All I want to know is, what is the quality level of the recordings offered by these new pay download services? I used EMusic's $10/month service for a while and quit mainly because many of their MP3s were poorly encoded at low bit rates. Many people just can't tell the difference or don't care, but for me high fidelity is important.
Such a hyper-OS would allow people using ordinary PCs to try out alternative operating systems, such as Linux, and the applications that run on them, without giving up Windows.
Wow. If hyper-OS lets us do such wonderful technological feats, we should all bow down and worship Intel now!
Or instead we could go back to some really freaking old technology called a "boot disk" to accomplish the same thing. Oh, wait, Knoppix and Lindows, among others, already allow this. Today.
Seriously, guys, when you're writing marketing hype that looks like news try to be not quite so stupid and obvious about it?
In much of the deep southeast, tapwater has a high mineral content that gives it a faint sulfurous odor. Throughout the midwest and southwest, the water is very hard and has a definite earthy flavor. The tapwater in these places is certainly very high quality due to public health standards. But it is water that stinks and tastes like dirt even when run through a cheap faucet filter. For these people, bottled water is definitely higher quality in a definitely perceptible manner.
Regarding pay-to-download, there could very well be a quality difference as well. If you're P2P-ing it, you don't know the source of the MP3. It could have been ripped at a low bitrate or with a crappy ripper. Hopefully these pay-to-download services will offer consistent high-quality encoding. I hate that wavering sound you get in the high frequencies in low-quality MP3s. I subscribed to EMusic for a couple months, downloaded a few tracks, and then quit because their MP3s were low bitrate and sounded like it.
And also, I recently purchased several old arcade game roms from StarRoms after reading a Slashdot article that mentioned it. I did this even though I knew where I could get them for free, despite the fact that sites distributing these ROM images are routinely shut down by C&Ds from IP owners. I did this because it is comforting to legally own something, and I also did it to make a statement:
Today's digital technology allows for archival and on-demand transmittal of copies every single piece of intellectual property ever created. There is no excuse for anybody to not sell or give away their IP over the internet. Don't shut down video arcade game ROM sites and then NOT sell the ROM images you are "protecting". Record labels, don't go sueing people for file swapping until your entire catalogs are available for purchase online. If you sell it, people WILL buy.
I've never had bad phone service. It's always worked. Even when the power goes out, I can pick up a hard-wired phone and get dialtone. I've never had a problem with clarity of my phone connections -- they are always crystal clear. I've never had a call fail because of bandwidth unavailability. The service has a reasonable cost, and their bean counters will usually let you get a month in arrears before they cut you off. I've used two different cable companies and two different telephone companies for broadband, and DSL beat out cable modem both times. The DSL connections are more reliable, both in continuous connection times and in steady bandwidth availability. The telephone companies will market to those who want to run services through their pipe and even make blocks of static IP addresses available, while the cable companies dole out static IPs stingily and charge three times as much.
So, in a nutshell, telcos produce a superior quality service that does what it's supposed to do virtually all the time and for a good price. What is to hate?
It's easy to hate Microsoft because of their ridiculous EULAs, overpriced software, and hard-on for Digital Restrictions Management. It's easy to hate the RIAA for wanting to bankrupt people already near the poverty line and for refusing to admit that just maybe they are putting out lower quality product at higher prices in a sluggish economy and that just maybe their failure to adapt to new technology might be a straw woven into the handbasket that is taking their business to Hell.
...claiming that telemarketer's free speech rights would be infringed if this was to take affect...
How the fuck is someone calling me on my telephone that I paid for and that requires monthly fees for it to work, protected free speech????????
This must mean it would also be free speech for me to call the home of these idiot judges and tell them how utterly retarded that is. Over and over again. Even if the judge asked me to not call again.
I actually subscribed to EMusic and partook of this veritable buffet. But, alas, a lot of the stuff I downloaded suffered from low bitrate and poor conversion. In some cases listening to their MP3s was like listening to the CD through stereo cell phones.
Why? They left a loophole: The law also prohibits the use of data from such boxes without a court order or the permission of the vehicle's owner, unless the data is used in such a way that it can not be traced back to the owner.
Back in the day, when computers and consoles were 8- and 16-bit, and nobody would ever need more than 640K of RAM, and CD ROMs were a futuristic marvel that would allow you to store an entire encyclopedia on one third of a disc, RPGs rocked. With such limited resources on the available gaming platforms, game designers were forced to tell their story using this nifty trick called "gameplay".
Then cheaply duplicated mass storage hit the scene, and all of a sudden every RPG became a movie that requires the watcher to hit a button on the controller every now and then. Back in the day these games gave you a free-form feeling of being able to explore the world. Now, with the ubiquitous Cut Scene, the gameplay has to force you down a linear path, because the cut scenes have to play in order for the "game" to make any sense.
That's why I play RTS games, shooters, Diablo II, strategy games, and online poker today. "Play" a Final Fantasy game? Why, when I can just rent some anime and push "play" on my remote once?
TiVo was never meant to be unhackable. The box itself runs Linux. TiVo personnel also encouraged the hacking up to a point (they disapprove of, obviously, hacking it to get free service, and hacking it to get video streams off the box). Slashdot even covered this topic here.
The biggest TiVo hacks seem to be hard drive space upgrades, Web-based remote administration done via a Web server running on on the TiVo box.
If you buy Pretty Good Privacy, does that mean you'd shop with a real estate agent who sells pretty good houses? Would you buy a pretty good car from Pretty Good Motors?
Pretty Good ain't good enough for me. I'll take Fuggin' Awesome Privacy, thank you very much.
PZEV (Partial ZEV)...better than SULEV, pretty close to ZEV
Good God Almighty. I'm an American. Give it to me in rainbow format. I get "orange" versus "yellow" but when you bring out the alphabet soup my eyes cross.
Not to mention the fact that I don't understand why anybody doesn't want a hummer, full-size pickup truck, or at least an SUV.
And apparently E*TRADE agrees. Notice how the "company news" section links to SCO's open letter but not to the wailing outcry from the open source community? Oh, and SCO's stock continues to climb.
This just in. SCO to sue ESR for patent infringement over "comparator", a software package that performs comparison between different sets of source code to determine if any code is copied between them.
Slashdot Mirror
All I want to know is, what is the quality level of the recordings offered by these new pay download services? I used EMusic's $10/month service for a while and quit mainly because many of their MP3s were poorly encoded at low bit rates. Many people just can't tell the difference or don't care, but for me high fidelity is important.
I for one welcome our new Martian overlords.
Or instead we could go back to some really freaking old technology called a "boot disk" to accomplish the same thing. Oh, wait, Knoppix and Lindows, among others, already allow this. Today.
Seriously, guys, when you're writing marketing hype that looks like news try to be not quite so stupid and obvious about it?
In much of the deep southeast, tapwater has a high mineral content that gives it a faint sulfurous odor. Throughout the midwest and southwest, the water is very hard and has a definite earthy flavor. The tapwater in these places is certainly very high quality due to public health standards. But it is water that stinks and tastes like dirt even when run through a cheap faucet filter. For these people, bottled water is definitely higher quality in a definitely perceptible manner.
Regarding pay-to-download, there could very well be a quality difference as well. If you're P2P-ing it, you don't know the source of the MP3. It could have been ripped at a low bitrate or with a crappy ripper. Hopefully these pay-to-download services will offer consistent high-quality encoding. I hate that wavering sound you get in the high frequencies in low-quality MP3s. I subscribed to EMusic for a couple months, downloaded a few tracks, and then quit because their MP3s were low bitrate and sounded like it.
And also, I recently purchased several old arcade game roms from StarRoms after reading a Slashdot article that mentioned it. I did this even though I knew where I could get them for free, despite the fact that sites distributing these ROM images are routinely shut down by C&Ds from IP owners. I did this because it is comforting to legally own something, and I also did it to make a statement:
Today's digital technology allows for archival and on-demand transmittal of copies every single piece of intellectual property ever created. There is no excuse for anybody to not sell or give away their IP over the internet. Don't shut down video arcade game ROM sites and then NOT sell the ROM images you are "protecting". Record labels, don't go sueing people for file swapping until your entire catalogs are available for purchase online. If you sell it, people WILL buy.
Why do everyone hate the telcos?
I've never had bad phone service. It's always worked. Even when the power goes out, I can pick up a hard-wired phone and get dialtone. I've never had a problem with clarity of my phone connections -- they are always crystal clear. I've never had a call fail because of bandwidth unavailability. The service has a reasonable cost, and their bean counters will usually let you get a month in arrears before they cut you off. I've used two different cable companies and two different telephone companies for broadband, and DSL beat out cable modem both times. The DSL connections are more reliable, both in continuous connection times and in steady bandwidth availability. The telephone companies will market to those who want to run services through their pipe and even make blocks of static IP addresses available, while the cable companies dole out static IPs stingily and charge three times as much.
So, in a nutshell, telcos produce a superior quality service that does what it's supposed to do virtually all the time and for a good price. What is to hate?
It's easy to hate Microsoft because of their ridiculous EULAs, overpriced software, and hard-on for Digital Restrictions Management. It's easy to hate the RIAA for wanting to bankrupt people already near the poverty line and for refusing to admit that just maybe they are putting out lower quality product at higher prices in a sluggish economy and that just maybe their failure to adapt to new technology might be a straw woven into the handbasket that is taking their business to Hell.
So what have the telocs done to earn such ire?
Most of these old coin-op arcade games used dual Z80 microprocessors. One handled *just* the sound and the other ran the rest of the game.
I'm so glad we're finally moving to 64-bit technology if it makes this kind of thing possible!
"American" should be capitalized, you insensitive clod!
This must mean it would also be free speech for me to call the home of these idiot judges and tell them how utterly retarded that is. Over and over again. Even if the judge asked me to not call again.
Oh, and by the way, it's "take effect".
I actually subscribed to EMusic and partook of this veritable buffet. But, alas, a lot of the stuff I downloaded suffered from low bitrate and poor conversion. In some cases listening to their MP3s was like listening to the CD through stereo cell phones.
Why, oh why, don't mod points work on articles?
Actually, rotary engines can burn a variety of fuels including hydrogen, and operate by internal combustion.
Back in the day, when computers and consoles were 8- and 16-bit, and nobody would ever need more than 640K of RAM, and CD ROMs were a futuristic marvel that would allow you to store an entire encyclopedia on one third of a disc, RPGs rocked. With such limited resources on the available gaming platforms, game designers were forced to tell their story using this nifty trick called "gameplay".
Then cheaply duplicated mass storage hit the scene, and all of a sudden every RPG became a movie that requires the watcher to hit a button on the controller every now and then. Back in the day these games gave you a free-form feeling of being able to explore the world. Now, with the ubiquitous Cut Scene, the gameplay has to force you down a linear path, because the cut scenes have to play in order for the "game" to make any sense.
That's why I play RTS games, shooters, Diablo II, strategy games, and online poker today. "Play" a Final Fantasy game? Why, when I can just rent some anime and push "play" on my remote once?
It would be a violation of COPYright if you ripped or copied each other's CD. But merely lending the CD is not illegal. No COPYing is going on.
TiVo was never meant to be unhackable. The box itself runs Linux. TiVo personnel also encouraged the hacking up to a point (they disapprove of, obviously, hacking it to get free service, and hacking it to get video streams off the box). Slashdot even covered this topic here.
The biggest TiVo hacks seem to be hard drive space upgrades, Web-based remote administration done via a Web server running on on the TiVo box.
If you buy Pretty Good Privacy, does that mean you'd shop with a real estate agent who sells pretty good houses? Would you buy a pretty good car from Pretty Good Motors?
Pretty Good ain't good enough for me. I'll take Fuggin' Awesome Privacy, thank you very much.
No. In America you wouldn't be found criminally negligent for that, but the victim's family could sue you into bankruptcy and probably win.
Not to mention the fact that I don't understand why anybody doesn't want a hummer, full-size pickup truck, or at least an SUV.
- Sleek shape fits comfortably into your right hand
Leaving the left hand free to hold your joystick.This just in. SCO to sue ESR for patent infringement over "comparator", a software package that performs comparison between different sets of source code to determine if any code is copied between them.