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You don't seem to be aware that Downey's contract already requires him to be in the Avengers.

That still doesn't make me optimistic about this movie getting made by him. Your comments about Whedon getting played by the movie executives seem quite familiar, given how he was assigned to Wonder Woman, got all worked up over it, and here we are five years later with no sign of a movie.

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/04/14/joss-whedon-to-rewrite-avengers-script/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/04/14/joss-whedon-to-rewrite-avengers-script/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/04/14/joss-whedon-to-rewrite-avengers-script/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/

Tell me, does it suck to be as wrong as you~

"According to Variety, Whedon will also rewrite the script for "The Avengers"

Here is an article that talks about why user generated content is restricted so much on an Xbox 360: Microsoft is afraid someone will draw a penis. So, no opportunity to community vett content before it goes to general consumption just ban it from everyone and leave the job to the professionals.

Then complete silence until the 24-hour period ended, followed by a brief announcement that "hey, it works again!" and then completely ignoring that it ever happened. Instead they've posted several blog entries that conveniently knock the PSN outage way down the page.

A major bug knocks out significant functionality in a console with an installed base in the tens of millions. Remember, you're the CEO of Sony, and you have to protect the value of your company. It would be criminally irresponsible if you were to rush out an untested fix. If that broke anything you'd be subject to lawsuits. Firmware updates are risky at the best of times.

Meanwhile, your engineers are telling you, "We've got a problem with the date that's screwing up DRM. On our special development consoles, it looks like once the date rolls over in less than 24 hours, the problem will go away. We've tested it on a handful of our customer-style consoles, and from what we can see it appears to be the case there, too. But there are seven 'Fat' models out there and in these few hours we can't test 'em all. Even once that's fixed, we can't absolutely guarantee all will be working after that."

So, you're careful about what you say, and you proceed with deliberate speed. The problem hasn't even been resolved for 24 hours yet! I strongly suspect that they are working on adding a fix to the next firmware upgrade - but that means they'll need to delay the next upgrade, add new tests to the regression tests and QA process, evaluate the fix on all nine models of PS3 (plus the two new slim models in the pipe), and then finally roll it out.

Every company with a substantial codebase and millions of customers is this slow, by necessity. It took Microsoft a week to get the Live network stable after the flood of new users back in December, 2008. A week later (i.e. seven times 24 hours), they gave away a free downloadable game as a further apology. And they still got sued over it.

I strongly suspect that Sony will release more information soon, and may offer a downloadable trinket as a further apology, too. But expecting a giant company to share technical information (that might be used in a lawsuit) in real-time is a bit much.

Bizarrely, this was predicted by Adam Carolla and Patton Oswalt last week on Carolla's podcast:

They were talking about how people get famous for doing nothing...

Oswalt: With the Dr. Drew show.. Now there's no way out. There's no... drinking or fucking yourself out of show biz. There will always be a show for every level of your success or failure as a reality douche. The whole infrastructure is there. You will never have to leave television.
Carolla: The next one is going to be called... Celebrity Crematorium.... Snooki goes from the Jersey Shore to Dr. Drew to the Dark Sleep to the crematorium where we have them "Earn the Urn!"

The really sad thing is that URL for Snooki: http://www.mtv.com/shows/jersey_shore/cast_member.jhtml?personalityId=13196

MTV Reality Show personality ID THIRTEEN THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX. Step right up and get in line, everyone!

Bizarrely, this was predicted by Adam Carolla and Patton Oswalt last week on Carolla's podcast:

They were talking about how people get famous for doing nothing...

Oswalt: With the Dr. Drew show.. Now there's no way out. There's no... drinking or fucking yourself out of show biz. There will always be a show for every level of your success or failure as a reality douche. The whole infrastructure is there. You will never have to leave television.
Carolla: The next one is going to be called... Celebrity Crematorium.... Snooki goes from the Jersey Shore to Dr. Drew to the Dark Sleep to the crematorium where we have them "Earn the Urn!"

The really sad thing is that URL for Snooki: http://www.mtv.com/shows/jersey_shore/cast_member.jhtml?personalityId=13196

MTV Reality Show personality ID THIRTEEN THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX. Step right up and get in line, everyone!

The fact that the word "gimpy" is somewhat related to "gimp" does not make it any more related to the software that the word "excellence" is to Microsoft's spreadsheet program, so using a Google search for the term "gimpy" to prove use of the word "gimp" outside of the software is still common is foolish.

How do you figure that 'gimpy' is not simply the adjective form of 'gimp'?

You'd get about as far with argument as if you were saying clear panes of glass are no longer called 'windows'.

So? I'm not telling you how it should be used, I'm telling you how it *is* being used. The simple fact is, the word 'gimp' is pretty much dead in contexts other than 'weird free image editor', its original meaning no more important in modern conversations than that of 'gay' being a synonym of 'happy'.

I hear you, I really do. You're just not right, is all. The word 'gimp' is, in fact, being used to mean things other than software. It is not anywhere near dead.

Here's an extremely recent example.

They got up close and personal with Spears as she performed occasionally adult-only routines including a sexy cage dance surrounded by gimp guys.

They don't appear to mean the software's mascot.

Another one.

Deathstreaks are interesting and kinda disappointing in my opinion. Yeah, they are nice for beginners but seem to gimp the game to me. I don’t get why someone should get a bonus for dying a lot, and I understand its because they want to help casual players but I dont think it adds to the experience

Again. Not software.

Here's a third.

Ice-T and his wife Coco took a different tactic when coming up with their couple-centric costume, as they decided to pose as a dominatrix and a gimp at the same party in New York.

So, again, while you are certainly correct that the term 'gimp' trends strongly towards software inside the context of information technology, you are ABSOLUTELY INCORRECT that this term is dated and/or approaching a 'dead' status outside of it.

" I have no clue how you come to the idea that buying your kid an expensive car is a good investment."

somebody watched too many episodes of My Super Sweet 16

I say this as an American: we've become barbarians. We torture people. We incarcerate more people, both in absolute terms and on a per capita basis, than any other nation in the world, and think it's okay to gang-rape 1% of our population. Our wealth is distributed like that of a banana republic. We're stupid, vapid, and like a feral child, we snarl and bite when someone tries to help us. America really is the sick man of the world, and personally, I'm about ready to give up and pronounce the disease incurable. We can argue about causes and solutions, but you can't deny that we're in a steep decline. As George Orwell write,

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

Much like how the 14th Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama deserves the award for speaking out against an evil, boneheaded tyrant.

Of course, I'm referring to the September 13th massacre and Obama's scathing comments about the topic and the dictator.

Clearly, he deserves more than one Nobel Peace Prizes for his courage.

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/04/10/sony-ms-onlive-weigh-in-on-tiered-internet-pricing/ .. in which the OnLive CEO suggests that HD would use 950MB/hour (= 2.1Mb/s), SD would use 350MB/hour (= 0.8Mb/s)

The article is illuminating in other ways. OnLive knows that if the broadband industry goes in a certain direction, they're screwed. But they feel that other factors will drive consumers to push the industry in the other direction.

I don't know, maybe it's because of the uncanny valley effect on a larger scale but these new games seem increasingly unrealistic to me. I see it takes a lot of skill and C/GPU power to do a real-time image like this: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/rage_quakecon2009.jpg but realistic? I don't know - something's missing there. Sometimes I think Q3A was more "realistic" than Fallout3 and newer games. *shrug*

Don't bother. Just overhaul the entire IP system. So far Trademarks is the only member of the three types of IP that doesn't with regularity make headlines with how broken it is.

I guess you've missed all the stories where sues for "breaching" their trademark? Here's a recent example. Another that's been bought up on Slashdot is Nissan Motors vs Nissan Computer. I agree that trademark law is the sanest of the three, but it still gets plenty of abuse.

..why do men still have nipples. Film at 11.

It's 11 and here is the film. Men have nipples so that they can take part in this test which has the potential to increase monetary winnings and thus the man's ability to afford to go out on a date and eventually reproduce. This continued pressure on the nipples hence keeps them around, and may in fact make them more durable in the long term.

Agreed. The sad thing is that censorship of the things you list aren't even just the old examples, but people continue to try today - possession of sexual imagery in comics risks you being convicted for child porn, if a character merely appears under 18, in the US, and Australia, and soon in the UK (even though the age of consent is 16 here, the law will cover depictions of 17 year olds). We in the UK now have the BBFC which can censor material even for adults (set up in 1984, before it was just guidelines). Not to mention that some kinds of adult porn are now illegal to simply possess in the UK, and the police have decided to try again at prosecuting someone for writing a fictional story (the trial is due to start 29 June).

It's a paradox: I'd like to think that public attitudes on media are becoming more liberal, but it seems the laws being passed are becoming stricter.

The first Acoustic Black Hole was actually created back in 1981.

Mr Bean makes an exact copy of that chair, using his own tools and materials, and gives it to the friend for free. Now in that scenario, how would the craftsman sue Mr Bean for copyright infringement? If you were to have Mr Bean mass producing chairs and giving them away for free (probably all to Ballmer), then again, what part of the law is the craftsman going to sue Mr Bean under and why the hell should he be able to anyway?

That is my biggest issue with the current state of copyright. I, personally, have no interest in reselling original works to others. But what if I want to make a derivative work? Many of the pro-copyright crowd (cliffski, I'm looking at you) assume that people just want to take their work and either not pay for it or make money from it. There is a large swath of interest in combining works to form something new. Custom music videos are a good example of this. They violate copyright on both sides, but are a "new and creative" work. Some of them are quite brilliant. The Grey Album is another example, as is the Harry Potter Lexicon. But you can't do those legally now, and by the time they're out of copyright the material won't be meaningful and... you'll be dead.

As someone else mentioned, the public is tired of having their culture locked up and resold to them with onerous restrictions. They're taking it back and no amount of laws will prevent or stop it.

Here: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/13/bethesda-deals-with-pirates/ Last week, âoeFallout 3âproduct manager Pete Hines told me that some development studios now calculate that up to half of their customer support calls involve dealing with people who have pirated copies of the game.

This isn't just about 'free music'. This is about art and freedom of expression, which these laws eventually step on.

The industries involved are not hurting for money... See the record breaking weekend the MPAA just had, despite the recession. Not to mention how well the record industry did in the UK during 2008.

It's a huge scam! The idea is control the dissemination of information on a wide scale; hence, attack P2P networks under the guise of protecting national security (read: executives' platinum parachutes).

About 6 months ago, during this interview, Mythic VP and lead Warhammer Online designer Mark Jacobs said some interesting things regarding MMO development, including their own game. In particular:

According to Jacobs, another way to measure success is to look at the number of servers a game has added in a six-month period. "The corollary to that is if you've seen a game consolidate servers, you know it's in deep, deep trouble -- that's not a healthy sign for an MMO," he said, citing Sony's January-released "Pirates of the Burning Sea" as a recent example. "It will be the same for 'Warhammer.' Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we're not adding servers, we're not doing well."

Looks like they're not doing that well - according to their own standards.

Future is bright: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/09/29/harmonix-confirms-rb2-wii-dlc/

Can we get link-speak added to that Lake Superior State University list of things that must die? The links you assigned to all the words there had no special meaning to any particular word. Particularly with Slashdot's little citing engine throwing block quotes behind every one, it just makes it terribly annoying to read. Why not keep things legible and list links in an orderly fashion:

Nickalodeon
The Daily Show
South Park
MTV
TV Land

See, it's not hard.

Stealing? Who's talking about stealing?

Viacom puts many of their shows online.

"Racism is a lot like the Bible code: if you look hard enough, you can find it anywhere."

Best... quote... ever.

I had to google "Resident Evil 5 controversy" to find what all the drama was about. I watched the trailers, didn't see anything racist so I kept looking.

One of the links was a interview with a Newsweek journalist:
"There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn't see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don't understand what you're talking about and think that you're sort of seeing race where nothing exists?"

Simple: because none exists. If you have a black man and a white man on a video game, someone somewhere playing the game will somehow see racism. The video is a bunch of zombies being killed. That's it. No racism, unless you want it to be there.

No one is going to play the game and go "OMG that white man just killed a black man!" unless all you see is skin color and, if you do, then you are the racist.

In fact, it's not a Rock Band game at all, though it is made by the same developers.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1598228/20081030/beatles.jhtml

Toumani Diabate speaks about the song's meaning - http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/21/little-big-planet-musician-defends-song-to-mtv/:

In the song, "Tapha Niang" (taken from the World Circuit/Nonesuch album "Boulevard de lâ(TM)Independance"), the singer, Moussa Diabate, adapts a traditional Malian song about the death of a much-loved hippopotamus who has been shot by a white hunter.

In the original song (Mali Sadjo) the griots of the village sing about how difficult it is to be separated from your loved one in death.

The singer adapts this song in âoeTapha Niangâ to lament the death of his brother Mustapha, who died very young as a child.

Moussa draws on the excerpts from the Koran to console him & help him overcome his bereavement...

It's a terrific album, by the way. I've had the privilege of listening to Toumani Diabate perform - he is one of the most magnificent musicians I have ever heard. His instrument is the kora, a harp-like instrument, the 71st generation griot of his family line, and a devout, peaceful Muslim who has never faced controversy for his inclusion of passages from the Qu'uran before. I don't think that any of that is particularly significant, but it's possibly relevant to the discussion and a little interesting given how misinformed many of the responses are.

Money is beside the point. Who wants to be forbidden from using their own code? You'll end up like George Clinton, who can't even perform his own work without paying a royalty. I would never sign a non-compete or fork over my copyright on anything for any amount of money. Tell them to come down on their offer and give you more reasonable terms. No amount of money is worth selling yourself into legalized slavery.

Considering they passed a special law, prior art really has nothing to do with it. In the US, the Olympics long ago go a heinous law passed that gave them trademark rights on things you couldn't normally trademark. They didn't go so far as the anthem, but you cannot legally put the name "Olympic" in your business. Who cares of the thousands of years of prior art. This came to my attention when they recently forced the band named the Olympic Hopefuls to change. And it was, unfortunately, all very legal of them to do so.

Here's the law:
http://www.inta.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=187&Itemid=59&getcontent=1

Here's a story on the band:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1507047/20050805/index.jhtml

As it was prophesized in the days when the Gates was still upon his throne, and the battle between the parties of Mc Cain and Obama was new, we see here how the users bring their lamentations unto the pharacies.

Yeah, though the forces of EA did ease their burdens upon the masses, the users said this is not sufficent for a Mass Effect. For the masses knew of the prophecy and they proclaimed your response was heard as though it were proclaimed in jest! You go about proclaiming that we the users want our legitimate copies installed on multiple machines but nay! We want multiple installs on but one machine post upgrade or for restoration from corruption caused by your corrupt software or the corrupt software of the Gates legacy, or a legitimate transfer there of! Nay, the class action was filed with the pharacies by Melissa of the house of Thomas, as it was prophesized by the great prophet Pecosdave in the early days of Secure ROM your token relaxing of your DRM laden bondage of our people is not of the goodness of your blackened hearts, but a reaction to hearing of Melissa's lamentations! Your bondage runs deep, deep into the roots of our systems, have you learned not from the smiting of Sony?

We see now the opening of the users revolt. The prophecy is yet to be fully fulfilled, for the users are not yet organized as one. Soon will come the day not of the court smiting of the EA and their dark hordes, but of an out of court settlement, for the EA and their hordes are cowards at heart and they fear the pharacies and the integrity of their purses. For it stings the purse far less to issue coupons for future purchases than it does to refund what one has aquired.

The article on the comparison between Diablo III design and fan "improved" colours:

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/08/04/diablo-iii-designer-turns-tables

Thank you. Read it, people, if you don't like Diablo III "WoW Gayness". Lead designer Jay Wilson nails it.

This came up weeks ago.

The article on the comparison between Diablo III design and fan "improved" colours:

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/08/04/diablo-iii-designer-turns-tables

and Penny-Arcade's take on the "protest":

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/6/

No. It's true. http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/08/12/is-zero-the-hutt-the-first-gay-alien-in-star-wars-history/

The video depicts demonstrators conducting a candlelight vigil and projecting a protest video onto the consulate building; the projection features recent footage of Tibetan monks being arrested and riffs on the Olympic logo of the five interlocking rings, turning them into handcuffs.

People, please! This is the Olympics. The Olympics--let's not bicker and argue about who's been brutally repressing who for hundreds and hundreds of years!

On a side note, I used to enjoy this band from Minnesota called The Olympic Hopefuls who are now known as The Hopefuls due to some legal business and the fact that the IOC is full of lawyers. And you're surprised a video criticizing the Olympics is taken down on the internet?

Wow. It's true.

Better start burning lol.

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1573617/20071106/story.jhtml

MTV: What do you think of another actor, Heath Ledger, playing the Joker in next summer's "The Dark Knight"?

Nicholson: Let me be the way I'm not in interviews. I'm furious. I'm furious. [He laughs.] They never asked me about a sequel with the Joker. I know how to do that! Nobody ever asked me.

MTV: It was never brought up?

Nicholson: No. It's like, in any area, you can't believe the reasons things do or don't happen. Not asking me how to do the sequel is that kind of thing. Maybe it's not a mistake. Maybe it was the right thing, but to be candid, I'm furious.

I wouldn't mind any of those things, but if this inspires a remake starring Will Smith or Keanu Reeves, I might just throw myself into an art deco steel foundry that has an odd resemblance to Moloch...

P.S. did anyone else see the trailer for The Day the Earth Stood Still?

Jennifer Connelly does Patricia O'Neal: Mmm. OK, that could work.
Keanu Reeves does Michael Rennie: WTF?! No, no, NO! Why, God, Why!?!?

To put it this way, can you imagine writing something like GIMP, Abiword, Entourage or Firefox in Flash?

Photoshop Express
Fotoflexer
Buzzword
SlideRocket
Premiere Express
Goowy

Note the absence of *a single* significant Silverlight application.

Ah, but how profitable is an artist's tour going to be if nobody knows who they are?

But since the MafiAA doesn't try out new acts any more, that's not a risk. And all of the "promotional" work done by the label is charged back to the band, again. The MafiAA don't actually pay for shit.

Mind you, one of my all-time favorite bands was pretty much snuffed out by Capitol - had their album produced and recorded and then just sat on it for a couple years without releasing it, until finally the band called it quits.

Many bands have this happen, usually because the label's holding them slave/hostage trying to force them to re-up for an even longer/worse contract.

They also backed the production of that album, taking the risk that it wouldn't sell. They need to recover those costs.

That's what the sales price is for, not duplicitously using FRAUDULENT ACCOUNTING to hide the profits and try to charge the costs to the band AS WELL.

The goal of the MafiAA companies is simple: milk for every penny. It's slave labor, unless you hit it super-big (metallica/etc). They don't ever take a real risk - the times someone didn't hit it ultra-big, the labels "made money" off of them anyways, then forced them through bankruptcy with all the charge-backs. This happens even to the big names.

You want to know why there are so many so-called "singer/songwriter" acts these days? Because it's one of the few ways out - get one song you "wrote" onto the album, and they have to pay you writers' royalties. You want to know why half or more of the album is shit? Because desperately trying to save their own asses financially, every bandmember wrote at least one track on the album. And it doesn't matter, because the MafiAA's dirty accounting always comes out a rape-job anyways.

Hey, argue against the dictionary all you want. :) Examples of usage from media outlets, just in the headlines alone, and ignoring other uses of the phrase and puns (such as "Home pool tables cue up lots of family fun"):

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/19/business/ptpogue20.php ("Cue up the music, choose the rooms")
http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080212/LIFE/802120309/-1/LIFE03 ("Cue up your appetite")
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/13/business/video.php ("Bank internship? Time to cue up the video")
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1492913/20041021/handsome_boy_modeling_school.jhtml ("Handsome Boy Modeling School Cue Up LP #2")
http://blogs.chron.com/franblinebury/2008/02/yo_adrian_cue_up_the_rocky_the.html ("You, Adrian! Cue up the Rocky Theme!")
http://mediawiredaily.com/2007/01/cue-up-sound-of-cbs-cash-register-ka.html ("Cue up sound of CBS cash register!")
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117853509.html ("MTV arms cue up 'Unplugged' on Net")

Need me to keep going? Just because you haven't heard the phrase doesn't make it any less real, or any less in the dictionary.

"In any case, after reading that blog post, I'm never, ever watching one second of CNN again.."

Say it with me now: never mix your real life with your internet life.

That's what this guy did, and he got fired for it and he'll probably never get a another news job unless it's for online news blog site. You can't go online and blog under your real name and be shocked when your bosses find out and may not like what you're writing about, especially when you're working for a big firm like CNN.

The idiot actually put on his blog that he's in the TV business, lists off all the places he's worked, that he has two emmys and a golden mic award, and that he lives in New York with his wife, and goes by "Chez", and on the link to his myspace he puts his age as 38. Gee, wouldn't take much to figure out who you are, and soon as the internet does and that you work for CNN every link to your page will read "CNN producer said this today". Think your boss would like that?

then he says:
"I'm an insufferable wise-ass who doesn't mind being an occasional nuisance to authority figures."
-- wow, I'm sure your bosses love that
"I wake up every morning baffled as to why America hasn't deported George Bush and Dick Cheney"
-- Sure CNN producer, bash the president, your bosses won't care.
--and I bet that's just the start, I'm sure if I bothered to read his blog their would be plenty of other BS opinions that CNN doesn't want to be associated with.

And he wonders why he doesn't have a job anymore??

I do not feel sorry for this guy and don't think anyone should, you can't be stupid and expect my sympathy. If he hasn't figured out how the world works at 38 he never will and if I was his wife I'd leave his stupid ass.

The only "job/school/etc fired me over blog/facebook/myspace" person I feel sorry for is this woman, who, at 25, was denied her college degree because she had a picture of herself in a pirate outfit drinking from a plastic cup and the title "drunken pirate" on her myspace page. If you can't have a picture of yourself taking a drink at 25 then when can you??

It was "The Weavers On Tour" as I see from this page (thanks google).

I don't know how old the album was; I remember it was no later than the very early '60s. As I was only 10 in '62 my memory is of course not a good judge.

But at any rate, I don't see how his daughter would have not heard this album.

http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/jean_wyclef/7152926/lyrics.jhtml

In America and other countries, we have laws that mandate that sex-offenders have to register as such, effectively ruining them for life. I wonder if that's the case in Thailand? There are plenty of sick bastards who would be willing to deal with the temporary consequences as long as they could continue to satisfy themselves in the future.

An interesting side note: The biz has crept into American pop culture.

In the "real world" ...

I believe that "best game songs ever made" link should be to here.

First, This articlepoints out that "First and foremost, all of Radiohead's previous albums were already available as MP3s encoded at 320 kilobits per second". I take that to mean that Radiohead had already established a standard of expectation of 320 kbps with their previous behavior. Providing the album 'for 'free' but then changing the bitrate from what they had historically provided for downloadable material is what makes it look duplicitus to me.

Second is this quote from this article. "If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn't do what we are doing,' Bryce Edge of Courtyard Management told Music Week, the UK's industry magazine."

That is a flat-out admission that the only point of the downloadable album concept was to push the CD sales, not any real expectation to make money off the actual download or to use it as part of a new business model that Radiohead was given credit for.

It's these two aspects together that made me think it wasn't an innocent oversight. Even if many won't know, care, or tell the difference, some will and Radiohead certainly wasn't thinking of the download as anything other than a promotion for the CD sales. In other words even if most people are okay with it, I think Radiohead intended for the bitrate to be a little too low and that it would encourage the CD sales instead of being a replacement for them.

I'm in the same boat as you, waiting for the CD, which will be coming out at a later date - nothing offical yet but speculation is sometime in December or January. Apparently Radiohead is in talks with some lables. Unlike you - I don't care about the jewel case. I do like the little booklets that Radiohead has put together in the past.

My main concern is having a full bit rate soundtrack. I paid exactly zero for my D/L because I didn't know what the quality would be. (My wife says I am lame for this) If the format was higher I would have gone back and paid them for the tunes as I respect them greatly both as a band and for bucking the normal trend. Unfortunately 160 kbs is below the acceptable standard of 192 which is near CD quality. I don't have golden ears but even on my mid line system you can easily pick out a low grade MP3 compared to a FLAC file if you intently listen to music - which I enjoy doing. In fact - one of the things I like most about Radiohead is the recording quality and production value is extremely high.

Puting on my tinfoil hat - there has been some controversy around this low bit rate release ... http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571737/20071011/radiohead.jhtml