The reason why XM and Sirius exists today
on
Homogenized Music
·
· Score: 2
The reason why XM and Sirius satellite radio exists today is the fact that we have megacorporations owning large swaths of terrestrial radio stations that have pretty much market-researched all the fringe (and some not-so-fringe) music formats out of existance.
Right now, most radio stations play the following formats: Adult Contemporary, Hip-Hop, Heavy Metal and Country & Western formats for new music, plus a tightly-controlled selection of oldies. What happened to stations that play Classical, New Age, ethnic, Easy Listening, and wide-selection Oldies music?
This is where XM and Sirius satellite radio fills the niche. With some 100 channels of audio programming to fill the result is a major resurgence of music formats on these systems that are sorely missed on terrestrial radio today (like the formats I mentioned).
Yes, I give the nod to college radio stations that are playing a very wide selection of music, but alas, the vast majority of college radio stations don't have powerful enough signals to reach a wide audience like the more mainstream terrestrial broadcasters.
Looking at the specs for Camera Link, I don't think it will be popular.
There is one major reason for this: the size of the connector--it's essentially a modified DB-25 connector design. Compare that against the very small connector size for FireWire cables and I think for portability purposes FireWire wins hands down. Besides, at 400 megabits/second transfer rate the current FireWire standard is more than enough to transfer the entire contents of a 512 MB CompactFlash card to the computer pretty quickly.
Besides, the new IEEE-1394b standard for FireWare will double the data transfer rate to 800 megabits/second, which makes Camera Link even less attractive.
I think for relatively low-speed applications (digital still cameras with small-sized memory cards, keyboards, mouse pointers, analog modems, and lower-resolution scanners) USB will do fine.
However, with CompactFlash memory cards already hitting 512 MB in size (and you know the Panasonic SD and Sony Memory Stick cards are going to increase way beyond 64 MB in storage capacity), the wide availability of FireWire port external hard drives and CD-RW/DVD recordable drives, and for higher-resolution scanners, you definitely want to have the higher sustained transfer speeds of FireWire connections.
Besides, how much does it cost to install a FireWire adapter card anyway? These cards are almost as cheap as USB adapter cards for older computers. And many computer manufacturers already include FireWire connections with the computer and many newer motherboards include FireWire support, too.
This isn't the SCSI versus IDE debate, because the price differential between FireWire and USB 2.0 is much smaller than the price differential between SCSI and IDE.
I think once digital projection for movie theaters becomes common by 2010, the idea of phased release of movies may become obselete.
The reason for phased release is simple: the very high cost of duplicating movie prints (each complete set for a 120-minute movie costs about US$2,500 to US$3,000 and you have to make about 6,000 to 8,000 prints for a blockbuster movie; you also have to factor into the cost of shipping each 35 mm print set weighing 210 pounds each for a 120-minute movie).
With the development of blue-spectrum LED lasers in the last few years, a theatrical-quality digital movie could probably fit on a single 300 mm optical disc; given today's technology to master and duplicate optical discs it'll probably be substantially cheaper to master and duplicate 8,000 optical discs than 8,000 film prints, not to mention shipping costs being a very tiny fraction of a 35 mm movie print!:-)
With that substantial drop in duplicating and shipping costs simultaneous worldwide release of blockbuster movies may become the norm, not the exception.
Here in the USA, the only time where you have to own more than one VCR and/or DVR is during the months of November, February and May, the periods where advertisers closely monitor TV viewship to determine advertising rates (the so-called sweeps periods). That's when you really need to have multiple machines running at the same time; back on 19 May 2002 you had to choose between the X-Files finale, the Cosby Show reunion, the season finale of Survivor and the season finale for The Practice. There was much complaints about this and it appears they may not try this again soon.
I'll say this though: one way some terrorist could potentially render a UCAV useless is to detonate what's known as an electro-magnetic pulse bomb (a bomb that spreads a big cloud of energized carbon filaments). Such a bomb could render all electronics virtually useless since electromagnetic field caused by such an explosion will render all electronics useless in a very localized version of a EMP effects from a nuclear detonation.
Mind you, I'm sure the designers of UCAV's have built the plane so they are not affected by EMP blasts caused by such a device.
I think the problem with television network executives is that there's been a pretty strong warning about changes in TV viewing habits that Alvin Toffler mentioned in one of the most prophetic books ever written, The Third Wave.
The book was published (in 1979) at the time when home videocassette recorders were starting to become popular. What VCR's did was to effectively destroy the whole idea of synchonized television watching Toffler mentioned in this book, where everyone watched TV all at the same time. With VCR's (and now DVR's), you can record a TV program for viewing at a later time; the rise of VCR's was a big contributing factor in the ascendency of David Letterman's success (NBC's Late Night with David Letterman was one of the most recorded shows on TV, according to Nielsen Research).
Indeed, with VCR's being so inexpensive nowadays many people own more than one VCR; it makes even the idea of network counter-programming obselete since the viewer can record multiple shows at the same time and watch it later at their own leisure.
I think the networks will have to really start factoring in the wide use of VCR/DVR devices; in a way, ABC is already doing this by running a number of their ABC network first-run programs as a first rerun on the ABC Family cable channel.
I think if what the Taiwanese developed does become practical reality, there may be already one possible use of this type of optical disc: the storage medium for digital projection systems used in movie theaters.
Remember, from what I've heard Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones needs about 300 GB of disk storage for playback through a theater-quality DLP projector; instead of a large number of hard disks we could reduce all that to a single optical disc of 300 mm in diameter using this new optical disc process.
So, instead of lugging six 35-pound reels of 35 mm film for a two hour movie, you only need a 2-pound 300 mm optical disc; given our considerable experience in mastering and duplicating optical discs it'll be way cheaper to duplicate and ship 8,000 to 10,000 optical disc copies of a movie intended for theatrical projection than to duplicate and ship 8,000 to 10,000 35 mm film prints.
I think Sony has already planned for the day that they can sell the PlayStation 2 as low as US$99 by this time in 2003.
The reason is simple: Sony recently developed a new, lower-cost main circuit board for the PS2 that has much lower chip count and is much less expensive to manufacture. That could mean dramatic drops in PS2 production costs and Sony can afford to drop PS2 price even further without cutting into the revenue stream.
Unfortunately, you can't really use the tally of numbers of tickets sold comparing pre-1950 movies to post-1950 movies.
With the advent of television on a wide scale in the late 1940's and the advent of home video playback in the late 1970's, that tends to really skew the issue of movie viewership drastically.
Remember, up until around 1950 the movie theater was the primary form of visual entertainment; that of course meant huge numbers of tickets sold for movies like Gone with the Wind and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Today, television and home video playback tends to create a huge audience for movies outside of movie theaters, so we have to contend with the issue of people seeing the movie well after its theatrical first run on DVD/VHS, pay-per-view channels and premium cable channels.
The price drop by Nintendo on the GameCube was expected. Do you think Nintendo was going to keep the price at US$199 when PlayStation 2 and XBox now sport the same price?
Besides, Nintendo's greatest strength is its own internal software development group. There are a big number of potentially great games coming out for GameCube from Nintendo coming out later this year that will really drive GameCube sales.
However, OPEC's most prominent members are all Islamic countries--the Persian Gulf states, Libya, Nigeria (which has a very large Moslem population), and Indonesia.
The states of the former Soviet Union aren't going to going OPEC because they need the revenue to fund economic improvement to that part of the world--they don't want production tied down by some international group.
I think the MPAA think they're like the RIAA, but they forget that with the rapid rise of DVD console player and DVD-ROM drive sales many movies now have a major second revenue stream from home video sales.
For example, take the first Harry Potter movie. It has made US$965 million worldwide, but look at how fast the movie has sold on DVD in the UK and the huge pre-orders for the movie here in the USA; that could add US$170 million or more to the total box office receipts for the movie. Indeed, many movies are making their money back just from home video sales.
Besides, the problem with the RIAA is their stupidity in pricing CD's out of the reach of many consumers (US$18 per album-length disc) on a cartel-like basis. If they price is more reasonably (like US$10 per album length disc) the incentive to pirate the music drops dramatically, as anyone who understands basic microeconomics knows.
I think the next improvements will not be with the CPU, but getting the rest of the computer up to speed.
Already, we're seeing that with faster speed expansion slot peripheral connectors, more efficient motherboard chipset architectures, and faster hard drive interfaces (Serial ATA could take hard drive data rates to 6-7 times what ATA-133 does now, and SCSI has reached 320 MB/second).
Besides, given the technical know-how of companies like Intel, AMD, SGS-Thomson, TSMC, Toshiba, Kyocera, etc., I think we will probably see non-CMOS techniques of increasing chip density by 2005-2006 anyway.
Most people think the world's oil reserves are mostly around the Persian Gulf. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union and improving technology to extract and transport oil, we are discovering massively huge reserves in what was once Soviet Central Asia, Siberia and much of China. Also, there is much oil in the continental shelf off the coasts of the USA that have yet to be exploited; British Petroleum engineers have said there may be enough oil beneath the Gulf of Mexico to equal the entire Middle East combined. Also, the tar sands of Alberta province in Canada hold the equivalent of all the oil in Saudi Arabia and then some.
Already, oil from the former Soviet Union has begun to moderate the influence of OPEC; once the oil fields there are fully opened up it could make OPEC obselete.
Fortunately, technology today is WAY better
on
Zeppelins on Patrol?
·
· Score: 2
I think you haven't been reading about the work that the Zeppelin company has done recently with the Zeppelin NT project.
By applying modern aerospace technology to airship designs, the Zeppelin NT requires far less ground crew handling, less work load for the pilot, and the airship itself has far stronger structure to better withstand higher velocity winds.
If I remember from that National Geographic documentary, the doping compound used on the Hindenberg was a combination of powdered aluminum and nitrocellulose. Which is the EXACT formula used on solid rocket fuel.
Small wonder why when the airship burned there was almost no fabric cover left from the fire.
A secret 1938 report inside the Zeppelin company confirmed that the doping compound was extremely flammable.
While a true 35 mm print in pristine form is great, the problem is that for a two-hour movie you're talking six 20-minute reels of 35 mm film that is probably going to weigh around 35 pounds for each reel. I'm not going to guess how much it costs to ship 210 pounds of film anywhere even by UPS Ground service. Also, movie prints have some really major downsides: easily scratched, easily breaks, and color quality could fade over time.
With the rapid development of blue-spectrum LED lasers in the last few years, I expect pretty soon that a movie intended for theatrical digital projection will easily fit on a single 300 mm two-sided optical disc, about the same as the old Laserdiscs. Given that such a package would probably weigh about 5 pounds at most, that is a reduction shipping weight by a factor of 42.
Anyway, wuth the combination of my suggested digital storage format and improvements in digital projection systems that will lower its cost dramatically by 2010, I expect by 2010 most of the major theater complexes will have at least 40-50% of its screens using digital projectors.
I think Nintendo will HAVE to reduce the price of the GameCube.
Remember, Nintendo originally priced GameCube at US$199 because it undercuts the price of both PlayStation 2 and XBox. With that advantage now gone, Nintendo faces the real prospect of losing many new customers to PlayStation 2 or XBox. This is why I expect Nintendo by at latest the start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) lower the price for GameCube to somewhere between US$130 to US$150.
I think Nintendo may be forced to drop the price of the Gamecube to somewhere between US$130 to US$150 by the time E3 starts.
The reason is simple: who wants to pay US$200 for a dedicated gaming machine when for the same price you get much more powerful consoles that have DVD playback capability and broadband gaming ready to go? Nintendo runs a huge risk of losing a large amount of purchasers to Sony and Microsoft thanks to Sony's price drop and Microsoft's soon-to-announce price drop.
I first felt a slow rolling motion, then suddenly a more severe rolling motion. It lasted about 25 seconds or so. If you live on relatively soft land (like I do), you certainly will feel it.
The reason why I assum the use of OpenBSD/FreeBSD is the ability to handle big transaction loads (which is definitely needed for that German election computer system) and have high security on the initial install (which you definitely want with election computers).
If they wanted to show Linux could handle such a load I'm sure SuSE Linux would have been prominently mentioned. That's why I was a bit puzzled by no mention of what Open Source OS was used.
The press release forgot to mention what operating system the computers are using.
People might think the German government is using a Linux variant, but given that all the tools mentioned in the release probably work under BSD variants I have a feeling that they're using a combination of OpenBSD/FreeBSD, an OS that is much-liked for its ability to handle large numbers of transactions and its very high level of security.
That's why I tend to avoid the reviews from the New York Times, both Chicago newspapers, and the Los Angeles Times. The reviews often have a snooty attitude that ends up turning off readers of their reviews and then some.
I'll never forget the sniping back and forth between James Cameron and LA Times movie critic Kenneth Turan over Titanic. Or how about The Sound of Music being heavily panned during its initial release in 1965?
Reviewers often nowadays are missing the point of why a movie was made a certain way, especially those aimed for summer release.
The situation in regards the high cost of replacement inkjet cartridges reminds me a lot of the famous case where the US government said that IBM could not force users of punch card readers to use ONLY punch cards manufactured by IBM. I think what will end up happening is that the Feds may end up forcing every printer manufacturer to sell off their inkjet cartridge/laser printer toner cartridge manufacturing operations to 3-4 third parties so you do have competition in terms of pricing for printer consumables.
It's a good thing my printer is an Epson Stylus COLOR 860--the last of the Epson models to NOT use the ink cartridge with the computer chip. That way, I can get a replacment ink cartridge set (B&W and color) for US$14.:-)
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The reason why XM and Sirius satellite radio exists today is the fact that we have megacorporations owning large swaths of terrestrial radio stations that have pretty much market-researched all the fringe (and some not-so-fringe) music formats out of existance.
Right now, most radio stations play the following formats: Adult Contemporary, Hip-Hop, Heavy Metal and Country & Western formats for new music, plus a tightly-controlled selection of oldies. What happened to stations that play Classical, New Age, ethnic, Easy Listening, and wide-selection Oldies music?
This is where XM and Sirius satellite radio fills the niche. With some 100 channels of audio programming to fill the result is a major resurgence of music formats on these systems that are sorely missed on terrestrial radio today (like the formats I mentioned).
Yes, I give the nod to college radio stations that are playing a very wide selection of music, but alas, the vast majority of college radio stations don't have powerful enough signals to reach a wide audience like the more mainstream terrestrial broadcasters.
Looking at the specs for Camera Link, I don't think it will be popular.
There is one major reason for this: the size of the connector--it's essentially a modified DB-25 connector design. Compare that against the very small connector size for FireWire cables and I think for portability purposes FireWire wins hands down. Besides, at 400 megabits/second transfer rate the current FireWire standard is more than enough to transfer the entire contents of a 512 MB CompactFlash card to the computer pretty quickly.
Besides, the new IEEE-1394b standard for FireWare will double the data transfer rate to 800 megabits/second, which makes Camera Link even less attractive.
I think for relatively low-speed applications (digital still cameras with small-sized memory cards, keyboards, mouse pointers, analog modems, and lower-resolution scanners) USB will do fine.
However, with CompactFlash memory cards already hitting 512 MB in size (and you know the Panasonic SD and Sony Memory Stick cards are going to increase way beyond 64 MB in storage capacity), the wide availability of FireWire port external hard drives and CD-RW/DVD recordable drives, and for higher-resolution scanners, you definitely want to have the higher sustained transfer speeds of FireWire connections.
Besides, how much does it cost to install a FireWire adapter card anyway? These cards are almost as cheap as USB adapter cards for older computers. And many computer manufacturers already include FireWire connections with the computer and many newer motherboards include FireWire support, too.
This isn't the SCSI versus IDE debate, because the price differential between FireWire and USB 2.0 is much smaller than the price differential between SCSI and IDE.
I think once digital projection for movie theaters becomes common by 2010, the idea of phased release of movies may become obselete.
:-)
The reason for phased release is simple: the very high cost of duplicating movie prints (each complete set for a 120-minute movie costs about US$2,500 to US$3,000 and you have to make about 6,000 to 8,000 prints for a blockbuster movie; you also have to factor into the cost of shipping each 35 mm print set weighing 210 pounds each for a 120-minute movie).
With the development of blue-spectrum LED lasers in the last few years, a theatrical-quality digital movie could probably fit on a single 300 mm optical disc; given today's technology to master and duplicate optical discs it'll probably be substantially cheaper to master and duplicate 8,000 optical discs than 8,000 film prints, not to mention shipping costs being a very tiny fraction of a 35 mm movie print!
With that substantial drop in duplicating and shipping costs simultaneous worldwide release of blockbuster movies may become the norm, not the exception.
Here in the USA, the only time where you have to own more than one VCR and/or DVR is during the months of November, February and May, the periods where advertisers closely monitor TV viewship to determine advertising rates (the so-called sweeps periods). That's when you really need to have multiple machines running at the same time; back on 19 May 2002 you had to choose between the X-Files finale, the Cosby Show reunion, the season finale of Survivor and the season finale for The Practice. There was much complaints about this and it appears they may not try this again soon.
I'll say this though: one way some terrorist could potentially render a UCAV useless is to detonate what's known as an electro-magnetic pulse bomb (a bomb that spreads a big cloud of energized carbon filaments). Such a bomb could render all electronics virtually useless since electromagnetic field caused by such an explosion will render all electronics useless in a very localized version of a EMP effects from a nuclear detonation.
Mind you, I'm sure the designers of UCAV's have built the plane so they are not affected by EMP blasts caused by such a device.
I think the problem with television network executives is that there's been a pretty strong warning about changes in TV viewing habits that Alvin Toffler mentioned in one of the most prophetic books ever written, The Third Wave.
The book was published (in 1979) at the time when home videocassette recorders were starting to become popular. What VCR's did was to effectively destroy the whole idea of synchonized television watching Toffler mentioned in this book, where everyone watched TV all at the same time. With VCR's (and now DVR's), you can record a TV program for viewing at a later time; the rise of VCR's was a big contributing factor in the ascendency of David Letterman's success (NBC's Late Night with David Letterman was one of the most recorded shows on TV, according to Nielsen Research).
Indeed, with VCR's being so inexpensive nowadays many people own more than one VCR; it makes even the idea of network counter-programming obselete since the viewer can record multiple shows at the same time and watch it later at their own leisure.
I think the networks will have to really start factoring in the wide use of VCR/DVR devices; in a way, ABC is already doing this by running a number of their ABC network first-run programs as a first rerun on the ABC Family cable channel.
I think if what the Taiwanese developed does become practical reality, there may be already one possible use of this type of optical disc: the storage medium for digital projection systems used in movie theaters.
Remember, from what I've heard Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones needs about 300 GB of disk storage for playback through a theater-quality DLP projector; instead of a large number of hard disks we could reduce all that to a single optical disc of 300 mm in diameter using this new optical disc process.
So, instead of lugging six 35-pound reels of 35 mm film for a two hour movie, you only need a 2-pound 300 mm optical disc; given our considerable experience in mastering and duplicating optical discs it'll be way cheaper to duplicate and ship 8,000 to 10,000 optical disc copies of a movie intended for theatrical projection than to duplicate and ship 8,000 to 10,000 35 mm film prints.
I think Sony has already planned for the day that they can sell the PlayStation 2 as low as US$99 by this time in 2003.
The reason is simple: Sony recently developed a new, lower-cost main circuit board for the PS2 that has much lower chip count and is much less expensive to manufacture. That could mean dramatic drops in PS2 production costs and Sony can afford to drop PS2 price even further without cutting into the revenue stream.
Unfortunately, you can't really use the tally of numbers of tickets sold comparing pre-1950 movies to post-1950 movies.
With the advent of television on a wide scale in the late 1940's and the advent of home video playback in the late 1970's, that tends to really skew the issue of movie viewership drastically.
Remember, up until around 1950 the movie theater was the primary form of visual entertainment; that of course meant huge numbers of tickets sold for movies like Gone with the Wind and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Today, television and home video playback tends to create a huge audience for movies outside of movie theaters, so we have to contend with the issue of people seeing the movie well after its theatrical first run on DVD/VHS, pay-per-view channels and premium cable channels.
The price drop by Nintendo on the GameCube was expected. Do you think Nintendo was going to keep the price at US$199 when PlayStation 2 and XBox now sport the same price?
Besides, Nintendo's greatest strength is its own internal software development group. There are a big number of potentially great games coming out for GameCube from Nintendo coming out later this year that will really drive GameCube sales.
However, OPEC's most prominent members are all Islamic countries--the Persian Gulf states, Libya, Nigeria (which has a very large Moslem population), and Indonesia.
The states of the former Soviet Union aren't going to going OPEC because they need the revenue to fund economic improvement to that part of the world--they don't want production tied down by some international group.
I think the MPAA think they're like the RIAA, but they forget that with the rapid rise of DVD console player and DVD-ROM drive sales many movies now have a major second revenue stream from home video sales.
For example, take the first Harry Potter movie. It has made US$965 million worldwide, but look at how fast the movie has sold on DVD in the UK and the huge pre-orders for the movie here in the USA; that could add US$170 million or more to the total box office receipts for the movie. Indeed, many movies are making their money back just from home video sales.
Besides, the problem with the RIAA is their stupidity in pricing CD's out of the reach of many consumers (US$18 per album-length disc) on a cartel-like basis. If they price is more reasonably (like US$10 per album length disc) the incentive to pirate the music drops dramatically, as anyone who understands basic microeconomics knows.
I think the next improvements will not be with the CPU, but getting the rest of the computer up to speed.
Already, we're seeing that with faster speed expansion slot peripheral connectors, more efficient motherboard chipset architectures, and faster hard drive interfaces (Serial ATA could take hard drive data rates to 6-7 times what ATA-133 does now, and SCSI has reached 320 MB/second).
Besides, given the technical know-how of companies like Intel, AMD, SGS-Thomson, TSMC, Toshiba, Kyocera, etc., I think we will probably see non-CMOS techniques of increasing chip density by 2005-2006 anyway.
That's what you think.
Most people think the world's oil reserves are mostly around the Persian Gulf. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union and improving technology to extract and transport oil, we are discovering massively huge reserves in what was once Soviet Central Asia, Siberia and much of China. Also, there is much oil in the continental shelf off the coasts of the USA that have yet to be exploited; British Petroleum engineers have said there may be enough oil beneath the Gulf of Mexico to equal the entire Middle East combined. Also, the tar sands of Alberta province in Canada hold the equivalent of all the oil in Saudi Arabia and then some.
Already, oil from the former Soviet Union has begun to moderate the influence of OPEC; once the oil fields there are fully opened up it could make OPEC obselete.
I think you haven't been reading about the work that the Zeppelin company has done recently with the Zeppelin NT project.
By applying modern aerospace technology to airship designs, the Zeppelin NT requires far less ground crew handling, less work load for the pilot, and the airship itself has far stronger structure to better withstand higher velocity winds.
If I remember from that National Geographic documentary, the doping compound used on the Hindenberg was a combination of powdered aluminum and nitrocellulose. Which is the EXACT formula used on solid rocket fuel.
Small wonder why when the airship burned there was almost no fabric cover left from the fire.
A secret 1938 report inside the Zeppelin company confirmed that the doping compound was extremely flammable.
I think Ebert is wrong, too.
While a true 35 mm print in pristine form is great, the problem is that for a two-hour movie you're talking six 20-minute reels of 35 mm film that is probably going to weigh around 35 pounds for each reel. I'm not going to guess how much it costs to ship 210 pounds of film anywhere even by UPS Ground service. Also, movie prints have some really major downsides: easily scratched, easily breaks, and color quality could fade over time.
With the rapid development of blue-spectrum LED lasers in the last few years, I expect pretty soon that a movie intended for theatrical digital projection will easily fit on a single 300 mm two-sided optical disc, about the same as the old Laserdiscs. Given that such a package would probably weigh about 5 pounds at most, that is a reduction shipping weight by a factor of 42.
Anyway, wuth the combination of my suggested digital storage format and improvements in digital projection systems that will lower its cost dramatically by 2010, I expect by 2010 most of the major theater complexes will have at least 40-50% of its screens using digital projectors.
I think Nintendo will HAVE to reduce the price of the GameCube.
Remember, Nintendo originally priced GameCube at US$199 because it undercuts the price of both PlayStation 2 and XBox. With that advantage now gone, Nintendo faces the real prospect of losing many new customers to PlayStation 2 or XBox. This is why I expect Nintendo by at latest the start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) lower the price for GameCube to somewhere between US$130 to US$150.
I think Nintendo may be forced to drop the price of the Gamecube to somewhere between US$130 to US$150 by the time E3 starts.
The reason is simple: who wants to pay US$200 for a dedicated gaming machine when for the same price you get much more powerful consoles that have DVD playback capability and broadband gaming ready to go? Nintendo runs a huge risk of losing a large amount of purchasers to Sony and Microsoft thanks to Sony's price drop and Microsoft's soon-to-announce price drop.
I certainly felt it, too.
I first felt a slow rolling motion, then suddenly a more severe rolling motion. It lasted about 25 seconds or so. If you live on relatively soft land (like I do), you certainly will feel it.
The reason why I assum the use of OpenBSD/FreeBSD is the ability to handle big transaction loads (which is definitely needed for that German election computer system) and have high security on the initial install (which you definitely want with election computers).
If they wanted to show Linux could handle such a load I'm sure SuSE Linux would have been prominently mentioned. That's why I was a bit puzzled by no mention of what Open Source OS was used.
The press release forgot to mention what operating system the computers are using.
People might think the German government is using a Linux variant, but given that all the tools mentioned in the release probably work under BSD variants I have a feeling that they're using a combination of OpenBSD/FreeBSD, an OS that is much-liked for its ability to handle large numbers of transactions and its very high level of security.
That's why I tend to avoid the reviews from the New York Times, both Chicago newspapers, and the Los Angeles Times. The reviews often have a snooty attitude that ends up turning off readers of their reviews and then some.
I'll never forget the sniping back and forth between James Cameron and LA Times movie critic Kenneth Turan over Titanic. Or how about The Sound of Music being heavily panned during its initial release in 1965?
Reviewers often nowadays are missing the point of why a movie was made a certain way, especially those aimed for summer release.
The situation in regards the high cost of replacement inkjet cartridges reminds me a lot of the famous case where the US government said that IBM could not force users of punch card readers to use ONLY punch cards manufactured by IBM. I think what will end up happening is that the Feds may end up forcing every printer manufacturer to sell off their inkjet cartridge/laser printer toner cartridge manufacturing operations to 3-4 third parties so you do have competition in terms of pricing for printer consumables.
:-)
It's a good thing my printer is an Epson Stylus COLOR 860--the last of the Epson models to NOT use the ink cartridge with the computer chip. That way, I can get a replacment ink cartridge set (B&W and color) for US$14.