Nobody... The problem with firewire is its cost-- USB is, on the device side, dirt cheap to implement. This comes at the cost of needing a host controller (your computer) to do anything and that comes with CPU use overhead. Firewire requires these 'controllers' in every device, making it far more useful (allowing things such as communication without a computer!), robust, and fast without the overhead. But it costs more! And, as we know, price is what drives the marketplace. As a 'normal' uniformed consumer, would you buy a firewire 400 widget for $100 if the usb version cost $50 and both "did the same thing" and ran at a theoretical "480 mbps" (And we all (by all, I mean us on slashdot) know how well usb2 does that...). As a 'normal' consumer, of course not!
Firewire is far from dead, however... Nearly all consumer/prosumer mini dv cameras use it (including hdv cameras), many set top boxes and HDTVs have 1394 links on them for connecting devices (DVHS decks, HDTVs, and cable boxes... this transport MPEG-2 transport streams), and every mac since the iMac debuted has shipped with firewire ports on it (Many, many external hard drives have firewire ports on them.. the good ones anyways;))... Sony has been shipping 1394 on its vaio computers for ages (in the form of i.link), and all modern computer manufactures have followed suit.
So, to answer your question, consumers "killed" firewire by being... well... price conscious consumers. But in reality it's not going anywhere, and with any luck and all the cool networking capabilities the firewire spec has these days it will eventually catch on with the majority of consumers as a convenient way to interconnect devices and stick around for good.
No official word on pricing, etc, but as of now anyways it looks like it will be both affordable and not too difficult to meet the "minimum technical standard"
All applications, operating systems, and runtime environments are supported so long as the devices connect properly to Verizon's CDMA network (they can make use of either the company's cellular and PCS bandwidth). The fee for certification of devices will be "surprisingly reasonable," we're told, and the program will be open to anyone. One Verizon exec went so far as to say that if someone builds a device in their basement on a breadboard, Verizon will test it and activate it. Smaller players will definitely be able to get in on the action, something that hasn't previously been possible.
Well, the article said that the FBI had done analysis on 2500 cases... So just extrapolating, 2500/300*18 means that something like 150 people were convicted largely because of this evidence. Obviously, 150 >5, but my reasoning was more so that of those 150 the majority of them actually committed the crimes they're in jail for. So, my "likely to be counted on one hand" comment was a bit sensationalistic, yes, but compared to the number of people we have in jail at the moment (1.5->2 million depending on where you look) it's not really significant. While it's hardly fair to call those wrongfully imprisoned a meaningless statistic, my point is only that we need to look at reforming the reasons many of them are in jail in the first place. A BBC article from today outlines the failures of the US prison system nicely: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7102054.stm
To be fair. the legal system in the US is at best a compromise; a system designed to be as fair as possible and lead mostly correct convictions. Unfortunately, it is lacking in a lot of places, and frankly, I'm not really sure how I'd go about improving it. But for starters, having a lawyer disbarred because he violated client-lawyer privilege after his client was dead is insane. Especially when the privilege required the man to withhold crucial testimony that proved another man's innocence.
From the CBS article:
Twenty-two years ago, as a young public defender, Hughes was representing Lee Wayne Hunt's co-defendant in the double murder that sent him to prison for life.
Hughes says his client, Jerry Cashwell, told him in great detail, shortly after he was arrested, how he alone had committed the double murder. Lee Wayne Hunt, he said, wasn't even there. But because of the attorney-client privilege, Staples Hughes was duty-bound to keep the secret.
"It was sort of one of those moments that stops you completely still," Hughes says. "You know, my client's saying, 'Not only did I kill two people, but these other folks didn't have anything to do with it. The state's case is a lie. It's a fabrication.'"
Asked if he tried to get Cashwell to tell that to the authorities, Hughes says, "No."
Because?
"I'm his lawyer," Hughes says. "It wasn't in his interest to tell, to have that known at all."
"Because he could have been facing the death penalty?" Kroft asks.
"He was facing the death penalty. It wasn't theoretical," Hughes says.
Asked if this bothered him, Hughes tells Kroft, "It bothered me most when Mr. Hunt was being tried. And it's bothered me ever since. There wasn't anything I could do about it. But I knew they were trying a guy who didn't do it."
It wasn't until his client committed suicide in prison that Hughes felt he could come forward to tell his story in court. But instead of being commended for coming forward to clear an innocent man, the judge threw out his testimony and reported Hughes to the North Carolina bar for violating attorney-client privilege, even though his client was dead.
While the bullet lead analysis story is indeed big news, the number of people that are unjustly behind bars because of it can likely be counted on one hand. And while that's hardly fair, and they fully deserve retrials with fair evidence... our legal system has much bigger problems that affect many more people. Imposing big fines for filing frivolous lawsuits would be a start towards unclogging the courts and getting the attention and funding of the legal system back to where it's needed most.
TraceSecurity modified the company's domain and sent an office-wide e-mail that looked as though it came from a higher-up in the branch. It warned employees of an upcoming pest control visit, and requested that the pest control workers be escorted through the office to check for infestation.
They "modified the company's domain"? How, exactly, did they go about doing that? If they can get access to internal DNS/email servers/etc from the outside, then your company has bigger security problems than those presented by a social engineering exercise...
As a Boston native living and going to school in Colorado I was ecstatic when the sox beat the Indians last night... Figuring I'd have as good a shot as anyone at scoring some tickets to a game I brought my MacBook Pro to class and logged on at 9:45. I was greeted by their countdown page, which auto-reloaded every minute.
Just seconds after 10AM mountain time, the site (evenue.net) became completely unresponsive. After about an hour of reloading and fighting with the system, I finally got in. I was able to (excruciatingly slowly) pick seats and get to my shopping cart. After that they took me to a captcha (which didn't load), and following that to a registration page to take all my info and credit card number.
Hitting submit on that page caused an hour long hang that eventually just kicked my back out to the waiting page. I had several family members across the country try to get in as well, all with no success.
What's interesting though is it seems that evenue was using a load balancing system to automatically assign the end user to one of their servers...
Over the course of trying to get tickets I was connected to ev14.evenue.net, ev15.evenue.net, ev9.evenue.net, ev5.evenue.net, and finally (the server that got me through), ev8.evenue.net.
I'm willing to bet that their all on the same backbone connection though, and from the way things went I can't imagine it being any fatter than a 45mbps link.. then again, 8.5 million hits in an hour *is* a lot. In order to sustain that load from a single datacenter (not that they'd have to, but from the sounds of it they were; all their servers seem to be in the same datacenter in California) they'd need, oh, 8,500,000/60/60*56/1024 ~130Mb/s... which really isn't that much at all (that's assuming a 56kbps connection per person for a reasonable experience on the site).
So what it really boils down to, then, is the inefficiency of their server code and the number of servers they have. From the failover numbers it looks like they only had ~20 servers handling this... And from the design of their site (Lots of java:/) it looks like each server couldn't handle more than a few simultaneous requests. This is likely why they have a "waiting" page in place (Ex: http://pleasehold.evenue.net/ev/rockies-st/PleaseHold.html?ev8.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEventInfo?ticketCode=GS%3AROCKIES-ST%3APS07%3AWSA%3A&linkID=rockies-st&shopperContext=&caller=&appCode= ), which appears to be served by independent servers... but if the behavior of my friends is any indication, every user looking to buy tickets had at LEAST 5 windows open at once trying to load the same page...
In any case, the Rockies are new at this;) Normal game tickets can be had for as little as $4/each during the regular season... and they haven't EVER been to the world series. They've made a hellof a lot of new fans seemingly overnight, and now everyone wants a piece of the action. Coors field, at least, is a good place to see it. It's a very well build stadium and their really isn't a bad seat in the house! (Unlike Fenway, where there are many. But I like Fenway better for other reasons:)). Ah well, wish me luck tomorrow, or whenever they decide to put the tickets on sale again on their new "fixed" yet exactly the same as before system...
Well, we tend to not have a whole lot of nerves on our back and chest (Think "low resolution" sensory perception here)... so 4 contact points on the back and front would actually be not that bad. If you don't believe me, have a friend/family member poke you in the back with an unspecified number of fingers and try to guess how many they poked you with... bet you're wrong;)
Here's to hoping other bands get the hint and start ditching record labels.. Even though I doubt it will happen, as record labels do provide a valuable function (distribution, marketing and loss-leading acts)... So I guess I'm saying I hope some of the bigger names that can afford to, ditch their label contracts as soon as they can and force the labels to change their ways (Yes, I know this would suck for the little guy during that time, but it looks like just about the only thing that can be done to bring about change)... Not to mention the artist gets 100% pay for album sales this way... as opposed to the paltry ~5-10% they get from labels.
You need to read more.... Grindelwald and Dumbledore....
Re:Yeah make it worthless, then I can afford one!!
on
Free the iPhone from AT&T
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It's not just a PDA. It's a SWEET solid state iPod... In fact, it;s currently the only flash based iPod that can play videos; and it has a kickass screen and touch interface to boot... the iPhone is apple's best ipod to date. While the price may seem high, there is clearly a demand for an iPhone-like iPod, and I imagine one at a lower price point than the iPhone will be released soon. Time will tell if the new ipod has any connectivity features built in (wifi, bluetooth, etc), but I hope so!
...you can even see his front left wheel go flying off into the area between the two ezpass lanes on the left... and his right two wheels go flying off to the right; his front right bounces up and hits the roof and his back right sails across and hits the toll booth.
It is a cop car; if you look at the video link posted a bit above this (the one to the.mpg, that hasn't been re-encoded.. twice...) you can clearly see it's a cop car, lights and all. It's unclear if the officer was following him for speeding and was about to pull him over, or was stationed before the toll booth and saw the thing happen.
...the OhMiBod vibrator rocks its socks off;) I got one for my girlfriend for her birthday this year and I've been seeing less of her ever since. http://www.ohmibod.com/
Slashdot Mirror
While, granted, this article has a much more fitting title than the last, this is a bloody dupe from yesterday!
Nobody... The problem with firewire is its cost-- USB is, on the device side, dirt cheap to implement. This comes at the cost of needing a host controller (your computer) to do anything and that comes with CPU use overhead. Firewire requires these 'controllers' in every device, making it far more useful (allowing things such as communication without a computer!), robust, and fast without the overhead. But it costs more! And, as we know, price is what drives the marketplace. As a 'normal' uniformed consumer, would you buy a firewire 400 widget for $100 if the usb version cost $50 and both "did the same thing" and ran at a theoretical "480 mbps" (And we all (by all, I mean us on slashdot) know how well usb2 does that...). As a 'normal' consumer, of course not!
;))... Sony has been shipping 1394 on its vaio computers for ages (in the form of i.link), and all modern computer manufactures have followed suit.
Firewire is far from dead, however... Nearly all consumer/prosumer mini dv cameras use it (including hdv cameras), many set top boxes and HDTVs have 1394 links on them for connecting devices (DVHS decks, HDTVs, and cable boxes... this transport MPEG-2 transport streams), and every mac since the iMac debuted has shipped with firewire ports on it (Many, many external hard drives have firewire ports on them.. the good ones anyways
So, to answer your question, consumers "killed" firewire by being... well... price conscious consumers. But in reality it's not going anywhere, and with any luck and all the cool networking capabilities the firewire spec has these days it will eventually catch on with the majority of consumers as a convenient way to interconnect devices and stick around for good.
Mainly because they don't want you to have a good "real world" cost sense of what you're buying in hopes that you spend more.
From ars (Emphasis mine):
Well, the article said that the FBI had done analysis on 2500 cases... So just extrapolating, 2500/300*18 means that something like 150 people were convicted largely because of this evidence. Obviously, 150 >5, but my reasoning was more so that of those 150 the majority of them actually committed the crimes they're in jail for. So, my "likely to be counted on one hand" comment was a bit sensationalistic, yes, but compared to the number of people we have in jail at the moment (1.5->2 million depending on where you look) it's not really significant. While it's hardly fair to call those wrongfully imprisoned a meaningless statistic, my point is only that we need to look at reforming the reasons many of them are in jail in the first place. A BBC article from today outlines the failures of the US prison system nicely: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7102054.stm
Eh, pardon the formatting on that last one.. accidentally chose html over plain text and didn't preview :/
In any case, here's it again, this time along with a mirror for the flash file in case their site gets hammered from the original link:
Eh, it's actually pretty good... check out the flash file that that viewer is displaying:
http://demos.immersivemedia.com/fvdemo_1/data/CylindricalFlashPlayerDemoSite/PopularMechanicsNYCDriveAlong/video.flv
Mirror here: http://g.appleguru.org/nycpano.flv
Open that without their custom flash player and you get 1024x512 video... And I'd imagine they're recording higher than that.
Also, check out some of the actual shots in google: http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=32.734512,-117.159705&spn=0.024981,0.05373&z=15&om=1&layer=c&cbll=32.72197,-117.161636&cbp=2,356.38393784103107,,1,-18.177554028083662&title=Google%20Maps&source=k
Pan around that one and double click to zoom in on the license plates of the cars on the street. You can zoom in VERY far.. and read them.
Eh, it's actually pretty good... check out the flash file that that viewer is displaying: http://demos.immersivemedia.com/fvdemo_1/data/CylindricalFlashPlayerDemoSite/PopularMechanicsNYCDriveAlong/video.flv Open that without their custom flash player and you get 1024x512 video... And I'd imagine they're recording higher than that. Also, check out some of the actual shots in google: http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=32.734512,-117.159705&spn=0.024981,0.05373&z=15&om=1&layer=c&cbll=32.72197,-117.161636&cbp=2,356.38393784103107,,1,-18.177554028083662&title=Google Maps&source=k Pan around that one and double click to zoom in on the license plates of the cars on the street. You can zoom in VERY far.. and read them.
From the CBS article:
While the bullet lead analysis story is indeed big news, the number of people that are unjustly behind bars because of it can likely be counted on one hand. And while that's hardly fair, and they fully deserve retrials with fair evidence... our legal system has much bigger problems that affect many more people. Imposing big fines for filing frivolous lawsuits would be a start towards unclogging the courts and getting the attention and funding of the legal system back to where it's needed most.
And any half brained AC would spend three seconds using google if s/he didn't already know. FTTH = Fiber to the home
http://www.google.com/search?q=ftth
It is 1Gb now if you use YouTube Uploader: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=55743&topic=10527
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/05/2055234
As a Boston native living and going to school in Colorado I was ecstatic when the sox beat the Indians last night... Figuring I'd have as good a shot as anyone at scoring some tickets to a game I brought my MacBook Pro to class and logged on at 9:45. I was greeted by their countdown page, which auto-reloaded every minute.
:/) it looks like each server couldn't handle more than a few simultaneous requests. This is likely why they have a "waiting" page in place (Ex: http://pleasehold.evenue.net/ev/rockies-st/PleaseHold.html?ev8.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEventInfo?ticketCode=GS%3AROCKIES-ST%3APS07%3AWSA%3A&linkID=rockies-st&shopperContext=&caller=&appCode= ), which appears to be served by independent servers... but if the behavior of my friends is any indication, every user looking to buy tickets had at LEAST 5 windows open at once trying to load the same page...
;) Normal game tickets can be had for as little as $4/each during the regular season... and they haven't EVER been to the world series. They've made a hellof a lot of new fans seemingly overnight, and now everyone wants a piece of the action. Coors field, at least, is a good place to see it. It's a very well build stadium and their really isn't a bad seat in the house! (Unlike Fenway, where there are many. But I like Fenway better for other reasons :)). Ah well, wish me luck tomorrow, or whenever they decide to put the tickets on sale again on their new "fixed" yet exactly the same as before system...
Just seconds after 10AM mountain time, the site (evenue.net) became completely unresponsive. After about an hour of reloading and fighting with the system, I finally got in. I was able to (excruciatingly slowly) pick seats and get to my shopping cart. After that they took me to a captcha (which didn't load), and following that to a registration page to take all my info and credit card number.
Hitting submit on that page caused an hour long hang that eventually just kicked my back out to the waiting page. I had several family members across the country try to get in as well, all with no success.
What's interesting though is it seems that evenue was using a load balancing system to automatically assign the end user to one of their servers...
Over the course of trying to get tickets I was connected to ev14.evenue.net, ev15.evenue.net, ev9.evenue.net, ev5.evenue.net, and finally (the server that got me through), ev8.evenue.net.
I'm willing to bet that their all on the same backbone connection though, and from the way things went I can't imagine it being any fatter than a 45mbps link.. then again, 8.5 million hits in an hour *is* a lot. In order to sustain that load from a single datacenter (not that they'd have to, but from the sounds of it they were; all their servers seem to be in the same datacenter in California) they'd need, oh, 8,500,000/60/60*56/1024 ~130Mb/s... which really isn't that much at all (that's assuming a 56kbps connection per person for a reasonable experience on the site).
So what it really boils down to, then, is the inefficiency of their server code and the number of servers they have. From the failover numbers it looks like they only had ~20 servers handling this... And from the design of their site (Lots of java
In any case, the Rockies are new at this
Well, we tend to not have a whole lot of nerves on our back and chest (Think "low resolution" sensory perception here)... so 4 contact points on the back and front would actually be not that bad. If you don't believe me, have a friend/family member poke you in the back with an unspecified number of fingers and try to guess how many they poked you with... bet you're wrong ;)
Here's to hoping other bands get the hint and start ditching record labels.. Even though I doubt it will happen, as record labels do provide a valuable function (distribution, marketing and loss-leading acts)... So I guess I'm saying I hope some of the bigger names that can afford to, ditch their label contracts as soon as they can and force the labels to change their ways (Yes, I know this would suck for the little guy during that time, but it looks like just about the only thing that can be done to bring about change)... Not to mention the artist gets 100% pay for album sales this way... as opposed to the paltry ~5-10% they get from labels.
Just captured the flash video for those of you who don't like flash/java:
.mov)
http://g.appleguru.org/x_wing_flight.mov
(5.7MB, H.264, AAC,
http://www.osticket.com/
It works well; I use it integrated with Help Center Live
You need to read more.... Grindelwald and Dumbledore....
It's not just a PDA. It's a SWEET solid state iPod... In fact, it;s currently the only flash based iPod that can play videos; and it has a kickass screen and touch interface to boot... the iPhone is apple's best ipod to date. While the price may seem high, there is clearly a demand for an iPhone-like iPod, and I imagine one at a lower price point than the iPhone will be released soon. Time will tell if the new ipod has any connectivity features built in (wifi, bluetooth, etc), but I hope so!
It is: http://otbmods.com/safari_beta_info.png
You can always go grab the latest webkit over at http://webkit.org/
It's the same as Safari, but without the installer... Nightly builds are made from the current source code repositary.
Today's build (r22084) is the same as the 3.0 public beta (Version 3.0 (522.11))
...you can even see his front left wheel go flying off into the area between the two ezpass lanes on the left... and his right two wheels go flying off to the right; his front right bounces up and hits the roof and his back right sails across and hits the toll booth.
It is a cop car; if you look at the video link posted a bit above this (the one to the .mpg, that hasn't been re-encoded.. twice...) you can clearly see it's a cop car, lights and all. It's unclear if the officer was following him for speeding and was about to pull him over, or was stationed before the toll booth and saw the thing happen.
...the OhMiBod vibrator rocks its socks off ;) I got one for my girlfriend for her birthday this year and I've been seeing less of her ever since. http://www.ohmibod.com/
Apple is also HOSTING these rather large garageband files for NIN:
_ not.zip
a l_g.zip
o lent_heart.zip
v alism.zip
http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/nin/me_im
http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/nin/capit
http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/nin/my_vi
And a fourth not linked to from the NIN main page:
http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/nin/survi