The arcing fun can be broken with a trivial data channel negociation before applying power. No real authentication, just the device sending the bytes to indicate if it wants AC or DC. Optionaly, they could actually do real authentication for payment purposes - user just plugs in the cable on a charging point, car supplies cryptographic proof of vehicle identity, and if the charger company has that vehicle in its database payment is automatic. Even without the crypto, your average vandal wouldn't have the knowledge to download the protocol specs and program a PIC chip to pretend to be a car.
It goes by many names. Tax avoision, tax optimisation, tax efficiency. Google does it, Microsoft does it, Apple does it... even the optician I use has a token headquarters in the tax haven of Gurnsey. Every major company engages in the practice, and they'd be stupid not to. Making a profit is the reason for their existance.
Microsoft already bundles H264 in windows 8. You must remember that they are actually a member of the consortium that holds the patents - part of their fee goes back to themselves, and they have a strong interest in seeing h264 adoption grow. In the case of DVD, the licences they wish to avoid are for MPEG2 (Which nothing other than DVDs still uses) and CSS.
You missed a cost though, and an important one. DVD technology is patented, with the patents held in part by MPEG-LA and in part by the DVDCCA. In addition, playing DVDs without breaking CSS (Which VLC does, but as a big company MS couldn't get away with) requires a licenced CSS key from the DVDCCA. Both the patent licence and the key licence incur a per-unit cost to those two bodies, and it is that fee that MS is trying to avoid by not including DVD functionality out of the box.
The only reason VLC gets away with playing DVDs is that the DVDCCA long ago gave up on enforcing their control.
Looks like it. So far it hasn't offered anything remotely compelling over Windows 7, and it brings an interface redesign that causes fits of rage. A repeat of Vista looms. That's part of the problem with Microsoft: Once they have an OS that is just what their user want, they feel compelled to redesign big parts of it in order to remain 'cutting edge' and innovative. Something has to change, and if there is nothing broken that needs fixing they'll go ahead and break what already works.
Downloads, of course. Everything is supposed to be on the cloud now, where it can be more easily controlled by our corporate overlords. The only thing you need media for is installing the OS itsself, and I imagine that in Microsoft's target future they are hopeing to find a way to make that impossible.
He was talking about playing DVD-video ISOs, as commonly used by people who make (DMCA-violating) backup images of their discs for convenience and reliability. Oddly enough, not by pirates, who no longer use DVD-video now due to the limitations of the old MPEG-2 codec.
When I last checked, the article on 'sex' was about two pages, half of which was under 'sex in the bible.' The article on homosexuality was the size of a small novel, and seventy sections had grown so long they had to be spun off into their own 'homosexuality and X' articles.
I used to troll them, years back. Then they decided, entirely seriously, the Hitler and most of the Nazi party were gay, and that the holocaust was secretly a homosexual conspiracy to exterminate the jews for their belief in Leviticus. At that point I realised that nothing I could write could be half as crazy as what the legitimate users believe.
-12V can indeed go, and should go. 3.3V is used for a lot of important things though. For reasons of energy efficiency, much of the logic runs at 3.3V or less. Including the memory.
This is in contrast with the standard ATX supply which runs, at a minimum, rails for 5V, 12V, 3.3V and -12V. The latter is really a leftover from powering old RS232 ports, but the standard still requires it. Even then the pins are so small that many pins in parallel are required, thus the sight of a ridiculous twenty-six-cable tangle winding it's way through your case like like a nest of intertwined worms.
In the US, you get to choose from two parties who are basically the same on all but a handful of issues. In the UK you have three parties, but otherwise the situation remains.
The open source community is highly reluctant to use h264 because they are concerned that Microsoft (Among others, but princibly their historical enemy Microsoft) would do something like that. Now Microsoft is on the receiving end.
They could turn to the national benefit argument: "Climate change will hurt us, but it'll be a hundred times worse for our cultural enemies in the already-water-starved middle east or overpopulated China. We can take it, they can't. Bring it on."
That's in part because they put the extra die space freed up to a new purpose: Graphics performance. If you just look at processor performance, Ivy is no better. Benchmark the inbuilt graphics and it's far ahead.
Of course, anyone who actually needs decent graphics wouldn't be using the on-chip graphics anyway, so I question just how useful this really is.
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The arcing fun can be broken with a trivial data channel negociation before applying power. No real authentication, just the device sending the bytes to indicate if it wants AC or DC. Optionaly, they could actually do real authentication for payment purposes - user just plugs in the cable on a charging point, car supplies cryptographic proof of vehicle identity, and if the charger company has that vehicle in its database payment is automatic. Even without the crypto, your average vandal wouldn't have the knowledge to download the protocol specs and program a PIC chip to pretend to be a car.
It goes by many names. Tax avoision, tax optimisation, tax efficiency. Google does it, Microsoft does it, Apple does it... even the optician I use has a token headquarters in the tax haven of Gurnsey. Every major company engages in the practice, and they'd be stupid not to. Making a profit is the reason for their existance.
Then you'll have to go with USB stick.
VLC does have the option to transcode too. It just isn't very good at it.
Microsoft already bundles H264 in windows 8. You must remember that they are actually a member of the consortium that holds the patents - part of their fee goes back to themselves, and they have a strong interest in seeing h264 adoption grow. In the case of DVD, the licences they wish to avoid are for MPEG2 (Which nothing other than DVDs still uses) and CSS.
You missed a cost though, and an important one. DVD technology is patented, with the patents held in part by MPEG-LA and in part by the DVDCCA. In addition, playing DVDs without breaking CSS (Which VLC does, but as a big company MS couldn't get away with) requires a licenced CSS key from the DVDCCA. Both the patent licence and the key licence incur a per-unit cost to those two bodies, and it is that fee that MS is trying to avoid by not including DVD functionality out of the box.
The only reason VLC gets away with playing DVDs is that the DVDCCA long ago gave up on enforcing their control.
This is a rare occasion where the MS-bashing instincts of the Slashdot users really are unjustified.
Looks like it. So far it hasn't offered anything remotely compelling over Windows 7, and it brings an interface redesign that causes fits of rage. A repeat of Vista looms. That's part of the problem with Microsoft: Once they have an OS that is just what their user want, they feel compelled to redesign big parts of it in order to remain 'cutting edge' and innovative. Something has to change, and if there is nothing broken that needs fixing they'll go ahead and break what already works.
Downloads, of course. Everything is supposed to be on the cloud now, where it can be more easily controlled by our corporate overlords. The only thing you need media for is installing the OS itsself, and I imagine that in Microsoft's target future they are hopeing to find a way to make that impossible.
He was talking about playing DVD-video ISOs, as commonly used by people who make (DMCA-violating) backup images of their discs for convenience and reliability. Oddly enough, not by pirates, who no longer use DVD-video now due to the limitations of the old MPEG-2 codec.
I like the name 'con-dems.' Though labour wouldn't be any better.
USB not-a-mouse-but-looks-like-one-to-software? Or a tablet/laptop with an app that draws a moving image on the screen to fool optical mouse tracking?
When I last checked, the article on 'sex' was about two pages, half of which was under 'sex in the bible.' The article on homosexuality was the size of a small novel, and seventy sections had grown so long they had to be spun off into their own 'homosexuality and X' articles.
I used to troll them, years back. Then they decided, entirely seriously, the Hitler and most of the Nazi party were gay, and that the holocaust was secretly a homosexual conspiracy to exterminate the jews for their belief in Leviticus. At that point I realised that nothing I could write could be half as crazy as what the legitimate users believe.
Purely anecdotially, I imagine 'any site using z to end a word' comes in a the top.
I give you only one out of five troll-points. Too short, lacking in class.
-12V can indeed go, and should go. 3.3V is used for a lot of important things though. For reasons of energy efficiency, much of the logic runs at 3.3V or less. Including the memory.
I was going to use 'like a color-coded earthworm orgy' but thought it too disturbing.
This is in contrast with the standard ATX supply which runs, at a minimum, rails for 5V, 12V, 3.3V and -12V. The latter is really a leftover from powering old RS232 ports, but the standard still requires it. Even then the pins are so small that many pins in parallel are required, thus the sight of a ridiculous twenty-six-cable tangle winding it's way through your case like like a nest of intertwined worms.
In the US, you get to choose from two parties who are basically the same on all but a handful of issues. In the UK you have three parties, but otherwise the situation remains.
Only for Apple.
The open source community is highly reluctant to use h264 because they are concerned that Microsoft (Among others, but princibly their historical enemy Microsoft) would do something like that. Now Microsoft is on the receiving end.
Wouldn't an 'imminent' climate scientist mean a pre-grad?
They could turn to the national benefit argument: "Climate change will hurt us, but it'll be a hundred times worse for our cultural enemies in the already-water-starved middle east or overpopulated China. We can take it, they can't. Bring it on."
That's in part because they put the extra die space freed up to a new purpose: Graphics performance. If you just look at processor performance, Ivy is no better. Benchmark the inbuilt graphics and it's far ahead.
Of course, anyone who actually needs decent graphics wouldn't be using the on-chip graphics anyway, so I question just how useful this really is.