Real isn't doing anything to Apple's 'platform'. They're allowing people who've bought into Apple's hardware (I have, BTW, it isn't anti-Apple bias from me) to use songs from their store. There is nothing illegal or anti-competitive here. There's no need for antitrust legislation, because there's no antitrust issue!
It's really simple - Real has said "Here are our files. You can also convert them to another format that's compatible with someone else's product." In any other arena, they would be applauded for allowing their customers to take their files free (because, remember, they did this knowing full well that FairPlay files can be DRM-stripped.) There's no monopoly, just additional options.
Apple has *no* right to complain that Real has enabled people to buy songs from Real and play them on an iPod. None. Just like Ford has no right to complain if I buy third-party parts for my car, Dell has no right if I buy 3rd party memory for my laptop, and Sony has no right to complain if I hook a JVC DVD player through my Sony receiver to my Samsung TV.
See, I would argue that the industry standard languages are (in order) C, C++, VB, and LabWindows/LabView/MATlab/other very high level language, because of my slice.
Its likely that your slice (the Perl-using slice) is also a very small slice. Based on a fairly wide-ranging look, I'd guess that C and C++ are the most widely used.
Oh, and in your console analogy, this is roughly equivalent to Sega saying:
"We've developed a virtualization layer that will allow you to play our games on any of the consoles, no matter whether you have the Gamecube, Xbox, or PS2 disc. PS2 disc on Xbox hardware, Xbox disc on Gamecube, mix and match. Buy once, run anywhere."
If Sega did that (I picked Sega because they no longer have a hardware business, and yes, I know that the kind of software mentioned above would be quite hard to write) I guarantee you/. would be jumping for joy.
Why would Apple complain? This is certainly not going to cannibalize iPod sales (profitable) - it'll, if anything, increase them - and while it might reduce iTMS sales slightly, Apple makes minimal amounts of money off of those anyway.
Real did nothing illegal. For that matter, they did nothing *wrong*, in any sense of the word wrong. They wrote software that allows people who buy music from them to play that music on an iPod by 'masking' their DRM to look like Apple's DRM. This is roughly equivalent to someone saying "Hey, that Sony MiniDisc thing is pretty cool. I think I'll make an adapter that lets my own (also proprietary) MO disc play on a MiniDisc player."
Both in terms of what's been done and in terms of exactly how much market impact it has.
How is Real developing this going to hurt Apple's sales of iPods? Answer: it won't. It might even enhance them. It might take some customers away from iTMS, but I've always gotten the impression that most people pick a music store and stick with it. In the end, this move by Real is going to have minimal effect, except to allow people who have a lot of music from Real to more easily use it on an iPod. And that cannot be considered bad.
There are tons of free tools out there for Motorola-designed phones, both Nextel and non. And I'm not talking the MPXs or the v600; there's good software out there for i60s and 90s, and for v300s and (I believe) v60s as well.
Hell, look at the V3 phone Motorola just released info on (called Razor as well - its *thin*) and you might even not worry about the design whether Apple does it or Motorola does it.
(obdisclaimer: I do work for Motorola, but not for the cell phone group.)
I do similar things; I think my favorite was when I was trying to debug a bad power supply circuit (turned out the person who did our layout actually managed to connect the net that was supposed to go to one of the inductors in the buck-boost regulator to ground instead, making it not work at all) and was just kinda poking at those tiny little surface mount pins with your standard DVM probe; all of a sudden, I heard this loud ZAP!, the scope I had sitting on the power channel to monitor ramping clipped out at around 40V, the magic smoke came up, and I jumped. After I calmed down, I looked at the power supply chip - no idea what I had shorted, but I arc-welded a big chip out of the IC. Replaced the power supply IC, fixed the bad trace (by completely depopping that part of the board and jumpering out to a daughterboard that was correctly built on a breadboard), and the entire thing worked just fine. Didn't zap the CPU or anything.
I've seen and done some other awful things in development (burned a solenoid out so badly that the grease flooded the lab station I was at, watched our lab tech reach up to scratch his nose... while he was soldering, resulting in minor burns, lifting CPU pins while the CPU was running to disable external interrupts because I didn't feel like recompiling our embedded code, and the ever fun forgetting to replace the protection circuitry and hitting the board with reverse battery and load dump), but none of them quite as funny as that.
Actually, you could do an equivalent process, but the proper way to do it to test octane would be to test its ignition properties under varying compressions, not under varying ignitors.
That said, if you decide to bin-sort your gas station, can I come watch?:)
They adjust pretty quickly; you don't want to let knock continue for very long, might damage the engine, so you're talking about minutes at worst most likely. There's probably a bit of hysteresis built in to avoid glitching and limit cycles, but I wouldn't worry too much about the delay.
I'll assume you aren't trolling this time, so here's the bin-sort process I'm familiar with - others probably exist, but they probably have a lot in common:
Let's say we have a hex inverter IC. After they've cut the wafer, bonded the die to the pads, and put it into whatever package they're going to use (CDIP, PDIP, SOIC, etc.), they'll drop it into a test fixture. They'll bake the test fixture to a certain temperature, and run tests on the IC. For an inverter IC, for example, they'll make sure the outputs are inverted to the inputs. You also make sure you don't have extreme power consumption at the extreme ends of the range, that a clocked IC doesn't fail under heat, that A/D converters don't die or go out of spec at temperature, that various IC filters don't get screwy as the temperature messes with their capacitors, so on, so forth. They'll run a temperature range, and when an IC fails, mark the max temperature. ICs whose max temperatures are less than the commercial range requires are tossed, reducing yield. ICs who make commercial, but not industrial, are binned commercial. ICs that make industrial but not milspec are binned industrial; however, industrial ICs often can make milspec because a particular wafer produced temperature tolerant parts that weren't compliant with other aspects of milspec requirements (part traceability, etc.).
Sometimes parts from the industrial bin are used to fill orders for commercial parts, but thats rare in most IC industries (desktop CPUs are a notable exception, where they bin by speed and not be temp tolerance).
Octane certainly is not a made up term - its a made up scale, and a real chemical. Isooctane is defined as having an octane rating of 100 on this scale. And nobody ever tests octane at gas stations.
It's pretty obvious you've never done anything but work at a gas station, isn't it?
Baud equals *symbols* per second. Once you start to get into modulations that get multiple bits per symbol, baud != bits per second.
56 kbps modems actually transmit at 8kbaud (7 bits per symbol, 8000 symbols per second), using PCM modulation, instead of the QAM/trellis modulation all the other high speed modems use. 2400 bps modems were 600 baud, 9600 modems were 2400 baud, 14.4 modems were 2400 baud. I believe 28.8 and 33.6 run at 3600 baud, which is about the most you can expect from the analog PSTN; 56k relies on the digital portion, essentially, which is how it achieves 8kbaud.
No, that would be fraud. You claim its 91 octane, you better sell 91 octane.
Now, if they're doing differential mixing from a pair of tanks to create mid-grade, that's legit, but considering that gas stations are tested on a regular basis to make sure they're actually delivering fair weight and proper octane, I'm just gonna go ahead and call you a liar.
Usually industrial parts are bin-sorted, because suppliers get it through the nose if their parts fail during a QA run (I've watched a Fortune 50 company refuse to do business with a chip house until they fixed some issues with one of their processes - Wal-Mart tactics get used all over). As a result, if the manufacturer can't guarantee the spec by design, they'll bin-sort.
On the other hand, at least for chips its unusual for there to be any difference between the parts other than the guaranteed temperature ranges (consumer is usually 0-70c, industrial is usually -40 to 125c, and military is usually -50 to 150c). Industrial parts come at a minor premium over consumer, while milspec parts come at a major premium over industrial.
So, to make it short - 90% of the time, ICs are bin-sorted and sold as binned. Every once in a while, you'll come across a consumer part that runs like an industrial, but its rare.
I'd like to submit that most people who have dual CPU rx2600's that they keep in plain sight probably don't care whether or not their computer looks good.
Now turn off your computer, and leave it off for a while. I recommend playing Gamecube to deal with the withdrawal symptoms. Touch the case again.
How different are they in temperature? Not very. Most of the heat inside of your case exits with the air, not through case heat transfer. That's why plastic computer cases are fine also - plastic sucks at heat transfer just like wood.
Despite that, Intacs patients are still usually prescribed antibiotics (risk of infection) and steroids (anti-inflammatory properties). Putting shit that isn't from your body into your body is rarely without some complications.
You know, I've never worked in NYC, but I've visited, and one thing I recall is the following: the yellows go to red, and then there's another couple seconds of pause, and then the reds on the other side flip to green. Also, many members of ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers, the traffic engineer equivalent to IEEE) have been bitching about NYC's idiotic 3 second yellow standard for a long time now. Let's also note that NYC's drive to a 3 second yellow was spearheaded by an insurance industry group that also pushes red light cameras (and that the far too short 3 second yellow has been proven to cause higher numbers of entry-on-red, which results in higher ticket revenue). Something that causes higher numbers of crashes and tickets, being pushed by an insurance industry lobbying group? Gee, you don't think they might want to be able to jack up their rates for drivers, do you?
My aggressiveness comes from the fact that I spent most of my high school summer jobs working as a surveyor's assistant, meaning that I dealt with more than a few road engineers. I'm not dumb, and I picked up quite a bit. Having a civil engineer for a father probably helped too. Oh, and knowing of the existence of the Highway Safety Act (1966) and the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Which used to lay out exactly the principles I talk about, until it was modified in 2000 to remove the "based on formal site engineering studies" for politically motivated reasons (specifically, the lobbying by red light camera and insurance industry people, and also the desire by most cities for increased revenue from red light cameras). However, even the watered down version states the reason for a yellow light to be (paraphrasing) "to allow motorists adequate time to stop prior to the intersection and to clear the intersection." ITE/ASCE's most recent publication setting forth the method of determination would be Determination of Left-Turn Yellow Change and Red Clearance Interval, published in JTE. Specifically it deals with those issues for left-turn intersections. Unfortunately, the paper is not free, unless you have access to JTE through work or school or membership. Another non-free reference is ITE's #JDB04A20
Be less aggressive when you try to talk back to someone who knows what they're talking about, okay? NYC is hardly the typical example for road safety, by the way - you freaks don't even obey your lane lines, much less your traffic signals.
Slashdot Mirror
Real isn't doing anything to Apple's 'platform'. They're allowing people who've bought into Apple's hardware (I have, BTW, it isn't anti-Apple bias from me) to use songs from their store. There is nothing illegal or anti-competitive here. There's no need for antitrust legislation, because there's no antitrust issue!
It's really simple - Real has said "Here are our files. You can also convert them to another format that's compatible with someone else's product." In any other arena, they would be applauded for allowing their customers to take their files free (because, remember, they did this knowing full well that FairPlay files can be DRM-stripped.) There's no monopoly, just additional options.
Apple has *no* right to complain that Real has enabled people to buy songs from Real and play them on an iPod. None. Just like Ford has no right to complain if I buy third-party parts for my car, Dell has no right if I buy 3rd party memory for my laptop, and Sony has no right to complain if I hook a JVC DVD player through my Sony receiver to my Samsung TV.
See, I would argue that the industry standard languages are (in order) C, C++, VB, and LabWindows/LabView/MATlab/other very high level language, because of my slice.
Its likely that your slice (the Perl-using slice) is also a very small slice. Based on a fairly wide-ranging look, I'd guess that C and C++ are the most widely used.
Oh, and in your console analogy, this is roughly equivalent to Sega saying:
/. would be jumping for joy.
"We've developed a virtualization layer that will allow you to play our games on any of the consoles, no matter whether you have the Gamecube, Xbox, or PS2 disc. PS2 disc on Xbox hardware, Xbox disc on Gamecube, mix and match. Buy once, run anywhere."
If Sega did that (I picked Sega because they no longer have a hardware business, and yes, I know that the kind of software mentioned above would be quite hard to write) I guarantee you
Interoperability is ALWAYS good.
Why would Apple complain? This is certainly not going to cannibalize iPod sales (profitable) - it'll, if anything, increase them - and while it might reduce iTMS sales slightly, Apple makes minimal amounts of money off of those anyway.
Music from Real's music store is encoded as an AAC file with a DRM wrapper.
All this software does is take RealDRM and replace it with equivalent AppleDRM.
Real did nothing illegal. For that matter, they did nothing *wrong*, in any sense of the word wrong. They wrote software that allows people who buy music from them to play that music on an iPod by 'masking' their DRM to look like Apple's DRM. This is roughly equivalent to someone saying "Hey, that Sony MiniDisc thing is pretty cool. I think I'll make an adapter that lets my own (also proprietary) MO disc play on a MiniDisc player."
Both in terms of what's been done and in terms of exactly how much market impact it has.
How is Real developing this going to hurt Apple's sales of iPods? Answer: it won't. It might even enhance them. It might take some customers away from iTMS, but I've always gotten the impression that most people pick a music store and stick with it. In the end, this move by Real is going to have minimal effect, except to allow people who have a lot of music from Real to more easily use it on an iPod. And that cannot be considered bad.
Maybe the Sanyo just has crappy connectivity?
There are tons of free tools out there for Motorola-designed phones, both Nextel and non. And I'm not talking the MPXs or the v600; there's good software out there for i60s and 90s, and for v300s and (I believe) v60s as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Of course, a new HP laser printer ain't built like one of the classic HP printers; *printer* quality, not *print* quality, is what's declined.
Hell, look at the V3 phone Motorola just released info on (called Razor as well - its *thin*) and you might even not worry about the design whether Apple does it or Motorola does it.
(obdisclaimer: I do work for Motorola, but not for the cell phone group.)
I do similar things; I think my favorite was when I was trying to debug a bad power supply circuit (turned out the person who did our layout actually managed to connect the net that was supposed to go to one of the inductors in the buck-boost regulator to ground instead, making it not work at all) and was just kinda poking at those tiny little surface mount pins with your standard DVM probe; all of a sudden, I heard this loud ZAP!, the scope I had sitting on the power channel to monitor ramping clipped out at around 40V, the magic smoke came up, and I jumped. After I calmed down, I looked at the power supply chip - no idea what I had shorted, but I arc-welded a big chip out of the IC. Replaced the power supply IC, fixed the bad trace (by completely depopping that part of the board and jumpering out to a daughterboard that was correctly built on a breadboard), and the entire thing worked just fine. Didn't zap the CPU or anything.
I've seen and done some other awful things in development (burned a solenoid out so badly that the grease flooded the lab station I was at, watched our lab tech reach up to scratch his nose... while he was soldering, resulting in minor burns, lifting CPU pins while the CPU was running to disable external interrupts because I didn't feel like recompiling our embedded code, and the ever fun forgetting to replace the protection circuitry and hitting the board with reverse battery and load dump), but none of them quite as funny as that.
Unix is dead. Long live the Unix.
Actually, you could do an equivalent process, but the proper way to do it to test octane would be to test its ignition properties under varying compressions, not under varying ignitors.
:)
That said, if you decide to bin-sort your gas station, can I come watch?
They adjust pretty quickly; you don't want to let knock continue for very long, might damage the engine, so you're talking about minutes at worst most likely. There's probably a bit of hysteresis built in to avoid glitching and limit cycles, but I wouldn't worry too much about the delay.
It's like octane mixing.
I'll assume you aren't trolling this time, so here's the bin-sort process I'm familiar with - others probably exist, but they probably have a lot in common:
Let's say we have a hex inverter IC. After they've cut the wafer, bonded the die to the pads, and put it into whatever package they're going to use (CDIP, PDIP, SOIC, etc.), they'll drop it into a test fixture. They'll bake the test fixture to a certain temperature, and run tests on the IC. For an inverter IC, for example, they'll make sure the outputs are inverted to the inputs. You also make sure you don't have extreme power consumption at the extreme ends of the range, that a clocked IC doesn't fail under heat, that A/D converters don't die or go out of spec at temperature, that various IC filters don't get screwy as the temperature messes with their capacitors, so on, so forth. They'll run a temperature range, and when an IC fails, mark the max temperature. ICs whose max temperatures are less than the commercial range requires are tossed, reducing yield. ICs who make commercial, but not industrial, are binned commercial. ICs that make industrial but not milspec are binned industrial; however, industrial ICs often can make milspec because a particular wafer produced temperature tolerant parts that weren't compliant with other aspects of milspec requirements (part traceability, etc.).
Sometimes parts from the industrial bin are used to fill orders for commercial parts, but thats rare in most IC industries (desktop CPUs are a notable exception, where they bin by speed and not be temp tolerance).
Octane certainly is not a made up term - its a made up scale, and a real chemical. Isooctane is defined as having an octane rating of 100 on this scale. And nobody ever tests octane at gas stations.
It's pretty obvious you've never done anything but work at a gas station, isn't it?
No....
Baud equals *symbols* per second. Once you start to get into modulations that get multiple bits per symbol, baud != bits per second.
56 kbps modems actually transmit at 8kbaud (7 bits per symbol, 8000 symbols per second), using PCM modulation, instead of the QAM/trellis modulation all the other high speed modems use. 2400 bps modems were 600 baud, 9600 modems were 2400 baud, 14.4 modems were 2400 baud. I believe 28.8 and 33.6 run at 3600 baud, which is about the most you can expect from the analog PSTN; 56k relies on the digital portion, essentially, which is how it achieves 8kbaud.
No, that would be fraud. You claim its 91 octane, you better sell 91 octane.
Now, if they're doing differential mixing from a pair of tanks to create mid-grade, that's legit, but considering that gas stations are tested on a regular basis to make sure they're actually delivering fair weight and proper octane, I'm just gonna go ahead and call you a liar.
Usually industrial parts are bin-sorted, because suppliers get it through the nose if their parts fail during a QA run (I've watched a Fortune 50 company refuse to do business with a chip house until they fixed some issues with one of their processes - Wal-Mart tactics get used all over). As a result, if the manufacturer can't guarantee the spec by design, they'll bin-sort.
On the other hand, at least for chips its unusual for there to be any difference between the parts other than the guaranteed temperature ranges (consumer is usually 0-70c, industrial is usually -40 to 125c, and military is usually -50 to 150c). Industrial parts come at a minor premium over consumer, while milspec parts come at a major premium over industrial.
So, to make it short - 90% of the time, ICs are bin-sorted and sold as binned. Every once in a while, you'll come across a consumer part that runs like an industrial, but its rare.
Better yet, a car company called Cafeolet. I bet they'd do great in the Seattle market.
I'd like to submit that most people who have dual CPU rx2600's that they keep in plain sight probably don't care whether or not their computer looks good.
OK, I'd like you to conduct a small experiment.
Touch your computer case.
Now turn off your computer, and leave it off for a while. I recommend playing Gamecube to deal with the withdrawal symptoms. Touch the case again.
How different are they in temperature? Not very. Most of the heat inside of your case exits with the air, not through case heat transfer. That's why plastic computer cases are fine also - plastic sucks at heat transfer just like wood.
If your sub ain't made of wood (well, technically processed wood, MDF generally) i.e. it's plastic, then its a really, really crappy sub.
Despite that, Intacs patients are still usually prescribed antibiotics (risk of infection) and steroids (anti-inflammatory properties). Putting shit that isn't from your body into your body is rarely without some complications.
You know, I've never worked in NYC, but I've visited, and one thing I recall is the following: the yellows go to red, and then there's another couple seconds of pause, and then the reds on the other side flip to green. Also, many members of ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers, the traffic engineer equivalent to IEEE) have been bitching about NYC's idiotic 3 second yellow standard for a long time now. Let's also note that NYC's drive to a 3 second yellow was spearheaded by an insurance industry group that also pushes red light cameras (and that the far too short 3 second yellow has been proven to cause higher numbers of entry-on-red, which results in higher ticket revenue). Something that causes higher numbers of crashes and tickets, being pushed by an insurance industry lobbying group? Gee, you don't think they might want to be able to jack up their rates for drivers, do you?
My aggressiveness comes from the fact that I spent most of my high school summer jobs working as a surveyor's assistant, meaning that I dealt with more than a few road engineers. I'm not dumb, and I picked up quite a bit. Having a civil engineer for a father probably helped too. Oh, and knowing of the existence of the Highway Safety Act (1966) and the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Which used to lay out exactly the principles I talk about, until it was modified in 2000 to remove the "based on formal site engineering studies" for politically motivated reasons (specifically, the lobbying by red light camera and insurance industry people, and also the desire by most cities for increased revenue from red light cameras). However, even the watered down version states the reason for a yellow light to be (paraphrasing) "to allow motorists adequate time to stop prior to the intersection and to clear the intersection." ITE/ASCE's most recent publication setting forth the method of determination would be Determination of Left-Turn Yellow Change and Red Clearance Interval, published in JTE. Specifically it deals with those issues for left-turn intersections. Unfortunately, the paper is not free, unless you have access to JTE through work or school or membership. Another non-free reference is ITE's #JDB04A20
Be less aggressive when you try to talk back to someone who knows what they're talking about, okay? NYC is hardly the typical example for road safety, by the way - you freaks don't even obey your lane lines, much less your traffic signals.
That's probably exactly how it'll start; the question is, will there ever be enough incentive to make local roads computer-controlled?