Monday, July 14, 2003

A collector cut out the stamp... 10:55:34 PM    comment []; Happy Bastille Day! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. That cry started the whole ball rolling, didn't it! 9:34:37 PM    comment []; Cool Interface!! Canton thinks these pads make his taplights seem primitive...... 9:34:02 PM    comment []; Chinese postcard from around 1910-1915 11:09:24 AM    comment []; Browser Wars Nice history and summation on past and present Browser wars... via [Slashdot] 10:29:20 AM    comment []; 'Massive' wind farm plans hailed Plans for three offshore wind farms are a "serious commitment" to green energy, say environmentalists. [BBC News] 10:12:12 AM    comment []; Thousands of duckies head for New England 29,000 rubber ducks, tossed overboard between China and Seattle more than a decade ago, will wash up on New England shores shortly. After a mammoth journey, they are expected to start washing up on the New England coast. And while they will be bleached and battered from their journey, they are providing invaluable information on the ocean's currents. They were flung into the Pacific on the International Date Line, level with Oregon, USA. [BoingBoing] 10:11:17 AM    comment []; I don't know why, but I do admire your optimism. - Dominic • 7/14/03; 6:09:43 AM Hm, you must be reading something else...because nothing that I wrote says that I am optimistic. I wrote that these are exciting times and they are. I wrote that things could go either way for the world. Nowhere do I state whether I am an optimist or a doom-sayer. Fact is, I oscillate between those two several times a week...and sometimes a couple of times a day... 10:04:16 AM    comment []; What is DVD-Audio or DVD-A format? DVD-A also provides higher fidelity of sound by increasing the sampling rate and the frequency range beyond what is possible for the space limitations of CDs and DVD-Video. DVD-Audio is 24-bit, with a sampling rate of 96 kHz. via [MacRumors] I have the feeling that we are still a couple of years away from actually using this format, even though it has been kicked around since 1999. For four years the industry has been playing around with several different protection schemes, which all turned out to be either hackable or audible. 7:57:53 AM    comment []; Digital Watermark 4 Audio DVD "Watermark could reduce the perceived quality of DVD-A to somewhere between a good MiniDisc and a below-average CD," says a leading classical recording engineer. In British tests, leading record producers were astonished to find that they could clearly hear the supposedly "inaudible" digital watermark, during replay demonstrations of the Verance (www.verance.com) watermarking system chosen by the record industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). The watermark must be robust enough to survive MP3 compression and similar Internet distribution techniques, while remaining inaudible to users of high-end DVD-Audio discs. via [MacRumors] That tells me I should continue with the regular CD and that I am right in not using any copy-protection...What's the point of making a DVD-A if the sound quality suffers that much? When the DVD-A has become a strong improvement over the current CD format I will consider it. BTW, does anyone know whether the Watermark is an integrated part of the DVD-A format or whether it can be controlled separately, i.e. turned off? 7:52:17 AM    comment [];

© Copyright 2003 Ottmar Liebert. Last update: 8/25/03; 11:57:23 AM.