A Tablet PC with a flexible paper thin screen that can be folded from the size of a credit card to A0, which has GPS, Bluetooth, Firewire 400 & 800, USB 1 and 2, every wireless connection method under the Sun, IRDA, Biometric authentication, works via a keyboard or a "keyboard glove", has a 15Ghz Transmeta processor, 1TB of RAM, 1PB of Storage, runs off a single AA battery for 3 year, runs Linux and responds to scribbles or the spoken word.
Not really - some groups often set up extranet's that they assume to be private when they really aren't. A while ago, FOX took over Speedvision because it was becoming very popular, yet didn't show much in the way of FOX's ASSCAR (Redneck's turning left). FOX saw this as a threat, so they conveniently bought up the station so they could cram the content down the viewers throats - the US seems to be hip to eating up *whatever* is delivered to them.
In all, I became frustrated so I scoured the net for some information. It turned out that there was an "affiliate" site set up by FOX that was completely open and unsecured. I was able to get some stuff... Here are the regional VP's contact info:
Northeast
CT, DE, DC, MN, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT, WV
Bill Lyons
(212) 822-9023
blyons@foxcable.com
1211 Avenue of the Americas 31st Floor New York, NY 10036
Central
IL, IN, IA, KS, MN, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, ND, OH, SD, WI
Ken Tremback
ktremback@foxcable.com
(314) 206-7029
700 St. Louis Union Station Suite 300 St. Louis, MO 63103
Southeast
AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, Puerto Rico & Caribbean
Chris Killebrew
(404) 230-7317
ckillebrew@foxcable.com
1175 Peachtree Street N.E. 100 Colony Square, Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30361
Southwest
AR, CO, ID (Southern), LA, MT, OK, TX, UT, WY
Rob Evanko
(972) 868-1801
revanko@foxcable.com
100 East Royal Lane Suite 200 Irving, TX 75039
West
AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID (panhandle), NV, NM, OR, WA
Matt Cacciato
(310) 286-3713
mcacciato@foxcable.com
10000 Santa Monica Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90067
Go ahead and ping them if you aren't happy with their decisions as of late (Futurama, etc).
They rec'd 590,000 hits, but only served 250,000 of them... I'm not sure why we should read their article on scaling.
Re:Sounds like an interesting read...
on
Hacker's Delight
·
· Score: 1, Funny
It also sounds like an interesting song:
I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop the hack it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
And, by using this "secure DRM", you feel that you also have the right to dictate to the purchaser the exact terms and conditions that they are allowed to use your book under? Things like not being able to print the book, not being able to copy it from device to device, the book becoming unavailable after X days?
Normal publishers don't get to dictate these terms - why should you? That's the problem with DRM.
Consumers have a right not to buy something if they do not like the terms. If Joe Consumer does not want to buy an eBook because he can't copy it to multiple devices, then there is nobody forcing him to do so. If Joe Consumer wants to buy a real, hard copy book, then his rights have been restricted as well.
For the record - I *am* writing a book. And my work will be released only in hard copy format because an unsecure digital work would quickly remove the need for most people to actually *purchase* the book (I realize that there are a few honest people out there but not in the demographic that I will be targeting).
What you are not realizing is that secure DRM *creates a new market* rather than restricting the current one. Everyone associates the term with the MPAA and RIAA. And yes - these companies would like to remove some of our fair use rights with this technology. What they don't realize is that it will remove the need for many authors and artists to require the terms of the MPAA, RIAA, and other associated Big Corporate Evil.
If a proven secure DRM makes an inroad, then I would consider releasing my work at this level. And if Joe Consumer wants to pay a few bucks to preview it for X number of days, then he will. But realize that this is a new market and not a restriction on an existing one.
As a side note, Linux will lose bigtime if it doesn't adopt a fair DRM system. Otherwise, Microsoft will be the only player in this new market.
Why does this kind of stuff happen right in front of our eyes, yet behind our backs?
Because it makes sense to a lot of people. Say, for example, that I want to write a book. While I could write the book, the odds of a publisher picking it up are incredibly small. Even if it did get picked up, an author only gets a small fraction of each sale. Then there is the Self Publishing route, but this requires that I put significant time and effort into developing my own publishing methods. Lastly, I could simply sub-contract the actual creation of the book, but I've got to have significant cash up front in order to buy in the quantity required in order for this to work. And then you've got to manage inventory (storage and accounting thereof).
Or I could simply publish an eBook under the context of secure DRM. If the book is successful, then I've got some capital to work with in order to bring the book to the bookshelf.
It isn't all evil, people. But this is slashdot so I'd better go screw myself, eh?
If I go and buy a new tyre from the store and *shudder* fit it myself, how will anyone know to match the tyre to the car?
Once the technology is there, they only need to pass a law before you won't be able to buy a tire without the included retrofit. They'll likely disguise it as some tire-disposal act to clean up the environment. At the bare minimum, you'll be required to provide a VIN for a car that uses the tire in question. That VIN will likely be verified against your name or registration.
But suppose that I'm just being paranoid and they don't require the VIN to be programmed into the tires. There is still a unique identifier in the tires from the manufacturer. Suppose that you roll past a sensor which then OCR's your license plate (they have OCR at the borders now - watch for the flash as you roll up to them) and associates it with your registration.
Of course, you *used* to be able to retrofit a 4 gallon per minute shower head, but then congress legislated those out of the country (I think that the new heads must be a max of 2GPM). I'm not saying that this particular instance was a bad decision, I'm just illustrating how this can happen. There are many other examples out there. I think that tires will be the next.
Imagine the possibilities... There's a video on that site for anyone willing to dig. I'd rather not slashdot it (28 megs). This technology was initially used to ship and track tires as a replacement to the old bar codes, but now, the boys in the tinfoil hats are detecting RFID activity on the freeways and border crossings...
Auto manufacturers are programming the VIN number into the tire at assembly. It is only a matter of time before this becomes a requirement.
I think that you aren't completely understanding where the gas and brakes are going to be located. They will be adding them to the Swiss Army Blinker(tm) that we've all come to know and love. Hmmm... Lessee... Gas... No, thats washer fluid...
Actually, if they were to replace the steering wheel with a set of handlebars (ala motorcycle), then they might be able to pull this off. Of course, then you've just invented the four wheel version of the Tron Light Cycle.
What do you mean, nothing exciting? Just look at that name DeltaChrome. Can you imagine the successors to this? In five years, we should be up to e.DeltaFLEX-ChromeNUMA FX 2008 Titanium.
The 'piggy back' comment is misleading. The ECUs are actually gutted and replaced with a complete standalone programmable unit because the rules only require the stock case. Although there are piggy-back units, they aren't allowed in rallying.
Some links here and here, though these are just to give you an idea of what is available.
An interesting bit:
In rallying, the turbo is kept in spool at all times with a special feature programmed into the ECU known as 'anti-lag'. Under low load conditions, the ECU delays the ignition spark to the point that the exhaust valve is already opening. Since there is nothing to expand against, the charge gets blown out the exhaust and uses most of its energy to spin the turbo, which only lasts a few hours under this gruelling condition. The spectators in some countries have come to call this the 'bang-bang' system since it makes quite the gunshot-like sound upon activation.
Though this isn't a rally car, some good videos can be seen here. The strangled-chicken type sound that you hear is the turbocharger compressor going into surge when the throttle is closed. On a normal turbo car, they use an anti-surge valve (aka blow off valve) in order to prevent surge - it opens when the throttle closes such that the large volume of unneeded charge air can escape. On a race car, this valve becomes a point of failure so they eliminate it and drive the turbo into surge, which unloads the turbo (essentially spinning in a turbulent vaccuum) but creates some strange noises.
The interesting thing is that most aftermarket anti-surge valves are designed to sound like compressor surge because most (ignorant) enthusiasts want that sound... If they'd just remove the valve altogether, they could save a couple hundred dollars...
It is the only PCTV software package available that does not 1) include spyware 2) include DRM or 3) require the use of a keyboard to gain *all* functionality. Although HDTV support isn't there yet, there are deinterlacing plug-ins available for progressive display of non-HDTV content.
If people would lobby them into Linux support, you could build your own Tivo for very little. And you get all of the benefits of open video format standards...
Most HDTVs are coming with a 1280x720 (aka 720p) "native" resolution (or something a tad higher to allow for overscanning). The sets will accept a 1080i (aka 1920x1080) signal and then downsample it into the native resolution. I know a guy who rushed out and bought what he thought was a good deal on an "HDTV" projector. He was pretty mad when he found that it was only 800x600 native.
I have the Panasonic 53WX42, and can garuntee it supports 1080i. It's absolutely goregeous.
Not as gorgeous as if it was actually displaying the entire 1920x1080 picture!
Lawrence Lessig is betting his position at Stanford on his anti-spam legislative recommendations.
Umm...
You *don't* need LEGISLATION to fix this problem (isn't that what technology is for?). Fix the technology (or lack thereof), and you've fixed the problem. There are several very good ideas floating around out there that don't require an office of homeland spam in the whitehouse.
nVidia still haven't release the integrated graphics version of the nForce2 that they announced over 6 months ago (although you can buy the non-IGP version). They told me that it would be out in September of 2002 and now they just ignore me. I've made the decision to not buy any more products from them since they actively engage in announcing products that take forever to materialize. ATI, OTOH, announces a product only as they are readying to ship it. I have much more respect for this.
I wouldn't be surprised if ATI has something oodles better than the FX if/when it ever ships.
I've always been surprised and even disappointed at my friends' lack of curiosity about Linux.
Linux on the desktop sucks for one reason: fragmentation.
If there wasn't a bunch of if distribution == x && graphical environment == y in the HOWTOs, we'd be much further along right now.
Even with all that cruft, the one itel holding Linux back is the file system requirements. Every mainstream consumer desktop sold these days has a hard drive installed with a 100% NTFS partition. People don't want to screw with boot managers and people don't want to screw with repartitioning.
If someone created a *free* distribution that could be installed *through* Windows on the local NTFS partition (with appropriate *free* boot manager), then we'd have a much larger installed base. Developers could start coding on Linux and distributing it with their applications.
But then there is the GPL/binary module hassle. it will never work. I'm waiting for Apple to port over to x86. I predict 2004.
Fight terrorism by addressing the reason *why* these people are driven a level of frustration that would cause them to commit such acts.
Ask the average Joe on the street (in the US) about why September 11th happened and you'll hear something like, "evil doer". This befuddles me. These people aren't driven by pure evil but rather extreme frustration. Until the root of their frustration is addressed, I wouldn't be surprised if this continues forever.
Slashdot Mirror
In summary: The Slashdot crowd wants
A Tablet PC with a flexible paper thin screen that can be folded from the size of a credit card to A0, which has GPS, Bluetooth, Firewire 400 & 800, USB 1 and 2, every wireless connection method under the Sun, IRDA, Biometric authentication, works via a keyboard or a "keyboard glove", has a 15Ghz Transmeta processor, 1TB of RAM, 1PB of Storage, runs off a single AA battery for 3 year, runs Linux and responds to scribbles or the spoken word.
You forgot waterproof.
Actually,
I believe the original story was in the cache files on the hard drives in question.
BaDoom!
Here it is!
They had taken it down for some time but it has appeared again. I bet their web guy gets canned this time...
Not really - some groups often set up extranet's that they assume to be private when they really aren't. A while ago, FOX took over Speedvision because it was becoming very popular, yet didn't show much in the way of FOX's ASSCAR (Redneck's turning left). FOX saw this as a threat, so they conveniently bought up the station so they could cram the content down the viewers throats - the US seems to be hip to eating up *whatever* is delivered to them.
In all, I became frustrated so I scoured the net for some information. It turned out that there was an "affiliate" site set up by FOX that was completely open and unsecured. I was able to get some stuff... Here are the regional VP's contact info:
Northeast
CT, DE, DC, MN, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT, WV
Bill Lyons
(212) 822-9023
blyons@foxcable.com
1211 Avenue of the Americas
31st Floor
New York, NY 10036
Central
IL, IN, IA, KS, MN, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, ND, OH, SD, WI
Ken Tremback
ktremback@foxcable.com
(314) 206-7029
700 St. Louis Union Station
Suite 300
St. Louis, MO 63103
Southeast
AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, Puerto Rico & Caribbean
Chris Killebrew
(404) 230-7317
ckillebrew@foxcable.com
1175 Peachtree Street N.E.
100 Colony Square, Suite 200
Atlanta, GA 30361
Southwest
AR, CO, ID (Southern), LA, MT, OK, TX, UT, WY
Rob Evanko
(972) 868-1801
revanko@foxcable.com
100 East Royal Lane
Suite 200
Irving, TX 75039
West
AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID (panhandle), NV, NM, OR, WA
Matt Cacciato
(310) 286-3713
mcacciato@foxcable.com
10000 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90067
Go ahead and ping them if you aren't happy with their decisions as of late (Futurama, etc).
No shit...
They rec'd 590,000 hits, but only served 250,000 of them... I'm not sure why we should read their article on scaling.
It also sounds like an interesting song:
I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie
to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop
the hack it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
And, by using this "secure DRM", you feel that you also have the right to dictate to the purchaser the exact terms and conditions that they are allowed to use your book under? Things like not being able to print the book, not being able to copy it from device to device, the book becoming unavailable after X days?
Normal publishers don't get to dictate these terms - why should you? That's the problem with DRM.
Consumers have a right not to buy something if they do not like the terms. If Joe Consumer does not want to buy an eBook because he can't copy it to multiple devices, then there is nobody forcing him to do so. If Joe Consumer wants to buy a real, hard copy book, then his rights have been restricted as well.
For the record - I *am* writing a book. And my work will be released only in hard copy format because an unsecure digital work would quickly remove the need for most people to actually *purchase* the book (I realize that there are a few honest people out there but not in the demographic that I will be targeting).
What you are not realizing is that secure DRM *creates a new market* rather than restricting the current one. Everyone associates the term with the MPAA and RIAA. And yes - these companies would like to remove some of our fair use rights with this technology. What they don't realize is that it will remove the need for many authors and artists to require the terms of the MPAA, RIAA, and other associated Big Corporate Evil.
If a proven secure DRM makes an inroad, then I would consider releasing my work at this level. And if Joe Consumer wants to pay a few bucks to preview it for X number of days, then he will. But realize that this is a new market and not a restriction on an existing one.
As a side note, Linux will lose bigtime if it doesn't adopt a fair DRM system. Otherwise, Microsoft will be the only player in this new market.
Why does this kind of stuff happen right in front of our eyes, yet behind our backs?
Because it makes sense to a lot of people. Say, for example, that I want to write a book. While I could write the book, the odds of a publisher picking it up are incredibly small. Even if it did get picked up, an author only gets a small fraction of each sale. Then there is the Self Publishing route, but this requires that I put significant time and effort into developing my own publishing methods. Lastly, I could simply sub-contract the actual creation of the book, but I've got to have significant cash up front in order to buy in the quantity required in order for this to work. And then you've got to manage inventory (storage and accounting thereof).
Or I could simply publish an eBook under the context of secure DRM. If the book is successful, then I've got some capital to work with in order to bring the book to the bookshelf.
It isn't all evil, people. But this is slashdot so I'd better go screw myself, eh?
If I go and buy a new tyre from the store and *shudder* fit it myself, how will anyone know to match the tyre to the car?
Once the technology is there, they only need to pass a law before you won't be able to buy a tire without the included retrofit. They'll likely disguise it as some tire-disposal act to clean up the environment. At the bare minimum, you'll be required to provide a VIN for a car that uses the tire in question. That VIN will likely be verified against your name or registration.
But suppose that I'm just being paranoid and they don't require the VIN to be programmed into the tires. There is still a unique identifier in the tires from the manufacturer. Suppose that you roll past a sensor which then OCR's your license plate (they have OCR at the borders now - watch for the flash as you roll up to them) and associates it with your registration.
Of course, you *used* to be able to retrofit a 4 gallon per minute shower head, but then congress legislated those out of the country (I think that the new heads must be a max of 2GPM). I'm not saying that this particular instance was a bad decision, I'm just illustrating how this can happen. There are many other examples out there. I think that tires will be the next.
RFID Tires
Imagine the possibilities... There's a video on that site for anyone willing to dig. I'd rather not slashdot it (28 megs). This technology was initially used to ship and track tires as a replacement to the old bar codes, but now, the boys in the tinfoil hats are detecting RFID activity on the freeways and border crossings...
Auto manufacturers are programming the VIN number into the tire at assembly. It is only a matter of time before this becomes a requirement.
I think that you aren't completely understanding where the gas and brakes are going to be located. They will be adding them to the Swiss Army Blinker(tm) that we've all come to know and love. Hmmm... Lessee... Gas... No, thats washer fluid...
Actually, if they were to replace the steering wheel with a set of handlebars (ala motorcycle), then they might be able to pull this off. Of course, then you've just invented the four wheel version of the Tron Light Cycle.
Hmmm...
What do you mean, nothing exciting? Just look at that name DeltaChrome. Can you imagine the successors to this? In five years, we should be up to e.DeltaFLEX-ChromeNUMA FX 2008 Titanium .
I can hardly wait!
I can see it now... There'll be a little popup in the taskbar that says:
Wireless internet services brought to you by Anheuser-Busch - St Louis, MO
"They've retained David Boies (DOJ prosecutor of Microsoft) to handle the legal issues."
This should read:
"They've retrained David Boies (DOJ prosecutor of Microsoft) to handle the legal issues."
Only in the US!
The 'piggy back' comment is misleading. The ECUs are actually gutted and replaced with a complete standalone programmable unit because the rules only require the stock case. Although there are piggy-back units, they aren't allowed in rallying.
Some links here and here, though these are just to give you an idea of what is available.
An interesting bit:
In rallying, the turbo is kept in spool at all times with a special feature programmed into the ECU known as 'anti-lag'. Under low load conditions, the ECU delays the ignition spark to the point that the exhaust valve is already opening. Since there is nothing to expand against, the charge gets blown out the exhaust and uses most of its energy to spin the turbo, which only lasts a few hours under this gruelling condition. The spectators in some countries have come to call this the 'bang-bang' system since it makes quite the gunshot-like sound upon activation.
Though this isn't a rally car, some good videos can be seen here. The strangled-chicken type sound that you hear is the turbocharger compressor going into surge when the throttle is closed. On a normal turbo car, they use an anti-surge valve (aka blow off valve) in order to prevent surge - it opens when the throttle closes such that the large volume of unneeded charge air can escape. On a race car, this valve becomes a point of failure so they eliminate it and drive the turbo into surge, which unloads the turbo (essentially spinning in a turbulent vaccuum) but creates some strange noises.
The interesting thing is that most aftermarket anti-surge valves are designed to sound like compressor surge because most (ignorant) enthusiasts want that sound... If they'd just remove the valve altogether, they could save a couple hundred dollars...
So long, OS X and whatever media packages are available for Linux, it was nice knowing you.
ShowShifter.
It is the only PCTV software package available that does not 1) include spyware 2) include DRM or 3) require the use of a keyboard to gain *all* functionality. Although HDTV support isn't there yet, there are deinterlacing plug-ins available for progressive display of non-HDTV content.
If people would lobby them into Linux support, you could build your own Tivo for very little. And you get all of the benefits of open video format standards...
Every HDTV I have seen has suport for 1080i.
This isn't the whole story...
Most HDTVs are coming with a 1280x720 (aka 720p) "native" resolution (or something a tad higher to allow for overscanning). The sets will accept a 1080i (aka 1920x1080) signal and then downsample it into the native resolution. I know a guy who rushed out and bought what he thought was a good deal on an "HDTV" projector. He was pretty mad when he found that it was only 800x600 native.
I have the Panasonic 53WX42, and can garuntee it supports 1080i. It's absolutely goregeous.
Not as gorgeous as if it was actually displaying the entire 1920x1080 picture!
OK -
I'm finally gonna switch because of this but my big question is, which competing product would be best to go with and why?
TIA
What is keeping SGI afloat?
;)
I think that they've been developing hardware for Sony.
Consider federal anti-junk-fax laws. If you get an unsolicited advertisement on your fax machine, the sender owes you $500.
If long distance faxing did not cost anything to the sender, then we'd all be getting spam via fax from China. US laws mean nothing to spammers.
Hell, there is nary a US provider that will carry a major spammer. How is a law going to fix that?
Lawrence Lessig is betting his position at Stanford on his anti-spam legislative recommendations.
Umm...
You *don't* need LEGISLATION to fix this problem (isn't that what technology is for?). Fix the technology (or lack thereof), and you've fixed the problem. There are several very good ideas floating around out there that don't require an office of homeland spam in the whitehouse.
Stupid lawyers...
nVidia still haven't release the integrated graphics version of the nForce2 that they announced over 6 months ago (although you can buy the non-IGP version). They told me that it would be out in September of 2002 and now they just ignore me. I've made the decision to not buy any more products from them since they actively engage in announcing products that take forever to materialize. ATI, OTOH, announces a product only as they are readying to ship it. I have much more respect for this.
I wouldn't be surprised if ATI has something oodles better than the FX if/when it ever ships.
I've always been surprised and even disappointed at my friends' lack of curiosity about Linux.
Linux on the desktop sucks for one reason: fragmentation.
If there wasn't a bunch of if distribution == x && graphical environment == y in the HOWTOs, we'd be much further along right now.
Even with all that cruft, the one itel holding Linux back is the file system requirements. Every mainstream consumer desktop sold these days has a hard drive installed with a 100% NTFS partition. People don't want to screw with boot managers and people don't want to screw with repartitioning.
If someone created a *free* distribution that could be installed *through* Windows on the local NTFS partition (with appropriate *free* boot manager), then we'd have a much larger installed base. Developers could start coding on Linux and distributing it with their applications.
But then there is the GPL/binary module hassle. it will never work. I'm waiting for Apple to port over to x86. I predict 2004.
Get this!
It does wonders for cross-platform development.
Fight terrorism by addressing the reason *why* these people are driven a level of frustration that would cause them to commit such acts.
Ask the average Joe on the street (in the US) about why September 11th happened and you'll hear something like, "evil doer". This befuddles me. These people aren't driven by pure evil but rather extreme frustration. Until the root of their frustration is addressed, I wouldn't be surprised if this continues forever.