"The fallback option is to use an analog capture card and to prioritize the digital tuners over the analog capture so you get high-def whenever possible."
The analog fallback is going to go away sooner or later - if I had to guess, not long after the analog OTA channels are phased out. The cable companies desperately want to phase out analog channels - they eat much more spectrum than digital channels, and look worse to boot. That's the problem with MythTV, at least in the US: unless something changes, you're going to be stuck with digital OTA broadcasts and unencrypted QAM in the long term.
Of course, Vista's not exactly much better off, either - you can only get CableCards on a PC certified by CableLabs, as you mentioned, so everyone who didn't do that is in exactly the same boat.
I suspect the FCC will actually confront this issue - what they'll do is a much more interesting question. Maybe DCAS will change things. We'll see.
"The point is - nothing seems much better in the user experience than before, for the vast majority of things we do - and that includes MacOS X, to my thinking."
Yeah, except for multi-tasking. You don't use that at all, right? Multifinder was only introduced in System 6, long after the Mac Plus was made obsolete by newer Macs.
Look, I liked my Mac Plus. I even liked the 512k, except for bumping against memory limits in large documents. But you're really viewing this whole thing with rose-colored glasses if you think that a Mac Plus with a bigger screen is going to be just as usable or pleasant-to-use as Vista or MacOS X.
I think it's because they originally wanted a separation between what Red Hat maintained (packages perceived as important) and what the community maintained (packages perceived optional stuff). But now that they've managed to iron out the problems they had working/communicating with the community, there's no longer much need for those artificial distinctions.
There's also the whole "you can spin your own Fedora variant" that's being pushed in this release, which further blurs the line between what's a core package and what's an extra package. If I've got a Mythdora-esque LiveCD, MythTV is important, but Evolution might not be.
"And how did the Europeans get all the good lawmakers anyway? I'm thinking about moving to Finland where copyright seems to make more sense."
They didn't, or have you not noticed the completely barely-democratic method the EU happens to govern itself by? Seriously, while I appreciate being able to legally rip DVDs, that comes pretty far behind basic rights and freedoms, some of which (speech, press, gun control) are openly assaulted on a daily basis at the EU Parliament level.
And, more to the point, this was a court decision, not a parliamentary one.
You bring up a good point, which is that the space municipal WiFi is supposed to fill is already being filled by cell providers. Right now, I can choose between any of four providers for 3G access anytime, anywhere (or at least as good as our own teensy municipal WiFi network provides). As far as I'm concerned, areas with decent EVDO/HSDPA coverage have no business going down the municipal WiFi path - government has no business competing with private business.
Is it as cheap or fast as some people want? No. But then again, you're paying the _real cost_ of such service, not just subsidizing it by force. And, personally, $15 a month for Sprint data access over EVDO seems OK to me.
HBO is "copy once". HBO On-Demand is "copy never". So, nominally, you should be able to record your regular HBO shows on your computer, but not burn them to DVD or copy them elsewhere. In other words, your system is working as expected.
The problem here, from what I understand, is that a few regional US cable operators are improperly passing "copy never" down the line on stuff like A&E, in violation of FCC regulations. Or there's the Canadian case, where there's no rules about that stuff at all, but Media Center honors it anyways - so all the cable and sat operators just flag everything as "copy never", and screw the Canadian users.
I just re-read it, too. Looks as if it's also mostly a Canadian problem, too. Someone also claimed that the FCC apparently didn't allow it to be set spuriously, so that's something to check into for US citizens.
I wouldn't take the summary at face value for this one - IIRC, there are some driver issues that cause this flag to pop up when it's really not supposed to. More info, including Microsoft's mostly-official response, at:
More than that - if they were laying off that many people in search of profitability, they'd announce it to everyone. Since when do major layoffs happen quietly?
The Dreamcast sold extremely well when it first came out, too. Didn't stop Sony from slaughtering Sega later, though. You've got to follow through on that initial lead, and I'd argue NO ONE has done that particularly well this time around.
The Wii outsold the Xbox 360 by 25% last month. That's certainly a sizable lead, yet it's not exactly what I'd call "creaming the competition". I'd also argue that the Wii's monthly software sales have been underwhelming - Wii Play has been propping up the numbers to a large extent, and that's a $10 game bundled with an accessory.
Now, if you want to talk about getting creamed, let's talk about the PS3...
Speaking as someone who actually did econometrics and hard math/statistics economics in school, I could not agree more with this critique of Freakonomics. It is an entertaining read, to be sure, but he's omitted a lot of the data to support his conclusions, making it more of a "just believe me" book than an actual primer to non-traditional economics.
You know, this comment comes up every time there's an article about convergence devices, and it drives me crazy each time.
Some of like not having to carry a cell phone, a portable media player, a digital camera and a laptop around with us just to be functional on the go. No, some of us actually like having a single device that can make calls, check our email, send IMs, play music and video, do light web browsing, and take a picture in a pinch - even if it doesn't do these things as well as the individual discrete devices. I know this is hard for some to comprehend, but not hauling around 3-5 devices just to do daily tasks is a real benefit to the more mobile among us, and might *gasp* be worth some trade-offs. If I have very specific needs (eg, I need to take high-quality photos, or do serious coding), I'll haul along another discrete device. This is not an "either/or" situation.
You answered your own damn question: some of us do indeed use it for work. Others like it for the convienience - I don't have to waste time in line at the supermarket if I can use my smartphone to multi-task. And, finally, some people are just gadget geeks and/or love technology - this is Slashdot, remember? No sin in that.
And your pontificating about "family" is equally off-base, as though people packing these devices somehow neglect their families intrinsically by doing so. I use my smartphone to IM my wife on her way back from work, or send her a quick email about our plans for the night. If anything, getting us smartphones has kept us more in touch, not less. Don't blame technology for the constant disintegration of modern families - blame a culture that puts work above everything else (amongst other things). The smartphone just happens to be something popular in that culture. It did not CREATE it.
I have no idea why a comment that boils down to "I don't have a use for it, so no one except lame people have a use for it" got modded up.
And that, sir, is the end of my rant. You meant well, but I had to disagree.
Your anecdote is more like suing an ISP because their user uploaded copyrighted materials without permission - and you'll notice that's not happening, either. If the USPS were actively soliciting mix tapes and then selling them without checking for copyrights first, do you think they'd be absolved of wrong-doing because someone else gave it to them?
I can understand Viacom's position here, and I don't think it's totally unjustified. That's not the same as "I totally agree with it", mind you, but I see where they're coming from. Google is using their copyrighted works to make money, and doing so without permission. Did said works get uploaded by others? Yes - but does this somehow absolve Google of wrong-doing?
I think that last question is what's going to need to be answered legislatively and judicially over the next decade. It seems wrong that Google is profiting off Viacom's work without permission or license, yet more restrictions will hinder the development of some technologies (ala some of the proposed remedies to mass copyright infringement via P2P). This, of course, assumes there is not some sort of drastic change in how copyright is handled - which I'm sure is the solution many Slashdotters would prefer, but doesn't strike me as terribly likely in the current legislative climate.
Probably because there's no working ordnance left?
If the program got terminated in 1985, that means the weapons left from it are at least 22 years old. It strikes me that there's a fair chance that few to none of them even work any more, and that we don't have any way to produce more on a moment's notice. This exact situation is discussed in Tom Clancy's book "Red Storm Rising", in fact.
However, there's another thing: the current US military wants weapons they can deploy as fast as possible (the TacSat program is something of an example of this). Hunting down a trained F-15+ASAT pilot, hauling them to the right location for an intercept, and then launching is inefficient and slow compared to "select satellite to kill, launch intercontinental ASAT from pad". If, say, the Chinese are using their comm satellites to support an invasion of Taiwan, you want to kill them right the hell now, not in 12 hours.
This sounds great on paper, but I'm reminded of J2ME - all the apps get coded down to the lowest common denominator, rather than actually getting something that takes advantage of your phone. For instance, compare the J2ME and Windows Mobile versions of Google Maps - the latter is just far better, even though the J2ME version could conceivably run on the exact same platform.
However: I do think that non-smartphones will see a common Linux variant as their base in the future, with J2ME on top. I just don't think it'll happen in the higher end of the market, where SymbianOS and Windows Mobile will continue to fight it out.
What Microsoft gets, and what I think is the future, is making all of these things work together. Windows Mobile syncs to your desktop at home. The Xbox 360 gets its content from your desktop at home. It's not about replacing your computer, it's about extending it.
Apple's very late to the game. Their implementation may be better, but they're stealing the paradigms, not innovating them.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that if you have an objection to gadgets, you should pursue a legislative solution. Yet another is that stuff like a BT hands-free set built in will actually encourage folks to have both hands on the wheel.
The game really does deserve a sequel, though. There aren't many problems in the underlying game mechanics - the game itself just needs more content. Similar story to Dead Rising in a lot of ways - not a lot wrong, but quite a bit missing.
I've heard rumor that Crackdown will seeing some (free?) downloadable content via XBLM, so there's that, too.
Slashdot Mirror
"The fallback option is to use an analog capture card and to prioritize the digital tuners over the analog capture so you get high-def whenever possible."
The analog fallback is going to go away sooner or later - if I had to guess, not long after the analog OTA channels are phased out. The cable companies desperately want to phase out analog channels - they eat much more spectrum than digital channels, and look worse to boot. That's the problem with MythTV, at least in the US: unless something changes, you're going to be stuck with digital OTA broadcasts and unencrypted QAM in the long term.
Of course, Vista's not exactly much better off, either - you can only get CableCards on a PC certified by CableLabs, as you mentioned, so everyone who didn't do that is in exactly the same boat.
I suspect the FCC will actually confront this issue - what they'll do is a much more interesting question. Maybe DCAS will change things. We'll see.
Interesting. I wonder what the end game is going to be?
My money is on "Earth is the Cylon home world" or something similarly devious.
"The point is - nothing seems much better in the user experience than before, for the vast majority of things we do - and that includes MacOS X, to my thinking."
Yeah, except for multi-tasking. You don't use that at all, right? Multifinder was only introduced in System 6, long after the Mac Plus was made obsolete by newer Macs.
Look, I liked my Mac Plus. I even liked the 512k, except for bumping against memory limits in large documents. But you're really viewing this whole thing with rose-colored glasses if you think that a Mac Plus with a bigger screen is going to be just as usable or pleasant-to-use as Vista or MacOS X.
I think it's because they originally wanted a separation between what Red Hat maintained (packages perceived as important) and what the community maintained (packages perceived optional stuff). But now that they've managed to iron out the problems they had working/communicating with the community, there's no longer much need for those artificial distinctions.
There's also the whole "you can spin your own Fedora variant" that's being pushed in this release, which further blurs the line between what's a core package and what's an extra package. If I've got a Mythdora-esque LiveCD, MythTV is important, but Evolution might not be.
"And how did the Europeans get all the good lawmakers anyway? I'm thinking about moving to Finland where copyright seems to make more sense."
They didn't, or have you not noticed the completely barely-democratic method the EU happens to govern itself by? Seriously, while I appreciate being able to legally rip DVDs, that comes pretty far behind basic rights and freedoms, some of which (speech, press, gun control) are openly assaulted on a daily basis at the EU Parliament level.
And, more to the point, this was a court decision, not a parliamentary one.
You bring up a good point, which is that the space municipal WiFi is supposed to fill is already being filled by cell providers. Right now, I can choose between any of four providers for 3G access anytime, anywhere (or at least as good as our own teensy municipal WiFi network provides). As far as I'm concerned, areas with decent EVDO/HSDPA coverage have no business going down the municipal WiFi path - government has no business competing with private business.
Is it as cheap or fast as some people want? No. But then again, you're paying the _real cost_ of such service, not just subsidizing it by force. And, personally, $15 a month for Sprint data access over EVDO seems OK to me.
Sure - who's got the incentive to upgrade the network?
CGMS-A isn't the same as the broadcast flag. The "reasonable justification" happens to be "FCC regulations".
HBO is "copy once". HBO On-Demand is "copy never". So, nominally, you should be able to record your regular HBO shows on your computer, but not burn them to DVD or copy them elsewhere. In other words, your system is working as expected.
The problem here, from what I understand, is that a few regional US cable operators are improperly passing "copy never" down the line on stuff like A&E, in violation of FCC regulations. Or there's the Canadian case, where there's no rules about that stuff at all, but Media Center honors it anyways - so all the cable and sat operators just flag everything as "copy never", and screw the Canadian users.
I just re-read it, too. Looks as if it's also mostly a Canadian problem, too. Someone also claimed that the FCC apparently didn't allow it to be set spuriously, so that's something to check into for US citizens.
I wouldn't take the summary at face value for this one - IIRC, there are some driver issues that cause this flag to pop up when it's really not supposed to. More info, including Microsoft's mostly-official response, at:
p x
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/176207.as
More than that - if they were laying off that many people in search of profitability, they'd announce it to everyone. Since when do major layoffs happen quietly?
The Dreamcast sold extremely well when it first came out, too. Didn't stop Sony from slaughtering Sega later, though. You've got to follow through on that initial lead, and I'd argue NO ONE has done that particularly well this time around.
The Wii outsold the Xbox 360 by 25% last month. That's certainly a sizable lead, yet it's not exactly what I'd call "creaming the competition". I'd also argue that the Wii's monthly software sales have been underwhelming - Wii Play has been propping up the numbers to a large extent, and that's a $10 game bundled with an accessory.
Now, if you want to talk about getting creamed, let's talk about the PS3...
Speaking as someone who actually did econometrics and hard math/statistics economics in school, I could not agree more with this critique of Freakonomics. It is an entertaining read, to be sure, but he's omitted a lot of the data to support his conclusions, making it more of a "just believe me" book than an actual primer to non-traditional economics.
This guy DOES look for sensationalism and tension where there is none!
The PR guys did their damn jobs. Good for them. There was nothing sinister in there at all.
You know, this comment comes up every time there's an article about convergence devices, and it drives me crazy each time.
Some of like not having to carry a cell phone, a portable media player, a digital camera and a laptop around with us just to be functional on the go. No, some of us actually like having a single device that can make calls, check our email, send IMs, play music and video, do light web browsing, and take a picture in a pinch - even if it doesn't do these things as well as the individual discrete devices. I know this is hard for some to comprehend, but not hauling around 3-5 devices just to do daily tasks is a real benefit to the more mobile among us, and might *gasp* be worth some trade-offs. If I have very specific needs (eg, I need to take high-quality photos, or do serious coding), I'll haul along another discrete device. This is not an "either/or" situation.
You answered your own damn question: some of us do indeed use it for work. Others like it for the convienience - I don't have to waste time in line at the supermarket if I can use my smartphone to multi-task. And, finally, some people are just gadget geeks and/or love technology - this is Slashdot, remember? No sin in that.
And your pontificating about "family" is equally off-base, as though people packing these devices somehow neglect their families intrinsically by doing so. I use my smartphone to IM my wife on her way back from work, or send her a quick email about our plans for the night. If anything, getting us smartphones has kept us more in touch, not less. Don't blame technology for the constant disintegration of modern families - blame a culture that puts work above everything else (amongst other things). The smartphone just happens to be something popular in that culture. It did not CREATE it.
I have no idea why a comment that boils down to "I don't have a use for it, so no one except lame people have a use for it" got modded up.
And that, sir, is the end of my rant. You meant well, but I had to disagree.
correction: "uploaded copyrighted materials to some other user"
"USPS is using those copyrighted works"
Your anecdote is more like suing an ISP because their user uploaded copyrighted materials without permission - and you'll notice that's not happening, either. If the USPS were actively soliciting mix tapes and then selling them without checking for copyrights first, do you think they'd be absolved of wrong-doing because someone else gave it to them?
I can understand Viacom's position here, and I don't think it's totally unjustified. That's not the same as "I totally agree with it", mind you, but I see where they're coming from. Google is using their copyrighted works to make money, and doing so without permission. Did said works get uploaded by others? Yes - but does this somehow absolve Google of wrong-doing?
I think that last question is what's going to need to be answered legislatively and judicially over the next decade. It seems wrong that Google is profiting off Viacom's work without permission or license, yet more restrictions will hinder the development of some technologies (ala some of the proposed remedies to mass copyright infringement via P2P). This, of course, assumes there is not some sort of drastic change in how copyright is handled - which I'm sure is the solution many Slashdotters would prefer, but doesn't strike me as terribly likely in the current legislative climate.
Probably because there's no working ordnance left?
If the program got terminated in 1985, that means the weapons left from it are at least 22 years old. It strikes me that there's a fair chance that few to none of them even work any more, and that we don't have any way to produce more on a moment's notice. This exact situation is discussed in Tom Clancy's book "Red Storm Rising", in fact.
However, there's another thing: the current US military wants weapons they can deploy as fast as possible (the TacSat program is something of an example of this). Hunting down a trained F-15+ASAT pilot, hauling them to the right location for an intercept, and then launching is inefficient and slow compared to "select satellite to kill, launch intercontinental ASAT from pad". If, say, the Chinese are using their comm satellites to support an invasion of Taiwan, you want to kill them right the hell now, not in 12 hours.
This sounds great on paper, but I'm reminded of J2ME - all the apps get coded down to the lowest common denominator, rather than actually getting something that takes advantage of your phone. For instance, compare the J2ME and Windows Mobile versions of Google Maps - the latter is just far better, even though the J2ME version could conceivably run on the exact same platform.
However: I do think that non-smartphones will see a common Linux variant as their base in the future, with J2ME on top. I just don't think it'll happen in the higher end of the market, where SymbianOS and Windows Mobile will continue to fight it out.
What Microsoft gets, and what I think is the future, is making all of these things work together. Windows Mobile syncs to your desktop at home. The Xbox 360 gets its content from your desktop at home. It's not about replacing your computer, it's about extending it.
Apple's very late to the game. Their implementation may be better, but they're stealing the paradigms, not innovating them.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that if you have an objection to gadgets, you should pursue a legislative solution. Yet another is that stuff like a BT hands-free set built in will actually encourage folks to have both hands on the wheel.
Life is full of trade-offs.
The game really does deserve a sequel, though. There aren't many problems in the underlying game mechanics - the game itself just needs more content. Similar story to Dead Rising in a lot of ways - not a lot wrong, but quite a bit missing.
I've heard rumor that Crackdown will seeing some (free?) downloadable content via XBLM, so there's that, too.
You can choose the race of your main character, so fears about this becoming a KKK future world simulator are probably unfounded. :)