The up and down world of Windows
Windows. Some you win, some you lose.
98=win. ME=lose. XP=win. Vista=lose. Windows 7=? For many Vista is leaving a bad taste. All you ever hear about is how Vista
crashed, how Vista isn’t compatible, how it’s even more buggy then XP ever was
(I heard a particularly ghastly camp fire story involving Vista and the
awakening of the long dormant Blue Screen of Death!). And while Microsoft is
scrambling to counteract that image, it’s also ramping up the next iteration of
the popular operating system, perhaps prepping for the old bait and switch.
Windows 7, as it is currently codenamed, was anticipated for a 2010 launch, but
word has trickled out that the big ‘soft might be aiming for something a little
more 2009ish.
And in order to accomplish that goal, Microsoft announced that
they will be dropping email, and media editing application from all versions.
Instead users will be able to download the programs through Microsoft’s
website. So gone are standardized versions of Windows Mail, Movie Maker, and
Photo Gallery that shipped with every edition of Vista.
Metallica losing in ‘Loudness Wars’
Many of those who have purchased Death
Magnetic, Metallica’s latest album, may have noticed that it sounds like, well,
it’s been “smashed to f**k” to quote Mastering Engineer Ian Shepherd. Shepherd
recently compared recordings of the new album with those that appear on Guitar
Hero III and found that the videogame renditions far exceeded those on the
album as far as track quality. Now comes word from ‘industry insiders’ that in
order to win the so-called ‘Loudness Wars’ new albums have had to sacrifice
dynamic range for volume. Wha? The moment Guitar Hero gets a hold of a better
version of your song, is the moment you cease producing decent music…
Judge overturns fine that would have seen
music sharer pay $222,000 in fines
A Minneapolis has had
a fortuitous turnaround in a case where she was ordered by a jury to pay
$222,000 to various record companies for copying and distributing 24 songs, as
U.S. District Judge Michael Davis ordered a new trial and rejected the ruling
against the defendant. In doing so he became third federal judge to flat out
refute the use of the Recording Industry Association of America’s ‘you made it
available and that’s distributing’ argument. In essence, by leaving a folder
open as shared which contains music files, the RIAA has been arguing that that
constitutes the act of distributing music.
I have to agree that if you have to get a better version of a song from a video game then something is definitely not right.
At last a bit of sanity. The judge was right to order a new trial, distributing music is wrong but the law has to apply common sense and in this case it seems that the RIAA had got things completely out of proportion.