> ‘How do you burn a CD?’ It’s something that was common for us growing up, but that’s knowledge that’s being lost as everything is sort of transitioning to digital.”
This paragraph is using a colloquial but wrong definition of the word "digital" - in this context it seems to mean "online audio/video distribution".
This is wrong because CDs, by definition, hold digital data. Some of us who are old enough to have lived through the transition from unapologetically analog audio media - vinyl records and magnetic cassette tape - to digital, optical compact discs. That was the real transition to digital, not the transition from digital physical media to digital online downloads (both are still digital). Likewise, the transition from analog broadcast TV and analog VHS tapes to digital TV and VCD/DVD/BD was less than 20 years ago. (Side note: LaserDisc stores video analogly but audio digitally.)
Digital is a word that fundamentally contrasts with analog - where analog means infinite variation, no resistance to noise, and imperfect copies. Digital simply means being composed of integers, which further implies finite information and allows perfect copies.
The misuse of the word digital to mean superfluous things is a mockery to the monumental human achievement in inventing and perfecting digital machines and methods of storing/transmitting images and sounds, being much higher quality than previous analog technologies (e.g. photographic film) and allowing information to be delivered reliably across wider space and time.
Digital does not imply electronic, new and high-tech, virtual, or communications-based (as opposed to transporting matter-based recording media). Mechanical LEGO logic is digital. DNA is digital and very old. Alphabets are digital (we agree today there are exactly 26 letters in English). The telegraph network was digital and messages were relayed by humans. A "virtual" meeting involving digital videoconferencing could just as well be held using analog NTSC video channels; the fact that digital technology happened to be used doesn't define the virtual meeting. "Digital marketing" is understood as doing business on the web/Internet through electronic online communications, but I could argue that a paper brochure designed on a digital computer is also "digital marketing".
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digital
Which of these definitions means "fancier than what the speaker grew accustomed to during their formative years from 10-30 years old"?
I know I am just one small example, but their decision to cheat me out of a few dollars has cost them hundreds in subscription fees.
It seems it would be more fair to pay a listing minimum, then royalties if they meet a certain criteria.
Does apple say you own them, or does it say "you are licensing the content" like amazon says with kindle books?
pryelluw•2h ago
Correction:
I meant to speak of my refusal to buy downloadable media like tv shows, movies, video games or music.
As penance, I shall force myself to write maven config for old Java projects.
slyfox125•2h ago
nayuki•2h ago
DVDs are digital-only media - "Digital Versatile Disc". There is no analog component in it. The disc stores data digitally.
Furthermore, if by digital you mean online distribution, well, you aren't buying media by definition. You're downloading bits from a wire (or radio wave) and storing it on your own physical media.
Among the general public, there is rampant terminology abuse and devaluing of what the word "digital" means - it is in contrast to "analog", not in contrast to physical, non-electronic, non-online, etc. For example, you can make digital logic gates out of mechanical LEGO; you can deliver digital data on floppy disks via sneakers.
linotype•2h ago
JumpCrisscross•2h ago
The problem is owned (for practical purposes) versus leased content. Not digital or physical.
acheron•2h ago
Dylan16807•1h ago
happytoexplain•2h ago
I assume the parent is using it to mean streaming, or other kinds of DRM.
pryelluw•1h ago
A wasp is just a bee with anger management issues.
Technically incorrect as they’re not quite the same. But amusing nonetheless.
hmry•2h ago
Enclosed discs like Minidisc solve most of those, but still die from age.
Still hope they can perfect those "laser-created point clouds in glass cubes" media someday
i80and•2h ago
It's been sobering for me.
pradmatic•2h ago
beej71•1h ago
btrettel•1h ago
https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/
Not everything was recoverable, but the vast vast majority was.
vel0city•2h ago
I've yet to lose any data after validating a good burn on any M-DISC DVD even well over a decade now. I have also not experienced any loss in data for Verbatim Blu-rays after validating the burn.
14•1h ago
cosmic_cheese•1h ago
Their size is great, too, being about as small as you can get while still being easy to handle across the gamut of human hand sizes yet too big to easily lose, and they’re more fun than SD and CF cards with their outer plastic casings coming in all sorts of colors and patterns.
A new media format that takes these strengths and fuses them with those of flash storage would be wonderful. The only thing is that I don’t know how you’d solve is the bit rot problem flash has when spending extended time powered down — maybe dedicated storage for parity data? Capacitors that hold just enough juice to keep the flash “alive”? Redundant flash chips? This isn’t my area of expertise so I’m just throwing things at the wall haha.