No more, “the dog ate my homework” or copying a friend’s homework ten minutes before class.
No excuses in the age of the interducts? Someone is sadly misinformed. Or just not informed at all.

Off topic, but I thought I’d make good on my earlier threat so we can all have the same nightmare.

And could someone explain to me why “The music industry” is apparently a plural, whereas “The Mainstream Media” alternate(s) between singular and plural? Is this just another manifestation of the corrosive effects of the LOLcat phenomenon?

We run our giant economy on the fumes from mimeograph machines.

And pellets.

Yes, instead of downloading free lossless flacs of music, we can pay a dollar for a drm crippled 160 bit rate mp3, and 10 bucks or more for an entire album in the same format. And the artists receive actual pennies on the dollar.
And bored students can txt each other pictures of themselves naked.
Technology!

No, there’s no copying anything in this computer age. The DMRA put the kibosh on that.

The inability to figure out that plural/singular for a collective noun thing pre-dates precious pictures of darling kittens saying the cutest things by several decades.

Is this just another manifestation of the corrosive effects of the LOLcat phenomenon? – Smut Clyde

I can haz good grammar?

The phrase “Like a dog trying to understand particle physics” comes to mind.

And the DMCA or something put an end to the “DMRA.”

I am wretched & aging. Damn.

They’re right at the bleeding edge fershure, I’ll tellya. Gosh, maybe soon they’ll even have Ozzie and Harriet reruns on this Innertube thingy, yathink?

Her bio includes that she’s the head of a foundation

whose mission is to re-introduce the American public to the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant socio-political issues important to our country, specifically the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth Column.

Now that’s non-partisan!

Good thing I’m a far left wing progressive whose mission it is to seek out and undermine the dangerous threat posed by Republicans and the Right Wingers, along with the insidious and pervasive right wing propaganda machine they’ve assembled, and I’m totally non-partisan about it too.

The music industry made the transformation several years ago, when they found CDs were being pirated and downloaded for free. Now, songs can be purchased for less than $1.00 which is changing the meaning of hit singles[.]

Umm, the music industry was dragged kicking and screaming into that realization by one Steve Jobs at Apple. They still chafe under that $.99 price point.

it can provide nutritive snacks… de merde.

You’ve totally given me an idea for a concession stand at the next CPAC convention or better, a gathering of Paultards.

“Merde? Why, that’s, um, French for ‘inland sea’. These are tasty tidbits from the Lac du Diptherie!”

And could someone explain to me why “The music industry” is apparently a plural, whereas “The Mainstream Media” alternate(s) between singular and plural? Is this just another manifestation of the corrosive effects of the LOLcat phenomenon?

Or rampant illiteracy in the punditocrazies. Also.

No more […] copying a friend’s homework ten minutes before class.

Ahem.

All students can engage by texting their answers to teachers’ discussion questions for a quick progress monitor.

Does any teacher actually do this? It sounds absurd.

a Timex watch in a digital age

Hey, my Timex watch is digital. It’s even got a snazzy USB connector and you can play Space Invaders on it!

No seriously, that’s the watch I’ve been wearing for the past five years. There’s only one thing that I hate about it – the wristband. Custom frigging wristband. Good luck trying to find a replacement.

The New Media Journal’s logo is a tree.

That’s just stupid.

All students can engage by texting their answers to teachers’ discussion questions for a quick progress monitor.

Does any teacher actually do this? It sounds absurd.

If I actually caught myself doing that, I’d have to slit my wrists.

I’m still mourning the loss of the card catalog and the rotary dial phone, so would somebody please explain how this would work? Would a teacher have to stand there at the front of the room, cell phone out, scrolling through thirty different text messages? That sounds like it would take the whole period.

In my class a “quick progress monitor” looks like this: “Raise your hand if you have no idea what I’m talking about.” It takes about two seconds.

Maybe I’m missing something.

Maybe I’m missing something.

If you are, I am too – not that I’ve spent any time in a kid-type school during the last 25 years or anything. The text-messaging thing sounds, as you say, ridiculously slow, not to mention requiring that every kid have a cell phone. Even now, I’m sure there are some pitiable kids who don’t. And the teachers may not even have one!

That “quick progress monitor” through texting sounds like a hauled-out-of-ass technofetishist bit of nonsense.

Miniskirts were once the rage, uh huh
Tramp stamps vamps will show their age, uh huh
And the Bleat goes on
And the Bleat goes on, on, on

“Merde? Why, that’s, um, French for ‘inland sea’. These are tasty tidbits from the Lac du Diptherie!”

The sad thing is, given the Paultards’ ability to swallow just about whatever racist bullshit their doctor spews, in all likelihood they would actually enjoy a confection from the ‘Lac du Diphtherie Dysenterie’.

Now, songs can be purchased for less than $1.00 which is changing the meaning of hit singles[.]

That had me going “whaaa….?” too. When I was a kid (Pleistocene era) 45rpm singles were 79 cents, just what I could afford with my babysitting money. I remember the shock when they hit $1, around, oh, 1969 or so. And in 2009, iTunes sells HIT SINGLES for 99 cents. What else sells for the same dollar amount 40 years later?

The only difference being that the music buyers now get to choose what the hit singles get to be. That, if anything, is what’s changed the meaning of “hit single.”

I think these silly persons are so infatuated with being Twitter heroes that everything good and wholesome is now “digital”.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

What else sells for the same dollar amount 40 years later?

Um, B sides….you no get the B side with a download, so it’s twice the price.

.you no get the B side with a download, so it’s twice the price.

True. Still, I imagine the B-sides were not usually why the 45 was purchased (although I did buy several just for the B-sides, but I assume that’s more of a specialist/fan thing).

you no get the B side with a download, so it’s twice the price.

True, but even twice the price doesn’t keep up with inflation over 40 years.

As Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist said, the b-side was generally ignored, although it was a source of royalty revenue for record companies. Royalties got paid for both songs, since they were both sold and there’s no way to tell which song the person intended to buy (even though it was obvious.)

Still, I imagine the B-sides were not usually why the 45 was purchased

Fair enough. I’d call them a bonus track, which of course, Apple et al could call them now.

Often for me, B sides were a way to cheaply explore a band’s repetoire. Albums were pretty expensive for a ten year old kid ($5!!!!!!), but at least back then, if you bought an album, you could pretty much guarantee at least two other songs on it had some quality.

That changed in the 90s. One thing to be said for digital downloads is you can concentrate on songs you actually like, and this also keeps a band from writing more songs than it’s capable of producing in a given period.

I remember when the Spin Doctors hit it big. They were a big local act here in NY/NJ, and their shows were a lot of fun to see. The first album in 1993 was pretty good, had like three songs on it (which we’d all heard at some point)

Point is, they played five years in the Village (ahhhh, Kenny’s Castaways!) and Jersey shore before they compiled that record, so they had a half-decade cycle of writing and perfecting a playlist.

Their second album, produced within a year, was horrible, even tho it sold two million copies.

Their third album was pulled off the shelves weeks after release.

With digital downloads, they probably could have extended their shelf life as a niche band by writing one or two good singles a year.

Same thing happened with Blues Traveller (both bands were founded by John Popper, curiously enough).

What else sells for the same dollar amount 40 years later?

There’s probably plenty of stuff where mass production / economies of scale off-set inflation about evenly. Cheap mugs and housewares, sewing notions, maybe paper.

Often for me, B sides were a way to cheaply explore a band’s repetoire. […] One thing to be said for digital downloads is you can concentrate on songs you actually like […]

Agreed on both counts. I bought some 45s and found out I liked the B-side better than the hit song I bought them for – and later managed to find the B-sides for digital download. Heh.

Often with albums I found there was only one song I really liked, so I have a ton of vinyl and CDs for which I could have just gotten singles.

It was also sort of dismaying somehow to reflect that my CD library, after 20 years of collecting, would all fit on a smallish iPod if ripped at 128K.

Xecky, that was an eye-opener for me: I have half a wall of CDs. I’ve got them all on my iPod for about 5 gigs of real estate, and I don’t recall that I skipped too many songs, crappy or not, and I encoded them in Apple’s proprietary format so while lossy, it was not too lossy.

I’ve got them all on my iPod for about 5 gigs of real estate…

Yup, exactly. I’m considering doing the same, but the prospect of running that many rips is kind of daunting.

It was double-plus unfun. I suppose if I did it in the winter over a couple of snowy weekends, where I could grab a coffee or tea and watch TV while letting ‘er rip, I wouldn’t have minded it so much. Just seemed to take forever.

It was double-plus unfun.

I get these OC phases where something like that would be just the thing to do. But I never know when they’re going to hit.

Also, POOP.

You know, you don’t have to do it all at the same time. If you ripped a CD a day, you’d be in pretty good shape after a few months. You could let it rip while you were brushing your teeth.

Problem is when you’ve loaded a couple thousand songs into iTunes – and then you get the OC fit. You could be adjusting “genres” and star ratings for days.

Oh man, DKW, I started doing that, and realized after a week, I hadn’t even finished my Beatles’ selections!

If you ripped a CD a day, you’d be in pretty good shape after a few months.

You’re right. That’s a habit I might look into developing.

You could be adjusting “genres” and star ratings for days.

Oh, Jesus. That could be a disaster.

You could let it rip while you were brushing your teeth.

Heck, I do that anyway, although it annoys the wife and frightens the cats.

Oh, wait…

What else sells for the same dollar amount 40 years later?

Almost anything “digital” or computer oriented.

Less, actually. I remember paying $1000 for a 1Gig hard drive ca. ’95. Now 1TB goes for $100.

As for the music, the manufacturing and distribution costs are somewhat lower with the download, so there’s that.

Also, I always rather liked B-sides.

A couple of years ago, one of my favorite bands released a full album of ‘b-sides’ – all the songs they thought weren’t good enough for the previous album. The b-sides album is better than anything else they’ve produced in the past ten years.

The music industry made the transformation several years ago, when they found CDs were being pirated and downloaded for free. Now, songs can be purchased for less than $1.00 which is changing the meaning of hit singles

This is so different from when I was 12 and bought 45s at the drug store for 99 cents. Granted, that was 1970 money, but…

Eff you all. I bought the Jefferson Hairpie’s first vinyl LP for $3.79, in ’67 when it first came out. Might’ve been on sale, but it was a time before LPs hit $5.00.

Feh.

The douchebags who ran the recording industry were specifically warned back in ’94 about what was coming. By geeks employed on the retail side. It was suggested that the recording industry might look into changing their business model. Their reaction was pretty much, “Fuck that! We’ll just get Congress to pass a bunch of laws making it illegal and throw heir asses in jail. Or sue ’em.”

Corporate oligopolies don’t really want regulation of “The Free Market” to end, they just want the authority passed from the government to them.

ugh, i only wish california had half the dependability of a timex watch.

my dear little department at one of the better-regarded CSU schools just found out LAST WEEK that EIGHT of our fall classes are not going to be funded. the music department here just found out that they have to let all their lecturers go, so there will be NO private lessons for any instrument next semester. for music majors. no private lessons.

my union just voted to direct our bargaining representative to pursue mandatory furloughs instead of layoffs, but we just might get both.

my last day of work is tuesday; i have a planned one month layoff, but there’s a chance that i won’t actually be reappointed.

my state is melting down. there’s no end in sight. i’m tired of seeing my department chair in tears.

my housemate wants to get trained as a volunteer HIV counselor, but he can’t because there’s no money. poor kids are losing their health insurance, AIDS patients aren’t going to get their drugs, we’re closing state parks, it is a mess.

my personal net worth is a decidedly negative number at this time, but i would throw some of my student loan money toward one way plane tickets to somalia for all those assholes who propagate the myth that taxes are unnecessary evils forced upon us by the evil big government.

sarah: unfortunately, at the rate the state is going, you won’t need a ticket to Somalia to experience, well, Somalia. Thanks a lot, Governator. My brother’s old boss also ran for Gov. in that election, billing himself as a “law school president/bounty hunter,” and for 2 cents I’d hop in a handy time machine and make sure he got elected — he could hardly have done worse.

All students can engage by texting their answers to teachers’ discussion questions for a quick progress monitor.

Once again proving that the inability to write clearly reflects the inability to think clearly. Is this even English? “Can engage” what? Is a “quick progress monitor” like a hall monitor?

“When I was a kid (Pleistocene era) 45rpm singles were 79 cents, just what I could afford with my babysitting money. I remember the shock when they hit $1, around, oh, 1969 or so. And in 2009, iTunes sells HIT SINGLES for 99 cents. What else sells for the same dollar amount 40 years later?”

Something that costs a great deal less to produce 40 years later. Studios used to be few and far between, and studio equipment was incredibly specialized and expensive. Now you can probably get a more sophisticated recording experience using a $200 microphone and a Macbook.

@TEOTD SIHTH, MKAY? SIS. SOTMG! *

I don’t know what that means. 🙁

yeah. schwarzenegger’s done a great job ruining california. but there’s enough blame to go around: the voters who approved prop 13 laid the groundwork for the destruction of our educational system, whichever idiots wrote the 2/3 budget approval requirement, the republicans who are adhering to the party line and refusing to raise taxes ever for any reason, the howard jarvis taxpayers association assholes who are finally seeing the return on their investment, our initiative system that essentially asks voters, “who wants a pony?!? raise your hand if you want a pony!!!” every few years, and then locks the state into paying pony fees…

i got an email today from my union informing me that, although the state is projected to start issuing IOUs instead of paychecks to state employees effective july 2, CSU employees will actually be paid.

which is cool. but i think i’d appreciate it more if i wasn’t going to be laid-off-and-potentially-not-rehired on tuesday.

“The Mainstream Media is struggling. Like California, they are going to have to reinvent themselves in order to survive in a digital world. Many New Media writers have long recognized the internet for what it is, a vast compilation of real time news and commentary. If the mainstream papers take a bailout, they will be compromising their credibility…”

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