Headline: Studies: Music industry overstating threat of P2P piracy

In other news, bear shit in woods.

Who pirates music?

– Those too young or too broke to have a credit card or some other way to pay for music online. Nobody with more than ten bucks to his name is going to bitch about a buck for a song that he really likes. Well, maybe a cheap bastard, but he wasn’t buying a CD anyway, and neither is the broke kid who doesn’t get enough allowance in a week to buy even one. If I like only one or two songs on a CD (that’s usual), I’m better off buying the single tracks for 99 cents each because then I pay $2 for what I want, not $18 for what I want and a bunch of shit I don’t like (plus have to find storage space for the physical discs). If, however, I can’t get a credit card or my parents won’t let me buy anything online, then I’m pretty much stuck with Limewire (or whatever the kids use these days).
– People who have substantial music collections that they may already have bought all over again in a new format. If I have music that I like on vinyl, and I’ve already purchased it again on cassette back in the 80s, I might very well baulk at purchasing it again on compact disc in the 90s and/or a digital download in the 00s. If I own the Bay City Rollers vinyl LP and cassettes already, I’m for goddamned sure not going to see downloading a 128Kb copy of “Shang-A-Lang.mp3” as any sort of crime; I’ve paid for it enough times already and all I want to do is have Rollermania on my iPod, FFS. (P.S. Gawd, the BCR were cute little things back then, and I remember well my pre-teen crush on Stuart Wood! :lol:)

– People who really do want to preview tracks on a disc before coughing up the cash for it. A low-quality 15 second clip on Amazon.com just doesn’t cut it. Sorry, that’s barely enough for me to tell that it might be the song I want. It’s entirely possible that the cute, catchy little pop song that I heard for a minute and a half on the radio might turn out to be something I like enough to buy, or it might turn out to be something I’ll listen to over and over for two days, then never, ever want to hear again. If it’s the latter, I’m out $18 for something I don’t want or need.

– People who are sick to death of restrictive DRM. If I bought it, I want to listen to it on my computer, on the CD players in my home and my car, and on my iPod (or whatever). I’m not going to pay for half a dozen different formats to use on half a dozen different devices–fuck that. The corporations might say that I bought the right to listen to it on one device only (or two, if they take the same format), but that’s because they’re greedy, money-grubbing bastards. Money might come easy to them, but it doesn’t come easy to me. If I’ve paid for him, then wherever I go, I want to take Robbie Williams with me, thanks, and that’s just what I’m going to do.

There will always be pathetic dumbasses who can’t see past their own sense of entitlement. People like that have existed always and they exist today. They download music and movies without paying, they pirate shareware apps that work well and cost under $20. If it’s there, they’ll steal it, but most of us just want something fair. Apple’s new iTunes Plus tracks are a good example of fair to both sides; they cost more, but the quality is better and there is no DRM, just personally identifiable information that should be a good way to deter people from sharing with the whole damned world. To the people who say, “Well, what if my iPod gets stolen and the thief shares my files,” you might try reporting your iPod stolen; once it’s out of your hands and in the hands of law enforcement, even the mighty RIAA won’t be able to accuse you. If you think your iPod could be stolen without your noticing it, then get a fucking safe and put it in because you obviously don’t use it often.

What part of “ID Please” do you arseholes not understand‽ (Note interrobang…heh.) Post your picture to this group if there’s something in it that you want identified. Maybe a flower, or an insect, or a piece of old glasswork you found somewhere, or even a plastic “thing” you’ve found that works well for shaving old people (it was a disposable eyebrow shaper). Don’t post it there because you think it’s pretty, or artistic, or because you want a fucking critique of your technique, post it because there’s something in it for which you want an ID. You know–an ID as in “ID Please”. Jesus tapdancing Christ, some people are dumbasses.

P.S. You know you’re not getting any younger when the local funeral home sends you special offers. 😆

You know you’re a photo nerd when someone typed “50mm cannon” and you think it’s a typo because he obviously meant, “50mm, Canon.”

There. Everything’s better with penguins. 🙂

Sin, Sin, Sin. Fucking cool song.

Muahahaha! A screaming-jeezus pink assault on the eyes, and fluid width, too! I hated the lame rose, so I put in a pink baby Tux instead. He sort of blends into the background because I made the colour too close, but fuck it. I should fix all of my images so that they’re placed on their own lines and not embedded in text, but…another fuck it.

P.S. My FF now has sexy widgets, too!

I have a new Flickr contact! 🙂 I have forgot his username, but when I got the Flickrmail, I went to look at his photostream. The majority of the pictures on the first page were bits and pieces of a woman in chains (presumably she herself was whole, I mean the shots were of bits and pieces). Assuming that she was a willing participant in the photo shoot, I don’t have any sort of problem with that, and I don’t find a boob offensive, but these are the tags for the last (i.e. first on the page).

He does have a few nature photos, but it looks like most of his are “artsy” shots, and he’s definitely got a thing for bondage because he has another set of a woman tied up with what appears to be rope. I have to wonder why on earth he added me as a contact. I take pictures of flowers, insects, critters, my aquarium pets and occasionally (very un-artistic) snapshots of people whom I know. I’m not “artsy” or even artistic, and I definitely don’t have any pictures of anything or anyone in bondage. I don’t have that many contacts, and those that I do have are contacts-of-contacts (of contacts, of…) that I found through other people. Perhaps one or two via Explore, but not most because I like very few of the shots that seem to end up on Explore (just spare me the mismatched “wardrobe remix” snapshots, the contents of anyone’s purse and B&W images of women with enormous distended abdomens standing in front of gauzy white curtains, also *gag* to your newborn baby because it is not cute to anyone but you). Where–actually how–did I get Bondage Guy? I’m not adding him to my list because the majority of his photos are not my style, and I actually like to keep (reasonably) up to date with the photos posted by my contacts, and comment on those that I like. When Stacey, Sergey, Olivia, Bill, Rob, Diane, Craig, MiloÅ¡, etc. post new pictures, chances are pretty good that I’ll find something interesting because they all take pictures of…things that I like and that interest me. Some silly girl with hardware across her boobs does not. My pro account expires on the 10th of next month, and I can’t decide whether to bother renewing it or not. On one hand, Flickr is fun because I get to see cool pictures, but on the other, it’s sort of a pain in the arse because I don’t always feel like commenting (but it would be rude if I never did), and anyway, it sometimes feels like it’s just one big “nice capture”/”great bokeh” circle jerk. Meh, I guess it’s only $25. Pretty cheap for chains and boobs. 😉

P.S. My little robin is outside the window, cheeping away again. His mama is with him, trying as usual to teach him to hunt, but I think he’d rather listen to the sound of his own voice. He has near-adult feathers now except for the red ones on his breast; he still has mostly speckles left there.

Jesus tapdancing Christ. A search in the Bettas forum for the expression “I’m sorry J—” (my standard response) turns up twelve results, eleven of which concern the fish that dumbass has killed in the past two years (the other one is his dead cat, but she was old). May 2005, August 2005, January 2006, July 2006, November 2006, February 2007, March 2007, April 2007 and May 2007. It’s not like he’s got twenty-some fish (in which case, a higher number of deaths would be understandable); the most he’s ever had at one time was four or five, and sometimes as few as one. Nine dead. How does someone kill that high a percentage of his fish in two short years, yet not have some inkling that there might perhaps be a better hobby for him…one that does not involve live aquatic animals? This morning, I actually considered creating a text file so that the next time he kills one, I can just copy and paste the “I’m sorry” message and won’t have to bother typing. I’m sure we won’t make it through the summer without another “RIP (insert name of latest fishy victim)” post. FFS.

Can somebody please explain to me WTF is going on with the current (usually CSS) fad of minuscule text and acres of wasted horizontal screen real estate? I know that few readers want to scroll horizontally (I’m one of them), but facrissake, is it absolutely necessary to do THIS?

I suck at CSS. Always have; I started to learn it and decided that there were better ways to spend my time than learning a skill that I did not enjoy and would probably never use. That said, I know basically how it works, and I know that at some point in time, someone decided that the column width for this article (which was fairly interesting, if in dire need of text magnification) should look like an erect penis sticking up in the middle of an otherwise blank page. To be fair, there may be advertising on either side of this, but my industrial-strength hosts file, AdBlock Plus/Filterset.G and NoScript mean that I don’t see much advertising at all. No loss to advertisers; their blinking, flashing crap would just piss me off and I wouldn’t buy their products anyway. Still this bullshit makes me glad I’ve never coughed up the cash for a giant WS monitor; this is a maximised FF window on an ordinary 17″ flat panel with the resolution set at 1280×1024. I have no trouble with 12pt text, but these days, I’m pretty sure that roughly 50% of web sites are using 3pt.
Attention, dumbasses: It’s nice to code for people who use lower screen resolutions, but I can assure you that the vast majority of visitors to your site are NOT using a screen resolution of 800×600 on a 14″ monitor. 1. Stop making text so fucking small that I have to hit Ctrl+ three times just to see that it is indeed in English. 2. Stop wasting my horizontal screen space by setting the text in columns approximately four pixels wide.

I hadn’t done it since I upgraded to Feisty, but I guess it’s time to set the minimum font size in FF. This is one web trend that I hope goes out of fashion in a big fucking hurry. Maddox may be an abrasive bastard, but he’s got the right idea.

Hahaha!

I wonder whether it’s possible that a 39-year-old female from eastern Canada and a 26-year-old male from western Slovakia could be twins, separated at birth? 🙂 His English is not perfect, but quite coherent, and even if some of the words are in the wrong places and sometimes not quite the right word, I just get M., and he gets me, too. I don’t have to read more than a few words to know exactly where he’s going with something. He’s an amazing young man; I hope he will do well in life.

I knew I shouldn’t have and I almost didn’t, but I watched the video of that poor Kurdish girl being stoned to death. It’s a low quality cell phone clip, but nonetheless, entirely sickening. That poor little girl–seventeen years old–is lying there on the ground, bloody and too weak to do more than roll over, and people are just standing there in a tight circle around her, trying to get a good angle with their cameraphones. Well, except those that are kicking her, that is. Her pants have been torn off, and one person (just one) flipped the edge of what appeared to be a coat over her to cover her underwear. The person who kicked her next made her roll over and it fell off.

Regardless of religion and ethnicity, and even of “shame cultures”, how could those who would watch this (much less actually do it) still call themselves human? I know that cultures are different in the Middle East, but still…stoning her to death for converting to another religion in order to marry someone she loved? No one helped her, no one even tried. Seventeen years old, guilty of nothing more than wanting to marry a young man she loved…and brutally kicked, beaten and stoned for half an hour until she finally died, at the hands of a mob including members of her own family. There cannot be a god; if there were, nothing like this would ever happen, at least not without a few lightning bolts from the sky getting involved. Sickening.