It was rural first.
My grandfather used to sit on the Cable Co-op board for his community (the "metro" area had 4000 people) back in early 1980's. Sure, they had clear-sight with no big buildings, but when you are 200 mi away from the second-closest signal that unobstructed view didn't help much.
It's another form of Video on Demand.
You aren't going to get a hard drive at home. The items you tape will be stored on TW's servers, and you'll be able to call them back.
It's the death of TIVO/SonicBlue/Replay when it catches on. I know other cable guys are looking at it. They say since most consumers have trouble setting up a VCR, the only way to get time shifting to mass adoption is to take the tech out of the home and make it esy to use.
Of course, making sure you don't share/store/skip things aini't bad either. And targeted ads will be completely real.
"The world simply cannot support 12 billion people (a common estimate for the population when growth finally levels off) comfortably."
I know it's cool to be negative (thanks, Boomers for that bit of legacy). Frankly, I do think we can support 12 billion people pretty easily. In my (short) lifetime, we've gone from 5 to 6 billion people on Earth. And we'll hit 7b soon. I remember reading old textbooks in grade school implying the world would fall apart at 6b (I'm sure inspired by pseudo-scientists like Ehrlich).
Let's do some math, shall we? San Fran proper's density/square mile was 15,681 people as of 1997. While not open prarie, SF is hardly some nightmarish sardine can. It's very livable from a density perspecitve.
Texas and Alaska have a combined mi^2 of 882K (+/-). Now, this is just an exercise, but in a land mass the size of those 2 states at SF density, you can fit 13.8 billion people. The whole rest of the world could be used to make food if so needed, or to let your favorite animal roam, or for Nascar races, whatever. Point is, we as humans have trouble with big numbers, and we also love to believe in doomsday stories (almost all societies have end of world stories). This is the EOW story for the eco-religion.
It's not a land issue. It's not a resource issue. It's a people issue. I'm sure we had starvation in societies of 100K when people decided to fight one another rather than use that human effort productively. And if you look at most areas of starvation, there's a war directly behind it.
Now, please bring on the flames...:)
In my opinion as a hedge fund guy...
XM is the one more likely to survive. They've got a pretty big lead, and the addition of GM OEM is going to be huge this fall.
Whats going to happen is GM will eventually roll XM into itself. A good portion of GM's growth over the recent past came from DirectTv. I think they are waiting until the money raising portion of XM's life is over, and then they'll buy 'em out.
XM has also stated they will dump the ads if it seems to stop people from signing up. It's not an issue so far (I don't think they are intrusive) but if the market so dictates they'll dump 'em.
After trying both services, I can't tell much difference. So I went with XM because it's more likely they will be around in a few years. And I gotta say, it's so nice to be able to have a wide choice of music on long trips.
If you call overseas from US, you are using VoIP
on
VoIP at $15 a Pop
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
A good chunk of international traffic is already converted to IP. All of the major US carriers have contracts with ITXC (http://www.itxc.com) which sends your voice traffic over the internet, and then attaches to local network at the destination. They constantly test a variety of paths to keep QoS at levels where you (the user) have no idea it's not circuit-switched.
So VoIP with QoS is not only possible, it's already here and in use. And the best testiment to the quality of the product is the fact you can't tell when you are using it. Not exactly a great marketing slogan...
Slashdot Mirror
It was rural first. My grandfather used to sit on the Cable Co-op board for his community (the "metro" area had 4000 people) back in early 1980's. Sure, they had clear-sight with no big buildings, but when you are 200 mi away from the second-closest signal that unobstructed view didn't help much.
It's another form of Video on Demand. You aren't going to get a hard drive at home. The items you tape will be stored on TW's servers, and you'll be able to call them back. It's the death of TIVO/SonicBlue/Replay when it catches on. I know other cable guys are looking at it. They say since most consumers have trouble setting up a VCR, the only way to get time shifting to mass adoption is to take the tech out of the home and make it esy to use. Of course, making sure you don't share/store/skip things aini't bad either. And targeted ads will be completely real.
"The world simply cannot support 12 billion people (a common estimate for the population when growth finally levels off) comfortably." I know it's cool to be negative (thanks, Boomers for that bit of legacy). Frankly, I do think we can support 12 billion people pretty easily. In my (short) lifetime, we've gone from 5 to 6 billion people on Earth. And we'll hit 7b soon. I remember reading old textbooks in grade school implying the world would fall apart at 6b (I'm sure inspired by pseudo-scientists like Ehrlich). Let's do some math, shall we? San Fran proper's density/square mile was 15,681 people as of 1997. While not open prarie, SF is hardly some nightmarish sardine can. It's very livable from a density perspecitve. Texas and Alaska have a combined mi^2 of 882K (+/-). Now, this is just an exercise, but in a land mass the size of those 2 states at SF density, you can fit 13.8 billion people. The whole rest of the world could be used to make food if so needed, or to let your favorite animal roam, or for Nascar races, whatever. Point is, we as humans have trouble with big numbers, and we also love to believe in doomsday stories (almost all societies have end of world stories). This is the EOW story for the eco-religion. It's not a land issue. It's not a resource issue. It's a people issue. I'm sure we had starvation in societies of 100K when people decided to fight one another rather than use that human effort productively. And if you look at most areas of starvation, there's a war directly behind it. Now, please bring on the flames...:)
In my opinion as a hedge fund guy... XM is the one more likely to survive. They've got a pretty big lead, and the addition of GM OEM is going to be huge this fall. Whats going to happen is GM will eventually roll XM into itself. A good portion of GM's growth over the recent past came from DirectTv. I think they are waiting until the money raising portion of XM's life is over, and then they'll buy 'em out. XM has also stated they will dump the ads if it seems to stop people from signing up. It's not an issue so far (I don't think they are intrusive) but if the market so dictates they'll dump 'em. After trying both services, I can't tell much difference. So I went with XM because it's more likely they will be around in a few years. And I gotta say, it's so nice to be able to have a wide choice of music on long trips.
A good chunk of international traffic is already converted to IP. All of the major US carriers have contracts with ITXC (http://www.itxc.com) which sends your voice traffic over the internet, and then attaches to local network at the destination. They constantly test a variety of paths to keep QoS at levels where you (the user) have no idea it's not circuit-switched. So VoIP with QoS is not only possible, it's already here and in use. And the best testiment to the quality of the product is the fact you can't tell when you are using it. Not exactly a great marketing slogan...