The problem with that idea is that it's still important for artists to get radio airtime. And pretty much all the radio stations are owned by a few big companies (e.g. ClearChannel) which are chummy with the RIAA. And that radio station cartel is supported, aided and abetted by the FCC.
In other words, to break the RIAA we also have to break the FCC.
What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?
Integration with iTunes (not necessarily the store), such as syncing Smart Playlists, and 3rd-party accessory support that's an order of magnitude greater than for any other music player.
Huh? The Roman citizenry never revolted (Rome's various "civil wars" were fights between one rich patrician and another, not large-scale popular uprisings); Rome fell because it was invaded by foreign Gallic and Germanic tribes. All the bread and circuses did was weaken the Empire so that the barbarians had an easier time of it (and then again, they might have invaded regardless, since they were fleeing the Huns).
They certainly can but to access encrypted channels, the box will need CableCards, the abomination of technology that they are.
Oh yeah? And who decided to invent that "abomination of technology" in the first place? That's right, the cable companies did!
The same goes for complaints about recording on CableCard TVs. Sorry, mate, but that restriction comes from the manufacturers and the content providers.
Bullshit! If the cable companies had wanted to, they could have just said to the content providers "we're going to send our channels unencrypted and such that they can be received just like over-the-air digital, and you can take it or leave it" and the content providers would have capitualated. But instead, the cable companies are just as much greedy assholes, and created the whole set-top box/CableCard fiasco specifically so they could bleed customers for an extra $5 per TV, per month regardless of whether said customer had a perfectly good VSB tuner!
At that point, I'll give back the cable box -- it isn't even hooked up, but Comcast insisted I take one -- and save a buck a month by going back to analog.
Hah! You think they'll let you go back to analog? Sure, some people have analog because they're grandfathered in, but that doesn't mean the cable company is necessarily accepting new analog subscriptions. It is being phased out, you know.
Also, in the latter case, it will probably start to show artifacts, perfectly square 16x16 pixel macroblocks that stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the picture.
You can't necessarily tell just from that -- I have analog cable (in fact, all my TVs are about 20 years old and I plug the coax directly into them without a cable box), but I still sometimes see digital noise because it was apparently introduced somewhere upstream before it hit the cable company.
What about "Smart" or "Dynamic" playlists? Those aren't lists of songs; they're more like database queries, choosing songs based on metadata. In my opinion, they're a lot more useful than regular playlists, and iTunes can sync them too.
Correct me if I'm wrong. Do the contents of your Smart Playlist change on your iPod without synchronizing? If not, then the iPod doesn't "support" Smart Playlists. It's an issue for the sync software.
Well, I don't know, so I'll check...
Ha ha! My iPod does update the playlists without synching!
Now, it's not that big a deal because most metadata can't be edited on the iPod anyway. However, there are a few things that can change: the star rating, play count, and "last played" timestamp. So, I decided to listen to my "least recently played" list. Once the song ended, I backed out a few levels in the menu and then went back to look at the list, and, lo and behold, the song I listened to was gone!
adding notes to an automatically-generated drawing
If you're automatically generating the drawing, shouldn't you be automatically generating the notes too? Would it make sense to specify the notes in whatever source you generated the drawing from?
enlarging details that the software draws too small to be legible
Do you mean making a separate subview on the layout?
re-arranging leader and dimension lines that cross each other
This is part of why I like constraint-based CAD (such as in SolidEdge): since it makes dimensioning an important part of the process, it's a lot less onerous than in something like AutoCAD.
I'd write a decent sync utility for file system based players...
Can't be done. Filesystems by themselves can't support playlists and playlists need to be synced too. So, in addition to understanding the filesystem your synchronization software also has to understand both the host's and portable's ideas of playlists, and be able to translate between them.
Do they update in real-time, when either the playlist's rules or the songs' metadata change? If so, then yes, they are like Smart Playlists.
But that's only one of my several questions. Are those Dynamic Playlists supported by any portable players (particularly Rockbox)? Can they be synchronized with said player?
Even back in 2001, you could buy a cheap 14" Dell with 1440x1050 resolution (128 pixels/linear inch). By contrast, in 2007 you cannot buy a 15.4" inch MacBook pro with similar pixel density.
Also in 2007, you can even find 1400x1050 even in some 12" displays (such as on my Thinkpad x60). 145.8 pixels per linear inch! Wheeeee! : )
It'd sure be nice, though, if there were a way to install Linux (or Rockbox, which AFAIK isn't Linux) on it but still have it act like an iPod (including syncing to iTunes, supporting Smart Playlists, etc.).
Hmm... I was under the impression that iTunes writes the ID3 info to the file. Sure, it keeps stuff like play counts only in its database, but I thought it wrote stuff like the title to the actual song. Am I wrong?
Why do you want your music files organized a certain way? The point of iTunes and such software is that you shouldn't need to care how it's organized- you should be able to focus on the task you *actually* want to accomplish
Exactly. He wants his files organized in a certain way because he doesn't yet realize that his actual problem is that the other stuff he uses doesn't properly support the database.
Changing a non-public interface is one thing. But it sounds like in this case that Apple went out of its way to add the hash, in order to lock out non-iTunes programs specifically.
Breaking the thing accidentally is excusable, doing it maliciously isn't!
I have a massive CD collection ripped sitting on a shared drive, and everytime she wants something she has to let Itunes convert it and store another copy of the song.
Are you sure that's because iTunes doesn't support the format you used (which I find unlikely unless you ripped to WMA, which as other posters have pointed out was stupid to begin with)? I ask because the other (and more likely, in my opinion) possibility is that your wife has the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" and/or "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" options checked in her iTunes preferences. If you turn those off, it should (theoretically) work without having to make a copy.
AAC? (oops, not proprietary) MP3? (oops, not proprietary)
AAC and MP3 are still proprietary, you know. They're standards, yes, but proprietary ones. In contrast, the Xiph formats (e.g. Vorbis, FLAC) are actually not proprietary.
The thing that makes a format proprietary or not is whether anyone is allowed to implement and/or use it without paying royalties, not how popular it is.
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The problem with that idea is that it's still important for artists to get radio airtime. And pretty much all the radio stations are owned by a few big companies (e.g. ClearChannel) which are chummy with the RIAA. And that radio station cartel is supported, aided and abetted by the FCC.
In other words, to break the RIAA we also have to break the FCC.
Integration with iTunes (not necessarily the store), such as syncing Smart Playlists, and 3rd-party accessory support that's an order of magnitude greater than for any other music player.
Huh? The Roman citizenry never revolted (Rome's various "civil wars" were fights between one rich patrician and another, not large-scale popular uprisings); Rome fell because it was invaded by foreign Gallic and Germanic tribes. All the bread and circuses did was weaken the Empire so that the barbarians had an easier time of it (and then again, they might have invaded regardless, since they were fleeing the Huns).
You must be new here, 'cause I see it all the time.
Oh yeah? And who decided to invent that "abomination of technology" in the first place? That's right, the cable companies did!
Bullshit! If the cable companies had wanted to, they could have just said to the content providers "we're going to send our channels unencrypted and such that they can be received just like over-the-air digital, and you can take it or leave it" and the content providers would have capitualated. But instead, the cable companies are just as much greedy assholes, and created the whole set-top box/CableCard fiasco specifically so they could bleed customers for an extra $5 per TV, per month regardless of whether said customer had a perfectly good VSB tuner!
Hah! You think they'll let you go back to analog? Sure, some people have analog because they're grandfathered in, but that doesn't mean the cable company is necessarily accepting new analog subscriptions. It is being phased out, you know.
You can't necessarily tell just from that -- I have analog cable (in fact, all my TVs are about 20 years old and I plug the coax directly into them without a cable box), but I still sometimes see digital noise because it was apparently introduced somewhere upstream before it hit the cable company.
Only the Tablet PC version has it. I'm pretty sure I've seen similar pixel density on non-tablets from other manufacturers, however.
Hey asshole, I was just making the point that Krita can't replace the GIMP yet, because the GIMP is cross-platform and Krita isn't.
So, does (the stable branch of) it run on Mac or Windows yet?
What about "Smart" or "Dynamic" playlists? Those aren't lists of songs; they're more like database queries, choosing songs based on metadata. In my opinion, they're a lot more useful than regular playlists, and iTunes can sync them too.
Well, I don't know, so I'll check...
Ha ha! My iPod does update the playlists without synching!
Now, it's not that big a deal because most metadata can't be edited on the iPod anyway. However, there are a few things that can change: the star rating, play count, and "last played" timestamp. So, I decided to listen to my "least recently played" list. Once the song ended, I backed out a few levels in the menu and then went back to look at the list, and, lo and behold, the song I listened to was gone!
If you're automatically generating the drawing, shouldn't you be automatically generating the notes too? Would it make sense to specify the notes in whatever source you generated the drawing from?
Do you mean making a separate subview on the layout?
This is part of why I like constraint-based CAD (such as in SolidEdge): since it makes dimensioning an important part of the process, it's a lot less onerous than in something like AutoCAD.
Yeah you can; it's called "Party Shuffle."
Can't be done. Filesystems by themselves can't support playlists and playlists need to be synced too. So, in addition to understanding the filesystem your synchronization software also has to understand both the host's and portable's ideas of playlists, and be able to translate between them.
Then when the kid does bypass it the boss blames you for giving him a crap suggestion. That wouldn't exactly be my idea of a smart career move...
Do they update in real-time, when either the playlist's rules or the songs' metadata change? If so, then yes, they are like Smart Playlists.
But that's only one of my several questions. Are those Dynamic Playlists supported by any portable players (particularly Rockbox)? Can they be synchronized with said player?
But by the same token, we're free to complain about it (whether we lobby for a "supported interface" or not)!
Also in 2007, you can even find 1400x1050 even in some 12" displays (such as on my Thinkpad x60). 145.8 pixels per linear inch! Wheeeee! : )
It'd sure be nice, though, if there were a way to install Linux (or Rockbox, which AFAIK isn't Linux) on it but still have it act like an iPod (including syncing to iTunes, supporting Smart Playlists, etc.).
Hmm... I was under the impression that iTunes writes the ID3 info to the file. Sure, it keeps stuff like play counts only in its database, but I thought it wrote stuff like the title to the actual song. Am I wrong?
Exactly. He wants his files organized in a certain way because he doesn't yet realize that his actual problem is that the other stuff he uses doesn't properly support the database.
Changing a non-public interface is one thing. But it sounds like in this case that Apple went out of its way to add the hash, in order to lock out non-iTunes programs specifically.
Breaking the thing accidentally is excusable, doing it maliciously isn't!
Are you sure that's because iTunes doesn't support the format you used (which I find unlikely unless you ripped to WMA, which as other posters have pointed out was stupid to begin with)? I ask because the other (and more likely, in my opinion) possibility is that your wife has the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" and/or "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" options checked in her iTunes preferences. If you turn those off, it should (theoretically) work without having to make a copy.
AAC and MP3 are still proprietary, you know. They're standards, yes, but proprietary ones. In contrast, the Xiph formats (e.g. Vorbis, FLAC) are actually not proprietary.
The thing that makes a format proprietary or not is whether anyone is allowed to implement and/or use it without paying royalties, not how popular it is.