You miss my point. The CD isn't a status symbol now, but that's just a marketing issue. Include something you can only get with the purchase - like say a mail in for a free t-shirt or some other cheap showy trinket. There's endless possibilities really.
You're assuming the laws against theft exist to protect one's profitability - that's just not the case. They exist to protect one's property (which in the case of a copy you still have). There's is no "right to be profitable" (or at least their didn't used to be). Of course anymore the solution is just to buy enough lawmakers to legislate your profitability, but I digress.
If you can't make money selling something people can get for free, that's your fault for not having a good business plan. For example, bottled water companies couldn't claim H2O as their intellectual property (and make it illegal to drink tap water), so they had to rely on marketing - this has been successful. What record companies need to realize is they can make money by selling the *image* not the song itself. After all, this is more or less what happens already. Just give the CD some extra fancy packaging and market owning it as a status symbol and you can continue to bilk the masses of of their money for years to come!
I think this is exactly why Disney is without a clue these days. As the article pointed out, it's not being 3D that's made the pixar stuff so popular - and a lame idea will still be a lame movie no matter how it's animated.
True, Disney may be partly a victim of its own success. Many people do type-cast Disney animation to the point where they won't accept anything original from them (and those who do look for originality tend to dismiss Disney out of hand), but that's a corner Disney's been painting themselves into for decades now.
I've used many different types of media - some cheap some not - but have never had a CDR "go" bad unless it was from direct physical damage (like the top being scratched). Maybe I've just been lucky, but if it burns ok, it's always stayed that way for me.
I'm also in a very high humidity climate, but the CDs never leave air-conditioned rooms so I don't think that's really a factor. The only thing I've noticed is CD made via packet writing (like direct CD) always read slower and strain the drive more than ones burned normally. I quickly stoped using that kind of stuff - CDs anymore seem so small I usually just record them DAO.
I just use a couple very simple perl scripts - one catalogs the cd and give it a number. I keep the cds in books so each items will have both a book and cd number stored in a plain text file - one file per book.
The other perl script just searches through all the files to find anything I need - say book 7 CD 60. Very simple, very fast and the text files are easy to read if you just want to browse your files. Plus it'll work on any platform that supports perl.
Took me only a few minutes to write the scripts, but it's saved me uncounted hours flipping through the books looking for something.
I don't know - that seems to place a purely political site (like the NRA) in the same category with sites that might teach people how to make a bomb (which is what I'd expect to be blocked in a "weapons" category).
Ever wonder if maybe the person before you changed the instructions on the phone? It could be awhile before the hotel even noticed.
Maybe it was an attempt to route you through one of those scam phone "services". I know there were several other scams that involved tricking you into dialing some special number first.
I think the biggest Republican stroke of genius was whole "liberal media" sound bite. They trot this out anytime the news is even remotely critical of them or has the audacity to ask a tough question. Now logically you'd think attacking the press would be a bad idea. After all politicians rely on it and fear most being ignored by it. However, in reality reporters have always been trained to question their own biases. By exploiting this sensitivity, you actually vastly increase your chances of coverage.
If you repeat something enough people eventually start to believe it, and as a result in the U.S. most news stations are so afraid of the "liberal" label that they now treat political figures (esp. republicans) with the shallow fluffiness of an Oprah interview.
If the Democrats had any brains they'd do the same and start calling the press names of their own. Here's a few samples...
"The corporate media fatcats" "The neocon intimidated media" "The Bush-whipped media"
No - remember the problem with those early "copy protected" music CD's? The soft-eject could never work because the drive would just ignore the command. The OS didn't even have to mount anything because the drive mechanism itself would just keep grinding away at the cd and never time out. I've had it happen on a PC too (flakey CD burn made a partly bad CD), but you can usually hold the player's eject button while it's powering on. Even if that fails, you have the paperclip method!
Newer Macs are hopefully immune to this now, but it was a problem.
Ahhh - you mean like CD drives that can be rendered useless by a bad CD because there's no real eject button!:-) As for software, Idunno but it seems except for Apple's own stuff most everything is also available on the PC.
The problem isn't that Macs aren't good really. But Mac users tend to take many of these "Mac is better" statements on faith rather than fact. Take it from one who didn't give up their Amiga till the bitter end - platform loyalty can blind one to the present-day situation.
Few people can really "love" Windows boxes the way they would some other platform, but by and large they can do much the same thing and are cheap. I'm sure Macs do have many real benefits, but many users are too stuck in the past to honestly evaluate them. Windows may not be a wonder, but it isn't 3.11 anymore, and Linux - while not as much into the GFX area Mac excels in - does offer one MS alternative.
Er, maybe 15 years ago (and probably not even then), but now days most of those six year olds could probably frag the daylights out of their teacher. For any kid raised on a steady diet of console game controllers bristling with buttons, a two button one wheel mouse probably seems quaint. Face it, the one button mouse is probably more for the benefit of the computer-phobic person teaching the class.
The selection tool I'm talking about is exactly like the freehand selection tool except you can draw the selection with connected line segments.
It's not the path tool you describe (which Photoshop also has) but works on a pixel level to directly make or extend a selection. That's important as a path and a selection are two different things. A path is a vector overlaid on top of the image. Sure, you can convert it to a selection, but that's an extra step (and thats not the only problem).
In Photoshop and most similar programs, you can usually get a k-line while making a freehand selection by holding down an aditional key. Especially when zoomed in tightly, the line segment will follow the "staircase" of the pixels so you can see *exactly* what will be selected. Without this, the freehand selection to is usually too inexact to be of much use.
I always wonder about this. ISPs reuse IP addresses and often I'll get left-over P2P traffic from whoever had my IP before me. It would be very easy I'd think for the RIAA enforcers to finger the wrong person if their log time stamps were off (and I'd hardly put much faith in their accuracy) or the P2P network had stale data.
Paint Shop Pro has gotten much, much better over the years, and for the price is a passable alternative. Unfortunately last I looked Gimp was still missing features as basic as a k-line selection tool (which is odd as it has both a freehand selection tool and k-line drawing tool).
Mostly I notice Gimp lacks features that most professional photo editors have, but may not be apparent from their menus (like tool variations that only happen when you hold a control or shift key down). The problem may be that programmers often aren't graphic artists, so Gimp maybe hasn't had the same kind of user feedback a program like Photoshop has had.
"or more" is right much, much more. Sadly, Photoshop has gone from being just "very expensive" to being one of the most absurdly overpriced pieces of software around. If it was *just* $100 I'd sure buy it - as it is, I'll make do with cheaper alternatives.
Romanization is always a bit tricky. I think the reason is "Nausicaa" is an actual Russian(?) name and not Japanese or made up. Na.u.shi.ka is about as close as you get in katakana, but in cases where it's known foreign word, it usually ok to "convert" it back to it's original form.
I think a lot of this stems from early anime dubs. Stuff brought over in the 80's or early 90's was often done on the cheap and could be *very* painful to listen too. Sometime it sounded like they just pulled anyone off the street to read the lines.
Anymore, anime (and animation in general) is taken seriously enough to hire professional voice actors and the results are much much better. The only problem I have with Disney dubs is they love to use "famous" voices to promote the movie, but think it's a distraction. I'd prefer professional voice actors over movie stars.
Hm, so supporting pirates is better than supporting Disney? That's actually a tough call, but I'd go looking for a BitTorrent of it first - at least that's non profit piracy.
Ok, I know I shouldn't be baited by an AC, but what you say here isn't even internally consistent.
If the MT32 sounds are so horribly outmoded and useless for even "retro kitch", then why are copies of it (as you point out) so popular? It's obvious *someone* must want to use them.
Believe me, with musicians still diging up the musty old corpses of Mellotrons and the like, no instrument is ever completely forgotten or outmoded. Hey, the flute, for example, is based on technology thousands of years old, yet last time I listened, people were still using that.
Still, I have to agree Roland doesn't have much of a case - no one would buy a new MT32 simply because they can get the sounds elsewhere. Still, profit through litigation is the hallmark of many a dead and dying company nowdays.
In general music hardware companies of all kinds tremble in fear of obscurity. From synths to effect units, what once cost thousands of dollars can now be emulated on any lowly PC. Sure it's not quite as nice as having a brick of knobs to twiddle, but it does mean far fewer are willing to spend a small fortune for the latest hunk of plastic with a nice friendly logo on the front.
Slashdot Mirror
You miss my point. The CD isn't a status symbol now, but that's just a marketing issue. Include something you can only get with the purchase - like say a mail in for a free t-shirt or some other cheap showy trinket. There's endless possibilities really.
You're assuming the laws against theft exist to protect one's profitability - that's just not the case. They exist to protect one's property (which in the case of a copy you still have). There's is no "right to be profitable" (or at least their didn't used to be). Of course anymore the solution is just to buy enough lawmakers to legislate your profitability, but I digress.
If you can't make money selling something people can get for free, that's your fault for not having a good business plan. For example, bottled water companies couldn't claim H2O as their intellectual property (and make it illegal to drink tap water), so they had to rely on marketing - this has been successful. What record companies need to realize is they can make money by selling the *image* not the song itself. After all, this is more or less what happens already. Just give the CD some extra fancy packaging and market owning it as a status symbol and you can continue to bilk the masses of of their money for years to come!
Ah, but I thought it was "here's a car that broken, and here's a car that's not - find the difference!"
Ok this is the part I don't understand. If you already need to have a version that works, then why do you need to debug it?
I think this is exactly why Disney is without a clue these days. As the article pointed out, it's not being 3D that's made the pixar stuff so popular - and a lame idea will still be a lame movie no matter how it's animated.
True, Disney may be partly a victim of its own success. Many people do type-cast Disney animation to the point where they won't accept anything original from them (and those who do look for originality tend to dismiss Disney out of hand), but that's a corner Disney's been painting themselves into for decades now.
I've used many different types of media - some cheap some not - but have never had a CDR "go" bad unless it was from direct physical damage (like the top being scratched). Maybe I've just been lucky, but if it burns ok, it's always stayed that way for me.
I'm also in a very high humidity climate, but the CDs never leave air-conditioned rooms so I don't think that's really a factor. The only thing I've noticed is CD made via packet writing (like direct CD) always read slower and strain the drive more than ones burned normally. I quickly stoped using that kind of stuff - CDs anymore seem so small I usually just record them DAO.
I just use a couple very simple perl scripts - one catalogs the cd and give it a number. I keep the cds in books so each items will have both a book and cd number stored in a plain text file - one file per book.
The other perl script just searches through all the files to find anything I need - say book 7 CD 60. Very simple, very fast and the text files are easy to read if you just want to browse your files. Plus it'll work on any platform that supports perl.
Took me only a few minutes to write the scripts, but it's saved me uncounted hours flipping through the books looking for something.
Ah, so lemons are veggies then....
I don't know - that seems to place a purely political site (like the NRA) in the same category with sites that might teach people how to make a bomb (which is what I'd expect to be blocked in a "weapons" category).
Ever wonder if maybe the person before you changed the instructions on the phone? It could be awhile before the hotel even noticed.
Maybe it was an attempt to route you through one of those scam phone "services". I know there were several other scams that involved tricking you into dialing some special number first.
I think the biggest Republican stroke of genius was whole "liberal media" sound bite. They trot this out anytime the news is even remotely critical of them or has the audacity to ask a tough question. Now logically you'd think attacking the press would be a bad idea. After all politicians rely on it and fear most being ignored by it. However, in reality reporters have always been trained to question their own biases. By exploiting this sensitivity, you actually vastly increase your chances of coverage.
If you repeat something enough people eventually start to believe it, and as a result in the U.S. most news stations are so afraid of the "liberal" label that they now treat political figures (esp. republicans) with the shallow fluffiness of an Oprah interview.
If the Democrats had any brains they'd do the same and start calling the press names of their own. Here's a few samples...
"The corporate media fatcats"
"The neocon intimidated media"
"The Bush-whipped media"
any other ideas?
No - remember the problem with those early "copy protected" music CD's? The soft-eject could never work because the drive would just ignore the command. The OS didn't even have to mount anything because the drive mechanism itself would just keep grinding away at the cd and never time out. I've had it happen on a PC too (flakey CD burn made a partly bad CD), but you can usually hold the player's eject button while it's powering on. Even if that fails, you have the paperclip method!
Newer Macs are hopefully immune to this now, but it was a problem.
"innovative case and accessory design"
:-) As for software, Idunno but it seems except for Apple's own stuff most everything is also available on the PC.
Ahhh - you mean like CD drives that can be rendered useless by a bad CD because there's no real eject button!
The problem isn't that Macs aren't good really. But Mac users tend to take many of these "Mac is better" statements on faith rather than fact. Take it from one who didn't give up their Amiga till the bitter end - platform loyalty can blind one to the present-day situation.
Few people can really "love" Windows boxes the way they would some other platform, but by and large they can do much the same thing and are cheap. I'm sure Macs do have many real benefits, but many users are too stuck in the past to honestly evaluate them. Windows may not be a wonder, but it isn't 3.11 anymore, and Linux - while not as much into the GFX area Mac excels in - does offer one MS alternative.
Silly! Everyone knows that song's a ode to his hemorrhoids after eating Mexican.
Er, maybe 15 years ago (and probably not even then), but now days most of those six year olds could probably frag the daylights out of their teacher. For any kid raised on a steady diet of console game controllers bristling with buttons, a two button one wheel mouse probably seems quaint. Face it, the one button mouse is probably more for the benefit of the computer-phobic person teaching the class.
The selection tool I'm talking about is exactly like the freehand selection tool except you can draw the selection with connected line segments.
It's not the path tool you describe (which Photoshop also has) but works on a pixel level to directly make or extend a selection. That's important as a path and a selection are two different things. A path is a vector overlaid on top of the image. Sure, you can convert it to a selection, but that's an extra step (and thats not the only problem).
In Photoshop and most similar programs, you can usually get a k-line while making a freehand selection by holding down an aditional key. Especially when zoomed in tightly, the line segment will follow the "staircase" of the pixels so you can see *exactly* what will be selected. Without this, the freehand selection to is usually too inexact to be of much use.
I always wonder about this. ISPs reuse IP addresses and often I'll get left-over P2P traffic from whoever had my IP before me. It would be very easy I'd think for the RIAA enforcers to finger the wrong person if their log time stamps were off (and I'd hardly put much faith in their accuracy) or the P2P network had stale data.
Paint Shop Pro has gotten much, much better over the years, and for the price is a passable alternative. Unfortunately last I looked Gimp was still missing features as basic as a k-line selection tool (which is odd as it has both a freehand selection tool and k-line drawing tool).
Mostly I notice Gimp lacks features that most professional photo editors have, but may not be apparent from their menus (like tool variations that only happen when you hold a control or shift key down). The problem may be that programmers often aren't graphic artists, so Gimp maybe hasn't had the same kind of user feedback a program like Photoshop has had.
"or more" is right much, much more. Sadly, Photoshop has gone from being just "very expensive" to being one of the most absurdly overpriced pieces of software around. If it was *just* $100 I'd sure buy it - as it is, I'll make do with cheaper alternatives.
Ah, so then my VCR is psychic! Amazing - I never even expected it had *the gift*. I wonder if I can get it on a TV show...
Romanization is always a bit tricky. I think the reason is "Nausicaa" is an actual Russian(?) name and not Japanese or made up. Na.u.shi.ka is about as close as you get in katakana, but in cases where it's known foreign word, it usually ok to "convert" it back to it's original form.
I think a lot of this stems from early anime dubs. Stuff brought over in the 80's or early 90's was often done on the cheap and could be *very* painful to listen too. Sometime it sounded like they just pulled anyone off the street to read the lines.
Anymore, anime (and animation in general) is taken seriously enough to hire professional voice actors and the results are much much better. The only problem I have with Disney dubs is they love to use "famous" voices to promote the movie, but think it's a distraction. I'd prefer professional voice actors over movie stars.
Hm, so supporting pirates is better than supporting Disney? That's actually a tough call, but I'd go looking for a BitTorrent of it first - at least that's non profit piracy.
Well, truthfully the correct title is "Kaze no Tani no Nausicca" ^_^
Ok, I know I shouldn't be baited by an AC, but what you say here isn't even internally consistent.
If the MT32 sounds are so horribly outmoded and useless for even "retro kitch", then why are copies of it (as you point out) so popular? It's obvious *someone* must want to use them.
Believe me, with musicians still diging up the musty old corpses of Mellotrons and the like, no instrument is ever completely forgotten or outmoded. Hey, the flute, for example, is based on technology thousands of years old, yet last time I listened, people were still using that.
Still, I have to agree Roland doesn't have much of a case - no one would buy a new MT32 simply because they can get the sounds elsewhere. Still, profit through litigation is the hallmark of many a dead and dying company nowdays.
In general music hardware companies of all kinds tremble in fear of obscurity. From synths to effect units, what once cost thousands of dollars can now be emulated on any lowly PC. Sure it's not quite as nice as having a brick of knobs to twiddle, but it does mean far fewer are willing to spend a small fortune for the latest hunk of plastic with a nice friendly logo on the front.