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At least one of these is bound to be on-topic in a large percentage of discussions on Slashdot. Feel free to copy-and-paste these links into Slashdot comments. If you have any questions or comments, send them to Damian.
Common myth: "Vinyl and 30 IPS tape are inherently superior to CDs because they're analog."
Fact: The human ear can hear frequencies from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz because of the band-pass features of the various parts of the ear. By the Nyquist-Shannon sampling rate theorem, 44 kHz sampling can perfectly reproduce any signal from DC to 22 kHz.
A 96 kHz sample sounds better not because the source contains frequencies in the 22–48 kHz range but because it's easier to make analog low-pass filters that transition from 20 kHz to 48 kHz than 20 kHz to 22 kHz. Any oversampling DAC will produce the same gains.
The ear also can't hear more than 20 bits in practice because it can't hear anything below 0 dB sound pressure level (SPL). The THX standard specifies a 75 dB SPL for a -30 dB reference signal (that is, 105 dB SPL for a rail to rail signal). A 20-bit linear PCM encoding gives a -120 dB quantization noise floor, meaning that it can reproduce sounds as quiet as -15 dB SPL. Most CD music is mastered for a -12 to -6 dB reference signal (thus reproducing a rail to rail signal at 87 dB SPL); the -96 dB noise floor of the 16-bit linear PCM used on CDs becomes 9 dB below audibility.
Even if we get into a whisper-quiet passage played at 30 to 35 dB SPL, and 16-bit linear PCM begins to use only the region around +/- 127, the ear still can't hear the quantization noise because it's 1. below 0 dB SPL and 2. most likely shifted up into the 16-22 kHz range, where the ear often can't reliably hear even 30 dB SPL, with the noise-shaped dither patterns commonly used in modern CD mastering.
When you refer to problems with CDs, make sure you're not conflating the format with the music. Many audio CDs that seem to lack punch sound that way because they're mastered for radio play. People in motor vehicles typically prefer music at a constant level above engine noise, and the dynamics need to be compressed to fit. Unfortunately, a loudness war has been going on for the last decade, so the same overcompressed mix gets sold in stores, taking the kick out of the kick drum on the best equipment. Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers ends up nearly unlistenable due to this.
Dolby Digital audio samples at 48 kHz, 24-bit, compressed down to 384 kbps, and that's more than enough for completely transparent 5.1 motion picture audio reproduction. An Ogg Vorbis encoding at about 192 kbps reproduces stereo audio flawlessly to even an above-average human ear. Or are you shopping for music for your dog?
The price of video gaming in current dollars has gone up: from $300 per PlayStation console, $20 per controller, and $50 per game in 1995 to $600 per PLAYSTATION 3 console, $50 per controller, and $60 per game. Video games are even more expensive in Europe due in part to content rating, localization, and tax differences. Some people like to cut costs by buying video games from the bargain bin or buying them used. But some games never hit the bargain bin, and their used prices stay high. For example, Harvest Moon was first published in 1995 at a price around 60 USD. In 2007, it's still 60 USD on half.com. So how can I tell whether a game will hit the bargain bin or become a collector's item?
The C++ standard library has little overhead on a platform where programs are dynamically linked to C++. But Windows is not one of those platforms, and neither are embedded systems. I made two versions of Hello World using <cstdio> and <iostream>, and I compiled each one using MinGW targeting Windows and devkitARM targeting Game Boy Advance. The <cstdio> version gave 5,632 bytes on Windows and 5,156 bytes on the GBA. The <iostream> version gave 266,240 bytes on Windows and 253,652 bytes on the GBA, using -Os. I was able to reduce the output on the GBA to 180,032 bytes by adding the flag -Wl,-gc-sections to remove some (but not all) unreachable code when linking.
Much of this difference is related to C++ locale support, which not all programs need but which gets linked into all programs that use <iostream> of GNU libstdc++ anyway. Given that the size of GBA main RAM is 262,144 bytes, Hello World using more than half the RAM poses somewhat of a problem. So please carefully weigh your options before you use <iostream>, and consider using a C++ standard library designed for small code size, such as uClibc++, instead of the GNU libstdc++ that your toolchain probably came with. If you get uClibc++ working with devkitARM, I'd like to hear how you did it.
Most broadband providers technically do not allow servers to run on residential connections. A few even require specialized client software (in their case, America Online software) to connect. And the providers (the telco for DSL and the cable company for cable modem service) generally have monopolies or duopolies on the last mile in the local market because fixed wireless broadband (WiMAX) isn't deployed yet.
Broadband isn't available everywhere; good broadband (standard conforming, no anti-server language in the TOS) is even less common. Do you really want to spend tens of thousands of dollars to pack up your belongings, buy a new house, move your family to another location, and try to find a new job, just to get a better Internet connection?
Windows ME, Windows XP, and Windows Vista contain a Secure Audio Path. Applications send encrypted data down the Secure Audio Path, and codecs that run in kernel space transform encrypted compressed audio into cleartext PCM and send it to the audio driver. Only drivers signed by Microsoft with Secure Audio Path permissions will receive Secure Audio Path data; to be signed, a driver has to conform to Microsoft's DRM requirements, which include disabling all digital outputs (such as to files) while playing Secure Audio Path data.
But is analog copying really that bad? With a good DAC on one end and a good ADC on the other, both external from the electrically noisy PC case, the artifacts of Ogg Vorbis or MP3 perceptual modeling will greatly outweigh the -90 dB noisefloor of 16-bit PCM.
Video, on the other hand, isn't so easy to analog reconvert, especially if it is high-resolution. But given that people are more than willing to watch low-definition video on YouTube and download overcompressed SDTV cams on pirate networks, people don't care about pristine video.
are not necessarily a bad thing. Copyleft, which keeps free software free, is built on copyright.
The bad thing is the use of copyright to interfere with the First Amendment. Entertainment franchise owners sue the operators of fan sites. Paramount treats Star Trek fans with little respect. I was twice cease-and-desisted about a Noddy fan site I ran.
The bad thing is also the pattern established by acts of the United States Congress in 1976 and 1998 that have effectively made copyright perpetual by adding 20 years to all copyrights every 20 years. The bad thing is also corrupt legislatures that take millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the Walt Disney Company and other major publishers of proprietary works to do so.
The wording of the DMCA's circumvention ban (17 USC 1201) is a bad thing.
Several companies produce add-on devices (called "mod chips") that deliver boot code to a PlayStation console. These are used in software development and can be used to run free software (or backups of lawfully acquired copies of software) on a PS1 or PS2. Sony has attacked those companies because the devices also allow pirated games to run.
Not to mention the DVD and eBook problems. See also DMCA in Plain English.
Is not illegal, no matter what Nintendo says. If you are running free software on your emulator, or you have burned free software to a CD or flash cartridge to play on your game console, whose copyright are you violating? Even if you use a cartridge copier to copy cartridges that you have purchased into your computer, you're probably covered under the format-shifting precedent in the RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia case (which grew out of the Betamax precedent set in Sony v. Universal case) as long as you don't redistribute the ROM dumps. Some people will complain about the ruling in Atari v. JS&A that backup copies under 17 USC 117(a)(2) are not needed and therefore not authorized, but ROM dumps used for emulation are not backups; they are an essential step in the use of a program under 17 USC 117(a)(1), and Vault v. Quaid appears more likely to apply.
Some game software companies try to thwart emulation and development of independent software by copyrighting a magic cookie used to authenticate products to other products. For instance, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance software needs to contain an exact copy of the Nintendo logo, or the system's BIOS will not start the program. Even worse, Sega Dreamcast games must have 14 kilobytes of copyrighted boot sector code that matches byte-for-byte a copy in ROM, or the system will not boot the game. It's a good thing the Sega v. Accolade decision has recognized copying such "magic cookies" as fair use. Chamberlain v. Skylink and Lexmark v. Static Control have upheld the principle even in the age of the DMCA. Heck, under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Improvement Act of 1975, the console maker can't even void the warranty if you use independently produced hardware or software with your console.
But please don't use NESticle for NES software. Try Nestopia, FCE Ultra, or Nintendulator instead.
Some compare buying a copy of a computer program to buying a piece of paper with a copyrighted work printed on it. Such a transaction does not give you a license to do whatever you want, but under United States law, it does grant you fair use rights and first sale rights in your copy of the work, and for computer software, such rights include the right to copy the software into RAM and to make backups. However, if a contract presented before the sale specifies that instead of buying a copy, you are perpetually renting one, then you are not "the owner of a copy," and none of this applies.
Running GNU software is said to be straightforward. See Cygwin and MinGW. (If you're still using DOS, try DJGPP.) However, too many Windows ports of UNIX programs, such as Konqueror and FontForge, rely on Cygwin, which limits their potential base of users and testers to people who have already installed Cygwin, and installing enough of Cygwin to run a given application isn't always as easy as point and click. Worse yet, installing Cygwin seems to require high-speed Internet access, which isn't always easy to get.
But if all you want is tab completion, you don't need to install MSYS Bash. The cmd shell in Windows 2000 and Windows XP can perform tab completion. Open regedit, search for "CompletionChar", and change its value from "0" to "9". Open up a command prompt, type "cd ", and start hitting the tab key.
The problem with making games for mobile phones and then distributing them publicly is thus:
Pointless in most cases. Virtually all music controlled by the major record labels is all-rights-reserved, and sharing it with the world is copyright infringement. Sharing cover versions is copyright infringement, as the songwriter and music publisher aren't getting the royalties that they are due. Even sharing recordings of independent artists' own compositions is also likely to be copyright infringement as well: see Songwriting.
are not always a bad thing. The Lempel-Ziv-Welch patent (U.S. Patent 4,558,302 and foreign counterparts) used in GIF did not cover lossless image compression; it covered a specific bytestream compression method. Other non-patented bytestream compression schemes exist; the Deflate algorithm (used in such apps as gzip and zip) was selected for PNG, and 7-Zip uses the LZMA algorithm.
The bad thing is overly broad patents. U.S. Patents #5,715,314 (electronic shopping carts) and #5,960,411 (single-action purchasing over WWW) cover both known ways to handle online shopping. Other patents such as #5,253,341 (compressed images) and #4,873,662 (hyperlinks; read more) seem to cover the basic concept of a World Wide Web.
The bad thing is patent examiners not doing their job. Patent #6,061,680 on using a hash of a compact disc's table of contents as a database key (i.e. how CDDB works) had prior art; CDDB existed two years before the patent was filed. (In the United States, an inventor who does not file a patent application within twelve months of publicly disclosing an invention loses eligibility for a patent.) All Amazon's patent #5,960,411 added to prior art was "using HTTP"; is that really such a non-obvious invention?
The bad thing is patents on something that any undergraduate could have come up with, such as requiring one second of inactivity before and after an escape sequence to distinguish it from data (look up Hayes Smartmodem). The worse thing is a Congress that siphons needed funding from the Patent Office. Left to its own devices, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is fully self-sufficient from trademark and patent filing fees, but Congress uses the USPTO as a revenue source, making the USPTO unable to pay patent examiners to do their job.
The bad thing is companies such as Rambus, TechSearch, and PEARL Ltd. that make extortion via the court system their primary business model.
The only thing in a patent that has legal force is the claims. You have to make, use, or sell a device that uses all elements of a given claim to infringe it, but infringing even one claim is patent infringement. To view claims, enter the patent serial number (e.g. LZW patent is 4558302) at the US Patent Office Full Text Database.
True, console software is cheaper. But multiplayer on console is cheaper than multiplayer on a PC. Console games are much more likely than PC games to offer modes tuned for a single console attached to a single television, either as split screen GoldenEye 007 or as a shared viewport (Secret of Mana; Bomberman). To play most multiplayer PC games, you need to buy multiple PCs and multiple monitors and put them on a LAN. Could this be why games such as those of the Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. series have rough equivalents on other companies' consoles but no PC equivalent? What are people with set-top PCs or converted four-player arcade machines supposed to play?
In the United States, the FCC's monopoly on broadcasting prevents independent music from getting played on the radio. For a long time, Clear Channel owned a large stake in XM satellite radio; it and a few other big players own most of the FM radio stations in most markets. It's hard for a new independent radio station to get a broadcasting license in the FM band (88.1 to 107.9 MHz), and without a sizable number of independent stations, radio listeners hear what Clear Channel wants them to hear, and the RIAA member labels pay a puppet promoter to pay Clear Channel to play RIAA music and only RIAA music. These bribes often come not in the form of cold hard cash but in free non-conforming promotional discs and free tickets to live performances. True, Internet radio that plays only freely licensed music isn't subject to the Clear Channel monopoly, but how can Internet radio get into a moving vehicle?
Using the region coding features of game consoles and DVD players to keep Japanese films and games out of American hands, especially when not a lot of text is involved and the community accepts bad translations as humorous, is a result of outright greed.
Region coded video game consoles: Famicom/NES, Mega Drive/Genesis, PlayStation, PS2, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii
Region coded video game consoles known not to distinguish Japan from America: Super Famicom/Super NES, Nintendo 64
Video game consoles known to be free of region lockout for games: Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PSP, PLAYSTATION 3
Here's how to get around perpetual copyrights and trademarks: Abstract the copyrighted expression away from the uncopyrightable idea by finding antecedents from before 1923 (or which are otherwise Free). For example, derive Precious Moments from the Eloi people in chapter 4 of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, and derive Enid Blyton's Noddy from Pinocchio renditions. This way you can avoid copyright and trademark infringement by taking a stereotype (uncopyrightable under Capcom v. Data East) and "making it yours" by changing just enough that the original expression is distinctive enough to overpower any copied expression.
This is why I no longer like Winnie-the-Pooh, as it has no Free antecedents unless and until Congress repeals the Bono Act.
Write a song. Put a recording on the Internet. Get sued.
The Handel v. Silver precedent recognizes a four-note match between two musical works as "substantial similarity" that constitutes prima facie evidence of copying. In the Western musical scale, there exist only 50,000 melodies four notes in length. The fear of accidentally copying an existing melody and facing a lawsuit from a major music publisher seems to put a chilling effect on creation of original works. So sharing recordings of independent artists' own compositions may infringe copyright, as those songs that aren't direct covers may be inadvertent, subconscious, yet still infringing copies of all-rights-reserved major label musical works. See also "A Chilling Effect on Music" by Damian Yerrick and "Three Chords and the Truth Part II" by Peter C. Lemire, Esq.
In the place where you live, unsolicited commercial e-mail ("spam") may or may not be legal. In the United States, the CAN-SPAM act set guidelines for legitimate direct marketing, but it failed to have much of an impact as spammers moved their operations offshore to botnets of compromised home computers in such countries as Brazil and the Republic of Korea.
There's more than one way to make a free GUI app that runs on more than one major desktop computer operating system. You can use Qt/Windows Open Source Edition, wxWidgets, or (especially for games) Allegro. (Now about that Qt little logo: It looks like the Communist hammer and sickle, no? In Soviet Russia, Qt applications develop YOU!)
are not a bad thing unless they are used to authenticate products to other products. For example, Mattel Intellivision, Nintendo Game Boy, and Sega Genesis and Dreamcast programs are required to execute an instruction string that produces "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM" the game manufacturer, with copyright and trademark signs all over the screen, or the console's BIOS won't run the program. However, as noted in the emulation section, Sega v. Accolade prevents console makers from using trademarks in this way.
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