Subject URL: CD eating fungus

A fungus has been discovered in tropical Belize that eats through CDs.

The fungus had burrowed into the CD from the outer edge, then devoured the thin aluminium layer and some of the data-storing polycarbonate resin.

So it eats aluminium? Isn't that far scarier than the fact it happened to pick a CD to eat?

I'm positive this is old news but various places are ranting about how Thomson multimedia has "bought the MP3 format" and is now charging for it. Which is why MusicMatch (owned by Thomson multimedia) is free while other encoders charge a fee (and this is also the excuse Microsoft is using for not including full CD quality MP3 encoding into new versions of Windows Media).

What exactly have they bought? At a guess it would be the Fraunhofer codec? Or Xing? I know this cannot possibly effect the completely free codec (and best quality) LAME. Are the best ripping/encoding combinations as described on the awesome r3mix.net still legal?

And what's with charging for using MP3s for sale/streaming? Are they trying to kill the format forcing everyone onto the completely free Windows Media format? Stupidity. And again. Do they own all MP3 streaming no matter what the codec?

And to top it off they go and release "MP3Pro" the new "backwards compatible" MP3 encoder. So it's another better quality codec? Just like LAME?

Bah.

This morning I stirred my tea with a fork. Last night I decided I'd take a week off, most likely in a couple of weeks. Yesterday I finished the back-end of a project a week early. Yesterday arvo I got bored and added image uploads to my online CD database. Last night I got angry at someone I've never met and never will meet; goodbye and don't come back Anita of Big Brother. On Saturday I drank half a bottle of Baileys and felt my stomach churn the next day. A week ago I decided I was lactose intolerant. Saturday night saw me have a dream about seeing Alex Lloyd. All he did was bash massive "Rover"-esque white balloon/pillows on the stage while a backing tape played all the music and sang for him. Today, I have nothing to do.