Oh my gosh. Did you know it has been a dream of mine for at least 10 years, to do that? It's on my "if I was going to die anyway..." list.
I had no idea that anyone had actually sat on that much mercury. It would kick ass to try and swim in it.
What's interesting to me is that Sony is only claiming about 20 CDs were affected, but I personally have purchased at least one that contains SunComm MediaMax, yet is not on their list. (Foo Fighters)
I have seen other lists online showing over 50 affected CDs. The Foo Fighters alone released 4 titles that Sony put Media Max on.
Anyone else notice how Sony only claims the shittiest, lowest-selling titles have the software at first? The first discs that admittedly had XCP were Celine Dion and a bunch of other crap that's most popular with people who are computer-illiterate.
They're avoiding mentioning the infection of the discs that sold the most, especially those sold to people who actually understand the word "rootkit".
Most of them do, now.
Our local station switched to mp3s about 7 years ago.
Apparently digital afforded them an advantage - they could increase the play speed of the mp3s by about 2% - imperceptible to the casual listener, but affording them extra minutes of ad time daily.
Imperceptible, I should say, unless that casual listener just *happens* to put Smashing Pumpkins' 1979 in the cd player - at the exact same time it comes on the radio. I toggled back and forth as the two got further and further out of sync - then called the station and asked what they were trying to pull. They just laughed at me.
Photoshop CAN save at 16 bits/channel in some formats.
There are a lot of PNG options available - several different compression algorithms can be used.
As someone who's been using Adobe products since 6th grade, to say I'm more comfortable with their interface would be an understatement.
My first version of Photoshop was v3 - text layers converted to raster instantly, no multiple undoes, etc, and my first version of Illustrator came on 17 floppy disks. No, really.
I'm now in web design, and use both Dreamweaver and GoLive because there are some things each does better. I really prefer GoLive's site management - the ability to update the Live site to reflect whatever you've done locally, even if that means deleting files! But there are some things I can only do in Dreamweaver, so that means using an interface that's (to me) illogical and clunky.
I honestly couldn't be happier, as I only see this simplifying my life a few years down the road. I'll get the best features of both programs, in the Adobe interface, and everything will be GOOD.
[I haven't used Flash enough to comment on that...I have used Freehand...and screw you Freehand.]
Hemp is _not_ highly absorbent. Hemp paper requires special drying processes to get the ink to set without smearing. High absorbency isn't a major factor in cloth diapers. And it is very coarse relative to cotton and other alternatives.
Disagree. As someone who actually uses cloth diapers (on my kids, I'm not incontinent, thanks) absorbency is a huge factor in their functionality.
The Canadian Agricultural site references hemp as having excellent absorbency (in addition to other attributes you mention below).
Hemp does have a number of advantages, including durability, better rot-resistance, and great strength.
That agrees with the information I've seen. It's one reason, I suppose, that hemp was used for many years for roping on ships. The longer fibres contribute to the strength, and it seems to resist bacterial damage better than cotton.
It's also quite expensive as production is very labor-intensive, and use of hemp fiber is not nearly as environmentally sound as people would have you believe.
I must've been reading all the wrong hippie sites, then.:)
For instance, while it does produce more fiber per acre than, say, a pine farm, you wind up discarding 75% of the fiber to get the good bast off the stems. So to produce the same end-user products winds up requiring far more acreage than alternative crops--and it's acreage that contributes far more to soil erosion than a wood or cotton farm.
Um, so this is not the best reference at all, but I haven't much time, soo..Toilet Paper World says: Most hemp paper made today uses the entire hemp stalk, bast and hurd. High-strength fiber paper can be made from the hemp baste, also without chemicals. According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, one acre of hemp can produce 4 times more paper than one acre of trees!
And, of course, most hemp used in the US is grown in China with all the labor issues that encompasses (though sane public policy legalizing hemp use could eliminate that problem).
Yeah, if only the government would realize that industrial hemp contains no THC and therefore isn't totally relevant in the war on drugs... but it "looks" like Marijuana and is therefore evil, so we must outlaw it.
That said, hemp is a good crop for some applications--tea bags, cigarette papers, canvas, rope, etc. And it's a useful mixin for strengthening other fibers in some cloths.
Indeed, although thanks to a small market and high importation costs, it's usually the crazy hippies buying the stuff right now. Like you said, people who buy hemp just because it says "hemp" on the label. Personally I think there are many more constructive uses for the stuff, but since we can't grow it in the US any more...well, small market = small production = small market.
Contrarily, hemp is plenty absorbent, and not very coarse. If what you stated were true, hemp wouldn't be used in a great number of cloth diapers, but it is. Granted, it's usually in a hemp-cotton blend, but as the owner of some pure-hemp clothing, I can attest that it's durable and not uncomfortable.
Who told you that? They're nuts - the paper/ink are trivial costs. The biggest cost to any paper, ours included, is people. Over 75% of our cost is people. Newsprint is CHEAP, so is soybean ink. It's the writers, the managers, the salespeople, the artists, the pressmen, the delivery people, that cost the most.
and as it turns out they plagiarize continually, make up facts, or outright lie/misquote people. Jason Blaire anyone? Dan Rather?
Your OPIOIN may be that allot of newspaper employees are morons, but you're making (at least)2 mistakes there -
1. Assuming that roughly 5 cases of journalistic irresponsibility somehow represent the integrity of tens of thousands of reporters/editors.
2. Assuming that the intelligence and integrity of those tens of thousands of reporters/editors somehow represent the other 92% of behind-the-scenes employees in the newspaper business.
But is it the journalists that need to?
Again and again I hear the misconception that EVERYONE who works at a newspaper is a reporter or an editor - Guess what? Those 2 positions comprise a whopping 8% of our staff. The reporters, as it goes, have little pull one way or the other in anything important.
Robin, this article reached somebody relevant - I'm the online manager at a community paper. Our print subscribers number about 25,000, and we average around 80,000 unique visitors to our website per month, with occasional deviations resulting from being linked on CollegeHumor (extra 50k visitors that month).
I mentally noted the things we're already doing as I went through your article - printable coupons, check. Online circulars, check. Searchable calendar..well, we have one, but's it's been neglected. We have a temp in to update it this week. We're working on setting up a blog system, right now, that will allow our oft-maligned city editor to rile up this conservative area with his "liberal" (more like moderate) commentary. We're not yet set up to allow reader comments on articles, but we're considering it.
In my experience so far, the biggest barrier to transitioning from all-print to online AND print, is that it's change! Big, scary, change!
We've recently started a daily news updates thing - every day, twice daily, we post short updates on news stories. It's been a huge hurdle for our reporters. They're used to having 12 hours to write a story, and nobody seeing it until it's done. Now, we're asking them to give us 2 short paragraphs early in the day, just so we have something timely up. It doesn't have to be complete. It doesn't even have to be completely correct - we can always post a correction. It just has to be timely. We are in a way taking a step backwards, to the days when the Times would print 12 editions per day, and the reporters would re-write, re-write, re-write their story until the final version. When shortly after news occured, the newsboys would be out yelling, "Extra! Extra!"
The other gigantic barrier is our salespeople. They are, on average, probably 30 years older than even our reporting staff. They don't understand the internet. They don't see the benefit of the internet. They don't make any effort to sell the internet. We're working on training them, but banner sales are still not tied into their goals, so it's low on their priority list.
Fortunately, in the last year, corporate has finally realized that where we're headed is online. The demographic is changing. Many people still want a physical newspaper, a piece of paper they can hold, relax in a la-z-boy with, read on the john. But they look to that paper to sum up the news from the day before. Newsprint is no longer the source of breaking news - we had TV for that even before the web.
Corporate is giving us more resources - slowly. As it stands right now, our site has only one full-time staffer. Me.
If we want to continue to be a major news source, we've got to provide relevant (local, like you said), timely news, along with forums where the readers can be heard.
Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
From the release notes.
This reminds me of a slashdot article not 2 weeks ago lamenting the lack of accessibility features in open-source programs. It's nice to see Mozilla addressing this issue - perhaps other open source programmers will follow suit.
As in NIN on the "The Downward Spiral" album?
Compression can be used as an instrument, sure, but when it's applied equally to every song it becomes about as artistic as a fade-out ending.
I agree. It depends on the bitrate and format, of course, but 96kbps mp3s have a "jangly" noise in the higher pitches that is obvious to me.
Lossy is lossy, and just like a JPEG, there's always damage from the compression whether it's obvious or not.
Slashdot Mirror
And then there is the old Star Trek method of killing a guy, carrying around his hand/eyeballs, and getting into anything he had permission to.
Oh my gosh. Did you know it has been a dream of mine for at least 10 years, to do that? It's on my "if I was going to die anyway..." list. I had no idea that anyone had actually sat on that much mercury. It would kick ass to try and swim in it.
What's interesting to me is that Sony is only claiming about 20 CDs were affected, but I personally have purchased at least one that contains SunComm MediaMax, yet is not on their list. (Foo Fighters) I have seen other lists online showing over 50 affected CDs. The Foo Fighters alone released 4 titles that Sony put Media Max on. Anyone else notice how Sony only claims the shittiest, lowest-selling titles have the software at first? The first discs that admittedly had XCP were Celine Dion and a bunch of other crap that's most popular with people who are computer-illiterate. They're avoiding mentioning the infection of the discs that sold the most, especially those sold to people who actually understand the word "rootkit".
Most of them do, now. Our local station switched to mp3s about 7 years ago. Apparently digital afforded them an advantage - they could increase the play speed of the mp3s by about 2% - imperceptible to the casual listener, but affording them extra minutes of ad time daily. Imperceptible, I should say, unless that casual listener just *happens* to put Smashing Pumpkins' 1979 in the cd player - at the exact same time it comes on the radio. I toggled back and forth as the two got further and further out of sync - then called the station and asked what they were trying to pull. They just laughed at me.
Maybe you've heard of it - it's called Satellite Radio, and they have talk shows in addition to music and comedy.
Photoshop CAN save at 16 bits/channel in some formats. There are a lot of PNG options available - several different compression algorithms can be used.
As someone who's been using Adobe products since 6th grade, to say I'm more comfortable with their interface would be an understatement. My first version of Photoshop was v3 - text layers converted to raster instantly, no multiple undoes, etc, and my first version of Illustrator came on 17 floppy disks. No, really. I'm now in web design, and use both Dreamweaver and GoLive because there are some things each does better. I really prefer GoLive's site management - the ability to update the Live site to reflect whatever you've done locally, even if that means deleting files! But there are some things I can only do in Dreamweaver, so that means using an interface that's (to me) illogical and clunky. I honestly couldn't be happier, as I only see this simplifying my life a few years down the road. I'll get the best features of both programs, in the Adobe interface, and everything will be GOOD. [I haven't used Flash enough to comment on that...I have used Freehand...and screw you Freehand.]
Disagree. As someone who actually uses cloth diapers (on my kids, I'm not incontinent, thanks) absorbency is a huge factor in their functionality.
The Canadian Agricultural site references hemp as having excellent absorbency (in addition to other attributes you mention below).
Hemp does have a number of advantages, including durability, better rot-resistance, and great strength.
That agrees with the information I've seen. It's one reason, I suppose, that hemp was used for many years for roping on ships. The longer fibres contribute to the strength, and it seems to resist bacterial damage better than cotton.
It's also quite expensive as production is very labor-intensive, and use of hemp fiber is not nearly as environmentally sound as people would have you believe.
I must've been reading all the wrong hippie sites, then. :)
For instance, while it does produce more fiber per acre than, say, a pine farm, you wind up discarding 75% of the fiber to get the good bast off the stems. So to produce the same end-user products winds up requiring far more acreage than alternative crops--and it's acreage that contributes far more to soil erosion than a wood or cotton farm.
Um, so this is not the best reference at all, but I haven't much time, soo..Toilet Paper World says:
Most hemp paper made today uses the entire hemp stalk, bast and hurd. High-strength fiber paper can be made from the hemp baste, also without chemicals. According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, one acre of hemp can produce 4 times more paper than one acre of trees!
And, of course, most hemp used in the US is grown in China with all the labor issues that encompasses (though sane public policy legalizing hemp use could eliminate that problem).
Yeah, if only the government would realize that industrial hemp contains no THC and therefore isn't totally relevant in the war on drugs... but it "looks" like Marijuana and is therefore evil, so we must outlaw it.
That said, hemp is a good crop for some applications--tea bags, cigarette papers, canvas, rope, etc. And it's a useful mixin for strengthening other fibers in some cloths.
Indeed, although thanks to a small market and high importation costs, it's usually the crazy hippies buying the stuff right now. Like you said, people who buy hemp just because it says "hemp" on the label. Personally I think there are many more constructive uses for the stuff, but since we can't grow it in the US any more...well, small market = small production = small market.
Contrarily, hemp is plenty absorbent, and not very coarse. If what you stated were true, hemp wouldn't be used in a great number of cloth diapers, but it is. Granted, it's usually in a hemp-cotton blend, but as the owner of some pure-hemp clothing, I can attest that it's durable and not uncomfortable.
Who told you that? They're nuts - the paper/ink are trivial costs. The biggest cost to any paper, ours included, is people. Over 75% of our cost is people. Newsprint is CHEAP, so is soybean ink. It's the writers, the managers, the salespeople, the artists, the pressmen, the delivery people, that cost the most.
Your OPIOIN may be that allot of newspaper employees are morons, but you're making (at least)2 mistakes there -
1. Assuming that roughly 5 cases of journalistic irresponsibility somehow represent the integrity of tens of thousands of reporters/editors.
2. Assuming that the intelligence and integrity of those tens of thousands of reporters/editors somehow represent the other 92% of behind-the-scenes employees in the newspaper business.
Again and again I hear the misconception that EVERYONE who works at a newspaper is a reporter or an editor - Guess what? Those 2 positions comprise a whopping 8% of our staff. The reporters, as it goes, have little pull one way or the other in anything important.
Robin, this article reached somebody relevant - I'm the online manager at a community paper. Our print subscribers number about 25,000, and we average around 80,000 unique visitors to our website per month, with occasional deviations resulting from being linked on CollegeHumor (extra 50k visitors that month).
I mentally noted the things we're already doing as I went through your article - printable coupons, check. Online circulars, check. Searchable calendar..well, we have one, but's it's been neglected. We have a temp in to update it this week. We're working on setting up a blog system, right now, that will allow our oft-maligned city editor to rile up this conservative area with his "liberal" (more like moderate) commentary. We're not yet set up to allow reader comments on articles, but we're considering it.
In my experience so far, the biggest barrier to transitioning from all-print to online AND print, is that it's change! Big, scary, change!
We've recently started a daily news updates thing - every day, twice daily, we post short updates on news stories. It's been a huge hurdle for our reporters. They're used to having 12 hours to write a story, and nobody seeing it until it's done. Now, we're asking them to give us 2 short paragraphs early in the day, just so we have something timely up. It doesn't have to be complete. It doesn't even have to be completely correct - we can always post a correction. It just has to be timely. We are in a way taking a step backwards, to the days when the Times would print 12 editions per day, and the reporters would re-write, re-write, re-write their story until the final version. When shortly after news occured, the newsboys would be out yelling, "Extra! Extra!"
The other gigantic barrier is our salespeople. They are, on average, probably 30 years older than even our reporting staff. They don't understand the internet. They don't see the benefit of the internet. They don't make any effort to sell the internet. We're working on training them, but banner sales are still not tied into their goals, so it's low on their priority list.
Fortunately, in the last year, corporate has finally realized that where we're headed is online. The demographic is changing. Many people still want a physical newspaper, a piece of paper they can hold, relax in a la-z-boy with, read on the john. But they look to that paper to sum up the news from the day before. Newsprint is no longer the source of breaking news - we had TV for that even before the web. Corporate is giving us more resources - slowly. As it stands right now, our site has only one full-time staffer. Me.
If we want to continue to be a major news source, we've got to provide relevant (local, like you said), timely news, along with forums where the readers can be heard.
Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers. From the release notes. This reminds me of a slashdot article not 2 weeks ago lamenting the lack of accessibility features in open-source programs. It's nice to see Mozilla addressing this issue - perhaps other open source programmers will follow suit.
As in NIN on the "The Downward Spiral" album? Compression can be used as an instrument, sure, but when it's applied equally to every song it becomes about as artistic as a fade-out ending.
I agree. It depends on the bitrate and format, of course, but 96kbps mp3s have a "jangly" noise in the higher pitches that is obvious to me. Lossy is lossy, and just like a JPEG, there's always damage from the compression whether it's obvious or not.
Begs the question - when can we expect a Google OS?