it can be slightly tricky, I agree at least with that much. Mostly for notifications that don't keep a connection to the sound system open; they're not connected long enough to adjust the per-app level in the mixer.
That is a case where I liked the older behavior better, but the new behavior is actually better for regular users. In the old days there were often three different volume levels to adjust, master, PCM, and in-app. Regular users would get the settings hosed, and have lots of hiss and pop because they didn't have the different gains balanced properly for their sound card. The new system, regular users can just slide the main volume, or open the mixer and change it per-app, and it works pretty well. But the per-app is relative to the other apps running.
So the technique now is to get the notification system to play a long sound, with the media player running, and then adjust the per-app volume. Then PulseAudio will remember that setting, at least as well as is possible until you've fiddled the levels enough that the relative volumes can't be maintained. Apps that use an external CLI player for notifications can be set by playing a music file with the CLI player, and adjusting the relative volume. This is how I have to adjust the move volume in xboard (an old internet chess client).
Things worked "better" before in some cases, but the cases that sucked before are fixed now. For example, xboard uses play or aplay for notifications, and has no in-app volume control. Before that was fine as long as you only have 1 such program running, and everything else had in-app volume. I could set the main volume for the level for xboard, and then set the in-app volume in xmms or mplayer. But that means you couldn't have the app tied to PCM volume, which was usually the better setting. So it didn't actually work better at all, even an advanced user had to fiddle and futz it, and you still couldn't get the volume you wanted if you wanted the "wrong" one to be louder. And if two apps didn't have their own volume control, then you couldn't get those apps to have different volume.
And I was using Skype back when it used OSS or ALSA for sound. The default "automatically adjust mixer levels" was even more buggy and wrecked more havoc back then than it does now.
There are lots of blind wine tastings, BTW. You might be European, I think they fell out of favor when the French snobs were rating much cheaper California wines as being equal. Here in the US there is wine tasting fad right now, with lots of blind tasting events. Interestingly, these are mainly used to sell mid-priced wines by showing that they stand toe-to-toe with big names. Prove to the consumer that you're selling something as good as the fancy stuff, they might buy a case. Or, you just don't pay attention to wine tasting and so of course you can get "never" as an easy answer.;)
I disagree that they need to go up to semi-pro to get better sound. They can spend the same money on any generic and get good sound. Even sony sounds better at a lower price than bose.
The reason bose sells a lot is because the hi-price hi-fi stores know to demo a *cheaper* generic against the name brand. Then they can use the pitch, "you get what you pay for." Which is true, in a very literal sense; you pay some amount, and what you got for it is what you got for it.
My advice to consumers, and this is true for almost all products not just headphones; only buy the highest label-price brands if you're buying at the highest price bracket. The very best of the best is better than the rest, for sure. For everything in the middle 95%, the same price with a less known brand will usually give you more bang for your buck, for the simple reason that name familiarity increases the price. You still have to check reviews on individual models though, there will be a few "stinker" generics to avoid.
Of course, they're consumer crapware, as opposed to actual pro/hi-fi gear like Sennheiser, Audio Technica, AKG, Bowers & Wilkins, et al.
I'm not sure if you got that wrong on purpose, or really misunderstood the point that much.
The claim is not that they are consumer crapware. The claim is that they have low performance compared to other brands at the same price that don't have the name familiarity. In other words, they are lower quality than an equal-priced generic.
The ones you listed are all from a different price point, and are not the ones people are comparing them to when talking about low performance.
$100 bose headphones have about the same sound as a $20 JVC, but with nicer pads and a better cord. The $40 JVC has equal quality pads, and actually better sound. But the bose still has a nicer cord. Luckily, copper wires of sufficient capacity to carry the signal all sound the same.
Yeah, I can also install vmware on my PC, and run MacOS in it, because some people have worked around the roadblocks that Apple put in the way to prevent users who pay for their software from doing that. How odd that Microsoft will permit me to virtualize their OS, but Apple won't. It's almost like they're bigger assholes than Microsoft. No, wait. It's exactly like that.
Microsoft's _business_ is to sell their operating system. Apple's _business_ is to sell computer hardware. If you claim that you can't see the difference then you are either deeply dishonest or an idiot.
You establish a reason that could explain the difference in behavior, but that doesn't refute the claim in any way; or even attempt to.
Is your thesis that any honest person who is not an idiot knows that selling software leads to better morals and ethics than selling hardware? I assume anybody with an IQ bigger than their shoe size can figure out that that is absurd, and hardware vendors can be morally good or bad. There is nothing about hardware itself that requires a company to suck. And software is so abstract, there is an almost unlimited range of moral choices available; a software company should have no trouble being immoral or unethical. And indeed, if you look at just the things MicroSoft was found guilty of in the 90s, we know they have a history that includes both immoral and unethical behavior.
On the technical specifics here, in the past MS didn't like virtualization because by opposing it they could negotiate better terms with hardware vendors. Because of the scale of the market (people mistakenly think this comes from monopoly) the same hardware pressures involve OS companies like MS, because their attitude towards hardware is determined largely by their contracts with the hardware companies. So it is a fake difference.
I gotta ask, did you not know all that (which is ignorance dishonestly shilling itself as being knowledgable) or are you just an idiot?
I have no idea where you got the idea that pulseaudio is considered best of breed.
By all the distros using it. The proof, right there in the pudding.
Before PulseAudio, linux audio sucked. Everything else was generic and networked, but audio sucked hard. Even just having multiple audio devices on a single computer was painful. Workarounds typically required an app to be restarted to switch audio devices, mostly because of deficiencies in the APIs.
With PulseAudio that was fixed, audio is a normal citizen, generic, with both a modern API and backwards compatibility. Now those same old apps, unaltered, can be moved between audio devices transparently, with no restart. Plus, networked audio is vastly more capable, able to use standard APIs instead of having to live totally outside of the normal sound ecosystem.
Were there early bugs in implementation? Yes. But that isn't PulseAudio's fault, that is the distros fault. They probably should have waited another year before doing the changeover. People are still hating on PA because of early bugs that were fixed years ago. Haters hate, but they don't read or think, so once they're told it sucks, it sucks forever. But distros hire actual professionals to make these decisions, and even the ones that weren't using PA yet during those early bugs... are using it now. Why? Space-Alien mind-control beams? Or, it is better than the alternatives?
All that is also true for systemd, except with an extra helping of known lies and a doubling of personal attacks.
Your mistake is that you're describing Glam Rock, which came earlier, 60s-70s. Glam Metal came later, late 70s-early 90s. "Butt Rock" is Glam Metal, not Glam Rock.
By `91 or so "Butt-rock" was already a synonym for Hair Rock, which is basically Glam Metal where the music sucks or is not notable; all glam, no metal. Butt-rock means the same thing, just with an insulting way of describing glam.
Dude, like, you know, butt-rock was the 80s. `73 was a pretty awesome year in music though. Crocodile Rock, Dark Side of the Moon, Aerosmith, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Tequila Sunrise... and that only brings us from January to April!
That's like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any work done in photoshop because it's more true to the source or some shit. Sort of like how audiofools never seem to have a problem wacking off to lossy jpegs but put on an mp3 and you'll never hear the end of it.
No, it is like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any extra photo filters applied after the artist has already completed and distributed the image. Yes, of course the artist uses photoshop; just like the recording professionals use distortion!
The reason you want a flat frequency response from the speakers is because the sound has already been properly distorted by the artist. Just like, a computer monitor with accurate color will reproduce the colors the artist chose in photoslop!
I see. So you would never smear a surgeon by deciding that you will not be operated on by someone who kills 80% of his patients even though the surgery should have less than 1% mortality?
You believe people should be promoted even if all of their work so far has had to be redone?
You would happily have your car re-painted by a guy whose car has overspray on all of the glass and trim?
You see no reason not to go to the restaurant that gave you food poisoning the last two times you went there?
What a strangely dysfunctional world you must live in!
Right, those are all blatant smears in the current context. None of that is happening, none of that compares to anything that happened, and the software in question is recognized by actual professionals as being the best-of-breed; the reason that most linux distros adopt them. A vocal minority disagrees, but they are a minority.
Do the majority of surgeons say that a surgeon who kills 80% of his patients is a role model whose practices should be adopted? No? Then yes, you're just smearing somebody.
A better example is a surgeon with a bunch of internet haters, whose skill and patient record are such that their methods are copied by a majority of their peers.
You don't even have to stop using Skype. You only have to:
1) Not decide to blame PulseAudio even before you know what is wrong 2) Open the Skype settings 3) Turn off the correctly named default setting "automatically adjust mixer levels."
For most people, who aren't part of some sort of hateful social movement focused on attacking one man for having a good job, that is actually only a 2 step process. But even neckbeards should be able to manage it with the extra step.
Except he probably just needs to turn off "automatically adjust mixer levels" in Skype, and stop blaming PulseAudio. The hate leads to the blame, in this case. If he didn't know what to hate, (for reasons that are logic errors) then he'd have to ask instead, "what software is connected to my sound subsystem and adjusts the mixer levels automatically?" That would be a question that might lead to the answer. But starting from logic errors and hate, they seek out PulseAudio to blame it. And are wrong, mean, and dumb asses, all at the same time.
Also some audio players fiddle the mixer, when allowed. They think they're helping. I personally went back to an old unforked xmms. Still compiles!
I know, right? I use Skype because for $15/m I can have unlimitted calling to local numbers in Thailand, from the US. And can make unlimitted US calls, too. Outbound only, inbound costs extra. I have it for my wife.
There is nothing "open source" that could offer the services Skype offers. Yes, I'd rather use a generic service and be able to run generic SIP software, but the service would cost vastly more, and I don't have an actual technical need that isn't being met. It meets 2 needs: For my wife to call landline and cell phones in Thailand, and for me to have a service with automatic billing so I don't have to go to the store at all hours to buy overpriced phone cards.
It is the only commercial software we even have in the house, on any machine. So yes, we run a Skype install. Yes, if you have the default Skype setting to "automatically adjust mixer levels," it will rape and pillage your mixer settings, and give you fuzz for the trouble. No, that isn't PulseAudio's fault. The setting was broken in the old days when it used the OSS interface, too.
I don't mind running one commercial package. Probably most of the people here have some sort of Apple device in their home, which is commercial, or else use Photoslop (because they can't find the Gimp context menus) or else a console gaming platform with dozens (or more!) of commercial software packages.
Skype for linux does have a setting to let it control the mixer levels or not. When Skype can control its settings, it likes to screw them up. Probably the root of the person's problem, but instead they wanted to blame pulseaudio.
They just hate because the neckbeard tells them to. It has outgrown their brains and taken control. They have to blame anything female, or any developers who make a living. The neckbeard isn't even from this planet, it is an alien fungus that thinks it is hating various alien factions from its homeworld. It can only control the brain, it doesn't have access to the eyes and ears.
Yeah, or are just trolling. I'm going to say this whole post is a giant troll that dice fell for. They thought they were trolling linux, but they were really trolling systemd. Whoops!
1) I agree that is what they are thinking. 2) But it is NOT valid.
The problem with your argument isPeople already have a legal right to that information.. If you read the article, you would see that he specfically referenced an Australian law that says they HAVE to give out the information.
So I congratulate you on your logic, but am sorely disappointed in both your knowledge of Australian law and in failing to read the article.
The doesn't say they have to give him the information. The law says they have to either give him the information, or make an excuse from a long list of acceptable excuses.
Based on the exceptions in the relevant Australian law, it seems that if you even ask about law enforcement they can refuse your request, because they don't give out information that will "prejudice an investigation of possible unlawful activity; or prejudice law enforcement activities." Even if it will "prejudice" a negotiation with the company. So if the company has information about you that would make the services they're offering worth less than they otherwise claim, they don't have to tell you... until after the negotiations! Yeah, that sounds reasonable... oh, wait
Organisations may deny an individual’s request for access to information about themselves in a limited range of circumstances. These include if:
...
the request for access is frivolous or vexatious;
I could drive a truck through that one. Why does he want the data? Just because? Sounds frivolous.
It seems they wrote the law to say that you can have the data as long as you have a good reason to want it, but it won't affect any negotiation or lawsuit. So basically, you can have the data if you need it, as long as you don't need it very badly.
It may be a bunch of horseshit, but that doesn't mean the company is legally wrong. It might just mean the law was written by the affected companies, and not by consumer advocates.
Except that by that claim, you're admitting to having never even looked at a contest closely enough to read the rules. How much of a nerd are you if you never even had enough of a contest-fantasy to read the website about a contest? That's pretty weak sauce, even for a cynic.
Probably why contests aren't give-aways in the first place, and while people should read the fine print first to make sure, it is not a realistic concern.
The devil will be in the details, which have not yet been decided and/or published, but it won't make sense for them to make it a gimmick because this is one of those contests where the most likely result is nobody will complete the task. The real risk for the managers is that nobody finishes and they wasted the conference budget with nothing to show for it. They need at least an "almost winner."
To have a significant chance, they need to attract entries from teams at high profile engineering schools. And somebody on the team will be reading the fine print. They can only build a small number of projects during their graduate education, they're not going to pick ones that have gimmicky give-away rules. Their professors will all be people with patents, who have started and sold spin-off startups to companies involved in the research. Given that audience, it is more likely that Amazon will have some sort of clause that keeps them in the sales loop and gives them access to purchasing the tech at normal prices.
The contest itself won't generate any significant PR for Amazon, because only nerds care and they're a household name already.
Slashdot Mirror
But systemd is written in C. I gather we would have to start by implementing C in elisp.
emacs is written in C, too.
it can be slightly tricky, I agree at least with that much. Mostly for notifications that don't keep a connection to the sound system open; they're not connected long enough to adjust the per-app level in the mixer.
That is a case where I liked the older behavior better, but the new behavior is actually better for regular users. In the old days there were often three different volume levels to adjust, master, PCM, and in-app. Regular users would get the settings hosed, and have lots of hiss and pop because they didn't have the different gains balanced properly for their sound card. The new system, regular users can just slide the main volume, or open the mixer and change it per-app, and it works pretty well. But the per-app is relative to the other apps running.
So the technique now is to get the notification system to play a long sound, with the media player running, and then adjust the per-app volume. Then PulseAudio will remember that setting, at least as well as is possible until you've fiddled the levels enough that the relative volumes can't be maintained. Apps that use an external CLI player for notifications can be set by playing a music file with the CLI player, and adjusting the relative volume. This is how I have to adjust the move volume in xboard (an old internet chess client).
Things worked "better" before in some cases, but the cases that sucked before are fixed now. For example, xboard uses play or aplay for notifications, and has no in-app volume control. Before that was fine as long as you only have 1 such program running, and everything else had in-app volume. I could set the main volume for the level for xboard, and then set the in-app volume in xmms or mplayer. But that means you couldn't have the app tied to PCM volume, which was usually the better setting. So it didn't actually work better at all, even an advanced user had to fiddle and futz it, and you still couldn't get the volume you wanted if you wanted the "wrong" one to be louder. And if two apps didn't have their own volume control, then you couldn't get those apps to have different volume.
And I was using Skype back when it used OSS or ALSA for sound. The default "automatically adjust mixer levels" was even more buggy and wrecked more havoc back then than it does now.
There are lots of blind wine tastings, BTW. ;)
You might be European, I think they fell out of favor when the French snobs were rating much cheaper California wines as being equal.
Here in the US there is wine tasting fad right now, with lots of blind tasting events. Interestingly, these are mainly used to sell mid-priced wines by showing that they stand toe-to-toe with big names. Prove to the consumer that you're selling something as good as the fancy stuff, they might buy a case.
Or, you just don't pay attention to wine tasting and so of course you can get "never" as an easy answer.
I disagree that they need to go up to semi-pro to get better sound. They can spend the same money on any generic and get good sound. Even sony sounds better at a lower price than bose.
The reason bose sells a lot is because the hi-price hi-fi stores know to demo a *cheaper* generic against the name brand. Then they can use the pitch, "you get what you pay for." Which is true, in a very literal sense; you pay some amount, and what you got for it is what you got for it.
My advice to consumers, and this is true for almost all products not just headphones; only buy the highest label-price brands if you're buying at the highest price bracket. The very best of the best is better than the rest, for sure. For everything in the middle 95%, the same price with a less known brand will usually give you more bang for your buck, for the simple reason that name familiarity increases the price. You still have to check reviews on individual models though, there will be a few "stinker" generics to avoid.
Of course, they're consumer crapware, as opposed to actual pro/hi-fi gear like Sennheiser, Audio Technica, AKG, Bowers & Wilkins, et al.
I'm not sure if you got that wrong on purpose, or really misunderstood the point that much.
The claim is not that they are consumer crapware. The claim is that they have low performance compared to other brands at the same price that don't have the name familiarity. In other words, they are lower quality than an equal-priced generic.
The ones you listed are all from a different price point, and are not the ones people are comparing them to when talking about low performance.
$100 bose headphones have about the same sound as a $20 JVC, but with nicer pads and a better cord. The $40 JVC has equal quality pads, and actually better sound. But the bose still has a nicer cord. Luckily, copper wires of sufficient capacity to carry the signal all sound the same.
Yeah, I can also install vmware on my PC, and run MacOS in it, because some people have worked around the roadblocks that Apple put in the way to prevent users who pay for their software from doing that. How odd that Microsoft will permit me to virtualize their OS, but Apple won't. It's almost like they're bigger assholes than Microsoft. No, wait. It's exactly like that.
Microsoft's _business_ is to sell their operating system. Apple's _business_ is to sell computer hardware. If you claim that you can't see the difference then you are either deeply dishonest or an idiot.
You establish a reason that could explain the difference in behavior, but that doesn't refute the claim in any way; or even attempt to.
Is your thesis that any honest person who is not an idiot knows that selling software leads to better morals and ethics than selling hardware? I assume anybody with an IQ bigger than their shoe size can figure out that that is absurd, and hardware vendors can be morally good or bad. There is nothing about hardware itself that requires a company to suck. And software is so abstract, there is an almost unlimited range of moral choices available; a software company should have no trouble being immoral or unethical. And indeed, if you look at just the things MicroSoft was found guilty of in the 90s, we know they have a history that includes both immoral and unethical behavior.
On the technical specifics here, in the past MS didn't like virtualization because by opposing it they could negotiate better terms with hardware vendors. Because of the scale of the market (people mistakenly think this comes from monopoly) the same hardware pressures involve OS companies like MS, because their attitude towards hardware is determined largely by their contracts with the hardware companies. So it is a fake difference.
I gotta ask, did you not know all that (which is ignorance dishonestly shilling itself as being knowledgable) or are you just an idiot?
I have no idea where you got the idea that pulseaudio is considered best of breed.
By all the distros using it. The proof, right there in the pudding.
Before PulseAudio, linux audio sucked. Everything else was generic and networked, but audio sucked hard. Even just having multiple audio devices on a single computer was painful. Workarounds typically required an app to be restarted to switch audio devices, mostly because of deficiencies in the APIs.
With PulseAudio that was fixed, audio is a normal citizen, generic, with both a modern API and backwards compatibility. Now those same old apps, unaltered, can be moved between audio devices transparently, with no restart. Plus, networked audio is vastly more capable, able to use standard APIs instead of having to live totally outside of the normal sound ecosystem.
Were there early bugs in implementation? Yes. But that isn't PulseAudio's fault, that is the distros fault. They probably should have waited another year before doing the changeover. People are still hating on PA because of early bugs that were fixed years ago. Haters hate, but they don't read or think, so once they're told it sucks, it sucks forever. But distros hire actual professionals to make these decisions, and even the ones that weren't using PA yet during those early bugs... are using it now. Why? Space-Alien mind-control beams? Or, it is better than the alternatives?
All that is also true for systemd, except with an extra helping of known lies and a doubling of personal attacks.
Your mistake is that you're describing Glam Rock, which came earlier, 60s-70s. Glam Metal came later, late 70s-early 90s. "Butt Rock" is Glam Metal, not Glam Rock.
By `91 or so "Butt-rock" was already a synonym for Hair Rock, which is basically Glam Metal where the music sucks or is not notable; all glam, no metal. Butt-rock means the same thing, just with an insulting way of describing glam.
Dude, like, you know, butt-rock was the 80s.
`73 was a pretty awesome year in music though. Crocodile Rock, Dark Side of the Moon, Aerosmith, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Tequila Sunrise... and that only brings us from January to April!
That's like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any work done in photoshop because it's more true to the source or some shit. Sort of like how audiofools never seem to have a problem wacking off to lossy jpegs but put on an mp3 and you'll never hear the end of it.
No, it is like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any extra photo filters applied after the artist has already completed and distributed the image. Yes, of course the artist uses photoshop; just like the recording professionals use distortion!
The reason you want a flat frequency response from the speakers is because the sound has already been properly distorted by the artist. Just like, a computer monitor with accurate color will reproduce the colors the artist chose in photoslop!
I see. So you would never smear a surgeon by deciding that you will not be operated on by someone who kills 80% of his patients even though the surgery should have less than 1% mortality?
You believe people should be promoted even if all of their work so far has had to be redone?
You would happily have your car re-painted by a guy whose car has overspray on all of the glass and trim?
You see no reason not to go to the restaurant that gave you food poisoning the last two times you went there?
What a strangely dysfunctional world you must live in!
Right, those are all blatant smears in the current context. None of that is happening, none of that compares to anything that happened, and the software in question is recognized by actual professionals as being the best-of-breed; the reason that most linux distros adopt them. A vocal minority disagrees, but they are a minority.
Do the majority of surgeons say that a surgeon who kills 80% of his patients is a role model whose practices should be adopted? No? Then yes, you're just smearing somebody.
A better example is a surgeon with a bunch of internet haters, whose skill and patient record are such that their methods are copied by a majority of their peers.
You don't even have to stop using Skype. You only have to:
1) Not decide to blame PulseAudio even before you know what is wrong
2) Open the Skype settings
3) Turn off the correctly named default setting "automatically adjust mixer levels."
For most people, who aren't part of some sort of hateful social movement focused on attacking one man for having a good job, that is actually only a 2 step process. But even neckbeards should be able to manage it with the extra step.
Is it really smearing when you look at how someone's last major project went when judging how well their current project is likely to work?
Yes. You basically define your attempts as a smear, right there in that short defense of it.
Except he probably just needs to turn off "automatically adjust mixer levels" in Skype, and stop blaming PulseAudio. The hate leads to the blame, in this case. If he didn't know what to hate, (for reasons that are logic errors) then he'd have to ask instead, "what software is connected to my sound subsystem and adjusts the mixer levels automatically?" That would be a question that might lead to the answer. But starting from logic errors and hate, they seek out PulseAudio to blame it. And are wrong, mean, and dumb asses, all at the same time.
Also some audio players fiddle the mixer, when allowed. They think they're helping. I personally went back to an old unforked xmms. Still compiles!
I know, right? I use Skype because for $15/m I can have unlimitted calling to local numbers in Thailand, from the US. And can make unlimitted US calls, too. Outbound only, inbound costs extra. I have it for my wife.
There is nothing "open source" that could offer the services Skype offers. Yes, I'd rather use a generic service and be able to run generic SIP software, but the service would cost vastly more, and I don't have an actual technical need that isn't being met. It meets 2 needs: For my wife to call landline and cell phones in Thailand, and for me to have a service with automatic billing so I don't have to go to the store at all hours to buy overpriced phone cards.
It is the only commercial software we even have in the house, on any machine. So yes, we run a Skype install. Yes, if you have the default Skype setting to "automatically adjust mixer levels," it will rape and pillage your mixer settings, and give you fuzz for the trouble. No, that isn't PulseAudio's fault. The setting was broken in the old days when it used the OSS interface, too.
I don't mind running one commercial package. Probably most of the people here have some sort of Apple device in their home, which is commercial, or else use Photoslop (because they can't find the Gimp context menus) or else a console gaming platform with dozens (or more!) of commercial software packages.
Skype for linux does have a setting to let it control the mixer levels or not. When Skype can control its settings, it likes to screw them up. Probably the root of the person's problem, but instead they wanted to blame pulseaudio.
They just hate because the neckbeard tells them to. It has outgrown their brains and taken control. They have to blame anything female, or any developers who make a living. The neckbeard isn't even from this planet, it is an alien fungus that thinks it is hating various alien factions from its homeworld. It can only control the brain, it doesn't have access to the eyes and ears.
Yeah, or are just trolling. I'm going to say this whole post is a giant troll that dice fell for. They thought they were trolling linux, but they were really trolling systemd. Whoops!
1) I agree that is what they are thinking.
2) But it is NOT valid.
The problem with your argument isPeople already have a legal right to that information.. If you read the article, you would see that he specfically referenced an Australian law that says they HAVE to give out the information.
So I congratulate you on your logic, but am sorely disappointed in both your knowledge of Australian law and in failing to read the article.
The doesn't say they have to give him the information. The law says they have to either give him the information, or make an excuse from a long list of acceptable excuses.
Based on the exceptions in the relevant Australian law, it seems that if you even ask about law enforcement they can refuse your request, because they don't give out information that will "prejudice an investigation of possible unlawful activity; or
prejudice law enforcement activities."
Even if it will "prejudice" a negotiation with the company. So if the company has information about you that would make the services they're offering worth less than they otherwise claim, they don't have to tell you... until after the negotiations! Yeah, that sounds reasonable... oh, wait
Organisations may deny an individual’s request for access to information about themselves in a limited range of circumstances. These include if:
...
I could drive a truck through that one. Why does he want the data? Just because? Sounds frivolous.
It seems they wrote the law to say that you can have the data as long as you have a good reason to want it, but it won't affect any negotiation or lawsuit. So basically, you can have the data if you need it, as long as you don't need it very badly.
It may be a bunch of horseshit, but that doesn't mean the company is legally wrong. It might just mean the law was written by the affected companies, and not by consumer advocates.
I always read the fine print.
Except that by that claim, you're admitting to having never even looked at a contest closely enough to read the rules. How much of a nerd are you if you never even had enough of a contest-fantasy to read the website about a contest? That's pretty weak sauce, even for a cynic.
Your user ID gives you no excuse to have never read the rules of a technical contest before. That is never the case.
Probably why contests aren't give-aways in the first place, and while people should read the fine print first to make sure, it is not a realistic concern.
The devil will be in the details, which have not yet been decided and/or published, but it won't make sense for them to make it a gimmick because this is one of those contests where the most likely result is nobody will complete the task. The real risk for the managers is that nobody finishes and they wasted the conference budget with nothing to show for it. They need at least an "almost winner."
To have a significant chance, they need to attract entries from teams at high profile engineering schools. And somebody on the team will be reading the fine print. They can only build a small number of projects during their graduate education, they're not going to pick ones that have gimmicky give-away rules. Their professors will all be people with patents, who have started and sold spin-off startups to companies involved in the research. Given that audience, it is more likely that Amazon will have some sort of clause that keeps them in the sales loop and gives them access to purchasing the tech at normal prices.
The contest itself won't generate any significant PR for Amazon, because only nerds care and they're a household name already.