Another Monday's work in the box.

[silveradept]

These late Mondays are definitely going to be an interesting thing. Getting out when it’s dark definitely means I have to start planning for temperature when I leave as much as when I arrive at work. Payday will finally happen at the end of the week, yay! And I get to throttle the Postal Service, as they apparently did not see fit to forward on an important bill of mine even though I’m pretty sure I filled out the forwarding instructions well in advance of the bills’ arrivals. As things are now, though, it looks to be good. Maybe starting next month, I’ll get all the old stuff forwarded on to me.

Cold is alternately retreating and advancing over territory in my nostrils. Another hot shower tonight and some decongestants, perhaps, and I’ll be good. I think.

And that’s enough of my life. You want the news. So here we go.

Potential replacement for the Attorney General post announced. So, what’s he like? An ass-kisser or an ass-kicker?

Actually, this is not news. The wall-to-wall O.J. coverage is a distraction. I doubt that it contributed to a Chinese gamer died after playing games for three days straight - that whole food thing, y’know, but it might have let the following gems slip by unnoticed, like the Secretary of Transportation saying that bike and walking paths aren't part of infrastructure as part of a campaign to avoid raising gasoline taxes, or perhaps increasingly sophisticated automated surveillance technology, including stuff that might peek in your windows with the related first unmanned vehicle kill recorded, so that you can be spotted and shot down without too many humans intervening, which could become important because Blackwater USA, the "private security firm" has been banned from operations in Iraq. That war, which, even according to Alan Greenspan, had a strong oil motive.

Hrm. People are speculating about Condolezza Rice's sexuality. As I said to przxqgl, I wonder if the Republican party has more closeted homosexuals than all the other parties have open and closeted ones. Still I don’t see the point in speculating, unless it’s to put forth a point that people who support a party that, in its current incarnation, wants to make them second-class citizens, if not force them to hide themselves on pain of humiliation or breaking the law seem pretty insane. But perhaps that’s a minor party doctrine quibble with some. And perhaps for others, they do want to be punished for it. A self-injury fetish, perhaps.

To close out this section - The Word according to W: 50 religious insights from George W. Bush.

Mathematical models from your data could be used to tell you what year you're most likely to die. I wonder, though, if that self-knowledge will become self-fulfilling or possibly reduce the expectancy some. Staying on the doctor track, but mixing in the successful con artist part from before and we get How Drug Reps Make Friends and Influence Doctors.

Taking out the doctors part and adding in politics regarding marriageable age versus statutory rape and we get a hoax that was supposedly selling young girls as brides, potentially legally, if any girls were actually involved, which they were not.

From the “Stupid, stupid rat creatures!” files, bladespark has excellently chronicled the RIAA's dumbest move yet - sending cease-and-desist orders on the MP3 tracks that Reznor himself released in promoting his new CD. After this fiasco, Reznor said something to the effect of “Fuck it. Steal my music - here, it’s right here, at yearzero.nin.com.” As you can see, pissing off the artist is a bad, bad thing.

Anyway, that’s all from me tonight (and it probably looks more like a standard post from me, too). Well-wishes are appreciated, of course. And storytime starts next week. I have people, this is good. Now we’ll see if I can perform for them.

Comments

[silveradept]

Well, it depends on whether you've got the money to pay for food, and whether you can find a break time in the middle of gaming to stop. For six-to-eight hour raids and the like, finding a stop point, eating something, and then returning really isn't that possible at a net cafe. And if you really can't tear yourself away from the screen long enough to eat, then this is waht happens.

CCTV may cut crime for some people who really aren't committed to doing the crime, but for people who are already decided on their course of action, not much will deter them. This seems to be more inclined toward just spying on private citizens than fighting crime.

Speculation about public figures' sex lives is nothing new. It just happens to be that the big thing at the moment is speculating about orientation. It doesn't really matter, other than being a possible point of strangeness in supporting a party that would work against you. Such is the nature of our media - play down important things, play up trivial ones.

The workout from regular sex probably does have health benefits, both physical and mental. And if you have a steamy sex life and a good, imaginative partner, I'll bet those benefits show up even more.

The best route for an artist of any sort is to stay in control of their work. The problem is, it's much more efficient, dollar-wise and audience-wise, to join a syndicate, association, cabal, or other organization and have them do marketing and heavy lifting for you. This results eventually in power shifting into the hands of the organization, not th members, and then you get those lovely one-sided contracts for X albums, or that have the abiliy to replace your comic with hired writers and artists if you should quit. Once you've made it big, you can go on your own and finance stuff, but you have to get big and then get out. Which isn't happening to most of the artists.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

but if you're at a Net Cafe, isn't the whole purpose that they also sell food? you can't pause your game for a few minutes to go buy food? Or even pack food to take along with you? Even just a granola bar or power bar and a bottle of water would be an improvement!

Yeah, but if CCTV is set up outside on streets, it's not really spying on people, because if you were outside you'd be able to see what they were doing anyway. It's not like they want to install cameras in your apartments or looking into your windows.

I still don't see what the point is in speculating about political figures/famous persons sexual orientations are. If they want us to know - they'd tell us, and really, does their sexual orientation have anything to do with how they run the state/country?

Heh. I read something in a magazine a long time ago that if you had a cold, the best thing is to have sex and it would shorten your sick time. There's also sites that tell you how many calories you burn based on what you do while you're having sex, and if you can have multiple orgasms in one go, you burn A LOT of calories! (not so easy for the boys to do, but for us girls....)

Yep, and then you have bands like Ben Folds Five who need to get OUT of their contract so they make a joke album (Naked Baby Photos is full of ridiculous improvs and random live tracks that all the fans already had anyway) just to get out of their record deal with Sony. It's also why a lot of bands with only 3 albums or so will release "greatest hits" CDs, just because they HAVE to if they want to be free. BUT, even gettin out of your contract doesn't mean you own your songs that company published for you. Some record companies maintain that THEY own the rights to your songs, even after your contract expires and therefor, you have no control over what they do with the songs. Hence, why "Who Needs Sleep" became a song for Coors Light Beer. BNL said "NO NO NO", but Reprise said "well, if you get a different singer, you can have it". I thikn with the giant shift into digital music over physical recordings is going to make it easier for start-up artists to get their stuff out there. A lot of the indie bands I go see in Philly have their "album" available on iTunes, but no physical copies for sale.

[silveradept]

Some net cafes might offer food. Others only offer the computers, and in some places, the computer time is more valuable and harder to get than the food. Plus, most places I know of have a "no outside food or drink" policy or a "no food or drink" policy, so you can't just bring your own.

Did you miss the second part of the article talking about the sensors that will detect people on the other side of a wall? It can just as easily be used to peek inside someone's house from a ways away.

Well, the whole sexual orientation mattering part has something to do with people who scream freaking murder about the existence of "sinful" people and that they shouldn't be allowed to do anything but be stoned or die, much less serve in any sort of official capacity. That whole "God hates homosexuals, you caused terror attacks and continue to cause the decline of our great" (mythical) "society." You know, some really medieval stuff.

Health benefits, as I said. Exercise, temperature increase, blood flow, love and affection, and the like all probably contribute quite a bit to keeping someone in good health.

Yep, some companies think that the material you produced with their equipment and money belongs to them. Which, in some senses, would be like saying that all of Picasso's paintings belong, at least partially, to the people who supplied him with canvas, ink, and any other supplies he needed. And if he had to paint seven masterpieces before he could change suppliers, I'm sure that we'd probably not hear of him unless they're really good paintings, or he does them early enough in his career to get a good supplier.

While you never have to contract with a recording group to produce and distribute your material now, worldwide and international distribution, promotion, and tours all require the kind of money that can be obtained only through teaming up and, to some degree, riding off the profits of the successful so that there's money to promote the up-and-comers.

If people don't need worldwide concert tours, though, or the band doesn't want them, then the Internet's a perfectly good way of selling your album. If you don't care about what people do after they buy it, then you can offer it without DRM.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

If it doesn't offer food, the idea of calling it a cafe is sort of silly.

And yes, I read that part. I said parts of it were freaky. But I also thought the wall-thing was going to be for the army to use only?

really, anyone is "sinful" if they aren't married, but have sex to them, right?

I think a lot of the smaller bands that do things internet only are counting on word of mouth to get them going, and possibly even getting heard by one of the bigger bands and offered to open for them. A lot of bands tend to pick small or local bands to be their opener so that those bands can get exposure. Then, you have the people at the concert who want their cds and shirts and who want to know wher ethey can go see them and things can take off for them that way.

[silveradept]

You would think so, but café, as I recall, can mean coffee, so anywhere that isn't serving coffee of come sort probably isn't really a café, either. It has since evolved to be "tiny place that offers some sort of consumable thing", which, in this case, apparently includes Internet access.

The Internet was going to be a ARPA thing only, then it became a universities thing, and then with the Web, it became an everything thing. A lot of the technology the government commissions finds its way to people, police departments, and others, whether adopted or discarded by the government. That it can be done is enough inducement for people to do it. And if it's not illegal at the time, then it's going to be used until it is illegal, and even then past that under different guises and justifications, depending on who's ordering it.

Yes, premarital stuff is sinful for them. But at least they're doing the boys and girls thing - the people who do women-and-women and men-and-men stuff are extra sinful because they're not using the equipment as YHWH intended and breaking an Old-Testament injunction that can be interpreted to say "No homosexuality."

Word of mouth does a lot, as does headlining for a bigger band, but to get really big these days, you still need to sign to a label. It's getting better that there are more large names jumping to running their own labels independent of the cabal and doing what they really want to do, but radio play and the other stuff is still mostly controlled by a few corporations. So locals, unless there a university radio broadcast or a "local scene" segment, don't get easy access to the nationwide radio network, so that lots of people can hear them and then decide whether to buy them or not.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I think most eateries offer coffee, so they can still be called a cafe. It's when it doesn't serve any type of beverage or food that it's weird. Then again, I'm sure most of the patrons at an Internet Cafe wouldn't be drinking coffee.

I can just see it. Instead of filling out a paper census, it's going to be "be in your house at x time" and they comne around with the little sensors. And even if they use it to determine "friend or foe" - what if the person had been running/exercising, or was having a heart attack...then their heart beat would be racing, too.

I thought there also are parts of the bible where you can interpret it to mean that homosexuality is okay?

We're moving away from analog radio though and into satellite and internet radio, and the satellite providers have channels where they specifically showcase the indie and smaller bands.

[silveradept]

Well, the people who like wireless the best are coffee drinkers, too, sometimes, so I wouldn't be too comfortable with that statement. Might turn out to be way wrong.

The problem with the "sensor" bits is that for people who are dodging the law or otherwise don't want to be sensored will find good ways of getting around it. It still is a pretty big invasion of one's privacy - "a man's home is his castle" and "no government should care what we do in our bedrooms" - after all, what happens if someone's making the beast with two backs when the sensors come around?

There are some parts that suggest there may have been homosexual relationships between characters in the Bible, and other teachings of Yeshua about how everyone should be able to come to the kingdom of God. Plus, plenty of Yeshua's behaviors, like hanging out with Roman tax collectors and sinners, suggest that he would probably be cool with homosexuals.

Yeah, satellite and Internet radio can offer more channels to listen to, and run programming outside of the advertising radio control, but you pay for satellite radio, and certain organizations have been cracking down hard on Internet radio, assessing them royalty fees far in excess of their costs or what they should be assessed based on their listenership. It's a similar backwards mentality exercised there.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Well, then I suppose the sensor holder get a show....and that's really disturbing to think about. Ew. Bad enough you canhave peeping toms through windows, now they won't even need the window!

do internet cafes also provide wifi for people with laptops? But then, they'd probably charge for it, and there are loads of places with free wifi, so I wouldn't go to an internet cafe.

backwards it is. I'm still not really understanding the whole royalty thing. Do regular stations pay royalties for playing songs?

[silveradept]

Told you that's not a fun thought. Imagine it being used in states where sodomy's still illegal on the books and Lawrence v. Texas gets overturned. Real easy to just cruise around looking for lawbreakers.

The cafés probably do offer wireless and charge for it at the rate they would for others. It's an easy way of increasing capacity without installing additional materials. Unless the infrastructure's bad or data is horribly expensive to the shop owner, why wouldn't they have wireless?

Regular stations do pay royalties for playing songs. There's a universal fee, I think, that all record stations pay, and then that organization, be it ASCAP or the RIAA or something, is supposed to divide that royalty payment among the artists that are played on the radio station so that everyone gets their cut. There may be exemptions in place for certain radio station types, like those that wouldn't be operating for profit, but I don't remember. I just recall that several Internet radio sites were being threatened with large royalty bills based on what they had done over the last few years.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I could see stuff like that happening, and what a nightmare it would be, too.

I sort of remember that too. What about the sites that let you run your own radio station Like the yahoo one, and I think iTunes supposedly has one too. How would they handle those?