lumanauw said:
Who is PRR? The picture you mention was taken by Mathew
Brady, just after the American Civil War.
By the way, John Curl (and I mean this in a good way) is the
exact image of Randy Newman (famous composer and so-so
singer) and has the same dry sense of humor. I mention this
because while there are many superior to my talents, he seems
to be my closest peer. (he will not agree)
Speaking of superior talent, you really should see "Stanley
Kubrick: A Life in Pictures". I watch it over and over.
> you have patents and many attorneys, while at the same moment you are still passing your knowledge and designs to DIYers.
The whole point of Patent Law is to make good ideas available to everybody.
Without patent law, if you had a good idea and tried to sell it, someone else would copy and sell it. The inventor might not be able to recover the cost of inventing the new idea. He can try to keep the idea a secret, but if he sells it and the idea is visible then the secret won't last long. So a lot of good ideas were never made public, because there was no way to earn a profit when anybody else could copy and sell the same idea.
With Patent, you write a paper clearly describing your idea, make it public in the Patent Office, anybody can look at the idea, but for the next 17 years they can not sell the idea without your permission. You can either sell the invention yourself and sue any copy-cats, or you can encourage copy-cats by charging a reasonable payment to use the idea. If it is a good idea, you have 17 years to get your money. And others can look at your public Patent and maybe come up with their own new ideas.
It encourages invention, which is good for Society. It grants a limited monopoly in return for public disclosure of new ideas.
So Mr Pass has a new idea (or twists an old idea), pays his lawyers to put it in the Patent Office. We all get to see it. He gets a 17 year chance to profit from it. After 17 years, anybody can sell it without dealing with Mr Pass's lawyers.
Patent Law generally prohibits selling, not building. The idea is to give the inventor a chance to get rich, and if you are not selling your copy then you are probably not hurting the inventor's profits. There are grey areas: if you invent a better Space Telescope, and NASA builds one "DIY" and doesn't sell it but uses it, NASA should pay you for use of the idea. The market for Space Telescopes is very small, and even one "DIY" is a major piece of that market, and a NASA Space Telescope is not really a garage project for personal use. But generally, in audio, personal use DIY does not have to worry about the Patent. And patent holders generaly do not care about non-commercial DIY.
Anyway, Pass comes from a tradition of designers sharing ideas, and a lot of ideas that are fun but not really profitable. He likes to share these ideas. But he has to eat and pay bills too. If there is any hope of making money from an idea, he "has" to patent it, so if there is any money in it he can demand a piece of the profit. (Although, in high-end audio, the real profit is in nice cases and good reviews and eager dealers, not patents.)
He patents to pay the bills, but he mostly just likes to share. And sharing with the DIY community is pleasant, and does not significantly affect his for-profit business. Probably improves it, because hanging with the DIY crowd is much more stimulating than going to Sales Meetings and working with patent lawyers.
> From its picture, he looks like PRR.
That shot looks more like a young Bob Pease.....
> Who is PRR?
Just some guy who visits here. See photo top left this post.
> Mr. PRR (whats his name?)... and what products they are in. Anyone has potrait picture?
Paul. No product, no company. Small paycheck for fixing school record players and shoving wires into computers. My visist here have NO connection or endorsement from my employer. No portrait; the only existing picture of PRR was an accidental snap on a digi-cam being connected.
> he looks like PRR.
Only that we are similar gender, race, age, and don't follow bleeding edge fashion trends. I could walk the halls here and find you a dozen more guys who look roughly similar. Nelson does have spiffier sneakers than I wear.
The whole point of Patent Law is to make good ideas available to everybody.
Without patent law, if you had a good idea and tried to sell it, someone else would copy and sell it. The inventor might not be able to recover the cost of inventing the new idea. He can try to keep the idea a secret, but if he sells it and the idea is visible then the secret won't last long. So a lot of good ideas were never made public, because there was no way to earn a profit when anybody else could copy and sell the same idea.
With Patent, you write a paper clearly describing your idea, make it public in the Patent Office, anybody can look at the idea, but for the next 17 years they can not sell the idea without your permission. You can either sell the invention yourself and sue any copy-cats, or you can encourage copy-cats by charging a reasonable payment to use the idea. If it is a good idea, you have 17 years to get your money. And others can look at your public Patent and maybe come up with their own new ideas.
It encourages invention, which is good for Society. It grants a limited monopoly in return for public disclosure of new ideas.
So Mr Pass has a new idea (or twists an old idea), pays his lawyers to put it in the Patent Office. We all get to see it. He gets a 17 year chance to profit from it. After 17 years, anybody can sell it without dealing with Mr Pass's lawyers.
Patent Law generally prohibits selling, not building. The idea is to give the inventor a chance to get rich, and if you are not selling your copy then you are probably not hurting the inventor's profits. There are grey areas: if you invent a better Space Telescope, and NASA builds one "DIY" and doesn't sell it but uses it, NASA should pay you for use of the idea. The market for Space Telescopes is very small, and even one "DIY" is a major piece of that market, and a NASA Space Telescope is not really a garage project for personal use. But generally, in audio, personal use DIY does not have to worry about the Patent. And patent holders generaly do not care about non-commercial DIY.
Anyway, Pass comes from a tradition of designers sharing ideas, and a lot of ideas that are fun but not really profitable. He likes to share these ideas. But he has to eat and pay bills too. If there is any hope of making money from an idea, he "has" to patent it, so if there is any money in it he can demand a piece of the profit. (Although, in high-end audio, the real profit is in nice cases and good reviews and eager dealers, not patents.)
He patents to pay the bills, but he mostly just likes to share. And sharing with the DIY community is pleasant, and does not significantly affect his for-profit business. Probably improves it, because hanging with the DIY crowd is much more stimulating than going to Sales Meetings and working with patent lawyers.
> From its picture, he looks like PRR.
That shot looks more like a young Bob Pease.....
> Who is PRR?
Just some guy who visits here. See photo top left this post.
> Mr. PRR (whats his name?)... and what products they are in. Anyone has potrait picture?
Paul. No product, no company. Small paycheck for fixing school record players and shoving wires into computers. My visist here have NO connection or endorsement from my employer. No portrait; the only existing picture of PRR was an accidental snap on a digi-cam being connected.
> he looks like PRR.
Only that we are similar gender, race, age, and don't follow bleeding edge fashion trends. I could walk the halls here and find you a dozen more guys who look roughly similar. Nelson does have spiffier sneakers than I wear.
This question has haunted me since the late 70´s:
The Treshold preamp introduced together with the 800 and the cascode amp (cant even remember the name of the preamp anymore, CAS 1 was the cascode amp wasn´t it). So:
In my store in Stockholm we put a system together for a discerning gentleman, consisting of: Linn Sondek LP12 with Grace707 and a GAS sleaping beauty, Lentek S4, and a sub (x2) that looked like something the dog could sleep in, an Electro research A75 for the Lenteks and a Treshold 400 for the subs
an ARC filter (the tube xx22 something), and the Threshold preamp!! That level control still makes me wake up in cold sweat at night, what was it?? Most other high end or quality preamps/amps at that time had dented pots or multistepswitches with resistors while this pot had close to zero mechanical resistance and made a fabulous sound ( like the 20-turn pots in Your lab power supply ) when turned. As this was the only sample to pass my store and my customer was eagerly awaiting installation, i had no time to lift off the lid and drool inside ( wich i never did ) So please mr Pass, what was that level pot?
The Treshold preamp introduced together with the 800 and the cascode amp (cant even remember the name of the preamp anymore, CAS 1 was the cascode amp wasn´t it). So:
In my store in Stockholm we put a system together for a discerning gentleman, consisting of: Linn Sondek LP12 with Grace707 and a GAS sleaping beauty, Lentek S4, and a sub (x2) that looked like something the dog could sleep in, an Electro research A75 for the Lenteks and a Treshold 400 for the subs
an ARC filter (the tube xx22 something), and the Threshold preamp!! That level control still makes me wake up in cold sweat at night, what was it?? Most other high end or quality preamps/amps at that time had dented pots or multistepswitches with resistors while this pot had close to zero mechanical resistance and made a fabulous sound ( like the 20-turn pots in Your lab power supply ) when turned. As this was the only sample to pass my store and my customer was eagerly awaiting installation, i had no time to lift off the lid and drool inside ( wich i never did ) So please mr Pass, what was that level pot?
So we have look at some of the guys who thinks about audio 24hr/day. We should have more respect for them. Imagine who is answering your thread.
Anyone with picture of Robert Zeff?
Mr Pass has wrote (and alot of them), Mr Borbely has, I really waits for Mr John Curl to write some article. About single device, about a circuit or anything.
Anyone with picture of Robert Zeff?
Mr Pass has wrote (and alot of them), Mr Borbely has, I really waits for Mr John Curl to write some article. About single device, about a circuit or anything.
Attachments
This thread has once again made me make an interesting obsevation
that I have made many many times before, especially within my
own profession. There is a lot of people one knows of, have read
articles by, heard of, maybe even discussed with via email or a
forum, but whom one have never met or seen on a photo. Although
there is no reason whatsoever to make any assumptions about
what that person looks like, one subconciously makes up somek
lind of fuzzy image of the person. Not a detailed image so one
could really describe what the person looks like, but anyway some
kind of image, based on absolutely nothing sensible. Then, when
eventually meeting the person or seeing a photo one often
gets surprised, finding that although not having had any particular
expectation what the person would look like, at least one know
this was not what one had expected. Not that there is usually
anything wrong with how the person actually looks, it is just that
it doesn't fit the mental image, however vague and fuzzy that one
was. Am I the only one having such experiences??
that I have made many many times before, especially within my
own profession. There is a lot of people one knows of, have read
articles by, heard of, maybe even discussed with via email or a
forum, but whom one have never met or seen on a photo. Although
there is no reason whatsoever to make any assumptions about
what that person looks like, one subconciously makes up somek
lind of fuzzy image of the person. Not a detailed image so one
could really describe what the person looks like, but anyway some
kind of image, based on absolutely nothing sensible. Then, when
eventually meeting the person or seeing a photo one often
gets surprised, finding that although not having had any particular
expectation what the person would look like, at least one know
this was not what one had expected. Not that there is usually
anything wrong with how the person actually looks, it is just that
it doesn't fit the mental image, however vague and fuzzy that one
was. Am I the only one having such experiences??
Why do your posts make me and probably other people think just that little bit further than we would have without them?Christer said:
I guess we all look like what life molded us. On a forum, we only have the words, the attitude, the way people react… to form ourselves a picture of what someone might look like.
I think we are heavily referring to people we know in real life, with similar attitudes, ways of thinking. People with great influence throughout history are examples too. The picture of Jesus Christ is one of them. Although I don’t believe in the person himself, but rather in the ‘good’ things in all of us, there’s no doubt we all have a rather similar picture of Jesus in mind. The beard, the eyes, the clothing…an image created by history and media.
Why does Tina Turner sings like she looks?
Why does Kofi Annan talks smoothly and gentle just the way he looks?
Why do people have strange assumptions with eyes standing too close to each other?
No need to give an example here.
Why does John Curl reassembles Randy Newman? Because of his humor? Could be but probably not.
Why is Christer always observing
/Hugo – Thinks he thinks different but looks very average
Netlist said:
Thanks for the nice words Hugo. Although I often do post things
with a hope of making some people think a little bit deeper about
something and also appreciate others posting things that make
me think a little bit deeper, I actually had no such intention in
this case. If my post had that side-effect for some, well then that
is a good thing.
Sometimes yes, in other cases I think it is not even based on
much substantial at all. I suppose it might be that our brain needs
to have some kind of face on people we haven't seen
so it makes one up for us just to please itself.
Actually, in this case it was the photo of John that surprised me.
No, there is nothing wrong at all with what he looks like, it was
just so different from what I had envisioned, however vague that
image was. It might have been the same with Nelson and Erno
Borbely if I hadn't already seen photos of them previously.
Why is Christer always observing
Well, sometimes maybe. I guess to some extent it is to blame on
my occupation, but mostly it is probably just the way I am, can't
help it.
Actually one of the funniest experiences of this kind I've had was
when I was a rather fresh PhD student and had read a number
of seemingly very insightful articles by a well-known american
researcher, let's call him X. I had, for whatever reason, made up
an image of him as an elderly grey-haired professor with glasses,
wearing a brown or grey suit and a necktie. When I attended
my first scientific conference it happened that a person entered
the room in the middle of a session (that's not uncommon). He
looked very young, although he probably was quite a bit older,
dressed in T-shirt and shorts, wearing Rayban sunglasses indoors
and I wouldn't have been the least surprised if he had carried a
surfboard under his arm. I wondered, whoever is this strange guy?
It turned out to be X.
I later got to know him rather well over the years and he is quite
a nice and intelligent guy, but my first encounter with him was
somewhat of a shock. Of course, I still hadn't quite learnt about
the (absence of) dresscode in computer science at that time.
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