Most of the stuff that the label supposedly pays for is actually paid back by the artist to the label out of royalties. The publisher does not really pay for the creation of the music in the end, so they shouldn't own it.
The ironic part is that at the local Sony store, they have a line of blank tapes called "CD-it". As in, these are targeted towards people wanting to copy CDs. Most other tapes there also include a little blurb on the label about how they're suited for copying CDs.
Spot on. I'm a big fan of Bill Cosby's stand-up comedy. It's clean, it's tasteful, and beyond all, it's hilarious. I first got hooked on it from a bunch of bootleg tapes my parents had. I took the opportunity four years ago to see him perform live, and now I'm in the process of building a collection of his works.
This is where it becomes relevant.
I was on Napster a couple of weeks ago searching for MP3s of his works. One person had MP3s from two albums - "Bill's Best friend" and "My Father Confused Me". I had never heard of these before - So I did a search of the various online music places and found on Borders.com that "My Father Confused Me" is no longer in print. "Bill's Best Friend" was nowhere to be found. There was a bunch of other stuff as well that was no longer available. I had already scoured the local record stores and bought all I could find, but these out of print works were not among them. Auction sites and such had nothing. Who loses money if I were to keep these MP3s? Nobody, and that's why I have no moral quandry in keeping them, at least until I can find a used CD of them somewhere.
To answer your question, region coding is not mandatory. Non-region coded DVDs probably use 0 or 7 as the region to indicate that they're playable on all DVD players. (Don't quote me on the method of unlocking, I just know it's not mandatory)
And just to be a nitpicky SOB, DVD players sold in New Zealand are required by law to be capable of playing DVDs from all regions.
The levy on non-audio blank CDs here in Canada is currently 5.2 cents per CD, but this story states that there is a proposal from the Canadian Private Copy Collective to raise the levy to 50 cents per CD. Hopefully this dies a horrible flaming death.
why are we still buying cd's when better forms of music distribution already exist? this boggles my mind and my only explanation is that the RIAA and major labels have too much power and won't allow cd's to be replaced.
Big Music would love to get rid of CDs because they're unencrypted and are easily copied. We can't have that, can we?
But I digress. I haven't found a better form of distribution yet, so could you elaborate? MP3 doesn't cut it yet because 128kbps is the standard and because of the popularity of overhyped shit software like AudioCatalyst - if I'm buying an MP3, I expect at least 256kbps CBR using LAME and nothing less. Besides, MP3 is a lot more transient than CD. I like to have something I can hold.
recordable mini discs correct ALL of the flaws of a cd. why haven't those replaced cd's?
Betamax, memory stick, minidisc... they all fall in the same line of proprietary Sony tech. Last I heard, CDs were an open standard that anyone can implement.
The fact that superior technologies exist yet don't become mainstream only proves that someone has too much control
CDs aren't as fragile as you make them out to be. None of my CDs have ever started skipping out of the blue on me. They provide the uncompressed sound in a format with a noise floor lower than the sound of a typical air current in a room. What's wrong with that?
Woah there, cowboy. This is only an announcement of the forthcoming announcement. They won't release the details until they've torqued off 75% of the people who want to know first.
The problem is that to my knowledge, there's no decent free ripper with good error-correction for Windows. No, EAC does NOT count. It's beta as hell, it pukes on hybrid data/audio CD formats (CD Extra, anyone?), and I've done ripping on a CD (with no visible scratches) where it'll do one track at 1.1x and on the next track it'll drop to 0.3x for no apparent reason. Bluntly, CDParanoia blows it away.
But then again, people won't really stand for 1.1x ripping anyway. If you ask people why they use crap like AudioCatalyst they'll probably say because it's fast. People are impatient enough that they'll want their MP3s nownownow, quality be damned.
But then there's a loophole: LAME. If you look at just the title of Fraunhofer's patent, it says "Digital Encoding Process". In other words, they have control over licensing the reference encoder and not the format itself. LAME started out as a patch to the reference ISO source, but now LAME is fully compilable as an MP3 encoder and contains none of the reference source code. So if Fraunhofer's patent only covers the reference process, LAME is not subject to any licensing fees or royalties.
Vorbis is a great idea, but it simply doesn't have the popularity or momentum of MP3.
A good place for some security starters is www.linuxnewbie.org. They have a section for Newbieized Help Files (NHFs), which has been subdivided into different sections, including one for security.
As for resources for learning how to use Linux, just about everyone here would probably recommend (as I do) O'Reilly's book Running Linux, 3rd edition. That should help you get started.
He was being a bit facetious there. Disney consciously disables the fast-forward controls at the start of their DVDs so that you actually have to wait through the ads before you can watch the damn movie.
The one thing I hate most about Open Source is the nose-in-the-air elitist attitude of those who think that those who don't know how to code should learn to code or else they're dead weight. But to my intended point....
If you really want to help, then be a tester. Go to mozilla.org and download a copy, install it and use it. No, I mean really use it. Try everything. Think to yourself "What would happen if..." and add the most creative thing you can think to try with a web browser to the end of that. If something goes wrong, do everything you can to reproduce the bug, and then submit a bug report. Look at the program's behavior if you're not qualified to look through the code. People who know some HTML can whip up some creatively-designed HTML pages and try to view them. If you know anything about how a web browser should work, you can put it to good use.
Believe it or not, there is room for non-coders in Open Source.
I tried IE5 for a couple of weeks last year, but got fed up with the little things (why the hell can't it open new windows maximized?). Sure, I've found Netscape to be buggy in the past, but it has been a lot better lately. 4.73 on Windows has locked up only about twice in the last few months. 4.73 isn't as stable on Linux, but so far 4.74 Linux hasn't caused any problems.
As for the speed issue, it is slow as installed, but I came across this page listing a bunch of settings for the preferences file (yes, it says that it's for Windows on the page, but they also seem to work when I add them to my.netscape/preferences.js file). There's another one I use that I can't remember where I found, but it seems to speed things up. It's:
user_pref("network.speed_over_ui", false);
Oh, and for those who use text-only buttons and are sick of mistaking "shop" for "stop", add this line:
The problem with this is that it's not everywhere. Sure, you may have a DJ counter at you local Future Shop, but there's no such thing at the Future Shop here in Saskatoon - nor is there in any other store in the city. What am I supposed to do, drive 2 1/2 hours to Regina? What about those living in rural communities? Heck, I'd argue that most people need to listen to the songs multiple times before they can make a well-informed decision. I imagine that they'd ask you to reliquish the DJ counter after a certain amount of time, probably not near long enough to make a good decision. Hellooo, Napster...
I doubt it. The only way to force a charge back onto the floating gate is to re-program it. If OTP devices were used to cut cost, then that can't be done because it'd need to be erased first. Even if they used EPROMs, over time the insulation would physically and chemically age, and it would become more prone to breakdown. And since we're talking about stuff on the micron scale, once it ages enough the chip is useless.
Microsoft? Screw them, they're not responsible. Try going after whoexer created the deliberately ass-backwards QWERTY layout (was it Remington? I think it was) so their typewriter keys wouldn't stick all the time. (Yeah, I know that it was also designed so that salespeople could hammer out the word "typewriter" all on one row, but the inefficiency still plagues us)
And doesn't trademark law have separate "spheres" of trademark rights?
Yeah, but that goes out the window in cases of very high-profile tradmarks. Take Apple records vs. Apple Computers as an example. So while "Olymp*" may technically refer to "near or pertaining to Mount Olympus or any other similarly named mountains", what comes to mind first for damn near everybody in the world is the Olympic Games, so they have a high risk of trademark dilution.
Alas, yes. EPROMs are programmed by applying a high-voltage to the non-floating gate of each transistor where a 0 is wanted. The insulating material around the floating gate breaks down and a negative charge accumulates on the floating gate, which subsequently prevents the transistor from turning on when a read operation takes place. This charge leaks out over time because, of course, there is no perfect insulator. Generally, EPROMs are guaranteed to keep for at least 10 years or more, depending on environment temperature. So yeah, even One Time Programmable devices (EPROMs without the quartz window - much cheaper) can self erase over long periods of time.
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Most of the stuff that the label supposedly pays for is actually paid back by the artist to the label out of royalties. The publisher does not really pay for the creation of the music in the end, so they shouldn't own it.
The ironic part is that at the local Sony store, they have a line of blank tapes called "CD-it". As in, these are targeted towards people wanting to copy CDs. Most other tapes there also include a little blurb on the label about how they're suited for copying CDs.
Spot on. I'm a big fan of Bill Cosby's stand-up comedy. It's clean, it's tasteful, and beyond all, it's hilarious. I first got hooked on it from a bunch of bootleg tapes my parents had. I took the opportunity four years ago to see him perform live, and now I'm in the process of building a collection of his works.
This is where it becomes relevant.
I was on Napster a couple of weeks ago searching for MP3s of his works. One person had MP3s from two albums - "Bill's Best friend" and "My Father Confused Me". I had never heard of these before - So I did a search of the various online music places and found on Borders.com that "My Father Confused Me" is no longer in print. "Bill's Best Friend" was nowhere to be found. There was a bunch of other stuff as well that was no longer available. I had already scoured the local record stores and bought all I could find, but these out of print works were not among them. Auction sites and such had nothing. Who loses money if I were to keep these MP3s? Nobody, and that's why I have no moral quandry in keeping them, at least until I can find a used CD of them somewhere.
To answer your question, region coding is not mandatory. Non-region coded DVDs probably use 0 or 7 as the region to indicate that they're playable on all DVD players. (Don't quote me on the method of unlocking, I just know it's not mandatory)
And just to be a nitpicky SOB, DVD players sold in New Zealand are required by law to be capable of playing DVDs from all regions.
The levy on non-audio blank CDs here in Canada is currently 5.2 cents per CD, but this story states that there is a proposal from the Canadian Private Copy Collective to raise the levy to 50 cents per CD. Hopefully this dies a horrible flaming death.
Big Music would love to get rid of CDs because they're unencrypted and are easily copied. We can't have that, can we?
But I digress. I haven't found a better form of distribution yet, so could you elaborate? MP3 doesn't cut it yet because 128kbps is the standard and because of the popularity of overhyped shit software like AudioCatalyst - if I'm buying an MP3, I expect at least 256kbps CBR using LAME and nothing less. Besides, MP3 is a lot more transient than CD. I like to have something I can hold.
Betamax, memory stick, minidisc... they all fall in the same line of proprietary Sony tech. Last I heard, CDs were an open standard that anyone can implement.
If you're thinking minidiscs again, you're right.
CDs aren't as fragile as you make them out to be. None of my CDs have ever started skipping out of the blue on me. They provide the uncompressed sound in a format with a noise floor lower than the sound of a typical air current in a room. What's wrong with that?
It's a conspiracy to drive up the sales of batteries. My 48G goes through enough AAAs just acting as a remote control for Winamp.
Woah there, cowboy. This is only an announcement of the forthcoming announcement. They won't release the details until they've torqued off 75% of the people who want to know first.
The problem is that to my knowledge, there's no decent free ripper with good error-correction for Windows. No, EAC does NOT count. It's beta as hell, it pukes on hybrid data/audio CD formats (CD Extra, anyone?), and I've done ripping on a CD (with no visible scratches) where it'll do one track at 1.1x and on the next track it'll drop to 0.3x for no apparent reason. Bluntly, CDParanoia blows it away.
But then again, people won't really stand for 1.1x ripping anyway. If you ask people why they use crap like AudioCatalyst they'll probably say because it's fast. People are impatient enough that they'll want their MP3s nownownow, quality be damned.
Um, no. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by British scientist Alexander Fleming.
Vorbis is a great idea, but it simply doesn't have the popularity or momentum of MP3.
As for resources for learning how to use Linux, just about everyone here would probably recommend (as I do) O'Reilly's book Running Linux, 3rd edition. That should help you get started.
He was being a bit facetious there. Disney consciously disables the fast-forward controls at the start of their DVDs so that you actually have to wait through the ads before you can watch the damn movie.
As they say, "It's not a bug, it's a feature."
DivX, as far as I know, is a hacked version of Microsoft's MPEG4 codec. The homepage for DivX is here, and not on Microsoft's site.
If you really want to help, then be a tester. Go to mozilla.org and download a copy, install it and use it. No, I mean really use it. Try everything. Think to yourself "What would happen if..." and add the most creative thing you can think to try with a web browser to the end of that. If something goes wrong, do everything you can to reproduce the bug, and then submit a bug report. Look at the program's behavior if you're not qualified to look through the code. People who know some HTML can whip up some creatively-designed HTML pages and try to view them. If you know anything about how a web browser should work, you can put it to good use.
Believe it or not, there is room for non-coders in Open Source.
As for the speed issue, it is slow as installed, but I came across this page listing a bunch of settings for the preferences file (yes, it says that it's for Windows on the page, but they also seem to work when I add them to my .netscape/preferences.js file). There's another one I use that I can't remember where I found, but it seems to speed things up. It's:
Oh, and for those who use text-only buttons and are sick of mistaking "shop" for "stop", add this line:
The problem with this is that it's not everywhere. Sure, you may have a DJ counter at you local Future Shop, but there's no such thing at the Future Shop here in Saskatoon - nor is there in any other store in the city. What am I supposed to do, drive 2 1/2 hours to Regina? What about those living in rural communities? Heck, I'd argue that most people need to listen to the songs multiple times before they can make a well-informed decision. I imagine that they'd ask you to reliquish the DJ counter after a certain amount of time, probably not near long enough to make a good decision. Hellooo, Napster...
The poster to whom you replied made *no mention* of open-sourcing the Sorenson codec. Want the quote? Here:
Keyword: license. Why the holy hell are you dragging open source into this?
Believe it or not, some people can hear a high-pitched whine from CRTs. I can hear it, but mostly from TVs. My PC monitor isn't near as bad.
I doubt it. The only way to force a charge back onto the floating gate is to re-program it. If OTP devices were used to cut cost, then that can't be done because it'd need to be erased first. Even if they used EPROMs, over time the insulation would physically and chemically age, and it would become more prone to breakdown. And since we're talking about stuff on the micron scale, once it ages enough the chip is useless.
Former id guy, now at MS, working on Xbox. Scroll down to about the middle, where he says:
For those who prefer OpenGL, NVIDIA will provide a fully Xbox-enhanced version.
Your dream will come true.
Microsoft? Screw them, they're not responsible. Try going after whoexer created the deliberately ass-backwards QWERTY layout (was it Remington? I think it was) so their typewriter keys wouldn't stick all the time. (Yeah, I know that it was also designed so that salespeople could hammer out the word "typewriter" all on one row, but the inefficiency still plagues us)
Yeah, but that goes out the window in cases of very high-profile tradmarks. Take Apple records vs. Apple Computers as an example. So while "Olymp*" may technically refer to "near or pertaining to Mount Olympus or any other similarly named mountains", what comes to mind first for damn near everybody in the world is the Olympic Games, so they have a high risk of trademark dilution.
Alas, yes. EPROMs are programmed by applying a high-voltage to the non-floating gate of each transistor where a 0 is wanted. The insulating material around the floating gate breaks down and a negative charge accumulates on the floating gate, which subsequently prevents the transistor from turning on when a read operation takes place. This charge leaks out over time because, of course, there is no perfect insulator. Generally, EPROMs are guaranteed to keep for at least 10 years or more, depending on environment temperature. So yeah, even One Time Programmable devices (EPROMs without the quartz window - much cheaper) can self erase over long periods of time.