The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the august organization best known for suing grandmothers and dead people for "stealing" music over the internet has hit on another scheme, one that may actually have some legitimate teeth. The Association is teaming up with large broadband ISPs who have agreed to forward cease and desist notices to users who the ISPs and the RIAA deem are stealing licensed content via their internet connections.
Most tech-savvy folks I know have been reading and cursing about the RIAA for years. Initially, I would preface my comments by stating that, yes, it IS illegal to pirate music and you shouldn't do it; I'm done with such pronouncements. I have come to the conclusion that the game has changed and the buggy-whip merchants at the RIAA need to adjust or, better yet, go away.
Before it was technologically possible to record music, humans only had the live performance to provide their listening pleasure. Artists made money selling sheet music, but that was generally a pittance. The wax cylinder and, later, the vinyl record made music available almost anywhere at any time. The modern music business was born.
About 15 years ago, the transition of music from tangible object (record, CD, tape) to easily traded electronic file began. Several years after that, the RIAA began its war against music fans. It only made sense: since the 1920's, record labels had raked in billions of dollars providing packaged products in the form of artists and bands who were stuffed down our throats on radio stations from coast to coast. We accepted the fact that a talentless facade like Britney Spears could make millions with CD sales, product endorsements and tickets sales. After all, this is capitalism at its finest: charge what the market will bear and give people the product they demand.
Fine and dandy, but here's the point the RIAA is missing: that obscene profit never had a guarantee attached to it. We have arrived at a time when anyone who can play an instrument and use a PC can produce music for distribution online. From a technological standpoint, an mp3 from Coldplay has no more value than an mp3 from a group of 16-year olds from Jeffersonville, Indiana. The value comes from each listener who decides he likes group A more than group B. For decades, the record industry has stacked the deck by promoting the hell out of their client groups, which is well within their rights. But as a result, it is incredibly expensive to produce the banality you hear on Top 40 stations today. And so when the labels cry about lost revenue, you have to ask why that really is.
Like it or not, music is moving away from tangible, touchable media forever. A generation from now, the successful artist will be his own promoter in charge of his own web presence. The idea of backing from a major label will be the stuff of fairy tales. Performers like arrogant fellow Hoosier John Mellencamp, who believes artists such as he should not have to stoop to self-promotion like other self-employed people who have to promote themselves every day, are dinosaurs who will soon disappear forever. Good riddance.
The RIAA and every ISP on the planet are not enough to stop piracy. What needs to change is the perception of the artist or actor as someone who has some God-given right to make an obscene salary when the market no longer supports it. Like every aspect of a free market, the movie and record industries will simply have to adjust to the realities of the 21st century instead of acting like the robber-barons of an earlier era.
The Battlestar Galactica finale was awesome. If you have not yet watched it, please stop reading now.
For those of you who don't watch the show, I'll keep the summary brief. The "bad" Cylons were defeated; the human and "good" Cylons ended up on our Earth, albeit 150,000 years ago. Thus, the entire series took place some 75 centuries ago. And those humans, along with the humans that were already here, and the Cylons, became our ancestors. It was tied up very nicely. I'm happy with it.
The final episode of 'Battlestar Galactica' air Friday night. There are many questions to answer, so many that one wonders how they are going to wrap it all up in a two-hour finale. We shall see.
I'm a sci-fi fan; assume what you will. However, I'm not one of those people who celebrates every show set in space or in the future. In fact, the sci-fi shows I have enjoyed can be counted on one hand. BSG was the best of those by a long shot.
The BSG airing now is a far cry from the original series from the late 70's. This re-imagining is dark and gritty, but not overly depressing. You are probably familiar with the story: the Cylons, a race of machines, kill almost the entire human race. The survivors, fewer than 50,000 in number, were the people who happened to be traveling in space from one colony to another when the war started. Led by Galactica, a 50-year old aircraft carrier spaceship due for retirement and conversion to a museum, they set out for a mythical 13th colony, a place called Earth.
There are two things that immediately attracted me to the show. First, all the characters are flawed. Admiral Bill Adama and his son, Lee (Apollo), have a very dysfunctional relationship at the beginning of the series. Galactica's executive office, Colonel Tigh, is a raging alcoholic who only has a career because his best friend, Bill Adama, knew some people in high places. Yet all three men shine when duty calls. As the series comes to an end, you begin to realize the depth of love between Adama and Tigh. As Tigh's wife says in one episode, "You always loved Bill more than me, more than anything." Many of us have people like that in our lives---people we would travel to hell and back with if they asked. That kind of relationship is often assumed on TV shows. Here, it existed before and has been tested over and over again to the point where you feel it, too.
Second, there's a realistic technical aspect to the show. Galactica is over half a century old and by the end of the series has been in space without serious maintenance for over four years. Those familiar with the Navy know that all warships spend significant portions of their lives being upgraded, repaired and overhauled. But there is nothing out there for Galactica, so the damage she sustains over the course of the show stays. At the beginning of season three, Adama jumps the ship into a planet's atmosphere to rescue the humans being held hostage by the Cylons. The damage of that mission plagues the ship for the rest of the show, just like it would in real life. Not clean, sterile 'Star Trek' sets here.
I will miss this show, something that I have never really been able to say about anything on television during my adult life. I wish there was more quality programming like this out there.
The national debt is now $11 trillion. That's two ones followed by 12 zeros: 11,000,000,000,000.
That's $174 every second since the birth of Christ (or 0 AD)
If spread out among all 6 billion people on Earth, that would be $1834 per person---men, women and children.
If paid out to just Americans, each one of us (all 300 million) would receive almost $37000.
As of January, 2009, the average American home costs $175,000. $11 trillion would buy 62.8 million of them. If the average family size in the US was five people, every family in the country could have a brand-new house.
A 2009 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG sedan has an MSRP of $199,000. We could give everyone in Canada a new one and still have 22 million of them left over, one for every family in England.
If this number doesn't scare you, you're not paying attention. This isn't you debt---it's your children's and grandchildren's debt. Do you think they will thank you for it?
I stayed home from work today. When I woke up this morning, I had so much 'gunk' in my throat I couldn't swallow. I feel a lot better now except for a pounding headache. I'll be to work ready to shine in the morning.
I feel guilty when I call into work. My department consists of only three people, so when one of us is missing it makes a huge difference. To make things worse, the other two people I work with rarely get sick.
What I'm wondering is, do you feel guilty when you call in sick? Or do you revel in a day off?
President Obama has been given his first real foreign policy "situation"----North Korea is promising retaliation against anyone who moves to intercept an upcoming satellite launch. South Korean, Japanese and US intelligence chiefs believe the launch may actually be a test of an ICBM and dummy warhead that could hit targets thousands of miles away.
I said long ago that foreign policy is not a card game. In other words, the rules change from nation to nation and region to region. The regime in Pyongyang has two goals: stay in power and scare South Korea and the US enough to keep them from invading. They have succeeded in their first goal and in the second, but not for the reasons they must believe. These two worldly goals could be used against North Korea IF President Obama has the stomach for it.
First, announce publicly that unless Pyongyang proves without a doubt that their satellite launch is only that and not a military test, the missile will be destroyed in flight. Also announce the arrival of a surface action group in the Sea of Japan ready to down the missile during its launch phase.
Second, actually shoot the missile down if North Korea does not meet the demand listed above. Kim Jong Il yearns to be taken seriously around the world; there is nothing more embarrassing than having the fruit of your military labor knocked out of the sky as if it's a toy.
These actions may seem extreme, but they would show Kim that even though administrations in Washington have changed, our attitude towards him has not.
It's official: the Obama White House is attacking Rush Limbaugh on purpose. The point of the attack is to simply call the man behind the EIB microphone the head of the Republican Party. Michael Steele, call your office.
Many of those who voted for His Worshipfulness look down their noses at Richard Nixon. Yet, we now see that the "enemies list" is alive and well at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Did you ever see G. W. Bush attack a media person by name? Hardly; he had too much class for this. But the classless socialists in power now have no problems with attacks on individuals, personal or otherwise.
Don't you think the White House should be concentrating on something more important than the host of a radio show?
I find that my choice in audiobooks reflects my mood at any given moment, so you can imagine what I've been thinking about with my last two selections: '2001' by Arthur C. Clarke and 'Pale Blue Dot' by Carl Sagan, who also read the work. One is fiction, the other a treatise on mankind's future in space. They speak to the same central theme: the universe is enormous and we really don't know anything about it.
I take something else from these works as well, that being the idea that the universe was not made for us. We are certainly a part of it, but we are a nearly invisible speck of dust in the corner of a giant machine whose size and purpose remain unknown to us.
Early Christians borrowed heavily from the Greeks and Egyptians in thinking the Earth is the center of the universe. After all, the stars and the Sun seem to move around us. The planets do not make neat paths, but that could be explained away with a complicated system of loops. An Earth-centric universe became so accepted by the Middle Ages that to deny it was seen as hypocrisy. As humans, we are above the animals and made in the image of God. As God's children, why would we not be at the center of His creation?
Now we know that our little planet is in an average Solar System in the arm of a common galaxy whose siblings number in the billions. We are not at the center of things; in fact, we can not realistically determine where the center is. With a universe expanding into an infinite space of something we know nothing of, there can be no center. Everywhere is the center, and nowhere is the center. Plus, the universe was here long before human beings showed up. In fact, the universe was over 10 billion years old before the Earth was formed. Planets and stars had been born, lived their lives, and died in that span. And we weren't here to see it.
So are we still God's children? Certainly. But we are not alone. I believe we will someday find children of God in all sorts of places. Their relationship with Him may be different in the same way a child's relationship with the divine is different from an adult's. They may know Him in ways we do not. Or they may look to us for enlightenment. Either way, I believe we will find the universe teeming with intelligent life, all of it in His image.
Imagining human beings as being the only intelligent creatures in the universe holds a certain arrogance. This is not our universe, but God's. It is for His glorification, not for ours. To think his Greatness is somehow centered on humanity with all our frailties is hard for me to imagine. We are His children, but we are using His playground.