I was thinking about something like this myself. Basically, what I'd like to have are two flags
You could probably work something out using keywords in the "Grouping" field. I create smart playlists by putting keywords like "Mellow" or "Work-out" and then create "Mellow" and "Work out music" playlists by pulling songs with those words in the grouping field. This way the real genre of the song is not changed, but I create my own groupings.
I've never understood the claim that Slashdot is a blog. Being short for "web log"
It is quite simply because weblogs, at their core, are just "articles" posted about one subject, with links to other areas of the web with more details on that particular subject, and a place for other people to comment on the article.
I am not anti-capitalist. I believe that everyone has a right to profit reasonably in proportion the extent, quality and value of the efforts or goods that they produce.
A company can't simply make a profit, they must make a growing profit.
The point of capitalism is to make as much money as you can with the capital you have, yes.
I'd say this is a new trend, but I don't know if it is.
No, it's as old as capitalism. That is, it's as old as one person having something and bartering with another person for something else.
it's a bad trend, and will eventually explode in companies' faces.
Why on earth would capitalism explode in companies' faces? Capitalism just works. Read some history.
What about this scenario makes you think this won't work out? If they charge too much money, they may not sell enough to justify the price raise, then they'll lower it again.
The thing that is weird is having all songs cost 99 cents when all songs are NOT equal. That makes no sense, and it was bound to have to change at some point.
It's time for some supply and demand to kick in.
I think Apple is just pretending to be worried about this. As long as their profits increase along with the labels as the prices escalate (and vice versa), it should be fair to all involved.
If you don't like the price, don't buy the song, or buy it elsewhere. That's capitalism.
No, it's not time to produce (more) state-funded content. All the BBC is is a premium channel, like HBO. HBO has a ton of very popular and critically acclaimed shows that run 30-60 minutes a week without commercials. I don't watch the BBC much (I'm in America), but I assume it also has quality programming with fewer or no ads.
So what you really want is more premium channels. But you want everyone to pay for it, rather than just those that actually want to watch it.
Easy, sure, but pretty much a ball and chain, especially if you actually use that digital music store, which will happily sell you songs all day at approx 8x the price of the best legal alternative site that doesn't insist on onerous DRM, but will sell you most music in a huge variety of MP3 formats, and some music in alternative formats such as those mentioned above - even lossless formats.
I can only assume you mean allofmp3.com, which is not legally selling that music, any more than pirates on the streets of NYC and Shanghai are legally selling $5 DVDs.
Apple's DRM won't look so innocuous when you realize a couple of computers or music players down the road that you have to buy the music *again*...
You are ignorant of how Apple DRM works. I have my itunes music playing on 5 different computers and half a dozen different ipods. No need to buy them again, ever. When I am done with my computer and want to upgrade, I just deauthorize the computer and authorize the new one.
If I am feeling paranoid, I burn the album to CD and store it away.
I've never understood why the people in this community are so willing to accept Apple's extremely proprietary architecture and DRM schemes.
What does "extremely proprietary" mean? How does it differ from plain old "proprietary"? Just curious.
The reason we put up with Apple's DRM scheme is simple -- it is the best solution available for legally purchased digital music, in our opinion.
Again, like many others, *if* you remember the special USB cable...
Yeah I am not implying these features are not common, I was explaining why ipods took off compared to MD players.
Yes, because when the minidisc first came out, there was no such thing as mp3. They developed their own compressed format to carry around your music.
That's right, and then MP3 came out, and Sony stuck to ATRAC. And then MP3 became wildly popular, and sony released "digital music players" and did they support MP3? No. More proprietary sony formats ONLY. Finally they gave up on the latest iteration, and supported MP3.
Why not say this in the first place before listing off a numbering of seemingly factual statements bashing the 'un-hip' minidisc?
Because I wrongly assumed you could read. The person I was responding to asked: "Ok, I have to wonder, why [MD players] never caught on.... I would love to be enlightened."
How did such a ludiciris article make it to the front page.
From the slashdot FAQ, it says they post what they think is interesting.
Also, it's spelled ludicrous, rap groups notwithstanding.
Based on the comments by our own Cowboy Neal, I'd peg him to be an ignorant coward (i.e. racist).
CowboyNeal didn't comment on this article, he just posted it.
Also, being a racist isn't the same thing as being an ignorant coward. (Ignorant, yes, but I don't see where "coward" comes into play.)
I'm a white american that has worked with a number of Indian s.w. developers, and I find this entire article to be flame bait'able.
I'm a white American that has not worked with many non-whites, and I still find this article to be a waste of time. Flame-baitable? meh
I will obviouslly get modded way down for this, but I hope those of you that browse at 0+ see this and realize how bigotted this submission really is.
How is it bigotted to recognize the reality that many overseas countries do not have a handle on many diseases that are not a problem in the US?
If I said Microsoft ought to invest in a lot of Yellow Fever medication if they hire workers from Peru, would that be a cowardly ignorant racist flamebaitable thing to say? No, because Peru has a problem with Yellow Fever.
In case you haven't been around in the last year, the current minidisc players play mp3s. No encoding to other formats. Also, these have the ability to record in raw PCM stereo, with a mic. And upload it USB to your computer to edit.
That's great. But the guy asked why MDs never took off like ipods. MDs just added the feature you speak of DUE TO the popularity of mp3 players.
If you love DRM, enjoy. Not me.
iTunes DRM has never adversely effected me.
And yes, you can also use the new minidisc models as external USB storage drives. 1GB disc are about $6 each.
See above. I am not giving a state of the union on md's, I am explaining why they didn't take off like ipods.
1. ipods run MP3's natively. No encoding to a proprietary format (ATRAC) and losing quality as with minidisc.
2. "sonicstage sure, stupid program, but its easy" Meet iTunes. It's not stupid, it's quite awesome, and quite easy. And it's a great portal into a digital music store.
3. You have to use interchangeable discs. My iPod has 40GB. I have 5000 songs, over a dozen audiobooks, and now a dozen constantly synced podcasts on this thing. I drive a lot, and what I feel like listening to at any given moment can change frequently.
4. You can use ipods like portable hard drives. Because they are.
5. Apple engineering. Sorry, the iPods are a thing of beauty and great UI. This counts, A LOT.
6. Marketing. iPods are hip. MDs were never hip. Yeah, this counts as well. When you see white headphones, you know there's an ipod on the other end. Steve Jobs is fucking brilliant at marketing.
Will that be enough to offset the loss of the XBox original?
Who knows, but it is not like those two events are mutually exclusive. MSFT chose to go with PPC for xbox 360, regardless of the fact that Apple is going with Intel in the future.
I think it is a good bet that Apple will eventually make more money for Intel than Xbox.
Intel sure keeps making a big deal of this Apple deal. Considering that 90%+ of their processors will still go into Windows-based systems that won't run OS-X
So another way to say that is that, with Apple's business, Intel found an easy way to increase it's volume by 10%.
Hardly "insightful." I give the parent a -1 Shortsighted.
This is just the reincarnation of the mainframe era. Everyone (Sun, MicroSoft, et al), want to put us back in the days where the storage/cpu and most importantly the applications themselves are in their "capable" hands.
The application is in the hands of the person creating it. You are purchasing scaleable processing power.
I'm not even going to enertain the idea of having MY data stored on another (microsoft/sun/etc)server, and paying for the rights to access/modify it.
Good to know. Too bad it's not what grid computing is concerned with. At all.
There is a reason it's called the PC,and not a dumb terminal.
In fact, one could say that google is violating the spirit of the GPL. They're "distributing" their software via a web server, but nobody gets to see the code behind the scenens, improve it, or fix bugs, or anything else.
Yes, yes, yes... Google has built this insanely awesome search engine on the back of open source, without giving anything back! Those bastards! If only they would provide some sort of free service to the community at large to "pay us back"!
You understand they are over here because WE ARE OVER THERE, and have been since the Cold War?
I understand it is a lot more complicated than that. Yes, it would be simpler if we weren't "over there." We'd also be speaking German. Or Russian.
What would your natural reaction be if an Iraqi army was occupying Washington D.C.?
That depends. Was U.S. President Saddam Hussein's secret service raping my sister before this occupation of D.C.?
We toppled a democratic government in Iran, and put the Shah in power. Then we act shocked when the people over there revolt and are pissed at us?
The people in Iran are pissed at Israel, too. What did they do to Iran? Oh, they were being Jewish. Those bastards. Are you saying the Iranian government is rational?
We have troops around Mecca
No we don't. We did have troops in Saudi Arabia, mostly all gone, and never near Mecca.
We are playing at empire, and terrorism is its natural consequence.
Really, empire? What lands are we taking over? We just toppled Saddam Hussein and are helping train Iraqis to police their own country, establish a constitution and elected government. Not exactly my kind of empire.
"All elected officals must solely use PUBLIC transportaion during the course of their term."
On this we agree. However, they already DO! We pay for all their transportation. Ha, not what you had in mind I bet.
And how is this information is worth paying $212M for hardware to see what the dead criminal looked like? Has the identity of the London bombers helped find "terror cells"?
Video footage helped capture the attempted bombers in the second bombing in London, so yes it did help catch terror cells. Without the video footage, would these men have been able to try again? Probably.
That's a lot of money for fuzzy video
$212M... I am guessing the video won't be fuzzy.
video that likely wouldn't stand up in court, assuming the bomber(s) had survived.
1. How are you making this assumption? The video could definitely stand up in court.
2. The primary purpose of the video is to CAPTURE THE SUSPECTS. Once you've done that, you normally can gather more damning evidence. In this case, they found their hideouts, their bomb-making materials, etc.
In the end, it is looking like a lot of money that will be spent that won't do anything to prevent a catastrophe.
If the second bombers weren't caught in London and managed to set off a third bombing that killed a bunch of people, would your position still be the same?
Slashdot Mirror
Without the ability to identify credible sources a piece of information is essentially worthless.
Yes, ifwm, I totally agree!
What kind of prick rags on someone for being anonymous while also being anonymous?
Yours truly,
That's Unpossible! (my real name)
I was thinking about something like this myself. Basically, what I'd like to have are two flags
You could probably work something out using keywords in the "Grouping" field. I create smart playlists by putting keywords like "Mellow" or "Work-out" and then create "Mellow" and "Work out music" playlists by pulling songs with those words in the grouping field. This way the real genre of the song is not changed, but I create my own groupings.
I've never understood the claim that Slashdot is a blog. Being short for "web log"
It is quite simply because weblogs, at their core, are just "articles" posted about one subject, with links to other areas of the web with more details on that particular subject, and a place for other people to comment on the article.
Sound familiar now?
I am not anti-capitalist. I believe that everyone has a right to profit reasonably in proportion the extent, quality and value of the efforts or goods that they produce.
That is not capitalism.
That's the American capitalist economy
No, it's just capitalism.
A company can't simply make a profit, they must make a growing profit.
The point of capitalism is to make as much money as you can with the capital you have, yes.
I'd say this is a new trend, but I don't know if it is.
No, it's as old as capitalism. That is, it's as old as one person having something and bartering with another person for something else.
it's a bad trend, and will eventually explode in companies' faces.
Why on earth would capitalism explode in companies' faces? Capitalism just works. Read some history.
What about this scenario makes you think this won't work out? If they charge too much money, they may not sell enough to justify the price raise, then they'll lower it again.
The thing that is weird is having all songs cost 99 cents when all songs are NOT equal. That makes no sense, and it was bound to have to change at some point.
It's time for some supply and demand to kick in.
I think Apple is just pretending to be worried about this. As long as their profits increase along with the labels as the prices escalate (and vice versa), it should be fair to all involved.
If you don't like the price, don't buy the song, or buy it elsewhere. That's capitalism.
The USA, proud member of the first world, is in the top ten for executions with such exemplary second world nations as Belarus and China.
After fair trials, and years of appeals.
Also, by the way, we don't execute virus writers...
So why hasn't it?
It already has. HBO. Showtime. Premium HD channels. InDemand (video on demand over cable). etc.
I pay more for cable in the US than I paid for the TV licence in the UK
You also get WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more channels than you get for that license in the UK.
Of course the BBC has no adverts because I paid a licnce fee instead.
Of course, HBO has no adverts because I paid for it. If you want all cable channels to be ad-free, you will pay even more.
If the best the free market can do is charge me twice - first money, then advertising - then I'm not at all impressed.
Sorry to hear that.
I wouldn't mind advertising that was clerverly integrated with a show and/or kind of funny.
True, but there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it.
Right way: A beat-up old Mini showing off extreme versatility in one of the best car chases ever filmed in The Bourne Identity.
Wrong way: Rene Russo taking a 10-second drink from a Pepsi One as everyone else in the movie just stares at her. (The Thomas Crown Affair.)
No, it's not time to produce (more) state-funded content. All the BBC is is a premium channel, like HBO. HBO has a ton of very popular and critically acclaimed shows that run 30-60 minutes a week without commercials. I don't watch the BBC much (I'm in America), but I assume it also has quality programming with fewer or no ads.
So what you really want is more premium channels. But you want everyone to pay for it, rather than just those that actually want to watch it.
How is that fair?
The free market can handle this problem.
Easy, sure, but pretty much a ball and chain, especially if you actually use that digital music store, which will happily sell you songs all day at approx 8x the price of the best legal alternative site that doesn't insist on onerous DRM, but will sell you most music in a huge variety of MP3 formats, and some music in alternative formats such as those mentioned above - even lossless formats.
I can only assume you mean allofmp3.com, which is not legally selling that music, any more than pirates on the streets of NYC and Shanghai are legally selling $5 DVDs.
Apple's DRM won't look so innocuous when you realize a couple of computers or music players down the road that you have to buy the music *again*...
You are ignorant of how Apple DRM works. I have my itunes music playing on 5 different computers and half a dozen different ipods. No need to buy them again, ever. When I am done with my computer and want to upgrade, I just deauthorize the computer and authorize the new one.
If I am feeling paranoid, I burn the album to CD and store it away.
I've never understood why the people in this community are so willing to accept Apple's extremely proprietary architecture and DRM schemes.
What does "extremely proprietary" mean? How does it differ from plain old "proprietary"? Just curious.
The reason we put up with Apple's DRM scheme is simple -- it is the best solution available for legally purchased digital music, in our opinion.
Again, like many others, *if* you remember the special USB cable...
Yeah I am not implying these features are not common, I was explaining why ipods took off compared to MD players.
Yes, because when the minidisc first came out, there was no such thing as mp3. They developed their own compressed format to carry around your music.
That's right, and then MP3 came out, and Sony stuck to ATRAC. And then MP3 became wildly popular, and sony released "digital music players" and did they support MP3? No. More proprietary sony formats ONLY. Finally they gave up on the latest iteration, and supported MP3.
Why not say this in the first place before listing off a numbering of seemingly factual statements bashing the 'un-hip' minidisc?
Because I wrongly assumed you could read. The person I was responding to asked: "Ok, I have to wonder, why [MD players] never caught on.... I would love to be enlightened."
Clear enough?
How did such a ludiciris article make it to the front page.
From the slashdot FAQ, it says they post what they think is interesting.
Also, it's spelled ludicrous, rap groups notwithstanding.
Based on the comments by our own Cowboy Neal, I'd peg him to be an ignorant coward (i.e. racist).
CowboyNeal didn't comment on this article, he just posted it.
Also, being a racist isn't the same thing as being an ignorant coward. (Ignorant, yes, but I don't see where "coward" comes into play.)
I'm a white american that has worked with a number of Indian s.w. developers, and I find this entire article to be flame bait'able.
I'm a white American that has not worked with many non-whites, and I still find this article to be a waste of time. Flame-baitable? meh
I will obviouslly get modded way down for this, but I hope those of you that browse at 0+ see this and realize how bigotted this submission really is.
How is it bigotted to recognize the reality that many overseas countries do not have a handle on many diseases that are not a problem in the US?
If I said Microsoft ought to invest in a lot of Yellow Fever medication if they hire workers from Peru, would that be a cowardly ignorant racist flamebaitable thing to say? No, because Peru has a problem with Yellow Fever.
In case you haven't been around in the last year, the current minidisc players play mp3s. No encoding to other formats. Also, these have the ability to record in raw PCM stereo, with a mic. And upload it USB to your computer to edit.
That's great. But the guy asked why MDs never took off like ipods. MDs just added the feature you speak of DUE TO the popularity of mp3 players.
If you love DRM, enjoy. Not me.
iTunes DRM has never adversely effected me.
And yes, you can also use the new minidisc models as external USB storage drives. 1GB disc are about $6 each.
See above. I am not giving a state of the union on md's, I am explaining why they didn't take off like ipods.
Anyway, yea, I would love to be enlightened
No problem.
1. ipods run MP3's natively. No encoding to a proprietary format (ATRAC) and losing quality as with minidisc.
2. "sonicstage sure, stupid program, but its easy" Meet iTunes. It's not stupid, it's quite awesome, and quite easy. And it's a great portal into a digital music store.
3. You have to use interchangeable discs. My iPod has 40GB. I have 5000 songs, over a dozen audiobooks, and now a dozen constantly synced podcasts on this thing. I drive a lot, and what I feel like listening to at any given moment can change frequently.
4. You can use ipods like portable hard drives. Because they are.
5. Apple engineering. Sorry, the iPods are a thing of beauty and great UI. This counts, A LOT.
6. Marketing. iPods are hip. MDs were never hip. Yeah, this counts as well. When you see white headphones, you know there's an ipod on the other end. Steve Jobs is fucking brilliant at marketing.
1. He gave prescriptions to people across the US even though he's only licensed in NJ.
2. He gave prescriptions to people he did not evaluate.
His final crime was allowing people to pump his gas for him, and at a lower cost then his neighboring states. That's just WRONG!
Even at a 0 rating, I still thought commenting on a so-so funny post with such enthusiasm was nauseating.
What makes it "good" is the group of people that know what they're talking about (like the directors themselves and film students and film critics).
There is no such thing as "good" art, only art you like. I don't care how many critics love a movie, if I don't like it, it's not good.
Now go back to reading your film studies book and pretend you know what you're talking about.
sometimes you see a comment that doesn't deserve a +4, Insightful
the above is one of those
bad show for boring me with your highly rated comment
Will that be enough to offset the loss of the XBox original?
Who knows, but it is not like those two events are mutually exclusive. MSFT chose to go with PPC for xbox 360, regardless of the fact that Apple is going with Intel in the future.
I think it is a good bet that Apple will eventually make more money for Intel than Xbox.
Intel sure keeps making a big deal of this Apple deal. Considering that 90%+ of their processors will still go into Windows-based systems that won't run OS-X
So another way to say that is that, with Apple's business, Intel found an easy way to increase it's volume by 10%.
Hardly "insightful." I give the parent a -1 Shortsighted.
This is just the reincarnation of the mainframe era. Everyone (Sun, MicroSoft, et al), want to put us back in the days where the storage/cpu and most importantly the applications themselves are in their "capable" hands.
The application is in the hands of the person creating it. You are purchasing scaleable processing power.
I'm not even going to enertain the idea of having MY data stored on another (microsoft/sun/etc)server, and paying for the rights to access/modify it.
Good to know. Too bad it's not what grid computing is concerned with. At all.
There is a reason it's called the PC,and not a dumb terminal.
Honestly... +5 Insightful? "The mods are crazy."
In fact, one could say that google is violating the spirit of the GPL. They're "distributing" their software via a web server, but nobody gets to see the code behind the scenens, improve it, or fix bugs, or anything else.
Yes, yes, yes... Google has built this insanely awesome search engine on the back of open source, without giving anything back! Those bastards! If only they would provide some sort of free service to the community at large to "pay us back"!
Wait.... it'll come to me.
You understand they are over here because WE ARE OVER THERE, and have been since the Cold War?
I understand it is a lot more complicated than that. Yes, it would be simpler if we weren't "over there." We'd also be speaking German. Or Russian.
What would your natural reaction be if an Iraqi army was occupying Washington D.C.?
That depends. Was U.S. President Saddam Hussein's secret service raping my sister before this occupation of D.C.?
We toppled a democratic government in Iran, and put the Shah in power. Then we act shocked when the people over there revolt and are pissed at us?
The people in Iran are pissed at Israel, too. What did they do to Iran? Oh, they were being Jewish. Those bastards. Are you saying the Iranian government is rational?
We have troops around Mecca
No we don't. We did have troops in Saudi Arabia, mostly all gone, and never near Mecca.
We are playing at empire, and terrorism is its natural consequence.
Really, empire? What lands are we taking over? We just toppled Saddam Hussein and are helping train Iraqis to police their own country, establish a constitution and elected government. Not exactly my kind of empire.
"All elected officals must solely use PUBLIC transportaion during the course of their term."
On this we agree. However, they already DO! We pay for all their transportation. Ha, not what you had in mind I bet.
That's certainly worth $212 million - the bastard might do it again!
Or he might leave the bomb instead of committing suicide, and do it again. Or he might screw up the bombing, and we catch him before he does it again.
Hmmm, maybe you're not as smart as you thought?
And how is this information is worth paying $212M for hardware to see what the dead criminal looked like? Has the identity of the London bombers helped find "terror cells"?
Video footage helped capture the attempted bombers in the second bombing in London, so yes it did help catch terror cells. Without the video footage, would these men have been able to try again? Probably.
That's a lot of money for fuzzy video
$212M... I am guessing the video won't be fuzzy.
video that likely wouldn't stand up in court, assuming the bomber(s) had survived.
1. How are you making this assumption? The video could definitely stand up in court.
2. The primary purpose of the video is to CAPTURE THE SUSPECTS. Once you've done that, you normally can gather more damning evidence. In this case, they found their hideouts, their bomb-making materials, etc.
In the end, it is looking like a lot of money that will be spent that won't do anything to prevent a catastrophe.
If the second bombers weren't caught in London and managed to set off a third bombing that killed a bunch of people, would your position still be the same?