Sounds as if SpaceShipOne had a wilder ride than initially thought: a major flight guidance problem; an unanticipated roll; and some structural failure in the rear of the craft. Dick Rutan says his creation won't fly again until they fully understand all that went wrong.
In short, this flight could *easily* have ended in disaster. If not for some damn fine flying by pilot (and new astronaut) Mike Melvill, SS1 might have been scattered all over the well-wishers who had come to see her off.
It also seems that the scramble for backup flight control cost SS1 a lot of altitude. Preliminary numbers show the craft beating the officially recognized boundary of space by all of 500 feet.
MIKE MELVILL: write his name next to Chuck Yeager's as one of the America's great aviators. We have a brand new "steely-eyed missile man."
... with the Star Trek franchise, it's probably the format.
How many stories are there, really, that will fit into a one-hour TV slot? The universe may or may not be finite, but plot possibilities certainly are.
Which is why new shows seem like such dreadful, bloodless retreads of old ones. We've seen all the characters and pretty much every idea you could ever squeeze onto the deck of a starship.
There's nothing really *wrong* with ST. It's just played-out.
If ST could learn one thing from Babylon 5, it would be plot and character development. In the original series, the fact that Kirk and the others were flying through space was somewhat incidental. We might have enjoyed it just as much if the same actors had been set in a western.
Perhaps ST could move toward the sort of long-term plot arcs we saw in Babylon 5, and have come to expect from series like the Sopranos. Freed from the format of episodic drama -- and the crushing weight of our expectations -- Star Trek might be free to again explore the Undiscovered Country.
So Listen Up 'Cause You Can't Say Nothin'
You'll Shut Me Dow With A Push Of Your Button?
But I'm Out And I'm Gone
I'll Tell You Now I Keep It On And On
'Cause What You See You Might Not Get
And We Can Bet So Don't You Get Souped Yet
You're Scheming On A Thing That's A Mirage
I'm Trying To Tell You Now It's Sabotage.
Yes, they both use the same extension with the DRM designator you describe.
Apple claims their Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) is faster and not based on FLAC, but I have seen very little in the way of spec online. Here is a quick description from MacMusic.com.
It's large, but it sounds great. Encodes fairly quickly.
I'm referring to Apple's proprietary new.m4a format, not.m4p (which I think is what you mean by AAC -- maybe I'm wrong). Apple Lossless Audio File is similar to FLAC.
I've never used AAC or OGG.
Both FLAC and Apple's.m4a are essentially lossless. In any case, they sound far better to me than mp3. Big lunking files, though.
There *is* a difference in sound quality beyond that of your MP3s or even your Audio CD collection. SACD and DVD-A are a whole new world. It is like heroin for your ears. Once you've heard the same album on CD and then SACD you'll wonder how you ever lived without the newfound detail.
I agree: I'm using Apple's lossless codec almost exclusively on iTunes now, and my MP3s now sound tinny and distorted to me.
But that's not where *most* consumers are going. Record companies are coming to grips with the fact that consumers are gravitating toward lower fidelity music on increasingly portable devices. That's not where they bet things would go, but that's what is happening. Nobody is buying SACD devices for the additional quality.
My guess is that we'll see a couple of archive-quality formats duke it out for one end of the market, while MP3 (or whatever Apple wants, since it's driving this train) dominates consumer music.
The technology and the marketplace is changing. PDAs will, too. Surprise!
I've really enjoyed PDAs over the past few years, but This Tungsten C is probably my last. What *I* use my PDA for is keeping track of my contacts and appointments. I also use it for brief emails when there is access to WiFi.
But enhanced cellphones really do this job BETTER. I can dial or message my contacts straight from the addressbook, and there's one less device to carry.
The article is right that PDAs will survive, but I think they'll find new users. As they become available with hard drives, PDAs could become portable (and continuously update-able) manuals, databases, order entry devices, etc. Heavy messaging belongs on small laptops. Contact management and appointments get shunted to cellphones.
PDAs end up being networked business devices: information terminals for people who need portability but aren't doing much content creation. That's the province of laptops and tablet computers, which will get lighter and more powerful. Cellphones are the communications platform (group calendaring is a communications feature). I think most people will prefer their entertainment to be on a dedicated device like an iPod. Who wants to be interrupted by the boss while you're listening to music or watching streaming video? Keep that crap on another box.
Someone mentioned note-taking. Heavy note-taking, such a meeting minutes, is content creation. Use a laptop. I think voice recognition will fill the need for post-it type entries. Dictate to your cellphone, and it gets recorded or dumped to text. MUCH better than Graffiti or a small keyboard, huh?
Apple saw this coming. They were right not to bring Newton 2 to market, cool as I'm sure it would have been.
I think you're right. Pro graphics programs have a daunting learning curve. Most professional design-types work incredibly hard, and would rather invest their time generating work and money than learning new software.
A wild concept, huh: people actually use their computers for WORK.;-)
The OS X phobes will eventually have to make the move. In the end, they'll appreciate the additional productivity of faster hardware and a more stable OS. But I understand their reluctance to switch gears.
Payola is the *secret* acceptance of money, service or other valuable consideration for the broadcast of program material. Read the law for yourselves, written by YOUR elected representatives. It was not written by broadcasters or the record companies.
If a sponsored record is properly disclaimed, no secrecy exists and it is not payola. Period. It's not a loophole in the law: it *is* the law.
Sponsored records are a risky play for stations, but not because of questions of ethics. They're risky because, by definition, most of these songs are too weak to be incorporated in a station's regular playlist. Radio market competition is pretty aggressive, and burdening your record rotations with deadwood ain't bright. People usually tune out when they hear unfamiliar or inferior music, which is why radio stations spend millions each year on music research.
Radio is so competitive and business has been so depressed since 9/11 (it's better this year) that station budgets are razor-thin. The first thing to go is usually the Promotions budget. If a station accepts a sponsored record -- and this practice is pretty unusual, in my experience -- the money usually goes into the Promotions line. That way, we can buy the free tshirts, stickers, and the freebies you demand when we show up in the station van for a public appearance.
Our company experimented with various (properly identified) national music promotions a couple years back. They didn't work out too well, and most of station managers and programmers are unwilling to compromise their ratings with weak music. That's because YOU won't listen if we do. And your listenership is how we sell advertising to keep our stations on the air and our people paid.
Would you like to influence our playlists? Go buy music instead of illegally swapping it. We actually look at sales figures when making playlist decisions.
As for the spins sponsored records receive: who do you think they influence? Other radio folks, most of whom are bright enough to recognize when a weak record is getting an unusual number of plays. So buying record sponsorships is really targeted at stimulating direct sales, not further airplay.
if you install linux on a g5 then the fans all run at full because the linux people haven't decoded the fan controllers yet (or hadn't last I looked)...
Yeah, Terrasoft (Yellow Dog Linux) has the fan thing down. Their new 64-bit Fedora port, the inexplicably named Y-HPC, is just about ready for commercial release.
As an aside, it appears YDL is just days or a week or two from shipping Yellow Dog Linux 4. It will be KDE 3.2, X.org, RPM Package Manager 4.3, gcc 3.3, and kernel 2.6.6. The Apple hardware support has always been excellent.
Well, they're coming. But I actually like my Cinema Monitor, and it doesn't look particular dated to me.
Those new aluminum-framed models will match the G5s well and attract PC buyers. Good move.
... if Dell/HP-Compaq/Apple/Acer (etc., etc.) got this memo? Probably not.
Hardware, in this context, will be no more "free" than your cable box.
Someday, companies will realize consumers are really tired of monthly subscriptions. How many cable, satelite radio, cellphone, and ISP bills do they think the market will actually stand?
In short: know what the cost/benefit of something is before you jump on it, body and soul. Having 64 bit capability is good. Knowing when to use it, and when not to, is better.
Good comment. No need to have posted anonymously.:-)
I am REALLY getting sick of Apple Zealotry about 64bit or fastest computer or best interface or what have you.
Why, exactly, do you find this so disturbing? Go use Windows or Linux or whatever you prefer and quit stressing.;-)
Apple's marketing hype aside, the G5 is a really sweet machine. It'll be even nicer when OS X is 64-bit native. In the meantime, it will be fun trying some of these 64-bit PPC Linux distros in dual boot.
Could be right, but I don't remember for sure. Cumulus was quite up-front about banning the Chicks, though. THEY are the most centralized radio company in America.
This was an ill-advised, nonbinding, and entirely ad-hoc list circulated by a few Programmers who were as in shock as the rest of the country. It had no official weight, and was quickly dismissed by CC Corporate once it got on their radar.
A lot of weirdness happened in the days immediately following 9-11. The list was one of them, but it NEVER amounted to a company ban. Generally speaking, CC doesn't operate this way.
Another urban legend: that CC banned the Dixie Chicks after they mouthed off overseas. Some CC stations did exactly that, but it was a local decision, not through Corporate. We were told to make the call based on our own markets. The only company I know which actually banned the Chicks was Cumulus.
Slashdot Mirror
The OS X client is either out now or imminent, too.
In short, this flight could *easily* have ended in disaster. If not for some damn fine flying by pilot (and new astronaut) Mike Melvill, SS1 might have been scattered all over the well-wishers who had come to see her off.
It also seems that the scramble for backup flight control cost SS1 a lot of altitude. Preliminary numbers show the craft beating the officially recognized boundary of space by all of 500 feet.
MIKE MELVILL: write his name next to Chuck Yeager's as one of the America's great aviators. We have a brand new "steely-eyed missile man."
Adventure ain't dead, after all. :-)
The phrase had dual meaning long before ST 6. But, hey, death works for Six Feet Under. Just no more core meltdowns, please. ;-)
How many stories are there, really, that will fit into a one-hour TV slot? The universe may or may not be finite, but plot possibilities certainly are.
Which is why new shows seem like such dreadful, bloodless retreads of old ones. We've seen all the characters and pretty much every idea you could ever squeeze onto the deck of a starship.
There's nothing really *wrong* with ST. It's just played-out.
If ST could learn one thing from Babylon 5, it would be plot and character development. In the original series, the fact that Kirk and the others were flying through space was somewhat incidental. We might have enjoyed it just as much if the same actors had been set in a western.
Perhaps ST could move toward the sort of long-term plot arcs we saw in Babylon 5, and have come to expect from series like the Sopranos. Freed from the format of episodic drama -- and the crushing weight of our expectations -- Star Trek might be free to again explore the Undiscovered Country.
That would be kinda nice.
You'll Shut Me Dow With A Push Of Your Button?
But I'm Out And I'm Gone
I'll Tell You Now I Keep It On And On
'Cause What You See You Might Not Get
And We Can Bet So Don't You Get Souped Yet
You're Scheming On A Thing That's A Mirage
I'm Trying To Tell You Now It's Sabotage.
From the Beastie Boys, "Sabotage" (1994)
Thanks, Doug. I keep meaning to remove Classic altogether.
Ah ... that's not a Smallfoot, that's Novell's foot. And we all know where it's embedded.
Take that, Gmail! We'll fight you with ... uh ... less. Now *that* is minimalism.
Apple claims their Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) is faster and not based on FLAC, but I have seen very little in the way of spec online. Here is a quick description from MacMusic.com. It's large, but it sounds great. Encodes fairly quickly.
I've never used AAC or OGG.
Both FLAC and Apple's .m4a are essentially lossless. In any case, they sound far better to me than mp3. Big lunking files, though.
I agree: I'm using Apple's lossless codec almost exclusively on iTunes now, and my MP3s now sound tinny and distorted to me.
But that's not where *most* consumers are going. Record companies are coming to grips with the fact that consumers are gravitating toward lower fidelity music on increasingly portable devices. That's not where they bet things would go, but that's what is happening. Nobody is buying SACD devices for the additional quality.
My guess is that we'll see a couple of archive-quality formats duke it out for one end of the market, while MP3 (or whatever Apple wants, since it's driving this train) dominates consumer music.
I've really enjoyed PDAs over the past few years, but This Tungsten C is probably my last. What *I* use my PDA for is keeping track of my contacts and appointments. I also use it for brief emails when there is access to WiFi.
But enhanced cellphones really do this job BETTER. I can dial or message my contacts straight from the addressbook, and there's one less device to carry.
The article is right that PDAs will survive, but I think they'll find new users. As they become available with hard drives, PDAs could become portable (and continuously update-able) manuals, databases, order entry devices, etc. Heavy messaging belongs on small laptops. Contact management and appointments get shunted to cellphones.
PDAs end up being networked business devices: information terminals for people who need portability but aren't doing much content creation. That's the province of laptops and tablet computers, which will get lighter and more powerful. Cellphones are the communications platform (group calendaring is a communications feature). I think most people will prefer their entertainment to be on a dedicated device like an iPod. Who wants to be interrupted by the boss while you're listening to music or watching streaming video? Keep that crap on another box.
Someone mentioned note-taking. Heavy note-taking, such a meeting minutes, is content creation. Use a laptop. I think voice recognition will fill the need for post-it type entries. Dictate to your cellphone, and it gets recorded or dumped to text. MUCH better than Graffiti or a small keyboard, huh?
Apple saw this coming. They were right not to bring Newton 2 to market, cool as I'm sure it would have been.
A wild concept, huh: people actually use their computers for WORK. ;-)
The OS X phobes will eventually have to make the move. In the end, they'll appreciate the additional productivity of faster hardware and a more stable OS. But I understand their reluctance to switch gears.
If a sponsored record is properly disclaimed, no secrecy exists and it is not payola. Period. It's not a loophole in the law: it *is* the law.
Sponsored records are a risky play for stations, but not because of questions of ethics. They're risky because, by definition, most of these songs are too weak to be incorporated in a station's regular playlist. Radio market competition is pretty aggressive, and burdening your record rotations with deadwood ain't bright. People usually tune out when they hear unfamiliar or inferior music, which is why radio stations spend millions each year on music research.
Radio is so competitive and business has been so depressed since 9/11 (it's better this year) that station budgets are razor-thin. The first thing to go is usually the Promotions budget. If a station accepts a sponsored record -- and this practice is pretty unusual, in my experience -- the money usually goes into the Promotions line. That way, we can buy the free tshirts, stickers, and the freebies you demand when we show up in the station van for a public appearance.
Our company experimented with various (properly identified) national music promotions a couple years back. They didn't work out too well, and most of station managers and programmers are unwilling to compromise their ratings with weak music. That's because YOU won't listen if we do. And your listenership is how we sell advertising to keep our stations on the air and our people paid.
Would you like to influence our playlists? Go buy music instead of illegally swapping it. We actually look at sales figures when making playlist decisions.
As for the spins sponsored records receive: who do you think they influence? Other radio folks, most of whom are bright enough to recognize when a weak record is getting an unusual number of plays. So buying record sponsorships is really targeted at stimulating direct sales, not further airplay.
Before the bottom falls out Monday, of course. Thursday's 10% slide will probably look rosy compared to what is about to hit them.
Just hit your homepage shortcut or some other bookmark.
Yeah, Terrasoft (Yellow Dog Linux) has the fan thing down. Their new 64-bit Fedora port, the inexplicably named Y-HPC, is just about ready for commercial release.
As an aside, it appears YDL is just days or a week or two from shipping Yellow Dog Linux 4. It will be KDE 3.2, X.org, RPM Package Manager 4.3, gcc 3.3, and kernel 2.6.6. The Apple hardware support has always been excellent.
Well, they're coming. But I actually like my Cinema Monitor, and it doesn't look particular dated to me. Those new aluminum-framed models will match the G5s well and attract PC buyers. Good move.
It gets loud enough when you render some huge lunking graphic file, I promise. ;-)
... must be next, freeing internet audio from the desktop.
Hardware, in this context, will be no more "free" than your cable box.
Someday, companies will realize consumers are really tired of monthly subscriptions. How many cable, satelite radio, cellphone, and ISP bills do they think the market will actually stand?
Good comment. No need to have posted anonymously. :-)
Why, exactly, do you find this so disturbing? Go use Windows or Linux or whatever you prefer and quit stressing. ;-)
Apple's marketing hype aside, the G5 is a really sweet machine. It'll be even nicer when OS X is 64-bit native. In the meantime, it will be fun trying some of these 64-bit PPC Linux distros in dual boot.
Could be right, but I don't remember for sure. Cumulus was quite up-front about banning the Chicks, though. THEY are the most centralized radio company in America.
A lot of weirdness happened in the days immediately following 9-11. The list was one of them, but it NEVER amounted to a company ban. Generally speaking, CC doesn't operate this way.
Another urban legend: that CC banned the Dixie Chicks after they mouthed off overseas. Some CC stations did exactly that, but it was a local decision, not through Corporate. We were told to make the call based on our own markets. The only company I know which actually banned the Chicks was Cumulus.