To reproduce a signal whose dynamic range is 90 dB, the smallest excursions have to be roughly 1/30000 of the maximum amplitude.
90dB? You're talking CD-quality there. I seriously doubt any vinyl record has 90dB of dynamic range. (That is, any 33.3 rpm record; a 78 might be able to do it, if anyone were still making 78s today.)
Guess again -- 1200 dpi is roughly 21 microns, off by a factor of 100.
Then that should still leave enough resolution to capture about (90 - 40 =) 50dB of range (that is, assuming this isn't all a big hoax, but the scanner resolution isn't the reason).
Who still uses glass? I think all the commericial stuff out there is already plastic.
Nope. Plastic is only used for cheapo short-run stuff, like the TOSLink cables used for digital links in home audio equipment. Anything that requires long runs, high bandwidth, or both is still glass. (And it doesn't break every "10 ms", it's more flexible and durable than you think. As long as you don't try to bend it 90 or step on it or anything, it's sturdy enough.)
50 years after Einstein, and people still don't realise that the electrons in a piece of copper wire travel at the speed of light?
Maybe that's because the electrons in a copper wire don't move anywhere near the speed of light - it's the wavefront produced by the electrons' motion that travels at or near c.
But he said he was in a "small western nation". Austrialia is so far east it's approaching the International Date Line. It also is over 7.6 million square kilometers, the sixth largest country in the world; I wouldn't call it small.
Depends on one's interpretation of "small" and "western". Being a 'Murrican, I interpret everything in America-centric terms. Australia is west of the United States (you fly west to get there, right?), and has less land area and one-tenth the population of the United States. Therefore, it is a "small western nation". [lame emoticon here]
I'm not disparaging pot, but using pot regularly is no different than being an alcoholic: It's much more sad than it is cool.
Oh, really? How regularly does one have to use pot for it to be "sad"? Once a week? Once a month? Hell, if you started at, say, 16, you could have used pot once a year and still get up over 15 uses before deciding to apply for the FBI.
isn't buying of government part of capitalism? capitalism is power embodied in things. so if I have a lot of things
Hardly. Capitalism is a free marketplace, the rights of whose members (to life, liberty, and property) are protected by laws which apply equally to everyone.
In any case, even if it were "appropriate" for companies to try and buy the government (which it isn't), it's still incumbent upon the government not to allow this to happen.
Isn't capitalism supposed to solve problems like this? Shouldn't companies who offer non-DRM hardware find favour with the consumer, and thus prosper over crippled-ware sellers?
Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work -- except that the government will instead allow itself to be bought yet again. Now why is that considered the fault of capitalism, rather than of the government??
You spout your Randroid nonsense as if it were gospel.
You spout your "Randroid nonsense" nonsense as if it were gospel. If I were this "Randroid" of which you speak, would I be saying that big business should not be protected against free software, you 'tard?
Funny, I thought that government (established by the people) was the means by which people promoted their welfare.
Which "people"? And at the expense of which other "people"? The government has no business promoting the welfare of some people at the expense of others. This just as true for the consumer as it is for the producer, the rich as well as the poor, the privileged as well as the disadvantaged. The government's job is to promote the welfare of all people, and the services which government can provide that fit that criterion are fairly limited: defense, police, courts, etc. One could conceivably argue for roads, schools, rails, etc. But there's no way it means "protecting big business against competition from free software".
Whatever. It uses a frikkin keyboard -- how innovative is that?
Pretty "frikkin" fantastic if you ask me - since I got my Tréo, I would never want to go back to something without a keyboard! You'd prefer - what? Lame Graffiti? Pneumatic tongue controls? The keyboard has been with us for so long for a reason.
What's worse, it uses a QWERTY keyboard. C'mon!
So instead you'd prefer that millions of people raised on QWERTY be expected to learn something else? Yeah, that's a surefire recipe for success...
Software has to be developed, but what economic incentive is there to develop free software?
As I see it, for the purpose of answering this question there are two kinds of software:
"Commodity" software, that everyone needs and uses, and which does not in itself confer any competitive advantage; e.g. OSes, "Office" type packages, compilers (for the host platform), etc.
"Custom" or "Bespoke" software, that is developed by a company as part of a specialized product, that differentiates that company or product from its competition and therefore does confer a competitive advantage; e.g. the firmware for a microcontroller-based product, an FPS with a new graphics engine, etc.
IMO, the free software model is best applied to the first category, where there's no point in everyone paying good money for the same software everyone else is going to have anyway.
Too bad that the stuff that actually gets exported the most is "culture": coke, disney and the worst of hollywood.
Um, let's turn that around: too bad the stuff that you guys import is the coke/disney/hollywood. Supply-and-demand requires not only a supply, but a demand. If people in other countries weren't willing to pay for American crap-culture, it wouldn't be there. So go out to your nearest bookstore, and buy up all the Hemingway, Faulkner, Asimov, Pirsig, Sterling, etc., that you can find, and get everyone to boycott Disney and Coke and MTV. (Hey, maybe we here in the US should try the same thing...)
Umm, are you implying that OS developers don't deserve jobs? What should they do in order to feed, shelter, and clothe their families?
Once upon a time, there were skilled, trained craftsmen making buggy whips - you know, to control the horses that pulled buggies. Then along came the dreaded Model T. Before long, nobody needed buggy whips anymore.
Umm, are you implying that buggy whip makers don't deserve jobs? What should they do in order to feed, shelter, and clothe their families?
Ayn Rand, however, forgot that humans need to care and believe, and her Objectivist society is completely uncaring. If you don't or can't work, you will drop off the bottom and society will forget you and let you die. There is no safety net. (Imagine what would happen during a period of surplus labour, for example.) In fact, Objectivism would rather let you die; if you're not economically useful, you would be better got rid of. Humans can't live like that.
And she never said they had to. Objectivism has no problem with charity or generosity; if you want to help poor people, if you want to donate your time or money to those "less fortunate", then by all means, go right ahead! No one would stop you. It is altruism -- the notion that we are obliged or forced to make sacrifices for other people we don't even know -- that Rand was against.
Re:John Brunner & Bruce Sterling
on
Dystopic Novels?
·
· Score: 1
Strange Weather by Sterling.
I think you meant Heavy Weather, no?
Actually, Sterling's pretty big on dystopia. Holy Fire, Distraction, Zeitgeist would qualify as well, IMO.
Driver's Licenses can be just for drivers: So, so many Americans who can't drive (for reasons including age, disability, etc.) fight to maintain their driver's licenses because it's HARD to participate in society and commerce without one. A national ID card would provide all persons with an ID that merchants wouldn't question -- and no need for a driving test.
Eh? In New York State, you can get a state-endorsed non-driver photo ID for this purpose. Other states don't have this?
What do you do in that case? It certainly will impact you, especially if one state is a tourism state (collects lots of revenue from sales tax) and the other is a property tax state.
Or you could live in both a property tax and a sales tax state (New York grumble mumble...) and not have to worry about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent quality vinyl, when played on top quality equipment, can have a noise floor of -85dB or so.
But noise floor does not necessarily equal dynamic range.
To reproduce a signal whose dynamic range is 90 dB, the smallest excursions have to be roughly 1/30000 of the maximum amplitude.
90dB? You're talking CD-quality there. I seriously doubt any vinyl record has 90dB of dynamic range. (That is, any 33.3 rpm record; a 78 might be able to do it, if anyone were still making 78s today.)
Guess again -- 1200 dpi is roughly 21 microns, off by a factor of 100.
Then that should still leave enough resolution to capture about (90 - 40 =) 50dB of range (that is, assuming this isn't all a big hoax, but the scanner resolution isn't the reason).
Who still uses glass? I think all the commericial stuff out there is already plastic.
Nope. Plastic is only used for cheapo short-run stuff, like the TOSLink cables used for digital links in home audio equipment. Anything that requires long runs, high bandwidth, or both is still glass. (And it doesn't break every "10 ms", it's more flexible and durable than you think. As long as you don't try to bend it 90 or step on it or anything, it's sturdy enough.)
50 years after Einstein, and people still don't realise that the electrons in a piece of copper wire travel at the speed of light?
Maybe that's because the electrons in a copper wire don't move anywhere near the speed of light - it's the wavefront produced by the electrons' motion that travels at or near c.
But he said he was in a "small western nation". Austrialia is so far east it's approaching the International Date Line. It also is over 7.6 million square kilometers, the sixth largest country in the world; I wouldn't call it small.
Depends on one's interpretation of "small" and "western". Being a 'Murrican, I interpret everything in America-centric terms. Australia is west of the United States (you fly west to get there, right?), and has less land area and one-tenth the population of the United States. Therefore, it is a "small western nation". [lame emoticon here]
I'm not disparaging pot, but using pot regularly is no different than being an alcoholic: It's much more sad than it is cool.
Oh, really? How regularly does one have to use pot for it to be "sad"? Once a week? Once a month? Hell, if you started at, say, 16, you could have used pot once a year and still get up over 15 uses before deciding to apply for the FBI.
Sure, I like to build things and wouldn't mind changing the world, where is my 27,000 sq ft mansion?
Well, maybe this Jones fellow is a little better at it than you are.
The version I've heard in the past was "Bayonet 'N', Compact" which would also seem to fit the etymology you describe.
Feh. That's nuthin'.
Testing complete for http://goatse.cx. Result:
Reported as accessible in China
...court decisions in this case could lay the foundation for the future of junk email regulation
Good, let's hope so! We could use more junk email regulation, and not a moment too soon.
isn't buying of government part of capitalism? capitalism is power embodied in things. so if I have a lot of things
Hardly. Capitalism is a free marketplace, the rights of whose members (to life, liberty, and property) are protected by laws which apply equally to everyone.
In any case, even if it were "appropriate" for companies to try and buy the government (which it isn't), it's still incumbent upon the government not to allow this to happen.
Isn't capitalism supposed to solve problems like this? Shouldn't companies who offer non-DRM hardware find favour with the consumer, and thus prosper over crippled-ware sellers?
Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work -- except that the government will instead allow itself to be bought yet again. Now why is that considered the fault of capitalism, rather than of the government??
You spout your Randroid nonsense as if it were gospel.
You spout your "Randroid nonsense" nonsense as if it were gospel. If I were this "Randroid" of which you speak, would I be saying that big business should not be protected against free software, you 'tard?
Funny, I thought that government (established by the people) was the means by which people promoted their welfare.
Which "people"? And at the expense of which other "people"? The government has no business promoting the welfare of some people at the expense of others. This just as true for the consumer as it is for the producer, the rich as well as the poor, the privileged as well as the disadvantaged. The government's job is to promote the welfare of all people, and the services which government can provide that fit that criterion are fairly limited: defense, police, courts, etc. One could conceivably argue for roads, schools, rails, etc. But there's no way it means "protecting big business against competition from free software".
Pretty "frikkin" fantastic if you ask me - since I got my Tréo, I would never want to go back to something without a keyboard! You'd prefer - what? Lame Graffiti? Pneumatic tongue controls? The keyboard has been with us for so long for a reason.
What's worse, it uses a QWERTY keyboard. C'mon!
So instead you'd prefer that millions of people raised on QWERTY be expected to learn something else? Yeah, that's a surefire recipe for success...
As I see it, for the purpose of answering this question there are two kinds of software:
"Commodity" software, that everyone needs and uses, and which does not in itself confer any competitive advantage; e.g. OSes, "Office" type packages, compilers (for the host platform), etc.
"Custom" or "Bespoke" software, that is developed by a company as part of a specialized product, that differentiates that company or product from its competition and therefore does confer a competitive advantage; e.g. the firmware for a microcontroller-based product, an FPS with a new graphics engine, etc.
IMO, the free software model is best applied to the first category, where there's no point in everyone paying good money for the same software everyone else is going to have anyway.
Um, let's turn that around: too bad the stuff that you guys import is the coke/disney/hollywood. Supply-and-demand requires not only a supply, but a demand. If people in other countries weren't willing to pay for American crap-culture, it wouldn't be there. So go out to your nearest bookstore, and buy up all the Hemingway, Faulkner, Asimov, Pirsig, Sterling, etc., that you can find, and get everyone to boycott Disney and Coke and MTV. (Hey, maybe we here in the US should try the same thing...)
Once upon a time, there were skilled, trained craftsmen making buggy whips - you know, to control the horses that pulled buggies. Then along came the dreaded Model T. Before long, nobody needed buggy whips anymore.
Umm, are you implying that buggy whip makers don't deserve jobs? What should they do in order to feed, shelter, and clothe their families?
Ayn Rand, however, forgot that humans need to care and believe, and her Objectivist society is completely uncaring. If you don't or can't work, you will drop off the bottom and society will forget you and let you die. There is no safety net. (Imagine what would happen during a period of surplus labour, for example.) In fact, Objectivism would rather let you die; if you're not economically useful, you would be better got rid of. Humans can't live like that.
And she never said they had to. Objectivism has no problem with charity or generosity; if you want to help poor people, if you want to donate your time or money to those "less fortunate", then by all means, go right ahead! No one would stop you. It is altruism -- the notion that we are obliged or forced to make sacrifices for other people we don't even know -- that Rand was against.
Strange Weather by Sterling.
I think you meant Heavy Weather, no?
Actually, Sterling's pretty big on dystopia. Holy Fire, Distraction, Zeitgeist would qualify as well, IMO.
Uh-uh. CDex isn't an "engine", it's an application (and a damn good one) that these f*ckers have essentially ''stolen'', IMO.
Eh? In New York State, you can get a state-endorsed non-driver photo ID for this purpose. Other states don't have this?
...from the front page:
What is KNOPPIX®?
KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software...
Or you could live in both a property tax and a sales tax state (New York grumble mumble...) and not have to worry about it.
Um, if they don't have enough food to feed themselves, then why are they concerned about exporting food they don't even have?!?