big giant circles

I knew someone would. May as well be you. In that case, I'm certainly glad that YOU are not in charge of the decision as to employ that dude as a law enforcement official or not. Also, when it comes to "who cares what people do on their own time as long as they do it professionally?" That might hold true to an extent, but I've had experience in management, and one thing interviews are really looking for is integrity--that is, how people behave when no one is looking, or in this case, when people think their "bosses/company" is not looking. If people like to go out and drink/party but show up and perform their duties professionally, that's fine. However, when someone posts pictures of themselves with demonic imagery and boasting that the blood that they are covered with is "not theirs", do you not think that's crossing the lines of public decency even just a little bit? Or are you really going to honestly tell me that some guy that has surgically implanted fangs is not going to be a detriment to the performance of normal business operation (or law enforcement) on some level? I'll agree with you so far that the level of screening does not need to be unnecessarily strict and that people should be free to "be themselves" within reason. Let's say Joe-Vampire actually did become a cop. His name is printed on the speeding ticket he just wrote you, and for the heck of it, you google it and find his myspace page. Would it not bother you in the least to see the imagery I've described? If not, then bravo to you, but I'm fairly certain that you'd be heavily, heavily outnumbered. Also, taking the flaw in your argument to an extreme, by litereal interpretation of your logic, you're saying it's ok for, say, a pedophile to work at a daycare, so long as he did it on his own time and not at work, and was otherwise completely professional about his duties on the clock. Or are you not? It's like Neko said. You can complain all you like about how it's not fair for jobs to stick their noses into your personal life, and you're right so far as their are laws that prohibit the most important types of discrimination. But you forget that when it comes to posting things on the internet, you are immediately forfeiting that "right to privacy". Even if you posted that picture where you were drunk and humping the horsey ride outside k-mart on your *private* page, there's still the possibility that people that recognize you at work will see it and make associations about you're character, and that can damage business. And businesses have every right to step in at that point.

I feel the same way, but I'm still waiting for someone to bring it up. There's always 2 sides to any argument, no matter how silly one side may seem.

this made me smile because I can relate.

Well, I'm not sure I agree entirely with that last part--that seems a bit over the top for my own personal tastes. I can say that there's plenty of bad that can come from too much addiction to online stuff and not enough planting in the "real world", but your wording makes it sound like it's a robot that's going to turn around and shoot us with lasers when we're not paying attention. As far as people looking up information about you, well, that's a double-edged sword. Obviously there's bad things that can come from it, sure. Identity theft is a pretty good example. Also, these perverts who sit and trick 14 year old girls to come hang out with them--both are pretty not-good results of the online service that instigated them. HOWEVER, is it really bad for employers to want to see what you're like publically to the rest of the world when you're not "clocked in"? A buddy of mine is a police officer. He tells me a story of a guy that had applied to the department. Seemed pretty straight-forward in the interview, told them "I've just alwasy wanted to be in law-enforcement. I admire the people who do it, and I think I'm a responsible individual who can handle it." They concluded the interview and after he left they checked his myspace account. Not only was it laden with all sorts of obseneties, he had tons of pictures of him wearing vampire outfits and other pictures of him covered in "blood" posing with guns in all sorts of maniacal positions. He had also surgically implanted small fangs and had pictures of those (guess they missed those in the interview). The caption to one of the pictures said "Most of this blood ain't mine, hahahahaha." I'm personally really happy that this guy got screened that way, because I'm not entirely sure I'd trust someone like that with authority like deadly force. Online information is a double-edged sword. In many cases, people are just as much to blame themselves for some of the misfortune that befalls them. Yes, I acknowledge that peopld have a right to live how they wish (within legal limits), but if you're going to post things that overstep the boundaries of common sense and common decency then you deserve whatever comes to you that pertains to such. If the 14 year old girl posted pictures of her tits on myspace and it attracted Jed the 46 year old sleezeball, that's partially her fault. If the guy who wants to be a cop has pictures of his self-mutilation and psychotic gun poses online, he's a moron. I guess I'm getting a bit off topic--I'm sure this will inevitably derail the discussion to something like "but that's invasion of privacy! They have no right! What I do on my own time is my own business!" And I have my own beliefs about that too, which I might be happy to discuss if it comes to that. But anyway, I'm going to wrap up for now, because in the spirit of the original message of this thread, I'm spending too much time in it, and not getting anything truly productive done.

I can agree with a lot of it. All things in moderation--generally a good rule to live by, whether it's the internet, games, food, or any hobby/habit. The technology opens up a lot of doors, but there's risks/pitfalls to it as well. Really, it just boils down to self-management I suppose. I'm personally not that huge on jumping around from social network to social network. I'll even go so far to say I'm slightly annoyed that I have to run back and forth between myspace, facebook, and twitter. And those are only three of SEVERAL such sites. However, I use them because there's good things that come from each--I just make a point to not sit down and spend too much time in front of any because for the most part, I don't accomplish ANYTHING, and I always end up looking back on all the time I wasted and thinking about how much of a chump I am for sitting and wasting so much time when I could be working on music or spending time outside or something. There have been a few good points made in this thread, but overall if you know what your boundaries for online social management are and you follow them, then good for you bro. That's something that lots and lots and lots of people cannot say. And this contributes what exactly?

dramarama. The other "right" answer would have been to ignore him and let him learn 1) people skills 2) work ethic and 3) common sense on his own.

Great news guys! Taken from DJP's writeup of http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01831/ So the good news is that over TWICE the people I've got on the list in the OP have actually donated. The bad news is that we've had over 100,000 unique IP hits this month, so there's definitely room for improvement. Keep it up everyone! There's still plenty of time left in the month to reach our goal of $5,000! And at the current rate, I can promise you, we'll do it!

I'll see your Lessig and I'll rais you a Colbert: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/215454/january-08-2009/lawrence-lessig ha HA!!

Man, I still have no idea what you're talking about. Have you been taking your medicine? <3

I don't know what you're talking about.

Is the following in order?

Ha, I didn't know you were working on this. Nice jorb!

Man, this is a pretty cool track. Pretty nice arrangement and partwriting. It's a fairly liberal take on the theme, as Vinnie suggested, but the Halo vibe is definitely here. Now then, that being said, what the HELL is up with the guitar? There is no polite way to say this--it's absolutely atrocious. I mean, it's a GLARING flaw, and I'm really genuinely surprised that you would sub this with the guitar sounding the way it does. It sounds like you put a respectable amount of work into sequencing all the other instruments in a compelling fashion; why would you want to blemish that with such a rigid, fake, and otherwise grating tone? Don't mean to sound, well, mean, but after checking out a few of the tracks on your website (which are pretty cool), I KNOW you can do better than that. Feel free to resubmit it man, this is a really solid base. I might suggest reworking the arrangement a tiny bit to make the "Finish the Fight" theme a bit more prominent. You know what to do, now get to it! NO (also, you know Halo was released before Myst IV, right?)

Well shoot, I guess that means we're going to have to actually buy the stuff we want now... That's really going to screw up the economy!

Happy b-lated b-day!

Happy b-day, Binjovi! Where's his birthday OCR-tan guys???

No, I said it right. Wait, you mean you don't browse the internet standing on your head too? Alright, fine, I'll change it to left.

<3 I like the bit about the change jar, too. I didn't even think of that.

I'm a little disappointed to see that not every post contains this. Ah well, here's to you man, you've always come through on our bdays!

Update: We've had over 1200 registered users visit the site this month. We currently have about 50 people on the list. That's only 4% of this month's visitors donating. Since last April, the site has had over 6,750 registered users visit. In other words, 0.71% of the site's visitors have shown their appreciation monetarily. While I want to make it clear that by no means do we expect any of you to pay for that which we strive to make freely available here, I can only look at the figures which tell me that each person on that list is making a sacrifice for 140+ other registered users to enjoy our site's awesome content. Q: Hey BGC, why do you keep emphasizing registered users? A: Because, that's not even counting the loads and loads of UNREGISTERED guests that pass through here and grab our content. If any of you who are reading this happen to be an unregistered guest and think we have awesome content that we're working hard to make available to you, please consider making a small donation to help ensure our progress! Ask yourselves, even in a poor economy (and considering all the time you've spent here or spent listening to the music here), would you really miss a mere $5 if you misplaced it? What if it was stolen? Would it bring you to your knees and bring your livelihood to ruin or utter hardship? If you are being 100% honest with yourself, and you answered YES, then please, continue to enjoy our free comment, and we are glad to provide it to you. And instead of money, please consider showing your appreciation by reviewing some of the great tracks on here and letting the ReMixers know you appreciate their fine work! Otherwise, if you know that you truly could do just fine without that $5 that mysteriously vanished (and if I were to wager, then I'd be willing to bet that most of us fall into this category), then you know what to do. Don't let less than 1% of the people in this community make 100% of the sacrifice. Be true to your school. The school of ReMix.

Not sure why this is stickied when we have votes from July still on the panel...

Comments and stuff: So I was stuck at work the other day for a tornado warning and they wouldn't let us leave until it had passed, so I decided to have some fun. I've done these sort of improvs before, but I'm not THAT proficient as a pianist, and my prior goofings-around have been filled with all sorts of finger-flubs and melodic-mishaps. I wish I could say that this is the natural, unedited outcome, but I'd be misrepresenting the entire truth if I did. I can say that it IS 100% improve, but I admit I cheated a bit. Instead of actually recording the audio, I recorded onto a MIDI out channel that was routed into the Fantom, and played at a more, ah, comfortable pace. Since there's no consistent rhythm, I recorded the whole thing at 140 bpm and then sped it up (and in some cases slowed it waaay down) mostly anywhere from 165 - 200 bpm. At any rate, for those who are scratching their heads to the mix title, it's intended to be a fusion of the musical styles of Yanni (New Age-ish pianist) and Shnabubula, who remains the most adept pianist I have ever met or seen, I ran it by him the other day and he seemed to get a kick out of it, so I'm hoping that means I didn't screw it up too badly And I don't' really listen to Yanni, but my mom had his "Live at the Acropolis" CD and I remember listening to it a couple times years and years ago. I've not busted out the stopwatch, but I'm aware it does tend to get a bit liberal, but hopefully the connection to the source remains noticeable despite the liberties I took in altering it's exactness. And pre-emptively: Larry, kill u.

Well, there originally was a link to the paypal button, but I took it down when they decided to be complete idiots about the whole thing even after we had adhered to their demands. I suppose I should put it back up.

Man, I saw a demo where he loaded up like a full mozart symphony, not a single instrument song.