DarrenKitchen.net

Music, High School, and Star Trek. 3 for the price of one!

Posted on February 28th, 2005 | by admin |

I feel like an ADD kid in a candy store today (no offense Ali), except I’m not ADD, and the candy is little news bits. I tried to catch up on some reading since I was AFK most of the weekend. The tabs in Firefox are so small at this point I can only see the little site icon. Why I don’t just close them after reading is beyond me, possibly having to do with my pack rat behavior when it comes to bookmarks.

First up is this little gem found at The Register:

The market for downloaded music is strong enough to take a price rise, according to the major music labels. Several big labels are in talks with online music retailers to get them to increase prices, according to the FT. The labels are looking to increase the wholesale prices shops pay for tracks. Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track, according to the FT. One suggestion is that labels want to introduce variable pricing - so they can charge more for top selling tracks.

My thoughts were completely summed up by a few posts on Slashdot:

TheRaven64 said:

Well they have to raise prices because the cost of manufacturing has… Er… Because they have to hire more employees to handle the purchasing load… Er… Because the Britney Spears needs a new swimming pool for her poodle… yeah!

And Viscun added:

Er… because price collusion is perfectly legal and ethical.

Me? I still think if you’re paying a buck for a ’50 cent’ single you’ve got issues. Maybe you didn’t pay much attention in high school? Which brings me to this find from AP:

The high school summit drew at least 45 governors from the 50 states and five U.S. territories, along with top names in U.S. industry and education. The leaders broke into groups late in the day to debate ideas, and planned to do the same through Sunday.

Bill Gates was around to make the following assessment:

“America’s high schools are obsolete,” Gates said. “By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they’re broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they’re working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.”

I’m not sure about you but to me High School was loaded with fluff, and it hasn’t stopped there. I’m bored and uninspired in college, though that might be because I’m currently in community college, that purgatory between High School Hell, and hopefully fun, interesting, informative classes in University (*crosses fingers*). I know I’m not an exception when I assess my skills that have gotten me where I am today, and try to tie them to instructional classes in school only to realize that most stuff worth learning I’ve learned on my own. My favorite class in HS was Computer Animation, and when I think about the average class it went something like: read tutorial, model gizmo, render, and get check mark. Lather, Rinse, Repeat (Does not lower testosterone). Did I mention mind blowing lectures that change the way you think about 3D space and ray-tracing? Not really. Though Mr. Tatum was a pretty kick ass teacher, most of what I learned was from a book + trial and error. Come to think of it, that’s just about how I learned everything I know today about technology today. Not necessarily in that order though. A lot of the times its try something out, make computer not boot anymore, fiddle with jumper settings, try pressing power button while crossing fingers, read manual. Some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in this field have been from friends and not teachers. Like why it’s a good idea to set your DVD burner to UDMA mode instead of PIO (thus turning an 8x burner into a 1x). Or why Wess shouldn’t format a 20 GB hard drive in FAT instead of FAT32 (thus turning a 20GB hard drive into a 2GB hard drive). The one program that did really spark my interests and get me learning new things was my senior year computer repair class, which promised an A+ certification voucher. The teacher, Nelson Scott, knew his stuff and was from the field. Within the first day we had made the class mascot Tux the penguin. There were about 12 of us, maybe 6 of which cared about the class and 6 that did nothing but slow us down, only taking the course to fill a credit. The instructor let us deviate from the literature, spending a day installing Mandrake Linux on a 486. That was some good learning. Where is that class today? It was discontinued in its second year due to lack of funding, and those A+ Certificate vouchers never saw the light of day. I’m sure the athletics department didn’t have any trouble meeting their yearly budget request though. Oh look, now I’m ranting. I’ll stop. Ooh, look, something shiny! No, wait, it’s just the reflections off the pale skin of a hundred star trek fans rallying for a 5th season of Enterprise in front of Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Thankfully they were kind enough to rally as simply fans, and not fully uniformed trekkies. (Off topic: attention span to red alert: Holy shit, Microsoft Word said I misspelled trekkies and just offered trekkers instead. Uuuuuh….) Anyway, from the article on startrek.com:

Star Trek fans, united in their support for the franchise, have launched a large-scale demonstration this morning in front of the main gates at Paramount Pictures, the studio where the show is produced. Tim Brazeal, head of the fan-run SaveEnterprise effort, was the main person responsible for organizing the demonstration which saw a steady influx of fans taking part, estimates for which range between 120-150 people during the morning portion of the demonstration. Many of the signs revealed the good humor of the fans, with slogans such as: “Trek’s Not Just a Show, It’s a Responsibility,” “WWKD (What Would Kirk Do?),” “Bush is a Hologram,” “Nielsen Schmielson” and the more straightforward ones such as “Keep Enterprise Alive,” “Save Star Trek,” “We are Star Trek: Enterprise’s Extended Family, We’re Here to Support Them!” and “To Boldly Go On”. Other fans at the demonstration had their own take on why Enterprise is essential. “Right now is the number one worst time for this [cancellation] to happen. We really need a quality show like Enterprise on the air. It’s very disturbing when the major popular television shows are things like Fear Factor, Surreal Life, etc,” said fan Marya Banniza regarding the show’s demise

I completely agree with the last fans view. I can’t wait for this Reality TV fad to die. It is just a fad, right? Hopefully Enterprise will see another season, and if so it won’t be the first time a Star Trek show has avoided cancellation. If you tuned out last season because of that whole Xindi war thing, don’t worry its MUCH better this season. The mini-arcs are much easier to digest, the characters are being developed, history is being explained. While the show before wasn’t much better than Voyager, this season is on par with TNG, and I believe if Enterprise gets the chance to live out the full 7 seasons fans will not be disappointed.

Oh, as long as I’m on SciFi, I’ve got to say that this show FireFly is really cool. I like the mixture of western and space opera. The captain gets in more fist fights than Kirk. Now if only he would score with the green aliens… Anyway, since the shows cancellation a movie has been in the works. Hopefully the movie will be good and jump start a new season. Check out the movie site at serenitymovie.com

I was going to rant for a bit about Clinton’s proposed “Count Every Vote Act of 2005”, but this post is getting long enough. Needless to say it’s a good idea, and if your looking for more info ctrl-click here.

Peace

I say rise up in the cafeterias and stab them with your plastic forks!