Jazzhole - Free The Robots

Thank you Shazam iPhone application that identifies songs.>> ^jonny:

I'm digging that music - what is it?

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by jonny.

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by chicchorea. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=

...seeing double...

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Interior-Decoration-with-2-Projectors

For the most part she is just doing some variations on the traditional melody and throwing a LOT of melismas for decoration. Unfortunately she started in a key that was too low for her voice which doesn't allow her to sing the lowest note of the tune and is forced to sing a higher note. (the third of the chord instead of the root) The opening notes are a good example of this and it makes it hard to recognize the melody since she's not singing the complete major triad that starts off the tune. That's the only thing really different in her version but since it's the very beginning of the piece, and it is so recognizable, people listen for it to establish the key and sing along. Other than that she's young and inexperienced and may not be formally trained so her teachers should encourage her to continue learning instead of discouraging her. It's very possible that some elderly person was really annoyed by the opening, then became even more annoyed by all of the variation, couldn't sing along, and was so upset by the end that s/he just had to complain. Older people complain about music ALL of the time for various reasons and the best thing to do is tell them you'll change it for next time. Anyways, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant.....

Well my question to this is, is the bandwidth actually as advertised at all hours of the day and do they guarantee it will be available at that rate at all times in the future under the terms of the agreement?

For instance, Time Warner in my area was consistently fast at all hours of the day when I first got it....much better than the DSL I had prior. And it slowly got a little slower...a few more outages a year...more "massive outages"... plus other problems unrelated to speed like them cutting off my net connection because they can't read a street address properly so they killed my net access when they installed my neighbors "business class"...that took me 2 days of calling to straighten out and total of 5 days to fix.

So the conclusion I can draw there is, his business class plus the other subscribers signing up in my loop drastically affected my bandwidth. Yet they claim higher bandwidth offerings with "Roadrunner Boost"...and I've got that...it's almost as fast as my connection was back when I first got it maybe a little better late at night.

So their claim of higher speeds is technically true, only because they've gotten slower. And the minimum speed they offer is pretty appalling although I don't remember it off the top of my head...I think it was like 125 or 250 kbps down.

Killing off non-digital television was supposed to give more bandwidth on the line for better internet speeds and better digital programming, except you have to pay for both...and the internet speeds aren't guaranteed until you step into business class. And for them to guarantee those speeds on a loop they would have to throttle residential users on the same loop.


I am not aware of DSL being improved upon. I know they offer the Fios and what not offerings through some of the phone companies, but they are not offering in this area. And you have to research them to see if they have hidden download caps or other nasty little things in the works to stick on their network to create artificial speed bumps to their own offerings.

Beyond that you'll have to direct to me to the information you speak of.

As for cell phones, I don't use data plans on them, but my parents have a property that has cell towers located on them...and I've been able to catch a couple of the guys and ask them some questions. Even without asking them...there's a screwed up little story related to these towers.

About 10 years back they got hot and heavy about putting in towers, for 3-5 years they were renting lots of land off people and installing these towers. My dad did some work for them paving the roadways, got to know one of the head guys in charge of the project. And while my information is not going to be perfect I know a few things affected their installation and their coverage.

Many of the cities and burbs wouldn't allow them to install towers that would be consider eyesores, in some cases they decorated the towers or put something on them to mask them being a tower...maybe the city name or some kind of design. Many of the "perfect" spots for towers people would not rent the land, so they had to pick imperfect places as close as they could get. So this led to problems with the coverage areas and causes some towers to bear more burden than they should, which Im taking a stab here and saying this really affects big cities network speeds. Within the last 3 years they upgraded the tower on my parents property by installing fiber landlines to the towers, presumably to speed up their network and alleviate some of the congestion.....however....the tower on the property has 2 "boxes" (equipment rooms with racks of network gear and the like) it feeds signals into...and I believe each ring or triangle of receivers transmitters is another cell phone companies signal range...so it services at least 3 networks. Meaning all 3 of those networks shares that one fiber line they installed to the tower unless they have multiple lines in the cable to be split, not very familiar with fiber cable.

Now the weird thing here is...Verizon did the majority of the tower installs I'm familiar with..as soon as they finished all of the towers were taken over by a company called "American Tower". They service the towers, you call them when you see a problem... I called them once about their air conditioner unit running all the time (it has 2 and one was running morning noon and night every time I got close enough to hear it). Two or three months later I thought I'd check to see if they fixed it, I could hear it running as I approached it...and when I got to where I could see it..it was frozen solid. This was in the Fall a year or two back, like 50 degrees or so outside with Winter coming. So they obviously don't pay very close attention to their equipment. AC failing in the summer means their shit cooks, and engineer said stuff in there is easily 100 grand worth of equipment.

So what I gather is, Verizon sold the towers, and rents from them....and now the other carriers rent from them. American Tower is in charge of maintaining the property and the building, but probably not the equipment since I see the various company engineers show up from time to time. They also provide power generators, there's a diesel powered unit that sits near these buildings and turns on from time to time.

I was also told the height of a tower limits it's usefulness. The tall towers can host more companies various signals versus the short towers. So For some reason they put in a bunch of short towers but they have limited utility and are just as ugly as the tall ones...so I dunno why in the hell they did that.


But for them to offer less congestion and higher speeds in high population areas they need more towers so they can break the area up in smaller coverage areas to limit the number of devices hitting any one tower. I have not see them put in a new tower since American Tower took over. I have seen them remove tower locations, probably due to cost of operation/replacement being high due to people hitting them with vehicles or breaking in.

In my opinion, cell phone pricing is a little better than it was but I am not happy with how Verizon handles their plans. For instance, if you want just a voice plan..no data no text. Your phone selection is terrible, I mean basic basic phones...most generally being flip phones with poor external screens and OK internal screens. If you want a better phone, you have to buy a text or data plan. Because if you buy specific types of phones, Verizon assumes you will be using that phone for what they specify that phone is. Take the EnV line of phones, I hate texting, but I like having the keyboard for typing in contacts and just general moderate to heavy usage it's easier to use than a flip phone keying in alternative. If I wanted that phone, I need a texting plan. If you get into smart phones you need a data plan...you can't activate one on your account without the plan. I don't know if the phones need the data plan to even function or not, but texting phones don't need texting plans to function...that's Verizon's plan offerings to maximize their earnings.

And texting in general is cheaper to the phone company than any voice call will ever be. Except texting is almost universally in ADDITION to voice packages....yet texting costs them very little in transfer costs compared to transmitting voice.

I hope some company out there is actually trying to implement new technologies and improve transfer speeds and push down prices. But if they are, they are taking their sweet time doing so...because if it was a big push...the other companies would have to react to that. Right now the only thing I see them all doing is trying to push through contract changes, shutting down government implement ISPs, and influencing laws that help keep us in the stone age.


>> ^deathcow:

> Everything except their networks seems to increase in size and capability, which is an odd thing.
All the ISP's I'm aware of have RADICALLY increased bandwidth and package offerings. It's called survival.

This poor bastage isn't going to hell....he's already there.

Here he is decorating the place.

Interesting, but I disagree with Penn here to a large extent.

I am an atheist, but I don't think anyone should feel like they need to exclude themselves from celebrating Christmas, or any other holiday, out of respect towards those who assign a deeper / broader / different meaning to the day.

For one thing, start with the obvious: there is no indication that the person referred to in the Bible as Jesus, if he existed at all, was born on December 25th. I think that date was assigned at the Council of Nicea in 325AD, and was chosen because it was already celebrated as the winter solstice / birth of Pagan Sun God(s, of which the biblical Jesus could arguably be included amongst). So if secularists "steal" the "deeper meaning" of Christmas from Christians, they aren't doing anything that Christians didn't do to a long history of Pagans.

I think one can easily strike a respectful middle ground without bringing that up though. Celebrate the holiday in whatever way you want, including or excluding any elements you find good or bad. Make it exclusively about being with your family, and abandon the Santa / commercial aspects if you wish. Decorate the house, talk about Santa and Reindeer, and give small or home-made presents if you prefer that. Or explain to your kids that many if not most Christians celebrate the holiday for their own religious reasons, but that you prefer to see it as a time to celebrate the family bond.

Do whatever you want. Don't go out of your way to rub it in anyone's noses, and don't give a second thought to anyone that might tell you that you are somehow perverting or desecrating the "true spirit" of the holiday if they see that your house decorations are conspicuously missing a nativity, or that your list of preferred carols replaces "Silent Night" with "Frosty the Snowman".

There is nothing religious about Christmas tress, well, rather, nothing Christian. If anything, the Christmas tree is about multiculturalism. I don't like Christmas tress personally. I don't like the Catholic guys attitude, he is being defensive and divisive. Even so, he is right, get over it. The key to being multiculturalism is to be exposed to stuff you don't believe in. I think it would be cool if I wish someone a merry Christmas, and then he wishes me a happy kwanzaa or Ramadan or something. That is what we are shooting for I think, not everyone having to leave their faith at home because of the atheist, that hardly seems fair to anyone. Trees and decorations and essentially passive, like any billboard or sign, it can be easily dismissed. The world both of these people want to build, though, frighten me. One wants to build a world of intolerance, and the other, a world of sterile, disingenuous devoid of any true personal expression. Both are a hell of sorts.

@Hive13 says it... it's NOT THEIR FRICKEN HOLIDAY. This bullshit of 'Christmas is because of the birth of Christ' is utter, utter rubbish. The bible makes NO MENTION AT ALL as to the date of the birth of Jesus, it's a Pagan festival, f*ck off Christians with your f*cking holier than though attitude, and the 'meaning of Christmas'. F*ck you whole fricken heartedly.

I LOVE Christmas, it is my favourite time of year. The decorations, the music, the food, the gatherings with family. The magic of Santa with the kids... It is a truly wonderful time. And anyone should be more than free to attach whatever importance they want to the period. And Christians can bugger off with this 'It's our holiday, and if you're celebrating it, then you are celebrating the birth of Jesus'. No we're not, we're celebrating the MUCH more important things of Family, Friends, Joy, Peace, and all round good will.

THAT is what christmas should be about, Peace on Earth and Good Will to All Men. No religion, no preaching, just happiness and magic.

I sing in a choir, and we often have concerts in churches. I never go voluntarily to any kind of service. But even though I am militantly anti-religious, I like being in churches. I enjoy the architecture and decorations, and we have several quite old churches in Norway that are very beautiful. I can find a certain calm in the big church room that I don't find anywhere else.

I can't agree more with your sentiment.

Every year we decorate our Xmas tree with a different "crafty thing" to avoid the urge to spend money on useless (and meaningless) glass baubles.

Last year we made ornaments out of Lego's (that I'd collected through my child-hood and passed onto my son.) It was an awesome tree, mainly because the family made all the ornaments together.
In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
i'm so dead incredibly outrageously fucking broke this year that we're skipping the christmas present part of christmas. i've informed my family that their rich asses can suck it, i'm checking out of going broke buying trinkets for rich people and their children this year so that i can keep my heat on instead.

and i'm thoroughly enjoying the season so far. it's only about baking and making christmas crafts and listening to ella fitzgerald over and over and over with my kids. it's beautiful.

you should all just tell the present part of xmas to suck a dick and make paper snowflakes for 4 weeks instead.

>> ^rottenseed:

Yea of course Christmas was fun and relaxing when you were a kid...you were a KID! Everything is fun and relaxing. While you were kicking your feet up and playing tee-ball, your parents were busting their asses to get you whatever the tickle-me-elmo of that time was.>> ^Hive13:
I absolutely hate people and I absolutely hate Christmas because of people like this. It is fucking disgusting.
I remember when I was a kid Christmas was actually fun, relaxing and exciting. Now we have christmas decorations out in stores in August, people getting trampled for a discount and people acting like selfish, hardheaded assholes. It completely ruins the holidays for me.
I bought televisions for my kids. I could have camped out at 2AM in front of Target, potentially gotten trampled and saved $14. Instead, I ordered them online, in my underwear, and it cost me $14 extra over Target's "super bad-ass trample worthy" price. Free shipping, too.


Black Friday has always been bad, but it steadily has gotten worse over the years. On Black Fridays in my childhood days, stores weren't opening up at 4:00 am and people weren't lined up half way around the mall to get in. There was no news footage of people being trampled because there were no people being trampled. Back when I was I kid, people only got trampled at The Who concerts.


I don't know why it's gotten worse, but it has. I could throw out some half-assed conjectures about people being more desperate to save money these days, or that modern marketing has become so sophisticated and manipulative that we are even bigger mindless consumerists than we ever have been, but I'm sure there's more to it than that. Maybe more perverts have realized that more crowding = more groping. Not that I would know.

>> ^Hive13:

I absolutely hate people and I absolutely hate Christmas because of people like this. It is fucking disgusting.
I remember when I was a kid Christmas was actually fun, relaxing and exciting. Now we have christmas decorations out in stores in August, people getting trampled for a discount and people acting like selfish, hardheaded assholes. It completely ruins the holidays for me.
I bought televisions for my kids. I could have camped out at 2AM in front of Target, potentially gotten trampled and saved $14. Instead, I ordered them online, in my underwear, and it cost me $14 extra over Target's "super bad-ass trample worthy" price. Free shipping, too.


*quality ? yes no ? its my first, im a virgin.

Yea of course Christmas was fun and relaxing when you were a kid...you were a KID! Everything is fun and relaxing. While you were kicking your feet up and playing tee-ball, your parents were busting their asses to get you whatever the tickle-me-elmo of that time was.>> ^Hive13:

I absolutely hate people and I absolutely hate Christmas because of people like this. It is fucking disgusting.
I remember when I was a kid Christmas was actually fun, relaxing and exciting. Now we have christmas decorations out in stores in August, people getting trampled for a discount and people acting like selfish, hardheaded assholes. It completely ruins the holidays for me.
I bought televisions for my kids. I could have camped out at 2AM in front of Target, potentially gotten trampled and saved $14. Instead, I ordered them online, in my underwear, and it cost me $14 extra over Target's "super bad-ass trample worthy" price. Free shipping, too.