I'll just leave this here:

800 isn't a whole lot of people... can't be hard to find 800 people who agree or believe just about anything. Any idea how these 800 people were selected?

+ a million. Beat us all to it.

The problem with that is you can't directly measure "success" either. Nobody really knows whether a band you hear on the radio has any money at the end of the day. Maybe you don't mean financial success. We also don't really know how many fans this band or artist has. I've always laughed when bands that I thought…

Yes...? That's not a real answer though.

I never disagreed with you. I've said it in tons of other comments on this same subject (feel free to search them out and read them), that I DO tip, and I'm far from against tipping, nor do I think you should not tip as a way to send a message, nor did I suggest that tips aren't some people's living.

I have a few arguments to this one:

I see no problem with the word 'breakthrough'. The fact that they made progress is more important than the word used. Also, breakthrough =/= cure. The article never used the word cure.

The fact that you ended that with a question mark is a clear indication that you question the validity of that response yourself.

Dear internet users: Why do you insist on just leaving things signed in, auto-filling passwords, not signing out of things when you're done.....? Everyone screams about privacy all the time, but they take no effort to keep track of what accounts they're signed into? I can't help but lose some respect for anyone…

Even at that, the sites weren't really down, they were just broken.

Sooo much fail in this article. Apples and oranges. You don't listen to recorded music and live music for the same reasons. Also, what about local music scenes that don't release much recorded content? What about "recording artists" that don't perform live? Who in their right mind still takes vinyl seriously…

I disagree. The stage itself, in my experience, is usually the best seat in the house. Then again, a lot of the "sound guys" I've worked with are pretty terrible. In those cases, the musicians themselves are usually pretty good at setting up their own equipment/levels so that they can hear each other clearly.

Sometimes it's got nothing to do with being able to hit the notes. A lot of bands have songs that are played on different types of instrument/guitars or different tunings. Having to switch instruments between each song isn't practical, so you switch key to allow you to play without stopping.

There are not enough jobs that would work that way. If nobody *needed* to ever work, then entire industries would disappear, service, hard labour, etc. Who would farm all this free food? Who would cook it for you? Who would bother building cities for no pay? Who would ever clean anything?

Would you rather they stop trying?

I never said he was untalented. I said that you can't measure talent by how long you've been around. Time would just indicate persistence. I'm not sure volume of records is an indication either, since there are a lot of very talented artists who have sold nothing, and lots of untalented artists who have sold tons.

I wasn't commenting on the quantity of people who have other options. Simply observing that cases exist where there are options.

The tipping situation is different in Canada. There aren't cases where the workers aren't reasonably compensated for their work. And I do tip. I just think that there do exist some very rare cases where not tipping, or tipping poorly can be justified, even if those cases are few and far between.

I live in a place (Quebec) where the minimum wage for anyone making tips is still $8.75, which is fair compensation as far as I care, given that you can make a lot more than that when you factor those tips into it. I *usually* tip, but I usually get at least satisfactory service. But I don't feel bad not tipping if…