Right now everyone's looking at the traditional model. That is, a portable CPU connected to a GPU connected to a display, and adding in a wireless form factor to it.
What if, instead, the base station contained the CPU AND the GPU connected directly together - much like a desktop system now - to do all the hard math and 3D rendering? - which then outputs a wireless PCIe signal, which is then picked up by the portable device, like a netbook, with a basic GPU, a small processor, and little to no HD space? It's only job would be, much like a thin client - would be to provide you access to the computing power in the "main" section of the house.
It would be like having a docking station for your netbook that turns it into a desktop powerhouse - only you could walk around the house with it. And, when the time comes that you want to take it outside, you still have the basic capabilities of a netbook.
That might be a product worth selling to, say, a family of four. "You can pay for four notebooks, or four netbooks and this powerful base station".
If you really want to pay me back for the comment, wait until I sign up with my new login, "boykotemplatedigital", then put in a good word when I say something smart there.
Here's the thing. I'm in new media marketing. I write the company blog for CA|NetQoS, and part of it is promoting both the blog and the CA|NetQoS products......which are awesome......but from day one (October 9, 2006) I've always taken the stance that when I participate in blogs or social news sites, or forums, or whatever, when related to the business, that I disclose my affiliations so that people can use the information to determine whether or not I am biased - or more specifically - so that they know that I am when they evaluate my point.
So I signed in as "boyko.at.netqos" when I registered for Slashdot. Right there is my name, and the company I work for.
In a couple weeks, I'm going to find out whether my immigration visa is approved to go work for a company in New Zealand called Template Digital. It's a start-up which hopes to be a buy-and-sell marketplace for motion graphics (Adobe AfterEffects) professionals who want to sell both to each other (it helps to start a project with a workable template rather than designing everything from scratch) or to final consumers of motion graphics work. (We actually sort-of segment the market by charging for "exclusivity." - so that a television production company, or large corporate entity could use one of the templates exclusively as part of their branding.)
I'm kinda getting ahead of myself here...
The point is, my excellent karma and +5 comments will not follow me to my next incarnation on Slashdot, a move I have to make both for transparency's sake - and also for accuracy's sake!
Like, okay, you know in Star Wars, when Leia hands out medals to Luke and Han, but Chewie's just standing there on the podium - he doesn't get a medal?
Well, here's the thing, if you're an Ubuntu contributor and you're chosen for membership, it's like getting those medals. But if you're an Ubuntu contributor, and you're not chosen for membership, you're like Chewie - no medal. But that's not a bad thing, because, you know what? Chewie is standing up there on the podium too, and you know what, it doesn't matter if he gets a medal - because Chewie is a frickin' bad ass, and Chewie knows it.
Hell, the only reason Chewie doesn't get a medal is cause he's got like 20 or so of his own from back in the day. Let the noobs have some fun, you know? Besides, if he wanted too, he could take that medal from whiny-boy or smirk-merc. Lightsabers? Blasters? They're no use when you fuggin' rip their arms out of their sockets.
Indeed. Call of Juarez looked great, but I wasn't prepared to buy it until I could get it used; when I did, I found out that while it had a decent multiplayer, the single-player game was horribly broken. I still haven't gotten past those three guys chasing me in the beginning of the game.
You're right - I've never done broadcast, where HDCam is the standard.
When you have an army at your disposal, tape is probably the way to go.
I don't have an army. All my shots are run-and-gun - for me, AVCHD has been the best thing since sliced bread.
I don't know if I'll ever work on a broadcast production, but I'm never going to buy a camera that uses tape ever again. Between dropouts, bulkiness, capture time, and disk space, I'm fed up with tape formats.
HDCam is higher quality than AVCHD; but most people can't tell the difference and I'd rather save the 48 hours of post time to do things more important.
> "- And why would it be hard to get a Mac replacement? You know they deliver, don't you?"
Delivery isn't "quickly" when you're filming a documentary - less so when filming, say, in many of the one-horse towns across the globe. If you're in Auckland or Wellington, New Zealand, you're okay, but if you're in anyplace smaller than, say, Palmerston North, you might be out of luck. (Basically, Dick Smiths does carry the Mac line, but not at all stores, but not at all locations.) I can't imagine trying to find an Apple store in someplace more rural.
Additionally, the "mac tax" may be mythical, but Apple doesn't sell low-end computers; so if you need something quick and don't care about the specs, you can go that one computer store in that one town and come out with a PC for much less than the Macs - lowest priced Apple notebook is $1858NZD ($1120USD) at DickSmith.co.nz - a netbook will cost you $758NZD ($450USD).
As for the speed of FCP; I can tell you this much: I had a MacBookPro 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo system with 4 MB of RAM. I used it to edit high definition footage what was filmed in AVCHD.
Even disabling RT, applying some really basic effects like color correction won't play until you render out that clip. Rendering clips in FCP is slow because it only uses one core; and I find myself having to render constantly so I can see what I'm working on. When rendering the final product, of course, I can use Compressor, which has multicore support, but that really doesn't matter.
I'm currently using Sony Vegas on PC for my workflow - and yes, from a UI standpoint, FCP is better. Tools such as LiveType and Motion are top notch. It's friendlier and easier to use.
But Vegas never prohibited me from seeing what I was working on when I was working on it - it dynamically adjusted resolution and framerate to do so, which means that I can edit once, render once, and be done with the project. The multi-core support helps me render faster.
And of course, by setting processor affinity, I can commit the cardinal sin; have an instance of Vegas rendering on one core, while I edit the next video on the other core.
There is no such thing as a "wrong" workflow, and FCP is rightly lauded as a great choice for filmmakers working in Hollywood. If you had to standardize on a workflow, that's a good one to standardize on. Preferring Vegas doesn't mean I'm FUDding Apple.
But I make short documentaries for the Web and I do it quickly. If I was stuck out in the wilderness and had a computer die on me, but I'm able to save the hard drive, I'd want the computer to be a PC, so I can just shove the old hard drive into the new computer, or put it into an enclosure, and be done with it.
I actually make travel documentaries - when I was on the road, the most important thing for me was a computer that worked, not the OS.
The OS really shouldn't matter, but I would advise using a Windows machine with the crew. The advantages of the Mac platform are in the editing phase, so the Final Cut Studio advantages aren't a big deal.
The thing is, most of your equipment will work with Windows out of the box - we're talking things like field recorders and video capture. But the biggest aspect of Windows-based PCs that you're going to appreciate on the road is that when it breaks (and I've had a Mac break on me in LAX, and spent 2 weeks in New Zealand without a computer,) you can get a new Windows-based PC quickly and easily, so you don't have to change your workflow up. Since you're cloud computing for most stuff, just make sure that you have Google Gears and you should be fine.
----------
That should answer the original poster's post. That said, I think anyone editing on a Mac these days is missing out on a lot. Yes, Macs are still the standard for AfterEffects and Motion, but Final Cut Pro can't take advantage of multicore processing until you go through Compressor, and they can't take advantage of CUDA applications. That makes editing -slow-.
My personal workflow is Sony Vegas for a render to an uncompressed format, then Badaboom for render to MP4.
Though I'm thinking about getting Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.
I got hit with that once, doing a documentary on Austin's air-guitar competitions. I thought that 10-15 second clips, recorded through an analog hole - a microphone placed not near the speakers, but near the air guitar stage (I was more interested in capturing the grunting and movement of the performers than a picture-perfect rendition of old 80s tunes)... point is, I thought that'd be fine.
Time Warner, as a whole, just doesn't get technology. CNN thinks "holograms" are a great way to tell the news, they want to put caps on broadband, and they are so worried about protecting "their copyrights" that they don't understand how or why people buy music, and what they use it for.
Every business that they run that has any technological background at all is running itself into the ground because they want to sell you something first, then TELL you how THEY want you to use it, and are willing to go to absurd lengths to make sure that you only use it in the manner that they wanted you to - not the reason you bought it in the first place.
This is why they'll sue auto repair companies playing CDs for employees to listen to at work, why they'll knock on people doing anime fun conversions, why they'll knock on air guitar guys.
It's also why they'll offer broadband but put in caps so people can't use it, why they'll offer news programs but only present one or two sides of a multifaceted issue...
Indeed; nearly every flight I take from Austin ends up connecting through Dallas. It's a 35 minute flight and I'm usually in the airport about 2 hours beforehand. I'd love to just skip that leg. I don't know if it would save me money, but a Dallas/Waco/Austin/San Antonio route, with a Houston/San Antonio, or Houston/Austin connection might make me interested.
Come to think of it, I have never been to Dallas, or Waco, or Houston, except the two times I drove from the East coast to move to Austin. I might visit Houston more if I didn't have to drive 4 hours to get there, and drive 4 hours back, you know? It'd still be 8 hours out of my weekend, but I can work on my book on the train, browse the Internet on my phone, all sorts of good stuff.
The RIAA has sued people it knows to be innocent, engaged in barratry, has tried to stifle long-term technology to preserve dying business models.
On the supply side of music, has been the bane of recording artists in music and movies for years - Prince changed his name to that weird symbol not only to be provocative, but also to get out of bad record contracts.
On the demand side of music, it was pretty clear even early on that piracy didn't hurt music sales. In fact, CD sales were going UP until the PR backlash from suing customers, coinciding with legal digital downloads and a down economy. What was happening was that Napster was exposing people to more music - different music - and indie artists.
They hated Napster not because it cut into their sales, but because people no longer relied on the radio to find out what new music was playing, meaning that talented artists didn't have to sign with the RIAA's labels. It was a threat to their cartel, not to their bottom line.
So, long story short, no matter what you think about the Pirate Bay or whether what they were doing was taking money away from artists or whatever -- they were Robin Hood.
They took from the evil and rich, and gave to the poor and smart. They did it while thumbing their nose at the Sheriff of Nottingham.
That's why they're loved and adored on places like Slashdot.
I think that bandwidth caps are a bad idea for other reasons, but the pricing is insane. I typically use 300GB/mo, mostly because I'm sending and receiving revisions of large HD video files. If the offer was for 200GB/mo for $60, plus $0.25/GB, I'd be cool with paying $25 more than someone under that cap. That to me doesn't seem unreasonable. (It's not -fair- for technical reasons of congestion and the nature of bandwidth, but at least they're not charging me an arm and a leg.) But considering that TW gets broadband wholesale at an estimated $0.10/GB, charging a 1000% markup is just obscene.
NPD: I was wondering if you ever considered this⦠tracking the high-end users, and⦠only when the line is congested⦠throttling back their service using QoS priorities. Giving them--
Dudley: Thatâ(TM)s exactly what Comcast did about a year ago, and it caused a complete outrage and the FCC hauled them before the committee and told them they had to stop doing it.
Dudley: â¦because of consumers that are using amounts like this, what we're seeing is a need for network expansion. â¦We figure⦠the top 25% of users use 100 times more network bandwidth than the bottom 25%.
NPD: Well that's just standard bell curves.
Dudley: Iâ(TM)m sorry?
NPD: Well, when you put any system on a graph like that⦠because of the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle or whatever it's called, when you put something on the bell curve, of course the top 25 are going to use the most bandwidth because they're the top 25â¦.
>> The man handed over a videotape of the blast, Albers said. As of Sunday night, he had not been arrested or charged with a crime. No one was injured.
----
That's a bad example, even by the strawman standards you set.
But here's the thing - you can get away with a hell of a lot if you - and this is the key point - ask nicely.
Going to the local police force and telling them: "We'd like to go down to X Quarry and blow up Y pounds of Z explosive. We're wondering what kind of permits and paperwork would be needed, and we were wondering if you had any advice on how to ensure safety."
He probably KNEW the answer: "Consult a Lawyer" or "Take it down" or "Put it on Wikileaks."
But what he wanted was to get the word out about the absurdity of the test itself.
And, thanks to Slashdot, we now know a little bit more about this stupid test, we now know what the first 75 questions are, we now know that the company that makes it are trying to keep it a secret, and we now know why they are.
In short, this was a hail-mary pass for the Streistand Effect that connected. Good play, sir!
The way I view it is that it's -exactly- like someone leaking Scientology's OT3 papers.
Both are ridiculous. Both rely on secrecy so that the general public doesn't know how ridiculous it is. If the general public knew how ridiculous it is, it'd be discredited immediately. Therefore, the test manufacturers have to hide behind copyright law.
Legally, I have no answers for you. Morally, as a journalist, this absolutely, positively falls under "The Public's Right To Know."
I'll call up the local major metro paper if they have one and ask if they'd be willing to help you out with this, as I'm sure their lawyers deal with questions like these all the time.
Bandwidth caps, or Pay As You Go is a horrible idea.
All Internet connections are merely the transfer of little positively and negatively charged electrical bits which stream down the wire. The limitations are not in the availability of the resource but in the capacity of distribution. We are not, in other words, "running out of bandwidth" like we run out of oil, run out of water, or run out of diapers.
What is limited is the capacity of the "pipe." To strain a metaphor, you could push Lake Michigan through a coffee stirring straw, but it would take a very, very long time.
Any pay-as-you-go plan has a fatal flaw - it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to bill people for the data they are downloading because data is not the limited resource!
What is limited is the capacity of the ISP's infrastructure at any particular moment in time, so it would be saner to limit the usage of the pipeline at a particular time.
But wait a minute! ISPs already do this - I know that my Internet connection at home is capped at a certain speed. In fact I could get a faster speed simply by asking for it and paying a premium - no delay nor needed infrastructure upgrades. Just cash.
So the move to a pay-as-you-go plan seems, to be at best a case of solving the wrong problem, and at worst a case of "double dipping" by making people pay for data and bandwidth. (If there are network slowdowns, charging people per-gigabyte won't help much if people are still downloading that gigabyte at the same time of the day, after all.)
Okay, you've got oversubscription. Here's what you do:
1) Be open and transparent with your users. Send out an e-mail, plain english, no legalese, no bull, explaining that you're currently oversubscribed, and that you are taking the following measures.
2) Implement a QoS policy that only takes effect at those times of the day when the line is congested.
3) During congestion times, provide higher QoS for customers who have, over the past 12 hour time period, used the least amount of bandwidth. During this time, someone downloading tons of BitTorrent traffic (or Linux distros via FTP) will probably see a reduction in speeds - but the information will not be blocked, and the download will complete. On the other hand, someone sending an e-mail with pictures, gaming, or chatting on Skype (all relatively low-bandwidth uses) will probably not notice a slowdown.
What this means is that:
1. There will be no changes to packet priority when the line is not congested.
2. The system identifies those users who are using the most bandwidth at that moment in time.
3. It places a lower priority to the packets of those heavy users. So, in an overcongested pipe, the large file downloader (FTP or BitTorrent) will have to suffer reduced speeds at higher latency (though they will still be able to get the data) while the e-mail/web/gaming/voip user will likely not see reduced throughput or increased latency.
This is a platform, application, and protocol agnostic method of choosing who will have service reduced during times of congestion. It attacks the limited resource â" bandwidth â" without attacking the unlimited resource of data. It only takes effect during times of peak usage.
It is, in other words, a moral way to solve oversubscription problems until you can increase your capacity.
We've covered this issue extensively at networkperformancedaily.com - do a search on the site for "pay as you go" if you're interested in more detail.
It did kind of creep me out. My local Circuit City only opened about 9 months ago. The first day I stopped in, I decided to browse, to see what they offered and what the prices were, etc. Hey, new store, maybe they have something Best Buy didn't.
In every goddamn department, I was bothered by someone asking me if they could help me, and if I'm finding everything alright. I expected it the first time - but after about six times with six different staff members, I actually complained to the manager about it.
"We're just trying to be helpful."
I now know what I'm finding so distasteful about it - when I was browsing, I was interested in looking at what they had, and my concentration was on browsing. My concentration got interrupted every time I was interrupted; "Can I help you" only helps when you're looking for a specific product.
By the time I checked in, the store was sparse as hell. However, everything - even with the discounts - was about the same price as I could get from Best Buy, down the street. I actually looked up the price of the big stack of HDTVs they were selling - you're trying to sell me a $1400 TV for $1500, claiming that you're doing me a favor by marking it down from $2200?
One thing about video game pricing that I don't think people realize is that a lot of companies still look at the market as "selling video games to kids."
We make the argument "Oh, but most video games are sold to adults" whenever Rockstar comes out with a new game, but the creative types and the accounting types in the same company don't read from the same script.
A $60 game isn't that odd - I remember Zelda II priced at $60 when I was a kid (we eventually bought it when the price came down to a more reasonable "$45" - and that was in 1988 dollars - so about $77.92 with inflation.
Still, there's a profound difference between 1988 and 2009. First of all, I was 10 years old at the time. Now I'm 29.
In 1988, the primary purchasers of video games were parents buying the games for their kids. In 2009, the primary purchasers of video games are the kids, now adults, who grew up on video games.
This means:
A) Adults have reasonable expectations of what they want out of video games, and can view video games more critically and come to a more appropriate approximation of their value to them. The parents who purchased the games in 1988 did not have reasonable expectations of what the value of a video game was, they just knew that spending $45 would make their kid happy and in some cases, keep them occupied, for some time... Children may have known what the value of a video game was (or more accurately, would have known a good video game from a bad one) but didn't understand the value of "$45" and so couldn't make a good comparison.
B) Adults today DO know the value of video games AND the value of money, but the $60 price point seems to be priced for parents who still know neither, when the people in the market are either fully grown adults without kids, or fully grown adults with kids who grew up playing video games.
There's other factors, such as the "price the retail PC game like the console game because we don't want to undercut the console game market, and price the digital download like the retail game because we don't want to undercut the retail game market."
Mostly, though, it's that marketing really doesn't understand the PC gaming market.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but consider this possibility:
Right now everyone's looking at the traditional model. That is, a portable CPU connected to a GPU connected to a display, and adding in a wireless form factor to it.
What if, instead, the base station contained the CPU AND the GPU connected directly together - much like a desktop system now - to do all the hard math and 3D rendering? - which then outputs a wireless PCIe signal, which is then picked up by the portable device, like a netbook, with a basic GPU, a small processor, and little to no HD space? It's only job would be, much like a thin client - would be to provide you access to the computing power in the "main" section of the house.
It would be like having a docking station for your netbook that turns it into a desktop powerhouse - only you could walk around the house with it. And, when the time comes that you want to take it outside, you still have the basic capabilities of a netbook.
That might be a product worth selling to, say, a family of four. "You can pay for four notebooks, or four netbooks and this powerful base station".
If you really want to pay me back for the comment, wait until I sign up with my new login, "boykotemplatedigital", then put in a good word when I say something smart there.
Here's the thing. I'm in new media marketing. I write the company blog for CA|NetQoS, and part of it is promoting both the blog and the CA|NetQoS products... ...which are awesome... ...but from day one (October 9, 2006) I've always taken the stance that when I participate in blogs or social news sites, or forums, or whatever, when related to the business, that I disclose my affiliations so that people can use the information to determine whether or not I am biased - or more specifically - so that they know that I am when they evaluate my point.
So I signed in as "boyko.at.netqos" when I registered for Slashdot. Right there is my name, and the company I work for.
In a couple weeks, I'm going to find out whether my immigration visa is approved to go work for a company in New Zealand called Template Digital. It's a start-up which hopes to be a buy-and-sell marketplace for motion graphics (Adobe AfterEffects) professionals who want to sell both to each other (it helps to start a project with a workable template rather than designing everything from scratch) or to final consumers of motion graphics work. (We actually sort-of segment the market by charging for "exclusivity." - so that a television production company, or large corporate entity could use one of the templates exclusively as part of their branding.)
I'm kinda getting ahead of myself here...
The point is, my excellent karma and +5 comments will not follow me to my next incarnation on Slashdot, a move I have to make both for transparency's sake - and also for accuracy's sake!
Just be kind, and keep a lookout for me.
-- Brian Boyko
I wouldn't worry too much about that.
Like, okay, you know in Star Wars, when Leia hands out medals to Luke and Han, but Chewie's just standing there on the podium - he doesn't get a medal?
Well, here's the thing, if you're an Ubuntu contributor and you're chosen for membership, it's like getting those medals. But if you're an Ubuntu contributor, and you're not chosen for membership, you're like Chewie - no medal. But that's not a bad thing, because, you know what? Chewie is standing up there on the podium too, and you know what, it doesn't matter if he gets a medal - because Chewie is a frickin' bad ass, and Chewie knows it.
Hell, the only reason Chewie doesn't get a medal is cause he's got like 20 or so of his own from back in the day. Let the noobs have some fun, you know? Besides, if he wanted too, he could take that medal from whiny-boy or smirk-merc. Lightsabers? Blasters? They're no use when you fuggin' rip their arms out of their sockets.
EPIC FILE!
You think a dog is bad - you should see the ecological footprint of an Irish child!
Indeed. Call of Juarez looked great, but I wasn't prepared to buy it until I could get it used; when I did, I found out that while it had a decent multiplayer, the single-player game was horribly broken. I still haven't gotten past those three guys chasing me in the beginning of the game.
You're right - I've never done broadcast, where HDCam is the standard.
When you have an army at your disposal, tape is probably the way to go.
I don't have an army. All my shots are run-and-gun - for me, AVCHD has been the best thing since sliced bread.
I don't know if I'll ever work on a broadcast production, but I'm never going to buy a camera that uses tape ever again. Between dropouts, bulkiness, capture time, and disk space, I'm fed up with tape formats.
HDCam is higher quality than AVCHD; but most people can't tell the difference and I'd rather save the 48 hours of post time to do things more important.
> "- And why would it be hard to get a Mac replacement? You know they deliver, don't you?"
Delivery isn't "quickly" when you're filming a documentary - less so when filming, say, in many of the one-horse towns across the globe. If you're in Auckland or Wellington, New Zealand, you're okay, but if you're in anyplace smaller than, say, Palmerston North, you might be out of luck. (Basically, Dick Smiths does carry the Mac line, but not at all stores, but not at all locations.) I can't imagine trying to find an Apple store in someplace more rural.
Additionally, the "mac tax" may be mythical, but Apple doesn't sell low-end computers; so if you need something quick and don't care about the specs, you can go that one computer store in that one town and come out with a PC for much less than the Macs - lowest priced Apple notebook is $1858NZD ($1120USD) at DickSmith.co.nz - a netbook will cost you $758NZD ($450USD).
As for the speed of FCP; I can tell you this much: I had a MacBookPro 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo system with 4 MB of RAM. I used it to edit high definition footage what was filmed in AVCHD.
Even disabling RT, applying some really basic effects like color correction won't play until you render out that clip. Rendering clips in FCP is slow because it only uses one core; and I find myself having to render constantly so I can see what I'm working on. When rendering the final product, of course, I can use Compressor, which has multicore support, but that really doesn't matter.
I'm currently using Sony Vegas on PC for my workflow - and yes, from a UI standpoint, FCP is better. Tools such as LiveType and Motion are top notch. It's friendlier and easier to use.
But Vegas never prohibited me from seeing what I was working on when I was working on it - it dynamically adjusted resolution and framerate to do so, which means that I can edit once, render once, and be done with the project. The multi-core support helps me render faster.
And of course, by setting processor affinity, I can commit the cardinal sin; have an instance of Vegas rendering on one core, while I edit the next video on the other core.
There is no such thing as a "wrong" workflow, and FCP is rightly lauded as a great choice for filmmakers working in Hollywood. If you had to standardize on a workflow, that's a good one to standardize on. Preferring Vegas doesn't mean I'm FUDding Apple.
But I make short documentaries for the Web and I do it quickly. If I was stuck out in the wilderness and had a computer die on me, but I'm able to save the hard drive, I'd want the computer to be a PC, so I can just shove the old hard drive into the new computer, or put it into an enclosure, and be done with it.
I actually make travel documentaries - when I was on the road, the most important thing for me was a computer that worked, not the OS.
The OS really shouldn't matter, but I would advise using a Windows machine with the crew. The advantages of the Mac platform are in the editing phase, so the Final Cut Studio advantages aren't a big deal.
The thing is, most of your equipment will work with Windows out of the box - we're talking things like field recorders and video capture. But the biggest aspect of Windows-based PCs that you're going to appreciate on the road is that when it breaks (and I've had a Mac break on me in LAX, and spent 2 weeks in New Zealand without a computer,) you can get a new Windows-based PC quickly and easily, so you don't have to change your workflow up. Since you're cloud computing for most stuff, just make sure that you have Google Gears and you should be fine.
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That should answer the original poster's post. That said, I think anyone editing on a Mac these days is missing out on a lot. Yes, Macs are still the standard for AfterEffects and Motion, but Final Cut Pro can't take advantage of multicore processing until you go through Compressor, and they can't take advantage of CUDA applications. That makes editing -slow-.
My personal workflow is Sony Vegas for a render to an uncompressed format, then Badaboom for render to MP4.
Though I'm thinking about getting Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.
You know it's bad when even the drop bears are leaving town, saying: "Well, that's it then, you're on your own, mate."
I got hit with that once, doing a documentary on Austin's air-guitar competitions. I thought that 10-15 second clips, recorded through an analog hole - a microphone placed not near the speakers, but near the air guitar stage (I was more interested in capturing the grunting and movement of the performers than a picture-perfect rendition of old 80s tunes) ... point is, I thought that'd be fine.
Time Warner, as a whole, just doesn't get technology. CNN thinks "holograms" are a great way to tell the news, they want to put caps on broadband, and they are so worried about protecting "their copyrights" that they don't understand how or why people buy music, and what they use it for.
Every business that they run that has any technological background at all is running itself into the ground because they want to sell you something first, then TELL you how THEY want you to use it, and are willing to go to absurd lengths to make sure that you only use it in the manner that they wanted you to - not the reason you bought it in the first place.
This is why they'll sue auto repair companies playing CDs for employees to listen to at work, why they'll knock on people doing anime fun conversions, why they'll knock on air guitar guys.
It's also why they'll offer broadband but put in caps so people can't use it, why they'll offer news programs but only present one or two sides of a multifaceted issue...
What can I say? They're crappy.
No ethical hacker would ever work for the DHS.
Indeed; nearly every flight I take from Austin ends up connecting through Dallas. It's a 35 minute flight and I'm usually in the airport about 2 hours beforehand. I'd love to just skip that leg. I don't know if it would save me money, but a Dallas/Waco/Austin/San Antonio route, with a Houston/San Antonio, or Houston/Austin connection might make me interested.
Come to think of it, I have never been to Dallas, or Waco, or Houston, except the two times I drove from the East coast to move to Austin. I might visit Houston more if I didn't have to drive 4 hours to get there, and drive 4 hours back, you know? It'd still be 8 hours out of my weekend, but I can work on my book on the train, browse the Internet on my phone, all sorts of good stuff.
That's it, in a nutshell.
The RIAA has sued people it knows to be innocent, engaged in barratry, has tried to stifle long-term technology to preserve dying business models.
On the supply side of music, has been the bane of recording artists in music and movies for years - Prince changed his name to that weird symbol not only to be provocative, but also to get out of bad record contracts.
On the demand side of music, it was pretty clear even early on that piracy didn't hurt music sales. In fact, CD sales were going UP until the PR backlash from suing customers, coinciding with legal digital downloads and a down economy. What was happening was that Napster was exposing people to more music - different music - and indie artists.
They hated Napster not because it cut into their sales, but because people no longer relied on the radio to find out what new music was playing, meaning that talented artists didn't have to sign with the RIAA's labels. It was a threat to their cartel, not to their bottom line.
So, long story short, no matter what you think about the Pirate Bay or whether what they were doing was taking money away from artists or whatever -- they were Robin Hood.
They took from the evil and rich, and gave to the poor and smart. They did it while thumbing their nose at the Sheriff of Nottingham.
That's why they're loved and adored on places like Slashdot.
I think that bandwidth caps are a bad idea for other reasons, but the pricing is insane. I typically use 300GB/mo, mostly because I'm sending and receiving revisions of large HD video files. If the offer was for 200GB/mo for $60, plus $0.25/GB, I'd be cool with paying $25 more than someone under that cap. That to me doesn't seem unreasonable. (It's not -fair- for technical reasons of congestion and the nature of bandwidth, but at least they're not charging me an arm and a leg.) But considering that TW gets broadband wholesale at an estimated $0.10/GB, charging a 1000% markup is just obscene.
I interviewed Alex Dudley, VP of PR for Time Warner Cable at Network Performance Daily on this. I tried to be impartial, but as I mention in the intro, this would raise my bill 500%, and would be a 1000% markup from Time Warnerâ(TM)s wholesale rate, and as TW is a monopoly in my apartment complex, the net effect is that Iâ(TM)m getting kicked out of my home when the billing goes live, so the interview gets heated at points. FTA:
Previously, I wrote on how bandwidth caps have a chilling effect on Internet participatory culture.
>> The man handed over a videotape of the blast, Albers said. As of Sunday night, he had not been arrested or charged with a crime. No one was injured.
----
That's a bad example, even by the strawman standards you set.
But here's the thing - you can get away with a hell of a lot if you - and this is the key point - ask nicely.
Going to the local police force and telling them: "We'd like to go down to X Quarry and blow up Y pounds of Z explosive. We're wondering what kind of permits and paperwork would be needed, and we were wondering if you had any advice on how to ensure safety."
is not the same as:
"I think I'll blow up my truck today!"
Oh, the poster is a clever one.
He probably KNEW the answer: "Consult a Lawyer" or "Take it down" or "Put it on Wikileaks."
But what he wanted was to get the word out about the absurdity of the test itself.
And, thanks to Slashdot, we now know a little bit more about this stupid test, we now know what the first 75 questions are, we now know that the company that makes it are trying to keep it a secret, and we now know why they are.
In short, this was a hail-mary pass for the Streistand Effect that connected. Good play, sir!
The way I view it is that it's -exactly- like someone leaking Scientology's OT3 papers.
Both are ridiculous. Both rely on secrecy so that the general public doesn't know how ridiculous it is. If the general public knew how ridiculous it is, it'd be discredited immediately. Therefore, the test manufacturers have to hide behind copyright law.
Legally, I have no answers for you. Morally, as a journalist, this absolutely, positively falls under "The Public's Right To Know."
I'll call up the local major metro paper if they have one and ask if they'd be willing to help you out with this, as I'm sure their lawyers deal with questions like these all the time.
Bandwidth caps, or Pay As You Go is a horrible idea.
All Internet connections are merely the transfer of little positively and negatively charged electrical bits which stream down the wire. The limitations are not in the availability of the resource but in the capacity of distribution. We are not, in other words, "running out of bandwidth" like we run out of oil, run out of water, or run out of diapers.
What is limited is the capacity of the "pipe." To strain a metaphor, you could push Lake Michigan through a coffee stirring straw, but it would take a very, very long time.
Any pay-as-you-go plan has a fatal flaw - it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to bill people for the data they are downloading because data is not the limited resource!
What is limited is the capacity of the ISP's infrastructure at any particular moment in time, so it would be saner to limit the usage of the pipeline at a particular time.
But wait a minute! ISPs already do this - I know that my Internet connection at home is capped at a certain speed. In fact I could get a faster speed simply by asking for it and paying a premium - no delay nor needed infrastructure upgrades. Just cash.
So the move to a pay-as-you-go plan seems, to be at best a case of solving the wrong problem, and at worst a case of "double dipping" by making people pay for data and bandwidth. (If there are network slowdowns, charging people per-gigabyte won't help much if people are still downloading that gigabyte at the same time of the day, after all.)
Okay, you've got oversubscription. Here's what you do:
1) Be open and transparent with your users. Send out an e-mail, plain english, no legalese, no bull, explaining that you're currently oversubscribed, and that you are taking the following measures.
2) Implement a QoS policy that only takes effect at those times of the day when the line is congested.
3) During congestion times, provide higher QoS for customers who have, over the past 12 hour time period, used the least amount of bandwidth. During this time, someone downloading tons of BitTorrent traffic (or Linux distros via FTP) will probably see a reduction in speeds - but the information will not be blocked, and the download will complete. On the other hand, someone sending an e-mail with pictures, gaming, or chatting on Skype (all relatively low-bandwidth uses) will probably not notice a slowdown.
What this means is that:
1. There will be no changes to packet priority when the line is not congested.
2. The system identifies those users who are using the most bandwidth at that moment in time.
3. It places a lower priority to the packets of those heavy users. So, in an overcongested pipe, the large file downloader (FTP or BitTorrent) will have to suffer reduced speeds at higher latency (though they will still be able to get the data) while the e-mail/web/gaming/voip user will likely not see reduced throughput or increased latency.
This is a platform, application, and protocol agnostic method of choosing who will have service reduced during times of congestion. It attacks the limited resource â" bandwidth â" without attacking the unlimited resource of data. It only takes effect during times of peak usage.
It is, in other words, a moral way to solve oversubscription problems until you can increase your capacity.
We've covered this issue extensively at networkperformancedaily.com - do a search on the site for "pay as you go" if you're interested in more detail.
It did kind of creep me out. My local Circuit City only opened about 9 months ago. The first day I stopped in, I decided to browse, to see what they offered and what the prices were, etc. Hey, new store, maybe they have something Best Buy didn't.
In every goddamn department, I was bothered by someone asking me if they could help me, and if I'm finding everything alright. I expected it the first time - but after about six times with six different staff members, I actually complained to the manager about it.
"We're just trying to be helpful."
I now know what I'm finding so distasteful about it - when I was browsing, I was interested in looking at what they had, and my concentration was on browsing. My concentration got interrupted every time I was interrupted; "Can I help you" only helps when you're looking for a specific product.
I'll second you on "Prices high."
By the time I checked in, the store was sparse as hell. However, everything - even with the discounts - was about the same price as I could get from Best Buy, down the street. I actually looked up the price of the big stack of HDTVs they were selling - you're trying to sell me a $1400 TV for $1500, claiming that you're doing me a favor by marking it down from $2200?
Good Riddance.
Call me when they have a motor made from liquid video...
One thing about video game pricing that I don't think people realize is that a lot of companies still look at the market as "selling video games to kids."
We make the argument "Oh, but most video games are sold to adults" whenever Rockstar comes out with a new game, but the creative types and the accounting types in the same company don't read from the same script.
A $60 game isn't that odd - I remember Zelda II priced at $60 when I was a kid (we eventually bought it when the price came down to a more reasonable "$45" - and that was in 1988 dollars - so about $77.92 with inflation.
Still, there's a profound difference between 1988 and 2009. First of all, I was 10 years old at the time. Now I'm 29.
In 1988, the primary purchasers of video games were parents buying the games for their kids. In 2009, the primary purchasers of video games are the kids, now adults, who grew up on video games.
This means:
A) Adults have reasonable expectations of what they want out of video games, and can view video games more critically and come to a more appropriate approximation of their value to them. The parents who purchased the games in 1988 did not have reasonable expectations of what the value of a video game was, they just knew that spending $45 would make their kid happy and in some cases, keep them occupied, for some time... Children may have known what the value of a video game was (or more accurately, would have known a good video game from a bad one) but didn't understand the value of "$45" and so couldn't make a good comparison.
B) Adults today DO know the value of video games AND the value of money, but the $60 price point seems to be priced for parents who still know neither, when the people in the market are either fully grown adults without kids, or fully grown adults with kids who grew up playing video games.
There's other factors, such as the "price the retail PC game like the console game because we don't want to undercut the console game market, and price the digital download like the retail game because we don't want to undercut the retail game market."
Mostly, though, it's that marketing really doesn't understand the PC gaming market.
I usually just vote for who the Doctor endorses and be done with it!
Voted for Harriet Jones first term, and against her second term, and against Harold Saxon.