True. But power out does not mean squat! Just because I have a million watt transmitter does not mean, based on this "7.08 Mbps per MHz per watt" or whatever it is, that all the receivers are going to be receiving data at 7.08 x 10^6 bps.
The key words in Shannon's Theorem are "signal to noise ratio".
The farther out you go from the transmitter, the worse the s/n ratio is going to be. Likewise a crappy antenna. Or crappy obstructions. Or crappy weather. Or a damn bird flying right between the transmitter and receiver. It doesn't matter how much power is being used - if any of the crappy things above happen, the s/n ratio is going to go down.
Instead of saying "7.08 Mbps per watt per MHz" or whatever it was, they need to instead say something like "7.08 Mbps per MHz with a S/N ratio of whatever-it-was."
This is the same industry who's copy protection for CD audio data over digital is to have two bits set. Turn those bits off and you can copy all you want over TOSLINK.
This is the same industry who let the CSS decryption code leak out.
This is essentialy the same industry who tries to copy protect XBOX and PS2 games, only to have $10 chips start showing up a week after the machines come out, or, better yet, loading a save game file that creates a FTP server you can log in to by way of a buffer overflow in a font package.
I don't think we have anything to worry about here, folks.
Let them make their piddly little broadcast flag. Give it a week and you will see a story here on Slashdot that says, "HD Broadcast Flag stripped from content with 2 lines of Pearl."
Nothing really too complicated in there, and it looks like you can build most of the stuff they present with just a few hours of work. The DIY stuff is pretty darn simple, actually.
When I was lookin' through my issue last night I kind of skimmed by the stuff they showed OS X doing - but when I went back and read it this morning, it actually looked like some cool stuff.
I do hope that in the future they have some actual electronics projects in there of some sort. I am sure they will. This time around it looked to be mainly taking what is already out there and showing different ways of putting said gizmo to use, or fixing it.
Overall though, I have to give Make a big thumbs up. It looks nice, is fun to read, and is gonna be really useful.
BTW, as I was typing this, I kept trying to come up with what Make reminds me of. I think I got it.... a paper version of The Screen Savers when the show did not suck.
Yeah, it is neat to see the thing - I mean, hell, Steve looks like he is about to explode when the Mac talks and crowd goes nuts...
But this video is not "lost" at all. I have seen it numerous times in numerous programs over the years - if memory serves, it is featured in Robert X. Cringley's Triumph of the Nerds, and probably a ton of other shows.
And if one person replies to this and says "it's not the commercial they are talking about!" I will personally kick thier ass. I know it is not the commercial.
Especially when you are using the device as temporary storage for a photo shoot. My Canon 10D files are an average of 6MB. Give me a few hours at a weding or a sports event and I will be filling that drive up pretty fast.
Last summer I shot over 3000 pictures in two days at a trap shooting competition - that's roughly 18 GB of photos. Everything fit in my camera bag and I got some great pics.
Final Cut Pro HD has been out for what, five months now? And even before that some form of HD has been supported in Final Cut Pro. I am not familiar with the earlier versions of it, but some of the FCP books I have all discuss editing it.
It is cool to see a 1080i camera out there though. Give it a few weeks and there will be a consumer affordable model.
First, in the world of full disclosure, I own stock in Packet8 (actually, in 8x8) which I bought a few weeks after I signed up for their service in March of this year.
I have been very impressed with it so far. There was a period in late March where the service was offline more than it was on. No idea what the hell they were doing, but it was not just me. It would be down during peak evening hours for about 2 to 3 hours a night. Then it would magically start working again.
Since that period of time, I have had zero downtime for the last month and a half.
One thing I will say though, before I go much further, Netgear sucks. I had a MR-314 WiFi router hooked up and P8 went down a number of times because of it. The router would just stop responding. Resetting it would make it work, but after doing that umpteen times I yanked it and put in a Linksys. It's kinda hard to tell that the router is down when you ain't using it, but you can always tell when you pick up the phone to order a pizza and hear a fast busy signal. Everything plays nice now with the Linksys - I have had 0 router issues since I replaced it.
Call quality, like all the VoIP, is outstanding unless you have to much data flying. Then it starts to break up. P8 only uses a few K in bandwidth (I think 5K?) but a nice file transfer in the middle of a call can really wreck the sound.
It also does not work with TiVo, alarm systems, or FAX. If you need those, go with Vonage or something.
The main reason I went with P8 was that NOBODY ELSE provides Kansas City telephone numbers which is where I am. Only Packet8 has call centers here. Matter of fact, from what I have seen, P8 seems to do a lot better job at having call centers in little tiny towns out in rural areas.
Their call forwarding really is cool too. I have it forwarded to my cell phone. It rings in both locations at once. This is a problem though if you want to call your house from your cell phone - you will get dumped straight into your cell phone voice mail because the way the system sees it, you are on the phone. Keep that in mind.
Hook up is stupidly simple. Plug it in, call the activation number, and you are off and running. You can also place/receive calls from Free World Dialup accounts. That may be something to consider as well.
I'm not sure how Honda deals with their battery pack, but on the Prius Toyota designed it as modules. Each module is made of 6 D-cell sized batteries (they change from using D-cells to a different sized battery in the 01 model year). A module runs about $150, or $4000 for the whole battery bank as of last year. That price will drop.
If one cell goes bad, you just replace the individual module.
This current tank I am sitting at 56.7 MPG over 420 miles - 1/2 is interstate driving, 1/2 is city street. My 03 Prius gets 50 MPG city and 46 Highway for an average of 48.
Here's what these people are doing wrong:
1. Not coasting to a stop. When you see a red light ahead, you do not accelerate to a stop! You take your foot off the gas and coast to a stop.
2. No jackrabbit starts. Slowly apply throttle and gently move away from the stop.
3. Feather the throttle when driving on level ground. In the 01-03 Prius, you can maintain 35 MPH on electric only very easily. In the 04 Prius you can go even faster on just electric.
4. DRIVE THE SPEED LIMIT or slightly under.
5. Take all the McDonalds sacks and other trash out of the car. You don't need to be tooling around town with dead weight equivilant to another person in your car. More weight = more work to move the car.
Driving a hybrid requires a lot of changes to driving habits. If these people are getting horrible mileage, they really need to learn to drive properly.
Pricing People think that VoIP is cheap compared to normal telephony. Average people spend around USD 200 per year on land line telephony. While VoIP might seam "free" you still have to pay around USD 300 for an ADSL connection.
If you are only getting a high speed internet connection to use VoIP, you deserve to part with your money. All of the people I know that use VoIP are doing so to avoid ugly long distance bills, if all you use the phone for is local calls to order pizza you really dont need VoIP.
I say both of you are wrong on this count, and it is something I could not seem to get through the skull of the lady I talked to at SBC yesterday when I called and had my PSTN shut off.
Our conversation went something like this:
Me: I am shutting off my PSTN because I am now using VoIP
SBC: Well, why are you doing that?
Me: Because I will be saving money.
SBC: Well, it shows here you have the Caller ID package. I can turn that off and save you about $10 a month and your montly service will drop to $19.50 a month.
Me: Well, I am going with VoIP for $19.95 a month, and I get that Caller-ID package. Plus I also get voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, and 3 way calling, and whatever else the VoIP people turn on in the future.
For some odd reason she still refused to grasp what I was saying to her.
Yes, I make a bunch of LD calls, but since I normally use my cell phone for those anyway, I was already getting LD for free. Going with VoIP just made it nicer because now I do not have to wait until 9 PM to make the calls.
Seriously - I know they were mp3.com and I know what all they did. I actually thought it was quite cool.
But besides the Aeron chairs giving away their inept ways, this picture is the most damning.
Look, folks, if it is 11:52 in San Diego, it is NOT 3:52 in New York. It would be 2:52. And it SURE as hell is not 10:52 in Paris!
Things like that just point out the sheer arrogance of a company in my book.
But I also have a Canon F1, A1, AE1 Program, Pentax K1000, Voitlander 6 x 6, and a Lomo LC-A. I find myself using the 10D more than any of my film based cameras.
However - I have NOT given up on film.
First, the 10D is not a 35mm frame. Yes, the images that come off it are the same size as PhotoCD (not pro, but still...), and they do look mighty purdy, but in some ways you are loosing image resolution a bit - not much, mind you, but you are still loosing it over what you are going to get on film.
To my eye Canon has got that whole "digital looks too much like video" thing licked. When I was shopping a few years ago there was not a camera out there that did not blow whites out and make them look flat. Even my Sony F707, which is only two years old blows the whites out. And so does the images I have seen off the 717. I have yet to see whites blown out on the 10D other than when I want them to be blown out.
But this all still gets down to cost. If you want a camera to shoot 6x4.5, 6x6, or 6x7, you still need to stick with film unless you have the buckage for one of those super expensive backs for the Mamiyas. And if you want to buy a 35mm digital that actually takes a image 35mm across, you again need to spend quite a few bucks on something like the EOS 1Ds. Those things ain't cheap.
However, if you are looking at the Rebel digital, I don't think you can go wrong one bit with it. The only thing it lacks over the 10D is buffer memory for doing rapid pictures and a magnesium body. It is the same camera the rest of the way.
You are going to be able to take pictures that you most likely will not be able to tell apart from film. I still need to do a blind test, but from what I have seen on the images I have taken, I can not tell a difference at all. They look gorgeous, and most importantly, they look like they came off of film. I love the way film looks, and this camera does it.
I'm getting my first Bluetooth device tomorrow
on
Is Bluetooth Dead?
·
· Score: 1
I got to play with a Sony Clie 50 the other day so I ordered one for myself. It will be my first Bluetooth device. Here's what the problem is as I see it:
NOBODY SHOWS IT OFF!
Pretty darn simple really. The first time I saw what Bluetooth could do was a few weeks ago on The Screen Savers on Tech TV. Leo showed off his Nokia 3650 and tried (but failed) to control iTunes with it. Some tech glitch happened but he did a great job describing it. That short segment they did is what sold me on it's ability.
Granted, I know and have known what it is capable of, but it boils down to "I wanna see it work".
It's like HDTV and TiVo in many ways - you can sit there all day long and talk about how great it is until you are blue in the face, but until the person you are trying to sell it to actually sees it, they ain't gonna go for it.
That vision service blows. SMS on Sprint phones blows even more - I mean, what's up with sending you an SMS message to tell you that you have a SMS message that you have to go read on a web page? Worse yet, what is up with having to send a SMS message from a web page? Sprint did their entire data thing so half assed it ain't even funny. So I went with T-Mobile and a Sidekick.
Would not have minded keeping my old PCS number, but it is really no big deal to me. Not many people had the number anyway, even though I had it for 5 years.
I have a 5500. At first it was a major cool toy. I mean, it is so easy to impress your geek friends by running a webserver in your pocket. But then what?
Once the gee-whiz factor wore off, I was left with just that. A gee-whiz toy. I have yet to actually do anything with it.
When I had a Palm I used it daily. When I had a PocketPC, I got to reboot it every fifteen minutes and quickly dumped it. The Zaurus never has crashed on me, but I find myself leaving it at home more often than not.
I am going to get rid of the Zaurus soon and go back to the Palm platform. I got a lot more use out of their stuff. Sure, it might crash at the drop of a hat (though nothing like PPC2002 does) but at least Palm thought out the thing from the start instead of trying to be like everyone else.
Linux in a handheld is probably going to be very cool one day. Just not right now.
I mean, what business is it of anyone else's if your brakes are bad, you have bald tires, and huge chunks of the car falling off as you drive down the street.
Slashdot Mirror
True. But power out does not mean squat! Just because I have a million watt transmitter does not mean, based on this "7.08 Mbps per MHz per watt" or whatever it is, that all the receivers are going to be receiving data at 7.08 x 10^6 bps.
The key words in Shannon's Theorem are "signal to noise ratio".
The farther out you go from the transmitter, the worse the s/n ratio is going to be. Likewise a crappy antenna. Or crappy obstructions. Or crappy weather. Or a damn bird flying right between the transmitter and receiver. It doesn't matter how much power is being used - if any of the crappy things above happen, the s/n ratio is going to go down.
Instead of saying "7.08 Mbps per watt per MHz" or whatever it was, they need to instead say something like "7.08 Mbps per MHz with a S/N ratio of whatever-it-was."
WTF does a watt have to do with bandwidth? This has got to be one of the stupidest things Slashdot has posted in a while.
These fucknuts have it coming to them. Anyone remember the Dmitri Sklyarov case?
This is now just a case of Adobe getting a taste of their own DMCA Flag Waving medicine. May it continue to be a bitter pill to them.
PRINT "I WILL GUESS YOUR WEIGHT"
FOR I=0 TO 1000
PRINT "DO YOU WEIGH "; I; " POUNDS?"
IF INSKEY="Y" THEN BREAK
NEXT I
Apologies to Penn Jillette
This is the same industry who's copy protection for CD audio data over digital is to have two bits set. Turn those bits off and you can copy all you want over TOSLINK.
This is the same industry who let the CSS decryption code leak out.
This is essentialy the same industry who tries to copy protect XBOX and PS2 games, only to have $10 chips start showing up a week after the machines come out, or, better yet, loading a save game file that creates a FTP server you can log in to by way of a buffer overflow in a font package.
I don't think we have anything to worry about here, folks.
Let them make their piddly little broadcast flag. Give it a week and you will see a story here on Slashdot that says, "HD Broadcast Flag stripped from content with 2 lines of Pearl."
Nothing really too complicated in there, and it looks like you can build most of the stuff they present with just a few hours of work. The DIY stuff is pretty darn simple, actually.
When I was lookin' through my issue last night I kind of skimmed by the stuff they showed OS X doing - but when I went back and read it this morning, it actually looked like some cool stuff.
I do hope that in the future they have some actual electronics projects in there of some sort. I am sure they will. This time around it looked to be mainly taking what is already out there and showing different ways of putting said gizmo to use, or fixing it.
Overall though, I have to give Make a big thumbs up. It looks nice, is fun to read, and is gonna be really useful.
BTW, as I was typing this, I kept trying to come up with what Make reminds me of. I think I got it.... a paper version of The Screen Savers when the show did not suck.
iMovie has been out on the store shelves a week tomorrow. Those of us that pre-ordered got it a week ago today.
And so is my Pentax K-1000! And my Voightlander! And my Canon F-1! And my Canon AE-1P! Not to forget my Keystone 16mm wind up movie camera...
Remote instruct my ass.....
Yeah, it is neat to see the thing - I mean, hell, Steve looks like he is about to explode when the Mac talks and crowd goes nuts...
But this video is not "lost" at all. I have seen it numerous times in numerous programs over the years - if memory serves, it is featured in Robert X. Cringley's Triumph of the Nerds, and probably a ton of other shows.
And if one person replies to this and says "it's not the commercial they are talking about!" I will personally kick thier ass. I know it is not the commercial.
True. However, my point was not so much being able to view the pictures as it was having 60 GB of space available for pictures.
Especially when you are using the device as temporary storage for a photo shoot. My Canon 10D files are an average of 6MB. Give me a few hours at a weding or a sports event and I will be filling that drive up pretty fast.
Last summer I shot over 3000 pictures in two days at a trap shooting competition - that's roughly 18 GB of photos. Everything fit in my camera bag and I got some great pics.
Final Cut Pro HD has been out for what, five months now? And even before that some form of HD has been supported in Final Cut Pro. I am not familiar with the earlier versions of it, but some of the FCP books I have all discuss editing it.
It is cool to see a 1080i camera out there though. Give it a few weeks and there will be a consumer affordable model.
For now I will stick with my Canon Optura Xi.
First, in the world of full disclosure, I own stock in Packet8 (actually, in 8x8) which I bought a few weeks after I signed up for their service in March of this year.
I have been very impressed with it so far. There was a period in late March where the service was offline more than it was on. No idea what the hell they were doing, but it was not just me. It would be down during peak evening hours for about 2 to 3 hours a night. Then it would magically start working again.
Since that period of time, I have had zero downtime for the last month and a half.
One thing I will say though, before I go much further, Netgear sucks. I had a MR-314 WiFi router hooked up and P8 went down a number of times because of it. The router would just stop responding. Resetting it would make it work, but after doing that umpteen times I yanked it and put in a Linksys. It's kinda hard to tell that the router is down when you ain't using it, but you can always tell when you pick up the phone to order a pizza and hear a fast busy signal. Everything plays nice now with the Linksys - I have had 0 router issues since I replaced it.
Call quality, like all the VoIP, is outstanding unless you have to much data flying. Then it starts to break up. P8 only uses a few K in bandwidth (I think 5K?) but a nice file transfer in the middle of a call can really wreck the sound.
It also does not work with TiVo, alarm systems, or FAX. If you need those, go with Vonage or something.
The main reason I went with P8 was that NOBODY ELSE provides Kansas City telephone numbers which is where I am. Only Packet8 has call centers here. Matter of fact, from what I have seen, P8 seems to do a lot better job at having call centers in little tiny towns out in rural areas.
Their call forwarding really is cool too. I have it forwarded to my cell phone. It rings in both locations at once. This is a problem though if you want to call your house from your cell phone - you will get dumped straight into your cell phone voice mail because the way the system sees it, you are on the phone. Keep that in mind.
Hook up is stupidly simple. Plug it in, call the activation number, and you are off and running. You can also place/receive calls from Free World Dialup accounts. That may be something to consider as well.
I'm not sure how Honda deals with their battery pack, but on the Prius Toyota designed it as modules. Each module is made of 6 D-cell sized batteries (they change from using D-cells to a different sized battery in the 01 model year). A module runs about $150, or $4000 for the whole battery bank as of last year. That price will drop.
If one cell goes bad, you just replace the individual module.
I am getting higher than average in my 03 Prius.
This current tank I am sitting at 56.7 MPG over 420 miles - 1/2 is interstate driving, 1/2 is city street. My 03 Prius gets 50 MPG city and 46 Highway for an average of 48.
Here's what these people are doing wrong:
1. Not coasting to a stop. When you see a red light ahead, you do not accelerate to a stop! You take your foot off the gas and coast to a stop.
2. No jackrabbit starts. Slowly apply throttle and gently move away from the stop.
3. Feather the throttle when driving on level ground. In the 01-03 Prius, you can maintain 35 MPH on electric only very easily. In the 04 Prius you can go even faster on just electric.
4. DRIVE THE SPEED LIMIT or slightly under.
5. Take all the McDonalds sacks and other trash out of the car. You don't need to be tooling around town with dead weight equivilant to another person in your car. More weight = more work to move the car.
Driving a hybrid requires a lot of changes to driving habits. If these people are getting horrible mileage, they really need to learn to drive properly.
I'd say the dumbass the installed the VoIP needs to go back to installing print drivers for people.
Pricing People think that VoIP is cheap compared to normal telephony. Average people spend around USD 200 per year on land line telephony. While VoIP might seam "free" you still have to pay around USD 300 for an ADSL connection.
If you are only getting a high speed internet connection to use VoIP, you deserve to part with your money. All of the people I know that use VoIP are doing so to avoid ugly long distance bills, if all you use the phone for is local calls to order pizza you really dont need VoIP.
I say both of you are wrong on this count, and it is something I could not seem to get through the skull of the lady I talked to at SBC yesterday when I called and had my PSTN shut off.
Our conversation went something like this:
Me: I am shutting off my PSTN because I am now using VoIP
SBC: Well, why are you doing that?
Me: Because I will be saving money.
SBC: Well, it shows here you have the Caller ID package. I can turn that off and save you about $10 a month and your montly service will drop to $19.50 a month.
Me: Well, I am going with VoIP for $19.95 a month, and I get that Caller-ID package. Plus I also get voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, and 3 way calling, and whatever else the VoIP people turn on in the future.
For some odd reason she still refused to grasp what I was saying to her.
Yes, I make a bunch of LD calls, but since I normally use my cell phone for those anyway, I was already getting LD for free. Going with VoIP just made it nicer because now I do not have to wait until 9 PM to make the calls.
Seriously - I know they were mp3.com and I know what all they did. I actually thought it was quite cool. But besides the Aeron chairs giving away their inept ways, this picture is the most damning. Look, folks, if it is 11:52 in San Diego, it is NOT 3:52 in New York. It would be 2:52. And it SURE as hell is not 10:52 in Paris! Things like that just point out the sheer arrogance of a company in my book.
That fuckin' advertisement that just showed up on the right side of the page.
Someone needs to be slapped....
But I also have a Canon F1, A1, AE1 Program, Pentax K1000, Voitlander 6 x 6, and a Lomo LC-A. I find myself using the 10D more than any of my film based cameras.
However - I have NOT given up on film.
First, the 10D is not a 35mm frame. Yes, the images that come off it are the same size as PhotoCD (not pro, but still...), and they do look mighty purdy, but in some ways you are loosing image resolution a bit - not much, mind you, but you are still loosing it over what you are going to get on film.
To my eye Canon has got that whole "digital looks too much like video" thing licked. When I was shopping a few years ago there was not a camera out there that did not blow whites out and make them look flat. Even my Sony F707, which is only two years old blows the whites out. And so does the images I have seen off the 717. I have yet to see whites blown out on the 10D other than when I want them to be blown out.
But this all still gets down to cost. If you want a camera to shoot 6x4.5, 6x6, or 6x7, you still need to stick with film unless you have the buckage for one of those super expensive backs for the Mamiyas. And if you want to buy a 35mm digital that actually takes a image 35mm across, you again need to spend quite a few bucks on something like the EOS 1Ds. Those things ain't cheap.
However, if you are looking at the Rebel digital, I don't think you can go wrong one bit with it. The only thing it lacks over the 10D is buffer memory for doing rapid pictures and a magnesium body. It is the same camera the rest of the way.
You are going to be able to take pictures that you most likely will not be able to tell apart from film. I still need to do a blind test, but from what I have seen on the images I have taken, I can not tell a difference at all. They look gorgeous, and most importantly, they look like they came off of film. I love the way film looks, and this camera does it.
I got to play with a Sony Clie 50 the other day so I ordered one for myself. It will be my first Bluetooth device. Here's what the problem is as I see it:
NOBODY SHOWS IT OFF!
Pretty darn simple really. The first time I saw what Bluetooth could do was a few weeks ago on The Screen Savers on Tech TV. Leo showed off his Nokia 3650 and tried (but failed) to control iTunes with it. Some tech glitch happened but he did a great job describing it. That short segment they did is what sold me on it's ability.
Granted, I know and have known what it is capable of, but it boils down to "I wanna see it work".
It's like HDTV and TiVo in many ways - you can sit there all day long and talk about how great it is until you are blue in the face, but until the person you are trying to sell it to actually sees it, they ain't gonna go for it.
That vision service blows. SMS on Sprint phones blows even more - I mean, what's up with sending you an SMS message to tell you that you have a SMS message that you have to go read on a web page? Worse yet, what is up with having to send a SMS message from a web page? Sprint did their entire data thing so half assed it ain't even funny. So I went with T-Mobile and a Sidekick.
Would not have minded keeping my old PCS number, but it is really no big deal to me. Not many people had the number anyway, even though I had it for 5 years.
"No Sleep Til Brooklyn" is a song by the Beastie Boys.
I have a 5500. At first it was a major cool toy. I mean, it is so easy to impress your geek friends by running a webserver in your pocket. But then what?
Once the gee-whiz factor wore off, I was left with just that. A gee-whiz toy. I have yet to actually do anything with it.
When I had a Palm I used it daily. When I had a PocketPC, I got to reboot it every fifteen minutes and quickly dumped it. The Zaurus never has crashed on me, but I find myself leaving it at home more often than not.
I am going to get rid of the Zaurus soon and go back to the Palm platform. I got a lot more use out of their stuff. Sure, it might crash at the drop of a hat (though nothing like PPC2002 does) but at least Palm thought out the thing from the start instead of trying to be like everyone else.
Linux in a handheld is probably going to be very cool one day. Just not right now.
car in roadworthy condition, huh?
I mean, what business is it of anyone else's if your brakes are bad, you have bald tires, and huge chunks of the car falling off as you drive down the street.