And, by the way, EverQuest can simply open a tiny office in Austria and you'd have to kiss your server goodbye - the newly opened office can legally sue you over copyright infrigerment.
9. You may not use any third party software to modify the Software to change Game play. You may not use our intellectual property rights contained in the Game or the Software to create or provide any other means through which the Game may be played by others, as through server emulators
Which means, if you you didn't agree to this clause (which, I belive only went in with the latest patch), Evergquest are implicity saying that you have the right to make a server emulator. Else why explicetly ban it now?
There is also the DMCA act - I think that a server counts as 'interoperability', don't you?
And lets not forget the strong legal standing affored to EULA - ie bog all [0].
To me, if you can build a playstation emulator, why can you do the same for a server? Your emulating very similar things (a required interface for the software you purchased to work).
Course, whether or not the courst agree with common sense remains to be seen.
I'm sure detection is advanced. I said detect and drive.
It't the drive part that's causing the problems.
For example, my suondcard is not supported by OSS. It is supported by ALSA. Took me about 6 hours from 'Damn, my card isn't in this list' to geting it to bleep. And, whilst not a kernel hacker, I'm not exactly a newbie.
If it had been a network card, sure, no hassle. And it can run my graphics card easy, in a crappy mode (640 x 480 x 256). This, I belive, represents Linux's strengths - it's background is UNIX, it's nativly a server style OS.
To have your own OS on a disc causes problems with updates. If you want to patch it, but it boots from, a CD, how do you do it?
Hardware support. The only way that that can work is if either hardware is known and fixed. Like a console. Or if it can autodetect and drve any current hardware. Linux can't do the latter (yet), particularly when it comes to sound and video cards. Not only that, there's the patching problem, on how do you issue updates for new hardware. Customoeters are not going to be happy if they upgrade to the latest and greatest hardwar, and then they find that thioer olders games don't work.
I will admit that these problems are not insumountable, but I don't believe that the games designers want to spend the time and effort solving them. And, as they would involve utilisng hard drive space, for the patching info, why bother with the separate OS?
Indeed, I can see a case for a designed for games, ground up, OS. Designed to be thin, nativly graphical, that lets games really bang on the hardware. Linux is a bit fat for gaming, really. (Do games need inetd [0]? Didn't think so)
I know several TLDs such as.uk shorten.com.uk to.co.uk. Is there some reason for this?
Yes.
Janet.
The Joint Academic Network was the Uk's equivelent of ARPAnet.
It used UK-AC-MAN rather than man.ac.uk. But the endiennes got changed, whilst the second level domains remains the same. notice that JANET implicetly had a national TLD as mandatory.
I could have a URL that had certain content, and, indeed these exist. However, the case against 2600 was not over the existance of these places, but the fact that 2600 was publicising a list of them.
By the analogy with the telephone service [0] 2600 are prevented from publising the phone number of the code.
Just because something is sold does not mean it is 'property'.
Consider a software liscence. You 'buy' that. Do you own it? [0]
A car registration plate can [1] be sold, and bought. You definitly don't own those, they are 'owned' by the govenment, but that doesn't stop you paying extra fo a 'personalised' plate.
You can purchase a liscence to use a patent. The patent does not become your propery.
The term property is used here in a fairly strict legal sense, not in an everyday sense. It's as per the law of 'conversion', whatever that may be.
[0] I'll leave the whole 'is it legal question to the side here'
Obsolesence is when an item designed to work with other components cannont work with the lasest 'other components'. By analogy [0], consider a screwdriver, with a pentagram head. When it was made, pentagram head screws were common. not they are not. This screwdriver is obsolete. Is it defective?
No, it can still perfrom the purpose for which it was designed, and, presumably, purchesed for.
Obsolesence and defective are orthogonal concepts.
Under your statutory rights in the UK, _all_ goods sold must be of 'merchandisable quality' - that is, unless you specifically state it is sold 'as seen', it must work. The time frame for returning a defective product is three years. So, unless it fails due to reasonable wear and tear in the first three years, it gets repaired.
You already have this law for cars, so what not make computer sellers as honest as used car salemen?
So why, exactly, is this a problem for a country like the US?
The PS2 system is tricky because of two main systems.
Firstly, it's designed with high bandwidth, and low cache. This is very different to the standard 'low' bandwidth and high cache. Whether better or not remains to be seen, but the fact is that by being very different, it is causeing problems for the developers
The other point is that some of it's much vaunted power comes from the vector registers. And (speaking from experinece) these require careful coding to get the best out of (such as doing the sum on 32 memory locations rather than just the required 5 can be faster). As far as I know, the only people who really have experience with this sort of thing are the supercomputer programmers.
Um, how many people write computer games and code on supercomputers too? Not darned many. Thus there is a lack of experienced deveolpers for the platform.
The N-cube specs suggest, to me, a more conventional design, although I would hardly call that page detailed or technical.
A more conventional design, means more deveolper experience, which, as you point out, means better games.
Time will tell, but I am wondering about the disk drive used in the cube. Anyone familer with it?
Don't knock Fortran, there's life in teh old girl yet.
For whatever reason (partly historical, partly due to language sturcture), all the supercomputer optimising compilers that I've got access to use Fortran [0].
When I say optimising, I mean using vector registars, and al the other funcky gubbins of those babys.
Fortran also has the complex data type, something sorely lacking in C, from the point of view of mathematical work.
In fact, I am now in the situation of learning Fortran, after having learned programming in C, purelt because numerical and scientific computing is easier in Fortran.
And for the supercomputers too:)
[0] Maybe I just don't get acess to good C compilers for the Cray. I dunno.
Um, maybe it's just me, but I thought that Shannon's law had been prove n within the bounds of mathematics.
Secondly, the article gives _no_ information that Shannons law has been broken.
In fact, it hasn't. All Shannons law says is the relationship between the signal to noise ration, and the size of the channel, to how much data you can put through it.
In this case, Shannons law allows this to happen. But requires powers of something like (quick mental sums) 280dB.
Naturally occuring uranium is slightly enriched, to 3% U235, for use in reactors.
And, actually, there are multiple ways of seperating isotopes. Centrifuging uranium hexaflouride is just the cheapest and easist way, requireing ten passes to get weapons grade. Previously, magnetic deflection of ions (like in a mass spectrometer) was used.
Ok, to return to my point, I should have said the most difficult part in getting fuel grade uranium to explode, is the construction.
The reason weapons grade uranim is used is because it's a lot easier to make explode, in a controlled manner. And it gets you big bangs.
Fuel grade uranium will not get you a much bigger bang than, say, 13 kiltons, assuming your careful about how you build it.
That is a mere fire cracker compared with todays 100 megaton bombs. At one 100000th of that power, it's the same size as the Hiroshima bomb.
If you were ever going to build one from fuel grade uranium, it would be a terror weapon. Even if all it did was blow up a block, that wuold do.
[Aside: Fuel grade uraium can be made into a bomb: the chain reaction co-efficent of a nuclear reactor is 1 (by definition). This is controled by control rods, that allow the maximum chain reaction co-efficent to be reduced (but not enchanced). Thus the natural peak chain reaction co-efficent of the fuel must exceed 1.]
Alternativly, you could build an FBR to produce plutonium, but that's getting off the point.
You can make a nuclear bomb just nicely out of uranium. Sure, it takes more work, and it's possibly not as big or as good, but hey, it still goes bang.
However, given that you need licenses to import uranium, you need to shape it in an inert atmosphere (argon), you need licenses to work with boron [0] too, and lets not even consider tritium. Krypton switches arn't exactly common, and high explosive is not trivial to obtain either.
The most expensive part of a bomb is not the knowledge, and not the raw material either. It's the construction.
I hardly think that anyone is going to use this to build a bomb.
[0] Boron is needed to control the reaction. It's also probably (as boron nitrate, the comonly used ceramic form)the single best ceramic. It's used in bulletproof ceramic vest, it's got a tensile strength and elestic modulus somewhere in the 'oh, my god!' region, and requires to be dome formed at 2000 centigrade.
Mr. Johansen is a very talented young man and a member of a very well known hacker group that viewed "cracking" of CSS as an end it [sic] itself and a means of demonstrating his talent and who fully expected that the use of DeCSS would not be confined to Linux machines.
No footnotes with refferences. No source indicated.
How in the hell did the judge get this conclusion?
He makes a statement upon the mental state of an individual, without any justification. Therefore either he is telepathic, or is talking out of an incorrect orifice.
To begin with, may I just point out that most of what has been discussed here about what is, and isn't possable, is actually about what can and can't be manufactured economically.
For example, Ferroelectric DRAM. Basically, a DRAM is a switching capacitor, so stick a ferroelectric in there, and the size of the cappacitor can be made smaller for the same charge storage. The best material to use for this is probably BST (Barium Strontium Titanate). This is difficult to deposit in a standard fab.
It is easy (scientifically) to do. You just etch a flat surface on silicon, and grow a layer by MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy). Or deposit a layer by MOCVD (Metal Oxide Chemical Vapour Depositon). Problem is, to get these to work, on silicon, is expensive. It can still be done.
I spend my time surrouned by cutting edge scientific research. Every day I see things that most people would consider impossable, or miraculus. For example, I have seen pure [0] aluminium, as strong as steel. That's not specific (per weight) strength. That's per voulme strength.
Frequency tuneable solid state lasers. Sure. Colour tunable over half the visable spectrum, by rotating a part. Smaller than a drinks can.
A slight digression there, but the point is that to see what the future might hold, is not too tricky for the next the next 3 or so years. After that, you need to look at the skunkworks projects. And then in to the labs of the academics. Because that's where the future can be glimpsed.
There is no need for defensive patents. There is prior art - the main algorithms were publish over 30 years ago.
That's one helluva prior art.
Besides, when the aim is for free and patent free codec, patents are silly.
It's all patent free, deliberatly so.
Besides, what (exactly) can cause you to _need_ a patent for defensive purposes? A Patent gives a limited monopoly, to allow you to stop others from using your invention. how would they assist in this case?
Technology is not mainstream unless there is some push factor.
Current pull factors ("It's cool!", "It's smaller!", "It sounds better!") wil not make it mainstream.
This is the same as PNG.
The tools to produce ogg files exist now, as do the players. Yes, same as PNG.
The difference is that most GIF's downloaded are from small sites [0]. There are no gallerys of GIF's for download, that are well used.
Most (legal) MP3's are downloaded from large(ish) sites. There are large 'gallerys', that are well used (cf mp3.com).
It is those sites, along with streaming audio content (internet 'radio'), that are made to pay the Fraunhofer group (via patent). They are the ones to benefit from the change. And it's a big benefit. (Files are generally smaller for same quality in Ogg - that saves money too, in terms of bandwidth).
There is a plugin for WinAmp, and Sonique. Apparently the Sonique plugin will be included in next main distribution too. Hopefully next verion of WinAmp too.
[0] Erm, prehaps 'site with a small number of gif's' would be more accurate.
If I remeber correctly, the MP4 you reffer to is a closed, commercial format, which uses an integrated player [0]. Hmm, space efficent, and cross platform.
It also has the problem that you have to pay to use it. That's a problem.
MP3 is also pay to encode.
VQF, sure it might sound good, but try doing a seek on a VQF file - Mute and fast forward. Also closed, so you can't fix that. Any player that needs all my CPU time to jump to the middle of a track doesn't get my vote.
The push for OGG will probably not come from home encoding, or hardware. It's most likely to come from web music sites, and internet 'radio'.
With this sort of push, it doesn't actually need to be better than MP3 [1], just cheaper [2].
[0] Did initially. May have changed by now. MP4 audio format not compatible with Macs.
This is the approach that was take for a University hall of residence.
Firstly, squid was used to do some IP address filtering. The suspect domains were obtained by greping the.com,.uk,.nl [0] and possable a few other zone files against a list of 'bad' words, that imply pornographic content. The IP addresses were then redirected to a local page that said the page possably had illegal content. Any question, email the admin for a review.
The next thing was to put posters up, explaining what was done, stressing the blocked sites were selected by an automatic method, and that porn (and others - warez etc) was banned.
The next step was to ensure that all the monitors could be seen anyone (ie no terms tucked in a corner).
After that, anyone caught, the site was baned, and so were they [1].
The bandwidth each user utilised was also examined (automatically). If it was found that a person downloaded more than a limit [2] of data from one site, in one day, the site was flagged for checking to the admin. This was desiged to catch warez sites, and similar. IIRC, the only think it caught was uk.kernel.org:).
This approach yeilded one complaint about an incorrectly blocked site (It was along the lines of fuckedcompany, although I forget the exact one, and one person caught for looking at porn.
The reason for the porn ban is that porn is just about the only clearly recognisable objectionable item, at a distance (ie for someone at the next term). There were other banned catagories, but they were unlikely to cause problems. Porn is also a bandwith killer.
Today, we'd probably be looking at throttling Napster, or possably blocking it [3].
Whilst this is possably slightly more than you want to block, it's justifyable on most fronts.
[0] In the UK, the netherlands is infamous (rightly or wrongly) as a source of, uh, XXX porn.
[1] This, of course requires user authentication, which I assume you are doing.
[2] Something insane, like 400 Mb (we were on the back of 155Mb/s ATM link).
[3] The Net was explicitly for 'academic purposes only'. One guy we found downloading porn claimed it was for his course:). We asked for a signed note from his proffessor, explaing why, and authorising that use. This, surprisingly, never appeared.
The way I understand it (and I'll try and get confirmation of this as soon as I can), is that it is illegal to make a _profit_ from anything Nazi related, or to promote the Nazi party.
Thus, educational uses are ok, but selling anthing (which implicitly makes a profit) is off. Charging to see an item would also be illegal, but display of such things in a museum is allowed [0].
I will post a reply to this, as soon as I can get some confirmation (may be a few days).
[0] Although entrance fees for such a museum would be suspect.
This is actually a good sign. The judge has asked for more technical details. Hopefuly it can be pointed out to him the problems.
1) French law makes it illegal to promote items relating to the Nazi party [0], making it illegal for Yahoo to auction nazi items in France.
2) American consitution makes it illegal for Yahoo to be forced to stop (under free speech).
3) Yahoo.fr has pulled the specified aution pages, but french people can still see them at yahoo.com.
So the judge is probably [1] weighing up whether it is a greater wrong to allow some french people to seem these items, or to attempt to force Yahoo to block the french.
One interesting point is that I don't belive [2] that the judge can specify technical details of implementation, just "pull it" or "you can leave it". If he decided to pull it, then Yahoo either have to block *.fr, or a list of all french IP addresses.
The formar is possable, but not complete, the latter is complete, but probably not possable. And let's not start on proxies.
All in all, I think it's good that the judge reailiese that there are technical issues, and is looking into them.
[0] Probably a little excessive, but that's beyond the scope here.
-- Begin included email--
From: XXXXXXXX@intel.com
To: XXXXX@intel.com
Subject: New marketing plan
Ok guys, looks like we've been getting some criticism about the new 1.4 GHz chips. Here's the new marketing stratagy for those.
"The new 1.4 GHz Pentium fron Intel is a milestone in computer chip technology. Beign so revolutionary, it requires a case and motherboard pgrade, to a new style called MacroATX. An example of this case can bee seen here. Note the stylish design, and improved form factor. Cooling is handled by the ultradisctrete cooling network in the case specifications.
- Improved performance [0]
- Fewer devices required [1]
- Next generation technology [2]
- Complient with all currnet standards [3]
There. That aught to do it.
[0] Of our shares.
[1] The 1.4 GHz pentium will replace the toaster, waffle iron, and desktop fan. All in one box. Value, huh?
[2] Yep, definitly technology dating from 1980, the generation of the NeXT.
[3] All the buzzwords: Client-server, Internet, Intranet,.NET, Linux, Windows, HTTP, HTML, WAP, HTCPCP [4], mobile office etc.
[4] See RFC 2324.
So, that's tipping at a rate of 100 dollars at week. That's actually more than I had expected. Call me cynical, but this sort thing is only really going to happen when the artists says "Here, try this. If you like it...." and _then_ it might get more attention.
Pay Lars has collected 500 dollars, and it's been going a lot longer than five weeks.
Slashdot Mirror
And, by the way, EverQuest can simply open a tiny office in Austria and you'd have to kiss your server goodbye - the newly opened office can legally sue you over copyright infrigerment.
Nope sorry, try again.
If this was about copyright, the Berne Convention applies.
Given that reverse engineering is specifically allowed in most of Europe (I'm Scottish, can't comment directly on Austria), I doubt it applies.
Anyway, for copyright to apply, they's have to have copyied part of Everquests work. If they haven't done that, copyright does not apply.
Breach of contract is about all it could be, and if you think that the EULA is going to be held up as suffcient for that, I'll be very surprised.
From thier EULA
9. You may not use any third party software to modify the Software to change Game play. You may not use our intellectual property rights contained in the Game or the Software to create or provide any other means through which the Game may be played by others, as through server emulators
Which means, if you you didn't agree to this clause (which, I belive only went in with the latest patch), Evergquest are implicity saying that you have the right to make a server emulator. Else why explicetly ban it now?
There is also the DMCA act - I think that a server counts as 'interoperability', don't you?
And lets not forget the strong legal standing affored to EULA - ie bog all [0].
To me, if you can build a playstation emulator, why can you do the same for a server? Your emulating very similar things (a required interface for the software you purchased to work).
Course, whether or not the courst agree with common sense remains to be seen.
[0] UCITA may have changed that
I'm sure detection is advanced. I said detect and drive.
It't the drive part that's causing the problems.
For example, my suondcard is not supported by OSS. It is supported by ALSA. Took me about 6 hours from 'Damn, my card isn't in this list' to geting it to bleep. And, whilst not a kernel hacker, I'm not exactly a newbie.
If it had been a network card, sure, no hassle. And it can run my graphics card easy, in a crappy mode (640 x 480 x 256). This, I belive, represents Linux's strengths - it's background is UNIX, it's nativly a server style OS.
... hardware is not something you can download the source code for to get it for free.
I think you'll find you can. Sort of.
If you happen to have a fab. But that's a minor implementation detail.
Um, well, to start with....
To have your own OS on a disc causes problems with updates. If you want to patch it, but it boots from, a CD, how do you do it?
Hardware support. The only way that that can work is if either hardware is known and fixed. Like a console. Or if it can autodetect and drve any current hardware. Linux can't do the latter (yet), particularly when it comes to sound and video cards. Not only that, there's the patching problem, on how do you issue updates for new hardware. Customoeters are not going to be happy if they upgrade to the latest and greatest hardwar, and then they find that thioer olders games don't work.
I will admit that these problems are not insumountable, but I don't believe that the games designers want to spend the time and effort solving them. And, as they would involve utilisng hard drive space, for the patching info, why bother with the separate OS?
Indeed, I can see a case for a designed for games, ground up, OS. Designed to be thin, nativly graphical, that lets games really bang on the hardware. Linux is a bit fat for gaming, really. (Do games need inetd [0]? Didn't think so)
I know several TLDs such as .uk shorten .com.uk to .co.uk. Is there some reason for this?
.com thingy.
Yes.
Janet.
The Joint Academic Network was the Uk's equivelent of ARPAnet.
It used UK-AC-MAN rather than man.ac.uk. But the endiennes got changed, whilst the second level domains remains the same. notice that JANET implicetly had a national TLD as mandatory.
Would have saved the whole
Linking is distinct from a URL
I could have a URL that had certain content, and, indeed these exist. However, the case against 2600 was not over the existance of these places, but the fact that 2600 was publicising a list of them.
By the analogy with the telephone service [0] 2600 are prevented from publising the phone number of the code.
Very different case.
[0] Which, in my opinion, is actually a good one
Just because something is sold does not mean it is 'property'.
Consider a software liscence. You 'buy' that. Do you own it? [0]
A car registration plate can [1] be sold, and bought. You definitly don't own those, they are 'owned' by the govenment, but that doesn't stop you paying extra fo a 'personalised' plate.
You can purchase a liscence to use a patent. The patent does not become your propery.
The term property is used here in a fairly strict legal sense, not in an everyday sense. It's as per the law of 'conversion', whatever that may be.
[0] I'll leave the whole 'is it legal question to the side here'
[1] At leat, you can in the UK
Obsolesence is when an item designed to work with other components cannont work with the lasest 'other components'. By analogy [0], consider a screwdriver, with a pentagram head. When it was made, pentagram head screws were common. not they are not. This screwdriver is obsolete. Is it defective?
No, it can still perfrom the purpose for which it was designed, and, presumably, purchesed for.
Obsolesence and defective are orthogonal concepts.
Under your statutory rights in the UK, _all_ goods sold must be of 'merchandisable quality' - that is, unless you specifically state it is sold 'as seen', it must work. The time frame for returning a defective product is three years. So, unless it fails due to reasonable wear and tear in the first three years, it gets repaired.
You already have this law for cars, so what not make computer sellers as honest as used car salemen?
So why, exactly, is this a problem for a country like the US?
The PS2 system is tricky because of two main systems.
Firstly, it's designed with high bandwidth, and low cache. This is very different to the standard 'low' bandwidth and high cache. Whether better or not remains to be seen, but the fact is that by being very different, it is causeing problems for the developers
The other point is that some of it's much vaunted power comes from the vector registers. And (speaking from experinece) these require careful coding to get the best out of (such as doing the sum on 32 memory locations rather than just the required 5 can be faster). As far as I know, the only people who really have experience with this sort of thing are the supercomputer programmers.
Um, how many people write computer games and code on supercomputers too? Not darned many. Thus there is a lack of experienced deveolpers for the platform.
The N-cube specs suggest, to me, a more conventional design, although I would hardly call that page detailed or technical.
A more conventional design, means more deveolper experience, which, as you point out, means better games.
Time will tell, but I am wondering about the disk drive used in the cube. Anyone familer with it?
Don't knock Fortran, there's life in teh old girl yet.
:)
For whatever reason (partly historical, partly due to language sturcture), all the supercomputer optimising compilers that I've got access to use Fortran [0].
When I say optimising, I mean using vector registars, and al the other funcky gubbins of those babys.
Fortran also has the complex data type, something sorely lacking in C, from the point of view of mathematical work.
In fact, I am now in the situation of learning Fortran, after having learned programming in C, purelt because numerical and scientific computing is easier in Fortran.
And for the supercomputers too
[0] Maybe I just don't get acess to good C compilers for the Cray. I dunno.
Um, maybe it's just me, but I thought that Shannon's law had been prove n within the bounds of mathematics.
Secondly, the article gives _no_ information that Shannons law has been broken.
In fact, it hasn't. All Shannons law says is the relationship between the signal to noise ration, and the size of the channel, to how much data you can put through it.
In this case, Shannons law allows this to happen. But requires powers of something like (quick mental sums) 280dB.
That's, like, stupidly high.
Uh, no.
Weapons grade uranium is 90% U235. The rest is U238 (plus some other junk).
The uranium used in reactors is also U235.
Naturally occuring uraniu m is 0.72% U235.
Naturally occuring uranium is slightly enriched, to 3% U235, for use in reactors.
And, actually, there are multiple ways of seperating isotopes. Centrifuging uranium hexaflouride is just the cheapest and easist way, requireing ten passes to get weapons grade. Previously, magnetic deflection of ions (like in a mass spectrometer) was used.
Ok, to return to my point, I should have said the most difficult part in getting fuel grade uranium to explode, is the construction.
The reason weapons grade uranim is used is because it's a lot easier to make explode, in a controlled manner. And it gets you big bangs.
Fuel grade uranium will not get you a much bigger bang than, say, 13 kiltons, assuming your careful about how you build it.
That is a mere fire cracker compared with todays 100 megaton bombs. At one 100000th of that power, it's the same size as the Hiroshima bomb.
If you were ever going to build one from fuel grade uranium, it would be a terror weapon. Even if all it did was blow up a block, that wuold do.
[Aside: Fuel grade uraium can be made into a bomb: the chain reaction co-efficent of a nuclear reactor is 1 (by definition). This is controled by control rods, that allow the maximum chain reaction co-efficent to be reduced (but not enchanced). Thus the natural peak chain reaction co-efficent of the fuel must exceed 1.]
Alternativly, you could build an FBR to produce plutonium, but that's getting off the point.
You can make a nuclear bomb just nicely out of uranium. Sure, it takes more work, and it's possibly not as big or as good, but hey, it still goes bang.
However, given that you need licenses to import uranium, you need to shape it in an inert atmosphere (argon), you need licenses to work with boron [0] too, and lets not even consider tritium. Krypton switches arn't exactly common, and high explosive is not trivial to obtain either.
The most expensive part of a bomb is not the knowledge, and not the raw material either. It's the construction.
I hardly think that anyone is going to use this to build a bomb.
[0] Boron is needed to control the reaction. It's also probably (as boron nitrate, the comonly used ceramic form)the single best ceramic. It's used in bulletproof ceramic vest, it's got a tensile strength and elestic modulus somewhere in the 'oh, my god!' region, and requires to be dome formed at 2000 centigrade.
No footnotes with refferences. No source indicated.
How in the hell did the judge get this conclusion?
He makes a statement upon the mental state of an individual, without any justification. Therefore either he is telepathic, or is talking out of an incorrect orifice.
...are very difficult to make accuratly.
To begin with, may I just point out that most of what has been discussed here about what is, and isn't possable, is actually about what can and can't be manufactured economically.
For example, Ferroelectric DRAM. Basically, a DRAM is a switching capacitor, so stick a ferroelectric in there, and the size of the cappacitor can be made smaller for the same charge storage. The best material to use for this is probably BST (Barium Strontium Titanate). This is difficult to deposit in a standard fab.
It is easy (scientifically) to do. You just etch a flat surface on silicon, and grow a layer by MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy). Or deposit a layer by MOCVD (Metal Oxide Chemical Vapour Depositon). Problem is, to get these to work, on silicon, is expensive. It can still be done.
I spend my time surrouned by cutting edge scientific research. Every day I see things that most people would consider impossable, or miraculus. For example, I have seen pure [0] aluminium, as strong as steel. That's not specific (per weight) strength. That's per voulme strength.
Frequency tuneable solid state lasers. Sure. Colour tunable over half the visable spectrum, by rotating a part. Smaller than a drinks can.
A slight digression there, but the point is that to see what the future might hold, is not too tricky for the next the next 3 or so years. After that, you need to look at the skunkworks projects. And then in to the labs of the academics. Because that's where the future can be glimpsed.
[0] A4N standard.
There is no need for defensive patents. There is prior art - the main algorithms were publish over 30 years ago.
That's one helluva prior art.
Besides, when the aim is for free and patent free codec, patents are silly.
It's all patent free, deliberatly so.
Besides, what (exactly) can cause you to _need_ a patent for defensive purposes? A Patent gives a limited monopoly, to allow you to stop others from using your invention. how would they assist in this case?
Technology is not mainstream unless there is some push factor.
Current pull factors ("It's cool!", "It's smaller!", "It sounds better!") wil not make it mainstream.
This is the same as PNG.
The tools to produce ogg files exist now, as do the players. Yes, same as PNG.
The difference is that most GIF's downloaded are from small sites [0]. There are no gallerys of GIF's for download, that are well used.
Most (legal) MP3's are downloaded from large(ish) sites. There are large 'gallerys', that are well used (cf mp3.com).
It is those sites, along with streaming audio content (internet 'radio'), that are made to pay the Fraunhofer group (via patent). They are the ones to benefit from the change. And it's a big benefit. (Files are generally smaller for same quality in Ogg - that saves money too, in terms of bandwidth).
There is a plugin for WinAmp, and Sonique. Apparently the Sonique plugin will be included in next main distribution too. Hopefully next verion of WinAmp too.
[0] Erm, prehaps 'site with a small number of gif's' would be more accurate.
MP4?
If I remeber correctly, the MP4 you reffer to is a closed, commercial format, which uses an integrated player [0]. Hmm, space efficent, and cross platform.
It also has the problem that you have to pay to use it. That's a problem.
MP3 is also pay to encode.
VQF, sure it might sound good, but try doing a seek on a VQF file - Mute and fast forward. Also closed, so you can't fix that. Any player that needs all my CPU time to jump to the middle of a track doesn't get my vote.
The push for OGG will probably not come from home encoding, or hardware. It's most likely to come from web music sites, and internet 'radio'.
With this sort of push, it doesn't actually need to be better than MP3 [1], just cheaper [2].
[0] Did initially. May have changed by now.
MP4 audio format not compatible with Macs.
[1] Although I think it is.
[2] Free to use and smaller files
This is the approach that was take for a University hall of residence.
Firstly, squid was used to do some IP address filtering. The suspect domains were obtained by greping the
The next thing was to put posters up, explaining what was done, stressing the blocked sites were selected by an automatic method, and that porn (and others - warez etc) was banned.
The next step was to ensure that all the monitors could be seen anyone (ie no terms tucked in a corner).
After that, anyone caught, the site was baned, and so were they [1].
The bandwidth each user utilised was also examined (automatically). If it was found that a person downloaded more than a limit [2] of data from one site, in one day, the site was flagged for checking to the admin. This was desiged to catch warez sites, and similar. IIRC, the only think it caught was uk.kernel.org
This approach yeilded one complaint about an incorrectly blocked site (It was along the lines of fuckedcompany, although I forget the exact one, and one person caught for looking at porn.
The reason for the porn ban is that porn is just about the only clearly recognisable objectionable item, at a distance (ie for someone at the next term). There were other banned catagories, but they were unlikely to cause problems. Porn is also a bandwith killer.
Today, we'd probably be looking at throttling Napster, or possably blocking it [3].
Whilst this is possably slightly more than you want to block, it's justifyable on most fronts.
[0] In the UK, the netherlands is infamous (rightly or wrongly) as a source of, uh, XXX porn.
[1] This, of course requires user authentication, which I assume you are doing.
[2] Something insane, like 400 Mb (we were on the back of 155Mb/s ATM link).
[3] The Net was explicitly for 'academic purposes only'. One guy we found downloading porn claimed it was for his course
The way I understand it (and I'll try and get confirmation of this as soon as I can), is that it is illegal to make a _profit_ from anything Nazi related, or to promote the Nazi party.
Thus, educational uses are ok, but selling anthing (which implicitly makes a profit) is off. Charging to see an item would also be illegal, but display of such things in a museum is allowed [0].
I will post a reply to this, as soon as I can get some confirmation (may be a few days).
[0] Although entrance fees for such a museum would be suspect.
This is actually a good sign. The judge has asked for more technical details. Hopefuly it can be pointed out to him the problems.
1) French law makes it illegal to promote items relating to the Nazi party [0], making it illegal for Yahoo to auction nazi items in France.
2) American consitution makes it illegal for Yahoo to be forced to stop (under free speech).
3) Yahoo.fr has pulled the specified aution pages, but french people can still see them at yahoo.com.
So the judge is probably [1] weighing up whether it is a greater wrong to allow some french people to seem these items, or to attempt to force Yahoo to block the french.
One interesting point is that I don't belive [2] that the judge can specify technical details of implementation, just "pull it" or "you can leave it". If he decided to pull it, then Yahoo either have to block *.fr, or a list of all french IP addresses.
The formar is possable, but not complete, the latter is complete, but probably not possable. And let's not start on proxies.
All in all, I think it's good that the judge reailiese that there are technical issues, and is looking into them.
[0] Probably a little excessive, but that's beyond the scope here.
[1] And this is only my opinion
[2] IANAL
-- Begin included email--
From: XXXXXXXX@intel.com
To: XXXXX@intel.com
Subject: New marketing plan
Ok guys, looks like we've been getting some criticism about the new 1.4 GHz chips. Here's the new marketing stratagy for those.
"The new 1.4 GHz Pentium fron Intel is a milestone in computer chip technology. Beign so revolutionary, it requires a case and motherboard pgrade, to a new style called MacroATX. An example of this case can bee seen here. Note the stylish design, and improved form factor. Cooling is handled by the ultradisctrete cooling network in the case specifications.
- Improved performance [0]
- Fewer devices required [1]
- Next generation technology [2]
- Complient with all currnet standards [3]
There. That aught to do it.
[0] Of our shares.
[1] The 1.4 GHz pentium will replace the toaster, waffle iron, and desktop fan. All in one box. Value, huh?
[2] Yep, definitly technology dating from 1980, the generation of the NeXT.
[3] All the buzzwords: Client-server, Internet, Intranet,
[4] See RFC 2324.
-- End included email --
PS: Spoof.
2 weeks ago, 60 bucks.
So, that's tipping at a rate of 100 dollars at week. That's actually more than I had expected. Call me cynical, but this sort thing is only really going to happen when the artists says "Here, try this. If you like it...." and _then_ it might get more attention.
Pay Lars has collected 500 dollars, and it's been going a lot longer than five weeks.
This could be somthing worth watching.