>those who've personally seen the digital StarWars >have reported that the artifacts become glaringly > obvious when projected across a 50 foot screen.
I didn't get to see the digital version of TPM myself, so I can't speak for the quality of Lucas' work. But I *DID* get to see BOTH the film AND digital versions of Toy Story 2.
And the digital print of TS2 *WAS* superior in almost every conceivable way... and *NO* artifacts visible, even on a 50ft screen.
Perhaps all George Lucas needs to do is give Steve Jobs a call? I'm sure Steve would *love* to have Pixar give Lucasfilm a helping hand. Perhaps in exchange for another little Pixar / Star Wars / Apple / Quicktime cross-promotional deal?
>Interesting. Is there really any benefit from >transmitting this rather that shipping cell? >Security? Or is it just a PR gimmic?
Well, yeah... a big one: Quality!
Now, I dunno about transmitting vs. FedExing a big honkin hard drive, but vs shipping *cell* (old style film to be viewed on a standard analog projector), the quality of the digital "print" will be much improved.
Now, I know the industry talking heads like roger ebert like to bash digital filming, distro, and projection. But they've got it all wrong. I've seen the difference WITH MY OWN EYES between an analog film print and a digital projection OF THE SAME MOVIE.
Yes, I was fortunate enough to live near one of the theaters that was showing Toy Story 2 digitally. I saw it on a standard film projection screen first, and saw the digital version a week or so later...
And lemme tell ya... cells (film) don't hold ANYTHING on digital! I'm talking PERFECT picture, PREFECT sound, PERFECT sync between the two, more vibrant colors, NO visual artifacts, NO JITTER!!!
Digital film prooved to be superior in every way.
Dinosaurs like ebert and co. need to get off their luddite high horses and get with the times. Digital film doesn't subtract from the "atmosphere of the theatre" or whatever it is that he holds so holy.
George Lucas gets it. Episode Two is supposed to be filmed, edited and presented 100% digitally!!! Just think, it'll NEVER be contaminated with analog! I can't wait.
An entire different set of people would be bitching about how "this is *such* old news, Slashdot is so far behind, LinuxNews posted that X(random amount of time) ago".
It's a no-win situation. Post news early, and people will complain about the site being slashdotted. Wait, and people will complain about how you're not "cutting edge" anymore and how "behind the times" you are.
>It's not that peer-to-peer file sharing is wrong. >It's that a multi million dollar VC-funded >corporation
That's not saying very much thesedays, when a bunch of marketoids and a halfassed frontpage generated e-commerce site can get multi-million dollar VC.
A couple of weeks ago, MTV ran a special on the Ten Spot entitled "Napster: Grand Theft Audio" (ironic eh? using a play on the title of a popular COMPUTER game as an expose on their smear job of computer geeks).
Now, this being MTV, they did their best to slant the story against napster, protreying them as these evil pirates trying to murder innocent musicians (taking food off my baby's plate blah blah blah). And of course, metallica, and lars in particular, was the white knight that would slay the dragon, and save the damsel in distress.
Everything went according to plan... until they interviewed lars... and later when they interviewed the two napster guys.
And despite MTV's bias, everytime lars opened his ugly mouth he came off as the asshole that he is. He just couldn't help it, he sounded like a malicious SOB every time he spoke.
Meanwhile, the napster authors came off as just what they are: a couple of nice, kinda introverted, computer geeks; kinda shy and embarassed to be in the spotlight so much.
>Napster isn't a front corporation for a bunch of >innovative software engineers...
Well, yeah it is actually. This isn't some destructive monstor like microsoft.
What *IS* Napster? It's a nifty little program written by a couple of college kids. When they finished it, people told them it was really cool and that they could make some money off of it. So they started a company.
Now, that may not adhere to the RMS/ESR/Slashdot ideal of "immediately open the source and give the copyright to the FSF", but that *IS* how a lot of innovative companies get their start.
And guess what? They didn't sell out. Did you know that thet don't run their own company? They hired professional management and a CEO and returned to codeing. Think they are liveing the life of the ostantiously wealthy? Think again. They (if Newsweek is to be beleived) share a small apartment in San Mateo. No Feraris, Porches, or beamers either. Try a '94 Honda.
>The problem is that it is much too easy for >people of a 'legally responsible age' (whatever >that should mean) to hide behind their computer >and spout off about someone else.
1) Since when is libel a CRIMINAL offense??? I was always under the impression before that it was a civil matter and up to the wronged to file suit. Why is the state involved at all?
2) It's been a long time since I took that journalism elective, but I KNOW that the prof said libel is VERY hard to prove, and that there are a number of factors that must all be true:
1)The statement must be untrue. 2)The statement must be intended to cause harm. 3)The statement must actually cause harm.
And the one that strikes me as important in this case...
4)The statement, while untrue, must be presented as a beleiveable truth.
That it has to be a BELEIVABLE truth is most important. Remember jerry falwell's libel suit against Larry Flynt (publisher of Hustler)? Flynt had published an article accusing falwell of having an incestous relationship with his own mother. The court ruled that since no one would *ever* beleive that the "oh so very virtuous" reverend jerry falwell would do such a thing, it was NOT being presented as the truth, and therefore NOT libel.
Kids call each other names all the time. But if a grade schooler calls a classmate a "donkey raping shit eater" is he actually implying that his classmate has unconsentual intercourse with donkeys and eats feces? NO!!! Of course not! Now, if he'd doctored a convincing image in Photoshop to make it look like he had photographic PROOF that the accused raped donkeys and ate shit, that might be abother story, but kids call each other names all the time. Full grown adults call each other names too. Ever been been to a UF/FSU game? Ever listen to what Berkeley/Stanford grads call each other?
We may only be hearing from Carmack thus far, but..
I've been following his.plan updates for years now. And, though I may have disagreed with him on some occasions ("Apple sucks" comes to mind, tho he sure seems to have changed his opinion there), I've never had reason to suspect that he was being untruthful or deceitful. If you'll forgive the cliches, he seems to be a "shoot from the hip, call it like he sees it" kind of guy.
And he's also a kick-ass programmer in every imaginable way.
All things considered, I'm more inclined *BY FAR* to beleive John Carmack than a couple of anal-retentive suits, and their PR/marketing drones.
>Did anyone who watched the Dune trailer get the >shivers when they saw Paul's character with the >spice-blue eyes?
More like the shudders.
As much as it pains me, I gotta agree with an AC here. If you do a frame-by-frame on the.mov, you can see Paul's glowing eyes ILLUMINATING HIS FOREHEAD!!! Tell me where in the book it said that the Eyes of Ibad acted like that?!?!?
More probs:
Nowhere in the trailer is anyone wearing anything resembling a stillsuit! And I don't mean the bodybuilder rubber jobbies from lynch's flick. NOTHING that these guys wear looks sturdy and body fitting enough to be a stillsuit, not even the outfits where they weat the masks.
Speaking of face masks... HELLO!!! Stillsuits use nose tubes (called filt-plugs I think)! That wasn't a lynchism, that's from the book!
The Baron Harkonen does NOT look so fat that he would require a suspensor belt to stay up. Also not a lynchism, he needed suspensors in the book. Tho, IIRC, he couldn't acutally fly in the book, just bounce around real good when he had to (getting away from the tooth).
Also, that orange hair color is NOT natural by any means. You need Manic Panic dye to get your hair to look like that. The Harkonens were supposed to be NATURAL redheads.
I don't recall Duke Leto being a blonde in the book. We're talking feudal families with inherited charistics here! In all the books, Harkonens tended to be redheads, Atradies had black hair, and Corrino had the blonde genes. Kinda like the Hapsburgs of Spain were known for big noses and pronounced chins.
The Reverend Mother (where did they get "Bene Gesserit Mother" for a title, or why didn't they use her name (Helen Gaius Moheium (bad spelling on my part, I know))) looks most undignified. Like a cheap carnival foutune teller. The Bene Gesserit Order was RICH. And this was a very advanced HIGH TECH (except for computers) soceity! A reverend mother would not be dressed in gaudy rags like that!
Can you say "water dicipline"? Can you say "lack of any evidence therof"?
Looks like this one is gonna be just as bad as that david lynch monstrosity. And as bad as lynch mangled the plot (wierding modules? heart plugs? rain on Arrakis at the end of the FIRST book??? Give me a page number. I dare you), at least he captured the ATMOSPHERE fairly good. You could actually beleive that lynch's movie took place on a water starved planet like Arrakis. And you could beleive that the nobility were nobles, and the Imperial Court was rich and decadent.
Who knows if this mini-series will get the plot right or not. It's obvious that they've failed on several points however, and have totally failed to capture the atmposphere.
Wouldn't that be the irony? If we got one Dune movie with the atmosphere but no plot, and another with the plot but no atmosphere?
What about the portion of the population that already have natural (grey matter only) photographic memories?
Are they commiting copyright violation every time they read a book?
Remember the end of the british film adaption of Farenheight 451? All the guys memorising and repeating the texts of banned and burned books?
I sure hope none of those books were copyrighted in the US. Forget the British laws requiring books to be burned. Those American copyright lawyers will pursue you to the ends of the Earth (well, to Norway at least), if they even THINK that you MIGHT be violating any copyright.
I just moved to San Francisco (okay, not the valley, but all the same cost-of-living issues) from Orlando, FL.
Now, Florida is supposed to have one of the lowest costs of living, no state income tax, and all the nice things that draws old people. Well, there's a certian mythology to the low Florida COL as well... just wait till you get your first July power bill, whwn you've been running your AC all month.
That said, in the two months I've lived in SF, I've noticed only two things that are appreciably more expensive than in Florida: Housing and Gas.
I'll start with gas. It's much less of an issue than you'd think. Fact is, for all the bad rep it gets, MUNI (SF public transit busses/subways) is quite reliable and timely. Only on the weekends have I ever had to wait an excessive (IMO) amount of time. The Van Ness/Mission/SOMA/Haight corridors that get the the majority of the techie commute are all served by multiple lines of both busses and, except for Van Ness, LRVs. Sure, if you decide to live in the scummy areas like hunters point, MUNI is gonna suck. But if you live anywhere liveable, MUNI or BART will get you there. And you can buy a monthly pass for MUNI for only $35. Sure, gas is expensive. But since my arrival, I've only had to drive when I've left the city on a weekend. I've used only a tiny fraction of the gas I would've used in this time, were I still in Orlando (whose public transit sucks to the point where it may as well be nonexistant).
Housing... That's the tricky bit. Yes it's a lot more expensive here. I'm paying more for a smaller place than I was in Fl. But, from what I gather, $900 for a one bedroom flat in Bernal Heights with all utilities except DSL included is pretty good. And ya know how that happened? (buzzword bingo time) NETWORKING!!! (the social kind, not the data kind) Yes, if you take the first apartment you see in the classifieds or on the net, you're gonna get fleeced. But if you talk to people, talk to your co-workers, get in on shared rentals or TICs, you can find a good place for a good price. It can be done, you just gotta do it, and bw willing to break out of your internet/classifieds shell and TALK TO PEOPLE!
Net result?
Even with these "horribly" high costs of living, a salary only 25% (gross) higher than what I was making in Orlando, is leaving me with TWICE as much disposable income (after rent/car/student loans/etc) as before. Oh, and that's also AFTER taking into account the highet taxes as well.
>your neighbors want (maybe) the service without >1) paying for it in taxes
California, and the bay area in particular, is ALREADY one of the most heavily taxed areas in the country, with perhaps only NYC and Boston being more heavily taxed.
The problem is not that we're not paying enough taxes... we're paying too much as it is. The problem is that the tax dollars we pay are wasted on useless crap that doesn't benefit us, or are, in some cases, even diverted out of the local community!
>and 2) living near the lines.
Well, they could do it like BART, and build the majority undergound. An underground BART line is no bother to live near, and, if placed properly, wouldn't even require a unsightly parking lot. Witness the downtown Berkeley BART station for example.
LIVE on TNT, from the UN Arena in downtown Manhattan it's....
World Diplomacy Nitro Live!!!
Tonight in our main event, US President Jessee "The Body" Ventura fights Saddam "The Iron Sheik" Hussain in a no-holds-barred cage match to determine once and for all who gets to control Kuwait!!!
But first, Slobo "The Butcher" Milosovich fights to keep Serbia's right to murder Albanians. But WAIT!!! He's fighting to keep *Austrian* peacekeepers out of Kosova! And you know what that means, ladies and gentlemen. Repersenting his native Austria against Milosovich: Arnold "The Terminator" Schwartzenegger!!!
Yeah, it was pretty sweet. I usually alternated between PRK and Real Radio WTKS. Howard in the morning, Monsters during lunch, passed on Phillips in the afternoon usually for WPRK, Drew at night, and, after thet got rid of love lines for that phil hendrie guy, WPRK again at night. All of that interspersed with TV, work, and a doven other things tho.
I moved to California about a month ago, and have been hurting, radiowise, ever since. The only thing radio stations here have on Orlando radio is better sponsered concerts and music festivals.
What REALLY hurts is that there's no SanFran equivelent of Real Radio (at least not that I've found so far).
Ameoba Records in Berkeley, however, puts DIY to shame, as much as it pains me to say it.
>They said they only saw one download from an >unsigned band int the 48hrs they were monitoring >traffic
Do you have ANY clue how napster works? I guess not, you're just another AC troll. But since you *are* just an AC, and too dumb to figure it out yourself, I'll elaborate.
Napster is ONLY a search engine. Logging on to it, as metallica claims that their mercenarys had done, you could determine how many people were OFFERING a given MP3. But you could NOT track how many people were downloading those MP3s. ALL file transfers are peer-to-peer. The MP3 files NEVER pass through Napster servers. To do what you claim metallica did, you'd have to monitor ALL traffic between EVERY ip address logged into Napster; something very detectable, and highly illegal.
YOU've exposed YOURSELF as being not just clueless, but a complete cretin as well.
>maybe if you said it right, i bet you asked about >"adams package" or something. hard
Okay dickwad, if I thought the name was "adams package" how did I get a search string that returned "Atom and his Package" in napster?!?!?
Now, the list of links you found with "just one search"
http://www.cpcn.com/articles/091798/ear.person.s html -- Can't order CDs
http://www.atomandhispackage.com/ -- You have to send money to some outfit in Gainsville to order CDs -- no SSL credit card option -- Yeah, riiiight.
http://www.midheaven.com/bin/state.cgi/204735628 1/artists/atom.an -- Returned an "internal server error" message
http://val.looksmart.com/eus1/eus52213/eus156227 /eus156477/eus522 -- Returns "no longer exists on our servers"
http://atomandhispackage.webjump.com/ -- Can't order CDs -- Takes forever and a day to load
http://expage.com/page/atomgo -- Can't order CDs
http://audiofind.net/atom_and_his_package.html -- Can't order CDs -- but you CAN DL MP3s
I'm not gonna bother with the rest of your links. I suspect they're just as defective as the first few. Only ONE of the links offers his CDs for sale, and that ONE just tells you to send money to Gainesville w/ NO secure credit card option. Not bloody likely.
>theres an electric fetus in just about >every city.
Really?
(http://yp.yahoo.com/py/ypResults.py?stx=electri c+fetus&stp=a&city=Orlando&state=FL&slt=28.538099&sln=-81.379402&cs=4&Search%A0Now=Search%A0 Now
Sorry, no electric fetus found in or nearby Orlando, FL. )
>the download was done because somebody wanted to >avoid buy a CD, not because somebody wanted to >check this no-name band out.
I happen to own ALL THREE of his CDs!!!
A quick check of his website shows that those three (self titled, Making Love, and A soceity of People named Elihu) are the only releases he's had in CD form (excepting the limited edition Fracture release).
Yeah, I downloaded some of my Atom MP3s before I owned the CDs. But if you know who Atom is, then you know that it's HARD AS HELL to find his CDs in stores! This ain't something tou can pick up at best buy, tower, or virgin. I was living in Orlando, FL at the time, and even most indie stores had no idea what I was talking about. Finally, almost a year after I first heard "Avenger", I found a guy working at DIY Records who knew who I was talking about and was able to special order them for me. And even then, it took about a month and a half for me to get all three.
And guess what? The entire time, I was downloading every Atom MP3 I could find! Not because I wanted to avoid paying for the CDs, but because I didn't want to wait till I could find a store that knew what I was talking about. And you know what else? Napster made the search easier!
So I had a few MP3s BEFORE I owned the CDs. Bog F-ing deal!!! I guess the admission I paied to see him live TWICE, when he toured through Florida, the Shirt and sticker I bought, and the purchase of the three CDs means SQUAT because I had a few MP3s before the CDs. Napster stole from Atom.
Yeah right.
You can take your "the download was because you wanted to avoid paying for the CDs" arguement and stick it up your ass!
>I know how to get onto AOL, and I will say that I >have used AOL a couple of times...
So he's an AOLuser! That should be enough to show his uter cluelessness right there, but...
>Now, are we aware of the Gnutellas and all these >other things? Of course we are, but you can only >take it one step at a time. And I believe, and >the people that we talk to about this, we >believe, that the minute some of these companies >become active
Please enlighten me lars. What company is responsible for gnutella? Freenet? FTP? IRC? Usenet?
>We believe that as quickly as they can make it >untraceable we believe that you can find a way to >fuck with it, and we have already heard about >different ways of doing that.
Just what way does he know of to "fuck with" Freenet? Gnutella? IRC? Anonymous remail posts to usenet? Somehow, I have more confidence in the intelligence of the computer geeks of the world than that of lars' army of metalhead and legal drones.
>if you have the energy and the resources to chase >'em -- and that's one thing we have is a lot of >energy and a lot of resources
>there will never be a point where they will >be uncatchable
Uh yeah... look at the resources to takes to trace down the author of a virus, either melissia or love bug. It takes joint evvorts of the FBI, NSA, and heaps of other police agancys to track down ONE person sending out an illegal file. Imagine going through that for EVERY metallica MP3 ever traded. Does anyone thing that then feds care to go through that much trouble? Methinks lars thinks his army of metalheads is bigger than it is. And with the advent of Freenet, it'g gonna get MUCH HARDER to track the originator of any given file.
Given enough resources, the NSA could intercept and decrypt every 4096 bit encrypted email too. Only problem is that those resources (gobs of supercomputers) wouldn't fit on the surface of the entire Earth.
>going on the Internet and getting 1st generation, >perfect digital copies of master recordings from >all the world,
Complete ignorant bullshit. Plain and simple. The.wav's or AIFFs are NOT being traded, MP3s are. MP3 is a lossy compression scheme and delivers far from "perfect digital copies of master recordings". You might not be able to tell the difference of crappy computer speakers, or the $2 POS headphones that come with your discman (assuming you convert MP3s to red book). But on a REAL stereo with GOOD speakers, you *CAN* tell that the MP3 leaves much to be desired! Perhaps metallica has blasted their eardrums in front of 50KW amps long enough thay THEY can't tell the difference. But on MY stereo, *I* can tell the difference!!!
That's why if it's an MP3 worth listening to in the first place, I make a point of getting the CD ASAP! There IS a noticeable difference. And if the MP3 is not worth getting the CD, it's not worth listening to anyway, and gets deleted in short order. No harm done. No loss of a sale. Too bad metalheads are too dumb to understand this.
>when we monitored Napster for 48 hours three >weekends ago, we came up with the 1.4 million >downloads of Metallica music, there was one, one >downloading -- one! of an unsigned artist the >whole time.
More lies! More bullshit! When I first started useing Napster, I was *easily* able to find MP3s for several bands I like who are NOT signed to a label; not within 48 hours, but within *FOUR* hours!!! Some of those are listed in a seperate post of mine on this topic. I won't bother repeating them. I HAVE bought several CDs from these bands... the ones that HAVE released CDs that is. Some of the bands I have on MP3 have ONLY released MP3s ao far!
Simple lies, arrogance, RIAA propaganda, or for whatever reason, metallica has displayed a COMPLETE lack of clue.
>And you aren't the least bit suspicious that that >number is cooked up?
You might say that...
Unsigned bands whose songs I've DLed from Napster:
Atom and His Package Skif Dank Johnny Socko Discount Gigolo Big & the Barflies Don't Know Jack Nature Kids The Savoys Headboard The Usuals The Spitvalves Edna's Goldfish
That's just off the top of my head, WITHOUT going through my MP3 folders to check. Fair bit more than one, eh? Now, some of these may or may not be associated with little indie labels, I'm not 100% sure, but NONE of them have whored themselved out to the RIAA majors.
>In addition, the fact that Metallica only went >after those they believed (although I still >believe screen and file names are not wholly >legitimate forms of proof) to be trading in >*their* music
Oh really? Then where was the news story about metallica dropping their lawsuit against napster after the 300,000-odd users were banned?
>suggests that they are not in favor of destroying >Napster and those like it,
Have you so soon forgotten the yahoo chat where he said that the ideal outcome would be the total destruction of napster?
He's pandering to the audience. He knows that slashdot users are more pro-technology than the common dirty metalhead type. So for a hostile audience, he tries to appear more conciliatory; whilst with their core metalhead hive, it's "destroy anything the masters don't like".
>Nobody who has access to broadband internet >access buys CD's anymore.
Well lets see. I've got access to an OC3 at work, and a 512Kbps dsl at home. I dunno what UC has for bandwidth, but it's undoubtedly pretty high. Is that "broadband" enough for ya?
I bought three CDs in the last week.
Your tautology is disproven. Your auguement is invalid.
What you (so convinently for RIAA/metallica schills) fail to mention is that colleges have been caveing in left to right to the RIAA's pressure to ban napster.
Or have you so convinently (for RIAA/metallica schills) forgotten that fact?
Or have you so convinently (for RIAA/metallica schills) missed the stories on slashdot the last few months about colleges caveing in to RIAA pressure to ban napster?
Or have you so convinently (for RIAA/metallica schills) forgotten that college students are among the highest target market for *USEDU CD sales?
A while back someone had posted a link to a list of colleges and universities that are supplicating themselves before the RIAA and banning napster on campus.
It'd be intresting to see if the study bothered to take into account the fact that the administration of these schools DID cave in to pressure and see if sales of CDs are HIGHER near colleges where MP3s are banned.
Or could it *POSSIBLY* be that college students are traditionally the most socially consious and actively progressive element of soceity; more apt to *PROTEST* injustice, and more apt to *BOYCOTT* RIAA albums and MPAA movies?
john
The US does NOT have the largest military...
on
Censorship In China
·
· Score: 4
>I don't think Cuba poses much of a threat to the >country with the largest military in the world
The US does NOT have the largest military in the world.
Know who does? China!
I don't have current numbers, but as of Desert Storm, the US was not even in the top five. There was a big stink about how we were facing the "mother of all wars" against Iraq, which, at the time, and the fourth largest military in the world.
At the time we were number seven. Ahead of Iraq was china, Russia, and vietnam. Desert Storm prolly bumped Iraq out of the picture and upped us to number six.
But then, we've done nothing but cut back the military ever since Desert Storm, so I really doubt that we're still that high. And we certianly do NOT have the largest military in the world. That dubious honor still goes to china.
>Do you wear any clothes at all? Almost everything >you wear comes from China.
Lets see... Jacket: Sri Lanka. Shirt: USA. Shoes: UK. Pants: Mexico.
I'm not gonna bother checking to see where my underwear was made. But you get the point.
>The DVD player that you own is made in China.
Wrong again. Mine was made in Japan. As was the DVD-ROM in my computer.
>Just about everything that is mass produced comes >from there.
Lets see... My car: Japan. My Mac: Ireland. My PC: Japan... (looking at the items on my desk) Telephone: Canada. Keyboard: Thailand BallPoint pen: Taiwan. Headphones: Taiwan Penguin Mints: Seattle... wait. The *box* that the mints are in was made in china.
You were saying something about how important china is to me?
>I can assure you, those $100 Nikes that you so >enjoy will cost twice as much.
And I couldn't care less. Never owned a pair of nikes. Never will. I'm confidant enough of myself not to have to be a trendy little pissant and try to "be like mike". Too bad you don't understand that that is possible.
>How long have people been trading CD-quality >MP3's via it?
It's never happened. Even at the 196 bitrate (the highest you regularly see on napster) an MP#, or an MP3, converted to AIFF and burned to a CD, will STILL be inferior to CD quality. That, and convinence, is why I have an extensive CD collection backing up my MP3s with high-quality audio.
I can understand the clueless, such as the the RIAA, metallica, dr dre, et al. not getting it, but you, as a slashdotter, should know better. The MP3 format purposely excludes part of the audio from the compression. And no audio compression scheme yet invented, not even the highest bitrate MP3, will decompress to a red book track equal to that from which the MP3 was ripped.
Sure, you might not be able to tell the difference on the crapy speakers hooked up to your computer, or the $2 headphones on your discman. But on a REAL stereo, with GOOD speakers, I GUARANTEE thae there's a difference.
Which is why CD sales are STILL increasing, in spite of napster "destroying" the industry. MP3s are no threat to any band that gets it. It's just too bad that there is such a seious clue shortage at the RIAA.
Slashdot Mirror
>those who've personally seen the digital StarWars
>have reported that the artifacts become glaringly
> obvious when projected across a 50 foot screen.
I didn't get to see the digital version of TPM myself, so I can't speak for the quality of Lucas' work. But I *DID* get to see BOTH the film AND digital versions of Toy Story 2.
And the digital print of TS2 *WAS* superior in almost every conceivable way... and *NO* artifacts visible, even on a 50ft screen.
Perhaps all George Lucas needs to do is give Steve Jobs a call? I'm sure Steve would *love* to have Pixar give Lucasfilm a helping hand. Perhaps in exchange for another little Pixar / Star Wars / Apple / Quicktime cross-promotional deal?
john
>Interesting. Is there really any benefit from
>transmitting this rather that shipping cell?
>Security? Or is it just a PR gimmic?
Well, yeah... a big one: Quality!
Now, I dunno about transmitting vs. FedExing a big honkin hard drive, but vs shipping *cell* (old style film to be viewed on a standard analog projector), the quality of the digital "print" will be much improved.
Now, I know the industry talking heads like roger ebert like to bash digital filming, distro, and projection. But they've got it all wrong. I've seen the difference WITH MY OWN EYES between an analog film print and a digital projection OF THE SAME MOVIE.
Yes, I was fortunate enough to live near one of the theaters that was showing Toy Story 2 digitally. I saw it on a standard film projection screen first, and saw the digital version a week or so later...
And lemme tell ya... cells (film) don't hold ANYTHING on digital! I'm talking PERFECT picture, PREFECT sound, PERFECT sync between the two, more vibrant colors, NO visual artifacts, NO JITTER!!!
Digital film prooved to be superior in every way.
Dinosaurs like ebert and co. need to get off their luddite high horses and get with the times. Digital film doesn't subtract from the "atmosphere of the theatre" or whatever it is that he holds so holy.
George Lucas gets it. Episode Two is supposed to be filmed, edited and presented 100% digitally!!! Just think, it'll NEVER be contaminated with analog! I can't wait.
john
You know exactly what would happen.
An entire different set of people would be bitching about how "this is *such* old news, Slashdot is so far behind, LinuxNews posted that X(random amount of time) ago".
It's a no-win situation. Post news early, and people will complain about the site being slashdotted. Wait, and people will complain about how you're not "cutting edge" anymore and how "behind the times" you are.
So whaddaya gonna do?
john
>It's not that peer-to-peer file sharing is wrong.
>It's that a multi million dollar VC-funded
>corporation
That's not saying very much thesedays, when a bunch of marketoids and a halfassed frontpage generated e-commerce site can get multi-million dollar VC.
A couple of weeks ago, MTV ran a special on the Ten Spot entitled "Napster: Grand Theft Audio" (ironic eh? using a play on the title of a popular COMPUTER game as an expose on their smear job of computer geeks).
Now, this being MTV, they did their best to slant the story against napster, protreying them as these evil pirates trying to murder innocent musicians (taking food off my baby's plate blah blah blah). And of course, metallica, and lars in particular, was the white knight that would slay the dragon, and save the damsel in distress.
Everything went according to plan... until they interviewed lars... and later when they interviewed the two napster guys.
And despite MTV's bias, everytime lars opened his ugly mouth he came off as the asshole that he is. He just couldn't help it, he sounded like a malicious SOB every time he spoke.
Meanwhile, the napster authors came off as just what they are: a couple of nice, kinda introverted, computer geeks; kinda shy and embarassed to be in the spotlight so much.
>Napster isn't a front corporation for a bunch of
>innovative software engineers...
Well, yeah it is actually. This isn't some destructive monstor like microsoft.
What *IS* Napster? It's a nifty little program written by a couple of college kids. When they finished it, people told them it was really cool and that they could make some money off of it. So they started a company.
Now, that may not adhere to the RMS/ESR/Slashdot ideal of "immediately open the source and give the copyright to the FSF", but that *IS* how a lot of innovative companies get their start.
And guess what? They didn't sell out. Did you know that thet don't run their own company? They hired professional management and a CEO and returned to codeing. Think they are liveing the life of the ostantiously wealthy? Think again. They (if Newsweek is to be beleived) share a small apartment in San Mateo. No Feraris, Porches, or beamers either. Try a '94 Honda.
Yeah... really evil guys.
john
>The problem is that it is much too easy for
>people of a 'legally responsible age' (whatever
>that should mean) to hide behind their computer
>and spout off about someone else.
1)
Since when is libel a CRIMINAL offense??? I was always under the impression before that it was a civil matter and up to the wronged to file suit. Why is the state involved at all?
2)
It's been a long time since I took that journalism elective, but I KNOW that the prof said libel is VERY hard to prove, and that there are a number of factors that must all be true:
1)The statement must be untrue.
2)The statement must be intended to cause harm.
3)The statement must actually cause harm.
And the one that strikes me as important in this case...
4)The statement, while untrue, must be presented as a beleiveable truth.
That it has to be a BELEIVABLE truth is most important. Remember jerry falwell's libel suit against Larry Flynt (publisher of Hustler)? Flynt had published an article accusing falwell of having an incestous relationship with his own mother. The court ruled that since no one would *ever* beleive that the "oh so very virtuous" reverend jerry falwell would do such a thing, it was NOT being presented as the truth, and therefore NOT libel.
Kids call each other names all the time. But if a grade schooler calls a classmate a "donkey raping shit eater" is he actually implying that his classmate has unconsentual intercourse with donkeys and eats feces? NO!!! Of course not! Now, if he'd doctored a convincing image in Photoshop to make it look like he had photographic PROOF that the accused raped donkeys and ate shit, that might be abother story, but kids call each other names all the time. Full grown adults call each other names too. Ever been been to a UF/FSU game? Ever listen to what Berkeley/Stanford grads call each other?
john
>You may think it's fair, but it's not "fair use"
>in the legal sense and is actually illegal. If
>that upsets you, change the law, don't break it.
Bzzzzttt!!! Wrongo!
If a law is unfair, you have a MORAL obligation to break it. Ever read a little essay called "Civil Disobedience", written by gool ol' Henry David?
Ever read anything by a guy by the name of Thomas Jefferson?
Don't they teach you little AC trolls about people like Ghandi, Rosa Parks, George Washington, and Nelson Mandella in grade school anymore?
Ya know, I doubt that whole "breaking away from the British Empire" thing was actually LEGAL under the law.
john
We may only be hearing from Carmack thus far, but..
.plan updates for years now. And, though I may have disagreed with him on some occasions ("Apple sucks" comes to mind, tho he sure seems to have changed his opinion there), I've never had reason to suspect that he was being untruthful or deceitful. If you'll forgive the cliches, he seems to be a "shoot from the hip, call it like he sees it" kind of guy.
I've been following his
And he's also a kick-ass programmer in every imaginable way.
All things considered, I'm more inclined *BY FAR* to beleive John Carmack than a couple of anal-retentive suits, and their PR/marketing drones.
john
>Did anyone who watched the Dune trailer get the
.mov, you can see Paul's glowing eyes ILLUMINATING HIS FOREHEAD!!! Tell me where in the book it said that the Eyes of Ibad acted like that?!?!?
>shivers when they saw Paul's character with the
>spice-blue eyes?
More like the shudders.
As much as it pains me, I gotta agree with an AC here. If you do a frame-by-frame on the
More probs:
Nowhere in the trailer is anyone wearing anything resembling a stillsuit! And I don't mean the bodybuilder rubber jobbies from lynch's flick. NOTHING that these guys wear looks sturdy and body fitting enough to be a stillsuit, not even the outfits where they weat the masks.
Speaking of face masks... HELLO!!! Stillsuits use nose tubes (called filt-plugs I think)! That wasn't a lynchism, that's from the book!
The Baron Harkonen does NOT look so fat that he would require a suspensor belt to stay up. Also not a lynchism, he needed suspensors in the book. Tho, IIRC, he couldn't acutally fly in the book, just bounce around real good when he had to (getting away from the tooth).
Also, that orange hair color is NOT natural by any means. You need Manic Panic dye to get your hair to look like that. The Harkonens were supposed to be NATURAL redheads.
I don't recall Duke Leto being a blonde in the book. We're talking feudal families with inherited charistics here! In all the books, Harkonens tended to be redheads, Atradies had black hair, and Corrino had the blonde genes. Kinda like the Hapsburgs of Spain were known for big noses and pronounced chins.
The Reverend Mother (where did they get "Bene Gesserit Mother" for a title, or why didn't they use her name (Helen Gaius Moheium (bad spelling on my part, I know))) looks most undignified. Like a cheap carnival foutune teller. The Bene Gesserit Order was RICH. And this was a very advanced HIGH TECH (except for computers) soceity! A reverend mother would not be dressed in gaudy rags like that!
Can you say "water dicipline"? Can you say "lack of any evidence therof"?
Looks like this one is gonna be just as bad as that david lynch monstrosity. And as bad as lynch mangled the plot (wierding modules? heart plugs? rain on Arrakis at the end of the FIRST book??? Give me a page number. I dare you), at least he captured the ATMOSPHERE fairly good. You could actually beleive that lynch's movie took place on a water starved planet like Arrakis. And you could beleive that the nobility were nobles, and the Imperial Court was rich and decadent.
Who knows if this mini-series will get the plot right or not. It's obvious that they've failed on several points however, and have totally failed to capture the atmposphere.
Wouldn't that be the irony? If we got one Dune movie with the atmosphere but no plot, and another with the plot but no atmosphere?
john
What about the portion of the population that already have natural (grey matter only) photographic memories?
Are they commiting copyright violation every time they read a book?
Remember the end of the british film adaption of Farenheight 451? All the guys memorising and repeating the texts of banned and burned books?
I sure hope none of those books were copyrighted in the US. Forget the British laws requiring books to be burned. Those American copyright lawyers will pursue you to the ends of the Earth (well, to Norway at least), if they even THINK that you MIGHT be violating any copyright.
john
I just moved to San Francisco (okay, not the valley, but all the same cost-of-living issues) from Orlando, FL.
Now, Florida is supposed to have one of the lowest costs of living, no state income tax, and all the nice things that draws old people. Well, there's a certian mythology to the low Florida COL as well... just wait till you get your first July power bill, whwn you've been running your AC all month.
That said, in the two months I've lived in SF, I've noticed only two things that are appreciably more expensive than in Florida: Housing and Gas.
I'll start with gas. It's much less of an issue than you'd think. Fact is, for all the bad rep it gets, MUNI (SF public transit busses/subways) is quite reliable and timely. Only on the weekends have I ever had to wait an excessive (IMO) amount of time. The Van Ness/Mission/SOMA/Haight corridors that get the the majority of the techie commute are all served by multiple lines of both busses and, except for Van Ness, LRVs. Sure, if you decide to live in the scummy areas like hunters point, MUNI is gonna suck. But if you live anywhere liveable, MUNI or BART will get you there. And you can buy a monthly pass for MUNI for only $35. Sure, gas is expensive. But since my arrival, I've only had to drive when I've left the city on a weekend. I've used only a tiny fraction of the gas I would've used in this time, were I still in Orlando (whose public transit sucks to the point where it may as well be nonexistant).
Housing... That's the tricky bit. Yes it's a lot more expensive here. I'm paying more for a smaller place than I was in Fl. But, from what I gather, $900 for a one bedroom flat in Bernal Heights with all utilities except DSL included is pretty good. And ya know how that happened? (buzzword bingo time) NETWORKING!!! (the social kind, not the data kind) Yes, if you take the first apartment you see in the classifieds or on the net, you're gonna get fleeced. But if you talk to people, talk to your co-workers, get in on shared rentals or TICs, you can find a good place for a good price. It can be done, you just gotta do it, and bw willing to break out of your internet/classifieds shell and TALK TO PEOPLE!
Net result?
Even with these "horribly" high costs of living, a salary only 25% (gross) higher than what I was making in Orlando, is leaving me with TWICE as much disposable income (after rent/car/student loans/etc) as before. Oh, and that's also AFTER taking into account the highet taxes as well.
john
>your neighbors want (maybe) the service without
>1) paying for it in taxes
California, and the bay area in particular, is ALREADY one of the most heavily taxed areas in the country, with perhaps only NYC and Boston being more heavily taxed.
The problem is not that we're not paying enough taxes... we're paying too much as it is. The problem is that the tax dollars we pay are wasted on useless crap that doesn't benefit us, or are, in some cases, even diverted out of the local community!
>and 2) living near the lines.
Well, they could do it like BART, and build the majority undergound. An underground BART line is no bother to live near, and, if placed properly, wouldn't even require a unsightly parking lot. Witness the downtown Berkeley BART station for example.
john
LIVE on TNT, from the UN Arena in downtown Manhattan it's....
World Diplomacy Nitro Live!!!
Tonight in our main event, US President Jessee "The Body" Ventura fights Saddam "The Iron Sheik" Hussain in a no-holds-barred cage match to determine once and for all who gets to control Kuwait!!!
But first, Slobo "The Butcher" Milosovich fights to keep Serbia's right to murder Albanians. But WAIT!!! He's fighting to keep *Austrian* peacekeepers out of Kosova! And you know what that means, ladies and gentlemen. Repersenting his native Austria against Milosovich: Arnold "The Terminator" Schwartzenegger!!!
Let's get rrready to RRRRUMBLE!!!!
Cue theme music....
Ya know? That might not be a bad idea at all!
john
Yeah, it was pretty sweet. I usually alternated between PRK and Real Radio WTKS. Howard in the morning, Monsters during lunch, passed on Phillips in the afternoon usually for WPRK, Drew at night, and, after thet got rid of love lines for that phil hendrie guy, WPRK again at night. All of that interspersed with TV, work, and a doven other things tho.
I moved to California about a month ago, and have been hurting, radiowise, ever since. The only thing radio stations here have on Orlando radio is better sponsered concerts and music festivals.
What REALLY hurts is that there's no SanFran equivelent of Real Radio (at least not that I've found so far).
Ameoba Records in Berkeley, however, puts DIY to shame, as much as it pains me to say it.
john
>They said they only saw one download from an
>unsigned band int the 48hrs they were monitoring
>traffic
Do you have ANY clue how napster works? I guess not, you're just another AC troll. But since you *are* just an AC, and too dumb to figure it out yourself, I'll elaborate.
Napster is ONLY a search engine. Logging on to it, as metallica claims that their mercenarys had done, you could determine how many people were OFFERING a given MP3. But you could NOT track how many people were downloading those MP3s. ALL file transfers are peer-to-peer. The MP3 files NEVER pass through Napster servers. To do what you claim metallica did, you'd have to monitor ALL traffic between EVERY ip address logged into Napster; something very detectable, and highly illegal.
YOU've exposed YOURSELF as being not just clueless, but a complete cretin as well.
john
>maybe if you said it right, i bet you asked about
>"adams package" or something. hard
Okay dickwad, if I thought the name was "adams package" how did I get a search string that returned "Atom and his Package" in napster?!?!?
Now, the list of links you found with "just one search"
http://www.cpcn.com/articles/091798/ear.person.
http://www.atomandhispackage.com/ -- You have to send money to some outfit in Gainsville to order CDs -- no SSL credit card option -- Yeah, riiiight.
http://www.midheaven.com/bin/state.cgi/20473562
http://val.looksmart.com/eus1/eus52213/eus15622
http://atomandhispackage.webjump.com/ -- Can't order CDs -- Takes forever and a day to load
http://expage.com/page/atomgo -- Can't order CDs
http://audiofind.net/atom_and_his_package.html -- Can't order CDs -- but you CAN DL MP3s
I'm not gonna bother with the rest of your links. I suspect they're just as defective as the first few. Only ONE of the links offers his CDs for sale, and that ONE just tells you to send money to Gainesville w/ NO secure credit card option. Not bloody likely.
>theres an electric fetus in just about
>every city.
Really?
(http://yp.yahoo.com/py/ypResults.py?stx=electr
Sorry, no electric fetus found in or nearby Orlando, FL. )
Not in Orlando.
Care to try again, asswipe?
john
>Johnny Socko is hardly an unsigned band.
I wasn't sure for 100% that none of the bands I listed were signed on indie labels.
But you have to admit, even though Asian Man has more quality bands signed than Virgin, that it's still a VERY small, independant, label.
Signing with Asian Man is vastly different from whoreing yourself out to the RIAA labels like virgin, sony, etc.
john
Try knowing what the hell you're talking about!
>the download was done because somebody wanted to
>avoid buy a CD, not because somebody wanted to
>check this no-name band out.
I happen to own ALL THREE of his CDs!!!
A quick check of his website shows that those three (self titled, Making Love, and A soceity of People named Elihu) are the only releases he's had in CD form (excepting the limited edition Fracture release).
Yeah, I downloaded some of my Atom MP3s before I owned the CDs. But if you know who Atom is, then you know that it's HARD AS HELL to find his CDs in stores! This ain't something tou can pick up at best buy, tower, or virgin. I was living in Orlando, FL at the time, and even most indie stores had no idea what I was talking about. Finally, almost a year after I first heard "Avenger", I found a guy working at DIY Records who knew who I was talking about and was able to special order them for me. And even then, it took about a month and a half for me to get all three.
And guess what? The entire time, I was downloading every Atom MP3 I could find! Not because I wanted to avoid paying for the CDs, but because I didn't want to wait till I could find a store that knew what I was talking about. And you know what else? Napster made the search easier!
So I had a few MP3s BEFORE I owned the CDs. Bog F-ing deal!!! I guess the admission I paied to see him live TWICE, when he toured through Florida, the Shirt and sticker I bought, and the purchase of the three CDs means SQUAT because I had a few MP3s before the CDs. Napster stole from Atom.
Yeah right.
You can take your "the download was because you wanted to avoid paying for the CDs" arguement and stick it up your ass!
john
>I know how to get onto AOL, and I will say that I
.wav's or AIFFs are NOT being traded, MP3s are. MP3 is a lossy compression scheme and delivers far from "perfect digital copies of master recordings". You might not be able to tell the difference of crappy computer speakers, or the $2 POS headphones that come with your discman (assuming you convert MP3s to red book). But on a REAL stereo with GOOD speakers, you *CAN* tell that the MP3 leaves much to be desired! Perhaps metallica has blasted their eardrums in front of 50KW amps long enough thay THEY can't tell the difference. But on MY stereo, *I* can tell the difference!!!
>have used AOL a couple of times...
So he's an AOLuser! That should be enough to show his uter cluelessness right there, but...
>Now, are we aware of the Gnutellas and all these
>other things? Of course we are, but you can only
>take it one step at a time. And I believe, and
>the people that we talk to about this, we
>believe, that the minute some of these companies
>become active
Please enlighten me lars. What company is responsible for gnutella? Freenet? FTP? IRC? Usenet?
>We believe that as quickly as they can make it
>untraceable we believe that you can find a way to
>fuck with it, and we have already heard about
>different ways of doing that.
Just what way does he know of to "fuck with" Freenet? Gnutella? IRC? Anonymous remail posts to usenet? Somehow, I have more confidence in the intelligence of the computer geeks of the world than that of lars' army of metalhead and legal drones.
>if you have the energy and the resources to chase
>'em -- and that's one thing we have is a lot of
>energy and a lot of resources
>there will never be a point where they will
>be uncatchable
Uh yeah... look at the resources to takes to trace down the author of a virus, either melissia or love bug. It takes joint evvorts of the FBI, NSA, and heaps of other police agancys to track down ONE person sending out an illegal file. Imagine going through that for EVERY metallica MP3 ever traded. Does anyone thing that then feds care to go through that much trouble? Methinks lars thinks his army of metalheads is bigger than it is. And with the advent of Freenet, it'g gonna get MUCH HARDER to track the originator of any given file.
Given enough resources, the NSA could intercept and decrypt every 4096 bit encrypted email too. Only problem is that those resources (gobs of supercomputers) wouldn't fit on the surface of the entire Earth.
>going on the Internet and getting 1st generation,
>perfect digital copies of master recordings from
>all the world,
Complete ignorant bullshit. Plain and simple. The
That's why if it's an MP3 worth listening to in the first place, I make a point of getting the CD ASAP! There IS a noticeable difference. And if the MP3 is not worth getting the CD, it's not worth listening to anyway, and gets deleted in short order. No harm done. No loss of a sale. Too bad metalheads are too dumb to understand this.
>when we monitored Napster for 48 hours three
>weekends ago, we came up with the 1.4 million
>downloads of Metallica music, there was one, one
>downloading -- one! of an unsigned artist the
>whole time.
More lies! More bullshit! When I first started useing Napster, I was *easily* able to find MP3s for several bands I like who are NOT signed to a label; not within 48 hours, but within *FOUR* hours!!! Some of those are listed in a seperate post of mine on this topic. I won't bother repeating them. I HAVE bought several CDs from these bands... the ones that HAVE released CDs that is. Some of the bands I have on MP3 have ONLY released MP3s ao far!
Simple lies, arrogance, RIAA propaganda, or for whatever reason, metallica has displayed a COMPLETE lack of clue.
john
>And you aren't the least bit suspicious that that
>number is cooked up?
You might say that...
Unsigned bands whose songs I've DLed from Napster:
Atom and His Package
Skif Dank
Johnny Socko
Discount
Gigolo Big & the Barflies
Don't Know Jack
Nature Kids
The Savoys
Headboard
The Usuals
The Spitvalves
Edna's Goldfish
That's just off the top of my head, WITHOUT going through my MP3 folders to check. Fair bit more than one, eh? Now, some of these may or may not be associated with little indie labels, I'm not 100% sure, but NONE of them have whored themselved out to the RIAA majors.
>In addition, the fact that Metallica only went
>after those they believed (although I still
>believe screen and file names are not wholly
>legitimate forms of proof) to be trading in
>*their* music
Oh really? Then where was the news story about metallica dropping their lawsuit against napster after the 300,000-odd users were banned?
>suggests that they are not in favor of destroying
>Napster and those like it,
Have you so soon forgotten the yahoo chat where he said that the ideal outcome would be the total destruction of napster?
He's pandering to the audience. He knows that slashdot users are more pro-technology than the common dirty metalhead type. So for a hostile audience, he tries to appear more conciliatory; whilst with their core metalhead hive, it's "destroy anything the masters don't like".
john
>Nobody who has access to broadband internet
>access buys CD's anymore.
Well lets see. I've got access to an OC3 at work, and a 512Kbps dsl at home. I dunno what UC has for bandwidth, but it's undoubtedly pretty high. Is that "broadband" enough for ya?
I bought three CDs in the last week.
Your tautology is disproven. Your auguement is invalid.
Next?
john
What you (so convinently for RIAA/metallica schills) fail to mention is that colleges have been caveing in left to right to the RIAA's pressure to ban napster.
Or have you so convinently (for RIAA/metallica schills) forgotten that fact?
Or have you so convinently (for RIAA/metallica schills) missed the stories on slashdot the last few months about colleges caveing in to RIAA pressure to ban napster?
Or have you so convinently (for RIAA/metallica schills) forgotten that college students are among the highest target market for *USEDU CD sales?
A while back someone had posted a link to a list of colleges and universities that are supplicating themselves before the RIAA and banning napster on campus.
It'd be intresting to see if the study bothered to take into account the fact that the administration of these schools DID cave in to pressure and see if sales of CDs are HIGHER near colleges where MP3s are banned.
Or could it *POSSIBLY* be that college students are traditionally the most socially consious and actively progressive element of soceity; more apt to *PROTEST* injustice, and more apt to *BOYCOTT* RIAA albums and MPAA movies?
john
>I don't think Cuba poses much of a threat to the
>country with the largest military in the world
The US does NOT have the largest military in the world.
Know who does? China!
I don't have current numbers, but as of Desert Storm, the US was not even in the top five. There was a big stink about how we were facing the "mother of all wars" against Iraq, which, at the time, and the fourth largest military in the world.
At the time we were number seven. Ahead of Iraq was china, Russia, and vietnam. Desert Storm prolly bumped Iraq out of the picture and upped us to number six.
But then, we've done nothing but cut back the military ever since Desert Storm, so I really doubt that we're still that high. And we certianly do NOT have the largest military in the world. That dubious honor still goes to china.
john
>Do you wear Gap clothes?
nope
>Do you wear Nikes?
nope
>Do you wear any clothes at all? Almost everything
>you wear comes from China.
Lets see... Jacket: Sri Lanka. Shirt: USA. Shoes: UK. Pants: Mexico.
I'm not gonna bother checking to see where my underwear was made. But you get the point.
>The DVD player that you own is made in China.
Wrong again. Mine was made in Japan. As was the DVD-ROM in my computer.
>Just about everything that is mass produced comes
>from there.
Lets see... My car: Japan. My Mac: Ireland. My PC: Japan... (looking at the items on my desk) Telephone: Canada. Keyboard: Thailand BallPoint pen: Taiwan. Headphones: Taiwan Penguin Mints: Seattle... wait. The *box* that the mints are in was made in china.
You were saying something about how important china is to me?
>I can assure you, those $100 Nikes that you so
>enjoy will cost twice as much.
And I couldn't care less. Never owned a pair of nikes. Never will. I'm confidant enough of myself not to have to be a trendy little pissant and try to "be like mike". Too bad you don't understand that that is possible.
john
>How long has Napster been out?
Dunno, exactly.
>How long have people been trading CD-quality
>MP3's via it?
It's never happened. Even at the 196 bitrate (the highest you regularly see on napster) an MP#, or an MP3, converted to AIFF and burned to a CD, will STILL be inferior to CD quality. That, and convinence, is why I have an extensive CD collection backing up my MP3s with high-quality audio.
I can understand the clueless, such as the the RIAA, metallica, dr dre, et al. not getting it, but you, as a slashdotter, should know better. The MP3 format purposely excludes part of the audio from the compression. And no audio compression scheme yet invented, not even the highest bitrate MP3, will decompress to a red book track equal to that from which the MP3 was ripped.
Sure, you might not be able to tell the difference on the crapy speakers hooked up to your computer, or the $2 headphones on your discman. But on a REAL stereo, with GOOD speakers, I GUARANTEE thae there's a difference.
Which is why CD sales are STILL increasing, in spite of napster "destroying" the industry. MP3s are no threat to any band that gets it. It's just too bad that there is such a seious clue shortage at the RIAA.
john