any materials the users access and copy or download are not files that have been illegally uploaded to their accounts."
To that, I'll add "allegedly illegally uploaded." The court as a finder of law can't determine that the files were illegally uploaded; a finder of fact (jury) needs to do that.
It doesn't help that Obama has basically done at best nothing to curb the excesses and crimes of the financial sector. Only Madoff has been imprisoned.
While I appreciate the rest of your point, this claim bugs me. It's not accurate, but it gets self-reinforcing echo chamber treatment. Compare the # of successful DOJ financial fraud prosecutions during W's administration with those of O's. http://www.stopfraud.gov/news-index.html While a fairly recent report points out that the raw number of financial fraud prosecutions has continued to decrease over the past 20 years, that study fails to distinguish between a $15,000 credit card scam and a $60 million dollar conspiracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Rajaratnam#Conviction_and_imprisonment_for_insider_trading (Can you name one big financial fraud or insider trading prosecution from 2000-2008?)
From what I've seen, high-profile financial fraud prosecutions --going after the big players-- has increased. The most recent big-fish on trial is Rajat Gupta, ex-Goldman Sachs guy. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/22/a-guide-to-the-gupta-trial/