They are doing nothing and getting profits from that.
They put up capital at their own risk to invest in artists. They create the infrastructure needed to create all kinds of music. They have the connections to bring together creative minds to patch up holes in individual artists' skills. They market the music nationally and sometimes internationally, to make the most of it's capitalist potential, with the side effect of giving many, many people the opportunity of listening to it. They have the tools and capital to distribute in CD form to all those people who don't want downloads for whatever reason. The industry provides an incredibly valuable service, but they aren't irreplaceable. You can support a different company if you really want to, but beware, they'll do much the same job that members of RIAA do, possibly less.
... the RIAA is a power. What do I mean by that? You can easily shop somewhere else then your local supermarket, it has no control over you, if the local manager does something you don't like, it is easy to boycot him... The RIAA is even worse, in many cases they ARE music.
The RIAA can't survive on the CD-R tax and the iPod tax alone. If the people want them dead, a simple boycott would work very well. Plus, if the boycott were big enough, politicians would sniff it out as a political leverage point very quickly. It's extremely misleading to imply they are some untouchable evil overlord, oppressing the people against their will, since most of the power is given to them by the people, and they can just as easily take it away. The only reason they are difficult to avoid is because they happen to be very, very good at their game.
Compulsory voting sounds a lot scarier than non-compulsory voting.
Only to the paranoid and the lazy. Compulsory voting tends to keep out the nutjobs better than non-compulsory voting. The only problem is if you have views that aren't shared at least partially with everyone else, and wish your idealism to have disproportionate power in your country. Then you may find compulsory voting a bit of a hassle. Ah well, at least it's very democratic.
... it's about the conflict between a manufacturer who locks down all their phones, and local laws that forbid it. We'll soon get to see what happens when a highly influential company with a *highly* desirable product clashes with consumer protection laws they don't like. Sure, there have been a few cases like this before, but it's always interesting to watch.
they've fixed also the bugs that made it possible to work around the bugs that they have NOT fixed yet!:-/
Could a corporate conspiracy theorist please explain for me how doing this helps MS themselves? I've looked and looked, but I can't find any malicious, evil, ungodly corporate behaviour, just raw stupidity. Thanks in advance.
But you have put a considerable amount of energy and work into your explanations, and I respect that.
That's really all I needed to hear. It's one think to be sceptic, it's completely another to call everyone who disagrees with you an idiot.
to say that the govenment as a whole is conspiring against us is somewhat ridiculous, but to say a certian group or person has an agenda of their own is not, and ANY tools of manipulation can and will be use if the strong agenda having person has the means to use those tools.
It depends on conflicting agendas. It's all well and good to have power (in the case of the government, temporary power) and have an agenda, but you have to have little resistance from conflicting agendas. After all, if two agendas are in conflict, at least one party's got to lose, and when both agendas are based on fragile misinformation, both parties usually end up losing to the will of the people. In the case of environmental debate, media and governmental interests are in conflict with interests of huge industries like the oil and energy industries, and all the companies who rely on them (i.e. everyone). I don't know why those two major industries would just sit there and take it from the government and media. I'm not asking you to believe me, rather just see why I'm highly sceptical of large-scale conspiracies/collusions/whatever else you want to call them.
If you really want to tear into something... I think that 9/11 was an inside job! Everyone I know gets after me for that
Funnily enough, that seems to me more probable than a governmental conspiracy.:)
Well here is one article if it makes you feel any better, but I have done all the research, and use to argue with people like you all the time, the thing is it does not matter cause you think one way, and I another.
When you say "you've done the research", do you mean you've conducted first hand research? If not, have you looked at multiple and varied sources, and not filtered them based on what side they take on these debates? Basically, what I'm saying is that these issues are widely acknowledged by the scientific community, and a bunch of smart-aleck comments isn't going to change that.
I'm not personally qualified to talk about the science behind it, but I can tell you that there is no government conspiracy to keep us scared. If they wanted to, they have plenty of other ammunition, such as terrorism, child safety, etc. They don't need Global Warming in their arsenal. Plus, people don't like hearing bad news that requires real, immediate, and tangible quality of life sacrifices. It would also require large-scale, prohibitively-expensive collusion with the scientific community. A huge number of debates need to have been rigged and scripted, and so many people would have to be silenced if they had sudden bursts of moral outrage. The whole thing seems implausible, much more implausible than some guy who is far, far, far too keen to vilify the government making a mistake in his research. Despite all that, I will continue.
Here is an undeniable scientific truth: The volume of the water that is produced when ice melts is exactly equal to the volume of the water that the ice displaced, when it was floating.
That's only if the ice is pure, and floating in water. Lots of ice isn't floating, but resting on mountaintops. The ice in Antarctica is also not floating AFAICT. Also, the rise in sea temperatures may lead to expansion of the water (I think I read that somewhere).
Carbon dioxide is to a plant what oxygen is to an animal. More carbon dioxide means that plants grow better and faster. When plants grow better and faster, the total amount of plant matter increases. Increases in the amount of plant matter cause more consumption of carbon dioxide. More consumption of carbon dioxide lowers the level of carbon dioxide.
Yes, I believe it's true that there is an equilibrium effect (something I think I saw in a documentary). What happens on the pointy end of the equilibrium is plant life does increase. Ironically enough, the Earth will revert back to the state it was in when most of our oil was formed. Plant life increases, temperature increases, there is more rainfall, more erosion, conditions are more prone to fossilisation, and coal/oil are formed from plant matter (and by extension, the CO2 in the air) in X million years (I don't recall the exact figure).
That's all well and good, but as a consequence, the oceans die. The increased plant life in the water creates what's known as an Anoxic Event. (Wikipedia, another website needed to be censored by the government in their massive conspiracy) The plants consume all the dissolved oxygen and die before the dissolved oxygen equilibrium has time to correct itself. The dead plant matter, mostly devoid of usable oxygen, sinks to the bottom and encourages anoxic bacteria to feed and develop an ecosystem below the oxygenated surface. The cloud of bacteria begin producing deadly sulphur-dioxide, and blocks out any sunlight penetrating very far into the ocean. The sulphur-dioxide then filters into the atmosphere, causing more harm, as it mixes with clouds, causing sulphuric acid to rain down, and eating away at the ozone layer. We lose a food source (the ocean), it would do harm to crops, it would degrade biodiversity, acid rain would eat away at our metal structures, etc, etc. All doom and gloom. I guess, despite all that sense I just made, despite all the evidence behind me that backs it up, despite alm
All China really has to do in order to control information flow nationwide is to deregulate the media and force them to compete vigorously against one another. They'll be so cost-pressured that they can't really do any journalism; instead, they'll end up so short-staffed that all they can do is publish the stuff that the government wants them to publish.
I think that's just a little too ironic to be true. Can you give us a case study? I would have thought that deregulation would just open up a flood of negative press, true or not. And besides, there are always crackpots who'll do some investigative journalism.
Nope, if you want to censor the media, the iron fist has to come in somewhere.
he RIAA is slowly becoming irrelevant, and we are watching it's death-throws. US music is abominable compared to the rest of the world. The quality of work has continously degraded for the past century - thanks to the ability to amplify profits through brain-washing (repeated paid-for spots on radio/TV). Audiences develop a taste through repeated use.. And it's sad, but taste Americans are developing is mostly bland (with a few category exceptions). Singers have less and less attractive sound. Music is extremely repetative from one song to the next (if not already synthesized). Lyrics are a joke. The message is less and less condusive to society building or even renewing (even older angry Rap represented a contemporary cry for change).
Your post was making sense up until this point. Sadly, you have fallen into the trap that so many others have fallen into before you: you've tried to come up with an objective measure of a subjective taste. All your lamenting has done is revealed your tastes in music, nothing more. You've also simplified "US music", which is diverse, just like music stemming from a country of 200+ million should be. You're concentrating on one market, one that you evidently don't belong in, and extrapolating incorrectly that all music from the US stinks. I'd come up with an example, but I'm in Australia, and I'm too preoccupied with some fine Australian music.
It's just completely out of proportion to the punishment deserved.
Well, there's the copies she made, then there's the copies that were uploaded, and then there are the copies that were made from those copies, and then... etc. Basically, for all those who also copied and didn't get caught. Don't buy from the RIAA if you don't want to, but sure as hell don't pirate their wares, or else you're just contributing to another litigious assault on another easy target.
Some people just find it easier to ask others rather than trying it themselves or look in the manual of the item they bought.
And others find it easier to tell 'em to RTFM than explain it to them.
Seriously though, I don't think you know the type. They're the kind who have avoided gadgets until mobile phones have become a necessity. They're busy people; they don't want to catch up on 10 years of gadgetry intuition, and they certainly don't want spend two hours figuring out an interface when I could feel it out over the phone in 5 minutes. Some call it lazy, others call it prioritising. It's like all the Slashdotters complaining that Joe Regular is just lazy when he doesn't learn Linux: some people have better things to do.
Anyway, they're a dying breed. As TFA says, kids these days are tech savvy, and that's going to continue for a long while to come. Call me impressed, but despite the ubiquitous nature of the skill, I'm still impressed that I, so many other people, and all these kids can nut out a variety of tech interfaces quickly and without too much effort.
yeah I know it's cliche to post about running another OS, but honestly, what's the motivation to run windows anymore?
You know what else is a cliche? Pointing out that windows is the "safe" option in terms of hardware compatibility and support, as well as the only decent gaming platform for PC. It also has some good software that only comes on windows, and doesn't yet have any decent linux-based competition.
... give me some evidence why 5 out of 6 mods are "petulant cock-gobblers"? Or at leas a reason why they're "fucking morons"? It wouldn't be because, perhaps, you don't agree with some (or a lot) of their decisions, or because you've expressed extreme views before, and been modded flamebait, would it?
So if you are a genius, they can be normal folks. But if you are a normal person, that means they are (at best) the lazy bastards who couldn't be bothered to think a bit about it.
What exactly does that mean? Why this dichotomy between "normal" (whatever that means) and "genius"? The story is: they are tech-illiterate while I'm not. The fact that they can't comprehend the interface doesn't make them lazy bastards, and it certainly doesn't mean they don't think about it. Sometimes, while I'm explaining certain devices to certain people, they'll make a comment or ask a question along the lines of "Why didn't they..." and I'm hard pressed to find an answer other than "because that's how all other modern gadgets do it". They're certainly thinking about it, it's just that they have little point of reference to use in figuring out how to use the device. You really have to imagine what it's like never being exposed to complicated electronics before you start criticising them.
An ipod is easy enough for an idiot to use, it's not a badge of honor to be able to use one.
An iPod, not so much, but knowing how to use a cellphone is impressive. I can't count the number of times I've had to help others with using their tech. Not troubleshooting, but using. As soon as I show them, or figure it out, I'm instantly a tech genius.
This guy isn't "clueless" or an "idiot" (as the tags suggest he is). He's tapping into a problem with the schooling system. There needs to be an emphasis on interactivity, but interactivity does not have to come from electronics. You only need a teacher who's willing to engage the class, speak to them, and encourage discourse in the classroom. Mobile phones and IM are just ways of satisfying the social needs. Make the classroom a social event, and kids will pay attention.
As for the non-social tech (like iPods), why not allow them in the classroom while the kids do quiet, individual work?
people that say "the ozone is getting better, but still be crazy worried and ashamed for existing." Are stupid and a tool of the media. Pull your nuts out of the Mass Media vice!
It's not really enough to ignore the problem on the basis that it'd make you "stupid and a tool of the media" in your eyes. WHY is it stupid? WHY would you be a tool of the media? WHAT is the agenda of the media in making us think about what we are doing to the environment? HOW did they get so many scientists to back up their agenda? If their indeed is some conspiracy (or at least some collusion), HOW have we not noticed this whole time, and made some issue out of it? WHAT makes you think that this stuff isn't true anyway? WHERE is your evidence?
It's also kinda funny that you're making environmental issues into a corporate conspiracy theory, when it makes much more sense the other way around. Constant consumerism, and indeed our entire society relies on changing the environment to varying degrees. Environmentalism inevitably degrades quality of life, and it makes more sense that people would rather stick their heads in the sand about it (as you seem to be doing). If society didn't believe any of this environmental science, people would be encouraged to continues spending irresponsibly, and would vote for the political candidates who reassured them that the planet was OK and would continue to be so for future generations. It seems completely disingenuous to think that we are being manipulated by Big Media (oooooooo!) to panic.
They have enough money to do it for free for 30 years and still pay the artists double what they do now
I seriously doubt it. Companies are built for profit. If they aren't generating any profit, and the prospect that it won't earn any profit in the near future, then it will go bankrupt and dissolve itself. Shareholders will demand that they get their share value back in assets.
Also, you make it sound as though the **AA own our culture. No, culture is made by people, not monopolies capitalizing on the sale of it. People will always make culture.
Sure, but don't forget that monopolies are also made from people. Seriously though, while the **AA doesn't own our culture, they do own a large part of it. Most of what isn't owned by the **AA is owned by companies with similar business models. It's only a tiny portion of our culture that is provided gratis, with the exception of software, which of course have open source models. Even much of the open source software out there requires copyright to uphold the terms of the license (in this case, the GPL). My point is that all these facets would be affected, if not all but destroyed. It's not actually about the **AA.
Where was the RIAA in the days of Mozart? Funny, culture seemed fine without the RIAA.
Ya. Back then, we didn't have computers, internet, large audiences, a large range of competition, etc, etc. Mozart had a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of talent. He also had people rich enough and willing enough to commision works. But naturally, they would reconsider such an investment if they could simply download the music from some other sucker who paid through the nose for it. Face it, things change. Copyright wasn't needed before, it is now.
That's the beauty of business. They -will- find some way to make money, because they must to survive.
That's the ugliness of reality. Just because it *has* to happen, doesn't mean it *can* happen. They may well not find a new business model.
Besides, we could test this rather easily. Allow personal copying for 10 years and watch. First RIAA music will suffer; then they will either die (win, artists take over with diverse business plans and make more money than ever)
It's a big deal to ask the artists to do all the jobs that the RIAA does. They'd have to provide their own recording studio and equipment, they'd have to market their own stuff (don't forget that the choke would apply directly to the artist too), and they'd have to find a way to distribute it. Certain genres wouldn't do so well on an obscure website, due to a significant portion of their audience being computer-illiterate. The artists would have to bear alone the risk of failure, which would be very off-putting It seems more likely that most of the artists and labels would retire.
The argument "if you kill the RIAA -CULTURE- will DIE!!!" is simply silly.
True. Less silly is the "if you kill COPYRIGHT -CULTURE- will DIE!!!" argument. Less silly still is the "if you kill COPYRIGHT -CULTURE- will become TERMINALLY ILL!!!"
Inventing a business model that works without artificially limiting technology is their job, -not- mine.
Depends how you look at it. We could just leave the culture industries to sink or swim, and just let them figure out a new business model. The problem is that they will sink, due to the fact that no-one can think of an alternative business model. And once they do sink, that's 95% of our culture gone. We have chosen as a society to protect our culture industries, with the purpose of keeping our culture alive. We have also decided that culture is good for society.
It's important to remember that we let business die because it helps society. Thus it doesn't make sense to follow that trend in cases when it does the opposite.
Slashdot Mirror
... it's about the conflict between a manufacturer who locks down all their phones, and local laws that forbid it. We'll soon get to see what happens when a highly influential company with a *highly* desirable product clashes with consumer protection laws they don't like. Sure, there have been a few cases like this before, but it's always interesting to watch.
Certainly not in Australia.
Perhaps it won't 'cause the old mantra is true: people truly do want to pay for content, but they just haven't had the chance/found the right price.
Blue! No wait...
When you say "you've done the research", do you mean you've conducted first hand research? If not, have you looked at multiple and varied sources, and not filtered them based on what side they take on these debates? Basically, what I'm saying is that these issues are widely acknowledged by the scientific community, and a bunch of smart-aleck comments isn't going to change that.
I'm not personally qualified to talk about the science behind it, but I can tell you that there is no government conspiracy to keep us scared. If they wanted to, they have plenty of other ammunition, such as terrorism, child safety, etc. They don't need Global Warming in their arsenal. Plus, people don't like hearing bad news that requires real, immediate, and tangible quality of life sacrifices. It would also require large-scale, prohibitively-expensive collusion with the scientific community. A huge number of debates need to have been rigged and scripted, and so many people would have to be silenced if they had sudden bursts of moral outrage. The whole thing seems implausible, much more implausible than some guy who is far, far, far too keen to vilify the government making a mistake in his research. Despite all that, I will continue.
That's only if the ice is pure, and floating in water. Lots of ice isn't floating, but resting on mountaintops. The ice in Antarctica is also not floating AFAICT. Also, the rise in sea temperatures may lead to expansion of the water (I think I read that somewhere).
Yes, I believe it's true that there is an equilibrium effect (something I think I saw in a documentary). What happens on the pointy end of the equilibrium is plant life does increase. Ironically enough, the Earth will revert back to the state it was in when most of our oil was formed. Plant life increases, temperature increases, there is more rainfall, more erosion, conditions are more prone to fossilisation, and coal/oil are formed from plant matter (and by extension, the CO2 in the air) in X million years (I don't recall the exact figure).
That's all well and good, but as a consequence, the oceans die. The increased plant life in the water creates what's known as an Anoxic Event. (Wikipedia, another website needed to be censored by the government in their massive conspiracy) The plants consume all the dissolved oxygen and die before the dissolved oxygen equilibrium has time to correct itself. The dead plant matter, mostly devoid of usable oxygen, sinks to the bottom and encourages anoxic bacteria to feed and develop an ecosystem below the oxygenated surface. The cloud of bacteria begin producing deadly sulphur-dioxide, and blocks out any sunlight penetrating very far into the ocean. The sulphur-dioxide then filters into the atmosphere, causing more harm, as it mixes with clouds, causing sulphuric acid to rain down, and eating away at the ozone layer. We lose a food source (the ocean), it would do harm to crops, it would degrade biodiversity, acid rain would eat away at our metal structures, etc, etc. All doom and gloom. I guess, despite all that sense I just made, despite all the evidence behind me that backs it up, despite alm
Nope, if you want to censor the media, the iron fist has to come in somewhere.
I dunno... I'm still waiting for iFS.
Seriously though, I don't think you know the type. They're the kind who have avoided gadgets until mobile phones have become a necessity. They're busy people; they don't want to catch up on 10 years of gadgetry intuition, and they certainly don't want spend two hours figuring out an interface when I could feel it out over the phone in 5 minutes. Some call it lazy, others call it prioritising. It's like all the Slashdotters complaining that Joe Regular is just lazy when he doesn't learn Linux: some people have better things to do.
Anyway, they're a dying breed. As TFA says, kids these days are tech savvy, and that's going to continue for a long while to come. Call me impressed, but despite the ubiquitous nature of the skill, I'm still impressed that I, so many other people, and all these kids can nut out a variety of tech interfaces quickly and without too much effort.
... give me some evidence why 5 out of 6 mods are "petulant cock-gobblers"? Or at leas a reason why they're "fucking morons"? It wouldn't be because, perhaps, you don't agree with some (or a lot) of their decisions, or because you've expressed extreme views before, and been modded flamebait, would it?
This guy isn't "clueless" or an "idiot" (as the tags suggest he is). He's tapping into a problem with the schooling system. There needs to be an emphasis on interactivity, but interactivity does not have to come from electronics. You only need a teacher who's willing to engage the class, speak to them, and encourage discourse in the classroom. Mobile phones and IM are just ways of satisfying the social needs. Make the classroom a social event, and kids will pay attention.
As for the non-social tech (like iPods), why not allow them in the classroom while the kids do quiet, individual work?
It's also kinda funny that you're making environmental issues into a corporate conspiracy theory, when it makes much more sense the other way around. Constant consumerism, and indeed our entire society relies on changing the environment to varying degrees. Environmentalism inevitably degrades quality of life, and it makes more sense that people would rather stick their heads in the sand about it (as you seem to be doing). If society didn't believe any of this environmental science, people would be encouraged to continues spending irresponsibly, and would vote for the political candidates who reassured them that the planet was OK and would continue to be so for future generations. It seems completely disingenuous to think that we are being manipulated by Big Media (oooooooo!) to panic.
It's important to remember that we let business die because it helps society. Thus it doesn't make sense to follow that trend in cases when it does the opposite.