I remember reading a story about how some African nations were creating a wifi network via balloon. The wireless router hangs off a weather balloon and gets it's network connection either via satellite or a dedicated link to a ground station. The advantage may be that it could be done cheaply and easily replenished.
I'd beware of the "too good" argument. I remember when people with normal TVs were saying that about Laserdisc, which these days looks like crap when compared with modern (non-HD) dvds on modern TVs. "Good" is a moving target. Rather, I'd say that the source material (in this particular case) wasn't good enough.
I'm not defending BluRay -- I think it's expensive and unnecessary. But there are better reasons than that the format is "too good".
Moreover, with a better compression algorithm, the resultant movies can be stored on normal DVDs as data files, obviating the need to laboriously render the video in BluRay disc format.
Or is it possible that since governments fund research, not solutions, that's what they're getting -- research, not solutions. Practical fusion will always be 50 years ahead, because that's what we are (inadvertently) paying scientists to say.
It sounds like they *are* trying, if the monthly fee is reasonable. If you're going to compete against illegal downloads, you must be at a minimum (a) DRM free and (b) available for a reasonable price. The third requirement is sufficient quality (where hulu still fails), but maybe it'll be ok. This could actually succeed.
Of course, if it is successful, the American music industry will implement their own version, which will be more expensive than CDs, have draconian DRM and be accompanied by punishing enforcement with lots of false positives. But hey, we were always on the forefront of innovation...
It's an entirely different deal. DVD was a significant improvement over VHS in quality, form factor, and durability. Blu-Ray is only an incremental improvement over DVD which most people won't notice.
Blu-Ray is to DVD what S-VHS was to VHS. And we all know how the market for S-VHS movies really took off.
It was reasonable for DVD to replace VHS over time. The improvement was significant enough that regular people were actually interested in switching after the cost of the players started to come down.
Blu-Ray has no such attraction. Same form factor, same durability, and only a small S-VHS-like improvement in quality (for most people). Compound this with draconian DRM and higher media and player costs in a down economy, and you have the makings of a genuine loser.
I'm not a seer, don't even play one on television, but I suspect that for prerecorded media, Blu-Ray will be swamped out by the Next Big Thing before it has a chance to replace DVD. It'll stick around as a recordable medium, but prerecorded content will die out. To replace a medium, you have to be Enough Better. Blu-Ray isn't.
Blu-Ray does have an important use, for backups and data storage. I plan to get a writer as soon as the price drops a bit.
Blu-Ray video? Enh. I seen it. I not impressed. It's just not the leap in quality that we got with the switch from VHS to DVD. Assuming well-crafted content (anyone can make a crappy DVD, or a crappy Blu-Ray disc), the weak link for the majority of consumers will be the TV. Except for a small collection of videophiles and the people who just have to have the latest thing, it's not worth the cost or the trouble. And the more restrictions enforced by content owners, the less it will be worth the cost or the trouble.
So, if I'm understanding this right, content owners are scheming to make life miserable for the few videophiles trying to use a mostly unnecessary video format. Yeah, that sounds like a business plan.
I don't find this surprising at all. Doctor's offices are assembly lines these days. A convenient good for a convenient number. Real life isn't like House -- unless you're a senator, successful diagnosis of obscure problems is unlikely, and probably prohibitively expensive for the patient, even with insurance.
It would be in our favor to become more educated about how this complicated machine called the body works. I'm not suggesting bizarre treatments only available in third world countries, but a more complete understanding of cause and effect.
For instance, the most common treatment for back pain is "weaponized" muscle relaxers and pain killers, commonly leading to hopeless addiction. I know of at least two cases (one of them my own) where the true cause of the pain was due to ergonomic issues, and changes in the environment accompanied by proper exercise solved the issue. Doctors are not likely to tell you that. I don't even believe it's something nefarious like kickbacks from the drug companies. It's simply because giving you a prescription frees up an examining room faster than trying to find a cause.
And then, there is the expense. I had an ailment that was costing me $400 a month in office visits, lab tests and drugs, after insurance. At some point I realized that I wasn't getting $400 worth of relief, and just stopped going. A little research produced alternates that provided 90% of the effect for 5% of the cost.
We don't have their training, but we do have a much higher regard for our own health than do most doctors, and access via libraries and the net to most of their information. The body is just another machine -- although a very complicated one -- and can be understood by an educated person, at least partially, via research.
Mind you, if I need surgery I'm going to the hospital. I'm not an idiot. But I stopped taking steroids for eczema, for instance, and switched to Bag Balm, available at the feed store at negligible cost. Works great.
rogue, sail, wump, search (you have crashed into a planet), battlestar (in the closet is a kingly robe), mazewars, that mazewars-like curses game who's name escapes me, with a variety of weapons (satchel bomb... oooo...) that had destructable maze walls.
There are a variety of Rogue-like games out there that have been ported to current platforms, but the other ones, especially sail, search and mazewars, I haven't seen in years and years. These games were arguably part of our early Unix heritage because they enticed people to get a login and explore the OS, and for many of us (myself included) they were our motivation learn how to write termcaps for obscure terminals and emulators (the acid test was if Rogue would render correctly), learn programming to fix and enhance the games, and earn root access to do installs and fix permission issues.
Multi-user Unix games like sail and mazewars helped spread the Unix word because we were always trying to entice others to get a login so we could play with them. People with early PC experience couldn't even conceive of multi-user games.
Ah, but I have a bit of understanding of how they work, I think. Betavoltaic are not photovoltaics. Different particle, different principle. Check out the wiki -- power supplies based on this principle have the potential to power small household appliances. And they last a very long time without refueling.
What made me think of this was the digital watch I had back in the late seventies that used radioactive tritium for a backlight. It was bright enough on a dark night to use as a flashlight. The only downside was that there was no way to shut it off, a disadvantage when going out to a movie. (Oh, and my left arm fell off. Not really.)
The significant advance since the times of Tesla is that devices take much less power to operate, which is, I think, the real reason broadcast power has become interesting again.
During recent years, there's been significant advances in atomic batteries. So, given that, why not atomic? If a device is typically replaced every three years (or one year if from Apple), I wonder if a tritium betavoltaic (for instance) of sufficient capacity could be made small enough to reside in the device, either powering it directly or charging a conventional battery during periods of unuse.
I'm thinking, watches, almost certainly. Solid state personal music players, possibly. Phones... maybe?
To quibble a bit, I'd say that the guidance systems capable of landing a probe on Titan are way overkill for landing a missile on someone's head, which is a lot simpler proposition. I suspect the military had the ability to do that from anywhere on earth well before Huygens launched.
Your point is valid -- there are military applications to advances associated with the space program. But what did you expect? The point is, a world war wasn't necessary to provide the impetus to develop the IC, as it was for, say, radar and avionics.
Hang on, I'll agree with you as soon as that flood of Sara Underwood pics finishes...
There we go. Yes, the binary groups killed Usenet.
No wait, they didn't. As a netnews admin (1982 to approx 1995) I could easily choose not to carry all or part of the binary newsgroups. The Usenet hierarchy was engineered such that this was fairly easy to do. The binary groups were something optional that you had to look for, they didn't just crash down on you. Especially if you were a business and getting your feeds from other businesses.
Oddly enough, as dead as Usenet is supposed to be today, discussion still continues, pretty much as it did in the 1980's. Sometimes the *same* discussions...
When my isp dropped usenet, I switched to readnews.com. It was something like $7 or $7.50 a month. I created an account, set up automatic billing, switched my news reader to the readnews nntp server, and forgot about it. It's a lot faster than my old ISP's news server ever was, especially when doing mass newsgroup updates, actually making use of the 20 Mbit pipe. They don't appear to do any newsgroup filtering, if you're concerned about that sort of thing.
Of course, I have no connection to readnews.com except as a customer. My first job on a Unix box back in 1982 was as the local usenet administrator, (ah, the days of "B" news and 1200 baud modems...) have always gotten Usenet for free, so it grates to have to pay for it, but I have to admit, the service works flawlessly.
Someone will inevitably point out that you can access news on groups.google.com. That service is excellent for searching for articles, but it fails when you're trying to browse a lot of articles. The interface is just too slow. If you're using usenet as a resource, google groups is fine. If you're actually trying to actively participate in any really effective fashion, you'll need a local news reader and an nntp service.
Don' look at me, I have no intention of owning one of those things any time soon. With phones, I tend to choose carefully, buy once, and then keep it until it can't be fixed anymore. Previous phone a Palm 680, and frankly it was somewhat of a relief when it finally quit. Current phone a Blackberry Bold, and I plan to keep it for a good long time.
Frankly, I observe without understanding this compulsion to have every new thing. If your phone was good enough a year ago, isn't it still? If it wasn't, whyinhell didn't you buy something that was?
Mind you, if the iPhone had had mms and cut-n-paste and stereo bluetooth and a decent camera with video and flash (which it still doesn't) a year ago, I might have gotten it instead of the Bold, which does have these things. But it didn't, so I didn't. And even then, the lack of a micro-sd slot may have been a deal-breaker.
But all this is moot. I got the phone I wanted. I like my phone. I plan to keep it. I have to question how much you could like your phone if you want to dump it at the first opportunity. And for such paltry improvements.
> How fond Americans are of reductionist dualities that are unhelpful, misleading and frequently downright dangerous: American pilot with The Right Stuff in an American plane would have saved everyone; dangerous European plane and computer killed hundreds. Oversimplified sniping, or childish fantasy?
I hear what you're saying, but ClariNet wasn't an ISP, it offered wire news services for a fee. It means you could flip on your terminal, fire up the Telebit, dial into your service provider, (or work, as may be) and then, for a fee, access news stories from wire services. As opposed to, for instance, turning on the radio. Utterly redundant now, but it was all the rage, sometimes literally, back then.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember reading a story about how some African nations were creating a wifi network via balloon. The wireless router hangs off a weather balloon and gets it's network connection either via satellite or a dedicated link to a ground station. The advantage may be that it could be done cheaply and easily replenished.
Popsicle sticks between the drives, for airflow.
That's too bad, I was looking forward to reading about successful municipal broadband projects.
I'd beware of the "too good" argument. I remember when people with normal TVs were saying that about Laserdisc, which these days looks like crap when compared with modern (non-HD) dvds on modern TVs. "Good" is a moving target. Rather, I'd say that the source material (in this particular case) wasn't good enough.
I'm not defending BluRay -- I think it's expensive and unnecessary. But there are better reasons than that the format is "too good".
Moreover, with a better compression algorithm, the resultant movies can be stored on normal DVDs as data files, obviating the need to laboriously render the video in BluRay disc format.
Or is it possible that since governments fund research, not solutions, that's what they're getting -- research, not solutions. Practical fusion will always be 50 years ahead, because that's what we are (inadvertently) paying scientists to say.
It sounds like they *are* trying, if the monthly fee is reasonable. If you're going to compete against illegal downloads, you must be at a minimum (a) DRM free and (b) available for a reasonable price. The third requirement is sufficient quality (where hulu still fails), but maybe it'll be ok. This could actually succeed.
Of course, if it is successful, the American music industry will implement their own version, which will be more expensive than CDs, have draconian DRM and be accompanied by punishing enforcement with lots of false positives. But hey, we were always on the forefront of innovation...
Right, but if they didn't make all those mistakes on the other natural keyboards, they couldn't sell you a Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000...
It's an entirely different deal. DVD was a significant improvement over VHS in quality, form factor, and durability. Blu-Ray is only an incremental improvement over DVD which most people won't notice.
Blu-Ray is to DVD what S-VHS was to VHS. And we all know how the market for S-VHS movies really took off.
It was reasonable for DVD to replace VHS over time. The improvement was significant enough that regular people were actually interested in switching after the cost of the players started to come down.
Blu-Ray has no such attraction. Same form factor, same durability, and only a small S-VHS-like improvement in quality (for most people). Compound this with draconian DRM and higher media and player costs in a down economy, and you have the makings of a genuine loser.
I'm not a seer, don't even play one on television, but I suspect that for prerecorded media, Blu-Ray will be swamped out by the Next Big Thing before it has a chance to replace DVD. It'll stick around as a recordable medium, but prerecorded content will die out. To replace a medium, you have to be Enough Better. Blu-Ray isn't.
Blu-Ray does have an important use, for backups and data storage. I plan to get a writer as soon as the price drops a bit.
Blu-Ray video? Enh. I seen it. I not impressed. It's just not the leap in quality that we got with the switch from VHS to DVD. Assuming well-crafted content (anyone can make a crappy DVD, or a crappy Blu-Ray disc), the weak link for the majority of consumers will be the TV. Except for a small collection of videophiles and the people who just have to have the latest thing, it's not worth the cost or the trouble. And the more restrictions enforced by content owners, the less it will be worth the cost or the trouble.
So, if I'm understanding this right, content owners are scheming to make life miserable for the few videophiles trying to use a mostly unnecessary video format. Yeah, that sounds like a business plan.
> It is utterly impossible to "phase out the analog hole".
There is a way. You could make the content so terrible that nobody would want to record it. Which is very nearly the case.
I don't find this surprising at all. Doctor's offices are assembly lines these days. A convenient good for a convenient number. Real life isn't like House -- unless you're a senator, successful diagnosis of obscure problems is unlikely, and probably prohibitively expensive for the patient, even with insurance.
It would be in our favor to become more educated about how this complicated machine called the body works. I'm not suggesting bizarre treatments only available in third world countries, but a more complete understanding of cause and effect.
For instance, the most common treatment for back pain is "weaponized" muscle relaxers and pain killers, commonly leading to hopeless addiction. I know of at least two cases (one of them my own) where the true cause of the pain was due to ergonomic issues, and changes in the environment accompanied by proper exercise solved the issue. Doctors are not likely to tell you that. I don't even believe it's something nefarious like kickbacks from the drug companies. It's simply because giving you a prescription frees up an examining room faster than trying to find a cause.
And then, there is the expense. I had an ailment that was costing me $400 a month in office visits, lab tests and drugs, after insurance. At some point I realized that I wasn't getting $400 worth of relief, and just stopped going. A little research produced alternates that provided 90% of the effect for 5% of the cost.
We don't have their training, but we do have a much higher regard for our own health than do most doctors, and access via libraries and the net to most of their information. The body is just another machine -- although a very complicated one -- and can be understood by an educated person, at least partially, via research.
Mind you, if I need surgery I'm going to the hospital. I'm not an idiot. But I stopped taking steroids for eczema, for instance, and switched to Bag Balm, available at the feed store at negligible cost. Works great.
rogue, sail, wump, search (you have crashed into a planet), battlestar (in the closet is a kingly robe), mazewars, that mazewars-like curses game who's name escapes me, with a variety of weapons (satchel bomb... oooo...) that had destructable maze walls.
There are a variety of Rogue-like games out there that have been ported to current platforms, but the other ones, especially sail, search and mazewars, I haven't seen in years and years. These games were arguably part of our early Unix heritage because they enticed people to get a login and explore the OS, and for many of us (myself included) they were our motivation learn how to write termcaps for obscure terminals and emulators (the acid test was if Rogue would render correctly), learn programming to fix and enhance the games, and earn root access to do installs and fix permission issues.
Multi-user Unix games like sail and mazewars helped spread the Unix word because we were always trying to entice others to get a login so we could play with them. People with early PC experience couldn't even conceive of multi-user games.
> But we already have solar energy.
Shrug. We already have atomic batteries. And they work in the dark.
Ah, but I have a bit of understanding of how they work, I think. Betavoltaic are not photovoltaics. Different particle, different principle. Check out the wiki -- power supplies based on this principle have the potential to power small household appliances. And they last a very long time without refueling.
Why not atomic?
What made me think of this was the digital watch I had back in the late seventies that used radioactive tritium for a backlight. It was bright enough on a dark night to use as a flashlight. The only downside was that there was no way to shut it off, a disadvantage when going out to a movie. (Oh, and my left arm fell off. Not really.)
The significant advance since the times of Tesla is that devices take much less power to operate, which is, I think, the real reason broadcast power has become interesting again.
During recent years, there's been significant advances in atomic batteries. So, given that, why not atomic? If a device is typically replaced every three years (or one year if from Apple), I wonder if a tritium betavoltaic (for instance) of sufficient capacity could be made small enough to reside in the device, either powering it directly or charging a conventional battery during periods of unuse.
I'm thinking, watches, almost certainly. Solid state personal music players, possibly. Phones... maybe?
Google appliance.
To quibble a bit, I'd say that the guidance systems capable of landing a probe on Titan are way overkill for landing a missile on someone's head, which is a lot simpler proposition. I suspect the military had the ability to do that from anywhere on earth well before Huygens launched.
Your point is valid -- there are military applications to advances associated with the space program. But what did you expect? The point is, a world war wasn't necessary to provide the impetus to develop the IC, as it was for, say, radar and avionics.
Hang on, I'll agree with you as soon as that flood of Sara Underwood pics finishes...
There we go. Yes, the binary groups killed Usenet.
No wait, they didn't. As a netnews admin (1982 to approx 1995) I could easily choose not to carry all or part of the binary newsgroups. The Usenet hierarchy was engineered such that this was fairly easy to do. The binary groups were something optional that you had to look for, they didn't just crash down on you. Especially if you were a business and getting your feeds from other businesses.
Oddly enough, as dead as Usenet is supposed to be today, discussion still continues, pretty much as it did in the 1980's. Sometimes the *same* discussions...
When my isp dropped usenet, I switched to readnews.com. It was something like $7 or $7.50 a month. I created an account, set up automatic billing, switched my news reader to the readnews nntp server, and forgot about it. It's a lot faster than my old ISP's news server ever was, especially when doing mass newsgroup updates, actually making use of the 20 Mbit pipe. They don't appear to do any newsgroup filtering, if you're concerned about that sort of thing.
Of course, I have no connection to readnews.com except as a customer. My first job on a Unix box back in 1982 was as the local usenet administrator, (ah, the days of "B" news and 1200 baud modems...) have always gotten Usenet for free, so it grates to have to pay for it, but I have to admit, the service works flawlessly.
Someone will inevitably point out that you can access news on groups.google.com. That service is excellent for searching for articles, but it fails when you're trying to browse a lot of articles. The interface is just too slow. If you're using usenet as a resource, google groups is fine. If you're actually trying to actively participate in any really effective fashion, you'll need a local news reader and an nntp service.
Don' look at me, I have no intention of owning one of those things any time soon. With phones, I tend to choose carefully, buy once, and then keep it until it can't be fixed anymore. Previous phone a Palm 680, and frankly it was somewhat of a relief when it finally quit. Current phone a Blackberry Bold, and I plan to keep it for a good long time.
Frankly, I observe without understanding this compulsion to have every new thing. If your phone was good enough a year ago, isn't it still? If it wasn't, whyinhell didn't you buy something that was?
Mind you, if the iPhone had had mms and cut-n-paste and stereo bluetooth and a decent camera with video and flash (which it still doesn't) a year ago, I might have gotten it instead of the Bold, which does have these things. But it didn't, so I didn't. And even then, the lack of a micro-sd slot may have been a deal-breaker.
But all this is moot. I got the phone I wanted. I like my phone. I plan to keep it. I have to question how much you could like your phone if you want to dump it at the first opportunity. And for such paltry improvements.
> How fond Americans are of reductionist dualities that are unhelpful, misleading and frequently downright dangerous: American pilot with The Right Stuff in an American plane would have saved everyone; dangerous European plane and computer killed hundreds. Oversimplified sniping, or childish fantasy?
Third choice: That's not what he said.
In this case, there is no ?????.
I hear what you're saying, but ClariNet wasn't an ISP, it offered wire news services for a fee. It means you could flip on your terminal, fire up the Telebit, dial into your service provider, (or work, as may be) and then, for a fee, access news stories from wire services. As opposed to, for instance, turning on the radio. Utterly redundant now, but it was all the rage, sometimes literally, back then.
This is genius.
1) Apple culture heavily weighted towards having latest shiny object
2) AT&T contract requires 2 year ownership or pay $200 penalty
3) Apple maintains 1 year design cycle
4) Profit!!