the award is handed out annually to 'individuals who, during their careers in music, have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording.'
Did you have a point you'd care to elaborate on? Or are you just here to snark?
The Grammy Trustees can give out any damned award they see fit on whatever random criteria they choose. I'd suggest getting over it.
I cannot name a single good song which got written because of itunes.
And, nobody is saying that iTunes caused good music to come into existence. The award is for the impact iTunes had on the music industry -- the iTunes store has sold 10 billion songs and, for many people, is likely the only digital music store they've ever used or heard of. Old people who barely use computers know what an iPod is and what iTunes is. My 65+ year old mother in law knows what it is and is pondering an iPod. If you can get the baby boomers aware of your product, that's pretty transformative -- 15 years ago I had a hard time explaining what the internet was.
I cannot identify a single earthquake caused by me farting either; fortunately, that's not what we're discussing. Though, I'm sure that would be worthy of at least a footnote somewhere, if not an award.;-)
There is simply no reputable evidence to believe this. But it's still propagated by people who refuse to accept that the evidence was fabricated -- but now that people believe it, you can't get rid of it.
Apparently you with your long winded replies which try to convince me that you're not the Apple guy you make yourself out to be; even though you claim that there wouldn't be anything wrong with that if you were.
LOL, truth be told, I'm long winded in general.:-P
You asked a couple of questions about their products, I answered them.
Seeing an "irrational hate for Apple" is all in your head.
Read the rest of this thread, or any article about Apple... it's far from in my head. (And I'm not accusing you of irrational Apple hate, merely pointing out that on Slashdot it's a widespread and prevalent sentiment.)
You're definitely some kind of "Apple guy". Maybe I shouldn't have said mac.
Sure, because I've been using iPods for so long I've been through several. I continue to use them because they work for what I want them to do.
When the iPad came out, I bought one because (contrary to what some people claim), it was the first consumer tablet that was widely available in my lifetime. It also had the added benefit that I could plug it into my iTunes and load stuff onto it within minutes of opening the box. So everything I already had just worked with it. Some nice tablets have come out since then, but I simply have no incentive to ditch my iPad.
But, really, who cares? I've got Windows machines, FreeBSD boxes, Linux machines... it's just technology. In the grand scheme of things, they're tools.
It just so happens that my media devices have been made by Apple for the last decade or so, and I'm happy with them and continue to use them.
I'm also a user of vi and a UNIX geek.
You might be a rabid Windows fanboi, or a dedicated Linux geek, or still clinging to BeOS... pick whatever device floats your boat. It's the seething irrational hate for Apple here on Slashdot that makes no sense -- people who have never even used it are convinced they're evil and produce shitty products. At that point, it's mostly religion and not about anything rational.
But, if you're going to dismiss what I'm saying on the basis that "I'm an Apple guy", well, then to you I say... neener neener neener, you're a doodie head -- because it's about as meaningful.
I started running itunes in XP back in about 2000/2001, and I run it in Vista now -- initially it was because I thought WMP was crap, and I had been through several really annoying MP3 players that just didn't work the way I wanted. Initially, I ripped my MP3s from my FreeBSD box and mounted them from a shared drive onto my Windows machine with Samba. (And, at the time, I only grudgingly owned a Windows machine having been a UNIX geek for a decade before that)
I've just never had any reason to look any any other music player besides iPods, because I've been happy with them. I think I'm on my 5th, 3 of which are still in the house and in use.
You may find it hard to believe, but having and using iPods/iTunes doesn't make one a Mac guy. In fact, I've not laid hands on an actual Mac in a very long time.
Ugh. I hardly know what Ogg is, but I can immediately think of a couple features the iPod didn't have when I was looking for an mp3 player. The first is a custom equalizer (ipod only has presets), and the second is a selection of 3rd party music library managers. I've never actually owned an ipod so correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard from many people that you basically have to use itunes with it (WMP not required for most others).
I just checked my iPod, and it has presets in the EQ, but not custom settings. But, in 10 years I've never gone looking for that. So to me it's not a feature I need. I suspect most of the rest of the consumers don't care either, which is why they don't have it. They basically took features most people will never use and got rid of them.
As far as I know, you're correct... iPods are intended to use used with iTunes. If you want a 3rd party music manager, get something else. But, the iTunes software (for me) provides some features I find indispensable... things like being able to create a playlist of "music not played in the last 6 months or played less than 5 times" is something iTunes can do for me, and the players keep track of play counts and the like. It keeps track across all of my devices, and when I sync with iTunes it updates it. It's a much more integrated platform, which for people who don't want to fiddle with the technology is a good thing. (Other players/music managers might keep this extra information, I honestly don't know.) Again, it's about what you want out of the device.
Also, it doesn't/didn't play divx or xvid (not exactly obscure formats and very useful on airplanes), and it was more expensive. And yes, I've never heard of any other mp3 player (of which there are many) not letting you copy mp3s from it.
Honestly, I've never had any files in divx or xvid... when I rip my older DVDs I put them into M4V format and import them into iTunes. So, for me they're file formats that never come up against. I also have the added benefit that when I buy a new DVD with the digital copy, I can have access to the files on my iPod or iPad (I have a cable that lets me play movies through a TV with RCA inputs). For all I know, iTunes will play those files, but I honestly don't know.
Apple stores the files on iPods with the filenames changed to support their own database... you technically can pull the files off if you've enabled disk usage, but they end up with cryptic filenames like MP123XYZ.MP3 -- it doesn't store it in a filesystem with the names exposed. Again, this is to support their own database, and likely to keep them from getting sued for making something that made copying some else's music easy. But, the database also stored a bunch of extra data about songs, all of which I can use to create playlists with.
For me, I actually like the integration between the iPod and iTunes, and I've been using it so long I guess I've drunk the Kool Aid. And, for some people with very specific needs, it may well not do that... but for most of the things most people will want to do, it does it just fine. Better than fine I'd say.
The good thing about choice, is you're free to make your own based on whatever criteria you select... but there's simply some features most people will never need or know what they're for. Apple fills that niche by just making it easy to use.
Changing the way a car showroom looks doesn't involve contributing to cars.
Being the first to come up with a wide spread model for having a car showroom, and having any commercial success with it, however, does. I don't believe there were any "car showrooms" before that.
I honestly can't name a single digital music store which existed before iTunes. And I doubt that anything which predated iTunes still exists. Apple also managed to get the big labels to sign up when everyone was trying to figure out how to shut down Napster et al.
As I said, before the iPod there were MP3 players... but the overall impact of iPods and iTunes vastly outstrips any of those. Most of them aren't even in business any more.
I'll be the first to admit that Apple doesn't invent technology out of the blue that nobody has ever seen... but what they do is to provide a much better integrated platform that non-technical people can use without fear. It just works, and doesn't do any of that weird technology stuff that people don't want to get involved with.
Name me a single player/software combination that has had nearly as much impact on the market. Because I can't think of any... the Zune was, comparatively, a joke.
Other than the idiot who got the Zune logo tattooed on his arm and later regretted it, I honestly don't know a single person who has owned one of them. Creative products disappeared a long time ago as far as I know. My wife's old Sony player which used proprietary formats and software wasn't wide-spread. Sure, you can buy cheap ass USB players that you can drag files onto and play, but you're stuck with Media Player or whatever. It certainly doesn't offer you a store or a nice interface.
Apple has sold something like 300 million iPods to date... who is in second place? The answer, nobody cares enough to find out.
No one who has anything to do with itunes has any business accepting awards for anything.
Why, exactly? Or do you have nothing more to add than "because I said so"?
Have you sold millions of audio devices? Billions of songs? Made a product that's a household name? Genuinely changed how people buy and play their music? Have you ever even used iTunes? Or is this just the standard Slashdot pissing and moaning?
I bet you could walk into a retirement home, and ask for a show of hands who knows what an iPod is, and get a significant response. I'd almost be willing to bet that you might even get a non-zero response to who actually owns one... I've actually seen grannies with iPods. If people in their 60's and 70's know what it is, and in some cases own then, that's a pretty significant impact.
What a crock. Did we expect any better from the music industry?
Like Steve Jobs and Apple or not... but if you can't see that iTunes totally changed how a huge number of people get and access their music, it's probably because you refuse to.
iTunes was the first widespread way that people could legally buy (or rip) digital music, and quickly managed to sell billions of songs. And the iPod radically changed how people accessed their music -- yes, there had been MP3 players, but in terms of making it widely usable by non-tech people. nothing else made quite the same impact. And, the iTunes software itself gives a nice, consistent way of dealing with this stuff. And, it also lets yo handle other media types through the exact same interface, and doesn't even require you to know what an MP3 is to use it.
Other than Napster (which got shut down because it was largely being used to pirate songs), name me one way you can get digital music that has had anywhere near the impact of iTunes?
And, yes, I will admit I've had iPods and iTunes since about 2001. But my mother-in-law is making noises about getting an iPod -- because even she understands what it is and what it's for. Do you think she'd know WTF a Zune is? I highly doubt it. And, at the time I chose to go the iPod/iTunes route, Windows Media Player was absolute crap -- I haven't touched it since, so I have no idea what it's like now.
Sure, there are players out there which have some features that a few hard-core geeks want... but quite honestly, I have only ever known one person who needed Ogg Vorbis support and I can't think of any other features that might be missing from the iPod. (Well, I hear people whine you can't easily copy songs off the iPod, but that's because Apple didn't want to get sued by the music industry, and because iTunes keeps extra information about songs in its database)
I can see exactly why they gave him this award. I mean, if Paris Hilton could use an iPod, how hard could it be? Geeks don't like easy to use devices, but the rest of the consumer world does.
And most especially so that I wouldn't have had to endure the physical and emotional effects when weening myself off that shit after the surgery took away almost all the pain (my doc was totally surprised when I told him I was off the shit several months after the surgery... without his help). I think getting off opiates messes you up almost as long as the injury.
I know someone who suffers from chronic back pain due to a curvature of her spine and related complications.
Her old pain specialist had her on morphine and possibly more. Eventually she realized she was addicted to them, and was quite distraught. She had to take it more often, not because the pain was back, but because her body was craving the meds.
Once her old doctor retired, the new one helped get her weened off the opiates, got rid of several of her prescriptions, and actually found a way to manage her chronic pain far better. (Though, I'm pretty sure she's still on some kind of pain killer.)
It was really unpleasant for her to go through an addiction which was more or less caused by her doctor simply giving her heavy duty painkillers. Her new doctor tried very hard to make her understand that she'd done nothing wrong, and that pretty much anybody using those things long enough is going to become dependent on them. But it literally took her months to wean off it with a doctor supervising it.
I know from my limited experience after having my wisdom teeth extracted (more like surgery) that the codeine they gave me made me dull and wooly... I could barely function and chose to not use the prescription any more than absolutely necessary. I simply can't imagine having to use opiates regularly.
These things have their places, but it's easy to see how they become abused by people. Take your normal dose, become addicted. No thanks.
Admittedly, when my uncle was dying of cancer and was on palliative care, the doctor pretty much told him he'd get him anything which would help with the pain if the ones he were on were making him too drowzy or not working -- but at that point, becoming addicted was the last thing anybody cared about. He wasn't going to live long enough for that to be something to be worried about.
Did I miss the announcement of a contest offering a prize for the company that can be the biggest douche-bag?
No, it's simply called 'doing business'. The prize is money.
Nothing has changed, companies have always acted like that if it gets them the most money. It's not like in the last few months we've changed the rules to favor those who act like greedy bastards -- that's always been how it's worked.
And, sadly, Zynga is far from the first company to be involved in two separate lawsuits, and arguing totally opposite (and incompatible) things in each.
Corporations and lawyers don't have cognitive dissonance by doing contradictory things.
No no no... a Newfoundlander is a paradox, not a logical fallacy.
They'd gladly give you the shirt off their back, but if they're from a rural area you might have no idea of what they're saying to you. (There are accents there that haven't been spoken in Ireland in 400 years -- sadly, only a couple of Welshman I met on vacation were even more incomprehensible. Mind you, they'd been drinking, but I couldn't even begin to follow what they were saying. I'm honestly not sure if they were speaking English, or joking with me.)
What bothers me are blue Christmas lights. Several of the shopping centers around here adorn their trees with all blue Christmas lights and I can't seem to focus on the lights to distinguish them. It's just bright blue annoyance.
Years ago there was a commercial building with a lighted sign on it near where I lived. The sign was a very deep blue, and a very bright red.
At night, I could see one or the other, but not both since they were on the opposite ends of the spectrum. It was truly evil -- your eyes just couldn't resolve both colors at the same time in the dark.
Could have been just me, but it definitely caused some brain pain. Sadly, I had to drive by it pretty often, and I just tried to not look at it because it was so damned hard on the eyes.
I've definitely seen that some deep blue lights just come up as a blur. Not sure why they go with that particular color. I had always assumed everyone else saw it the same way.
And then there are those people who can't even hear the smoke detector low battery chirp. Sometimes I envy them...
LOL, I think I have the opposite problem. My wife is constantly amazed that I can pretty much hear anything which goes "beep" in the house -- even if I'm watching a movie at fairly loud volumes, I've paused it and said "your cell phone just rang". Half the time she just shakes her head and wonders how the hell I hear this stuff.
I don't have abnormally good hearing or anything, but apparently electronic sounds are something I pick up pretty readily. Maybe I'm just more aware of those kinds of noises.
Though, I've certainly been driven out of rooms because fluorescent light fixtures are emitting what I consider an annoying whine when almost nobody else seems to hear it. Still not sure of why that would be... as I said, my hearing tests come out pretty standard with the usual high frequency loss for someone in his 40's.
You're the perfect example of what's wrong with the current state of corrupt corporate culture. Actually competing on merit is something that isn't even considered.
More to the point, I don't think it's even possible.
Between all of the players, damned near everything is patented. And anybody who owns a patent (no matter how absurd) wants everyone else to pay them crazy licensing fees (Microsoft gets paid something like $5 for every Android device), and sues to keep you out of the market if you don't.
Sadly, it seems like innovation has taken a back seat to lawyers, and it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of getting better.
If you designed a better product, unless you were already a company with deep pockets, there's simply no way you could bring it to market.
I blame the patent system more than I do the players -- it's been set up in such a way as to encourage lawsuits more than creating actual products. And, since we're talking about markets in the billions, I doubt companies can afford to purely compete on the merit of their products.
Since the USPTO has now changed it to "first to file" instead of considering prior art, it's only going to make this worse. Pretty much every company is going to have to try to patent the most trivial ideas in order to give themselves something to fight back with. Because they no longer care if you've taken someone else's idea... only that you filed first.
If patents are still filling their role of fostering innovation, it's sure as hell hard to see it.
Like most other gadgets, the iPad can charge off of a USB port. That would be 5 Vdc.
Not while you're using it.
You can charge an iPad off 5V USB, but only while it's off. The charger that comes with an iPad is 10V USB... with that you can use it and charge it at the same time. If it's on while connected to 5V USB, it's not charging.
But, having said that, I should think the military would be capable of figuring out their power requirements and making sure they could cover their bases. Surely they've had other requirements for something like this.
an old guy who doesn't understand the internet rips on the internet. go figure.
Seriously, did you RTFA?
All he said was that the sound quality of things you find on You Tube is generally low. That's it.
The tone of his answers bear no relation whatsoever to the summary... he didn't rip, blast, shred, flame, or even really put down anybody. He offered up some opinions, in a polite way, and without a whole lot of bile attached.
The entire summary is a joke, and is almost entirely unrelated to the interview except that it was Alan Parsons, and he did mention You Tube and the Jonas Brothers. Oh, and he also said that while you could spend an outrageous amount of money on equipment, it made only an incremental difference in his opinion.
I think the vast majority of music listeners would say "Alan Parsons?", with the logical response being "He engineered Dark Side Of The Moon".
I'd be willing to bet you're overstating "vast majority". By a lot.
Find 100 people, ask them if they've heard Dark Side of the Moon. Of the ones that say yes, ask how many know who the sound engineer was. I bet you'll find it quite small.
I've got pretty much everything published by Pink Floyd up until about '95 or so... and I know Alan Parsons from his band. I was actually going "really?" when I read the summary.
Then again, I'm neither a musician, nor someone who knows the endless trivia about who was sitting where during the recording and if he was wearing pants or not. That is the "vast majority" of music listeners. The behind-the-scenes talent remains anonymous to most of us.
That's not to say there aren't loads of people out there who do know these things; but I seriously doubt it's even close to a majority, let a lone a vast majority. It's really only the hard-core music geeks who keep track of such things.
The vast majority of people are too stupid to see the difference. That doesn't mean there's not an important difference. If the vast majority of people jumped off a cliff, would you too?
No, but that doesn't mean that I could stop them from jumping off a cliff with a well reasoned argument about why it's a stupid thing to do.
That 'vast majority' simply aren't going to listen to you. They're simply not interested.
So human life that is damaged from taking a counterfeit drug is worth less than what rights holders lose due to piracy? Or did I just interpret that wrong?
Of course.
Corporate profits are the highest form of good. Who cares about a few suckers who bought fake medicine?
As long as quarterly profits and executive bonuses are at all-time highs, that's all that matters./end sarcasm
Yes, clearly these guys do believe that downloaded songs is a bigger societal cost. Mostly because they use their ridiculous numbers to arrive at this conclusion. In their mind, the trillions in make-believe money they think they're owed is taken directly out of the economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Why, yes ... it even says so right in TFS ...
Did you have a point you'd care to elaborate on? Or are you just here to snark?
The Grammy Trustees can give out any damned award they see fit on whatever random criteria they choose. I'd suggest getting over it.
And, nobody is saying that iTunes caused good music to come into existence. The award is for the impact iTunes had on the music industry -- the iTunes store has sold 10 billion songs and, for many people, is likely the only digital music store they've ever used or heard of. Old people who barely use computers know what an iPod is and what iTunes is. My 65+ year old mother in law knows what it is and is pondering an iPod. If you can get the baby boomers aware of your product, that's pretty transformative -- 15 years ago I had a hard time explaining what the internet was.
I cannot identify a single earthquake caused by me farting either; fortunately, that's not what we're discussing. Though, I'm sure that would be worthy of at least a footnote somewhere, if not an award. ;-)
Horseshit.
The doctor who made that claim has been shown as being fraudulent.
There is simply no reputable evidence to believe this. But it's still propagated by people who refuse to accept that the evidence was fabricated -- but now that people believe it, you can't get rid of it.
LOL, truth be told, I'm long winded in general. :-P
You asked a couple of questions about their products, I answered them.
Read the rest of this thread, or any article about Apple ... it's far from in my head. (And I'm not accusing you of irrational Apple hate, merely pointing out that on Slashdot it's a widespread and prevalent sentiment.)
Cheers.
Sure, because I've been using iPods for so long I've been through several. I continue to use them because they work for what I want them to do.
When the iPad came out, I bought one because (contrary to what some people claim), it was the first consumer tablet that was widely available in my lifetime. It also had the added benefit that I could plug it into my iTunes and load stuff onto it within minutes of opening the box. So everything I already had just worked with it. Some nice tablets have come out since then, but I simply have no incentive to ditch my iPad.
But, really, who cares? I've got Windows machines, FreeBSD boxes, Linux machines ... it's just technology. In the grand scheme of things, they're tools.
It just so happens that my media devices have been made by Apple for the last decade or so, and I'm happy with them and continue to use them.
I'm also a user of vi and a UNIX geek.
You might be a rabid Windows fanboi, or a dedicated Linux geek, or still clinging to BeOS ... pick whatever device floats your boat. It's the seething irrational hate for Apple here on Slashdot that makes no sense -- people who have never even used it are convinced they're evil and produce shitty products. At that point, it's mostly religion and not about anything rational.
But, if you're going to dismiss what I'm saying on the basis that "I'm an Apple guy", well, then to you I say ... neener neener neener, you're a doodie head -- because it's about as meaningful.
Actually, I don't own a Mac, and never have.
I started running itunes in XP back in about 2000/2001, and I run it in Vista now -- initially it was because I thought WMP was crap, and I had been through several really annoying MP3 players that just didn't work the way I wanted. Initially, I ripped my MP3s from my FreeBSD box and mounted them from a shared drive onto my Windows machine with Samba. (And, at the time, I only grudgingly owned a Windows machine having been a UNIX geek for a decade before that)
I've just never had any reason to look any any other music player besides iPods, because I've been happy with them. I think I'm on my 5th, 3 of which are still in the house and in use.
You may find it hard to believe, but having and using iPods/iTunes doesn't make one a Mac guy. In fact, I've not laid hands on an actual Mac in a very long time.
I just checked my iPod, and it has presets in the EQ, but not custom settings. But, in 10 years I've never gone looking for that. So to me it's not a feature I need. I suspect most of the rest of the consumers don't care either, which is why they don't have it. They basically took features most people will never use and got rid of them.
As far as I know, you're correct ... iPods are intended to use used with iTunes. If you want a 3rd party music manager, get something else. But, the iTunes software (for me) provides some features I find indispensable ... things like being able to create a playlist of "music not played in the last 6 months or played less than 5 times" is something iTunes can do for me, and the players keep track of play counts and the like. It keeps track across all of my devices, and when I sync with iTunes it updates it. It's a much more integrated platform, which for people who don't want to fiddle with the technology is a good thing. (Other players/music managers might keep this extra information, I honestly don't know.) Again, it's about what you want out of the device.
Honestly, I've never had any files in divx or xvid ... when I rip my older DVDs I put them into M4V format and import them into iTunes. So, for me they're file formats that never come up against. I also have the added benefit that when I buy a new DVD with the digital copy, I can have access to the files on my iPod or iPad (I have a cable that lets me play movies through a TV with RCA inputs). For all I know, iTunes will play those files, but I honestly don't know.
Apple stores the files on iPods with the filenames changed to support their own database ... you technically can pull the files off if you've enabled disk usage, but they end up with cryptic filenames like MP123XYZ.MP3 -- it doesn't store it in a filesystem with the names exposed. Again, this is to support their own database, and likely to keep them from getting sued for making something that made copying some else's music easy. But, the database also stored a bunch of extra data about songs, all of which I can use to create playlists with.
For me, I actually like the integration between the iPod and iTunes, and I've been using it so long I guess I've drunk the Kool Aid. And, for some people with very specific needs, it may well not do that ... but for most of the things most people will want to do, it does it just fine. Better than fine I'd say.
The good thing about choice, is you're free to make your own based on whatever criteria you select ... but there's simply some features most people will never need or know what they're for. Apple fills that niche by just making it easy to use.
Being the first to come up with a wide spread model for having a car showroom, and having any commercial success with it, however, does. I don't believe there were any "car showrooms" before that.
I honestly can't name a single digital music store which existed before iTunes. And I doubt that anything which predated iTunes still exists. Apple also managed to get the big labels to sign up when everyone was trying to figure out how to shut down Napster et al.
As I said, before the iPod there were MP3 players ... but the overall impact of iPods and iTunes vastly outstrips any of those. Most of them aren't even in business any more.
I'll be the first to admit that Apple doesn't invent technology out of the blue that nobody has ever seen ... but what they do is to provide a much better integrated platform that non-technical people can use without fear. It just works, and doesn't do any of that weird technology stuff that people don't want to get involved with.
Name me a single player/software combination that has had nearly as much impact on the market. Because I can't think of any ... the Zune was, comparatively, a joke.
Other than the idiot who got the Zune logo tattooed on his arm and later regretted it, I honestly don't know a single person who has owned one of them. Creative products disappeared a long time ago as far as I know. My wife's old Sony player which used proprietary formats and software wasn't wide-spread. Sure, you can buy cheap ass USB players that you can drag files onto and play, but you're stuck with Media Player or whatever. It certainly doesn't offer you a store or a nice interface.
Apple has sold something like 300 million iPods to date ... who is in second place? The answer, nobody cares enough to find out.
Why, exactly? Or do you have nothing more to add than "because I said so"?
Have you sold millions of audio devices? Billions of songs? Made a product that's a household name? Genuinely changed how people buy and play their music? Have you ever even used iTunes? Or is this just the standard Slashdot pissing and moaning?
I bet you could walk into a retirement home, and ask for a show of hands who knows what an iPod is, and get a significant response. I'd almost be willing to bet that you might even get a non-zero response to who actually owns one ... I've actually seen grannies with iPods. If people in their 60's and 70's know what it is, and in some cases own then, that's a pretty significant impact.
Like Steve Jobs and Apple or not ... but if you can't see that iTunes totally changed how a huge number of people get and access their music, it's probably because you refuse to.
iTunes was the first widespread way that people could legally buy (or rip) digital music, and quickly managed to sell billions of songs. And the iPod radically changed how people accessed their music -- yes, there had been MP3 players, but in terms of making it widely usable by non-tech people. nothing else made quite the same impact. And, the iTunes software itself gives a nice, consistent way of dealing with this stuff. And, it also lets yo handle other media types through the exact same interface, and doesn't even require you to know what an MP3 is to use it.
Other than Napster (which got shut down because it was largely being used to pirate songs), name me one way you can get digital music that has had anywhere near the impact of iTunes?
And, yes, I will admit I've had iPods and iTunes since about 2001. But my mother-in-law is making noises about getting an iPod -- because even she understands what it is and what it's for. Do you think she'd know WTF a Zune is? I highly doubt it. And, at the time I chose to go the iPod/iTunes route, Windows Media Player was absolute crap -- I haven't touched it since, so I have no idea what it's like now.
Sure, there are players out there which have some features that a few hard-core geeks want ... but quite honestly, I have only ever known one person who needed Ogg Vorbis support and I can't think of any other features that might be missing from the iPod. (Well, I hear people whine you can't easily copy songs off the iPod, but that's because Apple didn't want to get sued by the music industry, and because iTunes keeps extra information about songs in its database)
I can see exactly why they gave him this award. I mean, if Paris Hilton could use an iPod, how hard could it be? Geeks don't like easy to use devices, but the rest of the consumer world does.
I know someone who suffers from chronic back pain due to a curvature of her spine and related complications.
Her old pain specialist had her on morphine and possibly more. Eventually she realized she was addicted to them, and was quite distraught. She had to take it more often, not because the pain was back, but because her body was craving the meds.
Once her old doctor retired, the new one helped get her weened off the opiates, got rid of several of her prescriptions, and actually found a way to manage her chronic pain far better. (Though, I'm pretty sure she's still on some kind of pain killer.)
It was really unpleasant for her to go through an addiction which was more or less caused by her doctor simply giving her heavy duty painkillers. Her new doctor tried very hard to make her understand that she'd done nothing wrong, and that pretty much anybody using those things long enough is going to become dependent on them. But it literally took her months to wean off it with a doctor supervising it.
I know from my limited experience after having my wisdom teeth extracted (more like surgery) that the codeine they gave me made me dull and wooly ... I could barely function and chose to not use the prescription any more than absolutely necessary. I simply can't imagine having to use opiates regularly.
These things have their places, but it's easy to see how they become abused by people. Take your normal dose, become addicted. No thanks.
Admittedly, when my uncle was dying of cancer and was on palliative care, the doctor pretty much told him he'd get him anything which would help with the pain if the ones he were on were making him too drowzy or not working -- but at that point, becoming addicted was the last thing anybody cared about. He wasn't going to live long enough for that to be something to be worried about.
No, it's simply called 'doing business'. The prize is money.
Nothing has changed, companies have always acted like that if it gets them the most money. It's not like in the last few months we've changed the rules to favor those who act like greedy bastards -- that's always been how it's worked.
And, sadly, Zynga is far from the first company to be involved in two separate lawsuits, and arguing totally opposite (and incompatible) things in each.
Corporations and lawyers don't have cognitive dissonance by doing contradictory things.
No no no ... a Newfoundlander is a paradox, not a logical fallacy.
They'd gladly give you the shirt off their back, but if they're from a rural area you might have no idea of what they're saying to you. (There are accents there that haven't been spoken in Ireland in 400 years -- sadly, only a couple of Welshman I met on vacation were even more incomprehensible. Mind you, they'd been drinking, but I couldn't even begin to follow what they were saying. I'm honestly not sure if they were speaking English, or joking with me.)
Years ago there was a commercial building with a lighted sign on it near where I lived. The sign was a very deep blue, and a very bright red.
At night, I could see one or the other, but not both since they were on the opposite ends of the spectrum. It was truly evil -- your eyes just couldn't resolve both colors at the same time in the dark.
Could have been just me, but it definitely caused some brain pain. Sadly, I had to drive by it pretty often, and I just tried to not look at it because it was so damned hard on the eyes.
I've definitely seen that some deep blue lights just come up as a blur. Not sure why they go with that particular color. I had always assumed everyone else saw it the same way.
Politicians.
LOL, I think I have the opposite problem. My wife is constantly amazed that I can pretty much hear anything which goes "beep" in the house -- even if I'm watching a movie at fairly loud volumes, I've paused it and said "your cell phone just rang". Half the time she just shakes her head and wonders how the hell I hear this stuff.
I don't have abnormally good hearing or anything, but apparently electronic sounds are something I pick up pretty readily. Maybe I'm just more aware of those kinds of noises.
Though, I've certainly been driven out of rooms because fluorescent light fixtures are emitting what I consider an annoying whine when almost nobody else seems to hear it. Still not sure of why that would be ... as I said, my hearing tests come out pretty standard with the usual high frequency loss for someone in his 40's.
More to the point, I don't think it's even possible.
Between all of the players, damned near everything is patented. And anybody who owns a patent (no matter how absurd) wants everyone else to pay them crazy licensing fees (Microsoft gets paid something like $5 for every Android device), and sues to keep you out of the market if you don't.
Sadly, it seems like innovation has taken a back seat to lawyers, and it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of getting better.
If you designed a better product, unless you were already a company with deep pockets, there's simply no way you could bring it to market.
I blame the patent system more than I do the players -- it's been set up in such a way as to encourage lawsuits more than creating actual products. And, since we're talking about markets in the billions, I doubt companies can afford to purely compete on the merit of their products.
Since the USPTO has now changed it to "first to file" instead of considering prior art, it's only going to make this worse. Pretty much every company is going to have to try to patent the most trivial ideas in order to give themselves something to fight back with. Because they no longer care if you've taken someone else's idea ... only that you filed first.
If patents are still filling their role of fostering innovation, it's sure as hell hard to see it.
His phone probably doesn't accept cookies. ;-)
Not while you're using it.
You can charge an iPad off 5V USB, but only while it's off. The charger that comes with an iPad is 10V USB ... with that you can use it and charge it at the same time. If it's on while connected to 5V USB, it's not charging.
But, having said that, I should think the military would be capable of figuring out their power requirements and making sure they could cover their bases. Surely they've had other requirements for something like this.
Ah, my apologies ... upon re-reading, that is exactly what you said.
Sorry about that, chief.
Seriously, did you RTFA?
All he said was that the sound quality of things you find on You Tube is generally low. That's it.
The tone of his answers bear no relation whatsoever to the summary ... he didn't rip, blast, shred, flame, or even really put down anybody. He offered up some opinions, in a polite way, and without a whole lot of bile attached.
The entire summary is a joke, and is almost entirely unrelated to the interview except that it was Alan Parsons, and he did mention You Tube and the Jonas Brothers. Oh, and he also said that while you could spend an outrageous amount of money on equipment, it made only an incremental difference in his opinion.
I'd be willing to bet you're overstating "vast majority". By a lot.
Find 100 people, ask them if they've heard Dark Side of the Moon. Of the ones that say yes, ask how many know who the sound engineer was. I bet you'll find it quite small.
I've got pretty much everything published by Pink Floyd up until about '95 or so ... and I know Alan Parsons from his band. I was actually going "really?" when I read the summary.
Then again, I'm neither a musician, nor someone who knows the endless trivia about who was sitting where during the recording and if he was wearing pants or not. That is the "vast majority" of music listeners. The behind-the-scenes talent remains anonymous to most of us.
That's not to say there aren't loads of people out there who do know these things; but I seriously doubt it's even close to a majority, let a lone a vast majority. It's really only the hard-core music geeks who keep track of such things.
Which, they're probably doing anyway.
Even if they don't admit it, I'm pretty sure Google already has this if you're searching while logged in.
Their latest changes to their privacy policy really only amounts to "we can (and do) already do this, we're just making it clear to you".
No, but that doesn't mean that I could stop them from jumping off a cliff with a well reasoned argument about why it's a stupid thing to do.
That 'vast majority' simply aren't going to listen to you. They're simply not interested.
Of course.
Corporate profits are the highest form of good. Who cares about a few suckers who bought fake medicine?
As long as quarterly profits and executive bonuses are at all-time highs, that's all that matters. /end sarcasm
Yes, clearly these guys do believe that downloaded songs is a bigger societal cost. Mostly because they use their ridiculous numbers to arrive at this conclusion. In their mind, the trillions in make-believe money they think they're owed is taken directly out of the economy.
It's only going to get worse from here.