True their cost of maintenance will rise as the fleet ages. But considering that the major airlines have much larger fleets that are already 10 years old on average they have some time before it will really hurt them. The size of their fleet still makes maintenance costs lower. Provided they slowly add more planes they have have plenty of time to establish themselves (as if they already haven't in select markets) before it their cost of maintenance even comes close to approaching that of the larger carriers.
steveha's point that their telecommuniting employees save on overhead is actually valid and it is a part of their IT infrastructure. That said it does reduce their overhead, probably to a great extent.
However I still feel my point is valid that their lack of IT saves them even more. Larger airlines have huge infrastructure in place to coordinate more than reservations (infact many outsource their reservation systems these days).
Larger airlines have to coordinate activities among several hubs. They have to account for supplies for each flight, passenger and baggage routing, maintenance, employee scheduling.
JetBlues non-stop service alleviates the need to plan passenger and baggage transfers. Since they don't serve them they don't have to coordinate the arrival of meals. As stoolpigeon mentioned because their fleet is newer combined with the fact that they only have one hub their maintenance infrastructure is smaller/more efficient. They also don't have to support and schedule as many employees in many different locations.
Because of their size and business plan their IT outlay seems like it can be far less per passenger than for the larger airlines.
These are what I see as the secrets behind JetBlue:
- Their ticket prices are very reasonable.
- They fly non-stop to their destinations.
- Their main hub is based close to a(the) major metropolitan city (New York).
- They don't serve crappy meals just snacks.
- Each seat has its own TV with 24 channels.
- They fly out of a notoriously annoying airport at off-peak hours making the airport far less of an issue.
- They have a new fleet of jets that are quiet and in excellent condition.
Where does their IT actually improve their product? They are a relatively small airline and they are bound to the scheduling and baggage routing procedures of the airports that they fly through and they don't have to schedule in flight meal delivery. As a JetBlue customer it seems more like their IT is barely relevant. Then again that can be a sign of excellent IT infrastructure.
You are correct that copying video is far from perfect and that image quality and ease of copying may deter some piracy. But could it just be that movies are reasonably priced and music isn't?
CD's today run anywhere from $12 to $20 for which you get 12 tracks, of which only 1, maybe 2 if you're lucky are likely to be of any interest to you. Most movies are far more expensive to produce than a music CD, yet they only cost a couple dollars more with many priced between $15-$25.
I personally have loads of bandwidth at my disposal and obtaining a VCD/SVCD/DivX copy of a movie is quite easy. Even though the actual effort to obtain a free copy of a movie is so minimal for me I can't be bothered. Its just doesn't pay when I know I can get a DVD with far superior video and audio quality for for a song.
The three alternative energy sources you mentioned all have fairly large drawbacks:
Solar - the equipment is expensive and you need a very large area to harness it, although prices and efficiencies of the hardware is getting better. But solar powered vehicles still suck.
Wind - lots of windmills needed and its only viable in certain geographic regions. Its also subject to which way the wind blows (yeah bad pun I know). For vehicles its only viable for battery power, boats, balloons and kites.
Nuclear - The only problem with nuclear power is that the long term plans for containment of spent fuel is sorely lacking. It cannot be generated safely on small vehicles so its energy must stored in batteries which are not yet up to the task of replacing a fuel tank.
This is not to say that these three alternative energy sources are bad but that they have some limitations. Limitations that technology has not fully overcome yet.
Hydrogens real strong point is that we can transition to hyrdrogen power with minimal notice to the user and we can do it quickly. We know how to harness the energy from burning fuel very well and we're even getting good at extracting the energy from some fuels without burning them. Internal combustion hydrogen powered vehicles can perform and feel almost identical to their gasoling powered cousins (Dodge even showed a hydrogen powered barracuda a few years ago with a reported 400+bhp). Hydrogen power can also be called upon on demand unlike solar, hydro or wind and as stated elsewhere its exhaust is very clean unlike nuclear.
However I'm not sure myself I'd like to go cruising down a highway at 75mph with a tank of compressed hydrogen sitting 2 feet behind me. But a hydrogen powered car sure sounds more fun than a battery or solar powered one.
The only problems I see with hydrogen power is the cost of the fuel and containment in the case of small vehicles. If NASAs findings lead to efficient and environmentally safe mining of the hydrogen this may be the perfect stop gap solution until even friendlier energy sources mature to meet our energy needs.
How does offloading the work from dedicated hardware to a more expensive CPU help the consumer? Last I checked people paid more money for faster cpus because they wanted faster computers, not because they wanted periphial manufacturers to save a couple bucks on the components in their modem or wireless card.
I just don't see how using 2% of a $120 cpu to do the work of a $1 chip is in the consumers favor. It seems like all this does is increase manufacturer profit while marginally reducing consumer cost.
Personally I could care less if microsoft endorses or pushes winWiFi as long as my option as a consumer to pay the extra $5 for a hardware based WiFi card remains. If the winmodem is their case study, I say we have nothing to worry about since last I checked you could still get a hardware modem years after winmodems hit the shelves.
Very good point. The author also mentions how physical hacking on a car is more expensive because sometimes you have to test things to the point of destruction. He fails to recognize that hacking away at inginition timing and/or the air/fuel mixture through software can cause lots of damage (modified RX7's are great for this).
I'm all for hacking cars. I personally dislike the way manufacturers today make it nearly impossible to replace a factory stereo without major work. Look at newer Mercedes and BMW's (especially the new 745 with iDrive). There have been plenty of times I wished I could change the way the Mercedes navigation system takes user input (scroll left and right to select letters, I'd much prefer using the numbers on the keypad). I'd also like to fix a bug where the integrated telephone only lets you dial the first number associated with a particular name (Timeports allow multiple number per location/name) but I'm stuck until they get enough complaints and do it themselves.
The businessman in question is Robert Novak, who does business as PetsWarehouse.com (www.petswarehouse.com). The online pet shop shares space at his son's store, Pets Warehouse, in Copiague, he said.
IANL and its not that this is conclusive by any means but maybe he is using a DBA not a corporation. In which case his personal assets would be fair game in a court of law.
I'm thinking it would be pleasantly ironic if the defendants filed countersuits in their home towns (notice the plural) and strong armed him into settling since travelling to Virginia, Masachusetts, North Carolina, Texas and California would most likely be cost prohibitive.
I have a better idea. Write your local news agency and tell them about this. I have already reported the story to my local news channel (who just happens to cover Long Island) and told them about this story.
Its important that the largest audience is exposed to this story and sees just one of the many ways that others try to impinge our right to free speech.
If you do submit the story to your local news include the following links:
There is one good thing to come out of Tilly's situation. Explaining to people the purpose of a copyright assignment and getting them to sign it can be difficult, especially if the project is sponsored by a corporation (my own personal experience). This thread along with other articles discussing this situation will help others show why these copyright assignments are so important.
That said, I still wonder how well these copyright assignments would hold up in court. I'm sure there are many people who don't even realize that their employment contracts restrict their private works in such a manner. Its very conceivable that a person may sign a copyright assignment and submit it even though it conflicts with their employment contract.
In other words who owns the code if this person signs it away to two parties. Most open source projects have limited funds if any and chances are a court battle would bankrupt the project long before the contributors employer. To make it even worse I think the project would have a very hard time securing the rights to such work since it would be like me signing a contract to sell Bill Gates' house even though I don't own it.
Should copyright assignments for projects like this require approval of the persons employer as well? This could discourage people from joining projects and contributing. Then again what good is their work if their company can just take it away?
I agree 100%, thats why I think the fps benchmark is completely wrong. Wouldn't a benchmark that shows how many objects/tetxures/polygons/special rendering features it can perform at a fixed frame rate and resolution make more sense?
Furthermore reviewers should supply more information about the results like performance curves if they are going to continue to use framerate as the benchmark. Who cares if your average frame rate is 150fps if half the time it runs at 275fps and the other half 25fps....
You are correct, even TightVNC with its compression ability is less efficient than using X. VNC really shines by being easy to set up, small to download and compatible with many platforms.
For me the primary reason to use VNC is the small download and cross platform ability. The VNC client is small (500KB IIRC) and there is even an applet version that the host computer can serve to a calling browser. That doesn't mean I don't use X, just that I prefer different tools for different jobs.
I agree that this thing has some limited appeal because of its expected performance. Are there any Nforce based motherboards on the horizon with a similar form factor? The superior cpu (AMD), memory architecture, graphics (GeForce2MX) and sound on a nforce based motherboard would make it a serious machine for the space conscious.
Too bad it doesn't work well on CalTrain in the bay area. It would have totally been worth it if I could have checked my email on the way to work with it. But instead I had to pray there was a seat available in the middle of the upper level, east facing side of the train car, and even then I spent more time waiting for things to connect than I did actually reading email.
And as far as using it at home, it didn't work there either, that would have been when the power went out.
I see your point about how this seems unfair, but lets look at the flip side. Your an employee that is doing more work and making more money for your boss and not seeing a cent of it, you'd be pissed too.
Now think back to how computers infilitrated businesses. Most companies were computerized because it saved them money or enabled to make them more money. Often the sale of big iron was accompanied by service contracts and engineering consulting making the transaction look more like a partnership in a project than a traditional sale of goods. Selling them the rights to use only a portion of the machine was good for both parties, a company with less need for power didn't have to make the decision between buying hardware for todays needs and then retooling down the line or spending more money upfront for hardware they didn't need. The manufacturer probably saw two benefits, one they have hardware in the field not generating revenue that brings them a tax credit and they know that they are almost guaranteed a sale in the future (to unlock the extra hardware). This is a win-win situation for both parties when you really think about it.
Uncompressed NTSC video (720x480) would use about 237mbit/second (720x480x24x29.97 (drop frame)), but we don't record that uncompressed. Instead we compress it before we transmit or store it digitally and in the case of DSS/Tivo combo boxes the units store the compressed stream exactly as it is received.
IIRC most HDTV programs are broadcast using a 18Mbit/sec stream. This isn't exactly tiny but in a day of 160GB harddrives its manageable. In fact DV uses a M-JPEG like codec that consumes about 25Mbit/sec for standard NTSC video and current consumer PC technologies are up to the task of handling it. Storing an exact copy of a HDTV broadcast is quite acheivable given current consumer level equipment.
So the problem is political rather than technological. Media companies view the move to HDTV and digital video in general as their chance to correct the "mistakes" they made with previous copiable formats. These companies do not want their content to fall under the previous fair use controls and they are draging their feet while they frantically search for a way to control every aspect of their content even if it impinges on the consumers fair use ability. This is evident in the vast array of manuevers going on behind the scenes to get DRM in place before the consumer HDTV explosion happens.
Late in the game, hardware manufacturers jumped to using encrypted streams over IEEE1394 (Firewire/i.Link) to the display device. So if you purchased a HDTV decoder 1-2 years ago there is the possibility/probability you may not be able to use whatever the standard format of choice for recording content is without buying a new decoder or additional hardware.
The simple fact is that the powerhouses behind the scenes don't want us timeshifting their prescious HDTV content until they can control every aspect of how we use it.
Does anyone have sales statistics? I would agree with the hypothesis that they are readying a newer model, but its also possible that the recouped enough R&D money on the unit and they are looking to boost sales. Many people this previous holiday season spent large amounts of loot on new consoles so maybe sales have hit a plateau or even slumped.
If it wasn't for a lack luster manufacturer warranty I wouldn't consider buying this aftermarket internal light. But since they only have 90 days of confidence in their product I might as well buy one and give it a whirl.
Best guess is that if this thing is real there is a fair amount of "stealing". I'm willing to bet microsoft has a bunch of copyrighted and patented instructions in the lower layers. The act of emulating those functions according to the law may be considered copyright infringement.
There is also no mention if there is a copy of the xbox bios included in the download. Considering the short amount of time from the xbox release and the release of this supposed emulator I doubt anyone has had the time to completely reverse engineer a "compatible" xbox operating system. (afaik the xbox doesn't run plain vanilla win2k or wince but a bastardized version of the win2k/nt kernel)
While I don't doubt that emulating the xbox is possible, microsoft probably spent 1/5 the budget on developing the system and the remaining 4/5 on obfuscating and copyrighting the lower level operation. Even if you do emulate it, based on the assumed (yeah I know assuming is bad) IP protection, the MS lawyers probably have form letter style injunctions ready to go.
"Under that law, consumers pay a few extra pennies each time they buy a blank recordable CD, and that money goes to the entertainment industry as compensation for losses caused by copying.
"
Totally forgot about this one, so now that they are "copy protecting" CD's, can we have even cheaper CD-R's now? Maybe music companies should subsidize the cost of CD-R's needed to copy their products so that they will work in older hardware.
Do you think the average 13 year old girl will care if the NSync CD has a specific logo on it, your nuts (same goes for 33 year old boys buying britney spears CD's).
They are trying to "keep the honest people honest", that means the average joe who makes a copy of the CD for a buddy. The problem is the method they do this by breaks compatibility with older hardware (and imo fair use).
How long it will be before the content creators and their lobbying efforts begin an attempt at forcing hardware manufacturers to build "copy protedction" mechanisms in their readers?
Will we see a similar situation to the DVD players that did not conform to the DVD spec (you know, the ones that would play any region DVDs and did not force you to watch the goddamn FBI warning for the 256,000th time)? Remember how quickly most national resellers stopped carring those brands? How hard it was to find one once the Word was Out?
Thats the whole point though, the current copy protection schemes must be backwards compatible with older players which sometimes they are not. Adding some sort of protection layer to a new format similar to CSS on a DVD wouldn't work because few people will go out and buy a new CD player and even fewer would try replacing the factory radio or cd changer in their car just so they can listen to the new Nsync album . In fact trying to move to such a new platform would most likely lead to INCREASED piracy. The people that wouldn't buy the new Britney album thats only available in the new format, would look for alternative avenues to aquire it (aka download and burn).
IMO Phillips' move is somewhat selfish but I'm willing to forgive them since it may help to serve the greater good. They are a hardware company, they want to sell hardware and being creator of the format provides them some leverage. I haven't come across one of the new CD's with copy protection on it, but I'm willing to bet that if they continue to proliferate, at some point people are going to be buying new CD's and having to back them up just so they will play in older hardware that is compatible with the official standard - thus Phillips' magic egg.
Its funny but similar stuff has failed in the past. I used to work with a guy who did a short stint with the PA turnpike. For a while it seems that they were using the tickets that motorists collect when they get on the turnpike to time them to see if they exceeded the speed limit. If a motorist was found to have covered 55 miles in 59 minutes they would receive a nice shiny moving violation. I'm not sure of the circumstances surrounding the discontinuation, but this is not done today.
In the NY/NJ/CT area we have something called EZPass that does electronic toll collection on the NJ turnpike by marking your entry and exit. I've been wondering how long it will be before people start receiving summonses in the mail based on their times from exit to exit. With the exception of heavy commuter hours where your not going anywhere fast anyway, I wait in line and use the paper tickets on the turnpike, just in case.
If MS continues to explore such avenues and the powers that be do not break MS up, eventually MS business practices will begin to annoy average users, not just the geeks and privacy concerned.
Opps, I forgot to mention that I would have to give them my name to verify the payment (which giving them that information would annoy me) but it still doesn't mean the account can't be under a fictitious name.
Slashdot Mirror
True their cost of maintenance will rise as the fleet ages. But considering that the major airlines have much larger fleets that are already 10 years old on average they have some time before it will really hurt them. The size of their fleet still makes maintenance costs lower. Provided they slowly add more planes they have have plenty of time to establish themselves (as if they already haven't in select markets) before it their cost of maintenance even comes close to approaching that of the larger carriers.
steveha's point that their telecommuniting employees save on overhead is actually valid and it is a part of their IT infrastructure. That said it does reduce their overhead, probably to a great extent.
However I still feel my point is valid that their lack of IT saves them even more. Larger airlines have huge infrastructure in place to coordinate more than reservations (infact many outsource their reservation systems these days).
Larger airlines have to coordinate activities among several hubs. They have to account for supplies for each flight, passenger and baggage routing, maintenance, employee scheduling.
JetBlues non-stop service alleviates the need to plan passenger and baggage transfers. Since they don't serve them they don't have to coordinate the arrival of meals. As stoolpigeon mentioned because their fleet is newer combined with the fact that they only have one hub their maintenance infrastructure is smaller/more efficient. They also don't have to support and schedule as many employees in many different locations.
Because of their size and business plan their IT outlay seems like it can be far less per passenger than for the larger airlines.
These are what I see as the secrets behind JetBlue:
- Their ticket prices are very reasonable.
- They fly non-stop to their destinations.
- Their main hub is based close to a(the) major metropolitan city (New York).
- They don't serve crappy meals just snacks.
- Each seat has its own TV with 24 channels.
- They fly out of a notoriously annoying airport at off-peak hours making the airport far less of an issue.
- They have a new fleet of jets that are quiet and in excellent condition.
Where does their IT actually improve their product? They are a relatively small airline and they are bound to the scheduling and baggage routing procedures of the airports that they fly through and they don't have to schedule in flight meal delivery. As a JetBlue customer it seems more like their IT is barely relevant. Then again that can be a sign of excellent IT infrastructure.
You are correct that copying video is far from perfect and that image quality and ease of copying may deter some piracy. But could it just be that movies are reasonably priced and music isn't?
CD's today run anywhere from $12 to $20 for which you get 12 tracks, of which only 1, maybe 2 if you're lucky are likely to be of any interest to you. Most movies are far more expensive to produce than a music CD, yet they only cost a couple dollars more with many priced between $15-$25.
I personally have loads of bandwidth at my disposal and obtaining a VCD/SVCD/DivX copy of a movie is quite easy. Even though the actual effort to obtain a free copy of a movie is so minimal for me I can't be bothered. Its just doesn't pay when I know I can get a DVD with far superior video and audio quality for for a song.
The three alternative energy sources you mentioned all have fairly large drawbacks:
Solar - the equipment is expensive and you need a very large area to harness it, although prices and efficiencies of the hardware is getting better. But solar powered vehicles still suck.
Wind - lots of windmills needed and its only viable in certain geographic regions. Its also subject to which way the wind blows (yeah bad pun I know). For vehicles its only viable for battery power, boats, balloons and kites.
Nuclear - The only problem with nuclear power is that the long term plans for containment of spent fuel is sorely lacking. It cannot be generated safely on small vehicles so its energy must stored in batteries which are not yet up to the task of replacing a fuel tank.
This is not to say that these three alternative energy sources are bad but that they have some limitations. Limitations that technology has not fully overcome yet.
Hydrogens real strong point is that we can transition to hyrdrogen power with minimal notice to the user and we can do it quickly. We know how to harness the energy from burning fuel very well and we're even getting good at extracting the energy from some fuels without burning them. Internal combustion hydrogen powered vehicles can perform and feel almost identical to their gasoling powered cousins (Dodge even showed a hydrogen powered barracuda a few years ago with a reported 400+bhp). Hydrogen power can also be called upon on demand unlike solar, hydro or wind and as stated elsewhere its exhaust is very clean unlike nuclear.
However I'm not sure myself I'd like to go cruising down a highway at 75mph with a tank of compressed hydrogen sitting 2 feet behind me. But a hydrogen powered car sure sounds more fun than a battery or solar powered one.
The only problems I see with hydrogen power is the cost of the fuel and containment in the case of small vehicles. If NASAs findings lead to efficient and environmentally safe mining of the hydrogen this may be the perfect stop gap solution until even friendlier energy sources mature to meet our energy needs.
How does offloading the work from dedicated hardware to a more expensive CPU help the consumer? Last I checked people paid more money for faster cpus because they wanted faster computers, not because they wanted periphial manufacturers to save a couple bucks on the components in their modem or wireless card.
I just don't see how using 2% of a $120 cpu to do the work of a $1 chip is in the consumers favor. It seems like all this does is increase manufacturer profit while marginally reducing consumer cost.
Personally I could care less if microsoft endorses or pushes winWiFi as long as my option as a consumer to pay the extra $5 for a hardware based WiFi card remains. If the winmodem is their case study, I say we have nothing to worry about since last I checked you could still get a hardware modem years after winmodems hit the shelves.
Wouldn't it be great if they could reengineer consoles so that the games were reasonably priced?
Very good point. The author also mentions how physical hacking on a car is more expensive because sometimes you have to test things to the point of destruction. He fails to recognize that hacking away at inginition timing and/or the air/fuel mixture through software can cause lots of damage (modified RX7's are great for this).
I'm all for hacking cars. I personally dislike the way manufacturers today make it nearly impossible to replace a factory stereo without major work. Look at newer Mercedes and BMW's (especially the new 745 with iDrive). There have been plenty of times I wished I could change the way the Mercedes navigation system takes user input (scroll left and right to select letters, I'd much prefer using the numbers on the keypad). I'd also like to fix a bug where the integrated telephone only lets you dial the first number associated with a particular name (Timeports allow multiple number per location/name) but I'm stuck until they get enough complaints and do it themselves.
An article in the Long Island Business News says:
The businessman in question is Robert Novak, who does business as PetsWarehouse.com (www.petswarehouse.com). The online pet shop shares space at his son's store, Pets Warehouse, in Copiague, he said.
IANL and its not that this is conclusive by any means but maybe he is using a DBA not a corporation. In which case his personal assets would be fair game in a court of law.
I'm thinking it would be pleasantly ironic if the defendants filed countersuits in their home towns (notice the plural) and strong armed him into settling since travelling to Virginia, Masachusetts, North Carolina, Texas and California would most likely be cost prohibitive.
I have a better idea. Write your local news agency and tell them about this. I have already reported the story to my local news channel (who just happens to cover Long Island) and told them about this story.
3 5&mode=nested&tid=153&threshold=1
t ic_plants/index1.html
Its important that the largest audience is exposed to this story and sees just one of the many ways that others try to impinge our right to free speech.
If you do submit the story to your local news include the following links:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/04/14592
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/04/04/aqua
http://www.libn.com/Column_details.cfm?ID=1249
http://www.petsforum.com/psw/
If enough of us raise this issue maybe we can get more new coverage raising public awareness.
Does this mean Britney won't have to lip sync anymore?
There is one good thing to come out of Tilly's situation. Explaining to people the purpose of a copyright assignment and getting them to sign it can be difficult, especially if the project is sponsored by a corporation (my own personal experience). This thread along with other articles discussing this situation will help others show why these copyright assignments are so important.
That said, I still wonder how well these copyright assignments would hold up in court. I'm sure there are many people who don't even realize that their employment contracts restrict their private works in such a manner. Its very conceivable that a person may sign a copyright assignment and submit it even though it conflicts with their employment contract.
In other words who owns the code if this person signs it away to two parties. Most open source projects have limited funds if any and chances are a court battle would bankrupt the project long before the contributors employer. To make it even worse I think the project would have a very hard time securing the rights to such work since it would be like me signing a contract to sell Bill Gates' house even though I don't own it.
Should copyright assignments for projects like this require approval of the persons employer as well? This could discourage people from joining projects and contributing. Then again what good is their work if their company can just take it away?
I agree 100%, thats why I think the fps benchmark is completely wrong. Wouldn't a benchmark that shows how many objects/tetxures/polygons/special rendering features it can perform at a fixed frame rate and resolution make more sense?
Furthermore reviewers should supply more information about the results like performance curves if they are going to continue to use framerate as the benchmark. Who cares if your average frame rate is 150fps if half the time it runs at 275fps and the other half 25fps....
You are correct, even TightVNC with its compression ability is less efficient than using X. VNC really shines by being easy to set up, small to download and compatible with many platforms.
For me the primary reason to use VNC is the small download and cross platform ability. The VNC client is small (500KB IIRC) and there is even an applet version that the host computer can serve to a calling browser. That doesn't mean I don't use X, just that I prefer different tools for different jobs.
I agree that this thing has some limited appeal because of its expected performance. Are there any Nforce based motherboards on the horizon with a similar form factor? The superior cpu (AMD), memory architecture, graphics (GeForce2MX) and sound on a nforce based motherboard would make it a serious machine for the space conscious.
Too bad it doesn't work well on CalTrain in the bay area. It would have totally been worth it if I could have checked my email on the way to work with it. But instead I had to pray there was a seat available in the middle of the upper level, east facing side of the train car, and even then I spent more time waiting for things to connect than I did actually reading email.
And as far as using it at home, it didn't work there either, that would have been when the power went out.
Overall I'd give Ricochet a C- when it was up.
I see your point about how this seems unfair, but lets look at the flip side. Your an employee that is doing more work and making more money for your boss and not seeing a cent of it, you'd be pissed too.
Now think back to how computers infilitrated businesses. Most companies were computerized because it saved them money or enabled to make them more money. Often the sale of big iron was accompanied by service contracts and engineering consulting making the transaction look more like a partnership in a project than a traditional sale of goods. Selling them the rights to use only a portion of the machine was good for both parties, a company with less need for power didn't have to make the decision between buying hardware for todays needs and then retooling down the line or spending more money upfront for hardware they didn't need. The manufacturer probably saw two benefits, one they have hardware in the field not generating revenue that brings them a tax credit and they know that they are almost guaranteed a sale in the future (to unlock the extra hardware). This is a win-win situation for both parties when you really think about it.
If I recall, HDTV is 1.5 Gbps uncompressed</snip>
Uncompressed NTSC video (720x480) would use about 237mbit/second (720x480x24x29.97 (drop frame)), but we don't record that uncompressed. Instead we compress it before we transmit or store it digitally and in the case of DSS/Tivo combo boxes the units store the compressed stream exactly as it is received. IIRC most HDTV programs are broadcast using a 18Mbit/sec stream. This isn't exactly tiny but in a day of 160GB harddrives its manageable. In fact DV uses a M-JPEG like codec that consumes about 25Mbit/sec for standard NTSC video and current consumer PC technologies are up to the task of handling it. Storing an exact copy of a HDTV broadcast is quite acheivable given current consumer level equipment.
So the problem is political rather than technological. Media companies view the move to HDTV and digital video in general as their chance to correct the "mistakes" they made with previous copiable formats. These companies do not want their content to fall under the previous fair use controls and they are draging their feet while they frantically search for a way to control every aspect of their content even if it impinges on the consumers fair use ability. This is evident in the vast array of manuevers going on behind the scenes to get DRM in place before the consumer HDTV explosion happens.
Late in the game, hardware manufacturers jumped to using encrypted streams over IEEE1394 (Firewire/i.Link) to the display device. So if you purchased a HDTV decoder 1-2 years ago there is the possibility/probability you may not be able to use whatever the standard format of choice for recording content is without buying a new decoder or additional hardware.
The simple fact is that the powerhouses behind the scenes don't want us timeshifting their prescious HDTV content until they can control every aspect of how we use it.
Does anyone have sales statistics? I would agree with the hypothesis that they are readying a newer model, but its also possible that the recouped enough R&D money on the unit and they are looking to boost sales. Many people this previous holiday season spent large amounts of loot on new consoles so maybe sales have hit a plateau or even slumped.
If it wasn't for a lack luster manufacturer warranty I wouldn't consider buying this aftermarket internal light. But since they only have 90 days of confidence in their product I might as well buy one and give it a whirl.
Best guess is that if this thing is real there is a fair amount of "stealing". I'm willing to bet microsoft has a bunch of copyrighted and patented instructions in the lower layers. The act of emulating those functions according to the law may be considered copyright infringement.
There is also no mention if there is a copy of the xbox bios included in the download. Considering the short amount of time from the xbox release and the release of this supposed emulator I doubt anyone has had the time to completely reverse engineer a "compatible" xbox operating system. (afaik the xbox doesn't run plain vanilla win2k or wince but a bastardized version of the win2k/nt kernel)
While I don't doubt that emulating the xbox is possible, microsoft probably spent 1/5 the budget on developing the system and the remaining 4/5 on obfuscating and copyrighting the lower level operation. Even if you do emulate it, based on the assumed (yeah I know assuming is bad) IP protection, the MS lawyers probably have form letter style injunctions ready to go.
"Under that law, consumers pay a few extra pennies each time they buy a blank recordable CD, and that money goes to the entertainment industry as compensation for losses caused by copying. "
Totally forgot about this one, so now that they are "copy protecting" CD's, can we have even cheaper CD-R's now? Maybe music companies should subsidize the cost of CD-R's needed to copy their products so that they will work in older hardware.
Do you think the average 13 year old girl will care if the NSync CD has a specific logo on it, your nuts (same goes for 33 year old boys buying britney spears CD's).
They are trying to "keep the honest people honest", that means the average joe who makes a copy of the CD for a buddy. The problem is the method they do this by breaks compatibility with older hardware (and imo fair use).
How long it will be before the content creators and their lobbying efforts begin an attempt at forcing hardware manufacturers to build "copy protedction" mechanisms in their readers?
Will we see a similar situation to the DVD players that did not conform to the DVD spec (you know, the ones that would play any region DVDs and did not force you to watch the goddamn FBI warning for the 256,000th time)? Remember how quickly most national resellers stopped carring those brands? How hard it was to find one once the Word was Out?
Thats the whole point though, the current copy protection schemes must be backwards compatible with older players which sometimes they are not. Adding some sort of protection layer to a new format similar to CSS on a DVD wouldn't work because few people will go out and buy a new CD player and even fewer would try replacing the factory radio or cd changer in their car just so they can listen to the new Nsync album . In fact trying to move to such a new platform would most likely lead to INCREASED piracy. The people that wouldn't buy the new Britney album thats only available in the new format, would look for alternative avenues to aquire it (aka download and burn).
IMO Phillips' move is somewhat selfish but I'm willing to forgive them since it may help to serve the greater good. They are a hardware company, they want to sell hardware and being creator of the format provides them some leverage. I haven't come across one of the new CD's with copy protection on it, but I'm willing to bet that if they continue to proliferate, at some point people are going to be buying new CD's and having to back them up just so they will play in older hardware that is compatible with the official standard - thus Phillips' magic egg.
Its funny but similar stuff has failed in the past. I used to work with a guy who did a short stint with the PA turnpike. For a while it seems that they were using the tickets that motorists collect when they get on the turnpike to time them to see if they exceeded the speed limit. If a motorist was found to have covered 55 miles in 59 minutes they would receive a nice shiny moving violation. I'm not sure of the circumstances surrounding the discontinuation, but this is not done today.
In the NY/NJ/CT area we have something called EZPass that does electronic toll collection on the NJ turnpike by marking your entry and exit. I've been wondering how long it will be before people start receiving summonses in the mail based on their times from exit to exit. With the exception of heavy commuter hours where your not going anywhere fast anyway, I wait in line and use the paper tickets on the turnpike, just in case.
If MS continues to explore such avenues and the powers that be do not break MS up, eventually MS business practices will begin to annoy average users, not just the geeks and privacy concerned.
Opps, I forgot to mention that I would have to give them my name to verify the payment (which giving them that information would annoy me) but it still doesn't mean the account can't be under a fictitious name.