True, I hadn't thought of that, but I was going to give up after a minute until I found out that if you really dig all you need to do is fill out a form and they will send you off a login ID. I assumed that other/.ers would too, being the neurotic crowd we are!
Pretty damn cool. Now I am waiting my week until I get my Username and ID!!!!!
Everyone should check out PACER. It is free to register and if fairly cheap to access, and only costs $.07 a page and you will only get billed if you access over $10 worth of information. You can get access to TONS of information about US Court cases.
I never knew there was such easy accesible tools to information that the government owes us anyways. Takes about a week for them to e-mail you a password, and you are free to register as a individual citizen!
In fact the FCC has already decided sideband usage for DTV over broadcast waves, I am sure there are other unique uses in this band, especially if two way communication were eventually allowed. In fact DTV broadcasters will be able to squeeze a lot into a current "channel". I think I remember reading somewhere that four channels could be compressed into an existing one.
Truly the slicing and dicing of this spectrum is antiquated. We should be like the British and cut our ties with backwards compatability, like when they moved from B&W to Color.
What about heavy usage of UWB in that spectrum. I am not sure how far our TV signals travel in a low wattage scenario, but I am sure you could cram a lot into UWB that included this spectrum.
What about truly interative TV and or features? Maybe high grade digital audio?
There are 3 spectrums out there, and UHF is way underused. Lets get some more bang for the buck!
When I read the statement it seemed to indicate that Futuremark was unsure how to write comparitve benchmark now that you can "cheat" at the benchmarks.
I can understand that if there are thing in a GPU that can be optimized for an application then you should go ahead and do it, but of course that means how do you truly, evenly compare the performance of one piece of hardware (now with tons of customizable software) versus another one?
Futuremark has a tough time ahead now getting people to believe they add imperical comparive value.
I have been involved in the telecom industry for over 8 years, mostly in the call center arena, merging voice and data, and the thing I have yet to see is a good implimentation of VoIP to the desktop.
An earlier poster made the comment that "a number that follows you anywhere." This would not be a function of the pipe that delivers the call to you. WiFi as it stands now is not a good protocol for VoIP. In general IPv4 is not a good protocol for VoIP, and there Internet is VERY MUCH not a protocol for VoIP. It all has to do with the bandwidth that voice takes, and the unusually high quality that us humans need to have to feel the service is good.
If you want a good VoIP solution, you have to run a seperate pipe to the desktop, on seperate routers to ensure decent bandwidth. You have to use propriety IPv4 QOS and you have to sratch you head a bit when it doesn't work right. Also, you Data folks tend not to understand Voice applications and you have a hard time getting pratical support from your WAN/LAN administrators.
We have heard a lot about carriers switching over VoIP. Well, what they are mostly doing, which is pratical these days, is using it for intra-Central Office traffic, which is fine and dandy when the only thing going over your Pipes is Voice. You can guaruntee the quality, know what the bandwidth usage is, etc... but this isn't much different than ATM except that it has a cool name. A lot of us forget that almost every networking technology (ATM, T1, Fiber, etc) was orginally a voice pipe before it was used on the data side.
GSM, CDMA, etc are GOOD wireless protocols that show what adaptive bitrate protocols can do, WiFi would be abosolutly horrible in its current incarnation. It is a fully cooperative very limited bandwidth protocol. Great for our data bursts, but very bad for the sustained traffic of voice. It has a VERY large overhead, plus you had the overhead of IP and you are at a pratical 3-4Mbs which then has to content with the guy down the hall dragging porn files off a remote server or someone playing Warcraft III with 20 other players. Now even 802.11g/a would be a tough bandwidth to deal with. I don't know the specifications in detail, but I doubt they have any standard QOS features.
While I can agree with the MPEG decoder (and only certain channels are encoded, vs satallite where are channels are encoded at different rates) the IP address thing is wrong. Essentially every channel is allocated a certain bandwidth on the cable which is then decoded by the receiver. While two way communication can happen, it isn't TCP/IP as we know it.
So while there is bandwidth there to supply it, how are you going to maintain the bandwidth used for Analog channels, plus existing Digital Cable, plus Digital Phone, broadband Internet and these new services without saturation?
I don't have specifics on actually what cable can reasonably carry if it wasn't carrying anything else, but I still see 802.11g not adding a whole lot to the mix.
You also point out something interesting, that TCP/IP again is a cooperative networking solution, with the current incarnation IPv4 not having any native QoS, so not only do you have do drop massive Mbps in each house, but you will have large bandwith on each segment. Current cable technology has everyone going over the same pipe. Sometimes your cable modem gets slow, add in these other "free for all" services and your neighbor down the way watching Porn on 5 TVs knocks off your VoIP service! Fun Fun...
Well, it is good to see we are at least producing students that can actually put something together. Working in the consulting field myself, I seldom see people actually able to pull together a presentation.
On the other hand, 802.11g, like all wireless standards are cooperative shared bandwidth. From what I saw, there was a lot of bandwidth need in the presentation.
Also, with any technology that you are going to drop into the home, there are lots of hidden costs, support, hardware, etc as well as distributing and developing the devices necessary to enable not only wireless but VoiP, VOD, etc, etc... so I would say the cost model is a bit flawed.
Also, 802.11g is overkill for current cable modem speeds (upto 800Mbp/s is what I understand). I am not sure you can get that much more over cable at current cable quality (most houses are RG56 and not even RG8, which is what is recommended).
Also, there is a desire (altough draconian) for cable to use cable and telco to use copper and so on and so on...
That this will only create a sense of accomplishment. Eventually spammers will provide throw away addresses that simply reply to get on the white list anyways. The reason they don't do it now is because this challange-authenticate is not widely accepted.
I still think, and am quite happy with, a Bayesian Filtering application that Mozilla Mail currently offers. Very little spam leaks through and I have only had one false positive in almost 3 months of using it.
Well, I meant cool gadgets are a minimal requirement , in my opinion. Obviously it had to be mis-managemement or something else.
Someone replied Apple, and I agree, they show how you can make a profit off of cool gadgets.
I looked at SonicBlue's financial statement and they lost 30 million on 60 million revenue. Something is wacked when you can't you lose that much money... The sad thing is that someone else will be able to pick up their cool gadgets for 10 cents on the dollar and make a profit (I hope). Oh well...
After much research I bought my ReplayTV a month ago. I love the thing. With the commercial skip and the quick advance, I actually enjoy my favorite shows now.
I wonder if D&M will try to maintain the unique value that ReplayTV presents. It is a hackers paradise. I also paid my $299 for lifetime activation. I also got an e-mail asking about a future product that was just a ReplayTV player that would stream video from your recorder to the player in another room. I was really excited about that as well...
SonicBlue did such a great job buying up all these cool gadgets, I wonder what really went to their demise?
His points are quite interesting, but the question I have is that if no one gets into the arena (and obviously 100 is a lot) then who will supply the demand? He has obviously figured out what challenges there are, but you have to be able to overcome them, because there is such a huge demand for interactive group fantasy. People want to escape.
What about a decentralized approach. A grid based or peer to peer for persistant worlds. You might have to increase the bandwith to double check nodes and the like to prevent hacking, but some of the problems (DOS, investment in infrastructure) would go away.
In the world we live in we can only see clearly and understand the world that is near by, that doesn't mean we have to be connected to a server that is one giant persistant world. There could be areas of the world hosted on several region peers. The client would be required to take on some function of the world and it could be totally decentralized.
>I may be missing some big point here, but how >can unsolicited mail be opt in? If I've opted in >to receive it, then it's not unsolicited, is it?
Well, lets say you fill out a registration form for a piece of software. You can agree to get advertising. There is a difference between a regular opt-in news letter and a random spattering of e-mail or phone calls offering services you didn't ask for, even if you agreed to share your information. Does that make sense?
Probally the main reason it doesn't mention that it needs to be Opt-In is because of EU Privacy rules, all unsolicted advertising is supposed to be Opt-In.
All forms have to be written that you proactively allow sharing of your information, if you don't expressily give your consent, your information cannot be shared.
Of course the traffic may not be to chase after obscure documents, but simply more larger files, more peer-to-peer, more p0rn, etc...
I wonder if the traffic can be correlated back to the actual number of "transactions" that are being done on the Internet? Like when I visit a website, a lot of the traffic (large banners, pop-up, etc) aren't really what I am doing or after.
Is this simply a bandwith increase or are we talking about more real transactions? Probablly a bit of both...
While this makes sense, Amazon.com has a track record of forcing fee's for their frivolous patents. While I don't fault them for trying to cover their butts, they have proven (One-Click with Barnes and Noble) that they want to do more than that.
And it still doesn't address that patents are being given to people who did not truly invent what they now have a patent for. Patents are for novell and usefull ideas, not ones society as a whole came up with.
I would welcome some version of DRM for the individual. I work for a consulting company and I have had cases where other consulting companies have taken documents that I put my blood sweat and tears into, changed a title page and then went an took work away from me, let alone co-workers who have done the same.
We have often resorted to creating everything in Acrobat, which is somewhat limited, but I really would like more control. It would be great to give my team complete write access, but not worry about who I ship the document to.
It is upto me then to come to agreement with my clients about how much access they have to the documentation I produce.
While I can understand the frustration with boilerplate letters to the editor, I personally feel that boilerplate letters to our members of congress is a good thing.
I am glad grass roots organizations bring to my attention issues that are important to me, and I have taken the time to print off a form letter, sign it and mail it off to my senators and representative.
The corporations use big money to influence government, the grass roots people should use whatever means they have to get us to speak up, even if it is just a click away...
Actually, the only reason, as a minor, you cannot attend an R Rated movie is not because of any law, but because the movie industry agrees to not allow it. The MPAA is not government mandated. It is a studio group that comes up with the ratings. The same goes for NC-17. It is the theaters that agree to follow to the MPAA recommendation.
Also, it is the retailers that voluntarily follow the guideline by not renting or selling to minors.
Nor Pornography is a totally different story. Selling or renting or showing Pornography to a minor usually fall under child sex crimes. It is up to the courts to determine if a particular image/video/movie etc would be considered pornography.
Movies are no longer classified as X or XXX by the MPAA. These are self applied ratings to encourage the purchase of the materials by adults. Usually pornography is never submitted to the MPAA, which means that average theater won't show it, etc...
Since none of the movies mature content (violence, sex, adult themes) is actually law, the Gaming industry should follow the same. It should be companies that refuse to rent, sell, or produce games to minors. Congress should have no business in it.
I wasn't trying to say even Linux should rule the dekstop. It may not be the space for it. But obviously this group (and other) think the way to make Linux suceed is to copy Windows, which I feel is a bad premise.
If someone wanted to make Linux or a *NIX type OS be dekstop friendly only needs to look at MacOS X for an example. But that require not open. The only reason there is any standardization in desktop interface is because we have had them forced on us, between Windows and MacOS. I doubt anyone can get 90% of people to use a particular desktop interface if it is OSS. That means it would be difficult if not impossible for Linux to ever suceed at being on 90% of peoples desktops. Which may not be a goal of people, but it obviously is of certain people.
It seems like this is a good way to get your ass sued for copyright or trademark infringment. Those screen shots do look like XP, and though Microsoft fended off the Apple "look-and-feel", I would be afraid of 10,000 Microsoft lawyers coming after me. Even if they lose, it would be in their best interests to sue these folks.
Also, what is the true purpose for something like this. Hoping to sell it to the Lindows folks? Seems like a lot of talent being wasted on a less than effective interface in the first place.
To rule the Desktop, Linux needs to be more user friendly. Copying Windows UI is not necessairly the best way to do this.
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True, I hadn't thought of that, but I was going to give up after a minute until I found out that if you really dig all you need to do is fill out a form and they will send you off a login ID. I assumed that other /.ers would too, being the neurotic crowd we are!
Pretty damn cool. Now I am waiting my week until I get my Username and ID!!!!!
Everyone should check out PACER. It is free to register and if fairly cheap to access, and only costs $.07 a page and you will only get billed if you access over $10 worth of information. You can get access to TONS of information about US Court cases.
I never knew there was such easy accesible tools to information that the government owes us anyways. Takes about a week for them to e-mail you a password, and you are free to register as a individual citizen!
Hack into the system... focus all the telescopes on your neighbors window and watch her get undressed from every angle!
In fact the FCC has already decided sideband usage for DTV over broadcast waves, I am sure there are other unique uses in this band, especially if two way communication were eventually allowed. In fact DTV broadcasters will be able to squeeze a lot into a current "channel". I think I remember reading somewhere that four channels could be compressed into an existing one.
Truly the slicing and dicing of this spectrum is antiquated. We should be like the British and cut our ties with backwards compatability, like when they moved from B&W to Color.
What about heavy usage of UWB in that spectrum. I am not sure how far our TV signals travel in a low wattage scenario, but I am sure you could cram a lot into UWB that included this spectrum.
What about truly interative TV and or features? Maybe high grade digital audio?
There are 3 spectrums out there, and UHF is way underused. Lets get some more bang for the buck!
When I read the statement it seemed to indicate that Futuremark was unsure how to write comparitve benchmark now that you can "cheat" at the benchmarks.
I can understand that if there are thing in a GPU that can be optimized for an application then you should go ahead and do it, but of course that means how do you truly, evenly compare the performance of one piece of hardware (now with tons of customizable software) versus another one?
Futuremark has a tough time ahead now getting people to believe they add imperical comparive value.
I have been involved in the telecom industry for over 8 years, mostly in the call center arena, merging voice and data, and the thing I have yet to see is a good implimentation of VoIP to the desktop.
An earlier poster made the comment that "a number that follows you anywhere." This would not be a function of the pipe that delivers the call to you. WiFi as it stands now is not a good protocol for VoIP. In general IPv4 is not a good protocol for VoIP, and there Internet is VERY MUCH not a protocol for VoIP. It all has to do with the bandwidth that voice takes, and the unusually high quality that us humans need to have to feel the service is good.
If you want a good VoIP solution, you have to run a seperate pipe to the desktop, on seperate routers to ensure decent bandwidth. You have to use propriety IPv4 QOS and you have to sratch you head a bit when it doesn't work right. Also, you Data folks tend not to understand Voice applications and you have a hard time getting pratical support from your WAN/LAN administrators.
We have heard a lot about carriers switching over VoIP. Well, what they are mostly doing, which is pratical these days, is using it for intra-Central Office traffic, which is fine and dandy when the only thing going over your Pipes is Voice. You can guaruntee the quality, know what the bandwidth usage is, etc... but this isn't much different than ATM except that it has a cool name. A lot of us forget that almost every networking technology (ATM, T1, Fiber, etc) was orginally a voice pipe before it was used on the data side.
GSM, CDMA, etc are GOOD wireless protocols that show what adaptive bitrate protocols can do, WiFi would be abosolutly horrible in its current incarnation. It is a fully cooperative very limited bandwidth protocol. Great for our data bursts, but very bad for the sustained traffic of voice. It has a VERY large overhead, plus you had the overhead of IP and you are at a pratical 3-4Mbs which then has to content with the guy down the hall dragging porn files off a remote server or someone playing Warcraft III with 20 other players. Now even 802.11g/a would be a tough bandwidth to deal with. I don't know the specifications in detail, but I doubt they have any standard QOS features.
Anyways, that is my 2-3 cents...
While I can agree with the MPEG decoder (and only certain channels are encoded, vs satallite where are channels are encoded at different rates) the IP address thing is wrong. Essentially every channel is allocated a certain bandwidth on the cable which is then decoded by the receiver. While two way communication can happen, it isn't TCP/IP as we know it.
So while there is bandwidth there to supply it, how are you going to maintain the bandwidth used for Analog channels, plus existing Digital Cable, plus Digital Phone, broadband Internet and these new services without saturation?
I don't have specifics on actually what cable can reasonably carry if it wasn't carrying anything else, but I still see 802.11g not adding a whole lot to the mix.
You also point out something interesting, that TCP/IP again is a cooperative networking solution, with the current incarnation IPv4 not having any native QoS, so not only do you have do drop massive Mbps in each house, but you will have large bandwith on each segment. Current cable technology has everyone going over the same pipe. Sometimes your cable modem gets slow, add in these other "free for all" services and your neighbor down the way watching Porn on 5 TVs knocks off your VoIP service! Fun Fun...
Ooops... my mistake... my cable numbers got goofed up in my head...
Well, it is good to see we are at least producing students that can actually put something together. Working in the consulting field myself, I seldom see people actually able to pull together a presentation.
On the other hand, 802.11g, like all wireless standards are cooperative shared bandwidth. From what I saw, there was a lot of bandwidth need in the presentation.
Also, with any technology that you are going to drop into the home, there are lots of hidden costs, support, hardware, etc as well as distributing and developing the devices necessary to enable not only wireless but VoiP, VOD, etc, etc... so I would say the cost model is a bit flawed.
Also, 802.11g is overkill for current cable modem speeds (upto 800Mbp/s is what I understand). I am not sure you can get that much more over cable at current cable quality (most houses are RG56 and not even RG8, which is what is recommended).
Also, there is a desire (altough draconian) for cable to use cable and telco to use copper and so on and so on...
Keep up the good thoughts though!
That this will only create a sense of accomplishment. Eventually spammers will provide throw away addresses that simply reply to get on the white list anyways. The reason they don't do it now is because this challange-authenticate is not widely accepted.
I still think, and am quite happy with, a Bayesian Filtering application that Mozilla Mail currently offers. Very little spam leaks through and I have only had one false positive in almost 3 months of using it.
I even saw this one in the Amazing Future! but couldn't stop it...
Dope here. Thanks for playing!
Well, I meant cool gadgets are a minimal requirement , in my opinion. Obviously it had to be mis-managemement or something else.
Someone replied Apple, and I agree, they show how you can make a profit off of cool gadgets.
I looked at SonicBlue's financial statement and they lost 30 million on 60 million revenue. Something is wacked when you can't you lose that much money... The sad thing is that someone else will be able to pick up their cool gadgets for 10 cents on the dollar and make a profit (I hope). Oh well...
After much research I bought my ReplayTV a month ago. I love the thing. With the commercial skip and the quick advance, I actually enjoy my favorite shows now.
I wonder if D&M will try to maintain the unique value that ReplayTV presents. It is a hackers paradise. I also paid my $299 for lifetime activation. I also got an e-mail asking about a future product that was just a ReplayTV player that would stream video from your recorder to the player in another room. I was really excited about that as well...
SonicBlue did such a great job buying up all these cool gadgets, I wonder what really went to their demise?
His points are quite interesting, but the question I have is that if no one gets into the arena (and obviously 100 is a lot) then who will supply the demand? He has obviously figured out what challenges there are, but you have to be able to overcome them, because there is such a huge demand for interactive group fantasy. People want to escape.
What about a decentralized approach. A grid based or peer to peer for persistant worlds. You might have to increase the bandwith to double check nodes and the like to prevent hacking, but some of the problems (DOS, investment in infrastructure) would go away.
In the world we live in we can only see clearly and understand the world that is near by, that doesn't mean we have to be connected to a server that is one giant persistant world. There could be areas of the world hosted on several region peers. The client would be required to take on some function of the world and it could be totally decentralized.
Any thoughts comments?
>I may be missing some big point here, but how
>can unsolicited mail be opt in? If I've opted in
>to receive it, then it's not unsolicited, is it?
Well, lets say you fill out a registration form for a piece of software. You can agree to get advertising. There is a difference between a regular opt-in news letter and a random spattering of e-mail or phone calls offering services you didn't ask for, even if you agreed to share your information. Does that make sense?
Probally the main reason it doesn't mention that it needs to be Opt-In is because of EU Privacy rules, all unsolicted advertising is supposed to be Opt-In.
All forms have to be written that you proactively allow sharing of your information, if you don't expressily give your consent, your information cannot be shared.
The US could learn a lot from EU Privacy Laws.
Of course the traffic may not be to chase after obscure documents, but simply more larger files, more peer-to-peer, more p0rn, etc...
I wonder if the traffic can be correlated back to the actual number of "transactions" that are being done on the Internet? Like when I visit a website, a lot of the traffic (large banners, pop-up, etc) aren't really what I am doing or after.
Is this simply a bandwith increase or are we talking about more real transactions? Probablly a bit of both...
While this makes sense, Amazon.com has a track record of forcing fee's for their frivolous patents. While I don't fault them for trying to cover their butts, they have proven (One-Click with Barnes and Noble) that they want to do more than that.
And it still doesn't address that patents are being given to people who did not truly invent what they now have a patent for. Patents are for novell and usefull ideas, not ones society as a whole came up with.
Probablly being hosted on a 2600 and just melted down. I was rather curious, I guess I will have to wait.
Suing is not an option. Long legal battles, court cases, etc. and only gives money to lawyers.
I would welcome some version of DRM for the individual. I work for a consulting company and I have had cases where other consulting companies have taken documents that I put my blood sweat and tears into, changed a title page and then went an took work away from me, let alone co-workers who have done the same.
We have often resorted to creating everything in Acrobat, which is somewhat limited, but I really would like more control. It would be great to give my team complete write access, but not worry about who I ship the document to.
It is upto me then to come to agreement with my clients about how much access they have to the documentation I produce.
While I can understand the frustration with boilerplate letters to the editor, I personally feel that boilerplate letters to our members of congress is a good thing.
I am glad grass roots organizations bring to my attention issues that are important to me, and I have taken the time to print off a form letter, sign it and mail it off to my senators and representative.
The corporations use big money to influence government, the grass roots people should use whatever means they have to get us to speak up, even if it is just a click away...
Actually, the only reason, as a minor, you cannot attend an R Rated movie is not because of any law, but because the movie industry agrees to not allow it. The MPAA is not government mandated. It is a studio group that comes up with the ratings. The same goes for NC-17. It is the theaters that agree to follow to the MPAA recommendation.
Also, it is the retailers that voluntarily follow the guideline by not renting or selling to minors.
Nor Pornography is a totally different story. Selling or renting or showing Pornography to a minor usually fall under child sex crimes. It is up to the courts to determine if a particular image/video/movie etc would be considered pornography.
Movies are no longer classified as X or XXX by the MPAA. These are self applied ratings to encourage the purchase of the materials by adults. Usually pornography is never submitted to the MPAA, which means that average theater won't show it, etc...
Since none of the movies mature content (violence, sex, adult themes) is actually law, the Gaming industry should follow the same. It should be companies that refuse to rent, sell, or produce games to minors. Congress should have no business in it.
I wasn't trying to say even Linux should rule the dekstop. It may not be the space for it. But obviously this group (and other) think the way to make Linux suceed is to copy Windows, which I feel is a bad premise.
If someone wanted to make Linux or a *NIX type OS be dekstop friendly only needs to look at MacOS X for an example. But that require not open. The only reason there is any standardization in desktop interface is because we have had them forced on us, between Windows and MacOS. I doubt anyone can get 90% of people to use a particular desktop interface if it is OSS. That means it would be difficult if not impossible for Linux to ever suceed at being on 90% of peoples desktops. Which may not be a goal of people, but it obviously is of certain people.
It seems like this is a good way to get your ass sued for copyright or trademark infringment. Those screen shots do look like XP, and though Microsoft fended off the Apple "look-and-feel", I would be afraid of 10,000 Microsoft lawyers coming after me. Even if they lose, it would be in their best interests to sue these folks.
Also, what is the true purpose for something like this. Hoping to sell it to the Lindows folks? Seems like a lot of talent being wasted on a less than effective interface in the first place.
To rule the Desktop, Linux needs to be more user friendly. Copying Windows UI is not necessairly the best way to do this.