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This topic will act as a place for CricketMX members to discuss articles :)

A brief overview of the article will be posted by the Articles Bot whenever a new article has been posted. Articles Bot will also provide a link to the article so you can read more of the article. Each article has a link that says "Discuss this article in the forum", which when clicking will automatically quote the article you wish to discuss :)
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Until the arrival of Napster, mp3’s were few and far between. My first contact with mp3’s came in 1998 in the Malaysian city of Kuala Lumpur. The dodgy bootleg store was selling thousands of “CD’s”, each claiming to hold hundreds of tracks. At just a couple of dollars each, it was worth the risk.

Upon inserting the disks into my Windows 98 computer, I was shocked to see that there were indeed hundreds of tracks. Not all of the disks worked, but some of them did - in the end it was worth whatever negligible expense it ended up costing me.
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Nice article battye.

I'm not a big mp3 purchaser or buyer. Occasionally I will download some stuff if I get a bug in me. At this point I am so fed up with the RIAA and anti-piracy measures that I refuse to purchase music. The artists don't make much money off CD sales anyway but that is a topic for another discussion. I'll go out on a limb and say within a few years time the CD will be like the 8-track. People know what they are but wouldn't know what to do with them. Digital distribution will be the way of the future. It would be kind of cool to be able to walk into a music store and instead of racks of CD's they have computer terminals where you can sit down and sample music and purchase for download to your mp3 player.
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Nice article Battye.
Yep digital downloads is the future. CD's will die out just like the previous formats tapes , 8-tracks, LP's.
Even though the RIAA , CRIA etc. is complaining that cd sales are down to like 6-10% per year , digital downloads are up to 100%+ ranges per year depending on what countries that stats are from.If the cartels would've jumped on to the digital download bandwagon like in 1999 instead of suing Napster , Kazaa etc , creating DRM software & suing there own costumers they would be doing way better now raking in billions of dollars, but instead they alienated there fans so much that people are boycotting there products & are downloading them illegally instead.Now they are finally releasing music online DRM free. But is it to late for them to make up for the lost opportunity that they had & can they win back those costumers that are still boycotting the big 4 RIAA record labels? Only time will tell my Friends.
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The fact of the matter is, if an entire album is good enough, people will probably buy it as a CD.
Back when I first started listening to music, the concept album existed. Yes, Genesis, Rush, etc all put out albums that were meant to be listened to as a whole. And this was good. Bands were allowed time to develop and produce good music instead of having to be immediately profitable. Albums therefore probably contained more than ONE good song, which made them worth your buck. CDs have become too expensive and less artistic, depending upon one catchy tune to sell a product full of forgettable pap. How many ''Greatest Hits'' albums have you noticed recently that cause you to ask "They had enough hits to make an album?", or that have come out after the artist has put out only 2 or 3 albums? (I use album only for convenience and to show my age). The 99 cent download is comparable today to the sale of 45s years ago. And only 2 times as expensive :)
I'll download music and if I like the group and they come play in my area, I'll go see them and purchase their CDs there, as opposed to giving my money to the record companies.
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The Articles Topic is a very good addition to our new look CMX.
The convenience of sampling an mp3 track before buying online is such an easy way get the music you want.
Sampling random tracks is a very good way to expand your musical horizon.
I still buy CDs. I make some really good purchases in duty-free cities :wink:
I also get some good "bargain" CDs, checking that they are original artists of course, and not the old "someone-else-sings/plays" trap you can fall into...
Ok, I really mean to say I fell into...
At the moment I am playing: The Alan Parsons Project - performed by M.A.S.S. (I didn't pick up on the M.A.S.S. until I opened it!!) The result for me is a bit of musical horizon expanding... to Germany :lol:
Bottom line...music is good for us, however we get to listen to it!! :wink:
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It made headlines around the world when the Chinese government and Chinese internet service providers blocked access to Wikipedia in 2004, on the 15 year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Wikipedia was unblocked and reblocked several times over the years following, at times the blocks be...

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Articles Bot wrote:
It made headlines around the world when the Chinese government and Chinese internet service providers blocked access to Wikipedia in 2004, on the 15 year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Wikipedia was unblocked and reblocked several times over the years following, at times the blocks be...

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"I am very confident in the future of Internet search in China," Baidu Chairman Robin Li said. "This is a very basic need for every consumer in China."
http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.p ... 850#p45850

If it is a basic need to use a search engine, I think it is also a basic right to view global information from a source such as Wikipedia.
I think Wikipedia provides far more content than YouTube, which can be construed to be of a frivolous nature by comparison.
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battye
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From the perspective of the Chinese government, YouTube is probably just as much a threat as Wikipedia when it comes to distributing democratic messages. In fact, YouTube is probably a better medium to get messages across, often people will be more inclined to watch a video than read a Wikipedia article, not to mention that a video could be far more emotive than any text can, which could really stir people up. Even though there is a lot of rubbish on YouTube, and a lot of material is frivolous as you say, there is a lot of politically motivated content on their too.

With regards to Baidu, I've heard it mentioned that hardly anybody in China uses Google, they prefer the local alternative. Which is strange, because I would imagine there is a good chance that there is some filtering going on in the background which perhaps Google wouldn't do.
CricketMX.com in 2022: Still the home of bat's, rat's and other farmyard animals!

"OK, life [as you chose to define it] repeats until there are no more lessons to be learned." - nrnoble (June 12, 2005)
"the new forum looks awesome, it's getting bigger & better" - p2p-sharing-rules (11 Jan, 2008)
"Looks like CMX is not only getting bigger...but, also getting better!!" - moongirl (14 Dec, 2007)
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Restriction on media isn't a good thing. But even in a 'western civilization' media isn't 100% truthful. Often bought to sway an opinion. Essentially the same thing?
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Certainly, but in the western world is it concealed more cleverly. Through a series of corporate links and relationships, you'll often see different media outlets report on issues differently. For instance, if TV1 reports on a particular company, which happens to be a subsidiary of a company who invests in advertising on TV1, then the coverage will be a lot different to TV2's coverage, where no such relationship exists. Maybe this isn't restriction, but it's certainly looking after ones interests. Either way, the end result means viewers get a skewed version of the story to favour one particular viewpoint, to sway opinion as you said.

I'm not sure about Canada and the US, but in Australia politics are covered reasonably fairly. You will naturally find an abundance of talk show hosts and interviewers who quite clearly support a particular political party, but on the whole I think we have a fair system. Certainly, there is nothing that violates basic rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of information.
CricketMX.com in 2022: Still the home of bat's, rat's and other farmyard animals!

"OK, life [as you chose to define it] repeats until there are no more lessons to be learned." - nrnoble (June 12, 2005)
"the new forum looks awesome, it's getting bigger & better" - p2p-sharing-rules (11 Jan, 2008)
"Looks like CMX is not only getting bigger...but, also getting better!!" - moongirl (14 Dec, 2007)
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Most of WinMX's users left the one time market leading P2P program in late 2005, when the developers gave in to the RIAA's cease and desist order. Thanks to efforts by various loyal individuals and supporter groups in the greater WinMX community, just because the owners of WinMX literally pulled the...

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Articles Bot wrote:
Most of WinMX's users left the one time market leading P2P program in late 2005, when the developers gave in to the RIAA's cease and desist order. Thanks to efforts by various loyal individuals and supporter groups in the greater WinMX community, just because the owners of WinMX literally pulled the...

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I enjoyed WinMX for a while but there are better alternatives for file sharing. Much of the reason I used WinMX was for the chat rooms but those communities died and I got tired of the bull$hit that erupted a few years ago. I haven't been on WinMX in years. Actually, my file sharing use has dwindled considerably over the past couple of years.

But it is impressive that WinMX has survived.
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I haven't been on WinMX in years, but what sets it apart from the rest is, as you said, the community. Unfortunately it has had its fair share of dramas, but you have to expect that on the internet :P

As I said in the article, there's a few million users in Japan alone still using WinMX - there it is one of the top P2P programs. As long as you have any active participation in the millions, I think WinMX will avoid "death" so to speak. It will be interesting to review this at the same time next year.
CricketMX.com in 2022: Still the home of bat's, rat's and other farmyard animals!

"OK, life [as you chose to define it] repeats until there are no more lessons to be learned." - nrnoble (June 12, 2005)
"the new forum looks awesome, it's getting bigger & better" - p2p-sharing-rules (11 Jan, 2008)
"Looks like CMX is not only getting bigger...but, also getting better!!" - moongirl (14 Dec, 2007)
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Japanese are still a big part of the WinMX community and always will be.WinMX supports many languages that's one reason why it got so big in Japan because not too many p2p apps back in WinMX's heyday didn't support the Japanese language.

People still use WinMX cause it has a great community atmosphere kind of like a family .It has the chat rooms which is a great place to meet people and develop friendships with your fellow users who have the same interest as yourself , unlike other networks where they don't have a community type feeling to them. If WinMX didn't have the chat room built in to it, maybe WinMX wouldn't be around anymore.When FrontCode pulled the plug the chat rooms acted as an important gathering place for all the tech users to get together to find ways to save the network from dying.

I'm still supporting the WinMX network. I don't download from it as much as I use to download.I download the odd album from people in the chat rooms that I hang out in.I'm mainly uploading new content to help bring new content to the network and hang out in some chat rooms.I did leave the network a couple of time because of the drama BS , but I ended up going back cause I missed the network , missed seeing the same old faces and friends in chat rooms.It's hard to break the habit of using something that you're so familiar with.
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