Removing the record label is ultimately good for both artist and listener - cutting out the middle man, as it were. Record labels in general take most of the revenue from music sales and use it to sue the artist's fans.
That said, unless Metallica quits producing the musically bland crap that has characterized their more recent albums, the price and method of distribution is irrelevant. Crap is crap, whether downloaded for free or bought at a brick-and-mortar store for fifteen bucks. I only hope that Metallica returns to its former glory.
There exists a distinction between invention and discovery only because we create one. Any given mathematical technique that we "invent" could also be considered a "discovery", because we simply discovered that this particular technique works correctly within the framework of mathematics that we have already defined.
Let's take an example: calculus. Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus simultaneously. It could be said, then, that they both simply discovered the same thing!
The line between interpreted and compiled, however, is blurring. Languages that are traditionally compiled can sometimes now be interpreted, and vice versa. There exists both a C interpreter and a Lisp compiler, for example. One could write a performance-hungry program in, say, Perl, run it normally (using a Perl interpreter) for testing, and compile it when it's ready for use.
Also, interpreted and compiled languages can play nicely together if you let them. Guile Scheme, for example, can be embedded in a C program. There also exists a feature of Perl that allows the use of C libraries from Perl code. There is nothing stopping one from writing the core of a program in C and allowing extensions/plugins to be written in Scheme; in fact, several programs (i'm looking at you, GIMP) take this approach.
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Removing the record label is ultimately good for both artist and listener - cutting out the middle man, as it were. Record labels in general take most of the revenue from music sales and use it to sue the artist's fans.
That said, unless Metallica quits producing the musically bland crap that has characterized their more recent albums, the price and method of distribution is irrelevant. Crap is crap, whether downloaded for free or bought at a brick-and-mortar store for fifteen bucks. I only hope that Metallica returns to its former glory.
There exists a distinction between invention and discovery only because we create one. Any given mathematical technique that we "invent" could also be considered a "discovery", because we simply discovered that this particular technique works correctly within the framework of mathematics that we have already defined.
Let's take an example: calculus. Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus simultaneously. It could be said, then, that they both simply discovered the same thing!
This is a question of linguistic semantics.
The line between interpreted and compiled, however, is blurring. Languages that are traditionally compiled can sometimes now be interpreted, and vice versa. There exists both a C interpreter and a Lisp compiler, for example. One could write a performance-hungry program in, say, Perl, run it normally (using a Perl interpreter) for testing, and compile it when it's ready for use.
Also, interpreted and compiled languages can play nicely together if you let them. Guile Scheme, for example, can be embedded in a C program. There also exists a feature of Perl that allows the use of C libraries from Perl code. There is nothing stopping one from writing the core of a program in C and allowing extensions/plugins to be written in Scheme; in fact, several programs (i'm looking at you, GIMP) take this approach.