I found very little info on if these will break down in a solar wind, how long they will last on Mecury or if they are at risk of shattering in the cold temperature of Pluto. Is there any chance of damage in the sandstorms on Mars? From what they are made out of, I would think they may do somewhat OK in minor temperature extremes, but against highly abrasive wind blown dust, I would worry as I know how easy it is to scratch my cookware when I use metal utensils.
As proof of the state of affairs, on the lower right corner of the default Gnome desktop in the toolbar is a little bin with a clear recycle symbol on it. Hovering over it, it indicates it is the trash. So what the heck is it? If it is trash, Apple owns it. If it is a recycling bin, Microsoft owns it.
I am sure if they could, they would have jumped on that long ago, but can't because they would have problems with much of network authentication, encryption, tabbed browsing, photo editing, and many other aspects of the software. Too much of the GUI is common to Apple, IBM OS/2, Gnome, KDE, Adobe, etc to risk opening that can of worms. Instead they hint there may be issues with patent violations of 200 Microsoft patents. Prior art and other peoples patents would be devastating to their claims.
I think I know why Microsoft can't show their hand even it the 200 patent violations are 100% true.
Often in a patent litigation case, there is an immediate countersuit by the opposing IP property owner as often there is many shared technologies in a complex project. The more complex a project is, the more likely someone else's patents have been inadvertently used in the project. In this case, MS code would be laid bare like Linux was in the SCO case. MS can't have the source code on the table for inspection. They know they are in possession of much prior art and many other patents, much of which they have no cross IP deals for. Closed source hides much of this behind the scenes. Because Microsoft has to keep it this way, they can't risk the counter suit. The SCO was a front for the attack Microsoft is unable to do in the open.
Microsoft would not survive the countersuit without severe damage.
This article is simply calling them on their veiled threats to put up or shut up. You may have the patents, but since you are not going to do anything about them, shut up already.
The only time to watch out for Microsoft is when Linux overtakes Windows and Open Office overtakes Microsoft Office. In other words, when they have nothing left and need a Hail-Mary play like SCO.
I can sue then and claim damages for all the time that Linux was being used and was infringing.
Up to a point. If you know of the infringement and do nothing (they admitted knowing), after a while it becomes un-enforceable much like not protecting a trademark.
What's the deal? Does OIN need donations, so they decided to get themselves in the news?
I do not know. I have a major conflict about one aspect. It's like trying to create levitation by buttering the back of a cat and throwing it off the balcony. It can never land because cats always land feet first/buttered side down. With that in mind, the problem is SONY... Evil rootkit drm RIAA member/good supports open source anti-litigation.. I think my head is going to explode. I think I just figured it out.. SONY entered politics. That explains the two faces.
OS X and Ubuntu are gaining grounds. And Vista is a serious reason to consider those alternatives!
As the proud owner of a new Core 2 Duo box (homebuilt) the high price for Vista and the end of life for XP and DRM are the big reasons it is running Ubuntu. Ubuntu Rocks! Codecs not included and must be installed separately. (play on batteries not included)
I challenge Slashdot to boycott the US recording and movie industry... either that or stop whining...
I've been in that mode since I first heard about the settlement support center and the settle or sue with no options except being dead accepted.
Can I go on whining now? In the meantime I only buy from non-RIAA sources. http://www.riaaradar.com/
I haven't yet deleted all the RIAA music from my hard drive, but with the liability issue presented for having it there, I'll wipe it and start with only non-RIAA titles.
She will still end up paying $50k in legal fees, even if she wins an appeal. Just another reason to never do business with any RIAA entity ever again. It's time to take a vacation, blow the assets, and realize from now on it's going to be hand to mouth. Then she needs a friend to move in with so she can live with no income. A typical single mom can't afford a 200K home. There is no way for her to pay this and provide for a family. I hope the media has a heyday with this one. Fly irritates RIAA. They nuked a family in response.
Thanks. It comes from years of experience in the field.
Though as far as powered speakers go, I love the Mackie SRM 450 powered speakers connected to a Rane, Urei, Vestax or Allen & Heath dj mixer w/ balanced outputs. I think they sound wonderful and is a nice portable dj solution.
Excellent choice. It's durable, idiot proof (Mostly) reliable and immune to most power problems. They designed their equipment to be immune to most causes of system noise and disruption. It works well near RF sources and other sources of electrical noise. A word of caution. Never let the connectors get corroded from dampness. Your noises will start to appear.
In regards to the book, I have heard of it, but never bought it. It came out shortly before I changed careers. I worked audio from 1978-1992. It was published January 1988 after I was the old pro in the shop. It's a little technical, but the Electronic Engineers Handbook is a great reference My training was general electronics as a jack of all trades and focused on consumer electronics including VCR's, and camcorders when they first came out and pro audio. In these years I earned my journeyman ISCET certificate.
http://www.iscet.org/ I found out later I scored in the top 2% but that's probably because I took the exam later in my career and was helping an apprentice prepare for his exam. I sat the exam with him but I took the journeyman portion also.
Later I moved into 2 way radio working a Motorola shop (RF theory) and broadcast (TV and Radio). I finally got a job in R & D at about double the income, so I left that field.
Consumer electronics was a dying field overloaded with cheap unrepairable junk. You can earn a living fixing a $800 VCR that needs a $60 head replacement and 2 hours of labor, but people just don't do that for $60 VCR's where you can't even afford to stock replacement parts. The number of parts required to have on hand for an efficient shop to cover the many brands has exploded beyond reasonable, so most stuff is send it in or throw it away instead of take it to the local shop. My old job went the way of the buggy whips. They still exist, but volume is way way down. If I get back into the field, I may get into DMX lighting systems instead of audio, or do both. It is unlikely I'll leave R & D.
Seriously, the moon is sterile. It is covered in dangerous, sticky, abrasive, lung-destroying dust. It appears to have no valuable resources,
The same thing was said about earth orbit except about the dust. Go back to your Satelite TV, XM Radio, and enjoy the GPS to get to the store with a really good price on a high def TV. There is more to a trip to the moon other than mining.
If you don't want to be forced to see this message every time you watch the movie you purchased, then copy this film and edit this out.
Or go to bittorrent - somebody has probably done this for you already. Otherwise, please wait for 30 seconds while we remind you (once again) not to copy this film.
I use mplayer on Linux. I use acidrip. One thing I found when not using a DVD player blessed by the DVD consortium, it the player just plays the movie. If I want to see the warning again, or go to the menu for the don't steal this video or other extras of the movie, I can always use the menu.
Or go to bittorrent Use at your own risk. It's like the heyday of Napster. It's big enough to no longer be ignored. It's drawing too much attention.
Blu-Ray isn't supported yet because it's unstable, expensive and unreliable.
No more than 640K should be enough for anybody. Firmware updates, a limit on installed memory, a limit on processor speed, and the ever increasing need for firmware to keep ahead of the pirates.. I see a dead end at the end of the upgrade path. The examples of never obsolete hardware pave the path to the junkyard.
Shielding a 2m audio interconnect cable will provide no benefit, and might cause much harm.
Set your cell phone behind your stereo and tell me that again. RF is a problem if it is enough to be detected in a non-linear circuit such as an amplifier stage.
Lay an unshielded interconnect cable next to the amplifier power cable and tell me that again.. Inductive coupling is an issue not to be ignored. The lack of the ability to pick up a 60 HZ radio signal is no reason to disregard capacitive pick-up from the power cord or inductive pickup from any power wire carrying current, such as the wire powering the baseboard heater.
If you manage to form a ground loop, you can create a ground loop big enough to actually recieve interference!
This is absolutely true! Ground loops is a common problem in the improper installation of sound gear. Proper layout of power, ground, and signal wiring is the job of a good studio audio engineer. Proper use of balanced cable, equipment selection to use balanced inputs to reject common mode noise, and other aspects are all part of the design of a quality sound system installation.
Here is a good paper regarding with dealing with the subject. It's a little lengthly, but that's the diffrence between understanding the concepts and buying a $7000 cable that won't fix the problem. http://www.epanorama.net/documents/groundloop/index.html
Anyone who has done extensive audio work has had to deal with this.
from the article..
Usually ground loops are an after-the-fact type of problem in which the end-user blames the installer, the installer blames the manufacturer, and actually nobody is at fault. Neither the manufacturer nor the installer can usually predict where a loop will occur. Only after the system is installed can it be determined if a problem will exist.
Ground loop problems can be corrected and avoided. It is important for the dealer, isntallee and the end user to be aware that this problem can occur. It is a good idea to design the system to avoid most obvious source of this kind of problems, and then be prepared still to face some problems when starting to use the system. A ground loop problem may occur at several points in the system, and each occurrence of the problem must be corrected individually.
In my work in the audio field, this was one of the top 3 issues I had to deal with and the most time consuming.
If you use powered amplifiers, then you're running the signal through wire to the amp. Any noise the wire picks up gets amplified.
Some pro arena installations with exceedingly long runs such as a sports stadium in a location with lots of electrical noise (stage lighting, Mercury, lots of cellphones, and radio and TV remote broadcast) take the additional steps of using higher voltage so the noise pick-up component is a smaller portion of the overall signal in the wire.
Typical home stereo stuff uses about a quarter volt for interconnects. TV and Radio station studios use a higher level, which is often a balanced shielded connection to prevent ground loops and reject common mode noise pick-up.
True. Instead of using unshielded speaker wire, the best thing to use is shielded twisted pair. Most home stereo stuff does not accept balanced inputs, so the next best thing is 100% shielded coax. The selection of dielectric is important. Look up cable rustle. Dielectric with an embeded charge can be microphonic and pick up mechanical noises of things bumping the cable. This is a problem mostly with amplifiers with high input impedance. (>20K Ohm) The current generated is often too low to be significant in low impedance circuits. (Doesn't the latter situation seem innately better, from a noise-fighting standpoint? Yes. Long signal wire is a noise pick-up if unshielded.
When I lay out power-correction circuitry, I put all my effort into minimizing the loop area in front of the amplifiers, the high-impedance region, and downstream of the amp Good plan
Or are you saying that the wire type does actually matter a lot, that shielded wire to powered amps is a much better solution than unshielded wire for either unpowered or powered speakers?
What I am saying is when laying out a system, you have to deal with real resistance of a speaker wire. Part of the distortion in an amplifier speaker setup is the ability for the amplifier to control the movement of the speaker cone. The figure often thrown out is call Damping Factor. For an example of this, take a speaker not connected to anything and drum the cone lightly with your fingers. Now repeat the test with a short length of wire shorting the speaker terminals. Notice anything different? Now repeat the test a third time with cheap 24 gauge speaker wire connected. 25 feet should do nicely, and short the far end of the wire. The resistance of the cheap wire reduced the ability of the amplifier to damp the unwanted speaker cone resonances.
Not only is there resistance in wire, there is capacitance and resistance. All these are factors in how power is delivered to the speakers and unwanted reflected power is returned back to the amplifier.
For the answer to your question.. It's a trade-off. Knowing how much noise you gain and how much reduction in fidelity loss should be what affect your decision. Trade noise pick-up for speaker damping and frequency response. Noise pick-up can be managed. Eliminating speaker cable resistance, inductance, and capacitance is as easy as removing gravity which is why there is $7000 speaker cable for the fools to buy. All the expensive speaker cable attempt to eliminate the problems created by using speaker cable. The proper solution is to eliminate the speaker cable or keep them as short as physically possible. Resistance, inductance and capacitance all add up over the length of the cable. Cut the cable length in half, the problem is also cut in half. It is easy to figure as well as measure the improvement going from a 20 foot cable to a 6 inch cable. Measuring the change in a 20 foot 12 AWG zip cord and a 20 foot 12 AWG monster oxygen free cable is much harder.
All you need is an appropriate length of oxygen free copper cable/wire with sufficient shielding and appropriate gauge. All but the lowest of low end OEM cables meet these needs. Beyond this, there is zero difference in cables other than packaging and branding. Any perceived difference is in the listeners head.
Close but a few facts are left out. Lets touch base on speaker cable and what it needs to do. It needs to move electric power from one place to another. Along the way it needs to keep most of the power (all cable has resistance and loss even superconductors which have a bit less). In moving power is should deliver all frequencies the same.
Now back to your statement... oxygen free copper cable/wire Hmm, the first step seems to trend to snake oil. I'll grant you that oxygen free has lower resistance than plain copper, but how much? Is it worth the money? Would the money be better spent on maybe a larger wire size? You will find the lack of copper wire resistance tables for copper wire and oxygen free copper wire almost completely absent. The reason is because the change is almost not measurable. If it essentially makes no change, why spend the money.
Copper wire facts are easy to find and are well docummented.
"Oddly enough, it isn't the freedom of oxygen in copper wire that makes any difference. The process of removing oxygen also removes the impurity of iron and it's this impurity that can cause the resistance to be slightly higher."
Could someone please define and give a measurement to me for Slightly higher? As in is the change enough to spend money on? Until someone publishes a table, I would assume slightly higher is slightly less than the measuring test equipment. A larger wire size is a measurable change. Oxygen free as far as I am concerned is below the threshold of measurement.
Beyond this, there is zero difference in cables other than packaging and branding.
OK here I disagree with you again. The number of strands and twist in the wire affect the ability of a wire to withstand repeated flexing. When I worked doing some TV studio stuff, I had to show some of the features of some of the cable to the staff. The low loss and low price was a draw to the PHB who thought he was a studio engineer. I showed him the flaw in his reasoning when I held up a 3 foot piece of coax and pushed out a ceiling tile. Then I held up a 1 foot length of super flex which had much poorer response and the 1 foot length flopped over like a piece of braided nylon rope. The signal loss for the studio was a trade off for cable that stood up well following the cameras without breaking. A cable that lays flat instead
Note however that lamp cord is not shielded therefore it actually can be worse sounding than a shielded cable.
For speaker cable, that is not the problem. The signal induced into an unshielded speaker wire is in the micro or picowatt range in the audible frequency range. It is not enough amplitude to be heard over the background noise present in a room with a breathing person in it, or more often it is much less than the thermal noise(hiss) of the amplifier. At inaudible frequencies such as RF, the wire makes a fine radio antenna. Add in a little non-linear detection in the output stages of a cheap stereo and you can plainly hear "Breaker 19" as the guy goes by outside.
For the rest of us, the problem is not related to unshielded verses shielded. It has to do with dielectric loss. The cable was designed for 60 HZ power, not high frequencies. Some cable had quite a bit of loss at higher frequencies (I swept a lot of RF cable and power cord). Most people wouldn't notice as the cable length was too short to have much effect (small room, speakers only 6 feet or less from the receiver) and the cheap speakers provided much more response flaws to the fidelity by several orders of magnitude. Did you know the loss was great enough in the clear lamp cord that it could be used as a very inefficient EL wire? A high voltage high frequency signal made these babies glow violet. (Discovered from my Tesla coil days)
These very real high frequency losses is why the wire dielectric is such a big deal in the manufacture of cable for high frequency use. The twist and dielectric is the big differences in Cat 3 Cat 5 and Cat5e cable. The copper in all three is the same gauge and quality.
When an engineer designs cable and knows what he is doing, they design the audio cable just like they would an RF cable. Low loss, and match the load impedance. At one time we needed to run a long signal wire over 500 feet. We used RF coax. We terminated it and added a small inductance to compensate for the end equipment's input capacitance of 47 pF. Then we sweep tested it. (audiophiles rarely do this with test equipment). We managed to get flat response to 500 Kilocycles with only a half db loss at the high end. Loss and distortion in 20HZ to 20KHZ wasn't measurable unlike it was in our unterminated cable.
This is why network cable has a design impedance and it is required to terminate the cable with it's impedance. T connections is not permitted. (Unlike stereo where a Y cable is often used either external to the equipment or internally. Coax network cable required external terminations (Network old timers will remember the 50 ohm terminations) while utp cable forbids T connectors and the end equipment provides the termination.
More HF engineering goes into most network cable than goes into most audiophile cable. Audiophile speaker cable is almost never engineered to match the load impedance. Due to the complex impedance of a speaker, the best cable is either none or as short as possible. This is the reason for powered speakers and sub woofers. The signal wire can then be a better match to the load impedance of the speaker amplifier. Now if they would just stop using cheap amplifiers and speakers for powered speakers..
Other than just having all the heat in one spot in the dash, this is the reason premium car stereos have amplified speakers. No speaker wire while driving a complex impedance. You can't make a speaker wire to match the impedance of a speaker. An amplified speaker or amplifier at the speaker with very short wires is a better solution than any $7000 long speaker cable. Anyone who does RF engineering understands this.
He found the BSA audit, business downtime, and the contract under duress far exceeded any value in the software and went with a software source with much user friendly terms. I don't blame him. Read the article. They hit him pretty hard and then tried to squeeze him out of business. They lost him in the process.
The damage to Microsoft and the BSA is long lasting and well deserved.
Today marks the first time a university has made full course lecture available via the popular video sharing site.
Maybe they call today new simply because they transfered the videos from Google Video to You Tube, another popular sharing site. I have already watched the entire Physics for Future Presidents series about 6 months ago.
Yeah, well, obviously you never tried to do a mail merge or embed an image in a spreadsheet.
I've never wanted to embed an image in a spreadsheet. That's what Power Point is for. I don't need photos to keep track of my stocks, loan, or gas mileage. I use email to keep in touch with family and friends. I don't run a mass mailing. My wife is more into the upscale power user stuff. That is why she is the one with MS Office. For the rest of the family, Open Office or an older version of MS Office is fine. If we have a super need for one of the features in the newer version of MS Office, we do have a machine that will take care of that. It is inconvenient that MS Office is permitted on only one machine (Sometimes 2 for desktop and laptop), so for the most of the rest of the stuff we do, Open Office is good enough. It was Microsoft's business plan to do either Enterprise Licensing or Single Seat licensing. This left a big hole for SOHO site licenses which the GNU LGPL software takes care of very nicely.
I share my Internet, printers, file server, fax, and now my OS and Office Suite with the entire home office.
Often it is much more quiet as the gears start rolling. For me personally, this stuff is a major factor in why I avoid Microsoft EULA licenses and discovered the wonderful world of open standards and open source.
It started with WGA and product activation. I have way too many computers to keep up to date at retail prices. Due to the MS way of doing things, my family has 3 versions of MS Office. My old PIII has a copy of Office 97. It still has the OEM Windows 98 on it. (Don't fret, it's dual boot and only boots Windows for the GPS software which is Windows only) The Wife's XP machine has my copy of Office 2000 which was free from work. Her new laptop for her masters degree came with Vista. Through my employer's homeware agreement with Microsoft we picked up a copy of Office 2007 for a nominal fee of about $20. It is valid only while I am employed with the company. The compatibility issues between versions is a pain in the backside, but providing the same version on all machines is way too expensive.
On the other side, all my machines have Open Office. The license is such that I am permitted to install it on every machine in my home (and give away copies to friends). Do you see a trend here? Incompatibile versions and single install licenses or a a site wide license so all machines can have the same version for the home.
As the Open Document Format becomes standardized it should be obvious to anyone why Open Office and other ODF compatible office software is going to erode Microsoft's market. Tightening the screws is only going to accelerate the adoption of alternatives.
If you have more then 2 computers (laptop and desktop) because you have a family, keeping them all in sync with per seat software is expensive. You either have to decide to spend a lot, or figure out which machine gets the office software. With the competition, everyone can have a legal copy on their desktop and laptop.
After introduction to Sum Microsystems Star Office (home site license for all machines) and then Linux and Open Office, The Microsoft License doesn't look very good for a family SOHO. I can deal with slightly less mature software instead of the big dent in the bottom line.
When I truly need the Microsoft product due to some requirement, I can borrow the wife's laptop. For everything else, Open Office is what I am using. It is on both my laptops, my kids machine, my daughters laptop, my main machine, and my old PIII Dual boot machine. This is the migration that MS can't stop.
So, are they just guessing FLV may sometime become a virus vector? Has someone done a proof of concept?
TFA makes it sound like the Georgia Tech Information Security Center is making it up as they go along.
The FA was short on details, but from what I've seen in online video, there are 2 probable ways this is done. Most flash video sites require scripting to be on.. Duh there is a vector right there. Other sites insist you download their viewer (Untrusted software anyone?). With an untrusted viewer and scripting on, a video could easily launch this attack.
Slashdot Mirror
I found very little info on if these will break down in a solar wind, how long they will last on Mecury or if they are at risk of shattering in the cold temperature of Pluto. Is there any chance of damage in the sandstorms on Mars? From what they are made out of, I would think they may do somewhat OK in minor temperature extremes, but against highly abrasive wind blown dust, I would worry as I know how easy it is to scratch my cookware when I use metal utensils.
As proof of the state of affairs, on the lower right corner of the default Gnome desktop in the toolbar is a little bin with a clear recycle symbol on it. Hovering over it, it indicates it is the trash. So what the heck is it? If it is trash, Apple owns it. If it is a recycling bin, Microsoft owns it.
I am sure if they could, they would have jumped on that long ago, but can't because they would have problems with much of network authentication, encryption, tabbed browsing, photo editing, and many other aspects of the software. Too much of the GUI is common to Apple, IBM OS/2, Gnome, KDE, Adobe, etc to risk opening that can of worms. Instead they hint there may be issues with patent violations of 200 Microsoft patents. Prior art and other peoples patents would be devastating to their claims.
I think I know why Microsoft can't show their hand even it the 200 patent violations are 100% true.
Often in a patent litigation case, there is an immediate countersuit by the opposing IP property owner as often there is many shared technologies in a complex project. The more complex a project is, the more likely someone else's patents have been inadvertently used in the project. In this case, MS code would be laid bare like Linux was in the SCO case. MS can't have the source code on the table for inspection. They know they are in possession of much prior art and many other patents, much of which they have no cross IP deals for. Closed source hides much of this behind the scenes. Because Microsoft has to keep it this way, they can't risk the counter suit. The SCO was a front for the attack Microsoft is unable to do in the open.
Microsoft would not survive the countersuit without severe damage.
This article is simply calling them on their veiled threats to put up or shut up. You may have the patents, but since you are not going to do anything about them, shut up already.
The only time to watch out for Microsoft is when Linux overtakes Windows and Open Office overtakes Microsoft Office. In other words, when they have nothing left and need a Hail-Mary play like SCO.
Remember the big deal with a trash can in Windows? MS knows it is not ready to scrap Windows and start from scratch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_v._Microsoft
Even tabbed browsing in IE7 is at risk if they move on this.
I can sue then and claim damages for all the time that Linux was being used and was infringing.
Up to a point. If you know of the infringement and do nothing (they admitted knowing), after a while it becomes un-enforceable much like not protecting a trademark.
What's the deal? Does OIN need donations, so they decided to get themselves in the news?
I do not know. I have a major conflict about one aspect. It's like trying to create levitation by buttering the back of a cat and throwing it off the balcony. It can never land because cats always land feet first/buttered side down. With that in mind, the problem is SONY... Evil rootkit drm RIAA member/good supports open source anti-litigation.. I think my head is going to explode. I think I just figured it out.. SONY entered politics. That explains the two faces.
OS X and Ubuntu are gaining grounds. And Vista is a serious reason to consider those alternatives!
As the proud owner of a new Core 2 Duo box (homebuilt) the high price for Vista and the end of life for XP and DRM are the big reasons it is running Ubuntu. Ubuntu Rocks! Codecs not included and must be installed separately. (play on batteries not included)
I challenge Slashdot to boycott the US recording and movie industry... either that or stop whining...
I've been in that mode since I first heard about the settlement support center and the settle or sue with no options except being dead accepted.
Can I go on whining now? In the meantime I only buy from non-RIAA sources.
http://www.riaaradar.com/
I haven't yet deleted all the RIAA music from my hard drive, but with the liability issue presented for having it there, I'll wipe it and start with only non-RIAA titles.
She will still end up paying $50k in legal fees, even if she wins an appeal. Just another reason to never do business with any RIAA entity ever again.
It's time to take a vacation, blow the assets, and realize from now on it's going to be hand to mouth. Then she needs a friend to move in with so she can live with no income. A typical single mom can't afford a 200K home. There is no way for her to pay this and provide for a family. I hope the media has a heyday with this one. Fly irritates RIAA. They nuked a family in response.
I believe you are 100% correct and informative.
Thanks. It comes from years of experience in the field.
Though as far as powered speakers go, I love the Mackie SRM 450 powered speakers connected to a Rane, Urei, Vestax or Allen & Heath dj mixer w/ balanced outputs. I think they sound wonderful and is a nice portable dj solution.
Excellent choice. It's durable, idiot proof (Mostly) reliable and immune to most power problems. They designed their equipment to be immune to most causes of system noise and disruption. It works well near RF sources and other sources of electrical noise. A word of caution. Never let the connectors get corroded from dampness. Your noises will start to appear.
In regards to the book, I have heard of it, but never bought it. It came out shortly before I changed careers. I worked audio from 1978-1992. It was published January 1988 after I was the old pro in the shop. It's a little technical, but the Electronic Engineers Handbook is a great reference My training was general electronics as a jack of all trades and focused on consumer electronics including VCR's, and camcorders when they first came out and pro audio. In these years I earned my journeyman ISCET certificate.
http://www.iscet.org/ I found out later I scored in the top 2% but that's probably because I took the exam later in my career and was helping an apprentice prepare for his exam. I sat the exam with him but I took the journeyman portion also.
Later I moved into 2 way radio working a Motorola shop (RF theory) and broadcast (TV and Radio). I finally got a job in R & D at about double the income, so I left that field.
Consumer electronics was a dying field overloaded with cheap unrepairable junk. You can earn a living fixing a $800 VCR that needs a $60 head replacement and 2 hours of labor, but people just don't do that for $60 VCR's where you can't even afford to stock replacement parts. The number of parts required to have on hand for an efficient shop to cover the many brands has exploded beyond reasonable, so most stuff is send it in or throw it away instead of take it to the local shop. My old job went the way of the buggy whips. They still exist, but volume is way way down.
If I get back into the field, I may get into DMX lighting systems instead of audio, or do both. It is unlikely I'll leave R & D.
Seriously, the moon is sterile. It is covered in dangerous, sticky, abrasive, lung-destroying dust. It appears to have no valuable resources,
The same thing was said about earth orbit except about the dust. Go back to your Satelite TV, XM Radio, and enjoy the GPS to get to the store with a really good price on a high def TV. There is more to a trip to the moon other than mining.
If you don't want to be forced to see this message every time you watch the movie you purchased, then copy this film and edit this out.
Or go to bittorrent - somebody has probably done this for you already. Otherwise, please wait for 30 seconds while we remind you (once again) not to copy this film.
I use mplayer on Linux. I use acidrip. One thing I found when not using a DVD player blessed by the DVD consortium, it the player just plays the movie. If I want to see the warning again, or go to the menu for the don't steal this video or other extras of the movie, I can always use the menu.
Or go to bittorrent
Use at your own risk. It's like the heyday of Napster. It's big enough to no longer be ignored. It's drawing too much attention.
Blu-Ray isn't supported yet because it's unstable, expensive and unreliable.
Many players are upgradeable.
No more than 640K should be enough for anybody. Firmware updates, a limit on installed memory, a limit on processor speed, and the ever increasing need for firmware to keep ahead of the pirates.. I see a dead end at the end of the upgrade path. The examples of never obsolete hardware pave the path to the junkyard.
Shielding a 2m audio interconnect cable will provide no benefit, and might cause much harm.
Set your cell phone behind your stereo and tell me that again. RF is a problem if it is enough to be detected in a non-linear circuit such as an amplifier stage.
Lay an unshielded interconnect cable next to the amplifier power cable and tell me that again..
Inductive coupling is an issue not to be ignored. The lack of the ability to pick up a 60 HZ radio signal is no reason to disregard capacitive pick-up from the power cord or inductive pickup from any power wire carrying current, such as the wire powering the baseboard heater.
If you manage to form a ground loop, you can create a ground loop big enough to actually recieve interference!
This is absolutely true! Ground loops is a common problem in the improper installation of sound gear. Proper layout of power, ground, and signal wiring is the job of a good studio audio engineer. Proper use of balanced cable, equipment selection to use balanced inputs to reject common mode noise, and other aspects are all part of the design of a quality sound system installation.
Here is a link to some information on common grounding errors. Of note is item 8.
http://www.ese.upenn.edu/rca/instruments/misctutorials/Ground/grd.html
Here is a good paper regarding with dealing with the subject. It's a little lengthly, but that's the diffrence between understanding the concepts and buying a $7000 cable that won't fix the problem.
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/groundloop/index.html
Anyone who has done extensive audio work has had to deal with this.
from the article..
Usually ground loops are an after-the-fact type of problem in which the end-user blames the installer, the installer blames the manufacturer, and actually nobody is at fault. Neither the manufacturer nor the installer can usually predict where a loop will occur. Only after the system is installed can it be determined if a problem will exist.
Ground loop problems can be corrected and avoided. It is important for the dealer, isntallee and the end user to be aware that this problem can occur. It is a good idea to design the system to avoid most obvious source of this kind of problems, and then be prepared still to face some problems when starting to use the system. A ground loop problem may occur at several points in the system, and each occurrence of the problem must be corrected individually.
In my work in the audio field, this was one of the top 3 issues I had to deal with and the most time consuming.
If you use powered amplifiers, then you're running the signal through wire to the amp. Any noise the wire picks up gets amplified.
Some pro arena installations with exceedingly long runs such as a sports stadium in a location with lots of electrical noise (stage lighting, Mercury, lots of cellphones, and radio and TV remote broadcast) take the additional steps of using higher voltage so the noise pick-up component is a smaller portion of the overall signal in the wire.
Typical home stereo stuff uses about a quarter volt for interconnects. TV and Radio station studios use a higher level, which is often a balanced shielded connection to prevent ground loops and reject common mode noise pick-up.
http://www.murata.com/emc/knowhow/pdfs/te04ea-1/26to28e.pdf
Some pro sound installations go as high as 10 volts of signal from the console simply overpower the much lower noise pick-up on the wire.
Ok lets take a couple things one at a time.
Any noise the wire picks up gets amplified.
True. Instead of using unshielded speaker wire, the best thing to use is shielded twisted pair. Most home stereo stuff does not accept balanced inputs, so the next best thing is 100% shielded coax. The selection of dielectric is important. Look up cable rustle. Dielectric with an embeded charge can be microphonic and pick up mechanical noises of things bumping the cable. This is a problem mostly with amplifiers with high input impedance. (>20K Ohm) The current generated is often too low to be significant in low impedance circuits. (Doesn't the latter situation seem innately better, from a noise-fighting standpoint?
Yes. Long signal wire is a noise pick-up if unshielded.
When I lay out power-correction circuitry, I put all my effort into minimizing the loop area in front of the amplifiers, the high-impedance region, and downstream of the amp
Good plan
Or are you saying that the wire type does actually matter a lot, that shielded wire to powered amps is a much better solution than unshielded wire for either unpowered or powered speakers?
What I am saying is when laying out a system, you have to deal with real resistance of a speaker wire. Part of the distortion in an amplifier speaker setup is the ability for the amplifier to control the movement of the speaker cone. The figure often thrown out is call Damping Factor. For an example of this, take a speaker not connected to anything and drum the cone lightly with your fingers. Now repeat the test with a short length of wire shorting the speaker terminals. Notice anything different? Now repeat the test a third time with cheap 24 gauge speaker wire connected. 25 feet should do nicely, and short the far end of the wire. The resistance of the cheap wire reduced the ability of the amplifier to damp the unwanted speaker cone resonances.
Not only is there resistance in wire, there is capacitance and resistance. All these are factors in how power is delivered to the speakers and unwanted reflected power is returned back to the amplifier.
For the answer to your question.. It's a trade-off. Knowing how much noise you gain and how much reduction in fidelity loss should be what affect your decision. Trade noise pick-up for speaker damping and frequency response. Noise pick-up can be managed. Eliminating speaker cable resistance, inductance, and capacitance is as easy as removing gravity which is why there is $7000 speaker cable for the fools to buy. All the expensive speaker cable attempt to eliminate the problems created by using speaker cable. The proper solution is to eliminate the speaker cable or keep them as short as physically possible. Resistance, inductance and capacitance all add up over the length of the cable. Cut the cable length in half, the problem is also cut in half. It is easy to figure as well as measure the improvement going from a 20 foot cable to a 6 inch cable. Measuring the change in a 20 foot 12 AWG zip cord and a 20 foot 12 AWG monster oxygen free cable is much harder.
All you need is an appropriate length of oxygen free copper cable/wire with sufficient shielding and appropriate gauge. All but the lowest of low end OEM cables meet these needs. Beyond this, there is zero difference in cables other than packaging and branding. Any perceived difference is in the listeners head.
Close but a few facts are left out. Lets touch base on speaker cable and what it needs to do. It needs to move electric power from one place to another. Along the way it needs to keep most of the power (all cable has resistance and loss even superconductors which have a bit less). In moving power is should deliver all frequencies the same.
Now back to your statement... oxygen free copper cable/wire Hmm, the first step seems to trend to snake oil. I'll grant you that oxygen free has lower resistance than plain copper, but how much? Is it worth the money? Would the money be better spent on maybe a larger wire size? You will find the lack of copper wire resistance tables for copper wire and oxygen free copper wire almost completely absent. The reason is because the change is almost not measurable. If it essentially makes no change, why spend the money.
Copper wire facts are easy to find and are well docummented.
http://www.otherpower.com/cgi-bin/webbbs/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=6346
http://www.stealth316.com/2-wire-resistance.htm
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/wiring/wire_resistance.html
http://amasci.com/tesla/wire1.txt
http://www.thelenchannel.com/1wire.php
On the other hand the data on oxygen free seems to be tied up in perceptions and not solid facts. Where are the tables?
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20060198757.html
http://mobile-emotions.com/speakerwire_faq.html?1062644160781
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire.htm
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5443665-description.html
http://www.cda.org.uk/megab2/elecapps/pub122/sec72.htm
"Oddly enough, it isn't the freedom of oxygen in copper wire that makes any difference. The process of removing oxygen also removes the impurity of iron and it's this impurity that can cause the resistance to be slightly higher."
Could someone please define and give a measurement to me for Slightly higher? As in is the change enough to spend money on? Until someone publishes a table, I would assume slightly higher is slightly less than the measuring test equipment. A larger wire size is a measurable change. Oxygen free as far as I am concerned is below the threshold of measurement.
Beyond this, there is zero difference in cables other than packaging and branding.
OK here I disagree with you again. The number of strands and twist in the wire affect the ability of a wire to withstand repeated flexing. When I worked doing some TV studio stuff, I had to show some of the features of some of the cable to the staff. The low loss and low price was a draw to the PHB who thought he was a studio engineer. I showed him the flaw in his reasoning when I held up a 3 foot piece of coax and pushed out a ceiling tile. Then I held up a 1 foot length of super flex which had much poorer response and the 1 foot length flopped over like a piece of braided nylon rope. The signal loss for the studio was a trade off for cable that stood up well following the cameras without breaking. A cable that lays flat instead
Note however that lamp cord is not shielded therefore it actually can be worse sounding than a shielded cable.
For speaker cable, that is not the problem. The signal induced into an unshielded speaker wire is in the micro or picowatt range in the audible frequency range. It is not enough amplitude to be heard over the background noise present in a room with a breathing person in it, or more often it is much less than the thermal noise(hiss) of the amplifier. At inaudible frequencies such as RF, the wire makes a fine radio antenna. Add in a little non-linear detection in the output stages of a cheap stereo and you can plainly hear "Breaker 19" as the guy goes by outside.
For the rest of us, the problem is not related to unshielded verses shielded. It has to do with dielectric loss. The cable was designed for 60 HZ power, not high frequencies. Some cable had quite a bit of loss at higher frequencies (I swept a lot of RF cable and power cord). Most people wouldn't notice as the cable length was too short to have much effect (small room, speakers only 6 feet or less from the receiver) and the cheap speakers provided much more response flaws to the fidelity by several orders of magnitude. Did you know the loss was great enough in the clear lamp cord that it could be used as a very inefficient EL wire? A high voltage high frequency signal made these babies glow violet. (Discovered from my Tesla coil days)
These very real high frequency losses is why the wire dielectric is such a big deal in the manufacture of cable for high frequency use. The twist and dielectric is the big differences in Cat 3 Cat 5 and Cat5e cable. The copper in all three is the same gauge and quality.
When an engineer designs cable and knows what he is doing, they design the audio cable just like they would an RF cable. Low loss, and match the load impedance. At one time we needed to run a long signal wire over 500 feet. We used RF coax. We terminated it and added a small inductance to compensate for the end equipment's input capacitance of 47 pF. Then we sweep tested it. (audiophiles rarely do this with test equipment). We managed to get flat response to 500 Kilocycles with only a half db loss at the high end. Loss and distortion in 20HZ to 20KHZ wasn't measurable unlike it was in our unterminated cable.
This is why network cable has a design impedance and it is required to terminate the cable with it's impedance. T connections is not permitted. (Unlike stereo where a Y cable is often used either external to the equipment or internally. Coax network cable required external terminations (Network old timers will remember the 50 ohm terminations) while utp cable forbids T connectors and the end equipment provides the termination.
More HF engineering goes into most network cable than goes into most audiophile cable. Audiophile speaker cable is almost never engineered to match the load impedance. Due to the complex impedance of a speaker, the best cable is either none or as short as possible. This is the reason for powered speakers and sub woofers. The signal wire can then be a better match to the load impedance of the speaker amplifier. Now if they would just stop using cheap amplifiers and speakers for powered speakers..
Other than just having all the heat in one spot in the dash, this is the reason premium car stereos have amplified speakers. No speaker wire while driving a complex impedance. You can't make a speaker wire to match the impedance of a speaker. An amplified speaker or amplifier at the speaker with very short wires is a better solution than any $7000 long speaker cable. Anyone who does RF engineering understands this.
tried to cheap out on his obligations
He found the BSA audit, business downtime, and the contract under duress far exceeded any value in the software and went with a software source with much user friendly terms. I don't blame him. Read the article. They hit him pretty hard and then tried to squeeze him out of business. They lost him in the process.
The damage to Microsoft and the BSA is long lasting and well deserved.
Today marks the first time a university has made full course lecture available via the popular video sharing site.
Maybe they call today new simply because they transfered the videos from Google Video to You Tube, another popular sharing site. I have already watched the entire Physics for Future Presidents series about 6 months ago.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Physics+for+future
Why is a move from Google Video to You Tube such a big deal?
So you're going to trust someone who has already pirated at least 1 copy in the past, that they'll stop doing it?
It happens. Sometimes it happens without agreeing to an audit.
http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
Yeah, well, obviously you never tried to do a mail merge or embed an image in a spreadsheet.
I've never wanted to embed an image in a spreadsheet. That's what Power Point is for. I don't need photos to keep track of my stocks, loan, or gas mileage. I use email to keep in touch with family and friends. I don't run a mass mailing. My wife is more into the upscale power user stuff. That is why she is the one with MS Office. For the rest of the family, Open Office or an older version of MS Office is fine. If we have a super need for one of the features in the newer version of MS Office, we do have a machine that will take care of that. It is inconvenient that MS Office is permitted on only one machine (Sometimes 2 for desktop and laptop), so for the most of the rest of the stuff we do, Open Office is good enough. It was Microsoft's business plan to do either Enterprise Licensing or Single Seat licensing. This left a big hole for SOHO site licenses which the GNU LGPL software takes care of very nicely.
I share my Internet, printers, file server, fax, and now my OS and Office Suite with the entire home office.
but it would, invariably, result in revenue for Microsoft, so it would be worth-while for them.
Not always. Sometimes the move isn't as dramatic or as public as the story in the link below.
http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
Often it is much more quiet as the gears start rolling. For me personally, this stuff is a major factor in why I avoid Microsoft EULA licenses and discovered the wonderful world of open standards and open source.
It started with WGA and product activation. I have way too many computers to keep up to date at retail prices. Due to the MS way of doing things, my family has 3 versions of MS Office. My old PIII has a copy of Office 97. It still has the OEM Windows 98 on it. (Don't fret, it's dual boot and only boots Windows for the GPS software which is Windows only) The Wife's XP machine has my copy of Office 2000 which was free from work. Her new laptop for her masters degree came with Vista. Through my employer's homeware agreement with Microsoft we picked up a copy of Office 2007 for a nominal fee of about $20. It is valid only while I am employed with the company. The compatibility issues between versions is a pain in the backside, but providing the same version on all machines is way too expensive.
On the other side, all my machines have Open Office. The license is such that I am permitted to install it on every machine in my home (and give away copies to friends). Do you see a trend here? Incompatibile versions and single install licenses or a a site wide license so all machines can have the same version for the home.
As the Open Document Format becomes standardized it should be obvious to anyone why Open Office and other ODF compatible office software is going to erode Microsoft's market. Tightening the screws is only going to accelerate the adoption of alternatives.
If you have more then 2 computers (laptop and desktop) because you have a family, keeping them all in sync with per seat software is expensive. You either have to decide to spend a lot, or figure out which machine gets the office software. With the competition, everyone can have a legal copy on their desktop and laptop.
After introduction to Sum Microsystems Star Office (home site license for all machines) and then Linux and Open Office, The Microsoft License doesn't look very good for a family SOHO. I can deal with slightly less mature software instead of the big dent in the bottom line.
When I truly need the Microsoft product due to some requirement, I can borrow the wife's laptop. For everything else, Open Office is what I am using. It is on both my laptops, my kids machine, my daughters laptop, my main machine, and my old PIII Dual boot machine. This is the migration that MS can't stop.
Purely FYI, this always violated the terms of Microsoft's license agreement.
Purely FYI, that was a retail copy, not an OEM copy.
So, are they just guessing FLV may sometime become a virus vector? Has someone done a proof of concept?
TFA makes it sound like the Georgia Tech Information Security Center is making it up as they go along.
The FA was short on details, but from what I've seen in online video, there are 2 probable ways this is done. Most flash video sites require scripting to be on.. Duh there is a vector right there. Other sites insist you download their viewer (Untrusted software anyone?). With an untrusted viewer and scripting on, a video could easily launch this attack.
I wish I had the ability to mod you up. For those who didn't follow the link, here is the jucy part..
I followed the link to see what that unknown bug was in NFS and rsync.
Bug #1 (liberation), first reported on 2004-08-20 by Mark Shuttleworth
Microsoft has a majority market share