HP help desk, health check, AV update check,.... About a half dozen pre-installed helpful useless tidbits to make life easer.
you're using some craptastic 3rd party player
It's the default HP media player. It launches when a DVD is inserted. I agree, it is craptastic, but it's the default and we have not had the time to figure out how to change all the wrong defaults.
Of course Vista works with dual monitors
Sorry, my bad. I changed lanes without signalling. I was back to Geexbox. Does it support dual monitors? http://geexbox.org/en/index.html
I use it all the time on my laptop (Ubuntu) as it plays DVDs just fine while not conforming to the DVD consortium demands of DVD players. The best feature is it plays the movie. If I want the menu, previews, FBI warning, or "Don't steal this film" short, I can watch them later if I want. Geexbox may be the fix to the Vista machine and playing DVDs. It works fine on my laptop with selecting internal (laptop) screen and an external monitor, but I have not tested if it is able to do dual monitor setup with control on one monitor and the presentaion on the other.
Open your eyes and look. My dad bought a Mac Laptop and has migrated to Linux. I'm typing this right now on an ex-Windows machine. Do you know anyone talking about the release of Gutsy? Pay attention.
Hell, I'm still on Windows 2000, works fine for me! I had too many driver problems and moved on. I got tired of hunting down a driver for a thumb drive every time someone handed me one. I still have it on the laptop hard drive I swapped out just in case I need it, but have found I seldom slide it back in the laptop to use it.
And that doesn't translate to throwing out their entire machine and spending loads on a Mac.
True, but it does often equate buying a Mac instead of a PC when picking up a new machine. The XP machine is still there and doesn't get tossed right away. It collects dust sitting there just in case it is needed for something until it is just in the way and gets tossed (donated).
And the only reason Vista nags so much, is because people (presumably Mac users) slagged off XP so much for not asking you,
In anything I have used that isn't Windows, updates and such being avaliable, don't stop the machine when a dialog shows up. A toolbar item gently brightning and dimming to get your attention for an application needing user input is one thing. Shutting off the movie that is playing to ask permission to do a Java update check (while there is no network connection) is just plain bad design regardless of how much it is a good idea to ask permission. It should not stop the show.
OS X was better because you had to enter your password to do such things
Does OS X freeze all open applications when it decided it needs the user permission to check for an update?
Oh, hail the genius. You mean, you'll practice running your presentations at least once from now on before going public on an out-of-the-box machine? Gee, I wish I'd thought of that one.
Um no. The presentation was tested, then made just fine twice. The third film in the series it decided to ask permission to let Java do something.. right in the middle of a running presentation. To make matters worse, we were not running a browser or any other java application. It was a pop-up plain and simple. It was not network intiated. At the time, there was no LAN connection.
Set-up and testing is not enough. I know all the junk that pops up on an HP machine on start-up is enough to choke a horse, but when you think it is over, more stuff shows up later. Auto scheduled stuff not configured by the end user is the problem. The user did not launch the application or schedule it.
Really? I just picked up Windows XP last month at work.
Check the copyright date, release date, and the expiration date. It has been polished a few times and put back on the shelf so you can still buy a few "New" copies.
Maybe this whole "upgrade the OS" thing isn't such a good business plan after all?
Maybe if they did it well, it might pay off. Windows XP is ancient. For a release, it is very old. They missed on the upgrade the OS thing poorly with Vista. Many are moving on to Apple or Linux instead.
My wife has picked up a Vista laptop to use in class stuff. She needed to play a DVD. After waiting for the boot dialog boxes to quit and closing them all. she started the DVD using an external monitor (dual monitor setup for presentation). About 5 minutes the DVD playback froze. Checking the laptop display to check the error message, it was a permission needed for Java to continue to do something or other. This stop everything and launch some odd process 5 minutes into a presentation is no OK for business. In the future we are not using the brand new Vista laptop for business presentations. It's nagging is unacceptable. In the future we will boot Geexbox or use another laptop to show videos. The Vista one interupts business presentations. I need to test it to see if it supports dual monitors.
My father help design the DC lines from the Northwest to California.
Mine too. My dad retired from BPA about 18 years ago.
That's funny. Here is the proof of the pudding.. Name the popular joke when they were considering the possibility of a lightning strike and damage to the converters.. The joke was a hit with the engineers..
Yes. In long runs, the line capacitance and inductance don't create reactive power problems. Among the problems are high reactive currents causing more line heating and loss as well as problems with voltage regulation along the length of the line. DC can be stored in batteries.
With the lines being an inductor and providing inductive reluctance and the conductors being capacitive along their length, a long line where only one end of the line opens, but not the other can cause extreme voltages on the end that opened due to approaching resonance. Long lines must be tripped off line at both ends at the same time. The failure of one substation breaker to open when the other end tripped is the cause of the great East Coast blackout.
Inductive coupling to fences and other conductors is lessened. Corona discharge is lessened.
The big downside is the cost of the converter stations needed to change the voltage at all the local distribution points. On the West coast in the US, is the DC intertie. It starts near the Columbia River, crosses Oregon into California and Nevada and ends about 60 miles North of LA in California. There is a total of 2 converter stations along it's entire length. There are no substations in-between.
However, in that case, an Australian lawyer was able to sneak the wheel patent through a fast-track application system. The US patent went through the full application procedure.
That Sony was willing and able to resolve this issue is mind blowing. It still raises the question why they don't just put non-DRM stuff on the shelves in the first place.
It was an experiment with only a few titles. I was sure to let them know it is a failure. DRM will make it in the market if the loss to piracy is drastic and the loss to rejected sales is minimal. I was let them know I bought the movie. DRM will kill sales. DRM did not stop piracy. When my copy didn't work and before I found non-DRM ones were offered, I picked up an ISO from Bit Torrent. It is the first and only MPAA movie I got from Peer to Peer. After I received my working copy, I deleted the ISO. I bought it. It didn't work. I used a work-around. I let them know.
They need to know people are moving to portable players just like they did with music. Ripping to the players is common. Home Theater set-ups are common. Media servers are common. Watching the movie is expected. Forcing the watching of "Don't steal this film" and the FBI warning is robbing customers who bought the film. Life wasted on the redundant waste of time can not be bought back at any price. Quit stealing my time.
This is the main reason for PVRs and home media servers. I don't want to take the time to find the disk the kids didn't put away, sit through the propaganda, and re-file it when done. I would like to decide on a movie, select it from the menu and have the movie start when I hit play. I love a media server. I hate new incompatible copy protection. It kills sales.
You cannot copy your DVD to my (or your own) video tape.
This is copy protection. I can sell you or lend you my video tape and it will play. Digital DRM files have no equivalent. Moved files have playback prevention. The same is true for console video games. They have copy protection. There is no rights management that says permission granted to play on player serial number XXXX and no others. The copy won't work (shouldn't work) while the original will.
Fine-grained DRM gets to the level that I cannot play your mp3 on my player, or you cannot play your own mp3 on a different player than the one you bought it for.
It is this exact playback prevention that is DRM. It is defective by design. It is designed to not work on another player. This is protected WMA songs playing on certified players are guaranteed to not play on it's replacement certified but not authorized player.
Put you money where your mouth is, Eddie boy. If these lawsuits offend you as you claim, dissolve your membership in the conspiracy that organizes them. As long as you're still a member of the RIAA, and as long as the lawsuits keep coming, your comments are just as dishonest as your corrput business model.
I think he just got wind of the number of people who don't trade with the enemy. He hasn't figured out what to do about it yet.
Even after the "tumble", I wouldn't be rushing to invest in this one.
Good point. I used them as an example of an overvalued stock pushed into a bubble by speculation. I thought their IPO was high and didn't buy. I didn't want to be holding the bag when the bubble burst. The speculators pushing it would have made a nice chunk of change with some properly placed buy and sell orders at + & - 10% price points. Sell on the way up and buy on the way down and repeat a couple times...
I remember having THX (or something similar) on the cassette tapes.
That was Dolby calibration tones. Dolby worked by boosting the highs in recording to improve the recorded high frequency S/N ratio and then reversing the process on playback. To properly set the attenuation curve a refrence tone was recorded to calibrate the playback levels. They still use it on studio videotape. The specification is here.
www.exn.ca/producersguide/HD_Prod_Specs_04.doc
This was quickly dropped as it caused much confusion with consumers. A few with high end and super ears with unlimited budget for equipment though that was the best thing since sliced bread. It's too bad it couldn't be shoved off into an extras menu somewhere like THX calibration screens included in many DVDs.
Wrong.. They have copy protection. My DVD's will play just fine in your DVD player. Your DVD's and VHS tapes will play fine in my player. DRM is your music files will play on only your iPod and not mine.
CDs can be ripped into MP3 files.
Some CDs can be ripped into MP3 files. There fixed it for you.
DVDs also have region encoding and there's the PAL/NTSC nuisance to deal with, while CDs play everywhere.
True, unless you use an un-approved player.
Thus there is no convenient way to get movies from DVDs onto portable players without using an underground ripper, and your average customer is forced to buy the videos again from an online store.
Or use Peer to Peer. Often a customer knows he bought the movie. Why buy it twice? In my case, based on the Kaleidescope ruling, I regularly rip to my media server. The kids can put movies on the video Zen and iPod. They can watch the movies, and I don't have to deal with a stack of loose scratched DVD's they never put away. Picking up after the kids and broken DVDs is a thing of the past.
By contrast, I would imagine that most music made in the last 20 years still has a good amount of demand, which is why their prices haven't gotten lower.
Wrong... They are high priced or pulled from distribution. There is no back catalog of CD's and LP re-releases out there for $1-$5. There is no bin of $1.00 CDs like there is for out of copyright old cartoons on DVD. How much demand is there for old cartoons and comedians such as Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Lural and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, etc. I can find their stuff on $1 DVDs. Try to find old Jazz recordings on CD for $1. They are either classic collections at collector prices or not for sale. Please explain how they can release $1 DVDs of old stuff, but can't release $1 CDs of old stuff. The competition is showing your argument doesn't hold water.
The music industry is clinging to the old average selling price model. Our stuff is worth a minimum of $XX. Don't dare sell anything for less than that as it will cheapen our product. This is wrong. The Red Skelton DVD I picked up did not errode the price Disney charges for Cars.
Like the CDs, many companies have also introduced non-standard DRM into their DVDs that can break the compatibility.
Unfortunately true. Some movie studios who also have a music label are making the same mistakes all over again and will suffer the same fate. I picked up a copy of Open Season distributed by Sony. It wouldn't rip with Acid Rip on Linux. I called them to complain. They provided a replacement for no charge without the additional copy protection. They asked what player I was having trouble with. I flat told them. I hope it is properly added to their market research. I told them flat out that it didn't work on my Linux machine, and wouldn't rip with Acid Rip to my media server so I couldn't play it on my TV or play on an iPod or Zen. The additional copy protection on HD stuff along with the high price is why for the time being I'm sticking to the old format that is good enough.
The only way to kick the DRM to the curb is in the market place. I still make sure any DVD I buy is not distributed by Sony until they kick the compatibility problems to the curb for good.
Selling broken shiny disks at high prices next to a Peer to Peer system that provides working product is not a way to sell movies or CDs.
There is no copy protection on newspapers.. There is no microprint and no constellation to make copiers go ape. Newsprint is sold at reasonable prices unlike the stuff that needs protection. You get your own copy instead of copying someone else's copy. Music and movies can be sold the same way, especially out of the back catalog.
I open a store and say "Come on in and pay whatever you want." Are you on f---ing crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?
Movies came to the home market at $65 to $160 each. Piracy was a problem even though a blank T120 VHS tape sold for $15 - $20 each. I know, been there and done that. CD's on the other hand have added rootkits and DRM to make them incompatible with your playback equipment (iPod) by trying to prevent ripping. At the time I can buy full length movies at 2 for $20 or 4 for $20 in the pre viewed section at Blockbuster, many CDs are still less than an hour in length and are over $10 each. They are often not marked that they contain defective by design problems. Movies have THX certification for quality assurance of both the video and audio quality. CDs on the other hand are engineered to compete in the loudness war at the expense of dynamic range and harmonic distortion (Clipping).
Go a head and open a store. Provide in inferior product that won't play on my portable MP3 player for an extreme price and tell me again how this business model works? I buy movies instead.
I can buy oldies (movies) at Wal*Mart for 5.99. Try to find any good 20 year old Kiss, Pink Floyd, Styx, Queen, etc for 5.99 that hasn't been compressed.
There are many energy-saving questions I'd like to see investigated. For example, I have an old Subaru, and I'm not sure if I should buy a new fuel-efficient car. Mine isn't a guzzler, and I can afford a newer one. But that new car, even if it gets twice the MPG, costs energy to make--would an extra 20mpg offset the energy cost of making the car, and if so, how long would it take?
There is more to the question than just gas savings. Repairs and routine maintenance are another part as well as resale value. My wife and I both bought used cars in 2003. We both bought 2002 vehicles for $18,000. Hers has 80,000 miles and mine has 101,000 miles.
The Dodge has already needed a brake pad replacement, power steering service and other items. The Prius has no engine belts except for the AC. The power steering is electric, not hydraulic. I had the brakes checked at 80,000 miles when I changed tires. There was 80% remaining due to the use of regenerative braking.
Just from the above, it is easy to see which is the winner on value.. and we haven't touched gas cost yet.. OK what about the gas?
I bought the Prius used with 8,000 miles, so I have put on 101,000 - 8,000 or 93,000 miles since I bought it. Gas went from about 1.50 a gal to over $3.00 a gal. For sake of argument, lets use the average of about $2.25/gallon. I have averaged 46 MPG. I bought approximately 2,022 gallons for a cost of approximately $4,550. On the other hand the gas for the Caravan is over $10,000 spent. At over $3.00/gallon, the savings are more dramatic. For the same distance driven it is either a $30 fill-up or $70.
People often argued that the cost savings in gas will not pay for the premium for buying a hybrid. If you drive a car that gets less than 1/2 that of the Prius and you drive it more than 100,000 miles, and you can still get gas for $2.25/gallon, then the argument is almost valid as this is the break even point on the additional price premium.
I bought the car when the price of gas wasn't over $2.00/gallon. I studied them and found they are not new tech. They were on the road for 5 years in Japan before they hit the US market in 2001. I was impressed with the reliability and the elimination of most of the expensive over 100,000 mile failure items. Items like alternators, power steering pumps, hoses, starters and the like are eliminated. I also knew gas prices were going up and were never returning to under $1.00/gallon. Future gas prices meant future savings. A surprise was just how high the resale value is. That is an added bonus.
One of the big scares of buying a hybrid was that big expensive battery. It is common knowledge batteries are useless after about 3 years in your cell phone, laptop, etc. I'm going to have to buy a $5,000 battery in 3 years... there is no savings as gas savings will need to be spent on a battery every 3 years. Part of my studies was to deal with just this fact. In digging I found the truth, and it's very nice and was the final item that got me to buy one.
Here is the deal on the batteries... Cell phones, laptops and such deep cycle batteries.. BAD. You run them down past 50% and charge them up to the top.. Bad and bad.
The hybrid keeps the battery under 80% and over 50% with almost no exc
I had to laugh when the conspiracy folks made a great stab at the lack of stars. The intensity of the stars and the intensity of the earth is no where near each other. To expose the stars, would severly overexpose the earth and moon in the photos. In properly exposing the earth and moon, the stars simply don't show up. If they did, I would know the photos were fake. Not mentioned, is the angle of sunlight matches properly in the photos to the illumination of the earth. I hope they take more photos with the earth at three quarters, half and quarther earth. I would like to see the moon better lit in some of these photos. The parts of the moon in direct sunlight is very interesting and matches the reports of how dark the lunar soil is. On the apollo missions, one of the things noted was the soil on the moon was very dark like black pavement. These photos show the same result as the original apollo missions, which tends to validate the earlier stuff as being real. The more data we get the better we can either prove or disprove the conspiracy theory. These latest photos are a plug for real, not fake.
Doesn't that infer the moon's rotation is 365.25 days?
No. If you thing of the earth and moon as orbiting each other, the earth could be considered in geostationary orbit. The earth and moon as they circle each other has the same side of the moon facing the earth at all times.
That is an overvoltage protection device to protect against relatively slow surges, hence they are used in surge protectors and squelch the bulk of an overvoltage surge. They are fast, but not fast enough to protect against a blast of RF at UHF or higher frequencies.
Important parameters are a varistor's energy rating (in joules), response time (how long it takes the varistor to break down), maximum current and a well-defined breakdown (clamping) voltage. Energy rating is often defined using 'industry standard' transients such as 8/20 microseconds or 10/1000 microseconds. MOVs are intended for shunting short duration pulses.
The response time of the MOV is largely ambiguous, as no standard has been officially defined. The sub-nanosecond MOV response claim is based on a transient having an 8 microsecond rise-time, thereby allowing ample time for the device to slowly turn-on. When subjected to a very fast,
Inverting the response time gives the frequency where they no longer work. Plugging the number in the middle gives us 50 ns. The inverse is 1/0.00000005 or only 2 MHZ. Don't use a MOV for RFI protection. It's ok to protect from the spike of the fridge shutting off and distant lightning surges.
Thank you for an excellent post. I'm disappointed how few electrical engineers appear to be on slashdot anymore . .
Actualy I'm a technician. I never went for the engineering degree due to the math. I understood most of the concepts, but dont ask me to design a choke joint or circulators. I can tune the stuff, but not design it. RFI was a huge part of my job. Harmonic generation included finding the source of RFI from things like a rusty downspout rectifying an RF field and radiating harmonics which then would wipe out a television channel. The transmitter was clean, but the RFI came from the downspout. Technicians know to look for this stuff. Engineers at first are thinking we are off our rocker, but we are able to teach them in the field.
Harmonics can also be generated by external causes - for example a bad connection between two metal surfaces, e.g. gutters, metal roofing, and antennas. The joint can oxidise and form a poor quality diode which when excited by an RF field produces harmonics.
Often the conusmer complaint is our transmitter is causing problems. In reality the transmitter is very clean. The RFI is often generated by a bad connection near the TV reciever, such as rusty connections on the downlead of the TV antenna itself or the aluminum mast and mounting bracket or guy wires. It's always the fault of the transmitter. Often the fix is on the complainer's roof. I got out of the field because of the endless bickering over who pays the bill. It can take a long time to trace down a noise source that only appears after it rains and stops.
It is pretty much in a Faraday cage; its enclosed in a solid metal case sealed along the edges with silicone.
Many of those cases were there simply to provide a physicaly robust container and to radiate heat. Many of those simply had a big hole for a connector to plug directly into the circuit board inside with absolutely no feed-through filtering before connecting to the board. They may have been good at preventing dripping water from getting in, but they did nothing to keep RFI from entering the wires.
Adding a filter to every lead going into an RF tight box added considerably to the cost and was often left out as a cost cutting measure. The cover has a water seal, but not an RF seal in many car computers.
Here is a feed-through filter consisting of a coaxial capacitor with a built in ferrite bead. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
I tried to be informative, but was modded funny as people just thought I was using buzzwords.
RF on a wire can be shorted directly to the case with no way past due to lead inductance when coaxial feed through capacitors are used. They work well and are used on every microwave oven made. They are on the bottom of the magnitron. The fillimant leads come from the bottom inside a box. They then go through feed through capacitors to keep microwave energy from radiating out the wire.
A full filter often includes an inductor. Here is an example. PDF alert.. http://www.dearbornelectronics.com/pdf/EMIFilters.pdf This shows performance curves of various filters. A 3 DB change is the half power point. To have the same effect on a device 3 DB less sensitive would require double the power. Many of these devices have more than 80 DB attenuation at 10 MHZ and above. This would provide a high degree of immunity as the RFI source would need to be very close and very powerful to overcome the attenuation compared to an unprotected device.
Unlike a capacitor or inductor, a ferrite bead doesn't re-direct the RF current. It converts it to heat, and in the process, attenuates it. A capacitor on a wire, may make a tuned antenna at some frequencies. The ferrite bead is to prevent these tuned peaks by eating the power. Used in combination with a feed-through will prevent a tuned standing wave building on the wire.
A capacitor and inductor simply make a tuned circuit with a venurable frequency. Diodes, discharge tubes, resistors, and ferrite beads prevent a high Q tuned circuit.
For example, a pendulum suspended from a high-quality bearing, oscillating in air, would have a high Q, while a pendulum immersed in oil would have a low one.
How effective would this be on a car without a fully computer controlled engine? Wouldn't the engine need significant electrically controlled systems for this to even work? I'd guess that most cars built through the 70's would be immune to a system like this.
Cars with an electronic fuel injection system were vunerable. In the early days there was an issue with HF transmitters. It was discovered by accident. Some police departments ordered the new vehicles for their improved performance. In the process of pulling people over, sometimes the system would simply die. The cause was many truckers had illegal amplifiers on their CB radios. When they were being pulled over, they told others in the area to watch out for the speed trap. Instead of running less than 5 watts, they often ran 500 watts to 2 KW. This shut down the injection system. Word got out and the police looked for a fix with the vendor and quickly got it fixed. The exploit wasn't much use as by the time lights and siren were on, they already had the plate info. Some officers took a long time restarting again and again to pull up to the vehicle they pulled over.
Info is sketchy with some vague refrences and often buried into the general catagory of RFI.
Here is one such mention in a Ham radio newsletter;
From Electronics, November 23, comes this note: A new inquiry into radio-frequency interference is being readied by the FCC in response to increasing business and consumer complaints. The notice of inquiry under Docket No. 78-369 is expected to be ready in December, with comments due by May 1, 1979. Nearly three quarters of the RFI complaints come from home entertainment electronics users, the FCC says, and usually involve citizens' band, amateur, broadcast, and land-mobile transmitters. Other malfunctions produced by RFI involve air navigational aids, pacemakers, truck braking, and automotive electronic fuel-injection systems, as well as explosive systems used at construction sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have a ton of crapware on there?
.... About a half dozen pre-installed helpful useless tidbits to make life easer.
It is an HP. Is that a retorical question?
What are you talking about?
HP help desk, health check, AV update check,
you're using some craptastic 3rd party player
It's the default HP media player. It launches when a DVD is inserted. I agree, it is craptastic, but it's the default and we have not had the time to figure out how to change all the wrong defaults.
Of course Vista works with dual monitors
Sorry, my bad. I changed lanes without signalling. I was back to Geexbox. Does it support dual monitors?
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html
I use it all the time on my laptop (Ubuntu) as it plays DVDs just fine while not conforming to the DVD consortium demands of DVD players. The best feature is it plays the movie. If I want the menu, previews, FBI warning, or "Don't steal this film" short, I can watch them later if I want. Geexbox may be the fix to the Vista machine and playing DVDs. It works fine on my laptop with selecting internal (laptop) screen and an external monitor, but I have not tested if it is able to do dual monitor setup with control on one monitor and the presentaion on the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Forum
Citation needed.
Open your eyes and look. My dad bought a Mac Laptop and has migrated to Linux. I'm typing this right now on an ex-Windows machine. Do you know anyone talking about the release of Gutsy? Pay attention.
Anyway if you want ones in the news.. here;
http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/ Open the links for the list of businesses in each sector using Linux.
And ones that we know about from the SCO debacle are Auto Zone and Daimler Chrystler.
Hell, I'm still on Windows 2000, works fine for me! I had too many driver problems and moved on. I got tired of hunting down a driver for a thumb drive every time someone handed me one. I still have it on the laptop hard drive I swapped out just in case I need it, but have found I seldom slide it back in the laptop to use it.
And that doesn't translate to throwing out their entire machine and spending loads on a Mac.
True, but it does often equate buying a Mac instead of a PC when picking up a new machine. The XP machine is still there and doesn't get tossed right away. It collects dust sitting there just in case it is needed for something until it is just in the way and gets tossed (donated).
And the only reason Vista nags so much, is because people (presumably Mac users) slagged off XP so much for not asking you,
In anything I have used that isn't Windows, updates and such being avaliable, don't stop the machine when a dialog shows up. A toolbar item gently brightning and dimming to get your attention for an application needing user input is one thing. Shutting off the movie that is playing to ask permission to do a Java update check (while there is no network connection) is just plain bad design regardless of how much it is a good idea to ask permission. It should not stop the show.
OS X was better because you had to enter your password to do such things
Does OS X freeze all open applications when it decided it needs the user permission to check for an update?
Oh, hail the genius. You mean, you'll practice running your presentations at least once from now on before going public on an out-of-the-box machine? Gee, I wish I'd thought of that one.
Um no. The presentation was tested, then made just fine twice. The third film in the series it decided to ask permission to let Java do something.. right in the middle of a running presentation. To make matters worse, we were not running a browser or any other java application. It was a pop-up plain and simple. It was not network intiated. At the time, there was no LAN connection.
Set-up and testing is not enough. I know all the junk that pops up on an HP machine on start-up is enough to choke a horse, but when you think it is over, more stuff shows up later. Auto scheduled stuff not configured by the end user is the problem. The user did not launch the application or schedule it.
Really? I just picked up Windows XP last month at work.
Check the copyright date, release date, and the expiration date. It has been polished a few times and put back on the shelf so you can still buy a few "New" copies.
I know, don't tell me. *****WHOSH*****
Maybe this whole "upgrade the OS" thing isn't such a good business plan after all?
Maybe if they did it well, it might pay off. Windows XP is ancient. For a release, it is very old. They missed on the upgrade the OS thing poorly with Vista. Many are moving on to Apple or Linux instead.
My wife has picked up a Vista laptop to use in class stuff. She needed to play a DVD. After waiting for the boot dialog boxes to quit and closing them all. she started the DVD using an external monitor (dual monitor setup for presentation). About 5 minutes the DVD playback froze. Checking the laptop display to check the error message, it was a permission needed for Java to continue to do something or other. This stop everything and launch some odd process 5 minutes into a presentation is no OK for business. In the future we are not using the brand new Vista laptop for business presentations. It's nagging is unacceptable. In the future we will boot Geexbox or use another laptop to show videos. The Vista one interupts business presentations. I need to test it to see if it supports dual monitors.
To be fair the Australian "innovation patent" law is more like a provisional patent in the US
OK to be fair, it shows they put in dibs first.
My father help design the DC lines from the Northwest to California.
Mine too. My dad retired from BPA about 18 years ago.
That's funny. Here is the proof of the pudding.. Name the popular joke when they were considering the possibility of a lightning strike and damage to the converters.. The joke was a hit with the engineers..
Are there any advantages to DC current?
Yes. In long runs, the line capacitance and inductance don't create reactive power problems. Among the problems are high reactive currents causing more line heating and loss as well as problems with voltage regulation along the length of the line. DC can be stored in batteries.
With the lines being an inductor and providing inductive reluctance and the conductors being capacitive along their length, a long line where only one end of the line opens, but not the other can cause extreme voltages on the end that opened due to approaching resonance. Long lines must be tripped off line at both ends at the same time. The failure of one substation breaker to open when the other end tripped is the cause of the great East Coast blackout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
Inductive coupling to fences and other conductors is lessened. Corona discharge is lessened.
The big downside is the cost of the converter stations needed to change the voltage at all the local distribution points. On the West coast in the US, is the DC intertie. It starts near the Columbia River, crosses Oregon into California and Nevada and ends about 60 miles North of LA in California. There is a total of 2 converter stations along it's entire length. There are no substations in-between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
Edison's DC is not dead yet, at least for long haul power transmission.
Dibs on patenting the wheel.
--
You are too late..
However, in that case, an Australian lawyer was able to sneak the wheel patent through a fast-track application system. The US patent went through the full application procedure.
Refrence;
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2178.html
That Sony was willing and able to resolve this issue is mind blowing. It still raises the question why they don't just put non-DRM stuff on the shelves in the first place.
It was an experiment with only a few titles. I was sure to let them know it is a failure. DRM will make it in the market if the loss to piracy is drastic and the loss to rejected sales is minimal. I was let them know I bought the movie. DRM will kill sales. DRM did not stop piracy. When my copy didn't work and before I found non-DRM ones were offered, I picked up an ISO from Bit Torrent. It is the first and only MPAA movie I got from Peer to Peer. After I received my working copy, I deleted the ISO. I bought it. It didn't work. I used a work-around. I let them know.
They need to know people are moving to portable players just like they did with music. Ripping to the players is common. Home Theater set-ups are common. Media servers are common. Watching the movie is expected. Forcing the watching of "Don't steal this film" and the FBI warning is robbing customers who bought the film. Life wasted on the redundant waste of time can not be bought back at any price. Quit stealing my time.
This is the main reason for PVRs and home media servers. I don't want to take the time to find the disk the kids didn't put away, sit through the propaganda, and re-file it when done. I would like to decide on a movie, select it from the menu and have the movie start when I hit play. I love a media server. I hate new incompatible copy protection. It kills sales.
You cannot copy your DVD to my (or your own) video tape.
This is copy protection. I can sell you or lend you my video tape and it will play. Digital DRM files have no equivalent. Moved files have playback prevention. The same is true for console video games. They have copy protection. There is no rights management that says permission granted to play on player serial number XXXX and no others. The copy won't work (shouldn't work) while the original will.
Fine-grained DRM gets to the level that I cannot play your mp3 on my player, or you cannot play your own mp3 on a different player than the one you bought it for.
It is this exact playback prevention that is DRM. It is defective by design. It is designed to not work on another player. This is protected WMA songs playing on certified players are guaranteed to not play on it's replacement certified but not authorized player.
Put you money where your mouth is, Eddie boy. If these lawsuits offend you as you claim, dissolve your membership in the conspiracy that organizes them. As long as you're still a member of the RIAA, and as long as the lawsuits keep coming, your comments are just as dishonest as your corrput business model.
I think he just got wind of the number of people who don't trade with the enemy. He hasn't figured out what to do about it yet.
Even after the "tumble", I wouldn't be rushing to invest in this one.
Good point. I used them as an example of an overvalued stock pushed into a bubble by speculation. I thought their IPO was high and didn't buy. I didn't want to be holding the bag when the bubble burst. The speculators pushing it would have made a nice chunk of change with some properly placed buy and sell orders at + & - 10% price points. Sell on the way up and buy on the way down and repeat a couple times...
I remember having THX (or something similar) on the cassette tapes.
That was Dolby calibration tones. Dolby worked by boosting the highs in recording to improve the recorded high frequency S/N ratio and then reversing the process on playback. To properly set the attenuation curve a refrence tone was recorded to calibrate the playback levels. They still use it on studio videotape. The specification is here.
www.exn.ca/producersguide/HD_Prod_Specs_04.doc
This was quickly dropped as it caused much confusion with consumers. A few with high end and super ears with unlimited budget for equipment though that was the best thing since sliced bread. It's too bad it couldn't be shoved off into an extras menu somewhere like THX calibration screens included in many DVDs.
http://www.cnet.com.au/dvdpvr/dvdrecorders/0,239035839,240056302,00.htm
It just seems to be a shallow field--either the Prius, or the Honda Civic Hybrid.
You haven't been paying attention and it shows.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/hybrid_news.shtml
Toyota in addition to the Prius has the Highlander and Camry.
Thanks for the info--it was this kind of post I was hoping for.
You are welcome.
CDs can be ripped into MP3 files. DVDs can not without breaking the DRM and consequently the DMCA
Don't be too quick on that one. The Kaleidescope ruling seems to show a nick in the armor of DVD's.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/29/2251210
Both VHS and DVD have DRM.
Wrong.. They have copy protection. My DVD's will play just fine in your DVD player. Your DVD's and VHS tapes will play fine in my player. DRM is your music files will play on only your iPod and not mine.
CDs can be ripped into MP3 files.
Some CDs can be ripped into MP3 files. There fixed it for you.
DVDs also have region encoding and there's the PAL/NTSC nuisance to deal with, while CDs play everywhere.
True, unless you use an un-approved player.
Thus there is no convenient way to get movies from DVDs onto portable players without using an underground ripper, and your average customer is forced to buy the videos again from an online store.
Or use Peer to Peer. Often a customer knows he bought the movie. Why buy it twice? In my case, based on the Kaleidescope ruling, I regularly rip to my media server. The kids can put movies on the video Zen and iPod. They can watch the movies, and I don't have to deal with a stack of loose scratched DVD's they never put away. Picking up after the kids and broken DVDs is a thing of the past.
By contrast, I would imagine that most music made in the last 20 years still has a good amount of demand, which is why their prices haven't gotten lower.
Wrong... They are high priced or pulled from distribution. There is no back catalog of CD's and LP re-releases out there for $1-$5. There is no bin of $1.00 CDs like there is for out of copyright old cartoons on DVD. How much demand is there for old cartoons and comedians such as Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Lural and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, etc. I can find their stuff on $1 DVDs. Try to find old Jazz recordings on CD for $1. They are either classic collections at collector prices or not for sale. Please explain how they can release $1 DVDs of old stuff, but can't release $1 CDs of old stuff. The competition is showing your argument doesn't hold water.
The music industry is clinging to the old average selling price model. Our stuff is worth a minimum of $XX. Don't dare sell anything for less than that as it will cheapen our product. This is wrong. The Red Skelton DVD I picked up did not errode the price Disney charges for Cars.
Like the CDs, many companies have also introduced non-standard DRM into their DVDs that can break the compatibility.
Unfortunately true. Some movie studios who also have a music label are making the same mistakes all over again and will suffer the same fate. I picked up a copy of Open Season distributed by Sony. It wouldn't rip with Acid Rip on Linux. I called them to complain. They provided a replacement for no charge without the additional copy protection. They asked what player I was having trouble with. I flat told them. I hope it is properly added to their market research. I told them flat out that it didn't work on my Linux machine, and wouldn't rip with Acid Rip to my media server so I couldn't play it on my TV or play on an iPod or Zen. The additional copy protection on HD stuff along with the high price is why for the time being I'm sticking to the old format that is good enough.
The only way to kick the DRM to the curb is in the market place. I still make sure any DVD I buy is not distributed by Sony until they kick the compatibility problems to the curb for good.
Selling broken shiny disks at high prices next to a Peer to Peer system that provides working product is not a way to sell movies or CDs.
There is no copy protection on newspapers.. There is no microprint and no constellation to make copiers go ape. Newsprint is sold at reasonable prices unlike the stuff that needs protection. You get your own copy instead of copying someone else's copy. Music and movies can be sold the same way, especially out of the back catalog.
The one that got me was this one...
I open a store and say "Come on in and pay whatever you want." Are you on f---ing crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?
Movies came to the home market at $65 to $160 each. Piracy was a problem even though a blank T120 VHS tape sold for $15 - $20 each. I know, been there and done that. CD's on the other hand have added rootkits and DRM to make them incompatible with your playback equipment (iPod) by trying to prevent ripping. At the time I can buy full length movies at 2 for $20 or 4 for $20 in the pre viewed section at Blockbuster, many CDs are still less than an hour in length and are over $10 each. They are often not marked that they contain defective by design problems. Movies have THX certification for quality assurance of both the video and audio quality. CDs on the other hand are engineered to compete in the loudness war at the expense of dynamic range and harmonic distortion (Clipping).
Go a head and open a store. Provide in inferior product that won't play on my portable MP3 player for an extreme price and tell me again how this business model works? I buy movies instead.
I can buy oldies (movies) at Wal*Mart for 5.99. Try to find any good 20 year old Kiss, Pink Floyd, Styx, Queen, etc for 5.99 that hasn't been compressed.
There are many energy-saving questions I'd like to see investigated. For example, I have an old Subaru, and I'm not sure if I should buy a new fuel-efficient car. Mine isn't a guzzler, and I can afford a newer one. But that new car, even if it gets twice the MPG, costs energy to make--would an extra 20mpg offset the energy cost of making the car, and if so, how long would it take?
There is more to the question than just gas savings. Repairs and routine maintenance are another part as well as resale value. My wife and I both bought used cars in 2003. We both bought 2002 vehicles for $18,000. Hers has 80,000 miles and mine has 101,000 miles.
Let's check current bluebook...
2002 Dodge Caravan Roughly $6-8,000
http://www.cars.com/go/crp/research.jsp;jsessionid=JOG2KH0OBPGX1LAYIESU2UY?makeid=12&modelid=127&year=2002§ion=summary&mode=&aff=national
2002 Toyota Prius Roughly $16-17,000
http://www.cars.com/go/crp/research.jsp?makeid=47&modelid=2916&year=2002§ion=summary&mode=&aff=national
The Dodge has already needed a brake pad replacement, power steering service and other items. The Prius has no engine belts except for the AC. The power steering is electric, not hydraulic. I had the brakes checked at 80,000 miles when I changed tires. There was 80% remaining due to the use of regenerative braking.
Just from the above, it is easy to see which is the winner on value.. and we haven't touched gas cost yet.. OK what about the gas?
I bought the Prius used with 8,000 miles, so I have put on 101,000 - 8,000 or 93,000 miles since I bought it. Gas went from about 1.50 a gal to over $3.00 a gal. For sake of argument, lets use the average of about $2.25/gallon. I have averaged 46 MPG. I bought approximately 2,022 gallons for a cost of approximately $4,550. On the other hand the gas for the Caravan is over $10,000 spent. At over $3.00/gallon, the savings are more dramatic. For the same distance driven it is either a $30 fill-up or $70.
People often argued that the cost savings in gas will not pay for the premium for buying a hybrid. If you drive a car that gets less than 1/2 that of the Prius and you drive it more than 100,000 miles, and you can still get gas for $2.25/gallon, then the argument is almost valid as this is the break even point on the additional price premium.
I bought the car when the price of gas wasn't over $2.00/gallon. I studied them and found they are not new tech. They were on the road for 5 years in Japan before they hit the US market in 2001. I was impressed with the reliability and the elimination of most of the expensive over 100,000 mile failure items. Items like alternators, power steering pumps, hoses, starters and the like are eliminated. I also knew gas prices were going up and were never returning to under $1.00/gallon. Future gas prices meant future savings. A surprise was just how high the resale value is. That is an added bonus.
One of the big scares of buying a hybrid was that big expensive battery. It is common knowledge batteries are useless after about 3 years in your cell phone, laptop, etc. I'm going to have to buy a $5,000 battery in 3 years... there is no savings as gas savings will need to be spent on a battery every 3 years. Part of my studies was to deal with just this fact. In digging I found the truth, and it's very nice and was the final item that got me to buy one.
Here is the deal on the batteries... Cell phones, laptops and such deep cycle batteries.. BAD. You run them down past 50% and charge them up to the top.. Bad and bad.
The hybrid keeps the battery under 80% and over 50% with almost no exc
I had to laugh when the conspiracy folks made a great stab at the lack of stars. The intensity of the stars and the intensity of the earth is no where near each other. To expose the stars, would severly overexpose the earth and moon in the photos. In properly exposing the earth and moon, the stars simply don't show up. If they did, I would know the photos were fake. Not mentioned, is the angle of sunlight matches properly in the photos to the illumination of the earth. I hope they take more photos with the earth at three quarters, half and quarther earth. I would like to see the moon better lit in some of these photos. The parts of the moon in direct sunlight is very interesting and matches the reports of how dark the lunar soil is. On the apollo missions, one of the things noted was the soil on the moon was very dark like black pavement. These photos show the same result as the original apollo missions, which tends to validate the earlier stuff as being real. The more data we get the better we can either prove or disprove the conspiracy theory. These latest photos are a plug for real, not fake.
Doesn't that infer the moon's rotation is 365.25 days?
No. If you thing of the earth and moon as orbiting each other, the earth could be considered in geostationary orbit. The earth and moon as they circle each other has the same side of the moon facing the earth at all times.
http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/earthspace/session7/closer1.html
Orbital period (days) 27.32166
Rotational period (days) 27.32166
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/moon.htm
The moon has about 13 days a year.
That is an overvoltage protection device to protect against relatively slow surges, hence they are used in surge protectors and squelch the bulk of an overvoltage surge. They are fast, but not fast enough to protect against a blast of RF at UHF or higher frequencies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varistor
Actualy I'm a technician. I never went for the engineering degree due to the math. I understood most of the concepts, but dont ask me to design a choke joint or circulators. I can tune the stuff, but not design it. RFI was a huge part of my job. Harmonic generation included finding the source of RFI from things like a rusty downspout rectifying an RF field and radiating harmonics which then would wipe out a television channel. The transmitter was clean, but the RFI came from the downspout. Technicians know to look for this stuff. Engineers at first are thinking we are off our rocker, but we are able to teach them in the field.
http://www.e-meca.com/rf-circulator-isolator.php
http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14183/css/14183_51.htm
I didn't design it. I just make it work.
Info on the rain gutter stuff for the unbelieving engineers is here..
http://www.nzart.org.nz/nzart/Exam/AMATEUR%20RADIO%20STUDY%20GUIDE%2007A/Course%20Files/Harmonics%20And%20Parasitics/STUDY%20NOTES%20-%20HARMONICS%20&%20PARASITICS.htm
Often the conusmer complaint is our transmitter is causing problems. In reality the transmitter is very clean. The RFI is often generated by a bad connection near the TV reciever, such as rusty connections on the downlead of the TV antenna itself or the aluminum mast and mounting bracket or guy wires. It's always the fault of the transmitter. Often the fix is on the complainer's roof. I got out of the field because of the endless bickering over who pays the bill. It can take a long time to trace down a noise source that only appears after it rains and stops.
It is pretty much in a Faraday cage; its enclosed in a solid metal case sealed along the edges with silicone.
Many of those cases were there simply to provide a physicaly robust container and to radiate heat. Many of those simply had a big hole for a connector to plug directly into the circuit board inside with absolutely no feed-through filtering before connecting to the board. They may have been good at preventing dripping water from getting in, but they did nothing to keep RFI from entering the wires.
Adding a filter to every lead going into an RF tight box added considerably to the cost and was often left out as a cost cutting measure. The cover has a water seal, but not an RF seal in many car computers.
Here is a feed-through filter consisting of a coaxial capacitor with a built in ferrite bead. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.hamtronics.com/images/a18_ft_cap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.hamtronics.com/accys.htm&h=273&w=367&sz=6&hl=en&start=17&um=1&tbnid=CIGSEy5wKl-fvM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=122&prev=/images%3Fq%3DRF%2Bcoaxial%2Bfeed-through%2Bcapacitors%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
RF on a wire can be shorted directly to the case with no way past due to lead inductance when coaxial feed through capacitors are used. They work well and are used on every microwave oven made. They are on the bottom of the magnitron. The fillimant leads come from the bottom inside a box. They then go through feed through capacitors to keep microwave energy from radiating out the wire.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7184256.html
photos here at the bottom of the page..
http://www.samwha.co.th/capacitor.htm
RFI suppression on motors..
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6307344.html
RFI protection for pacemakers.. PDF alert..
http://www.interferencetechnology.com/ArchivedArticles/medical/Article08web.pdf?regid=
A full filter often includes an inductor. Here is an example. PDF alert..
http://www.dearbornelectronics.com/pdf/EMIFilters.pdf
This shows performance curves of various filters. A 3 DB change is the half power point. To have the same effect on a device 3 DB less sensitive would require double the power. Many of these devices have more than 80 DB attenuation at 10 MHZ and above. This would provide a high degree of immunity as the RFI source would need to be very close and very powerful to overcome the attenuation compared to an unprotected device.
Info on ferrite beads is here...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ferrite+bead+RFI
Unlike a capacitor or inductor, a ferrite bead doesn't re-direct the RF current. It converts it to heat, and in the process, attenuates it. A capacitor on a wire, may make a tuned antenna at some frequencies. The ferrite bead is to prevent these tuned peaks by eating the power. Used in combination with a feed-through will prevent a tuned standing wave building on the wire.
A capacitor and inductor simply make a tuned circuit with a venurable frequency. Diodes, discharge tubes, resistors, and ferrite beads prevent a high Q tuned circuit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_factor
Cars with an electronic fuel injection system were vunerable. In the early days there was an issue with HF transmitters. It was discovered by accident. Some police departments ordered the new vehicles for their improved performance. In the process of pulling people over, sometimes the system would simply die. The cause was many truckers had illegal amplifiers on their CB radios. When they were being pulled over, they told others in the area to watch out for the speed trap. Instead of running less than 5 watts, they often ran 500 watts to 2 KW. This shut down the injection system. Word got out and the police looked for a fix with the vendor and quickly got it fixed. The exploit wasn't much use as by the time lights and siren were on, they already had the plate info. Some officers took a long time restarting again and again to pull up to the vehicle they pulled over.
Info is sketchy with some vague refrences and often buried into the general catagory of RFI.
Here is one such mention in a Ham radio newsletter;
http://www.jplrecclubs.caltech.edu/radio/calling/1979/jan/jan79.html
Rarely is the RFI mentioned as an active exploit.