If you're willing to look beyond the Pi, the BeagleBone Black might be a good alternative. It has a significantly faster processor (1 GHz ARMv7 vs. 700MHz ARMv6, about twice the performance typically and even more if your application can take advantage of new SIMD instructions) and more I/O. Add the Audio Cape (24/96 capable TLV320AIC3104 codec, $30) and you're set. The combination won't quite reach your price point (the new 4GB version of the BB Black is about $55) but you could get to $150 for receive-only or $200 for RXTX, not too bad.
O3b's business plan isn't currently about selling satellite dishes to individual subscribers. They plan to offer their service mostly to local internet providers, who would in turn provide local service using other technologies. I don't think it's likely that the local providers will have much interest in doing wired infrastructure; 3G or 4G wireless, or WiFi for smaller areas, are more likely.
Most people won't need a separate sound card or external interface for playback of music, movies, or game sounds. Audiophiles with high quality speakers or headphones can still benefit from a good DAC (digital to analog converter). People who want to play surround sound from a laptop may also benefit if they are using a receiver or speaker system that only has analog surround inputs, or if they have an older laptop with no HDMI port.
In a current home theater setup you're likely to be sending sound to the receiver via HDMI. In that setup a separate sound card will give you no quality benefit, because the DAC is in the receiver rather than the computer. HDMI also eliminates the need for multichannel analog audio outputs, which laptops rarely have.
Recording is another matter entirely. Laptops typically only have a mono microphone input. Desktop systems usually have a stereo line in, but even that is not enough channels for many recording scenarios. Onboard ADCs (analog to digital converter) are usually low quality and suffer from high levels of noise, in part because of having to exist inside the electrically noisy computer enclosure. A quality recording interface will let you make much better recordings. The best ones are found in music stores (either brick and mortar or online) or from specialty manufacturers online, not in computer stores, though a Sound Blaster is significantly better than most onboard audio. Special audiophile motherboards may be an exception; those use better converters and pay attention to filtering and shielding.
Creative has a professional line, E-MU. That brand is decent for the price, though in typical Creative fashion the published specs overstate the actual performance. Current E-MU products top out at two microphone inputs, so they're inadequate for most professional studio applications. But they might be useful in some home studio setups or for field recording.
Life expectancy is an issue in some applications. If you wanted to build an electric bus, for example, where the battery would likely have to withstand multiple charge-discharge cycles every day, the current lifespan of batteries is a problem. You might well have to replace the battery annually.
Mixed power catenary-standalone bus rapid transit systems (like the airport branch of the Silver Line in Boston) are an even more extreme case. Currently the MBTA uses electric/diesel dual mode buses on that route; they use electricity from overhead wires while in the underground busways and a diesel engine for the above-ground parts of the route. It would be more environmentally friendly to replace those with pure electric vehicles that charged while operating in the busways and discharged on the above-ground segments, but that vehicle would see as many as 50 deep charge-discharge cycles every day. How deep the cycles would be depends on the size of the battery or capacitor, but you would probably want to keep it relatively small to keep cost and weight down.
Don Lancaster never wanted to go corporate. He likes his independent life. He wrote a book about how to do it yourself: The Incredible Secret Money Machine. The second edition of the book is available as a PDF download on his web site: http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/i...
Er, no. The original version of DOS was developed by Seattle Computer Products; later versions contained contributions from IBM and Microsoft. Microsoft Windows was Microsoft's baby all along, though it certainly got ideas if not code from OS/2 which was jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft.
Microsoft got the market share of XP down, but a lot of those people are going to 7 rather than 8. A lot of the Windows 7 users won't upgrade to Windows 8 nor buy computers that come with 8. To move forward, Microsoft has to get the Windows 7 users to consider using a newer version of Windows.
Microsoft might even need to consider an upgrade model similar to what Apple is doing now - all upgrades are free, you only pay once for the initial license of Windows for your computer. Currently a negligible percentage of Windows systems are ever upgraded - unlike Macs, newer Windows versions get involved when people buy new computers - so Microsoft wouldn't be leaving a lot of money on the table, and it would get them away from the burden of having to support multiple old versions of Windows as they could take the position of "upgrade or get dropped".
Another thing that has kept some of us from upgrading is the pricing of Media Center in Windows 8. Not only is it optional at extra cost - the $10 add-on would be tolerable - but you can only add it to Windows 8 Pro, if you have the standard (home) edition you have to upgrade with a $100 Pro Pack. The net result is that you can count the number of HTPC users who are running Windows 8 with the fingers of no hands, and the manufacturers of TV tuner cards are unhappy because Microsoft has pretty much destroyed their business.
T-Mobile service offers good prices, but there are a couple of catches to watch out for.
1. If you have a non-US phone that does not offer AWS band (1700 and 2100 MHz) coverage, you will not be able to get 3G data service in smaller cities (the ones that do not yet have LTE service). T-Mobile originally operated HSPA+ on that band; more recently they moved it to 1900 MHz (reducing or eliminating EDGE service to make room) and operate LTE on the AWS frequencies.
2. Most retail outlets only have the full size SIMs. If you need a micro or nano SIM you will probably have to order it from T-Mobile. You might be able to get one at a T-Mobile company store. Other places that sell prepaid T-Mobile stuff (drug stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack) won't have them. One other way to get a micro SIM is to buy a Lumia 521, an inexpensive Windows 8 phone.
General comments that apply to bringing any GSM phone to any US carrier: you need a quad-band phone (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) phone to get anywhere at all. LTE probably won't work with your non-US phone.
It's to make the company possible at all. The broadcast industry clearly doesn't want Aereo to exist, so the probability that they would have offered retransmission rights at non-ruinous rates is nil.
The Hopper case is a bit different because it involves equipment that is clearly customer-controlled. No telling what this court will do, but Hopper is not a pure cloud play.
On a laptop computer with a limited number of USB ports and no internal expansion slots, you are likely to have USB ports that go to a USB hub and have multiple devices connected. In that use case the bus speed matters; using the higher USB3 speed means there is more bus bandwidth available for other devices. On a typical desktop computer with oodles of USB ports it is rare to see a USB hub (except perhaps one that is built into a monitor or keyboard and is only used to connect HID devices); in that scenario there is no advantage to the higher bus speed unless the device also delivers higher performance.
I remember the days when companies made 10/100 USB Ethernet interfaces that had a USB1 port. You didn't get any more performance than you would with a 10Mbps Ethernet stick because you were limited by the USB port, but it did mean you used less of your Ethernet bandwidth on your hub. Now that everybody uses Ethernet switches even that advantage no longer applies.
There have been lots of jokes about the name, but it is consistent with Amazon's branding of other products. They already have the Kindle Fire and the Fire TV.
Firefly takes it a step farther. The existing Amazon app lets you scan a bar code and buy. Firefly lets you take a picture of the THING ITSELF or its package and buy without needing to scan the bar code. (It will be interesting to see how well that works.) Making that kind of recognition work probably requires the combination of a high end sensor and image stabilization that are featured in the Fire Phone; there are a few other devices that can match that but the average smartphone cannot.
You can only play Prime movies on older Android phones unless you jump through hoops. Amazon hasn't released a movie viewing app for stock Android; you have to use the player in your web browser, which means that you need Flash, and Flash is unsupported in Android versions after 4.1. You can get it on 4.2 or 4.3 by installing an alternate browser and sideloading the Flash APK. For KitKat you also need to get a hacked Flash APK because the standard one is incompatible with 4.4.
Once you've gone to all that trouble, you have a unstable way to play Prime movies. And it eats your battery life because it doesn't take full advantage of hardware video acceleration.
There is no good technical reason why Amazon couldn't release an Android app. They have released one for iOS, and doing one for Android should be even easier since Fire OS is based on Android. They don't do it because they want you to buy a Kindle Fire or a Fire Phone and be totally tied to their ecosystem, but they can't afford to ignore the huge iOS market and they probably can't convince Apple fans to come over to their platform no matter what Prime benefits they offer.
The 64 bit Snapdragon 808 and 810 are not yet available, and aren't expected until 2015. The lower end 64 bit Snapdragon processors (410, 610, and 615) are expected later this year, but I don't expect them to cause a lot of excitement because they don't match the performance of the 32 bit 800 and 805.
I am surprised by the pricing, especially given that it's an Amazon-captive device. At the price point of the Fire Phone it should have a Snapdragon 805, a 1080p display, and 3GB RAM; that's the current level for a state of the art Android smartphone. At its actual spec level it should be about $150 cheaper.
Do we have confirmation of that? Amazon is marketing it as an AT&T-exclusive device but I haven't seen any statements on whether the no-contract version is carrier locked. And interestingly, the Fire Phone includes AWS band coverage, which is unnecessary for the AT&T network but is needed for full use on T-Mobile US.
The name Braves is not offensive; if anything it celebrates the courage of the Native American. But the team should drop the use of the tomahawk chop in the stadium. (They have already done away with the Native American image that was formerly used in conjunction with their logo.) And the Indians should get rid of their horrible cartoon logo.
The HDMI 2.0 spec was released in 2013. Products that support are beginning to become available. HDMI 2.0 supports 4K@60Hz, color depth up to 16 bits, and improved color subsampling. (The supported formats depend on refresh rate and color depth.) Reference: http://www.hdmi.org/manufactur...
There IS a universal standard called ClearQAM, and nearly every digital television set implements it. At one time cable companies were required to send local channels and certain other things like C-SPAN that way. But the FCC did away with that mandate, and the cable guys have been shifting to sending all the signals encrypted. One reason is so they can easily cut your TV reception off if you don't pay or if you stop subscribing to TV services and just get internet and/or telephone. It also means that you need a set-top box for every TV, which allows them to charge you extra if you hook up more than one set even if you're only interested in receiving basic channels on the extra set. You have always needed the STB for any digital cable channels other than basic ones, and with cable companies discontinuing analog service you no longer have the option of watching that way.
Cable companies also aren't really in love with DVRs that they don't sell you, in part because content providers aren't in love with them. If you get a cable company DVR your recordings are captive to that platform and you can't do anything else with them unless you figure out how to hack the platform. The same is true with a TiVo, but hacking information is more readily available. But if you buy an HD HomeRun Prime and use Windows Media Center or XBMC as your DVR, your recordings are unprotected files that you can back up on DVD-R discs or external hard drives, play with VLC or other applications, and open with your video editor. The cable company and the content company no longer have any way to take your recorded content away from you or make it refuse to play.
Despite the existence of the special CableCard number, my two attempts at self-activating a CableCard through Comcast were failures. They eventually had to send a technician who was able to get somebody clueful on the other end to get the CableCard working in my HD HomeRun. (The two failures were caused by people at the other end not dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts; I had done everything correctly.) At least they didn't have the gall to charge me for that technician visit.
In this case, the supplier in question originally WAS them. Delphi was spun off from General Motors and became a fully separate company in 1999. Delphi went through serious financial problems and irregularities, including an SEC investigation in 2004 and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2005.
Whether the spun-off company was set up to fail from the start is unclear, but it wouldn't be at all surprising. GM was having problems of its own at the time and eventually went through its own bankruptcy in 2009. Delphi surely shared many of the same corporate culture problems that GM had.
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If you're willing to look beyond the Pi, the BeagleBone Black might be a good alternative. It has a significantly faster processor (1 GHz ARMv7 vs. 700MHz ARMv6, about twice the performance typically and even more if your application can take advantage of new SIMD instructions) and more I/O. Add the Audio Cape (24/96 capable TLV320AIC3104 codec, $30) and you're set. The combination won't quite reach your price point (the new 4GB version of the BB Black is about $55) but you could get to $150 for receive-only or $200 for RXTX, not too bad.
O3b's business plan isn't currently about selling satellite dishes to individual subscribers. They plan to offer their service mostly to local internet providers, who would in turn provide local service using other technologies. I don't think it's likely that the local providers will have much interest in doing wired infrastructure; 3G or 4G wireless, or WiFi for smaller areas, are more likely.
Most people won't need a separate sound card or external interface for playback of music, movies, or game sounds. Audiophiles with high quality speakers or headphones can still benefit from a good DAC (digital to analog converter). People who want to play surround sound from a laptop may also benefit if they are using a receiver or speaker system that only has analog surround inputs, or if they have an older laptop with no HDMI port.
In a current home theater setup you're likely to be sending sound to the receiver via HDMI. In that setup a separate sound card will give you no quality benefit, because the DAC is in the receiver rather than the computer. HDMI also eliminates the need for multichannel analog audio outputs, which laptops rarely have.
Recording is another matter entirely. Laptops typically only have a mono microphone input. Desktop systems usually have a stereo line in, but even that is not enough channels for many recording scenarios. Onboard ADCs (analog to digital converter) are usually low quality and suffer from high levels of noise, in part because of having to exist inside the electrically noisy computer enclosure. A quality recording interface will let you make much better recordings. The best ones are found in music stores (either brick and mortar or online) or from specialty manufacturers online, not in computer stores, though a Sound Blaster is significantly better than most onboard audio. Special audiophile motherboards may be an exception; those use better converters and pay attention to filtering and shielding.
Creative has a professional line, E-MU. That brand is decent for the price, though in typical Creative fashion the published specs overstate the actual performance. Current E-MU products top out at two microphone inputs, so they're inadequate for most professional studio applications. But they might be useful in some home studio setups or for field recording.
Desktop computers usually still have stereo line in. Most laptops only have mono mic inputs. There are exceptions in both cases.
Life expectancy is an issue in some applications. If you wanted to build an electric bus, for example, where the battery would likely have to withstand multiple charge-discharge cycles every day, the current lifespan of batteries is a problem. You might well have to replace the battery annually.
Mixed power catenary-standalone bus rapid transit systems (like the airport branch of the Silver Line in Boston) are an even more extreme case. Currently the MBTA uses electric/diesel dual mode buses on that route; they use electricity from overhead wires while in the underground busways and a diesel engine for the above-ground parts of the route. It would be more environmentally friendly to replace those with pure electric vehicles that charged while operating in the busways and discharged on the above-ground segments, but that vehicle would see as many as 50 deep charge-discharge cycles every day. How deep the cycles would be depends on the size of the battery or capacitor, but you would probably want to keep it relatively small to keep cost and weight down.
Don Lancaster never wanted to go corporate. He likes his independent life. He wrote a book about how to do it yourself: The Incredible Secret Money Machine. The second edition of the book is available as a PDF download on his web site: http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/i...
Er, no. The original version of DOS was developed by Seattle Computer Products; later versions contained contributions from IBM and Microsoft. Microsoft Windows was Microsoft's baby all along, though it certainly got ideas if not code from OS/2 which was jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft.
Microsoft got the market share of XP down, but a lot of those people are going to 7 rather than 8. A lot of the Windows 7 users won't upgrade to Windows 8 nor buy computers that come with 8. To move forward, Microsoft has to get the Windows 7 users to consider using a newer version of Windows.
Microsoft might even need to consider an upgrade model similar to what Apple is doing now - all upgrades are free, you only pay once for the initial license of Windows for your computer. Currently a negligible percentage of Windows systems are ever upgraded - unlike Macs, newer Windows versions get involved when people buy new computers - so Microsoft wouldn't be leaving a lot of money on the table, and it would get them away from the burden of having to support multiple old versions of Windows as they could take the position of "upgrade or get dropped".
Another thing that has kept some of us from upgrading is the pricing of Media Center in Windows 8. Not only is it optional at extra cost - the $10 add-on would be tolerable - but you can only add it to Windows 8 Pro, if you have the standard (home) edition you have to upgrade with a $100 Pro Pack. The net result is that you can count the number of HTPC users who are running Windows 8 with the fingers of no hands, and the manufacturers of TV tuner cards are unhappy because Microsoft has pretty much destroyed their business.
T-Mobile service offers good prices, but there are a couple of catches to watch out for.
1. If you have a non-US phone that does not offer AWS band (1700 and 2100 MHz) coverage, you will not be able to get 3G data service in smaller cities (the ones that do not yet have LTE service). T-Mobile originally operated HSPA+ on that band; more recently they moved it to 1900 MHz (reducing or eliminating EDGE service to make room) and operate LTE on the AWS frequencies.
2. Most retail outlets only have the full size SIMs. If you need a micro or nano SIM you will probably have to order it from T-Mobile. You might be able to get one at a T-Mobile company store. Other places that sell prepaid T-Mobile stuff (drug stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack) won't have them. One other way to get a micro SIM is to buy a Lumia 521, an inexpensive Windows 8 phone.
General comments that apply to bringing any GSM phone to any US carrier: you need a quad-band phone (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) phone to get anywhere at all. LTE probably won't work with your non-US phone.
It's to make the company possible at all. The broadcast industry clearly doesn't want Aereo to exist, so the probability that they would have offered retransmission rights at non-ruinous rates is nil.
The Hopper case is a bit different because it involves equipment that is clearly customer-controlled. No telling what this court will do, but Hopper is not a pure cloud play.
At least they're giving the two tiers different branding (and pricing). And both tiers deliver high READ speeds; it's the write speeds that diverge.
On a laptop computer with a limited number of USB ports and no internal expansion slots, you are likely to have USB ports that go to a USB hub and have multiple devices connected. In that use case the bus speed matters; using the higher USB3 speed means there is more bus bandwidth available for other devices. On a typical desktop computer with oodles of USB ports it is rare to see a USB hub (except perhaps one that is built into a monitor or keyboard and is only used to connect HID devices); in that scenario there is no advantage to the higher bus speed unless the device also delivers higher performance.
I remember the days when companies made 10/100 USB Ethernet interfaces that had a USB1 port. You didn't get any more performance than you would with a 10Mbps Ethernet stick because you were limited by the USB port, but it did mean you used less of your Ethernet bandwidth on your hub. Now that everybody uses Ethernet switches even that advantage no longer applies.
There have been lots of jokes about the name, but it is consistent with Amazon's branding of other products. They already have the Kindle Fire and the Fire TV.
Firefly takes it a step farther. The existing Amazon app lets you scan a bar code and buy. Firefly lets you take a picture of the THING ITSELF or its package and buy without needing to scan the bar code. (It will be interesting to see how well that works.) Making that kind of recognition work probably requires the combination of a high end sensor and image stabilization that are featured in the Fire Phone; there are a few other devices that can match that but the average smartphone cannot.
You can only play Prime movies on older Android phones unless you jump through hoops. Amazon hasn't released a movie viewing app for stock Android; you have to use the player in your web browser, which means that you need Flash, and Flash is unsupported in Android versions after 4.1. You can get it on 4.2 or 4.3 by installing an alternate browser and sideloading the Flash APK. For KitKat you also need to get a hacked Flash APK because the standard one is incompatible with 4.4.
Once you've gone to all that trouble, you have a unstable way to play Prime movies. And it eats your battery life because it doesn't take full advantage of hardware video acceleration.
There is no good technical reason why Amazon couldn't release an Android app. They have released one for iOS, and doing one for Android should be even easier since Fire OS is based on Android. They don't do it because they want you to buy a Kindle Fire or a Fire Phone and be totally tied to their ecosystem, but they can't afford to ignore the huge iOS market and they probably can't convince Apple fans to come over to their platform no matter what Prime benefits they offer.
The 64 bit Snapdragon 808 and 810 are not yet available, and aren't expected until 2015. The lower end 64 bit Snapdragon processors (410, 610, and 615) are expected later this year, but I don't expect them to cause a lot of excitement because they don't match the performance of the 32 bit 800 and 805.
I am surprised by the pricing, especially given that it's an Amazon-captive device. At the price point of the Fire Phone it should have a Snapdragon 805, a 1080p display, and 3GB RAM; that's the current level for a state of the art Android smartphone. At its actual spec level it should be about $150 cheaper.
Do we have confirmation of that? Amazon is marketing it as an AT&T-exclusive device but I haven't seen any statements on whether the no-contract version is carrier locked. And interestingly, the Fire Phone includes AWS band coverage, which is unnecessary for the AT&T network but is needed for full use on T-Mobile US.
The name Braves is not offensive; if anything it celebrates the courage of the Native American. But the team should drop the use of the tomahawk chop in the stadium. (They have already done away with the Native American image that was formerly used in conjunction with their logo.) And the Indians should get rid of their horrible cartoon logo.
This article in the Chicago Tribune suggests that the Blackhawks have little cause for worry: http://articles.chicagotribune...
The HDMI 2.0 spec was released in 2013. Products that support are beginning to become available. HDMI 2.0 supports 4K@60Hz, color depth up to 16 bits, and improved color subsampling. (The supported formats depend on refresh rate and color depth.) Reference: http://www.hdmi.org/manufactur...
There IS a universal standard called ClearQAM, and nearly every digital television set implements it. At one time cable companies were required to send local channels and certain other things like C-SPAN that way. But the FCC did away with that mandate, and the cable guys have been shifting to sending all the signals encrypted. One reason is so they can easily cut your TV reception off if you don't pay or if you stop subscribing to TV services and just get internet and/or telephone. It also means that you need a set-top box for every TV, which allows them to charge you extra if you hook up more than one set even if you're only interested in receiving basic channels on the extra set. You have always needed the STB for any digital cable channels other than basic ones, and with cable companies discontinuing analog service you no longer have the option of watching that way.
Cable companies also aren't really in love with DVRs that they don't sell you, in part because content providers aren't in love with them. If you get a cable company DVR your recordings are captive to that platform and you can't do anything else with them unless you figure out how to hack the platform. The same is true with a TiVo, but hacking information is more readily available. But if you buy an HD HomeRun Prime and use Windows Media Center or XBMC as your DVR, your recordings are unprotected files that you can back up on DVD-R discs or external hard drives, play with VLC or other applications, and open with your video editor. The cable company and the content company no longer have any way to take your recorded content away from you or make it refuse to play.
Despite the existence of the special CableCard number, my two attempts at self-activating a CableCard through Comcast were failures. They eventually had to send a technician who was able to get somebody clueful on the other end to get the CableCard working in my HD HomeRun. (The two failures were caused by people at the other end not dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts; I had done everything correctly.) At least they didn't have the gall to charge me for that technician visit.
In this case, the supplier in question originally WAS them. Delphi was spun off from General Motors and became a fully separate company in 1999. Delphi went through serious financial problems and irregularities, including an SEC investigation in 2004 and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2005.
Whether the spun-off company was set up to fail from the start is unclear, but it wouldn't be at all surprising. GM was having problems of its own at the time and eventually went through its own bankruptcy in 2009. Delphi surely shared many of the same corporate culture problems that GM had.