The BD and HDDVD players need to be firmware-updatable so that cracked keys can be revoked. The occasional snafu like this helps train consumers to cooperate with the process.
In the case of "CD's", the apostrophe indicates a written (as opposed to verbal) contraction.
I don't buy it. Following this rule, a single compact disc[1] could be abbreviated " CD' ", and if we were speaking of certificates of deposit instead of compact discs, the acronymized plural would be " C'sD ". No, the use of apostrophes to pluralize acronyms descends from the use of apostrophes to pluralize individual letters, which is sometimes needed to avoid ambiguity:
Four is are needed to spell my name.
vs.
Four i's are needed to spell my name.
The practice was extended to all individual letters for consistency, so it "feels" right, especially for acronyms that are pronounced letter-for-letter. The consensus is that while the apostrophe is still permitted when needed to eliminate ambiguity, adding it for all acronym plurals is taking the whole nonsense a bit too far, especially since 1) acronyms are almost always all uppercase, distinguishing the suffix from the root without the need for punctuation, and 2) unlike letters, acronyms are often actually used in the possessive form.
Did I just make up a word?
No, thought I see the need. I can't dictionary entries for them, but Google prefers "acronymned" to "acronymized", 27,600 to 19,100 (not that the meaning is exactly the same.)
[1]It's "compact disc", not "compact disk". "Disk" is short for "diskette" which only refers to floppies.
This is not strictly a lossy-codec issue. As the anonymous grandparent implied, there are those of us who like to listen to a whole album, and this can differ from a playlist of single audio files. Ripping individual tracks from the CD often screws with the pauses between the songs and the relative loudness of tracks... easily perceptible, no fuckery required.
There are ways to specify play-time volume adjustments in the metadata of some container formats, which can be used to handle the issue in the other direction -- something that sounds right as a quiet movement in the middle of a longer work might sound way too quiet on a shuffled playlist. To reduce the wrongsoundingness when a user wants to play a whole album, a player could support special if-played-as-original-work-not-a-shuffled-playlist behavior that would keep (or simulate) the original volume and between-track timing. I've never seen anything like that, so in the mean time having a single-file rip of a CD is a way to avoid this annoyance.
Another nice feature of ripping a CD to a single-file FLAC -- you can reproduce the original red book audio CD exactly, which is nice if you wanna, say, look up data on freedb (rip now, tag later.)
The red cross symbol has become synonymous with 'First Aid' in the public mind. When I was a kid sure, but for some reason I often see something like an X with a vertical bar through the middle these days. In green. Probably a stylized caduceus
In Firefox, bookmarks are stored in an html file, but browsing history (History sidebar and URL autocomplete) is in a Mork db. With Places, both will be stored together in a SQLite db.
In Thunderbird, Mork is used not only for the email summary files but also for the address books, which is much more frustrating. It's nearly impossible to find or write non-Mozilla code that can read or write Thunderbird address books, which is a serious impediment to synchonization tools. (Honorable mention to Dawn, which does a fair job of Mork address book conversion.)
I, too, believe that Thunderbird has far more to gain from the move to "Unified Storage" than Firefox does.
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The BD and HDDVD players need to be firmware-updatable so that cracked keys can be revoked. The occasional snafu like this helps train consumers to cooperate with the process.
I don't buy it. Following this rule, a single compact disc[1] could be abbreviated " CD' ", and if we were speaking of certificates of deposit instead of compact discs, the acronymized plural would be " C'sD ". No, the use of apostrophes to pluralize acronyms descends from the use of apostrophes to pluralize individual letters, which is sometimes needed to avoid ambiguity:
vs. The practice was extended to all individual letters for consistency, so it "feels" right, especially for acronyms that are pronounced letter-for-letter. The consensus is that while the apostrophe is still permitted when needed to eliminate ambiguity, adding it for all acronym plurals is taking the whole nonsense a bit too far, especially since 1) acronyms are almost always all uppercase, distinguishing the suffix from the root without the need for punctuation, and 2) unlike letters, acronyms are often actually used in the possessive form. Did I just make up a word?No, thought I see the need. I can't dictionary entries for them, but Google prefers "acronymned" to "acronymized", 27,600 to 19,100 (not that the meaning is exactly the same.)
[1]It's "compact disc", not "compact disk". "Disk" is short for "diskette" which only refers to floppies.
None to my satisfaction, of course... but they do exist, some discussion in the hydrogen audio forums.
This is not strictly a lossy-codec issue. As the anonymous grandparent implied, there are those of us who like to listen to a whole album, and this can differ from a playlist of single audio files. Ripping individual tracks from the CD often screws with the pauses between the songs and the relative loudness of tracks... easily perceptible, no fuckery required.
There are ways to specify play-time volume adjustments in the metadata of some container formats, which can be used to handle the issue in the other direction -- something that sounds right as a quiet movement in the middle of a longer work might sound way too quiet on a shuffled playlist. To reduce the wrongsoundingness when a user wants to play a whole album, a player could support special if-played-as-original-work-not-a-shuffled-playlist behavior that would keep (or simulate) the original volume and between-track timing. I've never seen anything like that, so in the mean time having a single-file rip of a CD is a way to avoid this annoyance.
Another nice feature of ripping a CD to a single-file FLAC -- you can reproduce the original red book audio CD exactly, which is nice if you wanna, say, look up data on freedb (rip now, tag later.)
Also for Windows, more up-to-date DS filters that include Vorbis support along with other formats are available --
p _id=173941.
(Don't fear the name and beta status, this is the de facto official release of ffdshow.)
"ffdshow tryouts" project: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
Haali Media Splitter: http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/
Quicktime plugins for the ogg vorbis and theora formats, for both Mac and Windows, are available from Xiph: http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/download.html
o rbis_Speex_Theora_and_FLAC.htm
For Windows users who'd rather use an existing player than install VLC, try the DirectShow filters: http://free-codecs.com/download/Filters_for_Ogg_V
In Firefox, bookmarks are stored in an html file, but browsing history (History sidebar and URL autocomplete) is in a Mork db. With Places, both will be stored together in a SQLite db.
In Thunderbird, Mork is used not only for the email summary files but also for the address books, which is much more frustrating. It's nearly impossible to find or write non-Mozilla code that can read or write Thunderbird address books, which is a serious impediment to synchonization tools. (Honorable mention to Dawn, which does a fair job of Mork address book conversion.)
I, too, believe that Thunderbird has far more to gain from the move to "Unified Storage" than Firefox does.