If you want CD Quality, download CD quality audio.
I never said anything about "CD Quality" in my original post.
Downloading an MP3, burning it, then ripping it, then converting to MP3 is worse than spinning analog tapes generationally.
Yes, I know. I never said I actually did this.
MP3, OGG, WMA, RA, etc.. were all designed to be the final product in your audio device, not the end user's master copy. If you purchase music in lossy-compressed format, you are buying less quality than you could purchase in full quality. these formats were ment for end users to rip/encode for usage in other technology, and for convenience.
Yes, I know. Your point?
Sure, its good for downloading, but not when you have to pay real hard earned cash for low quality audio.
192Kbps is good enough for me.
What if you want to use your purchased MP3 to put in your low memory mp3 player?
I never said I wanted to do that.
Even if I did, I wouldn't own a cheap-assed MP3 player with low memory.
I'm sticking with uncompressed songs for my master copy.
Goody for you. However, in my post, I was talking about me.
... what percentage of people browsing will prefer to buy music from a company, then... burn it...
I'd rather go to the nearest diskstore & buy some CDs that will have a nice cover
I certainly prefer downloading just the songs I want and burning my own mix CDs. I'd happily pay $0.99-$1.50/song for just the songs I like rather than $15-$18/CD where I invariably only like a few songs on it.
But I want an MP3 file, i.e., a non-propriatary file format, that I can do whatever I want with it. With Liquid Audio's scheme, you had to download songs in their (or Microsoft's) proprietary format, burn it to a CD, then rip that CD to get an MP3 -- a pain in the ass.
And I couldn't care less about the CD cover artwork. I buy music to listen to it, not look at the package it came in.
Computer technology is no different than other technology - sewing machines, lawn mowers.
We know that, but the problem is that a lot of people, especially of the older generation, don't know that. They perceive a computer as something too new, something they never had exposure to growing up, and therefore alien, complicated, and intimidating. (They had exposure to sewing machines and lawn mowers as kids even if they didn't personally use them.) Their brains simply switch off to cut their losses at embarassment rather than spending hours trying to figure out only to still not understand it and feel like an even bigger idiot.
Does this apply to all states after they have settled?
Massachusetts is in the 1st Circuit. Generally, a ruling applies only in the states that comprise the circuit. The 1st circuit is MA, ME, NH, PR, and RI. (Look here.) It's not until a ruling is handed down by the Supreme Court that it applies throughout the country.
But since this is about punishment for a company and not about declaring a law unconstitutional, I'm not sure what happens.
If you crack even the stupidest DRM technology, you have violated the DMCA.
I believe you have to crack it and distribute it and/or tell others how you cracked it in order for it to violate the DMCA. If you simply crack it for your own use, you're fine.
But separating them out and having someone present to watch over those who are under 18 is compliance to the law.
Which law are you referring to? It's against the law to sell or otherwise distribute porn to minors. The enforcement is largely done by the vendors themselves since they don't want to get arrested. The government gets involved only if somebody brings a violation to their attention.
This is totally not the case with a computer in a public library since the distributor has no idea who is viewing his/her web site (unless they do adult age verification with a credit card or some such). Instead, the government has to take an active role and use subjective criteria to enforce (arbitrarily) the proposed law. This is just bad. Sorry if you can't see it. I can't make my point any clearer.
Public computers, payed for by the public, should not be used for illegal activities.
That's a nice dream we can all hope for. But the hard reality is that it's just that: a dream. Nobody ever said the world was fair. Get used to it.
Hence two sections.
But you just said that publicly fundered computers shouldn't be used for illegal activities. Child porn is illegal even for an adult. So are we going to have a librarian standing over the adults' shoulders now too? Or do we simply have to get rid of the computers altogether?
Face it: this is a problem that doesn't have a simple answer. And certainly not one that can be solved by a filtering program (with the current abysmal state of A.I.).
Why should my tax dollars be funding access to porn? That's rediculous.
So you have no problem with funding access to porn, i.e., computers, only if you spend yet more of your tax dollars to develop, purchase, install, and continually upgrade filtering software?
I'll agree that the filters need work, but someone should be taking the time to build a better filter as opposed to pissing and moaning that this is inhibiting free speech.
Never mind the fact that it simply can not be done.
Children are "filtered" from the market based on their inability to enter porn extablishments.
This is done by filtering on the child's age. This can be done perfectly (modulo fake IDs) and objectively. Therefore, it does not prevent any adult from access to porn establishments.
Also, it's known for a certainty that the content of a porn establishment is, in fact, porn without inspecting the content. The same is not true for a web site discussing, say, breasts. Either the filters will get it wrong or the librarian will be censoring as an agent of the government. Both are bad.
We already separate children's books from adult books, why not the computers as well?
I hear the children's books analogy all the time -- and it's wrong all the time. (Don't people ever really think through what they say any more? Sigh.)
Books in a children's section are those that are written especially for children, i.e., those which most children would find interesting; and those written using a child's vocabulary. These books are not what is left over after a librarian censors out books inappropriate for children. Therefore it's just plan wrong to use this as an analogy for filtering the internet.
Why not have a set of computers in each section for internet access. Have a person physically monitor (in other words be present) while the children are surfing the internet.
As I already pointed out: that would be government censorship based on the (arbitrary) decisions of whatever person just so happened to be on duty.
[Children] cannot easily view porn without the possibility of it being viewable by any and all around/behind them, including librarians. This is likely to tone down their prurient net wanderings.
This assumes the children are viewing porn intentionally. What about viewing porn unintentionally?
That aside, what if the librarian sees porn on the screen and races over to get it off the screen: congratulations! The government has just committed an act of censorship.
It's the libaray's business what rules they decide to make and how they decide to enforce them, not the federal government's.
I was in complete agreement with you until you wrote that. A library is run by a city. A city has a government. The fact that it isn't the federal government is irrelevant.
A library that came up with its own rule to filter web sites on a computer would be just as unconstitutional.
He said "hassle" as in "more inconvenient" which does not mean "slower" which implies that he didn't know about Command-Tab. I'm assuing he meant that he had to move the mouse to click on a window of the application to bring it front-most.
I used to have time to take a shower while waiting for 10.1 to boot in the mornings. 10.2 has it down to a few sips of coffee.
You mean you still boot your Mac every morning? I always just put mine to sleep and wake it up every morning. It's back up in seconds. With OS X's stability, my Mac is only rebooted when Apple released an OS update. It's been continuously up (barring sleep) for months now.
Either the list must be made free to telemarketers because it is a law with selective application (no calls only to those on the list) which they must follow
The telemartketer is free to maintain their own list of people who have opted-in to be called. (How they get such a list is their problem. They could snail-mail a permission form to people, for example.)
You cannot force a company to pay for information it needs to keep itself legal every quarter.
Why not? The government forces companies to pay all the time to maintain licenses and permits to keep themselves legal. They also force me to pay for my driver's licence and auto insurance.
Hypothetically, if Apple were to switch to using Intel CPUs, i.e., x86s, that does not mean that you'd be able to install and run OS X on any old PC box.
All it would mean would be that Apple would unplug the PowerPC CPU from the motherboard and plug in an Intel CPU (plus whatever other motherboard tweaks were necessary to make this actually work: the pin-outs are different, for example). The G4 towers, iMacs, PowerBooks, and iBooks would all look exactly the same. You'd still be buying Apple machines.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware: their hardware. Plus, you can bet that Steve would never let OS X run on anything as aesthetically unpleasing as a typical PC box.
And I think an Apple PC would be cool. It would provide a little more flexibility, and probably a pretty big cost savings.
How would it provide more flexibility, exactly? If Apple switched to x86, all that would change would be the CPU plugged into the motherboard. The rest of the G4 case and components would be exactly the same. That being the case, the cost savings would be nil.
It's a cute machine, but I need at least a 2 button mouse to comfortably use the software I need.
It amazes me that people still bitch about only one mouse button. If you want more buttons, go buy a friggin' 2- or 3-button mouse and plug it in! Mac OS X supports it natively.
Well, if Verizon wins out and has their network in planes, those who are Verizon customers anyway may not have to pay roaming charges at all since they're not roaming.
Of course, Verizon could always weasel out of that by charging a "convenience" fee for calls on planes.
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But I want an MP3 file, i.e., a non-propriatary file format, that I can do whatever I want with it. With Liquid Audio's scheme, you had to download songs in their (or Microsoft's) proprietary format, burn it to a CD, then rip that CD to get an MP3 -- a pain in the ass.
And I couldn't care less about the CD cover artwork. I buy music to listen to it, not look at the package it came in.
But since this is about punishment for a company and not about declaring a law unconstitutional, I'm not sure what happens.
This is totally not the case with a computer in a public library since the distributor has no idea who is viewing his/her web site (unless they do adult age verification with a credit card or some such). Instead, the government has to take an active role and use subjective criteria to enforce (arbitrarily) the proposed law. This is just bad. Sorry if you can't see it. I can't make my point any clearer.
That's a nice dream we can all hope for. But the hard reality is that it's just that: a dream. Nobody ever said the world was fair. Get used to it. But you just said that publicly fundered computers shouldn't be used for illegal activities. Child porn is illegal even for an adult. So are we going to have a librarian standing over the adults' shoulders now too? Or do we simply have to get rid of the computers altogether?Face it: this is a problem that doesn't have a simple answer. And certainly not one that can be solved by a filtering program (with the current abysmal state of A.I.).
Also, it's known for a certainty that the content of a porn establishment is, in fact, porn without inspecting the content. The same is not true for a web site discussing, say, breasts. Either the filters will get it wrong or the librarian will be censoring as an agent of the government. Both are bad.
Books in a children's section are those that are written especially for children, i.e., those which most children would find interesting; and those written using a child's vocabulary. These books are not what is left over after a librarian censors out books inappropriate for children. Therefore it's just plan wrong to use this as an analogy for filtering the internet.
As I already pointed out: that would be government censorship based on the (arbitrary) decisions of whatever person just so happened to be on duty.That aside, what if the librarian sees porn on the screen and races over to get it off the screen: congratulations! The government has just committed an act of censorship.
Nice try; thanks for playing.
A library that came up with its own rule to filter web sites on a computer would be just as unconstitutional.
He said "hassle" as in "more inconvenient" which does not mean "slower" which implies that he didn't know about Command-Tab. I'm assuing he meant that he had to move the mouse to click on a window of the application to bring it front-most.
All it would mean would be that Apple would unplug the PowerPC CPU from the motherboard and plug in an Intel CPU (plus whatever other motherboard tweaks were necessary to make this actually work: the pin-outs are different, for example). The G4 towers, iMacs, PowerBooks, and iBooks would all look exactly the same. You'd still be buying Apple machines.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware: their hardware. Plus, you can bet that Steve would never let OS X run on anything as aesthetically unpleasing as a typical PC box.
Of course, Verizon could always weasel out of that by charging a "convenience" fee for calls on planes.