The Irish government has been making it very cost-friendly to build plants there. Additionally, they have a great deal of fresh water available -- which is one of the lifelines of a semiconductor plant (the water is processed to be de-ionized for use in numerous things - cleaning, processing, and reducing that 80 molar HF to something more usable - like 8 molar HF -- fun stuff. Don't spill it on you).
You also need a fairly well educated populace for a fab -- if you just take people with grade school educations they aren't likely to follow the very strict guidelines on cleanliness, dresscode, and operational procedures because they just don't understand what they're working with, and how easily it is to destroy. One worker can singlehandedly destroy several million dollars in production in a single day. So most fabs want educated workers (I dunno that this is necessarily a plus or minus for Ireland over SE Asia, just something to consider).
Finally, one huge plus for Ireland over SE Asia is language. Most (all?) Irish speak English, so when a manager from the US comes over they can ask a worker and not have to go through translation (well... ok... depends on how heavy an accent, but I bet you'll have more success than you would in SE Asia).
They don't have the right to make me watch it on their terms either.
realize that skipping commercials will prompt the producers to find other ways to recoup production costs
Exactly. And they need to do that. The industry is changing, but instead of trying to change with it they're attempting to legislate and sue their business model into perpetuity.
Go ahead and ignore the numerous studies indicating that white noise can help you sleep.
A perfectly quiet room is not conducive to a good night's sleep - you wind up being woken by small noises, such as the house creaking, wind blowing through trees, the HVAC system coming on and turning off, etc. White noise gives a higher base noise level that makes these events less noticeable because they're not such an abrupt change from what's in the room otherwise.
did you get to sleep before you had a computer?
Most people leave a fan running in the room - not only does it generate white noise, but it helps air circulation and keeps the temperature more stable.
There's a bunch of quieting gear on Quiet PC, including HD case enclosures. I'd really like to know how well their fan-less CPU and GPU coolers work.
You're very right about HD's though -- my older PC had 3 7200 rpm SCSI drives in it. I finally cannabalized it, removing the SCSI drives and replacing them with a single IDE drive (with twice the capacity). It's much quieter and much faster now (yes, they were old SCSI drives).
If you have a Maxtor drive you can download a utility that will put the drive into "quiet" mode. It reduces performance somewhat by slowing down and re-optimizing seeks to reduce head movement. Did this for the 80 GB drive I put in my TiVo.
Seagate drives are currently considered the "quietest" though, so take that into consideration if buying a new drive. I believe they're even quieter than the Maxtor liquid bearing drives.
Wow, my post generated a lot of feedback. I myself would rather have a 100% compliant browser without fluffy stuff in it, but what mathers in the end is : does this web page load
Yup. But I've given up trying to beat this concept into the/. collective. I don't like that I need to use IE, but I do because it was the only thing rendering web pages worth a damn. And while I'm going to try Mozilla soon, I still know I'll be frustrated when it doesn't work right.
Sure, the web page isn't "standards" compliant. That's nice. I can't change the web page. I can change my browser.
The same people who continue to say "but IE is WRONG!" ignore that TCP/IP got to where it is today by much the same method. Your TCP/IP stack was compliant if it could talk to BSD. Not if it matched the RFCs. Because BSD occasionally ignored the RFCs itself. Sure, you could write to the "standard" and have a TCP/IP stack. Bloody lot of good it does you when you can't talk to anyone else, because they've all recognized the real world standard doesn't match a piece of paper 100%.
One could argue that users of public spectrum should have to provide this info as a cost of doing business, but
What public spectrum? The broadcast channels use public spectrum, sure, but the cable companies don't.
I actually don't think I'd use those features
Yes, and back in the late 70s nobody thought they'd use a VCR either.
But why do the people providing the hardware also have to be the ones providing the programming info?
In the case of TiVo it's not. TiVo isn't providing the hardware. At least not directly. Sony, Phillips, Hughes, etc. make the TiVo boxes and TiVo doesn't see a dime of that revenue - in fact, they used to pay Phillips, et. al. (and they may still, I'm not sure). So if they don't charge you for services exactly where is their revenue going to come from?
Sure, you can scream faulty business plan all you want. But the alternative is to produce the boxes and charge $2000 for them. Because there's no other way to recoup R&D costs on the software otherwise.
Speaking of which, TiVo's fee isn't just for guide data... it's also for the software. In fact, I'd say it's primarily for the software. I bought my TiVo(s) with 1.3 installed. I've since gotten 2.0 and 2.5 and will receive 3.0 in the next couple months. They've added significant features since I bought my TiVo too, so people who say the fee is only for guide data aren't seeing the whole picture.
And yes, I paid lifetime for my units... one is well over the breakeven point now, the other is about halfway.
You can buy a 40"-ish DTV for $1500 now. 50" sets are $2500, and 62" sets are $3500. This is, of course, the low end on each. But you can buy one of those $2500 50" sets, have someone come and calibrate it properly for about $200 and end up with a set that's better than an uncalibrated $6000 50" set.
Digital TV's are selling, and they're selling very well indeed. If you look at the circulars in Sunday papers you'll see that the majority of large screen (>36") sets are digital ready, either in 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios.
The thing that is not selling is the digital receivers - which are down to about $500 now (maybe less). And those aren't advertised in the circulars either. Because they're not selling. People are buying the DTV's to be "upgrade ready" and to get way, way better picture quality from DVDs and (usually) NTSC broadcasts. Even a crappy scalar built into the sets is better than watching interlaced.
Why aren't people buying the receivers though? Well, it's a few factors. First, 8VSB sucks and a lot of people simply can't get reception. Since the FCC declined to require cable must carry rules for digital broadcasts (despite the fact that 80% of the US gets all TV from cable, and it's been this way for 15 years) most people can't get a signal. Rabbit ears don't cut it for 8VSB, and people aren't going back to the 1960s and putting huge ass antennas on their roofs.
Second, there's no broadcasting. The networks have done a miserable job of holding up their end of the bargain. Fox is deliberately dragging its feet and broadcasting in only 480p where they're broadcasting digital at all.
Third, the connection standards are pretty non-existant. There's no recording standards, no encryption standards, and no definite cabling standards. All of these have been vaguely proposed, and vaguely accepted, but the studios and broadcasters keep whining that it's not sufficient and keep wanting to go back to the drawing board. The cable industry has only done preliminary steps on a cable box interface standard -- allegedly finished, but now we get to watch them fight over patent and royalty issues for a few years. And those of us in the know haven't bought digital yet because of this. It's entirely possible that any DTV without the proper DVI connector will wind up not being able to display anything better than NTSC quality in a couple years when all of the above issues DO get ironed out. I have a good bit of money earmarked toward a very large DTV, but I'm not spending it until some of this gets figured out.
OFDM was invented by Bell Labs in 1965... my reference for this is here and (better) here. According to the 2nd article, the C of COFDM was indeed done by a French lab, which would lead to the moronic NIH syndrome.
While we're at it, here's another article that talks about some of the differences between 8VSB and COFDM, and even points at some advantages to 8VSB.
To venture back off-topic - yes, the US telecomm market is rapidly headed back toward a monopoly. Except this time it won't be regulated like AT&T was. The rest of the US free market is doing pretty well though:)
Back ontopic - what's interesting is that Digital TV's are selling pretty well in the US. What isn't selling well are the set top decoders to receive digital broadcasts. People are buying the TVs and then hooking up DVD players to get a superior picture. And since most of the large screen TVs have built in de-interlacing, you even get an improved NTSC picture.
Why aren't the boxes selling? Partly the 8VSB issue and the cable issue (nobody is going to stick up a big ass antenna on their roof nowadays), partly the lack of broadcasting by the major networks, and partly (a very small part) due to some of the more informed people knowing that anything bought today may not be compatible in 2-3 years -- since the studios and the manufacturers are still hashing out connection standards it's possible that any DTV you buy today may wind up being reduced to NTSC-quality reception in the future because it doesn't have the right connectors on it. Fun fun fun.
For me, the last bit is the one and only reason I don't have a digital TV now. I have $5k earmarked toward one (and I'm hoping to spend much less than that). But I'm not going to buy one to have it rendered nearly useless by idiotic studio mavens.
OFDM (there is no such thing as OMDF for a broadcast standard) and COFDM (which has been widely suggested as a replacement for 8VSB) were both invented by Bell Labs. So "NIH" claims don't come into it.
As for the rest of your flamebait - get over yourself. I'll admit that GSM is better, but the telecomm industry here is radically different from Europe or Asia (and, in general, radically fucked up).
My country reduced CO2 emissions about 19% allready in relation to 1990 emissions. I gladly pay energy taxes for that.
Great. When you get DOWN to US levels of pollution, let us know.
I can visit ANY University in Europe FOR FREE. I gladly pay taxes for that.
So care to explain why so many students, internationally, strive to go to the top end US universities?
Besides which, if you want to start babbling like that, any kid in the state of Georgia can go to ANY college or university in the state for free (tuition wise). As long as they maintain their GPA. And that's without a cent of tax money.
Did you read any of the article? Or anything else relating to Perl 6?
It's been made clear from the get-go that Perl 6 is going to be breaking things. The idea is to fix a lot of the issues in the language and hopefully move it out of the "write only language" category that it's been relegated to.
For once, screw NTSC, PAL and SECAM. I still can't figure out why various countries chose to have different broadcast signals in the first place. Hopefully Digital TV will make this a moot point, once we all share the same "format" (and it better be good:)
Uh... riiight. Whatever.
HDTV is a North American only standard. Japan has it's own analog high definition standard. Various countries in Europe have their own standards (e.g. - the UK. Not sure what the status is of other countries at the moment).
Second, this can also be the occasion for designing a newer DVD format [slashdot.org] better suited than current DVDs for high-res TV.
There are already ongoing efforts for an HD DVD standard. Blu-ray is one of them. The name of the other (which is a single company, not a consortium) escapes me at the moment. If there's any relation to the HDTV broadcast standards then it'll be more because the hardware is already setup to deal with specific resolutions than for any other reason.
I think these will be every happy times in 5-10 years once the technology will have matured a bit.
Some of the issues are not solvable. The 8VSB broadcast standard sucks wind. It doesn't fulfill it's goal properly - multipath transmissions kill it dead, and its current operational range is pathetic. If you live within 25 miles of a HD tower you'll probably get reception. If under 50, you may. If 75, you'll be lucky. Over 75? Forget it, the signal won't be strong enough to get a picture.
just hope that the same mistakes (the ones we did in the past with analog broadcast) will not be repeated..
No, they're making all new and improved mistakes. The FCC apparantly got neutered in the past couple decades and they haven't done anything that is in the consumer's interest regarding HD. Removing the "must carry" clause for cable when it comes to HD was the nail in the coffin. At this point they're just throwing dirt on top (no recording standards, no cable box standards, no encryption standards, etc.).
I love the idea of digital. I've seen HD and it's absolutely stunning. But the rollout has been so mismanaged that I'm increasingly of the opinion that HD is doomed to become the next DAT.
Image quality can be debated... my personal opinion is that the amount of crap that winds up on a film reel after just a couple showings of a movie degrades the stock to below that of digital already.
As for color depth - forget it. Not even an issue. Colors in film stock get washed out very quickly from projection. And one of the big gains expected out of digital delivery and projection is the elimination of color variations between film stock. Film being film, it's very difficult to expose exactly the same twice. Much less get similar exposures between different reels. So you wind up with slightly yellow or blue tinted media going out to the retail chains... now generally it's not something that's noticeable, especially since you generally have no comparison at the time of watching, but it's still there and it's another distribution nightmare to match up similarly tinted film stock.
I wish TI would push higher resolution DMD's for theater level projectors. They have demo'd a 1920x1024 DMD, but say it's cost prohibitive to produce (and it very well may be right now... but 1280x1024 w/ a panamorphic lens just doesn't cut it).
Is the crypto chip reprogrammable? I was under the (totally uninformed) impression that it was hardwired. That would pretty much bring TiVo to a crashing halt, as you say.
I don't think TiVo would ever do any of these things, unless forced to by a court order. Despite some of the paranoia on/., TiVo has been very user and hacker friendly -- and they've been very clear about what they'd rather not see hacked, and why (generally liability reasons and their desire to be able to continue existing without a SonicBlue-esque lawsuit)
Re:French Nazi Grammer Police!
on
IBM Spins Down
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I just knew I misspelled that. Oh, and it's "grammar" not "grammer":)
I do find "French Nazi" to be humorous though:)
Re:Moving production to Asia?
on
IBM Spins Down
·
· Score: 2
Anything man has ever done to hinder the invisible hand of the free market has always backfired
Yes, those child labor laws and worker safety are pure evil and must be eliminated. They're driving all the unskilled labor to SE Asia!
Yes, I know, an extreme case, but they haven't always backfired. I'm all for lasseiz faire, but there are limits -- Smith's model has its downfalls just like any other model. The invisible hand doesn't work when the company/person committing the act does not shoulder the burdon of cost for that act. This is generally true for child labor, safety, and environmental issues.
Now the laws to deal with these issues can go too far, but to say that any law that hinders the free market is inherently doomed to backfire is a very short sighted view of things.
Why not release such a device with the same VCR-style interface everyone is used to
Because the VCR interface is pretty universally hated? Very few people actually use their VCRs for recording because they find the interface confusing. Why do you think there are so many jokes about it?
And yes, I'm happy for your parents. Now get me data that I can actually use. See my other post for why that data is not sufficient.
And no, you don't know what channel the Simpsons are on. Not all of them at least. Which channels are playing the syndicated reruns? At what times? And do you know when they're going to change their schedule? Or show a special episode?
You don't NEED to know any of that with a good PVR like TiVo or Replay. All you need to know is what the name of the show is... or (with TiVo) the name of an actor. Or the director. Or even a general category. And you can record it, whenever it comes on, whatever channel it comes on, no matter how many lineup changes occur or special episodes are shown.
PVR's are truely freeing... it's not a matter of watching more TV (although you may), it's about watching what you want when you want. Like a show that's on at 8 pm for 30 mins and another that's on at 9 pm for 30 mins? Great. Now you don't have to watch the trash that's on between. You don't have to worry about being home to watch it at 8 pm either. And you don't have to wonder about if there's a tape in the VCR, if there's enough space left on it, or if another show is about to come on that you want to tape so you can't watch that first one.
If you want an absolute brain dead PVR, that may be all you need. But anyone who's used a TiVo won't use a brain dead PVR again - it'd be nearly as bad as going back to a VCR.
TiVo provides name and time, plus episode name, category (and there's 20 or so categories plus sub categories for each), primary actors, director, rating, new/rerun, and a few other markings I'm forgetting now. All of this is useful for searching, indexing, and automatic recording of interesting shows (the new/rerun and episode name are biggies -- so I can select only new programs, or I can decide to not record any episodes I've recorded in the past 30 days).
Looking at Yahoo's listings, some of that is available, but it's very very random and the classifications for some shows appear to be off. And it requires you to drill down on every link, which is not how you want an automated update to work.
Accuracy is another issue... I have no way to comment on the accuracy of Yahoo's data, but I've rarely seen TiVo's data wrong. When it is you can call them up and they'll yell at the company that provides it to them.
The reason you're waiting is because it's not a trivial problem. People who think it's a trivial problem don't have a clue what the problem is.
Recording the data stream, keeping it all perfectly synched, allowing fast forward/skip/rewind at various speeds/intervals and still keeping it synched, the program guide data, the user interface, reasonable indexing of recorded data, and everything else - these aren't simple problems. The first being the hardest. And the guide data isn't free - you have to pay someone for it. To get it in the level of detail and quality that TiVo has you have to pay a good bit (more than what you can download from the net or hack off your cable/DSS).
Free markets do provide what is in demand. But nobody believes that the average consumer will $2k for one of these boxes - which is about what you'd have to charge to recoup R&D costs since you have no ongoing revenue.
There's a reason that TiVo and Replay have done well. And why nobody's sufficiently duplicated them yet on the PC. One of these days you'll realize that.
Go ahead and kill my TiVo. I have it backed up. And there's nothing they can do to stop me from restoring it and then going and using 3rd party services to get program information, etc. -- at that point I consider the informal contract between myself and TiVo to have ended (and it's not so informal in my case - I have a lifetime subscription, and both my TiVo's are prior to the "you must use this with our service" clauses).
What, you don't have your PVR backed up? You should. It's really quite easy.
And no, there are no hardware kill switches. Or none that have been found at least - and I doubt the first generation boxes had them at all. Even if they were to tell the BIOS to kill itself, the BIOS can be replaced too.
Hrm. I'm surprised that's not considered tying, which is illegal under the Sherman Act (aka - antitrust act), Section 2, Article 3 (if my memory is correct - IANAL).
Of course, you can try to spoof the data all you want. Statisically, you're insignificant and anything you're trying to do is thrown out in any decent modeling.
There aren't enough people doing that kind of thing to skew models... it's why they've worked for so long. I have a friend who is on some grocery tracking system - he scans everything he buys and reports it back to some company. His buying habits are pretty damn weird too -- single male with two cats. He buys everything in MASSIVE bulk (witness the 30 packages of jello in his pantry - which haven't been touched in months), he feeds his cats Sunkist tuna, and so forth. So are his unusual buying habits going to skew the resulting data and render it all useless? Nope. Because if he's sufficiently outside the median the data will be thrown out through statistical methods. It won't even be a blip.
And small scale attempts to hack reporting software like you suggest won't even be a blip either. Sorry to make you realize that you aren't the world-changing, corporate-overthrowing, l33t hax0r you think you are.
1 - got it... same general purpose though, correct?
2 - Yes, I know how fast they are. But a ship running 60 knots full-out is still slow compared to an aircraft or a missile. By at least an order of magnitude.
3 - No, we don't, but if going to full alert isn't SOP then someone in the brass needs to have their ass canned. As a point of reference (which I meant to include but didn't), I do believe all our military assets went to full alert after the September 11th attacks. This scenario is considerably worse.
4 - You are correct again. The movie shows the carrier using such a system to take out roughly 2/3's of the incoming missiles.
5-6 - Nod.
7 - I meant the submarine going below the layer to infiltrate the battle group, and then going up to fire (if necessary - or just firing from beneath it if possible).
You are very correct in that I had a good bit of the terminology wrong on the details, and your evenhanded corrections ARE appreciated... but it's still considerably more accuate than what the movie depicted (gee - the US just got nuked, so we'll have a helicopter, a few F-15s, and a Hawkeye sitting idle on the flight deck in storage mode, not even being prepped for flight ops).
Slashdot Mirror
It's not rocket science.
Of course not.
It's quantum mechanics.
Duh.
The Irish government has been making it very cost-friendly to build plants there. Additionally, they have a great deal of fresh water available -- which is one of the lifelines of a semiconductor plant (the water is processed to be de-ionized for use in numerous things - cleaning, processing, and reducing that 80 molar HF to something more usable - like 8 molar HF -- fun stuff. Don't spill it on you).
You also need a fairly well educated populace for a fab -- if you just take people with grade school educations they aren't likely to follow the very strict guidelines on cleanliness, dresscode, and operational procedures because they just don't understand what they're working with, and how easily it is to destroy. One worker can singlehandedly destroy several million dollars in production in a single day. So most fabs want educated workers (I dunno that this is necessarily a plus or minus for Ireland over SE Asia, just something to consider).
Finally, one huge plus for Ireland over SE Asia is language. Most (all?) Irish speak English, so when a manager from the US comes over they can ask a worker and not have to go through translation (well... ok... depends on how heavy an accent, but I bet you'll have more success than you would in SE Asia).
By your wonderfully specious logic, you enter a contract to buy something when you enter the store. Or even look in the window.
They don't have the right to make me watch it on their terms either.
realize that skipping commercials will prompt the producers to find other ways to recoup production costs
Exactly. And they need to do that. The industry is changing, but instead of trying to change with it they're attempting to legislate and sue their business model into perpetuity.
Go ahead and ignore the numerous studies indicating that white noise can help you sleep.
A perfectly quiet room is not conducive to a good night's sleep - you wind up being woken by small noises, such as the house creaking, wind blowing through trees, the HVAC system coming on and turning off, etc. White noise gives a higher base noise level that makes these events less noticeable because they're not such an abrupt change from what's in the room otherwise.
did you get to sleep before you had a computer?
Most people leave a fan running in the room - not only does it generate white noise, but it helps air circulation and keeps the temperature more stable.
Note that Quantum no longer manufacturers HD's.
There's a bunch of quieting gear on Quiet PC, including HD case enclosures. I'd really like to know how well their fan-less CPU and GPU coolers work.
You're very right about HD's though -- my older PC had 3 7200 rpm SCSI drives in it. I finally cannabalized it, removing the SCSI drives and replacing them with a single IDE drive (with twice the capacity). It's much quieter and much faster now (yes, they were old SCSI drives).
If you have a Maxtor drive you can download a utility that will put the drive into "quiet" mode. It reduces performance somewhat by slowing down and re-optimizing seeks to reduce head movement. Did this for the 80 GB drive I put in my TiVo.
Seagate drives are currently considered the "quietest" though, so take that into consideration if buying a new drive. I believe they're even quieter than the Maxtor liquid bearing drives.
Wow, my post generated a lot of feedback. I myself would rather have a 100% compliant browser without fluffy stuff in it, but what mathers in the end is : does this web page load
/. collective. I don't like that I need to use IE, but I do because it was the only thing rendering web pages worth a damn. And while I'm going to try Mozilla soon, I still know I'll be frustrated when it doesn't work right.
Yup. But I've given up trying to beat this concept into the
Sure, the web page isn't "standards" compliant. That's nice. I can't change the web page. I can change my browser.
The same people who continue to say "but IE is WRONG!" ignore that TCP/IP got to where it is today by much the same method. Your TCP/IP stack was compliant if it could talk to BSD. Not if it matched the RFCs. Because BSD occasionally ignored the RFCs itself. Sure, you could write to the "standard" and have a TCP/IP stack. Bloody lot of good it does you when you can't talk to anyone else, because they've all recognized the real world standard doesn't match a piece of paper 100%.
One could argue that users of public spectrum should have to provide this info as a cost of doing business, but
What public spectrum? The broadcast channels use public spectrum, sure, but the cable companies don't.
I actually don't think I'd use those features
Yes, and back in the late 70s nobody thought they'd use a VCR either.
But why do the people providing the hardware also have to be the ones providing the programming info?
In the case of TiVo it's not. TiVo isn't providing the hardware. At least not directly. Sony, Phillips, Hughes, etc. make the TiVo boxes and TiVo doesn't see a dime of that revenue - in fact, they used to pay Phillips, et. al. (and they may still, I'm not sure). So if they don't charge you for services exactly where is their revenue going to come from?
Sure, you can scream faulty business plan all you want. But the alternative is to produce the boxes and charge $2000 for them. Because there's no other way to recoup R&D costs on the software otherwise.
Speaking of which, TiVo's fee isn't just for guide data... it's also for the software. In fact, I'd say it's primarily for the software. I bought my TiVo(s) with 1.3 installed. I've since gotten 2.0 and 2.5 and will receive 3.0 in the next couple months. They've added significant features since I bought my TiVo too, so people who say the fee is only for guide data aren't seeing the whole picture.
And yes, I paid lifetime for my units... one is well over the breakeven point now, the other is about halfway.
You're deeply, deeply out of touch.
You can buy a 40"-ish DTV for $1500 now. 50" sets are $2500, and 62" sets are $3500. This is, of course, the low end on each. But you can buy one of those $2500 50" sets, have someone come and calibrate it properly for about $200 and end up with a set that's better than an uncalibrated $6000 50" set.
Digital TV's are selling, and they're selling very well indeed. If you look at the circulars in Sunday papers you'll see that the majority of large screen (>36") sets are digital ready, either in 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios.
The thing that is not selling is the digital receivers - which are down to about $500 now (maybe less). And those aren't advertised in the circulars either. Because they're not selling. People are buying the DTV's to be "upgrade ready" and to get way, way better picture quality from DVDs and (usually) NTSC broadcasts. Even a crappy scalar built into the sets is better than watching interlaced.
Why aren't people buying the receivers though? Well, it's a few factors. First, 8VSB sucks and a lot of people simply can't get reception. Since the FCC declined to require cable must carry rules for digital broadcasts (despite the fact that 80% of the US gets all TV from cable, and it's been this way for 15 years) most people can't get a signal. Rabbit ears don't cut it for 8VSB, and people aren't going back to the 1960s and putting huge ass antennas on their roofs.
Second, there's no broadcasting. The networks have done a miserable job of holding up their end of the bargain. Fox is deliberately dragging its feet and broadcasting in only 480p where they're broadcasting digital at all.
Third, the connection standards are pretty non-existant. There's no recording standards, no encryption standards, and no definite cabling standards. All of these have been vaguely proposed, and vaguely accepted, but the studios and broadcasters keep whining that it's not sufficient and keep wanting to go back to the drawing board. The cable industry has only done preliminary steps on a cable box interface standard -- allegedly finished, but now we get to watch them fight over patent and royalty issues for a few years. And those of us in the know haven't bought digital yet because of this. It's entirely possible that any DTV without the proper DVI connector will wind up not being able to display anything better than NTSC quality in a couple years when all of the above issues DO get ironed out. I have a good bit of money earmarked toward a very large DTV, but I'm not spending it until some of this gets figured out.
OFDM was invented by Bell Labs in 1965... my reference for this is here and (better) here. According to the 2nd article, the C of COFDM was indeed done by a French lab, which would lead to the moronic NIH syndrome.
:)
While we're at it, here's another article that talks about some of the differences between 8VSB and COFDM, and even points at some advantages to 8VSB.
To venture back off-topic - yes, the US telecomm market is rapidly headed back toward a monopoly. Except this time it won't be regulated like AT&T was. The rest of the US free market is doing pretty well though
Back ontopic - what's interesting is that Digital TV's are selling pretty well in the US. What isn't selling well are the set top decoders to receive digital broadcasts. People are buying the TVs and then hooking up DVD players to get a superior picture. And since most of the large screen TVs have built in de-interlacing, you even get an improved NTSC picture.
Why aren't the boxes selling? Partly the 8VSB issue and the cable issue (nobody is going to stick up a big ass antenna on their roof nowadays), partly the lack of broadcasting by the major networks, and partly (a very small part) due to some of the more informed people knowing that anything bought today may not be compatible in 2-3 years -- since the studios and the manufacturers are still hashing out connection standards it's possible that any DTV you buy today may wind up being reduced to NTSC-quality reception in the future because it doesn't have the right connectors on it. Fun fun fun.
For me, the last bit is the one and only reason I don't have a digital TV now. I have $5k earmarked toward one (and I'm hoping to spend much less than that). But I'm not going to buy one to have it rendered nearly useless by idiotic studio mavens.
OFDM (there is no such thing as OMDF for a broadcast standard) and COFDM (which has been widely suggested as a replacement for 8VSB) were both invented by Bell Labs. So "NIH" claims don't come into it.
As for the rest of your flamebait - get over yourself. I'll admit that GSM is better, but the telecomm industry here is radically different from Europe or Asia (and, in general, radically fucked up).
My country reduced CO2 emissions about 19% allready in relation to 1990 emissions. I gladly pay energy taxes for that.
Great. When you get DOWN to US levels of pollution, let us know.
I can visit ANY University in Europe FOR FREE. I gladly pay taxes for that.
So care to explain why so many students, internationally, strive to go to the top end US universities?
Besides which, if you want to start babbling like that, any kid in the state of Georgia can go to ANY college or university in the state for free (tuition wise). As long as they maintain their GPA. And that's without a cent of tax money.
Did you read any of the article? Or anything else relating to Perl 6?
It's been made clear from the get-go that Perl 6 is going to be breaking things. The idea is to fix a lot of the issues in the language and hopefully move it out of the "write only language" category that it's been relegated to.
For once, screw NTSC, PAL and SECAM. I still can't figure out why various countries chose to have different broadcast signals in the first place. Hopefully Digital TV will make this a moot point, once we all share the same "format" (and it better be good :)
Uh... riiight. Whatever.
HDTV is a North American only standard. Japan has it's own analog high definition standard. Various countries in Europe have their own standards (e.g. - the UK. Not sure what the status is of other countries at the moment).
Second, this can also be the occasion for designing a newer DVD format [slashdot.org] better suited than current DVDs for high-res TV.
There are already ongoing efforts for an HD DVD standard. Blu-ray is one of them. The name of the other (which is a single company, not a consortium) escapes me at the moment. If there's any relation to the HDTV broadcast standards then it'll be more because the hardware is already setup to deal with specific resolutions than for any other reason.
I think these will be every happy times in 5-10 years once the technology will have matured a bit.
Some of the issues are not solvable. The 8VSB broadcast standard sucks wind. It doesn't fulfill it's goal properly - multipath transmissions kill it dead, and its current operational range is pathetic. If you live within 25 miles of a HD tower you'll probably get reception. If under 50, you may. If 75, you'll be lucky. Over 75? Forget it, the signal won't be strong enough to get a picture.
just hope that the same mistakes (the ones we did in the past with analog broadcast) will not be repeated..
No, they're making all new and improved mistakes. The FCC apparantly got neutered in the past couple decades and they haven't done anything that is in the consumer's interest regarding HD. Removing the "must carry" clause for cable when it comes to HD was the nail in the coffin. At this point they're just throwing dirt on top (no recording standards, no cable box standards, no encryption standards, etc.).
I love the idea of digital. I've seen HD and it's absolutely stunning. But the rollout has been so mismanaged that I'm increasingly of the opinion that HD is doomed to become the next DAT.
Image quality can be debated... my personal opinion is that the amount of crap that winds up on a film reel after just a couple showings of a movie degrades the stock to below that of digital already.
As for color depth - forget it. Not even an issue. Colors in film stock get washed out very quickly from projection. And one of the big gains expected out of digital delivery and projection is the elimination of color variations between film stock. Film being film, it's very difficult to expose exactly the same twice. Much less get similar exposures between different reels. So you wind up with slightly yellow or blue tinted media going out to the retail chains... now generally it's not something that's noticeable, especially since you generally have no comparison at the time of watching, but it's still there and it's another distribution nightmare to match up similarly tinted film stock.
I wish TI would push higher resolution DMD's for theater level projectors. They have demo'd a 1920x1024 DMD, but say it's cost prohibitive to produce (and it very well may be right now... but 1280x1024 w/ a panamorphic lens just doesn't cut it).
Is the crypto chip reprogrammable? I was under the (totally uninformed) impression that it was hardwired. That would pretty much bring TiVo to a crashing halt, as you say.
/., TiVo has been very user and hacker friendly -- and they've been very clear about what they'd rather not see hacked, and why (generally liability reasons and their desire to be able to continue existing without a SonicBlue-esque lawsuit)
I don't think TiVo would ever do any of these things, unless forced to by a court order. Despite some of the paranoia on
I just knew I misspelled that. Oh, and it's "grammar" not "grammer" :)
:)
I do find "French Nazi" to be humorous though
Anything man has ever done to hinder the invisible hand of the free market has always backfired
Yes, those child labor laws and worker safety are pure evil and must be eliminated. They're driving all the unskilled labor to SE Asia!
Yes, I know, an extreme case, but they haven't always backfired. I'm all for lasseiz faire, but there are limits -- Smith's model has its downfalls just like any other model. The invisible hand doesn't work when the company/person committing the act does not shoulder the burdon of cost for that act. This is generally true for child labor, safety, and environmental issues.
Now the laws to deal with these issues can go too far, but to say that any law that hinders the free market is inherently doomed to backfire is a very short sighted view of things.
Why not release such a device with the same VCR-style interface everyone is used to
Because the VCR interface is pretty universally hated? Very few people actually use their VCRs for recording because they find the interface confusing. Why do you think there are so many jokes about it?
And yes, I'm happy for your parents. Now get me data that I can actually use. See my other post for why that data is not sufficient.
And no, you don't know what channel the Simpsons are on. Not all of them at least. Which channels are playing the syndicated reruns? At what times? And do you know when they're going to change their schedule? Or show a special episode?
You don't NEED to know any of that with a good PVR like TiVo or Replay. All you need to know is what the name of the show is... or (with TiVo) the name of an actor. Or the director. Or even a general category. And you can record it, whenever it comes on, whatever channel it comes on, no matter how many lineup changes occur or special episodes are shown.
PVR's are truely freeing... it's not a matter of watching more TV (although you may), it's about watching what you want when you want. Like a show that's on at 8 pm for 30 mins and another that's on at 9 pm for 30 mins? Great. Now you don't have to watch the trash that's on between. You don't have to worry about being home to watch it at 8 pm either. And you don't have to wonder about if there's a tape in the VCR, if there's enough space left on it, or if another show is about to come on that you want to tape so you can't watch that first one.
If you want an absolute brain dead PVR, that may be all you need. But anyone who's used a TiVo won't use a brain dead PVR again - it'd be nearly as bad as going back to a VCR.
TiVo provides name and time, plus episode name, category (and there's 20 or so categories plus sub categories for each), primary actors, director, rating, new/rerun, and a few other markings I'm forgetting now. All of this is useful for searching, indexing, and automatic recording of interesting shows (the new/rerun and episode name are biggies -- so I can select only new programs, or I can decide to not record any episodes I've recorded in the past 30 days).
Looking at Yahoo's listings, some of that is available, but it's very very random and the classifications for some shows appear to be off. And it requires you to drill down on every link, which is not how you want an automated update to work.
Accuracy is another issue... I have no way to comment on the accuracy of Yahoo's data, but I've rarely seen TiVo's data wrong. When it is you can call them up and they'll yell at the company that provides it to them.
The reason you're waiting is because it's not a trivial problem. People who think it's a trivial problem don't have a clue what the problem is.
Recording the data stream, keeping it all perfectly synched, allowing fast forward/skip/rewind at various speeds/intervals and still keeping it synched, the program guide data, the user interface, reasonable indexing of recorded data, and everything else - these aren't simple problems. The first being the hardest. And the guide data isn't free - you have to pay someone for it. To get it in the level of detail and quality that TiVo has you have to pay a good bit (more than what you can download from the net or hack off your cable/DSS).
Free markets do provide what is in demand. But nobody believes that the average consumer will $2k for one of these boxes - which is about what you'd have to charge to recoup R&D costs since you have no ongoing revenue.
There's a reason that TiVo and Replay have done well. And why nobody's sufficiently duplicated them yet on the PC. One of these days you'll realize that.
Go ahead and kill my TiVo. I have it backed up. And there's nothing they can do to stop me from restoring it and then going and using 3rd party services to get program information, etc. -- at that point I consider the informal contract between myself and TiVo to have ended (and it's not so informal in my case - I have a lifetime subscription, and both my TiVo's are prior to the "you must use this with our service" clauses).
What, you don't have your PVR backed up? You should. It's really quite easy.
And no, there are no hardware kill switches. Or none that have been found at least - and I doubt the first generation boxes had them at all. Even if they were to tell the BIOS to kill itself, the BIOS can be replaced too.
Hrm. I'm surprised that's not considered tying, which is illegal under the Sherman Act (aka - antitrust act), Section 2, Article 3 (if my memory is correct - IANAL).
Of course, you can try to spoof the data all you want. Statisically, you're insignificant and anything you're trying to do is thrown out in any decent modeling.
There aren't enough people doing that kind of thing to skew models... it's why they've worked for so long. I have a friend who is on some grocery tracking system - he scans everything he buys and reports it back to some company. His buying habits are pretty damn weird too -- single male with two cats. He buys everything in MASSIVE bulk (witness the 30 packages of jello in his pantry - which haven't been touched in months), he feeds his cats Sunkist tuna, and so forth. So are his unusual buying habits going to skew the resulting data and render it all useless? Nope. Because if he's sufficiently outside the median the data will be thrown out through statistical methods. It won't even be a blip.
And small scale attempts to hack reporting software like you suggest won't even be a blip either. Sorry to make you realize that you aren't the world-changing, corporate-overthrowing, l33t hax0r you think you are.
Appreciate the clarifications, seriously.
1 - got it... same general purpose though, correct?
2 - Yes, I know how fast they are. But a ship running 60 knots full-out is still slow compared to an aircraft or a missile. By at least an order of magnitude.
3 - No, we don't, but if going to full alert isn't SOP then someone in the brass needs to have their ass canned. As a point of reference (which I meant to include but didn't), I do believe all our military assets went to full alert after the September 11th attacks. This scenario is considerably worse.
4 - You are correct again. The movie shows the carrier using such a system to take out roughly 2/3's of the incoming missiles.
5-6 - Nod.
7 - I meant the submarine going below the layer to infiltrate the battle group, and then going up to fire (if necessary - or just firing from beneath it if possible).
You are very correct in that I had a good bit of the terminology wrong on the details, and your evenhanded corrections ARE appreciated... but it's still considerably more accuate than what the movie depicted (gee - the US just got nuked, so we'll have a helicopter, a few F-15s, and a Hawkeye sitting idle on the flight deck in storage mode, not even being prepped for flight ops).