Actually, it'll be damn-near nonexistant. Most 1080p HDTVs have a built-in 3:2 pulldown reversal filter, meaning they'll convert that 1080i picture back into fully progressive 24FPS (minus an occasional artifact)
You're only correct if you consider the film source is 24fps which is delivered as a 1080i60 signal. The current HD-DVD standard stores film as 1080i23.97 with 3:2 sequence header flag. This flag allows an extra chip within the Toshiba HD-DVD player to output 1080i60. As you stated, with proper reverse 3:2 pulldown, the feed will yield exactly the same image as a 1080p signal of the material. The problem is that the Toshiba player's Broadcom decoder chip cannot deinterlace the material to output 1080p. Ergo, for a display to recreate the original signal a consumer would need to purchase an outboard video processor in addition to the Toshiba HD-DVD player. Furthermore, most consumer-grade HDTVs that claim to be able to display 1080p must down convert the incoming 1080i signal to 540p before upconverting to 1080p which further degrades image quality. Further complicating this mess is the possibility of the original master having excessive vertical-pass filtering or other steps to further degrade the image. In all of these cases a true 1080p24 signal will be higher quality and therefore there is a difference between 1080i and 1080p in real world applications. The gap will only increase as the reality of 1080p60 source material becomes available and standards are devised to deliver it (H.264 encoding).
SACD and DVD-Audio both ran into the upper-limits of what the human ear is capable of. Most people very literally can't hear the difference between 44.1KHz PCM (CDs) and something better/higher.
If the success of audio technology was based solely on the ability of people's ability to appreciate frequencies then we should stop innovating at CDs. On a CD the highest possible frequency is just a little north of 22kHz but, as a medical student, I can firmly say that most people beyond their youth can't distinguish anything higher than 17kHz. The doubled sampling frequency seen in DVD-Audio and SACD from 44.1kHz to 88.2kHz extends the audio range by an indistiguishable one octave. Even if this range were open to human perception, most pop music these days is so compressed in dynamic range that there is very little benefit for the average consumer. Again, for the music that does benefit, there are very few people with home audio equipment that can successfully reproduce such content.
So where is the beauty and purpose of SACD and DVD-Aduio? Besides DTS encoded CDs, last time I checked the only widely avaiable multichannel audio-centric formats were SACD and DVD-Audio. Any Joe Public can tell the difference between mere stereo and a multichannel music sample. Yet, this wasn't enough for the format to catch on.
Format wars actually DO sell players... Competition is very healty. In this case, Toshiba seems to be forcing Sony to significantly lower their prices (and delay release until they could do that). Of course that has the effect of convincing Toshiba they need to lower their prices even further, and so on. The winner of the format war can be decided very quickly, by who is going to have the significantly cheaper discs/movies.
Do you have proof of the first assertion you made? If you recall the battle during the early days of DVD+R and DVD-R drives, a lot of people didn't bother adopting either because no one was sure what each format was good for. It wasn't until Sony released a dual format drive did adoption sky rocket. I will agree that Dell insisting on selling DVD+R varients probably helped adoption a little but even Dell now ships dual format drives. Format wars do not spur adoption especially when geeks are at the helm.
I do believe competition is good but only as long as this takes place within defined standards and interoperability guidelines. The introductio
I am an avid home theater fanatic with a massive front projection screen and a high-end audio system to go with it. (Here's a bad picture of the system. For scale, each one of the front black speaker is 6 feet tall.)
For someone with a similar large format setup, this technology is a worthwhile leap in quality because I can see the lack of resolution and compression artifacts inherent in many DVD transfers. Having a large display surface area makes noticing such issues much easier even for novices. However, those people who are content with their Sony and Hitachi consumer level television regardless of the display technology involved (tube, LCD, and Plasma) probably won't see the difference nor will they care.
I'll go through the points quickly...
1. Nobody likes false starts I agree that the Toshiba HD-DVD player is lacking in terms of usability and quality, but it is a Toshiba and a first generation product so bugs are expected. It would be rather unfair for me to compare to my US$10k+ Meridian 800 series DVD player that has gone through a number of revisions for refinement to a first generation DVD player from many years ago. Even if they were both new and unused, products and implementations improve with time. However, even the Toshiba HD-DVD "budget" player with its superior resolution still makes my combination of Meridian 800 with line quadrupler look soft in comparison.
This technology cannot simply be written off even though I am disappointed 1080p isn't available. For a majority of consumers, the difference between 1080i and 1080p will be even less noticable than the jump from 480i/p to 1080i. Even for an enthusiast this isn't a problem until the new 3-chip DLP solutions capable of playing 1080p are widely available from Marantz and Runco. I also find the lack of HDMI is a blessing in disguise. Sure, we can't run 1080p and multichannel audio over one cable but the amount of copy protection possible on that interface makes me cringe. The fact that movie houses have a right to protect their content isn't in dispute, but the very notion that with the flip of a switch any component can be rendered useless through key revocation makes purchasing expensive and esoteric a much larger risk than it should be. If nothing else, I expect the esoteric ultra-high end companies will produce (and they have in the past) a better interconnect format but that won't make a difference with Joe Public.
2. Format Wars Don't Sell Players Agreed. This curse hit SACD and DVD-Audio as few years ago. The initial bickering and lack of material made buying into either format a liability. Furthermore, there were artists on both formats that I liked which weren't available universally across formats so I bought machines that played each format. Other technical problems such as no individual channel volume and delay adjustments and the lack of a single digital output made hooking up the player difficult for consumers. Meridian and others made a proprietary single interconnect but this wasn't available in any budget machines.
Arguably, the general public doesn't care about multi-channel audio because CDs are good enough. Besides fanatics such as myself, who here has both an SACD player and a DVD-Audio player? Not many. Penetration of these formats into the market has been very slow and nearly non-existant. Interestingly my car has a DVD-Audio system from the factory but the manufacturer probably did research and realized that their target demographic probably has the disposable income to play with such formats.
3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology From the article: "Consumers, most of whom rarely know how to properly configure their players or home theater systems, are perfectly content with their current DVD players..." (emphasis mine). The general public doesn't care. Many times I see my friend's te
I was writing a blog entry but figured I'd post it here.
Although the latest Beta 2 detected all of my hardware except my smartcard reader, I'm not impressed. There are some issues with 802.1x authentication which is quite a large hindrance (especially for corporate customers). Mainly, it does not work in my WPA2-Enterprise (WPA2 + AES + RADIUS) wireless network running at my home. Vista would send the proper authentication information and the Microsoft IAS RADIUS server (running on Win2k3) would grant access (confirmed via logs) but Vista would not grab an IP address. Statically setting an IP also failed to provide network access. I had to pull out an old WEP access point and finally Vista worked wirelessly. Due to WEP's insecurity, I have resorted to having to use the built in gigabit ethernet. Albeit that most of the public doesn't have as an elaborate of a set up at home, but I'm surprised that this is borked in Beta 2.
USB2 is horribly slow. I connected a USB2 memory stick to copy some files off the system when wireless wasn't working. The new Vista file copy progress dialog displays transfer rate. The fastest it ever got was about 300KB/s! Can you imagine waiting almost 10 minutes to transfer 150 megs locally? I almost went nuts. Again, I acknowledge this is beta software, but is it that hard to get USB Mass Storage drivers to work properly?
The Aero Glass interface isn't very responsive. Since Windows 95, the mouse pointer in Windows has never been afflicted by pauses when moving the pointer. I'm sure all of us remember these hiccupy movements of the pointer in X Windows in Linux distributions a few years ago, but the Linux community largely solved these problems. I was very surprised when I saw this behavior in Vista Beta 2. I was running the Vista nVidia drivers. I also noticed the screen compositing process pegging the CPU usage to about 30-40% and sometimes it would completely pause for a few seconds before updating the desktop and its windows. I tried XGL on this same system and never dealt with any of the problems. Maybe my Direct X 9-enabled, 128 meg nVidia Quadro FX Go video card may be 2 years old, I'm surprised with the lack of performance. Can Microsoft streamline and optimize this in time for a release? I hope so otherwise I'll be running the basic interface if I ever upgrade.
Vista Beta 2 is a resource hog. A full install with Office 2007 took nearly 14 gigs of hard drive space. After boot up, Windows commit charge was averageing nearly 750-800megs of RAM on my laptop equipped with 2gigs of RAM. Opening up Firefox with a few tabs, MSN messenger, and playing a DivX AVI in Windows Media Player 11 pushed up the usage to nearly 1.3gigs of RAM. I know any unused RAM is wasted RAM but when a basic Windows hogs that much, it shows that power users will easily have to push 4gigs of RAM if they intend to run Photoshop or a few instances of Office applications.
The other annoyance is the new non-admin user model. It is completely broken and illogical. Inevitably, those people that get Vista Beta 2 working on their hardware will complain about constantly being bothered to elevate privileges. The end result will either be people disabling the new protection scheme or learning to click without reading-both scenarios are disastrous and will render this protection useless.
As it stands, Microsoft needs to revamp the model. I want a Control Panel applet that will let me choose the level of incisiveness. Here is my proposal:
1. Off - If I'm logged in as an Administrator, then it will work as current Windows machines.
2. Default - The current default settings as shipped in Vista Beta 2. The user would be hand held even while in his/her profile (aka home) directory. Deleting, editing and installing any files would all require the annoying pop-up dialog confirming action.
3. Limited Power User - Following the Linux model as shown in Red Hat of yesteryear, Ubuntu and others with a modification or two. All system files, installation of software available to the
I'd mod you up if I had points. I'm a medical student and I got the chance to take a history on a patient claiming to have this syndrome. It ended up that we gave him risperidone. If I'm not mistaken, pimozide has some fairly bad side effects and isn't normally prescribed these days. Then again, I'm only a med student.
I wasn't sure I was going to mod you down for being an idiot or responding to your comment. I will be the bigger man and respond. The Mughal Era was from 1526-1707 and was defined as a Muslim empire. The era after that was the Maratha Era who were (from Wikipedia): "The Hindu Marathas long had lived in the Desh region around Satara, in the western portion of the Deccan plateau, where the plateau meets the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats mountains."
If you have parsing troubles, since 1707 India was ruled by Hindus. During the colonial period, the British had an influence but most of the dirty work was done by Hindus who were sympathetic to British goals. To blame Muslim governance for modern poverty in India shows you are not only ignorant but also a bigot. I know it is the "in thing" these days to blame everything on Muslims but try to pick some more obscure events for we can't easily prove people of your ilk to be wrong.
It's funny because every time I look at these sorts of stats, it leads me to conclude that PDA users want more multimedia and productivity applications while laptops users want smaller and longer lasting systems. It seems like everyone is pushing towards items like the OQO, CPC, and Flipstart since they can run the big software applications people are accustomed. The problem seems to be the interface. The miniaturized PC-to-the-size-of-a-PDA concept is flawed because most programs these days are optimized for usability studies conducted with the mindset of the HIDs being keyboards and mice. This is one of the many reasons sales of the OQO haven't skyrocketed and tablet PCs really haven't taken off. So why can't we get software design houses revamp their application interfaces? Maybe the CPC guys have the right idea for the software and battery technology available when they want a tiny system with both the ability to run XP and Windows Mobile. Personally, I think the idea is a clunky hack until developers start designing interfaces for both keyboard/mouse and pen input. Maybe by then we'll have great battery technology that will give us a days worth of power on a single charge.
My Dell Axim X51v is Windows Mobile 5.0 based with a VGA screen. It's output in my logs is as follows:
Operating System: Microsoft WinCE Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320) Javascript: version 1.2 Monitor Resolution: 480 x 640 Monitor Color Depth: 16 bits
It would be nice if more people designed sites that worked on PDAs but, as other posters have commented, if my PDA has access then usually my ultra-portable laptop can too so I just use that.
It's a possibility, but adding it to the end of your article is called "flaming".
Flaming? How is it considered flaming when even Intel engineers have commented that drivers and firmware were not solving the problem (which leads on to CONSIDER that it is possibly a hardware problem)?
It's a baseless accusation which you either placed their to bash Apple computers, when you have absolutely no proof or evidence to suggest they would be affected by this.
Just because there is no definitive proof that it is squarely a hardware issue, similarly you have zero proof that it is not. However, Intel engineers seem to be suggested (according to the article) that it could be a hardware issue. If that is the case, then Apple system could be affected too.
If you said "This is definitively what caused the MacBook to be delayed, here's a link to some evidence", I would have probably agreed with you, but sadly, you have done nothing of the like, because nothing of the like currently exists to say that it happened that way.
No where have I commented on MacBooks being delayed. Can you please provide proof where I have suggested that? I think this part of your comment illustrates that you have not been reading that I've written nor have you read the article. Please refrain from putting words in my mouth. Maybe then you'll realize how silly you sound right now.
Thus, if I had the ability to mod this article, "Flamebait" is the only choice I'd have, until the anti-Apple remark was removed.
It's fairly clear that you are just stirring the pot by putting words in my mouth so I'd go as far as to say that your response is flamebait. Unfortunately, your response has contributed nothing to the discussion.
Critical_ sees a typical Wintel bug and thinks Apple has a problem. It's an interesting thought, but not one to publish without checking.
I never concluded Apple had a problem. Rather I suggest it could be a problem because Microsoft's ACPI driver communicates with the ICH7-M Southbridge. If I am not mistaken, Apple uses the same southbridge on it's hardware. As the article repeatedly states, this issue can be anywhere on the chain from the southbridge, the Microsoft driver or even the attach peripheral. If it's purely a driver problem then why has it taken Microsoft and Intel 6 months of a non-working fix? Why are single core systems not affected by the same driver? Could this issue affect Linux or Mac OSX users on those platforms? Sure it could be a state-based issue but no one can really know until further testing takes place and Intel/Microsoft release more details.
Just within the last 12 months has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power.
False. Your statement isn't giving Intel enough credit and is not supported by the numbers. Since the original Banias Pentium M's were released back in March of 2003, we've seen Intel's mobile products have very good performance per watt ratios and overall power usage numbers. In fact, the overall power usage was the lowest in the original Pentium M's out of the entire line. You statement would be correct if you it said this: "...within the last 34 months (i.e. ~3 years) has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power."
Banias (the normal voltage models-i.e. 1.7 GHz, 1.6 GHz, 1.4 GHz, etc):
Thermal Design Power: 24.5 W (Full speed) / 6 W (Speedstep) Sleep Power: 1.7 W Deep Sleep Power: 1.1 W Deeper Sleep Power: 0.55 W
Dothan (any model #):
Thermal Design Power: 21 W (Full speed) / 7.5 W (Speedstep) Sleep Power: 3.2 W Deep Sleep Power: 2.5 W Deeper Sleep Power: 0.8 W
Core Duo (any standard power model #):
Thermal Design Power: 31 W (Full speed) / 13.1 W (Speedstep) Sleep Power: 4.7 W Deep Sleep Power: 3.4 W Deeper Sleep Power: 2.2 W
The Pentium M chips were a step towards lower power, but the Intel Core Duo that ships in the imac is the first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems.
Again, False. The first part of that sentence has already been proven false with the numbers I've posted. The second part of your AMD fanboy'ism is also incorrect. AMD offers two TDP ranges in their "Lancaster" single core Turion64 mobile processors: 25 watts and 35watts. As you can see with the data presented above, both of these TDP's are larger than Intel's single core Pentium M offerings which have been available since March 2003. AMD's Turion didn't even arrive on the scene until 2005 which gives Intel a solid two year headstart. What's even more interesting is that more than half of AMD's entire single core Turion line consumes more power than Intel's dual core Core Duo mobile processors. AMD has yet to release their dual core Turion processors. So your statement that the Intel Core Duo is the "first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems" is complete wrong. Intel has had AMD beat since March of 2003 in the mobile market and still continues to beat it. Please check your facts before posting lies or put an AMD fanboy disclaimer on your posts.
Note: I didn't both including Intel's various Low Voltage and Ultra Low Voltage Pentium M, Core Solo and Core Duo processors that have an even lower TDP than the standard voltage processor numbers I posted above. Adding this information would only serve to futher prove that your statements are wrong.
It did not fall under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) because, at the time, there were no stipulations for physical searches only electronic. Secondly, Ames himself chose not to pursue having any evidence thrown out based on the issue of warrents as you seem to be claiming. Here is the Criminal Complaint form from Ames' Case. I'm going to highlight some important areas:
"Paragraph 11: As a result of information obtained through electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, searches authorized by the Attorney General pursuant to section 2.5 of Executive Order 12333, trash covers, and other investigation which is detailed herein, I believe AMES has traveled abroad to meet surreptitiously with KGB/SVRR."
So they had what was necessary to aquire the evidence.
"The Attorney General hereby is delegated the power to approve the use for intelligence purposes, within the United States or against a United States person abroad, of any technique for which a warrant would be required if undertaken for law enforcement purposes, provided that such techniques shall not be undertaken unless the Attorney General has determined in each case that there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. Electronic surveillance, as defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, shall be conducted in accordance with that Act, as well as this Order."
They had probable cause which allowed them to go warrentless. The next three instances, again pulled from the Ames Criminal Complaint form referenced above, we see that FISA was used throughout the investigation.
"Paragraph 18: Based on information acquired in an electronic surveillance of AMES' personal computer and software within his residence, which was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, on or about October 9, 1993, along with other information obtained through electronic surveillance and other means, I believe "B" refers to Bogota, Colombia. From electronically stored documents located in AMES' personal computer, "North" has been identified as a signal site used by the SVRR to contact AMES, and "Pipe" is a dead drop used by the SVRR to pass messages, instructions, and cash to AMES. In this message, AMES indicated he could not be contacted from the 13th through l9th of September. I have been advised by CIA officials and learned through electronic surveillance that AMES traveled to Turkey on official business on or about September 13 and returned to the U.S. on or about September 17, 1993.
Paragraph 28: Based on several factors, including but not limited to the following, I believe AMES signaled his assent to the November meeting in Bogota by placing a chalk mark at the mailbox, "SS Smile", on or about October 13, 1993:
a. First, on or about October 12, 1993, FBI Special Agents monitored, by means of electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a discussion between AMES and his wife ROSARIO AMES, substantially as follows:
Paragraph 48: Based on information obtained through electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, I believe AMES also owns two condominium apartments and a farm in Colombia. The condominiums are in Bogota and Cartagena; the farm is referred to as the "Guajira.""
As you can see, FISA was involved and the case itself never came down to contesting the gathering the evidence. So you see, everything was in order and our government was able to find a spy on our soil without gross violations of our Constitutional rights.
Being that I have known quite a few people who have interned for Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the linked alarmist article has very little evidence to support its claims. I encourage people to read every word and then look for comprehensive proof in the cited sources. Furthermore, it's hard to believe that CAIR, after having regular meetings with some of the top-most senators/representatives in the nation would be called "Islamofascist" or a "terrorist" organization by any stretch of the imagination.
Thanks for posting that as I had not read the Media Matters articles. I'm sure that if there are any gaps in information, they can be filled in by using Google, searching CNN/NYT/WP sites and the texts of most laws can be found online as well.
WH press secretary McClellan claimed the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches just as your post claims. However, what he was refering to was an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants. This resulted in McClellan saying today (of Gore) that, "I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds." Not only is your blanket statement wrong about the Clinton Administration engaging in similar activities as Bush Jr., but you are also incorrect in its scope. At the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed. However, your post fails to mention both and furthermore fails to mention that Clinton never circumvented FISA to search US Citizen's overseas phone calls. It's sad that you'd pedal the same misinformation that the White House feeds everyone instead of presenting the facts to educate your fellow Slashdotters. It's just as bad as Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, making the same false arguments as McClellan during interviews Monday on CNN's "Larry King Live" and Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." Chew on that.
Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?
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New iMac disassembled
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I find your argument to be without merit. Somehow a mentality was set in that suggested to technophiles that for something to be great, it must be completely new. This would be predicated on the idea that somehow humans are perfect designers and can make no mistakes. The truth is that humans are not perfect and it takes a few revisions to get a products bugs worked out. It's a lot easier to make improvements to a basic design rather than start over. In terms of the Pentium Pro debate that keeps popping up, it seems like a non-issue. Better power utilization, better branch predictors, etc. etc. etc. have allowed the Pentium M to do what no other processor from Intel can do (I would argue that even AMD's mobile offering can't compete). Let's put your argument this way...
The Porsche 911 is a decades old design that is updated by Porsche every few years. The Porsche 911 Twin Turbo and 911 GT2 are arguably some of the best sports cars in the world. So are you going to tell me that a 911 is somehow worse off because its not all new from the ground up? Wrong. With your logic the new Ford Fusion is inherently better than any 911 design. Right... get real.
I was wondering if you could post how you are going about scheduling adaware and spybot. As far as I know, you're probably using some sort of script to call the software and to update definitions. Any help in this regard would be appreciated greatly. Thank you
It seems like Google must be doing some sort of datamining on all the data its aquired through searches, sitemaps, email, and now a "hit counter." Is it really improving their results? I don't really think so because certain search terms are still marred by the typical commericial or SEO junk. I really think the next step for the search engines is to start work on creating a better way to index all those subject specific web forums on the internet that have massive amounts of good information but very poor searching capabilities.
Oh, if you have an invite send one my way so I can check this out for myself... is300fan "at" hotmail.com Thanks
Some of us have lurked here for a long time before finally making our accounts so I've seen Slashdot grow. There was once a time when shooting you an email meant getting a response in a pretty short time frame. Although I completely understand that your readership has grown, I think that by posting questions like this you bring a sense of "for the community, by the community" feeling back. So don't worry about not being able to respond to every single one of us as long as you can get a general feeling of where we stand and ask any clarifying questions that help facilitate those conclusions.
Last but not least, I would post the story even if its from an annoying user. I'd also tweak the moderation system such that users with "Excellent" karma always have the option of modding down a discussion thread that is discussion a problem poster. Once the initial thread is flagged, others with this priviledge can verify it. If a user erroneously does this a certain number of times, then they lose the priviledge for good. It's just a thought which I'm sure you'll be able to drive a semi through.
I personally have the JVC 7310 notebook which uses the first generation Centrino ultra-low voltage processors in a tiny notebook which weighs less than 1kg (1.99 pound to be exact). JVC later released the 741 which included a Dothan 1.1Ghz CPU. Yes, they use standard hardware and Linux runs just fine on it. I'm sure JVC will be releasing a Core Duo ultra-low voltage notebook very soon.
In the article it says that the new integrated video chip in the Centrino triad will display Vista's user interface without any problems. The new 3945abg wireless also supports some of the new advanced wireless technologies with Windows own WLAN client.
I can't believe someone would rate the parent post as "informative" without ever looking at the article.
In the article, Anandtech clearly states that their request for identical notebooks was filled by Asus's W-series notebooks. Since Asus is a huge ODM, they provided identical notebooks with the only difference being the new chipset, processor combo. The processors (Dothan and Core Duo) were even matched clock for clock at 1.86Ghz. The comparison is amazingly good and shows very clearly that the new processor has a great boost and performance and battery time. Next time, please RTFA before posting drivel.
It was with clients using Intel's 2915ABG wireless cards. Installing custom firmware and updating the Intel drivers fixed the problem for me. I am currently running Firmware Version : v4.20.9 - HyperWRT 2.1b1+tofu7 on my version 3 WRT54G. I have uptimes of months now without any problems.
If you're running RC1 already, the posted links have.MAR files available to perform an update without redownloading the entire binary. Windows users should be careful because.MAR is associated with Microsoft Access in Office 2003 (maybe earlier versions but this is all I checked with). Anyway, info on how to update with.MAR files is here:
Slashdot Mirror
You're only correct if you consider the film source is 24fps which is delivered as a 1080i60 signal. The current HD-DVD standard stores film as 1080i23.97 with 3:2 sequence header flag. This flag allows an extra chip within the Toshiba HD-DVD player to output 1080i60. As you stated, with proper reverse 3:2 pulldown, the feed will yield exactly the same image as a 1080p signal of the material. The problem is that the Toshiba player's Broadcom decoder chip cannot deinterlace the material to output 1080p. Ergo, for a display to recreate the original signal a consumer would need to purchase an outboard video processor in addition to the Toshiba HD-DVD player. Furthermore, most consumer-grade HDTVs that claim to be able to display 1080p must down convert the incoming 1080i signal to 540p before upconverting to 1080p which further degrades image quality. Further complicating this mess is the possibility of the original master having excessive vertical-pass filtering or other steps to further degrade the image. In all of these cases a true 1080p24 signal will be higher quality and therefore there is a difference between 1080i and 1080p in real world applications. The gap will only increase as the reality of 1080p60 source material becomes available and standards are devised to deliver it (H.264 encoding).
If the success of audio technology was based solely on the ability of people's ability to appreciate frequencies then we should stop innovating at CDs. On a CD the highest possible frequency is just a little north of 22kHz but, as a medical student, I can firmly say that most people beyond their youth can't distinguish anything higher than 17kHz. The doubled sampling frequency seen in DVD-Audio and SACD from 44.1kHz to 88.2kHz extends the audio range by an indistiguishable one octave. Even if this range were open to human perception, most pop music these days is so compressed in dynamic range that there is very little benefit for the average consumer. Again, for the music that does benefit, there are very few people with home audio equipment that can successfully reproduce such content.
So where is the beauty and purpose of SACD and DVD-Aduio? Besides DTS encoded CDs, last time I checked the only widely avaiable multichannel audio-centric formats were SACD and DVD-Audio. Any Joe Public can tell the difference between mere stereo and a multichannel music sample. Yet, this wasn't enough for the format to catch on.
Do you have proof of the first assertion you made? If you recall the battle during the early days of DVD+R and DVD-R drives, a lot of people didn't bother adopting either because no one was sure what each format was good for. It wasn't until Sony released a dual format drive did adoption sky rocket. I will agree that Dell insisting on selling DVD+R varients probably helped adoption a little but even Dell now ships dual format drives. Format wars do not spur adoption especially when geeks are at the helm.
I do believe competition is good but only as long as this takes place within defined standards and interoperability guidelines. The introductio
I am an avid home theater fanatic with a massive front projection screen and a high-end audio system to go with it. (Here's a bad picture of the system. For scale, each one of the front black speaker is 6 feet tall.)
For someone with a similar large format setup, this technology is a worthwhile leap in quality because I can see the lack of resolution and compression artifacts inherent in many DVD transfers. Having a large display surface area makes noticing such issues much easier even for novices. However, those people who are content with their Sony and Hitachi consumer level television regardless of the display technology involved (tube, LCD, and Plasma) probably won't see the difference nor will they care.
I'll go through the points quickly...
1. Nobody likes false starts
I agree that the Toshiba HD-DVD player is lacking in terms of usability and quality, but it is a Toshiba and a first generation product so bugs are expected. It would be rather unfair for me to compare to my US$10k+ Meridian 800 series DVD player that has gone through a number of revisions for refinement to a first generation DVD player from many years ago. Even if they were both new and unused, products and implementations improve with time. However, even the Toshiba HD-DVD "budget" player with its superior resolution still makes my combination of Meridian 800 with line quadrupler look soft in comparison.
This technology cannot simply be written off even though I am disappointed 1080p isn't available. For a majority of consumers, the difference between 1080i and 1080p will be even less noticable than the jump from 480i/p to 1080i. Even for an enthusiast this isn't a problem until the new 3-chip DLP solutions capable of playing 1080p are widely available from Marantz and Runco. I also find the lack of HDMI is a blessing in disguise. Sure, we can't run 1080p and multichannel audio over one cable but the amount of copy protection possible on that interface makes me cringe. The fact that movie houses have a right to protect their content isn't in dispute, but the very notion that with the flip of a switch any component can be rendered useless through key revocation makes purchasing expensive and esoteric a much larger risk than it should be. If nothing else, I expect the esoteric ultra-high end companies will produce (and they have in the past) a better interconnect format but that won't make a difference with Joe Public.
2. Format Wars Don't Sell Players
Agreed. This curse hit SACD and DVD-Audio as few years ago. The initial bickering and lack of material made buying into either format a liability. Furthermore, there were artists on both formats that I liked which weren't available universally across formats so I bought machines that played each format. Other technical problems such as no individual channel volume and delay adjustments and the lack of a single digital output made hooking up the player difficult for consumers. Meridian and others made a proprietary single interconnect but this wasn't available in any budget machines.
Arguably, the general public doesn't care about multi-channel audio because CDs are good enough. Besides fanatics such as myself, who here has both an SACD player and a DVD-Audio player? Not many. Penetration of these formats into the market has been very slow and nearly non-existant. Interestingly my car has a DVD-Audio system from the factory but the manufacturer probably did research and realized that their target demographic probably has the disposable income to play with such formats.
3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology
From the article: "Consumers, most of whom rarely know how to properly configure their players or home theater systems, are perfectly content with their current DVD players..." (emphasis mine). The general public doesn't care. Many times I see my friend's te
I was writing a blog entry but figured I'd post it here.
Although the latest Beta 2 detected all of my hardware except my smartcard reader, I'm not impressed. There are some issues with 802.1x authentication which is quite a large hindrance (especially for corporate customers). Mainly, it does not work in my WPA2-Enterprise (WPA2 + AES + RADIUS) wireless network running at my home. Vista would send the proper authentication information and the Microsoft IAS RADIUS server (running on Win2k3) would grant access (confirmed via logs) but Vista would not grab an IP address. Statically setting an IP also failed to provide network access. I had to pull out an old WEP access point and finally Vista worked wirelessly. Due to WEP's insecurity, I have resorted to having to use the built in gigabit ethernet. Albeit that most of the public doesn't have as an elaborate of a set up at home, but I'm surprised that this is borked in Beta 2.
USB2 is horribly slow. I connected a USB2 memory stick to copy some files off the system when wireless wasn't working. The new Vista file copy progress dialog displays transfer rate. The fastest it ever got was about 300KB/s! Can you imagine waiting almost 10 minutes to transfer 150 megs locally? I almost went nuts. Again, I acknowledge this is beta software, but is it that hard to get USB Mass Storage drivers to work properly?
The Aero Glass interface isn't very responsive. Since Windows 95, the mouse pointer in Windows has never been afflicted by pauses when moving the pointer. I'm sure all of us remember these hiccupy movements of the pointer in X Windows in Linux distributions a few years ago, but the Linux community largely solved these problems. I was very surprised when I saw this behavior in Vista Beta 2. I was running the Vista nVidia drivers. I also noticed the screen compositing process pegging the CPU usage to about 30-40% and sometimes it would completely pause for a few seconds before updating the desktop and its windows. I tried XGL on this same system and never dealt with any of the problems. Maybe my Direct X 9-enabled, 128 meg nVidia Quadro FX Go video card may be 2 years old, I'm surprised with the lack of performance. Can Microsoft streamline and optimize this in time for a release? I hope so otherwise I'll be running the basic interface if I ever upgrade.
Vista Beta 2 is a resource hog. A full install with Office 2007 took nearly 14 gigs of hard drive space. After boot up, Windows commit charge was averageing nearly 750-800megs of RAM on my laptop equipped with 2gigs of RAM. Opening up Firefox with a few tabs, MSN messenger, and playing a DivX AVI in Windows Media Player 11 pushed up the usage to nearly 1.3gigs of RAM. I know any unused RAM is wasted RAM but when a basic Windows hogs that much, it shows that power users will easily have to push 4gigs of RAM if they intend to run Photoshop or a few instances of Office applications.
The other annoyance is the new non-admin user model. It is completely broken and illogical. Inevitably, those people that get Vista Beta 2 working on their hardware will complain about constantly being bothered to elevate privileges. The end result will either be people disabling the new protection scheme or learning to click without reading-both scenarios are disastrous and will render this protection useless.
As it stands, Microsoft needs to revamp the model. I want a Control Panel applet that will let me choose the level of incisiveness. Here is my proposal:
1. Off - If I'm logged in as an Administrator, then it will work as current Windows machines.
2. Default - The current default settings as shipped in Vista Beta 2. The user would be hand held even while in his/her profile (aka home) directory. Deleting, editing and installing any files would all require the annoying pop-up dialog confirming action.
3. Limited Power User - Following the Linux model as shown in Red Hat of yesteryear, Ubuntu and others with a modification or two. All system files, installation of software available to the
I'd mod you up if I had points. I'm a medical student and I got the chance to take a history on a patient claiming to have this syndrome. It ended up that we gave him risperidone. If I'm not mistaken, pimozide has some fairly bad side effects and isn't normally prescribed these days. Then again, I'm only a med student.
I wasn't sure I was going to mod you down for being an idiot or responding to your comment. I will be the bigger man and respond. The Mughal Era was from 1526-1707 and was defined as a Muslim empire. The era after that was the Maratha Era who were (from Wikipedia): "The Hindu Marathas long had lived in the Desh region around Satara, in the western portion of the Deccan plateau, where the plateau meets the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats mountains."
If you have parsing troubles, since 1707 India was ruled by Hindus. During the colonial period, the British had an influence but most of the dirty work was done by Hindus who were sympathetic to British goals. To blame Muslim governance for modern poverty in India shows you are not only ignorant but also a bigot. I know it is the "in thing" these days to blame everything on Muslims but try to pick some more obscure events for we can't easily prove people of your ilk to be wrong.
It's funny because every time I look at these sorts of stats, it leads me to conclude that PDA users want more multimedia and productivity applications while laptops users want smaller and longer lasting systems. It seems like everyone is pushing towards items like the OQO, CPC, and Flipstart since they can run the big software applications people are accustomed. The problem seems to be the interface. The miniaturized PC-to-the-size-of-a-PDA concept is flawed because most programs these days are optimized for usability studies conducted with the mindset of the HIDs being keyboards and mice. This is one of the many reasons sales of the OQO haven't skyrocketed and tablet PCs really haven't taken off. So why can't we get software design houses revamp their application interfaces? Maybe the CPC guys have the right idea for the software and battery technology available when they want a tiny system with both the ability to run XP and Windows Mobile. Personally, I think the idea is a clunky hack until developers start designing interfaces for both keyboard/mouse and pen input. Maybe by then we'll have great battery technology that will give us a days worth of power on a single charge.
My Dell Axim X51v is Windows Mobile 5.0 based with a VGA screen. It's output in my logs is as follows:
Operating System: Microsoft WinCE
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320)
Javascript: version 1.2
Monitor Resolution: 480 x 640
Monitor Color Depth: 16 bits
It would be nice if more people designed sites that worked on PDAs but, as other posters have commented, if my PDA has access then usually my ultra-portable laptop can too so I just use that.
It's a possibility, but adding it to the end of your article is called "flaming".
Flaming? How is it considered flaming when even Intel engineers have commented that drivers and firmware were not solving the problem (which leads on to CONSIDER that it is possibly a hardware problem)?
It's a baseless accusation which you either placed their to bash Apple computers, when you have absolutely no proof or evidence to suggest they would be affected by this.
Just because there is no definitive proof that it is squarely a hardware issue, similarly you have zero proof that it is not. However, Intel engineers seem to be suggested (according to the article) that it could be a hardware issue. If that is the case, then Apple system could be affected too.
If you said "This is definitively what caused the MacBook to be delayed, here's a link to some evidence", I would have probably agreed with you, but sadly, you have done nothing of the like, because nothing of the like currently exists to say that it happened that way.
No where have I commented on MacBooks being delayed. Can you please provide proof where I have suggested that? I think this part of your comment illustrates that you have not been reading that I've written nor have you read the article. Please refrain from putting words in my mouth. Maybe then you'll realize how silly you sound right now.
Thus, if I had the ability to mod this article, "Flamebait" is the only choice I'd have, until the anti-Apple remark was removed.
It's fairly clear that you are just stirring the pot by putting words in my mouth so I'd go as far as to say that your response is flamebait. Unfortunately, your response has contributed nothing to the discussion.
Critical_ sees a typical Wintel bug and thinks Apple has a problem. It's an interesting thought, but not one to publish without checking.
I never concluded Apple had a problem. Rather I suggest it could be a problem because Microsoft's ACPI driver communicates with the ICH7-M Southbridge. If I am not mistaken, Apple uses the same southbridge on it's hardware. As the article repeatedly states, this issue can be anywhere on the chain from the southbridge, the Microsoft driver or even the attach peripheral. If it's purely a driver problem then why has it taken Microsoft and Intel 6 months of a non-working fix? Why are single core systems not affected by the same driver? Could this issue affect Linux or Mac OSX users on those platforms? Sure it could be a state-based issue but no one can really know until further testing takes place and Intel/Microsoft release more details.
Just within the last 12 months has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power.
False. Your statement isn't giving Intel enough credit and is not supported by the numbers. Since the original Banias Pentium M's were released back in March of 2003, we've seen Intel's mobile products have very good performance per watt ratios and overall power usage numbers. In fact, the overall power usage was the lowest in the original Pentium M's out of the entire line. You statement would be correct if you it said this: "...within the last 34 months (i.e. ~3 years) has Intel started releasing chips that focus on lower heat and power."
Data pulled from Intel Product Specifications at http://www.intel.com/
Banias (the normal voltage models-i.e. 1.7 GHz, 1.6 GHz, 1.4 GHz, etc):
Thermal Design Power: 24.5 W (Full speed) / 6 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 1.7 W
Deep Sleep Power: 1.1 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 0.55 W
Dothan (any model #):
Thermal Design Power: 21 W (Full speed) / 7.5 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 3.2 W
Deep Sleep Power: 2.5 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 0.8 W
Core Duo (any standard power model #):
Thermal Design Power: 31 W (Full speed) / 13.1 W (Speedstep)
Sleep Power: 4.7 W
Deep Sleep Power: 3.4 W
Deeper Sleep Power: 2.2 W
The Pentium M chips were a step towards lower power, but the Intel Core Duo that ships in the imac is the first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems.
Again, False. The first part of that sentence has already been proven false with the numbers I've posted. The second part of your AMD fanboy'ism is also incorrect. AMD offers two TDP ranges in their "Lancaster" single core Turion64 mobile processors: 25 watts and 35watts. As you can see with the data presented above, both of these TDP's are larger than Intel's single core Pentium M offerings which have been available since March 2003. AMD's Turion didn't even arrive on the scene until 2005 which gives Intel a solid two year headstart. What's even more interesting is that more than half of AMD's entire single core Turion line consumes more power than Intel's dual core Core Duo mobile processors. AMD has yet to release their dual core Turion processors. So your statement that the Intel Core Duo is the "first chip that is really ahead of AMD for mobile systems" is complete wrong. Intel has had AMD beat since March of 2003 in the mobile market and still continues to beat it. Please check your facts before posting lies or put an AMD fanboy disclaimer on your posts.
Note: I didn't both including Intel's various Low Voltage and Ultra Low Voltage Pentium M, Core Solo and Core Duo processors that have an even lower TDP than the standard voltage processor numbers I posted above. Adding this information would only serve to futher prove that your statements are wrong.
It did not fall under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) because, at the time, there were no stipulations for physical searches only electronic. Secondly, Ames himself chose not to pursue having any evidence thrown out based on the issue of warrents as you seem to be claiming. Here is the Criminal Complaint form from Ames' Case. I'm going to highlight some important areas:
"Paragraph 11: As a result of information obtained through electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, searches authorized by the Attorney General pursuant to section 2.5 of Executive Order 12333, trash covers, and other investigation which is detailed herein, I believe AMES has traveled abroad to meet surreptitiously with KGB/SVRR."
So they had what was necessary to aquire the evidence.
Here is a link to and specifically Section 2.5:
"The Attorney General hereby is delegated the power to approve the use for intelligence purposes, within the United States or against a United States person abroad, of any technique for which a warrant would be required if undertaken for law enforcement purposes, provided that such techniques shall not be undertaken unless the Attorney General has determined in each case that there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. Electronic surveillance, as defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, shall be conducted in accordance with that Act, as well as this Order."
They had probable cause which allowed them to go warrentless. The next three instances, again pulled from the Ames Criminal Complaint form referenced above, we see that FISA was used throughout the investigation.
"Paragraph 18: Based on information acquired in an electronic surveillance of AMES' personal computer and software within his residence, which was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, on or about October 9, 1993, along with other information obtained through electronic surveillance and other means, I believe "B" refers to Bogota, Colombia. From electronically stored documents located in AMES' personal computer, "North" has been identified as a signal site used by the SVRR to contact AMES, and "Pipe" is a dead drop used by the SVRR to pass messages, instructions, and cash to AMES. In this message, AMES indicated he could not be contacted from the 13th through l9th of September. I have been advised by CIA officials and learned through electronic surveillance that AMES traveled to Turkey on official business on or about September 13 and returned to the U.S. on or about September 17, 1993.
Paragraph 28: Based on several factors, including but not limited to the following, I believe AMES signaled his assent to the November meeting in Bogota by placing a chalk mark at the mailbox, "SS Smile", on or about October 13, 1993:
a. First, on or about October 12, 1993, FBI Special Agents monitored, by means of electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a discussion between AMES and his wife ROSARIO AMES, substantially as follows:
Paragraph 48: Based on information obtained through electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, I believe AMES also owns two condominium apartments and a farm in Colombia. The condominiums are in Bogota and Cartagena; the farm is referred to as the "Guajira.""
As you can see, FISA was involved and the case itself never came down to contesting the gathering the evidence. So you see, everything was in order and our government was able to find a spy on our soil without gross violations of our Constitutional rights.
Being that I have known quite a few people who have interned for Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the linked alarmist article has very little evidence to support its claims. I encourage people to read every word and then look for comprehensive proof in the cited sources. Furthermore, it's hard to believe that CAIR, after having regular meetings with some of the top-most senators/representatives in the nation would be called "Islamofascist" or a "terrorist" organization by any stretch of the imagination.
Thanks for posting that as I had not read the Media Matters articles. I'm sure that if there are any gaps in information, they can be filled in by using Google, searching CNN/NYT/WP sites and the texts of most laws can be found online as well.
WH press secretary McClellan claimed the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches just as your post claims. However, what he was refering to was an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants. This resulted in McClellan saying today (of Gore) that, "I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds." Not only is your blanket statement wrong about the Clinton Administration engaging in similar activities as Bush Jr., but you are also incorrect in its scope. At the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed. However, your post fails to mention both and furthermore fails to mention that Clinton never circumvented FISA to search US Citizen's overseas phone calls. It's sad that you'd pedal the same misinformation that the White House feeds everyone instead of presenting the facts to educate your fellow Slashdotters. It's just as bad as Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, making the same false arguments as McClellan during interviews Monday on CNN's "Larry King Live" and Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." Chew on that.
I find your argument to be without merit. Somehow a mentality was set in that suggested to technophiles that for something to be great, it must be completely new. This would be predicated on the idea that somehow humans are perfect designers and can make no mistakes. The truth is that humans are not perfect and it takes a few revisions to get a products bugs worked out. It's a lot easier to make improvements to a basic design rather than start over. In terms of the Pentium Pro debate that keeps popping up, it seems like a non-issue. Better power utilization, better branch predictors, etc. etc. etc. have allowed the Pentium M to do what no other processor from Intel can do (I would argue that even AMD's mobile offering can't compete). Let's put your argument this way...
The Porsche 911 is a decades old design that is updated by Porsche every few years. The Porsche 911 Twin Turbo and 911 GT2 are arguably some of the best sports cars in the world. So are you going to tell me that a 911 is somehow worse off because its not all new from the ground up? Wrong. With your logic the new Ford Fusion is inherently better than any 911 design. Right... get real.
I was wondering if you could post how you are going about scheduling adaware and spybot. As far as I know, you're probably using some sort of script to call the software and to update definitions. Any help in this regard would be appreciated greatly. Thank you
It seems like Google must be doing some sort of datamining on all the data its aquired through searches, sitemaps, email, and now a "hit counter." Is it really improving their results? I don't really think so because certain search terms are still marred by the typical commericial or SEO junk. I really think the next step for the search engines is to start work on creating a better way to index all those subject specific web forums on the internet that have massive amounts of good information but very poor searching capabilities.
Oh, if you have an invite send one my way so I can check this out for myself... is300fan "at" hotmail.com Thanks
Some of us have lurked here for a long time before finally making our accounts so I've seen Slashdot grow. There was once a time when shooting you an email meant getting a response in a pretty short time frame. Although I completely understand that your readership has grown, I think that by posting questions like this you bring a sense of "for the community, by the community" feeling back. So don't worry about not being able to respond to every single one of us as long as you can get a general feeling of where we stand and ask any clarifying questions that help facilitate those conclusions.
Last but not least, I would post the story even if its from an annoying user. I'd also tweak the moderation system such that users with "Excellent" karma always have the option of modding down a discussion thread that is discussion a problem poster. Once the initial thread is flagged, others with this priviledge can verify it. If a user erroneously does this a certain number of times, then they lose the priviledge for good. It's just a thought which I'm sure you'll be able to drive a semi through.
I've been here since the beginning when Malda started this place. I just choose not to post on every story.
I personally have the JVC 7310 notebook which uses the first generation Centrino ultra-low voltage processors in a tiny notebook which weighs less than 1kg (1.99 pound to be exact). JVC later released the 741 which included a Dothan 1.1Ghz CPU. Yes, they use standard hardware and Linux runs just fine on it. I'm sure JVC will be releasing a Core Duo ultra-low voltage notebook very soon.
In the article it says that the new integrated video chip in the Centrino triad will display Vista's user interface without any problems. The new 3945abg wireless also supports some of the new advanced wireless technologies with Windows own WLAN client.
I can't believe someone would rate the parent post as "informative" without ever looking at the article.
In the article, Anandtech clearly states that their request for identical notebooks was filled by Asus's W-series notebooks. Since Asus is a huge ODM, they provided identical notebooks with the only difference being the new chipset, processor combo. The processors (Dothan and Core Duo) were even matched clock for clock at 1.86Ghz. The comparison is amazingly good and shows very clearly that the new processor has a great boost and performance and battery time. Next time, please RTFA before posting drivel.
It was with clients using Intel's 2915ABG wireless cards. Installing custom firmware and updating the Intel drivers fixed the problem for me. I am currently running Firmware Version : v4.20.9 - HyperWRT 2.1b1+tofu7 on my version 3 WRT54G. I have uptimes of months now without any problems.
If you're running RC1 already, the posted links have .MAR files available to perform an update without redownloading the entire binary. Windows users should be careful because .MAR is associated with Microsoft Access in Office 2003 (maybe earlier versions but this is all I checked with). Anyway, info on how to update with .MAR files is here:
Manually Installing a MAR File
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Car pictures gallery
Chrysler is OWNED BY Mercedes.