George Lucas' claim to be the first in this area is limited to the very qualifier-laden "the first major motion picture, shot on the new 1080i/24p Sony camera and projected digitally". Every single part of that statement has been done by other film-makers. HDTV shot films are all over the place. I attended an HDTV Film Fest just last week (most of the films sucked, but that's hardly the point).
Somebody came up with an analog video disk system in the late 40s/early 50s, but surprisingly it went nowhere.
John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor of a 25 line mechanical television system, made 78 RPM recordings of his video signal in the 1920s. But, due to difficulties in syncronizing the signal on the disk to the mechanical TV system, he was never able to play them back. An engineer recently obtained some of these audio tracks, and was able to process the audio into video, doing a huge amount of time base correction. Astonishing to see video from 1928. I wish I could find the link, but the link I had seen is now dead.
Well that too. But you see, these astronauts spent 6 months getting to Mars, and they did not even try to do some science from space before heading down? Smart people always plan. Even if they did not, Houston in Earth would. What was their excuse for heading down to surface that quickly?
They had just entered orbit, and were just getting ready to start the process then a massive solar flare blew a huge amount of their equipment and blinded their insturments. The original reviewer was way off the mark; this is one of the least scientifically offensive SF films in a while. Especially as compared to "Mission To Mars".
In Red Planet, we have a bunch of intelligent scientists sent to investigate a supposedly oxygen depleted planet. They do everything - discuss sex, talk about God, fly through space etc except try to accomplish their mission. At least, in Star Trek, Data would announce that the the neutronium detector was broken and no telemetry of the planetary composition was possible.
They did announce that the "science package" was destroyed. They did not intend a bouncing landing, that was the backup. Their original intention was a normal rocket-assisted landing, but they had to blow the landing package.
No, the main groaner for me was - why the hell woundn't they remove the military programming from the robot before they put it on the ship?
What other movie can you think of where the director actually bothered to demonstrate a gravity differential by having the intrepid heroes take a piss? The director got his reaction mass principles basically right, and best of all, the characters actually seemed to think in scientific terms.
I enjoyed the film, but that scene pissed me off. Given their situation, the fact that it looked like they were going die of thirst, they would have saved their piss. At the very least, their suits would have recycled it. into drinking water. When you're on a dry planet with no other source of water, you can't afford to be squeemish.
The character development was some what weak, but Carrie Ann Moss did a good job of showing us that she can be a bit more feminine than Trinity, and the shower scene was, as mentioned earlier, pretty much worth the price of admission.
Yeah, thin white tank-tops have been standard issue for females in space since Ellen Ripley - a trend I do not wish to discourage. Frankly NASA's TV broadcasts would become more popular if they'd adopt it.
As I said, though, that's a pretty small list compared to such rancid pieces of science-hating crap as Armaggeddon.
...or Mission To Mars, which had people audibly snickering when I saw it. At least, for the most part, these people behaved as if they possessed an IQ closer to a scientist than a Hollywood Screenwriter.
...what in the hell would hackers want with Microsoft's plans? Script kiddies, sure. Crackers, of course. But actual hackers? No self-respecting hacker would ant or need to crib from Microsoft's notes. That would be like copying off the paper of the class idiot.
My current favorite MP3 sharing program is Audiogalaxy. It has a security and anonymity oriented design, but on the discussion board people are boasting about how many files they are sharing and how many gigs they've shared so far. Contrary to the GNUtella experience, most of these folks seen to be taking advantage of anonymity to share more, rather than less. Of course that could change.
You could also support these artists by going to their live shows, or buying their merchandise, if they have any.
We do go to plenty of live shows, as we're lucky to be in Chicago. Everybody plays Chicago. But if I were some smaller place, I'd not have the same opportunity. Or if I was in LA or New York, where virtually every show is scalped. I buy T-Shirts, cassettes and CDs - if the artist is on a major label, they have to buy the CDs they are selling from the label at a small discount.
But the "live show" thing doesn't apply to every situation. My favorite artist, Kate Bush, has never toured the US - she's only done a single tour, back in 1979. CD purchases are the only way.
The other thing is that MP3s are not "CD quality". They can sound decent, but so many people are using crap encoders like the Musicmatch Jukebox that you just can't rely on them. What the labels should do to keep selling me stuff is to deliver a more compelling product. I want 5.1 channels!
BTW, I know that OGG/Vorbis is supposed to support multiple channels; does anyone have a prototype OGG file, player or encoder demoing greater than two channels?
i started buying cds about 7 years ago... and of the hundreds of cds that now have, i reckon that about 40 were purchased new. seriously.
the rest were purchased as used cds.
how come these anti-napster bastards don't lay off of the best thing since the web browser and start trying to attack the dealing of used cds. i would definitely like that... they'd lose so much faster. kind of like how garth brooks did in his similar campaign a while back.
Yeah. Every couple of years, whenever the record industry goes into a tiny slump, they search for something to blame their incompetence on. Garth was the puppet for the "used CD threat". Before that it was the "home taping is killing music" campaign (I still have CDs with their idiotic "cassette and crossbones" sticker.)
oh yeah, let me also mention that many of the cds at used cd places are promotional copies of albums that record industry types immediately sell to a used cd place.
Do you want to know the really offensive part of all this? Those were paid for out of the artist's share. Yep. Every single promotional CD came out of the artists share of the royalties before they get a single dollar.
so... whether just about everyone i knows gets their music on cd or from napster... the record companies aren't getting shit... yet they're still around.
Maybe it applies to you and your friends, but my wife and me are avid Napster (and Scour...and Audiogalaxy...) users. And music is the most important thing. We have ~1500 CDs, as many LPs and bushel baskets of cassettes. Napster is a way to discover and share music, but as the only way we have to support artists we like is to buy their CD, thats what we do. Personally, I wish that every time I read an article about Napster, they didn't have a quote from some 17 year old who brags about the fact that he's never bought a CD.
In my mind, this is one of the fundamental problems with the music industry. I mean, an artist who "only" sells 100,000 CDs can't break even, and depends on the profits of someone who sells 5,000,000 CDs. That's just a broken business model. The recording industry has gotten so used to mega-profitably multi-platinum national "acts," that they've pretty much given up on making money on music that might not play in every mall on Earth.
It's not so much that they've gotten used to it, as the fact that their promotion depend on it. If Mr. J. Random Record-Weasle discovers a dozen good solid bands that produce good music and sell a respectable number of albums, he'll eventually get fired. If, on the other hand, he has one huge-ass Brittney-like hit artist, no matter how dreadful their music, that sells millions of copies, he'll be a vice-president of the label in no time.
A long time ago, labels would have "prestige artists", people who wouldn't sell huge numbers of records, but were loved by critics. These artists would elevate the status of the label, and help attract artists to the label. Now, as there are essentually no labels left anymore, only various "brands" of a huge conglomorate, they don't care about prestige anymore. Only hits. Because only hits get you a corner office.
A few people I know are living a happy existance as a member of fairly average unsigned club bands bouncing around New York trying to get heard, and a few of them, after finally getting a demo-quality CD cut asked me to rip the tracks and share them over 'that Napster thing'. I'd like to do what I can, but because of the way Napster works, it's easy to find the song you know, by the band you know (oh, say, Metallica) but next to impossible to just share a song that no one has ever heard of and get any good hits. mp3.com is a site that does a much better job of this than Napster claims to do.
A lot of this discussion of Napster focuses on searching, but very little on it's best feature: it's instant messaging. Everyone I know who uses Napster regularly goes through several stages. First, they search for songs they know and like. Once they have their current collection duplicated, they search for stuff they remember, but never owned. Eventually thay have all the stuff they can think of. Then, they start looking for stuff that will appeal to their tastes. That's when they start noticing who they've downloaded stuff from, who has tastes similar to their own and message them. Eventually they develop friendships with people they trust with reliable taste.
Of course just having a song on Napster won't do anything for someone. But having a song in the collection of an active fan of a particular genre of music, someone happy to talk to people who share their tastes, is wonderfully effective.
I have a fairly small MP3 collection on Napster (560 files), but my wife has 8600 songs. She is constantly chatting with people all over the world, discovering artists that she could have otherwise never heard, and introducing people to new music constantly. I'll look over at her computer and she'll have four chat windows open, conversing with various folks. She's bought albums and CDs of artists she's discovered via Napster, and people are constantly telling her that they're on a web site ordering something that she's introduced them to, or heard on her Shoutcast stream.
Knee-jerk pro-napster moderators can mark this as flamebait if they really want to, but realize that unless Napster gets a decent overhaul allowing an mp3.com style system of self-advertising, their claims in the article are fairly self-serving in their defense against RIAA. However, the potential is there. I'd LOVE to see them actually do it.
Maybe it might make the job of marketing easier, but in this respect Napster is not broken. MP3.com works fine, and Napster works fine. Leave both to do the job each does well. The last thing Napster needs in a bunch of self-serving verbige accompanying each listing. There are file sharing programs that allow links and comments (see Audiogalaxy) but the "viral marketing" of enthusiastic fans chatting about their favorite music is (IMO) more effective in the long run.
But what I really wish I could see would be Asimov in a panel discussion with actual robotics scientists. THAT would be pretty major.
Sadly that's not going to happen, mainly because he died in 1992. But his stories and books probably did inspire a lot of the people working in robotics to enter the field in the first place.
With live drivers, isn't there a slight matter of 'how much do you want to win' versus, 'how close are you willing to go to the edge' that doesn't quite translate when machines are involved.
It's a measure of how far we've come that we can actually approach discussing the real-world application of Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics".
Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Clearly, this is a case of the First Law overriding the Third Law. The reasonable thing would be to not try to win the race. (OK, so sue me. I was a SF geek long before I ever touched a computer.)
It's not clear from the web site if this robotic car is to actually compete in real race conditions, or if they plan some farce where it's just doing speed laps solo? The first is a real challange, while the latter is a farce. It's a factory robot following a white line - only faster.
Create the reverse of what you want in ice, with drain paths designed in. Fill the ice mold with plastic resin and let harden. Heat up, ice melts, water pours out of drain holes. Whole new way of making things. Very cool indeed.
He's denying it, but he has not said that it has not been cracked. It was a very careful, political statment.
...it's simply impossible to say whether this is true or this is false.
What he didn't say is if the group that reportedly cracked it provided the "plaintext" of the watermark. If they managed to extract that, then all his bluster is about evaluating how well they removed the watermark and eliminated the damage the watermark caused.
...an evalution of whether the proposed technologies were affected in such a way as to avoid the intended effect, whether the results can be replicated, and whether in attacking the technology the music quality was degraded.
...as opposed to the degradation caused by a watermarking system designed to be detectable even after passing through an MPEG decoder -> encoder -> decoder cycle? After being recorded to analog cassette? After being compressed for FM transmission? That kind of degradation?
The Inside.com reporter did not understand enough about the technology to ask the right questions, and let him/her self be snowed.
In the tradition of geekdom and Usenet, I will point out a minor problem with your numbers:
(24 bits)*(96kHz)*(5 channels) = 11.5 Mbits / sec
1x DVD speed delivers only 10 Mbits / sec. Therefore, a 24 bit, 96kHz, 5.1 channel disc wouldn't be legal DVD-Video.
Yes, but using 2:1 or 2.5:1 lossless compression is so easy, that halves the data rate. I'm not sure what compression Meridian Lossless Compressions achieves, but I'm pretty sure it exceeds 2.5:1.
Sony will introduce one format, and Panasonic will introduce another. Sony has their "Memory Stick", so Panasonic introduced "SD Memory". DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.
They are not doing it to actually innovate, but to make money from licencing the technology. CD is an old enough technology that the patents are either due to expire, or have already expired. So they have to introduce some new patented technology so they can keep that revenue stream going. Remember that they have introduced several stupid formats (anyone remember the El-cassette? Philips' DCC?) for every one that succeeds.
If they goal was simply to make better audio available, they would be releasing regular DVDs without video tracks. 5.1 24-bit 96khz. No, instead they want you to buy a whole new machine that essentially does they same thing, except is broken by disabling the digital output! Seriously, both DVD-Audio and SuperAudio CD do not have any way to output anything other than multiple analog audio channels. Mega-stupid. Their fear of people copying their tracks has rendered both formats worthless. The worst thing to happen to Sony was when they purhased Columbia.
Sony has had SACD for quite a while now. I remember picking up some audiophile magazines over a year ago and reading about it. They've released a lot of Sony Classical stuff on it.
This is very old news indeed. An audio-video store I consult with has had demo units of both the Sony SuperAudio CD and DVD-Audio for months.
The ironic part of course is, the only people who listen closely enough to music to hear the difference between these enhanced formats and regular CDs are the same folks who will be able to hear the effect of the audio watermarking. The watermarking must be audible, as they wish it to be detectable even when all the inaudible portions of the music are thrown away by a process like MPEG encoding. They want it audible when the music is recorded to cassette. And, possibly most important from their perspective, they want it audible when the music is played though the compressor at the radio station - so they can automatically log all the plays and get their ASCAP and BMI money from the stations.
I've heard A/B comparisons at the Consumer Electronics Show and the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association show. They both do sound better than standard CDs - though not that much better than the standard-CD compatible HDCD process. And the most annoying part is that they are both entirely unecessary. A standard DVD can provide 5.1 channels of uncompressed audio at up to 24 bits at 96 khz. As a Dolby engineer explained to me, this is enough dynamic range to reproduce the sound of a jet engine starting in an totally silent enviorment.
Both SuperAudio CD and DVD Audio are basically a rip off. To date, the most impressive 5.1 channel demos I've heard, of better than CD quality systems have been DTS - which works with most existing DVD players and requires only an additional decoder. Virtually all Dolby Digital decoder equipped audio componets also feature DTS.
Ok dude. In this quote he is saying that he created the internet while he was in Congress.
When any politician claims to "create" anything, that means that they secured the funding for other people to do so. That's the only power a member of Congress has to actually produce anything. Al Gores father, Sen. Albert Gore, Sr. "created" the US Interstate highway system. He wasn't out there laying down rebar and pouring concrete, he convinced other members of Congress to support it, had bills written to be voted on, made deals to get votes, etc. In the same way, Al Gore, Jr. was talking about the importance of a "information superhighway" when the other members of Congress thought he was a space case to do so.
The truth is that we have an "information superhighway" now. And Gore does actually deserve more credit than any other member of Congress for helping to ensure that it happened. No, he didn't invent TCP/IP. But if Vint Cert, the man who did invent TCP/IP, says that Gore played a vital part in bringing it to the public, I'll go with that.
I think napster hit the nail on the head. It's easy to use and nothing to bother with, just plug it in and turn it on.
I and my wife spend a huge amount of time on Napster (read: every waking moment). I have to disagree with your assessment. It does not "just work". Half of the stuff I try to get fails, and half of the people who try to get stuff from me fail. I have an SDSL connection, and Napster's fragility doesn't seem to have much to do with my own net connection. It just breaks.
I've investigated a number of different free trading services, and the "tragedy of the commons" is at work in all of them. I can't recall the number of times I see someone getting something interesting from me, but when I try to check their list, they are sharing nothing (this continues to be true even after Napster recent fixes). Or those losers getting stuff at 98k, but are listed as "14.4". I've seen it in Scour Exchange, CuteMX, Hotline, etc.
I like the idea of something that will make it harder for leeches to just leech. Everyone has processing power, most people have bandwidth, and we need some form of agent system to find the more obscure stuff we're seeking. Gnutella is nothing but p0rn spam anymore...and wasn't scalable in the first place.
The story i remember hearing is that when the 747 was being first tested, the test pilot took it through a barrel-roll after the prototype had passed all the normal tests. Now that's something i'd love to see!
The Discovery Channel had a show about the 747. It really was amazing that it was essentially designed without computers. They tested the wing strength by hanging an insane amount of weight off of them, and the test pilot pulled the stick back so far on take-off that the tail scraped the runway.
Slashdot Mirror
George Lucas' claim to be the first in this area is limited to the very qualifier-laden "the first major motion picture, shot on the new 1080i/24p Sony camera and projected digitally". Every single part of that statement has been done by other film-makers. HDTV shot films are all over the place. I attended an HDTV Film Fest just last week (most of the films sucked, but that's hardly the point).
Not by a long shot. A major studio release, shot in HDTV, starring Kathleen Turner, Gabriel Byrne and Sting was done in...ready for this...1987.
Julia and Julia was shot using the Sony 1" 1030i format as confirmed by Leonard Maltin.
After posting this, I found a working link.
John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor of a 25 line mechanical television system, made 78 RPM recordings of his video signal in the 1920s. But, due to difficulties in syncronizing the signal on the disk to the mechanical TV system, he was never able to play them back. An engineer recently obtained some of these audio tracks, and was able to process the audio into video, doing a huge amount of time base correction. Astonishing to see video from 1928. I wish I could find the link, but the link I had seen is now dead.
They had just entered orbit, and were just getting ready to start the process then a massive solar flare blew a huge amount of their equipment and blinded their insturments. The original reviewer was way off the mark; this is one of the least scientifically offensive SF films in a while. Especially as compared to "Mission To Mars".
They did announce that the "science package" was destroyed. They did not intend a bouncing landing, that was the backup. Their original intention was a normal rocket-assisted landing, but they had to blow the landing package.
No, the main groaner for me was - why the hell woundn't they remove the military programming from the robot before they put it on the ship?
I enjoyed the film, but that scene pissed me off. Given their situation, the fact that it looked like they were going die of thirst, they would have saved their piss. At the very least, their suits would have recycled it. into drinking water. When you're on a dry planet with no other source of water, you can't afford to be squeemish.
Yeah, thin white tank-tops have been standard issue for females in space since Ellen Ripley - a trend I do not wish to discourage. Frankly NASA's TV broadcasts would become more popular if they'd adopt it.
...or Mission To Mars, which had people audibly snickering when I saw it. At least, for the most part, these people behaved as if they possessed an IQ closer to a scientist than a Hollywood Screenwriter.
...what in the hell would hackers want with Microsoft's plans? Script kiddies, sure. Crackers, of course. But actual hackers? No self-respecting hacker would ant or need to crib from Microsoft's notes. That would be like copying off the paper of the class idiot.
My current favorite MP3 sharing program is Audiogalaxy. It has a security and anonymity oriented design, but on the discussion board people are boasting about how many files they are sharing and how many gigs they've shared so far. Contrary to the GNUtella experience, most of these folks seen to be taking advantage of anonymity to share more, rather than less. Of course that could change.
We do go to plenty of live shows, as we're lucky to be in Chicago. Everybody plays Chicago. But if I were some smaller place, I'd not have the same opportunity. Or if I was in LA or New York, where virtually every show is scalped. I buy T-Shirts, cassettes and CDs - if the artist is on a major label, they have to buy the CDs they are selling from the label at a small discount.
But the "live show" thing doesn't apply to every situation. My favorite artist, Kate Bush, has never toured the US - she's only done a single tour, back in 1979. CD purchases are the only way.
The other thing is that MP3s are not "CD quality". They can sound decent, but so many people are using crap encoders like the Musicmatch Jukebox that you just can't rely on them. What the labels should do to keep selling me stuff is to deliver a more compelling product. I want 5.1 channels!
BTW, I know that OGG/Vorbis is supposed to support multiple channels; does anyone have a prototype OGG file, player or encoder demoing greater than two channels?
Yeah. Every couple of years, whenever the record industry goes into a tiny slump, they search for something to blame their incompetence on. Garth was the puppet for the "used CD threat". Before that it was the "home taping is killing music" campaign (I still have CDs with their idiotic "cassette and crossbones" sticker.)
Do you want to know the really offensive part of all this? Those were paid for out of the artist's share. Yep. Every single promotional CD came out of the artists share of the royalties before they get a single dollar.
Maybe it applies to you and your friends, but my wife and me are avid Napster (and Scour...and Audiogalaxy...) users. And music is the most important thing. We have ~1500 CDs, as many LPs and bushel baskets of cassettes. Napster is a way to discover and share music, but as the only way we have to support artists we like is to buy their CD, thats what we do. Personally, I wish that every time I read an article about Napster, they didn't have a quote from some 17 year old who brags about the fact that he's never bought a CD.
It's not so much that they've gotten used to it, as the fact that their promotion depend on it. If Mr. J. Random Record-Weasle discovers a dozen good solid bands that produce good music and sell a respectable number of albums, he'll eventually get fired. If, on the other hand, he has one huge-ass Brittney-like hit artist, no matter how dreadful their music, that sells millions of copies, he'll be a vice-president of the label in no time.
A long time ago, labels would have "prestige artists", people who wouldn't sell huge numbers of records, but were loved by critics. These artists would elevate the status of the label, and help attract artists to the label. Now, as there are essentually no labels left anymore, only various "brands" of a huge conglomorate, they don't care about prestige anymore. Only hits. Because only hits get you a corner office.
A lot of this discussion of Napster focuses on searching, but very little on it's best feature: it's instant messaging. Everyone I know who uses Napster regularly goes through several stages. First, they search for songs they know and like. Once they have their current collection duplicated, they search for stuff they remember, but never owned. Eventually thay have all the stuff they can think of. Then, they start looking for stuff that will appeal to their tastes. That's when they start noticing who they've downloaded stuff from, who has tastes similar to their own and message them. Eventually they develop friendships with people they trust with reliable taste.
Of course just having a song on Napster won't do anything for someone. But having a song in the collection of an active fan of a particular genre of music, someone happy to talk to people who share their tastes, is wonderfully effective.
I have a fairly small MP3 collection on Napster (560 files), but my wife has 8600 songs. She is constantly chatting with people all over the world, discovering artists that she could have otherwise never heard, and introducing people to new music constantly. I'll look over at her computer and she'll have four chat windows open, conversing with various folks. She's bought albums and CDs of artists she's discovered via Napster, and people are constantly telling her that they're on a web site ordering something that she's introduced them to, or heard on her Shoutcast stream.
Maybe it might make the job of marketing easier, but in this respect Napster is not broken. MP3.com works fine, and Napster works fine. Leave both to do the job each does well. The last thing Napster needs in a bunch of self-serving verbige accompanying each listing. There are file sharing programs that allow links and comments (see Audiogalaxy) but the "viral marketing" of enthusiastic fans chatting about their favorite music is (IMO) more effective in the long run.
Sadly that's not going to happen, mainly because he died in 1992. But his stories and books probably did inspire a lot of the people working in robotics to enter the field in the first place.
It's a measure of how far we've come that we can actually approach discussing the real-world application of Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics".
Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"
Clearly, this is a case of the First Law overriding the Third Law. The reasonable thing would be to not try to win the race. (OK, so sue me. I was a SF geek long before I ever touched a computer.)
It's not clear from the web site if this robotic car is to actually compete in real race conditions, or if they plan some farce where it's just doing speed laps solo? The first is a real challange, while the latter is a farce. It's a factory robot following a white line - only faster.
Create the reverse of what you want in ice, with drain paths designed in. Fill the ice mold with plastic resin and let harden. Heat up, ice melts, water pours out of drain holes. Whole new way of making things. Very cool indeed.
...and you think you've got uptime!
Seriously, it's a testament to the engineering skill of the people who built, launched and operated this particular piece of machinery. Amazing work!
He's denying it, but he has not said that it has not been cracked. It was a very careful, political statment.
What he didn't say is if the group that reportedly cracked it provided the "plaintext" of the watermark. If they managed to extract that, then all his bluster is about evaluating how well they removed the watermark and eliminated the damage the watermark caused.
...as opposed to the degradation caused by a watermarking system designed to be detectable even after passing through an MPEG decoder -> encoder -> decoder cycle? After being recorded to analog cassette? After being compressed for FM transmission? That kind of degradation?
The Inside.com reporter did not understand enough about the technology to ask the right questions, and let him/her self be snowed.
Yes, but using 2:1 or 2.5:1 lossless compression is so easy, that halves the data rate. I'm not sure what compression Meridian Lossless Compressions achieves, but I'm pretty sure it exceeds 2.5:1.
Sony will introduce one format, and Panasonic will introduce another. Sony has their "Memory Stick", so Panasonic introduced "SD Memory". DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.
They are not doing it to actually innovate, but to make money from licencing the technology. CD is an old enough technology that the patents are either due to expire, or have already expired. So they have to introduce some new patented technology so they can keep that revenue stream going. Remember that they have introduced several stupid formats (anyone remember the El-cassette? Philips' DCC?) for every one that succeeds.
If they goal was simply to make better audio available, they would be releasing regular DVDs without video tracks. 5.1 24-bit 96khz. No, instead they want you to buy a whole new machine that essentially does they same thing, except is broken by disabling the digital output! Seriously, both DVD-Audio and SuperAudio CD do not have any way to output anything other than multiple analog audio channels. Mega-stupid. Their fear of people copying their tracks has rendered both formats worthless. The worst thing to happen to Sony was when they purhased Columbia.
This is very old news indeed. An audio-video store I consult with has had demo units of both the Sony SuperAudio CD and DVD-Audio for months.
The ironic part of course is, the only people who listen closely enough to music to hear the difference between these enhanced formats and regular CDs are the same folks who will be able to hear the effect of the audio watermarking. The watermarking must be audible, as they wish it to be detectable even when all the inaudible portions of the music are thrown away by a process like MPEG encoding. They want it audible when the music is recorded to cassette. And, possibly most important from their perspective, they want it audible when the music is played though the compressor at the radio station - so they can automatically log all the plays and get their ASCAP and BMI money from the stations.
I've heard A/B comparisons at the Consumer Electronics Show and the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association show. They both do sound better than standard CDs - though not that much better than the standard-CD compatible HDCD process. And the most annoying part is that they are both entirely unecessary. A standard DVD can provide 5.1 channels of uncompressed audio at up to 24 bits at 96 khz. As a Dolby engineer explained to me, this is enough dynamic range to reproduce the sound of a jet engine starting in an totally silent enviorment.
Both SuperAudio CD and DVD Audio are basically a rip off. To date, the most impressive 5.1 channel demos I've heard, of better than CD quality systems have been DTS - which works with most existing DVD players and requires only an additional decoder. Virtually all Dolby Digital decoder equipped audio componets also feature DTS.
When any politician claims to "create" anything, that means that they secured the funding for other people to do so. That's the only power a member of Congress has to actually produce anything. Al Gores father, Sen. Albert Gore, Sr. "created" the US Interstate highway system. He wasn't out there laying down rebar and pouring concrete, he convinced other members of Congress to support it, had bills written to be voted on, made deals to get votes, etc. In the same way, Al Gore, Jr. was talking about the importance of a "information superhighway" when the other members of Congress thought he was a space case to do so.
The truth is that we have an "information superhighway" now. And Gore does actually deserve more credit than any other member of Congress for helping to ensure that it happened. No, he didn't invent TCP/IP. But if Vint Cert, the man who did invent TCP/IP, says that Gore played a vital part in bringing it to the public, I'll go with that.
I and my wife spend a huge amount of time on Napster (read: every waking moment). I have to disagree with your assessment. It does not "just work". Half of the stuff I try to get fails, and half of the people who try to get stuff from me fail. I have an SDSL connection, and Napster's fragility doesn't seem to have much to do with my own net connection. It just breaks.
I've investigated a number of different free trading services, and the "tragedy of the commons" is at work in all of them. I can't recall the number of times I see someone getting something interesting from me, but when I try to check their list, they are sharing nothing (this continues to be true even after Napster recent fixes). Or those losers getting stuff at 98k, but are listed as "14.4". I've seen it in Scour Exchange, CuteMX, Hotline, etc.
I like the idea of something that will make it harder for leeches to just leech. Everyone has processing power, most people have bandwidth, and we need some form of agent system to find the more obscure stuff we're seeking. Gnutella is nothing but p0rn spam anymore...and wasn't scalable in the first place.
Give me Mojo! Yeah baby!
The Discovery Channel had a show about the 747. It really was amazing that it was essentially designed without computers. They tested the wing strength by hanging an insane amount of weight off of them, and the test pilot pulled the stick back so far on take-off that the tail scraped the runway.