From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #204 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, May 15 2007 Volume 16 : Number 204 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: What about them CD thingies? ["Lauren Elizabeth" ] Re: the material world [kevin ] Re: the material world [Benjamin Lukoff ] Re: the material world [Capuchin ] maybe there is a God [Christopher Gross ] Re: the material world [2fs ] Re: data mass [Rex ] Re: What about them CD thingies? [Rex ] Re: What about them CD thingies? ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: What about them CD thingies? [Rex ] Re: the material world [Rex ] Re: Melt Banana to Support TOOL? ["Stacked Crooked" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 15:16:52 -0400 From: "Lauren Elizabeth" Subject: Re: What about them CD thingies? 2fs says: > On 5/15/07, David Witzany wrote: > > > > About those O-sleeves: I check to see if they have any content that's not > > part of the regular CD packaging. They almost never do, in which case I > > just toss 'em. The only exception is for multi-disc sets, like the complete > > Beethoven symphonies and such. (I own the Magnetic Fields' _i_ but didn't > > save the O-sleeve; what essentiality have I lost?) > > > The entirety of the artistic concept of the sleeve's design, in that case. jeff 2fs: is this the 0-sleeve: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0001NNL8O/ref=dp_image_text_0/104-8458211-2127155?ie=UTF8&n=5174&s=music does it have a cut-out where the "i" is? i can't remember. it seems weird that i would have gotten rid of the particular one, but i was moving and i made some really weird decisions about what to throw out. i'm a collector at heart but that's really started to bite me in the ass in the past few years, so i'm trying to reform myself a wee** bit. i would probably be most content with some textbooks and some notebooks, but even as i'm writing my minimal list, i'm adding to it (letters, computer, coloured pencils, cds, novels, photographs, camera, at least three black shoes, low-top converse...) xo ** i am in love with how maggie on "extras" says "wee." i think that's the first time i personally have used the wod. - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 15:18:18 -0400 From: "Lauren Elizabeth" Subject: Re: What about them CD thingies? i say: > camera, at least three black shoes, low-top converse...) you know i mean pairs, but oh well, it's funnier as is. xo - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 14:30:08 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: What about them CD thingies? On 5/15/07, Lauren Elizabeth wrote: > > 2fs says: > > On 5/15/07, David Witzany wrote: > > > > > > About those O-sleeves: I check to see if they have any content that's > not > > > part of the regular CD packaging. They almost never do, in which case > I > > > just toss 'em. The only exception is for multi-disc sets, like the > complete > > > Beethoven symphonies and such. (I own the Magnetic Fields' _i_ but > didn't > > > save the O-sleeve; what essentiality have I lost?) > > > > > > The entirety of the artistic concept of the sleeve's design, in that > case. > > jeff 2fs: is this the 0-sleeve: > > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0001NNL8O/ref=dp_image_text_0/104-8458211-2127155?ie=UTF8&n=5174&s=music > > does it have a cut-out where the "i" is? i can't remember. Yes. So what you see in that image, behind the "i," is in fact the insert that goes in the jewelcase. In other words, the O-card looks like the image you see in Lauren's link, but remove the O-card, and the entire front cover is the design you see inside that "i" shape. As I said: lose the O-card, lose the whole design concept. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 16:26:26 -0400 (EDT) From: kevin Subject: Re: the material world >Obviously things are changing: I'm just unwilling to sound the death knell >for all physical media, at least not for me and not for the world either. > But the lure of the physical object will never go away entirely. Archaeologists, collectors/completists/fetishists, the accumulators of momentoes & souvenirs - some of us just like stuff. It's like the inverse of the memory palace - the things you surround yourself with become a code that evokes (invokes?) the stuff occupying the virtual theater inside the skull. I've got heaps of books, old magazines, LPs, cassettes viseo & audio, DVDs, old 45s and whatnot cluttering up my place, and I know I'm not the only dinosaur on the planet. Friend of mine in LA who's a Jolson fan still maintains a stash of 78s going back the the turn of the last century and even a few quaint, antique Edison cylinders. So the little shiny discs may not be in the mainstream but there'll always be some kind of market, and somebody willing to service it for a few bucks...and when the real crash happens, all that old vinyl may be the only medium that still works - if you can get your hands on a working hand-cranked Victrola, that is. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 15:01:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: the material world On Tue, 15 May 2007, kevin wrote: > >Obviously things are changing: I'm just unwilling to sound the death knell > >for all physical media, at least not for me and not for the world either. > > > > But the lure of the physical object will never go away entirely. > Archaeologists, collectors/completists/fetishists, the accumulators of > momentoes & souvenirs - some of us just like stuff. It's like the > inverse of the memory palace - the things you surround yourself with > become a code that evokes (invokes?) the stuff occupying the virtual > theater inside the skull. I've got heaps of books, old magazines, LPs, > cassettes viseo & audio, DVDs, old 45s and whatnot cluttering up my > place, and I know I'm not the only dinosaur on the planet. Friend of > mine in LA who's a Jolson fan still maintains a stash of 78s going back > the the turn of the last century and even a few quaint, antique Edison > cylinders. So the little shiny discs may not be in the mainstream but > there'll always be some kind of market, and somebody willing to service > it for a few bucks...and when the real crash happens, all that old vinyl > may be the only medium that still works - if you can get your hands on a > worki! > ng hand-cranked Victrola, that is. From a recent articleo n the future of the book in the Economist: Books are not primarily artefacts, nor necessarily vehicles for ideas. Rather, as Mr Godin puts it, they are "souvenirs of the way we felt" when we read something. That is something that people are likely to go on buying. http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RRRTQQG ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 15:24:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: the material world On Tue, 15 May 2007, 2fs wrote: > But again, you're forgetting the time and labor costs of finding them > and giving them even rudimentary organization. For example: I am in the > process of downloading a certain album on a major label (because I've > decided that in most cases I don't want to buy m.l. product anymore). > Granted, it's a fairly easy-to-find item, and it didn't take me long to > find a high-res version, but it's slowish downloading (seems to be more > on their end than on mine in this case). Once they're here, I need to > load them onto iTunes. Minor investments, yes...but multiply by a large > number of discs, and it's a significant load. OK, so here's another place where my tiny bit of technical savvy makes all this stuff seem like you're going the wrong way about it. My home computer is online all the time. I can (and sometimes do) run a service (a permanent background program) that reads RSS "news" feeds from torrent sites and looks for new torrents matching whatever criteria I like. If a torrent matches, it's handed to my torrent client and downloaded and seeded for others to download. If there's ever some reason to duplicate my record collection in another format (that contains more information than the one I have -- so I can't simply convert my old stuff), I can just tell this software to read from my record collection database and re-grab everything there. As stuff comes in, I can cross it off the list. All this happens with no intervention from me and I can just go on using whatever copy I've got mostly oblivious to which format it's in. I can grab track listings from the various online databases and compare them and then run them through a filter to make sure the filenaming and punctuation/capitalization conventions of my particular collection are followed. Again, this can be done with little programs, so I don't have to put in all that effort. > I'm still suspicious of whether these things *will* in fact remain "out > there" for everyone. There will still be rarity and, effectively, > absence: if only 100 people on the planet own a particular title, for > you to get that, you and one of those people have to be online at the > same time. I don't know if I have anything that only 100 people on the planet have. > That math I can't quite do, sorry: but at some point, if you really want > that title, it will probably occur to you, oh wait, I can go to the CD > store (or the used CD store: my other alternative re major-label > releases, btw) and buy the damned thing for less investment than waiting > around for you and one of Persons 1-100 to be online when you are so you > can download. It's not like you have to sit around waiting for it. It just shows up one day. > I downloaded a relatively unpopular torrent I'd found looking for a > particular artist; it took several days to come through, because very > few people were interested in it (apparently) and so it was very > narrowly distributed. If I were trying to do that with a whole buncha > titles, I'm sure I'd lack patience to wait... Patience is a virtue, sure. Are you still seeding that record that took you so long to get? You can prevent someone else from having to wait so long. I try to seed back at least two copies of everything I download (sometimes much, much more). For things that are either quite rare or I really want to make sure stay available for some other reason (like the seven full-season Buffy torrents on thepiratebay.org), I keep the torrents around forever, but stopped in my client. If I ever see the number of seeders drop to an unreasonably low number, I'll queue up that torrent again. I could probably automate that, too, but it hasn't been a serious issue. > Then, if my circumstances were such that I simply didn't *have* space to > store music in physical media and I couldn't afford to buy it, I'd > certainly see the light there. And in fact, I'm spending a lot less on > music now than I used to: legitimate, quasi-legitimate, and not-so-legit > downloads do take up more of my collection (and therefore, my time - > obviating the need to buy new physical media, to a degree) than they > used to, and that percentage has been rising steadily. That's what happened with me... then the balance completely tipped. And today, the only physical media I buy is from local artists at shows (or the occassional CDBaby purchase when I couldn't make it to the show). I haven't touched any of my CDs in months. When the amp blew out on the minisystem I was using in my living room, I gave the system to a friend and bought an amp on craigslist. No more CD player in the living room. I have a handful of minidiscs that I haven't bothered to convert, but I will be doing that before I move to NOLA and won't be taking any MD stuff with me at all. It'll be the amp, the Audiotron (an MP3 player that reads network shared storage), and the turntable. > Obviously things are changing: I'm just unwilling to sound the death > knell for all physical media, at least not for me and not for the world > either. Oh, no no no. As has been written, there will always be collectors. In fact, that's why it's OK to get rid of stuff... because somewhere there's a collector who is making sure it survives. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 18:36:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: maybe there is a God Just a week ago, the late Jerry Falwell told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that he was praying for another 20 years of life to complete his work. I doubt anyone has ever seen a clearer example of God answering a prayer. (Go to http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/15/jerry.falwell/index.html and scroll to the bottom.) - --Chris "sometimes the answer is 'no'" the Snarkster ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 18:32:02 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: the material world On 5/15/07, Capuchin wrote: > > On Tue, 15 May 2007, 2fs wrote: > > But again, you're forgetting the time and labor costs of finding them > > and giving them even rudimentary organization. For example: I am in the > > process of downloading a certain album on a major label (because I've > > decided that in most cases I don't want to buy m.l. product anymore). > > Granted, it's a fairly easy-to-find item, and it didn't take me long to > > find a high-res version, but it's slowish downloading (seems to be more > > on their end than on mine in this case). Once they're here, I need to > > load them onto iTunes. Minor investments, yes...but multiply by a large > > number of discs, and it's a significant load. > > OK, so here's another place where my tiny bit of technical savvy makes all > this stuff seem like you're going the wrong way about it. Well, the setup you describe really wouldn't work for me, for various reasons - but chiefly, I just don't feel comfortable automating all that stuff. If I just wanted music to come to me, based on criteria I loosely define, I'd just run something like one of the "radio" stations at last.fm. But it's fine that it works for you: I just prefer to retain more control over and awareness of my music. > > > I'm still suspicious of whether these things *will* in fact remain "out > > there" for everyone. There will still be rarity and, effectively, > > absence: if only 100 people on the planet own a particular title, for > > you to get that, you and one of those people have to be online at the > > same time. > > I don't know if I have anything that only 100 people on the planet have. I think you'd be surprised: some friends of mine run a very small record company, and even artists with a fair degree of cult status sometimes sell only a few hundred copies. Or, to compare: in the latest Harper's Index, it's noted that of nearly 1.5 million different book titles sold in the US last year, more than 1.1 million of them sold fewer than 99 copies. I suspect some of the more limited-release Robyn stuff (like Robyn Sings maybe) have sold only a few hundred copies. I could be wrong - but I wouldn't be surprised, either. > That math I can't quite do, sorry: but at some point, if you really want > > that title, it will probably occur to you, oh wait, I can go to the CD > > store (or the used CD store: my other alternative re major-label > > releases, btw) and buy the damned thing for less investment than waiting > > around for you and one of Persons 1-100 to be online when you are so you > > can download. > > It's not like you have to sit around waiting for it. It just shows up one > day. While I enjoy the similar sort of surprise factor in the way lala.com works (I've told it a few hudnred used CDs I want, but which one comes next is a mystery, more or less), I'm more willful and impatient than that: if the new album by Artist X is out and I want it, I probably don't want to wait until it randomly shows up. Even if it's super-obscure. But again: that's me. I don't think either of us is arguing that our model is the best or only way to do things; only that, since each of us (and everyone else) has our own reasons why we prefer our model, that model is likely to persist, or at least something similar. > I downloaded a relatively unpopular torrent I'd found looking for a > > particular artist; it took several days to come through, because very > > few people were interested in it (apparently) and so it was very > > narrowly distributed. If I were trying to do that with a whole buncha > > titles, I'm sure I'd lack patience to wait... > > Patience is a virtue, sure. Are you still seeding that record that took > you so long to get? You can prevent someone else from having to wait so > long. Well, yeah, sure - but it's still only one more copy. I'm not complaining: I understand that more popular torrents are, by that fact, going to be more broadly distributed and therefore in most cases quicker to load - but again with my impatience... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 17:17:51 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: data mass On 5/15/07, 2fs wrote: > > On 5/15/07, David Stovall wrote: > > > > . > > > > Now, this doesn't mean it's not just STOOPID of me to keep accumulating > > all this material at a rate faster than I can ever hope to effectively > > listen to it all,.... The days don't need to double in time, if you can just learn to function without sleep. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 17:22:31 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: What about them CD thingies? On 5/15/07, Lauren Elizabeth wrote: > > i say: > > camera, at least three black shoes, low-top converse...) > > you know i mean pairs, but oh well, it's funnier as is. The best typo in that post, though, was "i think that's the first time i personally have used the wod". I want to invent something for which "personally used the wod" might be a euphemism, but I don't feel cool enough. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 20:32:17 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: What about them CD thingies? Lauren Elizabeth wrote: > 2fs says: >> On 5/15/07, David Witzany wrote: >> > >> > About those O-sleeves: I check to see if they have any content >> that's not >> > part of the regular CD packaging. They almost never do, in which >> case I >> > just toss 'em. The only exception is for multi-disc sets, like the >> complete >> > Beethoven symphonies and such. (I own the Magnetic Fields' _i_ but >> didn't >> > save the O-sleeve; what essentiality have I lost?) >> >> >> The entirety of the artistic concept of the sleeve's design, in that >> case. > > jeff 2fs: is this the 0-sleeve: > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0001NNL8O/ref=dp_image_text_0/104-8458211-2127155?ie=UTF8&n=5174&s=music > > > does it have a cut-out where the "i" is? i can't remember. > > it seems weird that i would have gotten rid of the particular one, but > i was moving and i made some really weird decisions about what to > throw out. i'm a collector at heart but that's really started to bite > me in the ass in the past few years, so i'm trying to reform myself a > wee** bit. i would probably be most content with some textbooks and > some notebooks, but even as i'm writing my minimal list, i'm adding to > it (letters, computer, coloured pencils, cds, novels, photographs, > camera, at least three black shoes, low-top converse...) > > xo > > ** i am in love with how maggie on "extras" says "wee." i think > that's the first time i personally have used the wod. whats your favourite word dearie is it wee I hope its wee wees such a nice wee word like a wee hairy dog with two wee eyes such a nice wee word to play with dearie you can say it quickly with a wee smile and a wee glance to the side or you can say it slowly dearie with your mouth a wee bit open and a wee sigh dearie a wee sigh put your wee head on my shoulder dearie oh my a great wee word and Scottish it makes you proud. -- The Voyeur, by Tom Leonard ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 17:26:39 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: What about them CD thingies? On 5/15/07, 2fs wrote: > > > > As I said: lose the O-card, lose the whole design concept. cf. the blue jewel case on Lou's "Set the Twilight Reeling", the artwork to which is unrecognizeable without it. You know, for better or worse... nobody said the design concept had to be "good". I think I missed the point where the term "o-card" was introduced into this thread... is it a standard term, and just based on the fact that the sleeve is closed? Because it's not that o-like... I would tend to think of it more as a "backless slip-cover". - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 17:50:35 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: the material world On 5/15/07, Capuchin wrote: > > > I don't know if I have anything that only 100 people on the planet have. All that is is a clear indicator that you are not a musician or sound recordist of any kind; we're constantly piling up unique discs of demos (ours and others'), potential album sequences, session roughs and the like. And then there's personal mix discs made for me by friends... and the safety copies of the ones I've made for friends... I have a lot of unique, if completely undesireable, material. > Oh, no no no. As has been written, there will always be collectors. In > fact, that's why it's OK to get rid of stuff... because somewhere there's > a collector who is making sure it survives. So the Great Feggy Divide may be between those who believe that the Holy EMP is coming (Victrola hoarders) and those who don't. I think the real money is going to be in selling monkeys trained to crank the things. > But again: that's me. I don't think either of us is arguing that our model > is the best or only way to do things; only that, since each of us (and > everyone else) has our own reasons why we prefer our model, that model is > likely to persist, or at least something similar. I'm so mystified by why people do half of the stuff they do that I'm not assuming my model of anything is likely to persist. BTW, I'd assume that "Robyn Sings" sold at least 1000 copies worldwide. Probably way more; it got reviews all over the place and was easy for anyone anywhere to order, beyond which I'm sure there are at least that many Dylanophiles who like to have as many Dylan covers as they can, so it actually has interest beyond Robyn's fanbase. It would be kind of interesting to see a sales comparison among Robyn's non-retail releases (SFB, RS, OP, S3)... interesting to me, anyway... - -Rex - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 18:05:19 -0700 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: Re: Melt Banana to Support TOOL? i think he's about run his course. as i see it, he reached his zenith with *Lone Star*, and has been in steady, if gradual, decline since: - -- *Men With Guns*: very good, but not as good as *Lone Star*. - -- *Limbo*: quite good, but not as good as *Men With Guns*. - -- *Sunshine State*: pretty good, but not as good as *Limbo*. - -- *Casa De Los Babys*: i must confess to never having seen it. but for the purposes of this argument, let's assume that it was fair-to-middling, but not as good as *Sunshine State*. - -- *Silver City*: suckage. ass-sucking of the type i never dreamt i'd see from him. (but then, i never dreamt i'd see ass-suckage from the coens as ass-sucking as the likes of their two latest ass-suck-ed offerings...) a few years ago i had some decent success selling laserdiscs via craigslist (for what it's worth). i'm aware that everyone on this board loves to hate the book/folder thingies; but i must confess to being smitten by them. i mean, if you're eb, and you've got 10,000 CDs (or whatever it is), the prospect of putting them all into books can sound more than a little daunting. but if you're under 1,000, i think it'd be worth your effort. saves an incredible amount of space. funny you should mention that, as i was kinda surprised that woj didn't remove that post from the queue, for just that very reason. says the man who lost the entire robyn hitchcock lyrics archive even though backed-up in not one, but two, different places! not to say that i don't do the same thing you do, of course... you may (or may not) be thinking of my having argued that we're at peak energy, and thus, peak infrastructure, right now; and that therefore any further technological leaps are not too likely. this was a response, though, to your having tabbed *movies* to in future be readily available for near-instantaneous download; so maybe you're thinking of a whole other discussion? but that's only about five years' time distant. perhaps even much sooner. see e.g., from : >>In particular, Saudi oil production has been falling with increasing speeed since summer 2005, and overall, since mid 2004, about 2 million barrels of oil per day in production has gone missing (about 1mbpd in reduction in total production, and about another 1mbpd in that two major new projects, Qatif and Haradh III, failed to increase overall production). That's 2.5% of world production and, if that production hadn't gone missing, gasoline in the US likely would still be somewhere in the vicinity of $2/gallon instead of well over $3.<< and from : >>With temperatures already surging into the 80s and a scorching summer on tap, many Massachusetts communities could face a spike in blackouts -- and possibly even explosions -- from thousands of potentially dangerous overloaded electrical transformers. Documents obtained by the Herald show more than 12,000 transformers from Attleboro to Ayer are operating at above 200 percent capacity, with some as high as 900 percent over design standards. Union officials, who last night reached an agreement in contract talks with National Grid, say the overloads are pushing the states electrical system to the brink and could lead to widespread blackouts this summer.<< well, there's a pretty big difference between not seeing *any* value and not seeing $18.98 (or whatever the going rate is) value. i like to get discs from the library, even when i've already downloaded the music, to check out the packaging. but once i've looked through it, that's enough for me -- no need to keep a reference copy to hand. will do it for you. wikipedia is damned good substitute, in my opinion. i haven't done a study of it or anything, but my experience is that it's easier to find rarities via bittorrent that to find them (especially at a decent price) used. anyway, there's no real harm in waiting around. i was looking for a DVD of *Urgh! A Music War* a few years back, and couldn't find anything. i had more less forgotten about it, but then saw a reference to it a few days ago, had a notion, went looking, and in about twenty seconds' time found a very healthily seeded torrent. i never died, or anything, in the interim. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #204 ********************************