DirecTV is seriously screwing up by not getting on the ball when it comes to HDTV.
Free programming is irrelevant to me -- $600 out of pocket for a Sony HDTV-capable IRD is still $600 out of pocket. Whether DirecTV "finances" it or not, I still have to write a check somewhere.
IMHO, they should sell these new IRD's at their cost in order to keep their customers. Sadly, I decided after five years with Direct to go to Time Warner Digital cable because I will get all of my local channels in HD, plus HBO as well. Directsimply could not match that. I won't be getting HDNet, as TWC doesn't have it, but I honestly believe that I would end up wanting the locals more anyway.
Long story short: DirecTV banked on a merger with EchoStar for getting themselves up and running in the HDTV world. It didn't happen and their terrestial-based competition wasn't sleeping. Hence, they lose this round.
I have an 8*10 view camera (the film is 8 inches by 10 inches) that captures approximately eight to ten magnitudes more photons (data) than does a 35mm. Think that it compares to that?
...if someone spent hours and hours analyzing how to break down an encryption system for cable or satellite, what makes you think that they would tell YOU?
You'll tell a friend, who will tell a friend, who will tell a friend and next thing you know, poof! the whole thing is discovered and shut down.
That's one of the funniest myths of hacking: that an exploit is public domain. Let me assure you that the best ones are not.
If you haven't noticed, hard drive warrantees are getting shorter all the time. So are their MTTB ratings. Moreover, the higher the storage capacity, the more precision required and the more fragile maintaining that precision becomes. So, basically, the seven year drive you have running today is the blissful result of overengineering, which in these times is definitely not the case.
If you do not believe me, ask IBM about some of their 100GB drives. Better yet, ask their customers.
The failure rate of hard drives is precisely known: 100 +/-0.0%
...sounds crazy, but you could end up with a pile of drives that it takes something out of the Boston Computer Museum to read.
Anyone remember RLL? Or those fun little 800MB tape drives? Magneto-Optical? Can you mount any of 'em without going in your junk room?
Plus, drop an IDE drive and chances are your data is unreadable. Drop a tape and you pick it up.
DAT and DLT drives seem to be a pain to buy and operate, but they are backward compatible for the most part. Put them in a magnetically shielded storage case (like a fireproof safe) and you are good to go.
After all, we have auto-updating now, and since Microsoft is completely dedicated to battling Linux, et. al, with the lower Windows TCO, no one will need to pay for an upgrade cycle for years! In fact, all of the Windows administrators who've installed SP3 can now rest easy knowing that the boys and girls in Redmond are diligently uploading security patches, bug fixes and feature enhancements to your machine when-ever and where-ever it needs it.
Isn't life great, MCSEs? No more staying up all night reconstructing servers, praying that the tape backups were current, etc.
I wouldn't know, though. I changed my systems over to Red Hat, and keep up with the errata, and amuse myself by opening a sessions and typing in "uptime"...
"Rather than attempting to promote Linux and Open Source as worthwhile competitors, Slashdot and its parent company insist on attacking Microsoft."
You are implying that VA Software created the memo and leaked it to CNN?
It would seem that the article was written by a bona fide news source, and that it is onl;y being echoed here.
Fact is, the battle for market supremacy in the server room and on the desktop is of paramount importance to most of the readers of/.
Fact is, Microsoft itself created this "bad news."
You imply it is cowardly to post these articles rather than extol the virtues of the competition. Hmmm, I daresay that you are being cowardly for attacking the messenger rather than the message.
"Apple is every bit as proprietary as Microsoft, even going so far as to monopolize their hardware market and filing numerous lawsuits to combat those attempting to mimic their 'look and feel', something that even Microsoft does not attempt to do."
The most famous suit was the one against Windows, and Microsoft.
They lost, BTW.
"I propose that this site state its purpose"
I think they do.
Look upward at the banner at the top of the screen.
It says "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
I fail to see how this memo fails to qualify as exactly that.
One of the prime rules of administering a system is to never destabilize it. I have great respect for Red Hat, and use their systems every day, but whatever this patch does, I will not apply it until I understand what effect it is going to have on my systems.
I suppose I could (and really SHOULD) look at the source and figure it out from there, but given the fact that time is a scarce resource, it will be lower on my priority list than the other problems that are more readily apparent to me.
That means that the DMCA is actually contributing to the destabilization of the systems I am responsible for. Makes me wonder just who is being protected here in the land of "free speech" and home of the brave.
Good God, by the time machine came out, there was already a robust computer community, one that was larger, and stayed larger, than the C64: it was a fruity company named Apple and the model was "Apple II".
As much as digital affacianados would like to say that digital has passed traditional chemical methods of photography, it hasn't happened -- yet. Of course, there are those that will tell tell you that a synthesizer sounds identical to a real instrument.
All that cargo-cult science is all well and good, but I will tell you this as a photographer. Recently, we went to Yosemite National Park, and took photographs with a year old "pro-sumer" camera, a Nikon E-995. Aside it, on another tripod, was my trusty Nikon N90, which is the rough "pro-sumer" equivilant of the E-995. Pictures were made at the same time, with the same relatiove composition in the same light. And the prints from the film that came out of the darkroom had higher acutance and a world more contrast than did the digital, in every single case. Not even Photoshop could make up the difference.
Film indeed has grain structure, and the higher the "speed" of the film, the larger the grains, which gives them more surface area for photons to react faster. Hence, in film, faster film is "grainier" than slower. As for reactions taking place on an atomic level, actually it is at a molecular level.
I am at work at the moment, but once upon a time, I did the math and compared a typical ISO 100 film, T-MAX for example, and counted each "grain" (lump of silver halide) as a pixel. Roughly, according to Kodak's data, a properly exposed and developed T-MAX 100 film would have about 14 mega-grains, or megapixels.
But then there was a major, major rub in the favor of film: there was a huge variance, about a magnitude, in the size of the grains, which seemed to be roughly evenly distributed. This gave the film at least a magnitude of contrast advantage over digital pixels, as the pixels are all the same size.
Know what you are talking about. Apparently you do not. Ted Turner has little interest in CNN any more, he sold his controlling stake in TBS/CNN to Time Warner quite a while back.
Regarding Fox, a news organization that leans hard to the right and is afraid of not appeasing their own constituency by reporting news in an unbiased manner is not a cure for what you think ails CNN.
I tend to get my news from a variety of sources and cull the "truth" from the common set of facts they report rather than rely on whatever poltical manifesto the news organization is trying to propogate. What the world needs are fewer polemicists and more people that are pragmatics. Bumper sticker slogans never solved a single problem.
It's an Instrument, Not a Freakin' Religion!!!!
on
No More Mac Tweaking?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've got Windows, Linux and a Mac machine in the house. They all know their roles, and they do them reasonably well. I wouldn't trade any of them for any of them, if that makes sense to you. Cats meow and dogs bark. SFW. Point is, I care about getting the job done, not the tool I use to do it. Computers are just machines, not religions worthy of jihad.
The means is irrelevant to the ends. Do you edit a digital picture to make it more aesthetic, or to make it look like a MAc edited it? Do you type a letter into Word to show off your word processor or to convey your thoughts to the recipient? Do you serve web docs to the world to demonstrate Apache or to share your idiotic blogs to all who care to waste time reading it? You get the point.
Maybe I am old now, and remember life before all three of the aforementioned OS's, but the fact is that each have their place and do certain things better than the other -- no matter what zealots, evangalists or underinformed Luddites would like you to believe.
You must now wear federally mandated, MPAA approved earplugs and blindfolds whenever you watch a movie. Further, you are required to be tied to a chair in order to sit through the whole thing, not skip any commercials and not keep a copy for yourself.
Further, I have patented these devices and will now sue anyone who 1) uses a blindfold or earplugs, whether or not it is in the interest of protecting a film; 2) uses a chair for any reason, whether or not it is to watch a film, blindfolded or not and 3) engages in or is tied up by anyone else (although I will consider cross-licensing this technology for the purposes of creating unrated films.
Now the world is safer!
This Market's Harder For M$ To FUD and Dominate
on
.NET for Apache
·
· Score: 1
Micro$oft is now trying their classic tactic: embrace, extend and extinguish. Sure, they'll play nice with Apache for now, after all, they have 57% of the web server market. And being the good guys that they are, they may even offer some improvements and additions to our patchy little server friend. Then, watch out -- they will come out with a version of IIS that will attempt to kill the APACHE beast once and for all. That's the Microsoft tactic, and it has worked for two decades now. But this time, it will fail.
The reason is simple: Micro$oft will be trying to sell their wares to experienced and very wary system administrators who have undoubtedly experienced the woe that is Windows security. This market does not need ease of use, it needs rock solid reliability, speed and execution -- we're not scared by command line interfaces,.CONF files and other "old-school" measures that one may use in order to make a *NIX box sing. In fact, oddly, we PREFER the flexibility that CLI and text control files offer.
That does not begin to mention the mistrust that Microsoft has generated for itself, especially in the server marketplace. NIMDA, Code Red and others are still fresh in our mninds. Sure, Linux, PHP and others have flaws of their own, but the community has seemingly always dealt with these in a far more forthright manner.
Finally, another note on the strategy Bill and drones are employing here: this is also a blatant attempt to kill Mono before it gets going, to eliminate any competition in the.NET infrastructure.
Beware, SysAdmins, FUD bombs and "presents" from Micro$oft are coming! Brace yourselves and SAVE YOUR SHOES!
The higher you climb, the further you fall. But in this case, the more you store, the more you will lose.
Every time hard drive storage gets denser, we further space ourselves away from effective means to make archival backups of this huge amount of data we are carrying around. While your MP3 collection might be expendable, a week's worth of digital photos might not be. Or any other data you can imagine.
When is a cost-effective 1 TB DLT drive going to come to market?
...longbeards can remember the "good ole days" where the free flow of ideas and not making money were what made the pre-commodity internet a very worthwhile place to be. Everyone was expected to contribute their resources for the benefit of all, and none of it was (apparently) designed to make help smartass b-school dropout come up with enough cash to buy a 4,000 square foot "bungalo" in Palo Alto.
Count me in.
My Solution Was Simple:
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 1
I explained my trouble with getting through to AOL to my credit card company, who now refuses to honor any charge they submit. I then followed it up with a registered letter explaining to them that I wanted my service terminated.
Time on phone: 20 minutes. Time mailing letter: 20 minutes. Stress: Zero.
Slashdot Mirror
If Boies "saves" SCO as well as he saved Napster, then there is nothing at all to worry about.
Moreover, at the end of the day, what did he really "win" from Microsoft?
DirecTV is seriously screwing up by not getting on the ball when it comes to HDTV.
Free programming is irrelevant to me -- $600 out of pocket for a Sony HDTV-capable IRD is still $600 out of pocket. Whether DirecTV "finances" it or not, I still have to write a check somewhere.
IMHO, they should sell these new IRD's at their cost in order to keep their customers. Sadly, I decided after five years with Direct to go to Time Warner Digital cable because I will get all of my local channels in HD, plus HBO as well. Directsimply could not match that. I won't be getting HDNet, as TWC doesn't have it, but I honestly believe that I would end up wanting the locals more anyway.
Long story short: DirecTV banked on a merger with EchoStar for getting themselves up and running in the HDTV world. It didn't happen and their terrestial-based competition wasn't sleeping. Hence, they lose this round.
I have an 8*10 view camera (the film is 8 inches by 10 inches) that captures approximately eight to ten magnitudes more photons (data) than does a 35mm. Think that it compares to that?
...if someone spent hours and hours analyzing how to break down an encryption system for cable or satellite, what makes you think that they would tell YOU? You'll tell a friend, who will tell a friend, who will tell a friend and next thing you know, poof! the whole thing is discovered and shut down. That's one of the funniest myths of hacking: that an exploit is public domain. Let me assure you that the best ones are not.
If you haven't noticed, hard drive warrantees are getting shorter all the time. So are their MTTB ratings. Moreover, the higher the storage capacity, the more precision required and the more fragile maintaining that precision becomes. So, basically, the seven year drive you have running today is the blissful result of overengineering, which in these times is definitely not the case.
If you do not believe me, ask IBM about some of their 100GB drives. Better yet, ask their customers.
The failure rate of hard drives is precisely known: 100 +/-0.0%
...sounds crazy, but you could end up with a pile of drives that it takes something out of the Boston Computer Museum to read.
Anyone remember RLL? Or those fun little 800MB tape drives? Magneto-Optical? Can you mount any of 'em without going in your junk room?
Plus, drop an IDE drive and chances are your data is unreadable. Drop a tape and you pick it up.
DAT and DLT drives seem to be a pain to buy and operate, but they are backward compatible for the most part. Put them in a magnetically shielded storage case (like a fireproof safe) and you are good to go.
After all, we have auto-updating now, and since Microsoft is completely dedicated to battling Linux, et. al, with the lower Windows TCO, no one will need to pay for an upgrade cycle for years! In fact, all of the Windows administrators who've installed SP3 can now rest easy knowing that the boys and girls in Redmond are diligently uploading security patches, bug fixes and feature enhancements to your machine when-ever and where-ever it needs it.
...
Isn't life great, MCSEs? No more staying up all night reconstructing servers, praying that the tape backups were current, etc.
I wouldn't know, though. I changed my systems over to Red Hat, and keep up with the errata, and amuse myself by opening a sessions and typing in "uptime"
>We have the technology
We also supposedly have an operation Saturn V stashed at Stennis Space Center.
Yes, but it's probably stored on a Sun server, and uses it's native OS, Solaris.
Solaris is inherently far more secure, so it is unlikely that it will be "leaked" out to the press.
"Rather than attempting to promote Linux and Open Source as worthwhile competitors, Slashdot and its parent company insist on attacking Microsoft."
/.
You are implying that VA Software created the memo and leaked it to CNN?
It would seem that the article was written by a bona fide news source, and that it is onl;y being echoed here.
Fact is, the battle for market supremacy in the server room and on the desktop is of paramount importance to most of the readers of
Fact is, Microsoft itself created this "bad news."
You imply it is cowardly to post these articles rather than extol the virtues of the competition. Hmmm, I daresay that you are being cowardly for attacking the messenger rather than the message.
"Apple is every bit as proprietary as Microsoft, even going so far as to monopolize their hardware market and filing numerous lawsuits to combat those attempting to mimic their 'look and feel', something that even Microsoft does not attempt to do."
The most famous suit was the one against Windows, and Microsoft.
They lost, BTW.
"I propose that this site state its purpose"
I think they do.
Look upward at the banner at the top of the screen.
It says "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
I fail to see how this memo fails to qualify as exactly that.
"Information is power."
Remember how the Parliament of the Soviet Union defied the then-communist government -- with fax machines?
We all have to test internet connectivity Ryan.
;)
Apparently both of ours works!
One of the prime rules of administering a system is to never destabilize it. I have great respect for Red Hat, and use their systems every day, but whatever this patch does, I will not apply it until I understand what effect it is going to have on my systems.
I suppose I could (and really SHOULD) look at the source and figure it out from there, but given the fact that time is a scarce resource, it will be lower on my priority list than the other problems that are more readily apparent to me.
That means that the DMCA is actually contributing to the destabilization of the systems I am responsible for. Makes me wonder just who is being protected here in the land of "free speech" and home of the brave.
Good God, by the time machine came out, there was already a robust computer community, one that was larger, and stayed larger, than the C64: it was a fruity company named Apple and the model was "Apple II".
You should get a nice Powerbook, so you can upload a virus to the main computer of the mothership.
But let them blow up the White House first, okay? (I'm just KIDDING, Echelon analysts!!!)
As much as digital affacianados would like to say that digital has passed traditional chemical methods of photography, it hasn't happened -- yet. Of course, there are those that will tell tell you that a synthesizer sounds identical to a real instrument.
All that cargo-cult science is all well and good, but I will tell you this as a photographer. Recently, we went to Yosemite National Park, and took photographs with a year old "pro-sumer" camera, a Nikon E-995. Aside it, on another tripod, was my trusty Nikon N90, which is the rough "pro-sumer" equivilant of the E-995. Pictures were made at the same time, with the same relatiove composition in the same light. And the prints from the film that came out of the darkroom had higher acutance and a world more contrast than did the digital, in every single case. Not even Photoshop could make up the difference.
Film indeed has grain structure, and the higher the "speed" of the film, the larger the grains, which gives them more surface area for photons to react faster. Hence, in film, faster film is "grainier" than slower. As for reactions taking place on an atomic level, actually it is at a molecular level.
I am at work at the moment, but once upon a time, I did the math and compared a typical ISO 100 film, T-MAX for example, and counted each "grain" (lump of silver halide) as a pixel. Roughly, according to Kodak's data, a properly exposed and developed T-MAX 100 film would have about 14 mega-grains, or megapixels.
But then there was a major, major rub in the favor of film: there was a huge variance, about a magnitude, in the size of the grains, which seemed to be roughly evenly distributed. This gave the film at least a magnitude of contrast advantage over digital pixels, as the pixels are all the same size.
Know what you are talking about. Apparently you do not. Ted Turner has little interest in CNN any more, he sold his controlling stake in TBS/CNN to Time Warner quite a while back.
Regarding Fox, a news organization that leans hard to the right and is afraid of not appeasing their own constituency by reporting news in an unbiased manner is not a cure for what you think ails CNN.
I tend to get my news from a variety of sources and cull the "truth" from the common set of facts they report rather than rely on whatever poltical manifesto the news organization is trying to propogate. What the world needs are fewer polemicists and more people that are pragmatics. Bumper sticker slogans never solved a single problem.
I've got Windows, Linux and a Mac machine in the house. They all know their roles, and they do them reasonably well. I wouldn't trade any of them for any of them, if that makes sense to you. Cats meow and dogs bark. SFW. Point is, I care about getting the job done, not the tool I use to do it. Computers are just machines, not religions worthy of jihad.
The means is irrelevant to the ends. Do you edit a digital picture to make it more aesthetic, or to make it look like a MAc edited it? Do you type a letter into Word to show off your word processor or to convey your thoughts to the recipient? Do you serve web docs to the world to demonstrate Apache or to share your idiotic blogs to all who care to waste time reading it? You get the point.
Maybe I am old now, and remember life before all three of the aforementioned OS's, but the fact is that each have their place and do certain things better than the other -- no matter what zealots, evangalists or underinformed Luddites would like you to believe.
C'mon, the classics of the genre in IMAX?
:)
Are you kidding me? Every detail exposed in tender, loving IMAX quality?
Yeppers, there IS a silent majority that would dearly love to see their favorite pr0n babe up on the IMAX screen.
Who has ever paid for a copy of Linux 2000 or Linux XP?
Obviously, nobody.
That's because many Linux installs are sticky, and people stay with the same kernels far longer than Windows.
You buy a new version of Windows to fix bugs, to finally make your computer work, to get new hardware installed, etc.
You must now wear federally mandated, MPAA approved earplugs and blindfolds whenever you watch a movie. Further, you are required to be tied to a chair in order to sit through the whole thing, not skip any commercials and not keep a copy for yourself.
Further, I have patented these devices and will now sue anyone who 1) uses a blindfold or earplugs, whether or not it is in the interest of protecting a film; 2) uses a chair for any reason, whether or not it is to watch a film, blindfolded or not and 3) engages in or is tied up by anyone else (although I will consider cross-licensing this technology for the purposes of creating unrated films.
Now the world is safer!
Micro$oft is now trying their classic tactic: embrace, extend and extinguish. Sure, they'll play nice with Apache for now, after all, they have 57% of the web server market. And being the good guys that they are, they may even offer some improvements and additions to our patchy little server friend. Then, watch out -- they will come out with a version of IIS that will attempt to kill the APACHE beast once and for all. That's the Microsoft tactic, and it has worked for two decades now. But this time, it will fail.
.CONF files and other "old-school" measures that one may use in order to make a *NIX box sing. In fact, oddly, we PREFER the flexibility that CLI and text control files offer.
.NET infrastructure.
The reason is simple: Micro$oft will be trying to sell their wares to experienced and very wary system administrators who have undoubtedly experienced the woe that is Windows security. This market does not need ease of use, it needs rock solid reliability, speed and execution -- we're not scared by command line interfaces,
That does not begin to mention the mistrust that Microsoft has generated for itself, especially in the server marketplace. NIMDA, Code Red and others are still fresh in our mninds. Sure, Linux, PHP and others have flaws of their own, but the community has seemingly always dealt with these in a far more forthright manner.
Finally, another note on the strategy Bill and drones are employing here: this is also a blatant attempt to kill Mono before it gets going, to eliminate any competition in the
Beware, SysAdmins, FUD bombs and "presents" from Micro$oft are coming! Brace yourselves and SAVE YOUR SHOES!
The higher you climb, the further you fall. But in this case, the more you store, the more you will lose.
Every time hard drive storage gets denser, we further space ourselves away from effective means to make archival backups of this huge amount of data we are carrying around. While your MP3 collection might be expendable, a week's worth of digital photos might not be. Or any other data you can imagine.
When is a cost-effective 1 TB DLT drive going to come to market?
...longbeards can remember the "good ole days" where the free flow of ideas and not making money were what made the pre-commodity internet a very worthwhile place to be. Everyone was expected to contribute their resources for the benefit of all, and none of it was (apparently) designed to make help smartass b-school dropout come up with enough cash to buy a 4,000 square foot "bungalo" in Palo Alto.
Count me in.
I explained my trouble with getting through to AOL to my credit card company, who now refuses to honor any charge they submit. I then followed it up with a registered letter explaining to them that I wanted my service terminated.
Time on phone: 20 minutes.
Time mailing letter: 20 minutes.
Stress: Zero.