According to the summary, the GPU enhanced version uses ECB:
"A demo in its current source repository is a modified eCryptfs, which is an encrypted filesystem used by Ubuntu and other distributions . . ..However, both the GPU cipher-based eCryptfs and the CPU cipher-based one are changed to use ECB cipher mode for parallelism. "
I hope this is just a proof-of-concept design because ECB mode should not be used for this purpose. Wikipedia provides a pretty obvious example of the weakness of ECB mode:
"The disadvantage of this method is that identical plaintext blocks are encrypted into identical ciphertext blocks; thus, it does not hide data patterns well. In some senses, it doesn't provide serious message confidentiality, and it is not recommended for use in cryptographic protocols at all. A striking example of the degree to which ECB can leave plaintext data patterns in the ciphertext is shown below; a pixel-map version of the image on the left was encrypted with ECB mode to create the center image, versus a non-ECB mode for the right image."
No, 1 of 794 people identified were ultimately arrested of SOME crime, but not necessarily convicted. The article states that 40% of the arrests were immigration related, and a great deal more were drug related. Thus, the real number of false positives is actually much higher if you are only including legitimate threats to security.
Just to be clear, the paragraphs starting with "Members of Congress" and "Experts agree" are direct quotations from CNN. The remainder of the post contains my opinion. Sorry for any confusion.
According to CNN, the TSA is actually more ineffective than I initially thought:
False Positives-
Members of Congress also expressed concern about the number of "false positives" -- people flagged for additional screening that resulted in nothing being found. For every person correctly identified as a "high risk" traveler by (the behavior detection officers), 86 were misidentified, Willis said. At random screening, for every person correctly identified, 794 were misidentified.
Effectiveness at detecting terrorists-
Experts agree that the fact that there is an extremely small number of terrorists makes it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral observation programs. The Accountability Office said it looked at 23 occasions in which 16 individuals -- people later charged with terrorism-related activities -- passed through high-threat airports. None is known to have been identified. But it is not known if the behavior detection officers were working at the time, the agency said.
So, in the best case scenario, for every person ultimately charged with a crime (not necessarily convicted) 86 are misidentified. And that is using "trained" behavioral analysts. Most TSA searches are random, which results in one charge for every 794 false positives. Note also that nearly 40% of the charges are immigration related. Most of the rest are probably drug related.
The TSA can't point to a single incident where its random searches or behavioral analysis actually has prevented a terrorist attack. Despite their utter failure, the TSA plans to spend another $1.2 billion over the course of five years on behavior analysis techniques.
I can only get 40 Mbit (5 MB/sec) on my 802.11n wireless router. However, I routinely get my rated speed of 50 Mbit/sec (6.2 MB/sec) down from my DOCSIS 3.0 connection, which peaks of 8 MB/sec. Of course, such connections are a rarity. Nonetheless, Gigabit ethernet is cheap and is far more reliable than wireless. Wireless connections just can't maintain multiple, high-throughput connections while wired ethernet can.
Also, I can easily get local transfers over my gigabit LAN that surpass 100 MB/sec. Unlike 802.11n, Gigabit doesn't have 50%+ overhead. I don't see wireless competing with wired ethernet anytime soon. Anyway, by the time Gigabit wireless is available, 10 Gbit Ethernet will be mainstream.
I'm currently signed up for Comcast's new 50/10 Docsis 3.0 connection. I get a constant 50 Mbit on Bittorrent with bursts up to 70 Mbit. Upload bursts to 20 Mbit and provides reliable 10 Mbit speeds. Not bad for cable. I am told that there are no data caps in my area but I won't know for sure for a few months:P.
However, FiOS still has better upload speeds and no download caps. Verizon offers 35/35 (around 43/35 in practice) in most of its service areas for $100/mo. or $115 with its ultimate HD package.
Was it a Plasma or LCD based screen? I was able to demo two 3D televisions at Best Buy. One was horrid (the LCD) while the Plasma had a very pleasing 3D effect without the traditional ghosting and blurring that you normally see at the theatre. I guess it depends on the implementation.
And if it was incorrectly calibrated by the Fry staff, what chance is their that Joe Consumer will figure it out. There are still people that think they're watching HD programming because the logo on their 4:3 27" 480i TV says "HDTV".
Odd, it scrolls fine for me in Chrome 5.0.375. There is a slight delay while the page fully loads, but after that it scrolls smoothly. Firefox is smooth immediately, but the delay is at most 1/10th of a second.
What build of Chrome and OS are you using?
I'm on Windows 7 and am using Chrome 5.0.375. I compared against Firefox 3.6.3.
I'm using Adblock, FlashBlock, and Session Manager in Chrome. While Adblock isn't as good as Adblock plus, it works fairly well. I certainly wouldn't say Chrome lacks a base of plugins.
BTW, I use Firefox 3.6.3 and Chrome 5. I've used Firefox since it was Phoenix, and Mozilla before that. I love Firefox for the amazing extensions, Awesomebar, recently closed tabs etc. but I also like testing out new browsers, and I have to say I'm very impressed with Chrome. I really like that each tab is sandboxed in its own tab. It makes everything more responsive, and the rendering speed is ridiculous. There really is nothing better than having a browser load before you have the opportunity to remove your finger from the left mouse button.:P
I wonder if there is some issue on your system causing performance problems with Chrome. For example, I know there is an incompatibility between Nod32 4.0 and Chrome 5 that causes insanely high ping. I was getting 10 ping in speedtests on Firefox 3.6.3 and 550 ping in Chrome 5. After upgrading to Nod32 4.2 the issue was fixed. Chrome went from sluggish to blazing.
I find Chrome to be as fast, or faster than Firefox in all circumstances. It is usually faster. The browser loads instantly on a Core i7 system with an Intel X-25M G2 SSD vs. 1.5 seconds cold start for Firefox (around 0.8 sec without Adblock Plus), but that's running off a fast SSD. It took significantly longer on cold start off a WD Caviar Black drive, which is similar to what most people are using.
Page rendering is amazingly fast. The Adblock extension isn't as good as Firefox, but it's ok.
I really do like Chrome's multi-threading and sandboxing. In Firefox, every time a download finished, the browser would freeze momentarily while NOD32 scanned the file (disabled checking in about::config, but still happened), and often loading Adobe Acrobat files would hang the browser momentarily. Because Chrome is multi-threaded, issues in one tab never affect another tab.
In addition, while Chrome uses more RAM than Firefox because of its design, you actually get the RAM back when you close a tab. With Firefox, RAM usage balloons unless you close the browser. I've seen Firefox use 1.5 GB of RAM after 2-3 days of usage. Close all the tabs in Chrome and you're back to 70 MB or so of usage. And Chrome also loads instantly, even with many tabs.
In conclusion, Chrome's performance isn't just marketing - it is the fastest browser available at the moment. If it's slow for you, something else is wrong.
Not really since you can't use Flash on either the iPad or iPhone, so the only way to view streaming video is through HTML5, and presumably H.264. In either case, HTML5 fins.
Macs can run any browser of your choosing including Firefox and Chrome, which do support VP8. VP8 just seems like a better choice than H.264 for streaming video. Perhaps when all the other major browsers support VP8, Apple will add support.
In any case, I think WebM is likely a better solution than including a known patent-encumbered codec in Firefox.
And, I don't support WebM because I have any opposition to H.264. As an avid Blu-Ray watcher, I love H.264. Recent x264 builds have managed incredible IQ at relatively low bitrates, and both H.264 and VC-1 are huge improvements over MPEG-2 in terms of efficiency and quality. Nonetheless, quality is far less of a concern with streaming video. Hopefully, Google will be willing to defend VP8's patent-free status in court.
I think the H.264 point has been mooted by the introduction of WebM (VP8 + Ogg Vorbis). If VP8 is in fact patent-free, it is a good alternative for streaming online video as it provides quality equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile. In fact, Firefox had builds supporting WebM BEFORE Chrome. Chrome's first release came one day after the public announcement whereas Firefox already had a build at the time of announcement with such support.
MS has stated an intent to include WebM in IE9. Firefox and Chrome already support WebM in development releases, and the next stable releases will support it. Opera beta builds support WebM. The only major browser that doesn't have support, and for which support is not forthcoming, is Safari.
The problem isn't really modern CPUs but the lack of improvement in conventional hard drive speeds. With a Core i7 processor and a 160 GB X-25M Gen 2 Intel SSD, pretty much everything I run loads within 1-2 seconds, and there is little or no difference between loading apps from RAM or my hard drive. Even with a 1 TB WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM drive, my Core i7 machine was constantly limited by the hard drive.
With an SSD, I boot to a usable desktop and can load Firefox with Adblock, Pidgin, Skype, Foobar2000 and Word in around 2 seconds. Many programs like Chrome load so quickly that they are effectively instant-on. Even though quad-core processors are often derided for desktop use, I see a tremendous improvement with a Core i7 + high-performance SSD vs. a Core 2 Duo + mediocre laptop drive. Modern CPUs can make your desktop experience much more responsive. You just need a hard drive that can keep up.
Oh, and in video playback, the difference is incredibly obvious. My roommate is still using a 7 year old laptop which can barely playback a DVD (MPEG-2). In contrast, my Core i7 can simultaneously decode 5 1080p H.264 videos with ease (after this point, the hard drives can't keep up). While this might be considered useless, it definitely makes a difference when running background tasks such as backups. With my Core 2 Duo without hardware decoding, I would have to pause when scheduled backups started or video would skip. With my quad-core system, I can run any task in the background without fear of slowdown, and also use high-quality upscale filters and renderers that would have slowed my dual-core system to a crawl.
Too many people claim that modern processors and hardware do not provide meaningful improvements to the desktop experience. I just don't find this to be true. Multi-core processors have allowed users to run background tasks, install software etc. with no noticeable speed degradation. When I am working with old single-core machines, I miss this benefit.
In addition, today's software is more powerful. You may not need all the features in Word 2007 or the latest Firefox build, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful.
Adblock, Flashblock, Session Management, the ability to have dozens of tabs loaded without memory issues, the ability to stream high definition video in my browser with no or minimal buffering, the "Awesomebar" etc. are all features that didn't exist 5+ years ago.
Real-time indexing of system files and applications is relatively recent, and yet I find that it has fundamentally transformed how I access data.
There are many more examples. It may be popular to say that things haven't changed much in two decades, because word processors are superficially similar for example, but a great deal has changed.
Hmm. Perhaps I really, really enjoy downloading Linux ISOs.:P
I actually wasn't complaining. I just thought it odd that they impose a restriction that has gained a great deal of bad PR and don't bother to enforce it.
Easy. Start downloading high-quality 1080p movie encodes (12-15 GB avg) and high-quality 720p encodes of TV series from Blu-Ray (50-75 GB a season). Adds up quickly.
But, the last month was just a freeleech on one of my private trackers. It was upload - not download.
On most private trackers, you have to multiply everything you upload by 2 just to hit a 1.0 ratio, and I tend to seed to significantly higher than that. 250 GB is easy to hit. Hell, 2.5 TB isn't that difficult.:P
I'm interested to know if anyone has actually had their Comcast connection terminated (on the East Coast) due to exceeding the 250 GB cap. I have exceeded the cap numerous times and never heard as much as a word from Comcast. In fact, a Comcast tech mentioned that they don't enforce the cap at all in my area.
I wonder if enforcement is regional in nature. It seems stupid to have a rule that generates such bad PR if they're not even going to enforce it.
This idea is discussed more thoroughly in Steve Levitt's book, SuperFreakonomics. The idea apparently thought up by several individuals in a patent-holding company called Intellectual Ventures (IV) which has a number of noteworthy academics and scientists. I suggest you read more about the idea before rejecting it. It is not surprising that Bill Gates has invested in the idea given that the creator of Intellectual Ventures was a high-level executive at Microsoft, and friends with Bill Gates. Gates has invested in several other of IV's projects - all of which seem a bit crazy at first.
An observation... FLAC being a digital representation of analog phenomena (voice/instruments), I suppose ('cause I don't know the details) it needs a very high sampling frequence to achieve "identical" (at least, for human perception).
When I say it's identical to the source, I mean that the FLAC decodes to an exact replica of the original PCM digital stream. A redbook audio CD uses 44,100 samples/second and each sample is 16 bits.
So 16 bits/sample x 44,100 samples x 2 channels = 1,411,200 bits/sec or 1411 Kbit/sec
FLAC compresses the audio losslessly, and decodes to the identical PCM input. However, the source may not be "perfect".
1) Transparency means that the music SOUNDS indistinguishable to you when compared with the source. So, if I took the original CD and compared it against a V0 MP3, I would find that they sound the same (tested by a blind ABX test). They are most certainly NOT the same - the MP3 throws out quite a bit of high frequency detail, but the vast majority of people simply can't perceive this information. It sounds the same, but it's not the same.
FLAC, and other lossless formats, should always be transparent since they are in fact identical to the source.
2) It's like any other bittorrent tracker, but it's dedicated to music and designed for that purpose (advanced search features, grouping of albums to allow multiple lossy and lossless codecs per album, grouping of editions per album, searching by artist, album, label, catalog # etc.) It's private, so it's invitation only, or requires an "interview".
3. foobar2000 is a highly configurable mostly open-source (special license) player that supports every major format including Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, and can basically do whatever you want it to. If there is a will, there is a way. I currently have it setup with 6 columns for Genre, Album, Artist (Composer), Performer/Conductor, Orchestra, and Compilation. I can simultaneously search all 6 categories.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the summary, the GPU enhanced version uses ECB:
"A demo in its current source repository is a modified eCryptfs, which is an encrypted filesystem used by Ubuntu and other distributions . . . .However, both the GPU cipher-based eCryptfs and the CPU cipher-based one are changed to use ECB cipher mode for parallelism. "
I hope this is just a proof-of-concept design because ECB mode should not be used for this purpose. Wikipedia provides a pretty obvious example of the weakness of ECB mode:
"The disadvantage of this method is that identical plaintext blocks are encrypted into identical ciphertext blocks; thus, it does not hide data patterns well. In some senses, it doesn't provide serious message confidentiality, and it is not recommended for use in cryptographic protocols at all. A striking example of the degree to which ECB can leave plaintext data patterns in the ciphertext is shown below; a pixel-map version of the image on the left was encrypted with ECB mode to create the center image, versus a non-ECB mode for the right image."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_modes_of_operation#Initialization_vector_.28IV.29
No, 1 of 794 people identified were ultimately arrested of SOME crime, but not necessarily convicted. The article states that 40% of the arrests were immigration related, and a great deal more were drug related. Thus, the real number of false positives is actually much higher if you are only including legitimate threats to security.
Just to be clear, the paragraphs starting with "Members of Congress" and "Experts agree" are direct quotations from CNN. The remainder of the post contains my opinion. Sorry for any confusion.
According to CNN, the TSA is actually more ineffective than I initially thought:
False Positives-
Members of Congress also expressed concern about the number of "false positives" -- people flagged for additional screening that resulted in nothing being found. For every person correctly identified as a "high risk" traveler by (the behavior detection officers), 86 were misidentified, Willis said. At random screening, for every person correctly identified, 794 were misidentified.
Effectiveness at detecting terrorists-
Experts agree that the fact that there is an extremely small number of terrorists makes it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral observation programs. The Accountability Office said it looked at 23 occasions in which 16 individuals -- people later charged with terrorism-related activities -- passed through high-threat airports. None is known to have been identified. But it is not known if the behavior detection officers were working at the time, the agency said.
So, in the best case scenario, for every person ultimately charged with a crime (not necessarily convicted) 86 are misidentified. And that is using "trained" behavioral analysts. Most TSA searches are random, which results in one charge for every 794 false positives. Note also that nearly 40% of the charges are immigration related. Most of the rest are probably drug related.
The TSA can't point to a single incident where its random searches or behavioral analysis actually has prevented a terrorist attack. Despite their utter failure, the TSA plans to spend another $1.2 billion over the course of five years on behavior analysis techniques.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/04/15/tsa.screeners.complain/index.html?hpt=C1
I can only get 40 Mbit (5 MB/sec) on my 802.11n wireless router. However, I routinely get my rated speed of 50 Mbit/sec (6.2 MB/sec) down from my DOCSIS 3.0 connection, which peaks of 8 MB/sec. Of course, such connections are a rarity. Nonetheless, Gigabit ethernet is cheap and is far more reliable than wireless. Wireless connections just can't maintain multiple, high-throughput connections while wired ethernet can.
Also, I can easily get local transfers over my gigabit LAN that surpass 100 MB/sec. Unlike 802.11n, Gigabit doesn't have 50%+ overhead. I don't see wireless competing with wired ethernet anytime soon. Anyway, by the time Gigabit wireless is available, 10 Gbit Ethernet will be mainstream.
I'm currently signed up for Comcast's new 50/10 Docsis 3.0 connection. I get a constant 50 Mbit on Bittorrent with bursts up to 70 Mbit. Upload bursts to 20 Mbit and provides reliable 10 Mbit speeds. Not bad for cable. I am told that there are no data caps in my area but I won't know for sure for a few months :P.
However, FiOS still has better upload speeds and no download caps. Verizon offers 35/35 (around 43/35 in practice) in most of its service areas for $100/mo. or $115 with its ultimate HD package.
Was it a Plasma or LCD based screen? I was able to demo two 3D televisions at Best Buy. One was horrid (the LCD) while the Plasma had a very pleasing 3D effect without the traditional ghosting and blurring that you normally see at the theatre. I guess it depends on the implementation.
And if it was incorrectly calibrated by the Fry staff, what chance is their that Joe Consumer will figure it out. There are still people that think they're watching HD programming because the logo on their 4:3 27" 480i TV says "HDTV".
Odd, it scrolls fine for me in Chrome 5.0.375. There is a slight delay while the page fully loads, but after that it scrolls smoothly. Firefox is smooth immediately, but the delay is at most 1/10th of a second.
What build of Chrome and OS are you using?
I'm on Windows 7 and am using Chrome 5.0.375. I compared against Firefox 3.6.3.
I'm using Adblock, FlashBlock, and Session Manager in Chrome. While Adblock isn't as good as Adblock plus, it works fairly well. I certainly wouldn't say Chrome lacks a base of plugins.
BTW, I use Firefox 3.6.3 and Chrome 5. I've used Firefox since it was Phoenix, and Mozilla before that. I love Firefox for the amazing extensions, Awesomebar, recently closed tabs etc. but I also like testing out new browsers, and I have to say I'm very impressed with Chrome. I really like that each tab is sandboxed in its own tab. It makes everything more responsive, and the rendering speed is ridiculous. There really is nothing better than having a browser load before you have the opportunity to remove your finger from the left mouse button. :P
I wonder if there is some issue on your system causing performance problems with Chrome. For example, I know there is an incompatibility between Nod32 4.0 and Chrome 5 that causes insanely high ping. I was getting 10 ping in speedtests on Firefox 3.6.3 and 550 ping in Chrome 5. After upgrading to Nod32 4.2 the issue was fixed. Chrome went from sluggish to blazing.
I find Chrome to be as fast, or faster than Firefox in all circumstances. It is usually faster. The browser loads instantly on a Core i7 system with an Intel X-25M G2 SSD vs. 1.5 seconds cold start for Firefox (around 0.8 sec without Adblock Plus), but that's running off a fast SSD. It took significantly longer on cold start off a WD Caviar Black drive, which is similar to what most people are using.
Page rendering is amazingly fast. The Adblock extension isn't as good as Firefox, but it's ok.
I really do like Chrome's multi-threading and sandboxing. In Firefox, every time a download finished, the browser would freeze momentarily while NOD32 scanned the file (disabled checking in about::config, but still happened), and often loading Adobe Acrobat files would hang the browser momentarily. Because Chrome is multi-threaded, issues in one tab never affect another tab.
In addition, while Chrome uses more RAM than Firefox because of its design, you actually get the RAM back when you close a tab. With Firefox, RAM usage balloons unless you close the browser. I've seen Firefox use 1.5 GB of RAM after 2-3 days of usage. Close all the tabs in Chrome and you're back to 70 MB or so of usage. And Chrome also loads instantly, even with many tabs.
In conclusion, Chrome's performance isn't just marketing - it is the fastest browser available at the moment. If it's slow for you, something else is wrong.
Not really since you can't use Flash on either the iPad or iPhone, so the only way to view streaming video is through HTML5, and presumably H.264. In either case, HTML5 fins.
Macs can run any browser of your choosing including Firefox and Chrome, which do support VP8. VP8 just seems like a better choice than H.264 for streaming video. Perhaps when all the other major browsers support VP8, Apple will add support.
In any case, I think WebM is likely a better solution than including a known patent-encumbered codec in Firefox.
And, I don't support WebM because I have any opposition to H.264. As an avid Blu-Ray watcher, I love H.264. Recent x264 builds have managed incredible IQ at relatively low bitrates, and both H.264 and VC-1 are huge improvements over MPEG-2 in terms of efficiency and quality. Nonetheless, quality is far less of a concern with streaming video. Hopefully, Google will be willing to defend VP8's patent-free status in court.
That's why I used the qualifier "If VP8 is in fact patent-free. . ."
It is very much uncertain whether VP8 is in fact patent-free or whether users of VP8 will be sued for patent infringement by MPEG LA or others.
I think the H.264 point has been mooted by the introduction of WebM (VP8 + Ogg Vorbis). If VP8 is in fact patent-free, it is a good alternative for streaming online video as it provides quality equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile. In fact, Firefox had builds supporting WebM BEFORE Chrome. Chrome's first release came one day after the public announcement whereas Firefox already had a build at the time of announcement with such support.
MS has stated an intent to include WebM in IE9. Firefox and Chrome already support WebM in development releases, and the next stable releases will support it. Opera beta builds support WebM. The only major browser that doesn't have support, and for which support is not forthcoming, is Safari.
The problem isn't really modern CPUs but the lack of improvement in conventional hard drive speeds. With a Core i7 processor and a 160 GB X-25M Gen 2 Intel SSD, pretty much everything I run loads within 1-2 seconds, and there is little or no difference between loading apps from RAM or my hard drive. Even with a 1 TB WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM drive, my Core i7 machine was constantly limited by the hard drive.
With an SSD, I boot to a usable desktop and can load Firefox with Adblock, Pidgin, Skype, Foobar2000 and Word in around 2 seconds. Many programs like Chrome load so quickly that they are effectively instant-on. Even though quad-core processors are often derided for desktop use, I see a tremendous improvement with a Core i7 + high-performance SSD vs. a Core 2 Duo + mediocre laptop drive. Modern CPUs can make your desktop experience much more responsive. You just need a hard drive that can keep up.
Oh, and in video playback, the difference is incredibly obvious. My roommate is still using a 7 year old laptop which can barely playback a DVD (MPEG-2). In contrast, my Core i7 can simultaneously decode 5 1080p H.264 videos with ease (after this point, the hard drives can't keep up). While this might be considered useless, it definitely makes a difference when running background tasks such as backups. With my Core 2 Duo without hardware decoding, I would have to pause when scheduled backups started or video would skip. With my quad-core system, I can run any task in the background without fear of slowdown, and also use high-quality upscale filters and renderers that would have slowed my dual-core system to a crawl.
Too many people claim that modern processors and hardware do not provide meaningful improvements to the desktop experience. I just don't find this to be true. Multi-core processors have allowed users to run background tasks, install software etc. with no noticeable speed degradation. When I am working with old single-core machines, I miss this benefit.
In addition, today's software is more powerful. You may not need all the features in Word 2007 or the latest Firefox build, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful.
Adblock, Flashblock, Session Management, the ability to have dozens of tabs loaded without memory issues, the ability to stream high definition video in my browser with no or minimal buffering, the "Awesomebar" etc. are all features that didn't exist 5+ years ago.
Real-time indexing of system files and applications is relatively recent, and yet I find that it has fundamentally transformed how I access data.
There are many more examples. It may be popular to say that things haven't changed much in two decades, because word processors are superficially similar for example, but a great deal has changed.
Hmm. Perhaps I really, really enjoy downloading Linux ISOs. :P
I actually wasn't complaining. I just thought it odd that they impose a restriction that has gained a great deal of bad PR and don't bother to enforce it.
Easy. Start downloading high-quality 1080p movie encodes (12-15 GB avg) and high-quality 720p encodes of TV series from Blu-Ray (50-75 GB a season). Adds up quickly.
But, the last month was just a freeleech on one of my private trackers. It was upload - not download.
On most private trackers, you have to multiply everything you upload by 2 just to hit a 1.0 ratio, and I tend to seed to significantly higher than that. 250 GB is easy to hit. Hell, 2.5 TB isn't that difficult. :P
I am switching to 25/20 FiOS in a few weeks for the indefinite future, so they're too late.
I'm interested to know if anyone has actually had their Comcast connection terminated (on the East Coast) due to exceeding the 250 GB cap. I have exceeded the cap numerous times and never heard as much as a word from Comcast. In fact, a Comcast tech mentioned that they don't enforce the cap at all in my area.
I wonder if enforcement is regional in nature. It seems stupid to have a rule that generates such bad PR if they're not even going to enforce it.
This idea is discussed more thoroughly in Steve Levitt's book, SuperFreakonomics. The idea apparently thought up by several individuals in a patent-holding company called Intellectual Ventures (IV) which has a number of noteworthy academics and scientists. I suggest you read more about the idea before rejecting it. It is not surprising that Bill Gates has invested in the idea given that the creator of Intellectual Ventures was a high-level executive at Microsoft, and friends with Bill Gates. Gates has invested in several other of IV's projects - all of which seem a bit crazy at first.
Nice. Thanks for the explanations.
An observation... FLAC being a digital representation of analog phenomena (voice/instruments), I suppose ('cause I don't know the details) it needs a very high sampling frequence to achieve "identical" (at least, for human perception).
When I say it's identical to the source, I mean that the FLAC decodes to an exact replica of the original PCM digital stream. A redbook audio CD uses 44,100 samples/second and each sample is 16 bits.
So 16 bits/sample x 44,100 samples x 2 channels = 1,411,200 bits/sec or 1411 Kbit/sec
FLAC compresses the audio losslessly, and decodes to the identical PCM input. However, the source may not be "perfect".
Garbage in, Garbage out. :P
1) Transparency means that the music SOUNDS indistinguishable to you when compared with the source. So, if I took the original CD and compared it against a V0 MP3, I would find that they sound the same (tested by a blind ABX test). They are most certainly NOT the same - the MP3 throws out quite a bit of high frequency detail, but the vast majority of people simply can't perceive this information. It sounds the same, but it's not the same.
FLAC, and other lossless formats, should always be transparent since they are in fact identical to the source.
2) It's like any other bittorrent tracker, but it's dedicated to music and designed for that purpose (advanced search features, grouping of albums to allow multiple lossy and lossless codecs per album, grouping of editions per album, searching by artist, album, label, catalog # etc.) It's private, so it's invitation only, or requires an "interview".
3. foobar2000 is a highly configurable mostly open-source (special license) player that supports every major format including Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, and can basically do whatever you want it to. If there is a will, there is a way. I currently have it setup with 6 columns for Genre, Album, Artist (Composer), Performer/Conductor, Orchestra, and Compilation. I can simultaneously search all 6 categories.
Excuse the improper formatting/quoting.