Web distribution is being perceived (sp?) as a threat to the powers that be. This has happened once before. Ever wonder why your home tv has a 4:3 aspect ratio and all modern movies are in appx 16:9? Before tv, 4:3 was called "Academy Standard" and thats the way movies were filmed. Along comes this upstart technology - tv - and there are dire predictions about the demise of movies at the theatre. So along comes widescreen, panorama, etc, with a 16:9 (this does vary depending on which standard is being used, and i don't remember them all off the top of my head) and now movies are safe again, being different from home tv. Now with the rapid pace of technology, etc, the reactionaries are in a panic and the sky is falling. MP3 has just made it worse - they forsee the same kind of free distribution that has happened with music and a loss of control - imagine if the unwashed masses had input into what was award worthy, and not the self-appointed deadwood that infests orgaizations like this one?
I have to disagree about the 8vsb/codfm thing. in the sf bay area, i saw no trouble with 8vsb, my friend now receives fine with an indoor antenna the 7 or 8 dtv channels now on air. I saw great results with low power transmission in testing and one of the big arguments for codfm has to do with mobile reception, which is irrelevant for home use.
in any case you are right about the manufacturers - it will cost too much and kill the entire hd format to convert. im sure that sinclair would love this.
The problem with the ATVEF is the ip aspect - everyone wants a closed 'their' ip format, so they can rake in the $. In this case, the format MUST be totally open, or it will die.
im working on it. the legality is grey. according to the tcpa, junk fax is banned, period. but in other parts of the law, it refers to exemptions for CALLS made by on on behalf of non-profit organizations - this is where the national center for missing and exploited children comes in - in exchange for money, they have hired fax.com to send fax ads.
i will definately follow up on this. i am also working on getting a tv news story done on this.
in the mean time here is how you can help kill these vermin.
1. verio.net is the isp for fax.com - i would think that junk fax violates their acceptable use policy.
2. sun microsystems - they are a major donor to the non profit - email/write them and suggest that the misbehaviour of ncfmec is reflecting badly on them
3. cai.com (computer associates) is another major sponsor - let them know too.
4. finally www.missingkids.com - contact the offenders directly and let them know how you feel (politely please - foul language and threats of violence accomplish nothing, or worse) (do let them know that you have written to their sponsors about their actions)
5. time to break out pens and paper and write you senators and congresspeople (obviously for those of us in the usa) and let them know that the non-profit loophole is being abused and must be closed.
me too, what a nice thing to come home to - better late than never. it looks cool so far, but i had to switch to direct 3d - 3dfx glide crashed my system as soon as i tried to walk anywhere
probably a win me bug, as all drivers are current - anyone else try this yet?
or the poor owner of a fax machine that is spammed by non-profit organizations
fax.com and the national center for exploited and missing children has started a junk fax campaign, and last friday i came home to find my fax machine out of toner and paper. when confronted fax.com gets very indignant and says what they do is legal etc.
spamming should be a capital crime. i love junkbusters.com and spamcop.net
we have a choice - legal regulation, or wild west vigilantism - both suck - as to which is the lesser evil?
Only 7 years - Darwinism is much harsher with stupid people. Creating and loosing a virus should be a captial crime, KNOWINGLY forwarding a virus should be criminal, and those that are just stupid have enough of a burden. Now we just need a life guard on the gene pool - if it had one i'd need a new sig.
used to work the radio room myself, and all the companies that had email qued it and i had to dl 2 or 3 times a day. The ship would have its own lan, at least for the officers.
anyway, best bet now is either live w/o it for 5 days, or be ready to shell out 5-10 bucks a minute for access. (I thought the whole point of going to sea was to get away from it all)
The real problem is with sales and marketing - they got ahold of info about dsl and started selling the ()*&!@* out of it before the techs were ready. (This from a senior exec at pac bell) anyway, sales was selling FAR more than tech could hope to deliver, hence the 6-8 week lead time. they are continuing to sell, without allowing the techs to catch up, so there is no time to slow down and get the infrastructure caught up and build logically planned expansion.
im using an enhanced dsl package from pac bell - (5 static ips), and love it (the only dsl down time ive had is courtesy of pg&e - stuff doesnt work without electricity.) Now if pac bell would just fix their email system (i guess thats why ive set up a linux box as a firewall/web server/mail host), and no comment on the lack of spam filtering from them.
i guess im one of the lucky ones - 6 week wait, plug and chug, and 8 months of high speed bliss.
best advice i have, is if you have one of these horror stories, find out who the ceo's of the companies are and write to them directly, cc'ing your local newspaper and local tv news department (great high tech story with a pro consumer angle - new departments love that (*&^. )
Anyone going to this movie for intellectual stimulation deserves to be disappointed. It was exactly what one should expect - lots of stunts, very well directed and filmed - the car and motorcycle chases were very well done. (i know there are cries about killing the porsche and audi, but if you really want to cry, there is also the hidden: victim a ferrari 308gts, the original gone in 60 seconds: victim tons of valuable muscle cars, including a hemi cuda tboned by a semi, and others)
in fairness, i didn't have to pay to see it - not having to shell out $9 for a movie helps (what does silicon valley think it is? - midtown manhattan?!).
anyway go to have fun, if you want intellectual stimulation - go to something else.
really works great, and easy to configure individual sites, and an optional tool bar which will tell you what is being blocked, and how many of each - ie 1 cookie, 3 banners, 2 pop ups
also kills referers, java, javascript, autorefresh, music and other stuff
best $20 i ever spent
it does have a 2 week demo, so its worth checking out -
definately - i put together a 600/asus system, and it threw up on some older no-name dimms - they work fine on a p233 and a k62-350. put in a new 128 dimm/name brand, cost an extra $15 - works great, and fast. a noisy power supply can cause problems. a 300w supply is a good idea, from what ive heard good luck
it gets worse: on page 18 of the april 2k issue of Broadcast Engineering, in an article titled "Hollywood pursues copyright protection" there is a reference to a scheme being developed by Digital Display Working Group (DDWG) to provide copy protection between a computer/set top box and the monitor. joy. Intel has developed Highbandwidth Digital Copy Protection to encrypt each PIXEL (!!!) between STB and monitor.
The rest of the article discusses this in a bit more depth, and is worth reading: www.broadcastengineering.com, click columns and it is the second article (sorry - haven't learned html yet)
"Yes, but there isn't that much that's currently being sold. Besides, all Sinclair is asking -- asked, rather -- for is that COFDM be accepted as an alternative to 8VSB. This would not mandate any change, but only allow the option for consumers and broadcasters."
acquisition and bandwidth - no cameras etc exist to deal with 1080p @ 30 Hz - some film makers are working with 1080p @ 24 Hz now, but that is several years later.
i don't have the info in front of me and am not as knowlegable about the reasons - ive read them, just don't remember, so i can't contribute much more, but will follow up if i can find more info in a timely fashion...
The requirement is that 85% of the households in a market have to be equipped to receive digital transmissions - if that threshold isn't met, NTSC continues...
Getting the FCC involved with $ has been the single worst event in broadcast history. You now have a regulatory body that has abandoned regulation and is now a revenue source. (the fcc does have the power to take back the frequencies at any time, it just has to be prepared for the political fallout)
Look at radio, instead of 1 am and 1 fm in a market, a company can now own 8!!!
Granite broadcasting has now done the same to tv - a company can now own 2 stations in a market, not just 1.
In relation to HD, after the conversion to digital, the FCC is going to take back the old freq's. (don't hold your breath though)
This is why there are no consumer HD vcrs available - the tech is there, but no copy protection.
The other half - a big part of the problem - lack of programming - stems from a lack of copy protection - no one wants to expose their IP to free digital copying. There are already plenty of extra bits set aside for various things, including this. Now if the IP owners would just set a standard everyone could get back to work...including the people who are going to break the copy protection.
Commercial editing will be easy - just use the psip tables to get the info you want and throw out the rest.
HD is wonderful - if you haven't seen it, its like a great flat 21" monitor with resolution set to 1280x1024. (only in 16x9 ratio)
What little programming that is available so far really looks good. The superbowl was outstanding, except when the ntsc camerman walked right in front of the HD camera, so you got a really great picture of the back of the SD camera.
Waiting for the set is a toss up. If you do have the bucks, even regular tv looks really good on the set. The two most important things are native resolution and the set top box.
Do not get a set that is not native 1080. Otherwise, any 1080 signal will be downcoverted to whatever the native mode is - a cheap set might be 480 native, in which case you have a fancy regular tv.
do NOT get a set with an integrated box. The linked article is a perfect reason why. Until there is enough HD programming, broadcasters are looking to fill their pipe with some source of revenue. The new broadcast pipe can carry 5 SD signals and change or one HD, so sending 1 SD leave about 14 mb/s of available pipe.
There are a lot of revenue generating things you can do with 14mbs. Given the cost of going digital (1-1.5 Mil for a transmitter; a new antenna, tower space, microwave, etc can tack on another mil or so)(not to mention another 5-15k/month for electricity) broadcasters are in need of income asap.
There is a great opportunity for someone to come up with new business models to take advantage to this distribution medium. Any ideas? Any Takers?
these corporate mergers/buyouts suck more and more
Hasbro couldn't create anything new and original, they have to go out and buy companines that did. After the talented people all leave, hasbro has the rights, but thats it - they then hire talentless people to continue product lines.
Does anyone think D&D is going to go anywhere now that hasbro owns it? I thought WoC would, but the greedy corp pigs saw poke$ and swallowed up one of the few good gaming companies in existance.
We need choice, and hasbro is trying to destroy that. (Granted, in this case they had some very valid points, innumerated elsewhere, but the concept "copyright" is insane). since hasbro has D&D, lord british ought to be scared now - ultima is too much like D&D....
even better - go to spamcop.org and get an account (free), or join (not too expensive)
process your spam and it will email provide tracking info on the offending piece. 3 times ive even gotten spam from stupid spammer who didn't spoof - i now have names, home addresses, and phone numbers for 2 of them, not to mention the joy of having thier accounts (big full blown commerial sites) closed (no refunds:P)
the names etc have been turned over to my pet shark. (oh the temptation to call someone to provide a permanent solution...)
But they do - im currently processing a lawsuit against the home shopping network 4 times in the last six months they have called me, seized my line (can't hang up on the call) and proceded to send out an avertising blurb - all done by automation - no human, no nothing - i have 2 of the 4 on my answering machine, and once i got a number from my caller id box.
CA has nice anti harrassment laws, so this should be lucrative. >:)
Slashdot Mirror
Web distribution is being perceived (sp?) as a threat to the powers that be. This has happened once before. Ever wonder why your home tv has a 4:3 aspect ratio and all modern movies are in appx 16:9? Before tv, 4:3 was called "Academy Standard" and thats the way movies were filmed. Along comes this upstart technology - tv - and there are dire predictions about the demise of movies at the theatre. So along comes widescreen, panorama, etc, with a 16:9 (this does vary depending on which standard is being used, and i don't remember them all off the top of my head) and now movies are safe again, being different from home tv. Now with the rapid pace of technology, etc, the reactionaries are in a panic and the sky is falling. MP3 has just made it worse - they forsee the same kind of free distribution that has happened with music and a loss of control - imagine if the unwashed masses had input into what was award worthy, and not the self-appointed deadwood that infests orgaizations like this one?
Parody is protected speech - time to appeal
good/bad taste is irrelevant, ie the earlier reference to holocost denial.
Poking fun at a political group is a centuries old practice - look in history books for old political funnies poking fun at early presidents.
nuf said
the broadcast pipe is about 19 mbs, this is about the capacity you will need to record hd (im to lazy to go look up the exact info right now)
why not just raw hd at 1.5 gig/sec?
hard on the raid storage though
I have to disagree about the 8vsb/codfm thing. in the sf bay area, i saw no trouble with 8vsb, my friend now receives fine with an indoor antenna the 7 or 8 dtv channels now on air. I saw great results with low power transmission in testing and one of the big arguments for codfm has to do with mobile reception, which is irrelevant for home use.
in any case you are right about the manufacturers - it will cost too much and kill the entire hd format to convert. im sure that sinclair would love this.
The problem with the ATVEF is the ip aspect - everyone wants a closed 'their' ip format, so they can rake in the $. In this case, the format MUST be totally open, or it will die.
im working on it. the legality is grey. according to the tcpa, junk fax is banned, period. but in other parts of the law, it refers to exemptions for CALLS made by on on behalf of non-profit organizations - this is where the national center for missing and exploited children comes in - in exchange for money, they have hired fax.com to send fax ads.
i will definately follow up on this. i am also working on getting a tv news story done on this.
in the mean time here is how you can help kill these vermin.
1. verio.net is the isp for fax.com - i would think that junk fax violates their acceptable use policy.
2. sun microsystems - they are a major donor to the non profit - email/write them and suggest that the misbehaviour of ncfmec is reflecting badly on them
3. cai.com (computer associates) is another major sponsor - let them know too.
4. finally www.missingkids.com - contact the offenders directly and let them know how you feel (politely please - foul language and threats of violence accomplish nothing, or worse) (do let them know that you have written to their sponsors about their actions)
5. time to break out pens and paper and write you senators and congresspeople (obviously for those of us in the usa) and let them know that the non-profit loophole is being abused and must be closed.
me too, what a nice thing to come home to - better late than never. it looks cool so far, but i had to switch to direct 3d - 3dfx glide crashed my system as soon as i tried to walk anywhere
probably a win me bug, as all drivers are current - anyone else try this yet?
anyway, back to d2 - no sleep tonite....
...nothing expensive...
or the poor owner of a fax machine that is spammed by non-profit organizations
fax.com and the national center for exploited and missing children has started a junk fax campaign, and last friday i came home to find my fax machine out of toner and paper. when confronted fax.com gets very indignant and says what they do is legal etc.
spamming should be a capital crime. i love junkbusters.com and spamcop.net
we have a choice - legal regulation, or wild west vigilantism - both suck - as to which is the lesser evil?
Only 7 years - Darwinism is much harsher with stupid people. Creating and loosing a virus should be a captial crime, KNOWINGLY forwarding a virus should be criminal, and those that are just stupid have enough of a burden. Now we just need a life guard on the gene pool - if it had one i'd need a new sig.
used to work the radio room myself, and all the companies that had email qued it and i had to dl 2 or 3 times a day. The ship would have its own lan, at least for the officers.
anyway, best bet now is either live w/o it for 5 days, or be ready to shell out 5-10 bucks a minute for access. (I thought the whole point of going to sea was to get away from it all)
The real problem is with sales and marketing - they got ahold of info about dsl and started selling the ()*&!@* out of it before the techs were ready. (This from a senior exec at pac bell)
anyway, sales was selling FAR more than tech could hope to deliver, hence the 6-8 week lead time. they are continuing to sell, without allowing the techs to catch up, so there is no time to slow down and get the infrastructure caught up and build logically planned expansion.
im using an enhanced dsl package from pac bell - (5 static ips), and love it (the only dsl down time ive had is courtesy of pg&e - stuff doesnt work without electricity.) Now if pac bell would just fix their email system (i guess thats why ive set up a linux box as a firewall/web server/mail host), and no comment on the lack of spam filtering from them.
i guess im one of the lucky ones - 6 week wait, plug and chug, and 8 months of high speed bliss.
best advice i have, is if you have one of these horror stories, find out who the ceo's of the companies are and write to them directly, cc'ing your local newspaper and local tv news department (great high tech story with a pro consumer angle - new departments love that (*&^. )
Anyone going to this movie for intellectual stimulation deserves to be disappointed. It was exactly what one should expect - lots of stunts, very well directed and filmed - the car and motorcycle chases were very well done. (i know there are cries about killing the porsche and audi, but if you really want to cry, there is also the hidden: victim a ferrari 308gts, the original gone in 60 seconds: victim tons of valuable muscle cars, including a hemi cuda tboned by a semi, and others)
in fairness, i didn't have to pay to see it - not having to shell out $9 for a movie helps (what does silicon valley think it is? - midtown manhattan?!).
anyway go to have fun, if you want intellectual stimulation - go to something else.
try intermute (www.intermute.com)
really works great, and easy to configure individual sites, and an optional tool bar which will tell you what is being blocked, and how many of each - ie 1 cookie, 3 banners, 2 pop ups
also kills referers, java, javascript, autorefresh, music and other stuff
best $20 i ever spent
it does have a 2 week demo, so its worth checking out -
unfortunately no linux yet, for winblows only...
definately - i put together a 600/asus system, and it threw up on some older no-name dimms - they work fine on a p233 and a k62-350. put in a new 128 dimm/name brand, cost an extra $15 - works great, and fast. a noisy power supply can cause problems. a 300w supply is a good idea, from what ive heard good luck
it gets worse: on page 18 of the april 2k issue of Broadcast Engineering, in an article titled "Hollywood pursues copyright protection" there is a reference to a scheme being developed by Digital Display Working Group (DDWG) to provide copy protection between a computer/set top box and the monitor. joy. Intel has developed Highbandwidth Digital Copy Protection to encrypt each PIXEL (!!!) between STB and monitor.
The rest of the article discusses this in a bit more depth, and is worth reading: www.broadcastengineering.com, click columns and it is the second article (sorry - haven't learned html yet)
"Yes, but there isn't that much that's currently being sold. Besides, all Sinclair is asking -- asked, rather -- for is that COFDM be accepted as an alternative to 8VSB. This would not mandate any change, but only allow the option for consumers and broadcasters."
AM Stereo anybody?
acquisition and bandwidth - no cameras etc exist to deal with 1080p @ 30 Hz - some film makers are working with 1080p @ 24 Hz now, but that is several years later.
i don't have the info in front of me and am not as knowlegable about the reasons - ive read them, just don't remember, so i can't contribute much more, but will follow up if i can find more info in a timely fashion...
The requirement is that 85% of the households in a market have to be equipped to receive digital transmissions - if that threshold isn't met, NTSC continues...
Getting the FCC involved with $ has been the single worst event in broadcast history. You now have a regulatory body that has abandoned regulation and is now a revenue source. (the fcc does have the power to take back the frequencies at any time, it just has to be prepared for the political fallout)
Look at radio, instead of 1 am and 1 fm in a market, a company can now own 8!!!
Granite broadcasting has now done the same to tv - a company can now own 2 stations in a market, not just 1.
In relation to HD, after the conversion to digital, the FCC is going to take back the old freq's. (don't hold your breath though)
This is why there are no consumer HD vcrs available - the tech is there, but no copy protection.
The other half - a big part of the problem - lack of programming - stems from a lack of copy protection - no one wants to expose their IP to free digital copying. There are already plenty of extra bits set aside for various things, including this. Now if the IP owners would just set a standard everyone could get back to work...including the people who are going to break the copy protection.
Commercial editing will be easy - just use the psip tables to get the info you want and throw out the rest.
HD is wonderful - if you haven't seen it, its like a great flat 21" monitor with resolution set to 1280x1024. (only in 16x9 ratio)
What little programming that is available so far really looks good. The superbowl was outstanding, except when the ntsc camerman walked right in front of the HD camera, so you got a really great picture of the back of the SD camera.
Waiting for the set is a toss up. If you do have the bucks, even regular tv looks really good on the set. The two most important things are native resolution and the set top box.
Do not get a set that is not native 1080. Otherwise, any 1080 signal will be downcoverted to whatever the native mode is - a cheap set might be 480 native, in which case you have a fancy regular tv.
do NOT get a set with an integrated box. The linked article is a perfect reason why. Until there is enough HD programming, broadcasters are looking to fill their pipe with some source of revenue. The new broadcast pipe can carry 5 SD signals and change or one HD, so sending 1 SD leave about 14 mb/s of available pipe.
There are a lot of revenue generating things you can do with 14mbs. Given the cost of going digital (1-1.5 Mil for a transmitter; a new antenna, tower space, microwave, etc can tack on another mil or so)(not to mention another 5-15k/month for electricity) broadcasters are in need of income asap.
There is a great opportunity for someone to come up with new business models to take advantage to this distribution medium. Any ideas? Any Takers?
these corporate mergers/buyouts suck more and more
Hasbro couldn't create anything new and original, they have to go out and buy companines that did. After the talented people all leave, hasbro has the rights, but thats it - they then hire talentless people to continue product lines.
Does anyone think D&D is going to go anywhere now that hasbro owns it? I thought WoC would, but the greedy corp pigs saw poke$ and swallowed up one of the few good gaming companies in existance.
We need choice, and hasbro is trying to destroy that. (Granted, in this case they had some very valid points, innumerated elsewhere, but the concept "copyright" is insane). since hasbro has D&D, lord british ought to be scared now - ultima is too much like D&D....
its lawyers like hasbro's that prove my sig...
even better - go to spamcop.org and get an account (free), or join (not too expensive)
:P)
process your spam and it will email provide tracking info on the offending piece. 3 times ive even gotten spam from stupid spammer who didn't spoof - i now have names, home addresses, and phone numbers for 2 of them, not to mention the joy of having thier accounts (big full blown commerial sites) closed (no refunds
the names etc have been turned over to my pet shark. (oh the temptation to call someone to provide a permanent solution...)
But they do - im currently processing a lawsuit against the home shopping network 4 times in the last six months they have called me, seized my line (can't hang up on the call) and proceded to send out an avertising blurb - all done by automation - no human, no nothing - i have 2 of the 4 on my answering machine, and once i got a number from my caller id box.
CA has nice anti harrassment laws, so this should be lucrative. >:)
slip.net is back up
enjoy the site