twostoned

That's an epic and terrible story. I'm sorry and horrified you had to experience that :$

I agree with this. I am wondering if boat is an abstract class and ship is an implementation.

LOL Lars is that you?

This is amazing. When I was younger I used to write bands that I love. I'd contact them with praise, or asking with help on chord progressions, and never received anything back.

One day I mailed an indie band from Canada and told them how much I loved their record and how incredible it was. I received an email back saying thanks that was signed with a name that I didn't recognize. I looked at their website and it was their drummer. I loved it. One of the very happy moments in my musical journey.

I need to block attention hacking features also, have been thinking about this recently. Stupid youtube.

I love that your mom is a VIM users. That caught me off guard and I lol'd. My mom: not a vim user (or emacs for that matter)

Wow, great post. This is all very interesting, I love music history. Do you have any recommendations of good books on the subject of evolution of music, notation, compositions etc?

I'm on your side mate. Everyone seems to think people like us are nuts. Only time will tell what side of history we were on. Be the change you want to see in the world and all that. Big faceless corporations make me uncomfortable in general; having their tentacles in my home, with my family, makes me even more uncomfortable. Don't pitch me any nonsense about trying to provide me with a service because that's absurd: you literally have to use technology to be a part of modern society. There's no option. I don't care if people think I'm a wacko for being privacy conscious, I think they're wacko for the opposite. Even if there is no future horrible implications of the surveillance state, which is hard to imagine, I think just trying to exist without having every micro detail of my life profiled by what seems like every mega international on the planet is a worthwhile ambition.

I got carried away and rambling but I mean, come on. Mouse movements? Really? I suppose you have to give them credit they are creative in a very perverted sense.

Based on the discussion in this thread doing such a thing seems relatively easy.

Obligatory Orwell:

“The most gifted of [the Proletariate], who might possibly become a nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated.”

I don't think you're being too harsh. There's a weird sort of subtle trolling that goes on on online discussions to the point that I don't much engage in online communities. I don't think it's trolling in the sense that people don't consciously do it; they're just negative: "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE!!"

Internet discussion has become very toxic (well, perhaps it always has been). The other day I was on IRC and asked a question about Eclipse which was doing some quirky things that I didn't know how to disable and one of the people in the chat (not a huge open freenode chat but the chat of a smaller, private community) responded "Java is horrible" or something along those lines. I hadn't even mentioned that I was writing Java! What's funny is that I can't imagine anyone responding in this way were it an in-person conversation. You get much more "I don't care much for Java" or even "What are you using Eclipse for?"

I guess because if you're a nasty person AFK people will avoid you and you do face the risk of some social ostracization. However, with the internet, it's harder to prune these people from your social circle.

It was me. I made a fortune.

Yes. The debate is gone. Young people have a much different view of 'ownership' (I struggled for a better word) than older people. For example, I remember the copyright, file sharing, music piracy arguments and debates from the 90s (Metallica, Napster! Hah) and 00s. But when I talk about this stuff now with people in their early 20s there seems to be less awareness. DRM & 'Stream everything' are the way it is, as if its some kind of inevitability. The concept of actually owning, or possessing, something (even if its a byte stream on a physical hard drive in your house) seems to be disappearing. It's interesting to watch.

I think the most interesting part is the lack of discussion.

Yes and working on cars is a heck of a lot of fun as a result. Car modding and tinkering is a huge hobby and from what I can tell only supports these brands and the OEM sales. You need a Chevy in the first place to outfit it with 3rd party high perf parts. Something will break as a result and you'll be back buying more parts and investing even more in the GM/Chevy ecosystem. It's the opposite of how record labels try to attack music 'pirates' who also tend to spend more on music too. (Perhaps their love of music is what correlates high piracy and high purchasing? Hmm)

It adds to the romanticism and involvement. The original GT40 Le Mans car from the 60s that originally beat Ferrari was built from parts that you could go to your local Ford dealer and order. Maybe I'm wrong but I think that if you had enough money at the time you could actually buy all of the parts to build the same .427 they were using in the professional races. Pretty cool.

Best summary that I've seen thus far.