Wow, I cannot believe it, but this might be the first Katz article I can actually stand on its face. Bezos was a damn cynical choice, but keep in mind, this is the same magazine that made Adolf Hitler their "Man of the Year" back in the 30s.
Anyway, Time has again won my own personal "Shittiest Periodical of the Year" award. Congrats!
Yeah, they certainly did, but still and all, if it hadn't been for Loki, we wouldn't even be talking about this now. I can really appreciate Myth TFL/Myth II from a purely gaming standpoint, because it truly is an excellent game, but I for one have serious doubt about Bungie's true code writing abilities. Myth II took a full SEVEN MONTHS to be fully fixed (V2 SLI patch, room switch lock-ups, options lag, etc.), which is just absurd. I'm amazed I put up with their shit for as long as I did--that game was literally the only thing that could crash my PC, and it must've done it 3 times a day on average. Hell, the first version had that nasty uninstall bug, which shouldn't have made it out of beta. I may be speaking out of my ass here, but I sincerely doubt Bungie could do the job Loki did with the game under Linux, and I hope they keep their paws off of future games (Oni, Halo, Myth III maybe?), because I have little faith in their ability to do the job themselves.
PS> Their tech "support" is beneath contempt, I won't even start on that.
Skorzeny, the last time I had moderator points, I blew all five of them upping anti-Katz posts. And I'll do it again in heartbeat the moment I get more. Katz is an ignorant slut, I've had more than enough of his licentious idiocy to last a lifetime. I heartily welcome those of a similar mind, and I will do what I can for them when points come my way. I wouldn't up a "u r dumb u suk" post, of course, but anyone who points out his lies and bigotry is a-ok, and certainly deserving of a point.
"If movie chains are going to refuse admission to movies that contain explicit sexual imagery or profanity, MP3 them. Download the movies on ICQ or Hotline, or other sites where they are becoming readily available, just as many kids did with the postponed "Buffy" finale. Watch how quickly they'll lighten up on ticket-booth vigilanteism."
You've got to be kidding me. Just because you or someone else you know doesn't get their way, you're going to advocate retaliating by breaking federal copyright laws? You, sir, are an imbecile. Just keep it up. And don't think the industry and their squadrons of high-priced legal talent aren't reading this. I can hardly wait until the day you go too far with your idiotic little rants and really incite something. Those lawyers are going to be circling you like tigers around a fat little maharaja on a fallen elephant.
Yeah, I should emmigrate to Germany so the government can tell me that I can't play id FPS games because their feelings are still hurt over the anti-Nazi portrayal of Wolf3D years back. Or I could have the pleasure of dealing with a government that cracks down on ISPs for not filtering out porn to their standards. I also love their continued repression of fringe religions, like Scientology. A totally stupid religion, but then again, most all are anyway.
At the risk of sounding like an AOLer, I must say I could not possibly agree more. Katz is nothing more than a demagogue. Anyone who places any stock in his inane, unresearched, and totally BS "ideas" is a total lemming. I'm sorry, I hate to make sweeping generalizations, but in this case, it's true. Look at the man. His faults are innumerable. He lies, he distorts facts, he doesn't do basic research, he makes unfounded allegations, he slanders, etc. I could go on forever. The man (?) is a simply a product of frustration, and his writing bears that out. He has no following, though, so I wouldn't worry about that. If he does, I'm sure they're every bit as shallow-minded and ineffectual as he is, and therefore of no consequence.
I can see how you'd be angry, but don't bother yourself. Katz isn't worthy of your anger. He's just a lowly shoeshine boy of the ruling elite. Anyone who can be personally offended by broad social trends obviously has some personality issues. Katz should be in intensive psychotherapy right now, with a team of doctors supervising him around the clock, instead of spreading his idiocy here. But as long as he's here, sit back, read his stuff, and have a chuckle. The look of bemusement on my face as I read his latest tangent must be glorious, indeed!
I'll second that. Neither of those posts were flamebait, even a half-witted chimpanzee could see that. They were well-reasoned and lucid. Standoffish? Sure. Hostile? Probably. Flamebait? Certainly not. Nice to see that/. moderators stick up for/suck up to their own, god forbid someone cross the thin green line and challenge Katz's boundless arrogance and monumental stupidity.
In all seriousness though, to the moderator who did this: get a life. I've said much worse things about Katz before, as have numerous other people. So sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities, but maybe instead of playing thought police, you should just do your job right and don't let your feelings get in the way. Neither of those posts were anywhere near "flamebait".
Jon isn't even elite, he merely wishes he was, hence his annoying and incessant whining. I take it he wishes to ingraciate himself, but he's still just their puppet.
Face it Katz, you're the shoeshine boy of the ruling elite. I hope you enjoy toiling in the dirt like a mindless thrall, because your yellow journalism and mindless ranting don't seem to be winning you many fans among us poor dumb workin' class folk.
PS> I'm "Gen-X" myself, whatever the hell that means, and I have to say, while I know some pessimistic and egotistic people, none of them could ever hope to hold a candle to Katz and his banal little rantings over banal little subjects. I'm continually impressed by his ability to be _outraged_ by nothing at all. Combine this bizarre predisposition towards unfettered hatred with a misplaced sense of superiority and questionable logical reasoning skills, and *presto*, instant doofus. This latest epic is really no different. A truly pathetic display from a truly pathetic individual.
I couldn't agree more (except for maybe MS having a neat culture - I have it on good authority that they're all impotent from stress). Corporations don't give a good goddamn about people, aside from their wallets. If Katz thinks Amazon was ever interested in anything but the big mamoo, then he's even more deluded than I'd thought (no small feat). If he thinks the utterly pedestrian act of spending money at one bookstore over another is going to accomplish some intrinsic moral or ethical good, then he need to go back and take Econ 101/102. True, there are a couple of very small privately help companies that do actually pursue a more enlightened agenda, but these are few and far between. And once you have shareholders, forget about it, that party's over. The bottom line is all that matters. The notion that online vendors could possibly have some sort of tangible rayonnement, or that any retailer adheres to some sort of philosophical code is empirically dubious at best, and Katz is a total rube for believing otherwise. All Amazon or any other store provides is a place to buy merchandise. If they sell it cheaply and conveniently, who cares whether they also move TVs on the side?
Yes, the MD format operates using ATRAC, a very advanced (relative to mp3 or anything else) compression scheme. From the MiniDisc Community Homepages:
ATRAC (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding) divides the 16 bit 44.1 KHz digital signal into 52 sub-bands in the frequency domain (after a Fast Fourier Transform). The sub-bands in the low frequencies are finer than the ones in the high frequency range. A psycho-acoustic transfer function that takes advantage of the masking effect and the absolute hearing threshold then removes enough information to reduce the data stream to 1/5th of the original size. Each channel receives that treatment separately (the Sony MZ-1 portable MD recorder features one ATRAC encoder/decoder chip per channel). PASC (Precision Adaptive Sub-band Coding) divides the digital signal into equally spaced sub-bands and removes less information (to only 1/4th of the original size). PASC is essentially the MPEG Layer 1 audio standard (can be decompressed with MPEG Layer 1 players after a trivial preprocessing step).
Both are data compression algorithms, used to store the information content from a stream of 16-bit samples in fewer bits. The purpose of compression is to reduce the rate at which the disk has to deliver or record bits, and to reduce the total number of bits stored. There are many compression algorithms. The ones used for computer data (for example in archiving programs) are lossless; the result of decompression is identical to the input.
PASC and ATRAC are both "lossy" algorithms. In order to get greater compression, they do not attempt to preserve every bit of the original data, but rather only the acoustically "important" bits. Considerable cleverness goes into finding the sounds masked by properties of the human auditory system, ones that you would not hear even if they were reproduced. By all accounts the two schemes do amazing well, considering they operate in real time.
So basically, yes. MD definitely compresses, at roughly a 4.6:1 ratio (I assume... it squeezes 74 minutes of music into 140MB worth of media). I personally have a MD, and it rocks. If this company thinks they're going to beat Sony in court, they've got another thought coming. The MD standard has been around for almost a decade.
I hope this doesn't seem to cold-hearted, but it would seem to me that "developing" nations have better things to worry about than internet access. Perpetual civil warfare in places like Sudan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, crushing poverty and infant mortality in Iraq, forced cannibalism in North Korea, the list goes on. And they're worried about email? Gimme a break.
The third world has so far to go before net access means anything that it's not even funny. We're talking about places with literacy rates in single digits, where people walk miles to get water. How is this going to help? Instead of an attempt to broker peace, foster better education, or build basic infrastructure (roads, running water, electricity), what do we get? More pie-in-the-sky idealistic idiocy from the UN. Two million people have been killed in the Sudan in the last couple of decades, and the slave trade has staged a comeback, but the starving paupers can browse the web! Too bad they can't read anything on it, unless it's in the universal language of porn.
This is the kind of scheme I'd expect from a soft-skulled second grader who saw one too many Sally Struthers commercials. They should come back down to Earth and concentrate on real issues. Throwing money at fundamental structural flaws in these states will change nothing. It's a total waste, and worse yet, it will intensify the West's impatience with LDCs, damaging their willingness to help in the future when it may actually matter. How stupid can an organization be? I guess with the UN, there are no limits. To hell with it, the future belongs to regional trading blocks, political regimes, and alliances, they are the only way progress can be made in these areas. I sincerely hope I outlive the UN.
I'm sorry, but this article is just absurd. The intentions may be all well and good, but the point from which it was argued is simply ludicrous. Record labels are in the business to make money, not as part of some grand capitalist conspiracy to enthrall the music-loving public, and neither is Katz and other bootleggers some group of little Contras or Rebel Alliance battling some evil empire. Get real. Mr. Katz's penchant for fantasy makes it sound like he is a charter member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Music is, by definition, a LUXURY item. You do NOT need it to survive. This is NOT a matter of life and death. If you don't want half of the songs on an album or think the CD costs too much, DON'T BUY THE DAMN ALBUM! Buy the single. Borrow it from a friend. Listen to it on the radio. Or buy nothing! This may come as big news, but you'll live either way. The success of this format would in no way sound the death knell of liberty and consumer choice. Wake up already. There are thousands of small labels that will have no part in this, and with the state of digital recording (CHEAP and EASY, consumer DAT is absurdly high quality) and distribution (the Web), any band with even a modicum of ambition could set up a DIY operation with relative ease.
So stop bitching and moaning and comparing yourself and your plight to Washington and Jefferson (or Luke Skywalker), because you're nothing alike. Tis the very height of arrogance and narcissism to assume otherwise. You're just another typical lazy consumer, sitting at a keyboard, ripping off music. Wow, how exciting. Maybe Pacino can play you in the movie. If you don't like the labels, stop whining and get off your ass and do something about it. Boycott. Buy indie. I don't care, as this will almost certainly never effect me as I virtually never buy big label music, but then again I'm not the one bitching. If you want to make a difference, come back down to Earth and do something, because your foolish words will change nothing.
Don't forget #5 - Jon has more exaggerated, totally unresearched BS to spout, like the fact that big labels form "outside of the country of Colombia perhaps the world's largest cartel." I guess Jonny hasn't heard of OPEC (that would be the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Mr. Katz) and the like. I hate big labels as much as (or more than) anyone else, but I can't stand it when people make idiotic statements like the above. It only makes it appear like the anti-label movement is populated by a bunch of drooling, semi-literate simians.
DIVX, for example, didn't die because people made impassioned speeches about the Machiavellian schemes and machinations of Big Brother. It died because DVD proponents were effectively able to educate the populace about how DIVX was likely to be a poor economic choice in the long run, and because they were also able to illustrate how the resting of format control in the hands of one company and law firm could be detrimental to consumer choice.
Check your facts, make rational statements, and above all else, embrace the truth. These are all the weapons we need, if we marshall them properly. Zealotry and stupidity do not help the cause.
Anyone who can't get a simple NT box working with a relative degree of stability probably should probably keep to Sega or Etch-A-Sketch something, because they have no clue. I've worked with a number of OS'es (Win32, Linux, Mac, etc.) for the last five years now, and NT is really no more crash-prone than the rest (save AIX and Solaris). Indeed, I'd rate it well above MacOS and some others. If it's crashing thrice daily for you, it's probably time to get off your ass and install a Service Pack (psst, don't tell anyone, but they're up to 5 now) or upgrade beyond 24MB of memory. I ran NT Server 4.0 on a Dell OptiPlex GXpro 200 for well over two years, and it crashed maybe four times during that period, two of them because of a crappy Jaz drive. One crash per six months hardly seems cataclysmic. As for cost of operation, aside from an old Voodoo Graphics board I got for free, I don't think I put any parts or special effort into that box.
I'm all for a little harmless overstatement while trying to make a point, but this is just dumb.
...in the 1996 elections. Sure, he's nowhere near 35, but neither Clinton nor Dole did anything for me. I didn't think Ralph Nader was presidential material either, whereas Griffey Jr. has the charisma to carry the job off, and the moose seems like a reliable back-up.
But hey, at least it's still legal to burn our flag, and that they don't think that sticking the 10 commandments up on the wall, and confiscating nail clippers will stop mass murders in schools.
Err... If you were following US politics, you'd know that the flag burning ban is passed by the House of Representatives every year as a sort of "rites of spring" joke. It is promptly crushed in the Senate every year, and will be again this time. Even if it did pass by some miracle, 38 out of 50 states would have to ratify the amendment. I don't think our precious flag-burning liberties are going anyway anytime soon. Oh yeah, the retarded 10 commandments thing will be summarily quashed by the courts, per our age-old "seperation of church and state" agreement, which has stood up well even with conserative judges. This is not the first time some nonsense has been tried, it's just a political ploy to try to win voter sympathy, although it'll only hurt moderate Republicans in the end. But I digress...
Oh yeah.... true enough, but it's so absurd, I didn't even think of it (still, duh). How could modern day Italians possibly have any lingering effects from "loss of empire" when Rome collapsed 1500 years ago? It's ridiculous to compare the two nationalites psyches, especially when the Italy of modernity is so different from Rome. I'd even consider comparison to the Greeks absurd, and Byzantium lasted one thousand years longer than the Latin half of the Empire. I could see bringing France's loss of worldwide stature and prominence into the discussion, because it seems somewhat viable in that the French are only a couple of generations removed from their colonial holdings in Africa and SE Asia, but to compare France to Italy/Rome? Come on, that's just dumb. If I'm part Indian (and I am), I may as well pat myself on the back for coping so well with the fall of the Atzec's at Cortez's hand, as my bond to them is closer than current day Italians' is to Rome.
Italian empire? A pathetic campaign in Ethiopia against a populace armed only with sticks and stones counts as an empire? Moreover, the occupation lasted what, less than a decade? If that counts as an empire, I'm going to go piss on the stop sign at the nearest street corner tonight and declare myself Emperor of West Washington Avenue.
>>I fail to see the point, all of these schemes get cracked in no time. SCMS, Macrovision, PSX and Saturn country code lock-outs and copy protection regimes, even hardware lockouts, et. al., have all been defeated.
>It doesn't matter. You can't buy devices that do this in the consumer electronics store in the mall. So it doesn't exist. Just because a handful of high-tech wunderkinds have the ability to crack this stuff doesn't mean it will ever find its way into the hands of the general public -- which is the only time it actually matters.
Whatever, Cletus. The number of technically inept idiots with modchips in their PSXs could easily be considered legion. If you'd bother to do a little research by doing a quick search on AltaVista or reading r.g.v.sony, you'd know this. These people can't disassemble a system or solder at all, yet they're playing "backups". Care to guess how? And this is just one example. I could also easily point out the thousands of everyday folk with $30 settop video clarifiers sitting between their VCRs or DVDs and VCRs. It's pretty obvious that anit-piracy countermeasures have long since reached critcal mass. Just because you're too dumb to see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
>>Any chimp with even a modicum of technical knowledge can circumnavigate these truly pathetic measures.
>You're on crack. This means that you and your friends, members of the technological priesthood all, will be able to pirate music. That's all well and good for you. But it does not mean that any lasting change will have been effected in the way the music industry operates. It does not mean that the artists will stop getting screwed the way they are today.
And you're a moron. Did I ever say I was going to pirate music, simian? Of course not. But being the High Exhalted Troll you are, you simply assumed as much. Doubtless because you're an ass. I spend a ton of money on music, but I do this because I like small label stuff, and I know the band is actually getting a fair cut (and they need it when they'll be lucky to break 50,000 copies sold worldwide). Why am I even bothering to respond to you? You're obviously an imbecile. Did you find it convenient to only read the first part of my post and skip the rest? I never said anything about artists rights, ignoramus. I'm all for that. I merely said RIAA can bring about this standard if they want, but it's going to be a failure because there will be easy ways to crack it (for people who's brainstems are attached to their spinal columns, unlike yourself), and besides, there is little incentive for smaller labels to adhere to the standard.
I too am a poor student, so I can't give much, but BladeEnc is far and away my favorite encoder. I would've registered it were it shareware, so I suppose I can kick in $20 or so for the cause.
Unfortunately, many people don't even have optical/digital line-outs on their soundcards. Very few models have them to this day, and almost no OEMs ship computers with these high end soundcards. You'd have to go out and buy a Xitel Storm Platinum ($80), or a SB Live! (Not Value - about $130) or something similarily pricey, just to do this, and you shouldn't even have to. US Copyright law dictates that all consumers have the right to make one backup of their purchased media for archival purposes. Just who is V2 that they think they are exempt from this? They're just running roughshod over established norms, and I'm not pleased.
Sure, I run it through the PC, or I could make an analog copy, or I could use a stripper, or any number of ways around it, but the point is I shouldn't have to. Moreover, they should've advertised their little decision, and they did not. I didn't get up in arms about SCMS because I could still make the one copy, which was all I needed, so it was fine. But this is clearly an abuse of the system, and I can see no point to their decision other than to inconvenience and antagonize end users. As a result, I believe they should be made to feel some pain.
I fail to see the point, all of these schemes get cracked in no time. SCMS, Macrovision, PSX and Saturn country code lock-outs and copy protection regimes, even hardware lockouts, et. al., have all been defeated. Any chimp with even a modicum of technical knowledge can circumnavigate these truly pathetic measures. East Asian "pirates" in Taiwan and Hong Kong usually have new regimes cracked well before they even hit the marketplace, if you can believe that. I can't imagine this new scheme is going to be any different. There will inevitably be ways around it, and the workarounds are going to be legion. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I have to wonder though, if this isn't some giant conspiracy on the part of the labels and the guys who make clarifiers, SCMS strippers, modchips and the like, just to sell more hardware, because that's what the end result is going to be. Sad little schemes like this aren't going to stop any determined bootlegger.
You're all right, the price of big label CDs is outlandish. I've never seen singles as high as the $17 quoted in this thread, but $13 is not uncommon. I still remember when the industry swore up and down when the CD format debuted that prices would quickly sink below those of cassette tapes (which were $10 or less), due to cheaper manufacturing processes. Well, it never happened. They all lied, you have a right to be pissed.
Don't bitch and moan about it though, it's not going to change anything. Do something. Buy indie! There are hundreds of small independent labels out there, most of whom only charge $10 or so for their CDs (some, like Dischord, charge even less). The bands are usually better anyway. Moreover, a greater share of the money actually goes to the band. Hell, I'd guess well over 80% of what I buy is indie. Call for catalogs, search the net, whatever, the stuff is out there. Don't take crap from the big labels if you don't want to.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Boycott V2 Music. Those bastards have set the SCMS setting on some of their recent releases to ZERO (final)!!! You can't even make a LEGAL digital copy of your CD, that you bought and paid for, to your format of choice (MiniDisc, etc.). Lame as hell, and they deserve to pay for it. If you see something by that label, shun it. If you want, write the company if you want and ball them out. The address is information@v2music.com.
Hey there, Chuckles, if you had an iota of sense you'd know that DIMMs consist of multiple (in this case, 8) memory chips working in unison. 1Gbit = 128MB, thus 128MB x 8 chips = 1024MB, or, 1GB of RAM. Was that simple equation too tough to follow?
The only mistake they made was the assumption that plebes like you had enough brain power to figure this out on your own. They were obviously mistaken, but you know what they say about assuming anything. I'm sure the editors will mend their ways and mollycoddle to stupid brats in the future, and I apologize on their behalf [end sarcasm].
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Wow, I cannot believe it, but this might be the first Katz article I can actually stand on its face. Bezos was a damn cynical choice, but keep in mind, this is the same magazine that made Adolf Hitler their "Man of the Year" back in the 30s.
Anyway, Time has again won my own personal "Shittiest Periodical of the Year" award. Congrats!
Yeah, they certainly did, but still and all, if it hadn't been for Loki, we wouldn't even be talking about this now. I can really appreciate Myth TFL/Myth II from a purely gaming standpoint, because it truly is an excellent game, but I for one have serious doubt about Bungie's true code writing abilities. Myth II took a full SEVEN MONTHS to be fully fixed (V2 SLI patch, room switch lock-ups, options lag, etc.), which is just absurd. I'm amazed I put up with their shit for as long as I did--that game was literally the only thing that could crash my PC, and it must've done it 3 times a day on average. Hell, the first version had that nasty uninstall bug, which shouldn't have made it out of beta. I may be speaking out of my ass here, but I sincerely doubt Bungie could do the job Loki did with the game under Linux, and I hope they keep their paws off of future games (Oni, Halo, Myth III maybe?), because I have little faith in their ability to do the job themselves.
PS> Their tech "support" is beneath contempt, I won't even start on that.
Skorzeny, the last time I had moderator points, I blew all five of them upping anti-Katz posts. And I'll do it again in heartbeat the moment I get more. Katz is an ignorant slut, I've had more than enough of his licentious idiocy to last a lifetime. I heartily welcome those of a similar mind, and I will do what I can for them when points come my way. I wouldn't up a "u r dumb u suk" post, of course, but anyone who points out his lies and bigotry is a-ok, and certainly deserving of a point.
Hey, moderator who pronounced this off-topic: give the PC back to daddy now, he needs it for Quicken.
While I personally have great disdain for Christianity and all other organized religions, this post was clearly anything but "off-topic". Get a clue.
You've got to be kidding me. Just because you or someone else you know doesn't get their way, you're going to advocate retaliating by breaking federal copyright laws? You, sir, are an imbecile. Just keep it up. And don't think the industry and their squadrons of high-priced legal talent aren't reading this. I can hardly wait until the day you go too far with your idiotic little rants and really incite something. Those lawyers are going to be circling you like tigers around a fat little maharaja on a fallen elephant.
Lol! Pretty witty, I must admit.
Yeah, I should emmigrate to Germany so the government can tell me that I can't play id FPS games because their feelings are still hurt over the anti-Nazi portrayal of Wolf3D years back. Or I could have the pleasure of dealing with a government that cracks down on ISPs for not filtering out porn to their standards. I also love their continued repression of fringe religions, like Scientology. A totally stupid religion, but then again, most all are anyway.
Yeah, Europe rocks. Moron.
At the risk of sounding like an AOLer, I must say I could not possibly agree more. Katz is nothing more than a demagogue. Anyone who places any stock in his inane, unresearched, and totally BS "ideas" is a total lemming. I'm sorry, I hate to make sweeping generalizations, but in this case, it's true. Look at the man. His faults are innumerable. He lies, he distorts facts, he doesn't do basic research, he makes unfounded allegations, he slanders, etc. I could go on forever. The man (?) is a simply a product of frustration, and his writing bears that out. He has no following, though, so I wouldn't worry about that. If he does, I'm sure they're every bit as shallow-minded and ineffectual as he is, and therefore of no consequence.
I can see how you'd be angry, but don't bother yourself. Katz isn't worthy of your anger. He's just a lowly shoeshine boy of the ruling elite. Anyone who can be personally offended by broad social trends obviously has some personality issues. Katz should be in intensive psychotherapy right now, with a team of doctors supervising him around the clock, instead of spreading his idiocy here. But as long as he's here, sit back, read his stuff, and have a chuckle. The look of bemusement on my face as I read his latest tangent must be glorious, indeed!
I'll second that. Neither of those posts were flamebait, even a half-witted chimpanzee could see that. They were well-reasoned and lucid. Standoffish? Sure. Hostile? Probably. Flamebait? Certainly not. Nice to see that /. moderators stick up for/suck up to their own, god forbid someone cross the thin green line and challenge Katz's boundless arrogance and monumental stupidity.
In all seriousness though, to the moderator who did this: get a life. I've said much worse things about Katz before, as have numerous other people. So sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities, but maybe instead of playing thought police, you should just do your job right and don't let your feelings get in the way. Neither of those posts were anywhere near "flamebait".
Jon isn't even elite, he merely wishes he was, hence his annoying and incessant whining. I take it he wishes to ingraciate himself, but he's still just their puppet.
Face it Katz, you're the shoeshine boy of the ruling elite. I hope you enjoy toiling in the dirt like a mindless thrall, because your yellow journalism and mindless ranting don't seem to be winning you many fans among us poor dumb workin' class folk.
PS> I'm "Gen-X" myself, whatever the hell that means, and I have to say, while I know some pessimistic and egotistic people, none of them could ever hope to hold a candle to Katz and his banal little rantings over banal little subjects. I'm continually impressed by his ability to be _outraged_ by nothing at all. Combine this bizarre predisposition towards unfettered hatred with a misplaced sense of superiority and questionable logical reasoning skills, and *presto*, instant doofus. This latest epic is really no different. A truly pathetic display from a truly pathetic individual.
I couldn't agree more (except for maybe MS having a neat culture - I have it on good authority that they're all impotent from stress). Corporations don't give a good goddamn about people, aside from their wallets. If Katz thinks Amazon was ever interested in anything but the big mamoo, then he's even more deluded than I'd thought (no small feat). If he thinks the utterly pedestrian act of spending money at one bookstore over another is going to accomplish some intrinsic moral or ethical good, then he need to go back and take Econ 101/102. True, there are a couple of very small privately help companies that do actually pursue a more enlightened agenda, but these are few and far between. And once you have shareholders, forget about it, that party's over. The bottom line is all that matters. The notion that online vendors could possibly have some sort of tangible rayonnement, or that any retailer adheres to some sort of philosophical code is empirically dubious at best, and Katz is a total rube for believing otherwise. All Amazon or any other store provides is a place to buy merchandise. If they sell it cheaply and conveniently, who cares whether they also move TVs on the side?
Yes, the MD format operates using ATRAC, a very advanced (relative to mp3 or anything else) compression scheme. From the MiniDisc Community Homepages:
ATRAC (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding) divides the 16 bit 44.1 KHz digital signal into 52 sub-bands in the frequency domain (after a Fast Fourier Transform). The sub-bands in the low frequencies are finer than the ones in the high frequency range. A psycho-acoustic transfer function that takes advantage of the masking effect and the absolute hearing threshold then removes enough information to reduce the data stream to 1/5th of the original size. Each channel receives that treatment separately (the Sony MZ-1 portable MD recorder features one ATRAC encoder/decoder chip per channel). PASC (Precision Adaptive Sub-band Coding) divides the digital signal into equally spaced sub-bands and removes less information (to only 1/4th of the original size). PASC is essentially the MPEG Layer 1 audio standard (can be decompressed with MPEG Layer 1 players after a trivial preprocessing step).
Both are data compression algorithms, used to store the information content from a stream of 16-bit samples in fewer bits. The purpose of compression is to reduce the rate at which the disk has to deliver or record bits, and to reduce the total number of bits stored. There are many compression algorithms. The ones used for computer data (for example in archiving programs) are lossless; the result of decompression is identical to the input.
PASC and ATRAC are both "lossy" algorithms. In order to get greater compression, they do not attempt to preserve every bit of the original data, but rather only the acoustically "important" bits. Considerable cleverness goes into finding the sounds masked by properties of the human auditory system, ones that you would not hear even if they were reproduced. By all accounts the two schemes do amazing well, considering they operate in real time.
So basically, yes. MD definitely compresses, at roughly a 4.6:1 ratio (I assume... it squeezes 74 minutes of music into 140MB worth of media). I personally have a MD, and it rocks. If this company thinks they're going to beat Sony in court, they've got another thought coming. The MD standard has been around for almost a decade.
I hope this doesn't seem to cold-hearted, but it would seem to me that "developing" nations have better things to worry about than internet access. Perpetual civil warfare in places like Sudan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, crushing poverty and infant mortality in Iraq, forced cannibalism in North Korea, the list goes on. And they're worried about email? Gimme a break.
The third world has so far to go before net access means anything that it's not even funny. We're talking about places with literacy rates in single digits, where people walk miles to get water. How is this going to help? Instead of an attempt to broker peace, foster better education, or build basic infrastructure (roads, running water, electricity), what do we get? More pie-in-the-sky idealistic idiocy from the UN. Two million people have been killed in the Sudan in the last couple of decades, and the slave trade has staged a comeback, but the starving paupers can browse the web! Too bad they can't read anything on it, unless it's in the universal language of porn.
This is the kind of scheme I'd expect from a soft-skulled second grader who saw one too many Sally Struthers commercials. They should come back down to Earth and concentrate on real issues. Throwing money at fundamental structural flaws in these states will change nothing. It's a total waste, and worse yet, it will intensify the West's impatience with LDCs, damaging their willingness to help in the future when it may actually matter. How stupid can an organization be? I guess with the UN, there are no limits. To hell with it, the future belongs to regional trading blocks, political regimes, and alliances, they are the only way progress can be made in these areas. I sincerely hope I outlive the UN.
I'm sorry, but this article is just absurd. The intentions may be all well and good, but the point from which it was argued is simply ludicrous. Record labels are in the business to make money, not as part of some grand capitalist conspiracy to enthrall the music-loving public, and neither is Katz and other bootleggers some group of little Contras or Rebel Alliance battling some evil empire. Get real. Mr. Katz's penchant for fantasy makes it sound like he is a charter member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Music is, by definition, a LUXURY item. You do NOT need it to survive. This is NOT a matter of life and death. If you don't want half of the songs on an album or think the CD costs too much, DON'T BUY THE DAMN ALBUM! Buy the single. Borrow it from a friend. Listen to it on the radio. Or buy nothing! This may come as big news, but you'll live either way. The success of this format would in no way sound the death knell of liberty and consumer choice. Wake up already. There are thousands of small labels that will have no part in this, and with the state of digital recording (CHEAP and EASY, consumer DAT is absurdly high quality) and distribution (the Web), any band with even a modicum of ambition could set up a DIY operation with relative ease.
So stop bitching and moaning and comparing yourself and your plight to Washington and Jefferson (or Luke Skywalker), because you're nothing alike. Tis the very height of arrogance and narcissism to assume otherwise. You're just another typical lazy consumer, sitting at a keyboard, ripping off music. Wow, how exciting. Maybe Pacino can play you in the movie. If you don't like the labels, stop whining and get off your ass and do something about it. Boycott. Buy indie. I don't care, as this will almost certainly never effect me as I virtually never buy big label music, but then again I'm not the one bitching. If you want to make a difference, come back down to Earth and do something, because your foolish words will change nothing.
Don't forget #5 - Jon has more exaggerated, totally unresearched BS to spout, like the fact that big labels form "outside of the country of Colombia perhaps the world's largest cartel." I guess Jonny hasn't heard of OPEC (that would be the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Mr. Katz) and the like. I hate big labels as much as (or more than) anyone else, but I can't stand it when people make idiotic statements like the above. It only makes it appear like the anti-label movement is populated by a bunch of drooling, semi-literate simians.
DIVX, for example, didn't die because people made impassioned speeches about the Machiavellian schemes and machinations of Big Brother. It died because DVD proponents were effectively able to educate the populace about how DIVX was likely to be a poor economic choice in the long run, and because they were also able to illustrate how the resting of format control in the hands of one company and law firm could be detrimental to consumer choice.
Check your facts, make rational statements, and above all else, embrace the truth. These are all the weapons we need, if we marshall them properly. Zealotry and stupidity do not help the cause.
Anyone who can't get a simple NT box working with a relative degree of stability probably should probably keep to Sega or Etch-A-Sketch something, because they have no clue. I've worked with a number of OS'es (Win32, Linux, Mac, etc.) for the last five years now, and NT is really no more crash-prone than the rest (save AIX and Solaris). Indeed, I'd rate it well above MacOS and some others. If it's crashing thrice daily for you, it's probably time to get off your ass and install a Service Pack (psst, don't tell anyone, but they're up to 5 now) or upgrade beyond 24MB of memory. I ran NT Server 4.0 on a Dell OptiPlex GXpro 200 for well over two years, and it crashed maybe four times during that period, two of them because of a crappy Jaz drive. One crash per six months hardly seems cataclysmic. As for cost of operation, aside from an old Voodoo Graphics board I got for free, I don't think I put any parts or special effort into that box.
I'm all for a little harmless overstatement while trying to make a point, but this is just dumb.
...in the 1996 elections. Sure, he's nowhere near 35, but neither Clinton nor Dole did anything for me. I didn't think Ralph Nader was presidential material either, whereas Griffey Jr. has the charisma to carry the job off, and the moose seems like a reliable back-up.
But hey, at least it's still legal to burn our flag, and that they don't think that sticking the 10 commandments up on the wall, and confiscating nail clippers will stop mass murders in schools.
Err... If you were following US politics, you'd know that the flag burning ban is passed by the House of Representatives every year as a sort of "rites of spring" joke. It is promptly crushed in the Senate every year, and will be again this time. Even if it did pass by some miracle, 38 out of 50 states would have to ratify the amendment. I don't think our precious flag-burning liberties are going anyway anytime soon. Oh yeah, the retarded 10 commandments thing will be summarily quashed by the courts, per our age-old "seperation of church and state" agreement, which has stood up well even with conserative judges. This is not the first time some nonsense has been tried, it's just a political ploy to try to win voter sympathy, although it'll only hurt moderate Republicans in the end. But I digress...
Oh yeah.... true enough, but it's so absurd, I didn't even think of it (still, duh). How could modern day Italians possibly have any lingering effects from "loss of empire" when Rome collapsed 1500 years ago? It's ridiculous to compare the two nationalites psyches, especially when the Italy of modernity is so different from Rome. I'd even consider comparison to the Greeks absurd, and Byzantium lasted one thousand years longer than the Latin half of the Empire. I could see bringing France's loss of worldwide stature and prominence into the discussion, because it seems somewhat viable in that the French are only a couple of generations removed from their colonial holdings in Africa and SE Asia, but to compare France to Italy/Rome? Come on, that's just dumb. If I'm part Indian (and I am), I may as well pat myself on the back for coping so well with the fall of the Atzec's at Cortez's hand, as my bond to them is closer than current day Italians' is to Rome.
Italian empire? A pathetic campaign in Ethiopia against a populace armed only with sticks and stones counts as an empire? Moreover, the occupation lasted what, less than a decade? If that counts as an empire, I'm going to go piss on the stop sign at the nearest street corner tonight and declare myself Emperor of West Washington Avenue.
>>I fail to see the point, all of these schemes get cracked in no time. SCMS, Macrovision, PSX and Saturn country code lock-outs and copy protection regimes, even hardware lockouts, et. al., have all been defeated.
>It doesn't matter. You can't buy devices that do this in the consumer electronics store in the mall. So it doesn't exist. Just because a handful of high-tech wunderkinds have the ability to crack this stuff doesn't mean it will ever find its way into the hands of the general public -- which is the only time it actually matters.
Whatever, Cletus. The number of technically inept idiots with modchips in their PSXs could easily be considered legion. If you'd bother to do a little research by doing a quick search on AltaVista or reading r.g.v.sony, you'd know this. These people can't disassemble a system or solder at all, yet they're playing "backups". Care to guess how? And this is just one example. I could also easily point out the thousands of everyday folk with $30 settop video clarifiers sitting between their VCRs or DVDs and VCRs. It's pretty obvious that anit-piracy countermeasures have long since reached critcal mass. Just because you're too dumb to see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
>>Any chimp with even a modicum of technical knowledge can circumnavigate these truly pathetic measures.
>You're on crack. This means that you and your friends, members of the technological priesthood all, will be able to pirate music. That's all well and good for you. But it does not mean that any lasting change will have been effected in the way the music industry operates. It does not mean that the artists will stop getting screwed the way they are today.
And you're a moron. Did I ever say I was going to pirate music, simian? Of course not. But being the High Exhalted Troll you are, you simply assumed as much. Doubtless because you're an ass.
I spend a ton of money on music, but I do this because I like small label stuff, and I know the band is actually getting a fair cut (and they need it when they'll be lucky to break 50,000 copies sold worldwide). Why am I even bothering to respond to you? You're obviously an imbecile. Did you find it convenient to only read the first part of my post and skip the rest? I never said anything about artists rights, ignoramus. I'm all for that. I merely said RIAA can bring about this standard if they want, but it's going to be a failure because there will be easy ways to crack it (for people who's brainstems are attached to their spinal columns, unlike yourself), and besides, there is little incentive for smaller labels to adhere to the standard.
Scurry back under your bridge now, little troll.
I too am a poor student, so I can't give much, but BladeEnc is far and away my favorite encoder. I would've registered it were it shareware, so I suppose I can kick in $20 or so for the cause.
Unfortunately, many people don't even have optical/digital line-outs on their soundcards. Very few models have them to this day, and almost no OEMs ship computers with these high end soundcards. You'd have to go out and buy a Xitel Storm Platinum ($80), or a SB Live! (Not Value - about $130) or something similarily pricey, just to do this, and you shouldn't even have to. US Copyright law dictates that all consumers have the right to make one backup of their purchased media for archival purposes. Just who is V2 that they think they are exempt from this? They're just running roughshod over established norms, and I'm not pleased.
Sure, I run it through the PC, or I could make an analog copy, or I could use a stripper, or any number of ways around it, but the point is I shouldn't have to. Moreover, they should've advertised their little decision, and they did not. I didn't get up in arms about SCMS because I could still make the one copy, which was all I needed, so it was fine. But this is clearly an abuse of the system, and I can see no point to their decision other than to inconvenience and antagonize end users. As a result, I believe they should be made to feel some pain.
I fail to see the point, all of these schemes get cracked in no time. SCMS, Macrovision, PSX and Saturn country code lock-outs and copy protection regimes, even hardware lockouts, et. al., have all been defeated. Any chimp with even a modicum of technical knowledge can circumnavigate these truly pathetic measures. East Asian "pirates" in Taiwan and Hong Kong usually have new regimes cracked well before they even hit the marketplace, if you can believe that. I can't imagine this new scheme is going to be any different. There will inevitably be ways around it, and the workarounds are going to be legion. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I have to wonder though, if this isn't some giant conspiracy on the part of the labels and the guys who make clarifiers, SCMS strippers, modchips and the like, just to sell more hardware, because that's what the end result is going to be. Sad little schemes like this aren't going to stop any determined bootlegger.
You're all right, the price of big label CDs is outlandish. I've never seen singles as high as the $17 quoted in this thread, but $13 is not uncommon. I still remember when the industry swore up and down when the CD format debuted that prices would quickly sink below those of cassette tapes (which were $10 or less), due to cheaper manufacturing processes. Well, it never happened. They all lied, you have a right to be pissed.
Don't bitch and moan about it though, it's not going to change anything. Do something. Buy indie! There are hundreds of small independent labels out there, most of whom only charge $10 or so for their CDs (some, like Dischord, charge even less). The bands are usually better anyway. Moreover, a greater share of the money actually goes to the band. Hell, I'd guess well over 80% of what I buy is indie. Call for catalogs, search the net, whatever, the stuff is out there. Don't take crap from the big labels if you don't want to.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Boycott V2 Music. Those bastards have set the SCMS setting on some of their recent releases to ZERO (final)!!! You can't even make a LEGAL digital copy of your CD, that you bought and paid for, to your format of choice (MiniDisc, etc.). Lame as hell, and they deserve to pay for it. If you see something by that label, shun it. If you want, write the company if you want and ball them out. The address is information@v2music.com.
That's all, have a good day.
Hey there, Chuckles, if you had an iota of sense you'd know that DIMMs consist of multiple (in this case, 8) memory chips working in unison. 1Gbit = 128MB, thus 128MB x 8 chips = 1024MB, or, 1GB of RAM. Was that simple equation too tough to follow?
The only mistake they made was the assumption that plebes like you had enough brain power to figure this out on your own. They were obviously mistaken, but you know what they say about assuming anything. I'm sure the editors will mend their ways and mollycoddle to stupid brats in the future, and I apologize on their behalf [end sarcasm].