You seem to think that amateurs are all talentless. Many of the guys playing in the pubs have been playing and singing since they were children, and taking lessons, and many majored (or at least minored) in music in college. I have some friends who are very talented, talented enough for the RIAA to want them to sign contracts. They laughed in the labels' faces. They're not making product, they're making art.

Art and commerce are usually at odds. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life, to his brother, for a pittance, to pay a debt. Meanwhile, none of the paintings in the galleries then are in the museums today.

Look at the old Ska band Reel Big Fish. Their first several CDs kicked ass. They were signed by Britney Spears' label, and my daughter bought that CD. It really sucked donkey balls.

Look at Stephen King's remarks about James Patterson. "He's a terrible writer, but very successful." I've been reading Patterson's When the Wind Blows and... well, not terrible, not even too bad, but he's no Stephen King. The book I'm reading he keeps changing perspectives from first person to third person, which was bad enough when describing things the 1st person character didn't experience, but later in the book uses the third person when the 1st person narrator, who isn't narrating, is there. That was a big WTF? But almost every time I see a women with a book, it's one of his pulp fiction murder mysteries (which is why I'm reading it, I wanted to find the secret of his success. Too bad the secret is murder mysteries, I hate them usually).

Remember Milli Vanilli? Caught lip-syncing on stage and it turned out they didn't sing on the album. How about the Talking Heads? Terrible singing, uninspired musicianship, but they were new and different. The music industry isn't after quality, it's after "new and different" because that will garner them what they're in business for -- money.

What you hear in a good pub will very often be far superior to what you hear on the radio. The professionals are in it for the money, the "amateurs" (like the Jungle Dogs, who held masters degrees and taught music at SIU in Carbondale) are in it for the art.

We THOUGHT we were voting for a new FDR in 2008. What we GOT was a new Calvin Coolidge.

A little weak on your history, aren't you? We thought we were getting an FDR but we got... well, not Coolidge, that would be Bush (and if McCain had won, he would have been Hoover). I'd say we wanted FDR and got Jimmy Carter.

I mean, really, do you believe for a second Coolidge would have signed the ACA?

Wow, guys, way to misunderstand. Take the lyrics to the Dead Kennedies' Kill the poor and change the words to "Kill the Jews" and that's more like what we're talking about.

OTOH, I wonder how the Germans authorities would react if you changed the words to "kill the fags"? Would that be illegal, too?

Christ, dude, you're dangerously wrong and I have no idea how you got modded up. There certainly IS a difference -- run high octaine gasoline in a (normal) low compression engine and you'll ruin your exhaust valves, because higher octane burns slower and your valves will get burned. For the same reason, run regular in your high compression engine and unless you detune it, it will ruin the pistons from dieseling ("spark knock").

Use the correct gasoline for your engine, or risk expensive repairs.

You're even more wrong about the price of the extra octane. Lead is dirt cheap (or was before they found out how hazardous it is). If what they're using now was cheaper they'd have used it instead of lead; lead was used because it's cheap.. It costs a lot more to raise octane with the newer chemicals.

Quarter inch headphone jacks I'll agree with, but not the little ones. The plugs are sturdy enough, but I don't know how many headphone jacks I've replaced. If one goes bad in a phone or a tablet or a notebook, bye-bye having headphones for that device. Too damned hard to work on.

Gotta agree about wall warts. God but I hate those things. Wall warts for non-battery devices like printers, scanners, antenna amplifiers and so forth are especially stupid. If there are two devices that do the same thing in the store and one has a wall wart, I'll buy the other one even if it costs more. Wall warts for battery powered devices should be wire warts; put the wart in the wire, not the plug, there just aren't enough sockets to waste them.

Yeah, I've known people to put CDs and floppies in upside down, too. Hell, once at work I had to call the hardware guys because some dumbass (although she held a PhD in statistics) put a floppy in the slot for the backup tape.

Murphey was right. If there's a wrong way to do something, some dumbass will do it that way. A good designer will remember Murphey, the KISS principle, and will minimize PEBCAK as much as possible.

There was a camp at Beale. I'm not sure if it was an internment camp or held POWs, but they were TINY little cages, 2mx2mx2m and open on one side (a barred door). Drawings on the walls, some quite good.

I wouldn't have wanted to be in one of those cages. I can see why he didn't want to talk about it, must be some horrible, terrible memories.

Why would you not send Marigolds if you had a chance for such an experiment? Besides, we will need bees on the moon; so we're going to need flowers. Plants don't pollinate themselves.

Fail!

Let me explain how this works in management-land.

"We're not going to back fill."

A good manager will take the raise and accolades for cutting costs. And then leave for greener pastures while the references are still positive.

It's all Win-Win. The company saves money, the manager gets a raise and a better job. Everyone wins.

Seven years? Kid, seven years is nothing. How old are you, fourteen? I just published Nobots last month, have been working on it since 2009. I'd have a two year copyright.

The Paxil Diaries aren't even in print yet but the copyright would have expired.

Asimov's Foundation trilogy was out for ten years before Asimov made a dime from it.

The present copyright term is way too long and harms creativity and culture, but your length is equally ridiculous. Make it twenty years, same as patents.

No, he's right. If the penalty for murder is twenty years, and you and four other people beat someone to death, all five of you will spend 20 years in prison, not four years each.

I've dropped my Kyocera more than once and it's never broken. A case? If it was in a protective case it wouldn't fit in my pocket. As it only cost a hundred bucks with no subsidy, if it does break I'll just buy a new one.

What kind of cheap but expensive phone do you have that is so delicate?

The most surprising thing to me here is that Hotfile was profitable enough to have $80 million.