Personally, I think it's just a lot of sensationalism right now. The scary part is that we, the end Lusers of Microsoft products, seem to have little real input into these things. At first it will be optional, then MS will claim that this "feature" has been wildly successful and will make it a mandatory thing in the end-Luser version of the OS. To have the "right" to decide what programs can run, you'll have to pay a 500% markup for the Professional or Server version of the OS that just has some snippets of code disabled.
They forgot to mention (iv)Lack of ability to penetrate through objects.
As you get higher in RF bandwidth, you lose the ability for the RF waves to penetrate objects (walls, furniture, etc). So, while we will (theoretically) get higher bandwidth, we will also sacrifice distance when compared to similar power consumption levels over lower-bandwidth technologies.
I am sure that IBM is not going to lose a whole bunch on this, but there isn't a whole lot you are going to do with some vintage equipment. E.g.
what is the current market for working VT320 terminals. Well, the answer is not much. I sold one on ebay for all of $1
I mean they're worth something to IBM in the sense that they can pay $30 for the unit, make it an assest of the company, take a tax break for the $30/unit they pay out, then get money from the recycler for the gold, steel, etc that is "mined" from the PC.
If that's so, they why haven't you... or anyone else for that matter... offered to buy them for $25? It's called the "free market".
Well, for starters, if IBM is offering ~$30.00 per PC, and you want to entice people to go through you, instead of IBM, you'd be well off to offer MORE money for their junk, not less.
Of course, you also have to have the cash on-hand to pay people with, and you have to have an infrastructure in place to support the whole operation. Personally, I don't want to trade $30,000+ of my money for 1000 outdated PC's. That still doesn't change the fact that this is more of a money-making operation for IBM than it is a good-will operation.
Why do I get the feeling that IBM is essentially offering to buy dollars from people for the low, low price of $.25? I think that IBM will reap much more than $30 on average for each PC that it recylces...
Correct me if i'm wrong but current handhelp GPS technology does not allow you to determine your exact position due to military restrictions.
You're wrong:) The inaccuracy factor in the GPS system was recently disables. ALL GPS units (within their own design limitations) are now equally accurate.
As Fiber To The Curb becomes more readily available, and our bandwidth is a "given" just like the phone and electrical lines, we'll be able to roughly pinpoint locations easier.
The edge device you connect to to access the 'Net will be registered with the Feds (this is only a matter of time). Knowing how long it takes light to travel to the closest fiber-to-copper demarc point by your house, it will be easy for the edge device and/or your PC to spit out some numbers showing what will essentially be a ping time delay. Knowing that Registered Router X serves the geographic area of Y, and you are 2.003ms away from Router X, then you must be 1.22 miles from the router. The fiber run you are on goes down Big Brother Ave, so you're 1.22 miles from the end of Big Brother Ave.
It's not a pin-pointer, but it proves that you're not on the other side of the world impersonating yourself...
I just bought a 27" Sony Wega (ruler-flat) tube TV and a I love it.
Dude... Do a search on the Wega's, and look at all the problems they've had. If I were you, I'd take the Wega back and get a higher-end Panasonic, you'll save money, and get a better set. But that's just my opinion (although, I do own an A/V store...)
The fact that THERE ARE NO FULL HDTV's out there now. Every TV that they say are
HDTV or Digital TV Ready require a convertor box!
Sorry, but this is just un-true. There are several models from various manufacturers that have the tuners built-in. The Samsung units spring to mind.
It is also a Good Thing that the tuners aren't always built-in. The capabilities and features of HDTV tuners have progressed rapidly in the last few years, recent models include USB and firewire I/O ports, etc. I'd rather have an HDTV with an out-board tuner, so that I can upgrade the tuner.
So are there any *inexpensive* devices (which of course would work under Linux) which can overlay graphics onto a std.
video signal in real-time? Through chromakeying or some other method?
You're not going to get cheap graphics overlay, but you could use a PIC-TV from CC Concepts to do text overlay for about $170.
The Ucentric hoax is actually quite old.
You might have confused it with something else. Ucentric is participating in various upcoming conferences based around home technologies (or so their news page states). It would seem to be an awful lot of work to perpetuate a hoax...
I have a box at home that does this Stargate, but it's probably more expensive ($899) than what you're looking for. Of course, it does a helluva lot more than just answer the phone.
Where are you getting the mp3s from? THE COMPUTER.
The concept would be that all MP3's could be stored centrally, then played back on any PC or A/V system in the house. Almost like an in-home Napster server:)
I'd admit that the box may not work out for the uber-geek that tends to be drawn to/., but for parents that want to help/watch their kids surf the 'net, etc it seems the box is going to blend a lot of the common wish-list items together.
Look at the popularity of the RF units from x10.com where people want to stream MP3's from their PC to their home A/V system and/or to another room. This will accomplish the same thing without the horrible loss in sound quality with the X10.com product.
Unfortunately, people like me who live off campus are left out
in the cold:(.
Unless college life has changed significantly since I was kicked out of Ferris State, off-campus life beats the hell out of a free PC+dorm room anyday:)
Locally, we have a high school and junior high that both issue laptops to students to use in their studies. I remember when we couldn't use calculators in school, and now laptops are becoming standard issue...
Like so many other things with technology, this is a double-edged sword. It's great that more people are becoming comfortable with computers, but there are several problems as well. The biggest problem I see is that the curriculum will probably be OS centric, and the OS will likely be Windoze. This gives Microsoft an unfair advantage and headstart. I wish I had the time to develop a linux distro that was education-centric. Something that would allow for easy encrytped distribution/sending of homework assignments (128-bit encrytped wireless NICS, ex.), basic firewalling when the laptop is in a classroom (handled by the local basestation for the RF NICS), and software that was tailored to a learning environment. At the very least the curriculum should support Windows, Linux and Mac OS's so that the students can use what they feel most comfortable with.
I also worry that this may make the students lazy. If you've got spell checkers, thesauruses, and other tools handy on the laptop that might encourage more of a reliance on the technology and less reliance on independant thought. Also, if the laptops are provided by the school, or partially funded by the school, does this mean that the information stored on them is the schools property as well? Will this make it easier to invade students' rights?
FWIW... I didn't mean to imply that TimeWarner/AOL would be the sole backbone provider. I think TW/AOL will eventually end up melting down as they attract a dumber and dumber user base. Soon their best users won't be able to figure out how to use the service, which will collapse upon itself.
If you read Cringely a few weeks back, you would see that it really doesn't take anything but a name. You can farm out pretty much all the operations, and just sign people up. Sort of like a digital Amway:)
I figure it will be about another 8 years until we see the FCC and/or the FTC intervene to break up the _one_ company that will be providing backbone bandwidth on the Internet.
Perhaps "inevitable" would be better than "obvious". It seems that it is/was inevitable that someone would design a way to do this very thing. The solution itself was not an "obivous" design, per se. Then again, maybe it just depends on your own perception. I read this and said "big deal", even after reading all the technical data. He basically hangs a camera over a surface, and then uses a computer to monitor the surface and vibrate/rotate the surface to cause the objects to move as desired.
ry reading the scientist page.... the method used is by no means obvious.
I _did_ read the page. Like I said, he figured out how to harness something that we've all seen. I'm sure he didn't design this on a cocktail napkin, but the general concept is nothing new, IMO.
Basically he noticed that when you vibrate a surface, stuff tends to slide around. By controlling the surface and the vibrations, he can make objects move at will.
I dunno, this almost seems like an "obvious patent" type of thing. How many times have you watched something dance around on top of the washing machine, or watch your pager glide across the desktop when set to vibrate mode? While it's sorta neat that this guy is controlling the movements, it's hardly (IMO) all that much of a breakthrough.
The whole thing seems really dumbed-down when they suggest a room that can re-arrange itself. Do people rearrange their rooms SO MUCH, that they would go through the expense of imbedding a bunch of motors in special honeycomb floor?
They will only learn when their customers start to feel the same way you do.
How true. Unfortuneately their real target customer is large businesses. It's easy for them to convince some dweeby IT pruchasing manager to buy into the M$ propaganda by simply passing out free lunches and cheesy swag. I know, I've been there... I've seen some very devoted anti-microsoft types come back from Redmond with a leather jacket and a frontal lobotamy. It's scary, I tell you.
I'm sure MICROS~1 will have some PR twist on this, blah blah blah. Although I think this story was VERY worthwhile of inclusion on/., I'm almost getting tired of hearing about Microsofts security flaws, and their inability to deal with them. Microsoft has more hardware, software and programmer resources than probably any other company today. They have NO excuse (IMO) to not address something like this immediately,
Until, of course, the TiVo hackers figure out the Filesystem the TiVo uses
And the compression algorithm, and hope that it doesn't require some other piece of on-baord hardware for a dependency. My guess is that there are certain pieces of hardware/chipsets that handle the comporession/decompression, which would make it VERY difficult to view a recording on any box other than the one it was recorded on, or at the very least, on a non-Tivo box. That's probably why Tivo hasn't sent legal letters to any of the public Tivo hacking pages, they're not worried.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I think it's just a lot of sensationalism right now. The scary part is that we, the end Lusers of Microsoft products, seem to have little real input into these things. At first it will be optional, then MS will claim that this "feature" has been wildly successful and will make it a mandatory thing in the end-Luser version of the OS. To have the "right" to decide what programs can run, you'll have to pay a 500% markup for the Professional or Server version of the OS that just has some snippets of code disabled.
They forgot to mention (iv)Lack of ability to penetrate through objects.
As you get higher in RF bandwidth, you lose the ability for the RF waves to penetrate objects (walls, furniture, etc). So, while we will (theoretically) get higher bandwidth, we will also sacrifice distance when compared to similar power consumption levels over lower-bandwidth technologies.
I am sure that IBM is not going to lose a whole bunch on this, but there isn't a whole lot you are going to do with some vintage equipment. E.g. what is the current market for working VT320 terminals. Well, the answer is not much. I sold one on ebay for all of $1
I mean they're worth something to IBM in the sense that they can pay $30 for the unit, make it an assest of the company, take a tax break for the $30/unit they pay out, then get money from the recycler for the gold, steel, etc that is "mined" from the PC.
If that's so, they why haven't you... or anyone else for that matter... offered to buy them for $25? It's called the "free market".
Well, for starters, if IBM is offering ~$30.00 per PC, and you want to entice people to go through you, instead of IBM, you'd be well off to offer MORE money for their junk, not less.
Of course, you also have to have the cash on-hand to pay people with, and you have to have an infrastructure in place to support the whole operation. Personally, I don't want to trade $30,000+ of my money for 1000 outdated PC's. That still doesn't change the fact that this is more of a money-making operation for IBM than it is a good-will operation.
Why do I get the feeling that IBM is essentially offering to buy dollars from people for the low, low price of $.25? I think that IBM will reap much more than $30 on average for each PC that it recylces...
Correct me if i'm wrong but current handhelp GPS technology does not allow you to determine your exact position due to military restrictions.
:) The inaccuracy factor in the GPS system was recently disables. ALL GPS units (within their own design limitations) are now equally accurate.
You're wrong
As Fiber To The Curb becomes more readily available, and our bandwidth is a "given" just like the phone and electrical lines, we'll be able to roughly pinpoint locations easier.
The edge device you connect to to access the 'Net will be registered with the Feds (this is only a matter of time). Knowing how long it takes light to travel to the closest fiber-to-copper demarc point by your house, it will be easy for the edge device and/or your PC to spit out some numbers showing what will essentially be a ping time delay. Knowing that Registered Router X serves the geographic area of Y, and you are 2.003ms away from Router X, then you must be 1.22 miles from the router. The fiber run you are on goes down Big Brother Ave, so you're 1.22 miles from the end of Big Brother Ave.
It's not a pin-pointer, but it proves that you're not on the other side of the world impersonating yourself...
I just bought a 27" Sony Wega (ruler-flat) tube TV and a I love it.
Dude... Do a search on the Wega's, and look at all the problems they've had. If I were you, I'd take the Wega back and get a higher-end Panasonic, you'll save money, and get a better set. But that's just my opinion (although, I do own an A/V store...)
The fact that THERE ARE NO FULL HDTV's out there now. Every TV that they say are HDTV or Digital TV Ready require a convertor box!
Sorry, but this is just un-true. There are several models from various manufacturers that have the tuners built-in. The Samsung units spring to mind.
It is also a Good Thing that the tuners aren't always built-in. The capabilities and features of HDTV tuners have progressed rapidly in the last few years, recent models include USB and firewire I/O ports, etc. I'd rather have an HDTV with an out-board tuner, so that I can upgrade the tuner.
So are there any *inexpensive* devices (which of course would work under Linux) which can overlay graphics onto a std. video signal in real-time? Through chromakeying or some other method?
You're not going to get cheap graphics overlay, but you could use a PIC-TV from CC Concepts to do text overlay for about $170.
The Ucentric hoax is actually quite old.
You might have confused it with something else. Ucentric is participating in various upcoming conferences based around home technologies (or so their news page states). It would seem to be an awful lot of work to perpetuate a hoax...
I have a box at home that does this Stargate, but it's probably more expensive ($899) than what you're looking for. Of course, it does a helluva lot more than just answer the phone.
Where are you getting the mp3s from? THE COMPUTER. :)
/., but for parents that want to help/watch their kids surf the 'net, etc it seems the box is going to blend a lot of the common wish-list items together.
The concept would be that all MP3's could be stored centrally, then played back on any PC or A/V system in the house. Almost like an in-home Napster server
I'd admit that the box may not work out for the uber-geek that tends to be drawn to
Look at the popularity of the RF units from x10.com where people want to stream MP3's from their PC to their home A/V system and/or to another room. This will accomplish the same thing without the horrible loss in sound quality with the X10.com product.
Unfortunately, people like me who live off campus are left out in the cold :(. :)
Unless college life has changed significantly since I was kicked out of Ferris State, off-campus life beats the hell out of a free PC+dorm room anyday
Locally, we have a high school and junior high that both issue laptops to students to use in their studies. I remember when we couldn't use calculators in school, and now laptops are becoming standard issue...
Like so many other things with technology, this is a double-edged sword. It's great that more people are becoming comfortable with computers, but there are several problems as well. The biggest problem I see is that the curriculum will probably be OS centric, and the OS will likely be Windoze. This gives Microsoft an unfair advantage and headstart. I wish I had the time to develop a linux distro that was education-centric. Something that would allow for easy encrytped distribution/sending of homework assignments (128-bit encrytped wireless NICS, ex.), basic firewalling when the laptop is in a classroom (handled by the local basestation for the RF NICS), and software that was tailored to a learning environment. At the very least the curriculum should support Windows, Linux and Mac OS's so that the students can use what they feel most comfortable with.
I also worry that this may make the students lazy. If you've got spell checkers, thesauruses, and other tools handy on the laptop that might encourage more of a reliance on the technology and less reliance on independant thought. Also, if the laptops are provided by the school, or partially funded by the school, does this mean that the information stored on them is the schools property as well? Will this make it easier to invade students' rights?
FWIW... I didn't mean to imply that TimeWarner/AOL would be the sole backbone provider. I think TW/AOL will eventually end up melting down as they attract a dumber and dumber user base. Soon their best users won't be able to figure out how to use the service, which will collapse upon itself.
Cool news blurb, but I hope that no one that reads /. was really all that surprised by this.
Makes you wonder what it takes to make an ISP
:)
If you read Cringely a few weeks back, you would see that it really doesn't take anything but a name. You can farm out pretty much all the operations, and just sign people up.
Sort of like a digital Amway
I figure it will be about another 8 years until we see the FCC and/or the FTC intervene to break up the _one_ company that will be providing backbone bandwidth on the Internet.
Okay... good comment...
Perhaps "inevitable" would be better than "obvious". It seems that it is/was inevitable that someone would design a way to do this very thing. The solution itself was not an "obivous" design, per se. Then again, maybe it just depends on your own perception. I read this and said "big deal", even after reading all the technical data. He basically hangs a camera over a surface, and then uses a computer to monitor the surface and vibrate/rotate the surface to cause the objects to move as desired.
ry reading the scientist page.... the method used is by no means obvious.
I _did_ read the page. Like I said, he figured out how to harness something that we've all seen. I'm sure he didn't design this on a cocktail napkin, but the general concept is nothing new, IMO.
Basically he noticed that when you vibrate a surface, stuff tends to slide around. By controlling the surface and the vibrations, he can make objects move at will.
I dunno, this almost seems like an "obvious patent" type of thing. How many times have you watched something dance around on top of the washing machine, or watch your pager glide across the desktop when set to vibrate mode? While it's sorta neat that this guy is controlling the movements, it's hardly (IMO) all that much of a breakthrough.
The whole thing seems really dumbed-down when they suggest a room that can re-arrange itself. Do people rearrange their rooms SO MUCH, that they would go through the expense of imbedding a bunch of motors in special honeycomb floor?
They will only learn when their customers start to feel the same way you do.
How true. Unfortuneately their real target customer is large businesses. It's easy for them to convince some dweeby IT pruchasing manager to buy into the M$ propaganda by simply passing out free lunches and cheesy swag. I know, I've been there... I've seen some very devoted anti-microsoft types come back from Redmond with a leather jacket and a frontal lobotamy. It's scary, I tell you.
I'm sure MICROS~1 will have some PR twist on this, blah blah blah. Although I think this story was VERY worthwhile of inclusion on /., I'm almost getting tired of hearing about Microsofts security flaws, and their inability to deal with them. Microsoft has more hardware, software and programmer resources than probably any other company today. They have NO excuse (IMO) to not address something like this immediately,
Until, of course, the TiVo hackers figure out the Filesystem the TiVo uses
And the compression algorithm, and hope that it doesn't require some other piece of on-baord hardware for a dependency. My guess is that there are certain pieces of hardware/chipsets that handle the comporession/decompression, which would make it VERY difficult to view a recording on any box other than the one it was recorded on, or at the very least, on a non-Tivo box. That's probably why Tivo hasn't sent legal letters to any of the public Tivo hacking pages, they're not worried.