Jeffrey Nonken 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Always A Gatekeeper: RIAA Backs .music Proposal… If It's Only Limited To 'Accredited' Musicians

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 08:21pm

    Re:

    oops.

  • On the post: Always A Gatekeeper: RIAA Backs .music Proposal… If It's Only Limited To 'Accredited' Musicians

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 10:42am

    Instant fail: just add stupid.

  • On the post: The Web Is Saved: East Texas Jury Says Eolas Patents Are Invalid

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2012 @ 07:00pm

    A few years ago I used to work for an LED lighting company.

    There's a communications protocol called DMX that's commonly used for controlling theater lighting, though of course anything commonly used for one thing is often used for related things as well.

    Now, LEDs aren't like incandescent bulbs. Incandescents light by heating a wire until it glows, just short of melting. I don't know the physics of LEDs but they turn on and off pretty much instantaneously. However, unlike incandescents, they do not respond linearly to voltage changes (or current changes). IOW they don't dim very well.

    But they turn on and off really, really quickly. So you "dim" an LED by turning it on and off very quickly, and the longer you leave it on compared to how long you leave it off, the brighter it gets. That's called "duty cycle". It's very linear. The most common method used to dim LEDs is called Pulse Width Modulation, or PWM. Because it's simple: you vary the duty cycle of a repeating, fixed-period pulse. All you need is a counter and a comparator.

    There's apparently a lighting company -- I forget who -- who does, or at least at the time did, have a patent on using DMX with PWM to control LED lighting.

    Now I don't know about you, but as a developer who was part of the industry, it's pretty freaking obvious to me that if you want to use theater lighting equipment to control LED lighting, you'd combine DMX with PWM. HOW THE F**K ELSE WOULD YOU DO IT?!?! But they have this patent and use it to beat up other lighting companies.

    Fortunately for us, we had prior art. At least until I left, said competitor never brought us to court, and we never pursued having the patent invalidated. I guess our boss figured it was better to let them do all the work, and we were protected by the fact that suing us would be shooting themselves in the foot (and they knew it).

    Meantime, several other companies have found ways around the patent. Cypress (who makes microcontrollers) has some sort of random-based method of controlling the duty cycle, and I happen to know that the 100th anniversary Times Square Ball uses a method called Bit Angle Modulation. (I don't know exactly what method the current one uses.)

    So all these companies are trying to dance around this stupid invalid patent instead of innovating because... ponies? And please don't try to say that getting around the patent is innovation in and of itself. Broken Window fallacy.

  • On the post: OK Go Shows, Once Again, How Content Is Advertising… And How There Are Many Revenue Streams For Musicians

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 07 Feb, 2012 @ 01:03pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: 2.6

    Ours go to 11 million.

  • On the post: The NFL Issues Takedown For Chrysler Super Bowl Commercial

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2012 @ 08:10pm

    Re: Re:

    Try:

    Had to check out the commercial after reading the comments and <a href="http://i44.tinypic.com/64ggua.jpg">this</a> is what came up.

    The result looks like this:
    Had to check out the commercial after reading the comments and this is what came up.

  • On the post: The NFL Issues Takedown For Chrysler Super Bowl Commercial

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2012 @ 07:49pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Define "ripped off" please. And no hedging; I want an unequivocal, precise definition.

  • On the post: Hollywood Wants To Kill Piracy? No Problem: Just Offer Something Better

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2012 @ 01:30pm

    I'm in! Here's my credit card, where is this service?

  • On the post: When Judges Are Determining Whether Or Not Art Should Exist… We Have A Problem

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 03 Feb, 2012 @ 02:58pm

    Well, there go all the Monty Python animated bits.

  • On the post: Is Using A Piece Of Existing Music In A Film To Underline An Emotion 'Rape' – Or Just The Way Cinema Works?

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2012 @ 12:25pm

    Re:

    Damn! You beat me to it.

  • On the post: Why Chris Dodd Failed With His SOPA/PIPA Strategy

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2012 @ 12:11pm

    Re:

    Whoa, fumbled that link.

    Go me.

  • On the post: Why Chris Dodd Failed With His SOPA/PIPA Strategy

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2012 @ 12:11pm

    a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPDwQwM1cLU&feature=player_detailpage#t=16s" target="_blank">"I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!"

  • On the post: Are Democrats About To Lose An Entire Generation Of Voters By Pushing PIPA/SOPA Forward?

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2012 @ 02:24pm

    Re: Re:

    Of course, it's not about which you prefer. It's about Coke and Pepsi tricking you into thinking that it's about which of the two you prefer: Coke or Pepsi -- and forgetting that there could be another brand you might like just fine.

    In the long run they don't care so much about which of the two is number 1. They just don't want you thinking past the number 2.

    The False Dilemma personified in a decades-long marketing campaign.

  • On the post: Are Democrats About To Lose An Entire Generation Of Voters By Pushing PIPA/SOPA Forward?

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2012 @ 01:58pm

    Re: Re: Re: I've already made up my mind

    I still think he would have made a good president, if only because he didn't take himself too seriously.

    What's really funny is the thought of the look on his face if he'd won. :)

  • On the post: Are Democrats About To Lose An Entire Generation Of Voters By Pushing PIPA/SOPA Forward?

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2012 @ 01:51pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: I've already made up my mind

    At 10% above the current speaker's income level at the time he is speaking.

  • On the post: RIAA Takes MPAA's Condescending Response To Protests Up A Notch

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2012 @ 01:41pm

    Re:

    You forgot to carry the 1 trillion.

  • On the post: Supreme Court Chooses SOPA/PIPA Protest Day To Give A Giant Middle Finger To The Public Domain

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2012 @ 01:47pm

    The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are now just toilet paper. Didn't you know?

  • On the post: Lamar Smith & MPAA Brush Off Wikipedia Blackout As Just A Publicity Stunt

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2012 @ 05:34pm

    Re:

    Absolutely it's a publicity stunt. I mean, really, who has ever heard of Wikipedia? Just a few geeks. Nobody important.

    And it's totally irresponsible for them to black out the site when all these people (the ones who have never heard of it?) depend on it so much.

  • On the post: Musician Peter Gabriel Comes Out Against SOPA/PIPA; Website Will Go Dark

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2012 @ 01:21pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I dunno. Works either way for me. :)

  • On the post: Musician Peter Gabriel Comes Out Against SOPA/PIPA; Website Will Go Dark

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2012 @ 01:20pm

    Re: Re:

    Nope, I doubt his reasons are altruistic.

    Mine aren't, either. Purely selfish. I want to keep writing code. I want the economy not to collapse, so I can continue working and living in a house and eating, feeding my family, send my kids to college. I want to have more choices about the movies I can watch and the music I can listen to, not fewer. I don't want to live in the fear that any random remark I make could be used to take away my freedom or my belongings.

    And I want that for my friends, too. And their friends. And everybody else in the world. Not because I'm altruistic, but because I like sharing things that I like, and I like helping people. I like it when other people are happy, it makes me happy.

    I'd be inclined to call that "enlightened self-interest" but when you get down to it, my reasons are all selfish. I want the world to be a certain way.

    It's easy to question the motives of somebody you don't know, especially if he's rich, famous, or (worse yet) both. And yet... I bet he wants the same thing I want. He wants the world to be a certain way. I'm sure we all differ in the details but in the end, everybody does things for selfish reasons. Whether it's direct gain of desired resources or feeling good about the rightness of your actions, you do things because you anticipate that the results and consequences of your actions will satisfy a need in yourself.

    So while it's easy to be all cynical about Peter Gabriel's motives, in the long run, he's no more selfish than anybody else. We all try to fulfill our needs and, if we have energy left over, our desires.

    For myself, I'm not going to refuse his help just because he has more money than I have. I'm also not going to assume that any successful artist must necessarily have a selfish, greedy hidden agenda when it comes to this. Maybe Peter Gabriel just sees SOPA and PIPA as threats to his business model? Sounds good to me. Screw altruism, give me enlightened self-interest every time. Then you know where you stand.

  • On the post: Musician Peter Gabriel Comes Out Against SOPA/PIPA; Website Will Go Dark

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2012 @ 12:39pm

    Re: INB4

    I'm not going to darken my website or any of my blogs because... I'm in support of SOPA/PIPA?

    Wrong. I'm not doing it because I HAVE ZERO READERS. It's not worth the effort. It would be a cry in the wilderness, a tempest in a teacup. Crickets will chirp. Somewhere a dog will bark.

    It's OK. Once SOPA or PIPA passes, you can use it to shut down my website yourself. I'm sure there's a phrase or a line of code that you could use to get it done.

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