Seriously. I think if could peer into the "mind" of my users, I'd just see a saw going back and forth through a log, or one of those cymbal-clapping wind-up monkey toys. I can't imagine there's much else going on up there.
And sadly, it's extremely typical of how minor criminal charges are handled. The first line is usually the cop, whose job amounts to little more than hired muscle for the state; entrance requirements in terms of education are pretty low in most areas, and cops barely understand the law themselves, instead adopting an attitude of "arrest first and let the courts sort it out later".
Combine this with absolutely zero options or oversight from the citizenry and you already have a recipe for disaster.
A cop will therefore hassle a citizen based on a combination of hazy understanding of the law, bad mood, and whether or not he approves of the citizen's attitude. The charge is usually, in the grand scheme of things, fairly minor, but enough to cause a serious headache for the victim. For many things, an arrest will be involved, along with jailtime, bond money, and the embarassment of having to call friends and family to get you out, not to mention the retrieval of whatever confiscated or impounded property -- and the money involved in getting that back.
This is justice in America.
Your court date will roll around and you'll plead not guilty. A trial date will be set, meaning you'll have to schedule your life around that, and try to get a lawyer to help. The average person isn't expected to fully understand the law, because it's so nuanced and convoluted, which is why defense attorneys with years of specialized training exist. The average person is expected to fully abide by the law he doesn't understand, though, which may suggest a problem with the system, but nobody will question it during this process.
On your trial date you'll speak to some self-important prosecutor or solicitor who acts on behalf of the government. He'll treat your minor case like it's the crime of the century. Depending on your demeanor he may offer a deal of some sort, which usually entails you pleading guilty to a somewhat lessor offense. What he probably won't tell you is that if you reject this offer, and make him go through the hassle of an actual trial, he'll push for the maximum possible punishment the law allows, regardless of any circumstances up to that point.
This is justice in America.
If you take his deal, you've just pleaded guilty to an offense you may not have even committed, and is probably something so stupid no one should care even if you did do it, but you're intimidated into the plea by his legal jargon and the fact that, as an average Joe, you don't have the time, money, or resources devoted to fighting it. You'll pay a few hundred dollars in fines and be on your way, with an arrest record, a criminal history, and completely out the hundreds you spent for the bond, the fine, the impound, the attorney, and anything else. The state will pat itself on the back for a job well done for cleaning up the mean streets of dangerous scum like you.
If you don't take his deal you'll be put on trial. For minor offenses you may not even get a jury of twelve average Joes who will sympathize with you; the state has found a loophole and called this an "administrative matter", meaning you'll get tried by a judge, who will claim to be impartial but is on the state's payroll and has a vested interest in making sure things turn out in the state's favor, not to mention his clouded view of every person who appears before him as a criminal.
The judge will ignore everything you say, and your attorney will be mostly powerless since the time for deal-making is over and all he can do is try to object to the prosection's evidence. There will be little evidence to which he can object, though, since for most minor offenses there aren't any significant witnesses or material bits of evidence. Nothing but the policeman's word and charge on the books, often, and this will be taken as wholly sufficient to pronounce you guilty, whereupon you'll pay a huge fine, face possible jail time, and be in worse shape than you had you just meekly submitted instead of trying to assert your rig
There is no control panel for adjusting the way the touch pad works, and I found it so sensitive that I was constantly launching programs
First: That's a hardware thing, not software, so he would be just as right to complain to Dell about this. Second, this is an issue in every laptop I've ever used unless you use the pre-installed Windows that comes with it. Even if you put another clean install of Windows on it, surprise! Suddenly your touchpad doesn't work all that well, or the scroll area doesn't work at all, and you have to go hunt down fiddly drivers from the machine's manufacturer.
Same goes for multimedia crap. Hell, on plenty of laptops I've dealt with, and some desktops, a clean install of Windows XP results in no audio, no NIC, no wireless, and no video drivers. You have to go find all this crap yourself.
Those stupid drivers, by the way, are beyond the ken of most users. Your aunt Mabel doesn't know how to install drivers in Windows any more than she would in Linux, She wouldn't even know what to look for, or where to look. And when you do install them, you can look forward to a desktop icon, a systray icon hogging memory for no reason, and at least one, but probably more, inane start menu entries.
So let's not go pretending Windows is easier or better than anything else on this front, hm?
Every time the computer awoke from sleep, the volume control software crashed and had to be reloaded.
I've installed Ubuntu, from Hoary to Feisty, on dozens of machines, both laptops and desktops. I have never had this problem, and none of my friends have come to me whining about it either. I grant that my evidence is purely anecdotal, but I find it a little too strange that he's having this issue which I've never even heard of, much less encountered.
When I tried to play common audio and video files, such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download special files called codecs that are built into Windows and Mac computers.
Way to miss the point there, sport. With Ubuntu, if you don't have a codec (which, by the way, isn't built into Mac or Windows either), it will discover this and go get it for you. I agree that the warning about free this and open that would confuse Aunt Mabel, but let's look at the alternative: Go play a movie in a default Windows install. It doesn't play. There won't be any freaking warning, helpful error, or anything else. At most you'll get some gibberish about OxDEADBEEF and some obscure crap that you and I recognize as a missing codec, but Aunt Mabel wouldn't.
Oh, and once you recognize that you're missing a codec? Now you get to go find it and install it! Have fun hunting down a codec pack that doesn't riddle you with adware, champ.
To get the computer to recognize my Kodak camera and Apple iPod, I had to reboot it several times.
Can't speak to this as I don't deal with iPods or cameras, but let's not pretend like installing things in Windows doesn't require a reboot. Half the time you have to reboot just because you installed a new mouse driver or something, and Windows will freaking nag you to death about it until you do it. Still, although I've never had to deal with the hardware he's discussing, I can say that I've never had to restart an Ubuntu machine to work with new anything except a new kernel.
Playing videos was a bad experience, with lots of flickering and freezing. Oh, and there's no built-in software for playing commercial DVDs.
Never had a problem with video on any machine I've ever put Ubuntu on. Ever. And there's no "built in" DVD playing software for Windows that I know of either. You can either go try to find one yourself, install it, and hope it's either free or won't riddle you with more adware crap (and five desktop entries, quickstart buttons, systray icons...), or you could open Synaptic, type "DVD player", and have a one-click, fully
Weirdo. What's wrong with Winamp? I want to play a song -- I click "open", and I've now got a window where everything is alphabetized so it takes me about three seconds to find the song I want. Then it plays. How much more "utility" or "functionality" do I need here? How much faster could this possibly get?
Forgive me for not wanting a huge-ass iTunes window open, replete with all kinds of fancy-schmancy graphical crap and worthless menus. I don't need the program to calculate what songs I like based on inane vote-up-vote-down criteria which is as much a mood and whim thing than anything else. I can decide for myself what I want to listen to. Plus, if I'm listening to music, I'm probably doing something else at the moment too; the last thing I need is to constantly switch back to another window to give a yay or nay to a song so some idiotic program can decide for me if I like it.
You got all that right. I run a darkwave and futurepop radio station myself and play stuff that most people have never heard of before outside the hazy drunkenness of a goth club somewhere. There are a few groups I have in rotation that have acheived some commercial success, but most of them, despite being signed to labels, are almost totally unknown beyond a pretty tight-knit circle.
I have personally had people email me and tell me they loved such and such song, this or that group, and ended up buying some songs off iTunes or CDs or whatever. I know one guy who attended the VNV Nation concert here in Atlanta, after hearing them on my station. Had he never tuned in he'd never have known who VNV Nation was, but he did, and paid for a ticket. What's that mean for VNV Nation? At least the sale of a ticket, plus whatever swag he may have picked up while he was at the show (shirts, albums, buttons, who knows).
This sort of thing happens all the time. Artists seek out net radio broadcasters and send them free tracks, promo kits, and other stuff to get exposure. I'm not even that big a player as internet radio goes, and I've gotten a bunch of CDs in the mail, mp3s, release kits, promotional tracks, and other goodies. More important broadcasters than I am, they get way more stuff.
And why would the artists do this? Because they want exposure, which is something that's actually pretty hard to buy. You can advertise but people learn to tune out and ignore advertisements pretty quickly, in any medium or format. Or you can just spread the word and let your work speak for itself, which is what the musicians are doing.
The RIAA really is killing off a fantastic source of free advertising, and I can't understand what their problem is. It's not as though anyone refrained from buying music because they can just listen to it on the radio. Hell, most of the music I own, I got because I heard it on the radio and just had to have it.
And it was usually internet radio that brought me to it.
I transferred a 3.5 gigabyte file from my Ubuntu Fawn laptop to my Vista Ultimate workstation. Both are dual-core Intel processors; the Ubuntu laptop is a T5600 @ 1.83ghz, and the Vista workstation is an e6600 @ 2.4ghz. They are connected through a normal Belkin with a 100mbit ports.
(Amusingly, the file in question was a Vista Ultimate ISO.)
While the transfer took place I opened Vista's task manager and looked at the network utilization graph. Steady at 38% with almost no deviation. I let that go for a minute.
Then I played an mp3.
Immediately the utilization went to 27% and held steady. As soon as I stopped the mp3, it shot back up to 38%.
I did this all with WMP at first, thinking that'd be it. To double-check I ran my usual player, Winamp, with the exact same results.
Here is a screenshot of the network graph. Every single one of those dips you see was me playing an mp3. Disgusting!
Thinking that just maybe the problem was disk usage, I did two things. First, I forced a defrag on Vista while the transfer was underway. Network utilization was unaffected. Next, I tried streaming music from my own darkwave station (and then shamelessly plugged in on slashdot). Network obligingly dropped to 27% even though streaming shouldn't use the disk.
I'm convinced. This is a seriously messed up issue and I hope to whatever diety that Microsoft rectifies it quickly.
For the record, Vista has managed to annoy me a lot less than any previous incarnation of Windows, at least in userland, once I turned off the UAC crap. And I like some of the little extras that it does. But from a technical and administrative standpoint, this is highly obnoxious, and I'm pretty appalled.
I do have to say, though, that until I went out of my way to test this, I had never noticed the difference, and I'm a technical guy. The average user would probably never notice the difference under any circumstances. That does not excuse this type of idiocy, but it may explain why MS chose to do this. Just a guess.
A highly-reflective screen that can be viewed in ambient light, but has no backlight of its own. Because that worked out ever so well for the original Gameboy Advance.
Yeah, but most streaming radio stations aren't that high quality to begin with. There are a few out there that broadcast at 128k or sometimes even higher, but most don't. My own darkwave radio station (plug!) broadcasts at 96k, actually, and I do this for a few reasons, which are also the same reasons other broadcasters do it.
First, because it's a reasonably decent fidelity without hammering the connection (mine or yours). 96k isn't that fantastic but it's still quite a bang for the buck, as it were. Second, I don't believe you should get a perfect reproduction of the music I'm playing -- it's supposed to be analogous to an actual radio, where the fidelity isn't perfect either, and furthermore my station is free to listen to, and if you like the music you can go buy the albums or songs. I even provide a bunch of links to Amazon for currently featured artists I'm playing at the moment. My station is not intended to be a perfect copy.
All of this comes together to mean that you could streamrip mirrorshades radio all day long but you're not going to get something you'd want to burn to CD or put on your iPod. The quality is fine for a stream you're likely listening to at work or as background music for home, but if you were to rip it it'd be about the same as taping a song off the radio.
Most broadcasters I know or listen to operate the same way. Digitally Imported's free streams are 96k, Corrosion Radio streams at 64k mono, and most of the stations on live365 are 64k or below. I know afterhoursdjs goes up to 192k but they're one of few that do.
The main bullet point you should be taking away from my entire speech here is that despite SoundExchange's whinging, streamripping is an extremely minor concern. Most people don't know it can be done, most of those who know it can be done don't know how, and even if they do, who cares if they get a low-quality copy of a song?
Every time this sort of thing comes up, we all get up in arms and raise the same points over and over.
That the AP is open. That it can safely be assumed to be open on purpose.
That you, your friends, and everyone you know do this deliberately so random passerby can leech off your connection. (You altruist, you, always looking out for people wandering by your house / apartment who just happen to have a laptop.) And therefore any open AP must be run by someone with the same mindset.
That the laptop asked permission from the AP to connect, and the AP gave it, therefore everything was kosher.
Guys, it's tiresome.
I am a huge believer in the "no harm, no foul" viewpoint when it comes to law, also known as "no victim, no crime". I therefore think the law is stupid if it regards leeching a bit of network access as a crime, because 99% of the time it is not harming anyone or anything.
But give me a break. I'd like you to step back from the world we live in, where technology makes sense and we control every aspect of our networks.
Put yourselves in the shoes of the hapless technoweenies you deal with day to day. The users. The Aunt Mabels and Joe Nobodys of the world, to whom "a computer" automatically means "Windows", who routinely tell you "my email doesn't work" because they typed "doofus@aolcom" and forgot the period. The people who can use MS Office only because someone like you or I showed them how over and over, not because they were able to figure it out on their own. The people who complain that "my internet is down" because a single site couldn't be reached. The people who take their computer to Geek Squad to "fix the viruses" and blindly trust anything a first-tier helpdesk joker tells them, because they don't know any better.
In short, the majority of computer users. Leaving aside the hows and whys for the moment, and all the philosophical pontifications of how people should be ashamed to be so ignorant, let us just accept that the majority of people are not computer literate, even in this day and age. They're getting better, but most people still don't know jack about jack.
You know who I'm talking about.
My point here is that most people don't know how to secure their wireless networks. Many of them don't even know it can be done, or why it matters. All they know is they bought this "thing" at Circuit City, plugged it in, and now they have "wireless internet".
A few of them get as far as being able to change the ssid, but not many. Even those often don't bother changing any other settings, because they don't know they exist, or are scared of them, or it's a hassle, or they don't understand how to use keys in Windows, or whatever.
It's a foolish, utopian fantasy to assume that these people want (or don't care) random passerby to be able to connect to their network. If you brought it to their attention they'd probably be annoyed, but they're blissfully unaware.
Understand: I am not condoning a ham-fisted, idiotic law that punishes you for connecting somewhere for a little while and screwing around online. And I am not saying it's okay for people to be ignorant about network security, or making excuses for their inability to learn / care / be bothered.
But I am dealing with reality, and the reality is that just because an AP is left open by some ignoramus who doesn't know any better doesn't mean that's what they wanted. And their router handing out invitations and broadcasting its existence to the world doesn't mean that's what the network owner wanted. For us to pretend this isn't the case is naive.
The point is that if a candidate actually believes in nonsense like creationism he is unfit to lead a technological, industrial society. By answering an affirmative to creationism in any of its forms, he is demonstrating that he is incapable of critical analysis, inflexible and stubborn to new ideas, will run to the hilt any preconceived notion he might have, values "tradition" over progress, is unaccepting of new information that might contradict what he wants to be true, etc.
On top of all that, a creationism is also saying that he holds the Bible to be a more grand source of information and a better moral guide than anything else. Expect a creationist candidate to also do what he can to steamroll gay rights, Roe v Wade, and be instilled with all the other crackpot "values" of fundie nutjobs.
Most kids don't regard the determination of chemical bonds as "fun" -- but that's fundamental to the field of chemistry.
Most kids (including me, when I was one, and still to this day) couldn't care less what Shakespeare wrote -- and what he wrote is frankly irrelevant to anybody who does something useful for a living (scientists, engineers, doctors),
So you think knowledge of chemistry is important, even though only a tiny, tiny percentage of the population will ever use it or even encounter it outside a classroom.
But you think the study of culture and art, as in Shakespeare, is useless -- because most people won't ever need it?
And that actors, writers, and other artists and performers aren't doing anything useful?
That's some twisted thinking, man.
And then you go on to say that "most of life is boring". Stop for a minute, please, and consider how much more boring life would be without the creative types -- those you brush off as merely "playing" -- producing all the various artforms that give civilization depth.
Look, I understand what you're trying to say here, but I can't really see where you're coming from. You're trying to show me how useful math is for everyone, with these examples culled from real life, but that just isn't how it works.
Almost every example you give is intuitive, not mathematical. Ask the reporter how they write, and they aren't going to start talking about complex algos and maximizing space potential. It just comes to them. Yes, math can be used to describe what they are doing, but the reporter is certainly not sitting down with paper and calculator and crunching the numbers.
Neither is the salesperson and cablerunner you describe. They just do it. Again, math can be used to describe what they are doing but they are not performing any actual calculations in their head the way you might perform them with pencil and paper.
Consider a baseball player trying to catch a pop fly. Even a Little League player can look at the ball, watch it for a split second, and run to where the ball will be. He sticks out his hand, makes a few minor adjustments, and catches it.
Did that kid "compute" the quadratic equation for the ball's parabola in his head? No, of course not. He just innately knew how to do it, from a life of experience.
Don't confuse "can be described by math" with "was done by using math".
if you focus too narrowly too early, you end up limiting their options later in life.
Yeah, but exactly how long do you want to wait, man?
By ninth or tenth grade a student has been in school for a decade. If that student has consistently scored poorly in math, isn't it possible he just sucks at it? Odds are he's pretty frustrated with math as a whole at this point too.
And now you want to force him through another few years of it. If he didn't hate math before he's surely going to now. Congratulations, you taught him something about math -- you taught him how to hate math.
So that maybe they'll get better at it?
And if little Johnny grows up without the ability to crunch polynomials, how has he really suffered? I realize math is important to some people and interesting to others, but most people don't need it -- to the point where I'm finding it hard to believe you'd argue with me on this.
I'm gonna ask a question that will sound flippant but isn't meant to be; it's an honest question and I'm looking for a sincere answer. If Johnny graduates high school and can't really do much math beyond arithmetic and basic fractions/decimals... so what?
I just don't think that's the case. I took the four years of math (two of algebra, one of statistics, one of geometry). plus another in college (having deliberately chosen a major that would let me avoid as much math as possible). That's five years of math, plus the algebra class in eigth grade, which could count as a sixth year of math even though it was, obviously, not very advanced.
To this day I have absolutely no idea what a quadratic equation is beyond a vague "something to do with parabolas". I still remember the formula thanks to a silly mneumonic, and if forced I could probably still crunch through one. But that was ten years ago, and that is all I can do today.
Even then, being exposed to it every single day, I didn't understand it. I had no idea what it was used for, and I had no idea whatsoever how it worked. At all. And I still don't.
To say I -- or anyone like me who is not inclined towards math -- is "learning" it is somewhat disingenuous. I learned nothing about math in high school. I did what most non-math types did, which was memorize the formulas long enough to plug the numbers in and pass the test. I had no idea what I was doing -- just steps in a dance I was forced to go through like a trained monkey.
And today I still suck at it.
See, the reason I don't like your analogy is because, unlike math, English (or whatever your native language may be) is something you are constantly exposed to, and you will use it every single day of your life, regardless of your profession, interests, social status, etc. And because of that, it is useful to everyone, from every walk of life, in every professional or personal communication they have with anybody. Ensuring that people are better at this is a good thing for everyone, and moreover, it doesn't take much, because everyone is exposed to it all the time.
You cannot make the same argument for math. It is rarely used by anyone; only a small subset of people use it for their professions, and another small percentage find it of personal interest. But the majority of people never encounter math beyond arithmetic outside the classroom -- and because of that, they forget what they allegedly learned.
Learning English may have helped you be somewhat better at it, but then, you have plenty of opportunity for practice. Learning math won't help most people, who will never find a chance to use it, and after only a year or two away from the classroom, will have forgotten most of it.
I'm not denying that math is important -- the fact that we're talking about it using computers which require an intimate understanding of silicon semiconductor physics demonstrates that. But Joe Average didn't design the computer. But can you really, with a straight face, tell me that most people have any use for math beyond basic arithmetic?
It's easy for us to knee-jerk and say this is bad, but why? Most people don't need mathematics beyond basic arithmetic and fractions. Outside of a classroom, the concepts taught in algebra and above are rarely, if ever, encountered by the day to day people. And precisely because they hardly, if ever, use it, they forget all of it anyway.
I'm not being facetious at all when I assert this. A normal student in public schools in America will take at least two to three years of algebra, sometimes more, plus a year of trig or geometry. The ones who are interested in such things will take more advanced stuff yet, but those aren't the ones we have to more or less force into math classes anyway.
So we're looking at three to four years of mandatory math classes. For someone not strong in math, isn't that enough?
I am not saying that exposing the students to the classes is a bad idea. But by high school age, it is usually fairly apparent whether or not the student has an aptitude for math or not. If he doesn't, there is no point in making endure a forced march through a bunch of crap he'll never internalize, fully understand, or find any use for. Indeed, the article states precisely that
"If a school wants to maximise their performance, they may feel that 'if we encourage weaker students not to take maths, our results will look better'," he said.
And why should a student weak in math be encouraged to pursue it? Let him focus whatever talents he has in other areas. I, for example, am hopeless when it comes to math, but was always strong in English and decent at visual arts. I'd have been ecstatic had an administrator said to me, "Your scores are consistently low in math but high in these areas. Would you like to shift your credit focus to reflect the subjects in which you excel?" Hell yeah.
This "one size fits all" approach to education -- the idea that we must churn out "well-rounded" students no matter what an individual student's strengths and weaknesses may be -- is patently idiotic.
That's fine. If they want to adopt the ultimate position that "we think it was done in some supernatural way which is by definition beyond the reach of what we can know", I'm okay with that.
But then you have to wonder exactly what the hell they think they're going to teach in schools. Or why they always try to use "science" to back themselves up. There are literally thousands of websites and books devoted to the alleged science which "proves" or at least provides "evidence" for creationism. And yet the same people who write such gibberish, and the same people who read it, will eventually, if pressed, fall back to saying "WELL GOD IS BEYOND SCIENCE!" Which is true, so why don't they shut up about it?
From the article: It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say.
Well, then, I say bravo, women! If more people in meetings would shut the hell up until they have something useful to contribute, meetings would not only be much shorter, but more productive. Instead, meetings are often a mishmash of pointless blithering, unrelated tangents, and half-baked bullshit tossed out to give off the illusion of "being involved".
So what she's saying is that women are much more intelligent about this process, and, not feeling the need to prove how big their dicks are, know that it's okay to not fill the meeting with mindless crap, but rather interject only when necessary.
I know that isn't the point she was trying to make, but still.
While the Navy (or other branches) may supplement their firepower with railguns, railguns will not replace cruise missiles. For one thing a railgun is line-of-sight, whereas a cruise missile can navigate over mountains or whatever is in the way between you and your target.
Considering that "virii" is a made-up, non-English word, then yes, I can believe Bush using it and being mocked in the media the next day for another brilliant Bushism. The proper plural is "viruses".
Hate to be the one who bears bad news. And by the way, "boxen" is not a real word either.
You would need to send enormous amounts of gear, several hundred tons of water and food and air enough for the journey, the time spent on the planet and the trip back. Exactly what would be the net gain for anyone?
"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept."
As the operator of a synthpop and darkwave radio station (plug!) myself, my response is "kiss my ass". Like most other stations, I broadcast things that aren't ever going to be heard on conventional radio, giving (relatively) niche or obscure artists that much more free exposure. I know this works for two reasons:
1. I myself have bought albums after hearing certain artists' songs on other net radio stations -- music I would never, ever, ever have heard otherwise except perhaps in the drunken haze of a goth club.
2. Several independent artists have sent me singles and even entire albums and other promo kits, encouraging me to put them in rotation. One synthpop artist wrote:
Thanks I appreciate the exposure, it's hard to get the music out as an independent artist which is why I'm trying to get radioplay. The CD is the mail.
And another said, after sending me some tracks and I liked them but mentioned I'd never heard of this group before:
Yeah, that is what we are experiencing with Red Flag. The darkwave scene
just loves the music but we need to really get the message out there.
This has happened dozens of times. It's good for the artists who are trying to get noticed; it's good for the audience who gets to discover new music; it's good for the broadcaster cause it's just fun. I get permission from many of the labels or artists to play their stuff, and when I don't, well, it's a freaking 96k broadcast that can't be copied without some technical know-how (certainly much more difficult than jamming a tape into your radio and hitting "record"). Exactly who is being harmed here?
You know, there ain't no Benjamins in the net broadcasting trade. We do this for fun and the love of the music. The RIAA's outmoded and antiquated business models, and their continued attempts to strangle the life out of emergent technologies, is absolutely appalling. I'll continue to broadcast from my host in Germany and here's a big screw you to the suits. I don't make a single cent off my broadcast, and I don't play the kind of music that would come close to competing with the mass-appeal fare on the normal airwaves. You'll never get a dime from me.
I watched a bunch of his videos about a month ago when I discovered them, just to see what he was all about. I don't know the specific video they're complaining about (it says they got ticked off about "one"), but in general he wouldn't even play the whole song, so it's not like a performance in full. Usually his videos would start off with him showing a famous guitar solo or intro or something. He'd then break it down for the viewer showing a chord-by-chord progression and all the techniques needed to play them.
As far as I know even full covers are considered fair use to a point and this guy usually wasn't even playing the full songs -- again I didn't see the specific video that provoked the ire of the RIAA, but even if he just sat there playing the entire song, there were no vocals, drums, any other instruments, etc. Hardly the same performance.
Isn't using even copyrighted material for instructional purposes protected? How many thousands of guitar players initially got interested because they wanted to be able to play one certain song and brought it to an instructor, saying "can you teach me this?" What this guy was doing was no different. Should we prevent all private guitar instructors from teaching their students "Stairway to Heaven"?
Though the RIAA is hardly known for its logical arguments, I'm really at a loss to see how they can possibly justify this crap. And if you want to slant it so the RIAA can understand, this guy was providing a useful service that was -- and could have continued -- to teach hundreds of aspiring musicians how to rock. Some of whom would have continued to learn, perhaps write their own songs, perhaps record an album the RIAA could exploit. And all they want to do is shut off that potential pool of guitarists so that no one will see an unauthorized performance of the introduction to "Sweet Child Of Mine". Morons.
Those technoweenies are also the same people with a "linksys" ssid wireless router at home, unencrypted. The media makes a huge deal out of the HACKERS IN THE CYBERSPACES, so the technophobes are afraid of getting their stupid credit cards stolen. But there's hardly any mention of how your wireless broadcasts out in the open, so they're not the least bit afraid of it, and thus fear will not deter them from getting a device like this.
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I don't know why, ma'am.
Seriously. I think if could peer into the "mind" of my users, I'd just see a saw going back and forth through a log, or one of those cymbal-clapping wind-up monkey toys. I can't imagine there's much else going on up there.
And sadly, it's extremely typical of how minor criminal charges are handled. The first line is usually the cop, whose job amounts to little more than hired muscle for the state; entrance requirements in terms of education are pretty low in most areas, and cops barely understand the law themselves, instead adopting an attitude of "arrest first and let the courts sort it out later".
Combine this with absolutely zero options or oversight from the citizenry and you already have a recipe for disaster.
A cop will therefore hassle a citizen based on a combination of hazy understanding of the law, bad mood, and whether or not he approves of the citizen's attitude. The charge is usually, in the grand scheme of things, fairly minor, but enough to cause a serious headache for the victim. For many things, an arrest will be involved, along with jailtime, bond money, and the embarassment of having to call friends and family to get you out, not to mention the retrieval of whatever confiscated or impounded property -- and the money involved in getting that back.
This is justice in America.
Your court date will roll around and you'll plead not guilty. A trial date will be set, meaning you'll have to schedule your life around that, and try to get a lawyer to help. The average person isn't expected to fully understand the law, because it's so nuanced and convoluted, which is why defense attorneys with years of specialized training exist. The average person is expected to fully abide by the law he doesn't understand, though, which may suggest a problem with the system, but nobody will question it during this process.
On your trial date you'll speak to some self-important prosecutor or solicitor who acts on behalf of the government. He'll treat your minor case like it's the crime of the century. Depending on your demeanor he may offer a deal of some sort, which usually entails you pleading guilty to a somewhat lessor offense. What he probably won't tell you is that if you reject this offer, and make him go through the hassle of an actual trial, he'll push for the maximum possible punishment the law allows, regardless of any circumstances up to that point.
This is justice in America.
If you take his deal, you've just pleaded guilty to an offense you may not have even committed, and is probably something so stupid no one should care even if you did do it, but you're intimidated into the plea by his legal jargon and the fact that, as an average Joe, you don't have the time, money, or resources devoted to fighting it. You'll pay a few hundred dollars in fines and be on your way, with an arrest record, a criminal history, and completely out the hundreds you spent for the bond, the fine, the impound, the attorney, and anything else. The state will pat itself on the back for a job well done for cleaning up the mean streets of dangerous scum like you.
If you don't take his deal you'll be put on trial. For minor offenses you may not even get a jury of twelve average Joes who will sympathize with you; the state has found a loophole and called this an "administrative matter", meaning you'll get tried by a judge, who will claim to be impartial but is on the state's payroll and has a vested interest in making sure things turn out in the state's favor, not to mention his clouded view of every person who appears before him as a criminal.
The judge will ignore everything you say, and your attorney will be mostly powerless since the time for deal-making is over and all he can do is try to object to the prosection's evidence. There will be little evidence to which he can object, though, since for most minor offenses there aren't any significant witnesses or material bits of evidence. Nothing but the policeman's word and charge on the books, often, and this will be taken as wholly sufficient to pronounce you guilty, whereupon you'll pay a huge fine, face possible jail time, and be in worse shape than you had you just meekly submitted instead of trying to assert your rig
Let's look at his complaints, shall we?
There is no control panel for adjusting the way the touch pad works, and I found it so sensitive that I was constantly launching programs
First: That's a hardware thing, not software, so he would be just as right to complain to Dell about this. Second, this is an issue in every laptop I've ever used unless you use the pre-installed Windows that comes with it. Even if you put another clean install of Windows on it, surprise! Suddenly your touchpad doesn't work all that well, or the scroll area doesn't work at all, and you have to go hunt down fiddly drivers from the machine's manufacturer.
Same goes for multimedia crap. Hell, on plenty of laptops I've dealt with, and some desktops, a clean install of Windows XP results in no audio, no NIC, no wireless, and no video drivers. You have to go find all this crap yourself.
Those stupid drivers, by the way, are beyond the ken of most users. Your aunt Mabel doesn't know how to install drivers in Windows any more than she would in Linux, She wouldn't even know what to look for, or where to look. And when you do install them, you can look forward to a desktop icon, a systray icon hogging memory for no reason, and at least one, but probably more, inane start menu entries.
So let's not go pretending Windows is easier or better than anything else on this front, hm?
Every time the computer awoke from sleep, the volume control software crashed and had to be reloaded.
I've installed Ubuntu, from Hoary to Feisty, on dozens of machines, both laptops and desktops. I have never had this problem, and none of my friends have come to me whining about it either. I grant that my evidence is purely anecdotal, but I find it a little too strange that he's having this issue which I've never even heard of, much less encountered.
When I tried to play common audio and video files, such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download special files called codecs that are built into Windows and Mac computers.
Way to miss the point there, sport. With Ubuntu, if you don't have a codec (which, by the way, isn't built into Mac or Windows either), it will discover this and go get it for you. I agree that the warning about free this and open that would confuse Aunt Mabel, but let's look at the alternative: Go play a movie in a default Windows install. It doesn't play. There won't be any freaking warning, helpful error, or anything else. At most you'll get some gibberish about OxDEADBEEF and some obscure crap that you and I recognize as a missing codec, but Aunt Mabel wouldn't.
Oh, and once you recognize that you're missing a codec? Now you get to go find it and install it! Have fun hunting down a codec pack that doesn't riddle you with adware, champ.
To get the computer to recognize my Kodak camera and Apple iPod, I had to reboot it several times.
Can't speak to this as I don't deal with iPods or cameras, but let's not pretend like installing things in Windows doesn't require a reboot. Half the time you have to reboot just because you installed a new mouse driver or something, and Windows will freaking nag you to death about it until you do it. Still, although I've never had to deal with the hardware he's discussing, I can say that I've never had to restart an Ubuntu machine to work with new anything except a new kernel.
Playing videos was a bad experience, with lots of flickering and freezing. Oh, and there's no built-in software for playing commercial DVDs.
Never had a problem with video on any machine I've ever put Ubuntu on. Ever. And there's no "built in" DVD playing software for Windows that I know of either. You can either go try to find one yourself, install it, and hope it's either free or won't riddle you with more adware crap (and five desktop entries, quickstart buttons, systray icons...), or you could open Synaptic, type "DVD player", and have a one-click, fully
Weirdo. What's wrong with Winamp? I want to play a song -- I click "open", and I've now got a window where everything is alphabetized so it takes me about three seconds to find the song I want. Then it plays. How much more "utility" or "functionality" do I need here? How much faster could this possibly get?
Forgive me for not wanting a huge-ass iTunes window open, replete with all kinds of fancy-schmancy graphical crap and worthless menus. I don't need the program to calculate what songs I like based on inane vote-up-vote-down criteria which is as much a mood and whim thing than anything else. I can decide for myself what I want to listen to. Plus, if I'm listening to music, I'm probably doing something else at the moment too; the last thing I need is to constantly switch back to another window to give a yay or nay to a song so some idiotic program can decide for me if I like it.
Hey thanks! Just spread the word, that's all I ask. :)
You got all that right. I run a darkwave and futurepop radio station myself and play stuff that most people have never heard of before outside the hazy drunkenness of a goth club somewhere. There are a few groups I have in rotation that have acheived some commercial success, but most of them, despite being signed to labels, are almost totally unknown beyond a pretty tight-knit circle.
I have personally had people email me and tell me they loved such and such song, this or that group, and ended up buying some songs off iTunes or CDs or whatever. I know one guy who attended the VNV Nation concert here in Atlanta, after hearing them on my station. Had he never tuned in he'd never have known who VNV Nation was, but he did, and paid for a ticket. What's that mean for VNV Nation? At least the sale of a ticket, plus whatever swag he may have picked up while he was at the show (shirts, albums, buttons, who knows).
This sort of thing happens all the time. Artists seek out net radio broadcasters and send them free tracks, promo kits, and other stuff to get exposure. I'm not even that big a player as internet radio goes, and I've gotten a bunch of CDs in the mail, mp3s, release kits, promotional tracks, and other goodies. More important broadcasters than I am, they get way more stuff.
And why would the artists do this? Because they want exposure, which is something that's actually pretty hard to buy. You can advertise but people learn to tune out and ignore advertisements pretty quickly, in any medium or format. Or you can just spread the word and let your work speak for itself, which is what the musicians are doing.
The RIAA really is killing off a fantastic source of free advertising, and I can't understand what their problem is. It's not as though anyone refrained from buying music because they can just listen to it on the radio. Hell, most of the music I own, I got because I heard it on the radio and just had to have it.
And it was usually internet radio that brought me to it.
So I ran my own test.
I transferred a 3.5 gigabyte file from my Ubuntu Fawn laptop to my Vista Ultimate workstation. Both are dual-core Intel processors; the Ubuntu laptop is a T5600 @ 1.83ghz, and the Vista workstation is an e6600 @ 2.4ghz. They are connected through a normal Belkin with a 100mbit ports.
(Amusingly, the file in question was a Vista Ultimate ISO.)
While the transfer took place I opened Vista's task manager and looked at the network utilization graph. Steady at 38% with almost no deviation. I let that go for a minute.
Then I played an mp3.
Immediately the utilization went to 27% and held steady. As soon as I stopped the mp3, it shot back up to 38%.
I did this all with WMP at first, thinking that'd be it. To double-check I ran my usual player, Winamp, with the exact same results.
Here is a screenshot of the network graph. Every single one of those dips you see was me playing an mp3. Disgusting!
Thinking that just maybe the problem was disk usage, I did two things. First, I forced a defrag on Vista while the transfer was underway. Network utilization was unaffected. Next, I tried streaming music from my own darkwave station (and then shamelessly plugged in on slashdot). Network obligingly dropped to 27% even though streaming shouldn't use the disk.
I'm convinced. This is a seriously messed up issue and I hope to whatever diety that Microsoft rectifies it quickly.
For the record, Vista has managed to annoy me a lot less than any previous incarnation of Windows, at least in userland, once I turned off the UAC crap. And I like some of the little extras that it does. But from a technical and administrative standpoint, this is highly obnoxious, and I'm pretty appalled.
I do have to say, though, that until I went out of my way to test this, I had never noticed the difference, and I'm a technical guy. The average user would probably never notice the difference under any circumstances. That does not excuse this type of idiocy, but it may explain why MS chose to do this. Just a guess.
Well, did you find the item or not? Don't leave us hanging!
A highly-reflective screen that can be viewed in ambient light, but has no backlight of its own. Because that worked out ever so well for the original Gameboy Advance.
Yeah, but most streaming radio stations aren't that high quality to begin with. There are a few out there that broadcast at 128k or sometimes even higher, but most don't. My own darkwave radio station (plug!) broadcasts at 96k, actually, and I do this for a few reasons, which are also the same reasons other broadcasters do it.
First, because it's a reasonably decent fidelity without hammering the connection (mine or yours). 96k isn't that fantastic but it's still quite a bang for the buck, as it were. Second, I don't believe you should get a perfect reproduction of the music I'm playing -- it's supposed to be analogous to an actual radio, where the fidelity isn't perfect either, and furthermore my station is free to listen to, and if you like the music you can go buy the albums or songs. I even provide a bunch of links to Amazon for currently featured artists I'm playing at the moment. My station is not intended to be a perfect copy.
All of this comes together to mean that you could streamrip mirrorshades radio all day long but you're not going to get something you'd want to burn to CD or put on your iPod. The quality is fine for a stream you're likely listening to at work or as background music for home, but if you were to rip it it'd be about the same as taping a song off the radio.
Most broadcasters I know or listen to operate the same way. Digitally Imported's free streams are 96k, Corrosion Radio streams at 64k mono, and most of the stations on live365 are 64k or below. I know afterhoursdjs goes up to 192k but they're one of few that do.
The main bullet point you should be taking away from my entire speech here is that despite SoundExchange's whinging, streamripping is an extremely minor concern. Most people don't know it can be done, most of those who know it can be done don't know how, and even if they do, who cares if they get a low-quality copy of a song?
Every time this sort of thing comes up, we all get up in arms and raise the same points over and over.
That the AP is open. That it can safely be assumed to be open on purpose.
That you, your friends, and everyone you know do this deliberately so random passerby can leech off your connection. (You altruist, you, always looking out for people wandering by your house / apartment who just happen to have a laptop.) And therefore any open AP must be run by someone with the same mindset.
That the laptop asked permission from the AP to connect, and the AP gave it, therefore everything was kosher.
Guys, it's tiresome.
I am a huge believer in the "no harm, no foul" viewpoint when it comes to law, also known as "no victim, no crime". I therefore think the law is stupid if it regards leeching a bit of network access as a crime, because 99% of the time it is not harming anyone or anything.
But give me a break. I'd like you to step back from the world we live in, where technology makes sense and we control every aspect of our networks.
Put yourselves in the shoes of the hapless technoweenies you deal with day to day. The users. The Aunt Mabels and Joe Nobodys of the world, to whom "a computer" automatically means "Windows", who routinely tell you "my email doesn't work" because they typed "doofus@aolcom" and forgot the period. The people who can use MS Office only because someone like you or I showed them how over and over, not because they were able to figure it out on their own. The people who complain that "my internet is down" because a single site couldn't be reached. The people who take their computer to Geek Squad to "fix the viruses" and blindly trust anything a first-tier helpdesk joker tells them, because they don't know any better.
In short, the majority of computer users. Leaving aside the hows and whys for the moment, and all the philosophical pontifications of how people should be ashamed to be so ignorant, let us just accept that the majority of people are not computer literate, even in this day and age. They're getting better, but most people still don't know jack about jack.
You know who I'm talking about.
My point here is that most people don't know how to secure their wireless networks. Many of them don't even know it can be done, or why it matters. All they know is they bought this "thing" at Circuit City, plugged it in, and now they have "wireless internet".
A few of them get as far as being able to change the ssid, but not many. Even those often don't bother changing any other settings, because they don't know they exist, or are scared of them, or it's a hassle, or they don't understand how to use keys in Windows, or whatever.
It's a foolish, utopian fantasy to assume that these people want (or don't care) random passerby to be able to connect to their network. If you brought it to their attention they'd probably be annoyed, but they're blissfully unaware.
Understand: I am not condoning a ham-fisted, idiotic law that punishes you for connecting somewhere for a little while and screwing around online. And I am not saying it's okay for people to be ignorant about network security, or making excuses for their inability to learn / care / be bothered.
But I am dealing with reality, and the reality is that just because an AP is left open by some ignoramus who doesn't know any better doesn't mean that's what they wanted. And their router handing out invitations and broadcasting its existence to the world doesn't mean that's what the network owner wanted. For us to pretend this isn't the case is naive.
The point is that if a candidate actually believes in nonsense like creationism he is unfit to lead a technological, industrial society. By answering an affirmative to creationism in any of its forms, he is demonstrating that he is incapable of critical analysis, inflexible and stubborn to new ideas, will run to the hilt any preconceived notion he might have, values "tradition" over progress, is unaccepting of new information that might contradict what he wants to be true, etc.
On top of all that, a creationism is also saying that he holds the Bible to be a more grand source of information and a better moral guide than anything else. Expect a creationist candidate to also do what he can to steamroll gay rights, Roe v Wade, and be instilled with all the other crackpot "values" of fundie nutjobs.
Most kids don't regard the determination of chemical bonds as "fun" -- but that's fundamental to the field of chemistry.
Most kids (including me, when I was one, and still to this day) couldn't care less what Shakespeare wrote -- and what he wrote is frankly irrelevant to anybody who does something useful for a living (scientists, engineers, doctors),
So you think knowledge of chemistry is important, even though only a tiny, tiny percentage of the population will ever use it or even encounter it outside a classroom.
But you think the study of culture and art, as in Shakespeare, is useless -- because most people won't ever need it?
And that actors, writers, and other artists and performers aren't doing anything useful?
That's some twisted thinking, man.
And then you go on to say that "most of life is boring". Stop for a minute, please, and consider how much more boring life would be without the creative types -- those you brush off as merely "playing" -- producing all the various artforms that give civilization depth.
Look, I understand what you're trying to say here, but I can't really see where you're coming from. You're trying to show me how useful math is for everyone, with these examples culled from real life, but that just isn't how it works.
Almost every example you give is intuitive, not mathematical. Ask the reporter how they write, and they aren't going to start talking about complex algos and maximizing space potential. It just comes to them. Yes, math can be used to describe what they are doing, but the reporter is certainly not sitting down with paper and calculator and crunching the numbers.
Neither is the salesperson and cablerunner you describe. They just do it. Again, math can be used to describe what they are doing but they are not performing any actual calculations in their head the way you might perform them with pencil and paper.
Consider a baseball player trying to catch a pop fly. Even a Little League player can look at the ball, watch it for a split second, and run to where the ball will be. He sticks out his hand, makes a few minor adjustments, and catches it.
Did that kid "compute" the quadratic equation for the ball's parabola in his head? No, of course not. He just innately knew how to do it, from a life of experience.
Don't confuse "can be described by math" with "was done by using math".
if you focus too narrowly too early, you end up limiting their options later in life.
Yeah, but exactly how long do you want to wait, man?
By ninth or tenth grade a student has been in school for a decade. If that student has consistently scored poorly in math, isn't it possible he just sucks at it? Odds are he's pretty frustrated with math as a whole at this point too.
And now you want to force him through another few years of it. If he didn't hate math before he's surely going to now. Congratulations, you taught him something about math -- you taught him how to hate math.
So that maybe they'll get better at it?
And if little Johnny grows up without the ability to crunch polynomials, how has he really suffered? I realize math is important to some people and interesting to others, but most people don't need it -- to the point where I'm finding it hard to believe you'd argue with me on this.
I'm gonna ask a question that will sound flippant but isn't meant to be; it's an honest question and I'm looking for a sincere answer. If Johnny graduates high school and can't really do much math beyond arithmetic and basic fractions/decimals... so what?
I just don't think that's the case. I took the four years of math (two of algebra, one of statistics, one of geometry). plus another in college (having deliberately chosen a major that would let me avoid as much math as possible). That's five years of math, plus the algebra class in eigth grade, which could count as a sixth year of math even though it was, obviously, not very advanced.
To this day I have absolutely no idea what a quadratic equation is beyond a vague "something to do with parabolas". I still remember the formula thanks to a silly mneumonic, and if forced I could probably still crunch through one. But that was ten years ago, and that is all I can do today.
Even then, being exposed to it every single day, I didn't understand it. I had no idea what it was used for, and I had no idea whatsoever how it worked. At all. And I still don't.
To say I -- or anyone like me who is not inclined towards math -- is "learning" it is somewhat disingenuous. I learned nothing about math in high school. I did what most non-math types did, which was memorize the formulas long enough to plug the numbers in and pass the test. I had no idea what I was doing -- just steps in a dance I was forced to go through like a trained monkey.
And today I still suck at it.
See, the reason I don't like your analogy is because, unlike math, English (or whatever your native language may be) is something you are constantly exposed to, and you will use it every single day of your life, regardless of your profession, interests, social status, etc. And because of that, it is useful to everyone, from every walk of life, in every professional or personal communication they have with anybody. Ensuring that people are better at this is a good thing for everyone, and moreover, it doesn't take much, because everyone is exposed to it all the time.
You cannot make the same argument for math. It is rarely used by anyone; only a small subset of people use it for their professions, and another small percentage find it of personal interest. But the majority of people never encounter math beyond arithmetic outside the classroom -- and because of that, they forget what they allegedly learned.
Learning English may have helped you be somewhat better at it, but then, you have plenty of opportunity for practice. Learning math won't help most people, who will never find a chance to use it, and after only a year or two away from the classroom, will have forgotten most of it.
I'm not denying that math is important -- the fact that we're talking about it using computers which require an intimate understanding of silicon semiconductor physics demonstrates that. But Joe Average didn't design the computer. But can you really, with a straight face, tell me that most people have any use for math beyond basic arithmetic?
I'm not being facetious at all when I assert this. A normal student in public schools in America will take at least two to three years of algebra, sometimes more, plus a year of trig or geometry. The ones who are interested in such things will take more advanced stuff yet, but those aren't the ones we have to more or less force into math classes anyway.
So we're looking at three to four years of mandatory math classes. For someone not strong in math, isn't that enough?
I am not saying that exposing the students to the classes is a bad idea. But by high school age, it is usually fairly apparent whether or not the student has an aptitude for math or not. If he doesn't, there is no point in making endure a forced march through a bunch of crap he'll never internalize, fully understand, or find any use for. Indeed, the article states precisely that
And why should a student weak in math be encouraged to pursue it? Let him focus whatever talents he has in other areas. I, for example, am hopeless when it comes to math, but was always strong in English and decent at visual arts. I'd have been ecstatic had an administrator said to me, "Your scores are consistently low in math but high in these areas. Would you like to shift your credit focus to reflect the subjects in which you excel?" Hell yeah.
This "one size fits all" approach to education -- the idea that we must churn out "well-rounded" students no matter what an individual student's strengths and weaknesses may be -- is patently idiotic.
That's fine. If they want to adopt the ultimate position that "we think it was done in some supernatural way which is by definition beyond the reach of what we can know", I'm okay with that.
But then you have to wonder exactly what the hell they think they're going to teach in schools. Or why they always try to use "science" to back themselves up. There are literally thousands of websites and books devoted to the alleged science which "proves" or at least provides "evidence" for creationism. And yet the same people who write such gibberish, and the same people who read it, will eventually, if pressed, fall back to saying "WELL GOD IS BEYOND SCIENCE!" Which is true, so why don't they shut up about it?
From the article: It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say.
Well, then, I say bravo, women! If more people in meetings would shut the hell up until they have something useful to contribute, meetings would not only be much shorter, but more productive. Instead, meetings are often a mishmash of pointless blithering, unrelated tangents, and half-baked bullshit tossed out to give off the illusion of "being involved".
So what she's saying is that women are much more intelligent about this process, and, not feeling the need to prove how big their dicks are, know that it's okay to not fill the meeting with mindless crap, but rather interject only when necessary.
I know that isn't the point she was trying to make, but still.
While the Navy (or other branches) may supplement their firepower with railguns, railguns will not replace cruise missiles. For one thing a railgun is line-of-sight, whereas a cruise missile can navigate over mountains or whatever is in the way between you and your target.
Considering that "virii" is a made-up, non-English word, then yes, I can believe Bush using it and being mocked in the media the next day for another brilliant Bushism. The proper plural is "viruses".
Hate to be the one who bears bad news. And by the way, "boxen" is not a real word either.
You would need to send enormous amounts of gear, several hundred tons of water
and food and air enough for the journey, the time spent on the planet and
the trip back. Exactly what would be the net gain for anyone?
"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept."
I watched a bunch of his videos about a month ago when I discovered them, just to see what he was all about. I don't know the specific video they're complaining about (it says they got ticked off about "one"), but in general he wouldn't even play the whole song, so it's not like a performance in full. Usually his videos would start off with him showing a famous guitar solo or intro or something. He'd then break it down for the viewer showing a chord-by-chord progression and all the techniques needed to play them.
As far as I know even full covers are considered fair use to a point and this guy usually wasn't even playing the full songs -- again I didn't see the specific video that provoked the ire of the RIAA, but even if he just sat there playing the entire song, there were no vocals, drums, any other instruments, etc. Hardly the same performance.
Isn't using even copyrighted material for instructional purposes protected? How many thousands of guitar players initially got interested because they wanted to be able to play one certain song and brought it to an instructor, saying "can you teach me this?" What this guy was doing was no different. Should we prevent all private guitar instructors from teaching their students "Stairway to Heaven"?
Though the RIAA is hardly known for its logical arguments, I'm really at a loss to see how they can possibly justify this crap. And if you want to slant it so the RIAA can understand, this guy was providing a useful service that was -- and could have continued -- to teach hundreds of aspiring musicians how to rock. Some of whom would have continued to learn, perhaps write their own songs, perhaps record an album the RIAA could exploit. And all they want to do is shut off that potential pool of guitarists so that no one will see an unauthorized performance of the introduction to "Sweet Child Of Mine". Morons.
Those technoweenies are also the same people with a "linksys" ssid wireless router at home, unencrypted. The media makes a huge deal out of the HACKERS IN THE CYBERSPACES, so the technophobes are afraid of getting their stupid credit cards stolen. But there's hardly any mention of how your wireless broadcasts out in the open, so they're not the least bit afraid of it, and thus fear will not deter them from getting a device like this.