Short history of the Compact Disc
The invention of the Compact Disc has had a large impact on both music and computing in the last 20 years. Invented in 1979 as a joint project between Sony and Phillips to counter the self-destructive nature of consumer audio playback (such as tapes and records that could only be played so many times before the recording degraded significantly) by switching to a resilient digital format.
Imagine that! Two companies working together to create a media that sounded better and lasted longer... and it succeeded!
My wife and I recently saw a TV commercial for a movie "now available on DVD and Blu-Ray." She said: "What's Blu-ray?" That's exactly the problem with both formats.
Nobody in the non-geek world knows what they are, so nobody cares.
I would love to have a new technology like this. Does anybody else remember those halcyon days when a CD-ROM could hold much more data than the HD on your computer? I remember my computer having an 80MB HD, and being absolutely awestruck at the idea of 680+ MB of storage on a CD-ROM.
Where have those days gone? Have we run into a problem of the limits of miniturization, or have we simply run out of innovations?
To take this comment a bit further -- not only does NBC do a "crap-ton" of promos for their own shows, but they do it alongside ads that they're selling to other companies.
If I buy a Nike shirt, it has a Nike logo on it.
What surprises me most about this whole thing is that Google even feels a need to respond at all!
As a professional musician, I have aural deja vu all the time. My life is spent trying to recreate performances in my "inner ear," and it happens regularly that I'll hear a performance or recording that sounds completely familiar. One's most commonly used senses are of course the ones that will experience deja vu.
This reminds me of that bogus psychological study on Auditory "Hallucinations" brought on my frequent iPod use. Some quack spouting off about people hearing sounds that weren't there--more serious than having a song stuck in your head. Again, that's what I spend my life TRYING to do!
There's also an interesting side market of copyright infringement mercenaries--- in the classical music world, there are people who collect program books from concerts all over the world and meticulously double check whether the ensembles had purchased the rights to perform certain copyrighted works.
Frankly, I see this as proof of the effectiveness of the free market. Copyright becomes self-inforced, and the govt doesn't always need to be involved.
I just installed a copy of Democracy. It offered to install SIX codecs for my QuickTime installation. While that's great and all, how many of those are free?
I saw in the list some freebies like FLAC, but I also saw "flash." IIRC, the flash codec was only available to those who purchased Flash Pro.
Am I right?
While I don't really want to pull these comments off-topic, I will say how impressed I've been with the Amber Alert system here in Indiana. Highway billboards, tv channels, and radio stations all work together -- and have had several successes in recent years.
But other than weather alerts and whitehouse rose garden press conferences, I've never seen any sort of real interruption of broadcasts for "important" messages.
Now that I've grown older, I won't play any game unless I can cheat. I have absolutely zero patience for a game that requires hours of skill-building before anything happens.
I don't know if the intent is to be clever with packaging, prevent theft, but it's gotten so bad I have started factoring in how much pain the packaging looks to promise vs. how much I want the product. Sounds silly, but after a few plastic cuts for a couple of two-buck knick knacks...
If a few minutes frustration is enough to keep you from buying something, then it's clear you don't need it. The packaging is doing you a favor!
Fight the ravages of Affluenza, people.
You then can verify your votes were recorded correctly before putting your ballot in a box so that it can be run through an optical scanner at the end of the day to count the votes.
Didn't anybody here see "Hacking Democracy?" The most terrifying thing in that documentary was the end, where they proved that the optical scanners were hackable to count incorrectly, and then give a printed record with the incorrect count indicated. There was no trail of deceit, except for the pile of actual ballots.
It's ALL hackable, people!
It seems perfectly reasonable to me. Most ATMs in America are manufactured by Diebold. Diebold has proven time and again that they consider all their products to be unhackable.
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Why is this article tagged with "texas, cheney, dick cheney?" May I please moderate the tags?
I've been waiting to find a decent LCD with screen rotation for under $100. I've been waiting a very long time.
Imagine that! Two companies working together to create a media that sounded better and lasted longer... and it succeeded!
Pfft -- the bloated, oversized OSes of the future won't come close to fitting in 16 GB.
Download codes here: http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/search/search .cgi?Match=1&Terms=roomba
Nobody in the non-geek world knows what they are, so nobody cares.
Where have those days gone? Have we run into a problem of the limits of miniturization, or have we simply run out of innovations?
If I buy a Nike shirt, it has a Nike logo on it.
What surprises me most about this whole thing is that Google even feels a need to respond at all!
D'oh!
This reminds me of that bogus psychological study on Auditory "Hallucinations" brought on my frequent iPod use. Some quack spouting off about people hearing sounds that weren't there--more serious than having a song stuck in your head. Again, that's what I spend my life TRYING to do!
You're a reasercher? Gotta research SOMETHIN'!
There's also an interesting side market of copyright infringement mercenaries--- in the classical music world, there are people who collect program books from concerts all over the world and meticulously double check whether the ensembles had purchased the rights to perform certain copyrighted works.
Frankly, I see this as proof of the effectiveness of the free market. Copyright becomes self-inforced, and the govt doesn't always need to be involved.
Did Apple patent the Billion Dollar Bill?
I just installed a copy of Democracy. It offered to install SIX codecs for my QuickTime installation. While that's great and all, how many of those are free?
I saw in the list some freebies like FLAC, but I also saw "flash." IIRC, the flash codec was only available to those who purchased Flash Pro.
Am I right?
While I don't really want to pull these comments off-topic, I will say how impressed I've been with the Amber Alert system here in Indiana. Highway billboards, tv channels, and radio stations all work together -- and have had several successes in recent years. But other than weather alerts and whitehouse rose garden press conferences, I've never seen any sort of real interruption of broadcasts for "important" messages.
"illiterate Indian slum dwellers" need bank accounts and easy access to their cash?
Now that I've grown older, I won't play any game unless I can cheat. I have absolutely zero patience for a game that requires hours of skill-building before anything happens.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me. Most ATMs in America are manufactured by Diebold. Diebold has proven time and again that they consider all their products to be unhackable.