But, if that is the case, you are insane. Seriously. Okay, the current stuff isn't that good, but if you don't like Prince, you probably don't actually know much about him. If you learn about this musical genius, who, unfortunately gets lumped in with a lot of talentless 80s hitmakers (I hope you read this, Madonna), you will, at least, respect him.
...and wasn't it about 20 years ago that we were calling them an enemy AND selling them arms? (To support the noble [Honduran] freedom fighters in Nicaragua, of course.)
Anyhoo, I would imagine it might have something to do with all the tech companies that set up shop in Seattle and the rest of the Pacific NW, where coffee culture has been big long before there was a Starbuck's on every corner. (I can't say it technically predates Starbuck's, since the original SB store opened in, I think 1974, and I was only born in 1971, but growing up in Portland, I can attest to the fact that coffee was a big deal before I ever heard of SB.) Somehow, in the PNW, geek culture and coffee culture collided, and the ripples spread outward. That's a theory anyway.
You are, of course, correct, a point I have also ceded to the other person who responded to my post. I only wish I could take my original post back. Oh well.
Crap! You're right. Now I have another in my long list of stupid comments that are permanently a part of Slashdot.
Still, even if it's technically correct, it's certainly an unnecessary use of "literally." It doesn't clarify the statement or help those who might think it was meant to be merely figurative. That's really nitpicking, though. My bad.
So, you mean he should move to a new building? A new city? State? If you mean he should buy from somebody besides Dell, you are misusing the word "literally."
Now, many of you will refer to somebody who makes a comment like this as a "grammar Nazi." However, this really isn't a grammar issue. You might call it a usage issue or a meaning issue or... I don't know. Using a word to mean something that it doesn't mean really has nothing to do with grammar.
OTOH, the original story did mention the high sales tax in his area, so maybe the parent really did mean he should move somewhere else. Hey, how about the Cayman Islands?
I'd put a giant "MOD PARENT UP!" in the subject line here if I didn't find that so annoying and you've already got a 4 anyway, so it's probably not worth it.
This is an important comment though. I was having fun reading all the different ways people posted the "secret" key in a thread on/. the other day, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time or effort defending the companies that are trying to stop it from being published, but the rants about how we should all be able to say and publish whatever we want because "all speech is protected" and "it's just a number" don't seem very well thought-out to me. I was trying to think of an example when I read this post and I think credit card numbers with expiration dates, CVNs and PINs is a great example. That's all. Thank you for being smart.
I think the answer might lie not in more fields, but in repeatable fields. I'm drawing on my experience as a library cataloger here. The record format that we use most commonly in my field is called MARC (for MAchine Readable Cataloging... or "Cataloguing" if you are in an English-speaking country other than the US), and, instead of having a field for every possible role a person or corporate body (not as in a corporation in the business sense of the word, but in the literal sense, so "The Beatles", "The Berlin Philharmonic" or "Blue Note Records" would all be considered corporate bodies), there are fields for names which can be repeated for every name you want to add to a record and a subfield can be applied to each entry, identifying the role the person or corporate body plays in the production of the work.
I believe this makes the database-programming end of things a little more complicated, but it has many advantages. Records in such a system can be as simple or as complicated as the user desires. If one is only interested in a simple song title-artist-album record, then s/he is not confronted with 50 empty fields upon viewing the track's metadata template. On the other hand, if I want to enter every performer on a particular Miles Davis track, as well as the original composer of the songs performed, I can do that.
The hard part on the user's end is actually getting all the data in there. I reserve a special "holding area" folder in iTunes for stuff that I've added recently so that I can fix the metadata to conform to my own standards before I let it loose in my library. (Obviously, it's already in the library as soon as it's in iTunes, but I don't remove songs from the "holding area" until I've reviewed the data.) I don't actually buy anything from the iTunes store, but I probably will now that DRM-free stuff is going to be there. (I haven't noticed a way to limit a search in the iTS to only DRM-free music yet, though, which makes it harder. I don't remember which of the artists I like are on EMI, probably not many. I certainly hope a lot more labels go this way now that the offer is open.) I have downloaded music from other places, though, and found metadata attached that was just plain stupid. Data from CDDB, applied automatically when I rip a CD, is a little better, but I usually still need to tweak it. More data would mean more bad data, which would mean more time fixing the data every time I added more music to my library. In the library-cataloging world we have standards for the formatting of names and other data and people with Masters' degrees doing the data creation. We can then share records with each other, saving a lot of time and money, with a reasonable assurance of data quality. A world where the data attached to downloaded music is that rigidly controlled exists only in my OCD-fueled fantasies.
Oh. Well, no. I understand that the graphics card would be impossible, but I think that the DVD drive isn't hard is it? You have to find a slot-loading one, of course, but they're out there.
I'm an idiot. That's obvious because I just don't get this post, so I've saved you the trouble of responding and calling me an idiot, okay?
Now, does this refer to the OS9>OSX migration? Or an incorrect assumption that Mac users buy new computers every time they want to upgrade?
I'm currently running Mac OS 10.4.9, the latest release, on a 400mhz G3 iMac that I bought in early 2000, a computer that was released before OSX. It runs very smoothly and as about as fast as any computer with a 400mhz processor can be expected to run. Admittedly, I added more RAM than it came with (but it can go up to 1GB, I think, which ain't bad for a computer manufactured in 2000) and I upgraded the 13GB HD to 120GB. Still, I wonder how many PCs purchased that long ago will be able to run vista with so few modifications. From what I hear on Slashdot, not many, but I really don't know.
There is a statistic about Macs that we fanbois have long used as a reason to distrust statistics about how many Macs are actually in use that says that people tend to keep using Macs longer than PCs, also. I can't cite that statistic, however, because I'm feeling too lazy to dig it up, so maybe it's inaccurate?
Or maybe your joke meant something else and I've just been rambling about something completely unrelated? What does the sweater mean?
If you think the Democrats and the Republicans are opposed 180 degrees, then I feel sorry for you. Unfortunately, people who can't try to make a point without calling other people "idiots" and "trolls" aren't likely to a) know what they're talking about, or b) listen to what anybody else has to say. The Democrats do not support the "majority" of the Greens' platform and if you think they do, then you obviously aren't paying attention.
The sad thing is that the Democrats, instead of actually listening to all the voters they've disenfranchised, seem to treat "What are you going to do, vote Republican?" as a policy platform.
I hope this doesn't turn me into a target for the army of Nader-Haters out there, but I voted for Nader in 2000 and I would do it again. (FWIW, I was registered in Washington state at the time, and given the (absurd) Electoral College system, my vote did not actually play into the final outcome of that election.) When Democrats tried to convince me I should vote with them, nobody ever tried to make the "we support those issues also" or "actual progress requires more compromise" arguments. All I ever heard was, in essence, "Yeah, but the Republicans are worse." That just seems pathetic.
That's the main reason I like using Apple's mail.app. I can write emails when I'm somewhere where I don't have an Internet connection and then send them later when I do. Also, if you're somewhere with a slow connection, it only affects the sending and receiving, whereas, in my experience, a slow connection affects all of the navigating through messages and almost everything else you might do with Web mail.
Graphically, I also think most clients are nicer to look at. That may not be that important to most people, but it is to me.
That said, I like that I have the option of using Web mail when I'm near someone else's computer. (Ideally, I think I'd use IMAP so that my folders, etc. from my client would match the ones I see when I log on using the Web. I've actually been looking for a provider that offers IMAP where I could also transfer my domains so I'd still have everything in one place. I'm also looking for a price that would be competitive with GoDaddy, who currently handles my email and domains.)
Totally agree about 110 wins. No way. 110 is an AWESOME season and there's nothing about this year's Yankees to show that they are better than any of the teams from the last nine years since the last time the Yankees cracked 110. (They won 114, setting the record that was broken by the Seattle Mariners [w00t! Sorry, couldn't resist.] in 2001 with 116.]
Interestingly, as you note, the heavy spending has consistently landed the Yankees in the playoffs, but, for several years now (I think they last won the World Series in 2000, but I didn't double check that) it hasn't helped them get past that.
Certainly the Yankees stay at the top of the list, but there is definitely a trend toward crazier spending. The database only goes back to 1988 so you can't look too far back, but enough to see what I'm talking about. (When did free agency start anyway, around 1980? It's probably an apples-and-oranges type of thing to compare pre- and post-free-agency numbers.)
The Yankees' payroll now is about 10 times what it was in 1990, way more of an increase than can be attributed to inflation, and it's actually plateaued over the last couple of years (even gone down a little, I think) so increase is even sharper if you look at 1990-2005, rather thann 1990-2007.
Also, in 1990, the Yankees' payroll was just over twice what the lowest-paid team dished out. Now, it's over SEVEN TIMES what the Devil Rays pay. That shows a sharp trend rather than just more of the same-old-same-old.
OTOH, it's also interesting to note that the crazy spending trend does seem to be catching on with some other teams. Today there are nine teams that spend at least half of what the Yankees spend, whereas, as recently as 2005, when the Yankees spent $208M and the Red Sox spent $123M, there was only one. (!)
One thing to note is how freely they Yankees spend money. Other teams seem to be a little more careful about how they spend money. I just read an article the other day where I learned that Jason Jiambi is the second-highest-paid (behind A-Rod) player in MLB. He makes like $23M per year. He's pretty good, but he's nowhere near that good!
When they were at their best, they had some huge stars but they were also bringing up some good young players from their farm system. The Yankees team now looks more like a baseball card collection than a team. Baseball cards often get more valuable as they get older and older, the actual players... not so much.
I will admit that the crazy spending doesn't seem to be hurting ALL of baseball so much, since the Yankees don't seem to be able to turn their regular-season success into playoff/World Series victories, but I do think it's made the AL East rather horrible. I personally don't like NY or Boston and I'm so sick of hearing about them. I hope Toronto, with a mere $81M, gives a strong showing again this year, but I won't count on it. It's so lopsided, it really takes the fun out of that division.
I was wondering when somebody was going to point this out. The study just uses "Hummer" because it's a stereotype of an environmentally unfriendly vehicle. The H1 was the only "real" Hummer (i.e., a barely street-legal military vehicle), the H2 and H3 are just regular old Chevys/GMCs dressed up like something they're not. I suppose this point is neither here nor there with respect to this study and the discussion of its validity but it's just something that always bugs me when somebody refers generically to a "Hummer."
I'm just trying to figure out why it's "third-party email." That means that there must be "first-party email" and "second party email." Now, one of those must be the email that the company provides... Or am I the "first party" and the company is the "second party?" Then I suppose there would be no "first party email" unless I was imagining it in my head? I'm so confused. Who are the parties?
The Professor actually made a laptop out of some bamboo and coconuts, didn't he? If my memory serves correctly, though, the portability was compromised since it was powered by Giligan riding a bamboo bicycle nearby.
...that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value, in fact, it's the only thing that ever has. - With apologies to Margaret Mead
It might fly far enough to keep you in court for four years. In 2000, Ralph Nader's presidential campaign created a parody of the MasterCard "priceless" ads, which had been parodied in several other places previously without a peep from MasterCard. When the Nader ads came out, however, the company atttempted to block stop them from airing, though this was denied. (Interestingly, with the rather small campaign warchest Nader had, the ads probably got more notice than they ever would have if they just aired.) They also sued the Nader campaign and eventually lost... in 2004.
Here is a random assortment of links about the story:
And, there are tons of other entities besides major labels that provide filtering services. There are music reviews, both in print and online, there are indie record labels (To name just two, I like http://www.quannum.com/ and http://www.ninjatune.net/ but a lot of people on/. might not) that are specialized enough that if you like one of their artists you probably like several of them, and, of course there is the radio. These days, if there is not a good radio station near where you live, that's no excuse. I live in Maryland and listen to http://www.kexp.org/ in Seattle. I discover new artists that I love there all the time. (Rather than listen live or to the archived shows, I use this software: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/ I can schedule it to record specific shows that I like and then listen to them on my mp3 player.
Oh, and another thing, whether it's Amazon, or the All Music Guide, or some other place, the Web is filled with "if you like that then you might like this"-type recommendations. Furthermore, in the old days, you might get recommendations from somebody you knew in your town who was into the same kind of music that you are. Now, if you don't know anybody in your town with your tastes, you can probably find a whole group of people online who like the same stuff you do.
So, there are more ways to find music you like than ever before and with the ease of recording and the cost of recording equipment plummeting, there is more music being produced than ever before. (Yes, more bad music, but also more good music.)
In conclusion, the "I'll just listen to Led Zeppelin for the rest of my life" guy (I love LZ, by the way, but I love the wide spectrum of wonderful music out there and can't imagine limiting myself like that.) obviously just isn't that into music, which is fine. It's easier than ever to find great music and if you're using some method where you have to listen to 100 crappy songs for every one good one, then you're not going about it very logically. If, OTOH, you're content to just listen to the same record over and over again, that's cool too, but it can't be blamed on the lack of good music or the difficulty of finding it.
Slashdot Mirror
But, if that is the case, you are insane. Seriously. Okay, the current stuff isn't that good, but if you don't like Prince, you probably don't actually know much about him. If you learn about this musical genius, who, unfortunately gets lumped in with a lot of talentless 80s hitmakers (I hope you read this, Madonna), you will, at least, respect him.
...and wasn't it about 20 years ago that we were calling them an enemy AND selling them arms? (To support the noble [Honduran] freedom fighters in Nicaragua, of course.)
No, but I know what's "weird." Sorry.
Anyhoo, I would imagine it might have something to do with all the tech companies that set up shop in Seattle and the rest of the Pacific NW, where coffee culture has been big long before there was a Starbuck's on every corner. (I can't say it technically predates Starbuck's, since the original SB store opened in, I think 1974, and I was only born in 1971, but growing up in Portland, I can attest to the fact that coffee was a big deal before I ever heard of SB.) Somehow, in the PNW, geek culture and coffee culture collided, and the ripples spread outward. That's a theory anyway.
You are, of course, correct, a point I have also ceded to the other person who responded to my post. I only wish I could take my original post back. Oh well.
Crap! You're right. Now I have another in my long list of stupid comments that are permanently a part of Slashdot.
Still, even if it's technically correct, it's certainly an unnecessary use of "literally." It doesn't clarify the statement or help those who might think it was meant to be merely figurative. That's really nitpicking, though. My bad.
So, you mean he should move to a new building? A new city? State? If you mean he should buy from somebody besides Dell, you are misusing the word "literally."
Now, many of you will refer to somebody who makes a comment like this as a "grammar Nazi." However, this really isn't a grammar issue. You might call it a usage issue or a meaning issue or... I don't know. Using a word to mean something that it doesn't mean really has nothing to do with grammar.
OTOH, the original story did mention the high sales tax in his area, so maybe the parent really did mean he should move somewhere else. Hey, how about the Cayman Islands?
I'd put a giant "MOD PARENT UP!" in the subject line here if I didn't find that so annoying and you've already got a 4 anyway, so it's probably not worth it.
/. the other day, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time or effort defending the companies that are trying to stop it from being published, but the rants about how we should all be able to say and publish whatever we want because "all speech is protected" and "it's just a number" don't seem very well thought-out to me. I was trying to think of an example when I read this post and I think credit card numbers with expiration dates, CVNs and PINs is a great example. That's all. Thank you for being smart.
This is an important comment though. I was having fun reading all the different ways people posted the "secret" key in a thread on
I think the answer might lie not in more fields, but in repeatable fields. I'm drawing on my experience as a library cataloger here. The record format that we use most commonly in my field is called MARC (for MAchine Readable Cataloging... or "Cataloguing" if you are in an English-speaking country other than the US), and, instead of having a field for every possible role a person or corporate body (not as in a corporation in the business sense of the word, but in the literal sense, so "The Beatles", "The Berlin Philharmonic" or "Blue Note Records" would all be considered corporate bodies), there are fields for names which can be repeated for every name you want to add to a record and a subfield can be applied to each entry, identifying the role the person or corporate body plays in the production of the work.
I believe this makes the database-programming end of things a little more complicated, but it has many advantages. Records in such a system can be as simple or as complicated as the user desires. If one is only interested in a simple song title-artist-album record, then s/he is not confronted with 50 empty fields upon viewing the track's metadata template. On the other hand, if I want to enter every performer on a particular Miles Davis track, as well as the original composer of the songs performed, I can do that.
The hard part on the user's end is actually getting all the data in there. I reserve a special "holding area" folder in iTunes for stuff that I've added recently so that I can fix the metadata to conform to my own standards before I let it loose in my library. (Obviously, it's already in the library as soon as it's in iTunes, but I don't remove songs from the "holding area" until I've reviewed the data.) I don't actually buy anything from the iTunes store, but I probably will now that DRM-free stuff is going to be there. (I haven't noticed a way to limit a search in the iTS to only DRM-free music yet, though, which makes it harder. I don't remember which of the artists I like are on EMI, probably not many. I certainly hope a lot more labels go this way now that the offer is open.) I have downloaded music from other places, though, and found metadata attached that was just plain stupid. Data from CDDB, applied automatically when I rip a CD, is a little better, but I usually still need to tweak it. More data would mean more bad data, which would mean more time fixing the data every time I added more music to my library. In the library-cataloging world we have standards for the formatting of names and other data and people with Masters' degrees doing the data creation. We can then share records with each other, saving a lot of time and money, with a reasonable assurance of data quality. A world where the data attached to downloaded music is that rigidly controlled exists only in my OCD-fueled fantasies.
So, just to be clear, you would define 9 to X as the last Mac OS upgrade?
Oh. Well, no. I understand that the graphics card would be impossible, but I think that the DVD drive isn't hard is it? You have to find a slot-loading one, of course, but they're out there.
Thanks for clarifying.
I'm an idiot. That's obvious because I just don't get this post, so I've saved you the trouble of responding and calling me an idiot, okay? Now, does this refer to the OS9>OSX migration? Or an incorrect assumption that Mac users buy new computers every time they want to upgrade? I'm currently running Mac OS 10.4.9, the latest release, on a 400mhz G3 iMac that I bought in early 2000, a computer that was released before OSX. It runs very smoothly and as about as fast as any computer with a 400mhz processor can be expected to run. Admittedly, I added more RAM than it came with (but it can go up to 1GB, I think, which ain't bad for a computer manufactured in 2000) and I upgraded the 13GB HD to 120GB. Still, I wonder how many PCs purchased that long ago will be able to run vista with so few modifications. From what I hear on Slashdot, not many, but I really don't know. There is a statistic about Macs that we fanbois have long used as a reason to distrust statistics about how many Macs are actually in use that says that people tend to keep using Macs longer than PCs, also. I can't cite that statistic, however, because I'm feeling too lazy to dig it up, so maybe it's inaccurate? Or maybe your joke meant something else and I've just been rambling about something completely unrelated? What does the sweater mean?
If you think the Democrats and the Republicans are opposed 180 degrees, then I feel sorry for you. Unfortunately, people who can't try to make a point without calling other people "idiots" and "trolls" aren't likely to a) know what they're talking about, or b) listen to what anybody else has to say. The Democrats do not support the "majority" of the Greens' platform and if you think they do, then you obviously aren't paying attention.
The sad thing is that the Democrats, instead of actually listening to all the voters they've disenfranchised, seem to treat "What are you going to do, vote Republican?" as a policy platform.
I hope this doesn't turn me into a target for the army of Nader-Haters out there, but I voted for Nader in 2000 and I would do it again. (FWIW, I was registered in Washington state at the time, and given the (absurd) Electoral College system, my vote did not actually play into the final outcome of that election.) When Democrats tried to convince me I should vote with them, nobody ever tried to make the "we support those issues also" or "actual progress requires more compromise" arguments. All I ever heard was, in essence, "Yeah, but the Republicans are worse." That just seems pathetic.
That's the main reason I like using Apple's mail.app. I can write emails when I'm somewhere where I don't have an Internet connection and then send them later when I do. Also, if you're somewhere with a slow connection, it only affects the sending and receiving, whereas, in my experience, a slow connection affects all of the navigating through messages and almost everything else you might do with Web mail.
Graphically, I also think most clients are nicer to look at. That may not be that important to most people, but it is to me.
That said, I like that I have the option of using Web mail when I'm near someone else's computer. (Ideally, I think I'd use IMAP so that my folders, etc. from my client would match the ones I see when I log on using the Web. I've actually been looking for a provider that offers IMAP where I could also transfer my domains so I'd still have everything in one place. I'm also looking for a price that would be competitive with GoDaddy, who currently handles my email and domains.)
Totally agree about 110 wins. No way. 110 is an AWESOME season and there's nothing about this year's Yankees to show that they are better than any of the teams from the last nine years since the last time the Yankees cracked 110. (They won 114, setting the record that was broken by the Seattle Mariners [w00t! Sorry, couldn't resist.] in 2001 with 116.]
d efault.aspx
Interestingly, as you note, the heavy spending has consistently landed the Yankees in the playoffs, but, for several years now (I think they last won the World Series in 2000, but I didn't double check that) it hasn't helped them get past that.
Also, the argument that "they have always spend such money" is not entirely true. This database at USA Today is interesting:
http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/
Certainly the Yankees stay at the top of the list, but there is definitely a trend toward crazier spending. The database only goes back to 1988 so you can't look too far back, but enough to see what I'm talking about. (When did free agency start anyway, around 1980? It's probably an apples-and-oranges type of thing to compare pre- and post-free-agency numbers.)
The Yankees' payroll now is about 10 times what it was in 1990, way more of an increase than can be attributed to inflation, and it's actually plateaued over the last couple of years (even gone down a little, I think) so increase is even sharper if you look at 1990-2005, rather thann 1990-2007.
Also, in 1990, the Yankees' payroll was just over twice what the lowest-paid team dished out. Now, it's over SEVEN TIMES what the Devil Rays pay. That shows a sharp trend rather than just more of the same-old-same-old.
OTOH, it's also interesting to note that the crazy spending trend does seem to be catching on with some other teams. Today there are nine teams that spend at least half of what the Yankees spend, whereas, as recently as 2005, when the Yankees spent $208M and the Red Sox spent $123M, there was only one. (!)
One thing to note is how freely they Yankees spend money. Other teams seem to be a little more careful about how they spend money. I just read an article the other day where I learned that Jason Jiambi is the second-highest-paid (behind A-Rod) player in MLB. He makes like $23M per year. He's pretty good, but he's nowhere near that good!
When they were at their best, they had some huge stars but they were also bringing up some good young players from their farm system. The Yankees team now looks more like a baseball card collection than a team. Baseball cards often get more valuable as they get older and older, the actual players... not so much.
I will admit that the crazy spending doesn't seem to be hurting ALL of baseball so much, since the Yankees don't seem to be able to turn their regular-season success into playoff/World Series victories, but I do think it's made the AL East rather horrible. I personally don't like NY or Boston and I'm so sick of hearing about them. I hope Toronto, with a mere $81M, gives a strong showing again this year, but I won't count on it. It's so lopsided, it really takes the fun out of that division.
I was wondering when somebody was going to point this out. The study just uses "Hummer" because it's a stereotype of an environmentally unfriendly vehicle. The H1 was the only "real" Hummer (i.e., a barely street-legal military vehicle), the H2 and H3 are just regular old Chevys/GMCs dressed up like something they're not. I suppose this point is neither here nor there with respect to this study and the discussion of its validity but it's just something that always bugs me when somebody refers generically to a "Hummer."
I'm just trying to figure out why it's "third-party email." That means that there must be "first-party email" and "second party email." Now, one of those must be the email that the company provides... Or am I the "first party" and the company is the "second party?" Then I suppose there would be no "first party email" unless I was imagining it in my head? I'm so confused. Who are the parties?
The Professor actually made a laptop out of some bamboo and coconuts, didn't he? If my memory serves correctly, though, the portability was compromised since it was powered by Giligan riding a bamboo bicycle nearby.
...that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value, in fact, it's the only thing that ever has. - With apologies to Margaret Mead
Don't forget this idea, also promoted by 24: torture actually works.
it's unlikely this would fly far in the US.
w ins_pric.html
It might fly far enough to keep you in court for four years. In 2000, Ralph Nader's presidential campaign created a parody of the MasterCard "priceless" ads, which had been parodied in several other places previously without a peep from MasterCard. When the Nader ads came out, however, the company atttempted to block stop them from airing, though this was denied. (Interestingly, with the rather small campaign warchest Nader had, the ads probably got more notice than they ever would have if they just aired.) They also sued the Nader campaign and eventually lost... in 2004.
Here is a random assortment of links about the story:
http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2004/03/nader_
http://www.commondreams.org/views/091300-102.htm
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/packets002050.shtml
It seems more suited to O'Reilly's MAKE magazine and their blog, then on Slashdot.
Yeah! This doesn't have anything to do with:
-sharks with frickin' laser beams
-socialism vs. libertarianism
-DRM is teh suXx0rz
which, as we all know, are the three allowed topics as outlined the Slashdot mission statement.
And, there are tons of other entities besides major labels that provide filtering services. There are music reviews, both in print and online, there are indie record labels (To name just two, I like http://www.quannum.com/ and http://www.ninjatune.net/ but a lot of people on /. might not) that are specialized enough that if you like one of their artists you probably like several of them, and, of course there is the radio. These days, if there is not a good radio station near where you live, that's no excuse. I live in Maryland and listen to http://www.kexp.org/ in Seattle. I discover new artists that I love there all the time. (Rather than listen live or to the archived shows, I use this software: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/ I can schedule it to record specific shows that I like and then listen to them on my mp3 player.
Oh, and another thing, whether it's Amazon, or the All Music Guide, or some other place, the Web is filled with "if you like that then you might like this"-type recommendations. Furthermore, in the old days, you might get recommendations from somebody you knew in your town who was into the same kind of music that you are. Now, if you don't know anybody in your town with your tastes, you can probably find a whole group of people online who like the same stuff you do.
So, there are more ways to find music you like than ever before and with the ease of recording and the cost of recording equipment plummeting, there is more music being produced than ever before. (Yes, more bad music, but also more good music.)
In conclusion, the "I'll just listen to Led Zeppelin for the rest of my life" guy (I love LZ, by the way, but I love the wide spectrum of wonderful music out there and can't imagine limiting myself like that.) obviously just isn't that into music, which is fine. It's easier than ever to find great music and if you're using some method where you have to listen to 100 crappy songs for every one good one, then you're not going about it very logically. If, OTOH, you're content to just listen to the same record over and over again, that's cool too, but it can't be blamed on the lack of good music or the difficulty of finding it.
"the nation that keeps carbombs off my streets"
That's questionable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letelier_case
I think it's more lawful neutral, not quite as good, but at least not chaotic evil.