Robert Buice's Profile

Nathan, You mean "academic" science. In commercial science, ideas are kept secret, patented, and sold as intellecutual property so the inventors get wealthy and sit on the boards of companies with lots of stock options. THEN they publish everything.... As the matter of fact, most of the academic science out there works this way too...

While 80% of listeners may not care that the sound is crappy. Most any reasonable stereo in a car or boom-box will reveal the difference between AAC and CD, it is a major difference. When my car is roaring down the road, it doesn't matter to me that big chuncks of the mid and high range are missing. For this reason my simple motto is DON"T BUY DOWNLOADED MUSIC! You can buy it at a store for $1-$3 dollars more, you get MUCH better sound quality, no drm, and you can rip it to the format of the day, all teh while getting nice liner notes and artwork. The ONLY advantage I see to downloadable music is instant gratification and all the negatives make that gratification expensive. Apple doesn't make any money off the iTunes store anyway so you're not hurting apple buy buying real CDs and SACDs. One exception to my rule may be that it is ok to download music if it is the only way to support independent musicians.