I am a Brit, but I fail to see why news of the terror attacks is 'news for nerds'. It is important but it is covered on many sites elsewhere which cover the news from around the world. There is nothing particularly 'technical' about these attacks. They have not resulted in a single death and there appear to be as many casualties among those perpetrating the crimes as those they were attacking (One of each at the latest count. One attacker badly burned and in a critical condition, and 1 innocent bystander treated for a leg injury). So, in terms of 'stuff that matters' they are also probably not particularly exciting to discuss in this forum. I am not saying that the attacks are not significant, nor am I suggesting that they should not be discussed in full, but simply not relevant here.
Er, I meant the same people - as in Dutch. And I believe that there was cooperation between Phillips and various Dutch universities regarding development of the CD which I alluded to in my earlier post, although I couldn't confirm that Radboud Uni was involved. But thank you, I understand your point.
Perhaps we are not seeing the potential. Maybe the advantage will not, ultimately, be manufactured in hard drive terms. But I suspect that there will be a good few bright people thinking of ways to use the fact that you can change the field on a magnetic medium using a laser. If the read/write speed is increased and size of the magnetic field on the medium is reduced by an order or 2 of magnitude then perhaps someone will have a bright idea of how to convert the theory into a working, usable device. Perhaps rotating the medium is not the way to go and it might be possible to control the laser using an alternative technology which makes the whole thing feasible. I'll meet you here on/. in 10 years time and we can see where the path has taken us.....
OK.
Are they making a hard disk with an optical head?
Yes. Or at least they are to my interpretation of using a laser to write to the disk. You can be pedantic if you wish but they haven't claimed something that they haven't done.
And no-one is arguing with any of your other points, which I guess is why they reckon it will take a decade to come up with a workable, deployable solution. Perhaps they are being optimistic but, hey, who knows? The world is full of things that once looked impossible but are now taken for granted. The clever part is that they are changing a magnetic medium using a laser. Lets accept that and now address the other problems.
Which is probably why they said that it will take a decade to produce usable devices. However, that doesn't detract from the discovery or achievement. It is another hurdle passed which will let someone else concentrate on solving the other problems.
I guess you didn't RTFA:
... they used laser light to write data to a magnetic hard drive at very high speeds. The technique works because the photons transmitted by the laser actually carry angular momentum, allowing them to interact with the hard drive. Also, each laser pulse heats a tiny space on the disk just enough to make changing its polarity--thereby storing a bit of data--a little easier. The key is reversing the polarity of the laser pulses, which can produce the equivalent of either a 1 or a 0 of binary code on the disk storage medium.
No, they are not looking at light- or holography-based storage. They are reading and writing a hard drive using laser. That's not bad from the same people that invented the CD (Phillips). I'm still searching Google to see if the same university provided research support to that earlier achievement. Your question is valid however, I don't know why the promised holographic storage has never been produced in large quantities other than it must be proving to be more difficult that either you or I think it should be.
Haven't you seen the developments in CDs and DVDs during that last 30 years? Everybody else has! A DVD is an incredible amount of storage when compared to the 5MB (yes MB!) hard drive or even my cassette tapes that I was using in the late 70s.
Of course, on that basis it will depend on how far back in history you want to go. Rather than cling to the help that you provided to Europe during WW2, why not consider how many native Americans might still be alive if you hadn't taken the actions that you did a few hundred years ago.
It is easy to pick one time in history when events would certainly be on your side, and I'm not contesting that there are not many such times - America has made many valuable contributions to the world - but your 'belief' that your nation is threatened and therefore it demands your intervention in other countries is not viewed by much of the world as being one of your best moves.
The current threat to US citizens is far greater from car accidents or even natural disasters than it is from terrorism. But the billions that are spent in measures to 'protect' the USA (immigration controls, military intervention, beginning the downward slide by losing sight on one's ideals) could be spent far more wisely and to greater effect without pissing off a huge part of the world. I know that the world is far from perfect but what makes you think that you have the right to dictate how it should be, or even that you are the only one to know how a perfect world should be designed?
Unfortunately, this is not simply an American thing. Many other countries, for whatever reason, seem to wish to emulate the USA and follow the same path. I'm not America-bashing; my own birthplace was, until a few days ago, happily going the same way. Perhaps there is a change in the air, perhaps not.... But a few terrorist bombs in London will not result in us attacking another country in the near future. We have witnessed first hand terrorism in the UK for many years, long before it threatened the USA. In fact, a large number of your country men seemed to think that it was a good idea to help fund it. Were they also right in what they did, or can you concede that Americans can also make bad decisions like everyone else on this planet?
we have weapons not even in the arena currently Either you already have the weapons, in which case they are in the arena (i.e. your arsenal), or you haven't, in which case I can smell bovine waste material. Are you suggesting that you, personally, know of weapons that are kept secret from everyone else? Or perhaps you mean that there are plans for weapons but, as yet, the weapons are under development and not yet tested, and therefore not available for use? I am not saying that you are wrong, but the statement is meaningless unless you clarify the claim.
1. I concede that the BBC now collect the licence fee directly. I did not know that this was now happening. However, they act as a subcontractor to HMG in this role; it just makes commonsense and saves money by making them do their own collection and licence enforcement.
2. The BBC is still funded by your licence fee. As is the BBC Monitoring Service which is funded by several government departments, and the World Service which you have acknowledged. So that is at least 3 separate departments that are government funded. I think that BBC World and BBC Worldwide (http://www.bbcworldwide.com/) are run as separate businesses.
3. I do not see anything contentious here. I didn't mean to say that they couldn't use streaming but as a UK citizen with a licence you are entitled to receive it. Well you can, initially with Windows and later with Mac etc. They haven't said that you will have to pay any more than you currently do. However, the BBC must a. enforce licencing (so they have elected to use some form of DRM to make sure that only those with a valid licence can receive the product. That seems fair and in line with what they already do) and b. try to sell their product to those who have not paid for a licence, i.e. those outside the UK (so they have elected to use some form of DRM to make sure that they can control the stream to those who pay and prevent it from being received by those that haven't). They are not taking anything existing away, but they are expanding their services. That would appear, as you have suggested, to be covered by "technologies" which have yet to be developed. I suspect that we both believe that DRM will not work; it will be broken but that is no different from those who watch TV today without paying for a licence.
They are taking a platform-agnostic approach. They are initially using Windows (which has the greatest use in the UK. That is a sensible decision) and they have said that they are working on a Mac version. They haven't said that they won't support linux in the future, or BSD, or the BBC Computer, or whatever. But each of these will throw up different technical issues which are not their current priority.
Other than the fact that the BBC are now actually contracted to do the collection and enforcement, I do not think that I was "Wrong on every single point". But I note the points that you have made and can see your point of view.
LOL. OK, see my other response elsewhere. However, I am a Brit. No, I am not called janrinok - are you called FeatureBug? I am retired and have lived outside of the UK for a little over 6 months. I was employed by the Government, at times in posts related to communications but it is not my specialisation. During my employment I worked in the USA, Canada, Norway, Germany, Holland, France, Belgium, Italy, Bosnia, Croatia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Australia, New Zealand, Iraq, Turkey and elsewhere. I think that understand 'overseas' and happily concede your point about RoI. In addition to English, I speak Russian, German and Serbian (although now all 4 probably badly:-)) and I am concentrating on learning my 5th language, which will be just as bad as the previous 4. We will have to agree to differ but thank you for the debate.
I apologise if I have pasted the wrong version - I found 3 - but the point of the post is to show that there are rules applying to broadcasts. There are similar rules applicable to ALL broadcasts - look at the Amateur Radio Licence or the CB licence for two other easy ones to find on Google. I do not believe I have made a false claim.
A broadcast license is a specific type of spectrum licence that grants the licensee the right to use a portion of the radio frequency spectrum in a given geographical area for broadcasting purposes. (http://www.answers.com/topic/broadcast-license as an example of several sources)
The use of particular frequency is limited to geographic area. This fact, when combined with the licensed transmission power, limits the region covered by that transmission. Both of these technicalities are controlled and enforced by international law, through national bodies which work with the ITU and other agencies, to prevent adjacent channel interference and to ensure effective use worldwide of the electro-magnetic spectrum. The intended audience for the BBC terrestrial service is the UK and the power of individual transmissions is partly decided by the footprint required by a specific transmitter. I accept that daily and seasonal changes make the boundaries blurred as transmissions spill out. I still contend that there is international law limiting the broadcasting of TV transmissions to 'intended audience' but that it isn't written in a way that cannot be enforced (i.e. by stating that is must only be received by people living in a certain place) but in a way that can (i.e. by stipulating frequency and output power).
Now, take the example of something like the Olympic Games or any other event which is of interest globally. If the BBC pays for permission to broadcast the event and also streams it worldwide how will the purchase of the rights by other countries be affected? Such rights are usually sold numerous times to different broadcasters. Whilst this might not be in the consumers' interests it certainly wouldn't be in the BBC's interests to go upsetting all the other broadcasters with which it has to cooperate and work with, or to whom the BBC would like to sell its programs, nor would those selling the rights to broadcast the event be pleased by the marked loss in income. Secondly, it is in the BBC's interest to ensure that where they can deliver streamed content it should be paid for, accepting that they cannot charge the UK citizen who has a right to receive their product if (s)he has a licence. Without, DRM or some other protection they could have no such control. Furthermore, they couldn't hope to sell the actual program to country X if the citizens of country X can already receive the content via streaming. This would actually hurt the BBC's ability to sell its programs. I do not like DRM or the Windows OS but I can understand why the BBC are planning to use it and why they are concentrating initially on compatibility with the Windows OS.
We can argue this until the cows come home but the BBC have not, in my opinion, broken their Charter by planning to stream DRM'd data via the web. I can understand their reasons for the decisions that they have made even though I do not like them.
No, not a marketing shill. The reason for the DRM is to prevent access to the stream for non-British markets, not vice versa. Then they can charge foreigners for receiving the stream which they are quite entitled to do under the Charter. I didn't say they were going to charge British viewers, you must have made that assumption, although I expect they might if they can find a way to do so.
22. Guardians of the licence fee and the public interest
The Trust is the guardian of the licence fee revenue and the public interest in the
BBC. The Trust has the ultimate responsibility, subject to the provisions of this
Charter, for--
(a)
the BBC's stewardship of the licence fee revenue and its other resources..... 23.d.
exercise rigorous stewardship of public money 24.2.e
(e)
approving individual strategic or financial proposals where they stand to
have significant implications for the fulfilment of the purpose remits and
strategies referred to in sub-paragraph (a) or for the overall financial
position of the BBC;
I would suggest that the BBC does have a moral obligation to make profit from its sales of programs overseas although I will agree that it is open to some flexibility of interpretation.
"The Licencee will implement all necessary work on maintenance and adjustments of its radio equipment, in order to ensure that the broadcast of the Licencee is in accordance with the technical Rules of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)." In addition, there are various international protocols, which are covered and enforced by international law, to which the UK is a signatory. Included in such protocols are those which dictate frequency allocations and deconfliction, output powers, transmission of callsigns and/or identifying features, etc
The BBC has asked for the licence fee to be increased because of digital TV broadcasting, not only online streaming, although they do intend to expand the latter as well. Digital TV broadcasting accounts for the lion's share of the £1.2 billion as it requires a huge investment in new (at least for the BBC) technology. If you read my link to BBC Worldwide it clearly states "During 2005/06 BBC Worldwide achieved sales of £784 million. It increased its profit before interest and tax to £89 million." which is somewhat more that the £6.9 million that you are quoting. How much do you think that they are paying for iPlayer?
I'm sure that there are few on this thread that believe that this will help defeat terrorism. And I don't suppose it will improve the tourist trade very much either. I'm glad that America is the home of the brave; I cannot imagine what they might do if they were frightened...
If they were only reaching their existing viewers I would agree. But, if the streaming were widely available worldwide, other countries would argue that the BBC was poaching their viewers which could potentially reduce their own income. Because of this, there are international agreements and protocols with which all nations and broadcasters have to be comply. I agree with your sentiments but, elsewhere in this thread, the discussion has deteriorated into some who are arguing that they simply do not like it. Neither do I, but that doesn't mean that the BBC have done anything wrong in a legal sense or even in a moral one. The fact that we may not like DRM, or use an alternative OS to Windows, doesn't mean that the BBC is forbidden from doing what they are planning to do. It simply is not to our liking and all the debate in the world won't change that fact.
There ARE international laws regarding the broadcasting of TV transmissions. To limit the transmission to its intended audience they feel that they must use DRM. It doesn't matter who owns the programs, they must first comply with their own broadcasting licence (I don't mean your TV licence) and secondly, the BBC is are duty bound to the licence payers (i.e. you) to try to make as much profit from the programs that your money has helped fund. So they want to control where it goes so that they can charge for it if they feel it necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a Brit, but I fail to see why news of the terror attacks is 'news for nerds'. It is important but it is covered on many sites elsewhere which cover the news from around the world. There is nothing particularly 'technical' about these attacks. They have not resulted in a single death and there appear to be as many casualties among those perpetrating the crimes as those they were attacking (One of each at the latest count. One attacker badly burned and in a critical condition, and 1 innocent bystander treated for a leg injury). So, in terms of 'stuff that matters' they are also probably not particularly exciting to discuss in this forum. I am not saying that the attacks are not significant, nor am I suggesting that they should not be discussed in full, but simply not relevant here.
If the police behave as you say, Fred, isn't it time that someone sorted that problem out as well?
Er, I meant the same people - as in Dutch. And I believe that there was cooperation between Phillips and various Dutch universities regarding development of the CD which I alluded to in my earlier post, although I couldn't confirm that Radboud Uni was involved. But thank you, I understand your point.
Perhaps we are not seeing the potential. Maybe the advantage will not, ultimately, be manufactured in hard drive terms. But I suspect that there will be a good few bright people thinking of ways to use the fact that you can change the field on a magnetic medium using a laser. If the read/write speed is increased and size of the magnetic field on the medium is reduced by an order or 2 of magnitude then perhaps someone will have a bright idea of how to convert the theory into a working, usable device. Perhaps rotating the medium is not the way to go and it might be possible to control the laser using an alternative technology which makes the whole thing feasible. I'll meet you here on /. in 10 years time and we can see where the path has taken us.....
Yes. Or at least they are to my interpretation of using a laser to write to the disk. You can be pedantic if you wish but they haven't claimed something that they haven't done.
And no-one is arguing with any of your other points, which I guess is why they reckon it will take a decade to come up with a workable, deployable solution. Perhaps they are being optimistic but, hey, who knows? The world is full of things that once looked impossible but are now taken for granted. The clever part is that they are changing a magnetic medium using a laser. Lets accept that and now address the other problems.
Which is probably why they said that it will take a decade to produce usable devices. However, that doesn't detract from the discovery or achievement. It is another hurdle passed which will let someone else concentrate on solving the other problems.
No, they are not looking at light- or holography-based storage. They are reading and writing a hard drive using laser. That's not bad from the same people that invented the CD (Phillips). I'm still searching Google to see if the same university provided research support to that earlier achievement. Your question is valid however, I don't know why the promised holographic storage has never been produced in large quantities other than it must be proving to be more difficult that either you or I think it should be.
Did you notice that they weren't promising greater storage density, just faster access speeds? This is do-able and still worthwhile.
Haven't you seen the developments in CDs and DVDs during that last 30 years? Everybody else has! A DVD is an incredible amount of storage when compared to the 5MB (yes MB!) hard drive or even my cassette tapes that I was using in the late 70s.
Of course, on that basis it will depend on how far back in history you want to go. Rather than cling to the help that you provided to Europe during WW2, why not consider how many native Americans might still be alive if you hadn't taken the actions that you did a few hundred years ago.
It is easy to pick one time in history when events would certainly be on your side, and I'm not contesting that there are not many such times - America has made many valuable contributions to the world - but your 'belief' that your nation is threatened and therefore it demands your intervention in other countries is not viewed by much of the world as being one of your best moves.
The current threat to US citizens is far greater from car accidents or even natural disasters than it is from terrorism. But the billions that are spent in measures to 'protect' the USA (immigration controls, military intervention, beginning the downward slide by losing sight on one's ideals) could be spent far more wisely and to greater effect without pissing off a huge part of the world. I know that the world is far from perfect but what makes you think that you have the right to dictate how it should be, or even that you are the only one to know how a perfect world should be designed?
Unfortunately, this is not simply an American thing. Many other countries, for whatever reason, seem to wish to emulate the USA and follow the same path. I'm not America-bashing; my own birthplace was, until a few days ago, happily going the same way. Perhaps there is a change in the air, perhaps not.... But a few terrorist bombs in London will not result in us attacking another country in the near future. We have witnessed first hand terrorism in the UK for many years, long before it threatened the USA. In fact, a large number of your country men seemed to think that it was a good idea to help fund it. Were they also right in what they did, or can you concede that Americans can also make bad decisions like everyone else on this planet?
It is not illegal where I am to post that number. I believe that it is only illegal in the USA but I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
1. I concede that the BBC now collect the licence fee directly. I did not know that this was now happening. However, they act as a subcontractor to HMG in this role; it just makes commonsense and saves money by making them do their own collection and licence enforcement.
2. The BBC is still funded by your licence fee. As is the BBC Monitoring Service which is funded by several government departments, and the World Service which you have acknowledged. So that is at least 3 separate departments that are government funded. I think that BBC World and BBC Worldwide (http://www.bbcworldwide.com/) are run as separate businesses.
3. I do not see anything contentious here. I didn't mean to say that they couldn't use streaming but as a UK citizen with a licence you are entitled to receive it. Well you can, initially with Windows and later with Mac etc. They haven't said that you will have to pay any more than you currently do. However, the BBC must a. enforce licencing (so they have elected to use some form of DRM to make sure that only those with a valid licence can receive the product. That seems fair and in line with what they already do) and b. try to sell their product to those who have not paid for a licence, i.e. those outside the UK (so they have elected to use some form of DRM to make sure that they can control the stream to those who pay and prevent it from being received by those that haven't). They are not taking anything existing away, but they are expanding their services. That would appear, as you have suggested, to be covered by "technologies" which have yet to be developed. I suspect that we both believe that DRM will not work; it will be broken but that is no different from those who watch TV today without paying for a licence.
They are taking a platform-agnostic approach. They are initially using Windows (which has the greatest use in the UK. That is a sensible decision) and they have said that they are working on a Mac version. They haven't said that they won't support linux in the future, or BSD, or the BBC Computer, or whatever. But each of these will throw up different technical issues which are not their current priority.
Other than the fact that the BBC are now actually contracted to do the collection and enforcement, I do not think that I was "Wrong on every single point". But I note the points that you have made and can see your point of view.
LOL. OK, see my other response elsewhere. However, I am a Brit. No, I am not called janrinok - are you called FeatureBug? I am retired and have lived outside of the UK for a little over 6 months. I was employed by the Government, at times in posts related to communications but it is not my specialisation. During my employment I worked in the USA, Canada, Norway, Germany, Holland, France, Belgium, Italy, Bosnia, Croatia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Australia, New Zealand, Iraq, Turkey and elsewhere. I think that understand 'overseas' and happily concede your point about RoI. In addition to English, I speak Russian, German and Serbian (although now all 4 probably badly :-)) and I am concentrating on learning my 5th language, which will be just as bad as the previous 4. We will have to agree to differ but thank you for the debate.
I apologise if I have pasted the wrong version - I found 3 - but the point of the post is to show that there are rules applying to broadcasts. There are similar rules applicable to ALL broadcasts - look at the Amateur Radio Licence or the CB licence for two other easy ones to find on Google. I do not believe I have made a false claim.
A broadcast license is a specific type of spectrum licence that grants the licensee the right to use a portion of the radio frequency spectrum in a given geographical area for broadcasting purposes. (http://www.answers.com/topic/broadcast-license as an example of several sources)The use of particular frequency is limited to geographic area. This fact, when combined with the licensed transmission power, limits the region covered by that transmission. Both of these technicalities are controlled and enforced by international law, through national bodies which work with the ITU and other agencies, to prevent adjacent channel interference and to ensure effective use worldwide of the electro-magnetic spectrum. The intended audience for the BBC terrestrial service is the UK and the power of individual transmissions is partly decided by the footprint required by a specific transmitter. I accept that daily and seasonal changes make the boundaries blurred as transmissions spill out. I still contend that there is international law limiting the broadcasting of TV transmissions to 'intended audience' but that it isn't written in a way that cannot be enforced (i.e. by stating that is must only be received by people living in a certain place) but in a way that can (i.e. by stipulating frequency and output power).
Now, take the example of something like the Olympic Games or any other event which is of interest globally. If the BBC pays for permission to broadcast the event and also streams it worldwide how will the purchase of the rights by other countries be affected? Such rights are usually sold numerous times to different broadcasters. Whilst this might not be in the consumers' interests it certainly wouldn't be in the BBC's interests to go upsetting all the other broadcasters with which it has to cooperate and work with, or to whom the BBC would like to sell its programs, nor would those selling the rights to broadcast the event be pleased by the marked loss in income. Secondly, it is in the BBC's interest to ensure that where they can deliver streamed content it should be paid for, accepting that they cannot charge the UK citizen who has a right to receive their product if (s)he has a licence. Without, DRM or some other protection they could have no such control. Furthermore, they couldn't hope to sell the actual program to country X if the citizens of country X can already receive the content via streaming. This would actually hurt the BBC's ability to sell its programs. I do not like DRM or the Windows OS but I can understand why the BBC are planning to use it and why they are concentrating initially on compatibility with the Windows OS.
We can argue this until the cows come home but the BBC have not, in my opinion, broken their Charter by planning to stream DRM'd data via the web. I can understand their reasons for the decisions that they have made even though I do not like them.
No, not a marketing shill. The reason for the DRM is to prevent access to the stream for non-British markets, not vice versa. Then they can charge foreigners for receiving the stream which they are quite entitled to do under the Charter. I didn't say they were going to charge British viewers, you must have made that assumption, although I expect they might if they can find a way to do so.
I would suggest that the BBC does have a moral obligation to make profit from its sales of programs overseas although I will agree that it is open to some flexibility of interpretation.
The BBC has asked for the licence fee to be increased because of digital TV broadcasting, not only online streaming, although they do intend to expand the latter as well. Digital TV broadcasting accounts for the lion's share of the £1.2 billion as it requires a huge investment in new (at least for the BBC) technology. If you read my link to BBC Worldwide it clearly states "During 2005/06 BBC Worldwide achieved sales of £784 million. It increased its profit before interest and tax to £89 million." which is somewhat more that the £6.9 million that you are quoting. How much do you think that they are paying for iPlayer?
Again, I cannot find anywhere in the relevant places that actually states this as a fact. Not to say that you aren't right, though...
I'm sure that there are few on this thread that believe that this will help defeat terrorism. And I don't suppose it will improve the tourist trade very much either. I'm glad that America is the home of the brave; I cannot imagine what they might do if they were frightened...
If they were only reaching their existing viewers I would agree. But, if the streaming were widely available worldwide, other countries would argue that the BBC was poaching their viewers which could potentially reduce their own income. Because of this, there are international agreements and protocols with which all nations and broadcasters have to be comply. I agree with your sentiments but, elsewhere in this thread, the discussion has deteriorated into some who are arguing that they simply do not like it. Neither do I, but that doesn't mean that the BBC have done anything wrong in a legal sense or even in a moral one. The fact that we may not like DRM, or use an alternative OS to Windows, doesn't mean that the BBC is forbidden from doing what they are planning to do. It simply is not to our liking and all the debate in the world won't change that fact.
There ARE international laws regarding the broadcasting of TV transmissions. To limit the transmission to its intended audience they feel that they must use DRM. It doesn't matter who owns the programs, they must first comply with their own broadcasting licence (I don't mean your TV licence) and secondly, the BBC is are duty bound to the licence payers (i.e. you) to try to make as much profit from the programs that your money has helped fund. So they want to control where it goes so that they can charge for it if they feel it necessary.