Only when you're absolutely as sure as you can be that the whole thing wont fly to pieces around do you accelerate and rotate.
And only then have you reached an aviation milestone. Until then, you've built an inefficient, funny looking car.
Look at Eclipse. They've been doing all sorts of taxi tests, engine tests, and so on for months, even years. But only with the first flight have they silenced the naysayers.
Actually, you're both close. The DVD specification allows only AC-3 or PCM audio for NTSC DVDs, but also allows MPEG Layer 2 (not Layer 3, aka MP3) for PAL DVDs.
BTW, anyone owning an old Mac or any Apple][ series outfitted with a 3.5" drive has a similar setup. 5 zones, but definitely directly-opposing heads and not this nonstandard setup. I think the 5zone drives finally got the axe when Jobs decided to not include a floppy with iMac.
The 400k (single sided) and 800k (double sided)formats were always zoned, though the early drives did actually change speeds, and loudly at that. Once Apple introduced HD drives, (the first "SuperDrive") the variable spindle speeds went away. That said, they could read and write the old formats just fine, by changing bitrates instead of spindle speed. The SuperDrive could also read and write MFM DD floppies (720k) in addition to HD. (1440k)
We varied bitrate instead of spindle speed from the beginning on duplication equipment, but the dupe equipment never had the cost pressure that a consumer-ish PC did.
Thank god we never had to build a Twiggy duplicator....and my Lisa had a proper 3.5" drive
Sony *does* get it. DVD+R/+RW are Beta all over again.
+R is more compatible than -R with settop DVD players and older DVD-ROM drives. +R/+RW drives write faster than their -R/-RW counterparts. It's arguably the "better" format.
But... HP et al. screwed the early adopters with +RW drives that won't write +R. +R/+RW media is more expensive, and while + has the edge for the write-once discs, -RW has better compatibility with settop players.
Sony is big enough that they can just bet on both horses, and no matter who wins, they're OK. In fact, Sony is rumored (or maybe it's official now) to be building a drive that does all four (+R/+RW/-R/-RW)
It's a little known bit of trivia that the original Ricochet system used Geographic Routing. Every poletop knew its Lat/Long, and portables associated with their "Best Node," or strongest RSSI (signal strength)/lowest latency poletop. There was a nameserver that did modem name/number -> lat/long translation, and the system routed by sending the packet in its visible node list that was closest to the destination.
If you type ATS311? into a Ricochet modem, you'll get the best few nodes on that node list, including RSSI and latency. There was a Newton app that parsed ATS311, did a weighted average based on RSSI, and gave you a position.
Worked pretty well, actually, though the sample rate was low, since it could be several seconds between updates of the node list.
Wouldn't 1080i look halfway decent at 9 Mb/s or so using MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Video (the DivX video codec)?
Actually, yes. There are several of us who pour our HiPix ATSC recordings through Vidomi and burn DVD-R's. It's expensive in terms of encoding time, but it does work fairly well. The original MPEG2 looks a little better, but I suspect most of that has to do with transcoding, and if you went from uncompressed to MPEG4 you could get excellent results at DVD-friendly bit rates.
The problem is that all the cheap hardware out there is geared towards ATSC MPEG2, so it will be a while before you see MPEG4 DVD or MPEG4 set-tops. The HTPC crowd is stylin', however.
I think that's one of the reasons why commercial VHS tapes look like crap, too.
I spent a lot of time working with floppy duplication in the late eighties/early nineties, and conventional wisdom was that you couldn't duplicate data with the Curie-point process since the transitions were too closely spaced. (Ignoring the double-sided issue for the moment.)
I'm not sure that the contact printers are up to DVHS.
Thank you for setting this straight. You stamped out most of the FUD, and I, for one, am going to pick up a JVC deck if it looks like there are going to be more than a handful of titles. (And as the proud owner of 400 LaserDiscs, my threshhold is pretty low.;)
A couple of nits:
DVD is 480i for NTSC or 576i for PAL. "Progressive Scan" DVD players do inverse telecine either based on MPEG2 flags (which are often wrong) or watching the field cadence. It works under most circumstances, but it's important to note that you can do the same thing with 1080i to get 1080p.
D-Theater (and D-VHS in general) only goes to 28Mb/s. ATSC stops at 19.3, so it's not twice, it's more like 50% higher.
No, DVD is interlaced. RTFSpec. Further, DVD has a max resolution of 720x480x60, or 720x576x50. Yes, they could change the spec, but then they could change the spec to make waffles, too. Hardly relevant to the installed base.
You *can* get 720x480x30 progressive from DVD, but it requires manipulation of MPEG2 flags that is almost always done wrong. This is why the Progressive-Scan DVD players that actually work ignore the flags and watch the cadence of the fields to construct progressive frames. And this only works from progressive sources like film. If you shoot on video, it's interlaced. Game over. And the same applies to 1080i. If you have a display that can do 1080p, you can do the same inverse telecine that you can with DVD.
Yes, DVD supports 9.8Mb/s. ATSC HDTV supports up to 19.3Mb/s. 1080i looks like hell at 9.8Mb/s, and you only get around an hour per DVD layer at that rate. (Yes, 2hr movies will fit on SS/DL discs, but HD is still going to look like hell.)
Oh, and if you really want progressive, ATSC includes a few 720p resolutions (ABC uses 1280x720p) but they still require more than 10Mb/s to look good.
Stupid? How about condeming a technology you don't know $#!+ about. That's stupid.
D-VHS is an established standard. It has extremely limited acceptance at this point, as it's primary use is for HDTV.
It is not uncompressed HDTV. You can't deal with uncompressed HD in a consumer environment. You can't even deal with uncompressed SD in a consumer environment. Uncompressed HD is 1.5Gb/s, SD is 270Mb/s.
It does not beat DLT in speed, and it might beat it in storage, but it doesn't beat Ultrium.
The tape is physically identical to S-VHS, which works just fine in a home enviroment, thank you very much. It tops out at 28Mb/s, and the promise is that D-Theater releases will use all of that 28Mb/s, as compared to the ATSC (Broadcast HDTV) limit of 19.3Mb/s. And let me tell you that full 19.3Mb/s 1080i is very, very nice as it is.
Oh, HDTV is MPEG2 compression, just like DVD.
And how much random access do you really do on a DVD? Truly random access is locked out by most studio authored DVDs anyway. (It breaks scripting.)
I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all. Flummery!
Umm, because.mp2 is for mpeg2 (though.m2v and.m2a more common for elementary streams)
.mp3 is a mutant. It stands for MPEG-[1|2] Layer III. MPEG-1 defined the standard, and MPEG-2 allowed a wider range of bitrates, so MPEG-2 Layer III is pedantically correct, but MPEG-1 Layer III is probably not incorrect. Further, Layer II (which you sometimes also see as.mp2, and is also called "Musicam" for historical reasons) works better for many encoders at high bitrates.
But the real confusion here is that MPEG-3 doesn't exist. It was reserved for an HDTV standard, but ATSC and friends decided that MP@HL MPEG-2 works just fine. ATSC, like NTSC DVD's use AC3 audio. (Even though most players are perfectly happy with it, MPEG-2 audio is not legal for NTSC DVDs, only PAL).
Now, as to what MPEG is thinking with the next standards (-7 and -21), who knows...
For the less tube savvy out there, that means it is a preamp that can drive six channels.
Uhh, no. It's a dual triode. That means it has two sections each of which have three electrodes. Those three electrodes are Plate, Grid, and Cathode, which map roughly to Emitter, Base, and Collector. (I think...it's been a while) Actually, I suppose Source, Gate, and Drain are more appropriate, this being a GloFET.
In any case, there are two devices, not six, so you get two channels, not six. In fact, I'm pretty sure the 6DJ8 was designed for balanced operation, not stereo. For the less tube savvy out there, that means it was designed for one channel, not two.
Ahh, excellent link. From the photos, we can see that the tube is a Sovtek 6922. Google tells us that thetubestore.com calls the 6922 "Sovtek's premium version of the 6DJ8." Which everyone should recognize as a dual triode. Data here tells us that it has 6.3V filaments (perfect for coexistance with any 25120's that may be required by future DRM schemes), wants 90V B+ (plate voltage) and has a max Plate Dissipation of 1.8W.
This is a preamp tube, which is appropriate, actually. Get those nice GloFET harmonics and then feed it to some decent SandAmp for actual power.
Interesting concept. Twisted, and I don't think I want my preamp tube in the same faraday cage as my P4, but it is interesting.
Now, I was almost ready to buy one of these, GloFET and all, but there's no Firewire. And since that lovely firebottle takes so much room, there are only 3 PCI slots... One for FW, One for the HD tuner, One for Gigabit, One for SCSI... oops, no more slots.
On the flip side, I've never been much for case windows...but this board NEEDS a window!
Actually, if you really want to be picky about the recording. They both record on iron oxide. It's just that some of it is on reels of mylar, and some of it is on aluminum or glass platters.
(I haven't kept up with hard disc materials lately, but it's still magnetic recording.)
"It's about privacy, which is allegedly protected by the Constitution." ... of some country other than the US. Unfortunately, the people who wrote the constitution forgot to add in mention of a right to privacy.
Hence the word "allegedly."
And don't give me any shit about the 9th and 10th Amendments -- you might as well say they protect a right to murder.
Thank you for underlining my argument regarding the right to privacy being contentious only because it was the basis of Roe v. Wade.
You have yet to establish any coherent argument as to why a company's incentive to collect data has anything to do with whether it is reasonable and proper to do so. You agree that Apple being forced to install a keystroke logger would be unnatural and intrusive, yet somehow because my PVR is connected to a TV, keystroke logging there isn't?
(And make no mistake, that's PRECISELY what Tivo logs. Keystrokes. They knew that we were rewinding to watch Britney jiggle, and fast-forwarding through the rest of the Super Bowl.)
Apple being forced to log keystrokes was a close parallel. What about...
<REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM> Is a datalogging condom an invasion of privacy? Even if the results were "made anonymous"? Think of all the "free money" Schmid could get by eliminating excess latex. With all that data on number of strokes, surface temperature, tension, and coefficients of friction, they could reduce the raw material requirements dramatically, a cost savings that would go straight to the bottom line. </REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM>
Sorry. That was, perhaps, in poor taste. But you see the problem.
As to the Constitutional issues regarding privacy, you are correct that it is not explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution. I submit, however, that it is only a contentious issue for the court because it was the basis of Roe v. Wade. Had that been based on, say, property rights (Interesting suggestion, courtesy another/. denizen.), I don't think privacy would be nearly the hot button that it is today.
But even setting aside all of those issues, which have far more to do with emotional charge than actual law, this was still a completely brain-dead ruling. Federal Law regarding discovery does not allow surveillance for prospective evidence.
I don't remember if it was Tivo or Replay that ran the ad parodies, but they were a little counterproductive. Ads for an ad-skipping device that were actually worth watching.;)
I should add that while I have two DTivos (analog sucks) I'm seriously considering buying a Replay as a meaningful contribution to the SonicBlue legal fund.
I already have several other SonicBlue products, most significantly a couple of empeg^H^H^H^H^HRio Cars.
I disagree strongly with several of your arguments. And I'm not saying anything that isn't in the Amici brief.
First of all, SonicBlue is not making a "stupid business decision." They're making a very smart one. Their competition got *fried* on privacy issues for making the decision you advocate. So they made the opposite decision, and then advertised it as a feature. Tivo has since anonymized their data significantly, but there's still a black eye. (And the DTivo box is anything but anonymous...DirecTV is absolutely spying.)
Yes, this information is worth a great deal of money to the PVR manufacturers, but only because they can sell it to the content cartel. I fail to see, however, how the value of the information correlates to whether it's OK to collect it.
But this ruling goes far beyond that. It required that a device be used to collect ostensibly private information, simply because it was within the capability of the device to do so.
Think about this for a moment. Let's change the names a bit. Let's say that the RIAA gets tired of Apple and goes after them. So they sue Apple, and get a court order demanding that they install keystroke loggers in the OS to see where Apple's customers are getting their music. Certainly this is data that Apple might want (hey, good marketroids want all the data they can get!), but it's not data that Apple is going to collect, because to do so would be a massive invasion of privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
Only when you're absolutely as sure as you can be that the whole thing wont fly to pieces around do you accelerate and rotate.
And only then have you reached an aviation milestone. Until then, you've built an inefficient, funny looking car.
Look at Eclipse. They've been doing all sorts of taxi tests, engine tests, and so on for months, even years. But only with the first flight have they silenced the naysayers.
Actually, you're both close.
;)
The DVD specification allows only AC-3 or PCM audio for NTSC DVDs, but also allows MPEG Layer 2 (not Layer 3, aka MP3) for PAL DVDs.
I can't even begin to speculate why.
BTW, anyone owning an old Mac or any Apple][ series outfitted with a 3.5" drive has a similar setup. 5 zones, but definitely directly-opposing heads and not this nonstandard setup. I think the 5zone drives finally got the axe when Jobs decided to not include a floppy with iMac.
The 400k (single sided) and 800k (double sided)formats were always zoned, though the early drives did actually change speeds, and loudly at that. Once Apple introduced HD drives, (the first "SuperDrive") the variable spindle speeds went away. That said, they could read and write the old formats just fine, by changing bitrates instead of spindle speed. The SuperDrive could also read and write MFM DD floppies (720k) in addition to HD. (1440k)
We varied bitrate instead of spindle speed from the beginning on duplication equipment, but the dupe equipment never had the cost pressure that a consumer-ish PC did.
Thank god we never had to build a Twiggy duplicator....and my Lisa had a proper 3.5" drive
Sony *does* get it. DVD+R/+RW are Beta all over again.
+R is more compatible than -R with settop DVD players and older DVD-ROM drives. +R/+RW drives write faster than their -R/-RW counterparts. It's arguably the "better" format.
But...
HP et al. screwed the early adopters with +RW drives that won't write +R. +R/+RW media is more expensive, and while + has the edge for the write-once discs, -RW has better compatibility with settop players.
Sony is big enough that they can just bet on both horses, and no matter who wins, they're OK. In fact, Sony is rumored (or maybe it's official now) to be building a drive that does all four (+R/+RW/-R/-RW)
Wrong distro.
Everyone knows it's RedHat that has the Redneck language option. (Even if it's just for the installer.)
-Z
We did this back in the day with Ricochets.
It's a little known bit of trivia that the original Ricochet system used Geographic Routing. Every poletop knew its Lat/Long, and portables associated with their "Best Node," or strongest RSSI (signal strength)/lowest latency poletop. There was a nameserver that did modem name/number -> lat/long translation, and the system routed by sending the packet in its visible node list that was closest to the destination.
If you type ATS311? into a Ricochet modem, you'll get the best few nodes on that node list, including RSSI and latency. There was a Newton app that parsed ATS311, did a weighted average based on RSSI, and gave you a position.
Worked pretty well, actually, though the sample rate was low, since it could be several seconds between updates of the node list.
Wouldn't 1080i look halfway decent at 9 Mb/s or so using MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Video (the DivX video codec)?
Actually, yes. There are several of us who pour our HiPix ATSC recordings through Vidomi and burn DVD-R's. It's expensive in terms of encoding time, but it does work fairly well. The original MPEG2 looks a little better, but I suspect most of that has to do with transcoding, and if you went from uncompressed to MPEG4 you could get excellent results at DVD-friendly bit rates.
The problem is that all the cheap hardware out there is geared towards ATSC MPEG2, so it will be a while before you see MPEG4 DVD or MPEG4 set-tops. The HTPC crowd is stylin', however.
-Z
There's also superbit DVD, which provides an even higher resolution than conventional DVD.
Where do you people get this crap? Superbit discs are DVDs, therefore they are DVD resolution.
What sets Superbit apart is that the films are transferred by people who give a shit about image quality. Which is admittedly quite rare.
-Z
I think that's one of the reasons why commercial VHS tapes look like crap, too.
I spent a lot of time working with floppy duplication in the late eighties/early nineties, and conventional wisdom was that you couldn't duplicate data with the Curie-point process since the transitions were too closely spaced. (Ignoring the double-sided issue for the moment.)
I'm not sure that the contact printers are up to DVHS.
Thank you for setting this straight. You stamped out most of the FUD, and I, for one, am going to pick up a JVC deck if it looks like there are going to be more than a handful of titles. (And as the proud owner of 400 LaserDiscs, my threshhold is pretty low. ;)
A couple of nits:
DVD is 480i for NTSC or 576i for PAL. "Progressive Scan" DVD players do inverse telecine either based on MPEG2 flags (which are often wrong) or watching the field cadence. It works under most circumstances, but it's important to note that you can do the same thing with 1080i to get 1080p.
D-Theater (and D-VHS in general) only goes to 28Mb/s. ATSC stops at 19.3, so it's not twice, it's more like 50% higher.
No, DVD is interlaced. RTFSpec. Further, DVD has a max resolution of 720x480x60, or 720x576x50. Yes, they could change the spec, but then they could change the spec to make waffles, too. Hardly relevant to the installed base.
You *can* get 720x480x30 progressive from DVD, but it requires manipulation of MPEG2 flags that is almost always done wrong. This is why the Progressive-Scan DVD players that actually work ignore the flags and watch the cadence of the fields to construct progressive frames. And this only works from progressive sources like film. If you shoot on video, it's interlaced. Game over. And the same applies to 1080i. If you have a display that can do 1080p, you can do the same inverse telecine that you can with DVD.
Yes, DVD supports 9.8Mb/s. ATSC HDTV supports up to 19.3Mb/s. 1080i looks like hell at 9.8Mb/s, and you only get around an hour per DVD layer at that rate. (Yes, 2hr movies will fit on SS/DL discs, but HD is still going to look like hell.)
Oh, and if you really want progressive, ATSC includes a few 720p resolutions (ABC uses 1280x720p) but they still require more than 10Mb/s to look good.
Oh, and DVD-Video is at v1.1.
ObLink: DVD FAQ: 2.9-Does DVD support HDTV?
Stupid? How about condeming a technology you don't know $#!+ about. That's stupid.
D-VHS is an established standard. It has extremely limited acceptance at this point, as it's primary use is for HDTV.
It is not uncompressed HDTV. You can't deal with uncompressed HD in a consumer environment. You can't even deal with uncompressed SD in a consumer environment. Uncompressed HD is 1.5Gb/s, SD is 270Mb/s.
It does not beat DLT in speed, and it might beat it in storage, but it doesn't beat Ultrium.
The tape is physically identical to S-VHS, which works just fine in a home enviroment, thank you very much. It tops out at 28Mb/s, and the promise is that D-Theater releases will use all of that 28Mb/s, as compared to the ATSC (Broadcast HDTV) limit of 19.3Mb/s. And let me tell you that full 19.3Mb/s 1080i is very, very nice as it is.
Oh, HDTV is MPEG2 compression, just like DVD.
And how much random access do you really do on a DVD? Truly random access is locked out by most studio authored DVDs anyway. (It breaks scripting.)
-Z
I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all. Flummery!
.mp2 is for mpeg2 (though .m2v and .m2a more common for elementary streams)
.mp2, and is also called "Musicam" for historical reasons) works better for many encoders at high bitrates.
Umm, because
.mp3 is a mutant. It stands for MPEG-[1|2] Layer III. MPEG-1 defined the standard, and MPEG-2 allowed a wider range of bitrates, so MPEG-2 Layer III is pedantically correct, but MPEG-1 Layer III is probably not incorrect. Further, Layer II (which you sometimes also see as
But the real confusion here is that MPEG-3 doesn't exist. It was reserved for an HDTV standard, but ATSC and friends decided that MP@HL MPEG-2 works just fine. ATSC, like NTSC DVD's use AC3 audio. (Even though most players are perfectly happy with it, MPEG-2 audio is not legal for NTSC DVDs, only PAL).
Now, as to what MPEG is thinking with the next standards (-7 and -21), who knows...
-Z
For the less tube savvy out there, that means it is a preamp that can drive six channels.
Uhh, no. It's a dual triode. That means it has two sections each of which have three electrodes. Those three electrodes are Plate, Grid, and Cathode, which map roughly to Emitter, Base, and Collector. (I think...it's been a while) Actually, I suppose Source, Gate, and Drain are more appropriate, this being a GloFET.
In any case, there are two devices, not six, so you get two channels, not six. In fact, I'm pretty sure the 6DJ8 was designed for balanced operation, not stereo. For the less tube savvy out there, that means it was designed for one channel, not two.
Ahh, excellent link. From the photos, we can see that the tube is a Sovtek 6922. Google tells us that thetubestore.com calls the 6922 "Sovtek's premium version of the 6DJ8." Which everyone should recognize as a dual triode. Data here tells us that it has 6.3V filaments (perfect for coexistance with any 25120's that may be required by future DRM schemes), wants 90V B+ (plate voltage) and has a max Plate Dissipation of 1.8W.
This is a preamp tube, which is appropriate, actually. Get those nice GloFET harmonics and then feed it to some decent SandAmp for actual power.
Interesting concept. Twisted, and I don't think I want my preamp tube in the same faraday cage as my P4, but it is interesting.
-Z
Now, I was almost ready to buy one of these, GloFET and all, but there's no Firewire. And since that lovely firebottle takes so much room, there are only 3 PCI slots... One for FW, One for the HD tuner, One for Gigabit, One for SCSI... oops, no more slots.
On the flip side, I've never been much for case windows...but this board NEEDS a window!
-Z
Actually, if you really want to be picky about the recording. They both record on iron oxide. It's just that some of it is on reels of mylar, and some of it is on aluminum or glass platters.
(I haven't kept up with hard disc materials lately, but it's still magnetic recording.)
-Z
No.
"It's about privacy, which is allegedly protected by the Constitution."
... of some country other than the US. Unfortunately, the people who wrote the constitution forgot to add in mention of a right to privacy.
Hence the word "allegedly."
And don't give me any shit about the 9th and 10th Amendments -- you might as well say they protect a right to murder.
Thank you for underlining my argument regarding the right to privacy being contentious only because it was the basis of Roe v. Wade.
You have yet to establish any coherent argument as to why a company's incentive to collect data has anything to do with whether it is reasonable and proper to do so. You agree that Apple being forced to install a keystroke logger would be unnatural and intrusive, yet somehow because my PVR is connected to a TV, keystroke logging there isn't?
/. denizen.), I don't think privacy would be nearly the hot button that it is today.
(And make no mistake, that's PRECISELY what Tivo logs. Keystrokes. They knew that we were rewinding to watch Britney jiggle, and fast-forwarding through the rest of the Super Bowl.)
Apple being forced to log keystrokes was a close parallel. What about...
<REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM>
Is a datalogging condom an invasion of privacy? Even if the results were "made anonymous"? Think of all the "free money" Schmid could get by eliminating excess latex. With all that data on number of strokes, surface temperature, tension, and coefficients of friction, they could reduce the raw material requirements dramatically, a cost savings that would go straight to the bottom line.
</REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM>
Sorry. That was, perhaps, in poor taste. But you see the problem.
As to the Constitutional issues regarding privacy, you are correct that it is not explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution. I submit, however, that it is only a contentious issue for the court because it was the basis of Roe v. Wade. Had that been based on, say, property rights (Interesting suggestion, courtesy another
But even setting aside all of those issues, which have far more to do with emotional charge than actual law, this was still a completely brain-dead ruling. Federal Law regarding discovery does not allow surveillance for prospective evidence.
And that should have settled it.
ROTFLMAO!
;)
I don't remember if it was Tivo or Replay that ran the ad parodies, but they were a little counterproductive. Ads for an ad-skipping device that were actually worth watching.
That doesn't get you out of DirecTV's snooping on the combo box, just TiVo's data collection.
I should add that while I have two DTivos (analog sucks) I'm seriously considering buying a Replay as a meaningful contribution to the SonicBlue legal fund.
I already have several other SonicBlue products, most significantly a couple of empeg^H^H^H^H^HRio Cars.
Hmmm...
/var/log/*
;)
rm -rf
It is a Linux machine, after all.
-Z
I disagree strongly with several of your arguments. And I'm not saying anything that isn't in the Amici brief.
v ies/
First of all, SonicBlue is not making a "stupid business decision." They're making a very smart one. Their competition got *fried* on privacy issues for making the decision you advocate. So they made the opposite decision, and then advertised it as a feature. Tivo has since anonymized their data significantly, but there's still a black eye. (And the DTivo box is anything but anonymous...DirecTV is absolutely spying.)
Yes, this information is worth a great deal of money to the PVR manufacturers, but only because they can sell it to the content cartel. I fail to see, however, how the value of the information correlates to whether it's OK to collect it.
But this ruling goes far beyond that. It required that a device be used to collect ostensibly private information, simply because it was within the capability of the device to do so.
Think about this for a moment. Let's change the names a bit. Let's say that the RIAA gets tired of Apple and goes after them. So they sue Apple, and get a court order demanding that they install keystroke loggers in the OS to see where Apple's customers are getting their music. Certainly this is data that Apple might want (hey, good marketroids want all the data they can get!), but it's not data that Apple is going to collect, because to do so would be a massive invasion of privacy.
%s/Apple/SonicBlue/
%s/RIAA/MPAA/
%s/music/mo
%s/OS/Replay 4000/
Get the point?
This isn't really about Copyright law anymore. It's about privacy, which is allegedly protected by the Constitution.