1. I don't have a satellite or cable TV service because I refuse to pay for any TV service that also throws advertisements at me every few minutes. (Fortunately I live in the UK and have access to the totally ad-free BBC TV and radio services for a relatively small licensing fee each year).
2. I'm not organised enough to remember to program any recording device on a regular basis.
3. I'm certainly not paying the cellular rip-off merchants even more money than I currently do for the ability to program a recorder when away from home.
As far as I'm concernd, the money I don't spend on the above is better spent on DVD boxed sets of TV shows that I can enjoy in my own time, without adverts, albeit a year or two after the first broadcast of the shows.
Sorry, call me old fashioned but I thought the idea was you paid for your TV service and got no advertisements OR you got free TV service with adverts every 10 minutes. All credit to Sky's marketing in that they seem to have combined the two into one great big ripoff.
Kontiki is Sky realising they've got away with one ripoff and are now embarking on a second to leech even more money from their customers - no different than just about every other big corporation that we the cattle masses have allowed to get too big for it's own damn good.
Wake up and smell the coffee people! If you don't like how a corporation is screwing you then don't buy their products, it really is THAT SIMPLE. The more people that do that, the more they have to take notice and stop treating their customers like mindless cattle.
And as for Sky, don't bother with them. Wait a year or two and all those nice TV programs you want to see get released in a handy DVD box set that you can probably buy for less than a month's subscription to Sky anyway.
I personally think it's disgusting that games/software companies charge money for the replacement of scratched disks when they also pile on the copy protection on CDs/DVDs to stop honest users making backups of disks they've paid anything up to $50/£50/50. As far as I'm concerned, there should be a minumum 12 month warranty period where disks are replaced free of charge if they go faulty - especially bearing in mind that a lot of young kids play these consoles who, in my experience, rarely know how to handle a disc correctly in their excitement to load a game on their machine.
I do own a Gamecube for about 6 or so games I want to play but can't on the PC but, apart from that, I always check for a "No CD crack" before I buy any PC game so that I can keep the CD safe in its case once I've installed the game - if I can't do that, then I don't buy it.
I think it's really about time games players on all formats started to treat the games companies with the same disdain & suspicion that they treat us with - if a lot more of us stopped buying the games until we were given guaranteed free replacements and/or the ability to make personal backups, that would force their hand to start treating the real customers properly.
If you're a true music fan, you take the *time* to listen to your music properly. That means you put a CD/tape/vinyl LP on a reasonable playing source and just sit and listen to it - more than likely as an entire album, from start to finish, that stays with you through the years.
Downloadable music is about "disposable" music - it's about getting a "quick fix" of music when you need it, it's about being "fashionable" and it's targeted at the 18-25 year olds who need one more thing to brag to their friends about other than the latest mobile phone or most expensive designer jeans.
As such, downloadable music creates (in general) disposable artists who have each song thrust into their hands by a record company backroom ballad writer when their time comes again to churn out some plastic, sterile tune for the pop charts.
Yes, there are still good artists out there, mainly in the indie scene, and it's all the more satisfying for someone like me when you push aside the majority of music bilge and come across a great piece of music by a relatively unknown artist.
However, as time progresses, if downloadable music becomes more dominant, so will the plastic music. This means that the album will be a thing of the past because a popular artist's career will just consist of a series of singles that are released on a regular basis. In turn, the artists won't have enough material for reasonable-length live performance, thus the live concert will be in jeopardy.
Give me a CD any day that I can rip for my player for when I go to the gym - other than that, if music downloading dies a death then I say good riddance to it.
Right now they are making huge profits off of things like ringtones, wallpapers, games, music, etc because they control the way consumers can access these things.
I say good luck to them if people are stupid enough to pay good money for these things - after all, ringtones, wallpapers, etc are aimed mainly at the teenage market where kids want these things to feel "cool" amongst their peers - but they're hardly a necessity when it comes down to the fact of simply making and receiving phone calls so what do I care?
I guess I would have several thousand less books read, movies watched, and songs heard, so I think I will not be too worried about my lack of appreciation - I even get time to listen to, read, or watch the good ones more than once then, as well
Of course you would but then it's all about *quality* not *quantity*.
I read lots of books and watch lots of movies, to the point where I can't remember, a couple of months later, whether I saw a particular movie or read a particular book. But that's because I wasn't giving either my full attention at the time and not appreciating them fully.
Much of my music collection is similar. I know about 1/4 of my music CD collection *really well* to the point where I can only play a lot of albums when I am in particular moods. The rest of it tends to be used as background stuff and will continue to be used in that way unless I *really* sit and listen to it. Therefore, I only truly appreciate about 1/4 of my collection, I'm the first to admit that.
There is no necessary link between truly appreciating music, and having the highest quality available.
Of course there's a link! I really do not understand why you and other people cannot see this.
Let me explain it this way - if you're driving in your car, working out at the gym or programming a computer, you probably enjoy sticking a piece of music on in the background to give your mind something to focus on; either because what you're doing is possible boring (driving), repetitive (working out) or you just need some noise in the background (programming). That's fine and dandy for all of those things and made much easier by portable music formats.
But if you really sit and listen to a piece of music, and you find yourself really starting to like that piece of music, surely the next thing you're going to try and do is get more out of that experience? Like getting a better copy of that music (i.e. the CD if you were listening to an MP3), adjusting your hifi or speakers, maybe even getting a better hi-fi? Otherwise, why do so many people spend thousands of pounds/dollars/Euros on pieces of hi-fi they put in rooms optimally designed for music listening?
There is a very big difference to simply enjoying music and having a real passion for it.
It's about getting goosepimples, shivers down the spine, maybe even a tear in the eye.... no, not every piece of music you might listen to but if you've ever got that from any piece of music, you know how to appreciate it.
Don't get me wrong here - someone could pour me a glass of vintage wine and I'd drink it without giving it a second glance. Yes, I enjoy a glass of wine but I don't *fully appreciate it* like an enthusiast might.
In the same way, downloadable music is all about *convenience* (just like being able to buy a £4 bottle of Australian wine in a supermarket), nothing more. Fine, if there's a market for it then I say let people have their downloads.
But just like a true wine enthusiast cleanses his/her palette before tasting a good wine, a true music enthusiast does his/her best to get the most out of a piece of music - and no, that doesn't mean expensive hi-fi but it *does* mean giving it 100% attention to start fully appreciating it.
I'm glad you enjoy your CDs on your mediocre system,
C'mon now, let's keep the argument intelligent and away from personal attacks - yes, perhaps it's a mediocre system but what the hell, I'm happy with it.
but someone listening on their $60 CD player to a burned copy of a 96bit mp3 is no less into music.
But that's my entire point - downloadable music is designed for people who are not prepared to put in the time and effort to *enjoy* their music properly. Don't get me wrong, I like background music just like the next guy but all that's doing is giving my mind something to focus on whilst I'm carrying out some other laborious task - that is not fully appreciating and listening to music.
Downloadable music is great for fad followers who want just have the latest tunes on their players and perhaps boast to their friends about the size of their track collections.
I'm no art fanatic but someone who appreciates a painting can stand staring at it for hours, just giving it their full attention and just enjoying every brush stroke the original artist made - that's why I wouldn't give, say, the Mona Lisa a second look compared to an art fan.
Music is *NO* different - if you're not giving it your full attention and not getting all you can out of listening to it, then whilst you may enjoy having it playing in you ears, you are definitely NOT truly appreciating it.
When bandwidth gets there we'll be downloading far higher quality tracks than you can get on your glorious CDs.
Sorry, I don't see the logic of that statement.
It doesn't matter how much bandwidth you have if an audio signal was sampled at a specific bit-rate. What's your point? And why have you totally ignored mine?
Thankfully though you're an unreasonable generation that is dying out.
To be perfectly honest, at 43 years of age, I'm glad I'm too old for most of the modern-day music scene. I have more than enough good music with some albums (yes, *albums*, not single tracks) I've appreciated for the past 30 years that I will continue to appreciate to my grave - it's just nice sometimes to find a new album by a new artist to add to my collection.
Sorry, I'm a geek just like most others here and I like my PCs and gadgets. But it seems to me that far too many people, mainly the younger generation, spends far too much time rushing through life trying to do lots of things at the same time - this is why (most) modern music has become "disposable" because it's been manufactured as something that justs goes on in the background while you are doing something else.
My argument, therefore, is that those same people do not know how to devote *all* of their attention to a piece of music and therefore do not appreciate it fully.
Whereas you may be laughing at me, I feel sorry for you at not being able to understand what it really means to *LISTEN* to a piece of music.
By your argument, you could appreciate a movie by going into the movie theater and reading a book while the movie is on...
If you like music as something to have in the background, that's fine, but you are not giving it you full attention then either:-
1. You are not fully appreciating that music, or
2. You don't know how to appreciate a piece of music.
Wrong. I have an amp, speakers & CD player from 3 different manufacturers that cost me a total of around £600. I am quite happy with it currently.
I've no doubt Bose / B&O probably sound good (never bothered finding out) but I'm not after spending 5 times the price just for something to impress the neighbours with alongside a cappucino machine.
Please don't assume hi-fi is always about expensive equipment - it's not. It's more about hearing something that sounds good, at whatever budget you have.
Personally, I don't see the appeal of paying for music downloads - sorry, but I have this "thing" about paying good money for a series of "1s" and "0s" to be arranged in various fashions on my hard disk in a lower quality format than what I want. I *need* something tangible...
Give me a nice case, a shiny disk, good sleeve notes and nice music all at a reasonable price and I am perfectly happy - especially if I can then rip it the way I want to for portability afterwards.
To me, free music downloads from Usenet mean I get to preview my music before I buy it, no different to test driving a car before I buy it. When all said and done, if I download some music and don't like it, it's not even worth the waste of disk space keeping it and if it's a good piece of music then I want it in the clearest format possible to play on my nice shiny hi-fi.
Music downloads are for people who don't fully *appreciate* music and treat it as something to have on in the background while they work or workout - I don't have a problem with that, before anyone comments, because I do the same thing myself by ripping my own CDs when I want portability for the car, gym, etc.
However, a true music enthusiast, be it rock, blues, classical, whatever, only fully appreciates a piece of music when he/she sits down and does *nothing else* but listen to that music on a reasonable hi-fi setup with the best quality version of that music he/she can lay their hands on - namely, the original CD.
Call it snobbery, whatever you like, but music downloading is fine for people who treat music as "throwaway", like a set of clothes that gets changed when it goes out of fashion - again, it's up to them how they treat their music. But it's definitely not for someone who *truly* appreciates music...
Akin to what the parent of this comment said, I'd like to know how many people who posted anti-Microsoft banter will still try to rush out and buy one the first day.
I have a GBA for travelling with and a GameCube for the half-dozen or so games I want to play that I can't on a PC. I doubt I'll ever buy an X-Box but that's primarily because there's not that many titles on it (that I'd be interested in playing anyway) that aren't on the PC.
Besides, it takes middle age to realise that the only things worth rushing out to buy on the first day are tickets to an AC/DC concert - everything else is "just another gadget", "just another movie" or "just another CD" that will still be there to buy/view after all the rush has died down...
So Microsoft want to get as much publicity as they can for the X-Box 360 launch day - big deal...
Why is this any different to Apple's launch of the iPod, Sony's launch of the PS2 or Nintendo's launch of the Gameboy Advance? All of these "sold out" on the day of their launches.
I have no love for Microsoft whatsoever but they're just a big corporation marketing a product that they just want to sell lots of.
And if they leech money from the countless sheeple who just *have* to have something before anyone else in their street, then I say good luck to them!
Interesting Questions About The Sony Service Pack
on
Slashback: DRM, MPAA, ADSL
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· Score: 2, Insightful
1. The service pack "removes" the rootkit software. Does this mean that when you insert one of their corrupt CDs again, it gets installed again leaving you having to remove it again? Presumably it does not disable the autorunning of CDs?
2. If you only install the service pack once, then presumably there must be a service/daemon running to detect the insertion of future corrupt CDs to stop the rootkit being installed. In which case, the service pack will need to use continual PC resources to be constantly running.
3. If the format of the corrupt CDs is such that the rootkit needed to be in place to allow three rips of the CD to be made, what happens once the rootkit is disabled? Can you no longer exercise your fair usage rights to rip the CD for personal use?
Slashdot Mirror
2. I'm not organised enough to remember to program any recording device on a regular basis.
3. I'm certainly not paying the cellular rip-off merchants even more money than I currently do for the ability to program a recorder when away from home.
As far as I'm concernd, the money I don't spend on the above is better spent on DVD boxed sets of TV shows that I can enjoy in my own time, without adverts, albeit a year or two after the first broadcast of the shows.
Kontiki is Sky realising they've got away with one ripoff and are now embarking on a second to leech even more money from their customers - no different than just about every other big corporation that we the cattle masses have allowed to get too big for it's own damn good.
Wake up and smell the coffee people! If you don't like how a corporation is screwing you then don't buy their products, it really is THAT SIMPLE. The more people that do that, the more they have to take notice and stop treating their customers like mindless cattle.
And as for Sky, don't bother with them. Wait a year or two and all those nice TV programs you want to see get released in a handy DVD box set that you can probably buy for less than a month's subscription to Sky anyway.
I can either:
a. Buy a more expensive, lower power CPU for my PC and tell 9 buddies simulataneously about it
or
b. Buy a more value for money CPU for my PC and tell 4 buddies about it
Nope, still gonna buy AMD - try harder Intel.
I do own a Gamecube for about 6 or so games I want to play but can't on the PC but, apart from that, I always check for a "No CD crack" before I buy any PC game so that I can keep the CD safe in its case once I've installed the game - if I can't do that, then I don't buy it.
I think it's really about time games players on all formats started to treat the games companies with the same disdain & suspicion that they treat us with - if a lot more of us stopped buying the games until we were given guaranteed free replacements and/or the ability to make personal backups, that would force their hand to start treating the real customers properly.
Downloadable music is about "disposable" music - it's about getting a "quick fix" of music when you need it, it's about being "fashionable" and it's targeted at the 18-25 year olds who need one more thing to brag to their friends about other than the latest mobile phone or most expensive designer jeans.
As such, downloadable music creates (in general) disposable artists who have each song thrust into their hands by a record company backroom ballad writer when their time comes again to churn out some plastic, sterile tune for the pop charts.
Yes, there are still good artists out there, mainly in the indie scene, and it's all the more satisfying for someone like me when you push aside the majority of music bilge and come across a great piece of music by a relatively unknown artist.
However, as time progresses, if downloadable music becomes more dominant, so will the plastic music. This means that the album will be a thing of the past because a popular artist's career will just consist of a series of singles that are released on a regular basis. In turn, the artists won't have enough material for reasonable-length live performance, thus the live concert will be in jeopardy.
Give me a CD any day that I can rip for my player for when I go to the gym - other than that, if music downloading dies a death then I say good riddance to it.
... is just not to buy any Sony CDs.
Amazing how hard some people will work to get a negative scoring / Troll rating...
...yet again, just another corporate exercise in the "brand brainwashing" of our kids ala Macdonalds, Disney, etc.
I say good luck to them if people are stupid enough to pay good money for these things - after all, ringtones, wallpapers, etc are aimed mainly at the teenage market where kids want these things to feel "cool" amongst their peers - but they're hardly a necessity when it comes down to the fact of simply making and receiving phone calls so what do I care?
It's coming out on Tuesday...
Now move along, nothing else to see here.
Of course you would but then it's all about *quality* not *quantity*.
I read lots of books and watch lots of movies, to the point where I can't remember, a couple of months later, whether I saw a particular movie or read a particular book. But that's because I wasn't giving either my full attention at the time and not appreciating them fully.
Much of my music collection is similar. I know about 1/4 of my music CD collection *really well* to the point where I can only play a lot of albums when I am in particular moods. The rest of it tends to be used as background stuff and will continue to be used in that way unless I *really* sit and listen to it. Therefore, I only truly appreciate about 1/4 of my collection, I'm the first to admit that.
Of course there's a link! I really do not understand why you and other people cannot see this.
Let me explain it this way - if you're driving in your car, working out at the gym or programming a computer, you probably enjoy sticking a piece of music on in the background to give your mind something to focus on; either because what you're doing is possible boring (driving), repetitive (working out) or you just need some noise in the background (programming). That's fine and dandy for all of those things and made much easier by portable music formats.
But if you really sit and listen to a piece of music, and you find yourself really starting to like that piece of music, surely the next thing you're going to try and do is get more out of that experience? Like getting a better copy of that music (i.e. the CD if you were listening to an MP3), adjusting your hifi or speakers, maybe even getting a better hi-fi? Otherwise, why do so many people spend thousands of pounds/dollars/Euros on pieces of hi-fi they put in rooms optimally designed for music listening?
There is a very big difference to simply enjoying music and having a real passion for it.
Do what you like, you're missing my point entirely. But if you're doing something else, all you are doing is *hearing* music, not *listening* to it.
Seriously, what do you have to do to "FULLY" appreciate the music?
You give it your full attention, start hearing things in it you never knew were there.
It's about getting goosepimples, shivers down the spine, maybe even a tear in the eye.... no, not every piece of music you might listen to but if you've ever got that from any piece of music, you know how to appreciate it.
In the same way, downloadable music is all about *convenience* (just like being able to buy a £4 bottle of Australian wine in a supermarket), nothing more. Fine, if there's a market for it then I say let people have their downloads.
But just like a true wine enthusiast cleanses his/her palette before tasting a good wine, a true music enthusiast does his/her best to get the most out of a piece of music - and no, that doesn't mean expensive hi-fi but it *does* mean giving it 100% attention to start fully appreciating it.
C'mon now, let's keep the argument intelligent and away from personal attacks - yes, perhaps it's a mediocre system but what the hell, I'm happy with it.
but someone listening on their $60 CD player to a burned copy of a 96bit mp3 is no less into music.
But that's my entire point - downloadable music is designed for people who are not prepared to put in the time and effort to *enjoy* their music properly. Don't get me wrong, I like background music just like the next guy but all that's doing is giving my mind something to focus on whilst I'm carrying out some other laborious task - that is not fully appreciating and listening to music.
Downloadable music is great for fad followers who want just have the latest tunes on their players and perhaps boast to their friends about the size of their track collections.
I'm no art fanatic but someone who appreciates a painting can stand staring at it for hours, just giving it their full attention and just enjoying every brush stroke the original artist made - that's why I wouldn't give, say, the Mona Lisa a second look compared to an art fan.
Music is *NO* different - if you're not giving it your full attention and not getting all you can out of listening to it, then whilst you may enjoy having it playing in you ears, you are definitely NOT truly appreciating it.
Yes, but then you are not appreciating either thing *FULLY*. This is my point exactly.
Sorry, I don't see the logic of that statement.
It doesn't matter how much bandwidth you have if an audio signal was sampled at a specific bit-rate. What's your point? And why have you totally ignored mine?
To be perfectly honest, at 43 years of age, I'm glad I'm too old for most of the modern-day music scene. I have more than enough good music with some albums (yes, *albums*, not single tracks) I've appreciated for the past 30 years that I will continue to appreciate to my grave - it's just nice sometimes to find a new album by a new artist to add to my collection.
Sorry, I'm a geek just like most others here and I like my PCs and gadgets. But it seems to me that far too many people, mainly the younger generation, spends far too much time rushing through life trying to do lots of things at the same time - this is why (most) modern music has become "disposable" because it's been manufactured as something that justs goes on in the background while you are doing something else.
My argument, therefore, is that those same people do not know how to devote *all* of their attention to a piece of music and therefore do not appreciate it fully.
Whereas you may be laughing at me, I feel sorry for you at not being able to understand what it really means to *LISTEN* to a piece of music.
If you like music as something to have in the background, that's fine, but you are not giving it you full attention then either:- 1. You are not fully appreciating that music, or 2. You don't know how to appreciate a piece of music.
Wrong. I have an amp, speakers & CD player from 3 different manufacturers that cost me a total of around £600. I am quite happy with it currently.
I've no doubt Bose / B&O probably sound good (never bothered finding out) but I'm not after spending 5 times the price just for something to impress the neighbours with alongside a cappucino machine.
Please don't assume hi-fi is always about expensive equipment - it's not. It's more about hearing something that sounds good, at whatever budget you have.
Give me a nice case, a shiny disk, good sleeve notes and nice music all at a reasonable price and I am perfectly happy - especially if I can then rip it the way I want to for portability afterwards.
To me, free music downloads from Usenet mean I get to preview my music before I buy it, no different to test driving a car before I buy it. When all said and done, if I download some music and don't like it, it's not even worth the waste of disk space keeping it and if it's a good piece of music then I want it in the clearest format possible to play on my nice shiny hi-fi.
Music downloads are for people who don't fully *appreciate* music and treat it as something to have on in the background while they work or workout - I don't have a problem with that, before anyone comments, because I do the same thing myself by ripping my own CDs when I want portability for the car, gym, etc.
However, a true music enthusiast, be it rock, blues, classical, whatever, only fully appreciates a piece of music when he/she sits down and does *nothing else* but listen to that music on a reasonable hi-fi setup with the best quality version of that music he/she can lay their hands on - namely, the original CD.
Call it snobbery, whatever you like, but music downloading is fine for people who treat music as "throwaway", like a set of clothes that gets changed when it goes out of fashion - again, it's up to them how they treat their music. But it's definitely not for someone who *truly* appreciates music...
I have a GBA for travelling with and a GameCube for the half-dozen or so games I want to play that I can't on a PC. I doubt I'll ever buy an X-Box but that's primarily because there's not that many titles on it (that I'd be interested in playing anyway) that aren't on the PC.
Besides, it takes middle age to realise that the only things worth rushing out to buy on the first day are tickets to an AC/DC concert - everything else is "just another gadget", "just another movie" or "just another CD" that will still be there to buy/view after all the rush has died down...
Why is this any different to Apple's launch of the iPod, Sony's launch of the PS2 or Nintendo's launch of the Gameboy Advance? All of these "sold out" on the day of their launches.
I have no love for Microsoft whatsoever but they're just a big corporation marketing a product that they just want to sell lots of.
And if they leech money from the countless sheeple who just *have* to have something before anyone else in their street, then I say good luck to them!
2. If you only install the service pack once, then presumably there must be a service/daemon running to detect the insertion of future corrupt CDs to stop the rootkit being installed. In which case, the service pack will need to use continual PC resources to be constantly running.
3. If the format of the corrupt CDs is such that the rootkit needed to be in place to allow three rips of the CD to be made, what happens once the rootkit is disabled? Can you no longer exercise your fair usage rights to rip the CD for personal use?