All digital formats are inherently lossy, unless the original music is entirely digitally created, which most isn't. The question is how much loss one is prepared to accept.
If CD is your benchmark, and human hearing is your measurement device, you can achieve the same quality using MP3, a good encoder, VBR, and a suitable bit rate. Quite what that bit rate needs to be depends on the listener and the listener's audio equipment.
I remember when I arrived at university and found the IS folk complaining about bandwidth use and porn, I suggested to them that they could save the university a fortune by just giving each student a free subscription to a porn magazine.
For some reason they didn't go for it. But really, it's the logical next step. I'm sure Larry Flynt would go for a bundling deal with MIT. Their symbol is a beaver already, so there's some natural synergy.
The PlayStation lineup is bland and unoriginal, eh?
What about Rez, Irritating Stick, Frequency, Herdy Gerdy, Roll Away, PaRappa The Rapper, Incredible Crisis, Stretch Panic, Mad Maestro!, Mister Mosquito, Fantavision, No One Can Stop Mister Domino!, Vib Ribbon, Kinetica, Monster Rancher, Shadow Of Destiny, State Of Emergency, and maybe Sky Odyssey? And those are just the ones I can think of right now...
As a fan of quirky games, I picked PlayStation and PS2 precisely because the platform tends to get strange experimental games that other systems don't. If you want to see a truly uninspired lineup of FPS and sports games (with one interesting game), look at the Xbox...
Maybe you think the PlayStation has no original games because it has so darn many game releases that the unusual games aren't as prominent. Quirky games wasn't what killed Dreamcast, not enough games was the problem.
I've bought half a dozen tunes from the iTunes music store because they were one-off songs I happened to like from artists whose work I generally dislike. In return for being able to buy the one Eagles track I like for 99 cents and not have to pay $12 for a CD, I'm prepared to put up with the minor restrictions Apple has placed on iTunes music store files.
I say "minor" because I can play the files on any Mac I want, and doubtless any Windows PC once iTunes gets ported, and I can burn the songs onto a perfectly ordinary audio CD. That's all I care about.
At a bit-rate of 128, it sounds as good or better than a 192 VBR MP3
You mean it sounds as good or better than a 192 VBR MP3 encoded with iTunes. AAC files unfortunately sound worse than LAME-encoded VBR MP3 files of the same average bitrate, in all the comparative tests I've seen reported (including my own).
Not necessarily. The games on the chart are all Windoze only as far as I know, so other platforms are a wide-open market. And remember, you don't need to sell to Windows users to make a profit.
For making video DVDs to play anywhere, DVD-R is best, followed by +R.
For backing up data, DVD-RAM is most reliable, +RW is second-best. It's a bit faster, but less reliable.
+R and DVD-RW are pretty much useless except as a compromise alternative to +RW, DVD-R, or DVD-RAM.
Microsoft supports both +RW and DVD-RAM for data backup, Apple doesn't really *support* either, but DVD-RAM works.
For burning movies, Apple supports only DVD-R, but DVD-RW can be used by switching the disc.
Personally I wish the +RW and +R formats would die a horrible death, as they don't do anything that can't be done better with a DVD of some kind and a DVD-RAM/R/RW combo drive. They're a compromise based on the marketing assumption that people feel a compelling need to back up data and record movies using the same media. I question that assumption. However, if you agree with it, go ahead and get a +RW drive.
Why go through all the work of training some software to read your email and decide if you might want to read it when most email programs have white list capabilities? If I don't know you, that means I don't want to talk to you.
I was going to e-mail you explaining why whitelists suck, but obviously there would be no point.
Suffice it to say that not everybody is an antisocial asshole.
Of course, Vikings are entirely appropriate to SPAM. The Hormel factory which makes all America's SPAM (as well as the UK's) is located in Austin, Minnesota... and of course, Minnesota has a sports team called the Vikings.
Not just while it was being developer. JavaScript was called LiveScript in the initial releases of Netscape. It was changed to JavaScript when Java started becoming the "hot" technology.
I've seen several articles from developers who started selling Mac games who discovered that they made more money out of Mac games than Windows ones. Reasons:
1. Market is less crowded, so you need to spend less on advertising to get awareness of your product.
2. Mac users are more likely to pay for the software they use.
3. Less competition from other similar games. If you're the only Mac MMORPG out there...
4. Lower development costs, because there are fewer weird pieces of hardware to deal with leading to less QA necessary.
5. More rapid development owing to the strength of the Cocoa environment compared to Microsoft's equivalents.
There's more to making a profit than blindly going after the largest possible market.
The main reason why Mac game ports don't happen is Microsoft's doing: DirectX. Makes it a bitch to make your game multi-platform. Whereas if you use OpenGL and the like, porting usually isn't all that big of a deal.
It has yet to be seen whether Jot infringes Xerox's patent, and Palm have yet to ship anything using Jot. It's quite possible that keyboards are a stopgap measure.
I actually agree that a thumboard is as good as Graffiti. Graffiti sucks, I hate it, the sooner it dies the better. My Newton was more accurate reading my ordinary handwriting.
Copyright law supercedes rights granted by the GPL.
But copyright is the very enforcement mechanism of the GPL. To say that copyright law is stronger than the GPL makes no sense.
If SCO owns code in Linux they don't want distributed, they can revoke any and all rights to distribute derivative works of their code, even though it is imbedded in a GPL product. As long as *they* own the copyright, they can dictate any and all circumstances of its distribution, even including revoking the GPL on it.
For SCO to ship their Linux distribution, they had to agree to the terms of the GPL. Without doing so, they had no right--according to copyright law--to ship a Linux distro. They can't agree to the terms of the GPL, and then unilaterally modify the terms of the agreement several years later after shipping code, any more than Microsoft can turn around and say that Windows 95 users are retrospectively deemed to have agreed not to run Netscape.
Even if they could, it would simply mean that they duplicated and redistributed other people's code (i.e. Linux) illegally, falsely claiming that it was licensed to their customers.
Assume for the moment that the SCO lawsuit has merit, in the sense that the Linux kernel contains SCO code. It seems undeniable that SCO made modifications to the Linux kernel, and then released it under the GPL with their code in it.
Maybe they didn't recognize their own code when they were looking at it, but that's their problem. They worked on it and then knowingly released it under the GPL, they owned the rights to it and were entitled to place it under the GPL. Hence no matter how it got there it's under the GPL now, and we can use it.
So SCO have no grounds to be threatening Linux vendors or end users the way they are. At most, assuming their claims are true, they should be able to get damages from whoever copied the code into the Linux kernel, and whoever failed to exercise due diligence within their own organization.
In other words, many of us are quite consistently arguing that the GPL should be found to be valid in both this case and the SCO case, and that most of SCO's threats should be thrown out of court.
Now, as a secondary matter I think the claim that SCO code was copied into Linux is highly dubious. But even if the allegation were true, SCO's behavior would still be sleazy.
I'm using Mozilla 1.4b, and the IHT site looks like crap. Huge empty space in the middle, scroll right to read the text which is crammed into a column about three words wide.
Microsoft only buys stuff that has value to it, and even then it only buys when there's no alternative.
SOP at Microsoft is:
1. Approach a small company that has some cool technology.
2. Get a perpetual license for the technology and source code, in return for a cash injection.
3. Take the source, incorporate it into Microsoft products, and give those products away as bundled parts of Windows and Office, reducing small company's own products to zero value.
4. Shed worthless husk of small company.
Examples are too numerous to list, but VIVO is the classic that fits the model perfectly. Real would have gone the same way if they hadn't secretly worked on their G2 stuff in a separate code stream that wasn't covered by their agreement with Microsoft.
Let's not forget Wipeout 2097 (aka Wipeout XL) with its extensive ads for Red Bull.
(I just happen to be wearing a Red Bull T-shirt right now. I tried the stuff out of curiosity after seeing it in the game, and now I'm an addict. I guess video game advertising works.)
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All digital formats are inherently lossy, unless the original music is entirely digitally created, which most isn't. The question is how much loss one is prepared to accept.
If CD is your benchmark, and human hearing is your measurement device, you can achieve the same quality using MP3, a good encoder, VBR, and a suitable bit rate. Quite what that bit rate needs to be depends on the listener and the listener's audio equipment.
I remember when I arrived at university and found the IS folk complaining about bandwidth use and porn, I suggested to them that they could save the university a fortune by just giving each student a free subscription to a porn magazine.
For some reason they didn't go for it. But really, it's the logical next step. I'm sure Larry Flynt would go for a bundling deal with MIT. Their symbol is a beaver already, so there's some natural synergy.
The PlayStation lineup is bland and unoriginal, eh?
What about Rez, Irritating Stick, Frequency, Herdy Gerdy, Roll Away, PaRappa The Rapper, Incredible Crisis, Stretch Panic, Mad Maestro!, Mister Mosquito, Fantavision, No One Can Stop Mister Domino!, Vib Ribbon, Kinetica, Monster Rancher, Shadow Of Destiny, State Of Emergency, and maybe Sky Odyssey? And those are just the ones I can think of right now...
As a fan of quirky games, I picked PlayStation and PS2 precisely because the platform tends to get strange experimental games that other systems don't. If you want to see a truly uninspired lineup of FPS and sports games (with one interesting game), look at the Xbox...
Maybe you think the PlayStation has no original games because it has so darn many game releases that the unusual games aren't as prominent. Quirky games wasn't what killed Dreamcast, not enough games was the problem.
...then upgrade to WHAMB!, which not only has uncrippled streaming, but also has a much better quality MP3 decoder.
Oh, and encode your MP3s with LAME, which is much better than even the AAC encoder in iTunes (yes, at the same average bitrates).
I've bought half a dozen tunes from the iTunes music store because they were one-off songs I happened to like from artists whose work I generally dislike. In return for being able to buy the one Eagles track I like for 99 cents and not have to pay $12 for a CD, I'm prepared to put up with the minor restrictions Apple has placed on iTunes music store files.
I say "minor" because I can play the files on any Mac I want, and doubtless any Windows PC once iTunes gets ported, and I can burn the songs onto a perfectly ordinary audio CD. That's all I care about.
You mean it sounds as good or better than a 192 VBR MP3 encoded with iTunes. AAC files unfortunately sound worse than LAME-encoded VBR MP3 files of the same average bitrate, in all the comparative tests I've seen reported (including my own).
Not necessarily. The games on the chart are all Windoze only as far as I know, so other platforms are a wide-open market. And remember, you don't need to sell to Windows users to make a profit.
For making video DVDs to play anywhere, DVD-R is best, followed by +R.
For backing up data, DVD-RAM is most reliable, +RW is second-best. It's a bit faster, but less reliable.
+R and DVD-RW are pretty much useless except as a compromise alternative to +RW, DVD-R, or DVD-RAM.
Microsoft supports both +RW and DVD-RAM for data backup, Apple doesn't really *support* either, but DVD-RAM works.
For burning movies, Apple supports only DVD-R, but DVD-RW can be used by switching the disc.
Personally I wish the +RW and +R formats would die a horrible death, as they don't do anything that can't be done better with a DVD of some kind and a DVD-RAM/R/RW combo drive. They're a compromise based on the marketing assumption that people feel a compelling need to back up data and record movies using the same media. I question that assumption. However, if you agree with it, go ahead and get a +RW drive.
Jeez, how did that crap get moderated to +5 points?
DVD-RAM 2.6GB can be removed from the cartridge and read in regular DVD-ROM drives.
I was going to e-mail you explaining why whitelists suck, but obviously there would be no point.
Suffice it to say that not everybody is an antisocial asshole.
Of course, Vikings are entirely appropriate to SPAM. The Hormel factory which makes all America's SPAM (as well as the UK's) is located in Austin, Minnesota... and of course, Minnesota has a sports team called the Vikings.
Not just while it was being developer. JavaScript was called LiveScript in the initial releases of Netscape. It was changed to JavaScript when Java started becoming the "hot" technology.
I've seen several articles from developers who started selling Mac games who discovered that they made more money out of Mac games than Windows ones. Reasons:
1. Market is less crowded, so you need to spend less on advertising to get awareness of your product.
2. Mac users are more likely to pay for the software they use.
3. Less competition from other similar games. If you're the only Mac MMORPG out there...
4. Lower development costs, because there are fewer weird pieces of hardware to deal with leading to less QA necessary.
5. More rapid development owing to the strength of the Cocoa environment compared to Microsoft's equivalents.
There's more to making a profit than blindly going after the largest possible market.
The main reason why Mac game ports don't happen is Microsoft's doing: DirectX. Makes it a bitch to make your game multi-platform. Whereas if you use OpenGL and the like, porting usually isn't all that big of a deal.
Phew. For a moment I thought my real life would be over at the end of this year...
Who'd have thought Cyan would become Microsoft whores, though?
I can believe it. I was talking to a J2EE web developer this week who claimed to have no knowledge what what MIME was.
I always put rsum spammers in the database of "morons not to hire, no matter how desperate you are". Don't all companies?
It has yet to be seen whether Jot infringes Xerox's patent, and Palm have yet to ship anything using Jot. It's quite possible that keyboards are a stopgap measure.
I actually agree that a thumboard is as good as Graffiti. Graffiti sucks, I hate it, the sooner it dies the better. My Newton was more accurate reading my ordinary handwriting.
But copyright is the very enforcement mechanism of the GPL. To say that copyright law is stronger than the GPL makes no sense.
For SCO to ship their Linux distribution, they had to agree to the terms of the GPL. Without doing so, they had no right--according to copyright law--to ship a Linux distro. They can't agree to the terms of the GPL, and then unilaterally modify the terms of the agreement several years later after shipping code, any more than Microsoft can turn around and say that Windows 95 users are retrospectively deemed to have agreed not to run Netscape.
Even if they could, it would simply mean that they duplicated and redistributed other people's code (i.e. Linux) illegally, falsely claiming that it was licensed to their customers.
Assume for the moment that the SCO lawsuit has merit, in the sense that the Linux kernel contains SCO code. It seems undeniable that SCO made modifications to the Linux kernel, and then released it under the GPL with their code in it.
Maybe they didn't recognize their own code when they were looking at it, but that's their problem. They worked on it and then knowingly released it under the GPL, they owned the rights to it and were entitled to place it under the GPL. Hence no matter how it got there it's under the GPL now, and we can use it.
So SCO have no grounds to be threatening Linux vendors or end users the way they are. At most, assuming their claims are true, they should be able to get damages from whoever copied the code into the Linux kernel, and whoever failed to exercise due diligence within their own organization.
In other words, many of us are quite consistently arguing that the GPL should be found to be valid in both this case and the SCO case, and that most of SCO's threats should be thrown out of court.
Now, as a secondary matter I think the claim that SCO code was copied into Linux is highly dubious. But even if the allegation were true, SCO's behavior would still be sleazy.
A VIA EDEN system can run on 20W of power. It'll run Linux happily, and fit in a box not much bigger than a CD-ROM drive. Will that do?
Are you crazy? Think how many security holes they're open to at this point.
Because Xerox won their patent infringement lawsuit against Palm for stealing the idea of Graffiti from Xerox research.
Next question?
I'm using Mozilla 1.4b, and the IHT site looks like crap. Huge empty space in the middle, scroll right to read the text which is crammed into a column about three words wide.
Microsoft only buys stuff that has value to it, and even then it only buys when there's no alternative.
SOP at Microsoft is:
1. Approach a small company that has some cool technology.
2. Get a perpetual license for the technology and source code, in return for a cash injection.
3. Take the source, incorporate it into Microsoft products, and give those products away as bundled parts of Windows and Office, reducing small company's own products to zero value.
4. Shed worthless husk of small company.
Examples are too numerous to list, but VIVO is the classic that fits the model perfectly. Real would have gone the same way if they hadn't secretly worked on their G2 stuff in a separate code stream that wasn't covered by their agreement with Microsoft.
Let's not forget Wipeout 2097 (aka Wipeout XL) with its extensive ads for Red Bull.
(I just happen to be wearing a Red Bull T-shirt right now. I tried the stuff out of curiosity after seeing it in the game, and now I'm an addict. I guess video game advertising works.)