It might be a start. Getting the best out of lilypond will require manual tweaking though. It certainly is a pretty idiosyncratic program, but if you half-way know what you're doing it'll produce output better than commercial packages costing hundreds of dollars. Maybe when I get home I'll typeset 8 bars or so from one of the variations in Lilypond, and also Notion 3 - Notion is commercial software (~$300) but it's much more useful than lilypond for _writing_ music, since it can do live play and enables quick experimentation. It's typesetting is OK but not superb.

That seems incredibly short sited. Lilypond is OSS, and ly files are plain text. I'd much rather have something in one format that produces excellent output, than crappy output from 10 different progs.

The people that "make it" in the industry (and while I know this is true in music, it's probably true in film and other arts as well) aren't necessarily very good at their given craft anyway. Most of the time, it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

First step is realizing that "the industry" is producing records that people will buy. The industry is *NOT* about producing good music. In an industry that produces records people will buy, musicians are rarely qualified for the position of "person who appears on record cover and performs concerts". That position is filled by models/dancers.

And they get paid a lot not because of their musical talent; they get paid a lot in exchange for sacrificing any shred of privacy for the rest of their lives.

Should you get a notification from the phone company that the long distance call you're currently making is starting to cost a lot?

Facebook has a real name policy as well. It hasn't hindered their growth. The problem is that Google+ has a real name policy, but doesn't require mutual friendship. This leads to a duplicate one way friendship problem.

Here is the use case: you want to add a friend who isn't on the network but you have their email address.
Facebook: You add the user by email. It goes to "friendship requested" status.
Google: You add the user by email. That email address is added to your circles
Then later, the user signs up for the social network, but not using the email address you supplied then friends you.
Facebook: You are friends!
Google: You are friends, plus you have a zombie email address friend in your circles. FAIL!

That and Google+ is full of bugs. For example you open a Google+ account at your own email address. Then you sign up for gmail. This changes the email address of your Google account to your new gmail address with NO WAY TO CHANGE IT BACK. The people in your circles are associated with your old email address. Google has DELETED all the friends from your circles. You then have to re-add all of them.

And then you get your food spit in by the waitress when you share that plate with your friend.

they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign

One of these things is not like the others...

Maybe you can point to the one which isn't illegal, sleuth!

You would make a poor sleuth.

Three of the above mentioned actions are not illegal: weaving, driving erratically, and emitting radiation.

However, all three of those actions are a good indication of either an illegal OR unsafe condition. And either an illegal OR unsafe condition is a reasonable basis for a police officer to conduct a traffic stop.

For example, weaving could be an indication that the driver is drunk. (illegal) Or that they are simply too tired. (unsafe) Or that they just spilled a beverage in their lap. (probably not safe, but remedied once clean-up is complete.) Emitting radiation could indicate improper transport of radioactive material (illegal) or presence of some sort of destructive device (really illegal) or simply that you recently had a medical test done.

And you believe, no doubt, that re-instituting this tax at a higher level will bring back the golden days of yesteryear?

I do.

Here's the thing about taxing the rich.

It reduces their incentive to make more money.

Which is a very good thing.

For example, let's say the top marginal tax rate is 80%. It applies to all income over, say, $10 million. Income includes ALL income too, including capital gains.

You have a decision to make. If you fire 100 employees, you can increase your profits by $1 million. And make $200,000. What's your decision?

Now let's look at the current tax system. If you fire 100 employees, you can increase your profits by $1 million, funnel those earnings through a structure so they are taxed as capital gains, and make $850,000. What's your decision?

The reason we had great economic expansion is because very high marginal tax rates on very high income is a strong disincentive against earning very high income. It encourages the people who are running the businesses to share the wealth with everyone who contributes to the business.

When you eliminate taxes on high income, you are encouraging most of the wealth to go to a small number of people.

Why pay an employee an extra $10,000 that the government will take $4,300 of (15.3% FICA and 28% income) when you can keep it for yourself and only pay the government $1,500?

That's the problem: Under the current tax system, paying employees (in the US) is stupid! The more employees you have, the MORE taxes you pay!

I am very pro first amendment, but the idea of disclaimers on impossibly obtainable body proportions sounds as good as those white rectangles on the cigarette boxes. Women, and to a lesser, but increasing amount, men, are getting severely programmed by all the fake crap we do to our mass media people of fiction. I don't know if this is an American thing, or not even a thing at all, maybe I'm just out in left field here, maybe it's generational, I have no pattern - point I am making is that lots of women seem really put off by their body image, and they dont care that members of the appropriate gender think they look fine, or great, or even perfect. They just want to drop 30% of their body weight, to anorexic levels, stab their fellow with a rib, I dunno what the end goal is man, I'm just sick of cute girls crabbing about a little belly or having real thighs. So sick of it. This is probably my most ranty, less focused slashdot post in a long while, so I'm sorry about that. It's super frustrating to tell someone they look really beautiful and have them gaze off into the distance, miserable they aren't a jpeg and unwilling to ever embrace themselves or enjoy life until that day. We should all be extremely grateful that there's no great way to apply these photoshop techniques to moving images, yet. We'll be even worse off when that happens.

You can upgrade to 1680x1050 on the 15", $50 for a glossy, $150 for matte