> [CSS Sprites are] only a win if your images are tiny. Why are you optimizing for this? Tiny images do not take long to download, even on dialup, because they are tiny.
The point is to reduce the number of HTTP connections, and thus avoid pointless latency. A TCP connection takes time to set up because there's a back-and-forth, and if the client is far from the server this can introduce a significant delay in loading static resources. Not to mention that the browser may have to reflow the page as the new images come in, which looks ugly. (Albeit that can be mitigated if image width/height are specified in the HTML).
> [Combined CSS/JS files are] less egregious than suggesting CSS Sprites, but it still suffers from the same problems. These are not large files, and if they are large files, the headers are not larger.
Again, the point is to reduce the number of HTTP connections, not to reduce the total header size. We did this on our site and got a pretty significant speedup.
> What, seriously? Are you really optimizing for your visitors who load one and only one page before their cache is cleared? Even though you "measured... and found the number of page views with a primed cache is 75-85%"?
For a public site, this can be important. A user coming to your site for the first time may only be there on a whim: if it's taking a while to load, then they may either abandon the load or get a bad first impression that your site runs slowly.
>> Keep in mind, if you use a far future Expires header you have to change the component's filename whenever the component changes. > And if you ever change something but forget to change the file name, your visitors will have to reload everything on the damn page to get the current version of the one thing you changed.
True, but a good engineer can solve this problem. We solved it by including each resource's last-updated-version (from source control) in the URL, via some clever template and filesystem magick. This means the developer doesn't have to remember to change the file name, which would be a version control nightmare anyway.
> Can someone give me one good reason they couldn't launch the PSP in Europe at the same time they launched it in America?
Sure. Here's two.
- Localization for the 5 major European languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian and German), and support for any others (Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Norweigan, Russian, etc, etc). Despite what you might think, these take time. - Sony's couldn't manufacture PSPs fast enough to support all three markets at the same time.
Judging by some of the posts on this forum, it seems the pro-gun people think a mugging goes like this:
[Innocent Geek wanders down the street] Geek: "Dump-de-doo..." [Mugger jumps out of some bushes brandishing a knife] Mugger: "Aha! Your money or your life!" [Geek reels in shock, but quickly recovers] Geek: "You roustabout! Taste some of this!" [Geek pulls gun] Mugger: "Forsooth! The tables have turned! I must flee!"
Reality check: Talk to anyone who has been mugged. It's never like how they expected it to happen.
Often, muggers will hit you before you even know they're there. In some places, they'll just stab or shoot you without even confronting you with demands - you'll be too worried about pain and blood loss to think about fighting back, and that's the idea.
The comments here so far have concentrated on face-to-face encounters with muggers, but pickpockets are probably a bigger threat in London. If you pull out your wallet, gameboy, PDA, etc on the Tube, sooner or later someone will notice where you stashed it in your bag, get behind you on the escalator, and pilfer it. You will never know. Pickpockets are good at what they do, even some of the most streetwise Londoners I know have been pickpocketed.
Maybe you should get one of those belt chains that were fashionable for wallets a while back, and use them for your PDA and Ipod. Use some superglue and one of those things they use to secure computers to desks if there's no other way to attach it. It won't stop muggers (and if you're too flashy about the chains, it might attract them), but it will stop pickpockets and grab-and-run thieves, including those gypsies that come up to you when you're at a restaurant with some card that explains their sob story (which is just a distraction to pour the objects on the table into their bag).
Everyone I knew in London (myself included) has been a victim of crime there. Chances are, you'll eventually join their ranks.
...considering how wildly profitable the show is for FOX, in syndication and merchandising, the actors felt they should get a bigger piece of the pie.
So the writers, animators, technicians and other staff will also be getting equivalent raises... right? Or are the actors just extortionists, knowing that they're hard to replace?
Many western companies have had huge success in Japan. To name but a few:
Dominos Pizza, Lipton Tea, Starbucks, MacDonalds
Walmart (albeit under another name)
Gap, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc
Virgin, HMV, Tower Records
And those are the kinds of companies you might shop at often, they're not esoteric markets. National pride has very little to do with the companies that Japanese shop at.
Last month I flew to the US (a 10 hour flight) for business meetings. At SFO, I got off the plane as quick as I could and ran to the immigration queue because I know it can take a long time. There were just 7 people in front of me, and it took them 50 minutes to photo/fingerprint them all. Other queues moved just as slow. After a 10 hour flight in Economy with no sleep, I can tell you that in a pretty foul mood.
That was because I was unlucky enough to arrive just after a Chinese flight. Now, every foreigner will have to endure the same delays. The experience I had was not unique, and so in the future will I try to avoid any business trips to the US.
What makes it worse is that they used to have a system to expedite immigration. The INS PASS system stored a retina scan, hand geometry and fingerprint. A quick scan in a machine when you arrived, and you could whisk through customs in less than a minute. The programme was halted before 9/11, for reasons unknown.
I hope to hell that all other countries start doing these checks on US citizens. Then you'll see a backlash. Not that people from the US travel overseas much...
Partially. The I/O processor is the same as the main PS1 CPU, and so that's what runs PS1 games. But there is no PS1 GPU in the PS2, so that's software emulated by the PS2's more powerful EE chip.
If this is going to save the industry so much money when is the price of my games going to drop?
Why are you under the impression that the cost of goods is proportional to the price of the product?
How much does a Rolex watch cost to produce? How much does a Mercedes cost to make? Waaaay less that what they actually sell for. The price of those products is set to maximise profits, because there are rich people out there who will buy that sort of stuff. It's not "cost of goods + 10% markup".
If it costs $1 million to make a game, and the publishers can halve that and still sell the same number of copies at the same price, why would they drop the price? In many other industries, there would be only one such reason - competition. But in the games industry (as with movies and music) there effectively is no competition for your exact product. Once someone has decided that they like a company's game, CD or movie, then the only barrier to them getting it is the price that the company sets. It's not like they can go anywhere else and buy exactly that same product for less from some other company.
Anyway, a drop in the price won't necessarily mean more sales or more profit. It may in fact have a negative effect ("This game is only $5.99, it must be budget crap").
Sorry, it's another "you know, white guys drive like this, but black guys drive like *this*" post.
Guys get obsessed with systems. Most guys know absolutely *everything* about some topic, whether it be computers, car engines, movies, comic books, etc, etc. Girls, by contrast, tend to think that obsessive knowledge in those areas is a waste of time.
This means that in general, girls won't bother learning the intricate depths of some games. They won't bother spending hours perfecting double-jumps in Quake2, or configuring their keys for faster weapons changes. This generally puts them at a disadvantage to the guys, but if they really wanted to beat the guys, there's no reason they couldn't.
Recently I bought a compilation of Pete Namlook's "Silence" series of albums. I didn't realise till I popped the disc in the drive to rip it to MP3 that it was a data-only disc containing 224Kbps MP3s of the tracks!
This product is great, but why force the user to use DVD? Why not make it so it can be hooked up to an external hard disc?
I'd rather go to a club with a laptop. That way, I can just plug in and go, and I have access to all my data easily in one place, no disc changing required.
Today's VJ/DJ booths are a mess of CDs, DVDs and VHS cassettes that have been battered to the point where they barely work, they go missing, and you have to keep shooing people away from putting down drinks and cigarettes on top of them.
Pioneer, don't mar a great interface by forcing users to use a crappy media!
Hey, full points to Penny Arcade for trying to do some good in the world.
But they must be stupid if they thought their charity drive was ever going to change public perception of gamers or game violence. A gun control advocate is still going to think the NRA is just a bunch of gun nuts, even if the NRA raised $200K for a childrens hospital.
Check out the Google Zeitgeist. Only 1% of all hits were from Linux machines. Given that, do you really think it's worth Apple's time to cater for 1% of the Internet population?
Not all those hits could have been from personal Linux machines, as opposed to those at universities or workplaces, so the real figure of personal Linux machines is probably less.
Or maybe you were talking about Amiga support, which I'm sure made up most of the "Other" category.:)
I always see people saying things like "I connect via a SCART socket, so it's RGB."
Not necessarily.
SCART connectors are huge chunky things that can handle a number of video formats, including RGB, S-Video and Composite (maybe others too). But that's not the same as saying that a given SCART cable or socket will support all those formats. Many cheaper cables only support Composite (fewer wires means cheaper cost). And on some high-end TVs with multiple SCART inputs, only some of those will support RGB.
So if you're playing your PS2 or whatever through a SCART cable, the TV might be using the SVideo or Composite signal rather than RGB.
The lesson is, be sure to check your TV inputs, and always buy good quality cables!
Copy protection did not work for computer software. A sufficiently determined individual can always defeat such a system.
Well, duh. But you seem to think that it's pointless to copy-protect data. If that's the case, then why is a lot of commercial software copy-protected with CD-keys, etc?
The point is not that DRM/copy-protection is infallible. Instead, it provides a barrier which is only circumventable by a minority of people. The aim is not to prevent the data becoming unprotected, it is to hinder the data becoming unprotected.
If they make it difficult enough to circumvent, then people may view buying a legitimate copy as more convenient than pirating an illegitimate one.
Even though they don't celebrate the birth of Christ in Japan, Xmas there is as much of a big deal to retailers as it is in the States. I've seen graphs of console sales vs month, and the number they sell in December is more than 10 times what they sell in all other months combined. So it's understandable that they'd do anything to launch for Xmas.
And is it really so bad? All these features they're dropping are software features that can be upgraded later. Not the ideal situation, but certainly financially better for the company than delaying the launch.
Although those groups are prompted to seek new sources of revenue because of what they say are illegal downloads of copyrighted content,
SOCAN is asking ISPs to pay a blanket annual royalty regardless of whether the ISP is transmitting legal or illegally downloaded music.
This might have a chance if it was possible for ISPs to detect illegal traffic. But it's not. With the latest P2P protocols you can't use the port number to detect that type of traffic, and if the transmission in encrypted, you can't sniff the data to see why type of traffic it is.
It seems the SOCAN technical advisor only seems to know about downloading illegal content from web pages. Let's hope the courts have access to someone slightly more savvy.
I'm totally against piracy of any sort, so it makes me mad when they'd tax me (because you know the ISPs would just pass the costs onto the users) for something I didn't do! This is just the same as those damned proposed taxes on CDRs and HDDs, because they "might" be used for piracy.
Verdict: not a chance in hell, if common sense prevails. If ISPs inform their users that costs will go up because SOCAN considers them all criminals, there'll be enough of an outcry to squash it.
As the popularity of DJing has increased (sales of turntables are higher than guitars I believe), more and more companies are making products which cater to the hobbyist DJ. As such, there will be shitty products, and great products. If you think this is shitty, maybe you're just after high-end professional stuff, and this product just isn't for you.
"USB is no good, it's unreliable."
There's a lot of people who make music that disagree, because there are a lot of music products (MIDI controllers, etc) that are USB. And if speed is the issue, it's a moot point because USB2 is now out, which can support up to 450Mbps transfers.
"You can't scratch!"
Scratching is important only to some hip-hop DJs and turntablists like Q-bert. This tool is not for them. However, it is for almost every other type of DJ, none of whom need to scratch. If you're worried about a lack of tactile response, check out a Pioneer CDJ-1000, it's just as good, and they're now standard in many clubs (well, until the long-awaited Technics digital decks come out).
"Digital is the future!"
Damn straight. Chris Liebing, Richie Hawtin (famous techno DJ) and Aphex Twin all use laptops, with smatterings of vinyl. Why? Well, one reason is because these guys travel a lot. I hear Richie Hawtin has got 18,000 tracks on his laptop. Ever tried to carry 18,000 pieces of vinyl? [True story - I saw Qbert's tour team at an airport in Japan having a fit because the amount of vinyl they'd brought was going to cost them $2000 to get it onto the plane]
Digital is more convenient, you can carry more records, provide a greater selection of material for your audience, and that's just the beginning.
"The audio quality will be no good, vinyl is best."
"This is dumb, DJs only use vinyl, dance music singles are only available on vinyl."
Firstly, the dance music that you're listening to was very very probably created on a computer using a digital sampler. Even if analog instruments are used, a DAT tape is probably used to get it to mastering. So your source data is digital at some point, and therefore the higher analog fidelity you think you're getting does not exist. The only difference between the audio quality of vinyl and digital is that vinyl playback introduces a pleasing change to the frequency response (i.e. a better bottom end). Simulate that on CDs by fiddling with your graphic equalizers.
Secondly, there is another reason why vinyl is still so prevelant, even with all these digital decks around. There's no way to easily copy vinyl without loss of quality. While Britney et al will sell a million copies of their next single, most house and techno DJs will be lucky to sell a few thousand. If DJs, who are infamously poor, can copy tracks with no loss of quality, they will, and that will hurt the artists. Vinyl helps stop this. I'm not saying that's the only reason they still put it out on vinyl, but it's a factor.
"Use Final Scratch!"
Heh. This is quite amusing to me, because I actually invented a similar system when I was at college, a few years before FS came out. I don't claim to be the first: since then, I've found that a number of people had come up with similar ideas at around the same time. If only I'd had the business sense (and money) to make it a product, I'd be as rich as the FS guys now.
Nostalgiac reminiscing aside, FS is now out-of-date (no, I'm not being bitter;). The Pioneer CDJ-800/1000 and the Technics digital decks provide the same functionality but with a better interface. The only downside is that you can't hook those up to hard discs. If you could, you'd never have to carry CDs or vinyl again.
N-Gage is an example of an age-old lesson. If you make a multi-purpose device, it must perform its primary function well. All other purposes are 'bonuses' that increase the value of the machine. N-Gage does not do that. It tries to be all things to all people, and ends up being nothing to no-one.
For example, your cellphone probably has a calculator function, right? Is it as good as a proper scientific calculator? No. But it wasn't hard for the cellphone OS manufacturers to add one in, and it is useful. If you need a real calculator, you'll go buy one.
The same is true of game consoles. These are computers that were designed to play games, but it's not too hard for the manufacturer to add features that only require software (like CD/DVD playback, or net access). It doesn't matter that playback is as good as a Denon, or net access isn't as good as on a PC. But it does increase the value of the machine to some people, so it's worth putting in.
And the same goes for people who claim that they should have it because they're frequent fliers -- that's just a way of abstracting the fact that you have a lot of money.
I applied for a US "INS Port Pass" a few years ago (the system is sadly defunct now) where you could fast-track US customs with a special ID card and a quick automated hand-geometry check. This was great, as it meant not having to wait in the long immigration lines at SFO airport.
And it was free.
Only trouble is, now the US Government has my fingerprint, hand geometry and retina scan on file. ARGH!
Slashdot Mirror
> [CSS Sprites are] only a win if your images are tiny. Why are you optimizing for this? Tiny images do not take long to download, even on dialup, because they are tiny.
The point is to reduce the number of HTTP connections, and thus avoid pointless latency. A TCP connection takes time to set up because there's a back-and-forth, and if the client is far from the server this can introduce a significant delay in loading static resources. Not to mention that the browser may have to reflow the page as the new images come in, which looks ugly. (Albeit that can be mitigated if image width/height are specified in the HTML).
> [Combined CSS/JS files are] less egregious than suggesting CSS Sprites, but it still suffers from the same problems. These are not large files, and if they are large files, the headers are not larger.
Again, the point is to reduce the number of HTTP connections, not to reduce the total header size. We did this on our site and got a pretty significant speedup.
> What, seriously? Are you really optimizing for your visitors who load one and only one page before their cache is cleared? Even though you "measured... and found the number of page views with a primed cache is 75-85%"?
For a public site, this can be important. A user coming to your site for the first time may only be there on a whim: if it's taking a while to load, then they may either abandon the load or get a bad first impression that your site runs slowly.
>> Keep in mind, if you use a far future Expires header you have to change the component's filename whenever the component changes.
> And if you ever change something but forget to change the file name, your visitors will have to reload everything on the damn page to get the current version of the one thing you changed.
True, but a good engineer can solve this problem. We solved it by including each resource's last-updated-version (from source control) in the URL, via some clever template and filesystem magick. This means the developer doesn't have to remember to change the file name, which would be a version control nightmare anyway.
> Can someone give me one good reason they couldn't launch the PSP in Europe at the same time they launched it in America?
Sure. Here's two.
- Localization for the 5 major European languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian and German), and support for any others (Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Norweigan, Russian, etc, etc). Despite what you might think, these take time.
- Sony's couldn't manufacture PSPs fast enough to support all three markets at the same time.
I saw the "Xbox FS" and thought it said "Xbox F5". F5 is the Reload button in most browsers. Xbox Reloaded?
Oh God I hope not.
Judging by some of the posts on this forum, it seems the pro-gun people think a mugging goes like this:
[Innocent Geek wanders down the street]
Geek: "Dump-de-doo..."
[Mugger jumps out of some bushes brandishing a knife]
Mugger: "Aha! Your money or your life!"
[Geek reels in shock, but quickly recovers]
Geek: "You roustabout! Taste some of this!"
[Geek pulls gun]
Mugger: "Forsooth! The tables have turned! I must flee!"
Reality check: Talk to anyone who has been mugged. It's never like how they expected it to happen.
Often, muggers will hit you before you even know they're there. In some places, they'll just stab or shoot you without even confronting you with demands - you'll be too worried about pain and blood loss to think about fighting back, and that's the idea.
The comments here so far have concentrated on face-to-face encounters with muggers, but pickpockets are probably a bigger threat in London. If you pull out your wallet, gameboy, PDA, etc on the Tube, sooner or later someone will notice where you stashed it in your bag, get behind you on the escalator, and pilfer it. You will never know. Pickpockets are good at what they do, even some of the most streetwise Londoners I know have been pickpocketed.
Maybe you should get one of those belt chains that were fashionable for wallets a while back, and use them for your PDA and Ipod. Use some superglue and one of those things they use to secure computers to desks if there's no other way to attach it. It won't stop muggers (and if you're too flashy about the chains, it might attract them), but it will stop pickpockets and grab-and-run thieves, including those gypsies that come up to you when you're at a restaurant with some card that explains their sob story (which is just a distraction to pour the objects on the table into their bag).
Everyone I knew in London (myself included) has been a victim of crime there. Chances are, you'll eventually join their ranks.
I heard they called in the US Army to find it.
So the writers, animators, technicians and other staff will also be getting equivalent raises... right? Or are the actors just extortionists, knowing that they're hard to replace?
- Dominos Pizza, Lipton Tea, Starbucks, MacDonalds
- Walmart (albeit under another name)
- Gap, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc
- Virgin, HMV, Tower Records
And those are the kinds of companies you might shop at often, they're not esoteric markets. National pride has very little to do with the companies that Japanese shop at.That was because I was unlucky enough to arrive just after a Chinese flight. Now, every foreigner will have to endure the same delays. The experience I had was not unique, and so in the future will I try to avoid any business trips to the US.
What makes it worse is that they used to have a system to expedite immigration. The INS PASS system stored a retina scan, hand geometry and fingerprint. A quick scan in a machine when you arrived, and you could whisk through customs in less than a minute. The programme was halted before 9/11, for reasons unknown.
I hope to hell that all other countries start doing these checks on US citizens. Then you'll see a backlash. Not that people from the US travel overseas much...
Partially. The I/O processor is the same as the main PS1 CPU, and so that's what runs PS1 games. But there is no PS1 GPU in the PS2, so that's software emulated by the PS2's more powerful EE chip.
Why are you under the impression that the cost of goods is proportional to the price of the product?
How much does a Rolex watch cost to produce? How much does a Mercedes cost to make? Waaaay less that what they actually sell for. The price of those products is set to maximise profits, because there are rich people out there who will buy that sort of stuff. It's not "cost of goods + 10% markup".
If it costs $1 million to make a game, and the publishers can halve that and still sell the same number of copies at the same price, why would they drop the price? In many other industries, there would be only one such reason - competition. But in the games industry (as with movies and music) there effectively is no competition for your exact product. Once someone has decided that they like a company's game, CD or movie, then the only barrier to them getting it is the price that the company sets. It's not like they can go anywhere else and buy exactly that same product for less from some other company.
Anyway, a drop in the price won't necessarily mean more sales or more profit. It may in fact have a negative effect ("This game is only $5.99, it must be budget crap").
Sorry, it's another "you know, white guys drive like this, but black guys drive like *this*" post.
Guys get obsessed with systems. Most guys know absolutely *everything* about some topic, whether it be computers, car engines, movies, comic books, etc, etc. Girls, by contrast, tend to think that obsessive knowledge in those areas is a waste of time.
This means that in general, girls won't bother learning the intricate depths of some games. They won't bother spending hours perfecting double-jumps in Quake2, or configuring their keys for faster weapons changes. This generally puts them at a disadvantage to the guys, but if they really wanted to beat the guys, there's no reason they couldn't.
Buffering... buffering... Whoa, overflow!
I wish all the CDs I bought were like that.
This product is great, but why force the user to use DVD? Why not make it so it can be hooked up to an external hard disc?
I'd rather go to a club with a laptop. That way, I can just plug in and go, and I have access to all my data easily in one place, no disc changing required.
Today's VJ/DJ booths are a mess of CDs, DVDs and VHS cassettes that have been battered to the point where they barely work, they go missing, and you have to keep shooing people away from putting down drinks and cigarettes on top of them.
Pioneer, don't mar a great interface by forcing users to use a crappy media!
But they must be stupid if they thought their charity drive was ever going to change public perception of gamers or game violence. A gun control advocate is still going to think the NRA is just a bunch of gun nuts, even if the NRA raised $200K for a childrens hospital.
Not all those hits could have been from personal Linux machines, as opposed to those at universities or workplaces, so the real figure of personal Linux machines is probably less.
Or maybe you were talking about Amiga support, which I'm sure made up most of the "Other" category. :)
Not necessarily.
SCART connectors are huge chunky things that can handle a number of video formats, including RGB, S-Video and Composite (maybe others too). But that's not the same as saying that a given SCART cable or socket will support all those formats. Many cheaper cables only support Composite (fewer wires means cheaper cost). And on some high-end TVs with multiple SCART inputs, only some of those will support RGB.
So if you're playing your PS2 or whatever through a SCART cable, the TV might be using the SVideo or Composite signal rather than RGB.
The lesson is, be sure to check your TV inputs, and always buy good quality cables!
Digital > RGB > Component > Svideo > Composite > RF modulator
The difference between Composite and SVideo is HUGE, please change if you are still using Composite!
Well, duh. But you seem to think that it's pointless to copy-protect data. If that's the case, then why is a lot of commercial software copy-protected with CD-keys, etc?
The point is not that DRM/copy-protection is infallible. Instead, it provides a barrier which is only circumventable by a minority of people. The aim is not to prevent the data becoming unprotected, it is to hinder the data becoming unprotected.
If they make it difficult enough to circumvent, then people may view buying a legitimate copy as more convenient than pirating an illegitimate one.
And is it really so bad? All these features they're dropping are software features that can be upgraded later. Not the ideal situation, but certainly financially better for the company than delaying the launch.
It seems the SOCAN technical advisor only seems to know about downloading illegal content from web pages. Let's hope the courts have access to someone slightly more savvy.
I'm totally against piracy of any sort, so it makes me mad when they'd tax me (because you know the ISPs would just pass the costs onto the users) for something I didn't do! This is just the same as those damned proposed taxes on CDRs and HDDs, because they "might" be used for piracy.
Verdict: not a chance in hell, if common sense prevails. If ISPs inform their users that costs will go up because SOCAN considers them all criminals, there'll be enough of an outcry to squash it.
- "But it looks like a shitty piece of plastic"
As the popularity of DJing has increased (sales of turntables are higher than guitars I believe), more and more companies are making products which cater to the hobbyist DJ. As such, there will be shitty products, and great products. If you think this is shitty, maybe you're just after high-end professional stuff, and this product just isn't for you.- "USB is no good, it's unreliable."
There's a lot of people who make music that disagree, because there are a lot of music products (MIDI controllers, etc) that are USB. And if speed is the issue, it's a moot point because USB2 is now out, which can support up to 450Mbps transfers.- "You can't scratch!"
Scratching is important only to some hip-hop DJs and turntablists like Q-bert. This tool is not for them. However, it is for almost every other type of DJ, none of whom need to scratch. If you're worried about a lack of tactile response, check out a Pioneer CDJ-1000, it's just as good, and they're now standard in many clubs (well, until the long-awaited Technics digital decks come out).- "Digital is the future!"
Damn straight. Chris Liebing, Richie Hawtin (famous techno DJ) and Aphex Twin all use laptops, with smatterings of vinyl. Why? Well, one reason is because these guys travel a lot. I hear Richie Hawtin has got 18,000 tracks on his laptop. Ever tried to carry 18,000 pieces of vinyl? [True story - I saw Qbert's tour team at an airport in Japan having a fit because the amount of vinyl they'd brought was going to cost them $2000 to get it onto the plane]Digital is more convenient, you can carry more records, provide a greater selection of material for your audience, and that's just the beginning.
- "The audio quality will be no good, vinyl is best."
- "This is dumb, DJs only use vinyl, dance music singles are only available on vinyl."
Firstly, the dance music that you're listening to was very very probably created on a computer using a digital sampler. Even if analog instruments are used, a DAT tape is probably used to get it to mastering. So your source data is digital at some point, and therefore the higher analog fidelity you think you're getting does not exist. The only difference between the audio quality of vinyl and digital is that vinyl playback introduces a pleasing change to the frequency response (i.e. a better bottom end). Simulate that on CDs by fiddling with your graphic equalizers.Secondly, there is another reason why vinyl is still so prevelant, even with all these digital decks around. There's no way to easily copy vinyl without loss of quality. While Britney et al will sell a million copies of their next single, most house and techno DJs will be lucky to sell a few thousand. If DJs, who are infamously poor, can copy tracks with no loss of quality, they will, and that will hurt the artists. Vinyl helps stop this. I'm not saying that's the only reason they still put it out on vinyl, but it's a factor.
- "Use Final Scratch!"
Heh. This is quite amusing to me, because I actually invented a similar system when I was at college, a few years before FS came out. I don't claim to be the first: since then, I've found that a number of people had come up with similar ideas at around the same time. If only I'd had the business sense (and money) to make it a product, I'd be as rich as the FS guys now.Nostalgiac reminiscing aside, FS is now out-of-date (no, I'm not being bitter ;). The Pioneer CDJ-800/1000 and the Technics digital decks provide the same functionality but with a better interface. The only downside is that you can't hook those up to hard discs. If you could, you'd never have to carry CDs or vinyl again.
For example, your cellphone probably has a calculator function, right? Is it as good as a proper scientific calculator? No. But it wasn't hard for the cellphone OS manufacturers to add one in, and it is useful. If you need a real calculator, you'll go buy one.
The same is true of game consoles. These are computers that were designed to play games, but it's not too hard for the manufacturer to add features that only require software (like CD/DVD playback, or net access). It doesn't matter that playback is as good as a Denon, or net access isn't as good as on a PC. But it does increase the value of the machine to some people, so it's worth putting in.
I applied for a US "INS Port Pass" a few years ago (the system is sadly defunct now) where you could fast-track US customs with a special ID card and a quick automated hand-geometry check. This was great, as it meant not having to wait in the long immigration lines at SFO airport.
And it was free.
Only trouble is, now the US Government has my fingerprint, hand geometry and retina scan on file. ARGH!