>>What?! No HDTV?
Nope. At least, not in the near future.
Sony is a company with competing interests. On one hand, the personal electronics division wants to sell compelling, useful electronic devices. On the other, the studio-side of the company jealously guards its entertainment/media content. The content side holds the electronics side in check -- it knows what the market wants (HDTV TiVO, anyone?) but fears cannibalizing Sony's Content/Studio division sales.
There are internal (management) power struggles going on right now to determine which side will win. Personally, I'm betting on "neither." The infighting at Sony will continue for the forseeable future, and smaller, more nimble companies without divided loyalties will be the ones to deliver innovative products and gain market share.
>>This is great news. Yeah, until you try to sneak it onto an expense report:
Taxi - $28.00 Meal @ airport - $11.45 Hotel - $85.00 Eight bottles of gin - $65.00
Something tell me that Wanda over in Accounting isn't goint to think that eight bottles of sauce looks quite so "great.";)
On the other hand, this may be the only case where conspicious consumption of alcohol is a justification for a promotion. "Gosh, boss, look at all these empty bottles! That's two more bottles than last week, don'cha think I deserve a raise?!?"
If its Bezos's job to take advantage of the government due to poor enforcement for as long as he can get away with it, that must make it my job to take advantage of the government due to poor enforcement by killing people for as long as I can get away with it.
In the off-chance that you're not kidding...
when you begin your rampage, can you please start somewhere FAR AWAY from where I live?
Thanks a bunch. --Jon
Tom, The International Court doesn't recognize the rights afforded to us all by God and protected by the US Constitution. According to the UN, any "right" that interferes with the UN's charter is invalid. What's entirely legal in one country (free speech, for instance) could be considered a criminal act by the UN, and a citizen may be tried by foreign nationals.
See the difference? In America, God gives us rights as human beings. In the UN, the UN "gives" you rights so long as it's not contrary to the UN's "goals" (read: "inconvenient to whoever's in charge of the UN at that particular moment.")
I'm proud that the UN International Court has been told to go stuff themselves. Soverign nations should never freely relinquish their self-determination.
1. Al gore used the government's threat of force to DEMAND consumers pay a tax on telecommunications which was to be used to cover the cost of obtaining internet access for rural government schools. This money wasn't needed as a vast majority of the schools were already online; it was a simple kickback to Gore's most dependable constituency -- the Teacher's Unions.
WOW! (eyes roll) What an achievement!
Oh, don't forget his other "job" as a reporter during the Vietnam war. As a Senator's Son, he had a protection detail assigned to keeping him out of harm's way and out of trouble. AlGore. A Real American Zero.
2. Gore didn't just attend the Vanderbilt school of Divinity, he FLUNKED OUT!
3. whatever.
4. Having connections with government does wonders for one's business, IF YOU PLAN TO (AB)USE THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT (e.g. taxation and/or the threat of force) to help that business. I don't consider that a positive.
>>the majority of folks like him. The majority of URBANITES like him. The big-city, know-it-alls in America's cultural freakshows such as NYC, Detroit, Philly, DC, LA, etc. The rest of the country despises Gore. (Recall the USA Today "red/blue" map?) REAL Americas, myself included, wouldn't spit on him if he were on fire.
Even if only 1 in 1000 people hate him enough to not buy Apple products, will it outweigh the number of people who will buy Apple products because they like him? Probably not.
You can put me down as "not". Al Gore is a self-important condescending blowhard that demonstrated outright contempt for the Constitution, the Electoral College, the military vote, and the rule of law. Any company that would look to this sort of individual for direction doesn't DESERVE my hard-earned money.
Apple has just forever, irreversably, added itself to my lifetime "boycott" list. I don't care if they invent a fucking time machine that ran off of water and spit gold bullion out the tailpipe, I wouldn't buy it.
Good riddance.
Republicans relentlessly mocked Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.
Not even close.
AlGore, in his book "Earth in the Balance," called the internal combustion engine the greatest threat to mankind in the world today. For that he was mocked, and rightly so.
"I wouldn't punish the innocent to get Usama bin Ladin, let alone spammers."
OBL's daily activities don't impinge on you in any way, until you get an odd-one-out. Spammers' activities *do* impinge, through ISPs having to pass on bandwidth costs to someone, ie their users.
Oh yeah, the inconvenience of spam is much worse than the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. That's typical horseshit that could only come from a subject of a country being actively infested with militant Muslims bent on dragging the British Empire back to the 14th century but won't admit there's a problem.
The problem is that OBL's "daily activities" culminate in the murder of pro-Western civilians, with the eventual goal of Muslim rule. (If it weren't for the English Channel, friend, they would have taken England in the 6th century.) If, somehow, you believe that living under Muslim rule doesn't "impinge", you're clueless.
Further, Please defend your "doesn't impinge" statement before the friends and family of the 3000+ people murdered in the World Trade Center attack. Explain your view to the people that witnessed the horror of seeing innocents jumping to their death from Tower windows eight hundred feet above the sidewalk! You don't think there's a "cost" there, both in material and emotional terms?
When these backwards cavemen from the Religion Of Peace destroy an Underground station, Piccadilly Circus, or Buckingham Palace, snuffing out the lives of a few thousand of your countrymen in the process, perhaps you'll feel different.
Next time, stop and think before you shoot off your stupid mouth.
--
Go ahead, pro-Muslim moderators and Anonymous Cowards. Give it your best shot. I have PLENTY of Karma to burn. Plus, I'm right and you know it.
Check this out. It's the home page for Digital Content Protection, LLC -- the folks who administer the HDCP protocol licensing system. At this site you'll find HDCP's specifications, upstream protocol, license agreements, reseller agreements, etc.
Of interest, also, may be
Niels Ferguson's paper in which he details the cryptographic weaknesses in HDCP.
Unfortunately, he won't publish the document due to fears of being prosecuted under the US DMCA.
"So who was it that named the "Potomac" river? Sounds like an element of American Indian culture to me."
I see your point, but adopting the name of something doesn't mean you've adopted the culture that gave you that name. For instance, it is possible to walk into a McDonalds and order french fries without surrendering to the pimple-faced kid behind the counter.
Jokes aside, if residents of DC were seasonally nomadic, living in buffalo-hide tents, practicing subsistance farming, and having skirmishes with nearby settlers who speak a different language then I would say, yes, the American Indian culture was indeed adopted but that's not the case.
Occasionally, cultures persist and evolve. Some times they merge with other cultures. Sometimes they are made extinct.
A "region" doesn't have a culture. A civilization has a culture, and when the population changes (as in this case), the culture is either adopted, modified or replaced entirely.
Or would you claim that the city of Washington, DC has elements of American Indian culture because those peoples once lived there before being displaced?
It's not a freedom/safety issue. It's not about violent criminal behavior. It's about money.
Specifically, states are busy passing laws allowing collection of taxes on internet sales, but most of these sales go unreported. (Think about it, did you list last year's eBay sales on your 1040? Well, neither did anyone else.) So this is their method for reporting. And thanks to eBay's "flexible" reporting system, a simple fax request is all that's needed. No need for a time-consuming, cumbersome warrant with all those messy rules about Judge's signatures and prior evidence... just a bored cop's desire to go trolling for evil tax evaders.
"Dear eBay,
Please send us a list of all the transactions in the past 7 years from customers in the 90210 area code.
Thank you,
Sgt. Jackass, Podunk California Police Department."
It's simple. If they want to collect taxes on unreported sales, they start with records from the largest online retailer, the one who hands out information no questions asked. Thanks for nothing, eBay!
"the set is one of the smallest costs of an HD setup. There are the obvious costs, the TV set, and $250 for a progressive-scan dvd player (or significantly more if you want a region-free one). But then come the non-obvious costs... the new receiver that can switch component video, the $125/m video cables, the HD OTA receiver if you want to receive HD content off the air, the HD satellite receiver and dish to get your hbo and showtime, and the list goes on, dependant on your installation." and "...I don't recommend purchasing HD signal unless you're willing to spend four or five thousand dollars in miscellaneous crap in order to make the opening sequence of CSI look really damned cool."
You don't have to spend a fortune for a great HDTV setup. Let me show you how to save $500, right off the top.
$250+ for a region-free proscan DVD? No way! I paid $50 (after rebates) for a Cyberhome CH-500 Progressive Scan DVD player with Dolby 5.1 and component video outs from BestBuy. Image quality is great and yes, it's region free. Open the tray, press 1999 on the remote to bring up the service menu, and choose any region you like.
[SAVINGS: $200+]
If you're paying $125 for cables, you're wasting your money. The difference between $20 component cables and the high-end $100+ "video snob" cables is beyond the capabilities of my eyes to discern and I'm pretty damned picky about image quality. Why buy cables that cost more than your components? Seriously, try a set of mid-grade cables and see for yourself. Better yet, have a friend swap cables while you watch the picture and you try to identify which cables are connected. I bet you can't! If I'm wrong, you can call me an idiot, just try it first.:)
[SAVINGS: $100]
The OTA ("set top box) HDTV decoder is expensive, usually $400. Zenith and Samsung seem to be the only models offered in my area's consumer electronics stores. I bought the Samsung SIR-T151 is about $400 as an Open-Box item (it was returned but it has a full warranty). My cost = $260.00.
[SAVINGS: $140]
What about the Over The Air antenna? Radio Shack has some fine Yagi antennas for around $50 and a 10dB antenna-mounted signal booster (to help signal loss over a long span of RG6 -- 1db drop per 18 feet of cable!) runs around $25.00. Also RadioShack sells a Terk TV50 clone for $50 (half of Terk's price) Add $40 for a length of decent RG6 cable, a cable stripper, some ends and make your own cable rather than buying pre-built lengths. (savings? about 30%) Don't forget a grounding block unless you like lightning damage.
[SAVINGS: $50+]
So there you are. I just saved you at least $500, not including taxes! That's half the cost of some of the 32" tube HDTVs and is about 1/3 the price of many 48" projection sets.
...TV rightly so feels it has a duty to properly represent the population. vs. "Maybe there are a disproportionate number of white engineers in the states, but I don't think it's right that it should be portrayed that way to the nation's youth."
So pick one. Either TV represents reality, or it's a propaganda machine. (Which seems to be okay, so long as it's "for the children...")
But be aware that if you advocate serving propaganda to the masses, you perpetuate the problems by hiding the evidence that inequities exist.
Think about it.
>>1) forged headers should be illegal 2) a specific header entry should identify the email as unsolicited
Don't we ever learn from the past? We've all seen the unintended consequences of poorly-crafted legislation (e.g. DMCA), so why run to the shelter of more restrictions which, in the end, will only cause us more problems? Like the criminals trying to scam your mom with the Nigerian-hold-my-money-for-a-day scam are going to suddenly begin obeying the law... yeah, right. Which begs another question: what law, in what jurisdiction? Even if the US were to pass this law and ruthlessly enforce it (domestically), all scammers would simple flood us from offshore servers.
The solution is not legislation, it is the creative use of technology. Build software that "learns" what is spam and what isn't, then evolves to keep up with the changing tactics of the spammers. Something like PopFile
because 1) it weakens their stranglehold on the music distribution channel and 2) reinforces in the consumer's mind that the RIAA is only looking out for itself -- artists and consumers be damned.
This will allow them to be used in rescue missions
How many butterflies does it take to pry open the door of an automobile and lift the occupant to safety? How many to put out a house fire? Or rescue a downing person swept away in a flood? Or locate an Altzheimer's patient who has wandered away from home?
That's what I thought.
It's interesting research, but lets not blow this out of proportion or set unrealistic expectations by exaggerating the usefulness of the (proposed) technology.
Slashdot Mirror
>>What?! No HDTV?
Nope. At least, not in the near future.
Sony is a company with competing interests. On one hand, the personal electronics division wants to sell compelling, useful electronic devices. On the other, the studio-side of the company jealously guards its entertainment/media content. The content side holds the electronics side in check -- it knows what the market wants (HDTV TiVO, anyone?) but fears cannibalizing Sony's Content/Studio division sales.
There are internal (management) power struggles going on right now to determine which side will win. Personally, I'm betting on "neither." The infighting at Sony will continue for the forseeable future, and smaller, more nimble companies without divided loyalties will be the ones to deliver innovative products and gain market share.
Your right to DRM ends where my TV begins.
I find it interesting that the "Windows" topic has finally been used. This is the first time I can remember seeing it
Me too. However, since we're discussing a Windows security hole, shouldn't one of the glass panes be broken?
>blocking port 135 on a firewall is a better option.
I can't help but wonder how many brainwashed MSCE's will "solve" the problem by setting up a firewall running Win2K.
>>This is great news.
;)
Yeah, until you try to sneak it onto an expense report:
Taxi - $28.00
Meal @ airport - $11.45
Hotel - $85.00
Eight bottles of gin - $65.00
Something tell me that Wanda over in Accounting isn't goint to think that eight bottles of sauce looks quite so "great."
On the other hand, this may be the only case where conspicious consumption of alcohol is a justification for a promotion. "Gosh, boss, look at all these empty bottles! That's two more bottles than last week, don'cha think I deserve a raise?!?"
Now if only someone would invent edible CDs...
If its Bezos's job to take advantage of the government due to poor enforcement for as long as he can get away with it, that must make it my job to take advantage of the government due to poor enforcement by killing people for as long as I can get away with it.
In the off-chance that you're not kidding... when you begin your rampage, can you please start somewhere FAR AWAY from where I live?
Thanks a bunch. --Jon
I propose locking up Representatives who shoot off their mouths about things they don't understand.
Anybody think that would act as a deterrent?
Tom,
The International Court doesn't recognize the rights afforded to us all by God and protected by the US Constitution. According to the UN, any "right" that interferes with the UN's charter is invalid. What's entirely legal in one country (free speech, for instance) could be considered a criminal act by the UN, and a citizen may be tried by foreign nationals.
See the difference? In America, God gives us rights as human beings. In the UN, the UN "gives" you rights so long as it's not contrary to the UN's "goals" (read: "inconvenient to whoever's in charge of the UN at that particular moment.")
I'm proud that the UN International Court has been told to go stuff themselves. Soverign nations should never freely relinquish their self-determination.
1. Al gore used the government's threat of force to DEMAND consumers pay a tax on telecommunications which was to be used to cover the cost of obtaining internet access for rural government schools. This money wasn't needed as a vast majority of the schools were already online; it was a simple kickback to Gore's most dependable constituency -- the Teacher's Unions.
WOW! (eyes roll) What an achievement!
Oh, don't forget his other "job" as a reporter during the Vietnam war. As a Senator's Son, he had a protection detail assigned to keeping him out of harm's way and out of trouble. AlGore. A Real American Zero.
2. Gore didn't just attend the Vanderbilt school of Divinity, he FLUNKED OUT!
3. whatever.
4. Having connections with government does wonders for one's business, IF YOU PLAN TO (AB)USE THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT (e.g. taxation and/or the threat of force) to help that business. I don't consider that a positive.
>>the majority of folks like him.
The majority of URBANITES like him. The big-city, know-it-alls in America's cultural freakshows such as NYC, Detroit, Philly, DC, LA, etc. The rest of the country despises Gore. (Recall the USA Today "red/blue" map?) REAL Americas, myself included, wouldn't spit on him if he were on fire.
Even if only 1 in 1000 people hate him enough to not buy Apple products, will it outweigh the number of people who will buy Apple products because they like him? Probably not.
You can put me down as "not". Al Gore is a self-important condescending blowhard that demonstrated outright contempt for the Constitution, the Electoral College, the military vote, and the rule of law. Any company that would look to this sort of individual for direction doesn't DESERVE my hard-earned money.
Apple has just forever, irreversably, added itself to my lifetime "boycott" list. I don't care if they invent a fucking time machine that ran off of water and spit gold bullion out the tailpipe, I wouldn't buy it.
Good riddance.
>>I like the pictures of lil' Rambo rolling along there in the panzer. Reminds me of my youth.
>Where the heck did you grow up???
France.
Republicans relentlessly mocked Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.
Not even close.
AlGore, in his book "Earth in the Balance," called the internal combustion engine the greatest threat to mankind in the world today. For that he was mocked, and rightly so.
"She'd get my vote...
we'll, if I had one over there..."
Since when has that been a problem with Democrats? Heck, tell 'em you're an illegal alien and they might let you vote twice.
(Woah, easy people. It was a joke...)
"I wouldn't punish the innocent to get Usama bin Ladin, let alone spammers."
OBL's daily activities don't impinge on you in any way, until you get an odd-one-out. Spammers' activities *do* impinge, through ISPs having to pass on bandwidth costs to someone, ie their users.
Oh yeah, the inconvenience of spam is much worse than the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. That's typical horseshit that could only come from a subject of a country being actively infested with militant Muslims bent on dragging the British Empire back to the 14th century but won't admit there's a problem.
The problem is that OBL's "daily activities" culminate in the murder of pro-Western civilians, with the eventual goal of Muslim rule. (If it weren't for the English Channel, friend, they would have taken England in the 6th century.) If, somehow, you believe that living under Muslim rule doesn't "impinge", you're clueless.
Further, Please defend your "doesn't impinge" statement before the friends and family of the 3000+ people murdered in the World Trade Center attack. Explain your view to the people that witnessed the horror of seeing innocents jumping to their death from Tower windows eight hundred feet above the sidewalk! You don't think there's a "cost" there, both in material and emotional terms?
When these backwards cavemen from the Religion Of Peace destroy an Underground station, Piccadilly Circus, or Buckingham Palace, snuffing out the lives of a few thousand of your countrymen in the process, perhaps you'll feel different.
Next time, stop and think before you shoot off your stupid mouth.
--
Go ahead, pro-Muslim moderators and Anonymous Cowards. Give it your best shot. I have PLENTY of Karma to burn. Plus, I'm right and you know it.
Check this out. It's the home page for Digital Content Protection, LLC -- the folks who administer the HDCP protocol licensing system. At this site you'll find HDCP's specifications, upstream protocol, license agreements, reseller agreements, etc.
Of interest, also, may be Niels Ferguson's paper in which he details the cryptographic weaknesses in HDCP. Unfortunately, he won't publish the document due to fears of being prosecuted under the US DMCA.
"So who was it that named the "Potomac" river? Sounds like an element of American Indian culture to me."
I see your point, but adopting the name of something doesn't mean you've adopted the culture that gave you that name. For instance, it is possible to walk into a McDonalds and order french fries without surrendering to the pimple-faced kid behind the counter.
Jokes aside, if residents of DC were seasonally nomadic, living in buffalo-hide tents, practicing subsistance farming, and having skirmishes with nearby settlers who speak a different language then I would say, yes, the American Indian culture was indeed adopted but that's not the case.
Occasionally, cultures persist and evolve. Some times they merge with other cultures. Sometimes they are made extinct.
A "region" doesn't have a culture. A civilization has a culture, and when the population changes (as in this case), the culture is either adopted, modified or replaced entirely.
Or would you claim that the city of Washington, DC has elements of American Indian culture because those peoples once lived there before being displaced?
Absurd.
"As we can see from the article on China, it's not exactly a musician's paradise."
As if China's a paradise for anyone other than the ruling elite.
It's not a freedom/safety issue. It's not about violent criminal behavior. It's about money.
Specifically, states are busy passing laws allowing collection of taxes on internet sales, but most of these sales go unreported. (Think about it, did you list last year's eBay sales on your 1040? Well, neither did anyone else.) So this is their method for reporting. And thanks to eBay's "flexible" reporting system, a simple fax request is all that's needed. No need for a time-consuming, cumbersome warrant with all those messy rules about Judge's signatures and prior evidence... just a bored cop's desire to go trolling for evil tax evaders.
"Dear eBay,
Please send us a list of all the transactions in the past 7 years from customers in the 90210 area code.
Thank you,
Sgt. Jackass, Podunk California Police Department."
It's simple. If they want to collect taxes on unreported sales, they start with records from the largest online retailer, the one who hands out information no questions asked. Thanks for nothing, eBay!
"the set is one of the smallest costs of an HD setup. There are the obvious costs, the TV set, and $250 for a progressive-scan dvd player (or significantly more if you want a region-free one). But then come the non-obvious costs... the new receiver that can switch component video, the $125/m video cables, the HD OTA receiver if you want to receive HD content off the air, the HD satellite receiver and dish to get your hbo and showtime, and the list goes on, dependant on your installation."
:)
[SAVINGS: $100]
and
"...I don't recommend purchasing HD signal unless you're willing to spend four or five thousand dollars in miscellaneous crap in order to make the opening sequence of CSI look really damned cool."
You don't have to spend a fortune for a great HDTV setup. Let me show you how to save $500, right off the top.
$250+ for a region-free proscan DVD? No way! I paid $50 (after rebates) for a Cyberhome CH-500 Progressive Scan DVD player with Dolby 5.1 and component video outs from BestBuy. Image quality is great and yes, it's region free. Open the tray, press 1999 on the remote to bring up the service menu, and choose any region you like. [SAVINGS: $200+]
If you're paying $125 for cables, you're wasting your money. The difference between $20 component cables and the high-end $100+ "video snob" cables is beyond the capabilities of my eyes to discern and I'm pretty damned picky about image quality. Why buy cables that cost more than your components? Seriously, try a set of mid-grade cables and see for yourself. Better yet, have a friend swap cables while you watch the picture and you try to identify which cables are connected. I bet you can't! If I'm wrong, you can call me an idiot, just try it first.
The OTA ("set top box) HDTV decoder is expensive, usually $400. Zenith and Samsung seem to be the only models offered in my area's consumer electronics stores. I bought the Samsung SIR-T151 is about $400 as an Open-Box item (it was returned but it has a full warranty). My cost = $260.00. [SAVINGS: $140]
What about the Over The Air antenna? Radio Shack has some fine Yagi antennas for around $50 and a 10dB antenna-mounted signal booster (to help signal loss over a long span of RG6 -- 1db drop per 18 feet of cable!) runs around $25.00. Also RadioShack sells a Terk TV50 clone for $50 (half of Terk's price) Add $40 for a length of decent RG6 cable, a cable stripper, some ends and make your own cable rather than buying pre-built lengths. (savings? about 30%) Don't forget a grounding block unless you like lightning damage. [SAVINGS: $50+]
So there you are. I just saved you at least $500, not including taxes! That's half the cost of some of the 32" tube HDTVs and is about 1/3 the price of many 48" projection sets.
Exactly right -- very little overlap. I believe that anyone with the good sense to run Opera wouldn't want to load the MSN page in the first place.
...TV rightly so feels it has a duty to properly represent the population.
vs.
"Maybe there are a disproportionate number of white engineers in the states, but I don't think it's right that it should be portrayed that way to the nation's youth."
So pick one. Either TV represents reality, or it's a propaganda machine. (Which seems to be okay, so long as it's "for the children...")
But be aware that if you advocate serving propaganda to the masses, you perpetuate the problems by hiding the evidence that inequities exist.
Think about it.
>>1) forged headers should be illegal 2) a specific header entry should identify the email as unsolicited
Don't we ever learn from the past? We've all seen the unintended consequences of poorly-crafted legislation (e.g. DMCA), so why run to the shelter of more restrictions which, in the end, will only cause us more problems? Like the criminals trying to scam your mom with the Nigerian-hold-my-money-for-a-day scam are going to suddenly begin obeying the law... yeah, right. Which begs another question: what law, in what jurisdiction? Even if the US were to pass this law and ruthlessly enforce it (domestically), all scammers would simple flood us from offshore servers.
The solution is not legislation, it is the creative use of technology. Build software that "learns" what is spam and what isn't, then evolves to keep up with the changing tactics of the spammers. Something like PopFile
because 1) it weakens their stranglehold on the music distribution channel and 2) reinforces in the consumer's mind that the RIAA is only looking out for itself -- artists and consumers be damned.
"Paranoid rubbish. For starters, they'd have off-site backups."
Not if Jack Valenti hears about it first...
This will allow them to be used in rescue missions
How many butterflies does it take to pry open the door of an automobile and lift the occupant to safety? How many to put out a house fire? Or rescue a downing person swept away in a flood? Or locate an Altzheimer's patient who has wandered away from home?
That's what I thought.
It's interesting research, but lets not blow this out of proportion or set unrealistic expectations by exaggerating the usefulness of the (proposed) technology.