The only electron microscope I've ever seen in person was at a scrap dealer, so it was an old one, but it had warning labels about radiation exposure. I got the feeling that operators needed to wear those badges that measure exposure over time. I really wanted buy the thing. I figured I could work on the electronics if needed, but wasn't sure about the condition of the vacuum pumps. It would have been a blast to see what sorts of things grow in my fridge, but the supporting console was large and very heavy and the scrap dealer was really in love with all the stainless steel.
Capacitors can be fun. Some of the small electrolytics create a nice pop, puff of smoke, and throw foil all over when they're hooked up with the polarity reversed. A variable power supply works well for that. Also fun were some 20 kv capacitors from the high voltage section of some really ancient (50's) TVs. I'd screw them together in series with wires sticking out in between, then charge each one by rubbing my shoes on the carpet on a dry day, and putting the cap to charge between me and a grounded screw on a wall switch. When I'd go to discharge the bank of them I'd get an arc over an inch long.
Fun at age 14 without drugs, computers or video games...
I guess most of the above would get you in trouble. Stick to electroplating the family silverware?
Well it isn't the Borg that they're up against, but people in Season 1 Episode 10 (the latest one) of the ABC TV series Invasion can be seen using Firefox. It's in the scene where folks are explaining why they kidnapped the blogger, about 19 minutes in not counting commercials.
If some power supplies are overheating during the cool season, we should expect even more problems next summer.
I can see cooling being a big issue for the CPU and graphics chips which have to dissipate quite a bit no matter what, but the power supply? A well designed switching supply should have very low losses and run cool.
When you think about the ridiculous prices people pay for ringtones it's not that crazy
By that logic heroin use looks pretty good too. After all, it's less addicting than the nicotine in cigarettes and it doesn't give you cancer. For lack of the proper term, I call that "best car in the junkyard" reasoning. Sometimes we're forced to pick the lesser of evils, some elections for instance, but this is a situation where we can just say NO.
"Producers of the James Bond movies are widely reported to have offered the role of 007 to Patrick McGoohan, who allegedly declined due to the character's propensity for casual sex and extreme violence."
Maybe it's just lack of competition, but sometimes I have to wonder if there isn't too much Floride in the water or oxytocin in our milk. What explanation is there for so many people willingly opting for these awful deals? Some common choices made in spending and voting seem to defy logic. Our overall absurdity-threshold seems to have been raised somehow.
I guess tunes could be more expensive. I wonder how many 160 Byte text-messaged UUencoded segments would be needed to transfer Alices Restaurant?
I think there are several good reasons for using Intel at the low end first. The low-end and portable machines haven't got PCI/AGP etc slots, so there's no worry about coming up with drivers for those third-party cards so soon. It looks like the Intel CPUs will be relatively low-power and low-temperature. Those issues matter most in portables and more compact consumer models. The high end just got a big performance boost with dual-core CPUs which remain competitive. Most of the time consumers will likely be using included or optional native Apple software that will be fast. Many other apps will run quite ACCEPTABLY in emulation, just remember that with no altivec, emulation essentially gives us a G3. Anything that doesn't run well on a G3 needs to be native. Pro users need fast hardware with native software, so it would only hurt Apple to ship the high-end machines long before the core apps are ready.
I saw a screenshot of an XBench 1.1.3 comparison of a developer Intel machine against a dual 2.7 G5. The G5 had about 5 times the overall score (and this was before dual-core). The CPU-only comparison was more like a 15 to 1 ratio. If we compared against a single G4, the gap would narrow, except because there is no altivec in emulation, we're essentially getting G3 performance. With the OS, video and disk systems full speed and emulated apps getting perhaps the performance of a 600 Mhz G3, we're fine as long as native apps are available for things like MPEG compression. With the possible exception of recompressing data from ripped DVDs, the native Apple apps will probably cover most consumer needs.
While it is interesting to discuss whether there is constitutional basis for the F.C.C. to exist, it is a gross oversimplification to represent the F.C.C. as being needed, or not, only for it's function in moderating interference problems. The manner in which broadcast stations are operated has far reaching implications in the areas of public safety, public education, public health, public purchasing behavior, political decisions and more.
The F.C.C.'s failure to see that broadcasters properly carry out the role as trustees of the public interest is behind much of the mess we have in U.S. politics. By allowing broadcasters to sell political advertising the media have become a crucial paid-for component in the corruption of the U.S. elections process. Not only is public opinion subject to being warped by misleading ads. Our elected officials frequently have to sell out in order to raise the funds used in political advertising. We cannot expect those in office to enact meaningful campaign spending reforms when it could mean cutting their own funds. Instead, we should have an F.C.C. that prevents broadcasters from accepting any political revenue. If broadcasters had to provide free time and ONLY free time to all legally validated candidates and measures, there would be far less motivation to seek or accept funding from the wrong places.
Perhaps if all Slashdotters in the U.S. wrote and visited their local stations and insisted that paid advertising was a key element in the corruption of our political process, it could be added to the quarterly lists of community issues that stations address with their programming. Letters to the stations, with copies to the F.C.C., should point out that carrying paid political ads is a FAILURE to address a serious community issue. If there were enough written public outcry licenses could be challenged at renewal time.
Possible Secondary Benefit of Wireless VOIP
on
VoIP Going Wireless
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· Score: 1
Consolidation in the cellular industry has been reducing competition. Carriers have been further restraining trade by locking customers into contracts, many of which are now two years. It is clear we can't count on the government to insure fair behavior. Hopefully losing some customers to wireless VOIP will be enough to get some cellular carriers to relax future contract terms.
I read the article. I disagree. I believe the article misrepresents the facts. One clue is that there was mention of excluding playing rap music. That suggests to me that this was a group of people looking for an excuse to run a legal version of their own little pirate radio station. Sure that would be fun, and potentially even useful, but the rules don't allow it. Instead of a traditional broadcast license, what they would likely get is a license or S.T.A. (Special Temporary Authority) to operate a Travellers' Information Station (Google for FCC 90.242). 90.242 describes low-power AM transmission. Low-power FM transmission has also been available for the same uses since January 2000.
Even with a S.T.A. issued allowing for slightly different use of the proposed station in this situation, I see two primary problems. They are not tied to either the entity that has the information to be broadcast or to the location needing service, and they can't broadcast music. (By tied to the location, the example of a fairground operator providing directions, bus and carpooling information comes to mind) Unless FEMA or local agencies chose to give these people the information they claim to want to broadcast, they have no particular qualifications to do so. Without the Emergency Alert System hardware that other broadcasters must have, they could very easily have worse than normal access to critical information. If one looks at the need for a good system of distributing information on more continuous basis than what normally happens with the emergency alert system, there would be something for people to tune into all over when on the highways. Then people could know at some distance if a particular shelter site was full, if they needed to go somewhere else, what routes were blocked, where fuel, water and food were available etc. It sounds like there was the seed of a potential good idea, but it was recognized that these were the wrong people to carry it out.
Here are related quotes from F.C.C. information:
"In January 2000 FCC created a low power FM radio service. These stations are available to noncommercial educational entities and public safety/travellers information entities, but not individuals or commercial operations."
"(7) Travelers Information Stations shall transmit only noncommercial voice information pertaining to traffic and road conditions, traffic hazard and travel advisories, directions, availability of lodging, rest stops and service stations, and descriptions of local points of interest. It is not permissible to identify the commercial name of any business establishment whose service may be available within or outside the coverage area of a Travelers Information Station. However, to facilitate announcements concerning departures/arrivals and parking areas at air, train, and bus terminals, the trade name identification of carriers is permitted."
In the United States the authority governing radio stations is the Federal Communications Commission. I'll refer you to the Code Of Federal Regulations, title 47, parts 17 and 70 through 79. Part 90 covers Travellers' Information Stations.
If the F.C.C. grants a traditional AM or FM broadcast license outside the dome and the licensee has a location to broadcast from, no one else has the authority to tell them not to broadcast to people in the dome. There can be other obsticles, but they are not target-audience related. The studio and transmitter locations must be compatible with local zoning requirements. Many areas have environmental restrictions on towers. It's mainly a matter of people not wanting to look at them in their own backyard. Also there are tower lighting and marking requirements for certain antenna structures depending on structure height and proximity to local airports.
There are also rules to keep people a safe distance from extremely strong radio-frequency electromagnetic fields. Due to problems with people filing for licenses and then trying to sell a station
There's no reason why local radio stations can't provide the needed information. Even if the Clear Channel stations are not very helpful, I'm sure that local public/college stations could fill the need. And if the proposed transmitter is really powerful enough to require a license, there is no reason why these people couldn't provide adequate signal coverage of the area FROM OUTSIDE THE ASTRODOME.
Hasn't this place got a scoreboard with text capability?
Those tests have very little to do with what you hear. Tilt on a 20 Hz squarewave when driving a low impedance load such as headphones is the result of the output coupling capacitor and the load acting as a simple high-pass filter. The change in waveshape is not an indication of distortion from non-linearty. In other words, it isn't showing addition of undersired harmonics, nor creating of sum/difference frequencies through intermodulation. It simply shows the combined effects of phase shifts and rolloff at very low frequencies. Since the input of a stereo system is far higher impedance, the low frequency effect shown IS NOT A PROBLEM AT ALL when feeding your stereo. The effects of lossy compression are FAR more important, and are not shown at all by the squarewave tests. The sweep pink noise measurements are not very useful either, since the output isn't corrected for the noise being pink. If it were, an ideal response would be a horizontal line. Then it would be easy to see rolloff at the extremes. But the variations in a line that is already sloped are not as easily interpreted.
One could take a 20 Hz squarewave sampled with only 8 bits instead of 16, sampled at only 11 kHz instead of 44.1, and then use 32 kbps compression AND STILL HAVE A FLAT SQUAREWAVE. Of course music processed that way would sound awful. My point is this test is not one for judging overall audio quality.
Low-frequency tilt on a squarewave is visible even when the amplitude loss is small. On an otherwise excellent system using excellent recordings low-frequency phase shifts affect the feel of the impact of instruments such as the snare drum. If you're really a purist, you'll care about absolute phase. Is the transient that hits you chest on hear a snare drum a pressure increase or a decrease? If the signal is inverted anywhere down the line, the absolute phase will be wrong. Of course simply reversing the leads on both speakers can correct that. With normal recordings and equipment you probably won't be able to tell any difference though. (not that I am NOT talking about reversing the leads on only one channel).
Forgive me if I sound far out. I've been around since the days when some audiophiles would reverse the leads on one channel of a phono cartridge and on one speaker so that a transient common to both channels would have one channel loading the positive power supply more heavily while the other loaded the negative so there would be higher average power supply voltage available.
If you'd really like to be upset by squarewave testing, feed a squarewave into your stereo system (be careful that it's not too loud) and look at what a high quality microphone sees coming from your speakers. Many speaker systems don't compensate for the average point of radiation of a low-frequency driver being further away than the higher frequency drivers, so the spikes of the rising and falling edges of the squarewave show up to the left (earlier) than the body of it. And because many speakers have crossovers with phase shifts that can cause cancellation at the crossover frequency, it isn't uncommon for the high-frequency driver to be hooked up with the leads reversed. The spikes of the rising and falling edges of the squarewave will go the wrong direction!!! Perhaps you have equipment that isn't designed that way, but many do.
Squarewave tests have uses, but those linked here might as well have been used to show WMD. They don't show THD.
Output stages in almost all high-level audio circuits use a pair of transistors with one pulling the output up for one half of the waveform and the other pulling it down for the other. When there are positive and negative voltages available with respect to the output ground connection, the output can rest at zero with no signal and the load can be directly connected. If there is a supply of one polarity the output rests at half the supply voltage. That's when a coupling capacitor is used to avoid having that DC voltage cause a constant current through the load.
I didn't go very far into the process since I don't need aid, but I got as far as the form where personal data would be entered by using the current beta of iCab for Mac OS X. I set iCab to identify itself as Explorer (twice, browser ID and Javascript ID).
Apple hardly deserves to be labeled as a company of the past. They've continually proved to be innovative, and have shown willingness to make major changes at any level when it helps them move forward.
The article wasn't taking about Apple threatening Microsoft as a hardware company. They don't appear to be planning to compete in selling gaming consoles. Clearly the major potential threat from Apple could come from competing OS SOFTWARE sales should they decide to go there. Putting an older or lite version of an OS installer on a iPod would be using the iPod as a promotional tool. Putting an AOL disk in a cereal box or magazine is essentially the same idea, although it is hard to imagine that boosting the sales of those products very much.
Even if you are entirely right about a shift of many applications to web-services, it is shortsighted to think that Apple hasn't got a big opportunity to be the OS software provider for machines used to access those services. Anyone entering data that matters isn't going to want to do it from a machine infected with a key-logger or other malware. Whether it is a complete OS/hardware bundle or the OS only, Apple certainly could offer something relevant to dealing with such problems.
Using web services would seem to make more sense for some business applications than for consumers. I think consumers prefer to have their most personal data, pictures, music and video on their own machines when possible.
While I agree most already have as powerful of hardware as they need for common tasks, there is still room for new areas of demand. Surely some see potential opportunities with high end consumer hardware being able to handle HD video as we approach the end of NTSC TV broadcasting in the US. We're also close to seeing the next generation of DVDs. We're not just talking about computer owners upgrading, anyone with a television set might be a potential customer for the right product at the right price. Some things that are too costly for most right now might not be later. Perhaps you recall that the day before Apple introduced the G4's with a DVD burner just a raw Pioneer drive was $5000. Things can change quickly. Apple seems to be able to move more quickly than many other companies in either hardware or software. I wouldn't be so quick to write them off as "a company of the past".
I'll go along with most of the reasons given so far for reduced attendance, but if some others feel as I do, factors behind the trend also go deeper on a more personal level.
1) I feel a bitterness towards the major studios. It parallels the way I feel towards Microsoft, Wal-Mart or Clear Channel. I resent having to sit through legal and anti-piracy notices on DVDs that I buy or rent. I resent the heavy handed push to control technology, especially the broadcast flag efforts. I resent the high prices. I resent advertising that goes beyond trailers. I'm more apt to attend a smaller but well-run locally owned moviehouse than go to one of the big-chain multi-screen megaplexes.
2) I find it harder to make decent income at at time when gas and housing costs are skyrocketing.. The current U.S. political and economic climate gives me a feeling of carrying debt beyond my own, adding to feelings of needing to be increasingly selective about spending. Most movies seem a poor value to me.
3) I feel pressure to be more selective in spending time also. Just as things like the net have cut into tv viewing time, there's also less freely burnable time for the theatre. Many movies aren't worth my time alone, and they piles of cash too? I might as well wait until they're on tv, which I usually treat as only a background process.
4) Anytime-news-access on the net, PVRs, iPod music, and now Podcasts have increased my natural thirst for getting what I want WHEN I WANT IT. I'm increasingly becoming less willing to plan my life around a tv, radio or movie schedule.
Over time it seems that the broadcasting, cable, music and movie industries have become increasingly optimized as corporate profit engines (short-term anyway) while becoming too far and increasingly removed from nurturing the arts they depend on or the public good. It has reached the point where I feel it is my duty as a citizen to avoid supporting them if possible.
The one movie I saw this summer that left me feeling really good was March Of The Penguins. The rest were a waste of my time.
If we get more advanced battery technology I hope it is used to give us better runtime instead of encouraging development of laptops that cook my balls!
My current laptop is hotter than I'd like already. Better performance/watt CPUs are a step in the right direction. I'd be happy to see my desktop use less energy too. Besides being good for the budget and the global environment, it could also permit quieter cooling systems. (I suspect that Apple is the only company that looks at the whole picture enough to actually optimize and balance the design for cooling/noise)
Hopefully these Intel chips will be a good thing for everyone including Apple users. I just hope the transition doesn't give OS X any binary compatibility with PC/Windows malware. I've wondered if a PC binary not needing the Windows API could be launched from Terminal on Mac X86.
All Sony needs to do now is leverage their video expertise into audio. I'm thinking they'll do something along the lines of an audible FBI warning and promos playing before the start of every song...
I haven't yet used a meter to see how much the power comsumption is going up, but through use of the menubar utility Menu Meters, I've caught CPU use being unexpectedly high at times. Even without meausuring the power I'm certain that it increases, as my old TiBook fires up the fan after these periods of high CPU activity.
The primary source of unexpected CPU load for me turned out to be certain animated banner/skyscraper animated ads. I haven't looked at page source to figure out just what they were, but I suspect Flash. Reloading pages and getting the ads to change has brought the CPU use back to very low levels while sitting on a page. I've even seen these high-cpu ads on Slashdot at times.
Although I haven't seen a problem with any Apple-supplied Dashboard Widgets, some third-party widgets use more CPU than I'd expect when they're in the background.
The Options section of the Energy Saver control panel allows setting reduced processor performance. That helps too. Separate settings are available for battery and adaptor operation. I find myself using the "reduced" setting even for adaptor operation at times just because I don't like the computer to get so hot. It's fine on a glass desktop or coffee table, but really cooks on a bedspread!
Activity Monitor should help spot processes that are using the CPU heavily. It and Menu Meters can show disk activity also, but I haven't found a way to tell which processes are using the disk. I haven't noticed much activity I'd attribute to Spotlight, except when first connecting a Firewire drive.
It is very easy to see what's going on with power consumption if you measure the power going into the AC adaptor (best done when you've reached the fully charged state, but you can still see changes while charging).
I use a small meter I picked up at Radio Shack called the "Kill A Watt". It makes it very easy to see how much effect things like screen brightness settings have (a bunch).
I think many on Slashdot would find one of those meters useful. They're very handy for spotting things around the house that use power even when off. Using one was enough to get me to swap most of my generic AC adaptors with transformers for the variety with switching supplies (most easily identified by their lower weight). Tests revealed that even my soldering stations had the transformer cores energized when "off". I rewired them to put the power switch before the transformer instead of after. Metering also easily showed the effects of over (and under) clocking PCs here. Watching power consumption everywhere not only helps laptop battery life, but the environment and the the budget. A fast and dirty rule of thumb I use for estimating cost is $1 a month for every 10 Watts that's consumed 24 hours a day. (Those AC adaptors, cable/satellite boxes, routers, VCRs, microwave ovens, doorbells, thermostats, amplified speakers, remote-control devices etc are probably all using some power all the time!)
An elitist group known as The Living has long believed that they were inherently superior to their rivals The Dead, but statistics are showing a shift and some clear advantages for The Dead.
The Dead use no gasoline, an advantage increasing over time as prices rise and supplies dwindle.
The Dead never argue.
The Dead are more loyal. While there are rumors of switchers, there are only proven cases of switching from The Living to The Dead, not the reverse.
Some evidence of future switchers has been seen in political office where The Brain Dead have a significant presence.
The Dead have a well established installed base.
Some of The Dead give their all for recycling.
The Living are still generally more highly regarded for dating even though some are only vaguely familiar with the activity.
The stated reason for the switch doesn't have to be the only reason or even the real reason. If Apple wants the option of someday competing head to head against Windows on other vendors' Intel-class hardware, they've got to get the compatible applications built and do so without killing their installed base. They're on a roadmap that does just that.
Having some life ahead in the current line of CPUs and still switching isn't without precedence either. Apple made the transition from the 68040 to PPC even though the 68060 was on the horizon.
Simply spending more time on the computer, whether it be reading spam or Slashdot, is apt to make me forget about the time and be less likely to cook up a large meal.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems probably that they'd see some dupe IPs from people surfing using Tor, and cookies might reveal the internal IPS used behind NAT roters.
The only electron microscope I've ever seen in person was at a scrap dealer, so it was an old one, but it had warning labels about radiation exposure. I got the feeling that operators needed to wear those badges that measure exposure over time. I really wanted buy the thing. I figured I could work on the electronics if needed, but wasn't sure about the condition of the vacuum pumps. It would have been a blast to see what sorts of things grow in my fridge, but the supporting console was large and very heavy and the scrap dealer was really in love with all the stainless steel.
Capacitors can be fun. Some of the small electrolytics create a nice pop, puff of smoke, and throw foil all over when they're hooked up with the polarity reversed. A variable power supply works well for that.
Also fun were some 20 kv capacitors from the high voltage section of some really ancient (50's) TVs. I'd screw them together in series with wires sticking out in between, then charge each one by rubbing my shoes on the carpet on a dry day, and putting the cap to charge between me and a grounded screw on a wall switch. When I'd go to discharge the bank of them I'd get an arc over an inch long.
Fun at age 14 without drugs, computers or video games...
I guess most of the above would get you in trouble. Stick to electroplating the family silverware?
Well it isn't the Borg that they're up against, but people in Season 1 Episode 10 (the latest one) of the ABC TV series Invasion can be seen using Firefox. It's in the scene where folks are explaining why they kidnapped the blogger, about 19 minutes in not counting commercials.
If some power supplies are overheating during the cool season, we should expect even more problems next summer.
I can see cooling being a big issue for the CPU and graphics chips which have to dissipate quite a bit no matter what, but the power supply? A well designed switching supply should have very low losses and run cool.
When you think about the ridiculous prices people pay for ringtones it's not that crazy
By that logic heroin use looks pretty good too. After all, it's less addicting than the nicotine in cigarettes and it doesn't give you cancer. For lack of the proper term, I call that "best car in the junkyard" reasoning. Sometimes we're forced to pick the lesser of evils, some elections for instance, but this is a situation where we can just say NO.
Liked his character much more than James Bond. The BBC has some interesting things to say about The Prisoner and Patrick McGoohan.
"Producers of the James Bond movies are widely reported to have offered the role of 007 to Patrick McGoohan, who allegedly declined due to the character's propensity for casual sex and extreme violence."
Maybe it's just lack of competition, but sometimes I have to wonder if there isn't too much Floride in the water or oxytocin in our milk. What explanation is there for so many people willingly opting for these awful deals? Some common choices made in spending and voting seem to defy logic. Our overall absurdity-threshold seems to have been raised somehow.
I guess tunes could be more expensive. I wonder how many 160 Byte text-messaged UUencoded segments would be needed to transfer Alices Restaurant?
I think there are several good reasons for using Intel at the low end first. The low-end and portable machines haven't got PCI/AGP etc slots, so there's no worry about coming up with drivers for those third-party cards so soon. It looks like the Intel CPUs will be relatively low-power and low-temperature. Those issues matter most in portables and more compact consumer models. The high end just got a big performance boost with dual-core CPUs which remain competitive. Most of the time consumers will likely be using included or optional native Apple software that will be fast. Many other apps will run quite ACCEPTABLY in emulation, just remember that with no altivec, emulation essentially gives us a G3. Anything that doesn't run well on a G3 needs to be native. Pro users need fast hardware with native software, so it would only hurt Apple to ship the high-end machines long before the core apps are ready.
I saw a screenshot of an XBench 1.1.3 comparison of a developer Intel machine against a dual 2.7 G5. The G5 had about 5 times the overall score (and this was before dual-core). The CPU-only comparison was more like a 15 to 1 ratio. If we compared against a single G4, the gap would narrow, except because there is no altivec in emulation, we're essentially getting G3 performance. With the OS, video and disk systems full speed and emulated apps getting perhaps the performance of a 600 Mhz G3, we're fine as long as native apps are available for things like MPEG compression. With the possible exception of recompressing data from ripped DVDs, the native Apple apps will probably cover most consumer needs.
While it is interesting to discuss whether there is constitutional basis for the F.C.C. to exist, it is a gross oversimplification to represent the F.C.C. as being needed, or not, only for it's function in moderating interference problems. The manner in which broadcast stations are operated has far reaching implications in the areas of public safety, public education, public health, public purchasing behavior, political decisions and more.
The F.C.C.'s failure to see that broadcasters properly carry out the role as trustees of the public interest is behind much of the mess we have in U.S. politics. By allowing broadcasters to sell political advertising the media have become a crucial paid-for component in the corruption of the U.S. elections process. Not only is public opinion subject to being warped by misleading ads. Our elected officials frequently have to sell out in order to raise the funds used in political advertising. We cannot expect those in office to enact meaningful campaign spending reforms when it could mean cutting their own funds. Instead, we should have an F.C.C. that prevents broadcasters from accepting any political revenue. If broadcasters had to provide free time and ONLY free time to all legally validated candidates and measures, there would be far less motivation to seek or accept funding from the wrong places.
Perhaps if all Slashdotters in the U.S. wrote and visited their local stations and insisted that paid advertising was a key element in the corruption of our political process, it could be added to the quarterly lists of community issues that stations address with their programming. Letters to the stations, with copies to the F.C.C., should point out that carrying paid political ads is a FAILURE to address a serious community issue. If there were enough written public outcry licenses could be challenged at renewal time.
Consolidation in the cellular industry has been reducing competition. Carriers have been further restraining trade by locking customers into contracts, many of which are now two years. It is clear we can't count on the government to insure fair behavior. Hopefully losing some customers to wireless VOIP will be enough to get some cellular carriers to relax future contract terms.
Video devices get used to watch prOn, and when that happens SIZE MATTERS!
I read the article. I disagree. I believe the article misrepresents the facts. One clue is that there was mention of excluding playing rap music. That suggests to me that this was a group of people looking for an excuse to run a legal version of their own little pirate radio station. Sure that would be fun, and potentially even useful, but the rules don't allow it. Instead of a traditional broadcast license, what they would likely get is a license or S.T.A. (Special Temporary Authority) to operate a Travellers' Information Station (Google for FCC 90.242). 90.242 describes low-power AM transmission. Low-power FM transmission has also been available for the same uses since January 2000.
/travellers information entities, but not individuals or commercial operations."
Even with a S.T.A. issued allowing for slightly different use of the proposed station in this situation, I see two primary problems. They are not tied to either the entity that has the information to be broadcast or to the location needing service, and they can't broadcast music. (By tied to the location, the example of a fairground operator providing directions, bus and carpooling information comes to mind) Unless FEMA or local agencies chose to give these people the information they claim to want to broadcast, they have no particular qualifications to do so. Without the Emergency Alert System hardware that other broadcasters must have, they could very easily have worse than normal access to critical information. If one looks at the need for a good system of distributing information on more continuous basis than what normally happens with the emergency alert system, there would be something for people to tune into all over when on the highways. Then people could know at some distance if a particular shelter site was full, if they needed to go somewhere else, what routes were blocked, where fuel, water and food were available etc.
It sounds like there was the seed of a potential good idea, but it was recognized that these were the wrong people to carry it out.
Here are related quotes from F.C.C. information:
"In January 2000 FCC created a low power FM radio service. These stations are available to noncommercial educational entities and public safety
"(7) Travelers Information Stations shall transmit only noncommercial voice information pertaining to traffic and road conditions, traffic hazard and travel advisories, directions, availability of lodging, rest stops and service stations, and descriptions of local points of interest. It is not permissible to identify the commercial name of any business establishment whose service may be available within or outside the coverage area of a Travelers Information Station. However, to facilitate announcements concerning departures/arrivals and parking areas at air, train, and bus terminals, the trade name identification of carriers is permitted."
In the United States the authority governing radio stations is the Federal Communications Commission. I'll refer you to the Code Of Federal Regulations, title 47, parts 17 and 70 through 79. Part 90 covers Travellers' Information Stations.
If the F.C.C. grants a traditional AM or FM broadcast license outside the dome and the licensee has a location to broadcast from, no one else has the authority to tell them not to broadcast to people in the dome. There can be other obsticles, but they are not target-audience related.
The studio and transmitter locations must be compatible with local zoning requirements. Many areas have environmental restrictions on towers. It's mainly a matter of people not wanting to look at them in their own backyard. Also there are tower lighting and marking requirements for certain antenna structures depending on structure height and proximity to local airports.
There are also rules to keep people a safe distance from extremely strong radio-frequency electromagnetic fields. Due to problems with people filing for licenses and then trying to sell a station
There's no reason why local radio stations can't provide the needed information. Even if the Clear Channel stations are not very helpful, I'm sure that local public/college stations could fill the need. And if the proposed transmitter is really powerful enough to require a license, there is no reason why these people couldn't provide adequate signal coverage of the area FROM OUTSIDE THE ASTRODOME.
Hasn't this place got a scoreboard with text capability?
Those tests have very little to do with what you hear. Tilt on a 20 Hz squarewave when driving a low impedance load such as headphones is the result of the output coupling capacitor and the load acting as a simple high-pass filter. The change in waveshape is not an indication of distortion from non-linearty. In other words, it isn't showing addition of undersired harmonics, nor creating of sum/difference frequencies through intermodulation. It simply shows the combined effects of phase shifts and rolloff at very low frequencies. Since the input of a stereo system is far higher impedance, the low frequency effect shown IS NOT A PROBLEM AT ALL when feeding your stereo. The effects of lossy compression are FAR more important, and are not shown at all by the squarewave tests. The sweep pink noise measurements are not very useful either, since the output isn't corrected for the noise being pink. If it were, an ideal response would be a horizontal line. Then it would be easy to see rolloff at the extremes. But the variations in a line that is already sloped are not as easily interpreted.
One could take a 20 Hz squarewave sampled with only 8 bits instead of 16, sampled at only 11 kHz instead of 44.1, and then use 32 kbps compression AND STILL HAVE A FLAT SQUAREWAVE. Of course music processed that way would sound awful. My point is this test is not one for judging overall audio quality.
Low-frequency tilt on a squarewave is visible even when the amplitude loss is small. On an otherwise excellent system using excellent recordings low-frequency phase shifts affect the feel of the impact of instruments such as the snare drum. If you're really a purist, you'll care about absolute phase. Is the transient that hits you chest on hear a snare drum a pressure increase or a decrease? If the signal is inverted anywhere down the line, the absolute phase will be wrong. Of course simply reversing the leads on both speakers can correct that. With normal recordings and equipment you probably won't be able to tell any difference though. (not that I am NOT talking about reversing the leads on only one channel).
Forgive me if I sound far out. I've been around since the days when some audiophiles would reverse the leads on one channel of a phono cartridge and on one speaker so that a transient common to both channels would have one channel loading the positive power supply more heavily while the other loaded the negative so there would be higher average power supply voltage available.
If you'd really like to be upset by squarewave testing, feed a squarewave into your stereo system (be careful that it's not too loud) and look at what a high quality microphone sees coming from your speakers. Many speaker systems don't compensate for the average point of radiation of a low-frequency driver being further away than the higher frequency drivers, so the spikes of the rising and falling edges of the squarewave show up to the left (earlier) than the body of it. And because many speakers have crossovers with phase shifts that can cause cancellation at the crossover frequency, it isn't uncommon for the high-frequency driver to be hooked up with the leads reversed. The spikes of the rising and falling edges of the squarewave will go the wrong direction!!! Perhaps you have equipment that isn't designed that way, but many do.
Squarewave tests have uses, but those linked here might as well have been used to show WMD. They don't show THD.
Output stages in almost all high-level audio circuits use a pair of transistors with one pulling the output up for one half of the waveform and the other pulling it down for the other. When there are positive and negative voltages available with respect to the output ground connection, the output can rest at zero with no signal and the load can be directly connected. If there is a supply of one polarity the output rests at half the supply voltage. That's when a coupling capacitor is used to avoid having that DC voltage cause a constant current through the load.
I didn't go very far into the process since I don't need aid, but I got as far as the form where personal data would be entered by using the current beta of iCab for Mac OS X. I set iCab to identify itself as Explorer (twice, browser ID and Javascript ID).
Apple hardly deserves to be labeled as a company of the past. They've continually proved to be innovative, and have shown willingness to make major changes at any level when it helps them move forward.
The article wasn't taking about Apple threatening Microsoft as a hardware company. They don't appear to be planning to compete in selling gaming consoles. Clearly the major potential threat from Apple could come from competing OS SOFTWARE sales should they decide to go there. Putting an older or lite version of an OS installer on a iPod would be using the iPod as a promotional tool. Putting an AOL disk in a cereal box or magazine is essentially the same idea, although it is hard to imagine that boosting the sales of those products very much.
Even if you are entirely right about a shift of many applications to web-services, it is shortsighted to think that Apple hasn't got a big opportunity to be the OS software provider for machines used to access those services. Anyone entering data that matters isn't going to want to do it from a machine infected with a key-logger or other malware. Whether it is a complete OS/hardware bundle or the OS only, Apple certainly could offer something relevant to dealing with such problems.
Using web services would seem to make more sense for some business applications than for consumers. I think consumers prefer to have their most personal data, pictures, music and video on their own machines when possible.
While I agree most already have as powerful of hardware as they need for common tasks, there is still room for new areas of demand. Surely some see potential opportunities with high end consumer hardware being able to handle HD video as we approach the end of NTSC TV broadcasting in the US.
We're also close to seeing the next generation of DVDs. We're not just talking about computer owners upgrading, anyone with a television set might be a potential customer for the right product at the right price. Some things that are too costly for most right now might not be later. Perhaps you recall that the day before Apple introduced the G4's with a DVD burner just a raw Pioneer drive was $5000. Things can change quickly.
Apple seems to be able to move more quickly than many other companies in either hardware or software. I wouldn't be so quick to write them off as "a company of the past".
I'll go along with most of the reasons given so far for reduced attendance, but if some others feel as I do, factors behind the trend also go deeper on a more personal level.
1) I feel a bitterness towards the major studios. It parallels the way I feel towards Microsoft, Wal-Mart or Clear Channel. I resent having to sit through legal and anti-piracy notices on DVDs that I buy or rent. I resent the heavy handed push to control technology, especially the broadcast flag efforts. I resent the high prices. I resent advertising that goes beyond trailers. I'm more apt to attend a smaller but well-run locally owned moviehouse than go to one of the big-chain multi-screen megaplexes.
2) I find it harder to make decent income at at time when gas and housing costs are skyrocketing.. The current U.S. political and economic climate gives me a feeling of carrying debt beyond my own, adding to feelings of needing to be increasingly selective about spending. Most movies seem a poor value to me.
3) I feel pressure to be more selective in spending time also. Just as things like the net have cut into tv viewing time, there's also less freely burnable time for the theatre. Many movies aren't worth my time alone, and they piles of cash too? I might as well wait until they're on tv, which I usually treat as only a background process.
4) Anytime-news-access on the net, PVRs, iPod music, and now Podcasts have increased my natural thirst for getting what I want WHEN I WANT IT. I'm increasingly becoming less willing to plan my life around a tv, radio or movie schedule.
Over time it seems that the broadcasting, cable, music and movie industries have become increasingly optimized as corporate profit engines (short-term anyway) while becoming too far and increasingly removed from nurturing the arts they depend on or the public good. It has reached the point where I feel it is my duty as a citizen to avoid supporting them if possible.
The one movie I saw this summer that left me feeling really good was March Of The Penguins. The rest were a waste of my time.
If we get more advanced battery technology I hope it is used to give us better runtime instead of encouraging development of laptops that cook my balls!
My current laptop is hotter than I'd like already. Better performance/watt CPUs are a step in the right direction.
I'd be happy to see my desktop use less energy too. Besides being good for the budget and the global environment, it could also permit quieter cooling systems. (I suspect that Apple is the only company that looks at the whole picture enough to actually optimize and balance the design for cooling/noise)
Hopefully these Intel chips will be a good thing for everyone including Apple users. I just hope the transition doesn't give OS X any binary compatibility with PC/Windows malware. I've wondered if a PC binary not needing the Windows API could be launched from Terminal on Mac X86.
All Sony needs to do now is leverage their video expertise into audio. I'm thinking they'll do something along the lines of an audible FBI warning and promos playing before the start of every song...
I haven't yet used a meter to see how much the power comsumption is going up, but through use of the menubar utility Menu Meters, I've caught CPU use being unexpectedly high at times. Even without meausuring the power I'm certain that it increases, as my old TiBook fires up the fan after these periods of high CPU activity.
The primary source of unexpected CPU load for me turned out to be certain animated banner/skyscraper animated ads. I haven't looked at page source to figure out just what they were, but I suspect Flash. Reloading pages and getting the ads to change has brought the CPU use back to very low levels while sitting on a page. I've even seen these high-cpu ads on Slashdot at times.
Although I haven't seen a problem with any Apple-supplied Dashboard Widgets, some third-party widgets use more CPU than I'd expect when they're in the background.
The Options section of the Energy Saver control panel allows setting reduced processor performance. That helps too. Separate settings are available for battery and adaptor operation. I find myself using the "reduced" setting even for adaptor operation at times just because I don't like the computer to get so hot. It's fine on a glass desktop or coffee table, but really cooks on a bedspread!
Activity Monitor should help spot processes that are using the CPU heavily. It and Menu Meters can show disk activity also, but I haven't found a way to tell which processes are using the disk. I haven't noticed much activity I'd attribute to Spotlight, except when first connecting a Firewire drive.
It is very easy to see what's going on with power consumption if you measure the power going into the AC adaptor (best done when you've reached the fully charged state, but you can still see changes while charging).
I use a small meter I picked up at Radio Shack called the "Kill A Watt". It makes it very easy to see how much effect things like screen brightness settings have (a bunch).
I think many on Slashdot would find one of those meters useful. They're very handy for spotting things around the house that use power even when off. Using one was enough to get me to swap most of my generic AC adaptors with transformers for the variety with switching supplies (most easily identified by their lower weight).
Tests revealed that even my soldering stations had the transformer cores energized when "off". I rewired them to put the power switch before the transformer instead of after. Metering also easily showed the effects of over (and under) clocking PCs here. Watching power consumption everywhere not only helps laptop battery life, but the environment and the the budget. A fast and dirty rule of thumb I use for estimating cost is $1 a month for every 10 Watts that's consumed 24 hours a day. (Those AC adaptors, cable/satellite boxes, routers, VCRs, microwave ovens, doorbells, thermostats, amplified speakers, remote-control devices etc are probably all using some power all the time!)
Or Vista Virus...
An elitist group known as The Living has long believed that they were inherently superior to their rivals The Dead, but statistics are showing a shift and some clear advantages for The Dead.
The Dead use no gasoline, an advantage increasing over time as prices rise and supplies dwindle.
The Dead never argue.
The Dead are more loyal. While there are rumors of switchers, there are only proven cases of switching from The Living to The Dead, not the reverse.
Some evidence of future switchers has been seen in political office where The Brain Dead have a significant presence.
The Dead have a well established installed base.
Some of The Dead give their all for recycling.
The Living are still generally more highly regarded for dating even though some are only vaguely familiar with the activity.
The stated reason for the switch doesn't have to be the only reason or even the real reason. If Apple wants the option of someday competing head to head against Windows on other vendors' Intel-class hardware, they've got to get the compatible applications built and do so without killing their installed base. They're on a roadmap that does just that.
Having some life ahead in the current line of CPUs and still switching isn't without precedence either. Apple made the transition from the 68040 to PPC even though the 68060 was on the horizon.
Simply spending more time on the computer, whether it be reading spam or Slashdot, is apt to make me forget about the time and be less likely to cook up a large meal.
If Apple gained rights to some technology when Motorola and IBM didn't deliver, perhaps they could bring Altivec to Intel?