(Because) enough people do not regularly apply security patches to Windows and do not run anti-virus software, there is little immediate need for malware authors to turn to these techniques as a means of deeper compromise.
Note that in Windows XP, especially if you have Service Pack 2 applied, the Security Center in Windows XP SP2 nags you enough that you end up installing programs like the free editions of ZoneAlarm firewall and AVG Anti-Virus (in lieu of commercial Internet security suites) and at least reminds you to install security patches from Microsoft when it becomes available.
The point people are trying to make is that aside from the picture quality that you can only detect with a $2000-3000 new television there is really no compelling reason to invest in Blu-ray.
I have to disagree on that! The price of non-CRT rear-projection TV's have dropped tremendously over the last year (you can get a DLP 720p set for under US$1,500!), and even the price of the big 40" (diagonal) LCD panel displays have dropped to the point you can get them for US$1,700 for 720p models! By the end of 2007, expect even 1080p non-CRT rear-projection TV's and 1080p larger LCD panels to drop well below US$2,000 in price. With these lower prices, the incentive to buy high-definition disc players jumps dramatically, to say the least. I've seen Disney's Blu-Ray version of Dinosaur and even on a 40" 720p LCD panel, the picture sharpness is amazing.
A similar situation could happen with Blueray, but this time the xbox 360 is in the mix as well.
However, Blu-Ray on a game console has one big advantage over HD-DVD: Blu-Ray playback is built into the console, while you need to buy an accessory drive to play back HD-DVD discs on the Xbox 360. As such, once PlayStation 3 production and sales ramp up over the next year, this will dramatically increase the Blu-Ray user base, which will drive more Blu-Ray player sales.
Actually, I think an XPC-sized box with heat-pipe cooling for the Fusion chip will actually work pretty well.
I think people are confused about the nature of Fusion--it is intended for general computer users, not the high-end geeks who want to load up on the latest in everything inside the computer.
Not really. Because the Fusion concept integrates so much into one chip, it also means the potential to substantially cut the size of the motherboard itself, which means lower overall power consumption. This means we could dramatically reduce the size of the CPU box to something not much bigger than the current Mac Mini but still have tremendous processing power. It would certainly make it easier for designer of small computer barebones systems like Shuttle's XPC boxes.
I believe that while the PlayStation 3 will cater to high-end gamers, the Wii will cater to value-oriented gamers and those who want a "different" gaming experience, thanks to the Wii's unusual (but innovative) game controller.
1) It has far more movie studio support than HD-DVD. Particularly important is Disney's support, since Disney DVD's have always been very strong sellers to start with anyway. Can you imagine a Pixar movie released on Blu-Ray format? (big thumbs up)
2) The storage capacity is larger (50 GB versus 30 GB), which means you can put more extra features on a single Blu-Ray disc than an HD-DVD disc.
3) The arrival of Sony's PlayStation 3 means immediately the arrival of a large user base that can play Blu-Ray discs.
4) We're still a long way from offering HD-quality video downloads over the Internet. It would require huge increases in download speeds, maybe as high as 50 megabits per second at bare minimum (the number of broadband Internet home users with anything over 10 mbps download speeds is still very small even in Europe and Asia).
Yes, prices are high now, but I expect prices to drop rapidly during the course of 2007. Good quality standalone Blu-Ray players will probably cost around US$450 by the end of 2007, in my humble opinion.
My guess is that on January 30, 2007 (the day Windows Vista arrives for public sale), Microsoft will either 1) incorporate Zune functions into the operating system or 2) provide a download that allows Windows Vista to access the Zune player.
But try telling, persuading or cajoling China, India, Indonesia, South America and Africa to alter their pollution output (particularly soot and CO2).
GOOD LUCK FOLKS!
And that was why the original Kyoto Protocol as signed was flawed to start with. If what they agreed to did include China, India, and the Third World (e.g., essentially the whole world) to comply with the CO2 limits, I think public support in the USA would have been far higher, to say the least.
Have you seen the pollution problems in the less-developed world? Go to China and India, where pollution and deforestation due to population pressures are SERIOUS problems, to say the least. The air quality of the cities of China are getting as bad (if not worse!) than the Los Angeles during the 1960's and 1970's, when smog was an extremely serious problem.
Thanks to modern technology, Los Angeles' air has dramatically improved, and the days of serious smog alerts in the Los Angeles basin has dropped dramatically, too.
I think you're forgetting that the BEST way to determine Earth's climate is to look at that thermonuclear fireball called the Sun. If you look at sunspot activity, you can note that our climate changes depending on the point in the sunspot cycle.
Also, we should also check on if there has been any major volcanic eruptions, too. A major eruption like Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 can spew massive amounts of volcanic ash into the atmosphere, where the ash particles and the chloride compounds from the ash can cool the planet for a couple of years. G*d help us all if we have another eruption on the level of Mt. Tambora in 1815, an eruption that literally cooled the planet substantially for a couple of years.
We have to means now to study climate by looking at the tree rings our oldest living trees, tree rings on petrified trees, and doing deep-core ice samples of Antarctic ice.
From that analysis so far, we know that Earth's climate has always wildly varied over the years. Indeed, from reading the journals of Church monks in Europe during the Middle Ages we know that Europe during the early Middle Ages was quite warm and the later Middle Ages was quite cold; it's possible that we're returning to the warmer climate of early Middle Age Europe again.
Let's do it by doing studies of our climate going back thousands of years (we can do that now by analyzing tree rings from very old trees, tree rings from petrified logs, and deep-core sampling of the Antarctic ice pack that can study climate dating back 100,000 years).
We do know from Middle Age historical records kept by Church monks in Europe that up until around 1200 AD, Europe was actually quite warm and supported pretty strong agriculture. But then, the temperatures suddenly dropped and the Thames River in England froze over in winter frequently; that right there cause people in Europe to change the design of their living structures and to change the types of food grown there. It is likely that Europe is returning to the warmer days of the early Middle Ages, which means agriculture could really flourish in Europe again.
Unless Microsoft is willing to spend huge amounts of money promoting and improving the Zune player, they're not going to make much of a dent against the 70% marketshare of all iPod models in the portable music player market. The iPod marketshare is so entrenched that even automakers now offer as standard iPod connections that use the data connector on the iPod, which means you can 1) control the iPod from the car stereo controls and 2) charge the iPod batteries.
Personally, I blame soon-to-be former Mayor Jerry Brown for the A's leaving Oakland. The A's had an excellent, privately-financed plan to put up a new stadium just north of Jack London Square that would have literally transformed Oakland, since having some 80 games there per year would attract a lot of development around the ballpark, which would have strongly revived the economy of the city since the stadium would be so close to downtown and Jack London Square (I believe it would have been located on the waterfront, which meant you could even get to the game by ferryboat). But Brown wanted housing development in that area instead, and as such the A's decided to use that land in Fremont owned by Cisco Systems for the park instead.
Brown obviously didn't learn the lesson of the San Francisco Giants, where the construction of (now) AT&T Park at San Francisco's China Basin literally revived the South of Market area and also transformed much of the Embarcardero area, too.
I think you're forgetting that the vast majority of mid-range to high-end machines will likely ship with Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, which essentially replaces Windows XP Media Center Edition. Vista Home Premium is actually a pretty nice package, and the pricing is not bad considering that Windows XP Media Center Edition is pretty expensive to start with. Vista Ultimate Edition is overkill for everyone except seriously hard-core users who want the latest and greatest with their latest high-end hardware....
The biggest draw of the Xbox 360 is the Xbox Live service for online gaming. Because Xbox Live is a truly singular interface for online gaming access regardless of game, that means you can play multiple different types of online games pretty easily. It will be interesting to see if the PlayStation 3's new online service will be a singular acess method like Xbox Live....
Self-serving probably, but Akamai does have a point, though. With today more and more users surfing the Internet at broadband speeds, anything that slows down access is going to aggravate users to no end.
Actually, the new nanos are very nice for one reason: long battery life per charge. Being able to run up to 24 hours before needing a recharge is very nice, especially if you listen to the player on long international flights. The new iPod Shuffle only lasts up to 12 hours on a single charge is something I don't desire, especially when listening to multiple podcasts that last well over a hour per podcast.
However, I expect sales of portable music players to be strong for quite some time, especially with the new Apple iPod Shuffle (2G) and the plethora of 1 GB/2 GB portable music players at US$100 or less.
Actually, right now Intel is leading with their excellent Core 2 Duo CPU's. Extremely fast, very efficient in instructions processed per CPU clock cycle, and decently cool running, that's why Apple chose the Core 2 Duo for most of their Macintosh line.
And customers who do a lot of multimedia editing now enjoy the benefits of dual-core CPU technology, too. Dual cores make it possible to edit still images from digital still cameras, video from MiniDV/MicroDV camcorders, and audio far faster than ever before.
But how are we going to stop growing the human population? War? A major epidemic that kills off a huge fraction of the human race? Mandatory limits on two children per family?
How about this better solution: move as much of the human population off the planet as possible. Imagine building space colonies with each colony holding perhaps 200,000 or more people; the raw material to build them is readily available on the Moon.
But seriously, when Thomas Robert Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, he assumed that there would be little change in food production technology. But since his time, thanks to dramatic improvements in agricultural technology and food storage technology, the food supply has grown at a hugely exponential rate, so much so that the only reason why we have mass famines nowadays are either deliberate political policy or war. And with improvements in desalinization of water, the world's deserts could literally explode in agricultural output. After all, what was then called the Salton Sink (now the Imperial Valley of California) was desert land, but thanks to tapping into the Colorado River for irrigation this area has become one of the world's most productive farmlands on a per hectare basis.
I think what is happening is that the high price (US$150) of a decently-featured iPod nano 2 GB (remember, the iPod Shuffle totally lacks a display, which is a turnoff for many users) is creating a demand for low-cost portable music players.
Remember, Windows XP users can "rip" their CD collection using Windows Media Player 10 and copy the music to various low-cost (but decently-featured) players for under US$100, many of which sport as much as 2 GB of flash memory storage. For example, you can get a Creative Zen Nano Plus 512 MB for around US$40 online, and the Panasonic SV-MP010W 1 GB player for around US$50 online (and this is only scratching the surface for the many low cost models out there).
If Apple wants to keep their marketshare up, in my humble opinion they should seriously consider dropping the price of the 2 GB nano to US$125 and 4 GB nano to US$160-US$175 probably by February-March 2007.
I am very happy that they've decided to launch one final Hubble servicing mission. This will allow the HST to operate until the James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2013.
That's why here in California most people vote nowadays using mark sense ballots akin to like filling out a Scantron form when you did your college entrance exams.
Mind you, I'd prefer such ballots to be marked with a pen or a permanent-ink marker stamp, since this eliminates mostly the issue of pencil-filled ballots with either not-dark enough marks and/or erased marks, which can open the door to serious voter fraud.
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From the article:
(Because) enough people do not regularly apply security patches to Windows and do not run anti-virus software, there is little immediate need for malware authors to turn to these techniques as a means of deeper compromise.
Note that in Windows XP, especially if you have Service Pack 2 applied, the Security Center in Windows XP SP2 nags you enough that you end up installing programs like the free editions of ZoneAlarm firewall and AVG Anti-Virus (in lieu of commercial Internet security suites) and at least reminds you to install security patches from Microsoft when it becomes available.
The point people are trying to make is that aside from the picture quality that you can only detect with a $2000-3000 new television there is really no compelling reason to invest in Blu-ray.
I have to disagree on that! The price of non-CRT rear-projection TV's have dropped tremendously over the last year (you can get a DLP 720p set for under US$1,500!), and even the price of the big 40" (diagonal) LCD panel displays have dropped to the point you can get them for US$1,700 for 720p models! By the end of 2007, expect even 1080p non-CRT rear-projection TV's and 1080p larger LCD panels to drop well below US$2,000 in price. With these lower prices, the incentive to buy high-definition disc players jumps dramatically, to say the least. I've seen Disney's Blu-Ray version of Dinosaur and even on a 40" 720p LCD panel, the picture sharpness is amazing.
A similar situation could happen with Blueray, but this time the xbox 360 is in the mix as well.
However, Blu-Ray on a game console has one big advantage over HD-DVD: Blu-Ray playback is built into the console, while you need to buy an accessory drive to play back HD-DVD discs on the Xbox 360. As such, once PlayStation 3 production and sales ramp up over the next year, this will dramatically increase the Blu-Ray user base, which will drive more Blu-Ray player sales.
Actually, I think an XPC-sized box with heat-pipe cooling for the Fusion chip will actually work pretty well.
I think people are confused about the nature of Fusion--it is intended for general computer users, not the high-end geeks who want to load up on the latest in everything inside the computer.
Not really. Because the Fusion concept integrates so much into one chip, it also means the potential to substantially cut the size of the motherboard itself, which means lower overall power consumption. This means we could dramatically reduce the size of the CPU box to something not much bigger than the current Mac Mini but still have tremendous processing power. It would certainly make it easier for designer of small computer barebones systems like Shuttle's XPC boxes.
I believe that while the PlayStation 3 will cater to high-end gamers, the Wii will cater to value-oriented gamers and those who want a "different" gaming experience, thanks to the Wii's unusual (but innovative) game controller.
I can cite the following reasons:
1) It has far more movie studio support than HD-DVD. Particularly important is Disney's support, since Disney DVD's have always been very strong sellers to start with anyway. Can you imagine a Pixar movie released on Blu-Ray format? (big thumbs up)
2) The storage capacity is larger (50 GB versus 30 GB), which means you can put more extra features on a single Blu-Ray disc than an HD-DVD disc.
3) The arrival of Sony's PlayStation 3 means immediately the arrival of a large user base that can play Blu-Ray discs.
4) We're still a long way from offering HD-quality video downloads over the Internet. It would require huge increases in download speeds, maybe as high as 50 megabits per second at bare minimum (the number of broadband Internet home users with anything over 10 mbps download speeds is still very small even in Europe and Asia).
Yes, prices are high now, but I expect prices to drop rapidly during the course of 2007. Good quality standalone Blu-Ray players will probably cost around US$450 by the end of 2007, in my humble opinion.
My guess is that on January 30, 2007 (the day Windows Vista arrives for public sale), Microsoft will either 1) incorporate Zune functions into the operating system or 2) provide a download that allows Windows Vista to access the Zune player.
But try telling, persuading or cajoling China, India, Indonesia, South America and Africa to alter their pollution output (particularly soot and CO2).
GOOD LUCK FOLKS!
And that was why the original Kyoto Protocol as signed was flawed to start with. If what they agreed to did include China, India, and the Third World (e.g., essentially the whole world) to comply with the CO2 limits, I think public support in the USA would have been far higher, to say the least.
You have got to be kidding with your remarks.
Have you seen the pollution problems in the less-developed world? Go to China and India, where pollution and deforestation due to population pressures are SERIOUS problems, to say the least. The air quality of the cities of China are getting as bad (if not worse!) than the Los Angeles during the 1960's and 1970's, when smog was an extremely serious problem.
Thanks to modern technology, Los Angeles' air has dramatically improved, and the days of serious smog alerts in the Los Angeles basin has dropped dramatically, too.
I think you're forgetting that the BEST way to determine Earth's climate is to look at that thermonuclear fireball called the Sun. If you look at sunspot activity, you can note that our climate changes depending on the point in the sunspot cycle.
Also, we should also check on if there has been any major volcanic eruptions, too. A major eruption like Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 can spew massive amounts of volcanic ash into the atmosphere, where the ash particles and the chloride compounds from the ash can cool the planet for a couple of years. G*d help us all if we have another eruption on the level of Mt. Tambora in 1815, an eruption that literally cooled the planet substantially for a couple of years.
We have to means now to study climate by looking at the tree rings our oldest living trees, tree rings on petrified trees, and doing deep-core ice samples of Antarctic ice.
From that analysis so far, we know that Earth's climate has always wildly varied over the years. Indeed, from reading the journals of Church monks in Europe during the Middle Ages we know that Europe during the early Middle Ages was quite warm and the later Middle Ages was quite cold; it's possible that we're returning to the warmer climate of early Middle Age Europe again.
AMEN!
Let's do it by doing studies of our climate going back thousands of years (we can do that now by analyzing tree rings from very old trees, tree rings from petrified logs, and deep-core sampling of the Antarctic ice pack that can study climate dating back 100,000 years).
We do know from Middle Age historical records kept by Church monks in Europe that up until around 1200 AD, Europe was actually quite warm and supported pretty strong agriculture. But then, the temperatures suddenly dropped and the Thames River in England froze over in winter frequently; that right there cause people in Europe to change the design of their living structures and to change the types of food grown there. It is likely that Europe is returning to the warmer days of the early Middle Ages, which means agriculture could really flourish in Europe again.
Unless Microsoft is willing to spend huge amounts of money promoting and improving the Zune player, they're not going to make much of a dent against the 70% marketshare of all iPod models in the portable music player market. The iPod marketshare is so entrenched that even automakers now offer as standard iPod connections that use the data connector on the iPod, which means you can 1) control the iPod from the car stereo controls and 2) charge the iPod batteries.
(getting on soapbox)
Personally, I blame soon-to-be former Mayor Jerry Brown for the A's leaving Oakland. The A's had an excellent, privately-financed plan to put up a new stadium just north of Jack London Square that would have literally transformed Oakland, since having some 80 games there per year would attract a lot of development around the ballpark, which would have strongly revived the economy of the city since the stadium would be so close to downtown and Jack London Square (I believe it would have been located on the waterfront, which meant you could even get to the game by ferryboat). But Brown wanted housing development in that area instead, and as such the A's decided to use that land in Fremont owned by Cisco Systems for the park instead.
Brown obviously didn't learn the lesson of the San Francisco Giants, where the construction of (now) AT&T Park at San Francisco's China Basin literally revived the South of Market area and also transformed much of the Embarcardero area, too.
(getting off soapbox)
I think you're forgetting that the vast majority of mid-range to high-end machines will likely ship with Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, which essentially replaces Windows XP Media Center Edition. Vista Home Premium is actually a pretty nice package, and the pricing is not bad considering that Windows XP Media Center Edition is pretty expensive to start with. Vista Ultimate Edition is overkill for everyone except seriously hard-core users who want the latest and greatest with their latest high-end hardware....
The biggest draw of the Xbox 360 is the Xbox Live service for online gaming. Because Xbox Live is a truly singular interface for online gaming access regardless of game, that means you can play multiple different types of online games pretty easily. It will be interesting to see if the PlayStation 3's new online service will be a singular acess method like Xbox Live....
Self-serving probably, but Akamai does have a point, though. With today more and more users surfing the Internet at broadband speeds, anything that slows down access is going to aggravate users to no end.
Actually, the new nanos are very nice for one reason: long battery life per charge. Being able to run up to 24 hours before needing a recharge is very nice, especially if you listen to the player on long international flights. The new iPod Shuffle only lasts up to 12 hours on a single charge is something I don't desire, especially when listening to multiple podcasts that last well over a hour per podcast.
However, I expect sales of portable music players to be strong for quite some time, especially with the new Apple iPod Shuffle (2G) and the plethora of 1 GB/2 GB portable music players at US$100 or less.
Actually, right now Intel is leading with their excellent Core 2 Duo CPU's. Extremely fast, very efficient in instructions processed per CPU clock cycle, and decently cool running, that's why Apple chose the Core 2 Duo for most of their Macintosh line.
And customers who do a lot of multimedia editing now enjoy the benefits of dual-core CPU technology, too. Dual cores make it possible to edit still images from digital still cameras, video from MiniDV/MicroDV camcorders, and audio far faster than ever before.
But how are we going to stop growing the human population? War? A major epidemic that kills off a huge fraction of the human race? Mandatory limits on two children per family?
How about this better solution: move as much of the human population off the planet as possible. Imagine building space colonies with each colony holding perhaps 200,000 or more people; the raw material to build them is readily available on the Moon.
But seriously, when Thomas Robert Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, he assumed that there would be little change in food production technology. But since his time, thanks to dramatic improvements in agricultural technology and food storage technology, the food supply has grown at a hugely exponential rate, so much so that the only reason why we have mass famines nowadays are either deliberate political policy or war. And with improvements in desalinization of water, the world's deserts could literally explode in agricultural output. After all, what was then called the Salton Sink (now the Imperial Valley of California) was desert land, but thanks to tapping into the Colorado River for irrigation this area has become one of the world's most productive farmlands on a per hectare basis.
I think what is happening is that the high price (US$150) of a decently-featured iPod nano 2 GB (remember, the iPod Shuffle totally lacks a display, which is a turnoff for many users) is creating a demand for low-cost portable music players.
Remember, Windows XP users can "rip" their CD collection using Windows Media Player 10 and copy the music to various low-cost (but decently-featured) players for under US$100, many of which sport as much as 2 GB of flash memory storage. For example, you can get a Creative Zen Nano Plus 512 MB for around US$40 online, and the Panasonic SV-MP010W 1 GB player for around US$50 online (and this is only scratching the surface for the many low cost models out there).
If Apple wants to keep their marketshare up, in my humble opinion they should seriously consider dropping the price of the 2 GB nano to US$125 and 4 GB nano to US$160-US$175 probably by February-March 2007.
I am very happy that they've decided to launch one final Hubble servicing mission. This will allow the HST to operate until the James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2013.
That's why here in California most people vote nowadays using mark sense ballots akin to like filling out a Scantron form when you did your college entrance exams.
Mind you, I'd prefer such ballots to be marked with a pen or a permanent-ink marker stamp, since this eliminates mostly the issue of pencil-filled ballots with either not-dark enough marks and/or erased marks, which can open the door to serious voter fraud.