I'm not saying ads don't work. I'm saying mass media ads are a lot less effective than direct targeted ads, and the new media in the changing world of technology including PVRs make that more and more possible.
I'm still not buying another new car, neither are dancing or singing people in or around cars things that make me interested in the brand. Sure, the marketing people play the statistics and know that music and dancing people 'sell cars' in the percentages, but I for example base my choice on car size, engine power & technology, available options, dealer location, warranty time, safety, looks&color. So an ad geared towards me would show me the good stuff that I use to choose the car ('look at this: this is the size boat this car will tow', without the disclaimers you hear all the time now 'professional driver, nonstandard automobile, closed concourse' and all that b.s. about $1 down).
Mass media works only on the lowest-common-denominator, so they can't target me directly on TV, because many people for example won't like my choice of color, and may not be interested to see what's under the hood. So they show the thing that in _totals_ after summation of everybody, averaging out of differences between peope, gets the most cars sold. And then in the next ad they show me that nsync has released a new CD. I'm not the median of the audience, I'm me. I'm not even the 'target' audience for that nsycn cds. Summarizing, all those mass-media marketing minutes are 95% lost to me, while a directly targeted ad might make me go to the store immediately, with much much better hit rates for those ads.
A large part of the commercials they show me are about things that definitely will not generate sales for them. Most of the remaining commercials have only a slight probability of generating brand recognition next time I'm in a store picking up a bottle of peanuts. I'm just saying that if some clothing manufacturer would show me an ad in which they claim their pants were optimized for Linux, I'd buy it right away (even though I know it can't really be true, they just hit the right strings). However when they show that you can walk like an idiot in their pants because they are supposed to be 'superlight', then I don't care at all, and I'll get whatever fits best and is cheapest when I'm in the store.
Sure, they want to repeat things in which I'm not interested, so that when the day comes they get brand recognition. But even then, ads for stuff that 'm actually looking for or might actually be interested in are 500% more effective, they will generate sales the same week instead of hoping to give marginally more brand recognition some time in the future.
I think Kellner is responding to messages from his advertisers that they realize that a lot of people don't actually watch the TV commercials and want to pay less.
On the Internet, one of the factors in the dot com bomb was declining ad revenues because advertisers realized that the banner ad wasn't worth as much as what they were paying for it. Maybe the same advertisers are now questioning the value of TV ads.
As they should, because I've seen enough beep-beep commercials (I just bought a new car, am not looking for another), neither do I have herpes or am I looking for a lawyer. The time of mass media marketed TV ads is over, advertisers are realizing how relatively worthless they are.
What PVRs can do for you is viewer profiling and targeted ads. After a couple of car ads, I'd tell the machine I just bought a new car, and then it will show me commercials for accessories for my new car, and cell phones and PDAs instead, because I'm in the market for new ones right now. What counts in advertising is eyeballs, and another car ad doesn't get my eyeballs right now, it doesn't matter whether I'm looking live or recorded TV.
Really, this will become one of the classic examples that established industry first fights ferociously against changes, and in the end praises the changed environment.
CRT is still CRT, it doesn't matter whether or not the tube is big or small, or where the phosporus is located. A CRT monitor is still a projection system, because the electron beams project an image to the front of the tube where the phosphorus converts it into visible light. The only difference with a large screen 'rear projection TV' is that there the phospohurus is located farther away from the screen.
Ditto LCD, LCD is a light filter. An LCD panel is a light filtering LCD layer on top of a backlight. In a projector, it's an light filtering LCD screen in front of a more intensive bulb. Possibly the projector includes a mirror (and cooling) surface right behind the LCD screen and the light performs a 180 right before or after passing through the LCD, but it's really the same thing, the LCD filters the light.
What is darkest is not important. All you need is sufficient contrast ratio, and then you control the light in your viewing room and you colour your projection screen and its surroundings to reflect the absolute black level that matches your viewing room and preferences.
When you say that 'LCD' has a better contrast than a 'CRT', you've got to be kidding. My 21" trinitron CRT on my desk still is visible when the sun shines directly on it, yet my TFT/LCD laptop has serious problems when that happens.
In addition to that, 'black level has nothing to do with contrast ratio'. Hmm. contrast ratio = white level divided by black level. Quite much so something to do with it.
Hmm. Actually, for centuries piracy usually happens in international waters where the piracy acts that were performed would not fall under the jurisdiction of any country. No countries' laws apply in international waters. If the pirates operated in the jurisdiction of a country, the pirates could be prosecuted by that country, and hence it would not be called piracy, but it would be called by what crimes occured during the piracy acts 'theft', 'murder', 'robbery', etc.
So, piracy in history has always happened in a place where there are no laws to protect the victims.
Now in this case, since there are laws and valid jurisdictions to protect the victims of these acts described as 'piracy' (in the form of copyright laws), I resent the use of the term 'piracy' as it pollutes the genuine history of the words 'pirate' and 'piracy'. Why don't they call it what it is: the act of 'unauthorized copying of copyrighted material'? If they did that, then it would be clear to everybody what was meant and statements like 'piracy is copying' would not be necessary, because the statement 'unauthorized copying of copyrighted material is copying' doesn't have any informative value to begin with.
Why do they need to misappropriate a historic term. After their abuse, a 'pirates story' will never be the same anymore. Genuine piracy has nothing to do with the Internet or software, or 'IP' in whichever context, piracy has to do with parrots, hooks, eye patches, cannons, knives, strong liquor, drunks, and sinking ships.
Actually, sea pirates currently operating are at least as bad as they were in the past: robbing and murdering without mercy. Last December, pirates killed a famous blue water competition sailer who anchored somewhere too close to pirates with an eye on his equipment and engine. Another story about that incident here
You can get those micromirrors in projection TVs too, it's called 'DLP'. I was really impressed when I looked at a DLP display at a specialty store. Still very expensive though ($10k or so)
Btw, I've seen the term 'contrast ratio' used in the specs of projectors/TVs. AFAIK, LCD projectors often have a contrast ration of 200 or so, the better ones have up to 400. I think DLP has more than that.
Err, simple. A vendor might install an application from a Microsoft competitor that adds the possibility to shutdown the system without first having to push 'start'.
Yeah, that would really confuse the users, I would be confused if for shutting down windows, I wouldn't have to click 'start' first...
Gee, the monopolist is claiming that all they are doing is protecting the consumer from 'confusion' by competition. Maybe Standard Oil and the old AT&T (both were once split up for monopoly abuse) used those arguments too, but probably only amongst themselves and never in a court testimony...
"So you assume he is speaking the thruth in court?:-)"
IANAL, but AFAIK in the legal system we have to assume exactly that until it's proven otherwise. So until then, I'll assume that he was not lying when he said that the XP OS core has no improvements or innovations compared to the 10 year old wfw311 OS core.
I didn't say so, I'm just quoting Billy from the yahoo article:
"... antitrust sanctions sought by nine states... would cripple Microsoft and set its Windows operating system back 10 years..."
The mentioned antitrust sanctions are to force Microsoft to release an OS with just the OS functionality, without the addon apps. If billy says that's 10 years old stuff, then the OS part of wfw3.11 obviously is the same as the OS part of Wxp. Or do you think he's lying in court?
Ximian Evolution (available in debian/woody "apt-get install evolution"), a really nice email client for Gnome supports gnupg too. Mail verification, encryption, signing etc is as simple as one or two clicks.
So I don't know what David Del Torto means when he says "and it's really not there yet,", but it probably means that when he clicks on "Start" he doesn't see it yet. Maybe he should switch to Debian.
I opened it up, and looked at the first two graphs 'computer industry 1983' and 'computer industry 2002', and they make it seem as if a user can go from vendor to vendor in 2002, but was locked into a specific vendor in 1983. That's just not true. Users are at least equally if not more locked into MS for operating systems and some applications than they ever were in 1983 locked into any of the other vendors. And the company doing everything it can against interoperability (including the latest file sharing patent BS) is... Microsoft.
But the point is not whether or not the end user is allowed to compose the bundle of software that goes on their PC, but whether or not the PC manufacturer is allowed to compose the bundle of software that goes preloaded with every new PC. Even if it were a MS operating system, for the OEMs, there should be the option to use the boring $5 clean OS without addons (you know, the part that even Bill Gates testified hasn't changed in the last 10 years), and spend the rest of the money on addon tools from various competing software vendors.
But now, with the way Windows is, and with the way MS OEM contracts are, that's not possible. That's the monopoly-abuse that is to be countered by this demand from the nine states.
"OK, so how do i find out that one of my machines is doing this and how do i fix it"
Check all machines (and then doublecheck), or check the traffic that is leaving your site:
Look at your firewall logs: There should not be any outgoing traffic to any IP address and port number 53 except from the company internal DNS servers. If you don't see any traffic to port 53 at all in your logs, then you'll first have to enable logging of that traffic on your firewall (unless your firewall doubles as the DNS, in which case you might not see the queries).
Next step: Get educated in TCP/IP and firewalling.
- 6 replies here and the site already is slashdotted.
Anyway, I think you can make cd drives that spin 4000x if you want, because it might be possible to put the cd in braces to hold it together, and/or to rotate the laser instead. Or how about using multiple lasers?
It's just like silicon transistors: There's always somebody saying there is a final physical limit we'll reach within the five years...
Often, we(they)'ll find a way around the limitation.
I have one of those boards. It has a builtin MPEG2 encoder. I use it in an Athlon XP1600+ with a Matrox G400 video card and a 5400rpm Maxtor. I configured the G400 dual-head card in 'clone' mode, the second head is connected to my TV through SVHS for the playback. Note the creative didn't work for me with a Geforce2-MX
The board comes with a remote. The PVR software remembers the location where you were while watching a recording, so you can flip between recordings and live TV and it will continue where you left. You can set the MPEG2 bit-rate at any level up to 8mbits. For my 27" TV, 2-3mbit is good enough for most of my recordings.
When watching time-shifted TV (=recording and playing back simultaneously), it consumes 40% CPU on my box when I set the display size to either fullscreen or 640x480, and approx 25% CPU when I set the display size to 320x240. When I record a program while the PVR software is on 'standby' (not watching), the CPU usage is below 5%.
I've been told by other users that when you share the mpg drive on a local network, then a second box without the videoblaster card, but with the PVR software loaded can be used to watch recorded shows too, independent from what you're doing on the first box.
The three things I'm missing are an interactive TV guide, a direct SVHS output, and a Linux version of the software, or otherwise at least a Linux version of a driver for the card. As soon as they integrate at least the TV guide I'd say the board is worth the $100. but until then, I'd say it's a nice and promising toy, but not yet worth what they're asking.
In Bill's analogy, the otherwise would-be-programmers become farmers and do their programming in the evenings for free to create GPL-ed software.
Call me strange, but to me that seems like a more productive society, because instead of just delivering computer programs, this programmer-farmer is now also delivering eggs, meat, and spinach! Als all your citizens can use (afford) the software without paying a cent or doing any software piracy, because it's _free_ software.
Every half-smart economist will see that Bill is talking nonsense. The tax argument tends to forget that if companies have to buy software, they themselves pay less taxes because their costs are higher. Plus really the only way to improve economy on a macro level is to increase productivity. Enter the farmer moonlighting with GPL.
It has a remote and has pvr software that lets you program shows, lets you view recorded programs while recording, lets you pause live tv, select recording bitrate and resolution, etc. It's currently still missing an interactive TV guide though (bad bad).
A $500 PC with this $100 card will easily be able to handle MPEG2 streams.
Slashdot Mirror
"If we consider that Thawte is selling their 128-but SuperCerts [thawte.com] at the price of US $300 per year"
Hey, something has to pay for those trips to space. We'll all have to chip in.
"The company says it will restrict .Pro to doctors, lawyers or accountants: 'qualified professionals in good standing ... "
Hmm. Pretty shortsighted to think that those are the only professionals out there.
I'm not saying ads don't work. I'm saying mass media ads are a lot less effective than direct targeted ads, and the new media in the changing world of technology including PVRs make that more and more possible.
I'm still not buying another new car, neither are dancing or singing people in or around cars things that make me interested in the brand. Sure, the marketing people play the statistics and know that music and dancing people 'sell cars' in the percentages, but I for example base my choice on car size, engine power & technology, available options, dealer location, warranty time, safety, looks&color. So an ad geared towards me would show me the good stuff that I use to choose the car ('look at this: this is the size boat this car will tow', without the disclaimers you hear all the time now 'professional driver, nonstandard automobile, closed concourse' and all that b.s. about $1 down).
Mass media works only on the lowest-common-denominator, so they can't target me directly on TV, because many people for example won't like my choice of color, and may not be interested to see what's under the hood. So they show the thing that in _totals_ after summation of everybody, averaging out of differences between peope, gets the most cars sold. And then in the next ad they show me that nsync has released a new CD. I'm not the median of the audience, I'm me. I'm not even the 'target' audience for that nsycn cds. Summarizing, all those mass-media marketing minutes are 95% lost to me, while a directly targeted ad might make me go to the store immediately, with much much better hit rates for those ads.
A large part of the commercials they show me are about things that definitely will not generate sales for them. Most of the remaining commercials have only a slight probability of generating brand recognition next time I'm in a store picking up a bottle of peanuts. I'm just saying that if some clothing manufacturer would show me an ad in which they claim their pants were optimized for Linux, I'd buy it right away (even though I know it can't really be true, they just hit the right strings). However when they show that you can walk like an idiot in their pants because they are supposed to be 'superlight', then I don't care at all, and I'll get whatever fits best and is cheapest when I'm in the store.
Sure, they want to repeat things in which I'm not interested, so that when the day comes they get brand recognition. But even then, ads for stuff that 'm actually looking for or might actually be interested in are 500% more effective, they will generate sales the same week instead of hoping to give marginally more brand recognition some time in the future.
Right on the bat.
I think Kellner is responding to messages from his advertisers that they realize that a lot of people don't actually watch the TV commercials and want to pay less.
On the Internet, one of the factors in the dot com bomb was declining ad revenues because advertisers realized that the banner ad wasn't worth as much as what they were paying for it. Maybe the same advertisers are now questioning the value of TV ads.
As they should, because I've seen enough beep-beep commercials (I just bought a new car, am not looking for another), neither do I have herpes or am I looking for a lawyer. The time of mass media marketed TV ads is over, advertisers are realizing how relatively worthless they are.
What PVRs can do for you is viewer profiling and targeted ads. After a couple of car ads, I'd tell the machine I just bought a new car, and then it will show me commercials for accessories for my new car, and cell phones and PDAs instead, because I'm in the market for new ones right now. What counts in advertising is eyeballs, and another car ad doesn't get my eyeballs right now, it doesn't matter whether I'm looking live or recorded TV.
Really, this will become one of the classic examples that established industry first fights ferociously against changes, and in the end praises the changed environment.
CRT is still CRT, it doesn't matter whether or not the tube is big or small, or where the phosporus is located. A CRT monitor is still a projection system, because the electron beams project an image to the front of the tube where the phosphorus converts it into visible light. The only difference with a large screen 'rear projection TV' is that there the phospohurus is located farther away from the screen.
Ditto LCD, LCD is a light filter. An LCD panel is a light filtering LCD layer on top of a backlight. In a projector, it's an light filtering LCD screen in front of a more intensive bulb. Possibly the projector includes a mirror (and cooling) surface right behind the LCD screen and the light performs a 180 right before or after passing through the LCD, but it's really the same thing, the LCD filters the light.
What is darkest is not important. All you need is sufficient contrast ratio, and then you control the light in your viewing room and you colour your projection screen and its surroundings to reflect the absolute black level that matches your viewing room and preferences.
This discussion contains some interesting material to read.
When you say that 'LCD' has a better contrast than a 'CRT', you've got to be kidding. My 21" trinitron CRT on my desk still is visible when the sun shines directly on it, yet my TFT/LCD laptop has serious problems when that happens.
In addition to that, 'black level has nothing to do with contrast ratio'. Hmm. contrast ratio = white level divided by black level. Quite much so something to do with it.
Hmm. Actually, for centuries piracy usually happens in international waters where the piracy acts that were performed would not fall under the jurisdiction of any country. No countries' laws apply in international waters. If the pirates operated in the jurisdiction of a country, the pirates could be prosecuted by that country, and hence it would not be called piracy, but it would be called by what crimes occured during the piracy acts 'theft', 'murder', 'robbery', etc.
So, piracy in history has always happened in a place where there are no laws to protect the victims.
Now in this case, since there are laws and valid jurisdictions to protect the victims of these acts described as 'piracy' (in the form of copyright laws), I resent the use of the term 'piracy' as it pollutes the genuine history of the words 'pirate' and 'piracy'. Why don't they call it what it is: the act of 'unauthorized copying of copyrighted material'? If they did that, then it would be clear to everybody what was meant and statements like 'piracy is copying' would not be necessary, because the statement 'unauthorized copying of copyrighted material is copying' doesn't have any informative value to begin with.
Why do they need to misappropriate a historic term. After their abuse, a 'pirates story' will never be the same anymore. Genuine piracy has nothing to do with the Internet or software, or 'IP' in whichever context, piracy has to do with parrots, hooks, eye patches, cannons, knives, strong liquor, drunks, and sinking ships.
Actually, sea pirates currently operating are at least as bad as they were in the past: robbing and murdering without mercy. Last December, pirates killed a famous blue water competition sailer who anchored somewhere too close to pirates with an eye on his equipment and engine. Another story about that incident here
You can get those micromirrors in projection TVs too, it's called 'DLP'. I was really impressed when I looked at a DLP display at a specialty store. Still very expensive though ($10k or so)
Btw, I've seen the term 'contrast ratio' used in the specs of projectors/TVs. AFAIK, LCD projectors often have a contrast ration of 200 or so, the better ones have up to 400. I think DLP has more than that.
"Now what's all this about the Start button?"
Err, simple. A vendor might install an application from a Microsoft competitor that adds the possibility to shutdown the system without first having to push 'start'.
Yeah, that would really confuse the users, I would be confused if for shutting down windows, I wouldn't have to click 'start' first...
Gee, the monopolist is claiming that all they are doing is protecting the consumer from 'confusion' by competition. Maybe Standard Oil and the old AT&T (both were once split up for monopoly abuse) used those arguments too, but probably only amongst themselves and never in a court testimony...
"So you assume he is speaking the thruth in court? :-)"
IANAL, but AFAIK in the legal system we have to assume exactly that until it's proven otherwise. So until then, I'll assume that he was not lying when he said that the XP OS core has no improvements or innovations compared to the 10 year old wfw311 OS core.
"Same core as Windows XP? _Really_?"
... would cripple Microsoft and set its Windows operating system back 10 years ..."
I didn't say so, I'm just quoting Billy from the yahoo article:
"... antitrust sanctions sought by nine states
The mentioned antitrust sanctions are to force Microsoft to release an OS with just the OS functionality, without the addon apps. If billy says that's 10 years old stuff, then the OS part of wfw3.11 obviously is the same as the OS part of Wxp. Or do you think he's lying in court?
Ximian Evolution (available in debian/woody "apt-get install evolution"), a really nice email client for Gnome supports gnupg too. Mail verification, encryption, signing etc is as simple as one or two clicks.
So I don't know what David Del Torto means when he says "and it's really not there yet,", but it probably means that when he clicks on "Start" he doesn't see it yet. Maybe he should switch to Debian.
tridiavnc and its companion developers site , have integrated tight and jpg encoding in their version, plus added an acceptable windows installer.
Actually, AFAIK most of his fortune is based on MSFT stock, and that went down 2.81% today.
So I'd say he actually lost money while sitting on that stand testifying.
I opened it up, and looked at the first two graphs 'computer industry 1983' and 'computer industry 2002', and they make it seem as if a user can go from vendor to vendor in 2002, but was locked into a specific vendor in 1983. That's just not true. Users are at least equally if not more locked into MS for operating systems and some applications than they ever were in 1983 locked into any of the other vendors. And the company doing everything it can against interoperability (including the latest file sharing patent BS) is... Microsoft.
Your sarcasm is loud and clear.
But the point is not whether or not the end user is allowed to compose the bundle of software that goes on their PC, but whether or not the PC manufacturer is allowed to compose the bundle of software that goes preloaded with every new PC. Even if it were a MS operating system, for the OEMs, there should be the option to use the boring $5 clean OS without addons (you know, the part that even Bill Gates testified hasn't changed in the last 10 years), and spend the rest of the money on addon tools from various competing software vendors.
But now, with the way Windows is, and with the way MS OEM contracts are, that's not possible. That's the monopoly-abuse that is to be countered by this demand from the nine states.
"OK, so how do i find out that one of my machines is doing this and how do i fix it"
Check all machines (and then doublecheck), or check the traffic that is leaving your site:
Look at your firewall logs: There should not be any outgoing traffic to any IP address and port number 53 except from the company internal DNS servers. If you don't see any traffic to port 53 at all in your logs, then you'll first have to enable logging of that traffic on your firewall (unless your firewall doubles as the DNS, in which case you might not see the queries).
Next step: Get educated in TCP/IP and firewalling.
"I've lost several CDRs to 72x drives after 2-3 years of use"
;-))
heh, good thing(tm) I didn't throw out those olde 12x and 16x drives.
- 6 replies here and the site already is slashdotted.
Anyway, I think you can make cd drives that spin 4000x if you want, because it might be possible to put the cd in braces to hold it together, and/or to rotate the laser instead. Or how about using multiple lasers?
It's just like silicon transistors: There's always somebody saying there is a final physical limit we'll reach within the five years...
Often, we(they)'ll find a way around the limitation.
I have such a card and haven't lost a show yet.
The main things I'm missing are the electronic program guide (EPG) and the Linux driver.
I don't work for a company that makes a PVR, so I don't have to post anonymously.
I have one of those boards. It has a builtin MPEG2 encoder. I use it in an Athlon XP1600+ with a Matrox G400 video card and a 5400rpm Maxtor. I configured the G400 dual-head card in 'clone' mode, the second head is connected to my TV through SVHS for the playback. Note the creative didn't work for me with a Geforce2-MX
The board comes with a remote. The PVR software remembers the location where you were while watching a recording, so you can flip between recordings and live TV and it will continue where you left. You can set the MPEG2 bit-rate at any level up to 8mbits. For my 27" TV, 2-3mbit is good enough for most of my recordings.
When watching time-shifted TV (=recording and playing back simultaneously), it consumes 40% CPU on my box when I set the display size to either fullscreen or 640x480, and approx 25% CPU when I set the display size to 320x240. When I record a program while the PVR software is on 'standby' (not watching), the CPU usage is below 5%.
I've been told by other users that when you share the mpg drive on a local network, then a second box without the videoblaster card, but with the PVR software loaded can be used to watch recorded shows too, independent from what you're doing on the first box.
The three things I'm missing are an interactive TV guide, a direct SVHS output, and a Linux version of the software, or otherwise at least a Linux version of a driver for the card. As soon as they integrate at least the TV guide I'd say the board is worth the $100. but until then, I'd say it's a nice and promising toy, but not yet worth what they're asking.
In Bill's analogy, the otherwise would-be-programmers become farmers and do their programming in the evenings for free to create GPL-ed software.
Call me strange, but to me that seems like a more productive society, because instead of just delivering computer programs, this programmer-farmer is now also delivering eggs, meat, and spinach! Als all your citizens can use (afford) the software without paying a cent or doing any software piracy, because it's _free_ software.
Every half-smart economist will see that Bill is talking nonsense. The tax argument tends to forget that if companies have to buy software, they themselves pay less taxes because their costs are higher. Plus really the only way to improve economy on a macro level is to increase productivity. Enter the farmer moonlighting with GPL.
"...while it's pumping a GB/hour to disk."
The creative videoblaster digital vcr card has a built-in MPEG2 codec. Available on the web and at your local compusa.
It has a remote and has pvr software that lets you program shows, lets you view recorded programs while recording, lets you pause live tv, select recording bitrate and resolution, etc. It's currently still missing an interactive TV guide though (bad bad).
A $500 PC with this $100 card will easily be able to handle MPEG2 streams.
For 2.4, Torvalds recommends SWAP= 2xRAM
Has to do with swap fragmentation.