Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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Music, ah, music
[Read the article: Zune 2.0: Microsoft's new line of music players]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not that 99 cents is a lot for one song, perhaps, but it certainly is cheaper than a 5 to 20 dollar used or new CD.
Anonymous,
This is true, of course. It all depends whether you are wanting to build a collection of digital music, or just to listen to the latest hit songs.
I tend towards building a collection of the best recordings of every genre of music since hi-fi came along in the early 50's, because once you have your digital recordings, you and your heirs have that music for ever and it will not deteriorate like the old 78s that sat in my father's attic.
If you just want a few popular songs and you are honest enough not to just record them off Internet radio, then $1 is not a lot to pay. If you want hundreds of hours of music to use as background at work or when driving without repeating the same music often enough to get tired of it, then $1 per track is a huge amount.
My Gigabeat currently contains 65 playlists that last at least one hour, three more playlists that have 300 songs each, 70 CD albums, about 120 radio shows of 1 to 2 hours duration,and a dozen full length sound tracks of musicals and movies.
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What the hell?
[Read the article: My Christian daughter says I'm going to hell]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to agree with Michael Huggins here. What Cary proposes absolutely will not work, because churches that teach kids that non adherents are hellbound don't go in for rational discussions and exchanges of views. Oh, no! It is all emotion, high pressure sales, and forcing you to see it their way. They will not hesitate to tear your family apart, to turn daughter against father, if they get the chance. That is how this situation came about in the first place.
Of course you don't want to aggressively attack your daughter's views, especially if her religious faith is important to her, but she is going to have no scruples about condemning you for your lack of religious faith.
I think the only thing to do is to deflect her religiosity with good humor and tell her that someday she will probably understand that religion and belief is much more complex than she knows.
This won't produce an instant solution, but face it, if she grows up to be a religious fanatic, you aren't going to get along anyway.
Of course, if you want to go deeper, you might consider that her adoption of the Father Above is a means of compensating for a lack of a father at home.
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Yes. but...
[Read the article: Help pay the RIAA defendant's downloading fine]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... as far as I can make out from reports of this prosecution, she did not just download songs illegally, but was also involved in distributing them on to other people.
She may not have been making any money out of this herself, but her role in distribution is more than likely the reason why she was prosecuted. She also made the mistake of trading in very popular (I think) songs by contemporary artists.
There is a difference between that and downloading content that is available to listeners on Internet radio or over-the-air radio for your personal use so that you can listen to it when you are on the road or away from your computer. Still illegal maybe, but at least the artist is receiving some kind of payment or promotional value at the point of original broadcasting.
Of course thousands, or millions, of people are doing the same thing ( illicit file sharing), but I am sure that a sample prosecution will have a deterrent effect on thousands, if not millions, which is surely the whole point. It is not about the $9000 per song.
It would certainly be interesting to know whether someone who sells bootleg CDs in a flea market or copies a neighbor's CD onto their computer would face similar penalties. Probably not, but then their activities are not taking place in a highly-organized worldwide public forum.
In any case reports of this case will make a lot of people think twice about illegal downloading and/or trading music, knowing that it could blight their present or future careers.
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And also...
[Read the article: Help pay the RIAA defendant's downloading fine]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... I pointed out to my stepson several years ago when Napster was at its peak of popularity that I did not want him downloading copyright music onto my computer precisely because I didn't want to deal with the possibility, no matter how remotely improbable, of the type of possible repercussions that Jammie Thomas has run into.
I guess I was before my time by a few years, but the warnings were always out there if you wanted to listen to them.
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Cheating...
[Read the article: I'm cheating on my husband and loving it. Is that a problem?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here].... interesting thing here is the concept of "cheating".
I have often, in my wicked past, had sex with women who were not my primary legal partner at the time, but when that occurred it was always for its own sake--for sex, for lust, for passion, or whatever--not out of a desire to hurt the primary partner.
Now the LW starts right off by saying "I am a cheater". This seems to me to suggest that the extamarital sex is not sui generis--just a pleasurable interlude between the two sexual partners-- but for the purpose of cheating, deceiving, or injuring the husband.
She could say that she is incapable, despite her best efforts, of remaining sexually faithful because she craves sexual novelty, but that is not what she says. She says she is a cheater.
This seems to me to be the crux of the matter.
I have no idea what advice to offer. Practice safe sex, obviously. Maybe this behavior will eventually burn out.
I could make a guess that the fact of being found sexually desirable by other men is a boost to the ego of the LW and something that gives her a high, but that would be a guess.
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Getting out of the marriage...
[Read the article: I'm cheating on my husband and loving it. Is that a problem?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... those who advise the LW to get out of the marriage are missing the essential paradox of the situation.
SHE ENJOYS CHEATING! She does not want to be single and screw around, she wants to be in a relationship and screw around.