step 1: drop the color space resolution in half, the eye can't see it. (this is the first step in JPEGs)
I absolutely disagree with this statment. To my eyes, the most annoying thing about mpeg compression is not the blockiness that some complain about, it's the poor color gradients, especially in skin tones and sky shots. The sky goes from deep blue to light blue. Ideally, it should look like that when compressed, but mpeg2 color is only 24 bits deep (I think), so what you end up with is stripes of similar, but distinctly different colors. Very annoying, especially if you're viewing on a progressive scan monitor.
-S
Re:Given how cheap DVD drives are, does this matte
on
Copying A DVD To A CD?
·
· Score: 1
Someone who wants to get around illegal region locking schemes or other assorted annoyances that are built into "licensed" DVD players?
Ok, I'll bite.
Region coding is a pain, it sucks, and I hate it, but illegal? Got some case law, statute, or something to back that up?
The RIAA may be worried about piracy, lost record sales, etc... but their BIG (and unspoken) concern is the loss of their talent pool of artists who will be freed to go off and market their music as they see fit rather than being tied to RIAA member labels for broad distribution.
Piracy is the LEAST of their concerns, and is really just a smokescreen. The growing number of artists who are going out on their own is what's especially troubling to the RIAA. If the RIAA can mash the distribution channels that don't fit their current modus operandi, then they will maintain control over the artists who will need the RIAA for distribution.
"Legal uses of.mp3 be damned." It's those legal uses that are going to bring the RIAA to its knees.
1. - Done
2. - Done
3. - Soon. I've got a DVD-ROM drive and software to disable codes and macrovision. Does that count?
4. - Done. Write real letters, not just online. They figure if you can take the time to write and send a real letter, then they can take the time to read it. You don't get that kind of response from online forms and email.
5. - Done. Same deal as reps.
Add 6. - Tell your non-techie friends and relatives. Done.
By incorporating these things into a chip package, all you'd do is decrease the thermal spreading resistance. At it's limit, the chip becomes an isothermal block with no hot-spots. That's only a very small part of the equation, and in general the dominating thermal resistance in the equation is the chip to ambient thermal resistance.
For you electrical guys, heat flow works very much like electrical flow. Differences in temperature are the "voltage" which drives the heat flow. Material properties and interfaces are the "resistance" to that heat flow, and the heat itself is the "current".
A mathmatical model of the heat flow out of a silicon die acts like a resistance network. Even if you solve the problem of getting the heat out of the die and evenly distributed around the package (driving all of the "resistors" in that network to zero), you still have to get rid of the heat, either through conduction into the board, radiation, convection into the air, or conduction into a heatsink which provides more efficient convection into the air (or whatever working fluid you might have).
Yes, this potentially could help computer cooling. The cost is very high and the benefits would be minimal, but sometimes a very small benefit is all you need to reach the next level...
-S
A: Our main office is located in Praha, Cheh Republic. There're also offices and production facilities in Kiev, Ukraine and Saint-Petersbourg, Russian Federation.
Can I stand in the middle of the road holding a sign that says "By driving past me, you are legally bound to give me a million dollars."???
Just because I say it doesn't make it so.
They give you the device (free) and only after you get it home you read that you don't really own it? I don't think so. I don't think their "license" is any more legally binding than my sign.
And even if they -did- stick a license on the hardware, is it enforceable?
If some company sells some product, they could stick a license on it that says if you use this product for purposes not outlined in the license, you have to stick a fork in your ear.
If I smash it with a sledge hammer instead of following their "license", does that mean I'm legally required to stick a fork in my own ear?
This isn't about drivers, or Linux, or IP, or any of that. Their business is collecting data on the online habits of individual users and selling that data to the highest bidder. Failure to use their proprietary Windows drivers breaks their business model. Boo hoo.
I fail to see what the interest is. It's trivial technology. Not cutting edge in the least. For the most part PC cooling solutions are bad science at best, outright scams at worst.
It's not that at all. It's actually as if you're suing someone for copying your books while at the same time you're giving them a printing press. That's hypocracy.
Sheesh... I must be in the minority, because I thought it was a well written, well researched, and interesting article. I've been paying very close attention this issue, and I've been trying to see both sides. I think he's done a good job at not taking sides. Historical comparison is always useful, and to be honest, I hadn't heard any of that history until I read the article.
-S
The domain seems to have been created in '98. So either this guy registered everything he could think might be the title of the movie, or he just got real damn lucky (or unlucky depending on how you look at it)
It doesn't matter where the servers are. Doing business with someone while they are on French soil brings on French jurisdiction.
So, by that reasoning, any US based business with a phone could have the same problem Yahoo is having.
That's not the way it works at all with other forms of communication, and nor should it be for the internet. Yahoo is a US based company. If some French person is buying, or even requesting information about, Nazi items, then it's the French person who is committing the French crime on French soil, not Yahoo.
It's the same reason why someone in Minnesota who gambles with an offshore internet casino is still breaking Minnesota law.
Right. The person in Minnesota is breaking the law. NOT the offshore casino. What the casino does is perfectly legal on some little island somewhere, just as what Yahoo does is perfectly legal in the US.
could a person who runs a porn site in the U.S. get arrested by Australian authorities if he were vacationing there?
Can an Australian get arrested upon returning to Australia after a US vacation for reading porn while he was out of the country?
What if he brought that porn magazine back with him? That's really what he's doing when he goes to a US based website and downloads/looks at something that is illegal under his country's law. How is going to a website and getting something any different from ordering it through the mail.
If a frenchman ordered Nazi items from a US company, who would get in trouble with the French government? The citizen of France who -asked- for said material? Or the company that sent it?
If customers of flatplanet find that gnutella users don't respond to such advertisements, they won't use flatplanet's product
I'm not sure you understand the economies of spam. The spammer, flatplanet in this case, makes their money off of pathetic companies that pay them to spam. Spam never works for the product being advertised, but that's OK and Justin knows this. He collects his eighty bucks for advertisting Company A, and Company A is out eighty bucks and gets pretty much nothing in return. Justin continues touting what a great advertising medium this is, so Company B comes along... etc etc.
Thanks. Someone called it flamebait. That wasn't my intent at all. I believe in personal responsibility and I resent being called selfish, compassionless, and fearful for it, as the article seems to imply.
Who cares. Doesn't our government have anything better to do than to chase around things like this? Music/CDs are luxury items, not necessary for your general existance. We're not talking about price fixing on something like food and attempting to starve people to make a buck.
Don't like to spend $15+ on a CD? Then don't. But obviously enough people ARE happy enough to spend that much, and they do. If that's too much money, then we have no one to blame but the people who PAID that much. If you don't like how expensive CDs are, then spend your money somewhere else. If enough people agree with you, the record companies will get the idea and will lower prices. If they don't... well, you've got no reason to whine about it.
I don't understand how this lawsuit equates to "Rah Rah go Napster!". I guess those who are stealing music through Napster/Gnutella/etc. are looking for a way to ease their conscience.... and this lawsuit gives them a way to justify their Robin Hood complex.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely disagree with this statment. To my eyes, the most annoying thing about mpeg compression is not the blockiness that some complain about, it's the poor color gradients, especially in skin tones and sky shots. The sky goes from deep blue to light blue. Ideally, it should look like that when compressed, but mpeg2 color is only 24 bits deep (I think), so what you end up with is stripes of similar, but distinctly different colors. Very annoying, especially if you're viewing on a progressive scan monitor.
-S
Ok, I'll bite.
Region coding is a pain, it sucks, and I hate it, but illegal? Got some case law, statute, or something to back that up?
-S
We needed a survey to tell us this? Some writers just have a flair for the obvious, I guess.
Exactly, and this brings up another point...
.mp3 be damned." It's those legal uses that are going to bring the RIAA to its knees.
The RIAA may be worried about piracy, lost record sales, etc... but their BIG (and unspoken) concern is the loss of their talent pool of artists who will be freed to go off and market their music as they see fit rather than being tied to RIAA member labels for broad distribution.
Piracy is the LEAST of their concerns, and is really just a smokescreen. The growing number of artists who are going out on their own is what's especially troubling to the RIAA. If the RIAA can mash the distribution channels that don't fit their current modus operandi, then they will maintain control over the artists who will need the RIAA for distribution.
"Legal uses of
-S
1. - Done
2. - Done
3. - Soon. I've got a DVD-ROM drive and software to disable codes and macrovision. Does that count?
4. - Done. Write real letters, not just online. They figure if you can take the time to write and send a real letter, then they can take the time to read it. You don't get that kind of response from online forms and email.
5. - Done. Same deal as reps.
Add 6. - Tell your non-techie friends and relatives. Done.
Add 7. - Write to the MPAA. Done.
OK, so when doing web graphics, I've got two choices...
1) Use a low-color palette and have graphics and pages that look generally crappy to everyone, or
2) Stick with the "don't worry about it" method and have graphics and pages that only look crappy to those with amazingly low color palettes.
-S
By incorporating these things into a chip package, all you'd do is decrease the thermal spreading resistance. At it's limit, the chip becomes an isothermal block with no hot-spots. That's only a very small part of the equation, and in general the dominating thermal resistance in the equation is the chip to ambient thermal resistance. For you electrical guys, heat flow works very much like electrical flow. Differences in temperature are the "voltage" which drives the heat flow. Material properties and interfaces are the "resistance" to that heat flow, and the heat itself is the "current". A mathmatical model of the heat flow out of a silicon die acts like a resistance network. Even if you solve the problem of getting the heat out of the die and evenly distributed around the package (driving all of the "resistors" in that network to zero), you still have to get rid of the heat, either through conduction into the board, radiation, convection into the air, or conduction into a heatsink which provides more efficient convection into the air (or whatever working fluid you might have). Yes, this potentially could help computer cooling. The cost is very high and the benefits would be minimal, but sometimes a very small benefit is all you need to reach the next level... -S
Right... from their FAQ. Legit, huh?
Q: Where is your company located?
A: Our main office is located in Praha, Cheh Republic. There're also offices and production facilities in Kiev, Ukraine and Saint-Petersbourg, Russian Federation.
Can I stand in the middle of the road holding a sign that says "By driving past me, you are legally bound to give me a million dollars."???
Just because I say it doesn't make it so.
They give you the device (free) and only after you get it home you read that you don't really own it? I don't think so. I don't think their "license" is any more legally binding than my sign.
What's the point of 50-60 FPS when broadcast video is ~30? Are we itching for a higher frame rate in movies and TV?
And even if they -did- stick a license on the hardware, is it enforceable?
If some company sells some product, they could stick a license on it that says if you use this product for purposes not outlined in the license, you have to stick a fork in your ear.
If I smash it with a sledge hammer instead of following their "license", does that mean I'm legally required to stick a fork in my own ear?
Just 'cause it's written doesn't make it so.
-S
This isn't about drivers, or Linux, or IP, or any of that. Their business is collecting data on the online habits of individual users and selling that data to the highest bidder. Failure to use their proprietary Windows drivers breaks their business model. Boo hoo.
I fail to see what the interest is. It's trivial technology. Not cutting edge in the least. For the most part PC cooling solutions are bad science at best, outright scams at worst.
Oh this is just frickin' great...
Now I can get spam from domains with oddball characters that will just be about impossible to trace using standard tools.
Yahoo: 1 hit
Altavista: 33,106 hits
Google: 50,100 hits
HotBot: 3,600 hits
Lycos: 14,295 hits
Deja: 1,450 hits
ScrubTheWeb: 2,201 hits
Slashdot: 69 hits
-S
It's not that at all. It's actually as if you're suing someone for copying your books while at the same time you're giving them a printing press. That's hypocracy.
Didn't they learn anything from Hunt for Red October?
Sheesh... I must be in the minority, because I thought it was a well written, well researched, and interesting article. I've been paying very close attention this issue, and I've been trying to see both sides. I think he's done a good job at not taking sides. Historical comparison is always useful, and to be honest, I hadn't heard any of that history until I read the article. -S
The domain seems to have been created in '98. So either this guy registered everything he could think might be the title of the movie, or he just got real damn lucky (or unlucky depending on how you look at it)
Maybe now we can answer that age old question... Coke or Pepsi? Just as long as that annoying little girl isn't part of the equation....
So, by that reasoning, any US based business with a phone could have the same problem Yahoo is having.
That's not the way it works at all with other forms of communication, and nor should it be for the internet. Yahoo is a US based company. If some French person is buying, or even requesting information about, Nazi items, then it's the French person who is committing the French crime on French soil, not Yahoo.
Right. The person in Minnesota is breaking the law. NOT the offshore casino. What the casino does is perfectly legal on some little island somewhere, just as what Yahoo does is perfectly legal in the US.
-S
Can an Australian get arrested upon returning to Australia after a US vacation for reading porn while he was out of the country?
What if he brought that porn magazine back with him? That's really what he's doing when he goes to a US based website and downloads/looks at something that is illegal under his country's law. How is going to a website and getting something any different from ordering it through the mail.
If a frenchman ordered Nazi items from a US company, who would get in trouble with the French government? The citizen of France who -asked- for said material? Or the company that sent it?
I fail to see how this is any different.
-S
Thanks. Someone called it flamebait. That wasn't my intent at all. I believe in personal responsibility and I resent being called selfish, compassionless, and fearful for it, as the article seems to imply.
Who cares. Doesn't our government have anything better to do than to chase around things like this? Music/CDs are luxury items, not necessary for your general existance. We're not talking about price fixing on something like food and attempting to starve people to make a buck.
Don't like to spend $15+ on a CD? Then don't. But obviously enough people ARE happy enough to spend that much, and they do. If that's too much money, then we have no one to blame but the people who PAID that much. If you don't like how expensive CDs are, then spend your money somewhere else. If enough people agree with you, the record companies will get the idea and will lower prices. If they don't... well, you've got no reason to whine about it.
I don't understand how this lawsuit equates to "Rah Rah go Napster!". I guess those who are stealing music through Napster/Gnutella/etc. are looking for a way to ease their conscience.... and this lawsuit gives them a way to justify their Robin Hood complex.