The iTMS AAC is not standard AAC - your standard AAC library will not be able to decode it. The WMA that you buy from Rhapsody, Napster etc or any new WMA is not the old WMA files that those decoder supports.
Implementations of WMA can be made from patent filing but when it's protected as in the case of iTMS AAC and WMA from Rhapsody, Napster it is actually illegal to create decoders for them because of the DMCA.
So, even if Microsoft gives me a free album of WMAs (which they did of Coldplay last week), it won't work with the decoder since it's protected.
But, of course, if I download AAC and WMA files from sources who haven't protected it then it will play fine. Someone could adopt the MP3 file to be protected as well. My point was that I don't trust buying from iTMS and Rhapsody, Napster etc because the files are protected and the decoders not available (and illegal).
There is no single MP3 decoder. There is LAME and MAD, and those are open-source, true. But how do you know which one WMP uses? They most likely have their own. Also, you don't really need to replace the encoder - you can first read the file with your custom built-in one which only looks for 'hidden' tags, and once you've got them, redirect the stream to LAME or whatever.
The LAME and MAD are encoders not decoders. The MP3 decoder is pretty simple and there are a lot of implementations. Even a reference one was put out by Thomson who patented MP3.
I can play MP3 with any old player. I HAVE to play WMA with a WMP (as a plugin or as a player) and iTMS AAC with iTunes. They can upgrade WMP and iTunes and break all the WMP and AAC files I have. If they do it to MP3, I can use another player on my computer and still play MP3 fine.
Well, if you're truly paranoid, there's no reason to believe than an MP3 cannot have 'latent tags' in it either, encoded in a manner similar to (but different from) ID3v2, and perhaps mangled so you cannot see them there. So, as long as you use iTunes, WMP, or any other similar proprietary software, you cannot truly be sure that some DRM scheme won't be activated one day and suddenly apply to all your old files retroactively, MP3 or not. FOSS players are somewhat safer, not only because you can, in theory, check the code for yourself, but also because there's arguably no motivation for the people who write it to introduce such things. Then again, I'd watch out for any open-source media offerings from MS and Apple either way.
There IS a reason to believe that MP3 will always be good. The source code for an MP3 decoder is out there and it does not change from version to version of WMP or iTunes or whatever. You get an MP3 file, you can strip the tags or make the headers complaint whatever. You know exactly what's supposed to be there in the file.
However, there are no source code or formal specification for WMP and iTunes AAC out there. It's totally closed and locked away. So, you get or buy a WMP or an AAC file who knows what's in there.
Yes, I think the iPod killer will be something twice as expensive and twice as bling-bling.
Maybe they will include headphones that glow and light up to let everyone know you are using the iPod killer. Also, the headphones will include a big subwoofer so as you walk by or at the library everyone will know you're listening to an iPod killer.
I'm sure it will come with clothes and jewelery too as you can then integrate it to your look - the goth with the iPod killer look or the nuMetal kid + iPod killer look.
I trust an anonymous P2P peer more than I trust Sony, Microsoft etc. Everytime Apple releases a iTunes update I start asking myself it this is the release where the iTMS pervades iTunes (before you say anything, it's already half way there; before version 5 you could remove all iTMS items from iTunes, now you can only remove the arrow links from your database) or when they will give me a hard time on loading my MP3s onto the iPod. Each Quicktime or Acroboat or whatever software upgrades just seem to add more ads; more icons; more grabs at system prefs and software from their "partners".
Now, I never trust myself to put a music CD or DVD into my computer. My reference speakers are connected to my computer and so I listen to my CDs most on my computer. But, who knows that's in the CD and how it was designed to screw with your computer.
Yeah, even if I disable this and that, I'm sure Media Player keeps an eye out for all the CDs I put in my computer or will in the future and god knows what it will do.
So, if I want a music, I trust P2P to give me a simple, clean MP3 file. I'm even afraid of downloading from iTMS and WMA files since now, they might be innocious now but, who knows, they could any day change to do nefarious "upgrade". Or maybe have latent tags and all that will one day become active as certain hardware standard enforcemens come into play.
Not saying derrogatorily, but you sort of remind me of the music snobs I used to meet about 5-6 years ago. The primary tool of arguement would be to name-drop obscure bands that I would never spend $20 to buy the CD or a rare release that costs $50. For example, when talking about music say Radiohead they would start rattling off this Japan only release track that was so great or this obscure British band that complimented Radiohead. Basically, I could be outspent in CDs in obscure bands and releases and that was their main root in the snobbiness.
Then Napster and P2P came around and everyone could have any release they wanted. This totally destroyed the music snob scene.
So, my point is you're being an OSX snob because you can outspend me on the computer budget.
If OSX starts running on any computer, you'll get over it. I'm sure Apple with design a Mac hardware that will be centerpiece of the office - like the iPod - super glitzy and all that. People buy iPods because they want to buy iPods not because they want to buy a large storage MP3 player. You're buying a Mac computer because you want a Mac and not a computer in general.
I'm not a Windows fan or anything. I do a lot of software development and have spent a lot of time on Macs. In fact I constantly switched between OSX and Dell Windows and to tell you the truth the lab room became more of a factor than the computers in which computer I used. They all behave the same way and feel about the same for everyday use since it's my IDE and Moailla I spend 99% of my time on.
Also, I think Macs and iPods are as "yellow" as any other PC - they say designed in California but check underneath says Made in China.
Dude, I used to be like you - only 5 years ago shifted. It was Tom was pissed that Napster users got kicked out for downloading their album tracks, and Zach did that and all.
Now, Tom is a fat sell-out on Audioslave and who knows where Zach is.
My point is how can you even trust someone whose music is being peddled by Sony? They're in the same list as Celine Dion and Van Zant.
I heard that System of a Down is the new Rage Against the Machine. Political messages, anti-large corporation music being peddled by a large corporation. Their next song will proably be something along the lines of RATM's "renegades of funk"... a total joke. A couple of years down the line you'll be glad you never got the CD.
Exactly. Give a professor a huge grant to accomplish a software. The professor is happy since he/she can pay off the university and not have to teach undergraduate classes. Then, he/she can hire a battalion of graduate students (they can read about their coding skills in graduate applications and such) and then for their stipend and tuition waiver (like the RA position), get them to write software.
Most of the work in commercial software is rather pedantic and rather than having the new graduate students teach classes, they can write the software. After they have passed their quals and comps, they can write the really research oriented software or concentrate on their thesis and publications, while the masters guys and the begining PhDs can hammer out the basic stuff for the software.
No it isn't. The role of graduate schools is research, not product development. Graduate researchers and professors rarely produce software that can be used by other researchers, forget the average consumer, because their focus is on proof-of-concept innovation. The focus of these government-funded Software Development Corps would be to develop usuable software products, not engage is raw science.
The role of graduate schools is learning as well - it isn't strictly for research only. Most of the time in graduate schools students are learning than researching. But, to get money, graduate schools only highlight research. So, if there are grants for open source software, I'm sure a lot of grad students will jump at it instead of teaching intro to Java to freshmen for the stipend.
The problem with just increasing eg. NSF's budget for funding graduate research programs is that they've historically not been interested in funding "practical" stuff. In fact, a proposal to NSF that is mostly implementation of existing concepts rather than pie-in-the-sky research is going to get rejected out of hand most of the time.
NSF gives grants to professors to write textbooks or create educational tools. I'm sure they can make a division which gives money for open source software.
The other thing is: Do we really want CS grad students producing software for people other than themselves? (The software engineering practices in most of the CS research projects I've seen have been abysmal.)
Most grad students will probably jump at a RA position to develop software than to teach CS101. The software engineering practices at commercial houses are even worse; at least in grad school they know the most important part works as well as it can. The glitz and user-friendly stuff can be added later by anyone who knows their way around an IDE.
Seriously, it's already there in the form of graduate schools. Just up the funding of graduate school science programs rather than create an artificial agency.
The name BitTorrent is alone worth that. This is a name millions and millions of people know - it would take more than $8.75 million dollars to achieve that through advertising.
As a consumer, you always want lower prices. But, prices are set by supply and demand; not actual value. In a perfect free market system, they would be the same but it isn't a perfect free market system.
The current price is setup for maximum profits. While $20 maybe a big deal to you, for a lot of aimed market, it probably isn't when they're making 100K a year.
So what you're saying is that men would rather be judged for who they are than what they are, and women would rather be judged for what they are than who they are. Sounds to me like you're saying that women are fundamentally shallow.
Huh?
What I'm saying is whoever is whatever is what they are is how they should be and not whoever think whatever should be.
But, seriously, I was saying men are fundamentally shallow since they always go for the prettier girls. But, I agree with you too and so we can agree that both men and women are fundamentally shallow or neither are.
Firefox already adheres to standards better than IE, has a more rubust, and secure environment, and arguably provides a superior user experience to IE.
I have to disagree.
There is a website that reloads the page every minute or so. In Mozilla, it would invariably reach a point where it would stop reloading with an error message and show an empty page but IE never did that.
Upon further investigation, I found out that it was an embedded hitbox.com thingie in the page that Mozilla was choking on. That site was some ad site or whatever and wasn't responding all the time or very slowly. So, Mozilla would just stop loading the entire page because that little ad image was hosed.
On IE, that didn't happen for some reason. It would still render the page even though that image wasn't accessible!
Plus, it didn't take IE even a second to render the page waiting for hitbox.com to respond. I would practically have to wait between 20s-40s before the page would be shown on Mozilla with the status bar saying wating for hitbox.com.
I had to put point hitbox.com to 127.0.0.1 to make Mozilla work.
My point is Mozilla doesn't always provide the best experience. Embedded Windows Media always sends Mozilla in a 2 min coma. Mozilla sometimes think a link is text and blasts it onto the screen. When the file is binary, it can take a while for Mozilla to try and show that on screen and the back button is stuck!
I try to use Mozilla as much as possible but Mozilla still has a lot of problems to overcome before it can say it's better experience than IE.
all these people that think technology can cure all. sad really. nothing beats books. and by the way, my masters is in Ed. Tech.
I think it'd be easier and faster too search through an e-book rather than a book and copy contents for a slide or notes. It's the restriction of technology that is appaling, not the use of it.
I'd love to see all my books as e-books so for each concept i can refer to 4 books in 10s instead of me settling for 1 book after going through pages and pages for 20 mins to find what I'm looking for.
You have to wonder about a crucial part of the equation: why would internet users share their bandwidth to benefit media companies?
Simple. They will check your upload to download ratio and give you incentives to keep a higher ratio. Of course, the incentive will be far far smaller than the actual value of the bandwidth but hey, 1GB upload means 1 song or something like that would motivate people.
Learning is INTRINSIC to humanity. Not only is it not difficult to educate, it's actually AUTOMATIC if we'd just get out of the !@#@! way! Children are NATURALLY curious! Why do we spend 12 YEARS teaching our children that their "curiousity is irrelevant, shuddup and do the odd problem set on page 122"?
No no no. The CAPABILITY of learning is instrinsic not learning itself.
Humans strive to learn something only if we see there is something to be gained from it.
Education on the other hand has gains that are 10-15 years into the future. It's hard for anyone to see that far.
The main motivation kids have on learning at school is to competing among their peers.
What they are learning doesn't matter. It's all the same since the brain can learn a variety of things. School curriculum is based so that the learning material is optimized for the future as the entire general population will have the same standard base of knowledge as foundation for communication.
It's only who inspires you, who you study with and who you compete with that determines how much you learn.
However, I also feel school curricums in general is always out of date and behind the times.
I think out difference in opinion lies in the fact that I see human behaviour being more simplistic that you do. You have a MA is Education, maybe you can find some scientific papers that show human learning and motivation is more complex than what I see as and more towards what you think it is.
I would not be surprised if the result of this study was the finding that mass consumption of sweets was as genetically altering as smoking tobacco products.
I would be really really suprised if that happened.
Your genes cannot be altered be sweets you eat! - unless you're eating radioactive ones.
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The iTMS AAC is not standard AAC - your standard AAC library will not be able to decode it. The WMA that you buy from Rhapsody, Napster etc or any new WMA is not the old WMA files that those decoder supports.
Implementations of WMA can be made from patent filing but when it's protected as in the case of iTMS AAC and WMA from Rhapsody, Napster it is actually illegal to create decoders for them because of the DMCA.
So, even if Microsoft gives me a free album of WMAs (which they did of Coldplay last week), it won't work with the decoder since it's protected.
But, of course, if I download AAC and WMA files from sources who haven't protected it then it will play fine. Someone could adopt the MP3 file to be protected as well. My point was that I don't trust buying from iTMS and Rhapsody, Napster etc because the files are protected and the decoders not available (and illegal).
The LAME and MAD are encoders not decoders. The MP3 decoder is pretty simple and there are a lot of implementations. Even a reference one was put out by Thomson who patented MP3.
I can play MP3 with any old player. I HAVE to play WMA with a WMP (as a plugin or as a player) and iTMS AAC with iTunes. They can upgrade WMP and iTunes and break all the WMP and AAC files I have. If they do it to MP3, I can use another player on my computer and still play MP3 fine.
There IS a reason to believe that MP3 will always be good. The source code for an MP3 decoder is out there and it does not change from version to version of WMP or iTunes or whatever. You get an MP3 file, you can strip the tags or make the headers complaint whatever. You know exactly what's supposed to be there in the file.
However, there are no source code or formal specification for WMP and iTunes AAC out there. It's totally closed and locked away. So, you get or buy a WMP or an AAC file who knows what's in there.
Yes, I think the iPod killer will be something twice as expensive and twice as bling-bling.
Maybe they will include headphones that glow and light up to let everyone know you are using the iPod killer. Also, the headphones will include a big subwoofer so as you walk by or at the library everyone will know you're listening to an iPod killer.
I'm sure it will come with clothes and jewelery too as you can then integrate it to your look - the goth with the iPod killer look or the nuMetal kid + iPod killer look.
I trust an anonymous P2P peer more than I trust Sony, Microsoft etc. Everytime Apple releases a iTunes update I start asking myself it this is the release where the iTMS pervades iTunes (before you say anything, it's already half way there; before version 5 you could remove all iTMS items from iTunes, now you can only remove the arrow links from your database) or when they will give me a hard time on loading my MP3s onto the iPod. Each Quicktime or Acroboat or whatever software upgrades just seem to add more ads; more icons; more grabs at system prefs and software from their "partners".
Now, I never trust myself to put a music CD or DVD into my computer. My reference speakers are connected to my computer and so I listen to my CDs most on my computer. But, who knows that's in the CD and how it was designed to screw with your computer.
Yeah, even if I disable this and that, I'm sure Media Player keeps an eye out for all the CDs I put in my computer or will in the future and god knows what it will do.
So, if I want a music, I trust P2P to give me a simple, clean MP3 file. I'm even afraid of downloading from iTMS and WMA files since now, they might be innocious now but, who knows, they could any day change to do nefarious "upgrade". Or maybe have latent tags and all that will one day become active as certain hardware standard enforcemens come into play.
Not saying derrogatorily, but you sort of remind me of the music snobs I used to meet about 5-6 years ago. The primary tool of arguement would be to name-drop obscure bands that I would never spend $20 to buy the CD or a rare release that costs $50. For example, when talking about music say Radiohead they would start rattling off this Japan only release track that was so great or this obscure British band that complimented Radiohead. Basically, I could be outspent in CDs in obscure bands and releases and that was their main root in the snobbiness.
Then Napster and P2P came around and everyone could have any release they wanted. This totally destroyed the music snob scene.
So, my point is you're being an OSX snob because you can outspend me on the computer budget.
If OSX starts running on any computer, you'll get over it. I'm sure Apple with design a Mac hardware that will be centerpiece of the office - like the iPod - super glitzy and all that. People buy iPods because they want to buy iPods not because they want to buy a large storage MP3 player. You're buying a Mac computer because you want a Mac and not a computer in general.
I'm not a Windows fan or anything. I do a lot of software development and have spent a lot of time on Macs. In fact I constantly switched between OSX and Dell Windows and to tell you the truth the lab room became more of a factor than the computers in which computer I used. They all behave the same way and feel about the same for everyday use since it's my IDE and Moailla I spend 99% of my time on.
Also, I think Macs and iPods are as "yellow" as any other PC - they say designed in California but check underneath says Made in China.
I get the feeling that you're saying that you don't want to OSX on cheap computers because then, anyone could be working using it.
Your OSX system is a status symbol like Lexus.
I think labs have to use the money or they lose it.
Dude, I used to be like you - only 5 years ago shifted. It was Tom was pissed that Napster users got kicked out for downloading their album tracks, and Zach did that and all.
Now, Tom is a fat sell-out on Audioslave and who knows where Zach is.
My point is how can you even trust someone whose music is being peddled by Sony? They're in the same list as Celine Dion and Van Zant.
I heard that System of a Down is the new Rage Against the Machine. Political messages, anti-large corporation music being peddled by a large corporation. Their next song will proably be something along the lines of RATM's "renegades of funk" ... a total joke. A couple of years down the line you'll be glad you never got the CD.
Exactly. Give a professor a huge grant to accomplish a software. The professor is happy since he/she can pay off the university and not have to teach undergraduate classes. Then, he/she can hire a battalion of graduate students (they can read about their coding skills in graduate applications and such) and then for their stipend and tuition waiver (like the RA position), get them to write software.
Most of the work in commercial software is rather pedantic and rather than having the new graduate students teach classes, they can write the software. After they have passed their quals and comps, they can write the really research oriented software or concentrate on their thesis and publications, while the masters guys and the begining PhDs can hammer out the basic stuff for the software.
No it isn't. The role of graduate schools is research, not product development. Graduate researchers and professors rarely produce software that can be used by other researchers, forget the average consumer, because their focus is on proof-of-concept innovation. The focus of these government-funded Software Development Corps would be to develop usuable software products, not engage is raw science.
The role of graduate schools is learning as well - it isn't strictly for research only. Most of the time in graduate schools students are learning than researching. But, to get money, graduate schools only highlight research. So, if there are grants for open source software, I'm sure a lot of grad students will jump at it instead of teaching intro to Java to freshmen for the stipend.
The problem with just increasing eg. NSF's budget for funding graduate research programs is that they've historically not been interested in funding "practical" stuff. In fact, a proposal to NSF that is mostly implementation of existing concepts rather than pie-in-the-sky research is going to get rejected out of hand most of the time.
NSF gives grants to professors to write textbooks or create educational tools. I'm sure they can make a division which gives money for open source software.
The other thing is: Do we really want CS grad students producing software for people other than themselves? (The software engineering practices in most of the CS research projects I've seen have been abysmal.)
Most grad students will probably jump at a RA position to develop software than to teach CS101. The software engineering practices at commercial houses are even worse; at least in grad school they know the most important part works as well as it can. The glitz and user-friendly stuff can be added later by anyone who knows their way around an IDE.
Linux is interesting today, but only because of eight or so years of uninteresting work (from a CS research point of view) before it.
And, where is the person who did the 8 years of the unintersting work? IN A GRADUATE SCHOOL AS A PROFESSOR!
US government-funded Software Development Corps?
I thought they were called graduate schools?
Seriously, it's already there in the form of graduate schools. Just up the funding of graduate school science programs rather than create an artificial agency.
How can this company be worth 8.75 million
When Fortune magazine runs a story on the CEO.
The name BitTorrent is alone worth that. This is a name millions and millions of people know - it would take more than $8.75 million dollars to achieve that through advertising.
As a consumer, you always want lower prices. But, prices are set by supply and demand; not actual value. In a perfect free market system, they would be the same but it isn't a perfect free market system.
The current price is setup for maximum profits. While $20 maybe a big deal to you, for a lot of aimed market, it probably isn't when they're making 100K a year.
So what you're saying is that men would rather be judged for who they are than what they are, and women would rather be judged for what they are than who they are. Sounds to me like you're saying that women are fundamentally shallow.
Huh?
What I'm saying is whoever is whatever is what they are is how they should be and not whoever think whatever should be.
But, seriously, I was saying men are fundamentally shallow since they always go for the prettier girls. But, I agree with you too and so we can agree that both men and women are fundamentally shallow or neither are.
By which I assume that you'd rather be intellegent than beautiful.
Society also tells males than they can look really ugly and it won't matter as long as they're successful.
She's a girl, not a boy!
Plus intellegence isn't something you can acquire. It's genetically determined. You can't turn a girl into a boy. That's what I think.
Firefox already adheres to standards better than IE, has a more rubust, and secure environment, and arguably provides a superior user experience to IE.
I have to disagree.
There is a website that reloads the page every minute or so. In Mozilla, it would invariably reach a point where it would stop reloading with an error message and show an empty page but IE never did that.
Upon further investigation, I found out that it was an embedded hitbox.com thingie in the page that Mozilla was choking on. That site was some ad site or whatever and wasn't responding all the time or very slowly. So, Mozilla would just stop loading the entire page because that little ad image was hosed.
On IE, that didn't happen for some reason. It would still render the page even though that image wasn't accessible!
Plus, it didn't take IE even a second to render the page waiting for hitbox.com to respond. I would practically have to wait between 20s-40s before the page would be shown on Mozilla with the status bar saying wating for hitbox.com.
I had to put point hitbox.com to 127.0.0.1 to make Mozilla work.
My point is Mozilla doesn't always provide the best experience. Embedded Windows Media always sends Mozilla in a 2 min coma. Mozilla sometimes think a link is text and blasts it onto the screen. When the file is binary, it can take a while for Mozilla to try and show that on screen and the back button is stuck!
I try to use Mozilla as much as possible but Mozilla still has a lot of problems to overcome before it can say it's better experience than IE.
all these people that think technology can cure all. sad really. nothing beats books. and by the way, my masters is in Ed. Tech.
I think it'd be easier and faster too search through an e-book rather than a book and copy contents for a slide or notes. It's the restriction of technology that is appaling, not the use of it.
I'd love to see all my books as e-books so for each concept i can refer to 4 books in 10s instead of me settling for 1 book after going through pages and pages for 20 mins to find what I'm looking for.
You have to wonder about a crucial part of the equation: why would internet users share their bandwidth to benefit media companies?
Simple. They will check your upload to download ratio and give you incentives to keep a higher ratio. Of course, the incentive will be far far smaller than the actual value of the bandwidth but hey, 1GB upload means 1 song or something like that would motivate people.
Learning is INTRINSIC to humanity. Not only is it not difficult to educate, it's actually AUTOMATIC if we'd just get out of the !@#@! way! Children are NATURALLY curious! Why do we spend 12 YEARS teaching our children that their "curiousity is irrelevant, shuddup and do the odd problem set on page 122"?
No no no. The CAPABILITY of learning is instrinsic not learning itself.
Humans strive to learn something only if we see there is something to be gained from it.
Education on the other hand has gains that are 10-15 years into the future. It's hard for anyone to see that far.
The main motivation kids have on learning at school is to competing among their peers.
What they are learning doesn't matter. It's all the same since the brain can learn a variety of things. School curriculum is based so that the learning material is optimized for the future as the entire general population will have the same standard base of knowledge as foundation for communication.
It's only who inspires you, who you study with and who you compete with that determines how much you learn.
However, I also feel school curricums in general is always out of date and behind the times.
I think out difference in opinion lies in the fact that I see human behaviour being more simplistic that you do. You have a MA is Education, maybe you can find some scientific papers that show human learning and motivation is more complex than what I see as and more towards what you think it is.
Basically they are flag words for a bad argument (or a faulty one). If you need to point out the obvious, then it isn't very obvious, now is it...
Did you mean, obviously they are flag words for a bad argument ...
I agree with you on that if you need to point out the obvious, then it isn't very obvious, now is it
I would not be surprised if the result of this study was the finding that mass consumption of sweets was as genetically altering as smoking tobacco products.
I would be really really suprised if that happened.
Your genes cannot be altered be sweets you eat! - unless you're eating radioactive ones.