What you're saying pretty much proves my point, especially when you talk about vinyl as a "piece of art". specifically, as a piece of visual art. I'm talking about the music and sound quality. Yes, nice bit cover art is cool, but I'll take higher audio quality over that any time. The same way that I want a poster to look nice rather than sound nice when I unfurl it or feel good when I touch it.
And saying vinyl produces a more accurate sound is, if you will forgive me, the exact opposite of true. The medium is by it's nature distorted. No digital sampling? Perhaps. But you have inaccurate analog modeling that gets degraded every single time you play it. Digital sampling is 100% accurate 100% of the time.
And what do you say about albums that were produced using digital equipment to begin with? I've had people argue that Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits sounds better on vinyl because "That's how it was meant to be heard". That album was produced specifically to take advantage of the newly-available CD's capabilities. And that is not a recent album.
I said it's a different story, I didn't say it's impossible.
I have one SACD left that I can't find in another format nor ripped by someone else in a format I can do anything with. I just have to be very gentle with it.
That stylus going over the record each time you play it? Yeah, that's degrading the signal. Every. Single. Time.
Also note that I'm not saying CDs were perfect. I'm saying the technology should have moved forward, but vinyl means it has moved backwards.
Also, vinyl records can break, crack and melt if you leave them on the dashboard. And I have CDs from two decades and three continents ago that still work. So that's a nice subjective problem you're seeing.
I wish it was a fad, but it's been going on for way too long. It needs to go away, please, so we can actually have the technology advance, rather than recede....then we just have to get people to produce good music again.
You are 100% right on cover-art - I do miss that from the vinyl days - but it is ultimately about the music.
I'm not saying we needed to keep CDs around. We could have easily have sold lossless compression audio tracks. In fact, there are sites that do just that.
I still buy CDs, but any CD I buy gets ripped -- in a lossless format -- to my media server. My various media players (including the one connected to my stereo) can then access those.
And I do the same with DVD-A and music Blu-Rays, so any DRM there might've been on them is not effective in any way (SACD is a different story, though).
So I technically "built" my own player for those. I seriously doubt you can build your own record player that would be even remotely decent quality.
Vinyl had a tech update decades ago. It's called "CDs".
This obsession with obsolete and empirically inferior technology is baffling. Yes, I know it started as a backlash over bad MP3 compression, but that obsession killed superior technologies, the tech upgrades to CDs - SACD, DVD-A and pure DTS albums. All you vinyl obsessed people are making things worse, not better.
What's next? Let's all go back to watching movies on VHS and old CRTs! It's how the director wanted it to be seen, right? How about analogue cellphones and leaded gasoline?
Can I finally start a side-business building people desktops, then? Because I don't think that's feasible and it's quite likely those days will never return.
...but when I hear of new technology in this arena, I don't really think "Ooh Dual Channel DDR400!" or "Finally USB 3.1!" or whatever.
I just want to get my hands on some of this stuff and build a new system with it. Or several.
I don't even need to replace any of my current computers. I just love building them, and getting to build stuff with new components (be they AMD- or Intel-based) is just fun.
The last system I built was my gaming rig, and it's the most powerful machine I've ever made. As soon as it was up and running I wanted to sell it so I could use the money to build another one.
Kinda wish I could do that for a living, really, but the market for Artisanal Hand-Crafted Desktops is kind of rough ):
This is around the time where they cancelled Farscape, their highest rated show ever, claiming nobody was watching it. When they got over a million fan letters asking them to reconsider, they said that "rating figures don't correspond with that many people watching the show".
So they were saying all kinds of things that made no sense.
Though one might postulate that perhaps they thought "SciFi" appeals to males, so they were divesting from that.
I couldn't get into The Expanse and never even tried The Magicians. Killjoys is fun, but honestly the SyFy Low Effort is visible in it. I think the only way these shows are at all decent is the cheapo CG they use has finally got to the point where it looks decent.
that was their actual explanation. When they changed their name from "The Science Fiction Channel" to "SciFi", sure, I can see that. But when they changed to "SyFy" they did actually say that it was to appeal to women.
I lost all respect for "SyFy" when they changed their name to that "to appeal to women".
Also when they cancelled Farscape to churn out crappy movie after crappy movie.
That said, I did enjoy Childhood's End, but to call it "pretty dang close" to the book is pretty far off. "Inspired by", maybe. "Kind of similar", perhaps. "Shares some plot-points", definitely. But it also varies immensely from it, and while some of the story might be the same, it tells a completely different narrative.
I'm going to assume this is going to be a "Based On The Novel By" kind of thing, where they basically have a couple of plot elements from the book and nothing more. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the book, nor that it's not an important book in science fiction history, but I'm not really sure the story holds up for the 21st century. Some of the themes that were controversial at the time, and which I'm sure Heinlein thought that by now would be the norm, kind of went the other direction, too.
It's one of those times where they should just call it something else rather than name it after a famous work.
Yeah, series 8 was... well, bad, and most people are content to ignore (mini)series 9. But season 10 was pretty good and had some really, really funny moments (Lister's Father's Day thing, for example, took one of the more hilariously messed up aspects of the show and built on it).
True. There are things you can go ahead and shrink, but there are also things you/can't/. Keyboards, for instance. Apple laptops used to have great keyboards, then they went all chicklet on us...
EVERY manufacturer charges insane amounts for their own RAM and HDD upgrades. If I buy a Lenovo or HP or Acer or whatever, they'll likely charge you $400 (or more) to go from 8 gigs to 16 gigs, even though I can get 16 gigs on Amazon for well under $100.
Apple has become way more extreme about making their laptops unupgradable. They claim this is in the name of design and efficiency, and yes, to a degree it is. Doesn't make it OK for me, though.
I'm writing this on an Early 2011 15" Macbook Pro, which is frankly on it's last legs. In fact, it's at the point where I can't really move it around.
It would have been pretty unusable years ago, except that this is one of the last Macbook Pros that you could upgrade the RAM and harddrive on. I got this thing with the least amount of RAM and cheapest harddrive I could, and as time went on I added more RAM and an SSD. New lease of life. And that stuff all cost me about $250 rather than the extra > $1000 Apple would have charged.
I want (and pretty much need) a new laptop, and Apple makes great ones. Yeah, people say "Apple Tax!" a lot, but spec-for-spec, Apple laptops are pretty much equal to other manufacturers and the *usability* is *phenomenally* better. From the UI design to the friggin *trackpad*.
But if I can't upgrade my own machine... sorry, not happening. And that goes for any other laptop maker.
Slashdot Mirror
What you're saying pretty much proves my point, especially when you talk about vinyl as a "piece of art". specifically, as a piece of visual art. I'm talking about the music and sound quality. Yes, nice bit cover art is cool, but I'll take higher audio quality over that any time. The same way that I want a poster to look nice rather than sound nice when I unfurl it or feel good when I touch it.
And saying vinyl produces a more accurate sound is, if you will forgive me, the exact opposite of true. The medium is by it's nature distorted. No digital sampling? Perhaps. But you have inaccurate analog modeling that gets degraded every single time you play it. Digital sampling is 100% accurate 100% of the time.
And what do you say about albums that were produced using digital equipment to begin with? I've had people argue that Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits sounds better on vinyl because "That's how it was meant to be heard". That album was produced specifically to take advantage of the newly-available CD's capabilities. And that is not a recent album.
I said it's a different story, I didn't say it's impossible.
I have one SACD left that I can't find in another format nor ripped by someone else in a format I can do anything with. I just have to be very gentle with it.
No, they don't. By their very nature, they don't.
That stylus going over the record each time you play it? Yeah, that's degrading the signal. Every. Single. Time.
Also note that I'm not saying CDs were perfect. I'm saying the technology should have moved forward, but vinyl means it has moved backwards.
Also, vinyl records can break, crack and melt if you leave them on the dashboard. And I have CDs from two decades and three continents ago that still work. So that's a nice subjective problem you're seeing.
I wish it was a fad, but it's been going on for way too long. It needs to go away, please, so we can actually have the technology advance, rather than recede. ...then we just have to get people to produce good music again.
Yes, and the reasons they give for this preference are almost always provably false.
I grew up with vinyl being the pinnacle of Hi-Fi. It was better than tapes and WAY better than 8-track.
I remember the first time I heard a CD. It was mind-blowing.
And the first time I heard an SACD, same deal.
You are 100% right on cover-art - I do miss that from the vinyl days - but it is ultimately about the music.
I'm not saying we needed to keep CDs around. We could have easily have sold lossless compression audio tracks. In fact, there are sites that do just that.
I still buy CDs, but any CD I buy gets ripped -- in a lossless format -- to my media server. My various media players (including the one connected to my stereo) can then access those.
And I do the same with DVD-A and music Blu-Rays, so any DRM there might've been on them is not effective in any way (SACD is a different story, though).
So I technically "built" my own player for those. I seriously doubt you can build your own record player that would be even remotely decent quality.
Vinyl had a tech update decades ago. It's called "CDs".
This obsession with obsolete and empirically inferior technology is baffling. Yes, I know it started as a backlash over bad MP3 compression, but that obsession killed superior technologies, the tech upgrades to CDs - SACD, DVD-A and pure DTS albums. All you vinyl obsessed people are making things worse, not better.
What's next? Let's all go back to watching movies on VHS and old CRTs! It's how the director wanted it to be seen, right? How about analogue cellphones and leaded gasoline?
Can I finally start a side-business building people desktops, then? Because I don't think that's feasible and it's quite likely those days will never return.
I've designed some machines that would run well over $10K... I'd loooove someone to pay me to build them...
...but when I hear of new technology in this arena, I don't really think "Ooh Dual Channel DDR400!" or "Finally USB 3.1!" or whatever.
I just want to get my hands on some of this stuff and build a new system with it. Or several.
I don't even need to replace any of my current computers. I just love building them, and getting to build stuff with new components (be they AMD- or Intel-based) is just fun.
The last system I built was my gaming rig, and it's the most powerful machine I've ever made. As soon as it was up and running I wanted to sell it so I could use the money to build another one.
Kinda wish I could do that for a living, really, but the market for Artisanal Hand-Crafted Desktops is kind of rough ):
> Now that we have Netflix, we _know_ exactly who is watching what
Except that Netflix won't release that information.
I may. It /is/ still on the media server...
This is around the time where they cancelled Farscape, their highest rated show ever, claiming nobody was watching it. When they got over a million fan letters asking them to reconsider, they said that "rating figures don't correspond with that many people watching the show".
So they were saying all kinds of things that made no sense.
Though one might postulate that perhaps they thought "SciFi" appeals to males, so they were divesting from that.
I couldn't get into The Expanse and never even tried The Magicians. Killjoys is fun, but honestly the SyFy Low Effort is visible in it. I think the only way these shows are at all decent is the cheapo CG they use has finally got to the point where it looks decent.
that was their actual explanation. When they changed their name from "The Science Fiction Channel" to "SciFi", sure, I can see that. But when they changed to "SyFy" they did actually say that it was to appeal to women.
I lost all respect for "SyFy" when they changed their name to that "to appeal to women".
Also when they cancelled Farscape to churn out crappy movie after crappy movie.
That said, I did enjoy Childhood's End, but to call it "pretty dang close" to the book is pretty far off. "Inspired by", maybe. "Kind of similar", perhaps. "Shares some plot-points", definitely. But it also varies immensely from it, and while some of the story might be the same, it tells a completely different narrative.
They should've done it with lots of things. This is not even the first time a Heinlein book has got this treatment - remember Starship Troopers?
I'm going to assume this is going to be a "Based On The Novel By" kind of thing, where they basically have a couple of plot elements from the book and nothing more. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the book, nor that it's not an important book in science fiction history, but I'm not really sure the story holds up for the 21st century. Some of the themes that were controversial at the time, and which I'm sure Heinlein thought that by now would be the norm, kind of went the other direction, too.
It's one of those times where they should just call it something else rather than name it after a famous work.
Red Dwarf is one of my favourite shows, ever.
Yeah, series 8 was... well, bad, and most people are content to ignore (mini)series 9. But season 10 was pretty good and had some really, really funny moments (Lister's Father's Day thing, for example, took one of the more hilariously messed up aspects of the show and built on it).
So more Red Dwarf? I'll take it.
I'm having IT flashbacks now.
"You're in charge of administrating several thousand UNIX machines, using UNIX tools and UNIX utilities. Here's a Windows laptop."
True. There are things you can go ahead and shrink, but there are also things you /can't/. Keyboards, for instance. Apple laptops used to have great keyboards, then they went all chicklet on us...
I said it was ONE of the last. Not the absolute last.
EVERY manufacturer charges insane amounts for their own RAM and HDD upgrades. If I buy a Lenovo or HP or Acer or whatever, they'll likely charge you $400 (or more) to go from 8 gigs to 16 gigs, even though I can get 16 gigs on Amazon for well under $100.
Apple has become way more extreme about making their laptops unupgradable. They claim this is in the name of design and efficiency, and yes, to a degree it is. Doesn't make it OK for me, though.
I'm writing this on an Early 2011 15" Macbook Pro, which is frankly on it's last legs. In fact, it's at the point where I can't really move it around.
It would have been pretty unusable years ago, except that this is one of the last Macbook Pros that you could upgrade the RAM and harddrive on. I got this thing with the least amount of RAM and cheapest harddrive I could, and as time went on I added more RAM and an SSD. New lease of life. And that stuff all cost me about $250 rather than the extra > $1000 Apple would have charged.
I want (and pretty much need) a new laptop, and Apple makes great ones. Yeah, people say "Apple Tax!" a lot, but spec-for-spec, Apple laptops are pretty much equal to other manufacturers and the *usability* is *phenomenally* better. From the UI design to the friggin *trackpad*.
But if I can't upgrade my own machine... sorry, not happening. And that goes for any other laptop maker.