Perhaps you would care to explain how a simple projector scans the scene. It Floods the scene with slightly-collimated light.
Think about it. Put a photodetector in a room. Turn on a slide projector in the room. You detect an image with the photo detector how? Remember it isn't a camera.
Now replace the slide projector with a CRT video projector. Project a blank white raster onto a playing card. Pick up the intensity of the reflected light from the card. Do you think now you would have the light modulated in intensity by the raster of light scanning the card?
They were a little obtuse in the article. The light projector is a raster scan, not a soft gentle static non-moving flood of light.
I want my kids to be able to play it 20 years from now if they want. I have zero guarantee of being able to do that with my iTunes DRMed music.
I know the feeling. I got a copy of "The Cinnamon Bear" from my dad who has it on Reel to Reel tape. I recently got a better copy off the internet (Public Domain) as MP3's. I'll pass them to my kids on an MP3 CD. None of the DRM stuff can be passed on. It dies when either your subscription dies or your hard drive dies.
That said, my players won't play WMA, which makes Yahoo's years of development a moot point.
I agree. People only complain about their portable MP3 player. What about the other ones. For example;
My computer is not in the living room. My stereo and TV are. My DVD player will play a CD full of MP3's. Great I can buy music I can only hear in the office.
My car will also play the CD full of MP3's. Again another market missed by DRM.
DRM simply means less value for me. Having a low price is a nice start, but if I can't use your product because it doesn't fit I won't buy it.
It's just like the cheap shirts on the sale rack. They are not my size, but a few people will find a fit.
Best quality, acceptable price, no DRM (at least when speaking about sane labels, providing sane, non-crap music), and a bunch of nice extras like CD-covers. With Amazon and other online retailers shipping for free, I fail to see where the merits of "pay for download"-services lie, except for the lower delivery-time. --
There are three problems with the shiny disks.
1 The price. I pick up 2 DVD's instead of 1 CD. 2 The package. One maybe 2 great songs and filler. 3 The compression. Most CD's now are compressed to increase the percieved loudness much like most FM broadcast stations. What ever happened to dynamic range? Much of what sells for music is as pleasant to listen to as a jet engine idling. On compressed music, the kick drum mutes the lead guitar. On music with proper dynamic range the drum plays and does not affect the level of the guitar. I hate recordings where the drum mutes the music on each beat. Overall an uncompressed recording has a lower volume level. There is room left for the peaks.
That's what I wondered. So I stopped in and checked out the prices of a couple titles. It isn't the K-Mart segment. I left the music on the shelf and bought a couple under $5 DVD's instead.
Believe it or not, Wall-Mart is selling some DVD's for under $2 which are all region. It is older material, but hopefuly the selection will expand!
Logi Baird created a camera. It used a mechanical scanner to cause the light detector to sample reflected light levels so the scanner worked with the light detector, not a light source sweeping the set.
The difference is in the article that you can't read, a camera is not used. The photo detector simply monitors light levels without a mechanical scanner. The target is scanned with a small beam of light (raster scan). The object because of both it's contrast and orientation to the scanning light source and the photo detector sees a modulation of intensity. Therefore the photo detector can produce a signal used to re-create an image of the scene as seen from the light source, not the detector.
Very true. My DVD player in my living room and my car CD player won't play I-tunes without an extra investment of time and material to burn a CD (at reduced quality and again to get MP3). Same for anything MS format. The fact I can't play it is why I don't buy it.
and anyone else wishing to try their luck (and there are a lot of those guys) can release their material under something else... possibly under your "all-hardware" format.
It's about the only thing other than ripping CD's I use. The indi stuff needs better billboard ratings. You have to weed through a bunch of avarage stuff to find the gems. The gems are all things that never gets air-time, so it's harder to discover. All in all, I don't buy much music anymore. The new stuff arrives intentionaly broken and very expensive. The indi stuff takes forever to find and is also expensive.
Public domain stuff is a rich source of good programming. I've been collecting old radio programs. Most of it is already in MP3 format. Most of what I have found in MP3 format is in better condition than some of the old radio programs I got on cassette tape or reel to reel. Too bad they extended the copyrights. I wanted to get the Radio Mystery series, but sadly I'll be dead before it becomes public domain. It's also not offered for sale at any price.
The problem with copyright is works that are not sold are simply locked in a vault, maybe never to be seen. Examples include Walt Disney's "Littlest Horse Thieves", "Third man on the Mountain" and the CBS "Radio Mystery" series. All of which I'm interested in.
As a result, I buy other things besides music and simply replay my library.
how about a dark room with a tv or CRT monitor on?
About the only to get anything would be if the light sensor had a direct view of the screen and an object blocked part of the path. Then the light from the screen would be modulated by the blockage. You would see an outline shadow. Since there is no point of light scanning the objects in the room, they would not modulate the intensity of the light from the TV. Therefore you would not get an image of the viewer's face for example.
Actually, you could theoretically get a good image if the person simply had a TV on in the room, tuned to a known channel--the bigger the TV, the better.
And just how are you going to image such little things as facial features? Or image big items like how many people are in the room?
To work the light source must scan the target. If I had a light detector in the corner of a room tucked under the door, and they were showing a slideshow with a projector, and the presentor walked in front of the screen, then the raster scan would scan his features. I could detect the reflected light and reconstruct the person's image as if the video projector were a camera. The person's shadows would appear in the image as if I lit the room and him as if the photo detector were a light source. For example one side of his face away from the photo detector would be in shadow.
With this technique, 'any' light source can function as a point of view.
No it can't. The light source must scan the target, not just illuminate it.
The only place I know of with a scanning light source that might be exploited is the confrence room. A photodetector would able to get a raster image of the Power Point presentation in the room and the presenter when he walked in front of the screen and became a scanned object.
It's like the flying spot scanners that predate camera tubes.
Wow, you remember those?
For those who don't know what they are, it's simply a CRT with a blank raster and a photo detector. Usualy a photomultiplier tube (fast and before photodiodes). The flying spot was simply the bright spot on the CRT. If you put movie film in front of the CRT, the brightness detected by the photodetector was modulated by the film in-between. This was the standard way of showing movies on television in the early days. The flying spot scanner was built into a movie projector with a CRT for the lamp and a photomultiplier tube where the projection lens would go.
In this example, it's a very big flying spot scanner. The lightsource is a projector. (raster scanning light source) The target is a 3D object instead of movie film, and the detector is offset so the 3D object casts shadows to the detector.
The scanned image looks like it would be viewed from the light source with shadows that look like the light source is from the photo detector.
It seems like this might have some military applications as a result. Imagine sticking a photo-resistor array under a door or through a window and then getting "viewpoints" from any of the lights in the room. Could aid in target aquisition and elimination.
If you can get to the article, it mentions the light source as a projector. The projector controls the resolution. How it works is a raster scanning video projector lights objects. A photoresistor (in my opinion way too slow. A fast photodiode would be better or photomultiplier tube) picks up the reflected light from the object scanned by the light projector.
A simple street light or the ceiling light in the room will not modulate the light to provide an image signal on a photo sensor slid under a door. On the other hand, if they were doing a video presentation, and the presenter walked between a projector and the screen and you had a photoresistor slid under the door, you would be able to see his arm movements.
You would get the best image when the projector was not showing a slide, but showing a blank screen. Use a CRT projector, not an LCD. LCD's don't raster scan.
With a video projector providing structured illumination, reciprocity permits us to generate pictures from the viewpoint of the projector, even though no camera was present at that location.
Other than using electrons instead of light, that's how a scanning electron microscope works. An object is scanned (raster scan) and one or more sensors near the target pick up the reflections to generate an image. In the SEM the image appears as viewed from the scanning electron beam source.
In the optical one mentioned in the article, the light source is a raster scanning projector which lights a target. The image is produced from photodiodes picking up reflected light.
These two systems are very much alike. One uses photons and the other electrons. The end image is generated the same way.
some of us are grown adults who just want things liek ot be able to get the music we want to buy and play it on any music player we own
Which is why I settled on the most common format. I use MP3's. I rip to MP3's. My Winamp plays MP3's. My DVD player in the living room plays MP3's. My car CD player plays MP3's. My portable CD player plays MP3's. There is not any other format supported by all my hardware. Any format other than MP3 reduces the playability of the music and reduces it's value to me. Low value at a high price = no sale.
I-tunes at free (the Pepsi promotion) even gets ignored by me. The time and trouble to download a program, set up an account, and download one or two songs playable only in their program on just the PC isn't worth it. Having a couple songs that play only on the absolute worst sound system I own does not get me to go out and buy a bunch of songs.
The problem is not many stores sell MP3's. Too bad.
I agree with Hilary. I don't want to support multiple playlists on multiple devices to support multiple formats. Sell me music in a format all my hardware and software can play. Is that too much to ask?
(There are even reports of people paying UNDER MSRP.)
Don't overlook buying used.
I bought mine with 16K on it. As I was signing the paperwork, the finance officer came to the salesman and asked if the price was correct. There was an error. They sold it for the base price. I got the fully loaded model with the NAV system. It should have sold for about 3K more. It was too late. I got my original price. Sweet.. Know the value before you go to the dealer. Watch for a bargin. They are out there.
Back in 90's Microsoft became very concerned that Netscape's web browser could end up being the PLATFORM for which software would be written. If you wrote your software to run in a browswer window the underlying OS was no longer important. Microsoft needed to push Netscape over a cliff.
I know the old history of why it was bolted on. Now that AOL bought Netscape, and Outlook Express and IE have been proven to be exploitable holes in the OS, why hasn't the mistake been fixed, especialy after the big DOJ case? Un-bolting them and providing some user/OS security may improve Windows. Because of the security problems as it is now, Firefox is now a fix to most of the IE exploits. MS with their team of software engineers should have been able to provide rock solid security. Instead they focused on Media player and DRM protection of content. They left system security weak. MS had the chance to improve things.
So, there is no good technical reason for integrating your file system browser with your web browser
They blew it. It's a security joke. People are getting Firefox for security, not DRM features. Tabbed browsing is nice too.
My Office Depot had free CDs from Microsoft with SP2.
I'll have to check it out next time I have to rebuild mom's machine. Is it just SP2, or does it also contain all the critical updates and patches up to SP2?
you participate in a communist scheme designed to prevent software professionals from being compensated for their work
Are you kidding? The software professionals get compensated regardless of what OS I choose. It's simply cheaper for me to buy a box and pay the professionals for the software that I don't use than to buy a box without paying the software professionals.
Now if only the professionals will produce software that won't run exploits as root, then I may consider using it. Why is IE and Outlook Express integrated to the manditory OS anyway?
Maybe we should stop running all those stories about how evil WindowsUpdate is,
Are you kidding. When a hosed machine is rebuilt from the CD, that un-installs all the updates.. Have you tried to re-update mom's machine after a rebuild.. on a modem?
How about all the MS updates and patches on a rack at the local Best Buy? It would save a ton of re-update time on the modem. Then the real MS update could be used for this months updates instead of the last 2 years updates.
Why doesn't MS update offer to save a local copy of all patches and updates and prompt the user to either save it to a floppy or burn it on a CD to keep with the original manufacture's recovery CD set?
MS assumes the user will never rebuild the box after the hard disk is replaced and they assume the user has broadband so an update won't be a problem. (they assume Dell should take care of it)
From a security standpoint, fully updated IE is much better than unupdated Firefox.
I prefer to be a duck during deer hunting season. If you haven't noticed, it's IE season... I'd rather not be IE out on the web right now. It is true either will can be hit, but IE is a marked target right now with lots of hunters on the web. Firefox still has a lower profile and few hunters trying to bag it into their botnet.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you would care to explain how a simple projector scans the scene. It Floods the scene with slightly-collimated light.
Think about it. Put a photodetector in a room. Turn on a slide projector in the room. You detect an image with the photo detector how? Remember it isn't a camera.
Now replace the slide projector with a CRT video projector. Project a blank white raster onto a playing card. Pick up the intensity of the reflected light from the card. Do you think now you would have the light modulated in intensity by the raster of light scanning the card?
They were a little obtuse in the article. The light projector is a raster scan, not a soft gentle static non-moving flood of light.
I want my kids to be able to play it 20 years from now if they want. I have zero guarantee of being able to do that with my iTunes DRMed music.
I know the feeling. I got a copy of "The Cinnamon Bear" from my dad who has it on Reel to Reel tape. I recently got a better copy off the internet (Public Domain) as MP3's. I'll pass them to my kids on an MP3 CD. None of the DRM stuff can be passed on. It dies when either your subscription dies or your hard drive dies.
transfer the songs to select portable MP3-format music players
The key is WMA players are also MP3 players. The select MP3 players are the ones that play WMA files. Do not assume the format is MP3. It isn't.
That said, my players won't play WMA, which makes Yahoo's years of development a moot point.
I agree. People only complain about their portable MP3 player. What about the other ones. For example;
My computer is not in the living room. My stereo and TV are. My DVD player will play a CD full of MP3's. Great I can buy music I can only hear in the office.
My car will also play the CD full of MP3's. Again another market missed by DRM.
DRM simply means less value for me. Having a low price is a nice start, but if I can't use your product because it doesn't fit I won't buy it.
It's just like the cheap shirts on the sale rack. They are not my size, but a few people will find a fit.
Best quality, acceptable price, no DRM (at least when speaking about sane labels, providing sane, non-crap music), and a bunch of nice extras like CD-covers. With Amazon and other online retailers shipping for free, I fail to see where the merits of "pay for download"-services lie, except for the lower delivery-time.
--
There are three problems with the shiny disks.
1 The price. I pick up 2 DVD's instead of 1 CD.
2 The package. One maybe 2 great songs and filler.
3 The compression. Most CD's now are compressed to increase the percieved loudness much like most FM broadcast stations. What ever happened to dynamic range? Much of what sells for music is as pleasant to listen to as a jet engine idling.
On compressed music, the kick drum mutes the lead guitar.
On music with proper dynamic range the drum plays and does not affect the level of the guitar.
I hate recordings where the drum mutes the music on each beat. Overall an uncompressed recording has a lower volume level. There is room left for the peaks.
What segment is Wall-Mart selling to exactly?
That's what I wondered. So I stopped in and checked out the prices of a couple titles. It isn't the K-Mart segment. I left the music on the shelf and bought a couple under $5 DVD's instead.
Believe it or not, Wall-Mart is selling some DVD's for under $2 which are all region. It is older material, but hopefuly the selection will expand!
Logi Baird created a camera. It used a mechanical scanner to cause the light detector to sample reflected light levels so the scanner worked with the light detector, not a light source sweeping the set.
The difference is in the article that you can't read, a camera is not used. The photo detector simply monitors light levels without a mechanical scanner. The target is scanned with a small beam of light (raster scan). The object because of both it's contrast and orientation to the scanning light source and the photo detector sees a modulation of intensity. Therefore the photo detector can produce a signal used to re-create an image of the scene as seen from the light source, not the detector.
The market will then choose, variously.
... possibly under your "all-hardware" format.
Very true. My DVD player in my living room and my car CD player won't play I-tunes without an extra investment of time and material to burn a CD (at reduced quality and again to get MP3). Same for anything MS format. The fact I can't play it is why I don't buy it.
and anyone else wishing to try their luck (and there are a lot of those guys) can release their material under something else
It's about the only thing other than ripping CD's I use. The indi stuff needs better billboard ratings. You have to weed through a bunch of avarage stuff to find the gems. The gems are all things that never gets air-time, so it's harder to discover. All in all, I don't buy much music anymore. The new stuff arrives intentionaly broken and very expensive. The indi stuff takes forever to find and is also expensive.
Public domain stuff is a rich source of good programming. I've been collecting old radio programs. Most of it is already in MP3 format. Most of what I have found in MP3 format is in better condition than some of the old radio programs I got on cassette tape or reel to reel. Too bad they extended the copyrights. I wanted to get the Radio Mystery series, but sadly I'll be dead before it becomes public domain. It's also not offered for sale at any price.
The problem with copyright is works that are not sold are simply locked in a vault, maybe never to be seen. Examples include Walt Disney's "Littlest Horse Thieves", "Third man on the Mountain" and the CBS "Radio Mystery" series. All of which I'm interested in.
As a result, I buy other things besides music and simply replay my library.
You paid the new car price for one with 16K on it? Man, what a deal! Can you come with me next time I buy a used car? :)
I didn't think I had to explain the diference between new car MSRP and used car Blue Book.
I got a fully loaded Prius with 16K for under $18K. I'll leave it up to you to figure if that's 3K under MSRP or Blue Book.
how about a dark room with a tv or CRT monitor on?
About the only to get anything would be if the light sensor had a direct view of the screen and an object blocked part of the path. Then the light from the screen would be modulated by the blockage. You would see an outline shadow. Since there is no point of light scanning the objects in the room, they would not modulate the intensity of the light from the TV. Therefore you would not get an image of the viewer's face for example.
Actually, you could theoretically get a good image if the person simply had a TV on in the room, tuned to a known channel--the bigger the TV, the better.
And just how are you going to image such little things as facial features? Or image big items like how many people are in the room?
To work the light source must scan the target. If I had a light detector in the corner of a room tucked under the door, and they were showing a slideshow with a projector, and the presentor walked in front of the screen, then the raster scan would scan his features. I could detect the reflected light and reconstruct the person's image as if the video projector were a camera. The person's shadows would appear in the image as if I lit the room and him as if the photo detector were a light source. For example one side of his face away from the photo detector would be in shadow.
With this technique, 'any' light source can function as a point of view.
No it can't. The light source must scan the target, not just illuminate it.
The only place I know of with a scanning light source that might be exploited is the confrence room. A photodetector would able to get a raster image of the Power Point presentation in the room and the presenter when he walked in front of the screen and became a scanned object.
It's like the flying spot scanners that predate camera tubes.
Wow, you remember those?
For those who don't know what they are, it's simply a CRT with a blank raster and a photo detector. Usualy a photomultiplier tube (fast and before photodiodes). The flying spot was simply the bright spot on the CRT. If you put movie film in front of the CRT, the brightness detected by the photodetector was modulated by the film in-between. This was the standard way of showing movies on television in the early days. The flying spot scanner was built into a movie projector with a CRT for the lamp and a photomultiplier tube where the projection lens would go.
In this example, it's a very big flying spot scanner. The lightsource is a projector. (raster scanning light source) The target is a 3D object instead of movie film, and the detector is offset so the 3D object casts shadows to the detector.
The scanned image looks like it would be viewed from the light source with shadows that look like the light source is from the photo detector.
It seems like this might have some military applications as a result. Imagine sticking a photo-resistor array under a door or through a window and then getting "viewpoints" from any of the lights in the room. Could aid in target aquisition and elimination.
If you can get to the article, it mentions the light source as a projector. The projector controls the resolution. How it works is a raster scanning video projector lights objects. A photoresistor (in my opinion way too slow. A fast photodiode would be better or photomultiplier tube) picks up the reflected light from the object scanned by the light projector.
A simple street light or the ceiling light in the room will not modulate the light to provide an image signal on a photo sensor slid under a door. On the other hand, if they were doing a video presentation, and the presenter walked between a projector and the screen and you had a photoresistor slid under the door, you would be able to see his arm movements.
You would get the best image when the projector was not showing a slide, but showing a blank screen. Use a CRT projector, not an LCD. LCD's don't raster scan.
With a video projector providing structured illumination, reciprocity permits us to generate pictures from the viewpoint of the projector, even though no camera was present at that location.
Other than using electrons instead of light, that's how a scanning electron microscope works. An object is scanned (raster scan) and one or more sensors near the target pick up the reflections to generate an image. In the SEM the image appears as viewed from the scanning electron beam source.
In the optical one mentioned in the article, the light source is a raster scanning projector which lights a target. The image is produced from photodiodes picking up reflected light.
These two systems are very much alike. One uses photons and the other electrons. The end image is generated the same way.
some of us are grown adults who just want things liek ot be able to get the music we want to buy and play it on any music player we own
Which is why I settled on the most common format. I use MP3's. I rip to MP3's. My Winamp plays MP3's. My DVD player in the living room plays MP3's. My car CD player plays MP3's. My portable CD player plays MP3's. There is not any other format supported by all my hardware. Any format other than MP3 reduces the playability of the music and reduces it's value to me. Low value at a high price = no sale.
I-tunes at free (the Pepsi promotion) even gets ignored by me. The time and trouble to download a program, set up an account, and download one or two songs playable only in their program on just the PC isn't worth it. Having a couple songs that play only on the absolute worst sound system I own does not get me to go out and buy a bunch of songs.
The problem is not many stores sell MP3's. Too bad.
I agree with Hilary. I don't want to support multiple playlists on multiple devices to support multiple formats. Sell me music in a format all my hardware and software can play. Is that too much to ask?
Sometimes an indicator may be misleading.
The army started issuing kevlar helments. The number of injured in the hospital went up.
(jump to the wrong conclusion here)
The soldiers survived attacks and went to the hospital instead of the morgue.
(There are even reports of people paying UNDER MSRP.)
Don't overlook buying used.
I bought mine with 16K on it. As I was signing the paperwork, the finance officer came to the salesman and asked if the price was correct. There was an error. They sold it for the base price. I got the fully loaded model with the NAV system. It should have sold for about 3K more. It was too late. I got my original price. Sweet.. Know the value before you go to the dealer. Watch for a bargin. They are out there.
and I've never been caught doing it.
Please elaborate.. I've never been caught doing it either. I've not been caught simply because I've never done it.
Are you implying you've done it?
Back in 90's Microsoft became very concerned that Netscape's web browser could end up being the PLATFORM for which software would be written. If you wrote your software to run in a browswer window the underlying OS was no longer important. Microsoft needed to push Netscape over a cliff.
I know the old history of why it was bolted on. Now that AOL bought Netscape, and Outlook Express and IE have been proven to be exploitable holes in the OS, why hasn't the mistake been fixed, especialy after the big DOJ case? Un-bolting them and providing some user/OS security may improve Windows. Because of the security problems as it is now, Firefox is now a fix to most of the IE exploits. MS with their team of software engineers should have been able to provide rock solid security. Instead they focused on Media player and DRM protection of content. They left system security weak. MS had the chance to improve things.
So, there is no good technical reason for integrating your file system browser with your web browser
They blew it. It's a security joke. People are getting Firefox for security, not DRM features. Tabbed browsing is nice too.
My Office Depot had free CDs from Microsoft with SP2.
I'll have to check it out next time I have to rebuild mom's machine. Is it just SP2, or does it also contain all the critical updates and patches up to SP2?
This game management is healthy for the environment, which is what most green anti-hunting folks fail to understand.
The difference is natural predatation picks the weak easy targets out of a herd and reducing the amount of diseased in the herd.
A hunter on the other hand is looking for the best of the herd.. With a gun a hunter does not have to try to take down prey by chasing it down.
(disclaimer, I'm not a vegitarian. I have seen diseased deer populations.)
you participate in a communist scheme designed to prevent software professionals from being compensated for their work
Are you kidding? The software professionals get compensated regardless of what OS I choose. It's simply cheaper for me to buy a box and pay the professionals for the software that I don't use than to buy a box without paying the software professionals.
Now if only the professionals will produce software that won't run exploits as root, then I may consider using it. Why is IE and Outlook Express integrated to the manditory OS anyway?
Can you say Target?
Maybe we should stop running all those stories about how evil WindowsUpdate is,
Are you kidding. When a hosed machine is rebuilt from the CD, that un-installs all the updates.. Have you tried to re-update mom's machine after a rebuild.. on a modem?
How about all the MS updates and patches on a rack at the local Best Buy? It would save a ton of re-update time on the modem. Then the real MS update could be used for this months updates instead of the last 2 years updates.
Why doesn't MS update offer to save a local copy of all patches and updates and prompt the user to either save it to a floppy or burn it on a CD to keep with the original manufacture's recovery CD set?
MS assumes the user will never rebuild the box after the hard disk is replaced and they assume the user has broadband so an update won't be a problem. (they assume Dell should take care of it)
WRONG!
From a security standpoint, fully updated IE is much better than unupdated Firefox.
I prefer to be a duck during deer hunting season. If you haven't noticed, it's IE season... I'd rather not be IE out on the web right now. It is true either will can be hit, but IE is a marked target right now with lots of hunters on the web. Firefox still has a lower profile and few hunters trying to bag it into their botnet.