The 98-01 seasons were so weak that I, formerly hardcore Simpsons fan, don't even remember a single episode from after season 9. Can't say anything about 02, as seasons air a year later here in Germany. (The dubbing has weakened, too.)
The cartels can sell anything they want. It's just important that they don't do false advertising (i.e. calling crippled CDs "CDs" even though they might not play back everywhere). The principles of free trade mandate that the inferior value of a inferior product must be clear, and a big sticker "This CD is crippled and might not play back in your player" does this in the case of crippled CDs.
The whole problem with copy-restricted CDs, in my eyes, is that CDs are not designed to employ any form of copy restriction.
The copy restriction, while "reading restriction" might be a better term, on CDs consists of deliberate infringements on the CD standard, aiming to confuse drives that have to deal with the full CD specification (PC drives), while hopefully not confusing drives that just want to play audio.
Therefore, a "copy-restricted" CD doesn't comply with the standard and may not be advertised as "CD Digital Audio". That's what the whole labelling discussion is about.
DVDs, on the other hand, were conceived with copy-restriction in mind. Playback devices know about encryption and region coding. When you buy a DVD, you don't have to care whether it is restricted or not because it won't harm your playback. When you make a copy, you can just copy the DVD with encryption and everything - the restriction doesn't try to interfere with the reading of the data.
That's why you have to increase the rendering resolution using the -dpi argument of X. A 12pt font on a 200 ppi display rendered for 100 ppi will appear only 6pt tall.
In a perfect world, you wouldn't have to increase the font size when your resolution grows. Instead, you'd tell the computer about the resolution and it would adjust the font rendering accordingly. Remember that pt is an absolute measure (1/72 inch), as in "Computer, make that font 22pt tall and I don't care how many pixels you will use".
It has been a problem for a long time that fonts would scale up with increased rendering resolution, but icons wouldn't, destroying the visual composition. SVG can definitely make that better.
Re:Something strikes me as not quite right here
on
Asterix and Mobilix Redux
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Here's what I remember from 10th grade law class:
In Germany, the loser of a criminal case can always call appeal court. Because there is no jury, the judge makes decisions alone (advised by two "Schöffen" in some areas of criminal law) and therefore, esp. in cases like this, the decision is strongly flavoured by his personal opinion which can of course vary between courts.
In this example, the judge obviously deemed the lower court's decision bullshit and made a different one. The importance of precedent decisions is much lower in Germany than in the US, and as long as the decision is backed by material law (German principle of law which leaves more room for interpretation than positive law), it's valid.
When the appeal case is lost, however, it's often difficult to appeal again at the BGH.
Products like this continue to discourage the creation of and adherance to standards. If it is possible to just slap a.avi file on the disc and have it (hopefully) (somehow) played on the standalone, and other manufacturers stard implementing this (and they will), everything will lead to a horrendous chaos of incompatibilites.
It will be the same as with mp3 discs: Does player X support mp3s in subdirectories? Yes, but only without id3 tags, while player Y understands Joliet but no subdirectories and no filename may be longer than 12 characters, etc.
The implementation of "playing.avi files somehow slapped on a disc" is a BAD THING. They didn't even bother to create some sort of standard. This could have been implemented with glorified SVCDs.
No, they're just being exact. The volume (litre) can change with pressure, temperature, and other factors. The mass (kg) always stays the same for the needed amount of water.
Well, the copy prevention is designed so that it only works on Windows systems. Therefore, a Linux media player wouldn't circumvent, because nothing would be standing in its way, therefore, DMCA wouldn't apply at all. Case closed.
One could easily prove this by examining the relevant source code of the Linux system and showing that there is no code whatsoever designed to circumvent anything, and that its ability to freely play is solely caused by the inadequacy of the protection device's design.
I pay 1.10/litre for petrol, that's a bit less than what you pay, but still above £0.70. Because my car only burns about 5 litres per 100 km, no, I'm not worried.:)
Yes, but if petrol prices were falling rapidly, I'd still be worried if every new car I buy consumed more petrol than the previous one. But that is exactly what would happen if that morale of development was applied to cars.
It's mainly a matter of principle, in my opinion, not to let everything be manufactured sloppily and without regard to effectivity just because the ungodly amount of available resources can balance that out in terms of money spent. But that's perhaps just idealistic me.
If a competitor offers a comparable product for a lower price than you do, he will sell more. The MPEG 4 people should rather lower their fees instead of complaining how evil MS is for making low prices.
It would? The "German DMCA" explicitly states that DRM on material that is not protected by copyright may be cracked to your heart's content (if it passes, as it's still controversial). Not that it's a good law. But I can't really imagine that the original beast doesn't contain such a clause. It would be quite shortsighted.
But would it really matter? Europe being a free-trade zone, I wonder if it would be illegal to import a CD made from PD material from a European country to another European country where said material still enjoys protection?
Germany, for example, might be sued before the European Court for seizing imports of UK DVDs, which, according to German law, are treated as rated "adult only" no matter which rating the material received in Germany - and material rated "adult only" may not be commercially shipped. Stupid German law, but the case looks similar: Local laws colliding with the principle of free trade in the Union.
It's a shame I have so little clue about my home region's laws.
The quote is wrong. It should just go: "DVDs are made in widescreen to reflect the artist's true representation of the movie".
Many 1.85:1 movies are shot in full frame (1.37:1) and then matted. Zemeckis almost always does it. The artist's intention of the movie is still the widescreen one, even if it shows less picture than the fullframe one.
Simple: By not including Java, Microsoft abuses its monopoly power to push ActiveX.
Re:super hi rez applications
on
New Red Hat Beta
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Too small text doesn't come from high physical resolutions, but from a wrong logical one. If you crank up your physical resolution, you have to adjust the dpi settings (called "User Defined Font Size" in Windows). A typical 17" running at 1152x864 has approx. 100 dpi, with 1600x1200, you're up to 140.
Higher physical resolution means finer text, not smaller one.
This is the reason for Windows's advantage
on
DirectX 9 Finally Out
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Microsoft, with its money and power, is able to deal with hardware manufacturers, to receive specs of planned features early and to develop API for those extremely quickly.
This is the reason why Windows and DirectX will always have a huge advantage over every independent implementation, be it MesaGL or something else. Programmers can be sure that MS will implement every new interesting feature of coming graphics hardware quickly, so that they can make use of it. Therefore, DirectX is the obvious choice.
The only solution can be by legislation. I don't know about the USA, but Germany, for example, has some rather strict rules concerning TV ads, limiting their length, their percentage in programming time, defining that they shall be strictly separated from the stations' own programming, and more.
Web ads, as they can be even more annoying, need similar rulings. Ads like these should be defined as harassment, and you should be able to file an information about that. The size, amount of scripting designed to circumvent (hey... where did I hear that phrase last?) user input or to annoy the user etc. should be strictly limited. It's very important that the USA receive such legislation because most commercial web sites with such extremely penetrant ads are US based.
It's not only not wise for ATI & NVidia to put out GPL drivers, it's nearly impossible. The trade secrets you mentiond are often enough third-party licensed features. S3TC is an example. The licensors would simply not allow to have their code released under GPL, even if NVidia wanted.
Slashdot Mirror
The 98-01 seasons were so weak that I, formerly hardcore Simpsons fan, don't even remember a single episode from after season 9. Can't say anything about 02, as seasons air a year later here in Germany. (The dubbing has weakened, too.)
The cartels can sell anything they want. It's just important that they don't do false advertising (i.e. calling crippled CDs "CDs" even though they might not play back everywhere). The principles of free trade mandate that the inferior value of a inferior product must be clear, and a big sticker "This CD is crippled and might not play back in your player" does this in the case of crippled CDs.
The whole problem with copy-restricted CDs, in my eyes, is that CDs are not designed to employ any form of copy restriction.
The copy restriction, while "reading restriction" might be a better term, on CDs consists of deliberate infringements on the CD standard, aiming to confuse drives that have to deal with the full CD specification (PC drives), while hopefully not confusing drives that just want to play audio.
Therefore, a "copy-restricted" CD doesn't comply with the standard and may not be advertised as "CD Digital Audio". That's what the whole labelling discussion is about.
DVDs, on the other hand, were conceived with copy-restriction in mind. Playback devices know about encryption and region coding. When you buy a DVD, you don't have to care whether it is restricted or not because it won't harm your playback. When you make a copy, you can just copy the DVD with encryption and everything - the restriction doesn't try to interfere with the reading of the data.
That's why you have to increase the rendering resolution using the -dpi argument of X. A 12pt font on a 200 ppi display rendered for 100 ppi will appear only 6pt tall.
In a perfect world, you wouldn't have to increase the font size when your resolution grows. Instead, you'd tell the computer about the resolution and it would adjust the font rendering accordingly. Remember that pt is an absolute measure (1/72 inch), as in "Computer, make that font 22pt tall and I don't care how many pixels you will use".
It has been a problem for a long time that fonts would scale up with increased rendering resolution, but icons wouldn't, destroying the visual composition. SVG can definitely make that better.
Here's what I remember from 10th grade law class:
In Germany, the loser of a criminal case can always call appeal court. Because there is no jury, the judge makes decisions alone (advised by two "Schöffen" in some areas of criminal law) and therefore, esp. in cases like this, the decision is strongly flavoured by his personal opinion which can of course vary between courts.
In this example, the judge obviously deemed the lower court's decision bullshit and made a different one. The importance of precedent decisions is much lower in Germany than in the US, and as long as the decision is backed by material law (German principle of law which leaves more room for interpretation than positive law), it's valid.
When the appeal case is lost, however, it's often difficult to appeal again at the BGH.
Products like this continue to discourage the creation of and adherance to standards. If it is possible to just slap a .avi file on the disc and have it (hopefully) (somehow) played on the standalone, and other manufacturers stard implementing this (and they will), everything will lead to a horrendous chaos of incompatibilites.
.avi files somehow slapped on a disc" is a BAD THING. They didn't even bother to create some sort of standard. This could have been implemented with glorified SVCDs.
It will be the same as with mp3 discs: Does player X support mp3s in subdirectories? Yes, but only without id3 tags, while player Y understands Joliet but no subdirectories and no filename may be longer than 12 characters, etc.
The implementation of "playing
Dang, it's .NET and not .org.
GStreamer has been under development for quite some time and looks quite promising.
No, they're just being exact. The volume (litre) can change with pressure, temperature, and other factors. The mass (kg) always stays the same for the needed amount of water.
Well, the copy prevention is designed so that it only works on Windows systems. Therefore, a Linux media player wouldn't circumvent, because nothing would be standing in its way, therefore, DMCA wouldn't apply at all. Case closed.
One could easily prove this by examining the relevant source code of the Linux system and showing that there is no code whatsoever designed to circumvent anything, and that its ability to freely play is solely caused by the inadequacy of the protection device's design.
It's not as bad as mp3 because the noise and degradation introduced by D/A conversion isn't as annoying as mp3's artifacts. At least in my opinion.
I'm German, but I'll forgive you :o)
/litre for petrol, that's a bit less than what you pay, but still above £0.70. Because my car only burns about 5 litres per 100 km, no, I'm not worried. :)
I pay 1.10
Yes, but if petrol prices were falling rapidly, I'd still be worried if every new car I buy consumed more petrol than the previous one. But that is exactly what would happen if that morale of development was applied to cars.
It's mainly a matter of principle, in my opinion, not to let everything be manufactured sloppily and without regard to effectivity just because the ungodly amount of available resources can balance that out in terms of money spent. But that's perhaps just idealistic me.
If a competitor offers a comparable product for a lower price than you do, he will sell more. The MPEG 4 people should rather lower their fees instead of complaining how evil MS is for making low prices.
Babushkas. If you want some, there's always Google.
Close. Matrushkas.
It would? The "German DMCA" explicitly states that DRM on material that is not protected by copyright may be cracked to your heart's content (if it passes, as it's still controversial). Not that it's a good law. But I can't really imagine that the original beast doesn't contain such a clause. It would be quite shortsighted.
But would it really matter? Europe being a free-trade zone, I wonder if it would be illegal to import a CD made from PD material from a European country to another European country where said material still enjoys protection?
Germany, for example, might be sued before the European Court for seizing imports of UK DVDs, which, according to German law, are treated as rated "adult only" no matter which rating the material received in Germany - and material rated "adult only" may not be commercially shipped. Stupid German law, but the case looks similar: Local laws colliding with the principle of free trade in the Union.
It's a shame I have so little clue about my home region's laws.
The quote is wrong. It should just go: "DVDs are made in widescreen to reflect the artist's true representation of the movie".
Many 1.85:1 movies are shot in full frame (1.37:1) and then matted. Zemeckis almost always does it. The artist's intention of the movie is still the widescreen one, even if it shows less picture than the fullframe one.
Simple: By not including Java, Microsoft abuses its monopoly power to push ActiveX.
Too small text doesn't come from high physical resolutions, but from a wrong logical one. If you crank up your physical resolution, you have to adjust the dpi settings (called "User Defined Font Size" in Windows). A typical 17" running at 1152x864 has approx. 100 dpi, with 1600x1200, you're up to 140.
Higher physical resolution means finer text, not smaller one.
Microsoft, with its money and power, is able to deal with hardware manufacturers, to receive specs of planned features early and to develop API for those extremely quickly.
This is the reason why Windows and DirectX will always have a huge advantage over every independent implementation, be it MesaGL or something else. Programmers can be sure that MS will implement every new interesting feature of coming graphics hardware quickly, so that they can make use of it. Therefore, DirectX is the obvious choice.
The only solution can be by legislation. I don't know about the USA, but Germany, for example, has some rather strict rules concerning TV ads, limiting their length, their percentage in programming time, defining that they shall be strictly separated from the stations' own programming, and more.
Web ads, as they can be even more annoying, need similar rulings. Ads like these should be defined as harassment, and you should be able to file an information about that. The size, amount of scripting designed to circumvent (hey... where did I hear that phrase last?) user input or to annoy the user etc. should be strictly limited. It's very important that the USA receive such legislation because most commercial web sites with such extremely penetrant ads are US based.
It's not only not wise for ATI & NVidia to put out GPL drivers, it's nearly impossible. The trade secrets you mentiond are often enough third-party licensed features. S3TC is an example. The licensors would simply not allow to have their code released under GPL, even if NVidia wanted.
And I even keep buying new albums on vinyl. The reason is very simple: No copy prevention.