They discover strange indecipherable messages in biological processess.
You know, I always thought that anything that smells that bad has to have SOME sort of meaning. Of course, I also thought the meaning was too much hot sauce in the chilli...
My favorite thing about the whole article is they give 5 reasons that the iPod isn't the best and then each reason shows different music players that could replace the iPod. Notice however that there is no player that will fill all 5 roles by itself, in order to get all these "features" you would need to buy 5 different players.
The fact is that the iPod does a pretty good job at filling all these roles, but it can be beat by a specialized player in a particular function. If you want an overall good player then the iPod is a great choice.
All of the reasons are pretty flimsy or can be overcome easily, such as the battery life/airplane flight reason. 6 hours is plenty for most flights that people take and if you are going on a longer one then you can get a power adapter that works on planes. As for jogging, the iPod has an extremely long buffer so it has little chance of getting hurt by vibration. Price, yeah it's on the expensive side but you have to pay for quality and solid features.
High-quality digital recordings on a MP3 player? You have to be kidding, you will probably use a feature like that maybe once or twice in your life unless you are a professional and then you will probably have dedicated equipment that is way better than any MP3 player.
Choice in online stores? Well given that the iTunes music store has about the same prices as everyone else, and the choice is similar to everyone else, and that it has had 80% of online sales of music, don't you think that just having the iTunes Music Store is enough? I mean what is the point of being able to purchase the same music for the same price at 4 or 5 different stores? Aren't you only going to purchase from 1 anyways?
I also love how they bracket the entire article with "it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world." Ok so you think it's the best and yet you decided to write an article about how all these other players are better. Talk about hedging your bets, I'm guessing that they got paid for every mention of a MP3 player or music service in the article. They probably just needed a reason to mention as many as possible in order to make the maximum amount of cash.
Lol I knew that but I'm so conditioned to use the wrong saying. Don't mind me, I have heard the saying the wrong way my entire life and now it's just reflex to write it the wrong way.
Anyways, thanks for beating me in the head with it. One of these days it will stick!:-)
I'm curious what's causing you to be getting substandard previews. Are you using Mac OS or Windows? Have you tried checking the "load complete preview before playing" box in iTunes preferences?
I'm using MacOS and am not loading the complete preview.
Obviously you have done more investigation into the matter than I have. I merely went back to the previews of a one or two tracks that I had purchased previously and I thought they sounded lower quality. I didn't do any hard-core comparison or testing to see what the differences were, if any.
So I might be all wet in saying that the previews are lower quality, although they certainly seemed to be so. I'll have to go back and take a more serious second listen to see if they truly are.
A CD is closer to the original than the AAC file, period. End of story. It might sound OK to you, but it is not technically or mathematically better.
Remember that the 44 kHz sampling rate of the AIFF files on a CD is based on the theory that you need to sample at double the rate of the frequencies that you are attempting to measure in order to capture the waveform adequately. This is known as the Nyquist Frequency.
The problem is that this theory is actually intended as a "best-case" scenario where the signal is formed of all sinusoidal waves. In the real-world audio signals are often formed of extremely non-sinusoidal waves and thus they still have a lot of aliasing at 44 kHz sampling. Encoding formats such as AAC and MP3 do a better job of encoding a signal than straight sampling at 44 kHz because they can vary the sampling rate at various frequencies in order to better fit the original waveforms rather than just blindly sampling them and aliasing.
Yes AAC and MP3 "throw out" some of the data but so does a 16 bit, 44 kHz AIFF encoding. The difference is that both AAC and MP3 are designed to throw out data that is inaudible or barely audible and faithfully record the data that we can hear the best. AIFF encoding "throws out" the data in a blindly mechanical manner rather than doing so intelligently and thus can result in varying sound quality levels.
Which, in the end, is better? They all do a decent job but in the end it is up to your personal preferences. I find AIFF audio to be a bit tinny and AAC audio to be warmer, on the other hand AAC audio sometimes sounds over-saturated and AIFF doesn't seem to do that as much. It is all very subjective but don't begin to pretend that it is all as easy as a simple mathematical comparison.
the previews are the same datarate as the purchased files. No difference at all.
Just by listening to the previews of songs that I've purchased I can say that the purchased tracks sound WAY better than the previews. I don't know where the difference lies but the previews are definitely lower quality than the purchased tracks.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but can you give any sources to back your statements up? Apple does not say that its iTMS tracks are taken from the masters, and considering the fact that Jobs said he went to some length to get the rights to sell "untethered" music online, it seems unlikely that the record labels would give in even more by letting Apple use the masters.
Steve Jobs said that they use the studio masters during the event announcing the launch of the iTunes Music Store, you can read about it in this article if you don't want to take my word about it.
Comparing the bitrate of an AAC to an AIFF does not tell the tale properly either. In an AIFF file there are all sorts of harmonics and other information that are faithfully reproduced but never heard by people because they are drowned out by louder portions od the music. In an AAC they cut down the portions of the audio that are, for all intensive purposes, inaudible and instead use the bandwidth to reproduce the sounds that you can hear more faithfully. So a plain vanilla comparison of bitrates is just a pissing contest and doesn't really compare the quality of the files.
Yes I am saying that to me the AAC files downloaded sound the same as the AIFF files on a CD, I never claimed any kind of scientific comparison. In the end that is all that matters to me. As for AAC verses MP3 there have been a number of studies that show bitrate for bitrate AACs come out sounding better. The comparisons are out there, Google for them if you want.
The extra step of encoding reduces the quality of the final file, since the end result of both is an AAC file. I'm using Apple's AAC encoding for my rips so it's probably close to the files produced by iTMS.
That and the parallels between sugar and cocaine are simply ridiculous, just because two chemicals might be close in molecular formula doesn't mean that they are at all similar in molecular structure or pharmacological effects.
Sorry to burst your bubble on a clever sounding sig, but it just doesn't hold up to anyone who knows a bit about the subject.
Remember that to make a CD they sample the masters at 16 bit and 44 kHz. This is quite a big loss in quality. For iTMS they also encode the music - not from the CD as you would at home, but directly from the masters. They encode it as a 128 kbps, 44kHz AAC file, which ends up sounding pretty close to CD quality. This is because AAC does a great job of keeping the encoded sound close to the original sound, especially when compared to MP3s at 128 kbps.
I've bought a good deal of tracks from the iTMS and they all sound just about the same as the CD versions. They certainly sound way better than stuff that I've ripped from CD to MP3 at 160 kbps.
The iTMS to me seems to support the hit single method to producing music. Record one hit song, sell millions of copies...Record one song that flop, bye bye...
Maybe, maybe not. The last figures I saw showed that 45% of sales were toward full album purchases. iTunes is selling a lot of singles, but there are also a good deal of whole albums being sold.
Not only that but this will actually serve to push albums back into the main stream. It will no longer be profitable for a band to have 1 or 2 good songs and then poop out 9 mediocre ones to fill an album. Now if you want to sell an entire album you will make an entire album of quality songs. Those bands that concentrate on the super singles will find themselves left in the dust, since a single makes 1/10th the amount a full album does.
I highly doubt they are going to be kind enough to give away just ANY free download. I'm sure they are already entered talks with various record labels about which bands will get pushed.
Well considering that the deal between Apple and Pepsi allow you to use the credit on any song you want, I am betting that the McDonalds deal is going to be similar.
Wouldn't a disappointing failure be a mediocre success?
No, a disappointing failure is a failure that causes disappointment. An encouraging failure is one where the failure actually caused the situation to get better.
A disappointing failure:
"The transducer didn't work so we can't get the 1.21 gigawatts to power our time machine."
An encouraging failure:
"The bomb didn't explode so we still have a chance to make it across the bridge."
Plenty of Mac users don't like Windows because Windows lacks some nifty Mac features.
Yeah, like style, ease of use, consistent user interfaces, great included applications, impressive system stability, lack of viruses, good security, beautiful and functional hardware...
:-)
Honestly though, use whatever you want but be sure to try everything with an open mind. I will totally admit that Windows has come a long way with Windows XP and in some ways it is better than Mac OS X. Obviously a lot of people are using Microsoft over Apple, for whatever their reasons are. More power to them, I choose Mac OS X for my own reasons.
Competition is a good thing and Windows users should be glad that Apple is keeping Microsoft on its toes, as well as the hardware manufacturers.
would someone in a cleaner environment be at a higher risk for cancer (or more to the point, a higher risk from dieing before the Reovirus healed them)? It would be really interesting to find out that drinking bottled water and organtic foods is actually increasing the risk of death from cancer.
As others have pointed out here, the benefits of living in a clean environment most likely outweigh living in filth and contracting a few "beneficial" viruses.
However there is something to be said for not living in a totally pristine environment. If you lived in a bubble and had your environment completely sterilized then you would never get sick (at least not from outside agents). Thus your immune system would never get challenged and the amount and diversity of the various immunological bodies in your system would be reduced. If your bubble got compromised then you would probably get very ill very quickly.
There have been a few science fiction stories which have dealt with this. In one story that I read (I don't recall the author or the story name) there were a group of people who were on a space voyage and the doctor continually released very low-grade illnesses to challenge the crew's immune system. Just stuff like the viruses that cause sniffles or a slight sore throat, nothing that could result in a major illness. This way the crew's immune system would stay "exercised" and ready to deal with any serious illnesses, should they encounter one.
I feel that this is a good explanation for why people who live in pristinely clean environments seem to get some of the worse illnesses. Their immune systems are not challenged constantly by low-grade illnesses and so when one finally comes along it wallops them. Sure people who work closely with large groups of small children tend to get sick more often, but they seem to rarely get serious illnesses. This could be because of the same effect I have been describing.
It's common to find somewhat archaic-sounding language (in this case "certain" used as a pronoun) in legal documents.
I understand the use given in your link:
Certain of the products are faulty.
However this use just seems to be wrong:
certain of your registration information
Certain what of your registration information? It really should be more explicit. I believe that they meant:
certain
parts of your registration information
They probably just didn't check it thoroughly enough, but it still looks unprofessional and any mistakes in a legal agreement can cause big problems when that agreement is used in a court case.
Apple released the first versions of the gui to the marketplace but it was MS who really popularized it.
It is debatable as to if Microsoft popularized it or not. Certainly Microsoft has the most market share for a GUI but that doesn't mean they popularized it, it just means that they sold a higher percentage of systems with it.
It was Apple that first introduced GUI concepts to the "ordinary" person. Yes, the Xerox Alto was a groundbreaking computer but it was intended as a high-end workstation that was used by relatively few people. By the time that Microsoft Windows came around most people had already heard of, had seen, or had used a Macintosh.
Further, when you access the service through a Partner and download the Napster Client, we will add certain of your registration information (such as your member name and, if applicable, the Partner or promotion through which you registered) to the registry settings on your computer's hard drive, so that we can recognize which of our Partners or other sign-in pages to send to you when you log on to the service.
It also looks like Napster could use a good copy editor. You'd think their legal department would at least read this before they allowed it to get out.
Reminds be of the whole windows gui argument. We all know it was Apple, not Xerox
Well, since it was Apple that made a deal with Xerox to use their GUI ideas and since it was Apple who first released those GUI concepts in a major commercial product then, yes it was Apple and not Xerox who popularized the GUI.
It should only matter when you're manipulating "Classic" applications and data files (which do have resource forks) on the command-line. All the OS X native files should be standard-unix-tool-safe...
I'm fairly certain that even Mac OS X "native" files can have resource forks, they certainly do have Finder meta data that gets lost when you do use cp to copy them. I agree that using cp is probably safe most of the time, but since using ditto is not that much different than using cp I would just use ditto and be safe 100% of the time.
Any PowerBook ordered from Apple after the 21st of October has Panther included.
Not exactly. They are still shipping PowerBooks and PowerMacs with Jaguar (10.2.x) installed and Jaguar disks. However, you can get Panther for $20 shipping and handling on any Mac bought recently. The version of Panther you will get is an upgrade disk set, not a full install disk set. You get all the same stuff but you can only install it over an existing Mac OS X installation.
If you've no idea about the Terminal just do this.
cd/Volumes/Restore CD/.images ls cp nameOfImage.dmg ~/Desktop
I'm not sure if this matters but you are almost always better off using ditto instead of cp on Mac OS X. This is because ditto understands resource forks and Finder-specific metadata, cp might mess some of those up.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I always thought that anything that smells that bad has to have SOME sort of meaning. Of course, I also thought the meaning was too much hot sauce in the chilli...
Apple doesn't make a FM transmitter for their iPods, all of those are 3rd party. The cassette adaptors are also 3rd party.
My favorite thing about the whole article is they give 5 reasons that the iPod isn't the best and then each reason shows different music players that could replace the iPod. Notice however that there is no player that will fill all 5 roles by itself, in order to get all these "features" you would need to buy 5 different players.
The fact is that the iPod does a pretty good job at filling all these roles, but it can be beat by a specialized player in a particular function. If you want an overall good player then the iPod is a great choice.
All of the reasons are pretty flimsy or can be overcome easily, such as the battery life/airplane flight reason. 6 hours is plenty for most flights that people take and if you are going on a longer one then you can get a power adapter that works on planes. As for jogging, the iPod has an extremely long buffer so it has little chance of getting hurt by vibration. Price, yeah it's on the expensive side but you have to pay for quality and solid features.
High-quality digital recordings on a MP3 player? You have to be kidding, you will probably use a feature like that maybe once or twice in your life unless you are a professional and then you will probably have dedicated equipment that is way better than any MP3 player.
Choice in online stores? Well given that the iTunes music store has about the same prices as everyone else, and the choice is similar to everyone else, and that it has had 80% of online sales of music, don't you think that just having the iTunes Music Store is enough? I mean what is the point of being able to purchase the same music for the same price at 4 or 5 different stores? Aren't you only going to purchase from 1 anyways?
I also love how they bracket the entire article with "it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world." Ok so you think it's the best and yet you decided to write an article about how all these other players are better. Talk about hedging your bets, I'm guessing that they got paid for every mention of a MP3 player or music service in the article. They probably just needed a reason to mention as many as possible in order to make the maximum amount of cash.
Lol I knew that but I'm so conditioned to use the wrong saying. Don't mind me, I have heard the saying the wrong way my entire life and now it's just reflex to write it the wrong way.
Anyways, thanks for beating me in the head with it. One of these days it will stick!
I'm using MacOS and am not loading the complete preview.
Obviously you have done more investigation into the matter than I have. I merely went back to the previews of a one or two tracks that I had purchased previously and I thought they sounded lower quality. I didn't do any hard-core comparison or testing to see what the differences were, if any.
So I might be all wet in saying that the previews are lower quality, although they certainly seemed to be so. I'll have to go back and take a more serious second listen to see if they truly are.
Remember that the 44 kHz sampling rate of the AIFF files on a CD is based on the theory that you need to sample at double the rate of the frequencies that you are attempting to measure in order to capture the waveform adequately. This is known as the Nyquist Frequency.
The problem is that this theory is actually intended as a "best-case" scenario where the signal is formed of all sinusoidal waves. In the real-world audio signals are often formed of extremely non-sinusoidal waves and thus they still have a lot of aliasing at 44 kHz sampling. Encoding formats such as AAC and MP3 do a better job of encoding a signal than straight sampling at 44 kHz because they can vary the sampling rate at various frequencies in order to better fit the original waveforms rather than just blindly sampling them and aliasing.
Yes AAC and MP3 "throw out" some of the data but so does a 16 bit, 44 kHz AIFF encoding. The difference is that both AAC and MP3 are designed to throw out data that is inaudible or barely audible and faithfully record the data that we can hear the best. AIFF encoding "throws out" the data in a blindly mechanical manner rather than doing so intelligently and thus can result in varying sound quality levels.
Which, in the end, is better? They all do a decent job but in the end it is up to your personal preferences. I find AIFF audio to be a bit tinny and AAC audio to be warmer, on the other hand AAC audio sometimes sounds over-saturated and AIFF doesn't seem to do that as much. It is all very subjective but don't begin to pretend that it is all as easy as a simple mathematical comparison.
Just by listening to the previews of songs that I've purchased I can say that the purchased tracks sound WAY better than the previews. I don't know where the difference lies but the previews are definitely lower quality than the purchased tracks.
Steve Jobs said that they use the studio masters during the event announcing the launch of the iTunes Music Store, you can read about it in this article if you don't want to take my word about it.
Comparing the bitrate of an AAC to an AIFF does not tell the tale properly either. In an AIFF file there are all sorts of harmonics and other information that are faithfully reproduced but never heard by people because they are drowned out by louder portions od the music. In an AAC they cut down the portions of the audio that are, for all intensive purposes, inaudible and instead use the bandwidth to reproduce the sounds that you can hear more faithfully. So a plain vanilla comparison of bitrates is just a pissing contest and doesn't really compare the quality of the files.
Yes I am saying that to me the AAC files downloaded sound the same as the AIFF files on a CD, I never claimed any kind of scientific comparison. In the end that is all that matters to me. As for AAC verses MP3 there have been a number of studies that show bitrate for bitrate AACs come out sounding better. The comparisons are out there, Google for them if you want.
Actually I believe the reason that the ripped files sound worse than what comes from iTMS is that the iTMS files have this recording path:
studio masters -> 128 kbps AAC
The stuff I rip has this path:
studio masters -> 16 bit, 44 kHz AIFF -> 128 kbps AAC
The extra step of encoding reduces the quality of the final file, since the end result of both is an AAC file. I'm using Apple's AAC encoding for my rips so it's probably close to the files produced by iTMS.
Even better, those artists will die off like the hacks they really are!
The only nitrogen molecule that I'm aware of is N2, maybe you meant nitrogen atom? Even that is not right because the molecular formula for sugar is C12H22O11 and the molecular formula for cocaine is C17H21NO4. They are not remotely close in their molecular formulas, even by a nitrogen atom.
That and the parallels between sugar and cocaine are simply ridiculous, just because two chemicals might be close in molecular formula doesn't mean that they are at all similar in molecular structure or pharmacological effects.
Sorry to burst your bubble on a clever sounding sig, but it just doesn't hold up to anyone who knows a bit about the subject.
CD quality - isn't that some sort of oxymoron?
Remember that to make a CD they sample the masters at 16 bit and 44 kHz. This is quite a big loss in quality. For iTMS they also encode the music - not from the CD as you would at home, but directly from the masters. They encode it as a 128 kbps, 44kHz AAC file, which ends up sounding pretty close to CD quality. This is because AAC does a great job of keeping the encoded sound close to the original sound, especially when compared to MP3s at 128 kbps.
I've bought a good deal of tracks from the iTMS and they all sound just about the same as the CD versions. They certainly sound way better than stuff that I've ripped from CD to MP3 at 160 kbps.
Maybe, maybe not. The last figures I saw showed that 45% of sales were toward full album purchases. iTunes is selling a lot of singles, but there are also a good deal of whole albums being sold.
Not only that but this will actually serve to push albums back into the main stream. It will no longer be profitable for a band to have 1 or 2 good songs and then poop out 9 mediocre ones to fill an album. Now if you want to sell an entire album you will make an entire album of quality songs. Those bands that concentrate on the super singles will find themselves left in the dust, since a single makes 1/10th the amount a full album does.
Well considering that the deal between Apple and Pepsi allow you to use the credit on any song you want, I am betting that the McDonalds deal is going to be similar.
No, a disappointing failure is a failure that causes disappointment. An encouraging failure is one where the failure actually caused the situation to get better.
A disappointing failure:
An encouraging failure:
Yeah, like style, ease of use, consistent user interfaces, great included applications, impressive system stability, lack of viruses, good security, beautiful and functional hardware...
Honestly though, use whatever you want but be sure to try everything with an open mind. I will totally admit that Windows has come a long way with Windows XP and in some ways it is better than Mac OS X. Obviously a lot of people are using Microsoft over Apple, for whatever their reasons are. More power to them, I choose Mac OS X for my own reasons.
Competition is a good thing and Windows users should be glad that Apple is keeping Microsoft on its toes, as well as the hardware manufacturers.
As others have pointed out here, the benefits of living in a clean environment most likely outweigh living in filth and contracting a few "beneficial" viruses.
However there is something to be said for not living in a totally pristine environment. If you lived in a bubble and had your environment completely sterilized then you would never get sick (at least not from outside agents). Thus your immune system would never get challenged and the amount and diversity of the various immunological bodies in your system would be reduced. If your bubble got compromised then you would probably get very ill very quickly.
There have been a few science fiction stories which have dealt with this. In one story that I read (I don't recall the author or the story name) there were a group of people who were on a space voyage and the doctor continually released very low-grade illnesses to challenge the crew's immune system. Just stuff like the viruses that cause sniffles or a slight sore throat, nothing that could result in a major illness. This way the crew's immune system would stay "exercised" and ready to deal with any serious illnesses, should they encounter one.
I feel that this is a good explanation for why people who live in pristinely clean environments seem to get some of the worse illnesses. Their immune systems are not challenged constantly by low-grade illnesses and so when one finally comes along it wallops them. Sure people who work closely with large groups of small children tend to get sick more often, but they seem to rarely get serious illnesses. This could be because of the same effect I have been describing.
That was a troll folks, and full of lies too. Mod down please. (hello proclus)
I understand the use given in your link:
However this use just seems to be wrong:
Certain what of your registration information? It really should be more explicit. I believe that they meant:
They probably just didn't check it thoroughly enough, but it still looks unprofessional and any mistakes in a legal agreement can cause big problems when that agreement is used in a court case.
It is debatable as to if Microsoft popularized it or not. Certainly Microsoft has the most market share for a GUI but that doesn't mean they popularized it, it just means that they sold a higher percentage of systems with it.
It was Apple that first introduced GUI concepts to the "ordinary" person. Yes, the Xerox Alto was a groundbreaking computer but it was intended as a high-end workstation that was used by relatively few people. By the time that Microsoft Windows came around most people had already heard of, had seen, or had used a Macintosh.
It also looks like Napster could use a good copy editor. You'd think their legal department would at least read this before they allowed it to get out.
Well, since it was Apple that made a deal with Xerox to use their GUI ideas and since it was Apple who first released those GUI concepts in a major commercial product then, yes it was Apple and not Xerox who popularized the GUI.
I'm fairly certain that even Mac OS X "native" files can have resource forks, they certainly do have Finder meta data that gets lost when you do use cp to copy them. I agree that using cp is probably safe most of the time, but since using ditto is not that much different than using cp I would just use ditto and be safe 100% of the time.
Not exactly. They are still shipping PowerBooks and PowerMacs with Jaguar (10.2.x) installed and Jaguar disks. However, you can get Panther for $20 shipping and handling on any Mac bought recently. The version of Panther you will get is an upgrade disk set, not a full install disk set. You get all the same stuff but you can only install it over an existing Mac OS X installation.
I'm not sure if this matters but you are almost always better off using ditto instead of cp on Mac OS X. This is because ditto understands resource forks and Finder-specific metadata, cp might mess some of those up.
So instead of:do this: