I agree with you, in that the number of times I've gone looking for a particular album and found that it was out of print is too depressing to even think about.
That said, you may be interested in checking out Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. (They mostly do folk and roots music, but lots of other neat stuff, so they may or may not be your cup of tea.) Folkways has their entire list of out of print CDs listed on the web, and if you want one, they will burn it to a CDR and mail it to you. (For an extra fee...) So you can effectively get a copy of everything they've ever put out.
There is of course iso-accents-mode in Emacs. Do "M-x iso-accents-mode" in a buffer and Emacs will combine certain keystrokes into accented characters. For example, the string
My parents lived in Cleveland in the 1960s. They went for a walk one lovely day only to discover that the Cuyahoga river had caught on fire. (Shortly thereafter, they moved to the other end of Ohio.) So there's not a doubt in my mind that you're telling the absolute truth.
<really ot section> Greetings. I am a Browns fan living in Boston. (A real Browns fan, too... I've already tossed random detritus at someone today.) How are things back there, football-wise? And yes, I'm infuriated that Belichick followed me here.</really ot section>
I find it immensly useful to have the text of the book on the CD that accompanies it.
Well put. Please allow me to amplify your remarks...
I have purchased several books that provide their complete text in HTML format on CD (Design Patterns, The Perl CD Bookshelf, The UNIX CD Bookshelf, etc.) and I use them quite often. There are two issues that are important enough to me to make me seek out such books:
Searchability. I often find a grep to be of far more use than the book's own index.
Portability. This is crucial. When I travel, I sometimes like to have my technical books with me, but I don't care to physically lug them across the country. Some books I use at both work and home, and this prevents me from having to choose between dragging them around or breaking down and buying multiple copies.
I'll agree with most of the other posters, though, in stating that I rarely use CDs that contain only supplemental material. But having the full text of a book in electronic format is a huge benefit.
MaxJazz is a smallish jazz label that does not belong to the RIAA. They have sample mp3s available for download, although I have not checked them for quality.
DISCLAIMER: The only artists I'm familiar with on that label are Laverne Butler and Bruce Barth. Other artists quality may vary.
An interesting story: I bought my first Laverne Butler CD after hearing one of her songs on one of AT&T's digital music channels. Actually, that may not be interesting at all, but there it is.
Having to look after yourself also gives you a sense of responsiblity, IMHO. I'm not sure I'd want a robot doing these things for me.
I don't really have a response here... other than I would recommend reading Ray Bradbury's short story "The Veldt", which describes in part the consequenses of such a situation.
Lots of pros, and the only con would be the endless round of "To Infinity... And Beyond" jokes on Slashdot.
Bleah. I'd prefer the "Hey, what is that? It's an inanimate carbon rod!" jokes.
(http://www.snpp.com/episodes/1F13)
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY
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Islam allows for violence against its opponents and Christianity does not.
So what would you call the Crusades?
A really good argument for separation of church and state.
During the Middle Ages, Christianity was used as a tool by the political elite to maintain and further their power. Access to Bibles was strictly controlled by the elite, so there was no chance the people could read for themselves. ("Hey Ivanhoe. It says here that Jesus was against killing. Who knew?") They were forced to rely on those in power to feed them information - it shouldn't surprise you that the information they were given was very carefully crafted so as to maintain the political power of the elite. Once Bibles started being printed/translated/made available, people were more able to make decisions on their own, rather than blindly accepting what they were told. (For a good comparison of faith versus blind acceptance, rent the Kevin Smith movie "Dogma".)
The Christianity of the Middle Ages was a corrupt, perverted version. But you are right that it was responsible for horrid atrocities. I can't change the past, but I apologize for my people's actions, and promise that I'm doing what I can to prevent it in the future.
(People who don't think that separation of church and state is a good idea are not students of history. Every time - every time - it's happened, it's been a complete disaster.)
An important questions is "is there really any viable way for artists to make a living". Historically, there has not. Van Gogh only sold 1 painting in his entire life. Mozart lived on the charity of his patrons.
You don't consider "living on the charity of patrons" a viable way to make a living? Sounds pretty viable to me.
I picked up one of those for $10 for my house. I made sure to get one with 4 legs instead of 5 so it can easily tip over and kill me. Steel frame. It's much more comfortable than my expensive office chair. Dunno why.
No, they had multiple colors, they just had to glue colored cellophane onto the screen to achieve it.
Oh thank you thank you thank you!
I spent last weekend going around to each of my friends, saying "Hey, do you remember those monochrome arcade games that had cellophane glued to the screen?" Each person said "What? I've never heard of such a thing!" I was beginning to think I'd imagined it all...
Actually, I just saw something on TV the other day (TLC, Discovery, Fox?) about a guy well before the creation of computers, who used to create incredibly intricate ASCII art using only a keyboard.
The Incas were far from "primitive." They had metallurgy, architecture, and over 103 species of potato.
I'm not convinced that potato speciation is really an accurate yardstick for technological advancement. But then again, I didn't even realize that there were 103 species of potato, so what do I know?
I'm pretty certain the parser is supposed to break when tags are malformed.... why should *ML parsers try and figure out what you meant when you left out all your/P and/LI tags?
I don't think that's correct. I believe HTML parsers are supposed to be quite lenient about screwy code. This is bad in a sense, since it leads to slop, but it does allow you to do things like browse the web using Netscape 3. ("What the heck's a style tag? I'll just ignore it.")
[The GPL] not only tries to control your use of the product that is licenced but any future product based on it.... It prohibits any author that does not agree with the GPL from using the code in any way.
Incorrect.
You don't have to agree to the GPL in order to use the product. If you have the source, you don't have to agree to the GPL in order to view it or modify it. Thus, you can modify or use any GPL-ed product to your heart's content. Go nuts.
However, you cannot distribute your modifications unless you agree to the GPL.
This is a subtle but important distinction that many people miss. You may still have a problem with the GPL, but it is incorrect to state that it prevents any use by dissenters.
there _are_ people out there with copper who would appreciate, say, 26kbps so that they can even listen to it in realtime
Pardon my ignorance... I've never seen an MP3 with less than, say, a 96kbps bitrate. I didn't know there were any encoders that went that low (although I suspected...). How does a 26kbps MP3 sound, anyway? Is the speech recognizable?
22 megabytes for a 2 hour 26kbps file... that's not so bad.
Last time I checked, I think an hour's worth of normal speech fit in ~10MB in MP3 format.
Doubtful, unless you're encoding at a rate af around 12kbps. A typical MP3 is encoded at a rate of 128kbps, making a 2-hour long file 2*60*60*128000/8/1024/1024 = 110 megabytes.
Well, (although it's really none of my business...) I don't think AC was attacking you so much as he/she/it was attacking this entire story. In the first sentance of the story, neonzebra makes a reference to "SPAM nazis", at which point inquisitor invoked Godwin's Law.
Anyway, that's what I think is going on, so I wouldn't take it too personally.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you, in that the number of times I've gone looking for a particular album and found that it was out of print is too depressing to even think about.
That said, you may be interested in checking out Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. (They mostly do folk and roots music, but lots of other neat stuff, so they may or may not be your cup of tea.) Folkways has their entire list of out of print CDs listed on the web, and if you want one, they will burn it to a CDR and mail it to you. (For an extra fee...) So you can effectively get a copy of everything they've ever put out.
If all labels did this I'd be a happy, happy man.
There is of course iso-accents-mode in Emacs. Do "M-x iso-accents-mode" in a buffer and Emacs will combine certain keystrokes into accented characters. For example, the string
becomesMy parents lived in Cleveland in the 1960s. They went for a walk one lovely day only to discover that the Cuyahoga river had caught on fire. (Shortly thereafter, they moved to the other end of Ohio.) So there's not a doubt in my mind that you're telling the absolute truth.
<really ot section> Greetings. I am a Browns fan living in Boston. (A real Browns fan, too... I've already tossed random detritus at someone today.) How are things back there, football-wise? And yes, I'm infuriated that Belichick followed me here.</really ot section>
Well put. Please allow me to amplify your remarks...
I have purchased several books that provide their complete text in HTML format on CD (Design Patterns, The Perl CD Bookshelf, The UNIX CD Bookshelf, etc.) and I use them quite often. There are two issues that are important enough to me to make me seek out such books:
I'll agree with most of the other posters, though, in stating that I rarely use CDs that contain only supplemental material. But having the full text of a book in electronic format is a huge benefit.
MaxJazz is a smallish jazz label that does not belong to the RIAA. They have sample mp3s available for download, although I have not checked them for quality.
DISCLAIMER: The only artists I'm familiar with on that label are Laverne Butler and Bruce Barth. Other artists quality may vary.
An interesting story: I bought my first Laverne Butler CD after hearing one of her songs on one of AT&T's digital music channels. Actually, that may not be interesting at all, but there it is.
I don't really have a response here... other than I would recommend reading Ray Bradbury's short story "The Veldt", which describes in part the consequenses of such a situation.
Of course, that should actually read Edward G. Robinson. *sigh* I even previewed...
"Nyah! Where's your Fair Use now! Nyah!"
Hmm... come to think of it, that's Ewardd G. Robinson. He had better lines than Chuck in that one.
Bleah. I'd prefer the "Hey, what is that? It's an inanimate carbon rod!" jokes.
(http://www.snpp.com/episodes/1F13)
A really good argument for separation of church and state.
During the Middle Ages, Christianity was used as a tool by the political elite to maintain and further their power. Access to Bibles was strictly controlled by the elite, so there was no chance the people could read for themselves. ("Hey Ivanhoe. It says here that Jesus was against killing. Who knew?") They were forced to rely on those in power to feed them information - it shouldn't surprise you that the information they were given was very carefully crafted so as to maintain the political power of the elite. Once Bibles started being printed/translated/made available, people were more able to make decisions on their own, rather than blindly accepting what they were told. (For a good comparison of faith versus blind acceptance, rent the Kevin Smith movie "Dogma".)
The Christianity of the Middle Ages was a corrupt, perverted version. But you are right that it was responsible for horrid atrocities. I can't change the past, but I apologize for my people's actions, and promise that I'm doing what I can to prevent it in the future.
(People who don't think that separation of church and state is a good idea are not students of history. Every time - every time - it's happened, it's been a complete disaster.)
You don't consider "living on the charity of patrons" a viable way to make a living? Sounds pretty viable to me.
Much obliged, AC.
Hear, hear.*
I picked up one of those for $10 for my house. I made sure to get one with 4 legs instead of 5 so it can easily tip over and kill me. Steel frame. It's much more comfortable than my expensive office chair. Dunno why.
(* Is it "hear, hear" or "here, here"?)
Oh thank you thank you thank you!
I spent last weekend going around to each of my friends, saying "Hey, do you remember those monochrome arcade games that had cellophane glued to the screen?" Each person said "What? I've never heard of such a thing!" I was beginning to think I'd imagined it all...
My grandfather was an alcoholic. I loved my grandfather, but I hated his alcoholism (which was a pretty integral part of him).
You mean, a typewriter?
I'm not convinced that potato speciation is really an accurate yardstick for technological advancement. But then again, I didn't even realize that there were 103 species of potato, so what do I know?
Like Don Knuth and Larry Wall?
I don't think that's correct. I believe HTML parsers are supposed to be quite lenient about screwy code. This is bad in a sense, since it leads to slop, but it does allow you to do things like browse the web using Netscape 3. ("What the heck's a style tag? I'll just ignore it.")
Also, you might check the HTML 4.01 specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3. 2.1 ("Some HTML element types allow authors to omit end tags (e.g., the P and LI element types).").
Incorrect.
You don't have to agree to the GPL in order to use the product. If you have the source, you don't have to agree to the GPL in order to view it or modify it. Thus, you can modify or use any GPL-ed product to your heart's content. Go nuts.
However, you cannot distribute your modifications unless you agree to the GPL.
This is a subtle but important distinction that many people miss. You may still have a problem with the GPL, but it is incorrect to state that it prevents any use by dissenters.
Pardon my ignorance... I've never seen an MP3 with less than, say, a 96kbps bitrate. I didn't know there were any encoders that went that low (although I suspected...). How does a 26kbps MP3 sound, anyway? Is the speech recognizable?
22 megabytes for a 2 hour 26kbps file... that's not so bad.
Doubtful, unless you're encoding at a rate af around 12kbps. A typical MP3 is encoded at a rate of 128kbps, making a 2-hour long file 2*60*60*128000/8/1024/1024 = 110 megabytes.
Well, (although it's really none of my business...) I don't think AC was attacking you so much as he/she/it was attacking this entire story. In the first sentance of the story, neonzebra makes a reference to "SPAM nazis", at which point inquisitor invoked Godwin's Law.
Anyway, that's what I think is going on, so I wouldn't take it too personally.
Godwin's Law: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Godwi n%27s-Law.html.
It's not?
My understanding is that DeCSS is used to decrypt DVD's, in other words, to "crack" them. The decrypted file may then be played.
I'm certainly not pro-MPAA, but I fail to see the truth in your statement. Or am I just way off on what this code does?