It seems to me that the PVR manufs are trying to make more content available, not restrict us on content they already get for us. By having a policy on the table, they can offer the PPV providers more customers and offer PVR users access to movies as soon as they are available on DVD, rather than months later. This could be a win for us PVR users. This could only be a loss for us PVR users if the PVR providers were somehow forced (forced I say) to implement these new restrictions on content we already get.
Your local TV station is transmitting a single TV channel at 5000 watts or whatever. That's 5000 watts at 5 megahertz of bandwidth. An AM station at 10khz bandwidth and 5000 watts can go MUCH further to receivers that are really crappy. The satellite will be transmitting MANY channels of bandwidth with it's 4300 watts. The power output per channel is much less than your local station.
My point is that the power output, while relevent in this discussion, is by no means the only criteria to use while guessing signal strength or reliability of signal.
They are already applying the same techniques to the revenues they draw from digital download sites like Apple iTunes
Do I undertand that the problem is that the record companies are NOT passing the low manufacturing costs on to the musician? Or is it that Apple is doing something bad?
There is a software updater program that may be kicked off manually or (and this is the default) it runs every week. it downloads things at a rate of several a month. This includes updates to the OS, security patches, new versions of included applications.
Patents were cool because the protection given by the Patent made the documentation process rqeuired worth doing, but they were even MORE cool because they make sure that the idea gets recorded for all to see. Once upon a time invention were kept secret and often lost before implemented. Patents attempted to fix that.
Feathered wouldn't work for an orbital re-entry. It works here because SpaceShip One will not be going as fast. The NASA Space Shuttle is flying at 17000mph when it starts it's reentry run. SpaceShip One will be doing under 2000mph.
is a link to SAS info. SAS is SATA with SCSI protocol.
Lithium Ion batteries and overcurrent protection
on
Flaming Cellphones
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Many LiOn batteries include built in gas gauging and over current protection. This costs about $1 in parts. Dallas makes some of the gas gauging parts -- DS2438 for instance. The gas gauging component is connected to the telephone via a 1 wire + ground interface. The overcurrent protection circuit is entirely internal. If the clone vendor wanted to save several nickels they could leave out the overcurrent chip and nobody would be the wiser until the battery shorts out. The reason the overcurrent protection is built in is because Lithium Ion batteries will reach the flash temperature of plastic if current is drawn from them too fast. So... don't rip the plastic off the pack and short them out except by remote control. Thankyou.
EPCOT is sort of like a worlds fair that got stuck. It has future science exhibits, some of which are modern but not too surprising and others which are future science from the 70s. The park is fantastically well designed and executed.
Spend a day wondering around the country pavilions. The restaurants are all four star quality although they are a bit expensive. The exhibits are manned even in the winter (the best time to see EPCOT).
Don't forget to ride the monorail. Wait until 9:30pm for the fireworks/light show.
Park costs about $70/day to visit per person. It's worth it once or twice even.
My favorite destination in North America (so far) is Quebec City. Quebec City is a very inexpensive and beautiful place to visit. It is about 7 hours from New York City or 6 from Boston. You can stay in a high rise Holiday Inn for about $60 US a night. The Hotel Frontenac is expensive to stay in but beautiful to look at. Quebec City is nice in the winter or summer with winter carnival and mild weather in the summer. Quebec is a French city but they treat English speaking tourists very well. The city also boasts a mall with an indoor amusement park including a decent roller coaster. A few pix of Frontenac are here: http://homepage.mac.com/tadd/PhotoAlbum14.h tml If that gets busy, just search the web for "Hotel Frontenac"
The up close tour still exists. I was on it a month ago. Make sure you get the right tour. Up Close costs extra. It takes a few hours. There is an admission price for the visitor complex and an additional cost for the up close tour. Also make sure your admission covers the Astronaut Hall Of Fame. It may be an extra $5. That's where the good rides and hands-on stuff is located. You'll end up spending about $70. I recommend hitting Cape Canaveral (and any other Florida scene save the beach) in the winter. Florida is hot and the lines are longer during the summer.
I led a group of amateur radio network builders in the early 1990s to construct a 600 mile long wireless network. We had 300 network backbone nodes on line 24 hours a day and had digital communications without wires in Montreal, Toronto, London, Rochester, Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Springfield, Boston, Hartford, NYC, Philladelphia and a miriad of other cities. We built the network entirely on the backs of volunteers. We ran into several stumbling blocks.
1st: as soon as the network got large enough that it was better than what the local governments had, they wanted to partake. As soon as there was money available the leaches came out of the woodwork to block the spread of the volunteer network and promote that THEY were the keepers of the knowledge on how to use the government money to build something better than the mere volunteers would build. This affectively eliminated many sites and entire cities from the network.
2nd: About half the volunteers would only do the project if there was some amount of glory in doing it. Geeks get glory pretty easily so that wasn't a big deal as long as they were on the 'primary' trunk. This effectively eliminated the chance of building a redundant path between any two points.
3rd: It was way too easy in the late 90s to make landline connections via internet that short circuited wireless efforts. This hurt us because of #2 above.
4th: Most newcomers to the system after the system was big were more interested in using our 'free' network to short circuit the $20/month ISP fees than to actually build the wireless network. This put far more bandwidth on our network than we could handle.
5th: People found that establishing a link from point A to point C via point B worked just fine by putting 3 radios at A, B and C on the same frequency, paying no attention to the obvious ramifications of having A and C not hearing each other. Since it worked for the first PING, it must be good, right? Wrong. As soon as 3 or 4 sessions started the network went down. I called this Catastrophic Network Failure Due To Hidden Transmitter Syndrome.
6th: It was very difficult to overcome egotism in the network. This is especially true because we COUNTED on egotism (see #2). The trick is to construct a network Mandate Paper that effectively rewards good network construction (say, by listing the paths by their testable throughput and latency rather than by distance or claimed coverage area.
Our organization was called The North East Digital Association and had 1500 members in 1994. I was the editor and technical directory for various times during the 12 year life of the club (1989->2001)
I propose that we focus on delivering documentation on how to build a chunk of the coast to coast network. We should create a web site that documents sources for decent and inexpensive radios, antennas, switches, coax, enclosures, software, firmware, drivers , and et-cetera.
A Tivo and a year's subscription pre-paid. That would run about $350. Cheaper than an iPod and at least as interesting, especially for somebody who already has a Rio or some other poor excuse for a non-iPod
If they really want to stamp out antisocial behavior by kids in public schools they should exclude children who have no parent at home when they get out of school, bastards, and kids whose parents divorced. That would probably take care of almost all of the problems. This would have two consequences, 1. impose reasonable standards on adults, and 2. keep kids who are going to be messed up in the head away from the normal kids.
The other thing i hate about desktop computers in a listening environment is noise. Fans, HDs, etc... Gotta make them quieter or make it reasonable to put the computer in the basement and wire the display, keyboard, etc.. to the stereo room. But then, where do you put the CD or DVD? Oh yeah, external SCSI DVD on a 15 foot leash. that would work.
I have a half dozen computers (and several geek family members) with a 100baseT network. I think we'll get one of these to replace the CD player in the TV/stereo blob (I hesitate to say rack or system). My previous plan was to have our MacOS laptop doing the MP3 playback-over-the-network duty. This sounds like it will be easier and cheaper than the laptop.
--Now tell me what I'll have to do to let this thing access my MP3 archive!
Wireless coverage away from the BIG cities isn't good enough to expect reliable portable coverage. I wouldn't waste my time with wireless digital access via terrestrial networks. Orbital networks would be fun but expensive. ISP coverage IS good enough to work in most towns where there are more than a couple of national-chain motels. att.worldnet, sprint, earthlink, etc. etc. etc.. will do. You'll pay out $20 to get hooked up, and then $20 for the first month. That's probably better than trying to argue with AOL to get disconnected and get your credit card back. I'd ask a friendly USA slashdotter to set you up with an ISP account (your name, your $40, his/her address) instead of trying to do something from the UK. There will not be any cyber cafes except in the big cities. Hotel stays in the big cities is way more expensive than in the smaller towns. Coordinating WHERE the hotels are with WHERE the cyber cafes are will be difficult. It's not worth it unless you are planning to visit each big city on purpose and unless you are staying more than a night in each. Libraries may have net access but it will be a pain to have to stop in the middle of the day to find one in the little towns OR the big cities. Also you probably won't be able to do IRC or other chat methods with a library computer. I'd go with a laptop, telephone modem, and national ISP. You will have to make sure you have USA compatable modem and power but that is pretty easy compared with USA compatable cellphone.
I have been in two startups, The first one worked and grew to a 200 person company before being bought out and trashed, the 2nd didn't work at all. Both had great ideas. Using 20-20 hindsite, both could have worked. The difference between the two was that the successful startup had one or more dedicated full time geeks AND a dedicated full time slimeball. In the 2nd attempt our slimeball wasn't full time. He had businesses and cashflow on the side.
So... you need a business plan to tempt VC. You need full time people who are giving up their livelyhood and time to see the company succeed.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that the PVR manufs are trying to make more content available, not restrict us on content they already get for us. By having a policy on the table, they can offer the PPV providers more customers and offer PVR users access to movies as soon as they are available on DVD, rather than months later.
This could be a win for us PVR users. This could only be a loss for us PVR users if the PVR providers were somehow forced (forced I say) to implement these new restrictions on content we already get.
Your local TV station is transmitting a single TV channel at 5000 watts or whatever. That's 5000 watts at 5 megahertz of bandwidth. An AM station at 10khz bandwidth and 5000 watts can go MUCH further to receivers that are really crappy. The satellite will be transmitting MANY channels of bandwidth with it's 4300 watts. The power output per channel is much less than your local station.
My point is that the power output, while relevent in this discussion, is by no means the only criteria to use while guessing signal strength or reliability of signal.
So I have my PowerBook and have to carry around something else too?
Salvage 1 webpage
http://www.umpi.maine.edu/info/nmms/solar/
This is a 40 mile long model. They say they are 1:93,000,000
According to Internic's who-is, the moontomars web site is registered by ANSER. I'm curious why the space panel couldn't get a .GOV address for this?
ANSER. could be a spam outfit for all I know.
Do I undertand that the problem is that the record companies are NOT passing the low manufacturing costs on to the musician? Or is it that Apple is doing something bad?
There is a software updater program that may be kicked off manually or (and this is the default) it runs every week. it downloads things at a rate of several a month. This includes updates to the OS, security patches, new versions of included applications.
Patents were cool because the protection given by the Patent made the documentation process rqeuired worth doing, but they were even MORE cool because they make sure that the idea gets recorded for all to see. Once upon a time invention were kept secret and often lost before implemented. Patents attempted to fix that.
Feathered wouldn't work for an orbital re-entry. It works here because SpaceShip One will not be going as fast. The NASA Space Shuttle is flying at 17000mph when it starts it's reentry run. SpaceShip One will be doing under 2000mph.
http://www.serialattachedscsi.com/
is a link to SAS info. SAS is SATA with SCSI protocol.
Many LiOn batteries include built in gas gauging and over current protection. This costs about $1 in parts. Dallas makes some of the gas gauging parts -- DS2438 for instance. The gas gauging component is connected to the telephone via a 1 wire + ground interface. The overcurrent protection circuit is entirely internal. If the clone vendor wanted to save several nickels they could leave out the overcurrent chip and nobody would be the wiser until the battery shorts out.
The reason the overcurrent protection is built in is because Lithium Ion batteries will reach the flash temperature of plastic if current is drawn from them too fast.
So... don't rip the plastic off the pack and short them out except by remote control.
Thankyou.
EPCOT is sort of like a worlds fair that got stuck. It has future science exhibits, some of which are modern but not too surprising and others which are future science from the 70s. The park is fantastically well designed and executed.
Spend a day wondering around the country pavilions. The restaurants are all four star quality although they are a bit expensive. The exhibits are manned even in the winter (the best time to see EPCOT).
Don't forget to ride the monorail. Wait until 9:30pm for the fireworks/light show.
Park costs about $70/day to visit per person. It's worth it once or twice even.
My favorite destination in North America (so far) is Quebec City.h tml
Quebec City is a very inexpensive and beautiful place to visit. It is about 7 hours from New York City or 6 from Boston. You can stay in a high rise Holiday Inn for about $60 US a night. The Hotel Frontenac is expensive to stay in but beautiful to look at. Quebec City is nice in the winter or summer with winter carnival and mild weather in the summer. Quebec is a French city but they treat English speaking tourists very well. The city also boasts a mall with an indoor amusement park including a decent roller coaster.
A few pix of Frontenac are here:
http://homepage.mac.com/tadd/PhotoAlbum14.
If that gets busy, just search the web for
"Hotel Frontenac"
The up close tour still exists. I was on it a month ago. Make sure you get the right tour. Up Close costs extra. It takes a few hours. There is an admission price for the visitor complex and an additional cost for the up close tour. Also make sure your admission covers the Astronaut Hall Of Fame. It may be an extra $5. That's where the good rides and hands-on stuff is located. You'll end up spending about $70. I recommend hitting Cape Canaveral (and any other Florida scene save the beach) in the winter. Florida is hot and the lines are longer during the summer.
I led a group of amateur radio network builders in the early 1990s to construct a 600 mile long wireless network. We had 300 network backbone nodes on line 24 hours a day and had digital communications without wires in Montreal, Toronto, London, Rochester, Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Springfield, Boston, Hartford, NYC, Philladelphia and a miriad of other cities. We built the network entirely on the backs of volunteers. We ran into several stumbling blocks.
1st: as soon as the network got large enough that it was better than what the local governments had, they wanted to partake. As soon as there was money available the leaches came out of the woodwork to block the spread of the volunteer network and promote that THEY were the keepers of the knowledge on how to use the government money to build something better than the mere volunteers would build. This affectively eliminated many sites and entire cities from the network.
2nd: About half the volunteers would only do the project if there was some amount of glory in doing it. Geeks get glory pretty easily so that wasn't a big deal as long as they were on the 'primary' trunk. This effectively eliminated the chance of building a redundant path between any two points.
3rd: It was way too easy in the late 90s to make landline connections via internet that short circuited wireless efforts. This hurt us because of #2 above.
4th: Most newcomers to the system after the system was big were more interested in using our 'free' network to short circuit the $20/month ISP fees than to actually build the wireless network. This put far more bandwidth on our network than we could handle.
5th: People found that establishing a link from point A to point C via point B worked just fine by putting 3 radios at A, B and C on the same frequency, paying no attention to the obvious ramifications of having A and C not hearing each other. Since it worked for the first PING, it must be good, right? Wrong. As soon as 3 or 4 sessions started the network went down. I called this Catastrophic Network Failure Due To Hidden Transmitter Syndrome.
6th: It was very difficult to overcome egotism in the network. This is especially true because we COUNTED on egotism (see #2). The trick is to construct a network Mandate Paper that effectively rewards good network construction (say, by listing the paths by their testable throughput and latency rather than by distance or claimed coverage area.
Our organization was called The North East Digital Association and had 1500 members in 1994. I was the editor and technical directory for various times during the 12 year life of the club (1989->2001)
I propose that we focus on delivering documentation on how to build a chunk of the coast to coast network. We should create a web site that documents sources for decent and inexpensive radios, antennas, switches, coax, enclosures, software, firmware, drivers , and et-cetera.
A Tivo and a year's subscription pre-paid. That would run about $350. Cheaper than an iPod and at least as interesting, especially for somebody who already has a Rio or some other poor excuse for a non-iPod
If they really want to stamp out antisocial behavior by kids in public schools they should exclude children who have no parent at home when they get out of school, bastards, and kids whose parents divorced. That would probably take care of almost all of the problems. This would have two consequences, 1. impose reasonable standards on adults, and 2. keep kids who are going to be messed up in the head away from the normal kids.
--Now tell me what I'll have to do to let this thing access my MP3 archive!
Good
quick
cheap
soon.
choose three!
Wireless coverage away from the BIG cities isn't good enough to expect reliable portable coverage. I wouldn't waste my time with wireless digital access via terrestrial networks. Orbital networks would be fun but expensive. ISP coverage IS good enough to work in most towns where there are more than a couple of national-chain motels. att.worldnet, sprint, earthlink, etc. etc. etc.. will do. You'll pay out $20 to get hooked up, and then $20 for the first month. That's probably better than trying to argue with AOL to get disconnected and get your credit card back. I'd ask a friendly USA slashdotter to set you up with an ISP account (your name, your $40, his/her address) instead of trying to do something from the UK. There will not be any cyber cafes except in the big cities. Hotel stays in the big cities is way more expensive than in the smaller towns. Coordinating WHERE the hotels are with WHERE the cyber cafes are will be difficult. It's not worth it unless you are planning to visit each big city on purpose and unless you are staying more than a night in each. Libraries may have net access but it will be a pain to have to stop in the middle of the day to find one in the little towns OR the big cities. Also you probably won't be able to do IRC or other chat methods with a library computer. I'd go with a laptop, telephone modem, and national ISP. You will have to make sure you have USA compatable modem and power but that is pretty easy compared with USA compatable cellphone.
I have been in two startups, The first one worked and grew to a 200 person company before being bought out and trashed, the 2nd didn't work at all. Both had great ideas. Using 20-20 hindsite, both could have worked. The difference between the two was that the successful startup had one or more dedicated full time geeks AND a dedicated full time slimeball. In the 2nd attempt our slimeball wasn't full time. He had businesses and cashflow on the side.
So... you need a business plan to tempt VC. You need full time people who are giving up their livelyhood and time to see the company succeed.
I think you mean Steve CASE?