I'll bet Apple are glad that nVidia are around so people still have something to complain about when they unveil their new machines. Especially the Macbook Pro - now it'll have two failure-prone components, built right in.;)
The case is going to have pretty poor airflow too (you don't have the usual wind-tunnel setup) so a silent, passively-cooled machine is the way to go. Alternatively you could use water cooling to relay heat to a large radiator setup, evading both issues.
Oh, I agree, it's all about how much this affects the price rather than the details of Apple's manufacturing process (unless it's something they can make money from licencing to others, which I doubt). Whether it's through new fab methods or magic pixie dust, the staggering idea is that Macs might become spec-for-spec cheaper than PCs, in addition to their current aesthetic and software advantages. That would be really game-changing.
Exactly. The Turing Test is interesting, but I think that the really important AI research has little to do with headline-grabbing stories about how amazing the machines are at fooling people in conversations. A machine which can not only solve but pose its own questions would be much more provocative.
There's a grain of truth there, in that the current generation of Macbooks had problems with the palmrests discolouring after a few weeks of use. AFAIK this was resolved back in two thousand and six.
I think HP make some of those, just without OSX. I kid, but what they really need is a decent graphics card on their consumer range and to drum up developer support for MacOS-specific games.
When everything is knocked up in China on a cost basis, you lose something in the way of aesthetics.
Apple's machines are knocked up in China, strictly speaking. Like HP, Dell, etc. they mostly contract Chinese firms to build hardware to their designs.
The "new case" really is the interesting part if various rumours are to be believed. Word has it that Apple's fabricating the shells from aluminium using a proprietary laser/hydro cutter setup, and has slashed costs as a result. They may even be constructing the shells and assembling the machines in-house now, something they dabbled with in the past. A leaked price list for the new range of notebooks includes a $800 machine that may well be the new entry-level Macbook.
That's the non-technical solution, which involves educating users about hearing loss etc. etc. and isn't flashy enough to impress government figures or the media. The flashy, sure to be endorsed technical solution is mandatory audio player volume limits, as we have in Europe. Frankly I think they only help fuel the insufferable loudness war.
While it's very vogueish to make comparisons with Apple products lately, Sony's Cambridge studio are the group that spring to mind when it comes to gestural webcam-based interfaces. On a related note, their original Eyetoy tech demos were similarly "keyed to color", using large foam props, although the end product worked on skintones and therefore was heavily dependent on good lighting and contrast. They patented a "wand" with coloured LEDs back in 2005 which provided a reasonable compromise between the two (a month or two before the Wii Controller popped up, and made it all look passe).
It depends where you go. Europe's nowhere near as litigious as the US (yet), but there's a lot of regulation and testing with regards to product safety, so I'd say that products are every bit as safe as those in the US. And give me a BS 1363 plug over those crazy things you stick in your walls any day of the week.;)
Walmart's switching to plain MP3 either way. The studios have absolutely nothing to gain by forcing Walmart to continue running its DRM servers after they do so.
Okay, it's not literally a waveform, that's a semantic cludge by yours truly. To be more pedantic, you're taking a compressed audio file, unpacking that into a 40-something kilohertz 16-bit audio file, compression artefacts and all, and then the audio compression reads that audio file as though the recording artefacts were an original component of the record as it doesn't know any better. Therefore by necessity the resultant recompressed file is mathematically different than the original file. You can imagine the compression process is some function c(x)=y, and there's no reason to suppose that anything resembling a real audio file will give you c(y)=y.
If the DRM servers stay on, the customers continue to use the files they paid for. If the DRM servers switch off, those files will become useless at some point in the future and must be repurchased, making money for aforementioned studios. If everyone's switching to DRM-free music, you can bet the studios want them to switch their DRM servers off too.
Not quite. Burning the CD converts those bits into an analogue waveform, containing all the original compression artefacts from the first ripping operation. Re-ripping that disk will convert that analogue waveform back into bits, but necessarily with some data loss (it's lossy compression after all) so the new file has some additional compression artefacts on those original compression artefacts and isn't quite the same file you burned in the first place. It'll be subjectively nigh-identical though.
"Where necessary for a customer to continue exercising his or her rights on the media." If they take away the rights that you paid for - which is the whole damn product when you buy something with DRM - then it is entirely reasonable that you can circumvent the DMCA to regain those rights.
Well, the government pays people to look after the elderly with taxpayers' money, to be exact. I imagine that only a very small fraction of taxpayers ever personally help an elderly neighbour with their groceries, or offer to mow their lawn, sadly enough. Although that would work out a lot cheaper for the taxpayer in the end, I suspect.
Of course, they'll pick lead-free toys given the choice, but to let them know what ones are lead free, you have to have some oversight of the products, or the manufacturing process, or goods coming in at import. I'd say my overall point is that there's got to be some oversight of the the "invisible" aspects of a product that the customer cannot readily assess on his own, be it environmental damage, worker rights, or the chemical safety issues of the product itself.
This does raise the tantalising question of whether it would be sufficient to just tell customers this information, after it's been gathered, and let the market decide how safe it wants its products to be. On the other hand, does the government have an obligation to set hard limits on top of that? Would the poor wind up fuelling a market for environmentally, ethically, and medically dangerous products?
Part of the 1976 copyright act (quoted below) includes "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" as a consideration in fair use. That's a big one, I'm sure, in situations where the rights owner objected to the work their material was being featured in. It's not clear that Ono objected because it's Expelled, she's protective in general, and arguably Imagine already has near zero market value these days anyway, but it's worth thinking about. If I were to create a movie about how fun it was to squish kittens, over a looped extract from Don't Stop Me Now, it might not qualify as fair use for example.
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To be fair, they are a "slimline" range, and therefore probably use notebook components.
I'll bet Apple are glad that nVidia are around so people still have something to complain about when they unveil their new machines. Especially the Macbook Pro - now it'll have two failure-prone components, built right in. ;)
In retrospect, that is asking for trouble.
The case is going to have pretty poor airflow too (you don't have the usual wind-tunnel setup) so a silent, passively-cooled machine is the way to go. Alternatively you could use water cooling to relay heat to a large radiator setup, evading both issues.
Zavvi nee Virgin and HMV stock '80s US shows by the barrel-load also. They seem to be selling.
Oh, I agree, it's all about how much this affects the price rather than the details of Apple's manufacturing process (unless it's something they can make money from licencing to others, which I doubt). Whether it's through new fab methods or magic pixie dust, the staggering idea is that Macs might become spec-for-spec cheaper than PCs, in addition to their current aesthetic and software advantages. That would be really game-changing.
Exactly. The Turing Test is interesting, but I think that the really important AI research has little to do with headline-grabbing stories about how amazing the machines are at fooling people in conversations. A machine which can not only solve but pose its own questions would be much more provocative.
There's a grain of truth there, in that the current generation of Macbooks had problems with the palmrests discolouring after a few weeks of use. AFAIK this was resolved back in two thousand and six.
I think HP make some of those, just without OSX. I kid, but what they really need is a decent graphics card on their consumer range and to drum up developer support for MacOS-specific games.
When everything is knocked up in China on a cost basis, you lose something in the way of aesthetics.
Apple's machines are knocked up in China, strictly speaking. Like HP, Dell, etc. they mostly contract Chinese firms to build hardware to their designs.
The "new case" really is the interesting part if various rumours are to be believed. Word has it that Apple's fabricating the shells from aluminium using a proprietary laser/hydro cutter setup, and has slashed costs as a result. They may even be constructing the shells and assembling the machines in-house now, something they dabbled with in the past. A leaked price list for the new range of notebooks includes a $800 machine that may well be the new entry-level Macbook.
That's the non-technical solution, which involves educating users about hearing loss etc. etc. and isn't flashy enough to impress government figures or the media. The flashy, sure to be endorsed technical solution is mandatory audio player volume limits, as we have in Europe. Frankly I think they only help fuel the insufferable loudness war.
This is region-locked the US also.
he's your new fucking god.
Maybe I'm parsing this incorrectly, but you seem to have a somewhat unique insight into his abilities in bed.
While it's very vogueish to make comparisons with Apple products lately, Sony's Cambridge studio are the group that spring to mind when it comes to gestural webcam-based interfaces. On a related note, their original Eyetoy tech demos were similarly "keyed to color", using large foam props, although the end product worked on skintones and therefore was heavily dependent on good lighting and contrast. They patented a "wand" with coloured LEDs back in 2005 which provided a reasonable compromise between the two (a month or two before the Wii Controller popped up, and made it all look passe).
It depends where you go. Europe's nowhere near as litigious as the US (yet), but there's a lot of regulation and testing with regards to product safety, so I'd say that products are every bit as safe as those in the US. And give me a BS 1363 plug over those crazy things you stick in your walls any day of the week. ;)
Walmart's switching to plain MP3 either way. The studios have absolutely nothing to gain by forcing Walmart to continue running its DRM servers after they do so.
Okay, it's not literally a waveform, that's a semantic cludge by yours truly. To be more pedantic, you're taking a compressed audio file, unpacking that into a 40-something kilohertz 16-bit audio file, compression artefacts and all, and then the audio compression reads that audio file as though the recording artefacts were an original component of the record as it doesn't know any better. Therefore by necessity the resultant recompressed file is mathematically different than the original file. You can imagine the compression process is some function c(x)=y, and there's no reason to suppose that anything resembling a real audio file will give you c(y)=y.
Hey, it worked for Vista.
If the DRM servers stay on, the customers continue to use the files they paid for. If the DRM servers switch off, those files will become useless at some point in the future and must be repurchased, making money for aforementioned studios. If everyone's switching to DRM-free music, you can bet the studios want them to switch their DRM servers off too.
Not quite. Burning the CD converts those bits into an analogue waveform, containing all the original compression artefacts from the first ripping operation. Re-ripping that disk will convert that analogue waveform back into bits, but necessarily with some data loss (it's lossy compression after all) so the new file has some additional compression artefacts on those original compression artefacts and isn't quite the same file you burned in the first place. It'll be subjectively nigh-identical though.
"Where necessary for a customer to continue exercising his or her rights on the media." If they take away the rights that you paid for - which is the whole damn product when you buy something with DRM - then it is entirely reasonable that you can circumvent the DMCA to regain those rights.
Well, the government pays people to look after the elderly with taxpayers' money, to be exact. I imagine that only a very small fraction of taxpayers ever personally help an elderly neighbour with their groceries, or offer to mow their lawn, sadly enough. Although that would work out a lot cheaper for the taxpayer in the end, I suspect.
Of course, they'll pick lead-free toys given the choice, but to let them know what ones are lead free, you have to have some oversight of the products, or the manufacturing process, or goods coming in at import. I'd say my overall point is that there's got to be some oversight of the the "invisible" aspects of a product that the customer cannot readily assess on his own, be it environmental damage, worker rights, or the chemical safety issues of the product itself.
This does raise the tantalising question of whether it would be sufficient to just tell customers this information, after it's been gathered, and let the market decide how safe it wants its products to be. On the other hand, does the government have an obligation to set hard limits on top of that? Would the poor wind up fuelling a market for environmentally, ethically, and medically dangerous products?
Part of the 1976 copyright act (quoted below) includes "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" as a consideration in fair use. That's a big one, I'm sure, in situations where the rights owner objected to the work their material was being featured in. It's not clear that Ono objected because it's Expelled, she's protective in general, and arguably Imagine already has near zero market value these days anyway, but it's worth thinking about. If I were to create a movie about how fun it was to squish kittens, over a looped extract from Don't Stop Me Now, it might not qualify as fair use for example.