In a lot of cases, the director participates in the pan and scan version, so you're not butchering anything. Plus, scenes like the famous Star Wars scene where Luke is looking to the far side of the screen are actually not that good cinematographically, because you've got two important points of interest on opposite sides of the screen - unless people go anti-crosseyed - heh - they're not going to be able to see both of them at once, and switching back and forth between the two is a bad idea (it's a movie, not a piece of static art, so the audience's eyes should not be switching back and forth between two different areas unless the action is moving).
Bah. In any case, pan and scan isn't that bad, and more importantly, it shouldn't take up space. It's the same movie - just displaying different portions of it on screen (and if you don't have thousands of dollars for a TV, or don't want a huge intrusive aesthetically disgusting TV setup, displaying a 16:9 image on a 13" TV will, um, suck). It's just that Hollywood for some reason chose not to make technology to have a combination pan & scan/widescreen capable DVD (see other comments for explanations:) ). They probably saw it as a chance for more money (Hollywood 2: The Search for More Money).
Plus, I don't know what video rental places you go to: ALL the video rental places around here ONLY have widescreens for DVDs - I can't find pan & scan's anywhere.
There are more widescreens than I can shake a stick at: normal TV is 1.33:1, anamorphic widescreen is 1.8:1 (roughly), I think there's also 1.6 and 1.5:1, so there will always have to be either some form of pan and scan, or 'black bar' widescreen modes (on a 16:9, they'd be vertical bars, so no big deal...) . On a 16:9 set, this isn't a big deal, since you don't lose resolution, but I can bet my bottom dollar some wacky movie producer will come up with an aspect resolution of 2:1, and we're back to loss of vertical resolution.
Which I hate. No reason to throw out resolution on 2/3 of the image to gain an additional 1/3 which may be unimportant to the film. But that's just me, which is why I think P&S and fullscreen modes should exist together.
I can't imagine, for the life of me, why studios didn't make it so that P&S and fullscreen use the same MPEG stream, just with software pan and scan, and include the pan and scan cues on the DVD. Makes absolutely no sense.
This is stupid, you know. There's no bloody reason that pan & scan and widescreen shouldn't be THE SAME FILM, using the SAME MPEG-2 stream, on the SAME DVD. After all, it's not like it's a different movie, or anything - this entire mode of "must choose widescreen - must choose pan&scan" is more stupid than I can possible imagine.
Let me explain: normal TVs are in one format (NTSC), and movies are in a different, but all of the movies are wider than the TV, right? So, Pan & Scan movies aren't cropping, or zooming, or anything: all they're doing is displaying only a "portion" of the screen, and another remaining portion is left offscreen.
WHY didn't the movie makers come up with a standard to allow a DATA track along side the DVD MPEG stream which cues the DVD player to pan & scan ON ITS OWN? Most people already have "Zoom" features on the DVD player, and then with "left" and "right" buttons you can "pan and scan" manually. All you need is a cue track to move the 'window' left and right. It's a joke - honestly. It would take no effort, everyone would have everything they want, and we'd be happy. And better yet, if there were some scenes where the director said "um, no... I really want to retain the widescreen here" it could simply switch out of pan and scan for a portion of it. Best of both worlds, and all it requires is a really trivial amount of coding (come ON, I could do this in my sleep!).
Grr. Rant off. Pan and Scan will always be around, simply because different films use different transfer techniques, and while most people say "who cares, I don't mind the black bars" the fact is, it's not the black bars - it's the fact that you're tossing resolution in one direction to gain information (which may be meaningless) in another. I'd rather have the option to see it full screen (that is, pan and scan) rather than having widescreen shoved down my throat.
Strangely enough, each one of the situations you describe has different aspects, but they all generate the same thing (of course, this is Einstein's equivalence principle, but, you know).
Generating gravity via spacetime distortion: (the way mass does it) Other than the initial build-up cost of energy, this is the best way to do it, as it requires no maintenance and has no unexpected behavior.
Generating gravity via acceleration: This requires a constant energy drain, so after a while, you would've been better off setting up the gravity well yourself (a very LONG while, but anyway).
Generating gravity via rotation: Not good. There're many NASA papers out there which describe why spinning a ship is not the ideal way (or even a MODERATELY good way) of generating gravity - in fact, it sucks. Sucks a lot. Ship has to be huge in order to be useful, or the disorientation factor will cause problems worse than the problems with weightlessness! In addition, you're not QUITE right about not needing to maintain a spin - just close. Any ship which spins itself up to generate gravity is going to need to continually add energy to sustain the spin simply from energy drains from magnetic fields generating eddy currents, etc. Actually, any spinning metallic object will generate eddy currents from galactic/intergalactic/intrasolar magnetic fields, as small as they are. Those eddy currents will slow down the rotation by generating magnetic fields of their own to push against the magnetostatic field. Slow, yes, but there is going to be a slowdown effect.
Bottom line, though: gravity takes power, and lots of it. Science fiction loves to say "bah, humbug, just spin the thing" but spinning something to generate gravity is so ridiculously not good (coriolis effect, high pseudogravity gradient) that I don't think any civilization would really consider it.
The spin-2 field derivation of linearized gravity is in "the big book of Gravity", Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's "Gravitation" - check out the linear field regime, and they show the spin-2 nature and give a few references. This is where gravitational waves come from, incidentally.
Incidentally, my background's in experimental particle physics AND in gravity - grad and undergrad, respectively, just so you know where I'm coming from. The lack of a diple moment in gravity is just conservation of momentum: think of it this way.
Electromagnetism: No scalar moment: conservation of charge, so (d/dt) sum over q_i = 0. Dipole moment: perfectly allowed: (d/dt) sum over (q_i*x_i) need not be zero. (all higher moments are fine)
Gravity: No scalar moment: conservation of mass, so (d/dt) sum over m_i = 0. No dipole moment: conservation of momentum, so (d/dt) sum over (m_i*x_i) = 0. (that is, dm_i/dt * x_i = 0, from cons. of mass, and m_i*dx_i/dt = 0 from cons. of momentum). Quadrupole moment: perfectly allowed: (d/dt) sum over (m_i*x_i^2) need not be zero. (that is, dm_i/dt*x_i^2 = 0, cons. of mass, 2*m_i*x_i*dx_i/dt need not be zero)
Of course, you can substitute "dipole" for "vector", and "quadropole" for "tensor" before, so gravity is a tensor field (spin 2), and electromagnetism is a vector field (spin 1).
Using a tensor field for gravity is therefore justified mainly from its presence in linearized GR, and supported by the singularly attractive potential. Its downfall is, of course, the fact that it doesn't work.:)
Theory says that antimatter falls just like matter. No conclusive experiments have been run yet - gravity's just far far too weak to be tested with individual particles, and there aren't any 'neat' couplings which allow us to probe that small.
Not quite - linearized GR can be viewed as a spin-2 field theory. It's not a working quantum field theory, though: why? Because in QFT, a spin-2 field theory has problems with stuff like tachyons and other weird particles appearing. This may not be a limitation of a spin-2 field theory (though it really looks like it is... sigh) as it may be that our understanding of QFT is just that bad (it was for a long time, before renormalization became 'en vogue'). QFT has a lot of semi-ad hoc rules right now, so it's entirely possible that a spin-2 field is exactly what gravity is, and we just really are still that poor at field theory that we can't describe it. This is basically the way things are being approached now.
However, if we assume GR is true (which it looks like it is, in a gross sense) then at some level, it has to be spin 2, as in the small field limit, it IS a spin 2 field.
So, we really have two observations:
1) gravity is a spin-2 field. (not a quantum field, true, but I didn't say it was a quantum field:) )
2) spin-2 fields in quantum field theory are solely attractive.
Based on this, we can say it's not a surprise that gravity is solely attractive. We CAN'T say that gravity is a spin-2 quantum field in the sense that we understand quantum fields now, but we can say it's not really a surprise that gravity is solely attractive.
That is, if you didn't have the volumes of empirical data saying "gravity is solely attractive", your first guess would be that gravity is solely attractive based on the fact that it is a spin-2 field in the linearized approximation, and spin-2 fields in quantum field theory are solely attractive. It's similar to calculating energy level transitions using quantum mechanics: it shouldn't work, you're crossing realms of validity, but it does, because it's a general 'macroscopic concept' - in this case, energy. In the spin-2 gravity case, it's conservation of momentum which is driving the spin-2 necessity. A theoretician would probably say "conservation of momentum is such a strongly held symmetry that we can bend it a little with no problem" or some bull like that (no joke - I've heard similar).
As for Podkletnov, I agree that he's a quack (will never argue that) and that his research is sloppy and all the extrapolations/reasonings are junk. The main thing that people are trying to replicate, though, is not the antigrav beam (which I almost printed out to go alongside the other antigrav devices I've seen on arxiv) but the anomalous mass reduction over a spinning superconductor. This one... ok, I can see the desire to try to replicate it (especially because they had trouble previously) but it probably won't work (PROBABLY... but, eh, who knows).
That said, I should also point out this is almost definitely funded via Millis's BPP program, which is a perfectly valid program. There's some random financial realm of thinking which basically says "if you have an idea which has a very low probability of success, but an infinitely huge return, you should invest some small portion of money into it", and this is what Millis's program is being funded out of. It's valid. They'd probably be better off futzing around with the Casimir effect, but that's probably next year.:)
Bingo. And that's the safest way to generate artificial gravity.
The only problem with that is that you can figure out exactly how much power that burns, so you can get an idea of what kind of technology that requires.
OK, so quickly doing the math, with everything being constant acceleration, and an infinitesimal turn time, so we assume that the thing's "always" at 0.5 gee, and we'll write out power in terms of watts/kg needed to sustain that kind of acceleration.
Assume shortest distance trip to Mars, and you're looking at oh, 0.4 AU (more, but that's a first-order correction). OK. Time to travel 0.4 AU from scratch accelerating for 0.5 gee for 0.2 AU and decelerating at 0.5 gee for 0.2 AU is roughly 150,000 seconds (~40 hours). Energy/kg required is accel*distance, so roughly 588 GJ/kg (yuck, but it's a long time, so...) the power needed is therefore 3.92 MW/kg.
That's still not good at all - assuming that the ship is several thousands of kilograms, you're talking several gigawatts of power. That's a HUGE nuclear reactor, at minimum. Note, just checked: need 5.88 x 10^11 J/kg this way, and fusion fuel - deut, trit is 3.4 x 10^14 J/kg, so it is theoretically possible with just fusion, and the fuel would only be roughly 0.1% of your mass. You'd need to have a VERY light reactor, though, or a LOT of fuel. Fission's doable, though it'd be a HELL of a lot of fuel, considering fission is 2.1 GJ/kg,,which is only about 3 times what we need - so 33% of the mass of the ship has to be fuel - that's a hell of a lot of fuel!
So is it doable? Yah. Really only feasible with microscale fusion, though. You might actually see this well before artificial gravity - futzing with fusion is just futzing with electromagnetic fields, which we can manipulate fairly easily.
Note that I didn't include the gravitational binding energy increase that you need to supply (i.e. to counteract the Sun's gravity) because it really is miniscule in comparison (first-order effect).
Presumedly, if there is a way to counteract the effects of gravity (and that presupposes that's REALLY what this is doing) there'll be a way to simulate the effects of gravity.
That said, unless you can do VERY weird things, simulating gravity REALLY sucks. Think about the energy cost! If you can 'simulate' gravity, then all the matter that's put in that 'simulated' gravity field suddenly has a LOT of potential energy. Where do you think that potential energy has to come from? Gravity can't be free.
We don't need simulated gravity. We need ways of dealing with zero-gravity. If you absolutely have to have a gravity-like force, spin the ship. The only problem with that is that you need a BIG ship so Coriolis forces and a sharp pseudogravity gradient don't screw you up.
Simulated gravity won't happen until we are as good at manipulating gravity as we are at manipulating electromagnetism. The initial gravity field would take A LOT of energy to set up (hell: it took the Earth's mass times c^2 to set up the Earth's gravitational field! We sure as hell don't have easy access to that much energy!)
(first, correction in your post: you want F = GMm/r^2, not g: g is 9.8 m/s^2, which means it can't have any variables in it. it's g = GM/R^2, where M is the Earth's mass, and R is the Earth's radius)
Not really: G is a conversion factor between mass and force, making it a coupling constant (like Coulomb's constant) - it's more a field strength than anything else.
Note that you can make G go away with a convenient choice of units (mass is mass is mass: they would still have the same units - grams - even if you had inertial and gravitational, just like kinetic energy, potential energy are both measured in joules). For the rest of this, we'll work in units (call them 'statgrams') such that G = 1 Newton-m^2/statgram^2.
When people say that gravitational mass is the same as inertial mass, we mean: force is equal to inertial mass times acceleration, and force is equal to gravitational mass of the two objects divided by radius squared.
OK, so F = (m_i)a , and F = (m_g)M/r^2. Now, when we say that gravitational mass is the same as inertial mass, we mean that if you set these two forces equal, so gravity's providing all the acceleration, the inertial and gravitational masses cancel, that is, g = (m_g/m_i) M/r^2 goes to g= M/r^2.
There are several ways to test this, and all any of them can test is that the ratio is constant (indep. of radius, indep. of inertial mass, etc.) and so we set this constant to 1.
It's a subtle difference, but there: there're two different things that're in the force equation, a coupling of matter to matter (G) and a conversion between gravitational mass and inertial mass (m_g/m_i). Setting one of them to 1 doesn't necessarily set the other to 1, but since they're both 'unit choices', you can freely set them both to 1. The important thing is that since all derivatives of m_g/m_i appear to be zero, it IS merely a unit choice. If there WAS a difference, you could set G to 1, but not m_g/m_i.
One other thing: quantum-mechanically, it's not surprising that gravity is solely attractive: it's a tensor (spin-2) field, which IS solely attractive. That part's understood (We know that a spin-2 field can mimic linearized GR - that is, GR in the weak field limit).
Mercury's orbit doesn't agree with GR all that phenomenally well. How's that for starters?
OK, disclaimer here: Note that I said "GR", not "Newtonian" gravity - yes, I know that every textbook on the planet says that GR agrees with Mercury's orbit "phenomenally well" - but it's not really true. If you check out a decent astrophysics textbook (I -think- it's in Carroll & Ostlie) there were findings in the early 90s (I think... I'll try to look it up, but I figured I'd post this first so more people'll look around) that the discrepancies in Mercury's orbit could be mostly explained away due to non-sphericity of the Sun. When you take that into account, GR doesn't agree quite so well (unless someone's cleaned this up recently, which is possible. No one seems to care, actually).
That said, that wasn't what the poster was talking about - my guess is that the original poster was talking about stuff like continuous spacetime vs. quantum spacetime, but again, that's quantum effects.
I'm still of the opinion that the anomalous mass changes above a superconductor COULD be real (and could be quantum, keep in mind that superconductors produce weird quantum states of electrons) - after all, before people knew about the Casimir effect, no one would ever have thought to claim that sticking two pieces of metal very very close to each other would cause them to be strongly attracted to each other by anything except gravity.
That being said, I think it's probably experimental error, and I REALLY don't appreciate the way the original scientist handled it. The fact that he hid his experimental setup (or the complete details of it) out of fear of someone stealing his idea is such crap. Personally, if it had been me, I wouldn't've cared. If it does work, it's such a revolutionary breakthrough that I wouldn't've even cared about the economic benefits to me - the scientific benefits are too massive (besides, SOMEONE would've named the effect after me - or me and someone else - and that's all I really care about:) )
The magnetic field of the Earth is due to a highly spinning core of liquid ferrous material (the "dynamo effect") - that is, sustained electric currents set up a magnetic field. Pole movement and pole reversal are two different things (and probably completely unrelated to each other). What causes pole reversal isn't very well understood - there're some good theories, but until we know more about the inner structure of the Earth, no good solid evidence (the dynamo effect, it should be noted, isn't well understood either! Mars wasn't supposed to have a magnetic field - no liquid core - and Mercury wasn't supposed to have one either - spinning too slow - but they both do, and Mercury's is quite noticeable) as far as I know.
There isn't really a good qualitative description of what's going on, but basically, the core of the Earth is a spinning liquid ferrous object which is highly conducting, and sets up huge currents which produce huge magnetic fields. These magnetic fields can get "trapped" in a convective layer above the core (and become "earthspots", in analogy to "sunspots"). The sunspots act to cancel out the conductive field (the dipole portion) which weakens the field. These perturbations can cause the conductive region to 'flip' to the other polarity (there are two spots of stability, one with + polarity, one with - polarity: if you 'push' the magnetic field enough away from the original, you can shove it to the opposite polarity) which then begins to cause sunspots of its own, and the cycle continues.
The field recovers basically because there are two magnetically generating 'layers' - the core, and the convective region. They, together, cancel each other out, but because the core generates the convective region, the magnetic field is only zero so long as the polarities of the convective region and the core are opposite and equal (which doesn't last 'long' on a cycle scale).
This is all assuming everything works like the Sun does, which is assumed, but not entirely sure.:) The Earth's period is roughly 250,000 years, and the Sun's is 22, so as you can guess, we have a lot of data about the Sun's, and virtually none about the Earth's.:)
No, the magnetic field doesn't allow the VAST majority of charged particles inside the magnetosheath at all. If it goes away, huge numbers of particles now enter the Earth's magnetosheath (atmosphere, etc.).
So, to answer your statement, if the flux of particles that DON'T hit you is orders of magnitude higher (probably around 10^9 or higher) than the particles that DO hit you, would YOU want to flip those numbers around (so now the number of particles that DO hit you is 10^9 times higher than the number of particles that DON'T hit you)? Obviously not.
No, lasers are a coherent, highly focused BEAM of photons. An individual photon can't be focused or unfocused, coherent or incoherent - it's only in context of other photons that it matters.
And in actuality, you want "collimated", rather than "focused", I think - collimated meaning that over a long distance, the beam won't spread out much. I think they're used interchangably in optics, but focused in this sense could imply being from the eye's sense, which is a totally different thing (whether or not the beam actually focuses to a point on the retina or not).
Over a short distance, the difference between a laser and a normal beam of light is minimal, at least in the collimated sense: if a normal beam of light doesn't spread out more than the width of a molecule or so over the path length of the retina, it doesn't matter that a laser doesn't diffuse at all.
As for the coherency bit, I don't know - the molecules in the eye aren't sensitive to the phase of the photon, are they? If they were, then you should be able to see a difference between differently polarized light (which you can't, as far as I know).
I don't think this is going to cause any more problems than reading a monitor does (which it does, I agree) and possibly much less. I think monitors (especially LCDs) cause damage mainly from straining to focus text all the time. In cases where you aren't using this kind of a setup to project text, but images, I don't think it's going to be an issue.
The easiest way for them to tell if this is going to be damaging (which they did already) is to calculate out the light flux through the retina and compare it to safety standards. What they say is that it's far below it. Like I said, coherency (I don't think) is going to affect this, and collimation is already taken into account in the light flux (flux = energy/unit area, so higher collimation = lower area = higher flux).
(Note that I'm not sure if I spelled 'collimation' right through here, so someone correct me if I'm wrong).
Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?
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EFF Takes Bnetd Case
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I should also point out that bnetd doesn't even support WC3, so the whole WC3 argument is crap. Why are they going after bnetd? Even if all the illegal WC3 owners are playing on something else besides Battle.net (which is LEGAL - the illegal part was getting the copy illegally!) it's NOT bnetd.
Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?
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EFF Takes Bnetd Case
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Unfortunately, your analysis of the alternate situation that I presented is wrong under current law. So, they might be your personal beliefs, but they're (legally) wrong - the DMCA specifically says that alternate implementations do not have to use anti-piracy devices in one implementation. So, even if you do believe it's a circumvention device, it's not illegal.
I can't honestly understand how you can think that this is a good idea - that provision was put in the DMCA just for that purpose.Otherwise Microsoft WOULD do what I just described (it'd make all copies of Linux illegal), not to mention dozens of other companies (AOL, any other company that's had a protocol reverse-engineered) would do the same thing. What you just described is a really really easy way to make competing products illegal - it would kill all of capitalism.
But I'm confused - You just said that even if Blizzard was not involved at all (no Blizzard games), then Blizzard could still shut bnetd down because they didn't publish or license the Battle.net protocol?
How the heck can a company shut down a server if all they've done is reverse engineer a protocol? Reverse engineering is LEGAL. Reality check here: first off, the Battle.net protocol isn't patented, it isn't copyrighted, and it doesn't matter in any case, as a clean-room reverse engineer of the protocol is fine, so long as you don't break any encryption on the data stream. Blizzard DOESN'T HAVE to 'publish' or license ANYTHING.
Yes, I am going to argue that copy protection is a good thing. It's critical. If you want to prevent people from pirating your work, prevent the damned thing from being copied illegally in the first place. Is it hard? Yes. Too bad. Suck it up and go hire intelligent people to come up with an intelligent solution.
You said it yourself - "I took a look and found four or five sites hosting the.iso" - GO AFTER THOSE SITES. They're breaking the law, not bnetd. I can't understand why we're arguing this: it's clear cut that they're breaking the law, right? It's NOT clear cut that bnetd is breaking the law (because they -aren't-).
If Blizzard is really concerned about WC3 betas being passed around, they should've 1) had tighter control on the release process (it's not bnetd's fault that Blizzard is incompetent), and 2) they should've ASKED bnetd to refrain from adding WC3 support. Your response is probably going to be "they didn't have to" - my response is "Yes, they did - because what bnetd is doing is LEGAL."
I find it curious that in response to my challenge to prove that the people who connect to bnetd servers have pirated copies, you didn't mention bnetd at all. How do you know they didn't find another way around the Battle.net CD authentication (because we know that Blizzard's control over it's own software is SO good)? All you've proved is that there are pirated WC3 copies out there. You haven't proved that they use bnetd exclusively, and that no one who uses bnetd has a legitimate copy.
Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?
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EFF Takes Bnetd Case
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Wrong, wrong, wrong. bnetd doesn't "facilitate piracy of Blizzard's product": it MAY "facilitate playing of pirated Blizzard products online", but NOT "facilitate piracy". What facilitated piracy was Blizzard's weak copy protection initially. Why do you continually keep ignoring that fact? The games are already pirated - the copy protection FAILED. If Blizzard wants to stop the piracy, STOP THE PIRATES. Stop the damned games from being pirated in the first place.
Once again, a road is NOT responsible for stolen cars driving on it! Period!
Answer me this:
Suppose Windows implemented a 'license checking' on its SMB servers. All computers which logged into the SMB server on Windows 2000 are queried to find out if they have a valid product installation key, with several blacked out, checked against a master list, etc. Any one that doesn't is barred from access.
Now, Linux has an SMB server. But Linux doesn't have to implement that 'license checking': could Linux be sued because they're 'facilitating Microsoft piracy'? NO. No way. No chance, no way, no how.
Do you argue with this? How is this any different than Blizzard's issue?
I'm trying to be clear here, but I keep repeating the same thing: Blizzard has a monopoly - they are the only company that makes Battle.net servers, that is, servers which communicate with other programs via the Battle.net protocol. You might say 'well, duh, they created the battle.net protocol, they don't have to let anyone else make one!' YES, they DO. That's the law. They don't have to HELP them, and they didn't, but they can't STOP them from doing it. That's what this case is going to say, flat out, no question.
And just because Battle.net is OK for you, doesn't mean it is for everyone else. Battle.net blows - it really does. It's idiotic that when I can connect to my friend down the hall in a dorm with an IP on a different portion of the network, but the outbound network is down, we can't play. (different Ethernet network = IPX doesn't cross through). I fought, scrambled, and clawed to try to get it to work (I was the ONLY ONE on that portion of the network!) but I just couldn't do it. bnetd would've completely made my life easier had I known about it back then.
Here's the next question: what about actual usage patterns? Can you prove that the people who connect to bnetd servers have pirated copies, and can't play without bnetd? You never will be able to, because it's complete crap. bnetd might make life easier for pirates, but so does Linux and ethernet bridging, and IPX bridging (which I couldn't get to work then, but know why now... grr). So have Blizzard go after Linux, too!
8 more days to find out if Blizzard is really stupid and wants to lose in court.
Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?
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EFF Takes Bnetd Case
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A monopoly is where you have the ONLY product in a certain market - in this case, Blizzard has a monopoly on Battle.net-type gaming.
Battle.net is not their product - Diablo II, etc, are. More importantly, though, Battle.net, as I'm speaking of it, is just a -type- of online gaming. You can't attack a work-alike of Battle.net anymore than Microsoft could challenge KOffice for being an office productivity suite. Blizzard created a market - a type of product - a Battle.net server. They have the only product for it.
The point is that you can't protect the monopoly that that product has - at least not legally.:) bnetd created a product that worked like Battle.net, and Blizzard is trying to challenge them, because they WANT the 'Battle.net style gaming' monopoly.
They created a protocol. bnetd can reverse engineer it. The DMCA even allows them to. This is how capitalism works. Someone creates a market. Others enter it. Competition creates the best product. Blizzard's just trying to get around the fact that they have competition now, and they don't want to improve their product (Battle.net, that is).
9 more days to find out if Blizzard wants to lose in court or not.
As has been mentioned many times, the problem is that they are trying to protect something illegal (a Battle.net monopoly) by claiming it protects against piracy, when there are perfectly valid OTHER methods to protect against piracy, or to give up the Battle.net monopoly while still protecting against piracy.
The fundamental problem here is twofold: one, the basic problem is that Blizzard's CD-KEY authentication method is junk. Anyone can, and has, cracked it, and so therefore, invalid/duplicate CD-KEYs are rampant. This is the first of Blizzard's argument's problems: bnetd is not responsible for the poor technological safeguards inherent in Blizzard's software. If Blizzard is so worried about piracy, they should do something more aggressive to prevent the illegal copies from being out there. As many people have said, it is not a road's job to check if there are stolen cars driving on it.
The second problem is that Blizzard is trying to protect a Battle.net monopoly on piracy concerns, and protecting that monopoly that way is completely illegal. What if Microsoft were to come and say "Linux is illegal, because people can use Linux to change a Windows NT/2K/XP administrator password and hack in!" (which you can, and I have done, and I'm glad you can do, as I lost the admin password to an old machine)
I'm serious - this is exactly the same exact thing, and it sounds ludicrous when referred to in this way, and it sounds ludicrous in Blizzard's case. It's stupid. So, let me stress it again:
bnetd is not responsible to fix the stupidity of Blizzard's anti-piracy controls.
Just because Blizzard's anti-piracy controls suck doesn't mean bnetd can't exist, any more than Linux can't exist because Windows security sucks.
Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?
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EFF Takes Bnetd Case
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Blizzard should have to help to prove they actually care about just the anti-piracy concern, which is real and legal, and NOT the Battle.net monopoly, which is NOT legal.
Yes, Blizzard has a monopoly, and they're trying to use "anti-piracy concerns" to protect it. That's what this is all about, and that's why it's bull.
All reverse engineering is legal, within the definitions of reverse engineering. It basically comes down to "what is reverse engineering?" Reverse engineering is developing a work-alike simply by using the product without any knowledge of how it works inside, and without breaking any encryption between it and other devices. The DMCA just changed the definition of reverse engineering (very very weakly, IMHO, but every corporation seems to think it's a panacea), not eliminate it.
As for the problems of Slashdot, eh, whatever. Everyone who wants to gain karma eventually does, so it's not important if you lose a bit here and there.
Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?
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EFF Takes Bnetd Case
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You don't have to have the CD checks done on the bnetd source - they could've passed the network challenge along to Battle.net and done it that way.
Blizzard's argument is completely full of holes.
Blizzard, versus anyone intelligent:
"bnetd facilitates piracy!" "Why?" "Because it doesn't do CD checks to make sure all of the clients are valid." "How is this illegal?" "It circumvents our copy protection scheme!" "No, it doesn't - the illegal CD key to install already did that." "Oh. Well, CD keys are easy to crack, so we had to come up with something else!" "So what? Sorry. Come up with better technology next time." "But, but, they figured out how to get around the CD checks!" "No, they didn't do them. They don't have to. The DMCA even SAYS they don't have to." "But, how are we supposed to prevent piracy if everyone can play online?" "Didn't Quake 3 work fine?" "Yah, but we don't want anyone else to have a battle.net server, because we want to charge for it and offer nothing new!" "Suck it up and deal. Competition, baby, life sucks for you. Offer your customers something worth paying money for."
Or what about ipx_bridge, or Ethernet forwarding? All of this is easily accomplished, but no challenge there. Why? Oh, because this is Battle.net?
The Battle.net implementation has a lot of nice extras, but that's like them suing bnetd and saying "Their product, completely independently and cleanroom developed, is too nice. We want you to protect OUR product, which is exactly the same, but ours is special because we wrote the other piece of software it works with." God. If that worked, Microsoft could block Linux SAMBA servers in favor of Windows servers.
I've never used Battle.net. I never will. It's crap, and it always has been crap. Why should I only be able to play when Blizzard's local portion of the Net is accessible to me and not flooded with traffic, rather than at any time? My network's still running. Their network is still running. Complete junk.
And don't forget that without bnetd, when Blizzard collapses sometime in the future (they all do - just give them time) all these games are useless.
If it's a cleanly reverse engineered protocol, and you didn't have to break any encryption (which they DIDN'T, so screw the DMCA) it's legal. Period. It's completely identical to any of the already-out there emulator cases.
If your argument were true, then Microsoft could sue anyone who uses SAMBA, since all the Linux SAMBA servers aren't licensed by Microsoft, who developed SMB (probably:) ). Using an unlicensed, cleanroom developed server can never be illegal, or you're eliminating fair competition.
I'll say this once again, though: the DMCA doesn't apply. They did NOT break any encryption. The DMCA even specifically states that CD-KEY type authentication doesn't have to be incorporated into interoperating programs. So, without the 'DMCA crap', Blizzard's just yelling about an unlicensed server, which is definitely legal.
After all, Blizzard already REJECTED Bnetd's request to somehow incorporate the CD-KEY checks into bnetd: they can't claim that it's not possible to do it, as Q3 already does, so in this case, it's clear that Blizzard has no desire to protect its intellectual property from piracy, so claiming bnetd should be removed because of piracy concerns is crap.
Honestly, this case is going to be over very quickly in the courts: Blizzard really doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Why is it inaccurate? It's the same thing. Bnetd has no other function other than to play Blizzard games online, and Bleem has the sole function than to allow you to play Playstation games on a computer. Both these products are doing the same thing - allowing you to play the game on hardware other than the original manufacturer intended (in the bnetd case, on bnetd servers rather than Battle.net servers, and in Bleem's case, on a PC rather than on a Playstation), and this kind of 'fair use' is EXACTLY what the courts are trying to uphold.
It's EXACTLY the same. Software to facilitate the playing of a legally purchased game is not, can not, and never WILL be illegal. The fact that some people use it for an illegal purpose does not even come CLOSE to eliminating the fair use intent of the bnetd server, which is to play Blizzard games on hardware other than was originally intended.
Bleem is a piece of software which facilitates a legal program running by providing the interfaces that a proprietary piece of hardware uses. Bnetd is a piece of software which facilitates a legal program running by providing the interfaces that a proprietary network protocol uses (or, by extension, the proprietary "system" that Battle.net is).
Bnetd does not facilitate or get around the copy protection in any of Blizzard's games: that's done by the actual CD-KEY generators themselves, or the cracked warez ISO. All they're doing is emulating a piece of external hardware, which has been validated in courts many times over by now.
Blizzard doesn't have a chance. There's tons of legal precedent supporting bnetd, and none supporting Blizzard.
Slashdot Mirror
In a lot of cases, the director participates in the pan and scan version, so you're not butchering anything. Plus, scenes like the famous Star Wars scene where Luke is looking to the far side of the screen are actually not that good cinematographically, because you've got two important points of interest on opposite sides of the screen - unless people go anti-crosseyed - heh - they're not going to be able to see both of them at once, and switching back and forth between the two is a bad idea (it's a movie, not a piece of static art, so the audience's eyes should not be switching back and forth between two different areas unless the action is moving).
:) ). They probably saw it as a chance for more money (Hollywood 2: The Search for More Money).
Bah. In any case, pan and scan isn't that bad, and more importantly, it shouldn't take up space. It's the same movie - just displaying different portions of it on screen (and if you don't have thousands of dollars for a TV, or don't want a huge intrusive aesthetically disgusting TV setup, displaying a 16:9 image on a 13" TV will, um, suck). It's just that Hollywood for some reason chose not to make technology to have a combination pan & scan/widescreen capable DVD (see other comments for explanations
Plus, I don't know what video rental places you go to: ALL the video rental places around here ONLY have widescreens for DVDs - I can't find pan & scan's anywhere.
There are more widescreens than I can shake a stick at: normal TV is 1.33:1, anamorphic widescreen is 1.8:1 (roughly), I think there's also 1.6 and 1.5:1, so there will always have to be either some form of pan and scan, or 'black bar' widescreen modes (on a 16:9, they'd be vertical bars, so no big deal...) . On a 16:9 set, this isn't a big deal, since you don't lose resolution, but I can bet my bottom dollar some wacky movie producer will come up with an aspect resolution of 2:1, and we're back to loss of vertical resolution.
Which I hate. No reason to throw out resolution on 2/3 of the image to gain an additional 1/3 which may be unimportant to the film. But that's just me, which is why I think P&S and fullscreen modes should exist together.
I can't imagine, for the life of me, why studios didn't make it so that P&S and fullscreen use the same MPEG stream, just with software pan and scan, and include the pan and scan cues on the DVD. Makes absolutely no sense.
This is stupid, you know. There's no bloody reason that pan & scan and widescreen shouldn't be THE SAME FILM, using the SAME MPEG-2 stream, on the SAME DVD. After all, it's not like it's a different movie, or anything - this entire mode of "must choose widescreen - must choose pan&scan" is more stupid than I can possible imagine.
Let me explain: normal TVs are in one format (NTSC), and movies are in a different, but all of the movies are wider than the TV, right? So, Pan & Scan movies aren't cropping, or zooming, or anything: all they're doing is displaying only a "portion" of the screen, and another remaining portion is left offscreen.
WHY didn't the movie makers come up with a standard to allow a DATA track along side the DVD MPEG stream which cues the DVD player to pan & scan ON ITS OWN? Most people already have "Zoom" features on the DVD player, and then with "left" and "right" buttons you can "pan and scan" manually. All you need is a cue track to move the 'window' left and right. It's a joke - honestly. It would take no effort, everyone would have everything they want, and we'd be happy. And better yet, if there were some scenes where the director said "um, no... I really want to retain the widescreen here" it could simply switch out of pan and scan for a portion of it. Best of both worlds, and all it requires is a really trivial amount of coding (come ON, I could do this in my sleep!).
Grr. Rant off. Pan and Scan will always be around, simply because different films use different transfer techniques, and while most people say "who cares, I don't mind the black bars" the fact is, it's not the black bars - it's the fact that you're tossing resolution in one direction to gain information (which may be meaningless) in another. I'd rather have the option to see it full screen (that is, pan and scan) rather than having widescreen shoved down my throat.
Strangely enough, each one of the situations you describe has different aspects, but they all generate the same thing (of course, this is Einstein's equivalence principle, but, you know).
Generating gravity via spacetime distortion: (the way mass does it) Other than the initial build-up cost of energy, this is the best way to do it, as it requires no maintenance and has no unexpected behavior.
Generating gravity via acceleration: This requires a constant energy drain, so after a while, you would've been better off setting up the gravity well yourself (a very LONG while, but anyway).
Generating gravity via rotation: Not good. There're many NASA papers out there which describe why spinning a ship is not the ideal way (or even a MODERATELY good way) of generating gravity - in fact, it sucks. Sucks a lot. Ship has to be huge in order to be useful, or the disorientation factor will cause problems worse than the problems with weightlessness! In addition, you're not QUITE right about not needing to maintain a spin - just close. Any ship which spins itself up to generate gravity is going to need to continually add energy to sustain the spin simply from energy drains from magnetic fields generating eddy currents, etc. Actually, any spinning metallic object will generate eddy currents from galactic/intergalactic/intrasolar magnetic fields, as small as they are. Those eddy currents will slow down the rotation by generating magnetic fields of their own to push against the magnetostatic field. Slow, yes, but there is going to be a slowdown effect.
Bottom line, though: gravity takes power, and lots of it. Science fiction loves to say "bah, humbug, just spin the thing" but spinning something to generate gravity is so ridiculously not good (coriolis effect, high pseudogravity gradient) that I don't think any civilization would really consider it.
The spin-2 field derivation of linearized gravity is in "the big book of Gravity", Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's "Gravitation" - check out the linear field regime, and they show the spin-2 nature and give a few references. This is where gravitational waves come from, incidentally.
:)
Incidentally, my background's in experimental particle physics AND in gravity - grad and undergrad, respectively, just so you know where I'm coming from. The lack of a diple moment in gravity is just conservation of momentum: think of it this way.
Electromagnetism:
No scalar moment: conservation of charge, so (d/dt) sum over q_i = 0.
Dipole moment: perfectly allowed: (d/dt) sum over (q_i*x_i) need not be zero.
(all higher moments are fine)
Gravity:
No scalar moment: conservation of mass, so
(d/dt) sum over m_i = 0.
No dipole moment: conservation of momentum, so (d/dt) sum over (m_i*x_i) = 0. (that is, dm_i/dt * x_i = 0, from cons. of mass, and m_i*dx_i/dt = 0 from cons. of momentum).
Quadrupole moment: perfectly allowed: (d/dt) sum over (m_i*x_i^2) need not be zero. (that is, dm_i/dt*x_i^2 = 0, cons. of mass, 2*m_i*x_i*dx_i/dt need not be zero)
Of course, you can substitute "dipole" for "vector", and "quadropole" for "tensor" before, so gravity is a tensor field (spin 2), and electromagnetism is a vector field (spin 1).
Using a tensor field for gravity is therefore justified mainly from its presence in linearized GR, and supported by the singularly attractive potential. Its downfall is, of course, the fact that it doesn't work.
Theory says that antimatter falls just like matter. No conclusive experiments have been run yet - gravity's just far far too weak to be tested with individual particles, and there aren't any 'neat' couplings which allow us to probe that small.
Check out here
for a better discussion. Summary is that we're pretty damned sure that it should, but not positive, and we don't have any experiments to prove it.
Not quite - linearized GR can be viewed as a spin-2 field theory. It's not a working quantum field theory, though: why? Because in QFT, a spin-2 field theory has problems with stuff like tachyons and other weird particles appearing. This may not be a limitation of a spin-2 field theory (though it really looks like it is... sigh) as it may be that our understanding of QFT is just that bad (it was for a long time, before renormalization became 'en vogue'). QFT has a lot of semi-ad hoc rules right now, so it's entirely possible that a spin-2 field is exactly what gravity is, and we just really are still that poor at field theory that we can't describe it. This is basically the way things are being approached now.
:) )
:)
However, if we assume GR is true (which it looks like it is, in a gross sense) then at some level, it has to be spin 2, as in the small field limit, it IS a spin 2 field.
So, we really have two observations:
1) gravity is a spin-2 field. (not a quantum field, true, but I didn't say it was a quantum field
2) spin-2 fields in quantum field theory are solely attractive.
Based on this, we can say it's not a surprise that gravity is solely attractive. We CAN'T say that gravity is a spin-2 quantum field in the sense that we understand quantum fields now, but we can say it's not really a surprise that gravity is solely attractive.
That is, if you didn't have the volumes of empirical data saying "gravity is solely attractive", your first guess would be that gravity is solely attractive based on the fact that it is a spin-2 field in the linearized approximation, and spin-2 fields in quantum field theory are solely attractive. It's similar to calculating energy level transitions using quantum mechanics: it shouldn't work, you're crossing realms of validity, but it does, because it's a general 'macroscopic concept' - in this case, energy. In the spin-2 gravity case, it's conservation of momentum which is driving the spin-2 necessity. A theoretician would probably say "conservation of momentum is such a strongly held symmetry that we can bend it a little with no problem" or some bull like that (no joke - I've heard similar).
As for Podkletnov, I agree that he's a quack (will never argue that) and that his research is sloppy and all the extrapolations/reasonings are junk. The main thing that people are trying to replicate, though, is not the antigrav beam (which I almost printed out to go alongside the other antigrav devices I've seen on arxiv) but the anomalous mass reduction over a spinning superconductor. This one... ok, I can see the desire to try to replicate it (especially because they had trouble previously) but it probably won't work (PROBABLY... but, eh, who knows).
That said, I should also point out this is almost definitely funded via Millis's BPP program, which is a perfectly valid program. There's some random financial realm of thinking which basically says "if you have an idea which has a very low probability of success, but an infinitely huge return, you should invest some small portion of money into it", and this is what Millis's program is being funded out of. It's valid. They'd probably be better off futzing around with the Casimir effect, but that's probably next year.
Bingo. And that's the safest way to generate artificial gravity.
,which is only about 3 times what we need - so 33% of the mass of the ship has to be fuel - that's a hell of a lot of fuel!
The only problem with that is that you can figure out exactly how much power that burns, so you can get an idea of what kind of technology that requires.
OK, so quickly doing the math, with everything being constant acceleration, and an infinitesimal turn time, so we assume that the thing's "always" at 0.5 gee, and we'll write out power in terms of watts/kg needed to sustain that kind of acceleration.
Assume shortest distance trip to Mars, and you're looking at oh, 0.4 AU (more, but that's a first-order correction). OK. Time to travel 0.4 AU from scratch accelerating for 0.5 gee for 0.2 AU and decelerating at 0.5 gee for 0.2 AU is roughly 150,000 seconds (~40 hours). Energy/kg required is accel*distance, so roughly 588 GJ/kg (yuck, but it's a long time, so...) the power needed is therefore 3.92 MW/kg.
That's still not good at all - assuming that the ship is several thousands of kilograms, you're talking several gigawatts of power. That's a HUGE nuclear reactor, at minimum. Note, just checked: need 5.88 x 10^11 J/kg this way, and fusion fuel - deut, trit is 3.4 x 10^14 J/kg, so it is theoretically possible with just fusion, and the fuel would only be roughly 0.1% of your mass. You'd need to have a VERY light reactor, though, or a LOT of fuel. Fission's doable, though it'd be a HELL of a lot of fuel, considering fission is 2.1 GJ/kg,
So is it doable? Yah. Really only feasible with microscale fusion, though. You might actually see this well before artificial gravity - futzing with fusion is just futzing with electromagnetic fields, which we can manipulate fairly easily.
Note that I didn't include the gravitational binding energy increase that you need to supply (i.e. to counteract the Sun's gravity) because it really is miniscule in comparison (first-order effect).
Presumedly, if there is a way to counteract the effects of gravity (and that presupposes that's REALLY what this is doing) there'll be a way to simulate the effects of gravity.
That said, unless you can do VERY weird things, simulating gravity REALLY sucks. Think about the energy cost! If you can 'simulate' gravity, then all the matter that's put in that 'simulated' gravity field suddenly has a LOT of potential energy. Where do you think that potential energy has to come from? Gravity can't be free.
We don't need simulated gravity. We need ways of dealing with zero-gravity. If you absolutely have to have a gravity-like force, spin the ship. The only problem with that is that you need a BIG ship so Coriolis forces and a sharp pseudogravity gradient don't screw you up.
Simulated gravity won't happen until we are as good at manipulating gravity as we are at manipulating electromagnetism. The initial gravity field would take A LOT of energy to set up (hell: it took the Earth's mass times c^2 to set up the Earth's gravitational field! We sure as hell don't have easy access to that much energy!)
(first, correction in your post: you want F = GMm/r^2, not g: g is 9.8 m/s^2, which means it can't have any variables in it. it's g = GM/R^2, where M is the Earth's mass, and R is the Earth's radius)
Not really: G is a conversion factor between mass and force, making it a coupling constant (like Coulomb's constant) - it's more a field strength than anything else.
Note that you can make G go away with a convenient choice of units (mass is mass is mass: they would still have the same units - grams - even if you had inertial and gravitational, just like kinetic energy, potential energy are both measured in joules). For the rest of this, we'll work in units (call them 'statgrams') such that G = 1 Newton-m^2/statgram^2.
When people say that gravitational mass is the same as inertial mass, we mean: force is equal to inertial mass times acceleration, and force is equal to gravitational mass of the two objects divided by radius squared.
OK, so F = (m_i)a , and F = (m_g)M/r^2. Now, when we say that gravitational mass is the same as inertial mass, we mean that if you set these two forces equal, so gravity's providing all the acceleration, the inertial and gravitational masses cancel, that is, g = (m_g/m_i) M/r^2 goes to g= M/r^2.
There are several ways to test this, and all any of them can test is that the ratio is constant (indep. of radius, indep. of inertial mass, etc.) and so we set this constant to 1.
It's a subtle difference, but there: there're two different things that're in the force equation, a coupling of matter to matter (G) and a conversion between gravitational mass and inertial mass (m_g/m_i). Setting one of them to 1 doesn't necessarily set the other to 1, but since they're both 'unit choices', you can freely set them both to 1. The important thing is that since all derivatives of m_g/m_i appear to be zero, it IS merely a unit choice. If there WAS a difference, you could set G to 1, but not m_g/m_i.
One other thing: quantum-mechanically, it's not surprising that gravity is solely attractive: it's a tensor (spin-2) field, which IS solely attractive. That part's understood (We know that a spin-2 field can mimic linearized GR - that is, GR in the weak field limit).
Mercury's orbit doesn't agree with GR all that phenomenally well. How's that for starters?
:) )
OK, disclaimer here: Note that I said "GR", not "Newtonian" gravity - yes, I know that every textbook on the planet says that GR agrees with Mercury's orbit "phenomenally well" - but it's not really true. If you check out a decent astrophysics textbook (I -think- it's in Carroll & Ostlie) there were findings in the early 90s (I think... I'll try to look it up, but I figured I'd post this first so more people'll look around) that the discrepancies in Mercury's orbit could be mostly explained away due to non-sphericity of the Sun. When you take that into account, GR doesn't agree quite so well (unless someone's cleaned this up recently, which is possible. No one seems to care, actually).
That said, that wasn't what the poster was talking about - my guess is that the original poster was talking about stuff like continuous spacetime vs. quantum spacetime, but again, that's quantum effects.
I'm still of the opinion that the anomalous mass changes above a superconductor COULD be real (and could be quantum, keep in mind that superconductors produce weird quantum states of electrons) - after all, before people knew about the Casimir effect, no one would ever have thought to claim that sticking two pieces of metal very very close to each other would cause them to be strongly attracted to each other by anything except gravity.
That being said, I think it's probably experimental error, and I REALLY don't appreciate the way the original scientist handled it. The fact that he hid his experimental setup (or the complete details of it) out of fear of someone stealing his idea is such crap. Personally, if it had been me, I wouldn't've cared. If it does work, it's such a revolutionary breakthrough that I wouldn't've even cared about the economic benefits to me - the scientific benefits are too massive (besides, SOMEONE would've named the effect after me - or me and someone else - and that's all I really care about
The magnetic field of the Earth is due to a highly spinning core of liquid ferrous material (the "dynamo effect") - that is, sustained electric currents set up a magnetic field. Pole movement and pole reversal are two different things (and probably completely unrelated to each other). What causes pole reversal isn't very well understood - there're some good theories, but until we know more about the inner structure of the Earth, no good solid evidence (the dynamo effect, it should be noted, isn't well understood either! Mars wasn't supposed to have a magnetic field - no liquid core - and Mercury wasn't supposed to have one either - spinning too slow - but they both do, and Mercury's is quite noticeable) as far as I know.
:) The Earth's period is roughly 250,000 years, and the Sun's is 22, so as you can guess, we have a lot of data about the Sun's, and virtually none about the Earth's. :)
There isn't really a good qualitative description of what's going on, but basically, the core of the Earth is a spinning liquid ferrous object which is highly conducting, and sets up huge currents which produce huge magnetic fields. These magnetic fields can get "trapped" in a convective layer above the core (and become "earthspots", in analogy to "sunspots"). The sunspots act to cancel out the conductive field (the dipole portion) which weakens the field. These perturbations can cause the conductive region to 'flip' to the other polarity (there are two spots of stability, one with + polarity, one with - polarity: if you 'push' the magnetic field enough away from the original, you can shove it to the opposite polarity) which then begins to cause sunspots of its own, and the cycle continues.
The field recovers basically because there are two magnetically generating 'layers' - the core, and the convective region. They, together, cancel each other out, but because the core generates the convective region, the magnetic field is only zero so long as the polarities of the convective region and the core are opposite and equal (which doesn't last 'long' on a cycle scale).
This is all assuming everything works like the Sun does, which is assumed, but not entirely sure.
No, the magnetic field doesn't allow the VAST majority of charged particles inside the magnetosheath at all. If it goes away, huge numbers of particles now enter the Earth's magnetosheath (atmosphere, etc.).
So, to answer your statement, if the flux of particles that DON'T hit you is orders of magnitude higher (probably around 10^9 or higher) than the particles that DO hit you, would YOU want to flip those numbers around (so now the number of particles that DO hit you is 10^9 times higher than the number of particles that DON'T hit you)? Obviously not.
No, lasers are a coherent, highly focused BEAM of photons. An individual photon can't be focused or unfocused, coherent or incoherent - it's only in context of other photons that it matters.
And in actuality, you want "collimated", rather than "focused", I think - collimated meaning that over a long distance, the beam won't spread out much. I think they're used interchangably in optics, but focused in this sense could imply being from the eye's sense, which is a totally different thing (whether or not the beam actually focuses to a point on the retina or not).
Over a short distance, the difference between a laser and a normal beam of light is minimal, at least in the collimated sense: if a normal beam of light doesn't spread out more than the width of a molecule or so over the path length of the retina, it doesn't matter that a laser doesn't diffuse at all.
As for the coherency bit, I don't know - the molecules in the eye aren't sensitive to the phase of the photon, are they? If they were, then you should be able to see a difference between differently polarized light (which you can't, as far as I know).
I don't think this is going to cause any more problems than reading a monitor does (which it does, I agree) and possibly much less. I think monitors (especially LCDs) cause damage mainly from straining to focus text all the time. In cases where you aren't using this kind of a setup to project text, but images, I don't think it's going to be an issue.
The easiest way for them to tell if this is going to be damaging (which they did already) is to calculate out the light flux through the retina and compare it to safety standards. What they say is that it's far below it. Like I said, coherency (I don't think) is going to affect this, and collimation is already taken into account in the light flux (flux = energy/unit area, so higher collimation = lower area = higher flux).
(Note that I'm not sure if I spelled 'collimation' right through here, so someone correct me if I'm wrong).
I should also point out that bnetd doesn't even support WC3, so the whole WC3 argument is crap. Why are they going after bnetd? Even if all the illegal WC3 owners are playing on something else besides Battle.net (which is LEGAL - the illegal part was getting the copy illegally!) it's NOT bnetd.
Unfortunately, your analysis of the alternate situation that I presented is wrong under current law. So, they might be your personal beliefs, but they're (legally) wrong - the DMCA specifically says that alternate implementations do not have to use anti-piracy devices in one implementation. So, even if you do believe it's a circumvention device, it's not illegal.
.iso" - GO AFTER THOSE SITES. They're breaking the law, not bnetd. I can't understand why we're arguing this: it's clear cut that they're breaking the law, right? It's NOT clear cut that bnetd is breaking the law (because they -aren't-).
I can't honestly understand how you can think that this is a good idea - that provision was put in the DMCA just for that purpose.Otherwise Microsoft WOULD do what I just described (it'd make all copies of Linux illegal), not to mention dozens of other companies (AOL, any other company that's had a protocol reverse-engineered) would do the same thing. What you just described is a really really easy way to make competing products illegal - it would kill all of capitalism.
But I'm confused - You just said that even if Blizzard was not involved at all (no Blizzard games), then Blizzard could still shut bnetd down because they didn't publish or license the Battle.net protocol?
How the heck can a company shut down a server if all they've done is reverse engineer a protocol? Reverse engineering is LEGAL. Reality check here: first off, the Battle.net protocol isn't patented, it isn't copyrighted, and it doesn't matter in any case, as a clean-room reverse engineer of the protocol is fine, so long as you don't break any encryption on the data stream. Blizzard DOESN'T HAVE to 'publish' or license ANYTHING.
Yes, I am going to argue that copy protection is a good thing. It's critical. If you want to prevent people from pirating your work, prevent the damned thing from being copied illegally in the first place. Is it hard? Yes. Too bad. Suck it up and go hire intelligent people to come up with an intelligent solution.
You said it yourself - "I took a look and found four or five sites hosting the
If Blizzard is really concerned about WC3 betas being passed around, they should've 1) had tighter control on the release process (it's not bnetd's fault that Blizzard is incompetent), and 2) they should've ASKED bnetd to refrain from adding WC3 support. Your response is probably going to be "they didn't have to" - my response is "Yes, they did - because what bnetd is doing is LEGAL."
I find it curious that in response to my challenge to prove that the people who connect to bnetd servers have pirated copies, you didn't mention bnetd at all. How do you know they didn't find another way around the Battle.net CD authentication (because we know that Blizzard's control over it's own software is SO good)? All you've proved is that there are pirated WC3 copies out there. You haven't proved that they use bnetd exclusively, and that no one who uses bnetd has a legitimate copy.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. bnetd doesn't "facilitate piracy of Blizzard's product": it MAY "facilitate playing of pirated Blizzard products online", but NOT "facilitate piracy". What facilitated piracy was Blizzard's weak copy protection initially. Why do you continually keep ignoring that fact? The games are already pirated - the copy protection FAILED. If Blizzard wants to stop the piracy, STOP THE PIRATES. Stop the damned games from being pirated in the first place.
Once again, a road is NOT responsible for stolen cars driving on it! Period!
Answer me this:
Suppose Windows implemented a 'license checking' on its SMB servers. All computers which logged into the SMB server on Windows 2000 are queried to find out if they have a valid product installation key, with several blacked out, checked against a master list, etc. Any one that doesn't is barred from access.
Now, Linux has an SMB server. But Linux doesn't have to implement that 'license checking': could Linux be sued because they're 'facilitating Microsoft piracy'? NO. No way. No chance, no way, no how.
Do you argue with this? How is this any different than Blizzard's issue?
I'm trying to be clear here, but I keep repeating the same thing: Blizzard has a monopoly - they are the only company that makes Battle.net servers, that is, servers which communicate with other programs via the Battle.net protocol. You might say 'well, duh, they created the battle.net protocol, they don't have to let anyone else make one!' YES, they DO. That's the law. They don't have to HELP them, and they didn't, but they can't STOP them from doing it. That's what this case is going to say, flat out, no question.
And just because Battle.net is OK for you, doesn't mean it is for everyone else. Battle.net blows - it really does. It's idiotic that when I can connect to my friend down the hall in a dorm with an IP on a different portion of the network, but the outbound network is down, we can't play. (different Ethernet network = IPX doesn't cross through). I fought, scrambled, and clawed to try to get it to work (I was the ONLY ONE on that portion of the network!) but I just couldn't do it. bnetd would've completely made my life easier had I known about it back then.
Here's the next question: what about actual usage patterns? Can you prove that the people who connect to bnetd servers have pirated copies, and can't play without bnetd? You never will be able to, because it's complete crap. bnetd might make life easier for pirates, but so does Linux and ethernet bridging, and IPX bridging (which I couldn't get to work then, but know why now... grr). So have Blizzard go after Linux, too!
8 more days to find out if Blizzard is really stupid and wants to lose in court.
A monopoly is where you have the ONLY product in a certain market - in this case, Blizzard has a monopoly on Battle.net-type gaming.
:) bnetd created a product that worked like Battle.net, and Blizzard is trying to challenge them, because they WANT the 'Battle.net style gaming' monopoly.
Battle.net is not their product - Diablo II, etc, are. More importantly, though, Battle.net, as I'm speaking of it, is just a -type- of online gaming. You can't attack a work-alike of Battle.net anymore than Microsoft could challenge KOffice for being an office productivity suite. Blizzard created a market - a type of product - a Battle.net server. They have the only product for it.
The point is that you can't protect the monopoly that that product has - at least not legally.
They created a protocol. bnetd can reverse engineer it. The DMCA even allows them to. This is how capitalism works. Someone creates a market. Others enter it. Competition creates the best product. Blizzard's just trying to get around the fact that they have competition now, and they don't want to improve their product (Battle.net, that is).
9 more days to find out if Blizzard wants to lose in court or not.
As has been mentioned many times, the problem is that they are trying to protect something illegal (a Battle.net monopoly) by claiming it protects against piracy, when there are perfectly valid OTHER methods to protect against piracy, or to give up the Battle.net monopoly while still protecting against piracy.
The fundamental problem here is twofold: one, the basic problem is that Blizzard's CD-KEY authentication method is junk. Anyone can, and has, cracked it, and so therefore, invalid/duplicate CD-KEYs are rampant. This is the first of Blizzard's argument's problems: bnetd is not responsible for the poor technological safeguards inherent in Blizzard's software. If Blizzard is so worried about piracy, they should do something more aggressive to prevent the illegal copies from being out there. As many people have said, it is not a road's job to check if there are stolen cars driving on it.
The second problem is that Blizzard is trying to protect a Battle.net monopoly on piracy concerns, and protecting that monopoly that way is completely illegal. What if Microsoft were to come and say "Linux is illegal, because people can use Linux to change a Windows NT/2K/XP administrator password and hack in!" (which you can, and I have done, and I'm glad you can do, as I lost the admin password to an old machine)
I'm serious - this is exactly the same exact thing, and it sounds ludicrous when referred to in this way, and it sounds ludicrous in Blizzard's case. It's stupid. So, let me stress it again:
bnetd is not responsible to fix the stupidity of Blizzard's anti-piracy controls.
Just because Blizzard's anti-piracy controls suck doesn't mean bnetd can't exist, any more than Linux can't exist because Windows security sucks.
Blizzard should have to help to prove they actually care about just the anti-piracy concern, which is real and legal, and NOT the Battle.net monopoly, which is NOT legal.
Yes, Blizzard has a monopoly, and they're trying to use "anti-piracy concerns" to protect it. That's what this is all about, and that's why it's bull.
All reverse engineering is legal, within the definitions of reverse engineering. It basically comes down to "what is reverse engineering?" Reverse engineering is developing a work-alike simply by using the product without any knowledge of how it works inside, and without breaking any encryption between it and other devices. The DMCA just changed the definition of reverse engineering (very very weakly, IMHO, but every corporation seems to think it's a panacea), not eliminate it.
As for the problems of Slashdot, eh, whatever. Everyone who wants to gain karma eventually does, so it's not important if you lose a bit here and there.
You don't have to have the CD checks done on the bnetd source - they could've passed the network challenge along to Battle.net and done it that way.
Blizzard's argument is completely full of holes.
Blizzard, versus anyone intelligent:
"bnetd facilitates piracy!"
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't do CD checks to make sure all of the clients are valid."
"How is this illegal?"
"It circumvents our copy protection scheme!"
"No, it doesn't - the illegal CD key to install already did that."
"Oh. Well, CD keys are easy to crack, so we had to come up with something else!"
"So what? Sorry. Come up with better technology next time."
"But, but, they figured out how to get around the CD checks!"
"No, they didn't do them. They don't have to. The DMCA even SAYS they don't have to."
"But, how are we supposed to prevent piracy if everyone can play online?"
"Didn't Quake 3 work fine?"
"Yah, but we don't want anyone else to have a battle.net server, because we want to charge for it and offer nothing new!"
"Suck it up and deal. Competition, baby, life sucks for you. Offer your customers something worth paying money for."
Or what about ipx_bridge, or Ethernet forwarding? All of this is easily accomplished, but no challenge there. Why? Oh, because this is Battle.net?
The Battle.net implementation has a lot of nice extras, but that's like them suing bnetd and saying "Their product, completely independently and cleanroom developed, is too nice. We want you to protect OUR product, which is exactly the same, but ours is special because we wrote the other piece of software it works with." God. If that worked, Microsoft could block Linux SAMBA servers in favor of Windows servers.
I've never used Battle.net. I never will. It's crap, and it always has been crap. Why should I only be able to play when Blizzard's local portion of the Net is accessible to me and not flooded with traffic, rather than at any time? My network's still running. Their network is still running. Complete junk.
And don't forget that without bnetd, when Blizzard collapses sometime in the future (they all do - just give them time) all these games are useless.
If it's a cleanly reverse engineered protocol, and you didn't have to break any encryption (which they DIDN'T, so screw the DMCA) it's legal. Period. It's completely identical to any of the already-out there emulator cases.
:) ). Using an unlicensed, cleanroom developed server can never be illegal, or you're eliminating fair competition.
If your argument were true, then Microsoft could sue anyone who uses SAMBA, since all the Linux SAMBA servers aren't licensed by Microsoft, who developed SMB (probably
I'll say this once again, though: the DMCA doesn't apply. They did NOT break any encryption. The DMCA even specifically states that CD-KEY type authentication doesn't have to be incorporated into interoperating programs. So, without the 'DMCA crap', Blizzard's just yelling about an unlicensed server, which is definitely legal.
After all, Blizzard already REJECTED Bnetd's request to somehow incorporate the CD-KEY checks into bnetd: they can't claim that it's not possible to do it, as Q3 already does, so in this case, it's clear that Blizzard has no desire to protect its intellectual property from piracy, so claiming bnetd should be removed because of piracy concerns is crap.
Honestly, this case is going to be over very quickly in the courts: Blizzard really doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Why is it inaccurate? It's the same thing. Bnetd has no other function other than to play Blizzard games online, and Bleem has the sole function than to allow you to play Playstation games on a computer. Both these products are doing the same thing - allowing you to play the game on hardware other than the original manufacturer intended (in the bnetd case, on bnetd servers rather than Battle.net servers, and in Bleem's case, on a PC rather than on a Playstation), and this kind of 'fair use' is EXACTLY what the courts are trying to uphold.
It's EXACTLY the same. Software to facilitate the playing of a legally purchased game is not, can not, and never WILL be illegal. The fact that some people use it for an illegal purpose does not even come CLOSE to eliminating the fair use intent of the bnetd server, which is to play Blizzard games on hardware other than was originally intended.
Bleem is a piece of software which facilitates a legal program running by providing the interfaces that a proprietary piece of hardware uses. Bnetd is a piece of software which facilitates a legal program running by providing the interfaces that a proprietary network protocol uses (or, by extension, the proprietary "system" that Battle.net is).
Bnetd does not facilitate or get around the copy protection in any of Blizzard's games: that's done by the actual CD-KEY generators themselves, or the cracked warez ISO. All they're doing is emulating a piece of external hardware, which has been validated in courts many times over by now.
Blizzard doesn't have a chance. There's tons of legal precedent supporting bnetd, and none supporting Blizzard.