They claim that they cannot process all of the e-mails to remove the e-mail addresses in a reaonable time.
What do they have, some moron using MS Outlook copying the messages by hand? Someone needs to clue them into Perl, C, or any of the dozens of tools for this job.
It requires proprietary streaming server software, which is only available for Windows. That server software has many restrictions on what it will allow to be sent to the player. For example, it would not allow me to stream my home movies exported to DVD format (or the native Mini-DV, or any other export I tried). It won't import any video with a rate that is > 3Mbps. So, you can basically only do poor quality internet downloaded thumbnail videos.
The MP3 streaming was okay, but not great. The GUI needs a lot of help. It also requires you to use the streaming server, so any exising song/playlist management you have is useless.
The JPEG playback was okay, but could be better. It only supported resolution up to 480p, no HD display. It did not allow MP3 playback during the slideshow - only silence. Of course, you had to import your images into the crappy server software.
A more interesting product is the Roku HD streaming device. http://www.rokulabs.com/ Linux based, open architecture, developers kit & API's, access content via samba (works with Windows, Linux, MacOS), JPEG display at HDTV resolutions, MP3 playback. They had a beta release that supported streaming of HDTV captures.. I'm not sure if that is released yet, or if they support DVD VOBs yet.
We have all seen the reports of the various PC manufacturers trying to get a bigger piece of the home entertainment pie. Dell and Gateway being the most obvious.. Also Microsoft, with their weak XP Media Center, and more interesting X-Box tie-ins.
Now, we've got the dominant producer of Internet infrastructure jumping in with a networked DVD player. Interesting... I wonder if this was one of the major reasons for buying Linksys, and we me see more from them.
Actually, the video is encoded in either progressive or interlaced format, so that is how it is stored on the disk.
In the specific case of DVD's, they are all encoded in interlaced format, and if the player is progressive capable, it can combine interlaced fields to make progressive frames. The process for doing this accounts for much of the quality difference among various DVD players.
But, for other files/formats, the video can be encoded as progressive frames, thus eliminating the need for the player to de-interlace the content (and any artifacting that this implies). HDTV 720P programs are one example of progressive MPEG2 streams/files. I can also export my MiniDV to 480P progressive frames.
High Definition sounds kind of misleading for this technology.. Detail on the quality of the broadcasts is conspicuously absent from the information I could find on this technology. They only describe it as "CD-like".
So, where High Definition video is clearly defined as 1920x1080i or 1280x720p (~ 5x the resolution of a DVD), "HD" radio is lower quality than a 25 year old audio standard.
They should stick to caling it what it is, Digital Radio. It's really cool technology, with a lot of advantages over analog - but it's not setting a new bar for quality like HDTV is compared to DVD.
I will definitely not use Turbo Tax.. I switched to TaxCut last year because of the Intuit fiasco. (I spent several hours trying to clean the c-dilla junk from my parents computer over the holidays, reinforcing my disdain for their tactics.)
But, my problem with TaxCut is that they make you play the rebate game for state tax software. They don't offer a combined Federal/State package. And, even if you buy both from their WWW site, downloading the software, they still make you pay full price for the state portion, then mail in rebate forms.
It looks like I'll be trying TaxAct this year.. $20 for TaxAct Deluxe + State Tax via internet download.
You're thinking in terms of the current console makers - selling the console for a loss, locking it down, and raping the consumer on the games.
At $300 to $400, Apex/VIA are not losing money on the hardware. These are two companies with a lot of experience in dirt cheap manufacturing.
They can make a healthy profit on getting the hardware out there. Maybe they can also get some game licensing revenue, or maybe they avoid that altogether and see if the PC game makers will do a trivial port to this platform and keep a bigger slice of the pie for themselves.
VIA has had good results with the Mini-ITX community. This could be just an extension of that effort. Put a cool reference platform out there & let people hack the hell out of it.
I wouldn't put too much faith in the pricing they mention in their press release.. They are not going to publish their rock bottom / razor thin margin pricing. They quote a price that is the starting point for negotitations. Then they drop their pants to win the Apple business, to be the supplier for a high profile product - and instantly get in the sights for many others.
$55-60 is probably more like the 100K-units price.
Good point... The new generation of VIA processors continue to create interesting possibilities.
This article has some information on upcoming VIA processors/boards. A new processor package that is about the size of a penny, and the nano-ITX board for ultra small devices looks really cool.
But, the thing I want in that article is the proto Dual Processor C5P motherboard, with dual ethernets and a DVI display output. That would make a great little linux server and/or gateway box.
So, how do these Transmeta chips compare to the VIA C3's, in terms of computing performance, and power/heat requirements?
VIA has been doing a very nice job with the C3, with several varieties, speeds, and sizes to be used in all sorts of commercial or hobbyist applications. They have a new mini-itx board, with dual ethernet ports for network gateway usage. And, their new C3 processor includes hardware AES support, with incredible performance for network or filesystem encryption.
It would be great to have an alternative. The TM chips seem to have some really interesting features. But, I have not seen any of these boards/chips available retail. They seem to be essentially OEM solutions for embedded devices. This positioning puts them head to head with many excellent non-x86 solutions, like the ARM, PowerPC, and Hitachi SH processors.
This appears to be a trend.. If getting these restrictions passed at a national level is too difficult, or is noticed and opposed by too many people, the lobbyists go to the state governments. This was the same tactic taken for the anti-VPN law and others I can't think of right now.
While in principal I agree that filming of these movies should not be allowed. I find it disturbing how easily lobbying groups can get their pet projects pushed through state legislatures.
I've never been particularly impressed with OSnews articles. But, this one seems unusually poor. The writing was terrible, and his testing (or at least his description of his testing) was useless.
At one time, vmware had home user pricing at something around $100. Then, they cranked it up to ~$300. Hopefully EMC will have some pricing options for home/hobbyist/non-commercial use. $300 is a bit too steep for me.. I can build another PC to run windows for that much.
I am in the process of setting up an Athlon64 system. The 64-bit architecture is nice, in a techy coolness kind of way. And, the other architecture improvements, like more general purpose registers, are great.
But, the thing that pushed me to take the plunge was the "Cool 'n Quiet" feature of the chips.
The Athlon64 is the first mass-market / desktop chip to offer speed/voltage control that has been offered in laptop chips for quite a while. Based on processor load, CnQ will slow down the processor speed, in 200MHz increments, all the way down to 800MHz.
So, when you're doing light tasks like WWW browsing, MP3 playback, word processing, etc. the system slows down. When you're compiling, gaming, minidv editing, or other CPU hungry app, it goes up to full speed.
When the CPU slows down, obviously less power is used, and less heat is created. The system fans slow or stop, and the noise level goes way down.
Combine this with a fanless video card (e.g. GeForce FX 5200) and a quiet Seagate Barracuda hard drive, and you've got a very quite, but still powerful, system.
For me, this quote from the article sums up the essence of their argument:
'SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension. We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work.'
So, he's saying that to give your work away is unconstitutional.. if you're not pursuing monetary gain, you are in violation of the U.S. Constitution. He can't possibly be serious can he?
In any case, how the hell did this morph into an argument about the constitutionality of the GPL? What happened to the contract dispute with IBM?
Come on guys.. It works for the comments on slashdot articles. The only way to deal with trolls, like SCO, is to ignore them. If you keep reporting on, and getting excited about every ridiculous move they make, you're just doing them a favor.
> Further I download all the HDTV feeds of Alias, Smallville, and 24 off USENET. Yeah I wait a day, but it works great. I have a cron task that downloads the episodes I need.
I assume this is a joke.. 8GB/hr HDTV data streams, uuencoded then fragmented onto usenet. Yeah, that must work great. A $30 UHF antenna and an HDTV PCI card does the job for me.
> Anyone know if there are any cards that word with cable or dish HDTV broadcasts?
There is a community closed source project that is enhancing the Windows software for the AccessHDTV card. They have a beta version that supports cable QAM encoding.
DVICO's FusionHDTV III (Windows only) will be released soon. It is reported to support QAM.
Both of those cards will only be able to support unencrypted channels. The premium channels, like HBO-HD and Showtime-HD, are encrypted.
There are no cards that support US satellite services - the content security they use prevents this.
By the way - there is no HDTV Animal Planet channel.. There is a Discovery-HD, but their selection is rather limited right now.
If so, SCO bears little resemblance to "The Santa Cruz Operation". That group lives on as Tarantella. What is now called SCO is mostly the former Caldera, and is based out of Utah.
I have no problem with the DRM concept. I think that musicians, writers, and coders should be paid a fair price for their works.
If someone can implement a good model of usability while protecting the content's creator, I'm all for it.
For me, iTunes and my iPod work seamlessly, and offer great advantages in terms of accessibility. The Apple Music Store is always the first place I look when I want music. As their catalog increases, it will become the only place I look.
This was a hot issue in Feb-Apr of this year.. What took them so long?
I used TurboTax for my '01 taxes, but because of this incident I changed to Tax Cut last year. I will be sticking with Tax Cut.
I was pissed at Intuit before this incident anyway. They also play those shady rebate games. The TurboTax'01 box stated 'Free State Tax' forms. Once I opened it, I found it was not included, but needed to be downloaded - no problem. Go to download it, and they insist on charging me $20 for the download with the opportunity to mail in rebate forms for a refund. Screw them.
Following a few links from the mission site, I found the answer to a question I had about the communications capabilities of the rovers.
They can communicate directly back to Earth at a slow speed ( 3,500 to 12,000 bits/sec ) or they can communicate via the Mars orbiting spacecraft (Odyssey or Mars Global Surveyor) at a rate of 128,000 bits/sec. The orbiters are only 250 miles from the planet surface.
Unfortunately, there was no information about protocols, encoding, or error correction schemes..
Slashdot Mirror
They claim that they cannot process all of the e-mails to remove the e-mail addresses in a reaonable time.
What do they have, some moron using MS Outlook copying the messages by hand? Someone needs to clue them into Perl, C, or any of the dozens of tools for this job.
The Gateway product is weak at best..
It requires proprietary streaming server software, which is only available for Windows. That server software has many restrictions on what it will allow to be sent to the player. For example, it would not allow me to stream my home movies exported to DVD format (or the native Mini-DV, or any other export I tried). It won't import any video with a rate that is > 3Mbps. So, you can basically only do poor quality internet downloaded thumbnail videos.
The MP3 streaming was okay, but not great. The GUI needs a lot of help. It also requires you to use the streaming server, so any exising song/playlist management you have is useless.
The JPEG playback was okay, but could be better. It only supported resolution up to 480p, no HD display. It did not allow MP3 playback during the slideshow - only silence. Of course, you had to import your images into the crappy server software.
A more interesting product is the Roku HD streaming device. http://www.rokulabs.com/ Linux based, open architecture, developers kit & API's, access content via samba (works with Windows, Linux, MacOS), JPEG display at HDTV resolutions, MP3 playback. They had a beta release that supported streaming of HDTV captures.. I'm not sure if that is released yet, or if they support DVD VOBs yet.
We have all seen the reports of the various PC manufacturers trying to get a bigger piece of the home entertainment pie. Dell and Gateway being the most obvious.. Also Microsoft, with their weak XP Media Center, and more interesting X-Box tie-ins.
Now, we've got the dominant producer of Internet infrastructure jumping in with a networked DVD player. Interesting... I wonder if this was one of the major reasons for buying Linksys, and we me see more from them.
Actually, the video is encoded in either progressive or interlaced format, so that is how it is stored on the disk.
In the specific case of DVD's, they are all encoded in interlaced format, and if the player is progressive capable, it can combine interlaced fields to make progressive frames. The process for doing this accounts for much of the quality difference among various DVD players.
But, for other files/formats, the video can be encoded as progressive frames, thus eliminating the need for the player to de-interlace the content (and any artifacting that this implies). HDTV 720P programs are one example of progressive MPEG2 streams/files. I can also export my MiniDV to 480P progressive frames.
High Definition sounds kind of misleading for this technology.. Detail on the quality of the broadcasts is conspicuously absent from the information I could find on this technology. They only describe it as "CD-like".
So, where High Definition video is clearly defined as 1920x1080i or 1280x720p (~ 5x the resolution of a DVD), "HD" radio is lower quality than a 25 year old audio standard.
They should stick to caling it what it is, Digital Radio. It's really cool technology, with a lot of advantages over analog - but it's not setting a new bar for quality like HDTV is compared to DVD.
I will definitely not use Turbo Tax.. I switched to TaxCut last year because of the Intuit fiasco. (I spent several hours trying to clean the c-dilla junk from my parents computer over the holidays, reinforcing my disdain for their tactics.)
But, my problem with TaxCut is that they make you play the rebate game for state tax software. They don't offer a combined Federal/State package. And, even if you buy both from their WWW site, downloading the software, they still make you pay full price for the state portion, then mail in rebate forms.
It looks like I'll be trying TaxAct this year.. $20 for TaxAct Deluxe + State Tax via internet download.
According to Webster, "Enjoined" is how you say forbidden / prohibited when you want to sound like a lawyer.
You're thinking in terms of the current console makers - selling the console for a loss, locking it down, and raping the consumer on the games.
At $300 to $400, Apex/VIA are not losing money on the hardware. These are two companies with a lot of experience in dirt cheap manufacturing.
They can make a healthy profit on getting the hardware out there. Maybe they can also get some game licensing revenue, or maybe they avoid that altogether and see if the PC game makers will do a trivial port to this platform and keep a bigger slice of the pie for themselves.
VIA has had good results with the Mini-ITX community. This could be just an extension of that effort. Put a cool reference platform out there & let people hack the hell out of it.
I wouldn't put too much faith in the pricing they mention in their press release.. They are not going to publish their rock bottom / razor thin margin pricing. They quote a price that is the starting point for negotitations. Then they drop their pants to win the Apple business, to be the supplier for a high profile product - and instantly get in the sights for many others.
$55-60 is probably more like the 100K-units price.
Good point... The new generation of VIA processors continue to create interesting possibilities.
This article has some information on upcoming VIA processors/boards. A new processor package that is about the size of a penny, and the nano-ITX board for ultra small devices looks really cool.
But, the thing I want in that article is the proto Dual Processor C5P motherboard, with dual ethernets and a DVI display output. That would make a great little linux server and/or gateway box.
So, how do these Transmeta chips compare to the VIA C3's, in terms of computing performance, and power/heat requirements?
VIA has been doing a very nice job with the C3, with several varieties, speeds, and sizes to be used in all sorts of commercial or hobbyist applications. They have a new mini-itx board, with dual ethernet ports for network gateway usage. And, their new C3 processor includes hardware AES support, with incredible performance for network or filesystem encryption.
It would be great to have an alternative. The TM chips seem to have some really interesting features. But, I have not seen any of these boards/chips available retail. They seem to be essentially OEM solutions for embedded devices. This positioning puts them head to head with many excellent non-x86 solutions, like the ARM, PowerPC, and Hitachi SH processors.
This appears to be a trend.. If getting these restrictions passed at a national level is too difficult, or is noticed and opposed by too many people, the lobbyists go to the state governments. This was the same tactic taken for the anti-VPN law and others I can't think of right now.
While in principal I agree that filming of these movies should not be allowed. I find it disturbing how easily lobbying groups can get their pet projects pushed through state legislatures.
I've never been particularly impressed with OSnews articles. But, this one seems unusually poor. The writing was terrible, and his testing (or at least his description of his testing) was useless.
I wonder if the pricing will change?
At one time, vmware had home user pricing at something around $100. Then, they cranked it up to ~$300. Hopefully EMC will have some pricing options for home/hobbyist/non-commercial use. $300 is a bit too steep for me.. I can build another PC to run windows for that much.
I am in the process of setting up an Athlon64 system. The 64-bit architecture is nice, in a techy coolness kind of way. And, the other architecture improvements, like more general purpose registers, are great.
But, the thing that pushed me to take the plunge was the "Cool 'n Quiet" feature of the chips.
The Athlon64 is the first mass-market / desktop chip to offer speed/voltage control that has been offered in laptop chips for quite a while. Based on processor load, CnQ will slow down the processor speed, in 200MHz increments, all the way down to 800MHz.
So, when you're doing light tasks like WWW browsing, MP3 playback, word processing, etc. the system slows down. When you're compiling, gaming, minidv editing, or other CPU hungry app, it goes up to full speed.
When the CPU slows down, obviously less power is used, and less heat is created. The system fans slow or stop, and the noise level goes way down.
Combine this with a fanless video card (e.g. GeForce FX 5200) and a quiet Seagate Barracuda hard drive, and you've got a very quite, but still powerful, system.
For me, this quote from the article sums up the essence of their argument:
'SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension. We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work.'
So, he's saying that to give your work away is unconstitutional.. if you're not pursuing monetary gain, you are in violation of the U.S. Constitution. He can't possibly be serious can he?
In any case, how the hell did this morph into an argument about the constitutionality of the GPL? What happened to the contract dispute with IBM?
Come on guys.. It works for the comments on slashdot articles. The only way to deal with trolls, like SCO, is to ignore them. If you keep reporting on, and getting excited about every ridiculous move they make, you're just doing them a favor.
Just what we need, another article pointing out the same thing we already know: SCO is full of shit.
Keep giving them the coverage they love so much. Keep letting SCO play you.
DVB is a European standard.. This will not work with the US satellite services.
> Further I download all the HDTV feeds of Alias, Smallville, and 24 off USENET. Yeah I wait a day, but it works great. I have a cron task that downloads the episodes I need.
I assume this is a joke.. 8GB/hr HDTV data streams, uuencoded then fragmented onto usenet. Yeah, that must work great. A $30 UHF antenna and an HDTV PCI card does the job for me.
> Anyone know if there are any cards that word with cable or dish HDTV broadcasts?
There is a community closed source project that is enhancing the Windows software for the AccessHDTV card. They have a beta version that supports cable QAM encoding.
DVICO's FusionHDTV III (Windows only) will be released soon. It is reported to support QAM.
Both of those cards will only be able to support unencrypted channels. The premium channels, like HBO-HD and Showtime-HD, are encrypted.
There are no cards that support US satellite services - the content security they use prevents this.
By the way - there is no HDTV Animal Planet channel.. There is a Discovery-HD, but their selection is rather limited right now.
Santa Clara? Do you mean Santa Cruz?
If so, SCO bears little resemblance to "The Santa Cruz Operation". That group lives on as Tarantella. What is now called SCO is mostly the former Caldera, and is based out of Utah.
Because it works well.
I have no problem with the DRM concept. I think that musicians, writers, and coders should be paid a fair price for their works.
If someone can implement a good model of usability while protecting the content's creator, I'm all for it.
For me, iTunes and my iPod work seamlessly, and offer great advantages in terms of accessibility. The Apple Music Store is always the first place I look when I want music. As their catalog increases, it will become the only place I look.
This was a hot issue in Feb-Apr of this year.. What took them so long?
I used TurboTax for my '01 taxes, but because of this incident I changed to Tax Cut last year. I will be sticking with Tax Cut.
I was pissed at Intuit before this incident anyway. They also play those shady rebate games. The TurboTax'01 box stated 'Free State Tax' forms. Once I opened it, I found it was not included, but needed to be downloaded - no problem. Go to download it, and they insist on charging me $20 for the download with the opportunity to mail in rebate forms for a refund. Screw them.
Following a few links from the mission site, I found the answer to a question I had about the communications capabilities of the rovers.
n s.html
They can communicate directly back to Earth at a slow speed ( 3,500 to 12,000 bits/sec ) or they can communicate via the Mars orbiting spacecraft (Odyssey or Mars Global Surveyor) at a rate of 128,000 bits/sec. The orbiters are only 250 miles from the planet surface.
Unfortunately, there was no information about protocols, encoding, or error correction schemes..
Some good info is here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/mission/communicatio
There was an article in 'IEEE Spectrum' this month taking about some technology improvements that would allow broadband to the house at around 20Mbps.
One of the drivers they mentioned for this was this FCC regulation limiting access to their infrastructure.