I hope you're right there compaero (sorry, I don't know the Portuguese). Until the only government in the negotiations for the FTAA that was willing to stand up to the demands of the US Government was Venezuela (Cuba was excluded from the start). I'm sure this is one of the reasons that the Bush administration has tried several times now to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez (trying to wrest control of the countries oil resources from US control being the other big one).
Lula should take a lesson from this. Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina need to put up a united front against the pressure tactics that the US Government and transnationals will use. They will try to "divide and rule" again. All of you should repudiate your debt at once. The only safe way.
"Nothing roused such British anger as protectionism, and they sometimes gave vent to it in violent language, as during the Opium War against China. But free trade only became revealed truth for them after they became sure of being the strongest power, and after they had developed their own textile industry under the umbrella of Europe's toughest protectionist legislation. In the difficult early days, when British industry was still at a disadvantage, an Englishman caught exporting raw wool was sentenced to lose his right hand, and if he repeated the sin he was hanged. It was prohibibted to bury a corpse without prior certification from the parish priest that the shroud came from a British factory."
Eduardo Galeano wrote this about the British trade policies of the early 19th Century in his 1973 book The Open Veins of Latin America
Fast Track is a mechanism that delegates away to the Executive Branch this congressional authority for setting trade terms as well as other powers. In one lump sum, Fast Track:
* Delegates Congress' constitutional authority to decide terms for international commerce at negotiations. Congress includes a list of "negotiating objectives," but these are not enforceable.
* Permits the ExecutiveBranch to lock down these trade terms and enter into pacts because under Fast Track, the Administration signs trade deals before Congress ever votes on them.
* Empowers the Executive Branch to write implementing legislation to change federal laws to conform them to an agreement's terms (usually Congress writes law, but Fast Track circumvents the congressional committee process of mark ups, etc..)
* Pre-sets the floor procedures for final consideration of trade deals before negotiations start. Congress must vote on whatever the Administration brings back (agreement and implementing legislation) within a set time with no amendments and only 20 hours of debate.
Although hundreds of trade pacts were implemented since Fast Track's 1974 inception, Fast Track has been used only five times ever. Despite the oft-repeated mantra about how every president since Ford has "had" Fast Track authority, in fact its only uses were the GATT Tokyo Round, U.S.-Israel FTA, Canada-U.S. FTA, NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round.
"Nearly 300 separate trade agreements" were negotiated by the Clinton Administration. Of these, only the Uruguay Round Agreement and NAFTA were submitted to Congress under Fast Track procedures.
I would amend this by adding to the list of Fast Tracked trade agreements the recently passed US-Chilean Free Trade Agreement.
Congress has already given away its right to amend the agreement and they have 20 hours to debate it. So, it isn't Congress that loads these "FTAs" with goodies for corporations, it's the executive branch. Congress can only vote up or down on them. The backers of these things seem to think that they have to railroad these things on a fast track because once the contents of the Agreements become known public opposition grows quickly. Democracy is so inconvenient.
It is not "hand-waiving" point out that a "key Google engineer" used to work for the National Security Agency. That is a presentation of evidence - the exact opposite of hand-waiving.
"Hand-waiving" is the making of assertions without offering any evidence to support those assertions. You need to be more careful with your language, Rob.
Boycotts are very effective. Corporations are very sensitive to any decline in revenue. For recent examples look at NorPac and Aramark.
I looked at the list of record labels who are members of the RIAA, and I saw none of the labels that have bands that I like on them: Touch-and-Go, Sub Pop, K Records, Kill Rock Stars, Matador . . . none of them are members of the RIAA.
Turns out, without knowing it, I'm already boycotting the RIAA - just because the bands they sign are too boring.
I had no idea that there was new, more intrusive advertising on slashdot. I use the iCab browser with Mac OS X. It has a great user-configureable ad-filter.
It filters out banner ads based on their URL, file name, path, or server - of the page itself or the page that the banner links to. It replaces the banner with a box of the same size that is empty, except for an icon of a little melita coffee filter (nice touch, that).
It works great.
That said, I am very disturbed by the reports of censorship by the maintainers of slashdot of their unlimited moderator powers. Evidence does seem to point in that direction.
If they were serious about democratic speech, freedom of speech and anti-censorship they would give themselves only the same moderating power that anyone else has - and only if they meet the same critera.
More proof that hierarchy in *any* form is corrupting, but especially when money is at stake.
Ashland, Oregon already has a publicly owned fiber-optic network through out the town.
http://www.ashlandfiber.net/
This is serving as the basis for a community wireless network. Businesses and individuals will hook 802.11b nodes up to their connections to the public broadband network and open it up to guest access by anyone within range. The goal it to get enough people involved to cover the whole town with WiFi.
Hey, tough guy, I'm 36 and I wondered, as well. It seemed to me that the sentence implies that they were transmitting power over fiberoptic cable.
I'm no engineer, but I'm more technical than average. In these times of frequent articles announcing nanomachines and DNA computing, you don't have to be a child to be prepared for some new outlandish feat of ingenuity.
I think they're done with candy colors and translucent plastics at Apple now. They've got a new aesthetic they're working with, very like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I don't think Jobs and Ive like to repeat themselves.
Given how adamant they are about an all-in-one design, I couldn't understand why Apple went with a dome shape that meant that stereo speakers had to be external.
I thought a more squarish (dare I say cube-shaped) base would have allowed for built in stereo speakers. And I think it would have looked a lot cooler than the lump base.
The Independent interview with Ive finally explained it for me:
'a dome is the only shape that lets the screen swivel without having "preferred" positions, maximizes stability and offers lots of horizontal space.'
Well if lump is the most functional form for the base, then lump it is. As Ive mentions in the interview, you don't really appreciate all the subtle decisions that go into an industrial design until you start to understand all the constraints.
I think because the digital hub is not yet fit to be the home stereo, and I don't think that it will be for awhile.
Audio playback on a computer, at it's best, is still pretty bad. Even if you have an iSub Woofer and some fancy Altec Lansing speakers, the CD drive isn't a very good audio CD player. The sound card isn't a very good preamp or amplifier.
If Apple were to begin adding all the hardware that would be required to make an iMac good at audio, the thing would be as big as your desk.
As cool as iTunes and the iPod are MP3 is a lossy format, even at the highest sampling rate, it tosses out some information (=sound) from the ripped CD.
More fundamentally, CD audio itself is "lossy" because even its sampling rate misses too much information from the original analog sound recording (most records are still originally recorded in the analog domain, then digitized).
Until the widespread adoption of audio DVD (which stores much more information and allows for a much higher sampling rate) digital audio playback will remain inferior to analog.
Definitely get your resume together and start to look for a new job. But this isn't 1998 - they aren't as easy to come by now.
If you choose to stay, or in case you can't find anything else, start to talk to your coworkers. If your boss is that unreasonable with you, chances are he is also with some of your coworkers (perhaps the particulars are different with them, but an asshole is an asshole). If you find similar dissatisfaction among them, suggest that you all may need to band together for your mutual protection in the workplace. Float the idea of forming a Union.
Federal law prohibits firing someone because they are attempting to Unionize their workplace. That said, the penalties for an employer who violates this law are minimal. Most AFL-CIO affiliated Unions are not that vigorous, but still Union workers on average make 20% more money than non-Union workers in the same job class.
Try to find the most democratic Union you can to talk to, and talk to several. An undemocratic union is sometimes worse than none at all. They'll all say that they are democratic, but ask for and read their national and state constitutions to see where the real power lies. Pick the one that gives the most power to the rank and file. Or form an independent union (there's no law that says that you have to join one of the national federations).
It's not really the legal status of a Union, or their lawyers, or whatever that are the real power. It is in you and your coworkers ability to watch each others' backs and work together that is where the power lies. The next time someone is called into Mr. IT director's office for discipline, all of you go with him - together. Start a work slowdown, wear buttons or ribbons as an outward sign of your solidarity with each other.
This all can seem scary, but where ever you go you can have the same problems if yo don't have some protection in the workplace. Sometimes it's better to stay and join with your coworkers to solve your collective problems. It is the only way that you can gain some power over your work life so that you can do your job without worrying about arbitrary management bullshit.
Almost all groups similar to the ones that you mentioned have servers, websites, and use email to keep in contact with each other. Therefore they have need of in-house geeks. This would likely be in the home office, but you never know.
Here's a link to a site that just might help in your search for such groups that operate in the United States.
These footnotes are at the bottom of the iPod tech specs page:
(1) 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
(2) Capacity based on an average song length of 4 minutes and 160-Kbps encoding.
(3) Battery life may vary according to use.
(4) iPod and iTunes are for legal or rightholder-authorized copying only. Don't steal music. [my emphasis]
(5) Actual rates will vary.
What is going on here? Microsoft is playing ball with the Recording Institute Assoc. of America (RIAA) and building digital copyright management (DCRM) into their new OS, Windows XP. They're going to try to order back the tide of file swapping.
We all know that this is impossible. The demise of Napster has only led to increased use of more purely peer to peer tools that are not suppressible by a court order, like Gnutella and Freenet.
MS thinks that people are so wedded to Windows that they'll continue to use it although it cripples their ability share files, or even prevents them from exercising their traditional "fair use" rights to music, text or other data that they own. This would work if there really were no alternative OS, or if all the alternatives also built in DCRM. But there are alternatives who aren't going to build in DCRM, and MS is betting on the wrong horse.
PC users who want to exercise their fair use right to copyrighted material that they've bought, and people who want to share will look for an alternative to Windows so they can continue to do so. Some people will look to switch because they resent MS's heavy-handed Big-Brother-is-watching-your-hard-drive approach.
Linux rippers and players for DVD and MP3 and other sources do exist. Though the DVD players are "illegal" all efforts to supress them have failed and they remain readily available. Some of the people who are looking to swap files and/or retain their fair use rights will move to Linux. Although this will be slowed because Linux is still an OS that one must be a bit technically inclined to tackle. But as it becomes easier to use this will become less of an impediment.
And Apple? Notice that their new OS does not include any built-in DCRM features. OS X is easier to use than Windows, powerful, stable, and is designed with "rip, mix, and burn" in mind. Now the iPod gives people another easy way to enjoy their fair-use right to play music that they have bought on any device that they own. Of course this is legal and, as the above quote from Apple urges, you shouldn't "steal music."
These protestations may be genuine, or they may be as sincere as Claude Raines's police inspector in Casablanca:
"I'm shocked! Shocked to find that people are buying our products to use for illegal file trading!"
Either way, Microsoft will soon learn that people, particularly young people, aren't going to have anything to do with an operating system that includes DCRM. File sharing is one of the reasons they buy a computer in the first place. Many of the more computer-savvy among them will head for Linux. Others, and all of the less-technical ones, will switch to Macintosh for iTunes, FireWire, the iPod, iDVD, and the rest.
Microsoft will realize their mistake, ditch the DCRM, and come out with the WinRipper, but Bill "Hey you hackers are stealing my software" Gates won't see this and react to it until they have hemorrhaged quite a bit of market share. Its impossible to know how much they will lose before they let go of the idea of becoming every computer user's nanny. But their heads seem pretty hard to me. Apple could double or triple their market share before Gates and Ballmer cop on. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of Fascists: MS, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
Will it be possible to upgrade the software to accept the Ogg Vorbis or other newer codecs? New ones are produced all the time, and MP3 will be changed and improved. Will you be able to upgrade the iPod, or will it become obsolete when everyone switches to a new codec that it can't play?
No fool, I did not mean "analogue." I'm not English or Canadian. And I have no idea what you're talking about. Every recording and playback instrument or method distorts.
There is no such thing as a truly transparent reproduction of sound. But, analog and vacuum tubes replay with a warmth and a certain three-dimensionality that I find very pleasant. Perhaps it is because the harmonic distortion is in multiples of 2. Seems to be something humans like.
I'm not really sure and it doesn't matter. I just know it sounds cool.
NAD turntable (a generic Riga Planar 2), Sumiko Bluepoint cartridge, Counterpoint SA 1000 Hybrid preamplifier (with all tube phono stage), pair of Heathkit UA-2 power amplifiers (modified to run all Class A), Infinity Qa speakers.
Picky listening? For my money no digital format is all that good, not even CD let alone a lossy format like MP3 or Ogg. The warmth, the dynamics of vinyl records can't be beaten, especially if played through vacuum tube equipment.
May be one day when the sampling rate is high enough digital will approach analog quality. Audio DVDs have promise. Unfortunately the music industry oligarchs are not supporting it.
But if for convenience or out of necessity you compress, Ogg beats MP3.
The two dirty little secrets of the pollsters are that people lie (They don't trust assurances of anonymity. They say what they think they're expected to say), and many, many people refuse to answer.
The people who refuse to answer do not as a group have the same range of opinions as those who do answer the poll takers questions. The opinions of those who answer them do not accurately reflect the opinions of the people as a whole (they may not even accurately reflect the their own views). So poll results are skewed.
I'm listening to National Public Radio. The host of Morning Edition, Bob Edwards, just interviewed Dr. Alice Cronin professor of Counter-Terrorism at Georgetown University. She said (I'm paraphrasing),
"We have liberties in the US that we cherish, but there may need to be some trade-offs of those for greater security. And those trade-offs will be on the table."
Look for those in government who always seek an opportunity to restrict civil liberties to attempt to use this as a pretext for that.
I give up. I'm just going to walk down to the police station and let them implant a chip under my scalp.
I saw a woman the other day who had a bar code tattoo on her arm. I thought it was funny (wry comment on the commodification of all life. ha ha). Now I'm not so sure.
Slashdot Mirror
The protests in Seattle in 1999 were kind of effective, too. ;)
I hope you're right there compaero (sorry, I don't know the Portuguese). Until the only government in the negotiations for the FTAA that was willing to stand up to the demands of the US Government was Venezuela (Cuba was excluded from the start). I'm sure this is one of the reasons that the Bush administration has tried several times now to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez (trying to wrest control of the countries oil resources from US control being the other big one).
Lula should take a lesson from this. Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina need to put up a united front against the pressure tactics that the US Government and transnationals will use. They will try to "divide and rule" again. All of you should repudiate your debt at once. The only safe way.
"Nothing roused such British anger as protectionism, and they sometimes gave vent to it in violent language, as during the Opium War against China. But free trade only became revealed truth for them after they became sure of being the strongest power, and after they had developed their own textile industry under the umbrella of Europe's toughest protectionist legislation. In the difficult early days, when British industry was still at a disadvantage, an Englishman caught exporting raw wool was sentenced to lose his right hand, and if he repeated the sin he was hanged. It was prohibibted to bury a corpse without prior certification from the parish priest that the shroud came from a British factory."
Eduardo Galeano wrote this about the British trade policies of the early 19th Century in his 1973 book The Open Veins of Latin America
For economists "efficient" is a term of art with a very specific meaning. A given mode of production is more efficient than another if:
a) It results in a greater output given the same amount of inputs (labor, raw materials, etc).
or
b) It results in the same output while using the same quanitities of inputs.
I don't know if this is what he meant, but I hope it helps.
Unfortunately, last year Congress gave Bush "Fast Track" negotiating authority. According to Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
Fast Track is a mechanism that delegates away to the Executive Branch this congressional authority for setting trade terms as well as other powers. In one lump sum, Fast Track:
* Delegates Congress' constitutional authority to decide terms for international commerce at negotiations. Congress includes a list of "negotiating objectives," but these are not enforceable.
* Permits the ExecutiveBranch to lock down these trade terms and enter into pacts because under Fast Track, the Administration signs trade deals before Congress ever votes on them.
* Empowers the Executive Branch to write implementing legislation to change federal laws to conform them to an agreement's terms (usually Congress writes law, but Fast Track circumvents the congressional committee process of mark ups, etc..)
* Pre-sets the floor procedures for final consideration of trade deals before negotiations start. Congress must vote on whatever the Administration brings back (agreement and implementing legislation) within a set time with no amendments and only 20 hours of debate.
Although hundreds of trade pacts were implemented since Fast Track's 1974 inception, Fast Track has been used only five times ever. Despite the oft-repeated mantra about how every president since Ford has "had" Fast Track authority, in fact its only uses were the GATT Tokyo Round, U.S.-Israel FTA, Canada-U.S. FTA, NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round.
"Nearly 300 separate trade agreements" were negotiated by the Clinton Administration. Of these, only the Uruguay Round Agreement and NAFTA were submitted to Congress under Fast Track procedures.
I would amend this by adding to the list of Fast Tracked trade agreements the recently passed US-Chilean Free Trade Agreement.
Congress has already given away its right to amend the agreement and they have 20 hours to debate it. So, it isn't Congress that loads these "FTAs" with goodies for corporations, it's the executive branch. Congress can only vote up or down on them. The backers of these things seem to think that they have to railroad these things on a fast track because once the contents of the Agreements become known public opposition grows quickly. Democracy is so inconvenient.
It is not "hand-waiving" point out that a "key Google engineer" used to work for the National Security Agency. That is a presentation of evidence - the exact opposite of hand-waiving.
"Hand-waiving" is the making of assertions without offering any evidence to support those assertions. You need to be more careful with your language, Rob.
Boycotts are very effective. Corporations are very sensitive to any decline in revenue. For recent examples look at NorPac and Aramark.
I looked at the list of record labels who are members of the RIAA, and I saw none of the labels that have bands that I like on them: Touch-and-Go, Sub Pop, K Records, Kill Rock Stars, Matador . . . none of them are members of the RIAA.
Turns out, without knowing it, I'm already boycotting the RIAA - just because the bands they sign are too boring.
I've been to that site numerous times and never been bothered by the ads. Thanks to iCab's excellent ad-filtering feature, I've never seen them.
I had no idea that there was new, more intrusive advertising on slashdot. I use the iCab browser with Mac OS X. It has a great user-configureable ad-filter.
It filters out banner ads based on their URL, file name, path, or server - of the page itself or the page that the banner links to. It replaces the banner with a box of the same size that is empty, except for an icon of a little melita coffee filter (nice touch, that).
It works great.
That said, I am very disturbed by the reports of censorship by the maintainers of slashdot of their unlimited moderator powers. Evidence does seem to point in that direction.
If they were serious about democratic speech, freedom of speech and anti-censorship they would give themselves only the same moderating power that anyone else has - and only if they meet the same critera.
More proof that hierarchy in *any* form is corrupting, but especially when money is at stake.
Ashland, Oregon already has a publicly owned fiber-optic network through out the town.
http://www.ashlandfiber.net/
This is serving as the basis for a community wireless network. Businesses and individuals will hook 802.11b nodes up to their connections to the public broadband network and open it up to guest access by anyone within range. The goal it to get enough people involved to cover the whole town with WiFi.
http://www.ashlandunwired.com/
Hey, tough guy, I'm 36 and I wondered, as well. It seemed to me that the sentence implies that they were transmitting power over fiberoptic cable. I'm no engineer, but I'm more technical than average. In these times of frequent articles announcing nanomachines and DNA computing, you don't have to be a child to be prepared for some new outlandish feat of ingenuity.
I think they're done with candy colors and translucent plastics at Apple now. They've got a new aesthetic they're working with, very like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I don't think Jobs and Ive like to repeat themselves.
I thought a more squarish (dare I say cube-shaped) base would have allowed for built in stereo speakers. And I think it would have looked a lot cooler than the lump base.
The Independent interview with Ive finally explained it for me:
Well if lump is the most functional form for the base, then lump it is. As Ive mentions in the interview, you don't really appreciate all the subtle decisions that go into an industrial design until you start to understand all the constraints.
I like the G4 iMac more now.
I think because the digital hub is not yet fit to be the home stereo, and I don't think that it will be for awhile.
Audio playback on a computer, at it's best, is still pretty bad. Even if you have an iSub Woofer and some fancy Altec Lansing speakers, the CD drive isn't a very good audio CD player. The sound card isn't a very good preamp or amplifier.
If Apple were to begin adding all the hardware that would be required to make an iMac good at audio, the thing would be as big as your desk.
As cool as iTunes and the iPod are MP3 is a lossy format, even at the highest sampling rate, it tosses out some information (=sound) from the ripped CD.
More fundamentally, CD audio itself is "lossy" because even its sampling rate misses too much information from the original analog sound recording (most records are still originally recorded in the analog domain, then digitized).
Until the widespread adoption of audio DVD (which stores much more information and allows for a much higher sampling rate) digital audio playback will remain inferior to analog.
New from Apple and Harmon Kardon, the iTurntable!
Definitely get your resume together and start to look for a new job. But this isn't 1998 - they aren't as easy to come by now.
If you choose to stay, or in case you can't find anything else, start to talk to your coworkers. If your boss is that unreasonable with you, chances are he is also with some of your coworkers (perhaps the particulars are different with them, but an asshole is an asshole). If you find similar dissatisfaction among them, suggest that you all may need to band together for your mutual protection in the workplace. Float the idea of forming a Union.
Federal law prohibits firing someone because they are attempting to Unionize their workplace. That said, the penalties for an employer who violates this law are minimal. Most AFL-CIO affiliated Unions are not that vigorous, but still Union workers on average make 20% more money than non-Union workers in the same job class.
Try to find the most democratic Union you can to talk to, and talk to several. An undemocratic union is sometimes worse than none at all. They'll all say that they are democratic, but ask for and read their national and state constitutions to see where the real power lies. Pick the one that gives the most power to the rank and file. Or form an independent union (there's no law that says that you have to join one of the national federations).
It's not really the legal status of a Union, or their lawyers, or whatever that are the real power. It is in you and your coworkers ability to watch each others' backs and work together that is where the power lies. The next time someone is called into Mr. IT director's office for discipline, all of you go with him - together. Start a work slowdown, wear buttons or ribbons as an outward sign of your solidarity with each other.
This all can seem scary, but where ever you go you can have the same problems if yo don't have some protection in the workplace. Sometimes it's better to stay and join with your coworkers to solve your collective problems. It is the only way that you can gain some power over your work life so that you can do your job without worrying about arbitrary management bullshit.
Good luck
http://www.uniondemocracy.org/
http://www.labornotes.org/index.html
http://www.ilwu.org
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/29/
Almost all groups similar to the ones that you mentioned have servers, websites, and use email to keep in contact with each other. Therefore they have need of in-house geeks. This would likely be in the home office, but you never know.
Here's a link to a site that just might help in your search for such groups that operate in the United States.
http://www.interaction.org/
Good Luck
Ok, Ok. I'll back up my hard drive. Today. I swear.
These footnotes are at the bottom of the iPod tech specs page:
(1) 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
(2) Capacity based on an average song length of 4 minutes and 160-Kbps encoding.
(3) Battery life may vary according to use.
(4) iPod and iTunes are for legal or rightholder-authorized copying only. Don't steal music. [my emphasis]
(5) Actual rates will vary.
What is going on here? Microsoft is playing ball with the Recording Institute Assoc. of America (RIAA) and building digital copyright management (DCRM) into their new OS, Windows XP. They're going to try to order back the tide of file swapping.
We all know that this is impossible. The demise of Napster has only led to increased use of more purely peer to peer tools that are not suppressible by a court order, like Gnutella and Freenet.
MS thinks that people are so wedded to Windows that they'll continue to use it although it cripples their ability share files, or even prevents them from exercising their traditional "fair use" rights to music, text or other data that they own. This would work if there really were no alternative OS, or if all the alternatives also built in DCRM. But there are alternatives who aren't going to build in DCRM, and MS is betting on the wrong horse.
PC users who want to exercise their fair use right to copyrighted material that they've bought, and people who want to share will look for an alternative to Windows so they can continue to do so. Some people will look to switch because they resent MS's heavy-handed Big-Brother-is-watching-your-hard-drive approach.
Linux rippers and players for DVD and MP3 and other sources do exist. Though the DVD players are "illegal" all efforts to supress them have failed and they remain readily available. Some of the people who are looking to swap files and/or retain their fair use rights will move to Linux. Although this will be slowed because Linux is still an OS that one must be a bit technically inclined to tackle. But as it becomes easier to use this will become less of an impediment.
And Apple? Notice that their new OS does not include any built-in DCRM features. OS X is easier to use than Windows, powerful, stable, and is designed with "rip, mix, and burn" in mind. Now the iPod gives people another easy way to enjoy their fair-use right to play music that they have bought on any device that they own. Of course this is legal and, as the above quote from Apple urges, you shouldn't "steal music."
These protestations may be genuine, or they may be as sincere as Claude Raines's police inspector in Casablanca:
"I'm shocked! Shocked to find that people are buying our products to use for illegal file trading!"
Either way, Microsoft will soon learn that people, particularly young people, aren't going to have anything to do with an operating system that includes DCRM. File sharing is one of the reasons they buy a computer in the first place. Many of the more computer-savvy among them will head for Linux. Others, and all of the less-technical ones, will switch to Macintosh for iTunes, FireWire, the iPod, iDVD, and the rest.
Microsoft will realize their mistake, ditch the DCRM, and come out with the WinRipper, but Bill "Hey you hackers are stealing my software" Gates won't see this and react to it until they have hemorrhaged quite a bit of market share. Its impossible to know how much they will lose before they let go of the idea of becoming every computer user's nanny. But their heads seem pretty hard to me. Apple could double or triple their market share before Gates and Ballmer cop on. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of Fascists: MS, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
Come on everybody, let's "Rip, Mix and Burn!"
Thanks, Malic. I went over the tech specs, but I must have missed that bit. I'd mod you up for "helpful" if I could.
How upgradeable is the software for this thing?
Will it be possible to upgrade the software to accept the Ogg Vorbis or other newer codecs? New ones are produced all the time, and MP3 will be changed and improved. Will you be able to upgrade the iPod, or will it become obsolete when everyone switches to a new codec that it can't play?
No fool, I did not mean "analogue." I'm not English or Canadian. And I have no idea what you're talking about. Every recording and playback instrument or method distorts.
There is no such thing as a truly transparent reproduction of sound. But, analog and vacuum tubes replay with a warmth and a certain three-dimensionality that I find very pleasant. Perhaps it is because the harmonic distortion is in multiples of 2. Seems to be something humans like.
I'm not really sure and it doesn't matter. I just know it sounds cool.
NAD turntable (a generic Riga Planar 2), Sumiko Bluepoint cartridge, Counterpoint SA 1000 Hybrid preamplifier (with all tube phono stage), pair of Heathkit UA-2 power amplifiers (modified to run all Class A), Infinity Qa speakers.
in the words of the great Steve Albini.
Picky listening? For my money no digital format is all that good, not even CD let alone a lossy format like MP3 or Ogg. The warmth, the dynamics of vinyl records can't be beaten, especially if played through vacuum tube equipment.
May be one day when the sampling rate is high enough digital will approach analog quality. Audio DVDs have promise. Unfortunately the music industry oligarchs are not supporting it.
But if for convenience or out of necessity you compress, Ogg beats MP3.
The two dirty little secrets of the pollsters are that people lie (They don't trust assurances of anonymity. They say what they think they're expected to say), and many, many people refuse to answer.
The people who refuse to answer do not as a group have the same range of opinions as those who do answer the poll takers questions. The opinions of those who answer them do not accurately reflect the opinions of the people as a whole (they may not even accurately reflect the their own views). So poll results are skewed.
I'm listening to National Public Radio. The host of Morning Edition, Bob Edwards, just interviewed Dr. Alice Cronin professor of Counter-Terrorism at Georgetown University. She said (I'm paraphrasing),
"We have liberties in the US that we cherish, but there may need to be some trade-offs of those for greater security. And those trade-offs will be on the table."
Look for those in government who always seek an opportunity to restrict civil liberties to attempt to use this as a pretext for that.
We have to be ready to counter that immediately!
I give up. I'm just going to walk down to the police station and let them implant a chip under my scalp.
I saw a woman the other day who had a bar code tattoo on her arm. I thought it was funny (wry comment on the commodification of all life. ha ha). Now I'm not so sure.