"Because each new change in the population and the demands of society will not make the previous system utterly unworkable, and force it to be scrapped in its entirety."
"But nobody could prove that CDMA, in the real world, could work as well as TDMA and provide better spectral efficiencies."
Neither is spectral efficiency anything near the most important thing. Quality of reception everywhere in the coverage area (holes, echoes, etc), and stability of the connection (interference) is much more important than spectral efficiency. Spectral efficiency can be fixed by allocating a bit more bandwidth, but the other problems just result in cell phones that suck.
"First, I see this as being a basically useless criteria for selecting a phone. My CDMA phone works anywhere in the US, and that's generally good enough. Europeans forget the the US is basically comparable with the EU, and not a single country, at least where things like size and travel are concerned."
Conclusion: Europeans travel more? Triband GSM phones also work in Asia, and the US you know.
"the European tendency to pick a winner (even if it's a loser), as compared to the American way of allowing competition to pick."
AFAICS, gsm really is the winner over the current digital cell phone networks in the US. The popularity of cell phones in Europe should be enough proof. How can it be a loser if a higher percentage of the population buys and uses it? Market penetration is a sure sign of winning.
Handset prices and cell phone subscriptions in Europe are lower than in the US. Low enough in Sweden to outnumber land lines in that country. Actually low enough so that vending machines dont accept coins or bills, you pay by calling a special number with your cell phone.
He's not always right, but then again he chose his name wisely...
"AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA"
AT&T currently also uses GSM (as does Verizon in some markets) which is a very good thing because their old PCS signal quality was not something to be particularly proud of.
And why does he not mention UMTS (is that what he calls WCDMA?). And why doesn't he call CDMA what it is: spread spectrum. There's no magic in it, it's just another way of allocating bits in a band.
Actually cell phones are cheaper in Europe than in the US, you are more free to switch providers without switching phones or vice-versa (yes there is much choice in providers and phones). Plus, until GSM grew in the US, the network coverage, signal quality, voice sound quality, and battery life of cell phones all over Europe was better than the US deployed digital systems. You could (still can) cheap prepaid phones for which the prepaid minuted expire only after 12 months (compare with 30 or 90 days and much higher rates in the US).
Also, it supported instant messaging from the get go years ago, so his 'protectionism' and 'complacency' argument doesn't hold foot in facts.
"... and ironically we not only ended up with compatibility over the whole continent but got that compatibility with a superior system which emerged out of competition."
I've actually had phones on both continents and that statement is just wrong. Cell networks in the US are a mess compared to Europe. In practice in the US, I cannot buy a cell phone from a third party and pick and choose my provider. You can in Europe, because the subscription is the sim card. When roaming in Europe, you usually can select multiple provider from which to roam, in the US, you'll just have to accept that your phone says no signal while a guy next to you is actually making a call.
If the GSM people were arrogant, it was for a reason: calls weren't dropped, you always have a signal (a 'can you hear me, good' commercial in Europe tells the viewers that the network for that provider obviously is in very bad shape), the phones worked across international boundaries and the prices were low.
Ahhh. I still hope he makes a followup though, because it still was a nice read...
"person to whom I was responding seemed to believe that Photoshop or a computer program can automate everything"
True, that would be an overestimation. Photoshop cannot always postprocess to reproduce image capture tricks, and cannot fix bad composition, timing, or automate creativity, etc...
"However, writing that code might not be a trivial task"
True too, but that's just what will keep professionals above amateurs that use standard off-the-shelf tools. Even though that professionalism will require much more digital proficiency.
"would probably require some code to identify the subject and label those pixels (probably very difficult)"
Difficult doesn't mean impossible. A lot of research has been done in object recognition, and with some user interaction and/or supported by other images of the same object/scene or background in different surroundings or angles, I'm sure amazing algorithms can be designed. no need to manually go over each pixel (though some people may still be inclined to waste their time doing that...).
"there's no way for the computer to automatically determine whether or not a given pixel is in focus..."
Yes there is (when using methods called 'dynamic programming' by computer experts and 'nonlinear filters' by signal and image processing experts). And it works better than what you can do after exposion of an analog film. The fact that it's not in photoshop doesn't mean a computer can't do it.
And whatever you do with your lenses, exposure times, and diaphragm on your analog camera should also be possible on a good digital camera, especially when it is the same body with a digital ccd back.
The only limit you may run into is the ccd noise in low light, which afaik is not as low as the noise on good film yet.
But of course most/.ers aren't "most people". But if you prefer, I'll rephrase: Digital requires at least $2300 worth of equipment -- and that doesn't include the price of the camera.
The "most people" without a computer that you refer to will also not buy a computer 'to go with that new camera'. They'll just buy the $150 10x15 photo printer with flash card slot and maybe the $200 harddisk photo storage unit, and be done with it, and/or they get their prints/enlargements by 'unloading' the flash cards at walmart...
Digital is already more convenient and/or cheaper than analog for a lot of people, and will soon be for almost everybody. Digital photography is a growing market with quickly developing, improving, and price-reducing technology and there is reason that that will stop or reverse.
Maybe you didn't know, but you (yes you too) can _program_ computers, so that you may have to write your own image filter by hand, but you sure don't have to do the pixel manipulations by hand.
Sure, you can wait until 'hptotoshop' can do it, but then your neighbour and his cat can do it too.
Want to stay on top of professional photography? Maybe you should try to learn some programming (or partner up with somebody who has...).
Then that would allow for incompatible Linux-GNU, Linux=GNU, and Linux.GNU distributions, in addition to the wealth of LinuxWindows, LinuxOS, LinuxCE, LinuxNT, LinuxXP, and Linux.Net, LinuxPro, WebLinux, eLinux, ActiveLinux, linuX, LinuxPlus, MyLinux, DeskLinux, EasyLinux, SuperLinux, HolyLinux, TuxLinux, LINU (Linux Is Not Unix), etc...
Where did they get all the electricity for that? Especially considering that the total electricity generating _capacity_ was 811 gigawatts for the US in 2000 (note all generators/plants are probably never at peak capacity at the same time)?
I'd say that terawatt number is as reliable as a unmaintained 10 year old car...
"but if your Boss wants a cluster setup by tomorrow, and you only have a Windows Admin on hand"
Option 1) Windows admin calls Microsoft, waits on-hold for three hours to hear that he needs to become a registered enterprise customer first, and that then he can request a quote, after which.... yada yada the 24 hours are gone. No alternatives.
Option 2) Use one of the so many turnkey solutions available for Linux.
Actually, even just looking at what the $0 Linux distribution contains, and comparing it with $X costing Windows. You're saving more than $X, because you don't have to buy virus scanners, compilers, winzip, etc...
It's obviously FUD, and there is no need to worry about it. It must be simply a case where steve hopes to be able to use it to keep some business/enterprise accounts that it is loosing to IBM. The only response IBM will have to give is 'we guarantee you that it will work' and the problem is solved (they shouldn't have a problem saying that, plus they can give the customer more freedom and power wrt support options, because everybody who is knowledgable can service open source solutions, which can not be said about closed source solutions). When MS says the same 'we guarantee you that it will work', then who would you believe? MS promised a secure, fast and reliable operating system with win2k, and even xp hasn't lived up yet, and enterprise customers know that.
Plus, suppose MS says they are "accepting legal liability" for their software, any enterprise customer will know that the license agreements of the software contradict that, and that sueing microsoft and winning is impossible even for the government...
I remember that Linus made a remark that he tought that the O1 scheduler wouldn't impact Linux much at all, and that its development would not be a biggie for Linux, downplaying the importance of what it can achieve. Go Ingo for keeping at it!
So it's a bunch of drunk ass-holes flying around above the speed limit, cutting off other spaceships, throwing trash out of the window, playing loud music, and looking for a fight? Hmm... Maybe I should've stayed home to see it.
Slashdot Mirror
"You seem to be unaware of the extreme shortage of spectrum."
And that is just politics, an artificial shortage. Just like the price of CDs.
ps, what you call interference is just the noise.
Interference is the name for signals that are from outside the system, e.g. non-cell phone signals from non-cell phone and base station sources.
"Spectral efficiency *is* the ratio of information rate divided by bandwidth."
Sign. So, when the spectral efficiency is not as good, just allocate a bit more frequency and the same amount of channels can be served...
"Spectral efficiency is extremely important."
Not if you have some more frequencies for your system.
"multipath rejection (what you call holes)"
That would be echoes, not holes.
"Interference *is* the issue of spectral efficiency!"
No it is not. Bandwidth restrictions is.
"Because each new change in the population and the demands of society will not make the previous system utterly unworkable, and force it to be scrapped in its entirety."
Same holds for GSM in Europe.
"But nobody could prove that CDMA, in the real world, could work as well as TDMA and provide better spectral efficiencies."
Neither is spectral efficiency anything near the most important thing. Quality of reception everywhere in the coverage area (holes, echoes, etc), and stability of the connection (interference) is much more important than spectral efficiency. Spectral efficiency can be fixed by allocating a bit more bandwidth, but the other problems just result in cell phones that suck.
"Over the course of one to two decades, the American system is going to be far cheaper overall."
Why?
Any of those have the standard 12 month expiration on prepaid minutes? Or do they take your money and run after 30-90 days?
"First, I see this as being a basically useless criteria for selecting a phone. My CDMA phone works anywhere in the US, and that's generally good enough. Europeans forget the the US is basically comparable with the EU, and not a single country, at least where things like size and travel are concerned."
Conclusion: Europeans travel more? Triband GSM phones also work in Asia, and the US you know.
"the European tendency to pick a winner (even if it's a loser), as compared to the American way of allowing competition to pick."
AFAICS, gsm really is the winner over the current digital cell phone networks in the US. The popularity of cell phones in Europe should be enough proof. How can it be a loser if a higher percentage of the population buys and uses it? Market penetration is a sure sign of winning.
"Here in the USA, everyone (schoolkids upwards) has one"
You really don't see them use their cell phones as much in the US as you do in Europe.
Actually, Cell phone use in Europe has consistently been higher in Europe since at least 1998
Handset prices and cell phone subscriptions in Europe are lower than in the US. Low enough in Sweden to outnumber land lines in that country. Actually low enough so that vending machines dont accept coins or bills, you pay by calling a special number with your cell phone.
And what about what Gartner Group has found: "Cell phone problems are more common here than many places in Europe and Asia because the USA has multiple wireless systems and has been slower to adopt wireless technology, says Ken Dulaney of Gartner consulting firm in San Jose, Calif."
Facts and fiction...
He's not always right, but then again he chose his name wisely...
"AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA"
AT&T currently also uses GSM (as does Verizon in some markets) which is a very good thing because their old PCS signal quality was not something to be particularly proud of.
And why does he not mention UMTS (is that what he calls WCDMA?). And why doesn't he call CDMA what it is: spread spectrum. There's no magic in it, it's just another way of allocating bits in a band.
Actually cell phones are cheaper in Europe than in the US, you are more free to switch providers without switching phones or vice-versa (yes there is much choice in providers and phones). Plus, until GSM grew in the US, the network coverage, signal quality, voice sound quality, and battery life of cell phones all over Europe was better than the US deployed digital systems. You could (still can) cheap prepaid phones for which the prepaid minuted expire only after 12 months (compare with 30 or 90 days and much higher rates in the US).
Also, it supported instant messaging from the get go years ago, so his 'protectionism' and 'complacency' argument doesn't hold foot in facts.
"... and ironically we not only ended up with compatibility over the whole continent but got that compatibility with a superior system which emerged out of competition."
I've actually had phones on both continents and that statement is just wrong. Cell networks in the US are a mess compared to Europe. In practice in the US, I cannot buy a cell phone from a third party and pick and choose my provider. You can in Europe, because the subscription is the sim card. When roaming in Europe, you usually can select multiple provider from which to roam, in the US, you'll just have to accept that your phone says no signal while a guy next to you is actually making a call.
If the GSM people were arrogant, it was for a reason: calls weren't dropped, you always have a signal (a 'can you hear me, good' commercial in Europe tells the viewers that the network for that provider obviously is in very bad shape), the phones worked across international boundaries and the prices were low.
Ahhh. I still hope he makes a followup though, because it still was a nice read...
"person to whom I was responding seemed to believe that Photoshop or a computer program can automate everything"
True, that would be an overestimation. Photoshop cannot always postprocess to reproduce image capture tricks, and cannot fix bad composition, timing, or automate creativity, etc...
"However, writing that code might not be a trivial task"
True too, but that's just what will keep professionals above amateurs that use standard off-the-shelf tools. Even though that professionalism will require much more digital proficiency.
"would probably require some code to identify the subject and label those pixels (probably very difficult)"
Difficult doesn't mean impossible. A lot of research has been done in object recognition, and with some user interaction and/or supported by other images of the same object/scene or background in different surroundings or angles, I'm sure amazing algorithms can be designed. no need to manually go over each pixel (though some people may still be inclined to waste their time doing that...).
"there's no way for the computer to automatically determine whether or not a given pixel is in focus..."
Yes there is (when using methods called 'dynamic programming' by computer experts and 'nonlinear filters' by signal and image processing experts). And it works better than what you can do after exposion of an analog film. The fact that it's not in photoshop doesn't mean a computer can't do it.
And whatever you do with your lenses, exposure times, and diaphragm on your analog camera should also be possible on a good digital camera, especially when it is the same body with a digital ccd back.
The only limit you may run into is the ccd noise in low light, which afaik is not as low as the noise on good film yet.
But of course most /.ers aren't "most people". But if you prefer, I'll rephrase: Digital requires at least $2300 worth of equipment -- and that doesn't include the price of the camera.
The "most people" without a computer that you refer to will also not buy a computer 'to go with that new camera'. They'll just buy the $150 10x15 photo printer with flash card slot and maybe the $200 harddisk photo storage unit, and be done with it, and/or they get their prints/enlargements by 'unloading' the flash cards at walmart...
Digital is already more convenient and/or cheaper than analog for a lot of people, and will soon be for almost everybody. Digital photography is a growing market with quickly developing, improving, and price-reducing technology and there is reason that that will stop or reverse.
But when your customers want digital images...
Film
Film (108 pictures): $10
Processing (3 rolls): $15
High Resolution Scanner: $350
Flash card (90 pictures): $40
Computer (w/CD Burner): $1200
Adobe Photoshop 7.0: $600
Photo-quality printer: $400
Photo-ink: $40
Total: $2645
So you may still be spending more when you go analog.
I predict that in less than 5 year, you'll have to have both analog and digital cameras and equipment as a successful professional photographer.
(but by then your PC+image processing software will be $500 instead of $1800....)
Maybe you didn't know, but you (yes you too) can _program_ computers, so that you may have to write your own image filter by hand, but you sure don't have to do the pixel manipulations by hand.
Sure, you can wait until 'hptotoshop' can do it, but then your neighbour and his cat can do it too.
Want to stay on top of professional photography? Maybe you should try to learn some programming (or partner up with somebody who has...).
"The only realistic source of that kind of thing is water being dumped by airplanes ..."
How about Louis Franks ice comets?
Or better yet, Linux+GNU
Then that would allow for incompatible Linux-GNU, Linux=GNU, and Linux.GNU distributions, in addition to the wealth of LinuxWindows, LinuxOS, LinuxCE, LinuxNT, LinuxXP, and Linux.Net, LinuxPro, WebLinux, eLinux, ActiveLinux, linuX, LinuxPlus, MyLinux, DeskLinux, EasyLinux, SuperLinux, HolyLinux, TuxLinux, LINU (Linux Is Not Unix), etc...
In other words: Who cares, really? Besides RMS...
"and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR."
Where did they get all the electricity for that? Especially considering that the total electricity generating _capacity_ was 811 gigawatts for the US in 2000 (note all generators/plants are probably never at peak capacity at the same time)?
I'd say that terawatt number is as reliable as a unmaintained 10 year old car...
Or maybe xf4vnc
That is not the first autostereo LCD display at all. More information and lot of links on this page.
"but if your Boss wants a cluster setup by tomorrow, and you only have a Windows Admin on hand"
.... yada yada the 24 hours are gone. No alternatives.
Option 1) Windows admin calls Microsoft, waits on-hold for three hours to hear that he needs to become a registered enterprise customer first, and that then he can request a quote, after which
Option 2) Use one of the so many turnkey solutions available for Linux.
Actually, even just looking at what the $0 Linux distribution contains, and comparing it with $X costing Windows. You're saving more than $X, because you don't have to buy virus scanners, compilers, winzip, etc...
Their business plan for the coming 5 years:
;-))
1) Spread Vapour.
2) Beat Linux.
3) Profit.
They are good at 1) and still doing pretty good at 3), and that 2) thing is just details
It's obviously FUD, and there is no need to worry about it. It must be simply a case where steve hopes to be able to use it to keep some business/enterprise accounts that it is loosing to IBM. The only response IBM will have to give is 'we guarantee you that it will work' and the problem is solved (they shouldn't have a problem saying that, plus they can give the customer more freedom and power wrt support options, because everybody who is knowledgable can service open source solutions, which can not be said about closed source solutions). When MS says the same 'we guarantee you that it will work', then who would you believe? MS promised a secure, fast and reliable operating system with win2k, and even xp hasn't lived up yet, and enterprise customers know that.
Plus, suppose MS says they are "accepting legal liability" for their software, any enterprise customer will know that the license agreements of the software contradict that, and that sueing microsoft and winning is impossible even for the government...
I remember that Linus made a remark that he tought that the O1 scheduler wouldn't impact Linux much at all, and that its development would not be a biggie for Linux, downplaying the importance of what it can achieve. Go Ingo for keeping at it!
So it's a bunch of drunk ass-holes flying around above the speed limit, cutting off other spaceships, throwing trash out of the window, playing loud music, and looking for a fight? Hmm... Maybe I should've stayed home to see it.