"Relatively short drive"? If you live in Berne, Multimap is giving me over 100 miles each way to get to a likely town outside Swizerland. Man, you've got to really want that game!
If you don't think 100 miles each way is a "relatively short drive" then I'm guessing you're European. Few Americans think much of driving such a distance for trivial things -- heck, some do it just to get to and from work every day! But then, since we're talking about Europeans then I guess you have a point....
And what about people working very hard at off-shore oil platforms? Can we use them? I'm pretty sure that their wage is somewhat lower than the average artist on tour, but they have to do it anyway.
Do you really think it's that lucrative to play a 90 minute set at a smoky club in Knoxville at 10:00 on a Tuesday night? It's not. The "average artist on tour" is often lucky to make enough to pay for that night's hotel room, frequently crashes on the floors or couches of fans, and prays that nothing happens to the van so they don't have to cancel gigs and blow a week's worth income on a mechanic. This on top of taking a break from or quitting their day jobs and, in many cases, leaving family behind to tour. Even so, they generally still make more money this way than from selling CDs. People working at off-shore oil platforms, on the other hand, are paid very well and get large chunks of time off. For many on the rig it's a far more physically demanding job than that of a touring musician, but I'm not convinced it's more emotionally demanding. It is a hell of a lot more lucrative than touring is for the "average artist on tour".
So poor artists with their luxury hotel rooms, first-class plane seats, 50 foot long limousines and multi million dollar contracts can't stand tour pressure? Too bad. Makes me cry.
That describes the life of the "average artist on tour" about as well as it describes the life of the average IT professional.
If I were coding this site, complete with online backup of purchased tunes, there's no way I'd actually keep 89,227 copies of Britney Spears' latest toxic waste on my servers at 4MB (give or take) per copy. No, I'd keep a DB table of links to one master copy of the file
That sounds like an awful lot of work to save a few cents on storage. And besides, how do you decide whether two files are the same? Compare checksums? You'll still end up with a separate copy of the same song for every bit rate your users have selected and each encoder or download source your customers use. On top of that, for each of those you'll end up with separate copies of each song for each variation on the file's metadata (e.g., if somebody uploads a file by "Britny Spears" you can't very well return them one by "Britney Spears"). I don't know about you, but I frequently edit my tracks' metadata and I'd be pretty irritated if a service that is just supposed to store my files were to purposely alter them. I suppose you could strip the metadata out, store it in another DB table, and reinsert it when the user demands, but then you're doing even more work, not to mention that with many files any such alteration might constitute a clear violation of the DMCA.
So, almost certainly their backup service is a massive shared folder that all their backup service users have access to.
So... You UPS your encrypted laptop (and your clothes, shampoo, etc.) to wherever you are going and get on the airplane with as little technology as you are willing to lose when you travel.
Shipping, instead of carrying, across international borders doesn't get you around Customs. I've never seen the point in shipping my laptop, but my brother has tried shipping his to Mexico twice with no success -- each time, Customs has held the laptop for several weeks, then sent it back to the US with no explanation. If Customs wants your laptop they're going to take it regardless of whether you carry it or ship it. And for safe shipping, UPS? Really? I have never permanently lost anything to an airline (including a sketchy Russian one that held my bags in Moscow during a 36-hour delay), TSA, Customs, or any other shipper, but UPS manages to permanently lose my stuff on a fairly regular basis. In fact, just yesterday they admitted to doing it with an important time-sensitive document. (I quit using them years ago, but I can't stop others from using them when they ship to me.)
Either way, neither of the two are complete solutions like so many want to believe. Relying on the sun for power is not feasible for anything other than base load stuff. When usage starts peaking there is no way to get the sun to send down more energy.
Well you're half-right. Photovoltaics can't run overnight without storage, and that alone disqualifies them as baseload in the vast majority of cases. However, in many locations, peak power production from PV tracks peak demand pretty well, so PV's ideal use would be to displace peaking plants that burn fossil fuels. Even where it doesn't track peak use as well it can displace intermediate load plants. Anything that can't run overnight can ever be called a baseload plant, though.
Solar thermal plants store quite a bit of heat energy in their working fluid and do so very efficiently, so they can continue working overnight and are much more promising than PV as a baseload technology. Despite the low cost compared to many other technologies, though, solar thermal is still a little on the expensive side for baseload generation. Plus, the need to focus the sunlight on the working fluid ensures that it is only useful in areas with few clouds.
It's all about finding the right combination.
As it has always been. In the U.S. no one energy source has provided more than 55% of our electricity in a given year for at least 60 years.
Now, I'll grant that the fact this was sent through the mail complicates the issue (and probably makes this a gift), but let's say it was delivered by personal courier. In that case, I think it's very hard to say that there was no contract. Under traditional notions of contract law, use of the CD after acceptance by a courier, preexisting contract or not, would be an offer-acceptance and, a contract.
So now I'm curious. Only once have I ever accepted a promo CD knowingly and without paying for it, and it was handed to me by a record label rep after a concert in a small club. He handed it to me without a word as I was exiting the club. Does a contract exist?
A few others I've purchased at used record stores. I have no idea of their provenance, and I doubt any record label does either. Does a contract exist?
Several others have been given to me without my knowledge, hidden inside magazines I have purchased (the CDs were marked as promo copies not for retail sale) or promotional gift bags given to me at events sponsored by organizations like liquor companies and TV networks. When I don't even know I'm receiving it, does a contract exist?
If a contract exists in some cases and not in others, to whom does the burden of proving the provenance of the CD in question fall? It seems that would be particularly difficult in the case of a CD that has passed through many hands.
Is the doctrine of first sale not a statutory contract in some fashion?
Finally, if the promo CD is contractually the property of the record company and I no longer wish to store it for them, whose responsibility (contractually speaking) are the costs associated with returning it? If those costs are the responsibility of the record company and the company declines to pay them, does that dissolve the contract?
I don't think they're the property of the label, strictly, but the labels and the media endpoints that consume the NFR discs both benefit from having them. Maybe selling them is de jure legal, but it's really dickish.
I suppose if you work at a radio station or you're a record reviewer then selling them is "dickish," but those aren't the only people the labels give them to. I am neither of those things, yet I have had quite a few of CDs marked NFR. I came by each in a different manner and I can only remember one that I accepted knowing beforehand that it was marked NFR. One came with a magazine that I bought because I wanted to read the magazine, not because I wanted the CD (and there was no way for me to see that the CD was marked NFR until I opened the plastic bag the magazine was sealed in). Another was slipped into a gift bag I was given at a bar "party" sponsored by a liquor company. I didn't even know it was in there -- let alone marked NFR -- until I got home. Several others I don't even remember how I got. I agree that the labels and the "media endpoints" both benefit from having them, but I hate getting them because they're invariably worthless to me. I realize record labels are just trying to promote their music, but they're inconveniencing me by slipping CDs I don't want into my home surreptitiously and now they want me to store those CDs indefinitely in case they decide they want them back? Sorry, that's not going to happen. If I throw away, give away, or even sell NFR CDs that I didn't want in the first place then I'm not going feel "dickish" about it.
Allow me to clarify my response regarding Jim Crow laws. For awhile the Supreme Court upheld them. Now, I admit I haven't read the Court's opinions on the matter, but I have the distinct impression that the rights of the states to determine voting eligibility had a lot to do with it. At any rate, it wasn't until the Court began to see Jim Crow laws as disenfranchising voters on the basis of race -- and thus in violation of the 15th Amendment -- that it began to strike them down. Eventually, Congress ended all controversy about the laws with the Voting Rights Act, which the 15th Amendment gave it the power to enact.
In the end, I think Jim Crow laws not only don't falsify my assertion, but prove it quite well.
Have you ever read the Constitution? For starters, the 14th Amendment [usconstitution.net] specifies that people denied the vote for "participation in rebellion or other crime" still be counted for purposes of apportioning Representatives, implying that voting is not a right.
Apparently having read it does nothing for your comprehension of it.
That's a pretty ironic statement, considering that your comprehension of my comment seems to be about zero. I'm well aware of how Representatives are apportioned, but that's beside the point. I used the 14th Amendment as an example of the Constitution explicitly mentioning otherwise vote-eligible people being legally denied the vote. That's exactly the sort of example the comment I responded to asked for. I can't help that the language is buried in an Amendment having to do with apportionment of Representatives.
The removal of the right to vote from criminals by due process of law in no way changes the fact that it is a right.
Then let me correct myself: The right to vote is not a Constitutionally guaranteed right. If you disagree, please point to where in the Constitution it is guaranteed.
They're free to put whatever other restrictions they wish on voting.
No they aren't. Jim Crow laws are an example that falsifies your assertion.
How do Jim Crow laws falsify my assertion? Before you answer, keep in mind that in the sentence prior to the one you quoted I explicitly cited the 15th Amendment and its prohibition on denying voting rights on the basis of race. I think I understand what you're getting at -- things like literacy tests and poll taxes that applied to everybody, but disproportionately disenfranchised blacks -- but the Supreme Court eventually struck many of these down and Congress took care of the rest with the Voting Rights Act (under powers granted it by the 15th Amendment). Voter ID laws in some states are under a similar challenge for being discriminitory against minority populations, but they may survive and continue to exist for now.
Except that slumps are already accounted for--they're just normal random distribution. Slumps and "hot streaks" can only be identified after the fact, and they turn out to be just what you'd expect in a random deviation from the mean. Toss an unbiased coin 1000 times and you'll see "hot streaks" and "slumps" of heads.
You're assuming the probability distribution doesn't change over the course of a season. That's a reasonable assumption when you're tossing a coin -- the weight distribution of the coin doesn't change from toss to toss -- but I'm not sure that's a reasonable assumption for a batter going through the emotional and physical ups and downs of a baseball season and facing pitchers of varying skill. Coins don't have good and bad days, but people do.
Why should I give two shits what concerns the record companies?
I'm not saying you should, but I fail to see how the OP was wrong in saying that record companies provide the music that the music-buying public has collectively decided is "the best." Your personal taste in music is completely and utterly irrelevant.
contrary to popular belief the industry has far more failures than it has successes
I said that.
Not that I can see.
If they knew what sold they wouldn't have, now would they?
Give me a break. Nobody can predict what will sell and what won't with 100% accuracy. And perhaps the intent of my comment isn't 100% clear from the context, but with the successes/failures thing I was referring primarily to band that are record company "creations" like boy bands and Kevin Federline. With bands they sign through the A&R process I think their expectations are more modest and their success rate much higher (as measured against those expectations). And it makes sense purely from a business perspective -- and remember, that is their perspective -- the "creations" are high-risk, high-reward, while the regular signings are less risky but generally have a smaller upside.
You mean the fourteen year old girle who get their parents to buy her CDs for them. Making a demographic that has no income your primary target is pretty foolish. But that's the MAFIAA labels for you.
It's also clothing and makeup companies, for-profit web sites, and other niche businesses. The income of the demographic isn't important to them, it's what the demographic spends that counts. And the fact is, where teen girls were spending hardly anything a few decades ago they're now spending quite a lot of money, regardless of where it comes from. Perhaps that just means that they are deciding how a chunk of their parents' money is spent, but the important part (to marketers) is that they are the ones doing the deciding.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data"
There are no data.
Sure there are. You think the RIAA doesn't have a pretty good idea of how many girls 13-15 buy Britney Spears and how many buy ska?
"Voting is a privilege, not a right as some would have us believe."
I need for you to point out to me in the Constitution where you got that ridiculous assertion.
Have you ever read the Constitution? For starters, the 14th Amendment specifies that people denied the vote for "participation in rebellion or other crime" still be counted for purposes of apportioning Representatives, implying that voting is not a right. More importantly, nowhere does it guarantee voting rights to anybody for any reason -- eligibility to vote is left completely up to the states, and prior to the 17th Amendment the only office for which it even mandated a popular vote was Representative. The 17th Amendment mandates a popular vote for Senator, but even now it doesn't require a popular vote for President -- your state legislature can forego the popular vote for the Presidential election and choose your state's Electors itself, or empower the Governor to do so, or choose them with a coin flip if it wishes.
Now it's true that the 15th, 18th, and 26th Amendments prohibit states from denying or abridging voting "rights" on the basis of race, gender, and age, but beyond that it still leaves voting eligibility up to the states. They're free to put whatever other restrictions they wish on voting. Many states deny the vote to felons, for example, and a growing number deny it to people without government-issued photo ID.
They historically provided, out of economic necessity, whatever music was (subjectively) "the best."
You're wrong.
That quite misses the point, now doesn't it? Where record companies are concerned, "the best" = "whatever sells". They do focus groups and market certain bands to try to make it easier to predict who will sell big, minimizing their financial risk. Marketing surely has some affect on what "the masses" choose to listen to, but contrary to popular belief the industry has far more failures than it has successes, and the idea that they force-feed us whatever music they decide they want to sell is a myth. If it weren't, Kevin Federline and Vitamin C would have music careers right now, Liz Phair would be a pop diva, and music execs would be the world's richest men for having found the Holy Grail of marketing: how to make us buy whatever they tell us to.
You might not like what's popular, and you can probably even make a coherent argument about why Britney Spears is without artistic merit. But you know what? The 14-year-old girls who buy her CDs think Led Zeppelin sucks. If you want record companies to push music you like, these are the people you have to convert to your point of view.
The critics panned [Led Zeppelin] and they never got any airplay; at least until non-critics and non-radio people found them.
I think you're engaging in a little romanticism here. First off, yes, critics panned their first album, but that has nothing to do with the issue at hand -- how the record company promoted them. According to Robert Plant, Atlantic was ecstatic about their first record. As for never getting any airplay, well, I can't tell you what you do and don't remember. However, I do know that after Atlantic sent promo copies of Led Zeppelin (the album) out to radio and critics they received 50,000 pre-orders and started the band touring the US before the record was even released. It was so successful that Atlantic had the band record Led Zeppelin II during tour stops and released it just nine months later. Just a year after Led Zeppelin's debut it had had a #10 album (Led Zeppelin), a #1 album (Led Zeppelin II), and a #4 song ("Whole Lotta Love").
None of that necessarly means they got airplay, of course, but it does mean that whatever problems Led Zeppelin had in getting heard were not the fault of the record company and were incredibly short-lived by the standards of most bands.
My crazy friend Tom Egbert called me up one day after school. "Man, you GOT to hear this album! It ROCKS!" He was right: the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced kicked ass! He never got any airplay, either.
Another poor example. Hendrix was wildly popular in Europe, particularly the UK (where he had several top-10 singles before he had even recorded a full album), and sold a whole lot of records for about a year before the Monterey Pop Festival. His record company tried to sell him in the US, but nobody was buying until a whole lot of influential critics and musicians saw him live at Monterey. It's true that they had trouble figuring out how to market him to a US audience because of his flamboyance and the prevailing sense that his wasn't the kind of music that black people make, and maybe they screwed that up, but they did try.
I'm no big defender of major record labels, but if you're looking for examples of them failing to recognize greatness then Zeppelin and Hendrix are not a good place to start. I would probably have picked the A&R guy who passed on The Beatles.
My oldest daughter is mentally handicapped. She likes the rap they play on the radio. My youngest (just turned 21) otoh is "gifted". She listened to punk and ska - and you didn't hear either of those genres on the radio (and never have outside the college stations).
Yes, you'd need the variance and not just the mean, and you'd need a suitable distribution
That would be another way to do it, sure. You could also use a Markov chain with states corresponding to slumping/not slumping (or something like that). Bootstrapping might not be a bad way to go, either. It all depends on how much computational effort you want to expend and how well suited these various methods are to the actual statistics (that's a project unto itself). Even then, the decisions a batter and a team's manager make in the real world depend very much on the in-game situation and whether or not a player is slumping. If Joe DiMaggio isn't going into game 45 of his hitting streak, for example, then maybe on his last at-bat of the game the manager has him sacrifice bunt instead of trying to get a hit.
Because of that, I can understand why the study's authors took the approach they did -- from a statistical standpoint, you can argue with the method, but more rigorous methods won't necessarily be reflective of the real world (or a "real" parallel universe). That's why I suggested using something like a 10-game moving average: I think it strikes a balance between rigor and real-world insight, particularly since this isn't exactly an earth-shatteringly important topic. That's just armchair statistics, though.
By assuming the hitter's probability of getting a hit is equal to his season average the researchers don't take into account that most, if not all, batters have a higher batting average at some points in the season than they do in others. As one with experience in Monte Carlo simulations I know that taking that into account would complicate the analysis considerably, but I suspect their results would be a bit different if they even did something as simple as using a 10-game moving average of the batter's average.
I believe that World War II had a significant effect on the technological advances made between 1928 and 1968. During wartime various governments were able to ramrod through all sorts of stuff under emergency powers. These days... not so much...
On technology, yes, and not just because of emergency powers -- they simply had greater freedom to spend more on technology to support the war effort. And that technology certainly affected telecom infrastructure after the war. But development of other infrastructure, like the national highway system and rural electrification, both began well before the war (in part as Depression-era make-work programs), and development of the interstate highway system didn't begin until well after the war (though it was sold, in part, as vital to national security).
In most Western countries the public sector grew from perhaps 10% of GDP in 1815 to over a third now: that's what financed all those new services. Today we pay taxes just to keep what we have.
That may be, but my point still stands: The projections in the article (in a US publication) were made at a time when the US had been spending massively on infrastructure for decades, so it seems likely that to the author it was entirely plausible that major changes and improvements to infrastructure could occur. US government spending as a percentage of GDP in 2005 was approximately the same as it was in 1968, so perhaps as you say the money is now spent on keeping what we have, but where US infrastructure is concerned the $3+ trillion I referred to was an estimate of how much money must be spent in addition to what we're already spending -- and that is just to keep what we have. The study that made the claim came in the wake of a series of major events that showed just how weak our infrastructure is: a series of levee collapses that nearly destroyed a major city, the sudden collapse of the main highway bridge in a major city, rolling blackouts in California, and a blackout caused by a single tree that affected the entire northeastern part of the US, to name a few.
As for the magnitude of public spending in Western countries, aside from 1992 the only time the US government has ever spent as much as a third of GDP was during World War II (and even then it never exceeded 35%). During the time of the US's greatest public works projects it spent between 15% (before the war) and 25% (after the war) of GDP. In 2005 it was about 27% of GDP, and if that $3+ trillion were financed over 10 years in addition to current expenditures that would only rise to 30%. Now, I realize that in The Netherlands the government spends 38% of GDP, but if you think your infrastructure problems are as bad as the ones here then you'll be the first European I've met who believes that. We in the US have simply chosen to prioritize low taxes over all else.
Today the average NATO country spends about 2% of GDP on defence, for 63 years of no foreign invasions, no pillaged cities, no naval blockades crippling the economy, and no famines.
There is simply no money for big new projects like the highways
And yet it was during those 63 years that not just the highway systems of the US and Europe were built, but telecom infrastructure, rural electrification, and the rebuilding of war-ravaged Europe. The point being that the reason there is no money for big new projects is because we (meaning Western governments) have chosen to prioritize services over infrastructure. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what the tradeoffs are. The author of the article in question, though, clearly didn't predict that government spending would shift in that manner.
By my standards resolving the current US budget deficit problem would already be a heroic feat for the next US president.
I don't think I'd call it heroic, at least not in terms of the effort required, particularly if the next president gets us out of Iraq -- after all, the budget deficit was already resolved before the current president took office, lowered taxes on the wealthy, and started an unnecessary war. What would be truly heroic is a significant reduction in the national debt.
He describes a world where the entire infrastructure has essentially been rebuilt in 40 years. I can't see how that would have seemed plausible even back then.
Well, 40 years prior to 1968 there were no interstates and the country had only a handful of major highways. Rural areas not only didn't have electricity, but many believed that rural electrification was impossible. Commercial aviation was virtually nonexistent. Commercial radio had existed for only a few years and television was still experimental, with the first commercially licensed television stations more than a decade away. Telephone service wasn't entirely novel, but telephones at home weren't the norm, either.
So yes, I can see how in 1968 it would have seemed plausible to rebuild our entire infrastructure in the span of 40 years. I think part of the reason it seems implausible in hindsight is that over the past 40 years we simply haven't spent the massive sums on public works that we did from the 1930s to the 1960s. In fact, we went in quite the opposite direction in spending on our infrastructure, and now by at least one estimate we need to spend $3+ trillion just to keep what we have already built from falling apart (let alone improve or replace it).
It does NOT suck to be an engineering student. If - and here's the big part - if you like engineering. If you're in this because you parents told you to do it, or because you think there's big money in it - there's the door and don't let it hit you in the ass.
Absolutely agreed! The engineers I know who got into it for the paycheck also tend to be the ones who are unhappy with their jobs and aren't very good engineers. The ones who got into because they love it are the ones advancing at work and living happy, fulfilled lives. Of all the engineering students from college that I'm still in touch with, by far the most successful ones -- regardless of GPA, because they didn't all have stellar GPAs -- are the engineering geeks who didn't talk constantly about how much money they'd make after graduation.
I've noticed that whenever somebody makes a claim about engineering being harder than some other subject, what they are really talking about in almost every case is not how hard it is to honestly learn or excel in the field, but how hard it is to slack. Ask somebody why they thought an engineering course was hard and the answer will almost always have to do with the amount of work required to pass. Ask why they thought a humanities course was easy in comparison and the answer will likely have to do with how little work was required to pass. The operative phrase here is "to pass" -- not to learn the material, not to master the subject, not to excel, but to earn a passing grade.
In the end, I don't think it's harder to excel in engineering than it is in the humanities, but I do think it is harder to slack in engineering, probably because its objectivity makes slackers easier to spot. This makes me suspicious of engineers who whine about how much harder engineering is, since to me it implies they're slackers and not very enthusiastic about engineering. I don't know if that's fair, but I'll take enthusiasm over arrogance any day.
There is a general impression on Slashdot among the more ignorant that humanities classes are a joke. I think a lot of it is based on the fact that, yes, introductory humanities classes, aimed at people just out of high school, tend to not be especially difficult. It's more likely that a science or engineering major will take these classes than the upper level ones. Taking an upper level philosophy or linguistics or history course (or even a low-level classics course) would probably disabuse them of the notion.
I absolutely agree. I formed my opinion on this back when I was an undergrad at one of the top engineering schools in the country. I noticed that the engineering students who thought the humanities and social sciences were easy tended to be the same ones who, before registration each semester, would announce their intention to take the simplest courses possible to fulfill the requirements for their degrees. When your liberal arts experience consists of performing the minimum possible work to earn a decent grade in a series of courses ending in "101" you are probably not qualified to speak about how difficult a degree in the subject might be. My housemates all through college were liberal arts majors and I saw just how hard they worked -- many of them worked harder than me, though they also tended to be intelligent people who were very passionate about what they were learning. At one point I took a 300-level english course that proved to be my toughest class that semester, though that was helped out by the fact that one of the 400-level engineering courses I had that same semester was by far the easiest course I took at any level in college, bar none. Of course, the professor who taught that course only cared about you if you were a cigarette....
But I look forward to a day when engineering, science, and humanities majors can put aside their differences, come together in a spirit of unity, and make fun of business majors.
For the excessively high prices of undergrad' degrees, you better have a trade when you are done.
Then choose a course of study that provides you a trade. You tell the university what kind of education you wish to receive, not the other way around. Yes, it takes some foresight and planning, but that's part of being an adult.
sure, money isn't EVERYTHING, but it's about 90% of it. when your all grown up and have a house and other responsibilites like a family, you'll learn you'd happily shovel shit for a living if it paid the right money.
Wow! That's an awfully depressing outlook on life. In fact, it makes me really happy I went to grad school. I was making really good money doing something that was not terribly satisfying and realized that I was going to be miserable all my life if I spent it shoveling shit just because it paid well. I took a $40,000/yr pay cut AND had to buy my own health insurance, but I sure was a whole hell of a lot happier.
you'll have to go into a graduate program after getting your engineering degree, where they will teach you how things are really done and pay you shit money for the pleasure.
You either went through one unique graduate program or you didn't go through one at all -- I've never heard anybody claim that a graduate program will "teach you how things are really done"! Sure, I got shit money in grad school, but in terms of work I largely got to choose the projects I worked on, hardly ever had to meet a deadline, dressed however I pleased, came and went from the office as I pleased, etc. Grad school taught me a lot of things, but "how things are really done" was definitely not one of them.
Also, having studied abroad is something that would look very good on your CV.
Having studied, yes. Having a degree from abroad -- not necessarily. Right or wrong, and for better or for worse, there are a lot of employers in the US who will: (a) take that as a sign you weren't good enough to get into a US school, (b) decline to interview you because you didn't obtain your degree from an institution accredited by one or more US accreditation bodies, or (c) decline to interview you because they can't figure you how to interpret your transcript and compare it to their other applicants. The more advanced your degree the less likely you are to have problems of this nature, but it still isn't easy. And I can tell you from experience -- both personal and otherwise -- that it works similarly in Europe too, at least for Americans.
Try reading the parent post a little more closely: "philosophy of religion" is NOT the same thing as "religious philosophy".
Okay, I'll grant you that and agree that it's an important distinction. That doesn't change the fact that all sides need to make a better effort to understand where the others are coming from if they are ever to come to a mutually satisfactory resolution. I applaud Dawkins for making the effort, but as you said, he falls short. I think he's also a bit antagonistic, which doesn't help matters (though I'm sure his publisher doesn't mind).
Then again, most of your "evangelical" Christians don't know much either--theological sophistication has really taken a beating in the US lately.
I couldn't agree more. I think the evangelical movement was organized more for political than religious reasons, though, and for the rank-and-file members whose spiritual guidance is now filtered through politicians it's hard for their theological sophistication not to take a beating.
mp3 downloading almost certainly *could* kill CD sales in 5-10 years.
So what? People don't exist to support business, people choose the businesses they wish to support on the basis of which ones provide what they want at a price they're willing to pay. Businesses that can't do that receive no support and, well, go out of business. After all, do you buy milk just to support the dairy industry? I doubt it. If bands still make music and people still have a means to access it then why should anybody care whether it's provided by a record company or by somebody else?
So an illegal practice is threatening their business, and they should react by enhancing their product at much more cost to themselves?
First off, the government cannot punish you for copyright infringement, it only greases the wheels for copyright holders to collect damages from infringers. That makes it unlawful, not illegal. It might seem like a quibble, but it's something that any business that bases its income on copyrighted material must be mindful of since it means the government won't foot the bill for pursuing infringers. It is a financial risk like any other. That doesn't excuse piracy, of course, but this has been a fact of life in the music business for literally hundreds of years. Thus far, the industry has always found ways to adapt to or account for changes in technology, and when it stops being able to do that it will die.
Second, it is not at all clear that this practice is hurting their business. Music sales are down, sure, and there are studies suggesting that piracy has played a role in that. However, there are also studies suggesting that piracy has not played a role in the decline, and there are a lot of other reasons that might explain it: the popularity of other activities like video gaming and the internet, lack of quality music, the poor economy, and the RIAA lawsuits, just to name a few. In addition, several record executives have worried publicly that the popularity of legal downloads is hurting their business, since a lot of people are now spending $0.99 to buy one track instead of $15 for the whole CD. Finally, there is also anecdotal evidence that piracy has actually increased sales, though I'm not aware of any published studies that make that claim.
In the end, it all comes back to offering people a product they want at a price they're willing to pay. Period. Internet downloads, legal or otherwise, and a growing number of established and unknown musicians have reduced the price people are willing to pay for recorded music. Why should that be my problem?
For the record, I've never knowingly downloaded music illegally, but thanks in large part to the RIAA's lawsuits and the prevalence of DRM I've pared my CD-buying habit down from about two per week to about 2 per year (new music has sucked in recent years, but there's a huge back catalog of stuff I want so that hasn't really been a factor). Now that legal, DRM-free downloads are becoming more widely available I might add a few singles to that total, but I alone have reduced the RIAA's sales by about 200 CDs per year without pirating a single thing. Data is not the plural of anecdote, I know, but still....
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If you don't think 100 miles each way is a "relatively short drive" then I'm guessing you're European. Few Americans think much of driving such a distance for trivial things -- heck, some do it just to get to and from work every day! But then, since we're talking about Europeans then I guess you have a point....
Do you really think it's that lucrative to play a 90 minute set at a smoky club in Knoxville at 10:00 on a Tuesday night? It's not. The "average artist on tour" is often lucky to make enough to pay for that night's hotel room, frequently crashes on the floors or couches of fans, and prays that nothing happens to the van so they don't have to cancel gigs and blow a week's worth income on a mechanic. This on top of taking a break from or quitting their day jobs and, in many cases, leaving family behind to tour. Even so, they generally still make more money this way than from selling CDs. People working at off-shore oil platforms, on the other hand, are paid very well and get large chunks of time off. For many on the rig it's a far more physically demanding job than that of a touring musician, but I'm not convinced it's more emotionally demanding. It is a hell of a lot more lucrative than touring is for the "average artist on tour".
That describes the life of the "average artist on tour" about as well as it describes the life of the average IT professional.
That sounds like an awful lot of work to save a few cents on storage. And besides, how do you decide whether two files are the same? Compare checksums? You'll still end up with a separate copy of the same song for every bit rate your users have selected and each encoder or download source your customers use. On top of that, for each of those you'll end up with separate copies of each song for each variation on the file's metadata (e.g., if somebody uploads a file by "Britny Spears" you can't very well return them one by "Britney Spears"). I don't know about you, but I frequently edit my tracks' metadata and I'd be pretty irritated if a service that is just supposed to store my files were to purposely alter them. I suppose you could strip the metadata out, store it in another DB table, and reinsert it when the user demands, but then you're doing even more work, not to mention that with many files any such alteration might constitute a clear violation of the DMCA.
I find that extremely unlikely.
Shipping, instead of carrying, across international borders doesn't get you around Customs. I've never seen the point in shipping my laptop, but my brother has tried shipping his to Mexico twice with no success -- each time, Customs has held the laptop for several weeks, then sent it back to the US with no explanation. If Customs wants your laptop they're going to take it regardless of whether you carry it or ship it. And for safe shipping, UPS? Really? I have never permanently lost anything to an airline (including a sketchy Russian one that held my bags in Moscow during a 36-hour delay), TSA, Customs, or any other shipper, but UPS manages to permanently lose my stuff on a fairly regular basis. In fact, just yesterday they admitted to doing it with an important time-sensitive document. (I quit using them years ago, but I can't stop others from using them when they ship to me.)
Well you're half-right. Photovoltaics can't run overnight without storage, and that alone disqualifies them as baseload in the vast majority of cases. However, in many locations, peak power production from PV tracks peak demand pretty well, so PV's ideal use would be to displace peaking plants that burn fossil fuels. Even where it doesn't track peak use as well it can displace intermediate load plants. Anything that can't run overnight can ever be called a baseload plant, though.
Solar thermal plants store quite a bit of heat energy in their working fluid and do so very efficiently, so they can continue working overnight and are much more promising than PV as a baseload technology. Despite the low cost compared to many other technologies, though, solar thermal is still a little on the expensive side for baseload generation. Plus, the need to focus the sunlight on the working fluid ensures that it is only useful in areas with few clouds.
As it has always been. In the U.S. no one energy source has provided more than 55% of our electricity in a given year for at least 60 years.
So now I'm curious. Only once have I ever accepted a promo CD knowingly and without paying for it, and it was handed to me by a record label rep after a concert in a small club. He handed it to me without a word as I was exiting the club. Does a contract exist?
A few others I've purchased at used record stores. I have no idea of their provenance, and I doubt any record label does either. Does a contract exist?
Several others have been given to me without my knowledge, hidden inside magazines I have purchased (the CDs were marked as promo copies not for retail sale) or promotional gift bags given to me at events sponsored by organizations like liquor companies and TV networks. When I don't even know I'm receiving it, does a contract exist?
If a contract exists in some cases and not in others, to whom does the burden of proving the provenance of the CD in question fall? It seems that would be particularly difficult in the case of a CD that has passed through many hands.
Is the doctrine of first sale not a statutory contract in some fashion?
Finally, if the promo CD is contractually the property of the record company and I no longer wish to store it for them, whose responsibility (contractually speaking) are the costs associated with returning it? If those costs are the responsibility of the record company and the company declines to pay them, does that dissolve the contract?
I suppose if you work at a radio station or you're a record reviewer then selling them is "dickish," but those aren't the only people the labels give them to. I am neither of those things, yet I have had quite a few of CDs marked NFR. I came by each in a different manner and I can only remember one that I accepted knowing beforehand that it was marked NFR. One came with a magazine that I bought because I wanted to read the magazine, not because I wanted the CD (and there was no way for me to see that the CD was marked NFR until I opened the plastic bag the magazine was sealed in). Another was slipped into a gift bag I was given at a bar "party" sponsored by a liquor company. I didn't even know it was in there -- let alone marked NFR -- until I got home. Several others I don't even remember how I got. I agree that the labels and the "media endpoints" both benefit from having them, but I hate getting them because they're invariably worthless to me. I realize record labels are just trying to promote their music, but they're inconveniencing me by slipping CDs I don't want into my home surreptitiously and now they want me to store those CDs indefinitely in case they decide they want them back? Sorry, that's not going to happen. If I throw away, give away, or even sell NFR CDs that I didn't want in the first place then I'm not going feel "dickish" about it.
Allow me to clarify my response regarding Jim Crow laws. For awhile the Supreme Court upheld them. Now, I admit I haven't read the Court's opinions on the matter, but I have the distinct impression that the rights of the states to determine voting eligibility had a lot to do with it. At any rate, it wasn't until the Court began to see Jim Crow laws as disenfranchising voters on the basis of race -- and thus in violation of the 15th Amendment -- that it began to strike them down. Eventually, Congress ended all controversy about the laws with the Voting Rights Act, which the 15th Amendment gave it the power to enact.
In the end, I think Jim Crow laws not only don't falsify my assertion, but prove it quite well.
That's a pretty ironic statement, considering that your comprehension of my comment seems to be about zero. I'm well aware of how Representatives are apportioned, but that's beside the point. I used the 14th Amendment as an example of the Constitution explicitly mentioning otherwise vote-eligible people being legally denied the vote. That's exactly the sort of example the comment I responded to asked for. I can't help that the language is buried in an Amendment having to do with apportionment of Representatives.
Then let me correct myself: The right to vote is not a Constitutionally guaranteed right. If you disagree, please point to where in the Constitution it is guaranteed.
How do Jim Crow laws falsify my assertion? Before you answer, keep in mind that in the sentence prior to the one you quoted I explicitly cited the 15th Amendment and its prohibition on denying voting rights on the basis of race. I think I understand what you're getting at -- things like literacy tests and poll taxes that applied to everybody, but disproportionately disenfranchised blacks -- but the Supreme Court eventually struck many of these down and Congress took care of the rest with the Voting Rights Act (under powers granted it by the 15th Amendment). Voter ID laws in some states are under a similar challenge for being discriminitory against minority populations, but they may survive and continue to exist for now.
You're assuming the probability distribution doesn't change over the course of a season. That's a reasonable assumption when you're tossing a coin -- the weight distribution of the coin doesn't change from toss to toss -- but I'm not sure that's a reasonable assumption for a batter going through the emotional and physical ups and downs of a baseball season and facing pitchers of varying skill. Coins don't have good and bad days, but people do.
I'm not saying you should, but I fail to see how the OP was wrong in saying that record companies provide the music that the music-buying public has collectively decided is "the best." Your personal taste in music is completely and utterly irrelevant.
Not that I can see.
Give me a break. Nobody can predict what will sell and what won't with 100% accuracy. And perhaps the intent of my comment isn't 100% clear from the context, but with the successes/failures thing I was referring primarily to band that are record company "creations" like boy bands and Kevin Federline. With bands they sign through the A&R process I think their expectations are more modest and their success rate much higher (as measured against those expectations). And it makes sense purely from a business perspective -- and remember, that is their perspective -- the "creations" are high-risk, high-reward, while the regular signings are less risky but generally have a smaller upside.
It's also clothing and makeup companies, for-profit web sites, and other niche businesses. The income of the demographic isn't important to them, it's what the demographic spends that counts. And the fact is, where teen girls were spending hardly anything a few decades ago they're now spending quite a lot of money, regardless of where it comes from. Perhaps that just means that they are deciding how a chunk of their parents' money is spent, but the important part (to marketers) is that they are the ones doing the deciding.
Sure there are. You think the RIAA doesn't have a pretty good idea of how many girls 13-15 buy Britney Spears and how many buy ska?
Have you ever read the Constitution? For starters, the 14th Amendment specifies that people denied the vote for "participation in rebellion or other crime" still be counted for purposes of apportioning Representatives, implying that voting is not a right. More importantly, nowhere does it guarantee voting rights to anybody for any reason -- eligibility to vote is left completely up to the states, and prior to the 17th Amendment the only office for which it even mandated a popular vote was Representative. The 17th Amendment mandates a popular vote for Senator, but even now it doesn't require a popular vote for President -- your state legislature can forego the popular vote for the Presidential election and choose your state's Electors itself, or empower the Governor to do so, or choose them with a coin flip if it wishes.
Now it's true that the 15th, 18th, and 26th Amendments prohibit states from denying or abridging voting "rights" on the basis of race, gender, and age, but beyond that it still leaves voting eligibility up to the states. They're free to put whatever other restrictions they wish on voting. Many states deny the vote to felons, for example, and a growing number deny it to people without government-issued photo ID.
That quite misses the point, now doesn't it? Where record companies are concerned, "the best" = "whatever sells". They do focus groups and market certain bands to try to make it easier to predict who will sell big, minimizing their financial risk. Marketing surely has some affect on what "the masses" choose to listen to, but contrary to popular belief the industry has far more failures than it has successes, and the idea that they force-feed us whatever music they decide they want to sell is a myth. If it weren't, Kevin Federline and Vitamin C would have music careers right now, Liz Phair would be a pop diva, and music execs would be the world's richest men for having found the Holy Grail of marketing: how to make us buy whatever they tell us to.
You might not like what's popular, and you can probably even make a coherent argument about why Britney Spears is without artistic merit. But you know what? The 14-year-old girls who buy her CDs think Led Zeppelin sucks. If you want record companies to push music you like, these are the people you have to convert to your point of view.
I think you're engaging in a little romanticism here. First off, yes, critics panned their first album, but that has nothing to do with the issue at hand -- how the record company promoted them. According to Robert Plant, Atlantic was ecstatic about their first record. As for never getting any airplay, well, I can't tell you what you do and don't remember. However, I do know that after Atlantic sent promo copies of Led Zeppelin (the album) out to radio and critics they received 50,000 pre-orders and started the band touring the US before the record was even released. It was so successful that Atlantic had the band record Led Zeppelin II during tour stops and released it just nine months later. Just a year after Led Zeppelin's debut it had had a #10 album (Led Zeppelin), a #1 album (Led Zeppelin II), and a #4 song ("Whole Lotta Love").
None of that necessarly means they got airplay, of course, but it does mean that whatever problems Led Zeppelin had in getting heard were not the fault of the record company and were incredibly short-lived by the standards of most bands.
Another poor example. Hendrix was wildly popular in Europe, particularly the UK (where he had several top-10 singles before he had even recorded a full album), and sold a whole lot of records for about a year before the Monterey Pop Festival. His record company tried to sell him in the US, but nobody was buying until a whole lot of influential critics and musicians saw him live at Monterey. It's true that they had trouble figuring out how to market him to a US audience because of his flamboyance and the prevailing sense that his wasn't the kind of music that black people make, and maybe they screwed that up, but they did try.
I'm no big defender of major record labels, but if you're looking for examples of them failing to recognize greatness then Zeppelin and Hendrix are not a good place to start. I would probably have picked the A&R guy who passed on The Beatles.
That would be another way to do it, sure. You could also use a Markov chain with states corresponding to slumping/not slumping (or something like that). Bootstrapping might not be a bad way to go, either. It all depends on how much computational effort you want to expend and how well suited these various methods are to the actual statistics (that's a project unto itself). Even then, the decisions a batter and a team's manager make in the real world depend very much on the in-game situation and whether or not a player is slumping. If Joe DiMaggio isn't going into game 45 of his hitting streak, for example, then maybe on his last at-bat of the game the manager has him sacrifice bunt instead of trying to get a hit.
Because of that, I can understand why the study's authors took the approach they did -- from a statistical standpoint, you can argue with the method, but more rigorous methods won't necessarily be reflective of the real world (or a "real" parallel universe). That's why I suggested using something like a 10-game moving average: I think it strikes a balance between rigor and real-world insight, particularly since this isn't exactly an earth-shatteringly important topic. That's just armchair statistics, though.
By assuming the hitter's probability of getting a hit is equal to his season average the researchers don't take into account that most, if not all, batters have a higher batting average at some points in the season than they do in others. As one with experience in Monte Carlo simulations I know that taking that into account would complicate the analysis considerably, but I suspect their results would be a bit different if they even did something as simple as using a 10-game moving average of the batter's average.
On technology, yes, and not just because of emergency powers -- they simply had greater freedom to spend more on technology to support the war effort. And that technology certainly affected telecom infrastructure after the war. But development of other infrastructure, like the national highway system and rural electrification, both began well before the war (in part as Depression-era make-work programs), and development of the interstate highway system didn't begin until well after the war (though it was sold, in part, as vital to national security).
That may be, but my point still stands: The projections in the article (in a US publication) were made at a time when the US had been spending massively on infrastructure for decades, so it seems likely that to the author it was entirely plausible that major changes and improvements to infrastructure could occur. US government spending as a percentage of GDP in 2005 was approximately the same as it was in 1968, so perhaps as you say the money is now spent on keeping what we have, but where US infrastructure is concerned the $3+ trillion I referred to was an estimate of how much money must be spent in addition to what we're already spending -- and that is just to keep what we have. The study that made the claim came in the wake of a series of major events that showed just how weak our infrastructure is: a series of levee collapses that nearly destroyed a major city, the sudden collapse of the main highway bridge in a major city, rolling blackouts in California, and a blackout caused by a single tree that affected the entire northeastern part of the US, to name a few.
As for the magnitude of public spending in Western countries, aside from 1992 the only time the US government has ever spent as much as a third of GDP was during World War II (and even then it never exceeded 35%). During the time of the US's greatest public works projects it spent between 15% (before the war) and 25% (after the war) of GDP. In 2005 it was about 27% of GDP, and if that $3+ trillion were financed over 10 years in addition to current expenditures that would only rise to 30%. Now, I realize that in The Netherlands the government spends 38% of GDP, but if you think your infrastructure problems are as bad as the ones here then you'll be the first European I've met who believes that. We in the US have simply chosen to prioritize low taxes over all else.
And yet it was during those 63 years that not just the highway systems of the US and Europe were built, but telecom infrastructure, rural electrification, and the rebuilding of war-ravaged Europe. The point being that the reason there is no money for big new projects is because we (meaning Western governments) have chosen to prioritize services over infrastructure. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what the tradeoffs are. The author of the article in question, though, clearly didn't predict that government spending would shift in that manner.
I don't think I'd call it heroic, at least not in terms of the effort required, particularly if the next president gets us out of Iraq -- after all, the budget deficit was already resolved before the current president took office, lowered taxes on the wealthy, and started an unnecessary war. What would be truly heroic is a significant reduction in the national debt.
Well, 40 years prior to 1968 there were no interstates and the country had only a handful of major highways. Rural areas not only didn't have electricity, but many believed that rural electrification was impossible. Commercial aviation was virtually nonexistent. Commercial radio had existed for only a few years and television was still experimental, with the first commercially licensed television stations more than a decade away. Telephone service wasn't entirely novel, but telephones at home weren't the norm, either.
So yes, I can see how in 1968 it would have seemed plausible to rebuild our entire infrastructure in the span of 40 years. I think part of the reason it seems implausible in hindsight is that over the past 40 years we simply haven't spent the massive sums on public works that we did from the 1930s to the 1960s. In fact, we went in quite the opposite direction in spending on our infrastructure, and now by at least one estimate we need to spend $3+ trillion just to keep what we have already built from falling apart (let alone improve or replace it).
Absolutely agreed! The engineers I know who got into it for the paycheck also tend to be the ones who are unhappy with their jobs and aren't very good engineers. The ones who got into because they love it are the ones advancing at work and living happy, fulfilled lives. Of all the engineering students from college that I'm still in touch with, by far the most successful ones -- regardless of GPA, because they didn't all have stellar GPAs -- are the engineering geeks who didn't talk constantly about how much money they'd make after graduation.
I've noticed that whenever somebody makes a claim about engineering being harder than some other subject, what they are really talking about in almost every case is not how hard it is to honestly learn or excel in the field, but how hard it is to slack. Ask somebody why they thought an engineering course was hard and the answer will almost always have to do with the amount of work required to pass. Ask why they thought a humanities course was easy in comparison and the answer will likely have to do with how little work was required to pass. The operative phrase here is "to pass" -- not to learn the material, not to master the subject, not to excel, but to earn a passing grade.
In the end, I don't think it's harder to excel in engineering than it is in the humanities, but I do think it is harder to slack in engineering, probably because its objectivity makes slackers easier to spot. This makes me suspicious of engineers who whine about how much harder engineering is, since to me it implies they're slackers and not very enthusiastic about engineering. I don't know if that's fair, but I'll take enthusiasm over arrogance any day.
I absolutely agree. I formed my opinion on this back when I was an undergrad at one of the top engineering schools in the country. I noticed that the engineering students who thought the humanities and social sciences were easy tended to be the same ones who, before registration each semester, would announce their intention to take the simplest courses possible to fulfill the requirements for their degrees. When your liberal arts experience consists of performing the minimum possible work to earn a decent grade in a series of courses ending in "101" you are probably not qualified to speak about how difficult a degree in the subject might be. My housemates all through college were liberal arts majors and I saw just how hard they worked -- many of them worked harder than me, though they also tended to be intelligent people who were very passionate about what they were learning. At one point I took a 300-level english course that proved to be my toughest class that semester, though that was helped out by the fact that one of the 400-level engineering courses I had that same semester was by far the easiest course I took at any level in college, bar none. Of course, the professor who taught that course only cared about you if you were a cigarette....
Amen to that!
Then choose a course of study that provides you a trade. You tell the university what kind of education you wish to receive, not the other way around. Yes, it takes some foresight and planning, but that's part of being an adult.
Wow! That's an awfully depressing outlook on life. In fact, it makes me really happy I went to grad school. I was making really good money doing something that was not terribly satisfying and realized that I was going to be miserable all my life if I spent it shoveling shit just because it paid well. I took a $40,000/yr pay cut AND had to buy my own health insurance, but I sure was a whole hell of a lot happier.
You either went through one unique graduate program or you didn't go through one at all -- I've never heard anybody claim that a graduate program will "teach you how things are really done"! Sure, I got shit money in grad school, but in terms of work I largely got to choose the projects I worked on, hardly ever had to meet a deadline, dressed however I pleased, came and went from the office as I pleased, etc. Grad school taught me a lot of things, but "how things are really done" was definitely not one of them.
Having studied, yes. Having a degree from abroad -- not necessarily. Right or wrong, and for better or for worse, there are a lot of employers in the US who will: (a) take that as a sign you weren't good enough to get into a US school, (b) decline to interview you because you didn't obtain your degree from an institution accredited by one or more US accreditation bodies, or (c) decline to interview you because they can't figure you how to interpret your transcript and compare it to their other applicants. The more advanced your degree the less likely you are to have problems of this nature, but it still isn't easy. And I can tell you from experience -- both personal and otherwise -- that it works similarly in Europe too, at least for Americans.
Okay, I'll grant you that and agree that it's an important distinction. That doesn't change the fact that all sides need to make a better effort to understand where the others are coming from if they are ever to come to a mutually satisfactory resolution. I applaud Dawkins for making the effort, but as you said, he falls short. I think he's also a bit antagonistic, which doesn't help matters (though I'm sure his publisher doesn't mind).
I couldn't agree more. I think the evangelical movement was organized more for political than religious reasons, though, and for the rank-and-file members whose spiritual guidance is now filtered through politicians it's hard for their theological sophistication not to take a beating.
So what? People don't exist to support business, people choose the businesses they wish to support on the basis of which ones provide what they want at a price they're willing to pay. Businesses that can't do that receive no support and, well, go out of business. After all, do you buy milk just to support the dairy industry? I doubt it. If bands still make music and people still have a means to access it then why should anybody care whether it's provided by a record company or by somebody else?
First off, the government cannot punish you for copyright infringement, it only greases the wheels for copyright holders to collect damages from infringers. That makes it unlawful, not illegal. It might seem like a quibble, but it's something that any business that bases its income on copyrighted material must be mindful of since it means the government won't foot the bill for pursuing infringers. It is a financial risk like any other. That doesn't excuse piracy, of course, but this has been a fact of life in the music business for literally hundreds of years. Thus far, the industry has always found ways to adapt to or account for changes in technology, and when it stops being able to do that it will die.
Second, it is not at all clear that this practice is hurting their business. Music sales are down, sure, and there are studies suggesting that piracy has played a role in that. However, there are also studies suggesting that piracy has not played a role in the decline, and there are a lot of other reasons that might explain it: the popularity of other activities like video gaming and the internet, lack of quality music, the poor economy, and the RIAA lawsuits, just to name a few. In addition, several record executives have worried publicly that the popularity of legal downloads is hurting their business, since a lot of people are now spending $0.99 to buy one track instead of $15 for the whole CD. Finally, there is also anecdotal evidence that piracy has actually increased sales, though I'm not aware of any published studies that make that claim.
In the end, it all comes back to offering people a product they want at a price they're willing to pay. Period. Internet downloads, legal or otherwise, and a growing number of established and unknown musicians have reduced the price people are willing to pay for recorded music. Why should that be my problem?
For the record, I've never knowingly downloaded music illegally, but thanks in large part to the RIAA's lawsuits and the prevalence of DRM I've pared my CD-buying habit down from about two per week to about 2 per year (new music has sucked in recent years, but there's a huge back catalog of stuff I want so that hasn't really been a factor). Now that legal, DRM-free downloads are becoming more widely available I might add a few singles to that total, but I alone have reduced the RIAA's sales by about 200 CDs per year without pirating a single thing. Data is not the plural of anecdote, I know, but still....