Most theaters still display real film - which technically has no absolute resolution, though there is some theoretical maximum which the film grain can reproduce. The point though is that WMV can reproduce the same level of quality as theater film at perhaps 6-8 mbits/sec or better. I am talking about the level of quality the first time film is shown - film significantly degrades over the time the film is shown because the high-powered lamps damage it and the equipment scratches it - I've seen some pretty bad stuff at theaters because of this.
This amounts to about 5GB for a typical film (6mbit/8 bits * 60 sec * 111 minutes is 4995mb)
David
I realize you were just trying to make a dig against WMV - but the reality is that lisences are typically renewed for a window of time (or set for a window of time in the first place, such as the "3 months this theater is allowed to play this movie") - requiring an actual check every time media is played is very unlikely (though possible) - PressPlay uses WMA DRM and appears to renew media lisences once a month (and, not coincidentally, people pay for access to PressPlay on a monthly basis - if you don't pay for the next month, your content will expire at the end of this one and will no longer play)
DRM has it's problems but some people are really working on figuring out how to make it work fairly for both the content owners and the customers - sad that some people can not see the value it holds, only the fears of some 1984 society. (and it has some of each in it)
David
Last I checked every car had a lisence plate that was pretty easy to read - via automated cameras and relatively simple OCR software - this is nothing new. If they really want to know you went through the toll booth they can already find out (Canada has highways that operate this way, billing users by scanning their plates and sending them a periodic bill in the mail)
Not that Canada is exactly a bastion of liberty - but the point is that this doesn't really enable any new privacy "problems"
XP Pro and even XP Home support hyperthreading. They know the difference between physical and logical and they treat them accordingly (including lisencing ramifications - you can have 2 logical processors on home, 4 on pro vs. 1 / 2 physical processors.)
Win2K was capable of making use of hyperthreaded processors, though not aware of the difference between a hyperthreaded processor and 2 physical processors. Windows XP is aware of the difference and makes the right choices about thread prioritization / processor affinity - and licensing (XP Pro, which supports "2 processors" will still support "4 virtual processors" on a hyperthreaded machine.)
There is nothing new about Linux supporting Hyperthreading.
David
The machines are about $1700. I agree it is a lot. Btu they are only selling it on OEM machines because this is a "complicated scenario to get right" and if they sold it as a seperate piece of software for anyone to buy and try out on their machines they would have a lot of complaints about it not working or not working well on hardware x, y, or z. They know, have been able to validate, that it works well with certain specific hardware - the OEMs all have to pick hardware that works well... I don't like it either, but I understand the "why" behind it.
David
READ the info on this. You can not buy the software. You can only get it along with a new PC. The lack of support for a wide range of hardware (the complications which that would create esp. with non-hardware compression like ATI) is one of the reasons they must have chosen the OEM-only route.
Depending on the importance of the person, now wouldn't that be a terrible scheme - no, depending on whatever the person wants it to be - bearing in mind that, of course, this same "ultimatim" of be important or be charged is going to apply to anyone not on your white list, including that long-lost friend trying to reach you.
I think it's a great idea - however, implementation would be a challenge.
That said it COULD be implemented by an ISP - who basically has an automated firewall for you, if mail is received for you from someone not on the white list an auto-response is sent back (instead of delivering the mail) stating the terms - in fact, even without an ultimatum, simply requiring a response to the auto-responder would cut out 95% of the spam out there.
Your last statement is basically what pressplay has done. Except that it's $1 or less per song but you need a subscription - still, if you buy much music at all it can come down below $1 a song including the subscription price.
Oh, and they don't do anything smart to keep track of what you bought (well, they probably track it but it doesn't help you) - realistically you need to burn to CD and re-rip unprotected everything you buy to get the full value out of it.
But it's getting so much closer to reasonable.
What, at a whopping 4.7GB per DVD? You'll have a tower by the time you're done with a single backup. And the DVD discs aren't cheap, they aren't durable, and I haven't seen any study showing them to be remarkably reliable.
So do you want gateway to support your right to copy-at-will and "remove the protection" for the SOFTWARE provided with the PC?
No, Gateway is not going to support your right to make 10 copies of MS Word for your friends - they only sold you an OEM lisence for that machine. Neither are they going to support your right to copy the music that they only gave limited rights for. They, as I understand it, ARE supporting your right to pop in a CD, rip it with media player (or whatever) and then make your mix CDs, copy to portable devices, whatever.
PressPlay's signup page says "unlimited access to over 175,000 songs"
The "2000" figure is just the music that is _already on the hard drive_ of these gateway boxes. The idea is, they save pressplay bandwith and save their customers download time (those who are actually interested in pressplay.) - so they put the stuff they expect to be most popular on there.
KaZaa is not a "primary player" - they aren't a player at all. The only time that KaZaa's content overlaps the content of PressPlay is when it is illegal content. (i.e. KaZaa's legally justified existance for trading non-copyrighted material does not compete with PressPlay at all)
re: 56k. Well, these are WMA files, I believe the bit rate provided is 128k (equivalent to "some higher rate" of MP3 - I'm not going to argue about how much higher) - most albums are about 60 minutes... do the math. It's an overnight download, or at least a few hours - BUT - I am pretty sure PressPlay also lets users download files at significantly lower rates, so, download those, if you like the songs, download the 128k rate files. If you REALLY like the songs, pay $1 for each one you want to burn to CD.
It should be pointed out that there is no such thing as "Press Play Format" PressPlay provides music in the form of DRM'd WMA files.
Personally, I think their service is a great idea - only a few bits short of being "just right."
Like:
The silliness of only letting you "burn or transfer" a file once when you "pay to make it portable" - this wastes people's time - because what you then have to do is use your "burn once" to burn it to a CR-RW, then copy the file back as a NON-DRM WMA (or MP3 ot whatever) file and you can then use it as you want. This approach doesn't really protect anything, it just wastes consumer's time.
It's pretty reasonable I think to have access to almost all the major label music out there for 9.95 a month and basically be able to buy songs for $1 each (less in larger quantities or when gotten along with the monthly fee) - this is generally cheaper than buying the physical CDs.
Hopefully it will get even cheaper when there are more companies doing what PressPlay is doing and hopefully some of them will have better "terms" - like letting you burn a song all you want once you pay for it.
David
Doesn't killer app imply that there is something new about the idea?
Windows Media Player 9 (beta) already does this for copying to portable devices with WMA files.
Toms Hardware used the same processor for the HT and non HT tests (at 3GHZ) - they simply enabled/disabled HT in the bios. So whether you feel the "3GHZ-HT" is fastest or the "3GHZ-NO-HT" is fastest - they were referring to the same chip.
This is all pretty moot since you can beat the "fastest" by turning up the FSB a few mhz and it's very unlikely that anything is going to go wrong.
It should be able to do significantly more than 1 billion computations per second since it has multiple execution units (not sure how many these days - 7? 9?)... this is all depending on what those computations are. I am fairly certain division still takes more than one cycle.
Back in the old days (8086) there were very few, if any, instructions that only took one cycle. By the time we got to 486s most basic instructions (i.e. other than division, multiplication, or anything floating point which gets into a whole different realm) was down to one or two cycles. This was interesting becuase the fastest way to compile a particular bit of C code into assembly is different depending on the target processor.
I am pretty sure if you define computation as "add" that it can do at least 2 per cycle (assuming you don't hit the memory for both operands for every add - don't know how much this might slow it down)
There are really quite a few complications in determining how many computations it will pull off each second, and it depends on more than just the processor.
The bar for "security hazard" really must be a moving target - what was "secure encryption" 5 years ago can be broken quite readily with the machines we have today.
Actually, this is not an issue for XP. XP knows the difference between "physical" and "logical" processors. XP Home will support 1 physical processor even it it is HT and acts like 2 logical processors. XP Pro... 2 physical / no prob when these show up as 4 logical. Read the anandtech review, it provides more detail on this.
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Most theaters still display real film - which technically has no absolute resolution, though there is some theoretical maximum which the film grain can reproduce. The point though is that WMV can reproduce the same level of quality as theater film at perhaps 6-8 mbits/sec or better. I am talking about the level of quality the first time film is shown - film significantly degrades over the time the film is shown because the high-powered lamps damage it and the equipment scratches it - I've seen some pretty bad stuff at theaters because of this. This amounts to about 5GB for a typical film (6mbit /8 bits * 60 sec * 111 minutes is 4995mb)
David
I realize you were just trying to make a dig against WMV - but the reality is that lisences are typically renewed for a window of time (or set for a window of time in the first place, such as the "3 months this theater is allowed to play this movie") - requiring an actual check every time media is played is very unlikely (though possible) - PressPlay uses WMA DRM and appears to renew media lisences once a month (and, not coincidentally, people pay for access to PressPlay on a monthly basis - if you don't pay for the next month, your content will expire at the end of this one and will no longer play) DRM has it's problems but some people are really working on figuring out how to make it work fairly for both the content owners and the customers - sad that some people can not see the value it holds, only the fears of some 1984 society. (and it has some of each in it) David
Last I checked every car had a lisence plate that was pretty easy to read - via automated cameras and relatively simple OCR software - this is nothing new. If they really want to know you went through the toll booth they can already find out (Canada has highways that operate this way, billing users by scanning their plates and sending them a periodic bill in the mail)
Not that Canada is exactly a bastion of liberty - but the point is that this doesn't really enable any new privacy "problems"
David
Of course, you are wrong.
XP Pro and even XP Home support hyperthreading. They know the difference between physical and logical and they treat them accordingly (including lisencing ramifications - you can have 2 logical processors on home, 4 on pro vs. 1 / 2 physical processors.)
David
Win2K was capable of making use of hyperthreaded processors, though not aware of the difference between a hyperthreaded processor and 2 physical processors. Windows XP is aware of the difference and makes the right choices about thread prioritization / processor affinity - and licensing (XP Pro, which supports "2 processors" will still support "4 virtual processors" on a hyperthreaded machine.) There is nothing new about Linux supporting Hyperthreading. David
The machines are about $1700. I agree it is a lot. Btu they are only selling it on OEM machines because this is a "complicated scenario to get right" and if they sold it as a seperate piece of software for anyone to buy and try out on their machines they would have a lot of complaints about it not working or not working well on hardware x, y, or z. They know, have been able to validate, that it works well with certain specific hardware - the OEMs all have to pick hardware that works well ... I don't like it either, but I understand the "why" behind it.
David
READ the info on this. You can not buy the software. You can only get it along with a new PC. The lack of support for a wide range of hardware (the complications which that would create esp. with non-hardware compression like ATI) is one of the reasons they must have chosen the OEM-only route.
Depending on the importance of the person, now wouldn't that be a terrible scheme - no, depending on whatever the person wants it to be - bearing in mind that, of course, this same "ultimatim" of be important or be charged is going to apply to anyone not on your white list, including that long-lost friend trying to reach you.
I think it's a great idea - however, implementation would be a challenge.
That said it COULD be implemented by an ISP - who basically has an automated firewall for you, if mail is received for you from someone not on the white list an auto-response is sent back (instead of delivering the mail) stating the terms - in fact, even without an ultimatum, simply requiring a response to the auto-responder would cut out 95% of the spam out there.
Your last statement is basically what pressplay has done. Except that it's $1 or less per song but you need a subscription - still, if you buy much music at all it can come down below $1 a song including the subscription price. Oh, and they don't do anything smart to keep track of what you bought (well, they probably track it but it doesn't help you) - realistically you need to burn to CD and re-rip unprotected everything you buy to get the full value out of it. But it's getting so much closer to reasonable.
What, at a whopping 4.7GB per DVD? You'll have a tower by the time you're done with a single backup. And the DVD discs aren't cheap, they aren't durable, and I haven't seen any study showing them to be remarkably reliable.
So do you want gateway to support your right to copy-at-will and "remove the protection" for the SOFTWARE provided with the PC?
No, Gateway is not going to support your right to make 10 copies of MS Word for your friends - they only sold you an OEM lisence for that machine. Neither are they going to support your right to copy the music that they only gave limited rights for. They, as I understand it, ARE supporting your right to pop in a CD, rip it with media player (or whatever) and then make your mix CDs, copy to portable devices, whatever.
PressPlay's signup page says "unlimited access to over 175,000 songs" The "2000" figure is just the music that is _already on the hard drive_ of these gateway boxes. The idea is, they save pressplay bandwith and save their customers download time (those who are actually interested in pressplay.) - so they put the stuff they expect to be most popular on there. KaZaa is not a "primary player" - they aren't a player at all. The only time that KaZaa's content overlaps the content of PressPlay is when it is illegal content. (i.e. KaZaa's legally justified existance for trading non-copyrighted material does not compete with PressPlay at all) re: 56k. Well, these are WMA files, I believe the bit rate provided is 128k (equivalent to "some higher rate" of MP3 - I'm not going to argue about how much higher) - most albums are about 60 minutes ... do the math. It's an overnight download, or at least a few hours - BUT - I am pretty sure PressPlay also lets users download files at significantly lower rates, so, download those, if you like the songs, download the 128k rate files. If you REALLY like the songs, pay $1 for each one you want to burn to CD.
It should be pointed out that there is no such thing as "Press Play Format" PressPlay provides music in the form of DRM'd WMA files. Personally, I think their service is a great idea - only a few bits short of being "just right." Like: The silliness of only letting you "burn or transfer" a file once when you "pay to make it portable" - this wastes people's time - because what you then have to do is use your "burn once" to burn it to a CR-RW, then copy the file back as a NON-DRM WMA (or MP3 ot whatever) file and you can then use it as you want. This approach doesn't really protect anything, it just wastes consumer's time. It's pretty reasonable I think to have access to almost all the major label music out there for 9.95 a month and basically be able to buy songs for $1 each (less in larger quantities or when gotten along with the monthly fee) - this is generally cheaper than buying the physical CDs. Hopefully it will get even cheaper when there are more companies doing what PressPlay is doing and hopefully some of them will have better "terms" - like letting you burn a song all you want once you pay for it. David
Doesn't killer app imply that there is something new about the idea? Windows Media Player 9 (beta) already does this for copying to portable devices with WMA files.
Toms Hardware used the same processor for the HT and non HT tests (at 3GHZ) - they simply enabled/disabled HT in the bios. So whether you feel the "3GHZ-HT" is fastest or the "3GHZ-NO-HT" is fastest - they were referring to the same chip. This is all pretty moot since you can beat the "fastest" by turning up the FSB a few mhz and it's very unlikely that anything is going to go wrong.
It should be able to do significantly more than 1 billion computations per second since it has multiple execution units (not sure how many these days - 7? 9?) ... this is all depending on what those computations are. I am fairly certain division still takes more than one cycle.
Back in the old days (8086) there were very few, if any, instructions that only took one cycle. By the time we got to 486s most basic instructions (i.e. other than division, multiplication, or anything floating point which gets into a whole different realm) was down to one or two cycles. This was interesting becuase the fastest way to compile a particular bit of C code into assembly is different depending on the target processor.
I am pretty sure if you define computation as "add" that it can do at least 2 per cycle (assuming you don't hit the memory for both operands for every add - don't know how much this might slow it down)
There are really quite a few complications in determining how many computations it will pull off each second, and it depends on more than just the processor.
The bar for "security hazard" really must be a moving target - what was "secure encryption" 5 years ago can be broken quite readily with the machines we have today.
Actually, this is not an issue for XP. XP knows the difference between "physical" and "logical" processors. XP Home will support 1 physical processor even it it is HT and acts like 2 logical processors. XP Pro ... 2 physical / no prob when these show up as 4 logical. Read the anandtech review, it provides more detail on this.