Not to mention that McNealy is a blabbermouth who tends to exaggerate. Remember when he claimed that "ZFS will be the file system for OS X"? The reality was a little different,
Sure was. McNealy never claimed ZFS will be the file system for OS X. That was Jonathan Schwartz. In other news, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has read-only ZFS support, with a beta read/write file system module available, and a full ZFS implementation is part of the announced specification for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard.)
FWIW, HDTV (in the US, where "60" is the frame rate) is 1080i60 (or 720p60), not 1080p60. So in terms of total information rate, the two formats are probably about equal with 16mm 24fps film, though I recall some TV shows are filmed on 35mm anyway (House MD, for one.)
Because, in fairness, nobody would participate. The issue is that amongst the major charges leveled against the Bush administrations are actual, bona-fide, war crimes, such as the authorization of torture against foreign nationals.
Now, before the inauguration, there was a lot of debate about whether Bush would pardon himself and his staff over that issue. He very wisely appears to have chosen not to do so. Had Bush issued such a pardon, it would have been effectively useless, as in order to benefit from a pardon you have to accept it, which is an admission of guilt.
These are not, however, national crimes. Pardons would only affect trials within the US. However, war crimes have an international jurisdiction. That is, if a Swiss national and victim of US torture wants Switzerland wants to prosecute Dick Cheney's role in authorizing torture, Switzerland actually as the right to do so - though would have to find a way to get Cheney on Swiss soil to start with.
What would a T&R committee actually do? Exacerbate the issue. Assuming the allegations are true, and people involved in the decisions to approve torture actually testified, truthfully and in full, what you'd simply be doing is creating enormous amounts of evidence to be used against the participants if they ever leave the confines of the US and reach a country that (a) wants to see them prosecuted, and (b) either has standing to prosecute or has an extradition treaty with a country that does.
So that's why we're not going to see a T&R hearing. These are international problems, and the US government either has to bite the bullet and prosecute those who committed crimes at the highest levels, or it can "protect" them by shoving the entire thing under the carpet. There's no real middle ground. You might see progress on something like the spying programs, but not on the issues people are most concerned about.
This argument is more or less an urban legend. Sony wouldn't have been able to prevent porn from being distributed on Betamax even if they had tried. I've heard it for the longest time, and even repeated it myself in the belief it was true, but given some thought it doesn't make sense. How would Sony police this? Betamax duplication equipment consisted of commodity Betamax players available for anonymous purchase at thousands of electronics stores. Betamax tapes were similarly commodity items available for anonymous purchase at stores nationwide. Betamax tape distribution consisted of mail order companies and non-networks of independent outlets with no connection to Sony whatsoever.
It's not impossible that the adult content industry adopted VHS to Betamax's exclusion, but the likely explanation is that VHS was cheaper at that point, not that Sony did anything to prevent the industry from using its technologies. In other words, the adult content industry likely chose VHS for the same reason the Europeans did - by the point they started taking a serious interest, VHS was the dominant format, and was benefiting from massive economies of scale.
Yes true, but the Umatic or Quad decks used by the professionals were not any better
But they weren't in common use. You would see tape decks used for the local news, but most broadcasts in the 1960s and 70s were either filmed, or live.
Yeah but television studios didn't broadcast film
Yes, they did. Video tape didn't become common until the 1980s. 90% of the content you'd watch prior to the mid eighties was live or filmed on 16mm film. The practice of using film never really died out either, it's still common today.
Most of what you'd record on tape - soaps, movies, dramas, sitcoms, and sports - never went anywhere near a videotape at the station. With the exception of sports, it was also filmed. Sports were transmitted live.
Poorly focussed film will contain less actual information. Yes, film stores the same amount of "data", but the actual information content is lower.
If there's less information, then obviously 1080p will end up being higher resolution. If there's even less information, then 480p will contain more information.
So you installed third party applications by sliding open the phone, clicking "Radio", clicking "Favourites", selecting a channel, and listening? 'cos I can't really get my head around that. How do you install a Bluetooth headset? Do you bring up the address book and select a person to call?
What you're describing is not a particularly intuitive interface. I'd have gone for something like "Install Application", and then found a streaming player app from a list, and then selected that. When you click on the word "channel", is that where it tells you all about streaming audio channels, and how to download applications to listen to them?
But, before I did any of that, I'd have had to know that the application existed. I'd have also had to know that the music channels existed. I'd have had to know that my phone can actually stream these without data charges.
And then I'd have had to know that the interface was going to be usable. I'd have had to know it was something I could control in the car. Like a radio. I'd want a nice interface consisting of, say, six presets plus a scan button, in an easily accessible part of the car, so I don't KILL PEOPLE when I change the channel.
I've used Net"radio". I have it on my N800, and on my Powerbook. iTunes does it, y'know. It's a nice toy that I virtually never listen to. I don't have the time or inclination to sit there seeking out channels of content that'll exist fleetingly or else be as bad as what I can receive in analog OTA. And I'm certainly not going to make the effort to make it work in my car. I'm not going to invest in a new phone. I'm not going to pay $30 a month to a desperate cellphone network. I'm not going to search eBay for some kind of dash-mounted control panel to control the cellphone's streaming audio capabilities - assuming such a thing even exists. And I already know streaming audio exists.
Your solution is too hard and too expensive. It. Can. Not. Kill. Sirius/XM. Sirius XM may die, but it will not be because of a convoluted, expensive, streaming audio solution that a requires geek skills and a geek mentality to make work, and is based upon a clumsy interface that's a liability when placed in a car.
That's just not true. Neither VHS nor Betamax could accurately reproduce an NTSC or PAL signal. Both had poorer horizontal lumina resolution and much, much, much, poorer colour resolution.
TV quality from the early sixties until advent of digital didn't change significantly. The standards stayed the same. Colour TVs underwent a few minor improvements, but mid-range CRT TVs in the mid-nineties weren't significantly better than mid-range CRT colour TVs in the mid-seventies. There was a shift of emphasis in the mid-eighties from film to video which initially resulted in a drop in quality that was reversed over time, but, y'know, that should tell you a lot right there: 16mm film, properly shot and focussed, is higher resolution than 1080p.
People weren't looking for high quality though, they were used to the relatively poor quality of NTSC and PAL. They were just looking for a way to record TV programming.
First, a nit pick, 'cos it's kind of irrelevant here: It's not true that UK VHS tapes were limited to three hours in '78 - E-120s - which stored four hours of LP video (just as T-120s stored four hours of LP NTSC) were available from day one. Meanwhile, I recall the complaints about Betamax's lousy recording lengths even in 1980, which makes me think that while LP and long tape lengths were actually rolled out from the beginning with VHS, it took longer for similar technologies to be rolled out with Betamax, regardless of whether they were theoretically released or not.
But in any case, you're actually pointing at a period after the momentum had already switched to VHS. By the time serious headway was made in selling VCRs in Europe, the format war had been decided in the US. VHS was benefiting from the economies of scale of being the cheaper, well supported, format in the US, due to Betamax's initially lousy tape lengths. Essentially, the format that would be cheap and well-supported was picked in the US. Europe wasn't presented with a choice of "short and long tape lengths" so much as "Expensive and poorly supported vs cheap and well supported."
Again, the winner was decided by "fit for use". While Sony made efforts to fix the serious issues Betamax had, it did so too late, like a long distance runner who trains hard immediately after the marathon is over.
So betamax was better. But VHS won the format war anyway.
No, so Betamax had slightly higher image quality (they both sucked, FWIW), but VHS won the format war anyway.
Betamax was not better than VHS from a "usability for application" standpoint. The short recording times per tape meant it had limited use as a movie distribution format or a system for recording more than one show unattended. By 1977, VHS could typically squeeze four hours onto a single T-120 video tape, while Betamax was limited at that time to one hour per tape. When considering whether one thing is "better" than another, you have to look at the whole picture. Betamax's picture was higher quality, but in every other respect, it failed every test. Consumers consistently chose recording length over picture quality, because it's better to get a fuzzy recording of a movie than only the first half.
And yes, I'm aware later versions of Betamax "solved" the recording length issues, but by that point the war was over and done with.
Your response to my comment that streaming radio over cellphone connections is expensive and not supported by the majority of cellphones appears to be that you have a fairly uncommon (and generally not desirable) cellphone that you use to stream radio over an expensive EVDO connection. You also appear to have added another argument that how you do it is convoluted and unlikely to be considered user friendly (or even usable) to the vast majority of people, who just want something that "just works" - something a Sirius receiver gives you in a nice neat package.
Sirius/XM may or may not make it next year, but it's certainly not going to be from competition from unpopular smartphones running third party streaming apps.
You can't listen to your Cellphone as it streams wireless radio in your car?
Ok, first thing: "Wireless radio". Think about it.
Second thing: No. If you're referring to cellphones with radios built in, there's no point: cars already have built-in radios.
If you're referring to connecting to a streaming radio service using the wireless Internet, the vast majority of cellphones offer no such facility. Even when they do, you're going to have to find a streaming service worth listening to (hey, here's an idea, subscribe to Sirius!) The free streaming services I've seen are generally either rebroadcasts of radio-accessible content (your car already has a radio), or ad-supported music stations (or non-ad supported stations that'll exist fleetingly at best.) You'll also generally have to pay more for your data subscription than the $12 per month Sirius charges for its content.
The point of Sirius-XM is not "woo! we have satellites!", it's "we have high quality content, you pay for it by subscribing rather than buying advertiser's products". If you're obsessing about how "technologies" are going to make "Sirius-XM" obsolete, then you have no idea what Sirius-XM is and you've ignored the part of my comment where I pointed out Sirius-XM can exist without satellites.
Or Ipods in your car?
iPods contain a fixed collection of content that can only be updated when you're at a computer, with items you select in advance. I can't even begin to imagine why you'd bring them up as a Sirius-XM competitor.
For the satellite service, Sirius/XM's main market are car drivers. Streaming radio isn't going to have much of an impact, nor are cellphones with radios built into them. It's also worth noting that most Sirius subscribers I know are attracted in large part because of Sirius's own streaming service. They listen to the satellite in the car, and then listen to the same Sirius-exclusive stations via streaming from their computers at work.
It's possible that in five years, ubiquitous LTE coverage will mean streaming radio to cars will suddenly start to become viable, but XM/Sirius has an opportunity to carve out a niche in the meantime, and at that point Sirius/XM will become more of a seller of streaming services than a satellite operator.
While they're not doing well, there's no reason to believe that they have an unviable business model. As long as they provide a portal to subscription funded ad-free content, they're going to attract a market. A move from satellite based distribution to streaming will probably end up helping them more than hindering them, as they'll no longer need to fund the distribution.
Are you kidding? The President-elect has just been shot* and you don't think it's newsworthy?
* As in "shot with a camera", "camera shot", etc**
** Yes, I'm aware most people get the joke. This is Slashdot though, half the readers will need it explaining to them.
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Well, there's one obvious answer: ask Barack. According to the article, he has some experience of this kind of thing, having just had his portrait taken using a digital camera. I'm sure if you call him, he'll be more than happy to discuss his experiences of photography using modern photographic methods.
And UTF-8 is only backwards compatible if all your needs were covered by ASCII
This sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Whether our needs were covered by ASCII has no bearing whatsoever on whether tools that process ASCII can process UTF-8. Our needs aren't covered by ASCII, hence we want to move to UTF-8.
ASCII is a dog, hence we want to switch to Unicode. What UTF-8 gives us is compatibility with previous applications. Almost every app written to assume ASCII input can be used to process UTF-8 files. Hence it's backwards compatible.
Yeah, that would be good, but thus far that's proven difficult and one of the major issues is you get a lot of politics when that happens.
As an example, there already is a perfectly good standard for encoding low-bit rate HD, SD, and LD content on DVDs, it's called 3XDVD and it's a DVD Forum standard. It's actually the HD DVD standard applied to regular red-laser media. It uses H.264 (or you can use VC-1 or MPEG2 or - for low resolutions only - MPEG1) and lots of beautiful audio codecs like DTS and Dolby TrueHD.
And the DVD Forum fits your description. But the DVD Forum is a consortium of manufacturers, so the manufacturers all insist that something they did be a part of the standard, and then they get all huffy about wanting to license the technologies they've donated so they can collect royalties, and the end result is that the DVD Forum only makes the specs available to those willing to pay thousands of dollars, and there are very real costs to incorporating the technology into a regular player.
Sometimes it's worth someone independently saying "Look, here are some open standards" (DivX originally did this with MPEG4 Part 2 and AVI), "Encode to/support these standards and here's a logo we'll license to you. In return, we'll market the bezeesus out of it." Sometimes that works. Hopefully it'll work now.
You're missing the point. This is about slapping logos on things, so people know what they're getting. Here's how it works.
My DVD player contains decoders for MPEG1 and MPEG2 video, and Dolby Digital. My receiver can also decode DTS. My HD DVD player can - on top of those standards - decode H.264, VC-1, and Dolby TrueHD (and a bunch of other Dolby standards.)
But there are limitations. None of these players can decode an arbitrary MPEG1 stream. If I encode a 1080p24 MPEG1 stream, they'll choke. This is because 1080p24 is not a supported profile. Likewise, the Receiver will probably choke if I find a 1Mbps AC-3 Dolby Digital stream and try to get it to play it.
The purpose of the DVD and HD DVD logos when put on players is to say "This equipment supports these standards", and the purpose of the logos when put on discs is to say "This disc is formatted to this standard."
That's what DivX are selling. They're not selling you what you already have. They're selling you a known quality. They're making it possible to make DVD players that support H.264 video and AC-3 audio, in such a way that you know that IF you create an MKV of a supported bitrate, using a supported resolution, using a supported profile, using the supported codecs, using the supported framerates, you will know that that MKV will work on every player that carries the DivX 7 logo.
Oh, and they're selling the software to player manufacturers, but the player manufacturers have to get it from somewhere...
Despite the slightly misleading name, 6to4 is really about getting your own routable netblock, regardless of whether your ISP supports IPv6 or not. The IPv4 address is used to create a/48 network prefix, and every address under that prefix will be routed to the IPv4 address over the IPv4 Internet. The name suggests its a way to get IPv6 machines onto IPv4 networks, but actually IPv6 only machines will be still unable to access IPv4 addresses regardless of whether 6to4 is in use or not. So as an opposite of 6to4, "4to6" doesn't make much sense. An IPv6 address is too big to be used as the basis of creating a block of IPv4 addresses.
What I suspect you meant, and what various people have experimented with, is mapping IPv6 addresses to private IPv4 addresses so an IPv4 machine can access the IPv6 Internet. This isn't that simple, as you essentially have to map a virtual IPv4 address to every IPv6 address that machine is likely to ever connect to. You can kind of do it using an integrated DNS and mapping system, so every time a DNS name is resolved by the IPv4 machine, if it's a new IPv6 address an entry is added to a mapping table for the NAT router, mapping the next available IPv4 address to that IPv6 address, with the IPv4 machine given that mapped number, but it's a fairly nasty hack.
In the end, almost all modern operating systems natively support IPv6, and will start "talking" IPv6 as soon as they make physical contact with a network that routes IPv6 and has a route advertisement daemon to prove it. Only a few closed devices, often focussed on local routing, really require IPv4 access to the outside world. Those devices generally require access to other, specific, IPv4 machines rather than general access to arbitrary nodes on the network. So the use of a NAT "Give IPv4 devices access to the IPv6 Internet" device is fairly limited.
You can, unless you're using an ISP that specifically blocks it, use IPv6 now however. Either use 6to4 (if you've rolled your own router, then check the web for implementation specifics - start here if you can't find a better page. Another possibility are the Apple Airport routers, that generally have this built in. But before spending time on 6to4, ensure your ISP doesn't block it by ensuring you can ping 192.88.99.1. If you can, go right ahead), or use a Tunnel Broker. Hurricane Electric is a good example.
If you can't ping 192.88.99.1, please let your ISP know.
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It kinda does
Sure was. McNealy never claimed ZFS will be the file system for OS X. That was Jonathan Schwartz. In other news, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has read-only ZFS support, with a beta read/write file system module available, and a full ZFS implementation is part of the announced specification for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard.)
So Communism is actually a viable economic model, and would have been OK if it wasn't for that pesky Ronald Reagan?
FWIW, HDTV (in the US, where "60" is the frame rate) is 1080i60 (or 720p60), not 1080p60. So in terms of total information rate, the two formats are probably about equal with 16mm 24fps film, though I recall some TV shows are filmed on 35mm anyway (House MD, for one.)
Because, in fairness, nobody would participate. The issue is that amongst the major charges leveled against the Bush administrations are actual, bona-fide, war crimes, such as the authorization of torture against foreign nationals.
Now, before the inauguration, there was a lot of debate about whether Bush would pardon himself and his staff over that issue. He very wisely appears to have chosen not to do so. Had Bush issued such a pardon, it would have been effectively useless, as in order to benefit from a pardon you have to accept it, which is an admission of guilt.
These are not, however, national crimes. Pardons would only affect trials within the US. However, war crimes have an international jurisdiction. That is, if a Swiss national and victim of US torture wants Switzerland wants to prosecute Dick Cheney's role in authorizing torture, Switzerland actually as the right to do so - though would have to find a way to get Cheney on Swiss soil to start with.
What would a T&R committee actually do? Exacerbate the issue. Assuming the allegations are true, and people involved in the decisions to approve torture actually testified, truthfully and in full, what you'd simply be doing is creating enormous amounts of evidence to be used against the participants if they ever leave the confines of the US and reach a country that (a) wants to see them prosecuted, and (b) either has standing to prosecute or has an extradition treaty with a country that does.
So that's why we're not going to see a T&R hearing. These are international problems, and the US government either has to bite the bullet and prosecute those who committed crimes at the highest levels, or it can "protect" them by shoving the entire thing under the carpet. There's no real middle ground. You might see progress on something like the spying programs, but not on the issues people are most concerned about.
This argument is more or less an urban legend. Sony wouldn't have been able to prevent porn from being distributed on Betamax even if they had tried. I've heard it for the longest time, and even repeated it myself in the belief it was true, but given some thought it doesn't make sense. How would Sony police this? Betamax duplication equipment consisted of commodity Betamax players available for anonymous purchase at thousands of electronics stores. Betamax tapes were similarly commodity items available for anonymous purchase at stores nationwide. Betamax tape distribution consisted of mail order companies and non-networks of independent outlets with no connection to Sony whatsoever.
It's not impossible that the adult content industry adopted VHS to Betamax's exclusion, but the likely explanation is that VHS was cheaper at that point, not that Sony did anything to prevent the industry from using its technologies. In other words, the adult content industry likely chose VHS for the same reason the Europeans did - by the point they started taking a serious interest, VHS was the dominant format, and was benefiting from massive economies of scale.
But they weren't in common use. You would see tape decks used for the local news, but most broadcasts in the 1960s and 70s were either filmed, or live.
Yes, they did. Video tape didn't become common until the 1980s. 90% of the content you'd watch prior to the mid eighties was live or filmed on 16mm film. The practice of using film never really died out either, it's still common today.
Most of what you'd record on tape - soaps, movies, dramas, sitcoms, and sports - never went anywhere near a videotape at the station. With the exception of sports, it was also filmed. Sports were transmitted live.
Poorly focussed film will contain less actual information. Yes, film stores the same amount of "data", but the actual information content is lower.
If there's less information, then obviously 1080p will end up being higher resolution. If there's even less information, then 480p will contain more information.
Sirius costs $12 a month, or $10 a month if bought a year in advance.
Yeah, we're still trying to go for something popular here.
So you installed third party applications by sliding open the phone, clicking "Radio", clicking "Favourites", selecting a channel, and listening? 'cos I can't really get my head around that. How do you install a Bluetooth headset? Do you bring up the address book and select a person to call?
What you're describing is not a particularly intuitive interface. I'd have gone for something like "Install Application", and then found a streaming player app from a list, and then selected that. When you click on the word "channel", is that where it tells you all about streaming audio channels, and how to download applications to listen to them?
But, before I did any of that, I'd have had to know that the application existed. I'd have also had to know that the music channels existed. I'd have had to know that my phone can actually stream these without data charges.
And then I'd have had to know that the interface was going to be usable. I'd have had to know it was something I could control in the car. Like a radio. I'd want a nice interface consisting of, say, six presets plus a scan button, in an easily accessible part of the car, so I don't KILL PEOPLE when I change the channel.
I've used Net"radio". I have it on my N800, and on my Powerbook. iTunes does it, y'know. It's a nice toy that I virtually never listen to. I don't have the time or inclination to sit there seeking out channels of content that'll exist fleetingly or else be as bad as what I can receive in analog OTA. And I'm certainly not going to make the effort to make it work in my car. I'm not going to invest in a new phone. I'm not going to pay $30 a month to a desperate cellphone network. I'm not going to search eBay for some kind of dash-mounted control panel to control the cellphone's streaming audio capabilities - assuming such a thing even exists. And I already know streaming audio exists.
Your solution is too hard and too expensive. It. Can. Not. Kill. Sirius/XM. Sirius XM may die, but it will not be because of a convoluted, expensive, streaming audio solution that a requires geek skills and a geek mentality to make work, and is based upon a clumsy interface that's a liability when placed in a car.
That's just not true. Neither VHS nor Betamax could accurately reproduce an NTSC or PAL signal. Both had poorer horizontal lumina resolution and much, much, much, poorer colour resolution.
TV quality from the early sixties until advent of digital didn't change significantly. The standards stayed the same. Colour TVs underwent a few minor improvements, but mid-range CRT TVs in the mid-nineties weren't significantly better than mid-range CRT colour TVs in the mid-seventies. There was a shift of emphasis in the mid-eighties from film to video which initially resulted in a drop in quality that was reversed over time, but, y'know, that should tell you a lot right there: 16mm film, properly shot and focussed, is higher resolution than 1080p.
People weren't looking for high quality though, they were used to the relatively poor quality of NTSC and PAL. They were just looking for a way to record TV programming.
First, a nit pick, 'cos it's kind of irrelevant here: It's not true that UK VHS tapes were limited to three hours in '78 - E-120s - which stored four hours of LP video (just as T-120s stored four hours of LP NTSC) were available from day one. Meanwhile, I recall the complaints about Betamax's lousy recording lengths even in 1980, which makes me think that while LP and long tape lengths were actually rolled out from the beginning with VHS, it took longer for similar technologies to be rolled out with Betamax, regardless of whether they were theoretically released or not.
But in any case, you're actually pointing at a period after the momentum had already switched to VHS. By the time serious headway was made in selling VCRs in Europe, the format war had been decided in the US. VHS was benefiting from the economies of scale of being the cheaper, well supported, format in the US, due to Betamax's initially lousy tape lengths. Essentially, the format that would be cheap and well-supported was picked in the US. Europe wasn't presented with a choice of "short and long tape lengths" so much as "Expensive and poorly supported vs cheap and well supported."
Again, the winner was decided by "fit for use". While Sony made efforts to fix the serious issues Betamax had, it did so too late, like a long distance runner who trains hard immediately after the marathon is over.
No, so Betamax had slightly higher image quality (they both sucked, FWIW), but VHS won the format war anyway.
Betamax was not better than VHS from a "usability for application" standpoint. The short recording times per tape meant it had limited use as a movie distribution format or a system for recording more than one show unattended. By 1977, VHS could typically squeeze four hours onto a single T-120 video tape, while Betamax was limited at that time to one hour per tape. When considering whether one thing is "better" than another, you have to look at the whole picture. Betamax's picture was higher quality, but in every other respect, it failed every test. Consumers consistently chose recording length over picture quality, because it's better to get a fuzzy recording of a movie than only the first half.
And yes, I'm aware later versions of Betamax "solved" the recording length issues, but by that point the war was over and done with.
Your response to my comment that streaming radio over cellphone connections is expensive and not supported by the majority of cellphones appears to be that you have a fairly uncommon (and generally not desirable) cellphone that you use to stream radio over an expensive EVDO connection. You also appear to have added another argument that how you do it is convoluted and unlikely to be considered user friendly (or even usable) to the vast majority of people, who just want something that "just works" - something a Sirius receiver gives you in a nice neat package.
Sirius/XM may or may not make it next year, but it's certainly not going to be from competition from unpopular smartphones running third party streaming apps.
iPods are also white, whereas most Sirius receivers I've seen are black. And iPods have colour screens too.
I raise those points because they don't answer anything raised by the comment you were responding to either.
Ok, first thing: "Wireless radio". Think about it.
Second thing: No. If you're referring to cellphones with radios built in, there's no point: cars already have built-in radios.
If you're referring to connecting to a streaming radio service using the wireless Internet, the vast majority of cellphones offer no such facility. Even when they do, you're going to have to find a streaming service worth listening to (hey, here's an idea, subscribe to Sirius!) The free streaming services I've seen are generally either rebroadcasts of radio-accessible content (your car already has a radio), or ad-supported music stations (or non-ad supported stations that'll exist fleetingly at best.) You'll also generally have to pay more for your data subscription than the $12 per month Sirius charges for its content.
The point of Sirius-XM is not "woo! we have satellites!", it's "we have high quality content, you pay for it by subscribing rather than buying advertiser's products". If you're obsessing about how "technologies" are going to make "Sirius-XM" obsolete, then you have no idea what Sirius-XM is and you've ignored the part of my comment where I pointed out Sirius-XM can exist without satellites.
iPods contain a fixed collection of content that can only be updated when you're at a computer, with items you select in advance. I can't even begin to imagine why you'd bring them up as a Sirius-XM competitor.
For the satellite service, Sirius/XM's main market are car drivers. Streaming radio isn't going to have much of an impact, nor are cellphones with radios built into them. It's also worth noting that most Sirius subscribers I know are attracted in large part because of Sirius's own streaming service. They listen to the satellite in the car, and then listen to the same Sirius-exclusive stations via streaming from their computers at work.
It's possible that in five years, ubiquitous LTE coverage will mean streaming radio to cars will suddenly start to become viable, but XM/Sirius has an opportunity to carve out a niche in the meantime, and at that point Sirius/XM will become more of a seller of streaming services than a satellite operator.
While they're not doing well, there's no reason to believe that they have an unviable business model. As long as they provide a portal to subscription funded ad-free content, they're going to attract a market. A move from satellite based distribution to streaming will probably end up helping them more than hindering them, as they'll no longer need to fund the distribution.
Are you kidding? The President-elect has just been shot* and you don't think it's newsworthy?
* As in "shot with a camera", "camera shot", etc**
** Yes, I'm aware most people get the joke. This is Slashdot though, half the readers will need it explaining to them.
CmdrTaco is a big fat idiot.
Well, there's one obvious answer: ask Barack. According to the article, he has some experience of this kind of thing, having just had his portrait taken using a digital camera. I'm sure if you call him, he'll be more than happy to discuss his experiences of photography using modern photographic methods.
This sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Whether our needs were covered by ASCII has no bearing whatsoever on whether tools that process ASCII can process UTF-8. Our needs aren't covered by ASCII, hence we want to move to UTF-8.
ASCII is a dog, hence we want to switch to Unicode. What UTF-8 gives us is compatibility with previous applications. Almost every app written to assume ASCII input can be used to process UTF-8 files. Hence it's backwards compatible.
Yeah, that would be good, but thus far that's proven difficult and one of the major issues is you get a lot of politics when that happens.
As an example, there already is a perfectly good standard for encoding low-bit rate HD, SD, and LD content on DVDs, it's called 3XDVD and it's a DVD Forum standard. It's actually the HD DVD standard applied to regular red-laser media. It uses H.264 (or you can use VC-1 or MPEG2 or - for low resolutions only - MPEG1) and lots of beautiful audio codecs like DTS and Dolby TrueHD.
And the DVD Forum fits your description. But the DVD Forum is a consortium of manufacturers, so the manufacturers all insist that something they did be a part of the standard, and then they get all huffy about wanting to license the technologies they've donated so they can collect royalties, and the end result is that the DVD Forum only makes the specs available to those willing to pay thousands of dollars, and there are very real costs to incorporating the technology into a regular player.
Sometimes it's worth someone independently saying "Look, here are some open standards" (DivX originally did this with MPEG4 Part 2 and AVI), "Encode to/support these standards and here's a logo we'll license to you. In return, we'll market the bezeesus out of it." Sometimes that works. Hopefully it'll work now.
Isn't it time we dumped ASCII and moved over to Unicode? Preferably UTF-8, which is all nicely backwards compatible and stuff?
ASCII sucks!
You're missing the point. This is about slapping logos on things, so people know what they're getting. Here's how it works.
My DVD player contains decoders for MPEG1 and MPEG2 video, and Dolby Digital. My receiver can also decode DTS. My HD DVD player can - on top of those standards - decode H.264, VC-1, and Dolby TrueHD (and a bunch of other Dolby standards.)
But there are limitations. None of these players can decode an arbitrary MPEG1 stream. If I encode a 1080p24 MPEG1 stream, they'll choke. This is because 1080p24 is not a supported profile. Likewise, the Receiver will probably choke if I find a 1Mbps AC-3 Dolby Digital stream and try to get it to play it.
The purpose of the DVD and HD DVD logos when put on players is to say "This equipment supports these standards", and the purpose of the logos when put on discs is to say "This disc is formatted to this standard."
That's what DivX are selling. They're not selling you what you already have. They're selling you a known quality. They're making it possible to make DVD players that support H.264 video and AC-3 audio, in such a way that you know that IF you create an MKV of a supported bitrate, using a supported resolution, using a supported profile, using the supported codecs, using the supported framerates, you will know that that MKV will work on every player that carries the DivX 7 logo.
Oh, and they're selling the software to player manufacturers, but the player manufacturers have to get it from somewhere...
This is "superior"? The MPEG transport stream has supported all of that since MPEG2.
We don't seem to be particularly good at making progress here.
Despite the slightly misleading name, 6to4 is really about getting your own routable netblock, regardless of whether your ISP supports IPv6 or not. The IPv4 address is used to create a /48 network prefix, and every address under that prefix will be routed to the IPv4 address over the IPv4 Internet. The name suggests its a way to get IPv6 machines onto IPv4 networks, but actually IPv6 only machines will be still unable to access IPv4 addresses regardless of whether 6to4 is in use or not. So as an opposite of 6to4, "4to6" doesn't make much sense. An IPv6 address is too big to be used as the basis of creating a block of IPv4 addresses.
What I suspect you meant, and what various people have experimented with, is mapping IPv6 addresses to private IPv4 addresses so an IPv4 machine can access the IPv6 Internet. This isn't that simple, as you essentially have to map a virtual IPv4 address to every IPv6 address that machine is likely to ever connect to. You can kind of do it using an integrated DNS and mapping system, so every time a DNS name is resolved by the IPv4 machine, if it's a new IPv6 address an entry is added to a mapping table for the NAT router, mapping the next available IPv4 address to that IPv6 address, with the IPv4 machine given that mapped number, but it's a fairly nasty hack.
In the end, almost all modern operating systems natively support IPv6, and will start "talking" IPv6 as soon as they make physical contact with a network that routes IPv6 and has a route advertisement daemon to prove it. Only a few closed devices, often focussed on local routing, really require IPv4 access to the outside world. Those devices generally require access to other, specific, IPv4 machines rather than general access to arbitrary nodes on the network. So the use of a NAT "Give IPv4 devices access to the IPv6 Internet" device is fairly limited.
It is tiny and that sucks.
You can, unless you're using an ISP that specifically blocks it, use IPv6 now however. Either use 6to4 (if you've rolled your own router, then check the web for implementation specifics - start here if you can't find a better page. Another possibility are the Apple Airport routers, that generally have this built in. But before spending time on 6to4, ensure your ISP doesn't block it by ensuring you can ping 192.88.99.1. If you can, go right ahead), or use a Tunnel Broker. Hurricane Electric is a good example.
If you can't ping 192.88.99.1, please let your ISP know.