subject:"Re\: \[Slight OT\] TDPL in Russia"

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i6a576$19j...@digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 I must be young. My first CD player was a $200 (IIRC) Sega CD (Mega CD 
 for those outside the states and Canada).

 I also remember paying $600 for 64K (that's K, not M) of memory. It was 
 worth every penny at the time, too!

Heh. The most I ever paid per-byte was $180 for 4MB.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i6a52a$19j...@digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 Weird. 'Nothing else matters' is such a depressing-sounding song, I still 
 can't imagine any grandmothers liking it. (But then who am I to talk? My 
 granda's in her 80's, drives a Celica, and is the only person in my 
 family to own an HDTV.)

 I talked my dad into getting a 60 HDTV. He loves it, as his vision is 
 poor and he can see it easily. Big TV sets are a godsend for the elderly.

My grandma's HDTV is only about 13. Actually, the only reason she got it 
was because her old small bedroom TV finally died (And by old I mean it 
had two knobs: one for VHF, one for UHF - hardware wasn't always designed to 
be disposable like it is now) and the only new ones available were HD.

Interesting thing to note is that this HD set with a rather expensive 
brand-new antenna and digital broadcast gets her *fewer* watchable channels 
than that ultra-old set did back before the analog cutoff. My dad's been 
even more worse off - since the switch he gets about one realistically 
watchable channel if he's lucky (used to get most of the local channels). 
And he's understandably pissed about it (partly because now he can't watch 
Letterman.) Neither of them live in rural areas. Broadcast DTV is shit. I 
honestly can't believe anyone was ever stupid enough to buy into the DTV 
will give you more channels at better quality bullshit. I mean seriously: 
you get interference on an analog signal and you get a little static 
overlaid - you get interference on digital signal and you get a dead fucking 
signal. Basic fucking electronic signaling. I saw through it from the start, 
but it's not like there was a damn thing I could have done about it - the 
overwhelming hordes of corporate lobbyists and consumer whores (Just visit 
engadget) had spoken.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i69vov$o6...@digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message
 Secondly, people ought to read contracts before they sign them. It's 
 their own fault if they don't.

 Until recent years, if you wanted to be a successful musician (aside from 
 scoring, and there's really only so much demand for that) you *had* to 
 sign one of those constracts. There was no choice - they had an oligopoly 
 on the entire market, and if you wanted in they had you by the balls.

 Of course there was a choice. You could go with a major and get a tiny 
 cut, or an independent with a larger cut, or do it yourself and keep 100%.


100% of nothing is still nothing. Only the labels had all the means of 
largescale marketing and distribution. These days there's internet.


 Contracts with children aren't legally binding because children are not 
 considered legally competent. Adults are.


 I've seen very few adults I'd consider competent, but oh well ;)

 A marketplace is impossible without the ability to make binding contracts. 
 Nobody is going to invest in you or lend you money if you can just walk 
 away from it later if you change your mind.


I wasn't arguing against contracts, I was diving further off-topic by using 
competent as a springboard for bitching about...well, general lack of 
competence among most people.

 I always get the old versions of CDs before they were remastered :-) as 
 I don't care for the audio leveling.

 I've always been unclear on what that is.


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Marketing

 And here's why I shoot for the old ones:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cd_loudness_trend-something.gif

Ahh, yea, that's what I thought. Maybe it's gone too far with CDs, I dunno. 
Never noticed a difference between original and remastered myself (but I've 
never gone and compared them side-by-side). I do think DVD Video creators 
have gone waaay to far the other way though, because of the 
Volume-fiddling-test reason I mentioned before: If I set the volume to a 
comfortable level, and the damn volume keeps changing anyway, enough that I 
have to re-adjust over and over back to where I had it, then there's too 
fucking much dynamic range.

I once recorded an Elvis Vinyl my dad had to put on a CD for him. There was 
one song (forget what it was) that had a spot in the middle that was SO 
quiet in relation to the rest (and you could tell it wasn't just from it 
being an old album) that it was completely imperceptible without boosting 
the volume all the away up. But being as quiet as it was, there was SO 
little actual data there that the quality turned to shit when it was loud 
enough to hear. Avoiding low dynamic range seems to be all the rage these 
days (among consumers), but people never seem to learn more is not always 
better.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread retard

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:10:00 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Marketing

 And here's why I shoot for the old ones:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cd_loudness_trend-something.gif
 
 Ahh, yea, that's what I thought. Maybe it's gone too far with CDs, I
 dunno. Never noticed a difference between original and remastered myself
 (but I've never gone and compared them side-by-side). I do think DVD
 Video creators have gone waaay to far the other way though, because of
 the Volume-fiddling-test reason I mentioned before: If I set the
 volume to a comfortable level, and the damn volume keeps changing
 anyway, enough that I have to re-adjust over and over back to where I
 had it, then there's too fucking much dynamic range.
 
 I once recorded an Elvis Vinyl my dad had to put on a CD for him. There
 was one song (forget what it was) that had a spot in the middle that was
 SO quiet in relation to the rest (and you could tell it wasn't just from
 it being an old album) that it was completely imperceptible without
 boosting the volume all the away up. But being as quiet as it was, there
 was SO little actual data there that the quality turned to shit when it
 was loud enough to hear. Avoiding low dynamic range seems to be all the
 rage these days (among consumers), but people never seem to learn more
 is not always better.

Vinyls have a bad dynamic range. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
RIAA_equalization )

Most consumers have absolutely no idea what the dynamic range is. They're 
actually happier when the range gets smaller and smaller because the 
louder somehow sounds better. And like you say, they don't need to touch 
the volume knob anymore.

You can try it yourself, use some basic audio library like OpenAL and 
play sounds @ 1% .. 100% volume. You need a decent hi-fi system for this 
(preferably an amp with 1000+W per channel power). Even the 16-bit 44 kHz 
LPCM is enough for most people. DVD soundtracks have a 24-bit dynamic 
range. Modern compressed CDs only cover a ridiculously small part of the 
range.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread Steven Schveighoffer

On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:12:37 -0400, Walter Bright  
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:58:39 -0400, Walter Bright  
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of  
anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data  
side of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some  
slight distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I  
would expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues  
though.  It's not copy protection, it's ripping protection.


Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who would  
notice?
 You notice in the cymbals the most :)  And Ulrich uses a lot of  
cymbals.
 But you are right, the guitars aren't as noticeable (you can still  
hear it though).



Back in the 80's, it wasn't unusual for a compiler vendor to release a  
student version or some such, that was missing a feature like floating  
point. The problem, though, was that the compiler would earn a  
reputation as not having floating point and people would turn elsewhere  
when they would want to buy a professional compiler.


In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of being  
labeled a band with lousy sound.


Note that the sound is fine if you are playing the CD, it's if you rip the  
tracks to MP3s when the sound degrades.


BTW, I think they abandoned this, the Death Magnetic album does not have  
this protection.


-Steve

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread Steven Schveighoffer


On Thu, 09 Sep 2010 01:05:45 -0400, Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote:


Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message
news:i69fr8$2cb...@digitalmars.com...


In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of being
labeled a band with lousy sound.


IIRC, A lot of Metallica fans felt they had started putting out lousy
sound back around the Load and Reload albums. And that was before CD
DRM.


Load was the beginning of the downhill slide.  There are a couple alright  
songs, but all albums before that were filled with good songs.  Reload was  
utter crap (Unforgiven 2?  Really!???).  St. Anger I never really liked,  
although I've heard that some people like it.  It's not my style, but you  
can't really say it was Metallica selling out.


Death Magnetic is a complete return to their original style.  I feel some  
of the solos are rehashed, but there is a lot of good stuff on there.


-Steve

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Steven Schveighoffer schrieb:
On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:12:37 -0400, Walter Bright 
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:58:39 -0400, Walter Bright 
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of 
anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data 
side of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some 
slight distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  
I would expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues 
though.  It's not copy protection, it's ripping protection.


Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who 
would notice?
 You notice in the cymbals the most :)  And Ulrich uses a lot of 
cymbals.
 But you are right, the guitars aren't as noticeable (you can still 
hear it though).



Back in the 80's, it wasn't unusual for a compiler vendor to release a 
student version or some such, that was missing a feature like 
floating point. The problem, though, was that the compiler would earn 
a reputation as not having floating point and people would turn 
elsewhere when they would want to buy a professional compiler.


In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of 
being labeled a band with lousy sound.


Note that the sound is fine if you are playing the CD, it's if you rip 
the tracks to MP3s when the sound degrades.


BTW, I think they abandoned this, the Death Magnetic album does not have 
this protection.


-Steve


The Death Magnetic album had crappy sound anyway, according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Magnetic#Criticism_regarding_production
(But not because of the copy protection but because of the 
aforementioned loudness war).

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


retard schrieb:

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:55:46 +0200, Daniel Gibson wrote:


retard schrieb:

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:15:15 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:


retard wrote:

You must be young then. I got my first CD-ROM drive with my Pentium
75. The first 1x external CD-ROM drives were pretty expensive. I
think one used to cost around $600..800.

Eh, my first CD-ROM drive was $1100 or so.

Was it that expensive? Anyway, the world has changed so much. You can
probably find a decent dvd+rw drive for $30 or $40 now. My original
point was that people like us who listened to CDs in the 80's quite
likely still possess real hi-fi cd players or integrated cd/amp/tuner
systems. These systems are unaffected by the cd copy protection
methods.

Not necessarily - I've heard of copy protections (they should actually
be called listening preventions) that caused trouble on old as well as
some new CD players (not CD ROM drives). Also Car CD player seem to be
massively affected by such problems. Why the hell should someone buy a
CD he can't listen to in his car?!


Ah, true. The reason (IIRC) was that the DRMed CDs also had a data cd TOC 
or multiple sessions or something like that. If the car CD player 
supported MP3 CDs via the data cd format, that made it too intelligent 
to play the disks.


Yeah, and there also was this tric with manipulating the CIRC checksums, 
resulting in read errors that are ignored/interpolated by (most?) CD 
players, but CD ROM drives fail and apparently car radios fail as well.

Those CDs are not CDs anyway, because they violate the red book standard.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread Steven Schveighoffer

On Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:28:12 -0400, Daniel Gibson metalcae...@gmail.com  
wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer schrieb:
On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:12:37 -0400, Walter Bright  
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:58:39 -0400, Walter Bright  
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of  
anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data  
side of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some  
slight distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.   
I would expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues  
though.  It's not copy protection, it's ripping protection.


Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who  
would notice?
 You notice in the cymbals the most :)  And Ulrich uses a lot of  
cymbals.
 But you are right, the guitars aren't as noticeable (you can still  
hear it though).



Back in the 80's, it wasn't unusual for a compiler vendor to release a  
student version or some such, that was missing a feature like  
floating point. The problem, though, was that the compiler would earn  
a reputation as not having floating point and people would turn  
elsewhere when they would want to buy a professional compiler.


In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of  
being labeled a band with lousy sound.
 Note that the sound is fine if you are playing the CD, it's if you rip  
the tracks to MP3s when the sound degrades.
 BTW, I think they abandoned this, the Death Magnetic album does not  
have this protection.

 -Steve


The Death Magnetic album had crappy sound anyway, according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Magnetic#Criticism_regarding_production
(But not because of the copy protection but because of the  
aforementioned loudness war).


*shrug* sounds good to me ;)  The production quality is low, but I'm  
pretty sure that was on purpose.  I've never heard of the dynamic range  
thing, and I've never really noticed it.


On another note, ...And Justice for All is an album that you can turn up  
all the way and it's never loud enough :)


Crappy sound that I'm talking about is like a wishuwishuwishu sound over  
the whole recording.  I can only hear it on my ripped tracks of Garage Inc  
(and only the second disc, the one they recorded for the album  
specifically), the actual disc doesn't exhibit the sound.  I think they  
did something to the high frequencies that messes up mp3 encoders.


-Steve

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread BCS


Hello Nick,


BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1bb248cd1ce96dc11...@news.digitalmars.com...


Hello Nick,


domino eff...@sitemine.org wrote in message
news:i666vt$158...@digitalmars.com...

Walter Bright Wrote:


domino wrote:


Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard
movie/audio CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.


CDs are not copy protected.


False.

I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg
rootkit protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At
least the cactus shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on
purpose and it's audible even with a legal authentic cd audio
player. If you place these discs in a standard PC cd/dvd drive, it
just spins and spins and spins and spins and the OS either hangs or
refuses to open the cd tray. I'm 100% sure you are not allowed to
break these.


The vast majority of CDs don't have that. I have approx 250
commercial audio CDs, and not a single one of them has any DRM. And
if I did want something that only came on a DRMed CD, I'd just say
Fuck you Sony and pirate it.


I'd buy the disk, put it on the shelf and let it collect dust with
the rest and download the tracks I really care about.


That's what I've mostly been doing lately (Except I rip the disc.
Everything online is MP3 - meh).



That's what I do, assuming I can read the disk.

--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread BCS


Hello retard,


Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:17:33 +, BCS wrote:


I've never owned a CD player that wasn't a CD-ROM drive. I've never
come across a disk I couldn't play.


You must be young then.


Nope, just cheap. The first CD-ROM drive I got was after high school.

--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread BCS


Hello Nick,


Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message
news:i69jg8$2mu...@digitalmars.com...


retard wrote:


I doubt they have any power to fight the record company in these
kinds of issues. A friend of a friend signed a deal with a record
company owned by a multinational mother record company. Now they are
told where to play concerts, how the cd distribution is organized,
and when they are supposed to release the next two albums. That's
like slavery.


To put it mildly, to say such a thing is like slavery is patently
absurd. Contract or no, a record company cannot make you do anything,
regardless of what you signed. (Sign a contract with the military,
however, and they *can* make you.)

Secondly, people ought to read contracts before they sign them. It's
their own fault if they don't.


Until recent years, if you wanted to be a successful musician (aside
from scoring, and there's really only so much demand for that) you
*had* to sign one of those constracts. There was no choice - they had
an oligopoly on the entire market, and if you wanted in they had you
by the balls.


Contracts with children aren't legally binding because children are
not considered legally competent. Adults are.


I've seen very few adults I'd consider competent, but oh well ;)


I always get the old versions of CDs before they were remastered :-)
as I don't care for the audio leveling.


I've always been unclear on what that is. Is that where they make the
volume-level relatively consistent? (If so, then I wish the DVD
companies would start doing it. I hate when I have to turn the volume
*waaay* up just to hear the dialog and then *waaay* down again to not
bust my eardrums as soon as music or sound effects come on. And then
tough shit whenever a character talks during an action scene. Never
had to deal with that crap on VHS.)



Subtitles, man. Subtitles. Heck, even at the right volume, I still can't 
understand what they are saying(/mumbleing) some of the time. (And my hearing 
is just fine.)


--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread dsimcha

== Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org)'s article
 On 09/09/2010 03:40 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
  Broadcast DTV is shit. I
  honestly can't believe anyone was ever stupid enough to buy into the DTV
  will give you more channels at better quality bullshit. I mean seriously:
  you get interference on an analog signal and you get a little static
  overlaid - you get interference on digital signal and you get a dead fucking
  signal. Basic fucking electronic signaling. I saw through it from the start,
  but it's not like there was a damn thing I could have done about it - the
  overwhelming hordes of corporate lobbyists and consumer whores (Just visit
  engadget) had spoken.
 Actually DTV has error correction capabilities that are simply
 impossible with analog signal. Clearly at a point you do end up simply
 losing the carrier (I'm not sure what the noise margins are for digital
 vs. analog) but clearly an ok-signal DTV broadcast is much better than
 an ok-signal analog broadcast.
 Andrei

Yea, but the problem with ATSC (the American DTV standard) is that it's
ridiculously susceptible to multipath distortion.  I live about a mile and 
change
from the transmitter and have trouble watching stuff with only an indoor 
antenna.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread Andrei Alexandrescu


On 09/09/2010 03:40 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

Broadcast DTV is shit. I
honestly can't believe anyone was ever stupid enough to buy into the DTV
will give you more channels at better quality bullshit. I mean seriously:
you get interference on an analog signal and you get a little static
overlaid - you get interference on digital signal and you get a dead fucking
signal. Basic fucking electronic signaling. I saw through it from the start,
but it's not like there was a damn thing I could have done about it - the
overwhelming hordes of corporate lobbyists and consumer whores (Just visit
engadget) had spoken.


Actually DTV has error correction capabilities that are simply 
impossible with analog signal. Clearly at a point you do end up simply 
losing the carrier (I'm not sure what the noise margins are for digital 
vs. analog) but clearly an ok-signal DTV broadcast is much better than 
an ok-signal analog broadcast.


Andrei

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-09 Thread Andrei Alexandrescu


On 9/9/10 12:19 CDT, dsimcha wrote:

== Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org)'s article

On 09/09/2010 03:40 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

Broadcast DTV is shit. I
honestly can't believe anyone was ever stupid enough to buy into the DTV
will give you more channels at better quality bullshit. I mean seriously:
you get interference on an analog signal and you get a little static
overlaid - you get interference on digital signal and you get a dead fucking
signal. Basic fucking electronic signaling. I saw through it from the start,
but it's not like there was a damn thing I could have done about it - the
overwhelming hordes of corporate lobbyists and consumer whores (Just visit
engadget) had spoken.

Actually DTV has error correction capabilities that are simply
impossible with analog signal. Clearly at a point you do end up simply
losing the carrier (I'm not sure what the noise margins are for digital
vs. analog) but clearly an ok-signal DTV broadcast is much better than
an ok-signal analog broadcast.
Andrei


Yea, but the problem with ATSC (the American DTV standard) is that it's
ridiculously susceptible to multipath distortion.  I live about a mile and 
change
from the transmitter and have trouble watching stuff with only an indoor 
antenna.


USA latching onto an inferior TV standard and then fighting tooth and 
nail to improve equipment that puts up with it? I cry deja vu :o).


Andrei

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


BCS schrieb:

Hello Nick,


Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message
news:i69jg8$2mu...@digitalmars.com...


retard wrote:


I doubt they have any power to fight the record company in these
kinds of issues. A friend of a friend signed a deal with a record
company owned by a multinational mother record company. Now they are
told where to play concerts, how the cd distribution is organized,
and when they are supposed to release the next two albums. That's
like slavery.


To put it mildly, to say such a thing is like slavery is patently
absurd. Contract or no, a record company cannot make you do anything,
regardless of what you signed. (Sign a contract with the military,
however, and they *can* make you.)

Secondly, people ought to read contracts before they sign them. It's
their own fault if they don't.


Until recent years, if you wanted to be a successful musician (aside
from scoring, and there's really only so much demand for that) you
*had* to sign one of those constracts. There was no choice - they had
an oligopoly on the entire market, and if you wanted in they had you
by the balls.


Contracts with children aren't legally binding because children are
not considered legally competent. Adults are.


I've seen very few adults I'd consider competent, but oh well ;)


I always get the old versions of CDs before they were remastered :-)
as I don't care for the audio leveling.


I've always been unclear on what that is. Is that where they make the
volume-level relatively consistent? (If so, then I wish the DVD
companies would start doing it. I hate when I have to turn the volume
*waaay* up just to hear the dialog and then *waaay* down again to not
bust my eardrums as soon as music or sound effects come on. And then
tough shit whenever a character talks during an action scene. Never
had to deal with that crap on VHS.)



Subtitles, man. Subtitles. Heck, even at the right volume, I still can't 
understand what they are saying(/mumbleing) some of the time. (And my 
hearing is just fine.)




I've got the same problems with many american movies/series.
Synchronizations usually fix that, but translations often suck..

And I thought this was just a bad combination of not native speaker 
(so I have more trouble understanding spoken english) and too many 
Motörhead concerts =)


Anyway: Subtitles are definitely helpful.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message 
news:a6268ff1bcc78cd1e0464501...@news.digitalmars.com...
 Hello Nick,

 I've always been unclear on what that is. Is that where they make the
 volume-level relatively consistent? (If so, then I wish the DVD
 companies would start doing it. I hate when I have to turn the volume
 *waaay* up just to hear the dialog and then *waaay* down again to not
 bust my eardrums as soon as music or sound effects come on. And then
 tough shit whenever a character talks during an action scene. Never
 had to deal with that crap on VHS.)


 Subtitles, man. Subtitles. Heck, even at the right volume, I still can't 
 understand what they are saying(/mumbleing) some of the time. (And my 
 hearing is just fine.)


Heh, yea I've actually ended up doing that suprisingly often (but then 
sometimes discs with english audio will lack english subtitles which is 
annoying). It's pretty sad when a native english speaker with perfectly 
normal hearing has to turn on subtitles just to know what they're saying in 
an english audio track.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Steven Schveighoffer schvei...@yahoo.com wrote in message 
news:op.viri2yp3eav...@localhost.localdomain...
 On Thu, 09 Sep 2010 01:05:45 -0400, Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote:

 Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message
 news:i69fr8$2cb...@digitalmars.com...

 In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of being
 labeled a band with lousy sound.

 IIRC, A lot of Metallica fans felt they had started putting out lousy
 sound back around the Load and Reload albums. And that was before CD
 DRM.

 Load was the beginning of the downhill slide.  There are a couple alright 
 songs, but all albums before that were filled with good songs.  Reload was 
 utter crap (Unforgiven 2?  Really!???).  St. Anger I never really liked, 
 although I've heard that some people like it.

I was avoiding stating my own Metallica opinions, but now that you mention 
it, that's exactly how I feel (and yea, I have heard a lot of other people 
say Load was the start of a downfall). I did kind of like Until it Sleeps 
and maybe one other (forget what), but yea, most of Load/Reload I just never 
got into. Black album was filed with good stuff, and I never understood 
people that said St. Anger was a return to Metallica's former glory. Just 
sounded like noise to me, and I'm a big metal fan!

Speaking of all this, am I correct in my understanding that Load was right 
after Megadeth split off? (And that black album was right before?)

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Nick Sabalausky schrieb:

Speaking of all this, am I correct in my understanding that Load was right 
after Megadeth split off? (And that black album was right before?)




No, Megadeth was found in 1983 - Mustaine was kicked out of Metallica 
before they recorded their first album.


(Don't like Metallica though.. neither the pop stuff of the Black Album 
nor the older slightly better stuff like Master of Puppets.. I guess I 
just don't like Hetfields singing voice)

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer


On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:23:25 -0400, domino eff...@sitemine.org wrote:


Walter Bright Wrote:


domino wrote:
 Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard movie/audio
 CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.

CDs are not copy protected.


False.

I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg  
rootkit protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At  
least the cactus shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on purpose  
and it's audible even with a legal authentic cd audio player. If you  
place these discs in a standard PC cd/dvd drive, it just spins and spins  
and spins and spins and the OS either hangs or refuses to open the cd  
tray. I'm 100% sure you are not allowed to break these.


perhaps it's time for a new CD drive?

FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of anti-copy  
distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data side of the disc.   
The result when you encode it via MP3 is some slight distortion, even at  
160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I would expect that a bit-for-bit  
copy would not have any issues though.  It's not copy protection, it's  
ripping protection.


-Steve

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-08 Thread Walter Bright


Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of 
anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data side 
of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some slight 
distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I would 
expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues though.  It's 
not copy protection, it's ripping protection.


Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who would notice?

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:58:39 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of
 anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data side
 of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some slight
 distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I would
 expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues though.  It's
 not copy protection, it's ripping protection.
 
 Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who would
 notice?

That particular album consists of covers, but in general Metallica also 
has pretty calm ballads. Ever heard of 'Nothing else matters'? Even my 
grandmother used to love it.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:17:33 +, BCS wrote:

 Hello domino,
 
 Walter Bright Wrote:
 
 domino wrote:
 
 Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard
 movie/audio CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.
 
 CDs are not copy protected.
 
 False.
 
 I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg
 rootkit protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At
 least the cactus shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on purpose
 and it's audible even with a legal authentic cd audio player. If you
 place these discs in a standard PC cd/dvd drive, it just spins and
 spins and spins and spins and the OS either hangs or refuses to open
 the cd tray. I'm 100% sure you are not allowed to break these.
 
 
 I've never owned a CD player that wasn't a CD-ROM drive. I've never come
 across a disk I couldn't play.

You must be young then. I got my first CD-ROM drive with my Pentium 75. 
The first 1x external CD-ROM drives were pretty expensive. I think one 
used to cost around $600..800. Before 1994 I only had a CD walkman and a 
moderately cheap entry level hi-fi system.

On top of that, the first CD-ROM drives provided ridiculously bad audio 
quality and connectivity. Also the 16-bit SB clones were trash.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer

On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:58:39 -0400, Walter Bright  
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:



Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of  
anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data side  
of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some slight  
distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I would  
expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues though.  It's  
not copy protection, it's ripping protection.


Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who would  
notice?


You notice in the cymbals the most :)  And Ulrich uses a lot of cymbals.

But you are right, the guitars aren't as noticeable (you can still hear it  
though).


-Steve

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-08 Thread Walter Bright


retard wrote:
You must be young then. I got my first CD-ROM drive with my Pentium 75. 
The first 1x external CD-ROM drives were pretty expensive. I think one 
used to cost around $600..800.


Eh, my first CD-ROM drive was $1100 or so.



Before 1994 I only had a CD walkman and a moderately cheap entry level hi-fi 
system.


I had a Sony Discman back in the early 80's. Still have it somewhere.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:15:15 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 retard wrote:
 You must be young then. I got my first CD-ROM drive with my Pentium 75.
 The first 1x external CD-ROM drives were pretty expensive. I think one
 used to cost around $600..800.
 
 Eh, my first CD-ROM drive was $1100 or so.

Was it that expensive? Anyway, the world has changed so much. You can 
probably find a decent dvd+rw drive for $30 or $40 now. My original point 
was that people like us who listened to CDs in the 80's quite likely 
still possess real hi-fi cd players or integrated cd/amp/tuner systems. 
These systems are unaffected by the cd copy protection methods.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:12:37 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:58:39 -0400, Walter Bright
 newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:
 
 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of
 anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data
 side of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some
 slight distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I
 would expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues
 though.  It's not copy protection, it's ripping protection.

 Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who would
 notice?
 
 You notice in the cymbals the most :)  And Ulrich uses a lot of
 cymbals.
 
 But you are right, the guitars aren't as noticeable (you can still hear
 it though).
 
 
 Back in the 80's, it wasn't unusual for a compiler vendor to release a
 student version or some such, that was missing a feature like floating
 point. The problem, though, was that the compiler would earn a
 reputation as not having floating point and people would turn elsewhere
 when they would want to buy a professional compiler.
 
 In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of being
 labeled a band with lousy sound.

I doubt they have any power to fight the record company in these kinds of 
issues. A friend of a friend signed a deal with a record company owned by 
a multinational mother record company. Now they are told where to play 
concerts, how the cd distribution is organized, and when they are 
supposed to release the next two albums. That's like slavery.

Another thing is, I doubt the degraded audio quality matters as much as 
the pesky DRM protection scheme. I once had few of these sony key2audio 
(iirc) discs. They refused to play on windows so I just made an illegal 
copy for backup purposes and used that instead. There are far worse 
things than CD DRM systems decreasing the audio quality, e.g. the 
loudness war, the audio artefacts in mp3 distributions, and terrible 
(it's subjective) effects like autotune in modern pop music..

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-08 Thread Walter Bright


retard wrote:
I doubt they have any power to fight the record company in these kinds of 
issues. A friend of a friend signed a deal with a record company owned by 
a multinational mother record company. Now they are told where to play 
concerts, how the cd distribution is organized, and when they are 
supposed to release the next two albums. That's like slavery.


To put it mildly, to say such a thing is like slavery is patently absurd. 
Contract or no, a record company cannot make you do anything, regardless of what 
you signed. (Sign a contract with the military, however, and they *can* make you.)


Secondly, people ought to read contracts before they sign them. It's their own 
fault if they don't. Contracts with children aren't legally binding because 
children are not considered legally competent. Adults are.


Third, record company contracts are well known and you can google them. There's 
no reason anyone should be surprised.



Another thing is, I doubt the degraded audio quality matters as much as 
the pesky DRM protection scheme. I once had few of these sony key2audio 
(iirc) discs. They refused to play on windows so I just made an illegal 
copy for backup purposes and used that instead. There are far worse 
things than CD DRM systems decreasing the audio quality, e.g. the 
loudness war, the audio artefacts in mp3 distributions, and terrible 
(it's subjective) effects like autotune in modern pop music..


I always get the old versions of CDs before they were remastered :-) as I don't 
care for the audio leveling.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-08 Thread Daniel Gibson


retard schrieb:

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:15:15 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:


retard wrote:

You must be young then. I got my first CD-ROM drive with my Pentium 75.
The first 1x external CD-ROM drives were pretty expensive. I think one
used to cost around $600..800.

Eh, my first CD-ROM drive was $1100 or so.


Was it that expensive? Anyway, the world has changed so much. You can 
probably find a decent dvd+rw drive for $30 or $40 now. My original point 
was that people like us who listened to CDs in the 80's quite likely 
still possess real hi-fi cd players or integrated cd/amp/tuner systems. 
These systems are unaffected by the cd copy protection methods. 


Not necessarily - I've heard of copy protections (they should actually 
be called listening preventions) that caused trouble on old as well as 
some new CD players (not CD ROM drives).

Also Car CD player seem to be massively affected by such problems.
Why the hell should someone buy a CD he can't listen to in his car?!

I'd never buy a CD with copy protection - I like to rip them so I don't 
have to mess around with the discs (and also my car radio has a USB port 
and plays MP3s).
As mentioned before ripping copy protected CDs is illegal (also in 
Germany where I live) - so if I gotta do something illegal just to 
listen to the CD I just payed 15EUR for I can as well download it for free.


Fortunately the kind of music I listen to (Heavy Metal) is mostly 
unaffected by copy protection and DRM on CDs.
Metallica is probably one of the few exceptions, because they're so big 
or at the wrong lable or something.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message 
news:a6268ff1bb248cd1ce96dc11...@news.digitalmars.com...
 Hello Nick,

 domino eff...@sitemine.org wrote in message
 news:i666vt$158...@digitalmars.com...

 Walter Bright Wrote:

 domino wrote:

 Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard
 movie/audio CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.

 CDs are not copy protected.

 False.

 I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg
 rootkit protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At
 least the cactus shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on
 purpose and it's audible even with a legal authentic cd audio player.
 If you place these discs in a standard PC cd/dvd drive, it just spins
 and spins and spins and spins and the OS either hangs or refuses to
 open the cd tray. I'm 100% sure you are not allowed to break these.

 The vast majority of CDs don't have that. I have approx 250 commercial
 audio CDs, and not a single one of them has any DRM. And if I did want
 something that only came on a DRMed CD, I'd just say Fuck you Sony
 and pirate it.


 I'd buy the disk, put it on the shelf and let it collect dust with the 
 rest and download the tracks I really care about.

That's what I've mostly been doing lately (Except I rip the disc. Everything 
online is MP3 - meh).

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i69g05$2cb...@digitalmars.com...
 retard wrote:
 You must be young then. I got my first CD-ROM drive with my Pentium 75. 
 The first 1x external CD-ROM drives were pretty expensive. I think one 
 used to cost around $600..800.

 Eh, my first CD-ROM drive was $1100 or so.


 Before 1994 I only had a CD walkman and a moderately cheap entry level 
 hi-fi system.

 I had a Sony Discman back in the early 80's. Still have it somewhere.

I must be young. My first CD player was a $200 (IIRC) Sega CD (Mega CD for 
those outside the states and Canada).

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-08 Thread Eric Poggel


On 9/8/2010 11:15 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

Contracts with children aren't legally binding because children are not
considered legally competent.


I may have to find some new minions.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

retard r...@tard.com.invalid wrote in message 
news:i68qac$7l...@digitalmars.com...
 Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:58:39 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
 FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of
 anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data side
 of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some slight
 distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I would
 expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues though.  It's
 not copy protection, it's ripping protection.

 Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who would
 notice?

 That particular album consists of covers, but in general Metallica also
 has pretty calm ballads. Ever heard of 'Nothing else matters'? Even my
 grandmother used to love it.

Weird. 'Nothing else matters' is such a depressing-sounding song, I still 
can't imagine any grandmothers liking it. (But then who am I to talk? My 
granda's in her 80's, drives a Celica, and is the only person in my family 
to own an HDTV.)

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

retard r...@tard.com.invalid wrote in message 
news:i69i7v$2be...@digitalmars.com...
 Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:12:37 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of being
 labeled a band with lousy sound.

 I doubt they have any power to fight the record company in these kinds of
 issues.

From my understanding, Metallica would have been more likely to urge the 
labels into using DRM.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:55:46 +0200, Daniel Gibson wrote:

 retard schrieb:
 Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:15:15 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
 
 retard wrote:
 You must be young then. I got my first CD-ROM drive with my Pentium
 75. The first 1x external CD-ROM drives were pretty expensive. I
 think one used to cost around $600..800.
 Eh, my first CD-ROM drive was $1100 or so.
 
 Was it that expensive? Anyway, the world has changed so much. You can
 probably find a decent dvd+rw drive for $30 or $40 now. My original
 point was that people like us who listened to CDs in the 80's quite
 likely still possess real hi-fi cd players or integrated cd/amp/tuner
 systems. These systems are unaffected by the cd copy protection
 methods.
 
 Not necessarily - I've heard of copy protections (they should actually
 be called listening preventions) that caused trouble on old as well as
 some new CD players (not CD ROM drives). Also Car CD player seem to be
 massively affected by such problems. Why the hell should someone buy a
 CD he can't listen to in his car?!

Ah, true. The reason (IIRC) was that the DRMed CDs also had a data cd TOC 
or multiple sessions or something like that. If the car CD player 
supported MP3 CDs via the data cd format, that made it too intelligent 
to play the disks.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread Nick Sabalausky

BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message 
news:a6268ff1b9ca8cd1c2c66c86...@news.digitalmars.com...
 Hello Nick,

 BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
 news:a6268ff1b9958cd1bfa01297...@news.digitalmars.com...

 Hello Nick,

 Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already
 too small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now
 MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my blood
 pressure...

 My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space
 (GB) a phone has.

 And my link dispelled that myth. Try putting 200GB+ into a MicroSD
 form factor at the cost of a 2.5 HDD. Yea, eventually that'll happen,
 but by then I could get a HDD many times bigger than that for the same
 price.


 I wouldn't. I'd put it in a package about 4-5 times as big and mount it on 
 the PC board. Besides, what the heck do you need more than about 32GB for 
 on a phone? If you need to shoot that much video, get a real camera!


Like I said, there's two kinds of phones: phone phones, and PDA 
phones. For the former, I *still* agree with you. For the latter: If I 
were going to blow the money on a smartphone (as they're calling them now) 
or on some sort of iPad-like device (which is the other thing I've been 
talking about), I would expect it to replace a dedicated camera and a 
dedicated portable music player. And they can easily do so just by slapping 
a HDD in there. (BTW, by current music player, which also does video - a 
feature I rather like is 40GB and I find it uncomfortably tight. Plus, with 
that tightness, I can't really use it as an external HDD, which I used to 
do, and found very helpful.) I'm not interested in toting around twenty 
different gadgets. There can be only one!

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello Nick,


BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9ca8cd1c2c66c86...@news.digitalmars.com...


Hello Nick,


BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9958cd1bfa01297...@news.digitalmars.com...

Hello Nick,


Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already
too small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway.
Now MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my
blood pressure...


My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space
(GB) a phone has.


And my link dispelled that myth. Try putting 200GB+ into a MicroSD
form factor at the cost of a 2.5 HDD. Yea, eventually that'll
happen, but by then I could get a HDD many times bigger than that
for the same price.


I wouldn't. I'd put it in a package about 4-5 times as big and mount
it on the PC board. Besides, what the heck do you need more than
about 32GB for on a phone? If you need to shoot that much video, get
a real camera!


Like I said, there's two kinds of phones: phone phones, and PDA
phones. For the former, I *still* agree with you. For the latter: If
I were going to blow the money on a smartphone (as they're calling
them now) or on some sort of iPad-like device (which is the other
thing I've been talking about), I would expect it to replace a
dedicated camera and a dedicated portable music player. And they can
easily do so just by slapping a HDD in there. (BTW, by current music
player, which also does video - a feature I rather like is 40GB and I
find it uncomfortably tight. Plus, with that tightness, I can't really
use it as an external HDD, which I used to do, and found very
helpful.) I'm not interested in toting around twenty different
gadgets. There can be only one!



Stuff a person has to store expands to fit the space they have to store it 
in. It's some kind of immutable law of nature that transcends computers and 
closet space. If you had 4.5TB of storage space, then you'd just want to 
store 5TB. The solution isn't more storage space as that just stalls the 
problem for about 10min/Mb.



--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread retard

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:45:55 +, BCS wrote:

 Hello Nick,
 
 BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
 news:a6268ff1b9958cd1bfa01297...@news.digitalmars.com...
 
 Hello Nick,
 
 Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already too
 small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now
 MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my blood
 pressure...
 
 My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space
 (GB) a phone has.
 
 And my link dispelled that myth. Try putting 200GB+ into a MicroSD form
 factor at the cost of a 2.5 HDD. Yea, eventually that'll happen, but
 by then I could get a HDD many times bigger than that for the same
 price.
 
 
 I wouldn't. I'd put it in a package about 4-5 times as big and mount it
 on the PC board. Besides, what the heck do you need more than about 32GB
 for on a phone? If you need to shoot that much video, get a real camera!

I have 32 GB micro-sdhc cards (class 2 or 4) on my phone and 64 GB 
compactflash (don't know the class, but approximately 90 MB/s) on my 
camera (Canon 7D). Both could have more space. The camera doesn't compress 
video very well despite quite high price so the maximum video length is 
only few minutes.

 
 Besides:
 http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966955+
 42 94953566sht=Anyprt=NewProduct
 
 If I wanted more sortage than I can put on flash cards, I'd breing a
 lap-top. OTOH: this is the class of phone I use:
 http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services
 /Mobile-Phones/Motorola-Stature-i9-US-EN
 
 You're not everyone. Some people would rather have HDD-level storage
 capacity.
 
 
 1) I don't want an HDD in my phone. Moving parts? Ouch! 2) That will
 always be cheaper as an external HDD. Some people will want to use their
 phone as a weapon, should that also be a design criteria?

I'd like to have 128..512 GB of storage in the phone. Why? My media 
library (hundreds of CDs  DVDs transcoded - mp3/ogg or xvid). I think 
this is even possible with two 64 GB sdxc cards. Podcasts. TV series. 
Games. Photos converted to JPG @ 1080p resolution for powerpoint  other 
purposes.

 
 In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a smart
 phone/PDA needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports. You might, just
 maybe, talk me into believing that an HDMI port could be handy. But
 that would really push it.
 
 Ugh, I hate HDMI, but that's a whole other discussion ;)
 
 
 I just picked the smallest video connector I could think of.

The mini-HDMI is pretty decent. There are no better alternatives that I 
know of at the moment. 1080p video + multichannel audio, quite small.

My phone  cam both also have micro-usb 2.0 connectors. Pretty good. 
Waiting for usb 3.0.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread domino

BCS Wrote:

 Hello Nick,
 
  BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
  news:a6268ff1b9ca8cd1c2c66c86...@news.digitalmars.com...
  
  Hello Nick,
  
  BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
  news:a6268ff1b9958cd1bfa01297...@news.digitalmars.com...
  Hello Nick,
  
  Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already
  too small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway.
  Now MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my
  blood pressure...
  
  My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space
  (GB) a phone has.
  
  And my link dispelled that myth. Try putting 200GB+ into a MicroSD
  form factor at the cost of a 2.5 HDD. Yea, eventually that'll
  happen, but by then I could get a HDD many times bigger than that
  for the same price.
  
  I wouldn't. I'd put it in a package about 4-5 times as big and mount
  it on the PC board. Besides, what the heck do you need more than
  about 32GB for on a phone? If you need to shoot that much video, get
  a real camera!
  
  Like I said, there's two kinds of phones: phone phones, and PDA
  phones. For the former, I *still* agree with you. For the latter: If
  I were going to blow the money on a smartphone (as they're calling
  them now) or on some sort of iPad-like device (which is the other
  thing I've been talking about), I would expect it to replace a
  dedicated camera and a dedicated portable music player. And they can
  easily do so just by slapping a HDD in there. (BTW, by current music
  player, which also does video - a feature I rather like is 40GB and I
  find it uncomfortably tight. Plus, with that tightness, I can't really
  use it as an external HDD, which I used to do, and found very
  helpful.) I'm not interested in toting around twenty different
  gadgets. There can be only one!
  
 
 Stuff a person has to store expands to fit the space they have to store it 
 in. It's some kind of immutable law of nature that transcends computers and 
 closet space. If you had 4.5TB of storage space, then you'd just want to 
 store 5TB. The solution isn't more storage space as that just stalls the 
 problem for about 10min/Mb.

That's only true when you're working for Google and steal personal wifi data. 
Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard movie/audio 
CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection. According to DMCA breaking 
the encryption is illegal. Online shops only rent the same material. Software 
developers may need more space, but 99.9% of people are not software 
developers. Thus q.e.d, you don't need that much space.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread domino

the retarded superretard script kid Wrote:

 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:45:55 +, BCS wrote:
 
  Hello Nick,
  
  BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
  news:a6268ff1b9958cd1bfa01297...@news.digitalmars.com...
  
  Hello Nick,
  
  Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already too
  small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now
  MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my blood
  pressure...
  
  My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space
  (GB) a phone has.
  
  And my link dispelled that myth. Try putting 200GB+ into a MicroSD form
  factor at the cost of a 2.5 HDD. Yea, eventually that'll happen, but
  by then I could get a HDD many times bigger than that for the same
  price.
  
  
  I wouldn't. I'd put it in a package about 4-5 times as big and mount it
  on the PC board. Besides, what the heck do you need more than about 32GB
  for on a phone? If you need to shoot that much video, get a real camera!
 
 I have 32 GB micro-sdhc cards (class 2 or 4) on my phone and 64 GB 
 compactflash (don't know the class, but approximately 90 MB/s) on my 
 camera (Canon 7D). Both could have more space. The camera doesn't compress 
 video very well despite quite high price so the maximum video length is 
 only few minutes.

I doubt that. The only camera you have is in your phone. VGA 640x480 quality

 
  
  Besides:
  http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966955+
  42 94953566sht=Anyprt=NewProduct
  
  If I wanted more sortage than I can put on flash cards, I'd breing a
  lap-top. OTOH: this is the class of phone I use:
  http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services
  /Mobile-Phones/Motorola-Stature-i9-US-EN
  
  You're not everyone. Some people would rather have HDD-level storage
  capacity.
  
  
  1) I don't want an HDD in my phone. Moving parts? Ouch! 2) That will
  always be cheaper as an external HDD. Some people will want to use their
  phone as a weapon, should that also be a design criteria?
 
 I'd like to have 128..512 GB of storage in the phone. Why? My media 
 library (hundreds of CDs  DVDs transcoded - mp3/ogg or xvid). I think 
 this is even possible with two 64 GB sdxc cards. Podcasts. TV series. 
 Games. Photos converted to JPG @ 1080p resolution for powerpoint  other 
 purposes.

Yep yep.. piratebay kid. Your first year CS 101 teacher doesn't expect any 
powerpoints from a people of your quality.

 
  
  In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a smart
  phone/PDA needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports. You might, just
  maybe, talk me into believing that an HDMI port could be handy. But
  that would really push it.
  
  Ugh, I hate HDMI, but that's a whole other discussion ;)
  
  
  I just picked the smallest video connector I could think of.
 
 The mini-HDMI is pretty decent. There are no better alternatives that I 
 know of at the moment. 1080p video + multichannel audio, quite small.

Firewire. Nuff said

 
 My phone  cam both also have micro-usb 2.0 connectors. Pretty good. 
 Waiting for usb 3.0.

Your _phone_ has usb 1.0 and a proprietary connector.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread Walter Bright


BCS wrote:
People want a phone that has a key board from the get go. How many 
people actually want to /add/ one to the phone they have?



I like being able now and then to attach a full size keyboard.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread Walter Bright


domino wrote:

Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard movie/audio
CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.


CDs are not copy protected.

I'm running around .5 TB these days, and none of it is DRM'd material. (Family 
movies eat up space like you wouldn't believe, too.)

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread domino

Walter Bright Wrote:

 domino wrote:
  Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard movie/audio
  CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.
 
 CDs are not copy protected.

False.

I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg rootkit 
protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At least the cactus 
shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on purpose and it's audible even 
with a legal authentic cd audio player. If you place these discs in a standard 
PC cd/dvd drive, it just spins and spins and spins and spins and the OS either 
hangs or refuses to open the cd tray. I'm 100% sure you are not allowed to 
break these.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread Nick Sabalausky

domino eff...@sitemine.org wrote in message 
news:i666vt$158...@digitalmars.com...
 Walter Bright Wrote:

 domino wrote:
  Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard movie/audio
  CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.

 CDs are not copy protected.

 False.

 I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg rootkit 
 protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At least the 
 cactus shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on purpose and it's 
 audible even with a legal authentic cd audio player. If you place these 
 discs in a standard PC cd/dvd drive, it just spins and spins and spins and 
 spins and the OS either hangs or refuses to open the cd tray. I'm 100% 
 sure you are not allowed to break these.

The vast majority of CDs don't have that. I have approx 250 commercial audio 
CDs, and not a single one of them has any DRM. And if I did want something 
that only came on a DRMed CD, I'd just say Fuck you Sony and pirate it.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-07 Thread Walter Bright


Nick Sabalausky wrote:
The vast majority of CDs don't have that. I have approx 250 commercial audio 
CDs, and not a single one of them has any DRM. And if I did want something 
that only came on a DRMed CD, I'd just say Fuck you Sony and pirate it. 


I have around 400 CDs, and also exactly zero of them have any form of DRM on 
them. I ripped them with Windows Media Player, not exactly a cracking tool.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello domino,


Walter Bright Wrote:


domino wrote:


Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard
movie/audio CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.


CDs are not copy protected.


False.

I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg
rootkit protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At
least the cactus shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on purpose
and it's audible even with a legal authentic cd audio player. If you
place these discs in a standard PC cd/dvd drive, it just spins and
spins and spins and spins and the OS either hangs or refuses to open
the cd tray. I'm 100% sure you are not allowed to break these.



I've never owned a CD player that wasn't a CD-ROM drive. I've never come 
across a disk I couldn't play.


--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello Nick,


domino eff...@sitemine.org wrote in message
news:i666vt$158...@digitalmars.com...


Walter Bright Wrote:


domino wrote:


Ordinary man cannot have 5 TB of data because ALL standard
movie/audio CD/DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD discs have DRM copy protection.


CDs are not copy protected.


False.

I have 10--20 discs with cactus data protection. Two with sony bmg
rootkit protection system. And several with mediamax protection. At
least the cactus shit is annoying. They corrupted the audio on
purpose and it's audible even with a legal authentic cd audio player.
If you place these discs in a standard PC cd/dvd drive, it just spins
and spins and spins and spins and the OS either hangs or refuses to
open the cd tray. I'm 100% sure you are not allowed to break these.


The vast majority of CDs don't have that. I have approx 250 commercial
audio CDs, and not a single one of them has any DRM. And if I did want
something that only came on a DRMed CD, I'd just say Fuck you Sony
and pirate it.



I'd buy the disk, put it on the shelf and let it collect dust with the rest 
and download the tracks I really care about.

--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello retard,


Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:45:55 +, BCS wrote:


I wouldn't. I'd put it in a package about 4-5 times as big and mount
it on the PC board. Besides, what the heck do you need more than
about 32GB for on a phone? If you need to shoot that much video, get
a real camera!


I have 32 GB micro-sdhc cards (class 2 or 4) on my phone and 64 GB
compactflash (don't know the class, but approximately 90 MB/s) on my
camera (Canon 7D). Both could have more space. The camera doesn't
compress video very well despite quite high price so the maximum video
length is only few minutes.



Real cameras are another matter. A good lens alone is bigger than a 2.5 HDD.


You're not everyone. Some people would rather have HDD-level storage
capacity.


1) I don't want an HDD in my phone. Moving parts? Ouch! 2) That will
always be cheaper as an external HDD. Some people will want to use
their phone as a weapon, should that also be a design criteria?


I'd like to have 128..512 GB of storage in the phone. Why? My media
library (hundreds of CDs  DVDs transcoded - mp3/ogg or xvid). I
think this is even possible with two 64 GB sdxc cards. Podcasts. TV
series. Games. Photos converted to JPG @ 1080p resolution for
powerpoint  other purposes.


Once you scratch into the I-might-want-it space, you can blow right past 
any reasonable amount of storage for a package you will like putting in your 
pocket.


--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-06 Thread Max Samukha


On 09/04/2010 08:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

Max Samukha wrote:

On 04.09.2010 5:50, Walter Bright wrote:

It still makes no sense to have it as a separate file.



Yeah. Just like it makes no sense to have headers separate from object
files.


If I invented an object file format, you can bet it'd be quite a bit
different from existing ones!


Hm. From one of your posts I concluded that you are quite comfortable 
with the separation. I apologize if it's not the case.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-06 Thread domino

Sean Kelly Wrote:

 Walter Bright Wrote:
 
  retard wrote:
   Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:03:59 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
   
   J. What happens when the battery gets old and won't hold a charge?
   
   You buy a new one, of course. Why this will never happen is that once a 
   new model of the iShit comes out, as a die hard Apple fan you simply MUST 
   buy it and get rid of the old one. I heard they don't even replace the 
   batteries in Apple's repair services. They just hand you a new phone.
  
  It's the subscription model for hardware. It also effectively kills the 
  market 
  for used iPods.
 
 Then the model is broken somewhere, because Apple hardware has an incredibly 
 high resale value.

Apple faggots buy legacy expensive hardware even when it's broken because it 
compensates the lacking in their dick department.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello Nick,


Steven Schveighoffer schvei...@yahoo.com wrote in message



Obsolescence comes from three things:

1. Forced by big business strong-arming people into buying products
via subscription model.

2. Physical breaking down.

3. The consumer *themself* deciding to get the new one *despite* the
old one still working fine (If it didn't still work fine, it would
fall under #1 or #2) .

Notice that a newer one came out and proceeded to break all the old
ones isn't in there.



However #3 can easily turn into the old one being such a small fraction of 
the market that it's not worth anyone's time to support it.



In and of itself, maybe. But thinness typically necessitates other
design compromises, all for a benefit that is, as you say, petty.


What compromises?  What is it missing that could be there if it were
thicker?


Compromises that often need to be made for ultra-thin devices:

- Low storage space due to lack of room for hard drive.


http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=32+gb+micro+sdx=0y=0


- Reduced variety of i/o ports.


In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a cell phone needs 
more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports.



- Reduced or eliminated potential for expandability.


Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known someone else 
to want to add to a phone?



--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-06 Thread Walter Bright


BCS wrote:
Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known someone 
else to want to add to a phone?


A keyboard.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9068cd1bc36b696...@news.digitalmars.com...
Hello Nick,

In and of itself, maybe. But thinness typically necessitates other
design compromises, all for a benefit that is, as you say, petty.

What compromises? What is it missing that could be there if it were
thicker?

Compromises that often need to be made for ultra-thin devices:

- Low storage space due to lack of room for hard drive.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=32+gb+micro+sdx=0y=0

Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already too small
if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now MicroSD, well I
can't say anything about it without raising my blood pressure...

Besides:
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966955+4294953566sht=Anyprt=NewProduct;

- Reduced variety of i/o ports.

In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a cell phone
needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports.

I consider there to be a big difference between a cell phone and a smart
phone. A cell phone is for making calls, and for those, I agree with you.
But a smartphone is a PDA that also makes cell calls, and that changes
things. Plus, I was kind of talking both smartphone and iPad-style stuff.

- Reduced or eliminated potential for expandability.

Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known someone else
to want to add to a phone?

- Headphone jack
- Audio line-input
- User's choice of portable Keyboard
- TV Out (for picture/video-viewing, and there's a million different kinds
of TV-Out these days)
- GPS
- Back before built-in cameras became common, I could have said camera.

All just off the top of my head, there's probably others.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote in message
news:i63jvb$29f...@digitalmars.com...
BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9068cd1bc36b696...@news.digitalmars.com...
Hello Nick,

In and of itself, maybe. But thinness typically necessitates other
design compromises, all for a benefit that is, as you say, petty.

What compromises? What is it missing that could be there if it were
thicker?

Compromises that often need to be made for ultra-thin devices:

- Low storage space due to lack of room for hard drive.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=32+gb+micro+sdx=0y=0

Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already too
small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now MicroSD,
well I can't say anything about it without raising my blood pressure...

Besides:
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966955+4294953566sht=Anyprt=NewProduct;

- Reduced variety of i/o ports.

In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a cell phone
needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports.

- Reduced or eliminated potential for expandability.

Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known someone else
to want to add to a phone?

All just off the top of my head, there's probably others.

And domain-specific things, like various kinds of sensors for in-field
scientific data gathering, or barcode scanning, for instance.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote in message 
news:i63k4d$29q...@digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote in message 
 news:i63jvb$29f...@digitalmars.com...
 BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message 
 news:a6268ff1b9068cd1bc36b696...@news.digitalmars.com...

 Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known someone 
 else to want to add to a phone?


 - Headphone jack
 - Audio line-input
 - User's choice of portable Keyboard
 - TV Out (for picture/video-viewing, and there's a million different 
 kinds of TV-Out these days)
 - GPS
 - Back before built-in cameras became common, I could have said camera.

 All just off the top of my head, there's probably others.


 And domain-specific things, like various kinds of sensors for in-field 
 scientific data gathering, or barcode scanning, for instance.


*Alternate* types of memory card...

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello Walter,


BCS wrote:


Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known someone
else to want to add to a phone?


A keyboard.



People want a phone that has a key board from the get go. How many people 
actually want to /add/ one to the phone they have?


--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Hello Nick,

BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9068cd1bc36b696...@news.digitalmars.com...

Hello Nick,

In and of itself, maybe. But thinness typically necessitates other
design compromises, all for a benefit that is, as you say,
petty.

What compromises? What is it missing that could be there if it
were thicker?

Compromises that often need to be made for ultra-thin devices:

- Low storage space due to lack of room for hard drive.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-k
eywords=32+gb+micro+sdx=0y=0

Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already too
small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now
MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my blood
pressure...

My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space (GB) a
phone has.

Besides:
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966955+42
94953566sht=Anyprt=NewProduct

If I wanted more sortage than I can put on flash cards, I'd breing a lap-top.
OTOH: this is the class of phone I use: http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-Stature-i9-US-EN

- Reduced variety of i/o ports.

In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a cell
phone needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports.

I consider there to be a big difference between a cell phone and a
smart phone. A cell phone is for making calls, and for those, I agree
with you. But a smartphone is a PDA that also makes cell calls, and
that changes things. Plus, I was kind of talking both smartphone and
iPad-style stuff.

In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a smart phone/PDA
needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports. You might, just maybe, talk me into
believing that an HDMI port could be handy. But that would really push it.

- Reduced or eliminated potential for expandability.

Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known someone
else to want to add to a phone?

- Headphone jack
- Audio line-input

Many have the first and the second wouldn't be hard to add to the same jack

- User's choice of portable Keyboard

USB

- TV Out (for picture/video-viewing, and there's a million different
kinds
of TV-Out these days)

USB can do that, and at the image quality a smart phone can drive it wouldn't
be a bottle neck.

- GPS

You would be hard pressed to find a (cell) phone that doesn't have that hardware
already.

- Back before built-in cameras became common, I could have said
camera.
All just off the top of my head, there's probably others.

And as I pointed out to Walter, are those things you want to ADD or do you
want them in there to begin with?

--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello Nick,


Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote in message
news:i63k4d$29q...@digitalmars.com...


Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote in message
news:i63jvb$29f...@digitalmars.com...


BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9068cd1bc36b696...@news.digitalmars.com...


Aside from a memeory card, name one things you've ever known
someone else to want to add to a phone?


- Headphone jack
- Audio line-input
- User's choice of portable Keyboard
- TV Out (for picture/video-viewing, and there's a million different
kinds of TV-Out these days)
- GPS
- Back before built-in cameras became common, I could have said
camera.
All just off the top of my head, there's probably others.


And domain-specific things, like various kinds of sensors for
in-field scientific data gathering, or barcode scanning, for
instance.


*Alternate* types of memory card...



Consumer choice (in form factors) is a good thing for new markets, but at 
some point it just drive up prices and causes compatibility problems. At 
some point it's cheaper to just pick a good enough standard and make it a 
commodity.



--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9958cd1bfa01297...@news.digitalmars.com...
Hello Nick,

Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already too
small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now
MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my blood
pressure...

My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space (GB) a
phone has.

And my link dispelled that myth. Try putting 200GB+ into a MicroSD form
factor at the cost of a 2.5 HDD. Yea, eventually that'll happen, but by
then I could get a HDD many times bigger than that for the same price.

Besides:
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966955+42
94953566sht=Anyprt=NewProduct

If I wanted more sortage than I can put on flash cards, I'd breing a
lap-top. OTOH: this is the class of phone I use:
http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-Stature-i9-US-EN

You're not everyone. Some people would rather have HDD-level storage
capacity.

In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a smart
phone/PDA needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports. You might, just maybe,
talk me into believing that an HDMI port could be handy. But that would
really push it.

Ugh, I hate HDMI, but that's a whole other discussion ;)

- TV Out (for picture/video-viewing, and there's a million different
kinds
of TV-Out these days)

USB can do that, and at the image quality a smart phone can drive it
wouldn't be a bottle neck.

News to me.

- Back before built-in cameras became common, I could have said
camera.
All just off the top of my head, there's probably others.

And as I pointed out to Walter, are those things you want to ADD or do you
want them in there to begin with?

1. I don't want to pay for features I don't need, or don't need right away.
And I'm the only one who can effectively decide what I do or don't need/want
and when. Therefore, a system that's based around expandability beats the
hell out of You get whatever we choose to pre-package together for you.

2. Expandability provides a level of future-proofing (much moreso if you
don't limit it to USB). Unlike all the sheep out there, I'm not interested
in disposable gadgets.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Hello Nick,


BCS n...@anon.com wrote in message
news:a6268ff1b9958cd1bfa01297...@news.digitalmars.com...


Hello Nick,


Ugh, don't even get me started on MicroSD. Ordinary SD is already
too small if you ask me, although I still put up with it anyway. Now
MicroSD, well I can't say anything about it without raising my blood
pressure...


My point was that space (volume) is not what limits how much space
(GB) a phone has.


And my link dispelled that myth. Try putting 200GB+ into a MicroSD
form factor at the cost of a 2.5 HDD. Yea, eventually that'll happen,
but by then I could get a HDD many times bigger than that for the same
price.



I wouldn't. I'd put it in a package about 4-5 times as big and mount it on 
the PC board. Besides, what the heck do you need more than about 32GB for 
on a phone? If you need to shoot that much video, get a real camera!



Besides:
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966955+
42 94953566sht=Anyprt=NewProduct


If I wanted more sortage than I can put on flash cards, I'd breing a
lap-top. OTOH: this is the class of phone I use:
http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services
/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-Stature-i9-US-EN


You're not everyone. Some people would rather have HDD-level storage
capacity.



1) I don't want an HDD in my phone. Moving parts? Ouch!
2) That will always be cheaper as an external HDD. Some people will want 
to use their phone as a weapon, should that also be a design criteria?



In this day and age, you would be hard pressed to suggest a smart
phone/PDA needs more than a 1 maybe 2 USB ports. You might, just
maybe, talk me into believing that an HDMI port could be handy. But
that would really push it.


Ugh, I hate HDMI, but that's a whole other discussion ;)



I just picked the smallest video connector I could think of.


- TV Out (for picture/video-viewing, and there's a million different
kinds
of TV-Out these days)

USB can do that, and at the image quality a smart phone can drive it
wouldn't be a bottle neck.


News to me.



Which part:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8q=usb+video+card

http://www.acousticpc.com/images/a_zalman_rhs88_heatsink_instaled_views.jpg

(yes, I know you don't need that big a heatsink but, video sinks lots of 
watts.



- Back before built-in cameras became common, I could have said
camera.
All just off the top of my head, there's probably others.

And as I pointed out to Walter, are those things you want to ADD or
do you want them in there to begin with?


1. I don't want to pay for features I don't need, or don't need right
away. And I'm the only one who can effectively decide what I do or
don't need/want and when. Therefore, a system that's based around
expandability beats the hell out of You get whatever we choose to
pre-package together for you.


YAGNI: The trade off for expandability is increased size (off hand, I'd say 
2-3x) and cost (??x) and MOST people will never use it. And I'm including 
the people who think they will like you. Unless you can say up front what 
you will be adding and when, I'd bet money you would never add anything to 
a phone. OTOH factory options... Maybe.




2. Expandability provides a level of future-proofing (much moreso if
you don't limit it to USB). Unlike all the sheep out there, I'm not
interested in disposable gadgets.


Neither am I and I still think you are on a wild goose chase.
--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-04 Thread Nick Sabalausky

Steven Schveighoffer schvei...@yahoo.com wrote in message 
news:op.vig8crpreav...@localhost.localdomain...

 And OMG, you've never bought a cell phone?  Why are you punishing yourself 
 ;)  I suppose with the attitude you have towards them it would just raise 
 your blood pressure carrying it around...


It would :) But I have other reasons for not having one. One of them is that 
I just don't do anywhere near enough yapping (outside of NG text, of course 
;) ) for it to be worthwhile. Cell companies don't even have a plan that 
would be small enough to be appropriate for me. But the landlines do, and 
with the tiny amount of talking I do, waiting until I get home to use the 
phone is a complete non-issue (especially since I'd be the only cell owner 
in the world to that would refuse to use it while driving). And I don't even 
*want* to be reachable 24/7. Unlimited minutes? Forget it. Back when pay 
phones still existed, my away-from-home phone usage never totaled more than 
$5/yr. Try finding a cell plan that competes with that.

 Your lack of experience with cell phones does not give any boost to your 
 position...


I never said I lacked experience with them, I said I never owned one. I've 
used them plenty, and I've even done WAP/WML sites (I'm glad that's gone!) 
and C/J2ME on Symbian.


 Huh?  Why should verizon go out of its way to allow you to use its phones 
 with other services?  Maybe you don't understand capitalism...


1. Anti-competitive practices are illegal under capitalism (...but then 
again, so is having the government in your company's pocket). In any case, 
the destruction of consumer choice is a hallmark of communism, not 
capitalism. Contrary to popular belief, capitalism doesn't bean bending over 
a table and taking it so big business can make a couple extra bucks.

2. Companies like Verizon doesn't make phones. They pay companies like Nokia 
and Samsung to slap on branded stickers, or just commission them to build 
proprietary phones.

People used to rent phones from the land-line companies. Then cross-provider 
for-purchase phones came around. That was a good thing. Now people want to 
go backwards.


 But cell phones and  computers change so fast that the hardware is 
 obsolete before it's broken.


That just absurd. Just because a newer fizzbarwidget comes out doesn't mean 
you can't keep using your old one...unless you happen to be an Apple 
customer.

Do I need to link to my phone again? I've had that probably close to ten 
years and all the cell phones and smart phone features in the world aren't 
doing a damn thing to make my phone suddenly cease functioning. How would 
they? Seek-and-destroy mini-missiles?

Obsolescence comes from three things:

1. Forced by big business strong-arming people into buying products via 
subscription model.

2. Physical breaking down.

3. The consumer *themself* deciding to get the new one *despite* the old one 
still working fine (If it didn't still work fine, it would fall under #1 or 
#2) .

Notice that a newer one came out and proceeded to break all the old ones 
isn't in there.

 However, outside the cell phone world, such situations are likely to 
 result
 in dual-use devices

 There were some phones like that.  Nobody cared ;)


Yea, widespread contract lock-in, along with cable-card-style 
sweeping-it-under-the-rug will do that. (You don't expect me to believe the 
carriers didn't try to steer people away from those phones, do you?)


 I've had two old-style touch screen phones before this.  They suck.  They 
 break, require calibration, and require a stylus.  My samsung phone got to 
 be so inaccurate that I pretty much avoided using the touch screen as much 
 as possible.  I'll pay the price of lost accuracy when positioning a 
 cursor in order to avoid having to pop out a stylus to press on-screen 
 buttons.


*Shrug* Both of my PalmOS devices still work fine, the accuracy always 
worked fine, calibration takes about two seconds and is a one-time deal, I 
never had a problem with a fingernail, and I like syluses (stylii?).


 Which is exactly why it's idiotic for Apple to make the entire interface
 touchscreen.  You do that and you lose tactile feedback and you can't 
 just
 hack it back in. If you took my Palm Pilot, replaced the 
 up/down/left/right
 and app buttons with touchscreen input, that would be a step *backwards*.
 You'd gain nothing but a questionable cool factor, and the UI would 
 just
 simply be worse.

 But PalmOS is not iOS.  I've had about 5 palms, starting with the palm 
 III, and I like the apple interface significantly more.


Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting iOS used the exact same buttonset as 
PalmOS.

 The screen is made of pretty durable glass.  Like all touch-screen 
 phones,
 it's highly advisable to get a screen protector for it.  I don't get 
 what
 your problem is here, do you want a screen or not?  If you do, then what
 possible way could a manufacturer design a destruction-proof screen? 
 Put

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-04 Thread Max Samukha


On 04.09.2010 5:50, Walter Bright wrote:

It still makes no sense to have it as a separate file.



Yeah. Just like it makes no sense to have headers separate from object 
files.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-04 Thread Walter Bright


Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

But, you can't embed multiple track info in mp3's either..?


Isn't it interesting that people keep inventing new audio formats and fail to 
solve obvious fundamental problems with them, like providing fields for things 
like artwork, lyrics, etc.?

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-04 Thread Walter Bright


Max Samukha wrote:

On 04.09.2010 5:50, Walter Bright wrote:

It still makes no sense to have it as a separate file.



Yeah. Just like it makes no sense to have headers separate from object 
files.


If I invented an object file format, you can bet it'd be quite a bit different 
from existing ones!

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-04 Thread Yao G.

On Sat, 04 Sep 2010 12:55:58 -0500, Walter Bright  
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:


Isn't it interesting that people keep inventing new audio formats and  
fail to solve obvious fundamental problems with them, like providing  
fields for things like artwork, lyrics, etc.?


http://www.id3.org/

--
Yao G.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-04 Thread Michel Fortin


On 2010-09-02 22:04:39 -0400, Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com said:


Michel Fortin wrote:
Basically, you wanted to do what I did with my website. What was the 
problem exactly? Creating a style sheet that displays the contents well 
when read linearly? Or was it about how to trigger this particular 
style sheet for iPhone and iPods? The later's quite simple, just use 
this media attribute:


media=handheld, only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)

The handheld,  part isn't really relevant for iOS devices, but it'll 
trigger the stylesheet with Opera-based handheld browsers.


The problem was that I googled it and every hit used a radically 
different method and they'd refer to it as seems to work. I'm not 
comfortable using such hacks. I'd like one that officially works and is 
standards compliant.


Call it a hack if you want, but this is the most standard-compliant 
solution as it is based on the CSS3 Media Queries specification:

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/

It'll be officially standard-compliant once the specification becomes a 
W3C recommendation (it's currently a candidate recommendation). 
Currently, WebKit (Safari, Chrome), Gecko (Firefox) and Opera all 
support media queries.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/css/media_queries
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/presto25/css/mediaqueries/

IE 9 will support media queries too when it ships (I believe it's in 
beta currently) so it'll probably work with Windows Phone 7 too (when 
it becomes available). Here's a showcase they've made:

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5/85CSS3_MediaQueries/Default.html

So good luck finding something more standard-compliant.

--
Michel Fortin
michel.for...@michelf.com
http://michelf.com/

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-04 Thread Walter Bright


Michel Fortin wrote:
On 2010-09-02 22:04:39 -0400, Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com 
said:



Michel Fortin wrote:
Basically, you wanted to do what I did with my website. What was the 
problem exactly? Creating a style sheet that displays the contents 
well when read linearly? Or was it about how to trigger this 
particular style sheet for iPhone and iPods? The later's quite 
simple, just use this media attribute:


media=handheld, only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)

The handheld,  part isn't really relevant for iOS devices, but 
it'll trigger the stylesheet with Opera-based handheld browsers.


The problem was that I googled it and every hit used a radically 
different method and they'd refer to it as seems to work. I'm not 
comfortable using such hacks. I'd like one that officially works and 
is standards compliant.


Call it a hack if you want, but this is the most standard-compliant 
solution as it is based on the CSS3 Media Queries specification:

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/

It'll be officially standard-compliant once the specification becomes a 
W3C recommendation (it's currently a candidate recommendation). 
Currently, WebKit (Safari, Chrome), Gecko (Firefox) and Opera all 
support media queries.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/css/media_queries
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/presto25/css/mediaqueries/

IE 9 will support media queries too when it ships (I believe it's in 
beta currently) so it'll probably work with Windows Phone 7 too (when it 
becomes available). Here's a showcase they've made:

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5/85CSS3_MediaQueries/Default.html

So good luck finding something more standard-compliant.



This is good information. Thanks!

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread Nick Sabalausky

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i5pl44$jf...@digitalmars.com...
 Michel Fortin wrote:
 Basically, you wanted to do what I did with my website. What was the 
 problem exactly? Creating a style sheet that displays the contents well 
 when read linearly? Or was it about how to trigger this particular style 
 sheet for iPhone and iPods? The later's quite simple, just use this media 
 attribute:

 media=handheld, only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)

 The handheld,  part isn't really relevant for iOS devices, but it'll 
 trigger the stylesheet with Opera-based handheld browsers.


 The problem was that I googled it and every hit used a radically different 
 method and they'd refer to it as seems to work. I'm not comfortable 
 using such hacks. I'd like one that officially works and is standards 
 compliant.

Then you're best off avoiding the web enitrely, or else you're in for a 
world of hurt ;) The web has no such things.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Nick Sabalausky wrote:
Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i5pl44$jf...@digitalmars.com...

Michel Fortin wrote:
Basically, you wanted to do what I did with my website. What was the 
problem exactly? Creating a style sheet that displays the contents well 
when read linearly? Or was it about how to trigger this particular style 
sheet for iPhone and iPods? The later's quite simple, just use this media 
attribute:


media=handheld, only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)

The handheld,  part isn't really relevant for iOS devices, but it'll 
trigger the stylesheet with Opera-based handheld browsers.


The problem was that I googled it and every hit used a radically different 
method and they'd refer to it as seems to work. I'm not comfortable 
using such hacks. I'd like one that officially works and is standards 
compliant.


Then you're best off avoiding the web enitrely, or else you're in for a 
world of hurt ;) The web has no such things.


The print style sheet is standard and works great.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread Nick Sabalausky

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i5q1u1$1bf...@digitalmars.com...
 Sean Kelly wrote:
 Walter Bright Wrote:

 retard wrote:
 Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:03:59 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 J. What happens when the battery gets old and won't hold a charge?
 You buy a new one, of course. Why this will never happen is that once a 
 new model of the iShit comes out, as a die hard Apple fan you simply 
 MUST buy it and get rid of the old one. I heard they don't even replace 
 the batteries in Apple's repair services. They just hand you a new 
 phone.
 It's the subscription model for hardware. It also effectively kills the 
 market for used iPods.

 Then the model is broken somewhere, because Apple hardware has an 
 incredibly high resale value.

 I wouldn't buy a used ipod because of the non-replaceable battery. One has 
 no idea how much life is left in it. I've had a number of gadgets become 
 useless once the battery would no longer take a charge.

I miss the days when there was such a thing as standard battery types.

[old guy swinging a cane at some kids] Why, when *I* was a lad (*cough* 
*wheeze*), all the battery and device manufacturers...(*hack*)...well they 
got together, and they decided on what they called these standards. Yup, 
that was the name a' 'em (*hack* *wheeze*) And then, you could go into any 
store...didn't matter where ([blows nose])...and get a gadget. Any company's 
gadget, ain't never mattered. And when the batteries run out...well, we'd go 
and we'd get us s'more batteries. Yessirree. And those batteries would work 
with ([leans foreward]) ANYTHIN'! Ya hear me? Anythin'! Didn't matter where 
ya got 'em or who's name was on 'em . They'd just werk, dernnit. And you 
could bet on that! Yup. ([lights a pipe]) And they didn't cost no arm or 
leg, nether! Or void your warranty. They *made* them to werk that way. Not 
like you kinds these days and yer ten-packs of disposable telleyphones and 
single-use laptops and whatnot. Now go fetch me my pillow, boy, I'm tired!

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Nick Sabalausky wrote:

I miss the days when there was such a thing as standard battery types.


Me too. My first bad experience with custom batteries was my trusty TI SR-50A 
calculator, vintage 1975. After a year, it would no longer hold a charge, but I 
could still use it with the charger plugged in. And so I used it that way for 
the next 6 years or so. Then the battery got so bad even that didn't work 
anymore, and an EE friend of mine devised a load that behaved like a battery. I 
soldered that in in place of the battery, and got a few more years out of the 
calculator until it completely expired.


Of course, this was in the years before there were desktop computers with 
calculator apps. Gosh I'm old!


(Just for grins, I pulled it out of a drawer and plugged it in. Random led's 
flash. Still busted. Oh well!)

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread Steven Schveighoffer


On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:03:59 -0400, Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote:


Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote in message
news:i5ov60$2c5...@digitalmars.com...

Steven Schveighoffer schvei...@yahoo.com wrote in message
news:op.vieozxaleav...@localhost.localdomain...


Love my iPhone.  Love it.  My last two phones were a Palm Treo and a
Samsung touch-screen (w/stylus) smartphone with Windows mobile 6.  They
are absolute garbage compared to this.  Granted, I started with the  
3gs,

and upgraded to iOS4 about a month after I got it, so my phone is the
result of 3 years of polish, but I feel apple has the right focus for  
it.


iPhone is hands down the best phone I've ever used.  I thought when I  
got

it, I would have a hard time accessing small things like the on-screen
keyboard keys, but I'm surprised at how accurate I am with it, even  
after

only having it for a few months.  I regularly go to webnews on
digitalmars and can click the minuscule links pretty accurately.

You can not like them if you want, you are entitled to your opinion,  
but

it seems like you have a very negative view of almost everything :)  I
bet your glass is half empty, huh...



I'm a technical-ist: The glass is half-empty and half-full at the same
time. Problem is, most glasses I've seen are only a quarter full and  
with

overly-sweetened content (or three-quarters empty if you prefer ;) ).

I just have standards.

A. Search you're holding it wrong.


Not a problem on my 3gs, and no longer a problem on 4 (free case).  Though  
I understand the issue people have with the statement, Jobs is as arrogant  
as they come...




B. Closed platforms are evil (not to be confused with closed source).


s/evil/stable.  It's one of the reasons my previous company was in  
business.  They built server appliances.  When you control everything on  
the platform, there's less things to test, less things that can go wrong,  
and any bugs you fix for one customer automatically translate to all other  
customers.




C. Gatekeeping is evil. See also http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html


This I agree with.  It should be enough that the developers follow the  
technical requirements.  Still, the apps that are available are pretty  
cool.  My new favorite is netflix.  When I'm waiting for something  
somewhere and I can continue watching a movie I was streaming at home,  
that's just awesome...



D. Service provider lock-in is evil. My phone works with *any* service
provider (and didn't become uselessly obsolete after a year or two):
http://www.uniden.com/products/productdetail.cfm?product=EXAI398  And I
really do like this phone a lot.


Then I guess 99% of phones are evil?  I also have co-workers and friends  
who use jailbroken iphones on other GSM networks.  I could never do that  
with most of my verizon phones.  Besides, who switches phone service  
providers within the life of a phone?  Not to mention that the two biggest  
service providers are incompatible with eachother, so you couldn't switch  
between them even if you wanted to.



E. A die-hard Apple fan I know recently showed me his beloved iPad.
Accurately setting the text-cursor was nearly impossible. But that would
have been an incredibly simple fix: Use a screen that worked with a  
stylus
or fingernail. There's millions of them out there. Even if that would  
have
prevented multi-touch (and I don't know that it would or would not  
have),

after using the multi-touch, I felt it added no real value other than a
gee-whiz gimmick factor. Stylus/fingernail support would have added at
least some real value.


Your friend is doing it wrong.  I can accurately set the cursor whenever I  
want using the magnifying glass.


See an example here:  
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781430231295/typing_numbers_and_symbols



F. Like all Apple software, the software on the iPad/iPhone are
appallingly slim on settings/options.


*shrug*  Most of the settings suit me well.  What options do you miss?

G. A *phone* without tactile dial buttons is just plain wrong. What is  
it
with Apple's long-standing war against tactile feedback? It detracts  
from

usability and the only thing it adds is high-tech-gee-whiz-gimmick.


What do you need tactile feedback for?  You get audible feedback, and the  
phone number buttons are extremely responsive.  Plus, if you want to dial  
without looking at the phone, you can use voice-activation.


Blackberry tried a touch-screen with tactile feedback, it sucked.


H. What's there to protect the highly-prominent screen?


The screen is made of pretty durable glass.  Like all touch-screen phones,  
it's highly advisable to get a screen protector for it.  I don't get what  
your problem is here, do you want a screen or not?  If you do, then what  
possible way could a manufacturer design a destruction-proof screen?  Put  
little airbags around it in case you drop it?


I. I don't give a crap how thin they can make it. But Apple seems to  
think

I should care. Heck, I don't

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread Nick Sabalausky

Steven Schveighoffer schvei...@yahoo.com wrote in message 
news:op.vigl6wxpeav...@localhost.localdomain...
 On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:03:59 -0400, Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote:

 Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote in message
 news:i5ov60$2c5...@digitalmars.com...

 B. Closed platforms are evil (not to be confused with closed source).

 s/evil/stable.  It's one of the reasons my previous company was in 
 business.  They built server appliances.  When you control everything on 
 the platform, there's less things to test, less things that can go wrong, 
 and any bugs you fix for one customer automatically translate to all other 
 customers.


In theory. In practice, I really don't believe it's quite so simple. And 
there's still the ethical issue.


 D. Service provider lock-in is evil. My phone works with *any* service
 provider (and didn't become uselessly obsolete after a year or two):
 http://www.uniden.com/products/productdetail.cfm?product=EXAI398  And I
 really do like this phone a lot.

 Then I guess 99% of phones are evil?

99% of phones? Certainly not.

99% of *cell* phones? Absolutely, yes. Service provider lock-in is one of 
the primary reasons I've never bought one.

 I also have co-workers and friends  who use jailbroken iphones on other 
 GSM networks.

In an allegedly capitalist society (or mixed-economy with capitalist 
leanings as the case may be), no one should ever have any reason to devise 
or use such hacks for such a basic freedom as consumer choice.

 I could never do that  with most of my verizon phones.

Verizon is one of the worst cell companies out there anyway.

 Besides, who switches phone service  providers within the life of a phone?

No one, but you're overlooking the *reasons* that doesn't happen: contract 
lock-in and hardware that's not built to last.

 Not to mention that the two biggest  service providers are incompatible 
 with eachother, so you couldn't switch  between them even if you wanted 
 to.


If there's a fundamental difference in protocols (as opposed to the 
artificially-created incompatibilities), then yes, of course that's fine. 
However, outside the cell phone world, such situations are likely to result 
in dual-use devices: DVD-R and DVD+R were incompatible, but both widely 
used. So instead of going the absolutely idiotic cell-phone route of 
*maintaining* a dividing chasm, they just made devices support both. And I 
don't believe extra cost is necessarily a good argument against this 
practice, because of how quickly dual+/- DVD player/burner prices became 
dirt cheap.

 E. A die-hard Apple fan I know recently showed me his beloved iPad.
 Accurately setting the text-cursor was nearly impossible. But that would
 have been an incredibly simple fix: Use a screen that worked with a 
 stylus
 or fingernail. There's millions of them out there. Even if that would 
 have
 prevented multi-touch (and I don't know that it would or would not 
 have),
 after using the multi-touch, I felt it added no real value other than a
 gee-whiz gimmick factor. Stylus/fingernail support would have added at
 least some real value.

 Your friend is doing it wrong.

Well, I was the one using it and noticing that.

 I can accurately set the cursor whenever I  want using the magnifying 
 glass.

 See an example here: 
 http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781430231295/typing_numbers_and_symbols


That's nothing more than a workaround. How is that *not* worse than being 
able to just use the tip of your fingernail?

 F. Like all Apple software, the software on the iPad/iPhone are
 appallingly slim on settings/options.

 *shrug*  Most of the settings suit me well.  What options do you miss?


I admit, I don't remember and I'd have to use it more to see.

But I have spent a fair amount of time with other Apple products. I even 
used OSX as my primary system for about a year or two. And (aside from the 
Apple II, which obviously doesn't quite count) there has never been a piece 
of Apple software I've used more than a little for which I haven't found 
large amounts of things that would be ideal as setting or even obvious as 
settings but were sorely lacking. Same goes for features (such as the 
iPod/iTunes's inexcusable lack of Vorbis support, and for a *long* time 
iTunes couldn't read CD audio if track 1 was data (which was not entirely 
uncommon) but everything else could). So judging by the very sparse options 
on the iPad, I have fairly strong reason to believe it would be the same.

 G. A *phone* without tactile dial buttons is just plain wrong. What is 
 it
 with Apple's long-standing war against tactile feedback? It detracts 
 from
 usability and the only thing it adds is high-tech-gee-whiz-gimmick.

 What do you need tactile feedback for?

See, now I just can't even fathom that kind of stance, so it's difficult for 
me to argue against it. For me it's just a fundamental thing: With tactile 
feedback  without tactile feedback, by a large degree.

 You get audible feedback, and the  phone

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread Steven Schveighoffer


On Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:36:55 -0400, Nick Sabalausky a...@a.a wrote:


Steven Schveighoffer schvei...@yahoo.com wrote in message

Then I guess 99% of phones are evil?


99% of phones? Certainly not.

99% of *cell* phones? Absolutely, yes. Service provider lock-in is one of
the primary reasons I've never bought one.


Yes, that's what I meant :)  I thought we were talking cell phones here...

And OMG, you've never bought a cell phone?  Why are you punishing yourself  
;)  I suppose with the attitude you have towards them it would just raise  
your blood pressure carrying it around...


Your lack of experience with cell phones does not give any boost to your  
position...



I also have co-workers and friends  who use jailbroken iphones on other
GSM networks.


In an allegedly capitalist society (or mixed-economy with capitalist
leanings as the case may be), no one should ever have any reason to  
devise

or use such hacks for such a basic freedom as consumer choice.


Huh?  Why should verizon go out of its way to allow you to use its phones  
with other services?  Maybe you don't understand capitalism...



I could never do that  with most of my verizon phones.


Verizon is one of the worst cell companies out there anyway.


[purposely ignoring]

Besides, who switches phone service  providers within the life of a  
phone?


No one, but you're overlooking the *reasons* that doesn't happen:  
contract

lock-in and hardware that's not built to last.


Contract lock-in only happens if you want to buy a phone cheap.  If you  
absolutely don't want a 2-yr contract, you can pay full price for the  
phone.


These days, hardware is not built to last no matter what it is.  And it's  
because people don't *want* old hardware.  As a manufacturer, you have a  
choice:


1. build something that's more expensive, but outlasts its usefulness or
2. build something that's cheaper, may not last as long, but lasts at  
least until the next gen version is available.


And I like to buy things once and keep them as long as possible (my stereo  
has an input for laser disc to give you an idea).  But cell phones and  
computers change so fast that the hardware is obsolete before it's broken.



Not to mention that the two biggest  service providers are incompatible
with eachother, so you couldn't switch  between them even if you wanted
to.



If there's a fundamental difference in protocols (as opposed to the
artificially-created incompatibilities), then yes, of course that's fine.


Yes, Verizon uses CDMA and ATT uses GSM.  Different protocols, different  
chips required.


However, outside the cell phone world, such situations are likely to  
result

in dual-use devices


There were some phones like that.  Nobody cared ;)


E. A die-hard Apple fan I know recently showed me his beloved iPad.
Accurately setting the text-cursor was nearly impossible. But that  
would

have been an incredibly simple fix: Use a screen that worked with a
stylus
or fingernail. There's millions of them out there. Even if that would
have
prevented multi-touch (and I don't know that it would or would not
have),
after using the multi-touch, I felt it added no real value other than  
a
gee-whiz gimmick factor. Stylus/fingernail support would have added  
at

least some real value.


Your friend is doing it wrong.


Well, I was the one using it and noticing that.


I can accurately set the cursor whenever I  want using the magnifying
glass.

See an example here:
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781430231295/typing_numbers_and_symbols



That's nothing more than a workaround. How is that *not* worse than being
able to just use the tip of your fingernail?


Because... it's better?  At least I think it is :)  What if you don't  
have a long fingernail?  Even if you do have a fingernail, and are using  
an old-style screen that could detect the fingernail, it's probably going  
to be more inaccurate, and without a way to tune into the right position.


I've had two old-style touch screen phones before this.  They suck.  They  
break, require calibration, and require a stylus.  My samsung phone got to  
be so inaccurate that I pretty much avoided using the touch screen as much  
as possible.  I'll pay the price of lost accuracy when positioning a  
cursor in order to avoid having to pop out a stylus to press on-screen  
buttons.


And once you get used to it (the cursor positioning), it's fast.


G. A *phone* without tactile dial buttons is just plain wrong. What is
it
with Apple's long-standing war against tactile feedback? It detracts
from
usability and the only thing it adds is high-tech-gee-whiz-gimmick.


What do you need tactile feedback for?


See, now I just can't even fathom that kind of stance, so it's difficult  
for
me to argue against it. For me it's just a fundamental thing: With  
tactile

feedback  without tactile feedback, by a large degree.


ok then :)




You get audible feedback, and the  phone number buttons are extremely
responsive.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread Andrei Alexandrescu


On 9/3/10 16:51 CDT, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

Well, it's just that they haven't got to it yet, or maybe they don't
feel it's as important as other issues. If something is 99% perfect and
you want to point out the 1%, I guess you're entitled to it. But if
everything else out there is only 90% perfect, then it's just pointless
griping. It's a phone, it calls just fine (best in-call interface by far
I've seen), it surfs the internet very well (best web browser experience
on a phone I've had by far), and has lots of attention to detail. The
frilly petty stuff isn't what makes the phone bad or good. My opinion is
that the obvious stuff *does* work well, it's the niche stuff that has
issues, and they are issues I'm willing to live with.


I totally agree. Before the iPhone, I'd always complained that cell 
phones were designed by villains who made them tedious to use on 
purpose. When criticizing it's always good to keep in mind what baseline 
we're talking about.


Andrei

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread BCS


Hello Walter,


Michel Fortin wrote:


Basically, you wanted to do what I did with my website. What was the
problem exactly? Creating a style sheet that displays the contents
well when read linearly? Or was it about how to trigger this
particular style sheet for iPhone and iPods? The later's quite
simple, just use this media attribute:

media=handheld, only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)

The handheld,  part isn't really relevant for iOS devices, but
it'll trigger the stylesheet with Opera-based handheld browsers.


The problem was that I googled it and every hit used a radically
different method and they'd refer to it as seems to work. I'm not
comfortable using such hacks. I'd like one that officially works and
is standards compliant.



Setup a mobile.digitalmars.com that has hosts the same files as www.* but 
a different .css?


A little work with the config files and you might even need only one copy 
of the files on the server.



--
... IXOYE

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


BCS wrote:
Setup a mobile.digitalmars.com that has hosts the same files as www.* 
but a different .css?


A little work with the config files and you might even need only one 
copy of the files on the server.


That might work.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


Nick Sabalausky wrote:
But I have spent a fair amount of time with other Apple products. I even 
used OSX as my primary system for about a year or two. And (aside from the 
Apple II, which obviously doesn't quite count) there has never been a piece 
of Apple software I've used more than a little for which I haven't found 
large amounts of things that would be ideal as setting or even obvious as 
settings but were sorely lacking. Same goes for features (such as the 
iPod/iTunes's inexcusable lack of Vorbis support, and for a *long* time 
iTunes couldn't read CD audio if track 1 was data (which was not entirely 
uncommon) but everything else could). So judging by the very sparse options 
on the iPad, I have fairly strong reason to believe it would be the same.


Yeah, I'm mystified by some of this stuff, too. Like why WMP will not recognize 
CDTEXT info. (I sent them a bug report on it 5 years ago at least.) Like how 
FLAC format does not allow for track info - you have to have a separate cue 
file for that. Yee gawds. The image convert program on Linux to convert between 
audio formats loses the tag information in the process.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-03 Thread Andrej Mitrovic

I'm pretty sure that's only for albums which are stored as a single
flac file. They usually come with a .cue file which stores track
lengths so you can split up the huge flac file into each track as a
flac. Then you can have per-track info stored in the flac files
themselves. As for splitting a .flac file that has a .cue file,
Medieval cue splitter is probably the best free tool for the job.

On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Walter Bright
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:
Like how FLAC format does not allow for track info - you have to
 have a separate cue file for that.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia


It still makes no sense to have it as a separate file.

Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

I'm pretty sure that's only for albums which are stored as a single
flac file. They usually come with a .cue file which stores track
lengths so you can split up the huge flac file into each track as a
flac. Then you can have per-track info stored in the flac files
themselves. As for splitting a .flac file that has a .cue file,
Medieval cue splitter is probably the best free tool for the job.

On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Walter Bright
newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote:

Like how FLAC format does not allow for track info - you have to
have a separate cue file for that.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i5ndre$1e0...@digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 I only rarely see them now. I don't have any of that DVR stuff (never 
 thought it made sense to buy a device, as opposed to a service, on a 
 subscription model), so not only do I get the increasingly irritating and 
 patronizing commercials (I don't normally have a problem with 
 commercials, just the irritating and patronizing ones, which are most of 
 them these days), but I also get those ads that stations have injected 
 *over-top* of the shows themselves as a backlash against DVRs (Which I 
 don't even have! And I have to be punished anyway!) So I've just said 
 fuck them, and fuck playing fair, since they obviously aren't and I 
 only watch shows on library DVDs now, or if the libraries either don't 
 have it or don't have it unscratched then downlaod (but not Hulu - fuck 
 web browsers, fuck flash video, and fuck TV on a PC). So usually the 
 only times I do see ads is when a roomate watches TV.

 Me very satisfied Netflix customer.

For videos and music, north-eastern Ohio's library systems are absolutely 
phenomenal. And unless you're *ridiculously* irresponsible, the late fees 
are an order of magnitude cheaper than any netflix subscription. If I lived 
anywhere else, I would probably be a Netflix user.

(But unfortunately, these libraries are horrible for non-fiction books, 
unless all you ever want is For Dummies-level stuff, or if you just happen 
to be paying thousands of dollars to a college, or work for a college - 
*then* they give you the *cough* privilege of using the OhioLINK library 
system which is great for non-fiction books. But frankly, an 
enterprise-level MSDN subscription would probably be cheaper (literally))

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
news:i5ncem$1bp...@digitalmars.com...
 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message 
 news:i5n87k$14u...@digitalmars.com...
 Jonathan M Davis wrote:
 I hear that this sort of thing tends to happen with Indie artists as 
 well. There are fans who like them until they get popular. I guess that 
 there are people who _like_ it when the stuff that they like is niche.
 I bet that deep down they know that they don't actually like it, they 
 just like being in the in crowd where they all smugly congratulate each 
 other about how they get it and nobody else does :-)


 I hope not. If that's so, what would that mean about those of us who have 
 been here in the D crowd for the last few years? ;)

 If you leave when D goes mainstream, then you're here for all the wrong 
 reasons!


How's that for lock-in? :)

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Brad Roberts bra...@puremagic.com wrote in message 
news:mailman.60.1283405205.858.digitalmar...@puremagic.com...
 On 9/1/2010 6:56 PM, BCS wrote:
 OTOH try and write a play that no one will watch. I'd be very surprised 
 if it
 can be done.

 There's a book that was purposely written (by a collaboration of good 
 authors)
 to be as bad as it could be.

There was a videogame (freeware) a few years ago that was deliberately 
designed to serve as an example of all the typical worst practices in game 
design. The great thing though, was that a lot of people found it to fall 
into the so bad it's good category :)  I wish I could remember what it 
was.

 So, of course, I just had to get a copy.  I
 couldn't make it past the second chapter, if I remember right.  It'd take 
 a
 seriously determined person to actually finish it.  Reading it might well 
 void
 any life insurance policies you might have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights


That sounds awesome :) The history and reasons behind it are really 
interesting, and I got a kick out of these parts of what Wikipedia said 
about it:


...obvious grammatical errors, nonsensical passages, and a complete lack of 
a coherent plot

The distinctive flaws of Atlanta Nights include nonidentical chapters 
written by two different authors from the same segment of outline (13 and 
15), a missing chapter (21), two chapters that are word-for-word identical 
to each other (4 and 17), two different chapters with the same chapter 
number (12 and 12), and a chapter written by a computer program that 
generated random text based on patterns found in the previous chapters (34). 
Characters change gender and race; they die and reappear without 
explanation. Spelling and grammar are nonstandard and the formatting is 
inconsistent. The initials of characters who were named in the book spelled 
out the phrase PublishAmerica is a vanity press.[7]

Under Macdonald's direction, the finale revealed that all the previous 
events of the plot had been a dream, although the book continues for several 
more chapters.


That had to have been a really fun book to write.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-02 Thread Kagamin

Steven Schveighoffer Wrote:

 I was just employing irony and sarcasm to demonstrate why your arguments  
 were meaningless :)  The only measurable factor for good art is how many  
 people use it/buy it.

Well... commercial quality doesn't have any value for me in the context of art 
:) Rentability is not the most important property of art.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

Brad Roberts bra...@puremagic.com wrote in message 
news:mailman.60.1283405205.858.digitalmar...@puremagic.com...
 On 9/1/2010 6:56 PM, BCS wrote:
 OTOH try and write a play that no one will watch. I'd be very surprised 
 if it
 can be done.

 There's a book that was purposely written (by a collaboration of good 
 authors)
 to be as bad as it could be.  So, of course, I just had to get a copy.  I
 couldn't make it past the second chapter, if I remember right.  It'd take 
 a
 seriously determined person to actually finish it.  Reading it might well 
 void
 any life insurance policies you might have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights


I hope it started with It was a dark and stormy night :)

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-02 Thread Kagamin

Walter Bright Wrote:

 Someone once told me that capitalism doesn't support the arts. I asked him 
 how 
 the Beatles got rich. Oops!

Yes, art does manage to cope with capitalism, it's just the result doesn't look 
like a lot of fun.
Glen Cook said I get salary for the number of pages.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

2010-09-02 Thread Brad Roberts

On 9/1/2010 11:28 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 Brad Roberts bra...@puremagic.com wrote in message 
 news:mailman.60.1283405205.858.digitalmar...@puremagic.com...
 On 9/1/2010 6:56 PM, BCS wrote:
 OTOH try and write a play that no one will watch. I'd be very surprised 
 if it
 can be done.

 There's a book that was purposely written (by a collaboration of good 
 authors)
 to be as bad as it could be.  So, of course, I just had to get a copy.  I
 couldn't make it past the second chapter, if I remember right.  It'd take 
 a
 seriously determined person to actually finish it.  Reading it might well 
 void
 any life insurance policies you might have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights

 
 I hope it started with It was a dark and stormy night :)
 

Sadly no.. that'd be cliched but not bad enough.  Hopefully this doesn't push
the bounds of fair use too far.  The first several lines:

Chapter 1

  Pain.
  Whispering voices.
  Pain.
  Pain. Pain. Pain.
  Need pee -- new pain -- what are they sticking in me? ...
  Sleep.
  Pain.
  Whispering voices.
  As you know, Nurse Eastman, the government spooks controlling this hospital
will not permit me to give this patient the care I think he needs.
  Yes, doctor.  The voice was breathy, sweet, so sweet and sexy.

---

Actually, that part's not THAT bad, by itself.. but it certainly isn't anywhere
near good.

Re: [Slight OT] TDPL in Russia