I got one at work, to my desk phone, trying to sell me a mobile phone. He seemed rather confused when I tried to sell him broadband right back. (I work in the sales department for a major telecoms company. I found the irony amusing.)

Or the classic "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"

If they do this, are they also going to place legal limits on the volume with which Ethel, sitting on the tram across from me, is going to talk about whichever soap or celebirty show has her attention this week? If I can't drown out their pathetic and often obnoxious ramblings, what the heck is a sane, rational person supposed to do?

This is my bane, really. It's not the people who don't know the terms, or the difference between the different bits. They're OK. Not being familiar with the jargon, I can relate to. It's the people who seem to think that wilfull ignorance is the best policy. the people who, no matter how many times you explain something, will just answer with "sorry, I don't know much about computers" or "I'm too old/young/stupid/busy" rather than actually try and listen to, or understand the concepts involved.

A lot of this is probably fear, they're already afraid they won't understand, so they take refuge in that predetermined state, but some people actually seem to be proud of their ignorance, and refuse to have their store of knowledge increased. Alsthough, i think what really gets my goat is

Of course, the irony of this is that this problem applies to practically everything these days that requires a modicum of learning.

The debate is, should we be pandering to wilful and prideful ignorance?

Most metal bands that use orchestral or other backing work use these too. At that point, it's a matter of synchronising the live performers with that stuff you's spent a goood deal of money getting that choir or orchestra to record. Thankfully, with the best bands of this type, they tend to try and do as much as possible within the live performance.

To be honest, I think the sheer amount of badly-done artifical pap err pop music has really soured very many people to the concept of backing tapes, and any aid that keeps tempo. Queen used a fair amount of backing tape, and nobody ever said they were fake. Sometimes, you just need a degree of synchronisation, especially when your songs are more compositions than out and out songs (Nightwish, Dream Theatre, et al) which mean that there have to be moments where the band knows, to the instant, where to come in, or back in after a gap, without being able to hear exactly where they are on the tape itself.

As an aid to lousy drummers, I can see why they'd draw ire, but a lot of these drummers are very very good. They just need to keep a lot of things synched up to make their soundscapes work as they should.