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Prison Tapes
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Prison Tapes
addy essay
Stereos, Tapes, CDs and Vinyl Records: My Frustrating Romance With Old-Fashioned Audio Gear
So, here's the thing. My stereo components have been in boxes gathering dust ever since I became a fully fledged member of the iPosse. Ditto for my CDs, cherished cassette tapes and even a few essential vinyl records. Since Jesus and I are relocating to London, and I've ripped everything I really listen to, you might say it's a no-brainer to throw it all out. But it's not that easy to do, is it? More »
11:00 AM on Sun Jun 1 2008
By AddyDugdale
11,015 views,
77 comments
images
Gorgeous Shots Of Microwaved CDs
We haven't nuked a CD since the '90s either, but maybe that's only because we didn't have the right camera setup to capture the digital destruction in all of its glory. The Wacky Archives features a few remarkable shots of our ex-favorite pastime and we strongly recommend it as an opulently wasteful way to burn three minutes of your precious Saturday. The microwave, however, paid the ultimate price:
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suckermodo
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums Come Pre-Ripped For $9,000
If you're rich enough to have a dedicated media server from the likes of Crestron, Elan, Escient, Kaleidescape, ReQuest or Apple—a strange one to mix in, I thought—you can go off and buy Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time already ripped and encoded on a NAS RAID drive, for the low price of $9,000, thanks to a company called Terra-San. I can see several problems with this: More »
recycling
This is a story of a not so environmentally friendly, but rather groovy repurposing idea: reusing CDs as records (remember them?) At the UK's Futuresonic festival last week, a guy named Aleks Kolkowski had his vintage record-cutting machine ready to carve sound tracks into old CDs and DVDs. People simply had to turn up with an old disc and a sound file and he'd "overwrite" the CD with a track ready to be played on a turntable. Neat! I'd have been there asking Aleks for a copy of my first ever record (that'll be the theme to Watership Down— I know, I know) on a crappy old AOL CD I found recently. [Futuresonic via DIYDaily via ]
More »
CDs Get Into the Groove, Do Music the 45RPM Way
This is a story of a not so environmentally friendly, but rather groovy repurposing idea: reusing CDs as records (remember them?) At the UK's Futuresonic festival last week, a guy named Aleks Kolkowski had his vintage record-cutting machine ready to carve sound tracks into old CDs and DVDs. People simply had to turn up with an old disc and a sound file and he'd "overwrite" the CD with a track ready to be played on a turntable. Neat! I'd have been there asking Aleks for a copy of my first ever record (that'll be the theme to Watership Down— I know, I know) on a crappy old AOL CD I found recently. [Futuresonic via DIYDaily via ]
More »
4:22 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By Kit Eaton
4,486 views,
24 comments
Latest by infmom: @ideaman2020: Yes! They had one on one of the upper floors of the Empire State Building in the mid-50s and I remember making a record for my mom in there. It'd probably be a laugh riot if it had survived into more »
clarification
Even the RIAA isn't Ballsy Enough to Claim Ripping CDs is Illegal
So a few weeks ago we reported that the RIAA had claimed that just ripping CDs was enough to get you sued. Later, jumping on the bandwagon, the Washington Post reported the same thing. Turns out, it's not exactly true. The RIAA claims that ripping a CD and then putting the files into a shared folder is illegal, which we disagree with but is a little less flabbergasting. The confusion arose with the wording, which called ripped copies "unauthorized." More »
pimp hand
Disc Holder Has a Strong Pimp Hand
If you have any DVDs, HD DVDs, Blu-ray Discs or even some old-timey CDs lying around that are in desperate need of a bizarre storage solution, look no further than the Art of Hand Stand Disc Holder. It doesn't do much beyond what you see here, but it will definitely add an interesting look to any desktop or home theater. [Product Page]
lamps
The Light CD Tower by Kwang Hoo Lee was inspired by the fact that people spend an ever-increasing amount of time sitting in front of their computers. In the end, he came up with a design that merged a lamp and a CD holder into one sweet looking practical device. Unfortunately, the design is not without its flaws. For one thing, the lamp would be rendered useless when filled with CDs, the device is battery powered (why not USB?) and CDs are on the fast track to obsolecence. Still, not a bad concept piece from a design perspective. [Designboom via Gearfuse via DVICE]
Lamp CD Tower Is Beautifully Obsolete
The Light CD Tower by Kwang Hoo Lee was inspired by the fact that people spend an ever-increasing amount of time sitting in front of their computers. In the end, he came up with a design that merged a lamp and a CD holder into one sweet looking practical device. Unfortunately, the design is not without its flaws. For one thing, the lamp would be rendered useless when filled with CDs, the device is battery powered (why not USB?) and CDs are on the fast track to obsolecence. Still, not a bad concept piece from a design perspective. [Designboom via Gearfuse via DVICE]
how-to
Extreme Repair For Extremely F*cked Up CDs
Instructables has a tutorial on a CD repair technique designed to bring nearly any disc (barring any cracks, breaks, etc...) back from the dead. The fix requires you to heat the underside of the CD over a gas burner, boil it in water and dry off your freshly resurfaced disc. The process seems to leave a slim margin of error, so if you're trying to recover something valuable, you better know what you're doing. [Instructables]
sad but true
Digital Porn Stash Gets Guy Murdered By Girlfriend
Just a heads-up to all of our Puritan Gizmodo readers: 58-year-old Chicago native Jeanette Strowder confessed to shooting and killing her boyfriend, Jesse Martin, after finding his stash of porn stored on CDs. We initially assumed that the CDs must have contained some really freaky content to warrant the response, or at least some juicy ex-girlfriend shots, but apparently it was a (standard?) collection of "nude photographs of women." More »
bad idea
Disney's New CDVU+ Sounds Like Every Other Stupid Enhanced CD Format
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the reason CD sales suck is not the fact that there isn't enough crap loaded onto the disc. Enhanced CDs have been around for over a decade; hell, many of the first interactive CD-ROMs came from the record industry. Does anyone remember a single one? Apparently Disney doesn't, because this week its Hollywood Records label introduced the CDVU+ format. The who what? More »
pointless
Disc Pod Dispenser Makes Past Methods of Disc Retrieval Painfully Obsolete
We see a lot of pointless gadgets around here, but sometimes a product comes along that blows us away with its utter lack of utility. The Disc Pod Dispenser is basically a Pez dispenser for discs. Load it up, push a button, and one pops out. Is twisting the plastic case off of a spindle when you want a disc really too much effort to put forward? More »
ill-advised politicians
Latest Piracy Havens Sweating the Crackdown: Used CD Shops
In Florida and Utah (with Wisconsin and Rhode Island following suit) you'd think shops dealing in used CDs were cogs in a vast piracy machine given the way state legislators are starting to regulate them. Florida so far is the worst, according to Billboard:In Florida, the new legislation requires all stores buying second-hand merchandise for resale to apply for a permit, would be required to thumb-print CD sellers and get a copy of their state-issued identity documents, such as a driver's license. Furthermore, stores could only issue store credit—not pay cash—in exchange for traded CDs, and then would be required to hold them for a 30-day period, before re-selling them.DVD and video game sellers aren't entirely off the hook, either. More »
home entertainment
You haven't forgotten about the boycott, have you? I should hope not. If you're having trouble not going out and buying discs from artists you like, why not save yourself some money and fulfill your little consumery desires at the same time? Buy used CDs.
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RIAA Boycott Tip: Buy Used CDs
You haven't forgotten about the boycott, have you? I should hope not. If you're having trouble not going out and buying discs from artists you like, why not save yourself some money and fulfill your little consumery desires at the same time? Buy used CDs.
More »
gadgets
EMI Says The CD Is Dead, Is It?
The CEO of EMI Music (you know, one of the biggest, baddest record companies out there) just recently went on the record saying that, in its current incarnation, the CD is dead. Muerto. Tot. "The CD as it is right now is dead," he said, while burning £100 notes. (Digital music sales accounted for 11 percent of sales in the first half of this year, with CDs accounting for more than 70 percent.) More »
home entertainment
Wharfdale Hard Drive-Based Hi-Fi System
Since the prospect of placing a computer inside a home theater still doesn't quite turn people on, Wharfdale figures it can provide the best of both worlds with a 40GB hard drive-based Hi-Fi stereo system. As you might expect, a 40GB hard drive is the heart of the system and offers enough space to hold an estimated 8,000 songs, either USB-imported, pre-existing MP3s or MP3s ripped by the unit itself. Like other, similar audio systems, this Wharefdale unit will query the appropriate databases when playing CDs in order to display accurate (well, for the most part) song information. More »
gadgets
Xipper CD/DVD Jewel Case Opener
How many times have you come home from the local retailer with a shrink-wrapped CD or DVD only to work yourself into a fit of rage when you can't get the packaging open without pulling a muscle? If you answered "several times," even if you're just fibbing for the sake of this article, perhaps the Xipper will save you from needless trips to the emergency room. It's a small device that, when properly activated next to a shrink-wrapped jewel case, sees a small edge protrude. Simply slide the Xipper down the case and let the tiny blade work its magic. Since the Xipper comes in a CD and DVD version, there's no worrying about getting the blade to properly align with different types of jewel cases. More »
gadgets
