A VPN for that much data must cost a lot to run - there are pirates, they download by the gigabyte. I imagine intrusive, annoying adware is the best means of getting some income off of the service, and even then I doubt it'll be enough to break even.
I'm an advocate of piracy myself - I believe that enforceable copyright law is incompatible with fundamental freedoms of the internet - but I still have to point out that 'potential sales' are a widely-accepted concept in economics. A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost: The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
I think they are more dangerous *because* of political inclinations. They can easily get away with almost anything because they are so rich, well-connected and essential for the operation of a global oil-fueled economy.
In Saudi Arabia? While I am sure there is porn available there - a great deal of porn - it isn't out in the open. Certainly not something to get caught with at work. Forget about being fired, they'll send you for lashing and a few years in jail just for looking at it.
More precisely, No True Scotsman refers to setting a definition (Often retroactively) for membership a group aimed at reaching a desired conclusion. It's most common use is for a member of some faction to deny association with the groups less desireable members. For example:
[Animal rights snob] Us animal rights campaigners hold ourselves to the highest moral standards. How can someone be inhumane to their fellow men if they are willing to respect even the animals, in their position of such vulnerability?
[Counterargument] Are you aware that Hitler was a big campaigner for animal rights?
[Snob] Er... well, no true spporter of animal rights could support his genocidal policies, so he must have been just putting on an act for the people.
In the case of communism, supporters of the ideology use it to dismiss the many failed communist states as not practicing 'true' communism. Likewise, the more extreme supporters of unregulated markets (like the Objectivists) will dismiss any flaws in capitalist systems as a consequence of government regulation in some way and thus a symptom of not practicing 'true' capitalism. The fallacy is the same in all cases: Crafting a definition for the term that is not widely accepted, and crafted for the specific purpose of reaching the desired conclusion.
The media live by viewship and rateings. They want to run stories that people want to read. Given the choice between 'General YouNeverHeardOf authorises the use of mace-cannons on protestors in Elbonia' and 'LIBERAL-SUPPORTED LIGHTBULBS ARE KILLING YOUR BABY!!!!1!!!1!,' which do you think is going to make the most advertising money?
The windmill sounds like a good option for this, as compressing air is something where the unreliable nature of wind isn't an issue. So long as you get enough wind over a long period (How long depending on the size of the tank), it doesn't matter how variable the windspeed is.
Linux on the desktop is nothing today, but it still poses a threat because of what it could become. Particually in developing countries, where few computer owners can afford a windows license - their options are linux or pirate windows. Most choose the latter. Linux isn't much of a competitor, but on the desktop it's the only competitor Microsoft has.
AVI is a terribly outdated format, but I find it's quite good enough for intermediary work - it's a widely-supported and dependable container for video while you work on it, before you mux the video into something more modern that supports VBR audio properly.
The many options do serve a purpose. They allow someone knowledgeable to get the best possible quality from a low bitrate, allow for handling of awkward inputs like interlaced video, and provide a means of handling profiles. A lot of hardware decoders have strict limits on what they can decode due to limited memory or processor capacity, knowing how to work within a profile allows you to be sure that a specific device will play your video and not choak on an out-of-memory error.
Fortunatly there are two classes of people who might die or face jail for their cause. Those who feel so strongly they would risk that, and those who are so proud they believe they cannot be caught. There are plenty of the latter around. Anonymous is full of them.
Perhaps the lack of devoted activists isn't such a bad thing. I imagine there isn't much difference psychologically between someone willing to go to jail for leaking the government's dirty secrets and someone willing to go to jail for murdering a doctor who performs abortions. Fanaticism can be a powerful thing, and every fanatic believes they are on the side of truth, justice and other such ideals. Ideals often not shared by wider society.
The meaning of HSPDA or TDM isn't important, suffice to say the are some of the technologies involved in making cellphones work that you, as a user, don't need to worry about.
The mess of video codec is really down to three causes: A rapid pace of advancement that leads to shifts in dominant codec every few years, issues of patents, and some companies being unwilling to support any codec that competes with their own. In the years I've dabbled in media I've seen many come and go. MPEG1 first, then realmedia came along for internet - the first codec to cram watchable video streams down dialup. Windows media video sucked in it's first incarnation, for although the codec was decent the implimentation was appalling, requiring the use of the supported-by-nothing WMV container and with no ability to transcode. With DVDs came the rise of MPEG2 and, at around the same time, divx;-) - the latter actually a hacked form of Microsoft's codec that allowed it to be used without also requiring the barely-useable WMV container. Divx;-) gave way to the non-microsoft-based Divx, which ruled for a time - certainly among pirates - as *the* codec for dodgy internet video, while Flash video was the only choice for streaming because Flash was the only way to have video on websites. Divx forked into xvid over ideological differences, and stayed on top until h264 came along - once that took off, it spread with amazing speed simply due to far superior performance. And now we have the patent conflict going on. All that in the last fifteen years or so, no wonder we've had to keep installing new codecs!
Can't install a new codec so easily on embedded devices though. The future may involve a lot more people transcoding videos into slightly-obsolete codecs so their tablets or televisions can play them.
But now you've gotten me thinking of evil vending machine ideas! Perhaps a user-based price... query the database to check your income level based on past purchases, and determine your rate of travel on foot over the previous hour, then estimate what you would be willing to pay and set the price accordingly.
Because the majority of people are not nerds. They don't know a single command of any programming language, and barely understand the idea of a heirachial filesystem. When the computer doesn't do what they expect, they have no idea how to fix it. They are willing to give up control in return for simplicity - something that, in the words of Apple's marketing department, 'just works.' They are happy to let the manufacturer of their phone and network operator run all the technical stuff because they have no idea what HSPDA, 3G, GSM, TDM and GPRS mean and they don't want to have to know. They just want to be able to make phone calls and use a few simple apps. We've gone past the time when technology was inherently cool, and entered the time when it is just a tool - and the non-nerd wishes to use the tool to achieve an end, not learn how the tool works.
It works if the hardware isn't commodity. You could build an emulator for a self-driving car computer, or an artificial limb controller. But without the actual car or limb mechanics, it isn't going to do you a lot of good.
Where would the money be in a machine like that? How about a machine that takes a photo of you from a distance, runs it against a customer database, and reforms it's e-paper front to advertise whichever brand of soft drink you have been determined most likely to buy, and using whichever style of advertising has previously proven most effective on you personally? It'll even record the time and location in your file, for use in marketing other things.
If you've got the money for it. This isn't about just desktop PCs. It's about more embedded systems as well. The example of self-driving cars was used several times. Could you build a new control computer for a car, including reverse-engineering all the propritary (and likely encrypted) protocols used to communicate between the driving computer and the control chips in the engine, breaks, steering motors and sensors?
Quite possibly they won't. But the case will drag through the courts for a decade, and eventually Microsoft would face a fine of a few hundred million dollars. I'm sure they'd be willing to pay that much, if doing so allowed them to destroy linux on the desktop almost entirely. We've been through this before with their bundling decisions: A seemingly endless legal battle, and while Microsoft eventually lost the benefits they gained from their anticompetative actions arguably outweighed even the record-setting fine.
How government is supposed to operate and how government actually operates are not at all the same thing. While the other branches of government have no formal power to influence the ruling of a judge, they can still bring informal power to bear upon the decision. If the decision threatened a corporation so great as to be of strategic importance to US interests in global affairs, then I imagine that would happen.
Ebook services require you to agree to a license agreement. As the sale is of a license and not a physical object, the first sale doctrine does not apply.
If you truely are willing to spend the rest of your life in jail, and likely in solitary confinement, for your ideals then that puts you in a very small minority.
You imagine the US would play by it's own laws on this? I seriously doubt that. If they want him, they'll get him. There are many ways to do so. They could make up charges for something unrelated, even fabricating evidence... like, for example, rape. Or they could simply disappear him to a secret prison somewhere - it's very Soviet, but I've no doubt the US has a few people that would be happy to make it happen. Or they could do the simplist approach: The show trial. Make it clear to the judge and every official that any verdict other than guilty means they'll never work in the legal profession again, and it doesn't matter what legal arguments he uses about jurisdiction.
I don't suppose you ever left behind a copy of 'Lilith' in a holiday cabin. If so, thank you. I took that one myself to finish, and left 'Beak of the Moon' in it's place.
The simplist format for audio is uncompressed PCM. It's a format so trivial that so long as the byte-stream is preserved, even if all playing hardware and software is destroyed in an unusually selective apocolypse a moderatly-skilled person can reverse-engineer the format and reimpliment from scratch.
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A VPN for that much data must cost a lot to run - there are pirates, they download by the gigabyte. I imagine intrusive, annoying adware is the best means of getting some income off of the service, and even then I doubt it'll be enough to break even.
I'm an advocate of piracy myself - I believe that enforceable copyright law is incompatible with fundamental freedoms of the internet - but I still have to point out that 'potential sales' are a widely-accepted concept in economics. A dollar not earned is in many ways equivilent to a dollar lost: The effect on a company bottom line is the same.
I think they are more dangerous *because* of political inclinations. They can easily get away with almost anything because they are so rich, well-connected and essential for the operation of a global oil-fueled economy.
In Saudi Arabia? While I am sure there is porn available there - a great deal of porn - it isn't out in the open. Certainly not something to get caught with at work. Forget about being fired, they'll send you for lashing and a few years in jail just for looking at it.
Panem et Television.
More precisely, No True Scotsman refers to setting a definition (Often retroactively) for membership a group aimed at reaching a desired conclusion. It's most common use is for a member of some faction to deny association with the groups less desireable members. For example:
[Animal rights snob] Us animal rights campaigners hold ourselves to the highest moral standards. How can someone be inhumane to their fellow men if they are willing to respect even the animals, in their position of such vulnerability?
[Counterargument] Are you aware that Hitler was a big campaigner for animal rights?
[Snob] Er... well, no true spporter of animal rights could support his genocidal policies, so he must have been just putting on an act for the people.
In the case of communism, supporters of the ideology use it to dismiss the many failed communist states as not practicing 'true' communism. Likewise, the more extreme supporters of unregulated markets (like the Objectivists) will dismiss any flaws in capitalist systems as a consequence of government regulation in some way and thus a symptom of not practicing 'true' capitalism. The fallacy is the same in all cases: Crafting a definition for the term that is not widely accepted, and crafted for the specific purpose of reaching the desired conclusion.
The media live by viewship and rateings. They want to run stories that people want to read. Given the choice between 'General YouNeverHeardOf authorises the use of mace-cannons on protestors in Elbonia' and 'LIBERAL-SUPPORTED LIGHTBULBS ARE KILLING YOUR BABY!!!!1!!!1!,' which do you think is going to make the most advertising money?
The windmill sounds like a good option for this, as compressing air is something where the unreliable nature of wind isn't an issue. So long as you get enough wind over a long period (How long depending on the size of the tank), it doesn't matter how variable the windspeed is.
Linux on the desktop is nothing today, but it still poses a threat because of what it could become. Particually in developing countries, where few computer owners can afford a windows license - their options are linux or pirate windows. Most choose the latter. Linux isn't much of a competitor, but on the desktop it's the only competitor Microsoft has.
AVI is a terribly outdated format, but I find it's quite good enough for intermediary work - it's a widely-supported and dependable container for video while you work on it, before you mux the video into something more modern that supports VBR audio properly.
The many options do serve a purpose. They allow someone knowledgeable to get the best possible quality from a low bitrate, allow for handling of awkward inputs like interlaced video, and provide a means of handling profiles. A lot of hardware decoders have strict limits on what they can decode due to limited memory or processor capacity, knowing how to work within a profile allows you to be sure that a specific device will play your video and not choak on an out-of-memory error.
I know a lot about the options. I wrote (shamelessplug) http://birds-are-nice.me/publications/Optimising%20x264%20encodes.htm
Fortunatly there are two classes of people who might die or face jail for their cause. Those who feel so strongly they would risk that, and those who are so proud they believe they cannot be caught. There are plenty of the latter around. Anonymous is full of them.
Perhaps the lack of devoted activists isn't such a bad thing. I imagine there isn't much difference psychologically between someone willing to go to jail for leaking the government's dirty secrets and someone willing to go to jail for murdering a doctor who performs abortions. Fanaticism can be a powerful thing, and every fanatic believes they are on the side of truth, justice and other such ideals. Ideals often not shared by wider society.
The meaning of HSPDA or TDM isn't important, suffice to say the are some of the technologies involved in making cellphones work that you, as a user, don't need to worry about.
;-) - the latter actually a hacked form of Microsoft's codec that allowed it to be used without also requiring the barely-useable WMV container. Divx ;-) gave way to the non-microsoft-based Divx, which ruled for a time - certainly among pirates - as *the* codec for dodgy internet video, while Flash video was the only choice for streaming because Flash was the only way to have video on websites. Divx forked into xvid over ideological differences, and stayed on top until h264 came along - once that took off, it spread with amazing speed simply due to far superior performance. And now we have the patent conflict going on. All that in the last fifteen years or so, no wonder we've had to keep installing new codecs!
The mess of video codec is really down to three causes: A rapid pace of advancement that leads to shifts in dominant codec every few years, issues of patents, and some companies being unwilling to support any codec that competes with their own. In the years I've dabbled in media I've seen many come and go. MPEG1 first, then realmedia came along for internet - the first codec to cram watchable video streams down dialup. Windows media video sucked in it's first incarnation, for although the codec was decent the implimentation was appalling, requiring the use of the supported-by-nothing WMV container and with no ability to transcode. With DVDs came the rise of MPEG2 and, at around the same time, divx
Can't install a new codec so easily on embedded devices though. The future may involve a lot more people transcoding videos into slightly-obsolete codecs so their tablets or televisions can play them.
But now you've gotten me thinking of evil vending machine ideas! Perhaps a user-based price... query the database to check your income level based on past purchases, and determine your rate of travel on foot over the previous hour, then estimate what you would be willing to pay and set the price accordingly.
Because the majority of people are not nerds. They don't know a single command of any programming language, and barely understand the idea of a heirachial filesystem. When the computer doesn't do what they expect, they have no idea how to fix it. They are willing to give up control in return for simplicity - something that, in the words of Apple's marketing department, 'just works.' They are happy to let the manufacturer of their phone and network operator run all the technical stuff because they have no idea what HSPDA, 3G, GSM, TDM and GPRS mean and they don't want to have to know. They just want to be able to make phone calls and use a few simple apps. We've gone past the time when technology was inherently cool, and entered the time when it is just a tool - and the non-nerd wishes to use the tool to achieve an end, not learn how the tool works.
It works if the hardware isn't commodity. You could build an emulator for a self-driving car computer, or an artificial limb controller. But without the actual car or limb mechanics, it isn't going to do you a lot of good.
Where would the money be in a machine like that? How about a machine that takes a photo of you from a distance, runs it against a customer database, and reforms it's e-paper front to advertise whichever brand of soft drink you have been determined most likely to buy, and using whichever style of advertising has previously proven most effective on you personally? It'll even record the time and location in your file, for use in marketing other things.
If you've got the money for it. This isn't about just desktop PCs. It's about more embedded systems as well. The example of self-driving cars was used several times. Could you build a new control computer for a car, including reverse-engineering all the propritary (and likely encrypted) protocols used to communicate between the driving computer and the control chips in the engine, breaks, steering motors and sensors?
Quite possibly they won't. But the case will drag through the courts for a decade, and eventually Microsoft would face a fine of a few hundred million dollars. I'm sure they'd be willing to pay that much, if doing so allowed them to destroy linux on the desktop almost entirely. We've been through this before with their bundling decisions: A seemingly endless legal battle, and while Microsoft eventually lost the benefits they gained from their anticompetative actions arguably outweighed even the record-setting fine.
How government is supposed to operate and how government actually operates are not at all the same thing. While the other branches of government have no formal power to influence the ruling of a judge, they can still bring informal power to bear upon the decision. If the decision threatened a corporation so great as to be of strategic importance to US interests in global affairs, then I imagine that would happen.
Ebook services require you to agree to a license agreement. As the sale is of a license and not a physical object, the first sale doctrine does not apply.
If you truely are willing to spend the rest of your life in jail, and likely in solitary confinement, for your ideals then that puts you in a very small minority.
You imagine the US would play by it's own laws on this? I seriously doubt that. If they want him, they'll get him. There are many ways to do so. They could make up charges for something unrelated, even fabricating evidence... like, for example, rape. Or they could simply disappear him to a secret prison somewhere - it's very Soviet, but I've no doubt the US has a few people that would be happy to make it happen. Or they could do the simplist approach: The show trial. Make it clear to the judge and every official that any verdict other than guilty means they'll never work in the legal profession again, and it doesn't matter what legal arguments he uses about jurisdiction.
I don't suppose you ever left behind a copy of 'Lilith' in a holiday cabin. If so, thank you. I took that one myself to finish, and left 'Beak of the Moon' in it's place.
True for physical media, yes. That is how it works if you buy a CD or a book. But electronic copies are something else entirely.
The simplist format for audio is uncompressed PCM. It's a format so trivial that so long as the byte-stream is preserved, even if all playing hardware and software is destroyed in an unusually selective apocolypse a moderatly-skilled person can reverse-engineer the format and reimpliment from scratch.