One of the departments I have to support and generally recommend equipment for is my university's scanning operation.
The new scantrons and technology is MUCH better than it use to be. Optical Mark technology use to require a #2 pencil, but more and more are allowing pens to work -- I know because we test for this possibility all the time.
Past that, if you have a bad read, you can set it up to kick the sheet out. For about 2 months of the year, we would pack up our 5000i and send it across state-lines to another (unnamed) state as it was good enough to do the new automated tax forms (this thing can do both optical mark AND optical character recognition). Designed well, a form would give NO ambiguous results and the folks renting ours for tax purposes have no problems with this stuff.
Now if you are talking the standard 1/2 page scantron with 400 choices all next to each other, that COULD be a problem for voting...but one designed well enough with none of the choices close to the others would allow this to be unambiguous enough that even its equivalent of a "Hanging Chad" would be easy to understand.
Past that, if you use a computer to actually print this out -- with the full key on it for any human to read -- you don't get into the problem of folks erasing or lightly penciling and you don't know if it was intentional or not. We do preprints of scantrons that include the course / section on them so at least that part doesn't get screwed up in the millions of things we see a year. If the instructors don't get to us in time, its up to them to make sure this gets filled out right (or pay us 2x the time to manually check everything -- which we do anyways, but that guarentees it:-)
Properly done, scantrons are far more secure than other means...
"This powerbook was running os9 and we found that we couldnt join a domain and let it run normally like any other wintel machines"
Thats such a Windows POV...this is like saying I Can't Find Any AntiVirus Software for Macs...mainly because you don't need it.
Ok, you want to connect one OS to another's proprietary services. You can either, A) Install Mac Services on your servers -- takes 3 minutes and a reboot (everything takes a reboot on NT)...or B) Go To Microsoft and download the Windows File Sharing software stuff for the Mac -- I forget the name but its located on the Mactopia site Microsoft runs. Its again a 3 minute procedure and will allow you not to screw with your servers.
Past that, if you want single login domain, you will need to upgrade to 2K Servers, set up ADS and make sure its using LDAP instead of the regular BS -- you will need to do this if you are wanting to use any sort of single domain login stuff with mixed OSes because it really wants to revert back to proprietary Windows BS with the focus on Only Windows Works Here.
The problem I find most techs have with Macs are the same thing I see they have with Linux and other 'minor' OSes...they are dumbasses that have only ever had to deal with one OS their entire life discarding every other machine out there. Instead of learning how to use an operating system, they learn how to use Windows by rote. Well you ALWAYS do blah by blahing it. No sense of learning how to do something or figuring it out on their own. Problem solving is not something that most PC / Windows users are good at.
We've been around for computer & music needs for almost 10 years -- much longer than most of these places and with folks that actually work in the industry (though its getting increasingly Apple oriented these days).
It depends. In the main printing, they probably d get paid by the page or a set contractual fee.
In the trade paperbacks, its different...its a standard royalty rate like anything else.
I had a friend that just did a score for a movie...he was paid by the cue. How many seconds of music is going to show up on the screen. I made sure he checked the distribution contracts as they weren't going to give him anything more via DVD royalties. When he complained (actually just asked about this), they didn't even blink -- they sent out a contract that said he gets like $0.15 a sale as publishing. Of course, he asked for it, and a lot of these guys might not have the savvy to ask for it when they publish their books (there is no law stopping people from doing completely moronic things -- for instance, Elvis use to ask writers to pay him half the song writing royalties...and folks took it simply to get him to perform their songs).
So yeah, there are probably folks that don't get publishing royalties for their trade paperbacks -- but there are probably quite a bit more that are savvy enough to know that if they don't ask for it, they won't get it -- and if they DO ask for it, their publishers will probably more than likely not even hesitate at faxing over the amended agreements.
Awww...I don't know why I browse at 0 sometimes:-)
Lets see, I've done asbestos and lead removal a couple summers (and then on weekends after classes started to help my team out -- I had the certs and TECHNICALLY I was in charge).
I've done roofing for a year to pay for school, and for a year and a half I was a security guard.
All in all, none of this 'honest to goodness' hard work was anything more than using my body as a meat puppet. No skills needed. Can I work for 12 hours a day in a tyveck suit with a respirator in the hot sun? Good qualification. Really doing the world a lot of good aren't I? Can I live with the constant burns through SPS 2000 that you are guaranteed to get as a f'n roofer. Cool. Qualified for that too. Can I be trusted to not shoot anyone while in possession of a high calibre weapon and make sure that I don't get shot as well. Lots of skill there...I think the only qualification was that ya can't be a complete dumbass.
Effete snob? Maybe so, but I have the experience to know that manual labour is nothing more than renting out my flesh in return for a roof over my head and food on my plate. That isn't living, its surviving. I'm sorry you never got the experience to see what its like on the other side of the fence.
Actually, trade paperback is the generic name given in the comic industry for the bound issues.
A few years after being published (though I know a few that will issues theirs within months of a story arc), these companies will issue a 'trade paperback' with these stories.
Again, this is the common term for it in comics. If you go into any big book store and ask for trade paperback comics, they will know what you are talking about. If we cannot use the common terms in the realm you are wishing to peruse, maybe thats why folks can't seem to understand this stuff is already out there.
And with most products, its nice to do some research on this stuff before you buy. That doesn't mean stealing the product wholesale as an excuse to find what you need. There are the Amazon customer comments and the product descriptions, as well as many many comic resources (trust me, I WOULD rather hang out with/.'rs than spend much time around a comic convention or even a comic forum...folks discussing how the story line just isn't real -- but DAMN that was awesome that the Hulk could throw that tank 500 Meters -- and not see the irony in it).
You have the resources at hand...and most bookstores have seats. I don't know how many times I've gone in to just look for some research and ended up reading a chapter of something else. Heck, a lot of these places have cafes where they ENCOURAGE you to read their products. You read the stuff and after investing an hour in it, you are likely to walk out of the store with it. Download the first 200 issues, and you might buy the next several dozen issues -- but any artist / writer that is no longer with the project just got ripped. The new guys will be happy and so will the publisher -- but the actual content writers will be left in the lurch.
"Having these online so that people could read from the start of the series would be wonderful."
Never heard of trade paperbacks? I have several sets of comics I was too lazy to pick up every issue (that and I hate going into the comic shop where you are guaranteed that some 35 year old with middling education is going to try to convince you that both Star Wars and the Matrix actually contain intellectual philosophies) -- all of them in trade paperbacks.
Too lazy to pick up issues 1 -20, but the story arc in paperback form. Sick of folks handling your precious copies? Get the trade paperback -- the only one actually went out of my way to collect was the Sandman (still need to find issue #4 to fill out the collection -- haven't looked too hard) -- but I won't let those out of my home.
These don't exist for every comic, but they do for quite a bit. hit the comic section of the local Barnes and Noble and you will see what is newly available...and ya can probably find the rest by order.
If I wrote something 15 years ago, one would think I was still entitled to copyright protection. Folks today think 3 years and not published in the 2 places they looked means its 'abandonware'. Then again, these are the same type of peoples as the 35 year old comic shop employee mentioned above so I don't put much credence in their logic.
People that have never created something creative will always believe that it isn't real work and this stuff comes readily to ones mind. "It only took me 30 minutes to read this comic, heck, I'll be generous and believe that it could have taken up to 2 hours to write. " Intellectual properties are much harder to develop and need far more protection than any manual labour, but the/. crowd wants to literally put us further down the scale with the ditch diggers and that ilk.
Good plan -- always ask before you put it out there. If you don't like he decision, program something else.
I had an employee interning with me a few years in her final year of graduate school. She asked if I wouldn't mind if she used the project we were working on as her thesis project. I paid her for the work, gave her guidance and showed her code not related to what she was working on so I wouldn't interfere with her schooling. In return, the cocksucker that was her advisor took the work and tried selling it to the same target audience we were competing again -- but claimed it was HIS work and that she did very little. He even claimed it was his idea -- even though I had versions 1 - 3 in actual use and this was a rewrite based on that source code (honestly, he COULD have claimed this because 1&2 were already GPL'd by the time V4.0 -- her version -- came out -- we always release old code back into the wild when we are finished with it).
The school decided during arbitration that they should get the use of it, but that it wasn't to be sold...they even tried to sneak in a 'We Get 50% of The Profits', but our lawyer caught that -- sad part is, my department is actually a part of the university -- just funded from outside and generally funded through items like this.
Make sure you get in writing what is yours and what isn't. As the parent says -- contact your advisor -- no one here knows the policies of your particular school.
And I've NEVER talked about cover bands or otherwise.
When someone writes a song specifically for you, THAT is not a 'cover' band.
The fact that I'm not 'winning' is due to the fact that you are not a troll. A troll would know when they are wrong and laugh about it. An idiot will however believe they are wrong because one instance in their life tells them its possible and thus probable.
*THIS* is why I hate hippies. Sure -- communism work dude. Thats all you fuckers know anyways.
You say one thing and then move another way jigging and jivin' one way or another all to prove that you really can't support any statement you've made.
You sir are an idiot and an hypocritical one at that.
You REALLY don't know how wrong you are on this topic.
Quite a few GREAT singers and performers don't write their own stuff. For instance, I know of no Broadway play where the musicians and singers are playing their own stuff. Does that mean instead of buying the Chicago 'Soundtrack' (definately, not the one from the movie, I can assure you) one should be able to rip this from the show and put it on the net?
I DO respect artists more that are all in one stops. Then again, Elvis Pressley wrote nothing. Sinatra wrote nothing. Great performers and it had NOTHING to do with voice trickery or other items folks use these days (and yeah, I've done pitch correction as well as going in to a digital editor to splice in words and where the words didn't work, rip apart forments to find something that can do the trick)...
Not everyone is a great musician, great performer AND a great writter. Sometimes you've got to settle for 2 of the 3.
As for singers that suck, so what if the singer rocked...but couldn't write a decent song. What about folks like Elton John. Should Elton get all the credit and all the $$$ while Bernie Taupin is left pennieless because Elton decides that he's going to tell everyone to steal their music and just come see him in concert -- and as an added bonus, all performances are available a day after the show FOR FREE.
You seem to think its the Britneys of the world that are killing the industry. The Britneys are a small portion of the industry in everyway other than sales. Of course, if you want to consider yourself a part of the 12 - 16 concert going crowd, I guess this IS everything to you. Quite a few GREAT singers and performers and songwritters that don't feel they need to do everything and end up sounding like a plastic doll when they can focus on one small part of the industry and do what they do well.
As for price fixing, it may be true they were convicted, but anyone that really believes they were effected by this actions that caused this judgment is a complete fucking looser that had no musical taste anyways -- or at the very least fickle and decide after the fact that they can decide that they were taken for a ride when an hour ago, they felt that they were buying something worth their money. If you don't want to pay a set price for something, don't pay it. Again, no one forces you...and anyone that is so willing to continually bring this up really does have a I Heart Justin tat on their ass (I hope ya don't want to sue over that too).
That is because you are ignorant and don't feel like knowing how the industry works.
The example of my friend is the example of ANY songwritter these days.
For instance, in the Beatles, Lennon / McCartney were listed as the sole songwritters on 95% of the music. That would mean they get 95% of the songwritting royalties. in concert, one would expect the gross to be split between the band members equally (though in reality, there probably was a slight advantage going to the two bigger names).
This example is also pretty fair because those songwritters STILL go paid.
I know of several other songwritters that are not close personal friends -- but are still good aquaintences. I talked with a better known producer this weekend as he was heading through the midwest (along with the friend noted earlier) -- this guy was the front man and songwritter for a well known 80s band...and this is where the conversation got kicked up.
Folks like the dead are singular creations. Folks like my friend the songwritter are happening by the hundreds.
You sir do not know the music industry.
Personally, any stupid motherfucker that thinks that someone colludes to bring prices up for entertainment should be punished is infact a moron. You don't need music to survive. You don't need someone elses music to feed you children. Your business is not threatened because you can't afford a certain type of music. Price fixxing for crappy music SHOULD be legal and if you are one of the millions of sheep that disagree with this sentiment, maybe the Gap and Abercrombie and Bananna Republic and otherwise should all be sued because they are charging way too much for the same things you can get a KMart or the salvation army clothing store.
You sir are ignornant and more importantly willingly uninformed. Keep believing your singular solution will work, even though many artists have tried this and it hasn't worked for them. Keep talking about jam bands where the song is different each night, and ignore the bands that enjoy trying to recreate the perfect version of a song and improving every night. Not everything has to be deconstructed and torn apart and made anew -- but again, some bands like the Dead are perfect at this...I use to enjoy going to their shows just to listen to their Space music and then hitting the parking lot after that...great music, but not everyone is an improviser.
Thats all good and nice, but what about folks that don't tour? What about song writters that get their publishing cut ONLY from the album sales.
Maybe, we should talk about publishers and song writters and otherwise getting a split from the concert venues. But until that happens, this argument is full of shit and not realistic.
I work closely with one songwritter that because of family issues ended up setting up a studio and staying home. He writes for several great artists...he is credited on the albums as both performer and writter, but these days the royalties are drying up. I know he has a few older songs that you can find in compilations like "Now Thats What I Call Music" (yeah -- most of that stuff is cheesy...not saying his stuff isn't, but its always fun party music). Ya know what? Anything older that a few years old, folks seem to think is alright...the guy was paying his house payments about a year ago on the royalties of just 3 songs that are less than 15 years old -- but about 2 years ago, these just died...I don't mind dropping the copyright back to something reasonable, but one should be able to expect that 20 - 30 years should be reasonable.
But the point is, not everyone makes their money through touring. Not everyone can sell a tshirt. Not everyone has the desire to be on stage.
Bands like the Dead are great because they are an all in one package. They can afford to cut off one revenue stream to ensure that others are better supported. Then again, I could also stop paying my programmers and then I would be able to take a risk here at work and do more things that might make *ME* more $$$.
Before you talk about how an industry works, please do some research into it and don't just throw out the first "But Blah Does Blah And Blah Is Successful" because more often than not, they are the exception to the rule than the average.
clif
Re:Sampling frequencies and filters
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Is Louder Better?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Yeah yeah...I got the number wrong...you know what the hell I'm saying never the less:-)
The rest is pretty much what I already said.
Yeah -- I'm one of the ones with a ribbon tweeter...or more to the point, the studio I run with one of my buddies with several platniums to his name:-) They weren't 10s of thousands, but the system was expensive. Ya CAN tell the difference when using these...but it really only sounds good on high end strings (one of the reasons ribon mics are excellent choices for these recordings). Honestly, they only get used when the snobbiest of the snobbies come in, and past that, our new Blue Sky 5.1 system is just as good as anything I need to mix on.
As I've said about ADCs...you are right on consumer and prosumer level gear. Too many folks confuse prosumer and professional. I don't, but the work I do means prosumer is good enough for my home.
You still have the filters, but they end up much higher...*IF* you are not running parallel 48khz ADCs...talking real world implementation of 96khz as opposed to theoretical here.
Anywho, yeah...I threw together a nontechnical laymans answer to someones faulty note and it should be taken as such. I don't claim to know much more than this but I do work with quite a few audio engineers (I'm taking this to mean you design circuits and not just run the board...guys that run the board generally throw shit around that they just have no clue about because they believe what they read in the magazines without knowing real world implementations). I'm a sound designer and its a few steps below the guys doing the circuits, but working closely with the manufacturers, ya get to know a little more than ya ever wanted to know...no one ever spills their own dirty secrets, but guys that are paid to reverse engineer other peoples boards will in a heartbeat:-)
Re:It is not the bits..
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Is Louder Better?
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· Score: 1, Informative
Hmmm...your ears can hear 44Khz???
WOW!!! Someone call an ear doctor FAST. We need to figure out what gave you this superhuman hearing.
96Khz gives you 44Khz according to Nyquest filtering. 44Khz gives you 22khz. The average human hearing is between 12 - 16Khz. You can hear 22Khz if you have perfect hearing AND just had your ears cleaned AND haven't been in any loud sound for a few weeks.
What does 96Khz do for you? Well, as a musician, it and 24bits gives you slightly better latency...why? I'm not quite sure:-) I've been told it has to do with the physical make up of the data and how the computer can access it. Probably the difference from setting a video card from millions of colors down to 256 -- it has to think about the dither, where as with these, it sends it out raw (try it playing a game...you set the colors too low and it impedes gameplay). Translated to music, imagine being use to playing a piano...the second the hammer hits the string a sound appears. High latency might mean you are waiting to hear that sound milliseconds after playing and it can throw off the timing...lower latency is GOOD.
Half the guys I work with in the music industry are rocket scientists and the other half are great musicians...I kinda straddle the realms, but not quite up on the theories, so I may be getting SOME facts wrong on this debate.
What does 96Khz do for you as a consumer? Well, with 44Khz audio interfaces, consumer level stuff is not always the most perfectly matched. As such, aliasing happens. Get 2% phase in a cap or resister and then multiple this over the signal path...Nyquest? Nyquest ain't gonna help you out when the alising is dipping into the audible portions of the sound. Remember 44khz gives you 22 IF EVERYTHING ELSE IS PERFECT.
On Pro Level stuff, like my Kurzweil 2600, folks can't believe my synth is ONLY 48Khz. Audio Snobs tell me that it MUST be processing internally at 96 at 192Khz. Bullshit...they've been so use to their tubes (that color the sound regardless of what they say) and consumer level 44Khz that they don't don't what 44Khz sounds like when the Nyquest Theorum is put to good use and approaches what theoretically / mathematically it should output.
96Khz gives a lot of wiggle room with consumer level crap. It really doesnt cost any more to make 96Khz signal paths which means you have a LOT more aliasing that can go on outside of the human scale of hearing without ever touching the 22Khz freqs...
BUT the main problem with 96Khz these days is ya never know if you have TRUE 96Khz or dual 44Khz's -- i.e., one of the 44Khz's are just clocked and filtered to read the 44Khz - 96khz frequencies and drop them into audible range (at least in the signal path way before it ever gets to something you can hear). Duals give you NO advantage over the 44Khz and actually give MORE aliasing problems when you add the two signals together at the final outstage. Unless you know circuits, you won't be able to tell if this is happening...
So, no...96Khz is NOT more important in any sense of the word (err..word clock?). It can be helpful, but only if its set up right from all parts of the machine. Then again, if the machine is set up right with decent and matched parts -- this is really a moot point:-)
Wow! We've been waiting for DVD-A and SACD for 24dB of headroom!!!
Quite honestly, most pop music has about 16 - 32db at most.
With 16bit Audio, we get 96dB of space to play with. With 24bit, ya get 144.
144dB is equivelent of going from a dead silent room to standing about 10 feet behind a jet engine at take off.
16bit audio is MORE than anyone needs to work in any pop medium -- and I'd count the metal albums I've seen listed here within that medium as well.
A lot of classical and jazz might do well with 24 bit...anything that is uncompressed as a rule. But even that could be done reasonably well with 16bit audio -- unless we are talking Varses on the classical side or Zorn in the jazz end of things....
Mixing in 24+ bits, however rocks...its always nicer to mix in a higher bit rate than what you are going to be presenting in as it allows ya to have the data errors out of the range of what will be heard by the consumer anyways.
"...the GPL is about the freedom of the code (i.e., once the code is Free, it has to stay Free) and as such the freedom of the community at large..."
So by this definition, the Chinese citizens are ACTUALLY freer than US and other westernized countries, because its all about the welfare of the country as opposed to personal freedoms.
What would Chairman Stallman have to say about this? Actually, I think this is what he wants...he's a modern day communist hippy thinking he's going to change the world by taking away choice.
A good friend of mine makes a little change through this company.
He prints the liners with an inkjet printer and buys printable discs (about $0.30 as opposed to $0.10) and has a friend with a CD printer do them up for about $1 each...pretty much the cost of the ink. The cheapest CD Printer on the market is around $350.
Past that, $3000 should get your album mastered and recorded and all that...quite a few popular indy rockers these days doing their entire recording on $5000 or less.
If you can't afford to burn a few CDs and con a friend at a studio to print a few custom discs for you, ya shouldn't be waiting for anything like this because we aren't going to be buying your work anyways.
Re:calling clueful car manufacturers
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Pods Unite
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· Score: 1
I don't even remember what brand it was. The ONLY feature I was after was the AuxIn. Can't really get them without CDs these days. I'm finding Cassette platers are getting to be more expensive than CDs.
It was the cheapest one CircuitShitty had on the display room wall and I'm kinda regretting it because it was a gaudy riceboy silver color and looks horrible in my car:-) Wish they had the same thing in basic black at the same price...but $120 including installation wasn't bad -- I just wish those fuckers didn't try stealing my other radio that was still good...had to go back for it after asking if they threw it in my trunk and got a Ummm Yeah...Came back and watched the guys talking for 3 minutes about who was going to get to keep it and what a dumbass I was to get rid of it before they turned around almost gasping for air knowing I was close to calling the management and having their asses fired...:-)
Re:calling clueful car manufacturers
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Pods Unite
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Kinda depends on the car.
For instance, I've tried 3 FM transmitters -- a generic one, the Griffen iTrip and another one I found from the Apple Store. None of them worked in my stereo.
I ended up picking up a new stereo JUST so I could run my iPod through it. On a larf, I decided to again try to solutions. Not a one worked any better. Only way to get it to work was to go outside and hold the transmitted next to the antenna. This REALLY sucks...
Well, it kinda worked on trips outside the city...doesn't help when there is a station, ever so weak it may be, on any channel you try.
I'm happy with the new AuxIn on mine...now I have to figure out how not to make all those wires look so ugly as they wind around the car...
Yeah, that was a troll but not my original arguement.
I didn't say anything about Linux users being pirates. I said that about the Windows Users. The hardcore Linux users won't buy non-GPL'd works -- or at least will snear at them when they have to.
As for GPL -- no, you don't HAVE to give it away for nothing. BUT say you put it out and charge $20 to your first user that buys it and gets the source. They also have the rights to redistribute it any way they want.
The GPL has no authorship clause. This is one of the reasons I actually prefer the Creative Commons licensing because you can specify that in there. You may own the copyright to your code, but NOTHING in the GPL forces you to keep that in there (or anything else). I believe there is a version of the GPL up for debate that actually does this.
I have personally seen code taken by bigger companies and used with little credit to the original owner. Yeah -- you get get the Source and look it up, but these folks were MUCH better marketters and ended up making a good deal of money off of something they threw in a nice package and slick GUI. If you are talking writting a front end to something like a Firewall where it is a CLI based product, but you simply create a simple to use config maker that throws arguements at that product, there is NOTHING stopping you from not releasing the source to that application...which someone else could recreate from scratch, but if they wanted to be dicks about it...copyright could come into play. Heck, and thats straight forward GPL and not even talking about LGPL because the application technically doesn't interface with it other than telling it to start up (hence why one can make a closed front end for GCC as MANY others have done...I believe VisualC++ could use the GCC from the last time I used it...does that make M$'s product in violation of the GPL?).
We've seen it all the time on Slashdot...at least for the last 5 years I've been on this site. OpenSource developer gets pissed off someone used the GPL exactly how its intended to be used by Stallman and the programmer packs the cats and closes the doors and then the community cries sour grapes.
Anywho, I think you need to check out the GPL a little more before you bow before its teats. Its a good document and was designed with good intentions, but its not perfect by any means. And with as many folks that think its infallible, the religion keeps Linux out of the mainstream (for the most part).
Someone should mark this and the parent as off topic.
There was never a decent simple to use Acide type application. Live does a sorta decent job, but its as complicated as a lot of the other sequencers like Logic (for which I run the largest users group on the web:-) or Cubase.
Its a simple to use application and it will allow the non-musicians to do their thing as well as some musicians might find it an easier task to wrap their heads around than the other solutions (not everyone is a techie nor does everything think that being a musician means being as good of a virtual drummer / keyboardist / whatever as you are a real life guitarist -- not everyone can perform all duties well).
There is a lot of 3rd party work out there in this field and no one is getting squeezed out. Heck, Apple already has a popular music app, and this might scare people over to this one...competition within the same company:-)
Wrong, Apple has provided a way to make sure my music stays my music. They have provided a way that allows me to listen to it in any format I want. In a sense, they DID sell me the rights to listen to that music.
Microsoft in their Windows Media Format, sells a file. They don't sell the music. They make it intentionally hard to get at. Burn discs? Hell no. Heck, even the files expire after so long. I picked up a few exclusive Moby tracks last year in WM that I never got around to recording out to another machine (not too hard when I have optical lines connecting half a dozen machines in my machine room under my studio). Sadly, last time I went to listen to them, they had already expired and were unlistenable.
Most of the other services out there that one could buy music over the net involved a constant subscription...if you broke the subscription, the music you bought was gone. Hmmm...I didn't know I bought a limited listening of these files -- I tested some of these as an evaluation for a friends lable a few years ago as they were trying to court some genre based music in the indies realm. Needless to say, they didn't go for it (then again, they still sell a large amount of vinyl, so their audience REALLY wouldn't want something like that:)
I know the difference between a file, a service and music. I buy the music, I don't buy a service. I can deal with the music showing up in media that is easily converted to other formats...I can't deal with it being structurally tied to that format.
As for the Marxist comment, no one forces anyone to buy anything. THAT would be Marxist. Socialist would be that enough folks want something and thus the gov'ts collude to make a product worth $0.50 even though the absolute break even point is $0.99. Capitalist is saying there is a breakeven point, but the artist / management can make it what ever price and if they don't break even they fail...and if someone can't afford it, they don't get it. Theft is saying I can't afford it and I won't pay what others are asking for it, but I will obtain it anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the departments I have to support and generally recommend equipment for is my university's scanning operation.
:-)
The new scantrons and technology is MUCH better than it use to be. Optical Mark technology use to require a #2 pencil, but more and more are allowing pens to work -- I know because we test for this possibility all the time.
Past that, if you have a bad read, you can set it up to kick the sheet out. For about 2 months of the year, we would pack up our 5000i and send it across state-lines to another (unnamed) state as it was good enough to do the new automated tax forms (this thing can do both optical mark AND optical character recognition). Designed well, a form would give NO ambiguous results and the folks renting ours for tax purposes have no problems with this stuff.
Now if you are talking the standard 1/2 page scantron with 400 choices all next to each other, that COULD be a problem for voting...but one designed well enough with none of the choices close to the others would allow this to be unambiguous enough that even its equivalent of a "Hanging Chad" would be easy to understand.
Past that, if you use a computer to actually print this out -- with the full key on it for any human to read -- you don't get into the problem of folks erasing or lightly penciling and you don't know if it was intentional or not. We do preprints of scantrons that include the course / section on them so at least that part doesn't get screwed up in the millions of things we see a year. If the instructors don't get to us in time, its up to them to make sure this gets filled out right (or pay us 2x the time to manually check everything -- which we do anyways, but that guarentees it
Properly done, scantrons are far more secure than other means...
"This powerbook was running os9 and we found that we couldnt join a domain and let it run normally like any other wintel machines"
Thats such a Windows POV...this is like saying I Can't Find Any AntiVirus Software for Macs...mainly because you don't need it.
Ok, you want to connect one OS to another's proprietary services. You can either, A) Install Mac Services on your servers -- takes 3 minutes and a reboot (everything takes a reboot on NT)...or B) Go To Microsoft and download the Windows File Sharing software stuff for the Mac -- I forget the name but its located on the Mactopia site Microsoft runs. Its again a 3 minute procedure and will allow you not to screw with your servers.
Past that, if you want single login domain, you will need to upgrade to 2K Servers, set up ADS and make sure its using LDAP instead of the regular BS -- you will need to do this if you are wanting to use any sort of single domain login stuff with mixed OSes because it really wants to revert back to proprietary Windows BS with the focus on Only Windows Works Here.
The problem I find most techs have with Macs are the same thing I see they have with Linux and other 'minor' OSes...they are dumbasses that have only ever had to deal with one OS their entire life discarding every other machine out there. Instead of learning how to use an operating system, they learn how to use Windows by rote. Well you ALWAYS do blah by blahing it. No sense of learning how to do something or figuring it out on their own. Problem solving is not something that most PC / Windows users are good at.
What about http://sonikmatter.com :-)
We've been around for computer & music needs for almost 10 years -- much longer than most of these places and with folks that actually work in the industry (though its getting increasingly Apple oriented these days).
It depends. In the main printing, they probably d get paid by the page or a set contractual fee.
In the trade paperbacks, its different...its a standard royalty rate like anything else.
I had a friend that just did a score for a movie...he was paid by the cue. How many seconds of music is going to show up on the screen. I made sure he checked the distribution contracts as they weren't going to give him anything more via DVD royalties. When he complained (actually just asked about this), they didn't even blink -- they sent out a contract that said he gets like $0.15 a sale as publishing. Of course, he asked for it, and a lot of these guys might not have the savvy to ask for it when they publish their books (there is no law stopping people from doing completely moronic things -- for instance, Elvis use to ask writers to pay him half the song writing royalties...and folks took it simply to get him to perform their songs).
So yeah, there are probably folks that don't get publishing royalties for their trade paperbacks -- but there are probably quite a bit more that are savvy enough to know that if they don't ask for it, they won't get it -- and if they DO ask for it, their publishers will probably more than likely not even hesitate at faxing over the amended agreements.
Awww...I don't know why I browse at 0 sometimes :-)
Lets see, I've done asbestos and lead removal a couple summers (and then on weekends after classes started to help my team out -- I had the certs and TECHNICALLY I was in charge).
I've done roofing for a year to pay for school, and for a year and a half I was a security guard.
All in all, none of this 'honest to goodness' hard work was anything more than using my body as a meat puppet. No skills needed. Can I work for 12 hours a day in a tyveck suit with a respirator in the hot sun? Good qualification. Really doing the world a lot of good aren't I? Can I live with the constant burns through SPS 2000 that you are guaranteed to get as a f'n roofer. Cool. Qualified for that too. Can I be trusted to not shoot anyone while in possession of a high calibre weapon and make sure that I don't get shot as well. Lots of skill there...I think the only qualification was that ya can't be a complete dumbass.
Effete snob? Maybe so, but I have the experience to know that manual labour is nothing more than renting out my flesh in return for a roof over my head and food on my plate. That isn't living, its surviving. I'm sorry you never got the experience to see what its like on the other side of the fence.
Actually, trade paperback is the generic name given in the comic industry for the bound issues.
/.'rs than spend much time around a comic convention or even a comic forum...folks discussing how the story line just isn't real -- but DAMN that was awesome that the Hulk could throw that tank 500 Meters -- and not see the irony in it).
A few years after being published (though I know a few that will issues theirs within months of a story arc), these companies will issue a 'trade paperback' with these stories.
Again, this is the common term for it in comics. If you go into any big book store and ask for trade paperback comics, they will know what you are talking about. If we cannot use the common terms in the realm you are wishing to peruse, maybe thats why folks can't seem to understand this stuff is already out there.
And with most products, its nice to do some research on this stuff before you buy. That doesn't mean stealing the product wholesale as an excuse to find what you need. There are the Amazon customer comments and the product descriptions, as well as many many comic resources (trust me, I WOULD rather hang out with
You have the resources at hand...and most bookstores have seats. I don't know how many times I've gone in to just look for some research and ended up reading a chapter of something else. Heck, a lot of these places have cafes where they ENCOURAGE you to read their products. You read the stuff and after investing an hour in it, you are likely to walk out of the store with it. Download the first 200 issues, and you might buy the next several dozen issues -- but any artist / writer that is no longer with the project just got ripped. The new guys will be happy and so will the publisher -- but the actual content writers will be left in the lurch.
"Having these online so that people could read from the start of the series would be wonderful."
/. crowd wants to literally put us further down the scale with the ditch diggers and that ilk.
Never heard of trade paperbacks? I have several sets of comics I was too lazy to pick up every issue (that and I hate going into the comic shop where you are guaranteed that some 35 year old with middling education is going to try to convince you that both Star Wars and the Matrix actually contain intellectual philosophies) -- all of them in trade paperbacks.
Too lazy to pick up issues 1 -20, but the story arc in paperback form. Sick of folks handling your precious copies? Get the trade paperback -- the only one actually went out of my way to collect was the Sandman (still need to find issue #4 to fill out the collection -- haven't looked too hard) -- but I won't let those out of my home.
These don't exist for every comic, but they do for quite a bit. hit the comic section of the local Barnes and Noble and you will see what is newly available...and ya can probably find the rest by order.
If I wrote something 15 years ago, one would think I was still entitled to copyright protection. Folks today think 3 years and not published in the 2 places they looked means its 'abandonware'. Then again, these are the same type of peoples as the 35 year old comic shop employee mentioned above so I don't put much credence in their logic.
People that have never created something creative will always believe that it isn't real work and this stuff comes readily to ones mind. "It only took me 30 minutes to read this comic, heck, I'll be generous and believe that it could have taken up to 2 hours to write. " Intellectual properties are much harder to develop and need far more protection than any manual labour, but the
Good plan -- always ask before you put it out there. If you don't like he decision, program something else.
I had an employee interning with me a few years in her final year of graduate school. She asked if I wouldn't mind if she used the project we were working on as her thesis project. I paid her for the work, gave her guidance and showed her code not related to what she was working on so I wouldn't interfere with her schooling. In return, the cocksucker that was her advisor took the work and tried selling it to the same target audience we were competing again -- but claimed it was HIS work and that she did very little. He even claimed it was his idea -- even though I had versions 1 - 3 in actual use and this was a rewrite based on that source code (honestly, he COULD have claimed this because 1&2 were already GPL'd by the time V4.0 -- her version -- came out -- we always release old code back into the wild when we are finished with it).
The school decided during arbitration that they should get the use of it, but that it wasn't to be sold...they even tried to sneak in a 'We Get 50% of The Profits', but our lawyer caught that -- sad part is, my department is actually a part of the university -- just funded from outside and generally funded through items like this.
Make sure you get in writing what is yours and what isn't. As the parent says -- contact your advisor -- no one here knows the policies of your particular school.
And I've NEVER talked about cover bands or otherwise.
When someone writes a song specifically for you, THAT is not a 'cover' band.
The fact that I'm not 'winning' is due to the fact that you are not a troll. A troll would know when they are wrong and laugh about it. An idiot will however believe they are wrong because one instance in their life tells them its possible and thus probable.
*THIS* is why I hate hippies. Sure -- communism work dude. Thats all you fuckers know anyways.
Man, you really have a problem with consistancy.
You say one thing and then move another way jigging and jivin' one way or another all to prove that you really can't support any statement you've made.
You sir are an idiot and an hypocritical one at that.
Cool -- so you don't respect anyone that plays other peoples music.
t ml
http://www.gdforum.com/news/dead030214setlist.h
I see a few in there that weren't of the Dead's creations...and certainly not of the singers that were performing that night.
The dead were your sole inspiration for the post I originally responded to.
What a fucking hypocrite. I think you should destroy everything they've ever recorded that you own now.
Dude,
You REALLY don't know how wrong you are on this topic.
Quite a few GREAT singers and performers don't write their own stuff. For instance, I know of no Broadway play where the musicians and singers are playing their own stuff. Does that mean instead of buying the Chicago 'Soundtrack' (definately, not the one from the movie, I can assure you) one should be able to rip this from the show and put it on the net?
I DO respect artists more that are all in one stops. Then again, Elvis Pressley wrote nothing. Sinatra wrote nothing. Great performers and it had NOTHING to do with voice trickery or other items folks use these days (and yeah, I've done pitch correction as well as going in to a digital editor to splice in words and where the words didn't work, rip apart forments to find something that can do the trick)...
Not everyone is a great musician, great performer AND a great writter. Sometimes you've got to settle for 2 of the 3.
As for singers that suck, so what if the singer rocked...but couldn't write a decent song. What about folks like Elton John. Should Elton get all the credit and all the $$$ while Bernie Taupin is left pennieless because Elton decides that he's going to tell everyone to steal their music and just come see him in concert -- and as an added bonus, all performances are available a day after the show FOR FREE.
You seem to think its the Britneys of the world that are killing the industry. The Britneys are a small portion of the industry in everyway other than sales. Of course, if you want to consider yourself a part of the 12 - 16 concert going crowd, I guess this IS everything to you. Quite a few GREAT singers and performers and songwritters that don't feel they need to do everything and end up sounding like a plastic doll when they can focus on one small part of the industry and do what they do well.
As for price fixing, it may be true they were convicted, but anyone that really believes they were effected by this actions that caused this judgment is a complete fucking looser that had no musical taste anyways -- or at the very least fickle and decide after the fact that they can decide that they were taken for a ride when an hour ago, they felt that they were buying something worth their money. If you don't want to pay a set price for something, don't pay it. Again, no one forces you...and anyone that is so willing to continually bring this up really does have a I Heart Justin tat on their ass (I hope ya don't want to sue over that too).
That is because you are ignorant and don't feel like knowing how the industry works.
The example of my friend is the example of ANY songwritter these days.
For instance, in the Beatles, Lennon / McCartney were listed as the sole songwritters on 95% of the music. That would mean they get 95% of the songwritting royalties. in concert, one would expect the gross to be split between the band members equally (though in reality, there probably was a slight advantage going to the two bigger names).
This example is also pretty fair because those songwritters STILL go paid.
I know of several other songwritters that are not close personal friends -- but are still good aquaintences. I talked with a better known producer this weekend as he was heading through the midwest (along with the friend noted earlier) -- this guy was the front man and songwritter for a well known 80s band...and this is where the conversation got kicked up.
Folks like the dead are singular creations. Folks like my friend the songwritter are happening by the hundreds.
You sir do not know the music industry.
Personally, any stupid motherfucker that thinks that someone colludes to bring prices up for entertainment should be punished is infact a moron. You don't need music to survive. You don't need someone elses music to feed you children. Your business is not threatened because you can't afford a certain type of music. Price fixxing for crappy music SHOULD be legal and if you are one of the millions of sheep that disagree with this sentiment, maybe the Gap and Abercrombie and Bananna Republic and otherwise should all be sued because they are charging way too much for the same things you can get a KMart or the salvation army clothing store.
You sir are ignornant and more importantly willingly uninformed. Keep believing your singular solution will work, even though many artists have tried this and it hasn't worked for them. Keep talking about jam bands where the song is different each night, and ignore the bands that enjoy trying to recreate the perfect version of a song and improving every night. Not everything has to be deconstructed and torn apart and made anew -- but again, some bands like the Dead are perfect at this...I use to enjoy going to their shows just to listen to their Space music and then hitting the parking lot after that...great music, but not everyone is an improviser.
Thats all good and nice, but what about folks that don't tour? What about song writters that get their publishing cut ONLY from the album sales.
Maybe, we should talk about publishers and song writters and otherwise getting a split from the concert venues. But until that happens, this argument is full of shit and not realistic.
I work closely with one songwritter that because of family issues ended up setting up a studio and staying home. He writes for several great artists...he is credited on the albums as both performer and writter, but these days the royalties are drying up. I know he has a few older songs that you can find in compilations like "Now Thats What I Call Music" (yeah -- most of that stuff is cheesy...not saying his stuff isn't, but its always fun party music). Ya know what? Anything older that a few years old, folks seem to think is alright...the guy was paying his house payments about a year ago on the royalties of just 3 songs that are less than 15 years old -- but about 2 years ago, these just died...I don't mind dropping the copyright back to something reasonable, but one should be able to expect that 20 - 30 years should be reasonable.
But the point is, not everyone makes their money through touring. Not everyone can sell a tshirt. Not everyone has the desire to be on stage.
Bands like the Dead are great because they are an all in one package. They can afford to cut off one revenue stream to ensure that others are better supported. Then again, I could also stop paying my programmers and then I would be able to take a risk here at work and do more things that might make *ME* more $$$.
Before you talk about how an industry works, please do some research into it and don't just throw out the first "But Blah Does Blah And Blah Is Successful" because more often than not, they are the exception to the rule than the average.
clif
Yeah yeah...I got the number wrong...you know what the hell I'm saying never the less :-)
:-) They weren't 10s of thousands, but the system was expensive. Ya CAN tell the difference when using these...but it really only sounds good on high end strings (one of the reasons ribon mics are excellent choices for these recordings). Honestly, they only get used when the snobbiest of the snobbies come in, and past that, our new Blue Sky 5.1 system is just as good as anything I need to mix on.
:-)
The rest is pretty much what I already said.
Yeah -- I'm one of the ones with a ribbon tweeter...or more to the point, the studio I run with one of my buddies with several platniums to his name
As I've said about ADCs...you are right on consumer and prosumer level gear. Too many folks confuse prosumer and professional. I don't, but the work I do means prosumer is good enough for my home.
You still have the filters, but they end up much higher...*IF* you are not running parallel 48khz ADCs...talking real world implementation of 96khz as opposed to theoretical here.
Anywho, yeah...I threw together a nontechnical laymans answer to someones faulty note and it should be taken as such. I don't claim to know much more than this but I do work with quite a few audio engineers (I'm taking this to mean you design circuits and not just run the board...guys that run the board generally throw shit around that they just have no clue about because they believe what they read in the magazines without knowing real world implementations). I'm a sound designer and its a few steps below the guys doing the circuits, but working closely with the manufacturers, ya get to know a little more than ya ever wanted to know...no one ever spills their own dirty secrets, but guys that are paid to reverse engineer other peoples boards will in a heartbeat
Hmmm...your ears can hear 44Khz???
:-) I've been told it has to do with the physical make up of the data and how the computer can access it. Probably the difference from setting a video card from millions of colors down to 256 -- it has to think about the dither, where as with these, it sends it out raw (try it playing a game...you set the colors too low and it impedes gameplay). Translated to music, imagine being use to playing a piano...the second the hammer hits the string a sound appears. High latency might mean you are waiting to hear that sound milliseconds after playing and it can throw off the timing...lower latency is GOOD.
:-)
WOW!!! Someone call an ear doctor FAST. We need to figure out what gave you this superhuman hearing.
96Khz gives you 44Khz according to Nyquest filtering. 44Khz gives you 22khz. The average human hearing is between 12 - 16Khz. You can hear 22Khz if you have perfect hearing AND just had your ears cleaned AND haven't been in any loud sound for a few weeks.
What does 96Khz do for you? Well, as a musician, it and 24bits gives you slightly better latency...why? I'm not quite sure
Half the guys I work with in the music industry are rocket scientists and the other half are great musicians...I kinda straddle the realms, but not quite up on the theories, so I may be getting SOME facts wrong on this debate.
What does 96Khz do for you as a consumer? Well, with 44Khz audio interfaces, consumer level stuff is not always the most perfectly matched. As such, aliasing happens. Get 2% phase in a cap or resister and then multiple this over the signal path...Nyquest? Nyquest ain't gonna help you out when the alising is dipping into the audible portions of the sound. Remember 44khz gives you 22 IF EVERYTHING ELSE IS PERFECT.
On Pro Level stuff, like my Kurzweil 2600, folks can't believe my synth is ONLY 48Khz. Audio Snobs tell me that it MUST be processing internally at 96 at 192Khz. Bullshit...they've been so use to their tubes (that color the sound regardless of what they say) and consumer level 44Khz that they don't don't what 44Khz sounds like when the Nyquest Theorum is put to good use and approaches what theoretically / mathematically it should output.
96Khz gives a lot of wiggle room with consumer level crap. It really doesnt cost any more to make 96Khz signal paths which means you have a LOT more aliasing that can go on outside of the human scale of hearing without ever touching the 22Khz freqs...
BUT the main problem with 96Khz these days is ya never know if you have TRUE 96Khz or dual 44Khz's -- i.e., one of the 44Khz's are just clocked and filtered to read the 44Khz - 96khz frequencies and drop them into audible range (at least in the signal path way before it ever gets to something you can hear). Duals give you NO advantage over the 44Khz and actually give MORE aliasing problems when you add the two signals together at the final outstage. Unless you know circuits, you won't be able to tell if this is happening...
So, no...96Khz is NOT more important in any sense of the word (err..word clock?). It can be helpful, but only if its set up right from all parts of the machine. Then again, if the machine is set up right with decent and matched parts -- this is really a moot point
Wow! We've been waiting for DVD-A and SACD for 24dB of headroom!!!
Quite honestly, most pop music has about 16 - 32db at most.
With 16bit Audio, we get 96dB of space to play with. With 24bit, ya get 144.
144dB is equivelent of going from a dead silent room to standing about 10 feet behind a jet engine at take off.
16bit audio is MORE than anyone needs to work in any pop medium -- and I'd count the metal albums I've seen listed here within that medium as well.
A lot of classical and jazz might do well with 24 bit...anything that is uncompressed as a rule. But even that could be done reasonably well with 16bit audio -- unless we are talking Varses on the classical side or Zorn in the jazz end of things....
Mixing in 24+ bits, however rocks...its always nicer to mix in a higher bit rate than what you are going to be presenting in as it allows ya to have the data errors out of the range of what will be heard by the consumer anyways.
Heh! Just giving you some shit over the def :-)
Quite honestly, I DO think Chairman Stallman IS a commie. Do I think this is bad? Not as long as folks have a choice to be a part of that society...
"...the GPL is about the freedom of the code (i.e., once the code is Free, it has to stay Free) and as such the freedom of the community at large..."
So by this definition, the Chinese citizens are ACTUALLY freer than US and other westernized countries, because its all about the welfare of the country as opposed to personal freedoms.
What would Chairman Stallman have to say about this? Actually, I think this is what he wants...he's a modern day communist hippy thinking he's going to change the world by taking away choice.
clif
A good friend of mine makes a little change through this company.
He prints the liners with an inkjet printer and buys printable discs (about $0.30 as opposed to $0.10) and has a friend with a CD printer do them up for about $1 each...pretty much the cost of the ink. The cheapest CD Printer on the market is around $350.
Past that, $3000 should get your album mastered and recorded and all that...quite a few popular indy rockers these days doing their entire recording on $5000 or less.
If you can't afford to burn a few CDs and con a friend at a studio to print a few custom discs for you, ya shouldn't be waiting for anything like this because we aren't going to be buying your work anyways.
I don't even remember what brand it was. The ONLY feature I was after was the AuxIn. Can't really get them without CDs these days. I'm finding Cassette platers are getting to be more expensive than CDs.
:-) Wish they had the same thing in basic black at the same price...but $120 including installation wasn't bad -- I just wish those fuckers didn't try stealing my other radio that was still good...had to go back for it after asking if they threw it in my trunk and got a Ummm Yeah...Came back and watched the guys talking for 3 minutes about who was going to get to keep it and what a dumbass I was to get rid of it before they turned around almost gasping for air knowing I was close to calling the management and having their asses fired... :-)
It was the cheapest one CircuitShitty had on the display room wall and I'm kinda regretting it because it was a gaudy riceboy silver color and looks horrible in my car
Kinda depends on the car.
For instance, I've tried 3 FM transmitters -- a generic one, the Griffen iTrip and another one I found from the Apple Store. None of them worked in my stereo.
I ended up picking up a new stereo JUST so I could run my iPod through it. On a larf, I decided to again try to solutions. Not a one worked any better. Only way to get it to work was to go outside and hold the transmitted next to the antenna. This REALLY sucks...
Well, it kinda worked on trips outside the city...doesn't help when there is a station, ever so weak it may be, on any channel you try.
I'm happy with the new AuxIn on mine...now I have to figure out how not to make all those wires look so ugly as they wind around the car...
Wow! You REALLY don't know how to read do you?
Yeah, that was a troll but not my original arguement.
I didn't say anything about Linux users being pirates. I said that about the Windows Users. The hardcore Linux users won't buy non-GPL'd works -- or at least will snear at them when they have to.
As for GPL -- no, you don't HAVE to give it away for nothing. BUT say you put it out and charge $20 to your first user that buys it and gets the source. They also have the rights to redistribute it any way they want.
The GPL has no authorship clause. This is one of the reasons I actually prefer the Creative Commons licensing because you can specify that in there. You may own the copyright to your code, but NOTHING in the GPL forces you to keep that in there (or anything else). I believe there is a version of the GPL up for debate that actually does this.
I have personally seen code taken by bigger companies and used with little credit to the original owner. Yeah -- you get get the Source and look it up, but these folks were MUCH better marketters and ended up making a good deal of money off of something they threw in a nice package and slick GUI. If you are talking writting a front end to something like a Firewall where it is a CLI based product, but you simply create a simple to use config maker that throws arguements at that product, there is NOTHING stopping you from not releasing the source to that application...which someone else could recreate from scratch, but if they wanted to be dicks about it...copyright could come into play. Heck, and thats straight forward GPL and not even talking about LGPL because the application technically doesn't interface with it other than telling it to start up (hence why one can make a closed front end for GCC as MANY others have done...I believe VisualC++ could use the GCC from the last time I used it...does that make M$'s product in violation of the GPL?).
We've seen it all the time on Slashdot...at least for the last 5 years I've been on this site. OpenSource developer gets pissed off someone used the GPL exactly how its intended to be used by Stallman and the programmer packs the cats and closes the doors and then the community cries sour grapes.
Anywho, I think you need to check out the GPL a little more before you bow before its teats. Its a good document and was designed with good intentions, but its not perfect by any means. And with as many folks that think its infallible, the religion keeps Linux out of the mainstream (for the most part).
Someone should mark this and the parent as off topic.
More the latter.
:-) or Cubase.
:-)
There was never a decent simple to use Acide type application. Live does a sorta decent job, but its as complicated as a lot of the other sequencers like Logic (for which I run the largest users group on the web
Its a simple to use application and it will allow the non-musicians to do their thing as well as some musicians might find it an easier task to wrap their heads around than the other solutions (not everyone is a techie nor does everything think that being a musician means being as good of a virtual drummer / keyboardist / whatever as you are a real life guitarist -- not everyone can perform all duties well).
There is a lot of 3rd party work out there in this field and no one is getting squeezed out. Heck, Apple already has a popular music app, and this might scare people over to this one...competition within the same company
Wrong, Apple has provided a way to make sure my music stays my music. They have provided a way that allows me to listen to it in any format I want. In a sense, they DID sell me the rights to listen to that music.
:)
Microsoft in their Windows Media Format, sells a file. They don't sell the music. They make it intentionally hard to get at. Burn discs? Hell no. Heck, even the files expire after so long. I picked up a few exclusive Moby tracks last year in WM that I never got around to recording out to another machine (not too hard when I have optical lines connecting half a dozen machines in my machine room under my studio). Sadly, last time I went to listen to them, they had already expired and were unlistenable.
Most of the other services out there that one could buy music over the net involved a constant subscription...if you broke the subscription, the music you bought was gone. Hmmm...I didn't know I bought a limited listening of these files -- I tested some of these as an evaluation for a friends lable a few years ago as they were trying to court some genre based music in the indies realm. Needless to say, they didn't go for it (then again, they still sell a large amount of vinyl, so their audience REALLY wouldn't want something like that
I know the difference between a file, a service and music. I buy the music, I don't buy a service. I can deal with the music showing up in media that is easily converted to other formats...I can't deal with it being structurally tied to that format.
As for the Marxist comment, no one forces anyone to buy anything. THAT would be Marxist. Socialist would be that enough folks want something and thus the gov'ts collude to make a product worth $0.50 even though the absolute break even point is $0.99. Capitalist is saying there is a breakeven point, but the artist / management can make it what ever price and if they don't break even they fail...and if someone can't afford it, they don't get it. Theft is saying I can't afford it and I won't pay what others are asking for it, but I will obtain it anyways.