You obviously have no idea what a stock split is. First of all, the split happened a while ago. Second of all, a stock split does absolutely nothing to the intrinsic value of the stock. What was once 100 shares at $50/share is now 200 shares at $25/share. The price does not get lowered, and the market isn't flooded. Learn something about the stock market before you post.
What I and most other people are aguing is that you can make you own backup copies of your can opener, so why should DVD's be any different?
The obvious difference, in the MPAA and the RIAA's eyes, is the ease of copying. You can copy a CD in mere minutes. A DVD in a couple of hours. Both can be done with a few mouse clicks. Can you build your own can opener? Sure, but it will take a long time. Most will just spend another $20 for another can opener.
I really don't understand why the MPAA would make the "DVD=license" argument. Their argument should be based on copyright law and the exclusive right to copy. Saying that there is a license is foolish (because it leads to the free replacement argument), especially since there is no printed license anywhere on any DVD I've ever seen.
Oh, and the whole issue of DVDs and CDs containing copyrighted material, while a can opener doesn't is probably an issue also.
It's way more convenient and fast to pick up a pencil and write down an appointment/number in an organizer than to power up a Palm and tap in the info.
Completely agree. I tried using my Clie as a notetaking device and it failed miserably. Now I end up taking notes on a post it, transferring it to my Clie when I'm done.
What I do find the Clie useful for:
Appointments. I have a terrible memory sometimes and I always forgot when I had a meeting to go to. Now I just enter it into my Clie and check the Clie every morning.
Quick notes to self. Again with the memory problem. Sometimes I'll be out and suddenly remember to do something (pay the phone bill, etc.). But when I got home, I'd forget about it. Now I use Bug Me and write a note to myself and set an alarm for when I think I'll be home.
Quick games.
Off-line web browsing with Avant go.
E-book reading.
Lists. Because of the memory, I can keep lists of various items: grocery lists, books to read, etc., that I would have normally put on a post-it and forgot about.
Was it worth the $250 I spent on it? I don't think so. I probably should have gotten the more basic model. But it does come in handy. Could I live without it? Yes, but I don't want to now.
It was hard to make such copies for tape and impossible for vinyl, but this is trivial for CDs.
While it is much easier to make a copy of a CD, it is still pretty easy to make a copy of a cassette tape. Most cassette decks sold today are dual-decks. Put a tape in one deck, put a blank one in the other, hit a button, and it will record. It takes more time, but is still only the press of a button combined with monitoring the end of the tape being copied. Far from difficult.
I agree that Pronograffiti was crap except those two songs. But their follow-up album, 3 Sides to Every Story, was a great metal album. They advanced far beyond just hair metal, almost into progressive territory. But it is a very diverse album and one of my favorite albums of all time.
Whenever there is a thread about music, someone will bring up the argument that most current CDs only have 2 good songs on it, therefore necessitating downloads (nobody wants to pay $18 for 2 songs).
So use this thread to post CDs you have bought or heard that only had 1-2 good songs on it. Personally, I think that experience is rare. In most cases, if you like a particular song, there are other songs on the album that are similar in style and should be liked by you as well. The exception would be a situation where the "hit" song is totally unlike the rest of the album. For example, Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The song 1979 was all over the "soft rock" stations and I'm sure many people were surprised when they heard the rest of the album.)
But I'll kick it off by nominating a relatively old album: School of Fish from 1991. I loved the song Three Strange Days and even bought the CD single. The songs on the single were pretty good as well, so I bought the album. Ugh! No other good song on the entire album. Terrible disappointment (though the Amazon reviews are pretty high.)
When you legally acquire a copy of a copyrighted work you are allowed to do certain things with it; actions which fall into two categories, Use and Fair-Use. "Use" would be listening to a CD or watching a DVD for example. "Fair-use" seems to differ from country to country but might include such things as watching a DVD with a couple of your pals or (in the USA at least) making a backup copy for personal use.
I've no idea why people think backup copy is a right given to them. The copyright laws give the copyright owner the *EXCLUSIVE* right to copy, distribute, etc. works. (See this statute. A backup copy may be fair use or it may not, depending on how a judge interprets the fair use factors. But to automatically assume that a backup is fair use is wrong. (you're allowed to show a DVD to friends because it doesn't infringe the exclusive right to publicly perform a work.)
Whether or not the laws should be changed is another question, of course.
Most people are saying that if they buy a DVD and it becomes unplayable they shouldn't have to buy a new one because they can make a backup from their own materials. Thus my "make your own can opener" analogy. If you are too lazy to make the backup before it breaks, that's too bad for you, you'll have to buy a new one.
But that analogy is weak. What people here are arguing is that, by paying $20 for a DVD you have the right to be able to see that movie for the rest of their lives, even if you scratch the DVD; thus, the necessity of legal backups. What the MPAA would then counter with is that you don't get free "backups" of any other consumer product in the world. Why should DVDs be different?
Here is a
Wikipedia article on Precedent. The basics of it are as follows (with respect to Federal laws). Congress makes laws, signed by the President. When a case goes to court, the trial court rules based on the facts of the case and the applicable law. In some cases, the statute is very clear and it is applied by the judge. If a higher court has interpreted the law, the trial court is bound by the decision of the higher court. The trial court is required to interpret the law in the same way (if he doesn't he will just be overruled by the higher court anyway).
In the US, there are basically 3 layers of courts: the trial courts (formally known as the District Courts), the appellate courts (Court of Appeal), and the Supreme Court. The Courts of Appeal are divided into 13 different circuits, each circuit handling a particular territory (except the Federal Circuit) or type of case (for the Federal Circuit). A map of the Courts of Appeal is located here. Precedents from the Court of Appeal level are only applicable to the states in the Circuit. For example, a Ninth Circuit decision has no binding effect on Florida, but does have binding effect on California, Arizona, Nevada, and a bunch of other states. Decisions of the Supreme Court are binding on the entire country.
Since the DMCA is a fairly new law, I do not know if any appellate court has ever interpreted it. If the provision at issue in the DVD case has not been interpreted by a Court of Appeals in the Circuit of the case, the judge is free to interpret the law as she sees fit (based on, for example, legislative intent and policy issues).
Many of the responses to this question rely on the fact that when you buy a DVD, you are buying a license to view the movie. Could someone please point me to a link where that is argued by the content owners? I couldn't find one when Googling and it seems logical that the content providers DON'T want it considered to be a license, as copyright law already prevents unlawful distribution and copying.
That's not what I was talking about. The argument of some is that, when you buy a DVD and it becomes unplayable, you shouldn't have to buy a new one. Thus, the reason for a backup. The analogous argument is that when you buy a product (such as a can opener) and it becomes unusable, you buy a new can opener.
Allow me to play devil's advocate here. For many, the argument is that you should be able to produce a backup, in case the original gets damaged (or to prevent the original from getting damaged). If you buy a can opener and it breaks, do you expect to get another can opener for free (ignoring warranties, assume it's been 3 years since you bought the can opener)?
More relevant to the copyright law: when you buy a book, do you copy/scan every page in the book, on the off chance that your dog will eat the book? Why should DVDs be any different?
A trial court judge is REQUIRED to follow precedent. This case is fairly clear: under the DMCA, ALL copy protection circumvention is illegal. The judge really has no choice, unless she rules the DMCA unconstitutional. We really aren't going to get final word until the appeals are through, which will take years.
Anandtech has performed benchmark tests on Doom 3. You can see the results in its review of the GeForce 5900. You can see the results starting at page 22 of the review.
At 1024x768 medium quality no AA/Aniso, the Geforce 5900 was able to achieve 104 fps, compared to the Radeon 9800's 77 fps. Unfortunately, the game seems to be very dependent on video game performance: a Radeon 9600 could only get 40 fps and a 9200 can only get 19 fps. And remember, this is at 1024 x 768. At 1600 x 1200, the performance drops significantly. The drop is even more significant when 4X AA/8X Quality Aniso is turned on, with the Radeon 9800 only getting 42 fps and the GeForce 5900 getting 53 fps. In comparison, UT2003 gets 142 fps with the 5900 and 137 with the 9800 with the same AA settings at 1024 x 768.
Unless performance is improved drastically from the Alpha version, it looks like claims of being able to use older hardware is a little premature.
I have multiple PC's at home. I do most of my work in the living room, but it would be nice to be able to alternately work on my taxes from the upstairs office. No can do, without a second license. At least Micro$oft's Activation method lets you have two copies in most cases.
I thought that you could install Turbo Tax on multiple computers and that the only limitation was that you could only file from the first installation? If so, it's not that big of a limitation for a multi-computer household, as you install it in the living room, but can work on the file in your upstairs office, just transfer the file later for filing.
Probably because the record counts the sales of the first week after release, i.e. he sold a lot more copies the second week, but that doesn't matter since the record covers first-week sales.
They count sales every week. Most records don't sell more records its second week than its first week (One by the Beatles being an obvious exception). The simple fact is that no record has ever sold 7 million copies in two weeks. The poster who said so was pulling numbers out of thin air.
I don't know if price will make that much of a difference at all. I chose PS2 because of GTA and GTA3. Since most sports games (the biggest console sellers) are available on all 3 consoles, it doesn't make sense for me to get an XBox, considering I already have a library of games and most games will be on all systems. Even at $150, I would choose PS2 because of its superior library. If MS really wants to be competitive, they have to get some HUGE exclusive releases. If EASports were to become MS exclusive, the gap between PS2 and XBox sales would shift dramatically in the fall (when the hockey, football, and basketball games get released). Of course, EA isn't about to give up the PS2, because of all the sales it has there.
Who was first to 1 GHz? Here's a hint - not Intel.
Who was first to 2.4 GHz? Oh, that's right, Intel reached that over a year ago while AMD still hasn't reached it.
The bottom line is simple: AMD is generally less expensive to operate at the same benchmark speed. But Intel is faster at the high-end, both in clock speed and in benchmark speed.
The difference is between a client-side query and a server-side query. The client-side has a few dozen records. The server-side has millions of records.
I would like to see the business case for how lyrics damage record sales.
Lyric sites probably don't damage record sales, but they almost certainly damage sales of song books. For all you, "I want to support the artist" people, just remember that the song writers get a cut of those song books also.
Of course, most non-musicians don't buy song books anyway, so their accessing of lyric sites don't hurt at all (and may help, as others have pointed out, by letting users become aware of the title/artist of a lyric), but I just thought I'd point out the other side of the argument.
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You obviously have no idea what a stock split is. First of all, the split happened a while ago. Second of all, a stock split does absolutely nothing to the intrinsic value of the stock. What was once 100 shares at $50/share is now 200 shares at $25/share. The price does not get lowered, and the market isn't flooded. Learn something about the stock market before you post.
Verizon charges $2.99 for unlimited SMS or 10 cents/2 cents for outgoing/incoming messages.
The obvious difference, in the MPAA and the RIAA's eyes, is the ease of copying. You can copy a CD in mere minutes. A DVD in a couple of hours. Both can be done with a few mouse clicks. Can you build your own can opener? Sure, but it will take a long time. Most will just spend another $20 for another can opener.
I really don't understand why the MPAA would make the "DVD=license" argument. Their argument should be based on copyright law and the exclusive right to copy. Saying that there is a license is foolish (because it leads to the free replacement argument), especially since there is no printed license anywhere on any DVD I've ever seen.
Oh, and the whole issue of DVDs and CDs containing copyrighted material, while a can opener doesn't is probably an issue also.
I get about 30 fps from the Benchmark.exe program during the botmatch portion. The game is still playable against the computer (though not online).
Completely agree. I tried using my Clie as a notetaking device and it failed miserably. Now I end up taking notes on a post it, transferring it to my Clie when I'm done.
What I do find the Clie useful for:
- Appointments. I have a terrible memory sometimes and I always forgot when I had a meeting to go to. Now I just enter it into my Clie and check the Clie every morning.
- Quick notes to self. Again with the memory problem. Sometimes I'll be out and suddenly remember to do something (pay the phone bill, etc.). But when I got home, I'd forget about it. Now I use Bug Me and write a note to myself and set an alarm for when I think I'll be home.
- Quick games.
- Off-line web browsing with Avant go.
- E-book reading.
- Lists. Because of the memory, I can keep lists of various items: grocery lists, books to read, etc., that I would have normally put on a post-it and forgot about.
Was it worth the $250 I spent on it? I don't think so. I probably should have gotten the more basic model. But it does come in handy. Could I live without it? Yes, but I don't want to now.While it is much easier to make a copy of a CD, it is still pretty easy to make a copy of a cassette tape. Most cassette decks sold today are dual-decks. Put a tape in one deck, put a blank one in the other, hit a button, and it will record. It takes more time, but is still only the press of a button combined with monitoring the end of the tape being copied. Far from difficult.
I agree that Pronograffiti was crap except those two songs. But their follow-up album, 3 Sides to Every Story, was a great metal album. They advanced far beyond just hair metal, almost into progressive territory. But it is a very diverse album and one of my favorite albums of all time.
So use this thread to post CDs you have bought or heard that only had 1-2 good songs on it. Personally, I think that experience is rare. In most cases, if you like a particular song, there are other songs on the album that are similar in style and should be liked by you as well. The exception would be a situation where the "hit" song is totally unlike the rest of the album. For example, Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The song 1979 was all over the "soft rock" stations and I'm sure many people were surprised when they heard the rest of the album.)
But I'll kick it off by nominating a relatively old album: School of Fish from 1991. I loved the song Three Strange Days and even bought the CD single. The songs on the single were pretty good as well, so I bought the album. Ugh! No other good song on the entire album. Terrible disappointment (though the Amazon reviews are pretty high.)
I've no idea why people think backup copy is a right given to them. The copyright laws give the copyright owner the *EXCLUSIVE* right to copy, distribute, etc. works. (See this statute. A backup copy may be fair use or it may not, depending on how a judge interprets the fair use factors. But to automatically assume that a backup is fair use is wrong. (you're allowed to show a DVD to friends because it doesn't infringe the exclusive right to publicly perform a work.)
Whether or not the laws should be changed is another question, of course.
But that analogy is weak. What people here are arguing is that, by paying $20 for a DVD you have the right to be able to see that movie for the rest of their lives, even if you scratch the DVD; thus, the necessity of legal backups. What the MPAA would then counter with is that you don't get free "backups" of any other consumer product in the world. Why should DVDs be different?
In the US, there are basically 3 layers of courts: the trial courts (formally known as the District Courts), the appellate courts (Court of Appeal), and the Supreme Court. The Courts of Appeal are divided into 13 different circuits, each circuit handling a particular territory (except the Federal Circuit) or type of case (for the Federal Circuit). A map of the Courts of Appeal is located here. Precedents from the Court of Appeal level are only applicable to the states in the Circuit. For example, a Ninth Circuit decision has no binding effect on Florida, but does have binding effect on California, Arizona, Nevada, and a bunch of other states. Decisions of the Supreme Court are binding on the entire country.
Since the DMCA is a fairly new law, I do not know if any appellate court has ever interpreted it. If the provision at issue in the DVD case has not been interpreted by a Court of Appeals in the Circuit of the case, the judge is free to interpret the law as she sees fit (based on, for example, legislative intent and policy issues).
The judge in this case, Susan Illston, is part of the Northern District of California, which is a part of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Many of the responses to this question rely on the fact that when you buy a DVD, you are buying a license to view the movie. Could someone please point me to a link where that is argued by the content owners? I couldn't find one when Googling and it seems logical that the content providers DON'T want it considered to be a license, as copyright law already prevents unlawful distribution and copying.
That's not what I was talking about. The argument of some is that, when you buy a DVD and it becomes unplayable, you shouldn't have to buy a new one. Thus, the reason for a backup. The analogous argument is that when you buy a product (such as a can opener) and it becomes unusable, you buy a new can opener.
More relevant to the copyright law: when you buy a book, do you copy/scan every page in the book, on the off chance that your dog will eat the book? Why should DVDs be any different?
A trial court judge is REQUIRED to follow precedent. This case is fairly clear: under the DMCA, ALL copy protection circumvention is illegal. The judge really has no choice, unless she rules the DMCA unconstitutional. We really aren't going to get final word until the appeals are through, which will take years.
At 1024x768 medium quality no AA/Aniso, the Geforce 5900 was able to achieve 104 fps, compared to the Radeon 9800's 77 fps. Unfortunately, the game seems to be very dependent on video game performance: a Radeon 9600 could only get 40 fps and a 9200 can only get 19 fps. And remember, this is at 1024 x 768. At 1600 x 1200, the performance drops significantly. The drop is even more significant when 4X AA/8X Quality Aniso is turned on, with the Radeon 9800 only getting 42 fps and the GeForce 5900 getting 53 fps. In comparison, UT2003 gets 142 fps with the 5900 and 137 with the 9800 with the same AA settings at 1024 x 768.
Unless performance is improved drastically from the Alpha version, it looks like claims of being able to use older hardware is a little premature.
I thought that you could install Turbo Tax on multiple computers and that the only limitation was that you could only file from the first installation? If so, it's not that big of a limitation for a multi-computer household, as you install it in the living room, but can work on the file in your upstairs office, just transfer the file later for filing.
They count sales every week. Most records don't sell more records its second week than its first week (One by the Beatles being an obvious exception). The simple fact is that no record has ever sold 7 million copies in two weeks. The poster who said so was pulling numbers out of thin air.
I believe you are mistaken. The Soundscan system tracks barcodes as they are scanned by record stores. Thus, they track sales to consumers.
I don't know if price will make that much of a difference at all. I chose PS2 because of GTA and GTA3. Since most sports games (the biggest console sellers) are available on all 3 consoles, it doesn't make sense for me to get an XBox, considering I already have a library of games and most games will be on all systems. Even at $150, I would choose PS2 because of its superior library. If MS really wants to be competitive, they have to get some HUGE exclusive releases. If EASports were to become MS exclusive, the gap between PS2 and XBox sales would shift dramatically in the fall (when the hockey, football, and basketball games get released). Of course, EA isn't about to give up the PS2, because of all the sales it has there.
$45 Million. At $17 per CD, that is the equivalent of 2.6 million CDs, a figure that Eminem and N'Sync could easily break in a month.
Please provide a source. According to E Online, the record for weekly sales is 1.7 million (by Eminem). How can he sell 7 million in 2 weeks if he can't even sell 2 million in 1 week?
Who was first to 2.4 GHz? Oh, that's right, Intel reached that over a year ago while AMD still hasn't reached it.
The bottom line is simple: AMD is generally less expensive to operate at the same benchmark speed. But Intel is faster at the high-end, both in clock speed and in benchmark speed.
The difference is between a client-side query and a server-side query. The client-side has a few dozen records. The server-side has millions of records.
Lyric sites probably don't damage record sales, but they almost certainly damage sales of song books. For all you, "I want to support the artist" people, just remember that the song writers get a cut of those song books also.
Of course, most non-musicians don't buy song books anyway, so their accessing of lyric sites don't hurt at all (and may help, as others have pointed out, by letting users become aware of the title/artist of a lyric), but I just thought I'd point out the other side of the argument.