Um. And if I am a criminal (ie. Someone who flouts the law regularly), by what fraction of a percent do you think you have decreased my chances of having a gun by making them illegal?
Good, now think how much smaller the chances of me attacking you if I thought you almost certainly had a gun?
I'm sorry, but I find your argument particularly weak.
Like Sun with Java on the desktop, the GPL tries to tightly regulate what can and can't be done source code. Like Java on the desktop the GPL will eventually whither and die because who wants to deal with that bureaucratic BULLSHIT? Either code is free (BSD) or it isn't. Restricting developer's freedoms to use the source code how they see fight is wrong.
I have released code under the GPL, and seeing as it is my code, I feel no compunction about doing it. Furthermore, I like the fact that if someone improves the program, I get the improvements back if I want them. Furthermore, when I modify someone else's GPL'ed code, I am usually champing at the bit to give my modifications back to the author so everyone can benefit.
Look at it this way - I've already done the work on the code, so what is the effort of sending a diff to the author by comparison. I might even get a bit of fame out of it.
I have a problem with the basic proposition of hashcash. It it really reasonable to - in order to improve the efficiency of a system - introduce ineficiency into that system and and expect a positive outcome?
As an electronic engineer, this concept is very comfortable for me. Though it's more a case of "negative feedback" than inefficiency. Friction-free systems are usually very unstable.
In electronics you usually design a system to respond as fast as possible and then wrap a negative feedback loop around that. The result is a dynamic balance... The system responds well because it is straining to break free, and the feedback holds it to within designed constraints.
Negative feedback is by far the most common element in analog designs - go an look inside any audio amplifier.:-)
Whether this analogy applies to hashcash I don't know. But I do know that I feel nervous when I see a design without some sort of negative feedback in it, to force a dynamic equalibrium.
I have had the advantage of living in both Africa and the USA, and I can say straight off that the question misses the point altogether.
Commercials are not required to keep TV going. I know this because I have paid for TV, and got lots of stations with very few adverts. These adverts were only shown between shows, and there weren't very many. Mostly there were musical interludes, or a screen counting down to the next show. (I think this is changing, but that has more to do with greed than anything else.)
I would love to be able to buy cable TV with no adverts and specify exactly what channels I want. Remind me again why I should have 200 channels of absolute shit? I'd much rather have 5 channels of decent viewing.
The current model in the USA is one in which channels sell viewer's eyeballs to advertisers. Period. You as a viewer get no control over what shows should be on. You get to watch ridiculously short shows because of the 20 odd minutes of adverts rammed down your throat. In fact, the shows are only there as fillers between the adverts, and wouldn't be there if advertisers could figure out a way to get around it.
TV in the USA will continue sucking until the viewers actually have real control over the money that goes to broadcasters. Until then, they are just eyeballs.
I only have experience of four countries, but the USA TV model is by far the crappiest P.O.S. I have ever encountered. So bad in fact that I got rid of my TV.
How much does it actualy cost to run a station? Somehow I get the feeling it doesn't have to be as much to do with COST as much as PROFIT. As long as consumers in the USA can be convinced that they should sit down and be forcefed crap because there is no other way, this will continue.
There is another way. It works well, and it's been around for ages. It just involves the USA media cartels not having the power and money they would like. It also involves the "consumers" learning that they way things are done now has nothing to do with necessity.
I've never understood this fetish for advertising. Hopefully it'll one day just be a short entry under "insanity; greed; wasting others' time" in the history books.
Oh get off your whiney soapbox and get a sense of perspective.
It's his website and he can prominently display whatever he likes. And yes, I support your right to prominently whine about it, but it won't make me think any better of you (or from pointing out your faults).
If I have friends that go over to linux, they will do it because its something that is useful to them. All the "legalise marijauna" stickers in the world won't change that.
Of course, this might be because my friends aren't whiney gits, and are quite happy to let other people do things their own way as long as they don't hurt others.
"Shameless pot-promotion"? What a wonderfully mealy mouthed way of implying that pot is wrong and so is promoting its legalisation. I don't do any recreational drugs but I support the right of people to do what they like as long as it doesn't adversely affect others.
I think your comment is far more harmful than Mr Speck's. At least he isn't trying to shut someone up. ie. He isn't trying to adversely affect others.
About the only censorship I find worthy is the suppression of suppression by mealy mouthed moral police that are convinced their way is the only "true" way to live.
Your assumption of some dubious moral high ground deserves to be put in its place. I hope you consider this reply a small step on the way to that goal.
I find it incredibly sad that some idiots actually moderated you up. Looks like people will never just live and let live.
I haven't tried this, but I'll have a look. I use something else: I hacked PHPix into something I call PHPixDir, because PHPix didn't do what I need.
You dump all your files into a directory structure, and PHPixDir produces a web site from them. The URLs it makes are carefully chosen so you can just do a "wget -mk site" to make a hard static copy of the website. It's also careful to tell browsers to locally cache pictures etc. This is so I can have pics up for family on slow net connections elsewhere in the world. I can also send them the odd CDR.
PHPixDir is simple with some very well defined goals. Gallery looks like it does a lot more.
Anyway, if you are interested, PHPixDir and a demo site can be found here.
*shrug* I wish I could agree with you, but I don't.
I have generally been able to get massive savings and a huge increase in quality and power by building up my own machines. It helps that I usually buy the best power/price stuff (AMD CPUs usually) and carefully balance my systems to have no bottlenecks.
What can I say? YMMV, but I have been building my own machines since the XT, and I've won out every time. I don't buy from any particular place. I just keep my eyes open. I never buy the latest and greatest, but I put together mean machines.
It was $1 _per port_, and chipsets probably cost in the range of $8 or so to make.
I only repeat what the internal feeling was amongst the 1394 community, and I think that feeling is justified. I saw a number of chipsets that were going to have 1394 mysteriously lose that feature around this period.
I didn't realise that dissing Apple would be such a bone of contention. I find it quite funny, actually. They've done some cool things in their time, and this wasn't one of them. A little objectivity would be a good idea here.
Flamebait=2? I didn't just make this stuff up you know. Get a grip.
You're all wrong. Trust me on this - I've been writing stacks and designing 1394 hardware for a while now.
There is no difference between iLink and FireWire. They are different names for the same thing. Yes, there are two plug types. One is tiny and 4 pin, the other is bigger and 6 pin. The big one has power. They are both part of the IEEE 1394 standard. They are both FireWire. They are both iLink.
There is no difference at the protocol level. Trust me on this. I have had my nose rubbed in more 1394 protocol stacks and chipsets than I care to remember.
The main reason that this hasn't happened before is that nobody trusted Apple. Especially after their stunt where they tried to tack on huge royalty fees for every 1394 port (this after agreeing several years earlier to pool patents with the other people who made 1394 possible). They timed this particularly well, and managed to delay the uptake of 1394 by maybe 2 years, and in some cases, permanently. Basically, they were complete idiots and damn near shot off their foot at the ankle. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that 1394 isn't standard kit on todays PC motherboard chipsets. The royalties alone were close to the cost of the entire chipset.
It Sony hadn't stuffed 1394 into every camcoder on the planet, 1394 would be dead. Apple are NOT my favourite people. Greedy idiots.
I'm not sure if they are illegal in South Africa, but I don't ever remember getting such a call. Part of that is that it is not socially acceptable.
Nobody would buy anything because they would be too busy screaming at you or hanging up in a huff. This is a GOOD thing, I think.
Perhaps with enough opt-out etc. crap in the USA, it will eventually get to the point where cold calling people is simply considered so rude it won't work any more.
I really think opt-outs are the lowest sort of weasling. They only exist because politicians listen to money instead of people.:-P
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It isn't my sig. To be fair, I was being a bit imprecise. I thought talking about the other parts of your message that were a bit dubious would be boring and a bit off topic, not to mention anal.:-)
"Submittor" is actually spelt "submitter", yes. "ebay" is "eBay". "b/c" is amusing from someone complaining about "whilst". For that matter any use of nonstandard English or jargon is asking for trouble in a comment about English you consider nonstandard.:-)
On the whole your punctuation is probably better than mine. I don't usually care, but I have this built in need to correct people that think their English is the only English. Feel free to use your brand of English, just don't confuse it with all of English. That probably goes for things like milk, bread and Coke too.:-)
I have heard "lurvely" used in various countries by the way.:-)
I admit it, I saw an oppurtunity to take a dig at you (in a hopefully funny way) and I took it.:-)
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Whilst? Lurvely? WTF?
Um.
"Whilst" is a perfectly legitimate English word, and is in common use by many people.
"Lurvely" was obviously used for effect. This is a mild form of "humour". (Note that it is permissible to spell "humour" with a "u".)
You wouldn't happen to be American, would you?
Whatever your nationality, I suggest you travel more and read more.
(A list of your spelling errors is omitted for brevity.)
Is the problem with universities? Are any researcher doing work on codecs that could end up in the open forum?
I agree with you, and have decided to do something about it. OIC is a video codec I am writing. I hope it will be ready for prime time in a matter of months. No promises though.:-)
Right now, my only realistic approach to buy used CD's. Unfortunately, I feel bad because I really would like to support the artists out there. If there are any artists reading this article now, please... provide me with a way to pay you directly. I'll pay double what your royalty from a CD would be. At this point, I don't care about having MP3's legitimately anymore, but I do care about making sure the artists have incentive to keep doing their work.
I'm not an artist, but try fairtunes.com. You get to support the artists directly, through donations sent to them. Fairtunes will hunt down the artist for you and pay them your donation.
Which is akin, in some cases, to saying "come on in and take the kitchen sink while you're at it" for hardware manufacturers.
As a hardware designer I can say this is almost never the case. If you're any good, you know exactly how something was done. This doesn't mean that you can program the hardware though, because there are still too many ways they could lay out the interfaces.
I'll say it again: It is extremely rare that you are giving anything "secret" away by telling somehow to interface to your device. I'm sure lawyers like forcing their engineers to keep quiet, just in case, but there is no real technical reason to do this. It's akin to designing a car and using your own controls, then not telling drivers which pedals do what.
The weird thing is that it is always fast on my machine. I'm not sure what I do to my linux boxes to speed it up. I just enable DMA on the drives and a few other things. I'm a chronic fiddler.
I can start Mozilla cold, render the Slashdot root page and exit in under 4 seconds. That is on my 1.2GHz Athlon. My 900MHz Duron was the same speed tho, making me think that the CPU isnt the deciding factor here. The Duron had 128MB RAM,and the Athlon has 384MB, with some IDE drives. I use reiserfs.
Hah! I'm from Africa, and this doesn't bug me. Parts of Africa have some very cool toys and are way ahead of the USA in some ways (Dropped any calls lately on your cellphone? *snicker*). Another example would be electronic banking in South Africa which is waaaay better there than the US. (Yes, I have lived in both countries.)
We just have to teach certain parts of our population that nothing comes for free, and you bloody well get what you work for. The people that just knuckle down and do things do some very cool stuff.
So I guess what I'm saying is: Don't stress. We'll handle, and when we take over the world, we'll be nice to you.;-)
But how does this help the authors for used books? Hmmm? They don't receive ANY royalties from these sales... nor does the publisher. So what's in it for them if you do this? Now... if I could find a new book for $30 (which pays royalties, and Bezos loses money) or a used book for $15 (which pays NO royalties, and Bezos gets $$$ for the listing)... certainly the $15 book would probably get sold. Personally, I don't normally buy used book, except in very good condition, and a title that I want."
It helps them because it gets more people to read their books. Books are like drugs. You get people hooked on your variant, and then you offer them more later. This means you are more likely to buy their books new next time, just because you desperately need your fix. Even if you don't buy the books new, you are generating demand for that author's books. This will eventually generate more fame and sales for him.
It works this way for me, and I imagine, plenty of others. Even a bookworm like me can't afford to buy all my books new. I loan and borrow books within my circle of friends, and I feel no qualms about doing so. I'm a kind of pusher, and I generate addicts wherever I go, just by lending people books.
I think being able to adjust ourselves genetically is a good thing on average. We just have to be careful that we dont:
1) Decrease the overall genetic diversity of the population. ie. Mass produced specific genes are probably a bad idea.
2) Create people that can't mate with "normal" humans.
As long as (2) applies we are adding to the gene pool, and it think there are enough people having kids the natural way out there that (1) will be very difficult to make happen (gene-implanting virus epidemics aside).
The possibility exists that a modification could be made that ends up having bad consequences for the recipient decades later. This is the nature of reality. The risk means that people will think twice before doing it, which should provide some handy negative feedback. You have to consider the probabilities.
Would I be willing to make this choice for my offspring? Yes. I indirectly make this choice by picking a mate anyway. I won't make a choice carelessly, and I would only do it if I saw real benefit for my kids. Many choices you make in your lifetime have a significant impact on those around you. It's the nature of life, rather than the nature of this particular problem.
For those that would point out that my children would bear the lifelong burden of my choices, I agree and say "So what?". It would be one of many such choices, and I feel no moral qualms about making them. It is my responsibility to do so.
Just to be clear, I know we are currently in the "remove things we know to be bad" stage rather than the "designer water-breathing" gene stage. I'm just looking ahead a bit.
I find most of the complaints against this sort of thing to be in the gut-feeling-looking-for-a-pseudo-logical-argument category. The remainder have so far made points that haven't convinced me.
It is my understanding we are talking about copyright here, not trademarks. The Star Wars movies might become public domain, but the merchandise would still be protected by trademarks. Any derivative works would be protected by their own copyright starting from the date of publication.
Furthermore, the constitution states that there is a reason for people to profit off the work despite the copyright holders: for the benefit of society at large.
Copyrights aren't a God-given right, they're a constitution-given right, and one that the creators weren't sure was a good idea either.
We are not forcing people to give something away. We are waiting for their temporary monopoly on the creative expression of an idea to lapse - a monopoly given to them by we the society so that they might benefit more than if it didn't exist.
It's a gift, and its for a limited time only.
Your reply seems to take as a given the concept of "Intellectual Propety". I for one do not share your conviction that such a thing exists.
I don't want profit. I want freedom of expression that allows me to include what are now cultural icons in my work if I think it will enrich the experience I wish to create. I want to do this without someone else being able to dictate how I use it.
"In any case, you won't be getting any newly released books published (officially:-) in any format you can actually use."
www.baen.com has a bunch. You can get the titles BEFORE they hit the shelves. They come in several formats including plain HTML, and I own over 40 titles.
I love these people. I am horribly biased. They give me access to great books in many different convenient formats, and they trust me to be reasonable in what I do with them. No draconian anti-piracy crap.
"SOMEBODY has to pay for your content... if it's not the advertisers, it's gonna be you, directly out of your pocket. What's the worst of these two evils?"
Somebody has to pay? Fine. I'll pay. As an electronics engineer, I have a fair idea of just how little it costs to get the signal to my house. Any costs they have probably have to do with the thousands of hours of drivel they need to produce and cut to pad their adverts.
Why should I pay tens of dollars per month for lots of cut re-runs AND have to watch adverts? I _hate_ adverts. When I want to watch TV, I want to watch a particular program. I usually end up doing something else cos I couldnt be bothered to watch something that had 5 minutes cut out of it, along with almost 20 minutes of added crap that I mute and ignore.
The fact is that adverts do NOT give people something they want. The networks are basically there to produce shows for the advertisers. This marginalises you the viewer.
If the viewers pay for their TV, and only have a quarter of the channels, but they're actually worth watching, then the viewer wins.
Ok, so the networks might have less money. I certainly don't care. I'd have a service worth paying for. Unlike the current crap. The broadcaster wouldnt be treating me as a slave and an enemy either, because I WOULD BE THE ONE PAYING, not some dingbat who wants to sell me a worthless piece of junk.
FYI, I have happily moved from AT&T Digital cable with all the bells and whistles to no TV at all. I don't seem to be missing that much. I'll accept adverts on a free channel (because I won't watch it), but that's it.
I know that it is possible to produce good, cheap subscriber-only programming without adverts, because I used to have it. I can't get it here in the USA though.
"So then, isn't the question of what type of sensitivity *human eyes* have? Do we have logarithmic or linear sensitivity?"
Logarithmic, by far. The eye has an astounding dynamic range. Walking from a normally lit room out into the sunlight can mean a change in ambient brightness of around a factor of 400.
Because of this, an 8-bit linear representation of a picture tends to have too much information (ie more than you can see) in the brighter values, and not nearly enough near the bottom end of the range.
This is why 24-bit linear colour isnt really enough. A smoothly graduated dark blue or green will show up as banded. You could probably use less than 24 bits though, if you used a carefully tuned logarithmic scale.
"Windows and Linux both suck. The difference is that Linux sucks twice as fast and 10 times more reliably, and since you have the source, it's your fault."
*wipes tears from eyes*. Oh God. That made my day.:-)
I use Linux for everything, and it seems you've had some awful luck. I agree that Debian is nice in some ways, but comes with the crappiest default config files of them all.
Slashdot Mirror
Um. And if I am a criminal (ie. Someone who flouts the law regularly), by what fraction of a percent do you think you have decreased my chances of having a gun by making them illegal?
Good, now think how much smaller the chances of me attacking you if I thought you almost certainly had a gun?
I'm sorry, but I find your argument particularly weak.
Like Sun with Java on the desktop, the GPL tries to tightly regulate what can and can't be done source code. Like Java on the desktop the GPL will eventually whither and die because who wants to deal with that bureaucratic BULLSHIT? Either code is free (BSD) or it isn't. Restricting developer's freedoms to use the source code how they see fight is wrong.
I have released code under the GPL, and seeing as it is my code, I feel no compunction about doing it. Furthermore, I like the fact that if someone improves the program, I get the improvements back if I want them. Furthermore, when I modify someone else's GPL'ed code, I am usually champing at the bit to give my modifications back to the author so everyone can benefit.
Look at it this way - I've already done the work on the code, so what is the effort of sending a diff to the author by comparison. I might even get a bit of fame out of it.
I have a problem with the basic proposition of hashcash. It it really reasonable to - in order to improve the efficiency of a system - introduce ineficiency into that system and and expect a positive outcome?
:-)
As an electronic engineer, this concept is very comfortable for me. Though it's more a case of "negative feedback" than inefficiency. Friction-free systems are usually very unstable.
In electronics you usually design a system to respond as fast as possible and then wrap a negative feedback loop around that. The result is a dynamic balance... The system responds well because it is straining to break free, and the feedback holds it to within designed constraints.
Negative feedback is by far the most common element in analog designs - go an look inside any audio amplifier.
Whether this analogy applies to hashcash I don't know. But I do know that I feel nervous when I see a design without some sort of negative feedback in it, to force a dynamic equalibrium.
I have had the advantage of living in both Africa and the USA, and I can say straight off that the question misses the point altogether.
Commercials are not required to keep TV going. I know this because I have paid for TV, and got lots of stations with very few adverts. These adverts were only shown between shows, and there weren't very many. Mostly there were musical interludes, or a screen counting down to the next show. (I think this is changing, but that has more to do with greed than anything else.)
I would love to be able to buy cable TV with no adverts and specify exactly what channels I want. Remind me again why I should have 200 channels of absolute shit? I'd much rather have 5 channels of decent viewing.
The current model in the USA is one in which channels sell viewer's eyeballs to advertisers. Period. You as a viewer get no control over what shows should be on. You get to watch ridiculously short shows because of the 20 odd minutes of adverts rammed down your throat. In fact, the shows are only there as fillers between the adverts, and wouldn't be there if advertisers could figure out a way to get around it.
TV in the USA will continue sucking until the viewers actually have real control over the money that goes to broadcasters. Until then, they are just eyeballs.
I only have experience of four countries, but the USA TV model is by far the crappiest P.O.S. I have ever encountered. So bad in fact that I got rid of my TV.
How much does it actualy cost to run a station? Somehow I get the feeling it doesn't have to be as much to do with COST as much as PROFIT. As long as consumers in the USA can be convinced that they should sit down and be forcefed crap because there is no other way, this will continue.
There is another way. It works well, and it's been around for ages. It just involves the USA media cartels not having the power and money they would like. It also involves the "consumers" learning that they way things are done now has nothing to do with necessity.
I've never understood this fetish for advertising. Hopefully it'll one day just be a short entry under "insanity; greed; wasting others' time" in the history books.
Oh get off your whiney soapbox and get a sense of perspective.
It's his website and he can prominently display whatever he likes. And yes, I support your right to prominently whine about it, but it won't make me think any better of you (or from pointing out your faults).
If I have friends that go over to linux, they will do it because its something that is useful to them. All the "legalise marijauna" stickers in the world won't change that.
Of course, this might be because my friends aren't whiney gits, and are quite happy to let other people do things their own way as long as they don't hurt others.
"Shameless pot-promotion"? What a wonderfully mealy mouthed way of implying that pot is wrong and so is promoting its legalisation. I don't do any recreational drugs but I support the right of people to do what they like as long as it doesn't adversely affect others.
I think your comment is far more harmful than Mr Speck's. At least he isn't trying to shut someone up. ie. He isn't trying to adversely affect others.
About the only censorship I find worthy is the suppression of suppression by mealy mouthed moral police that are convinced their way is the only "true" way to live.
Your assumption of some dubious moral high ground deserves to be put in its place. I hope you consider this reply a small step on the way to that goal.
I find it incredibly sad that some idiots actually moderated you up. Looks like people will never just live and let live.
-Nurf
I haven't tried this, but I'll have a look. I use something else: I hacked PHPix into something I call PHPixDir, because PHPix didn't do what I need.
You dump all your files into a directory structure, and PHPixDir produces a web site from them. The URLs it makes are carefully chosen so you can just do a "wget -mk site" to make a hard static copy of the website. It's also careful to tell browsers to locally cache pictures etc. This is so I can have pics up for family on slow net connections elsewhere in the world. I can also send them the odd CDR.
PHPixDir is simple with some very well defined goals. Gallery looks like it does a lot more.
Anyway, if you are interested, PHPixDir and a demo site can be found here.
*shrug* I wish I could agree with you, but I don't.
I have generally been able to get massive savings and a huge increase in quality and power by building up my own machines. It helps that I usually buy the best power/price stuff (AMD CPUs usually) and carefully balance my systems to have no bottlenecks.
What can I say? YMMV, but I have been building my own machines since the XT, and I've won out every time. I don't buy from any particular place. I just keep my eyes open. I never buy the latest and greatest, but I put together mean machines.
It was $1 _per port_, and chipsets probably cost in the range of $8 or so to make.
I only repeat what the internal feeling was amongst the 1394 community, and I think that feeling is justified. I saw a number of chipsets that were going to have 1394 mysteriously lose that feature around this period.
I didn't realise that dissing Apple would be such a bone of contention. I find it quite funny, actually. They've done some cool things in their time, and this wasn't one of them. A little objectivity would be a good idea here.
Flamebait=2? I didn't just make this stuff up you know. Get a grip.
Ergh.
You're all wrong. Trust me on this - I've been writing stacks and designing 1394 hardware for a while now.
There is no difference between iLink and FireWire. They are different names for the same thing. Yes, there are two plug types. One is tiny and 4 pin, the other is bigger and 6 pin. The big one has power. They are both part of the IEEE 1394 standard. They are both FireWire. They are both iLink.
There is no difference at the protocol level. Trust me on this. I have had my nose rubbed in more 1394 protocol stacks and chipsets than I care to remember.
The main reason that this hasn't happened before is that nobody trusted Apple. Especially after their stunt where they tried to tack on huge royalty fees for every 1394 port (this after agreeing several years earlier to pool patents with the other people who made 1394 possible). They timed this particularly well, and managed to delay the uptake of 1394 by maybe 2 years, and in some cases, permanently. Basically, they were complete idiots and damn near shot off their foot at the ankle. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that 1394 isn't standard kit on todays PC motherboard chipsets. The royalties alone were close to the cost of the entire chipset.
It Sony hadn't stuffed 1394 into every camcoder on the planet, 1394 would be dead. Apple are NOT my favourite people. Greedy idiots.
I'm not sure if they are illegal in South Africa, but I don't ever remember getting such a call. Part of that is that it is not socially acceptable.
:-P
Nobody would buy anything because they would be too busy screaming at you or hanging up in a huff. This is a GOOD thing, I think.
Perhaps with enough opt-out etc. crap in the USA, it will eventually get to the point where cold calling people is simply considered so rude it won't work any more.
I really think opt-outs are the lowest sort of weasling. They only exist because politicians listen to money instead of people.
It isn't my sig. To be fair, I was being a bit imprecise. I thought talking about the other parts of your message that were a bit dubious would be boring and a bit off topic, not to mention anal. :-)
:-)
:-)
:-)
:-)
"Submittor" is actually spelt "submitter", yes. "ebay" is "eBay". "b/c" is amusing from someone complaining about "whilst". For that matter any use of nonstandard English or jargon is asking for trouble in a comment about English you consider nonstandard.
On the whole your punctuation is probably better than mine. I don't usually care, but I have this built in need to correct people that think their English is the only English. Feel free to use your brand of English, just don't confuse it with all of English. That probably goes for things like milk, bread and Coke too.
I have heard "lurvely" used in various countries by the way.
I admit it, I saw an oppurtunity to take a dig at you (in a hopefully funny way) and I took it.
Whilst? Lurvely? WTF?
Um.
"Whilst" is a perfectly legitimate English word, and is in common use by many people.
"Lurvely" was obviously used for effect. This is a mild form of "humour". (Note that it is permissible to spell "humour" with a "u".)
You wouldn't happen to be American, would you?
Whatever your nationality, I suggest you travel more and read more.
(A list of your spelling errors is omitted for brevity.)
Is the problem with universities? Are any researcher doing work on codecs that could end up in the open forum?
:-)
I agree with you, and have decided to do something about it. OIC is a video codec I am writing. I hope it will be ready for prime time in a matter of months. No promises though.
Check my sig for a link if you are interested.
Right now, my only realistic approach to buy used CD's. Unfortunately, I feel bad because I really would like to support the artists out there. If there are any artists reading this article now, please... provide me with a way to pay you directly. I'll pay double what your royalty from a CD would be. At this point, I don't care about having MP3's legitimately anymore, but I do care about making sure the artists have incentive to keep doing their work.
I'm not an artist, but try fairtunes.com.
You get to support the artists directly, through donations sent to them. Fairtunes will hunt down the artist for you and pay them your donation.
Which is akin, in some cases, to saying "come on in and take the kitchen sink while you're at it" for hardware manufacturers.
As a hardware designer I can say this is almost never the case. If you're any good, you know exactly how something was done. This doesn't mean that you can program the hardware though, because there are still too many ways they could lay out the interfaces.
I'll say it again: It is extremely rare that you are giving anything "secret" away by telling somehow to interface to your device. I'm sure lawyers like forcing their engineers to keep quiet, just in case, but there is no real technical reason to do this. It's akin to designing a car and using your own controls, then not telling drivers which pedals do what.
I see fear here, not reason.
Hmm. Yeah, I know it can be slow.
The weird thing is that it is always fast on my machine. I'm not sure what I do to my linux boxes to speed it up. I just enable DMA on the drives and a few other things. I'm a chronic fiddler.
I can start Mozilla cold, render the Slashdot root page and exit in under 4 seconds. That is on my 1.2GHz Athlon. My 900MHz Duron was the same speed tho, making me think that the CPU isnt the deciding factor here. The Duron had 128MB RAM,and the Athlon has 384MB, with some IDE drives. I use reiserfs.
*shrug* I wonder what it is?
Hah! I'm from Africa, and this doesn't bug me. Parts of Africa have some very cool toys and are way ahead of the USA in some ways (Dropped any calls lately on your cellphone? *snicker*). Another example would be electronic banking in South Africa which is waaaay better there than the US. (Yes, I have lived in both countries.)
;-)
We just have to teach certain parts of our population that nothing comes for free, and you bloody well get what you work for. The people that just knuckle down and do things do some very cool stuff.
So I guess what I'm saying is: Don't stress. We'll handle, and when we take over the world, we'll be nice to you.
But how does this help the authors for used books? Hmmm? They don't receive ANY royalties from these sales ... nor does the publisher. So what's in it for them if you do this? Now ... if I could find a new book for $30 (which pays royalties, and Bezos loses money) or a used book for $15 (which pays NO royalties, and Bezos gets $$$ for the listing) ... certainly the $15 book would probably get sold. Personally, I don't normally buy used book, except in very good condition, and a title that I want."
It helps them because it gets more people to read their books. Books are like drugs. You get people hooked on your variant, and then you offer them more later. This means you are more likely to buy their books new next time, just because you desperately need your fix. Even if you don't buy the books new, you are generating demand for that author's books. This will eventually generate more fame and sales for him.
It works this way for me, and I imagine, plenty of others. Even a bookworm like me can't afford to buy all my books new. I loan and borrow books within my circle of friends, and I feel no qualms about doing so. I'm a kind of pusher, and I generate addicts wherever I go, just by lending people books.
I think being able to adjust ourselves genetically is a good thing on average. We just have to be careful that we dont:
1) Decrease the overall genetic diversity of the population. ie. Mass produced specific genes are probably a bad idea.
2) Create people that can't mate with "normal" humans.
As long as (2) applies we are adding to the gene pool, and it think there are enough people having kids the natural way out there that (1) will be very difficult to make happen (gene-implanting virus epidemics aside).
The possibility exists that a modification could be made that ends up having bad consequences for the recipient decades later. This is the nature of reality. The risk means that people will think twice before doing it, which should provide some handy negative feedback. You have to consider the probabilities.
Would I be willing to make this choice for my offspring? Yes. I indirectly make this choice by picking a mate anyway. I won't make a choice carelessly, and I would only do it if I saw real benefit for my kids. Many choices you make in your lifetime have a significant impact on those around you. It's the nature of life, rather than the nature of this particular problem.
For those that would point out that my children would bear the lifelong burden of my choices, I agree and say "So what?". It would be one of many such choices, and I feel no moral qualms about making them. It is my responsibility to do so.
Just to be clear, I know we are currently in the "remove things we know to be bad" stage rather than the "designer water-breathing" gene stage. I'm just looking ahead a bit.
I find most of the complaints against this sort of thing to be in the gut-feeling-looking-for-a-pseudo-logical-argument category. The remainder have so far made points that haven't convinced me.
It is my understanding we are talking about copyright here, not trademarks. The Star Wars movies might become public domain, but the merchandise would still be protected by trademarks. Any derivative works would be protected by their own copyright starting from the date of publication.
Furthermore, the constitution states that there is a reason for people to profit off the work despite the copyright holders: for the benefit of society at large.
Copyrights aren't a God-given right, they're a constitution-given right, and one that the creators weren't sure was a good idea either.
We are not forcing people to give something away. We are waiting for their temporary monopoly on the creative expression of an idea to lapse - a monopoly given to them by we the society so that they might benefit more than if it didn't exist.
It's a gift, and its for a limited time only.
Your reply seems to take as a given the concept of "Intellectual Propety". I for one do not share your conviction that such a thing exists.
I don't want profit. I want freedom of expression that allows me to include what are now cultural icons in my work if I think it will enrich the experience I wish to create. I want to do this without someone else being able to dictate how I use it.
"In any case, you won't be getting any newly released books published (officially :-) in any format you can actually use."
www.baen.com has a bunch. You can get the titles BEFORE they hit the shelves. They come in several formats including plain HTML, and I own over 40 titles.
I love these people. I am horribly biased. They give me access to great books in many different convenient formats, and they trust me to be reasonable in what I do with them. No draconian anti-piracy crap.
"SOMEBODY has to pay for your content... if it's not the advertisers, it's gonna be you, directly out of your pocket. What's the worst of these two evils?"
Somebody has to pay? Fine. I'll pay. As an electronics engineer, I have a fair idea of just how little it costs to get the signal to my house. Any costs they have probably have to do with the thousands of hours of drivel they need to produce and cut to pad their adverts.
Why should I pay tens of dollars per month for lots of cut re-runs AND have to watch adverts? I _hate_ adverts. When I want to watch TV, I want to watch a particular program. I usually end up doing something else cos I couldnt be bothered to watch something that had 5 minutes cut out of it, along with almost 20 minutes of added crap that I mute and ignore.
The fact is that adverts do NOT give people something they want. The networks are basically there to produce shows for the advertisers. This marginalises you the viewer.
If the viewers pay for their TV, and only have a quarter of the channels, but they're actually worth watching, then the viewer wins.
Ok, so the networks might have less money. I certainly don't care. I'd have a service worth paying for. Unlike the current crap. The broadcaster wouldnt be treating me as a slave and an enemy either, because I WOULD BE THE ONE PAYING, not some dingbat who wants to sell me a worthless piece of junk.
FYI, I have happily moved from AT&T Digital cable with all the bells and whistles to no TV at all. I don't seem to be missing that much. I'll accept adverts on a free channel (because I won't watch it), but that's it.
I know that it is possible to produce good, cheap subscriber-only programming without adverts, because I used to have it. I can't get it here in the USA though.
"So then, isn't the question of what type of sensitivity *human eyes* have? Do we have logarithmic or linear sensitivity?"
Logarithmic, by far. The eye has an astounding dynamic range. Walking from a normally lit room out into the sunlight can mean a change in ambient brightness of around a factor of 400.
Because of this, an 8-bit linear representation of a picture tends to have too much information (ie more than you can see) in the brighter values, and not nearly enough near the bottom end of the range.
This is why 24-bit linear colour isnt really enough. A smoothly graduated dark blue or green will show up as banded. You could probably use less than 24 bits though, if you used a carefully tuned logarithmic scale.
Hah! I've heard that one before! "No really, we took a picture of the galactic center but it was off at the time!".
What? Is it having its lightbulb changed or something?
Sheesh.
;-)
"Windows and Linux both suck. The difference is that Linux sucks twice as fast and 10 times more reliably, and since you have the source, it's your fault."
:-)
*wipes tears from eyes*. Oh God. That made my day.
I use Linux for everything, and it seems you've had some awful luck. I agree that Debian is nice in some ways, but comes with the crappiest default config files of them all.