I think the solution is to prevent the transportation official from using a computer until he gets a computer science qualification.
That should make it a bit harder for him to cause problems for others.
(1) LEDs can in fact be dimmed by running less current through them, however their power efficiency drops, which negates the whole purpose of LED lighting. The most efficient way to dim an LED is to strobe it on faster than the human eye can detect By varying with fraction of the on/off cycle that the LED is on, the human eye perceives this as "dimmer".
This isn't the whole story. Dimming a LED by using less current makes it more efficient, because LEDs are more efficient at lower temperatures.
It is the driver circuit that can become less efficient. If the driver circuit uses 5% of the power, then when you dim to half power the driver circuit may be using the same power, which is now 10% of the total power. Your efficiency has gone from 95% to 90%. Incandescent globes and fluorescent tubes lose even more efficiency when they are dimmed. A linear regulator as a dimmer is inefficient. You need to use a switch mode regulator. These can use filtering to avoid the flicker, but this makes them a little more expensive.
LEDs and Fluorescents are about the same efficiency (give or take 20%). LEDs are better for dimming, rapid turn on, and narrow beams. Fluorescent are better for area lighting.
LEDs lights should be built with custom fixtures for several reasons. Firstly they need to run cool to be efficient, and this needs the cooling to be built into the fixture. Secondly they are point light sources and very annoying to the eye, requiring the use of diffusers. Finally, a single LED is currently about 3W maximum, so for a room light you need multiple LEDs, which means it needs to be bigger than a conventional incandescent globe. You can fit 10W of LEDs into a ES or BC style globe, but it isn't ideal.
This allegations sounds as substantial as the story of someone being accused of kidnapping Robert Louis Stevenson, when all they did was to borrow the book. Then it was discovered that Stevenson was dead, so it wasn't just a case of kidnapping.
MPEG Licensing Authority maintains a patent pool and issues licences for MPEG-2 encoders and decoders. If you have a patent that is essential for MPEG-2, then what *most* companies do is to contribute it to the patent pool in return for a share of the licensing fees. The Lucent (was AT&T Bell Laboratories) patent 5,227,878 is not one of those on the list. In fact neither Lucent nor AT&T have any licences in the patent pool. Why is Lucent being obnoxious?
The technique of using a stereo down-mix and a spatial cue sub-channel is not limited to MP3. Wait for it to appear in other codecs such as AAC and WMA. One use of this technology is to get a better surround mix for a small increase in bit-rate, in environments where the bit-rate is restricted. The paper on MP3 Surround technology and testing omitted AAC with spatial cues - perhaps because it wasn't available, perhaps because it performs better.
Coding improvements being retrofitted to existing technologies isn't new. We have MP3Pro, aacPlus and ATRAC3plus, all of which appear to use Spectral Band Replication from Coding Technologies. aacPlus has become part of MPEG as High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC).
Austalia uses standard MPEG Layer 2 stereo audio for Standard Definition (same as Europe), but uses AC-3 for HD so that surround audio can be sent to a Dolby Digital capable receiver. Most receivers on the market here don't have Layer 2 decode, so the DVD player or DTV set top box just sends it as stereo PCM.
Many stations actually transmit both layer 2 and AC-3 stereo audio for SDTV. Occasionally there will be 5.1 AC-3 audio on the SD broadcast for special events (e.g. ABC rock music concert).
DVB-T for SDTV in Australia uses a different channel spacing (7 not 8MHz) uses VHF as well as UHF bands.
H.323 does support IPv6, it is just the implementations that don't. The 1996
release of H.225.0 (part of H.323) includes the following ASN.1 syntax.
ip6Address SEQUENCE
{
ip OCTET STRING(SIZE(16)),
port INTEGER(0..65535), ...
},
Other suported choices for TransportAddress are ipAddress (IPv4), ipSourceRoute, ipxAddress, netBios, nsap, nonStandardAddress, and "..." to allow extensions.
It's not which sound "better" that is important, but which ones can be distinguished from the original.
You will also need speakers capable of representing the original well. Poor speakers may distort the original, so that the compressed version with different distortion actually sounds better.
The interesting question is which version of OS/2. You might find that instead of running OS/2 Warp (v3 or 4), they are running the 16-bit OS/2 1.3. There is something to be said for being small and reliable.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is still using OS/2 for their customer assist computers. Unsure if they are 16 or 32-bit. This does have the advantage that staff can't run unauthorised applications on these computers!
You don't need to make it uncopyable. You just have to make it less appealing than copying it another way. If someone can copy it from a DVD, they won't bother trying to copy it from Movielink.
A good quality analog copy is good enough for many purposes. Witness the existence of pirate DVDs obtained by taking a DV camera into a cinema. They know they can't block all copying. It comes down to an economic decision on whether they think they can get money from the consumer through Movielink that they wouldn't otherwise get, without damaging their existing income.
They not only view PDF, but they also create PDF. Set up a PostScript printer driver on Windows and attach it to FILE:. Print from any Windows application. Open in GSview, check that it is correct, then "File | Convert", pdfwrite device, 720dpi, and OK. A few seconds later and you have your PDF file.
If you want automate this process, see
RedMon. This allows you to connect the Windows printer port directly to ghostscript.
Apologies for the messy configuration!
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Perhaps the original post should have said that 31 March was Robert Bunsen's birthday, because it was posted one day later on 1 April.
I think the solution is to prevent the transportation official from using a computer until he gets a computer science qualification. That should make it a bit harder for him to cause problems for others.
The inventor of the black box flight recorder, David Warren, died recently. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/black-box-inventor-david-warren-dies-at-85/story-e6frg95x-1225895120709 David said in his talks that The RAAF went as far as to note that “such a device is not required the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations”. Live telemetry of aeroplane data could help revive this objection.
(1) LEDs can in fact be dimmed by running less current through them, however their power efficiency drops, which negates the whole purpose of LED lighting. The most efficient way to dim an LED is to strobe it on faster than the human eye can detect By varying with fraction of the on/off cycle that the LED is on, the human eye perceives this as "dimmer".
This isn't the whole story. Dimming a LED by using less current makes it more efficient, because LEDs are more efficient at lower temperatures.
It is the driver circuit that can become less efficient. If the driver circuit uses 5% of the power, then when you dim to half power the driver circuit may be using the same power, which is now 10% of the total power. Your efficiency has gone from 95% to 90%. Incandescent globes and fluorescent tubes lose even more efficiency when they are dimmed. A linear regulator as a dimmer is inefficient. You need to use a switch mode regulator. These can use filtering to avoid the flicker, but this makes them a little more expensive.
LEDs and Fluorescents are about the same efficiency (give or take 20%). LEDs are better for dimming, rapid turn on, and narrow beams. Fluorescent are better for area lighting.
LEDs lights should be built with custom fixtures for several reasons. Firstly they need to run cool to be efficient, and this needs the cooling to be built into the fixture. Secondly they are point light sources and very annoying to the eye, requiring the use of diffusers. Finally, a single LED is currently about 3W maximum, so for a room light you need multiple LEDs, which means it needs to be bigger than a conventional incandescent globe. You can fit 10W of LEDs into a ES or BC style globe, but it isn't ideal.
This allegations sounds as substantial as the story of someone being accused of kidnapping Robert Louis Stevenson, when all they did was to borrow the book. Then it was discovered that Stevenson was dead, so it wasn't just a case of kidnapping.
That's right, just like the platypus isn't a duck even though it's latin name means "duck billed".
But the collision is low speed, and most importantly no one is hurt.
MPEG Licensing Authority maintains a patent pool and issues licences for MPEG-2 encoders and decoders. If you have a patent that is essential for MPEG-2, then what *most* companies do is to contribute it to the patent pool in return for a share of the licensing fees. The Lucent (was AT&T Bell Laboratories) patent 5,227,878 is not one of those on the list. In fact neither Lucent nor AT&T have any licences in the patent pool. Why is Lucent being obnoxious?
Coding improvements being retrofitted to existing technologies isn't new. We have MP3Pro, aacPlus and ATRAC3plus, all of which appear to use Spectral Band Replication from Coding Technologies. aacPlus has become part of MPEG as High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC).
Austalia uses standard MPEG Layer 2 stereo audio for Standard Definition (same as Europe), but uses AC-3 for HD so that surround audio can be sent to a Dolby Digital capable receiver. Most receivers on the market here don't have Layer 2 decode, so the DVD player or DTV set top box just sends it as stereo PCM.
Many stations actually transmit both layer 2 and AC-3 stereo audio for SDTV. Occasionally there will be 5.1 AC-3 audio on the SD broadcast for special events (e.g. ABC rock music concert).
DVB-T for SDTV in Australia uses a different channel spacing (7 not 8MHz) uses VHF as well as UHF bands.
My understanding was that taping for your own use was a civil copyright infringement, not criminal. Selling a copy would be criminal.
ip6Address SEQUENCE
...
{
ip OCTET STRING(SIZE(16)),
port INTEGER(0..65535),
},
Other suported choices for TransportAddress are ipAddress (IPv4), ipSourceRoute, ipxAddress, netBios, nsap, nonStandardAddress, and "..." to allow extensions.
It's not which sound "better" that is important, but which ones can be distinguished from the original.
You will also need speakers capable of representing the original well. Poor speakers may distort the original, so that the compressed version with different distortion actually sounds better.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is still using OS/2 for their customer assist computers. Unsure if they are 16 or 32-bit. This does have the advantage that staff can't run unauthorised applications on these computers!
You don't need to make it uncopyable. You just have to make it less appealing than copying it another way. If someone can copy it from a DVD, they won't bother trying to copy it from Movielink.
A good quality analog copy is good enough for many purposes. Witness the existence of pirate DVDs obtained by taking a DV camera into a cinema. They know they can't block all copying. It comes down to an economic decision on whether they think they can get money from the consumer through Movielink that they wouldn't otherwise get, without damaging their existing income.
If you want automate this process, see RedMon. This allows you to connect the Windows printer port directly to ghostscript. Apologies for the messy configuration!
(Author of GSview and RedMon).
The next version will use AFPL for the Windows version, and GPL for the Unix version.
(author of GSview)