This has GOT to be a case of Italy just doing something to make itself seem..ahem...more badass than they are.
It makes no sense. Countless numbers of bootleg CD's come out in Italy. I happen to know of a studio album of a "classic" band that not only was the Italian imported CD a bootleg (despite saying it was used with permission), but was also sourced off vinyl and not "complete"
What's next? The Chinese suing TPB for cutting in on thier piracy business?
I love how everyone is focusing on speaker cables and such...or how some phones do it but others don't.
it's not a simple fact of the speaker itself...but rather it's any kind of analog audio amplifier. Most things these days are tightly cammed onto circuit boards with SMD devices and, well, these things aren't always shielded properly. As a result, when the phone is close enough it causes interference through the analog componets themselves...it's NOT stictly the cable as one might say.
I took my 1982 Sansui EQ and 1980 Danon amplifier (both old-school 100% analog devices), put my cell phone on top, and naturally, buzzing, static, and everything else associated with cell phone interference...come to think of it, this is not a NEW phenomon, but every cell phone i've owned since 2001 has done it, and i never really questioned what it is, i do know how radios and electronic circuits work afterall, i'm not a mouse jockey who thinks he knows everything
the point is, it's not cell phones specifically that's the culprit. I have a 2.4ghz digital cordless phone that if i'm in the same room as the cheap computer speakers, IT too picks up a similar noise. My 5.8 ghz digital does it to.
really, the main factors here is how well the "recieving" hardware is getting this. When i put the ferrite cores on my cables, i didn't notice ANY difference. Yes, it was less because they're not acting as antenna, but it wasn't till I put my audio equipment in a makeshift farraday cage that it obliterated audio.
this is nothing new, i don't know why people think they have the answers. analog audio devices are going to pick up interference like that, the only thing people can do is maybe engineer these things to have more shielding...becuase even th most advanced phone design in the world is STILL going to ouput microwave, it has to, there's no escaping that. (and for the record, yes, i put an old microwave next to the denon and turned it on, as i moved it closer, nice loud screeching became more apparent...wrap the stereo in alumimum foil and screeching gone.
so tell me again how a little metal donut on some cable is going to protect all my other "unshielded" stuff? srsly. fail.
Am I the only one who's had this for a while. My phone company has been doing "call intercept" on my line for the last 8 years. Numbers I select, or ones that have valid ID information get passed to the phone. Unknown numbers are required to do the same as this gadget...identify themselves or they're not passed. If i refuse to accept the call for whatever reason, the number gets blocked and they receieve the same "this number is not accepting your call" every time they call..my phone never rings. It's worked well for the recent rash of mass internet-lines calling from invalid numbers, null numbers (which don't show up as out of area or unavailable, but as 00000 or "No Data Sent) - not only that but it got bundled with my phone service simply by asking for it.
But also, wouldn't you have to install this thing at the master incoming line, for the whole house? Plugging it up to a phone would still cause the phones to ring with an inital call is made.
I too have noticed that my comics widget gets screwed up by thier "widget suggestions". i haven't been able to read the first 5 comics since they did that.
Maybe I just didn't read all the comments, but I know that just about every facebook user i've spoken to is very unhappy about the new facebook, in fact, people that like it seem to be in the minority?
But what are people to do? Boycott, complain? Thus far none of it seems to be working for facebook. The groups are filled with people against the new facebook and whatnot..and there's not just one, no, it seems the very intelligent users can't feel one is enough, so there's about as many anti-facebook groups as there are users to go around.
But facebook seems to be completely unresponsive about this. They've made no comments on the complains, they've changed NOTHING about the new site despite the fact everyone hates it and seem to be unresponsive to any options. They even went as far as to let people choose the old facebook if they wanted.
It seems to be a case of, the new formats don't suck..but it's the fact there's a lot of widgets and layouts already based around an old format that won't work with the new...and it's hard to tell if the developers of the widgets are at fault or whoevers in charge of the backend of the site. I say it's partially irresponsible for a company to drastically change the backend of their site and cause things to break..wasn't it 10 years ago people actually, i don't know..TESTED things before they committed them to make sure the user expierences wasn't damaged?
I say the biggest problem is the internet has gotten sold to corporate america more than anything..let's face it, these are the guys who've got the money to buy the servers and hire the people to do this...but just like any corporation, they're not going to do it becuase they care? Do you think these sites really care about thier users? No, they got a bottom line to care about, and if these new layouts let them get on 5% more advertising while pissing the users off...well..they're going to yield to the advertisers....
afterall, it's corporate america....you're expected to bend over upon entry.
Why does everyone sound shocked? I mean, sure, these days it's not as common, but, 10 years ago..it was a rare occurance, but happend often enough I laughed t it. I can't count the number of audio CD's that were pressed with one name and had NOTHING to do with reality.
the greatest example was boot magazine (which is now MaximumPC. Issue #23's shareware CD...at least in the package I got, contained Windows NT Server 4 - said bootdisc 23 on the outside...but the pits were NT Server...and i'm ashamed to admit I did figure out how to get it working (who knew all 1's was a valid NT4 license key)
It's a Microsoft product...one should expect it to be optimized for crashing and burning. It's what they know best.
I'm surprised they haven't gotten a BSOD and had to start the entire market over from scratch.
As I've stated before with satellite internet:
If you're using it for a real-time service, say VOIP, well, you might as well just shoot yourself in the foot. You've got serious physical latency to deal with. Ping times of 500, 800 ms? That's quite normal.
Let's look at a basic part of radio theory...radio signals travel at speed of light, around 186K miles/sec. Geosync orbits are 22.5K miles above the equator. My math sucks, but I do know that if the sats are positioned over equator, and you're up in northern canada...you're going to have a whole lot more than a 22,500 mile haul for your signal...so you've got all this physical latency to contend with.
Sending analog signals (like they used to for international calls) generally works fine...but when you add in TCP/IP, it's just painful.
It's really only good as a replacement for dialup..that's about as useful as it is. Sure, you can download large files pretty quick, but if you're doing any kind of real-time communication, seriously, save yourself the hassle and look into maybe getting some kind of microwave link for tellcommunications, it'll probably be cheaper in the long run than maintaining satellite systems...not to mention they're a LOT faster.
Whoever said that the BUD market is dead obviously hasn't looked around.
Sure, the BUD market is about dead, but let's face it, Dish and DirecTV gotta thier channels somehow. The majority of major cable feeds, are, believe it or not, still being sent via analog. Sure, there's a large number of channels being done in digital, but there's still some analog feeds out there.
You also have what's known as wild-feeds in which you can get some cool stuff. I can watch The Simpsons for 2 hours at 4AM because it's the syndicated feed.
There is also a large number of Free To Air channels you can get with the thing. Sure, they're complex, but I'm sure if you look around you'll find the information you need.
I mean, you could do a birdbath..or create some kind of "redneck gazebo", but you're almost better off just setting it up in your yard, aligning and programming positions, and scanning the air to see what you get.
www.lyngsat.com tells you what birds are up there and what they're broadcasting.
Would't putting the Gnome on the roof just reduce the latency we get travel packages?:P
Re:Potentially crazy suggestion:
on
Dealing With Dialup
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Let me lay this satellite issue to rest (probably not, but i can try).
You CANNOT mount the dish inside the house or cover it with a fake rock as per Hughes standards. For starters, the uplinking signals are EXTREMELY weak..most materials (even some of the microwave transparent ones) will block the signal...it's actually a few ghz higher than your downlink...this is not to mention that the uplink dishes on your house are NOTHING like the big-boys..they use powerful transmitters remotely mounted and feed the signal with a waveguide out the center of the dish off a reflector, off the dish again and out into space.
The mere fact is the alignment required to get a signal up there accurately can be affected by things covering it...sure, people do it, and i'm sure it works fine...but a few years ago when i took the exam to install these things, this was not allowed.
satellite is an expensive option...the wireless G3 option is probably a much better solution. wind hail and lightning don't really pose to many problems IF they're installed properly...this means grounding the dish...which will be done becuase hughes DOES NOT let the homeowner install these things.
the latency is horrible but the theoritical speeds are good...but if you wanna pay a couple hundred bucks for your internet connection to travel 90,000 miles more than it needs (and that's about half a second of PHYSICAL latency)....then i have to question of you're a senile old geezer to begin with.
I agree completely with you on this..in fact, I was about ready to step up and make a comment about this.
It's true, uTorrent and Limewire are two different beasts...they do NOT belong in the same category, let alone the same article about P2P. I can't understand why they wanted to include this in the list...I suspect that the people that wrote the article are probably just as stupid as people using limewire.
The biggest problem with with P2P programs are in fact, the amount of viruses you'll get, malware, spyware and god knows what else.
Most of the people anymore who use things like Limewire are the high-schoolers who "THINK" they're doing something cool..and when you have 4,000,000 people who can barely understand how an mp3 works, you wind up with a bunch of garbage, re-encoded mp3's that no self respecting "poweruser" would want.
This isn't just apples to bananas or oragnes..it's apples to pie. both are food..neither one are the same...and let's face it, people who know the truth would rather have pie:)
In the immortal words of Peter:
"THANK YOU!"
Seriously, have any of you all been watching the series? Don't you remember when Loretta cheated on Cleveland and she kicked him out and Cleveland went through that whole ordeal? Then Peter had to use the masks and "wrestle" with Brian on the floor to trigger Clevelands rage? hmm? just a little minor point to the plot? enough to put a hole in this story? make it totally false? Gotta, gotta compelling protaganist? Yeah? Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh? Gotta story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? Yea, talking about that 3 years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah?
No, if past cartoons are any indicator they'll write it anyway. Still, a Quagmire spinoff would be better. He's Quagmire, Quagmire, "Giggidy-giggidy-lets have sex!"
i also put rockbox on my "5.5" generation 30gig iPod Video, in fact, the main reason for me buying my ipod was to put rockbox on it....it's a prime example of how the OS makes the hardware. being a linux guy, i figured maybe he would of thought of that...or maybe the white-collar linux guys don't really know anything...or maybe he's protesting it doesn't work out of box...the point is...there's a lot of stuff computers never did out of box that people had to hack support to....wasn't that kind of the point of Linux to begin with? i kind of want to start questioning some of his other ideas.
hanging is still done, although it's usually by request and usually isn't honoured.
as far as the penalty, it depends how you look at this.
if you take the "common sense" approach..anything you send out over public lines would in theory become public domain, similar to FCC laws regarding the FRS band...however some would argue that the internet isn't a "public forum" because they're in thier own home and using a closed system.
personally, i see it as a major security problem, and those responsible should be sacked..however, at the same time, when i see something saying "so and so resigned from his position..." i basically see that as jumping ship. it doesn't mention if he was forced to resign, and even if he was, they still make it look like, and probably treat it as if he left on his own will, giving him his retirement and other benefits where as if they flat out fired him, he'd lose those benefits.
at this point, you can begin to maybe see how if this is punishment, it's a cushy one.
i'm not an AOL subscriber, personally this doesn't affect me, but it if had, i would personally be outraged at his apparent resignation because he's leaving before he can take any of the responsibility and any real punishment that's due to him; i'd say they should be yelling for nothing less than a stern immediate termination with loss of any benefits...and any lawsuits that might ensue from subscribers or on behalf of subscribers, he should take direct responsibility for..rather than skipping town.
But you're an audio engineer and I'm an uptight elitist asshole, and we represent a very very very small percentage of the market.
In a lot of ways, we're one in the same. Part of the requirement to be an audio engineer is being an uptight elitist asshole.
Now what i said about lack of analog component on blu-Ray/HD-DVD isn't entirely true. I had misread an article i pulled it from. On Blu-Ray, analog outputs will be DOWNSAMPLED to 480p..on HD-DVD it's up to the studio. I know a lot of you are saying that's a risk..but here's the thing. It's problems like this that cause a LOT of formats to fail in the public. I'm surprised DVD made it since they were lacking RF outputs, which consumers had been used to since the 70's, requiring those to buy additonal boxes...meaning consumers are willing to spend extra to hook stuff up. HD had been around since about 1998 and things almost standardized..now they're changing the standards and making a lot of current equipment no better than what we've got now. As a consumer it angers me. I paid $1200 for an HDTV last year because the market had somewhat stabalized and it wasn't really much of a "early adoption", and now with all this new stuff coming out i'm not going to even be able to fully use it. But I'll save my outrages at the industry and such for another slashdot article.
i personally don't go to theaters anymore for the basic reason of, i'm not going to basically spend the same amount as a DVD to see a movie once..then leave the movie with nothing other than memories and maybe a few screencaps snuck with my Sidekick...$8 for a ticket..$6 for popcorn....$6 for a soda??? It's almost CHEAPER to go to a baseball game or minor-league sporting event event than it is to see a movie in a theater. (While food at major events is about the same price..ticket costs are WAYYY up there.) Where is all this money going to? It's obviously not going into the customer expierence? The steats are uncomfortable and broken, the floors are always sticky, the carpets in these places are horrible and they've got people running around the lobby like a maze. I've been to only one nice theater (Landmark E Street in DC) which was a slighly upscale theater showing artsy/ind. films (i did break my no theater rule for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and it was a small theater, but, good big clear screen, nice sharp sound...and it was reasonably priced..$15 got me a ticket, two hot dogs,soda and some popcorn. Last time i went to a Regal Cinema..the ticket alone was $8.50. No wonder movies are making such bigger numbers at the box office, the price of a ticket i'm sure has gone up 8000%. However, the DraftHouse cinema was nice....pricy..but you can smoke in the theater.
Anyway, to make this short, the downfall of the industry is going to be the industry itself. They're going to do this, and that and change things on consumers and as a result, euventually, they'll alienate intelligent consumers who won't have antything to do with them. However, judging by the masses and masses of people i see in Wal-Mart..i don't think there are any intelligent consumers left. Stick crap in a big blue box and mark it with a sale tag, and people will buy it.
Everything has been said about movies that can be said. But i've noticed everyone is kinda focusing on DVD's and movies still in theaters.
In some ways..the analog hole is being closed in the HD world. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players aren't going to include componet video output and the newer HDTV componets are abandoning componet as well, per FCC ruling, going exclusively to HDMI and DVI connections. Which not only has a LOT of HDTV owners up in arms because our sets are going to be completely useless, but does in a way close the analog hole in the HDTV world. Then again, it's only a matter of time before someone makes a converter.
However, the audio world is the one place i continue to see an analog hole exist. SACD and DVD-Audio players use analog outputs rather than optical or coaxial digital signals to carry thier audio to the reciever. Analog audio is good quality, let's not forget we live in an analog world..our eyes and ears process analog. The main problem in the piracy world is taking advantage of this hole properly, which many won't do because of the time and expense involved.
I'm an audio engineer, I quite honestly find audio Cd's quite lacking in the sound game. The whole audio and DRM thing has come up before, along with discussions of the analog hole. The problem with the hole in the audio world is the equipment is almost good enough to capture an analog source with virturally no noticable loss of signal. It was even brought up a few times that record companies go back to distributing on vinyl to prevent piracy, it MIGHT work comsidering few people have the capability to properly record vinyl.
It still boils down to someone will find a way..even if you've got someone with clip-leads in the back of a TV set reading the raw RGB being sent to the projectors (at least until we abandon CRT technolgy)..the methods will keep getting more creative..and the quality may or may not in
As far as movie theaters..that's a losing game. Cameras keep getting smaller and smaller and more hidden in everday objects. Even if you place IR emitters around the screen to "overpower" the brightness of the screen in video carmera...a simple IR filter fixes that.
So, in the myth of the analog hole...i couldn't call it busted..and i wouldn't quite call it confirmed as quality issue is there..but i'd diffently call it plausable.
If Microsoft can get sued for putting Internet Explorer in Windows...can an ISP get sued for blocking access to competitors products?
It's a really interesting question. Another one to pose would be, if you sign up for internet service, and your ISP blocks access to certin ports without your knowledge...can you find some legal way to get back at them? However, given the fact that ISP's can and do change thier Terms Of Service on users without thier knowledge, I'd say no.
Given that, I feel big brother needs to step up and say something and change the way broadband providers work. They need to be required to tell thier customers what ports they block as well as notifying their customers when thier service is "modified" rather than keeping them in the dark.
But, it's another case of another monopoly showing once again they don't care about the quality of the service they provide to thier customers, as long as they keep sending in the checks.
I live in Manassas, which many people may or may not know was a major tested for BPL technology.
As a radio enthuiast, i've signed numerous petitions to have this blocked by the FCC.
The problem itself does not lie within the noisy power but the RF that radiates from the unshielded lines outside your house.
The results you might think would be ok, after finding out the extra RF in the signal doesn't affect the electricity itself.
The problem is BPL uses a "low" frequency range of 2mhz - 80mhz...so what operates in this range? Well, covering most of this band is shortwave radio and ham communications. It also affects VHF analog between 2 - 6. It can also affect 49mhz cordless phones if they use AM.
I had to install massife RF filters on my TV's line cord because the lower chanels were unwatchable.
Since BPL went like in my area about a year or so ago, i have no been able to pick up any real shortwave stations. The once beeping and tones of WWV is now replaced by a gieger-like ticking as packets move up and down the high voltage and very unshielded power lines.
What gets me is the FCC seems to be ignoring this. Here's an organization that's required to ensure other services are not adversly affected by new installations and they're simply not doing it. Think back to the 56K modem fiasco of the mid 90's. Yes, they could link up at 56kbps...but FCC regulations limited it to 53 because they weren't sure how the extra power required to link at 56 would do to other services...and now here's a serivce that's actually CAUSING damage to an existing service and they're turning a deaf ear. Part of me wants to think it's because the FCC considers the HF band and ham radio operators a "low priority"....although, it seems thier habit lately is to talor to the "average" american and screw the people who actually have any sense...
i mean..afterall...some people are too damn lazy to watch thier kids so congress made FCC have stricter standards of decency.
If these current trends keep up, who knows what's going to happen to the open air around us.
I for one predict many homebrew x-miters and probably countless legal battles with the FCC in an effort to regain the airwaves.
I live in Northern Virgina, in fact, the very city that in all my research comes up as a huge test bed, Manassas.
We were the first to have citywide BPL in use. I personally haven't looked into it, becuase I am a shortwave enthuist.
BPL does basically work by broadcasting a wideband signal, 2 to 80mhz, over unshielded power lines. It also only affects those signals, wireless networking won't pick it up. The local agencies and authorties for the most part use 800mhz trunked systems, except for the local schoolboard which uses 45.32 mhz.
Where my house is, with my outdoor antenna, on any given day I could pick up BBC clear as a bell, CHU on 7.335mhz, and any of the WWVB stations. I even enjoyed listening to HF hammers from around the world and even pirate stations. When BPL rolled out, I could tell you exactly what I got...static. Pure static, some signals pull through, but for the most part, they don't.
Now, this might not be so bad if say, the power grid was underground..but there aren't too many places in this city the power lines are underground, maybe in a few of the new neighborhoods, but most everything is above ground.
VHF isn't affected, the only repeaters I know of in this area are in the 150mhz HAM range, in fact, I don't even know if there are any licensed hams on the HF band because they're really not necessary with the propragation of that particular band.
basically all that's really out is the HF band, which a lot of hammers use, and one I enjoyed listening to, but what gets me is the FCC is licensing this technology despite the impact it already has on licensed services. I'm sure a lot of us can go through and pull minor petty infractions that limited new technology, biggest example...56K modems....
56k modems can't run at the full 56k because they might interfere with other services, but they're going to allow a possibly massive broadband pipe to disrupt an entire band....what kind of message are they pushing?
While I'm not sure what exact impact allowing wireless networking on unused stations would allow, I so feel the spectrum of unused channels, while varied per area, is large enough that a few unused channels in areas could be used without major interference. I do know my 2.4 ghz cordless went bezerk after I got a 802.11b access point in my house.
The reason I think the FCC priorites are skewed is I live in the DC metro area, Manassas Virginia to be exact. For anyone who's really studied broadband, they may know that Manassas is the testbed for BPL, which delivers broadband over normal power lines. This is achieved by sending a wideband signal that uses 2 - 80 mhz. This is all fine and good in theory because US electricy has a frequency of 60hz. However, powerlines are unshielded. I am one of the few in the area that happens to be a HAM enthuiest. This means the entire shortwave band is prebby much dead. Standing on a corner trying to pick up WWVB on 10mhz, all I hear is static, it does have a pattern and changes as use increases.
The FCC has pretty much turned a blind eye to our complaints, with most groups saying the interference caused doesn't interfere with any government sources or emergency bands, so therefore it's not of important.
The FCC is supposed to PREVENT this kind of interference. 5 years ago they were preventing 56K modems to connect at more than 53000bps because they felt it might cause interference, but they've licensed a technology that KNOWINGLY causes problems, and they're about to propose NEW rules that POTENTIALLY will ruin the TV band. I look at this NOT from the off-the-air aspect, since 95% of people have cable or satellite for thier signals, but, it's also look at the idea that no cable system is 100% shielded from outside interference, so cable users, espically those who have a mixed analog/digital setup (such as the local Comcast system here) MAY possibly see some interference, espically if they live near a transmitter site. I do know that even on the cable band, it gets into UHF signals around around the mid 60's (broadcast channel 20 is cable channel 72, with cable channels being expressed as the band channel, not the channels on addressable converters). Weather anything will actually happen, not sure. I only bring this up becuase it seems the FCC is ignoring the older technology that has been in place for years in order to push newer technology on the people. I'm all for progress like this, but I think there needs to be more extensive testing.
true..
also, what's interesting...a while back I ripped a CD via analog off my Apex DVD player..it was a John Prine CD but, it was HDCD, my Apex decodes HDCD, and no one noticed it wasn't a pure digital rip (no one complained that is)
a LOT of it has to do with the cartirdge involved. and I mean A LOT. if it was a higher end turntable, it probably has a stylus cartridge that plugs into the arm, this is an electromagnetic cartridge. magnets mounted inside of the "stick" the stylus is attatched to vibrate according to the grove, coils (electromagnets, but, there is no electricity to the cartridge) pick it up and make an electric signal, much like a generator. this is a low power output, so, it's preamped then amped. this produces a highy accurate output. there are other (Read CHEAP) mounts commonly seen on newer turntables and some 80's bundle models which have a snap on stylus, and a piece of carboard picks up the vibration, this produces bad quality.
also, weight and calibration have A LOT to do.
my technics SL-Q200 is listed as an "Audiophile" table on several pages, and has a electromagnet P-Mount cart, so, I can get better sound by buying a better cartridge, or ok sound from a cheaper cart, I have a diamond eplittical stylus on it right now, smooth sound.
I'm not sure what the sony's used. But, it seems recently and in the 80's, when vinyl started going out, that companies stopped producing good turntables, they were mostly provided for "legacy" support, if I may put it.
there's too much involved to read a phonograph by laser, you have to measure too many axis to do it with a laser,
it'll also eat your vinyl, possibly.
By proper I mean a good turntable. I have a 1984 Technics SL-q200, often reffered to as an AudioPhile turntable. The key here is the cartridge, it's an electromagnet, the cartridge determines a good bit of the sound quality, shitty cart/stylus...crappy sound. Calibration is also important.
The main issue is your ADC...I use a SB Audigy because it was good for the money..I'd like an Audiophile 2496.
"Copyright owners are entitled to use whatever formats they want to use," von Lohmann said. "If they really want to protect their content they can go back to vinyl."
How is THAT going to stop people? It simply makes it harder to rip?
With the proper equipment (read - PROPER) you can produce vinyl rips that are BETTER than some CD sources. Naturally the equipment is expensive, and there's always the inevatible static click or pop, but, with good digital procecssing, you can clean it up. I've done several albums off vinyl and burned them to CD with excellent results.
Which remins the question, did the mention vinyl beecause of sound quality, or because some people look at it as lower sound quality than cassette?
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anyone remember how ridiculously long ICQ was in "beta"? I think it spanned the enture duration it was created till AOL bought out Mirablis.
This has GOT to be a case of Italy just doing something to make itself seem..ahem...more badass than they are. It makes no sense. Countless numbers of bootleg CD's come out in Italy. I happen to know of a studio album of a "classic" band that not only was the Italian imported CD a bootleg (despite saying it was used with permission), but was also sourced off vinyl and not "complete" What's next? The Chinese suing TPB for cutting in on thier piracy business?
I love how everyone is focusing on speaker cables and such...or how some phones do it but others don't.
it's not a simple fact of the speaker itself...but rather it's any kind of analog audio amplifier. Most things these days are tightly cammed onto circuit boards with SMD devices and, well, these things aren't always shielded properly. As a result, when the phone is close enough it causes interference through the analog componets themselves...it's NOT stictly the cable as one might say.
I took my 1982 Sansui EQ and 1980 Danon amplifier (both old-school 100% analog devices), put my cell phone on top, and naturally, buzzing, static, and everything else associated with cell phone interference...come to think of it, this is not a NEW phenomon, but every cell phone i've owned since 2001 has done it, and i never really questioned what it is, i do know how radios and electronic circuits work afterall, i'm not a mouse jockey who thinks he knows everything
the point is, it's not cell phones specifically that's the culprit. I have a 2.4ghz digital cordless phone that if i'm in the same room as the cheap computer speakers, IT too picks up a similar noise. My 5.8 ghz digital does it to.
really, the main factors here is how well the "recieving" hardware is getting this. When i put the ferrite cores on my cables, i didn't notice ANY difference. Yes, it was less because they're not acting as antenna, but it wasn't till I put my audio equipment in a makeshift farraday cage that it obliterated audio.
this is nothing new, i don't know why people think they have the answers. analog audio devices are going to pick up interference like that, the only thing people can do is maybe engineer these things to have more shielding...becuase even th most advanced phone design in the world is STILL going to ouput microwave, it has to, there's no escaping that. (and for the record, yes, i put an old microwave next to the denon and turned it on, as i moved it closer, nice loud screeching became more apparent...wrap the stereo in alumimum foil and screeching gone.
so tell me again how a little metal donut on some cable is going to protect all my other "unshielded" stuff? srsly. fail.
Am I the only one who's had this for a while. My phone company has been doing "call intercept" on my line for the last 8 years. Numbers I select, or ones that have valid ID information get passed to the phone. Unknown numbers are required to do the same as this gadget...identify themselves or they're not passed. If i refuse to accept the call for whatever reason, the number gets blocked and they receieve the same "this number is not accepting your call" every time they call..my phone never rings. It's worked well for the recent rash of mass internet-lines calling from invalid numbers, null numbers (which don't show up as out of area or unavailable, but as 00000 or "No Data Sent) - not only that but it got bundled with my phone service simply by asking for it. But also, wouldn't you have to install this thing at the master incoming line, for the whole house? Plugging it up to a phone would still cause the phones to ring with an inital call is made.
I too have noticed that my comics widget gets screwed up by thier "widget suggestions". i haven't been able to read the first 5 comics since they did that. Maybe I just didn't read all the comments, but I know that just about every facebook user i've spoken to is very unhappy about the new facebook, in fact, people that like it seem to be in the minority? But what are people to do? Boycott, complain? Thus far none of it seems to be working for facebook. The groups are filled with people against the new facebook and whatnot..and there's not just one, no, it seems the very intelligent users can't feel one is enough, so there's about as many anti-facebook groups as there are users to go around. But facebook seems to be completely unresponsive about this. They've made no comments on the complains, they've changed NOTHING about the new site despite the fact everyone hates it and seem to be unresponsive to any options. They even went as far as to let people choose the old facebook if they wanted. It seems to be a case of, the new formats don't suck..but it's the fact there's a lot of widgets and layouts already based around an old format that won't work with the new...and it's hard to tell if the developers of the widgets are at fault or whoevers in charge of the backend of the site. I say it's partially irresponsible for a company to drastically change the backend of their site and cause things to break..wasn't it 10 years ago people actually, i don't know..TESTED things before they committed them to make sure the user expierences wasn't damaged? I say the biggest problem is the internet has gotten sold to corporate america more than anything..let's face it, these are the guys who've got the money to buy the servers and hire the people to do this...but just like any corporation, they're not going to do it becuase they care? Do you think these sites really care about thier users? No, they got a bottom line to care about, and if these new layouts let them get on 5% more advertising while pissing the users off...well..they're going to yield to the advertisers.... afterall, it's corporate america....you're expected to bend over upon entry.
Why does everyone sound shocked? I mean, sure, these days it's not as common, but, 10 years ago..it was a rare occurance, but happend often enough I laughed t it. I can't count the number of audio CD's that were pressed with one name and had NOTHING to do with reality. the greatest example was boot magazine (which is now MaximumPC. Issue #23's shareware CD...at least in the package I got, contained Windows NT Server 4 - said bootdisc 23 on the outside...but the pits were NT Server...and i'm ashamed to admit I did figure out how to get it working (who knew all 1's was a valid NT4 license key)
It's a Microsoft product...one should expect it to be optimized for crashing and burning. It's what they know best. I'm surprised they haven't gotten a BSOD and had to start the entire market over from scratch.
As I've stated before with satellite internet: If you're using it for a real-time service, say VOIP, well, you might as well just shoot yourself in the foot. You've got serious physical latency to deal with. Ping times of 500, 800 ms? That's quite normal. Let's look at a basic part of radio theory...radio signals travel at speed of light, around 186K miles/sec. Geosync orbits are 22.5K miles above the equator. My math sucks, but I do know that if the sats are positioned over equator, and you're up in northern canada...you're going to have a whole lot more than a 22,500 mile haul for your signal...so you've got all this physical latency to contend with. Sending analog signals (like they used to for international calls) generally works fine...but when you add in TCP/IP, it's just painful. It's really only good as a replacement for dialup..that's about as useful as it is. Sure, you can download large files pretty quick, but if you're doing any kind of real-time communication, seriously, save yourself the hassle and look into maybe getting some kind of microwave link for tellcommunications, it'll probably be cheaper in the long run than maintaining satellite systems...not to mention they're a LOT faster.
Whoever said that the BUD market is dead obviously hasn't looked around. Sure, the BUD market is about dead, but let's face it, Dish and DirecTV gotta thier channels somehow. The majority of major cable feeds, are, believe it or not, still being sent via analog. Sure, there's a large number of channels being done in digital, but there's still some analog feeds out there. You also have what's known as wild-feeds in which you can get some cool stuff. I can watch The Simpsons for 2 hours at 4AM because it's the syndicated feed. There is also a large number of Free To Air channels you can get with the thing. Sure, they're complex, but I'm sure if you look around you'll find the information you need. I mean, you could do a birdbath..or create some kind of "redneck gazebo", but you're almost better off just setting it up in your yard, aligning and programming positions, and scanning the air to see what you get. www.lyngsat.com tells you what birds are up there and what they're broadcasting.
Would't putting the Gnome on the roof just reduce the latency we get travel packages? :P
Let me lay this satellite issue to rest (probably not, but i can try).
You CANNOT mount the dish inside the house or cover it with a fake rock as per Hughes standards. For starters, the uplinking signals are EXTREMELY weak..most materials (even some of the microwave transparent ones) will block the signal...it's actually a few ghz higher than your downlink...this is not to mention that the uplink dishes on your house are NOTHING like the big-boys..they use powerful transmitters remotely mounted and feed the signal with a waveguide out the center of the dish off a reflector, off the dish again and out into space.
The mere fact is the alignment required to get a signal up there accurately can be affected by things covering it...sure, people do it, and i'm sure it works fine...but a few years ago when i took the exam to install these things, this was not allowed.
satellite is an expensive option...the wireless G3 option is probably a much better solution. wind hail and lightning don't really pose to many problems IF they're installed properly...this means grounding the dish...which will be done becuase hughes DOES NOT let the homeowner install these things.
the latency is horrible but the theoritical speeds are good...but if you wanna pay a couple hundred bucks for your internet connection to travel 90,000 miles more than it needs (and that's about half a second of PHYSICAL latency)....then i have to question of you're a senile old geezer to begin with.
I agree completely with you on this..in fact, I was about ready to step up and make a comment about this.
:)
It's true, uTorrent and Limewire are two different beasts...they do NOT belong in the same category, let alone the same article about P2P. I can't understand why they wanted to include this in the list...I suspect that the people that wrote the article are probably just as stupid as people using limewire.
The biggest problem with with P2P programs are in fact, the amount of viruses you'll get, malware, spyware and god knows what else.
Most of the people anymore who use things like Limewire are the high-schoolers who "THINK" they're doing something cool..and when you have 4,000,000 people who can barely understand how an mp3 works, you wind up with a bunch of garbage, re-encoded mp3's that no self respecting "poweruser" would want.
This isn't just apples to bananas or oragnes..it's apples to pie. both are food..neither one are the same...and let's face it, people who know the truth would rather have pie
In the immortal words of Peter: "THANK YOU!" Seriously, have any of you all been watching the series? Don't you remember when Loretta cheated on Cleveland and she kicked him out and Cleveland went through that whole ordeal? Then Peter had to use the masks and "wrestle" with Brian on the floor to trigger Clevelands rage? hmm? just a little minor point to the plot? enough to put a hole in this story? make it totally false? Gotta, gotta compelling protaganist? Yeah? Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh? Gotta story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? Yea, talking about that 3 years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? No, if past cartoons are any indicator they'll write it anyway. Still, a Quagmire spinoff would be better. He's Quagmire, Quagmire, "Giggidy-giggidy-lets have sex!"
i also put rockbox on my "5.5" generation 30gig iPod Video, in fact, the main reason for me buying my ipod was to put rockbox on it....it's a prime example of how the OS makes the hardware. being a linux guy, i figured maybe he would of thought of that...or maybe the white-collar linux guys don't really know anything...or maybe he's protesting it doesn't work out of box...the point is...there's a lot of stuff computers never did out of box that people had to hack support to....wasn't that kind of the point of Linux to begin with? i kind of want to start questioning some of his other ideas.
hanging is still done, although it's usually by request and usually isn't honoured. as far as the penalty, it depends how you look at this. if you take the "common sense" approach..anything you send out over public lines would in theory become public domain, similar to FCC laws regarding the FRS band...however some would argue that the internet isn't a "public forum" because they're in thier own home and using a closed system. personally, i see it as a major security problem, and those responsible should be sacked..however, at the same time, when i see something saying "so and so resigned from his position..." i basically see that as jumping ship. it doesn't mention if he was forced to resign, and even if he was, they still make it look like, and probably treat it as if he left on his own will, giving him his retirement and other benefits where as if they flat out fired him, he'd lose those benefits. at this point, you can begin to maybe see how if this is punishment, it's a cushy one. i'm not an AOL subscriber, personally this doesn't affect me, but it if had, i would personally be outraged at his apparent resignation because he's leaving before he can take any of the responsibility and any real punishment that's due to him; i'd say they should be yelling for nothing less than a stern immediate termination with loss of any benefits...and any lawsuits that might ensue from subscribers or on behalf of subscribers, he should take direct responsibility for..rather than skipping town.
In a lot of ways, we're one in the same. Part of the requirement to be an audio engineer is being an uptight elitist asshole.
Now what i said about lack of analog component on blu-Ray/HD-DVD isn't entirely true. I had misread an article i pulled it from. On Blu-Ray, analog outputs will be DOWNSAMPLED to 480p..on HD-DVD it's up to the studio. I know a lot of you are saying that's a risk..but here's the thing. It's problems like this that cause a LOT of formats to fail in the public. I'm surprised DVD made it since they were lacking RF outputs, which consumers had been used to since the 70's, requiring those to buy additonal boxes...meaning consumers are willing to spend extra to hook stuff up.
HD had been around since about 1998 and things almost standardized..now they're changing the standards and making a lot of current equipment no better than what we've got now. As a consumer it angers me. I paid $1200 for an HDTV last year because the market had somewhat stabalized and it wasn't really much of a "early adoption", and now with all this new stuff coming out i'm not going to even be able to fully use it. But I'll save my outrages at the industry and such for another slashdot article.
i personally don't go to theaters anymore for the basic reason of, i'm not going to basically spend the same amount as a DVD to see a movie once..then leave the movie with nothing other than memories and maybe a few screencaps snuck with my Sidekick...$8 for a ticket..$6 for popcorn....$6 for a soda??? It's almost CHEAPER to go to a baseball game or minor-league sporting event event than it is to see a movie in a theater. (While food at major events is about the same price..ticket costs are WAYYY up there.) Where is all this money going to? It's obviously not going into the customer expierence? The steats are uncomfortable and broken, the floors are always sticky, the carpets in these places are horrible and they've got people running around the lobby like a maze. I've been to only one nice theater (Landmark E Street in DC) which was a slighly upscale theater showing artsy/ind. films (i did break my no theater rule for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and it was a small theater, but, good big clear screen, nice sharp sound...and it was reasonably priced..$15 got me a ticket, two hot dogs,soda and some popcorn. Last time i went to a Regal Cinema..the ticket alone was $8.50. No wonder movies are making such bigger numbers at the box office, the price of a ticket i'm sure has gone up 8000%. However, the DraftHouse cinema was nice....pricy..but you can smoke in the theater.
Anyway, to make this short, the downfall of the industry is going to be the industry itself. They're going to do this, and that and change things on consumers and as a result, euventually, they'll alienate intelligent consumers who won't have antything to do with them. However, judging by the masses and masses of people i see in Wal-Mart..i don't think there are any intelligent consumers left. Stick crap in a big blue box and mark it with a sale tag, and people will buy it.
It's sad.
So very sad.
Everything has been said about movies that can be said. But i've noticed everyone is kinda focusing on DVD's and movies still in theaters. In some ways..the analog hole is being closed in the HD world. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players aren't going to include componet video output and the newer HDTV componets are abandoning componet as well, per FCC ruling, going exclusively to HDMI and DVI connections. Which not only has a LOT of HDTV owners up in arms because our sets are going to be completely useless, but does in a way close the analog hole in the HDTV world. Then again, it's only a matter of time before someone makes a converter. However, the audio world is the one place i continue to see an analog hole exist. SACD and DVD-Audio players use analog outputs rather than optical or coaxial digital signals to carry thier audio to the reciever. Analog audio is good quality, let's not forget we live in an analog world..our eyes and ears process analog. The main problem in the piracy world is taking advantage of this hole properly, which many won't do because of the time and expense involved. I'm an audio engineer, I quite honestly find audio Cd's quite lacking in the sound game. The whole audio and DRM thing has come up before, along with discussions of the analog hole. The problem with the hole in the audio world is the equipment is almost good enough to capture an analog source with virturally no noticable loss of signal. It was even brought up a few times that record companies go back to distributing on vinyl to prevent piracy, it MIGHT work comsidering few people have the capability to properly record vinyl. It still boils down to someone will find a way..even if you've got someone with clip-leads in the back of a TV set reading the raw RGB being sent to the projectors (at least until we abandon CRT technolgy)..the methods will keep getting more creative..and the quality may or may not in As far as movie theaters..that's a losing game. Cameras keep getting smaller and smaller and more hidden in everday objects. Even if you place IR emitters around the screen to "overpower" the brightness of the screen in video carmera...a simple IR filter fixes that. So, in the myth of the analog hole...i couldn't call it busted..and i wouldn't quite call it confirmed as quality issue is there..but i'd diffently call it plausable.
If Microsoft can get sued for putting Internet Explorer in Windows...can an ISP get sued for blocking access to competitors products?
It's a really interesting question. Another one to pose would be, if you sign up for internet service, and your ISP blocks access to certin ports without your knowledge...can you find some legal way to get back at them? However, given the fact that ISP's can and do change thier Terms Of Service on users without thier knowledge, I'd say no.
Given that, I feel big brother needs to step up and say something and change the way broadband providers work. They need to be required to tell thier customers what ports they block as well as notifying their customers when thier service is "modified" rather than keeping them in the dark.
But, it's another case of another monopoly showing once again they don't care about the quality of the service they provide to thier customers, as long as they keep sending in the checks.
I live in Manassas, which many people may or may not know was a major tested for BPL technology. As a radio enthuiast, i've signed numerous petitions to have this blocked by the FCC. The problem itself does not lie within the noisy power but the RF that radiates from the unshielded lines outside your house. The results you might think would be ok, after finding out the extra RF in the signal doesn't affect the electricity itself. The problem is BPL uses a "low" frequency range of 2mhz - 80mhz...so what operates in this range? Well, covering most of this band is shortwave radio and ham communications. It also affects VHF analog between 2 - 6. It can also affect 49mhz cordless phones if they use AM. I had to install massife RF filters on my TV's line cord because the lower chanels were unwatchable. Since BPL went like in my area about a year or so ago, i have no been able to pick up any real shortwave stations. The once beeping and tones of WWV is now replaced by a gieger-like ticking as packets move up and down the high voltage and very unshielded power lines. What gets me is the FCC seems to be ignoring this. Here's an organization that's required to ensure other services are not adversly affected by new installations and they're simply not doing it. Think back to the 56K modem fiasco of the mid 90's. Yes, they could link up at 56kbps...but FCC regulations limited it to 53 because they weren't sure how the extra power required to link at 56 would do to other services...and now here's a serivce that's actually CAUSING damage to an existing service and they're turning a deaf ear. Part of me wants to think it's because the FCC considers the HF band and ham radio operators a "low priority"....although, it seems thier habit lately is to talor to the "average" american and screw the people who actually have any sense... i mean..afterall...some people are too damn lazy to watch thier kids so congress made FCC have stricter standards of decency. If these current trends keep up, who knows what's going to happen to the open air around us. I for one predict many homebrew x-miters and probably countless legal battles with the FCC in an effort to regain the airwaves.
I live in Northern Virgina, in fact, the very city that in all my research comes up as a huge test bed, Manassas. We were the first to have citywide BPL in use. I personally haven't looked into it, becuase I am a shortwave enthuist. BPL does basically work by broadcasting a wideband signal, 2 to 80mhz, over unshielded power lines. It also only affects those signals, wireless networking won't pick it up. The local agencies and authorties for the most part use 800mhz trunked systems, except for the local schoolboard which uses 45.32 mhz. Where my house is, with my outdoor antenna, on any given day I could pick up BBC clear as a bell, CHU on 7.335mhz, and any of the WWVB stations. I even enjoyed listening to HF hammers from around the world and even pirate stations. When BPL rolled out, I could tell you exactly what I got...static. Pure static, some signals pull through, but for the most part, they don't. Now, this might not be so bad if say, the power grid was underground..but there aren't too many places in this city the power lines are underground, maybe in a few of the new neighborhoods, but most everything is above ground. VHF isn't affected, the only repeaters I know of in this area are in the 150mhz HAM range, in fact, I don't even know if there are any licensed hams on the HF band because they're really not necessary with the propragation of that particular band. basically all that's really out is the HF band, which a lot of hammers use, and one I enjoyed listening to, but what gets me is the FCC is licensing this technology despite the impact it already has on licensed services. I'm sure a lot of us can go through and pull minor petty infractions that limited new technology, biggest example...56K modems.... 56k modems can't run at the full 56k because they might interfere with other services, but they're going to allow a possibly massive broadband pipe to disrupt an entire band....what kind of message are they pushing?
While I'm not sure what exact impact allowing wireless networking on unused stations would allow, I so feel the spectrum of unused channels, while varied per area, is large enough that a few unused channels in areas could be used without major interference. I do know my 2.4 ghz cordless went bezerk after I got a 802.11b access point in my house.
The reason I think the FCC priorites are skewed is I live in the DC metro area, Manassas Virginia to be exact. For anyone who's really studied broadband, they may know that Manassas is the testbed for BPL, which delivers broadband over normal power lines. This is achieved by sending a wideband signal that uses 2 - 80 mhz. This is all fine and good in theory because US electricy has a frequency of 60hz. However, powerlines are unshielded. I am one of the few in the area that happens to be a HAM enthuiest. This means the entire shortwave band is prebby much dead. Standing on a corner trying to pick up WWVB on 10mhz, all I hear is static, it does have a pattern and changes as use increases.
The FCC has pretty much turned a blind eye to our complaints, with most groups saying the interference caused doesn't interfere with any government sources or emergency bands, so therefore it's not of important.
The FCC is supposed to PREVENT this kind of interference. 5 years ago they were preventing 56K modems to connect at more than 53000bps because they felt it might cause interference, but they've licensed a technology that KNOWINGLY causes problems, and they're about to propose NEW rules that POTENTIALLY will ruin the TV band. I look at this NOT from the off-the-air aspect, since 95% of people have cable or satellite for thier signals, but, it's also look at the idea that no cable system is 100% shielded from outside interference, so cable users, espically those who have a mixed analog/digital setup (such as the local Comcast system here) MAY possibly see some interference, espically if they live near a transmitter site. I do know that even on the cable band, it gets into UHF signals around around the mid 60's (broadcast channel 20 is cable channel 72, with cable channels being expressed as the band channel, not the channels on addressable converters). Weather anything will actually happen, not sure. I only bring this up becuase it seems the FCC is ignoring the older technology that has been in place for years in order to push newer technology on the people. I'm all for progress like this, but I think there needs to be more extensive testing.
true.. also, what's interesting...a while back I ripped a CD via analog off my Apex DVD player..it was a John Prine CD but, it was HDCD, my Apex decodes HDCD, and no one noticed it wasn't a pure digital rip (no one complained that is)
a LOT of it has to do with the cartirdge involved. and I mean A LOT. if it was a higher end turntable, it probably has a stylus cartridge that plugs into the arm, this is an electromagnetic cartridge. magnets mounted inside of the "stick" the stylus is attatched to vibrate according to the grove, coils (electromagnets, but, there is no electricity to the cartridge) pick it up and make an electric signal, much like a generator. this is a low power output, so, it's preamped then amped. this produces a highy accurate output. there are other (Read CHEAP) mounts commonly seen on newer turntables and some 80's bundle models which have a snap on stylus, and a piece of carboard picks up the vibration, this produces bad quality. also, weight and calibration have A LOT to do. my technics SL-Q200 is listed as an "Audiophile" table on several pages, and has a electromagnet P-Mount cart, so, I can get better sound by buying a better cartridge, or ok sound from a cheaper cart, I have a diamond eplittical stylus on it right now, smooth sound. I'm not sure what the sony's used. But, it seems recently and in the 80's, when vinyl started going out, that companies stopped producing good turntables, they were mostly provided for "legacy" support, if I may put it.
there's too much involved to read a phonograph by laser, you have to measure too many axis to do it with a laser, it'll also eat your vinyl, possibly. By proper I mean a good turntable. I have a 1984 Technics SL-q200, often reffered to as an AudioPhile turntable. The key here is the cartridge, it's an electromagnet, the cartridge determines a good bit of the sound quality, shitty cart/stylus...crappy sound. Calibration is also important. The main issue is your ADC...I use a SB Audigy because it was good for the money..I'd like an Audiophile 2496.
"Copyright owners are entitled to use whatever formats they want to use," von Lohmann said. "If they really want to protect their content they can go back to vinyl."
How is THAT going to stop people? It simply makes it harder to rip?
With the proper equipment (read - PROPER) you can produce vinyl rips that are BETTER than some CD sources. Naturally the equipment is expensive, and there's always the inevatible static click or pop, but, with good digital procecssing, you can clean it up. I've done several albums off vinyl and burned them to CD with excellent results.
Which remins the question, did the mention vinyl beecause of sound quality, or because some people look at it as lower sound quality than cassette?