In my limited experience, techno is much more easily compressed than just about anything that didn't start out as a midi.
OTOH, the more instruments there are, the more difficult something is to compress at the same sound quality. I've even encountered one song (Blind Guardian's "And Then There Was Silence" (which purportedly had 128 separate tracks used in its recording)) that had a couple audible artifacts on the retail CD, and in many parts had an overall feeling of flatness due to the limited resolution of CDs. Incidentally, it's the only song so far that I'd want to compare a DVD-Audio version to the CD.
Most songs just aren't worth $1 per song, especially for a lossy, low-bitrate, DRM-encrusted file. And that's before the major labels try to hike the price up.
Every previous change in standard formats has been an increase in audio quality and/or consistency.
Examples:
Vinyl was prone to scratches; 8-tracks weren't.
Cassettes were an evolution in tape technology (and, iirc, CrO2 was higher quality too).
CDs brought the consistency and durability of optical digital media to music.
MP3 just doesn't add anything. It's a lossy encoding of the CD audio, it's easily destroyed by virii, worms, and particularly nasty windows crashes (other OSes are unfortunately statistically insignificant in the end user market). AAC doesn't either. It's got all those risks, plus DRM out of the box. I haven't heard of anything else of comparable or better quality being used for music sales.
I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall the 7 Years' War starting in the colonies as the French & Indian War, then spreading from there to Europe as word of the conflict spread.
It is a NH state decision - it has no force anywhere else.....
Regardless of whether the judge was out of touch with other case law, the law is apparently on the books in NH, and therefore applies to the rest of the country. US Constitution, Article IV, Section 1: "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."
It's rather clear that the first sentence says that every state law applies in not only its own state but all the other states too. Sounds strange to me too, but it's in there.
Virii themselves aren't much of an issue. They can still cause problems, but they're much less dangerous than worms. But while we're pipedreaming, we might as well hope people will wake up to the threats from virii too.
IANAL but, IIRC, some EULAs have been shot down in court because you had to agree to it before being able to see it (anything that says something like that on the cd envelope without actually stating the EULA there or saying where in the included (dead-wood) documentation you can find said EULA). I don't remember the last time I saw some windows packaging, so I don't know if MS does this or not (IIRC, the case in question involved the EULA some company's software firewall saying that all reviews of it had to be approved of by the company and couldn't say anything negative about the product).
I don't recall ever agreeing to a EULA for anything that came preinstalled on machines, either.
It's not going to happen of course. Infected and remotely controllable machines are worth too much to worm/virus writers for them to run around willy nilly destroying the install on them.
It'll probably take some security expert going completely apeshit and writing a highly polymorphic worm with some very public, truly nasty consequences (stuff much worse than the gay porn thing and file deletion) in something that uses dozens of known exploits to get people to realize virii and worms really are a big problem.
Hanlon's Razor works up to a point. But with the degree, extent, and predictability of the RIAA's bungling in this area, I'm beginning to wonder if that much incompetence can really exist in one organization without the shareholders tearing the whole thing to pieces.
Um, there are native firewire drives (or at least a specification for them). It's called Serial-attached SCSI (for those of you who don't know, firewire is a serial implementation of SCSI).
Laptops and rackmount storage servers already tend to make use of backplanes or backplane-style connectors. From that, it's not difficult to route the wires internally to a more ventilation-friendly location.
The rise of payola is probably more to blame for the death of the album than the internet/pay-per-song model. It encouraged one-hit wonders that poured all their efforts into a single track rather than making a balanced, continuous, multipart concept album that occasionally sacrificed the individual quality of a song for the overall effect of the album.
I dare anyone to identify a true concept album (not a bunch of songs with similar themes tossed on a disc, but an central story told throughout the length of the album) released by an RIAA member label in the past 15 years.
Chances are, if someone isn't already doing this, they've got a decent-sized music collection already. Most or all of it might even be unquestionably legal.
If you think you disagree with the parent, ask yourself this: if you aren't willing to listen to the music you've already got, why'd you get it in the first place? That's right, you got it because you liked it, or someone said it was really good, or it looked interesting. But surely some of it's from the first reason. And surely you still like some of that.
If you get bored with your own music, there's always the radio (not the best option, but still an option), internet radio, and mp3.com or whatever rose to take its place.
Buying music, especially from the RIAA member labels, isn't your only option if you don't like their practices.
And if another supply (legal or not) opens up and demand drops, what do they do? They sick the lawyers on anything and everything that might've caused it, unless it's located within their own ivory tower.
I'd expect someone with that degree of importance to have a phone with a functional vibrate setting. They get a call, they can see who it is by caller id, and if it's important step outside the auditorium to take it. If not, they hit the mute button, it stops vibrating, and they continue watching the movie. No harm, no foul, no inconvenience. It does require them to set the phone to vibrate (if they don't leave it on that all the time), but that's already asked by theaters of everyone.
What if your hydraulic brake line fails on your manually controlled car? What if your transmission explodes and sends you into an uncontrolled skid?
Then you're hosed. Systems fail, and accidents (sometimes fatal ones) happen.
In the US, by law, it's the driver's fault for not making sure their vehicle is in proper mechanical condition.
I've never heard of a brake line failing without deliberate intervention (i.e. sabotage), but I suppose it could happen. In that case, you can still use engine braking to slow down, and the emergency/parking brake to stop.
Transmissions are pretty solid components. Barring gross abuse, they're rather difficult to make explode. Still, that'd still just cause a loss of power to the wheels, and possibly damage the engine. The brakes would still work, as would the emergency/parking brake.
The way a lot of SUV drivers drive them, you'd expect them to have brakes off a Porsche.
Perhaps GM, Ford, etc. should put high-end brakes on their SUVs at the factory. They've got big engines already. They really ought to be able to stop from a given speed in less distance than it took to accelerate to it.
I have 33 cds. About 25 of those were bought because I had downloaded some songs from the cd, liked them, and decided I wanted higher quality versions of them (I rip all my cds to FLAC). Most of those 25 I never would've heard because they're not what MTV and Clear Channel cater to (primarily heavy metal, progressive metal, and trance).
Prior to discovering Napster, I had all of 6 cds, and bought more at a rate of a couple a year. Now it's more like a couple a month. I doubt I'm alone in this trend.
They've already been sued for price fixing (it was collusion, not antitrust, as it involved multiple companies cooperating to screw the consumer), lost, and given everyone who signed up for the settlement $13.86. But like the MS antitrust cases, the ??AA's just view it as the cost of doing business, and will continue to do so until the punishment costs them more than their earnings increased over operating within the law.
You're right about the RIAA not going to shops and saying "you can't sell both our stuff and the little guys' stuff", but they do effectively lock out the little guys from the radio by paying the stations to play stuff (~30 years ago, this was a scandal; now it's SOP).
Pebble-bed reactors are supposed to be significantly cheaper, because they require a much less extensive containment structure, and are reportedly more efficient than traditional nuclear reactors.
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In my limited experience, techno is much more easily compressed than just about anything that didn't start out as a midi.
OTOH, the more instruments there are, the more difficult something is to compress at the same sound quality. I've even encountered one song (Blind Guardian's "And Then There Was Silence" (which purportedly had 128 separate tracks used in its recording)) that had a couple audible artifacts on the retail CD, and in many parts had an overall feeling of flatness due to the limited resolution of CDs. Incidentally, it's the only song so far that I'd want to compare a DVD-Audio version to the CD.
Most songs just aren't worth $1 per song, especially for a lossy, low-bitrate, DRM-encrusted file. And that's before the major labels try to hike the price up.
Every previous change in standard formats has been an increase in audio quality and/or consistency.
- Examples:
- Vinyl was prone to scratches; 8-tracks weren't.
- Cassettes were an evolution in tape technology (and, iirc, CrO2 was higher quality too).
- CDs brought the consistency and durability of optical digital media to music.
MP3 just doesn't add anything. It's a lossy encoding of the CD audio, it's easily destroyed by virii, worms, and particularly nasty windows crashes (other OSes are unfortunately statistically insignificant in the end user market). AAC doesn't either. It's got all those risks, plus DRM out of the box. I haven't heard of anything else of comparable or better quality being used for music sales.I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall the 7 Years' War starting in the colonies as the French & Indian War, then spreading from there to Europe as word of the conflict spread.
Oops...forgot my IANAL.
Regardless of whether the judge was out of touch with other case law, the law is apparently on the books in NH, and therefore applies to the rest of the country. US Constitution, Article IV, Section 1: "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."
It's rather clear that the first sentence says that every state law applies in not only its own state but all the other states too. Sounds strange to me too, but it's in there.
Virii themselves aren't much of an issue. They can still cause problems, but they're much less dangerous than worms. But while we're pipedreaming, we might as well hope people will wake up to the threats from virii too.
So what do they have to lose that they haven't already lost?
I think that's about it.
IANAL but, IIRC, some EULAs have been shot down in court because you had to agree to it before being able to see it (anything that says something like that on the cd envelope without actually stating the EULA there or saying where in the included (dead-wood) documentation you can find said EULA). I don't remember the last time I saw some windows packaging, so I don't know if MS does this or not (IIRC, the case in question involved the EULA some company's software firewall saying that all reviews of it had to be approved of by the company and couldn't say anything negative about the product).
I don't recall ever agreeing to a EULA for anything that came preinstalled on machines, either.
It's not going to happen of course. Infected and remotely controllable machines are worth too much to worm/virus writers for them to run around willy nilly destroying the install on them.
It'll probably take some security expert going completely apeshit and writing a highly polymorphic worm with some very public, truly nasty consequences (stuff much worse than the gay porn thing and file deletion) in something that uses dozens of known exploits to get people to realize virii and worms really are a big problem.
Hanlon's Razor works up to a point. But with the degree, extent, and predictability of the RIAA's bungling in this area, I'm beginning to wonder if that much incompetence can really exist in one organization without the shareholders tearing the whole thing to pieces.
Um, there are native firewire drives (or at least a specification for them). It's called Serial-attached SCSI (for those of you who don't know, firewire is a serial implementation of SCSI).
Laptops and rackmount storage servers already tend to make use of backplanes or backplane-style connectors. From that, it's not difficult to route the wires internally to a more ventilation-friendly location.
The rise of payola is probably more to blame for the death of the album than the internet/pay-per-song model. It encouraged one-hit wonders that poured all their efforts into a single track rather than making a balanced, continuous, multipart concept album that occasionally sacrificed the individual quality of a song for the overall effect of the album.
I dare anyone to identify a true concept album (not a bunch of songs with similar themes tossed on a disc, but an central story told throughout the length of the album) released by an RIAA member label in the past 15 years.
Indeed.
Chances are, if someone isn't already doing this, they've got a decent-sized music collection already. Most or all of it might even be unquestionably legal.
If you think you disagree with the parent, ask yourself this: if you aren't willing to listen to the music you've already got, why'd you get it in the first place? That's right, you got it because you liked it, or someone said it was really good, or it looked interesting. But surely some of it's from the first reason. And surely you still like some of that.
If you get bored with your own music, there's always the radio (not the best option, but still an option), internet radio, and mp3.com or whatever rose to take its place.
Buying music, especially from the RIAA member labels, isn't your only option if you don't like their practices.
And if another supply (legal or not) opens up and demand drops, what do they do? They sick the lawyers on anything and everything that might've caused it, unless it's located within their own ivory tower.
I'd expect someone with that degree of importance to have a phone with a functional vibrate setting. They get a call, they can see who it is by caller id, and if it's important step outside the auditorium to take it. If not, they hit the mute button, it stops vibrating, and they continue watching the movie. No harm, no foul, no inconvenience. It does require them to set the phone to vibrate (if they don't leave it on that all the time), but that's already asked by theaters of everyone.
In the US, by law, it's the driver's fault for not making sure their vehicle is in proper mechanical condition.
I've never heard of a brake line failing without deliberate intervention (i.e. sabotage), but I suppose it could happen. In that case, you can still use engine braking to slow down, and the emergency/parking brake to stop.
Transmissions are pretty solid components. Barring gross abuse, they're rather difficult to make explode. Still, that'd still just cause a loss of power to the wheels, and possibly damage the engine. The brakes would still work, as would the emergency/parking brake.
The way a lot of SUV drivers drive them, you'd expect them to have brakes off a Porsche.
Perhaps GM, Ford, etc. should put high-end brakes on their SUVs at the factory. They've got big engines already. They really ought to be able to stop from a given speed in less distance than it took to accelerate to it.
Or panhandlers that block traffic just because you didn't give them anything yesterday when you were at the same stoplight.
My personal favorite is something high in sugar & caffeine (such as mountain dew) and thrash metal. That'll keep just about anyone awake.
I have 33 cds. About 25 of those were bought because I had downloaded some songs from the cd, liked them, and decided I wanted higher quality versions of them (I rip all my cds to FLAC). Most of those 25 I never would've heard because they're not what MTV and Clear Channel cater to (primarily heavy metal, progressive metal, and trance).
Prior to discovering Napster, I had all of 6 cds, and bought more at a rate of a couple a year. Now it's more like a couple a month. I doubt I'm alone in this trend.
They've already been sued for price fixing (it was collusion, not antitrust, as it involved multiple companies cooperating to screw the consumer), lost, and given everyone who signed up for the settlement $13.86. But like the MS antitrust cases, the ??AA's just view it as the cost of doing business, and will continue to do so until the punishment costs them more than their earnings increased over operating within the law.
You're right about the RIAA not going to shops and saying "you can't sell both our stuff and the little guys' stuff", but they do effectively lock out the little guys from the radio by paying the stations to play stuff (~30 years ago, this was a scandal; now it's SOP).
Pebble-bed reactors are supposed to be significantly cheaper, because they require a much less extensive containment structure, and are reportedly more efficient than traditional nuclear reactors.
This was mainly under office 97.
Indeed. I can barely believe they touted having Outlook as part of MSOffice as a feature.