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EMI Promises Downloadable Music
SataiCam writes "The Economist has an article up referring to EMI's plans to implement digital music downloading starting on December 1 through a whole host of 'distributors'. They claim it will allow users to get music in 'the formats they are demanding' (ogg?), to burn copies of songs, and download them to other devices. Here's the press release from EMI."
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The chance that ogg will ever be seriously adapted is about zero.
- The argument for OGG is that some MP3 patent/process is owned by somebody.
- In this way, the ogg campaign is similar to the days of 'burn all
.gifs.'
- Anti-gif campaigning went, essentially nowhere. Basically, Compuserve didn't go after anybody of import and PNG continues to be a marginally used format.
- PNG is marginally used, despite being superior to
.GIF, technically. The thing is, OGG is INFERIOR to even MP3, and certainly to WMA, etc, at least according to the OGG FAQ.
- a path away from GIF entrenchment was relatively easy to do--just give everybody a new browser that supports both. The problem is that it's much harder to consider this for audio files considering how many mp3 (hardware) players are already in the field--it may not be technically ideal, but Mp3 is here to stay unless there is a compelling reason to switch.
- Compelling reasons include:
- technical superiority (WMA has this, but even it can barely make a dent in mp3's market hold)
- mandates from hardware companies / ip holders - ie something that better considers DRM.
I can see no compelling reason why OGG will ever gain any significant market share.SUMMARY: A new study found that 56 percent of poor Los Angeles-area black men who say they're straight have actually had anal sex with men.
Confirming the existence of hidden "down low" homosexuality in African-American communities, a new study found that 56 percent of poor Los Angeles-area black men who consider themselves straight have actually had anal sex with men.
Thirty-seven percent of HIV (news - web sites)-infected poor black men who call themselves heterosexual also reported having anal sex with men.
"We need to move beyond thinking of people as being just gay or straight," said study co-author Amy Rock Wohl, head of HIV epidemiology for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.
"People's behaviors are complicated and don't always fall into these predetermined categories, and prevention directed toward gay and bisexual men will miss these men who consider themselves to be straight," she said.
For years, experts have suggested that some black men live double lives, keeping their boyfriends secret from their families and girlfriends or wives. In slang terms, these men are "on the down low," and both the media and TV shows like "ER" have explored the phenomenon.
There's little research looking into the specifics of "down low" behavior among black men specifically, Wohl said. However, according to the New York Times, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reported in 2000 that a study of HIV-positive men who got infected by other men found that 25 percent of blacks called themselves straight. Only 6 percent of white men did.
In the new study, researchers examined statistics from surveys taken in 1997 and 1998 of 90 HIV-infected black men who attended Los Angeles county clinics and 272 uninfected black men from nearby neighborhoods. All the men considered themselves to be heterosexual.
The men in both groups were generally poor, Wohl said, "but it doesn't include men who don't seek health care, who are even more disenfranchised than this group." The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
All of the infected men and two-thirds of the uninfected men who had sex with men reported that they didn't always use condoms during anal sex. When asked about condom use during anal sex with women, 46 percent of the HIV-positive men and 37 percent of the other men said they didn't always use them.
"That does have implications for transmission to female partners, especially if the women don't know the HIV status of the male partners or their risk behaviors," Wohl said, reflecting a common concern in the black community about "down low" activity.
Anal sex with men was much more popular than oral sex. Only 12 percent of the infected men and 2 percent of the uninfected men reported having oral sex with men.
I must be a bit anal about sound quality and find even 128kb/s a bit lacking - the Grado Labs [gradolabs.com] SR325s [gradolabs.com] I have at work are almost a bit too for my own good in this respect. So I'm not too much into music piracy and do often have gigs left of my 3GB monthly ADSL quota.
Did you go to school to sound like a dildo? Or are your parents both just dildos, or what? Jesus.. I've never READ something that reminded me so much of the nasally, whiney, jewish character from South Park in my whole life.