HD-DVD is letter soup. It's "just another kind of DVD". Nothing special. CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, HD-DVD. Same thing.
Physically, they are all the same thing -- 12cm plastic disks. There is no reason to make them sound "hip and sexy" because there isn't anything hip or sexy about them. They're disks. The only really significant difference for most people is that they are in "high-def" resolutions, hence "HD". Even BluRay is "like a DVD, except HD".
It doesn't even matter what the letters stand for. Most people don't know what DVD stands for, and almost nobody knows what VHS stands for.
While I appreciate the information on the iPod's docking port, I will still stubbornly refuse to listen to it, for several reasons which I shall make-up as required.
And that, smartass, is how people get on my friends list.
I realise that you're trying to stir things up with that comment, but let's face it: corporations already have patents and copyright to protect their "property". There is no need for an outmoded concept like "trade secret" as well.
Spoken like someone that fails to grasp the difference.
Re:Putting quotes around "trade secrets"
on
Apple vs Bloggers
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Investigative journalism is not now, has not ever been, and will never be a "preposterous parasitic business model".
That should be a clue that investigative journalism is not what Apple rumor sites do.
And before you say "whistleblower", please familiarize yourself with some of the relevant laws, as so few people choose to do. If these sites had published evidence that, say, Apple was dumping toxic waste or committing fraud, they would probably be protected. They didn't, though. The information they published had only commercial value, and it's disclosure was not in the public interest, no matter how interested the public may have been.
Re:Putting quotes around "trade secrets"
on
Apple vs Bloggers
·
· Score: 1
On its face, given the text of the First Amendment, it would appear that any law passed by Congress abridging the freedom of speech or of the press would be unconstitutional. However, this does not consider the role of the doctrine of stare decisis, in which judges consider previous decisions they (and other courts) have rendered to be binding precedent, decisions to be followed as if they were themselves laws. This is extremely significant. -- The First Amendment @ Wikipedia
Re:Putting quotes around "trade secrets"
on
Apple vs Bloggers
·
· Score: 1
I believe the constitution supercedes this act. Or at least it should. In America that is.
It does. There is no part of this law that says otherwise. You still have the usual First Amendment rights. They just aren't absolute, and never were.
Re:Putting quotes around "trade secrets"
on
Apple vs Bloggers
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The company can sue the employee who leaks a "secret" but once it has been leaked to the public, it's no longer "secret" - and its permissible to be published.
Sure, sure, once it becomes public knowledge it's not really an issue, but you don't have the right to make it public just because you know it.
The portion of the law I quoted says this is not so in cases such as this one. If someone that works for Company A reveals trade secrets to you, Website B, and you have reason to believe it is a trade secret, then by publishing it you are liable for misappropriation.
Dealing in "stolen" information is illegal in the same way that fencing stolen goods is.
If the blogger misappropriated the "secret" (ie conducted industrial espionage), then it's a criminal case - though the standard of proving guilt is significantly higher. A criminal investigation could establish if the blogger is breaking security measures or subpoena the defendant for his sources, and possibly land the blogger in Contempt.
This is what is happening, more or less, though the criteria for "misappropriation" are far less than "industrial espionage"; simply asking for secrets seems to count. Apple is trying to figure out who leaked the information in the first place, but unfortunately the only people who know are more interested in protecting their preposterous parasitic business model than telling the truth. Hence it is now somehow a First Amendment issue.
Re:Putting quotes around "trade secrets"
on
Apple vs Bloggers
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Putting quotes around "trade secrets" doesn't make them not trade secrets. Telling them to a reporter does though.
(2) "Misappropriation " means: (i) acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or (ii) disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who (A) used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or (B) at the time of disclosure or use knew or had reason to know that his knowledge of the trade secret was (I) derived from or through a person who has utilized improper means to acquire it; (II) acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or (III) derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or (C) before a material change of his position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret ad that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.
Given that rumor sites operate on the principle of soliciting inside information, it's hard to make the case that they didn't know they had gotten some unless they admit that most of what they print isn't inside information (i.e., that they make it up).
Read the Constitution, especially the part about the limited monopoly granted by Congress that enables copyrights, and thereby the retained rights called "Fair Use". Then tell me about them, when you have a clue what they actually are.
You're only continuing to demonstrate ignorance. Fair Use is not in the Constitution at all. It was common law until the 1976 Copyright Act, which itself doesn't say "you can do anything you want", as you seem to think. The Home Recording Act and other laws have made some things explicit, but overall Fair Use is not the concrete and absolute thing you're treating it as.
Look, I can understand your position. What I object to is making shit up to support it.
I introduced my example describing it as absurd, but nevertheless it's true.
No it isn't, and I explained why. Copyright covers intellectual property. The author of a book does not have the right to stop you from burning your copy of it. Why? Because the book is yours. Only the text it contains is his. Likewise, a record company or artist can't stop you from using a CD to prop up a table because that doesn't involve the recording at all.
Why would I pay any attention to your warbling?
Because you might learn to sound less like an idiot. Then maybe people will listen to you.
Copyright 101 has a prerequisite: Constitutional Rights.
You do not have a constitutional right to do whatever you please with someone else's property (i.e. the recording). Once again, you do have Fair Use rights, which are not the same.
I use a CD I bought to prop up a wobbly table leg. Later the record label's parent company markets leg proppers of their own, marketed under the same brand as the CD. They try to stop me from my "unlicensed" propping.
That is among the stupidest things I have ever heard. Using a CD to prop up a table leg does not involve the recording that the CD contains. It has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. Not only is it absurd, it's irrelevant.
You are either willfully ignorant or dangerously insane.
Besides, I've never signed or otherwise agreed to any contract or license whenever I've bought any recording.
Exactly. You never entered into any sort of arrangement that would give you the right to do "anything I please" with the recording. You have Fair Use rights, which do not include "anything I please", and never did, DRM or no DRM. This is Copyright 101.
Still want to bet on the iPod's supremacy when Joe Sixpack will be able to walk by a Cingular kisok and pick up a phone that has that kind of storage, no DRM lock-in, and a service plan that makes it cost about a hundred bucks?
So when Apple initially refused to acknowledge that their new iPod Nanos would scratch easily, where exactly was good customer service being practised?
Good customer service does not mean immediately believing every psychotic customer complaint. Not all iPod Nanos had the scratching problem (in fact, the vast majority didn't), and it would be difficult for anybody to have said with much certainty that it was indeed a problem with the device itself and not simply a vocal fraction of irresponsible users. It takes time to determine these things. Even when they did acknowledge it they said it only affected 0.1% of the units they sold. And then they offered to replace each of them.
Compression formats like MPEG-4 and all its variants (h.264, DivX, XviD, etc) can fit perfectly well on a CD or a DVD.
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use h.264 [1]. Also, DivX is not usually MPEG-4 compliant, and XviD often is not.
Anyhow, the compression is not the issue, it's the bitrate. Sure, you can fit a movie on a CD, but only at bitrates less than about 1Mbps. For HD content, that won't even remotely cut it, no matter what codec you use. You'd either have deplorable quality or deplorable capacity. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both range from around 10Mbps up to 40Mbps, even using modern codecs. In other words, you need a new kind of disc.
[1] h.264 is one of the required formats, in addition to VC-1 and MPEG-2. That is, the content can be in any of these, but all players must support each.
You think WRONG. Thousands upon thousands of people complaining that they hooked their DVD player up to their VCR's inputs, and it looked crappy. Thousands upon thousands of people trying to record their DVDs to VHS tapes so they could watch them on their "other TV" or so their children wouldn't have to scratch-up the original DVD.
This is not DRM. This is Macrovision. Analog VHS tapes had this as well.
Precisely proof that Apple Computer has diluted the trademark of Apple Corps to the extent that they have illegally substituted their brand for that of the original owners.
How is that proof? That many people don't know the name of the record label of a band that broke up more than 30 years ago (and shortly after the labels' founding) should not be surprising. Nor is it terribly relevant. There are many reasons that Apple Corps has faded into relative obscurity, not the least of which is that it doesn't really do much now except license The Beatles' music.
I think it would be fair to say that very little of Apple Corps/Apple Records value comes from the Apple trademark. In fact, the chief value of the Apple Corps/Apple Records trademark is that it can be used to extort money from Apple Computer, a company with several billion in cash reserves. This has worked several times before and there is little indication that it will not work again.
Which is why this lawsuit against Apple Computer must succeed to be fair.
This lawsuit will only succeed in provoking a large cash settlement, to be handed over to people who are already quite rich. Make no mistake -- this is not about "fairness", it is about money.
Do the studios not realize that they are driving customers away by price-gouging?
They don't realize it because it's not true. People continue to buy what they want at a price that is acceptable to them. If it's not acceptable, why are they buying? It isn't as though movies or music are essential goods that people need to survive. Just because you personally think something is overpriced does not make it price gouging.
That doesn't make comparisons impossible. Who cares how many cores there is. People want speed.
In a mulithreaded speed test, a single-core processor is much like a one-legged man at an asskicking contest. While a comparison is not impossible, it is more or less a waste of time. Even the slight (slight over Core Duo, that is) architectural superiority that AMD has would not make a significant difference.
I know in this instance France wants Apple to open their DRM.
No they don't. They want Apple to support Microsoft's DRM. Apple's comments about "state-sponsored piracy" come from the conclusion that being forced to allow third-party software to remove their DRM (for the presumed purpose of applying other DRM) will invariably lead to a gaping unsealable hole that they have no control over.
If you look into it, this bill is actually pro-DRM/anti-P2P.
The day a DJ can tap out an arbitrary melody on his turntables is the day I call that DJ a musician.
Can you play arbitrary melodies on a drum? Hmm. I guess the world's oldest musical instrument isn't actually a musical instrument. Or maybe your criteria is fucked up.
It doesn't matter though -- Scratch DJs started playing melodies at least 10-15 years ago. It's old hat by now. The easiest way is to take a record with a constant tone while working the pitch control and using the crossfader of the mixer to click off while you change the pitch so you get clean notes instead of a bending sound. The day I got my first turntable and mixer I was playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb".
Like I said, though, that's old hat -- the artform has advanced and branched out quite a bit since then.
Of course, you're exactly the kind of asshole I was talking about, cowering behind anonymity to take your ignorant pot-shots at people who are being more creative than you, so I don't expect you to understand.
Here are some things I wish someone had told me when I learned to DJ:
1. Do not spend your money on mixtapes/cds or DVDs made by other DJs. 2. Do not spend your money on music you can't use in a set. 3. Do not spend your money on drugs. It bears repeating: do not spend your money on drugs.
In fact, maybe you should just forget about ever having money for anything but records ever again. Records are always going to be an expensive addiction. It's kind of like a puzzle that never really ends -- some records work well with some but not others -- so you're always going to be searching for new stuff that has the sound (hopefully your sound) that you're trying to play. The drugs thing should be obvious, but I've seen so many people for whom it's not that I think it's worth mentioning.
4. Do not spend your money on cheap equipment. 5. Do not spend your money on more equipment than you need. 6. Extra equipment will not make you suck less.
Cheap equipment won't work as well (turntables with too little torque, etc), won't last very long, and will have no resale value whatsoever. If that means waiting six months to save up the money, so be it. Also, you do not need anything but two turntables (or CD decks, if you're one of those people), a mixer, and some cables. If you find yourself looking at samplers, drum machines, DAWs, MIDI stuff, effects boxes and so on (and you will), walk out of the store or turn off the computer and go practice instead.
7. Practice every day. Not every other day. Not when you feel like it. Every day. 8. You are not going to get laid because you DJ. 9. You might actually get laid less because you DJ.
Practice is really the most valuable part, but it's the only one you can't buy. Books and DVDs won't really help you much, so don't waste too much money on them. You need to know what to practice, but there isn't much that one book will tell you that another won't. A lot of how-to DVDs are actually just an hour of showing off with maybe ten minutes of instruction: fun to watch, but useless for learning.
8 and 9 will spare you some potential embarrassment. These days you can throw a rock and hit a DJ (please do!), so as a general rule people are not going to be impressed by that fact alone. If you want to learn to DJ because you want people to be impressed by you (and there's no shame in that, it's only natural), you're going to be disappointed.
I'm not even sure what a DJ is. Doesn't that just mean you have lots of MP3's and a CD burner?
No, it means you have to put up with a lot of assholes making pretentious remarks (as if ignorance is supposed to make them seem smarter) about DJs not being musicians no matter how hard they work, how much fun they have, how many records they sell, how many people they entertain with their art.
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HD-DVD is letter soup. It's "just another kind of DVD". Nothing special. CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, HD-DVD. Same thing.
Physically, they are all the same thing -- 12cm plastic disks. There is no reason to make them sound "hip and sexy" because there isn't anything hip or sexy about them. They're disks. The only really significant difference for most people is that they are in "high-def" resolutions, hence "HD". Even BluRay is "like a DVD, except HD".
It doesn't even matter what the letters stand for. Most people don't know what DVD stands for, and almost nobody knows what VHS stands for.
While I appreciate the information on the iPod's docking port, I will still stubbornly refuse to listen to it, for several reasons which I shall make-up as required.
And that, smartass, is how people get on my friends list.
The iPod has a small power amplifier at its output, which is how it drives the headphones.
None of the speaker systems reviewed here connect through the headphone jack. They all use the dock connector.
I realise that you're trying to stir things up with that comment, but let's face it: corporations already have patents and copyright to protect their "property". There is no need for an outmoded concept like "trade secret" as well.
Spoken like someone that fails to grasp the difference.
Investigative journalism is not now, has not ever been, and will never be a "preposterous parasitic business model".
That should be a clue that investigative journalism is not what Apple rumor sites do.
And before you say "whistleblower", please familiarize yourself with some of the relevant laws, as so few people choose to do. If these sites had published evidence that, say, Apple was dumping toxic waste or committing fraud, they would probably be protected. They didn't, though. The information they published had only commercial value, and it's disclosure was not in the public interest, no matter how interested the public may have been.
On its face, given the text of the First Amendment, it would appear that any law passed by Congress abridging the freedom of speech or of the press would be unconstitutional. However, this does not consider the role of the doctrine of stare decisis, in which judges consider previous decisions they (and other courts) have rendered to be binding precedent, decisions to be followed as if they were themselves laws. This is extremely significant. -- The First Amendment @ Wikipedia
I believe the constitution supercedes this act. Or at least it should. In America that is.
It does. There is no part of this law that says otherwise. You still have the usual First Amendment rights. They just aren't absolute, and never were.
The company can sue the employee who leaks a "secret" but once it has been leaked to the public, it's no longer "secret" - and its permissible to be published.
Sure, sure, once it becomes public knowledge it's not really an issue, but you don't have the right to make it public just because you know it.
The portion of the law I quoted says this is not so in cases such as this one. If someone that works for Company A reveals trade secrets to you, Website B, and you have reason to believe it is a trade secret, then by publishing it you are liable for misappropriation.
Dealing in "stolen" information is illegal in the same way that fencing stolen goods is.
If the blogger misappropriated the "secret" (ie conducted industrial espionage), then it's a criminal case - though the standard of proving guilt is significantly higher. A criminal investigation could establish if the blogger is breaking security measures or subpoena the defendant for his sources, and possibly land the blogger in Contempt.
This is what is happening, more or less, though the criteria for "misappropriation" are far less than "industrial espionage"; simply asking for secrets seems to count. Apple is trying to figure out who leaked the information in the first place, but unfortunately the only people who know are more interested in protecting their preposterous parasitic business model than telling the truth. Hence it is now somehow a First Amendment issue.
Putting quotes around "trade secrets" doesn't make them not trade secrets. Telling them to a reporter does though.
Actually, according to the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, it doesn't:
(2) "Misappropriation " means: (i) acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or (ii) disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who (A) used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or (B) at the time of disclosure or use knew or had reason to know that his knowledge of the trade secret was (I) derived from or through a person who has utilized improper means to acquire it; (II) acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or (III) derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or (C) before a material change of his position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret ad that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.
Given that rumor sites operate on the principle of soliciting inside information, it's hard to make the case that they didn't know they had gotten some unless they admit that most of what they print isn't inside information (i.e., that they make it up).
Read the Constitution, especially the part about the limited monopoly granted by Congress that enables copyrights, and thereby the retained rights called "Fair Use". Then tell me about them, when you have a clue what they actually are.
You're only continuing to demonstrate ignorance. Fair Use is not in the Constitution at all. It was common law until the 1976 Copyright Act, which itself doesn't say "you can do anything you want", as you seem to think. The Home Recording Act and other laws have made some things explicit, but overall Fair Use is not the concrete and absolute thing you're treating it as.
Look, I can understand your position. What I object to is making shit up to support it.
I introduced my example describing it as absurd, but nevertheless it's true.
No it isn't, and I explained why. Copyright covers intellectual property. The author of a book does not have the right to stop you from burning your copy of it. Why? Because the book is yours. Only the text it contains is his. Likewise, a record company or artist can't stop you from using a CD to prop up a table because that doesn't involve the recording at all.
Why would I pay any attention to your warbling?
Because you might learn to sound less like an idiot. Then maybe people will listen to you.
Copyright 101 has a prerequisite: Constitutional Rights.
You do not have a constitutional right to do whatever you please with someone else's property (i.e. the recording). Once again, you do have Fair Use rights, which are not the same.
I use a CD I bought to prop up a wobbly table leg. Later the record label's parent company markets leg proppers of their own, marketed under the same brand as the CD. They try to stop me from my "unlicensed" propping.
That is among the stupidest things I have ever heard. Using a CD to prop up a table leg does not involve the recording that the CD contains. It has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. Not only is it absurd, it's irrelevant.
You are either willfully ignorant or dangerously insane.
Besides, I've never signed or otherwise agreed to any contract or license whenever I've bought any recording.
Exactly. You never entered into any sort of arrangement that would give you the right to do "anything I please" with the recording. You have Fair Use rights, which do not include "anything I please", and never did, DRM or no DRM. This is Copyright 101.
Still want to bet on the iPod's supremacy when Joe Sixpack will be able to walk by a Cingular kisok and pick up a phone that has that kind of storage, no DRM lock-in, and a service plan that makes it cost about a hundred bucks?
You mean like the SLVR?
So when Apple initially refused to acknowledge that their new iPod Nanos would scratch easily, where exactly was good customer service being practised?
Good customer service does not mean immediately believing every psychotic customer complaint. Not all iPod Nanos had the scratching problem (in fact, the vast majority didn't), and it would be difficult for anybody to have said with much certainty that it was indeed a problem with the device itself and not simply a vocal fraction of irresponsible users. It takes time to determine these things. Even when they did acknowledge it they said it only affected 0.1% of the units they sold. And then they offered to replace each of them.
How is that not good customer service?
as well as Safari as soon as it gets SVG.
Just so you know, it's in the nightlies.
Compression formats like MPEG-4 and all its variants (h.264, DivX, XviD, etc) can fit perfectly well on a CD or a DVD.
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use h.264 [1]. Also, DivX is not usually MPEG-4 compliant, and XviD often is not.
Anyhow, the compression is not the issue, it's the bitrate. Sure, you can fit a movie on a CD, but only at bitrates less than about 1Mbps. For HD content, that won't even remotely cut it, no matter what codec you use. You'd either have deplorable quality or deplorable capacity. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both range from around 10Mbps up to 40Mbps, even using modern codecs. In other words, you need a new kind of disc.
[1] h.264 is one of the required formats, in addition to VC-1 and MPEG-2. That is, the content can be in any of these, but all players must support each.
You think WRONG. Thousands upon thousands of people complaining that they hooked their DVD player up to their VCR's inputs, and it looked crappy. Thousands upon thousands of people trying to record their DVDs to VHS tapes so they could watch them on their "other TV" or so their children wouldn't have to scratch-up the original DVD.
This is not DRM. This is Macrovision. Analog VHS tapes had this as well.
Precisely proof that Apple Computer has diluted the trademark of Apple Corps to the extent that they have illegally substituted their brand for that of the original owners.
How is that proof? That many people don't know the name of the record label of a band that broke up more than 30 years ago (and shortly after the labels' founding) should not be surprising. Nor is it terribly relevant. There are many reasons that Apple Corps has faded into relative obscurity, not the least of which is that it doesn't really do much now except license The Beatles' music.
I think it would be fair to say that very little of Apple Corps/Apple Records value comes from the Apple trademark. In fact, the chief value of the Apple Corps/Apple Records trademark is that it can be used to extort money from Apple Computer, a company with several billion in cash reserves. This has worked several times before and there is little indication that it will not work again.
Which is why this lawsuit against Apple Computer must succeed to be fair.
This lawsuit will only succeed in provoking a large cash settlement, to be handed over to people who are already quite rich. Make no mistake -- this is not about "fairness", it is about money.
Do the studios not realize that they are driving customers away by price-gouging?
They don't realize it because it's not true. People continue to buy what they want at a price that is acceptable to them. If it's not acceptable, why are they buying? It isn't as though movies or music are essential goods that people need to survive. Just because you personally think something is overpriced does not make it price gouging.
That doesn't make comparisons impossible. Who cares how many cores there is. People want speed.
In a mulithreaded speed test, a single-core processor is much like a one-legged man at an asskicking contest. While a comparison is not impossible, it is more or less a waste of time. Even the slight (slight over Core Duo, that is) architectural superiority that AMD has would not make a significant difference.
I know in this instance France wants Apple to open their DRM.
No they don't. They want Apple to support Microsoft's DRM. Apple's comments about "state-sponsored piracy" come from the conclusion that being forced to allow third-party software to remove their DRM (for the presumed purpose of applying other DRM) will invariably lead to a gaping unsealable hole that they have no control over.
If you look into it, this bill is actually pro-DRM/anti-P2P.
The day a DJ can tap out an arbitrary melody on his turntables is the day I call that DJ a musician.
Can you play arbitrary melodies on a drum? Hmm. I guess the world's oldest musical instrument isn't actually a musical instrument. Or maybe your criteria is fucked up.
It doesn't matter though -- Scratch DJs started playing melodies at least 10-15 years ago. It's old hat by now. The easiest way is to take a record with a constant tone while working the pitch control and using the crossfader of the mixer to click off while you change the pitch so you get clean notes instead of a bending sound. The day I got my first turntable and mixer I was playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb".
Like I said, though, that's old hat -- the artform has advanced and branched out quite a bit since then.
Of course, you're exactly the kind of asshole I was talking about, cowering behind anonymity to take your ignorant pot-shots at people who are being more creative than you, so I don't expect you to understand.
I think dr.badass said it best, earlier in the thread: "These days you can throw a rock and hit a DJ (please do!)"
Heh, that was me, too. You quoted me in your reply to me. That is awesome.
Here are some things I wish someone had told me when I learned to DJ:
1. Do not spend your money on mixtapes/cds or DVDs made by other DJs.
2. Do not spend your money on music you can't use in a set.
3. Do not spend your money on drugs. It bears repeating: do not spend your money on drugs.
In fact, maybe you should just forget about ever having money for anything but records ever again. Records are always going to be an expensive addiction. It's kind of like a puzzle that never really ends -- some records work well with some but not others -- so you're always going to be searching for new stuff that has the sound (hopefully your sound) that you're trying to play. The drugs thing should be obvious, but I've seen so many people for whom it's not that I think it's worth mentioning.
4. Do not spend your money on cheap equipment.
5. Do not spend your money on more equipment than you need.
6. Extra equipment will not make you suck less.
Cheap equipment won't work as well (turntables with too little torque, etc), won't last very long, and will have no resale value whatsoever. If that means waiting six months to save up the money, so be it. Also, you do not need anything but two turntables (or CD decks, if you're one of those people), a mixer, and some cables. If you find yourself looking at samplers, drum machines, DAWs, MIDI stuff, effects boxes and so on (and you will), walk out of the store or turn off the computer and go practice instead.
7. Practice every day. Not every other day. Not when you feel like it. Every day.
8. You are not going to get laid because you DJ.
9. You might actually get laid less because you DJ.
Practice is really the most valuable part, but it's the only one you can't buy. Books and DVDs won't really help you much, so don't waste too much money on them. You need to know what to practice, but there isn't much that one book will tell you that another won't. A lot of how-to DVDs are actually just an hour of showing off with maybe ten minutes of instruction: fun to watch, but useless for learning.
8 and 9 will spare you some potential embarrassment. These days you can throw a rock and hit a DJ (please do!), so as a general rule people are not going to be impressed by that fact alone. If you want to learn to DJ because you want people to be impressed by you (and there's no shame in that, it's only natural), you're going to be disappointed.
10. Stop doing it when it stops being fun.
This applies to just about everything.
I'm not even sure what a DJ is. Doesn't that just mean you have lots of MP3's and a CD burner?
No, it means you have to put up with a lot of assholes making pretentious remarks (as if ignorance is supposed to make them seem smarter) about DJs not being musicians no matter how hard they work, how much fun they have, how many records they sell, how many people they entertain with their art.