Buying albums -physical media or digital download?

Shopping around for some CDs, I came across the following conundrum. Buy the CD for €6.49 or buy the digital download equivalent for €10.49 instead? Hmmm.

I'm probably a tad more proficient with the issue of ripping an audio CD than the average shopper, but why would I consider buying a degraded version of the debatable lossless version at almost twice the price?

Surely the novelty of digital distribution has gone the way of floppy discs by now? I mean, I can't for the life of me imagine that the production costs, printing costs, physical labor and distribution have plummeted to the point that even brand new popular albums from exemplary bad examples of talent (or lack thereof) are available for less than the digital lossy-encoded alternative. (Note that I am not in any way implying that Rex The Dog is anything but good. I love his music beyond modesty -it's just that his album was available at such a depressing ratio that he's made an example of).

This is weird. This is like warping to the late 1980s and being charged more for a cassette than a CD. Granted, people readily had Walkmans, so the format was more convenient for on-the-go music, but nobody in their right mind would pony up more for the cassette than the CD. Not even with a deviant taste in hair styles and music.

So I wonder, who in their right mind would buy a lossy encoded version of an album they might as well archive lossless on their computer?

Disclaimer portion: I am not a wooden-knob audiophile

I won't try to bullshit myself believing I can discern between the original recording and anything encoded on more than 192kpbs, but I sure as hell won't be inclined to transcode a lossy file with the same vigor as with an original CD.

Moreover, I started out with a rip from, say, CNCD's self-titled album ten years ago at 128kpbs ...then upgraded to 192kpbs a while later ...then some -aps VBR version and recently I upgraded my whole music collection to lossless rips.

There was never any quality concern at play here -diskspace was. In 1999, my system had a 8GB harddisk and the idea to have lossless encodings of my collection alongside other data and software installs was, ...hilarious. But I never had to worry about future-proofing my audio purchase, since hey -the source I purchased was lossless after all.

Fact remains: being charged more for what you can churn out from the original source yourself than the original itself is nothing short of ridiculous.

New Macbooks: brand confusion and overlap

No real surprises during the Macbook talk in Cupertino -most of the material leaked already. On the surface, things are fine, but there are some glitches in what most people seem to consider a great step up. There is *way* too much overlap.

Let's recap

• What's the next reduction from a single button? That's right! None!
  
• Equalized hardware architecture for MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. All have the same base IGP solution (G9400M) inside a single-chip mainboard solution from the blood-thirsty demons who bought the demoscene and forgot to tell the world they screwed up a whole generation of graphics cards -Nvidia
• The MacBook Pro has an additional G9600M GT 512Mb.
• New 24" display with iSight, speakers, mini DisplayPort and a MagSafe connector (which I really, really like).
• The oldskool Macbook in white plastic gets a price drop for being such a good sell all these years.
  

Overlap

• Every new MacBook (regular, Air or Pro), now shares the same hardware architecture. You're essentially presented with a number of speed-bumps and additions/reductions at a financial premium. Plenty of the disparity of old MBP with the MB are gone -up to the plastic vs. alu casing and hen you really look at things like an end-user, the difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Air is how much junk can plug into it.
  
  During QA the question was raised whether the new MacBook was going to eat away at the MacBook Pro market. They don't seem to think so, but I have strong doubts there.
• The new 24" display costs twice that of a competing screen. On top of that, it has to compete with the old 20", 24" and 30" siblings in sales. With the craziness for matte screens among professionals, don't think they'll fall from grace just yet.
• Not only does the MacBook Pro muddle affairs with the BTO models of the MacBook, it discredits its big brother: the 17" MacBook Pro (still awaiting the refresh).
• Worse still: the spiffy new MacBook has to deal with its plastic predecessor -with a slight price cut. Apple used to sell EOL overstock through their Apple stores at a cut, but this is a new turn of events. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be an entry-level solution -netbooks sold at half price can (illegally) run OS X just fine.
• No significant design or technology gap sets the MacBook Air apart from either the regular or the Pro model. You're ending up paying way more for slightly less of possibilities and ports to stuff plugs in. I honestly doubt that the e-penis envy of the old Air will work with the new model.

I liked the old proposition: MacBook for regular users, MacBook Pro for professionals (or rubes like myself) and eventually the MacBook Air for people who seriously believe that there is such a thing as an answer to ultra-portable computers from Apple (it's expensive, after all).

Web duh-velopment

I'm not sure how this was considered to make sense, but marvel at this forced-upon snippet of web development with a capital Z:



Brilliant! Whichever side of the process you want to throw yourself on, it's just plain filthy.

1. It assumes an XHTML document without an initial opening element for <body> is okay. No validator will love you -rightfully so.


2. The scroll attribute is an "awesome" proprietary IE attribute. No matter which browser it is, vendor-specific crap like that needs to be absent.


3. Three different ways to write an opening <body> just so IE won't produce a scroll bar on a fullscreen Flash site? Oh boy!

Fuck. Shit. Piss. Cunt. Cocksucker. Motherfucker. Tits.

Bad news -one of the funniest men alive no longer is.

George Carlin was arguably one of the best comedians of the 20th century and was doing quite well in the 21st to boot. I'll miss the crazy old coot.

The 90s called -they want their fad back

It's always nice to see common aspects of the demoscene trickle down into the mainstream, but the opposite can give me the occasional jolt. Assembly 2008 has decided that a revamp of the traditional Oldskool competitions was in order, and to the general positive reception of its audience, they went on and did it.

The mailing list surprised me this morning with an update on the matter. You might want to take a step back here:

Oldskool music has become Realtime Extreme Music

Oldskool graphics has become Realtime Extreme Graphics


…Extreme?! Supplanting of Oldskool music and graphics with Executable 4k Graphics and Executable 32k music competitions -two competitions and two terms proven to be successful at other demoparties, can only be made acceptable with the corniest idea in Sports marketing taped onto it? I'm lost here.

Bluetooth Mice -Oh how much fun there is to be had

The midget sibling of the Wireless Laser 8000 I graciously dubbed best for throwing at oysters, the Microsoft Wireless Laser 5000, is even more fun. It actually came without any dongle, which was promising. Maybe it actually would run out of the box! Never fear, it was not to be -it ran fine under Boot Camp but refused to do anything involving pointers moving across the screen in OS X.

I have caved in and bought the Mighty Mouse. It's a weird device and my short thumb cannot reach the squeeze buttons, but quite frankly I don't care. It works, doesn't look like a cheap transformer bootleg toy and saves me another dongle.

Bluetooth Mice -the fun starts!

There has to be an explanation for this. The Microsoft Wireless Laser 8000, one of the few Bluetooth mice available in a non-midget size, apparently is shipped with the preposterous expectation that you only will use the supplied Bluetooth dongle.

Which is great, especially since the only reason I wanted to buy a bluetooth mouse was to get rid of the disarray of dongles in the first place! Nice one!

Some people managed some draconian ritual to get it to run, but somehow this didn't work for me. At all.

This will be great fun...

SVN does stuff like this a lot

<<<<<<< .mine
$('a[href$=.pdf]').attr('target','_blank');
=======
$('a[href$=.pdf]').attr('target','_blank');
>>>>>>> .r30529

What! Stop making my heart explode already :(

Kimchi in space

Huh. I didn't know South Korea had astronauts, but it would appear that Yi So-Yeon has gone up to the Soyuz space station, bringing some home cuisine along for the ride. Beats a tube of tuna paste :)

Icons 2008 competitions: hypocritic hogwash

The Icons demo party 2008 edition has been somewhat of a problematic venture for me -the rules are broken.

Something that sticks out in the realtime demo competitions, as a sore thumb after a nice hammer session:

• It's not "Rob is Jarig" nor any kind of a remake of it

For the non-sceners out there, Rob Is Jarig (note incorrect case of the Icons people) is a sub-par, non-serious demo made by dutch demo group Aardbei way back in 1999 to commemorate the birthday of one of the coders in the group. It was a joke production which has gathered a rather notorious following after it was released in several demo competitions.

Typically, demo competitions dictate that previously released entries are not allowed. For some reason, Rob Is Jarig is usually exempt from this rule and appears at many demo competitions. Several homages, remixes and ports of the original demo were made, and in general, the stage get hijacked by people who dance and sing along to the karaoke text for the duration. It is more of a ritual than serious competition.

Granted, not everybody likes to see this dead horse being beaten over and over, but to instate a specific rule like this is overdone and petty. All you really need to do is to actually enforce the original goldenrule -no previously released entries. All the other demo parties tend to have that rule, but waive it for the simple reason that there is no way that Rob Is Jarig will ever rock the vote due to being released earlier. In some occasions, they do play the demo, but disqualify it to make sure nobody gets any crazy ideas during the voting rounds.

Why would Icons not stick to general rules? Well, because that would mean they'd have to be hardliners on their own turf as well. Take a look at this rule:

• Production must not contain methods that are very likely highly uncompatible. (For example import by ordinals, BAT droppers)
  • Special exception is applied for Flo releases

When from Finland, deviations from the rules are allowed? Way to go, guys :)

I'm not really sure why, but the Flash people at work updated the Spang Makandra display at work with an FLV background of wavy grass. As if the 1920x1200 resolution wasn't killer enough, we now have coarse VCD quality grass animating at 10fps.

I eased the pain by watching the demos from ASD and Excess from last weekend. I really ought to get around writing some incensed article explaining my absence at Breakpoint -to my chagrin I had to explain the situation ad nauseam even DURING the damn event.

When gimmicky design fails

Infinity Art Studio has one hell of a site. I like how they convey their lust for interlaced, over-compressed video playback. I love how they randomly glitch the hell out of the content of their pages to make it look "edgy".

But I absolutely adore how their contact form not only glitches and blurs like the rest of their pages. Get this: when that happens, you lose focus of the form you were just typing in. So type fast and pray to whatever deity that you're on time to finish your sentence.

Wonderful design, but nobody's upstairs.

And good morning to you too, Adobe!

Looks like my computer at work could do with a reinstall.

My urge to kill is like a cake in the oven...

Rising, to be precise. I'm reading up on some seriously dumb suggestions regarding rendering compatibility introduced in IE8, which fortunately is met with furious disdain. However, some people seem to advocate using this approach to "fix" bad web development for no reason other than that it makes sense in Bizarro World.

Once I've calmed down I'll try to express my feelings about this crazy idea in words.

The world has gone nuts (foodwise)

Case in point: Guy described some new bread snack he had the misfortune to experience: bread molded in a plastic tray to look like a candy bar, laced with tomato and onion. I can't wait to hear how the board meeting for that nightmare product went.

Somewhat in queue with that, semi-prepared ingredients are getting really, really dumb. A single potato, pre-peeled and pre-sliced? No problem, unless you wish to avoid the fact that you're nuts for willingly purchasing said plastic bag of no effort whatsoever. Pre-sliced mushrooms are another sign of the apocalypse for me. Half the fun (well, for me, at least) of cooking is preparing the ingredients. If you cannot even be bothered to slice a mushroom, order a bloody pizza.

But the thing that really, really made my hairs stand up in the back of my neck was the conversation I overheard at the produce stand of the local supermarket:

Girl #1: "Wow, this is so convenient! (picking up sliced mushrooms)
Girl #2: "You mean the sliced stuff? Yeah, it is!"
Girl #1: "You know what would be awesome? If they did that with cucumbers too!"

Cucumbers.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Horsemen are a-comin'...

Not about keyboards this time.

Stupidity had better come to either full circle or some hilarious singularity, because the Mac store is full of it.

To recap the previous hilarity: salespeople full of crap, incapable to memorize details of the most restrained line of hardware in the computing industry and pretty much unable to understand the difference between the picture on the website and the keyboard in their hands.

Sadly, I was forced to deal with them once more -courtesy of my own persistence to deal with the reseller before brand. I might as well have put a puppy in a blender for effect, the outcome was just as predictable.

So what happened

To my horror, I noted that the power adapter of my MBP had developed a weird defect - the insulation of the power cord had started to retract from the adapter, giving unconcerned people ample time to handle a bare electrical wire. There were no signs of the typical "frayed magsafe" scenario, but it certainly looked like a warranty case.

Fortunately, the Mac store had other ideas about that.

First glance from a sales clerk gave the expert conclusion that this was a clear-cut case of wear and tear. I reminded him of the fact that the adapter came with a laptop a few months back. I did't add that this kind of "logic" implied that the average life span of power adapters from Apple is a fifth of an iPod's. Nor did I suggest that they were just being their lovable old selves again -namely incompetent. All of that was filed under "must not murder people with some hope of becoming useful".

I was ushered to the service desk, where a perfectly bored copy of Mirage (of Focus and Analogue fame -demoscene reprazent whoot etc) was unable to fix a macbook problem before my turn and then started to drone on about how my problem was a clean cut case of user abuse.

Since I never really took to using the charger as a bolo implement, there ought to have been no reason to suggest this. There was no wear on the cable. There was no fraying. There were no machete marks anywhere. The worst thing was that the thing had, were scratches across the casing. Not a great feat, since the chargers and remotes come in the same kind of plastic and the very light of day scratches those critters. Considering my skepticism, he suggested to ship the thing to head office for a re-check. I was just happy I had already ordered and received a spare power adapter, since this smelled of delays.

A week later, they called. As far as they were concerned, it was a case of user abuse, not covered by warranty. I suggested they might not be up to speed with the whole "oldschool magsafe adapters are fucking weird" policy of Apple. Unable to appreciate any kind of retort, the guy merrily proceeded along the checklist for "dealing with people from outside the store". He was nice enough to drone the Apple Support phone number when I told him I'd take it up with Apple. After I emphasized it was no use, since I had no pen (or one of his colleagues to use as a memo pad). Twice.

Naturally, Apple Support spent far too much time making sure the thing would be replaced as soon as possible. They even have a form option for this kind of defect. God bless the sweet-natured helpdesk girl -they have all the info they're not supposed to tell me.

After sharing the bizarre hilarity of once more dealing with the infamous Mac Store, Andrew pleaded that I'd tell him the name of the store with such a wonderful regard of their goods. Just so he could make sure none of his friends would ever visit "that cesspit" during their stay-overs

Just so the rest of you people know: It's iCentre CS, the authorized Apple Reseller right across Amsterdam Central Station. I'd avoid them like the plague. They've repeatedly proven themselves unfit to deal with anything more than the purchase of an iPod sock. In the future, I'll deal with Apple directly -or Apple resellers worth their salt.

And the Catch-22 of the day...

One of the most beautiful suggestions of the (otherwise pretty okay) after-sales guy: "I assume we don't sell them because there has been no demand for this layout in Europe."

Am I that alone in the keyboard layout department?

Why would you want to have a US keyboard? - Part 3

A couple of days ago the quest for a normal keyboard was rekindled. Browsing the Apple store, I once again saw a promising 24hr shipping estimate for the International layout and I buckled under the urge to get my hands on it.

Two days later (i.e. today), Christmas came early. A box! With a keyboard! The product code matched, so I gleefully opened the box to get my grubby fingers all over that thing and-



Son. Of. A. BITCH.

I spent some time on the phone with after-sales. First to explain what the US International layout was and which difference it made in relation to whatever Apple's offering as a standard. The after-sales guy concurred that the keyboard in the promotional images on Apple's website came closer to my description than the thing they sent me. I was asked if I didn't feel like trying this one instead (again) and then decided to try and figure out where I could get the keyboard I really wanted.

In the end, he told me he was sorry the images on the website were incorrect, but I was not going to be able to get one. They weren't sold in Europe! He offered me a refund, and I'm typing on a Logitech keyboard instead of a delicious, slim Apple keyboard.

Again, I am getting close to sheer desperation over the completely irate policy on something as simple as a keyboard. Apple, sell me that damn keyboard. Please.

Steam doesn't want me to play games anymore

While the Steam distribution system looks pretty good on paper and hasn't been a cause for concern previously, I'm having one hell of a time trying to convince it to stop locking down my games here in Surinam.

Before leaving the Netherlands I bought the Half-Life 2 Orange Box through Steam, installed the games and made sure they were activated so i could play in offline mode. All was well. During a boring, rainy day I played some Portal, was thoroughly pleased with the game and tried playing it again the next day.

The Steam client told me something along these lines: "No. I am updating your game. Go away." Apparently the Steam client had accidentally been online -there's a very shaky wireless connection with a 64kbps internet connection in the appartment complex. I saw that all games had an auto-update feature enabled, which is great in times of bandwidth, but Portal has been inactive for the last two weeks, apparently updating. It's that slow out here.

Not to be outdone by a piece of software, I disabled the update feature, made sure that Steam was offline (it was) and decided to play HL2 Episode 1 instead. This lasted until it was time for this game to get the wonderful "Updating: 0%" message rather than "Sure, go ahead and play me!".


And now HL2 Episode Two started too. I'm running out of games I have configured to not update at all. Quit this bullshit already!

PWNED!!11!1 :)

So yeah, this is a day to remember: I screwed up a practice for the trainees :)


A stupid, innocent little mistake, really: In order to make them play with CSS filter hacks, I made a practice XHTML file that they needed to style in certain ways in certain browsers. I mixed up the conditions a little to get a fresh test case for them, and made the following mistake:

"I want my text to blink in Internet Explorer 6 and Opera. In the rest of the browsers it will be nice and quiet"

…and that's not possible. IE6 doesn't support text-decoration: blink;. I should have noticed that slip-up while rearranging the conditions in the page, but I didn't. The trainees found it staring at them like a bleeding carcass.

That was a damning moment right there :)