You just reminded me that I haven't purchased music since about 1998, so for me, there's no monopoly to worry about. And with Songza, Spotify, Pandora and radio streaming + tools to convert streams to mp3, it doesn't seem likely that I will for the next ten years or so.

Well, I do remember back in the OLD days, sitting with the radio on the stereo and un-pausing the cassette recorder to try to record songs that were played on the radio.

I got over that real quick....

But what you say is fine enough I guess if you're just gonna use that to listen in the car on on a mobile player, but what about your home stereo..you know, something you put some money into for better fidelity sound, don't you want a lossy format for that?

I tend to buy my music on CDs that I really like and rip it to lossy mp3's for my poor listening environments (car, gym)...but keep the good stuff for the living room stereo for quality listening.

I have seen sites that sell very high lossless formats online and I'm thinking of checking out those for new purchases of replacing CD's lost to Katrina and time....

HD Tracks sells 96/24 tracks in AIFF and FLAC for a very reasonable price.

I don't buy that much music these days, due to my perceived lack of quality of performance and style, but when I do find something I like, it is something to keep. I don't think of music as disposable as many of the youth today seem to do....

I can bog down a core i7 with 16GB ram, with a SSD external drive for dedicated cache, etc.....in seconds with one decent render or Photoshop project with 4-8+ Smart Objects open.

And more and more...if you are even a decent hobbits photographer, you depend on post to do your magic and you can overload a computer pretty quickly even with decen cpu, gnu and ram.

That doesn't even get into having a nice monitor(s), wacom tablet...etc.

I'd put this group maybe in between the #2 and #3 you listed above.

In this case, it is people with wells on their properties.

People still do water that way...wells on their property??

If so...I'd guess it would have to be a very small minority these days, eh?

Why? Over most of history spying has saved lives more than taken them. I find it so odd that people on Slashdot sing the praises of the "Codebreakers" of WWII but are shocked and freaked out that they are still around today.

Because they spied on the enemy, the foreign entities that were trying to harm them.

The problem today is, this tech is being aimed domestically as well as on foreign enemies....without due process or proper warrants showing probably cause.

The objection is the broad dragnet of information being captured and analyzed, of presumable innocent citizens.

If this were ONLY being aimed at the enemy, not only would most folks here not have a problem with it, they'd whole heartedly support it!!

;)

Uber have been shut down in cities in the following countries:

That's the problem today with too much damned govt. rules, regulations and stranglehold on innovation.

Geez, if we had the amounts of rules and regulations a 100 years ago that we have today, we'd certainly NOT likely have all the inventions and businesses we have today.

No, that pollutes too much. No you need a permit for this, and this, and this...and well, we don't permit that at all. Are you diverse enough in your company? Do you have medical? Well, you need a license to even think about building and testing that and certainly not around here. You want to sell what across state lines? You want to drive what across state lines? I'm sorry but we have to tax that. Etc.

Shit....Henry Ford couldn't have done business today as a start up.

But I do try to make damned sure I double check my directory I'm in, as well as the command before I hit enter.

I've blown stuff up before, but mostly as other users...likely that I wasn't being as careful when in as those users as I was when I'm wielding root around.

I used to think she was pretty hot back on the old Star Trek days....

Well, sounds like she had a full life....say hello to Leonard, Deforest and James for us all!!

Seriously, the unrest is brewing in our towns. The powder keg is filled to the brim, all it takes is a spark, and any kind will do, to blow it up. You're getting close to a critical mass of people who are severely unhappy with how things are going, the only thing missing is a focal point for this anger. As soon as a justification is found to vent that anger, you have a riot.

Seriously? Critical Mass? Seriously?

I kinda doubt it...this is pretty isolated. Seems mostly to just be a problem in the few highly packed urban centers in the US. You don't see this type of behavior, or even sympathy to it in most of the US.

And for the most part, I think the 24/7 news channels blow it up to much more than it actually is. They often choose camera angles to try to make it look like more people than it is.

The majority if folks in the US rarely if ever have a personal encounter with the police in their cities. The majority of US citizens while concerned that these isolated events are coming to our attention, they also don't see it as much a problem in their local areas or states.

However, there are limited limits. The old "you can't yell fire in a crowded movie house" comes to mind.

I should think the same rules apply to social media? I mean, that tweet that went out saying "there's going to be a PURGE at 3pm..etc" could the powers that be not have that taken down, blocked, etc?

I"m guessing no mechanism now..but shouldn't be hard to figure how to put filters on there, no?

I don't say this type thing lightly either, it is a slippery slope...in that righteous expressions that may be controversial, political and all could be in jeopardy, but I think it is something to be discussed.

You have plenty of rights to free speech, but incitement to riot isn't one of them.

At the very least...track down the folks that tweeted to riot, and throw the book at them. Maybe just use existing law to get those doing this would be better than a censorship method like I first proposed...it might not STOP a riot as well, but after awhile people *might* actually start getting wise that it isn't smart to incite a riot on social media of any form.

Compare the policies of the Democrat party with those of the Conservative Party in the UK. The Tories are left of the Democrats, that makes the Democrats a right-wing party and the Republicans further out than Genghis Khan.

And that comparison has exactly what to do with US politics?

We're talking left vs right here in America...not the rest of the world which leans far enough left to be socialist in so many ways.

I consider Obama to be very left in his views, and if he'd not gone checked by congress, would take us down the European path.

I figure if you want to live European style, move to Europe. The US broke off from Europe many moons ago because we did not want to be European. The majority of us still don't.

Most of the idiot Apple 'Geniuses' I've encountered have near full-sleeve tattoos going to damn near their palm.

I haven't ever seen this at the Apple Store here and this is New Orleans, where anything goes...??!?!

...I have not voted R or D since 2004, except when Elizabeth Warren ran for Senate.

So, as of this point, neither of the parties is currently Left enough for you?

;)