You release albums as individual cartridges for portable players
Replacing the flash memory in portable hardware MP3 players with tangible ROM cartridges containing albums is about as convenient as using a MiniDisc player. It takes away the sole advantage of these MP3 players in the first place - the promise of letting you take your whole CD collection (not to mention a fair few audiobooks, games, TV shows and films) with you wherever you go. If you had to bring a few dozen cartridges with your player, you've reduced it to having none of the advantages over old formats again.
If you're boycotting Sony because of their nasty DRM, try writing them a letter telling them, otherwise they won't notice a handful of hackers boycotting them, it'll get lost in the noise of economics. Maybe if enough people tell them why their sales are slightly down, they might notice, and maybe even do something about it.
Interesting that they did a preview of a product they're not ready to formally announce yet. Rather uncharacteristic.
Ah, but this product is the first of its kind, not an upgrade. Therefore people won't put off buying something similar until it comes out. Basically, Apple know how to avoid the Osborne effect, which doesn't apply to this product.
Apple is in your den
Apple is in your living room
Apple is in your car
Apple is in your pocket
What's next?
I thought they were going more for the Fight Club angle - "We cook your meals, we drive your ambulances. We connect your calls, we guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us."
Gapless Payck for iPod! Wonder if they will update the 5th gen with this?? Please???
I've just upgraded mine. Officially it's now gapless. To my ear, it's very close, but not quite there. Then again, the tiny gap in the drumloop of Leftfield's Space Shanty drives me nuts and it's probably even shorter. (My music is currently in 128kbps LAME encoded MP3 format, and I'm pretty sure that the lower the bitrate is, the shorter the gap is.)
At any rate, for gapless playback, upgrade iTunes to version 7. Then hilight whichever songs you want to be gapless (Apple-A for all of them), right click (or control-click), then select "Get Info." In the bottom is "Gapless Album." Just change it to "Yes."
You'll also need to update your 5G iPod's firmware by clicking on "iTunes" in the file menu, then "Check for Updates." The rest should be automated.
What is better than the current 5G 60GB iPod for a cheaper price?
"Better" is a vague term. I hear that some products have more features, or support free (as in liberated) formats, but that they are harder to use and look less elegant. Either way, they're probably made by teenagers working 60 hour weeks plus overtime. So by "better," could you please clarify if you mean easier, better looking, more featureful, more liberated, or more ethical?
Do you mean the aniversary of Mahatma Gandi's first successful protest?
Perhaps they're referring to the Chilean coup of 1973? The one where thousands of people died. The one in which the U.S. role "remains a controversial matter."
I love the way no one is even considering the possibility of 4:3 ratio film downloads, even though the 5G iPod's screen is small enough as it is without films taking up even less of the 320x240 resolution if they're going to remain backwards compatible with it. Sure, a widescreen iPod plus film downloads that you'll need to upgrade to the 6G in order to watch on the go seem likely, but it still amazes me how quickly people will refuse to put up with something like pan and scan, the format everyone watched films in at home until only a few years ago in most people's cases.
It's like there's an unwritten agreement that we'll never speak of VHS ever again, like it was an embarrassing mistake that it ever took off in the first place.
In my opinion, portable video will never be really as successful as portable music.
I think you're right, and I think Apple knows this, which is probably why each new Mac Mini (now with Front Row, a remote control and TV output) has been inching closer and closer to the TV set. I suspect people will download videos via iTunes just so they can watch them on TV almost instantly, without the fuss of having to leave the house, probably ignoring whether they can watch them on their iPod or not.
They'll have to provide a simple text only alternative to the site
Alternative? If the site's made well using web standards, all the browser needs to do is ignore the stylesheet (like Firefox has the option to do, and Lynx has to do), and you can see the site without any snazzy design getting in the way of the actual content. You certainly don't need to make two copies of every page.
For those that want to buy a good amount DVDs they will have to pay a premium once they surpass their download limit. My ISP charges $1/GB over my 100 GB limit
Even if these stores will go for the rather arbitrary upper limit of 4.5GB per film, you'd still need to buy 22 films in a one month period to reach that 100GB limit. If you have that kind of money to spend, you probably won't even notice your ISP's extra charge.
Most of it is MP3s... I want a routine to simply write my selection to the DVD writer and spread it across however many discs are required.
I'm not sure about the other files, but seriously, iTunes is the best free (as in gratis, not libre) program for managing MP3 files. You install it, show it your whole collection, make a playlist for the whole thing, select it, click on the "burn" icon, and keep on feeding it DVDs until it's copied all of the files to them. Why other software isn't this easy, I'm not sure.
Nothing ever has been truely free, if you aren't buying (or stealing) something someone else is paying to put it in your hands for [their] own reasons.
What about Project Gutenberg, archive.org or the GNU project? Don't underestimate the wealth of art which has an expired copyright, or which is by believers in freedom.
What they are really saying is that they will let you try listening to their music without paying for it first. If you want to do anything with it, you have to pay. Which isn't a bad idea, acutally...
I've been doing that via Naxos (and Warp Records, for that matter) for months (and I'm sure others have been for years). You can try the music before you buy it, only it's bad quality and you can't download it, or you can buy a good old-fashioned CD and do what you want with it.
As everyone says, Apples are too expensive, and the cost must come down.
Branded products do not cost a lot to buy, yet have to be made astonishlingly cheaply, because they are better. They cost a lot, and have to be made cheaply, because much more money is spent on advertising the product than making the product. This is the simple reason why unbranded products can be rediculously cheaper than branded ones - partly because the corporation that makes the cheap product doesn't want to insinuate its product is better through having a high price, and partly because it doesn't need to advertise its product because its target market knows where to get it, likes the fact it's cheap, and doesn't need to be told repeatedly that it's good.
So a large corporation has ripped off a small company's software, which was specifically designed to stop people ripping off software. Somehow I doubt individuals sharing software is as big a threat as corporations cloning it.
Before I forget again, the slightly less paranoid reasons to not trust corporations with your data are that they may want to start charging for you to access or update it, and that they may decide to never delete it, no matter how incriminating it might become. I'm sure I heard that Hotmail e-mails don't ever get deleted, even after you officially delete them, they just become flagged as hidden.
I'm sure plenty of people will make statements like "What about the privacy!? I don't want google looking at pictures of my kids!". I don't really care, but it's certainly an issue.
It's not just that someone else can rummage through your personal data, it's that they can forbid you access to your personal data if they were so inclined, or network problems could cause you to not be able to access it, or they could lose it. This is on top of things like the potential for blackmail, or plagarism if you store your unpublished novel on such a server, for instance.
If Linus wrote it and he calls it Linux, thats good enough for me.
Um, are you joking? Yes, Richard Stallman can go on a bit about calling it GNU/Linux, but it's precisely to get people to realise that the operating system as a whole wasn't just written by one person.
It's not like the spirit of the license is changing, the wording is just being articulated better to avoid DRM checksum type loopholes. Yes, there are various licenses, and you should carefully decide which one you want to use, be it BSD, GPL or just plain old public domain. However, if you disagree so strongly with GPL on principle of it being too far to the left politically, you have to realise that open source software such as the Linux kernal wouldn't even have the rest of an operating system to interface with were it not for free software such as GNU.
It can be very discouraging to an artist when an entire medium is practically devoted to destroying [the idea of an album].
Would this be the original photo album style booklet containing several 78RPM discs, the 33RPM LP (just over 20 minutes on each of the two sides, depending on how much bass you have), the 33RPM 2xLP (the same, only four sides), the official red book standard audio CD (one side lasting 74 minutes), or the more modern audio CD (one side, 80 minutes)?
I'm sure I read that when CDs came out, they had all kinds of bonus tracks that wouldn't fit on a 12" (33RPM) LP, then artists started recording 2xLPs, with bonus tracks that wouldn't fit on the CD. The definition of an album, even in terms of how long it should be, doesn't seem very clear cut.
Personally I like the single 33RPM LP kind, as exemplified with Kraftwerk's Computer World and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, but then again maybe I've got a short attention span. I wouldn't rule out double CDs such as Nine Inch Nails's The Fragile for special occasions when you've got about two hours to spare.
[Sneaking into a cinema is] not theft, because there were empty seats in the theater, so they weren't going to get any money even if I didn't go.
I know you're being sarcastic to illustrate that this really is immoral, but you can't equate any misdemeanour that exists with theft. Yes, sneaking into a cinema to watch a film is wrong. No, it's not theft. Taking the actual film reels from the projector, so that the other people in the cinema can't watch the film any more, would be theft.
Employees confirmed in interviews that they could decline overtime requests without penalty.
It's worth noting that sometimes companies like these will order their employees to lie about forced overtime, with the consequence of firing them if they tell the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
You release albums as individual cartridges for portable players
Replacing the flash memory in portable hardware MP3 players with tangible ROM cartridges containing albums is about as convenient as using a MiniDisc player. It takes away the sole advantage of these MP3 players in the first place - the promise of letting you take your whole CD collection (not to mention a fair few audiobooks, games, TV shows and films) with you wherever you go. If you had to bring a few dozen cartridges with your player, you've reduced it to having none of the advantages over old formats again.
If you're boycotting Sony because of their nasty DRM, try writing them a letter telling them, otherwise they won't notice a handful of hackers boycotting them, it'll get lost in the noise of economics. Maybe if enough people tell them why their sales are slightly down, they might notice, and maybe even do something about it.
Interesting that they did a preview of a product they're not ready to formally announce yet. Rather uncharacteristic.
Ah, but this product is the first of its kind, not an upgrade. Therefore people won't put off buying something similar until it comes out. Basically, Apple know how to avoid the Osborne effect, which doesn't apply to this product.
Apple is in your den
Apple is in your living room
Apple is in your car
Apple is in your pocket
What's next?
I thought they were going more for the Fight Club angle - "We cook your meals, we drive your ambulances. We connect your calls, we guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us."
Gapless Payck for iPod! Wonder if they will update the 5th gen with this?? Please???
I've just upgraded mine. Officially it's now gapless. To my ear, it's very close, but not quite there. Then again, the tiny gap in the drumloop of Leftfield's Space Shanty drives me nuts and it's probably even shorter. (My music is currently in 128kbps LAME encoded MP3 format, and I'm pretty sure that the lower the bitrate is, the shorter the gap is.)
At any rate, for gapless playback, upgrade iTunes to version 7. Then hilight whichever songs you want to be gapless (Apple-A for all of them), right click (or control-click), then select "Get Info." In the bottom is "Gapless Album." Just change it to "Yes."
You'll also need to update your 5G iPod's firmware by clicking on "iTunes" in the file menu, then "Check for Updates." The rest should be automated.
What is better than the current 5G 60GB iPod for a cheaper price?
"Better" is a vague term. I hear that some products have more features, or support free (as in liberated) formats, but that they are harder to use and look less elegant. Either way, they're probably made by teenagers working 60 hour weeks plus overtime. So by "better," could you please clarify if you mean easier, better looking, more featureful, more liberated, or more ethical?
Do you mean the aniversary of Mahatma Gandi's first successful protest?
Perhaps they're referring to the Chilean coup of 1973? The one where thousands of people died. The one in which the U.S. role "remains a controversial matter."
16:9 touchscreen ipod would be mighty sweet
I love the way no one is even considering the possibility of 4:3 ratio film downloads, even though the 5G iPod's screen is small enough as it is without films taking up even less of the 320x240 resolution if they're going to remain backwards compatible with it. Sure, a widescreen iPod plus film downloads that you'll need to upgrade to the 6G in order to watch on the go seem likely, but it still amazes me how quickly people will refuse to put up with something like pan and scan, the format everyone watched films in at home until only a few years ago in most people's cases.
It's like there's an unwritten agreement that we'll never speak of VHS ever again, like it was an embarrassing mistake that it ever took off in the first place.
In my opinion, portable video will never be really as successful as portable music.
I think you're right, and I think Apple knows this, which is probably why each new Mac Mini (now with Front Row, a remote control and TV output) has been inching closer and closer to the TV set. I suspect people will download videos via iTunes just so they can watch them on TV almost instantly, without the fuss of having to leave the house, probably ignoring whether they can watch them on their iPod or not.
They'll have to provide a simple text only alternative to the site
Alternative? If the site's made well using web standards, all the browser needs to do is ignore the stylesheet (like Firefox has the option to do, and Lynx has to do), and you can see the site without any snazzy design getting in the way of the actual content. You certainly don't need to make two copies of every page.
For those that want to buy a good amount DVDs they will have to pay a premium once they surpass their download limit. My ISP charges $1/GB over my 100 GB limit
Even if these stores will go for the rather arbitrary upper limit of 4.5GB per film, you'd still need to buy 22 films in a one month period to reach that 100GB limit. If you have that kind of money to spend, you probably won't even notice your ISP's extra charge.
How much are proprietary format licensing fees pushing up the cost of consumer goods?
In this case, 75 cents per hardware MP3 decoder, with a minumum of $15,000 per year. Personally, I'm more worried about royalty payments' inherent incompatability with free software, seeing as you can't keep track of who's copied it to who by its very nature.
Most of it is MP3s... I want a routine to simply write my selection to the DVD writer and spread it across however many discs are required.
I'm not sure about the other files, but seriously, iTunes is the best free (as in gratis, not libre) program for managing MP3 files. You install it, show it your whole collection, make a playlist for the whole thing, select it, click on the "burn" icon, and keep on feeding it DVDs until it's copied all of the files to them. Why other software isn't this easy, I'm not sure.
Nothing ever has been truely free, if you aren't buying (or stealing) something someone else is paying to put it in your hands for [their] own reasons.
What about Project Gutenberg, archive.org or the GNU project? Don't underestimate the wealth of art which has an expired copyright, or which is by believers in freedom.
What they are really saying is that they will let you try listening to their music without paying for it first. If you want to do anything with it, you have to pay. Which isn't a bad idea, acutally...
I've been doing that via Naxos (and Warp Records, for that matter) for months (and I'm sure others have been for years). You can try the music before you buy it, only it's bad quality and you can't download it, or you can buy a good old-fashioned CD and do what you want with it.
As everyone says, Apples are too expensive, and the cost must come down.
Branded products do not cost a lot to buy, yet have to be made astonishlingly cheaply, because they are better. They cost a lot, and have to be made cheaply, because much more money is spent on advertising the product than making the product. This is the simple reason why unbranded products can be rediculously cheaper than branded ones - partly because the corporation that makes the cheap product doesn't want to insinuate its product is better through having a high price, and partly because it doesn't need to advertise its product because its target market knows where to get it, likes the fact it's cheap, and doesn't need to be told repeatedly that it's good.
If copying a copyrighted song counts as theft, does deleting the evidence count as giving it back? Shouldn't that warrant a reduced sentence?
So a large corporation has ripped off a small company's software, which was specifically designed to stop people ripping off software. Somehow I doubt individuals sharing software is as big a threat as corporations cloning it.
Before I forget again, the slightly less paranoid reasons to not trust corporations with your data are that they may want to start charging for you to access or update it, and that they may decide to never delete it, no matter how incriminating it might become. I'm sure I heard that Hotmail e-mails don't ever get deleted, even after you officially delete them, they just become flagged as hidden.
I'm sure plenty of people will make statements like "What about the privacy!? I don't want google looking at pictures of my kids!". I don't really care, but it's certainly an issue.
It's not just that someone else can rummage through your personal data, it's that they can forbid you access to your personal data if they were so inclined, or network problems could cause you to not be able to access it, or they could lose it. This is on top of things like the potential for blackmail, or plagarism if you store your unpublished novel on such a server, for instance.
If Linus wrote it and he calls it Linux, thats good enough for me.
Um, are you joking? Yes, Richard Stallman can go on a bit about calling it GNU/Linux, but it's precisely to get people to realise that the operating system as a whole wasn't just written by one person.
It's not like the spirit of the license is changing, the wording is just being articulated better to avoid DRM checksum type loopholes. Yes, there are various licenses, and you should carefully decide which one you want to use, be it BSD, GPL or just plain old public domain. However, if you disagree so strongly with GPL on principle of it being too far to the left politically, you have to realise that open source software such as the Linux kernal wouldn't even have the rest of an operating system to interface with were it not for free software such as GNU.
It can be very discouraging to an artist when an entire medium is practically devoted to destroying [the idea of an album].
Would this be the original photo album style booklet containing several 78RPM discs, the 33RPM LP (just over 20 minutes on each of the two sides, depending on how much bass you have), the 33RPM 2xLP (the same, only four sides), the official red book standard audio CD (one side lasting 74 minutes), or the more modern audio CD (one side, 80 minutes)?
I'm sure I read that when CDs came out, they had all kinds of bonus tracks that wouldn't fit on a 12" (33RPM) LP, then artists started recording 2xLPs, with bonus tracks that wouldn't fit on the CD. The definition of an album, even in terms of how long it should be, doesn't seem very clear cut.
Personally I like the single 33RPM LP kind, as exemplified with Kraftwerk's Computer World and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, but then again maybe I've got a short attention span. I wouldn't rule out double CDs such as Nine Inch Nails's The Fragile for special occasions when you've got about two hours to spare.
[Sneaking into a cinema is] not theft, because there were empty seats in the theater, so they weren't going to get any money even if I didn't go.
I know you're being sarcastic to illustrate that this really is immoral, but you can't equate any misdemeanour that exists with theft. Yes, sneaking into a cinema to watch a film is wrong. No, it's not theft. Taking the actual film reels from the projector, so that the other people in the cinema can't watch the film any more, would be theft.
Employees confirmed in interviews that they could decline overtime requests without penalty.
It's worth noting that sometimes companies like these will order their employees to lie about forced overtime, with the consequence of firing them if they tell the truth.