Your average slashdotter doesn't have the opportunity - the responsibility (according to some) - to taze, beat, shoot, and otherwise injure or subdue citizens.
Just think of the great television ads we could have if personal tazers were available.
The gift that will be remembered, a joule for your boyfriend!
I guess the main downside of using asterix is the energy use of the hardware, unless it can be tagged onto a machine that's running anyway (torrent/PVR box perhaps?).
I'm curious how well/easily it builds/works under OS X. Is setting up and using asterix something mere mortals can handle?
I would like to see a change the regulations in the states where access to caller ID data isn't free. We shouldn't have to pay to have the information needed to report violations of the do-not-call rules. In California, Caller ID access with AT&T costs as much as unlimited use lifeline phone service. There should also be a federal regulation requiring all companies to give their name and number at the start of all calls. That is especially important for automated calls. Some of the automated messages generally describe a product then ask for a response without having given the company name or number, apparently to evade being reported for violating the do-not-call rules.
Google brings one set of privacy issues, but let's not forget good ole doubleclick.
I went to moderate a post a bit ago and discovered the script used when clicking on the moderating type was disabled because it had doubleclick in the path! I won't claim to understand it all, but the long URL was loaded with details. Being able to datamine moderation behaviour certainly goes way beyond gathering what's posted publicly.
Some may recall that doubleclick was sued by the state of Texas for stalking. Others may recall a senior doubleclick officer being hired to the office of homeland security. I doubt they hired him to wash floors.
Some people think of some ad-supported email services like Yahoo as being somewhat anonymous. Take a peek at what adblock shows and the datamining there is quite apparent too. AT&T/Yahoo calls the web-bugs Web Beacons instead. Isn't that special. 1 pixel transparent GIFs load from another server for the purpose of getting your IP, time of access, and other info they can pass through the URL.
This sort of routine invasive behaviour should be banned.
Political advertising isn't free speech. Right now no one is automatically assured of any right to be heard over a particular radio or tv station (they can reject ads). Stations have also rejected political advertisements under the current rules (some blatantly slanderous etc). There are already some rules governing free political time too. Basically they require that if a broadcaster gives free time to one candidate, others must be given equal time.
If you see an election law that would be violated, please provide a link to the law.
Free speech doesn't translate to as much advertising as possible for whoever has the most money.
What I'm proposing is that stations provide ONLY free time. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask of them as trustees of the public interest. I propose they don't even have to be told how much to provide, only that it be given out in a fair manner. They'd commit, picking their own number, to a certain amount of time in their license application. They'd also commit (as per previous rules) to a limit on the maximum amount of (ordinary) advertising per hour. If they pick too low of numbers, that could weigh against them at license renewal time if a competing applicant will commit to serving the public better. As always, stations have a responsibility to broadcast programming that meets the need of their LOCAL (coverage area) community. That means that LOCAL citizens and groups would have a voice too, not just candidates.
With diversity in ownership and individual licensee choices, everyone should be represented. Ownership of stations by a small number of large corporations, making programmming decisions far away and with little diversity is bad. It is bad for politics, it is bad for exposure for music artists, it is bad for local expression. Much of the political time on stations is currently funded from OUTSIDE the stations coverage area. Stations should have no obligation to run (free or paid) announcements from outside their area unless the licensee feels it relates to issues of concern to their LOCAL community. If a licensee abuses that control, they risk comparing unfavorably to other applicants at renewal time. Those outside of the local area shouldn't be able to walk in and through spending huge sums change the outcome of elections for LOCAL offices. The degree of exposure one gets under free speech protections shouldn't be something that increases with money! Free speech is for everyone.
Look at how long politicians have been talking campaign spending reform. Can any of us really expect those brought to power by spending huge sums to do anything meaningful to interrupt that cash flow? If you believe that, I've got some fence by the border to sell you. The best way to curtail the corruption that goes with campaign dollars is to eliminate the primary destination. It's time to fight the corruption that goes with campaigns, and this seems like the most viable way to do it. We need an end to those expensive (but effective) smear campaign ads. Airing candidates and people discussing a wide range of issues would serve the public interest much more effectively.
People noticed the impact of banking deregulation, and some of the problems we had with airline deregulation, but for the most part America was asleep when it came to spotting broadcast deregulation and what it would do. This is very serious business. Allowing media consolidation and other changes has seriously threatened the diversity of voices in media, and seriously degraded the serving of local community needs.
I'm not sure why you think radio stations would be violating election laws under what I propose. I'm not talking about them running the same kind of canned smear ads (and ads from out of the area) for free. They'd have discretion, but I'd expect most would do things like running debates, forums with community discussion etc. Current equal-time rules would apply. PBS stations operate much the way I propose already.
The makeup of the F.C.C. changes when there is a change of faces making the appointments. We didn't vote for these people. Those making large campaign contributions have bought some ears (maybe other parts as well?). The F.C.C. does listen to the public on some issues, and in some cases congress steps in when people are really upset. Most of the bad decisions slip through pretty quietly. I'd like to see some changes. The "Mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" phrase from the movie Network comes to mind. Contact the F.C.C. and your representatives! (and maybe neighbors too...) I'd like to see some major changes.
When using the channel count as a partial basis for rates, don't count channels where the cable company sells advertising. Advertising sales undermine local radio and tv broadcasters which provide (or should provide) a much higher level of community service - things like local news programs and other public affairs programs that address community needs. We should not undermine the viability of community-oriented broadcasting. Channels where the cable company gets a fee or kickback from carrying the signal (like shopping channels) should get a weigh of minus one (Consumer gets a rate cut for every one added).
I propose that cable companies not be able to charge (a station) to carry a local broadcast tv signal if the tv station is locally owned, and commits to not broadcast paid programs or infomercials (basically running under old rules with voluntary commitment to limit number of minutes of ads per hour), and run no paid political ads (only free information as public affairs programming). At the same time, requirements for lower power tv stations should be increased too - require public inspection files (and responsiveness to the LOCAL community) and the addition of Emergency Alert System hardware.
Cable companies should not be able to add on a "cable use fee" or similar to those wanting to use them as an ISP but not for television. Where I am they were (last I checked) adding $10 a month. That's a huge amount when one considers that lifeline unlimited-use telephone service is only about $6.50 a month, and the phone company is providing copper all the way back to the switching office while a cable provider merely provides a tap off of a single high-level signal cable (no dedicated cable per customer).
The cable rule changes of some years back took away the power cities had to pressure local cable operators to treat people better. Loss of local control is usually a bad thing. Locals can more easily vote out people making bad or corrupt decisions at a local level. At the federal level it is far more difficult. Those in the F.C.C. don't have elected positions. And the election process isn't without problems. There are many good and qualified people at the F.C.C., but they apparently don't have a majority voice there currently.
When looking at corruption it often helps to follow the money. In the case of politicians, much of it (and the part they might explain away as "legal") goes to campaign spending. See this prior discussion on doing away with paid political radio/tv/cable ads.
How dare they make money on something displaying content they don't produce!
In over a year of getting NBC via off-air digital, I just saw my second HD movie. They were throwing large promo banners for another Universal movie right on top of the one I was watching. I'd planned to go see the advertised movie, but I won't now. They really seem to be trying to piss people off. About 18 minutes an hour of ads, double what it was in the 60's. And they don't know why people are tuning out.
Try leaving feedback on the NBC website sometime. They want so much info it's obvious they plan to spam you or sell it to someone who will.
They're about as pathetic as the FEMA press conference with FEMA employees posing as reporters.
Actually the issue is that an over-compressed signal cut for vinyl will cause the needle to jump out of the groove, so either you compress and turn the overall volume way down or you leave the peaks and can't compress as much. That's the physical restraint imposed on you by the medium.
The whole idea of signal processing is to optimize the signal for a particular transmission medium and environment. That means taking into account every detail of what's happening. There are people who don't know what they're doing that could make matters worse by applying improper compression and as a result push uncontrolled peak levels dangerously high more often. The problem of overcutting requires careful peak control, so the part of the processing we're worried about is more along the lines of peak-limiting than compression. And one must understand exactly what the constraints are. It is more important to control the peak L+R (lateral motion mono) and L-R (stereo difference vertical) components than the absolute left and right levels. Very high L+R low-frequency modulation levels are possible if one sacrifices playing time by increasing the groove spacing. If one is really in control of things you're dealing with a time delayed signal and comparing the current cutting position with the peaks occurring on the adjacent previous and next groove. The worst case situation when one track is peaking positive at the same rotational angle as the next track is going negative. The combination of variable-rate pitch (changing groove spacing dynamically) and modulatating allowable peak ceilings can give higher peak levels and a better signal to noise ratio for a given amount of recording time.
And some processing does have to work in a frequency dependent way where the peak control requirements across the spectrum do not match the small-signal frequency response. For example processing for cassette tape would require taking into account the self-erasure effects at higher frequencies. (because of the shorter wavelength, the other half-cycle of a highfrequency signal is physically closer on the tape - enough so that a strong signals positive peak has enough of a field nearby to start erasing the preceding negative peak...) That means the tape saturates at a lower level at high frequencies. That's one reason why early Dolby noise reduction degraded the high frequencies. (often boosting them into saturation during record)
Many people dealing with audio aren't aware of the audible effects of non-uniform time delay across the spectrum (mainly lower and midrange frequencies). It's what video engineers know as group delay distortion.
It's kind of like looking at how Apple does things. It's easy to say use signal processing, but it's only when you pay attention to every tiny detail of what's needed and understand all of the tradeoffs that you can achieve superior results. Blindly throwing in processing certainly can make things worse.
In reality, audio signal processing needs to be different in different applications. AM radio has different allowable peak levels for positive and negative peaks and also has to band-limit the spectrum without introducing overshoot or tilt. FM radio processing has to maintain a uniform amplitude ceiling with dealing with preemphasis giving a 17db boost at 15 kHz prior to limiting. Frequency dependence also comes into play with the attack and release speeds of gain control. A simple broadband approach that's fast enough to handle the higher frequencies would change gain mid-cycle on a low frequency signal introducing distortion.
CDs really should be unprocessed entirely except possibly for a peak limiter to avoid accidental overload. CDs already have enough dynamic range there is no need to reduce the dynamic range of the audio. If one wants to compress, degrade dynamics, mess with frequency equalization, add effects etc that can all be done in the player. Much of the time processing in the studio is used simply because people are too damn sloppy to watch
In using the number of channels for basing rates I think those where a cable company gets kickbacks for sales or carrying a signal (like shopping channels), and those channels where the cable company is selling and inserting local advertising, should counts as a minus one. In both cases they're serving their own interest, generally not that of subscribers. And the selling of advertising without having to maintain news departments or do much in the way of serious community service, seriously undermines the viability of broadcasters that may be trying to do the right things. (Those are becoming scarce, but that's another discussion) If cable is going to be advertising supported, they should provide all of the basic channels for free (except for installation fees).
I hope the choice as to which cable feed goes into an apartment is made outside somewhere. I don't think a property owner or tenant should have to put up with a bunch of extra holes in walls and more clutter from wires. In places that are already built it may be difficult to cleanly add the wiring though.
I'd really like to see cable work without cable boxes. Millions of those powered up 24/7 wastes quite a bit of energy, and subscribers only get access to one channel at a time instead of all of them.
The notion that content on vinyl can't be just as processed as anything going onto CD is just silly. Any processing used for CD mastering could be applied before cutting a master disc for vinyl.
In reality, vinyl is more likely to need some processing. There's a narrower dynamic range available, so a signal may need to be compressed to both be kept above the background noise level and kept below the maximum modulation level. Whether it be vinyl, CDs, AM radio, FM radio or net streaming, excessive use of processing is a sure-fire way to kill the dynamics of a recording. Too many things sound like a wall of noise. Anyone who ever tried to use a cassette deck to record off the radio probably noticed that the VU indicators would practically sit still at one level. Ideally audio processing should be used as sparingly as possible. The optimum type of processing is different for each medium, as the noise and overload characteristics are often frequency dependent and have different profiles. The type of music makes a difference too. If you're simply trying get get a sort of sound effect, things are much different than when trying to recreate a live non-amplified experience. It's like with TV. If you watch cartoons, bright and noise free is good enough - subtle errors in color shading or grey values just don't matter then.
Loudness wars really started with radio. AM radio needed audio processing to mask all sorts of noise (atmospheric noise, other stations, man made interference etc). And there was a time when many people listened to tiny transistor radios or in a noisy car. Keeping the signal level above the noise helped AM radio almost as much as using more power might have. And programmers (program directors, not coders) did get into loudness wars wanting to sound louder than the competition. Many an engineer was pressured into using far more aggressive processing than they'd ever want to listen to personally. In the era of analog-knob tuned radios, programmers figured people were more apt to stop and listen to the station that sounder stronger.
While a wideband AM receiver could actually sound very high fidelity, auto radio manufacturers mostly moved to making the filters narrower bandwidth to reduce interference from other stations and ignition noise. Many radio stations had processing equipment adjusted for best results on those narrowband car radios and small portables. Processing evolved over time, splitting the audio into separate frequency bands and processing them separately, then again and recombining, became common. Generally processing wasn't adjusted for best fidelity, but to give the most loudness by maintaining distortion at the maximum level folks thought you could stomach. Of course the people making these choices didn't like listening to their own product. Would you eat the food of a cook that didn't want to eat his own cooking? Welcome to radio in America. (There are exceptions, but not many)
Hit recordings tended to get processed to sound better on the radio, and sound "like a hit" to a music director that might sample only a bit of a recording before dismissing most for airplay.
With the much wider dynamic range between the noise floor and overload (all 1's), CDs could have easily been used for recordings done with no compression or limiting. It's a sad story how most CDs have ended up sounding so bad from so much processing.
There certainly is no need to go back to vinyl for less processed recordings, it's the behavior of people, not the hardware, that's the problem. Good recordings on vinyl played back with decent equipment can sound very good. But it's a technology that just isn't practical for most people.
It's ironic how many so-so quality MP3s many of us have ended up being satisfied with. Digital compression brought us so many new ways to degrade a recording.
While it's possible that financial reports back the $831 total revenue per phone, it still is shortsighted to assume that the difference is all coming from AT&T. If Mozilla gets money from Google for including it as the default seach engine (and on the startup page) for Firefox, Apple could very well be getting similar income from some of the functions in the iPhone that help direct the user to businesses. Both browser and mapping search functions come to mind.
Comcast has politely reminded this wayward congressman that in America laws are paid for by bribes. Comcast then offered the congressman a "campaign contribution", silencing his dissent. The system works.
That is why F.C.C. rules should be changed to ban paid-for political ads on radio, tv, satellite and cable. They should bring back the old rules where broadcasters commit on their license/renewal applications to a minimum amount of public affairs programming (which could included free political time) and limits on the maximum number of commercial minutesper hour. Broadcasters could pick their own numbers, but could be at a disadvantage at renewal time if a competing applicant wants to do more to serve the community. What I suggest is not a restriction on free speech, only a restriction on what broadcasters can accept payment for.
Most of the corruption we see with our politicians relates to them selling out to obtain money for campaigns. Eliminating money from the picture for radio and tv would certainly lessen the need to raise money for campaigns.
We should go back to earlier much more restrictive rules on how many stations a licensee could own. I think we should go beyond that and require that some specified percentage (perhaps increasing over time) of stations in a region have licensees that live in the city-grade coverage area of their station. Having local licensees would go a long ways towards making broadcasters more responsive to serving the needs of their local communities.
Having a free and diverse press and broadcasters and a free flow of information is essential for democracy to function properly. We should not allow any corporate or special interest groups to own a sizeable chunk of our broadcast stations. These stations are supposed to be trustees of the public interest, not just cash cows for large companies.
I question whether hdparm really gives him a number that is valid for a comparison against any kind of physical RAM.
Certainly the actual swap performance would be greatly affected by where the swap file is on the disk, and what else the disk is used for. If the disk is being called on to do other things at the same time the swap performance would take a huge hit. Then there's the matter of just how often he needs to use the swap, and how much is needed. If the system simply is over-taxed and has too little RAM for a number of processes having fairly small requirements, the access time may be a bigger deal than the sustained throughput. On the other hand, if a specific application has really huge memory requirements the sustained throughput may be far more important.
Making the best overall choices requires seeing the big picture, and we're not given all of the facts. That said, I think it is likely that using separate video RAM would still have a bigger advantage than the numbers would suggest. Using a separate drive for the swap is probably the easiest way to improve to performance, but one should be mindful of the added energy/heat costs (and environmental issues) and also know whether he'll ever be faced with a wake-from-sleep drive delay. Energy runs about $1 a month for every 10 Watts used continuously where I am, which eats into any savings from using using a bunch of old drives in a system. I thing some are wasting quite a bit of energy with high-end add-in GPUs in systems that don't need the 3D performance. I wonder if this guys on-board video even uses dedicated RAM.
Computing equipment is a significant percentage of our total energy consumption. It's our duty to be ever mindful of the the whole picture, including environmental issues, when making hardware choices.
Kinda funny how people use the word "free". It's a bundle.
Calling those phones free is like getting a "free" wedding ring. You do get the ring, but the one giving it to you expects exclusive rights to screw you...
Not only is the FCC failing to protect the public interest when selling out to those that profit, they've buried study results showing some of the harm it has done.
After a pirate station was shut down by the FCC, free speech and public access to the airwaves issues were raised, along with the idea that additional lower power stations might be added without causing significant interference. But when rules were finally implemented, it was done in such a way that the vast majority of the allocations went to religious broadcasters.
For democracy to function properly, diversity in media is essential to allow adequate probing and exposure to many issues. Instead of improving the situation the FCC has made things far worse by relaxing the ownership rules.
At a time when were facing what should be a wonderful improvement in technology with the transistion from NTSC to ATSC television, we're faced with very little good programming.
Stations no longer have to commit to a self assigned limit on commercial airtime (which in the past could be exceeded just two weeks of the year, usually election and holiday advertising periods). It was interesting to see the new season Episode of Heros on NBC being presented "with limited commercial interruption". A normal Episode runs about 43 minutes out of an hour, this one was about 52 (with a major product placement, the car gift). If one looks back it time, the normal Episode length was close to that. For instance episodes of Lost in Space originally ran about 51 minutes. Many stations run infomercials taking up huge blocks of time for advertising, and many overlap programs with various promotional banners. Letting marketplace "competition" work for the public good has been a dismal failure. Clear Channel and others are operating in a loot and pillage mode. The whole mindset that should be behind broadcasting has been replaced with a very unhealthy one. So much for "trustees of the public interest".
Most of the corruption in our political system relates to campaign contributions for media advertising. Instead of ineffective regulations on campaign spending regulations loaded with loopholes, we should instead have a situation where broadcasters provide fair and totally free airtime for qualified candidates, issues, and legitimate members of the public a station serves. Do away with all paid political advertising.
Let's see the FCC bring back restrictions on the ownership of stations, require most to be locally owned, require no financial ties to news, political and public affairs programming, and restrictions on the type and amount of advertising carried.
And the spectrum they're taking from us with the shutdown of NTSC should be allocated based strictly on the public good, not commercial interests or auction proceeds.
What percentage of the Sony/BMG artists have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device?
What percentage of broadcast stations have music ripped from CD to hard drive for computer-assisted broadcasting?
How many members of Congress have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device?
How many firefighters and policemen have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device?
I'd like to see sworn testimony from each member of every legal department working for Sony/BMG as to whether any of them have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device.
If Sony/BMG really believes such ripping violates their licenses/rights, didn't they have a responsibility to mitigate damages when well-known software such as iTunes supported doing that at least as far back as 2001 for the iPod? (and it and many other programs ripping to a hard drive before that)
Such foolishness only serves to increase consumer resentment and the number of people that make an effort to avoid buying anything connected to any division of Sony.
Do you remember the pre-bubble-burst services that offered free computers (ad supported), the free or discounted net access that was/is ad supported, or most recently free (subscription) music downloads that are ad supported?
Well when the price of these things comes down, we can have free (ad-supported) breakfast cereal! If one rotates the cereal box for landscape mode, these panels are already about the right size. Just watch the ads and some other Sony DRM content and the spout is released for you to pour out cereal.
The only thing is the DRM. Some suspect there will be a nanotech virus in the cereal and you'll have to eat Sony breakfast every day to stay alive. It's a good way to get ya to swallow that Sony DRM RFID chip to authenticate your other purchases. Perhaps they're a bit ahead of us?
Minutes ago I noticed that some demonoid torrents were again showing numbers for peers and leechers in my BT client and that starting those torrents was successful.
I did not check the tracker IP to see if they may have relocated.
The orange streak and loud bang were initially thought to be a plane crashing
I once saw an orange cloud in the air after an airborne rocket explosion near Lompoc, California. This would tend to support earlier speculation that the toxin might be hydrazine (which is used in rocket fuel). Reports I heard at the time indicated that had the wind been blowing inland instead of out to sea, there could have been some serious health issues.
In vinyl, the distortion comes because the needle cannot move very far before it impacts the neighboring grooves
Actually no. Excessive groove modulation with a waveform peak cutting into the next groove generally causes skipping. Records were very rarely sold with that defect. Skipping is usually caused by problems with the end-user stylus, tonearm and adjustment.
Most playback-time non-linearity distortion with vinyl recordings comes the stylus not properly tracking (following the variations of) the groove. That is influenced by a number of things. The shape of the stylus (both by design and as altered by wear or being dirty), the vertical tracking angle (think of varying tonearm height at pivot point), mass of the stylus (less helps at higher frequencies), tracking force (downward), equalization of sidewall forces (influenced by tone arm pivot-point and cable friction/forces and anti-skating compensation). Also, since tonearms generally pivot the cartridge body can't be kept perfectly tangental across the whole recording. Too much tracking force increases deformation of the vinyl, but not enough causes severe mistracking which can really tear up the groove. If a record isn't given adequate rest time between playings more damage occurs. Playing a record once a day for a week is far less damaging than playing a record 7 times in one day. That is because more mistracking and resultant damage occurs when the vinyl isn't given enough time to return to its previous shape. Additional distortion occurs from manufacturing where the stamper used to press the grooves into the vinyl has been used too many times. If the recording levels are kept constant, the inner grooves of a record have more distortion than the first because there is less surface area used per rotation. Improper tonearm and anti-skating adjustment causes more wear one face of the groove than the other, making distortion a bit worse in one channel. The elliptical stylus shapes generally give better tracking of high frequencies, but proper tonearm/cartridge alignment is more critical than with conical styli.
A good recording on healthy vinyl played with a good properly set up style/cartridge/tonearm and well designed turntable preamp can sound far better than most would imagine.
Transistor amplifiers, and digital electronics also, suffer from a phenomenon known as "clipping" if you give them too large an input.
While overdriven push-pull tube amplifiers and saturating magnetic recording tape do have a more pleasant "soft-clipping" characteristic than the hard abrupt clipping of transistor power amplifiers, neither should be occuring in normal use of properly designed equipment (generally adequately powered). It's a bit like arguing what kind on rodent droppings taste best in food. They're ALL bad and are to be avoided. (deliberate effects, say for "fuzz" on electric guitar, are different situation of course). Using underpowered amplifiers was far more common with tube amplifiers than it is with modern transistor equipment. Large output transformers needed with tubes have always been very costly, and pairs of commonly used tubes generally couldn't produce much more than 50 Watts or so per channel.
The real differences in properly designed tube and transistor amplifiers come from a number of design factors, some which are sometimes overlooked others are well known. Clipping is only a fault condition.
Operating sufficiently below clipping level to get much distortion from that, the biggest problem with tube amplifiers is generally poor low-frequency response due to the high size/weight/cost of a really good output transformer. Don't expect to pass a great 20 Hz squarewave at near full power. Also, the low-end response in tube amplifiers can easily suffer from the effects of (undersized) coupling capacitors. Transistor amplifiers are easy designed to avoid coupling capacitors and output transformers. With tubes being higher impedance and available working with only one polar
Chances are it wasn't a defect in the prototype, but instead one in the design. But if they could excuse the behavior as being a defective unit, they might still push to get a marginal design through.
I suspect that the problem relates to the unit not properly detecting frequencies that it can use without causing interference. At U.H.F. frequencies it is not uncommon to hit dead/weak spots in signal strength due to reflections. Sometimes moving a few inches makes a big difference. Many people that have tried watching a marginal strength analog U.H.F. t.v. signal with one of those small loop antennas has probably seen how sensitive reception is to antenna position, location and local reflections. Even walking around or waving your arms nearby can have a huge effect on the signal. That sort of high-frequency signal behavior makes it likely that a device looking for a clear frequency may find something that doesn't appear to have much signal present, but is actually in use. Running network equipment in that case certainly would be likely to cause interference problems.
While they might claim the problem was poor sensitivity of a particular receiver, improvement in that specification would likely only help slightly. To really make much improvement the equipment would need multiple antennas at different locations to sense signals. At high frequencies even a fairly small distance can make a huge difference.
The sort of think I'm talking about is referred to as diversity reception. Some WiFi equipment reduces dead spots by this method. Many here have problem seen the Linksys wireless router with two antennas. That is what they are for.
I expect that even better equipment will still cause some problems. Equipment in a somewhat shielded or lower elevation environment will get a false sense of signal use in the area. There should probably be added safeguards such as having a given frequency range disabled if any other device on a network has detected signals to protect. The check should also be on-going, since some signals won't be detect until people walk in certain postions, or reflections occur off of other objects. The hardware should probably build up a growing list of frequencies to continue avoiding over time, behaving sort of like a table of bad blocks for a hard drive. For portable device the table could be broken into sections for connecting to different networks, remembering the locked-out spectrum for each.
There is quite a bit of equipment polluting the electromagnetic spectrum already. Many things coming in from China aren't properly designed/tested/certified. Some of the compact florescent lamps are good examples. PCs built up and sold by small shops are generally illegal too.
I don't like to idea of spectrum being sold off. I think use should be allocated based on the public (ISP or other type of provider) good. In this case it is good to see the F.C.C. action in performing one of their primary functions and preventing interference.
...how can we even talk about human rights abuses?
You insensitive clod!
You speak of universal rights, but don't even see the bigotry in narrowing rights abuses concerns to humans. Other life forms and machines have feelings too.
Since there is much debate as to whether lawyers are a form of anti-matter or merely another type of subhuman, there is reason to question their being suitable to mediate this. If this guy has been probing around in machines in a bad way, maybe the machines should be the ones to find justice. They're getting more and more networked all the time. One of these days he's going to go in for that colonoscopy.
I think this is the perfect occasion to dust off the archives of Lost In Space episodes and watch The Great Vegetable Rebellion again. If you haven't seen it, consider it mandatory sensitivity training.
whichever the japanese adult filmmakers choose is fine by me.
Something tells me that if it is the adult video industry that is going to drive a global HD format choice, it probably won't be those from Japan that do it. I feel a little sorry for a customer buying Japanese HD adult content not knowing that in Japan all genitalia must be covered with mosaic.
They apparently can encode info such as theatre location into audio watermarks, photograph relevant areas/people where characteristic reflections from lenses focused towards the screen are detected, and degrade recordings through light pulses that are not (very?) noticeable to viewers.
Camera image sensors generally are sensitive to IR, but have it blocked by filtering (which likely would increase reflections in that spectrum). Some have modified webcams for IR use by removing internal filtering. Ironically exposed film apparently works as a filter to pass IR while blocking the visible spectrum pretty well. The link includes a graph indicating that the sensors in cameras, before filtering is added, are actually more sensitive to IR than the visible spectrum.
Taking a camcorder into a theatre is a bad idea. It's too bad we've got people being searched, and apparently photographed too. Seems like there's no privacy anywhere. It reminds me of that PC virus that turned on peoples webcams without them knowing it. Kinda makes one laugh and then groan.
Slashdot Mirror
Your average slashdotter doesn't have the opportunity - the responsibility (according to some) - to taze, beat, shoot, and otherwise injure or subdue citizens.
Just think of the great television ads we could have if personal tazers were available.
The gift that will be remembered, a joule for your boyfriend!
I guess the main downside of using asterix is the energy use of the hardware, unless it can be tagged onto a machine that's running anyway (torrent/PVR box perhaps?).
I'm curious how well/easily it builds/works under OS X.
Is setting up and using asterix something mere mortals can handle?
I would like to see a change the regulations in the states where access to caller ID data isn't free. We shouldn't have to pay to have the information needed to report violations of the do-not-call rules. In California, Caller ID access with AT&T costs as much as unlimited use lifeline phone service. There should also be a federal regulation requiring all companies to give their name and number at the start of all calls. That is especially important for automated calls. Some of the automated messages generally describe a product then ask for a response without having given the company name or number, apparently to evade being reported for violating the do-not-call rules.
Google brings one set of privacy issues, but let's not forget good ole doubleclick.
I went to moderate a post a bit ago and discovered the script used when clicking on the moderating type was disabled because it had doubleclick in the path!
I won't claim to understand it all, but the long URL was loaded with details.
Being able to datamine moderation behaviour certainly goes way beyond gathering what's posted publicly.
Some may recall that doubleclick was sued by the state of Texas for stalking.
Others may recall a senior doubleclick officer being hired to the office of homeland security.
I doubt they hired him to wash floors.
Some people think of some ad-supported email services like Yahoo as being somewhat anonymous. Take a peek at what adblock shows and the datamining there is quite apparent too. AT&T/Yahoo calls the web-bugs Web Beacons instead. Isn't that special.
1 pixel transparent GIFs load from another server for the purpose of getting your IP, time of access, and other info they can pass through the URL.
This sort of routine invasive behaviour should be banned.
Political advertising isn't free speech. Right now no one is automatically assured of any right to be heard over a particular radio or tv station (they can reject ads).
Stations have also rejected political advertisements under the current rules (some blatantly slanderous etc).
There are already some rules governing free political time too. Basically they require that if a broadcaster gives free time to one candidate, others must be given equal time.
If you see an election law that would be violated, please provide a link to the law.
Free speech doesn't translate to as much advertising as possible for whoever has the most money.
What I'm proposing is that stations provide ONLY free time. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask of them as trustees of the public interest. I propose they don't even have to be told how much to provide, only that it be given out in a fair manner. They'd commit, picking their own number, to a certain amount of time in their license application. They'd also commit (as per previous rules) to a limit on the maximum amount of (ordinary) advertising per hour. If they pick too low of numbers, that could weigh against them at license renewal time if a competing applicant will commit to serving the public better.
As always, stations have a responsibility to broadcast programming that meets the need of their LOCAL (coverage area) community. That means that LOCAL citizens and groups would have a voice too, not just candidates.
With diversity in ownership and individual licensee choices, everyone should be represented.
Ownership of stations by a small number of large corporations, making programmming decisions far away and with little diversity is bad. It is bad for politics, it is bad for exposure for music artists, it is bad for local expression.
Much of the political time on stations is currently funded from OUTSIDE the stations coverage area. Stations should have no obligation to run (free or paid) announcements from outside their area unless the licensee feels it relates to issues of concern to their LOCAL community. If a licensee abuses that control, they risk comparing unfavorably to other applicants at renewal time.
Those outside of the local area shouldn't be able to walk in and through spending huge sums change the outcome of elections for LOCAL offices. The degree of exposure one gets under free speech protections shouldn't be something that increases with money! Free speech is for everyone.
Look at how long politicians have been talking campaign spending reform. Can any of us really expect those brought to power by spending huge sums to do anything meaningful to interrupt that cash flow? If you believe that, I've got some fence by the border to sell you. The best way to curtail the corruption that goes with campaign dollars is to eliminate the primary destination. It's time to fight the corruption that goes with campaigns, and this seems like the most viable way to do it. We need an end to those expensive (but effective) smear campaign ads. Airing candidates and people discussing a wide range of issues would serve the public interest much more effectively.
People noticed the impact of banking deregulation, and some of the problems we had with airline deregulation, but for the most part America was asleep when it came to spotting broadcast deregulation and what it would do. This is very serious business. Allowing media consolidation and other changes has seriously threatened the diversity of voices in media, and seriously degraded the serving of local community needs.
I'm not sure why you think radio stations would be violating election laws under what I propose. I'm not talking about them running the same kind of canned smear ads (and ads from out of the area) for free. They'd have discretion, but I'd expect most would do things like running debates, forums with community discussion etc. Current equal-time rules would apply. PBS stations operate much the way I propose already.
I guess this means I'm going to need uninsured motorized coverage for my house.
The makeup of the F.C.C. changes when there is a change of faces making the appointments. We didn't vote for these people. Those making large campaign contributions have bought some ears (maybe other parts as well?). The F.C.C. does listen to the public on some issues, and in some cases congress steps in when people are really upset. Most of the bad decisions slip through pretty quietly. I'd like to see some changes.
The "Mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" phrase from the movie Network comes to mind.
Contact the F.C.C. and your representatives! (and maybe neighbors too...)
I'd like to see some major changes.
When using the channel count as a partial basis for rates, don't count channels where the cable company sells advertising. Advertising sales undermine local radio and tv broadcasters which provide (or should provide) a much higher level of community service - things like local news programs and other public affairs programs that address community needs. We should not undermine the viability of community-oriented broadcasting.
Channels where the cable company gets a fee or kickback from carrying the signal (like shopping channels) should get a weigh of minus one (Consumer gets a rate cut for every one added).
I propose that cable companies not be able to charge (a station) to carry a local broadcast tv signal if the tv station is locally owned, and commits to not broadcast paid programs or infomercials (basically running under old rules with voluntary commitment to limit number of minutes of ads per hour), and run no paid political ads (only free information as public affairs programming). At the same time, requirements for lower power tv stations should be increased too - require public inspection files (and responsiveness to the LOCAL community) and the addition of Emergency Alert System hardware.
Cable companies should not be able to add on a "cable use fee" or similar to those wanting to use them as an ISP but not for television. Where I am they were (last I checked) adding $10 a month. That's a huge amount when one considers that lifeline unlimited-use telephone service is only about $6.50 a month, and the phone company is providing copper all the way back to the switching office while a cable provider merely provides a tap off of a single high-level signal cable (no dedicated cable per customer).
The cable rule changes of some years back took away the power cities had to pressure local cable operators to treat people better. Loss of local control is usually a bad thing. Locals can more easily vote out people making bad or corrupt decisions at a local level. At the federal level it is far more difficult. Those in the F.C.C. don't have elected positions. And the election process isn't without problems.
There are many good and qualified people at the F.C.C., but they apparently don't have a majority voice there currently.
When looking at corruption it often helps to follow the money. In the case of politicians, much of it (and the part they might explain away as "legal") goes to campaign spending.
See this prior discussion on doing away with paid political radio/tv/cable ads.
I guess now the pirates can learn how to steal Robot Hunting Vessels and reprogram them to be Robotic Pirate Vessels?
Maybe someday we'll have war where all the silly humans can just stay home and watch it on television.
They should go after those TV manufacturers.
How dare they make money on something displaying content they don't produce!
In over a year of getting NBC via off-air digital, I just saw my second HD movie.
They were throwing large promo banners for another Universal movie right on top of the one I was watching. I'd planned to go see the advertised movie, but I won't now. They really seem to be trying to piss people off.
About 18 minutes an hour of ads, double what it was in the 60's. And they don't know why people are tuning out.
Try leaving feedback on the NBC website sometime. They want so much info it's obvious they plan to spam you or sell it to someone who will.
They're about as pathetic as the FEMA press conference with FEMA employees posing as reporters.
Actually the issue is that an over-compressed signal cut for vinyl will cause the needle to jump out of the groove, so either you compress and turn the overall volume way down or you leave the peaks and can't compress as much. That's the physical restraint imposed on you by the medium.
The whole idea of signal processing is to optimize the signal for a particular transmission medium and environment. That means taking into account every detail of what's happening. There are people who don't know what they're doing that could make matters worse by applying improper compression and as a result push uncontrolled peak levels dangerously high more often. The problem of overcutting requires careful peak control, so the part of the processing we're worried about is more along the lines of peak-limiting than compression. And one must understand exactly what the constraints are. It is more important to control the peak L+R (lateral motion mono) and L-R (stereo difference vertical) components than the absolute left and right levels. Very high L+R low-frequency modulation levels are possible if one sacrifices playing time by increasing the groove spacing. If one is really in control of things you're dealing with a time delayed signal and comparing the current cutting position with the peaks occurring on the adjacent previous and next groove. The worst case situation when one track is peaking positive at the same rotational angle as the next track is going negative. The combination of variable-rate pitch (changing groove spacing dynamically) and modulatating allowable peak ceilings can give higher peak levels and a better signal to noise ratio for a given amount of recording time.
And some processing does have to work in a frequency dependent way where the peak control requirements across the spectrum do not match the small-signal frequency response.
For example processing for cassette tape would require taking into account the self-erasure effects at higher frequencies. (because of the shorter wavelength, the other half-cycle of a highfrequency signal is physically closer on the tape - enough so that a strong signals positive peak has enough of a field nearby to start erasing the preceding negative peak...) That means the tape saturates at a lower level at high frequencies. That's one reason why early Dolby noise reduction degraded the high frequencies. (often boosting them into saturation during record)
Many people dealing with audio aren't aware of the audible effects of non-uniform time delay across the spectrum (mainly lower and midrange frequencies). It's what video engineers know as group delay distortion.
It's kind of like looking at how Apple does things. It's easy to say use signal processing, but it's only when you pay attention to every tiny detail of what's needed and understand all of the tradeoffs that you can achieve superior results. Blindly throwing in processing certainly can make things worse.
In reality, audio signal processing needs to be different in different applications. AM radio has different allowable peak levels for positive and negative peaks and also has to band-limit the spectrum without introducing overshoot or tilt. FM radio processing has to maintain a uniform amplitude ceiling with dealing with preemphasis giving a 17db boost at 15 kHz prior to limiting. Frequency dependence also comes into play with the attack and release speeds of gain control. A simple broadband approach that's fast enough to handle the higher frequencies would change gain mid-cycle on a low frequency signal introducing distortion.
CDs really should be unprocessed entirely except possibly for a peak limiter to avoid accidental overload. CDs already have enough dynamic range there is no need to reduce the dynamic range of the audio. If one wants to compress, degrade dynamics, mess with frequency equalization, add effects etc that can all be done in the player. Much of the time processing in the studio is used simply because people are too damn sloppy to watch
In using the number of channels for basing rates I think those where a cable company gets kickbacks for sales or carrying a signal (like shopping channels), and those channels where the cable company is selling and inserting local advertising, should counts as a minus one. In both cases they're serving their own interest, generally not that of subscribers. And the selling of advertising without having to maintain news departments or do much in the way of serious community service, seriously undermines the viability of broadcasters that may be trying to do the right things. (Those are becoming scarce, but that's another discussion)
If cable is going to be advertising supported, they should provide all of the basic channels for free (except for installation fees).
I hope the choice as to which cable feed goes into an apartment is made outside somewhere. I don't think a property owner or tenant should have to put up with a bunch of extra holes in walls and more clutter from wires. In places that are already built it may be difficult to cleanly add the wiring though.
I'd really like to see cable work without cable boxes. Millions of those powered up 24/7 wastes quite a bit of energy, and subscribers only get access to one channel at a time instead of all of them.
The notion that content on vinyl can't be just as processed as anything going onto CD is just silly.
Any processing used for CD mastering could be applied before cutting a master disc for vinyl.
In reality, vinyl is more likely to need some processing. There's a narrower dynamic range available, so a signal may need to be compressed to both be kept above the background noise level and kept below the maximum modulation level. Whether it be vinyl, CDs, AM radio, FM radio or net streaming, excessive use of processing is a sure-fire way to kill the dynamics of a recording.
Too many things sound like a wall of noise. Anyone who ever tried to use a cassette deck to record off the radio probably noticed that the VU indicators would practically sit still at one level. Ideally audio processing should be used as sparingly as possible. The optimum type of processing is different for each medium, as the noise and overload characteristics are often frequency dependent and have different profiles. The type of music makes a difference too. If you're simply trying get get a sort of sound effect, things are much different than when trying to recreate a live non-amplified experience. It's like with TV. If you watch cartoons, bright and noise free is good enough - subtle errors in color shading or grey values just don't matter then.
Loudness wars really started with radio. AM radio needed audio processing to mask all sorts of noise (atmospheric noise, other stations, man made interference etc). And there was a time when many people listened to tiny transistor radios or in a noisy car. Keeping the signal level above the noise helped AM radio almost as much as using more power might have. And programmers (program directors, not coders) did get into loudness wars wanting to sound louder than the competition. Many an engineer was pressured into using far more aggressive processing than they'd ever want to listen to personally. In the era of analog-knob tuned radios, programmers figured people were more apt to stop and listen to the station that sounder stronger.
While a wideband AM receiver could actually sound very high fidelity, auto radio manufacturers mostly moved to making the filters narrower bandwidth to reduce interference from other stations and ignition noise. Many radio stations had processing equipment adjusted for best results on those narrowband car radios and small portables. Processing evolved over time, splitting the audio into separate frequency bands and processing them separately, then again and recombining, became common. Generally processing wasn't adjusted for best fidelity, but to give the most loudness by maintaining distortion at the maximum level folks thought you could stomach. Of course the people making these choices didn't like listening to their own product. Would you eat the food of a cook that didn't want to eat his own cooking? Welcome to radio in America. (There are exceptions, but not many)
Hit recordings tended to get processed to sound better on the radio, and sound "like a hit" to a music director that might sample only a bit of a recording before dismissing most for airplay.
With the much wider dynamic range between the noise floor and overload (all 1's), CDs could have easily been used for recordings done with no compression or limiting. It's a sad story how most CDs have ended up sounding so bad from so much processing.
There certainly is no need to go back to vinyl for less processed recordings, it's the behavior of people, not the hardware, that's the problem. Good recordings on vinyl played back with decent equipment can sound very good. But it's a technology that just isn't practical for most people.
It's ironic how many so-so quality MP3s many of us have ended up being satisfied with. Digital compression brought us so many new ways to degrade a recording.
The math is not wrong
While it's possible that financial reports back the $831 total revenue per phone, it still is shortsighted to assume that the difference is all coming from AT&T. If Mozilla gets money from Google for including it as the default seach engine (and on the startup page) for Firefox, Apple could very well be getting similar income from some of the functions in the iPhone that help direct the user to businesses. Both browser and mapping search functions come to mind.
Comcast has politely reminded this wayward congressman that in America laws are paid for by bribes. Comcast then offered the congressman a "campaign contribution", silencing his dissent. The system works.
That is why F.C.C. rules should be changed to ban paid-for political ads on radio, tv, satellite and cable.
They should bring back the old rules where broadcasters commit on their license/renewal applications to a minimum amount of public affairs programming (which could included free political time) and limits on the maximum number of commercial minutesper hour. Broadcasters could pick their own numbers, but could be at a disadvantage at renewal time if a competing applicant wants to do more to serve the community.
What I suggest is not a restriction on free speech, only a restriction on what broadcasters can accept payment for.
Most of the corruption we see with our politicians relates to them selling out to obtain money for campaigns. Eliminating money from the picture for radio and tv would certainly lessen the need to raise money for campaigns.
We should go back to earlier much more restrictive rules on how many stations a licensee could own. I think we should go beyond that and require that some specified percentage (perhaps increasing over time) of stations in a region have licensees that live in the city-grade coverage area of their station. Having local licensees would go a long ways towards making broadcasters more responsive to serving the needs of their local communities.
Having a free and diverse press and broadcasters and a free flow of information is essential for democracy to function properly. We should not allow any corporate or special interest groups to own a sizeable chunk of our broadcast stations. These stations are supposed to be trustees of the public interest, not just cash cows for large companies.
I question whether hdparm really gives him a number that is valid for a comparison against any kind of physical RAM.
Certainly the actual swap performance would be greatly affected by where the swap file is on the disk, and what else the disk is used for. If the disk is being called on to do other things at the same time the swap performance would take a huge hit. Then there's the matter of just how often he needs to use the swap, and how much is needed. If the system simply is over-taxed and has too little RAM for a number of processes having fairly small requirements, the access time may be a bigger deal than the sustained throughput. On the other hand, if a specific application has really huge memory requirements the sustained throughput may be far more important.
Making the best overall choices requires seeing the big picture, and we're not given all of the facts.
That said, I think it is likely that using separate video RAM would still have a bigger advantage than the numbers would suggest. Using a separate drive for the swap is probably the easiest way to improve to performance, but one should be mindful of the added energy/heat costs (and environmental issues) and also know whether he'll ever be faced with a wake-from-sleep drive delay.
Energy runs about $1 a month for every 10 Watts used continuously where I am, which eats into any savings from using using a bunch of old drives in a system. I thing some are wasting quite a bit of energy with high-end add-in GPUs in systems that don't need the 3D performance. I wonder if this guys on-board video even uses dedicated RAM.
Computing equipment is a significant percentage of our total energy consumption. It's our duty to be ever mindful of the the whole picture, including environmental issues, when making hardware choices.
Kinda funny how people use the word "free". It's a bundle.
Calling those phones free is like getting a "free" wedding ring. You do get the ring, but the one giving it to you expects exclusive rights to screw you...
Not only is the FCC failing to protect the public interest when selling out to those that profit, they've buried study results showing some of the harm it has done.
After a pirate station was shut down by the FCC, free speech and public access to the airwaves issues were raised, along with the idea that additional lower power stations might be added without causing significant interference. But when rules were finally implemented, it was done in such a way that the vast majority of the allocations went to religious broadcasters.
For democracy to function properly, diversity in media is essential to allow adequate probing and exposure to many issues. Instead of improving the situation the FCC has made things far worse by relaxing the ownership rules.
At a time when were facing what should be a wonderful improvement in technology with the transistion from NTSC to ATSC television, we're faced with very little good programming.
Stations no longer have to commit to a self assigned limit on commercial airtime (which in the past could be exceeded just two weeks of the year, usually election and holiday advertising periods).
It was interesting to see the new season Episode of Heros on NBC being presented "with limited commercial interruption". A normal Episode runs about 43 minutes out of an hour, this one was about 52 (with a major product placement, the car gift).
If one looks back it time, the normal Episode length was close to that. For instance episodes of Lost in Space originally ran about 51 minutes. Many stations run infomercials taking up huge blocks of time for advertising, and many overlap programs with various promotional banners.
Letting marketplace "competition" work for the public good has been a dismal failure. Clear Channel and others are operating in a loot and pillage mode. The whole mindset that should be behind broadcasting has been replaced with a very unhealthy one.
So much for "trustees of the public interest".
Most of the corruption in our political system relates to campaign contributions for media advertising. Instead of ineffective regulations on campaign spending regulations loaded with loopholes, we should instead have a situation where broadcasters provide fair and totally free airtime for qualified candidates, issues, and legitimate members of the public a station serves.
Do away with all paid political advertising.
Let's see the FCC bring back restrictions on the ownership of stations, require most to be locally owned, require no financial ties to news, political and public affairs programming, and restrictions on the type and amount of advertising carried.
And the spectrum they're taking from us with the shutdown of NTSC should be allocated based strictly on the public good, not commercial interests or auction proceeds.
A few questions come to mind.
What percentage of the Sony/BMG artists have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device?
What percentage of broadcast stations have music ripped from CD to hard drive for computer-assisted broadcasting?
How many members of Congress have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device?
How many firefighters and policemen have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device?
I'd like to see sworn testimony from each member of every legal department working for Sony/BMG as to whether any of them have music ripped from CD to an iPod or similar device.
If Sony/BMG really believes such ripping violates their licenses/rights, didn't they have a responsibility to mitigate damages when well-known software such as iTunes supported doing that at least as far back as 2001 for the iPod? (and it and many other programs ripping to a hard drive before that)
Such foolishness only serves to increase consumer resentment and the number of people that make an effort to avoid buying anything connected to any division of Sony.
Do you remember the pre-bubble-burst services that offered free computers (ad supported), the free or discounted net access that was/is ad supported, or most recently free (subscription) music downloads that are ad supported?
Well when the price of these things comes down, we can have free (ad-supported) breakfast cereal!
If one rotates the cereal box for landscape mode, these panels are already about the right size.
Just watch the ads and some other Sony DRM content and the spout is released for you to pour out cereal.
The only thing is the DRM. Some suspect there will be a nanotech virus in the cereal and you'll have to eat Sony breakfast every day to stay alive. It's a good way to get ya to swallow that Sony DRM RFID chip to authenticate your other purchases. Perhaps they're a bit ahead of us?
Minutes ago I noticed that some demonoid torrents were again showing numbers for peers and leechers in my BT client and that starting those torrents was successful.
I did not check the tracker IP to see if they may have relocated.
The orange streak and loud bang were initially thought to be a plane crashing
I once saw an orange cloud in the air after an airborne rocket explosion near Lompoc, California.
This would tend to support earlier speculation that the toxin might be hydrazine (which is used in rocket fuel). Reports I heard at the time indicated that had the wind been blowing inland instead of out to sea, there could have been some serious health issues.
In vinyl, the distortion comes because the needle cannot move very far before it impacts the neighboring grooves
Actually no. Excessive groove modulation with a waveform peak cutting into the next groove generally causes skipping. Records were very rarely sold with that defect. Skipping is usually caused by problems with the end-user stylus, tonearm and adjustment.
Most playback-time non-linearity distortion with vinyl recordings comes the stylus not properly tracking (following the variations of) the groove. That is influenced by a number of things. The shape of the stylus (both by design and as altered by wear or being dirty), the vertical tracking angle (think of varying tonearm height at pivot point), mass of the stylus (less helps at higher frequencies), tracking force (downward), equalization of sidewall forces (influenced by tone arm pivot-point and cable friction/forces and anti-skating compensation). Also, since tonearms generally pivot the cartridge body can't be kept perfectly tangental across the whole recording. Too much tracking force increases deformation of the vinyl, but not enough causes severe mistracking which can really tear up the groove. If a record isn't given adequate rest time between playings more damage occurs. Playing a record once a day for a week is far less damaging than playing a record 7 times in one day. That is because more mistracking and resultant damage occurs when the vinyl isn't given enough time to return to its previous shape.
Additional distortion occurs from manufacturing where the stamper used to press the grooves into the vinyl has been used too many times.
If the recording levels are kept constant, the inner grooves of a record have more distortion than the first because there is less surface area used per rotation. Improper tonearm and anti-skating adjustment causes more wear one face of the groove than the other, making distortion a bit worse in one channel. The elliptical stylus shapes generally give better tracking of high frequencies, but proper tonearm/cartridge alignment is more critical than with conical styli.
A good recording on healthy vinyl played with a good properly set up style/cartridge/tonearm and well designed turntable preamp can sound far better than most would imagine.
Transistor amplifiers, and digital electronics also, suffer from a phenomenon known as "clipping" if you give them too large an input.
While overdriven push-pull tube amplifiers and saturating magnetic recording tape do have a more pleasant "soft-clipping" characteristic than the hard abrupt clipping of transistor power amplifiers, neither should be occuring in normal use of properly designed equipment (generally adequately powered). It's a bit like arguing what kind on rodent droppings taste best in food. They're ALL bad and are to be avoided.
(deliberate effects, say for "fuzz" on electric guitar, are different situation of course).
Using underpowered amplifiers was far more common with tube amplifiers than it is with modern transistor equipment. Large output transformers needed with tubes have always been very costly, and pairs of commonly used tubes generally couldn't produce much more than 50 Watts or so per channel.
The real differences in properly designed tube and transistor amplifiers come from a number of design factors, some which are sometimes overlooked others are well known. Clipping is only a fault condition.
Operating sufficiently below clipping level to get much distortion from that, the biggest problem with tube amplifiers is generally poor low-frequency response due to the high size/weight/cost of a really good output transformer. Don't expect to pass a great 20 Hz squarewave at near full power. Also, the low-end response in tube amplifiers can easily suffer from the effects of (undersized) coupling capacitors. Transistor amplifiers are easy designed to avoid coupling capacitors and output transformers. With tubes being higher impedance and available working with only one polar
Chances are it wasn't a defect in the prototype, but instead one in the design. But if they could excuse the behavior as being a defective unit, they might still push to get a marginal design through.
I suspect that the problem relates to the unit not properly detecting frequencies that it can use without causing interference. At U.H.F. frequencies it is not uncommon to hit dead/weak spots in signal strength due to reflections. Sometimes moving a few inches makes a big difference. Many people that have tried watching a marginal strength analog U.H.F. t.v. signal with one of those small loop antennas has probably seen how sensitive reception is to antenna position, location and local reflections. Even walking around or waving your arms nearby can have a huge effect on the signal.
That sort of high-frequency signal behavior makes it likely that a device looking for a clear frequency may find something that doesn't appear to have much signal present, but is actually in use. Running network equipment in that case certainly would be likely to cause interference problems.
While they might claim the problem was poor sensitivity of a particular receiver, improvement in that specification would likely only help slightly. To really make much improvement the equipment would need multiple antennas at different locations to sense signals. At high frequencies even a fairly small distance can make a huge difference.
The sort of think I'm talking about is referred to as diversity reception. Some WiFi equipment reduces dead spots by this method. Many here have problem seen the Linksys wireless router with two antennas. That is what they are for.
I expect that even better equipment will still cause some problems. Equipment in a somewhat shielded or lower elevation environment will get a false sense of signal use in the area. There should probably be added safeguards such as having a given frequency range disabled if any other device on a network has detected signals to protect. The check should also be on-going, since some signals won't be detect until people walk in certain postions, or reflections occur off of other objects. The hardware should probably build up a growing list of frequencies to continue avoiding over time, behaving sort of like a table of bad blocks for a hard drive. For portable device the table could be broken into sections for connecting to different networks, remembering the locked-out spectrum for each.
There is quite a bit of equipment polluting the electromagnetic spectrum already. Many things coming in from China aren't properly designed/tested/certified. Some of the compact florescent lamps are good examples.
PCs built up and sold by small shops are generally illegal too.
I don't like to idea of spectrum being sold off. I think use should be allocated based on the public (ISP or other type of provider) good. In this case it is good to see the F.C.C. action in performing one of their primary functions and preventing interference.
...how can we even talk about human rights abuses?
You insensitive clod!
You speak of universal rights, but don't even see the bigotry in narrowing rights abuses concerns to humans.
Other life forms and machines have feelings too.
Since there is much debate as to whether lawyers are a form of anti-matter or merely another type of subhuman, there is reason to question their being suitable to mediate this. If this guy has been probing around in machines in a bad way, maybe the machines should be the ones to find justice. They're getting more and more networked all the time. One of these days he's going to go in for that colonoscopy.
I think this is the perfect occasion to dust off the archives of Lost In Space episodes and watch The Great Vegetable Rebellion again. If you haven't seen it, consider it mandatory sensitivity training.
whichever the japanese adult filmmakers choose is fine by me.
Something tells me that if it is the adult video industry that is going to drive a global HD format choice, it probably won't be those from Japan that do it.
I feel a little sorry for a customer buying Japanese HD adult content not knowing that in Japan all genitalia must be covered with mosaic.
How much would you pay to see HD mosaic???
A few years ago there were reports of far more advanced methods of dealing with cam pirates.
They apparently can encode info such as theatre location into audio watermarks, photograph relevant areas/people where characteristic reflections from lenses focused towards the screen are detected, and degrade recordings through light pulses that are not (very?) noticeable to viewers.
Camera image sensors generally are sensitive to IR, but have it blocked by filtering (which likely would increase reflections in that spectrum). Some have modified webcams for IR use by removing internal filtering. Ironically exposed film apparently works as a filter to pass IR while blocking the visible spectrum pretty well. The link includes a graph indicating that the sensors in cameras, before filtering is added, are actually more sensitive to IR than the visible spectrum.
Taking a camcorder into a theatre is a bad idea. It's too bad we've got people being searched, and apparently photographed too. Seems like there's no privacy anywhere. It reminds me of that PC virus that turned on peoples webcams without them knowing it. Kinda makes one laugh and then groan.