Precisely. Some kinds of source material--concert hall presence during quiet passages, challenging transients in the sound of a harpsichord--get trashed in lossy recording. A lot of it depends on whether you know what real musical instruments in an acoustic environment sound like. If you've had that experience then you will be less tolerant of even high bit-rate lossy compression. You'll probably be somewhat critical of the whole recording process, but that's the price we must pay just to hear a lot of music. Use FLAC to keep that price to a minimum.
I use Rasberry Pis running Logitech Media Server (free as in gratis, don't know if libre), and squeezelite (libre) player software. The d/a and amps for the Pis come from IQaudio. There is at least one other supplier of comparable-spec Pi audio hardware, but I haven't tried them. Use the d/a for line out to existing audio systems; use the d/a-amp combo to drive fairly substantial speakers. I use the various computers and smartphones around the house to control it. They can also run the squeezelite player software. Synchronizing works well with squeezelite software players on the pis and linux machines. It doesn't work well with Java-based players.
I found this approach when I was looking to back up my slimserver hardware after slimserver was bought by Logitech and then dropped, although they continue to maintain the server software now called Logitech Media Server.
CDs are stored in lossless format (flac) on the server (which could also host a player, but I don't.)
You could use your iPods as controllers and players (see the app store). What I don't know is how well synchronizing works for iPod players--haven't tried it.
Multics suffered due to its scale--ultimately time-sharing on minicomputers became much more cost-effective compared to Multics. The cost of the hardware it ran on limited its market. Its niche disappeared. OSes like Unix could run on small computers in small companies and big computers (or lots of small computers) in big companies.
It also suffered slow development due to tackling new hardware, a new (and complex, bloated) programming language, PL/I, and several new architectural concepts in one project. That it didn't out-and-out collapse with this combination is a miracle, in itself.
The 360 wasn't particularly slow--the time-sharing operating system TSS/360 was initially a mess (so was OS/360--at first--see Brooks,"The Mythical Man Month") and I don't recall that they improved the TSS to where it was usable. There was a project in (as I recall) the IBM lab in Cambridge MA that did an interesting and credible virtual machine OS for the 360 (I vaguely recall it was for a middling level 360) that was developed because the "official" time-sharing system TSS/360 was such a mess.
I hum or whistle something complicated requiring full attention (the one I usually use is a Bach piece), in other words, something a little too complicated for getting stuck in my head. This usually unsticks whatever was going around in my head without replacing it.
You may not be allowed to profit from your own criminal behavior, but the 'criminal' is the person making the copy of the copyrighted material (once upon a time this was a tort, i.e. a wrong against someone that one could be sued for, not a crime against the state or general public; that's what these guys are always trying to do: turn torts into crimes so they can sic the government on you), not the specialized search engine or directory of links.
The Usenet-indexers are profiting in the same way that Truman Capote profited when he wrote a book about a notorious murder.
Even more so because AT&T decided to market licenses for Unix instead of just distributing, pissing off Stallman, who went and started the Free Software Movement in response.
I served on a jury in which DNA evidence was presented, along with the expert witness' estimation of probability that two random people would have the same number of matching points of comparison (DNA is only matched at a relatively small number of points in the strand).
In this case, however, there were many people present at the discovery of the object from which the DNA was taken for analysis. As it happens, several of these people were relatives (brother, mother) of the person the prosecution were trying to persuade us was the person that possessed (in legal terms) the object.
The question that I kept hoping the defense attorney would ask was "what are the probabilities of an erroneous match if the people are relatives, not just two random people off the street"? Unfortunately, he didn't.
As it happened, there were so many other peculiarities in this case as well as some pretty bizarre testimony from prosecution witnesses that we voted to acquit without making much of the DNA evidence.
I share your natural skepticism of public officials' pronouncements, but there is another factor: it is in the data centers' own best interest to analyze their energy use, since it's their biggest cost by far. Since there's a relatively rapid turnover in gear (compared to, say, power plants), the data centers are going to be very interested in energy use best practices and best gear even without a government mandate.
And so are the manufacturers of said gear--they also have a fairly short product cycle. They might be a little cranky if the government pushes them, but their customers are already pushing them by looking at instructions/watt as well as instructions/second.
When you say "private property of all kinds", you have already drunk the kool-aid. Copyright law is about the rights to copy and limitations thereof. Patents are the granting of a government monopoly on an idea in exchange for the rapid dissemination of that idea. Violations in their original forms were torts, i.e. wrongs for which you could seek damages. Organizations like the RIAA seek laws (like the DMCA) to criminalize torts and get the government to enforce them--shifting cost to the government; to slow down any technological development that might make it harder for them to enforce their customary rights; and to reinterpret those customary rights in an effort to expand their customary rights into anything remotely resembling a grey area.
So there are grey areas about the limitations of one's right to copy something. The courts have made some rulings that clarified some of the grey areas. Given time, they will further clarify grey areas. The RIAA is just trying to push the grey areas in the other direction, using the courts and the legislature. Push back! Pushing back doesn't mean that you don't respect "private property of all kinds". It means that you disagree with the RIAA about their interpretation of just how limited your rights are to make a copy of something when it isn't for commercial exploitation. "Property" isn't the only right in question here. The very insubstantiability of what it is that is being copied is the reason that there is a whole other body of law governing it and when and how you can copy it. They want to change the law (if they can't get everyone to lapse into treating it like real estate and automobiles just by reframing the debate) in one direction only--to limit as much as possible your rights to move the bits around (whether it's just for your personal enjoyment of a cd that you bought and possess matters not to them). If you like the law just the way it is, push back.
What exactly does IBM hope to accomplish with this? I can't think of any motivation besides milking Amazon for every penny.
Besides the previous posters' observations that this is probably an invitation to the dance of cross-licensing, isn't it IBM's business to milk everyone for every penny possible? The business of business is business...
erm, how about: both the app and your docs are available to you wherever you can find a computer with net access? a (very) simple collaboration capability, but better than emailing docs back and forth?
I was in agreement with Vidala's response until I got to:
I think the real problem with Carroll's argument is that he bases it not on the real world application and adoption of open source software development by both big business, governments and individuals, but instead on the philosophy of the Free Software Foundation. In essence he ignores the fact that many in the open source community are not in total agreement with the outlook of the FSF, he assumes that the motivations of all open source developers are equal, and he ignores the business models that have been built around open source software.
I thought Vidala was saying that programmers won't starve because they'll make money from support and customization (or the companies that pay them will).
For as long as I've been hearing Stallman promote free (as in speech) software, he has also suggested that the way programmers will make a living off free (as in speech) software is to charge for support and customization. If Carroll is off-base (he is) it's because he's neither paying attention to the real world nor to the FSF.
Instead he's listening to the latest FUD-meme that those who are really threatened by free software are banging on in the hope that free software will be actively discriminated against as un-American or anti-Capitalist or simply hopelessly, naively, idealistic.
The point that Beck makes in the book is not that planning is bad, but that there is little point in planning beyond what your customer knows he wants, especially since customers tend to change their mind. Avoid flexibility overhead where the need for that overhead is entirely speculative. He is opposed to putting in flexibility that may never be used.
Extreme programming is not, however, undisciplined. It requires a commitment on the part of the customer to say what is really important to him, and constant feedback within the development group on task estimation. It is far from 'code then analyze/fix'.
Beck advocates a project management and programming style that can react to changes in requirements quickly: very short task schedules, pair programming, refactoring to keep code clean and to the point, constant testing so that one may make changes with confidence that any errors introduced will immediately be revealed...
I've tried some of this on small personal projects (except the pair part, which is a big except) mostly to become comfortable with the constant testing part and disciplined refactoring, and it is refreshing to not try to anticipate every future eventuality, but instead to try to stay 'to the point' and keep the code clean and simple. In that respect, it is not unlike hacking; the difference is the emphasis on constant detailed testing. This gives you the confidence to rearrange existing code whenever the structure gets shaky. When it does you often find that you can quickly rearrange things in a better way (and it is mostly rearrangement, not new code), test it, and go on your merry way.
In addition to Beck's book, I recommend Fowler's book: "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code". Taken one at a time, the techniques in this book seem straightforward, even trivial, but as a group go a long way to keeping code in a maintainable, extendible state.
I think that Microsoft has essentially decided that their main thrust in the distributed web application space (which is how they now view where Java is competing with them) is going to be SOAP -- XML-based RPC, that is.
In other words, Microsoft couldn't corrupt the platform-independent application space, so they'll ignore it and instead try to dominate (by being there first, for now; later they'll no doubt try the embrace-and-extend ploy) internet distributed applications by setting and backing some new standards. Visual Studio 7 will do the whole visual builder/wizard/etc. tools for building a distributed app using SOAP as the glue.
Microsoft has another variation on the embrace-and-extend strategy going on in the XML and SOAP space: propose a standard, implement the proposal and deliver it in products BEFORE W3C and/or IETF is finished with it, and then take their time bringing their software up to the standard so as to sow confusion as to just what is the standard and whether to go with the real standard or Microsoft's pre-standard proposal version or what. The goal, of course, is to make the Microsoft version the de facto standard at the same time they can claim to support open standards. Nifty, huh?
One thing I haven't seen comment on is the importance of its being a passive system. Radar attracts radar-seeking missiles and generally alerts targets to their being tracked. This system could guide interception without attracting attention to itself.
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unless it is Classical or Jazz.
Precisely. Some kinds of source material--concert hall presence during quiet passages, challenging transients in the sound of a harpsichord--get trashed in lossy recording. A lot of it depends on whether you know what real musical instruments in an acoustic environment sound like. If you've had that experience then you will be less tolerant of even high bit-rate lossy compression. You'll probably be somewhat critical of the whole recording process, but that's the price we must pay just to hear a lot of music. Use FLAC to keep that price to a minimum.
I found this approach when I was looking to back up my slimserver hardware after slimserver was bought by Logitech and then dropped, although they continue to maintain the server software now called Logitech Media Server.
CDs are stored in lossless format (flac) on the server (which could also host a player, but I don't.)
You could use your iPods as controllers and players (see the app store). What I don't know is how well synchronizing works for iPod players--haven't tried it.
Multics suffered due to its scale--ultimately time-sharing on minicomputers became much more cost-effective compared to Multics. The cost of the hardware it ran on limited its market. Its niche disappeared. OSes like Unix could run on small computers in small companies and big computers (or lots of small computers) in big companies. It also suffered slow development due to tackling new hardware, a new (and complex, bloated) programming language, PL/I, and several new architectural concepts in one project. That it didn't out-and-out collapse with this combination is a miracle, in itself.
The 360 wasn't particularly slow--the time-sharing operating system TSS/360 was initially a mess (so was OS/360--at first--see Brooks,"The Mythical Man Month") and I don't recall that they improved the TSS to where it was usable. There was a project in (as I recall) the IBM lab in Cambridge MA that did an interesting and credible virtual machine OS for the 360 (I vaguely recall it was for a middling level 360) that was developed because the "official" time-sharing system TSS/360 was such a mess.
I hum or whistle something complicated requiring full attention (the one I usually use is a Bach piece), in other words, something a little too complicated for getting stuck in my head. This usually unsticks whatever was going around in my head without replacing it.
You may not be allowed to profit from your own criminal behavior, but the 'criminal' is the person making the copy of the copyrighted material (once upon a time this was a tort, i.e. a wrong against someone that one could be sued for, not a crime against the state or general public; that's what these guys are always trying to do: turn torts into crimes so they can sic the government on you), not the specialized search engine or directory of links. The Usenet-indexers are profiting in the same way that Truman Capote profited when he wrote a book about a notorious murder.
Even more so because AT&T decided to market licenses for Unix instead of just distributing, pissing off Stallman, who went and started the Free Software Movement in response.
Yeah, but in a year or two whatever you get him will be obsolete...
In this case, however, there were many people present at the discovery of the object from which the DNA was taken for analysis. As it happens, several of these people were relatives (brother, mother) of the person the prosecution were trying to persuade us was the person that possessed (in legal terms) the object.
The question that I kept hoping the defense attorney would ask was "what are the probabilities of an erroneous match if the people are relatives, not just two random people off the street"? Unfortunately, he didn't.
As it happened, there were so many other peculiarities in this case as well as some pretty bizarre testimony from prosecution witnesses that we voted to acquit without making much of the DNA evidence.
I share your natural skepticism of public officials' pronouncements, but there is another factor: it is in the data centers' own best interest to analyze their energy use, since it's their biggest cost by far. Since there's a relatively rapid turnover in gear (compared to, say, power plants), the data centers are going to be very interested in energy use best practices and best gear even without a government mandate. And so are the manufacturers of said gear--they also have a fairly short product cycle. They might be a little cranky if the government pushes them, but their customers are already pushing them by looking at instructions/watt as well as instructions/second.
So there are grey areas about the limitations of one's right to copy something. The courts have made some rulings that clarified some of the grey areas. Given time, they will further clarify grey areas. The RIAA is just trying to push the grey areas in the other direction, using the courts and the legislature. Push back! Pushing back doesn't mean that you don't respect "private property of all kinds". It means that you disagree with the RIAA about their interpretation of just how limited your rights are to make a copy of something when it isn't for commercial exploitation. "Property" isn't the only right in question here. The very insubstantiability of what it is that is being copied is the reason that there is a whole other body of law governing it and when and how you can copy it. They want to change the law (if they can't get everyone to lapse into treating it like real estate and automobiles just by reframing the debate) in one direction only--to limit as much as possible your rights to move the bits around (whether it's just for your personal enjoyment of a cd that you bought and possess matters not to them). If you like the law just the way it is, push back.
What exactly does IBM hope to accomplish with this? I can't think of any motivation besides milking Amazon for every penny.
Besides the previous posters' observations that this is probably an invitation to the dance of cross-licensing, isn't it IBM's business to milk everyone for every penny possible? The business of business is business...
For example, did they control for gender or other sources of salary bias? Did they control for socializing but drinking seltzer?
It is like PM only earlier.
erm, how about: both the app and your docs are available to you wherever you can find a computer with net access? a (very) simple collaboration capability, but better than emailing docs back and forth?
I think the real problem with Carroll's argument is that he bases it not on the real world application and adoption of open source software development by both big business, governments and individuals, but instead on the philosophy of the Free Software Foundation. In essence he ignores the fact that many in the open source community are not in total agreement with the outlook of the FSF, he assumes that the motivations of all open source developers are equal, and he ignores the business models that have been built around open source software.
I thought Vidala was saying that programmers won't starve because they'll make money from support and customization (or the companies that pay them will) .
For as long as I've been hearing Stallman promote free (as in speech) software, he has also suggested that the way programmers will make a living off free (as in speech) software is to charge for support and customization. If Carroll is off-base (he is) it's because he's neither paying attention to the real world nor to the FSF.
Instead he's listening to the latest FUD-meme that those who are really threatened by free software are banging on in the hope that free software will be actively discriminated against as un-American or anti-Capitalist or simply hopelessly, naively, idealistic.
The point that Beck makes in the book is not that planning is bad, but that there is little point in planning beyond what your customer knows he wants, especially since customers tend to change their mind. Avoid flexibility overhead where the need for that overhead is entirely speculative. He is opposed to putting in flexibility that may never be used.
Extreme programming is not, however, undisciplined. It requires a commitment on the part of the customer to say what is really important to him, and constant feedback within the development group on task estimation. It is far from 'code then analyze/fix'.
Beck advocates a project management and programming style that can react to changes in requirements quickly: very short task schedules, pair programming, refactoring to keep code clean and to the point, constant testing so that one may make changes with confidence that any errors introduced will immediately be revealed...
I've tried some of this on small personal projects (except the pair part, which is a big except) mostly to become comfortable with the constant testing part and disciplined refactoring, and it is refreshing to not try to anticipate every future eventuality, but instead to try to stay 'to the point' and keep the code clean and simple. In that respect, it is not unlike hacking; the difference is the emphasis on constant detailed testing. This gives you the confidence to rearrange existing code whenever the structure gets shaky. When it does you often find that you can quickly rearrange things in a better way (and it is mostly rearrangement, not new code), test it, and go on your merry way.
In addition to Beck's book, I recommend Fowler's book: "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code". Taken one at a time, the techniques in this book seem straightforward, even trivial, but as a group go a long way to keeping code in a maintainable, extendible state.
I think that Microsoft has essentially decided that their main thrust in the distributed web application space (which is how they now view where Java is competing with them) is going to be SOAP -- XML-based RPC, that is.
In other words, Microsoft couldn't corrupt the platform-independent application space, so they'll ignore it and instead try to dominate (by being there first, for now; later they'll no doubt try the embrace-and-extend ploy) internet distributed applications by setting and backing some new standards. Visual Studio 7 will do the whole visual builder/wizard/etc. tools for building a distributed app using SOAP as the glue.
Microsoft has another variation on the embrace-and-extend strategy going on in the XML and SOAP space: propose a standard, implement the proposal and deliver it in products BEFORE W3C and/or IETF is finished with it, and then take their time bringing their software up to the standard so as to sow confusion as to just what is the standard and whether to go with the real standard or Microsoft's pre-standard proposal version or what. The goal, of course, is to make the Microsoft version the de facto standard at the same time they can claim to support open standards. Nifty, huh?
One thing I haven't seen comment on is the importance of its being a passive system. Radar attracts radar-seeking missiles and generally alerts targets to their being tracked. This system could guide interception without attracting attention to itself.