Actually, I know a lot of people who will go out of their way to get old 8-tracks or records of older artists. I could never figure this out when the same material is available on CD.
I think 8-track collectors collect because of the novelty of it. Record collectors are after a) superior sound quality (often true), b) out of press stuff that isn't available on CD, c) cheap finds (used records are very often dirt cheap... I came home from a record show a few weeks back with about 40 LPs in hand in mint or near-mint condition mostly for a grand total of $65) and d) sometimes they're just completists and want to have everything by their favorite artists.
No. No crack. Unless you've heard good quality vinyl (no scratches, properly maintained) on a properly setup turntable with a decent stereo system, you really don't know. I'll grant you that for cheap setups, you can't beat the cost and convenience of CDs. Most of my collection is CDs. But if you really care about the sound quality and want to hear what was recorded, even the best CD reproduction doesn't come close to good analog.
Ok, this is as much of a whore as I can get here on/., but what the heck. This was my reply to recent article about downloading music. I made that post late in the game and I doubt many people saw it, but I think it's totally relevant to the discussion here... so here it is anyway....
I recently got back into listening to vinyl... you know, those 12" black things that are (gasp!) analog. I'm finding this hobby really fun for a few reasons...
First, there's an amazing amount of stuff that's out there and DIRT CHEAP. Scour around used record stores, record shows, yard sales, etc and there's a ton of material to be had for a buck or less if you're willing to look.
Next, it sounds better than CD. No one is going to convince me otherwise. I can listen for hours and hours and enjoy every minute of it. Even the best CDs that I have are fatiguing to listen to after a while.
And finally, even under the most assenine RIAA intupretation of the law, this is completely legal and the record companies don't see an additional penny from me.
I just find it really funny that the industry gets all riled up over downloading, but my digging into used vinyl is actually worse for them yet there's not a damn thing they can complain about.
(of course we know that the RIAA has tried to stop the sale of used CDs but was summarily shot down because the practice is protected by the "first sale" doctrine of federal copyright law).
... didn't have the DMCA. Otherwise a lot of our shared history may have been lost forever. What are our decendants 100 or 500 or 1000 years from now going to know about us?
Our creative output is going to be slowly locked away in copyright protected files never to be seen again... except to the person who originally bought the rights to view it. But they (we) will be long since dead... and the content, which will be as helpful to them in understanding their history as hiroglyphics are to us, will be lost.
Bottom line... the DMCA, and everything it stands for, sucks. It is the epitomy of government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" gone terribly wrong.
Highly Polished... yea, I know what that means. It means a committee has been hard at work f***ing up what was probably a pretty good script.
A couple of recent script-by-committee disasters include "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", "Batman and Robin", and "The Scorpion King". Of course having one person in full control of the script isn't necessarily a good thing either as Mr. Lucas has so painfully pointed out.
I recently got back into listening to vinyl... you know, those 12" black things that are (gasp!) analog. I'm finding this hobby really fun for a few reasons...
First, there's an amazing amount of stuff that's out there and DIRT CHEAP. Scour around used record stores, record shows, yard sales, etc and there's a ton of material to be had for a buck or less if you're willing to look.
Next, it sounds better than CD. No one is going to convince me otherwise. I can listen for hours and hours and enjoy every minute of it. Even the best CDs that I have are fatiguing to listen to after a while.
And finally, even under the most assenine RIAA intupretation of the law, this is completely legal and the record companies don't see an additional penny from me.
I just find it really funny that the industry gets all riled up over downloading, but my digging into used vinyl is actually worse for them yet there's not a damn thing they can complain about.
(of course we know that the RIAA has tried to stop the sale of used CDs but was summarily shot down because the practice is protected by the "first sale" doctrine of federal copyright law)
BTW, up to the last few lines, that story is 100% true. The fact of the matter is that since I discovered SoulSeek (never cared for the business models of Kazaa and the like), I've been buying MORE music than I did before because I can be reasonably sure that I'll be happy with my purchase because I've already listened to it.
When I was in high school, I copied cassettes with my friends like there was no tomorrow. When it college, I started buying CDs, but still went copied almost everything I listened to. But all of that fueled my love of music and now that I'm making decent money, I buy music.
If the record lablels squish music sharing, kids interests will turn to something else and they will have lost a generation of future consumers with money. They need to tread very carefully here....
Friday 9:45pm - Listened to about 4 songs and realizing that it isn't anywhere near as interesting as I'd hoped it would be.
Friday 10:00pm - Hit some discussion boards to see what other people with similar tastes are listening to.
Friday 10:30pm - Dowloaded albums from Lightning Bolt, Beck, and Interpol.
Friday 11:00pm - Began listening to downloaded albums. Liked Lightning Bolt and the new Beck, but didn't care much for Interpol.
Saturday 11:00am - Trip to Newbury Comics (New Englanders know...). Buy 2x Lightning Bolt and 1x Beck. And also while there bought Johnny Cash and Sonic Youth on vinyl. Total outlay... about $65.
Saturday 4:00pm - Served with an arrest warant for illegally downloading music.
Sunday - Spent the day trying to explain the finer points of SoulSeek to my new friend Bubba.
Monday 9:00am - Allowed access to prision computer terminal to check on Slashdot. Awaiting bail...
Sold. I -love- my TiVo, but the lack of HDTV functionality is going to kill them if they don't rectify the situation quick. Several people I've talked to about getting TiVo are reluctant not because they have HDTV now, but because they want to be "ready" for it in the future. They don't want to invest in a technology that's near a dead-end.
Moxi will be available via cable providers or other Premium TV companies, and the hardware will be custom for each one of them.
IMO, that will be the biggest problem for them. Standalone TiVo is ubiquitous. It can be used with just about any source... anyone's cable box... any satellite system.
Of course, 90% of consumers (maybe more) are sheep. It might work out well for Moxi since the hardware will be coming from "their cable company" and not some third party. Do you think most cable consumers have any clue who makes their cable box and what features is has? To them this thing will be just another cable box with some cool stuff.
The Copyright Office page says "Electronic submissions may be made through this website beginning Nov. 19, 2002, through Dec. 18."
That's more than a month away. That'll slip right off my radar screen unless I have a reminder.
Put it in your PDA. In your favorite scheduling software. In you little black book. On your fridge. Whatever you like, but do it NOW. This is a really good way for the evils of the DMCA to be entered into record, even if (for now) it's just a formality.
One has to assume that the Nigerian scammers are sending out millions of spam, right? They're not using unique reply-to addresses for each one right?
In this case, the address mikeaba@mail.com is at, of course, mail.com. Surely mail.com must have gotten dozens, if not hundreds, of spam reports altering them that a mail.com address was being used for a scam.
What I don't understand is how on earth that address didn't get taken offline by mail.com within a very short time of the original scam/spam being sent. My experience has been that yahoo.com and hotmail.com do a pretty decent job of deleting accounts of addresses that are being used a spam dropboxes. But not mail.com?
Rather than clicking through, here's the "deep link"... I didn't see anything in their TOS restricting my posting of this... and even if I had, it wouldn't have mattered.
By midyear, the Harry Potter DVD had shipped 6,550,000 units (#1 for the year).
The studios should see this as proof that if they sell a reasonable package at a reasonable price, people WILL buy it. Yup, piracy sure is killing this business, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
I think 8-track collectors collect because of the novelty of it. Record collectors are after a) superior sound quality (often true), b) out of press stuff that isn't available on CD, c) cheap finds (used records are very often dirt cheap... I came home from a record show a few weeks back with about 40 LPs in hand in mint or near-mint condition mostly for a grand total of $65) and d) sometimes they're just completists and want to have everything by their favorite artists.
-S
No. No crack. Unless you've heard good quality vinyl (no scratches, properly maintained) on a properly setup turntable with a decent stereo system, you really don't know. I'll grant you that for cheap setups, you can't beat the cost and convenience of CDs. Most of my collection is CDs. But if you really care about the sound quality and want to hear what was recorded, even the best CD reproduction doesn't come close to good analog.
-S
-S
... didn't have the DMCA. Otherwise a lot of our shared history may have been lost forever. What are our decendants 100 or 500 or 1000 years from now going to know about us?
Our creative output is going to be slowly locked away in copyright protected files never to be seen again... except to the person who originally bought the rights to view it. But they (we) will be long since dead... and the content, which will be as helpful to them in understanding their history as hiroglyphics are to us, will be lost.
Bottom line... the DMCA, and everything it stands for, sucks. It is the epitomy of government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" gone terribly wrong.
-S
Highly Polished... yea, I know what that means. It means a committee has been hard at work f***ing up what was probably a pretty good script.
A couple of recent script-by-committee disasters include "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", "Batman and Robin", and "The Scorpion King". Of course having one person in full control of the script isn't necessarily a good thing either as Mr. Lucas has so painfully pointed out.
-S
I recently got back into listening to vinyl... you know, those 12" black things that are (gasp!) analog. I'm finding this hobby really fun for a few reasons...
First, there's an amazing amount of stuff that's out there and DIRT CHEAP. Scour around used record stores, record shows, yard sales, etc and there's a ton of material to be had for a buck or less if you're willing to look.
Next, it sounds better than CD. No one is going to convince me otherwise. I can listen for hours and hours and enjoy every minute of it. Even the best CDs that I have are fatiguing to listen to after a while.
And finally, even under the most assenine RIAA intupretation of the law, this is completely legal and the record companies don't see an additional penny from me.
I just find it really funny that the industry gets all riled up over downloading, but my digging into used vinyl is actually worse for them yet there's not a damn thing they can complain about.
(of course we know that the RIAA has tried to stop the sale of used CDs but was summarily shot down because the practice is protected by the "first sale" doctrine of federal copyright law)
-S
BTW, up to the last few lines, that story is 100% true. The fact of the matter is that since I discovered SoulSeek (never cared for the business models of Kazaa and the like), I've been buying MORE music than I did before because I can be reasonably sure that I'll be happy with my purchase because I've already listened to it.
When I was in high school, I copied cassettes with my friends like there was no tomorrow. When it college, I started buying CDs, but still went copied almost everything I listened to. But all of that fueled my love of music and now that I'm making decent money, I buy music.
If the record lablels squish music sharing, kids interests will turn to something else and they will have lost a generation of future consumers with money. They need to tread very carefully here....
-S
Friday 9:15pm - Downloaded new Audioslave album
Friday 9:45pm - Listened to about 4 songs and realizing that it isn't anywhere near as interesting as I'd hoped it would be.
Friday 10:00pm - Hit some discussion boards to see what other people with similar tastes are listening to.
Friday 10:30pm - Dowloaded albums from Lightning Bolt, Beck, and Interpol.
Friday 11:00pm - Began listening to downloaded albums. Liked Lightning Bolt and the new Beck, but didn't care much for Interpol.
Saturday 11:00am - Trip to Newbury Comics (New Englanders know...). Buy 2x Lightning Bolt and 1x Beck. And also while there bought Johnny Cash and Sonic Youth on vinyl. Total outlay... about $65.
Saturday 4:00pm - Served with an arrest warant for illegally downloading music.
Sunday - Spent the day trying to explain the finer points of SoulSeek to my new friend Bubba.
Monday 9:00am - Allowed access to prision computer terminal to check on Slashdot. Awaiting bail...
Yup. I'm a criminal.
-S
Gives new meaning to round-trip ping time, huh?
-S
"Heartlight" no doubt. Oh wait, that's Neil Diamond isn't it? Or are they the same person?
-S
-S
"We just went to the movie theater and then the coffee shop. Honest."
It's as if millions of hormonal boys suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
-S
Sold. I -love- my TiVo, but the lack of HDTV functionality is going to kill them if they don't rectify the situation quick. Several people I've talked to about getting TiVo are reluctant not because they have HDTV now, but because they want to be "ready" for it in the future. They don't want to invest in a technology that's near a dead-end.
Moxi will be available via cable providers or other Premium TV companies, and the hardware will be custom for each one of them.
IMO, that will be the biggest problem for them. Standalone TiVo is ubiquitous. It can be used with just about any source... anyone's cable box... any satellite system.
Of course, 90% of consumers (maybe more) are sheep. It might work out well for Moxi since the hardware will be coming from "their cable company" and not some third party. Do you think most cable consumers have any clue who makes their cable box and what features is has? To them this thing will be just another cable box with some cool stuff.
-S
That's more than a month away. That'll slip right off my radar screen unless I have a reminder.
Put it in your PDA. In your favorite scheduling software. In you little black book. On your fridge. Whatever you like, but do it NOW. This is a really good way for the evils of the DMCA to be entered into record, even if (for now) it's just a formality.
-S
He he... nice.
I put that in their online form. There's also an email addres...
CustomerService@DrsFosterSmith.com
-S
Actually, you've commented on this subject before.
(sorry... your subject sounded like a challenge to me). :-)
-S
Why exactly does bigger = better?
-S
One has to assume that the Nigerian scammers are sending out millions of spam, right? They're not using unique reply-to addresses for each one right?
In this case, the address mikeaba@mail.com is at, of course, mail.com. Surely mail.com must have gotten dozens, if not hundreds, of spam reports altering them that a mail.com address was being used for a scam.
What I don't understand is how on earth that address didn't get taken offline by mail.com within a very short time of the original scam/spam being sent. My experience has been that yahoo.com and hotmail.com do a pretty decent job of deleting accounts of addresses that are being used a spam dropboxes. But not mail.com?
Can someone explain what I'm missing here?
-S
The DIY section on avsforum also has some info.
DIY subwoofers is another place to start.
In fact a google search yields about 16,000 results with the words "DIY" and "subwoofer".
Which brings me to...
Is this really news?
-S
Sigh... nothing like failing to disclose an affiliate relationship when "recommending" a product.
I knew it was OK, especially by your "free speech online" banners. My comment was made, more or less, tongue-in-cheek.
-S
Roger Ebert has a story on it though is review seems to be missing at the moment (he loved it... so did Roeper).
The IMDB entry is here.
-S
Theater listing for Spirited Away in the U.S. and Canada
-S
-S
By midyear, the Harry Potter DVD had shipped 6,550,000 units (#1 for the year).
The studios should see this as proof that if they sell a reasonable package at a reasonable price, people WILL buy it. Yup, piracy sure is killing this business, isn't it?
-S