...with a VIA KT400 chipset mobo(tho its not out yet)...
Check out the ABit AT7-MAX2... Unless there is something I am missing (quite possible!), then the KT400 is shipping already, as are mobo's based around it.
Re:Putting the hurt on AMD?
on
Pentium 4 2.8GHz
·
· Score: 2, Informative
...anything made by Via is junk...
Just like AMD Themselves with their old performance issues with Floating Point Math, VIA have had some poor chipsets in the past, however, the KT333 as used on the ABit AT7 Motherboard is exceptionally stable - I have a Linux Server with 8x80GB Maxtor IDE Disks arrayed to one 640GB disk which (aside from a driver problem for the Highpoint 374 controller, which is nothing to do with the KT333 or the AMD CPU) runs perfectly.
I'm actually quite keen to get my hands on the new A Bit KT7-MAX2, which has the KT400 chipset, and a host of extra features not present on the original AT7
I can think of a number of other VIA / AMD motherboards which I have used, and found to be exceptionally stable, most notable of which is the ABit KT7A and ABit KT7A-RAID.
In short, if you put aside the past of both AMD and VIA, and look again at the technical specs, and real-world performance of these CPU's and Chipsets, you will find that they are both now a viable, low-cost, alternative to the traditional Intel Only way of thinking and working.
The need for "The biggest number you can get" would be happily satisfied by the AMD CPU's if you were to look at the number of Operations per Second that the AMD and Intel CPU's are capable of Completing.
Of course, Intel will never rebrand their CPU's on this basis whilst AMD would still be beating them on performance!
Though all the average user understands is "A bigger number must mean that it runs faster", any self respecting geek will look at the CPU's OP/s and FLOP/s ratings to make up their minds!
If there is enough interest, then I'll build a decent interface to the system (been looking for an excuse), open-source it, and add the ability for users to//optionally// send their 'privacy traitor' lists to a central location, and update their lists from said place...
Failing that, I'll see what I can do about posting a 'privacy traitor' list somewhere... (I'm not at home just now, so I can't get to the listings)
Mail me at: m i k e 'at' v o f k a 'dot' c o 'dot' u k
If you're interested... (May take me a couple of days to reply - I'm working away from home a lot just now, but I'll get back to you when I can!)
The majority of Domestic DVD Players have a simple workaround to RCE (works on Most players, probably not all!)
1. Insert DVD
2. Hammer the 'Stop' button like crazy, so the disc doesn't start to play
3. Press your DVD Player's 'title' button
4. Select the Main Feature (usually Title 1, but not always, varies by disc).
5. Press Play (or whatever will make your player play the selected title)
I also have my own domain, and run my own SMTP Server. As well as stopping Spam, I'm interested in tracking who gives my E-Mail addresses to whom, so each service I sign up for that is likely to send me Automatic E-Mails (which is most 'net services these days) get's an individual address, such as mdi0000000001@myverysecretdomain.co.uk.
At my Incoming Mail Server, I run procmail rules to check the incoming message address against 'permitted' senders. Any that don't match are Put into a Holding Account for checking, any that do are allowed through (I want my DNS Host to be able to mail me for example!).
The benefit of this is that I can tell Who has passed on my address (well, their address, but they don't know that!!). When I find that an address has been comprimised, I simply block it, and bounce all messages destined for it, as well as contacting the original 'owner' of the address to tell them what I think.
Now, it does take some work, and common sense, to run, it's not a 'set-it and forget-it' system by any means, but it lets me easily allow what I want in, in; and lets me block what I don't.
As for Doubleclick, they made their way onto my "reject all incoming mail from this sender" list (which I also maintain) a looooong time ago, along with several other 'direct marketing' companies (postmasterdirect springs instantly to mind!!)..
Sure, it's technology feeding technology, but since more and more cellphones (at least in Europe) are being equipped with Bluetooth Transceivers, why not just implement a Bluetooth setup where as you walk into a Theater / Cinema etc, a signal is sent to the phone saying "Ignore all calls".
A modified SIM could be issued to Doctors / Fire Persons etc telling the phone "Enter vibrate only mode" instead.
This would totally prevent the need for a set of laws governing usage, and doesn't have many of the common problems associated with Cellphone Jammers...
Crikey... Most of the replies to this post seem to be centered around Money, and are missing the Technical aspects of Digital TV.
There are a number of Technical reasons for pushing DTT (Digital Terestrial Television), including, but not limited to:
1. Lower power broadcasts to reach the same population base (therefore requiring less electricity to run the transmitters, also making it safer for transmitter maintenance engineers to work on the transmitter.)
2. More content can be broadcast within the same frequency spectrum, usually up to six 'channels' of content can be broadcast in one analog 'channel'.
3. DTT has a significantly better resistance to signal interference than Analog broadcasts.
4. DTT (as well as Digital Cable and Satellite) permit better 'interactive' service, either through text based information services, or by employing 'multi-angle' viewing for sports events.
I could go on - but the point is, it's not Just money. The probable reason for the mandate is that the Government knows that the general population will be unwilling to take the risk with such new technology unless they are 'prodded' in that direction.
Consider perhaps donating all old tv's to Third-World Developemnt projects.
Alternatively, KEEP your darned Analog TV, and simply obtain an EXTERNAL digital tuner... The TV itself is still fine, only the tuner needs to be replaced, and that can be done with a simple Set Top Box!
Are there no Americans in the world that understand the Impact their actions have on the environment! Sheesh!
Commercial ATC Operators don't 'see' the aircraft on screen, they 'see' a transponder signal (known as a 'squawk') which is sent by the transponder unit when the ATC Radar strikes a detector on the aircraft. Only Military Radar Operators actually 'see' a true radar return signal.
You miss the point... The Content of the 'image' file(s) would still be Audio Data - not image data. If you were to look at the image using an image view application, you would see total garbage in most cases.
You may as well say "Let's just encode everything with zero's and one's, and then I can't be caught out for stealing copyrighted material"... OH, oops, we do that already!
If you had read the whole post, you would know that at 1 foot away from a 13 inch TV, I, personally, would have the same visual perception as you would at 6 feet. In short, I would be able to resolve practically bugger all on the display, let alone percieve any Flicker! In order to even use a PC, I have to sit less than three inches from the CRT, and I have never in over 15 years noticed considerable flicker or storbe effects - Except in cases where the CRT has been located directly underneath office strip-lighting.
What kind of LCD's have you been using recently? The last time I had the 'do I have mouse trails on-or-off' feeling was with a DSTN type LCD, over five years ago! Modern TFT Breed LCD's (particularly those from the past 18 months or so) exhibit excellent refresh charachteristics - to the point where it is quite comfortable to watch complete DVD on the LCD, rather than pushing it out to a CRT.
A Key reason for flicker on US Television is the choice of Colour encoding (NTSC, as opposed to here in the UK where PAL is used). NTSC is much more prone to interference in the Chrominance burst due to it's encodiing system, which causes the signals for odd- and even-fields to interfere, leading to excess blurring and flicker. PAL Encoding does not suffer so badly from these artefacts, due to the fact that the odd- and even-field Chrominance Bursts are out of phase with each other by 120 Degrees. This is probably why I have only ever heard Yanks complaining about flicker on Domestic TV - It doesn't Happen nearly so badly with PAL Anyway.
In the US, A Full-Frame refresh occurs at 30 Hz, but the Field refresh (the important number here!) is at 60Hz. Remember that traditional broadcast TV, and analogue Video encoding is all Interlaced. (For the UK Frame = 25 Hz and Field = 50 Hz).
Remember where the Ambient and CRT Light all ends up - the Retina. Most flicker artefacts are at the perceptual level, or are caused by interference as different flicker components enter the eye, and not by an individual item of technology.
Probably the most important factor in assessing whether a given person 'sees' a flicker from a given source is not the light-source itself, but that persons eye. If like me, you suffer from a number of combined optical deficiencies, including Astigmatism, Albinism, Nystagmus, Short Sight and Central-vision blind-spots, I guarantee you that you will percieve flicker in a much different way to someone with the textbook '20-20' eye.
There are a significant number of factors which account for visual flicker - and Experience in the world tells me that you are quite Wrong to discount the effect of Ambient Lighting on percieved flicker from a CTR/LCD Display.
You can say what you want, and you can Mod this post all the way to oblivion, but you cannot change how anyone else sees the world.
You've never used System Policies, or an 'Approved Applications' listing then? Sure, neither is a panacea, but they would prevent stuff like that happening quite so easily.
Breaking a Network's security Restrictions can be made difficult, it's just not easy to put the proper restrictions in place on an M$ Product like 2K or XP.
No, it's not quite that simple - and perhaps my original response was biased by the fact that I am Partially Sighted (6/36 or 20/120 depending on your side of the Pond), and hence have a totally different view on the world to most of you!
Most people I have spoken to only 'see' the 60Hz flicker of a CRT in artificially lit conditions, and report that the flicker disappears in Natural Lighting - the visible component of the flicker is caused by resonance between the light-source and the CRT.
As for sports - you don't need to resolve images faster than 15 'cycles' per second - your brain will quite happily fill in the missing detail about an object's position, be it a Baseball or whatever, quite unconciously - you don't have to see it to know it's there and where it's going!
Re:Not that kind of bandwith ....
on
IBM's Deep View
·
· Score: 1
Why? (good) TFT Displays are not fed with a pure Analog Signal like CRT's are, they are fed with a pure-digital signal, which addresses each colour-pixel individually, and sequentially. Surely the Analog Mindset does not apply Here!
Surely the nVidia Lawyer types should have seen this kind of thing coming, and keeping that in mind, should have built a clause into their contract with Micro$haft stating that they would receive a certain acceptable minimum notice of a Code-Change, so that the manufacturing losses (and hence financial losses) were minimised?
Valid - however, the ASIC's in question are relatively simple multi-pipline DSP's (There are usually seperate pipelines, or even seperate discrete IC's which handle video and audio seperately - therefore there must be a unit at the 'head' of the line which seperates out the components in the source to 'hand off' to the individual processing functions.)
Now, a lot of ASIC's at least start out life as Programmable Gate Array Logic IC's. If the DVD Manufacturers were to use Field Programmable GAL's as opposed to One-Time Programmable GAL's in their shipping products, then there is no reason that the CODEC's cannot be updated post-manufacture.
Sure, this pushed the price up a few dollars / unit, and is a feature quite unlikely to find it's way into 'budget' DVD Hardware in the near future, however, there is absolutely no technical reason whatsoever that the CODECS in Mid- or High-range DVD models could not be updated if the manufacturers desired such an ability!
You're right of course... As a matter of habit, I tend to think about this kind of data-transfer in GigaBits per second - I totally forgot that AGP4x is specced in GigaBytes per second.
Standard cinema runs at 24 Hz non-Interlaced, domestic TV at 25 (UK) or 30 (US) Hz Interlaced (50 or 60 Hz effective, though only half of the image is rendered in each frame), neither of these show a visible strobe effect!
Also, the switching time of the Transistors in the Display Matrix, coupled with signal delays which are bound th be present in the Display Driver Unit (even if they are pico- or fento-second delays), will add up to a smooth(er) experience anyways.
Sure, the display would be more realistic at 100Hz or faster, but really, it's not vital... The human eye only resolves 12 to 15 frames per second, and (depending on the ambient light level, and image contrast levels) about 11 to 15 million distinct colours.
Quoth the article: since no single graphics adapter has the necessary horsepower and bandwidth to feed a 9.2 million pixel display (at 41Hz using 24 bits per pixel)
Hmm, doing the math: 3840*2400 pixels = 9216000 Pixels per Frame 9216000*3 (3=24/8) = 27648000 Bytes per Frame 27648000*8 = 221184000 Bits Per Frame 221184000 (bpf) * 41 (fps) = 9068544000 Bits per Second 9068544000/1024 = 8856000 KiloBits per Second (approx) 8856000/1024 = 8648 MegaBits per Second (approx) 8648/1024 = Just over 8 GigaBits per Second
Now, with newer DX9-type graphics Adapters, and AGP 8x, we can do about 2.5 to 3 Gigabits per second just now (over the AGP Bus, haven't calculated Actual Display bitrates!)... Applying Moore's law, (theorum, whatever!), we can safely say that this kind of horsepower will be common in a single, average, desktop PC inside of two to three years.
Sure, this may be a boost to Hollywood today - but soon enough, it will be pretty commonplace technology. (Though I'm betting the most expensive item in that bunch of kit is the actual LCD Display, not the kit driving it!).
The wrong Focus...
on
More MS EULA Fun
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
IMHO, most people are focusing on the wrong aspect of this change. Sure, this change in the EULA gives MS the power to connect to, scan, and update the OS Software on your PC - and with their past record with releasing buggy, security-flaw ridden software, one should think that having the most recent patches installed ASAP would be a good thing (though MS Have been known to go from bad to worse with some of their patches!)
However, you all seem to be missing a more obvious implication - if MS can connect to your machine to load Legitemate updates, How long do you think it will be before your local 3v1l Hax0r d00d works out how to spoof the mechanism to his/her own ends?
It's not necessarily what you are allowing MS to do that you should be worring about - it's what you will be allowing the rest of the world to do that should worry you!
Public makes more sense - it's not what it does, it's where it connects to (The PUBLIC Switched Telephone Network), and who can access it (The PUBLIC can place a call into the exchange).
This is one of those cases where an acronym has multiple acceptable and correct variations, live with it!
PBX = Public Branch eXchange Basically, it's a Telephone Switch device which connects a bunch of phones to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), or POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) (depends on which side of the pond you're on!).
Slashdot Mirror
...with a VIA KT400 chipset mobo(tho its not out yet)...
Check out the ABit AT7-MAX2... Unless there is something I am missing (quite possible!), then the KT400 is shipping already, as are mobo's based around it.
...anything made by Via is junk...
Just like AMD Themselves with their old performance issues with Floating Point Math, VIA have had some poor chipsets in the past, however, the KT333 as used on the ABit AT7 Motherboard is exceptionally stable - I have a Linux Server with 8x80GB Maxtor IDE Disks arrayed to one 640GB disk which (aside from a driver problem for the Highpoint 374 controller, which is nothing to do with the KT333 or the AMD CPU) runs perfectly.
I'm actually quite keen to get my hands on the new A Bit KT7-MAX2, which has the KT400 chipset, and a host of extra features not present on the original AT7
I can think of a number of other VIA / AMD motherboards which I have used, and found to be exceptionally stable, most notable of which is the ABit KT7A and ABit KT7A-RAID.
In short, if you put aside the past of both AMD and VIA, and look again at the technical specs, and real-world performance of these CPU's and Chipsets, you will find that they are both now a viable, low-cost, alternative to the traditional Intel Only way of thinking and working.
The need for "The biggest number you can get" would be happily satisfied by the AMD CPU's if you were to look at the number of Operations per Second that the AMD and Intel CPU's are capable of Completing.
Of course, Intel will never rebrand their CPU's on this basis whilst AMD would still be beating them on performance!
Though all the average user understands is "A bigger number must mean that it runs faster", any self respecting geek will look at the CPU's OP/s and FLOP/s ratings to make up their minds!
If there is enough interest, then I'll build a decent interface to the system (been looking for an excuse), open-source it, and add the ability for users to //optionally// send their 'privacy traitor' lists to a central location, and update their lists from said place...
Failing that, I'll see what I can do about posting a 'privacy traitor' list somewhere... (I'm not at home just now, so I can't get to the listings)
Mail me at: m i k e 'at' v o f k a 'dot' c o 'dot' u k
If you're interested... (May take me a couple of days to reply - I'm working away from home a lot just now, but I'll get back to you when I can!)
The majority of Domestic DVD Players have a simple workaround to RCE (works on Most players, probably not all!)
1. Insert DVD
2. Hammer the 'Stop' button like crazy, so the disc doesn't start to play
3. Press your DVD Player's 'title' button
4. Select the Main Feature (usually Title 1, but not always, varies by disc).
5. Press Play (or whatever will make your player play the selected title)
Yep, it is that simple...!
I also have my own domain, and run my own SMTP Server. As well as stopping Spam, I'm interested in tracking who gives my E-Mail addresses to whom, so each service I sign up for that is likely to send me Automatic E-Mails (which is most 'net services these days) get's an individual address, such as mdi0000000001@myverysecretdomain.co.uk.
At my Incoming Mail Server, I run procmail rules to check the incoming message address against 'permitted' senders. Any that don't match are Put into a Holding Account for checking, any that do are allowed through (I want my DNS Host to be able to mail me for example!).
The benefit of this is that I can tell Who has passed on my address (well, their address, but they don't know that!!). When I find that an address has been comprimised, I simply block it, and bounce all messages destined for it, as well as contacting the original 'owner' of the address to tell them what I think.
Now, it does take some work, and common sense, to run, it's not a 'set-it and forget-it' system by any means, but it lets me easily allow what I want in, in; and lets me block what I don't.
As for Doubleclick, they made their way onto my "reject all incoming mail from this sender" list (which I also maintain) a looooong time ago, along with several other 'direct marketing' companies (postmasterdirect springs instantly to mind!!)..
Sure, it's technology feeding technology, but since more and more cellphones (at least in Europe) are being equipped with Bluetooth Transceivers, why not just implement a Bluetooth setup where as you walk into a Theater / Cinema etc, a signal is sent to the phone saying "Ignore all calls".
A modified SIM could be issued to Doctors / Fire Persons etc telling the phone "Enter vibrate only mode" instead.
This would totally prevent the need for a set of laws governing usage, and doesn't have many of the common problems associated with Cellphone Jammers...
Nope! British!
Crikey... Most of the replies to this post seem to be centered around Money, and are missing the Technical aspects of Digital TV.
There are a number of Technical reasons for pushing DTT (Digital Terestrial Television), including, but not limited to:
1. Lower power broadcasts to reach the same population base (therefore requiring less electricity to run the transmitters, also making it safer for transmitter maintenance engineers to work on the transmitter.)
2. More content can be broadcast within the same frequency spectrum, usually up to six 'channels' of content can be broadcast in one analog 'channel'.
3. DTT has a significantly better resistance to signal interference than Analog broadcasts.
4. DTT (as well as Digital Cable and Satellite) permit better 'interactive' service, either through text based information services, or by employing 'multi-angle' viewing for sports events.
I could go on - but the point is, it's not Just money. The probable reason for the mandate is that the Government knows that the general population will be unwilling to take the risk with such new technology unless they are 'prodded' in that direction.
Landfill?
Consider perhaps donating all old tv's to Third-World Developemnt projects.
Alternatively, KEEP your darned Analog TV, and simply obtain an EXTERNAL digital tuner... The TV itself is still fine, only the tuner needs to be replaced, and that can be done with a simple Set Top Box!
Are there no Americans in the world that understand the Impact their actions have on the environment! Sheesh!
Err - no...
Commercial ATC Operators don't 'see' the aircraft on screen, they 'see' a transponder signal (known as a 'squawk') which is sent by the transponder unit when the ATC Radar strikes a detector on the aircraft. Only Military Radar Operators actually 'see' a true radar return signal.
You miss the point... The Content of the 'image' file(s) would still be Audio Data - not image data. If you were to look at the image using an image view application, you would see total garbage in most cases.
You may as well say "Let's just encode everything with zero's and one's, and then I can't be caught out for stealing copyrighted material"... OH, oops, we do that already!
If you had read the whole post, you would know that at 1 foot away from a 13 inch TV, I, personally, would have the same visual perception as you would at 6 feet. In short, I would be able to resolve practically bugger all on the display, let alone percieve any Flicker! In order to even use a PC, I have to sit less than three inches from the CRT, and I have never in over 15 years noticed considerable flicker or storbe effects - Except in cases where the CRT has been located directly underneath office strip-lighting.
What kind of LCD's have you been using recently? The last time I had the 'do I have mouse trails on-or-off' feeling was with a DSTN type LCD, over five years ago! Modern TFT Breed LCD's (particularly those from the past 18 months or so) exhibit excellent refresh charachteristics - to the point where it is quite comfortable to watch complete DVD on the LCD, rather than pushing it out to a CRT.
A Key reason for flicker on US Television is the choice of Colour encoding (NTSC, as opposed to here in the UK where PAL is used). NTSC is much more prone to interference in the Chrominance burst due to it's encodiing system, which causes the signals for odd- and even-fields to interfere, leading to excess blurring and flicker. PAL Encoding does not suffer so badly from these artefacts, due to the fact that the odd- and even-field Chrominance Bursts are out of phase with each other by 120 Degrees. This is probably why I have only ever heard Yanks complaining about flicker on Domestic TV - It doesn't Happen nearly so badly with PAL Anyway.
In the US, A Full-Frame refresh occurs at 30 Hz, but the Field refresh (the important number here!) is at 60Hz. Remember that traditional broadcast TV, and analogue Video encoding is all Interlaced. (For the UK Frame = 25 Hz and Field = 50 Hz).
Remember where the Ambient and CRT Light all ends up - the Retina. Most flicker artefacts are at the perceptual level, or are caused by interference as different flicker components enter the eye, and not by an individual item of technology. Probably the most important factor in assessing whether a given person 'sees' a flicker from a given source is not the light-source itself, but that persons eye. If like me, you suffer from a number of combined optical deficiencies, including Astigmatism, Albinism, Nystagmus, Short Sight and Central-vision blind-spots, I guarantee you that you will percieve flicker in a much different way to someone with the textbook '20-20' eye. There are a significant number of factors which account for visual flicker - and Experience in the world tells me that you are quite Wrong to discount the effect of Ambient Lighting on percieved flicker from a CTR/LCD Display.
You can say what you want, and you can Mod this post all the way to oblivion, but you cannot change how anyone else sees the world.
You've never used System Policies, or an 'Approved Applications' listing then? Sure, neither is a panacea, but they would prevent stuff like that happening quite so easily.
Breaking a Network's security Restrictions can be made difficult, it's just not easy to put the proper restrictions in place on an M$ Product like 2K or XP.
No, it's not quite that simple - and perhaps my original response was biased by the fact that I am Partially Sighted (6/36 or 20/120 depending on your side of the Pond), and hence have a totally different view on the world to most of you!
Most people I have spoken to only 'see' the 60Hz flicker of a CRT in artificially lit conditions, and report that the flicker disappears in Natural Lighting - the visible component of the flicker is caused by resonance between the light-source and the CRT.
As for sports - you don't need to resolve images faster than 15 'cycles' per second - your brain will quite happily fill in the missing detail about an object's position, be it a Baseball or whatever, quite unconciously - you don't have to see it to know it's there and where it's going!
Why? (good) TFT Displays are not fed with a pure Analog Signal like CRT's are, they are fed with a pure-digital signal, which addresses each colour-pixel individually, and sequentially. Surely the Analog Mindset does not apply Here!
Surely the nVidia Lawyer types should have seen this kind of thing coming, and keeping that in mind, should have built a clause into their contract with Micro$haft stating that they would receive a certain acceptable minimum notice of a Code-Change, so that the manufacturing losses (and hence financial losses) were minimised?
Hindsight, it seems, once again has 20-20 vision!
My point exactly! :)
Valid - however, the ASIC's in question are relatively simple multi-pipline DSP's (There are usually seperate pipelines, or even seperate discrete IC's which handle video and audio seperately - therefore there must be a unit at the 'head' of the line which seperates out the components in the source to 'hand off' to the individual processing functions.)
Now, a lot of ASIC's at least start out life as Programmable Gate Array Logic IC's. If the DVD Manufacturers were to use Field Programmable GAL's as opposed to One-Time Programmable GAL's in their shipping products, then there is no reason that the CODEC's cannot be updated post-manufacture.
Sure, this pushed the price up a few dollars / unit, and is a feature quite unlikely to find it's way into 'budget' DVD Hardware in the near future, however, there is absolutely no technical reason whatsoever that the CODECS in Mid- or High-range DVD models could not be updated if the manufacturers desired such an ability!
Grrr..
You're right of course... As a matter of habit, I tend to think about this kind of data-transfer in GigaBits per second - I totally forgot that AGP4x is specced in GigaBytes per second.
Time for a Homer Moment....... Doh!
Huh?
Standard cinema runs at 24 Hz non-Interlaced, domestic TV at 25 (UK) or 30 (US) Hz Interlaced (50 or 60 Hz effective, though only half of the image is rendered in each frame), neither of these show a visible strobe effect!
Also, the switching time of the Transistors in the Display Matrix, coupled with signal delays which are bound th be present in the Display Driver Unit (even if they are pico- or fento-second delays), will add up to a smooth(er) experience anyways.
Sure, the display would be more realistic at 100Hz or faster, but really, it's not vital... The human eye only resolves 12 to 15 frames per second, and (depending on the ambient light level, and image contrast levels) about 11 to 15 million distinct colours.
Quoth the article:
since no single graphics adapter has the necessary horsepower and bandwidth to feed a 9.2 million pixel display (at 41Hz using 24 bits per pixel)
Hmm, doing the math:
3840*2400 pixels = 9216000 Pixels per Frame
9216000*3 (3=24/8) = 27648000 Bytes per Frame
27648000*8 = 221184000 Bits Per Frame
221184000 (bpf) * 41 (fps) = 9068544000 Bits per Second
9068544000/1024 = 8856000 KiloBits per Second (approx)
8856000/1024 = 8648 MegaBits per Second (approx)
8648/1024 = Just over 8 GigaBits per Second
Now, with newer DX9-type graphics Adapters, and AGP 8x, we can do about 2.5 to 3 Gigabits per second just now (over the AGP Bus, haven't calculated Actual Display bitrates!)... Applying Moore's law, (theorum, whatever!), we can safely say that this kind of horsepower will be common in a single, average, desktop PC inside of two to three years.
Sure, this may be a boost to Hollywood today - but soon enough, it will be pretty commonplace technology. (Though I'm betting the most expensive item in that bunch of kit is the actual LCD Display, not the kit driving it!).
IMHO, most people are focusing on the wrong aspect of this change. Sure, this change in the EULA gives MS the power to connect to, scan, and update the OS Software on your PC - and with their past record with releasing buggy, security-flaw ridden software, one should think that having the most recent patches installed ASAP would be a good thing (though MS Have been known to go from bad to worse with some of their patches!)
However, you all seem to be missing a more obvious implication - if MS can connect to your machine to load Legitemate updates, How long do you think it will be before your local 3v1l Hax0r d00d works out how to spoof the mechanism to his/her own ends?
It's not necessarily what you are allowing MS to do that you should be worring about - it's what you will be allowing the rest of the world to do that should worry you!
<PARANOIA MODE="OFF">
Public makes more sense - it's not what it does, it's where it connects to (The PUBLIC Switched Telephone Network), and who can access it (The PUBLIC can place a call into the exchange).
This is one of those cases where an acronym has multiple acceptable and correct variations, live with it!
PBX = Public Branch eXchange
Basically, it's a Telephone Switch device which connects a bunch of phones to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), or POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) (depends on which side of the pond you're on!).