The threat that "DRM will make your computer useless" is not really relevant.
It seems quite relevant to me when faced with the possibility of having to purchase a bunch of new gear just to be able to run DRM'd software or watch DRM'd movies and other content that wouldn't otherwise require a hardware upgrade.
Yeah, I'm not seeing the "news" angle since Solaris 10 and Sun Studio 11 have been available as free downloads for quite some time. Sure, it's nice to have them on pressed media instead of a writable CD/DVD, but I'm not sure why/how this is a big deal.
The problem is that the product that bore the "iPhone" label in the declaration (Linksys CIT200) hadn't ever been associated with that name, so it seems to me that the sticker was an attempt to pull a fast one on the USPTO by representing the trademark as being actively used when in fact it wasn't and hadn't been for six years. The CIT200 was finally rebranded "iPhone" last month, but that was seven months after the declaration was filed and more than a year after the declaration had originally been due, and almost certainly after Cisco was aware of Apple's intentions.
IMHO Cisco fumbled badly, and they're desperately trying to recover.
I think you're spot on. From the e-mail that Jackson sent to TheOneRing.net:
"You may also be aware that Wingnut Films has bought a lawsuit against New Line, which resulted from an audit we undertook on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring. Our attitude with the lawsuit has always been that since it's largely based on differences of opinion about certain accounting practices, we would like an independent body - whether it be a judge, a jury, or a mediator, to look at the issues and make an unbiased ruling. We are happy to accept whatever that ruling is. In our minds, it's not much more complex than that and that's exactly why film contracts include right-to-audit clauses."
It sounds to me that Jackson is being quite reasonable and is simply trying to exercise his rights under his contract with New Line, and the studio is being a total ass about it.
I'll thank you not to treat me like a philistine because the environment where I listen to 95% of my music doesn't happen to meet your audiophile standards.
Excuse me - where exactly was I treating you or anyone else like a Philistine? The original argument was that re-encoding audio results didn't result in audible degradation, and I was responding to a post where the poster said that only one in 10,000 people would be able to discern a difference. Frankly, I think that's bullshit - plenty of people I know can hear compression artifacting, and I'm not talking about differences where you'd need an anechoic chamber and no ambient noise to hear. I'm talking about stuff like phase distortion that's bad enough to hear on the original AAC download from Apple. I'm talking about cymbal crashes that sound like they have a damn flanger on them. I'm talking about stuff that is quite clearly audible through a thoroughly average set of earbuds. Maybe people don't know it when they hear it, and maybe it doesn't bother them - if so, great for them. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist and isn't bothersome to some people.
I was just going to go back and mention that "lossless" doesn't necessarily mean "unencoded" as I hadn't considered the lossless codecs available. You're absolutely correct about Apple Lossless and other similar codecs offering a 2:1 reduction of data size.
The rest are those that claim that a $100 HDMI cable produces richer colors and fuller sound than a $6 HDMI cable.
Or maybe it's just that the rest are people that actually *listen* to their music. There are plenty of people that apparently can't see the degradation in a re-encoded JPEG image either, but it exists and is quantifiable, just like the degradation from re-encoding audio.
I'll concede that it's sometimes difficult to hear a difference with a lot of today's popular music, but that's mostly because the music is already processed and compressed to within an inch of its life. Most of today's producers wouldn't understand what "dynamic range" meant even if you put a book in front of them. However, listening to a well-recorded jazz or classical track that has a bit of delicacy and variation will usually let you hear the encoding artifacts quite clearly.
Don't forget the bit about "the lamentation of their women", that really needs to be worked in there somewhere.
But that can't come until after IBM sees SCO driven before them, which has to happen after the aforementioned crushing. You gotta keep to the schedule that was given, y'know.
I had originally said "a thousand times per second", so I think that might be part of the confusion, and I know for a fact that turbines for use in model aircraft run upwards of 150K RPM at peak with rotor diameters of 5" or so. The page you linked to gives a figure of 45,700 rpm for the second stage of one of the vehicles they discuss, and that implementation was limited by the need to be linked mechanically to the drive train and to be able to be spooled up and down often. I'd think that a more modern version would run the turbine constantly at a faster speed for the efficiency benefits.
Mind you, I'm not a mechanical engineer, nor do I work on turbines, so one shouldn't put much faith in anything I say on the subject - without much direct experience, I'm limited to the accuracy of the stuff I read.
I'm not sure you can really compare a turbine engine that's driving a hefty generator through a gearbox to a turbocharger that's directly driving a set of lightweight vanes in air - with the turbine, the load will be *substantially* heavier and you'll have to maintain a comparable rotor speed the entire time the car is running. The gearbox will also have parts moving at a non-trivial speed.
You're absolutely right about aircraft and power plant applications being built to withstand rotor failure, but those are also two applications in which there's not much concern about the additional costs needed to keep everything safe. Planes and power plants also tend to have rigid maintenance schedules, whereas it's a challenge to get most car owners to check their tire pressure regularly. Engineering a turbine system that is safe for a car is not particularly difficult, but making it lightweight, quiet, cheap, and sufficiently maintenance-free may prove to be a challenge.
The fastest your car's internal combustion engine will safely spin is probably a little above 8000 RPM or so, or around 150 times per second. That's at redline - a much more common value that you'll see is between 1500-3000 RPM. A car-sized turbine will probably have to run about 8 times faster than the speed at which your internal combustion engine redlines, and will have to maintain that speed all the time. That's a *lot* of kinetic energy to have to safely contain in the event of an accident.
Well, it's not thousands of revs per SECOND, it's usually around 10,000 RPM (minute).
Maybe for a big JT9D that you'd find under the wing of a 747, but not for a little-bitty turbine that you can stick in a car. Operating speed and size are usually inversely proportional for turbines.
That's right, it's not. However, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a turbine small enough for an automotive application that will run that slowly. In general, the smaller the turbine the faster it has to run to be useful, and a turbine that is small enough to fit into a car (2 feet or so in diameter) would need to run between 60-70K RPM.
It's only illegal to record a phone conversation in which you are not a participant.
That's fine in Minnesota and also is substantially what federal law says, but other states' laws come into play as well. You're fine recording without the other party's permission unless you or the other participant happens to be in one of the 12 states that requires consent of all parties. There was a case brought in California (which is an "all-party" state) last year that dealt with precisely this situation, and the court found that the laws of the state with the more restrictive policy controlled (Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, 45 Cal. Rptr. 730 (Cal. 2006)).
Even if the Tesla were only $10K, it'd still take quite a long time to justify the purchase financially (in the US, anyway). It's rather the same reason that I didn't buy my truck with a diesel engine - the diesel certainly gets better mileage, but it would take so long for the fuel savings to match the initial cost of the more expensive engine that it's just not worth it.
Why not have a simple high tax on fuel, and let the market take care of the rest?
Because 1) having government interfere in such a manner is not "letting the market take care of it", and 2) you'll end up increasing the costs of goods in general.
Something the parent poster may have been getting at is that turbines tend to be rather loud at speed, have to dump a lot of waste heat, and having parts spinning around a thousand times per second in your car may prove to be a safety issue. That's not to say that a workable turbine design couldn't be done, just that there are some formidable engineering challenges to be met.
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The threat that "DRM will make your computer useless" is not really relevant.
It seems quite relevant to me when faced with the possibility of having to purchase a bunch of new gear just to be able to run DRM'd software or watch DRM'd movies and other content that wouldn't otherwise require a hardware upgrade.
Actually, I'm working on it. :-)
I've heard all sorts of insults from a surgeon friend toward the morbidly obese.
What really gets me is when I get lectured like a child about my weight by a doctor that smokes and has a higher BMI than I do.
they, indirectly, pay my bills
:-)
Yup - it's *especially* dangerous to act like a tool when you're dealing with someone having a problem in Payroll.
Yeah, I'm not seeing the "news" angle since Solaris 10 and Sun Studio 11 have been available as free downloads for quite some time. Sure, it's nice to have them on pressed media instead of a writable CD/DVD, but I'm not sure why/how this is a big deal.
Personally I think the solution is to travel back in time, and re-engineer the human race so that we grow 12 fingers
Interestingly, Schoolhouse Rock covered a similar possibility on children's TV back in the 70's. Hell of a concept to lay on kids.
The problem is that the product that bore the "iPhone" label in the declaration (Linksys CIT200) hadn't ever been associated with that name, so it seems to me that the sticker was an attempt to pull a fast one on the USPTO by representing the trademark as being actively used when in fact it wasn't and hadn't been for six years. The CIT200 was finally rebranded "iPhone" last month, but that was seven months after the declaration was filed and more than a year after the declaration had originally been due, and almost certainly after Cisco was aware of Apple's intentions.
IMHO Cisco fumbled badly, and they're desperately trying to recover.
In your view, laws that restrict how or what technology you create are bad.
When it's done merely to prop up a dying industry at the expense of the public good, you bet.
I think you're spot on. From the e-mail that Jackson sent to TheOneRing.net:
"You may also be aware that Wingnut Films has bought a lawsuit against New Line, which resulted from an audit we undertook on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring. Our attitude with the lawsuit has always been that since it's largely based on differences of opinion about certain accounting practices, we would like an independent body - whether it be a judge, a jury, or a mediator, to look at the issues and make an unbiased ruling. We are happy to accept whatever that ruling is. In our minds, it's not much more complex than that and that's exactly why film contracts include right-to-audit clauses."
It sounds to me that Jackson is being quite reasonable and is simply trying to exercise his rights under his contract with New Line, and the studio is being a total ass about it.
Yeah, except for the "almost" part.
I'll thank you not to treat me like a philistine because the environment where I listen to 95% of my music doesn't happen to meet your audiophile standards.
Excuse me - where exactly was I treating you or anyone else like a Philistine? The original argument was that re-encoding audio results didn't result in audible degradation, and I was responding to a post where the poster said that only one in 10,000 people would be able to discern a difference. Frankly, I think that's bullshit - plenty of people I know can hear compression artifacting, and I'm not talking about differences where you'd need an anechoic chamber and no ambient noise to hear. I'm talking about stuff like phase distortion that's bad enough to hear on the original AAC download from Apple. I'm talking about cymbal crashes that sound like they have a damn flanger on them. I'm talking about stuff that is quite clearly audible through a thoroughly average set of earbuds. Maybe people don't know it when they hear it, and maybe it doesn't bother them - if so, great for them. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist and isn't bothersome to some people.
I was just going to go back and mention that "lossless" doesn't necessarily mean "unencoded" as I hadn't considered the lossless codecs available. You're absolutely correct about Apple Lossless and other similar codecs offering a 2:1 reduction of data size.
The rest are those that claim that a $100 HDMI cable produces richer colors and fuller sound than a $6 HDMI cable.
Or maybe it's just that the rest are people that actually *listen* to their music. There are plenty of people that apparently can't see the degradation in a re-encoded JPEG image either, but it exists and is quantifiable, just like the degradation from re-encoding audio.
I'll concede that it's sometimes difficult to hear a difference with a lot of today's popular music, but that's mostly because the music is already processed and compressed to within an inch of its life. Most of today's producers wouldn't understand what "dynamic range" meant even if you put a book in front of them. However, listening to a well-recorded jazz or classical track that has a bit of delicacy and variation will usually let you hear the encoding artifacts quite clearly.
No, you just have to give up 600 megabytes of disk space per album.
Don't forget the bit about "the lamentation of their women", that really needs to be worked in there somewhere.
But that can't come until after IBM sees SCO driven before them, which has to happen after the aforementioned crushing. You gotta keep to the schedule that was given, y'know.
I had originally said "a thousand times per second", so I think that might be part of the confusion, and I know for a fact that turbines for use in model aircraft run upwards of 150K RPM at peak with rotor diameters of 5" or so. The page you linked to gives a figure of 45,700 rpm for the second stage of one of the vehicles they discuss, and that implementation was limited by the need to be linked mechanically to the drive train and to be able to be spooled up and down often. I'd think that a more modern version would run the turbine constantly at a faster speed for the efficiency benefits.
Mind you, I'm not a mechanical engineer, nor do I work on turbines, so one shouldn't put much faith in anything I say on the subject - without much direct experience, I'm limited to the accuracy of the stuff I read.
I'm not sure you can really compare a turbine engine that's driving a hefty generator through a gearbox to a turbocharger that's directly driving a set of lightweight vanes in air - with the turbine, the load will be *substantially* heavier and you'll have to maintain a comparable rotor speed the entire time the car is running. The gearbox will also have parts moving at a non-trivial speed.
You're absolutely right about aircraft and power plant applications being built to withstand rotor failure, but those are also two applications in which there's not much concern about the additional costs needed to keep everything safe. Planes and power plants also tend to have rigid maintenance schedules, whereas it's a challenge to get most car owners to check their tire pressure regularly. Engineering a turbine system that is safe for a car is not particularly difficult, but making it lightweight, quiet, cheap, and sufficiently maintenance-free may prove to be a challenge.
The fastest your car's internal combustion engine will safely spin is probably a little above 8000 RPM or so, or around 150 times per second. That's at redline - a much more common value that you'll see is between 1500-3000 RPM. A car-sized turbine will probably have to run about 8 times faster than the speed at which your internal combustion engine redlines, and will have to maintain that speed all the time. That's a *lot* of kinetic energy to have to safely contain in the event of an accident.
Well, it's not thousands of revs per SECOND, it's usually around 10,000 RPM (minute).
Maybe for a big JT9D that you'd find under the wing of a 747, but not for a little-bitty turbine that you can stick in a car. Operating speed and size are usually inversely proportional for turbines.
That's right, it's not. However, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a turbine small enough for an automotive application that will run that slowly. In general, the smaller the turbine the faster it has to run to be useful, and a turbine that is small enough to fit into a car (2 feet or so in diameter) would need to run between 60-70K RPM.
It's only illegal to record a phone conversation in which you are not a participant.
That's fine in Minnesota and also is substantially what federal law says, but other states' laws come into play as well. You're fine recording without the other party's permission unless you or the other participant happens to be in one of the 12 states that requires consent of all parties. There was a case brought in California (which is an "all-party" state) last year that dealt with precisely this situation, and the court found that the laws of the state with the more restrictive policy controlled (Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, 45 Cal. Rptr. 730 (Cal. 2006)).
Even if the Tesla were only $10K, it'd still take quite a long time to justify the purchase financially (in the US, anyway). It's rather the same reason that I didn't buy my truck with a diesel engine - the diesel certainly gets better mileage, but it would take so long for the fuel savings to match the initial cost of the more expensive engine that it's just not worth it.
Read farther down:
"...or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect..." (emphasis mine)
Why not have a simple high tax on fuel, and let the market take care of the rest?
Because 1) having government interfere in such a manner is not "letting the market take care of it", and 2) you'll end up increasing the costs of goods in general.
Something the parent poster may have been getting at is that turbines tend to be rather loud at speed, have to dump a lot of waste heat, and having parts spinning around a thousand times per second in your car may prove to be a safety issue. That's not to say that a workable turbine design couldn't be done, just that there are some formidable engineering challenges to be met.