Exactly..... this is why you can never really verify Ohm's law, since either a voltmeter actually measures the current flowing through a known resistance, or an ammeter actually measures the voltage developed across a known resistance, depending on how you think about it:-) Plus, depending how you set up the experiment, either the ammeter is going to be measuring not only the current through the test resistance, but also the current through the voltmeter; or, the voltmeter is going to be measuring the voltage across the ammeter as well as the test resistance.
Still, everything that plugs in is empirical evidence for Ohm's law, so we can assume it is probably true.
OK, here's how they work
on
NYT on RFID
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The RFID chip works in conjunction with a tuned circuit {capacitor and coil; the coil also behaves as an antenna} that extracts energy from an applied RF field. The resonant frequency of this tuned circuit is the operating frequency for the system. The size of the coil determines the operating range. An RFID device with integral tuned circuit measures about 20mm. by 10mm. by 2mm. and has a range of a few cm. A smaller device would require an external coil, but the bigger coil would extend the working range.
The transmitter feeds an RF power amp with a sensitive ammeter in one of its power supply leads.
Now, when the tuned circuit is brought within range of the transmitter, it will pick up the signal. But that is all. A voltage will be induced across the system, and a current will flow, but they will be out of phase. When the voltage is at a peak, the current is nil, and vice versa. Recall that power = voltage * current, so there is no power. Bringing the tuned circuit into range of the transmitter will not affect the ammeter reading.
However, if you connect a resistance across the two ends of the tuned circuit, then the current across this resistance will be in phase with the voltage. Energy is now being changed from electromagnetic waves to heat. And, strictly in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics, the reading on the ammeter will go up. Reduce the resistance and it will go up more. Of course, the imperfect coupling from transmitter to receiver itself behaves like a big resistance, which effectively limits the power available for the receiver {and therefore the ammeter swing}.
Anyway, if we switch this resistance in and out of circuit, we can watch the ammeter moving in sympathy with the switching.
The RFID tag gets its power by rectifying the AC induced in the tuned circuit, and using this to charge a capacitor. This capacitor stores enough energy to allow the tag to miss a few cycles, because it unavoidably will as a consequence of how it works. The tag then switches on and off a transistor which sits across the bridge rectifier {a transistor only conducts in one direction} in accordance with a predefined pattern. When the transistor turns on, more power is drawn from the transmitter. {As a side effect, the voltage is pulled down and the RFID tag has to rely on the capacitor contents to keep in this state, remember how far through the sequence it is, and so forth; so this state lasts only a few cycles}. The transmitter can see, by measuring the supply current to the RF power amp, whether the transistor in the RFID tag is on or off.
The external RF field also provides a stable timing reference to the tag, because it can count cycles accurately and dead-reckon a few cycles when it has to.
So, we have a one-way communication from the RFID tag to the transmitter, even though the RFID tag has no power supply of its own. If the RFID tag is absent or high resistance, this is a zero. When the RFID tag goes low-resistance, the transmitter can see this as a one. This allows us to send a binary number from the RFID tag.
All the RFID tag does, once it comes into range of the transmitter, is continuously send out a series of zeros and ones by going low and high resistance. It is up to the transmitter to spot the resistance of the remote end.
It is also possible to send data to the RFID tag, by switching the RF field on and off. While this could be used for programming of tags with serial numbers {instead of laser etching as is currently done}, it would require the tag to have some sort of EEPROM or Flash memory. These devices currently have a high power demand making them unsuitable for operation on RF power alone, but recall Clarke's first law: When a scientist says something is possible they are usually right; when a scientist says something is impossible they are usually wrong. So it is almost certain that future RFID tags could be reprogrammable.
Um, can't Konqueror transport a textarea into Kate, where you can edit it to your heart's content - it even understands ed commands - and then back again? This is exactly the sort of functionality KDE is supposed to have built in. However, I'm unable to confirm this because I'm at "work" right now and having to put up win Win98SE. {Though I am hoping to find a way to break my HDD; then I'll reinstall Win98SE dual-booting with Slackware.}
Even if there is no inbuilt way of doing this, you can do it all with your mouse. In Konqueror: Mouse to top LH corner of textarea. Click and hold LH button. Mouse to bottom RH corner. Let go of LH button. Start Kate. Click middle button. Edit. Back to Konqueror. Click RH button over still-highlit text and chose "clear". Back to Kate. Mouse to top LH corner. Click and hold LH button. Mouse to bottom RH corner. Let go of LH button. Back to Konqueror. Click middle button. Submit form.
That "extra hurdle" falls down flat, though, the instant one person manages to make a recopiable copy of it. From such time on, copies propagate easily.
CDs would be cheaper if the record companies
Stopped selling cassettes altogether - a walkman cassette costs three times as much as a CD to manufacture, yet they are sold at a lower price.
Abandoned all playback-prevention attempts - see above
Back in The Days, you had a reasonable chance of typing a book title into a search engine and finding an online copy of the text. Well, mostly you didn't find anything ITTBT. Nowadays, you type a book title into a search engine and find lots of cached search records ultimately pointing to online bookstores offering to sell you the book. And lots of "ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved" where my Squid proxy blocked an advert;-)
My preferred scheme is to make a directory for each artist, subdirectories for each album {and maybe for each CD if it's a multi-disc album}, and just have the sorting order and song title in the filename. Something like {mind the gap - that's just Slashdot putting in extra line breaks to avoid page-widening trolls}
pink_floyd/dark_side_of_the_moon/05_great_gig_in_t he_sky_the or compilations/soft_rock_4/19_petty_tom-runnin_down_ a_dream Name of artist {surname first} or group {"the" or "a" last}, all lower case, underscores for spaces. Name of album, all lc, underscores. Track number as two digits. Underscore. Name of track, all lc, underscores for spaces. Or, for compilation albums, number_art_ist-ti_tle {note minus sign delimiting artist from title}. No extension required, of course, since there is more than enough metadata to tell the player application what kind of a file it is. Now, that number is important. By putting the track number first, it makes sure that my directory listings show the tracks in the album order {I ripped and lame-d in that order, so sorting alphabetically or datewise yields the same result} and also allows me to get away with the bare minimum of typing thanks to bash's TAB-key filename completion. I figure a machine that can handle stuff like mpeg / ogg playback isn't going to be forced to run ash!
Console navigation is just something like
$ mpg321 so[TAB]
$ mpg321 songs/pi[TAB]
$ mpg321 songs/pink_floyd/da[TAB]
$ mpg321 songs/pink_floyd/dark_side_of_the_moon/01[TAB][CR] and I'll end up with the first track on DSOTM. Total keystrokes, 20.
Mind you, you probably already have a scheme that works for you, and there's no point changing to another now. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that you can only get 64K in a BLOB, I'd recommend using a database.....
If nobody but the makers of kettles were allowed to sell tea bags, the price of a cuppa would skyrocket. Capitalists are always banging on about how competition fetches prices down. But show them a bit of healthy competition, and they chuck their toys out of their prams.
So why not end labels' traditional exclusivity over artists? Suppose for one minute that bands were free to pick and choose which label sold their records. So, you've recorded an album..... now you have a choice of who sells it for you. Bloggodisc charge you an upfront fee {based on the cost of initial pressing minus value recouped from recycling, subject to "administration charges"} as their insurance against you not being entirely serious, but take a smaller cut out of what they pass on to you. Fat Bum Records don't charge a penny upfront, but take a bigger cut. Some companies would use playback prevention technologies, others would not. There would also be room for specialised / minority labels - perhaps dealing exclusively in LPs, or distributing music directly via the Internet. You, as the artist, would get to choose who distributes your work. The only people with anything to lose under such a regime would be the major labels, who we have already proved that we do not need.
I will hazard a guess that the situation used to be more like this {with many small, independent record distributors competing for an artist's business} before the formation of cartels such as the BPI and RIAA. Maybe someone can fill me in on the early history of recording.
Obviously, few - if any - record stores will carry every label's print of a recording. It might be necessary that record labels be barred from owning record stores, and vice versa, to prevent excess of authority. But these issues, along with others I have not thought of here, will only be solved by vigorous debate and serious experimentation.
I think the Misuse of Computers Act 1990 {unauthorised installation of software}, the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 {licence terms incompatible with statutory rights} and maybe the Sale of Goods Act 1979 {music is sold, not licenced}, all as amended, might possibly be called into play. However, I am no lawyer, so proceed with caution.
If you bought the disc in good faith, then found it interfered with your computer, then you might well have a case; but
it will be a bitch to prove,
any damages awarded might well be less than your costs,
so you could still wind up out of pocket. If you merely found the disc to be unplayable on your system, you should be able to get your money back -- in real pound notes, not gift vouchers, BTW. SGA '79 again. Might be worth going for another copy of the disc first few times around, then deciding that they must all be faulty.
If enough people bought these non-regulation "CD"s, then took them back to the store as "unplayable", then the retailers might start to take notice and demand that their suppliers did something about them. On the downside, you might just get barred from your local HMV. From the retailer's point of view, that is just as effective a way of dealing with the problem.
Ah, but the C64 used a more RISC-like processor {6510, an extended 6502} which even had a rudimentary pipeline {only one byte; instructions varied from 1-3 bytes long, but it can decide in advance that it needn't do anything for a NOP, and conditionals only slow down execution if they pass and have to fetch from elsewhere in memory}. A 1MHz 6510 was more like a 4MHz Z-80. Especially when you add plenty of memory {65xx instruction set can access locations $0000-$00ff using a 2-byte instruction instead of 3 bytes, giving you almost an extra 256 registers}.
I'm sure this topic will attract more noise than signal.
There are two rules for extradition. Firstly, the offence must be a crime in both countries. Extradition treaty notwithstanding, you can't be tried in one country for something you did in another country where whatever you did was not a crime, even if it would have been a crime at home. Secondly, the country where you committed the offence can refuse to extradite you if their authorities believe that the punishment would be overly severe if you were tried in the other country.
So {and IANAL} this is how I understand it:
If someone sends spam to the UK from a country where it is legal to send spam, then that country's own sovereignty protects them from anything the UK might try on. In the absence of an international treaty, national laws stop at national boundaries.
If someone in the UK sends spam to a country where it is legal to send spam, then they might have committed an offence under UK law and therefore be subject to trial in the UK.
If someone sends spam to the UK from a country where it is illegal to send spam, then they could be extradited to the UK.
If someone in the UK sends spam to someone in a country where spamming carries a penalty considered significantly harsher than the penalty in the UK - especially imprisonment without parole or death - then they most likely would not be extradited from the UK, but would be tried and serve their sentence in the UK
Actually the UK does have the death penalty for certain offences, including
Treason
Piracy on the High Seas
Damaging ships in naval dockyards
Interestingly, any item of snail mail is considered the property of the Queen until it reaches its intended recipient, and it is actually treason to open a letter not addressed to you. I'm not sure if this applies to e-mail though, since ISPs are typically not By Royal Appointment in the same degree as the Royal Mail.
It is cheaper to use oil out of the ground than out of plants, more than 2x as cheap in fact
Yes..... stealing something {fossil fuels belong to future generations, if you think about it} usually does work out cheaper than earning it by your own hard graft. Especially if the person you stole it off is never going to meet you to ask for it back.
I've heard it said {but from a biased source} that Britain alone could produce enough food to feed the whole of the rest of the world on a Vegan diet, with appropriate management. IMHO that's far fetched, and anyway I'm no mortality-denialist, but bad logistics do cause many of the problems.
My take would be that it should be illegal for anyone to benefit from the misfortune of another. Clearly in these cases, lawyers are benefitting from the misfortunes of whoever sued.
IMHO a better solution would be the creation of a new court order whereunder you would be obliged to spend a certain amount of money correcting a problem. So, if someone trips on a loose paving stone, they can take the city council to court; then the city council could be ordered to spend a certain sum identifying and repairing broken paving stones, or nailing the b*****d who is going around damaging them; rather than paying out a fortune to some grasping freeloaders and their clients and not being able to actually afford to repair paving stones as a result. The council would have to report back to the court, showing the relevant paperwork, or else be held in contempt of court -- this being a criminal offence in its own right, and not one that has sleazeball lawyers queuing up to represent you either.
This is not new..... back in the eight bit days, a friend of mine was giving me a lift back from our BBC usergroup in her Morris Minor, and she warned me I would have to occasionally remind her she was not playing Crazee Rider.
However, we had some quaint, old-fashioned thing called common sense.
Where I'm from, we don't have a written constitution, just the general expectation that anything you would not dare do to the Queen, you would not do to an ordinary citizen either.
But if we did have a written constitution, I'd be pushing for a clause along the lines that all means to the same end were equally valid, and any future invention that accomplishes the same ends as an existing invention should not be given any special treatment unless there were compelling reasons beyond mere novelty.
Not true. Extreme heat destroys dioxins. They are often created by partial combustion {think bonfire}. What is basically going on in a fire is two processes. Pyrolysis is the fuel being decomposed into simpler chemicals, almost always incomplete fragments {sometimes even individual atoms} which will bond with whatever is nearest to hand {strictly speaking, nearest to valence electron?} as soon as they cool down enough. Pyrolysis consumes energy in breaking chemical bonds. Oxidation is the simpler chemicals reacting with oxygen. This gives out energy. Oxygen is chemically very horny and also will try very hard to avoid having to share with anything else. The pyrolysis products undergo some further decomposition as the oxygen atoms each try to grab something for themselves. Since the oxidation puts out more energy than the pyrolysis required, the fire stays alight. But you have to put some energy in {typically from a match} to start the pyrolysis, otherwise you would get spontaneous combustion.
Now, in a bonfire or badly-designed furnace, the pyrolysis products cool and recombine into literally goodness-knows-what and escape before they get a chance to combine with oxygen. This is where incineration can fail. Large lumps of fuel, and mixed fuels, all exacerbate the problems.
In a well-designed furnace, the fuel is finely-divided and the air supply forced {an unattended fire will tend to produce only as much energy as it needs to stay alight; this may mean partial combustion with great quantities of chemicals being released. A fan requires energy, but MOTN the energy gain from fetter combustion is greater than the consumption of the motor}. If the fuel is very heterogeneous, the pyrolysis phase of the reaction can be completed separately in by heating the fuel in an airless chamber {consuming energy} and the pyrolysis products burned later {releasing more energy than it took to do the pyrolysis}. By adjusting the temperature and pressure you can select whether the intermediate product is a gas, a light liquid like petrol or a heavy liquid like diesel fuel. This has the advantage that you know how long is the longest carbon chain in the fuel for the next stage, and there is no way that the products can contain sny longer carbon chains. The disadvantage is that it distributes the high-temperature processes, thereby creating more opportunities for heat leakage.
As for the "plastics" argument, it's a red herring. Upstream segregation could be used to separate plastic from the waste being used for energy recovery, if you were really concerned. But I can't see how it would not be better to extract energy from plastic that has already been used for something, than to use up energy burying that plastic in landfill and digging up more fossil fuel just to burn for energy. Over time, as fossil fuels became more expensive, plastics would begin to be made from plants anyway. Not to mention that lanfills also produce dioxins, albeit more slowly, and organic matter in landfill decays to CH4, which, molecule-for-molecule, is a better heat trap than CO2. The real problem is ignorance of the First Law of Thermodynamics. We've already had people bitching about CO2 emissions like they don't know where the carbon in a plant comes from, and if people can't appreciate the First Law as it applies to the tangible form of matter, how can we suppose they can appreciate it as applied to energy?
Of course, I'm with you about reduction. My ex's daughter was raised in reusable cotton nappies, so will be my niece at least while she is stopping with me. I avoid single-serving packs whenever possible. I wipe my nose on yesterday's T-shirt, and I put my sandwiches straight in my lunchbox without using a polybag {in the absence of a satisfactory explanation as to how wrapping food in plastic saves me from risking cancer by letting it touch plastic}. I don't use sanitary towels either, but only for The Reason That Does Not Count.
The poisonous stuff in hazelnuts and peanuts is an oil-soluble protein, so unlikely to affect water supplies. Proteins tend to decompose at low temperatures {which is why biological washing powder is only good up to 40 degrees; but if your washing machine has an integral water heater, you can safely set the 'stat for 60 and the powder will behave biologically till the water gets too hot. After that, the enzymes are destroyed and only the conventional detergent action remains; but at 60 degrees it will have significantly more cleaning power than at 40}.
I'd say tentatively that it would be unlikely to have adverse health effects. Beside which, presumably they must have been burning the nutshells anyway beforehand, just not doing anything useful with the heat, otherwise they would have drowned under a sea of the things. So if nutshell bonfires {aim: get rid of nutshells} were harmless, one can suppose a purpose-designed furnace {aim: turn as much fuel as possible into heat} would ensure better chemical decomposition.
In this country, we have a few billboards which consist of a row of triangular prisms, disposed vertically, parallel to one another, and able to revolve on spindles. At one end of each spindle is a cog wheel, and a chain connects them all to a motor. As the motor turns, all the prisms revolve together. A limit switch is used to detect when the flat sides line up together. This whole assembly is mounted in a shallow box. Three posters are cut up and slices of each affixed around the prisms in such a way that at each of the limit stops, a complete poster is visible. A cyclic timer relay closes briefly to start the motor every few seconds; the limit switch keeps it running until it hits a stop position.
I believe this kind of sign is not allowed near busy road junctions.
BOllox - John Logie Baird invented television, though it relied on a mechanical contraption for projecting a picture. Philo Farnsworth invented the cathode ray tube, which managed to put a picture on a screen without the moving parts; but not until there was actually anything to display using one.
Then someone had the idea of, instead of charging people for the privilege of watching TV and using the money raised to pay for high-quality programmes that would at once inform, educate and entertain, letting people watch telly for free but showing advertisements during the breaks between programmes, and using the advertising money to pay for programmes that ultimately would do little more than fill in the breaks between adverts. IMHO that was the disinvention of television.
On first reading, it looks like an excellent scheme. Unfortunately, there are so many reasons why it wouldn't work in real life.
In order for it to work, society would have to be more perfect than it is now; but if society was perfect enough for such a system to be able to work, it wouldn't be needed anyway.
What about this?
A group of unsigned artists get together and rent a managed, secure server. The server puts out signed digital audio files and value added extras - but you have to pay a fee to download them. The fee, enforced using cryptographic methods, goes to the artists, and covers the cost of producing the music and maintaining the server. {I am not sure whether or not it would be worthwhile to offer a CD burning service; some people might prefer to order a custom CD rather than place their computer effectively out of commission while downloading and burning, but this would need to be investigated in practice.}
Thanks to digital signing, punters get to differentiate between "unofficial" copies {which could be of inferior quality or infested with malware} and the "real thing". Nobody can make a profit offering other people's music for paid download, because they would not have the correct signing keys - and punters would be wary of inferior copies. The small cost of an assured download would outweigh the risk associated with downloading unofficial files {which might well be slower, and therefore more expensive, if hosted from a generic home ADSL connection, which is all anyone is going to be able to afford to give away; and who's going to pay for a dodgy copy when a pure one is only a little bit more?}
I think such a system would certainly cut out the organised piracy, which undoubtedly diverts funds from artists. Casual copiers might just as likely have gone without, had they not been able to obtain a free copy easily. Beside all which, users are less likely to resent compensating artists directly than lining the pockets of a middleman.
There is probably room within such a system for a middleman to make a slim profit, providing services to bands who for one reason or another can't co-operate directly to run servers. If artists retain their own copyrights, such intermediaries {they probably deserve a whole new name, but ICBB to think of one right now} conceivably could compete to promote artists to listeners; licencing tracks to offer for download from preconfigured servers and collecting fees on behalf of artists, who would be paid monolithically. The market self-regulates because of the crossover points between legal and illegal copying being more common, and between directly and indirectly serving files.
If it works, then nobody has anything to lose except the fatcat executives at the record companies. And they are NOT NECESSARY!
I'm sceptical about their abilities to deal with deliberately overwritten data. I would guess most of the drives they have to recover have suffered mechanical failure {thereby inherently limiting the amount of magnetic damage - spindle seizure means losing one bit per cylinder max., positioner failure means losing one cylinder max., total seizure means losing just one bit per surface}, and in cases where supposedly "overwritten" files are recovered, the process is more likely done by reconstructing from partial copies lying around waiting to be overwritten.
This creates interesting possibilities for a comparative test - using different processes on a number of identical drives, and seeing how much can be recovered from each. Sounds as though it'd be expensive, though.....
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly ..... this is why you can never really verify Ohm's law, since either a voltmeter actually measures the current flowing through a known resistance, or an ammeter actually measures the voltage developed across a known resistance, depending on how you think about it :-) Plus, depending how you set up the experiment, either the ammeter is going to be measuring not only the current through the test resistance, but also the current through the voltmeter; or, the voltmeter is going to be measuring the voltage across the ammeter as well as the test resistance.
Still, everything that plugs in is empirical evidence for Ohm's law, so we can assume it is probably true.
The RFID chip works in conjunction with a tuned circuit {capacitor and coil; the coil also behaves as an antenna} that extracts energy from an applied RF field. The resonant frequency of this tuned circuit is the operating frequency for the system. The size of the coil determines the operating range. An RFID device with integral tuned circuit measures about 20mm. by 10mm. by 2mm. and has a range of a few cm. A smaller device would require an external coil, but the bigger coil would extend the working range.
The transmitter feeds an RF power amp with a sensitive ammeter in one of its power supply leads.
Now, when the tuned circuit is brought within range of the transmitter, it will pick up the signal. But that is all. A voltage will be induced across the system, and a current will flow, but they will be out of phase. When the voltage is at a peak, the current is nil, and vice versa. Recall that power = voltage * current, so there is no power. Bringing the tuned circuit into range of the transmitter will not affect the ammeter reading.
However, if you connect a resistance across the two ends of the tuned circuit, then the current across this resistance will be in phase with the voltage. Energy is now being changed from electromagnetic waves to heat. And, strictly in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics, the reading on the ammeter will go up. Reduce the resistance and it will go up more. Of course, the imperfect coupling from transmitter to receiver itself behaves like a big resistance, which effectively limits the power available for the receiver {and therefore the ammeter swing}.
Anyway, if we switch this resistance in and out of circuit, we can watch the ammeter moving in sympathy with the switching.
The RFID tag gets its power by rectifying the AC induced in the tuned circuit, and using this to charge a capacitor. This capacitor stores enough energy to allow the tag to miss a few cycles, because it unavoidably will as a consequence of how it works. The tag then switches on and off a transistor which sits across the bridge rectifier {a transistor only conducts in one direction} in accordance with a predefined pattern. When the transistor turns on, more power is drawn from the transmitter. {As a side effect, the voltage is pulled down and the RFID tag has to rely on the capacitor contents to keep in this state, remember how far through the sequence it is, and so forth; so this state lasts only a few cycles}. The transmitter can see, by measuring the supply current to the RF power amp, whether the transistor in the RFID tag is on or off.
The external RF field also provides a stable timing reference to the tag, because it can count cycles accurately and dead-reckon a few cycles when it has to.
So, we have a one-way communication from the RFID tag to the transmitter, even though the RFID tag has no power supply of its own. If the RFID tag is absent or high resistance, this is a zero. When the RFID tag goes low-resistance, the transmitter can see this as a one. This allows us to send a binary number from the RFID tag.
All the RFID tag does, once it comes into range of the transmitter, is continuously send out a series of zeros and ones by going low and high resistance. It is up to the transmitter to spot the resistance of the remote end.
It is also possible to send data to the RFID tag, by switching the RF field on and off. While this could be used for programming of tags with serial numbers {instead of laser etching as is currently done}, it would require the tag to have some sort of EEPROM or Flash memory. These devices currently have a high power demand making them unsuitable for operation on RF power alone, but recall Clarke's first law: When a scientist says something is possible they are usually right; when a scientist says something is impossible they are usually wrong. So it is almost certain that future RFID tags could be reprogrammable.
The canonical method for deactivating
I don't have a microwave oven, you insensitive clod!
Good idea, but the only P2P filesharing service I'm likely ever to upload anything to is /usr/sbin/httpd :-) Or maybe proftpd.
Um, can't Konqueror transport a textarea into Kate, where you can edit it to your heart's content - it even understands ed commands - and then back again? This is exactly the sort of functionality KDE is supposed to have built in. However, I'm unable to confirm this because I'm at "work" right now and having to put up win Win98SE. {Though I am hoping to find a way to break my HDD; then I'll reinstall Win98SE dual-booting with Slackware.}
..... actually that does look very ugly.
Even if there is no inbuilt way of doing this, you can do it all with your mouse. In Konqueror: Mouse to top LH corner of textarea. Click and hold LH button. Mouse to bottom RH corner. Let go of LH button. Start Kate. Click middle button. Edit. Back to Konqueror. Click RH button over still-highlit text and chose "clear". Back to Kate. Mouse to top LH corner. Click and hold LH button. Mouse to bottom RH corner. Let go of LH button. Back to Konqueror. Click middle button. Submit form.
Um
CDs would be cheaper if the record companies
Got a link for it?
;-)
Back in The Days, you had a reasonable chance of typing a book title into a search engine and finding an online copy of the text. Well, mostly you didn't find anything ITTBT. Nowadays, you type a book title into a search engine and find lots of cached search records ultimately pointing to online bookstores offering to sell you the book. And lots of "ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved" where my Squid proxy blocked an advert
My preferred scheme is to make a directory for each artist, subdirectories for each album {and maybe for each CD if it's a multi-disc album}, and just have the sorting order and song title in the filename. Something like {mind the gap - that's just Slashdot putting in extra line breaks to avoid page-widening trolls}t he_sky_the
_ a_dream
]
.....
pink_floyd/dark_side_of_the_moon/05_great_gig_in_
or compilations/soft_rock_4/19_petty_tom-runnin_down
Name of artist {surname first} or group {"the" or "a" last}, all lower case, underscores for spaces. Name of album, all lc, underscores. Track number as two digits. Underscore. Name of track, all lc, underscores for spaces. Or, for compilation albums, number_art_ist-ti_tle {note minus sign delimiting artist from title}. No extension required, of course, since there is more than enough metadata to tell the player application what kind of a file it is. Now, that number is important. By putting the track number first, it makes sure that my directory listings show the tracks in the album order {I ripped and lame-d in that order, so sorting alphabetically or datewise yields the same result} and also allows me to get away with the bare minimum of typing thanks to bash's TAB-key filename completion. I figure a machine that can handle stuff like mpeg / ogg playback isn't going to be forced to run ash!
Console navigation is just something like
$ mpg321 so[TAB]
$ mpg321 songs/pi[TAB]
$ mpg321 songs/pink_floyd/da[TAB]
$ mpg321 songs/pink_floyd/dark_side_of_the_moon/01[TAB][CR
and I'll end up with the first track on DSOTM. Total keystrokes, 20.
Mind you, you probably already have a scheme that works for you, and there's no point changing to another now. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that you can only get 64K in a BLOB, I'd recommend using a database
If nobody but the makers of kettles were allowed to sell tea bags, the price of a cuppa would skyrocket. Capitalists are always banging on about how competition fetches prices down. But show them a bit of healthy competition, and they chuck their toys out of their prams.
..... now you have a choice of who sells it for you. Bloggodisc charge you an upfront fee {based on the cost of initial pressing minus value recouped from recycling, subject to "administration charges"} as their insurance against you not being entirely serious, but take a smaller cut out of what they pass on to you. Fat Bum Records don't charge a penny upfront, but take a bigger cut. Some companies would use playback prevention technologies, others would not. There would also be room for specialised / minority labels - perhaps dealing exclusively in LPs, or distributing music directly via the Internet. You, as the artist, would get to choose who distributes your work. The only people with anything to lose under such a regime would be the major labels, who we have already proved that we do not need.
So why not end labels' traditional exclusivity over artists? Suppose for one minute that bands were free to pick and choose which label sold their records. So, you've recorded an album
I will hazard a guess that the situation used to be more like this {with many small, independent record distributors competing for an artist's business} before the formation of cartels such as the BPI and RIAA. Maybe someone can fill me in on the early history of recording.
Obviously, few - if any - record stores will carry every label's print of a recording. It might be necessary that record labels be barred from owning record stores, and vice versa, to prevent excess of authority. But these issues, along with others I have not thought of here, will only be solved by vigorous debate and serious experimentation.
If you bought the disc in good faith, then found it interfered with your computer, then you might well have a case; but
- it will be a bitch to prove,
- any damages awarded might well be less than your costs,
so you could still wind up out of pocket. If you merely found the disc to be unplayable on your system, you should be able to get your money back -- in real pound notes, not gift vouchers, BTW. SGA '79 again. Might be worth going for another copy of the disc first few times around, then deciding that they must all be faulty.If enough people bought these non-regulation "CD"s, then took them back to the store as "unplayable", then the retailers might start to take notice and demand that their suppliers did something about them. On the downside, you might just get barred from your local HMV. From the retailer's point of view, that is just as effective a way of dealing with the problem.
Ah, but the C64 used a more RISC-like processor {6510, an extended 6502} which even had a rudimentary pipeline {only one byte; instructions varied from 1-3 bytes long, but it can decide in advance that it needn't do anything for a NOP, and conditionals only slow down execution if they pass and have to fetch from elsewhere in memory}. A 1MHz 6510 was more like a 4MHz Z-80. Especially when you add plenty of memory {65xx instruction set can access locations $0000-$00ff using a 2-byte instruction instead of 3 bytes, giving you almost an extra 256 registers}.
I'm sure this topic will attract more noise than signal.
So {and IANAL} this is how I understand it:
- Treason
- Piracy on the High Seas
- Damaging ships in naval dockyards
Interestingly, any item of snail mail is considered the property of the Queen until it reaches its intended recipient, and it is actually treason to open a letter not addressed to you. I'm not sure if this applies to e-mail though, since ISPs are typically not By Royal Appointment in the same degree as the Royal Mail.I've heard it said {but from a biased source} that Britain alone could produce enough food to feed the whole of the rest of the world on a Vegan diet, with appropriate management. IMHO that's far fetched, and anyway I'm no mortality-denialist, but bad logistics do cause many of the problems.
My take would be that it should be illegal for anyone to benefit from the misfortune of another. Clearly in these cases, lawyers are benefitting from the misfortunes of whoever sued.
IMHO a better solution would be the creation of a new court order whereunder you would be obliged to spend a certain amount of money correcting a problem. So, if someone trips on a loose paving stone, they can take the city council to court; then the city council could be ordered to spend a certain sum identifying and repairing broken paving stones, or nailing the b*****d who is going around damaging them; rather than paying out a fortune to some grasping freeloaders and their clients and not being able to actually afford to repair paving stones as a result. The council would have to report back to the court, showing the relevant paperwork, or else be held in contempt of court -- this being a criminal offence in its own right, and not one that has sleazeball lawyers queuing up to represent you either.
This is not new ..... back in the eight bit days, a friend of mine was giving me a lift back from our BBC usergroup in her Morris Minor, and she warned me I would have to occasionally remind her she was not playing Crazee Rider.
However, we had some quaint, old-fashioned thing called common sense.
Where I'm from, we don't have a written constitution, just the general expectation that anything you would not dare do to the Queen, you would not do to an ordinary citizen either.
But if we did have a written constitution, I'd be pushing for a clause along the lines that all means to the same end were equally valid, and any future invention that accomplishes the same ends as an existing invention should not be given any special treatment unless there were compelling reasons beyond mere novelty.
Not true. Extreme heat destroys dioxins. They are often created by partial combustion {think bonfire}. What is basically going on in a fire is two processes. Pyrolysis is the fuel being decomposed into simpler chemicals, almost always incomplete fragments {sometimes even individual atoms} which will bond with whatever is nearest to hand {strictly speaking, nearest to valence electron?} as soon as they cool down enough. Pyrolysis consumes energy in breaking chemical bonds. Oxidation is the simpler chemicals reacting with oxygen. This gives out energy. Oxygen is chemically very horny and also will try very hard to avoid having to share with anything else. The pyrolysis products undergo some further decomposition as the oxygen atoms each try to grab something for themselves. Since the oxidation puts out more energy than the pyrolysis required, the fire stays alight. But you have to put some energy in {typically from a match} to start the pyrolysis, otherwise you would get spontaneous combustion.
Now, in a bonfire or badly-designed furnace, the pyrolysis products cool and recombine into literally goodness-knows-what and escape before they get a chance to combine with oxygen. This is where incineration can fail. Large lumps of fuel, and mixed fuels, all exacerbate the problems.
In a well-designed furnace, the fuel is finely-divided and the air supply forced {an unattended fire will tend to produce only as much energy as it needs to stay alight; this may mean partial combustion with great quantities of chemicals being released. A fan requires energy, but MOTN the energy gain from fetter combustion is greater than the consumption of the motor}. If the fuel is very heterogeneous, the pyrolysis phase of the reaction can be completed separately in by heating the fuel in an airless chamber {consuming energy} and the pyrolysis products burned later {releasing more energy than it took to do the pyrolysis}. By adjusting the temperature and pressure you can select whether the intermediate product is a gas, a light liquid like petrol or a heavy liquid like diesel fuel. This has the advantage that you know how long is the longest carbon chain in the fuel for the next stage, and there is no way that the products can contain sny longer carbon chains. The disadvantage is that it distributes the high-temperature processes, thereby creating more opportunities for heat leakage.
As for the "plastics" argument, it's a red herring. Upstream segregation could be used to separate plastic from the waste being used for energy recovery, if you were really concerned. But I can't see how it would not be better to extract energy from plastic that has already been used for something, than to use up energy burying that plastic in landfill and digging up more fossil fuel just to burn for energy. Over time, as fossil fuels became more expensive, plastics would begin to be made from plants anyway. Not to mention that lanfills also produce dioxins, albeit more slowly, and organic matter in landfill decays to CH4, which, molecule-for-molecule, is a better heat trap than CO2. The real problem is ignorance of the First Law of Thermodynamics. We've already had people bitching about CO2 emissions like they don't know where the carbon in a plant comes from, and if people can't appreciate the First Law as it applies to the tangible form of matter, how can we suppose they can appreciate it as applied to energy?
Of course, I'm with you about reduction. My ex's daughter was raised in reusable cotton nappies, so will be my niece at least while she is stopping with me. I avoid single-serving packs whenever possible. I wipe my nose on yesterday's T-shirt, and I put my sandwiches straight in my lunchbox without using a polybag {in the absence of a satisfactory explanation as to how wrapping food in plastic saves me from risking cancer by letting it touch plastic}. I don't use sanitary towels either, but only for The Reason That Does Not Count.
The poisonous stuff in hazelnuts and peanuts is an oil-soluble protein, so unlikely to affect water supplies. Proteins tend to decompose at low temperatures {which is why biological washing powder is only good up to 40 degrees; but if your washing machine has an integral water heater, you can safely set the 'stat for 60 and the powder will behave biologically till the water gets too hot. After that, the enzymes are destroyed and only the conventional detergent action remains; but at 60 degrees it will have significantly more cleaning power than at 40}.
I'd say tentatively that it would be unlikely to have adverse health effects. Beside which, presumably they must have been burning the nutshells anyway beforehand, just not doing anything useful with the heat, otherwise they would have drowned under a sea of the things. So if nutshell bonfires {aim: get rid of nutshells} were harmless, one can suppose a purpose-designed furnace {aim: turn as much fuel as possible into heat} would ensure better chemical decomposition.
In this country, we have a few billboards which consist of a row of triangular prisms, disposed vertically, parallel to one another, and able to revolve on spindles. At one end of each spindle is a cog wheel, and a chain connects them all to a motor. As the motor turns, all the prisms revolve together. A limit switch is used to detect when the flat sides line up together. This whole assembly is mounted in a shallow box. Three posters are cut up and slices of each affixed around the prisms in such a way that at each of the limit stops, a complete poster is visible. A cyclic timer relay closes briefly to start the motor every few seconds; the limit switch keeps it running until it hits a stop position.
I believe this kind of sign is not allowed near busy road junctions.
BOllox - John Logie Baird invented television, though it relied on a mechanical contraption for projecting a picture. Philo Farnsworth invented the cathode ray tube, which managed to put a picture on a screen without the moving parts; but not until there was actually anything to display using one.
Then someone had the idea of, instead of charging people for the privilege of watching TV and using the money raised to pay for high-quality programmes that would at once inform, educate and entertain, letting people watch telly for free but showing advertisements during the breaks between programmes, and using the advertising money to pay for programmes that ultimately would do little more than fill in the breaks between adverts. IMHO that was the disinvention of television.
On first reading, it looks like an excellent scheme. Unfortunately, there are so many reasons why it wouldn't work in real life.
In order for it to work, society would have to be more perfect than it is now; but if society was perfect enough for such a system to be able to work, it wouldn't be needed anyway.
What about this?
A group of unsigned artists get together and rent a managed, secure server. The server puts out signed digital audio files and value added extras - but you have to pay a fee to download them. The fee, enforced using cryptographic methods, goes to the artists, and covers the cost of producing the music and maintaining the server. {I am not sure whether or not it would be worthwhile to offer a CD burning service; some people might prefer to order a custom CD rather than place their computer effectively out of commission while downloading and burning, but this would need to be investigated in practice.}
Thanks to digital signing, punters get to differentiate between "unofficial" copies {which could be of inferior quality or infested with malware} and the "real thing". Nobody can make a profit offering other people's music for paid download, because they would not have the correct signing keys - and punters would be wary of inferior copies. The small cost of an assured download would outweigh the risk associated with downloading unofficial files {which might well be slower, and therefore more expensive, if hosted from a generic home ADSL connection, which is all anyone is going to be able to afford to give away; and who's going to pay for a dodgy copy when a pure one is only a little bit more?}
I think such a system would certainly cut out the organised piracy, which undoubtedly diverts funds from artists. Casual copiers might just as likely have gone without, had they not been able to obtain a free copy easily. Beside all which, users are less likely to resent compensating artists directly than lining the pockets of a middleman.
There is probably room within such a system for a middleman to make a slim profit, providing services to bands who for one reason or another can't co-operate directly to run servers. If artists retain their own copyrights, such intermediaries {they probably deserve a whole new name, but ICBB to think of one right now} conceivably could compete to promote artists to listeners; licencing tracks to offer for download from preconfigured servers and collecting fees on behalf of artists, who would be paid monolithically. The market self-regulates because of the crossover points between legal and illegal copying being more common, and between directly and indirectly serving files.
If it works, then nobody has anything to lose except the fatcat executives at the record companies. And they are NOT NECESSARY!
I'm sceptical about their abilities to deal with deliberately overwritten data. I would guess most of the drives they have to recover have suffered mechanical failure {thereby inherently limiting the amount of magnetic damage - spindle seizure means losing one bit per cylinder max., positioner failure means losing one cylinder max., total seizure means losing just one bit per surface}, and in cases where supposedly "overwritten" files are recovered, the process is more likely done by reconstructing from partial copies lying around waiting to be overwritten.
.....
This creates interesting possibilities for a comparative test - using different processes on a number of identical drives, and seeing how much can be recovered from each. Sounds as though it'd be expensive, though
I know what I would like to have against Avril .....