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Here are some more pictures, obtained from Sky News - scary stuff...

Sky news has an article with pictures:

http://www.sky.com/skynews/storytemplate/storytopp ic/0,,30000-1029102,00.html

..until I post this that is!

Nick...

Actually there's 15 free-to-air Digital Widescreen channels.

The $150 (such a huge amount) pays for the BBC, which has no commercials, think of it as a subscription if you will.

You can get hundreds of channels through SkyDigital (satellite), ITV-Digital (digital terrestrial), ActiveDigital (digital cable), or BT Digital (through your phone line).

So there's actually lots of channels and competition, 1/3 of UK households have DigitalTV, which is the highest in the world.

Indeed, the similarities between H2G2 and Time Warner are uncanny. Likewise the BBC to AOL. Just a few years ago it would have been H2G2 buying the BBC; my, how the tables have turned.

Personally, this is the last straw for me. I'd all but given up on the BBC in any case. I switched my viewing habits to the high-quality "Sky One" channel, and haven't looked back. Say what you will, but you can't question the integrity of Rupert Murdoch, can you?

This may be true in the US, but it's not true in Europe. Sky Television has been using smart cards to control access to their DTH channels since it launched in the early 90's (The company was founded in 89, I belive it started transmitting the next year).

Sky also has had it's battles with pirates breaking their encryption, and periodically have to send out new cards to their subscribers whenever the losses become too high.

Digital TV is here, now, in Europe. No built in copy control. Satellite, cable and broadcast digital television.

Copy control is built into the Digital Video Broadcasting spec. that European players are built to. Copy control is called Conditional Access. But all DVB spec. decoders must be able to play unencrypted content. The actual implementation of conditional access is usually down to a individual network (ie Sky Digital).

Would this card work with satellite? (e.g. Sky digital), would be useful to be able to view more than one channel at once here, not even to HD but even just via the TV out to video.

Sky Digital, who are responsible for the bulk of channels on the Astra 2A satellite, a full list of which can be found here already has, on transponder 25, 60 channels of nonstop no-DJ no-Ads channels of digital music. I guess it's not bad if you like that sort of thing, but I'm willing to put up with short commercials if there's a decent DJ who can liven up the programming.

About 15 of these channels are part of the standard SKY Digital subscription with the remainder being a pay-for add on option. I don't see any figures showing how many people actually take them up.

I'm happy with the programme content of that system, but I'm sometimes vigen to wonder what happens to all the data that their 'free' recievers collect. To get a free dish and box, you have to agree to have your box connected to the phone line for 12 months, and each week, the box sends back a list of what you have watched. If this is compiled for advertising revenue ratings purposes, fair enough, but the possibility for abuse is huge.

Finally, if you want inane background music for shops, it's also there. A number of stores use satelite radio for their background muzak. ASDA (a UK supermarket group) have their Asda FM on the Astra 1 analogue satelite, and Costcutter (a smaller UK chain) use Astra 1D.

This is probably going to be v.bad for people like me who like free things no matter what the cost or usefulness...

It appears that the main reason the TiVo has a telephone connection is to get television scheduling information. In the UK (and I think most of the rest of Europe) you can get such information (and a lot more) through teletext, a gloriously old-fashioned system transmitted in the space above the television picture. A TiVo-like device could either use the standard listings, or the manufacturers could 'buy' space on one channel for specially formatted listings. No phone line required...

The UK probably the world leader in digital television, BTW - there's two main providers, OnDigital, which is received through a standard aerial, and Sky Digital, which needs a new satellite dish. There's also digital cable television, and internet access through television sets is rapidly becoming a reality.

One disturbing feature about the Sky Digital system is that you must connect it to your phone line for a minimum of one year, so it can report back information like viewing habits and pay-per-view channels. If you don't, they'll cancel your contract. Big Rupert Murdoch is watching you...

Ford Prefect

These guys build PPC supercomputers. They make some pretty sweet machines. These ones are especially interesting.

Sky Rugged Computers

You may want ot just give them a call and see what they do?

Anyways, sweet machines.....

I asked this in the SAP discussion, but it fits in more in this one.

Any word on when/if Linux/Beowolf will will run on one of these?

Any word on when LinuxPPC will run the SAP benchmark on one of these?

The thought of a flock of 4,096 MPC7400 (aka G4) processors running the penguin, with 16 terabytes of shared memory...

US energy has a relatively low cost of about $1/watt-year. Non-US energy costs are generally higher. For many energy efficiency is not a significant individual cost. Yet, consider the following...

CASE 1. Embedded High Performance Computing.

Sustainable PERFORMANCE/WATT can be a strong processor selection criteria for *embedded* processor selection including embedded high performance computing. Hence, vendors in the niche embedded high performance market tend to use PowerPC and DSP chips, not Alpha, Pentium or SPARC for dense compute solutions.

Vendor examples: CSPI, Mercury, Sky

Did folks notice that Black Lab Linux (see optional software) is working with MPI Software Technologies? Look close, MPI Software Technologies is actively supporting *embedded* MPI & MPI-RT.

CASE 2. Not Too Large Clusters (50 or so processors)

Also, notice the HPC Wire news article posted on the Top 500 site where...

"Several problems were caused by the power consumption and the heat in that small laboratory. The Paderborn people needed the fire brigade to pump cold air into the room. The power consumption was about 10 - 12 KWatt. Switching on only the power supplies of the nodes, the electric fuses switched off."

CASE 3. Blue Mountain...

6,144 processors -- 10,000 KW always online; 2,600 KW average usage.

SIXTEEN A/C Units plus FOUR 750-ton chillers plus TWO 10MW power stations (major UPS feature)

CASE 4. Aggregate World Energy Consumption (Green perspective)

Now consider 100,000,000 processors on desktops (far less than one per world capita)

100,000,000 * 30 watts-year * US$1/watt-year = US$3 Billion each year (without consideration for cooling costs, higher average world energy prices, CPU fan MTBF costs & such)

Hey, what's US$30 / year per CPU for a typical US home wallet??? Well maybe not much to many reading this... however, the energy costs can add up. Embedded system designers, large scale system installations, and environmentally sensitive people know what I'm talking about.

-- Think Global, Act Local --