Senator Conroy has been hugely inconsistent about the content of the blacklist. First it was "child porn", then he added "unwanted content" without clarifying what that actually meant and then he changed tack to "Refused Classification", which he then proceeded to repeatedly mention in conjunction with "child porn" in order to fool the public into thinking that the two were synonymous.
Also worth considering is the security of the blacklist. The Australian Communications & Media Authority's blacklist (upon which the filter's will be based) has been leaked several times before and it appears that the Government has done nothing to avoid repeating the experience besides threaten any local sites that host or link to it with $10,000 per day fines. So given the number of ways in which the blacklist can be leaked, it's practically inevitable that it will happen again.
If the ACMA blacklist is what Conroy says it is (ie. child porn), then the Australian Government will be directly responsible for providing pedophiles with a choice list of child porn on the Web. If the blacklist isn't what Conroy says it is, then the Government will have flat out lied to the public about what it is they're being "protected" from (in addition to the lies that they've told already).
I'm sure it'll sound just fine at 320, and you can fit twice as much (or 4x- cant remember is 128 is per channel or stereo), without drastically changing the technology.
The bitrate is specified for both channels. So, a 128kbps MP3 has 64kbits allocated to each channel. As for 320kbps being good, it's generally accepted amongst audiophiles (at least, the ones that are willing to touch MP3 at all), that 256kbps is the ideal bitrate for "archive-quality" recordings. Funnily enough, it's also close to the bitrate of the ATRAC1 codec (not MDLP, which uses Sony's new ATRAC3 codec). The quality increase in going to 320kbps is generally considered not worth the extra space neeeded. At 256kbps (approximately a 5:1 compression ratio), you should fit 5 hours of audio per 700Mb CD-R. 128kpbs is the most common because it is considered the best compromise between quality and space (I personally think it can make difficult material sound like shit, so I normally encode at 256kbps). Battery times for MP3 players are usually calculated for 128kbps MP3s because higher bitrates require a faster data transfer rate (because the higher the bitrate, the more data stored for a given second of audio), which increases power consumption and reduces battery life. This is especially important on HDD-based players such as Creative's Nomad Jukebox series and the Archos Jukebox series.
As for the audio capacity of DVD-Audio and SACD, it'd depend greatly on the bitrate of the audio used. Is there a technical handbook a la the "Red Book" that gives technical details such as this? In order for there to be compatibilty a standard had to have been drafted. Given the capacity of DVDs (around 4.7Gb), DVD-Audio would still be able to hold a serious amount of music even if there were many channels. Even so, there would have to be a reasonable limit on the number of channels and so forth, because most people have at most a 5.1 setup anyway. Your fancy new DVD-Audio isn't going to sell well if it can only be played properly on the ÜberSystem 2002 the Jones's have in their living room.
I don't like the fact, and I know there are heaps of non-racist Australians... but a lot of people vote for Howard. and a lot of people voted for One Nation!
That I agree with. But it's more accurate to say that One Nation has been (rightfully) confined to the "lunatic fringe" section of politics and is not the great threat to the mainstream parties that it apparently once was. The main frustration I have with Australian politics at the moment is that there really is no worthy opposition to the current government and that, knowing how fucked-up the current government can and has been, is a pretty scary thing. What I'd like to see is something like in Sweden (where I am at the moment) - a social democracy. But that would require increased taxes and a combining of the two types of politics (which might require, *gasp*, agreeing on things) and given the inability of Australian politicians to even suggest either or both possibilites, I don't see it happening in the near future.
Shows how much you know about Australia. What bullshit. The words and actions of a vocal and (unfortunately) influential minority do not a country make. There were a lot of people who voted against John Howard in the last election, myself included. Are you saying that I, as well as all these other people, are racists? I don't think so.
But hey, while we're on stereotypes here, can I say that the average American is a fat, ignorant git who's more than willing to give up his "freedoms" in order to feel "safe" again? I don't believe that's true, but you'd be suprised what people would believe in the absence of the truth.
Looks like our little Johnny Howard has been following the lead of the US more than we first imagined. I'd imagine he'll be constructing the Aussie version of the PATRIOT Act next. Depressing and, at the same time, completely unsuprising.
I can take pride in the fact that the Australian courts have in recent times said "no, I don't think so" to a lot of the bullshit that the xxAA organisations have tried to foist upon us re: DRM. Unfortunately our Prime Minister (who we recently re-elected because he distracted us with the whole "Tampa crisis" and the "shadow" of illegal immigration) rarely takes time to remove his lips from the arses of the United States and US corporations in order to make such an independent decision, which would require vision (and more importantly - balls). So I'm not holding my breath for something from government protecting consumer rights. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), who handles most consumer complaints, is unfortunately pretty much a toothless tiger. They still haven't got Telstra into line over their virtual monopoloy of the telecommunications market, which is responsible for high prices (of Telstraand their competitors, who use Telstra's backbone and hence must pay their so-called "wholesale" prices) of local calls and DSL.
This sort of thing has been in place in many countries for quite some time. In Sweden, for example, every resident has a "personnummer" (personal number) that you use for identification purposes. It consists of your birthdate followed by another four-digit number. And the US has their Social Security number.
Knowing that retailers are extremely unlikely to provide this service any time soon, may I humbly propose we create a CDNOT.com to catalog all these unplayable discs, and make a plugin available that will warn you, should you attempt to purchase one?
I know this may be stating the obvious (since this link has been made available on Slashdot many times) but there is a site that is taking on the (unfortunately) increasing task of cataloguing all "copy-protected" CDs. It's called Fat Chuck's and it not only lists "copy-protected CDs" in various regions but also, among other things, gives help to indie artists and gives a list of banned books throughout the world. You can also submit errors and comments on "copy-protected CDs".
If you find one in a store, excercise your customer (I hate the word consumer, it reinforces this cattle mentality corporations have about us citizens) rights and take it back, clear and simple. What they sold you is not a CD, according to the Red/Blue Book specifications and you have a right to return the product for exchange or refund unless the store specifically says otherwise. And I damn well hope somebody takes legal action because if this latest news is any indication, the record companies are not only selling you products that won't work in your equipment (ie. play and rip) but will actually intentionally damage your equipment (ie. fucking up firmware and forcing reboots, causing potential loss of data). I'm just so sick of this shit.
The reason that PVRs are perceived to be different from VCRs is because VCRs are more established and more socially acceptable. VCRs have been around for at least 20 years, most people know what they are and that they're "okay" to use (even if they still don't quite know how to use them:-)). PVRs, on the hand, are a relatively new invention. Most people aren't aware of what they are and the fact that they are an electronic device lends them an even greater aura of mystery to the average person. I personally find it disgusting that the "content industry", as it's known, is using this ignorance to deliberately misinform the populace about these devices, in order to "indoctrinate" them to their point of view (eg. "file sharing is stealing", deleting commericals from recordings is stealing", "watching ads is part of your contract with us").
Ads are a way for studios to generate revenue to create content (though the cheapness of RealityTV(TM) means that most of this money just goes to the pockets of execs), but they are not part and parcel of the viewing experience. Sorry, Mr Turner, but there is no "contract" and it is part of my fair use rights (not that I expect you to give a flying fuck about that, given the previous behaviour of your colleagues in the industry) to delete commercials from recordings that I make for my personal use. And if I don't watch ads, it's my right. It's bad enough that you try to equate file-sharing to stealing...
Are you seriously suggesting that anti-gun legislation has NEVER prevented guns falling into the wrong hands?
I would be suggesting exactly that. There is quite an element of truth in the saying "If you outlaw [illegal item], then only outlaws will have [illegal item]." Witness prohibition in the 1920's. It just made alcohol harder to get, lower quality (higher methanol content increased rates of blindness dramatically) and more expensive. Plus, it allowed the Mob to become more powerful because you could only get your liquor from the Mob (incidentally, most of the Kennedy family fortune was alleged to have been made through liquor-peddling). Same thing with guns. You pay more for weapons because they are illegal. And since they are unregulated, you don't know who has them and you can't track their use. Great if you want to commit a crime like armed robbery or murder because illegal items have no paper trail. The original poster has a point because kids or criminals who want to obtain guns, firearms etc badly enough will find a means. What outlawing does is tip the supply in favour of criminals, who don't care about the law and don't operate inside it. Ergo, it doesn't matter to them, only to us law-abiding folk.
I'd instead argue that the main objection to this legislation by this forum is not because 10-year-olds won't be able to get SOF2, but that this is yet another piece of legislation politicians are introducing to "improve" our lives. We are objecting not to the regulation of our lives, but to the overregulation of our lives. We expect laws to provide reasonable limits on our behaviour, not to dictate our lives.
In that case, maybe I should change it back to the original slogan of "There is no problem that can't be solved without the proper application of high explosives", eh?;-)
Possibly, but I think you're missing the point here. Read this post to see what I mean. The point is that the average user doesn't know and/or care about these things. As long as he/she can play music, games, get his/her spam from Hotmail;-) and write Word documents he/she couldn't care less because either they don't understand how this would work or consider it important. Hence, if your audience is ignorant of these things, you can get away with a hell of a lot under the impression that "it's for your convenience/benefit" because most people don't have the time or knowledge to question these actions. We (the technically literate) need to educate the rest of the community ourselves and not leave it up to Microsoft to utilise user ignorance to get away with such things.
Typical Australian Liberal Government Policy
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Aussies Ban GTA3
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· Score: 4, Interesting
This move to "reclassify" (ie. censor) a whole stack of games right before Christmas, when demand for such games is at its highest, reaks of not only ignorance but a certain sense of mean-spiritedness. And this isn't the first time that the Australian government has tried to ban games it didn't like. First up was an FMV-driven graphical adventure by the name of Phantasmagoria because it contained very violent scenes and was thought to have contained a possible scene of sexual violence. Next in the firing line was Carmageddon, which the government attempted to ban on the laughable premise that it would encourage people to run each other over (interestingly enough, the sequel, which contained more realistic graphics than the first, passed through without dissent). The game Postal also came into the firing line, although I'm not sure if it was banned or not (I think it was). What strikes me as even more odd this time around is that the first two GTA games passed through practically untouched, while this game was allowed to be released and is now being recalled right before the busy and lucrative Christmas holiday period. Furthermore, the basis on which the game is being banned ("sexual violence") is extremely tenuous because the act of killing a prostitute after (and not before or during) sex shouldn't qualify as sexual violence. The term "sexual violence" refers to violence that is being committed during the act of sex (eg. rape or killing someone during sex), which is not the case here. Yes, the game does allow you to kill a prostitute after you have sex with her, but the two acts as described are not mutually exclusive (ie. you can do one or the other as well as both) and are not necessary to win or advance in the game itself. Yes, the possibility of committing the described acts may offend your sensibilities but you do have the democratic freedom in this country to not perform the acts in-game or, even better, not buy the game altogether. This recent move to remove all the games from stores effectively removes that democratic freedom. Controlling what you see, do, read, write and say should be your responisibility and not that of your government. Same goes for parents with children. If you continue to abdicate such a right (this responsibility is also one of the fundamental democractic rights of my nation, Australia) to government then you lose the right to complain when things don't go the way you want them to or when the government starts to take more than they're entitled to.
The reason for all this madness when it comes to the classification of video is that the Liberal government (which has just won its thoroughly undeserved second term by successfully tapping into the nation's xenophobic tendancies over the Tampa incident and illegal immigrants in general) is notoriously conservative and ignorant when it comes to matters of new technology. For instance, they banned online gambing in Australia, effectively giving the world market a huge headstart, because a moratorium was needed to "assess the risks of online gambing" when in reality the government had allowed, even promoted, the installation of poker machines in pubs and clubs with willful ignorance of the social consequences. They also tried to remove "offensive content" from the Internet (ie. net censorship), which merely made it hell for companies to host content locally for fear of being shut down by an anonymous person who was offended and forced ISPs to do the technically impossible and monitor their services for such "offensive content" (a term which was not even properly defined and hence gave the bill a DMCA-like level of scope). However, this bill was necessary to gain the support of Independent senator Brian Harradine, whose vote was needed to swing the balance of power towards the government so the "wonderful" GST could be passed (which the government screwed up in spectacular fashion by creating mountains of red tape through increased business paperwork and "exceptions" fiascos, when they would have been better off by taxing everything and giving income tax cuts). So what starts out as beeing a possibly good idea becomes a complete pain in the ass. Furthermore, the little surplus (which was collected by slashing budgets across the board, especially in the areas of health, R & D, the arts, science and education - now university costs a packet and we're behind in pretty much everything), often derisively called the "election battle chest", was used to offer all kinds of expensive gifts to the electorate to lure their votes in the election. Now that they've spent it, the only way they can get more money to actually do something useful is to raise taxes or cut spending (usually the latter). Wonderful.
So as you can see, this kind of inconsistent, ignorant, poorly-implemented crap, I mean policies, (ironically the only consistency in government policy is it has all these properties) happens all the time. The sad part is we're used to it, even expecting it to happen.
What about the risk of explosion in a fuel cell? Hydrogen is very volatile - you need a really good system that prevents tampering, leakage, electrical activity outside the plane, and can withstand crashes. I'm thinking about the Hindenburg airship disaster here when making comparison at the moment. I'm not an expert on these things so I would really like to know how the gas used in the auxiliary unit would "burn" in comparison to hydrogen in the event of a disaster.
Flammable fuels are only explosive when it has mixed with air in a sufficient quantity to form a fuel-air mixture. This is different from volatility, which is a measure of how easily a compound turns into gaseous form (petrol/gasoline, for example, is quite volatile, as is ethanol). The fact is that Hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table and hence diffuses through leaks and openings much more quickly than, say volatile fumes from regular petrol or JP9 jet fuel (where the fumes consist of multiple gaseous hydrocarbons, which have greater molecular weights and are hence much heavier). This is why there is no gaseous Hydrogen in the Earth's atmosphere. The Hydrogen simply floats away into space.
If you were to be involved in an accident involving an aircraft equipped with a Hydrogen fuel cell, you'd find that the chief cause will not have been the Hydrogen. The combustion of the fuel used in the aircraft's engines (remembering that the Hydrogen fuel cell will be used as a backup device to generate air and power for the aircraft and not as a means of propulsion) would have caused the lion's share of the damage. The only noticeable effect the Hydrogen would have on the acccident is to perhaps allow the fire to burn a little longer (assuming that enough of the Hydrogen is still contained in the air and has not diffused into the atmosphere). When being used in fuel cells, Hydrogen chiefly stored as a compressed, possibly liquefied gas. Hydrogen can also be stored in certain metallic compounds (known as metallic hydrides, which hold the Hydrogen atoms in a similar way to amalgum containing Mercury) to increase energy densities. In the first case, the rapid diffusion of the Hydrogen gas would not cause a fire for the reasons outlined above. In the second case, the Hydrogen would not be released because it is still bound to the metallic hydrides. In either case, it is unlikely that the cause of the accident will be the Hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen has, in fact, been proven to be a safer fuel to handle than gasoline. The byproduct of the fuel cell is water vapour, so it's also much better for the environment.
Your comparison to the Hindenburg disaster is not really applicable in this case, as it was conclusively demonstrated that it was the Aluminium compounds in the paint on the Hindenburg that caused it to burst into flames and not the Hydrogen gas. The Hydrogen ignited later, burning much more slowly and for a lot longer and hence actually acted as a fuel that sustained the fire, as opposed to the agent that caused the ship to burst into flames in the first place (remembering that the ship still burned even though the outer material had been completely destroyed).
After checking the website, I found that the largest contributor was the National Association of Broadcasters with total lobbying expenditures of $5,200,000 and $657,892 in campagin contributions. Now, as far as I know (which isn't that much since I'm not actually a US citizen) there are about 300 million people in the US. If just one person in three hundred decided to give their relevant congressman or woman just five dollars, you'd easily match if not exceed the contributions of these corporations. So instead of complaining about evil, multinational corporations with seemingly bottomless pockets, why don't you dig deep and contribute something yourself? If more people did this, chances are your congressmen and women would not so readily accept money from people like the National Assoication of Broadcasters because they wouldn't need to. True, the big corporations could easily up the contributions more, but there's one thing the big multinationals don't have that we do - numbers. And if enough people contribute to campaigns, return defective CDs (which violate the Red Book standard and hence cannot carrry the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo) and write letters to the RIAA and politicians and anyone who'll listen then something just might be done about it. Hey, it's a better option sitting on your ass and complaining about it.
at least nsync and britney spears fans won't be suckered into dvd-audio and sacd.
no no no. go back, re-read what i just said, and savor its wisdom.
Maybe so, but you're forgetting that N'Sync and Britney Spears fans, for the most part, wouldn't know and/or appreciate a decent quality recording if one came up and smacked them in the head. Even DVD Audio , HDCD or SA-CD couldn't salvage an N'Sync or Britney Spears recording. These are often the same ones who think that crappy-ass 128kbit MP3 radio rip is "CD-quality" when in reality, the only thing that's truly "CD-quality" is the CD itself? It's actually the Mozart and Bach fans who tend to be the discerning listeners that can appreciate the good-quality recording that comes with formats like HDCD, DVD Audio and SA-CD because they have real hardwarer (like Bang & Olufson systems, Mirantz CD players and JBL speakers) to listen to it on, not some cheap-as computer speakers. But it's all a matter of perspective, I guess.
The point is not that the technically adept will possibly somehow be denied access to the Internet (which wouldn't happen for a whole slew of technical reasons), but that Micrsoft will get an unfair headstart on those who aren't technically minded. Your 'average user' may not know that you don't need Passport to use the Internet under Windows XP. But if he/she gets constant reminder messages for days suggesting to them that they get a Passport account, then they may start thinking "if I don't get a Passport account, I may be missing out on something (ie. may not be getting the "best" services)". Especially if, as the article suggests Microsoft might starting including "features" in XP that may only be accessed with a Passport account. Those who know enough about computers will know how to set up their systems under XP using their own software and Internet access. But it's the 'average user', who doesn't know these things, that it's going to most affect.
In this case, education will the key. If people know that they can use XP just fine without a Passport account, then they may be less likely to sign up for one in future (hey, it's yet one more password to memorise). That is, unless MS doesn't in future require users to have such accounts to use key features of the operating system. It's bad enough that it's compulsory to register your copy of Windows XP (otherwise it stops functioning). To say nothing of the fact that even in the face of an (once) impending antitrust suit by the Department of Justice, MS are continuing to "bundle" products and services to their operating systems more tightly than ever.
Kind of reminds me of SimCity 2000, where Microwave power allowed you to beam energy from space into the satellite dish of the power plant. My question is, what happens if they miss? Ooops, there goes half a residential district!
Actually, no. What the article was saying was that the material is the first non-metallic material that was magnetic at room temperature (meaning that other non-magnetic materials weren't, at least not at room temperature). The point about the material being magnetic even above 200C was about the material's Curie point (above which the material stops being magnetic) being much higher than any other material, the previous record being 255C which was held by a different form of buckyballs. So this material is interesting because it's the first non-metallic material to be magnetic at room temperature and has a higher Curie point than any other non-metallic material to date.
Apparently, the material's magnetism could be linked to unpaired electrons, which can sustain a magnetic field when their spins are aligned (in this case there are unpaired electrons). One possibility is that they bond in triangular groups of three, which would provide for unpaired spins.
Although, to be used as computer memory it would have to have uniform magnetism, not just in pockets. But either way it's a significant step forward.
The big reason why the politicians are trying to block the major record labels from setting up their music download services is that the major players may be anti-competitive (that would never happen in the software industry!) and unfairly dominate the market. Before we decide to post reactionary "EU sucks" posts en masse, we have to consider that they may actually have a point.
One of the fundamental aspects of the major players' (ie. AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann, Sony etc) control over the music industry is that of control of distribution. The big labels have managed to buy up/price out everyone else in the market over time until they become the majority providers in the market. They have so much money behind them that it's hard for the indie players to compete if they don't have multi million-dollar advertising budgets and large amounts of capital to professionally record and produce hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of CDs, although prices for both are dropping. You want your CD to reach a large enough audience for it to go gold or platinum? Do it through us. Sure you can refuse to, but it's not like you can compete with us. One of the reasons the RIAA decided to shut Napster down was not for mass copyright infringement (the Audio Home Recording Act allowed people to copy CDs to tape for years), it was for the loss of control over the distribution of their product.
The Internet may, if we're not careful, merely provide the big labels with another avenue of control over their product. We may see a repeat of past history where a couple of key players (both of which seem to be merely extensions of the major recording labels) grow and grow until they become so big they can have the kind of control over the digital market that they have over the physical market right now. This means high prices, low quality of service and even less money going towards the artist. They can control access that small players have to the product (ie. the music) by charging high prices for access to their copyrighted product. This is similar to Telstra being able to price out competitors by charging high prices for access to its telecommunications network (although the Australian Competition and Consumers Commission (ACCC) is trying to put a stop to that, just like they did with DVDs). Although an American congressman is trying to introduce a law that gives all download services the same access to music regardless of whether they are affiliated with the record company that sells the songs, which (for once) actually makes a lot of sense since it removes at least one measure through which the major players can unfairly control the market. This complaint by the politicians of the EU may actually be a good thing for all of us who download digital music.
I can see your point here in that people who are allowed to protect themselves (ie. carry handguns) can better protect others. This is already the case with some military and law enforcement personnel who are legally allowed to carry handguns onto passenger planes.
But the problem with this solution is that a handgun on an aircraft is incredibly dangerous, especially if the guns aren't in the hands of trained professionals (even then the danger is still there). And especially if there are thirty untrained amateurs who may not be acting cool in a time of crisis. If a stray bullet (or 30) were to pierce a window, which is possible on handguns of, say,.45 caliber (eg. a Colt 1991A1) or 5.7mm (eg. FN FiveseveN), the possible explosive decompression from a window shattering could prove to be disasterous. Even if it's a standard 9mm slug (from, say, a Beretta 92f - standard issue for FBI) the fracture would mean that the window would eventually shatter from the stress anyway. So the plane could crash somewhere else (say, downtown New York, where it still would have done massive damage). And what if a bullet (or several) were to take out the pilot? The co-pilot could theoretically fly the plane, but what if he was shot, too? In other words, it's a great idea in theory but the dangers are just too great for it to be practically useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Because if there's one thing we know about smart people it's that they constantly tell everyone how really super duper smart they are.
Basically, what author John Scalzi calls McKean's Inversion
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but aren't you kind of making the previous poster's point?
Exactly. Just ask Penny Arcade:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/1/
Senator Conroy has been hugely inconsistent about the content of the blacklist. First it was "child porn", then he added "unwanted content" without clarifying what that actually meant and then he changed tack to "Refused Classification", which he then proceeded to repeatedly mention in conjunction with "child porn" in order to fool the public into thinking that the two were synonymous.
Also worth considering is the security of the blacklist. The Australian Communications & Media Authority's blacklist (upon which the filter's will be based) has been leaked several times before and it appears that the Government has done nothing to avoid repeating the experience besides threaten any local sites that host or link to it with $10,000 per day fines. So given the number of ways in which the blacklist can be leaked, it's practically inevitable that it will happen again.
If the ACMA blacklist is what Conroy says it is (ie. child porn), then the Australian Government will be directly responsible for providing pedophiles with a choice list of child porn on the Web. If the blacklist isn't what Conroy says it is, then the Government will have flat out lied to the public about what it is they're being "protected" from (in addition to the lies that they've told already).
Neither outcome makes the Government look good.
I'm sure it'll sound just fine at 320, and you can fit twice as much (or 4x- cant remember is 128 is per channel or stereo), without drastically changing the technology.
The bitrate is specified for both channels. So, a 128kbps MP3 has 64kbits allocated to each channel. As for 320kbps being good, it's generally accepted amongst audiophiles (at least, the ones that are willing to touch MP3 at all), that 256kbps is the ideal bitrate for "archive-quality" recordings. Funnily enough, it's also close to the bitrate of the ATRAC1 codec (not MDLP, which uses Sony's new ATRAC3 codec). The quality increase in going to 320kbps is generally considered not worth the extra space neeeded. At 256kbps (approximately a 5:1 compression ratio), you should fit 5 hours of audio per 700Mb CD-R. 128kpbs is the most common because it is considered the best compromise between quality and space (I personally think it can make difficult material sound like shit, so I normally encode at 256kbps). Battery times for MP3 players are usually calculated for 128kbps MP3s because higher bitrates require a faster data transfer rate (because the higher the bitrate, the more data stored for a given second of audio), which increases power consumption and reduces battery life. This is especially important on HDD-based players such as Creative's Nomad Jukebox series and the Archos Jukebox series.
As for the audio capacity of DVD-Audio and SACD, it'd depend greatly on the bitrate of the audio used. Is there a technical handbook a la the "Red Book" that gives technical details such as this? In order for there to be compatibilty a standard had to have been drafted. Given the capacity of DVDs (around 4.7Gb), DVD-Audio would still be able to hold a serious amount of music even if there were many channels. Even so, there would have to be a reasonable limit on the number of channels and so forth, because most people have at most a 5.1 setup anyway. Your fancy new DVD-Audio isn't going to sell well if it can only be played properly on the ÜberSystem 2002 the Jones's have in their living room.
I don't like the fact, and I know there are heaps of non-racist Australians... but a lot of people vote for Howard. and a lot of people voted for One Nation!
That I agree with. But it's more accurate to say that One Nation has been (rightfully) confined to the "lunatic fringe" section of politics and is not the great threat to the mainstream parties that it apparently once was. The main frustration I have with Australian politics at the moment is that there really is no worthy opposition to the current government and that, knowing how fucked-up the current government can and has been, is a pretty scary thing. What I'd like to see is something like in Sweden (where I am at the moment) - a social democracy. But that would require increased taxes and a combining of the two types of politics (which might require, *gasp*, agreeing on things) and given the inability of Australian politicians to even suggest either or both possibilites, I don't see it happening in the near future.
but your average Aussie is still racist
Shows how much you know about Australia. What bullshit. The words and actions of a vocal and (unfortunately) influential minority do not a country make. There were a lot of people who voted against John Howard in the last election, myself included. Are you saying that I, as well as all these other people, are racists? I don't think so.
But hey, while we're on stereotypes here, can I say that the average American is a fat, ignorant git who's more than willing to give up his "freedoms" in order to feel "safe" again? I don't believe that's true, but you'd be suprised what people would believe in the absence of the truth.
Looks like our little Johnny Howard has been following the lead of the US more than we first imagined. I'd imagine he'll be constructing the Aussie version of the PATRIOT Act next. Depressing and, at the same time, completely unsuprising.
I can take pride in the fact that the Australian courts have in recent times said "no, I don't think so" to a lot of the bullshit that the xxAA organisations have tried to foist upon us re: DRM. Unfortunately our Prime Minister (who we recently re-elected because he distracted us with the whole "Tampa crisis" and the "shadow" of illegal immigration) rarely takes time to remove his lips from the arses of the United States and US corporations in order to make such an independent decision, which would require vision (and more importantly - balls). So I'm not holding my breath for something from government protecting consumer rights. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), who handles most consumer complaints, is unfortunately pretty much a toothless tiger. They still haven't got Telstra into line over their virtual monopoloy of the telecommunications market, which is responsible for high prices (of Telstra and their competitors, who use Telstra's backbone and hence must pay their so-called "wholesale" prices) of local calls and DSL.
This sort of thing has been in place in many countries for quite some time. In Sweden, for example, every resident has a "personnummer" (personal number) that you use for identification purposes. It consists of your birthdate followed by another four-digit number. And the US has their Social Security number.
So what I'm interested in is, what's the problem?
If you need a RAR utility for Linux, check this page on Tucows.
Knowing that retailers are extremely unlikely to provide this service any time soon, may I humbly propose we create a CDNOT.com to catalog all these unplayable discs, and make a plugin available that will warn you, should you attempt to purchase one?
I know this may be stating the obvious (since this link has been made available on Slashdot many times) but there is a site that is taking on the (unfortunately) increasing task of cataloguing all "copy-protected" CDs. It's called Fat Chuck's and it not only lists "copy-protected CDs" in various regions but also, among other things, gives help to indie artists and gives a list of banned books throughout the world. You can also submit errors and comments on "copy-protected CDs".
If you find one in a store, excercise your customer (I hate the word consumer, it reinforces this cattle mentality corporations have about us citizens) rights and take it back, clear and simple. What they sold you is not a CD, according to the Red/Blue Book specifications and you have a right to return the product for exchange or refund unless the store specifically says otherwise. And I damn well hope somebody takes legal action because if this latest news is any indication, the record companies are not only selling you products that won't work in your equipment (ie. play and rip) but will actually intentionally damage your equipment (ie. fucking up firmware and forcing reboots, causing potential loss of data). I'm just so sick of this shit.
The reason that PVRs are perceived to be different from VCRs is because VCRs are more established and more socially acceptable. VCRs have been around for at least 20 years, most people know what they are and that they're "okay" to use (even if they still don't quite know how to use them :-)). PVRs, on the hand, are a relatively new invention. Most people aren't aware of what they are and the fact that they are an electronic device lends them an even greater aura of mystery to the average person. I personally find it disgusting that the "content industry", as it's known, is using this ignorance to deliberately misinform the populace about these devices, in order to "indoctrinate" them to their point of view (eg. "file sharing is stealing", deleting commericals from recordings is stealing", "watching ads is part of your contract with us").
Ads are a way for studios to generate revenue to create content (though the cheapness of RealityTV(TM) means that most of this money just goes to the pockets of execs), but they are not part and parcel of the viewing experience. Sorry, Mr Turner, but there is no "contract" and it is part of my fair use rights (not that I expect you to give a flying fuck about that, given the previous behaviour of your colleagues in the industry) to delete commercials from recordings that I make for my personal use. And if I don't watch ads, it's my right. It's bad enough that you try to equate file-sharing to stealing...
Are you seriously suggesting that anti-gun legislation has NEVER prevented guns falling into the wrong hands?
I would be suggesting exactly that. There is quite an element of truth in the saying "If you outlaw [illegal item], then only outlaws will have [illegal item]." Witness prohibition in the 1920's. It just made alcohol harder to get, lower quality (higher methanol content increased rates of blindness dramatically) and more expensive. Plus, it allowed the Mob to become more powerful because you could only get your liquor from the Mob (incidentally, most of the Kennedy family fortune was alleged to have been made through liquor-peddling). Same thing with guns. You pay more for weapons because they are illegal. And since they are unregulated, you don't know who has them and you can't track their use. Great if you want to commit a crime like armed robbery or murder because illegal items have no paper trail. The original poster has a point because kids or criminals who want to obtain guns, firearms etc badly enough will find a means. What outlawing does is tip the supply in favour of criminals, who don't care about the law and don't operate inside it. Ergo, it doesn't matter to them, only to us law-abiding folk.
I'd instead argue that the main objection to this legislation by this forum is not because 10-year-olds won't be able to get SOF2, but that this is yet another piece of legislation politicians are introducing to "improve" our lives. We are objecting not to the regulation of our lives, but to the overregulation of our lives. We expect laws to provide reasonable limits on our behaviour, not to dictate our lives.
In that case, maybe I should change it back to the original slogan of "There is no problem that can't be solved without the proper application of high explosives", eh? ;-)
Possibly, but I think you're missing the point here. Read this post to see what I mean. The point is that the average user doesn't know and/or care about these things. As long as he/she can play music, games, get his/her spam from Hotmail ;-) and write Word documents he/she couldn't care less because either they don't understand how this would work or consider it important. Hence, if your audience is ignorant of these things, you can get away with a hell of a lot under the impression that "it's for your convenience/benefit" because most people don't have the time or knowledge to question these actions. We (the technically literate) need to educate the rest of the community ourselves and not leave it up to Microsoft to utilise user ignorance to get away with such things.
This move to "reclassify" (ie. censor) a whole stack of games right before Christmas, when demand for such games is at its highest, reaks of not only ignorance but a certain sense of mean-spiritedness. And this isn't the first time that the Australian government has tried to ban games it didn't like. First up was an FMV-driven graphical adventure by the name of Phantasmagoria because it contained very violent scenes and was thought to have contained a possible scene of sexual violence. Next in the firing line was Carmageddon, which the government attempted to ban on the laughable premise that it would encourage people to run each other over (interestingly enough, the sequel, which contained more realistic graphics than the first, passed through without dissent). The game Postal also came into the firing line, although I'm not sure if it was banned or not (I think it was). What strikes me as even more odd this time around is that the first two GTA games passed through practically untouched, while this game was allowed to be released and is now being recalled right before the busy and lucrative Christmas holiday period. Furthermore, the basis on which the game is being banned ("sexual violence") is extremely tenuous because the act of killing a prostitute after (and not before or during) sex shouldn't qualify as sexual violence. The term "sexual violence" refers to violence that is being committed during the act of sex (eg. rape or killing someone during sex), which is not the case here. Yes, the game does allow you to kill a prostitute after you have sex with her, but the two acts as described are not mutually exclusive (ie. you can do one or the other as well as both) and are not necessary to win or advance in the game itself. Yes, the possibility of committing the described acts may offend your sensibilities but you do have the democratic freedom in this country to not perform the acts in-game or, even better, not buy the game altogether. This recent move to remove all the games from stores effectively removes that democratic freedom. Controlling what you see, do, read, write and say should be your responisibility and not that of your government. Same goes for parents with children. If you continue to abdicate such a right (this responsibility is also one of the fundamental democractic rights of my nation, Australia) to government then you lose the right to complain when things don't go the way you want them to or when the government starts to take more than they're entitled to.
The reason for all this madness when it comes to the classification of video is that the Liberal government (which has just won its thoroughly undeserved second term by successfully tapping into the nation's xenophobic tendancies over the Tampa incident and illegal immigrants in general) is notoriously conservative and ignorant when it comes to matters of new technology. For instance, they banned online gambing in Australia, effectively giving the world market a huge headstart, because a moratorium was needed to "assess the risks of online gambing" when in reality the government had allowed, even promoted, the installation of poker machines in pubs and clubs with willful ignorance of the social consequences. They also tried to remove "offensive content" from the Internet (ie. net censorship), which merely made it hell for companies to host content locally for fear of being shut down by an anonymous person who was offended and forced ISPs to do the technically impossible and monitor their services for such "offensive content" (a term which was not even properly defined and hence gave the bill a DMCA-like level of scope). However, this bill was necessary to gain the support of Independent senator Brian Harradine, whose vote was needed to swing the balance of power towards the government so the "wonderful" GST could be passed (which the government screwed up in spectacular fashion by creating mountains of red tape through increased business paperwork and "exceptions" fiascos, when they would have been better off by taxing everything and giving income tax cuts). So what starts out as beeing a possibly good idea becomes a complete pain in the ass. Furthermore, the little surplus (which was collected by slashing budgets across the board, especially in the areas of health, R & D, the arts, science and education - now university costs a packet and we're behind in pretty much everything), often derisively called the "election battle chest", was used to offer all kinds of expensive gifts to the electorate to lure their votes in the election. Now that they've spent it, the only way they can get more money to actually do something useful is to raise taxes or cut spending (usually the latter). Wonderful.
So as you can see, this kind of inconsistent, ignorant, poorly-implemented crap, I mean policies, (ironically the only consistency in government policy is it has all these properties) happens all the time. The sad part is we're used to it, even expecting it to happen.
What about the risk of explosion in a fuel cell? Hydrogen is very volatile - you need a really good system that prevents tampering, leakage, electrical activity outside the plane, and can withstand crashes. I'm thinking about the Hindenburg airship disaster here when making comparison at the moment. I'm not an expert on these things so I would really like to know how the gas used in the auxiliary unit would "burn" in comparison to hydrogen in the event of a disaster.
Flammable fuels are only explosive when it has mixed with air in a sufficient quantity to form a fuel-air mixture. This is different from volatility, which is a measure of how easily a compound turns into gaseous form (petrol/gasoline, for example, is quite volatile, as is ethanol). The fact is that Hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table and hence diffuses through leaks and openings much more quickly than, say volatile fumes from regular petrol or JP9 jet fuel (where the fumes consist of multiple gaseous hydrocarbons, which have greater molecular weights and are hence much heavier). This is why there is no gaseous Hydrogen in the Earth's atmosphere. The Hydrogen simply floats away into space.
If you were to be involved in an accident involving an aircraft equipped with a Hydrogen fuel cell, you'd find that the chief cause will not have been the Hydrogen. The combustion of the fuel used in the aircraft's engines (remembering that the Hydrogen fuel cell will be used as a backup device to generate air and power for the aircraft and not as a means of propulsion) would have caused the lion's share of the damage. The only noticeable effect the Hydrogen would have on the acccident is to perhaps allow the fire to burn a little longer (assuming that enough of the Hydrogen is still contained in the air and has not diffused into the atmosphere). When being used in fuel cells, Hydrogen chiefly stored as a compressed, possibly liquefied gas. Hydrogen can also be stored in certain metallic compounds (known as metallic hydrides, which hold the Hydrogen atoms in a similar way to amalgum containing Mercury) to increase energy densities. In the first case, the rapid diffusion of the Hydrogen gas would not cause a fire for the reasons outlined above. In the second case, the Hydrogen would not be released because it is still bound to the metallic hydrides. In either case, it is unlikely that the cause of the accident will be the Hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen has, in fact, been proven to be a safer fuel to handle than gasoline. The byproduct of the fuel cell is water vapour, so it's also much better for the environment.
Your comparison to the Hindenburg disaster is not really applicable in this case, as it was conclusively demonstrated that it was the Aluminium compounds in the paint on the Hindenburg that caused it to burst into flames and not the Hydrogen gas. The Hydrogen ignited later, burning much more slowly and for a lot longer and hence actually acted as a fuel that sustained the fire, as opposed to the agent that caused the ship to burst into flames in the first place (remembering that the ship still burned even though the outer material had been completely destroyed).
After checking the website, I found that the largest contributor was the National Association of Broadcasters with total lobbying expenditures of $5,200,000 and $657,892 in campagin contributions. Now, as far as I know (which isn't that much since I'm not actually a US citizen) there are about 300 million people in the US. If just one person in three hundred decided to give their relevant congressman or woman just five dollars, you'd easily match if not exceed the contributions of these corporations. So instead of complaining about evil, multinational corporations with seemingly bottomless pockets, why don't you dig deep and contribute something yourself? If more people did this, chances are your congressmen and women would not so readily accept money from people like the National Assoication of Broadcasters because they wouldn't need to. True, the big corporations could easily up the contributions more, but there's one thing the big multinationals don't have that we do - numbers. And if enough people contribute to campaigns, return defective CDs (which violate the Red Book standard and hence cannot carrry the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo) and write letters to the RIAA and politicians and anyone who'll listen then something just might be done about it. Hey, it's a better option sitting on your ass and complaining about it.
at least nsync and britney spears fans won't be suckered into dvd-audio and sacd.
no no no. go back, re-read what i just said, and savor its wisdom.
Maybe so, but you're forgetting that N'Sync and Britney Spears fans, for the most part, wouldn't know and/or appreciate a decent quality recording if one came up and smacked them in the head. Even DVD Audio , HDCD or SA-CD couldn't salvage an N'Sync or Britney Spears recording. These are often the same ones who think that crappy-ass 128kbit MP3 radio rip is "CD-quality" when in reality, the only thing that's truly "CD-quality" is the CD itself? It's actually the Mozart and Bach fans who tend to be the discerning listeners that can appreciate the good-quality recording that comes with formats like HDCD, DVD Audio and SA-CD because they have real hardwarer (like Bang & Olufson systems, Mirantz CD players and JBL speakers) to listen to it on, not some cheap-as computer speakers. But it's all a matter of perspective, I guess.
The point is not that the technically adept will possibly somehow be denied access to the Internet (which wouldn't happen for a whole slew of technical reasons), but that Micrsoft will get an unfair headstart on those who aren't technically minded. Your 'average user' may not know that you don't need Passport to use the Internet under Windows XP. But if he/she gets constant reminder messages for days suggesting to them that they get a Passport account, then they may start thinking "if I don't get a Passport account, I may be missing out on something (ie. may not be getting the "best" services)". Especially if, as the article suggests Microsoft might starting including "features" in XP that may only be accessed with a Passport account. Those who know enough about computers will know how to set up their systems under XP using their own software and Internet access. But it's the 'average user', who doesn't know these things, that it's going to most affect.
In this case, education will the key. If people know that they can use XP just fine without a Passport account, then they may be less likely to sign up for one in future (hey, it's yet one more password to memorise). That is, unless MS doesn't in future require users to have such accounts to use key features of the operating system. It's bad enough that it's compulsory to register your copy of Windows XP (otherwise it stops functioning). To say nothing of the fact that even in the face of an (once) impending antitrust suit by the Department of Justice, MS are continuing to "bundle" products and services to their operating systems more tightly than ever.
Kind of reminds me of SimCity 2000, where Microwave power allowed you to beam energy from space into the satellite dish of the power plant. My question is, what happens if they miss? Ooops, there goes half a residential district!
Actually, no. What the article was saying was that the material is the first non-metallic material that was magnetic at room temperature (meaning that other non-magnetic materials weren't, at least not at room temperature). The point about the material being magnetic even above 200C was about the material's Curie point (above which the material stops being magnetic) being much higher than any other material, the previous record being 255C which was held by a different form of buckyballs. So this material is interesting because it's the first non-metallic material to be magnetic at room temperature and has a higher Curie point than any other non-metallic material to date.
Apparently, the material's magnetism could be linked to unpaired electrons, which can sustain a magnetic field when their spins are aligned (in this case there are unpaired electrons). One possibility is that they bond in triangular groups of three, which would provide for unpaired spins.
Although, to be used as computer memory it would have to have uniform magnetism, not just in pockets. But either way it's a significant step forward.
The big reason why the politicians are trying to block the major record labels from setting up their music download services is that the major players may be anti-competitive (that would never happen in the software industry!) and unfairly dominate the market. Before we decide to post reactionary "EU sucks" posts en masse, we have to consider that they may actually have a point.
One of the fundamental aspects of the major players' (ie. AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann, Sony etc) control over the music industry is that of control of distribution. The big labels have managed to buy up/price out everyone else in the market over time until they become the majority providers in the market. They have so much money behind them that it's hard for the indie players to compete if they don't have multi million-dollar advertising budgets and large amounts of capital to professionally record and produce hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of CDs, although prices for both are dropping. You want your CD to reach a large enough audience for it to go gold or platinum? Do it through us. Sure you can refuse to, but it's not like you can compete with us. One of the reasons the RIAA decided to shut Napster down was not for mass copyright infringement (the Audio Home Recording Act allowed people to copy CDs to tape for years), it was for the loss of control over the distribution of their product.
The Internet may, if we're not careful, merely provide the big labels with another avenue of control over their product. We may see a repeat of past history where a couple of key players (both of which seem to be merely extensions of the major recording labels) grow and grow until they become so big they can have the kind of control over the digital market that they have over the physical market right now. This means high prices, low quality of service and even less money going towards the artist. They can control access that small players have to the product (ie. the music) by charging high prices for access to their copyrighted product. This is similar to Telstra being able to price out competitors by charging high prices for access to its telecommunications network (although the Australian Competition and Consumers Commission (ACCC) is trying to put a stop to that, just like they did with DVDs). Although an American congressman is trying to introduce a law that gives all download services the same access to music regardless of whether they are affiliated with the record company that sells the songs, which (for once) actually makes a lot of sense since it removes at least one measure through which the major players can unfairly control the market. This complaint by the politicians of the EU may actually be a good thing for all of us who download digital music.
I can see your point here in that people who are allowed to protect themselves (ie. carry handguns) can better protect others. This is already the case with some military and law enforcement personnel who are legally allowed to carry handguns onto passenger planes.
But the problem with this solution is that a handgun on an aircraft is incredibly dangerous, especially if the guns aren't in the hands of trained professionals (even then the danger is still there). And especially if there are thirty untrained amateurs who may not be acting cool in a time of crisis. If a stray bullet (or 30) were to pierce a window, which is possible on handguns of, say, .45 caliber (eg. a Colt 1991A1) or 5.7mm (eg. FN FiveseveN), the possible explosive decompression from a window shattering could prove to be disasterous. Even if it's a standard 9mm slug (from, say, a Beretta 92f - standard issue for FBI) the fracture would mean that the window would eventually shatter from the stress anyway. So the plane could crash somewhere else (say, downtown New York, where it still would have done massive damage). And what if a bullet (or several) were to take out the pilot? The co-pilot could theoretically fly the plane, but what if he was shot, too? In other words, it's a great idea in theory but the dangers are just too great for it to be practically useful.