Imagine if a "new album" was only available in person, at a concert, without all the glitz, for the same ticket price, for the first 4 months. Then a fully produced digital version was available to download, direct from the label and in a high definition/lossless format, for a representative fee (say $1 a song, or $5 for the album, $6-10 for a double album). Yes, there would be bootlegs out there, but they'd be poor quality.
Sorry, your 4 month delay isn't going to work. There'd be bootlegs out there, and a few would be high quality (probably largely from insiders). You've just replaced the idea of a copy protected disc with a copy protected concert, and while the disc is easier to crack, it still only takes one crack to destroy the model.
Last time I heard, the film and music industries still made huge profits.
How can you tell? Their accounting practices are so byzantine that Wall Street is considering hiring them to figure out the whole mortgage-backed security mess.
Turning off some percentage of lights in a multi-LED fixture would be tricky, as it would screw up the light pattern and possibly the color (if multiple colors are used). But it's not a technically difficult trick; the device you're looking for is basically an ADC and a slightly modified demultiplexer, with the outputs of the demux controlling transistors which control banks of LEDs.
(the modification to the demux is that instead of outputting 1n for an input of n, it outputs (1n)-1)
Another option would be using PWM but varying the phase of the PWM across LEDs in the fixture.
PWM is one possible dimming method, but you have to use a resistor to limit the current. The LED/resistor combination acts as a low-pass filter, which means that the LED only 'sees' the DC level of the AC waveform you're feeding it. This, therefore, has the same effect as varying the voltage across the resistor/LED pair.
Um, no. A filter would require inductance and/or capacitance, which a PWM driver circuit is notably lacking in. PWM dimming works by running the LED at its rated current for the on-cycle, and turning it completely off during the off-cycle, so the LED does flicker. IIRC, the reason you don't typically do the dimming by current limiting is that the LEDs are a lot more efficient at the designed current levels, so dimming by current limiting is inefficient and it's hard to get a linear change in brightness.
The concern here is spot concentration -- what goes into the landfills tends quickly to go into the groundwater. If you've got a coal plant 150 miles away
How toxic (or not) are the materials they're talking about?
Well, "Arsenide" should be a big clue.
Give me a halogen or HIR bulb any day... actually do last as long as CFLs are claimed to, provide the same color temperature and CRI as incandescents, and require no mercury.
In the US, derivative works belong to the copyright holder, regardless of who did the works. Thus, if you write a song and I do a remix of it, you generally own the remix despite my hard work.
This is in fact explicitly not the case. The copyright on the remix belongs to the remixer, though it covers only the re-mixers original contribution. See 17 USC 117(b). The re-mix could be _infringement_ of the original material, but that doesn't mean the re-mix belongs to the original author.
Not necessarily true - most items created by students in the academic setting are vested to the University (they don't usually enforce this, but it is a legal question):
They can assert whatever they like, but that don't make it so. In the US, except for 'works for hire' copyright ownership is vested in the author upon creation. Transfer of that copyright can only be effected by a signed, written document doing so, not some blanket policy statement. Since a student (not on fellowship or grant) is paying the university and not vice-versa, there's no way the student work can be a work for hire. The Dartmouth policy you linked to is pretty clear in that it applies only to employees (including student employees), not students.
Even if the copyright on lecture notes is owned in part by the school, ownership of the copyright does not give the school any authority over the particular copy created by the student. Unless they want to go through the silly and likely futile exercise of suing the student for preparing an unauthorized derivative work -- that is, taking notes on the lecture.
Funny is, they copy everything from OS X regarding ease of use but they don't stop a second and think why Apple, the king of usability stayed away from autorun/auto play. Doesn't Apple have a similar feature?
Apple had an auto-run feature at one point, I think back in System 8 or so. They dropped it.
Even though the Esprimo Green uses no power in standby mode Fujitsu say it can still be managed with LAN, Bluetooth, and UMTS. A demonstration of which will surely be given during CeBIT.
To do that
1) They've managed to break the laws of physics or 2) They're lying or 3) They're storing power
And of course, if it's 3, that stored power has to be replenished when the computer is on, causing slightly higher draw then. It's certainly possible that the efficiency of doing that is greater than the efficiency of drawing a very small current from the line. But calling it "zero power" is just marketing. Truly "using zero power" would mean that any internal state of charge wouldn't be depleted either.
As a rule of thumb in hardware design, you make it as step-by-step debuggable as possible - Which in this case means planning for a tap after the decoding stage but before the downsampling stage.
I would fully expect nearly all of these units to require nothing more complex than finding the right place to attach a connector or three to pull the fully-featured DTV signal from it, at a cost less than dedicated units that do just that, and you get to stick Uncle Sam for a portion of the bill.
Unfortunately, no. Most of them are system-on-chip, with the demodulation, decoding, and downsampling all done within a single chip.
The Channel Master 7000 and the DTVPal (based on a separate demodulator and decoder) have more options for hacking; the Channel Master box in particular was designed to have a digital audio output, which was scotched due to coupon box requirements. A few passive components restore the output, but it's muted; there's a JTAG port if you want to try your hand at firmware hacking.
20 minutes? I'd say a whole weeks worth of listings data is no more than a megabyte. What's the bandwidth on an HDTV channel? Something immense I'm sure. Store the channel scan results in flash, no need to rescan each time. Download a meg of text, parse and store it, and you're up and running in two or three seconds.
Not so easy, if you're using the ATSC EPG information. It's broadcast; you have to wait for the data to come around, you can't request it. And the data for each channel is available only on that channel. So to get the guide data, you have to scan to each channel sequentially and wait for the data on it; this can take a while. You can't do it while the TV is on (because your tuner is otherwise occupied). It takes significant power to run the tuner. Fortunately, you do only have to do this once every three hours.
Child porn is defined by what it is, not who has it. There is no difference between someone who is 15 or 35 shoplifting. Why should be be different here?
This is another example children wanting to be treated like adults - except when it's inconvenient for them. Then, all of a sudden, they are "just children".
Eh, nice try, but you could drive a Freightliner -- the truck or the train -- sideways through the holes in that logic. If you consistently treat the "children" as adults, there's no issue of child porn, because pictures of themselves would not be not child porn.
...where summary execution really seems appropriate. After the judge had determined that yes, the prosecutor was pressing charges against a teenager for possessing pictures of herself, he would simply have the bailiff shoot the prosecutor in question. If his replacement didn't move to dismiss the charges... next! In some parts of the state I suspect the bailiff might have to reload.
I have like ~1,000 albums downloaded. Would I have the money to buy 1,000 albums? Hell no. Not unless I sold all my possessions.
RIAA: That'll be $7220 in "restitution", plus $750,000 minimum in statutory damages. Or you can just use the suicide booth down the hall; if you make a statement as you enter to the effect that "this is what happens to downloaders", we won't hound your family for more than half of the judgement.
That's what being nice is -- finishing last. If you're an asshole and able to get away with it, people assume you're important -- at least more important than the people you're being an asshole to. And if those people let you get away with it, they are conceding that you're more important than them. Being an asshole all the time doesn't work (unless you really are the man on top), as if you're an asshole to someone who is more important and knows it, you'll be out on your ass. But being nice all the time is another way of saying "I'm on the bottom of the hierarchy, shit on me".
Hence the need for strong laws to add to the DISincentives for hacking.
There's only so strong you can make the laws. You can make the penalty death and forfeiture of all property to the state, but if the incentives FOR it are strong enough, and the chance of getting away with it perceived to be good enough, it'll happen anyway.
You'll notice that there are close to zero Free Trade Zones in wealthy western countries, because they simply wouldn't be allowed by the local community, for the same reasons they are hated in Latin America.
Err, have you checked out the regular duties in the United States? Check out the duty for toys made in China, for example. Also, have you heard of NAFTA? The main reason there aren't Free Trade Zones in wealthy western countries is that we don't have those ruinous tarriffs and trade barriers in the first place. Though of course there are exceptions.
I didn't say they didn't use torture at Guantanemo. I said that wasn't the main reason they were held there.
Sure. If I posited the same argument that a person who fit the profile of a crack dealer was passing "something" to someone in a car after exchanging money, you'd be the first in line to throw him into prison. I'm not saying they don't deserve due process, but a judicial branch that wasn't a secretarial service for corporate America would at least investigate.
Err, #1, I wouldn't want to throw the guy in prison even if I knew for a fact that what he was passing was crack cocaine; I'm pro-legalization. #2, taking advantage of tax havens isn't illegal. But the point of my post is that not all companies which do business in tax havens do it only to avoid taxes; Apple went to Ireland for cheap labor and EU benefits. Intel manufactures in Costa Rica, and the sugar water companies sell sugar water in them (probably even in the Caymans).
It's like the question, "Are prisoners in Guantanamo being tortured?" If they weren't being tortured, they would be in New York state, sitting in the same jail cells we use for other suspected murderers.
Err, no. The main reason they are held in Guantanemo was for a jurisdictional dodge about holding them at all. One that didn't work out, as it turns out; the courts didn't buy the idea that they were beyond the reach of US courts just because they weren't within the boundaries of the United States.
Similarly, any company that sets up in a small country that they do no business in is obviously up to something. Otherwise they wouldn't be there.
Nothing in this report says the companies do no business in the "tax haven" countries. Apple originally set up in Ireland to make Powerbooks, as I recall. They don't do manufacturing there any more but it's still their European headquarters. Coke and Pepsi almost certainly sell sugar water in all those tax haven jurisdictions. Intel does manufacturing in Costa Rica.
Multinationals are, well, multinational. It's hardly a surprise when they do business in companies the IRS or GAO isn't fond of, whether that's why they do it (which it probably is, in many cases) or not.
Anyway, one of the definitions for the countries on this list was "...jurisdictions that have a high level of nonresident financial activity, and may have characteristics including low or no taxes, light and flexible regulation, and a high level of client confidentiality. " Horrors. Why would a country ever want to do that?
For example, when using music as background to a video game sequence, if the sequence is merely someone showing how cool they are, it is hard to see this as "teaching". Even if it is "teaching" -- it isn't teaching about the music.
There are four tests to fair use, however. Stuff like that pretty much immediately passes the fourth factor -- the effect of the use on the marketplace for the work. This is just vanity crap, and has no effect on the marketplace. If it's just a snippet of the song, it probably passes the third factor -- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. Low quality reproduction would likely count towards this factor as well. On the "purpose" test it falls somewhere in between -- it's clearly not commercial, but it doesn't clearly fall into the "transformative" use category either. The second test, the "nature" of the work, probably weighs against fair use, but it will be the same for nearly every use of a commercially-published song.
Since there's no bright-line test for fair use, it's impossible to say (unless Time-Warner sues you) whether a particular use is fair. The only way to defend yourself against a DMCA takedown is to write a DMCA counternotice, which essentially says "Meet me in federal court at high noon". Think your lawyers are better than theirs?
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Sorry, your 4 month delay isn't going to work. There'd be bootlegs out there, and a few would be high quality (probably largely from insiders). You've just replaced the idea of a copy protected disc with a copy protected concert, and while the disc is easier to crack, it still only takes one crack to destroy the model.
How can you tell? Their accounting practices are so byzantine that Wall Street is considering hiring them to figure out the whole mortgage-backed security mess.
Turning off some percentage of lights in a multi-LED fixture would be tricky, as it would screw up the light pattern and possibly the color (if multiple colors are used). But it's not a technically difficult trick; the device you're looking for is basically an ADC and a slightly modified demultiplexer, with the outputs of the demux controlling transistors which control banks of LEDs.
(the modification to the demux is that instead of outputting 1n for an input of n, it outputs (1n)-1)
Another option would be using PWM but varying the phase of the PWM across LEDs in the fixture.
Um, no. A filter would require inductance and/or capacitance, which a PWM driver circuit is notably lacking in. PWM dimming works by running the LED at its rated current for the on-cycle, and turning it completely off during the off-cycle, so the LED does flicker. IIRC, the reason you don't typically do the dimming by current limiting is that the LEDs are a lot more efficient at the designed current levels, so dimming by current limiting is inefficient and it's hard to get a linear change in brightness.
It's easy to dim LEDs; they respond nicely to pulse width modulation.
My coal plant is 5 miles away, you ignorant clod.
Well, "Arsenide" should be a big clue.
Give me a halogen or HIR bulb any day... actually do last as long as CFLs are claimed to, provide the same color temperature and CRI as incandescents, and require no mercury.
This is in fact explicitly not the case. The copyright on the remix belongs to the remixer, though it covers only the re-mixers original contribution. See 17 USC 117(b). The re-mix could be _infringement_ of the original material, but that doesn't mean the re-mix belongs to the original author.
They can assert whatever they like, but that don't make it so. In the US, except for 'works for hire' copyright ownership is vested in the author upon creation. Transfer of that copyright can only be effected by a signed, written document doing so, not some blanket policy statement. Since a student (not on fellowship or grant) is paying the university and not vice-versa, there's no way the student work can be a work for hire. The Dartmouth policy you linked to is pretty clear in that it applies only to employees (including student employees), not students.
Even if the copyright on lecture notes is owned in part by the school, ownership of the copyright does not give the school any authority over the particular copy created by the student. Unless they want to go through the silly and likely futile exercise of suing the student for preparing an unauthorized derivative work -- that is, taking notes on the lecture.
So what you're saying is that the cases of Parks (moving to the back of the bus) and the student (surrendering his notes) ARE closely analagous?
Your box-and-ball experiment is analagous to a "local hidden variable" theory, and they've been ruled out experimentally.
Apple had an auto-run feature at one point, I think back in System 8 or so. They dropped it.
To do that
1) They've managed to break the laws of physics or
2) They're lying or
3) They're storing power
And of course, if it's 3, that stored power has to be replenished when the computer is on, causing slightly higher draw then. It's certainly possible that the efficiency of doing that is greater than the efficiency of drawing a very small current from the line. But calling it "zero power" is just marketing. Truly "using zero power" would mean that any internal state of charge wouldn't be depleted either.
Unfortunately, no. Most of them are system-on-chip, with the demodulation, decoding, and downsampling all done within a single chip.
The Channel Master 7000 and the DTVPal (based on a separate demodulator and decoder) have more options for hacking; the Channel Master box in particular was designed to have a digital audio output, which was scotched due to coupon box requirements. A few passive components restore the output, but it's muted; there's a JTAG port if you want to try your hand at firmware hacking.
Not so easy, if you're using the ATSC EPG information. It's broadcast; you have to wait for the data to come around, you can't request it. And the data for each channel is available only on that channel. So to get the guide data, you have to scan to each channel sequentially and wait for the data on it; this can take a while. You can't do it while the TV is on (because your tuner is otherwise occupied). It takes significant power to run the tuner. Fortunately, you do only have to do this once every three hours.
Eh, nice try, but you could drive a Freightliner -- the truck or the train -- sideways through the holes in that logic. If you consistently treat the "children" as adults, there's no issue of child porn, because pictures of themselves would not be not child porn.
...where summary execution really seems appropriate. After the judge had determined that yes, the prosecutor was pressing charges against a teenager for possessing pictures of herself, he would simply have the bailiff shoot the prosecutor in question. If his replacement didn't move to dismiss the charges... next! In some parts of the state I suspect the bailiff might have to reload.
...comes with a service contract. From their competitor.
RIAA: That'll be $7220 in "restitution", plus $750,000 minimum in statutory damages. Or you can just use the suicide booth down the hall; if you make a statement as you enter to the effect that "this is what happens to downloaders", we won't hound your family for more than half of the judgement.
That's what being nice is -- finishing last. If you're an asshole and able to get away with it, people assume you're important -- at least more important than the people you're being an asshole to. And if those people let you get away with it, they are conceding that you're more important than them. Being an asshole all the time doesn't work (unless you really are the man on top), as if you're an asshole to someone who is more important and knows it, you'll be out on your ass. But being nice all the time is another way of saying "I'm on the bottom of the hierarchy, shit on me".
(what, cynical, me?)
There's only so strong you can make the laws. You can make the penalty death and forfeiture of all property to the state, but if the incentives FOR it are strong enough, and the chance of getting away with it perceived to be good enough, it'll happen anyway.
Err, have you checked out the regular duties in the United States? Check out the duty for toys made in China, for example. Also, have you heard of NAFTA? The main reason there aren't Free Trade Zones in wealthy western countries is that we don't have those ruinous tarriffs and trade barriers in the first place. Though of course there are exceptions.
I didn't say they didn't use torture at Guantanemo. I said that wasn't the main reason they were held there.
Err, #1, I wouldn't want to throw the guy in prison even if I knew for a fact that what he was passing was crack cocaine; I'm pro-legalization. #2, taking advantage of tax havens isn't illegal. But the point of my post is that not all companies which do business in tax havens do it only to avoid taxes; Apple went to Ireland for cheap labor and EU benefits. Intel manufactures in Costa Rica, and the sugar water companies sell sugar water in them (probably even in the Caymans).
Err, no. The main reason they are held in Guantanemo was for a jurisdictional dodge about holding them at all. One that didn't work out, as it turns out; the courts didn't buy the idea that they were beyond the reach of US courts just because they weren't within the boundaries of the United States.
Nothing in this report says the companies do no business in the "tax haven" countries. Apple originally set up in Ireland to make Powerbooks, as I recall. They don't do manufacturing there any more but it's still their European headquarters. Coke and Pepsi almost certainly sell sugar water in all those tax haven jurisdictions. Intel does manufacturing in Costa Rica.
Multinationals are, well, multinational. It's hardly a surprise when they do business in companies the IRS or GAO isn't fond of, whether that's why they do it (which it probably is, in many cases) or not.
Anyway, one of the definitions for the countries on this list was "...jurisdictions that have a high level of nonresident financial activity, and may have characteristics including low or no taxes, light and flexible regulation, and a high level of client confidentiality. " Horrors. Why would a country ever want to do that?
There are four tests to fair use, however. Stuff like that pretty much immediately passes the fourth factor -- the effect of the use on the marketplace for the work. This is just vanity crap, and has no effect on the marketplace. If it's just a snippet of the song, it probably passes the third factor -- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. Low quality reproduction would likely count towards this factor as well. On the "purpose" test it falls somewhere in between -- it's clearly not commercial, but it doesn't clearly fall into the "transformative" use category either. The second test, the "nature" of the work, probably weighs against fair use, but it will be the same for nearly every use of a commercially-published song.
Since there's no bright-line test for fair use, it's impossible to say (unless Time-Warner sues you) whether a particular use is fair. The only way to defend yourself against a DMCA takedown is to write a DMCA counternotice, which essentially says "Meet me in federal court at high noon". Think your lawyers are better than theirs?