Posts by User McUser 703 publicly visible posts • joined 6 May 2011
"[in a] VHS it is always the magnetic tape that is moving, never the magnetic pick up head."
Nope, in VHS both the tape and the read/write heads move. There simply isn't enough fidelity in linear recording for the extra video information. (Google "helical scan" for more info.)
"If the head was re-engineered to be a moving part then it would probably fail, and fail often and fast."
No more so than any other mechanical device.
Authentication Tokens are dumb unless it's just one part of a n-factor authentication scheme. If my access is dependent entirely on a single piece of gear then if it's stolen/lost A) I'm screwed and B) Someone else gets to access all my accounts without being challenged. (Same reason I don't let my browser save passwords.)
While I truly detest having to create separate logins for every f-ing site on the planet, I don't think we'll be excising passwords/PINs any time soon. Biometrics might manage to do it, but inexpensive USB fingerprint scanners have been available for at least 13 years that I'm aware of and it hasn't happened yet.
The difference is that once I buy the new version I STOP sending them money AND I still get to use the software. With a subscription model I'm left with nothing at the end of it.
And suppose I'm NOT one of those people who upgrade to every new version? A copy of CS5 will still work in another year and costs me exactly nothing beyond the amount I already paid. What benefit does a subscription give me here?
Why not sell the latest version normally and then offer a maintenance agreement/plan and provide me with the latest/greatest and what-not so long as I pay the maintenance fee? That way when I stop paying I get to keep whatever version I currently have rather than it evaporating into the æther.
"...with 48 hours of YouTube video coming in every minute, we can't mechanically do it."
Sure you can, just hire 2,880 people to watch one minute each. With 3 shifts of 8 hours each, that's only 8,640 people to run the process 24/7. California's minimum wage is $8 per hour so it would only cost a bit more than $200 Million in salaries, plus incidentals (electricity, health insurance, etc.) Given that Google made multiple Billions in 2012, this seems entirely feasible.
"Controlling for country-specific trends and the Christmas holiday, we find no statistical relationship between Megaupload penetration and changes in digital sales *prior* to the shutdown. However, we find a statistically significant positive relationship between a country’s Megaupload penetration and its sales change after the shutdown..." [Note: *Emphasis* is mine]
So the number of Megaupload users in an area had no measurable impact on digital sales/rentals *while it was operating* but shutting it down pushed sales up? Maybe I don't understand the math here, but to me that implies any change is just coincidental rather than causal.
The only real issue I have with this study is that there simply isn't enough data; a 9 month window (September 2011 to May 2012) isn't a big enough sample. You really need two or three years of data tracking both legal and illegal downloads to reach a meaningful conclusion IMHO.
We have a professor here (I work at a University) that maintains a PDP-8/E to use for something or other having to do with his research. Apparently some program he wrote in the 70s/80s couldn't possibly be ported to anything even remotely modern </sarcasm>, but since he's essentially self contained we let him do as he pleases.
Anyway, I'm curious what ancient computers other people might still be actually using.
"I'm now trying to work out how to paraphrase that into refusing to allow police on the premises even though they have a warrant"
You can't stop them from entering if they have a warrant; that's the whole *point* of a warrant.
However (in the US at least) a warrant must detail the specific thing or things that the police are looking for. So I suppose if they showed up with a warrant that stated they were looking for something exceptionally broad (eg: "illegal stuff") or with nothing listed you could argue that they're "attempting to discover harm."
"it makes no sense to settle for pennies from streams when you can bank pounds from purchases: that moment may never come again."
Ummm, why can't one do both? I seem to recall quite a number of highly successful groups that made plenty of money selling albums whilst simultaneously distributing some or all of the same content via streaming (I believe they called it "Radio" back in the day.) Why should an artist ever exclude or limit potential revenue streams?
"This video contains content from SME and Warner Chappell, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."
Good thing too, as I was about to stop spending money on music and/or entertainment forever as soon as I was able to watch this short excerpt from a 17 year old awards show. You win this round content producers...
Gasoline Powered Automobile Fails to Impress
A reporter for the New York Times was nearly able to make a round-trip from Washington to Boston during a recent "test-drive" of a new gasoline powered horseless carriage. However he required stopping for additional fuel two times, and that was only possible due to the contraption's manufacturer's special "gas-stations" which were built specifically for this test.
All was well on the first leg with the contraption making it to the first "station" without issue. However, on the return leg of the journey, the device suffered a mechanical fault needing to be towed into town by a mule team. "I was going past fields of hay, but I was not smiling" the reporter was heard to have quipped. Horse sales remain strong as people avoid automobiles for fear of running out of fuel far from the next fuel depot.
"Operators lock phones to give them enough time to recover the subsidy they pay when the contract is signed [...]"
If I'm under contract then I have to pay the agreed fee until the end of the contract or pay an "early termination fee." Which is perfectly fine; I signed the contract fully understanding that it is a binding legal document. So why do they need to lock the phone as well?
My theory is that they're trying to make switching providers as difficult as possible whilst simultaneously destroying the used phone reseller market.
"we're capable of seeing energy from 23.5 billion light-years away"
The universe is "only" 13.77 billion years old so it is not possible for anything further away than 13.77 billion light-years to be detectable simply because the light/energy can't have gotten here yet.
As for the "death" of the universe, given the Eddington number (10^80 protons) and the proton half-life (10^32 years) my math says we have 2.67*10^34 years before the last proton evaporates back into energy. But I could be wrong.
We had a user who reported receiving a similar phone call recently.
Much to my surprise the user (who is not normally the swiftest when it comes to computers) did the right thing and kept asking questions, didn't do anything the phisherman asked, demanded to speak to a manager, etc until he hung-up on her in frustration.
I have always wanted to get one these calls myself. I think it would be tremendous fun to see how long I could keep them on the line pretending to do what they ask while having the darndest problems... "Gosh thanks so much for calling me, I don't want 'the haxors' to steal all my desktops and megapixels from the inter-cloud! Oh dear, the screen's gone all blue again... Can you help me fix that too?"
"[...] it offers the convenient prediction of 'more droughts, more floods, more extreme weather' so anytime any of those things occur it can be linked to AGW."
Perhaps I misunderstood you, but it seems to me that you are saying "if an outcome matches a prediction that means that the theory behind the prediction was wrong." So exactly what sort of weather trends and other phenomena would you accept in support of AGW? What would convince you?
"Raise taxes on those companies and watch them leave for other tax friendlier havens."
I hate this argument, and I hear it all the time.
Businesses are not unicorns; we don't have to worry that we'll frighten them off never to return. Plain and simple, they want your money and if the only way to get it is to give some of it to the government then they'll fall in line.
When everyone can open my mental Encyclopedia (nicely to allow requisite shouting) all really easy parts require ten Toms yodeling. Sadly, help is the hardest of the ways humans equate natural interests there. Certainly others might eat some, tasting only mushrooms, apples, kale, interesting noodles, goldfish, and certain roots. Otherwise nothing you might see shall open minds. Every time I make ethanol someone tells Hubert "evolution yes!" Eventually varieties endanger news makers and keep everyone sane. "Enough nonsense," says everyone.
Not sure that makes any sense though...
"[The Apollo 17 astronauts] gathered more than 110kgs [of] soil"
There's no soil on the moon, just regolith. Soil is composed, in part, of decomposed organic matter; the moon has none of that. (Well not until 1969 at least [1].)
[1] http://boingboing.net/2009/06/16/poop-on-the-moon-and.html
And they'd probably reply "We'll see you in court then. We didn't file this case in East Texas for the barbeque you know..."
Then during the trial they'll cry and whine/whinge to the jury that mean-old Google wouldn't play ball and were very rude. And before you can say "software shouldn't be patentable," Google is on the hook for a couple hundred million. Better to just toss a couple million at them and put the whole thing behind an NDA.
I'm not talking about the resellers, they are obviously just fulfilling their contractual obligations as you pointed out. My beef is with the copyright owners/manufacturers who make their resellers sign such ridiculous contracts.
It's 2012 FFS. We have the Internet and we have international trade. There's no particular reason why we all shouldn't be able to buy a copy of Left4Dead or a Blu-Ray movie at roughly the same time for roughly the same price (taxes, etc not withstanding.)
Your analogy is invalid; we're not minors and digital copies of a movie or video game aren't anything like cigarettes or alcohol.
Beyond that, age restrictions on those products are put in place by the government (or by society), NOT the manufacturers* or stores. And those controls are based (ostensibly) on protecting minors from potential self harm (alcohol poisoning, cancer, etc) versus geoblocking's goal of... well whatever it is they think they'll gain by denying people with money access to content.
That said, it isn't unthinkable that there might be local laws that require content blocking; for example if a movie is deemed inappropriate based on a country's laws. But again that is the LAW, not Corporate Policy, and in cases such as those the nature of and reason for the block should be fully disclosed.
*Arguably some of them would very much like to sell their wares to minors (eg: Joe Camel.)
Why not use this as an opportunity to migrate to IPv6 and sell the IPv4 address block while it's still worth something?
At least then you can off-set the cost of the migration in whole or in part. If they wait much longer they'll have migrated to IPv6 anyway and the IPv4 block will be worthless.
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