Magneto-optical drives are not the only type of optical media. A DVD is also optical media, as well as a CD-ROM, as well as a hologram, and the experimental holocards.
Last time I checked, those had a pretty good lifespan for storage media. And in the case of DVDs and CDs, I think it's a pretty good assumption that those standards will not be made obsolete for a long time.
The one thing not mentioned by the article is the fact that the reason Madison Priest didn't want anyone opening up his stuff was the fact that hidden inside the receiving computer chasis was a remote controlled VCR.
The only demonstrations to which there were actual witnesses were the demonstrations he gave in his home, or in a local hotel room where he had time to set up the fraud.
It should also be noted that when the scam was first revealed, Priest skipped town and left his wife holding the bag.
For the most part, the copywrite is owned by the author for his lifespan plus another 70 years after his death. This guarantees that his heirs will also benefit from his work. After that period, the copywrited work is considered public domain.
If the work was created as work-for-hire (in other words, a publisher/corporation paid the writer to write that piece) then the copywrite can last for a duration of up to 120 years from the publish date.
So a work-for-hire piece will become public domain sooner than a freelanced piece. Knowing that one's children will benefit from one's hard work and creativity is certainly an incentive to try and create something for the public to enjoy. The more they enjoy it, the more income your family will receive.
I have a lot of old sci-fi paperbacks that I've collected over the past 30 years. Not that I was collecting them, but I was reading them and then sticking them on my bookshelves. Most of the older ones crumble now when I pull them out to read them. So I'm all for digitizing this collection to preserve it! Using proper storage techniques, yes these paper goods can last for centuries. Thank heavens that Mr. Gibson made some effert to do this! But with today's technology, digitizing would be a more permanent solution.
I would recommend digitizing at 4000 dpi (optical) to maximize the image quality. 600 dpi would not be adequate for high end printing, should some publisher wish to print some of the collection. I would think that on a university, there would be enough students who are deep afficianados of science fiction who would be quite dedicated to working towards copying this collection with great care.
Yes, magnetic media fades, but optical media does not. Well, so long as you don't scratch the disk...
All of the works with a publishing date prior to 1923 could be immediately posted to the internet for access. Works after 1923, permission would be needed from the copywrite holders to be posted digitally, depending on the state of the copywrite. Chances are, with a lot of the older works, permission could be had fairly easily. There are times when the children of the artist are sufficiently well off that they don't need the income, or they would like to see their parent's name become known again, and release some or all of the works to public domain.
Last, I'd like to point out the shear volume of work and dedication that Mr. Gibson had put into his collection! Finding periodicals that have gone out of print (comic books and the like) is NOT easy! In the article, the brief mention of the traveling Mr. Gibson did should give one an idea of what was involved with this. On top of that, he loved the genre enough to preserve it as best he could. Condsider how we are going to benefit from his work! A nod should also go to his son, Andrew Gibson for making the donation. Just as his father preserved the hard work of many writers and artists, Andrew Gibson has preserved the hard work of his father.
To the both of you, I'd like to say thank you. To my fellow/.-ers who are fans of science fiction (bet that's most of us), I'd urge you all to make some sort of contribution to continue the preservation of all this hard work. I certainly intend to!
Well, actually, they didn't sit on the patent for 11 years.
They bought the company that owned the patent. When they realized that they were the owners of the patent, they decided to enforce it. This is well within their rights.
I think they will find, however, that in their greed to cash in on the ubiquitous use of JPEGs in the internet universe, they never considered the PR nightmare they just released upon themselves. The ill will generated by this may do far more damage to Forgent than any profit that could have been had by their current actions.
In the end, the forces of Good win out anyway, and we will all greatly benefit by Forgents' actions. This will propel JPEG2000 into mainstream use far earlier than otherwise. JP2K is a better technology than JPEG, but it would have had a tough time replacing such an incumbent technology. (e.g. GIF vs. PNG)
Technically, the PowerPC chips are better than the x86 chips, being RISC they will be faster per _Hz (though, being RISC, the programs have to be longer to account for the lack of complex commands built into the chip...). But the x86 family has enough legs to outperform the current set of PowerPC chips.
What is killing Apple right now is Motorola's weakness in creating a stable production of volume for the G4 PowerPC chips. Now, things are certainly better than they were two years ago, but the damage was done. Right when it looked like the G4 chips were on track to be the first to bust through the 1 GHz barrier for a production chip, it was revealed that they couldn't create a stable chip above 500 MHz. And it took way too long for them to just reach the 1 GHz level. That gave Intel more than enough time to squeeze out just that much more performance out of the x86 family.
Additionally, Motorola's internal problems have hurt their stability. One key issue a few years ago, was rather than pay engineers as though they wanted to keep them, Motorola left itself wide open to have their talent drained away by Intel. That's the key reason why Intel's chips suddenly gained a new life and easily pushed past the 1 GHz barrier. There was even recent talk about Motorola selling their chip production facility so they could concentrate more on the mobile communications market.
Either way, it's very smart and very good business for Apple to make sure that they have alternatives, just in case. Consider what happened to Apple's iMac production when the supplier for their flat-panel displays couldn't produce enough to fill the order.
Of course, this is only one facet to this issue. But it makes for a good example. Apple could make the switch to a different chip architecture should it become necessary, in the event that Motorola fails to deliver. A hidden beauty of Apple switching to the Unix-based OS X is that it makes it a LOT easier to port to another architecture in a very short time, if necessary. Vendor software wouldn't have to be rewritten, they would just have to recompile their code. (Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying, but imagine trying to port OS 9 and earlier to a different architecture...)
Well, Mac users are a resourceful bunch. They'll just move their things elsewhere.
If Apple is looking at this as revenue generation, all I can say is the marketing nimrod who came up with this fiasco should be fired. If they are looking to shut down or minimize iTools as a cost saving measure, this will be quite effective.
For $60 a year, one can host their own web site with 10 email addresses from http://www.pair.com/ plus a whole lot more. The earlier posting about Dreamhost sounds very competitive as well!
For the most part, I only used mac.com for the email address, but it is something I really don't need, as I have dozens of others with my own domain. I just liked having the @mac.com on my email.
The iDisk service was something I simply didn't have any need for. For $100, I can go out and buy a 40 gig Firewire drive and use that for backup. It's certainly a lot quicker than trying to transfer gigabytes of data across the internet.
I'll have to consider whether or not to pay $50 to continue it for a year. That will depend on how much Virex for OS X costs.
Though he claims not to be, he actually is a true genius.
For one thing, it is rarely mentioned that he is self-made and quite wealthy due to the work he does. His comment about his "18 licensed toys" refers to 18 patents that he has created. These are not just patents, these are things that are practical enough that companies are actually using the things he developed. Sure, I'm sure there are quite a few/.-ers out there who can hold claim to a patent or two, but how many can claim that their patents are actually being used? AND make money from them? One more qualifier: he developed these things on his own, not as part of a research team for some company.
As far as having the "know how," he does have the know how! He learned what he knows by doing it, not by reading about it. He began as a welder, and worked on high pressure storage systems, and worked his way up from there. For the most part, a rocket is a high pressure tank with a hole in one end. Just because he doesn't talk about it in scientific words, doesn't mean he doesn't understand what he's planning. Yeah, I can see what you are saying about Junkyard Wars, but they had less than a day to build their rocket, Mr. Walker has been working on this for a few years.
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Magneto-optical drives are not the only type of optical media. A DVD is also optical media, as well as a CD-ROM, as well as a hologram, and the experimental holocards.
Last time I checked, those had a pretty good lifespan for storage media. And in the case of DVDs and CDs, I think it's a pretty good assumption that those standards will not be made obsolete for a long time.
The one thing not mentioned by the article is the fact that the reason Madison Priest didn't want anyone opening up his stuff was the fact that hidden inside the receiving computer chasis was a remote controlled VCR.
The only demonstrations to which there were actual witnesses were the demonstrations he gave in his home, or in a local hotel room where he had time to set up the fraud.
It should also be noted that when the scam was first revealed, Priest skipped town and left his wife holding the bag.
For the most part, the copywrite is owned by the author for his lifespan plus another 70 years after his death. This guarantees that his heirs will also benefit from his work. After that period, the copywrited work is considered public domain.
/.-ers who are fans of science fiction (bet that's most of us), I'd urge you all to make some sort of contribution to continue the preservation of all this hard work. I certainly intend to!
If the work was created as work-for-hire (in other words, a publisher/corporation paid the writer to write that piece) then the copywrite can last for a duration of up to 120 years from the publish date.
So a work-for-hire piece will become public domain sooner than a freelanced piece. Knowing that one's children will benefit from one's hard work and creativity is certainly an incentive to try and create something for the public to enjoy. The more they enjoy it, the more income your family will receive.
I have a lot of old sci-fi paperbacks that I've collected over the past 30 years. Not that I was collecting them, but I was reading them and then sticking them on my bookshelves. Most of the older ones crumble now when I pull them out to read them. So I'm all for digitizing this collection to preserve it! Using proper storage techniques, yes these paper goods can last for centuries. Thank heavens that Mr. Gibson made some effert to do this! But with today's technology, digitizing would be a more permanent solution.
I would recommend digitizing at 4000 dpi (optical) to maximize the image quality. 600 dpi would not be adequate for high end printing, should some publisher wish to print some of the collection. I would think that on a university, there would be enough students who are deep afficianados of science fiction who would be quite dedicated to working towards copying this collection with great care.
Yes, magnetic media fades, but optical media does not. Well, so long as you don't scratch the disk...
All of the works with a publishing date prior to 1923 could be immediately posted to the internet for access. Works after 1923, permission would be needed from the copywrite holders to be posted digitally, depending on the state of the copywrite. Chances are, with a lot of the older works, permission could be had fairly easily. There are times when the children of the artist are sufficiently well off that they don't need the income, or they would like to see their parent's name become known again, and release some or all of the works to public domain.
Last, I'd like to point out the shear volume of work and dedication that Mr. Gibson had put into his collection! Finding periodicals that have gone out of print (comic books and the like) is NOT easy! In the article, the brief mention of the traveling Mr. Gibson did should give one an idea of what was involved with this. On top of that, he loved the genre enough to preserve it as best he could. Condsider how we are going to benefit from his work! A nod should also go to his son, Andrew Gibson for making the donation. Just as his father preserved the hard work of many writers and artists, Andrew Gibson has preserved the hard work of his father.
To the both of you, I'd like to say thank you. To my fellow
Well, actually, they didn't sit on the patent for 11 years.
They bought the company that owned the patent. When they realized that they were the owners of the patent, they decided to enforce it. This is well within their rights.
I think they will find, however, that in their greed to cash in on the ubiquitous use of JPEGs in the internet universe, they never considered the PR nightmare they just released upon themselves. The ill will generated by this may do far more damage to Forgent than any profit that could have been had by their current actions.
In the end, the forces of Good win out anyway, and we will all greatly benefit by Forgents' actions. This will propel JPEG2000 into mainstream use far earlier than otherwise. JP2K is a better technology than JPEG, but it would have had a tough time replacing such an incumbent technology. (e.g. GIF vs. PNG)
Technically, the PowerPC chips are better than the x86 chips, being RISC they will be faster per _Hz (though, being RISC, the programs have to be longer to account for the lack of complex commands built into the chip...). But the x86 family has enough legs to outperform the current set of PowerPC chips.
What is killing Apple right now is Motorola's weakness in creating a stable production of volume for the G4 PowerPC chips. Now, things are certainly better than they were two years ago, but the damage was done. Right when it looked like the G4 chips were on track to be the first to bust through the 1 GHz barrier for a production chip, it was revealed that they couldn't create a stable chip above 500 MHz. And it took way too long for them to just reach the 1 GHz level. That gave Intel more than enough time to squeeze out just that much more performance out of the x86 family.
Additionally, Motorola's internal problems have hurt their stability. One key issue a few years ago, was rather than pay engineers as though they wanted to keep them, Motorola left itself wide open to have their talent drained away by Intel. That's the key reason why Intel's chips suddenly gained a new life and easily pushed past the 1 GHz barrier. There was even recent talk about Motorola selling their chip production facility so they could concentrate more on the mobile communications market.
Either way, it's very smart and very good business for Apple to make sure that they have alternatives, just in case. Consider what happened to Apple's iMac production when the supplier for their flat-panel displays couldn't produce enough to fill the order.
Of course, this is only one facet to this issue. But it makes for a good example. Apple could make the switch to a different chip architecture should it become necessary, in the event that Motorola fails to deliver. A hidden beauty of Apple switching to the Unix-based OS X is that it makes it a LOT easier to port to another architecture in a very short time, if necessary. Vendor software wouldn't have to be rewritten, they would just have to recompile their code. (Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying, but imagine trying to port OS 9 and earlier to a different architecture...)
Well, Mac users are a resourceful bunch. They'll just move their things elsewhere.
If Apple is looking at this as revenue generation, all I can say is the marketing nimrod who came up with this fiasco should be fired. If they are looking to shut down or minimize iTools as a cost saving measure, this will be quite effective.
For $60 a year, one can host their own web site with 10 email addresses from http://www.pair.com/ plus a whole lot more. The earlier posting about Dreamhost sounds very competitive as well!
For the most part, I only used mac.com for the email address, but it is something I really don't need, as I have dozens of others with my own domain. I just liked having the @mac.com on my email.
The iDisk service was something I simply didn't have any need for. For $100, I can go out and buy a 40 gig Firewire drive and use that for backup. It's certainly a lot quicker than trying to transfer gigabytes of data across the internet.
I'll have to consider whether or not to pay $50 to continue it for a year. That will depend on how much Virex for OS X costs.
Though he claims not to be, he actually is a true genius.
/.-ers out there who can hold claim to a patent or two, but how many can claim that their patents are actually being used? AND make money from them? One more qualifier: he developed these things on his own, not as part of a research team for some company.
For one thing, it is rarely mentioned that he is self-made and quite wealthy due to the work he does. His comment about his "18 licensed toys" refers to 18 patents that he has created. These are not just patents, these are things that are practical enough that companies are actually using the things he developed. Sure, I'm sure there are quite a few
As far as having the "know how," he does have the know how! He learned what he knows by doing it, not by reading about it. He began as a welder, and worked on high pressure storage systems, and worked his way up from there. For the most part, a rocket is a high pressure tank with a hole in one end. Just because he doesn't talk about it in scientific words, doesn't mean he doesn't understand what he's planning. Yeah, I can see what you are saying about Junkyard Wars, but they had less than a day to build their rocket, Mr. Walker has been working on this for a few years.