Exactly. WiMAX's up and coming rival is GSM/UMTS LTE, which also uses OFDM. You might just as well say this is a review of an LTE network, or that a review of Sprint's 3G network (CDMA) is a review of T-Mobile's (UMTS/W-CDMA).
You don't stay ahead of the game by standing still. If the DS wants to avoid competition springing up, it has to be a moving target.
There are some critical flaws in the DS that I'm surprised they've done nothing to fix. The most major is the lack of WPA support, forcing anyone who wants their DS to be network enabled to use WEP WAPs. (Say that five times...)
It's also not hard to see ways in which it could be improved while keeping within its mandate - the music feature seems more of a "me too" thing, but the camera sounds like something I can see Nintendo adding just to create another input device for DS developers to find new and original uses for. (If anyone has difficulty understanding what I mean here, then take the microphone on the DS. There's a subgame available for the DS where you inflate balloons by blowing into the microphone. Yeah. Now, think about that kind of lateral thinking applied to a camera.) Motion sensors would strike as obvious enhancements too.
I'm disappointed that Nintendo isn't doing more to enhance their current offerings. Releasing a more advanced Wii for a slightly higher price, while keeping the current one in production, would do much to manage demand for the unit while keeping sales and profits high.
I've taken plenty of pictures of items at stores, and it's never been about comparison shopping.
It's easier to take a picture than to note down a brand/part number, given the latter requires a pen and paper and surface to write on. Noting down that information means I can get home, check reviews and specs, and come back and buy it if it's really what I want.
Using TFA's system, I can do all that without leaving the store. That's pretty compelling. Any store that doesn't let me do that is going to lose business. Anyone who thinks this is about comparison shopping "to the nearest penny" hasn't a clue about how useful this is. Not everything in the world is about price.
For sites like YouTube, it's fairly easy, there's a file in/tmp called Flashxxxxx (where xxxxx is a random sequence of letters and digits.) I've yet to find a way of downloading anything from Hulu.com though. I got the impression the Hulu player keeps everything in memory, which is why moving the cursor is a somewhat less smooth experience than it is with YouTube.
Well, there are many points to the article, but one of them is that someone can watch the movie for free because Adobe's server software is set up to continue streaming the movies after showing the free "clip". That, indeed, is "stupid", it relies upon trusted client software. DRM is one solution to this problem, but another is not to stream content to people's PCs they haven't paid for.
It's not a myth. I receive analog TV with a fair bit of snow and ghosting. The audio always comes in perfect though. It's plenty watchable. I rarely feel like getting up and moving the antenna.
And this has to do with what exactly?
I say it's a myth that analog doesn't have a hard floor, and you argue that it isn't a myth because the analog channels you watch have snow on them? What about the channels you don't watch because they're unwatchable?
With digital TV, I am constantly moving my antenna in order to stop the frequent drop outs of picture and audio. I don't even care about the picture dropping out, I just want the audio to be listenable. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hear speech constantly cutting out?
I agree. Do you have any idea how hard it is to watch a channel where the picture keeps flitting up and down, and where the sound keeps fading in and out with white noise so loud it's impossible to hear the people speaking?
Both systems have hard floors, and both degrade. My experience is that I receive consistently better signals watching the same channels digitally than in analog. As an example, with an indoor antenna, I can receive my local Fox affiliate with a fairly interference free signal with digital. Using the same equipment, same antenna, same frickin TV, the analog version is frequently unwatchable. So digital has a slight edge on analog.
And as I said, those complaining that analog gracefully degrades have no idea what they're talking about.
Doesn't really answer the question. I asked what was a mess about 6to4. RFC3964 is a well-meaning but ultimately misguided complaint about the security of IPv6 over 6to4, which overstates the dangers of spoofing inherent in any technology that allows for open relays, and raises a number of obvious red-herrings that have to do with mixing IPv4 and IPv6 networks, rather than 6to4 specifically. If you want security, use IPSec.
6to4 is a clean, decentralized, IPv6 routing system with few central points of failure. Your suggestion offers no real enhanced security - IPv6 tunnel services have the same spoofing issues - while introducing central points of failure and actual bottlenecks and poor router optimization. If your ISP doesn't support IPv6 directly, and you have a static IPv4 address, 6to4 is infinitely better than IPv6 tunnel services, unless you're stuck with a third rate ISP like AT&T.
I also fail to see how using a tunnel service is in any way superior. You're now routing every single packet via a third party ISP, constricting yourself to their bandwidth, creating an unnecessary central point of failure, and potentially leaving yourself open to having the service terminated without any control over it.
And finally, what the hell does your problem with 6to4 have to do with the price of tea in China? Why should AT&T *block* it because you think it's not as good as tunnelling?
The problem with digital is that whether or not you see anything is a binary condition. Either you get perfect signals, or you get nothing. With analog, you have the choice of doing rabbit ears and putting up with snow or putting in a better antenna and seeing a much better picture.
That's a myth, and that's exactly what I was trying to challenge in the GP. Analog does have a floor, and no, snow is not the definer of that floor. You get to a point where the picture no longer stays still and the audio fades in and out of static. The TV becomes unwatchable. Digital has a hard floor too, it's just you're not fooled into thinking otherwise. And, generally, if you're receiving an analog signal with a bit of snow, you'll find your digital signal will come in loud and clear, with only the occasional on-screen corruption.
What people are resenting is the fact they've had the illusion of a choice removed from them. They've actually receiving far more watchable signals than they would have done with analog, but it doesn't feel like that because they had a greater selection of signals with analog that "showed up" on the TV.
Based upon my own experience, I suspect "they're doing it wrong" is the right answer here. If you're getting digital signals too weak to be usable, the chances are your analog signals are no better. Yes, digital has a fairly hard floor, but analog has a floor too. I spent several years with rabbit ear antennas and various amplifiers, and found that my ability to receive a watchable signal, as opposed to one where the screen would jump up and down and the audio would fade in and out of white noise, to be dependent on a variety of factors and a game of chance.
All that's happening is that people are getting their box throwing its hands up and saying "This isn't watchable" when they'd like to make the same decision themselves, even though - actually - for the equivalent analog signal, they would actually be saying "This isn't watchable" anyway. The "No lock" message is replacing a dancing screen and white-noise infested audio channel. Because the decision is being made for them, they're believing they've been deprived of something.
You fix both issues - poor analog reception, poor digital reception - the same way. You get a better antenna. You get one on the roof if possible.
Our household's switch to digital meant we immediately started receiving high quality signals from TV stations OTA with an unamplified indoor antenna that were unwatchable on analog with an amplified unit. It actually was so good that we saw a benefit in going the whole way and installing a roof-top antenna and making OTA work, whereas we'd previously just stuck with cable and satellite feeds of the same channels.
Or, you know, they'll buy a $50 converter box, which may or may not be subsidized depending on whether they're willing to enter the relevant paperwork.
The only router for the home market that is IPv6 aware is the Apple Airport Extreme, all the others seem to be on another channel.
Not to mention there are ISPs out there that are blocking the use of IPv6. I don't mean "Not supporting it" (does anyone of any note?), I mean actively preventing users from setting up 6to4 by blocking access to the 192.88.99.1 anycast gateway. AT&T's FastAccess.net service in Florida is one example. So people can't even migrate to IPv6 in a calm controlled manner.
What the hell can we do when large monopolistic entities do things that are clearly bad but are difficult to explain to the majority of its potential customers?
And I started the list with "Various. Given it has no compelling advantages over DVD, the major ones are." You're not seriously suggesting Blu-ray is to DVD as DVD was to VHS are you?
It's not even replacing a similar set-up. People didn't have portable VHS decks, VHS decks in their cars, and VHS decks in their computers. Backward compatibility wasn't necessary. DVD fit into the existing infrastructure, it was just a matter of buying players, for most part one per VHS deck you had, which in the mid-nineties generally was a count somewhere between one and two for the average household. Over time DVD developed its own infrastructure.
Now, you claim it's ok, because people are willing to replace their entire DVD collections. That's entirely irrelevant. The issue at hand is Blu-ray's usefulness. You can, if you want, spend around $1,200 on replacing three DVD players (the living room one, the one in your bedroom, and the one in the kid's room), but that still leaves you without something for, say, the car entertainment system. Until you do this, any Blu-ray discs you buy cannot be functionally as useful as any DVDs you buy. So, unless it's really compelling, why buy a Blu-ray disc over a DVD at all? And if you're not going to buy Blu-ray discs, why buy Blu-ray players?
Bottom line: THIS IS NOT VHS. It is not comparable to VHS. The environment is completely different:
DVD was a substantial upgrade over VHS. Nobody in their right mind can claim the same about Blu-ray over DVD
People had relatively few VHS decks. People have DVD players in their computers and their cars. They're everywhere
Upgrading a TV from VHS to DVD involved buying a new player. Upgrading from DVD to Blu-ray typically involves buying a whole new TV
It has nothing to do with practicality, it has to do with throwing in a 10 cent disc so that parents who want a collectible won't feel bad about Junior or their Little Pumpkin scratching the hell out of it. Did you bother to note the price as well (since we were on the topic)? Amazon is selling it for 4 USD more than the DVD version. Even the full retail is only slated for 5 dollars more. What was that about expensive? We can already see how much that's starting to change in just a few months. DVD didn't change that quickly, I can tell you that for a fact.
Right. Because families really want their home theater systems to be tied up with kids movies, and/or they're happy to install HDTVs and Blu-ray players in kids rooms. Honestly, tell me: what is the intended market for a Disney movie on Blu-ray?
No, go on. Tell me. What massive group of people do you know of that would watch Sleeping Beauty on an HD system? Kids? Kids don't care about HD! Adults? Which ones? Sleeping Beauty for fuck's sake? It's not a flaming Pixar movie y'know.
As for your "scratching the hell out of it", why then doesn't Disney bundle DVDs with their DVDs? I mean, the same issue applies. If Disney's concerned about back-ups, they can ship a spare disk with each package. Indeed, they could, y'know, ship a Blu-ray copy with the Blu-ray version. That way the parents will not feel bad at all either! It's probably cheaper too, pull 'em off two at a time at the assembly plant rather than grabbing discs from two different production lines. What's the logic for having both a DVD and a Blu-ray disc?
If Sleeping Beauty didn't have a DVD bundled with it, the Blu-ray version would bomb. People wouldn't buy it. It has everything to do with practicality - realistically, the movie would be unsellable without the DVD because it wouldn't work where the intended user wants it to work.
Without wide broadband proliferation physical media will remain king on it's own merits.
Nope. Every time this issue comes up everyone insists that they're taking the "Online download
I would be interested in knowing what you feel the "critical" flaws are.
Various. Given it has no compelling advantages over DVD, the major ones are:
Not backwards compatible. Your Blu-ray discs cannot play in your existing DVD equipment, meaning you're limited to watching anything you buy in your home theater
BD+, an inherently flawed DRM system whose problems will become more and more visible as more and more Blu-ray models are made and BD+ scripts are made making presumptions that cannot be safely relied upon. Studios will pass the buck to the manufacturers, consumers will be stuck with the choice between buying multiple players or being stuck with unplayable disks
Multiple levels of (in)compatibility meaning that you cannot safely look at the back of a Blu-ray disc cover and say for certain what you're going to be able to use
Expensive and with a limited range of players at this point
I found it interesting that Disney recognized some of the issues with the forthcoming release of Sleeping Beauty, they're going to have to bundle a DVD in each box. See (1) and (4) above. How many parents are going to give over the home theater to their kids on a regular basis? Or be happy with a DVD aimed at the kids that cannot be played on the SUV's DVD system? And how many are going to feel fairly sick about the concept given their kids are the last group who are going to care whether it's 1080p24 or 480i60? The kids would probably be happy with a VCD version.
If Disney has to ship a DVD with every Blu-ray disc, you know the format's not practical.
In practical terms, Blu-ray is less convenient than DVD. For that lack of convenience, you're expected to pay more, for a format whose lifetime looks set to be three to five years at most.
If there is any real truth to this it would make me lose a lot of respect for the community in general
Unfortunately, the last few times I've seen Bluetooth come up on Slashdot there have been postings still bemoaning how pointless the standard is and how it offers no advantages over Wifi. I'm not making this up. I think the issue is a disconnect between geeks and reality. They'll see what something is from a technical point of view, but not the applications for it.
Unless there is a great physical media replacement within the next 2-3 years I can't help but see BluRay as making headway in the market.
The major issue is that the world is going online, and in the meantime other serious contenders are coming out. My wife and I pretty much never buy new releases any more. We wait for them to be shown on Cinemax, recording them with our HD DVR and transferring them to our archive drive. I was disappointed by the killing of HD DVD, which at least had the capability to be a part of the online world, but poor marketing ("Look & Feel of Perfect"? The idiots promoted the one area where it was equal to Blu-ray) and a poor selection of hardware that never showed what it was capable of made it vulnerable. But it's dead, so we're going to have a bunch of non-standards in the online downloads world for a little bit while things shake themselves out, and then we'll start to see some standardization and a serious move towards making this all viable.
And, seriously, I can't wait. I really love the idea of subscribing to Netflix and being able to watch practically every movie ever made, from a simple set-top box in my living room. Everyone's excited by the Netflix model, and everyone's looking at the AppleTV technology and seeing it as the perfect hardware accompaniment to such a service. It's coming. And it will be the compelling technology that replaces DVD in a way that a hi-def version of DVD can never be.
You can see the compression artifacts! (and that's on a low resolution display)
Well, I can't. I'm the one person in my household who can generally easily tell the difference between HD and DVD, and honestly, the major difference is that DVD has a softer look to it. I haven't really seen any compression artifacts on any of our DVDs. On our satellite feed, yes. Both HD and SD signals from Dish Network have visible artifacts from time to time, but on DVDs? Nope.
I have better eyesight than average. I'd like a good HD format (Blu-ray isn't it, it's too stuck in the past with no compelling advantages.) I don't see the artifacts you're talking about. Imagine then, if you will, how the vast majority - 90% of the population - see HD.
Nobody understood Bluetooth. Everyone understands Blu-ray: it's a high definition version of DVD with a number of critical flaws. It's supposed to replace DVD, and Sony has made a number of statements to that effect, even - at one point - claiming Blu-ray penetration would be 50% (ie equal to DVD) by the end of the year.
Bluetooth was seen by Slashdotters and many in the tech industry as a rival to Wifi, something it was never intended to be (any more than USB is a rival to Ethernet.) They called it dead because they didn't understand it or what the measure of success would be. We know what Blu-ray is. We know what the measures of success are. We even know enough about the market to know why it's going to die in its own terms. It may live on as a niche format, but it's DoA in the terms Sony et al defined as its success.
Re:Deceiving your consumers (yeah, big news ...)
on
Bad Signs For Blu-ray
·
· Score: 1
The biggest problem with these kinds of demos is that they fall flat on anyone who's actually seen DVD on their HDTV. Comparing the two, side by side, to someone who's bought neither may convince that person, but someone who goes into a store with an attitude that DVD is "good enough" will look at the demo and ask themselves "Why does DVD not look that bad on my TV then?"
I think the biggest problem with Blu-ray is that it's all about HD. The biggest problem with HD DVD is that the people pushing it forgot that it wasn't all about HD, and just marketed the HD aspect of it. I think Toshiba would have had a winner on their hands if they'd put a hard drive and a DVD burner in each player (how much would that have added to the cost? $50? For a $300-500 player?) and allowed people to store movies on the hard drive, download them to the hard drive, and even burn a hard copy of each one downloaded. All of this was built into the frickin' HD DVD spec. Suddenly all your movies are available at the touch of a button and you can rent that new release, or even buy it, by downloading it rather than going to the store.
Frickin' idiots. They knew downloads were the future, Toshiba themselves are rejecting having anything to do with Blu-ray because they see it as a dead-end specifically because it doesn't do anything about online downloads, the DVD Forum made HD DVD be a part of an online infrastructure, and yet, in the end, all they could obsess about was a feature that many people consider imperceptible - high definition.
FWIW, with T-Mobile's data plans it's an "all or nothing" thing. If you haven't paid for unblocked data, you'll not get it. Unlike certain telcos, T-Mobile USA never chargers per-kilobyte.
Right now, the data plans are:
T-Zones (or whatever they call it) - $7 for unlimited WAP. Sometimes this allows generic HTTP and HTTPS, and sometimes not, and it usually supports SSH too.
T-Mobile Mobile Internet - $20 for unlimited everything, but you get a 10.x address
T-Mobile Total Internet - again $20, and you also get Hotspot access (why this and the latter aren't the same plan I don't know)
There's also a dedicated data plan (ie no voice plan needed), and a Sidekick pre-paid plan.
So, in short, if you haven't paid for "app background data", you're not going to get it.
Too little, too late, for too much
on
Bad Signs For Blu-ray
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I'm still finding it bizarre the industry settled on Blu-ray over HD DVD. While the latter would have been struggling at this point too, it at least had a future - online downloads weren't a rival to HD DVD, the entire technology was intended to be the center of an online downloads world in the longer term.
Blu-ray offers little over DVD other than improved quality. For many, that quality is imperceptible. For 90% of the population, whether it is or isn't is neither here nor there because they don't have the equipment necessary to view the difference. This is unlike DVD, where DVD had immediate benefits even if your primary viewing device was a 14" Black and White TV.
The jump to a new format will happen when the new format has compelling advantages over DVD, as DVD had over VHS. Had Blu-ray been designed with just a little more thought (just copying the principles behind HD DVD rather than trying to match it on a bulleted list) it might have been that format. It isn't. It's dead. What a waste.
Ahhhh ok.. so you are saying that he voted FOR the FISA bill.
I'm saying the GGGP was correct in saying that he voted against telco immunity. Saying that he didn't because while he voted against it over and over and over again, he ended up voting for a bill that included telco immunity as a small part of it, is sophistry. So is changing the subject and talking about the FISA bill when we were actually talking specifically about telco immunity.
Stop planting flowers in your words and take it on the chin/yamsack for your choice of candidate.
English, dude. It's a language, learn it. If you read the whole posting I made, you'll see that I was, indeed, disappointed at him voting for the final bill. I criticized him at the time, and I'm still critical.
My disappointment in Obama does not extend to letting people exaggerate or outright lie about what he did. He made every effort to get immunity out of FISA. He voted for every amendment to remove it from the bill. It is simply not telling the truth to suggest he supported telco immunity, and it is misleading to suggest someone is wrong for saying he voted against it by bringing up one vote where immunity was not the central issue, when every vote up until them was against it, when he said at the time he was still against immunity, and that he would continue to fight it.
The GP was correct, he voted against telecom immunity in the past. In addition, in the most recent vote, he voted against telecom immunity each time the subject came up (ie for all of the amendments that were aimed at removing telecom immunity from the FISA bill), but voted for the final FISA bill (which was about a lot more than telecom immunity.)
Whether the FISA bill was a good thing is open to question, I was disappointed in Obama voting for it myself, but it's a stretch to claim he supported the telecom immunity aspect of it when he supported all the attempts to remove telecom immunity from it.
Or buy any cellphone that supports J2ME/MIDP and doesn't insist on them being signed. The majority of GSM cellphones are available in an unlocked configuration with an open MIDP stack.
It boggles the mind that the iPhone keeps being referred to as a "smartphone" when the average factory-unlocked Motorola is more flexible and open.
Oh well, thats just a tough break if they 'take a hit'. Maybe, the AIG bigwigs should have though about the consequences of lending out money irresponsibly?
If you were advocating punishment for the AIG bigwigs, then I'd agree with you. Going bankrupt does not help you in any way. It causes a weakening of the financial positions of those invested in some way in AIG. The majority of banks, right now, are also having severe problems.
So what we end up with is a domino effect, where AIG fails, then someone else fails because AIG did, then others whose investments were dependent on both fail, and so on, and so forth, until you feel the effect anyway. The person who talked about investments and bonds is way off. This affects you if you do commerce with anyone at all. If you own a mud hut in the middle of Nebraska, and live on worms and seaweed, then yeah, you're not going to be bothered.
I don't directly own any bonds. I'm pretty sure my bank does. I don't know under what mattress my employer keeps its cash, but I do know it's dependent upon the financial system for economic stability. My employer's clients are large companies that also depend upon the ability to borrow money from time to time. And those companies are also dependent upon large numbers of ordinary people to have the wherewithall to spend large amounts of money, borrowing because the amounts involved are considerably higher than can be raised by stashing $100 into a jar every month.
And, for what it's worth, it's not like there's no return here. We didn't give AIG the money, we bought an 80% stake in them. Most analysts are suggesting that AIG can recover, and when it does it will be able to buy itself out of state ownership in a relatively short space of time, with the taxpayer making a buck in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. WiMAX's up and coming rival is GSM/UMTS LTE, which also uses OFDM. You might just as well say this is a review of an LTE network, or that a review of Sprint's 3G network (CDMA) is a review of T-Mobile's (UMTS/W-CDMA).
You don't stay ahead of the game by standing still. If the DS wants to avoid competition springing up, it has to be a moving target.
There are some critical flaws in the DS that I'm surprised they've done nothing to fix. The most major is the lack of WPA support, forcing anyone who wants their DS to be network enabled to use WEP WAPs. (Say that five times...)
It's also not hard to see ways in which it could be improved while keeping within its mandate - the music feature seems more of a "me too" thing, but the camera sounds like something I can see Nintendo adding just to create another input device for DS developers to find new and original uses for. (If anyone has difficulty understanding what I mean here, then take the microphone on the DS. There's a subgame available for the DS where you inflate balloons by blowing into the microphone. Yeah. Now, think about that kind of lateral thinking applied to a camera.) Motion sensors would strike as obvious enhancements too.
I'm disappointed that Nintendo isn't doing more to enhance their current offerings. Releasing a more advanced Wii for a slightly higher price, while keeping the current one in production, would do much to manage demand for the unit while keeping sales and profits high.
I've taken plenty of pictures of items at stores, and it's never been about comparison shopping.
It's easier to take a picture than to note down a brand/part number, given the latter requires a pen and paper and surface to write on. Noting down that information means I can get home, check reviews and specs, and come back and buy it if it's really what I want.
Using TFA's system, I can do all that without leaving the store. That's pretty compelling. Any store that doesn't let me do that is going to lose business. Anyone who thinks this is about comparison shopping "to the nearest penny" hasn't a clue about how useful this is. Not everything in the world is about price.
For sites like YouTube, it's fairly easy, there's a file in /tmp called Flashxxxxx (where xxxxx is a random sequence of letters and digits.) I've yet to find a way of downloading anything from Hulu.com though. I got the impression the Hulu player keeps everything in memory, which is why moving the cursor is a somewhat less smooth experience than it is with YouTube.
Well, there are many points to the article, but one of them is that someone can watch the movie for free because Adobe's server software is set up to continue streaming the movies after showing the free "clip". That, indeed, is "stupid", it relies upon trusted client software. DRM is one solution to this problem, but another is not to stream content to people's PCs they haven't paid for.
And this has to do with what exactly?
I say it's a myth that analog doesn't have a hard floor, and you argue that it isn't a myth because the analog channels you watch have snow on them? What about the channels you don't watch because they're unwatchable?
I agree. Do you have any idea how hard it is to watch a channel where the picture keeps flitting up and down, and where the sound keeps fading in and out with white noise so loud it's impossible to hear the people speaking?
Both systems have hard floors, and both degrade. My experience is that I receive consistently better signals watching the same channels digitally than in analog. As an example, with an indoor antenna, I can receive my local Fox affiliate with a fairly interference free signal with digital. Using the same equipment, same antenna, same frickin TV, the analog version is frequently unwatchable. So digital has a slight edge on analog.
And as I said, those complaining that analog gracefully degrades have no idea what they're talking about.
Doesn't really answer the question. I asked what was a mess about 6to4. RFC3964 is a well-meaning but ultimately misguided complaint about the security of IPv6 over 6to4, which overstates the dangers of spoofing inherent in any technology that allows for open relays, and raises a number of obvious red-herrings that have to do with mixing IPv4 and IPv6 networks, rather than 6to4 specifically. If you want security, use IPSec.
6to4 is a clean, decentralized, IPv6 routing system with few central points of failure. Your suggestion offers no real enhanced security - IPv6 tunnel services have the same spoofing issues - while introducing central points of failure and actual bottlenecks and poor router optimization. If your ISP doesn't support IPv6 directly, and you have a static IPv4 address, 6to4 is infinitely better than IPv6 tunnel services, unless you're stuck with a third rate ISP like AT&T.
I also fail to see how using a tunnel service is in any way superior. You're now routing every single packet via a third party ISP, constricting yourself to their bandwidth, creating an unnecessary central point of failure, and potentially leaving yourself open to having the service terminated without any control over it.
And finally, what the hell does your problem with 6to4 have to do with the price of tea in China? Why should AT&T *block* it because you think it's not as good as tunnelling?
What, exactly, is a mess about it? I use it with Earthlink. Works great.
That's a myth, and that's exactly what I was trying to challenge in the GP. Analog does have a floor, and no, snow is not the definer of that floor. You get to a point where the picture no longer stays still and the audio fades in and out of static. The TV becomes unwatchable. Digital has a hard floor too, it's just you're not fooled into thinking otherwise. And, generally, if you're receiving an analog signal with a bit of snow, you'll find your digital signal will come in loud and clear, with only the occasional on-screen corruption.
What people are resenting is the fact they've had the illusion of a choice removed from them. They've actually receiving far more watchable signals than they would have done with analog, but it doesn't feel like that because they had a greater selection of signals with analog that "showed up" on the TV.
Based upon my own experience, I suspect "they're doing it wrong" is the right answer here. If you're getting digital signals too weak to be usable, the chances are your analog signals are no better. Yes, digital has a fairly hard floor, but analog has a floor too. I spent several years with rabbit ear antennas and various amplifiers, and found that my ability to receive a watchable signal, as opposed to one where the screen would jump up and down and the audio would fade in and out of white noise, to be dependent on a variety of factors and a game of chance.
All that's happening is that people are getting their box throwing its hands up and saying "This isn't watchable" when they'd like to make the same decision themselves, even though - actually - for the equivalent analog signal, they would actually be saying "This isn't watchable" anyway. The "No lock" message is replacing a dancing screen and white-noise infested audio channel. Because the decision is being made for them, they're believing they've been deprived of something.
You fix both issues - poor analog reception, poor digital reception - the same way. You get a better antenna. You get one on the roof if possible.
Our household's switch to digital meant we immediately started receiving high quality signals from TV stations OTA with an unamplified indoor antenna that were unwatchable on analog with an amplified unit. It actually was so good that we saw a benefit in going the whole way and installing a roof-top antenna and making OTA work, whereas we'd previously just stuck with cable and satellite feeds of the same channels.
Or, you know, they'll buy a $50 converter box, which may or may not be subsidized depending on whether they're willing to enter the relevant paperwork.
Not to mention there are ISPs out there that are blocking the use of IPv6. I don't mean "Not supporting it" (does anyone of any note?), I mean actively preventing users from setting up 6to4 by blocking access to the 192.88.99.1 anycast gateway. AT&T's FastAccess.net service in Florida is one example. So people can't even migrate to IPv6 in a calm controlled manner.
What the hell can we do when large monopolistic entities do things that are clearly bad but are difficult to explain to the majority of its potential customers?
And I started the list with "Various. Given it has no compelling advantages over DVD, the major ones are." You're not seriously suggesting Blu-ray is to DVD as DVD was to VHS are you?
It's not even replacing a similar set-up. People didn't have portable VHS decks, VHS decks in their cars, and VHS decks in their computers. Backward compatibility wasn't necessary. DVD fit into the existing infrastructure, it was just a matter of buying players, for most part one per VHS deck you had, which in the mid-nineties generally was a count somewhere between one and two for the average household. Over time DVD developed its own infrastructure.
Now, you claim it's ok, because people are willing to replace their entire DVD collections. That's entirely irrelevant. The issue at hand is Blu-ray's usefulness. You can, if you want, spend around $1,200 on replacing three DVD players (the living room one, the one in your bedroom, and the one in the kid's room), but that still leaves you without something for, say, the car entertainment system. Until you do this, any Blu-ray discs you buy cannot be functionally as useful as any DVDs you buy. So, unless it's really compelling, why buy a Blu-ray disc over a DVD at all? And if you're not going to buy Blu-ray discs, why buy Blu-ray players?
Bottom line: THIS IS NOT VHS. It is not comparable to VHS. The environment is completely different:
Right. Because families really want their home theater systems to be tied up with kids movies, and/or they're happy to install HDTVs and Blu-ray players in kids rooms. Honestly, tell me: what is the intended market for a Disney movie on Blu-ray?
No, go on. Tell me. What massive group of people do you know of that would watch Sleeping Beauty on an HD system? Kids? Kids don't care about HD! Adults? Which ones? Sleeping Beauty for fuck's sake? It's not a flaming Pixar movie y'know.
As for your "scratching the hell out of it", why then doesn't Disney bundle DVDs with their DVDs? I mean, the same issue applies. If Disney's concerned about back-ups, they can ship a spare disk with each package. Indeed, they could, y'know, ship a Blu-ray copy with the Blu-ray version. That way the parents will not feel bad at all either! It's probably cheaper too, pull 'em off two at a time at the assembly plant rather than grabbing discs from two different production lines. What's the logic for having both a DVD and a Blu-ray disc?
If Sleeping Beauty didn't have a DVD bundled with it, the Blu-ray version would bomb. People wouldn't buy it. It has everything to do with practicality - realistically, the movie would be unsellable without the DVD because it wouldn't work where the intended user wants it to work.
Nope. Every time this issue comes up everyone insists that they're taking the "Online download
Various. Given it has no compelling advantages over DVD, the major ones are:
I found it interesting that Disney recognized some of the issues with the forthcoming release of Sleeping Beauty, they're going to have to bundle a DVD in each box. See (1) and (4) above. How many parents are going to give over the home theater to their kids on a regular basis? Or be happy with a DVD aimed at the kids that cannot be played on the SUV's DVD system? And how many are going to feel fairly sick about the concept given their kids are the last group who are going to care whether it's 1080p24 or 480i60? The kids would probably be happy with a VCD version.
If Disney has to ship a DVD with every Blu-ray disc, you know the format's not practical.
In practical terms, Blu-ray is less convenient than DVD. For that lack of convenience, you're expected to pay more, for a format whose lifetime looks set to be three to five years at most.
Unfortunately, the last few times I've seen Bluetooth come up on Slashdot there have been postings still bemoaning how pointless the standard is and how it offers no advantages over Wifi. I'm not making this up. I think the issue is a disconnect between geeks and reality. They'll see what something is from a technical point of view, but not the applications for it.
The major issue is that the world is going online, and in the meantime other serious contenders are coming out. My wife and I pretty much never buy new releases any more. We wait for them to be shown on Cinemax, recording them with our HD DVR and transferring them to our archive drive. I was disappointed by the killing of HD DVD, which at least had the capability to be a part of the online world, but poor marketing ("Look & Feel of Perfect"? The idiots promoted the one area where it was equal to Blu-ray) and a poor selection of hardware that never showed what it was capable of made it vulnerable. But it's dead, so we're going to have a bunch of non-standards in the online downloads world for a little bit while things shake themselves out, and then we'll start to see some standardization and a serious move towards making this all viable.
And, seriously, I can't wait. I really love the idea of subscribing to Netflix and being able to watch practically every movie ever made, from a simple set-top box in my living room. Everyone's excited by the Netflix model, and everyone's looking at the AppleTV technology and seeing it as the perfect hardware accompaniment to such a service. It's coming. And it will be the compelling technology that replaces DVD in a way that a hi-def version of DVD can never be.
Well, I can't. I'm the one person in my household who can generally easily tell the difference between HD and DVD, and honestly, the major difference is that DVD has a softer look to it. I haven't really seen any compression artifacts on any of our DVDs. On our satellite feed, yes. Both HD and SD signals from Dish Network have visible artifacts from time to time, but on DVDs? Nope.
I have better eyesight than average. I'd like a good HD format (Blu-ray isn't it, it's too stuck in the past with no compelling advantages.) I don't see the artifacts you're talking about. Imagine then, if you will, how the vast majority - 90% of the population - see HD.
Nobody understood Bluetooth. Everyone understands Blu-ray: it's a high definition version of DVD with a number of critical flaws. It's supposed to replace DVD, and Sony has made a number of statements to that effect, even - at one point - claiming Blu-ray penetration would be 50% (ie equal to DVD) by the end of the year.
Bluetooth was seen by Slashdotters and many in the tech industry as a rival to Wifi, something it was never intended to be (any more than USB is a rival to Ethernet.) They called it dead because they didn't understand it or what the measure of success would be. We know what Blu-ray is. We know what the measures of success are. We even know enough about the market to know why it's going to die in its own terms. It may live on as a niche format, but it's DoA in the terms Sony et al defined as its success.
The biggest problem with these kinds of demos is that they fall flat on anyone who's actually seen DVD on their HDTV. Comparing the two, side by side, to someone who's bought neither may convince that person, but someone who goes into a store with an attitude that DVD is "good enough" will look at the demo and ask themselves "Why does DVD not look that bad on my TV then?"
I think the biggest problem with Blu-ray is that it's all about HD. The biggest problem with HD DVD is that the people pushing it forgot that it wasn't all about HD, and just marketed the HD aspect of it. I think Toshiba would have had a winner on their hands if they'd put a hard drive and a DVD burner in each player (how much would that have added to the cost? $50? For a $300-500 player?) and allowed people to store movies on the hard drive, download them to the hard drive, and even burn a hard copy of each one downloaded. All of this was built into the frickin' HD DVD spec. Suddenly all your movies are available at the touch of a button and you can rent that new release, or even buy it, by downloading it rather than going to the store.
Frickin' idiots. They knew downloads were the future, Toshiba themselves are rejecting having anything to do with Blu-ray because they see it as a dead-end specifically because it doesn't do anything about online downloads, the DVD Forum made HD DVD be a part of an online infrastructure, and yet, in the end, all they could obsess about was a feature that many people consider imperceptible - high definition.
FWIW, with T-Mobile's data plans it's an "all or nothing" thing. If you haven't paid for unblocked data, you'll not get it. Unlike certain telcos, T-Mobile USA never chargers per-kilobyte.
Right now, the data plans are:
There's also a dedicated data plan (ie no voice plan needed), and a Sidekick pre-paid plan.
So, in short, if you haven't paid for "app background data", you're not going to get it.
I'm still finding it bizarre the industry settled on Blu-ray over HD DVD. While the latter would have been struggling at this point too, it at least had a future - online downloads weren't a rival to HD DVD, the entire technology was intended to be the center of an online downloads world in the longer term.
Blu-ray offers little over DVD other than improved quality. For many, that quality is imperceptible. For 90% of the population, whether it is or isn't is neither here nor there because they don't have the equipment necessary to view the difference. This is unlike DVD, where DVD had immediate benefits even if your primary viewing device was a 14" Black and White TV.
The jump to a new format will happen when the new format has compelling advantages over DVD, as DVD had over VHS. Had Blu-ray been designed with just a little more thought (just copying the principles behind HD DVD rather than trying to match it on a bulleted list) it might have been that format. It isn't. It's dead. What a waste.
Better technology can reduce costs by reducing the number of people who need to be sent into battle.
I'm saying the GGGP was correct in saying that he voted against telco immunity. Saying that he didn't because while he voted against it over and over and over again, he ended up voting for a bill that included telco immunity as a small part of it, is sophistry. So is changing the subject and talking about the FISA bill when we were actually talking specifically about telco immunity.
English, dude. It's a language, learn it. If you read the whole posting I made, you'll see that I was, indeed, disappointed at him voting for the final bill. I criticized him at the time, and I'm still critical.
My disappointment in Obama does not extend to letting people exaggerate or outright lie about what he did. He made every effort to get immunity out of FISA. He voted for every amendment to remove it from the bill. It is simply not telling the truth to suggest he supported telco immunity, and it is misleading to suggest someone is wrong for saying he voted against it by bringing up one vote where immunity was not the central issue, when every vote up until them was against it, when he said at the time he was still against immunity, and that he would continue to fight it.
The GP was correct, he voted against telecom immunity in the past. In addition, in the most recent vote, he voted against telecom immunity each time the subject came up (ie for all of the amendments that were aimed at removing telecom immunity from the FISA bill), but voted for the final FISA bill (which was about a lot more than telecom immunity.)
Whether the FISA bill was a good thing is open to question, I was disappointed in Obama voting for it myself, but it's a stretch to claim he supported the telecom immunity aspect of it when he supported all the attempts to remove telecom immunity from it.
Or buy any cellphone that supports J2ME/MIDP and doesn't insist on them being signed. The majority of GSM cellphones are available in an unlocked configuration with an open MIDP stack.
It boggles the mind that the iPhone keeps being referred to as a "smartphone" when the average factory-unlocked Motorola is more flexible and open.
If you were advocating punishment for the AIG bigwigs, then I'd agree with you. Going bankrupt does not help you in any way. It causes a weakening of the financial positions of those invested in some way in AIG. The majority of banks, right now, are also having severe problems.
So what we end up with is a domino effect, where AIG fails, then someone else fails because AIG did, then others whose investments were dependent on both fail, and so on, and so forth, until you feel the effect anyway. The person who talked about investments and bonds is way off. This affects you if you do commerce with anyone at all. If you own a mud hut in the middle of Nebraska, and live on worms and seaweed, then yeah, you're not going to be bothered.
I don't directly own any bonds. I'm pretty sure my bank does. I don't know under what mattress my employer keeps its cash, but I do know it's dependent upon the financial system for economic stability. My employer's clients are large companies that also depend upon the ability to borrow money from time to time. And those companies are also dependent upon large numbers of ordinary people to have the wherewithall to spend large amounts of money, borrowing because the amounts involved are considerably higher than can be raised by stashing $100 into a jar every month.
And, for what it's worth, it's not like there's no return here. We didn't give AIG the money, we bought an 80% stake in them. Most analysts are suggesting that AIG can recover, and when it does it will be able to buy itself out of state ownership in a relatively short space of time, with the taxpayer making a buck in the process.