The size difference between 128kbps MP3 and FLAC is 2x-8x. How long did it take for ipods to increase capacity by 2x-8x?
I think most Internet music stores focus on hosting and bandwidth costs, more than playback device capacity, when choosing the bitrate of their product.
While FIOS has started rolling out in many large markets, I think its safe to say most people have not experienced increases in internet access speed that would make them want to download 50 MB song files. Remember, for most of these people 128 kbps sounds "good enough".
AAC is not Apple Proprietary, it is in fact License and Royalty Free and a superior Codec. Hence the reason that it is pushed as MP3's successor.
That is also incorrect. T.T
From Daring Fireball: "For up to 400,000 units per year, AAC playback costs $1.00 per unit; for more than 400,000 units per year, the price drops to $0.74 per unit."
I've always been under the understanding that the only truly free codec is OGG.
I think Fraunhofer pushed AAC as being MP3's successor partially because, at the time, the music labels were looking for someone to blame for music piracy, and they were looking in Fraunhofer's direction since they had invented MP3 but did not include any sort of DRM from the get-go. They wanted the pirates to move off their format to take the heat way.
Apple has their own proprietary format called AAC;
AAC is not an Apple proprietary format.
I believe the only reason this idea ever began is because the iPod was one of the first commercial products to support it, and at the time it was a relatively new format, so to laymen the only thing that could play AAC was an iPod. Since they never bothered to find out what AAC stood for, they decided it must be "Apple Audio Codec" since that fit their pre-conceived idea it was an Apple-only format.
AAC was developed by Dolby labs if I remember right, and many other portable music players support it now, including Sony's newer digital music players and some cell phones.
Everyone in the immediate vicinity dialed 911 on their cell phones and got put in a queue (this is california and I think all 911's go to the state patrol first). I hung up the cell and picked up the nearest land line and dialed 911 and got a local 911 operator right away and she called for an ambulance which came about 5 minutes later.
So how is this the cell phone's fault? The problem is your state has some dumb call routing procedures.
That's a pretty good guess as to how the initial release will work. Then the EFF will have to file a lawsuit or something arguing that the documents are too redacted and don't fulfill the request. Then we're back in a long, protracted court case.
Im not sure if they can, given the atmosphere of lame duck surrounding the administration right now.
That's exactly why they will ignore it. It's a lame duck administration, it's not like they have to worry about getting re-elected. It's the last year or so of the Bush administration, there's nothing to lose.
What happens when they do ignore the court order? Nothing?
Pretty much. Undoing things and removing people in power is incredibly difficult in Government, not necessarily because the procedures are long winded, but because its a representative democracy so the people can't do it themselves.
If someone commits a crime against you, you can't put them in jail yourself, you can't seek charges against them yourself, ect. You have to have the police arrest them, but there's no rule saying the police have to arrest someone, either. So you really have to find a cop who's willing to go to the trouble to arrest them, and a prosecutor who will attempt to prosecute them. Of course, these are these people's jobs, but the fact remains they don't always do them.
It's the same with government. Even if there's an overwhelming amount of evidence the president did this or did that, and those things are illegal, they don't automatically get in trouble for it. Congress has to agree that the action was serious enough to warrant them getting off their asses to do something. And with party politics you'll have a bunch of people who will agree with the president and therefore feel he's doing nothing wrong, even if law books say he is. So they wont want to do anything, and without the needed majority agreement nothing will.
Those 'critics' need to calm down sometimes, not every large corporation out there is trying to destroy the 'sanctity of GPL' at every opportunity.
Neither are they trying to comply with it, unless someone points out their mistake.
I mean, we're talking about source code that is already written. They have a disc marked "master source code for product rev 1" somewhere, it takes pretty much zilch extra effort to have that included with the product. Just duplicate it and throw it in. The fact they had to make a different "cleaned up" version just confirms my suspicions as to why they didn't release it to begin with; the actual source code has programming hacks and embarrassing comments in it, like some previous examples of closed-source code that has been forced in to public view by the courts.
Because they are the government agency that was granted this power by the legislative branch, which was granted its power by you.
Can police arrest me for saying "Fuck" in a public place?
Depending on where you are, yes they can. State and local decency laws exist in many areas making swearing an actual crime, although generally they would fine you rather than taking you to jail.
What part about Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech is so hard to understand?
Weaselly loophole here. The decency standards are more under the control of the FCC, not Congress itself, so Congress has not actually not made any laws abridging freedom of speech, the FCC did. Also note that freedoms stop when they interfere with others' rights.
The abundance of "lists as articles" makes me want to vomit, but this one takes the cake. They just randomly put down ten tech mistakes in an ad-baiting format (click here to see the next on the list - we won't tell you what it is, but if you click here, we'll get more ad revenue!). What's the time period? What are the criteria for selection?
Because you still have to hook it to a steam turbine (again, the battery analogy fails badly).
Yeah, that was bothering me, too. I was having trouble seeing how one gets electrical power with no moving parts without chemicals being involved, but I felt too lazy too see if the PR people explained it in TFA.
Isn't there a program where small portable nuclear reactors ( larger than a hot tub) are placed in poor/3rd world regions (think sub-Saharan Africa) to provide power in areas there. I seem to remember those being billed as sealed "black-box style" units that didn't require maintenance, either. I see no difference to this as far as risks go.
SMS's put virtually no load at all on the network infrastructure. Surely some carrier could attract business with free unlimited messages, and it wouldn't cost them a thing.
.Logic_Error
With unlimited texting, there's much less incentive to call someone and speak to them, hence why do I need a 1000 min cellphone plan then, the much cheaper 250 minute one would be fine.
Despite it's 'small' size the company that is planning to develop the product (Hyperion Power Generation), claims it could power up to 25,000 homes.
Why don't they make one that's much smaller and could power a single home, then sell them to homeowners. I'd love to live off the grid and have my power not dependent on a system of under-maintained wires.
If you can get 25,000 homes off a hot-tub sized unit, how about one the size of my electric meter box for one family? Remove electric meter, hook up reactor "battery" where it was. Easy and uncomplicated installation.
Why don't these huge stores buy servers that can take the strain?
I used to work for the Dept of Education (by way of a subcontractor) and the site I supported (the one your submit you government college financial aid form through) had the same problem. Several times a year it would slow to a crawl or not really be usable at all. The days this happened were the days that states required forms be filed by to be eligible. Despite the fact there are 365 days in a year, it seemed there were only a dozen or so days that states would choose as their deadline days, so we'd always have at least a few states all due on the same day.
Anyway, the question you just asked used to come up a lot. "Why don't they just buy more servers/capacity?" The answer is because the difference in traffic is so huge between these days and "normal" days it would simply cost too much to maintain that sort of capacity. And (in our case at least) the security required for the app and data keeps a temporary bandwidth solution from being viable solution.
Note: in the case of the FAFSA, it was ultimately the users themselves who were at fault for the slowdown, it not like an 18-hour shopping sale where you have to be there in a small time window, the form was available year round, it just happens that most people wait till the [i]last possible day[/i] to do it, then complain about the traffic jam (I'm looking at you, California!).
legislation like this is coming from a country known for it's underage sex industry.
Why don't you guys work on breaking up the "tourism" that goes on in your country (which exists due to local police corruption in many cases) before you start passing unenforceable edicts on cyberspace? Kthnxbai.
The good news for Amazon here is that people have amazingly short memories, but their timing might cost them a few bucks if this gets picked up on by someone like Walt Mossberg.
Their memories may be amazingly short, but so is the Christmas shopping season. What a great way to kick it off Amazon!
Large corporations will love this. Every time the property tax abatement runs out on their current data center location, they can just lay off all the employees and truck the data center to another city.
They have levels to allow someone to measure how far they have progressed in the game. When your friends ask how far you've gotten, you can say "Level 42" or whatever and they can tell where you are relative to them in the game as a whole, not "well I got to the big black tower after the underground dungeon..." "What underground dungeon?" "Oh, it comes after you get in the airship and..."
Yeah, just think about how this conversation goes for a game like Super Mario Bros, verses an RPG like Final Fantasy and the reason for levels becomes obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
I think most Internet music stores focus on hosting and bandwidth costs, more than playback device capacity, when choosing the bitrate of their product.
While FIOS has started rolling out in many large markets, I think its safe to say most people have not experienced increases in internet access speed that would make them want to download 50 MB song files. Remember, for most of these people 128 kbps sounds "good enough".
That is also incorrect. T.T
From Daring Fireball:
"For up to 400,000 units per year, AAC playback costs $1.00 per unit; for more than 400,000 units per year, the price drops to $0.74 per unit."
I've always been under the understanding that the only truly free codec is OGG.
I think Fraunhofer pushed AAC as being MP3's successor partially because, at the time, the music labels were looking for someone to blame for music piracy, and they were looking in Fraunhofer's direction since they had invented MP3 but did not include any sort of DRM from the get-go. They wanted the pirates to move off their format to take the heat way.
AAC is not an Apple proprietary format.
I believe the only reason this idea ever began is because the iPod was one of the first commercial products to support it, and at the time it was a relatively new format, so to laymen the only thing that could play AAC was an iPod. Since they never bothered to find out what AAC stood for, they decided it must be "Apple Audio Codec" since that fit their pre-conceived idea it was an Apple-only format.
AAC was developed by Dolby labs if I remember right, and many other portable music players support it now, including Sony's newer digital music players and some cell phones.
Well I, for one, welcome our new higher education engineering overlords!
I remind them that the current administration might make excellent test subjects for the armored autonomous vehicle's weapons systems.
In Soviet Russia, malware reports YOU!
Perhaps they wrote it as a journal entry, and they have their journal set to automatically submit to stories.
So how is this the cell phone's fault? The problem is your state has some dumb call routing procedures.
That's a pretty good guess as to how the initial release will work. Then the EFF will have to file a lawsuit or something arguing that the documents are too redacted and don't fulfill the request. Then we're back in a long, protracted court case.
That's exactly why they will ignore it. It's a lame duck administration, it's not like they have to worry about getting re-elected. It's the last year or so of the Bush administration, there's nothing to lose.
Pretty much. Undoing things and removing people in power is incredibly difficult in Government, not necessarily because the procedures are long winded, but because its a representative democracy so the people can't do it themselves.
If someone commits a crime against you, you can't put them in jail yourself, you can't seek charges against them yourself, ect. You have to have the police arrest them, but there's no rule saying the police have to arrest someone, either. So you really have to find a cop who's willing to go to the trouble to arrest them, and a prosecutor who will attempt to prosecute them. Of course, these are these people's jobs, but the fact remains they don't always do them.
It's the same with government. Even if there's an overwhelming amount of evidence the president did this or did that, and those things are illegal, they don't automatically get in trouble for it. Congress has to agree that the action was serious enough to warrant them getting off their asses to do something. And with party politics you'll have a bunch of people who will agree with the president and therefore feel he's doing nothing wrong, even if law books say he is. So they wont want to do anything, and without the needed majority agreement nothing will.
And the crook gets away with it.
They think they are above the law already.
Neither are they trying to comply with it, unless someone points out their mistake.
I mean, we're talking about source code that is already written. They have a disc marked "master source code for product rev 1" somewhere, it takes pretty much zilch extra effort to have that included with the product. Just duplicate it and throw it in. The fact they had to make a different "cleaned up" version just confirms my suspicions as to why they didn't release it to begin with; the actual source code has programming hacks and embarrassing comments in it, like some previous examples of closed-source code that has been forced in to public view by the courts.
Oh? You must have not seen the "our favorite switches" article?
You could go back with a laser on your head (going off the previous comment).
Yeah, that was bothering me, too. I was having trouble seeing how one gets electrical power with no moving parts without chemicals being involved, but I felt too lazy too see if the PR people explained it in TFA.
Isn't there a program where small portable nuclear reactors ( larger than a hot tub) are placed in poor/3rd world regions (think sub-Saharan Africa) to provide power in areas there. I seem to remember those being billed as sealed "black-box style" units that didn't require maintenance, either. I see no difference to this as far as risks go.
With unlimited texting, there's much less incentive to call someone and speak to them, hence why do I need a 1000 min cellphone plan then, the much cheaper 250 minute one would be fine.
Why don't they make one that's much smaller and could power a single home, then sell them to homeowners. I'd love to live off the grid and have my power not dependent on a system of under-maintained wires.
If you can get 25,000 homes off a hot-tub sized unit, how about one the size of my electric meter box for one family? Remove electric meter, hook up reactor "battery" where it was. Easy and uncomplicated installation.
I used to work for the Dept of Education (by way of a subcontractor) and the site I supported (the one your submit you government college financial aid form through) had the same problem. Several times a year it would slow to a crawl or not really be usable at all. The days this happened were the days that states required forms be filed by to be eligible. Despite the fact there are 365 days in a year, it seemed there were only a dozen or so days that states would choose as their deadline days, so we'd always have at least a few states all due on the same day.
Anyway, the question you just asked used to come up a lot. "Why don't they just buy more servers/capacity?" The answer is because the difference in traffic is so huge between these days and "normal" days it would simply cost too much to maintain that sort of capacity. And (in our case at least) the security required for the app and data keeps a temporary bandwidth solution from being viable solution.
Note: in the case of the FAFSA, it was ultimately the users themselves who were at fault for the slowdown, it not like an 18-hour shopping sale where you have to be there in a small time window, the form was available year round, it just happens that most people wait till the [i]last possible day[/i] to do it, then complain about the traffic jam (I'm looking at you, California!).
legislation like this is coming from a country known for it's underage sex industry.
Why don't you guys work on breaking up the "tourism" that goes on in your country (which exists due to local police corruption in many cases) before you start passing unenforceable edicts on cyberspace? Kthnxbai.
Their memories may be amazingly short, but so is the Christmas shopping season. What a great way to kick it off Amazon!
Large corporations will love this. Every time the property tax abatement runs out on their current data center location, they can just lay off all the employees and truck the data center to another city.
Coming soon: Portable Oil Refineries.
They have levels to allow someone to measure how far they have progressed in the game. When your friends ask how far you've gotten, you can say "Level 42" or whatever and they can tell where you are relative to them in the game as a whole, not "well I got to the big black tower after the underground dungeon..." "What underground dungeon?" "Oh, it comes after you get in the airship and..."
Yeah, just think about how this conversation goes for a game like Super Mario Bros, verses an RPG like Final Fantasy and the reason for levels becomes obvious.
Hey, it worked for the environment. It's only a problem for those of us still alive in 600 years.