Actually, the two events aren't comparable. The decline of vinyl record sales to a boutique market was entirely due to the efforts of record companies pushing the CD audio format, ie. making vinyl records highly undesirable for record stores to stock in the first place. Record execs have very little to do with the rise in popularity of (legal) digital downloads, though we can thank Apple for that.
How on earth is a toddler going to reach the accelerator and brake pedals in any regular car, let alone a 4WD, whilst being strapped in to the driver's seat, especially given there's no way he could have been able to see over the dash board without sitting on a cushion or something?
They haven't managed to make them efficient enough for that yet. FTA:
Although industrial applications such as power stations made out of large arrays of millimeter size turbine might still be a distant dream due to the low efficiency level of the millimeter engine, It is not inconceivable that in the future more efficient millimeter engines will be able to allow for a competitive alternative to existing power manufacturing technology.
The amount of space in the boxes of the mobile phones I buy never ceases to amaze me. The box the phone itself comes in isn't that big usually, most of the space is taken up by the wall wart but other than that it seems fairly compact. However, then the network provider who sells me the phone usually takes it upon themselves to also package the phone's box in their own box so they don't have to send their employees running around getting me network documentation/new SIM cards which I normally throw out, they can just use the bolted-on space they've created to package everything in one go. If I'm lucky, separating all these parts from each other doesn't take very long, but I have had experiences where I couldn't get at the contents of the box without breaking the packaging first, and you can say goodbye to any returns policy the store might have if you do wreck it.
I also have several generations Logic Audio. The contents of each package are the installer CD(s) or floppy disks, the dongle and the instruction manual. The latter most you could easily mistake for a phone book if it was the same colour, but I digress. The size of the packaging is enourmous! I've been using the old boxes as bookends, as they're rather sturdy, but I do get disappointed that the coolest part of the package isn't even something physical, especially since they're so large.
iTunes uses MPEG 4 Audio http://www.m4a.com/ for its encoding. There seems to be a lot of varying and conflicting opinions on the differences in audio quality (ie. here: http://forums.macnn.com/archive/index.php/t-158250 .html , here: http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/ ) but my university lecturer, who has been a professional sound engineer for a long time, has told me in the past that M4A is much better at preserving the original sound than MP3, with a 96kbs M4A file being equivalent to something like a 260kbs MP3. I'm not sure if he's right as I can't seem to find any supporting evidence but the general consensus from my googling, other than the last link I posted, seems to be that M4A offers a higher quality output than MP3.
If by "weighted rateing" you mean the iPod's signal to noise ratio (SNR), Apple doesn't post it on their website, but I did find this: http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/mp3players/0,390 36128,40062302-2,00.htm
Note that most people can't tell the difference between a couple of dB, so most of the higher rated ones are fairly evenly matched, and I wouldn't be suprised if the results for those would change if the test was carried out again by somebody else. The lower ones are particularly bad, though; you would probably hear the white noise during the quiet parts of your music:)
I read in New Scientist a long time ago an article about violent video games and whether or not they actually affect children, and they seemed to suggest that it really doesn't affect them at all. Here's the article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16622425.000 .html, although I'm afraid you can't read much of it unless you're a subscriber.
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http://www.negativland.com/minidis.html
How on earth is a toddler going to reach the accelerator and brake pedals in any regular car, let alone a 4WD, whilst being strapped in to the driver's seat, especially given there's no way he could have been able to see over the dash board without sitting on a cushion or something?
Well, huge ones might be useful on a large scale but they aren't practical on a small scale, hence the smaller turbine :)
The amount of space in the boxes of the mobile phones I buy never ceases to amaze me. The box the phone itself comes in isn't that big usually, most of the space is taken up by the wall wart but other than that it seems fairly compact. However, then the network provider who sells me the phone usually takes it upon themselves to also package the phone's box in their own box so they don't have to send their employees running around getting me network documentation/new SIM cards which I normally throw out, they can just use the bolted-on space they've created to package everything in one go. If I'm lucky, separating all these parts from each other doesn't take very long, but I have had experiences where I couldn't get at the contents of the box without breaking the packaging first, and you can say goodbye to any returns policy the store might have if you do wreck it.
I also have several generations Logic Audio. The contents of each package are the installer CD(s) or floppy disks, the dongle and the instruction manual. The latter most you could easily mistake for a phone book if it was the same colour, but I digress. The size of the packaging is enourmous! I've been using the old boxes as bookends, as they're rather sturdy, but I do get disappointed that the coolest part of the package isn't even something physical, especially since they're so large.
iTunes uses MPEG 4 Audio http://www.m4a.com/ for its encoding. There seems to be a lot of varying and conflicting opinions on the differences in audio quality (ie. here: http://forums.macnn.com/archive/index.php/t-158250 .html , here: http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/ ) but my university lecturer, who has been a professional sound engineer for a long time, has told me in the past that M4A is much better at preserving the original sound than MP3, with a 96kbs M4A file being equivalent to something like a 260kbs MP3. I'm not sure if he's right as I can't seem to find any supporting evidence but the general consensus from my googling, other than the last link I posted, seems to be that M4A offers a higher quality output than MP3.
0 36128,40062302-2,00.htm
Note that most people can't tell the difference between a couple of dB, so most of the higher rated ones are fairly evenly matched, and I wouldn't be suprised if the results for those would change if the test was carried out again by somebody else. The lower ones are particularly bad, though; you would probably hear the white noise during the quiet parts of your music :)
If by "weighted rateing" you mean the iPod's signal to noise ratio (SNR), Apple doesn't post it on their website, but I did find this: http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/mp3players/0,39
I read in New Scientist a long time ago an article about violent video games and whether or not they actually affect children, and they seemed to suggest that it really doesn't affect them at all. Here's the article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16622425.000 .html, although I'm afraid you can't read much of it unless you're a subscriber.