Posts by Phil O'Sophical 7402 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2011
I have a portable, because it's, well, portable. For email/surfing/presentations 12" is fine, it fits a docking station with a pair of 1680x1050 monitors on my desk if I need it to and doesn't pull my shoulder off when hanging about in an airport between flights. It's cheap enough that neither I nor my company will be too upset if it dies after a few hard years.
For the big jobs I have a home desktop with lots of slots for additional cards &disks, and no worries about power consumption.
£1000+ for a skinny and unnecessarily powerful system that can't make up its mind what it wants to be? Why?
I have my TV hooked up to a hifi already, I don't need a new AV amp, nor the cabling it needs, nor yet another remote control. I just like to be able to pick up the TV remote & select the source. I had to build an external SCART switch for that in past, it would be nice to think that manufacturers had moved on from making inadequate equipment that needs external accessrories to be useful.
Why, in these days of multiple entertainment sources, do manufacturers still only put two real input connectors on a TV?
It was just about understandable in the early SCART days, when there wasn't much to connect beyond a VCR and maybe a satellite receiver, and the sockets were physically bulky. Today even a fairly modest setup is likely to have Satellite, Blu-ray and a games console. Adding a PVR and a networked streaming media client to that isn't unusual. Plus the spare socket for the digital camera.
HDMI connectors are tiny and cheap, like USB, so why not put 4 or even 6 on the TV, and avoid the need for an ugly external switchbox which means traipsing across the room to change sources?
Of course, now that people have twigged on to what the supermarkets are doing, small butchers and delis are springing up again, as entrepreneurs (oh look, it's a French word) are seeing the opportunities. What comes around goes around, and trade keeps it alive.
As for cigarettes, I'm a strong supporter of the idea that the minimum age for purchase should be raised by one year per year, until it gets to, say, 21. Won't hurt the current addicts, but might slow down the rate of new addictions.
The US pint is only 473ml, and when I was last in one of the Gordon Biersch brewpubs their menu said that they served their beer (which is much more drinkable than the usual US offerings) in 500ml servings. It didn't seem to taste any the worse for that, and I checked several times.
My experience of diet drinks is that they are horribly over-sweet, presumably because the people who order them are the ones who have a sweet tooth in the first place. It's hard to see how they could get a control group for a test like this, without forcing diet drinks on a random selection of people for years. yuk.
>It is mandatory for any Freeview HD product to apply copy controls as signalled at least to the HD content.
The key phrase there is "as signalled" The BBC asked permission to do it, and Ofcom allowed that, but if the broadcaster doesn't put DRM on the broadcast there is no requirement that the PVR should encrypt the content. If this PVR encrypts everything then it's just taking the lazy way out.
Does your position as "Ex-Sony Product Planner" allow you to respond to my first question, about who makes this for Sony?
Incidentally I'm not anti-Sony, I have an RDR-HX910 HDD-DVD box linked to a Sony TV and am happy with both. In terms of features and connectivity the 910 design is far superior, at least for SD viewing.
Who have Sony badge-engineered this from?
31watts, with an external wallwart PSU? More hot clunky clutter behind the TV.
No DVD or Blu-ray player, no video media playback from USB?
One HDMI socket, no S-Video or component for a projector?
Archive to an external disk, but locked to the box? That's understandable for pay-TV subscription channels, but unacceptable for Freeview.
And they want £350? I'l pass.
> If I somehow copied all of the iTunes catalogue how much would Apple et al have lost? Nothing,
Easy to say, but it fails on two counts:
1) If *everyone* took that attitiude, there would be no iTunes, so it clearly can't work as a general principle.
2) If there was absolutely no, zilch, zero, way for you to download stuff for free, can you really put your hand on your heart and say you would never, never, pay? If not, then inevitably you're creating a loss for the owner at some point by downloading stuff.
Hasn't this concept existed since the very first lock with a key was invented? Not to mention smartcards used in satellite/cable boxes, software license schemes based on the MAC address of an ethernet card, cars with keyless locks, etc. etc..
It really is time the USPO hired some technically-savvy examiners.
> Under UK law, theft is defined in the Theft Act 1968. Go and read it. You will find that you are simply wrong.
OK, I've read it, and I still disagree. Some excerpts:
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A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it
Any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounts to an appropriation,
“Property” includes money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property.
Property shall be regarded as belonging to any person having possession or control of it, or having in it any proprietary right or interest
A person appropriating property belonging to another without meaning the other permanently to lose the thing itself is nevertheless to be regarded as having the intention of permanently depriving the other of it if his intention is to treat the thing as his own to dispose of regardless of the other’s rights
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It is clear that usurping someones right to make copies of their work, with the intention of treating such a copy as if it were your own, amounts to theft.
"I am very carefully and deliberately making the statement that copyright infringement is not theft - which is a true statement"
I disagree. Your statement would only be true if the value of a copy did not depend on the number of copies that exist, which is rarely the case. In practice, making an unauthorized copy will reduce the value of authorized copies, or will reduce the market for sales of authorized copies.
In practice there is no difference between making an unauthorized copy of something, and stealing an authorized copy, the net effect is the same. Both are theft of property.
The repeated comments here that it isn't theft because making a copy doesn't deprive the owner of the original are disingenuous. The situation is called *copy*right not because it affects the original, but because it affects the right to make copies of that original. It is theft of those copies which is at issue.
When a band plays a song live at a concert, it is clear that no amount of copying of that performance is going to detract from the experience of those who paid to see it live. The original has indeed arguably lost nothing.
However, copyright allows the band to make THEIR OWN COPIES of that performance, and to distribute them for money. The availability of unauthorized copies will obviously reduce the number of copies that the band will sell, and could depress the price of those copies. In that sense it is very much theft, since making 500 unauthorized copies and selling them yourself is the same as breaking into the band's warehouse and stealing 500 legitimate copies to sell. Just because there are a potentially unlimited number of copies avaiable doesn't make stealing them less of a crime.
There is the argument that someone who takes a pirate copy isn't necessarily someone who would have bought a legitimate copy, so the losses cannot be equated to 100% of the unauthorized copies. That is true, but it is equally true that *some* of those pirate copies will correspond to a lost sale of a legitimate copy, so the loss is not 0% either.
Telephone exchanges have used -48v supplies pretty much since the beginning. It's high enough to power several miles of cable, yet low enough not to be dangerous. It's the one power supply that you can guarantee to find in any telco rack.
As to price, equipment that complies with NEBS Level 3 certification will never be cheap. It's specc'ed for fire resistance, earthquake survivability, lightning strikes, etc. It's not unknown for such equipment to still be functioning normally when the racks are lying on their side in a pile of rubble after the exchange building has collapsed on them. Try that with a standard PC! :)
