And by using records or tapes, you invited using a technology that would and did go away.. well.. not totally.. but you get the gist. you hav eto jump in sometime.
Technology such as records, tapes, cd, etc has an inherent industrial inertial that by definition increases the likely lifetime viability of your purchases. Software changes almost daily.
You do make backups of your data, right?
Apparently you have never tried to keep data archived digitally for a long time. I have been trying it for the last 15 years. Hard drives die, the tape you backed them up on becomes unreadable, cd-r, dvd-rs become unreable... It is possible to maintain digital archival material, but it requires diligence, redundancy, and the dedication of a lot of time and resources.
The only thing that's wrong is pushing them on everyone else.
I apologize in advance for this... but reading this comment on a forum for opinions is silly.... and also sad.
Let's Look at the benefits of purchasing compressed online music:
1. Immediate gratification.... uh, that's it.
Now, let's look at the disadavatages of purchasing compressed online music:
1. Lower sound quality. Everyone I have compared them for has asked "What's wrong with it?" after listening to the CD and then the AAC verison.
2. Codecs are changing very rapidly. You are investing a a fleeting software phenomenon that depends on the current and rapidily changing technology and the marketing whims of the computer and music industries. Soon there could be much better quality or with increased bandwidth CD quality. SOme sights now sell 24 bit flacs which you can burn using you regualr old DVDs and burner into DVD-A for BETTER THAN CD QUALITY.
3. Commercial CDs are inherently more stable than CD-Rs.
4. It is extremely difficult and time concuming to archive digital files for very long periods of time.
5. In most cases you get no liner notes or cover art.
6. You invite DRM.
7. For all the above, at a lot of stores, particularly iTMS, you PAY MORE for all these problems than a fine sounding CD, or a much better sounding DVD-A or SACD.
... except my 35 anniversary Mustang GT which got about 16 no matter how I drove it. My '89 CRX got about 50 highway, and 42 in the city for most of the 11 years that I owned it. My current Turbo Bug is very sensitive to how I drive it. It gets about 32 in the city and 28 on the highway unless I am very careful to accelerate slowly and shift correctly. My Yamaha FZ6 gets between 50-60 depending on how I ride it.
Although it is hard in our present time, it could be possible for the voting public to make themselves well infomred about the character and values of their reps. If the media and other sources could be swayed to keep tabs on the morals and values of the reps instead of the reps' rhetoric about one current issue or another, then we could consider ourselves well informed.
This has to be the most painful example of Orwellian double speak that I have ever seen. The idea that a person may consider himself well informed by explicitly ignoring the issues. Wow... I am speachless... and saddened.
Morals have nothing to do with the handling of issues, morals are not even a quantifiable entity.
Character is nice, it means that a person will do as he believes and not cater to political whims, but if you don't understand the issues, character is irrelevent. Two people can have good character and the same basic principals and still handle an issue two different ways.
Our system is designed for people to elect leaders who will represent the majority opinion of their constituents. It is the representative's job to accurate determine the will of his constituents and then fairthfully and skillfully execute that will. If the populace remains ignorant the system cannot function, no matter the charcter or morals of the representatives.
I am aware that it is possible (as you and others have pointed out) to use libraries and universities to gather some information. These sources are only one small facet of the problem. To become educated on a topic requires:
1. Sources of Data 2. Money (although some sources are free) 3. Time (to gather, collate, organize, and draw conclusions)
TIme becomes the critical factor. My conclusion is still that it is impossible for a common person leading a normal life to go through all three steps above primarily due to time constraints. What I had hoped when I began investigating this topic... and posed the question to/. is that technology could be leveraged to reduce the demands on time. So going to the library, while certainly possible, is not just a matter of convenience, it is a small addition of time, that helps make it impossible to educate oneself on these topics.
Bear in mind that I am not talking about researching a single issue, but rather maintaining a source of primary data, to allow one to be reasonable educated on all major topics or at least enough of them to be a responsible citizen.
To change this fact would require combined effort in search software and information architecture software (like Tinderbox) among others. WIthout technological changes it would require a research staff to dig through the available information.
does the same things everyday on his show. Conservatives seem absolutely apoplectic about this movie, but I don't understand why. You CAN'T be upset with the things that are said. You MUST be upset with the approach to "news"; the approach is to carefully select issues and facts that may border on truth and then construct them into an argument while leaving out all mention of the other side. If you want to complain about Michael Moore... fine, but complain equally loudly about Rush, Hannity, and O'Reilly (O'Reilly doesn't even belong in this group because he came from Hard Copy and he has been busted by many sources for out right lies). Complain about the approach, complain about the system, but DO NOT complain about the tactics just because someone does not agree with you.
To add a note of technology to this/. discussion.... A few months ago I read a lot of political book from both sides of the fence. Many of the authors claimed their opposite was simply lying and then "proved" it. I began to do some checking into what kind of information/technology was available for me to examine the any available facts and derive an opinion independent of the talking heads. Most of the online research services and transcript companies that can provide original documents (facts) cost thousands of dollars per month. My conclusion... It is IMPOSSIBLE for a common individual to be properly informed about issues that they must vote on. This is a very sad conclusion because our system of government is founded on the principal that the voting public is educated about the issues.
So what can open source do to correct the strangle hold that talking heads have on primary information sources?
I sat and watched every agonizing moment of B5 and I distinctly remember watching two episodes that didn't have painfully poor writing. Turns out those were written by someone else. Please... no more campy B5 writing.
Well really if your going to make a lossey format (mp3, aac, etc) then the interesting thing is that people don't even need all your fancy gear. Or all my fancy gear, because, copying the analog out of the CD player will do far less damage to the sound than they act of making the mp3 or aac will. So there is really no point to DRM.
Well DVD-A can be recorded by your computer using the same old 40 cent blank dvds. As far as commercial DVD-A and SACD's they cost about the same at Best Buy and Media Play as the CDs. In the case of the first Norah Jones release, the CD was 13.99 and the SACD (with CD on the same disc) was 11.99. No big deal.
This article talks about DVD-A and SACD as though they just started selling them yesterday. Best Buy and Media Play have been selling these things in my little town for at least 2 years... and no they don't cost more than CDs.
I really do not believe that raising a camera above eye-level constitutes a critical threat to our constitutional freedoms. One problem with technology is that people, especially slashdot'ers revel in the technologies' benefits (open source, information wants to be free, etc...) but cry foul when that same technological efficiency of communication is applied to "an eyeball view of the street". We have never had any expectation of privacy in a public place and the only privacy we have enjoyed was not a "right" but rather a limitation of technology. Certain individuals have always been tracked and cataloged by governemnt agencies. The government can simply do it more efficiently now. Is theis good or bad? Probably both. But it does not reflect a change in the status of your rights. In a public place your information wants to be free.
Is not whether it is uglier or better looking or has more features than the ipod. The critical factor is that it and everthing else are evaluated relative to the iPod standard, even by those who hate the iPod.
One central element of the iPods design and its success is its LACK of features. It does exactly what it needs to do (with the exception of not supporting flac) and nothing more. I can't understand why anyone would want a walkman like player that played video. Video is a concentration centered function. Some benefits of audio can be had in parallel with other activities.
I suspect it will be Apple who kills the iPod by "innovating" in lots of useless features that will corrupt its simply functional design.
"How long until that ability is either abused or hijacked?"
What consitutes abuse of a camera? Looking at things that I could see just walking down the street? This may be ineffective for terrorism or crime, but I don't see that it could hurt.
It is certainly a better use of funds than the DOJ redefining what consitutes torture, or imprisoning US citizens without trial.
Maybe we could divert some terrorism money to schools on the grounds that well educated people are more likely to spot terrorist activity.
It never even occurred to me to get windows. I have never needed anything that only windows offers. My linux box did everything I needed and now the mac does. There is simply no reason to use windows especially considering the cost, licensing issues, and all the invasive and obnoxious phoning home that MS products do.
I had to use windows when trying to continue the work of another student in graduate school and that little escapade probably added a year to my Ph.D. I could run the same code on the mac, ibm workstations, the linux boxes, but I would have to stop and rewrite everything for windows... stupid.
The problem with reencoding music is not the amount of space it takes up, but how much it reduces the battery life. Since the ipod has a fixed ram buffer, doubling the size of the music, will almost double the amount of time the hard disk is spinning, which will almost cut your battery life in half. Which is why (even though 128 AACs suck) I use them in the car. The battery only lasts about an hour with losses encoding.
It seems that there are lots of smaller channels that I get as part of my package that I like quite a bit. It is possible that on group package you will receive unexpectedlty good material that you would not have know to select. The benefits to ala cart programing would assume that all the channels would cost the same amount and you would select the ones you want. In practive it would likely be that channels with high ratings (and therefore, hig ad revenue) would be cheaper. Channels with low ratings (ie. the good ones) like OLN would then cost a fortune. Personally I like the idea of large revenue channels carrying the load for the low ratings channels.
A couple of years ago I tried to scan in an Olan Mills family photograph and the Photoshop said that the photo was protected and I could not scan in the complete picture or open the file.
I have been tracking my weight loss for the past 54 days using a low fat, high carb diet and exercise. The daily diary tell exactly what I ate and how much exercise I did. On one of the entries there is a spreadsheet for calculating weight loss for a male based on exercise and calorie intake. The log is linked off my web page at
http://homepage.mac.com/rgbuice
To this point the speadsheet is not exactly accurate (based on my 54 days of data), but it seems to be close. My doctor told me that in 15 years he has never had one patient successful with the Atkins type diet. I started off at 315 and am now about 270. That's not bad for 54 days!
Good artists, artisis who work for a living, touring... playing... creating. They don't need record companies. Ani Difranco is one of many examples. Most jazz musicians make a descent living working in this manner and releasing music independently. Bluegrass too...
On the other hand...
Hanson, Emenem.... these people NEED record companies. Their sales are hype and marketing.
This book has too little technical info for knowledgable mac and unix users and for newbies... well there are just better ways to do things than the book describes. I'd skip this one on all counts. I do find Pogue amusing at times though.
Control is everything in this market. If the networks can control what I watch (like they did pre-Tivo) then the device is of little use to me. Tivo is user hackable and I can choose when and what I record. This should work even on top of AOLs system through the "analog loophole". The trick is that TiVo has to have the business savy to let consumers know what they are missing by having networks control what they watch. Personally I don't see what the big deal is anyway with the commercials. The Tivo can't skip them, I get the point of all of them even though I fast-forward through them. I watch the last Michael Jordan commercial many times. The user must have control. The user must be taught that he must have control. Only then will the market drive the best product to success. These are the same problems Open Source faces.
Slashdot Mirror
And by using records or tapes, you invited using a technology that would and did go away.. well.. not totally.. but you get the gist. you hav eto jump in sometime.
Technology such as records, tapes, cd, etc has an inherent industrial inertial that by definition increases the likely lifetime viability of your purchases. Software changes almost daily.
You do make backups of your data, right?
Apparently you have never tried to keep data archived digitally for a long time. I have been trying it for the last 15 years. Hard drives die, the tape you backed them up on becomes unreadable, cd-r, dvd-rs become unreable... It is possible to maintain digital archival material, but it requires diligence, redundancy, and the dedication of a lot of time and resources.
The only thing that's wrong is pushing them on everyone else.
I apologize in advance for this... but reading this comment on a forum for opinions is silly.... and also sad.
Let's Look at the benefits of purchasing compressed online music:
... uh, that's it.
1. Immediate gratification.
Now, let's look at the disadavatages of purchasing compressed online music:
1. Lower sound quality. Everyone I have compared them for has asked "What's wrong with it?" after listening to the CD and then the AAC verison.
2. Codecs are changing very rapidly. You are investing a a fleeting software phenomenon that depends on the current and rapidily changing technology and the marketing whims of the computer and music industries. Soon there could be much better quality or with increased bandwidth CD quality. SOme sights now sell 24 bit flacs which you can burn using you regualr old DVDs and burner into DVD-A for BETTER THAN CD QUALITY.
3. Commercial CDs are inherently more stable than CD-Rs.
4. It is extremely difficult and time concuming to archive digital files for very long periods of time.
5. In most cases you get no liner notes or cover art.
6. You invite DRM.
7. For all the above, at a lot of stores, particularly iTMS, you PAY MORE for all these problems than a fine sounding CD, or a much better sounding DVD-A or SACD.
... except my 35 anniversary Mustang GT which got about 16 no matter how I drove it. My '89 CRX got about 50 highway, and 42 in the city for most of the 11 years that I owned it. My current Turbo Bug is very sensitive to how I drive it. It gets about 32 in the city and 28 on the highway unless I am very careful to accelerate slowly and shift correctly. My Yamaha FZ6 gets between 50-60 depending on how I ride it.
Although it is hard in our present time, it could be possible for the voting public to make themselves well infomred about the character and values of their reps. If the media and other sources could be swayed to keep tabs on the morals and values of the reps instead of the reps' rhetoric about one current issue or another, then we could consider ourselves well informed.
This has to be the most painful example of Orwellian double speak that I have ever seen. The idea that a person may consider himself well informed by explicitly ignoring the issues. Wow... I am speachless... and saddened.
Morals have nothing to do with the handling of issues, morals are not even a quantifiable entity.
Character is nice, it means that a person will do as he believes and not cater to political whims, but if you don't understand the issues, character is irrelevent. Two people can have good character and the same basic principals and still handle an issue two different ways.
Our system is designed for people to elect leaders who will represent the majority opinion of their constituents. It is the representative's job to accurate determine the will of his constituents and then fairthfully and skillfully execute that will. If the populace remains ignorant the system cannot function, no matter the charcter or morals of the representatives.
I am aware that it is possible (as you and others have pointed out) to use libraries and universities to gather some information. These sources are only one small facet of the problem. To become educated on a topic requires:
/. is that technology could be leveraged to reduce the demands on time. So going to the library, while certainly possible, is not just a matter of convenience, it is a small addition of time, that helps make it impossible to educate oneself on these topics.
1. Sources of Data
2. Money (although some sources are free)
3. Time (to gather, collate, organize, and draw conclusions)
TIme becomes the critical factor. My conclusion is still that it is impossible for a common person leading a normal life to go through all three steps above primarily due to time constraints. What I had hoped when I began investigating this topic... and posed the question to
Bear in mind that I am not talking about researching a single issue, but rather maintaining a source of primary data, to allow one to be reasonable educated on all major topics or at least enough of them to be a responsible citizen.
To change this fact would require combined effort in search software and information architecture software (like Tinderbox) among others. WIthout technological changes it would require a research staff to dig through the available information.
does the same things everyday on his show. Conservatives seem absolutely apoplectic about this movie, but I don't understand why. You CAN'T be upset with the things that are said. You MUST be upset with the approach to "news"; the approach is to carefully select issues and facts that may border on truth and then construct them into an argument while leaving out all mention of the other side. If you want to complain about Michael Moore... fine, but complain equally loudly about Rush, Hannity, and O'Reilly (O'Reilly doesn't even belong in this group because he came from Hard Copy and he has been busted by many sources for out right lies). Complain about the approach, complain about the system, but DO NOT complain about the tactics just because someone does not agree with you.
/. discussion.... A few months ago I read a lot of political book from both sides of the fence. Many of the authors claimed their opposite was simply lying and then "proved" it. I began to do some checking into what kind of information/technology was available for me to examine the any available facts and derive an opinion independent of the talking heads. Most of the online research services and transcript companies that can provide original documents (facts) cost thousands of dollars per month. My conclusion... It is IMPOSSIBLE for a common individual to be properly informed about issues that they must vote on. This is a very sad conclusion because our system of government is founded on the principal that the voting public is educated about the issues.
To add a note of technology to this
So what can open source do to correct the strangle hold that talking heads have on primary information sources?
I sat and watched every agonizing moment of B5 and I distinctly remember watching two episodes that didn't have painfully poor writing. Turns out those were written by someone else. Please... no more campy B5 writing.
Well really if your going to make a lossey format (mp3, aac, etc) then the interesting thing is that people don't even need all your fancy gear. Or all my fancy gear, because, copying the analog out of the CD player will do far less damage to the sound than they act of making the mp3 or aac will. So there is really no point to DRM.
Well DVD-A can be recorded by your computer using the same old 40 cent blank dvds. As far as commercial DVD-A and SACD's they cost about the same at Best Buy and Media Play as the CDs. In the case of the first Norah Jones release, the CD was 13.99 and the SACD (with CD on the same disc) was 11.99. No big deal.
This article talks about DVD-A and SACD as though they just started selling them yesterday. Best Buy and Media Play have been selling these things in my little town for at least 2 years... and no they don't cost more than CDs.
I really do not believe that raising a camera above eye-level constitutes a critical threat to our constitutional freedoms. One problem with technology is that people, especially slashdot'ers revel in the technologies' benefits (open source, information wants to be free, etc...) but cry foul when that same technological efficiency of communication is applied to "an eyeball view of the street". We have never had any expectation of privacy in a public place and the only privacy we have enjoyed was not a "right" but rather a limitation of technology. Certain individuals have always been tracked and cataloged by governemnt agencies. The government can simply do it more efficiently now. Is theis good or bad? Probably both. But it does not reflect a change in the status of your rights. In a public place your information wants to be free.
Is not whether it is uglier or better looking or has more features than the ipod. The critical factor is that it and everthing else are evaluated relative to the iPod standard, even by those who hate the iPod.
One central element of the iPods design and its success is its LACK of features. It does exactly what it needs to do (with the exception of not supporting flac) and nothing more. I can't understand why anyone would want a walkman like player that played video. Video is a concentration centered function. Some benefits of audio can be had in parallel with other activities.
I suspect it will be Apple who kills the iPod by "innovating" in lots of useless features that will corrupt its simply functional design.
"How long until that ability is either abused or hijacked?"
What consitutes abuse of a camera? Looking at things that I could see just walking down the street? This may be ineffective for terrorism or crime, but I don't see that it could hurt.
It is certainly a better use of funds than the DOJ redefining what consitutes torture, or imprisoning US citizens without trial.
Maybe we could divert some terrorism money to schools on the grounds that well educated people are more likely to spot terrorist activity.
It never even occurred to me to get windows. I have never needed anything that only windows offers. My linux box did everything I needed and now the mac does. There is simply no reason to use windows especially considering the cost, licensing issues, and all the invasive and obnoxious phoning home that MS products do.
I had to use windows when trying to continue the work of another student in graduate school and that little escapade probably added a year to my Ph.D. I could run the same code on the mac, ibm workstations, the linux boxes, but I would have to stop and rewrite everything for windows... stupid.
The problem with reencoding music is not the amount of space it takes up, but how much it reduces the battery life. Since the ipod has a fixed ram buffer, doubling the size of the music, will almost double the amount of time the hard disk is spinning, which will almost cut your battery life in half. Which is why (even though 128 AACs suck) I use them in the car. The battery only lasts about an hour with losses encoding.
It seems that there are lots of smaller channels that I get as part of my package that I like quite a bit. It is possible that on group package you will receive unexpectedlty good material that you would not have know to select. The benefits to ala cart programing would assume that all the channels would cost the same amount and you would select the ones you want. In practive it would likely be that channels with high ratings (and therefore, hig ad revenue) would be cheaper. Channels with low ratings (ie. the good ones) like OLN would then cost a fortune. Personally I like the idea of large revenue channels carrying the load for the low ratings channels.
A couple of years ago I tried to scan in an Olan Mills family photograph and the Photoshop said that the photo was protected and I could not scan in the complete picture or open the file.
Is this not the DIVX business model exactly? That worked real well....
A $100 million dollar company is very small. I work for a very small $400 million/yr company. Reasonable advertising will cost a $20-$40 million/yr.
I have been tracking my weight loss for the past 54 days using a low fat, high carb diet and exercise. The daily diary tell exactly what I ate and how much exercise I did. On one of the entries there is a spreadsheet for calculating weight loss for a male based on exercise and calorie intake. The log is linked off my web page at
http://homepage.mac.com/rgbuice
To this point the speadsheet is not exactly accurate (based on my 54 days of data), but it seems to be close. My doctor told me that in 15 years he has never had one patient successful with the Atkins type diet. I started off at 315 and am now about 270. That's not bad for 54 days!
Good artists, artisis who work for a living, touring... playing... creating. They don't need record companies. Ani Difranco is one of many examples. Most jazz musicians make a descent living working in this manner and releasing music independently. Bluegrass too...
On the other hand...
Hanson, Emenem.... these people NEED record companies. Their sales are hype and marketing.
This book has too little technical info for knowledgable mac and unix users and for newbies... well there are just better ways to do things than the book describes. I'd skip this one on all counts. I do find Pogue amusing at times though.
Actually half of all /. readers are below the median; I'm sure we have a few who bias the IQ average high and low.
Control is everything in this market. If the networks can control what I watch (like they did pre-Tivo) then the device is of little use to me. Tivo is user hackable and I can choose when and what I record. This should work even on top of AOLs system through the "analog loophole". The trick is that TiVo has to have the business savy to let consumers know what they are missing by having networks control what they watch. Personally I don't see what the big deal is anyway with the commercials. The Tivo can't skip them, I get the point of all of them even though I fast-forward through them. I watch the last Michael Jordan commercial many times. The user must have control. The user must be taught that he must have control. Only then will the market drive the best product to success. These are the same problems Open Source faces.
It is still the stand by which all new technologies are measured.