Besides when have you ever used something that needed the speed of firewire which was not videocamera
There exist well-known types of devices other than video input devices that require the higher throughput of a FireWire or High Speed USB serial bus. How about an external hard drive or an external DVD recorder? Internal doesn't always cut it on a notebook computer, and Samba-in-a-box network-attached storage isn't yet on the shelves of Best Buy.
I'm guessing "digital remastering", changed to "digital movie remastering" after the term "DRM" became associated with negative feelings toward digital restrictions management schemes that introduce infuriating barriers to fair use of copyrighted works.
I have downloaded free music that is offered free by artists often uninterested in composing for profit, and I now listen almost exclusively to free and/or libre music.
every computer, OS, hifi component, and pocket device plays MP3.
Every computer? Not those that come with Red Hat Linux Professional, which has dropped MP3 support because of the prohibitive cost of licensing Fraunhofer's patents. Where can I buy an x86 PC with a free operating system and a licensed MP3 encoder pre-installed to have it shipped to an address in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA?
It might have been illegal but now it contains no proprietary code
Though LAME has excised all of the ISO MP3 encoder code, LAME still implements a patented process, namely that of encoding a conforming MP3 bitstream. Because of this, U.S. patent law considers "mak[ing], us[ing], offer[ing] for sale, or sell[ing]" LAME software without Fraunhofer's permission unlawful.
Also has Mac & Windows clients, check the gift page for more info.
The giFT client for Windows is currently broken. Without a working Windows client, there won't be a large user base, and without a large user base, there won't be many obscure works available to download. Most casual computer users aren't willing to "just install Linux" because either GNU/Linux won't autodetect their hardware as well as OEM Windows did, they don't have space for a Linux partition nor money for another hard drive, or they frequently use Wine-incompatible programs that have no direct Linux compatible replacement to which they want instant access. I have fallen victim to all three.
What would prevent them from just having you enter your country and then adjust (localising) based on this?
How about labor to handle localization for all 200 or so countries? This is a big job.
I think that if they can get the price of an electronic novel down low enough, they will increase the volume to the point that their profit will actually increase
That's a big "if" that may not be realizable. There comes a point on the demand curve, however, below which demand is not elastic enough to increase marginal revenue. Whether this point is above costs plus royalties, even with economies of scale, is not yet known.
However, you missed my idea about just downloading the copies you want for reading on the plane/in the restroom/on the subway
Did this have anything to do with the "on request printing system" you mentioned? I'm not sure that will be viable either, especially because it lacks economy of scale in replication.
There is an unstated yet understood requirement in the discussion of battery-powered media devices other than notebook or tablet PCs. The constraint is that the device should be designed to let the owner stuff the device in his pants pocket. Anything bigger than the original green-screen Game Boy won't do.
Note the circumvention ban in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Note the "non-US citizenship" condition I mentioned and the lack of the United States on the map on the front page of thefreeworld.net to which I linked.
welcome to 2001.
Welcome to 1998, when 17 USC 1201 was enacted. Region lockout is a technological measure that "effectively protects a right of a copyright owner" (section 1201(b)) to restrict imports under section 602.
I'm not sure I understand how buying a usb adapter for my controller allows independent amateurs to make console games without paying licensing fees.
I didn't say "console games." I said "console style games" (emphasis added). Targeting a PC with a console controller connected through a USB adapter lets amateurs develop and publish PC games that use a console-style control paradigm.
an open format e-book can be fed through a text to speech synthesizer
Major book publishers are too scared of mass electronic copyright infringement to publish in open formats. Instead, you get $#!+ like this: This book can not be read aloud".
I surprised that you didn't mention the Gutenberg project.
I've wondered: What happens once Project Gutenberg has encoded 99 percent of all extant books written in the English language and published before 1923?
Other than Wintel (where Wine could possibly run iTunes) and Mac (which comes bundled with Mac OS X and iTunes), what desktop computer hardware platform promoted for use in homes is popular?
Palm? WinCE? Symbian?
Are those devices able to decode popular lossy audio compression formats with acceptable battery performance?
With DRM, it becomes even worse, as you can't get the content from a sanctioned device
Remember that nothing but a little generation loss and possibly the MP3 patents are keeping you from burning your recordings purchased from iTunes Music Store to CD-RW in Red Book format, ripping them with digital audio extraction software, and re-encoding them with the best MP3 encoder technology available. If you're encoding for a pocket sized MP3 player that you're planning on carrying into a public place, you don't even need to encode the distraction of stereo separation. Mono MP3 actually sounds pretty good at 96 kbps.
Trouble with that is it can easily screw up the soundtrack
If what you add from the end of one shot you remove from the beginning of the next shot, everything should stay perfectly synchronized. The technique I'm envisioning merely changes the frames around cuts. For one thing, people aren't going to notice one frame more of the previous scene or the next scene (3 choices per shot: -1, 0, +1). For another, the so-called "invisible" watermarks are also more likely to be invisible when they're masked by cuts.
They're releasing their "new version" of the PS2, the.. PSX, I think?
I've got over the confusion of IBM PS/2 vs. Sony PS2, but I call this new Sony hardware the "PS2vo" because Sony itself used the name "PSX" for a PS1 in the old form factor (picture). A Google Images search for "psx" turns up only one picture of a PS2vo and lots of pictures of PS1s.
Are you maybe talking Canadian or Australian dollars?
More like eBay dollars during the initial shortage. Remember the Tickle Me Elmo and Furby launches? The PS2's USA launch was the same way, with prices inflating well over $500 during the height of the shortage.
And, just what hardware can you buy at $99 that grants you the ability to play every PS2 game?
Not even a PS2 can play every PS2 game. Unlike PCs, PS2 consoles have region lockout. One would need either three PS2 consoles (one each for Europe, USA, and Japan) or non-US citizenship to defeat this region lockout.
Look into the underground GBA development market sometime. You may be surprised at what you find.
Yes, I'm part of the thriving GBA scene, but you seem to forget grandparent's "1. Graphics are inferior" complaint. PC graphics even on a laptop beat GBA graphics because the GBA is a 2D system and does all 3D in software at 120x80 pixels. In addition, it costs an extra $100 for a flash cartridge to be able to run full-size homebrew programs on the GBA.
Look at what came of the Dreamcast.
I'd get into Dreamcast development, but the amateur development kit for the Dreamcast (KOS) isn't well documented. Neither is OpenXDK.
Neither consoles nor PCs are the best thing since sliced bread.
(but only if the TV is standing close to the computer)
When I lived at college, my TV was 200 miles away from me because I didn't have space in my dorm room for a dedicated TV, and a good TV input card (i.e. not an ATI TV Wonder VE) was too pricey for my budget. I survived the first two years of college with PC games and emulated console games, adding a GBA at the start of my junior year.
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Besides when have you ever used something that needed the speed of firewire which was not videocamera
There exist well-known types of devices other than video input devices that require the higher throughput of a FireWire or High Speed USB serial bus. How about an external hard drive or an external DVD recorder? Internal doesn't always cut it on a notebook computer, and Samba-in-a-box network-attached storage isn't yet on the shelves of Best Buy.
I'm not that much of a Linux geek, am I?
You missed the even more obvious Mac joke. Imagine an iMac hooked up to Frank's 2000" TV.
I'm guessing "digital remastering", changed to "digital movie remastering" after the term "DRM" became associated with negative feelings toward digital restrictions management schemes that introduce infuriating barriers to fair use of copyrighted works.
Telemarketers show up as "Unknown Name, Unknown Number".
And almost nobody else does.
You can't get any useful info from CID.
Other than "I don't need to pick up the phone," as Shastao suggested above?
I have downloaded free music that is offered free by artists often uninterested in composing for profit, and I now listen almost exclusively to free and/or libre music.
How is this possible? Yes, I know that some people write songs and publish them under a Creative Commons license, but how do they keep themselves from making the same mistake George Harrison made in subconsciously copying an existing song and thereby infringing its copyright?
every computer, OS, hifi component, and pocket device plays MP3.
Every computer? Not those that come with Red Hat Linux Professional, which has dropped MP3 support because of the prohibitive cost of licensing Fraunhofer's patents. Where can I buy an x86 PC with a free operating system and a licensed MP3 encoder pre-installed to have it shipped to an address in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA?
It might have been illegal but now it contains no proprietary code
Though LAME has excised all of the ISO MP3 encoder code, LAME still implements a patented process, namely that of encoding a conforming MP3 bitstream. Because of this, U.S. patent law considers "mak[ing], us[ing], offer[ing] for sale, or sell[ing]" LAME software without Fraunhofer's permission unlawful.
Also has Mac & Windows clients, check the gift page for more info.
The giFT client for Windows is currently broken. Without a working Windows client, there won't be a large user base, and without a large user base, there won't be many obscure works available to download. Most casual computer users aren't willing to "just install Linux" because either GNU/Linux won't autodetect their hardware as well as OEM Windows did, they don't have space for a Linux partition nor money for another hard drive, or they frequently use Wine-incompatible programs that have no direct Linux compatible replacement to which they want instant access. I have fallen victim to all three.
What would prevent them from just having you enter your country and then adjust (localising) based on this?
How about labor to handle localization for all 200 or so countries? This is a big job.
I think that if they can get the price of an electronic novel down low enough, they will increase the volume to the point that their profit will actually increase
That's a big "if" that may not be realizable. There comes a point on the demand curve, however, below which demand is not elastic enough to increase marginal revenue. Whether this point is above costs plus royalties, even with economies of scale, is not yet known.
However, you missed my idea about just downloading the copies you want for reading on the plane/in the restroom/on the subway
Did this have anything to do with the "on request printing system" you mentioned? I'm not sure that will be viable either, especially because it lacks economy of scale in replication.
It's legal for me to rip my CD's because there's no encryption
didn't you know that using the shift key is a felony/
Anyway, a 320x240 video is not going to turn anyone on these days.
Oh really? It's not the size of the image that counts.
Audio CDs are not protected, it is legal to transfer them to other media. Technically, it is illegal to rip a DVD
there is no difference. did you know that the shift key is now a banned circumvention tool and anybody caught pointing to it will be found in violation of the dmca/
You mean like a laptop?
There is an unstated yet understood requirement in the discussion of battery-powered media devices other than notebook or tablet PCs. The constraint is that the device should be designed to let the owner stuff the device in his pants pocket. Anything bigger than the original green-screen Game Boy won't do.
It's called modding
Note the circumvention ban in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Note the "non-US citizenship" condition I mentioned and the lack of the United States on the map on the front page of thefreeworld.net to which I linked.
welcome to 2001.
Welcome to 1998, when 17 USC 1201 was enacted. Region lockout is a technological measure that "effectively protects a right of a copyright owner" (section 1201(b)) to restrict imports under section 602.
I'm not sure I understand how buying a usb adapter for my controller allows independent amateurs to make console games without paying licensing fees.
I didn't say "console games." I said "console style games" (emphasis added). Targeting a PC with a console controller connected through a USB adapter lets amateurs develop and publish PC games that use a console-style control paradigm.
an open format e-book can be fed through a text to speech synthesizer
Major book publishers are too scared of mass electronic copyright infringement to publish in open formats. Instead, you get $#!+ like this: This book can not be read aloud".
I surprised that you didn't mention the Gutenberg project.
I've wondered: What happens once Project Gutenberg has encoded 99 percent of all extant books written in the English language and published before 1923?
When does it show up for Linux? xxxBSD?
Other than Wintel (where Wine could possibly run iTunes) and Mac (which comes bundled with Mac OS X and iTunes), what desktop computer hardware platform promoted for use in homes is popular?
Palm? WinCE? Symbian?
Are those devices able to decode popular lossy audio compression formats with acceptable battery performance?
With DRM, it becomes even worse, as you can't get the content from a sanctioned device
Remember that nothing but a little generation loss and possibly the MP3 patents are keeping you from burning your recordings purchased from iTunes Music Store to CD-RW in Red Book format, ripping them with digital audio extraction software, and re-encoding them with the best MP3 encoder technology available. If you're encoding for a pocket sized MP3 player that you're planning on carrying into a public place, you don't even need to encode the distraction of stereo separation. Mono MP3 actually sounds pretty good at 96 kbps.
The market has chosen MP3 and Apple have still gone down a proprietary path.
MP3 is just as proprietary as AAC, and the same fingers (Fraunhofer's) are in the MPEG patent licensing pie.
Trouble with that is it can easily screw up the soundtrack
If what you add from the end of one shot you remove from the beginning of the next shot, everything should stay perfectly synchronized. The technique I'm envisioning merely changes the frames around cuts. For one thing, people aren't going to notice one frame more of the previous scene or the next scene (3 choices per shot: -1, 0, +1). For another, the so-called "invisible" watermarks are also more likely to be invisible when they're masked by cuts.
The controller is designed so as to make it easier to access the d-pad rather than the analog stick.
Which is exactly why I bought a PS2->GCN controller adapter for use with my Game Boy Player.
It makes it terrible.
Have you ever tried to play Tetris or traditional one-on-one fighting games with an analog stick?
They're releasing their "new version" of the PS2, the.. PSX, I think?
I've got over the confusion of IBM PS/2 vs. Sony PS2, but I call this new Sony hardware the "PS2vo" because Sony itself used the name "PSX" for a PS1 in the old form factor (picture). A Google Images search for "psx" turns up only one picture of a PS2vo and lots of pictures of PS1s.
Are you maybe talking Canadian or Australian dollars?
More like eBay dollars during the initial shortage. Remember the Tickle Me Elmo and Furby launches? The PS2's USA launch was the same way, with prices inflating well over $500 during the height of the shortage.
And, just what hardware can you buy at $99 that grants you the ability to play every PS2 game?
Not even a PS2 can play every PS2 game. Unlike PCs, PS2 consoles have region lockout. One would need either three PS2 consoles (one each for Europe, USA, and Japan) or non-US citizenship to defeat this region lockout.
Look into the underground GBA development market sometime. You may be surprised at what you find.
Yes, I'm part of the thriving GBA scene, but you seem to forget grandparent's "1. Graphics are inferior" complaint. PC graphics even on a laptop beat GBA graphics because the GBA is a 2D system and does all 3D in software at 120x80 pixels. In addition, it costs an extra $100 for a flash cartridge to be able to run full-size homebrew programs on the GBA.
Look at what came of the Dreamcast.
I'd get into Dreamcast development, but the amateur development kit for the Dreamcast (KOS) isn't well documented. Neither is OpenXDK.
Neither consoles nor PCs are the best thing since sliced bread.
(but only if the TV is standing close to the computer)
When I lived at college, my TV was 200 miles away from me because I didn't have space in my dorm room for a dedicated TV, and a good TV input card (i.e. not an ATI TV Wonder VE) was too pricey for my budget. I survived the first two years of college with PC games and emulated console games, adding a GBA at the start of my junior year.