But not really, because there's an unfathomable amount of time until this matters and humanity are some determined sons of bitches.
Life finds a way?
Speaking of a determined son of a bitch, you let me know when you find anything that can survive a black hole.
People will probably live on average to be over 1000, maybe 10,000 because people will only die from accidents. Science will advance at a faster rate because we don't have to spend the first 25 years or so of life on primary education. The next problem will be that without new generations, human evolution will be at a standstill. But, perhaps not totally. If we can direct our own evolution using simulation and very limited reproduction, say with the average age of a parent being about 1000 years or more, then perhaps we can still find ways to advance as a species. We might be able to grow new bodies and perhaps even new brains for ourselves. When we want to alter our DNA, we could somehow become chimeras for a period of time until the old DNA is completely replaced by the new upgraded DNA. In this way, our species gets all the evolutionary benefits of death without actually having to die.
The only problem with this theory is assuming that humans are mentally ready to live 1000 years or more.
Forget Alzheimer's or dementia for a minute (no pun intended). And pretend we cure cancer (all of them, somehow).
What makes you think grandpa will ever be mentally ready to stave off natural pessimism or cynicism for a few hundred years or more?
Perhaps the most likely answer to that is VR, but then that brings into question just exactly what kind of "world" we would be "living" in at that point.
Typically, music is measured in BPM, not RPM.
True, unless you were more referring to the 45RPM and 78RPM records that were spun at such a rate as to limit the amount of recording time on them..
Moving the storage task to the phone companies does absolutely nothing to make the collection less nasty.
It means absolutely nothing at all. They still have unfettered access to the data, they might as well hold it themselves. This is simply a move to absolve them of blame/responsibility down the road.
"We didn't collect the data this time, the phone companies did"
Uh, let's try this again, shall we?
First of all, let's not be stupid or ignorant. The answer coming back from any and every service provider in defense to the bullshit excuse above would be "They MADE us collect it!", which of course starts the infamous finger pointing exercise they're so damn good at.
And lastly, this move does have an impact. It merely gives the phone companies an excuse to tack another bullshit charge on our bill to warehouse and store the data the government is also taxing you on.
The musicians are paid per song. So they have no motivation to make 10 minute songs like American Pie. They have more motivation to make little 2 minute ditties like As Tears Go By and most songs less than 3 minutes, for this reason it seems.
If money is all they care about, then become a banker, for I struggle to call you an artist.
I get what you're saying, but this IS the problem with defining an artist these days. Money is THE priority. When that happens, the ability to express yourself beyond a mathematically calculated attention span becomes impossible.
The "sound" of a badly encoded MP3 is already influencing the way people sing - it's almost as if they think those artefacts and unwanted harmonics are something that makes a voice a good singing voice, because that's what they hear when someone holds a long or high note. Bloody hateful.
Yeah.
It would be a shame to allow shitty encoding to ruin the beautiful sounds of an Autotuned voice.
Most popular music was a result in changes in technology that allowed for new sounds. Elvis and The Beetles couldn't have made their sound a decade before due to differences in the technology of microphones, recording and playback equipment. The same is true for many of the groups that produced top hits and most major groups in the last 9 decades had a tehcnological edge over the music they replaced.
So, this generation of "music" makers, armed with the best Autotune sound mixers and Photoshop artists, along with the algorithms that prove what RPM will drive the most money out of a background bass track, is proving exactly what today? That technology can replace the artist?
Seriously, where do we go from here? How long before the musical overlords simply ask the computer to calculate the next beat and vocal pitch based on revenue?
Enjoy technology. Don't worry though, hologram Elvis will be touring soon, and he'll sound better than he ever could while sporting six-pack abs.
Are you joking? Technology has always disrupted the nature of music. Early forms of recording were very short in duration and essentially dictated the time lenggh of their contents. Popular music has had to conform to the technology, and arguably is permanently changed. How many charting pop songs over five minutes long that aren't novelty tunes can you think of?
Uh, let's not use time as a measure or indication of quality or intent, shall we?
I'm a bit too afraid that the attention span of today will start handing out Oscars for Vine videos.
Why would *anyone* encourage their child, regardless of gender, to spend a decade or more training for what is quickly becoming a minimum-wage job at best.
We should instead be encouraging kids to become investment bankers, hedge fund managers or politicians.
Well it sure is a damn good thing we only give a shit about making money these days now that job satisfaction and career happiness has been outsourced to another planet.
I'd say it's more important for kids today to type fast than it is to learn cursive.
As we move into the era of smartwatch-driven communications, along with all of the pressure against anyone who steps behind the wheel of any vehicle to become "hands-free", I'm rather curious. Why do you not feel the art of typing is also a dying requirement in society?
I know we've all been talking about the death of the keyboard for quite some time now. I tend to finally see that on the horizon. At one point we all thought Dick Tracy was the only lucky guy to own a watch like that, and voice recognition solutions aren't getting weaker.
Try Google.
I have one on my keyring. I know exactly what it is, and what it is used for.
In other words you have prior information that makes sense out of the word salad that passes for summaries these days...
Quite true, especially in today's music climate where a tossed salad is served up hot and fresh with a side of truffle butter.
(Yeah, go ahead, take your own advice and enjoy Google on that one.)
Important to what?
Oh, won't it be great fun trolling the youngsters of tomorrow when I ask them to read something I wrote down.
I'll make sure to hand-write my inheritance checks and will in cursive too.
Microwave networks are extremely susceptible to rain fade, and as such are not a good choice for important data links like these would be. We already have a technology which allows signals to travel at the speed of light and is immune to weather, solar radiation, and nearly anything else short of a major earthquake. It's called single mode fiber optic cable.
I didn't know a hung-over backhoe operator was considered in the same class as a major earthquake.
What exactly has caused your last three fiber outages? Chances are it was a human behind a stick or wheel, and not Mother Nature.
Your number is meaningless without knowing the rates of of alcoholism and alcohol-related mortality over time.
Just in the United States, someone becomes addicted to alcohol at the rate of one every three seconds.
http://www.substance.com/live-drug-stats-visualizing-drug-use-in-america/13180/
According to the CDC not long ago, alcohol was the 3rd leading cause of preventable death. Not sure what more we need to talk about. This problem isn't getting better or going away. We've just managed to waste billions making it acceptable to insurance companies for the last few decades by trying to reclassify it as a disease.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, some of these regulations are clear attempts to just protect the taxi industry from new models. On the other hand, some of the regulations (like having some basic insurance to cover if things go wrong) are pretty reasonable. On the gripping hand, both Uber and Lyft are both just blatantly ignoring regulations in many jurisdictions, and whether or not one thinks the laws should be there, it is hard to think that having cheaper car services is such a compellingly necessary service that it can morally or ethically justify ignoring laws.
If you wish to speak of morals and ethics, perhaps you should review the existing structure and their pricing model first.
There's a reason we have a compelling argument for competition here, and it's not because they have cooler looking cars.
Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division.
