behavioral studies suggest that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self, can think about the future
Ever watch a dog when it expects its master home in a short while? The dog becomes restless, pacing at the door, sometimes doing a fast excited pant and alternating that with whining. I'd suggest that the dog is thinking about the future when he can get under the feet of his master and dance around and be a huge annoyance for a few minutes.
The way I see it, you use your talents to eek out a living. If your talent is to be a composer and musician, then by all means you should be paid for your work without worrying about getting ripped off.
Unfortunately the sad reality is that RIAA member labels are bigger crooks than all but the largest for-profit "pirates."
If you do release anything progressive/psychadelic through iTunes drop me an email - I would like to check it out.
I'm thinking in terms of when you're stuck stopped on the parking lot known as Route 128 (in other words, you're in heavy stop & go traffic where you're stopped 20 seconds, then proceed a two and a half car lengths, and then are stopped again for another 20 seconds), and debating on whether or not it will be quicker to get off exit 15 and take back roads instead. I'm not thinking that responsible people would be reading the notifications at 55 mph traffic.
The Dark Side of the Moon was an immediate success, topping the Billboard 200 for one week. It subsequently remained in the charts for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988, longer than any other album in history. With an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is Pink Floyd's most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums worldwide. It has twice been remastered and re-released, and has been covered by several other acts. It spawned two singles, "Money" and "Us and Them". In addition to its commercial success, The Dark Side of the Moon is one of Pink Floyd's most popular albums among fans and critics, and is frequently ranked as one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
The singles were released well after the album charted, BTW. There were a few Pink Floyd singles but very few of them, and they really were not contributing factors to the albums' successes.
What made Pink Floyd successful was once they achieved a certain level of success in England they had the attitude of "fuck it" where the labels were concerned, and did what they wanted - and what they wanted to do was avant guard experimental music.
Some might hate the Ummagumma studio record but I love it for its uniqueness, that it is so out there, but that they manage to achieve such ethereal and non-traditional sounds and yet still arrange them into musical works. They had an entire album side where each member could do whatever the heck struck their fancy at the moment, and a lot of the stuff is fantastically weird, but in a good way.
And strangely, Pink Floyd have mastered balancing complexity and simplicity, never quite taking it "over the top" like Queen did, keeping the composition as a whole in mind, especially with their longer pieces and with Meddle, when they started delving into the "concept album" idea. Now, some of it did get a little whiny due to Roger's daddy issues, but they are still quite good. One vastly underrated work is "the final cut" which is actually quite good. It's missing Rick's keyboard work so it is missing the signature Pink Floyd sound and ambiance, but if you consider it a Roger Waters solo work (which it pretty much is thanks to his egomania at the time) it's likely his best solo work to date.
Meddle? The track Echoes is orgasmic to listen to. IMHO, it is one of the best tracks ever recorded. The way I can think of to best describe Pink Floyd is as a modern take of classical, where the pieces can be long and there can be a lot that is complex, but that there is a consistency to it that is missing from a lot of today's mainstream pop.
That's not to say that they are like Metallica where everything since the black album sounds like the black album. It's more that there is a quality and presence to Pink Floyd's work where you can hear a measure of a work from them and know it's them, even if you had never heard that work before. A lot of that has to do with Wright's talent on the keys as a Jazz musician, but it also has to do with their focus on a good, clean sounding production (the engineering aspect of the recording).
I really hope that the labels haven't lost sight of the potential this kind of music has. It certainly doesn't earn a quick buck and requires a big investment and 2-3 albums that might flop, but once the work gains notice it could very easily become a dinosaur.
Singles are not necessary. A great album can sell itself. The problem is the labels are unwilling to take such risks - they can't see the HUGE profits past their greed.
And as far as selling out is concerned, and the issue being over money rather than integrity? They were offered $100mil each to tour after 2005. They turned the money down, saying they would do more charity gigs but not tour. Those guys don't need money when they're each earning millions per MONTH from record sales alone, let alone current projects and investments, and licensed works. Once you're making a million a year, or ten million, or whatever, what's a million more? Money that will just sit, or you'll just blow on useless crap, or give away/donate.
Part of it is in the case of Pink Floyd, the artists actually own their work and the Animals at EMI only had distribution rights - so by distributing it in an unauthorised format EMI could have been screwed to The Wall for copyright infringement, and would have had to Run Like Hell. Instead Pink Floyd said Hey You - Not Now John! When you're One of the Few to retain ownership of your work, you get to say "Get Your Filthy Hands off My Desert, or all that will be on your shelves is Empty Spaces," and the EMI execs, blinking their Paranoid Eyes, had to once again Stop, or risk going to The Trial and end up stuck Outside the Wall.
So, rather than waste a lot of Time Waiting for the Worms to eat their mottled remains, EMI said The Show Must Go On, let's Bring the Boys Back Home to EMI and talk to them In the Flesh and say "Have a Cigar" and relax, and "Wut's uh, the deal?". When Dave, Nick, and Roger arrived, Roger was Fearless and shouted "You Animals must have Brain Damage" to think that we are Sheep who will allow you Dogs to cheapen our work. Then he grabbed the exec and put him in a headlock and started rapping his head, shouting "Is There Anybody Out there? McFly, is there Nobody Home? All I hear is Echoes. One of These Days, I'm Going to Cut You Into Little Pieces!"
Then Roger calmed down and sat down, exhausted. The EMI exect said "Don't Leave me Now; don't let your thinking be Obscured by Clouds. Stay, and we'll talk Money. Why, the Gold, it's in the. . . "
Roger exclaimed "Welcome to the Machine."
Dave interjected "Stop, Roger, don't go Burning Bridges again. The last time it tore the band apart for 22 years!"
Nick, ever the rational one, the only member to be with the band through its entire career, said "Hey You, It's One of My Turns to speak right now, and Let There Be More Light on this subject. Remember, Childhood's End, and we're at Chapter 24 of our careers. If only you would overcome your Flaming temper, we could Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and watch our sales go into Interstellar Overdrive. Remember a Day before today when we were young and were the Masters of Rock? When we shone like the sun? Today's market is The Thin Ice, or to put it in other words, The Narrow Way, and if we don't let them sell online, you may as well plant us now six feet under in Granchester Meadows."
I hear Echoes on the radio from time to time. The other day I heard Free Four on the radio as well. I hadn't previously heard that on the radio since I was a toddler. Sometimes the local classic rock station plays some of the longer and also the lesser known gems from Pink Floyd (like Fearless). On occasion they'll actually play Shine On You Crazy Diamond in entirety. More often you hear the staples though: Comfortably Numb, Run like Hell, Wish You Were Here or Welcome to the Machine, or on rare occasion Hey You and possibly The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part II.
There are folks on dpreview who have scouted out locations to shoot the ISS transiting the moon and sun. The only difference is this guy did it during an eclipse, and had the funds to travel to the ideal location. That's not to say it's not a great shot; it is.
My roommate broke the screen on one of my iPhones (well, the cover). She is completely not tech savvy - in her words she is "computer stupid." But, she got online and researched it and found a repair kit and instructions - then when the kit came she searched youtube and found some videos, and did 99% of it herself (she insisted). The only thing I had to do was clean some of the shards from the old crystal off of the bezel because she was afraid of over-heating the plastic bezel. So, I did that for her and then she was back in the race. I was so proud of her!
She knows near nothing about technology, but really, really wanted to fix the iPhone.
However contrast her to my mom: I, my brother, and a couple other people have tried to help her navigate netflix. She just doesn't get anything computer related, and doesn't care to learn. She just wants to get her bingo schedule, and that's it. She is finally starting to grasp how to cue up movies, but it's only a year after sitting down with her several times and having her watch, then go through the steps as I talk her through step by step, and then do it on her own, and repeat that whole process several times.
I don't blame age - I know people much older than my mom who are very tech savvy and have been on teh interwebz since the mid 90s - people who got their first computer in their mid-80s and are power users now.
It all has to do with motivation. If you don't care to learn and put up mental blocks for yourself, you're just not going to get it. If you think that lump of plastic and silicon is smarter than you, you're not going to grasp it because you let yourself be intimidated by a stupid, unthinking machine.
Then, you have the types who are afraid to even unplug the computer, and if they want to move a computer across the room, they hire someone to do it.
So your 20% number is off. I'd say 50% of people can do it on their own, another 20% can be talked through it over the phone, and 30% won't even bother to try.
I like Armageddon and The Sixth day, even as completely unrealistic as they are. That's why they are fiction. 2012? I didn't watch it. The whole premise was just stupid from the get-go. Yes, even more stupid than an oil well driller riding a shuttle into space to blow up an asteroid.
I would not call any of their "most realistic films" realistic. I haven't seen Gattaca, but I would not refer to "Contact" or "Jurassic Park" as realistic. Maybe some elements here and there are, but I think one of the best science fiction movies ever would have to be 2001 - not the monolith aspect but space travel and the realism of the lack of sound travel in space, the 0-gravity issues, spinning the craft to simulate 'gravity,' Ma Bell's outrageous rates, and so on. I'm very surprised 2001: A Space Odyssey didn't make NASA's top ten list.
That's, you know, the kinda thing they _are_ supposed to do: know what's happening up there.
Exploring/studying space is not their only task. Most people tend to forget the aeronautics portion of their tasks which are far more practical to taxpayers; that is, designing next-generation aircraft.
such as a GPS-enabled app that locks down texting once a car gets rolling
Thanks, but I would like to be able to text while riding as a passenger, and even if I am the driver I still want to see SMS traffic updates. I chose not to text of my own free will prior to the nannystate laws which solve nothing, and still won't text while driving. Go pull someone over for failure to yield, running a stop light, failure to come to a stop at a stop sign, or failure to maintain control of their vehicle and leave my phone the fuck alone.
Thanks.
and a program that cuts off credit-card spending.
I will decide when I have spent enough, thankyouverymuch. I spend a lot but I also pay my bills on time. I don't need you to tell me I can't buy one more blu-ray disc this month, or I can't order more camera gear, etc,. - if AmEx agrees I can handle the financial transactions I choose to engage in, who the fuck are you to decide otherwise?
Personal responsibility, folks. That's all I ask for.
If the USD goes down, US goods would be cheaper to the rest of the world, so our exports would increase, and it would decrease the buying power of the dollar for imported goods.
Except for wheat and soy, what do we make to export?
Camera manufacturers have been making weather-resistant DSLRs for years now (there have been well known instances where entire EOS 1Ds and EOS 7D Canon DSLR+Lenses combinations have been dunked into 3' of sea water and continued working without any problem), and they have a lot more connectors to contend with as well as a couple of microphones and speakers. It should not be difficult at all for phone manufacturers to start offering water-resistant smartphones.
Wouldn't estoppel (if that is the correct term) apply? Isn't Java available under the GPL, and aren't others allowed to modify and redistribute GPL code as much as they see fit?
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of dolphins - does anyone know of any good dolphin steak recipes?
Also:
Ever watch a dog when it expects its master home in a short while? The dog becomes restless, pacing at the door, sometimes doing a fast excited pant and alternating that with whining. I'd suggest that the dog is thinking about the future when he can get under the feet of his master and dance around and be a huge annoyance for a few minutes.
The way I see it, you use your talents to eek out a living. If your talent is to be a composer and musician, then by all means you should be paid for your work without worrying about getting ripped off.
Unfortunately the sad reality is that RIAA member labels are bigger crooks than all but the largest for-profit "pirates."
If you do release anything progressive/psychadelic through iTunes drop me an email - I would like to check it out.
Can I borrow it? And a couple blank tapes? /PhillipJFry
I especially like the artist's rendition of what the Monolith would look like! :-)
I also forgot to use anything from More. :(
I'm thinking in terms of when you're stuck stopped on the parking lot known as Route 128 (in other words, you're in heavy stop & go traffic where you're stopped 20 seconds, then proceed a two and a half car lengths, and then are stopped again for another 20 seconds), and debating on whether or not it will be quicker to get off exit 15 and take back roads instead. I'm not thinking that responsible people would be reading the notifications at 55 mph traffic.
I've had that on VHS since it was released. That tape is probably the only VHS tape I have that would motivate me to hook up one of my VCRs again. :)
Sure, in the '80s, when other worse music was endlessly getting air time. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon
The singles were released well after the album charted, BTW. There were a few Pink Floyd singles but very few of them, and they really were not contributing factors to the albums' successes.
What made Pink Floyd successful was once they achieved a certain level of success in England they had the attitude of "fuck it" where the labels were concerned, and did what they wanted - and what they wanted to do was avant guard experimental music.
Some might hate the Ummagumma studio record but I love it for its uniqueness, that it is so out there, but that they manage to achieve such ethereal and non-traditional sounds and yet still arrange them into musical works. They had an entire album side where each member could do whatever the heck struck their fancy at the moment, and a lot of the stuff is fantastically weird, but in a good way.
And strangely, Pink Floyd have mastered balancing complexity and simplicity, never quite taking it "over the top" like Queen did, keeping the composition as a whole in mind, especially with their longer pieces and with Meddle, when they started delving into the "concept album" idea. Now, some of it did get a little whiny due to Roger's daddy issues, but they are still quite good. One vastly underrated work is "the final cut" which is actually quite good. It's missing Rick's keyboard work so it is missing the signature Pink Floyd sound and ambiance, but if you consider it a Roger Waters solo work (which it pretty much is thanks to his egomania at the time) it's likely his best solo work to date.
Meddle? The track Echoes is orgasmic to listen to. IMHO, it is one of the best tracks ever recorded. The way I can think of to best describe Pink Floyd is as a modern take of classical, where the pieces can be long and there can be a lot that is complex, but that there is a consistency to it that is missing from a lot of today's mainstream pop.
That's not to say that they are like Metallica where everything since the black album sounds like the black album. It's more that there is a quality and presence to Pink Floyd's work where you can hear a measure of a work from them and know it's them, even if you had never heard that work before. A lot of that has to do with Wright's talent on the keys as a Jazz musician, but it also has to do with their focus on a good, clean sounding production (the engineering aspect of the recording).
I really hope that the labels haven't lost sight of the potential this kind of music has. It certainly doesn't earn a quick buck and requires a big investment and 2-3 albums that might flop, but once the work gains notice it could very easily become a dinosaur.
Singles are not necessary. A great album can sell itself. The problem is the labels are unwilling to take such risks - they can't see the HUGE profits past their greed.
And as far as selling out is concerned, and the issue being over money rather than integrity? They were offered $100mil each to tour after 2005. They turned the money down, saying they would do more charity gigs but not tour. Those guys don't need money when they're each earning millions per MONTH from record sales alone, let alone current projects and investments, and licensed works. Once you're making a million a year, or ten million, or whatever, what's a million more? Money that will just sit, or you'll just blow on useless crap, or give away/donate.
Part of it is in the case of Pink Floyd, the artists actually own their work and the Animals at EMI only had distribution rights - so by distributing it in an unauthorised format EMI could have been screwed to The Wall for copyright infringement, and would have had to Run Like Hell. Instead Pink Floyd said Hey You - Not Now John! When you're One of the Few to retain ownership of your work, you get to say "Get Your Filthy Hands off My Desert, or all that will be on your shelves is Empty Spaces," and the EMI execs, blinking their Paranoid Eyes, had to once again Stop, or risk going to The Trial and end up stuck Outside the Wall.
So, rather than waste a lot of Time Waiting for the Worms to eat their mottled remains, EMI said The Show Must Go On, let's Bring the Boys Back Home to EMI and talk to them In the Flesh and say "Have a Cigar" and relax, and "Wut's uh, the deal?". When Dave, Nick, and Roger arrived, Roger was Fearless and shouted "You Animals must have Brain Damage" to think that we are Sheep who will allow you Dogs to cheapen our work. Then he grabbed the exec and put him in a headlock and started rapping his head, shouting "Is There Anybody Out there? McFly, is there Nobody Home? All I hear is Echoes. One of These Days, I'm Going to Cut You Into Little Pieces!"
Then Roger calmed down and sat down, exhausted. The EMI exect said "Don't Leave me Now; don't let your thinking be Obscured by Clouds. Stay, and we'll talk Money. Why, the Gold, it's in the. . . "
Roger exclaimed "Welcome to the Machine."
Dave interjected "Stop, Roger, don't go Burning Bridges again. The last time it tore the band apart for 22 years!"
Nick, ever the rational one, the only member to be with the band through its entire career, said "Hey You, It's One of My Turns to speak right now, and Let There Be More Light on this subject. Remember, Childhood's End, and we're at Chapter 24 of our careers. If only you would overcome your Flaming temper, we could Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and watch our sales go into Interstellar Overdrive. Remember a Day before today when we were young and were the Masters of Rock? When we shone like the sun? Today's market is The Thin Ice, or to put it in other words, The Narrow Way, and if we don't let them sell online, you may as well plant us now six feet under in Granchester Meadows."
I hear Echoes on the radio from time to time. The other day I heard Free Four on the radio as well. I hadn't previously heard that on the radio since I was a toddler. Sometimes the local classic rock station plays some of the longer and also the lesser known gems from Pink Floyd (like Fearless). On occasion they'll actually play Shine On You Crazy Diamond in entirety. More often you hear the staples though: Comfortably Numb, Run like Hell, Wish You Were Here or Welcome to the Machine, or on rare occasion Hey You and possibly The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part II.
Noooooooooo!
Netcraft confirms it - album rock and concept albums are officially dead. :(
There are folks on dpreview who have scouted out locations to shoot the ISS transiting the moon and sun. The only difference is this guy did it during an eclipse, and had the funds to travel to the ideal location. That's not to say it's not a great shot; it is.
My roommate broke the screen on one of my iPhones (well, the cover). She is completely not tech savvy - in her words she is "computer stupid." But, she got online and researched it and found a repair kit and instructions - then when the kit came she searched youtube and found some videos, and did 99% of it herself (she insisted). The only thing I had to do was clean some of the shards from the old crystal off of the bezel because she was afraid of over-heating the plastic bezel. So, I did that for her and then she was back in the race. I was so proud of her!
She knows near nothing about technology, but really, really wanted to fix the iPhone.
However contrast her to my mom: I, my brother, and a couple other people have tried to help her navigate netflix. She just doesn't get anything computer related, and doesn't care to learn. She just wants to get her bingo schedule, and that's it. She is finally starting to grasp how to cue up movies, but it's only a year after sitting down with her several times and having her watch, then go through the steps as I talk her through step by step, and then do it on her own, and repeat that whole process several times.
I don't blame age - I know people much older than my mom who are very tech savvy and have been on teh interwebz since the mid 90s - people who got their first computer in their mid-80s and are power users now.
It all has to do with motivation. If you don't care to learn and put up mental blocks for yourself, you're just not going to get it. If you think that lump of plastic and silicon is smarter than you, you're not going to grasp it because you let yourself be intimidated by a stupid, unthinking machine.
Then, you have the types who are afraid to even unplug the computer, and if they want to move a computer across the room, they hire someone to do it.
So your 20% number is off. I'd say 50% of people can do it on their own, another 20% can be talked through it over the phone, and 30% won't even bother to try.
I like Armageddon and The Sixth day, even as completely unrealistic as they are. That's why they are fiction. 2012? I didn't watch it. The whole premise was just stupid from the get-go. Yes, even more stupid than an oil well driller riding a shuttle into space to blow up an asteroid.
I would not call any of their "most realistic films" realistic. I haven't seen Gattaca, but I would not refer to "Contact" or "Jurassic Park" as realistic. Maybe some elements here and there are, but I think one of the best science fiction movies ever would have to be 2001 - not the monolith aspect but space travel and the realism of the lack of sound travel in space, the 0-gravity issues, spinning the craft to simulate 'gravity,' Ma Bell's outrageous rates, and so on. I'm very surprised 2001: A Space Odyssey didn't make NASA's top ten list.
Exploring/studying space is not their only task. Most people tend to forget the aeronautics portion of their tasks which are far more practical to taxpayers; that is, designing next-generation aircraft.
Thanks, but I would like to be able to text while riding as a passenger, and even if I am the driver I still want to see SMS traffic updates. I chose not to text of my own free will prior to the nannystate laws which solve nothing, and still won't text while driving. Go pull someone over for failure to yield, running a stop light, failure to come to a stop at a stop sign, or failure to maintain control of their vehicle and leave my phone the fuck alone.
Thanks.
I will decide when I have spent enough, thankyouverymuch. I spend a lot but I also pay my bills on time. I don't need you to tell me I can't buy one more blu-ray disc this month, or I can't order more camera gear, etc,. - if AmEx agrees I can handle the financial transactions I choose to engage in, who the fuck are you to decide otherwise?
Personal responsibility, folks. That's all I ask for.
For our silly sports all we do is rip off Japanese game shows.
Rap is not music.
Weapons? Sure, they're assembled here, from parts made in China.
From the slashdotted site:
Your config file is being served up. Change your password right away - better yet, revert to a backup after first changing your password.
Except for wheat and soy, what do we make to export?
Move over Fake Steve Jobs, and check out Roger Waters' secret diaries:
http://www.ingsoc.com/waters/humour/rwdiary.html
Camera manufacturers have been making weather-resistant DSLRs for years now (there have been well known instances where entire EOS 1Ds and EOS 7D Canon DSLR+Lenses combinations have been dunked into 3' of sea water and continued working without any problem), and they have a lot more connectors to contend with as well as a couple of microphones and speakers. It should not be difficult at all for phone manufacturers to start offering water-resistant smartphones.
Wouldn't estoppel (if that is the correct term) apply? Isn't Java available under the GPL, and aren't others allowed to modify and redistribute GPL code as much as they see fit?