Certainly, I do not think that a single Slashdot reader was alive around 1930, which is around when US Congress enacted legislation that would make it easier for the early terrestrial radio broadcasters to invest and build out their fledging radio transmission network, by granting them an exemption from the obligation of having to pay royalties to the owners of the sound recordings they were playing on the air, although they were still obligated to pay the writers, their publishers and appointed representatives (ASCAP, BMI, Harry Fox Agency).
These payments to both sound recording owners as well as publishers are the norm for stations everywhere else in the world.
A measure of how wildly successful the radio stations are in the US today should be the amount of money they appear to have available to spend on lobbyists hired to ensure that this one-time exemption never ends.
One could fail to see what is so bad for owners of sound recordings to finally get paid for the use of their work, broadcasters have had a free ride for 80 years or so, it's fairly clear that they do not need that exemption for its original purpose anymore, and they should build their business model around the same one every other radio station on earth has been using successfully all of this time.
Yes, it obviously fantastic to have your songs promoted on radio, and labels have always seen this as a great way to help sell many more copies of whatever physical product, downloads or ringtones even. But when comparing the amount the broadcasters would have to pay for each song played to what most of them are already racking up from pro-rated advertising income for the time slot that song was in, one cannot help but wonder what this fuss is all about.... a mere few drops in the bucket.
Considering that the parent company of Time Warner is the same as Warner Music and Warner Bros,...
Please consider again, as the Warner Music Group is now a totally separate entity, which was clearly spun off from the Time Warner group several years ago, and its stock has lost something like 1,500% of its valuation in the last two years.
(from $30 a share to $1.50, although it's bounced back a bit since then, currently at $2.89)
Time Warner most likely still remained a minority shareholder in WMG, but IMHO they have other far more pressing matters to address at this time.
The row comes a week after a House of Lords report stated that the steady expansion of the "surveillance society" risked undermining fundamental freedoms including the right to privacy.
Peers said that Britain, with an estimated 4m CCTV cameras in use, had constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world in the name of combating terrorism and crime and improving administrative efficiency.
However, the cross-party committee warned that "pervasive and routine" electronic surveillance was almost taken for granted adding that privacy is an "essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom".
Lord Goodlad, the former Conservative chief whip and committee chairman, said that there could be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about an individual being recorded and pored over by the state.
"The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy," he said.
Well, undeniably the UK has slowly let itself become dominated by the mentality that maintaining a grid of CCTV cameras is the answer to reducing 'crime' and 'terrorism', and constantly stoking those fears in the public to allow for this 'creep' against personal privacy.
Funny when one looks at the statistics, but being that so many, many more people die of preventable car accidents and of heart attacks from eating too much junk food, why is it that the same expenditures aren't lavished on those areas?
Simple.
Arguably, there are many who sense that it has little to do with protecting the lives of citizens, but rather far more to do with the government jealously guarding its symbol of 'authority' and not wanting to lose face... If the goverment's mission was to truly protect the constituency (rather than its own authority), I imagine a lot of things would be done differently.
There is such a thing as the amount of acceptable risk one takes by doing everyday things like going to a pub, walking in the street and such. It is very telling, however, that these sorts of ideas are constantly being floated by the police, as in the example of some UK clubs having to submit an application form in advance listing the names and addresses of the artists and performers scheduled to appear, as well as style of music, in order to be allowed to have dance music event without being shut down.
Death by a thousand paper cuts of bureaucracy, which in the end doesn't truly prevent anything, but most certainly sets an aura of hysteria around every aspect of everyday life.
Totally agreed as far as headphones go, it's hard to distinguish any change.
But the bigger the playback system, the more the differences become apparent.
Just the same way if you took this web site's logo and blew it up to actual billboard size it would look
quite ugly, pixelated and distorted, the more sound is amplified, the more these artifacts become not
only noticeable, but downright annoying and irritating to the human ear.
..which is to say that yes, there is a difference, although most people are never in a position to hear it
Sorry for venting, but I am getting increasingly aggravated the more I read about moronic,
out-of-touch elected officials who think that they can just subvert technology to accomplish
things that are so completely unrealistic, it boggles the mind and should make us question
their very sanity.
After all we are supposed to be relying on them to represent us and serve us, and therefore are
expected to possess a modicum of basic common sense when it comes to dealing with a changing
landscape of what's around us, how to best and wisely use it, and how NOT TO.
Whether reading about pipe dreams of countrywide deep-packet inspection in Australia for
the sake of catching child porn traders who will just use encrypted connections anyway
(but in the process creating a nightmare of slowdowns and false positives for millions), or forcing ISPs to monitor content and become special interest copyright cops, to this.....
It seems to denote a fundamental level of cluelessness and utter stupidity that is fairly depressing.
Hey, maybe that is what the real world is like outside of Slashdot?
Some days it feels that 'Idiocracy' (the movie) probably didn't do so well because we are already there....
When people will be looking back at the madness, deceit, lies and coercion that has become so commonplace with some of the RIAA's strong-arm tactics, someone like Ray will stand as an exemplary model of integrity and fairness, refusing to simply kowtow to the unreasonable demands of a group of corporate entities who have demonstrated that they are utterly unable to serve their original mission (i.e.: be creative in providing the public entertainment in changing times) and re-invent themselves in the face of a mutating marketplace and technological tools, by providing the public with easy, ubiquitous and unencumbered access to their catalogs of copyrights, and have instead made it their new specialty to sue those who could have been their best customers.
Being slapped with such silly and pointless lawsuits over a blog is just a mark of how desperate some of those behind these campaigns of harassment really are, and can only serve to highlight that they are slowly running out of options of who else to blame for their own demise into obsolescence.
.... the 800-pound gorilla in the room. i.e.: the types of intrusions and attacks that seem to be committed on a daily basis by what appears to be government-sanctioned Chinese hacker groups.
But in truth, I find it remarkable that the US government is not owning up to the fact that it also seems to be running what amounts to basically insecure systems on much of its IT infrastructure.
This dude may have been a crackpot, but somehow these antics are only performed for the sake of overreaction, when the blame should also be squarely shared by those who administer these networks.
As a US taxpayer, I find this last part infinitely scarier... especially because all of this saber-rattling is not likely to remedy the conditions that made it possible to do this in the first place. A recent security audit of US Gov networks gave them an 'F' if I remember (could be wrong)
I have seen daily hotel rates of up to 30 Euros (that is $48 / day) for Internet access, at sometimes abysmal speeds.
That makes it up to $1,500 a month as well.
The most expensive countries were usually Denmark, Italy and Russia.
It's funny how since once installed it costs close to nothing to have a network maintained besides the odd router crapping out and such, that hotels keep providing their guests with free unlimited tap water ( a much more expensive commodity), but all the while insist on charging people undue amounts for what should be free.
Most of the money you pay probably goes into a fancy system designed to authenticate, meter, filter your connection, and the hotel is in on the split.
Basically, this is a result of clueless aging hotel managerial types, for whom Internet was an un-necessary luxury, and who just see it as a profit center, not as something their guests need as much as the bed they sleep in.
And these people are easily taken in by the suave tone of a provider who comes in, does the network install, maintains everything and gives them the peace of mind of not having to worry about an area they are very uncomfortable with, besides a nice stream of income.
Worst ever: UNA Hotel in Firenze, (Italy) managed by Swisscom, you used to have to pay 8 Euros for 2 hours, no daily plans (basically having to refill every 2 hours) so the daily price would be close to 100 Euros per day for 24 hours access.
There are many hotels where the mentality is "Internet is something you do in the lobby" and is only needed for a few minutes, especially in Europe.
The best free Internet I got was 10 Meg downstream at Tokyo's Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills.
No matter how many times I have read it, this book has never failed to generate such an incredible and tight aura, with an awesomely strange atmosphere, and feels to me like it truly is a shining example of what the definition of mindf*ck should be about. (In the meantime, and since this thing probably won't see the light of day until 2011, you'd hardly go wrong if you went and bought the book, and read it! You won't be disappointed!)
Along the same lines, I think that William Gibson's Neuromancer, but especially its sequel "Count Zero" (and arguably even the third one, Mona Lisa Overdrive, not quite as strong but still worthwhile) could yield a surprisingly entertaining Sci-Fi trilogy if in the hands of a capable director.
With all of the advances in 3D imaging and computer-generated special effects, it is quite reasonable to assume that all of these renditions could be done for an average movie budget, and still work. It's more how they adapt the script that will make it or break it.
As an old foggy and ad-hater, although we pay around $60 a month for cable in our residence for our family's benefit, I seldom if ever watch anything at all, as I much prefer to wait and download the stuff I like later (even weeks or months later) totally commercial-free, or buy the DVD if I really like it that much.
But when thinking more about it, the part I am actually not sure that I get anymore is that we are paying almost $800 a year for the privilege to watch advertising-sponsored shows. We actually are paying to have the chance to watch ads.... Increasingly, this part doesn't make much sense to me, as it was a business model that was clearly designed for over-the-air free viewing.
All the same, in observing my family's viewing patterns, I have noticed that the younger ones tend to accept the advertising content much more naturally, almost as if it was an integral part of the programming. They also clearly identify the cutting-edge bits in ads which incorporate mind-blowing special effects, or revel in their witty humor, and to them it rates just as high as the programs themselves.
As for the real benefits of DVR's, they seem to still clearly be first and foremost their time-shifting abilities. When they get home after work or school, many people are just too passive or exhausted to bother dealing with hitting the 'Forward' button repeatedly.
In the end, just like vegans, there is a minority of people out there who are violently and religiously against any ads; but the huge majority doesn't care at all, it's just a minor inconvenience to them, and this further carries over into how they watch the DVR recordings they've made.
I would find it most interesting to know what these patterns of ad skipping become when it's automated, as with Myth TV.
As an aside, I would also love to have the option of watching HD programming in real time with no ads whatsoever. How much would this cost? Why isn't it widely offered yet?
As any statistician would weigh in, the number of songs they've analyzed is far too puny to generate any kind
of usable data past the novelty of the first couple of times someone will hear or interact with this device.
When looking at the number of attributes and sophisticated tagging and analysis that goes on for a service
like Pandora, I'd wager that there is no way to generate something interesting for humans with less
than twenty to forty times more songs taken into account, not to speak of the number of interactive live
parameters the user should be able to modify in real time.... and even then it'll be restricted to certain
specific genres.
That's actually the depressing part, to listen to what the developers pick as being relevant and worthy,
and what they'd deemed unfit to be analyzed and incorporated into their data set, the 'cultural imperialism' bit which I'd be quite wary of, and which may be impossible to avoid.
As always, the future is nothing but a collection of the best and the worst aspirations of humankind. I didn't realize until now that removing the fun out of learning to play an instrument and discovering the magic of interacting with others as a band was worthy of a team of people's time.
This makes me picture a time not too far into the future where other people may in turn be willing to pay a
great deal of money to be in an environment where nothing is fake, with no commercials, no electronic
networked distractions keeping us tethered, and no artificial simulacra, approximations of things that once held a
poetic value in life, (and which from all appearances will
have become a ubiquitous advertiser-sponsored bonanza of mediocre cultural algorithmically-generated blandness, which may be the only thing that the less fortunate of us who cannot afford to experience the real thing will ever know....)
As a rule, when speaking of bigger names, not only do the record labels definitely give them the
music for free, actually they beg them to play it. Now suddenly the same DJ's who were GIVEN
all of these songs from the record labels, the producers or specialized promotion companies for free
would have to pay for the use of them?
A while back, a little known organization in the UK named the PPL managed to get similar laws enacted
To my knowledge, no one has ever gotten busted for not complying with their arcane rules
which border on extortion pure and simple, and are impossible to comply with.
What's happening pure and simple is that many of the people who make up the voting boards of these
entities are totally overwhelmed by technology they just
do not understand, and are passing measures
which they believe in earnest are going to help stem the tides of something they feel they can still control.
As someone posted above, paying such tax is only helping legitimize something which is patently
unfair at best, and not ever going to be a solution to anything other than yet another desperate attempt
at trying to put the proverbial cat back in the box, when the box itself has all but disappeared.
Let's not even go into details on who is going to get the money collected (probably pop artists
whose songs never get played once in the clubs, but who have enough airplay stats to register
on the radar of performing rights societies... LOL)
Who thought the dying throes of an entire industry were going to be that much fun?
Quite an interesting topic, especially when you look at it in the light that those in The White House are seemingly able to get away
with simply claiming that about 2 years of their own emails got erased from their server backups and cannot be retrieved, (...pffft!!...)
and no one appears too bothered by it enough to sue for what may well have been a motherlode of information on how the war in
Iraq was handled, and other crucial tidbits which clearly were supposed to have been a matter of public record, and could have
been used in a variety of ways to document this current administration's policies....
This is unfortunately a problem that is far, far bigger than the limited space we have to discuss it here.
It starts at the dawn of the MTV age, when record labels mounted a very successful propaganda campaign to make everyone feel bad if they didn't own a compact disc
of their favorite music, claiming that it was infinitely superior to anything ever made, up to that point. The only ones who didn't buy into this plan were those who were
rather underwhelmed with these outlandish claims from the marketing departments, due to their own empirical yet very practical experience, and who kept vinyl
pressing plants in business well into the 2000's when they were slated to die years before: the DJ's that played daily in large clubs for thousands of people.
It is a well-know fact among that crowd that true analog media 'sounds' and FEELS far better, for reasons that (again) oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers can't
quite quantify, but that boil down to the fact that digital media chops everything down into time-delimited segments, which introduces a series of stairsteps in
the waveforms (the slices) of audio it reproduces, and in very large acoustic spaces the human ear is incredibly sensitive to this, especially and most noticeably
in the high frequencies, (the screechy nails on the chalkboard effect), again in a way that is difficult to necessarily measure due to our very poor understanding
of psychoacoustics, and the perceptual and three-dimensional audio reproduction which our ear is capable of accomplishing.
The 'finalizing effect' of over-compressing only helps to contribute further to a poor reproduction of the dynamic range that was supposed to be on the original
master, in favor of the immediacy of the loudness that becomes apparent if you refuse to do it, as everyone else's CD appears to sound far louder than yours.
The compounded effect of these factors end up making something that doesn't quite seem to have the same excitement and immediacy it had in a format such as
analog, perhaps less pristine, with more distortion and other inherent artifacts, but which are not as subjectively 'bad' and tiresome to listen to over long periods
of time, again the larger the space, the more you will hear it.
What I am saying is that (forgetting MP3 for a second) we have all become victims of a great swindle, that successfully managed to make everyone believe that these
new formats were better. They are certainly better for certain things like separation, measured frequency response, linearity, lack of wow and flutter, and other well-known
characterisctics of digital audio, but what the CD was should have been a mere starting point, and just as digital cameras yearly keep pushing the megapixel count to a point
where it is slowly getting close to the resolution of film, audio should have abandoned formats like the CD (which was all we could manage technically around 1980, when
the Red Book Audio format was ratified) with progressively higher-resolution ones as technology improved and processing and storage afforded us the ability to increase
its quality.
So again, never mind MP3, the problem (in my eyes, at least) is that we are still using 25-year old obsolete technology as a 'Gold Standard', which robs the listeners
of a great deal more than most people realize until the actually - for once in their life - get to listen to an actual open-reel master tape, and compare. Obviously, SACD
and DV-Audio were at leat positive steps in the right direction, but in SACD's case, Sony's iron-clap grip over the über-proprietary DSD format has
made it all but impractical to use in everyday music production situations, and it now appears 'Betamaxed', doomed for lack of support.
Forgetting the convenience and portability factor compressed lossy formats have made possible, for the audio professionals they are the equivalent of Mike J
Well, to be fair the article is specifically talking about the phenomenon known as 'finalizing', which is a way to clearly boost the
apparent levels by up to 10 dB or more during the mastering stages without any digital clipping artifacts. (a.k.a. brick-wall limiting)
There is no question that a lot of great points were raised in the article, however when it comes to MP3 (the 'other' form of compression)
as a person who has participated in recording, mixing and mastering sessions for over 30 years, and constantly listens to master recordings,
can only say that it is pathetic how bad they sound on large audio playback systems, which some of us have and listen to.
(For example pick a very large loft, or someone's home theater for 20 people, not to say anything of a proper auditorium)
You might not hear it at home, on computer speakers or certainly not your earbuds, but the bigger the stereo, the more it is obvious.
And actually what is the most disturbing is that what is very, very wrong about lossy encoding formats is that it doesn't necessarily affect so
much the frequency response, as it does the 'punch', transients and other intangibles which when played on those large-format systems become
quickly apparent. The same way a graphic designer will not try and magnify this site's jpg logo (415 x 55 pixels, I did check) to a more
adequate 16,000 x 2122 for billboard and poster printing, as there will be obvious and nasty pixelization artifacts, there are similar phenomenons
happening with audio, and they are - at best - poorly understood, and at worst dismissed as being the brainchild of crackpots with too
much time on their hands, the New-Age idealists like those who read John Diamond's "Life Energy In Music" and keep a stack of copies
of 'Absolute Sound' by the bathroom stall.
Suffice to say that the combination of both forms of compression (finalizing, plus lossy encoding) do make for a pretty formidable opponent that
already has greatly affected the public's perception of what 'sounds good' and doesn't. And it's not likely to get better.
Fear not, for those who care about listening to music in more proper manners, there are plenty of options available, from an arguably limited selection
of SACDs of some great Jazz, Classical and Pop, to fantastic vinyl playback systems, or ways to re-process those CDs that are too loud and give them
back some form of dynamic range, which will involve spending time re-mastering them with specific analog//tube//tape-machine type equipment, and is
obviously not a recommended activity for what seems to make the most of today's impatient 'click-click' listeners, the Attention-Deficit-Disorder-addled set.
As for the Hydrogen Audio bunch that keeps doing those double-blind tests and play with oscilloscope and frequency analyzers, I think they should
once try them again, but in a place that holds a couple of thousand listeners, and they may come back around to the fact that even CD-resolution
is quite atrocious to listen to, when compared to something like formats that can actually reproduce the original master recordings in a way they should,
such as DSD or 24-bit / 96 kHz encoded music. (not to say anything of a proper 1/2" open-reel master copy)
So in essence, while some of these people quoted in the article all agree that something's wrong, most of them cannot put their finger on it, as it is
something that is far more in the domain of the perceptual and psychoacoustics than an exact science.
It is mind-boggling that 25 years after the CD was introduced, most people consider progress to be size-reduction and loudness, and all attempt
at making a case for higher-fidelity have commercially failed, but again there are far larger problems looming over our heads today.
As someone who has made a living with playing recorded sounds in very large venues, I can however vouch for the fact that even if people do not exa
When thinking about projects such as this, and comparing them to the ruthless and efficient way a few motivated individuals were able to bring
down a symbol of American might with a handful of box-cutters and some cheap flying lessons on 09/11, I think that it is starting to become
abundantely clear that this nation might very well be in the process of losing its collective bearings, by refusing to do the obvious, such as old-fashioned
intelligence gathering from people in the field, multiple secure contacts and authoritative sources, (which could have avoided the faulty intel about Iraq)
and the likes, which are set to cost us in excess of a bleeping TRILLION $ that could arguably have instead been spent on much more pressing issues,
besides repeatedly bombing some sand dunes, many rocks and a few camels.
Rather than settings our priorities on high-fallutin' technology items that will more than likely prove to be flawed, hard to control and guaranteed to cause
many innocents to lose their lives, (good old 'collateral damage') not to say anything of the possibility of an AI takeover making our worst nightmare scenarios
become true, one would think that we should invest far more of our resources in what is proven to prevent and anticipate conflicts with greater certainty.
Like for example not acting like arrogant saber-rattling a**holes on a divine mission to bring order to the rest of the planet? Or making sure that we can bring
containment and methods to prevent hostilities to new, greater levels of efficiency.
It is disconcerting to see such a drive to have our tax $ being spent on projects that do not appear to have any other purpose but that of de-humanizing all of
these situations, just because they look great on paper to some administration bureaucrats trying at all cost to minimize the human casualties to their own
armed forces, which in recent times has historically always been the factor that drives otherwise-brainwashed public opinion against US war campaigns.
When seeing how Diebold has handled e-voting, or even many other comparable government-funded IT projects, we should never forget that this childish
fascination with high-technology could possibly blind us to much in future conflicts.
All of this high-tech circus will - as always - be ultimately brought down by cunning, resourceful fighting by people motivated to do so.
I am not one for conspiracy theories, but I am REALLY not liking the turn of recent events. It points to very bleak possibilities I'd rather not even contemplate.
I think that (in my mind at least) there is a VAST difference between having ONE piece of music and selling a product with it,
therefore making it the centerpiece of the presentation, as in Bette Midler's case.
Ford had tried the same shenanigans that Activision is apparently doing: they didn't want to pay to use Bette Midler's original recording, so they hired one of her background singers to create an exact sound-alike, in an effort to confuse listeners.
In this case, gamers are playing along something that if you make a wrong move doesn't even let them hear the guitar line, and is
a very small part of the overall package of forty to sixty-odd other songs included in the game, certainly not the centerpiece.
They should be thankful theirs even got picked to be included in the package, and being able to reap the windfall of gigs and other
perks that usually come from gaining exposure on such a large scale, to a generation who would never otherwise know who they (are) were.
Not to worry, if there is in fact a lawsuit, surely it will discourage others to dabble with remaking any more songs from their catalog.
What would the difference have been? Instead of commissioning someone to go into the studio to record the piece, Activision would have
had to pay a pro-rated royalty for the use of the band's original master recording?
Although superstar-caliber entertainers can probably leverage those opportunities into large advances, those fees customarily never amount,
to much for over-the-hill bands with 3 Top 40 hit songs 20 years ago, from my limited experience in the game licensing field.
On a personal level, I find that these kinds of tactics are revolting, and makes me less and less proud to have once been part of a vibrant business
now obviously on its last legs, to have to resort to such crass tactics.
Mind you, it'll generate a fair amount of free publicity.... never mind, it makes sense when looking at it from that angle.
After over 30 years working in publishing and recording, I must confess that I had never, ever heard of such a frivolous assertion.
This is one of the most bizarre, convoluted claims one could imagine, as there clearly is no law preventing people from sticking close
to a song's original arrangement and sounds in a cover version, and arguably no way to prove, or no standards ever established to
define where things could be 'too close for comfort', or what would in turn constitute enough of a difference to be safe.
Matters here are not a case of impersonation, it's more just a bunch of musos with solid chops playing well, and 'nailing it' in the studio.
Also, isn't the whole Karaoke business built on recording
cover versions that stick so close to the original as to make them indistinguishable?
In theory, - if I were the game's publisher -, I would go to trial on this, as there is no legal set precedent that I have ever heard of.
However, before rushing to do so, there are two interesting bits to consider here, both gleaned from reading the excellent article linked on the band's history:
This band is one of the rare winners of any lawsuit to regain ownership of their own compositions, and may feel emboldened by this fact.
They managed to retain the services of a top-flight lawyer who didn't seem to flinch at the idea of taking up a long and drawn-out uphill battle on contingency.
So as far as the band, thinking that they've already won once in court, they may decide to stick it out, truly thinking that they'll do so again.
From a legal perspective, if this went to trial, and some moronic jury actually awarded hem damages, think of the chilling effect such
a precedent would have on the whole 'cover version' process, and incidentally to this game publisher's gravy train franchise.
What's to then stop another aging rock star to show up at one of your gigs as a cover band, and sue you claiming that you're too close to their original?
So perhaps, there's a pragmatic legal counsel at the game publisher's headquarters that will make the suggestion that it might be better to shut them up
(by offering them a sealed out-of-court settlement for a few millions, out of the $115,000,000.00 they recently made in the first seven days their newest
game was offered for sale!) than risk turning the whole 'cover version' business upside down, which could cost them and everyone else heaps more,
and might well become one of the worst legal precedents ever set.
After thinking back on all of these ideas, the band's strategy might not be anywhere as bad as what any layperson thinks.
Rather than to risk setting the precedent, the game's publisher may just push to settle this one quickly for undisclosed terms out of the public's eye....
If they don't, all of this could hinge on 10 morons serving jury duty, and who will vindicate the band by just trying to quickly
have the trial over with, and get back to their normal lives rather than agonizing in court for what could turn out to be weeks of boring deliberations.
Oh, yeah!... IANAL, and all of the other disclaimers too.
...what are the terms of the deal that made Apple so giddy about 'locking in' with AT&T for FIVE YEARS!!!
The argument is that Apple obviously has legal counsel who foresaw all of these problems (risk of class action, being made illegal in certain countries, etc...)
Yet they do not have any problem doing this for what (in hardware evolution time) is several lives long, and they are basically risking everything on this gamble.
What could it be that made the pot so sweet that they went with this deal on a debut product?
And on the opposite side of the coin, what could have been so incredibly bad about offering the phone unlocked with a SIM card slot
that they, -who pride themselves in public for being so 'open'- did not see that as a viable option?
Do they act so arrogant that they don't even want to please all of the international travelers who swap SIM cards
every time they arrive in a new country?
Someone, please drop some science on us. As it is, it makes no logical sense.
(Oh yeah, and BTW Steve, if you happen to read this, just email me the 411 directly...! KTHXBYE)
"Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry,
but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be
the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business. This model is done."
as well as: "The Sony people thought I was insane. I'm also trying to get them to move out of their offices in New York.
That space is tainted with the old way."
Looks like a total lack of communication in the company's new priorities still remains between the top execs and their lawyer drones, it seems....
Mind you, when this lady lawyer is done there, she can probably look for employment at NTP for a few more years of successful ligitious lifestyle.
...then again, not likely to be something most people would ever experience.
The test is worth taking, except that you really can't do it easily.
Go to a club, concert hall, any large listening space with decent acoustic treatment and time-aligned properly arrayed
sound system, and try and compare a reel-to-reel copy of a master tape to a CD of it (and the MP3 if you want).
On those large installations, the bigger the room, the more those differences are magnified, and become truly
painful once you notice them, like screechy nails on a blackboard. And experience does show that these factors
affect how people react to the music, and so on. Passing the same CD or MP3 through tube electronics on playback
does seem to help in making the music have some sort of 'coherence' and smoothness again.
The audio professionals quoted in the article have access to studio technology that is superior enough that
they can most times tell the difference, and would prefer if the listeners were given the tools to do so as well.
As with any culture of mediocrity, it becomes hard to argue against it once everyone has gotten
their hearing so used to severely compressed audio playback that they've never even experienced a properly
tuned listening system. I'd agree that on headphones or in a car, it is not a huge factor....
It is a stunning testament to what a misunderstood stepchild audio really is, when digital cameras keep improving
their resolution yearly at a pretty impressive clip, but audio gear makers went the other way and actually decided to
reduce the fidelity of what was a standard 25 years ago (that is, Red Book Audio as 16-bit 44.1 kHz files)
All for the sake of convenience.
Then again, as a generational thing, it is pretty obvious that however much some people might have used to communally obsess over
"Dark Side Of The Moon", "Abbey Road" or "In The Court Of The Crimson King" huddled around their stereos looking for the sweet spot in
the 70's, this just isn't the way most young people are relating to music today, and certainly doesn't appear to have the same magic hold
on listeners. The engineers and producers quoted in the article are all children of that past era!
Whatever. There are plenty of good solutions available today for those who care enough about decent sound to do something about it.
Like the Korg MR-1 DSD portable recorders. And so on..... For casual listening, it won't make a difference. For other applications, it might!!
To each his own.
Z.
Been using this drive as my primary music streaming audio drive while on the road, with rugged real-world everyday mission-critical use
in front of thousands of people, where one mis-hap is already too much.
So far things have been flawless, and it has made a huge difference for me due to portability compared to anything else of the same capacity.
as previously this meant a two-drive combo with heftier power supply.
The weight and size make it easier to have it as a carry-on item, rather than in my checked luggage!
As far as performance, it has been able to handle 4 simultaneous 24-bit / 96 kHz audio tracks playing back with no hiccups whatsoever.
The drive-to-drive copying in Firewire 800 or SATA has been quite speedy and error-proof.... (copying 900 gig at a time is always a good test)
Dream come true if you ask me.... I still carry a backup anyway, LOL! (ymmv(TM), batteries not included, kids don't try this at home, etc....)
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly, I do not think that a single Slashdot reader was alive around 1930, which is around when US Congress enacted legislation that would make it easier for the early terrestrial radio broadcasters to invest and build out their fledging radio transmission network, by granting them an exemption from the obligation of having to pay royalties to the owners of the sound recordings they were playing on the air, although they were still obligated to pay the writers, their publishers and appointed representatives (ASCAP, BMI, Harry Fox Agency).
These payments to both sound recording owners as well as publishers are the norm for stations everywhere else in the world.
A measure of how wildly successful the radio stations are in the US today should be the amount of money they appear to have available to spend on lobbyists hired to ensure that this one-time exemption never ends.
One could fail to see what is so bad for owners of sound recordings to finally get paid for the use of their work, broadcasters have had a free ride for 80 years or so, it's fairly clear that they do not need that exemption for its original purpose anymore, and they should build their business model around the same one every other radio station on earth has been using successfully all of this time.
Yes, it obviously fantastic to have your songs promoted on radio, and labels have always seen this as a great way to help sell many more copies of whatever physical product, downloads or ringtones even. But when comparing the amount the broadcasters would have to pay for each song played to what most of them are already racking up from pro-rated advertising income for the time slot that song was in, one cannot help but wonder what this fuss is all about.... a mere few drops in the bucket.
Z.
I was a member since 1984, for about 15 years or so. And I so clearly remember my number as well!!
75056,3611
Fond memories of an age that really pre-dated the Internet by so long.
z.
Considering that the parent company of Time Warner is the same as Warner Music and Warner Bros,...
Please consider again, as the Warner Music Group is now a totally separate entity, which was clearly spun off from the Time Warner group several years ago, and its stock has lost something like 1,500% of its valuation in the last two years. (from $30 a share to $1.50, although it's bounced back a bit since then, currently at $2.89)
Time Warner most likely still remained a minority shareholder in WMG, but IMHO they have other far more pressing matters to address at this time.
z.
The row comes a week after a House of Lords report stated that the steady expansion of the "surveillance society" risked undermining fundamental freedoms including the right to privacy.
Peers said that Britain, with an estimated 4m CCTV cameras in use, had constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world in the name of combating terrorism and crime and improving administrative efficiency.
However, the cross-party committee warned that "pervasive and routine" electronic surveillance was almost taken for granted adding that privacy is an "essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom".
Lord Goodlad, the former Conservative chief whip and committee chairman, said that there could be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about an individual being recorded and pored over by the state.
"The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy," he said.
Well, undeniably the UK has slowly let itself become dominated by the mentality that maintaining a grid of CCTV cameras is the answer to reducing 'crime' and 'terrorism', and constantly stoking those fears in the public to allow for this 'creep' against personal privacy.
Funny when one looks at the statistics, but being that so many, many more people die of preventable car accidents and of heart attacks from eating too much junk food, why is it that the same expenditures aren't lavished on those areas?
Simple.
Arguably, there are many who sense that it has little to do with protecting the lives of citizens, but rather far more to do with the government jealously guarding its symbol of 'authority' and not wanting to lose face... If the goverment's mission was to truly protect the constituency (rather than its own authority), I imagine a lot of things would be done differently.
There is such a thing as the amount of acceptable risk one takes by doing everyday things like going to a pub, walking in the street and such. It is very telling, however, that these sorts of ideas are constantly being floated by the police, as in the example of some UK clubs having to submit an application form in advance listing the names and addresses of the artists and performers scheduled to appear, as well as style of music, in order to be allowed to have dance music event without being shut down.
Death by a thousand paper cuts of bureaucracy, which in the end doesn't truly prevent anything, but most certainly sets an aura of hysteria around every aspect of everyday life.
Z.
Totally agreed as far as headphones go, it's hard to distinguish any change.
..which is to say that yes, there is a difference, although most people are never in a position to hear it
But the bigger the playback system, the more the differences become apparent.
Just the same way if you took this web site's logo and blew it up to actual billboard size it would look
quite ugly, pixelated and distorted, the more sound is amplified, the more these artifacts become not
only noticeable, but downright annoying and irritating to the human ear.
Lossy compressed audio is so 1995...
Z.
Sorry for venting, but I am getting increasingly aggravated the more I read about moronic,
out-of-touch elected officials who think that they can just subvert technology to accomplish
things that are so completely unrealistic, it boggles the mind and should make us question
their very sanity.
After all we are supposed to be relying on them to represent us and serve us, and therefore are
expected to possess a modicum of basic common sense when it comes to dealing with a changing
landscape of what's around us, how to best and wisely use it, and how NOT TO.
Whether reading about pipe dreams of countrywide deep-packet inspection in Australia for
the sake of catching child porn traders who will just use encrypted connections anyway
(but in the process creating a nightmare of slowdowns and false positives for millions), or forcing
ISPs to monitor content and become special interest copyright cops, to this.....
It seems to denote a fundamental level of cluelessness and utter stupidity that is fairly depressing.
Hey, maybe that is what the real world is like outside of Slashdot?
Some days it feels that 'Idiocracy' (the movie) probably didn't do so well because we are already there....
No LOLs from me this time.
Z.
When people will be looking back at the madness, deceit, lies and coercion that has become so commonplace with some of the RIAA's strong-arm tactics, someone like Ray will stand as an exemplary model of integrity and fairness, refusing to simply kowtow to the unreasonable demands of a group of corporate entities who have demonstrated that they are utterly unable to serve their original mission (i.e.: be creative in providing the public entertainment in changing times) and re-invent themselves in the face of a mutating marketplace and technological tools, by providing the public with easy, ubiquitous and unencumbered access to their catalogs of copyrights, and have instead made it their new specialty to sue those who could have been their best customers.
Being slapped with such silly and pointless lawsuits over a blog is just a mark of how desperate some of those behind these campaigns of harassment really are, and can only serve to highlight that they are slowly running out of options of who else to blame for their own demise into obsolescence.
Hang in there!!
Z.
.... the 800-pound gorilla in the room. i.e.: the types of intrusions and attacks that seem to be committed on a daily basis by what appears to be government-sanctioned Chinese hacker groups.
But in truth, I find it remarkable that the US government is not owning up to the fact that it also seems to be running what amounts to basically insecure systems on much of its IT infrastructure.
This dude may have been a crackpot, but somehow these antics are only performed for the sake of overreaction, when the blame should also be squarely shared by those who administer these networks.
As a US taxpayer, I find this last part infinitely scarier... especially because all of this saber-rattling is not likely to remedy the conditions that made it possible to do this in the first place. A recent security audit of US Gov networks gave them an 'F' if I remember (could be wrong)
Z.
I have seen daily hotel rates of up to 30 Euros (that is $48 / day) for Internet access, at sometimes abysmal speeds. That makes it up to $1,500 a month as well. The most expensive countries were usually Denmark, Italy and Russia. It's funny how since once installed it costs close to nothing to have a network maintained besides the odd router crapping out and such, that hotels keep providing their guests with free unlimited tap water ( a much more expensive commodity), but all the while insist on charging people undue amounts for what should be free.
Most of the money you pay probably goes into a fancy system designed to authenticate, meter, filter your connection, and the hotel is in on the split.
Basically, this is a result of clueless aging hotel managerial types, for whom Internet was an un-necessary luxury, and who just see it as a profit center, not as something their guests need as much as the bed they sleep in.
And these people are easily taken in by the suave tone of a provider who comes in, does the network install, maintains everything and gives them the peace of mind of not having to worry about an area they are very uncomfortable with, besides a nice stream of income.
Worst ever: UNA Hotel in Firenze, (Italy) managed by Swisscom, you used to have to pay 8 Euros for 2 hours, no daily plans (basically having to refill every 2 hours) so the daily price would be close to 100 Euros per day for 24 hours access.
There are many hotels where the mentality is "Internet is something you do in the lobby" and is only needed for a few minutes, especially in Europe.
The best free Internet I got was 10 Meg downstream at Tokyo's Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills.
Z.
This is great news!
No matter how many times I have read it, this book has never failed to generate such an incredible and tight aura, with an awesomely strange atmosphere, and feels to me like it truly is a shining example of what the definition of mindf*ck should be about. (In the meantime, and since this thing probably won't see the light of day until 2011, you'd hardly go wrong if you went and bought the book, and read it! You won't be disappointed!)
Along the same lines, I think that William Gibson's Neuromancer, but especially its sequel "Count Zero" (and arguably even the third one, Mona Lisa Overdrive, not quite as strong but still worthwhile) could yield a surprisingly entertaining Sci-Fi trilogy if in the hands of a capable director.
With all of the advances in 3D imaging and computer-generated special effects, it is quite reasonable to assume that all of these renditions could be done for an average movie budget, and still work. It's more how they adapt the script that will make it or break it.
Z.
As an old foggy and ad-hater, although we pay around $60 a month for cable in our residence for our family's benefit, I seldom if ever watch anything at all, as I much prefer to wait and download the stuff I like later (even weeks or months later) totally commercial-free, or buy the DVD if I really like it that much.
But when thinking more about it, the part I am actually not sure that I get anymore is that we are paying almost $800 a year for the privilege to watch advertising-sponsored shows. We actually are paying to have the chance to watch ads.... Increasingly, this part doesn't make much sense to me, as it was a business model that was clearly designed for over-the-air free viewing.
All the same, in observing my family's viewing patterns, I have noticed that the younger ones tend to accept the advertising content much more naturally, almost as if it was an integral part of the programming. They also clearly identify the cutting-edge bits in ads which incorporate mind-blowing special effects, or revel in their witty humor, and to them it rates just as high as the programs themselves.
As for the real benefits of DVR's, they seem to still clearly be first and foremost their time-shifting abilities. When they get home after work or school, many people are just too passive or exhausted to bother dealing with hitting the 'Forward' button repeatedly.
In the end, just like vegans, there is a minority of people out there who are violently and religiously against any ads; but the huge majority doesn't care at all, it's just a minor inconvenience to them, and this further carries over into how they watch the DVR recordings they've made.
I would find it most interesting to know what these patterns of ad skipping become when it's automated, as with Myth TV.
As an aside, I would also love to have the option of watching HD programming in real time with no ads whatsoever. How much would this cost? Why isn't it widely offered yet?
Z.
As any statistician would weigh in, the number of songs they've analyzed is far too puny to generate any kind
of usable data past the novelty of the first couple of times someone will hear or interact with this device.
When looking at the number of attributes and sophisticated tagging and analysis that goes on for a service
like Pandora, I'd wager that there is no way to generate something interesting for humans with less
than twenty to forty times more songs taken into account, not to speak of the number of interactive live
parameters the user should be able to modify in real time.... and even then it'll be restricted to certain
specific genres.
That's actually the depressing part, to listen to what the developers pick as being relevant and worthy,
and what they'd deemed unfit to be analyzed and incorporated into their data set, the 'cultural imperialism'
bit which I'd be quite wary of, and which may be impossible to avoid.
As always, the future is nothing but a collection of the best and the worst aspirations of humankind.
I didn't realize until now that removing the fun out of learning to play an instrument and discovering
the magic of interacting with others as a band was worthy of a team of people's time.
This makes me picture a time not too far into the future where other people may in turn be willing to pay a
great deal of money to be in an environment where nothing is fake, with no commercials, no electronic
networked distractions keeping us tethered, and no artificial simulacra, approximations of things that
once held a poetic value in life, (and which from all appearances will have become a ubiquitous
advertiser-sponsored bonanza of mediocre cultural algorithmically-generated blandness, which may be the
only thing that the less fortunate of us who cannot afford to experience the real thing will ever know....)
Philip K. Dick is having a field day!
Z.
What are professional DJ's supposed to do?
As a rule, when speaking of bigger names, not only do the record labels definitely give them the
music for free, actually they beg them to play it. Now suddenly the same DJ's who were GIVEN
all of these songs from the record labels, the producers or specialized promotion companies for free
would have to pay for the use of them?
A while back, a little known organization in the UK named the PPL managed to get similar laws enacted
To my knowledge, no one has ever gotten busted for not complying with their arcane rules
which border on extortion pure and simple, and are impossible to comply with.
What's happening pure and simple is that many of the people who make up the voting boards of these
entities are totally overwhelmed by technology they just do not understand, and are passing measures
which they believe in earnest are going to help stem the tides of something they feel they can still control.
As someone posted above, paying such tax is only helping legitimize something which is patently
unfair at best, and not ever going to be a solution to anything other than yet another desperate attempt
at trying to put the proverbial cat back in the box, when the box itself has all but disappeared.
Let's not even go into details on who is going to get the money collected (probably pop artists
whose songs never get played once in the clubs, but who have enough airplay stats to register
on the radar of performing rights societies... LOL)
Who thought the dying throes of an entire industry were going to be that much fun?
Z.
Quite an interesting topic, especially when you look at it in the light that those in The White House are seemingly able to get away
with simply claiming that about 2 years of their own emails got erased from their server backups and cannot be retrieved, (...pffft!!...)
and no one appears too bothered by it enough to sue for what may well have been a motherlode of information on how the war in
Iraq was handled, and other crucial tidbits which clearly were supposed to have been a matter of public record, and could have
been used in a variety of ways to document this current administration's policies....
Z.
It looks like most of those around adaptations of Tolkien's works are one by one falling prey to the same
sad curse that overtook Gollum...
"My Precious, My Precious!... Must have the Precious!"
If I may say so, I truly wonder what Tolkien himself would think of all this pathetic bickering and bitter lawsuits.
Z.
This is unfortunately a problem that is far, far bigger than the limited space we have to discuss it here.
It starts at the dawn of the MTV age, when record labels mounted a very successful propaganda campaign to make everyone feel bad if they didn't own a compact disc
of their favorite music, claiming that it was infinitely superior to anything ever made, up to that point. The only ones who didn't buy into this plan were those who were
rather underwhelmed with these outlandish claims from the marketing departments, due to their own empirical yet very practical experience, and who kept vinyl
pressing plants in business well into the 2000's when they were slated to die years before: the DJ's that played daily in large clubs for thousands of people.
It is a well-know fact among that crowd that true analog media 'sounds' and FEELS far better, for reasons that (again) oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers can't
quite quantify, but that boil down to the fact that digital media chops everything down into time-delimited segments, which introduces a series of stairsteps in
the waveforms (the slices) of audio it reproduces, and in very large acoustic spaces the human ear is incredibly sensitive to this, especially and most noticeably
in the high frequencies, (the screechy nails on the chalkboard effect), again in a way that is difficult to necessarily measure due to our very poor understanding
of psychoacoustics, and the perceptual and three-dimensional audio reproduction which our ear is capable of accomplishing.
The 'finalizing effect' of over-compressing only helps to contribute further to a poor reproduction of the dynamic range that was supposed to be on the original
master, in favor of the immediacy of the loudness that becomes apparent if you refuse to do it, as everyone else's CD appears to sound far louder than yours.
The compounded effect of these factors end up making something that doesn't quite seem to have the same excitement and immediacy it had in a format such as
analog, perhaps less pristine, with more distortion and other inherent artifacts, but which are not as subjectively 'bad' and tiresome to listen to over long periods
of time, again the larger the space, the more you will hear it.
What I am saying is that (forgetting MP3 for a second) we have all become victims of a great swindle, that successfully managed to make everyone believe that these
new formats were better. They are certainly better for certain things like separation, measured frequency response, linearity, lack of wow and flutter, and other well-known
characterisctics of digital audio, but what the CD was should have been a mere starting point, and just as digital cameras yearly keep pushing the megapixel count to a point
where it is slowly getting close to the resolution of film, audio should have abandoned formats like the CD (which was all we could manage technically around 1980, when
the Red Book Audio format was ratified) with progressively higher-resolution ones as technology improved and processing and storage afforded us the ability to increase
its quality.
So again, never mind MP3, the problem (in my eyes, at least) is that we are still using 25-year old obsolete technology as a 'Gold Standard', which robs the listeners
of a great deal more than most people realize until the actually - for once in their life - get to listen to an actual open-reel master tape, and compare. Obviously, SACD
and DV-Audio were at leat positive steps in the right direction, but in SACD's case, Sony's iron-clap grip over the über-proprietary DSD format has
made it all but impractical to use in everyday music production situations, and it now appears 'Betamaxed', doomed for lack of support.
Forgetting the convenience and portability factor compressed lossy formats have made possible, for the audio professionals they are the equivalent of Mike J
Well, to be fair the article is specifically talking about the phenomenon known as 'finalizing', which is a way to clearly boost the
apparent levels by up to 10 dB or more during the mastering stages without any digital clipping artifacts. (a.k.a. brick-wall limiting)
There is no question that a lot of great points were raised in the article, however when it comes to MP3 (the 'other' form of compression)
as a person who has participated in recording, mixing and mastering sessions for over 30 years, and constantly listens to master recordings,
can only say that it is pathetic how bad they sound on large audio playback systems, which some of us have and listen to.
(For example pick a very large loft, or someone's home theater for 20 people, not to say anything of a proper auditorium)
You might not hear it at home, on computer speakers or certainly not your earbuds, but the bigger the stereo, the more it is obvious.
And actually what is the most disturbing is that what is very, very wrong about lossy encoding formats is that it doesn't necessarily affect so
much the frequency response, as it does the 'punch', transients and other intangibles which when played on those large-format systems become
quickly apparent. The same way a graphic designer will not try and magnify this site's jpg logo (415 x 55 pixels, I did check) to a more
adequate 16,000 x 2122 for billboard and poster printing, as there will be obvious and nasty pixelization artifacts, there are similar phenomenons
happening with audio, and they are - at best - poorly understood, and at worst dismissed as being the brainchild of crackpots with too
much time on their hands, the New-Age idealists like those who read John Diamond's "Life Energy In Music" and keep a stack of copies
of 'Absolute Sound' by the bathroom stall.
Suffice to say that the combination of both forms of compression (finalizing, plus lossy encoding) do make for a pretty formidable opponent that
already has greatly affected the public's perception of what 'sounds good' and doesn't. And it's not likely to get better.
Fear not, for those who care about listening to music in more proper manners, there are plenty of options available, from an arguably limited selection
of SACDs of some great Jazz, Classical and Pop, to fantastic vinyl playback systems, or ways to re-process those CDs that are too loud and give them
back some form of dynamic range, which will involve spending time re-mastering them with specific analog//tube//tape-machine type equipment, and is
obviously not a recommended activity for what seems to make the most of today's impatient 'click-click' listeners, the Attention-Deficit-Disorder-addled set.
As for the Hydrogen Audio bunch that keeps doing those double-blind tests and play with oscilloscope and frequency analyzers, I think they should
once try them again, but in a place that holds a couple of thousand listeners, and they may come back around to the fact that even CD-resolution
is quite atrocious to listen to, when compared to something like formats that can actually reproduce the original master recordings in a way they should,
such as DSD or 24-bit / 96 kHz encoded music. (not to say anything of a proper 1/2" open-reel master copy)
So in essence, while some of these people quoted in the article all agree that something's wrong, most of them cannot put their finger on it, as it is
something that is far more in the domain of the perceptual and psychoacoustics than an exact science.
It is mind-boggling that 25 years after the CD was introduced, most people consider progress to be size-reduction and loudness, and all attempt
at making a case for higher-fidelity have commercially failed, but again there are far larger problems looming over our heads today.
As someone who has made a living with playing recorded sounds in very large venues, I can however vouch for the fact that even if people do not exa
When thinking about projects such as this, and comparing them to the ruthless and efficient way a few motivated individuals were able to bring
down a symbol of American might with a handful of box-cutters and some cheap flying lessons on 09/11, I think that it is starting to become
abundantely clear that this nation might very well be in the process of losing its collective bearings, by refusing to do the obvious, such as old-fashioned
intelligence gathering from people in the field, multiple secure contacts and authoritative sources, (which could have avoided the faulty intel about Iraq)
and the likes, which are set to cost us in excess of a bleeping TRILLION $ that could arguably have instead been spent on much more pressing issues,
besides repeatedly bombing some sand dunes, many rocks and a few camels.
Rather than settings our priorities on high-fallutin' technology items that will more than likely prove to be flawed, hard to control and guaranteed to cause
many innocents to lose their lives, (good old 'collateral damage') not to say anything of the possibility of an AI takeover making our worst nightmare scenarios
become true, one would think that we should invest far more of our resources in what is proven to prevent and anticipate conflicts with greater certainty.
Like for example not acting like arrogant saber-rattling a**holes on a divine mission to bring order to the rest of the planet? Or making sure that we can bring
containment and methods to prevent hostilities to new, greater levels of efficiency.
It is disconcerting to see such a drive to have our tax $ being spent on projects that do not appear to have any other purpose but that of de-humanizing all of
these situations, just because they look great on paper to some administration bureaucrats trying at all cost to minimize the human casualties to their own
armed forces, which in recent times has historically always been the factor that drives otherwise-brainwashed public opinion against US war campaigns.
When seeing how Diebold has handled e-voting, or even many other comparable government-funded IT projects, we should never forget that this childish
fascination with high-technology could possibly blind us to much in future conflicts.
All of this high-tech circus will - as always - be ultimately brought down by cunning, resourceful fighting by people motivated to do so.
I am not one for conspiracy theories, but I am REALLY not liking the turn of recent events. It points to very bleak possibilities I'd rather not even contemplate.
Z.
therefore making it the centerpiece of the presentation, as in Bette Midler's case.
In this case, gamers are playing along something that if you make a wrong move doesn't even let them hear the guitar line, and is
a very small part of the overall package of forty to sixty-odd other songs included in the game, certainly not the centerpiece.
They should be thankful theirs even got picked to be included in the package, and being able to reap the windfall of gigs and other
perks that usually come from gaining exposure on such a large scale, to a generation who would never otherwise know who they (are) were.
Not to worry, if there is in fact a lawsuit, surely it will discourage others to dabble with remaking any more songs from their catalog.
What would the difference have been? Instead of commissioning someone to go into the studio to record the piece, Activision would have
had to pay a pro-rated royalty for the use of the band's original master recording?
Although superstar-caliber entertainers can probably leverage those opportunities into large advances, those fees customarily never amount
to much for over-the-hill bands with 3 Top 40 hit songs 20 years ago, from my limited experience in the game licensing field.
On a personal level, I find that these kinds of tactics are revolting, and makes me less and less proud to have once been part of a vibrant business
now obviously on its last legs, to have to resort to such crass tactics.
Mind you, it'll generate a fair amount of free publicity.... never mind, it makes sense when looking at it from that angle.
Z.
This is one of the most bizarre, convoluted claims one could imagine, as there clearly is no law preventing people from sticking close
to a song's original arrangement and sounds in a cover version, and arguably no way to prove, or no standards ever established to
define where things could be 'too close for comfort', or what would in turn constitute enough of a difference to be safe.
Matters here are not a case of impersonation, it's more just a bunch of musos with solid chops playing well, and 'nailing it' in the studio.
Also, isn't the whole Karaoke business built on recording cover versions that stick so close to the original as to make them indistinguishable?
In theory, - if I were the game's publisher -, I would go to trial on this, as there is no legal set precedent that I have ever heard of.
However, before rushing to do so, there are two interesting bits to consider here, both gleaned from reading the excellent article linked on the band's history:
- This band is one of the rare winners of any lawsuit to regain ownership of their own compositions, and may feel emboldened by this fact.
- They managed to retain the services of a top-flight lawyer who didn't seem to flinch at the idea of taking up a long and drawn-out uphill battle on contingency.
So as far as the band, thinking that they've already won once in court, they may decide to stick it out, truly thinking that they'll do so again.From a legal perspective, if this went to trial, and some moronic jury actually awarded hem damages, think of the chilling effect such
a precedent would have on the whole 'cover version' process, and incidentally to this game publisher's gravy train franchise.
What's to then stop another aging rock star to show up at one of your gigs as a cover band, and sue you claiming that you're too close to their original?
So perhaps, there's a pragmatic legal counsel at the game publisher's headquarters that will make the suggestion that it might be better to shut them up
(by offering them a sealed out-of-court settlement for a few millions, out of the $115,000,000.00 they recently made in the first seven days their newest
game was offered for sale!) than risk turning the whole 'cover version' business upside down, which could cost them and everyone else heaps more,
and might well become one of the worst legal precedents ever set.
After thinking back on all of these ideas, the band's strategy might not be anywhere as bad as what any layperson thinks.
Rather than to risk setting the precedent, the game's publisher may just push to settle this one quickly for undisclosed terms out of the public's eye....
If they don't, all of this could hinge on 10 morons serving jury duty, and who will vindicate the band by just trying to quickly have the trial over
with, and get back to their normal lives rather than agonizing in court for what could turn out to be weeks of boring deliberations.
Oh, yeah!... IANAL, and all of the other disclaimers too.
Z.
...what are the terms of the deal that made Apple so giddy about 'locking in' with AT&T for FIVE YEARS!!!
The argument is that Apple obviously has legal counsel who foresaw all of these problems (risk of class action, being made illegal in certain countries, etc...)
Yet they do not have any problem doing this for what (in hardware evolution time) is several lives long, and they are basically risking everything on this gamble.
What could it be that made the pot so sweet that they went with this deal on a debut product?
And on the opposite side of the coin, what could have been so incredibly bad about offering the phone unlocked with a SIM card slot
that they, -who pride themselves in public for being so 'open'- did not see that as a viable option?
Do they act so arrogant that they don't even want to please all of the international travelers who swap SIM cards
every time they arrive in a new country? Someone, please drop some science on us. As it is, it makes no logical sense.
(Oh yeah, and BTW Steve, if you happen to read this, just email me the 411 directly...! KTHXBYE)
Z.
Is this the same Sony/BMG Music that Rick Rubin became the co-president of?
The same multinational about which Rick said in a highly publicized NY Times article that (fair use quote):
"Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry,
but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be
the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business. This model is done."
as well as: "The Sony people thought I was insane. I'm also trying to get them to move out of their offices in New York.
That space is tainted with the old way."
Looks like a total lack of communication in the company's new priorities still remains between the top execs and their lawyer drones, it seems....
Mind you, when this lady lawyer is done there, she can probably look for employment at NTP for a few more years of successful ligitious lifestyle.
Z.
Original Post Submitted By -> Ellis D. Tripp
This is just pure coincidence, right?
Z.
...then again, not likely to be something most people would ever experience.
The test is worth taking, except that you really can't do it easily.
Go to a club, concert hall, any large listening space with decent acoustic treatment and time-aligned properly arrayed
sound system, and try and compare a reel-to-reel copy of a master tape to a CD of it (and the MP3 if you want).
On those large installations, the bigger the room, the more those differences are magnified, and become truly
painful once you notice them, like screechy nails on a blackboard. And experience does show that these factors
affect how people react to the music, and so on. Passing the same CD or MP3 through tube electronics on playback
does seem to help in making the music have some sort of 'coherence' and smoothness again.
The audio professionals quoted in the article have access to studio technology that is superior enough that
they can most times tell the difference, and would prefer if the listeners were given the tools to do so as well.
As with any culture of mediocrity, it becomes hard to argue against it once everyone has gotten
their hearing so used to severely compressed audio playback that they've never even experienced a properly
tuned listening system. I'd agree that on headphones or in a car, it is not a huge factor....
It is a stunning testament to what a misunderstood stepchild audio really is, when digital cameras keep improving
their resolution yearly at a pretty impressive clip, but audio gear makers went the other way and actually decided to
reduce the fidelity of what was a standard 25 years ago (that is, Red Book Audio as 16-bit 44.1 kHz files)
All for the sake of convenience.
Then again, as a generational thing, it is pretty obvious that however much some people might have used to communally obsess over
"Dark Side Of The Moon", "Abbey Road" or "In The Court Of The Crimson King" huddled around their stereos looking for the sweet spot in
the 70's, this just isn't the way most young people are relating to music today, and certainly doesn't appear to have the same magic hold
on listeners. The engineers and producers quoted in the article are all children of that past era!
Whatever. There are plenty of good solutions available today for those who care enough about decent sound to do something about it.
Like the Korg MR-1 DSD portable recorders. And so on..... For casual listening, it won't make a difference. For other applications, it might!!
To each his own.
Z.
Been using this drive as my primary music streaming audio drive while on the road, with rugged real-world everyday mission-critical use
in front of thousands of people, where one mis-hap is already too much.
So far things have been flawless, and it has made a huge difference for me due to portability compared to anything else of the same capacity.
as previously this meant a two-drive combo with heftier power supply.
The weight and size make it easier to have it as a carry-on item, rather than in my checked luggage!
As far as performance, it has been able to handle 4 simultaneous 24-bit / 96 kHz audio tracks playing back with no hiccups whatsoever.
The drive-to-drive copying in Firewire 800 or SATA has been quite speedy and error-proof.... (copying 900 gig at a time is always a good test)
Dream come true if you ask me.... I still carry a backup anyway, LOL!
(ymmv(TM), batteries not included, kids don't try this at home, etc....)
Z.