Clearly the answer is to never go above 69% of your maximum upload speed. Too bad it is hard to manage all that when you are seeding 30 torrents at once that may have new leechers at any time. Good thing I download most things in less than 15 minutes though so I don't have to worry about that. Oh and I don't have Comcast.
You hit the nail on the head. If most of my favorite albums are from another country and the only way to buy them is to pay outrageous import prices, I won't buy the music although I certainly won't stop listening to it. A friend of mine contacted a Japanese publisher who has essentially released all the soundtracks composed by Masamichi Amano saying that he wanted to buy every single album they have ever released by him. The answer from the label was pretty much "sorry go away we don't ship outside of Japan". I find that it is much more worth my time and effort to support the bands whose CDs I can purchase for a reasonable price of $10-$15 a disc and anything else I have to listen to fully before I decide to take the plunge. I don't see it as practical to purchase a Japanese Pop album for $35 or so unless I know for sure I really like the stuff.
Seriously! As someone who goes to the theaters 4-10 times a month, this is just not fun at all. I sometimes want to come early because the movie may be crowded, but then I have to sit through ALL of the Regal First Look and then tons of trailers, the majority of which I have already seen 500 times in the past months so that I am surprised I even want to see the movie when it is released. Maybe if I could just go watch the movie and not all that other crap I would be more inclined to show up. That and the morons who don't know how to shut the hell up and stay off their cell phones while watching a movie. I get more quiet at home in a house I share with 3 other people than I get in a theater because people don't understand how to quietly enjoy a movie.
I fail to see how it would be beneficial to do an upgrade rather than a flat out re-format followed by re-install. The problem is the only reasonably priced versions of Windows 7 are upgrade versions that require me to have Vista on that machine. Thanks but I think I'll stick with XP on my home desktop for the time being.
Your point about VIdeo Game copyrights is exactly why most people who want to play anything from NES through even N64 and PS1 have emulators and play them for free. If Nintendo hadn't decided to create the VC, you would have no way to buy a new copy of any of these games to give money to the original copyright holder. Is it better to buy a copy of Suikoden 2 on ebay for over $100 than to download a free copy online and play that? I think not. All Nintendo with the VC and Sony with the PS1 store are doing is making it sound like "oh yeah we are going to sell those so you should feel bad for pirating them." The problem is that neither company has the rights or the interest to re-release all the popular games (especially the popular RPGS) from a given generation.
To make matters worse, emulators for PS1 and N64, while working, aren't exactly the greatest. In a few years when you can't find PS2 games in stores anymore and all the remaining stock is used, we are likely going to be prevented forever from playing them when all the living PS2s die and all the PS3s in existence are not backwards compatible. All this to give Sony and the other publishers the chance to re-release what they determine are the best games on PS2 (aka the most popular) as bundled games on a PS3 playable blu-ray. I bought all those ps2 games when they came out for a reason, so i can play them years in the future, too bad that won't be so easy.
Funny, I downloaded just as much when I had 56K, I just had to leave EVERYTHING on overnight. Of course at that time most of the music online was 128kbps so it wasn't so bad. They couldn't stop it then and certainly can't stop it now.
I take this stance with movies. There are tons of movies I want to see that I wait for and never make it to my theaters. I would have gone and watched it if the content providers released it but instead if I get the feeling that they don't want to I will pirate it. Why spend money on something when my preferred method of consuming that product is not available to me?
The same thing goes for music. If a company decides that they do not want to release their music on a physical CD, I will not buy their music. Why? Because I only want to buy my music in a physical format that is lossless and can easily be converted to various lossy formats that pop up over the years. Does it make good business sense to companies like Disney to release movie soundtracks exclusively on itunes/amazon.com? Possiblby. Do I want to support that path of releases? No way in hell. Thus they lose sales when they take such stupid annoying paths.
Noticing the same spelling mistake over and over causes me to eventually learn the correct spelling of the word rather than continue to spell incorrectly. Hand-writing notes in class would leave me with an incorrect spelling which I would later study and incorporate. However, when I type my in-class notes and have spell-check, I find that my spelling is corrected for the most part with a simple right click and I slowly realize which words I really didn't know how to spell.
It's also much easier to keep track of your favorite bands by purchasing all their albums than worrying about purchasing each individual song or even knowing when individual songs are released if digital only. Sure money-driven releases by pop artists are bound to contain filler but for the most part all the music I listen to is pretty free of terrible tracks. If the full album isn't good then I don't choose to support the artist because they don't have enough talent to create 8-15 tracks at once that are all great.
If they want the CD junkies to go from buying physical CDs to buying some digital album format they sure as hell better make sure that this new format is lossless and easy to backup on CD. I can't stand the thought of when I can no longer purchase physical CDs but if that time ever comes, the alternative better be as good of quality as the CD only digital. Considering there are so few digital lossless formats available now, I don't have much faith in these album alternatives being lossless. If all I have available is lossy digital crap then say goodbye to my sales.
I agree completely. I only wrote cursive when I was forced to. Once my teachers let me type my assignments I did so and if I had to hand-write, my printing has always been more legible anyways. I remember when I took the SATs I had to write a paragraph out in cursive and I was like EHHHH why does it have to be in cursive?
Plus maybe offer something other than what is available on the 4 major labels. I'm not 100% sure what the 4 major labels are but it is very unlikely it encompasses what I want to listen to. Then of course I refuse to pay for MP3s so no sale guys.
They can be used for playback if you rip to a single large file so that your software reads it as individual tracks. I prefer to do it that way over individual tracks.
What the hell is wrong with you? Do you seriously choose your music based on popularity? The important thing is that you are enjoying what you listen to.
I prefer the zune to the IPOD because I never was a fan of the clickwheel and the way the IPOD tends to organize your music. I've had my 30gb zune for years now and it still works great. I'm hoping that it will live long enough so that the ZUNEHD comces out and I can get the 120gb zune for cheap. Plus the zune has a better quality audio jack when it comes to the output you get to regular headphones. Now if only they would come out with a 300gb version that supports FLAC and cue sheets.
This is the same reason why I buy all my music in CD format and all my games in Disc format. I am already into some Niche genres as it is (Movie scores, euro-style power metal, heavy metal, Japanese-Pop; and on the game side JRPGS) so what is to stop these companies from removing the Niche stuff from their services because they don't think very many consumers are going to miss them? Sadly one of my cds I picked up used was one of those old DRM'd cds from Sony that I can't rip, but at least I can listen to it as much as I want. The point of all this is that in the end the physical media is the better bargain regardless of the online options.
The article states that she was sued for downloading 218 songs from Lionel Ritchie, Jay-Z, the Ruff Ryders and other artists. Talk about music that no person in their right mind would bother pirating. I guess as long as I stick to downloading heavy metal, J-pop, Movie soundtracks, and other things I won't have to worry about a suit.
This is the problem with the way things are going. A CD that is only available in a poor quality mp3 format that you can't purchase in CD format just leaves the people with ears reverting to download. There is no way I will pay for some mp3s when it doesn't contain all the parts of the song.
Furthermore, what about the people who like to import music or listen to music from other countries. I sure as hell would never pay for a service unless it would allow me to access Japanese and European music as well as the occasional American group I actually like or the foreign groups that get US releases. Plus like other users have mentioned, it is not worth the price if they are only giving it to us in MP3 format regardless of the quality of the files.
I actually almost never bought music in high school and only since i have been hardcore into music sharing, ive increased my cd purchacing output by a lot. I now have a few favorite japanese groups who i am subscribed to on a japanese site so i can get an email as soon as something new is put up by them and preorder it. I much prefer to buy a cd from an artist who is smaller and whose new cd blows my mind to buying a cd from an artist who is so massively popular they will sell no matter what. I prefer to support any group i like a lot by going to their concerts and buying t-shirts rather then buying their cds. This is especially because they dont get much money from the cd compared to other things.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly the answer is to never go above 69% of your maximum upload speed. Too bad it is hard to manage all that when you are seeding 30 torrents at once that may have new leechers at any time. Good thing I download most things in less than 15 minutes though so I don't have to worry about that. Oh and I don't have Comcast.
You hit the nail on the head. If most of my favorite albums are from another country and the only way to buy them is to pay outrageous import prices, I won't buy the music although I certainly won't stop listening to it. A friend of mine contacted a Japanese publisher who has essentially released all the soundtracks composed by Masamichi Amano saying that he wanted to buy every single album they have ever released by him. The answer from the label was pretty much "sorry go away we don't ship outside of Japan". I find that it is much more worth my time and effort to support the bands whose CDs I can purchase for a reasonable price of $10-$15 a disc and anything else I have to listen to fully before I decide to take the plunge. I don't see it as practical to purchase a Japanese Pop album for $35 or so unless I know for sure I really like the stuff.
Seriously! As someone who goes to the theaters 4-10 times a month, this is just not fun at all. I sometimes want to come early because the movie may be crowded, but then I have to sit through ALL of the Regal First Look and then tons of trailers, the majority of which I have already seen 500 times in the past months so that I am surprised I even want to see the movie when it is released. Maybe if I could just go watch the movie and not all that other crap I would be more inclined to show up. That and the morons who don't know how to shut the hell up and stay off their cell phones while watching a movie. I get more quiet at home in a house I share with 3 other people than I get in a theater because people don't understand how to quietly enjoy a movie.
I fail to see how it would be beneficial to do an upgrade rather than a flat out re-format followed by re-install. The problem is the only reasonably priced versions of Windows 7 are upgrade versions that require me to have Vista on that machine. Thanks but I think I'll stick with XP on my home desktop for the time being.
Your point about VIdeo Game copyrights is exactly why most people who want to play anything from NES through even N64 and PS1 have emulators and play them for free. If Nintendo hadn't decided to create the VC, you would have no way to buy a new copy of any of these games to give money to the original copyright holder. Is it better to buy a copy of Suikoden 2 on ebay for over $100 than to download a free copy online and play that? I think not. All Nintendo with the VC and Sony with the PS1 store are doing is making it sound like "oh yeah we are going to sell those so you should feel bad for pirating them." The problem is that neither company has the rights or the interest to re-release all the popular games (especially the popular RPGS) from a given generation. To make matters worse, emulators for PS1 and N64, while working, aren't exactly the greatest. In a few years when you can't find PS2 games in stores anymore and all the remaining stock is used, we are likely going to be prevented forever from playing them when all the living PS2s die and all the PS3s in existence are not backwards compatible. All this to give Sony and the other publishers the chance to re-release what they determine are the best games on PS2 (aka the most popular) as bundled games on a PS3 playable blu-ray. I bought all those ps2 games when they came out for a reason, so i can play them years in the future, too bad that won't be so easy.
Funny, I downloaded just as much when I had 56K, I just had to leave EVERYTHING on overnight. Of course at that time most of the music online was 128kbps so it wasn't so bad. They couldn't stop it then and certainly can't stop it now.
And I certainly won't be listening to those mp3s on my phone. I want my MP3 player separate from the phone thanks very much.
I take this stance with movies. There are tons of movies I want to see that I wait for and never make it to my theaters. I would have gone and watched it if the content providers released it but instead if I get the feeling that they don't want to I will pirate it. Why spend money on something when my preferred method of consuming that product is not available to me? The same thing goes for music. If a company decides that they do not want to release their music on a physical CD, I will not buy their music. Why? Because I only want to buy my music in a physical format that is lossless and can easily be converted to various lossy formats that pop up over the years. Does it make good business sense to companies like Disney to release movie soundtracks exclusively on itunes/amazon.com? Possiblby. Do I want to support that path of releases? No way in hell. Thus they lose sales when they take such stupid annoying paths.
Noticing the same spelling mistake over and over causes me to eventually learn the correct spelling of the word rather than continue to spell incorrectly. Hand-writing notes in class would leave me with an incorrect spelling which I would later study and incorporate. However, when I type my in-class notes and have spell-check, I find that my spelling is corrected for the most part with a simple right click and I slowly realize which words I really didn't know how to spell.
It's also much easier to keep track of your favorite bands by purchasing all their albums than worrying about purchasing each individual song or even knowing when individual songs are released if digital only. Sure money-driven releases by pop artists are bound to contain filler but for the most part all the music I listen to is pretty free of terrible tracks. If the full album isn't good then I don't choose to support the artist because they don't have enough talent to create 8-15 tracks at once that are all great.
If they want the CD junkies to go from buying physical CDs to buying some digital album format they sure as hell better make sure that this new format is lossless and easy to backup on CD. I can't stand the thought of when I can no longer purchase physical CDs but if that time ever comes, the alternative better be as good of quality as the CD only digital. Considering there are so few digital lossless formats available now, I don't have much faith in these album alternatives being lossless. If all I have available is lossy digital crap then say goodbye to my sales.
I agree completely. I only wrote cursive when I was forced to. Once my teachers let me type my assignments I did so and if I had to hand-write, my printing has always been more legible anyways. I remember when I took the SATs I had to write a paragraph out in cursive and I was like EHHHH why does it have to be in cursive?
Plus maybe offer something other than what is available on the 4 major labels. I'm not 100% sure what the 4 major labels are but it is very unlikely it encompasses what I want to listen to. Then of course I refuse to pay for MP3s so no sale guys.
I don't see why we on slashdot care about this with the majority of us spending all of our times in one solitary location in front of a desktop PC.
They can be used for playback if you rip to a single large file so that your software reads it as individual tracks. I prefer to do it that way over individual tracks.
What the hell is wrong with you? Do you seriously choose your music based on popularity? The important thing is that you are enjoying what you listen to.
I prefer the zune to the IPOD because I never was a fan of the clickwheel and the way the IPOD tends to organize your music. I've had my 30gb zune for years now and it still works great. I'm hoping that it will live long enough so that the ZUNEHD comces out and I can get the 120gb zune for cheap. Plus the zune has a better quality audio jack when it comes to the output you get to regular headphones. Now if only they would come out with a 300gb version that supports FLAC and cue sheets.
This is the same reason why I buy all my music in CD format and all my games in Disc format. I am already into some Niche genres as it is (Movie scores, euro-style power metal, heavy metal, Japanese-Pop; and on the game side JRPGS) so what is to stop these companies from removing the Niche stuff from their services because they don't think very many consumers are going to miss them? Sadly one of my cds I picked up used was one of those old DRM'd cds from Sony that I can't rip, but at least I can listen to it as much as I want. The point of all this is that in the end the physical media is the better bargain regardless of the online options.
The article states that she was sued for downloading 218 songs from Lionel Ritchie, Jay-Z, the Ruff Ryders and other artists. Talk about music that no person in their right mind would bother pirating. I guess as long as I stick to downloading heavy metal, J-pop, Movie soundtracks, and other things I won't have to worry about a suit.
This is the problem with the way things are going. A CD that is only available in a poor quality mp3 format that you can't purchase in CD format just leaves the people with ears reverting to download. There is no way I will pay for some mp3s when it doesn't contain all the parts of the song.
Furthermore, what about the people who like to import music or listen to music from other countries. I sure as hell would never pay for a service unless it would allow me to access Japanese and European music as well as the occasional American group I actually like or the foreign groups that get US releases. Plus like other users have mentioned, it is not worth the price if they are only giving it to us in MP3 format regardless of the quality of the files.
I actually almost never bought music in high school and only since i have been hardcore into music sharing, ive increased my cd purchacing output by a lot. I now have a few favorite japanese groups who i am subscribed to on a japanese site so i can get an email as soon as something new is put up by them and preorder it. I much prefer to buy a cd from an artist who is smaller and whose new cd blows my mind to buying a cd from an artist who is so massively popular they will sell no matter what. I prefer to support any group i like a lot by going to their concerts and buying t-shirts rather then buying their cds. This is especially because they dont get much money from the cd compared to other things.