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You must not be a math geek. 11,000/500,000 = 2.2% In other words SDTV owns 97.8% of the market. But to be optimistic it is a larger percentage than Linux market holds compared to Windows on the desktop. But if I know correctly these same people that ordered HDTV don't even know they need a new TV for it.

That's why Congress mandated they make CableCards. Timeline is July 2007 when they can't offer the integrated boxes anymore. On the downside, that has already been pushed back and I expect it to keep getting pushed back until it's dead. Greed knows no bounds.

the # shipped to north america (us+can+mex) in 2006 was 1 mil, estimated sold in US was ~490k

From your article: units may not have reached stores in time to be sold (and witness the piles of them in Best Buy last time I was in there, about two weeks ago.) Shipped != Sold.

refer to other posts about the 720p thing

I described the "720p thing" perfectly accurately. I own one, latest updates, and it does not output 720p for DVDs, only games, which is exactly what I said.

and now to the third.. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8602 .html

Your quote refers to the "BDA". I said Sony was balking - that's not outright refusal, that's dragging feet, that sort of thing. Get, and USE, a dictionary. The reason that I said that is because the wholly-owned Sony subsidiary Sony DADC Global that produces Blue-Ray disks has refused to master Porn DVDs. This is public, stated policy from them.

So seeing as how every part of your "rebuttal" was off the mark, perhaps you should change your reply technique to "think, research, post" — "post and wait for reply" doesn't seem to be working out for you.

the # shipped to north america (us+can+mex) in 2006 was 1 mil, estimated sold in US was ~490k
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070113/ap_on_hi_te/vi deo_game_sales

refer to other posts about the 720p thing

and now to the third..
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8602 .html

if every statement you brought up is wrong, how is the post informative? more like uninformed...

What I think you are thinking of was the problem where it was downsampeling from 1080 to 480 instead of 720, and that was fixed in a firmware update.

What I think you are thinking of was the problem where it was downsampeling from 1080 to 480 instead of 720, and that was fixed in a firmware update.

I know it's the mode to ridicule Sony for it's lameness on /.-- but this story (along with one I saw on Ars yesterday) is persuading me that perhaps the groupthink was too hasty to condemn the PS3.

A $320 (after potential price drop for 20Gig model) next-gen console with Blu-Ray? I was thinking of buying one just to run linux and to turn it into a MythTV "frontend" box with gaming capability... Admittedly the low end PS3 doesn't have wireless or the memory card readers, but it does give users the ability to swap out harddrives. Plus it will play all my PS2 games without too much hassle.

Like I said... maybe it doesn't suck as much as we think it does. From where I'm standing, the TCO for a next-gen console with high def capability is substantially lower for the PS3 than the XBox360.

(Yes, yes. I know there's another choice out there, but I've already got a Wii).

I was more troubled by the way they treated Omniweb...

Even more troubling is the hubbub surrounding their Colloquy vulnerability, mentioned in this article. They are accused of actually using the exploit on a public IRC channel before releasing the vulnerability and publishing a log of that hack in the announcement. I don't know if it is true, but given their behavior with the rest of this project they're slipping more and more towards the blackhat end of the spectrum.

I haven't heard much coverage on the MOAB since the QuickTime revelation -- haven't they dug up any further baloney in the OS or its core of Jobsian iApps?

They've revealed a number of potentially exploitable bugs, although nothing to really worry about right away, and a number more third party bugs that have little or nothing to do with Apple.

If the highlight of the month is the damn QuickTime thing, this has worked out to be a fairly dull bug hunt.

The most interesting thing to come out of this so far is actually a third party bug in Colloquy, a popular IRC client. The bug itself is not all that novel, but the explanation of the bug that the MOAB team allegedly, originally posted showed them using the vulnerability to hack users on the popular #macdev on Freenode IRC. Basically, many people are claiming they posted a log of them not only behaving unethically, but illegally before even announcing the vunlerability. The explanation of the bug they now post no longer contains that log. For more information check out the article and the accompanying forums.

Is this a great country, or what?

Sigh.

-S

If you think you need to run Windows so badly, just buy a PC and GTFO the Mac. You linear-thinking rectangular types are ruining the platform for the rest of us.

For example, OSX, although uses a few tricks, is more monolithic, where NT is less monolithic and employs a unique kernel design that abstracts the core NT architecture from the subsystem OSes that run on it, hence the client/server concept of the architecture. This is also why NT can natively run a BSD subystem along side the Win32 and Win64 subsystems, as each subsystem is their on OS running on a unified architecture.

First, I could dismiss the NT macrokernel (Microsoft's term) as "a few tricks" just as easily as you dismiss the XNU kernel. It wouldn't really mean anything. Second, NT does not have a BSD subsystem running alongside Win32 or Win32 and Win64 subsystems running simultaneously. While a lot of things are possible in theory on a lot of kernels, you're not describing the implemented architecture of the NT kernel. Microsoft apparently does have a combined Win32/Win64 API and a POSIX API written on top of the Win32 API, but I don't think you were talking about APIs.

OSX merely does a form of double buffering, where Vista actually brings the GPU into a functional accelerator of even non 3D applications, speeding up basic Window drawing and virtualizing RAM as well as setting a model for multi-tasking of the GPU for multiple 3D applications to share system RAM and run side by side.

You're way off here, at least in regard to OS X. Here's an Ars Technica article that clearly describes how OS X offloads basic 2D rendering to the GPU with "Quartz 2D Extreme" and the substantial improvements they've made to this technology over the last few versions of the OS. It's nice that Microsoft is finally adopting these ideas, but it hardly qualifies as an advantage for Vista over OS X.

Also it is worth noting that Vista is far more of a technical and architectual change in the Windows OS than just the UI changes that many reviewers focus on and try to compare to OSX. Applications on Vista load increadibly fast, using the GPU as Vista does, applications like CorelDraw/AI/Photoshop process and display images 10x faster than WindowsXP or OSX even. These are important changes that the end user will notice but are not something that is obvious to the casual reviewer.

As mentioned above, OS X already has these advancements in 2D rendering performance via Quartz 2D Extreme. And, yes, end users do notice them. In addition, the "UI changes that many reviewers focus on" are extremely important to most users, so they're certainly a valid subject for consumer-focused reviews.

Even the new audio subsystem in Vista brings computer fidelity to a new level, and playing old Mp3s or any music has a new level of richness due to these changes. Vista can even monitor a microphone to self tune itself to the enviroment the computer is in, and even self configure 7.1 speakers based on the room acoustics, but again, most common reviewers wouldn't even think to check things like this out.Even the new audio subsystem in Vista brings computer fidelity to a new level, and playing old Mp3s or any music has a new level of richness due to these changes. Vista can even monitor a microphone to self tune itself to the enviroment the computer is in, and even self configure 7.1 speakers based on the room acoustics, but again, most common reviewers wouldn't even think to check things like this out.

You're talking about some DSP sound enhancement. Not terribly exciting and already built into iTunes. The "self tuning with a microphone" stuff is more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. Home users are highly unlikely to have the type and quality of microphone required for accurate spectrum analysis (fairly high end omnidirectional condenser), not to mention knowledge of proper mic placement, etc. Without this, they would probably get better results tuning by ear.
With CoreAudio (too much to explain here -- Google it f

Your link is broken

Sorry. Blame the Library of Congress for handing out bogus URLs.

and you are wrong anyway. It's 25K per quarter.

Which in the most typical units in which income is expressed is $100k a year. 60 miles an hour is still 60 mph even if you're only driving for 15 minutes.

Also, the problem with the law is much less about the law existing as much as it is about the broad scope that it can cover

The bill covered a very narrow scope of people.

Do you just not give a damn about other's rights as long as they are against the Democrats?

Ars Technica points out that the bill in question was co-sponsored by top Republican Mitch McConnell, and is just an exact re-introduction of a bill put forward last year by Trent Lott - which passed the Republican-controlled Senate. The attempt to paint this as an attempt by those Mean Old Democrats to Silence the Masses may be good truthiness, but it just isn't true.

As for my own opinions, I have been an independent voter since I registered in 1987. In that time I have voted for Greens, Libertarians, Democrats, and yes, even one Republican candidate. I have made more than a few negative comments about Democratic politicians over the years - in fact I have suggested in the past that the party ought to dissolve and make way for real progressives. So, no, I have no desire to silence those who criticize the Democrats.

In any case, do you honestly think that it's lobbyists that make politicians bad?

A fire needs fuel, oxygen, and heat. Take away one, no fire.

A crime takes motive, method, and opportunity. Take away one, no crime.

Corruption takes corruptible politicians, money, and people who want favors. The fact that politicians are not angels means we have to be that much more careful about money and lobbyists.

Microsoft and Novell have announced that Novell will be providing support for the Office Open XML format--the default file format for Microsoft Office 2007--in its Novell-branded version of the open-source OpenOffice.org productivity suite. Novell will release a translator that will provide support for Microsoft Word by the end of January 2007, with translators for Excel and PowerPoint to follow.

The translators will be bidirectional: OpenOffice.org users will be able to read from and save to Office Open XML documents. At first, the translators will be made available as plug-ins for Novell's branded OpenOffice.org, but the Linux vendor says it will release the source code and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org product.

Due perhaps to the IIfx debacle, Apple has in years past made a habit of giving people upgrades on the hush-hush if they've bought a new Mac within the couple weeks before unexpected product announcements, if they only call and ask. Of course, the flood of you PC users crashing the party lately really seems to have beiged up the company, so who knows.

You're going to be paying for HDCP whether you use Vista or not. Eventually (and probably not too long from now), every video card by every manufacturer will have HDCP capabilities built in, even if your operating system of choice doesn't use the technology. Vista doesn't enable HDCP unless the content you're playing specifically demands it, anyhow. No such content exists now, anyways... movie studios won't be selling movies with this stuff enabled for a few more years.

Mac OS X users better not get too smug about this, either, since Apple is going to have to incorporate the technology if they want HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs to play on their hardware.

Oh blast it, stupid LOC... *sigh* Go here, hit the "introduction of S.1" link, click "text of legislation" and scroll down to section 220. >_ Sorry, should've noticed the "temp" in the address.

Each x1 lane of PCIe 1.1 offers a 250MB/s transfer rate, which puts a x16 link like the ones that host some GPUs at 4GB/s. The new PCIe 2.0 spec will double the per-lane speed to 500MB/s, boosting a x16 link to 8GB/s.

Check out this story, in which one producer at a trade-show talks about player distribution being higher for HD-DVD because of the XBox360...

I don't know the porn industry, but I do know BS when I see it.

And here is a definitely redundant post, but I suppose from a certain size one cannot expect that everyone reads every reply.

Apparently the 'no porn' policy does not exist. See:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8602 .html

Assuming Sony is actually preventing porn from appearing on Blu-ray ...

In this case, Apple doesn't support PFS because 1.) MS has never been very forthcoming in sharing and 2.) When Apple is totally and completely dominating a single market they just don't need second rate technology.

3, MS won't (repeat: will not ) license WMA10 DRM for Macs.

1. Here are the iPhone components according to FRB Research via arstechnica:

- Samsung Electronics for the CPU/Video processing
- Marvell for the 802.11 chipset
- Infineon Technologies for baseband communications
- Broadcomm Corp. for the touch screen controllers
- Cambridge Silicon Radio for the Bluetooth chipset

2. Darwin is an open source core based on FreeBSD according to Apple, Inc..

3. Here is freebsd on ARM processors (intel-based). ARM FreeBSD.

4. Why is it tough to believe that Apple would simply recompile necessary components of Darwin on the ARM processors and then include and compile the necessary (and only the necessary!) mid level libraries? Many existing apps would work with only minor modifications (to take into account the new control scheme) and a recompile.

Why is 360 better for developers?

I can't tell much. I'm not a game developer. But John Carmack did a recent interview and told why: summary here

I guess it means something.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050922-5339 .html has been /.ed!

WHS will be priced for OEM sales to HP and Dell.

Same as always. The home buyer is not a system builder and doesn't give a damn about retail list.

I can't see how a home server from MS would be any less complicated than setting up a Redhat Linux server.

Let me suggest one reason why Red Hat abandoned the home market:

When Microsoft sought beta testers for Windows Vista, it wasn't looking for just anybody. The company wanted to find a wide variety of testers ranging from novice users to respected experts. Microsoft's search was not limited to individuals, either. 50 families also participated in the testing of Windows Vista.

The program that the families were involved in was called "Life with Windows Vista", and it started around the time of Vista's first beta release. Using videotapes of the families interacting with the operating system, personal interviews, and background reporting, Microsoft was able to create gigs of data reports that the development teams used to uncover bugs and tweak the OS. According to eWeek, the families discovered over 800 bugs. Testing Vista as a family function

The article linked to is lame. There are dozens of articles out there on MS announcing Windows Home Server out there. Why pick this one? For example here are a couple of articles that actually have real informaiton in them: http://www.itjungle.com/two/two011007-story01.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070108-8573 .html http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs_preview.as p

Mr. Baxter issued statements months ago equivocating videogames to films in terms of importance and artistic potential.

Is this a step in the right direction? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070108-8569 .html

Not much, I know, but it's the nearest I can easily get to nuking civilization from orbit.

Seems these dead songwriters had a similar idea.

It has a USB port... While I wouldn't bet on it without testing, I'd guess it can use the eyetv usb tuner.

• Many of us assumed that the built-in USB 2.0 on the AppleTV was for external storage reasons. Why else would you need USB on it? You're not connecting a mouse and/or keyboard or any other oddball peripherals. It makes perfect sense.

  Jacqui: Is the USB 2.0 for external storage?
  Apple Employee: No. You cannot add external storage to the AppleTV. The USB port is there solely for service reasons.

  Wow, that sucks a lot of ass. No external storage? Service purposes only? How long until some Japanese hacker breaks that one?

...it probably runs some kind of OSX (since it seems to display the iTunes album interface, front row, and has a local 40gb disk cache)... It can definitely stream video over the network, so it can probably use an eyetv tuner attached to another machine, windows or mac.

I'm hoping Apple adds tuner/DVR control to Apple TV, but in all of Apple's hype about this product and Front Row, I haven't heard one hint about any plans to add TV tuner/DVR functions.

Maybe I didn't emphasize enough that these requirements are crap . I've read that 1080p video can look pretty darned good over analog component video connections. Apparently, a good scaler helps. Early adopters deserve better.

For anyone who's been following the recent debates about Vista, this is already old news. But now the mainstream seems to be picking up on it.

What the article doesn't mention is that, probably precisely for this reason, there seems to be an agreement between Sony and Microsoft that HDCP protection won't actually be required by Blu-Ray discs until at least 2010, maybe even 2012. Remember, it's the disc that actually needs to require it, the operating system only provides this as an option.

That doesn't make the system anymore pleasing though. I wonder how far Microsoft will actually get with it. Customers do seem to get upset with this, and it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has had to make "concessions" because of public criticism.

Peter Gutmann's paper on Vista's content protection is really recommended reading, even if it's a bit polemic. And nothing beats Microsoft's own document, written by the same guy that was interviewed for Times Online.

Lets remember Tommi Kyyräs comments on playing cd's: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050922-5339 .html

Being a crummy reader, I didn't read the entire article. At this point I'd just as soon build my web to a standard and any browser that can't handle it is outta luck.

That being said, here's a question for that motley crew at Redmond: If your damn browser is so goddamn great, why is there no open, cross-platform version available for schmoes like me? Are your programmers so bad they can't handle more than two OS's?

Firefox: free, and available on damn near any platform you want.

Opera: Free. It's probably on my phone.

IE7: NOT FREE. Oh, sure, you can monkey around and get a windows version on Linux, but, really, what's the point? If you're going to insist I spend triple digits just to use your browser--which may or may not work with standards, which may (or may not) be secure, which may (or probably not) run well with my limited knowledge of Linux, and, from some indications, not even work with web servers already out there, why the hell would I?

Yes, I realize this is a rant, but I just need to re-enforce the idea that because something is new it doesn't mean it's better, or more capable than what's already out there. And, because it's Microsoft, their ham-fisted way of pushing the "update" just tells me they're hoping to leave IE6's reputation behind them.

I hear that Reiser is good for 20 to life.

How can a JIT run faster than a Jazelle implimentation?

The same reason ARM code is faster than THUMB. When you compile an algorithm to a bytecode, it probably takes more instructions than it would take using 32-bit ARM instructions. When you JIT you don't just convert a bytecode to an ARM instruction, you do some optimization, and the resulting code is typically faster.

There are also other optimizations you can do at execution time that you just can't do at compile time. This is why work you do in the microarchitecture pays off (ie, out of order execution, alias detection, etc), but you can also find interesting things like HP Dynamo that find speedups in JIT recompiling PA-RISC to PA-RISC. Fun read, check it out. Ars technica article here, real paper here

You might also want to check out this page. It lists a bunch of different places to buy Wii component cables. I bought the MadCatz one for $19 and received them in less than a week!

MS is on the record as saying that the HD-DVD drive will never be built in. Read this article, page 3. http://arstechnica.com/articles/headstart.ars

I have to agree, not only are they tying their users to a format that may or may not be a success, I'd rather have the drive as an addon, because on all of these consoles the most likely things to go are the optical drives. Less stress on the main one, the better.

MS isn't as interested in the success of HD-DVD as sony is about BD either. Sony has always wanted to have full control of a storage format... So much so they were willing to sacrifice their space in portable music players to try and push mini discs. Apple wouldn't have stood a chance if Sony had been paying attention.

I'd go as far to say that MS supports HD-DVD mainly because they want to give Sony some hassle with this format war. MS really stands to benefit most if neither format really wins and VoD takes over.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/1/ 5/6489

Bad news for folks with a force feedback steering wheel, too. Force feedback doesn't work at all on PS3.

Well, Ars Technica doesn't think so.

An article at Ars has a much more realistic viewpoint on this Telegraph article.

Apple's latest overall market share is around 5-6%, but in *laptops* it's much higher. Reported by Ars Technica as 12% and climbing last June. http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/7/2 5/4753

the USA needs Russia more than Russia needs the USA, so good luck to the RIAA and their money wasting tactics.

It'd have to solve many of the current probs with the W, for one. Prob's such as accuracy, which apparently, said proposer doesn't believe W should be trusted for. Not to mention filtering for biased-users who'd get all their friends to promote irrelevant attachments to search terms, using the engine as a source of free publicity. (And speaking of "search and the W": the existing state of Wikipedia's current search is just horrendous. As for W's current state on filtering: perfectly good entries get marked for deletion without proper justification, while blatant propaganda goes by unnoticed.)

Moreover, if the system does get implemented -- that's if -- there'd still be at least one or two "incubation years," where users contribute enough to make the search engine useful, i.e., better than PageRank.

Crowdsourcing has its limitations. It takes time for all the people to get there to contribute. And, once they get there, since they're not paid for it, they'd only spend what little free time they have to contribute in-between their 80-hour weeks. Those who are paid for it... the majority of them will probably be paid for spawning biased results. (Imagine companies that spring up claiming they hire thousands to give "good rankings" on Wikisearchia.com.......)

It's a materialistic world, and people are... what they are.

Interesting, maybe you'd like to also read this long thread at Ars about this very subject that a number of people participated in.

Actually, no, it isn't. It's much more likely that you do not have Free Will. In order to prove Free Will, you have to prove that something can act contrary to the laws of physics/nature in order to arrive at some state (the state representing the choice). Otherwise, if all states of 'choice' are the result of following natural laws (phsyics, etc.) then arrival at that state was no more of a 'choice' than ice has of not melting when put into an environment of 100C at standard atmospheric pressure.

We had a very interesting discussion on Ars sometime back about this very subject. Basically, I believe that in order for Free Will to exist, the supernatural must also exist. Now... whether or not you believe in the supernatural (religion, diety or dieties, etc.) is your own business.