[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I happen to find a lot of older music is a lot better than some of the newer music. That's due to two things. The loudness wars and that some older music is just better.

I wonder if J.S. Bach-like music is still being written. That guy, and others in the baroque era, did some seriously complex stuff.

The loudness wars ruins the dynamic range and in some cases, the music is pushed so close to 0db that is actually distorts. That seems to be what a lot of people are into these days. The best way to fix this is to stop buying victims of the loudness wars and only buy music that's not that way. Then maybe the record companies will get the iead that the loudness wars is a rather bad idea.

True. When looking for older music, I always get the oldest CD version I can find because of this. My entire library has a huge dynamic range, apart from some albums released in later years, of which there are no older versions.

Old eBooks are not going to be a issue if you use ePub. ePub is XML in a ZIP container. Even if ePub goes away, as long as there is no DRM, all you have to do is unzip the ePub and you have it's component parts. Chances are you'd be able to do something with those parts and make a new eBook.

I expect EPUB to be convertible into basically every other format that is going to be devised. The HTML/CSS spec and add-on EPUB files are well understood.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I couldn't imagine hiding games in my GOG library. Like you, I've scooped up numerous old games for pennies on the dollar, though I mainly stick to playing a few old favorites (Outlaws, Blood, TFC, Fallout and The Temple of Elemental Evil will always have a home on my hard drive).

I have ToEE as well. I assume you played other RPG classics from the 1998 - 2006 era as well

I disagree that old games will become unplayable. Granted, I would face major challenges installing and running Outlaws or Thief from my original CDs, but GOG's emulator magic has worked wonders. Redneck Rampage runs better via GOG than it ever did when it was brand new (the slacker developers programmed it for DOS and released it in the days of Windows 98).

While they may run, it's completely possible the graphics will become unusable. I'm now playing Sanitarium, but sometimes I have to refer to a walkthrough because I'm overlooking things on screen. Everything can be an object (possibly), and something that looks like an undefined blob of pixels on my 1920x1080 laptop screen sometimes is an object I require. IT's worse on my 1920x1200 24.1 desktop screen...