In that case, why would they improve the quality so drastically? They could have just re-packaged it, or added other trashy content (like video). Also, why does every review of an SACD player that I've seen claim better quality? Sure, it's a way to generate revenue, but it's also a recognition that the CD format is hopelessly outdated. If you still don't believe me, look at a music catalog. You'd be hard-pressed to find gear that does not work at 24 bits, 96 KHz.
That sounds a little odd. You're saying that with appropriate signal processing, you can make the record ``sound better'' than the vibrations encoded there? Why can't you similarly massage the digitized data? What is on the vinyl which isn't on the CD?
Vinyl is analog. The resolution is limited only by the material it's made out of and by your equipment. Therefore, expensive playback equipment can extract much more out of the record than can its cheap counterpart, since the resolution of the vinyl is not artificially limited. Therefore, you can get a more and more out of a record with progressively more expensive equipment. Hell, if you wanted to, you could use a laser instead of a needle to read the information on the disc and possibly get better precision.
This is not true for a CD. A CD is just a bunch of bits, and even a very cheap CD-ROM will read them correctly. There's tons of error-correcting code and stuff, so you are virtually guaranteed to get all the data off the disc. After that, you can't do much with the signal to get more precision -- that's all you have.
If it helps, consider enlarging a small photograph and a small GIF file. What do you think would enlarge better? You can't make a 1280x1024 picture out of 320x200 without making it look worse -- the resolution is fixed. You can blow up a real photograph to almost any size with little loss of quality because the resolution is nearly infinite.
Also, please realize that listening to a signal generator is not a legitimate way to evaluate an audio system.
Sure, trade RPM dependency hell (which is really bullshit if you use a modern distribution) for the apple monopoly / shareware hell. Right. With macs and osx, you are forced to either shell out $30 to $100 to do _ANYTHING_ remotely useful, like encoding video, burning DVDs, or backing up your files, or pirate the abovementioned software. Sure, you can use free software, but then you have to mess with porting it and compiling it for PPC and OSX -- a major pain in the ass. That's pretty much the reason why I dumped Windows -- it's not stability or security. I'd say that XP is about as stable as OSX. Both are less stable than my Linux box.
Also, the simple solution to your Linux problems would be to either use packages compiled for your distribution (which is rather simple with URPMI) or to download and compile the source or source RPMs. I don't think you've used linux "for years". More like a week. Anyone who used Linux even for a month would know that packages built for Suse won't work well on Mandrake, which is probably what you were trying to do.
Besides, I would much rather use windows than go for vendor lock-in with apple. I thought people had enough of that with proprietary unix boxes. I have a severe problem with having to buy all my hardware and most of the software from one overpriced company that also actively prosecutes anyone selling compatible hardware. I don't know what planet Apple is living on, but a 1GHz machine with a small hard drive, outdated video card and hardly any RAM should not cost $1500 in this day and age.
Remember, "scientific" measurements only go so far. "Warmth" may not be quantifiable (yet), but only because not enough research has been done in the area of psychoacoustics. I am sure that 10 years down the road, we may very well find out what exactly is responsible for it.
For example, when transistor amps came out in the 60s, everyone thought they would sound far better than tubes because they did not produce as much distortion (on the analyzer, at least). That turned out to be extremely wrong. The early transistor amps may not have produced as much distortion, but they sounded far worse than tube amps. It was later found out that this occurred due to intermodulation distortion, a particularly nasty-sounding type of distortion.
I will not agree that a CD is "more than adequate". That's like saying that 640K of RAM, 256 colors, or 56Kbps is more than anyone will ever need. A CD is mastered to an extremely shitty set of parameters. 44KHz is not enough to go up to even 22KHz (and humans can hear that rather well), and 16 bits is not nearly enough for a wide dynamic range. Remember, this technology was designed in the early 80s and was supposed to be cheap even then. Even the audio industry is now switching to new formats, such as SACD and DVD Audio.
Unlike records, you can't extract any "extra" quality from the CD. It's digitized, and you can't get what's not already on the disc. With LPs, better equipment makes a world of difference. With CDs, a better transport will at best reduce jitter but will not improve the quality significantly. That's why audiophiles prefer LPs -- that's currently the only way to get better-than-CD sound.
Finally, please listen to a truly good-quality audio system (no, I don't mean a trashy Bose or Infinity 5.1) at least once in your lifetime before posting such idiotic comments. You would be surprised.
There is. It's called KDE and almost every normal distribution (Mandrake, Suse, etc.) has it as default. Gnome is a competitor, but IMO is not nearly as good.
AOL can't "retract" this decision. They never _made_ the decision. If it was out there for two years before they decided to take action, they would have a very difficult time proving that it was an unauthorized release. Since WASTE was out there for a total of two days, I think AOL has a point here. They did not authorize releasing the code, plain and simple.
There is no "intuitive" key placement. QWERTY is not any less intuitive than putting them in any other arrangement. Sure, you could put the keys in an alphabetical arrangement, but that would probably be very suboptimal and would not make it easier for anyone. I agree though, the Orbitouch is a stupid idea, as are all chord keyboards. The standard QWERTY layout is not going away anytime soon.
Umm... No. $300 for a mouse / keyboard is not that much if you do serious computer / programming work. It may seem like a lot, but given that a keyboard can easily last for 10 years, I think it's an excellent investment. For example, I type much faster and make fewer errors on a clicky keyboard like Northgate Omnikey or IBM Model M. If I use a cheap membrane keyboard, I make more typos and get tired quickly. What do you think is more expensive -- a $100 keyboard or lost programmer productivity?
Buying cheap keyboards in a programming company is just like making everyone work on rickety tables that were dug out of a dumpster. It catches up with you, productivity-wise, and you don't save that much money in the long run. After all, if your programming team increases productivity by even 5%, that could save you from having to hire another programmer who would be exponentially more expensive than a bunch of quality keyboards. I wouldn't be surprised if productivity increased even more, given that people's hands get less tired with a proper keyboard and they might enjoy working at their computer more.
In any case, the notion that everyone can use cheap keyboards with no lost productivity is as wrong as saying that Formula 1 race car drivers would do as well if their steering wheel was as cheap as that in a lawn tractor.
A T3 costs the same whether you use it or not. I don't think that email makes for a huge part of an ISP's bandwidth bill. They might be able to lower the cost by 2% or so if their message volume was reduced 60%. Remember that your ISP probably spends most of its money not on bandwidth, but on employees, salaries, buildings, etc. Of the bandwidth, most of it is probably taken up by hosting and web access, not email. Besides, why would I care that my ISP reduced its costs by 1/3? They won't pass those savings on in any case.
Mandrake spins their own modified kernel. Maybe they decided to add the 21 to it this time. I think they used to do something like 2.4.15-21mdk
Mandrake does use their own kernel, as does almost every other commercial distro. However, the number you listed is not something special. That's the standard RPM numbering. That would mean version 2.4.15, package revision 21. If they come out with an updated RPM of the same version, it will be numbered 22. There's even a changelog built into the package itself.
The only reason micropayments are being pushed is because there is a lot of money to be made in that. However, from a purely logical perspective, that is the most idiotic solution possible. The real reason is that some company wants to become the email micropayment monopoly. Imagine taking a small cut from every email sent -- that would add up to a fortune.
How much do you pay for email? Come on, stop bullshitting. As far as I know, most email providers are either free (hotmail) or flat-rate (your ISP), regardless of volume. Also, if you take basic precautions (like not posting your email address in robot-readable form), you will not get more than one or two spams a month.
DRM does not prevent you from copying files around. You don't need that. DRM is the encryption with which the sound files are encrypted. You can only play your songs on N computers with a certificate that is authorized by apple. This is DRM in its purest form.
I find it extremely ironic that Apple users, who are quick to rebuke Microsoft's DRM technologies, ignore the fact that Apple is doing the exact same thing right now. Yes, m4p files (or whatever -- I don't use a Mac) are encrypted and can only be played by a device with the certificate installed. This is exactly the same as what Microsoft has been pushing all along, and I don't like either technique. Besides, unlike Microsoft, apple has always been lawsuit-happy. I'll bet money they will sue the pants off anyone who tries to crack their encryption, just like the DVDCCA people did.
Nobody compromised it yet because nobody is crazy enough to subscribe to it. Besides, what would you get as the final result, low-fi compressed crap? I would say that the ends do not justify the means. Remember: if their software can decode the file, you can decrypt the file. It would just take a lot of work to get through the obstacles, and nobody wants to do it yet.
Are you retarded? Apple songs are encrypted. You can't decode them unless someone cracks the DRM. Thus, you can't play them on Linux any more than you can play WMA files (which are, incidentally, quite well supported by mplayer -- unless there's DRM).
Actually, if one of your employees investigated the break-in, or you lost some important business information, or lost profits, or something like that, then the FBI WILL get involved. It's not hard to rack up $5000 in damages -- just a few hours of work by a few employees + loss of business damages adds up to much more than $5000 for almost any organization.
Since when is that so? I haven't heard of too many laws prohibiting reverse engineering. You may not be able to legally disassemble their drivers, since that is probably a part of the license you get them under, but reverse engineering the chips by other means (hooking up a logic analyzer, using software to monitor the drivers, etc) should be ok.
Don't expect the manufacturer to help you modify it, though. If you want to do that, you would have to reverse-engineer the radio yourself. Then you can do whatever to it. Similarly, if you reverse-engineer a wifi driver, you can write your own. It's just that the manufacturer won't help you.
First, video games are different from other media. When you watch a movie, you aren't pulling the trigger, you are watching others do it. That's significantly different than playing a realistic game like Vice City and shooting cops and innocent bystanders. In a movie, the violence is typically quite disturbing -- you don't see many movies where someone just stands in the middle of the street and guns down innocent bystanders for 10 minutes straight. In games, it is normal and you quickly stop paying attention. I personally think there is a difference, despite the "credible studies" that you seem to refer to but never cite.
Also, you do realize that we are talking mainly about 15-year-olds and under? I sure as hell don't want fifth-graders to play Vice City all day. I know some fifth-graders, and I know for a fact that many or most of them have a hard time distinguishing video games and reality.
Finally, I am not sure how this law prevents anyone except high-schoolers and under from buying violent games. If their parents approve of such games, they might as well buy them for their kids. If the parents do not permit such games, then I don't see a problem with the law preventing the kids from doing so. What the hell is the issue at stake here?
Finally, I don't get your bitching at all. Okay, the cops stopped your grandmother a few times for driving a type of car that is typically driven by teenagers. What the fuck is wrong with that? Did they fine her or something? As for them stopping teenagers -- I completely approve of that. I know many high-schoolers, and judging by their driving abilities, those people should not be on the road. I don't see any problem with cops keeping them on their toes.
Bullshit. If you incorportate GPL code into a commercial product and someone finds out, you are only liable for copyright infringement, just like it would be if you stole some proprietary code from a competitor. You would have to remove that code, and that would probably be the extent of the problem. You would not have to release the product as GPL. Stop listening to Microsoft FUD.
The issue here is the reverse. Someone took commercial code and possibly incorporated it into a GPL product. Obviously, that is not "viral" in any sense. Also, if the code was stolen without permission of the copyright owner, it would not have to be released under the GPL.
This is the case with any license. Hell, release it under the BSD license (which microsoft _loves_) or under any other license, and you've just made your proprietary code public. The truth is, this has nothing to do with the license and everything to do with how a company manages its IP.
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In that case, why would they improve the quality so drastically? They could have just re-packaged it, or added other trashy content (like video). Also, why does every review of an SACD player that I've seen claim better quality? Sure, it's a way to generate revenue, but it's also a recognition that the CD format is hopelessly outdated. If you still don't believe me, look at a music catalog. You'd be hard-pressed to find gear that does not work at 24 bits, 96 KHz.
That sounds a little odd. You're saying that with appropriate signal processing, you can make the record ``sound better'' than the vibrations encoded there? Why can't you similarly massage the digitized data? What is on the vinyl which isn't on the CD?
Vinyl is analog. The resolution is limited only by the material it's made out of and by your equipment. Therefore, expensive playback equipment can extract much more out of the record than can its cheap counterpart, since the resolution of the vinyl is not artificially limited. Therefore, you can get a more and more out of a record with progressively more expensive equipment. Hell, if you wanted to, you could use a laser instead of a needle to read the information on the disc and possibly get better precision.
This is not true for a CD. A CD is just a bunch of bits, and even a very cheap CD-ROM will read them correctly. There's tons of error-correcting code and stuff, so you are virtually guaranteed to get all the data off the disc. After that, you can't do much with the signal to get more precision -- that's all you have.
If it helps, consider enlarging a small photograph and a small GIF file. What do you think would enlarge better? You can't make a 1280x1024 picture out of 320x200 without making it look worse -- the resolution is fixed. You can blow up a real photograph to almost any size with little loss of quality because the resolution is nearly infinite.
Also, please realize that listening to a signal generator is not a legitimate way to evaluate an audio system.
[rant]
Sure, trade RPM dependency hell (which is really bullshit if you use a modern distribution) for the apple monopoly / shareware hell. Right. With macs and osx, you are forced to either shell out $30 to $100 to do _ANYTHING_ remotely useful, like encoding video, burning DVDs, or backing up your files, or pirate the abovementioned software. Sure, you can use free software, but then you have to mess with porting it and compiling it for PPC and OSX -- a major pain in the ass. That's pretty much the reason why I dumped Windows -- it's not stability or security. I'd say that XP is about as stable as OSX. Both are less stable than my Linux box.
Also, the simple solution to your Linux problems would be to either use packages compiled for your distribution (which is rather simple with URPMI) or to download and compile the source or source RPMs. I don't think you've used linux "for years". More like a week. Anyone who used Linux even for a month would know that packages built for Suse won't work well on Mandrake, which is probably what you were trying to do.
Besides, I would much rather use windows than go for vendor lock-in with apple. I thought people had enough of that with proprietary unix boxes. I have a severe problem with having to buy all my hardware and most of the software from one overpriced company that also actively prosecutes anyone selling compatible hardware. I don't know what planet Apple is living on, but a 1GHz machine with a small hard drive, outdated video card and hardly any RAM should not cost $1500 in this day and age.
[/rant]
So, what if the drivers are patched to increase UT framerate at the expense of image quality?
Remember, "scientific" measurements only go so far. "Warmth" may not be quantifiable (yet), but only because not enough research has been done in the area of psychoacoustics. I am sure that 10 years down the road, we may very well find out what exactly is responsible for it.
For example, when transistor amps came out in the 60s, everyone thought they would sound far better than tubes because they did not produce as much distortion (on the analyzer, at least). That turned out to be extremely wrong. The early transistor amps may not have produced as much distortion, but they sounded far worse than tube amps. It was later found out that this occurred due to intermodulation distortion, a particularly nasty-sounding type of distortion.
I will not agree that a CD is "more than adequate". That's like saying that 640K of RAM, 256 colors, or 56Kbps is more than anyone will ever need. A CD is mastered to an extremely shitty set of parameters. 44KHz is not enough to go up to even 22KHz (and humans can hear that rather well), and 16 bits is not nearly enough for a wide dynamic range. Remember, this technology was designed in the early 80s and was supposed to be cheap even then. Even the audio industry is now switching to new formats, such as SACD and DVD Audio.
Unlike records, you can't extract any "extra" quality from the CD. It's digitized, and you can't get what's not already on the disc. With LPs, better equipment makes a world of difference. With CDs, a better transport will at best reduce jitter but will not improve the quality significantly. That's why audiophiles prefer LPs -- that's currently the only way to get better-than-CD sound.
Finally, please listen to a truly good-quality audio system (no, I don't mean a trashy Bose or Infinity 5.1) at least once in your lifetime before posting such idiotic comments. You would be surprised.
There is. It's called KDE and almost every normal distribution (Mandrake, Suse, etc.) has it as default. Gnome is a competitor, but IMO is not nearly as good.
AOL can't "retract" this decision. They never _made_ the decision. If it was out there for two years before they decided to take action, they would have a very difficult time proving that it was an unauthorized release. Since WASTE was out there for a total of two days, I think AOL has a point here. They did not authorize releasing the code, plain and simple.
There is no "intuitive" key placement. QWERTY is not any less intuitive than putting them in any other arrangement. Sure, you could put the keys in an alphabetical arrangement, but that would probably be very suboptimal and would not make it easier for anyone. I agree though, the Orbitouch is a stupid idea, as are all chord keyboards. The standard QWERTY layout is not going away anytime soon.
Umm... No. $300 for a mouse / keyboard is not that much if you do serious computer / programming work. It may seem like a lot, but given that a keyboard can easily last for 10 years, I think it's an excellent investment. For example, I type much faster and make fewer errors on a clicky keyboard like Northgate Omnikey or IBM Model M. If I use a cheap membrane keyboard, I make more typos and get tired quickly. What do you think is more expensive -- a $100 keyboard or lost programmer productivity?
Buying cheap keyboards in a programming company is just like making everyone work on rickety tables that were dug out of a dumpster. It catches up with you, productivity-wise, and you don't save that much money in the long run. After all, if your programming team increases productivity by even 5%, that could save you from having to hire another programmer who would be exponentially more expensive than a bunch of quality keyboards. I wouldn't be surprised if productivity increased even more, given that people's hands get less tired with a proper keyboard and they might enjoy working at their computer more.
In any case, the notion that everyone can use cheap keyboards with no lost productivity is as wrong as saying that Formula 1 race car drivers would do as well if their steering wheel was as cheap as that in a lawn tractor.
A T3 costs the same whether you use it or not. I don't think that email makes for a huge part of an ISP's bandwidth bill. They might be able to lower the cost by 2% or so if their message volume was reduced 60%. Remember that your ISP probably spends most of its money not on bandwidth, but on employees, salaries, buildings, etc. Of the bandwidth, most of it is probably taken up by hosting and web access, not email. Besides, why would I care that my ISP reduced its costs by 1/3? They won't pass those savings on in any case.
Mandrake spins their own modified kernel. Maybe they decided to add the 21 to it this time. I think they used to do something like 2.4.15-21mdk
Mandrake does use their own kernel, as does almost every other commercial distro. However, the number you listed is not something special. That's the standard RPM numbering. That would mean version 2.4.15, package revision 21. If they come out with an updated RPM of the same version, it will be numbered 22. There's even a changelog built into the package itself.
The only reason micropayments are being pushed is because there is a lot of money to be made in that. However, from a purely logical perspective, that is the most idiotic solution possible. The real reason is that some company wants to become the email micropayment monopoly. Imagine taking a small cut from every email sent -- that would add up to a fortune.
How much do you pay for email? Come on, stop bullshitting. As far as I know, most email providers are either free (hotmail) or flat-rate (your ISP), regardless of volume. Also, if you take basic precautions (like not posting your email address in robot-readable form), you will not get more than one or two spams a month.
DRM does not prevent you from copying files around. You don't need that. DRM is the encryption with which the sound files are encrypted. You can only play your songs on N computers with a certificate that is authorized by apple. This is DRM in its purest form.
I find it extremely ironic that Apple users, who are quick to rebuke Microsoft's DRM technologies, ignore the fact that Apple is doing the exact same thing right now. Yes, m4p files (or whatever -- I don't use a Mac) are encrypted and can only be played by a device with the certificate installed. This is exactly the same as what Microsoft has been pushing all along, and I don't like either technique. Besides, unlike Microsoft, apple has always been lawsuit-happy. I'll bet money they will sue the pants off anyone who tries to crack their encryption, just like the DVDCCA people did.
Actually, I find Mozilla and especially Firebird much faster than either IE or Opera. Maybe you should try Firebird 0.6.
Nobody compromised it yet because nobody is crazy enough to subscribe to it. Besides, what would you get as the final result, low-fi compressed crap? I would say that the ends do not justify the means. Remember: if their software can decode the file, you can decrypt the file. It would just take a lot of work to get through the obstacles, and nobody wants to do it yet.
Are you retarded? Apple songs are encrypted. You can't decode them unless someone cracks the DRM. Thus, you can't play them on Linux any more than you can play WMA files (which are, incidentally, quite well supported by mplayer -- unless there's DRM).
Actually, if one of your employees investigated the break-in, or you lost some important business information, or lost profits, or something like that, then the FBI WILL get involved. It's not hard to rack up $5000 in damages -- just a few hours of work by a few employees + loss of business damages adds up to much more than $5000 for almost any organization.
Since when is that so? I haven't heard of too many laws prohibiting reverse engineering. You may not be able to legally disassemble their drivers, since that is probably a part of the license you get them under, but reverse engineering the chips by other means (hooking up a logic analyzer, using software to monitor the drivers, etc) should be ok.
Don't expect the manufacturer to help you modify it, though. If you want to do that, you would have to reverse-engineer the radio yourself. Then you can do whatever to it. Similarly, if you reverse-engineer a wifi driver, you can write your own. It's just that the manufacturer won't help you.
First, video games are different from other media. When you watch a movie, you aren't pulling the trigger, you are watching others do it. That's significantly different than playing a realistic game like Vice City and shooting cops and innocent bystanders. In a movie, the violence is typically quite disturbing -- you don't see many movies where someone just stands in the middle of the street and guns down innocent bystanders for 10 minutes straight. In games, it is normal and you quickly stop paying attention. I personally think there is a difference, despite the "credible studies" that you seem to refer to but never cite.
Also, you do realize that we are talking mainly about 15-year-olds and under? I sure as hell don't want fifth-graders to play Vice City all day. I know some fifth-graders, and I know for a fact that many or most of them have a hard time distinguishing video games and reality.
Finally, I am not sure how this law prevents anyone except high-schoolers and under from buying violent games. If their parents approve of such games, they might as well buy them for their kids. If the parents do not permit such games, then I don't see a problem with the law preventing the kids from doing so. What the hell is the issue at stake here?
Finally, I don't get your bitching at all. Okay, the cops stopped your grandmother a few times for driving a type of car that is typically driven by teenagers. What the fuck is wrong with that? Did they fine her or something? As for them stopping teenagers -- I completely approve of that. I know many high-schoolers, and judging by their driving abilities, those people should not be on the road. I don't see any problem with cops keeping them on their toes.
Yes. In fact, the movie Three Days of the Condor (1975) shows such a robot scanning a book (near the beginning of the movie). Very nice movie, BTW.
BSD is great -- if you don't mind large commercial companies using your code royalty-free without even giving you credit.
Bullshit. If you incorportate GPL code into a commercial product and someone finds out, you are only liable for copyright infringement, just like it would be if you stole some proprietary code from a competitor. You would have to remove that code, and that would probably be the extent of the problem. You would not have to release the product as GPL. Stop listening to Microsoft FUD.
The issue here is the reverse. Someone took commercial code and possibly incorporated it into a GPL product. Obviously, that is not "viral" in any sense. Also, if the code was stolen without permission of the copyright owner, it would not have to be released under the GPL.
This is the case with any license. Hell, release it under the BSD license (which microsoft _loves_) or under any other license, and you've just made your proprietary code public. The truth is, this has nothing to do with the license and everything to do with how a company manages its IP.