Bad mixing. I can't find the link right now, but many people have complained about how CDs are being produced by mixing things loud and the sound getting clipped. Add to that most consumer CD players completely process the CD signal to hell and gone then they play it through cheap-ass head phones so seriously, the consumer has already lost a lot of quality. Most listeners won't notice the difference because of their playback set-up.
Everyone says stuff like this, and honestly, I don't see why I should buy expensive headphones. You might lose some of the "live feeling" from the tracks, but who the hell cares? I'm sick of people bemoaning the fact that people never have quality speakers. If you want us to have quality speakers, maybe not price em at 50k a piece?
The overall effect of the music in the listening environment does not really change. The Beatles sound like crappily encoded Beatles on your 96kbit MP3 and they sound like the slightly warped Beatles on those headphones you dropped in the pool the other summer, but they still sound like the Beatles. There's a concept of the song that doesn't change no matter how the format does. The little tings in the background and the niceities are all to dress up what music recordings really are to begin with: an expression of a musical idea. I once heard someone say that in general it seems musicians usually tend to care less about audio quality, and I could see how that could be true, not saying it is, just, I can see.
As long as the important parts of the melody are present, the chord structure hasn't fallen to shit because of encoding, it sounds like music to me. People playing around with HD-Audio and stuff have too much time. We know it isn't going to be like seeing the Beatles live on the rooftop, we weren't alive. We know concerts sound better, that's why we go to them. Instead of trying to make the insular experience of listening to music in headphones as qualified as possible, how about we just accept the great fact that music is cheap to make, more portable than it ever was and more accessible than most of our grandparents could've ever imagined.
We listen to music not to masturbate to the sound of the subtle little instrument you can't hear in the background sounds, that's what studio engineers do, we listen to music in order to get an idea of what the artist is telling us, and enjoying his/her musical ideas or refusing to take part in them. We enjoy the ideas and the expression. The windchimes in the background don't have to sound as crystal clear as they were on the artist's marble porch from which they were recorded, we get the idea.
I for one take a vote for sanity.
People pretend like DVD-Audio failed because people are non-audiophile cavemen who don't know what good music sounds like out of a set of speakers you could drive. The truth is that DVD-Audio and HD-Audio and the like fail because we don't necessarily have the time or the patience to pick apart the music we listen to. We just enjoy listening to it instead. Unless you waste all your time listening for artifacts in your tunes, CD and HD-Audio will probably be next to indistinguishable....same for higher bitrate MP3s and CDs. If you want to spend your time picking apart thing instead of enjoying them or creating them, be my guest. But quit considering the rest of us the unwashed unenlightened masses because we don't have the same priorities you do.
Why is it reasonable that beaches be "closed" at night anyway? Who cares if there's a safety risk? Why should you be able to sue anyone because you had an accident at the beach anyway? Do you close any other hazardous natural area? Do mountains have to be insured? I'm so sick of protecting the dumb by nanny government and taking away the freedom of those who could be on the beach responsibly at night without some lifeguard to watch their every move.
You can pick up a used six string for 100 and change then spend 5 years getting good enough to play some of those songs, instead of being able to have fun for a few hours playing a puzzle game with some friends.
FIXED!
speaking as a guitarist of 6 years and a bassist of 4, I enjoy guitar hero because it is a fun thing to do with my NON-MUSICALLY INCLINED friends without having to spend 6 months teaching them to play real instruments. Not one of them wants to actually learn guitar, they just want to have some fun playing some videogames. GTFO my internet, elitist-troll.
Five years, really? Cuz I've been playing about a year and you can at least play rhythm guitar of just about any song in that time period of learning. My point is why the hell are you going to spend 5-600 dollars on plastic instruments. What a crappy waste of money. Seriously, I don't even care if people are thinking I'm being a troll. The west has turned into the area of the biggest waste ever. How about instead of spending 500 dollars to masturbate at your own skill playing a plastic guitar, you just burn 500 dollars, cuz the results are about the same, and you gain about the same amount of skill. Same with the iphone guys. The west has become a bunch of losers that require an oracle DB in order to figure out what they need to buy at the grocery store. The ultimate lazy technogeeks with no real talent, memory, or skills. All because they have more money than they know what to do with.
I'm going to be ripping this line off, but seriously. If you are gonna spend 500 dollars on virtual instruments how about the next time you have 500 dollars to waste, you just give it to a poor person instead.
I'm not saying whatever version of Linux your grandmother is using isn't easy to use. What I am saying is that well-meaning folks like you who support Linux on the desktop always use an example such as the one you gave to show how easy Linux is to use yet, by your own admission, you had to do the setup. You had to do the configuration.
Who gives a shit who does the configuration? There's almost no grandma out there that would be able to install Windows herself and install all the drivers, that's why companies PRE-CONFIGURE computers.
People always say linux is impossible, etc. etc. I think the problem is that these people are too versed in computers for their own good. It's not that linux is too complicated. You could probably set it up so that grandma has everything she needs right now. It's a couple of other things:
All major PC vendors supply Microsoft
Everyone uses MS Office and such
MS has become near synonymous with computing to average people
Please stop beating yourself up about how hard Linux is or whatever. It's not that difficult for an average user to do web, email and whatever on Linux. You can even download pictures from your camera easily. The truth is that the OS isn't too hard to use, it's that people with some computer knowledge try to use the OS and use advanced features without knowing anything new. Grandma doesn't care how the menus are setup, she just wants to open her email. A lot of Windows users don't know how the start menu works, if you deleted a shortcut from it they'd think you deleted the program. A lot of windows users have no idea how a directory tree works even or the concept of a filesystem. These users don't care how these things work, as long as the little bit of crap they use works. They probably wouldn't even care if the icon changed from IE to firefox, they just want a couple clicks to email and a couple of clicks to anything.
Linux is not that much harder than Windows under the surface folks. If you've gotten into what makes Linux harder than Windows, then you aren't an "average" user anyway. The average user is just annoyed that his crappy proprietary software from his camera he got 10 years ago won't install. That's what they get pissed about. It has absolutely zero to do with ease of installation or ease of configuration. These people NEVER configure anything.
I cringe when I think about the amount of money people will waste to just pretend to be a musician or pretend to play an instrument. You can play air guitar for free folks, and if you want to actually learn guitar take some time out of your (obviously busy guitar/band pretending) life and buy a real instrument. You can pick up a used six string for 100 and change and actually play real music, instead of being able to pretend the best with some plastic guitar.
I think you guys are kind of missing the point. I wasn't really trying to persuade him to switch, I was just voicing my opinion about how far along linux has come and how it's worthy of attention and I was having a conversation about software freedoms and the like. I wouldn't try to switch him off, he's the kind of guy that still rocks Roxio CD Creator because EZ CD Creator came with his first CDR drive.
But the point remains that Windows was at fault for computers "not working" in the past. My dad himself even realized this over the course of the argument I believe.
"Most consumers" do not care about Linux; those that do, only care because their geek friend is trying to make them switch. Said geek will choose a suitable distro and install it for them. And, for the intended market, any major distro is just as good.
The fragmentation of Linux distros has nothing to do with it being slowly accepted as a mainstream OS; lack of specialized apps, shaky hardware support and the usual suspects are to blame for that. As well as the fact that for most people Windows and pirated Office Just Work(tm) (which they kinda do, come to think of it) so why change?
This was my dad's argument. XP "just works." He went on then to say how in the past (which is true, with other versions of Windows, things didn't work and there were problems. He said this is why he's staying away from Vista, he heard there are problems. But my dad also happens to be a champion for Bill Gates for some reason. His justification for not using linux was "XP just works and I finally have an OS that just works." Having used edgy myself, I know that Linux also now "just works" and in some cases "just works" better than Windows. The real breaking point in the argument was when I asked him what was the reason for all the problems he had had with computers in the past. He started to murmur and crack a smile. And I told him that's right. It's Microsoft and Bill Gates that just made those machines not work. Just because they finally put out a stable OS we are supposed to stay with them and their mistakes forever?
Vista is terrible (I tried it myself and really did try to like it) and Windows is clearly a platform that isn't going anywhere. When you are forced to use Vista which doesn't "just work" the option may soon become Linux for some people. I know it already has for me.
Ah, if only this were the case. As it is it's not the only tool. The other tool that you can use is network effect coupled with taking your ball and going home if you don't like how the other office application is playing with your documents. See, with MS formats, they can guarantee interoperability if they WANT to guarantee interoperability. They have the mass market, so they can dictate the rules. The competitors like Sun, etc. get to grovel at their feet for a glance at their internal standard or for an API and if the need for real interoperability arises, MS can actually hand over the specification and have them implement it. (Which they will more or less always do, because most major companies are willing to play ball with Microsoft, just not the other way around). So yes, standards are a tool. Standards, in fact, negate the other tools such as coercion and other sneaky business tactics to guarantee interoperability. If it's a standard, you can just implement it from a document. But, if it's not a standard, you don't have a document to implement it from...so Microsoft can use all of its other "tools" on you if it thinks you deserve interoperability.
Interoperability isn't a challenge, Microsoft MAKES it a challenge on purpose. They know you can just code to a standard. They like to play dumb with the media but they know that open standards will eliminate lockin, this is just the argument they use. The whole thing reminds me of that movie "Thank you for smoking" and the arguments the main character has in that.
We have P2P, usenet, friends, and even clever use of google to find illegal music ripped straight from CD. Does the record industry seriously believe thayt stream ripping is seriously affecting their sales?
No, that's just what they say they believe. People have been recording FM for years. The truth of the matter is that the RIAA doesn't like online radio because online radio isn't controllable via payola whereas terrestrial radio is. They'd rather bankrupt it than lose their stranglehold on all mass media. If the online radio stations were smart, they'd start accepting tracks from anyone who: a) is not a member of the RIAA and b) is willing to allow their music to be streamed without restrictions. People online would then just get music from artists that are pro-freedom and aren't scared of having to compete quality wise with other artists. I would take this crap as a direct affront if I ran a radio station and would put the question out to the airwaves. There are non-greedy non-RIAA artists available, it's time that supply kicked in online.
It's kinda hard when you see your "heroes" do bad things, and I feel tempted to give excuses. In any case, the news won't make me trade my 3800+ dual core Athlon 64 for an intel Core 2 duo of the same speed and have to pay twice the price.
I'd kind of like to know where you are pricing processors. I bought a low end core 2 duo processor that beat the AMD processor on performance at the same price in a Dell computer. Maybe if you are making your own box, but whatever. The prices aren't that different. In some cases AMD is more expensive. As a side note, anyone who includes in their list of heroes any corporation seriously needs to get out of the house more often. None of these corporations are worth idealizing.
Technically IIRC, this would not violate the laws. There is an outside force acting on it in the form of the magnetic fields. The real test of the devices is if it can create more power before the magnets degauss than it takes to create the machine and magnets.
Yeah, it's funny how bullshit always involves magnets or "sonic waves".
That's ok, you were closer than me, I thought it meant that honkeys took over the Pentagon!
I don't know how to break this to you but...they already had.
Re:Low energy efficiency, high cost
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What's actually happening in transportation is that railroads are making a comeback, simply because their energy costs are lower.
I didn't ever expect to see this come up here, but as an interesting side point my girlfriend's grandfather and father work(ed) for the railroads and wonder why everything had moved to trucks. I guess it was purely economical or something, but given all the side problems that trucks have (such as the disastrous effects on maintenance budgets for freeways, increased accident rates, high pollution and the irritation of having to have them clog up every major interstate in the nation), why in the hell do we use trucks as our main method of transporting goods? Trucks are, after all, basically carrying a cargo train on their backs as they go out over the sprawling highway system, what the hell was so wrong with railroads that we stopped using them? This isn't me just being an asshole either, I'd really like to know.
I think the reason that people see any irony at all in these type of stories is the fact that they actually expect that the government is as good as its hyperreal image. Of course government agencies aren't infallible, but to suggest this is to deny this hyperreal, overemphasized "we're efficient, intelligent and we know things about you you don't even know" public persona. Without a sufficient belief in the agencies like the CIA and the FBI, and the belief that they are actually more informed than the masses and that the government is more in the know than anyone is aware (unless they are in the government), people would want to know where all this security spending is going (which is a problem for anyone). The government is an inept, massive body of people that is unable to act upon information quickly due to its many layers of bureaucratic bullshit and the legality of everything. The only solution to this problem is to eliminate some of the bureaucracy (firing people, which, of course, can't be done), or to eliminate the red tape (legislation, which, if you eliminate too much becomes a Bush-like grab for power), neither of which will ever be done due to the nature of the politicians in charge. So the federal government, no matter what the politicians say will continue to grow as a monolithic, insecure and ineffective beast while feeding you the image of a secure, fast, intelligent and best of class organization and terrorists with their small but efficient plans will continue to find gaping holes in the system. And that's why irony in this case can be saved for the naive and the uninformed, the rest of us see things like this coming a mile away.
That was how I read the summary and it made me think - Dang the Dept of Homeland Security is so (dis)organised that you can phone in break in requests to their systems
...and so stupid they think there's 8 digits after 1-800
Anything beyond this effort is NOT likely to succeed because for 50 years that's what we have been trained to do.
Humans are loathe to accept change especially when it drastically changes daily routines.
I'm so sick of people pretending that this is the truth. Are you telling me that with the price of gas nowadays there wouldn't be some people who were willing to expend a little extra effort to save that money plus the environment (as a nice side bonus)? Because I would hardly believe you there. If there was a reasonably priced electric car I'd probably buy one because I spend more in gas than anything other than lodging or food currently. So, I'd love to save those dollars.
People pretend like we can't ever change just because they haven't seen some things in their lifetimes. Look at the development of the Internet or any other mass widespread dispersement of technology. It can fucking happen. I'm tired of people using this as an excuse to kill these technologies before they even really make it to market. Let me have a god damn choice before you assume I'm too lazy to do it.
We CAN change the way we do things. In the last two hundred years we've learned how to fly, developed rapid and mass transportation, developed a large highway system, built a system for conveying information almost instantly over large mileages, made wireless communication possible, gone to the moon and lots of other things, are you telling me we can't all adapt to expending a tad more effort than filling up at a gas station? Give us a fucking chance first.
Yet still both parents of the victim hold the game responsible - even though the only person involved who owned or had played a copy was the victim! They have not explained why their 14 year old child was allowed this 18 certificate game when they thought it was so deplorable - however they have the nerve to accuse Rockstar of being irresponsible. Given by their own admission, they were blatantly aware their 14 year old had this 18 certificate game and used to let him play it, that's somewhat ironic. I fully expect they even bought it for him.
People are missing the point I guess. It doesn't FUCKING MATTER if the game was partially or even completely responsible for the killing, it's about censorship, the freedom of speech. The freedom of speech might have some provisions, as not using it to cause riots, etc, but this definitely doesn't fall under that.
If there was information contained in a book that led to mass uprising or murders, do we just ban the book then? The answer should be no. It doesn't matter whether or not some piece of entertainment or information tells you to go out and kill people. It's entertainment, it can't force you to do anything. If we're going to censor this because it possibly results in murder then we should definitely censor the bible because of all the religious nutjobs who read it too much and use it as an excuse to kill abortion doctors or to kill John Lennon because he questioned religion's necessity. This is just the small tip of a very large iceberg. Without freedom, it really doesn't matter much if you are safe. You can be safe in a prison cell, is that what we want?
Without a monitor? Mac Mini. Except the specs on that are way higher than the Ubuntu computer Dell's offering. But Apple's not a budget computer company. If you want one, and can afford it, get one. Else, stop crying. I love my MBP and I also love my home built gaming desktop. The desktop computer was a grand total of like $800 (without hard drives or monitor) and the laptop was $2600. They both have their uses, and I'm not saying you HAVE to use one or the other.
Umm, $599 base price for the following:
1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo
* 512MB memory
* 60GB hard drive
and that's without a monitor.
For $400 from Dell (which is the price after tax and shipping mind you), I'm getting a PC with a faster processor, double the ram and more than double the hard drive space, not to mention a reasonable upgrade path and open source software pre-installed. I was waiting for someone to attempt to act like these aren't the facts, unfortunately they are. Their low end offerings are worse than a $400 dollar Dell, for +$200 retail. And I'm not even adding tax on Apple's side. If you are willing to pay that to run OSX and be trendy, then fine. OS X is nice and everything, but you have to pay the money, I wish people would stop trying to pretend that that isn't the case. Not all of us want to pay that tax for something that's gonna check email and store photos. And stop trying to pretend like Macs aren't still very overpriced compared to PCs. I pulled this information directly from my bank account on the Dell side, and from the Apple store on Apple's side. The only thing is that now we have an apples to apples (no pun intended) comparison as both companies now offer about the same hardware. And note that if I were to spend $599 with Dell, I'd have a monitor...
Michael Moore's works are full of falsehoods. Consider for example his butchery of Charleton Heston's speech in Denver after the Columbine shootings. He edited the speech, putting together Heston's actual words to make his speech sound quite the opposite of its original intent. It reminds me of Homer Simpson's interview when he's accused of grabbing the babysitter's butt. (I wanted... her... sweet, sweet can....)
You can't chalk that one up to poor presentation. Changing a man's words to mean the opposite of his intent is a falsehood. Either he got it wrong because he's incompetent or he got it wrong because he's deceptive.
It's hard for me to believe that you've really looked into this if you believe that Michael Moore has no intent to deceive his viewers.
What exactly was the intent? To politicize a human tragedy, because that's exactly what the NRA's unscheduled appearance in the surrounding area of a town days after a tragedy is doing, and to think otherwise is to buy someone else's propaganda.
I'm sure Heston didn't go down there and piss on the peoples' graves, but his presence in the situation was very much not needed. People like to spark that same anti-gun pro-gun debate after every human tragedy with weapons and ignore the details of the tragedy itself. I heard the same stupid debate get hashed out after the Virginia Tech shootings. The debate never gets won or lost, it just cycles again waiting for the next opportunity to show its face.
While weapons made the shootings easier to carry out, the problem isn't the guns and never was. Bowling for Columbine was an attempt to find the problem, and he didn't go out of his way to say anything about the NRA, other than Heston liked to plant himself and his organizations in spots where a human tragedy that had widespread media attention had just taken place, just to stir his crappy and pointless debate.
It's not about anti-gun or pro-gun, it's about being compassionate versus being an asshole in a situation where it is not needed or called for.
"2) Standard PC hardware with fancy plastic that is much more overpriced than the same hardware minus fancy plastic" You're going by old info. You can configure a Dell and an Apple with the same specs and the prices are quite close.
Everyone has this point that pushes Apple. Well, Dell and Apple are the same price at *arbitrarily quoted specs*. The fact of the matter is that I don't care. I like the ability to be able to upgrade my PCs, and I also like the ability to buy a 400 dollar box from Dell and run my OS on it. I don't want to have to spend a minimum amount on a desktop or be forced to buy a refurb or used desktop simply because Apple doesn't want to compete in the sub-500 dollar range or whatever. I want a computer that'll browse the web, check e-mail, play some videos and music and maybe process a word or two...Apple wants 599+ minimum for all of their desktops and then I get to play on their platform their way and if I need more ram sometime in the distant future, I have to hope they provided me an avenue for upgrade.
I understand the anti-MS crowd due to closed standards and proprietary stuff, now Apple may sell sleaker closed standard proprietary stuff, but that's the only difference. There's more than "Apple's core duo whatever machine with 2gb of ram costs about the same as Dell's." There's the issues of upgrade path, minimum cost of entry and openness. Dell offers PCs with Ubuntu for 300 plus change without a monitor, can anything Apple offers come close? I don't want used, I don't want refurbished, I want a cheap, open, upgradeable solution. Where's Apple at? Are those crickets I hear?
Hmmmm.....I see....so it was logical for an immediate investigative commission to be created after the Challenger explosion, but not illogical for this Bush administration to do everything possible to interdict any sort of investigative 9/11/01 commission from ever taking place, and finally when they capitulate to its existence, they refuse to allow it to have any subpoena powers, refuse to allow Bush and Cheney to testify under oath, severely underfund it, then try to have the American Business Representative of the BinLaden Group, Henry Kissinger, as the head of this investigative commission....Holy Crap!!!!
Your points may be valid and proven, but just as with any conspiracy nut just because the evidence fits one possible explanation of the events doesn't make that explanation definitive. There's many reasons that Bush and Cheney may not have wanted to testify under oath and many reasons why they would want to block a 9/11 investigation, and conceivably, many of these reasons wouldn't involve them staging or some how making a conspiracy to commit 9/11. They could've not wanted a thorough investigation into Katrina, does that mean they made the hurricane hit New Orleans? People don't like investigations because they shine light into the darkness. Bush is a fan of darkness, and doesn't want the light shining in with investigations. That's one possible explanation for the events you just described, and it's a little bit more reasonable than "the planes were really missiles and they are hiding the passengers from the flight" and such. I expect conspiracy theorists to be insane and to try to drag me into their insanity, but sorry, I don't get fooled by simple logical fallacies, even if they have a huge amount of data backing them up.
These 'gray lines' people like to jump on in terms of real-world analogies have been recognized and answered in law already. You can probably reasonably tell whether the person's share was intentional or incidental (most modern OSes and large-scale networks make it hard to accidentally share data such that people can get it without circumventing or bypassing a mechanism meant to prevent it). If his directory was by default world readable, there is a fair argument he was using it for his own purposes never realizing the world could get at it. If he put it in something like public_html, it's hard to argue that he didn't mean it. In which case, public_html would be like putting a few hundred speakers throughout a town and playing the music, and then claiming you didn't mean for anyone but you to hear it.
You say that it's hard to make a folder readable by accident. And I have a little anecdote. When I was in college I had a notebook computer I used to use around campus. One day in between classes I found that I could look around the network a little bit. There was one individual who had shared access not only to his files across campus, which included porn and mp3s along with other things, but also his printers. He, I would imagine, had been rather technically deficient but had attempted to share the folders and printers with a small group of people, perhaps just his own mini-network of computers. After screwing around with the shared files, and giving him some of my files I wrote up a text file on how I accessed it and how he could easily remove this unwanted intrusion if he deemed it necessary. Then I sent it to his printer which printed out the instructions for him. Moments later, I'm sure after some freaking out, his folders vanished from the network never to return again. Had I been a real asshole I could've probably acted maliciously, I mostly pulled a couple little jokes on him and printed hello and such before offering him a way out of the situation. But the lesson of the story goes: some college students really don't mean to share what they do, and it's not that infeasible that this is the case with this guy.
No, people never take a chance on the alternative. Every election I've ever voted in there has always been a good representation of third party and indie candidates. Few ever get elected because people actually believe it's better to vote for who might win vs who represents them best. Maybe if people took the time and heart to vote for who represents them best maybe they'd have a chance to win.
Why is this though? You ever asked that question? Other countries have party systems but more diverse representation. The answer is pretty easy, it's the winner-takes-all majority idea in the Constitution. It's a simple mistake that will never get fixed simply because the two parties that will ever conceivably win a majority in either Congress chamber don't want it fixed. They don't see the two-party system as broken, and so it'll never get fixed. If you expect everyone to suddenly jump ship from one major party to some minor third party that's unlikely to ever happen. If there was some reason, other than to work toward having a majority in Congress, to vote for a local third party member I think you'd find a lot of people doing it. But if their party doesn't win Congress, it really doesn't matter who is their representative, the representative might as well not be in the building if they don't agree with the majority, and that's why a lot of times they aren't.
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Everyone says stuff like this, and honestly, I don't see why I should buy expensive headphones. You might lose some of the "live feeling" from the tracks, but who the hell cares? I'm sick of people bemoaning the fact that people never have quality speakers. If you want us to have quality speakers, maybe not price em at 50k a piece?
The overall effect of the music in the listening environment does not really change. The Beatles sound like crappily encoded Beatles on your 96kbit MP3 and they sound like the slightly warped Beatles on those headphones you dropped in the pool the other summer, but they still sound like the Beatles. There's a concept of the song that doesn't change no matter how the format does. The little tings in the background and the niceities are all to dress up what music recordings really are to begin with: an expression of a musical idea. I once heard someone say that in general it seems musicians usually tend to care less about audio quality, and I could see how that could be true, not saying it is, just, I can see.
As long as the important parts of the melody are present, the chord structure hasn't fallen to shit because of encoding, it sounds like music to me. People playing around with HD-Audio and stuff have too much time. We know it isn't going to be like seeing the Beatles live on the rooftop, we weren't alive. We know concerts sound better, that's why we go to them. Instead of trying to make the insular experience of listening to music in headphones as qualified as possible, how about we just accept the great fact that music is cheap to make, more portable than it ever was and more accessible than most of our grandparents could've ever imagined.
We listen to music not to masturbate to the sound of the subtle little instrument you can't hear in the background sounds, that's what studio engineers do, we listen to music in order to get an idea of what the artist is telling us, and enjoying his/her musical ideas or refusing to take part in them. We enjoy the ideas and the expression. The windchimes in the background don't have to sound as crystal clear as they were on the artist's marble porch from which they were recorded, we get the idea.
I for one take a vote for sanity.
People pretend like DVD-Audio failed because people are non-audiophile cavemen who don't know what good music sounds like out of a set of speakers you could drive. The truth is that DVD-Audio and HD-Audio and the like fail because we don't necessarily have the time or the patience to pick apart the music we listen to. We just enjoy listening to it instead. Unless you waste all your time listening for artifacts in your tunes, CD and HD-Audio will probably be next to indistinguishable....same for higher bitrate MP3s and CDs. If you want to spend your time picking apart thing instead of enjoying them or creating them, be my guest. But quit considering the rest of us the unwashed unenlightened masses because we don't have the same priorities you do.
Why is it reasonable that beaches be "closed" at night anyway? Who cares if there's a safety risk? Why should you be able to sue anyone because you had an accident at the beach anyway? Do you close any other hazardous natural area? Do mountains have to be insured? I'm so sick of protecting the dumb by nanny government and taking away the freedom of those who could be on the beach responsibly at night without some lifeguard to watch their every move.
Five years, really? Cuz I've been playing about a year and you can at least play rhythm guitar of just about any song in that time period of learning. My point is why the hell are you going to spend 5-600 dollars on plastic instruments. What a crappy waste of money. Seriously, I don't even care if people are thinking I'm being a troll. The west has turned into the area of the biggest waste ever. How about instead of spending 500 dollars to masturbate at your own skill playing a plastic guitar, you just burn 500 dollars, cuz the results are about the same, and you gain about the same amount of skill. Same with the iphone guys. The west has become a bunch of losers that require an oracle DB in order to figure out what they need to buy at the grocery store. The ultimate lazy technogeeks with no real talent, memory, or skills. All because they have more money than they know what to do with.
I'm going to be ripping this line off, but seriously. If you are gonna spend 500 dollars on virtual instruments how about the next time you have 500 dollars to waste, you just give it to a poor person instead.
Who gives a shit who does the configuration? There's almost no grandma out there that would be able to install Windows herself and install all the drivers, that's why companies PRE-CONFIGURE computers.
People always say linux is impossible, etc. etc. I think the problem is that these people are too versed in computers for their own good. It's not that linux is too complicated. You could probably set it up so that grandma has everything she needs right now. It's a couple of other things:
Please stop beating yourself up about how hard Linux is or whatever. It's not that difficult for an average user to do web, email and whatever on Linux. You can even download pictures from your camera easily. The truth is that the OS isn't too hard to use, it's that people with some computer knowledge try to use the OS and use advanced features without knowing anything new. Grandma doesn't care how the menus are setup, she just wants to open her email. A lot of Windows users don't know how the start menu works, if you deleted a shortcut from it they'd think you deleted the program. A lot of windows users have no idea how a directory tree works even or the concept of a filesystem. These users don't care how these things work, as long as the little bit of crap they use works. They probably wouldn't even care if the icon changed from IE to firefox, they just want a couple clicks to email and a couple of clicks to anything.
Linux is not that much harder than Windows under the surface folks. If you've gotten into what makes Linux harder than Windows, then you aren't an "average" user anyway. The average user is just annoyed that his crappy proprietary software from his camera he got 10 years ago won't install. That's what they get pissed about. It has absolutely zero to do with ease of installation or ease of configuration. These people NEVER configure anything.
I cringe when I think about the amount of money people will waste to just pretend to be a musician or pretend to play an instrument. You can play air guitar for free folks, and if you want to actually learn guitar take some time out of your (obviously busy guitar/band pretending) life and buy a real instrument. You can pick up a used six string for 100 and change and actually play real music, instead of being able to pretend the best with some plastic guitar.
I think you guys are kind of missing the point. I wasn't really trying to persuade him to switch, I was just voicing my opinion about how far along linux has come and how it's worthy of attention and I was having a conversation about software freedoms and the like. I wouldn't try to switch him off, he's the kind of guy that still rocks Roxio CD Creator because EZ CD Creator came with his first CDR drive.
But the point remains that Windows was at fault for computers "not working" in the past. My dad himself even realized this over the course of the argument I believe.
This was my dad's argument. XP "just works." He went on then to say how in the past (which is true, with other versions of Windows, things didn't work and there were problems. He said this is why he's staying away from Vista, he heard there are problems. But my dad also happens to be a champion for Bill Gates for some reason. His justification for not using linux was "XP just works and I finally have an OS that just works." Having used edgy myself, I know that Linux also now "just works" and in some cases "just works" better than Windows. The real breaking point in the argument was when I asked him what was the reason for all the problems he had had with computers in the past. He started to murmur and crack a smile. And I told him that's right. It's Microsoft and Bill Gates that just made those machines not work. Just because they finally put out a stable OS we are supposed to stay with them and their mistakes forever?
Vista is terrible (I tried it myself and really did try to like it) and Windows is clearly a platform that isn't going anywhere. When you are forced to use Vista which doesn't "just work" the option may soon become Linux for some people. I know it already has for me.
Ah, if only this were the case. As it is it's not the only tool. The other tool that you can use is network effect coupled with taking your ball and going home if you don't like how the other office application is playing with your documents. See, with MS formats, they can guarantee interoperability if they WANT to guarantee interoperability. They have the mass market, so they can dictate the rules. The competitors like Sun, etc. get to grovel at their feet for a glance at their internal standard or for an API and if the need for real interoperability arises, MS can actually hand over the specification and have them implement it. (Which they will more or less always do, because most major companies are willing to play ball with Microsoft, just not the other way around). So yes, standards are a tool. Standards, in fact, negate the other tools such as coercion and other sneaky business tactics to guarantee interoperability. If it's a standard, you can just implement it from a document. But, if it's not a standard, you don't have a document to implement it from...so Microsoft can use all of its other "tools" on you if it thinks you deserve interoperability.
Interoperability isn't a challenge, Microsoft MAKES it a challenge on purpose. They know you can just code to a standard. They like to play dumb with the media but they know that open standards will eliminate lockin, this is just the argument they use. The whole thing reminds me of that movie "Thank you for smoking" and the arguments the main character has in that.
No, that's just what they say they believe. People have been recording FM for years. The truth of the matter is that the RIAA doesn't like online radio because online radio isn't controllable via payola whereas terrestrial radio is. They'd rather bankrupt it than lose their stranglehold on all mass media. If the online radio stations were smart, they'd start accepting tracks from anyone who: a) is not a member of the RIAA and b) is willing to allow their music to be streamed without restrictions. People online would then just get music from artists that are pro-freedom and aren't scared of having to compete quality wise with other artists. I would take this crap as a direct affront if I ran a radio station and would put the question out to the airwaves. There are non-greedy non-RIAA artists available, it's time that supply kicked in online.
I'd kind of like to know where you are pricing processors. I bought a low end core 2 duo processor that beat the AMD processor on performance at the same price in a Dell computer. Maybe if you are making your own box, but whatever. The prices aren't that different. In some cases AMD is more expensive. As a side note, anyone who includes in their list of heroes any corporation seriously needs to get out of the house more often. None of these corporations are worth idealizing.
Yeah, it's funny how bullshit always involves magnets or "sonic waves".
A newt?
I don't know how to break this to you but...they already had.
I think the reason that people see any irony at all in these type of stories is the fact that they actually expect that the government is as good as its hyperreal image. Of course government agencies aren't infallible, but to suggest this is to deny this hyperreal, overemphasized "we're efficient, intelligent and we know things about you you don't even know" public persona. Without a sufficient belief in the agencies like the CIA and the FBI, and the belief that they are actually more informed than the masses and that the government is more in the know than anyone is aware (unless they are in the government), people would want to know where all this security spending is going (which is a problem for anyone). The government is an inept, massive body of people that is unable to act upon information quickly due to its many layers of bureaucratic bullshit and the legality of everything. The only solution to this problem is to eliminate some of the bureaucracy (firing people, which, of course, can't be done), or to eliminate the red tape (legislation, which, if you eliminate too much becomes a Bush-like grab for power), neither of which will ever be done due to the nature of the politicians in charge. So the federal government, no matter what the politicians say will continue to grow as a monolithic, insecure and ineffective beast while feeding you the image of a secure, fast, intelligent and best of class organization and terrorists with their small but efficient plans will continue to find gaping holes in the system. And that's why irony in this case can be saved for the naive and the uninformed, the rest of us see things like this coming a mile away.
...and so stupid they think there's 8 digits after 1-800
I'm so sick of people pretending that this is the truth. Are you telling me that with the price of gas nowadays there wouldn't be some people who were willing to expend a little extra effort to save that money plus the environment (as a nice side bonus)? Because I would hardly believe you there. If there was a reasonably priced electric car I'd probably buy one because I spend more in gas than anything other than lodging or food currently. So, I'd love to save those dollars.
People pretend like we can't ever change just because they haven't seen some things in their lifetimes. Look at the development of the Internet or any other mass widespread dispersement of technology. It can fucking happen. I'm tired of people using this as an excuse to kill these technologies before they even really make it to market. Let me have a god damn choice before you assume I'm too lazy to do it.
We CAN change the way we do things. In the last two hundred years we've learned how to fly, developed rapid and mass transportation, developed a large highway system, built a system for conveying information almost instantly over large mileages, made wireless communication possible, gone to the moon and lots of other things, are you telling me we can't all adapt to expending a tad more effort than filling up at a gas station? Give us a fucking chance first.
People are missing the point I guess. It doesn't FUCKING MATTER if the game was partially or even completely responsible for the killing, it's about censorship, the freedom of speech. The freedom of speech might have some provisions, as not using it to cause riots, etc, but this definitely doesn't fall under that.
If there was information contained in a book that led to mass uprising or murders, do we just ban the book then? The answer should be no. It doesn't matter whether or not some piece of entertainment or information tells you to go out and kill people. It's entertainment, it can't force you to do anything. If we're going to censor this because it possibly results in murder then we should definitely censor the bible because of all the religious nutjobs who read it too much and use it as an excuse to kill abortion doctors or to kill John Lennon because he questioned religion's necessity. This is just the small tip of a very large iceberg. Without freedom, it really doesn't matter much if you are safe. You can be safe in a prison cell, is that what we want?
Umm, $599 base price for the following:
and that's without a monitor.
For $400 from Dell (which is the price after tax and shipping mind you), I'm getting a PC with a faster processor, double the ram and more than double the hard drive space, not to mention a reasonable upgrade path and open source software pre-installed. I was waiting for someone to attempt to act like these aren't the facts, unfortunately they are. Their low end offerings are worse than a $400 dollar Dell, for +$200 retail. And I'm not even adding tax on Apple's side. If you are willing to pay that to run OSX and be trendy, then fine. OS X is nice and everything, but you have to pay the money, I wish people would stop trying to pretend that that isn't the case. Not all of us want to pay that tax for something that's gonna check email and store photos. And stop trying to pretend like Macs aren't still very overpriced compared to PCs. I pulled this information directly from my bank account on the Dell side, and from the Apple store on Apple's side. The only thing is that now we have an apples to apples (no pun intended) comparison as both companies now offer about the same hardware. And note that if I were to spend $599 with Dell, I'd have a monitor...
What exactly was the intent? To politicize a human tragedy, because that's exactly what the NRA's unscheduled appearance in the surrounding area of a town days after a tragedy is doing, and to think otherwise is to buy someone else's propaganda.
I'm sure Heston didn't go down there and piss on the peoples' graves, but his presence in the situation was very much not needed. People like to spark that same anti-gun pro-gun debate after every human tragedy with weapons and ignore the details of the tragedy itself. I heard the same stupid debate get hashed out after the Virginia Tech shootings. The debate never gets won or lost, it just cycles again waiting for the next opportunity to show its face.
While weapons made the shootings easier to carry out, the problem isn't the guns and never was. Bowling for Columbine was an attempt to find the problem, and he didn't go out of his way to say anything about the NRA, other than Heston liked to plant himself and his organizations in spots where a human tragedy that had widespread media attention had just taken place, just to stir his crappy and pointless debate.
It's not about anti-gun or pro-gun, it's about being compassionate versus being an asshole in a situation where it is not needed or called for.
Everyone has this point that pushes Apple. Well, Dell and Apple are the same price at *arbitrarily quoted specs*. The fact of the matter is that I don't care. I like the ability to be able to upgrade my PCs, and I also like the ability to buy a 400 dollar box from Dell and run my OS on it. I don't want to have to spend a minimum amount on a desktop or be forced to buy a refurb or used desktop simply because Apple doesn't want to compete in the sub-500 dollar range or whatever. I want a computer that'll browse the web, check e-mail, play some videos and music and maybe process a word or two...Apple wants 599+ minimum for all of their desktops and then I get to play on their platform their way and if I need more ram sometime in the distant future, I have to hope they provided me an avenue for upgrade.
I understand the anti-MS crowd due to closed standards and proprietary stuff, now Apple may sell sleaker closed standard proprietary stuff, but that's the only difference. There's more than "Apple's core duo whatever machine with 2gb of ram costs about the same as Dell's." There's the issues of upgrade path, minimum cost of entry and openness. Dell offers PCs with Ubuntu for 300 plus change without a monitor, can anything Apple offers come close? I don't want used, I don't want refurbished, I want a cheap, open, upgradeable solution. Where's Apple at? Are those crickets I hear?
Your points may be valid and proven, but just as with any conspiracy nut just because the evidence fits one possible explanation of the events doesn't make that explanation definitive. There's many reasons that Bush and Cheney may not have wanted to testify under oath and many reasons why they would want to block a 9/11 investigation, and conceivably, many of these reasons wouldn't involve them staging or some how making a conspiracy to commit 9/11. They could've not wanted a thorough investigation into Katrina, does that mean they made the hurricane hit New Orleans? People don't like investigations because they shine light into the darkness. Bush is a fan of darkness, and doesn't want the light shining in with investigations. That's one possible explanation for the events you just described, and it's a little bit more reasonable than "the planes were really missiles and they are hiding the passengers from the flight" and such. I expect conspiracy theorists to be insane and to try to drag me into their insanity, but sorry, I don't get fooled by simple logical fallacies, even if they have a huge amount of data backing them up.
You say that it's hard to make a folder readable by accident. And I have a little anecdote. When I was in college I had a notebook computer I used to use around campus. One day in between classes I found that I could look around the network a little bit. There was one individual who had shared access not only to his files across campus, which included porn and mp3s along with other things, but also his printers. He, I would imagine, had been rather technically deficient but had attempted to share the folders and printers with a small group of people, perhaps just his own mini-network of computers. After screwing around with the shared files, and giving him some of my files I wrote up a text file on how I accessed it and how he could easily remove this unwanted intrusion if he deemed it necessary. Then I sent it to his printer which printed out the instructions for him. Moments later, I'm sure after some freaking out, his folders vanished from the network never to return again. Had I been a real asshole I could've probably acted maliciously, I mostly pulled a couple little jokes on him and printed hello and such before offering him a way out of the situation. But the lesson of the story goes: some college students really don't mean to share what they do, and it's not that infeasible that this is the case with this guy.
Why is this though? You ever asked that question? Other countries have party systems but more diverse representation. The answer is pretty easy, it's the winner-takes-all majority idea in the Constitution. It's a simple mistake that will never get fixed simply because the two parties that will ever conceivably win a majority in either Congress chamber don't want it fixed. They don't see the two-party system as broken, and so it'll never get fixed. If you expect everyone to suddenly jump ship from one major party to some minor third party that's unlikely to ever happen. If there was some reason, other than to work toward having a majority in Congress, to vote for a local third party member I think you'd find a lot of people doing it. But if their party doesn't win Congress, it really doesn't matter who is their representative, the representative might as well not be in the building if they don't agree with the majority, and that's why a lot of times they aren't.