Zakala's blog
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Leader: Podcasting over-hyped - WebWatch - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com
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Leader: Podcasting over-hyped - WebWatch - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com
The Richard Vobes Radio Show - vobes.com - is an example of why there is so much enthusiasm around podcasting.
The technology isn't new, so what? The increase in web use was helped by faster connection speeds, but was any of that new and revolutionary or small incremental steps? It's the content that's got everyone jumping and the fact that everyone can have a go - sure it's narrow casting, but if you happen to be into Peruvian architecture of the 18th century and there's a related podcast (a radio station for you) you'll be enthused. If there isn't one - you can make one.
Podcasting probably isn't going to change the world, but it might bring a smile to a few people's faces.
Legal music downloads held back by DRM
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When is the recording industry going to wake to the information age. Everyone used to copy vinyl to cassette (even though home taping was killing music) and now we copy CDs to computer.
Since all music has to be played no amount of DRM in the world will stop duplication from files or CDs. Perhaps the RIAA will be lobbying for the removal of line out ports as a device specifically designed to enable analogue copying of their merchandise?
The combination of overly compressed and distorted modern music mastering (encapsulated as "everything louder then everything else") and the fooling of the public into believing that 128kbps MP3s are "as good" as CD quality (which was, at best, adequate) means that few people care if their tracks have been copied via a pair of cheap analogue converters. By the time it gets to MP3/AAC/WMA I doubt anyone could tell. And if they could no doubt they would believe that the analogue stage would just add warmth.
We know have digital recording interfaces and software that can caputure audio in 32 bits at 192KHz which provides a dynamic range of well over 120dB (a pin drop to, well, loud music), but play most modern CDs and you'll find a dynamic range of at most 12dB and more often 6dB which is so hypercompressed and distorted it may as well be 8 bits at 22KHz! How mad is that?
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39151371,00.htm
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
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Oh YES!!!
When it comes to right wing conservative idiots insisting that the theory of Intelligent Design be taught in schools, if you can't beat 'em insist like hell that you be allowed to join them.
Truely excellent: http://www.venganza.org/index.htm
Techno, techno, techno.
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Sometimes I hate technology, I guess most people do, but I have to work with it all day every day and sometimes it is just so difficult for no good reason. I guess that's why I sympathise with our client base. It seems that true understanding of technology is about knowing that even though it should be really simple to do something it often isn't. Why? Because of stupid manufacturers who pretend to follow standards but don't or because of silly standards.
Take yesterday. I'm trying to make some short (30 sec) films demonstrating video conferencing. We have a VC device and a device that records VC streams. So sit in front of camera, connect VC device to recorder, hit record and recite a poem. Stop recording at end. Yep that all works wonderfully - all the recordings play back to my VC device.
Download recordings to Mac. Yep. Import into FCP4. No. Well sort of no. I have pictures but no sound because mpeg 1 uses a muxed format.
Quicktime pro! Err no. Both Macs have been upgraded to V7 of Quicktime and my pro licenses don't work. OK QT6 Pro on PC. Nope. Won't extract the audio.
Having tried & failed to get JACK to connect QT out to Audacity in I'm on th epoint of connecting line out to line in and doing it that way when I discover a program called Streamclip which will convert mpeg1 to a DV stream with the audio! More than Final Cut Pro can manage.
This works fine for all the files but one - it seems that the VC recorder has screwed up the file (it says it's 7 hours long). Hmmm - how do I get the audio? Another freeware app to the rescue mpgtx.
Lessons? Well there are lots of other free/shareware apps out there that can probably do this, you just have to find them. But why oh why, if Joe Bloggs can write an app to do this in his free time, can't a professional editing package like FCP just do it? If it takes a pro like me a day to do such a simple job how does an ordinary person fare? I had similar issues when trying to import video into my sequencer to record a voiceover so this isn't an isolated incidence.
Standards are there for a reason, but they have to be followed and they have to be pruned occasionally. Most of all they have to be implemented and that implementation should be seemless.
Until then it will be curses all round.
UK record industry takes first five file-sharers to court
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"The three men and two women are accused of uploading nearly 9,000 tracks between them to file-sharing networks and have been unable to settle with music industry trade body the BPI (British Phonographic Industry). The BPI has now filed civil proceedings against the five individuals and will be seeing them in court.
"The BPI has said it will be suing the individuals for costs and compensation for the income they claim has been lost to the music industry as a result of the uploaders' actions.
"The BPI has sought settlements with more than 90 alleged uploaders, more than 60 of whom have opted to pay compensation averaging thousands of pounds to the trade body."
silicon.com - http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39150973,00.htm
Let's hope that the courts see this as the cynical attempt to scare others into submission - I just hope that at least one of the five was only sharing music he/she had legitimately purchased. Sales of legal music online has grown by 300% where as shared tracks have grown by 3%. Hmmm... I make that a reasonable swing in the Record Companies favour already.
When will they learn that the file sharing community are helping their sales? Since most downloaders couldn't pay for many of the tracks that they download how could the BPI's members make any more money than they do already? Oh yeah, by suing people too scared or poor to go to court.