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Music

CD Sales Continue To Plummet, Vinyl Records Soar 431

Lucas123 writes "Over the past four years, vinyl record sales have been soaring, jumping almost 300% from 858,000 in 2006 to 2.5 million in 2009, and sales this year are on track to reach new peaks, according to Nielsen Entertainment. Meanwhile, as digital music sales are also continuing a steady rise, CD sales have been on a fast downward slope over the same period of time. In the first half of this year alone, CD album sales were down about 18% over the same period last year. David Bakula, senior vice president of analytics at Nielsen Entertainment, said it's not just audiophiles expanding their collections that is driving vinyl record sales but a whole new generation of young music aficionados who are digging the album art, liner notes and other features that records bring to the table. 'The trend sure does seem sustainable. And the record industry is really doing a lot of cool things to not only make the format come alive but to make it more exciting for consumers,' Bakula said."
Businesses

CIA Drones May Have Used Illegal, Inaccurate Code 279

skids writes "Coders hate having to rush code out the door before it's ready. They also hate it when the customer starts making unreasonable demands. What they hate even more is when the customer reverse engineers the product and starts selling their own inferior product. But what really ticks them off is when that buggy, knockoff product might be used by targeting systems in military unmanned drone attacks, and the bugs introduce location errors of up to 13 meters. That's what purportedly happened to software developer IISi, based on an ongoing boardroom/courtroom drama that will leave any hard-pressed coder appreciating just how much worse his job could get. The saddest part? The CIA assumed the bug was a feature. The tinfoil-hat-inducing part? The alleged perpetrators just got bought by IBM."

Comment Re:what is going on ? (Score 1) 838

The polls showed a dead heat

"The polls"?

Here is the percentage support for Ahmedinajad in a number of polls taken in the runup to the election:

22.5
23
24.61
25.5
29.5
32
33
33
34
34
35
36
36
38
40
42
42
43
44
47.5
53
54
59
61.7
62
62.7

Note that the poll that had him at 23% support was taken at almost the exact same time as the one that had him at 61.7% support.

The pollsters in Iran are politically motivated liars. If you trust their numbers you will come off looking as stupid as you would if you trusted the Iranian government's statements. Do realize, however, that if the Iranian government didn't want a certain person to win the election, they could have just refused to allow that person to run in the election - as they did with several other would-be candidates.

If they didn't want Mousavi to win why didn't they just refuse to let him run, citing "un-Islamic behavior" or some other such nonsense?

Comment Science (Score 1) 345

This has been studied extensively. Peer review of code is much better at finding bugs than QA testing.

If you release code without QA testing and the process works for you, fine, you can consider releasing code without peer review.

If you wouldn't consider releasing code without testing, but currently release it without peer review, you are batshit insane. Sucks to be you. Sucks even more to be your support department.

Comment Re:I haven't found that (Score 1) 445

if you would also sign a document stating that we could let you starve in the street (with no complaint from you), should you run out of private funds after your retirement, we'd be OK with that, too.

I wouldn't be OK with that. The issue isn't that someone might complain when they are starving in the street, the issue is that no matter how idiotically someone has conducted themselves, the public as a whole is not going to let them starve in the street, whether they complain or not.

Social Security prevents psychopaths (those who find it acceptable when someone in a wealthy country where people are paid to not grow food starves to death in the street) from being free riders on the backs of those with a conscience.

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