Word: prelaunch
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...works. Tens of thousands signed up for prelaunch testing, even though There had space for only 2,000 at first. Will it keep working? That's for you and your friends to find...
That's what it feels like to use the three paid digital-music services that are jockeying for your pocket in the wake of the old Napster's demise. They are MusicNet, owned by three of the five big record labels; Pressplay, owned by the other two; and a prelaunch trial version of the newly legal Napster. All three are so restrictive, you would think you were downloading homeland-security documents, not 'N Sync. And because the record labels are still squabbling about Internet licensing, nobody has a complete selection except those street-corner kids: morally dubious services like Morpheus...
...That's what it feels like to use the three paid digital-music services that are jockeying for your pocket in the wake of the old Napster's demise. They are MusicNet, owned by three of the five big record labels; Pressplay, owned by the other two; and a prelaunch trial version of the newly legal Napster. All three are so restrictive, you would think you were downloading homeland-security documents, not 'N Sync. And because the record labels are still squabbling about Internet licensing, nobody has a complete selection except those street-corner kids: morally dubious services like Morpheus...
Nobody called this prelaunch ritual by anything like its proper name. What people called it was "checking the laces"--a reference to the practice early cosmonauts had of tightening their space suits' laces before flight. When laces disappeared from modern suits, the checking did too, but superstitious crews needed something to take its place, and ceremonial voiding worked fine...
...would be returned to earth aboard the Soviet craft after a period of quarantine, possibly aboard an earth-orbiting space station. Says a NASA official: "It's a scheme that has a lot of attractive aspects." Estimated cost to the U.S.: a cool $2.5 billion and six years of prelaunch labor. The round-trip mission itself would take two years...