The new design is absolutely spectacular, easy and the eyes and invites reading.
Wonderful! Congrats on a job well done and a prize more than well-deserved.
This reminds me of going office-space hunting a few years ago, in a commercial building that had a big room full of Verizon Cellular transmission amplifiers, racks and all the rest, with the antenna on the roof, being proposed renting one of the office suites with a wall immediately adjacent to that gear, and feeling extremely queasy about what could possibly happen.
I mean, that stuff is no joke. Heavy industrial-strength droney vibration, and all the rest.
I would feel the same way about being near any AM or FM radio transmitters. These machines are electricity-guzzling beasts, and emit such an array of close-range EMF and all the rest.
Would YOU like the to be the one to spend years around that stuff to see if there is proof that it is harmful or not?.... I didn't think so.
I don't have time to check with my legal affairs person, but as far as I can tell, this is mistaken in the USA.
There are several things that usually happen in major label contracts, one of them being the re-recording clause which usually specifies that the artist is not allowed to put out any other recordings of the same song for xxx years (where xxx
As far as the 'mechanical' side, no one can prevent you from re-recording a musical composition if it has already been published (been released) as long as you are willing to pay the minimum Statuatory Mechanical Royalty Rateto the song's publisher, which rate is set and decided by congress.
No one can prevent an artist from re-recording their own songs unless
they never came out before and someone else acquired those publishing rights from them
the recording contract they have with the label they are signed to prohibits it for a certain duration, usually tied to the release of an album
I have never written an email like this. Not the kind of activist-minded person you may portray me to be, to conveniently classify me, so as to justify whatever you want, to keep believing with a clean conscience...
Ecology and nature: a profound subject worthy of many lifetimes of study.
Where would you you place the 'Joan Miro-inspired logo action' against Google within the natural order of things? (sorry to be ironically writing this from G-Mail)
As illustrious as Mr Miro has been, his artistic accomplishments celebrated high and low, his work revered and cherished by millions in some of the planet's most famous museums.
The fact is that an artist inspires many others with their creative work, just as they themselves were able to incorporate and take what many others before them had created.
After their passing (we all do die at one point), it appears that a system is now in place to wring every possible drop of juice from this tantalizing 'lemon' for the benefit of those who didn't have any of the creative talent above-mentioned whatsoever, but are very intent on making all the possible profits from it for legal reasons.
And you, as an instrument of this very desire to regulate, obfuscate, prevent at all cost, you must undoubtedly not have a very clear conscience on the true contributions of what artists created to the common good, when all it appears you have become by doing so is to be a mere meaningless pawn in a useless fight against the spreading of human culture and ideas throughout the world, which you must have no illusions will ultimately prevail FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF ALL, IRRESPECTIVE OF FINANCIAL GAIN.
Rather than seeing the good of such things, you are seemingly becoming fixated on legal issues which arguably may be reminding the student of nature of carrion-eating behaviour.
I am sure you are a fine human being with much appreciation for all great things in life.
Isn't it time you reconciled this view by rejecting the type of despicable actions taken in the name of someone who died... more than half a century ago?
Understanding that this type of nefarious philosophy and beliefs may be so deeply engrained in the system, it comes as a surprise that anyone would want to have their names associated with it, quoting some fuzzy legal documents as justification.
Sadly, as the natural selection of species has taught us, the branches that manage to survive are those which adapt best to their environment and changing conditions.
It would appear that the branch you represent has not yet grasped the profound change that has taken place with the advent of a globalized networked culture where the antiquated copyright restrictions you invoke are just going to be left a footnote in some legal history books, due to the overwhelming, unstoppable tide of incorporation of ideas and styles into a common melting pot of this new human culture. (which might ultimately also be our best chance in preventing more conflicts and wars)
At the very least, and to save face, you should issue an apology for such uncool behavior, which as we all know, were the artist in question to be alive, would -in all likelihood- never have happened. There was nothing to go and fight about. 'Inspired by Miro' was just such a beautiful tip of the hat. You had to spoil it....
How very sad. Wake up, smell the coffee already.... (and yes, I own a great deal of copyrights and intellectual property myself, please do not lecture me on my rights and legal remedies availble to me, as I have several lawyers on retainer, and who are very capable of doing the same when I need to hear it.)
Have a pleasant day contemplating how long you can hold the gates before the savages get in. Part of you, unknowingly may already have become one of us 'savages'. You might just be in denial about it. Been there, done that.... but please make sure that this type of action is not what YOU will be remembered for.
There's still time for you to change and see the possible error in your ways.( legal or not; last I checked, it was called ETHICS)
Reading deeper into the comments that the committee made, it does appear to leave the FCC some retort power on carriers who abuse this, and 'slap-on-the-wrist' level fines as well. Like anyone will believe that it is going to help any small company to give AT&T and any Bell Telco a fine months or years later for unfairly denying them access, after that small outfit is already been bankrupted and litigated into the ground....
But it is quite definitely a very, very sad feeling to wake up and read this, as if this marvelous, quasi-magical tool we all had come to know, use everyday and love will now become yet another contentious point in multi-national corporate wars, and one that was definitely brought on by what must have been the most intense behind-the-scenes lobbying and arm-twisting efforts by the Telcos. (innit funny how we never hear about THAT part of things...?)
After all, most of the innovations we are enjoying today were distinctly made possible because of this concept of free and equal access to peering points, and although one probably could backtrack to some comments that people like Tim Berner-Lee or Vint Cerf might have made about foreseeing the end of neutrality, the very core of the Internet is that (please correct me if I am mistaken) we US taxpayers already paid for laying its foundations and core architecture, and it was then decided that it be made available for everyone to use since we already paid for it. Granted the Telcos did add prodigious amounts of swtiching, routing, bandwidth and so on, but only because this instantly enabled them to make a profit from it, which I am fairly confident they have already recouped long ago.
To me, it feels like now comes what the French refer to as "La Curée", that ugly moment where the hunting dogs surround its mortally wounded prey, finally letting loose and gnawing it to death while the hunters just watch, basking in the glee of a future trophy on their mantle.
I guess in the end, Skype was just too good of a thing to be permitted. But maybe, just maybe, as the p2p and darknet creators have foreseen, all of this will only give rise to 'stealth protocols' that will be 'shifted' across multiple layers and encrypted in such a way that filtering is no longer even possible? If so, Philip K. Dick would be proud.
Forgive me for sounding melodramatic, as after all the Net has become so very important to my everyday life, but it really feels like today marks the end of "The Age Of Innocence". (...and feel free to sarcastically flame this all you want to, if I am anywhere near right, we'll all suffer equally, only those who didn't foresee it a bit more perhaps, as it might actually come to them as a very rude awakening.)
I don't know why, but reading this gives me a funny feeling that this type of technology could be easily perverted for some nasty stuff it wasn't meant for at all.
Nothing in particular, but the concept of this thing sounds a bit....twisted.
In the light of the fact that the Dept of Homeland Security just got an 'F' on its recent general security practices and server audits, I wonder what if this is really supposed to intimidate anyone....
Should they not get their house in order firstbefore thinking about greater things?
Mmmm... I think I am starting to see a pattern here.
...For someone who travels all the time and needs vast amount of data storage available such as a huge sample library (for music composition), this is ideal.
Well, I am not sure that FW/800 makes such a difference, but I own two of the FW/400 models, use them all the time and have found them an absolute pleasure to work with!
You can also buy the enclosure separately and put whatever drive strikes your fancy in there; regarding the price, it is really a tradeoff for the convenience, and when working with a Mac, it is really incredible to be able to use this without even needing external power in situation such as when on an airplane for a long time. (ever been to Asia?...)
These also ship with the shortest Firewire cables I have ever seen - just 1' long -, wish I knew where to buy them.
As a footnote, I must add that when traveling, the Homeland Security types actually welcome transparent cases as they can exactly see what's inside.
This has become such a science, there is just too much at stake for people who routinely invest 6 and 7-figure sums of money into a new album. (And I am not necessarily speaking about record labels here, it could just as well be about the associated release tour, which by now generates far more income than the actual CD sales). Focus groups, endless studies of people's buying patterns, major pressure from the 'top' (i.e.: management) to conform to a predictable sound, etc...
Here's a funny one, on a recent flight I was sitting next to the manager for some very well-known heavy metal and rock acts, who flatly declared that if U2 was a new band today, they wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting signed the way they did in 1983 when their breakthrough album propelled them into stardom. The people he deals with both at the label and promotion level would never take a chance on something that original.... Which of course means that after years of this kind of behavior, the general public's ears do not have a desire for anything new or unusual.
I could very well see a broke Jimi Hendrix today, still playing $100 fill-in gigs at Cafe Wah in the Village (still around too) and no one giving a rat's ass about his life-changing guitar playing because it would be too strong and outside of the norm....
Here's another example, last year a major game developer allegedly saw an increase of sales of their flagship PS2 game to the tune of 5,000 more units per week when they tweaked the music on their current TV campaign and featured background music that was more familiar to their target audience.....
This if doesn't seem like a game of chance and talent anymore, that's because because it isn't. Like P-Diddy said, it's all about Da Benjamins.
Still, it comes down to this: if you are going to do it, do it because you like it, not because of the expected returns. If you actually have talent, you might go a lot further on that than the empty promises and broken stardom dreams most end up shelving when they get their girlfriend pregnant.
On another (closer) note, maybe someone should transpose this study to/. and do a research on what posts get rated and modded the highest, and how this does influence the writers to conform to a certain style that they know will get them modded?... and does this make their style more boring and predictable?
This is a very timely topic, and a segment of the market that has repeatedly been identified as a 'hot' by storage manufacturers.
There is a new line of Maxtor RAID products called One-Touch III, which is just about to come out, and very much address the kind of needs you are having. If you look at the hassle of setting up a chassis, enclosure, configuring and installing your raid card and drives, the cooling and ventilation issues that may crop up as someone else already pointed out, as well as the associated electricity costs, these Maxtor devices are really a pretty fantastic value in a really small form factor.
Just to be clear, this is not Network-attached storage, so it would still need something like a Mac Mini or equivalent to get it onto the network, or until they come up with something that is Network Attached Storage as they did with their previous line (The One-Touch II line has some Attached Storage devices, but they are not RAID).
I have had decent luck with their other One-Touch drives, must admit that after several years of pretty intensive use, never had a real failure yet. So although YMMV you may want to look into these newer drives, wish I could tell you more myself, but they are not out until the end of the month.
Z.
(Disclaimer: I do not own stock in Maxtor - now Seagate -, and definitely do not work for either of them; just honest personal experience.)
Tom Petty = allegedly notorious Dance-Music hater?
AFAIK, he has gone on record a number of times expressing nothing but contempt and a profound dislike at large for House, Disco and all the rest.
Of course, it is easy to take his lyrics out of context for the sake of this thread, (as pointed out in another reply to this post, it was all about RADIO DJ's losing their individuality to homogenized corporate radio culture, and certainly not club DJ's) but as someone who has been working in Dance Music for a very long time, I would prefer not to see a hater's comments associated with this thread in any way.
His music may not be my cup of tea, but I wouldn't go on public record stating that what 'people like him do' sucks. It would only demonstrate a very shallow understanding of things around me.
(...and sadly having been around a number of 'aging rock artists' over the years, can verify that a few of them indeed harbor deep bigoted prejudice for something which to this day they still do not understand. See Steve Dahl et all...)
There are many thorny issues that this PPL ruling touches on. Belonging to PPL myself, I well understand that they are trying to get some revenue for their membership, but this will be yet another nail in the coffin of record labels' total misunderstanding of the music business' new realities.
Basically, it is a total travesty to say that you are able to play a song from CD or CD-R but as soon as it is played from a 'hard-disk' you are levied an additional license fee.
For that matter, the person could just re-transfer the tracks from the PC back to an audio CD and not be subjected to the license? This sounds ludicrous and worse than technologically narrow-minded. As a DJ, I get most of the copies of the music directly from the labels, and they do not require me to pay anything to (promote) play their music. They actually BEG ME to play their songs. Even if you did not get the music promotionally from the labels, when you purchased the song you are playing at the club, (or the vinyl, or the CD) you have already paid both the statuatory mechanical royalty and everything else you are required to pay by law once. Further to this, most clubs, bars and lounges already also pay a yearly flat license fee to the APRS or similar performing rights society for the right to have music played to the public by DJ's and live bands.
Then is the thornier issue of redistribution of the income, why should a club playing tracks by Underground Resistance and Trentemoeller subsidize Christina Aguilera and Coldplay to earn them yet more undeserved income? Surely the clubs and DJ's would feel a bit better if they knew that those license payments went to the people whose tracks they actually played!.....The tough part there is that without a playlist there is no way to account for those song which were played that night, not to mention that half the time, the DJ themselves do not know the real names of the songs they play....
Of course, the reality of this is that the only reason this is taking place is that they are trying to force people who download illegally MP3 files - and others who share them - to pay a little something that will go back to make up for the giant losses sustained by everyone involved in the making, marketing and distributing of music from everyday piracy.
There are different ways of dealing with this: As a DJ who makes large amounts and spends an average $200 a week on new records, I hardly see it making a dent in my budget to stay compliant. But someone who is just breaking into the business will be hurt by this.
(Trance DJ Richard Stallman would probably sacrifice himself to prove the PPL wrong, I am not sure I have time to be the sacrificial lamb to such a Quixotic battle.) Most active DJ's will probably just shrug it off and pay up as yet another annoyance in the cost of doing business when in the UK. Oh, well....
First Impressions from a traveling 'portable professional music system' user: "Careful, Jack!"
I think that the MacBook systems look very tempting, but in my own case, I have a large investment in the very technologies that are being dropped, namely:
-1) Firewire 800 drives; I carry one or two of the 1 TeraByte drives with me, and would now have to retool to USB 2.0.... ouch!!
-2) My main audio interface is a PC-card solution. I am not even aware of a manufacturer that makes an 'Express Card' professional multichannel audio interface.
-3) Traveling a lot, I need the Lindt in-flight power adaptor for my Powerbook. This new solution means having to purchase a new type if and when it becomes available
Adding all of it up, it makes me have to invest a lot more than the price of the laptop, not to speak of the fact that some of the peripherals might not be available with the needed connectivity. I think I will let others be on the bleeding edge, and will keep using my souped-up Dothan laptop under XP for a while (most of the apps I use are cross-platform) until the rest of the peripherals are available, and hopefully all of the first-gen kinks are ironed out. As well I must say that I am quite surprised that they did not introduce a 17-inch model with kick-ass processor and extra connectivity, but this will undoubtedly appear later in the year.
Without trying to sound overly informed, - as these things do change -, there are still many Telcos around the world which are fully state-owned and subsidized.
The types of companies which wouldn't stand a chance in a competitive-type (i.e.: "Free-Market") economy, where they would have to actually generate income.
One of the main things that these state-owned monopolies do is to be able to have laws altered by the government to their liking and advantage. Obviously, VOIP is an extremely disruptive technology, which although not too terribly worrisome right this minute, (as statistically there aren't that many people savvy enough to know how to use it) has already started showing up on those state-owned monopolies' radars as something that could force them to actually work and get things done for their (gasp!...) customers.
Things like offering discount pricing, many more advanced features, clarity of calls, not to mention the killer feature: 'free' calls to any location on the planet, that is free if placed to another VOIP customer as in Skype. Therefore, expect these state-owned Telcos to fight tooth-and-nail and do whatever it takes to go as far as criminalizing what in their eyes amounts to nothing less than robbing them of their state-sanctioned livelihood and cushy guaranteed income. (In all likelihood, it will ultimately be a trivial job of coming up with a protocol which can't be fingerprinted and blocked as it changes ports and goes through some sort of secure tunnel...)
So to get back on topic, yes, faster broadband is definitely a must as there will be more and more uses for those fat(ter) pipes.
Strangely, I started going through the registration process, and stopped cold as I kind of felt the same way about it.
If they are giving you a free app, there should really not be any strings attached like that. Also, they do not accept PayPal?
Z.
Although there are several patents already held in the field of military and defense-related technologies for ultra-high intensity infrasonic weapons capable of destroying concrete structures from a distance (it's rumored to be able to do far uglier things to the human body), and this since the early 50's, there are some other considerations to keep in mind when attempting to use such a monster subwoofer at home or in a small enclosed space.
Without taking the time to quote the exact sources, it is known (another urban legend?...) in the field of both professional studio and live sound that certain subsonic frequencies are likely to inflict severe punishment to the human body, from memory I seem to recall 3 Hz causing nausea, loss of equilibrium and balance, some other frequencies nearby incontinence or cardiac arrhythmia, and one in particular (??...) rumored to be fatal at certain elevated sound pressure levels. All of this between 1 Hz and 25 Hz. (someone please take the time to dig up the precise data and papers on this?...)
Further, it should be understood that most audio mastering engineers will severely filter out any frequencies below 25 Hz as a matter of habit from the old mastering vinyl days, but also as those sounds do 'cloud up' the 'bottom end' audio in final mixes, and possibly because some of them are aware of the inherent risks posed by having those stray frequencies played at very loud volumes in enclosed areas.
Although this piece of gear sounds like it could be terrific, it may also pose a very real threat to its users if operated improperly. So far, we're not even talking about the possibility of inflicted hearing damage from exposure.
YMMV, as always, and most certainly in this case, batteries definitely not included.
Yes, very much reminds me of the Jack Nicholson bit in "Five Easy Pieces" where he isn't allowed to just order a couple of slices of bread.
"Yeah, I'd like a tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat, hold the lettuce, hold the tuna, hold the mayo and just bring me the &#^$%# toast..."
I could definitely see some game sales skyrocketing because their VOIP is crystal clear, and they allow online games with only (!) two players from their servers. LOL!!
Although it is definitely arguable that bundling an audio player in the OS is 'monopolistic behavior', one thing does come to mind.
Adding all of those settlement sums up (Sun + Real + Netscape + etc...) the total $$ amount is still very trivial compared to the amount of money they were able to make from offering their version of reality and bundling all of those products in the OS install.
So the moral of the story, - if there is one - is that in business, it sometimes pay handsomely to take calculated risks and get away with what may amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist. However one wants to hate Micro$oft, it is undeniable that someone there was charting a course that ensured the company's survival and growth through the decade's first half. When studying the ecology of multinational corporate entities in the late 20th Century, this can be seen as quite Darwinian in a sense.....
I thought I was one of the only ones who sometimes felt this way about Middle America....
It's very bizarre to find many people in other countries clearly conscious of the impact that even just their own personal contribution can do to make things better. People there who choose to ride bicycles to work, or walk for exercise, or really cut down on the amount of household trash they generate, or have all sorts of electricity-saving devices installed in their houses. Then again, Middle America is all about big and macho. In some parts of Europe and in Japan, you have vast rail infrastructures developed, and which are far faster and safer than anything in the US, and the result is that more people choose to not use cars to comfortably travel long distances.
But the main point that needs to be addressed is that in the US there are no incentives from the government to current domestic car manufacturers to produce the kind of vehicles this would imply. (small, efficient, nimble, etc...) In order for this to happen, and until a 'critical mass' effect is reached, someone would have to force all gas stations to reconvert to offer charging services, or accessories and services clearly geared towards electric/hybrid vehicles. As for the car prices, it is a Catch-22, as people will only start buying them in numbers when they are the same price or cheaper than the current crop, but those cars cannot get cheaper until they are produced in vast quantities. With a gung-ho president from Texas in power, one wonders who would even think that this could become a serious item in our government's agenda.
Lastly, no one (i.e: TV Networks, radio, mass media) in their right minds and who want to keep their ad clients' revenue is pushing this way of thinking as a worthy alternative. They only cater to going bigger, faster, heavier, fatter...so in essence, we cannot blame anyone for this as it is not something that is even remotely on the radar of your average prime-time TV viewer as an available option.
Well, in the end, the skinny people will still get the last laugh as their life expectancy will far outlast the fatties, so obviously there is something to be said for being nimble!!
...everyone else knows that there is no way to tell iPod playing MP3s from your super-dooper $3k device playing 48bit DVD-audio or whatever else, as long as the testing is done blind.
Depends on what size sound system your 'blind test' is done with. While I would tend to agree that it may sound passably similar on a pair of earbuds or your computer speakers, it will sound completely different on a very large scale sound system. (yes, bigger than your living room) Sort of like blowing a web-optimized.jpeg onto a Billboard-sized poster. You will eventually hear mucho difference.
Some of us (who have to work with those large-scale sound systems in question everyday) could tell you how very much there is a difference, say between a properly-encoded 24-bit 192 kHz or DSD sound file and whatever MP3 of the same you want to throw at it.
Please do not help create or perpetuate another Urban Myth. At least add 'in my opinon' or something like this to your statements, until you are a verified authority on this ever-evolving subject of perceptual studies in digital audio sound reproduction!
Slashdot Mirror
Although I may be the nth poster to say so...
The new design is absolutely spectacular, easy and the eyes and invites reading. Wonderful! Congrats on a job well done and a prize more than well-deserved.
Z.
This reminds me of going office-space hunting a few years ago, in a commercial building that had a big room full of Verizon Cellular transmission amplifiers, racks and all the rest, with the antenna on the roof, being proposed renting one of the office suites with a wall immediately adjacent to that gear, and feeling extremely queasy about what could possibly happen.
.... I didn't think so.
I mean, that stuff is no joke. Heavy industrial-strength droney vibration, and all the rest.
I would feel the same way about being near any AM or FM radio transmitters. These machines are electricity-guzzling beasts, and emit such an array of close-range EMF and all the rest.
Would YOU like the to be the one to spend years around that stuff to see if there is proof that it is harmful or not?
Z.
There are several things that usually happen in major label contracts, one of them being the re-recording clause which usually specifies that the artist is not allowed to put out any other recordings of the same song for xxx years (where xxx
As far as the 'mechanical' side, no one can prevent you from re-recording a musical composition if it has already been published (been released) as long as you are willing to pay the minimum Statuatory Mechanical Royalty Rateto the song's publisher, which rate is set and decided by congress. No one can prevent an artist from re-recording their own songs unless
as always, YMMV(TM)
Z.
Greetings Mr Feder,
I have never written an email like this. Not the kind of activist-minded person you may portray me to be, to conveniently classify me, so as to justify whatever you want, to keep believing with a clean conscience...
Ecology and nature: a profound subject worthy of many lifetimes of study.
Where would you you place the 'Joan Miro-inspired logo action' against Google within the natural order of things? (sorry to be ironically writing this from G-Mail)
As illustrious as Mr Miro has been, his artistic accomplishments celebrated high and low, his work revered and cherished by millions in some of the planet's most famous museums.
The fact is that an artist inspires many others with their creative work, just as they themselves were able to incorporate and take what many others before them had created.
After their passing (we all do die at one point), it appears that a system is now in place to wring every possible drop of juice from this tantalizing 'lemon' for the benefit of those who didn't have any of the creative talent above-mentioned whatsoever, but are very intent on making all the possible profits from it for legal reasons.
And you, as an instrument of this very desire to regulate, obfuscate, prevent at all cost, you must undoubtedly not have a very clear conscience on the true contributions of what artists created to the common good, when all it appears you have become by doing so is to be a mere meaningless pawn in a useless fight against the spreading of human culture and ideas throughout the world, which you must have no illusions will ultimately prevail FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF ALL, IRRESPECTIVE OF FINANCIAL GAIN.
Rather than seeing the good of such things, you are seemingly becoming fixated on legal issues which arguably may be reminding the student of nature of carrion-eating behaviour.
I am sure you are a fine human being with much appreciation for all great things in life.
Isn't it time you reconciled this view by rejecting the type of despicable actions taken in the name of someone who died... more than half a century ago?
Understanding that this type of nefarious philosophy and beliefs may be so deeply engrained in the system, it comes as a surprise that anyone would want to have their names associated with it, quoting some fuzzy legal documents as justification.
Sadly, as the natural selection of species has taught us, the branches that manage to survive are those which adapt best to their environment and changing conditions.
It would appear that the branch you represent has not yet grasped the profound change that has taken place with the advent of a globalized networked culture where the antiquated copyright restrictions you invoke are just going to be left a footnote in some legal history books, due to the overwhelming, unstoppable tide of incorporation of ideas and styles into a common melting pot of this new human culture. (which might ultimately also be our best chance in preventing more conflicts and wars)
At the very least, and to save face, you should issue an apology for such uncool behavior, which as we all know, were the artist in question to be alive, would -in all likelihood- never have happened. There was nothing to go and fight about. 'Inspired by Miro' was just such a beautiful tip of the hat. You had to spoil it....
How very sad. Wake up, smell the coffee already.... (and yes, I own a great deal of copyrights and intellectual property myself, please do not lecture me on my rights and legal remedies availble to me, as I have several lawyers on retainer, and who are very capable of doing the same when I need to hear it.)
Have a pleasant day contemplating how long you can hold the gates before the savages get in. Part of you, unknowingly may already have become one of us 'savages'. You might just be in denial about it. Been there, done that.... but please make sure that this type of action is not what YOU will be remembered for.
There's still time for you to change and see the possible error in your ways.( legal or not; last I checked, it was called ETHICS)
Z.
Reading deeper into the comments that the committee made, it does appear to leave the FCC some retort power on carriers who abuse this, and 'slap-on-the-wrist' level fines as well. Like anyone will believe that it is going to help any small company to give AT&T and any Bell Telco a fine months or years later for unfairly denying them access, after that small outfit is already been bankrupted and litigated into the ground....
But it is quite definitely a very, very sad feeling to wake up and read this, as if this marvelous, quasi-magical tool we all had come to know, use everyday and love will now become yet another contentious point in multi-national corporate wars, and one that was definitely brought on by what must have been the most intense behind-the-scenes lobbying and arm-twisting efforts by the Telcos. (innit funny how we never hear about THAT part of things...?)
After all, most of the innovations we are enjoying today were distinctly made possible because of this concept of free and equal access to peering points, and although one probably could backtrack to some comments that people like Tim Berner-Lee or Vint Cerf might have made about foreseeing the end of neutrality, the very core of the Internet is that (please correct me if I am mistaken) we US taxpayers already paid for laying its foundations and core architecture, and it was then decided that it be made available for everyone to use since we already paid for it. Granted the Telcos did add prodigious amounts of swtiching, routing, bandwidth and so on, but only because this instantly enabled them to make a profit from it, which I am fairly confident they have already recouped long ago.
To me, it feels like now comes what the French refer to as "La Curée", that ugly moment where the hunting dogs surround its mortally wounded prey, finally letting loose and gnawing it to death while the hunters just watch, basking in the glee of a future trophy on their mantle.
I guess in the end, Skype was just too good of a thing to be permitted. But maybe, just maybe, as the p2p and darknet creators have foreseen, all of this will only give rise to 'stealth protocols' that will be 'shifted' across multiple layers and encrypted in such a way that filtering is no longer even possible? If so, Philip K. Dick would be proud.
Forgive me for sounding melodramatic, as after all the Net has become so very important to my everyday life, but it really feels like today marks the end of "The Age Of Innocence". (...and feel free to sarcastically flame this all you want to, if I am anywhere near right, we'll all suffer equally, only those who didn't foresee it a bit more perhaps, as it might actually come to them as a very rude awakening.)
Z.
I don't know why, but reading this gives me a funny feeling that this type of technology could be easily perverted for some nasty stuff it wasn't meant for at all.
Nothing in particular, but the concept of this thing sounds a bit....twisted.
Time will tell.
Z.
In the light of the fact that the Dept of Homeland Security just got an 'F' on its recent general security practices and server audits, I wonder what if this is really supposed to intimidate anyone....
Should they not get their house in order firstbefore thinking about greater things?
Mmmm... I think I am starting to see a pattern here.
Z.
...For someone who travels all the time and needs vast amount of data storage available such as a huge sample library (for music composition), this is ideal.
Well, I am not sure that FW/800 makes such a difference, but I own two of the FW/400 models, use them all the time and have found them an absolute pleasure to work with!
You can also buy the enclosure separately and put whatever drive strikes your fancy in there; regarding the price, it is really a tradeoff for the convenience, and when working with a Mac, it is really incredible to be able to use this without even needing external power in situation such as when on an airplane for a long time. (ever been to Asia?...)
These also ship with the shortest Firewire cables I have ever seen - just 1' long -, wish I knew where to buy them. As a footnote, I must add that when traveling, the Homeland Security types actually welcome transparent cases as they can exactly see what's inside.
Z.
This has become such a science, there is just too much at stake for people who routinely invest 6 and 7-figure sums of money into a new album. (And I am not necessarily speaking about record labels here, it could just as well be about the associated release tour, which by now generates far more income than the actual CD sales). Focus groups, endless studies of people's buying patterns, major pressure from the 'top' (i.e.: management) to conform to a predictable sound, etc...
/. and do a research on what posts get rated and modded the highest, and how this does influence the writers to conform to a certain style that they know will get them modded? ... and does this make their style more boring and predictable?
Here's a funny one, on a recent flight I was sitting next to the manager for some very well-known heavy metal and rock acts, who flatly declared that if U2 was a new band today, they wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting signed the way they did in 1983 when their breakthrough album propelled them into stardom. The people he deals with both at the label and promotion level would never take a chance on something that original.... Which of course means that after years of this kind of behavior, the general public's ears do not have a desire for anything new or unusual.
I could very well see a broke Jimi Hendrix today, still playing $100 fill-in gigs at Cafe Wah in the Village (still around too) and no one giving a rat's ass about his life-changing guitar playing because it would be too strong and outside of the norm....
Here's another example, last year a major game developer allegedly saw an increase of sales of their flagship PS2 game to the tune of 5,000 more units per week when they tweaked the music on their current TV campaign and featured background music that was more familiar to their target audience.....
This if doesn't seem like a game of chance and talent anymore, that's because because it isn't. Like P-Diddy said, it's all about Da Benjamins.
Still, it comes down to this: if you are going to do it, do it because you like it, not because of the expected returns.
If you actually have talent, you might go a lot further on that than the empty promises and broken stardom dreams most end up shelving when they get their girlfriend pregnant.
On another (closer) note, maybe someone should transpose this study to
How Darwinian!! Z.
This is a very timely topic, and a segment of the market that has repeatedly been identified as a 'hot' by storage manufacturers.
There is a new line of Maxtor RAID products called One-Touch III, which is just about to come out, and very much address the kind of needs you are having. If you look at the hassle of setting up a chassis, enclosure, configuring and installing your raid card and drives, the cooling and ventilation issues that may crop up as someone else already pointed out, as well as the associated electricity costs, these Maxtor devices are really a pretty fantastic value in a really small form factor.
Just to be clear, this is not Network-attached storage, so it would still need something like a Mac Mini or equivalent to get it onto the network, or until they come up with something that is Network Attached Storage as they did with their previous line (The One-Touch II line has some Attached Storage devices, but they are not RAID).
I have had decent luck with their other One-Touch drives, must admit that after several years of pretty intensive use, never had a real failure yet. So although YMMV you may want to look into these newer drives, wish I could tell you more myself, but they are not out until the end of the month.
Z.
(Disclaimer: I do not own stock in Maxtor - now Seagate -, and definitely do not work for either of them; just honest personal experience.)
Tom Petty = allegedly notorious Dance-Music hater?
AFAIK, he has gone on record a number of times expressing nothing but contempt and a profound dislike at large for House, Disco and all the rest.
Of course, it is easy to take his lyrics out of context for the sake of this thread, (as pointed out in another reply to this post, it was all about RADIO DJ's losing their individuality to homogenized corporate radio culture, and certainly not club DJ's) but as someone who has been working in Dance Music for a very long time, I would prefer not to see a hater's comments associated with this thread in any way.
His music may not be my cup of tea, but I wouldn't go on public record stating that what 'people like him do' sucks. It would only demonstrate a very shallow understanding of things around me.
(...and sadly having been around a number of 'aging rock artists' over the years, can verify that a few of them indeed harbor deep bigoted prejudice for something which to this day they still do not understand. See Steve Dahl et all...)
Z.
There are many thorny issues that this PPL ruling touches on. Belonging to PPL myself, I well understand that they are trying to get some revenue for their membership, but this will be yet another nail in the coffin of record labels' total misunderstanding of the music business' new realities.
.....The tough part there is that without a playlist there is no way to account for those song which were played that night, not to mention that half the time, the DJ themselves do not know the real names of the songs they play....
Basically, it is a total travesty to say that you are able to play a song from CD or CD-R but as soon as it is played from a 'hard-disk' you are levied an additional license fee. For that matter, the person could just re-transfer the tracks from the PC back to an audio CD and not be subjected to the license? This sounds ludicrous and worse than technologically narrow-minded. As a DJ, I get most of the copies of the music directly from the labels, and they do not require me to pay anything to (promote) play their music. They actually BEG ME to play their songs. Even if you did not get the music promotionally from the labels, when you purchased the song you are playing at the club, (or the vinyl, or the CD) you have already paid both the statuatory mechanical royalty and everything else you are required to pay by law once.
Further to this, most clubs, bars and lounges already also pay a yearly flat license fee to the APRS or similar performing rights society for the right to have music played to the public by DJ's and live bands.
Then is the thornier issue of redistribution of the income, why should a club playing tracks by Underground Resistance and Trentemoeller subsidize Christina Aguilera and Coldplay to earn them yet more undeserved income? Surely the clubs and DJ's would feel a bit better if they knew that those license payments went to the people whose tracks they actually played!
Of course, the reality of this is that the only reason this is taking place is that they are trying to force people who download illegally MP3 files - and others who share them - to pay a little something that will go back to make up for the giant losses sustained by everyone involved in the making, marketing and distributing of music from everyday piracy.
There are different ways of dealing with this: As a DJ who makes large amounts and spends an average $200 a week on new records, I hardly see it making a dent in my budget to stay compliant. But someone who is just breaking into the business will be hurt by this.
(Trance DJ Richard Stallman would probably sacrifice himself to prove the PPL wrong, I am not sure I have time to be the sacrificial lamb to such a Quixotic battle.) Most active DJ's will probably just shrug it off and pay up as yet another annoyance in the cost of doing business when in the UK. Oh, well....
Z.
First Impressions from a traveling 'portable professional music system' user: "Careful, Jack!"
I think that the MacBook systems look very tempting, but in my own case, I have a large investment in the very technologies that are being dropped, namely:
-1) Firewire 800 drives; I carry one or two of the 1 TeraByte drives with me, and would now have to retool to USB 2.0.... ouch!!
-2) My main audio interface is a PC-card solution. I am not even aware of a manufacturer that makes an 'Express Card' professional multichannel audio interface.
-3) Traveling a lot, I need the Lindt in-flight power adaptor for my Powerbook. This new solution means having to purchase a new type if and when it becomes available
Adding all of it up, it makes me have to invest a lot more than the price of the laptop, not to speak of the fact that some of the peripherals might not be available with the needed connectivity.
I think I will let others be on the bleeding edge, and will keep using my souped-up Dothan laptop under XP for a while (most of the apps I use are cross-platform) until the rest of the peripherals are available, and hopefully all of the first-gen kinks are ironed out. As well I must say that I am quite surprised that they did not introduce a 17-inch model with kick-ass processor and extra connectivity, but this will undoubtedly appear later in the year.
Z.
Without trying to sound overly informed, - as these things do change -, there are still many Telcos around the world which are fully state-owned and subsidized.
The types of companies which wouldn't stand a chance in a competitive-type (i.e.: "Free-Market") economy, where they would have to actually generate income.
One of the main things that these state-owned monopolies do is to be able to have laws altered by the government to their liking and advantage. Obviously, VOIP is an extremely disruptive technology, which although not too terribly worrisome right this minute, (as statistically there aren't that many people savvy enough to know how to use it) has already started showing up on those state-owned monopolies' radars as something that could force them to actually work and get things done for their (gasp!...) customers.
Things like offering discount pricing, many more advanced features, clarity of calls, not to mention the killer feature: 'free' calls to any location on the planet, that is free if placed to another VOIP customer as in Skype. Therefore, expect these state-owned Telcos to fight tooth-and-nail and do whatever it takes to go as far as criminalizing what in their eyes amounts to nothing less than robbing them of their state-sanctioned livelihood and cushy guaranteed income. (In all likelihood, it will ultimately be a trivial job of coming up with a protocol which can't be fingerprinted and blocked as it changes ports and goes through some sort of secure tunnel...)
So to get back on topic, yes, faster broadband is definitely a must as there will be more and more uses for those fat(ter) pipes.
Z.
Strangely, I started going through the registration process, and stopped cold as I kind of felt the same way about it.
If they are giving you a free app, there should really not be any strings attached like that. Also, they do not accept PayPal?
Z.
Although there are several patents already held in the field of military and defense-related technologies for ultra-high intensity infrasonic weapons capable of destroying concrete structures from a distance (it's rumored to be able to do far uglier things to the human body), and this since the early 50's, there are some other considerations to keep in mind when attempting to use such a monster subwoofer at home or in a small enclosed space.
Without taking the time to quote the exact sources, it is known (another urban legend?...) in the field of both professional studio and live sound that certain subsonic frequencies are likely to inflict severe punishment to the human body, from memory I seem to recall 3 Hz causing nausea, loss of equilibrium and balance, some other frequencies nearby incontinence or cardiac arrhythmia, and one in particular (??...) rumored to be fatal at certain elevated sound pressure levels. All of this between 1 Hz and 25 Hz. (someone please take the time to dig up the precise data and papers on this?...)
Further, it should be understood that most audio mastering engineers will severely filter out any frequencies below 25 Hz as a matter of habit from the old mastering vinyl days, but also as those sounds do 'cloud up' the 'bottom end' audio in final mixes, and possibly because some of them are aware of the inherent risks posed by having those stray frequencies played at very loud volumes in enclosed areas.
Although this piece of gear sounds like it could be terrific, it may also pose a very real threat to its users if operated improperly. So far, we're not even talking about the possibility of inflicted hearing damage from exposure.
YMMV, as always, and most certainly in this case, batteries definitely not included.
Yes, very much reminds me of the Jack Nicholson bit in "Five Easy Pieces" where he isn't allowed to just order a couple of slices of bread.
"Yeah, I'd like a tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat, hold the lettuce, hold the tuna, hold the mayo and just bring me the &#^$%# toast..."
I could definitely see some game sales skyrocketing because their VOIP is crystal clear, and they allow online games with only (!) two players from their servers. LOL!!
Z.
Although it is definitely arguable that bundling an audio player in the OS is 'monopolistic behavior', one thing does come to mind.
Adding all of those settlement sums up (Sun + Real + Netscape + etc...) the total $$ amount is still very trivial compared to the amount of money they were able to make from offering their version of reality and bundling all of those products in the OS install.
So the moral of the story, - if there is one - is that in business, it sometimes pay handsomely to take calculated risks and get away with what may amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist. However one wants to hate Micro$oft, it is undeniable that someone there was charting a course that ensured the company's survival and growth through the decade's first half. When studying the ecology of multinational corporate entities in the late 20th Century, this can be seen as quite Darwinian in a sense.....
Z.
I thought I was one of the only ones who sometimes felt this way about Middle America....
It's very bizarre to find many people in other countries clearly conscious of the impact that even just their own personal contribution can do to make things better. People there who choose to ride bicycles to work, or walk for exercise, or really cut down on the amount of household trash they generate, or have all sorts of electricity-saving devices installed in their houses. Then again, Middle America is all about big and macho. In some parts of Europe and in Japan, you have vast rail infrastructures developed, and which are far faster and safer than anything in the US, and the result is that more people choose to not use cars to comfortably travel long distances.
But the main point that needs to be addressed is that in the US there are no incentives from the government to current domestic car manufacturers to produce the kind of vehicles this would imply. (small, efficient, nimble, etc...) In order for this to happen, and until a 'critical mass' effect is reached, someone would have to force all gas stations to reconvert to offer charging services, or accessories and services clearly geared towards electric/hybrid vehicles. As for the car prices, it is a Catch-22, as people will only start buying them in numbers when they are the same price or cheaper than the current crop, but those cars cannot get cheaper until they are produced in vast quantities. With a gung-ho president from Texas in power, one wonders who would even think that this could become a serious item in our government's agenda.
Lastly, no one (i.e: TV Networks, radio, mass media) in their right minds and who want to keep their ad clients' revenue is pushing this way of thinking as a worthy alternative. They only cater to going bigger, faster, heavier, fatter...so in essence, we cannot blame anyone for this as it is not something that is even remotely on the radar of your average prime-time TV viewer as an available option.
Well, in the end, the skinny people will still get the last laugh as their life expectancy will far outlast the fatties, so obviously there is something to be said for being nimble!!
Z.
...everyone else knows that there is no way to tell iPod playing MP3s from your super-dooper $3k device playing 48bit DVD-audio or whatever else, as long as the testing is done blind.
.jpeg onto a Billboard-sized poster. You will eventually hear mucho difference.
Depends on what size sound system your 'blind test' is done with. While I would tend to agree that it may sound passably similar on a pair of earbuds or your computer speakers, it will sound completely different on a very large scale sound system. (yes, bigger than your living room)
Sort of like blowing a web-optimized
Some of us (who have to work with those large-scale sound systems in question everyday) could tell you how very much there is a difference, say between a properly-encoded 24-bit 192 kHz or DSD sound file and whatever MP3 of the same you want to throw at it. Please do not help create or perpetuate another Urban Myth. At least add 'in my opinon' or something like this to your statements, until you are a verified authority on this ever-evolving subject of perceptual studies in digital audio sound reproduction!