Economic Left/Right: -2.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.95
So I'm Libertarian, slightly left.
I sometimes describe my politics as being Green-Libertarian, or Conservative Anarchist, because I feel that will piss off the most people. And what's the point in talking about politics if you aren't going to piss people off?
Well, that's actually the problem with the people that identify as "left" or "right." A lot of people identify as one, and refuse to listen to anyone that identifies as the other. So instead they just get into shouting matches. It's not true of everyone but reminds me of Sturgeon's Law.
I started hating Star Trek in the 3rd to last season of TNG. I still watched just about every eposide, but it was a love to hate, so bad it's good kinda thing. My excuse was I only watched it so that I could complain about it.
I found DS9 interesting for a while, until I started watching B5. After that I could no longer tollerate the Trek shows anymore. Sure, B5 was a television show, it had soap operas, but they seamed less annoying and redundant. It wasn't hard science fiction but had a lot better science that Trek. Heck, my favorite SF authors are PKD and Zelazny who are not noted for Hard Science.
I gave Voyager a chance. I watched the first 4 episodes. It was awful. You can't even enjoy it on the level of Plan Nine from Outer Space.
The last season of B5 was disapointing but I liked the B5 TV movies. Too bad the B5 spinoff (can't even remember what it was called) was so boring. The settup had potential but I got bored after the first couple episodes of the series.
Heck, I stopped watching The X Files for the last couple seasons. (Pretty much after Chris Carter left the show.) By the time Enterprise started I was hooked on Joss Whedon, and had not interest.
Now, I'm hoping the Firefly movie is so successful that it will get back on TV. Until then I'll just watch my many tapes of Doctor Who. I respected JMS even after last season of B5, but now I just hate Star Trek and anything that has anything to do with it. You'd have to pay me to watch it.
Probably better to watch less TV anyway. There are a few hundred books I'd really like to read. If only this slashdot thing didn't take so much of my time.
the notion that banging people over the head with something makes it...popular?
Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth -- Aldous Huxley
You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but they seem to be handling fooling most of the people most of the time.
I first noticed it with music in the late 80s when I was listening to a lot of rap music. Radio stations would hardly play any, and when they started playing rap music, it was from people who came out of nowhere who were nowhere near as talented as the people I liked to listen to.
Later on when I took Political Science I found out that advertising dollars is the number one factor in elections, and name recognition is the second. Without overt advertising people tend to vote for the person whose name they have heard the most, regardless of possitions. It is not true of everyone, but it is scary how many people react like this.
Is this a hazard that comes with soft living? Or maybe 15,000 years of evolution without meaningful predators coming after you all the time? Or did TV and consumerism really, finally, destroy our minds?
Except for talk-radio, the only stations I listen to are community radio stations: KBOO, KMHD and KBPS.
I would listen to the NPR station (KOPB) if I knew what time Schickele Mix was on. I wish he had archives on the internet. It would be too obvious for me to look up what time it is on.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a radio station dedicated to playing nothing but the kind of music you'd find on SubRosa Records?
You make a lot of good points but miss the primary point of the post you are replying to.
What it is that the RIAA has a stranglehold on is distribution. The internet provides an alternative method of distribution, and with p2p the band doesn't even need to pay for most of the bandwidth.
Word of Mouth is actually the best method of advertising. Advertisers try to start it but artificially it is difficult to reproduce. Giving away your album for free is a good way for an independent band to get recognition. Hey, the price is right so if I'm at all interested in the kind of music the band is making, why not check it out. If I like it, I'll tell my all my friends who I think would also like it, maybe even burn them a CD and give it to them to save them the time to download it themselves.
Another thing is that if a band/project is moderately popular before they sign with an RIAA label, they are going to have a lot more leverage than without that grassroots underground support.
And most full-time bands can barely afford rent, regardless of whether or not they are signed to an RIAA label. Maybe they could even insist on a contract that does not allow the label to charge them for payola, and even allows them to distribute songs of their choosing on p2p as an alternative method of advertising. That would save the band a lot of money from their royalties.
I wanted to say something about Negativland and The Evolution Control Committee but they haven't sold albums on the same order of magnitude as Top 40 bands, and dispite the fact that I find them infinately more interesting than Top 40 music, I would never expect mainstream Americans to appreciate their music.
Then again, I once said the same thing about Chumbawamba.
Well, going out and buying a CD is what $20 if the price fixing rate continues as it has. Heck, it is what I pay for import music which constitutes a significan portion of my music. Anyway, logically it doesn't make sense to pay $1000-$500 dollars just to listen to free music. People will do it anyway but something I wanted to point out.
I wonder if there will still be some local ISPs that don't force their customers to "upgrade." There are still a few ISPs out ther that provide shell accounts. I pay more for it but I use a local ISP to get DSL. Would there be an underground internet with the old routers?
How often are backbone internet routers replaced? Maybe it would be a series of micronets. Maybe there will be a wifi net. And ten years from now I'll probably still have the computers I'm using now around. Probably be bigger in high tech areas like the bay area and Portland.
But it is a chilling senario.
The answer will probably be shut up and eat your happy meal.
I bet the "Blind Date with Joanie and Chachie" would be worth something nowadays.
I wonder if the RIAA will have some sort of robotic monster throwing the CDs like frisbies and beheading school children as a method of distributing these CDs?
Perhaps because it's a lot easier to train someone to use the tools capable of outputting.doc files
Or because they do not want to train them at all, just put them at a desk with a standard PC running the standard software and expect them to use it.
The people upstairs think it is better to just let them figure it out for themselves than to spend anything training them. And they might be right. But from what I understand about LaTeX, it can do a lot of kewl shite.
So, it doesn't suprise me that most people would run from the room screaming if asked to use LaTeX, but there are probably quite a few things where it would be the best tool to use.
I don't expect people to use vi, but for me I think it is the most practical editor of plain text. Then again, a lot of people probably think I'm psycho for liking plain text.
Do I have a point here? If I did I forgot it by now. Good Night.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but a lot of problems could be solved with an "Idiot-Proof" email client. (OK, we would be tempting fate by calling it "Idiot-Proff" but then I did put it in quotes right?
Anyway, I'm thinking an email client that when you open attatchments sent via email it boots up a temporary VM, runs the application, and when you quit it deletes the entire VM, and maybe calls the user an Idiot for doing what would get them a virus if they weren't using that program. Maybe tells them what the program attempted to do.
Or, I don't know much about XP but is it possible to prevent users from running any executables?
Now what would really make it a glorified appliance is if a robotic hand came out of the computer and bitch-slapped the user every time they did something stupid.
(I wonder if that would include posting to slashdot?)
At a recent party we played Pirraties (I'm not sure how you would spell it. It is pronounced like Pillates.)
Anyway, we watched Pirates of the Carabian (I know that isn't spelled correctly, and yet somehow I don't care right now.) and every time someone in the movie said "pirate" we would all shout "Pirate!" and take a drink.
Maybe we could play the game with RIAA trials as well. Although, somehow I don't think the judge would care for it in the courtroom.
I agree with what you are saying, and quoting, but question whether the majority of Americans would "get it."
In some Psychology text I remember it described different levels of morality. The first level is when you are young and you really don't have much choice in the matter because your authorities are bigger than you. The second level is the appeal to authority. It is "because I say so." The third level is when you really have an understanding of right and wrong, and make these decisions for yourself.
Do most people achieve true understanding of right and wrong, or do they just do what "authorities" tell them?
Are you saying that then the US will eventually invade Canada, or that the rush to use as much middle-east oil as possible is part of some evil Canadian conspiracy?
Just out of curiosity, and lazyness to bother to look it up myself, did the guy get convicted?
What jury would convict someone for threatening spammers?
"Your honor, we the jury have unanimously decided that the spammer not only deserved the threats, but deserved for them to be carried out, and recommend you sentence the plantif to a slow and painful death."
Quite a while ago I posted a comment to a spam article about trusting to buy from spammers, asking "Who would put in their mouth and swallow something from a spammer."
Well, it's old news (Haven't seen an opportunity to post this since then) but I was more correct in asking this than I had imagined.
Well, it turns out some folks at the Wall Street Journal did a laboratory study of these pills, and "analysis of a composite sample of 10 Performance Marketing pills and turned up significant levels of E. coli, yeast, mold, lead and pesticide residues."
So among other nasties, there is a significant amount of fecal matter in these pills.
I'm actually suprised this isn't bigger news. Maybe we should all put it in our signature files until the spammers go away: "Penis Pills have Poop in them!"
Maybe some idiot that is stupid enough to buy from a spammer will die of E. coli and get a Darwin Award. Those sure get forwarded around a lot. Even my mom forwarded me the nominations for the 2003 Darwin Awards. (Which suprised me.)
Maybe I should submit it for a Front Page story, but it was originally reported on August 13, 2003.
I've never noticed a difference either. I just use whichever screw fits. Tends to be the same for harddrives and CD Drives. I just got a big old bag o screws from Frys, and just grab for screws at random.
Not everybody is a geek, neither do they want to turn their goods consumption into a political fight.
But geeks do exist, as well as people who wish to turn everything into a political fight.
Another reason is, computers eventually get old. Some people like to tinker, even if they aren't a geek. When your computer gets old, buy a new one with the "latest and greatest" MS OS, and use your "obsolete" computer for fooling around with that Linux thingy everyone is talking about.
Why not if you're just going to junk it anyway?
Or hey, donate it to Free Geek and they will install the free OS and give it to someone who otherwise cannot afford a computer. Get a good tax write-off too.
I am not sure what the eco nuts were so upset about. There is a recycling plan
Because reducing is better than recycling?
these disks are a lot more expensive than renting.
And considering how expensive recordable DVDs for the public are, I'm not sure it would be possible for them to produce and ship them for under 2$.
And I'm not buying disposable DVDs as long as it is cheaper to rent. I got a rental place walking distance from where I live. And it is locally owned too.
But then these days I tend to buy more DVDs than I rent. Unless it is "so bad that it's good" I feel that if it isn't worth buying, it isn't worth watching. And I got a good collection so can just re-watch the extensive Video/DVD collection I already own.
Slashdot Mirror
Economic Left/Right: -2.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.95
So I'm Libertarian, slightly left.
I sometimes describe my politics as being Green-Libertarian, or Conservative Anarchist, because I feel that will piss off the most people. And what's the point in talking about politics if you aren't going to piss people off?
Well, that's actually the problem with the people that identify as "left" or "right." A lot of people identify as one, and refuse to listen to anyone that identifies as the other. So instead they just get into shouting matches. It's not true of everyone but reminds me of Sturgeon's Law.
I want to write more about this but maybe later.
The deficits were *deliberate*. They saw it as the only way to force reductions in the size of government.
The budget is the responsibility of the Executive Branch, and the congress Ratifies it correct?
Regardless, this seems to be what the current administration seems to be doing, with a Republican congress so they no longer have that excuse.
This is a big reason why I left the Republican party.
And the big irony is that once you introduce new government spending, it becomes very very difficult to end it.
I think I prefer PE's Party for your Right to Fight!
I started hating Star Trek in the 3rd to last season of TNG. I still watched just about every eposide, but it was a love to hate, so bad it's good kinda thing. My excuse was I only watched it so that I could complain about it.
I found DS9 interesting for a while, until I started watching B5. After that I could no longer tollerate the Trek shows anymore. Sure, B5 was a television show, it had soap operas, but they seamed less annoying and redundant. It wasn't hard science fiction but had a lot better science that Trek. Heck, my favorite SF authors are PKD and Zelazny who are not noted for Hard Science.
I gave Voyager a chance. I watched the first 4 episodes. It was awful. You can't even enjoy it on the level of Plan Nine from Outer Space.
The last season of B5 was disapointing but I liked the B5 TV movies. Too bad the B5 spinoff (can't even remember what it was called) was so boring. The settup had potential but I got bored after the first couple episodes of the series.
Heck, I stopped watching The X Files for the last couple seasons. (Pretty much after Chris Carter left the show.) By the time Enterprise started I was hooked on Joss Whedon, and had not interest.
Now, I'm hoping the Firefly movie is so successful that it will get back on TV. Until then I'll just watch my many tapes of Doctor Who. I respected JMS even after last season of B5, but now I just hate Star Trek and anything that has anything to do with it. You'd have to pay me to watch it.
Probably better to watch less TV anyway. There are a few hundred books I'd really like to read. If only this slashdot thing didn't take so much of my time.
Then you're really missing out.
For further reading may I suggest:
Note: "http://" is pronounced "Hut-up". Glad To Be Of Assistance!
***"http://www" is pronounced "Hut-up Wow!". Hope This Helps!***
the notion that banging people over the head with something makes it...popular?
Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth -- Aldous Huxley
You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but they seem to be handling fooling most of the people most of the time.
I first noticed it with music in the late 80s when I was listening to a lot of rap music. Radio stations would hardly play any, and when they started playing rap music, it was from people who came out of nowhere who were nowhere near as talented as the people I liked to listen to.
Later on when I took Political Science I found out that advertising dollars is the number one factor in elections, and name recognition is the second. Without overt advertising people tend to vote for the person whose name they have heard the most, regardless of possitions. It is not true of everyone, but it is scary how many people react like this.
Is this a hazard that comes with soft living? Or maybe 15,000 years of evolution without meaningful predators coming after you all the time? Or did TV and consumerism really, finally, destroy our minds?
A million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle.
Except for talk-radio, the only stations I listen to are community radio stations: KBOO, KMHD and KBPS.
I would listen to the NPR station (KOPB) if I knew what time Schickele Mix was on. I wish he had archives on the internet. It would be too obvious for me to look up what time it is on.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a radio station dedicated to playing nothing but the kind of music you'd find on SubRosa Records?
You make a lot of good points but miss the primary point of the post you are replying to.
What it is that the RIAA has a stranglehold on is distribution. The internet provides an alternative method of distribution, and with p2p the band doesn't even need to pay for most of the bandwidth.
Word of Mouth is actually the best method of advertising. Advertisers try to start it but artificially it is difficult to reproduce. Giving away your album for free is a good way for an independent band to get recognition. Hey, the price is right so if I'm at all interested in the kind of music the band is making, why not check it out. If I like it, I'll tell my all my friends who I think would also like it, maybe even burn them a CD and give it to them to save them the time to download it themselves.
Another thing is that if a band/project is moderately popular before they sign with an RIAA label, they are going to have a lot more leverage than without that grassroots underground support.
And most full-time bands can barely afford rent, regardless of whether or not they are signed to an RIAA label. Maybe they could even insist on a contract that does not allow the label to charge them for payola, and even allows them to distribute songs of their choosing on p2p as an alternative method of advertising. That would save the band a lot of money from their royalties.
I wanted to say something about Negativland and The Evolution Control Committee but they haven't sold albums on the same order of magnitude as Top 40 bands, and dispite the fact that I find them infinately more interesting than Top 40 music, I would never expect mainstream Americans to appreciate their music.
Then again, I once said the same thing about Chumbawamba.
Well, going out and buying a CD is what $20 if the price fixing rate continues as it has. Heck, it is what I pay for import music which constitutes a significan portion of my music. Anyway, logically it doesn't make sense to pay $1000-$500 dollars just to listen to free music. People will do it anyway but something I wanted to point out.
I wonder if there will still be some local ISPs that don't force their customers to "upgrade." There are still a few ISPs out ther that provide shell accounts. I pay more for it but I use a local ISP to get DSL. Would there be an underground internet with the old routers?
How often are backbone internet routers replaced?
Maybe it would be a series of micronets. Maybe there will be a wifi net. And ten years from now I'll probably still have the computers I'm using now around. Probably be bigger in high tech areas like the bay area and Portland.
But it is a chilling senario.
The answer will probably be shut up and eat your happy meal.
I bet the "Blind Date with Joanie and Chachie" would be worth something nowadays.
I wonder if the RIAA will have some sort of robotic monster throwing the CDs like frisbies and beheading school children as a method of distributing these CDs?
Do you think they'll be suing J. K. Rowling next for mentioning using Mandrake in Magic in her books?
Next they'll be conducting an interview with Philip K. Dick by Ouija Board.
They sort of did that last July.
Perhaps because it's a lot easier to train someone to use the tools capable of outputting .doc files
Or because they do not want to train them at all, just put them at a desk with a standard PC running the standard software and expect them to use it.
The people upstairs think it is better to just let them figure it out for themselves than to spend anything training them. And they might be right. But from what I understand about LaTeX, it can do a lot of kewl shite.
So, it doesn't suprise me that most people would run from the room screaming if asked to use LaTeX, but there are probably quite a few things where it would be the best tool to use.
I don't expect people to use vi, but for me I think it is the most practical editor of plain text. Then again, a lot of people probably think I'm psycho for liking plain text.
Do I have a point here? If I did I forgot it by now. Good Night.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but a lot of problems could be solved with an "Idiot-Proof" email client. (OK, we would be tempting fate by calling it "Idiot-Proff" but then I did put it in quotes right?
Anyway, I'm thinking an email client that when you open attatchments sent via email it boots up a temporary VM, runs the application, and when you quit it deletes the entire VM, and maybe calls the user an Idiot for doing what would get them a virus if they weren't using that program. Maybe tells them what the program attempted to do.
Or, I don't know much about XP but is it possible to prevent users from running any executables?
Now what would really make it a glorified appliance is if a robotic hand came out of the computer and bitch-slapped the user every time they did something stupid.
(I wonder if that would include posting to slashdot?)
At a recent party we played Pirraties (I'm not sure how you would spell it. It is pronounced like Pillates.)
Anyway, we watched Pirates of the Carabian (I know that isn't spelled correctly, and yet somehow I don't care right now.) and every time someone in the movie said "pirate" we would all shout "Pirate!" and take a drink.
Maybe we could play the game with RIAA trials as well. Although, somehow I don't think the judge would care for it in the courtroom.
I agree with what you are saying, and quoting, but question whether the majority of Americans would "get it."
In some Psychology text I remember it described different levels of morality. The first level is when you are young and you really don't have much choice in the matter because your authorities are bigger than you. The second level is the appeal to authority. It is "because I say so." The third level is when you really have an understanding of right and wrong, and make these decisions for yourself.
Do most people achieve true understanding of right and wrong, or do they just do what "authorities" tell them?
Like a couple others, I'm wondering: Are you serious???
People come to your door when you're throwing a party?
What if it is just friends, and you aren't charging money?
What if you aren't playing any music at your party?
What if you have a band of your own and am only paying your own music?
What if you punch the bastard in the nose?
Are you saying that then the US will eventually invade Canada, or that the rush to use as much middle-east oil as possible is part of some evil Canadian conspiracy?
Just out of curiosity, and lazyness to bother to look it up myself, did the guy get convicted?
What jury would convict someone for threatening spammers?
"Your honor, we the jury have unanimously decided that the spammer not only deserved the threats, but deserved for them to be carried out, and recommend you sentence the plantif to a slow and painful death."
Quite a while ago I posted a comment to a spam article about trusting to buy from spammers, asking "Who would put in their mouth and swallow something from a spammer."
Well, it's old news (Haven't seen an opportunity to post this since then) but I was more correct in asking this than I had imagined.
Well, it turns out some folks at the Wall Street Journal did a laboratory study of these pills, and "analysis of a composite sample of 10 Performance Marketing pills and turned up significant levels of E. coli, yeast, mold, lead and pesticide residues."
So among other nasties, there is a significant amount of fecal matter in these pills.
I'm actually suprised this isn't bigger news.
Maybe we should all put it in our signature files until the spammers go away: "Penis Pills have Poop in them!"
Maybe some idiot that is stupid enough to buy from a spammer will die of E. coli and get a Darwin Award. Those sure get forwarded around a lot. Even my mom forwarded me the nominations for the 2003 Darwin Awards. (Which suprised me.)
Maybe I should submit it for a Front Page story, but it was originally reported on August 13, 2003.
I've never noticed a difference either.
I just use whichever screw fits.
Tends to be the same for harddrives and CD Drives.
I just got a big old bag o screws from Frys, and just grab for screws at random.
Not everybody is a geek, neither do they want to turn their goods consumption into a political fight.
But geeks do exist, as well as people who wish to turn everything into a political fight.
Another reason is, computers eventually get old. Some people like to tinker, even if they aren't a geek. When your computer gets old, buy a new one with the "latest and greatest" MS OS, and use your "obsolete" computer for fooling around with that Linux thingy everyone is talking about.
Why not if you're just going to junk it anyway?
Or hey, donate it to Free Geek and they will install the free OS and give it to someone who otherwise cannot afford a computer. Get a good tax write-off too.
(Posting randomly through Meta-Moderation.)
I suppose there are Beavers too.
But we seem to have more squirles than anything.
(I don't normally run into too many slugs.)
Oh, and the opossums! How can you forget the opossums?
I am not sure what the eco nuts were so upset about. There is a recycling plan
Because reducing is better than recycling?
these disks are a lot more expensive than renting.
And considering how expensive recordable DVDs for the public are, I'm not sure it would be possible for them to produce and ship them for under 2$.
And I'm not buying disposable DVDs as long as it is cheaper to rent. I got a rental place walking distance from where I live. And it is locally owned too.
But then these days I tend to buy more DVDs than I rent. Unless it is "so bad that it's good" I feel that if it isn't worth buying, it isn't worth watching. And I got a good collection so can just re-watch the extensive Video/DVD collection I already own.