You were doing really well, and I agreed for the vast majority with your sentiment, right up until your left-field dig involving the Communist Manifesto. Have you ever read the thing? I'm no Communist (in fact, I think Communism is for the most part damn silly), but nowhere in the CM does it encourage people to be sheeple; quite the opposite, it is a panphlet encouraging people to revolt! I realy can't stand it when people confuse the quasi-fascist "communist" states and their histories and policies with the actual doctrines and documents describing Communism. It's the Political Scientist in me, I guess.
Riddle me this, Batman. Since we in our democratic society are taught that criticism of leaders who do not rise to our expectations is not only allowed, but appropriate and even a civic duty, how come when there is a teacher (and there are many of these) who are, oh how did you put it, "the stereotypical drill and kill, monotone, mindless worksheet teachers" that it isn't in fact appropriate to criticize that fact by direct argument, satire, humor, etc.? How are students supposed to learn that first lesson if the second is in fact made impossible? Put up and shut up is a poor lesson to teach, IMHO.
Seriously, reminds me of the Everglades or something. One stupid and, frankly, unentertaining video produced while the teacher's back was turned in one day really did a number to that school environment, eh? Come on, that's just a shallow and not too creative excuse for maintaining an authoritarian power-structure. It's not like he physically threatened or harmed anyone, nor prevented others from listening to or learning from the teacher. The "school environment" seems penty intact, and is just used to punish someone when they can't punish someone any other way. There was recently a Supreme Court case, IIRC, where a student was charged with "disrupting the mission of a school" and suspended for posting a "bong hits for jesus" sign after hours and off school property!
They think they own the kids that attend their schools, and they sure act that way, and things like this only reinforce it. Another poster above put it well that this is not how you train students to grow up to be good citizens of a democracy; this is how you acclimate them to autocracy.
It is public in the narrow legal sense that a person who acts in that forum cannot have a reasonable expectation that their actions would remain outside the awareness of a significant number of unrelated people. A private school classroom would be little different in this regard. IANAL, so the definition may be a little off.
I agree. But that doesn't mean we are less worthy for the trying. Sometimes, the attempt is the worthier part. And, just like attempts to attain the attention and favor of deities may make us observe closer whehther and how we could be made to deserve such an attention, perhaps the jealous guarding of one's own life's contents might provoke at least the possibility of introspection, and lead us to discover just what it is about our lives that makes their sanctity worth guarding.
And, meanwhile, I don't want you to know my taste in porn. That's just none of your damn business!
Well, seeing how all the other candidates have pointedly ignored the 'Connected Comstituency', perhaps that in and of itself is significant. Half of them wouldn't know a creative commons license if it bitchslapped them in the face, and the other half don't care.
I'm generally conservative and usually vote that way, but I'm seriously considering Obama. What flipped me was his speech on the role of faith in politics. As an Atheist, I get uncomfortable any time religion is brought into politics, but I am not hypersenstitive about it teh way many of my fellow Atheists are, e.g. in a predominantly believer nation, I do believe there is a place in the public square for religious expressions and conversations; he is the first politician I have heard (in a long time at least) who speaks sensibly on that topic, and seems even genuine about it, exposing both the Right's shameless pandering and the Left's unnecessarily extreme allergy to the issue.
And while I'm not sure if that segment of the Texas con. has specifically been challeneged, but other states that have similar provisions have had them struck down unanimously by the USSC [Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)]. The Article VI language preventing religious tests or oaths for federal office was ruled to apply to the states.
There's 'voluntary' behavior and then there is 'encouraged' behavior. The game certainly facilitates through the way it is designed and the missions the characters perform a certain penchant for theft and murder through the liberal application of semi-automatic firearms. Sure, you don't *have* to kill everyone in sight, but it is expected by the structure of the game that you get your hands filthy dirty; the violent life is glamorized and encouraged. And yes, I have played. Thought GTA 1 and 2 were mindless nihilistic fun, and 3 was pretty boring.
GTA and its progeny are violent games, no two ways about it. Sure, one or two saints will find a way to eke out an enjoyable experience without harming a digital soul in such games, but these are anomalies.
...that just because you abhor violence, sex, etc., in your media that 'Sin City', 'Doom' et al. are not good. It simply means they are uninteresting to you. It has nothing to do with class, and everything to do with age-appropriateness. Sin City and Doom are bad movies/games to be showing a kindergartener. Beyond that, you are just being snobby. (P.S. I'm pretty sure the arcade became a ghost town not because of violence, but because kids all of a sudden had access to games of similar quality right at their house or their friends' houses, with video game consoles and serious video-capable PCs).
There are, and always have been fun, interesting games that had no element of violence in them. Pinball is a good example (interestingly, Centipede is not, unless we don't care so long as it's violence against things not human, in which case you shouldn't care about Doom either). So was Myst (a personal fav). But there is no magical exclusionary rule that says if there are elements of violence, sex, and profanity a game is automatically bad and/or boring. The Longest Journey was a great game, but was full of profanity and had a good bit of the other two. Half-life and its sequel were both groundbreaking and engaging story-wise, but chock full of violence. Sin City was a fantastic movie, if for nothing else the artistic direction that was taken, but also the stories are quite gripping (and also inherently moral in dramatistic ways; you know, the same way Shakespeare's plays were morally tinged even though they were chock full of violence, sex, and profanity...).
Besides, all the good ol' games you seem bent on being nostalgic about are available in Flash or Java on the net somewhere or other. So, it's not like these options are forever lost to a parent trying to entertain a child age-appropriately.
No, no, no! Obviously it's the new and highly successful shotgun approach to English grammar! Shotguns are the wave of the future in lingustics; don't you forget!
Even better would be if we went with an amoeba or something similar, where there are no bones at all, merely controlled motive forces. Are there any engineering specialists around to tell me if there's any good way to do something like that?
The "turf" would dry up, because most people would rather walk down the street to the drug store to buy regulated quality marijuana than to risk getting shot buying some probably adulterated pot from a street corner dealer in a bad neighborhood. You are right, however, that legal drug producers have a great deal of power which is sometimes abused. These abuses, while serious, never reach the 'slaughter some dude's entire family' level that cartels reach...actually, not even in the same ballpark.
Also, most of the price associated with drugs is markup from the risk associated with processing and importation; in production countries, they shoot the growers when they find them. It's no picnic for a drug mule either. The prices are unbelievably inflated above actual material production and transportation costs. Also, a sizeable part of the market would shrivel for marijuana at least, because it is a relatively easy plant to cultivate at home.
We can argue over whether the system functioned properly or not; in fact, that's what this sort of thread is all about...hence my argument that it was in fact appropriate for/.
As for whether the system in fact acted as intended...I'd say no. While it is true that the government in question is in the republican form, even representative governments (like this one) contain methods of polling constitutents directly and investing the people with some limited legislative powers, like a referendum. Absent actual powers, non-binding ballot questions are intended to ask the people's inclination on issues of policy. In this case, a lawyer working for the county had 'a gut feeling' that people who voted for the question intended to vote against it, despite there being no evidence supproting that conclusion. Since deliberative bodies are supposed to deliberate on facts, and there were no facts in evidence except for the simple fact of the actual vote result, two out of three commissioners erred very, very badly. That was the system breaking down.
It isn't to say that the commissioners broke any laws. Quite the contrary, they probably acted within their authority. Nonetheless, we know that a system can act harmfully without having any structural defect. For example, it is within the power of the federal government to raise the marginal tax rate in all categories to 100%. It wouldn't be illegal, but I think we would all call it a massive systemic breakdown nonetheless.
P.S. The republican form was an innovation whose intention was never to prevent the tyranny of the majority. The element in the equation that provides that protection is a Constitution, a document prescribing and proscribing the bounds of legitimate authority for the governing body and placing certain human rights out-of-bounds of legislation or regulation.
P.P.S. I also think that most republics don't follow the wills of their constituents, and for the most part this is a good thing, as the people at large are neither privy to the requisite information nor the time to analyze that information to make decently informed decisions about most issues. However, that system seems to fail when that natural obfucatory nature of legislation provides a convenient shield for monied interests to ply favorable regulation.
Nerds tend to care about and try to understand how systems of any sort work, and are particularly intrigued and interested when those systems behave anomalously or break down. In this case, the democratic process is a system, and the implementation of this system in a particular county in a particular state seems to have broken down spectacularly, and about an issue which many young people care about, no less.
So, it is news for nerds. And its stuff that matters to many here, judging by the decent number of comments thus far.
All US states are Republics (Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution). Referendums are not incompatible with a republican form of government, since some apparatus of government controls the method by which referendum questions are selected to be put to the voting public.
Doesn't that put you into the second third? That is, people for whom the Internet simply doesn't enrich their lives beyond where it already is?
Personally I only use the Internet for three things: reading Slashdot, playing Correspondence Chess, and occasional wikisurfing. Don't see much need for myspace and facebook and all those newfangled things kids these days play with.;)
I'd say it's about three distinct thirds. That is, about one third of the non-users are just tech-intimidated and do not wish to feel stupid and/or incompetent while learning an entirely new skill set; newbie errors inevitably happen, and nobody likes to feel like a noob. A second third are people who truly honestly have rich, full lives without connectivity; it can't be that hard since people used to do it all the time! The final third are people who can't afford it, and would much rather concentrate on feeding their kids or making car payments. I have contempt for only the first third; fear of failure is a dumb reason to not try something new. The other two, however, have damn good reasons for staying offline.
I don't disagree; my only point, and the point of the original posting, was that the vast majority of music up until very recently was not music produced by one person for others merely for their enjoyment, but rather for other purposes, mostly religious. Characterize the oral tradition of indigenous people however one wants, and the fact remnains that the accompanying music is there to glorify the subject of the story (some religious/spiritual chracter or concept) or to serve as a mnemonic cue or device, and not primarily for the audience's aesthetic enjoyment.
The oral tradition, by and large, was a religious one. They preserved their creation, law, and holy stories (all functions of religion, esp. in your indigenous peoples) via music, and used music both as a mnemonic device and to spice the stories up a bit. Like I said, religion: Kept the music coming for many years (and still does, in many ways).
The vast majority of celebrations in all the societies you mentioned were religious celebrations, honoring this or that god or mythlogical-historical event. Did music exist that was non-religous? Probably. But was it played for the commoners' consumption? Absolutely not. Musicians played when they could get paid, becuase that's how they survived. The nobles/priests/kings they played for were generally jealous of te service being provided to them, and did not look kindly upon freebies. Which was the original point I was responding to: music generally as a service of one person for another did not happen. Music only happened from religious or noble patronage, and only for those purposes, until pretty damn recently.
BTW, the fiddle had not been invented by the time Nero was emperor. So he didn't fiddle. And if one is to argue that the classically educated did know how to play, you'd be right, but two points remain. One, nearly all the music they studied was religious in nature. Two, the people who were classically educated were on the whole filthy frikkin rich or in a noble family and did not play for the common folk at all, which again was the point I was originally responding to.
Yes, I have heard of bard, troubadours, etc.. They became prominenet...in the Late Baroque era. Like I said. And most of them traveled from fiefdom to fiefdom and sang and played...for kings and lords, also like I said. It was the only way they could eat; playing for commoners (though it did happen on occassion) didn't fill the stomach until the economy could support it (think late classical period).
And respectfully, while fantasy novels on the whole are entertaining and occasionally even thought provoking, are by and large utter shite when it comes to historical accuracy. The closest one comes to historical accuracy in a novel like that is something like "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis. And that portrayed the late medieval period; ain't no bards there.
For the vast majority of that fifteen thousand years you speak of, music wasn't a service that people (regular folk, that is) provided each other at all. For the lion's share of the first 14/15ths, nearly all music was for religious purposes, so at best it was a service by people for their gods, not for each other. Music for pleasure didn't become decently commonplace until the Baroque era in the West, and even then it was a service of talented professionals for some King or Prince, not the everyday folk.
Edison's phonograph did something indescribably precious. It gave people for mere pennies the ability to buy a service that once took a king's fortune to procure; even in Edison's day concert tickets were waaaaaay out of most people's price range. The easy dissemination of music in data-readable form accounts for the proliferation of music and musical styles that we enjoy today.
The only downide to commoditizing data just like commoditizing anything else, is that inevitably, outside intervention notithstanding, a cartel will form. That's the beef. Don't blame Edison for making possible the musical revolution in the modern world. It really, really, really isn't his fault that the RIAA exists.
p.s. Sorry about the Bob thing. Your nick...I couldn't resist.
You only need to be 30 to remember Commodore with fondness.
Try 25. That's how old I am, and I remember my C64 as the first home PC my family had, till we upgraded to an 8088! I still remember it and its blue 'bootscreen' glow with fondness.
Not only that, but he could also view any email correspondence by that judge, which could have included sensitive court material.
Show me a judge who handles sensitive court correspondence by e-mail and I'll show you a judge I dearly want to smack in the face really, really hard.
he should be punished for his deeds and then be enlisted by some the Canadian police and do it legally
I wouldn't find it at all more comforting that the guy who has the job (self-appointed or not) trolling through private e-mails has a badge. Wouldn't that make him *more* dangerous to the average privacy-loving John Q. Whatever?
Slashdot Mirror
You were doing really well, and I agreed for the vast majority with your sentiment, right up until your left-field dig involving the Communist Manifesto. Have you ever read the thing? I'm no Communist (in fact, I think Communism is for the most part damn silly), but nowhere in the CM does it encourage people to be sheeple; quite the opposite, it is a panphlet encouraging people to revolt! I realy can't stand it when people confuse the quasi-fascist "communist" states and their histories and policies with the actual doctrines and documents describing Communism. It's the Political Scientist in me, I guess.
Riddle me this, Batman. Since we in our democratic society are taught that criticism of leaders who do not rise to our expectations is not only allowed, but appropriate and even a civic duty, how come when there is a teacher (and there are many of these) who are, oh how did you put it, "the stereotypical drill and kill, monotone, mindless worksheet teachers" that it isn't in fact appropriate to criticize that fact by direct argument, satire, humor, etc.? How are students supposed to learn that first lesson if the second is in fact made impossible? Put up and shut up is a poor lesson to teach, IMHO.
Seriously, reminds me of the Everglades or something. One stupid and, frankly, unentertaining video produced while the teacher's back was turned in one day really did a number to that school environment, eh? Come on, that's just a shallow and not too creative excuse for maintaining an authoritarian power-structure. It's not like he physically threatened or harmed anyone, nor prevented others from listening to or learning from the teacher. The "school environment" seems penty intact, and is just used to punish someone when they can't punish someone any other way. There was recently a Supreme Court case, IIRC, where a student was charged with "disrupting the mission of a school" and suspended for posting a "bong hits for jesus" sign after hours and off school property!
They think they own the kids that attend their schools, and they sure act that way, and things like this only reinforce it. Another poster above put it well that this is not how you train students to grow up to be good citizens of a democracy; this is how you acclimate them to autocracy.
It is public in the narrow legal sense that a person who acts in that forum cannot have a reasonable expectation that their actions would remain outside the awareness of a significant number of unrelated people. A private school classroom would be little different in this regard. IANAL, so the definition may be a little off.
I agree. But that doesn't mean we are less worthy for the trying. Sometimes, the attempt is the worthier part. And, just like attempts to attain the attention and favor of deities may make us observe closer whehther and how we could be made to deserve such an attention, perhaps the jealous guarding of one's own life's contents might provoke at least the possibility of introspection, and lead us to discover just what it is about our lives that makes their sanctity worth guarding.
And, meanwhile, I don't want you to know my taste in porn. That's just none of your damn business!
Well, seeing how all the other candidates have pointedly ignored the 'Connected Comstituency', perhaps that in and of itself is significant. Half of them wouldn't know a creative commons license if it bitchslapped them in the face, and the other half don't care.
I'm generally conservative and usually vote that way, but I'm seriously considering Obama. What flipped me was his speech on the role of faith in politics. As an Atheist, I get uncomfortable any time religion is brought into politics, but I am not hypersenstitive about it teh way many of my fellow Atheists are, e.g. in a predominantly believer nation, I do believe there is a place in the public square for religious expressions and conversations; he is the first politician I have heard (in a long time at least) who speaks sensibly on that topic, and seems even genuine about it, exposing both the Right's shameless pandering and the Left's unnecessarily extreme allergy to the issue.
And while I'm not sure if that segment of the Texas con. has specifically been challeneged, but other states that have similar provisions have had them struck down unanimously by the USSC [Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)]. The Article VI language preventing religious tests or oaths for federal office was ruled to apply to the states.
There's 'voluntary' behavior and then there is 'encouraged' behavior. The game certainly facilitates through the way it is designed and the missions the characters perform a certain penchant for theft and murder through the liberal application of semi-automatic firearms. Sure, you don't *have* to kill everyone in sight, but it is expected by the structure of the game that you get your hands filthy dirty; the violent life is glamorized and encouraged. And yes, I have played. Thought GTA 1 and 2 were mindless nihilistic fun, and 3 was pretty boring.
GTA and its progeny are violent games, no two ways about it. Sure, one or two saints will find a way to eke out an enjoyable experience without harming a digital soul in such games, but these are anomalies.
...that just because you abhor violence, sex, etc., in your media that 'Sin City', 'Doom' et al. are not good. It simply means they are uninteresting to you. It has nothing to do with class, and everything to do with age-appropriateness. Sin City and Doom are bad movies/games to be showing a kindergartener. Beyond that, you are just being snobby. (P.S. I'm pretty sure the arcade became a ghost town not because of violence, but because kids all of a sudden had access to games of similar quality right at their house or their friends' houses, with video game consoles and serious video-capable PCs).
There are, and always have been fun, interesting games that had no element of violence in them. Pinball is a good example (interestingly, Centipede is not, unless we don't care so long as it's violence against things not human, in which case you shouldn't care about Doom either). So was Myst (a personal fav). But there is no magical exclusionary rule that says if there are elements of violence, sex, and profanity a game is automatically bad and/or boring. The Longest Journey was a great game, but was full of profanity and had a good bit of the other two. Half-life and its sequel were both groundbreaking and engaging story-wise, but chock full of violence. Sin City was a fantastic movie, if for nothing else the artistic direction that was taken, but also the stories are quite gripping (and also inherently moral in dramatistic ways; you know, the same way Shakespeare's plays were morally tinged even though they were chock full of violence, sex, and profanity...).
Besides, all the good ol' games you seem bent on being nostalgic about are available in Flash or Java on the net somewhere or other. So, it's not like these options are forever lost to a parent trying to entertain a child age-appropriately.
There's a special place in Hell for the RIAA. Right next to politicians and people who make reality shows.
Is that anywhere near the special place reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre?
No, no, no! Obviously it's the new and highly successful shotgun approach to English grammar! Shotguns are the wave of the future in lingustics; don't you forget!
Even better would be if we went with an amoeba or something similar, where there are no bones at all, merely controlled motive forces. Are there any engineering specialists around to tell me if there's any good way to do something like that?
Yes. Hire an amoeba.
The "turf" would dry up, because most people would rather walk down the street to the drug store to buy regulated quality marijuana than to risk getting shot buying some probably adulterated pot from a street corner dealer in a bad neighborhood. You are right, however, that legal drug producers have a great deal of power which is sometimes abused. These abuses, while serious, never reach the 'slaughter some dude's entire family' level that cartels reach...actually, not even in the same ballpark.
Also, most of the price associated with drugs is markup from the risk associated with processing and importation; in production countries, they shoot the growers when they find them. It's no picnic for a drug mule either. The prices are unbelievably inflated above actual material production and transportation costs. Also, a sizeable part of the market would shrivel for marijuana at least, because it is a relatively easy plant to cultivate at home.
We can argue over whether the system functioned properly or not; in fact, that's what this sort of thread is all about...hence my argument that it was in fact appropriate for /.
As for whether the system in fact acted as intended...I'd say no. While it is true that the government in question is in the republican form, even representative governments (like this one) contain methods of polling constitutents directly and investing the people with some limited legislative powers, like a referendum. Absent actual powers, non-binding ballot questions are intended to ask the people's inclination on issues of policy. In this case, a lawyer working for the county had 'a gut feeling' that people who voted for the question intended to vote against it, despite there being no evidence supproting that conclusion. Since deliberative bodies are supposed to deliberate on facts, and there were no facts in evidence except for the simple fact of the actual vote result, two out of three commissioners erred very, very badly. That was the system breaking down.
It isn't to say that the commissioners broke any laws. Quite the contrary, they probably acted within their authority. Nonetheless, we know that a system can act harmfully without having any structural defect. For example, it is within the power of the federal government to raise the marginal tax rate in all categories to 100%. It wouldn't be illegal, but I think we would all call it a massive systemic breakdown nonetheless.
P.S. The republican form was an innovation whose intention was never to prevent the tyranny of the majority. The element in the equation that provides that protection is a Constitution, a document prescribing and proscribing the bounds of legitimate authority for the governing body and placing certain human rights out-of-bounds of legislation or regulation.
P.P.S. I also think that most republics don't follow the wills of their constituents, and for the most part this is a good thing, as the people at large are neither privy to the requisite information nor the time to analyze that information to make decently informed decisions about most issues. However, that system seems to fail when that natural obfucatory nature of legislation provides a convenient shield for monied interests to ply favorable regulation.
Nerds tend to care about and try to understand how systems of any sort work, and are particularly intrigued and interested when those systems behave anomalously or break down. In this case, the democratic process is a system, and the implementation of this system in a particular county in a particular state seems to have broken down spectacularly, and about an issue which many young people care about, no less.
So, it is news for nerds. And its stuff that matters to many here, judging by the decent number of comments thus far.
All US states are Republics (Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution). Referendums are not incompatible with a republican form of government, since some apparatus of government controls the method by which referendum questions are selected to be put to the voting public.
Doesn't that put you into the second third? That is, people for whom the Internet simply doesn't enrich their lives beyond where it already is?
Personally I only use the Internet for three things: reading Slashdot, playing Correspondence Chess, and occasional wikisurfing. Don't see much need for myspace and facebook and all those newfangled things kids these days play with. ;)
I'd say it's about three distinct thirds. That is, about one third of the non-users are just tech-intimidated and do not wish to feel stupid and/or incompetent while learning an entirely new skill set; newbie errors inevitably happen, and nobody likes to feel like a noob. A second third are people who truly honestly have rich, full lives without connectivity; it can't be that hard since people used to do it all the time! The final third are people who can't afford it, and would much rather concentrate on feeding their kids or making car payments. I have contempt for only the first third; fear of failure is a dumb reason to not try something new. The other two, however, have damn good reasons for staying offline.
I don't disagree; my only point, and the point of the original posting, was that the vast majority of music up until very recently was not music produced by one person for others merely for their enjoyment, but rather for other purposes, mostly religious. Characterize the oral tradition of indigenous people however one wants, and the fact remnains that the accompanying music is there to glorify the subject of the story (some religious/spiritual chracter or concept) or to serve as a mnemonic cue or device, and not primarily for the audience's aesthetic enjoyment.
The oral tradition, by and large, was a religious one. They preserved their creation, law, and holy stories (all functions of religion, esp. in your indigenous peoples) via music, and used music both as a mnemonic device and to spice the stories up a bit. Like I said, religion: Kept the music coming for many years (and still does, in many ways).
The vast majority of celebrations in all the societies you mentioned were religious celebrations, honoring this or that god or mythlogical-historical event. Did music exist that was non-religous? Probably. But was it played for the commoners' consumption? Absolutely not. Musicians played when they could get paid, becuase that's how they survived. The nobles/priests/kings they played for were generally jealous of te service being provided to them, and did not look kindly upon freebies. Which was the original point I was responding to: music generally as a service of one person for another did not happen. Music only happened from religious or noble patronage, and only for those purposes, until pretty damn recently.
BTW, the fiddle had not been invented by the time Nero was emperor. So he didn't fiddle. And if one is to argue that the classically educated did know how to play, you'd be right, but two points remain. One, nearly all the music they studied was religious in nature. Two, the people who were classically educated were on the whole filthy frikkin rich or in a noble family and did not play for the common folk at all, which again was the point I was originally responding to.
Yes, I have heard of bard, troubadours, etc.. They became prominenet...in the Late Baroque era. Like I said. And most of them traveled from fiefdom to fiefdom and sang and played...for kings and lords, also like I said. It was the only way they could eat; playing for commoners (though it did happen on occassion) didn't fill the stomach until the economy could support it (think late classical period).
And respectfully, while fantasy novels on the whole are entertaining and occasionally even thought provoking, are by and large utter shite when it comes to historical accuracy. The closest one comes to historical accuracy in a novel like that is something like "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis. And that portrayed the late medieval period; ain't no bards there.
Hey Bob,
For the vast majority of that fifteen thousand years you speak of, music wasn't a service that people (regular folk, that is) provided each other at all. For the lion's share of the first 14/15ths, nearly all music was for religious purposes, so at best it was a service by people for their gods, not for each other. Music for pleasure didn't become decently commonplace until the Baroque era in the West, and even then it was a service of talented professionals for some King or Prince, not the everyday folk.
Edison's phonograph did something indescribably precious. It gave people for mere pennies the ability to buy a service that once took a king's fortune to procure; even in Edison's day concert tickets were waaaaaay out of most people's price range. The easy dissemination of music in data-readable form accounts for the proliferation of music and musical styles that we enjoy today.
The only downide to commoditizing data just like commoditizing anything else, is that inevitably, outside intervention notithstanding, a cartel will form. That's the beef. Don't blame Edison for making possible the musical revolution in the modern world. It really, really, really isn't his fault that the RIAA exists.
p.s. Sorry about the Bob thing. Your nick...I couldn't resist.
You only need to be 30 to remember Commodore with fondness.
Try 25. That's how old I am, and I remember my C64 as the first home PC my family had, till we upgraded to an 8088! I still remember it and its blue 'bootscreen' glow with fondness.
Not only that, but he could also view any email correspondence by that judge, which could have included sensitive court material.
Show me a judge who handles sensitive court correspondence by e-mail and I'll show you a judge I dearly want to smack in the face really, really hard.
he should be punished for his deeds and then be enlisted by some the Canadian police and do it legally
I wouldn't find it at all more comforting that the guy who has the job (self-appointed or not) trolling through private e-mails has a badge. Wouldn't that make him *more* dangerous to the average privacy-loving John Q. Whatever?