Unfortunately I am not a software author. I haven't the slightest idea of where to begin. Before you call me dumb, I am a ISCET Certified Tech. I'm a hardware tech. I can but a Broadcast radio station back on the air that has been hit by lightning (ask for photos) so my field of expertise is not software coding. Would you know how to fix a 50 KW FM transmitter dammaged by lightning? I know how to use a Motorolla D2000. My debuging tools is not compilers and such, it's storage oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, time domain reflectometers, digital multimeters, directional wattmeters, etc. We are only experts in our own fields.
PLAY buton in the drop down menu (right click). True, It is supposed to be there. Unfortunately some advertisers abused the control given them and I had too many ads that provided a right menu of one item; "About Macromedia Flash" That is why I mentioned advertiser abuse. This abuse led to the removal of flash on my system. Those ads were worse than blinking banners. The normal way to stop blinky flashly distracting things won't stop those flash ads. The only way found was remove flash. Another post recommends upgrading IE to 6 to get the ability to change Active X from enabled to prompt. I'll have to look into that. Is there a Netscape equivelant? I don't usualy use IE at home.
It means when you buy a WMA music file off the net, and download it to your player, you can't back it up on your friends computer. It is not a file format that can be copied and played on something else. That's how they manage the copywrite owners content. Stuff with DRM downloaded into the player will not upload back out. Even though they brag about using it to store and transfer files, that does not apply to DRM stuff.
Requires Macromedia Flash Player 6 on the little demo page. Too bad I removed FLASH due to it's abuse by web advertisers. I hope Macromedia will put out a player that can be set by default to not play flash. HINT HINT! I'm not going to install it to watch a demo and remove it for the rest of my browsing. Is a play button too much to ask?
What nobody's figured out is how to get this cost across to the execs in a dollars-and-cents way they understand. Actualy the execs in legitimate companies do get it. They put up a website listing their products with the prices and shipping information. They know when people are shopping, they will search for them. The spammers are usualy slimeballs not to be trusted. With shoddy products that cost nothing or next to nothing to produce. (photocopied etc.) I figured out long time ago to NEVER buy anything from a TELEMARKETER, DIRECT MAIL ADVETISER, or SPAMMER. When I do need to buy items like toner (I do use it) or bulk ink jet ink (I refill my own) I search the web. I then check the reputation of the supplier (including brick and morter address, BBB, hate sites, Telephone support line, etc.). If everything checks out, I sample the product with a small order before using them as a regular supplier. I usualy place my first order by telephone instead of online. A real contact goes a long ways in sorting out sweatshop bulk e-mail centers. Using this technique I am happy to report I get good quality refill ink for $14/half pint for the color inks. I use it regularly to print photographs with no problems. That ink savings alone has saved me enough to buy a color laser printer. Guess where I'm getting toner! Spamming me with a great offer will not get me to change suppliers. If I become unhappy with my current suppliers, I'll repeat the search process. If or when I become unhappy with my sex equipment or performance, I'll search for a supplier with a reputation that can make a real diffrence. The search does not include my inbox.
In summary, If you have a product to sell, list it online so I can find it when I am ready to buy. Put the details online so I can check if the product meets my needs. I bought ink from someone that not only sold ink, but provided all the detailed howto information online. These people knew what worked and what didn't and were glad to share the information online for free. If you want to buy something, research it first and search for competive products. You don't have to spend $30 for a refill kit good for 2 refills. For the same $30 you can do much better. The same is true for most products. Don't buy on price alone. I knew I found someone that was really in the business when I found out I could buy ink in sizes up to 55 gallon drums. This was not a small kit seller. Avoid the junk. There is plenty. What good is cheap insurance if your valid claim is always rejected and will require a court battle to collect? Check the ratings before you buy. Learn about the seller. If you can't find anythng about the company, that's A BAD SIGN! (big waving red flag)
I have addresses posted on websites for months now which receive NO spam Either you are a newbie, or you do not use the services of one of the larger ISP's. The simple act of opening an account with Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. gets you spam with out the need to ever post the address in any form anywhere. Try it. Get a free account and don't use it for anything. Check the inbox once a week. I doubt your "NO spam" claim would be valid.
It is an optical diagnostic port. You just don't know it yet. If you don't know Morse code, never fear. Hook up a phototransistor to the DTR line on a RS232 port of a laptop or PC and run any readily avaliable Morse reader freeware/shareware. You now have a non-contact diagnostics scanner to display the code. You may want to enlist the aid of a hardware type to build the RS232 optical pickup. It is a minimal hardware and software solution to not knowing Morse code. This is fully compatible with all the existing hardware and does not require new hardware.
I just found you can do searches without a subscription. It tried it and the results were very poor. I tried searching 6 of my favorite artists. The results came up with anything containing the word entered. Only one came up with a match with songs by the artist. 2 came up with other artists that contained the word entered. For example "Electric Light" provided no matches. "ELO" provided matches that were part of another word. "Eagles" was entered for a well known band just to check out older popular stuff. I got 4 matches, but none of them were by the Eagles. It was matches by other bands that had the word Eagles in the title such as "Wilmer Watts And His Lonely Eagles" which I never heard of. emusic.com needs a library of all the new and oldies in order to sell the service. Regular searches comming up empty or not revelant will not keep subscribers active. You have to have the content to sell a library service.
Try http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-921792.html for the article. Try http://www.emusic.com/pitch.html for the service. Quote; "We know that flexibility is one of the things you like most about downloading music. Unlike many other subscription offerings that restrict how you can use your music, we make it easy for you to transfer your music to portable devices, burn CDs and make multiple copies for your personal use. Once you download the MP3s, you own the music."
Unfortunately you can't see a catalog without a subscription. They do offer a free trial, but I'm leary as I tried an AOL subscription once and the cancellation process was next to impossible. I don't wish to repeat the process to check out the service. AOL giving free trials a bad name one consumer at a time.
Actually they can because they can gurantee the content. Have you experianced the looping files? Have you experianced the bad rips with clicks and pops? Have you had troll files (inapropiate material miss-labled (audio goat file)? Files miss-labeled to fly under RIAA radar? A well organized catalog of high quality files would be a big service that people will pay for. Would you have paid $10/month for a Napster that only had good rips, only at high bandwidth (no D/L from someone on dialup) from a Napster size searchable catalog, in MP3 format, and no monthly limits? How about if it were legal and there were no legal threats for using it? Sign me up! I'm on my way to buy some spindles! (full disclosure time, I never signed up for Napster or other Peer-Peer network due to legal/moral issues. Make it legal with a subscription plan, and I'm interested!)
Is their all you can eat table that barren? I could see a problem if they only had 1000 titles spanning six catagories. (western, swing, big band, polka, etc.) Is emusic.com's selection really that small? I guess it could be if they don't have the license from all the major players so their selection contains almost nothing that gets regular airplay. Can anybody subscribing to emusic comment on the music selection or lack thereof?
The cable analogy plays out. The signal on the pole is encrypted. The signal out of a decoder is not. You are free to connect your non-cable VCR to time shift the content. The guys in the interview know this will have to happen. Cable would not have sold if it had nothing but pay per view only viewable on cable equipment. Music to be sold on the internet will have to have the same level of ability to use on your rio, CD burner, Jukebox Device, etc. From the article; "
But right now they're offering more than you can offer. Let's forget about the size of the catalogues. You can put files downloaded off Kazaa or any of those companies on a MP3 player or record onto a CD. How far are you willing to go to offer legal music that can be transferred onto many different devices? Those are all things we have to do. But like I said, it's an evolution. You have to be able to download files permanently, burn them to CDs, transfer them to devices, use them on several computers, or else transfer them to other devices that can store and play back music. All those things will have to be part of that process. And if I was just going to steal all the content I could do it tomorrow. "
This guy has a clue that may work. XM radio sells well. Cable TV sells well. You could hook XM radio to a sound card and make MP3's. You can hook a VCR to cable. It looks like the next generation of subscription music will have the same lack of a restriction (CD burning, MP3 player, MP3 Jukebox). As long is it isn't crippled by some pay per view encrypted service, it may have a chance of selling. What took them so long to get a clue? Now if the marketing department can get the sweet price point to sell it! Hint-- $100/month isn't it for the masses regardless of how it's marketed as for the price of 6 CD's.
Apple is big enough to ask Intel for a custom chip just like Microsoft did for the X-Box. (notice the custom socket on the chip?) If they do not infringe on any of Motorola's patents, it is possible for Intel to manufacture and non-X86 chip for apple that would contain all the power, speed, and effecient manufacturing for low cost parts with high performance. What would you do with a 2.5 Ghz Mac?
Um, what I'm getting from this thread is, what he wants doesn't exist. Advice I always give anybody asking my opinion on what to buy is; define what you need to do and buy the hardware/software to do it. For some people that means a Windows machine for games, others it means Linux for a robust web server, others it means a MAC for desktop publishing (don't flame, Windows DTP has come a long way). I never recommend a brand, hard drive size, memory size, platform, etc. As you noted there is lots of platform specific solutions being recommended. Weed those out and see if there is any workable Windows solutions. If not, he may need to find a platform that will run a suitable application for his needs. In this department there seems to be lots of endorsements of a reliable solution that works.
I overlooked the obvious typo and replied to keep on topic instead of getting offtopic. Trying to run more red ink than my 4th grade english teacher is not what I wanted to post. Ignoring a typo does not mean I missed it.
Yes burn your JPEG's. The idea is from when Unisys pulled the same license stunt on the GIF format. The revolt is well docummented. Here is a snip I found. "PNG (Portable Network Graphics format) In January 1995 Unisys, the company Compuserve contracted to create the GIF format, announced that they would be enforcing the patent on the LZW compression technique the GIF format uses. This means that commercial developers that include the GIF encoding or decoding algorithms have to pay a license fee to Compuserve. This does not concern users of GIFs or non-commercial developers. However, a number of people banded together and created a completely patent-free graphics format called PNG (pronounced "ping"), the Portable Network Graphics format. PNG is superior to GIF in that it has better compression and supports millions of colours. PNG files end in a.png suffix.
PNG is supported in Netscape 4.03 and above. For more information, try the PNG home page. " Do a web search for "Burn your GIF's" You will find lots of information. It does not refer to burning them onto a CD! That is why GIF's are so poorly supported and rare nowdays. It looks like JPEG is the next obsoleted format since they did not learn from history they are condemmed to repeat it.
How long will it be before the camera manufactures release cameras using the.PNG format instead of the.JPEG format. How soon before a burn all JIF's page comes online like the burn all GIF's?
MS is getting you primed for no peer to peer. The only content that is yours is what you bought from them, or took yourself from your camera, recorded live from your band, etc. Notice there is no "Bob's music, Sarah's music, etc. MIB II will not go into the "My Movies". Expect it to be PPV streamed with no non-DRM recording of any kind. It will be fully DRM locked as "My Movie" only after it is paid for. There is no right of first sale on it. Once it's yours, your only choices will be watch it of delete it. Nothing else will be an option.
or perhaps they need the control for DRM? I think you have a clue. They will control the player, the advertising, the delivery, and they can provide a demographic profile to advertisers. They are your new cable services media company. Your non Dish Network hardware (receiver/decoder) doesn't work with the subscription Dish Network service. The hardware does very little without an active subscription. Each decoder/receiver has a unique ID that is used to prevent theft of service. The Dish Network receiver can't be used to use another providers programming. Peer to peer of programming provided by the service is prevented. There are no anon users getting a free ride (except for illicit piracy). No subscription, no programming! Do you expect anything less from MS?
That is a common thought. Hold that thought and do the math. A solar panel only works in sunlight (doh!)and does not provide power 24 X 7. A 100 Watt panel sells for nearly $300. A roof of an largr house can hold about 100 panels facing the sun (don't forget to cut down the shade trees!) Now you have spent $30,000 for 10 Kw of power averaging 6 hours a day. See an insolation map for your area. If you are thinking of solar on the roof of the car, think fitting 2 100 Watt panels that will be shaded part of the day by buildings, etc. Even figuring the 6 hour charge, that's only 200W X 6H for 1.2 KWH/day. How long will a full day's charge run a 15-30 KW motor? Might be good for the trip out to the mailbox. For your investment for 100 100W panels you get about 120 KWH per day. An average EV has a 30 KW motor. It will run for about 2 hours on an average day's charge at highway speeds. Electricity is about $.18/ KWH. How long will it take your investment to break even. Do not add in the changing electrical rates and maitenence costs. I come up with $10.8 per day in electric power from the solar. At that rate I see a payback of the hardware investment of about 8 years not counting any maitnance, battery replacements, financing costs and insurance that may have to be paid. It does not count the need for a second battery just in case you want to drive in the daytime. (charge one / use one)
I just had to dig out the scope and check my claim to back up my 25 watts RMS is bigger than 40 watts Peak claim. Here is the facts. The amplifier is a Pioneer GM120 amplifier. I cranked it up into clipping with a load. I measured the output voltage Peak to Peak with a scope. (Tektronics TD 220 for those interested) The singel ended output clipped at 40 volts Peak to Peak. (clips at + and - 20 volts) That is for an amplifier rated 25 watts into a 4 ohm load at 0.04% THD. To provide this voltage, it uses an inverting switch mode power supply to provide the + and - voltage supplies. To match this in a bridge amplifier, (40 watt in-dash example) the supply in the unit would have to provide over 20 volts so each leg (+ and - speaker lead) swings 10 volts over and under their 10 volt DC rest voltage, or it would need a supply in the deck to supply high current to the output of + and - 10 volts for a bridgable or + and - 20 volts for a single ended output. They don't put that kind of power in-dash. It would fry itself due to lack of proper heatsinks. The Pioneer amplifier swings a full 40 volts peak to peak on it's output. The in-dash unit will drive one lead (-) to ground while the other (+) swings to the supply voltage providing a swing of 24 volts P-P of one speaker lead refrenced to the other (14 volt car power). There is no way the 40 watt in-dash unit can match the 25 watt Pioneer with only a 12-14 volt single ended power supply. Remember that doubling the power into into a load is only 3 db gain. Doubling the voltage increases the power 6 db. (doubling the voltage into a resistor also doubles the current). With that in mind the 25 watt Pioneer is well over twice the power of the 40 watt indash unit into a 4 ohm load. 40 V P-P from the Pioneer is quite a bit more power than the 24 Volt P-P the in-dash unit provides.
Take the average radio.. a good one claims to do 40 watts per channel, on a 12 volt powersupply and a 4 ohm load, the maximum possible output wattage is 36 The radio you describe is the same bridge output amplifier that a few years ago was rated at 12.5 watts per channel, or 25 watts for 2 channel or 50 watts for 4 channel. It's the same voltage into the same load. Nothing has changed but the numbers. Because people tend to by things by comparing the fancy numbers on a spec sheet, lots creative writing has been done to seprate fools from their money. #1 Rate peak power instead of RMS average watts. Explaination; Music is not DC heating power. If you take the maximum DC voltage and figure the power based on load resistance, you can get a high number. In the example given, 40 watts was tossed out. It was pointed out that that number refuted with a supply of 12 volts. It wasn't figured at 12 volts. The charging system provides about 14 or more volts. Redo the math with this number. An audio waveform is not a sine wave. The peak possible voltage is not provided to the speakers 100% of the time. In the '70's some good stuff was rated at RMS power at a specified distortion level. In the above case, 40 watts is only possible with the engine running and the speaker voltage never leaving peak values. In short a very distorted square wave output. Not pleasant music in my book. A 6 Watt RMS rated amplifer at 0.1 THD is a much more powerful amplifier. My favorite amplifier is rated 25 watts RMS per channel at 0.04% THD into a 4 ohm load. Some amplifiers are rated to provide their rated output only a very low speaker impedances. 2 and one ohm are common. Almost half the power rating for these as they can not provide the voltage needed to properly drive rated power into a 4 ohm speaker. Needless to say, that rating will misslead most newbies in the audio field. The don't understand why my 50 watt amplifier uses 8 AWG wire with a 20 amp fuse. They are also supprised when I connect a scope and show it provides more unclipped peak to peak voltage to the 4 ohm speaker than most amplifiers rated 200 watts. Yes the honestly rated 25 watt amplifer is a bigger and higher power amp. That rating is not a peak power rating. Learn to compare apples with apples. Is the spec peak or RMS? Is that rated into 4 ohm, 2 ohm, 1 ohm? Is that rating guaranteed at 11 volt supply, or does the amp need to be under the hood getting 14 volts direct with no power distribution system to provide voltage loss due to resistance and distance? If you have a 200 Watt RMS into 4 ohms rated amplifier, I'll be looking for serious hearing protection! The car audio market is "let the buyer beware". The specs on paper are deliberately missleading. Borrow a scope and a dummy load. Find out how much Peak to Peak voltage the amplifier will deliver before before clipping occures. Don't buy anything that will not put out at least 40 volts for a small amp and 80 volts for the super thumpers. Half these values for brige mode amps. I have seen stuff rated at 120 watts that are powered by an 8 amp fuse. 12 X 8 is only 96 DC watts in at the point the fuse will blow. (commenly spouted spec for cheap underdash EQ-boosters) Some power is lost to heat in the audio conversion from DC. How much is left for each speaker? How are they expecting to get 120 watts out with only 96 watts maximum in? That rating is not RMS average music power! There is some honest stuff out there. However bring your pocketbook. It isn't cheap!
Now onto the function of caps. Music has it's peaks and valleys. The resistance of the electrical distribution system is finite. It includes the wire, battery internal resistance and alternator internal resistance. Current draw over a finite resitance provides a voltage drop over the resistance. This is well defined in ohm's law. The current drawn by an amplifier is not constant. It varies. Simply the more the current draw over a fixed resistance the more the voltage drop. Because of this the voltage drop varies as the current drawn varies. The wiring can have it's resistance reduced by using bigger wire, battery resistance can be reduced by adding more batteries (and placing one close to the amp to shorten the wire from battery and amp). To provide the maximum voltage to the amplifier at a music peak, the loss in DC voltage at the peak current draw can be acheived by providing the peak current from a local capicitor instead of through a long wire to the trunk. A big capacitor can provide the short duration high current the amplifier demands on a music peak, preventing the high current peak on the DC distribution system and it's associated peak voltage drop. A good scope will tell you in short order if the money is worth it. Watch the voltage drops on high power music at the amplifier with and without the cap. Saving a 1/2 volt peak drop may make a diffrence in a competition, but most people won't need it. Don't even consider adding a cap if your music peaks drop the supply voltage at the amplifier less than 1/4 volt. You don't need it.
The lightning arrester is now often built into the telco interface box. It was done that way to upgrade obsolete arresters and provide a single standard interface. It also removed an easy access point on the telco side of the interface. Take a look at your interface box. It has a double opening door. The Telco can lock their side of the interface while still allowing your side to open. You have a connection to a jack. That way in case of wireing problems, you can unplug your house from the interface and see if the telco is at fault by plugging in a telephone into the interface and seeing if it works. If it works, the telco is not at fault. We can't leave the old binding posts out for a homeowner to mess with to on the telco side now should we? It could make a needless service call for the telco in case of a problem. Yes the original lightning arrestors were removed in most residential upgrades for these reasons.
I only wish it used a format that was closer to standard, and let you pull tracks to other media With the SDMI comliant^h^h^h^h^h lawsuit avoiding players out there, it ain't gonna happen. A copy of a copy is a no-no. Get used to this. The only way it will die is if nobody buys this. Unfortunately nobody will release anything else due to the attack lawyers awaiting a target. Ya gotta walk a very tightrope to put out a player that the public will buy and will keep you out of the court system. Current standards are not going to be supported anymore except by write and erease players. An player that will serial copy from one player to another is a device that will be soon under legal attack.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately I am not a software author. I haven't the slightest idea of where to begin. Before you call me dumb, I am a ISCET Certified Tech. I'm a hardware tech. I can but a Broadcast radio station back on the air that has been hit by lightning (ask for photos) so my field of expertise is not software coding. Would you know how to fix a 50 KW FM transmitter dammaged by lightning? I know how to use a Motorolla D2000. My debuging tools is not compilers and such, it's storage oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, time domain reflectometers, digital multimeters, directional wattmeters, etc. We are only experts in our own fields.
PLAY buton in the drop down menu (right click).
True, It is supposed to be there. Unfortunately some advertisers abused the control given them and I had too many ads that provided a right menu of one item;
"About Macromedia Flash"
That is why I mentioned advertiser abuse.
This abuse led to the removal of flash on my system. Those ads were worse than blinking banners. The normal way to stop blinky flashly distracting things won't stop those flash ads. The only way found was remove flash. Another post recommends upgrading IE to 6 to get the ability to change Active X from enabled to prompt. I'll have to look into that. Is there a Netscape equivelant? I don't usualy use IE at home.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) support
It means when you buy a WMA music file off the net, and download it to your player, you can't back it up on your friends computer. It is not a file format that can be copied and played on something else. That's how they manage the copywrite owners content. Stuff with DRM downloaded into the player will not upload back out. Even though they brag about using it to store and transfer files, that does not apply to DRM stuff.
Requires Macromedia Flash Player 6
on the little demo page. Too bad I removed FLASH due to it's abuse by web advertisers. I hope Macromedia will put out a player that can be set by default to not play flash. HINT HINT! I'm not going to install it to watch a demo and remove it for the rest of my browsing. Is a play button too much to ask?
What nobody's figured out is how to get this cost across to the execs in a dollars-and-cents way they understand.
Actualy the execs in legitimate companies do get it. They put up a website listing their products with the prices and shipping information. They know when people are shopping, they will search for them. The spammers are usualy slimeballs not to be trusted. With shoddy products that cost nothing or next to nothing to produce. (photocopied etc.) I figured out long time ago to NEVER buy anything from a TELEMARKETER, DIRECT MAIL ADVETISER, or SPAMMER. When I do need to buy items like toner (I do use it) or bulk ink jet ink (I refill my own) I search the web. I then check the reputation of the supplier (including brick and morter address, BBB, hate sites, Telephone support line, etc.). If everything checks out, I sample the product with a small order before using them as a regular supplier. I usualy place my first order by telephone instead of online. A real contact goes a long ways in sorting out sweatshop bulk e-mail centers. Using this technique I am happy to report I get good quality refill ink for $14/half pint for the color inks. I use it regularly to print photographs with no problems. That ink savings alone has saved me enough to buy a color laser printer. Guess where I'm getting toner! Spamming me with a great offer will not get me to change suppliers. If I become unhappy with my current suppliers, I'll repeat the search process. If or when I become unhappy with my sex equipment or performance, I'll search for a supplier with a reputation that can make a real diffrence. The search does not include my inbox.
In summary, If you have a product to sell, list it online so I can find it when I am ready to buy. Put the details online so I can check if the product meets my needs. I bought ink from someone that not only sold ink, but provided all the detailed howto information online. These people knew what worked and what didn't and were glad to share the information online for free.
If you want to buy something, research it first and search for competive products. You don't have to spend $30 for a refill kit good for 2 refills. For the same $30 you can do much better. The same is true for most products. Don't buy on price alone. I knew I found someone that was really in the business when I found out I could buy ink in sizes up to 55 gallon drums. This was not a small kit seller. Avoid the junk. There is plenty. What good is cheap insurance if your valid claim is always rejected and will require a court battle to collect? Check the ratings before you buy. Learn about the seller. If you can't find anythng about the company, that's A BAD SIGN! (big waving red flag)
I have addresses posted on websites for months now which receive NO spam
Either you are a newbie, or you do not use the services of one of the larger ISP's. The simple act of opening an account with Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. gets you spam with out the need to ever post the address in any form anywhere. Try it. Get a free account and don't use it for anything. Check the inbox once a week. I doubt your "NO spam" claim would be valid.
It is an optical diagnostic port. You just don't know it yet. If you don't know Morse code, never fear. Hook up a phototransistor to the DTR line on a RS232 port of a laptop or PC and run any readily avaliable Morse reader freeware/shareware. You now have a non-contact diagnostics scanner to display the code. You may want to enlist the aid of a hardware type to build the RS232 optical pickup. It is a minimal hardware and software solution to not knowing Morse code. This is fully compatible with all the existing hardware and does not require new hardware.
I just found you can do searches without a subscription. It tried it and the results were very poor. I tried searching 6 of my favorite artists. The results came up with anything containing the word entered. Only one came up with a match with songs by the artist. 2 came up with other artists that contained the word entered. For example "Electric Light" provided no matches. "ELO" provided matches that were part of another word. "Eagles" was entered for a well known band just to check out older popular stuff. I got 4 matches, but none of them were by the Eagles. It was matches by other bands that had the word Eagles in the title such as "Wilmer Watts And His Lonely Eagles" which I never heard of. emusic.com needs a library of all the new and oldies in order to sell the service. Regular searches comming up empty or not revelant will not keep subscribers active. You have to have the content to sell a library service.
Try http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-921792.html
for the article.
Try http://www.emusic.com/pitch.html
for the service.
Quote;
"We know that flexibility is one of the things you like most about downloading music. Unlike many other subscription offerings that restrict how you can use your music, we make it easy for you to transfer your music to portable devices, burn CDs and make multiple copies for your personal use. Once you download the MP3s, you own the music."
Unfortunately you can't see a catalog without a subscription. They do offer a free trial, but I'm leary as I tried an AOL subscription once and the cancellation process was next to impossible.
I don't wish to repeat the process to check out the service.
AOL giving free trials a bad name one consumer at a time.
Actually they can because they can gurantee the content. Have you experianced the looping files? Have you experianced the bad rips with clicks and pops? Have you had troll files (inapropiate material miss-labled (audio goat file)? Files miss-labeled to fly under RIAA radar? A well organized catalog of high quality files would be a big service that people will pay for. Would you have paid $10/month for a Napster that only had good rips, only at high bandwidth (no D/L from someone on dialup) from a Napster size searchable catalog, in MP3 format, and no monthly limits? How about if it were legal and there were no legal threats for using it? Sign me up! I'm on my way to buy some spindles!
(full disclosure time, I never signed up for Napster or other Peer-Peer network due to legal/moral issues. Make it legal with a subscription plan, and I'm interested!)
Is their all you can eat table that barren? I could see a problem if they only had 1000 titles spanning six catagories. (western, swing, big band, polka, etc.) Is emusic.com's selection really that small? I guess it could be if they don't have the license from all the major players so their selection contains almost nothing that gets regular airplay.
Can anybody subscribing to emusic comment on the music selection or lack thereof?
The cable analogy plays out. The signal on the pole is encrypted. The signal out of a decoder is not. You are free to connect your non-cable VCR to time shift the content. The guys in the interview know this will have to happen. Cable would not have sold if it had nothing but pay per view only viewable on cable equipment. Music to be sold on the internet will have to have the same level of ability to use on your rio, CD burner, Jukebox Device, etc.
From the article;
"
But right now they're offering more than you can offer. Let's forget about the size of the catalogues. You can put files downloaded off Kazaa or any of those companies on a MP3 player or record onto a CD. How far are you willing to go to offer legal music that can be transferred onto many different devices?
Those are all things we have to do. But like I said, it's an evolution. You have to be able to download files permanently, burn them to CDs, transfer them to devices, use them on several computers, or else transfer them to other devices that can store and play back music. All those things will have to be part of that process. And if I was just going to steal all the content I could do it tomorrow. "
This guy has a clue that may work. XM radio sells well. Cable TV sells well. You could hook XM radio to a sound card and make MP3's. You can hook a VCR to cable. It looks like the next generation of subscription music will have the same lack of a restriction (CD burning, MP3 player, MP3 Jukebox). As long is it isn't crippled by some pay per view encrypted service, it may have a chance of selling. What took them so long to get a clue? Now if the marketing department can get the sweet price point to sell it! Hint-- $100/month isn't it for the masses regardless of how it's marketed as for the price of 6 CD's.
Apple is big enough to ask Intel for a custom chip just like Microsoft did for the X-Box. (notice the custom socket on the chip?) If they do not infringe on any of Motorola's patents, it is possible for Intel to manufacture and non-X86 chip for apple that would contain all the power, speed, and effecient manufacturing for low cost parts with high performance. What would you do with a 2.5 Ghz Mac?
Um, what I'm getting from this thread is, what he wants doesn't exist. Advice I always give anybody asking my opinion on what to buy is; define what you need to do and buy the hardware/software to do it. For some people that means a Windows machine for games, others it means Linux for a robust web server, others it means a MAC for desktop publishing (don't flame, Windows DTP has come a long way). I never recommend a brand, hard drive size, memory size, platform, etc. As you noted there is lots of platform specific solutions being recommended. Weed those out and see if there is any workable Windows solutions. If not, he may need to find a platform that will run a suitable application for his needs. In this department there seems to be lots of endorsements of a reliable solution that works.
I overlooked the obvious typo and replied to keep on topic instead of getting offtopic. Trying to run more red ink than my 4th grade english teacher is not what I wanted to post. Ignoring a typo does not mean I missed it.
Yes burn your JPEG's. The idea is from when Unisys pulled the same license stunt on the GIF format. The revolt is well docummented. Here is a snip I found. .png suffix.
"PNG (Portable Network Graphics format)
In January 1995 Unisys, the company Compuserve contracted to create the GIF format, announced that they would be enforcing the patent on the LZW compression technique the GIF format uses. This means that commercial developers that include the GIF encoding or decoding algorithms have to pay a license fee to Compuserve. This does not concern users of GIFs or non-commercial developers.
However, a number of people banded together and created a completely patent-free graphics format called PNG (pronounced "ping"), the Portable Network Graphics format. PNG is superior to GIF in that it has better compression and supports millions of colours. PNG files end in a
PNG is supported in Netscape 4.03 and above. For more information, try the PNG home page.
"
Do a web search for "Burn your GIF's"
You will find lots of information. It does not refer to burning them onto a CD!
That is why GIF's are so poorly supported and rare nowdays. It looks like JPEG is the next obsoleted format since they did not learn from history they are condemmed to repeat it.
How long will it be before the camera manufactures release cameras using the .PNG format instead of the .JPEG format. How soon before a burn all JIF's page comes online like the burn all GIF's?
http://burnallgifs.org/
MS is getting you primed for no peer to peer. The only content that is yours is what you bought from them, or took yourself from your camera, recorded live from your band, etc. Notice there is no "Bob's music, Sarah's music, etc. MIB II will not go into the "My Movies". Expect it to be PPV streamed with no non-DRM recording of any kind. It will be fully DRM locked as "My Movie" only after it is paid for. There is no right of first sale on it. Once it's yours, your only choices will be watch it of delete it. Nothing else will be an option.
or perhaps they need the control for DRM?
I think you have a clue. They will control the player, the advertising, the delivery, and they can provide a demographic profile to advertisers. They are your new cable services media company.
Your non Dish Network hardware (receiver/decoder) doesn't work with the subscription Dish Network service. The hardware does very little without an active subscription. Each decoder/receiver has a unique ID that is used to prevent theft of service. The Dish Network receiver can't be used to use another providers programming. Peer to peer of programming provided by the service is prevented. There are no anon users getting a free ride (except for illicit piracy). No subscription, no programming! Do you expect anything less from MS?
I missed a number wen redoing this for 100 panels instead of 200 wihch might not fit on the South facing roof.
That should be 60 KWH per day.
That is a common thought. Hold that thought and do the math.
A solar panel only works in sunlight (doh!)and does not provide power 24 X 7. A 100 Watt panel sells for nearly $300. A roof of an largr house can hold about 100 panels facing the sun (don't forget to cut down the shade trees!)
Now you have spent $30,000 for 10 Kw of power averaging 6 hours a day. See an insolation map for your area. If you are thinking of solar on the roof of the car, think fitting 2 100 Watt panels that will be shaded part of the day by buildings, etc. Even figuring the 6 hour charge, that's only 200W X 6H for 1.2 KWH/day. How long will a full day's charge run a 15-30 KW motor? Might be good for the trip out to the mailbox. For your investment for 100 100W panels you get about 120 KWH per day. An average EV has a 30 KW motor. It will run for about 2 hours on an average day's charge at highway speeds.
Electricity is about $.18/ KWH. How long will it take your investment to break even. Do not add in the changing electrical rates and maitenence costs. I come up with $10.8 per day in electric power from the solar. At that rate I see a payback of the hardware investment of about 8 years not counting any maitnance, battery replacements, financing costs and insurance that may have to be paid. It does not count the need for a second battery just in case you want to drive in the daytime. (charge one / use one)
I just had to dig out the scope and check my claim to back up my 25 watts RMS is bigger than 40 watts Peak claim. Here is the facts. The amplifier is a Pioneer GM120 amplifier. I cranked it up into clipping with a load. I measured the output voltage Peak to Peak with a scope. (Tektronics TD 220 for those interested) The singel ended output clipped at 40 volts Peak to Peak. (clips at + and - 20 volts) That is for an amplifier rated 25 watts into a 4 ohm load at 0.04% THD. To provide this voltage, it uses an inverting switch mode power supply to provide the + and - voltage supplies. To match this in a bridge amplifier, (40 watt in-dash example) the supply in the unit would have to provide over 20 volts so each leg (+ and - speaker lead) swings 10 volts over and under their 10 volt DC rest voltage, or it would need a supply in the deck to supply high current to the output of + and - 10 volts for a bridgable or + and - 20 volts for a single ended output. They don't put that kind of power in-dash. It would fry itself due to lack of proper heatsinks. The Pioneer amplifier swings a full 40 volts peak to peak on it's output. The in-dash unit will drive one lead (-) to ground while the other (+) swings to the supply voltage providing a swing of 24 volts P-P of one speaker lead refrenced to the other (14 volt car power). There is no way the 40 watt in-dash unit can match the 25 watt Pioneer with only a 12-14 volt single ended power supply. Remember that doubling the power into into a load is only 3 db gain. Doubling the voltage increases the power 6 db. (doubling the voltage into a resistor also doubles the current). With that in mind the 25 watt Pioneer is well over twice the power of the 40 watt indash unit into a 4 ohm load. 40 V P-P from the Pioneer is quite a bit more power than the 24 Volt P-P the in-dash unit provides.
Take the average radio.. a good one claims to do 40 watts per channel, on a 12 volt powersupply and a 4 ohm load, the maximum possible output wattage is 36
The radio you describe is the same bridge output amplifier that a few years ago was rated at 12.5 watts per channel, or 25 watts for 2 channel or 50 watts for 4 channel. It's the same voltage into the same load. Nothing has changed but the numbers.
Because people tend to by things by comparing the fancy numbers on a spec sheet, lots creative writing has been done to seprate fools from their money.
#1 Rate peak power instead of RMS average watts.
Explaination; Music is not DC heating power. If you take the maximum DC voltage and figure the power based on load resistance, you can get a high number. In the example given, 40 watts was tossed out. It was pointed out that that number refuted with a supply of 12 volts. It wasn't figured at 12 volts. The charging system provides about 14 or more volts. Redo the math with this number.
An audio waveform is not a sine wave. The peak possible voltage is not provided to the speakers 100% of the time. In the '70's some good stuff was rated at RMS power at a specified distortion level. In the above case, 40 watts is only possible with the engine running and the speaker voltage never leaving peak values. In short a very distorted square wave output. Not pleasant music in my book. A 6 Watt RMS rated amplifer at 0.1 THD is a much more powerful amplifier. My favorite amplifier is rated 25 watts RMS per channel at 0.04% THD into a 4 ohm load. Some amplifiers are rated to provide their rated output only a very low speaker impedances. 2 and one ohm are common. Almost half the power rating for these as they can not provide the voltage needed to properly drive rated power into a 4 ohm speaker. Needless to say, that rating will misslead most newbies in the audio field. The don't understand why my 50 watt amplifier uses 8 AWG wire with a 20 amp fuse. They are also supprised when I connect a scope and show it provides more unclipped peak to peak voltage to the 4 ohm speaker than most amplifiers rated 200 watts. Yes the honestly rated 25 watt amplifer is a bigger and higher power amp. That rating is not a peak power rating. Learn to compare apples with apples. Is the spec peak or RMS? Is that rated into 4 ohm, 2 ohm, 1 ohm? Is that rating guaranteed at 11 volt supply, or does the amp need to be under the hood getting 14 volts direct with no power distribution system to provide voltage loss due to resistance and distance? If you have a 200 Watt RMS into 4 ohms rated amplifier, I'll be looking for serious hearing protection! The car audio market is "let the buyer beware". The specs on paper are deliberately missleading. Borrow a scope and a dummy load. Find out how much Peak to Peak voltage the amplifier will deliver before before clipping occures. Don't buy anything that will not put out at least 40 volts for a small amp and 80 volts for the super thumpers. Half these values for brige mode amps. I have seen stuff rated at 120 watts that are powered by an 8 amp fuse. 12 X 8 is only 96 DC watts in at the point the fuse will blow. (commenly spouted spec for cheap underdash EQ-boosters) Some power is lost to heat in the audio conversion from DC. How much is left for each speaker? How are they expecting to get 120 watts out with only 96 watts maximum in? That rating is not RMS average music power! There is some honest stuff out there. However bring your pocketbook. It isn't cheap!
Now onto the function of caps. Music has it's peaks and valleys. The resistance of the electrical distribution system is finite. It includes the wire, battery internal resistance and alternator internal resistance. Current draw over a finite resitance provides a voltage drop over the resistance. This is well defined in ohm's law. The current drawn by an amplifier is not constant. It varies. Simply the more the current draw over a fixed resistance the more the voltage drop. Because of this the voltage drop varies as the current drawn varies. The wiring can have it's resistance reduced by using bigger wire, battery resistance can be reduced by adding more batteries (and placing one close to the amp to shorten the wire from battery and amp).
To provide the maximum voltage to the amplifier at a music peak, the loss in DC voltage at the peak current draw can be acheived by providing the peak current from a local capicitor instead of through a long wire to the trunk. A big capacitor can provide the short duration high current the amplifier demands on a music peak, preventing the high current peak on the DC distribution system and it's associated peak voltage drop. A good scope will tell you in short order if the money is worth it. Watch the voltage drops on high power music at the amplifier with and without the cap. Saving a 1/2 volt peak drop may make a diffrence in a competition, but most people won't need it. Don't even consider adding a cap if your music peaks drop the supply voltage at the amplifier less than 1/4 volt. You don't need it.
The lightning arrester is now often built into the telco interface box. It was done that way to upgrade obsolete arresters and provide a single standard interface. It also removed an easy access point on the telco side of the interface. Take a look at your interface box. It has a double opening door. The Telco can lock their side of the interface while still allowing your side to open. You have a connection to a jack. That way in case of wireing problems, you can unplug your house from the interface and see if the telco is at fault by plugging in a telephone into the interface and seeing if it works. If it works, the telco is not at fault. We can't leave the old binding posts out for a homeowner to mess with to on the telco side now should we? It could make a needless service call for the telco in case of a problem. Yes the original lightning arrestors were removed in most residential upgrades for these reasons.
I only wish it used a format that was closer to standard, and let you pull tracks to other media
With the SDMI comliant^h^h^h^h^h lawsuit avoiding players out there, it ain't gonna happen. A copy of a copy is a no-no. Get used to this. The only way it will die is if nobody buys this. Unfortunately nobody will release anything else due to the attack lawyers awaiting a target. Ya gotta walk a very tightrope to put out a player that the public will buy and will keep you out of the court system.
Current standards are not going to be supported anymore except by write and erease players.
An player that will serial copy from one player to another is a device that will be soon under legal attack.