I'd be more comfortable running a system running a vendor dbms rather than an Open Source implementation - just because when shit hits the fan (which it invariably does), at least there's ultimately someone responsible for it.
But MySQL is a vendor DBMS if you want it to be. You can buy the product and support from MySQL.com.
However, even if we invent a hypothetical Open Source product where paid support isn't available, there are circumstances where I get really fed up of the "we can't use that, what if it breaks" attitude.
I've just moved from horrifically risk averse backwater within a Fortune 500 corporation, to an environment where maybe just once in a while you can say "No, you don't need paid support for that piece of Open Source software: if it breaks we have the expertise and resource to fix it within 24 hours".
Sometimes that's not enough -- sometimes you're risking tens of thousands of dollars and you want insurance against that. Sometimes, though, it *is* enough, and it's right to stop and make that decision.
From the article: "They would happily trade some to get their hands on the source code and a better deal."
How many are there who would actually look at the source code of a database, work on it rather than develop new applications based on it?
Let me rephrase the excerpt from the article: "Some users would happy forego certain features present in commercial databases if (1) it means reduced cost and (2) you access to the source code."
Why stick with expensive Oracle or DB2 if PostgreSQL does the job reliably enough and it's free? That's a no brainer.
I think you're asking, "why even look at the code if it's working?". Absolutely right. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But, if there's a feature missing that you require, then for certain businesses -- not all -- it may well make sense to add code yourself. A tech company may underutilised coders on the payroll: it may be cheaper to get them to code and support that feature than it is to sack them.
A large corporation (Sony, 3M, etc.) might need to deploy that feature in hundreds of places. Paying someone to code it gives them a lot of bang for the buck.
If database A works, then they are going to stick with database A until conditions change drastically. It hasn't happened now and doesn't seem like it will happen in the near future.
Successful businesses always look to reduce costs. If database A works, database B is $10,000 per year cheaper to license and support, the migration will cost $20,000 and you expect to continue using the system for over 2 years, then (cashflow allowing) it's a no-brainer to move. The only thing stopping you would be lack of business agility.
it's really very simple - if I can't work in CMYK colourspace for professional colour separation, then the app is a nonstarter - it's dead right out of the gate.
In understand this, but the survey in question was of general computer users, not just professional designers targetting print.
Do that many people/really/ design for professional print media?
My perception (read: "guess") is that *most* Photoshop users use it to tweak JPEGs. They do not require colour accuracy within great tolerances and probably don't have the hardware to do that anyway.
Such people will have invested some time learning to do what they want to do in Photoshop. The GIMP can probably do what they want, but they'll be put off by the learning curve and by FUD.
>> Unlike grown-ups, kids didn't consent to being displayed for >> sexual purposes.
> That's an interesting concept, but I'm not certain that I agree > (at least WRT an eighteen-year-old age limit -- I think that you'll > find that most teens have an understanding of sexuality).
Let's work out the morals in the general case before moving on to boundary conditions. Think in terms of 8 year olds, not 17 year olds. Suddenly it seems a bit more distasteful, no?
Child porn is a non-issue. Child abuse is another matter. Come up with a program to stop child abuse, you don't have a child porn issue any more.
While I agree with the sentiment, I think that's unrealistic. If there's a demand for child porn, children will be abused to feed that demand. In other words, children are being abused, who would not be getting abused if people weren't paying money for footage of it happening.
Now, if you could detect the child abuse, prevent it, and let that market go unfed, that would be brilliant -- but people have a pesky habit of not getting caught.
furthermore, pornography is NOT a crime by itself.. or else pls convict De Sade, Nabokov (for lolita) and many others..
If the statute book has a law written in it that says "Pornography is illegal", then porn is a crime. That's how law works.
However Lolita is not porn. So even in countries where porn is illegal, Nabakov would walk free. Read Nabokov, then watch "Cum Gargling Sluts 6" and you should notice the difference. Sade, I'll reserve judgement on.
Mind you, obscenity is notoriously difficult to define (Justice Potter Stewart: "I know it when I see it", 1964). Unfortunately the best we can do is rely on a general consensus in our particular society, and hope that our courts reflect that. Bear in mind that something can be obscene without being pornography -- some of the artworks produced by Jake and Dinos Chapman, Paul McCarthy, etc. push the boundaries of decency (in a necessary and valuable way) without being porn.
That said, a lot of people accuse even live audiences of being distracting or sounding artificial, and that's because the audiences are encouraged by the programme-makers to make as much noise as possible, even if a joke isn't very funny.
It is, to an an extent, a directorial decision. I went to a sitcom shooting in Hollywood ("The Geena Davies Show" -- high prestige, huh?) where the warm-up guy, under direction from the production team, coached us in how to laugh. He'd say "Now remember, you're here to add to the atmosphere, and to encourage the actors, so if there's a joke where at home you'd just chuckle a bit, just exaggerate that a bit so it's a big belly laugh". For a second take, he'd say "This time around, you'll have heard the joke before, so you're not going to want to laugh quite as much -- but I want you to try and remember how it felt to see that the first time and laugh like you did that time."... and so on...
Most amusingly, at one point in the story one of the characters drops a bombshell about an ex-lover or something. For take two, the warm-up says "Now we've just learned that [... whatever...]; that's quite a bombshell, so when he says it again in the second take, everyone go 'ooooooooooooh!', let's practice that shall we?", then, "Oh wait a minute -- the director's telling me he doesn't want to go for that 'Home Improvements' vibe, so please do NOT do the 'ooooh' thing."
There was a documentary about "the death of the sitcom" (referring specifically to home-grown UK sitcomes) recently. Studio audiences were discussed in depth. A studio shoot puts some major constraints on the production: sets have to be built like theatre sets, with a missing 4th wall, so you can only shoot from a limited number of angles. Actors have to project, so it's theatrical not naturalistic. Cameras and mics can't get in close because that would spoil the view for the studio audience.
Their big comparisom was between "The Royle Family" and Victoria Wood's "Dinner Ladies". The former -- massively popular for some reason -- is filmed almost like a fly-on-a-wall documentary, with no studio audience, and is very naturalistic. Victoria Wood wanted that kind of atmosphere in Dinner Ladies, but for some reason ended up with a studio audience. What made it look particularly old fashioned -- and VW pointed this out -- was that lines that should have been throwaway gags, then move on, had to be projected to the audience, then during the ensuing laugh, the cast had to stand there "like lemons" (her words) waiting for enough quiet to deliver the next line.
It's funny-ish, but I don't see it running past more than a few episodes before it gets pulled,
That doesn't tend to happen in the UK: probably because the airtime isn't quite as valuable as a US-wide major network slot. If someone's commissioned a series, then the whole series will get aired. So your first opportunity to get "pulled" will be when you're trying to get a 2nd series commissioned.
Having said that, a UK series is generally only 6 episodes: some of our more exportable shows (Dr Who!) are now being commissioned as 12 or 13 episodes in order to fit with the American TV seasons.
I think the UK system gives more of a chance to slow-burners and word-of-mouth successes. I don't think "Coupling" was an instant success in the UK, but it grew to be popular enough for a US remake. The US remake was pulled after 2 episodes, I gather.
I've not seen The IT Crowd just yet. Father Ted and Black Books were both fantastic, but Graham Linehan can miss sometimes. His "Hippies" failed to sparkle; I think the writing was probably up to scratch, but the actors failed to deliver.
I don't use iTMS, because I don't like the DRM and I'm not prepared to apply workarounds.
But I do use the iTunes application, which I find a bit clunky.
When Google started to give away Picasa, one common thing was to compare it with iPhoto. At the time I didn't have access to a Mac, so I couldn't compare them (I have done since: Picasa's a much nicer user experience), but I noted that if Google were to release a music application with a Picasa-like approach, then I'd drop iTunes in a heartbeat.
Google: give me a Picasa for music ("Mucasa"? Maybe not...) and I'll use it. Use it as a portal into a store, an advertising conduit, a way of collecting information about listening habits -- I'm fine with any of that.
let's focus on pure education -- facts, repetition, useful classes: how to read, write and perform basic math.
This sentence contradicts your subject line. Forcing "facts" on impressionable kids is indoctrination. Teaching them to think is education.
If you present evolution to a person who can think, not as a doctrine or a fact, but merely as a concept, an idea, then they're very likely to recognise its inherent elegance and accept it as an extremely likely candidate for an accurate explanation of what's really going on.
Are you saying that the USB spec requires latency lower than 802.11 can provide, or are you simply suggesting that, for example, using a USB mouse tunnelled over 802.11 would feel unacceptably sluggish due to latency?
If the former, fine. If the latter, then just don't use this for applications where latency matters. If I'm streaming audio from a USB hard drive then I don't mind about latency.
It looks very handy, but why should the PC need yet another wireless interface?
Surely with a clever enough driver, you could tunnel USB traffic over 802.11 (or even over TCP/IP). Make a USB hub that provides the server for this tunnelling client, and you'd wouldn't need a dongle.
I have an old series 1 TiVo, and I very seldom find it a problem that I can only record one thing at once (although I rigged up a second set top box so I can watch one thing while TiVo records another).
However, one of the cool things TiVo does that other PVRs don't, is auto-record suggested shows for you, just on the off-chance you might be interested. How cool would it be to have/everything/ from/every channel/ for the last --say-- week available to you, not so you could watch it all, but so that you had a complete choice and could cherry pick the best bits without having to think about setting the recorder in advance.
Based on standard def and DivX compression rates, I don't think it would be unrealistic at today's HDD prices to keep a one week buffer of (say) your favourite 10 channels; 99% of which you'd never watch.
You can get a similar effect, at much poorer resolution, by processing digital video of a pan. You take a narrow slice out of each frame, and append them together into a scanned image.
I've played with this and got some images I'm very pleased with. However it's spurred me into wanting to hack some scanner hardware. Unfortunately I'm more comfortable with software than I am with the mechanical...
Fire a rifle at a target, you might hit the bullseye. Fire buck shot at a target, you can't miss the bullseye.
Make 1 game and maybe it's a hit. Make 50 games, there's bound to be a hit.
It's a classic disruptive technology approach. In business terms, fund 10 skunkworks blue-sky projects on the assumption that 9 go nowhere and the tenth will be successful enough to justify the investment in all ten.
I guess the irony is that for inventing an original and innovative game, their prize is the platform with the least inventive collection of games. The natural home of Yet Another FPS.
I hear that some people still travel down old Route 66 on occasion...
And a mighty fine road it is too. However, old Route 66 varies from state to state. In some parts, partly due to the way the dice fell, and to the later efforts of preservationists, you can drive on the narrow old-style red slab road. Other parts of Route 66 have been literally paved over with an Interstate.
Long stretches of Interstate have a parallel access road, and in places that's old Route 66 itself.
Regardless, it's certainly possible to cross the USA on non-Interstate roads. I've come pretty close 3 times; but we weren't thorough enough to avoid Interstates when it would have been inconvenient.
More problematic would be finding a route with frequent enough battery charging opportunities.
More to the point, cars use a challenge-response protocol, so that they're not susceptible to replay attacks:
KEY: Hello, I am a key. Please let me in. CAR: Hmm, what do you get if you encrypt this random number with our shared secret? KEY: I get this number. CAR: Yep, me too. I'll open up.
Well, assuming you still have the same TV in 3 years, and you do all your tv watching on Over-The-Air stations (no cable or sat) then you will have to get what they are calling a 'digital converter box', which is essentially what we now refer to as an HD Tuner, but alot cheaper since it doesn't need the high quality output for your standard definition television.
Current AVerMedia already sells a nice HD Tuner for $90, with digital audio and component video, so I am MORE than confident that in the next few years, as the demand increases dramatically, that you will be able to get your digital converter box for a price within the $40 the government is offering you as a tradeoff for discontinuing your current service.
Indeed. In the UK digital terrestrial set-top boxes are piled high in supermarkets and are getting cheaper all the time. (£29.99 example). They're also getting smaller and better (e.g. more responsive menus and EPG; built in DVR etc.)
If you can receive it, it's basically pretty stupid/not/ to buy a digital set top box in the UK, if you get a signal. The basic service is free. The one downside is that some people need their ariels improved, which can cost a bit.
This isn't HD (that's yet to come), but the receiver electronics aren't much different in any important ways (whereas the display equipment to show HD without downsampling is different in expensive ways).
Stitching is all well and good, and I've used it with some success, but there are definitely circumstances where I'd prefer the old-fashioned slit scanning approach to creating panoramas, where moving subjects will be warped (often in interesting ways) rather than duplicated and ghosted around stitch seams.
I've recently been experimenting with doing the digital equivalent of this by ripping a slice from each frame of a panning video. The results can be nice but resolution is limited by the comparatively low resolution available from consumer video cameras (even HD).
It'd be really nice if one of these manufacturers made a camera with a mode which would capture a single pixel column at a time, at a high refresh rate, appending the capture to an image as it goes. You don't need a tripod or a motorised rotating mount to get results (I'd even argue that the results without are more interesting), but I bet the enterprising manufacturer could sell such accessories to people who bought the camera for other reasons.
You can homebrew a slit-scanning camera out of a hand scanner, but it would really be nice if the functionality was built into a compact general purpose digital camera.
Still, in order to use it, you have to TURN IT ON at the network hardware. Now what kind of company is going to turn on something like that when it allows people inside the network to control their hardware. None?
When I heard what UPnP did, I was astonished and horrified, but I has a skim-read of the spec, and the standard does appear to support some form of authentication. In other words there is a mode of operation where authenticatedauthorised people inside the network can control the network hardware. That sounds much better.
It's just that most of us only encounter UPnP on home networks etc., where authentication isn't used, for expedience. I'm happy with that. On my home network I just want stuff to work. If I let a virus onto my machine then it's my fault.
I work in a corporate environment with geographically diverse colleagues, and IM is an extremely useful medium for doing Real Work. You might like to argue that we could just as easily use the phone, but IM has advantages over the phone for certain applications. Especially, it's nice to be able to supplement phone conversations with IM -- we'll cut and paste email addresses, code fragments, log fragments, even screenshots rather than try to read them out or describe them.
On telephone conference calls, IM is a useful out of band medium for comparing notes with colleagues; "Should I mention x?", "Don't forget y".... but if you really really want it, use a corporate IM solution (such as Exchange IM or Apple iChat) to keep things local. Problem solved.
I agree with this. OTOH, it's in my employer's interest to allow me access to MSN messenger. Some of my technical peers work for different companies. If I have external IM, I can go to them for technical assistance (and they can come to me: it's a two way street).
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I'd be more comfortable running a system running a vendor dbms rather than an Open Source implementation - just because when shit hits the fan (which it invariably does), at least there's ultimately someone responsible for it.
But MySQL is a vendor DBMS if you want it to be. You can buy the product and support from MySQL.com.
However, even if we invent a hypothetical Open Source product where paid support isn't available, there are circumstances where I get really fed up of the "we can't use that, what if it breaks" attitude.
I've just moved from horrifically risk averse backwater within a Fortune 500 corporation, to an environment where maybe just once in a while you can say "No, you don't need paid support for that piece of Open Source software: if it breaks we have the expertise and resource to fix it within 24 hours".
Sometimes that's not enough -- sometimes you're risking tens of thousands of dollars and you want insurance against that. Sometimes, though, it *is* enough, and it's right to stop and make that decision.
From the article: "They would happily trade some to get their hands on the source code and a better deal."
How many are there who would actually look at the source code of a database, work on it rather than develop new applications based on it?
Let me rephrase the excerpt from the article:
"Some users would happy forego certain features present in commercial databases if (1) it means reduced cost and (2) you access to the source code."
Why stick with expensive Oracle or DB2 if PostgreSQL does the job reliably enough and it's free? That's a no brainer.
I think you're asking, "why even look at the code if it's working?". Absolutely right. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But, if there's a feature missing that you require, then for certain businesses -- not all -- it may well make sense to add code yourself. A tech company may underutilised coders on the payroll: it may be cheaper to get them to code and support that feature than it is to sack them.
A large corporation (Sony, 3M, etc.) might need to deploy that feature in hundreds of places. Paying someone to code it gives them a lot of bang for the buck.
If database A works, then they are going to stick with database A until conditions change drastically. It hasn't happened now and doesn't seem like it will happen in the near future.
Successful businesses always look to reduce costs. If database A works, database B is $10,000 per year cheaper to license and support, the migration will cost $20,000 and you expect to continue using the system for over 2 years, then (cashflow allowing) it's a no-brainer to move. The only thing stopping you would be lack of business agility.
it's really very simple - if I can't work in CMYK colourspace for professional colour separation, then the app is a nonstarter - it's dead right out of the gate.
/really/ design for professional print media?
In understand this, but the survey in question was of general computer users, not just professional designers targetting print.
Do that many people
My perception (read: "guess") is that *most* Photoshop users use it to tweak JPEGs. They do not require colour accuracy within great tolerances and probably don't have the hardware to do that anyway.
Such people will have invested some time learning to do what they want to do in Photoshop. The GIMP can probably do what they want, but they'll be put off by the learning curve and by FUD.
Did Fawlty Towers or Flying Circus ship with built-in laughter?
Yes.
>> Unlike grown-ups, kids didn't consent to being displayed for
>> sexual purposes.
> That's an interesting concept, but I'm not certain that I agree
> (at least WRT an eighteen-year-old age limit -- I think that you'll
> find that most teens have an understanding of sexuality).
Let's work out the morals in the general case before moving on to boundary conditions. Think in terms of 8 year olds, not 17 year olds. Suddenly it seems a bit more distasteful, no?
Child porn is a non-issue. Child abuse is another matter. Come up with a program to stop child abuse, you don't have a child porn issue any more.
While I agree with the sentiment, I think that's unrealistic. If there's a demand for child porn, children will be abused to feed that demand. In other words, children are being abused, who would not be getting abused if people weren't paying money for footage of it happening.
Now, if you could detect the child abuse, prevent it, and let that market go unfed, that would be brilliant -- but people have a pesky habit of not getting caught.
furthermore, pornography is NOT a crime by itself.. or else pls convict De Sade, Nabokov (for lolita) and many others..
If the statute book has a law written in it that says "Pornography is illegal", then porn is a crime. That's how law works.
However Lolita is not porn. So even in countries where porn is illegal, Nabakov would walk free. Read Nabokov, then watch "Cum Gargling Sluts 6" and you should notice the difference. Sade, I'll reserve judgement on.
Mind you, obscenity is notoriously difficult to define (Justice Potter Stewart: "I know it when I see it", 1964). Unfortunately the best we can do is rely on a general consensus in our particular society, and hope that our courts reflect that. Bear in mind that something can be obscene without being pornography -- some of the artworks produced by Jake and Dinos Chapman, Paul McCarthy, etc. push the boundaries of decency (in a necessary and valuable way) without being porn.
That said, a lot of people accuse even live audiences of being distracting or sounding artificial, and that's because the audiences are encouraged by the programme-makers to make as much noise as possible, even if a joke isn't very funny.
... and so on ...
...]; that's quite a bombshell, so when he says it again in the second take, everyone go 'ooooooooooooh!', let's practice that shall we?", then, "Oh wait a minute -- the director's telling me he doesn't want to go for that 'Home Improvements' vibe, so please do NOT do the 'ooooh' thing."
It is, to an an extent, a directorial decision. I went to a sitcom shooting in Hollywood ("The Geena Davies Show" -- high prestige, huh?) where the warm-up guy, under direction from the production team, coached us in how to laugh. He'd say "Now remember, you're here to add to the atmosphere, and to encourage the actors, so if there's a joke where at home you'd just chuckle a bit, just exaggerate that a bit so it's a big belly laugh". For a second take, he'd say "This time around, you'll have heard the joke before, so you're not going to want to laugh quite as much -- but I want you to try and remember how it felt to see that the first time and laugh like you did that time."
Most amusingly, at one point in the story one of the characters drops a bombshell about an ex-lover or something. For take two, the warm-up says "Now we've just learned that [... whatever
There was a documentary about "the death of the sitcom" (referring specifically to home-grown UK sitcomes) recently. Studio audiences were discussed in depth. A studio shoot puts some major constraints on the production: sets have to be built like theatre sets, with a missing 4th wall, so you can only shoot from a limited number of angles. Actors have to project, so it's theatrical not naturalistic. Cameras and mics can't get in close because that would spoil the view for the studio audience.
Their big comparisom was between "The Royle Family" and Victoria Wood's "Dinner Ladies". The former -- massively popular for some reason -- is filmed almost like a fly-on-a-wall documentary, with no studio audience, and is very naturalistic. Victoria Wood wanted that kind of atmosphere in Dinner Ladies, but for some reason ended up with a studio audience. What made it look particularly old fashioned -- and VW pointed this out -- was that lines that should have been throwaway gags, then move on, had to be projected to the audience, then during the ensuing laugh, the cast had to stand there "like lemons" (her words) waiting for enough quiet to deliver the next line.
It's funny-ish, but I don't see it running past more than a few episodes before it gets pulled,
That doesn't tend to happen in the UK: probably because the airtime isn't quite as valuable as a US-wide major network slot. If someone's commissioned a series, then the whole series will get aired. So your first opportunity to get "pulled" will be when you're trying to get a 2nd series commissioned.
Having said that, a UK series is generally only 6 episodes: some of our more exportable shows (Dr Who!) are now being commissioned as 12 or 13 episodes in order to fit with the American TV seasons.
I think the UK system gives more of a chance to slow-burners and word-of-mouth successes. I don't think "Coupling" was an instant success in the UK, but it grew to be popular enough for a US remake. The US remake was pulled after 2 episodes, I gather.
I've not seen The IT Crowd just yet. Father Ted and Black Books were both fantastic, but Graham Linehan can miss sometimes. His "Hippies" failed to sparkle; I think the writing was probably up to scratch, but the actors failed to deliver.
I don't use iTMS, because I don't like the DRM and I'm not prepared to apply workarounds.
But I do use the iTunes application, which I find a bit clunky.
When Google started to give away Picasa, one common thing was to compare it with iPhoto. At the time I didn't have access to a Mac, so I couldn't compare them (I have done since: Picasa's a much nicer user experience), but I noted that if Google were to release a music application with a Picasa-like approach, then I'd drop iTunes in a heartbeat.
Google: give me a Picasa for music ("Mucasa"? Maybe not...) and I'll use it. Use it as a portal into a store, an advertising conduit, a way of collecting information about listening habits -- I'm fine with any of that.
let's focus on pure education -- facts, repetition, useful classes: how to read, write and perform basic math.
This sentence contradicts your subject line. Forcing "facts" on impressionable kids is indoctrination. Teaching them to think is education.
If you present evolution to a person who can think, not as a doctrine or a fact, but merely as a concept, an idea, then they're very likely to recognise its inherent elegance and accept it as an extremely likely candidate for an accurate explanation of what's really going on.
Are you saying that the USB spec requires latency lower than 802.11 can provide, or are you simply suggesting that, for example, using a USB mouse tunnelled over 802.11 would feel unacceptably sluggish due to latency?
If the former, fine. If the latter, then just don't use this for applications where latency matters. If I'm streaming audio from a USB hard drive then I don't mind about latency.
I don't think this is very interesting for your mouse or keyboard. Think printers, storage devices etc. instead.
It looks very handy, but why should the PC need yet another wireless interface?
Surely with a clever enough driver, you could tunnel USB traffic over 802.11 (or even over TCP/IP). Make a USB hub that provides the server for this tunnelling client, and you'd wouldn't need a dongle.
I have an old series 1 TiVo, and I very seldom find it a problem that I can only record one thing at once (although I rigged up a second set top box so I can watch one thing while TiVo records another).
/everything/ from /every channel/ for the last --say-- week available to you, not so you could watch it all, but so that you had a complete choice and could cherry pick the best bits without having to think about setting the recorder in advance.
However, one of the cool things TiVo does that other PVRs don't, is auto-record suggested shows for you, just on the off-chance you might be interested. How cool would it be to have
Based on standard def and DivX compression rates, I don't think it would be unrealistic at today's HDD prices to keep a one week buffer of (say) your favourite 10 channels; 99% of which you'd never watch.
You can get a similar effect, at much poorer resolution, by processing digital video of a pan. You take a narrow slice out of each frame, and append them together into a scanned image.
I've played with this and got some images I'm very pleased with. However it's spurred me into wanting to hack some scanner hardware. Unfortunately I'm more comfortable with software than I am with the mechanical...
I wrote up the video to panorama stuff.
Fire a rifle at a target, you might hit the bullseye. Fire buck shot at a target, you can't miss the bullseye.
Make 1 game and maybe it's a hit. Make 50 games, there's bound to be a hit.
It's a classic disruptive technology approach. In business terms, fund 10 skunkworks blue-sky projects on the assumption that 9 go nowhere and the tenth will be successful enough to justify the investment in all ten.
I guess the irony is that for inventing an original and innovative game, their prize is the platform with the least inventive collection of games. The natural home of Yet Another FPS.
Anyway, I guess my point was that the format for their filming was Segway + Big Van, not 2 Guys + 1 Segway.
So, we have to take it on trust that they didn't film a bit, pop the Segway into the van, drive 500 miles, get out, film a bit more, etc.
I hear that some people still travel down old Route 66 on occasion...
And a mighty fine road it is too. However, old Route 66 varies from state to state. In some parts, partly due to the way the dice fell, and to the later efforts of preservationists, you can drive on the narrow old-style red slab road. Other parts of Route 66 have been literally paved over with an Interstate.
Long stretches of Interstate have a parallel access road, and in places that's old Route 66 itself.
Regardless, it's certainly possible to cross the USA on non-Interstate roads. I've come pretty close 3 times; but we weren't thorough enough to avoid Interstates when it would have been inconvenient.
More problematic would be finding a route with frequent enough battery charging opportunities.
More to the point, cars use a challenge-response protocol, so that they're not susceptible to replay attacks:
KEY: Hello, I am a key. Please let me in.
CAR: Hmm, what do you get if you encrypt this random number with our shared secret?
KEY: I get this number.
CAR: Yep, me too. I'll open up.
Well, assuming you still have the same TV in 3 years, and you do all your tv watching on Over-The-Air stations (no cable or sat) then you will have to get what they are calling a 'digital converter box', which is essentially what we now refer to as an HD Tuner, but alot cheaper since it doesn't need the high quality output for your standard definition television.
Current AVerMedia already sells a nice HD Tuner for $90, with digital audio and component video, so I am MORE than confident that in the next few years, as the demand increases dramatically, that you will be able to get your digital converter box for a price within the $40 the government is offering you as a tradeoff for discontinuing your current service.
Indeed. In the UK digital terrestrial set-top boxes are piled high in supermarkets and are getting cheaper all the time. (£29.99 example). They're also getting smaller and better (e.g. more responsive menus and EPG; built in DVR etc.)
If you can receive it, it's basically pretty stupid
This isn't HD (that's yet to come), but the receiver electronics aren't much different in any important ways (whereas the display equipment to show HD without downsampling is different in expensive ways).
Stitching is all well and good, and I've used it with some success, but there are definitely circumstances where I'd prefer the old-fashioned slit scanning approach to creating panoramas, where moving subjects will be warped (often in interesting ways) rather than duplicated and ghosted around stitch seams.
I've recently been experimenting with doing the digital equivalent of this by ripping a slice from each frame of a panning video. The results can be nice but resolution is limited by the comparatively low resolution available from consumer video cameras (even HD).
It'd be really nice if one of these manufacturers made a camera with a mode which would capture a single pixel column at a time, at a high refresh rate, appending the capture to an image as it goes. You don't need a tripod or a motorised rotating mount to get results (I'd even argue that the results without are more interesting), but I bet the enterprising manufacturer could sell such accessories to people who bought the camera for other reasons.
You can homebrew a slit-scanning camera out of a hand scanner, but it would really be nice if the functionality was built into a compact general purpose digital camera.
Still, in order to use it, you have to TURN IT ON at the network hardware. Now what kind of company is going to turn on something like that when it allows people inside the network to control their hardware. None?
When I heard what UPnP did, I was astonished and horrified, but I has a skim-read of the spec, and the standard does appear to support some form of authentication. In other words there is a mode of operation where authenticatedauthorised people inside the network can control the network hardware. That sounds much better.
It's just that most of us only encounter UPnP on home networks etc., where authentication isn't used, for expedience. I'm happy with that. On my home network I just want stuff to work. If I let a virus onto my machine then it's my fault.
There's really no need for IM at work,
... but if you really really want it, use a corporate IM solution (such as Exchange IM or Apple iChat) to keep things local. Problem solved.
I work in a corporate environment with geographically diverse colleagues, and IM is an extremely useful medium for doing Real Work. You might like to argue that we could just as easily use the phone, but IM has advantages over the phone for certain applications. Especially, it's nice to be able to supplement phone conversations with IM -- we'll cut and paste email addresses, code fragments, log fragments, even screenshots rather than try to read them out or describe them.
On telephone conference calls, IM is a useful out of band medium for comparing notes with colleagues; "Should I mention x?", "Don't forget y".
I agree with this. OTOH, it's in my employer's interest to allow me access to MSN messenger. Some of my technical peers work for different companies. If I have external IM, I can go to them for technical assistance (and they can come to me: it's a two way street).