Claude

Worst referee decision ever: This was counted as a goal in the german second league this weekend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf9gztygrF0

The thread title Open Source Windows "Office 3.1" is slightly confusing. The name of the software is "Open Office". It's not only available for Windows but also for Mac, Linux and Solaris. http://www.openoffice.org/ There is also a non-free (but inexpensive), non open source version available by Sun under the name "Star Office" http://www.sun.com/software/staroffice/index.jsp It was initially developped by a german company before being sold to Sun in 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org

I always wondered about that too. In Europe, it's not allowed to release this information, unless it is useful for an investigation, or there is a public inquiry.

Some opinions: http://www.musicangle.com/album.php?id=776 http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?gmusi&1262718619

If you are not a die-hard audiophile and just want a good sounding version of "Out to lunch", try to find the regular McMaster reissue, which sounds much better than the RVG. The RVG suffers from compression and narrowed stereo spread.

This is the most impressive picture I've seen so far

I ordered it recently, but haven't received it yet. It's one of my favourite soundtracks. I already have the Schifrin re-recording from 2000 with the WDR big band. Because it's a limited edition release (3000 copies), I would not wait too long to get it.

That's odd. I don't think EMI would deliberately sell Copycontrol CDs in the US, after what happened to Sony. Maybe it was a CD that was "returned" to CD Universe by a customer.

Here are some pictures (by photographer Steve Crisp) showing bailiffs making an entrance à la John Carpenter's "The Fog"

I think I received the same email as king ubu today. According to Avira virus scan, it contains HTML/Spoofing.Gen malware http://www.avira.com/en/threats/section/fulldetails/id_vir/4139/html_spoofing.gen.html

I recently received a phishing email concerning Paypal, which was very well done, probably copied from a real Paypal email, including phishing warning But the phishing intent was quite obvious to more knowledgable users, since below the Paypal link was a link to a free webspace site (no https). I went to that site, which looked exactly like the Paypal login page. I entered some bogus email and password and came to a page were I was asked to enter a lot of personal data, including my password for ATM machines That's where the phishers screw up. They make websites which are good enough to fool people, but then raise suspicion by trying to get too much from the victim. Asking a credit card CVC code from users is pretty normal, but the ATM code? That's too stupid.

Is that really the linked page underneath the visible link? Point your mouse to the link (without clicking on it) so that Opera displays the real link. Usually scams consist in sending the user to a fake Paypal login page, so that they can collect the login data. I can't see how this could work as a scam, when the link sends you to the real Paypal site. Maybe there are some active scripts in the HTML code of the mail which try to do something and trigger the Antivirus warning. What you can do is forward the email to spoof@paypal.com , so that the Paypal support people inform you about the legitimace or not of the email. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/securitycenter/antiphishing/PPPhishingReport-outside

My 75 year old neighbour was just scammed by the guy who installed our satellite antenna (for 20 households). He installed her a DVB-T receiver for 200€. That's the thing referred to here as the "free digital converter". In January, the national TV station RTL will move to a new satellite, which requires a small modification of the satellite dish, not possible on large multi-user installations as ours. So the only other possibility is DVB-T reception. Every new TV sold in the last 3 years (at least) includes a DVB-T receiver, so no problem here. But people who have an older TV set either need to buy a new one (small LCD sets cost 300€ or more) or get an external DVB-T receiver box. So my neighbour calls me to announce that the satellite guy just installed this "piece". I was surprised,because the modification of the satallite dish was not an option here. Then she showed me the DVB-T receiver. In order to watch TV, she now has to handle 3 remote controls: 1 for the TV, 1 for the satellite receiver (for french, german and other stations), 1 for the terrestrial receiver (for the luxembourg and belgian stations). The cost was: - 80€ for the receiver - 30€ for travelling (same city!) - 50€ for one hour installion work - 20€ for a Scart adapter (which can be found for 3€ in any store) ----- 180€ She handed him 200€, and he bluntly said "I guess it's ok to keep the change" and went off. Of course these 200€ would have been much better invested in a new TV set. But I'm not only mad at this ruthless w@nker, but also at the TV industry, because they are not offering what the market badly needs: TV sets which removable receiver modules. DVB-T reception is now included in every TV (for the terrestrial stations), but many people have to buy either an DVB-S (satellite) or a DVB-C (cable) receiver, so they end up with two devices and remotes for watching TV. More knowledgeable users get a programmable remote to replace device-specific remotes, but others are stuck with several remotes. It would be so much easier if there were standardized receiver modules for DVB-C and DVB-S that could simply be inserted or connected to the TV, so that the TV remote can handle both. Afer we had decided to install a satellite dish to be free from the cable company (a monopolist who increases price by 10€ every year (now 400€/year)), we had several people moving back to cable after a few months because using an external receiver box was too complicated for them.

Unfortunately not. http://mp3.saturn.de/servlets/2452685121527Dispatch/34/jspforward?file=.%2Findex.jsp&page=terms Thanks to the outdated royalty perception system, the music download market in Europe is strictly limited by national borders. I recently received an Ipod Shuffle as a gift from a dutch friend, it came with a 15€ iTunes coupon, which is only valid on the dutch iTunes site, which can only be used by dutch residents. But thanks for the tip. 5€ for all those great Bird tracks is a good price indeed. BTW, those recordings are in the public domain in Europe, so anyone could legally open a download server to offer the complete Bird discography, except those tracks which were first released less than 50 years ago.

If the conclusions of the authors were that on an entry level hifi system, most people can't hear a difference between CD resolution and high resolution, I would agree with them. The article doesn't list the hardware used and the music played, nor does it say if people could use their own system and favorite recordings. I think I would have a problem detecting small differences in sound in a room with unfamiliar acoustics and with music I hadn't heard before. My personal experience with SACD and high resolution files (24/96) is that it requires high end hardware to really benefit from hi-rez, and that the difference is more audible with some types of music, but rather negligible with others. Classical orchestral music benefits much more from the added clarity than small group jazz, pop or chamber music. Because I listen a lot to classical music, I wouldn't want to miss SACDs. But it is clearly a high end medium, and because so few people are interested in high end audio (unlike high quality video), SACD could never have become a mainstream format, unless the industry decided to add the feature for free (hybrid SACDs instead of CDs). BTW, the authors would probably have gotten the same result with a CD / MP3 (320kbs) comparision.

Paradoxically, many of those public domain reissues are not cheap, some are even more expensive than the originals. This set is reasonably priced, 23€ at Amazon.fr (but twice the price at Amazon.de ) http://www.amazon.fr/Complete-Live-At-Black-Hawk/dp/B002XVZ1MQ/ http://www.amazon.de/Complete-Live-At-Black-Hawk/dp/B002XVZ1MQ/

Yesterday, I watched the "Alfie" movie (on a 2002 UK DVD) and noticed that the movie soundtrack and the Impulse! album seem to be entirely different recordings of the same themes. Little music has been used in the film, only a couple of cues which last barely more than a minute. But it would be great to have a complete CD release featuring the tracks from the album and the takes recorded for the film (unedited).

Bertrand, Hardly any DVD players are region free out of the box, since implementing region restrictions is part of the DVD license. Manufacturers are not allowed to make region free players. But a majority of DVD players can be made region free, many of them by simply entering a code with the remote control. Sometimes a seperate programmable remote (Philips Pronto etc) is required. Some stores sell DVD players that are region free. There is nothing special about those, except that the seller opened the box and made the player region free (which is legit, since only the manufacturer is bound by the DVD license). So my advice would be to look for a good DVD player and then check if it can be made region free, in this database: http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks Concerning Blu-ray players: Every Blu-ray player plays DVD as well, and some can be made region-free for DVDs, but region-free for Blu-ray discs usually requires an expensive hardware modification. Since most Blu-ray discs are currently not region-limited, this is not really a problem: http://www.blurayregioncodes.com/

It's great to have some jazz controversy in the newspapers, even if the whole story is stupid.

The guy in Spain only wanted his money back, he didn't request that Larry Ochs be put in a concentration camp. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/dec/09/jazz-festival-larry-ochs-saxophone Every use of the word Nazi for somebody intolerant implies the risk that Nazi crimes are being belittled. We don't know if the second Guardian article is only a joke or if Wynton really said something about it. I doubt he would be that silly.

I rather think that it's the Guardian who is kidding around, and Wynton has nothing to do with this story. The article reads like a jazz insider joke to me. My theory is that Wynton himself send this Raphael or Ramon himself to the Larry Ochs concert, and because he's the prime suspect of jazz fundamentalism, he's now actively playing the innocent.

In the age of high resolution audio, calling a CD with 16bit/44kHz sound an "Extended resolution CD" (XRCD) is marketing stretched to the limit of consumer deception. I'm aware that you haven't invented the name, but I think it's no longer acceptable today.

Here's the setting that the board administrator can change: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/298770-open-posted-links-in-a-new-window/

I noticed that too. I think it's a user/browser-independant general setting to be changed by the forum admin. I would prefer external links to open in a new tab by default. I'm aware that I can use shift-click in my browser, but I forget to use it since in most fora external links open in a new tab.

The DVD description text says "extensive concert footage", while the text on the website says "historic and contemporary concert footage". So it could indeed be that none or very little footage from the Luxembourg concert was used.