The companies that received gov't money for Hybrid cars brought none to market. And yet several other companies - with no corporate wellfare subsidies.
That's the nice viewpoint.
The other side of this Bush would rather push hydrogen since currently hydrogen research and production would greatly benefit the energy industry (despite what you might think).
Actually most people learned of these records the way I did. O Brother is a soundtrack. People saw the movie, realized Bluegrass was way cooler than they thought and bought the record.
Norah Jones is young and attractive - and someone at MTV2 decided to play her video. The song stuck out from the glossy stuff usually played and people sought the record out.
Movies and MTV are industry channels. While the internet is a huge force, especially for non-mainstream genre's, most people learn about music the same ways they used to.
Now for the punchline.
Why is the industry (CNN, MTV, NARAS) wanting to push stuff like Norah Jones? If you look at the demographics, they are realizing that there is lots of money to be made catering to older listeners, who have more discretionary income and who are more likely to BUY a CD instead of "share" a file. Look for more and more "grown up" music. While the demise of teenage pop is unlikely, don't be surprised if funding priorities change a bit.
Maybe because the production work on some of her later records is done by the Neptunes and is simply amazing? Problem is that, rather than send you to listen to other Neptunes projects like N.E.R.D and Clipse it might very well send you to listen to other bubblegum artists. Then again, if (human) Slashdot readers make blanket assumptions about Britney listeners, what is a stupid program supposed to be able to do...
They don't need to do this - in the rush to cash in on the CD jackpot, 100's of your favorite records were rushed through mastering with absolutely no care whatsever. The first generation of SACD mastering is being done with meticulous care. So for example, all those "digitally remastered" Rolling Stones reissues from the 90's have awful stuff like drop outs on them. Even without using the SACD layer of these releases, the new Stones records sound amazingly better.
Anyhow here are a few points: 1) the mixers and mastering engineers are still learning how to use multi channel formats. Just as early stereo records sound awkward,expect similar awkwardness in the early years of these formats. 2) I don't think most of the folks here have heard these formats, so it's stupid for them to argue whether or not they sound better. 3) With multichannel formats, spatial imaging is easier to attain than in stereo. The surprising result is that speaker and listener placement is actually less critical than it is in stereo. So unlike with stereo, you can move around the room and still have good imaging.
The implications of many of his writings are that the people we *think* built great civilizations aren't capable of being that smart. For example, say the aboriginal Maya peoples of Central America couldn't have build all those great cities and pyramids, let alone figured out all that astronomy, etc.
Instead some other "greater" previous civilization is responsible. Whatever.
First understand that there are two kinds of copyright in music. One is the (c) copyright to a published song like say "Happy Birthday." The other is the (p) copyright to a recording of a song - think of Jimi Hendrick's performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" as recorded at Woodstock.
When someone plays a recording of Happy Birthday on the air, the (c) copyright holder gets money, but the record company that paid to make the recording does not. On the other hand, when Jimi's "Star Spangled Banner" gets played on the air, no one gets a royalty since the song is public domain (and a copyrighted recorded master doesn't get compensation for play on radio).
In the view of the record industry (meaning the owners of huge back catalogs of recorded music) the fact that only the (c) copyright holder (i.e. the composer/songwriter/publisher ) gets paid money is a huge missed opportunity - it's something they missed back when radio was new & when no politician wanted to peeve the radio station owners. This has been a thorn in the record industry's side ever since.
In my view, a lot of what is happening is an attempt to change copyright law using the progress of technology as an excuse. If you can say it's not radio, then you can ask for more money - which is what they've wanted all along. And if radio as we know it goes away, they can then collect a new revenue stream beyond sales (which they see rapidly slipping away.)
The long range result - people get their music for free, advertisers pick up the tab, and music gets worse as commercial potential of a record is determined by how willing advertisers are to stomach it - this is largely why commercial radio is so middle of the road awful.
Detroit minimal techno pioneer Jeff Mills did a soundtrack for Metropolis - which hasn't come out on DVD yet. Other musicians could do alternative soundtracks to their favorite movies - silent or otherwise...
I've found that I can predict which movies I will like by doing the *opposite* of Roger Ebert. If he is revolted by a movie (e.g. Blue Velvet or Fight Club) I know I will really like it. If he totally doesn't understand a movie (e.g. Velvet Goldmine which was a complex meditation on the impact of Glam Rock) the I know the movie is pretty intelligent...
My understanding is that this book was created with US Intelligence to help spread bad information to would be troublemakers. So it's a perfect example of this tactic in the pre-web era.
Universal in the late 90's purchased Philips labels (Polygram, Decca, maybe Deutche Grammphone).
All this wouldn't be interesting, except that the deal involved stock if I remember. Anyone know if Philips still holds stock in Universal Music Group (part of Vivendi)?
The net-net is that human factors are far more important - and it's really hard to plug these into an estimate. One of Cockburn's contentions is that people aren't linear or predictable. But he also identifies items that can help a project run more efficiently. An excellent read at any rate.
Half the time you cannot read the captions on the screen bottom. Anyone try to watch MTV's pop up video lately? The have so many logos that you can't see the goofy "fact" pop ups half the time.
I don't think consumers need to fear this one much. While either film distributors or video stores will see their margins affected, it all balances out in the end.
Should the courts decide that DVDs *are* films, we'll probably just see more DVD's come out in an expensive version targeted at video stores a few weeks before the consumer market priced DVD's come out. Motivated video stores will get the releases early on (most have special agreements with the film distributors already anyhow). Those stores that wait will not see as many rentals since demand is highest at initial release, but they will save one the cost of the DVD.
Here is a whole slew of links to the realm of circuit bending (maybe this will distribute the load among those who want to create musical circuit hacks):
No, he is warning us that others will take advantage of this situation. Already televangelists like Jerry Fawell are linking the attacks to "pagans, homosexual, abortionists," etc. Such claims are absurd and pathetic - and more than a little indicative of how similar religious fundamentalists like Bin Ladden and Fawell really are in their intolerance.
Lots of folks will exploit this tragedy to advance their own agenda. But RMS isn't among them - his warning is truly linked with the events and he is being sincere in his fears.
The Chicago Schools have been an (unwilling) testing ground for a wireless, 'viral' handheld game called Pox. Basically it's a variation of the old Pokemon thing, except that it's wireless and electronic. The NYTimes article points out that the secrecy factor is part of what makes it popular - you can play it across the room w/o anyone else knowing. More amusing in the context of this article is the ways that the toymaker and kids try to justify the 'educational' value of the game.
We're talking about email here. If I'm on a business trip an read my mail in Washington, am I suddenly covered? The Internet really destroys such notions of geography, no?
In Sunday's NY Times Magazine there is an article on the size of the porn industry (as much as $14 billion in the US per year) and its consumers (practically everyone).
A good read and a strong challenge to those who claim that "community standards" dictate that porn be banned from their towns.
...will be to find it in MP3s on a service like Napster. Seems like they've created an incentive for honest people to not buy the CD.
Actually this CD wouldn't even work on my home stereo - older CD players (pre 1992) like mine won't play these SUNcomm copy protected CD's either...
As someone who spends about $300 a month on music purchases, it seems somewhat ironic that the music industry wants to make it impossible for me to get music without resorting to copying (a cracked copy would probably work on my CD player and laptop, but the original would be worthless to me!).
Many DJ CD players are fussier still, so maybe any artist who releases music on copy protected CD and neglects to have a vinyl release will be cutting themselves out of play at many clubs. (This is a good source of royalty money, ASCAP & BMI please take note of this when you're handing out the checks.)
Let's pretend just for one second that the major labels aren't greedy scumbags (and I fully believe they are). Now if you made your money selling items that are expensive to produce but that anyone can steal (copy) for almost free (CDRs are about 18 cents now) - what would you do? The labels know the bottom is about to fall out, and anyone in the industry with half a brain is scared silly about losing their livelihood.
Do you think they care one iota that in order to reduce illegal copying they'll make it harder to make legal copies? I'm as annoyed as anyone, but all this paranoid talk is plain stupid.
Anyone that can't see that the record industry is about to enter some very rough times is deluded.
She vegetarian, not vegan. Still it seemed weird when she was part of those MILK ads. So maybe she's got a little bit of the Crusty shill in her. Little Lisa slurry indeed!
Ergo2000 said, "On a similar note MP3s are shit. They sound like crap."
But I'm not sure where SDMI solves that.
Compressed formats will always have less fidelity. It's the simple trade off for file size. What SDMI adds to the mix are watermarks that audibly degrade the sound of a recording regardless of audio compression.
SDMI penalizes the people who bought a legit copy, and still doesn't really solve the problem.
This is similar to a software problem I have. I purchased a package that uses a key. Now occasionally, the key doesn't work so I can't get any work done with the package. Oddly enough cracked versions of the same software are easily available and by virtue of having the unstable software key security "feature" removed, they are arguably more usable. So you have an expensive package that randomly locks you out, or a free package that works all the time. Now the vendor would say they give support and that's why you should be registered. Only the vendor is slow to respond to any problem and when you call with an issue, such as, "My key doesn't work," they give you the run around, claim user error and take 3-7 days for each round trip denial of any problem. You can imagine how happy I am with this company.
Now if the music industry wants to do the same thing to their paying customers, well, I think we know where this is going.
Slashdot Mirror
The companies that received gov't money for Hybrid cars brought none to market. And yet several other companies - with no corporate wellfare subsidies.
That's the nice viewpoint.
The other side of this Bush would rather push hydrogen since currently hydrogen research and production would greatly benefit the energy industry (despite what you might think).
Actually most people learned of these records the way I did. O Brother is a soundtrack. People saw the movie, realized Bluegrass was way cooler than they thought and bought the record.
Norah Jones is young and attractive - and someone at MTV2 decided to play her video. The song stuck out from the glossy stuff usually played and people sought the record out.
Movies and MTV are industry channels. While the internet is a huge force, especially for non-mainstream genre's, most people learn about music the same ways they used to.
Now for the punchline.
Why is the industry (CNN, MTV, NARAS) wanting to push stuff like Norah Jones? If you look at the demographics, they are realizing that there is lots of money to be made catering to older listeners, who have more discretionary income and who are more likely to BUY a CD instead of "share" a file. Look for more and more "grown up" music. While the demise of teenage pop is unlikely, don't be surprised if funding priorities change a bit.
Maybe because the production work on some of her later records is done by the Neptunes and is simply amazing? Problem is that, rather than send you to listen to other Neptunes projects like N.E.R.D and Clipse it might very well send you to listen to other bubblegum artists. Then again, if (human) Slashdot readers make blanket assumptions about Britney listeners, what is a stupid program supposed to be able to do...
for when they go after Oblix?
They don't need to do this - in the rush to cash in on the CD jackpot, 100's of your favorite records were rushed through mastering with absolutely no care whatsever. The first generation of SACD mastering is being done with meticulous care. So for example, all those "digitally remastered" Rolling Stones reissues from the 90's have awful stuff like drop outs on them. Even without using the SACD layer of these releases, the new Stones records sound amazingly better.
Anyhow here are a few points:
1) the mixers and mastering engineers are still learning how to use multi channel formats. Just as early stereo records sound awkward,expect similar awkwardness in the early years of these formats.
2) I don't think most of the folks here have heard these formats, so it's stupid for them to argue whether or not they sound better.
3) With multichannel formats, spatial imaging is easier to attain than in stereo. The surprising result is that speaker and listener placement is actually less critical than it is in stereo. So unlike with stereo, you can move around the room and still have good imaging.
A lot of people have big issues with this guy.
The implications of many of his writings are that the people we *think* built great civilizations aren't capable of being that smart. For example, say the aboriginal Maya peoples of Central America couldn't have build all those great cities and pyramids, let alone figured out all that astronomy, etc.
Instead some other "greater" previous civilization is responsible. Whatever.
First understand that there are two kinds of copyright in music. One is the (c) copyright to a published song like say "Happy Birthday." The other is the (p) copyright to a recording of a song - think of Jimi Hendrick's performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" as recorded at Woodstock.
When someone plays a recording of Happy Birthday on the air, the (c) copyright holder gets money, but the record company that paid to make the recording does not. On the other hand, when Jimi's "Star Spangled Banner" gets played on the air, no one gets a royalty since the song is public domain (and a copyrighted recorded master doesn't get compensation for play on radio).
In the view of the record industry (meaning the owners of huge back catalogs of recorded music) the fact that only the (c) copyright holder (i.e. the composer/songwriter/publisher ) gets paid money is a huge missed opportunity - it's something they missed back when radio was new & when no politician wanted to peeve the radio station owners. This has been a thorn in the record industry's side ever since.
In my view, a lot of what is happening is an attempt to change copyright law using the progress of technology as an excuse. If you can say it's not radio, then you can ask for more money - which is what they've wanted all along. And if radio as we know it goes away, they can then collect a new revenue stream beyond sales (which they see rapidly slipping away.)
The long range result - people get their music for free, advertisers pick up the tab, and music gets worse as commercial potential of a record is determined by how willing advertisers are to stomach it - this is largely why commercial radio is so middle of the road awful.
Detroit minimal techno pioneer Jeff Mills did a soundtrack for Metropolis - which hasn't come out on DVD yet. Other musicians could do alternative soundtracks to their favorite movies - silent or otherwise...
I've found that I can predict which movies I will like by doing the *opposite* of Roger Ebert. If he is revolted by a movie (e.g. Blue Velvet or Fight Club) I know I will really like it. If he totally doesn't understand a movie (e.g. Velvet Goldmine which was a complex meditation on the impact of Glam Rock) the I know the movie is pretty intelligent...
My understanding is that this book was created with US Intelligence to help spread bad information to would be troublemakers. So it's a perfect example of this tactic in the pre-web era.
At one time the "Big 5" was the "Big 6."
Universal in the late 90's purchased Philips labels (Polygram, Decca, maybe Deutche Grammphone).
All this wouldn't be interesting, except that the deal involved stock if I remember. Anyone know if Philips still holds stock in Universal Music Group (part of Vivendi)?
The net-net is that human factors are far more important - and it's really hard to plug these into an estimate. One of Cockburn's contentions is that people aren't linear or predictable. But he also identifies items that can help a project run more efficiently. An excellent read at any rate.
Half the time you cannot read the captions on the screen bottom. Anyone try to watch MTV's pop up video lately? The have so many logos that you can't see the goofy "fact" pop ups half the time.
I don't think consumers need to fear this one much. While either film distributors or video stores will see their margins affected, it all balances out in the end.
Should the courts decide that DVDs *are* films, we'll probably just see more DVD's come out in an expensive version targeted at video stores a few weeks before the consumer market priced DVD's come out. Motivated video stores will get the releases early on (most have special agreements with the film distributors already anyhow). Those stores that wait will not see as many rentals since demand is highest at initial release, but they will save one the cost of the DVD.
http://www.oddmusic.com/illogic/
http://www.anti-theory.com/
http://www.simulated.net/bending/
http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/bent/
http://www.furious.com/perfect/emi/reedghazala.htm l
http://users.ev1.net/~bantha/bending/
http://www.pansiecola.com/space/inappropriate/bend ing/
And even a news group on the topic: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/benders
Lots of folks will exploit this tragedy to advance their own agenda. But RMS isn't among them - his warning is truly linked with the events and he is being sincere in his fears.
The Chicago Schools have been an (unwilling) testing ground for a wireless, 'viral' handheld game called Pox. Basically it's a variation of the old Pokemon thing, except that it's wireless and electronic. The NYTimes article points out that the secrecy factor is part of what makes it popular - you can play it across the room w/o anyone else knowing. More amusing in the context of this article is the ways that the toymaker and kids try to justify the 'educational' value of the game.
We're talking about email here. If I'm on a business trip an read my mail in Washington, am I suddenly covered? The Internet really destroys such notions of geography, no?
In Sunday's NY Times Magazine there is an article on the size of the porn industry (as much as $14 billion in the US per year) and its consumers (practically everyone). A good read and a strong challenge to those who claim that "community standards" dictate that porn be banned from their towns.
Various 'L' stops (incl Blue line at Grand Ave).
Actually this CD wouldn't even work on my home stereo - older CD players (pre 1992) like mine won't play these SUNcomm copy protected CD's either...
As someone who spends about $300 a month on music purchases, it seems somewhat ironic that the music industry wants to make it impossible for me to get music without resorting to copying (a cracked copy would probably work on my CD player and laptop, but the original would be worthless to me!).
Many DJ CD players are fussier still, so maybe any artist who releases music on copy protected CD and neglects to have a vinyl release will be cutting themselves out of play at many clubs. (This is a good source of royalty money, ASCAP & BMI please take note of this when you're handing out the checks.)
Do you think they care one iota that in order to reduce illegal copying they'll make it harder to make legal copies? I'm as annoyed as anyone, but all this paranoid talk is plain stupid.
Anyone that can't see that the record industry is about to enter some very rough times is deluded.
She vegetarian, not vegan. Still it seemed weird when she was part of those MILK ads. So maybe she's got a little bit of the Crusty shill in her. Little Lisa slurry indeed!
Burns' inability to remember Homer's name is a long running gag. Don't get me started...
But I'm not sure where SDMI solves that. Compressed formats will always have less fidelity. It's the simple trade off for file size. What SDMI adds to the mix are watermarks that audibly degrade the sound of a recording regardless of audio compression.
SDMI penalizes the people who bought a legit copy, and still doesn't really solve the problem.
This is similar to a software problem I have. I purchased a package that uses a key. Now occasionally, the key doesn't work so I can't get any work done with the package. Oddly enough cracked versions of the same software are easily available and by virtue of having the unstable software key security "feature" removed, they are arguably more usable. So you have an expensive package that randomly locks you out, or a free package that works all the time. Now the vendor would say they give support and that's why you should be registered. Only the vendor is slow to respond to any problem and when you call with an issue, such as, "My key doesn't work," they give you the run around, claim user error and take 3-7 days for each round trip denial of any problem. You can imagine how happy I am with this company.
Now if the music industry wants to do the same thing to their paying customers, well, I think we know where this is going.