CSS would have to be applied to the DVD. This would make it the essential equivalent of a commercially purchased DVD. But content owners may be concerned that consumers would quickly find they could burn multiple DVDs. Even though CSS-protected commercial DVDs can be copied as-is now (without decrypting), most consumers don't know this can be done, and right or wrong, content owners don't really want people to know they can just copy DVDs and give them to their friends for free. (And no, it wouldn't be as easy to have number-of-times restrictions for burning DVDs like you can with iTunes playlists, but I suppose something like that could be explored.)
I don't believe this is as big an issue as they (MPAA etc) think. Anyone can copy any DVD they want to right now. I don't unless it's to make a copy for my daughter to destroy, like many others want to. I don't see the purported flood of illegal distribution out there.
The content would have to have a DVD menu added, that would have to align with the owners' marketing/presentation intentions for the video; not impossible, but an undertaking.
Why? I paid for it, I don't care about any of that crap. Just start the movie. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, and this one facet of DVD's has probably spurred more ripping of DVDs than any other. Disney is especially guilty in this category, pre-pending as much as 10 minutes of UPA crap before you even get to the menu. Those disks are immediately ripped for movie only, generally with even the beginning entries removed. They were there in the original, they're not needed on my personal copy that I wish to watch.
- The content would have to be transcoded to MPEG-2 Transport Stream for video DVD, which means that burning a single DVD video disc could take a LOT longer than burning, say, a CD.
And therein lies the largest detractor to copying from this media. I'm not sure it would be transcoded, as much as decoded and then re-encoded, along with all the losses that entails. The copy will still be good enough, considering that many of the rips on the internet are of camcorder films or horrbily compressed AVIs. The copy will be less than the original.
I don't think there's going to be a large migration from existing iPod owners to Zune. There's no reason to. It's a case of the iPod being good enough, and Zune apparently really doesn't offer anything better. I'll be the first to admit that I wish my iPod had better features, such as shuffling songs within a playlist (maybe I just haven't played with it enough?) or directly managing my songs on it including 2-way transfers (EphPod supposedly allows this, haven't played with it yet - maybe iTunes will get the hint).
As for those that point to iTunes Music Store as the most compelling iPod source, the total number of iTunes Music store DRM'd songs on my and my friends iPods are way less than 1%. (We all have large collections of music that we already own...) To me the reason for having an iPod is that it's small and it works.
If wasting processor time in a game was an option, using "higher level" languages would've already been done. (But I think you really mean uncompiled stuff) I am sure they still use assembly for optimizing, not C. Probably compiled code from any language would work as long as they can meld in some assembly for optimizing of time critical code sections.
The games I'm familiar with use C as their code-base. As far as I know, they optimize their algorithms, and then use optimizations in the compiler. I'm sure some still use assembly in critical sections.
With Mozilla, you have a different issue. You can run 2 instances (separate processes) of Mozilla with 1 profile, but to run 2 separate versions of Mozilla, you'll need 2 different profiles.
The other poster already mentioned this, but you never heard of proper file locking?
Sure I have, what's going to prevent incompatibilities? Especially if you go with binary files?
Note that you can have multiple processes open on a single profile in Mozilla, just not multiple versions running off of the same profile. Your solution of proper file locking appears to be instituted already for multiple copies of a single version accessing one profile.
You've got a crappy phone, or a whole lot of numbers in it. I briefly owned a Motorola, simply hated the interface. Most of my entries have 2-4 numbers associated with them, sometimes more, so having to page through multiple entries for Tom Smith, then Richard Smith, and then a couple for Harry Smith before getting to the "preferred" number for Harry blew chunks. My replacement LG phone would be 1-4 key punches for first letter, then 0-x to get to the name, and ring. That's if I have to look it up. If I've recently called them, it's send and the down arrow key a couple of times. If they're in my top 9, I have speed dials assigned, and it's two keys.
I stopped learning phone numbers for people I call frequently but don't need to know a long time ago when my phone became a nice repository for that info. As for "what if you lost the phone?" - nothing beats written down numbers. The electronic backup is also nice though.
Quad core may not be intended for games, but once they figure out that the engine can now be written in managed code and still perform as well as C code because of the extra cores that can be utilized... I predict that games will soon move to higher level languages (for better or worse).
Single user programs scale just fine, provided they are written by decent programmers (ie, non-MS programmers - MS can't even write an OS that properly scales across CPUs...) Check Adobe out, or any professional engineering software.
With Mozilla, you have a different issue. You can run 2 instances (separate processes) of Mozilla with 1 profile, but to run 2 separate versions of Mozilla, you'll need 2 different profiles. (You can copy the profile from one directory to another, though, so you'd be running off of a clone) This makes sense, as the profile is where application specific information is stored regarding the user, and using 2 different versions could cause corruption.
I have issues with this as well occassionally (except for the fan issue). One major source of this problem turns out to be the seemingly innocuous MS Help service. This thing is a memory and CPU leak waiting to happen. Check taskmanager when your CPU hits 100% and see if Helpservice is eating most of that CPU. If so, kill it. I've seen mine running at 100% with 700MB RAM committed.
Once this was tracked down and stopped, the CPU issues have all but dissappeared.
Naah, why don't we just standardize on the world-standard signage of round signs with red circles for metric signs? Then there's no confusion, and they'd save cash by not printing "KPH" or "Speed Limit" everywhere.
It'd also make traveling from country to country easier.
Back on topic - FF works just about all the time, unless you have to hit a site with ActiveX, which doesn't work in any browser for me, as I won't permit ActiveX to run. (Talk about your security holes... even MS recommends disabling ActiveX)
I'd really be interested in those folks with "crashing" problems to post how/why they have crashing problems, and what plugins/extensions they have loaded. (Slashdotter - gasp - is one extension that causes FF issues, I wonder if I even need it anymore) If you have sufficient RAM, and your system is configured properly and works, there should be no issues with FF. I personally do web development with heavy javascripting. I also visit many sites dealing with Ajax, some of which are.NET based. I experience maybe 1 FF crash in 3-4 months. IE, on the other hand, crashes once every 2-3 days while being used to develop a site with a proprietary IE only framework. FF, amazingly enough, works on 99.9% of that site.
So, if someone's complaining about FF doesn't do this or that, I question what they're trying to do. View porn sites?
Re:It's the all encompassing .com that's the probl
on
Utube Sues YouTube
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You've either got a great memory for all those 10 digit numbers you have to remember, or you don't have many numbers to remember.
I find it much easier to type in the first char or two of the name, and voila, there's the number within another click or two. (Cell phone with 100s of programmed numbers).
There's no way I'm going to recall person x's cell number that I called once 2 years ago. I can remember their name, though.
Advent and Carver, not bad.:) I've tried a couple of things out as well, and this is on the systems in a couple of cars, as I play the original CD @ home after listening to 1 set of MP3s. 1st car - Pioneer deck from a while ago, cheesy cheap speakers - anything below 192 HQ is usually recognizable as MP3 if you knew the original CD version. Second car: much better sound system, MP3s below 256 are recognizable due to certain sound drop-offs and artifacts.
Home stereo, Denon 3803, hooked up to a Denon CD/DVD player and some old cheesy Sony tower speakers (Never got around to upgrading them - wife nixed my old Pioneer towers, and my Dynaco's died - there's an old reference for you;) Most MP3s sound pretty awful.
It really depends upon the music and waveform you're trying to compress. For instance, nice smooth waves like those from classical music actually seem to compress with less loss than heavily produced music, such as, say, Nine Inch Nails. (The Broken CD is broken in more ways than 1 if you try to compress it with MP3's codec.)
As for LPs, I have what was considered a near the top record player (Pioneer LP45D I think, it's at home...I'm not) with a Shure V15 Type IV cartridge. So unless there's some magical LP player out there, a well-produced CD is far superior to a well produced LP. LPs always have an underlying crackle/hiss that detract from the "silent" parts of a musical piece. (The S/N ratio is about 50% higher for a CD than an LP - reference here and here) Oh, I also have a linear tracking arm for that record player. It makes no difference.
To quell the obvious troll: there are those who prefer tube to transitor or digital amplifiers, and there are those who prefer vinyl to digital. It's a preference. As for 'x' sounds better on 'y' than 'z', anything produced badly for a particular format will sound worse than a better produced product on a lesser format. Some examples: Any of the Boston albums (initial pressing) CDs sound relatively terrible compared to their LP counterparts because the masters were originally produced for vinyl and accentuated the highs, to compensate for vinyl's softening of them. This was a problem with early CDs all around, and can still occassionally be seen in a badly produced CD. Other badly produced CDs are those, like some of Rush's latest CDs, that compress the dynamic range into the upper 10% to produce "loud" CDs, in hopes that that loudness will be noticed in airplay. Doing the same on vinyl will result in the same crappy sound.
Depends - in Apples case it's one and the same. For other products, it depends upon the manufacturer. Gateway, HP, Dell and Alienware (prior to Dell) - still manufacturer/product/QA.
Name brand computers that are likely to be reviewed are usually warranteed through the manufacturer.
And therein lies the rub to most - they're not willing to travel anymore. The higher the person's level, the less likely they are to be willing to travel in my esperience, especially when the pay no longer makes up for time away from home.
That would be for persistent connections. In general, HTTP requests are not persistent, so you can have as many as you want. Gecko browsers with 8 connections works just fine, thank you.
Unless things have changed significantly, IE is the only browser that limits you by default to 2 threads per server. All netscape derived browsers defaulted to 8, unless that's changed lately, and I don't know about the thread limitations of the others, although I can't imagine they artificially lowered their potential performance like IE did. (I believe I read that this was done for various performance issues they had on multiple MS OSes when threads were increased.)
But then you'd get to test out the other important aspect of a customer's experience - that of the customer service. It's quite important to the 99% of the populace that don't know a phillips head screwdriver from a flat-head or nutdriver, so they could open the case...
You should check Apple's latest prices, now that we can do apples to apples comparisons.
I think you'll find that the hardware is relatively fairly priced, although most is higher level (except for the Macbook - still using a Core Duo - bah). $2500 for a dual Woodcrest system? That's an awesome price.
Now, for the upgrades, they're on the order of Dell's pricing - far too expensive for what you get.
In Seattle, I have trouble finding a new cd (that I want to hear) for under $12. I've seen sales lately for cd's at a sale price of $14.99. (the new Decemberists album) I finally found it at $12.99 so I bought it and deleted my pirated copy. Usually I can't afford to buy every album I want to hear, so I have to wait until they show up in used bins for $9, which is a pretty reasonable price.
You need a Fry's in your area, along with several Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Walmart (as much as I never shop there). Fry's generally does release week specials around here at $8.88. Target sells for 9.98 or less. BB and CC usually have specials weekly (sunday ads) that sell CDs, especially for little known bands (at the time) for under $7. (The Kaiser Chiefs, Killers, and Bravery were all had for $6.99 at Best Buy. NIN With Teeth DVD dual disc was gotten for $8.99. She Wants Revenge @ CC for $7.99)
I'm not saying that it's easy, esp if you buy these before they've ever hit airplay. I generally check out what's for sale, and do some combination of download/buy and listen. If I don't like it and I bought it, I return it. If I do like it, voila, I bought it cheap. e.g., the Killers are now regularly selling for $11.99 at the cheapest sale, $5 more than I paid before they hit the airwaves. As I'm mostly interested in new acts and a few select existing acts, I'll generally risk it for a new act that's being promoted. They'll usually have at least a single decent song.
That's the thing, though. They grew slowly and over time, putting out album after album. They weren't really recognized for their initial work until several albums had been produced.
The current "crop" is 1-3 album blitz with the first being the "hit", and you never hear from them again. Usually subsequent albums are overall worse than the first, and generally there's not even one song on a later effort that even reaches the median of the previous effort. (IOW, they blew all their "talent" in a single album)
The Bravery, the Kaiser Chiefs, and She Wants Revenge all have some promise, although the Kaiser Chiefs might be a little too much like New Kids on the Block. Their sophomore efforts will tell.
I've actually had to go through the manual recovery of the registry. That driver "corruption" is frequently nothing more than registry corruption that prevents the driver from being loaded properly. Replacing the registry files with a previously backed up copy, even when the registry recovery tool doesn't work properly, sometimes fixes it.
My guess would have been a corrupt corrupt registry bug. (double word intended). Allthough I thought we'd never see that after Win98.
the sarcasm tags I'd wager?
You are aware that even XP will self-corrupt and be left unfixable? Even with System Restore etc? Your only recourse would be to restore from a backup in that case. (Yes, it happened to me)
1) I generally pay between $7 and $10 for a new CD. How much cheaper do you want it? Granted, this means I pay attention to sales for those I actually want, but it can be done. 2) ditto - DRM is stupido 3) while these are disgusting, they're not near as disgusting as the formulaic crap that the industry puts out these days under the onus of maximizing their profits.
What still amazes me is who draws the large crowds, and who doesn't. What band of the last 5 years is going to draw the attendance of say, the Rolling Stones, U2, or even Bad Company or Cheap Trick in another 5 years? (I can't think of any that recieve top 40 radio play on ClearChannel or Inifity...)
And therein lies the true crime of the recording industry as it has devolved. It no longer looks for talent, it "creates talent", or at least it thinks it does. Which is why, when a group like the Killers or Franz Ferdinand or The Bravery pops up, I get hopeful that perhaps, just perhaps, we may get another group to add to the "good" list. (the opinion's still out on two, one's already failed)
That's because Dutch is just slightly more gutteral than German, from which it most likely (d)evolved. As a Dutch speaker, it is easier to learn German than the other way around. Native German speakers have trouble properly pronouncing Dutch sounds like 'g' or saying words like "Scheveningen" (which confusingly doesn't have the glottal 'g' sound but does have the throat-clearing compound 'sch' sound).
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I don't believe this is as big an issue as they (MPAA etc) think. Anyone can copy any DVD they want to right now. I don't unless it's to make a copy for my daughter to destroy, like many others want to. I don't see the purported flood of illegal distribution out there.
Why? I paid for it, I don't care about any of that crap. Just start the movie. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, and this one facet of DVD's has probably spurred more ripping of DVDs than any other. Disney is especially guilty in this category, pre-pending as much as 10 minutes of UPA crap before you even get to the menu. Those disks are immediately ripped for movie only, generally with even the beginning entries removed. They were there in the original, they're not needed on my personal copy that I wish to watch.
And therein lies the largest detractor to copying from this media. I'm not sure it would be transcoded, as much as decoded and then re-encoded, along with all the losses that entails. The copy will still be good enough, considering that many of the rips on the internet are of camcorder films or horrbily compressed AVIs. The copy will be less than the original.
I don't think there's going to be a large migration from existing iPod owners to Zune. There's no reason to. It's a case of the iPod being good enough, and Zune apparently really doesn't offer anything better. I'll be the first to admit that I wish my iPod had better features, such as shuffling songs within a playlist (maybe I just haven't played with it enough?) or directly managing my songs on it including 2-way transfers (EphPod supposedly allows this, haven't played with it yet - maybe iTunes will get the hint).
As for those that point to iTunes Music Store as the most compelling iPod source, the total number of iTunes Music store DRM'd songs on my and my friends iPods are way less than 1%. (We all have large collections of music that we already own...) To me the reason for having an iPod is that it's small and it works.
The games I'm familiar with use C as their code-base. As far as I know, they optimize their algorithms, and then use optimizations in the compiler. I'm sure some still use assembly in critical sections.
Sure I have, what's going to prevent incompatibilities? Especially if you go with binary files?
Note that you can have multiple processes open on a single profile in Mozilla, just not multiple versions running off of the same profile. Your solution of proper file locking appears to be instituted already for multiple copies of a single version accessing one profile.
You've got a crappy phone, or a whole lot of numbers in it. I briefly owned a Motorola, simply hated the interface. Most of my entries have 2-4 numbers associated with them, sometimes more, so having to page through multiple entries for Tom Smith, then Richard Smith, and then a couple for Harry Smith before getting to the "preferred" number for Harry blew chunks. My replacement LG phone would be 1-4 key punches for first letter, then 0-x to get to the name, and ring. That's if I have to look it up. If I've recently called them, it's send and the down arrow key a couple of times. If they're in my top 9, I have speed dials assigned, and it's two keys.
I stopped learning phone numbers for people I call frequently but don't need to know a long time ago when my phone became a nice repository for that info. As for "what if you lost the phone?" - nothing beats written down numbers. The electronic backup is also nice though.
That's what assuming does for me... from your description, it seriously sounded like a Windows issue.
It'd be interesting to know whether that ultimately is a hardware or software issue.
Quad core may not be intended for games, but once they figure out that the engine can now be written in managed code and still perform as well as C code because of the extra cores that can be utilized... I predict that games will soon move to higher level languages (for better or worse).
Single user programs scale just fine, provided they are written by decent programmers (ie, non-MS programmers - MS can't even write an OS that properly scales across CPUs...) Check Adobe out, or any professional engineering software.
With Mozilla, you have a different issue. You can run 2 instances (separate processes) of Mozilla with 1 profile, but to run 2 separate versions of Mozilla, you'll need 2 different profiles. (You can copy the profile from one directory to another, though, so you'd be running off of a clone) This makes sense, as the profile is where application specific information is stored regarding the user, and using 2 different versions could cause corruption.
I have issues with this as well occassionally (except for the fan issue). One major source of this problem turns out to be the seemingly innocuous MS Help service. This thing is a memory and CPU leak waiting to happen. Check taskmanager when your CPU hits 100% and see if Helpservice is eating most of that CPU. If so, kill it. I've seen mine running at 100% with 700MB RAM committed.
Once this was tracked down and stopped, the CPU issues have all but dissappeared.
Naah, why don't we just standardize on the world-standard signage of round signs with red circles for metric signs? Then there's no confusion, and they'd save cash by not printing "KPH" or "Speed Limit" everywhere.
It'd also make traveling from country to country easier.
I too liked the sig.
.NET based. I experience maybe 1 FF crash in 3-4 months. IE, on the other hand, crashes once every 2-3 days while being used to develop a site with a proprietary IE only framework. FF, amazingly enough, works on 99.9% of that site.
Back on topic - FF works just about all the time, unless you have to hit a site with ActiveX, which doesn't work in any browser for me, as I won't permit ActiveX to run. (Talk about your security holes... even MS recommends disabling ActiveX)
I'd really be interested in those folks with "crashing" problems to post how/why they have crashing problems, and what plugins/extensions they have loaded. (Slashdotter - gasp - is one extension that causes FF issues, I wonder if I even need it anymore) If you have sufficient RAM, and your system is configured properly and works, there should be no issues with FF. I personally do web development with heavy javascripting. I also visit many sites dealing with Ajax, some of which are
So, if someone's complaining about FF doesn't do this or that, I question what they're trying to do. View porn sites?
You've either got a great memory for all those 10 digit numbers you have to remember, or you don't have many numbers to remember.
I find it much easier to type in the first char or two of the name, and voila, there's the number within another click or two. (Cell phone with 100s of programmed numbers).
There's no way I'm going to recall person x's cell number that I called once 2 years ago. I can remember their name, though.
Advent and Carver, not bad. :) I've tried a couple of things out as well, and this is on the systems in a couple of cars, as I play the original CD @ home after listening to 1 set of MP3s. 1st car - Pioneer deck from a while ago, cheesy cheap speakers - anything below 192 HQ is usually recognizable as MP3 if you knew the original CD version. Second car: much better sound system, MP3s below 256 are recognizable due to certain sound drop-offs and artifacts.
Home stereo, Denon 3803, hooked up to a Denon CD/DVD player and some old cheesy Sony tower speakers (Never got around to upgrading them - wife nixed my old Pioneer towers, and my Dynaco's died - there's an old reference for you;) Most MP3s sound pretty awful.
It really depends upon the music and waveform you're trying to compress. For instance, nice smooth waves like those from classical music actually seem to compress with less loss than heavily produced music, such as, say, Nine Inch Nails. (The Broken CD is broken in more ways than 1 if you try to compress it with MP3's codec.)
As for LPs, I have what was considered a near the top record player (Pioneer LP45D I think, it's at home...I'm not) with a Shure V15 Type IV cartridge. So unless there's some magical LP player out there, a well-produced CD is far superior to a well produced LP. LPs always have an underlying crackle/hiss that detract from the "silent" parts of a musical piece. (The S/N ratio is about 50% higher for a CD than an LP - reference here and here)
Oh, I also have a linear tracking arm for that record player. It makes no difference.
To quell the obvious troll: there are those who prefer tube to transitor or digital amplifiers, and there are those who prefer vinyl to digital. It's a preference. As for 'x' sounds better on 'y' than 'z', anything produced badly for a particular format will sound worse than a better produced product on a lesser format. Some examples: Any of the Boston albums (initial pressing) CDs sound relatively terrible compared to their LP counterparts because the masters were originally produced for vinyl and accentuated the highs, to compensate for vinyl's softening of them. This was a problem with early CDs all around, and can still occassionally be seen in a badly produced CD. Other badly produced CDs are those, like some of Rush's latest CDs, that compress the dynamic range into the upper 10% to produce "loud" CDs, in hopes that that loudness will be noticed in airplay. Doing the same on vinyl will result in the same crappy sound.
Go to Europe, sometimes the ads are better than the shows. ;)
Correction: not lowered, the law to extend the increased level failed post 9/11.
I can't imagine why.
Depends - in Apples case it's one and the same. For other products, it depends upon the manufacturer. Gateway, HP, Dell and Alienware (prior to Dell) - still manufacturer/product/QA.
Name brand computers that are likely to be reviewed are usually warranteed through the manufacturer.
And therein lies the rub to most - they're not willing to travel anymore. The higher the person's level, the less likely they are to be willing to travel in my esperience, especially when the pay no longer makes up for time away from home.
That would be for persistent connections. In general, HTTP requests are not persistent, so you can have as many as you want. Gecko browsers with 8 connections works just fine, thank you.
Unless things have changed significantly, IE is the only browser that limits you by default to 2 threads per server. All netscape derived browsers defaulted to 8, unless that's changed lately, and I don't know about the thread limitations of the others, although I can't imagine they artificially lowered their potential performance like IE did. (I believe I read that this was done for various performance issues they had on multiple MS OSes when threads were increased.)
But then you'd get to test out the other important aspect of a customer's experience - that of the customer service. It's quite important to the 99% of the populace that don't know a phillips head screwdriver from a flat-head or nutdriver, so they could open the case...
You should check Apple's latest prices, now that we can do apples to apples comparisons.
I think you'll find that the hardware is relatively fairly priced, although most is higher level (except for the Macbook - still using a Core Duo - bah). $2500 for a dual Woodcrest system? That's an awesome price.
Now, for the upgrades, they're on the order of Dell's pricing - far too expensive for what you get.
You need a Fry's in your area, along with several Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Walmart (as much as I never shop there). Fry's generally does release week specials around here at $8.88. Target sells for 9.98 or less. BB and CC usually have specials weekly (sunday ads) that sell CDs, especially for little known bands (at the time) for under $7. (The Kaiser Chiefs, Killers, and Bravery were all had for $6.99 at Best Buy. NIN With Teeth DVD dual disc was gotten for $8.99. She Wants Revenge @ CC for $7.99)
I'm not saying that it's easy, esp if you buy these before they've ever hit airplay. I generally check out what's for sale, and do some combination of download/buy and listen. If I don't like it and I bought it, I return it. If I do like it, voila, I bought it cheap. e.g., the Killers are now regularly selling for $11.99 at the cheapest sale, $5 more than I paid before they hit the airwaves. As I'm mostly interested in new acts and a few select existing acts, I'll generally risk it for a new act that's being promoted. They'll usually have at least a single decent song.
That's the thing, though. They grew slowly and over time, putting out album after album. They weren't really recognized for their initial work until several albums had been produced.
The current "crop" is 1-3 album blitz with the first being the "hit", and you never hear from them again. Usually subsequent albums are overall worse than the first, and generally there's not even one song on a later effort that even reaches the median of the previous effort. (IOW, they blew all their "talent" in a single album)
The Bravery, the Kaiser Chiefs, and She Wants Revenge all have some promise, although the Kaiser Chiefs might be a little too much like New Kids on the Block. Their sophomore efforts will tell.
I've actually had to go through the manual recovery of the registry. That driver "corruption" is frequently nothing more than registry corruption that prevents the driver from being loaded properly. Replacing the registry files with a previously backed up copy, even when the registry recovery tool doesn't work properly, sometimes fixes it.
the sarcasm tags I'd wager?
You are aware that even XP will self-corrupt and be left unfixable? Even with System Restore etc? Your only recourse would be to restore from a backup in that case. (Yes, it happened to me)
1) I generally pay between $7 and $10 for a new CD. How much cheaper do you want it? Granted, this means I pay attention to sales for those I actually want, but it can be done.
2) ditto - DRM is stupido
3) while these are disgusting, they're not near as disgusting as the formulaic crap that the industry puts out these days under the onus of maximizing their profits.
What still amazes me is who draws the large crowds, and who doesn't. What band of the last 5 years is going to draw the attendance of say, the Rolling Stones, U2, or even Bad Company or Cheap Trick in another 5 years? (I can't think of any that recieve top 40 radio play on ClearChannel or Inifity...)
And therein lies the true crime of the recording industry as it has devolved. It no longer looks for talent, it "creates talent", or at least it thinks it does. Which is why, when a group like the Killers or Franz Ferdinand or The Bravery pops up, I get hopeful that perhaps, just perhaps, we may get another group to add to the "good" list. (the opinion's still out on two, one's already failed)
That's because Dutch is just slightly more gutteral than German, from which it most likely (d)evolved. As a Dutch speaker, it is easier to learn German than the other way around. Native German speakers have trouble properly pronouncing Dutch sounds like 'g' or saying words like "Scheveningen" (which confusingly doesn't have the glottal 'g' sound but does have the throat-clearing compound 'sch' sound).