Sure you can [provide a benefit to only those who pay]. It's called: CD Quality vs. MP3 Quality
A properly encoded MP3 is CD quality. lame --r3mix will compress stereo sound to an average data rate of 176 kbps with no audible loss. See r3mix's "quality" section for details.
Even then, most consumers are happy with the 128 kbps files that permeate the WinMX, Kazaa, and Gnutella networks. You can't hear the difference above the ambient noise of the street, etc.
So, people are paying for the content. Given
that fact, why is there still advertising?
Without some sort of advertising, each channel would cost at least $5/month, up next to the "premium" channels such as HBO and Di$ney. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not pay $200 in cash per month for basic cable.
What's needed is a plain-English interpretation describing the legitimate activities which were crimilized under the DMCA (with the existing legal examples likewise described in plain English), in terms that make Joe Public think "Omighod, that could happen to me!!"
but it's true that by buying something else than SUVs and 7.9l engine cars
USian drivers buy SUVs because they don't want to get hurt in a potential wreck with an SUV.
stupid speed limitations! (Which are here precisely because cars' engines eat too much!)
Actually, U.S. roadways have speed limits because of the reaction time of the average USian driver, especially taking into account effects such as highway hypnosis.
We are not running games on 386/16 machines anymore, 3D rendering is not done in software anymore
Maybe not, but we are still running games on ARM/16 machines. Palm, Pocket PC, and Game Boy Advance will be around for a while. There's Doom 1 for GBA, and yes, it renders in software to a 120x120 pixel frame buffer.
Portability
Those not in the software biz define portability as "can I put it in my pocket?"
thanks to hardware 3D acceleration (a concept that seems completely alien to you)
And battery-powered devices (a concept that seems alien to 3D apologists)
Today's optimizing compilers often produce code that's far more efficient than most hand-optimized assembly.
Unless GCC doesn't have a good backend for the arch <cough>ARM</cough> <cough>Alpha</cough> or its runtime library isn't completely optimized <cough>newlib software divide on ARM</cough>.
For the most part, remember, CPU speed isn't the big bottleneck that it used to be
That's true on a big fat GameCube, PortBox, or Athlon PC with 1000 Mflops, but on a 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI processor, you really need to make every cycle count if you want to keep up with the 59.7 Hz retrace. Most of the tricks that applied on the 486 still apply on the Game Boy Advance.
Smart compilers often beat "smart" programmers and that is a common discussion [in news:comp.arch].
Often, but not always. If you start from the output of gcc -O3 and then carefully tweak each line of generated code, you can often double the speed, especially on platforms such as ARM and Alpha where GCC's code generator isn't yet up to snuff. Some architectures (such as ARM7TDMI) have auto-promoting 32x32=64 bit multiply instructions, useful for fixed-point signal processing, that GCC can't figure out how to use. Bit-twiddling (compression, encryption, etc.) is faster in assembly than in C because in assembly, you can get at least an extra 20% by leveraging the carry and overflow bits. Then you can prove in a profiler that your hand-optimized assembly version is faster. Of course, you'll want to keep your old C version around so that./configure can fall back on it when confronted with an unknown architecture.
When your OS starts requiring a 3D accelerator, you know there's gonna be some major upgrading afoot.
Why would.NET Server require a 3D accelerator? Datacenter hardware is almost always headless.
If Longhorn requires a 3D accelerator, it will raise the price of systems using Longhorn Embedded (the successor to Windows XP Embedded), making Linux or *BSD (which is not dying) seem more attractive. Is Microsoft going to push CE for such devices? Or is Microsoft going to require simple 3D hardware in a coming generation of Pocket PC devices, in effect creating the XBoy?
Linux has substantial assembly language pieces that exist in parallel for each supported architecture.
It has never been ported to any architecture other than x86.
Got documentation for that? If you give me a month, I'll be able to get back to the library in Fort Wayne (I'm away at school at the moment) and dig up a book about MS-DOS whose history chapter has a table that lists an edition of MS-DOS for at least one 68K machine.
IE on Mac is not composed of libraries littered across the OS, as it is on Windows.
Only because Mac OS X has a nicer directory structure than Windows. (Did you know that IE 5.5 for Windows is a port of IE for Mac?)
It's tricky when it comes to software, since it hasn't been determined yet by the courts whether a software sale is a sale of a product or a sale of a license
Yes it has: Softman Products Company LLC v. Adobe Systems Inc. U.S. federal law, 17 USC 101 defines a "copy" as the physical disc on which a computer program is recorded. If the transfer of a copy of a program looks like a sale, walks like a sale, and quacks like a sale, then it's a sale, thus making the "owner of a copy" under 17 USC 117 the person who buys the box.
Some people might chime in and claim that MAI v. Peak nullified 117. I don't think so. The text of the decision interpreted 117 out of context; the case it referenced, Apple v. Formula, involved selling copies, but the facts of MAI v. Peak didn't. (The decision prompted a rider to the DMCA that amended 117 to authorize repair or maintenance of a computer system.) The real copyright infringement seems to have involved the "rental, lease, or lending" of a computer program separate from any hardware in which it may be embedded, and 17 USC 109 prohibits rental of software without authorization of the copyright owner.
Last time this whole flash/anti-flash argument raged on/. someone posted a link to a hotel booking scheme that ran in flash and made it a much more natural experience than messing with forms and such. It was a very intuitive interface that I don't think could be done anywhere near as well in html.
Overlapping components are very common in software and in web design. Maybe they should sue Google [google.com] for their use of components which overlap with their tabbed menu of web, images, groups, or directory search. I would say that overlapping components are more common these days than popping up dialogs in a stack. Adobe did not innovate this
Adobe innovated and patented being able to drag and drop tabs from one palette to another. Read the patent.
While I am largely against the current patent system, my dislikes for it revolve around the duration of patents, and the inability of clerks to apply or monitor the requirements for innovation.
The argument of the League for Programming Freedom is that until legislators can fix these problems, patents on a generic computer running a specific algorithm do more harm than good and should be abolished.
We managed to get through over 20 years of GUI use without the widespread use of toolbars. Anyone know when they first appeared?
The first product I saw them in was MacPaint, released in 1984 for the Macintosh computer.
Dockable components which overlap to save space...? That's not a universal GUI concept; showing and hiding tool windows or popping up dialogs in a stack is a traditional means to handle this problem. Arguably Adobe DID innovate in this instance.
Adobe, or Be? BeOS's default theme shortens a window's title bar to just the length of its name plus the size of the close and maximize controls; overlapping these windows creates a tab-like interface. (But who came first?)
I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people who cannot spell 'kernel'.
"KERNAL" (with an A) was the name of the BIOS in the Commodore 64 computer. It contained some basic drivers and a BASIC interpreter. Don't ask me what it stood for; I was an Apple ][ user.
"MONITOR" was the name of the BIOS in the Apple ][ computer. It included Applesoft BASIC, some drivers, and a simple machine-level debugger.
ObTopic: "LINUX" is the name of the kernel (with an E) in the GNU/Linux operating system. It is also the name of the BIOS in computers that use LinuxBIOS.
However, they are attorneys licensed by a State and thus may fall under "a person acting pursuant to a contract with the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State."
WordPad is missing the all important spell check feature
Spell check is useless without grammar check.
A DOG IS
IS A MAN'S BEST FIEND.
There are two problems in the above blockquote, and a spell checker won't catch them. It also won't catch homophones, and it won't catch typos that happen to land on a word (from/form).
Grammar check has its own set of problems too, especially given that natural language parsing is still not an exact field.
What does that say about our geek-ness, or lack of it, when we see "H" and think heroin instead of hydrogen?
It means we know the difference between H, H+, and H2. Hydrogen, like oxygen, nitrogen, and the halogens, is diatomic, meaning that it exists in nature in pairs (Cl2 I2 F2 Br2 O2 H2 N2). In nature, it also exists as positive ions (labeled H+); Bronsted acids give off these. (Water is amphiprotic; that is, it's a weak acid and base simultaneously.)
When I see "H2", I think "hydrogen." When I see "H+", I think "hydrogen ion" and then "there's an acid somewhere around here". Plain "H" by itself is heroin, just like "X" without the "Window System".
For example, Macromedia have been supplying a Linux Flash client for years, yet it has failed to validify the Flash format as an open standard.
By "Flash format," I assume you mean SWF (not FLA). SWF version 4 has a publicly available specification. (Read More...) Do you consider a format not "valid[...] as an open standard" because it hasn't been submitted to an international standards body?
If their product is engineered in a reasonable fashion, there really isn't anything for them to lose from releasing SOME sort of sorenson decoder for Linux.
I've read that Apple ported QuickTime to Windows by writing an API layer that emulates Carbon (the Mac OS API, formerly called Toolbox) on top of Win32. Apple would have to either do this all over again for the POSIX+X11 API (which Linux and BSD use) or use Winelib (two layers of API translation? Ecch).
Slashdot Mirror
Sure you can [provide a benefit to only those who pay]. It's called: CD Quality vs. MP3 Quality
A properly encoded MP3 is CD quality. lame --r3mix will compress stereo sound to an average data rate of 176 kbps with no audible loss. See r3mix's "quality" section for details.
Even then, most consumers are happy with the 128 kbps files that permeate the WinMX, Kazaa, and Gnutella networks. You can't hear the difference above the ambient noise of the street, etc.
How did they eventually convince us that it's perfectly normal to pay $40-50 a month for JUST the copper wire?
By threatening to raise the monthly rate from $1 per channel to $5+ per channel, like the "premium" channels.
Why not homegrown TV broadcasting via the internet.
So you're talking about the type of narrowcasting that goes on public access channels. Interesting. Go on...
WE create our own programming
Unless it becomes illegal to own a camcorder without a license, because camcorders could be used to pirate a movie during its theatrical release.
So, people are paying for the content. Given that fact, why is there still advertising?
Without some sort of advertising, each channel would cost at least $5/month, up next to the "premium" channels such as HBO and Di$ney. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not pay $200 in cash per month for basic cable.
What's needed is a plain-English interpretation describing the legitimate activities which were crimilized under the DMCA (with the existing legal examples likewise described in plain English), in terms that make Joe Public think "Omighod, that could happen to me!!"
Here are a couple papers I wrote a while back (when the CBDTPA was still called SSSCA):
The Politics of Copy Protection Technology
DMCA in Plain English
You might also find this paper helpful: What's Wrong With Copy Protection by John Gilmore.
but it's true that by buying something else than SUVs and 7.9l engine cars
USian drivers buy SUVs because they don't want to get hurt in a potential wreck with an SUV.
stupid speed limitations! (Which are here precisely because cars' engines eat too much!)
Actually, U.S. roadways have speed limits because of the reaction time of the average USian driver, especially taking into account effects such as highway hypnosis.
We are not running games on 386/16 machines anymore, 3D rendering is not done in software anymore
Maybe not, but we are still running games on ARM/16 machines. Palm, Pocket PC, and Game Boy Advance will be around for a while. There's Doom 1 for GBA, and yes, it renders in software to a 120x120 pixel frame buffer.
Portability
Those not in the software biz define portability as "can I put it in my pocket?"
thanks to hardware 3D acceleration (a concept that seems completely alien to you)
And battery-powered devices (a concept that seems alien to 3D apologists)
Today's optimizing compilers often produce code that's far more efficient than most hand-optimized assembly.
Unless GCC doesn't have a good backend for the arch <cough>ARM</cough> <cough>Alpha</cough> or its runtime library isn't completely optimized <cough>newlib software divide on ARM</cough>.
For the most part, remember, CPU speed isn't the big bottleneck that it used to be
That's true on a big fat GameCube, PortBox, or Athlon PC with 1000 Mflops, but on a 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI processor, you really need to make every cycle count if you want to keep up with the 59.7 Hz retrace. Most of the tricks that applied on the 486 still apply on the Game Boy Advance.
Smart compilers often beat "smart" programmers and that is a common discussion [in news:comp.arch].
Often, but not always. If you start from the output of gcc -O3 and then carefully tweak each line of generated code, you can often double the speed, especially on platforms such as ARM and Alpha where GCC's code generator isn't yet up to snuff. Some architectures (such as ARM7TDMI) have auto-promoting 32x32=64 bit multiply instructions, useful for fixed-point signal processing, that GCC can't figure out how to use. Bit-twiddling (compression, encryption, etc.) is faster in assembly than in C because in assembly, you can get at least an extra 20% by leveraging the carry and overflow bits. Then you can prove in a profiler that your hand-optimized assembly version is faster. Of course, you'll want to keep your old C version around so that ./configure can fall back on it when confronted with an unknown architecture.
When your OS starts requiring a 3D accelerator, you know there's gonna be some major upgrading afoot.
Why would .NET Server require a 3D accelerator? Datacenter hardware is almost always headless.
If Longhorn requires a 3D accelerator, it will raise the price of systems using Longhorn Embedded (the successor to Windows XP Embedded), making Linux or *BSD (which is not dying) seem more attractive. Is Microsoft going to push CE for such devices? Or is Microsoft going to require simple 3D hardware in a coming generation of Pocket PC devices, in effect creating the XBoy?
Why would anyone *presume* that [the shareware model] won't work for music?
Because it's impossible to lock the extra features for registered users only.
MS-DOS has substantial assembly language pieces.
Linux has substantial assembly language pieces that exist in parallel for each supported architecture.
It has never been ported to any architecture other than x86.
Got documentation for that? If you give me a month, I'll be able to get back to the library in Fort Wayne (I'm away at school at the moment) and dig up a book about MS-DOS whose history chapter has a table that lists an edition of MS-DOS for at least one 68K machine.
IE on Mac is not composed of libraries littered across the OS, as it is on Windows.
Only because Mac OS X has a nicer directory structure than Windows. (Did you know that IE 5.5 for Windows is a port of IE for Mac?)
And if you break the GPL, no matter how minor the infraction, you lose all rights, including the right to copy the software into ram.
No. 17 USC 117 specifically permits the "owner of a copy" (defined as the owner of the CD) to copy software into RAM.
And shut up about MAI v. Peak; it's moot
It's tricky when it comes to software, since it hasn't been determined yet by the courts whether a software sale is a sale of a product or a sale of a license
Yes it has: Softman Products Company LLC v. Adobe Systems Inc. U.S. federal law, 17 USC 101 defines a "copy" as the physical disc on which a computer program is recorded. If the transfer of a copy of a program looks like a sale, walks like a sale, and quacks like a sale, then it's a sale, thus making the "owner of a copy" under 17 USC 117 the person who buys the box.
Some people might chime in and claim that MAI v. Peak nullified 117. I don't think so. The text of the decision interpreted 117 out of context; the case it referenced, Apple v. Formula, involved selling copies, but the facts of MAI v. Peak didn't. (The decision prompted a rider to the DMCA that amended 117 to authorize repair or maintenance of a computer system.) The real copyright infringement seems to have involved the "rental, lease, or lending" of a computer program separate from any hardware in which it may be embedded, and 17 USC 109 prohibits rental of software without authorization of the copyright owner.
Last time this whole flash/anti-flash argument raged on /. someone posted a link to a hotel booking scheme that ran in flash and made it a much more natural experience than messing with forms and such. It was a very intuitive interface that I don't think could be done anywhere near as well in html.
Macromedia Pushes Flash For All Things Web
Overlapping components are very common in software and in web design. Maybe they should sue Google [google.com] for their use of components which overlap with their tabbed menu of web, images, groups, or directory search. I would say that overlapping components are more common these days than popping up dialogs in a stack. Adobe did not innovate this
Adobe innovated and patented being able to drag and drop tabs from one palette to another. Read the patent.
While I am largely against the current patent system, my dislikes for it revolve around the duration of patents, and the inability of clerks to apply or monitor the requirements for innovation.
The argument of the League for Programming Freedom is that until legislators can fix these problems, patents on a generic computer running a specific algorithm do more harm than good and should be abolished.
We managed to get through over 20 years of GUI use without the widespread use of toolbars. Anyone know when they first appeared?
The first product I saw them in was MacPaint, released in 1984 for the Macintosh computer.
Dockable components which overlap to save space ...? That's not a universal GUI concept; showing and hiding tool windows or popping up dialogs in a stack is a traditional means to handle this problem. Arguably Adobe DID innovate in this instance.
Adobe, or Be? BeOS's default theme shortens a window's title bar to just the length of its name plus the size of the close and maximize controls; overlapping these windows creates a tab-like interface. (But who came first?)
"Slashteam": can we please moderate stories, already?
Want to exercise your voice in choosing the stories on a popular tech/culture board? You can.
I am a driver licensed by a State. Does this mean that I may be able to circumvent the DMCA? :)
If you break the DMCA in the course of legitimate investigative activity, and you have a good enough lawyer, possibly.
I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people who cannot spell 'kernel'.
"KERNAL" (with an A) was the name of the BIOS in the Commodore 64 computer. It contained some basic drivers and a BASIC interpreter. Don't ask me what it stood for; I was an Apple ][ user.
"MONITOR" was the name of the BIOS in the Apple ][ computer. It included Applesoft BASIC, some drivers, and a simple machine-level debugger.
ObTopic: "LINUX" is the name of the kernel (with an E) in the GNU/Linux operating system. It is also the name of the BIOS in computers that use LinuxBIOS.
AGFA's lawyers aren't cops, they're private entities
However, they are attorneys licensed by a State and thus may fall under "a person acting pursuant to a contract with the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State."
WordPad is missing the all important spell check feature
Spell check is useless without grammar check.
There are two problems in the above blockquote, and a spell checker won't catch them. It also won't catch homophones, and it won't catch typos that happen to land on a word (from/form).
Grammar check has its own set of problems too, especially given that natural language parsing is still not an exact field.
What does that say about our geek-ness, or lack of it, when we see "H" and think heroin instead of hydrogen?
It means we know the difference between H, H+, and H2. Hydrogen, like oxygen, nitrogen, and the halogens, is diatomic, meaning that it exists in nature in pairs (Cl2 I2 F2 Br2 O2 H2 N2). In nature, it also exists as positive ions (labeled H+); Bronsted acids give off these. (Water is amphiprotic; that is, it's a weak acid and base simultaneously.)
When I see "H2", I think "hydrogen." When I see "H+", I think "hydrogen ion" and then "there's an acid somewhere around here". Plain "H" by itself is heroin, just like "X" without the "Window System".
For example, Macromedia have been supplying a Linux Flash client for years, yet it has failed to validify the Flash format as an open standard.
By "Flash format," I assume you mean SWF (not FLA). SWF version 4 has a publicly available specification. (Read More...) Do you consider a format not "valid[...] as an open standard" because it hasn't been submitted to an international standards body?
If their product is engineered in a reasonable fashion, there really isn't anything for them to lose from releasing SOME sort of sorenson decoder for Linux.
I've read that Apple ported QuickTime to Windows by writing an API layer that emulates Carbon (the Mac OS API, formerly called Toolbox) on top of Win32. Apple would have to either do this all over again for the POSIX+X11 API (which Linux and BSD use) or use Winelib (two layers of API translation? Ecch).