I also was wondering about why this is under "Your Rights Online". I'm not going to say I've never downloaded a tv show or a song or whatever, but this is a pretty hardcore group of people....
I was just reading about when the Beatles put out Sgt. Pepper and wanted to put the lyrics on the back of the sleeve. I'm of the (80's) generation where lyrics always come with the record, but apparently that wasn't something that happened at all back then - EMI were very reluctant to print the lyrics, thinking it would severely cut down on sheet music sales from which they would get a royalty.
Anyway, remember in the (bad old) days, when people would compile lyrics on personal homepages? Now whenever I do a google search I get umpteen specialized lyric sites, often who don't even HAVE the lyrics (just the song listed with no real link) and way too much javascript.
I doubt anyone will read this, I'm never modded up..but anyway..
I'm not a coder, programmer, or anything special. Sometime in 2001, I was running Win98 with a new cd burner. I forget what program I was using, some burning crap that came with the burner, and while burning a CD Windows froze, the red light went completely off. When I turned the computer off and back on, it wouldn't boot - there was a bizarre message, something about C:\ being corrupted. When I couldn't even restore it with the restore disc...I was incensed! I also couldn't afford to just go buy a copy of Windows at the time. I had heard about Linux and went to the library and took out an old "Learn SuSE in 24 hours book" - it was a really old distro of SuSE - I remember my mouse didn't work on it, X was a mess and I was pretty much text only. But I did get connected to the internet, and (very slowly, I was still 256K then) downloaded what a friend of mine suggested, Mandrake 8.1. Well, that did it. I could play mp3s, I was in love with (still am) gcdmaster for burning/editing CDs, thought the Gimp was awesome. I haven't looked back, though I did do a little distro-hopping before settling on SuSE for the last 2 years. I'm really addicted to the apps even more since then - all my audio editing and recording software primarily. I found that while Windows programs were always easy to install but then over time things got really screwed up, with Linux some things are indeed still a bitch to get going properly - but once you get something working, it always works.
Every time my mom calls me over to fix her Windows XP from spyware that freezes it up all the time, or viruses, all my little Linux problems seem very small in comparison. I've heard Windows advocates frequently dismiss Linux because of some of the time required to get things working (editing conf files, whatever) but that seems a small price to pay for a nice clean system that always works and never has to be rebooted.
Not saying Linux is the end-all and be-all - my wife really wants to get a Mac for our next computer, and I just might give in because I should be able to run most of my favourite programs on OSX - but it's worked fine for me.
Well, that's what the rating system is for, I thought. Star Wars was originally going to be a G rated movie but when Lucas saw some Fox exec's daughter crying from fear of Darth Vadar he changed it to PG.
I was hoping Attack Of The Clones would be NC-17, myself. I wanted to see the Holy Conception of Luke and Leia, preferably with "wah-wah" disco music...
and I forgot just how deep the cringe went when Han is talking to Lando about the Falcon.."Not a scratch, right buddy?". UGH. But it's still a great movie. I was talking to a friend of mine and we were both wary of Star Wars talkin',because The Net has taught us that George Lucas hasn't done anything good since Empire, and we were both pleasantly surprised that a)we both liked watching the Special Editions more than the original - I like the huge Death Star explosion, and more importantly Palpatine instead of oldladymonkey in Empire b)We thought the prequels were pretty good and c)we both saw all Star Wars movies as fantastic entertainment, certainly with flaws and problems but who cares! What are we gonna do, watch Bridget Jones Diary with our wives!??!?! Screw that!
I think Google's search engine is a little better, but I actually like a lot of things about Yahoo, like the directories, the news, the groups and mailing lists. The one thing that still makes me mad is when Yahoo took over Launch.com and all their great music/videos, they removed the RealPlay option completely and now only work in.wmv and.wma....sucks for *nix users.
mkisofs and cdrecord for all my data, cdrdao and gcdmaster for all my audio needs. Pre-gaps, hidden "0" tracks, all that is really easy to do. I set my Mom up with Nero on her Windows box and kinda had a hard time of getting it. Although I would like a flashy, easy jewel case sleeve-designer program. Hrm.
At the same time, that's with my supported CD-RW, purchased after careful study of cdrdao supported drives. If Nero brings more driver support to Linux, then all the power to them!
Haha, I'll bite.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, when CDs started taking off and all the record companies went crazy raiding their back catalogs in order to get people to re-buy their favourite artists, no one seemed to know f-all about taking an analog master and throwing it on a digital format. You'd buy a Led Zeppelin album and find a whole chunk of guitars that used to sit comfortably on the left speaker completely gone; if I recall, wretched evil things were done to some Stones stuff as well. Now they've gotten quite a bit better at it. I just got The Who's remastered edition of "The Who Sell Out" and dammit if it doesn't sound almost BETTER than the vinyl in spots. However, that's the big records that the studios see a definite profit in doing the job properly. There's still tons of digi-crap out there - the New York Dolls CDs, for instance, aren't given any sort of respect in the CD format and just SUCK, especially "Too Much Too Soon" (if you have both the vinyl and the CD, compare "Human Being" - where the heck is Thunders' guitar on the CD?).
I'm almost tempted to say that for new artists it doesn't matter at all what format they pick, and that could be correct. However I've found vinyl both a fussy and forgiving format, for even digitall recorded music. Whatever science is used to take the 1s and 0s into grooves by the masterers (best one in America is Aardvark Mastering, outta Denver) seems to smooth out some peaks and warm up the bass. This is all subjective and just my own kinda cheaply recorded stuff - obviously some major studio mastering probably make all their masters bulletproof against this sort of digital to analog tinkering...
After I just spent a grand putting out a nice 7" for my first release of 2005.
I realize I'll get no points being the sole Luddite on Slashdot, but the fetishizing of music formats is still pretty strong, if very underground and limited to a small percentage of the population. And it's not just the guys like me who grew up in the good old days of record stores; there's a lot of kids out there buying their first turntable. Low, not a band I like but popular enough with said 'now' generation put out AAA records for that added kick! (Analog recorded, mastered, and format)
That being said, as a musician (and fledging record company owner) I can sure see the attraction of this sort of thing. Man, if I thought I had any sort of audience on iTunes, I'd grab it like no one's business. My 7 inch has 7 songs and retails for 3.50 - selling at 99 cents per song would double that amount, with no pressing costs! I'd just put the profits back in, however, to putting out obsolete formats, 'cause I don't believe it's a real record, 'til it's a record!
I remember when all the CD copy protection scheme thing was raging on (who knows, perhaps it's still raging) and Phillips, maker of the stand-alone home stereo CD burners said they'd just go right ahead and make a burner that can copy copy-protected discs. I thought that was cool, as someone who bought one of those when they first came out so I could easily a) transfer all my old vinyl to a CDR format and b)transfer all my band's music (computer burning wasn't an option for me then, don't ask). I'm surprised they're getting their hands dirty in all this.
This begs the question, "What's the most disturbing thing ever found on a family member's computer while fixing it?"
I was pretty embarrased my Dad's quests for porn involved putting the word 'vagina' into google. C'mon, a little more sophistication, pops!
Or, not installed. Tried to get my Mom on the Opera kick, but didn't work. She didn't like the looks of Firefox either. But I did get her the hell out of Outlook Express, and she doesn't mind Pegasus Mail. Mostly what I do is make sure she's getting the latest patches downloaded for her XP system, she's always months behind!
I gave my sister a computer a few months ago, just built from spare parts I had lying around. I put Mandrake on it, and made sure it'd connect to her dial-up and all that. She never asks me to fix anything on it, she never tries to download any software (all she wanted was an email client and a web browser with all the plugins, plus she's addicted to Circus Linux) and just loves it.
I'm with you there. I like Firefox and use it for banking, but that's about it. My external modem got toasted recently (56K) so until I get a new one I'm running at about 1.0 kbps and desperately NEED the images all turned off. If, though, there's one I really need to look at, I just right click and select 'load image'. Firefox has a sort of inverse property where you can block images that come from certain sites (like ads); ideally someone would have both features.
Even in the good modem working days, Firefox and Mozilla both have a bug - probably not with the code, but with SuSE 9.0. When I read pages with tons of text I frequently highlight huge reams of stuff and drag the mouse down, probably a nervous twitch or something. When I do it with Opera, no problem. When I do it with Firefox, it freezes X and I have to ctrl-esc-F2 er something and restart it.
I think I still prefer Opera becaue there's a lot of stuff right there on the toolbar, like if you want images or not. And the 'quick preferences' from tools so you can easily switch things like gif animation, java, or javascript without going to a huge other menu.
And the mail, news, rss feed stuff on Opera is pretty cool too, though I haven't really figured out how to work a lot of that stuff yet.
Slashdot Mirror
I also was wondering about why this is under "Your Rights Online". I'm not going to say I've never downloaded a tv show or a song or whatever, but this is a pretty hardcore group of people....
I was just reading about when the Beatles put out Sgt. Pepper and wanted to put the lyrics on the back of the sleeve. I'm of the (80's) generation where lyrics always come with the record, but apparently that wasn't something that happened at all back then - EMI were very reluctant to print the lyrics, thinking it would severely cut down on sheet music sales from which they would get a royalty. Anyway, remember in the (bad old) days, when people would compile lyrics on personal homepages? Now whenever I do a google search I get umpteen specialized lyric sites, often who don't even HAVE the lyrics (just the song listed with no real link) and way too much javascript.
I doubt anyone will read this, I'm never modded up..but anyway.. I'm not a coder, programmer, or anything special. Sometime in 2001, I was running Win98 with a new cd burner. I forget what program I was using, some burning crap that came with the burner, and while burning a CD Windows froze, the red light went completely off. When I turned the computer off and back on, it wouldn't boot - there was a bizarre message, something about C:\ being corrupted. When I couldn't even restore it with the restore disc...I was incensed! I also couldn't afford to just go buy a copy of Windows at the time. I had heard about Linux and went to the library and took out an old "Learn SuSE in 24 hours book" - it was a really old distro of SuSE - I remember my mouse didn't work on it, X was a mess and I was pretty much text only. But I did get connected to the internet, and (very slowly, I was still 256K then) downloaded what a friend of mine suggested, Mandrake 8.1. Well, that did it. I could play mp3s, I was in love with (still am) gcdmaster for burning/editing CDs, thought the Gimp was awesome. I haven't looked back, though I did do a little distro-hopping before settling on SuSE for the last 2 years. I'm really addicted to the apps even more since then - all my audio editing and recording software primarily. I found that while Windows programs were always easy to install but then over time things got really screwed up, with Linux some things are indeed still a bitch to get going properly - but once you get something working, it always works. Every time my mom calls me over to fix her Windows XP from spyware that freezes it up all the time, or viruses, all my little Linux problems seem very small in comparison. I've heard Windows advocates frequently dismiss Linux because of some of the time required to get things working (editing conf files, whatever) but that seems a small price to pay for a nice clean system that always works and never has to be rebooted. Not saying Linux is the end-all and be-all - my wife really wants to get a Mac for our next computer, and I just might give in because I should be able to run most of my favourite programs on OSX - but it's worked fine for me.
Well, that's what the rating system is for, I thought. Star Wars was originally going to be a G rated movie but when Lucas saw some Fox exec's daughter crying from fear of Darth Vadar he changed it to PG. I was hoping Attack Of The Clones would be NC-17, myself. I wanted to see the Holy Conception of Luke and Leia, preferably with "wah-wah" disco music...
and I forgot just how deep the cringe went when Han is talking to Lando about the Falcon.."Not a scratch, right buddy?". UGH. But it's still a great movie. I was talking to a friend of mine and we were both wary of Star Wars talkin' ,because The Net has taught us that George Lucas hasn't done anything good since Empire, and we were both pleasantly surprised that a)we both liked watching the Special Editions more than the original - I like the huge Death Star explosion, and more importantly Palpatine instead of oldladymonkey in Empire b)We thought the prequels were pretty good and c)we both saw all Star Wars movies as fantastic entertainment, certainly with flaws and problems but who cares! What are we gonna do, watch Bridget Jones Diary with our wives!??!?! Screw that!
I think Google's search engine is a little better, but I actually like a lot of things about Yahoo, like the directories, the news, the groups and mailing lists. The one thing that still makes me mad is when Yahoo took over Launch.com and all their great music/videos, they removed the RealPlay option completely and now only work in .wmv and .wma....sucks for *nix users.
mkisofs and cdrecord for all my data, cdrdao and gcdmaster for all my audio needs. Pre-gaps, hidden "0" tracks, all that is really easy to do. I set my Mom up with Nero on her Windows box and kinda had a hard time of getting it. Although I would like a flashy, easy jewel case sleeve-designer program. Hrm. At the same time, that's with my supported CD-RW, purchased after careful study of cdrdao supported drives. If Nero brings more driver support to Linux, then all the power to them!
Haha, I'll bite. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, when CDs started taking off and all the record companies went crazy raiding their back catalogs in order to get people to re-buy their favourite artists, no one seemed to know f-all about taking an analog master and throwing it on a digital format. You'd buy a Led Zeppelin album and find a whole chunk of guitars that used to sit comfortably on the left speaker completely gone; if I recall, wretched evil things were done to some Stones stuff as well. Now they've gotten quite a bit better at it. I just got The Who's remastered edition of "The Who Sell Out" and dammit if it doesn't sound almost BETTER than the vinyl in spots. However, that's the big records that the studios see a definite profit in doing the job properly. There's still tons of digi-crap out there - the New York Dolls CDs, for instance, aren't given any sort of respect in the CD format and just SUCK, especially "Too Much Too Soon" (if you have both the vinyl and the CD, compare "Human Being" - where the heck is Thunders' guitar on the CD?). I'm almost tempted to say that for new artists it doesn't matter at all what format they pick, and that could be correct. However I've found vinyl both a fussy and forgiving format, for even digitall recorded music. Whatever science is used to take the 1s and 0s into grooves by the masterers (best one in America is Aardvark Mastering, outta Denver) seems to smooth out some peaks and warm up the bass. This is all subjective and just my own kinda cheaply recorded stuff - obviously some major studio mastering probably make all their masters bulletproof against this sort of digital to analog tinkering...
After I just spent a grand putting out a nice 7" for my first release of 2005. I realize I'll get no points being the sole Luddite on Slashdot, but the fetishizing of music formats is still pretty strong, if very underground and limited to a small percentage of the population. And it's not just the guys like me who grew up in the good old days of record stores; there's a lot of kids out there buying their first turntable. Low, not a band I like but popular enough with said 'now' generation put out AAA records for that added kick! (Analog recorded, mastered, and format) That being said, as a musician (and fledging record company owner) I can sure see the attraction of this sort of thing. Man, if I thought I had any sort of audience on iTunes, I'd grab it like no one's business. My 7 inch has 7 songs and retails for 3.50 - selling at 99 cents per song would double that amount, with no pressing costs! I'd just put the profits back in, however, to putting out obsolete formats, 'cause I don't believe it's a real record, 'til it's a record!
I remember when all the CD copy protection scheme thing was raging on (who knows, perhaps it's still raging) and Phillips, maker of the stand-alone home stereo CD burners said they'd just go right ahead and make a burner that can copy copy-protected discs. I thought that was cool, as someone who bought one of those when they first came out so I could easily a) transfer all my old vinyl to a CDR format and b)transfer all my band's music (computer burning wasn't an option for me then, don't ask). I'm surprised they're getting their hands dirty in all this.
That's not even close!
This begs the question, "What's the most disturbing thing ever found on a family member's computer while fixing it?" I was pretty embarrased my Dad's quests for porn involved putting the word 'vagina' into google. C'mon, a little more sophistication, pops!
Or, not installed. Tried to get my Mom on the Opera kick, but didn't work. She didn't like the looks of Firefox either. But I did get her the hell out of Outlook Express, and she doesn't mind Pegasus Mail. Mostly what I do is make sure she's getting the latest patches downloaded for her XP system, she's always months behind! I gave my sister a computer a few months ago, just built from spare parts I had lying around. I put Mandrake on it, and made sure it'd connect to her dial-up and all that. She never asks me to fix anything on it, she never tries to download any software (all she wanted was an email client and a web browser with all the plugins, plus she's addicted to Circus Linux) and just loves it.
I'm with you there. I like Firefox and use it for banking, but that's about it. My external modem got toasted recently (56K) so until I get a new one I'm running at about 1.0 kbps and desperately NEED the images all turned off. If, though, there's one I really need to look at, I just right click and select 'load image'. Firefox has a sort of inverse property where you can block images that come from certain sites (like ads); ideally someone would have both features. Even in the good modem working days, Firefox and Mozilla both have a bug - probably not with the code, but with SuSE 9.0. When I read pages with tons of text I frequently highlight huge reams of stuff and drag the mouse down, probably a nervous twitch or something. When I do it with Opera, no problem. When I do it with Firefox, it freezes X and I have to ctrl-esc-F2 er something and restart it. I think I still prefer Opera becaue there's a lot of stuff right there on the toolbar, like if you want images or not. And the 'quick preferences' from tools so you can easily switch things like gif animation, java, or javascript without going to a huge other menu. And the mail, news, rss feed stuff on Opera is pretty cool too, though I haven't really figured out how to work a lot of that stuff yet.
Being on the internet itself used to carry an air of elitism about it..remember when?