Current solar cells are ~20% efficient... you can't do better then 100% obviously.
Nobody claimed they produced 60 X the power. In DC circuits Volts X Amps = Watts. 60 times the current does not equal 60 times the power if the voltage is not the same. The article is very clear, the voltage is way down. They make no power claims. It's even implied that the voltage is near zero. These panels may be less effecient than the curent generation. They are working on raising the voltage. Good luck and I hope they come out with some power figures soon.
How many other devices are marketted on intagible potential benfits?
Umm have you taken a marketing class? You market the benifits.
Our new wizbang product plays high def movies. It worked for SONY and Microsoft. They both sold a bunch of next gen Hi Def DVD players for their game consoles. One was included, the other was an accessory. Both sold on features marketed, not on the included DRM.
Re:It's just a rumor right now.
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If they go through with this, I'm selling my AMD stock.
Are you on a buy high sell low kick? Unless you just bought the stock, you couldn't pick a lower price to sell unless they go bust. Have you seen the chart for the last year? Might as well hang on much like those hanging on to SCO stock. AMD has a better chance of recovery than SCO.
I would much rather have Apple stock over the same time. AMD is less than half it's value a year ago. How long have you had AMD stock? If you bought a year and a half ago, you should be in tears by now.
So I am guessing you used a P3 for all these years and just now upgraded to a Core2Duo.
I'm not the guy you are replying to, but since the shoe fits..
I'm replying on a P-III 1 GHZ machine right now. I did build another machine using a P4 chip, but I built it for my kids. I didn't want to disrupt my current install.
After they trashed Windows 98 SE twice (budget box, used a legal retail copy I had here) I put Ubuntu on it. Other than a 5 month wait for Flash 9 the kids had no complaints. It worked so well, I put Ubuntu on an old laptop and then I partitioned the drive on this machine and put on Ubuntu. I almost never boot into the Windows partition any more.
A couple months ago I picked up an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700. I'm waiting for the tax refund to build a nice Linux Media Center Edition box with it. Needless to say, anything not compatible with it will be a hard sell.
Yes, I do vote with my wallet.
If more people did, then the industry would figure out what product they need to provide to sell the content. Keep up the anti-DRM fight.
Part of the fight is public education. That is why I mention the Kalidascope decision to friends (possible precident setting case for the home private use ripping of DVD's). I also mention problems I've had with DRM such as the SONY release of Open Season. They know why I'm not buying any more of their titles. So does much of Slashdot.
Re:Learn who their customers are...
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The assumption is the end user is the customer.. This is FALSE..
The media cartel is their customer. Let me explain.
1 The chip and graphics card manufactures want to sell product. The assumption is the end user is the consumer.. Wrong.
The media cartel says we are the customer and we have this subscriber base looking for comptatible hardware. To sell to them your hardware must meet the specifications to be compatible with the new content.
Either their hardware won't play DRM content and declaired incompatible, or they fall in line. The only vote the end user has is with their wallet. Unfortunately the canidate the end user wants won't be on the ballot.
They want to play the new content and retain their ripper/print screen key.
Be sure to vote!
I Don't have a SACD player. Same for HD DVD in either format. I have DVD's now that they are easly rippable and they work on Linux. A purchased used DVD will play ok on my DVD player unlike a DRM Janis, MTP, or FairPlay music file on my MP3 player.
Maybe I have a pirated copy then..;-) I have the box in my hand right now. I wish I could scan the back and post the logos..
Lower left corner on the back.. COLUMBIA PICTURES
Lower right corner on the back.. SONY PICTURES Home Entertainment
Just left of the SONY PICTURES.. www.SonyPictures.com
Following the link.. http://www.sonypictures.com/ Open Season is right on the main page "OPEN SEASON Go wild with official mobile downloads from the animated tale."
Viacom may own it, but it's SONY who is distributing it. I blame them for the defective by design distribution.
Why on earth would someone intelligent enough to make a Linux Media Center want to watch that terrible movie? Seriously Sony, I want those 2 hours of my life back!
I have kids... I mentioned that in the parent post..
Would you like to point us to the part of the AACS specs that specify this functionality?
Stick a new disk in your old player with the revoked keys and see what happens. It doen't play the new disk and won't play the old ones either until the player is upgraded.
Anyway Page 58 of the agreement near the bottom of the page..
I have on many occassions bypasses hardware dongles, FlexLM, trial periods, etc...
I instead of pirating and cracking, took the other road. I voted. Anything that required a hardware dongle is and always had been rejected. The new tack is using your hardware as a dongle with online activation. This is also rejected.
It is the primary reason for my move to Ubuntu instead of Vista.
It is the reason I did not accept the free upgrade to Light Factory. The upgrade removes the dependance on MS SQL server (hurrah), but also changed from a registration key (encoded with user name) to a single hardware online auth (boo hiss). I wrote the company and let them know why I moved to Freestyler instead. I am now moving to Q-Light a Linux console as part of my move from Windows.
Anybody want Lightfactory starter edition?
Vote against dongleware with your wallet. Don't pirate, use an alternative.
What do you think is more upsetting to Microsoft? Pirating MS Office or switching to Open Office? On one they can take legal action. On the other which is more offensive to them, they can do nothing.
so you only have to make the time cost of copying high enough to make the legal offering more attractive.
Unfortunately, high prices and the lack of working copies/backups makes the legal offerings un-attractive for many. I have kids. I have cases that used to contain working DVD's. Lack of backups is a problem. I'm moving to a Linux Media Center PC. This new format is incompatible. A media server is a much better solution for most families than a shelf of out of order/broken/lost DVD's. The inability to make a backup/working copy is a crime. DVD's in the home make as much sense as a CD player tethered to your iPod instead of a hard drive. Kids don't take CD cases to school anymore. They know they get stolen, lost, broken, etc. They rip the CD's at home and load them on their iPod with the originals safely stored away.
SONY Dreamworks doesn't get it. I bought Open Season. It has some copy protection on it besides CSS. Guess which film won't be in the Media Center? Guess which brand I'm not buying in the future? Chances are that title won't be watched much simply because it's inconvienent. It's like copy protection on CD's. The kids have iPods. They rip their CD's. CD's that don't work are remembered. That artist and label get a critical review on their next release. Kids instead of buying CD's they can't use, look elsewhere such as P-P and sneakernet. Copy protection (Defective product) sends buying consumers elsewhere.
I remember what CD's and DVD's can't be ripped and who put them out.
Since I did buy Open Season, I will be looking for an already ripped copy or a solution to rip it myself. So far, the rip it myself solutions seem to be mostly commercial offerings.
When they revoke keys, they simply remove the old compromised keys from new discs, so players relying on those keys can't play anything.
A slight correction.. Playing a new movie with a revoked key will disable the player the key was issued to. Playing a new movie in the compromised model player kills it. It will no longer play ANY movie until it is replaced or updated (software player).
If only it was as simple as it just won't play new movies.. They do not want you to use the player with the revoked key because if they didn't kill it, you could continue to rip older movies. Killing the player prevents it's use for other movies not yet ripped. If you are lucky enough to have this player, all you need to do is do an online upgrade to the software which fixes the loophole and re-enables playing new and old DVD's. No patch, no workie.
For a software player, there is probably the fix, of reinstalling it on a new hard drive and avoiding new movies to continue ripping older movies. As long as the player doesn't require online activation, there should be no way to prevent this. If it requires online activation, then your pretty much done. Activation would require an upgrade to a non-compromised version.
My company moved us from one site to another. Now we are all in a 6 story building. NOBODY'S cell phones work, unless they are Cingular who as the company service provider has a tower on the roof, or very close.
I found this to be helpful sometimes. Sit at your desk. Call them on the land line and complain about the cell outage in your area. Play dumb. Ask when the service will be restored.
Keep it up. Either they will contract with the building to install a micro-cell, or will offer an early termination due to the inability to provide service. Keep a service ticket open until they drop you or fix reception in your building.
Your milage may vary. Calling and asking to terminate is not the answer. Calling and asking for service is a strong lever against fees if they can't provide service. Going elsewhere to place calls is not an option. You need to recieve calls.
Your ISP is subsidizing the cost of equipment instead of charging you an up-front sign-up fee. If you leave, your monthly payment is no longer paying that off. It makes perfect sense.
What sucked for me is the non-negotiable new consumer set-up fee. I told them I was changing ISP's, already had a LAN, had pre-configured my router, etc. Still it was about $100 for the guy to come out and plug in the modem. I got a DHCP lease and was online right after the modem booted up. The installer was suprised that I even had pre-set the DNS servers ahead of time. (found it online). Working with dumbed down forced pro-installation and having to foot the bill is an issue that needs fixed. Now if I can get them to quit calling trying to get me to sign up for the triple play package... Every time they call, I remind them why I am not interested in more fees. I do let them know their VOIP offering is not competitive in either calling area, features, price, and of course professional installation. I then ask if the plan has a early termination fee. No thanks! I hope they keep a database of reasons given for rejection.
I have noticed lately that they now have some self install kits at a local retailer.
This patent seems to cover redundant circuits and one time fuses to patch them and a disable fuse to prevent end user changes. The repairs can be made after packaging. This is not to change code, but to increase manufacturing yeild. A few bad bits can be replaced by patching in redundant spare memory instead of trashing the die.
That's a fact. So, when I pay $9.99 for one of them, I'm not getting a good deal.
That is true. That is why I would rather pay $5.99 for it instead of $16.99 elswhere.
Many films are being remastered and re-released, at a higher price than they were originally released.
The same is true for many old audio recordings. Here is a prime example. It was mastered on analog tape with Dolby Pro noise reduction. In the mix the master tape for the original LP pressings was a 3rd generation tape. Now you can own it as a super duper high quality SACD. Sarcasm intentional..
The super fideliety recording in question? Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
How is a SACD recording oh so much better than a CD pressing from analog tape? Did they botch the CD pressing that badly?
The LP on the other hand is great. I'm not fooled into buying a SACD copy at over $30 for a CD from a third generation analog tape.
Once you've done that, the marginal costs of producing more processors aren't that high.
Hmmm. Are you sure. I thought there was quite a bit of expense to produce high speed processors due to the costs associated in production. Not only is R&D costs high, but so is the technology for Lithography, Clean Rooms, Metrology (can't make and sell a product with 100% failure rates), packaging (Silicon in carrier, effective heat spreader, etc. Not the cardboard box), and of course Yeild. The more steps it takes to make a chip, the more steps that can kill some of the product. Adding more and more to a chip requires more layers to connect it all together. Making it smaller makes dust that would pit a line, now completely obliterate it. Optics required for lithography for features smaller than visable light wavelengths raise the cost due to the precision required for registration, focus, etc.
If you were making a sound chip for a greeting card is a cheap process. Making a modern high speed heat and power effecient CPU is not a cheap process. If it were, then there would be many more manufactures working to rake in the money. Money is made by having the capacity at high yeild and a high performance product to cover the R&D and manufacturing costs. If your product doesn't yeild, you have less sellable product for your capitol investments and materials & manpower costs. If your product doesn't perform against the competition, then making a profit isn't easy.
Making current generation microporcessors is a very risky business, unless you have a clear roadmap into the future and can stay on track to beat the competition. Getting off track is very expensive. Microsoft having a poor showing of Vista isn't helping pay the bills in the Microprocessor market for everyone at the moment. The Apple Intel deal has helped soften the poor Vista launch for Intel. AMD doesn't have that safety net.
Wal*Mart does not have a line of DVD's. They retail DVD's manufactured by studios. Other retailers also have bargin bins. They are the same DVD's currently being sold in Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.
A prime example.. Ice Age or Ever After.. New $5.99. or Used at Blockbuster.. $12.95 & 14.95 respectively. (or 2 for $20.00) I got Ice Age and Ever After at the grocery store new. I got Open Season and Flushed Away used at 2 for $20. When the product is exactly the same, the low price is not and indicator of low quality.
I can't easly double my income tax free, but in many cases I can cut my expenses in half tax free.
Over all there is a lack of bargin bin CD's of any good content at reasonable prices. Good content tends to keep new retail prices 20-30 years later. There are very few CD's I buy because of the lack of discounted back catalog. There are no discount bins of good back catalog CD's in the grocery store. There are many DVD's I do buy from the back catalog because of the abundance of good material at good prices.
Even Wholesale, barginn bin DVD's are much cheaper than bargin bin CD's.
Bulk collectable DVD's 100 for $125 or a buck and a quarter each. CD's on the other hand... 100 CD's for $185.
Why is a 50 minute average CD so much more than an avrage 90 minute movie? Don't give me a song and dance about it costs more to make. The team to make Monsters Inc needed much more technical studio stuff than any band I have seen lately. In spite of all the demands on the team to produce a sellable product, they still sold it for about the same price as a typical new release CD and much cheaper than many back catalog CD re-releases (re-mastered release). Many CD re-releases are on SACD format, a DRM format with a backwards compatible standard format layer. Many of these have degraded standard layers just to make the SACD layer sound better in comparison. DRM and lower quality standard layers are the reasons I don't touch that format. Higher prices is just another nail in it's coffin. I don't have a SACD player and have no plans to get one.
The RIAA thinks it's Piracy to blame. It is realy market reality. I buy DVD's, not CD's. The labels simply don't market to my demographic. They are desprately trying to keep the average selling price (ASP) high. They have suceeded. They have watched the volume drop because of it.
Movies on the other hand markets to most demographics. There is some premium content and lots of bargins. This alone is why I actualy look to see what DVD's are out, have memberships to both Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, dig in DVD bins, but don't bother even going into a music store. There is nothing for my demographic in there.
I don't bother transfering my DVD's to videotape. It's not due to copy protection. LP's were always transfered to Cassette due to the high cost.
DVD's and CD's are ripped to computer for convience and to prevent damage/loss. If you have little kids, you know what I'm talking about. Rip it, and lock away the original. I have too big of a collection of empty jewel cases that used to have a CD or DVD. Nobody knows where it is now. Movies and MP3's on a read only share doesn't suffer that fate.
Many SONY DreamWorks DVD's now have a copy protection logo. Looking it up brings up an education site telling you there is absolutely no reason to rip a CD to back it up. It also states there is no new copy protection on the DVD, but all DVD's are CSS protected as they always were. If you have kids, I beg a differ about not needing to back up DVD's. From my own experiance and reading the fourms, Open Season seems to have some copy protection besides CSS. It looks like the Defective by Design crew is going to have to start a list of defective DVD's in addition to the defective CD's. I am going to have to stop buying SONY CD's or start returning them as defective.
Which campaign donor paid for this, or which Mormon edict is behind it? It's obviously one or the other.
I think you might be onto something here.. It looks like follow the money. Now if I can find some data on the new registery mentioned in the article and who profits...
Snipped from the article....
Owners of eligible words can register the terms in a new registry by paying a nominal fee.
I don't think this it was a question of IF... but WHEN.
Just to take a stupid guess... I think with the need for cash, AMD was hoping Microsoft releasing Vista (Biggest upgrade in 7 years) would create high demand for new PC's and they could sell product as demand exceeded supply. The demand for Vista didn't drive demand as expected.
Vista failing to launch put AMD in tight competition in a smaller market due the lack of demand for Vista. AMD didn't sell to Apple. Intel did. Mac's are selling where Vista is getting so-so response so Intel is selling the new chips into markets AMD is not in. If Intel didn't sell to Apple, and had to cut prices, AMD would be in an even worse position due to the low demand for new Vista machines.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL&annual Note that Apple has gone in revenue from 2004-2006 $8,279,000,000 to $19,315,000,000 Operating income has gone from $326,000,000 to $2,453,000,000. This is almost an order of magnitude growth in only 2 years. This isn't just from a few iPod sales. Vista's dead start and XP's malware flood is driving people away from Microsoft. The recent growth in Apple and Linux is not primarily new PC consumers. It's mostly ex-Microsoft consumers.
I'm wondering if AMD is selling chips at a loss instead of having to throw them out. I can't see them making money at that price, only cutting their loss.
Selling chips at half price is not profitable. I'm assuming most chips have only a 10-30% margin. Chopping the price in half is selling under the cost to manufacture.
In an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland.
Just how are they dating these samples? Is there an assumption that each layer is a year? Are they assuming there has been no meltbacks removing several years records?
Dating a volcanic event and matching a tree ring to an Ice deposit is good, but much is unknown about the rest of the pack, missing layers and such.
The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.
This alone may be an indicator of why there is no ice record. Past events may have melted the layer and they are in the ocean, not in the ice pack record. Lack of an ice pack record may indicate erasure of the record, not evidence it never happened.
I've notice that for older films. This is especialy true for DVD's under $2. As a collector of the cartoons I grew up with, 2 hours of early animation at $99cents a copy is a much better value to me than 1950's rock and roll at $12.95 for 48 minutes of stuff.
Let's face it. I can buy a fairly recent (less than 5 years old) DVD for less than $6 new. Ice age and Ever After I just picked up at the grocery store for 5.95 each. Have you checked the price on 20 year old music on CD's? The RIAA hasn't got a clue. I do buy something other than overpriced CD's.
Of course, nearly any DVD from Criterion will be around $30. So, the price isn't that big of an issue for me.
There are people who do pay premium prices for premium content. There is a market for Cadilacs and Mercedez Benz, but the real money is in Wal * Mart. Trying to make a Mercedes the standard car of choice is going to have a tough run against the Toyota's.
The HD DVD manufactures are seeing this right now. Hummers were a hot item as was the Escalade. Casino Royale is a hot item, but it's not overtaking conventional DVD's anytime soon much like Hummers and Escalades are not overtaking Accords and Camerys. This is reflected in the number of unsold high priced titles.
Already we are seeing movies released in 3 and 4-DVD packages -- that is a lot of disc shuffling that can be reduced. TV series are commonly on 7-disc sets (e.g. Lost, The Wild Wild West) -- one Blu-Ray could hold this.
Somehow I expect to see this at about the same time as I see the entire Beatles catalog released on an MP3 CD at 192 Kbs ready to load into your iPod, Zen, iRiver, or Zune. (not counting the release in the flea market from someone's trunk)
The ability to put more data content on a single disk does not mean they will. HD will be reserved for HD content, not collections of SD shows. CD's will be reserved for CD format audio (with a few exceptions of extra DRM digital tracks and DRM player for your Windows PC. To fit on the redundant tracks, the digital content is at low bitrates and the CD holds less music to make space.)
so it ignores the signals on all but a few towers at a time.
Ignoring a signal and having a channel free of interferance for another user are two diffrent things.
Grab an AM radio sometime. Listen to it at night. Try to find a weak station someplace on the dial. Is there more than one station on some frequencies? If there is, simply ignore the one you don't want and just enjoy the one you do want.
A cell tower ignoring a strong airborne phone does not make the channel clear for another call. The signal from the airborne phone blankets the entire city on that channel. One phone now ties up a reciever channel on several hundred towers instead of only 1-6.
Slashdot Mirror
How soon till SCO stock is cheaper than toilet paper?
It already is. Have you priced a package of toilet paper lately?
Current solar cells are ~20% efficient... you can't do better then 100% obviously.
Nobody claimed they produced 60 X the power. In DC circuits Volts X Amps = Watts. 60 times the current does not equal 60 times the power if the voltage is not the same. The article is very clear, the voltage is way down. They make no power claims. It's even implied that the voltage is near zero. These panels may be less effecient than the curent generation. They are working on raising the voltage. Good luck and I hope they come out with some power figures soon.
How many other devices are marketted on intagible potential benfits?
Umm have you taken a marketing class? You market the benifits.
Our new wizbang product plays high def movies. It worked for SONY and Microsoft. They both sold a bunch of next gen Hi Def DVD players for their game consoles. One was included, the other was an accessory. Both sold on features marketed, not on the included DRM.
If they go through with this, I'm selling my AMD stock.
m &q=l&c=AAPL
Are you on a buy high sell low kick? Unless you just bought the stock, you couldn't pick a lower price to sell unless they go bust. Have you seen the chart for the last year? Might as well hang on much like those hanging on to SCO stock. AMD has a better chance of recovery than SCO.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AMD&t=1y&l=off&z=
I would much rather have Apple stock over the same time. AMD is less than half it's value a year ago. How long have you had AMD stock? If you bought a year and a half ago, you should be in tears by now.
So I am guessing you used a P3 for all these years and just now upgraded to a Core2Duo.
I'm not the guy you are replying to, but since the shoe fits..
I'm replying on a P-III 1 GHZ machine right now. I did build another machine using a P4 chip, but I built it for my kids. I didn't want to disrupt my current install.
After they trashed Windows 98 SE twice (budget box, used a legal retail copy I had here) I put Ubuntu on it. Other than a 5 month wait for Flash 9 the kids had no complaints. It worked so well, I put Ubuntu on an old laptop and then I partitioned the drive on this machine and put on Ubuntu. I almost never boot into the Windows partition any more.
A couple months ago I picked up an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700. I'm waiting for the tax refund to build a nice Linux Media Center Edition box with it. Needless to say, anything not compatible with it will be a hard sell.
Yes, I do vote with my wallet.
If more people did, then the industry would figure out what product they need to provide to sell the content. Keep up the anti-DRM fight.
Part of the fight is public education. That is why I mention the Kalidascope decision to friends (possible precident setting case for the home private use ripping of DVD's). I also mention problems I've had with DRM such as the SONY release of Open Season. They know why I'm not buying any more of their titles. So does much of Slashdot.
The assumption is the end user is the customer.. This is FALSE..
The media cartel is their customer. Let me explain.
1 The chip and graphics card manufactures want to sell product. The assumption is the end user is the consumer.. Wrong.
The media cartel says we are the customer and we have this subscriber base looking for comptatible hardware. To sell to them your hardware must meet the specifications to be compatible with the new content.
Either their hardware won't play DRM content and declaired incompatible, or they fall in line. The only vote the end user has is with their wallet. Unfortunately the canidate the end user wants won't be on the ballot.
They want to play the new content and retain their ripper/print screen key.
Be sure to vote!
I Don't have a SACD player. Same for HD DVD in either format. I have DVD's now that they are easly rippable and they work on Linux. A purchased used DVD will play ok on my DVD player unlike a DRM Janis, MTP, or FairPlay music file on my MP3 player.
Viacom owns Dreamworks. Not Sony.
;-) I have the box in my hand right now. I wish I could scan the back and post the logos..
Maybe I have a pirated copy then..
Lower left corner on the back.. COLUMBIA PICTURES
Lower right corner on the back.. SONY PICTURES Home Entertainment
Just left of the SONY PICTURES.. www.SonyPictures.com
Following the link..
http://www.sonypictures.com/ Open Season is right on the main page "OPEN SEASON
Go wild with official mobile downloads from the animated tale."
Viacom may own it, but it's SONY who is distributing it. I blame them for the defective by design distribution.
Why on earth would someone intelligent enough to make a Linux Media Center want to watch that terrible movie? Seriously Sony, I want those 2 hours of my life back!
I have kids... I mentioned that in the parent post..
Would you like to point us to the part of the AACS specs that specify this functionality?
r _Agreement_060215.pdf
Stick a new disk in your old player with the revoked keys and see what happens. It doen't play the new disk and won't play the old ones either until the player is upgraded.
Anyway Page 58 of the agreement near the bottom of the page..
http://www.aacsla.com/support/AACS_Interim_Adopte
It's easy to find. Do a search of the PDF for disable
It's the part where they describe disable products or devices where the security of the AACS Technology has been compromised by 3rd parties.
I have on many occassions bypasses hardware dongles, FlexLM, trial periods, etc...
I instead of pirating and cracking, took the other road. I voted. Anything that required a hardware dongle is and always had been rejected. The new tack is using your hardware as a dongle with online activation. This is also rejected.
It is the primary reason for my move to Ubuntu instead of Vista.
It is the reason I did not accept the free upgrade to Light Factory. The upgrade removes the dependance on MS SQL server (hurrah), but also changed from a registration key (encoded with user name) to a single hardware online auth (boo hiss). I wrote the company and let them know why I moved to Freestyler instead. I am now moving to Q-Light a Linux console as part of my move from Windows.
Anybody want Lightfactory starter edition?
Vote against dongleware with your wallet. Don't pirate, use an alternative.
What do you think is more upsetting to Microsoft? Pirating MS Office or switching to Open Office? On one they can take legal action. On the other which is more offensive to them, they can do nothing.
so you only have to make the time cost of copying high enough to make the legal offering more attractive.
Unfortunately, high prices and the lack of working copies/backups makes the legal offerings un-attractive for many. I have kids. I have cases that used to contain working DVD's. Lack of backups is a problem. I'm moving to a Linux Media Center PC. This new format is incompatible. A media server is a much better solution for most families than a shelf of out of order/broken/lost DVD's. The inability to make a backup/working copy is a crime. DVD's in the home make as much sense as a CD player tethered to your iPod instead of a hard drive. Kids don't take CD cases to school anymore. They know they get stolen, lost, broken, etc. They rip the CD's at home and load them on their iPod with the originals safely stored away.
SONY Dreamworks doesn't get it. I bought Open Season. It has some copy protection on it besides CSS. Guess which film won't be in the Media Center? Guess which brand I'm not buying in the future? Chances are that title won't be watched much simply because it's inconvienent. It's like copy protection on CD's. The kids have iPods. They rip their CD's. CD's that don't work are remembered. That artist and label get a critical review on their next release. Kids instead of buying CD's they can't use, look elsewhere such as P-P and sneakernet. Copy protection (Defective product) sends buying consumers elsewhere.
I remember what CD's and DVD's can't be ripped and who put them out.
Since I did buy Open Season, I will be looking for an already ripped copy or a solution to rip it myself. So far, the rip it myself solutions seem to be mostly commercial offerings.
When they revoke keys, they simply remove the old compromised keys from new discs, so players relying on those keys can't play anything.
A slight correction.. Playing a new movie with a revoked key will disable the player the key was issued to. Playing a new movie in the compromised model player kills it. It will no longer play ANY movie until it is replaced or updated (software player).
If only it was as simple as it just won't play new movies.. They do not want you to use the player with the revoked key because if they didn't kill it, you could continue to rip older movies. Killing the player prevents it's use for other movies not yet ripped. If you are lucky enough to have this player, all you need to do is do an online upgrade to the software which fixes the loophole and re-enables playing new and old DVD's. No patch, no workie.
For a software player, there is probably the fix, of reinstalling it on a new hard drive and avoiding new movies to continue ripping older movies. As long as the player doesn't require online activation, there should be no way to prevent this. If it requires online activation, then your pretty much done. Activation would require an upgrade to a non-compromised version.
My company moved us from one site to another. Now we are all in a 6 story building. NOBODY'S cell phones work, unless they are Cingular who as the company service provider has a tower on the roof, or very close.
I found this to be helpful sometimes. Sit at your desk. Call them on the land line and complain about the cell outage in your area. Play dumb. Ask when the service will be restored.
Keep it up. Either they will contract with the building to install a micro-cell, or will offer an early termination due to the inability to provide service. Keep a service ticket open until they drop you or fix reception in your building.
Your milage may vary. Calling and asking to terminate is not the answer. Calling and asking for service is a strong lever against fees if they can't provide service. Going elsewhere to place calls is not an option. You need to recieve calls.
Your milage may vary.
Your ISP is subsidizing the cost of equipment instead of charging you an up-front sign-up fee. If you leave, your monthly payment is no longer paying that off. It makes perfect sense.
What sucked for me is the non-negotiable new consumer set-up fee. I told them I was changing ISP's, already had a LAN, had pre-configured my router, etc. Still it was about $100 for the guy to come out and plug in the modem. I got a DHCP lease and was online right after the modem booted up. The installer was suprised that I even had pre-set the DNS servers ahead of time. (found it online). Working with dumbed down forced pro-installation and having to foot the bill is an issue that needs fixed. Now if I can get them to quit calling trying to get me to sign up for the triple play package... Every time they call, I remind them why I am not interested in more fees. I do let them know their VOIP offering is not competitive in either calling area, features, price, and of course professional installation. I then ask if the plan has a early termination fee. No thanks! I hope they keep a database of reasons given for rejection.
I have noticed lately that they now have some self install kits at a local retailer.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4441170.html
This patent seems to cover redundant circuits and one time fuses to patch them and a disable fuse to prevent end user changes. The repairs can be made after packaging. This is not to change code, but to increase manufacturing yeild. A few bad bits can be replaced by patching in redundant spare memory instead of trashing the die.
That's a fact. So, when I pay $9.99 for one of them, I'm not getting a good deal.
That is true. That is why I would rather pay $5.99 for it instead of $16.99 elswhere.
Many films are being remastered and re-released, at a higher price than they were originally released.
The same is true for many old audio recordings. Here is a prime example. It was mastered on analog tape with Dolby Pro noise reduction. In the mix the master tape for the original LP pressings was a 3rd generation tape. Now you can own it as a super duper high quality SACD. Sarcasm intentional..
The super fideliety recording in question? Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
How is a SACD recording oh so much better than a CD pressing from analog tape? Did they botch the CD pressing that badly?
The LP on the other hand is great.
I'm not fooled into buying a SACD copy at over $30 for a CD from a third generation analog tape.
Once you've done that, the marginal costs of producing more processors aren't that high.
Hmmm. Are you sure. I thought there was quite a bit of expense to produce high speed processors due to the costs associated in production. Not only is R&D costs high, but so is the technology for Lithography, Clean Rooms, Metrology (can't make and sell a product with 100% failure rates), packaging (Silicon in carrier, effective heat spreader, etc. Not the cardboard box), and of course Yeild. The more steps it takes to make a chip, the more steps that can kill some of the product. Adding more and more to a chip requires more layers to connect it all together. Making it smaller makes dust that would pit a line, now completely obliterate it. Optics required for lithography for features smaller than visable light wavelengths raise the cost due to the precision required for registration, focus, etc.
If you were making a sound chip for a greeting card is a cheap process. Making a modern high speed heat and power effecient CPU is not a cheap process. If it were, then there would be many more manufactures working to rake in the money. Money is made by having the capacity at high yeild and a high performance product to cover the R&D and manufacturing costs. If your product doesn't yeild, you have less sellable product for your capitol investments and materials & manpower costs. If your product doesn't perform against the competition, then making a profit isn't easy.
Making current generation microporcessors is a very risky business, unless you have a clear roadmap into the future and can stay on track to beat the competition. Getting off track is very expensive. Microsoft having a poor showing of Vista isn't helping pay the bills in the Microprocessor market for everyone at the moment. The Apple Intel deal has helped soften the poor Vista launch for Intel. AMD doesn't have that safety net.
A couple items...
Wal*Mart does not have a line of DVD's. They retail DVD's manufactured by studios. Other retailers also have bargin bins. They are the same DVD's currently being sold in Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.
A prime example.. Ice Age or Ever After.. New $5.99. or Used at Blockbuster.. $12.95 & 14.95 respectively. (or 2 for $20.00) I got Ice Age and Ever After at the grocery store new. I got Open Season and Flushed Away used at 2 for $20. When the product is exactly the same, the low price is not and indicator of low quality.
I can't easly double my income tax free, but in many cases I can cut my expenses in half tax free.
Over all there is a lack of bargin bin CD's of any good content at reasonable prices. Good content tends to keep new retail prices 20-30 years later. There are very few CD's I buy because of the lack of discounted back catalog. There are no discount bins of good back catalog CD's in the grocery store. There are many DVD's I do buy from the back catalog because of the abundance of good material at good prices.
Even Wholesale, barginn bin DVD's are much cheaper than bargin bin CD's.
here is a link to the root of the problem;
http://www.spinningdiscent.com/catalog/index.php
Bulk collectable DVD's 100 for $125 or a buck and a quarter each.
CD's on the other hand... 100 CD's for $185.
Why is a 50 minute average CD so much more than an avrage 90 minute movie? Don't give me a song and dance about it costs more to make. The team to make Monsters Inc needed much more technical studio stuff than any band I have seen lately. In spite of all the demands on the team to produce a sellable product, they still sold it for about the same price as a typical new release CD and much cheaper than many back catalog CD re-releases (re-mastered release). Many CD re-releases are on SACD format, a DRM format with a backwards compatible standard format layer. Many of these have degraded standard layers just to make the SACD layer sound better in comparison. DRM and lower quality standard layers are the reasons I don't touch that format. Higher prices is just another nail in it's coffin. I don't have a SACD player and have no plans to get one.
The RIAA thinks it's Piracy to blame. It is realy market reality. I buy DVD's, not CD's. The labels simply don't market to my demographic. They are desprately trying to keep the average selling price (ASP) high. They have suceeded. They have watched the volume drop because of it.
Movies on the other hand markets to most demographics. There is some premium content and lots of bargins. This alone is why I actualy look to see what DVD's are out, have memberships to both Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, dig in DVD bins, but don't bother even going into a music store. There is nothing for my demographic in there.
I don't bother transfering my DVD's to videotape. It's not due to copy protection. LP's were always transfered to Cassette due to the high cost.
DVD's and CD's are ripped to computer for convience and to prevent damage/loss. If you have little kids, you know what I'm talking about. Rip it, and lock away the original. I have too big of a collection of empty jewel cases that used to have a CD or DVD. Nobody knows where it is now. Movies and MP3's on a read only share doesn't suffer that fate.
Many SONY DreamWorks DVD's now have a copy protection logo. Looking it up brings up an education site telling you there is absolutely no reason to rip a CD to back it up. It also states there is no new copy protection on the DVD, but all DVD's are CSS protected as they always were. If you have kids, I beg a differ about not needing to back up DVD's.
From my own experiance and reading the fourms, Open Season seems to have some copy protection besides CSS. It looks like the Defective by Design crew is going to have to start a list of defective DVD's in addition to the defective CD's. I am going to have to stop buying SONY CD's or start returning them as defective.
Which campaign donor paid for this, or which Mormon edict is behind it? It's obviously one or the other.
I think you might be onto something here.. It looks like follow the money. Now if I can find some data on the new registery mentioned in the article and who profits...
Snipped from the article....
Owners of eligible words can register the terms in a new registry by paying a nominal fee.
I don't think this it was a question of IF... but WHEN.
Just to take a stupid guess... I think with the need for cash, AMD was hoping Microsoft releasing Vista (Biggest upgrade in 7 years) would create high demand for new PC's and they could sell product as demand exceeded supply. The demand for Vista didn't drive demand as expected.
Vista failing to launch put AMD in tight competition in a smaller market due the lack of demand for Vista. AMD didn't sell to Apple. Intel did. Mac's are selling where Vista is getting so-so response so Intel is selling the new chips into markets AMD is not in. If Intel didn't sell to Apple, and had to cut prices, AMD would be in an even worse position due to the low demand for new Vista machines.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL&annual
Note that Apple has gone in revenue from 2004-2006 $8,279,000,000 to $19,315,000,000
Operating income has gone from $326,000,000 to $2,453,000,000. This is almost an order of magnitude growth in only 2 years. This isn't just from a few iPod sales. Vista's dead start and XP's malware flood is driving people away from Microsoft. The recent growth in Apple and Linux is not primarily new PC consumers. It's mostly ex-Microsoft consumers.
I'm wondering if AMD is selling chips at a loss instead of having to throw them out. I can't see them making money at that price, only cutting their loss.
Selling chips at half price is not profitable. I'm assuming most chips have only a 10-30% margin. Chopping the price in half is selling under the cost to manufacture.
In an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland.
Just how are they dating these samples? Is there an assumption that each layer is a year? Are they assuming there has been no meltbacks removing several years records?
Dating a volcanic event and matching a tree ring to an Ice deposit is good, but much is unknown about the rest of the pack, missing layers and such.
The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.
This alone may be an indicator of why there is no ice record. Past events may have melted the layer and they are in the ocean, not in the ice pack record. Lack of an ice pack record may indicate erasure of the record, not evidence it never happened.
A good many of those have poor transfers also
D _CD_(Pink_Floyd)-prod-29774059-38976525?sourceid=2 98 Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Now $32.99 was $47.38
5 357 Beatles White Album Your Price: $28.99
0 000OAN Queen Night at the Opera Price: $10.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
d p/B00005N7YZ Fiddler on the Roof 17 used & new available from $16.95
c h_constraint=0&search_query=star%20wars%20dvds&adi d=0100000031361378202498 Star Wars trilogy 3 movies for about $10 each. List Price: $49.98
6 5&Ne=160#Budget+DVD's
I've notice that for older films. This is especialy true for DVD's under $2. As a collector of the cartoons I grew up with, 2 hours of early animation at $99cents a copy is a much better value to me than 1950's rock and roll at $12.95 for 48 minutes of stuff.
Let's face it. I can buy a fairly recent (less than 5 years old) DVD for less than $6 new. Ice age and Ever After I just picked up at the grocery store for 5.95 each. Have you checked the price on 20 year old music on CD's? The RIAA hasn't got a clue. I do buy something other than overpriced CD's.
http://www.shop.com/op/~Dark_Side_of_the_Moon_SAC
http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=101
http://www.amazon.com/Night-at-Opera-Queen/dp/B00
Now some older classis movies for comparison;
http://www.amazon.com/Fiddler-Roof-Special-Topol/
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search-ng.gsp?sear
Our Price: $33.88
The RIAA can't figure out why I don't buy CD's..
More hints.. here is a list of DVD's at 5.99 Page 1 of 756 titles.
http://www.jr.com/JRSectionView.process?N=13326+1
Of course, nearly any DVD from Criterion will be around $30. So, the price isn't that big of an issue for me.
There are people who do pay premium prices for premium content. There is a market for Cadilacs and Mercedez Benz, but the real money is in Wal * Mart. Trying to make a Mercedes the standard car of choice is going to have a tough run against the Toyota's.
The HD DVD manufactures are seeing this right now. Hummers were a hot item as was the Escalade. Casino Royale is a hot item, but it's not overtaking conventional DVD's anytime soon much like Hummers and Escalades are not overtaking Accords and Camerys. This is reflected in the number of unsold high priced titles.
Wow, most of my songs are from Media Sentry! ;-)
Already we are seeing movies released in 3 and 4-DVD packages -- that is a lot of disc shuffling that can be reduced. TV series are commonly on 7-disc sets (e.g. Lost, The Wild Wild West) -- one Blu-Ray could hold this.
Somehow I expect to see this at about the same time as I see the entire Beatles catalog released on an MP3 CD at 192 Kbs ready to load into your iPod, Zen, iRiver, or Zune. (not counting the release in the flea market from someone's trunk)
The ability to put more data content on a single disk does not mean they will. HD will be reserved for HD content, not collections of SD shows. CD's will be reserved for CD format audio (with a few exceptions of extra DRM digital tracks and DRM player for your Windows PC. To fit on the redundant tracks, the digital content is at low bitrates and the CD holds less music to make space.)
so it ignores the signals on all but a few towers at a time.
Ignoring a signal and having a channel free of interferance for another user are two diffrent things.
Grab an AM radio sometime. Listen to it at night. Try to find a weak station someplace on the dial. Is there more than one station on some frequencies? If there is, simply ignore the one you don't want and just enjoy the one you do want.
A cell tower ignoring a strong airborne phone does not make the channel clear for another call. The signal from the airborne phone blankets the entire city on that channel. One phone now ties up a reciever channel on several hundred towers instead of only 1-6.