Here's a good (extremely quick) breakdown of where they fit in conceptually.
I suspect statistics will triumph over design, no matter how knowledgeable a group of musicologists you assemble. At the very least, statistics can do it faster and easier, because it skips the messy aesthetic questions and cuts right to behavior of peers (objective data).
One example of this efficiency in action: Pandora has been struggling to include latin and classical music. Last.fm doesn't care if you listen to white noise all day long (as long as someone else is too).
Pandora can behave unhelpfully if you program a station with a bunch of genre crossing interests (I've found that I have to compartmentalize my tastes into subgenres for Pandora to behave sensibly).
But Pandora lets me compartmentalize my tastes for more accuracy. The Last.fm algorithm gets diluted by my punk interests when recommending new funk for me to listen to, and vice versa.
And sometimes, when you're looking for recommendations, sometimes you don't just want to follow the crowd. Sometimes you want the help of an expert whose taste you admire, and sometimes you want something completely random.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to create a station on Pandora using your top artists of the week in Last.fm automatically? Wouldn't it be great to import all your distates from Pandora into Last.fm?
Who's got a script to hybridize these two, make them greater than the sum of their parts?
This claim is still controversial, and not just among reactionary homophobes.
Foucault's History of Sexuality points out that our modern conceptions of sexuality are recently invented labels, attempting to medicalize something, to label it as a condition when it is just one of the many ways humans can interact.
Dosteyevsky laid out an astounding critique of deterministic behaviorism back in 1864.
Sartre's Portrait of the Anti-Semite criticizes the persecution of others on better grounds. Portrait reminds us that this medicalization of it, this claim that it wasn't a legitimate choice but a biological disorder, was more notoriously homophobic, and we've forgotten that. Sartre decries anyone who would say that sexuality is not a choice as simply someone too afraid to face that choice in him/herself.
Far more sinister is the way the homosexual community boxes themselves in with this argument:
P1) It's wrong to act with prejudice towards something not chosen. P2) Sexual preference is not chosen. C) Therefore it is wrong to act with prejudice towards sexual preference.
It might be that one day we'll get the biological gene for homosexuality and reduce it to that and it will be end of story. Or, we might find evidence showing incontrovertibly that it IS chosen. What will the homosexual community do then, after convincing everyone it's legitimate to persecute those who've made certain choices?
But the reason it's wrong to persecute others has nothing to do with whether they have made a choice or not. No matter your religion, your nationality, your political affiliation, your beliefs, or your preferences: Our duty to respect each other extends well beyond the simple question of whether or not we can callously say someone brought it upon themselves by making a choice.
The Rogers Commission relegated the bulk of his thoughts to an "Appendix" because no one wanted to release a report that was too critical of the space program (even though that's exactly what they were appointed to do). It almost wasn't included at all, but for Feynman's dogged insistence.
He deals with his role in the Rogers commission in No Ordinary Genius (that's a link to the beginning of the Chapter from Google Print).
That chapter is filled with funny anecdotes, and enraging stories about the bullheadedness of beaurocracy, told by one of the most charismatic geniuses of our time about one of the most important events from my childhood.
"Am I saying that there are X similarities, therefore we are like 1984? No, and it would ridiculous to suggest it.
Am I saying that we should be wary of letting our liberties being taken from us...[yes]"
This seems very reasonable, and I'm sorry for any previous misinterpretations. But the misinterpretation wasn't entirely my fault. If you weren't invoking any similarities, it seems like bringing up 1984 only confuses your point. Why not just talk about the importance of the liberties directly?
It's probably time I confessed that Orwell killed my ancient Japanese master, that's probably why I overreacted.
I know this discussion arouses some passion, and I know my position is controversial, and...
"Again, you completely miss the point of my post and the book itself."...I think we both feel that we're talking completely past each other.
But I think this discussion is valuable, so I'd like to try to walk through my position with care one last time.
I take issue with this statement and its permutations, nothing more, nothing less:
"All practices of Big Brother are necessarily bad for society."
It seems this is the most common way the book is invoked.
"CCTVs! Those were in 1984! 1984 was bad, therefore CCTVs are bad!"
It's an appeal to infamy, and it's a textbook fallacy. It's just like saying, "Hitler rode a bicycle, therefore bicycles are bad."
Perhaps the erosion of liberty under CCTV or similar intrusions bring more costs to society than benefits. Or perhaps, while the short term benefits outweigh the costs, certain sacrifices set us on a slippery slope that will inevitably tip those scales.
But I'd like to occasionally be told how and why, have some sort of accounting of the costs and benefits and what will necessarily follow, and how we know that one thing must lead to another, as opposed to always just be referred to a book I find sensationalist and poorly written. I'd like to know whether people have actually thought about these issues themselves, or are just reading from Orwell's pamphlet.
Sorry for our perennial difficulties here. If it's any consolation, I really enjoyed Animal Farm.
2) And I'm not sure it's ripping people off. ROMS is collecting royalties here and delivering them directly to the artists. They're not getting significantly less than if I bought a CD in Moscow, then flew home with it. If anyone is getting ripped off in the music industry, it's artists and consumers, I think this system works better for both of them. Ripped off is always a question of "compared to what?"
3) If you have a legal argument to run against the service, I'd be anxious to hear it. But just calling them shady and hoping it sticks doesn't get you much traction.
4) I never really meant to defend an absolutist hardline, that all DRM everywhere is necessarily E-V-I-L, I just wondered what sort of DRM (if any) Google would employ, and was playing with their motto and recent news. I was probably being too cute, though, and your point is taken here.
5) You raise another interesting point about trying to sell everyday Americans on the idea that DRM hurts them, and the risks of losing them if we conflate such a view with more controversial ones. It's like you're reading out of the EFF handbook on how to be a model citizen.
I've thought about this problem too, and while I will not admit my endorsement of AllOfMp3 is less sound than my anti-DRM position, I must admit it is slightly more controversial.
But it's not significantly more controversial on Slashdot. This, of all places, should be the forum to air these views, to have them carefully considered, before widely endorsing them to folks who don't even know what DRM stands for.
I'm tempted to argue that there's little risk of alienating any audience if you've checked your facts, as I feel I have. And that chilling discussions, even discussions about the legality of services like AllOfMp3, can never be helpful. But I've been wrong before, so I'm happy to meet you in the middle, that we should restrict these discussions to places like Slashdot until our positions can be a bit more scrutinized. Incidentally, given the forum, this exonerates everything I originally posted.
That's my two cents, hopefully it leaves you as "fucking rich" as the first time.
Yeah, even if iTunes sells them cheaper by the album, the price of an album in Russia is about $3. The Russian download services reflect this. And the Russians also have obligatory licensing after publication, sorta like what we have for radio, so their catalogue is hypothetically unlimited.
With AllOfMp3 or the other Russian sites (mp3search.ru or musicmp3.ru), you can get tracks for something like 4 to 12 cents per song, ala carte or not, encoded in the format/bitrate you specify, with or without an artist's permission. ROMS (the Russian ASCAP) has routinely asserted the legality of these sites, and this legality has been supported by Russian legal authorities (the Moscow police, judges and Russian lawmakers have all attested to the legality here).
You can legally import them, in the US at least, just as if you went over to Russia and bought a physical album for $3 in a record store, as long as you intend it for personal use.
It's just price differentials, it's just like if you could buy your Big Macs in China and have them shipped instantly to your mouth for free. Welcome to the information age and the economic chaos/freedom it's bringing.
More importantly, the tracks from these services are completely DRM free.
The best version of this you can get outside of Russia is eMusic, which is subscription based, about 25 cents per song, completely DRM free. Their catalogue is mostly limited to smaller labels though.
So one big question is whether or not there will be meaningful price competition, the other big question for me is whether or not "Don't Be Evil" means "Don't Use DRM" or if it means "Buckle under the pressure of the RIAA, as if it were the hot new China."
If occasionally noticing your government were so terrible, maybe Orwell wouldn't have needed all the torture and mind control and bleak imagery to make the society look worse.
It's just a cheap rhetorical trick: x is bad, therefore x & y is bad, therefore y is bad.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want an omnipresent government either, but I don't want to celebrate dishonest literature either.
1984 shows you a society where the state irrationally tortures its citizens and does x.
Step 1) Look for an x that is present in our society and in 1984.
Step 2) Conclude our society is as bad as the society in 1984.
Step 3) If there's no obvious x, describe elements found in any society (such as "work is hard" or "some people fight with each other" or "not enough people care about fashion.") Proceed to step 2.
"I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you, But I get the feeling that you don't like it. What's with all the screaming? You like monkeys, you like ponies, Maybe you don't like monsters so much? Maybe I used too many monkeys; Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?" -Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton
Slashdot Mirror
...to integrate the two?
Can we get a greasemonkey script or something to take our top artists from Last.fm and build a station on Pandora?
Alternatively, I wish I could specify my distaste for certain artists in Last.fm...
Here's a good (extremely quick) breakdown of where they fit in conceptually.
I suspect statistics will triumph over design, no matter how knowledgeable a group of musicologists you assemble. At the very least, statistics can do it faster and easier, because it skips the messy aesthetic questions and cuts right to behavior of peers (objective data).
One example of this efficiency in action: Pandora has been struggling to include latin and classical music. Last.fm doesn't care if you listen to white noise all day long (as long as someone else is too).
Pandora can behave unhelpfully if you program a station with a bunch of genre crossing interests (I've found that I have to compartmentalize my tastes into subgenres for Pandora to behave sensibly).
But Pandora lets me compartmentalize my tastes for more accuracy. The Last.fm algorithm gets diluted by my punk interests when recommending new funk for me to listen to, and vice versa.
And sometimes, when you're looking for recommendations, sometimes you don't just want to follow the crowd. Sometimes you want the help of an expert whose taste you admire, and sometimes you want something completely random.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to create a station on Pandora using your top artists of the week in Last.fm automatically? Wouldn't it be great to import all your distates from Pandora into Last.fm?
Who's got a script to hybridize these two, make them greater than the sum of their parts?
Since I use IETab, the phrase "only works with IE" no longer holds much meaning for me.
(Well, actually, if there's an IE only page, I guess I have to click one button to make it work. But that's all.)
When I use IETab, I wonder if it reports my browser as IE or FF for these statistics?
"You do not Choose your sexual preference."
This claim is still controversial, and not just among reactionary homophobes.
Foucault's History of Sexuality points out that our modern conceptions of sexuality are recently invented labels, attempting to medicalize something, to label it as a condition when it is just one of the many ways humans can interact.
Dosteyevsky laid out an astounding critique of deterministic behaviorism back in 1864.
More recently, Andy Francis has collected compelling data suggesting that social factors must seriously contribute to sexual preference.
Sartre's Portrait of the Anti-Semite criticizes the persecution of others on better grounds. Portrait reminds us that this medicalization of it, this claim that it wasn't a legitimate choice but a biological disorder, was more notoriously homophobic, and we've forgotten that. Sartre decries anyone who would say that sexuality is not a choice as simply someone too afraid to face that choice in him/herself.
Far more sinister is the way the homosexual community boxes themselves in with this argument:
P1) It's wrong to act with prejudice towards something not chosen.
P2) Sexual preference is not chosen.
C) Therefore it is wrong to act with prejudice towards sexual preference.
It might be that one day we'll get the biological gene for homosexuality and reduce it to that and it will be end of story. Or, we might find evidence showing incontrovertibly that it IS chosen. What will the homosexual community do then, after convincing everyone it's legitimate to persecute those who've made certain choices?
But the reason it's wrong to persecute others has nothing to do with whether they have made a choice or not. No matter your religion, your nationality, your political affiliation, your beliefs, or your preferences: Our duty to respect each other extends well beyond the simple question of whether or not we can callously say someone brought it upon themselves by making a choice.
If this was going to be so insightful, you'd think I would've gotten a mod up when I posted this the first time.
The Challenger disaster sparked a lot of insightful commentary about the shuttle program from Richard Feynman.
The Rogers Commission relegated the bulk of his thoughts to an "Appendix" because no one wanted to release a report that was too critical of the space program (even though that's exactly what they were appointed to do). It almost wasn't included at all, but for Feynman's dogged insistence.
He deals with his role in the Rogers commission in No Ordinary Genius (that's a link to the beginning of the Chapter from Google Print).
That chapter is filled with funny anecdotes, and enraging stories about the bullheadedness of beaurocracy, told by one of the most charismatic geniuses of our time about one of the most important events from my childhood.
Highly recommended.
I guess the focus for you here was:
"Am I saying that there are X similarities, therefore we are like 1984?
No, and it would ridiculous to suggest it.
Am I saying that we should be wary of letting our liberties being taken from us...[yes]"
This seems very reasonable, and I'm sorry for any previous misinterpretations. But the misinterpretation wasn't entirely my fault. If you weren't invoking any similarities, it seems like bringing up 1984 only confuses your point. Why not just talk about the importance of the liberties directly?
It's probably time I confessed that Orwell killed my ancient Japanese master, that's probably why I overreacted.
I know this discussion arouses some passion, and I know my position is controversial, and...
...I think we both feel that we're talking completely past each other.
"Again, you completely miss the point of my post and the book itself."
But I think this discussion is valuable, so I'd like to try to walk through my position with care one last time.
I take issue with this statement and its permutations, nothing more, nothing less:
"All practices of Big Brother are necessarily bad for society."
It seems this is the most common way the book is invoked.
"CCTVs! Those were in 1984! 1984 was bad, therefore CCTVs are bad!"
It's an appeal to infamy, and it's a textbook fallacy. It's just like saying, "Hitler rode a bicycle, therefore bicycles are bad."
Perhaps the erosion of liberty under CCTV or similar intrusions bring more costs to society than benefits. Or perhaps, while the short term benefits outweigh the costs, certain sacrifices set us on a slippery slope that will inevitably tip those scales.
But I'd like to occasionally be told how and why, have some sort of accounting of the costs and benefits and what will necessarily follow, and how we know that one thing must lead to another, as opposed to always just be referred to a book I find sensationalist and poorly written. I'd like to know whether people have actually thought about these issues themselves, or are just reading from Orwell's pamphlet.
Sorry for our perennial difficulties here. If it's any consolation, I really enjoyed Animal Farm.
1) I'm not sure it's fair to assume everyone running a business in Russia is a mafioso. Especially a group that has passed the legal scrutiny AllOfMp3 has been subjected to.
2) And I'm not sure it's ripping people off. ROMS is collecting royalties here and delivering them directly to the artists. They're not getting significantly less than if I bought a CD in Moscow, then flew home with it. If anyone is getting ripped off in the music industry, it's artists and consumers, I think this system works better for both of them. Ripped off is always a question of "compared to what?"
3) If you have a legal argument to run against the service, I'd be anxious to hear it. But just calling them shady and hoping it sticks doesn't get you much traction.
4) I never really meant to defend an absolutist hardline, that all DRM everywhere is necessarily E-V-I-L, I just wondered what sort of DRM (if any) Google would employ, and was playing with their motto and recent news. I was probably being too cute, though, and your point is taken here.
5) You raise another interesting point about trying to sell everyday Americans on the idea that DRM hurts them, and the risks of losing them if we conflate such a view with more controversial ones. It's like you're reading out of the EFF handbook on how to be a model citizen.
I've thought about this problem too, and while I will not admit my endorsement of AllOfMp3 is less sound than my anti-DRM position, I must admit it is slightly more controversial.
But it's not significantly more controversial on Slashdot. This, of all places, should be the forum to air these views, to have them carefully considered, before widely endorsing them to folks who don't even know what DRM stands for.
I'm tempted to argue that there's little risk of alienating any audience if you've checked your facts, as I feel I have. And that chilling discussions, even discussions about the legality of services like AllOfMp3, can never be helpful. But I've been wrong before, so I'm happy to meet you in the middle, that we should restrict these discussions to places like Slashdot until our positions can be a bit more scrutinized. Incidentally, given the forum, this exonerates everything I originally posted.
That's my two cents, hopefully it leaves you as "fucking rich" as the first time.
Yeah, even if iTunes sells them cheaper by the album, the price of an album in Russia is about $3. The Russian download services reflect this. And the Russians also have obligatory licensing after publication, sorta like what we have for radio, so their catalogue is hypothetically unlimited.
With AllOfMp3 or the other Russian sites (mp3search.ru or musicmp3.ru), you can get tracks for something like 4 to 12 cents per song, ala carte or not, encoded in the format/bitrate you specify, with or without an artist's permission. ROMS (the Russian ASCAP) has routinely asserted the legality of these sites, and this legality has been supported by Russian legal authorities (the Moscow police, judges and Russian lawmakers have all attested to the legality here).
You can legally import them, in the US at least, just as if you went over to Russia and bought a physical album for $3 in a record store, as long as you intend it for personal use.
It's just price differentials, it's just like if you could buy your Big Macs in China and have them shipped instantly to your mouth for free. Welcome to the information age and the economic chaos/freedom it's bringing.
More importantly, the tracks from these services are completely DRM free.
The best version of this you can get outside of Russia is eMusic, which is subscription based, about 25 cents per song, completely DRM free. Their catalogue is mostly limited to smaller labels though.
So one big question is whether or not there will be meaningful price competition, the other big question for me is whether or not "Don't Be Evil" means "Don't Use DRM" or if it means "Buckle under the pressure of the RIAA, as if it were the hot new China."
So maybe misspellings won't be censored as effectively, and the Chinese can finally get all that pr0n.
e )
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tienanmen+square
(for comparison: http://images.google.com/images?q=tienanmen+squar
If occasionally noticing your government were so terrible, maybe Orwell wouldn't have needed all the torture and mind control and bleak imagery to make the society look worse.
It's just a cheap rhetorical trick: x is bad, therefore x & y is bad, therefore y is bad.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want an omnipresent government either, but I don't want to celebrate dishonest literature either.
I think hitting over the head with a chair would be pretty cruel, because man, that would have to hurt.
1984 shows you a society where the state irrationally tortures its citizens and does x.
Step 1) Look for an x that is present in our society and in 1984.
Step 2) Conclude our society is as bad as the society in 1984.
Step 3) If there's no obvious x, describe elements found in any society (such as "work is hard" or "some people fight with each other" or "not enough people care about fashion.") Proceed to step 2.
Step 4) Post to slashdot.
Isn't anyone going to make a Red Dwarf reference?
Clearly, most of this orbital debris comes from Chuck Norris roundhouse kicking people into space.
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
Yeah, the question isn't how do we get rid of it, but how much more space junk do we need to start getting a little shade?
Just a couple billionty tons more space junk, right around the equator, that's what I say!
Clearly this is the solution to global warming we've all been waiting for!
Can I get a harumph?
My guess is this release won't gather much attention, and the Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
It's just a string of bird related puns, or in /.ese: "news."
"I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you,
But I get the feeling that you don't like it.
What's with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies,
Maybe you don't like monsters so much?
Maybe I used too many monkeys;
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?"
-Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton
Should only have to wait until February 1st, and they promise it will "cost less than a good mobile phone."
I'm with you, but really, I'd go for any keyboard named after a Transformer.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
The judge offerred his retort.
Like here?
Your football is boring, and our Dr. Who is badly written childish tripe.
Oh come on, the current Dr. Who isn't childish.