There's no other practical use for it but movie theatres. The bandwidth demands are obscene -- you couldn't broadcast with it, and you'd need to run it over fiber rather than coax for cable TV. Not to mention that a minimally sized UHDV set would take up most of a wall.
SGI has some good technologies that could be better served in other hands. MIPS is pretty good... sell it to Sony if they haven't cashed out on that already. Sony's probably the biggest user of the MIPS platform these days anyway. OpenGL? Apple could probably run with that. The supercomputer business... I don't know about that though. There hasn't been a substantial market for raw computing power in some years, or Thinking Machines and all them would still be in business. Irix? Open-source the good parts.
It's kind of a pity. Once upon a time an SGI Indy was the sexiest thing you could have on your desk -- I remember Yahoo ran a promo around '96 or so giving one away. And let us not forget the Nintendo 64, which was SGI Inside all the way. But you know, I took a look at SGI's website when I saw the original for this article and noted that their stuff doesn't top a gigahertz. Hardware is a commodity now and a cheap-to-midrange PC with a Celeron and a halfway decent GPU could blow the doors off what SGI's selling right now.
Not sure I'd cite Apple for an example there -- before the days of funky design and squeaky-clean retail presence, they limped along for a good few years there and even fired a CEO for botching a merger with Sun (or so the rumor mill held at the time). And I don't know about the rest of the Mac fanboy world, but I'm holding my breath hoping that this upcoming Intel switch isn't their biggest mistake of all time.
Worth noting that CVS is good enough for Apple to use as a primary source management system, and even if CVS has too many holes in it there's always Subversion to fix the worst of the problems.
College radio is great listening too, and most college stations have online streams. I like WTBU out of Boston University -- amazingly eclectic programming schedule.
The thing about no ads is a major driving force for satellite radio -- they can have edgier content as well because they're listener-subsidized.
Radio technology in North America -- well, it's not often that you have a need for automatic channel hopping in the US (don't know about Canada -- public broadcasting is very different down here). There's a few situations in more sparsely populated areas where it might be useful -- I know where I live there are at least two stations that operate on multiple frequencies -- but it isn't that common.
Some radios down here do support RDS reception though -- mostly car radios mind you, but they do do it. And digital radio is ~= satellite radio for the most part, as there isn't really a lot of demand for terrestrial digital broadcasting. People don't want to spend the money for digital if there's no value added.
I listen to BBC Radio (usually 6music) sometimes. The Beeb has a pretty good idea of how to take advantage of DAB -- they make it worthwhile by creating content that sits a little outside the mainstream, adding value and giving someone a reason to tune in. I don't think in Canada or the United States there is a single media operation with the clout to do that, and even if there is (Clear Channel and Viacom, as the biggest in the business, come to mind) there's no incentive to do it. The frequency allocations aren't there to begin with, and spending the money to create new services would affect their stock prices.
So even if we did want it (which I don't consider all that likely) Big Media has no incentive to provide. I fully expect HD Radio to be a complete failure in the market for that reason. If you want diversity, that's what web radio is for.
The C64 was *the* hacker box back in the day. You could do pretty much anything with anything without fear of corrupting the system (ROM has its advantages), and the capabilities of the system were just unreal for an 8-bit of its day (remember, it was originally supposed to be an arcade game platform). I never got to use Qlink (mom was a hardass about getting a modem) but I do remember some of the games I played -- I still wish I had a recording of the credits music from the C64 version of Arkanoid II. Absolutely blew the sound from the arcade version away, even if the graphics were nothing special by that point.
Violence in porn just doesn't register with me as sexy, and I suspect it doesn't to most people. It violates the idea of implied consent to me, really -- BDSM doesn't work, and rape fantasies are Right Out. I can't think I'm alone.
I've always wondered if Microsoft might not just take a BSD snapshot and build a Windows ABI on top of it... might use less resources than what they're selling...
The LP has certain advantages. Fidelity of sound reproduction is not one of them. Supposedly a lot of the objections to CDs stem from overcompensation for the digital sampling process on early CD mixes.
"HD Radio" is unnecessary but not particularly stupid per se. If they found a way to make it value-added the way the BBC did with their DAB services, then it would make sense...
I have three Cuecats, even modified a piece of proof-of-concept software to make a command line tool for using them (qccat -- google it. I bet whoever did would be the first to download it.) and I still haven't found a real use for the things.
The truth of the matter is that they were mildly interesting but nearly useless even when declawed. There's only so many things you can do with a bar code reader, and the Cuecat was notorious for being not even particularly good at that.
Riiiiight. Germany could never get their shit together regarding the bomb and yet their captured scientists were the ones who created it? No. Bad troll. No bridge for you.
I don't know what the British knew about the bomb (in any case, they had their own brain trust doing mindboggling work at Bletchley Park). As for German scientists, they were instrumental in the space program (Werner von Braun, for example), but they had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project. There were refugees from German rule -- Edward Teller from Hungary comes to mind as one major example -- but... aw, what am I doing troll-feeding anyway?
You'd be surprised. Not so good on analog, but digital composite is another story -- some of the early digital video specs were composite-based, and I think the main reason they didn't catch on was because the analog side of the workflow was all component. They were quite high quality for the time.
www.camcorderinfo.com does seem like a good review site. As for DVD, I gotta second it -- the one feature I've seen on DVD camcorders that is even remotely interesting is surround sound, and that strikes me as being quite useless for a home camcorder. Stick with DV if you're editing -- you'll probably never need anything better anyway.
DVDs in general use MPEG-2, which proves that if you're willing to devote enough time to optimizing your compression you can get absolutely immaculate pictures from it. But that isn't happening with a realtime MPEG encoder -- the HDV standard is just barely adequate for production work, and requires some heavy duty hardware on the camcorder to do it right.
As for other HD cameras, Sony has two, but they record in an off-kilter variant of 1080i, not the 720p that the JVC unit uses.
Well, all I can say is that a MiniDV cassette holds 13GB, which is still small compared to the total amount of data you'd need in a nonlinear editing project. I'd consider that (video editing in general really) probably the most space-intensive use of a computer and you're going to hit that 2GB limit fairly frequently doing NLE. (Why you'd be doing NLE on SCO, on the other hand, is a question I won't even consider asking.)
What I find inexcusable is the part about needing separate versions of the utilities to deal with large files. That's just sloppy and/or lazy programming -- shows a failure to take the issues of modern data throughput seriously, which is a Bad Idea for a server platform.
One of these days I want to learn Morse, but if the ITU says I don't need it I don't want it shoved down my throat. People are still going to learn it and use it as long as there are still QRP operators and people flying planes out there.
You're not really creating anything new there though. There's no reason to -- your fundamental issue there is not an OS issue, it's a driver and processing power issue. I'd wager that anything you've suggested above could be easily implemented by putting the hardware in the computer itself and adding driver and userland support from any one of the six major open source operating systems (that would be Darwin, Linux, Open/Net/FreeBSD, and OpenSolaris for those of you following along at home). There's no reason to change the underlying structure of the OS unless you need to optimize some aspect of its function (microkernels for modularity, file system abstractions, network stack improvements, that sort of thing. Even then only the microkernel makes any substantial changes in the architecture of the OS itself, and there's no reason to change the external face of the OS.)
On the other hand there is the issue of user interface. That's where the real innovation belongs -- to control all of these items you are going to need to integrate them into your operating environment somehow. That's out of the realm of the OS.
As for Bob Metcalfe... well, he may be a networking genius but he's a lousy pundit. Not as bad as Dvorak or O'Gara, but nothing to get excited about.
Actually Apple did try rewriting their OS from scratch. It was only when Copland turned into a crawling cancerous horror that could never be finished that they gave up and bought NeXT.
Amoxicillin is a penicillin derivative -- they're built on the same molecular base. Now I suppose it's possible that someone would react differently to the two drugs, but it makes sense that if you have a penicillin allergy you shouldn't take the chance.
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Interestingly that's roughly 1000 times the bandwidth of an NTSC DV-25 data stream. DV-25 happens to use 5:1 compression. Discuss.
There's no other practical use for it but movie theatres. The bandwidth demands are obscene -- you couldn't broadcast with it, and you'd need to run it over fiber rather than coax for cable TV. Not to mention that a minimally sized UHDV set would take up most of a wall.
Would be nice if true, but I'm not opening an e*trade account based on the words of an AC.
Aren't they using third-party video cards now?
SGI has some good technologies that could be better served in other hands. MIPS is pretty good... sell it to Sony if they haven't cashed out on that already. Sony's probably the biggest user of the MIPS platform these days anyway. OpenGL? Apple could probably run with that. The supercomputer business... I don't know about that though. There hasn't been a substantial market for raw computing power in some years, or Thinking Machines and all them would still be in business. Irix? Open-source the good parts.
It's kind of a pity. Once upon a time an SGI Indy was the sexiest thing you could have on your desk -- I remember Yahoo ran a promo around '96 or so giving one away. And let us not forget the Nintendo 64, which was SGI Inside all the way. But you know, I took a look at SGI's website when I saw the original for this article and noted that their stuff doesn't top a gigahertz. Hardware is a commodity now and a cheap-to-midrange PC with a Celeron and a halfway decent GPU could blow the doors off what SGI's selling right now.
Not sure I'd cite Apple for an example there -- before the days of funky design and squeaky-clean retail presence, they limped along for a good few years there and even fired a CEO for botching a merger with Sun (or so the rumor mill held at the time). And I don't know about the rest of the Mac fanboy world, but I'm holding my breath hoping that this upcoming Intel switch isn't their biggest mistake of all time.
Worth noting that CVS is good enough for Apple to use as a primary source management system, and even if CVS has too many holes in it there's always Subversion to fix the worst of the problems.
It really depends on what you need.
College radio is great listening too, and most college stations have online streams. I like WTBU out of Boston University -- amazingly eclectic programming schedule.
The thing about no ads is a major driving force for satellite radio -- they can have edgier content as well because they're listener-subsidized.
Radio technology in North America -- well, it's not often that you have a need for automatic channel hopping in the US (don't know about Canada -- public broadcasting is very different down here). There's a few situations in more sparsely populated areas where it might be useful -- I know where I live there are at least two stations that operate on multiple frequencies -- but it isn't that common.
Some radios down here do support RDS reception though -- mostly car radios mind you, but they do do it. And digital radio is ~= satellite radio for the most part, as there isn't really a lot of demand for terrestrial digital broadcasting. People don't want to spend the money for digital if there's no value added.
I listen to BBC Radio (usually 6music) sometimes. The Beeb has a pretty good idea of how to take advantage of DAB -- they make it worthwhile by creating content that sits a little outside the mainstream, adding value and giving someone a reason to tune in. I don't think in Canada or the United States there is a single media operation with the clout to do that, and even if there is (Clear Channel and Viacom, as the biggest in the business, come to mind) there's no incentive to do it. The frequency allocations aren't there to begin with, and spending the money to create new services would affect their stock prices.
So even if we did want it (which I don't consider all that likely) Big Media has no incentive to provide. I fully expect HD Radio to be a complete failure in the market for that reason. If you want diversity, that's what web radio is for.
The C64 was *the* hacker box back in the day. You could do pretty much anything with anything without fear of corrupting the system (ROM has its advantages), and the capabilities of the system were just unreal for an 8-bit of its day (remember, it was originally supposed to be an arcade game platform). I never got to use Qlink (mom was a hardass about getting a modem) but I do remember some of the games I played -- I still wish I had a recording of the credits music from the C64 version of Arkanoid II. Absolutely blew the sound from the arcade version away, even if the graphics were nothing special by that point.
Violence in porn just doesn't register with me as sexy, and I suspect it doesn't to most people. It violates the idea of implied consent to me, really -- BDSM doesn't work, and rape fantasies are Right Out. I can't think I'm alone.
I've always wondered if Microsoft might not just take a BSD snapshot and build a Windows ABI on top of it... might use less resources than what they're selling...
Ah, Sagan/BHA/LAW was a hardware project that was quite successful. I know because the 7100 was my second Macintosh system.
The LP has certain advantages. Fidelity of sound reproduction is not one of them. Supposedly a lot of the objections to CDs stem from overcompensation for the digital sampling process on early CD mixes.
"HD Radio" is unnecessary but not particularly stupid per se. If they found a way to make it value-added the way the BBC did with their DAB services, then it would make sense...
I have three Cuecats, even modified a piece of proof-of-concept software to make a command line tool for using them (qccat -- google it. I bet whoever did would be the first to download it.) and I still haven't found a real use for the things.
The truth of the matter is that they were mildly interesting but nearly useless even when declawed. There's only so many things you can do with a bar code reader, and the Cuecat was notorious for being not even particularly good at that.
Riiiiight. Germany could never get their shit together regarding the bomb and yet their captured scientists were the ones who created it? No. Bad troll. No bridge for you.
I don't know what the British knew about the bomb (in any case, they had their own brain trust doing mindboggling work at Bletchley Park). As for German scientists, they were instrumental in the space program (Werner von Braun, for example), but they had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project. There were refugees from German rule -- Edward Teller from Hungary comes to mind as one major example -- but... aw, what am I doing troll-feeding anyway?
You'd be surprised. Not so good on analog, but digital composite is another story -- some of the early digital video specs were composite-based, and I think the main reason they didn't catch on was because the analog side of the workflow was all component. They were quite high quality for the time.
www.camcorderinfo.com does seem like a good review site. As for DVD, I gotta second it -- the one feature I've seen on DVD camcorders that is even remotely interesting is surround sound, and that strikes me as being quite useless for a home camcorder. Stick with DV if you're editing -- you'll probably never need anything better anyway.
Well...
DVDs in general use MPEG-2, which proves that if you're willing to devote enough time to optimizing your compression you can get absolutely immaculate pictures from it. But that isn't happening with a realtime MPEG encoder -- the HDV standard is just barely adequate for production work, and requires some heavy duty hardware on the camcorder to do it right.
As for other HD cameras, Sony has two, but they record in an off-kilter variant of 1080i, not the 720p that the JVC unit uses.
Well, all I can say is that a MiniDV cassette holds 13GB, which is still small compared to the total amount of data you'd need in a nonlinear editing project. I'd consider that (video editing in general really) probably the most space-intensive use of a computer and you're going to hit that 2GB limit fairly frequently doing NLE. (Why you'd be doing NLE on SCO, on the other hand, is a question I won't even consider asking.)
What I find inexcusable is the part about needing separate versions of the utilities to deal with large files. That's just sloppy and/or lazy programming -- shows a failure to take the issues of modern data throughput seriously, which is a Bad Idea for a server platform.
Exactly. Utter spite from the Lee Atwater playbook.
One of these days I want to learn Morse, but if the ITU says I don't need it I don't want it shoved down my throat. People are still going to learn it and use it as long as there are still QRP operators and people flying planes out there.
You're not really creating anything new there though. There's no reason to -- your fundamental issue there is not an OS issue, it's a driver and processing power issue. I'd wager that anything you've suggested above could be easily implemented by putting the hardware in the computer itself and adding driver and userland support from any one of the six major open source operating systems (that would be Darwin, Linux, Open/Net/FreeBSD, and OpenSolaris for those of you following along at home). There's no reason to change the underlying structure of the OS unless you need to optimize some aspect of its function (microkernels for modularity, file system abstractions, network stack improvements, that sort of thing. Even then only the microkernel makes any substantial changes in the architecture of the OS itself, and there's no reason to change the external face of the OS.)
On the other hand there is the issue of user interface. That's where the real innovation belongs -- to control all of these items you are going to need to integrate them into your operating environment somehow. That's out of the realm of the OS.
As for Bob Metcalfe... well, he may be a networking genius but he's a lousy pundit. Not as bad as Dvorak or O'Gara, but nothing to get excited about.
Actually Apple did try rewriting their OS from scratch. It was only when Copland turned into a crawling cancerous horror that could never be finished that they gave up and bought NeXT.
Amoxicillin is a penicillin derivative -- they're built on the same molecular base. Now I suppose it's possible that someone would react differently to the two drugs, but it makes sense that if you have a penicillin allergy you shouldn't take the chance.