Claude

Report: Landis follow-up tests also positive http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/6728854 PARIS (AP) - Follow-up tests on samples given by Tour de France champion Floyd Landis have found traces of synthetic testosterone, French sports newspaper L'Equipe reported Monday. The paper said on its Web site the tests on seven samples clearly showed traces of the banned substance. Initial tests on the samples had not produced positive results, it added. Landis gave the samples while on his way to winning the 2006 Tour, it said. The tests were conducted at France's national anti-doping laboratory of Chatenay-Malabry outside Paris. L'Equipe said the lab used a technique that can distinguish synthetic testosterone, a hormone that also occurs naturally in the body. The lab is the same one that revealed Landis' positive test after he won the 17th stage of last year's Tour. The president of the French anti-doping agency, Pierre Bordry, said when contacted by The Associated Press that the tests were concluded this weekend but that he did not know the result because they were sent directly to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, or USADA, which requested the tests. They were on Landis' "B" urine samples. Landis spokesman Michael Henson said Monday the head of the French lab prevented the cyclist's expert, Paul Smith, from entering the lab Sunday to witness the testing. "Such behavior constitutes a clear and direct infringement of Landis' rights while casting severe doubt on the integrity of an already dubious process," Henson said in a statement. Bordry confirmed the incident had taken place but said it stemmed from a prior agreement stipulating that Landis' expert would attend the test with two experts from the USADA. Smith was excluded Sunday because the USADA experts failed to show up, Bordry said. One of Landis' samples, taken after the 17th stage, tested positive for a high testosterone to epitestosterone ratio. Landis had insisted that the follow-up tests weren't necessary because the other primary "A" samples were negative for banned substances. He also wanted the tests conducted at the UCLA lab, which handles much of USADA's testing, but the machines it uses for the tests are under repair. Landis has an arbitration hearing scheduled for May 14 in California, at which he is expected to question the practices at the French lab. If doping allegations against the 31-year-old American are upheld, he faces a two-year ban from competition. He also would be the first rider in the 104-year history of the Tour to be stripped of the title. He already has agreed not to compete in this year's event while the case is pending.

Oh no, Rachel deleted everything Seriously, I can browse the forum normally. http://jazzcornertalk.com or http://speakeasy.jazzcorner.com

The Dizzy (Universal version) is available for 80 Euro from the german store JPC (= $108, plus 8 Euro shipping cost and no customs duty) : http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/hnum/5129160/ I'm not sure if Zweitausendeins will offer any more Mosaic box sets. The only box sets they are selling now are cheap public domain compilations.

I know some vinyl fans who own a dedicated turntable or an extra mono cartridge for mono pressings, but as a newcomer to vinyl, I will never be able to afford original mono pressings from the 50's and early 60's. For some recordings, the mono mix sounds considerably different from the stereo mix. In that case, it would be great to have the two mixes on a CD release. So far, this has AFAIK only been done with the "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman" hybrid SACD reissue. "Electronically reprocessed" stereo records should not be played with a mono cartrige. They should be thrown away

Oh goody, a death toll throwdown. Around 30,000 people a year die in the U.S. by gunshot. 40,000 a year die in car wrecks, lets ban all cars! Let's ban cars and guns alternatively for a week and see which ban results in the most chaos. "Sorry boss, I can't come work today, I live in a dangerous community and I can't shoot my way to the office"

No problem here with amazon.com and the european stores (which use the same customer database).

It's about making access to guns more difficult, especially those guns which seem to have no other purpose than committing a crime (semi-automatic assault weapons). The Virginia Tech killer didn't have a criminal background. He bought the weapons through the normal legal procedure. A young man here in Europe would have a hard time finding such a weapon, even on the black market. Again, my surprise is that in the US everything is being done to detect terrorist plots (people buying explosives, etc) while nothing prevents a lunatic from amassing dangerous assault weapons which can be used for equally deadly revenge plans.

There are certainly many more young men around us which are as mentally disturbed and dangerous as this guy. Which easy access to (semi-)automatic weapons, a tragedy of such a dimension can happen again and again. I don't understand how a country can put so much effort in preventing terrorist acts, thereby reducing many civil liberties, and at the same time accept the possibility of deranged individuals buying arms and committing mass murders, because the right to own arms is considered sacred.

Alles Gute, Flurin! The only non-EU european board regular

I don't understand either why his nationality would matter. Given that the murderer has lived in the US since the age of 8, he is a "product" of the US society, not the South Korean.

They have detailed instructions on how to deal with criminals. That's why I trust the police more than armed "self-defending" citizens.

If guns are allowed for self protection, then the owners should also get police training and pass psychological tests, so that it's certain they know when NOT to use a gun and they don't abuse of it.

Could President G.W. Bush's love for pretzels be the reason for the Iraq invasion? Salt overdose? And most importantly: what did Hitler eat?

It's all a question of pricing. Pay-per-listen can more economical when one does not come back very often to the same music. It's like renting DVDs. Of course it's not for those who like collecting more than listening

I think felser raised an important issue. The (current) impossibility to resell downloaded music (while erasing it from one's own collection) should be reflected in the purchasing price of the downloads. Most people may see music as a consumable good (use it and throw it away after some time), but for collectors who invest alot of money into music, the possibility to resell parts of the collection is important. I'm constantly recycling some discs. Technologically, transfers of license between users should be possible, but that would mean that people have to live with a system of license management, where the labels or download stores have a certain control over the customer's computer.

As I said, SACD is quite successful on the classical market, but classical itself is just a small niche on the music market, in terms of sales. The RIAA figures probably include US sales only, but most classical labels releasing SACDs are european. If the figures only include single layer SACDs, they are not telling the whole picture. The best selling SACD titles have been hybrids. For example, check the classical charts on the page of the JPC store (one of the largest in Germany). 6 discs among the top 20 are SACDs: http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/charts/-/nooffers/1/page/1

One thing is certain: as almost all SACDs released in the past 3 years are hybrid discs, you won't need to throw them away in case there are no longer SACD players available. You can play them in every CD player. In fact, the labels which release SACDs usually have a single inventory policy, i.e. they issue the titles as hybrid SACDs only, with no CD version available.

eBooks are a different story, because they are not very convenient. You can't print out a ebook as easily and cheaply like burning a CD-R from a music download. One day when "digital paper" will be ready for the market, that could however change very quickly.

The comparision with Betamax is too harsh. SACD is doing quite well on the classical market, which has a much larger proportion of audiophiles than pop or jazz. There is a consistent flow of new releases. From the recent BBC Music Magazine awards (which is not a hifi mag), half of the awarded discs are SACDs. Significantly, it's the large companies that have abandonned SACD, while for the small labels the format seems to pay off.

For the moment, download-only is an option to keep music available which does not sell enough CDs. To release music as downloads only (new recordings or new reissues) won't work, especially not on the jazz market, since many buyers still completely ignore downloads. I think new CDs will be released for many years to come. Just because CD sales are going down and downloads are going up doesn't mean CD is dead. It's still the dominant format, by a wide margin.

You don't need to keep the music on your hard drive. I downloaded thousands of OJC albums during the Emusic "all you can eat" days, and I keep them on DVD-Rs. Given the low bitrate of these files (back then), more than 100 albums fit on one disc. Most DVD players now play MP3 files from CD-R and the newer ones also from DVD-R, so the music can be played directly from the backup DVD-Rs also without using a PC.

I've had dozens of brand CD-Rs (Fuji) which were properly stored but became unreadable after just 3 years. I don't believe that any cheap CD-Rs on the market can offer very long lifespans (20 years and more). So don't keep important and rare recordings on one CD-R only. I make backups in lossless compressed formats on DVD-R (a dozen or more CDs on one disc).

I don't think so. Downloads are still far behind CD sales.

That is very strange indeed, especially since your book shows up in second position of the search results. There is no occurance of "roscoe" in the book, and only one of "mitchell", so that cannot be the reason. There are 42 occurances of the word "jazz", the only link to Roscoe Mitchell in the Concordances word list I could think of, but that doesn't explain the result.

I have A/B'ed a few titles, and didn't notice an improvement. I really listened carefully, with volume compensation, as the new CDs sound a lot louder than the OJCs. At least one RVG (Yusef Lateef) has clipping bass sound, for that reason I prefer the OJC. Apart from that the RVGs sound well balanced, like the OJCs. No strange mastering choices as on many early Blue Note RVGs (reduced stereo spread, treble boost). The problem with this RVG series is that most of the OJCs already sound very good, and that the RVGs don't come close to other "audiophile" treatments of these albums (DCC, XRCD). As there are no additional tracks, there is little reason to upgrade.