Given all the digital rights management in Vista, I'm sure any air force needed rights have already been managed in.
Nice the way Vista was the only "media recorder" to interpret a broadcast flag as seriously meaning do not record....isn't it a do not rebroadcast flag? I mean, why would a broadcaster want to prohibit viewing...just stupid to interpret the broadcast flag as meaning "don't let me watch this..."...but hey, its another reason why Vista should be expunged...and XP should be open-sourced if MS doesn't want to continue to support it (without new DRM addins)...
Ok, software formats already exist that can use 48 and 64-bit color -- but is this what studios like Dreamworks use to create their photo-realistic movies? I remembered that Hi-Def video takes ALOT of diskspace as it is, but if it was rendered in 48 or 64-bit color, when such couldn't be seen by viewers at a movie or on a HD-DVD, wouldn't it be a waste of money? Would film-makers "already" be operating at 2-2.5x the number of bits that would be usable in any final product? Or are they already making the film masters in preparation for the next gen HD? Would they use the extra space for color reproduction or would they be more likely to go with higher resolutions?
But more importantly, doesn't the use of 10-bits/color, or 1024 levels allow more "dynamic range" of brightness -- hasn't that been a problem more in LCD's vs. video? Lack of comparable dynamic range of digital to film is one of the major problems with digital photography today. Does video suffer, somehow less, from problems with dynamic range than still photography -- especially when the video may be created from 25-30+ still pictures/second?
If we move to displays with 1000:1 contrast, isn't 10-bits about what one needs to hold all the ranges of brightness on such displays?
Maybe people who complain about not being able to see differences of 1024-levels of brightness are used to monitors with 250:1 or 500:1 contrast monitors (that probably have real levels lower than that in practice)? Have end-user LCD monitors had more than 1000:1 contrast levels before the past few years?
So the video makers won't have to use hacks to render a video? So -- as the original article said, the video designers can ensure that the color they assign to Shrek at the beginning of the film is the same color used throughout and isn't altered during the entire film by other objects needing green.
I can imagine that if you have a few objects that you'd like to reserve color palette for over a feature length movie, the number of colors available might be more of an issue than in one static picture. It's possible this could simplify some rendering algorithms possibly allowing some speedups or optimizations?
Doesn't patent 6,332,158 already cover what is in Verisign's patent 7,337,910? It seems that the 2nd patent (7,337,910) should at least reference the 1st patent under the "Related US Patent Documents" section.
How does one submit a bug-report against a US Patent? Maybe the USPTO needs to open up a bugzilla DB to handle things like this?
Certainly UK lawmakers are not so ignorant or unimaginative. There is no way to play a CD unless you copy the music off of the CD, decode the digital signal, then eventually pipe it out analogue speakers or earphones. You can't play the CD by just looking at it -- by their nature, they are a digital source that needs to be read off by some digital reader and converted before they are useful.
CD players vary by complexity, but even portable walkman-type devices from 20 years ago had buffers that had different capacities and different abilities to keep playing after the CD had spun down. To allow copying of the CD into its computer memory would forbid features like "Skip protection", and spin-down features to save battery life and batteries. This entails less battery use and less toxic garbage to dispose of.
In fact, it might be better to only run the loading of the buffer from the CD when on house current ("the Mains"), then you could not waste battery life on running a CD motor, but could allow preserving battery power for essential operations like amplifying the music through headphones when you are away from the house. Of course, to be useful, with a small device, and rechargeable batteries you can probably get up to 10-12 hours of playback from an entirely solid state device, so you'd want to be able to buffer at least that much CD-music in the device so you could just carry it. If it's rechargeable, you might want even more CD-buffering capacity. I'd expect a computer to facilitate management of the buffer would be useful. Conceivably, with today's storage and portable power solutions, its easy to see how that buffer could hold literally 1000's of CD's.
I'm told that buffer space in a portable player can be optimized by throwing out parts of the audio signal that most people wouldn't hear on a portable player anyway. This can really optimize power consumption, since you can play the same song with as little as 10% of its normal memory-transfer requirements and still have it sound 'fine' for a portable player. These extra bits would waste more power being transferred around, and while its a very small amount, over megabytes and gigabytes of music playing, your' talking moving 10k/minute vs. 1k/minute.
Going from the most basic player, and adding energy-saving features you still need to copy the music off the CD -- I don't know of anyone who can listen to a CD by holding it against their ear or nor any blind person who can read off the vibes by touch. Just doesn't work that way. So where would they draw the line? What players don't copy the digital CD data off in order to have it eventually turned into sound in some earbuds or speakers?
Actually, in California, you have a choice to deduct, eitheryour state income tax OR your state sales tax on your federal income tax. So if your sales tax for the entire year (all purchases) exceeds the amount you owe on you CA state sales tax, then -- you can choose to deduct your state sales tax.
I'm not aware of any exclusions in deducting sales tax (that wouldn't apply to excluding parts of state income tax as deductions), so, actually, I could see the possibility of deducting any sales tax you pay on your porn, which would include non-periodicals, movies, and, possibly iTune downloads if you get your porn from there... Um...what section of iTunes do you shop on anyway?
It would help if, in the same year, you made some large purchases... like an automobile (or airplane, or super computer...etc.) The thing is, since California's income tax is so high, and the sales tax excludes so many necessities, (food supplies, most "services", and periodicals), it's usually hard to generate enough sales to have the sales tax exceed your income tax unless you are not working and living off mostly non-taxable income or savings from previous years.
Get a tax accountant (not HR Block...). If there is anything substantially odd on your tax return(s), they may want receipts, so be sure to keep sufficient documentation to prove how much you spent in sales tax on your porn. And no....legal fees defending against illegal or improper porn use (a teacher download porn during class might be an example) are not considered "taxes" paid to the society for your porn use.
Wasn't there a dispute about Apple's logo vs. the apple logo used by the Beatles?
Would New York's logo possibly be closer to the Beatle's logo?
Wasn't the eventual outcome that there was no trademark confusion between Apple and Beatles's apple use because they were in different fields at the time (computers vs. music). Of course with the iTunes store, that issue has come up again...
But for NYC vs. Apple, wouldn't similar principles apply -- i.e. they are separate entities that are not likely to be confused?
Hasn't an apple been used in NYC logo-material since before Apple-Computers even existed?
You said "perhaps it's about them losing money from people downloading music for free instead of paying for it?"
That's what they'd like you to believe. And that is part of it. But the more 'consumers' that get used to the idea of searching for content "online", then the less the large studios are needed to help with distribution.
You said "If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them"...
But back in the late 40's up through the early 60's, this is exactly what large record labels did. Anyone who had sufficient talent, that they felt would have a large enough "Appeal" to a large enough audience WAS signed by the record companies. It was obvious by the contracts of the day who had the power -- the record companies did. They were the only practical means of distributing that artist to their fans. This shut out a much larger number of "creators" that weren't deemed by the record company as exceeding some minimal Appeal "numbers".
If you want to feed creativity in someone, you have to realize that human creativity, unlike "production", isn't fed on money. Feeding creativity goes way beyond that. Personal enjoyment and fulfillment in doing what one does is essential to creativity for most people. A smaller number of people are motivated by money, "alone". If it is easier for "creators" to find personal enjoyment and fulfillment by lowered distribution costs (as in this case), you'll find more people motivated to produce "creations" and distribute them.
Then one can expect an explosion of musical types -- ones that may appeal to smaller audiences, but ones that can be "self-sustaining" due to considerably lower distribution costs than existed pre-internet. A creator, now, can likely distribute, 'for free' (in that there is no monetary renumeration) copies of their song to listeners to 10's or 100's of thousands of users for less than the cost it would take to produce a "production master" for a recording studio today. Some may hold "day jobs" to pay the rent and produce for shear enjoyment. Others can find it easier to make a living once they have a fanbase and the fanbase starts to directly support them. The numbers may not be "too different" than pre-internet, where a LARGE number of people get to listen to music "for free" (radio used to be common), but a fraction of those listeners will go out and buy the songs and fewer still would travel 100's of miles to listen to their favorite band. So unless a band had a large local audience, the only way for them to get their music "out" was to appeal to the "Music Industry".
The internet provides increased marketing opportunities and lower, or zero, distribution costs. Many more artists and types of artists, like the many niche artists that wouldn't normally appeal to "Mass Market" Music Producers (MMMP) can reach the audience "listening mass" necessary for them to be "happy" (whatever that means for the individual artist -- whether its fans, money...etc).
But inherent in the opportunity for 'creators', is the downside for those MMMP's: more competition with their artists -- the ones that they "own" or "control" (or rather the one's who's music they own or control) which, of course, is *bad* (for MMMP's) as it means lower market share and lower profits.
So, (like someone else said above), "*Duh*!" -- of course music downloads are costing MMMP's millions (or billions) of dollars in the MMMP's lost sales -- but not due, 'solely', or even, 'primarily' (as they would like Congress to believe), to piracy, but to decreased market share from vastly greater competition
"...to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services. So extended, the browser becomes an even more powerful and pervasive platform for all kinds of applications."
Anyone else see "browser hooking into the OS and web making it a powerful and invasive platform for all kinds of spyware for reporting back to 'web services' on user activities" in all of this, or is this just my paranoia talking?
Supposedly, 13.61-13.85 billion years ago, there wasn't much of anything of anything like what we know, then there was a Big Bang...who knows the last time (or universe) these LHC people turned this thing on?
While it would be illegal to deliberately delete emails while under an investigation where those emails may be (and have been) subpoenaed, one must remember, MS may be hoping for the "WhiteHouse" defense: "Oh, you wanted emails from when? " I'm sorry our email retention policy deletes emails from our servers after 2 months. They are also purged from all backups in order to limit our exposure to indefinitely retained emails." Didn't the Bush White House use that excuse as a reason for not having any emails for an earlier time period requested in an investigation?
Would it be "unreasonable" since MS isn't a financial institution, to institute (or officially claim to) a policy that deletes old emails after a certain date by default? Could they claim that it was standard business practice and use that as a defense for why discovery might find no emails for a given period?
How gullible are our courts? Or would MS have to be proven to have willfully and deliberately deleted evidence?
Dragon? name 110% recog? Try working in the shell or programming some time...
Maybe in non-tech world, you can get good recog, but tecnichal writing with TLA's and programing with $sp->throwsp(Nargor, &targ) is as primitive as can be...(sigh)...
Wouldn't banning P2P being roughly the online equivalent of banning the right to assembly?
If they ban P2P, they might try to claim they are implementing marshal law -- no assemblies (networks) of computers of more than 2 people -- except for licensed/official "service providers".
That could help return to the old paradigm of consumers being passive receptacles into which merchants insert their wares.. We have to control who is allowed to be "inserting" wares, ya know. Can't have the consumers producing content with equal access...all of US society will fall!
US society and culture is all about freedom of speech. However, before the internet, it was easy for the government and corporations to prevent your "freedom of speech" from being heard by all but the people around you. This seems to be one of the major friction points -- people are taking their "freedom of speech" that the are used to having in "small groups", and now using it on the internet where it can reach millions. The government and media corporations no longer have exclusive control.
The media corps whine the loudest -- claiming "consumers" can't be allowed to talk directly -- they'll use their direct (P2P) talking to transfer illegal goods. But meanwhile, the real hurt is being put on the mainstream media as newspapers and television are both suffering in numbers due to the internet. The media companies can' complain directly about that -- as it is competition, but they can use their entertainment arms (video, music, etc) to press for P2P controls and blocking.
I wonder how much of the media complaints are based in the fact that the internet is eroding nearly all of the classical media (news, music, entertainment, movies...) -- not because of illegal activity (though there may be some of that), but because people are spending time, on-line and that detracts from time spent watching TV, reading newspapers, magazines -- even listening to music -- except music that blends well into the background while one is online...
So what media firm(s) does this "house ip leader" represent...? Doesn't sound like he is representing the people...*sigh*
If I received a "national security" letter from the FBI asking for various information that also said I was not allowed to inform anyone (except maybe my lawyer(s)), that the penalty for ignoring such requests would be "zero"?
Whether or not it is constitutional is not entirely the issue -- whether or not the individuals on the other end of the requests thought they would go to jail if they didn't is another.
Lest we forget, the government has imprisoned those who have not cooperated in a government investigation -- most famously, reporters not giving up sources (because we have no federal 'shield' law)...
In cases where non-compliance could have meant jail, fines or legal charges, do you also expect them to have given up nothing? They are not bound by any ethical standard with which a reporter might guard a source or a lawyer their client.
This is why Telecom companies SHOULD NOT be given unlimited immunity.
If the telecom companies gave up information -- the minimum necessary that they were required to hand over in order to comply with the law, that could be an justification for immunity.
However, it doesn't sound like most of them did any due-diligence in ensuring the FBI got only the required information and only what the companies were required to hand over. They shouldn't be given a "free ticket" for every action they've done -- indeed, they should be held accountable for "privacy malpractice" -- not engaging in standard practice, in the industry, to protect customer privacy against "rogue" government organizations.
That's what needs to be made clear in the discussions to provide immunity from prosecution -- if such is provided, it should not be provided only for the narrowest of defense of complying with mandatory requests.
On a tangential note -- I know some companies are good about making sure the government bears the cost of all these monitoring events, but stockholders should also consider suing any company that has not been following prudent procedures or has not been properly billing the legal-entries requiring the information. Stockholders shouldn't have to pay for government monitoring, nor their companies' business incompetence.
A dual core is likely to be different from a dual processor machine. With Intel's Core2 Duo machines (am only using that processor because I know it's architecture, not because it's better or worse than anything else), both cores on a chip share the L2 cache. So a Dual Core Xeon with 8MB-L2 cache, shares the caches between the two cores and is not the same as 2 processors with each having 4MB of L2 cache. Besides the ability to have 1 Core use 8MB of the cache (presuming the 2nd core is forcibly halted and left idle), there are scheduling differences and differences in migration costs. Intel's 1st Quad core chips after the Core 2, were logically 2-Core2 Processors on the same chip. Each pair shared an L2 cache with their being a total of 2-L2 cache's on the one chip.
In some ways, that quad arrangement is like a Dual-Socket motherboard that has a Core2 Duo in each socket. Migration costs between adjacent cores (if migration includes cache loading costs) would be considerably less than between the two separate processors.
I believe the first Dual Core chips were similar to Dual processors machines in that each core had its own separate, fixed size cache. Logically -- one could achieve maximal resource usage on Processors with shared-caches, since whether your workload involved 1 active thread or multiple, the threads that are active can use all of the available core, whereas multi-core processors with each core having it's own separate cache will be limited to that cache even when other cores are idle.
At the time the Core Duo came out, AMD chips seemed to mostly (?completely?) sport per-core cache's, so the Core duo was a jump forward. Which the Quad-Core2 based chips had fully shared L2 caches -- would have been a no-brainer to upgrade to a quad-core with 8M L2 from a dual-core with 8M, but the processors on the quad core chip would be limited to 4M, max/core (or per/pair), whereas the dual-core chips could use up to 8M cache.
Of course the impact of cache size and whether it is sharable is totally dependent on what program(s) you are running, but local benchmarks between a 2GHz-8M-Core2Duo and a 3.2GHz-4M-Core2Duo showed the 2GHz beating out the 3.2GHz chip on small-medium problems with the 3.2GHZ chip taking the lead, only, in larger problems.
Supposedly, the linux kernel scheduler (pre-CFQ), recognizes the increased costs of inter-Processor switching being higher than intra-processor switching, but I've been unable to verify this. It might require some manual configuration using "CPUsets", but don't know.
FWIW, the new CFQ-cpu scheduler (which is different than the block-layer's CFQ Block-I/O scheduler) seemed awfully rushed into use as the "mainline" scheduler. I think it is because Linux has a "design choice" that it doesn't allow for modular CPU-schedulers as it does in the case of "block-i/o" (and USB I/I scheduling, and file systems, and choice of network layer, and partition type...even partly with security (a hybrid model with some security being configurable, (LSM) and some designed not to be (the "standard", user-controlled Unix file-access bit checking isn't modularized). It's odd that CPU scheduling was thought to be a 1-size fits all model when virtually nothing else is). But because it isn't configurable, there was no way to make the CFQ cpu scheduler an optional, _testable_ scheduling module before it was chosen as the "one-and-only" model.
I see the difference, but I don't believe you understand the issue. NDIS marks the kernel "tainted" as soon as it loads the proprietary drivers. This answers your concern of binary-blobs affecting the kernel. OTOH, as the recent bug in the Firewire devices in Windows shows -- if you have a driver in kernel space, it can still up or download code to a device that can then affect kernel space. Marking NDIS tainted, itself, is wrong, because it can load a GPL (non-tainted) module. NDIS needs the ability to mark the kernel tainted or not depending on what driver *it* is loading. the NDIS driver itself is not-tainted and is GPL.
Do you see the difference and why you shouldn't taint "agnostic" loaders, but base tainting on what is loaded?
Why was someone who didn't read the article nor understand the issue marked insightful? Oh yeah, this is slashdot where it's insightful to not read base article or understand the issue.
The NDISWrapper doesn't claim that loaded drivers are GLP-ONLY -- NDIS wrapper sets the tainted flag when loading non-GPL drivers. But it is NDISwrapper (a GPL-licenced loader) that is in question. NDISwrapper loads other modules (at least one of which IS GPL, though most are not).
Torvalds is claiming that NDISwrapper -- a loader like firmware-loading, or BIOS-updating drivers should be tainted as non-GPL because it loads some non-GPL material.
Tovalds deftly skipped over answering the issue of all the firmware-loading and updating drivers that are permitted to be called "GPL" even though the firmware they load is not.
NDIS wrapper provides a "virtual" space to run Win-drivers in. If that makes it non-GPL, then shouldn't all of the linux-virtualization work that can be used to run Windows also be non-GPL tainted?
*cough*...um exactly my point...(sorta)...they aren't fully in one time zone or the other. They are in the western-most region of the eastern-time zone, so the sun will rise the latest of any eastern time zone -- and part of the state..... central. Didn't part of the state used to "not change time"? As a western-most time-zone border state, it's usage wouldn't be "typical" of states on the east coast, for example. I knew Indiana was strange for more than one reason, including Steve Martin's remark about the major excitement in Terre Haute being watching the RR cars go by while you are stuck at one of the crossings waiting for a long train...:-)
Hardly...They are already among the western-most states in the "Eastern" timezone. Their sun schedule is already "latest in the day" in the time zone, so they would show the most distorted figures. Compare figures for New York or Massachusetts...
It has nothing to do with getting up earlier or not. It's society that is "off" from the sun cycle. We are not agrarian anymore. Businesses don't open at 6-7 and close at 2-3 -- not even in DST. instead it's 2-3 hours later, some businesses opening at 9 others at 10, very few even at 8. Closing...4 is rare, then 5 & 6 for businesses. So in summer, do you want the sun to rise 3-4 hours before you go to work, then have it set 2-3 hours after you get home, or do you want it to be 2-3 in the morn, or 1-2 and have that extra 1-2 hours tacked on in the evening?
I don't know about others, but the idea of me trying to go out and enjoy "daylight" for 2-3 hours before work in the morning -- just wouldn't work. I'd much rather have the extra hour or two (depending on where you live) in the evening.
To think it is just about "personal choice"? Ha! I can't expect to go run "half my errands and leisure life before work!" Maybe it has to do if you are a morning person who usually is up 3-4 hours before work or an evening person. Also may have a bit to do with what time zone you are in. The two 'coast's are both on "late-night' schedules with TV-prime time going from 8-11...so news, comes on 6 & 11 (or 10 if you do early news). In the center states (Mtn+Central TZ), they are already an hour earlier, with their prime time from 7-10 and everything else falling place.
AZ is a southern state. Being lower in latitude, it wouldn't be expected to be as much of a difference as for Seattle or Portland, D.C. or S.F. But "Indiana" -- since they are in the central TZ, they're already an hour earlier (clock time) than would be "normal" for an East or West Coast resident, so I wouldn't expect Indiana to save as much. But I know on the west coast, the sun's overhead right near 1pm in the summer and right near noon in the winter -- and in the summer, it's great -- with twilight happening around 9pm.
I seem to remember around Paris, France, it getting dark around 10pm in the summer and getting light around 6 or maybe a bit earlier. Seems a hole lot more 'civil' if you want to have a life (or family life) outside work.
Well...maybe start with the penalties for copyright violation -- how much is that the RIAA wants the penalties to be *per song*?
Sounds like a great idea...is it 350K/song?...maybe 10 songs/CD...3.5Million/CD. So starting, that should be about 1% "property tax"/CD owned going to state & local for funding schools...might even be able to fund a copyright course or two... Of course that is "per year"...
Maybe some corps might want to 'give up' the copyright on some of their properties? But thinking about though I'd have to say it should be counted as a piece of property for each edition/version/release of a song -- so an album might be one, a single would be another, a "collection of best hits" would be another...but wait, there's more...K-Tel re-releases, Christmas specials... each "incidence" of copying the song would be a unique viola^h^h^h^h^h count for computing taxation...
It could be "worse" -- counting the 350K/song against each sale of the song as the song's total worth? Then again, if a song brings in 50 million in "revenue" in a year, then maybe that is it's value in that year? Just a thought, I suppose...though all the taxes would eventually come out of the consumer's pocket, no doubt. sigh....
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Given all the digital rights management in Vista, I'm sure any air force needed rights have already been managed in.
Nice the way Vista was the only "media recorder" to interpret a broadcast flag as seriously meaning do not record....isn't it a do not rebroadcast flag? I mean, why would a broadcaster want to prohibit viewing...just stupid to interpret the broadcast flag as meaning "don't let me watch this..."...but hey, its another reason why Vista should be expunged...and XP should be open-sourced if MS doesn't want to continue to support it (without new DRM addins)...
Ok, software formats already exist that can use 48 and 64-bit color -- but is this what studios like Dreamworks use to create their photo-realistic movies? I remembered that Hi-Def video takes ALOT of diskspace as it is, but if it was rendered in 48 or 64-bit color, when such couldn't be seen by viewers at a movie or on a HD-DVD, wouldn't it be a waste of money? Would film-makers "already" be operating at 2-2.5x the number of bits that would be usable in any final product? Or are they already making the film masters in preparation for the next gen HD? Would they use the extra space for color reproduction or would they be more likely to go with higher resolutions?
But more importantly, doesn't the use of 10-bits/color, or 1024 levels allow more "dynamic range" of brightness --
hasn't that been a problem more in LCD's vs. video? Lack of comparable dynamic range of digital to film is one of the major problems with digital photography today. Does video suffer, somehow less, from problems with dynamic range than still photography -- especially when the video may be created from 25-30+ still pictures/second?
If we move to displays with 1000:1 contrast, isn't 10-bits about what one needs to hold all the ranges of brightness
on such displays?
Maybe people who complain about not being able to see differences of 1024-levels of brightness are used to monitors with 250:1 or 500:1 contrast monitors (that probably have real levels lower than that in practice)? Have end-user LCD monitors had more than 1000:1 contrast levels before the past few years?
So the video makers won't have to use hacks to render a video? So -- as the original article said, the video designers can ensure that the color they assign to Shrek at the beginning of the film is the same color used throughout and isn't altered during the entire film by other objects needing green.
I can imagine that if you have a few objects that you'd like to reserve color palette for over a feature length movie, the number of colors available might be more of an issue than in one static picture. It's possible this could simplify some rendering algorithms possibly allowing some speedups or optimizations?
How does one submit a bug-report against a US Patent? Maybe the USPTO needs to open up a bugzilla DB to handle things like this?
Certainly UK lawmakers are not so ignorant or unimaginative. There is no way to play a CD unless you copy the music off of the CD, decode the digital signal, then eventually pipe it out analogue speakers or earphones. You can't play the CD by just looking at it -- by their nature, they are a digital source that needs to be read off by some digital reader and converted before they are useful.
CD players vary by complexity, but even portable walkman-type devices from 20 years ago had buffers that had different capacities and different abilities to keep playing after the CD had spun down. To allow copying of the CD into its computer memory would forbid features like "Skip protection", and spin-down features to save battery life and batteries. This entails less battery use and less toxic garbage to dispose of.
In fact, it might be better to only run the loading of the buffer from the CD when on house current ("the Mains"), then you could not waste battery life on running a CD motor, but could allow preserving battery power for essential operations like amplifying the music through headphones when you are away from the house. Of course, to be useful, with a small device, and rechargeable batteries you can probably get up to 10-12 hours of playback from an entirely solid state device, so you'd want to be able to buffer at least that much CD-music in the device so you could just carry it. If it's rechargeable, you might want even more CD-buffering capacity. I'd expect a computer to facilitate management of the buffer would be useful. Conceivably, with today's storage and portable power solutions, its easy to see how that buffer could hold literally 1000's of CD's.
I'm told that buffer space in a portable player can be optimized by throwing out parts of the audio signal that most people wouldn't hear on a portable player anyway. This can really optimize power consumption, since you can play the same song with as little as 10% of its normal memory-transfer requirements and still have it sound 'fine' for a portable player. These extra bits would waste more power being transferred around, and while its a very small amount, over megabytes and gigabytes of music playing, your' talking moving 10k/minute vs. 1k/minute.
Going from the most basic player, and adding energy-saving features you still need to copy the music off the CD -- I don't know of anyone who can listen to a CD by holding it against their ear or nor any blind person who can read off the vibes by touch. Just doesn't work that way. So where would they draw the line?
What players don't copy the digital CD data off in order to have it eventually turned into sound in some earbuds or speakers?
?
Actually, in California, you have a choice to deduct, eitheryour state income tax OR your state sales tax on your federal income tax. So if your sales tax for the entire year (all purchases) exceeds the amount you owe on you CA state sales tax, then -- you can choose to deduct your state sales tax.
:-)
I'm not aware of any exclusions in deducting sales tax (that wouldn't apply to excluding parts of state income tax as deductions), so, actually, I could see the possibility of deducting any sales tax you pay on your porn, which would include non-periodicals, movies, and, possibly iTune downloads if you get your porn from there...
Um...what section of iTunes do you shop on anyway?
It would help if, in the same year, you made some large purchases... like an automobile (or airplane, or super computer...etc.) The thing is, since California's income tax is so high, and the sales tax excludes so many necessities, (food supplies, most "services", and periodicals), it's usually hard to generate enough sales to have the sales tax exceed your income tax unless you are not working and living off mostly non-taxable income or savings from previous years.
Get a tax accountant (not HR Block...). If there is anything substantially odd on your tax return(s), they may want receipts, so be sure to keep sufficient documentation to prove how much you spent in sales tax on your porn. And no....legal fees defending against illegal or improper porn use (a teacher download porn during class might be an example) are not considered "taxes" paid to the society for your porn use.
Is that what you were thinking of?
Wasn't there a dispute about Apple's logo vs. the apple logo used by the Beatles?
Would New York's logo possibly be closer to the Beatle's logo?
Wasn't the eventual outcome that there was no trademark confusion between Apple and Beatles's apple use because they were in different fields at the time (computers vs. music). Of course with the iTunes store, that issue has come up again...
But for NYC vs. Apple, wouldn't similar principles apply -- i.e. they are separate entities that are not likely to be confused?
Hasn't an apple been used in NYC logo-material since before Apple-Computers even existed?
You said "perhaps it's about them losing money from people downloading music for free instead of paying for it?"
That's what they'd like you to believe. And that is part of it. But the more 'consumers' that get used to the idea of searching for content "online", then the less the large studios are needed to help with distribution.
You said "If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them"...
But back in the late 40's up through the early 60's, this is exactly what large record labels did. Anyone who had sufficient talent, that they felt would have a large enough "Appeal" to a large enough audience WAS signed by the record companies. It was obvious by the contracts of the day who had the power -- the record companies did. They were the only practical means of distributing that artist to their fans. This shut out a much larger number of "creators" that weren't deemed by the record company as exceeding some minimal Appeal "numbers".
If you want to feed creativity in someone, you have to realize that human creativity, unlike "production", isn't fed on money. Feeding creativity goes way beyond that. Personal enjoyment and fulfillment in doing what one does is essential to creativity for most people. A smaller number of people are motivated by money, "alone". If it is easier for "creators" to find personal enjoyment and fulfillment by lowered distribution costs (as in this case), you'll find more people motivated to produce "creations" and distribute them.
Then one can expect an explosion of musical types -- ones that may appeal to smaller audiences, but ones that can be "self-sustaining" due to considerably lower distribution costs than existed pre-internet. A creator, now, can likely distribute, 'for free' (in that there is no monetary renumeration) copies of their song to listeners to 10's or 100's of thousands of users for less than the cost it would take to produce a "production master" for a recording studio today. Some may hold "day jobs" to pay the rent and produce for shear enjoyment. Others can find it easier to make a living once they have a fanbase and the fanbase starts to directly support them. The numbers may not be "too different" than pre-internet, where a LARGE number of people get to listen to music "for free" (radio used to be common), but a fraction of those listeners will go out and buy the songs and fewer still would travel 100's of miles to listen to their favorite band. So unless a band had a large local audience, the only way for them to get their music "out" was to appeal to the "Music Industry".
The internet provides increased marketing opportunities and lower, or zero, distribution costs. Many more artists and types of artists, like the many niche artists that wouldn't normally appeal to "Mass Market" Music Producers (MMMP) can reach the audience "listening mass" necessary for them to be "happy" (whatever that means for the individual artist -- whether its fans, money...etc).
But inherent in the opportunity for 'creators', is the downside for those MMMP's: more competition with their artists -- the ones that they "own" or "control" (or rather the one's who's music they own or control) which, of course, is *bad* (for MMMP's) as it means lower market share and lower profits.
So, (like someone else said above), "*Duh*!" -- of course music downloads are costing MMMP's millions (or billions) of dollars in the MMMP's lost sales -- but not due , 'solely', or even, 'primarily' (as they would like Congress to believe), to piracy, but to decreased market share from vastly greater competition
I think this is the point of the main article.
"...to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services. So extended, the browser becomes an even more powerful and pervasive platform for all kinds of applications."
Anyone else see "browser hooking into the OS and web making it a powerful and invasive platform for all kinds of spyware for reporting back to 'web services' on user activities" in all of this, or is this just my paranoia talking?
Supposedly, 13.61-13.85 billion years ago, there wasn't much of anything of anything like what we know, then there was a Big Bang...who knows the last time (or universe) these LHC people turned this thing on?
Is that the rendering engine for firefox Win and firefox on apple?
So you still live at home and don't pay for electricity but your mom makes you buy your own bulbs? Geez...And I thought my mom was harsh...
While it would be illegal to deliberately delete emails while under an investigation where those emails may be (and have been) subpoenaed, one must remember, MS may be hoping for the "WhiteHouse" defense: "Oh, you wanted emails from when? " I'm sorry our email retention policy deletes emails from our servers after 2 months. They are also purged from all backups in order to limit our exposure to indefinitely retained emails." Didn't the Bush White House use that excuse as a reason for not having any emails for an earlier time period requested in an investigation?
Would it be "unreasonable" since MS isn't a financial institution, to institute (or officially claim to) a policy that deletes old emails after a certain date by default? Could they claim that it was standard business practice and use that as a defense for why discovery might find no emails for a given period?
How gullible are our courts? Or would MS have to be proven to have willfully and deliberately deleted evidence?
Hmmmm....
Dragon? name 110% recog? Try working in the shell or programming some time...
Maybe in non-tech world, you can get good recog, but tecnichal writing with TLA's and programing with $sp->throwsp(Nargor, &targ) is as primitive as can be...(sigh)...
Wouldn't banning P2P being roughly the online equivalent of banning the right to assembly?
If they ban P2P, they might try to claim they are implementing marshal law -- no assemblies (networks) of computers of more than 2 people -- except for licensed/official "service providers".
That could help return to the old paradigm of consumers being passive receptacles into which merchants insert their wares.. We have to control who is allowed to be "inserting" wares, ya know. Can't have the consumers producing content with equal access...all of US society will fall!
US society and culture is all about freedom of speech. However, before the internet, it was easy for the government and corporations to prevent your "freedom of speech" from being heard by all but the people around you. This seems to be one of the major friction points -- people are taking their "freedom of speech" that the are used to having in "small groups", and now using it on the internet where it can reach millions. The government and media corporations no longer have exclusive control.
The media corps whine the loudest -- claiming "consumers" can't be allowed to talk directly -- they'll use their direct (P2P) talking to transfer illegal goods. But meanwhile, the real hurt is being put on the mainstream media as newspapers and television are both suffering in numbers due to the internet. The media companies can' complain directly about that -- as it is competition, but they can use their entertainment arms (video, music, etc) to press for P2P controls and blocking.
I wonder how much of the media complaints are based in the fact that the internet is eroding nearly all of the classical media (news, music, entertainment, movies...) -- not because of illegal activity (though there may be some of that), but because people are spending time, on-line and that detracts from time spent watching TV, reading newspapers, magazines -- even listening to music -- except music that blends well into the background while one is online...
So what media firm(s) does this "house ip leader" represent...? Doesn't sound like he is representing the people...*sigh*
Is this a legal opinion, or personal?
If I received a "national security" letter from the FBI asking for various information that also said I was not allowed to inform anyone (except maybe my lawyer(s)), that the penalty for ignoring such requests would be "zero"?
Whether or not it is constitutional is not entirely the issue -- whether or not the individuals on the other end of the requests thought they would go to jail if they didn't is another.
Lest we forget, the government has imprisoned those who have not cooperated in a government investigation -- most famously, reporters not giving up sources (because we have no federal 'shield' law)...
In cases where non-compliance could have meant jail, fines or legal charges, do you also expect them to have given up nothing? They are not bound by any ethical standard with which a reporter might guard a source or a lawyer their client.
This is why Telecom companies SHOULD NOT be given unlimited immunity.
If the telecom companies gave up information -- the minimum necessary that they were required to hand over in order to comply with the law, that could be an justification for immunity.
However, it doesn't sound like most of them did any due-diligence in ensuring the FBI got only the required information and only what the companies were required to hand over. They shouldn't be given a "free ticket" for
every action they've done -- indeed, they should be held accountable for "privacy malpractice" -- not engaging in standard practice, in the industry, to protect customer privacy against "rogue" government organizations.
That's what needs to be made clear in the discussions to provide immunity from prosecution -- if such is provided, it should not be provided only for the narrowest of defense of complying with mandatory requests.
On a tangential note -- I know some companies are good about making sure the government bears the cost of all these monitoring events, but stockholders should also consider suing any company that has not been following prudent procedures or has not been properly billing the legal-entries requiring the information. Stockholders shouldn't have to pay for government monitoring, nor their companies' business incompetence.
A dual core is likely to be different from a dual processor machine. With Intel's Core2 Duo machines (am only using that processor because I know it's architecture, not because it's better or worse than anything else), both cores on a chip share the L2 cache. So a Dual Core Xeon with 8MB-L2 cache, shares the caches between the two cores and is not the same as 2 processors with each having 4MB of L2 cache. Besides the ability to have 1 Core use 8MB of the cache (presuming the 2nd core is forcibly halted and left idle), there are scheduling differences and differences in migration costs. Intel's 1st Quad core chips after the Core 2, were logically 2-Core2 Processors on the same chip. Each pair shared an L2 cache with their being a total of 2-L2 cache's on the one chip.
...even partly with security (a hybrid model with some security being configurable, (LSM) and some designed not to be (the "standard", user-controlled Unix file-access bit checking isn't modularized). It's odd that CPU scheduling was thought to be a 1-size fits all model when virtually nothing else is). But because it isn't configurable, there was no way to make the CFQ cpu scheduler an optional, _testable_ scheduling module before it was chosen as the "one-and-only" model.
In some ways, that quad arrangement is like a Dual-Socket motherboard that has a Core2 Duo in each socket. Migration costs between adjacent cores (if migration includes cache loading costs) would be considerably less than between the two separate processors.
I believe the first Dual Core chips were similar to Dual processors machines in that each core had its own separate, fixed size cache. Logically -- one could achieve maximal resource usage on Processors with shared-caches, since whether your workload involved 1 active thread or multiple, the threads that are active can use all of the available core, whereas multi-core processors with each core having it's own separate cache will be limited to that cache even when other cores are idle.
At the time the Core Duo came out, AMD chips seemed to mostly (?completely?) sport per-core cache's, so the Core duo was a jump forward. Which the Quad-Core2 based chips had fully shared L2 caches -- would have been a no-brainer to upgrade to a quad-core with 8M L2 from a dual-core with 8M, but the processors on the quad core chip would be limited to 4M, max/core (or per/pair), whereas the dual-core chips could use up to 8M cache.
Of course the impact of cache size and whether it is sharable is totally dependent on what program(s) you are running, but local benchmarks between a 2GHz-8M-Core2Duo and a 3.2GHz-4M-Core2Duo showed the 2GHz beating out the 3.2GHz chip on small-medium problems with the 3.2GHZ chip taking the lead, only, in larger problems.
Supposedly, the linux kernel scheduler (pre-CFQ), recognizes the increased costs of inter-Processor switching being higher than intra-processor switching, but I've been unable to verify this. It might require some manual configuration using "CPUsets", but don't know.
FWIW, the new CFQ-cpu scheduler (which is different than the block-layer's CFQ Block-I/O scheduler) seemed awfully rushed into use as the "mainline" scheduler. I think it is because Linux has a "design choice" that it doesn't allow for modular CPU-schedulers as it does in the case of "block-i/o" (and USB I/I scheduling, and file systems, and choice of network layer, and partition type
I see the difference, but I don't believe you understand the issue. NDIS marks the kernel "tainted" as soon as it loads the proprietary drivers. This answers your concern of binary-blobs affecting the kernel. OTOH, as the recent bug in the Firewire devices in Windows shows -- if you have a driver in kernel space, it can still up or download code to a device that can then affect kernel space. Marking NDIS tainted, itself, is wrong, because it can load a GPL (non-tainted) module. NDIS needs the ability to mark the kernel tainted or not depending on what driver *it* is loading. the NDIS driver itself is not-tainted and is GPL.
Do you see the difference and why you shouldn't taint "agnostic" loaders, but base tainting on what is loaded?
Why was someone who didn't read the article nor understand the issue marked insightful? Oh yeah, this is slashdot where it's insightful to not read base article or understand the issue.
The NDISWrapper doesn't claim that loaded drivers are GLP-ONLY -- NDIS wrapper sets the tainted flag when loading non-GPL drivers. But it is NDISwrapper (a GPL-licenced loader) that is in question. NDISwrapper loads other modules (at least one of which IS GPL, though most are not).
Torvalds is claiming that NDISwrapper -- a loader like firmware-loading, or BIOS-updating drivers should be tainted as non-GPL because it loads some non-GPL material.
Tovalds deftly skipped over answering the issue of all the firmware-loading and updating drivers that are permitted to be called "GPL" even though the firmware they load is not.
NDIS wrapper provides a "virtual" space to run Win-drivers in. If that makes it non-GPL, then shouldn't all of the linux-virtualization work that can be used to run Windows also be non-GPL tainted?
*cough*...um exactly my point...(sorta)...they aren't fully in one time zone or the other. They are in the western-most region of the eastern-time zone, so the sun will rise the latest of any eastern time zone -- and part of the state ... .. central. Didn't part of the state used to "not change time"? As a western-most time-zone border state, it's usage wouldn't be "typical" of states on the east coast, for example. I knew Indiana was strange for more than one reason, including Steve Martin's remark about the major excitement in Terre Haute being watching the RR cars go by while you are stuck at one of the crossings waiting for a long train...:-)
Hardly...They are already among the western-most states in the "Eastern" timezone. Their sun schedule is already "latest in the day" in the time zone, so they would show the most distorted figures. Compare figures for New York or Massachusetts...
It has nothing to do with getting up earlier or not. It's society that is "off" from the sun cycle. We are not agrarian anymore. Businesses don't open at 6-7 and close at 2-3 -- not even in DST. instead it's 2-3 hours later, some businesses opening at 9 others at 10, very few even at 8. Closing...4 is rare, then 5 & 6 for businesses. So in summer, do you want the sun to rise 3-4 hours before you go to work, then have it set 2-3 hours after you get home, or do you want it to be 2-3 in the morn, or 1-2 and have that extra 1-2 hours tacked on in the evening?
I don't know about others, but the idea of me trying to go out and enjoy "daylight" for 2-3 hours before work in the morning -- just wouldn't work. I'd much rather have the extra hour or two (depending on where you live) in the evening.
To think it is just about "personal choice"? Ha! I can't expect to go run "half my errands and leisure life before work!" Maybe it has to do if you are a morning person who usually is up 3-4 hours before work or an evening person. Also may have a bit to do with what time zone you are in. The two 'coast's are both on "late-night' schedules with TV-prime time going from 8-11...so news, comes on 6 & 11 (or 10 if you do early news). In the center states (Mtn+Central TZ), they are already an hour earlier, with their prime time from 7-10 and everything else falling place.
AZ is a southern state. Being lower in latitude, it wouldn't be expected to be as much of a difference as for Seattle or Portland, D.C. or S.F. But "Indiana" -- since they are in the central TZ, they're already an hour earlier (clock time) than would be "normal" for an East or West Coast resident, so I wouldn't expect Indiana to save as much. But I know on the west coast, the sun's overhead right near 1pm in the summer and right near noon in the winter -- and in the summer, it's great -- with twilight happening around 9pm.
I seem to remember around Paris, France, it getting dark around 10pm in the summer and getting light around 6 or maybe a bit earlier. Seems a hole lot more 'civil' if you want to have a life (or family life) outside work.
Their Windows Genuine Advantage was disingenuous?
Well...maybe start with the penalties for copyright violation -- how much is that the RIAA wants the penalties to be *per song*?
Sounds like a great idea...is it 350K/song?...maybe 10 songs/CD...3.5Million/CD. So starting, that should be about 1% "property tax"/CD owned going to state & local for funding schools...might even be able to fund a copyright course or two... Of course that is "per year"...
Maybe some corps might want to 'give up' the copyright on some of their properties? But thinking about though I'd have to say it should be counted as a piece of property for each edition/version/release of a song -- so an album might be one, a single would be another, a "collection of best hits" would be another...but wait, there's more...K-Tel re-releases, Christmas specials... each "incidence" of copying the song would be a unique viola^h^h^h^h^h count for computing taxation...
It could be "worse" -- counting the 350K/song against each sale of the song as the song's total worth? Then
again, if a song brings in 50 million in "revenue" in a year, then maybe that is it's value in that year? Just a thought, I suppose...though all the taxes would eventually come out of the consumer's pocket, no doubt. sigh....