There are actually quite a few non-Apple players that support unprotected AAC. AAC is not an Apple-proprietary format. It's owned by Dolby and Apple is merely a licensee.
If you rip the audio CD at 256K you'll have an almost sonically identical copy of the original AAC file. But yeah, the ITMS 128K originals are not nearly audiophile quality to begin with.
It's fairly easy to play DRM'd iTunes Music Store music on any MP3 player. All you do is burn an audio CD from the DRM'd files and then rip that CD into MP3s. That's it. You might have to rip at higher bitrate to make sure you capture all the original audio information, but it's perfectly doable--and legal.
I fail to see anything in the new space policy to justify the torrent of vitriol spewing forth from my fellow Slashdotters. My reading of this policy can be distilled down to two main points:
1. The United States reserves the right to do basically anything it likes in space.
2. The United States reserves the right to vaporize any space assets that are hostile to it.
Nowhere in it do I see anything about the U.S. proclaiming that has either a monopoly on the use of space or that it has a problem with other countries merely going about their business in space. I don't know about anyone else, but if North Korea ever placed a nuclear launch platform in synchronous orbit over New York, I'd sure as heckfire want our boys to take it out, pronto.
I can't believe what a turkey the Zune is. Here are 2 reasons right off the bat:
- It only lets you share one song at a time via wi-fi and then only with another Zune player. What's more, even if the song is not DRM'd, it infects that song with DRM so that the recipient can only play the song a maximum of 3 times or for a maximum of 3 days, whichever comes first. So much for Microsoft's wonderful social networking scheme.
- It can't play songs you've already downloaded encoded with Microsoft's own Play For Sure DRM. Dumb. Just plain dumb.
And if including an FM tuner didn't get people to flock to Creative's Zen video pod, why should it be such a hot feature in the Zune? And who the frack thought brown was cool?
Re:Quick! Think of something funny!
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 1
Here's real for you: this is the same jackass who dangled his infant son in front of a huge crocodile a couple of years back in an incredibly misguided attempt to teach him to be "croc-savvy". I guess now he'll never get the opportunity to teach his kid to be "sting-ray savvy".
In a bizarre twist of fate, Bob Fortuna, AKA The Sting-Ray Man, was devoured today by a crocodile while taping an episode of his popular TV show in the Everglades. Commenting on the this latest trajedy to reporters in Canberra, Mabel Rosenbaum, known to millions of TV viewers as The Shark Babe, said, "I always said you gotta stick to your area of expertise when it comes to handling dangerous wildlife. These guys think that just because they know how to hog tie one kind of critter they can pretty much wrassle anything. Why, just last year, whats-his-name, the Man-Eating Plant guy, almost had his head bit off by a condor. Gettin' cocky in this busines will get you killed, so that's why I'm sticking to my sharks. No sense in taking foolish risks."
You should be able to use this with Linux by dragging and dropping your MP3s onto it. But you won't be able to do that with video files, since you must first rip them through its Sansa Media Converter Windows app to a proprietary video format which then syncs them with the player.
The Sansa is an interesting device in any case, but not quite good enough to seriously challenge the nano, imo. It needs to be able to play standard video formats directly and also play a wider variety of audio formats than just MP3 and WMA.
Why why why, after 22 years does Apple STILL insist on making us buy proprietary graphics cards? Why go to the trouble of adopting an industry standard bus like PCI-X and then let it only use Mac-only versions of graphics cards that are much cheaper on PCs that use the same bus? It was somewhat understandable when desktop Macs were built around the PPC, but it's annoying as hell now that they're Intel boxes.
The best part about this announcement isn't the 100 megapixel size. Photographers can already buy large format digital backs for view cameras with 300 megapixel resolution (albeit for a hefty price). But they use multiple CCDs and require external power supplies and HDDs. This new chip opens up intruiging possibilities for a self-contained high resolution camera that requires much less power to operate. Still, a CCD of that resolution will generate raw image files of about 350 megabytes each, so portability will necessarily be compromised to a degree by storage requirements.
Waterworld cost $229M to make and to date has grossed about $334M worldwide. That doesn't mean that the $115M above the $229M the film cost is profit. Out of that $334M gross you have to deduct the cost of marketing, distribution and finally the theater owner's cut, which is considerable. After all that, Waterworld has almost certainly lost money, but probably not as much some other cinematic money pits, like "Alexander".
I can see how these things could be big laughs for the first 10 minutes. Just stick your hand up their ass and they start chattering away. Love me squeeze me never leave me. How cute. How adorably neurotically needy! By minute 11, I think I'd begin to feel a burning desire to cram them into the microwave. The frozen burrito setting should be about right.
In that regard, Needies are much like my first marriage, only without the pre-nup.
This is what happens when the bean counters try to quantify the creative process. You can add up all the ingredients for a hit movie and still have a major bomb on your hands.
It's like saying you can dump fois gras, Chateau Latour, beluga caviar and a savoy truffle into a blender and end up with the world's most wonderful milkshake. In the end it's a recipe for mediocrity, at best. More often, all you get is expensive puke.
If one could predict success by adding up the elements that go into movie making, then "Catwoman" should have been the megahit of 2004.
Re:Editors/Reviews are at fault as well
on
Merck's Deleted Data
·
· Score: 5, Informative
You missed the point entirely. The Journal was given a hard copy of the study by Merck four months before the issue came out. This was in the days before the publication worked from digital submissions.
Merck knowingly gave the Journal incomplete data and the editors have only now discovered the discrepancy by going back and examining the original computer document.
For me as an administrator in a Mac-centric company, the most interesting part of this is Apple's accomodation of Linux, Windows and the Mac OS on their intel platform while simultaneously attempting to prevent their OS from being installed on a generic intel PC. If Apple can pull it off, it will give a significant value-add to their intel boxes. That's something that Micheal Dell would give his right arm to be able to do.
Slashdot Mirror
There are actually quite a few non-Apple players that support unprotected AAC. AAC is not an Apple-proprietary format. It's owned by Dolby and Apple is merely a licensee.
If you rip the audio CD at 256K you'll have an almost sonically identical copy of the original AAC file. But yeah, the ITMS 128K originals are not nearly audiophile quality to begin with.
At 15 cents per blank CD I'm not going to worry about it. Besides, I can simply use a CR-RW disc and just keep re-using it if I'm too cheap.
It's fairly easy to play DRM'd iTunes Music Store music on any MP3 player. All you do is burn an audio CD from the DRM'd files and then rip that CD into MP3s. That's it. You might have to rip at higher bitrate to make sure you capture all the original audio information, but it's perfectly doable--and legal.
Well, duh. Of course it would be deemed as such by us. Who else would we rely upon to perceive a threat to this country--the Easter Bunny?
I fail to see anything in the new space policy to justify the torrent of vitriol spewing forth from my fellow Slashdotters. My reading of this policy can be distilled down to two main points:
1. The United States reserves the right to do basically anything it likes in space.
2. The United States reserves the right to vaporize any space assets that are hostile to it.
Nowhere in it do I see anything about the U.S. proclaiming that has either a monopoly on the use of space or that it has a problem with other countries merely going about their business in space. I don't know about anyone else, but if North Korea ever placed a nuclear launch platform in synchronous orbit over New York, I'd sure as heckfire want our boys to take it out, pronto.
Pink.
What are the most common mistakes that tech startups make when they approach VCs such as yourself?
I can't believe what a turkey the Zune is. Here are 2 reasons right off the bat:
- It only lets you share one song at a time via wi-fi and then only with another Zune player. What's more, even if the song is not DRM'd, it infects that song with DRM so that the recipient can only play the song a maximum of 3 times or for a maximum of 3 days, whichever comes first. So much for Microsoft's wonderful social networking scheme.
- It can't play songs you've already downloaded encoded with Microsoft's own Play For Sure DRM. Dumb. Just plain dumb.
And if including an FM tuner didn't get people to flock to Creative's Zen video pod, why should it be such a hot feature in the Zune? And who the frack thought brown was cool?
KHAN!!!
Here's real for you: this is the same jackass who dangled his infant son in front of a huge crocodile a couple of years back in an incredibly misguided attempt to teach him to be "croc-savvy". I guess now he'll never get the opportunity to teach his kid to be "sting-ray savvy".
6 4000/3364967.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_33
In a bizarre twist of fate, Bob Fortuna, AKA The Sting-Ray Man, was devoured today by a crocodile while taping an episode of his popular TV show in the Everglades. Commenting on the this latest trajedy to reporters in Canberra, Mabel Rosenbaum, known to millions of TV viewers as The Shark Babe, said, "I always said you gotta stick to your area of expertise when it comes to handling dangerous wildlife. These guys think that just because they know how to hog tie one kind of critter they can pretty much wrassle anything. Why, just last year, whats-his-name, the Man-Eating Plant guy, almost had his head bit off by a condor. Gettin' cocky in this busines will get you killed, so that's why I'm sticking to my sharks. No sense in taking foolish risks."
You should be able to use this with Linux by dragging and dropping your MP3s onto it. But you won't be able to do that with video files, since you must first rip them through its Sansa Media Converter Windows app to a proprietary video format which then syncs them with the player.
The Sansa is an interesting device in any case, but not quite good enough to seriously challenge the nano, imo. It needs to be able to play standard video formats directly and also play a wider variety of audio formats than just MP3 and WMA.
www.rodeogirlsinbondage.com
OK, maybe it didn't change, like, the WHOLE world, but it sure rocked mine.
Why why why, after 22 years does Apple STILL insist on making us buy proprietary graphics cards? Why go to the trouble of adopting an industry standard bus like PCI-X and then let it only use Mac-only versions of graphics cards that are much cheaper on PCs that use the same bus? It was somewhat understandable when desktop Macs were built around the PPC, but it's annoying as hell now that they're Intel boxes.
So what if Vista isn't ready--finally we have a Windows OS that's VIRUS FREE!!
Way to go, Microsoft!
"Peace in our time!"
- Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, 1938
To ignore the lessons of history is the height of stupidity. To ignore the ones we have paid for so dearly is suicidal.
The best part about this announcement isn't the 100 megapixel size. Photographers can already buy large format digital backs for view cameras with 300 megapixel resolution (albeit for a hefty price). But they use multiple CCDs and require external power supplies and HDDs. This new chip opens up intruiging possibilities for a self-contained high resolution camera that requires much less power to operate. Still, a CCD of that resolution will generate raw image files of about 350 megabytes each, so portability will necessarily be compromised to a degree by storage requirements.
Waterworld cost $229M to make and to date has grossed about $334M worldwide. That doesn't mean that the $115M above the $229M the film cost is profit. Out of that $334M gross you have to deduct the cost of marketing, distribution and finally the theater owner's cut, which is considerable. After all that, Waterworld has almost certainly lost money, but probably not as much some other cinematic money pits, like "Alexander".
I can see how these things could be big laughs for the first 10 minutes. Just stick your hand up their ass and they start chattering away. Love me squeeze me never leave me. How cute. How adorably neurotically needy! By minute 11, I think I'd begin to feel a burning desire to cram them into the microwave. The frozen burrito setting should be about right. In that regard, Needies are much like my first marriage, only without the pre-nup.
This is what happens when the bean counters try to quantify the creative process. You can add up all the ingredients for a hit movie and still have a major bomb on your hands.
It's like saying you can dump fois gras, Chateau Latour, beluga caviar and a savoy truffle into a blender and end up with the world's most wonderful milkshake. In the end it's a recipe for mediocrity, at best. More often, all you get is expensive puke.
If one could predict success by adding up the elements that go into movie making, then "Catwoman" should have been the megahit of 2004.
You missed the point entirely. The Journal was given a hard copy of the study by Merck four months before the issue came out. This was in the days before the publication worked from digital submissions.
Merck knowingly gave the Journal incomplete data and the editors have only now discovered the discrepancy by going back and examining the original computer document.
For me as an administrator in a Mac-centric company, the most interesting part of this is Apple's accomodation of Linux, Windows and the Mac OS on their intel platform while simultaneously attempting to prevent their OS from being installed on a generic intel PC. If Apple can pull it off, it will give a significant value-add to their intel boxes. That's something that Micheal Dell would give his right arm to be able to do.
Intel OS X 10.4.3 is still a 32-bit operating system, whereas the PPC iteration is 64-bits. One step forward, one step back.
There are farms, Neo, vast farms where bacteria are grown, to turn a germ into... THIS. [HOLDS UP HUMIDITY SENSOR]