Yes I think you can only get this sort of accuracy with some sort of enhancement system. There are at least two different enhancement systems out there, one is mostly for marine use and uses land-based beacon stations, the other is satellite based and uses two geosync birds over North America to transmit correction info to capable receivers. It's called WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and a lot of inexpensive receivers are capable of using it now. However, that said I've never actually gotten a strong WAAS signal in any sort of treecover. Also it's not germane to this discussion since it's North America only.
If you want something that's going to work everywhere, you're pretty much restricted to plane-jane GPS service.
OT: But has anyone heard anything about the GPS-type system that the Europeans were talking about building a few years ago? I think there was a Slashdot article on it.
Actually, GPS does require a very accurate clock. Several of them, in fact. Luckily, they put them way up in the sky, on satellites. This is how the system works: the GPS satellites are constantly transmitting a signal which contains (among other things) their ID code and the time. The receiver uses these time signals to figure out how far away the satellites are, and from there discover its position. (This is a gross oversimplification, but you get the idea.) An atomic clock is NOT required in the receiver, or on the ground at all.
I find it interesting that they're talking about having the movie go straight to DVD. I guess maybe I'm biased, but the straight-to-home-video market was always a very low budget domain. So I'm curious as to whether this will break the B-rated mold. I can't see a Futurama movie doing well in theaters, so I think it's a good move...I just wonder whether maybe that will catch on more generally. I could think of a bunch more series shows that are definitely movie potential, but probably wouldn't draw millions upon millions into theaters.
Maybe DVD has raised the worthiness of direct-to-home-video in the eyes of producers from the network-made-for-tv ghetto that was VHS. If so, that's definitely a Good Thing.
Just because the government builds water mains, sewer lines, and (in the past) underwrote power projects doesn't mean they give the end product away free.
You pay for your water, at least where I live if you connect to the city sewer, you pay annually for that as well. And of course electricity costs money. But in each case much of the infrastructure development was done at public expense, because no corporation was willing to take up the project, either because of unprofitability, risk, or time-scale. But they're still worthwhile, because having the infrastructure there benefits citizens by raising the standard of living in the long run. At least that's the theory.
In L.A., no company wanted to pay for FTTH, but the residents still want it and are willing to use their tax revenue for it. In theory, I fully support this. They voted, they should get it.
What I don't support though, is the State and Federal subsidies that L.A. will probably get for this project, because as someone on the East Coast, I didn't vote on the project and I'll never see any benefit, so I don't want to pay for it. However if they want to use their own city taxes for such a project, more power to them.
Well, what the municipalities really maintain is the road network, not just "a road."
Of course, a stretch of road, in the middle of nowhere, connected to nothing, would be simply an object. Over time, it would deteriorate, and eventually become nothing but a line of dust. The roads which are built by the government are first of all part of a complex network, useful not only because of what they are, but because of other roads that they connect to. Also, they're useful because they are maintained.
Really, the municipalities are in the business of road maintenance. Road construction is simply a sideline. However, because much of the same equipment is used for road construction as in maintenance, they might do construction from time to time -- and why not, if they can do it cheaply. However I know where I live, road construction in new developments is normally handled by private contractors, and then later upkeep handled by the state.
But the real reason why municipalities do maintenance, or anything at all for that matter, is because there is a perceived public interest in doing so. People think that maintaining the road network is important, and they also think that the government can do it better than private industry can. Thus, they vote and continue to allow funding to be allocated for those purposes. Although some might argue that private firms could do a better job maintaining the roads, I think they'd be in the minority.
Our government however is not in the business of producing cars, because most people would not agree that this is a function better handled by the government than public industry. (Except maybe for the few diehard fans of the Trabant.)
What we are seeing in the case of internet access is a market that was previously served only by corporations, but poorly. As a result, people are going to the polls and demanding (retroactively, in this case) that their government provide a service which private industry is not. That is certainly their right, and given the history of the U.S. I very much doubt that people would do this unless they felt dramatically under-served by Industry.
The communication-industry, if they had two brain cells to rub together, would do itself a favor to stand back and let the people through on this one. They might just find themselves getting a very nice free ride in a few years: it's doubtful that the local government really wants to operate an ISP, once the infrastructure is built they'll probably want someone to operate it and provide content down the fiber. If the telcos and cablecos haven't alienated consumers too badly by then, they'd be in a perfect position to step in. But at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the people told them where to stick it and cast out further for a content provider.
With all the money that corporations spend trying to understand their markets, it slays me that they can be so blind when 'their market' rises up and kicks them so savagely in the ass for their slowness and attitude.
What would be more useful would be to have a display, a set of 5 LEDs would be enough, giving the status of the current Wifi signal strength on the outside of the case. If I were going to choose the location, I'd put it on the rear "spine" of the laptop, because it's what normally shows up when you have it in a bag.
Yes, I know there are little keychain dongles you can get which do this, I even own one, but that's just another thing to carry around / lose / need batteries for / etc. It would be a lot nicer if they just built that little circuit into the case and attached it to the regular antenna.
The GPS would be another nice feature. I've toyed with the idea of attaching a GPS unit to my laptop, but it would require a rats nest of adaptors, since I don't have a serial port, and I'd probably have to velcro the receiver to the top of the screen. Not very elegant. Even if I bundled everything up nice and tightly, it would just be another thing to get caught when I'm hauling it in and out of the bag...it really needs to be built in.
This is an excellent point which should be stressed further.
However, I think Novell was aided in this respect because they (assumedly) use their own GroupWise package rather extensively, and as it exists for Linux, there isn't a lot of accustomization required on the user end there, provided that the Linux version is similar to the Windows one.
The biggest leap they probably had was from MS Office to OpenOffice, and from the article it seems like they're taking that one fairly slowly, letting people wean themselves off the MS platform with dual-boot and make the jump voluntarily.
I'd imagine that if your main piece of software (which these days seems to be the email / calendar / address book program) wasn't available on Linux and identical in use to the current platform, then the upgrade would be much harder. By having the main application be the same, you give users something they can cling to that's similar, when they're exploring the new OS. Without that, I expect a lot of people might feel lost.
I think it's more subtle than any particular fear of termination; except for those working with either classified or strongly proprietary information (including financial information/predictions), simply discussing your work in general terms in public wouldn't be grounds for termination, yet people seem to avoid this. I think it's more that people want to keep their work lives separate from their personal ones, and their online ones from that.
Plus, if you work at a tech company, chances are you're not the only person at your firm who reads Slashdot. If you give enough personal details, eventually it becomes obvious to someone else in your office who you are online. Even if you never say anything that you wouldn't stand behind in public, it defeats the purpose of a semi-anonymous/psuedonymous forum.
What I still don't understand (and as I don't go there anymore I've never had much motivation to think hard on the subject) is how they keep the client computer from spoofing it's system type. Okay, so maybe at the moment it's easier to comply with the requirements than spoof them, especially if the requirements are only something like 'have a virus scanner,' but what if the requirements were 'must have this anti-pirated-music scanner and run it daily'? Then there'd be a serious market for a utility that deceived the network, by appearing to be a Linux (or BSD, BeOS, Amiga, whatever) box instead of windows.
The whole system just seems flawed, since it depends on the client computer (which is not trusted -- otherwise why are we going through all this stuff?) to correctly report it's OS type.
Scary. I think I'm going to go clean my assault rifle now.:)
Seriously though, DVR boxes and content-protected television have only reached a small percentage of the American market. Although I can't prove this to you, my feeling is that that segment of the market is comprised mostly of early adopter types, who tend to be more willing than average to put up with corporate bullshit, in order to be the first person on their block to have X, whether X is a Hidef-capable TiVo or ultra-hifi digital audio on SACD.
The average American consumer, of which there are lots (and who doesn't upgrade very often), and whose VCR is probably flashing "12:00" right now, will probably be a lot less tolerant of DRM, especially when it starts to interfere with things he/she always used to be able to do. Remember, those people will be going directly from their old VCR and stack of unbranded blank cassettes to 'content-protected' television, without witnessing any of the strange machinations or compromises that spawned it (Divx, etc.). I think when the wide deployments of these technologies start, we'll start to see a backlash. The question is whether the technology will by then be too entrenched by the early adopters and the networks for the average guy to reject it, when he finds out he can't tape the Super Bowl, or load that new "CD" onto his iPod.
My university network implemented this just as I was leaving last year. It was some Cisco scheme, and required you to download and install a client program if you had a Windows machine, which would scan your system for viruses and spyware and then report it 'safe' to the upstream network. Only then would it issue you an IP. I think it would only report the computer 'safe' if it had been updated recently also, providing a very nice way to force users to continually update their software. I wonder how long it will take before systems like this force people to spring for paid upgrades? Maybe they already have.
Oddly enough there wasn't a client program for Mac or Linux, and if your computer reported itself as being something other than Windows, it would just let you through unhindered, I'm told. Seems it wouldn't take much to fudge your Windows system to report itself as a Linux or Mac box.
As much as I dislike to say it, speaking as someone who isn't a British citizen (subject?), you are correct. If there is anyone who has absolutely no claim whatsoever on the symphonies, it's all the rest of us out on the Internet who never paid into the BBC system. But for the reasons you pointed out (DRM nightmare) it's probably not worthwhile for the BBC to try and separate those who have paid from those who haven't. And also, who knows, maybe they're just nice like that.
But none of it undermines my original point, which is that argument over whether the BBC ought to exist, and use public moneys--whatever the source--for artistic endeavors, is a separate one from what the record companies are arguing, which is essentially "the BBC is fine, we just want them to charge people twice for the music."
It's the exact same argument as about the National Weather Service in the U.S. recently: AccuWeather doesn't dislike the NWS per se (and in fact probably depends on it for data that it cannot afford to gather), they just want the public to be made to pay again for data which they underwrote the creation of. Although I'm not intimately familiar with the politics of the classical music scene in the U.K., I find it hard to believe that the classical music labels haven't benefited by the subsidies provided by the BBC, directly or otherwise (even if only by the creation of a talented pool of musicians, as others have suggested), so they have reason for it to continue: they would just like it to stop distributing music, regardless of the fact that the public--or at least the TV-owning public, who pay for the BBC via the TV tax--owns those symphonies.
This whole thing reminds me of the software companies who from time to time scream about how evil Free Software is, and how it's going to destroy them, without really considering how they might fit themselves into a new business model. There's still lots of room for money to be made in classical music, even with the BBC giving away free Beethoven symphonies. However rather than demonstrate any adaptability to changing circumstances, the music companies are doing what they do best: suing.
Fine, if you want to debate that, then go to your government representative and ask them to disband the BBC, if you think it's so parasitical.
What the corporations are arguing isn't that the BBC shouldn't exist--which is a defensible assertion, and one I might even be tempted to agree with--but that now, after that organization has been bought and paid for (we can only hope at the behest of the taxpaying public), and the recorded symphonies are to society a sunk cost, that the public who paid for them to be created should pay for them again.
The public HAS ALREADY paid for those symphonies. They have paid for them in their tax dollars, which their elected representatives chose to spend, via the BBC, on their creation via recording. That this payment is vastly more indirect than the payment a customer is used to making for a sound recording is obvious, but it doesn't mean that people who download the symphonies in question are in any way 'stealing' them.
It doesn't matter. Benchmarks are all secondary to the user experience.
As an old sound engineer once told me, over and over, "If it sounds good, it IS good." Well, translate that over to computers: "If it feels fast, it IS fast."
Unless you're doing serious number-crunching where simulations are actually predictive of the actual work you'll be doing, how an OS 'feels' is critically important. Especially if you spend large amounts of your day working at a computer, you want one that FEELS fast and responsive, and it doesn't matter what's going on under the hood in order to achieve it.
If my computer will run the software I need in order to do my work, and do so in a fast and responsive way, then I'm happy with it. When I'm forced by my work to upgrade my software, and the computer starts to bog down, then I upgrade it. The user experience, which is driven by software, drives hardware upgrades.
Everyone is assuming from Jobs' comments that he's planning on using x86 architecture chips, and while this is not a stupid assumption, it's not necessarily the whole and complete truth either.
He just said "Intel" chips. For all we know, it could be IA64/Itanium or something else not binary compatible.
Unless you guys have read something that I haven't, all that Apple has said is that they're going to use "Intel," which by itself doesn't say "x86" or "commodity hardware" or anything else.
Verizon especially won't ever give you a feature like that, because to them the reason that they put cameras in phones is so that poor sobs like you have to pay $1 for "PicMail" or whatever in order to get the images off of your phone and into your email box or another phone. (Oh, sure, you can buy a monthly plan that gets you "unlimited free" image transfers, I'm sure.)
IMO Verizon is the 'most evil' of the cellular phone companies, and has a history of intentionally crippling their hardware when it might get in the way of wringing a few extra cents out of you, but don't hold your breath for 'neat' features that would make your life easier by avoiding the cell company's network.
It is designed to be one-time-use, but people are trying to hack it so they can reuse it.
They are being 'sold' probably below cost, on the expectation that people will turn them back in, to get the video pulled off of them and burned to DVD. Then the camera is refurbished and resold, with a cleared memory and new battery.
However if you can find a way to get the video off yourself, then you can 'break the cycle' and have yourself a cheap digital camcorder.
In order for that to work (have an array of cameras all shooting and then cut one frame from each of them to make "bullet time" type effect) you'd need to somehow have the cameras synchronized, so that you'd know which frame from camera B comes after which frame on camera A, and so on.
I'm not sure if I'm being clear. If not then I apologize -- but I think for your plan to work you'd need to jam all the cameras together (a simple operation on professional cams that have SMPTE Timecode I/O) from a central clock in order to easily pick out the right frames in order.
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"Breakfree CLP" is just the civilian version/brand of the military-issue CLP cleaner that everyone in the military already uses. I'm sure they've got tons and tons of it already over there.
What you probably could send over that they'd appreciate, in terms of gun cleaning, are the cotton bore patches that you use to clean the barrel. I don't know why, but those were always in short supply when I was in the Army. We always ended up cutting up old t-shirts and rags and stuff, which tend to unravel and leave threads on metal protrusions. You can get them in packages of 100 or more at any gun store. Be sure to buy.22-caliber for an M-16.
Also, speaking from experience with the inside of an M-16, Hoppes No. 9 powder solvent works better than CLP and would probably be appreciated, but it's kerosene-based and you probably won't be allowed to ship it over.
I'd recommend sending lots of unscented baby wipes, and if the person wears glasses, the little packages of pre-soaked glasses cleaning cloths. You can find them in the travel-size sections of some drugstores.
The best "toy" I ever had overseas was a cheap Polaroid camera; there are a lot of people in the world that have never seen a photo of themselves, much less been given one. They used to make a cheap thing called the "JoyCam" that produced wallet-size photos and was all-manual, and was pretty small. Might be a cool thing for a guy over there to have.
It would be better called a "one time use" video camera: like the cameras, both film and digital of the same name.
I worked at a major camera-store chain (rhymes with 'zits') a while back, right when they first came out with one time use digital cameras. We were actively discouraged from calling them "disposable," because in reality they were anything but. In order for the company to make a profit, each one had to go out and back at least twice, I think. Probably that number went down as they made more of them, but at least at the beginning they were definitely being 'rented' out for below actual value / manufacturing cost. When they came back to the store, the photos got downloaded (through a proprietary port/interface) and then the camera body was sent back to be refurbished and repackaged.
I assume these video cameras are the same way. It's a natural extension of the technology. I just wonder what the video quality is like.
I think you're exaggerating. First, you only need to put up money if you want to take the book out of the library. So you can always read it there. Second, you only need to take it out if you want to be anonymous--you could take it out as normal with your name/address. And third, you'd have to be so poor as to not be able to afford the collateral on a single book.
I think the number of people who would meet all three criteria would be remarkably small.
And if it really did become an issue, maybe we could come up with some sort of semi-anonymous escrow system, where for your personal information and some small fee, a third party puts up the collateral for the book: kind of like a bail bondsman does if you're in jail and can't make bail.
This is a really good system. I would hope that there aren't so many dangerous books that we need to go to all this, but I can certainly see it getting this way in the future.
So don't take out quite as many books, if you don't have that much collateral, AND you don't want to give your identity.
It's a tradeoff: you can either be anonymous and put up cash in order to be allowed to take books out of the building, or you can give up your identity and other personal information and save the money. It's an issue of how much you think your privacy is worth.
Personally I think this sounds like a really good plan, especially as it would allow people to get checkout access to libraries that they currently can't, because of residency restrictions. For example, if I go visit a friend for a few weeks this summer in another state, and want to take some books out from the library, I either have to borrow my friend's card, or apply for a new one with their address (which could be a problem as I can't prove residency at the address, if the library wants to be strict about it). With a system like this, I could put up some cash and take out whatever I want. The library wouldn't have to care or question where I'm from, because they're covered if I take the books and never come back.
It's practically standard for lawyers who take on cases without payment upfront to take almost 50% of the settlement in return for their services. At least in personal injury and insurance litigation. I can't imagine that class-action stuff is any different.
It's a big industry, and when you look into it very far, the big law firms don't come out looking much better than the big companies they sue.
Uh, no. Decent, midrange headphones are 32-ohms. Really good headphones often have fairly high input impedances, which vary dramatically with frequency: 300-ohms is a fairly standard value.
Not to mention that the optimal audio component--any component--would have an infinite input impedance.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes I think you can only get this sort of accuracy with some sort of enhancement system. There are at least two different enhancement systems out there, one is mostly for marine use and uses land-based beacon stations, the other is satellite based and uses two geosync birds over North America to transmit correction info to capable receivers. It's called WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and a lot of inexpensive receivers are capable of using it now. However, that said I've never actually gotten a strong WAAS signal in any sort of treecover. Also it's not germane to this discussion since it's North America only.
If you want something that's going to work everywhere, you're pretty much restricted to plane-jane GPS service.
OT: But has anyone heard anything about the GPS-type system that the Europeans were talking about building a few years ago? I think there was a Slashdot article on it.
Actually, GPS does require a very accurate clock. Several of them, in fact. Luckily, they put them way up in the sky, on satellites. This is how the system works: the GPS satellites are constantly transmitting a signal which contains (among other things) their ID code and the time. The receiver uses these time signals to figure out how far away the satellites are, and from there discover its position. (This is a gross oversimplification, but you get the idea.) An atomic clock is NOT required in the receiver, or on the ground at all.
:-)
For a less gross oversimplification:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gps/work.html
I find it interesting that they're talking about having the movie go straight to DVD. I guess maybe I'm biased, but the straight-to-home-video market was always a very low budget domain. So I'm curious as to whether this will break the B-rated mold. I can't see a Futurama movie doing well in theaters, so I think it's a good move...I just wonder whether maybe that will catch on more generally. I could think of a bunch more series shows that are definitely movie potential, but probably wouldn't draw millions upon millions into theaters.
Maybe DVD has raised the worthiness of direct-to-home-video in the eyes of producers from the network-made-for-tv ghetto that was VHS. If so, that's definitely a Good Thing.
Just because the government builds water mains, sewer lines, and (in the past) underwrote power projects doesn't mean they give the end product away free.
You pay for your water, at least where I live if you connect to the city sewer, you pay annually for that as well. And of course electricity costs money. But in each case much of the infrastructure development was done at public expense, because no corporation was willing to take up the project, either because of unprofitability, risk, or time-scale. But they're still worthwhile, because having the infrastructure there benefits citizens by raising the standard of living in the long run. At least that's the theory.
In L.A., no company wanted to pay for FTTH, but the residents still want it and are willing to use their tax revenue for it. In theory, I fully support this. They voted, they should get it.
What I don't support though, is the State and Federal subsidies that L.A. will probably get for this project, because as someone on the East Coast, I didn't vote on the project and I'll never see any benefit, so I don't want to pay for it. However if they want to use their own city taxes for such a project, more power to them.
Well, what the municipalities really maintain is the road network, not just "a road."
Of course, a stretch of road, in the middle of nowhere, connected to nothing, would be simply an object. Over time, it would deteriorate, and eventually become nothing but a line of dust. The roads which are built by the government are first of all part of a complex network, useful not only because of what they are, but because of other roads that they connect to. Also, they're useful because they are maintained.
Really, the municipalities are in the business of road maintenance. Road construction is simply a sideline. However, because much of the same equipment is used for road construction as in maintenance, they might do construction from time to time -- and why not, if they can do it cheaply. However I know where I live, road construction in new developments is normally handled by private contractors, and then later upkeep handled by the state.
But the real reason why municipalities do maintenance, or anything at all for that matter, is because there is a perceived public interest in doing so. People think that maintaining the road network is important, and they also think that the government can do it better than private industry can. Thus, they vote and continue to allow funding to be allocated for those purposes. Although some might argue that private firms could do a better job maintaining the roads, I think they'd be in the minority.
Our government however is not in the business of producing cars, because most people would not agree that this is a function better handled by the government than public industry. (Except maybe for the few diehard fans of the Trabant.)
What we are seeing in the case of internet access is a market that was previously served only by corporations, but poorly. As a result, people are going to the polls and demanding (retroactively, in this case) that their government provide a service which private industry is not. That is certainly their right, and given the history of the U.S. I very much doubt that people would do this unless they felt dramatically under-served by Industry.
The communication-industry, if they had two brain cells to rub together, would do itself a favor to stand back and let the people through on this one. They might just find themselves getting a very nice free ride in a few years: it's doubtful that the local government really wants to operate an ISP, once the infrastructure is built they'll probably want someone to operate it and provide content down the fiber. If the telcos and cablecos haven't alienated consumers too badly by then, they'd be in a perfect position to step in. But at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the people told them where to stick it and cast out further for a content provider.
With all the money that corporations spend trying to understand their markets, it slays me that they can be so blind when 'their market' rises up and kicks them so savagely in the ass for their slowness and attitude.
What would be more useful would be to have a display, a set of 5 LEDs would be enough, giving the status of the current Wifi signal strength on the outside of the case. If I were going to choose the location, I'd put it on the rear "spine" of the laptop, because it's what normally shows up when you have it in a bag.
Yes, I know there are little keychain dongles you can get which do this, I even own one, but that's just another thing to carry around / lose / need batteries for / etc. It would be a lot nicer if they just built that little circuit into the case and attached it to the regular antenna.
The GPS would be another nice feature. I've toyed with the idea of attaching a GPS unit to my laptop, but it would require a rats nest of adaptors, since I don't have a serial port, and I'd probably have to velcro the receiver to the top of the screen. Not very elegant. Even if I bundled everything up nice and tightly, it would just be another thing to get caught when I'm hauling it in and out of the bag...it really needs to be built in.
This is an excellent point which should be stressed further.
However, I think Novell was aided in this respect because they (assumedly) use their own GroupWise package rather extensively, and as it exists for Linux, there isn't a lot of accustomization required on the user end there, provided that the Linux version is similar to the Windows one.
The biggest leap they probably had was from MS Office to OpenOffice, and from the article it seems like they're taking that one fairly slowly, letting people wean themselves off the MS platform with dual-boot and make the jump voluntarily.
I'd imagine that if your main piece of software (which these days seems to be the email / calendar / address book program) wasn't available on Linux and identical in use to the current platform, then the upgrade would be much harder. By having the main application be the same, you give users something they can cling to that's similar, when they're exploring the new OS. Without that, I expect a lot of people might feel lost.
I think it's more subtle than any particular fear of termination; except for those working with either classified or strongly proprietary information (including financial information/predictions), simply discussing your work in general terms in public wouldn't be grounds for termination, yet people seem to avoid this. I think it's more that people want to keep their work lives separate from their personal ones, and their online ones from that.
Plus, if you work at a tech company, chances are you're not the only person at your firm who reads Slashdot. If you give enough personal details, eventually it becomes obvious to someone else in your office who you are online. Even if you never say anything that you wouldn't stand behind in public, it defeats the purpose of a semi-anonymous/psuedonymous forum.
What I still don't understand (and as I don't go there anymore I've never had much motivation to think hard on the subject) is how they keep the client computer from spoofing it's system type. Okay, so maybe at the moment it's easier to comply with the requirements than spoof them, especially if the requirements are only something like 'have a virus scanner,' but what if the requirements were 'must have this anti-pirated-music scanner and run it daily'? Then there'd be a serious market for a utility that deceived the network, by appearing to be a Linux (or BSD, BeOS, Amiga, whatever) box instead of windows.
The whole system just seems flawed, since it depends on the client computer (which is not trusted -- otherwise why are we going through all this stuff?) to correctly report it's OS type.
Scary. I think I'm going to go clean my assault rifle now. :)
Seriously though, DVR boxes and content-protected television have only reached a small percentage of the American market. Although I can't prove this to you, my feeling is that that segment of the market is comprised mostly of early adopter types, who tend to be more willing than average to put up with corporate bullshit, in order to be the first person on their block to have X, whether X is a Hidef-capable TiVo or ultra-hifi digital audio on SACD.
The average American consumer, of which there are lots (and who doesn't upgrade very often), and whose VCR is probably flashing "12:00" right now, will probably be a lot less tolerant of DRM, especially when it starts to interfere with things he/she always used to be able to do. Remember, those people will be going directly from their old VCR and stack of unbranded blank cassettes to 'content-protected' television, without witnessing any of the strange machinations or compromises that spawned it (Divx, etc.). I think when the wide deployments of these technologies start, we'll start to see a backlash. The question is whether the technology will by then be too entrenched by the early adopters and the networks for the average guy to reject it, when he finds out he can't tape the Super Bowl, or load that new "CD" onto his iPod.
My university network implemented this just as I was leaving last year. It was some Cisco scheme, and required you to download and install a client program if you had a Windows machine, which would scan your system for viruses and spyware and then report it 'safe' to the upstream network. Only then would it issue you an IP. I think it would only report the computer 'safe' if it had been updated recently also, providing a very nice way to force users to continually update their software. I wonder how long it will take before systems like this force people to spring for paid upgrades? Maybe they already have.
Oddly enough there wasn't a client program for Mac or Linux, and if your computer reported itself as being something other than Windows, it would just let you through unhindered, I'm told. Seems it wouldn't take much to fudge your Windows system to report itself as a Linux or Mac box.
As much as I dislike to say it, speaking as someone who isn't a British citizen (subject?), you are correct. If there is anyone who has absolutely no claim whatsoever on the symphonies, it's all the rest of us out on the Internet who never paid into the BBC system. But for the reasons you pointed out (DRM nightmare) it's probably not worthwhile for the BBC to try and separate those who have paid from those who haven't. And also, who knows, maybe they're just nice like that.
But none of it undermines my original point, which is that argument over whether the BBC ought to exist, and use public moneys--whatever the source--for artistic endeavors, is a separate one from what the record companies are arguing, which is essentially "the BBC is fine, we just want them to charge people twice for the music."
It's the exact same argument as about the National Weather Service in the U.S. recently: AccuWeather doesn't dislike the NWS per se (and in fact probably depends on it for data that it cannot afford to gather), they just want the public to be made to pay again for data which they underwrote the creation of. Although I'm not intimately familiar with the politics of the classical music scene in the U.K., I find it hard to believe that the classical music labels haven't benefited by the subsidies provided by the BBC, directly or otherwise (even if only by the creation of a talented pool of musicians, as others have suggested), so they have reason for it to continue: they would just like it to stop distributing music, regardless of the fact that the public--or at least the TV-owning public, who pay for the BBC via the TV tax--owns those symphonies.
This whole thing reminds me of the software companies who from time to time scream about how evil Free Software is, and how it's going to destroy them, without really considering how they might fit themselves into a new business model. There's still lots of room for money to be made in classical music, even with the BBC giving away free Beethoven symphonies. However rather than demonstrate any adaptability to changing circumstances, the music companies are doing what they do best: suing.
What the corporations are arguing isn't that the BBC shouldn't exist--which is a defensible assertion, and one I might even be tempted to agree with--but that now, after that organization has been bought and paid for (we can only hope at the behest of the taxpaying public), and the recorded symphonies are to society a sunk cost, that the public who paid for them to be created should pay for them again.
The public HAS ALREADY paid for those symphonies. They have paid for them in their tax dollars, which their elected representatives chose to spend, via the BBC, on their creation via recording. That this payment is vastly more indirect than the payment a customer is used to making for a sound recording is obvious, but it doesn't mean that people who download the symphonies in question are in any way 'stealing' them.
It doesn't matter. Benchmarks are all secondary to the user experience.
As an old sound engineer once told me, over and over, "If it sounds good, it IS good." Well, translate that over to computers: "If it feels fast, it IS fast."
Unless you're doing serious number-crunching where simulations are actually predictive of the actual work you'll be doing, how an OS 'feels' is critically important. Especially if you spend large amounts of your day working at a computer, you want one that FEELS fast and responsive, and it doesn't matter what's going on under the hood in order to achieve it.
If my computer will run the software I need in order to do my work, and do so in a fast and responsive way, then I'm happy with it. When I'm forced by my work to upgrade my software, and the computer starts to bog down, then I upgrade it. The user experience, which is driven by software, drives hardware upgrades.
This should be modded up.
Everyone is assuming from Jobs' comments that he's planning on using x86 architecture chips, and while this is not a stupid assumption, it's not necessarily the whole and complete truth either.
He just said "Intel" chips. For all we know, it could be IA64/Itanium or something else not binary compatible.
Unless you guys have read something that I haven't, all that Apple has said is that they're going to use "Intel," which by itself doesn't say "x86" or "commodity hardware" or anything else.
Don't hold your breath.
Verizon especially won't ever give you a feature like that, because to them the reason that they put cameras in phones is so that poor sobs like you have to pay $1 for "PicMail" or whatever in order to get the images off of your phone and into your email box or another phone. (Oh, sure, you can buy a monthly plan that gets you "unlimited free" image transfers, I'm sure.)
IMO Verizon is the 'most evil' of the cellular phone companies, and has a history of intentionally crippling their hardware when it might get in the way of wringing a few extra cents out of you, but don't hold your breath for 'neat' features that would make your life easier by avoiding the cell company's network.
It is designed to be one-time-use, but people are trying to hack it so they can reuse it.
They are being 'sold' probably below cost, on the expectation that people will turn them back in, to get the video pulled off of them and burned to DVD. Then the camera is refurbished and resold, with a cleared memory and new battery.
However if you can find a way to get the video off yourself, then you can 'break the cycle' and have yourself a cheap digital camcorder.
In order for that to work (have an array of cameras all shooting and then cut one frame from each of them to make "bullet time" type effect) you'd need to somehow have the cameras synchronized, so that you'd know which frame from camera B comes after which frame on camera A, and so on.
I'm not sure if I'm being clear. If not then I apologize -- but I think for your plan to work you'd need to jam all the cameras together (a simple operation on professional cams that have SMPTE Timecode I/O) from a central clock in order to easily pick out the right frames in order.
"Breakfree CLP" is just the civilian version/brand of the military-issue CLP cleaner that everyone in the military already uses. I'm sure they've got tons and tons of it already over there.
.22-caliber for an M-16.
What you probably could send over that they'd appreciate, in terms of gun cleaning, are the cotton bore patches that you use to clean the barrel. I don't know why, but those were always in short supply when I was in the Army. We always ended up cutting up old t-shirts and rags and stuff, which tend to unravel and leave threads on metal protrusions. You can get them in packages of 100 or more at any gun store. Be sure to buy
Also, speaking from experience with the inside of an M-16, Hoppes No. 9 powder solvent works better than CLP and would probably be appreciated, but it's kerosene-based and you probably won't be allowed to ship it over.
I'd recommend sending lots of unscented baby wipes, and if the person wears glasses, the little packages of pre-soaked glasses cleaning cloths. You can find them in the travel-size sections of some drugstores.
The best "toy" I ever had overseas was a cheap Polaroid camera; there are a lot of people in the world that have never seen a photo of themselves, much less been given one. They used to make a cheap thing called the "JoyCam" that produced wallet-size photos and was all-manual, and was pretty small. Might be a cool thing for a guy over there to have.
It would be better called a "one time use" video camera: like the cameras, both film and digital of the same name.
I worked at a major camera-store chain (rhymes with 'zits') a while back, right when they first came out with one time use digital cameras. We were actively discouraged from calling them "disposable," because in reality they were anything but. In order for the company to make a profit, each one had to go out and back at least twice, I think. Probably that number went down as they made more of them, but at least at the beginning they were definitely being 'rented' out for below actual value / manufacturing cost. When they came back to the store, the photos got downloaded (through a proprietary port/interface) and then the camera body was sent back to be refurbished and repackaged.
I assume these video cameras are the same way. It's a natural extension of the technology. I just wonder what the video quality is like.
I think you're exaggerating. First, you only need to put up money if you want to take the book out of the library. So you can always read it there. Second, you only need to take it out if you want to be anonymous--you could take it out as normal with your name/address. And third, you'd have to be so poor as to not be able to afford the collateral on a single book.
I think the number of people who would meet all three criteria would be remarkably small.
And if it really did become an issue, maybe we could come up with some sort of semi-anonymous escrow system, where for your personal information and some small fee, a third party puts up the collateral for the book: kind of like a bail bondsman does if you're in jail and can't make bail.
This is a really good system. I would hope that there aren't so many dangerous books that we need to go to all this, but I can certainly see it getting this way in the future.
So don't take out quite as many books, if you don't have that much collateral, AND you don't want to give your identity.
It's a tradeoff: you can either be anonymous and put up cash in order to be allowed to take books out of the building, or you can give up your identity and other personal information and save the money. It's an issue of how much you think your privacy is worth.
Personally I think this sounds like a really good plan, especially as it would allow people to get checkout access to libraries that they currently can't, because of residency restrictions. For example, if I go visit a friend for a few weeks this summer in another state, and want to take some books out from the library, I either have to borrow my friend's card, or apply for a new one with their address (which could be a problem as I can't prove residency at the address, if the library wants to be strict about it). With a system like this, I could put up some cash and take out whatever I want. The library wouldn't have to care or question where I'm from, because they're covered if I take the books and never come back.
It's practically standard for lawyers who take on cases without payment upfront to take almost 50% of the settlement in return for their services. At least in personal injury and insurance litigation. I can't imagine that class-action stuff is any different.
It's a big industry, and when you look into it very far, the big law firms don't come out looking much better than the big companies they sue.
Uh, no. Decent, midrange headphones are 32-ohms. Really good headphones often have fairly high input impedances, which vary dramatically with frequency: 300-ohms is a fairly standard value.
Not to mention that the optimal audio component--any component--would have an infinite input impedance.