The AC-versus-DC debate ended when the switched mode power supply was invented.
Switched-mode power supplies use an oscillator to convert DC to AC at a much higher frequency than the mains, allowing it to pass through a much smaller transformer {the longer the current spends flowing in any one direction, the heavier the steel core needs to be; at 50Hz one cycle takes 20ms giving 10ms in each direction, but at 50 kilohertz the current is spending only 10 microseconds flowing in each direction}. The AC coming out of the transformer is then rectified to convert it to DC, and negative feedback is applied to the oscillator side of the circuit to adjust the amount of power going through. Switched-mode supplies have to use very high quality rectifier diodes on the secondary side because they are rectifying high frequency currents.
Now, I said that a switched mode supply starts with DC. This DC is had by rectifying the mains with {hopefully} a bridge rectifier {a single diode half-wave rectifier would appear to work, till everybody on the same housing estate was using one at the same time and blew up the substation}. You can run a computer from DC. Notice how, to an AVO, the input terminals of the power supply {left and right} look like a non-polarised capacitor. This is not surprising, since downstream of the first fuse are four diodes in a bridge configuration and a huge capacitor wired so that it will always charge regardless of which pin is positive and which negative. Note that the capacitor will charge up to the peak voltage, which in the case of a sinewave is the RMS voltage * sqrt(2). That's about 325 volts in civilised countries. If you could find 200 disposable AA batteries {or 250 rechargeables}, and wire them in series so as to get 300V, you could plug this straight into your computer and it would work.
The problem with cheap diodes is basically that they take awhile to stop conducting. Something like a 1N4007 is apparently fine at 50Hz mains frequency, but by the time you get up to 1kHz it's hardly rectifying at all. If manufacturers would just spend a bit more money on decent quality rectifier diodes, there would not be a problem. And users would end up spending less in the long term, because everytime a diode is not shutting off on time, energy is being wasted -- and PSUs would also last much longer because these poor-quality diodes are slowly damaging the capacitor and fuse.
And then there's also the issue of disposing of hundreds of pounds of batteries every few years. Nobody really seems to think about that one much. 100 pounds of batteries per year, per vehicle (ballpark estimate) is a pretty significant amount of chemical waste. I don't see people factoring in the environmental cost of that.
Lead-acid batteries, despite their reputation, are actually 100% recyclable. Lead is a valuable enough resource that it's never not worth the effort of recovering it. Dilute sulphuric acid isn't really all that severe a pollutant anyway, and the battery housings are made from high-density polyethylene or polypropylene -- which can be melted down and reused, or burned cleanly.
In open-vented configuration, these batteries are also amazingly tolerant of abuse by the standards of any other rechargeable battery technology. Which is why they are still used to power things like submarines and telephone exchanges.
You are obviously lying. It is not possible for a task to be harder under Windows than it is under Linux; Bill Gates would never let it be so!
Unless, of course, the task you are trying to perform is an abomination in the sight of BillG; in which case, then it is quite likely that the Penguin-Shagging Heathens would find it easier than the Chosen Ones, the True Believers, for the task is one Not To Be Done.
Therefore, repent, thou wicked sinner, repent for thy transgressions! and make an atonement offering by buying thyself a brand-new scanner and a new version of Windows {and possibly a new computer to run it on} at once! Then shalt thou begin to appreciate of the infinite bounties that BillG bestoweth upon His chosen ones.
The "GPL is too restrictive" crowd are a bunch of arseholes who haven't twigged on to the fact that this is the 21st century. They want the one thing the GPL forbids -- to make closed derivatives of other people's hard work, such that no-one else will in turn be able to make derivatives of their easy work.
My advice? Don't bother with dual-licencing. If the product is available under the GPL, then almost nobody is going to bother with paying for a commercial licence which will only restrict what they can do with it.
If your program does the same things as an existing commercial application, then the Open Source Tinkerers looking for an alternative to hat they are already using will download the GPL version and play with it; and then they'll decide either to ditch it altogether or stick with the GPL version.
If your program does something that nobody has ever done before, then most of the people who have managed without it for this long will be able to last a bit longer. The genuinely curious will just download the GPL version and stick with it if they think it's any good.
You will also have a very hard job enforcing the law against "pirates" of your commercial version. If they are ever caught, they will just switch to the GPL version rather than pay for a commercial licence.
Your best strategy really would be to make your money by some other means than selling commercial licences. It's not the 1980s anymore.....
I hear this canard very often. Yes, it's true that sometimes it can be a pain in the arse to get a scanner working under Linux. On the other hand, getting same scanner to work with Windows is not exactly a barefoot frolic in a summery meadow either.
Windows scanner software tends in my experience to be buggy, crash-prone and awkward to use. Even the TWAIN drivers, which should allow you to scan straight into your favourite graphics editor transparently, are prone to memory leaks. The installation CDs violate pristine systems with time-limited trials of expensive proprietary software.
At least, that is my experience with cheap scanners. I recently acquired a HP PSC750 combined printer, scanner and copier {not the world's most expensive machine perhaps, but no cornflake-packet giveaway either} for nothing, from a user who was having trouble {which I immediately diagnosed as an ID10T error} with it. One quick apt-get install hpoj later, I had the thing working.
It's going to cost you next to nothing to try out (ed)?ubuntu, so go for it! As long as you can afford one hard disk drive out of your own pocket, you needn't risk trashing the existing Windows installation on the machine you experiment with. Check out the applications available, and then show them to the teachers who will have to work with them. Seeing as Ubuntu prides itself on being i-tal, all applications will be Open Source; so there probably are versions compiled for Windows that the kids could take home even if they're still running legacy systems there, and of course no worries regarding licencing. Note: if your machines hail from the Windows 95 era, you might want to get some local Debian geek to graft you a faster desktop such as XFCE or IceWM onto your Ubuntu in place of Gnome -- it might run a bit faster.
It is not the place for schools to teach people how to use Microsoft software {which would essentially be propping up an illegal monopoly}. If we are to have this wonderful "choice" thing in the software marketplace, schools should be teaching the abstract concepts which are applicable to a wide range of software. However, I rather suspect that, as in other areas, that might be rather more choice than the self-styled advocates of "choice" are calling for.
I tried Gentoo once. I did a Stage One install. It's definitely worth doing, just because it teaches you a few things about Linux. And I do like the way that packages are compiled locally by default.
But I grew up with Debian {though I confess to a brief flirtation with Mandrake, just long enough to outgrow it}; and really, when you come down to it, there is very little to choose between the two. Both have huge package repositories and easy tools for installing pre-compiled packages or sources to compile.
I really don't see why nobody has thought of this. In cities, you have known times of day when there are going to be many vehicles chuffing out waste products. So accept this as inevitable. Instead of trying to minimise what is coming out of vehicles, try mitigating the effects of what has already come out of vehicles. Build air ducts in the roadway, leading to a purification plant: draw in the fumes, filter out the nasty stuff with cyclones, chemicals, activated charcoal, electrostatic precipitation and any other methods necessary, and pump out cleaner air at a higher level. The plant only needs to be running when traffic is dense -- either on a time switch, or some kind of "dirtostat".
If you think this sounds a little crazy, just remember: so did the idea of treating sewage before dumping it into rivers and the sea, the first time anybody proposed it.
Yes, and thanks to all those electric vehicles, the pollution would have been transferred from being distributed all over the roads by many tailpipes, to being concentrated in a few power station chimbleys. It still takes the same amount of energy to move a car whether it comes from an onboard fuel-burning engine or a remote fuel-burning engine.
Still, with a little luck, the economies of centralised power generation {scale, and not having to lug fuel around with you from place to place} might offset some of the losses incurred in distribution and the charging/discharging cycle.
Two kilowatts works out at just under ten amperes. It will all work fine from a bunch of extension leads with one 13A fuse.
But bear in mind that the current drawn by an amplifier -- at least a class AB1 amplifier like a modern IC power amp -- is not continuous; it's just some constant multiple of the rate at which work is being done by the speaker cones. You also most probably aren't going to be running anything like that full kilowatt of music power. Ten watts a channel is more than enough for a 4x4 living room -- you'll probably be spending more juice on lighting than sound. Especially if you're still using filament bulbs.....
I'm not into entry level. I'm into near-industrial quality. However, when certain practical considerations are taken into account, I am better equipped to appreciate two channels of mind-blowingly pure sound than seven-and-one-tenth channels of tinny sound complete with power hum, static and crosstalk. Hence I chose quality over quantity.
Because half the time, it's not the speakers that are the crappy bit, but the power supply for the amplifier.
After thirty years or so, we've got good enough at making op-amps with a decent gain-bandwidth product. Any amplifier you can buy will amplify, and will do so closely enough to ideally over a band easily broad enough for the human ear. That's not the real challenge anymore. The loudspeaker is important, but there have been improvements in both manufacturing precision and the understanding of the underlying physics. Even cheap speakers are reasonable as compared to what people used to put up with in the past.
Where it's all gone Pete Tong is in the power supply serving that amplifier.
The proper way to construct a multiple-channel amplifier is to have a very low pass filter -- series choke and parallel capacitor -- between the PSU proper and each of the individual power amp stages. This presupposes "star wiring": the current drawn by one power stage should not have to pass through a conductor which is also serving another power stage. Otherwise, you can get crosstalk induced from one channel to another. Each power amp stage needs a big hefty capacitor to supply the energy to handle loud passages between peaks of the mains, with a smaller ceramic -- not polyester -- capacitor across it to shunt out high frequency noise. {A separate PSU per power stage would be ideal; any crosstalk would have to make it all the way to the mains wiring, whose internal impedance is closer to a short circuit than can easily be made in the laboratory.}
Cheap, crappy multi-channel amps have all manner of nasties, like power rails that run across from one stage to another and under-rated capacitors that can't cut the mustard. In fact, the transformers used are frequently under-rated for the application: if you run the amp continuously just at the onset of distortion, the power transformer's thermal fuse will fail. That, by the way, is part of the reason why audio amplifiers generally use transformer power supplies. Part is that you can get a very nasty crosstalk between audio and the near-ultrasound at which SMPSUs tend to run, causing sounds to be heard that were not present in the original; but the other part is that big, chunky transformers heat up slowly and are generally more tolerant of abuse.
The reason why this situation has arisen is that manufacturers are designing down to a price point, and not up to a standard. And as long as there are more than a certain critical mass of gullible idiots out there who will pay good money for any old shite as long as it's shiny shite, I don't see any way out of the situation without some form of government intervention.
AMI juke boxes {the ones with the rotary selection device, and the last to adopt transistor amplifiers} used a similar connection scheme as what you describe..... but not quite. The right-hand speaker was wired in opposite phase to the left-hand speaker, and the centre speaker was wired between the two amplifier outputs. So you would expect it to produce a "difference" signal. However, the connections to the right-hand coil on the pickup were reversed. This meant the centre channel is producing the sum rather than the difference.
Seeburg juke boxes have 100V line transformers on the outputs, centre tapped to chassis. Therefore you can get a mono "sum" signal by wiring between the top end of the left-hand transformer and the bottom end of the right-hand transformer, or the bottom end of the left-hand transformer and the top end of the right-hand transformer. They are joined at the middle, so you get 0.5L + 0.5R.
Note that you should be careful when doing things like bridging across amps, lest you create too low an impedance. Valves don't mind working into a short circuit {it's less likely to damage them than an open circuit} but bipolar transistors will overheat if presented with too low an impedance. Decent amplifiers will be fitted with fuses to protect themselves and your speakers.
Indeed. I for one would prefer to have two decent speakers driven by amps with a frequency range of 4Hz-20kHz +/-1dB at 1%THD, than to have any number of crappy speakers driven by amps with a frequency response of 100Hz-10kHz +/-6dB at 10%THD.
Informal experiments with my neighbours would seem to suggest that when listening to music outdoors, THD is more noticeable than absolute volume: you can play it as loud as you like as long as it's coming through crystal clear, but the minute you introduce a little distortion you will be asked to turn it down.
All the study is saying, is that modern Linux distributions which are designed to take the best advantage of modern hardware, won't necessarily work on older kit. And one of those distributions actually had a partial success {no X server} on hardware that Windows XP wouldn't even look at: a '486 DX/2 66MHz, with 16MB RAM and 540MB HDD. Another distribution worked on a later machine -- MMX 233 with 64MB RAM and 2.0GB HDD -- where XP failed. This suggests to me that Linux has lower requirements than Windows XP. FC3's "driver problem with X server" on the 2001-spec machine sounds like the graphics card required a proprietary binary-only driver which could not legally be shipped with the distribution {do Knoppix and Slackware bend the rules a little, or is there an open source alternative which Fedora have perhaps "neglected" to include in the hope of persuading users to "upgrade" to the more expensive RHEL? Fedora Core distributions available in jurisdictions where the MP3 patent is invalid still don't contain mpg321..... then again, non-US versions of MS Windows don't default to A4 paper and metric measurements either} and so is the fault of the graphics card manufacturer. {Technically, graphics card owners have a right to the information that would be necessary to create an Open Source driver; but the legal system cares more about might than right}.
I would have expected that any charitable organisation looking to equip refurbished PCs with a Linux distribution would select, create or commission a distribution to match the machines' capabilities {exactly the sort of thing some geeks with masochistic tendencies do for kicks}. I would also expect such an organisation to have access to at least one more modern machine to be used in this task. Start with one of the "expert" distributions: Slackware, Debian or Gentoo. Now I expect some troll will try to have a dig at Gentoo's "compile everything locally" philosophy slowing things down; but actually, as people who have actually used Gentoo rather than simply talking about it know, you can compile the source code with slow box optimisations on a fast box, to create a pre-compiled package which can be installed on the slower ones as easily as unpacking a tarball. Similarly with Debian, if you obtain the source packages {.dsc,.diff and.tar.gz} you can tweak them a little before you build them on the fast box, then create a binary.deb package which installs quickly.
An author needs to eat, but there's nothing to say they have to write in order to be able to eat.
As long as a book is in print, and so able to make money for its copyright holders, people are more likely to buy the original than make copies. For one, photocopying or scanning a book is prohibitively expensive. For another, the book format is just so convenient. A sheaf of photocopied pages soon gets untidy, and anything electronic needs a computer to read it on -- either a big clunky one, or a little palmtop with a tiny display.
Whatever the motivation for "piracy" of books, it sure as hell isn't to save money.
The movie studios made their fortunes by doing something nobody else had the equipment to be able to do. Then they became greedy. Now they are whingeing because technology has caught up with them. Well, guess what? The people who made oil-lamps for horse-drawn carts faced the same problem; and had to make the same decision: adapt or perish.
And really, it's no great loss to the world if Hollywood does go under. Their product is not indispensable -- we lived without motion pictures until the end of the 19th century. And the techniques are well-understood, so there is room for independent production to fill the void even if they have to use obsolete technology for awhile until some important patents expire {assuming anyone is even going to have the money to protect their patents}.
We may never see another hundred-million-pound blockbuster. Frankly I don't care. I don't want to see some prima donna who has to have her hair re-set, her nails manicured, her teeth polished and her shoes cleaned between scenes -- or her stunt double arse -- getting involved in a pointless "love interest" subplot with a bloke who, if he went out looking like that, would be accused of being a shirt-lifter {and on whose bottle of after-shave the camera lingers for a suspiciously long time}. I want a plot that doesn't have holes you could drive a bus through sideways. I don't want to see an advertisement for a movie, then watch it and discover that the advert was made using just the best 1000 frames. If the end of Hollywood means the end of this tidal wave of crap, then I say bring it on.
Investing billions of dollars in technology which nobody buys costs you a FUCK of a lot more than piracy.
Unfortunately, the loss will still be attributed to "piracy" -- piracy being the thing that the studios were so dead set against that they pissed off all their legitimate customers while trying to fight it. After all, if it hadn't been for all those evil pirates, the studios would never have had to resort to annoying their customers in the first place.
But you have to be able to tell honest people what those naughty criminal types have been up to, and how they mustn't, under any circumstances, do the same thing..... otherwise they might do it, and we can't have that!
I mean something along the lines of saying "You must never, ever plug a Macrovision-free video signal into the front camcorder sockets of a Philips or Daewoo brand DVD recorder, start it recording, then whip out the plug with the clean signal and substitute for one with a Macrovision signal on it while the recording is going on. If you did that, you would fool the recorder into recording the Macrovision-protected signal -- which would of course be illegal unless you already had permission from the copyright holder."
But the rightful recipient of an encrypted message is entitled by virtue of being the person to whom the message is addressed to decrypt that message. So it would be up to the courts to prove that the owner of a HD-DVD was not the rightful recipient of the encrypted movie stored on the disc.
Just because something is illegal does not mean people will not do it. In fact, a whole lot of people do do things just because they are illegal! How else do you explain the popularity of GHB and Ketamine?
Anyway, you don't own the content you create. The Public -- that's people like me -- have allowed their elected representatives to give you a temporary monopoly over it in an attempt to give you incentive to create it on the condition that you return it to The Public after a reasonable time. You and your like are abusing that privilege -- and everyone who has ever been a child knows what happens to privileges if they are abused.
Bollocks. You don't have a right to make a profit. However, if you sell a product that people want to buy at a price they do not consider extortionate, they will buy it. If someone else sells a substantially similar product cheaper than you, then people will buy that instead. It's called the free market.
Given the economies of scale involved, it ought to be possible for the movie studios to sell DVDs cheaper than the pirates can make them for, if they were really bothered. This method certainly works for books and newspapers..... how many newsagents' shops have photocopiers? How much would it cost to photocopy the latest Harry Potter?
Why do you Americans insist on that crappy Y, R-Y, B-Y component video? It's still encoding-sensitive; and it has to go through a decoding matrix, for crying out loud. What's wrong with RGB? It is completely PAL/SECAM/NTSC agnostic {though sensitive to line and frame rates}, and RGB is what gets fed more or less directly to the electron guns of the picture tube; there is no decoding matrix anywhere in sight.
We have had SCART {aka PERITEL} in this country since the 1980s. This 21-pin connector, found on every colour TV set, provides a composite or RGB connection, and does so transparently: the same pin in the connector used for a timing signal in RGB mode, is used for a composite picture signal in composite mode. RGB-capable appliances such as DVD players and games console put out an RGB signal on the RGB pins, a full picture on the timing pin, and take both the "RGB" and "external" pins high. Mode switching {internal receiver, composite or RGB} is done using analogue voltages on two other pins {one for internal/external, and one for external is composite/external is RGB. Yes, that does apparently give a fourth mode, for which behaviour is undefined}. Now, if the TV set supports RGB, then it will sense the RGB switching signal and use the RGB picture; otherwise it will ignore the RGB switching signal but still see the "use external source, not internal receiver" signal and use the composite picture on the timing pin. Appliances such as VCRs, which produce only composite video, do not present an RGB switching signal. The standard also calls for mono audio, if that is all the appliance supports, always to be presented on both audio output pins.
I'm not sure what jurisdiction you are posting from,
Why? Does my e-mail address not show up in your browser, or something?
however, the validity of EULAs is entirely based on [running a program being Fair Dealing] not being true. If you do not agree to the EULA and run the program anyway, theoretically they come after you for copyright infringement for running the program.
No they can't. If you don't accept the permissions {above and beyond your statutory rights} granted by the EULA then you aren't bound by the restrictions {which do not affect your statutory rights and are void if they claim to do so}. Running a program is Fair Dealing in the eyes of the law, so you have not committed copyright infringement.
A licence which says something like "You may make and distribute copies of this program if and only if you include this licence, the full buildable source code and details of any changes you may have made, with every copy" is giving you permission above and beyond your statutory rights; and is likely to be considered legally valid. A licence which says something like "You may not make copies of this program at all" is seeking to diminish your statutory rights {since there are many ways you could make a copy and be covered by the Fair Dealing exemption} and thus would not be valid in the eyes of the law.
Otherwise EULAs would have no teeth, as nobody would ever need agree to it and we'd have a plethora of legally tight ways of disagreeing to the EULA and still running the program.
Study your statutory rights carefully, then strike out any terms of an EULA which conflict with them {all if there is no severability clause and local law does not deem all contracts automatically severable}. Whatever remains may well fail the tests of reciprocity and mutual right to remedy, and so not constitute a legally valid contract.
To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a proper test case so far in which the respondent was exercising a statutory right which the plaintiff sought to deny them. Under a fair legal system {losing party pays both sides' costs, no money changes hands before verdict is given} such a case would be a no-brainer. The illegal enforcement of EULAs relies on corrupt legal systems where costs have to be met up-front; under such a system, the party with more money can always win by making it too expensive for the other to continue with the process.
Two questions: When copyright expires on a piece of software, am I still bound by the EULA (assume for a moment that the EULA is a valid contract)? I suppose I could read the EULA to search for an expiration... And second, is there any commercially available proprietary software that does not include a EULA (other than the default copyright restrictions)?
First of all, the Law of the Land gives you rights that nothing can take away. If the EULA does not contain words to the effect of "Your statutory rights are not affected", then it may well be null and void. However, if it contains a severability clause {or if you live in a jurisdiction where all contracts are deemed to be severable} then such portions of the licence agreement as do not conflict with your statutory rights may still be applicable. Any provision which does conflict with your statutory rights is null and void.
Your statutory rights under the "fair dealing" or "fair use" provision of copyright law include the right to make a copy of a computer program in the memory of a computer as a necessary step in using the program, and the right to conduct reverse engineering for private study or research {which includes morbid curiosity}. You may be bound to secrecy in what you discover. Reverse engineering for the purpose of developing compatible or interoperable software {which implies that you are going to disclose results} is also permitted as a "reasonable force" measure if the vendor is unwilling to supply you with requested documentation. If you have to break encryption as part of your efforts, it is a defence that the encrypted information was meant for you.
When copyright expires and the software enters the Public Domain, you will not need a licence to do anything which was formerly forbidden by copyright law; the Law of the Land will give you the necessary permission.
As for proprietary software which does not come with an EULA, I don't know of any. The nearest thing might be DJB's "licence free" software, see here for more info.
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The AC-versus-DC debate ended when the switched mode power supply was invented.
Switched-mode power supplies use an oscillator to convert DC to AC at a much higher frequency than the mains, allowing it to pass through a much smaller transformer {the longer the current spends flowing in any one direction, the heavier the steel core needs to be; at 50Hz one cycle takes 20ms giving 10ms in each direction, but at 50 kilohertz the current is spending only 10 microseconds flowing in each direction}. The AC coming out of the transformer is then rectified to convert it to DC, and negative feedback is applied to the oscillator side of the circuit to adjust the amount of power going through. Switched-mode supplies have to use very high quality rectifier diodes on the secondary side because they are rectifying high frequency currents.
Now, I said that a switched mode supply starts with DC. This DC is had by rectifying the mains with {hopefully} a bridge rectifier {a single diode half-wave rectifier would appear to work, till everybody on the same housing estate was using one at the same time and blew up the substation}. You can run a computer from DC. Notice how, to an AVO, the input terminals of the power supply {left and right} look like a non-polarised capacitor. This is not surprising, since downstream of the first fuse are four diodes in a bridge configuration and a huge capacitor wired so that it will always charge regardless of which pin is positive and which negative. Note that the capacitor will charge up to the peak voltage, which in the case of a sinewave is the RMS voltage * sqrt(2). That's about 325 volts in civilised countries. If you could find 200 disposable AA batteries {or 250 rechargeables}, and wire them in series so as to get 300V, you could plug this straight into your computer and it would work.
The problem with cheap diodes is basically that they take awhile to stop conducting. Something like a 1N4007 is apparently fine at 50Hz mains frequency, but by the time you get up to 1kHz it's hardly rectifying at all. If manufacturers would just spend a bit more money on decent quality rectifier diodes, there would not be a problem. And users would end up spending less in the long term, because everytime a diode is not shutting off on time, energy is being wasted -- and PSUs would also last much longer because these poor-quality diodes are slowly damaging the capacitor and fuse.
In open-vented configuration, these batteries are also amazingly tolerant of abuse by the standards of any other rechargeable battery technology. Which is why they are still used to power things like submarines and telephone exchanges.
You are obviously lying. It is not possible for a task to be harder under Windows than it is under Linux; Bill Gates would never let it be so!
Unless, of course, the task you are trying to perform is an abomination in the sight of BillG; in which case, then it is quite likely that the Penguin-Shagging Heathens would find it easier than the Chosen Ones, the True Believers, for the task is one Not To Be Done.
Therefore, repent, thou wicked sinner, repent for thy transgressions! and make an atonement offering by buying thyself a brand-new scanner and a new version of Windows {and possibly a new computer to run it on} at once! Then shalt thou begin to appreciate of the infinite bounties that BillG bestoweth upon His chosen ones.
The "GPL is too restrictive" crowd are a bunch of arseholes who haven't twigged on to the fact that this is the 21st century. They want the one thing the GPL forbids -- to make closed derivatives of other people's hard work, such that no-one else will in turn be able to make derivatives of their easy work.
That is, of course, a double standard.
- If your program does the same things as an existing commercial application, then the Open Source Tinkerers looking for an alternative to hat they are already using will download the GPL version and play with it; and then they'll decide either to ditch it altogether or stick with the GPL version.
- If your program does something that nobody has ever done before, then most of the people who have managed without it for this long will be able to last a bit longer. The genuinely curious will just download the GPL version and stick with it if they think it's any good.
- You will also have a very hard job enforcing the law against "pirates" of your commercial version. If they are ever caught, they will just switch to the GPL version rather than pay for a commercial licence.
Your best strategy really would be to make your money by some other means than selling commercial licences. It's not the 1980s anymoreI hear this canard very often. Yes, it's true that sometimes it can be a pain in the arse to get a scanner working under Linux. On the other hand, getting same scanner to work with Windows is not exactly a barefoot frolic in a summery meadow either.
Windows scanner software tends in my experience to be buggy, crash-prone and awkward to use. Even the TWAIN drivers, which should allow you to scan straight into your favourite graphics editor transparently, are prone to memory leaks. The installation CDs violate pristine systems with time-limited trials of expensive proprietary software.
At least, that is my experience with cheap scanners. I recently acquired a HP PSC750 combined printer, scanner and copier {not the world's most expensive machine perhaps, but no cornflake-packet giveaway either} for nothing, from a user who was having trouble {which I immediately diagnosed as an ID10T error} with it. One quick apt-get install hpoj later, I had the thing working.
It's going to cost you next to nothing to try out (ed)?ubuntu, so go for it! As long as you can afford one hard disk drive out of your own pocket, you needn't risk trashing the existing Windows installation on the machine you experiment with. Check out the applications available, and then show them to the teachers who will have to work with them. Seeing as Ubuntu prides itself on being i-tal, all applications will be Open Source; so there probably are versions compiled for Windows that the kids could take home even if they're still running legacy systems there, and of course no worries regarding licencing. Note: if your machines hail from the Windows 95 era, you might want to get some local Debian geek to graft you a faster desktop such as XFCE or IceWM onto your Ubuntu in place of Gnome -- it might run a bit faster.
It is not the place for schools to teach people how to use Microsoft software {which would essentially be propping up an illegal monopoly}. If we are to have this wonderful "choice" thing in the software marketplace, schools should be teaching the abstract concepts which are applicable to a wide range of software. However, I rather suspect that, as in other areas, that might be rather more choice than the self-styled advocates of "choice" are calling for.
I tried Gentoo once. I did a Stage One install. It's definitely worth doing, just because it teaches you a few things about Linux. And I do like the way that packages are compiled locally by default.
But I grew up with Debian {though I confess to a brief flirtation with Mandrake, just long enough to outgrow it}; and really, when you come down to it, there is very little to choose between the two. Both have huge package repositories and easy tools for installing pre-compiled packages or sources to compile.
I really don't see why nobody has thought of this. In cities, you have known times of day when there are going to be many vehicles chuffing out waste products. So accept this as inevitable. Instead of trying to minimise what is coming out of vehicles, try mitigating the effects of what has already come out of vehicles. Build air ducts in the roadway, leading to a purification plant: draw in the fumes, filter out the nasty stuff with cyclones, chemicals, activated charcoal, electrostatic precipitation and any other methods necessary, and pump out cleaner air at a higher level. The plant only needs to be running when traffic is dense -- either on a time switch, or some kind of "dirtostat".
If you think this sounds a little crazy, just remember: so did the idea of treating sewage before dumping it into rivers and the sea, the first time anybody proposed it.
Yes, and thanks to all those electric vehicles, the pollution would have been transferred from being distributed all over the roads by many tailpipes, to being concentrated in a few power station chimbleys. It still takes the same amount of energy to move a car whether it comes from an onboard fuel-burning engine or a remote fuel-burning engine.
Still, with a little luck, the economies of centralised power generation {scale, and not having to lug fuel around with you from place to place} might offset some of the losses incurred in distribution and the charging/discharging cycle.
Two kilowatts works out at just under ten amperes. It will all work fine from a bunch of extension leads with one 13A fuse.
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But bear in mind that the current drawn by an amplifier -- at least a class AB1 amplifier like a modern IC power amp -- is not continuous; it's just some constant multiple of the rate at which work is being done by the speaker cones. You also most probably aren't going to be running anything like that full kilowatt of music power. Ten watts a channel is more than enough for a 4x4 living room -- you'll probably be spending more juice on lighting than sound. Especially if you're still using filament bulbs
I'm not into entry level. I'm into near-industrial quality. However, when certain practical considerations are taken into account, I am better equipped to appreciate two channels of mind-blowingly pure sound than seven-and-one-tenth channels of tinny sound complete with power hum, static and crosstalk. Hence I chose quality over quantity.
Because half the time, it's not the speakers that are the crappy bit, but the power supply for the amplifier.
After thirty years or so, we've got good enough at making op-amps with a decent gain-bandwidth product. Any amplifier you can buy will amplify, and will do so closely enough to ideally over a band easily broad enough for the human ear. That's not the real challenge anymore. The loudspeaker is important, but there have been improvements in both manufacturing precision and the understanding of the underlying physics. Even cheap speakers are reasonable as compared to what people used to put up with in the past.
Where it's all gone Pete Tong is in the power supply serving that amplifier.
The proper way to construct a multiple-channel amplifier is to have a very low pass filter -- series choke and parallel capacitor -- between the PSU proper and each of the individual power amp stages. This presupposes "star wiring": the current drawn by one power stage should not have to pass through a conductor which is also serving another power stage. Otherwise, you can get crosstalk induced from one channel to another. Each power amp stage needs a big hefty capacitor to supply the energy to handle loud passages between peaks of the mains, with a smaller ceramic -- not polyester -- capacitor across it to shunt out high frequency noise. {A separate PSU per power stage would be ideal; any crosstalk would have to make it all the way to the mains wiring, whose internal impedance is closer to a short circuit than can easily be made in the laboratory.}
Cheap, crappy multi-channel amps have all manner of nasties, like power rails that run across from one stage to another and under-rated capacitors that can't cut the mustard. In fact, the transformers used are frequently under-rated for the application: if you run the amp continuously just at the onset of distortion, the power transformer's thermal fuse will fail. That, by the way, is part of the reason why audio amplifiers generally use transformer power supplies. Part is that you can get a very nasty crosstalk between audio and the near-ultrasound at which SMPSUs tend to run, causing sounds to be heard that were not present in the original; but the other part is that big, chunky transformers heat up slowly and are generally more tolerant of abuse.
The reason why this situation has arisen is that manufacturers are designing down to a price point, and not up to a standard. And as long as there are more than a certain critical mass of gullible idiots out there who will pay good money for any old shite as long as it's shiny shite, I don't see any way out of the situation without some form of government intervention.
AMI juke boxes {the ones with the rotary selection device, and the last to adopt transistor amplifiers} used a similar connection scheme as what you describe ..... but not quite. The right-hand speaker was wired in opposite phase to the left-hand speaker, and the centre speaker was wired between the two amplifier outputs. So you would expect it to produce a "difference" signal. However, the connections to the right-hand coil on the pickup were reversed. This meant the centre channel is producing the sum rather than the difference.
Seeburg juke boxes have 100V line transformers on the outputs, centre tapped to chassis. Therefore you can get a mono "sum" signal by wiring between the top end of the left-hand transformer and the bottom end of the right-hand transformer, or the bottom end of the left-hand transformer and the top end of the right-hand transformer. They are joined at the middle, so you get 0.5L + 0.5R.
Note that you should be careful when doing things like bridging across amps, lest you create too low an impedance. Valves don't mind working into a short circuit {it's less likely to damage them than an open circuit} but bipolar transistors will overheat if presented with too low an impedance. Decent amplifiers will be fitted with fuses to protect themselves and your speakers.
Indeed. I for one would prefer to have two decent speakers driven by amps with a frequency range of 4Hz-20kHz +/-1dB at 1%THD, than to have any number of crappy speakers driven by amps with a frequency response of 100Hz-10kHz +/-6dB at 10%THD.
Informal experiments with my neighbours would seem to suggest that when listening to music outdoors, THD is more noticeable than absolute volume: you can play it as loud as you like as long as it's coming through crystal clear, but the minute you introduce a little distortion you will be asked to turn it down.
All the study is saying, is that modern Linux distributions which are designed to take the best advantage of modern hardware, won't necessarily work on older kit. And one of those distributions actually had a partial success {no X server} on hardware that Windows XP wouldn't even look at: a '486 DX/2 66MHz, with 16MB RAM and 540MB HDD. Another distribution worked on a later machine -- MMX 233 with 64MB RAM and 2.0GB HDD -- where XP failed. This suggests to me that Linux has lower requirements than Windows XP. FC3's "driver problem with X server" on the 2001-spec machine sounds like the graphics card required a proprietary binary-only driver which could not legally be shipped with the distribution {do Knoppix and Slackware bend the rules a little, or is there an open source alternative which Fedora have perhaps "neglected" to include in the hope of persuading users to "upgrade" to the more expensive RHEL? Fedora Core distributions available in jurisdictions where the MP3 patent is invalid still don't contain mpg321 ..... then again, non-US versions of MS Windows don't default to A4 paper and metric measurements either} and so is the fault of the graphics card manufacturer. {Technically, graphics card owners have a right to the information that would be necessary to create an Open Source driver; but the legal system cares more about might than right}.
.diff and .tar.gz} you can tweak them a little before you build them on the fast box, then create a binary .deb package which installs quickly.
I would have expected that any charitable organisation looking to equip refurbished PCs with a Linux distribution would select, create or commission a distribution to match the machines' capabilities {exactly the sort of thing some geeks with masochistic tendencies do for kicks}. I would also expect such an organisation to have access to at least one more modern machine to be used in this task. Start with one of the "expert" distributions: Slackware, Debian or Gentoo. Now I expect some troll will try to have a dig at Gentoo's "compile everything locally" philosophy slowing things down; but actually, as people who have actually used Gentoo rather than simply talking about it know, you can compile the source code with slow box optimisations on a fast box, to create a pre-compiled package which can be installed on the slower ones as easily as unpacking a tarball. Similarly with Debian, if you obtain the source packages {.dsc,
Try doing all that with Windows!
An author needs to eat, but there's nothing to say they have to write in order to be able to eat.
As long as a book is in print, and so able to make money for its copyright holders, people are more likely to buy the original than make copies. For one, photocopying or scanning a book is prohibitively expensive. For another, the book format is just so convenient. A sheaf of photocopied pages soon gets untidy, and anything electronic needs a computer to read it on -- either a big clunky one, or a little palmtop with a tiny display.
Whatever the motivation for "piracy" of books, it sure as hell isn't to save money.
The movie studios made their fortunes by doing something nobody else had the equipment to be able to do. Then they became greedy. Now they are whingeing because technology has caught up with them. Well, guess what? The people who made oil-lamps for horse-drawn carts faced the same problem; and had to make the same decision: adapt or perish.
And really, it's no great loss to the world if Hollywood does go under. Their product is not indispensable -- we lived without motion pictures until the end of the 19th century. And the techniques are well-understood, so there is room for independent production to fill the void even if they have to use obsolete technology for awhile until some important patents expire {assuming anyone is even going to have the money to protect their patents}.
We may never see another hundred-million-pound blockbuster. Frankly I don't care. I don't want to see some prima donna who has to have her hair re-set, her nails manicured, her teeth polished and her shoes cleaned between scenes -- or her stunt double arse -- getting involved in a pointless "love interest" subplot with a bloke who, if he went out looking like that, would be accused of being a shirt-lifter {and on whose bottle of after-shave the camera lingers for a suspiciously long time}. I want a plot that doesn't have holes you could drive a bus through sideways. I don't want to see an advertisement for a movie, then watch it and discover that the advert was made using just the best 1000 frames. If the end of Hollywood means the end of this tidal wave of crap, then I say bring it on.
But you have to be able to tell honest people what those naughty criminal types have been up to, and how they mustn't, under any circumstances, do the same thing ..... otherwise they might do it, and we can't have that!
I mean something along the lines of saying "You must never, ever plug a Macrovision-free video signal into the front camcorder sockets of a Philips or Daewoo brand DVD recorder, start it recording, then whip out the plug with the clean signal and substitute for one with a Macrovision signal on it while the recording is going on. If you did that, you would fool the recorder into recording the Macrovision-protected signal -- which would of course be illegal unless you already had permission from the copyright holder."
But the rightful recipient of an encrypted message is entitled by virtue of being the person to whom the message is addressed to decrypt that message. So it would be up to the courts to prove that the owner of a HD-DVD was not the rightful recipient of the encrypted movie stored on the disc.
Just because something is illegal does not mean people will not do it. In fact, a whole lot of people do do things just because they are illegal! How else do you explain the popularity of GHB and Ketamine?
Anyway, you don't own the content you create. The Public -- that's people like me -- have allowed their elected representatives to give you a temporary monopoly over it in an attempt to give you incentive to create it on the condition that you return it to The Public after a reasonable time. You and your like are abusing that privilege -- and everyone who has ever been a child knows what happens to privileges if they are abused.
Bollocks. You don't have a right to make a profit. However, if you sell a product that people want to buy at a price they do not consider extortionate, they will buy it. If someone else sells a substantially similar product cheaper than you, then people will buy that instead. It's called the free market.
..... how many newsagents' shops have photocopiers? How much would it cost to photocopy the latest Harry Potter?
Given the economies of scale involved, it ought to be possible for the movie studios to sell DVDs cheaper than the pirates can make them for, if they were really bothered. This method certainly works for books and newspapers
Why do you Americans insist on that crappy Y, R-Y, B-Y component video? It's still encoding-sensitive; and it has to go through a decoding matrix, for crying out loud. What's wrong with RGB? It is completely PAL/SECAM/NTSC agnostic {though sensitive to line and frame rates}, and RGB is what gets fed more or less directly to the electron guns of the picture tube; there is no decoding matrix anywhere in sight.
We have had SCART {aka PERITEL} in this country since the 1980s. This 21-pin connector, found on every colour TV set, provides a composite or RGB connection, and does so transparently: the same pin in the connector used for a timing signal in RGB mode, is used for a composite picture signal in composite mode. RGB-capable appliances such as DVD players and games console put out an RGB signal on the RGB pins, a full picture on the timing pin, and take both the "RGB" and "external" pins high. Mode switching {internal receiver, composite or RGB} is done using analogue voltages on two other pins {one for internal/external, and one for external is composite/external is RGB. Yes, that does apparently give a fourth mode, for which behaviour is undefined}. Now, if the TV set supports RGB, then it will sense the RGB switching signal and use the RGB picture; otherwise it will ignore the RGB switching signal but still see the "use external source, not internal receiver" signal and use the composite picture on the timing pin. Appliances such as VCRs, which produce only composite video, do not present an RGB switching signal. The standard also calls for mono audio, if that is all the appliance supports, always to be presented on both audio output pins.
A licence which says something like "You may make and distribute copies of this program if and only if you include this licence, the full buildable source code and details of any changes you may have made, with every copy" is giving you permission above and beyond your statutory rights; and is likely to be considered legally valid. A licence which says something like "You may not make copies of this program at all" is seeking to diminish your statutory rights {since there are many ways you could make a copy and be covered by the Fair Dealing exemption} and thus would not be valid in the eyes of the law. Study your statutory rights carefully, then strike out any terms of an EULA which conflict with them {all if there is no severability clause and local law does not deem all contracts automatically severable}. Whatever remains may well fail the tests of reciprocity and mutual right to remedy, and so not constitute a legally valid contract.
To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a proper test case so far in which the respondent was exercising a statutory right which the plaintiff sought to deny them. Under a fair legal system {losing party pays both sides' costs, no money changes hands before verdict is given} such a case would be a no-brainer. The illegal enforcement of EULAs relies on corrupt legal systems where costs have to be met up-front; under such a system, the party with more money can always win by making it too expensive for the other to continue with the process.
Your statutory rights under the "fair dealing" or "fair use" provision of copyright law include the right to make a copy of a computer program in the memory of a computer as a necessary step in using the program, and the right to conduct reverse engineering for private study or research {which includes morbid curiosity}. You may be bound to secrecy in what you discover. Reverse engineering for the purpose of developing compatible or interoperable software {which implies that you are going to disclose results} is also permitted as a "reasonable force" measure if the vendor is unwilling to supply you with requested documentation. If you have to break encryption as part of your efforts, it is a defence that the encrypted information was meant for you.
When copyright expires and the software enters the Public Domain, you will not need a licence to do anything which was formerly forbidden by copyright law; the Law of the Land will give you the necessary permission.
As for proprietary software which does not come with an EULA, I don't know of any. The nearest thing might be DJB's "licence free" software, see here for more info.